#i just recently made a couple of posts on why Tails is unlikely to share his backstory with his friends so that was a punch in the gut

[prowerprojects]

should we be concerned of Tails after the Twitter Takeover??? He literally acted like a nerd (not like him) and literally just said, 'yep, I slept outside because I didn't have a home.' Like, WHAT!!

Nah, it's all cool.

The Twitter takeovers are written by the people who run the Social media accounts and make memes like these:

It's not gonna impact any characterization long term, so don't worry. It's just for fun.

[astarryon]

Tame Your Demons

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Violence, blood mention, implied assault, language, general criminal minds things

Summary: The deal you have with Spencer is simple. You call him to take care of the men looking to take advantage of innocents on the street, and he comes to ensure you don’t kill them before he gets the chance. Unfortunately for the both of you, though, things don’t always go according to plan.

A/N: This is my latest love letter to Spencer Reid and Criminal Minds! Part Two will be posted a little later this week, and will be for a slightly more mature audience, if y’all catch my drift. A big thank you to @reids-trauma​ for letting me run this fic by her, she’s literally half the reason it even saw the light of day. Enjoy!

Masterlist

––

You see him before he sees you.

It doesn’t hurt your feelings— it’s the norm, in any case, and it’s what typically happens each time you reach out to plan a rendezvous. Part of the agreement is that you get to set the location, and you’re always careful to pick places you’re comfortable enough to slip your way out of unnoticed in case he ever morals up and brings his team to corner you. To his credit, that hasn’t happened yet — though you’re not naive enough to give up on the idea that it ever will just yet — but never subscribing to uncertain chances was a lesson you’d learned a long time ago.

But you know you’re safe for tonight, at least. He wouldn’t be meandering around the bar for such a prolonged amount of time searching for you if there were rows of feds waiting to take you into custody as soon as you stepped foot out the door. It takes a full fifteen seconds before his wandering gaze finally touches on you, another three before the glint of recognition appears in his eyes, and by the time he’s straightening his spine and striding purposefully toward you, it’s been an entire minute. Damn. Someone was really starting to lose their touch.

“You’re late, Doc,” you simper, arching a brow as you knock back a hearty sip from your glass. “Didn’t your mommy ever tell you it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?”

“Couldn’t be helped,” Reid huffs, crossing his arms over one another as he tries — and fails — to sidle up to you in a casual manner. You note the way he avoids touching the bar at all costs, how he folds in on himself like an exceptionally uncomfortable piece of origami. And then, of course, there’s the suit, far too dressy for a place so casual as the lively little bar nestled in the far side of downtown Georgetown. Jesus, the only way he would look like even more of an off the clock fed would be if his badge were superglued to his palm. “Getting away from the others without raising suspicion on such short notice isn’t exactly the easiest thing to pull off.”

“Yeah, well,” you chuckle, taking another sip from your glass. You make eyes at him, pointedly and conspicuously allowing your gaze to rake his lanky, suit clad frame head to toe. He looks good in the outfit he’s picked, the dark black of his jacket drawing the eye to the maroon button down he wore beneath it, and you marvel at the way his chosen color palette sets off his skin in the dim light. If Reid notices your staring or cares, he makes no show of it. Your ogling doesn’t bother him, not like it used to — doesn’t even make him blush, to your admitted dismay, though you suppose that makes sense. Spencer Reid is nothing like the sweet, shy boy he used to be. He’s not so wide eyed and naive anymore, though you’d never expected that to last very long in the first place. Still — getting a rise out of him had always been your favorite part of your arrangement. If you don’t get to keep that going, these meetings are about to become significantly less fun. “That’s the deal, isn’t it? When I call, you come running.”

“That’s the deal,” he mutters, nonchalantly waving off the approaching bartender. “And I came running. So who is it?”

You jut your lip out into a pout, resting your elbows atop the bar before settling your chin against your palms, sparing only a moment’s thought for how low the neckline of your dress must be dipping with the switch in position before casting the worry out of your mind. Were any other man your company tonight, you might have felt more concern for your modesty, but Spencer Reid was far from being anything like most men, and, honestly, the day you caught him checking you out was the day you mentally marked another tally on your side of the metaphorical score board. “Why’s it always straight to business with you?”

“Because—“

“No ‘hello’,” you go on, skirt riding further up your thigh as you cross your legs over each other. Not even a spare glance. Damn. “No ‘how are you,’ no admission of your undying love for me. If you’re not careful, Spencer, you’re going to start hurting my feelings.”

“No offense,” Spencer retorts, sounding particularly unconcerned with whether his words actually offend you or not, “but your feelings aren’t exactly my top priority right now. Arresting whoever this man is before you take it upon yourself to brutalize him is.”

“Well he’d deserve it, if I did,” you tell him matter of factly, swirling the contents of your glass as you pretend to be more interested in that than the eye-catching man just beside you. “This one likes to take advantage of young girls in clubs who accept drinks from strangers because they don’t know any better and still think there are nice people left in the world. Sometimes he keeps track, like it’s a game, and tries to see how many he can assault in a night, and this most recent time three of them made it home all right, but the fourth one turned up in a dumpster. So, yeah, Spencer, you’ll have to forgive me for figuring that if he ends up in a back alley with a couple of bruises and a broken leg he probably got what was coming to him, but don’t insult me by implying that I don’t know how to keep a promise.”

“If broken legs and bruises were all you left men with it wouldn’t be such a problem,” comes Spencer’s dry remark. “Unfortunately for the both of us, you seem to have a particular affinity for leaving men in comas.”

An affinity with which Spencer was all too familiar, you knew — not because he’d fallen victim to your habit of enacting revenge for all those poor defenseless victims, but because he’d caught you in the act with someone else. Two years later and you still weren’t positive how he’d managed to track you down. Spencer had told you minimal things — that an acquaintance on the city’s police force had reached out for his advice on a mysterious case of incapacitated men turning up in dark alleys, rarely little more than a few minutes away from going brain dead. That he’d been surprised to realize you profiled as female, considering the amount of unadulterated rage your behavior presented. That he’d made the decision to do what he could to keep from turning you in provided you help him be able to do so with a clean conscience before he’d even found you standing over some man with a white-knuckled grip on a tire iron.

“Give me your word that you’ll contact me first,” he’d instructed, a shockingly small amount of hesitancy glinting in his irises. “Give me your word that from the moment you call me, I have twenty four hours to find you so I can take care of all those awful men the right way. If I don’t make it in that time frame, they’re fair game, but if I find out that you laid a finger on them before you called me, I’ll personally see to it that you do time for every single man you’ve hospitalized. Can you agree to that?”

And you had. Partly because you had no interest in spending any prolonged amount of time behind bars, and partly because the odd sense of emotional recognition he’d gazed upon you with had been so unlike anything you’d ever been met with from another human being that you were essentially startled into instant complacency.

“He’s in the bathroom,” you sigh, downing the rest of your drink and flagging the bartender down for another. More for show than anything else, though you know the theatrics aren’t strictly necessary. Your drink of choice while out with company is much more coke than it is rum, and after two years there isn’t any doubt in your mind that Spencer is aware of that. “Has been for a while now, as a matter of fact, because he’s pompous and arrogant and wants to make sure the bait is set right for the barely legal girl he’s meeting here tonight.”

“Don’t suppose you want to share with the class the barely legal method you used to figure that one out?” Spencer deadpans, plucking your new drink from the bar and draining a few healthy sips before you even have the chance to reach for it. That’s something he’s never done before, though you suppose his repulsion to germs wouldn’t factor in one way or the other since the drink was fresh. But Spencer never indulged in alcohol around you, and was always incredibly careful to keep his guard up during these meetings. Either he was playing a different angle tonight, or something in him had drastically shifted.

“Only if you want to share with the class why I’ve been tailing this guy for two and a half weeks while you dodged my phone calls,” you retort, never breaking eye contact as you grab the glass and tilt the rim to your mouth, in just the same place that Spencer’s had been. You think you see a vein in his neck pulse as you swallow, but you can’t be sure whether the lights are playing tricks on you, so you decide not to count it. “Not like you to leave an innocent man’s life in my hands.”

Spencer arches a brow, eyes narrowing as he searches your face for something you’re not sure about. “Not like you to wait to hear back from me before doing anything about it.” He pauses, then, and more to himself than to you mutters, “And I’ve never said they were innocent.”

“Guess you’re right,” you mutter, shrugging a shoulder and leaning back in your chair as you let your eyes scan around the restaurant. The man you’re looking for is still nowhere to be found, and with the way your nerves are beginning to fray beneath Spencer’s all too calm and collected scrutiny, it’s hard to get ahold of your imagination as it barrels toward the worst case. “He’s still not back.”

“He’s probably still in the bathroom,” Spencer offers, giving an unconcerned shrug of his own. “You said he was a primper.”

“It’s been almost twenty minutes,” you shoot back, fixing him with a harsh stare. Normally you’d bother to be a bit more vivacious when speaking to Spencer, even in spite of your own irritation, but the sinking feeling in your stomach is making it impossible to pay attention to niceties. “That’s never happened before. Something’s wrong.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” But even to you Spencer’s words sound hesitant, like he’s trying to convince rather than tell, and somehow his lack of confidence only serves to make your throat that much thicker. “He couldn’t have left already, you would’ve seen him.”

Yeah, you would have — provided you hadn’t allowed every ounce of your attention to be monopolized by Spencer. You’d been so preoccupied with trying to appeal to his attention, so hung up on matching him wit for wit and taunting and tempting him with bared flesh and sultry gazes that, truthfully, anything could have escaped your notice in the last couple of minutes. Anything. And if some poor girl ended up preyed upon, if she ended up beaten or assaulted or worse, it wouldn’t be as simple as blaming the monster taking advantage of her. You wouldn’t even be able to blame Spencer for distracting you. No— the only person you’d have to blame would be yourself.

“He’s gone,” you breathe, horror a jagged knife twisting in your stomach. Your hands shake so badly that Spencer has to uncurl your fingers from around your glass so he can set it gently down for you. “God, he’s— I let him get away. He’s gone.”

“Don’t work yourself up,” Spencer insists, and if you weren’t sure your panic was playing tricks on you, you’d have sworn you saw his hand reach out to comfort you, just as you saw apprehension tensing his expression. Of course the one thing it took to get a reaction out of him would be unbridled panic. “Listen to me, everything is fine.”

“Not for whatever girl he decided he liked enough to blow off his date for!” you hiss, and it’s a strain to keep your volume low enough not to attract the attention of any other patrons, but you manage. “We need to— Spencer, we have to stop him! He’s going to hurt somebody!”

“Okay,” Spencer tries to calm you, quickly moving to his feet. You can’t get a read on the way he’s looking at you, can’t tell if he’s taking you seriously or trying to decide if he should make a phone call to he nearest psychiatrist, but he seems to be picking up on the urgency of the situation, so you make the choice to let it go. “Let me go check the bathroom to see if he’s still here. If he’s not there, then we can start worrying.” He turns, taking three steps towards the bathroom before spinning on his heel and coming back to say, “Just— stay here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

And as you watch his back as he makes the trek towards the restroom, you think about doing what he tells you to. Truly, you do. Spencer could walk into that bathroom and find the man you’d been planning to turn over to his custody and come back with him in handcuffs, unable to help leveling a handsome smirk at you by way of a silent I told you so. You could be panicking for nothing.

But… if there was even the slightest chance that someone innocent could be in the worst kind of danger, was it really worth leaving their fate up to a coin toss?

You’re on your feet as soon as Spencer’s out of sight, beelining for the exit and dodging between other patrons until your legs have carried you out the door and immediately to the dimly lit corner of the block, lined with the closed shops and darkened alleys the man you were after would need to get away with the unspeakable acts he planned to commit. Even as you book it to stop what you know in your gut to be happening, you can’t help but to hope that Spencer had been right. Things would certainly be easier to stomach, were that the case.

But, as you’d somehow known with sickening clarity, the closer you draw to the dark alley gaping between the buildings down the street, the more prominent sounds of a struggle become. You heard a man’s voice — deep and angry and enough to set your hands shaking and your mind blazing with fury — and then, beneath that, the muffled, whimpered cries of a young woman, the sounds of which were so pitiful that you didn’t need to have laid an eye on her to know that she was already sobbing. After that, all thoughts of Spencer effectively flew out the window. Suddenly all there was in your mind’s eye was you, some poor innocent girl having the worst night of her life, and what you were going to do to ensure that nothing bad befell her or any other girl ever again.

“Hey!” you screech, running head first into the alley. “Get the fuck off of her!”

There isn’t any time to survey your surroundings, to take stock of the fact that the man you’d known would be out here was in the process of brutalizing a young woman — one who looked to be barely more than a teen, to your unadulterated horror — nor was there time to really assess what you were barreling toward. All you knew was that your body moved of its own volition, and it was much too late to think things through once you’d collided so forcefully with the assailant that you’d knocked him bodily to the ground. It was too late to second guess yourself now, to wonder whether it wouldn’t be smarter to wait for Spencer, who could actually, legally take care of this guy. The only thing that mattered now was getting justice for everyone who had been too incapacitated to stand up for themselves.

“What the fuck?” the man hisses from beneath you, but you’re already whipping around to get a look at the frightened girl staring down at you. Her eyes are rimmed red, tears trailing down her cheeks, and to your morbid relief, you note that she appears to have no more than an expression of horror on her face.

You’d made it in time, then. By the grace of some higher power, you’d made it in time.

“There’s an FBI agent in the bar down the street,” you bark at her, struggling against the brute strength of the man you were trying — and failing — to keep pinned down. “His name is Spencer Reid. Find him.”

And that was all you had to say before she was running off down the alley and out of sight, the mercy of her safety striking such a psychological chord that you were just distracted enough for the man beneath you to throw a punch that successfully manages to clip you on the jaw, causing stars to swim in your vision as a result.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he hisses, quickly pushing himself to his feet and leering over you with a sneer. It made sense that he was under the impression that he had the upper hand— were you anyone else, he likely would have, and you’d have been little more to him than a replacement for the target you’d just saved.

But you weren’t anyone else. You weren’t helpless, or defenseless, and you certainly weren’t about to let this lowlife get away with all of the things he thought he was. No — you were someone hellbent on making a lasting difference in the world, and if that had to start with this guy getting his head bashed in, then so be it. You were down a tire iron, but your rage was weapon enough.

You wait until he grabs at your shoulder, waiting for just the right moment as he fully extends his elbow before punching as hard as you can against it in the opposite direction, not pausing to hear the sickening crunch of his bone snapping before rolling to the side, jumping to your feet, and subsequently kicking out his knee with a high heel clad foot. His howls of pain are equivalent to music in your ears, but you don’t pause to revel in the sound before you continue on with enacting your justified persecution. In this moment, you aren’t yourself. You’re not sure who you are, as a matter of fact, but you know it isn’t someone willing to let this lowlife get away with the mass amounts of pain and terror he’s inflicted on so many innocents.

“You like that, baby?” you snarl, letting your foot fly against his unprotected ribcage over and over again between sentences. “Does that feel good? Hmm?”

“You—“ The man cuts himself off with a hacked cough, spluttering and moaning as blood trickles down his chin. You’re not sure if that’s because you’ve kicked him in the face without noticing or because you’ve done enough damage to have already caused internal bleeding, but you’re not overly focused on figuring it out. “You psychotic— bitch,” he spits, and the hatred he gazes up at you with is so potent that you can’t help the wicked grin that curls across your mouth in response.

“That’s right,” you murmur, hovering your foot over the center of his chest for just a moment before digging your heel into his sternum. The harder you press, the louder he roars, and the louder he roars, the more you’re inclined to ensure that his screams continue. It’s a vicious cycle, but one you’re much too fond of to let go. “I’m a crazy, psychotic bitch because I’m a woman who stands up for herself and other women, and because I won’t let shitbags like you take advantage of us. Do you even know how old that girl was?”

His face contorts in pain, hands flying to your ankle in an attempt to pry your foot off his chest, but with one arm out of commission and pain proving to be too much of a distraction, he doesn’t manage to make any significant progress in alleviating your attacks. “Fuck you,” he hisses, but even to your ears, the vulgar words sound weak and reedy.

“I’m sure you’d like to,” you shoot back, digging your heel in that much further. You wait until you see tears welling in the corners of his eyes before letting any of the pressure up, and when you’re sure he’s hurting too badly to try and pull a fast one on you, you step off his chest and kneel to the ground, straddling his torso before your hands snake up to form a necklace at his throat. “You’re not used to girls fighting back, are you? You’re not used to anyone putting up a fight, and because of that you think you can just take whatever you want. Is that right?”

His eyes bulge out of their sockets as you begin to squeeze, hissed obscenities caught in his throat with nowhere to go, and the more he claws at the manacles your hands form, the tighter you let your grip become. It’s power, what you feel as you reconcile with the fact that you’re now quite literally holding this man’s life in your hands, and for a moment, you forget everything else. That you were only in this situation because you’d set out to save someone, that you’d sent that very same someone to go and fetch Spencer to come resolve all of this, that you weren’t an angel of death enacting revenge upon those who rightfully deserved what was coming to them. All those things washed away in the night, in just the same way as the beginning rainfall washed the man’s blood onto the ground in runny pink ribbons. It was only you and him, now. Nothing else mattered.

“You know, it’s men like you,” you snarl, squeezing so tightly against his throat that your knuckles go white and your fingers stiff, “that make people afraid to walk home alone at night. To send their kids off to college, to let their little ones grow up and experience the world. Because there are always— always monsters like you just waiting to take advantage of us. And no one’s ever made you pay for that, before, have they? That’s why you’re still so cocky, and confident enough to pull this shit out in the open because you know you’ll get away with it.”

Distantly, in the back of your mind, you think you hear someone calling your name. It’s hard to say for certain; with how focused you are on enacting revenge, on making sure this lowlife feels every single ounce of pain he’s ever managed to inflict on another unsuspecting human, your senses aren’t left with much more of an attention span. Even if they had been, you wouldn’t have bothered using it. Your fury, burning your nerves like hellfire, proves such a strong beacon of desire that you have no choice but to indulge. It feels good, the way his breath catches beneath where the heel of your palm digs into his throat, and you can tell by the way his eyes are beginning to cloud that if you keep it up, if you press just a little harder, squeeze just a little more—

Warm, strong arms snake around your middle, forming an inescapable cage of iron trying to pry you off the man beneath you, and the primal snarl that rips from your throat in response is a clear threat, but it does nothing to deter them. Hyperfixated as you are on finishing the job and ensuring that the man on the ground never lives to breathe another day, you don’t have the attention to spare, but your subconscious takes in the sharp scent of cloves filling your nostrils, the soft brush of curls against your shoulder, the domineering grip shackling your wrist maintaining a surprising air of gentleness. Your name is hurriedly whispered into your ear once, twice, three times, and by the fourth round you realize they’re not whispers at all — they’re shouts.

“Let go of him,” Spencer barks, bruising your ribs with how harshly he yanks you backwards. “Listen to me, listen to me. Let go of him.”

“Get off me!” you hiss in pain, stars dancing across your vision as you feel a slight bend in one of your bones, throwing an elbow back in retaliation. It lands square on his chest, and though the resulting grunt of pain he gives is certainly satisfying, it isn’t worth the grip you lose on the man’s neck. Once you’re down by one hand, it isn’t at all difficult for Spencer to wrench the second one back, and before you know it you’re a good ten feet down the alley, kicking and screaming wildly against Spencer’s grip as the monster you’d nearly strangled to death sputtered his way back to life.

“Calm down,” Spencer snaps, voice deep and low in your ear as he adjusts his grip around your torso so that you’re more fully pressed agains his body. “You need to breathe, do you hear me? Snap out of it. She’s okay. You got here in time and she’s okay. She’s safe, and you’re safe. Calm down. Calm down.”

You want to tell Spencer that he’s wrong. That you can’t be safe, that no one can be, so long as the man groaning on the ground across the alley is allowed to keep breathing. That this man can’t be allowed to live another day, waiting for the next opportunity to take advantage of an unsuspecting stranger who didn’t know any better. That it would be better to put him down now than to wait around for him to fuck up all over again, to ruin someone else’s life.

So you do.

Or, you try to. But all that manages to leave your mouth is little more than bent sobs and broken screams.

“It’s okay,” Spencer goes on, “it’s alright. Everything’s alright.” He uses the grip he’s got on your arm to spin you around, muffling your sobs as he brings your head against his chest and keeps it there with a gentle hand rested against the back of your head. Your body’s shaking so badly against his that, with your eyes still closed, you’re certain you’re still struggling to free yourself from his grip. It isn’t until you feel your fingers — numb with cold and shock and adrenaline — curl into his jacket that you realize you’re holding onto him for dear life. “Just breathe. Just breathe. You’re okay.”

“He was going to—“ You cut yourself off with a choked sob, shaking your head profusely. “He was going to—“

“I know,” Spencer murmurs, “I know. You don’t have to explain, just breathe.”

You hate this — that he’s caught you in such a vulnerable position, that he’s bearing witness to the rapid decline of your mental state. You hate that this is what it took to finally get him to wrap his arms around you, to offer words of reassurance and certainty rather than fixing you with unimpressed looks and exasperated eye rolls. Most of all, though, you hate that he’s now seen you at your worst, and that, going forward, he’ll never quite be able to dissociate you from the monster you truly are.

You don’t know how long he holds you there, murmuring insistent reassurances into your ear as he holds you gently to his chest. For how at odds it is with every other interaction you’d had with him — those ones where he’d roll his eyes, wave you off, regard you as little more than a vapid, spoiled brat who was all too used to getting her way — it’s nearly impossible to reconcile how you’d grown used to being treated with how you were being treated now. And though it’s certainly the last thing your mind should be focussing on, though you really don’t have the mental capacity required to work through this on top of everything else, you can’t help but come to the realization that you’re actually quite fond of the change.

A voice from across the alley cuts through the careful atmosphere of misguided comfort Spencer has crafted for you, and though he won’t let you turn around — actually goes so far as to squeeze his arms more tightly around your middle so that you can’t — the very sound of the man’s voice sends you dangerously close to the edge of the precipice all over again. “Are you… the fed that bitch was talking about?” His voice is hoarse, and half his words come out in broken hacks. It’s childish in the most juvenile of ways, but you can’t help the twinge of satisfaction that sparks to life in your blood. “Arrest her! She tried to kill me!”

“Actually,” Spencer mutters darkly in response, “from where I’m standing and from what that high school senior told me, she was only trying to stop you from committing assault. If anyone here is getting arrested tonight, it’s you.”

“Are you— are you fucking serious?” The blatant shock shooting his cracked voice up two octaves might have been funny, were the situation that led to it not so horribly severe. “She broke my fucking leg!”

“Thing is,” Spencer shoots back, never even missing a beat, “they do a lot worse to rapists in prison. I’d know— I’ve seen it.” The way his voice drops as the words tumble from his mouth catches your attention, but you don’t have the time to properly contemplate asking why before he’s going on. “You ask me, she went a little too easy on you. Remember that when you finally get what’s coming to you.”

And then Spencer’s calmly leading you away, maintaining a gentle yet firm grip on your waist to keep you from trying to look back. Even if you could, you don’t imagine you’d be much inclined to. You have no remorse for what you’d nearly done, and, truthfully, you’d left men in far worse states in the past. You know that; Spencer does, too. Yet, even in spite of that, even in spite of the fact that this was the second night he’d born witness to you attempting to kill a man, his touch on your body remains soft, and he curls over you like a protective blanket.

“We can’t just leave him,” you find the strength to whisper once you’ve put a healthy amount of distance between you and the alley’s opening. The street lights grow brighter the closer the two of you get to the bar, and you’d never admit it out loud, but it makes you feel that much safer. “He’ll get away. You need to… you need to go back.”

“I called the police as soon as I went to go check the bathroom,” Spencer tells you, leading you back into the safety of the bar. Suddenly surrounded by the sounds of raucous laughter and joyful whoops, it’s almost easy to forget what just occurred outside — almost. “They were on standby in case anything went wrong, but I had them hang back until I could get you out of there safely. They’re probably in the middle of cuffing him now.”

“And the girl?” you ask, so dazed that you don’t even protest or make any sort of snappy remark as Spencer gently helps you into a secluded corner booth. “She’s... you made sure she got home safe?”

“I called her a taxi and gave her my phone number,” Spencer answers, fixing you with as reassuring a stare as he can manage. “She’s going to give me a call in the morning about pressing charges. She was scared and a little banged up, but he didn’t... nothing happened. You stopped it before it could.”

You’re too weak to do anything with the knowledge but nod and sink down to the table, protectively covering your head with your arms as you squeeze your eyes shut and try to breathe. Dark thoughts, thoughts twisted in rage and a deeply intense need to protect, continue swirling through your mind, and if you’d thought catching your breath was impossible before, it’s effectively become something of an Olympic sport now, though the reasoning for why effectively evades your understanding. What you’d been through tonight, what you’d been ready to do to that man — if he could even be called a man — isn’t anything that’s never happened before. Hell, scum like that were the very reason you’d gotten caught up with Spencer in the first place.

But… something’s different now. You can tell by the way the oxygen rattles through your lungs, the way you can’t still your shaking fingers as they clatter against the tabletop. You don’t know what it is, where it’s come from, or how to stop it, but it’s there, and you can feel it.

Fingers softly brush up against one of your wrists, startling you so forcefully from your reverie that you can’t help the cry of shock that drops from your mouth as you yank your arm back with as much urgency as if you’d been burned. Seconds pass, then ten, then thirty, and even as your subconscious mind works double time to interpret the concerned light in Spencer’s eyes in response to his touch, you remain unable to fully come back to the present.

“You need to eat something,” he tells you, casting his eyes back down to the table. It’s a testament to how much time has passed that there are now two glasses of water covered in condensation that, up until this point, you’d not even been aware were present. “It’ll help with the shock.”

“I’m not going into shock,” you mutter, squeezing your hands together and resting them in front of you. Spencer catches sight, but if he has something to say about it he keeps it to himself. “And I’m not hungry. I just want to go home.”

“And I’ll take you there,” Spencer responds, metaphorically digging his feet in. “But you need to eat something first. And drink water.”

You roll your eyes, shakily moving to stand. “I’m not—“

“Sit down.” The hard glint in his eyes, sharp and metallic as a knife, makes it clear that he isn’t asking, and against your stubborn will, you immediately do as he commands. You want to think it’s simply because you’re too tired to fight back rather than too frightened or intimidated, but then, you can’t quite be sure. At least, not until Spencer leans across the table, insistently holding your gaze in something that you think might be a warning, and it’s only now that you realize he’s been holding back his frustration in favor of seeing to your needs, just as his composure begins to slip. “I told you to wait for me at the bar.”

“Yeah, you did,” you respond with a halfhearted roll of your eyes. “You should have known better.”

“No,” Spencer shoots back, “you should have listened to me. Instead you went and broke your word, all because you had something to prove to yourself.”

You can’t help but scoff in disbelief at Spencer’s implication, momentarily startled into genuine speechlessness. Those words hurt — so much so that you really weren’t inclined to admit that they did, lest Spencer think he have more power over you than you were actually willing to give him. So instead, you pushed back the hurt and leaned into the rage. It wasn’t healthy by any means, but at this point, you’d try just about anything to cut through the debilitating numbness medicating your senses at the moment.

“I didn’t break shit!” you hiss, repressing the urge to scream. “And if you really think I did what I did because I was thinking of myself, then you’re just as bad— no, scratch that, you’re… you’re even fucking worse than the rest of them!”

And you expect Spencer to launch some scathingly cruel insult back at you, one that cuts you deeper than you’d ever known words could be capable of, because Spencer’s a genius, after all, and he’s kept up with you enough over the years that he knows how to make an insult hurt if he wants it to. To your admitted surprise, though, he doesn’t open his mouth and hurl knives your way; he doesn’t even look at you like he wants to hurt you, in the way that you’re positive you’re looking at him. Instead, he only blinks down at you, carefully analyzing the expression on your face and the fury in your words before giving you any kind of response. It’s more than you deserve, really.

But Spencer’s soul has always struck you as kind.

“You could have gotten yourself hurt tonight,” he sighs, shaking his head in what you think could be disappointment. “You realize that, don’t you? That what you did was reckless and ridiculously stupid?”

You bark a harsh laugh in response to that, shaking your head as you go on squeezing your hands together. “In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t the one in danger. Believe me, you didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“You said he’s escalated to killing girls after assaulting them,” Spencer presses, and it’s only as you minutely glance down at the table that you realize he’s curling his hands into fists of his own. “Did you ever stop to think that if he’d managed to overpower you, that could have happened to you too?

“Well it didn’t, did it?” you snap, searching for the power to quell your sudden annoyance. You know it’s misplaced; Spencer’s only doing his best to take care of you, without saying as much in so many words. You should be happier for it; after all, hadn’t you spent years attempting to get Spencer to consider you? To leave lasting impressions on his mind? To sneak your way into his late night, private, personal thoughts? Sure, on the surface it had all been more for show than anything else, but… even if he’d never known the truth, you certainly always did. “I’m fine. Okay? Fine. I’m not going into shock—“

“You’re certainly acting like you are.”

“— I’m not having a panic attack—“

“Again, you could have fooled me.”

“— and I’m not hungry! Okay? I’m not! I just want to go home!”

And it’s lucky that Spencer had the foresight to seat the both of you as far away from the general population of the bar as possible, lest any of the unsuspecting strangers hear the two of you squabbling over something so harrowing, but even if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have cared enough to bother lowering your voice. All of these people, laughing, chatting, obliviously participating in their good times, and all the while an innocent girl had nearly been violated just a few buildings away out on the street. It wouldn’t have been their fault — really, the only person that should have been held accountable was hopefully being dragged to the police station at this very moment — but the fact that life could so casually go on while a child had to suffer the worst night of their life in silence just didn’t sit particularly well in your throat.

You inhale a deep breath, squeezing your eyes shut as you brace against the inky misery staining your senses. When you open them again, blinking through the stubborn tears trying to form in the brim of your eyes, you find Spencer carefully considering your face, and all you can do is hope he doesn’t notice the way your lip wobbles.

“I just want to go home,” you say again, hardly managing to get the words out in anything above a whisper. “Please, Spencer, just… I don’t… I can’t be here right now. Please just take me home.”

It’s hard to say what exactly takes the fight out of him. It could be the way you’ve said his name, softly, desperately, pleading in a manor which you’re certain he’s never heard from you before. But then, it could also be the tears welling in your eyes, far more conspicuous a sight than you’d have liked and one Spencer had only ever been confronted with once before. Whatever it is that’s done the trick, it prompts the softening of his gaze, along with the gentle downturn of the curve of his mouth. Just out of the corner of your eye, you think you see his fingers dancing hesitantly over the table top as they steadily migrate closer to yours, and though he doesn’t try to make contact with you this time, he manages to offer you an inexplicable amount of comfort as his fingers dance in a mirror image of the motions of yours.

“Okay,” Spencer concedes, frustration fading out of his expression to allow concern to take the lead. “If that’s what you need, then okay. But— just, put this on, at least.” Before you can interpret his meaning, he’s shrugging out of his jacket and pushing it across the table, and before you can protest, he’s pressing forward stubbornly. “It’s raining outside, you’re shaking, and that dress is gorgeous but it’s not going to stop you from catching hypothermia. Just wear it until we get to the car.”

He’s not leaving you a choice, judging by the glint in his eye that makes it clear he isn’t willing to hear any back talk on the subject. You consider doing so anyway — partly because you’re not sure you’re in the mood to take orders from Spencer, no matter how emotionally distressed you are, and partly because you’re afraid the weight of his jacket on your skin and the scent of his cologne in your nose would be just a bit too intimate for you to handle in this moment — but ultimately, you do as he asks, grabbing at the dark bundle of fabric and wrapping it around yourself like a blanket of protection.

It’s… warm. And it smells good, too. Embarrassing as it is, concentrating on further inhaling the scent of it — of him — is nearly enough to instantly cause your hands to cease their trembling.

“Let’s go,” Spencer murmurs, offering his hand as he stands from the table.

Wordlessly, you take it.

––

Part Two: Something of a Dangerous Game

[ninjakasuga]

Sonally Week Year 3 Day One

Another year, another of @gojira007 and their blog @boundforfreedomsonsal hosting another week of one of the best OTP’s of fiction. Here’s my entry for Day One: Dawn.

Foreward: Another year; another Sonally Week! Here’s my entry for Day One, and hope ya’all enjoy. This one is a sequel of sorts to my “Surprise” Day entry last year, where after some heckling over certain aspects of his romance with Sally; Sonic gets the news he’s gonna be a big brother! Instead of a literally dawn I decided to do a more thematic ‘dawn of a new part of life’ aspect than the actual time of day.

“Sonic.”

The blue furred Hedgehog in question continued to pace the floor, seeming to either not hear, or simply not regard the call of his name. He stopped, but not to reply, and began to tap his foot repeatedly as he often did in a show of impatience. Soon he was pacing yet again, causing the one trying to get his attention to sigh in exasperation, again.

“Sonic!” Raising her voice, just-oh-so-slightly, Sally again, attempted to get the attention of her fiancé’ this time reaching out and managing to grasp his tail and give it a small yank. Probably not the best thing for Sonic’s pride as he let out the cutest squeak in response, but Sally didn’t mind. Smiling coyly yet with a hint of apology in her eyes as he turned to face her, she reached for his arm, softly rubbing it. “Calm down a bit hun, you’re going to wear the floor out.” Rubbing his slightly sore posterior, Sonic gave his beloved a mild glare that softened almost as soon as it appeared; agitation giving way to the concern plaguing him. “Sorry Sal, it’s just, well it’s been over an hour since the expected due date. What’s the hold up?”

A voice quips from a chair along the opposite side of the waiting room from Sonic and Sally. “Well that’s how labor sometimes goes Sonny-boy. I mean you didn’t exactly pop out as soon as your Ma’s water broke. Slow-going was the name of the game.” Chuckled Charles Hedgehog, finding much amusement in his nephew’s impatience. An impatience he very much empathized with, but knew better than to get too riled up at this point. “So an hour past when the doctor expects the babies to come is small change, especially compared to how you made everyone wait a whole ten hours and ninety-one minutes before you finally graced us with your presence.”

Sitting besides Charles, Rosie Woodchuck let out her own dainty but hearty giggle as she reached to give the silver-furred Hedgehog a gentle squeeze of his hand. “Oh the language coming out of that room. We both feared for your brother’s manlihood if not his existence.”

“I wasn’t that hard on Mom was I?” Inquired Sonic with genuine curiosity mixed with a mild hint of indignity. His gaze only half-way went to his Uncle and Rosie; mainly because he still found it weird they were dating. Correction had been dating on the down-low since, well, a long time with the two only having a ‘break’ when he’d been roboticized all those years. He was genuinely happy for them, but it was still just plain weird to him.

“I think pregnancy is hard for any woman the first time around, or so I read and was told.” Mused Sally as she gently pulled Sonic to sit beside her, rubbing his quills to both straighten them out, and to soothe his nerves. Not unlike Sonic she was still processing the semi-recent revelation that her beloved former Nanny and Sir Charles had been dating under everyone’s noses for so long. Then again should she be surprised? Both were rather private people about their personal lives outside of whatever they did with friends and family. Not to mention the true reason they kept it quiet back in the day had more to do with concerns their positions in the Royal Court would cause unrest for some if their more intimate relationship came to light.

Looking toward Rosie, Sally was now curious about her own birth given the topic. “Were Elias or I rough on Mother?”

Rosie shook her head, “Not really, Elias took some time, but your dear Mother thankfully did not have too rough a time of it. Her calm demeanor kept up even dealing with labor pains, and the end result more than made up for it. You were much easier, as she knew what to navigate and you only took so many hours after the labor contractions began to grace us with your presence.” She smiled fondly, thinking about the two occasions, then giggled. “That said she wasn’t above occasionally reminding your Father it was his fault she was in that state, and well, that’s her story to tell more than mine.”

Snickering, Sally looked at Sonic with a very straight face, barely keeping a grin from forming. “I promise if we have kids, not to threaten your masculinity. That said, I will probably get my vengeance some other way.”

Lifting an eyebrow, Sonic elbowed his girlfriend-now-fiance’ gently in the arm. “Oh reeeeeeeally? Well you gotta catch me first Sal.”

“I already did.” She murmured, leaning in to kiss his cheek as she laced her fingers with his.

“Got me there,” Relenting, Sonic returned the smile, as well as the kiss, planting it on her fluffy cheek before leaning back in his seat. His concern for his Mother and his impending siblings, slightly alleviated for the time being.

The elder couple shared a look, one they had often shared when they were witness to the dear love and devotion between Sally and Sonic. From children to adults, the two always seemed to be a pair they fit so well, it was clear as day even when they were in diapers or arguing up a storm as toddlers, to their teen years. The small things in life that made all the gloom and doom of the past decade and some odd-change worth living for. Soon everyone’s heard turns as the double-door leading to the maternity ward opened and Doctor Quack limped out, leaning on his cane carefully, but with a confident stride; showcasing he’d come to master the walking tool quite well.

“Well-?!”

Holding up his free hand, both to interrupt as well as allow Quack to pull down his mask, his bill forming into a smile. “Your newborn sister and brother are here, healthy and loud, and your Mother is doing very well herself.”

The four cheer as they stand up, mindful this was still a hospital and kept it down, but their jubilation was completely understood.

“Can we see them?” Asked Sonic, already antsy and looking ready to speed down the corridor.

“Yes, we’ve already handled all the post-birth clean up, and checked their vitals as well as Bernie’s, who herself wishes to see you all as well. So I see no issue with allowing visitation right away, but do keep it brief, they do need their rest.” Advised the water-foul doctor as he kept himself straight, if just to fight off his own fatigue which was now creeping up after the long labor. “Just NO running Sonic, got it?”

At the mild admonishment, the Hedgehog simply grinned. “Me? Run through a hospital? Would I do thaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

“Yes, you would.” Everyone else remarked with amazing timing and matching deadpan. To which Sonic rolled his eyes.

“Sheesh, talk about a crowd! Anyway let’s go, let’s go!” Sonic urged, already half-dragging Sally along, forcing his beloved to keep in rapid pace close to him as they held hands still. Sally simply went with it, laughing softly at Sonic’s outright adorable impulsive need to see his new siblings. Chuck and Rosie merely followed at their pace, but there was certainly a spring in their step as well.

Eventually the group, along with Doctor Quack, reach the room designated for Bernie and her newborns. Managing to keep Sonic at bay enough, Quack pushed the door open for them and cleared his throat. “Jules, Bernie, your guests have arrived.”

Like an impatient puppy, Sonic squeezed past Quack, Sally trailing hand-in-hand still from behind. His emerald-green eyes, zeroing-in on the target, even as his breath hitched softly as a wave of emotion floored Sonic as he finally gazed upon his Mother and new siblings. As tired as Bernie Hedgehog looked, nothing could dull the intense love and adoration in her eyes and face as she held two swaddled bundles in her arms. Her husband Jules’ own expression was a mirror of his wife’s, only tinged with the pride only a Father can know. Each look up their expressions beaming more at the sight of their eldest child, with Jules instantly waving him over.

“Hey there son, come say hi to your baby brother and sister!”

Noticing that Sally seemed a bit frozen, Sally found back a ‘snerk’ that wanted to come out, and simply pulled him along. Upon seeing the two infants, mewling and cooing, her own eyes mist. “Awww, they’re adorable!”

“Y-yeah they are…” Sonic managed a dry chuckle,  why did his throat feel so dry? He’d been psyched for this ever since his Mom laid the bombshell she was pregnant nine months ago! Of all the times for Sonic the Hedgehog to choke and lose his cool, it’s this? He didn’t lose his cool this much, asking Sally to marry him for Almighty’s sake! Leaning over he got a much better look at the two.

One of the two clearly favored their Mother’s more light-purple coat, another had the milder-blue of his Father. Both were cute as a button, and just, the sounds they made! Sonic usually wasn’t one to obsess over cute things, but he was entranced. “So we got names for these two? Or do I call em’ Li’ Sib one, and two?”

“We were thinking of Sonia, for this little angel.” Explained Bernie as she gently pet the back of her daughter’s head. The newborn curled against the warm hand that carried the scent of her Mother. “As for this handsome young man, I was thinking of something with M, like Manwell or Manny.”

“If he’s anything like Sonny-boy he’ll be one manic child.” Chuckled Charles as he and Rosie moved closer taking the end of the bed so as to not crowd anyone.

Something about that line struck a chord with Jules, who instantly adopted a thoughtful look as he rubbed his chin. “Manic, manic, why not Manic?” He grinned even as his wife looked at him rather funny. “Face it hun, if Sonic’s any indication, these two are going to be spirited, and it kind of goes well don’t you think?”

After a moment, Bernie tired rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she however smiled, “Manic it is. However if that name causes him woe, I’ll be sure he knows he has you to blame.”

“Anybody gives him or Sonia woe I’mma deck em’.” Sonic proclaimed, pounding his fists together.

“Nor alone,” Agreed Sally as she leaned against him. They weren’t her siblings biologically, but already she had decided she would help protect them at all cost.

“Triple, and quadruple so.” Added Rosie, who nodded along with Charles. The family was united on this front.

“Fantastic.” Giggling, Bernie kissed the heads of her newborns. “Hear that, your family is ready to murder for you.”

“You all can plot future murder later, as much as I hate to spoil the moment, Mother and both newborns need rest.” Spoke up Quack as he stood at the door, keeping silent until now.

Yawning, Bernie nodded in agreement, she was drained. Her gaze lifted to her husband. “You get some rest too, you’ve been up with me through all this.”

“I didn’t do even a fraction of the work; but, rest sounds good.” He yawned, quickly covering his mouth. “Mind if I just crash here Doc?”

“I’ve already asked an orderly to bring a rollaway for you. I know better.” Smiled the duck-doctor in a knowing fashion. “Now come now everyone, time to go.”

Looking at his parents, Sonic instantly stated. “We’ll visit tomorrow, promise.”

“Looking forward to it son, looking forward to it.”

Giving his siblings one last look, Sonic smiled and winked at the two infants. “Welcome to the world you two, hopefully by the time you can talk and explore the world there’ll be one last fat-man to worry about. That’s a big-bro promise!”  

[artificialqueens]

Lemon's Misadventures in Dating, Chapter 5 (Lemon x the world) - Mermelada

A/n: Hej hej hej! I’m very late in posting this to AQ after Ao3, so please forgive me! I hope you all like *~* filler chapters *~* because there’s a couple of them coming up! I’ve already written the next couple of chapters, but PLEEEAAASSSEE let me know if you have any requests or suggestions! Namely, should I attempt to write smut or not lol! Thank you again for all your lovely words about the fic, I love you all massively <3 <3

Having not slept in her own bed for the last two nights, Lemon decided to take a well-earned evening for herself, partly because she was running out of excuses for her parents as to why she’d been out so much lately, and partly to give the various bruises and bite-marks on her body time to heal. With Gus the dog snuggled into her side, she waited for The Sims to load on her laptop as Chromatica blared from her phone. She pressed on its screen to check the time, and saw she had received a new text message.

Dr Rita <3 [16:45] “I hope you survived your walk of shame, mon petit citron! Thank you again for a great night and day :-) x”

Rita was amazing. She was the epitome of a dark horse: she was so kind and patient with Lemon during her panic crisis, as she had so adorably put it, and made her feel all the safety and love she needed all morning. Yet not long afterwards, after some lazy chatter which had made Lemon inexplicably horny, she was once again fucking her to within an inch of her life. Speaking two languages was far from the only thing she could do with her mouth. They had even gone for lunch together after round 2 – and round 2.5 in the shower – before reluctantly parting as Rita prepared for her nightshift at the hospital. It was over lunch where they both agreed that pursuing anything serious wouldn’t be worth it, but they would definitely like to work on a friendship. Lemon had, however, still managed to charm her way into borrowing a hoodie from the older woman, both of them secretly pleased that it gave them a reason to hang out again. She quickly sent off a reply, thanking her once again for her help that morning and wishing her luck for the long night ahead in kidneyland with her love interest from the ward. 

Looking back to her laptop, the loading bar appeared to have frozen. Rolling her eyes, she held down the device’s power button to restart it. The snoring lump beside her clearly wasn’t going to entertain her as she waited, so she bit the bullet and opened up her new favourite app.

She grinned upon seeing that her most recent message was from Kyne.

[16:20] Remember I told you about my roommate who works in a porn studio lol? She came home just now with a box of those custard tarts you were telling me about, they are so good!!! 🤤 You really do have the best taste 😘

That’s a lot to unpack, she laughed to herself, she’s persistent, fair play to her! Plus it turns out she actually WAS listening! I just hope they were clean… I’ll reply later. Now what about Kiara, eh Gus-bus? She was nice, let’s see what she’s said! 

[09:12] How was the party? 🙂 I hope it was tudo bem!!

Lemon and Kiara had continued chatting yesterday until Lemon had to leave for her date, a ‘family party’ being the first reasonable sounding thing that came to mind when having to end their conversation. She hated lying, she really did, but how acceptable was it really to tell one Tinder-match that you were going on a date with another Tinder-match?

[17:03] It went well, merci! But I was too hungover to function all day lol 🤯

[17:03] How has your day been? 😊

Right, who’s next? Two new matches and a message from Boa! Let’s see what she has to say about me spamming her before she blocks me. Clicking on the girl’s message from last night, however, Lemon was pleasantly surprised that her texting blunder wasn’t the end of her chances.

[20:55] Lololololololololol no YOU’RE fun!!!!

[20:55] Clock the good grammar

[20:55] So what’s a girl like you doing on an app like this?

[20:56] 🍆🍆🍆

Now that was a question Lemon still occasionally asked herself, and she didn’t even know if she had an answer. So the best she could do was be honest.

[17:07] Well I’m recently single so I’m just seeing what happens, really, a few dates here and there to get me back on my feet again! To quote the great Kelly Rowland, I am down for whatever 😉

[17:07] How about you?

She had, once again, been well and truly sucked into the Tinder vortex. Closing her laptop and placing it on her bedside table, she nuzzled her face into Gus’s head, the dog making no effort at all to reciprocate the sudden attention. Squishing a kiss to his head, she turned back to the app, and her new matches: Scarlett and Ilona. They had both matched at around the same time, making their chat windows sit neatly at the bottom of Lemon’s screen. Sending them both standard “Hey gorge! What’s up? 😊” messages, she went back to swiping through profiles, although within less than a minute, a reply from Scarlett flashed at the top of her screen. 

[17:13] Hey gorge! I’m doing much better now that I’m speaking to you 😉

[17:14] What’s up with you?

A bit of enthusiasm goes a long way, she smiled, maybe Scarlett is the one? Or maybe she’s too into me and I should be worried? Surely not!

[17:15] I’m glad I can help! I’m pretty good thanks, having a lazy night in tonight! Are you doing anything fun?

Lemon debated giving the girl more details of her night in, but she was worried about what she might think… She’s covered in tattoos and eats fire, for god’s sake, there is no way she likes Lady Gaga or The Sims. She probably listens to death metal and drives a motorbike and has a pet snake, I could never compete! 

Fortunately, Scarlett was charming and very easy to talk to, and the two exchanged details - both mundane and exciting - through quickly typed messages. She learned that the other blonde was a lawyer, but had gone to circus school at weekends throughout university - which explained a lot - and was currently in an open relationship with her girlfriend. Lemon had never been ‘the other woman’ before, but as long as she wasn’t hurting anyone, surely it’s not that bad! Eventually, though, one message made Lemon’s anxiety start to creep in again.

[17:57] So I know this probably seems WAY too fast, so don’t worry if you don’t want to

Time seemed to stand still between this message and the next one. What does she want to do that’s fast? Sex? That’s not that big a deal, it must be more than that. Unless she’s into super kinky shit, which wouldn’t surprise me, does she want to piss on me? Does she want her girlfriend to piss on me? Does she want me to be her fake girlfriend at her sister’s wedding where we have to share a bed before eventually realising we loved each other all along? Finally, right on cue, the follow-up arrived.

[17:59] It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m having a party at my house before heading out on the town, it’ll hopefully just be a few friends, and it would be cool if you could make it 🥳

[18:00] You can bring a friend if you want! But again no pressure!!

Wow, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. She started blankly at her phone, letting her heart rate settle back down to its normal speed. A party, cool. I can do that!

[18:02] You had me worried for a second there! But that sounds fun, I’ll be there! 😀

Exiting the app, she hastily composed a message to Jan. Jan loved parties, she had such a natural charisma which she exuded effortlessly whenever she entered a room. She was able to chat to anyone about anything, and Lemon was always responsible for getting her out of tricky situations on nights out where her natural friendliness had been mistaken for something else. She would be the perfect person to deflect any potential awkwardness that may occur at a Tinder-date-she’d-never-met-before’s birthday party. As she awaited Jan’s reply (Please please please say yes, Jan, you’re my only hope!), she checked on the app again, swiping through countless samey-looking profiles. Until she reached one that she’d definitely seen before.

Priyanka, 29

Within 10 miles

I already swiped for this girl, look! There’s her in her lengha, there she’s at pride… Oh she has new pictures now, how weird! Priyanka did indeed have an additional two photos on her profile which Lemon hadn’t seen before: a professional-looking black and white image of her face and torso, showing her dark waves flowing down her shoulders, and her eyes directly piercing Lemon’s soul; and finally, a picture of the dark-skinned girl wearing a blonde wig, cowboy hat, and appearing to be screaming into a microphone… I do like a Hannah Montana fantasy, get it girl!

Just like before, Lemon swiped Priyanka’s profile to the right, but unlike last time, the notification she’d been hoping for appeared straight away.

Congratulations! You have matched with Priyanka!

Buoyed by the excitement of matching with somebody so quickly - and someone so gorgeous - Lemon jumped straight off the bed and started dancing, ‘Rain on Me’ blaring beside her for the third time that evening. Even Gus seemed to pick up on the change of energy, running up and down the bed, wagging his tail merrily. As the pair danced, the familiar ‘ding’ of a new notification sounded through the room. And again.

Briefly pausing to pick up her phone, she saw the two messages she had received. Firstly, from Kiara.

[18:12] Unnggghhh work today was the worst, but I found a really cute Portuguese café on my walk home! I have eaten so many natas lol. We could go sometime if you want to? 🙂

Before replying (yes, obviously… I didn’t download Duolingo yesterday for nothing!), she went to check on the second message, which was from her recent match, Ilona.

[18:12] See you on Saturday bitch! xox

Well that seems ominous.

[mrsalwayswrite]

To Find the Light Again

This is my contribution to #waiting4Inspiration’s 2k writing challenge. I went a bit overboard but hey, its all good. I’ve never posted stories on here before so if the formatting is off please forgive me. 

My prompt was a/b/o dynamics and I chose Bucky Barnes as my muse. I’ve never written an a/b/o story before so it was a fun challenge. 

Some dark themes but nothing graphic. Some swearing. That’s about it for warnings. 

Chapter 1

 The metal chair dug into her back. The stale air in the small enclosed room chilled her. She was unsure how long she had been forced to sit in the uncomfortable chair but her ass was officially numb and her legs were getting there. Thankfully they had taken the restraints off her wrists when they tossed her into the room. No one had entered the room since she was unceremoniously deposited there. At least lights were on, even if it was annoying, flickering florescent lights. She hated the dark. Depending on how long she was kept here, her home emergency protocols would begin to alert the necessary people of her disappearance…abduction…whatever this was. This did not feel like HYDRA but she refused to be anything but a statue. No matter what they did to her, no matter what they said, she would not break. She refused to.

She sat up straight in the chair, hands loosely in her lap and legs under the metal table before her. Keeping her eyes closed, she focused on each slow, deep breath. To any outsider she would appear to be in a meditative state but truthfully, she struggled internally with saying goodbye to her life and those she loved. She did not expect to leave this room alive. The series of events that brought her here only confirmed that.

 Some time later the only door scrapped open and into the Spartan room walked someone she had hoped to never see. His alpha scent slammed into her first, like a thick syrup of sharp peppermint that made her eyes threaten to water and throat close up. Her own biology screamed at her to bare her neck and submit to the angry alpha. But she held perfectly still. She would not give in. Opening her eyes, she stared out at the man whom she assumed would be her interrogator. He presented an intimidating presence that any normal person should cower under. His dark skin glistened under the unflattering lights; his long black trench coat floated behind him like a dark cloud. Yet it was the single eye glaring at her from across the table that sent a shiver down her spine. His other eye covered by an ugly eyepatch…it made her wonder what happened.

Slowly and dramatically he tossed several pictures on the table. With a quick glance her blood froze. How did he find these? How did he find me? At least she knew who had captured her now. Not that being held prisoner by the Avengers brought her much comfort.

“Honestly I’m impressed by your performance so far.” The man spoke, voice rough and harsh, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve been in here three hours and not once have you moved nor spoken since you arrived. Most of the other HYDRA doctors or researchers don’t last nearly as long as you, always cursing or begging. I’m sure you know we are purging the world of the disease HYDRA is…so you have two choices in this. Either you help us on your own free will or we will be forced to use some…unsavory…methods to get information, then after that you can look forward to spending the rest of your life in a damn prison cell. Got it?”

Keeping her lips sealed, she just stared at the pictures laid out haphazardly before her. She looked so different in the photos compared to now.

“Your driver’s license says your name is Alicia Cox but we both know that’s fake, don’t we?” He changed tactics, glancing up at the wall to his left. She had guessed hours ago it was a one-way window. This only confirmed it. “No, when we first found your pictures in a HYDRA base surveillance, we were quite surprised. It took a lot of searching for you, cross matching, records and some good old-fashioned footwork. We even tailed a few other women thinking they were you. Yet here we are now. In the HYDRA paperwork you were referred to as Agent 72. The truth is your name is Jenna Lewis and the last records of you were filed by your college roommate as disappearing one night after a frat party. My guess…HYDRA recruited you and decided whatever undercover mission you were on was no longer necessary. Then with the downfall of Alexander Pierce and the helicarriers, you jumped from the drowning ship before it sucked you under.” Suddenly he slammed his hands on the table and leaned forward, invading her personal space. “But you see, SHIELD might not be what it once was but we are still doing everything to pick up and disposed of all of HYDRA’s rats. So, tell me…Agent 72, were you a spy? A researcher of some kind?”

No response from her. The only sound was the buzzing from the florescent lights and her heart pounding in her ears.

He barked out a harsh laugh. “You got balls but they won’t save you. We have Tony Stark and the Black Widow currently looking into everything they can about you. Whatever secrets you think you can hide form us…well, know we will fuck up anything that gets in our way. Now, I suggest you make yourself comfortable. You will be here a long damn time.”

After one last hesitation, he stood up and exited the interrogation room. When the sound of a lock echoed through the small room, she let her head drop, chin resting on her chest. All the years of hiding, changing identities, living in shitty places, doing everything to stay off the radar led to this. She would have laughed if she could at the situation she found herself in. This was the end of the line for her. She had done everything and they still found her. Faces filled her mind as time slowly passed. It was not enough but it was all she would get. Wiping the single tear away, she closed her eyes once again. Finally, she gave into whatever fate had in mind for her. As long as her family was safe, nothing else mattered.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bucky sat in the dark kitchen, nursing his second cup of black coffee. Only the streetlights and sunrise shed light into the room. He stared into the black, steaming liquid as if it held the answers to his questions. Unfortunately, if it did, it did not feel like sharing today.

“Buck, you ok?”

He looked over his shoulder at his best friend entering. Steve’s hair was messy and he was still in sweatpants and a t-shirt. He must have just rolled out of bed. As he approached, Steve’s beta scent drifted to him, calming him slightly. His scent reminded Bucky of a hot cinnamon latte, warm and inviting.  

Bucky just shrugged.

“Nightmare?”

Staring back into his mug, Bucky did not even acknowledge the question. Steve probably already knew. At least this time he had not woken up screaming. Just a cold sweat and twisted sheets, feeling as if he was suffocating.

Without a word, Steve padded over and poured himself a cup of coffee. Unlike his best friend, Steve added an obscene amount of sugar before taking a sip. It made Bucky shake his head, remembering when they were young and how sparingly they had to use sugar. Steve had teased once saying he was making up for lost time now. They both knew Steve had an insane sweet tooth and now took every opportunity to fill it.

“Natasha called me…you remember that case she was working on? Some HYDRA agent they were having a hard time tracking down. Well I guess they finally got confirmation and picked her up. Fury already talked with her a couple of hours ago. He wants Natasha and me to take a turn interrogating. Guess she isn’t talking at all.” Steve said, casually looking over his mug.

“And you want me there to see if I can remember her at all, right?”

“If you’re up for it. Apparently, this agent has been very elusive so we are guessing she was of high priority or something.”

Bucky ran his hand through his hair, sighing. He hated staring into the faces of those who worked for HYDRA, those that tortured and manipulated him. Most of the people they had him look at, he did not recognize. Which did not surprise him. HYDRA was careful who was around when they let the Winter Soldier loose. Yet looking up he could see the poorly concealed hope in Steve’s eyes. He hated disappointing him; the blond punk had done so much for him these past two years that he had been living at the Tower. It had been three years since the destruction of the helicarriers and his and Steve’s fight over the Potomac. So much had changed since then.

“Fine. Let me finish my coffee and change.”

“Thanks, Buck. I’m going to shower quick then I’ll find you. Oh, Sam is coming back today and said he needs a guys’ night of billiards and beer after this family reunion he went to.”

“Birdbrain is always complaining about something.”

“Be nice, jerk.”

“Punk.”

Steve chuckled as he headed back to his room. Bucky felt a faint smile on his lips, it felt good to joke with Steve again. He was nowhere near as laid back as he vaguely remembered being before the war, but he was better than when Steve first found him in a homeless shelter in Toronto. His memories were coming back in bits and pieces and he finally was seeing a therapist. It was slow, agonizing work that made him want to bash his head against a wall frequently. Sometimes he wondered why he tried, if it was even worth it all. He would always have blood on his hands. He was Frankenstein’s monster. His nightmares liked to remind him of that.

Quickly draining the rest of his coffee, he put the mug in the dishwasher and headed to his room to change. It was only just after six am. With that thought and hearing this HYDRA agent had been picked up sometime in the night and already interrogated by Director Fury…hopefully the agent would be tired and make a mistake. He doubted this agent would be different than any of the other agents SHIELD had found recently. Just another useless agent wasting oxygen who would be better off with a bullet through the brain.

  Chapter 2

 Bucky followed behind Steve as they walked down one of the umpteen hallways in the Stark Tower, supposedly Avengers Tower now. They passed several SHIELD agents, a few dressed in full tactical gear, coming and going from various rooms. No one stood in their way as the two super soldiers moved swiftly towards Interrogation Room 3B. A few dared to greet Captain America who only received a nod in return, none even made an attempt at the former Winter Soldier. Not that he cared. He kept a cold mask of indifference on as they moved. He wore his favorite black tactical pants, shirt and boots, along with an unspecified number of knives hidden and visible on his hulking form. Steve wore his Captain America uniform sans the mask and shield.

He stopped outside a door and looked over his shoulder. “Ready?”

Bucky just grunted, ready to get this over with and go pound some sand bags in the gym.

Opening the door, they entered to a room full of screens along one wall and the opposite wall, a one-way window into the interrogation room. Two other agents were in the room, two betas by their scent, focusing intently on the screens their faces were plastered to and fingers moving rapidly over keyboards before them. The only other alpha moved from leaning against the wall having been staring through the window to address the super soldiers.

“Took you long enough.” Natasha quipped, eyeing them both. Her normal pine scent with hints of gunpowder came off stronger, almost pungent. Bucky wondered what made her so angry for her pheromones to be coming off so strong. It was most unlike her.

“Any updates?” Steve asked, moving to look through the window, already switching mentally to Captain mode.

She shook her head, red hair dancing around her shoulders. “Still not talking or moving. She might actually be a challenge. Information we can find about her is sparse at best. We got lucky that she cut herself while resisting us. We used the spilled blood for a DNA test. It only came back 65% conclusive but Fury is sure she is the right girl.”

“Ok.” He nodded then glanced at Bucky. “Anything?”

Slowly, Bucky moved to look through the window. A young woman sat stoically in the metal chair, hands in her lap, head bowed forward. Her short, black hair covered her face; he doubted even the ends touched her shoulders. Even though it was only a side profile of her, it was unmistakable to see she was curvy in all the right places. Dark wash jeans covered her legs while a black tank top with some kind of writing on the front were the only things he wore. Her feet were bare and no jewelry could be seen. She was certainly not what he expected to see. Yet sometimes beauty masked the worst evil.

“No, but I can’t really see her face.”

“Right. Nat, want to go in together?” Steve asked, placing his hands on his hips.

“Good cop, bad cop?” Natasha winked, walking past to head out. Steve clapped a hand on Bucky’s shoulder as he followed Natasha out of the room, back into the hallway and into the interrogation room.

Moving closer to the window, he crossed his arms over his chest to watch the interrogation. He ignored the faint murmuring of the two betas behind him as the sound of Steve’s voice came through the speaker overhead.

With the entrance of Captain America and the Black Widow, the woman raised her head slowly to stare at them. Natasha took a seat across from her while Steve stood upright talking. He told her about their hunt for anyone associated with HYDRA and how she could help stop the terror and tyranny inflicted by the organization. If she spoke truthfully and told them everything she knew, they would be able to work with the judge on a lesser sentence and keep her from a maximum-security prison or even a death sentence. Bucky scoffed internally at the offer; HYDRA chose death over failure. True, a few of the doctors and researchers they had apprehended had spilled all of their secrets but once they reached their prison…Bucky doubted they lived long. Most agents just killed themselves or, like her, kept silent. He would give it to her though; her side profile conveyed a simple beauty that in his younger days, he would have been attracted too.

As if his thought summoned her, her head whipped around to face the window even thought he knew she could not see through. What he saw made his heart stop and breathing cease. Those eyes. Those eyes haunted his dreams. Full, round eyes the color of dark brown or onyx stared at him. Eyes that were innocent and frightened in his dreams, now were as hard and unbreakable as his metal arm. After a long second she turned her face back to her interrogators and air returned to the super soldier’s lungs. Pieces of memories fell into place, as if her face was the key to unlocking them. Those soft, pink, bowlike lips over a short, button nose in her round face…except something was wrong. Her hair…it was the wrong color. It was supposed to be long, and a honey brown. It was always braided down her back. He continued to stare, memories conflicting with that his eyes saw before him. There was the long scar on her upper arm that he remembered…something about a tree? Another on her collarbone, like someone tried to cut her throat but missed. The memory was faint but anger burned within him instantly. He had not been able to protect her. Like he promised. No one was allowed to touch her. That’s what they said. She was his. That’s what his handler said.

Suddenly his eyes refocused on the scene before him. Natasha had moved with the silent grace of a panther to pounce on the woman. She gripped the hair on the back of the woman’s head and forced her head up to meet her own green eyes as she stood over her, glaring down. It was harsh but nothing Bucky had not seen Natasha do before, or even worse. Yet the hiss that escaped the dark-haired woman made his blood boil. Before his rational mind could keep up, his body instinctively moved out of the room into the hallway. He flung open the door into the interrogation room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a startled look on Steve’s face but he ignored it. His eyes were solely focused on the Black Widow.

“Let go of her.” He hissed out, planting his feet, ready for a fight. His scent probably reeked of rotting driftwood or something similar. He could almost feel it pouring off him along with his anger.

Not moving a muscle, Natasha just stared him down, her own anger bubbling up slightly at another alpha demanding of her.

“Buck…” Steve tried to placate, sensing the impending fight but Bucky interrupted him, not taking his eyes off the threat.

“TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY OMEGA!” He roared, allowing all his alpha instincts and Winter Soldier to enhance his roar.

The force of his voice and dominance caused Natasha to release the woman and step back, only to get into her own aggressive stance. They both may be alphas but Bucky was bigger, stronger and enraged right now. Glaring at an angered Natasha and a confused Steve, he finally turned his gaze to the woman…his woman…his omega.

Her round eyes stared at him like two dark moons, her mouth slightly open. “Soldat?...Mon ange noir?”

Even though her words came out on a whisper of breath, it resounded in the room like a gunshot. Immediately Bucky moved closer…or was it the Winter Soldier? The distinction between the two felt blurred at the moment.

“It cannot be…they said…they said you were dead.” She stuttered out as she watched him move closer. Was that tears in her eyes? He swore they looked watery but a slow blink cleared away whatever he thought was there. He remembered her scent being floral and sweet…something that soothed him…his mind struggled for the word. Jasmine. She always smelled like jasmine. Now though it was dulled as if on suppressants and the tang of alcohol seeped out of her clothes and skin.

He hovered over her, looking down at her upturned face. There was a name he called her. Memories collided in his mind, both providing answers and causing more questions to pop up. She called him…mon ange nior…my dark angel…she had been learning French. He saved her. Blood on the floor. A beating after but it was worth it. She was his omega. What did he call her? Not just omega. There was a name whispered in the dark, tears on her cheeks. A forbidden truth she was forced to forget.

Moving slowly, he reached out a hand and ran his thumb over her cheek as the word on the tip of his tongue slipped out. “Jenna.”

Chapter 3 

Hearing him say her name, a flood of emotions overwhelmed her. All she could do was stare at the man standing in front of her. They lied to her. They said he was dead, that he died during the destruction of the Triskelion. She mourned him in her own way but she never forgot him. His brown hair was long but looked clean compared to prior times she had seen him. She could not help but wonder who cut his hair now. It was stupid to think about, she had been the only one he allowed without fighting the guards. Now his eyes were clear, staring at her in a way like he never had before. Those blue/gray eyes bored into her and she suppressed a shiver. His alpha scent though, it made her want to bare her neck and wholly submit, to let him protect her again without question. It was stronger now, lacking the disturbing smells of dirt, blood, sweat and disinfectant. Now it was pure, unadulterated him. It reminded her of standing on the edge of the ocean, the fresh, salty air wrapping around her along with the wet sand between her toes. For years that faint scent had let her know she was safe again, at least for a time.

“How?” She reached forward and touched his metal hand, making sure he was real, that this was not a dream.

Before he could answer, the door swung open behind him with a bang. In that split second the super soldier ripped her out of the chair and tossed her roughly into the closest corner. She managed to catch herself on the wall before smacking it with her forehead. Turning quickly around, the sight that greeted her made her stomach drop. Her soldier faced outward, blocking her with his body, a long knife in each hand. A deep growl erupted out of his throat. Words nor pheromones were needed to translate the message he was sending. Just inside the door now stood the Iron Man in a full suit, hands raised, ready to fire. Behind him stood the first man to interrogate her, Director Fury.

“You know, Cap, I feel a little left out that we weren’t invited to the party.” The voice of Tony Stark emitted out of the suit.

Moving past Tony Stark, the man who alluded justice and ruthlessness glared at everyone in the room like an enraged schoolmaster. “Someone care to explain what the hell is going on here?”

The air hung thick with tension as the showdown continued. No one was moving and no one was speaking. Her mind struggled with everything that had happened in the last five minutes and what the repercussions would be... There was one thing she knew. Her soldier would protect her. Her alpha always looked out for her and there was one last thing he could do…but it meant she had to speak. Her secrets would only kill her last hope now.

“Director Fury,” she spoke up as all eyes swung over to her besides her protector’s, whom only stiffened at her voice cutting through the air, “I will freely talk on the promise my one condition is met.”

“What is it?”

“Your men stand down and his actions will not be held against him.” She finished, placing a hand on the back just in front of her so her meaning was clear.

The single, focused eye turned to the man guarding her. “Will you stand down, Sergeant Barnes and allow her to speak with us?”

Hesitantly he glanced behind him and at her nod responded. “As long as no one touches her and I remain where she is.”

“Fine. Goddammit. This is turning into a bigger mess than I thought. As you two are calling the shots, care to talk here or do we need a penthouse with gold gilding and chandeliers?” Fury barked out, his peppermint scent coming off in strong waves with a mixture of rotting plants.

She moved to stand by the soldier’s side. “Do you have somewhere secure? No recordings, no way for information of who I am to get out?”

“Conference room? JARVIS can shut everything down.” Captain America spoke up, seeming to slowly come out of his shock.

Fury heavily sighed. “Everyone be there in five minutes. Cap, Romanov, don’t let her out of your sight.” With that he strode out of the room, his coat a dark cloud billowing behind him.

The Black Widow shifted, hands still tense by her sides. “Alright, let’s go, Agent 72.”

“Don’t call her that!” Her solider demanded, eyes sweeping the room for seen and unseen threats.

“It’s ok.” Jenna placed a hand on his arm and felt a bit of the tension ease out of his muscles.

Captain America watched them seeming unsure if he should jump into the fray or continue to stay on the sidelines. “Buck, can you put those away?” He gestured towards the knives still dangerously held out.

The ex-Winter Soldier seemed to think about the request for a long moment, as if debating the need for them in the near future. Slowly he placed the long knives back in their sheaths strapped to his thighs. Soon the group exited and started down a different hallway. The Black Widow walked in front with the Iron Man and Captain America behind. One thing kept running through Jenna’s mind as they walked. Director Fury had called him ‘Sergeant Barnes’ and Captain America called him ‘Buck’. Was that his real name? She had only ever heard him referred to as Soldat, the Soldier, or the Asset. Finally, she decided she had nothing to lose at this point.

Glancing up at the man walking stiffly beside her, she asked her strange question. “So, your name is Sergeant Barnes?”

A twitch of his lips accompanied the warmth in his eyes as he met her eyes for a moment. “James Barnes.”

“Huh. Never would have pegged you for a James.”

A snort sounded from behind them that she guessed came from the Captain. The man beside her…James, James Barnes, mock glared at her. The lightheartness of the moment vanished when the Iron Man spoke up.

“What? He goes into full Winter Solider mode to protect you and you don’t even know his name? Who the hell are you, girl?”

In an instant, James placed himself between the man of iron and her, tension thick once again and his hands twitching to grab a knife.

Thankfully the Captain broke up the impending fight by stepping between the two. “Tony, why don’t you go ahead and make sure the room is ready. Buck, stand down.”

With an unintelligent muttering, the Iron Man stormed around them but it was not until he turned down another hallway that James relaxed marginally.

“Omega…” James looked down at her.

“I’m fine. Let’s get this done.” She turned and started following the direction the Iron Man had disappeared. She could hear a huff and footsteps following but paid no attention, keeping her eyes on the red head leading the way. It bothered her the truth that rang through the man’s words. She had not known James’ name yet he was willing to fight and protect her. He even remembered her name. It made her feel like shit, was she taking advantage of him? Did he actually want to help her? She could not think too much more about that. There was one thing she needed from him. So, she would spill all her secrets, defying years of training and experience. Hopefully this did not come to bite her in the ass later. Not like she had much choice now.

 The conference room had a large oval table in the center with twelve chairs around it. Along all the walls were screens in which things could easily be projected upon. Against one of the walls was a short table with a Keurig coffeemaker, paper cups, and condiments for the coffee. Even though it was sparse, clearly this room was used a lot, or at least no one had come to take the overflowing trash can under the small coffee table. On one of the screens, the time was written in white, stating it was almost a quarter to seven in the morning. Jenna rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. It had been a long night at the bar she worked at, some college frat boys were making her night miserable. Walking to the train stop, she was exhausted and ready to crash for a few hours before having to go to her second job. Suddenly a van was pulling up next to her and someone threw a black bag over her head. She hoped those waiting for her were alright. No, she could not think about them right now. She had to focus on this meeting.

She took a seat towards the middle of the table and closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing. Whispering could be heard close to the door but she tried her best to ignore it. Keeping her hands clasped in her lap under the table, she tried to suppress the trembling in them. Never before had she talked about what she went through, what had happened to her. She barely had time to reflect on it herself, only in her dreams and nightmares did her mind decide to even remember it.

The door opened again and she knew it was time. Fury walked in, in his wake was a tall woman with a stern face and posture that suggested military. The scent of fresh bread came off of her so Jenna knew she was a beta. A different man came in last, closing the door behind him. He was dressed casual compared to everyone else but streaks of dirt and dust were on his white t-shirt and a few marks on his thick arms. His beta scent caught her off guard, like freshly grated ginger which made her think of making her favorite stir fry at home. Who were these people? She did not get a chance to find out since Fury took a seat directly across from hers and his eye bored into her soul demanding answers.

“Alright, Miss Lewis, here we are.” He leaned forward in the chair. “Why don’t you start from the beginning? How and why you were recruited by HYDRA then we’ll go from there.”

Everyone else settled around the room either taking seats around the table or leaning against the walls. The Iron Man stepped out of his suit and took a seat at the head of the table, kicking his feet up. The stern woman stood behind Fury, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. The scent of coastal waters and warm sunshine grew stronger and she sensed James take the seat next to her. She did not turn her head nor acknowledge his presence but internally she was grateful for his close proximity. She wondered how much of what she was about to share if he knew or it would come as a surprise to him too.

“My name is Jenna Lewis and there was only one reason HYDRA ‘recruited’ me as you keep stating. Its cause of what I am. I found out later but at the time they were trying a new…experiment, if you want to call it that. They kidnapped me when I was nineteen, walking back to my college dorm from a party. They gave me a number like a lab rat, instead of using my name. That’s where Agent 72 comes from. I…I wasn’t the only omega they took…”

“Wait! You’re an omega? You don’t smell like one.” Tony interrupted.

“Suppressants for years, it’s safer to pretend to be a beta then an unclaimed omega.” She retorted, surprised she had to explain that to someone who was supposed to be a genius. She hesitated to talk about the next part, unsure how the man next to her would handle it.

Fury broke the pregnant pause. “Why were they taking omegas?”

“They…shit,” she sighed before rushing out the next part. “They apparently were having issues controlling their asset. The doctors controlling his biology were saying how an alpha unable to go through a rut after sixty years could be harder to control and by giving him…a plaything…it would help them control him. So, they took omegas to satisfy the alpha’s natural urges.”

From beside her, soft, pained Russian was mumbled that if she took a guess was some vibrant cursing.

“Sex slaves. You’re telling me HYDRA took you as a sex slave.” Fury pinched the bridge of his nose.

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you really surprised?”

“What about the others?” The Captain asked, moving closer to the table but seemed hesitant to hear the answer. “Where are the other omegas?”

There was no kind way to answer that question. “Dead. Either they were killed by the asset or after he rejected them, they were given to the HYDRA guards. I never saw them again.”

With that, James pushed his chair back and shot up, retreating to a corner of the room to furiously pace. Her heart broke for him, she doubted this was something he wanted to hear.

“And somehow you survived…how?” Fury continued, keeping his eye on her.

“I guess I smelled right to him.”

“How long?”

Surprised by James’ raspy voice, she turned to look at him. He looked ready to tear his own heart out to take away her pain, his eyes tortured and fists clenching and unclenching.

He repeated his question, enunciating each word as if it was acid in his mouth. “How long…were you my…” His words faltered at the end.

“Four years.”

He balked, blood draining from his face. A gasp come from direction of the Captain. Even Tony’s face looked a little paler.

“I managed to escape after the fight at the Triskelion, everything was in such disarray, no one knew what was going on. I’ve been running ever since.”

“That’s three years ago.” Fury spoke up, his tone still harsh but no longer glaring at her. She guessed he believed her, at least somewhat. “How have you managed to evade them for so long?”

“I don’t stay in the same place longer than eight months usually. I thought I actually noticed someone following me two days ago. So, after the weekend I was going to move on. Besides, without their asset there’s no point to keeping me.”

The air was strained, everyone absorbing her words and their implications. She could hear James’ rapid breathing to her left and the Captain’s continued, concerned looks thrown his way.

The Black Widow’s voice rang out, indifferent to the range of emotions displayed in the room. “In the few documents with your…number on it. There were mentions of something about a ‘carrier’ or ‘bad breeder’.”

“Shit.” Jenna whispered, rubbing her hands on her face. This was the one topic she had hoped to not have to explain. Where had they gotten this information? “I got pregnant at one point…they decided to experiment and see what would happen with breeding. I lost…they thought it had something to do with the serum. It didn’t help where they kept us wasn’t ideal for growing pups up healthy.”

“It just happened once?”

She answered the Widow’s follow up question hesitantly. “Twice. I miscarried twice.”

A sudden pounding sound shook the room causing everyone to jump and look at James. Ruthlessly he pounded against the wall beside him with his metal arm. Glass shattered. Pieces fell to the floor under the brutal treatment. Jenna froze, the sudden emotion keeping her eyes glued. The four years she had known the Winter Soldier, only twice had she seen him lose control like this but never was it directed at her. Normally he was stoic and unemotional or just on the brink of tenderness but never fully crossing that threshold. This…she was unsure what to do.

The Captain immediately rushed over, trying to pacify and calm his friend. After several tense minutes, James finally turned to face the group but his blue/gray eyes pinned her to her seat. His chest still rose and fell rapidly but what surprised her the most was the unshed tears betraying his pain hidden in those eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

“No…” she tried to interrupt but he kept speaking, gripping his hair like he was ready to yank it all out.

“I can’t…I’ll kill them all, I swear, I’m so sorry. I’ll protect you…”

“STOP!” Jenna jumped up and moved closer to the devastated man, ignoring everyone else in the room. Roughly she grabbed his face as he tried to turn away from her. “Look at me!” She commanded. Once his eyes met hers again did she continue, her voice more confident than she felt. “Its not your fault. We were both prisoners…and you did protect me. Do you remember? Once after a certain guard…hurt me because you weren’t around, somehow you knew. You found him and killed him. You promised to keep me safe and you did. After that, all the guards were scared to touch me because they knew. They knew I was YOUR omega! You never hurt me on purpose. You kept me alive. None of this was your fault. You never asked for this. Neither did I yet we dealt with it and survived. Focus on that. They did not break us…and every day we get up and keep breathing, we are beating them. Ok?”

He nodded, placing his hands on her forearms and pressing their foreheads together. A warm tingle ran through her as memories come to the forefront of her mind. Occasionally he would do this when they were alone in their cell. When they both desperately needed positive human contact…when it had been awhile since his last mind wipe and memories were coming back. They would cling to one another like two drowning persons in a storm. Desperately hoping the storm would abate soon or they would drown and death would save them.

“Well this truly is touching but what happens now?” Tony’s question broke the silent moment causing everything to come crashing back to reality.

  Chapter 4

 Bucky kept her close, wanting…no needing her touch, her warmth. Her jasmine scent brought such a peace with it. Yet his alpha instincts could not be ignored. Everything in him screamed to keep her near and safe. She was his omega and he would fight for her and to keep her. Damn anyone that tried to stand in his way. Everything she had confessed, everything she had been through made him want to rip every HYDRA agent apart with his bare hands. He knew HYDRA consisted of monsters but this…this was a new depravity that surprised him. He had no memories of the prior omegas. There was only one his mind recalled. Once he caught her scent, memories of them came flooding back... Laying on the uncomfortable cot together, her brushing and cutting his hair, tracing her skin as she slept. What stood out was the night he claimed her, he left his mating mark on her and she moaned in pleasure. He wondered if it was still there, it had been years…he had not noticed anything and guessed it had faded by now. That thought bothered him more than he cared to admit.

“Well it would appear there is only one thing we can do now.” Fury said. With his words Jenna turned around to face the SHIELD director, she took a couple steps closer to the table, back ramrod straight. A soft clap on the shoulder reminded Bucky that Steve still stood nearby, silently supporting him. Like always.

Fury’s eye roved over Jenna then Bucky before returning to her. “Miss Lewis, you will be placed in SHIELD custody for your protection until a time is deemed you no longer are in need of it. You will be placed in an undisclosed location for now. While in custody, you will try and help identify any HYDRA agents, doctors, or researchers that you can recall.”

The plan made sense but it did not mean Bucky had to like it. He wanted nothing more than to keep her by his side. Perhaps he could convince Fury to let him be a part of her protection detail. Its not like he was doing much else in the Tower. Hell, Steve would probably be the only one to miss him.

“Thank you, sir but I respectfully decline your offer.”

Bucky whipped his head around to stare at her. What was she thinking? His heart began beating rapidly, fear flooding his veins. What was she doing?

Fury’s voice practically dripped shards of ice as he countered her. “Oh, is that so? Miss, I don’t think you have much of a choice in the matter. It was not an offer. This is happening.”

She took a step closer to the table. “If I stay with you, HYDRA will find out about me. If I continue on my own, its easier to hide, easier to escape notice. I gave you the information you asked for and now I will be walking out those doors. You have no real reason to keep me.”

“We need to confirm your story.”

“Do it but I’m leaving…and I will disappear so if there are any last questions, you better ask them now.”

Maybe another time he would be impressed by an omega standing up to an alpha, especially Fury without quaking in their shoes. Now, it felt like he was losing her.

“Jenna,” he pleaded, “you need to stay here. Its not safe for you to leave. What if HYDRA finds you?”

“What are they going to do with me? Why would they even really be looking for me? I’m nothing to them.”

“NO! You will stay here and I will protect you.” He used his alpha voice on her, his growl reverberating in the room. This was not how he wanted things to go. Hell, he just found her and she wanted to just run off and vanish. That wasn’t going to happen. He had four years’ worth of transgressions to make up to her.

Her body tensed, hands clenching into fists as she fought the submission her body screamed for. After several deep breaths, she turned fully to face him. What warmth they once held for him dispersed as flares of anger danced in her onyx eyes. “You have no right to demand of me. Once you were my alpha but no more.”

A dagger to the heart would have hurt less. Why was she fighting this so hard? He heard Steve shift next to him and begin to say something but clamped his mouth shut when Jenna leveled a glare at him.

“I have a question.” Natasha announced, taking a step closer and planting her hands on her hips. “JARVIS, open file MP103572-26355A and project it onto screen 2B.” A half second later, her famous Widow’s smirk appeared as she stared at Jenna. “Who is their father?”

On the screen was a surveillance picture of Jenna smiling as she walked by a swing set. What struck Bucky speechless were the toddlers holding her hands. One of them, a boy, had dark brown hair like he did while the other, a girl, had hair slightly lighter, closer to their mother’s natural honey brown hair. The girl carried a dandelion in her hand, showing it off like it was the greatest treasure. The boy looked down, concentrating on cracks in the pavement under his feet.  The innocence that radiated off them was palpable through the picture.  It felt like all the air had been sucked from his lungs. Turning his head, he looked at Jenna for an explanation.

All the color had drained from her face as she stared at the picture.

“See if my calculations are correct…they look over 2 years old. Its been three years since the fall of HYDRA. So that tells me when you escaped, if that’s really what happened, you were already pregnant. You keep claiming that only Sergeant Barnes was allowed to touch you so it makes me wonder. Why have you not mentioned them yet?”

His thoughts were flying by at a million miles per minute yet also sluggishly refusing to move. His super soldier brain could usually process information faster than the average person but not this. He needed to hear it from her mouth. He needed the truth.

“Jenna…” He moved closer until he stood over her. Tears welled in her eyes, shoulders sagged, she looked utterly defeated. “Please.”

“I won’t let them touch my pups. I’ll do whatever I have to but I refuse to let those monsters anywhere close to my babies.” She hissed out, a last reserve of strength.

“Please tell me…are they…” He could not even finish his question, both hope and fear fighting for dominance within him. The revelation that he could be a father crashed into him like a tidal wave. It was a dream he had before the war, settling down and starting a family with his sweet wife. Once HYDRA got their hands on him, that dream went up in smoke. It never occurred to him that it could still happen.

She blinked before whispering the answer.“Yes, they are your pups.”

“That’s why you’ve been running and hiding. Not for your own safety but for them.” Steve beckoned to the screen, his own shock evident.

“Hold on. Hold on.” Tony interrupted. “Why would HYDRA want the pups? Aren’t they about world domination and soldiers, not babysitters?”

Natasha answered this time. “They are part super soldier. It’s the breeding program, right? Why waste time creating an unstable serum when you can create and mold the soldiers from birth?”

Bucky wanted to vomit at the thought. Those same doctors that tortured him…touching his pups, forcing them to be mindless, emotionless killers, hurting them until the doctors received the result they wanted. He would not, could not let anything happen to them. He would sell his soul to keep them safe. He looked up at the picture again, studying it. They looked beautiful, his omega, his pups…his family. The desperate need to see them, meet them, touch them and confirm they were real overwhelmed him. He had to make her understand somehow. He needed this. He needed to see them with his own eyes. He was a father.

“Can I meet them?” He tried to keep his voice soft as Tony and Natasha were arguing about something.

She looked up, meeting his eyes, scrutinizing him as if confirming his genuine feelings. “Ok,” she whispered back.

“When? Today?”

She shook her head. “I’m already late to return home. My emergency protocols will be active. I need to sort it out first.”

“Tomorrow?” He could barely keep the desperation out of his voice. “You can have time to think about staying, let me...us protect you. You don’t have to be all on your own anymore. I swear I won’t let HYDRA anywhere near the three of you. I’ll die before they touch you.”

A sad smile touched her lips. “I believe you. We can meet tomorrow. I don’t know about…”

“Please, just think about it.”

She sighed. “Fine, ok. I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you, omega.”

“Don’t call me that. We may have been together once but we aren’t right now.”

“Buck and I can walk you out, Miss Lewis.” Steve said, clearly having heard their whispered conversation.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Fury, Buck and I are escorting Miss Lewis out. A rendezvous meeting has been set for tomorrow in which further plans will be discussed but right now she needs to return to her pups.” Steve stated, his voice ringing with authority.

Fury looked between the three of them with obvious mistrust and skepticism. “Miss Lewis, we are not done talking. An undercover detail will be sent to monitor your home.”

Pinching her lips together, Jenna gave a curt nod before following Steve out the room with Bucky following. Their walk was silent, even the elevator was endured with minimal speech. Bucky would give anything to know what was going through her mind. Her face was expressionless, a mask that frustrated him. His own mind whirled with the new revelation. He had pups. He was a father. With an beautiful omega who clearly, at least at one time, cared for him. He wanted to know more about them, what they liked, their favorite games and movies. Did they know their father was alive? His lips stayed shut even as the questions burned on his tongue. A frigidness had wrapped around Jenna and it felt impenetrable. Having her life exposed as it had been to strangers and ones initially claiming she was HYDRA, he could not think how she felt right now. A piece of him wished to reach out and touch her, comfort her in some way. Her lovely scent had begun to slowly sour, alerting him to her negative change of emotion. It felt like his hands were tied though. What could he offer her? Would she even want to receive his help? Did she want anything from him?

Once they reached the ground floor, the three said a short, awkward farewell before she turned on her heel and practically ran away.

“We’ll figure it out, Buck.”

“I can’t lose them, Steve…I just can’t….”

“I know. That’s my nephew and niece. We’ll keep them safe.”

Bucky could only nod as he followed Steve back to the elevator. He hoped Jenna would allow them to help protect her and the pups. They needed to be safe. There was not another option. He needed them safe and happy.

  Chapter 5

 She remembered the first time she met the Winter Soldier, when she had been given to him. They ripped the black bag off her head as they walked down a concrete hallway. The place felt like an underground bunker or something. Goosebumps broke out on her skin from the cold, she was still only clad in the stupid university t-shirt and jean shorts that she had worn to the frat party. Her honey brown hair hung loose and limp past her shoulders as she stumbled along. For some ridiculous reason they had taken her flats so the cold floor hurt her feet. Whenever she spoke or asked a question, one of the two men gripping her arms would hit or slap her. So silently she followed along.

They passed several metal doors before stopping at one. There was nothing unique about it, nothing to show why they were stopping there. One of her handlers called out something in a foreign language than a green light buzzed over the door. Quickly they dragged her through the doorframe before unceremoniously tossing her further into the room. Stumbling she caught herself falling on her hands and knees. A harsh clank behind her signaled the door was sealed shut leaving her alone…or so she thought.

A creaking made her head swivel to the side to identify the sound. To her surprise and horror, a man sat on a dirty looking cot. His long, dark brown hair hid his face so her eyes quickly scanned the rest of him. He looked fit, like really fit, if the protruding muscles said anything. What caught her off guard the most was his left arm was not flesh and blood but shiny and metal. Her mind did not have long to ponder the question for just as suddenly as he appeared, his head lifted. A pair of beautiful blue/gray eyes met hers that she would have immediately loved except they looked almost dead or void of emotion. A sharp jawline accentuated his plump lips which were pressed together. His nostrils flared quickly then he seemed to take a deep breath. It was then his scent hit her. He was an alpha! Stories of unspeakable horrors crossed her mind and she felt tears threatening to fall. Questions flooded her mind but her tongue refused to cooperate.

Slowly and silently he stood up, moving with an almost machine-like grace. Unsure what to do she scrambled onto her feet, breathing rapidly, moving to press her back against the wall. Her eyes remained transfixed on him. As if each movement took great deliberation, he slowly moved closer step by step. His eyes held her frozen in place. He was easily eight inches taller with muscles and movement that conveyed he knew how to handle himself. What could she do expect hope and pray? She was smart enough to know she would not win a fight against him. What did he want from her? Why was she here? Who was he?

After what felt like an eternity, he stood toe to toe with her, towering and intimidating. Her heart felt like it was ready to beat out of her chest. Sweat beaded on her palms. Agonizingly slow, he leaned forward moving his head closer and closer to her. With a whimper she tried to jerk away but to no avail. He forced her back against the wall. His metal hand gently yet forcefully pressed on her head, tilting it to the side so she was looking away. She felt him continue to lean in closer until his nose was pressed against her mating gland. Closing her eyes, a tear slipped out but she held still. A sound, the mixture between a moan and growl erupted from his lips ghosting over the skin of her neck. Gently he gripped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze once again. This time there seemed to be a spark amongst the deadness, a glimmer of something she could not decipher. He stared at her a long time as if absorbing everything about her and all her secrets. It unnerved her but so far, he had not done anything to hurt her yet, that had to be good, right?

To make their strange situation even more bizarre, his thumb brushed over her lower lip, then hesitantly touched his own lip with the thumb that had touched her. Whatever it was must have sealed the decision he was contemplating for suddenly he leaned forward again and pressed his nose against her mating gland.

“Mine…” His voice rasped out as if unused to speaking. “My omega.” He leaned back, staring at her. “Confirm.”

“Wh…what?” She stuttered out, confused by the crazy events.

“Confirm. My omega. Confirm.”

“Um…I’m…I’m your omega?”

“Affirmative.” With that he released her and walked back over to sit on the dirty cot.

She watched him sit there, barely moving or breathing for several moments before sliding onto the floor beneath her. She pulled her legs up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Tears silently fell but she dared not make a sound. What was going on?

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jenna was nervous. Shit, she was scared. This felt right though. After everything that happened yesterday at the Avengers Tower, how she just wanted to grab the twins and run for dear life. Yet with everything, she felt she owed it to him at least. He had protected her while they were both prisoners of HYDRA, even yesterday he still threw himself between her and whatever he deemed threatened her. He deserved to meet his pups, his son and daughter. So here they were.

“Park! We play!” Her daughter cried out excitedly, tugging on Jenna’s hand now in her great enthusiasm.

“Hold on, sweetheart, we’re going. We don’t want to fall and scrape our knees again, right?”

“No, mama.”

They rounded the last bend on the sidewalk to reach the entrance of the enclosed neighborhood park. Living in the Bronx had its shady times certainly and Jenna always kept a firm grip and sharp eye on her children. Luckily there had not been any incidents at this park. As they entered, her eyes scanned around for a particular face and within moments locked eyes.

“Mama, play!”

“One second, I want you two to meet someone.” She guided her children towards them. James stood frozen, almost mid-step as if he had been pacing and then saw her. Steve sat on the park bench next to him along with a dark-skinned man she did not recognize. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself as they walked the last few feet.

“Nuggets, this is my friend James. Can you say hi?” She spoke soothingly, as she stopped them in front of the ex-Winter Soldier. Her daughter waved, dimples appearing on her cheeks while her son stood staring, clinging to her hand. James’ eyes bounced continuously back and forth between the two and she knew he was noticing his own features in them. Her daughter had matching blue/gray eyes, identical to his. Her son had the same dimple in his chin while his eyes were more of a light blue. They both had Jenna’s lighter complexion but looking at them, it was easy to pick out similarities between their parents. Both a blessing and a curse that she had struggled with.

“James, this is Sierra and Aiden.”

Slowly he knelt before them, never removing his eyes from the three of them. “Hi, its…” he swallowed before continuing, “its nice to meet you two.”

“Alright, nuggets, why don’t you go play. I’m just going to talk to James for a bit.”

“Play!” Sierra chirped in her sweet voice. Without waiting another second, she darted towards the small playground and began running all over it. Aidan slowly followed but only to the edge, then he began driving the monster truck in his hand over the sandy ground contently. Jenna watched them for a moment, her heart swelling with love for them. They truly were her world and she did not mind one bit.

“So, you’re Jenna, huh?” The dark-skinned man smirked at her before leaning forward, extending his hand. “Sam Wilson. Bucky was not kidding when he mentioned how beautiful you are.”

She laughed as Sam winked at her while they shook hands and James glowered at him. His scent reminded her of lemons and honey, an interesting combination for a male beta in her opinion. She could not help but feel relaxed in his presence which both made her nervous yet happy to chat and laugh casually.

“Its good to see you again, Jenna.”

“You too, Captain.”

“Please, call me Steve.”

She nodded at him then turned her attention to the real reason she was here. James stared at the toddlers like a blind man seeing the moon and stars for the first time. It was both sweet and heartbreaking to witness. “You ok?”

“They are perfect.” He breathed out, not tearing his eyes from them.

She continued to watch him, seeing the misty eyes and silent disbelief at what his eyes were telling him. This world, HYDRA, had taken so much from him, forced him to be something he never wanted to be. Trapped in his own mind and body as they controlled him through torture and pain. She witness it. Yet there was a softness she had never seen before. It was in the small smile touching his lips as Sierra slid down the slide squealing and Aidan made ‘vroom’ noises for his truck. Was it possible for her pups to grow up with father after all? That was a dream she had given up long ago but watching him…could it be possible?

“So, did you make a decision yet?” Steve broke the silence.

“What?”

“If…if you’ll come back with us…or not?”

At her hesitation, James’ head turned to stare at her, an almost pained expression on his face.

“I’m not…”

“Please.” He interrupted her, moving closer and gripping her upper arms. “Please don’t run. I just found you…and them. I can’t, I can’t lose any of you. Please. Give us a chance.”

“You have to understand, its just been the three of us. They are my first priority and I will not compromise their safety in any way.”

“I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you or our…our pups. You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

She would never admit it out loud but she spent most of the night last night sitting in the dark thinking, planning and strategizing. The idea of not having to look over her shoulder constantly called out to her. To not feel alone, to maybe find a sliver of peace and rest delighted her. Yet what if HYDRA still infected SHIELD? Could she be fully positive that those around had her and her children’s best interests at heart?

“Trust me, please.” He begged, tearing her heart out.

After an eternity or a second, she was unsure, she decided to make her choice. Meeting his pleading eyes, she nodded. “Ok, I trust you James Barnes to keep me and our pups safe. Don’t fail us.”

“I won’t. I promise.” He whispered, pressing their foreheads together. “Thank you.”

“After the kids play, we can go get our stuff. It won’t take too long. Would that work?”

“Sure, sure. Steve can call for a truck to come and pick up the stuff. Right, Stevie?”

“Course, Buck. I’ll call right now.” The blond super soldier jumped up and walked several paces away, pulling out his cell phone.

James and Jenna took a hesitant step from each other and she scanned the playground to check on the twins. Yes, she needed to keep an eye on them, especially Sierra, but really, she just needed space. His scent made her want to burrow her face in his neck, to let him hold her close and know he would protect them. She was not sure if it was because of her being an omega or their shared past history but she wanted to relinquish control. But she could not submit like that. Not right away. She needed proof to trust him, besides her and James were such different people then when they last saw one another. Would a relationship even work between them anymore? Would he be a good alpha and father? It felt too early to tell.

“Mama!”

Aidan running over broke her train of thought. He slammed into her legs then tugged on her hand. She smiled, already knowing what he wanted. His favorite part of the playground was the swings off to the side while Sierra could spend hours climbing up and going down the slide.

For the next fifteen minutes, she pushed Aidan and watched James play on the slide with Sierra. After that, the little girl somehow got Steve and Sam to chase her around while James sat on the ground with Aidan and made ramps in the sand for him to drive his monster truck off. Maybe there was hope for a family between them. Perhaps things she once dreamed of might finally come true. She looked on with hope and love growing in her heart.

  Chapter 6

 Bucky followed behind Jenna as they ascended the stairs, having to move slow because of the toddlers wanting to walk up by themselves. Aidan held his hand, his monster truck still in his other hand. The way the two toddlers had warmed up to him was astounding. To his own even greater surprise, neither one was frightened by his metal arm. It barely even phased either one, only Sierra had a reaction to it which equated to her frequently grabbing his metal hand to stare at her own reflection and giggle. Now they were heading up to their second-floor apartment to gather their stuff and taken them to the Tower. Sam stayed outside with the truck and to keep an eye on their surroundings.

When Bucky saw the apartment building, he was horrified and distraught that this was where they had been living. He understood it had to be hard to be a single mother, raising twins while having to stay off the grid but this. It brought a new revelation of how much she must struggle to get by and the sacrifices she had made. He promised himself to spoil all three of them anyway he could. He doubted he would be the only one spoiling the kids by the heart shaped eyes Steve had whenever the kids interacted with him.

Jenna opened the door and ushered the toddlers in first. Steve and Bucky followed scanning the place. It was a small one-bedroom apartment, the walls were a yellowed tan from age with bare minimum furniture. A raised eyebrow from Steve received a nod from Bucky. This reminded them both of their own poor childhoods. There was no way his family was allowed to continue to live like this. Not while he had he means to change it.

“Look! Me puppy!” Sierra ran up to the two men, showing them a brown stuffed animal with floppy ears.

“He’s really nice.” Steve smiled at the little girl. Aidan appeared next to show them his stuffed owl but a male voice made Bucky turn around.

Before Jenna could fully close the door, someone called out her name. She sighed and reopened it, plastering a fake smile on her lips.

“Hey, Paul.”

“Alicia. How are ya, babe?”

Every alpha instinct went on high alert as Bucky heard that. He watched the man, by his scent a weak alpha, rush over. The man leaned against the doorframe, a crooked smile greeting her. He was attractive enough- tall, thin, a nose looking like it had been broken at least once, while wearing a backwards baseball cap and jeans.

“I’m ok. You?”

“Yeah, good, good. Hey, think you’ll have an evening off soon? I still wanna take you to that joint down the street. I think you’d really like it. I’ll even pay for someone to watch your pups. Don’t give me that look, come on, you’ve been saying no for two months now. Its ok to let loose and have some fun.”

Bucky had heard enough by this point. In several swift strides, he approached, wrapping an arm around Jenna’s waist and tugged her into his side. “Hey doll face, we’re waiting on you. Who’s your friend here?”

“Oh, this is Paul. He lives two doors away. Paul, this is James.”

Paul’s eyebrows furrowed as the other alpha intruded on what he thought was his territory. It almost made Bucky smile as he watched Paul straighten up and puff his chest out. He posed no real threat at all. It was almost comical.

“Nice to meet you.” Paul winced slightly as he shook Bucky’s hand. “Um…how…are you friends?”

“I’m her alpha.” He stated bluntly, loving the way Paul’s eyes widened.

A sharp elbow to his ribs surprised and amused him. “No, you’re not.” Jenna retorted.

“Keep telling yourself that, doll.” He winked at the still stunned Paul. “She likes to play hard to get. Now, we need to finish packing. It was nice to meet you.” Without waiting for a response, he pulled Jenna inside and closed the door in Paul’s face.

“Was that really necessary?”

He smirked. “Did you want him to keep talking to you?”

“No…”

“You’re welcome then, beautiful. Now, put Steve and me to work.”

A wicked gleam came into her eyes. “Yes, alpha.”

A low growl emerged as he stepped closer. Unable to help himself anymore, he ran his nose along the shell of her ear and breathed in her heady, sweet scent that he would happily drown in. “Don’t start something you don’t mean, omega.”

A faint shudder coursed through her before she replied, slightly breathless. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Damn boundaries and waiting. He pressed a chaste kiss to her temple then stepped back, pleased to see the faintest blush on her cheeks. “What do we need to do?”

“There are suitcases on the bed that we will take. None of the furniture has to come with. Let me grab a trash bag and throw the toys in it. Should we bring the food or leave it?”

“Bring it. Each of the suites have a full kitchen in them.”

“Ok.” She called over to the twins playing on the floor with Steve. “Nuggets! Get your toys please and put them on the couch. We are having a sleepover and want to bring everything.”

Ten minutes later, Steve has the three suitcases and was heading downstairs. The twins had a small backpack on each, a few toys in them. Sam had come up and was helping the twins down the stairs while loudly singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ with them somewhat following along.

Bucky stood at the door waiting for Jenna, two car seats by his feet. He watched her scanning the small apartment. Seeming somewhat satisfied, she reached above the fridge and pulled down a pistol and case of bullets. She stared at the gun for along moment as if lost in thought. He was caught off-guard by her having a gun in her possession. He doubted it was legal. Would she feel it necessary to keep? Did she know how to use it? Then a dark thought entered wondering if she had been forced to use it to protect her and their pups. Silently Bucky moved over to stand in front of her.

“Come here.” Gently he took it from her, slipping it into the waistline of his pants. The bullets, he stuffed the small case into one of his pockets. Without warning, he stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her. He could nt imagine what al she had been through to take care of the twins and stay ahead of HYDRA. She stiffened in his arms.  Immediately he wondered if he made the wrong move. His thought had been to offer comfort but maybe she was not ready for that from him. Before he could pull back and apologize, her arms went around his waist and she placed her head on his chest.

“I’m scared.” She murmured.

“I know. I am too. Yesterday morning I woke up and didn’t know what I was doing at the Tower. If I should stay or leave. What I currently should do with my life. But now I have you and our pups in my life. I’ll never be good enough for you or them but I promise to damn well try and do everything I can to keep you safe and happy. You aren’t alone anymore, Jenna. Not if you don’t wanna be.”

“James…”

“Bucky.”

“What?”

He tilted her chin up to stare into those gorgeous onyx eyes. “I prefer Bucky.”

“I thought you preferred alpha.”

He growled, burrowing his face into her neck. Damn she smelled incredible and her body pressed against his felt perfect. Her giggle almost made him come undone along with her squirming. He nipped at the skin on her neck teasingly. “Omega, you are trouble.”

She pushed against his chest, a coy smile on her face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Reluctantly he released her and stepped back. “Anything else you need?”

“No, I think that’s it, alpha.”

He groaned, his instincts attempting to run wild at her calling him that. “Argh. We better get moving out of this apartment before I pin you against a wall.”

“One of these days, I might let you, mon ange nior.” With a wink over her shoulder, she sashed over to the two garbage bags of stuff and headed towards the door.

That was it. By the grace of God, saints, angels or whatever deities he needed to beseech, he was going to do everything to become her alpha. To have her affection and trust once again. Dammit, he would be the best mate and father he could and make sure they never experienced any lack again. He promised himself to romance and love the hell out of her and devote himself to his pups. He may be a monster but he would be everything for them. Quickly he grabbed the car seats and followed her out the door. He could not help but think that the sound of the door closing was the signal of the ending of a chapter in his life. Glancing over at the beautiful omega by his side, he did not mind one bit and could not wait to see what the next chapter held in store for him. For their family.

[superfreakerz]

So, this is a request from @ccrispy asking me to write a story for my favorite artwork of hers! And lemme tell you, it was so hard to choose one because ccrispy is my fav artist on tumblr so I love literally everything she posts lmao. BUT! I have to say that this one is my favorite because it literally made me CRY seeing it the first time! So, without further ado, here it is! :D

Also, I really wanted to post a link to her post but I can’t find it on my laptop for some reason. So I’m sorry if the pictures are out of scale or something! I’ll try to add another link using mobile after I post this!

“So Long, Happy”

Rated K.

Summary: Saying goodbye hurts, especially when it’s to one of your closest friends.

So Long, Happy

All that could be heard were the muffled sobs as the three walked to their destination. Nobody said a word, their throats tight and constricted from all of their crying. Their steps were slow, as if trying to postpone the inevitable, which in truth they might have subconsciously doing. They wanted to turn around. They wanted to go home and laugh, tease each other, and continue their never-ending adventure.

But they couldn’t.

Not when Happy had a mission.

After the battle with Zeref and Acnologia, Lucy, Natsu, and Happy had found peace in their lives. They went on jobs together, messed up Lucy’s apartment together, and shared each day like it was their last. They had been through so much over the past couple of years, they very much needed the serenity.

Not long after, however, two strange people entered the guildhall. One was a girl with blonde hair, lighter than Lucy’s and not as golden. It fell in waves, a little bit past her shoulders. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, similar to Mira’s. Next to her was a boy with black hair, not unlike Gray’s. His eyes were dark and slanted. There was a small bandage over his cheek.

Before anyone could speak, they both dropped to their knees and bowed.

“Please,” the girl spoke. Her voice was strained, cracking as if she had been crying recently. “We… We need your help.”

Everyone in the guild shared a look of concern. The one who spoke next was none other than Natsu, who had walked closer to the strange pair.

“Then you came to the right place!” he said, giving them a wide grin in hopes of lightening the mood. “Fairy Tail never backs down from a job!”

“What is it you need?” Erza chimed in.

“We need your help,” the strange girl answered, her gaze still glued to the floor. “Our world- or worlds, I should say- is in danger of destruction.”

“What do you mean by worlds? Who are you people?”

“My name is Rebecca, and this is Shiki. We come from a different planet in another dimension of space.”

“A different dimension of space?” Lucy repeated, her mouth opened wide. “Is this like Edolas again?”

“I don’t think so,” Makarov answered. “Edolas was another world, but it was connected to ours. If their world is in a different pocket of space, then it would be different entirely, is that correct?”

Rebecca nodded. “There are multiple universes. We come from the Sakura Cosmos. I know it may be hard to believe but-”

“After everything all of us have been through, there’s really not much that’s hard to believe,” Natsu interrupted, giving the girl a grin. “So, what do you need us to do? Head over there?”

“Well… it’s not that simple. We can only take one of you. Coming from different universes, our bodies are made up of different materials. Ours are made up of something called ether, while yours are made up of something foreign to us. In order to get here, one of our friends back home had to create these devices that are inserted into our bodies and converts our ether into what is known as magical power over here. The parts needed to make them are rare in our world, so he could only make enough to bring back one person.”

“Just one?” Lucy asked, a frown spreading over her face.

“Don’t worry, Lucy,” Natsu said, nudging the girl and flashing her a reassuring grin. “I’ll go. And I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Actually…” Rebecca started, biting her lower lip. “There’s a specific person that we came for.”

“Huh? Who is it?”

Rebecca glanced behind Natsu, pointing at the blue exceed behind him.

“We came for Happy.”

The cat’s eyes widened. Pointing at himself, he asked, “Me?”

“Yes. I used to have a companion like you,” Rebecca started, her voice cracking. Her eyes pricked with tears, but she blinked them back. Now wasn’t the time to cry. She had to save the world. “But, umm… He didn’t make it in our last battle.”

Lucy’s hands flew to her mouth. It was that bad over there? Sure, she’d had more than a few close calls with her friends, but she’d never had any of them actually die.

“You look and sound just like the Happy from my own world,” Rebecca said with a sad smile. “And in order to use my powers, I need Happy. We’re running low on fighters, I can’t be put on the sidelines now.”

“So Happy will help you use your powers?” Erza asked. “How?”

“Well, once we insert the conversion device into Happy, his body will have ether that is compatible with my own. He will be able to transform his body into my weapon. That is, if he chooses to come with us.”

Everyone turned towards the cat in question. He shrugged.

“Sure. Why not?” Happy said with a grin.

Shiki frowned, shaking his head. “You should take some time to think about it first.”

“Huh? Why? All I’m doing there is helping you win and then coming back, right?”

“It’s not that simple,” Rebecca said, her frown growing. “While having you around will help our efforts, it won’t change the tide of the battle overnight. It’s a long and dangerous journey. In fact… It could take up to years.”

“Years!?” Lucy repeated. “But… But Happy…”

Natsu’s eyes were wide, his stomach filled with dread. The thought of going without one of his best friends for so long made him sick. Happy had been there for him through everything. He was there to help look for Igneel, there when Igneel had died, and was there to help with Zeref. Happy was his partner in crime, his confidant.

Happy frowned, glancing up at Natsu. It was clear that the boy wasn’t processing the information well.

“I’m sorry,” Happy said, turning back towards Rebecca and Shiki. “I don’t think I can be away that long. This is my home, and all of my friends are here…”

Rebecca nodded, but she couldn’t fight the tears that slipped down her cheeks. Happy was her only hope, and while she understood completely, it was devasting to know that he wasn’t going to help.

“We understand,” Shiki said. “Thank you for hearing us out.” He picked Rebecca up from the floor and went to lead her out of the guild when Natsu spoke.

“Wait,” he said, swallowing thickly. He crouched in front of Happy, ruffling his fur. “Don’t worry about me, buddy.”

“But-!” the cat started, only to be interrupted.

“I’m not gonna force you to go or anything, but these people need your help. I’m not gonna selfishly keep you here either. We’re Fairy Tail wizards, we don’t give up on jobs that we accept, right?”

Happy nodded, tears welling in his eyes. “A-Aye…” Before he could get discouraged and change his mind, he turned back towards the two. “I’ll go with you.”

After that, they were given one last day to hang out together. Many tears were shed that night, knowing that it would be their last time seeing each other for a while. Still, they made the best they could out of it.

But now that the fateful day was upon them, their feet felt like bricks and sorrow was heavy in their hearts. As selfish as it was, they didn’t want to let Happy go. They wanted him to stay with the guild, laughing, eating fish, and trying to win Charle’s heart.

Reaching Hargeon, the place they were told to meet up with Rebecca and Shiki, their sorrow intensified. This was the place Natsu and Happy had met Lucy. It held wonderful memories for them, as it was the beginning of their adventure. Ironically, it was also the end of it as well.

Soon enough, they could make out Rebecca and Shiki standing by the pier. A large, metallic ship rested in the water behind them. It was clear it wasn’t an ordinary ship, but they didn’t care about that at the moment.

Reaching the pair, the trio started their goodbyes.

Lucy watched, her heart sinking in her chest as Natsu crouched beside Happy, scooping him into his arms in a tight hug, his hand cupping the back of the exceed’s head. Tears washed over his face and sunk into Happy’s fur. The two cried together, uncaring of who saw.

Lucy crouched beside them, poking the back of Happy’s head. Her eyes stung with tears and her throat was dry. She hadn’t been able to stop crying since yesterday. Still, she wanted to be strong for her friend.

Forcing a smile to her face, Lucy held her arms out in front of her. Happy choked back a sob, launching himself into her chest for a final hug. No longer able to hold it in any longer, Lucy broke down, her cries loud enough to gain the attention of people passing by. She wept and wept, expecting her tears to run out eventually, but they didn’t.

It seemed Happy wasn’t faring any better, his claws digging into her sides as he cried. How many times had they hugged like this before? It was too much to count.

Trying to regain control of herself, Lucy pulled away.

A shaky smile spread over her face. “Be good, okay? D-Don’t give these guys too much trouble.”

Happy nodded, burying his face into her chest again. They held onto each other for a few more minutes, but their time was short. Happy had to go soon, and Lucy knew that his next goodbye meant even more.

Gently carrying Happy, Lucy handed him to Natsu. Without saying a word, the boy held Happy close to his chest. He wanted to say goodbye, but he couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come to him and his throat felt like it was getting tighter by the second. He felt sick to his stomach, so sad that he thought he might throw up. The only other times he’d been this sad was when he saw Igneel die or when he thought Lucy had died.

Still, he needed to be optimistic. He knew Happy better than anyone, and if he continued to act like this, then Happy would change his mind. And even though a large part of Natsu wished he would, he knew that there were people that needed him. People were dying, even if he couldn’t see it happening with his own two eyes. The thought alone was to galvanize him to speak.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he started, his voice just above a whisper. It was hoarse, cracking under the pressure of his emotions. “I trust them.”

“A-Aye,” Happy replied, his voice muffled as his face was buried in Natsu’s scarf.

They stayed like that in silence, as if scared that their time together would end if one of them spoke. Knowing that their time together was coming to an end soon, Lucy hugged them both tightly.

“I love you, Happy,” she whispered, unable to speak any louder. “Be safe, got it? You make sure that you come back to us.”

“Aye,” Happy replied with a nod.

Natsu smoothed a hand over the cat’s head one more time before pulling away from the hug. He knew that he needed to be the one to act, for if he didn’t, nobody else would. He had to be strong.

“C'mon, buddy. It’s time for you to go. A new journey for you begins,” he said, wiping away his tears and smiling at his friend. His lips quivered, and the smile didn’t reach his eyes, but it was enough to reassure the cat that what he was doing was the right thing to do.

Shiki picked up Happy, admittedly feeling guilty for being the one to take him away from such a loving family. He loved making new friends, but doing it like this wasn’t satisfying. His heart broke for the three of them just watching them say goodbye.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him,” Rebecca told Lucy, a smile on her face in hopes of cheering the other girl up.

Lucy gave a wet smile in return, tears streaming down her face. “I’m sure of that.”

Natsu swallowed thickly, ruffling his hand through Happy’s fur one more time. This was it. This was goodbye.

“So long, Happy,” he choked out. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Aye,” the exceed replied with a nod. “Soon.”

With that, Rebecca, Shiki, and Happy headed towards the ship, ready to start their new adventure.

The weight of Natsu’s emotions at the sight of Happy’s retreating form brought him crashing to his knees and clutching his scarf for support. His breathing was staggered, unable to be calmed even as Lucy wrapped her arms around him. Together, the two cried, knowing that their lives weren’t going to be the same without Happy there with them. The three of them were the original Team Natsu. Until Happy returned, there was always going to be a hole in their hearts.

But they had faith in their friend. Happy was a strong cat, stronger than he looked. They knew that he would help Rebecca and Shiki, just as he had helped them. Then, he would return.

“H-Happy!” Natsu cried out.

Happy turned around to find Natsu being held in Lucy’s arms. The boy’s body trembled as he brought a shaky hand into the air. Pointing his index finger and thumb out, he gave the cat Fairy Tail’s signature salute. Lucy smiled through her tears, raising her hand and doing the same.

For the first time that day, Happy smiled back at them, finally feeling ready to follow through with his decision. Raising his paw in the air, he mirrored their form. With that, he boarded the ship with the others, not turning around again to check on them. He knew that they were distraught. He was too. But he was going to see them again, he’d make sure of it.

Because even if they couldn’t find where he was, they would always be looking his way, just as he would with them.

[persephone-chen]

HPHM Character Profile

Thanks for tagging me @changeling-fae !

**Warning: Extremely long post since I put a lot of effort into building Persephone and her life**

-General Information-

Name: Persephone Chen

Age: 17 (currently)

Gender: Female

Nickname(s):

•Pip/my adorable Mei Mei (Jacob)

•Cursed Siblings (other families gossiping)

•Mud-Blood (students who don’t like her)

Date of Birth: August 30th

Astrological/ Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Ethnicity: Chinese/ Siren

Nationality: Chinese

Species: Witch + Siren

Blood Type: O

Blood-Status: Half-Breed

Family:

Father- Qiao Chen

•Qiao name meaning is pretty/handsome in Chinese

•As a child he was a risk taker and a bit of an adrenaline junkie

•Questioning/breaking rules and authority if it didn’t make sense and he did it all without an ounce of guilt

•Pretty popular because of his looks but his troublemaking ways made it impossible for anyone to even think about confessing to him

•Older he matured and was known to do crazy and dangerous missions all the while keeping level headed and was a great leader

•He taught his children to follow what they believe in and took caution with any ministry

•He was the oldest and had a younger brother

•He is the reason Persephone and Jacob can see Thestrals

•How he died is still a mystery

•If he didn’t like someone you would know it (he’s very blunt and not very tactful about it)

•His contribution to the family Grimoire was making a spell that could allow a species to change into another one and phase between the two at Will with no drawbacks

•Has thick skin since there was a huge expectation on all members of the Chen family

•Fell in love with Leta at first glance and was the one to confess

•The scar on his face is a constant reminder of what his younger brother did

•Despite being the oldest since he was not the family head he was sent to America to spread the reach of the Chen family

•Didn’t make any friends outside his house

•Did successfully have the America Ministry under his thumb (aka blackmail on all members at all levels)

•Job: Auror to Curse Breaker after getting second wand (Dogwood is not a quiet wand so element of surprise is lost)

* Owl: Eurasian eagle owl

* Hippogriff (tamed for transportation)

* Patronus: Bear (Learned in last year of Ilvermorny

* House: Ilvermorny: Wampus

* Wand Core: Phoenix Feather

•1st wand:

Redwood wands possess the admirable ability to fall on their feet, to make the right choice, to snatch advantage from catastrophe.

•2nd wand:

Dogwood refuse to perform non-verbal spells +rather noisy. Quirky and mischievous; playful natures and insist upon partners who can provide them with scope for excitement and fun.

Mother- Leta Chen

* Leta is Joyful in Latin considering that was where her origin was

* As a full blood Siren she got separated from her family at a young age and washed up in Japan

* A Japanese Wizard couple who recently lost their daughter to disease adopted her and used magic so she could live on land (short term) and was their replacement daughter who enrolled in Mahoutokoro

* As a child she was pretty quiet and was seen as serious in school since she didn’t want to draw attention to herself

* Since she had the highest markings in class her absences from class were ignored (When the spell wore off and she became a Siren again)

* She was the best Quidditch player in the school and training thru those Tsunamis weren’t a problem because of her Siren blood

* After Graduating and trying to avoid anyone who would try to uncover the secret she went to America where she meet Qiao

* She was the reason Qiao made a spell for the Grimoire

* She always had a mistrust for the Ministry since she was a huge secret from them

* She is very elegant and even tempered. It takes a lot for her to snap

* Her children helped her thru the death of her husband

* Once Persephone and Jacob were adults she went back to the Ocean and became a Siren and never looked back

* Gave each of her child a pearl which is tradition among Sirens

* After her husband’s death she

* moved her family to Europe to keep them safe

* Became a True Seer since they are so rare and held in high regards and would be her ticket for protection

* Job: True Seer

* Owl: Striped owl

* Siren: warm water=exceptionally beautiful use singing voice

* Patronus: occamy

* House: Mahoutokoro, gold robe (highest robe color)

* Pet: Kelpie

* Wand Core: White River Monster Spine- produce spells of force and elegance

•1st wand:

Cedar carries the potential to be a frightening adversary, which often comes as a shock to those who have thoughtlessly challenged them.

•2nd wand:

Cherry is very rare wand wood that makes for a wand of strange power, most highly prized by the wizarding students of the school of Mahoutokoro in Japan, where those who own cherry wands have special prestige. possesses truly lethal power, whatever the core

Brother- Jacob Chen

•Everyone describes Jacob as bright, cheerful, and easy to get along with but that’s just a front

•Seems nice but if people try to get close he gets annoyed and treats them coldly

• make sure he only gets along with others on surface level or enough to charm them if the need to use them ever arise

•He likes messing with his friends and making them stressed and tends to do stupid things with them

•While he seems easy going once someone messes with Persephone he’ll make their life hell and they’ll have no proof to show authority

•Like the rest of his family his grades are amazing but he is a troublemaker

•He sweet talks the female Professors as a front/ attempting to get out of trouble (example: Professor McGonagall you look amazing today as well! Did you do something different with your hat?)

•He originally wanted to be a professional Quidditch Player but after being trapped in the vaults he changed is mind

•He has an affinity for metal so became a Metal charmer (Makes snitches and incorporates magic into metal items without them losing magic over time or when creator dies)

•Professional Quidditch players look up to and aspire to be as good of a player as him

•He’ll sometimes help/ train professional Quidditch players like Victor

•While he doesn’t play pranks as an adult he likes to make people have misconceptions of his job by the way he dresses and loves their reactions of fear and wary

•He’s not as rowdy as when he was younger but he will hold grudges.

•Unlike Rakepick he doesn’t manipulate people into doing what he wants

•He despises his Siren voice because of it and he never sings

•Also for the right price among his friends he’s a very skilled part time thief. (Still liked messing with people for fun and entertainment)

•Was the ace of the Slytherin Quidditch team

•While he is ashamed of his Siren Blood he wears the pearl his mother gave him on the braid in his hair

•When he doesn’t want to put on a facade he’d go hide/hang out in Hagrid’s Hut

•Unlike his sister his fashion sense is more modern Asian street ware

•Owl: Great Horned Owl (are mottled gray-brown, with reddish brown faces and a neat white patch on the throat)

•Half Siren (hides that fact by dying hair gray. As adult isn’t ashamed and use lighter gray dye since he likes that color)

•Patronus:Buzzard

•Fire Crab- Sushi (got as pet from Persephone)

Thunderbird tail feather cores Powerful + difficult to master, particularly prized by Transfigurers. Can sense danger and cast curses on their own.

•1st wand:

Pine independent, individual master who may be perceived as a loner, intriguing and perhaps mysterious. Able to detect, and perform best for, owners who are destined for long lives. most sensitive to non-verbal magic.

•2nd wand:

Hornbeam quickest to adapt to owner’s style and become personalized Others find difficult to even cast simplest of spells. take on owner’s code of honor and refuse to perform acts (good or bad) that doesn’t go with master principles

Bibby: (House Elf of the Chen Family)

* Speaks and referees to themself in third person

* Really likes the Chen family so always does whatever they can to be of assistance

* Loves cooking/ getting items for Persephone

* Cleaning/ polishing Jacob’s broom/ items

* Cleans the house for Leta

* Helps gather info/ spy for family

* While Bibby does a lot for the family they are actually pretty shy but can be very protective of the family

* Despite their shy nature they don’t mind breaking rules/ lying to others to help the Chen family

Chen Family History

•One of the most powerful and influential Wizarding family in China

•Always has blackmail on every Ministry they’re tied to... just in case

•Every member in family will always get a second wand at some time during their life either because they lost it, got it broken, stolen, or sacrificed it... there has never been an exception

•Because of the second wand tradition many call the Chen family cursed

•High expectations is expected from all members regardless of age, gender, or birth order but not required (The family is quite nice to each other)

•When a member picks a field they always excel in it

•They are not new in breaking rules/laws or following a morally gray lifestyle

•No one knows why but the Chen family has never had a ghost in their entire history

•While they can be traditional with arrange marriages they are very adaptable so they have gone thru many traditions which has help them maintain their high status

•Has a secret family Grimoire

•During birth each member is registered by the Grimoire by placing a drop of their blood on the gem on the cover

•Over the generations the Grimoire has become semi sentient

•Each generation adds something to the Grimoire that could chance the whole wizarding world... spells, curses, hexes, potions, plant, creatures, etc.

•If any generation is ever low on funds they can use a page of the Grimoire and share it to the Wizarding world to get their fortune back (granted whatever they share is a way weaker version with drawbacks or requirements)

•Any member can summon the Grimoire and multiply copies can be an existence

•The Grimoire will not allow itself to be used for evil and can revoke any Chen member from its use if attempted

* Many go thru a process of living among muggles for a short time to learn to blend in and learn things so they won’t become heavily reliant on magic

•It is said that if a member of the family produces a Dragon patronus it is a calamity for the family which is odd since dragons are well respected and prized in the family

•Qiao’s younger brother’s patronus is a dragon

•During his time or regime the calamity prophecy was true. There was a rebellion and many of the Chen family members were killed but their knowledge,secrets, and power did not dwindle

•The Chen family is very private and if a member does wrong the family will deal with them behind close doors

•If multiple children are born from the main family one will be chosen as the head and the other sent to a different part of the world to spread their influence

•It is not a dishonor or a punishment if you are not chosen as the head of the family

•If the Head dies and has no heir the remaining sibling will gain the title

•Hence Qiao became the Head

•Among Qiao’s children while each excel in their studies the head was bestow on Jacob Since Persephone has no interest in it

•To the world the Chen family is all but wiped out with the exception of the Qiao’s family...for now

•The remaining Chen family members are currently keeping a low profile and keeping their ear to the ground to find out what happened and how

•No one knows Leta is a Siren except Qiao, Jacob, Bibby, and Persephone

•Hence no one knows Jacob and Persephone is half-Siren

•Only a few friends of the children know

•While Jacob doesn’t seem serious he takes being the head of the Chen family so serious that he ended up resenting his Siren blood until he came to terms with it when he was an adult

Affiliation(s)/ Organization(s):

•Hogwarts (Slytherin)

•Frog Choir

•Hufflepuff tutor

•Magical Creature Reserve Volunteer

•Hospital Wing volunteer

•Head Girl/ Prefect

Occupation(s):

•Magical Creature/ Fantastic Beast disease researcher/ cure developer

Magical Characteristics

•Form of Boggart: Jacob dying a horrible death over and over again and blaming her

•Form of Patronus: Buffalo

•Form of Riddikulus: Jacob doing something reckless that ends up making her laugh because the absurdity of it

•What do they see in the mirror of Erised?: Being surrounded by creatures, her family (immediate and extended) prospering, and a life with her crush

**Check out @thecloveryone . I love how in-depth the wand analysis are and I can’t wait till I get mine done💚**

Wand(s):

•1st wand:

-Wood: Applewood

-Core: Vampire fang

-Length: 10 1/4 inches

-Flexibility: surprisingly swishy

Description: Applewood wand users have an unusual ability to converse with with other magical beings in their native tongue. Vampire Fang Core make wands exceptional potion stirring also good with Charms and divinations.

•2nd wand:

-Wood: Ebony

-Core:Siren hair

-Length: 11 3/4 inches

-Flexibility: surprisingly swishy

Description:Ebony wood Frequently non-conformist, highly individual or comfortable with the status of outsider. Siren hair are good with enchantment and binding.

Animagus: Crow

Amortentia:

•What She smells like to others: A storm by the ocean with a hint of smoke (from a campfire) and whatever lotion she used that day

•What She smell: Max Nightclaw ( @diddy00 I don’t know his scent so I just put his name lol)

Appearance

Height: 5’ 6”

Weight: 120 lbs

Complexion (skin tone/ conditions):

* pale skin

* shimmering when in water

* can get pretty dry so usually stays where it’s a bit damp or slathers on lotion/ body creme

Hair Color/ Style:

* white long wavy hair

* has the tips and root dyed blueish green

* usually kept up in a bun all through school with her wand

* Once grown had hair half down and half up in a ponytail

Eye Color:

•Gold

•Topaz glow whenever underwater

Hogwarts Information

Worst class(es):

* Flying: doesn’t like the way the broom feels when sitting on it and how demanding everyone is in Quidditch so she half assess the class

* Herbology: as a Siren she’s more connected with water than the land

Best class(es):

•Care Of Magical Creatures: Since she always had a great love for them of course she would put in the most effort into her favorite class

•Charms: She seems to have a knack for this class and finds these spells fun

Least favorite teacher(s):

* Rakepick: at first she liked her but as time passed she got on her nerves and then the end of 5th year happened...

Most favorite teacher(s):

* Flitwick: he gives good advice/ hears her out, also one of the few professors that didn’t judge her base on her family, brother, or rumors

Quidditch:

* Not a big fan of playing Quidditch but loves watching her brother play

* Fan of the professional team the Ballycastle Bats because of their cute mascot

* She makes an amazing Beater which is usually rare among witches

Favorite spell(s):

•transformation jinx :Tentaclifor

•Patronus

•Riddikulus

Trivia (random facts about them, future job, face claim, theme song, etc.):

* Home is on an island in the middle of the lake which is connected to a river that leads to sea

* Many water creatures lurk in the lake so they always warn guest not to get in... of course it’s fine for them

* The woods around their house leads to a mountain range which houses the Basilisk, in the deep caves, Jacob and Persephone Hatched by accident when they were children

* Because of an incident where Persephone ended up in a snake pit with a high fever she learned Parseltongue from the Basilisk they accidentally hatched

* Persephone is very good at speaking to creatures (mostly water creatures) in their natural tongue

* Her mother, brother and her are pretty dense when it comes to people flirting with them since they can’t tell if people are interested in them because of the Siren effect or actually interested in them

* The only 3 times Persephone has tried to drown someone using her voice was because they really irritated her... those people being Rita, Emily, and Umbridge

* Only became a Prefect because of their Bathroom

* Is admired/ idolized by all Hufflepuffs

* Favorite prank item is Fanged Frisbee

* Really good terms with Bloody Baron

* Has attempted to fight Whomping Willow

* Is a VIP member of Honeydukes

[coppicefics]

Masked Omens: Week Eight, Part One

[Image Description: Image 1 - A simple rendition of the Masked Singer UK logo, a golden mask with colourful fragments flying off of it. The mask has a golden halo and a golden devil tail protruding from either side. Below, gold text reads ‘Masked Omens’.

Image 2 - A page from the Celebrity section of the Capital Herald, dated 13th February 2021. Full image description and transcript below the cut. End ID.]

Read the fic here!

The Capital Herald - Saturday, 13th February 2021 Celebrity section, page 18

Top: “Informants come to me”: Carmine Zugiber on front-line successes Tips, troubles and truths about writing headlines abroad - and now making headlines at home When working in a war zone, most people wear camouflage and try to keep their heads down – but not Carmine Zugiber. The successful war correspondent is one of the most recognisable journalists in the world, and that's even more true after her recent unmasking on The Masked Singer UK. I sat down with her to discuss her work, her brand partnerships, her passions and her fears – if, indeed, she knows the meaning of the word 'fear'. “I don't, really,” she laughs, “people have said that about me ever since I was a little girl. My mother absolutely despaired – she always wanted me to be safe at home playing with my dollies, and there I was climbing trees and falling out of them. I was always in the middle of fights, even then. So I suppose it was only natural that I'd drift towards war reporting.” But not everybody encouraged Zugiber to follow her dreams. “When I told my tutor at uni that I wanted to work on that side of things, he tried pretty hard to steer me back towards something a little safer. The politics beat, or entertainment, or fashion. I've actually been covering politics for the last month or so, as a colleague is on leave, and I have to say, that can feel pretty cut-throat! But I knew I wanted to see the world and get right to the heart of the action, and I'd like to think I've achieved that.” Zugiber has certainly made her mark on the headlines, covering conflicts in countries including Eden and, more recently, Celestan. “I just think it's important to take as unbiased an approach as possible and really tell the stories that are coming out of – well, especially a situation like Celestan. It's a complicated sort of conflict, and you never know how things are going to pan out. And sometimes being a journalist can feel like having a target painted on your back.” And Zugiber's signature red hair must stand out somewhat – does that make her more of a target? “I make it work for me, honestly. Informants come to me of their own accord, which is handy when everybody else is frantically chasing leads! Having done my share of broadcast journalism, people all over the place recognise me and there's a sort of built-in trust. It's flattering, really, and it's just a matter of making sure that trust is justified.” Zugiber has long been an ambassador for the Vibrant brand of hair dye – leading some to question her objectivity as a reporter. “Yes, I've heard that, but unless Vibrant starts a war, I don't think it's an issue. Clearly my editors and the press watchdog agree, because I've had no complaints from on high. And it's a product I genuinely believe in and use all the time, so why not?” Zugiber's most recent departure from the newsroom was even less likely to conflict with her usual work. What drew her to The Masked Singer UK? “I was asked if I wanted to take part in the show at about the same time that a colleague announced that she'd be taking some leave around now, and my editor suggested that I might like to take over her post for a while to get a broader range of experience. It seemed like perfect serendipity. I didn't want to be bored, hanging around in London for months – I'm used to travelling a lot – and the show sounded like a lot of fun. I jumped at the chance to make people smile for a change. Unfortunately, as a war correspondent, that's not something I often get to do.” Zugiber admits that she had mixed feelings as she got on the plane back to the UK. “Oh, yeah, definitely, it was a hard decision. With the situation unfolding in Celestan, which is becoming more complex by the minute, a big part of me felt like I should stay and keep working on the story there. But funnily enough, that story has followed me right into the Politics section, and it's looking increasingly likely that some sort of diplomatic solution might be reached. And the break has been really good for me – I needed to remember how to lighten up and be silly, and The Masked Singer is definitely silly! So ultimately it was the right decision for me.” And now, with The Masked Singer UK behind her, what's next for Carmine Zugiber? “The Masked Singer was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. And the response from the audience has been overwhelmingly positive. I loved the secrecy, but it's a relief that the truth is out now! I'll be staying in the UK, covering for Uriel [Scrolle, News World Weekly's Political Correspondent], for a little bit longer, and then in a couple of months I should be back out on assignment. No rest for the wicked!” BOGDAN PIGTON [Image Description: A picture of Carmine Zugiber’s face, in her motorbike helmet, with part of the village of Tadfield visible in the background. End ID.] [Caption] ROCK AND ROLL: Carmine Zugiber, pictured here outside a Labour party campaign meeting in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, often uses her motorbike to keep up with subjects on the move. Her iconic scarlet look has led to her gathering something of a cult appeal among her viewers and readers. Photo: QuiteUnlikely.net

Centre left: ConStellation boots web star Wytchfynder host removed from astrology event Popular YouTuber Sergeant Shadwell was thrown out of the Greater Dyvyn Conference Centre last Sunday after trying to attend ConStellation. ConStellation has been the UK's largest convention for astrologers ever since its foundation in 1994. In 1999, the convention expanded to include practitioners of other divination techniques such as cartomancy (tarot card reading) and tasseomancy (tea leaf reading). The convention has been dogged by controversy throughout its history, with critics claiming that the 'con' of the name stands for more than 'convention'. Sergeant Shadwell, through his Wytchfynder channel, has long been committed to investigating the claims of fortune-tellers and paranormal practitioners such as those who attend ConStellation each year, and in several cases he has denounced claims of psychic ability as completely and demonstrably fraudulent. It is, then, perhaps not surprising that he is completely banned from ConStellation, which according to its website is 'intended as a safe and welcoming place for practitioners and interested parties to share their appreciation for, and knowledge of, the unknowable'. Sergeant Shadwell himself, however, does not seem to have been aware of the blanket ban. Witnesses to the scene on Sunday reported that the YouTuber could be heard arguing with security all the way to the doors of the building. When reached for comment, the organisers of ConStellation issued the following statement: 'A man was removed from the ConStellation event on Sunday morning after attendees expressed concern that he might be attempting to create an 'exposé’ on their work by manipulating footage of the convention. The man in question is known to the convention organisers, and a decision was made to ask him to leave. Calls for the man to be searched for recording devices were not enforced, and the man eventually departed with minimal fuss. The convention otherwise proceeded without incident.' Sergeant Shadwell was not available for comment, but a video on the Wytchfynder channel on Tuesday mentioned the incident in passing. 'All right, I just want to say thanks for all your comments, you don't need to be worrying about me. I did go to a convention this weekend, but not for anything to do with the channel, I was just planning to meet up with a friend. Well. We've been exchanging texts, I thought it might be nice to meet in person. And we did, after the convention, so. Not a total waste. Anyway, about this haunted castle-' Speculation is rife about the identity of Sergeant Shadwell's alleged friend, with some The Masked Singer UK fans pointing out that fellow The Masked Singer contestant Marjorie Potts - better known as TV's Madame Tracy - was one of the key speakers at Sunday's event. Shadwell is far from the first person to be escorted out of the Greater Dyvyn Conference Centre by security; earlier this year, three women were removed from a panel at DivaCon after starting a food fight. Several other attendees had their weekend passes revoked and were allowed to leave under their own power. But whether Sergeant Shadwell was there this weekend to meet a friend or conduct an investigation, it's probably best that he choose another venue; he's unlikely to be welcome at ConStellation any time soon. SCUZZ FISHER

Centre- and lower- right, advertisement: [Image description: A microphone on a stand, against an orange background. A pair of Union Jack printed Converse hi-top shoes cover the lower half of the image. The microphone/background image is credited to Jon Tyson on Unsplash, while the shoe image is credited to Nick Fewings on Unsplash. End ID.] The British Inquisition Book now www.brianthames.co.uk/british-inquisition Brian Thames “Nobody expected this!” [4 stars] The Capital Herald.

Bottom left: Masked Cat out of the bag? Did a Pam & Sam guest let the big secret slip? Did Rose Montgomery really just admit to being the contestant known as Black Cat in the current series of The Masked Singer UK? It seems almost impossible; surely a contestant would be more careful when taking part in a show like Pam & Sam AM. But people do make mistakes, and Pam & Sam does air live. Let's look at the evidence. Appearing on the show to advertise her upcoming show, Notes and Measures – which promises to be part cooking show, part mixology class, and part vineyard tour - the celebrity chef was asked if the rumours surrounding her participation in the competition had any truth to them. “Well, naturally, I can't tell you that,” Montgomery told her hosts with a knowing smile, “there are all sorts of NDAs involved.” I don't want to jump to conclusions, but several of the previous weeks' clues seem to have hinted at Montgomery's involvement. For example, in week five of the competition, Black Cat's clue package included “if they take note of my performance, they'll finally get the true measure of me” (emphasis mine) – while Montgomery's show Notes and Measures was still just a distant speck on the TV scheduling horizon. And in week six, Black Cat was shown on CCTV with a daisy – and Daisy, like Rose, is a popular flower name. Is Rose Montgomery Black Cat? We'll find out tonight. GRESHAM PENDER

[End of transcript]

[thesewomenrulemyworld]

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He tried to explain the gist of it, but it was way over my head.

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[draginhikari]

Final Fantasy XIV: Azure and Crimson - Section 1: Warrior of Light, Shadros Hiku - Chapter 1: The Shinobi Meeting

(Take place after the events of FFXIV Patch 2.4 - Dreams of Ice)

Shadros awoke with a start from his bed, the sudden movement making him dizzy causing him to stumble off the bed.  Instinctively his hands lifted to his neck as if he was unable to breathe for a moment but soon regained his composure. “What in the hell am I doing?” He groaned. Slowly pushing himself into a sitting position to avoid the disorienting sensation, he soon rose to his feet. “What kind of Warrior of Light gets this freaked out over a simple dream?   This is the fourth night in a row now.”   Shadros didn’t want to admit it but the repetitive dreams were starting to concern him. He moved to the sink to wash his face before his attention moved to the window of his Goblet Cottage. His eyes squinted against the glaring light of the desert’s sun that streamed through the cracks of the window blinds he peered through. Shadros turned to his blue painted Paladin gear sitting in the corner of the room.  Having completed repairs the night before, he began to put it on. 

He cycled through the dream again in his mind.   He was in a strange dark cavern with the only the faint blue glow of an unknown source that gave the cavern walls an eerie tint. He recalled being held down by a couple of larger men. Though he never turned his head enough to see them, he could clearly make out the elderly Elezen man in the red cloak in front of him wielding some kind of knife.  Without hesitation, the elderly man grabbed Shadros’ head by his hair and ran the blade across Shadros’ throat.  A pool of blood began to gather under his head as he began to bleed out.   The whole thing felt a bit too real for his liking. At first, he wanted to assume it was a manifestation of the Echo and was a vision of someone else he had encountered. However, the longer it went on the more he felt that was extremely unlikely.   The other element of the dream that bothered him was the young woman chained up not far from him. Dressed in rags, she looked like a Hyur or perhaps a Miqo’te because Shadros swore seeing a tail at some point. Something seemed off about it however, because it did not look furry, more like scales.  There was something disturbingly familiar about her outside of the few similarities she held to a Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te but it still didn’t entirely fit.

Shadros grumbles trying to calm his mind with some dry humor as he thought about a particular Keeper, “If I am dreaming about Una now then I’ve obviously taken one too many blows to the head.” He picked up his sword, Curtana, and slid it into its appropriate place at his side before doing the same with his shield settling it on his back. Shadros griped his Paladin Soul Crystal for a moment to resonate the armor with its power before heading out. His thoughts went back to the man in the red cloak from his dream as he made his way to the front door. There was no doubt in his mind that the cloak was definitely the garb of the Lambs of Dalamud.   Like many adventurers, Shadros has had his fair share of run-ins with the blood cult and the voidsent they call upon.  Though familiar with their worship of the former lesser moon of Dalamud, which fell during the Calamity, he knew little about them outside of that. He didn’t recognize the symbol the man wore on his clothes, a wasp encased in a strange hexagonal pattern.  A different sect of the order perhaps?  More importantly, why was he dreaming of them?  After all as dangerous as the order was to civilians they hardly stood ground against the Primals nor the Imperial Forces that Shadros had faced.   What possible reason could he have to fear them?   Shadros shook his head, he didn’t, there had to be something more to it.

Shadros slips out of the house locking the door behind him and raising his hand above his eyes to shade them until they adjusted to the sunlight before making his way towards the market board in the center of the Goblet. Distracted, he was not paying attention to what was going on in front of him and found himself colliding into someone. The heavier armored Shadros wasn’t going to fall over but his victim wasn’t so fortunate. “Ow, why don’t you watch where you’re going!?” A familiar feminine voice spat out. The voice only made Shadros groan, as he didn’t even have to look at her to recognize the Miqo’te, Una Rela.  Her gray skin was a pretty common feature among many Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te.  Una was one of the few people Shadros viewed as a friend while also being his main antagonist. Nearly all of their conversation involved bickering or flinging insults at each other. She turns her head some to look at Shadros with sharp blue eyes that matched her hair which was tied into a ponytail, her cat like ears twitching in irritation as she spoke. “Of course it would be you, only you could be so rude and absentminded.”

Shadros just grumbles at her, “Look short-stuff, I am in no mood for your antics today. Why don’t you find a bedpost to scratch or something?”

Una stood back up quickly glaring up at the taller midlander, “Maybe I should use you as a scratching post. Maybe then you’ll learn how to treat a lady.”

Shadros crossed his arms across his chest, “When I find a lady, I’ll let you know because I clearly don’t see one here, flea bag.” Shadros saw her tail twitch a clear sign that he had said something that was going to send her over the edge.

“You’re an awful ass you know that Shadros? Would it hurt you to try to be nice to someone once and awhile?! Maybe then you wouldn’t be such a lonely, arrogant prick! Warrior of Light, hah don’t make me laugh!” She hunched over in an offensive looking position, her hands bearing forward in an open position as if she were planning to claw his eyes out rather then punch him.  Even though she was technically an Archer and Bard by trade, she had no issue scratching up Shadros’ armor herself from time to time when he really ticked her off.

Shadros merely wave his hand dismissingly, “Why don’t you go play with ball of yarn or whatever it is that you do when you’re not being a pain in the ass.” He merely turned his back on the Miqo’te woman deciding he could check the market later.   Una huffed, standing straight back up. Thrusting her arms down to her side, her tail stood straight up behind her as she spoke, “Shadros, you jerk!  Get back here I’m not done with you!” Shadros just simply ignored Una and left her to fume instead making his way towards the exit of the Goblet.

Shadros grumbles to himself as he walks, “She’s such a pain in my side.  She’d be half way cute if she wasn’t always so obnoxious.” Shadros stopped at the Goblet entrance leading back into Ul’dah. In reality, it was that first day in Ul’dah where he met Una that was on his mind lately.  Regardless of their constant bickering he still felt the need to keep her close by.   After all she was the one who stuck by him since the day they met on the first day he arrived in Ul’dah.   Having only recently arrived in Ul’dah as a fresh adventurer Shadros interfered with a mugging attempt and found himself a little outclassed.   Una who already had a few years of adventuring under her belt joined up with Shadros and was easily able to fight off the bandits.   Before he knew it, Una had become a partner for him on various adventures during his journey. Even after he had begun to gather the crystals of light she had always been by his side wherever she could.   She being blessed with the Echo, like himself, she was even able to stand with him against the various primals that the Warrior of Light was required to face.  The two had grown quite close, though it was hard to see it through the way they tended to bicker, Una did put Shadros at ease. Shadros didn’t really know why. He just assumed having someone to argue with kept things interesting.  Though, he did find the Miqo’te of Eorzea, including Una, at least pleasing to look at if nothing else.

The first day he met Una was playing back in his mind for other reasons as well because he could not recall why he had come to Ul’dah in first place or for that matter anything that had happened prior to that point. Letting thoughts of the Miqo’te leave his mind for now, he focused back on his dream.  He had the symbol on the red cloak memorized at this point and he felt his screwed-up memory played a role in all this. If he was going to find an answer to these questions he had to find this mysterious order.  Of course, he had no idea where to begin looking into that.  However, thanks to an arrangement by Yugiri he had a meeting today with a freelance shinobi from Othard that could be beneficial for figuring that out.   If Shadros had learned anything from his previous encounters with the shinobi of the Far East, they were definitely good at finding information that no one else could find on their own. Yugiri recommended this shinobi since her comrades were occupied with other tasks for the Scions and Shadros really wanted to keep this issue out of the Scions’ attention for now.  Not that he didn’t trust his allies per say but this was a personal matter to him after all.

When Shadros thought about it, it was around the time Yugiri and the others from Doma appeared when the strange dreams began. At first it was rare, then it became more frequent. Now however, it was a nightly affair.  Something about Yugiri made Shadros uneasy but he didn’t know why.   After all, he spent most of days dealing with the beastmen tribes, the various races of Eorzea, and even the Garleans from the Empire. He had never had the type of discomfort around any of them that he had about her.   The strange thing is even with her mask on, Shadros already had an idea of what she looked like beneath though he’s never met anyone like her.

Shadros simply shook his head as he made his way into the Quicksand Adventurer’s Guild sitting down at a table merely awaiting the arrival of his guest.   Shadros let his gaze cross the busy pub. The Quicksand was a hub for adventurers from all over making it a good source of information if one were to listen.  However, today, other than some loud boasting from some drunkard about some wench he took his business with, there didn’t seem to anything else Shadros could make out of interest.

A raven-hair midlander woman in a merchant garb approaches him after a while, “Sir, could I interest you in some spices today.” Shadros glances at her. The woman appeared normal enough but something was clearly out of place about her.  Yugiri did not given him a description for the person that would be meeting him, so he simply replied with the response he was told to provide.

Shadros states, “I’ve heard spices from the east are good.”  The woman demeanor changed in an instant and she took the seat across from him glancing at him with an expression of amusement on her face.   Shadros was able to get a better look at her now. The woman had violet highlights in her black hair, hazel eyes, and what appeared to be some kind of beauty mark under her lip on the left side of her face.   She also had a small scar that went across the middle of her nose and make-up which made her cheeks look blushed at all times.   Something about this person already irritating him, most likely the way she was sneering at him.

“So, you are the Warrior of Light, huh?  My name is…”

Shadros interrupts, “Let’s keep it at that.   Since I have no idea what we are actually dealing with at this point, I rather not take any take any unnecessary chances at this point.  Besides you have not earned my trust yet”

The woman gave a sly smirk, “My, how paranoid.   As you wish, I much prefer it that way.  You can call me Aya for the time being.”

Shadros narrows his gaze slightly, “Very well then Aya.” Shadros shifts and crosses his arms looking at her, “Onto the business at hand, I’m looking for a certain sect of cultists within the Lambs of Dalamud.”

Aya gave a chuckle, “Why interested in their kind of crazy?  Is the noble Paladin looking for a villain to slay or have the Scions run out of primals for you to smack down?” Shadros did not response to her taunt. Aya gave a scowl before asking, “Well, what do you know about this group?” Shadros would slide a piece of paper across to her. When she opened the paper she would see an emblem that seemed similar to that of a wasp encased in some strange hexagonal pattern.

Shadros said, “This the emblem of the sect I am trying to locate and determine my own connection to that group.”

Aya cocks an eyebrow, “Your connection to that group? What would someone like you be doing associated with a group of Dalamuds and why do you need me to find it?”

Shadros simply states, “Because of I have no knowledge on the matter myself. Prior to arriving in Ul’dah I have no memory of the events themselves. I have no idea what my role was to them if I was one of them.” Shadros pauses a moment before saying, “Or if I was a victim of their activities.” Shadros crosses his arms, “Regardless of whatever role I played, I need to know the answer to those facts.”

Aya shrugs her shoulders slightly, “Very strange reasoning if you ask me.  What could you possibly have to gain from finding them now?”

Shadros plainly states, “I don’t need to explain that part to you.  Are you interested in the task or not?”

Aya smirks some, “I’ve never seen such a hard case like you in my life. You are quite interesting Warrior of Light” She chuckles some, “Very well, as long as I get paid properly you’ll get your information.”

Shadros says, “So be it…” Shadros would simply push a bag of gil towards Aya. Aya chuckled, swiping up the bag eagerly.   With a smirk, she placed a bottle of some kind of spice on the table in front of him before leaving. Shadros just grumbles slightly to himself. Picking up the bottle, he recognized the label as a medical herb used for certain ‘male issues’. “She’s mocking me, isn’t she?”  Of all of the Othardian shinobi he had encountered she was by far one of the oddest but if what he was told by Yugiri was true she would get the information, one way or another.  

Shadros stood up putting his hand on the Curtana’s hilt knowing there was still more work to do. All he could do is return to his activities until the time came when he would receive word back from the shinobi.  

Shadros let go of the Curtana as his link pearl from the Scions went off, “Duty calls.”   Shadros would put his hand to the link pearl and listens as he made his way out of the Quicksand.

Final Fantasy XIV: Azure and Crimson Complete

Section 1 - Chapter 2: Into the Nexus of Madness

[mercerislandbooks]

Two Great Books: A Blog Post in Search of a Theme

As regular readers know, I like to set a hook in these blog posts, to pretend I’m writing about important issues of the day when I’m really blathering about books I like. Today, though, no pretense—just blather and books. Good blather, hopefully, and a couple of great books.

The first is by Stephen Greenblatt, an author you may remember from his sensational 2011 study The Swerve. That book made ancient literature relevant to a wide audience and made an inspirational hero of an obscure 15th-century scholar, the nearly-forgotten man who rescued the last remaining copy of a classical Latin poem and thereby set the world on a path out of intellectual darkness and into the light of science and reason. Greenblatt hasn’t rested on the ample laurels (a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award) The Swerve earned him, having now produced another page-turner out of unlikely academic material.

In The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve he examines an even more foundational story, one familiar to billions millennia after it was first told, one that’s so well known its actual details may be hazy. Greenblatt takes the necessary first step of elucidating for his readers the unvarnished tale itself, but what’s most fascinating in Rise and Fall is the story of the story. Over the centuries Adam and Eve have been reimagined by the religious and the secular alike, everyone from Augustine to Michelangelo to Milton. For some interpreters, our universal parents were a cautionary example about the human relationship to God, nature, and the cosmos, while others looked to them for marital advice. The significance of their tragedy has always been and remains both literal and symbolic, and traced through time, their shifting story explains much about why our world is as it is and why individual people are as they are.

Which is by way of saying that Greenblatt can paint a mural as well as a cameo. He’s equally insightful about broad social currents and about unique personalities of the past, and his store of engaging examples and anecdotes seems endless. Six pages in, he’d already justified the cover price to me. The capper was his reference to early Koranic commentators (how many of us even know that Adam and Eve are in the Koran?) who saw the tempter in the garden not as a serpent but a glorious camel: “She had a multicolored tail, red, yellow, green, white, black, a mane of pearl, hair of topaz, eyes like the planets Venus and Jupiter, and an aroma like musk blended with ambergris.”

Greenblatt’s isn’t the only recent release that has me wanting to quote it at length. Solar Bones is a novel by Irish writer Mike McCormack that was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, but it first came to my attention a bit earlier when it won the Goldsmiths Prize, given each year “to celebrate the qualities of creative daring ... and to reward fiction that breaks the mold or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” I read the UK edition months ago and have been itching ever since to be able to share it with American readers.

The novel takes place over the course of a single day, as a middle-aged Irish engineer sits at his kitchen table and considers ... well, most everything. He’s focused on the mundane tasks he has to undertake, the errands, the paperwork, and the like, but he’s also thinking about how his wife has been under the weather of late and how his nearly-grown children are faring as they transition into adulthood, and what repairs are needed around the house, and how different his little town in the far west of a small island off the coast of Europe is from what it was like when he was young, and asking himself what those politicians on the news can possibly be thinking, and how is it all put together and by whom and for what, and is it all coming apart? It’s ordinary life told in an extraordinary way.

What I love most about Solar Bones is the way it makes connections—among people, objects, institutions, and ideas. What we say and do and think sends ripples into the world, and there’s no telling how far they’ll spread before they subside. This is as true of humble working people as it is of, say, great artists or master builders or corrupt legislators, and McCormack manifests sympathy for them all. He not only tells us how they fit together into a society, he demonstrates it in the way he carefully constructs his novel. Each simple scene interlocks perfectly with the next, and seemingly insignificant details in one create unexpected resonances in another long after they’re first revealed.

Midway through the book I read a line so good that I put it into a text message to a friend. Looking at it isolated on my phone screen, though, I realized that context had made it so powerful. My friend didn’t know about the narrator’s memories of his father dismantling an oil-burning tractor engine, and hadn’t seen the broken-down wind turbine trucked out of the village, and hadn’t overheard the radio talk show listener call into the station with a plaintive question that struck the host silent. But I had, and I couldn’t stop thinking about all that as I re-read the sentence. So I deleted the text and sent the whole book with a note that said, “Here, I want you to read this.”

Solar Bones: here, I want you to read this. --James

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/can-you-murder-a-robot/

Can you murder a robot?

Image copyright Ryserson University

Image caption The road can be a lonely place when you are a little robot

Back in 2015, a hitchhiker was murdered on the streets of Philadelphia.

It was no ordinary crime. The hitchhiker in question was a little robot called Hitchbot. The “death” raised an interesting question about human-robot relationship – not so much whether we can trust robots but whether the robots can trust us.

The answer, it seems, was no.

Hitchbot has now been rebuilt, at Ryerson University, in Toronto, where it was conceived.

Its story is perhaps the ultimate tale of robot destruction, made all the more poignant by the fact that it was designed to be childlike and entirely non-threatening.

With pool noodles for arms and legs, a transparent cake container for a head, a white bucket as a body, and resting on a child’s car seat to allow anyone picking it up to be able to transport it safely, it was cartoon-like. If a child designed a robot, it would probably look like Hitchbot.

The team deliberately made it on the cheap – describing its look as “yard-sale chic”. They were aware that it may come to harm.

In order to qualify as a robot, it had to have some basic electronics – including a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to track its journey, movements in its arms, and software to allow it to communicate when asked questions. It could also smile and wink.

And, of course, it could move its thumb into a hitch position.

“It was extremely important that people would trust it and want to help it out which is why we made it the size of a child,” said Dr Frauke Zeller, who led the team with her husband, Prof David Smith.

The adventure started well, with Hitchbot being picked up by an elderly couple and taken on a camping trip in Halifax, Nova Scotia, followed by a sightseeing tour with a group of young men. Next, it was a guest of honour at a First Nation powwow, where it was given a name that translates to “Iron Woman”, assigning it a gender.

The robot picked up thousands of fans along the way, many travelling miles to be the next person to give it a lift.

Sometimes, the robot’s GPS location had to be disabled so that those who took it home wouldn’t be mobbed outside their houses.

Image copyright Hitchbot

Image caption Hitchbot was given a First Nation name, which translates to Iron Woman, assigning it a gender for the first time

The robot certainly appealed and the team behind it were swamped with international press enquiries from the outset.

Hitchbot was given its own social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and became an instant hit, gaining thousands of followers.

“People began to decorate Hitchbot with bracelets and other jewellery. This little robot with its simple design triggered so much creativity in people. And that was one of the biggest takeaways of the experiment, that we should stop telling people what to do with technology,” Dr Zeller said.

But Hitchbot’s adventure was about to come to an abrupt end.

“One day we received images of Hitchbot lying in the street with its arms and legs ripped off and its head missing,” Dr Zeller said.

“It effected thousands of people worldwide. Hitchbot had become an important symbol of trust. It was very sad and it hit us and the whole team more than I would have expected.”

Image caption The reborn Hitchbot shares a biscuit

Now, the team have rebuilt Hitchbot, even though its head was never found. They missed having it around and had been inundated with requests for Hitchbot 2.0, although they have no plans for another road trip.

BBC News joined Prof Smith and Dr Zeller to take Hitchbot 2.0 on one of its first outings, to the safety of a cafe next to the university. The robot was instantly recognised by passers-by, many of whom stopped to chat and take a Hitchbot selfie. All of them seemed overjoyed to see the robot back in one piece.

The Ryerson team is also working with Softbank’s Pepper, an archetypal big-eyed childlike robot, on another test of the trust relationship with humans. Pepper will be used to talk with patients about cancer care. The theory is that patients will communicate more openly with Pepper than they would to a human carer.

Beating up bots

Image copyright Innvo Labs

Image caption Could you harm a dinosaur robot?

Hitchbot is not the first robot to meet a violent end.

Prof Kate Darling, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), encouraged people to hit dinosaur robots with a mallet, in an experiment designed to test just how nasty we could be to a machine.

Most people struggled to hurt the bots, found Prof Darling.

“There was a correlation between how empathetic people were and how long it took to persuade them to hit a robot,” she told BBC News, at her lab in Boston.

“What does it say about you as a person if you are willing to be cruel to a robot. Is it morally disturbing to beat up something that reacts in a very lifelike way?” she asked.

The reaction of most people was to protect and care for the robots.

“One woman was so distressed that she removed the robot’s batteries so that it couldn’t feel pain,” Prof Darling said.

Prof Rosalind Picaurd, who heads up the Affective Computing Lab, also based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks it comes down to human nature.

Image copyright Ryerson University

Image caption Perhaps the most revealing image of Hitchbot’s travels was this one, where its temporary “owner” decided it would need dinner and assumed batteries would be a good robot treat. The dog is not so sure

“We are made for relationships, even us engineers, and that is such a powerful thing that we fit machines into that,” she said.

But while it is important that robots understand human emotions because it will be their job to serve us, it might not be a good idea to anthropomorphise the machines.

“We are at a pivotal point where we can choose as a society that we are not going to mislead people into thinking these machines are more human than they are,” Prof Picaurd told BBC News, at her lab.

“We know that these machines are nowhere near the capabilities of humans. They can fake it for the moment of an interview and they can look lifelike and say the right thing in particular situations.”

“A robot can be shown a picture of a face that is smiling but it doesn’t know what it feels like to be happy.

“It can be given examples of situations that make people smile but it doesn’t understand that it might be a smile of pain.”

Image copyright MIT

Image caption Prof Picaurd admits even engineers become attached to the machines they work with

But Prof Picaurd admitted it was hard not to develop feelings for the machines we surrounded ourselves with and confessed that even she had fallen into that trap, treating her first car “as if it had a personality”.

“I blinked back a tear when I sold it, which was ridiculous,” she said.

At her lab, engineers design robots that can help humans but do not necessarily look human.

One project is looking at robots that could work in hospitals as a companion to children when their parents or a nurse is not available. And they are working on a robot that will be able to teach children but also show them how to cope with not knowing things.

We may have to limit our emotional response to robots but it is important that the robots understand ours, according to Prof Picaurd.

“If the robot does something that annoys you, then the machine should see that you are irritated and – like your dog – do the equivalent of putting down its tail, put its ears back and look like it made a mistake,” she said.

Killer robots

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption War robots are unlikely to be actual robots and instead will look like conventional weapons but with autonomy

Roboticist Prof Noel Sharkey also thinks that we need to get over our obsession with treating machines as if they were human.

“People perceive robots as something between an animate and an inanimate object and it has to do with our in-built anthropomorphism,” he told BBC News.

“If objects move in a certain way, we think that they are thinking.

“What I try and do is stop people using these dumb analogies and human words for everything.

“It is about time we developed our own scientific language.”

To prove his point, at one conference he attended recently he picked up an extremely cute robotic seal, designed for elderly care, and started banging its head against a table.

“People were calling me a monster,” he said.

Actually, Prof Sharkey is much more of a pacifist – and leads the campaign to ban killer robots, something he thinks is a far more pressing ethical issue in modern-day robotics.

“These are not human-looking robots,” he said.

“I’m not talking about Terminators with a machine gun.

“These weapons look like conventional weapons but are designed so that the machine selects its own target, which to me is against human dignity.”

Prof Sharkey listed some of the current projects he thought were crossing the line into unethical territory:

Harpy – an Israeli weapons system designed to attack radar signals, with a high-explosive warhead. If the signal is not Israeli, then it dive-bombs

an autonomous super-tank, being developed by the Russian army

an autonomous gun designed by Kalashnikov

And he has been working at the UN for the past five years to get a new international treaty signed that either bans the use of them or states that they can never be used without “meaningful human control” – 26 nations are currently signed up, including China.

Listen to more on this story: Can you murder a robot? The Documentary, BBC World Service, airing 17 March

[digitalmark18-blog]

10+ Tools You Can Use for SEO Competitive Analysis by @alextachalova

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/10-tools-you-can-use-for-seo-competitive-analysis-by-alextachalova/

10+ Tools You Can Use for SEO Competitive Analysis by @alextachalova

Do you know what your SEO competitors are doing, how they rank in Google, and how much traffic they get?

Knowing this information can be the difference between future SEO success or failure.

That’s why a competitive analysis is an essential step when developing your SEO strategy.

This chapter will explore some SEO competitive analysis tools that can help you answer all (or most) of your questions and provide you with the most accurate data about your client’s current competitive landscape.

SERP Analysis

This section will cover tools that can show you what’s going on in Google SERPs for any domain you want to analyze.

Please note that there may be some data discrepancies.

The tools listed below work by scraping Google search results and the dataset accuracy mostly depends on the number of keywords that each of these tools has in its database.

The reason why the number of keywords matters so much is pretty simple. The more keywords a software has, the better it can show your competitor’s current ranking positions and their estimated traffic.

Also, we can’t ignore the logic behind peeking under competitor’s hood.

The process is based on matching the keywords for which several domains are ranking: if datasets overlap, chances are these sites are competitors.

However, when we try to analyze relatively small sites (i.e., that have less than 1,000 keywords), we come across an issue.

For instance, some of these tools can show that a domain’s competitors are YouTube or Wikipedia even though the real competitors are lurking.

1. Searchmetrics

This tool was founded in 2005 by Marcus Tober and was primarily focused on competitive analysis. After a couple of years, Searchmetrics began shifting its focus more toward the enterprise market.

As content marketing influence kept growing, Searchmetrics concentrated on content marketing performance rather than SEO.

However, the Searchmetrics Suite will still tell you about a site’s position in search, how well a certain domain is ranking in Google, and for what kind of keywords it is ranking for.

As mentioned earlier, some tools can incorrectly identify your competitors.

Searchmetrics, in particular, has an algorithm that is based on matching sets of keywords without considering any additional metrics.

On the screenshot below you can see that Searchmetrics shows that the competitive landscape of Search Engine Journal consists of Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia:

However, let’s not jump to conclusions here.

If we let this minor flaw slide, I can say that Searchmetrics has a nice array of handy organic rankings reports that automatically filters out long-tail keywords by displaying them in a separate tab:

2. SpyFu

Just like Searchmetrics, SpyFu has been around for a while and specializes in providing SEO competitive landscape data.

If you’re trying to identify your most aggressive competitors, SpyFu can also give you a list of competitor names for the domain you’re analyzing.

Here’s a screenshot that shows rivals of the same domain I analyzed using Searchmetrics. Obviously, SpyFu is much more accurate:

The SEO Overview dashboard is another great feature.

It gives you a comprehensive overview of a domain’s performance such as the distribution of its position on the first page of search results and some other details:

3. iSpionage

It seems like most tools visualize their data alike.

However, iSpionage supports more search engines including Bing and Yahoo, and covers Google databases like Australia and Canada.

Unlike SpyFu, the list of top organic competitors in iSpionage doesn’t look so well organized.

However, it’s one step ahead of Searchmetrics by displaying fine-tuned results:

4. SEMrush

If you go to G2Crowd, you’ll find that SEMrush is the leading SEO software for small and mid-sized businesses.

SEMrush supports an extensive database of 131 countries (e.g., Google databases).

I ran the same analysis to identify organic competitors for Search Engine Journal, and the results are quite impressive:

Another cool feature is that SEMrush’s dashboard displays proportion of branded to non-branded traffic, the number of search queries, and the amount of traffic branded search brings along with how its been trending over time:

SEMrush also shows you what category (or categories) does a domain belong to based on the keywords for which it ranks in Google.

Knowing this will help you locate successful keywords your competitors are using to rank well in Google, and whether those keywords are relevant to your niche.

5. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is well-known for its outstanding quality of backlink data and being among the best link tools on the market.

Not so long ago Ahrefs has implemented a set of reports for competitor analysis that shows you a list of competitors based on the number of related keywords:

Speaking of data accuracy, Ahrefs won’t detect your competitors with precision because Ahrefs doesn’t count in such metrics as the size of a domain or the type of industry a domain belongs to.

To organize their data and put things in order, Ahrefs has excluded big domains like Quora, Google, and Apple from their results. This will really improve the overview of the landscape they’re building.

If you feel like there is some inconsistency with your keyword strategy, use Content Gap report. This report allows you to spot the keywords your rivals are visible for but your domain isn’t:

This gives you an opportunity to seize the moment and improve your rankings. Taking advantage of this information can help you move forward with your SEO strategy.

Note: Be sure to read Kevin Rowe‘s chapter, 12 Great Link Building Tools That Are Essential to Your Success, to learn how you can take advantage of analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles.

6. SERPstat

SERPstat is new to the market and seems to mirror features other SEO software tools have.

The quality of its data is comparable to SEMrush and SpyFu:

The main dashboard gives you an overview of the most visible pages, which is extremely useful.

It will save your time and help you avoid the endless process of exporting organic rankings data and building pivot tables in Excel:

7. BrightEdge

BrightEdge is an enterprise-level platform that offers many great features for keeping an eye on competitors.

For instance, BrightEdge’s SEO X-Ray technology consolidates myriads of keywords in a “Reverse Index” of the web. It reveals which keywords are moving your competitors on top of SERPs – and that you should be taking advantage of as well.

SEO X-Ray follows the trail of your organic search history and identifies previously unknown competitors so that you can stay alert.

It also lets you analyze your competitors’ SEO campaigns in great detail, along with their recent link strategies, or find which of their single pages drive the most organic traffic.

8. Conductor

Conductor is another enterprise-level tool you can look into if you need more options.

Their source of keyword data comes from SEMrush.

Conductor allows you to view the market share that belongs to a certain brand you’re analyzing by pointing out both its current situation, and estimates its future potential growth.

This kind of data can help your clients comprehend their future SEO prospects, and gives reasons why hiring an agency is their best bet.

Traffic Analytics

Analyzing the SERPs helps you to understand your competitive landscape and gives you a list of pages that are ranking well in search engines.

But the fact that some sites may be showing up on the first page of search results doesn’t necessarily mean they’re getting a lot of traffic.

What’s more important is getting access to real user behavior that can reveal hidden SEO opportunities.

That’s why you can’t survive without tools that can give you traffic analytics insights.

9. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb helps you learn exactly how a site attracts traffic.

This tool shows you traffic distribution across all channels (Search, Social, Direct, etc.) and also displays the percentage of search traffic that comes from various search engines.

The option of looking up the keywords that bring the most visitors from search engine results is at your disposal.

With the help of this data, you can tell for certain which keywords should be your priority because they have the potential to bring more traffic to your client’s site.

SimilarWeb also shows you the list of competitors based on what kind of sites are ranking in search engines for the same set of keywords:

10. SEMrush Traffic Analytics

SEMrush has some traffic analytics data, but there’s still some work that needs to be done to improve its functionality.

SEMrush offers information about traffic distribution across various search engines but unfortunately provides no keyword data.

SEMrush Traffic Analytics doesn’t have any data for mobile devices, so for some industries where the volume of online traffic is always high, this data may not be so valuable.

11. Alexa

Historically, the biggest complaint against Amazon-owned Alexa has been its inaccurate data.

Originally, Alexa’s traffic data was gathered from users of the Alexa toolbar.

That all changed in 2008 when Alexa updated its ranking systems to include more sources. However, it’s really hard to say how much the data has changed, for the better or worse, since that time.

Regardless, Alexa is still a popular service that boasts a lot of (paid) competitive analysis reports that can give you a good representation of demographics and traffic data.

12. Quantcast

Quantcast used to have a product comparable with SimilarWeb, but about a year ago they’ve decided to get rid of their standard solution and switched to custom-made reports that represent unique datasets based on clients’ needs.

This tool can be a good fit for enterprise-level clients who want to see custom-based datasets to further interpret what’s going on in their industry.

13. Jumpshot

Jumpshot is a promising and overall consistent tool that launched only a couple of years ago.

Its data comes from Avast – and the data quality is high.

Jumpshot can also shed some light on such intricate data like CTR of a specific button located on your rivals landing page. Not bad for competitive intelligence.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you can now make an informed decision as you’re selecting your competitive analysis tool.

There are many great tools available – but ultimately it’s about choosing the tool that is right for you.

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, February 2018

Source: http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/10326850

[livefreeshop]

Over a year ago, I started a 5 part blog series on how to bootstrap a software company.  After a long break, I am finally releasing part IV of the series!

Here are previous parts:

Part I: How to Start a Successful Software Business

Part II: How to Hire a Great Software Developer

Part III: How to Launch on the Cheap Using Email, Active Communities, and JV Partners

Something interesting has also happened since my last update in this series…I sold my software company!  Now, this doesn’t mean I’m an expert in everything, but it is nice to see that the strategies I’m sharing in this series really do work.

I was able to exit Long Tail Pro, my bootstrapped software company, for over 7 figures.  Below you will find some of the content marketing strategies that I used to grow that business and how you can implement some of these ideas into your own company.

Why Content is the Ideal Marketing Strategy for Bootstrappers

For startups, the problem is not whether you can get traffic to your sales-page.  You can always pay for as much traffic as you want.  The problem is whether or not spending large amounts of money is a good idea to grow a profitable business.

Many startups (particularly those funded by VCs or other outside sources) are often more concerned with capturing market share and growth, as opposed to whether the business is making money today.

As a solopreneur or bootstrapped company, you have to take a more conservative approach.  If you break the bank, it’s your account…not someone elses.

So, one of the ideal ways to get traffic and sales for your new business is content marketing, as opposed to spending lots of money on advertisements.

ContentMarketingInstitute.com shared some interesting stats on how effective content marketing can be.  Here’s just a couple of points that they made and I completely agree with:

While content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, it generates more than three times as many leads

Content marketing drives higher conversion rates. (Nearly 6 times higher)

So, the bottom line is this – content marketing costs less, generates more leads, and drives higher conversion rates (sales), when compared to paid advertising.

For bootstrapped companies, I feel like it’s a no-brainer and it’s exactly what I used to grow Long Tail Pro.

What Type of Content Marketing Works Well for Software Companies?

Effective content marketing can be accomplished in many more ways than just blog posts and infographics.  In fact, a list of 105 types of content ideas was provided by Convinceandconvert.com right here.

Their list of content ideas includes things like:

Emails

White Papers

Videos

Pictures

Micro Sites

Polls

Mobile Apps

Plugins

Contests

Podcasts

and a bunch more…

Quick frankly, there are SO many different ways or ideas that you can tackle content marketing, that it can become overwhelming.  I don’t have the magic answer for what will work best for your software business.  So, it’s critical that you do your own analysis to determine what avenue you should take.

However, I will share the ideas that worked best for me to grow Long Tail Pro.

Consistent Blogging

I started NichePursuits.com back in 2010.  Much of what I have blogged about over the years has been sharing my results from building niche websites. I would share my failures and successes as I discovered what was working with keyword research and SEO.

These very real blog posts help me build a core audience of people also building niche websites.  So, when I would mention that I use Long Tail Pro for keyword research in my blog posts, it was very natural and real.

This consistent blogging did 4 big things for me:

It allowed me to build trust with my audience

It allowed me to mention Long Tail Pro is lots of blog posts without sounding “salesy”.

It helped me get more traffic to my site.

It gave me a platform I could point to as I reached out to influencers and connected with them.  (Many of which I now consider good friends).

The benefits of blogging have been discussed over and over again.

I like this strategy so much, that I really had 2 blogs generating traffic.  First, was my blog here on NichePursuits.com.  Second, I also started a blog on LongTailPro.com to drive additional traffic.

The result was lots of free traffic from Google to both of my blogs consistently generating both leads and sales.  The only cost was my own time to write the blog posts.  (And later in the business, I had an employee (Jake) doing the blogging on LongTailPro.com).

Case Studies

Case studies are really just a series of blog posts, but they can be very powerful.  I’ve conducted MANY smaller case studies where I share what is working in my business.

However, for generating sales, nothing was more powerful that Niche Site Projects 1, 2, and 3.  These projects took a reader along the journey of building a niche site from scratch and fully sharing the income and results over a series of months.

This engaged readers to an extremely high level.  A private FB group started at the beginning of the 3rd project now has nearly 15,000 members.

These case studies ignited blog posts on other sites, forum discussions, YouTube videos, Reddit mentions, and much more all without my direct involvement.  So, not only did the case study provide great ongoing content for my own blog, it also excited readers enough to share and discuss off of my blog.

This of course sent even more traffic and links to my blog…which every so often would mention Long Tail Pro.

The key to doing a case study though is to make sure it is sincere.  I didn’t do these case studies just so I could sell Long Tail Pro.  I would have done these case studies even if I didn’t own the software product.  I genuinely cared about building niche websites and enjoyed it (still do!).

So, sharing my results was very natural for me and my audience.

Podcasts

As much as I hate podcasting, I can’t deny that it still is one of the number one things that people mention whenever I meet them in person.  “Hey, I love your podcast!”  or “Hey, I discovered you on the Smart Passive Income Podcast!”

There is no easy way to track conversions or sales from a podcast.  Unlike blog posts, where I know exactly where people came from and what links they clicked, a podcast listener might not take any action for several days.

However, I’ve come to grips with the fact that someone that sits for an hour and listens to one or multiple episodes of the Niche Pursuits Podcast is likely to trust me more than someone who doesn’t.

Podcasting is a different platform than blogging and attracts different people.  So, if you are not podcasting or being a guest on podcast, you are likely missing a portion of your audience that perhaps doesn’t like to read blog posts.

Again, I have no idea how many leads the Niche Pursuit Podcast has generated or sales of Long Tail Pro it brought in.  I also don’t know how much being a guest on other podcasts helped.  However, I know it helped, because I DO still hear from people that found me through guest podcasts.

I was on the Smart Passive Income Podcast a few years ago, and people still come out of the woodwork saying they discovered me there.

I was on the EOFire.com podcast.  I’ve been on Chris Guthrie’s 2 shows: Up Fuel and Seller Cast.

I didn’t mean to, but I even had Cliff Ravenscraft mostly rant about me for nearly 2 hours on his podcast without me even being a guest.  He really didn’t like that I said people should NOT start a podcast.

I’ve been on several other podcasts as well.

I certainly didn’t try as hard as I could have to get on other podcasts, but if you are boostrapping a software company, I definitely think you could be missing a big opportunity if this is not part of your content strategy.

Email

Email has always been one of the most direct ways that I’ve used to drive traffic to sales pages and to build trust with my audience.  However, you need to walk a fine line between emailing your list too much and building trust.

Here’s the few different ways that you should be using emails as part of your content marketing strategies:

Auto-responder series to educate your audience and then eventually sell your product.

Email blasts to announce recent blog posts (education) or special offers (sales).

Have others email for you.

The last one of getting other influencers to email their list for you is a huge one. The ability to ask someone to email their list for you can come through paying an affiliate commission and building a good working relationship.

Since I was able to build a relationships with lots of people throughout the years through blogging and podcasting, I was more likely to get a mention on someone’s email blast.  This can work great when you do a discounted offer for a short period of time.

This gives people with large email lists a good reason to shoot an email out.  As I’ve documented in the past, a short term special offer can have huge results.

Content Lives Forever

One of the great things about content is that is often lasts forever.  Unlike an advertisement that you create and pay for each click, your content might generate “free” clicks for years.  I still have lots of blog posts that I wrote years ago that continue to send traffic to Long Tail Pro…even though I sold the company.

The amount of money I’ve saved by consistent blogging, case studies, podcasts, and email is a tremendous amount.  A single click on an advertisement in Google Adwords for related terms is often over $2.

Between referral traffic and natural traffic, there are often multiple thousands of visitors a day coming to LongTailPro.com…most of it thanks to the content marketing efforts I’ve put in over the years.

So, rather than spending thousands of dollars a day on ads to get traffic to your site, you should really consider the long term benefits of content marketing.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts!  If you have anything to add to the discussion, please leave a comment below.

The post Content Marketing for Software Businesses: Bootstrap Series Part IV appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

from Niche Pursuits http://bit.ly/2mci79l