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worth-more-than-two-thousand · 3 years ago

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Returning from the Dead is Easier Said than Done...

Request: Welcome, Shiny! May I request an x Reader (can be fem or gender neutral) where Echo (post-citadel) comes up to their s/o's doorstep to give them flowers and ask them on a date? A plus if the Bad Batch teases him for dressing up nicely and buying flowers. Thank you! (@handmaidenthesimp)

Author’s Note: Enjoy! If anybody wants me to repost with a gender-neutral reader, just let me know.

Story Notes: Some swearing, not much else to warn you about. Take place in-between Season 7 of CW and The Bad Batch. No Omega this time, sorry!

🖑 🖑 🖑 🖑 🖑

Being declared dead was uncomplicated. Your Republic file was branded with a "KIA" stamp, everyone stoically mourned, and someone just a bit shinier would step in to fill your shoes.

Being declared undead, however, was decidedly more complicated. Oh, Echo was reassigned to Clone Force 99 easily enough. But it was the little things that seemed to get mired in red tape. Getting his few personal effects back. Re-opening his modest credit account.

Approving a rental application.

Admittedly, it wasn't that Echo really needed his own place; clones were conditioned to be accustomed to share minimalist, often-cramped quarters. And they were always on the move, so it hardly made any financial or practical sense, in the long run.

But right now, oh, did Echo dearly wish that he was dressing up in the privacy of his own space...and not the shared cabin area of the Havoc Marauder.

He kept his face stoic, as though readying for battle, refusing to acknowledge his teammates goggling in the background. They had returned early from their supply run. Echo had meant to be out of here an hour ago, but (somehow) hadn’t counted on just how difficult it would be to get dressed into multiple clothing pieces with a scomp link for a hand.

So that’s how his comrades found him: trying to wrangle a neck accessory into submission by sheer will.

Oh, if Fives could see him now.

“You look funny,” Wrecker had declared decisively after an unbearably long silence. “What’s that thing you’ve got on?”

“It’s a suit,” he grumbled, refusing to look any of them in the eye. “I’m going to see Y/N.”

Wrecker gasped like a fishwife. He leaned forward, and pitched his voice low. As though the others couldn’t still hear him in the tinny space. “Your girlfriend? You mean you’re going to see her for the first time....since…” Wrecker made a muted cartoonish sound with his mouth, clenching then expanding his fingers in a gesture for ‘explosion’.

Echo stared at him for a moment disbelievingly, before nodding slowly, forcing the sarcastic response he really wanted to say back down. He couldn’t fault Wrecker for being...well, Wrecker. He had all the tact of a rampaging bantha.

“An’ what’s that? Around your neck?”

Echo opened his mouth, but someone cut across his response. “A bowtie,” Crosshair drolled, though his eyes glittered with amusement. Echo tensed, knowing that he wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

“Fifty credits says he chokes, and he ends up strangling himself with it in shame."

“No way!” Wrecker exclaimed, always the optimist. He clapped Echo on the back, who was unprepared so his knees buckled. He felt his metal joints strain. “Don’t worry, Echo,” his brother rasped in the loudest whisper known to man. “I bet she’s gonna love it!”

“You know,” Tech piped up unhelpfully, “Your strategy may backfire. The current deviation from your usual appearance may be so jarring for your beloved that she refuses your offer out of simple self-preservation instincts.”

Echo gritted his teeth. “Right. You have stats to back that up, I suppose?”

Tech blinked at him owlishly. “Of course I don’t. This is an obvious possible outcome.”

“I’m trying to look nice,” he snapped, scowling.

There was a loaded pause. “...’trying’ being the objective word here,” Crosshair smirked.

Before Echo could wipe the look off his comrade’s face with a well-placed ARC trooper punch that would’ve made Hardcase proud, Hunter wedged his way in between them, hands up in a conciliatory gesture.

“All right, laugh it up, fellas. Personally, I think you’re all jealous because you don’t have a girl waiting for you like Echo does.” Hunter turned to face their newest member, took the bowtie that was clenched in Echo’s fist, and smoothed it out before proceeding to tie it around his neck with surprisingly deft hands.

Crosshair ‘hmphed’ while Wrecker verbally agreed, looking slightly put out by the undeniable truth. Tech simply nodded in neutral confirmation. The group lapsed into a somewhat awkward (but not unwelcome) silence as Hunter finished tugging at the folded ends of the bow, then double-checking to ensure it was straight. He stepped back to assess his work.

“You look good,” he said sincerely.

Echo thought he was in the clear.

Hunter frowned. “But...it looks like you’re missing something.”

Or not.

“Like dignity?” Crosshair drawled from a dark corner of the ship that Echo frustratingly couldn’t glare at.

“A sense of self-confidence,” Tech suggested. He wasn’t joking.

“FLOWERS!” Wrecker boomed confidently. “All girls like flowers. You gotta get her some before you see her!”

“I...fine.” Echo relented, anything to get his teammates to shut up. He shoved his way through them towards the bridge. “I’ll get her some flowers. You all stay here until I get back. I mean it, Fives!” he warned.

An uneasy silence followed him, which he didn’t register until he reached the landing ramp.

He shot an exasperated look back at them. “What?’

“...Your former comrade is not here, Echo.” Tech finally spoke. His words were clinical, as always, but there was a touch of understanding underlying his tone.

Echo froze, just for a moment, then shook off the shock of his faux pas as best as he could.

It wasn’t the first time that had happened, after all.

Echo descended the landing ramp, squared his shoulders, and marched into town.

Y/N lived in a run-down but culturally distinct district of Coruscant, characterized by food stalls from species and ethnicities all over the galaxy. Children often ran through the streets, sellers in colorful robes and attire shouting their wares and art for all to peruse. It was one of the nicer markets, he thought, having come here once. He had been accompanying Y/N on her usual run for specialized ingredients that made the diner she worked at the talk of the galaxy.

Echo elbowed his way through the crowded street, content to simply blend in with the crowd, to forget about being a soldier for a moment.

He paused at a flower stand and was mindful not to draw too much attention to his scomp-link hand as he ordered a dozen sunflowers, which he remembered were Y/N’s favorite. When his credit chip was declined, however, he sighed and reached into his pocket to see what spare change he could muster up. Being that he was wearing a never-worn suit, however, meant that there was no change to be found, and the unimpressed florist snatched the bouquet away.

That’s okay, Echo. Y/N doesn't need flowers. She just wants to see you.

At least, he hoped that was the case. He hadn’t exactly written to her yet, unsure that he could sufficiently explain his sudden non-death in typed words...

Surprise! I’m not dead! Hey, you know that explosion on the citadel? Well, I survived! And out of it, I got an all-expenses paid trip to the Techno Union research facility! Why didn’t I write? Well, I was in stasis most of the time and that part’s a bit fuzzy. I also was responsible for killing my brothers by using their own battle plans against them. Oh, and you might notice that I’m missing most of my fleshy bits these days…

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, which were more rapid these days thanks to his enhancements. He was good at compartmentalizing, though. He had to be. He was still a soldier, through and through, and no one wanted a soldier who was about two seconds away from a mental breakdown.

Yeah, a letter to Y/N wouldn’t have cut it. But he still felt like maybe he could have sent ahead some sort of...heads up? A warning? A ‘Please don’t scream when you see me because I don’t think my heart could take it?’

His feet finally guided him to the front entrance of the building where he knew she lived on the 14th floor. Glancing around, he spotted some blue flowers sprouting in a planter near the entrance. He yanked a fairly healthy-looking handful from the soil, shaking the roots to get most of the dirt off. He tucked the strangled roots into his fist so that they would be less obvious.

It was time. He nodded to himself, squared his shoulders, and entered the building.

A short elevator ride later, Echo could feed the sweat beading at his forehead and neck. At least his fight or flight response seemed to be healthy and alive, and Echo tuned out everything but the door in front of him, adorned with a purple wreath of lavender flowers.

He stood in front of the door, and raised his hand to knock.

He stood…

In front of the door…

...and raised his hand…

...to knock, you coward. Just fucking knock.

His raised knuckles, however, refused to move. Echo caught a glimpse of himself in the curtained window panes on the sides of the door, and at the sight of his bloodless face, suddenly felt a whole lot less sure of himself.

He looked ridiculous.

He and Y/N had barely gotten to know each other before his untimely death.

What if she was with someone new?

This was a terrible idea. Echo should leave now, before he caused himself any more embarrassment. Crosshair might get his fifty credits, after all.

Echo had just convinced himself to turn around and admit defeat, when the door suddenly swung open.

Two Y/C/E eyes met his.

There were points during Echo’s battle career where time slowed to a crawl. When an explosive grenade was thrown just a bit too close, or the comrade you had just exchanged banter with received blaster fire to the face.

Echo was experiencing the same sensation now, but he would voluntarily stay in this moment forever, if he could. He fervently hoped his nightmares would be replaced with the sight that was etched before him.

She was wearing her yellow work uniform, white apron pressed crisply with starch...and was as beautiful as ever. Her hair was up in a messy ‘late-for-work’ up-do, a smudge of blushed color not quite within the lines of her lips smearing her cupids’ bow where she had applied it in a rush.

He couldn’t determine whether her reaction to his sudden appearance was positive or not, and so didn’t dare speak first, breathlessly afraid that if he did, the moment would shatter.

He saw her swallow hard, glancing at him from head to toe, gaze landing on his right hand.

He guarded his heart.

“Ech? Echo, is that you?” she whispered. Her eyes tore away from the scomp link hand, and began searching his face as though just as afraid he would disappear.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he rasped, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”

The silence stretched out, and the fight or flight response was creeping back.

“I know I look a bit different.” He tried for a light-hearted joke, but couldn’t quite get his tone to match. “Had some work done. What do you think?” He winced slightly.

She stepped forward and he froze as Y/N lifted her fingers, hesitating briefly before gently touching one of the metal bolts by his left temple. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“...do they hurt?”

He gasped a little as he remembered to breathe again.

“No,” he reassured her, raising his undamaged hand to steady hers. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

“...good.”

The wind was knocked out of him as Y/N flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck, tardiness to her job completely forgotten.

She began sobbing. It wasn’t neat little sobs, like in the scripted holovids, but heaving sobs that wracked her whole body, and he worried slightly that she was going to faint on him. He forgot about his scomp link for the first time as he rubbed it in circles against her back, murmuring nonsense words of comfort in her ear.

After several minutes, she sniffled, stepping back. She rubbed her nose ungracefully where snot was leaking out, but Echo could have cared less about any of that. He only kept his arms out to steady her, in case she needed support again.

Y/N glanced down suddenly, and flushed.

“Oh. I’ve crushed them.”

Echo followed her gaze and saw that he was still holding the blue flowers from the planter in his good hand, the bouquet having been caught in between their bodies when she had thrown herself at him. They did look a little worse for wear.

He shrugged unconcernedly. “They were free,” he said, not wanting her to feel guilty.

She stared at him for a moment before a bubble of laughter burst from her lips. She still looked like she was about to sob at any moment, but she smiled tremulously at him through shining eyes.

Desperate to make her feel better, he began rambling.

“I can get you better ones! N-not right now, though,” he stuttered. “Actually, it turns out that I don’t have any credits on me at the moment. Everything’s still kind of backed up at the bank regarding my accounts. Also, this suit is new. Well. Not new. It used to belong to this woman’s father who we rescued during a mission on Bith. Long story.” His brain, which worked faster than usual these days anyways, still couldn’t seem to catch up to his mouth.

He forced himself to get back to the task at hand. “I was actually here to ask you for a date. I mean, assuming there’s no one else at the moment…oh, but you have your job to go do…bantha spit, I forgot about that...” He would have to ask Tech if it was possible for his brain to actually short-circuit.

Echo finally trailed off. Now he was the one blushing.

The whole of Domino Squad was probably having a good laugh at his expense right about now, wherever they were.

But Y/N was still smiling at him. And her chin had stopped wobbling. She gently took the flowers from Echo’s hand and placed them on one of the side tables in the hallway before intertwining her fingers with his and grasping his right hand without hesitation.

“Forget about my job. Let’s go on that date. My treat. Though, if I know Dexter, he’ll give us a free meal, on the house. And the rest of the day off."

For the first time since he had joined Clone Force 99, since he had been rescued on Skako Minor, and even before the Citadel...Echo allowed a true grin of happiness to spread on his face.

“A free meal,” he echoed. “Sounds like a plan.”

#fic request #echo #arc trooper echo #tbb echo #the bad batch #star wars tbb #star wars the bad batch #tbb #echo x reader #echo x you #echo x fem reader #sw tbb #sw the bad batch

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cdroloisms · 4 years ago

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more of ghost!dream! what can i say, i love this au a lot. here are the previous parts [1] and [2] if you want to read them first - this picks up right after last time, again :D

tws: death, grief (as per usual for this au), very briefly mentioned torture/abuse (what quacktiy’s been doing in pandora), prison arc/pandora’s vault, unhealthy relationship, unhealthy coping mechanisms (c!sam is still very emotionally repressed, go figure)

Maybe he should’ve carried the kid; it probably would’ve been quicker, at least. Fran sidled up to him, tossing her head easily as she brushed against his leg. When he looked down, she seemed to be staring at him judgmentally.

“What?”

She barked sharply, prompting a sleepy mumble from the kid trailing behind them, and Sam rubbed at the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. Arguing with a dog now, really? You really are losing it.

“Are we there yet?”

“Almost,” Sam sighed again, cutting himself off before he said something he regretted. The words were colder than he intended as it was, making the kid flinch from the corner of his eye, and something in him stirred uncomfortably at the sight, far more familiar than he wanted to admit. Fran’s eyes were dark as she kept staring at him, feet padding softly against the grass as she nudged against him again.

What do you want me to do?

She held his gaze for a second longer before turning around, tail flicking to the side as she made her way to the shimmering image of the kid following them. Figure it out.

He huffed, making a small hissing sound through his teeth, ignoring the way his cheeks heated in embarrassment. He knew he was...cold, to say the least, had gotten used to everyone’s strange looks and shuffles away from him quickly enough. The prison left no room for vulnerability, not when every mechanism, every ounce of power in the prison, every person on the server was left in his hands, not when he was the only one standing in between the greatest danger that they had ever known and the peace that they had fought tooth and nail for. He’d learned how to lock every part of himself in a maze of redstone and blackstone and obsidian, learned how to hide away under layers of netherite and a metal mask. And- perhaps, at first, he’d flinched away from the slight fear in Puffy’s eyes, the hesitance in Tommy’s voice, the way that Ponk-

He swallowed, moving faster. He wasn’t going to think about him right now.

He was cold. He’d been cold as the Warden and he was cold, now, because he’d been the Warden for so long that he’d forgotten how to be anything else, because the walls that he’d thrown up between the part of him that lived under the sun and never wore more than a gold chestplate and the part of him that knew nothing but an endless checkerboard of grey and black had cracked over the days and weeks and months spent pacing, restless, around the same black box, from every piercing word Quackity spoke, from the bone-deep exhaustion that he could never shake. Fran barked again, behind him, and the kid giggled softly, the sound bright and weightless and warm; the weight of the mask on his face suddenly felt oppressive, and his hand came to brush against the polished edges. What did his voice sound like, warm? Did he even remember?

“Sammy!” He stumbled to a stop, the voice in his ears still unfamiliar in its familiarity, adrenaline making his heart flutter, “Slow down! You’re goin’ too fast!”

He stopped, not realizing he was holding his breath until he felt something- someone, right, knock into the back of his legs. He turned himself around carefully, finding the kid staring up at him with big, drooping eyes.

“M’tired,” he mumbled, leaning forward to put more of his weight on Sam, stumbling slightly when Sam drew backwards. “We’re almos’ there, right?”

“...yeah,” Sam looked away, pointedly looking over his shoulder to avoid having to meet the kid’s gaze, eyes finding the stone face of the mountain that he’d made into his home. “Just a few more minutes.”

“‘Kay,” he stepped back, arms coming down to his sides from where they’d been wrapped around Sam’s waist, and the weight that had suddenly settled over his ribcage eased off as well, finally letting him breathe. He began to turn back forwards so they could continue their walk and finally actually get inside the base when he felt something tug at his hoodie sleeve.

He watched, with something a little like a mix of muted horror and fascination as Dream grabbed his hand, carefully threading his fingers one by one in between Sam’s own until his hand was loosely clasped around the ghost’s, beaming at his accomplishment as he squeezed his hand firmly. It was something he’d done before, with Bad’s never-ending insistence that they stay together for safety at the slightest sight of danger and Sam usually relegated to wrangle the younger kids as one of the older and more “responsible” in the group, and the familiar weight of Dream’s hand in his own had him choking on memories he’d half-forgotten.

“Sammy?”

Even as a ghost, his grip was tight; there would be no way for Sam to ease his hand away without alerting him of his intentions. He swallowed around the thickness in his throat, feeling Fran walk up to his other side and circle around his legs.

“Let’s go.” His voice was rough, though the mask probably distorted it too much for it to be too noticeable. He pressed his shoulders back, let his right hand hang as a dead weight as the ghost swung it back and forth, humming idly as he did so.

“We’re almost there,” he said, looking forward towards his mountain, its western face shining golden by the setting sun, and didn’t know if he was talking to the ghost by his side or himself.

---

Thankfully, the actual process of getting into his base ended up being much simpler than the walk back to it. The sight of the various redstone mechanisms - hoeing the dirt and having a door appear from nowhere, especially - had the kid thoroughly perked up from where he’d been half-asleep by Sam’s side, and he’d fired off question after question as they made their way inside. The excitement was an easy distraction and he latched onto it with maybe a little too much enthusiasm, giving off-hand explanations as he dug through his chests for wool and wood.

The ghost, just as he’d always been, was an endless fountain of curiosity, following eagerly to look at his automatic potion brewer and sugarcane farm and furnace set-up, face scrunching in confusion when Sam tried explaining any of the redstone but watching intently anyway. Fran, seemingly exhausted from the walk - which, admittedly, had ended up being much longer than any of them expected - had almost immediately padded off to her room to sleep, leaving Sam alone with an all-too excitable ghost and far too many questions that weren’t going to get answers any time soon.

As the kid finally took a second away from running around to watch, fascinated, as the minecart in Sam’s furnaces dutifully circled back and forth with a few stacks of cobble that he’d thrown in there to smelt as a demonstration, he let himself step away, dragging a hand across his face with a low hiss of distress. He hadn’t thought of the possibility of Dream coming back as a ghost, honestly, had hardly thought about the future at all beyond the need for Quackity and himself to keep their mouths shut. It was an oversight, in hindsight, and he was lucky that he was the one to stumble on the kid instead of virtually anyone else on the server, but now-

Sam turned, watched as the kid rocked back and forth while watching the minecart make another round around the track. What was he supposed to do, now?

He would have to keep Dream here, obviously. All of the work that he and Big Q had put in to keep their actions secret could be blown with one careless pair of eyes on the newest phantom of the server; it’s not like they were particularly hard dots to connect. Speaking of Q, Sam felt the same uneasy prickle of something crawling up his spine, and he shook his head to clear it. It would probably be best if his business partner didn’t learn about this...complication, either, or at least not until he had a little more figured out. So it was left to Sam, in the end, to figure out what happened to the kid and to watch over him, as it always did; prime, there must’ve been someone out there laughing at the irony, making sure that he’d never be able to escape the seeming never-ending task of watching the same person.

It was fine. It would be- easier, this time, as long as he stayed far away from the rest of the Greater SMP. It’s not like anyone would notice anything different, considering how much time he’d been spending in the prison for the last few months, and at least his charge would be more willing to stay in one place than last time. All he had to do was keep them sufficiently out of the others’ prying eyes, at least until he and Quackity figured out a suitable explanation for the prisoner’s death to give to the others. Until then, his job was the same as it had been for months; of course, there were differences, but at its essence, did they really matter? Dead or alive, black walls or grey, he was still the Warden and Dream his...responsibility.

It would be fine. The ghost didn’t even remember anyone else; keeping him in one place would be easy. He’d been the Warden of Pandora’s Vault for months, what was a little time watching over a kid? An amnesiac ghost at that, naïve and far too trusting - it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

Right?

---

They ended up converting George’s abandoned room into a bedroom, of sorts, for the ghost. He’d been fascinated with the door going inside, had played with it for a couple minutes before his earlier exhaustion caught up to him and he’d settled on top of the bed, watching as Sam hastily brushed off dust and made the room semi-presentable. It was largely empty; he’d added some initial furnishings when he first built it, but George never really officially moved in, ended up caught up with one thing or another until everything went down on the Sixteenth, and everything since then had been so thoroughly chaotic on both ends that he really hadn’t bothered checking in on either Sapnap or George, leaving both of their rooms to do little more than collect dust. He ran his fingers over the blue-green planks, regret washing over him suddenly like a bucket of cold water thrown over his head. When had all of them grown apart? When did their home become this?

His hands slammed a little too hard on the next bookshelf he came too, eliciting a sharp gasp from the ghost behind him. He whirled around, winced at the sight of the kid cringing, a hand clasped firmly over his ear, and forced the tenseness out of his shoulders with a heavy sigh. The tiredness, it seemed, did more than make the ghost a little quieter and less excitable than the kid in his memories. Sam moved to the next bookshelf, running a damp cloth over the top edge; there was a newfound skittishness to him, an unfamiliar tendency to jump at loud noises and sudden movements. He’d always been cautious, masked even in Sam’s earliest memories, but there had always been a boldness that simply...didn’t exist anymore.

“I’ll leave you to it, alright?” He looked back, watching as the ghost ducked under the pink covers - he hadn’t been able to find anything other than a couple blocks of pink wool in his chest from who knows how long ago - and moving towards the door.

“G’dnigh’, Sammy.”

His voice was soft and sweet, and the cold feeling from before was back, a block of ice nestled in his chest that he couldn’t get out.

“...goodnight, Dream.”

#long post #ghost!dream au #tw torture #tw abuse #tw unhealthy relationship #tw death #tw grief #pandora's vault #prison arc #tw unhealthy coping mechanism #my writing :D #my asks !!

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rwbyvein · 4 years ago

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Firen Lhain: Chapter 612: Tin Woodsman: Part II/III

The group filed themselves into the CIC. Ironwood looked over and pointed his arm at a room, and they all filed in. Ironwood was second to last, with Winter as the last. She closed the door, and typed onto a keypad.

"This room is under the highest levels of secrecy." Ironwood stated. "Nothing said in this room will leave this room, and not only will there be no records or recording, your scrolls will not be able to connect. Most of the people checked their scrolls, proving it was true. "For those have not met me in person, I am General James Ironwood, Headmaster of Atlas Academy."

Oscar slowly raised his hand, "Um... a General... AND a headmaster?"

"I hold both seats on the Atlas Council." Ironwood stated.

"The first one ever." Winter stated.

"Un-precedented." Weiss quipped. Winter developed a sour look and the sisters briefly glared at each other.

"This is Specialist Winter Schnee." James stated. "Yes, older sister to Weiss Schnee."

Nora raised her hand, "Special what?"

"ASOCU", (pronounced Ask), "Atlas Special Operations Command Unit."

"Ah-sok-u?" Nora asked, causing Ironwood to break an extremely mild smile.

"Huntresses." Blake said.

"Enslaved to the military." Jaune grumbled.

"Mr. Arc?" James asked him, "I can assure you..."

Jaune grumbled again, and Ironwood paused. "I suppose," Jaune said, "that in the name of full disclosure, I suppose I should tell you my story. I'm from a former knightly house." he said, and paused.

"But?.." Ironwood asked, "the knightly houses haven't exist since?.."

"The Great War." Jaune stated. "Do you know who ASKED us to disarm?"

"That would be the good king?" Ironwood asked.

"We called him Oz." Jaune said, and Ironwood looked at him with shock. "That's... basically how I acted when I found it out, too. Now, why were the knightly houses shuttered?" James Ironwood just stared at him. The look said he knew exactly what Jaune was talking about. "He felt that armies always lead to war. That's why the Huntsmen Academies were created, and why Huntsmen were... what now?"

"Traditionally?," Ironwood asked, "independant."

"This is why I'm so against The ASOCUs." he grumbled, and then looked at Winter, "It even put sister against sister."

"Me and Ruby fight all the time?" Yang asked.

"I'm going to guess," Jaune said, and looked at Weiss, "that the Schnee sisters don't fight."

"Rarely." Weiss stated, "Though when we do, it's not a pretty sight."

"It would be pretty cool." Nora said, and Ruby let out and affirmative huff.

"I can assure you..." James said, but Jaune held up his hand.

"I know you mean well." Jaune said, and Ironwood stopped in his tracks. "You might be one of the only people that does. And while I can certainly criticize some of the things you've been doing, I just brought this up so we know what page I'm on."

"Oh, well, thank you, Mr. Arc." Ironwood said to him, "It's good to get the air clear."

Jaune then looked around, seeing no one else wanting to say anything. He then looked to Ironwood and Winter. "I guess I'll do our introductions. I am Jaune Arc, this is Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie, the survivors of team JNPR. This is Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long, team RWBY. Next we have Aurora Ainsley, personal assistant to Weiss schnee. Ilia Amitola, a... friend?.. of Blake's from Menagerie. RWBY and JNPR received our letters-patent as Huntsmen and Huntresses." Each of them had voiced or voiceless affirmations after he said their name. "This is Qrow Branwen... who's as shifty as he looks."

"Hey?!" Qrow stated, "Don't forget I'm also a drunk!"

"Which," Weiss quipped, "seems to be happening less frequently..." and Qrow just glared at her.

"I've never gotten along with Schnees." Qrow voiced.

"Last by certainly not least," Jaune stated, "Oscar Pines." Oscar's eyes began to glow green, "The newest incarnation of the Great and Powerful Oz."

Oscar/Ozpin spun his cane about before leaning on it, "Sadly, the Great and Powerful part has not been true since before I was king. As it is, right now, I put tremendous strain on young Oscar's body at the battle of Haven, and am trying to limit my time. We will have to talk, James."

"I can explain!" Ironwood said to the boy, and Oscar/Ozpin just warmly smiled at him.

"I - know very well, that you can explain." Oscar/Ozpin said warmly. "But, I have gotten quite used to waiting, and we have a long journey ahead of us, so I believe I will allow beauty before age for the time being." Oscar's eyes reverted to normal, his stance weakened, and nearly toppled himself over.

"uh... hi?" Oscar weakly said.

"I'm so sorry about pulling you into this." Ironwood said to him, "If there was any other way?.."

Oscar then did his bet to mimic Ozpin, "These are the circumstances we have."

Nora then raised her hand, "Are you sorry about us?"

Ironwood rolled his eyes and smiled at her, "I gave you all a choice. While I was against involving your before your graduation, you have done everything you can to involve yourselves."

"What the hell was that?!" Qrow asked.

Ironwood shook his head and looked at Qrow, "What was what?" Ironwood asked.

"Are we sure it's not that green-haired girl?" Qrow asked, and reached for his weapon, and the air in the room suddenly tensed up. Qrow then pulled his fingers forward like a pistol and pointed them at Ironwood, pretending to drop the hammer and fire, "He actually smiled."

Ironwood looked around for a moment before looking back at Qrow, "This is hardly the time to..." he tried to say, but Ruby, Yang, Nora, and Taiyang were all laughing out loud. Blake was chuckling. Jaune and Ren were smiling. Weiss, Winter, and Raven were doing their best to not smile. "Apparently it is." Ironwood said and sighed.

"Alright, enough fun and games." Taiyang stated, "It's time for dad to say something."

"Dad?" Nora asked.

"Well," Taiyang stated, "I am dad to like five of you, so I invoke my right to dad taxes."

Weiss looked scared whereas Blake looked confused.

Ruby angrily pointed her finger, "Dad tax only applies to Dark Eventide!" Causing Weiss to look embarassed and confused.

"I think we're a bit old for a dad tax." Yang stated.

"What's a dad tax?" Nora asked.

"And married." Yang added.

"Dad taxes," Ruby said to Nora, "are an evil tradition where dads get to claim a portion of your candy."

"Do we have to pay dad taxes?" Nora asked. "I mean, he is our glorious leader. So, we're like his minions or something."

With this Taiyang sighed, "I'm so sorry you had to grew up without someone to explain the dad tax code you to. I'll do my best to make sure you don't get left behind any more."

"No one is paying dad taxes!" Yang shouted at her father, eyes and hair aflame.

"Still unbalanced." Taiyang said to her, and stepped towards his daughter. RWB_ and _NR around her stepped back to clear room for them to fight. Jaune then stepped in front.

"What the hell?" Yang asked.

"You're the one who taught her to be afraid of her emotions, aren't you?"

"And who are you?" Taiyang semi-jokingly asked him.

"Not everyone has to fight like you." Jaune said to him.

"And what do you know about how I fight?" Taiyang asked.

"I fought Yang." Jaune said.

"Fought?" Raven asked.

"Sparred." Yang said to her mother.

"I can see the direction you were pushing her," Jaune said, and then looked at Ren, "and so does Ren."

"You seemed to be pushing her to a soft style, when Yang's entire karma is about hard styles."

"It doesn't hurt to train in different styles."

"It does," Ren stated, "if it requires you to compromise your primary style."

"Alright, alright," Yang said, stepping between Jaune and Tai, "enought talking about me like I'm not here."

Jaune looked at Taiyang, "I'm sorry if I came off..."

"It's fine." Taiyang said. "It just proves how much you care about her, and how much she cares about you. If you want to make me happy, though?.."

"Dad..." Yang admonished.

"Just take care of her." Taiyang said, and Yang's scales flushed orange as she looked about nervously.

"In the spirit of?.." Raven asked, and paused, "I really don't know. I'm Raven Branwen, Yang's mother, and Qrow's older sister."

"We're not sure about one of those." Yang stated, and looked Raven in the eyes.

"She's still your mother." Taiyang said to Yang. "Even if you have... issues... with her... She's your mother, and you can at least show her respect."

"So long as she doesn't try to bake me cookies, or something." Yang said.

"That's my job." Aurora said with glee.

"Aren't you like... a banker... or something?" Yang asked.

"Being an executive assistant requires you to be a bit of a polymath." Aurora said with glee.

Ironwood took a step foward, and everyone looked towards him.

#rwby #firen lhain #faunus au #pollinated knight

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themurphyzone · 4 years ago

Text

PatB Oneshot: Eurydice

Summary: An alternate scenario for the Halloween episode, loosely based on the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Mr. Itch strikes a different deal with Brain. If Brain can make it to the surface world without looking at Pinky, the contract will be voided and Pinky’s soul will be returned. And failure is not an option.

Beginning AN: I posted this idea on Discord a month ago and I’ve wanted to write this scenario ever since. I love the Halloween ep so much…so how about some whump? I am not kind to our favorite mice at all, just a heads up. Also there is a serious lack of fics over the Halloween ep. It's prime material for angst.

Big shout out to @plutonis who listened to me cry over torturing these poor mice over DM.

FFN Link

Contract

I, the Brain, hereby agree to a challenge against Mr. Itch, Proprietor of Wayward Souls and Master of Hell, in which the winner shall receive Pinky’s soul. Should Brain win this challenge against all impossible odds, Pinky’s previous contract in which he agreed to submit himself to hell’s eternal torments in exchange for Brain’s dominion over the surface world shall be voided and destroyed, and he may return to the surface world with Brain. Additionally, Brain agrees to forfeit his royal claim on the world and is prohibited from future attempts at global conquest for the remainder of his days.

Challenger Signature: The Brain

Drafter Signature: Mr. Itch

*Mr. Itch reserves the right to set the terms of the challenge at his leisure.

o-o-o-o-o

He’d been too hasty in signing the contract. The combination of brimstone and heat had to be affecting his decision-making process.

It’s not about Pin– the food pellets, he told himself. Absolutely not.

But it was too late. His signature was burned into the page. Five blood-red letters would determine Pinky’s fate.

And even if…no, he couldn’t afford an if…when he succeeded in rescuing Pinky, he’d have to give up the world. He wouldn’t even be able to try and earn his crown, scepter, and throne through his own merits.

Without the nightly ambitions, Pinky might…wish to find a different associate.

Brain’s entire purpose would be gone. Forever.

He didn’t listen to the convoluted, nonsensical legalese that Mr. Itch’s lawyers provided. There was no need to provide metaphors or explain the situation further.

Brain understood the gist.

No matter the outcome, he would fail. And this time, the consequences were permanent.

“Think of it, Brain,” Mr. Itch sneered, and Brain hated that cocky, self-assured expression that put even the best car salesman in the world to shame. Mr. Itch waved his hand, and a sick, twisted parody of a game show appeared behind him. “You can walk away now and rule the world…or you can risk it all and try to get Pinky back.”

Brain’s vision blurred as he was forcibly thrust onto a tall podium. A spotlight illuminated him, and the demons clamored for his choice.

A tall demoness cheerfully indicated two panels to the studio audience of hell’s denizens. One depicted Brain on top of the world in royal regalia. He could have power to change the world. Admiration from the populace. Endless wealth so they could have the finest things life had to offer.

But the other panel was a portrait of Pinky. Just a misleading, goofy portrait of a smiling Pinky that belied the high stakes of Brain’s contract.

He was chafing under the spotlight. But why? He was king, he was emperor, with everyone at his beck and call! He shouldn’t be afraid of a little spotlight!

Except he wasn’t any of those things here. Just a mouse who’d failed to notice his associate signing his own soul away.

The demons clamored. Brain gripped the podium, vulnerable and ripe for humiliation, for several…seconds? Minutes? Hours?

His voice wasn’t working. He needed his voice, didn’t he? But he could only stammer like a fool. Perspiration built on his fur, and he nearly slipped off the podium, his palms damp and clammy. He didn’t know if it was the heat or the anxiety, but everyone was waiting for his choice.

“Save Pinky!”

“No, the world!”

“Go for cash!”

The demons jeered in a harsh, guttural cacophony. Brain was sure he would’ve been covered in fresh produce and popcorn if they’d had any available. Anything to amplify his current indignity.

He wanted Pinky. He wanted the world. He couldn’t have both.

But in the end, there was hardly a choice at all.

Ruling the world without Pinky by his side wasn’t worth the castle, the riches, the statues. Institutes of higher learning named in his honor, policies with his seal of approval, ethical practices in scientific fields to enforce…but what good were they to him?

His castle would just be a gilded cage. Sparkling and clean and mighty for all his subjects to behold from afar, but its interior would only contain a gloomy king without an associate, a confidant…

And a kindred spirit.

All or nothing. He had to try. Who knows? Pinky might’ve done the same for him.

“I’ll try to save Pinky!” Brain shouted, forcing the words past his throat and into the unforgiving outside world.

He wasn’t prepared for Pinky to spring onto the podium. That mindless simpleton was grinning from ear to ear like he was just being called to the stage in The Price is Right! Didn’t Pinky realize his soul was in peril?

“Oh, Brain! My hero!” Pinky snatched Brain up in an enthusiastic hug. Brain stiffened and tried not to think about the hand currently rubbing his head, and how he would never feel it again if he failed his quest.

They were also surrounded by an unfriendly sort. They would believe this saccharine display was a weakness if Brain allowed Pinky to indulge these childish needs.

He shoved Pinky off, holding him at arm’s length for a moment so Pinky would take the hint.

“…so he can show me where the food pellets are,” Brain added hastily.

That was all Pinky was needed for.

To show him where the necessities laid.

A hellish fanfare played, saving Brain pondering those terrifying thoughts.

An enormous fiery plume burst onto the stage, then dissipated to reveal Mr. Itch. He conjured a microphone and bowed heartily at the thunderous applause.

“Ladies and demons, we have something very special for your entertainment on this fantastic Halloween night. I trust you’re aware of our newest resident and his…well, can I even call him a friend? He didn’t lift a finger to stop me when I claimed Pinky.”

Brain stared down at his hands to avoid the harsh, mocking glares. This was just the opening act. Mr. Itch was hyping up the crowd for Brain’s ultimate failure.

Mr. Itch strolled around the stage, each movement radiating confidence of a self-assured victory. “Yes, he enjoys having that ultimate power. A glorious statue, his rival in the race for world domination now a lowly jester in court, his name praised on every street corner! Isn’t that a dream come true? And yet...he chose to come into my realm and make demands. Like the world wasn’t enough for him.”

Because Pinky wasn’t there to make the world enough.

A hiss of smoke sprung up by Brain’s foot. He bit his tongue, wondering if part of the challenge was running on hot coals or avoiding random ember spurts. At this point, it seemed very likely. His feet probably wouldn’t survive the night.

In the unlikely scenario that the rest of his body survived of course.

And something wet landed on his toe. Wet? There wasn’t anything wet about hell, unless one counted the boiling lakes. But it evaporated into steam before he could fully process the cool reprieve.

Then he heard it.

A whimper.

From Pinky.

A tear trailed down Pinky’s cheek.

“Pinky?” Brain asked quietly, trying to keep his eyes trained on Mr. Itch, who was currently recapping the tale of Brain’s disastrous attempt at Broadway to the raucous audience. Not one of Brain’s finest moments, but he couldn’t dwell on that now. Better for them to laugh over what was past and done, rather than drawing their attention here.

Pinky clutched his tail in a death grip. Steam leaked under his eyes and around his cheeks, his entire face damp with tears.

“He’s saying awful things.”

Even with their proximity, Brain had to strain his ears to hear Pinky’s voice.

“Don’t bawl, Pinky,” Brain whispered, hoping by some off-chance that the verbal comfort would be enough. “Don’t cry. Not here. Not now. Don’t…don’t be foolish.”

He didn’t know if the reassurance was meant for Pinky or himself. With a trembling hand, Brain reached for Pinky’s back, shuffling closer to make the motion less conspicuous.

But Pinky moved away before Brain could touch him.

“They have to know, Brain,” Pinky said. His voice was far too calm. “I can’t let him tell those awful lies about you.”

Pinky tried to balance on the edge of the podium, but Brain grabbed him by the tail and hauled him off. But Pinky was stubborn, and he tried again.

“Let him talk, you idiot!” Brain yelled, grabbing Pinky’s tail to knock him off-balance and buy some much needed time before Pinky foolishly tried again, oddly glad that Mr. Itch was enough of a showman to keep the attention away from them.

But Pinky’s huge pain threshold allowed him to recover far quicker than Brain would’ve liked. “Brain, let go of my tail!” Pinky shouted, trying to sweep his tail into a huge arc to dislodge Brain.

“Not until you do as you’re told, for once in your life!” Brain retorted, grasping the wriggling tail. He wouldn’t relinquish it.

Pinky was slippery though, and in one swift motion, he freed himself from Brain’s grip. Realizing he needed a more secure hold, Brain threw himself at Pinky’s right arm. Suddenly, the arm blurred, and Brain couldn’t stop his forward momentum in time. A sharp pain erupted on the side of his head and knocked him against a corner, his face throbbing painfully.

Through his daze, Brain pressed a hand against his cheek and winced at the tenderness. Hopefully it didn’t swell. Ice packs weren’t exactly a common item in this hostile environment.

Then he saw Pinky.

And Pinky was absolutely distraught. Smoke poured out his eyes at a more alarming rate than before. His blue eyes were tinged red. Pinky clutched his elbow with his other arm, squeezing as hard as he could to admonish it.

But it wasn’t necessary.

A microphone was thrust into Pinky’s face before Brain could tell him so.

“How could I forget our little stars of the show?” Mr. Itch asked, a sadistic grin stretching from ear to ear. “That was quite a scuffle there, Pinky. Can’t say I blame you. Revenge for all the times Brain’s bopped you on the head and insulted you?”

Pinky wiped his eyes in a pitiful attempt to get some semblance of dignity back as the demonic crew trained all their lights and cameras on him.

“N-no...” Pinky said weakly. “I mean, he can say mean things sometimes, but the bops-“

Mr. Itch shook his head in a show of mock sympathy. “Your friend-“ he curled his lip as if the word itself was cyanide “-called you a speckless nougat just before you signed my contract. He’ll take everything and give nothing. He’ll send you away only to ask for your services again because he can’t do the manual labor on his own. You’re a talented little guy, aren’t you? You’ve showed the moxie and the know-how to become a Broadway star or president of the good old USA. And instead of putting those gifts to use, you’ve been rotting inside a cage with a failure who leeches on your success.”

Failure.

One of the cameras trained its unforgiving lens on Brain. He shook away the remaining dizziness and stood up to get some semblance of dignity back. The demons booed and heckled him, but he tried to lift his head in defiance.

He wasn’t a failure. He ruled the world! His word was law, his brilliance unparalleled!

He had it all-

-only because Pinky sacrificed his soul for him. Pinky had taken drastic measures to prove himself when there had been nothing to prove, because Brain made Pinky believe he had to prove his usefulness.

He’d gained the world yet lost Pinky. It was failure.

Which meant he-

“Stop it,” Pinky begged. Brain’s thoughts came to a screeching halt, and he stepped away from Pinky before reminding himself that he was being illogical. Pinky didn’t have telepathy. He couldn’t have heard all that. But Pinky was glaring up at Mr. Itch with a ferocity Brain had never seen before.

In the span of a single night, Brain’s entire world had been shaken to its roots.

Mr. Itch raised an eyebrow. “Stop what?” he asked, placing his free hand on his chest like he’d been genuinely offended.

“Stop it! STOP CALLING BRAIN ALL THOSE NASTY MEAN HORRIBLE THINGS RIGHT NOW!” Pinky’s voice rose into a fevered pitch, his fur bristling along his spine.

This was wrong. This was so very wrong. Pinky wasn’t supposed to be the angry one.

Before Brain could stop him, Pinky leapt off the podium and landed on the microphone to the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ of the lesser demons, and even Mr. Itch seemed too stunned by the maneuver to shake Pinky off.

“Pinky, cease immediately!” Brain yelled once he managed to find his voice. “You’re being reckless!”

“I HAVE PLENTY OF RECKS, BRAIN!” Pinky screamed, tightly clinging to the microphone even though Mr. Itch was attempting to pry him off. “CAUSE YOU’RE NOT A FAILURE OR A LEECH! YOU’RE A MOUSE!”

A comforting warmth spread through Brain’s chest at the affirmation, but he pushed those feelings aside. Pinky’s words meant nothing if Brain didn’t succeed with this rescue.

The audience was deathly quiet.

“Yes, Pinky,” Mr. Itch growled, trying to slip a finger under Pinky to dislodge him. But Pinky held on. “Let your friend talk. Let the cameras capture his selfishness. After all, his presence here just means he wasn’t grateful for your gift. That he wasn’t happy with your gift. As I said before, all he does is take, take, and take some more. What’s he ever done for you in return?”

But Brain had been grateful. For a short time anyway.

Until he realized his gratitude came from Pinky’s sacrifice. All of Pinky’s sacrifices that involved no benefit to himself.

Pinky mumbled something that had much of the audience leaning in eagerly, trying to hang onto every word.

Mr. Itch shrugged. “Well, if you have nothing else to say, then-“

But Pinky hauled himself on top of the microphone, clinging to it like a lifeline.

“Brain gave me my name! He gave me a chance to see the world! He gave me a chance to do things I never dreamed of doing before! I wouldn’t have met Pharfignewton otherwise! Or Winnie or Mr. Sultana or any of the other lovely people we met while trying to take over the world! Maybe Brain can be big-headed and a grump but he works super hard and he’s going to make the world a better place to live! And most importantly, he’s my best friend and nothing you say will ever change that!”

“Pinky…” Brain’s throat closed uncomfortably. It had to be the oppressive, stagnant air. What could he possibly say to Pinky’s emphatic speech?

Even the demons were moved. Some embraced their neighbors, others made sympathetic noises. There were a few who sat with their heads pressed against their knees in a futile attempt to staunch their tears.

He’d never been more grateful for Pinky’s charisma.

Mr. Itch took notice of his followers’ reactions. A vein seemed to pop in his head, his once casual, lazy posture now stiff and alert.

“Brain only kept you around because you were useful.” A dangerous edge crept into Mr. Itch’s tone. “That’s all there was to your so-called friendship.”

“NARF!” Pinky screeched in defiance.

It sounded all wrong. Fury and fear laced that familiar, irritating monosyllable. Brain didn’t know what narf meant, and he probably never would, but he was certain that narf wasn’t meant to be uttered in such a fashion.

“Narf!” a demon called.

Another demon stood up and pumped his fist. “Poit!”

“Troz! Egad! Narf! Zort!” The demons chanted Pinky’s favorite syllables like the world’s most demented cheering squad.

An inferno burned in Mr. Itch’s eyes.

“SILENCE!”

Mr. Itch’s snarl deepened into a guttural and unearthly roar, the entire netherworld quaking in outrage. The lesser demons hastily vacated their seats and cowered behind each other, large boulders, or whatever makeshift shields they could find.

The microphone and a tiny white body were hurled into the empty audience box, crashing into the metallic structure with enough force to leave an enormous dent.

There was no tic-filled laughter to accompany the harsh clang of his body impacting metal.

“PINKY!” Brain screamed, not caring that he tumbled more than climbed down the podium. He landed right on his throbbing cheek and got a mouthful of hot crimson dust for his trouble, but he couldn’t care less.

The physical tortures were just going to build up until Pinky’s body couldn’t handle it anymore. It didn’t matter that Pinky had a near-immunity to pain. Pinky’s body would break and he would never notice.

Brain spat out the dust and hurried over to Pinky, who feebly stirred next to the microphone.

Mr. Itch loomed above them, an ember casually lit on his finger. “You know what? That’s perfect,” he chuckled, and it was utterly devoid of good humor. “Absolute silence.”

Brain knelt on the hard ground next to Pinky, who only blinked up at him with those too-trusting blue eyes. Pinky raised a shaking hand, cupping it against the cheek he’d accidentally hurt.

“I’ve sustained worse injuries,” Brain said quietly. Despite the heat, he shivered at the touch. He wished Pinky wouldn’t comfort him. He didn’t deserve it. “You know that.”

Pinky opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Speak up, Pinky.” Brain tried to sound commanding, but his voice hitched instead. He couldn’t even keep up a thin illusion of normalcy.

Pinky tried again, but Brain still couldn’t hear him. Not even a cough or a wheeze from smoke inhalation. He wasn’t choking or flailing. There couldn’t be something lodged in his throat.

“He can’t speak, Brain,” Mr. Itch said. “He’s been silenced per our little agreement.”

Silenced?

Brain snatched the wrist gently cradling his cheek and felt for a pulse, and he couldn’t disguise his relieved sigh once he found it.

“C’mon, just what do you take me for? It’s not a euphemism. Takes all the fun outta the contract.”

“Just say narf, Pinky,” Brain pleaded as he shook Pinky’s shoulder, as if pleading in hell would accomplish anything useful. “Please say narf. Can’t you do that much?”

Pinky mouthed the syllable to no avail. He became teary all over again, his free hand feeling his throat as if trying to coax the narf out. His foot kicked out, yet it made no thump against the crimson rocks.

The demons murmured among themselves, and though they appeared sympathetic to Pinky’s plight, they were too frightened of their master to come any closer.

It was just as well. Brain didn’t want anyone to touch Pinky.

Brain tried to glare at Mr. Itch, but a mouse could never hope to be intimidating against a sadistic supernatural being.

“Don’t give me that look,” Mr. Itch scoffed. “The fine print of our contract lets me set the condition of the challenge. Pinky’s silence is my first condition. If anything, I’m doing you a favor. Awful noisy thing, isn’t he? No wonder you weren’t inclined to get back him back right away.”

Had this been a different situation entirely, Brain might’ve found it relieving that Pinky would have to be quiet for a while.

Cruel irony at its finest.

Pinky touched his nose against Brain’s own, and Brain tried not to think of how Pinky could comfort as easily with a touch as with words. Surely Pinky was just using tactile stimulation for his own peace of mind rather than Brain’s.

“And now for my second condition,” Mr. Itch smirked. He snapped his fingers, the sharp echo promising cruelty yet to come.

The gentle pressure of Pinky’s nose vanished, the feel of his wrist and shoulder gone. The whites, pinks, and reds of his body were now colorless, lifeless. His bright blue eyes faded into a pale, ghostly void. No pupils, no irises…just empty.

Brain tried to put a hand over Pinky’s heart, desperately wishing for the steady thrum he was so accustomed to. Yet his hand passed through Pinky’s chest like mist. It was neither cold nor hot, simply that there was nothing to feel.

Pinky reached for Brain’s face, looking at him with that strange, milky gaze. But his hand passed through the cheek he’d accidentally hurt, and Pinky’s chest heaved rapidly. He tried to grab his tail, as he always did when he was truly upset, but couldn’t.

No tears came out. Just several silent sobs.

Pinky was just a silent, sorrowful ghost of his former self. The loudest and happiest mouse Brain had ever known was reduced to this shadow, trapped within his mind, unable to engage with the world around him.

It was a horrible, undeserved fate for such a kindhearted mouse. There would be no release, not even from death, if Brain failed his challenge.

He had no choice but to win.

And even that was practically impossible.

“Pinky, I’m sorry…” The words tumbled out of Brain’s mouth before he could think of anything else to say.

Why wouldn’t his mind just work? I’m sorry? Like he’d done nothing more than eat the last food pellet? Sorry didn’t even begin to cut it!

Pinky floated instead of standing, feet skimming just above the ground. He gave Brain a tiny, reassuring smile. Of course he’d find something to smile about in his non-existent state. It probably should’ve annoyed Brain, but it was rather comforting to know that Pinky would always be Pinky.

Even so, the smile faded just as quickly as it came. Pinky couldn’t properly express his joy with narfs and poits and enormous embraces.

Then a fingersnap above his head reminded him of Mr. Itch’s presence.

“We’ve got business to discuss, Brain,” Mr. Itch said as he straightened his lapels. “You should know what your challenge consists of.”

In other words, Brain’s humiliation had hardly begun. But he’d do it. For Pinky’s sake.

Brain tried to hold his head high and show hell that he wasn’t afraid to defy their evil laws, but he couldn’t even find the strength to bring his ears up.

Another snap, and the microphone soared back to Mr. Itch. He twirled it with a showman’s flair and gestured for the audience to take their seats. The lesser demons obeyed, murmuring among themselves and pointing at the spectral Pinky. They didn’t seem pleased by Pinky’s complete silence.

“Ladies and demons, think of Brain’s challenge as an adaptation of an old Greek story,” Mr. Itch announced. “And I ain’t just talking about a watered-down Heracles here. No, this story isn’t about heroes slaying monsters. Rather, it’s a tragedy. The Greeks were masters of that particular craft, you see. A man goes on a quest, yet his fatal flaw always strikes him down in the end. I trust you’re quite familiar with the concept, Brain?”

Brain said nothing. No need to give them ammunition.

His temper and pride were the source of many failures. But there was nothing he could do except commit the same errors over and over again.

He should’ve known. It was only a matter of time before the ones he…tolerated suffered the consequences.

As if sensing his thoughts, Pinky wrapped his spectral arms around Brain’s shoulders. He couldn’t feel the saccharine display, and that fact pained him more than he cared to admit.

“Ever heard of cooperation?” Mr. Itch sighed. “You have the starring role in the show tonight. Give us something to work with, at least.”

Brain gritted his teeth. He’d had enough of this delay. “I’m through with this prolonged torture! Just get it over with already!” he shouted. “I refuse to be paraded around like a sideshow attraction!”

“Touchy,” Mr. Itch huffed in disdain. He turned back to the audience. “But I digress. Now, this tragedy involves a man who ventured into the depths of the underworld to retrieve his closest companion. He placated everyone with his music, including Hades himself. And because Hades was a total sap, he allowed the man to lead his companion back to the surface world.”

His arm swept out and a large stone staircase appeared. It spiraled and arched far above their heads, and Brain caught a glimpse of a starry sky hidden among the crimson stone.

Pinky belonged in the surface world, where the grass and horses and inanimate objects he had yet to befriend waited. And he was relying on Brain to bring him there.

Perhaps it was silly to reach for arms he couldn’t feel, but Brain placed his hands atop where Pinky’s fur should’ve been. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d voluntarily touched Pinky without hurting him.

Something to rectify if they made it through this trial.

“And that brings me to the final condition.” Before Brain could react, darkness engulfed his vision as he was plucked up into the air, his head squeezed by an unforgiving, burning hand. Brain bit the skin like it was just another day of rough handling by some careless scientist, but a fiery pain flooded his throat and he released the hand immediately. It felt like magma had crammed its way into his esophagus, and there was no lifegiving water to relieve him.

Then he was roughly deposited at the base of the stairs.

Brain tried to turn around, but Mr. Itch forced him to stare at the first brimstone step instead. The steps were several inches taller than him, though he could still reach the next step if he jumped high enough.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Mr. Itch scolded. “I wouldn’t do that if I were a pathetic mortal like you. In this little tale, Hades told the man he couldn’t look at his companion until they were both in the land of the living, lest she be lost to the underworld forever. For your challenge, I’ll be invoking that same clause.”

Brain resisted the urge to bite that supernatural conman’s fingers off. He would only wind up damaging his throat.

“I can hardly expect Pinky to follow me in the presence of distractors!” Brain protested. “He’s liable to find a stalactite interesting, or collect rocks, or do anything else other than-“

Mr. Itch only cackled, pillars of lava erupting alongside his cruelty.

And Brain remembered why the story was known as a tragedy.

The man looked at his companion just as they reached the surface world. Her soul was forever lost among the dead. Though he tried to reclaim her, the underworld wouldn’t release her again. And he spent the rest of his life mourning her loss.

Hell expected a faithful adaptation. They knew Brain would inevitably lose his temper and forget that he couldn’t look. They knew they’d be able to keep Pinky forever.

They knew.

Yet they put on this charade anyway.

Because false hope was the cruelest lie of all.

“Your challenge begins, Brain,” Mr. Itch declared, and the wicked fingers slowly released Brain’s head. “And remember, no looking at Pinky until you’re both in the surface world. But that’s a moot point, ain’t it? You’re bound to forget soon enough. At least try to go for most of the length before your undeniable failure, okay? We wouldn’t want the show to end too soon.”

Mr. Itch vanished in a puff of smoke.

Undeniable failure.

“I am not a failure,” Brain snarled to himself, more out of habit than belief. But his petulance at the phrase enabled him to climb five steps without pausing for breath.

And he didn’t require Pinky to boost him up! He climbed five steps by himself!

But that thought was banished as he climbed the sixth step. Pinky couldn’t physically boost him, nor provide mental fortitude. The adrenaline rush wore off quickly, and Brain’s feet dangled in the air as he tried to find a grip on the rocky outcropping. But he managed, albeit with difficulty. On the count of three, Brain heaved himself over the ledge.

He laid on the hot stone to catch his breath, face tucked under his hands so he wouldn’t see Pinky.

No words of encouragement. No strange tics. Nothing except the roar of lava, mockery, and his darkening thoughts.

Funny how one didn’t appreciate what they had until it disappeared. Pinky always lifted Brain, boosting him to higher places he couldn’t reach alone. It was something he’d always done, and Brain had let it slide out of practicality. Just treat the action like a living, portable stepstool. It was far better than expending more energy than required during plans.

In hindsight, would it have killed him to say thank you? Or at least nod in gratitude?

There was no time limit, but Brain stood up and dusted himself off, though the crimson dust would just attach itself to his fur all over again within seconds. It was impossible to shake off, and Brain wondered if he would ever be able to fully cleanse himself of it.

Taking a deep breath, Brain reached for a handhold above his head and hauled himself up.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot again. One more repetition. Start all over for the next stairstep.

It was a rhythm. Rhythms weren’t full of what-ifs or what could’ve beens. Concentrate on the rhythm. Nothing else mattered.

He had to keep moving. Keep climbing. It was better than sitting there and doing nothing. He couldn’t rest. He wouldn’t.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

Brain’s throat burned. His fur was slick with perspiration, though it only served as a method to lose precious water instead of cooling him off. His limbs trembled, and it was difficult to keep hold of the unforgiving stone.

But he’d only completed the first two spirals! There were still several more tiers left, and the starry sky seemed much further away than before.

“Pinky, if…if we make it out of here-”

Brain shuddered as he laid down to rest. His voice was raspy from the fumes and thirst, but he had to keep talking. Had to say something. Maybe Pinky would listen, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t even in earshot.

“-if you want to leave…”

He trailed off, rubbing away teardrops that quickly evaporated into smoke. His chest ached, but he couldn’t say for certain that it caused by physical labor.

Brain couldn’t make an attempt at global conquest even if he succeeded. Pinky’s help would no longer be necessary.

Between the two of them, Pinky knew how to live. He knew how to talk to people, how to have fun, how to narf through his pathetic lot in life with a smile on his face.

Brain only knew survival. Maybe it was his former field mouse instincts that somehow bled into intellect. Maybe his primitive instincts weren’t as gone as he’d like to believe.

He would never be anything else but a lowly test subject. If someone decided to euthanize or feed him to a snake one day…well, it hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things. Another mouse would take his place. And when that mouse died, it would be replaced again. And the progress would continue in the name of scientific progress.

Dying for science.

Yes, that’s how he’d meet his end.

But Pinky’s kindred spirit would touch others. Whether it was through an executive office, the lead role on Broadway, or even just helping a stranger on the street, he could do so many good things for the world around him.

The world would love Pinky back.

And if a solitary mouse in a lonely lab happened to turn on the TV and see his former associate surrounded by an adoring crowd, he would be happy to see the world has changed for the better.

So he had to keep going.

He had to try. Try to bring Pinky back to the surface world…and let him go. He shouldn’t keep anything he didn’t earn.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

The halfway point now.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

He miscalculated the distance to the top of the next step and reached too far. He lost his footing and plummeted several inches. Growling under his breath, Brain punched the unfeeling stone, though it only bruised his knuckles instead of making him feel better. Then he tried again.

And again. And again.

He couldn’t grasp these handholds! There was no logical reason why. They were approximately the same size and shape as all the other outcroppings! It shouldn’t be this difficult!

“Pinky, where are you when I need you? Cease your nonsense at once and help me!” Brain screamed, clutching the stone and closing his eyes so he wouldn’t see Pinky. Eight tries. Nine tries and counting. Why couldn’t he do something as simple as this?

But Pinky couldn’t help. It was useless to ask.

What’s the matter? Can’t manage a simple task on your own?

“Of course I can!” Brain snarled, and he gripped an outcropping so tightly that it broke off in his hand. He hurled the useless pebble into the abyss below, then found a different handhold and successfully hauled him to the next step out of sheer spite towards that nagging, insistent voice.

How do you know Pinky’s following you? How do you know he’s not enjoying his newfound flight capabilities?

He didn’t know. Pinky smiled when he discovered he could float as nothing more than a ghost, it was true, but the smile hadn’t reached his eyes. Pinky was incapable of deception. Even without speaking, the intention had been clear. Pinky only wanted to comfort Brain.

That Pinky could learn to live a life of nonexistence. That somehow Pinky would adapt to no touch, no words, no rest in hell.

If only those blank eyes had been more accusatory. It would’ve been far easier to deal with.

Pinky shouldn’t adapt to this. He couldn’t.

But he might-

No. Brain had to try. He had to try and not fail.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

The ground quaked beneath his feet, and Brain clung to the crimson ledge he rested on. He wouldn’t put it past hell to throw him to the bottom and negate all his efforts.

Still, he pressed on.

The sky was closer now. Several autumn leaves were blown along the wind.

Are you sure Pinky’s behind you?

Three spirals left. Almost there. They were almost there.

Failure would come soon. He was sure of it.

He didn’t know much time had passed in the world beyond. Was it November already? Was it time for the world to replace the witches and skulls with turkeys and wreaths?

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

The navy sky was filled with countless twinkling stars. Lights from a faraway airplane blinked steadily as it flew into the horizon. Ever closer, ever brighter.

“Do you see that, Pinky?” Brain whispered. For once, the stars gave him no existentialist dread. A feeling he dared describe as hope filled his chest and strengthened his limbs. All fears were banished to the recesses of his mind. He climbed with renewed purpose, not pausing for breath. “Just a little farther. We’re almost there. Stay behind me, Pinky. Just stay behind me.”

He’s not behind you.

“Yes, he is,” Brain retorted.

This was important. Pinky always came through in matters of importance.

Always is so absolute. You know those statements are usually false, right?

The ground rumbled, accompanied by a distant outraged roar, but Brain paid no heed to it. He ignored his doubts, he ignored the roars, he ignored everything but the starry expanse above and the rocks beneath his hand.

Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

He could do this. One more ledge. One more handhold. One more foothold.

The sky was so inviting, so beautiful…

Brain gripped the last ledge. He was filthy with dust and sweat, but he couldn’t care less. He was almost there.

Pinky was almost home. Pinky would be able to feel again.

And he would leave. But that was alright. Pinky wouldn’t suffer in hell on Brain’s account. That’s all that really mattered.

He hauled himself onto the last ledge…

…but he didn’t see the pitchfork’s hilt in time.

An agonizing pain shot through his body as he lost his grip and plummeted to the previous step. His back slammed against the hot stone. A searing pressure in the center of his forehead kept him pinned. He gasped for air, his dry throat throbbing.

An enormous crimson devil blotted out the night sky, and Brain’s fragile hope ripped away from his heart. The Devil’s eyes burned like lava as he glared hatefully at Brain, digging the pitchfork ever so slightly into his head.

It wouldn’t take much force to crush or melt his skull, whatever the Devil fancied.

“I OFFERED YOU CHANCE AFTER CHANCE TO WALK AWAY WITH THE WORLD. BUT YOU STOLE WHAT RIGHTFULLY BELONGS TO ME. YOUR PUNISHMENT SHALL BE DEATH.”

The silky, snake-oil voice was gone, replaced by the full power of a supernatural entity. What was a mortal, pathetic rodent compared to the Master of Hell himself?

He was going to die. He’d failed to save his friend. His only friend.

If his soul was trapped in hell forever…if he had to suffer for all eternity, he deserved it. For his selfishness. For his callousness. For his failure.

“Please don’t hate me, Pinky…please don’t…” Brain choked out. He didn’t know where Pinky was. But if Pinky was watching, or listening, he could only ask that Pinky wouldn’t hate him.

He lay there, his determination gone, his lonely demise imminent.

“Narf! Zort! Poit! Troz!”

And the pressure vanished.

“Narf! Zort! Poit! Troz!”

A cacophony of Pinky’s favorite syllables sounded again and again and again. Though Pinky’s voice wasn’t among them, Brain still heard that oddly wonderful Cockney accent loud and clear.

“NO! PINKY IS MY PROPERTY!”

The Devil roared as dozens of lesser demons swarmed him, the pitchfork swinging wildly at anyone who dared to oppose his reign. Something screamed at Brain to find cover before he was caught in the power struggle too, but his body refused to obey any rational thoughts.

Several demons ripped the enormous pitchfork away from their master, and the weapon crashed into a wall and spiraled into the depths below. Other demons screeched and clawed at every part of the Devil they could reach. The Devil swatted one pig-snouted demon slashing away at a shoulder, and he flew over Brain and tumbled down the stairs, grunts of pain echoing off the walls.

Immediately, his nearest allies howled in fury and attacked with more vigor than before. They chomped on cloven hooves, they fended off every swipe, and shouted warnings to their comrades before the Devil’s wrath could reach them.

No longer was self-preservation their only concern. They were a united force now, one the Devil himself had underestimated severely.

With one final shove, the Devil toppled over the edge. The ground rumbled at his furious roar, which quickly decreased in volume as he fell into the abyss.

Brain’s heart pounded, but the Devil didn’t resurface. A resounding cheer went up from the demons, then two of them rushed past Brain, presumably to check on their downed ally.

The remaining demons watched Brain closely. He flinched under attention he didn’t want. He just wanted to leave this horrible place. Then he realized they weren’t exactly looking at him, but rather somewhere just above his head.

“Narf!” the demons shouted, hands raised to their foreheads in a salute.

There was only one explanation behind the sudden camaraderie.

Pinky.

Pinky had been helping him all this time. Somehow, he’d influenced selfish demons to unite against their cruel master and protect each other from serious injury. Somehow, he’d found a way to say narf despite his voiceless state.

Somehow, Pinky still wanted to save Brain, even after all he’d done.

“Thank you, Pinky,” Brain said softly.

He didn’t need to question Pinky’s presence any longer.

A cool, fresh breeze blew over Brain’s fur as he climbed the last step. The starry sky was clear once again. It was a nice view.

The demons stood aside to allow them safe passage. He kept an eye out for any hostility, but other than their natural weapons, there was none to be found. Whether it was out of respect for the trial he and Pinky had endured, or if they were just an unpredictable force and Pinky’s presence somehow warded them off, he didn’t know.

Brain stepped onto the cool asphalt of the DMV parking lot, and had this been a different circumstance entirely, he might’ve found it rather ironic that one would be glad to set their sights on a DMV. He shivered from the temperature difference, the chilly autumn air contrasting heavily from the sweltering inferno.

Pinky’s contract shimmered into existence , and Brain’s own agreement followed within seconds. Someone had stamped ‘VOID’ in red capital letters across the top page of both contracts, and fire blazed across the crimson ink and engulfed the papers entirely. The ash and smoke left behind were swiftly carried off by the night wind.

Just like that, their contracts were gone.

In his relief, Brain turned to face Pinky to properly share their victory.

IDIOT! If you turn around, Pinky will be claimed by the Devil. Your entire challenge would be for nothing!

And Brain’s foot stopped mid-turn.

The realization struck harshly.

He didn’t truly know if the Devil had a claim over Pinky’s soul. The lesser demons only bought them time to escape hell. Brain doubted they’d be able to hold their master back forever, even as a united front. But if the Devil came back, what then? Two lab mice couldn’t hope for a permanent victory against a powerful, malicious entity.

There was only one solution.

Brain could never look at Pinky again.

He didn’t trust himself to not slip up. Sooner or later, he’d forget that he couldn’t look. And Pinky would be gone again. Brain’s efforts would be in vain.

Hell wouldn’t be so accommodating the second time.

“Narf! Brain, I can say narf again!” a familiar voice exclaimed behind him.

Brain’s ears perked without any conscious input, but it was a minor loss of control in comparison to everything else he’d endured tonight.

He heard the clatter of pebbles and a swish of fallen leaves alongside a gentle tap of dancing feet against the asphalt. Pinky could interact with the environment again. He could dance and speak and produce all the noises he wanted. It was a small consolation, at least. The contract never said anything about never being able to hear Pinky again.

“Brain?” Pinky asked again. “Are you alright?”

Brain forced himself to stare at a white line that marked a parking space instead.

Don’t look, he chanted. You mustn’t look.

A featherlight touch landed on his shoulder, a gentle warmth not quite touching his back, but just close enough for him to feel its presence.

Brain hastily pulled away. He hated this feeling of helplessness, of being unable to function without physical reassurance. But he couldn’t accept Pinky’s touch either. It would just lead to further loss of control over his emotions, and he’d forget that he couldn’t look.

Pinky would have to leave ACME Labs and Brain forever. He would probably find it difficult at first, but he’d adapt. That’s just what he did.

Brain’s entire body ached. He just wanted to wash away the fire and brimstone, tend to his injuries, and sleep. It didn’t matter what he wanted to do after that. Even if he ignored the contract’s terms and tried to conquer the world again, it would never be the same.

He set off for the lab. Pinky followed, as always.

Maybe it was a selfish risk to not send Pinky away at this very moment, but he was grateful that Pinky would accompany him for one last after-failure trek.

o-o-o-o-o

He’d completely forgotten about his very brief stint as emperor. The only reminder from that timeframe was Snowball, who’d exchanged his jester cap and bells for the royal crown as soon as Brain abandoned his post to rescue Pinky.

ACME was no longer a mighty castle, but just another underfunded lab. Nobody chanted his name, called for their problems to be solved, or held signs that proclaimed Brain as their ruler. His statue had long vanished.

He didn’t want to see loyal subjects, enormous wealth, and undisputed power tonight. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever want them again.

Right now, he was just Brain, an exhausted, downtrodden lab mouse who would have to try to live without his only friend.

On the way back, Pinky had chattered about anything and everything, prattling on about cheese flavors, then about an inflatable reindeer someone had put up a month early, and finally to paint swatches so their section of the lab would be, according to him, ‘happy and go-lucky and livelier than a herd of hippopotamuses!’.

Brain said nothing. He just let Pinky talk. This might be the last time he’d ever hear that silly voice again.

“Maybe we could get some feng shui going, just like on HGTV! Zort!” Pinky said, and Brain could just imagine him scratching his head in a vain attempt to get any thoughts going. “Wait, no…we should paint radish roses on the walls! And make them with our radish rose whatchamawhozits! Twice the garnishes for our dinner parties! What color swatch should they be though? Raspberry rose? Rosemary? Oh, we should get one with a funny name! What do you think, Brai-oh, hey Snowball! Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Snowball scowled, stalking over to Brain and casting a contemptuous glare at Pinky. The loss of the hamster’s usurped power was still fresh in his twisted mind.

“My statue is gone thanks to whatever you did!” Snowball jabbed a finger into Brain’s chest. But Brain barely felt it. He didn’t feel anything towards Snowball at the moment. Not betrayal, not hatred, not even bittersweet nostalgia.

Brain only wanted rest.

“You should’ve stayed in hell,” Snowball growled. “He promised he’d keep you there.”

Brain placed his hand over Snowball’s finger, but he didn’t have the strength to push it away. The hamster raised an eyebrow at the lack of resistance.

“And he kept that promise, Snowball,” Brain said quietly. “Perhaps not in the way you expected, but he kept it.”

Snowball scoffed. He wasn’t convinced in the slightest.

The laboratory doors were wide open. It was a small consolation that he wouldn’t have to go through the mail slot.

“But…our contracts went up in smoke, Brain. Literally.” Pinky’s voice quivered. “And we’re on the lab’s doorstep too.”

It was time to break the news. Maybe he shouldn’t prolong the goodbye, but Pinky needed time to clean himself and pack his belongings.

“I wish to speak with Pinky. Leave, Snowball.��

“Fine,” Snowball spat, shoving past Brain. “I’ll talk to that blasted devil myself. Even his lawyers will have a difficult time against an entire corporation’s legal team.”

Once he was gone, Brain gestured for Pinky to follow him inside. The interior no longer held a throne, red carpet, or a golden wheel. Just their cage, several counters, and standard laboratory equipment.

Pinky made a valiant effort to hold his tears back, though he couldn’t completely stop all the whimpers from escaping. “P-poit. Nothing good ever comes out of wanting to talk,” he chuckled weakly.

“No, I suppose not,” Brain said. He gripped the side of a bottom drawer to give his hands something to do. His hands were scraped raw from climbing, though he relished the sting. Stings were only a small pain. He could handle small pain. More importantly, he couldn’t turn around, not even to see Pinky off for a proper goodbye.

You have to leave now. Thank you for everything. Goodbye, Pinky, his mind supplied.

It wasn’t enough. Whether it was one word or a million, they would never properly express everything he never said. What was he supposed to say to Pinky, who gave his soul away for Brain and never asked for anything in return?

“Brain, are you mad cause I didn’t help you?” Pinky asked. “Is that what this is about? Cause…I wanted to. I tried to push you up the steps, but I couldn’t feel you…and I tried shouting and cheering and yelling too! I…I don’t think you heard me. I’m sorry for being useless, Brain. You struggled so hard for me, and I was just useless!”

When Mr. Itch imposed his horrible terms, Pinky tried to cheer up Brain. Even when Brain had doubted, Pinky had been by his side. And he’d somehow inspired the demons to come to their aid.

That wasn’t useless. Not at all.

Even if Pinky hadn’t done all those things, Brain wouldn’t have held it against him. His anger was directed entirely towards the Devil himself.

“You’re not useless, Pinky,” Brain admitted. “I never should’ve implied it before this entire mess started. I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a while, only broken by the tap of Pinky’s feet on the tiles.

“Okay, I forgive you,” Pinky said. There were no strings attached. It always took Brain by surprise, how there were no additional requirements for Pinky’s forgiveness. “How come you won’t face me, Brain? I wanna see you.”

Brain took a deep breath. Best to get it out of the way. Get it done.

He couldn’t say done and over with. There was no over. He would never be the same without Pinky.

“I can’t see you, Pinky. I can’t look at you. Ever again. ” Brain pressed his head to the drawer, fighting the urge to turn around. “Don’t come any closer. You’ll just…it’ll make it harder on both of us.”

But Pinky’s footsteps drew closer. Of course they would.

“Make what harder?” Pinky echoed.

A warm hand fell on Brain’s shoulder, so different from blazing fire and cold wind, and something inside him broke.

“This goodbye, you idiot! He’ll come and he’ll take you again if I look at you! So leave at once for your own safety!” he yelled. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, parched from thirst and raw from fumes.

“Then what was the point?” Pinky’s hand tightened around Brain’s shoulder. “Why would you rescue me only so you could tell me to leave? Why would you come after me and get hurt so much? At least you’d have the world if I’d just stayed there!”

“I WOULDN’T HAVE THE WORLD IF YOU REMAINED IN HELL, PINKY!” Brain screamed back. “I WOULDN’T HAVE ANYTHING!”

Not the one that truly mattered, anyway.

Pinky’s long tail drooped, ears falling back. Tears spilled out of his blue eyes.

And Brain’s anger melted away, replaced by all-consuming fear. His temper struck again, and he’d forgotten.

He’d turned around.

And he was looking straight at Pinky, right into the sorrowful expression he wore.

“No,” Brain whispered, shaking his head as he put as much distance between himself and Pinky as he could. But his body wouldn’t cooperate. He only managed a few shaky steps backwards. The lab was always so big. Why did it feel so tiny now?

Pinky was close. Far too close.

He’d looked.

The Devil was coming.

Lurking in any shadow, ready to snatch Pinky.

“He’s coming, Pinky!” Brain cried. “You have to get out of here now!”

“Who’s coming?” Pinky asked, reaching for Brain again. “Brain, are you alright? Your ears are floppy.”

He wasn’t even trying to run.

“No, I can’t let him take you. Not again!” Brain quickly glanced around the room. Surely there had to be plenty of places for a mouse to hide!

But the drawers were far too obvious, desk items could be moved easily, and his mind wouldn’t work just like every plan he ever came up with didn’t work and his attempts to protect Pinky would end in failure and he failed even when he wasn’t after the world and he just wanted to do something good for once without failing miserably-

White filled his vision as he was pressed against a warm chest by a gentle arm. A strong heartbeat thumped against his ear. A hand gently slipped under his chin, tilting his head up until he was looking into reassuring, sky blue eyes.

Despite the tears, Pinky’s gaze promised only hope and light and companionship.

Then Pinky carefully touched the area Snowball had jabbed, the center of Brain’s forehead where the pitchfork almost crushed him, until his hand lingered on the cheek he’d elbowed during their fight on the podium.

Gentle. Kind. Worried.

And Brain cried. Pinky held him close, not complaining when Brain’s tears dampened his fur or when the leftover crimson dust smudged against him. Tears splashed against Brain’s head, and he wrapped his own arms around Pinky, just to let him know it was alright if he needed to release his tears too. He didn’t know if he was hugging too tightly or holding too loosely, nor did he know if his arms were in the correct position at all.

Brain stroked the fur along Pinky’s spine, hoping the gesture conveyed that he forgave Pinky for accidentally hurting him. He took Pinky’s tiny hum as a good sign.

Pinky had been deprived of all sensation. This was comfort for him, just the reassurance of touching Brain. Of being close to him.

They stayed that way until nothing was left but exhaustion and damp fur along their cheeks. Brain’s legs buckled, unable to hold him up any longer.

Pinky caught him. “It’s okay, Brain. I’ll carry you,” he said, and his tone left no room for argument.

Never once did Brain feel like he was going to fall during Pinky’s climb up the counter. He only relished the close contact.

But he had to let go all too soon.

Pinky set Brain on the counter, then brought him a thimble of water from their bottle. The cool water flowed down his throat, bringing him much needed relief. He sipped slowly, giving Pinky time to dampen several fluffy towels in the sink.

“Pinky, aren’t you tired?” Brain asked as he exchanged the thimble for three small towels. One was damp, another held strawberry-scented soap, and the last one was dry.

But Pinky shook his head, yawning loudly as he skipped away to clean himself as well. He made lots of noise as he freshened up, just to let Brain know he was there.

And with his mouth wide open too. It was rather uncouth, and despite his exhaustion, Brain rolled his eyes at just how Pinky-like that action was.

Brain made sure to use all three towels the way Pinky intended, scrubbing out the dust with the damp towel, and to his surprise, it came out rather easily, then rubbed the strawberry scented soap and clean water into his fur, and finally dried himself off with the last towel.

As he patted down his fur to try and get it into some order, Pinky came back. The messy tuft on his head stuck out in every possible direction, and so did the rest of his fur.

“You’re a mess,” Brain sighed as Pinky picked him up and carried him back to the cage. Pinky laughed softly as Brain flattened a particularly egregious tuft on Pinky’s shoulder. The acrid fire and brimstone scent was gone, and now they smelled of fresh strawberries.

They settled into their shared bed. Pinky set Brain down on his preferred side, then pulled away. Pinky frowned for the barest second, but it was quickly replaced by a gentle smile.

Yet he knew Pinky still needed physical contact.

And so did he.

“Pinky?” Brain whispered.

Pinky took that as an invitation to pull Brain into a secure hold. “Yes, Brain?”

“Don’t go…” Brain nuzzled into Pinky’s chest, into the odd yet comforting warmth he freely gave. One last stray tear slipped from his eye. “Please don’t go.”

Instead of replying with words, Pinky rested his jaw on top of Brain’s and hummed softly, the vibration soothing to his worried mind. His tail draped over Brain’s waist to anchor him.

“Just say narf, just say narf.

We’re alright, we’re okay, so let’s say narf.

You and I will have tomorrow nights again.

No matter what happens, I’m always your friend…”

The melody was soft, the rhythm reassuring. Brain closed his eyes and believed in Pinky’s familiar song.

They were together. Tomorrow night would come. He was sure of it.

End AN: So...I’ll be real, some parts of these were really hard for me to write cause I feel so bad for torturing them like this. Give them love guys. They need it.

#pinky and the brain #patb fanfiction #warning for torture

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megaboy335 · 4 years ago

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Mega’s Top 2020 Anime

The year 2020 is finally coming to an end. It’s been an unusual year to say the least. Coronavirus more or less almost cancelled the entire spring anime season, which lead to a strange anime schedule for the rest of the year since delays have trickle down effects to what was in the pipeline. To be completely honest, this was not a good year for anime. I watched only a handful of very good shows, and the rest were mediocre at best. The top 5 shows I talk about here are definitely worth watching at least.

So with the introduction out of the way, lets get into this. As usual this list is just my opinions. Don’t take it too seriously.

1) Kaguya-sama Love is War? (Season 2)

The second season of Kaguya-sama took everything from season 1 and brought it up a level. The visual gags became more impressive, the voice acting was just as good, and the show is delivering sharper writing as we get deeper into the manga.

Season 2 added two new notable aspects to the show. First, a new member to the main cast by the name of Iino. She adds a new angle to exploit for the skits as someone who adheres strictly to the rules. This often means Iino and Kaguya frequently bump heads. In fact how they interpret a situation can be entirely different, which creates numerous misunderstandings between them. Second, Kaguya-sama began expanding the skits into long form stories. There were a series of skits that form an arc spanning an entire episode, or in some cases multiple episodes. Episode 11 was the highlight of the season where Ishigami confronted his past to overcome the bad stigma surrounding his character. Additionally, the story added depth to his connection with Shirogane while making us realize there was more to Ishigami than meets the eye. Kaguya and Shirogane also both became a little closer as the tangled web of their schemes yielded unexpected results at times.

Kaguya-Sama has an ova and season 3 planned. I eagerly look forward to seeing what new crazy situations the characters find themselves in.

2) A Certain Scientific Railgun T (Season 3)

After waiting 6 years since the conclusion of season 2, the Railgun anime finally returned to adapt two more arcs from the manga.

The first half was a Railgun version of the Daissheisai Festival arc. This version focuses on a completely different event in the arc with a story involving Misaki, Misaka, and Dolly. It pulls us deeper into the story threads established in the Level Upper and Sisters arc of what the scientists were doing out of the public eye. We meet the original Misaka clone and how Misaki came to meet her which adds a new layer to the current Misaka and Misaki relationship that we never knew. We see how Misaki is also a victim of the dark experiments occurring behind the scenes in Academy City. The experiment to turn Misaka into a level 6 was a very hype moment. Railgun’s Daissheisai Festival arc definiely hit all the right notes.

The second half of Railgun season 3 was the Dream Ranker arc. Like in previous seasons, I found the 2nd cour arc to be weaker than the first half. Indian Poker is a fun concept, but didn’t cleanly tie into the overall story. I also found it weird how special cards that can exchange dreams suddenly exist out of nowhere. Additionally, this arc brought it characters from the Accelerator spin-off which I wasn’t familiar with. It had a few cool and funny moments scattered throughout. The final fight at least brought the conflict to a satisfying conclusion. The only thing holding back Railgun for me like always is my lack of knowledge of the greater Raildex universe. Hopefully this won’t be the last we see of Railgun in animated form because I picked up the manga and the next arc is pretty neat.

3) The Journey of Elaina

The Journey of Elania is an anthology-centric anime where we follow Elania on her adventures. The first episode is a prologue to how she became a witch and the origins of her ambitions. Episode 2-onwards follow a fairly straightforward template of Elania arriving at a new location. She notices something isn’t quite right or learns about something from a local. As the story unfolds, Elania often takes a backseat role and opts to watch things playout. An anime of this style always brings a mixed bag to the table with the kind of stories that are told within the universe. Each episode/adventure is only loosely connected through the main character Elania traveling to a new location, but otherwise they are mostly independent besides a handful of recurring characters.

Naturally this format means there are both great and not so good episodes. There are bitter sweet tales, comedic, and even a few darker entries mixed within this show. In particular, there were a few standout episodes that cemented this show as something worth watching. Episode 7 was a comedy episode split into two halves. One half showed how two towns divided by a wall were ironically doing the same thing to the wall on each side. The second half recalled how Elania accidentally started a grape stomping tradition in a tiny village. Then there was episode 9, the darkest entry of the show so far, when Elania went back in time to help someone save their childhood friend. However, this person came to realize she hardly knew what her childhood friend was really like. Lastly, the last episode was unexpectedly deep where Elania met various alternate versions of herself and had to confront a dark version spawn from the events in episode 8. It showed how her journey can take all sorts of directions if events had transpired even a little differently.

A high part of the appeal to me was never knowing what kind of story we would get each week. Was it going to be light-hearted? Serious? Would it focus on Elania or not? Her adventures were certainly full of unexpected happenings. The light novels are 17 volumes in and still going. I wouldn’t mind seeing more if they ever wanted to make another season.

4) Tonikaku Kawaii

From the prolific author Kenjiro Hata comes an anime adaptation of his newest work under the “Crunchyroll Originals” label. The story is simply about a guy who is head over heels for his new wife and can’t get over how awesome it is living with her. Tonikaku Kawaii is a simple show that chooses to highlight the little moments between our main couple Nasa and Tsukasa. We go through all sorts of everyday events with them such as the act of buying a ring, a new television, bedding, and meeting each other’s family. All the characters are so earnest you can’t help but enjoy their silly banter. There is little to no drama here to drive the story forward. You just get to enjoy a newlywed couple discovering new things about each other as they go through everyday life.

However, at the end of the day Tonikaku Kawaii is far from complete and is honestly the type of show that likely wouldn’t make my list most years. It hardly scratched its overarching story during the 1 cour run. The thing that put it over the top for me was simply how likable each of its characters were. They all present their emotions like an open book and you come to enjoy the little quirks of each one. I was slightly confused at how this show became a “Crunchyroll Original” when anything by Hata would have probably gotten an anime sooner or later. There are plenty of other Weekly Shonen Sunday series that could really use an outside force to help them get animated. I can only hope it did well enough for Crunchyroll to consider investing into more from the magazine .

5) Ahiru no Sora

As usual, my list usually contains at least 1 show that began in the previous year. Ahiru no Sora is an anime that not a lot of people watched, but became one of my favorites each week. This is a 4 cour basketball series about a main character named Sora who is too short for basketball. Despite this set-back, he has a deep passion for the game imparted from his mother and wishes to someday find the same success as she did at the sport. The story begins when he enrolls in a new school and has to build the basketball club from scratch. However, the catch is the basketball team is basically non-existent. He ends up creating a team from a group of unlikely people: the ones who were bullying him. Ahiru no Sora presents a down to earth human side to the sport. There are no fantasy or supernatural elements found in this story. It follows a group of rough around the edges guys whose lives gets back in order through playing basketball together.

All of the main characters go through a decent amount of growth as their personal stories are explored, and Sora especially is taken through a series of events that allow his character to grow more than anyone. I was pleasantly surprised at how emotional it got at times. There was some real heart put into this series. In the middle of the show it genuinely felt the team had hit rock bottom. They lost a major game, the club room was lit on fire, and Sora lost his mother all right in a row. It was the recovery from that period and how each member matured from their experiences that solidified Ahiru no Sora as one of the top shows this year. The only thing holding back the show is that it's left incomplete since the manga is on-going (and actually on hiatus at the moment). I hope there will be an opportunity down the road to have more episodes.

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Disappointments of 2020

1) Deca Dence

I enjoyed Death Parade, Mob Psycho 100, and Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer was pretty good too. So I figured another original anime from Tachikawa Yuzuru would be something I would like, and yet Deca Dence barely resonated with me. I could never wrap my mind around the setting of the show where robots would enter an alternate world called “Deca Dence” for sport or how these robots had a human persona in the game. The humans were effectively NPCs in the game to the eyes of the robots. The show no doubt had a story it wanted to tell, and it certainly went through the plot beats it wanted to hit, yet I could never get invested in the show. I’m still looking forward to whatever Tachikawa Yuzuru does next. I’ll just consider this as something was not for me.

2) The Day I Became God

This show marks Jun Meada’s 3rd anime original project with P.A. Works. I understand that Angel Beats and Charlotte are flawed shows, but that did not stop them from being enjoyable for me. This unfortunately did not apply to The Day I Became God. At a base level it has many of the usual troupes you would expect from a Jun Meada title: the humor, baseball, an emotionally driven story. The place where this shows failed hard was having no backbone to back up the story it was trying to present. I enjoyed the comedy in the early episodes quite a bit and was somewhat intrigued by a subplot in the background that was slowly creeping up on the main plot. Ending each episode on a countdown to the end of the world helped to keep a looming sense of unease during the early part of the show.

Then in typical Jun Meada fashion, the plot of the show hit all at once. Episode 9 was the big climax where the subplot and main plot collided to send the show into its “true” storyline. The hacker kid who uncovered everything about Hina in the early part was poorly utilized and underdeveloped. So when he joins our main group in episode 10 for a short period of time, his presence makes very little sense. I can only describe that part as a 10 hour VN plot condensed into 10 minutes. The male lead Narukami has almost no personal stake in the story. Hina is hilarious in the comedy episodes, but lacks any sufficient character arc built up to carry her into the final section. Jun Meada is trying to sell this as a love story between Narukami and Hina, but I just don’t see it. Narukami spent at least half the summer trying to wow his childhood friend only to suddenly change at the last minute. It felt so haphazardly put together.

The Day I Became God is an extremely bare bones Jun Meada story. It goes through the motions of similar elements to his previous works, but comes out feeling emotionally hollow. While Angel Beats and Charlotte also felt rushed in the grand scheme, I can at least say he got the emotional aspect right. This will be remembered as one of, if not Jun Meada’s weakest title.

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Top OPs/EDs of the Year

1) Jujutsu Kaisen Opening 1 - The song is great, but it’s the visuals that really sell this opening. Each shot is brilliantly connected to showcase how everything in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen is layered. There is far more than what meets in the eye in our surroundings. Curses and humans co-mingle more than you might think.

2) A Certain Scientific Railgun T Opening 1 - There still hasn’t been a bad Railgun opening yet. Flipside once again delivers a song that once again never failed gets me in the mood for the episode each week. The visuals highlight some of the best action moments in the arc too.

3) Black Clover Opening 10 - Unlike the other songs on the list this year, this a slower somber song. It always makes me think of Nero’s backstory and how the story was leading up to the fight versus the devil. The black and white aesthetic with rain conveys how everything is laid bare for this major story climax.

4) Kaguya-Sama Love is War? Opening - Just like how this season is more character focused, the opening animation is basically a 90 second skit. It never fails to get to get me in the mindset for the hijinks that are ahead in the episode. The song itself is also a great follow up to the previous opening.

5) Rent-a-Girlfriend Opening - It’s a colorful opening that highlights the best aspects of each character. It completely conveys what the show is about with some nice music. I love how fun and upbeat this opening is. It definitely helped to set the tone for the episodes each week.

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....and so, that brings 2020 to a close. The North American anime scene is shifting once again with Sony buying out Crunchyroll. Hopefully the result of the merger keeps Crunchyroll as an entity alive. I’ll be curious to see how everything shakes out. In the coming year I am most looking forward to Chainsaw Man’s anime. The manga is quite an experience and anime viewers will be spinning their heads over learning how such a series was published in Weekly Shonen Jump. I think it has a good chance of being one of the most talked about shows in the new year.

Lets hope 2021 is a good one.

#Mega's Words

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davidmann95 · 5 years ago

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Your power is mine: thoughts on Kingdom Hearts’ newest, oddest character

Finished Final Fantasy XV over the weekend. Mixed feelings to say the least, but it does give me an excuse to talk about Kingdom Hearts again, specifically this weirdo:

And how it feels like most of the people discussing Yozora and trying to figure out what his deal is are missing half the point. Yes, there’s the apparent connections to Sora and Riku, and there’s his meta association with Noctis and the entire real-life corporate backstory there intertwining with the in-game narrative to an unknown extent. But when he’s discussed as some kind of fusion of Sora and Riku, or a literal reincarnation of Noctis, or that Verum Rex might end up a real game, or something similarly straightforward in terms of “he’s going to be a very important central character going forward”, the ideas or at least the tone of how they’re presented seem to miss an absolutely critical component of how he was introduced to us, in a way that shapes not only him but by extension the entire future of the franchise and its thematic concerns:

We aren’t just supposed to be surprised he’s important because he’s real where we thought he wasn’t. We’re supposed to be surprised because he’s introduced to us as a self-evident gag character.

Not that we’re not supposed to take him seriously where it counts: it’s clear he has an important role going forward and is a force to be reckoned with. But no matter what deep, foreboding connections to the Keyblade and Master of Masters may lie within his backstory that may determine the fate of more universes than one, he will never not have had the hilariously inauspicious beginning of being a toy played by Rex the Dinosaur. He doesn’t even have the dignity of being introduced as a game on one of the plot-heavy original worlds! He’s a throwaway gimmick to spice up one of the filler Disney segments, literally a child’s plaything.

Even before we learn the context he’s being presented in...well, look at him. He’s like Riku, who’s cooler than Sora, and Noctis, a Final Fantasy character and therefore cooler than all this Disney stuff, but also he has a LASER SWORD and a CROSSBOW - that are clearly functioning as cool future tech instead of dopey magical powers - and his eyes are MYSTERIOUS MISMATCHING UNNATURAL COLORS and he fights GIANT ROBOTS with a dude in a fedora in a city straight out of the REAL WORLD to save a helpless lady/prize: truly, let no mistake be made, he is VERY, VERY SERIOUS INDEED, AND ALSO, RAD. TO THE MAX. He’s every attempt at reframing contemporary Final Fantasy as slick and modern and cool dialed up and up and up until the tone breaks, without the barest hint of self-awareness even as it advertises its action figure tie-ins. I don’t think that his little Keyblade pattern on his jacket being near-impossible to spot unless you’re looking for it is just to preserve the surprise, but also because the sight of the big keys with the Mickey Mouse logo on them would be anathema to his entire vibe, so important as it may be it must be squirreled away where it can’t make him look dumb. Heck, when Dylan Spouse announced on Twitter he was playing this major character in a childhood favorite franchise of his, surely knowing more than we do about Yozora, his description of the part was “I have lived out my edgy JRPG character fantasies...I even got to say ‘Sorry, but I don’t lose.’” We’re supposed to receive him off the bat as Square Enix, and more specifically Tetsuya Nomura, poking fun at themselves, going ‘yes, we suppose this is all getting to be a bit much, isn’t it?’

And then he enters the story for real.

Obviously he’s much more than a joke now, but the idea of him as something off, something that doesn’t fit in these games, endures. His episode isn’t just in a modern cityscape but skinned in the graphics of the grittier, more detailed style of the Pirates of the Caribbean world meant to evoke photorealism rather than the look of the rest of the game. He interferes with the gameplay in ways no other enemy does, stealing your items and weapons (we’ll get back to that). When he casts you into a void to be attacked by the mechs, it’s not a pure empty white but a mass of abstract polygonal space, evocative of the visuals of early game development. What details we do get of his backstory frame him as a counterpart to Sora on a parallel journey all his own, but the associations with his other source material in Noctis are considerably more...cutting. Credit to @kitsoa, whose own extensive musings on Kingdom Hearts’ increasingly overt metafictional concerns brought to my attention the obvious parallel: that Yozora being changed ‘beyond recognition’ with his heart replaced by another’s is a reasonable, albeit scathing description of Noctis’s revised character in the shift from the Nomura-helmed Final Fantasy Versus XIII to the largely overhauled Final Fantasy XV (and by the same token, the Nameless Star’s identity being stolen comes across as a shot at Versus XIII’s Stella Nox Fleuret being entirely replaced by Lady Lunafreya. Who, by sheer coincidence, would have been corrupted in planned but cancelled DLC into a monster of darkness).

While the comparisons to his source material are not only intentional but textually overt - his introduction as a real boy is literally scored to the FFXV theme music - so is the distancing from that material, given that if Nomura simply wanted to use Noctis the very premise of Kingdom Hearts as a series could have allowed him to use Noctis, and even change him to fit his original vision however he wished given the design and backstory changes to the other Final Fantasy characters involved. Yozora has a distinct role in which he’s still meant to represent that tone and aesthetic, and all signs point to that being because as that representation, he hardly seems an endorsement. He’s a parody, offered up in a demeaning context and tangled up narratively in real-life creative bitterness before being placed as an antagonist, however well-meaning (though keep in mind every secret boss of his kind before - other than Julius, I suppose - went on to become an endgame boss later on), in the player’s path. He may not be a villain, but all signs seem to indicate he’s a figure to be regarded as a contrast to the heroes.

And it’s in that role as a contrast that I have my own theories about what his deal ultimately is, thematically if not plotwise.

For those who saw this in the Kingdom Hearts tag and aren’t superhero fans, that’s Superdoomsday, introduced in Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics about 8 years ago. One among many takes on an ‘evil Superman’ from a parallel universe, the twist with his world is that rather than a survivor of Krypton, he is literally the materialized concept of Superman - imagined by his reality’s Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen, who created a machine which could bring ideas to life - that when sold to a corporation was reimagined in service of wide public appeal into an all-powerful, uncompromisingly brutal monstrosity clad in armor somewhere between an iPhone, 90s Rob Liefeld battle gear, and Nazi regalia, who ultimately journeyed into the multiverse to stalk and kill other incarnations of Superman, seeing them as competition to his domination of the ‘market’. “The curse...of Superman...” murmurs the dying Kent of that world, “...he becomes anything you want...him...to be...our world...wanted that...”

Yozora is...probably not exactly a 1:1 to that. But as a counterpart to Sora, it absolutely seems as if the main factor by which he contrasts him is that he’s ostensibly the sleeker, edgier model, new-and-improved. He reworks Sora’s story arc and aesthetic into something theoretically cooler and more palatable, steals his power, ‘saves’ him by sealing him away to presumably fight in his stead and thereby take his place as the lead. He is the protagonist so many feel Kingdom Hearts has needed for years, the somber AMV-ready Secret Movie tone and aesthetic stepping into center stage at last rather than maintaining a sunshiney Disney-esque child hero lead to anchor the assorted conspiracies and horrors of much of the rest of the tale. The manner in which he is presented as to make metatextuality an in-universe concern (to call back to Grant Morrison again, his next work after Action Comics was Multiversity, where a major plot point was that the events of parallel universes were unwittingly documented in each others’ pop culture; in that case comic books, in here video games) for Kingdom Hearts to explore in the next main entry is I believe so as to ask what, in fact, Kingdom Hearts as a series should be; is it a Disney series with some incidental Final Fantasy stuff in it? A Final Fantasy spinoff with some Disney elements cluttering it up that should maybe be discarded as it grows up? Something all its own? Is it time for Kingdom Hearts to get Serious? Even if the Kingdom Hearts as imagined by a marketing executive vision of Verum Rex isn’t what’s next, what is, as things get darker and that vision is now part of the narrative whether for good or ill?

So yeah it looks like Kingdom Hearts IV is Kingdom Hearts vs. its own Gritty Realworld! Urban Fantasy AU fanfiction for the soul of the series, and I am extremely here for it.

#Yozora #Kingdom Hearts #Sora #Final Fantasy XV #Final Fantasy Versus XIII #Final Fantasy #Kingdom Hearts IV #Grant Morrison #Analysis #Opinion

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cristinablackthornkingson · 5 years ago

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Arc of a Scythe Short Story #2.

It is a cool Autumn day in the year of the Ox, three years after the events on Atoll, when 23 year old Greyson Tolliver and 23 old Jericho Soberains receive the news that will forever change their lives.

Greyson and Jeri have been together for 3 years now, after the rockets on Atoll launched into space, they left Atoll and traveled around for about a year, getting to know each other and their relationship.

After a year of being together, when they were docked in Thailand, Jeri proposed to Greyson. They had just gotten back to their hotel, after exploring Bangkok. Greyson was an exhausted sweaty mess, while somehow Jeri was cool and calm as ever. Greyson had been sitting in a chair in the hotel room, texting one of his sister’s, when Jeri knelt in front of him. At first Greyson didn’t think anything of it, he thought Jeri was looking for something, but then Jeri pulled out a ring, a silver band encrusted with sparkling diamonds and presented it to Greyson, asking him to marry them. Greyson had been stunned for a few minutes, before he threw himself at Jeri, hugging them tightly and accepting the proposal through tears of joy.

They had a year long engagement, during which time they settled down in North Merica, often visiting Jeri’s homeland of Madagascar.

Their wedding was very small and private, with only a few friends there to celebrate with them.

Shortly after the wedding, Jeri brought up the idea of having children, Greyson and Jeri had talked about having children before, but nothing serious, simply that they both wanted to have children eventually, and both wanted to adopt. When Jeri brought it up after the wedding, they talked seriously about it, and decided they wanted to start a family as soon as possible. After that, they got working on the adoption process, sorting out their home study, legal work, etc. It took them 6 months to complete all the paperwork, and for the past 6 months they’ve been waiting to be matched with a baby or expectant parent.

Today was meant to be an ordinary, calm and relaxed day for the young couple. Right now Jeri is lying on the sofa, watching TV, while Greyson lays curled into Jeri’s side, his head on their chest, reading a book. Neither of them expect to be interrupted in anyway, so when the loud shrill ringing of Greyson’s phone pulls them from their relaxed, sleepy state, it startles them both, making them jump.

“Hello?” Greyson answers his phone, as Jeri turns the volume of the TV down.

“Greyson, is now a good time to talk?” The voice of he and Jeri’s adoption agent Caroline, comes down the line. His heart starts racing at this, knowing that an adoption agent hardly ever calls with anything but good news.

“Yeah, it is.” Greyson says, pulling the phone away from his ear and putting in on speaker so Jeri can hear this too.

“I’ve got some good news for you Greyson, you remember the case you presented for a few days ago? The expectant mother who was being induced last night?” Caroline asks.

“Yeah.” Greyson says in a breathless tone, reaching out and grabbing Jeri’s hand.

“Well she’s made her decision and I am very happy to tell you that she has chosen you and Jericho. The baby was born at 8:00 A.M. this morning, a healthy little girl.” Jeri stares at Greyson, open mouthed and wide eyed, hardly able to believe what they’ve just heard.

“Oh my god, that... that’s amazing. W-what do we do now? When can we meet the baby and take her home?” Greyson asks.

“Well the mother is due to sign her rights over in the morning, then there is still a 48 hour revocation period, in which she can change her mind.

What usually happens there is the baby either stays with their birth parent, or goes into foster care for those 48 hours, in this case the mother has decided not to keep the baby with her during that time so she’ll be with a short term foster family for two days, then if the mother doesn’t change her mind, you’ll take custody of the baby, and bring her home.

It will take another few months to finalize everything, but once the mother has signed over her rights and those 2 days are over, the baby is yours.” Caroline explains. Greyson and Jeri exchange a look, and Greyson can tell from the look in Jeri’s eyes that they don’t want the baby to be in foster care for those two days, where she will bond with her care takers only for that bond to be broken one way or another 2 days later, which will traumatize her. It’s much better for the baby to break as few bonds as possible, it would be better if Jeri and Greyson could care for her for those two days, then one way or the other, there will be as little trauma for the baby as possible.

“Caroline, is it at all possible for Jeri and I to care for the baby, for those two days? If the mother changes her mind, we’ll bring the baby straight back to her, we swear, we just hate the idea of her going into foster care and bonding with her carers for those 48 hours, then having to have that bond broken one way or another. At least if we care for her for those 2 days, she’ll have as few broken bonds as possible, either way.” Greyson asks in a tight tone. He knows if they bond with the baby, and the birth mother changes her mind, it will hurt like hell for he and Jeri, but it’s better that they get hurt, than the baby gets hurt.

“Well yes, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do.” Caroline says.

“It is, it really, really is.” Greyson says, squeezing Jeri’s hand.

“Alright, well if all goes as planned, the baby will be discharged from the hospital at 2:00 P.M. tomorrow, so why don’t you come to the adoption agency for about 2:30 P.M. and you can meet the baby, and take her home.” Jeri and Greyson grin and Jeri leans in to kiss Greyson on the cheek.

“Sounds perfect, we’ll see you then.” Greyson says, before hanging up and turning to Jeri. “This is terrifying.” He says in a breathy tone. Jeri nods and cups Greyson’s cheek.

“Yes, it is but we always knew it would be, from the get go. Adoption is bitter-sweet, someone looses out and gets hurt one way or the other, either us or the mom, but what matters is that the baby doesn’t get hurt.” Jeri softly says, stroking Greyson’s cheek. Greyson smiles and leans into the touch, kissing Jeri’s palm.

“You’re right, of course you are. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The next day, Greyson and Jeri arrive at the adoption agency just before 2:30 P.M., already having received a text from Caroline letting them know that she is back from the hospital and is in the adoption center, with the baby.

“You ready?” Jeri asks Greyson, as they approach the steps leading up to the building. Greyson nods and slips his hand into Jeri’s.

“As I’ll ever be.”

They walk up the steps and into the building, where they are immediately met by Caroline, with a car seat at her feet, containing a bundle of blankets. The baby is wrapped up well, you can barely see her, apart from her little hand peeking out from one of the blankets.

“Well hello, you ready to meet her?” Caroline asks, bending down to unbuckle the baby. “Who wants to hold her first?” She adds, as Jeri and Greyson settle on the sofa against the wall.

“Jeri, Jeri’s going to hold her first.” Greyson announces. They hadn’t discussed who would hold the baby first, but it feels right that Jeri be the one to hold her first, for some reason.

“Alright, here you go.” Caroline says, gently and carefully lowering the baby into Jeri’s arms. Jeri’s breath hitches in their throat and tears well up in their eyes.

“Hello.” Jeri quietly says in a teary tone. “Sweet baby, you’re so beautiful.”

Greyson reaches out and strokes the baby’s dark hair with the back of his finger. The baby has dark skin, the same shade as Jeri’s, chubby little cheeks, lips like rose petals, and big brown eyes. She really is one of the most beautiful people Greyson has ever seen, she is perfect.

“I’ll give you three some privacy.” Caroline quietly says, before stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her.

“Baby, I’m your Nini and this is your daddy, we love you so much, and waited for you for so long. I really hope we do get the pleasure of being your parents and getting to raise you.” Jeri softly and quietly says, as Greyson wraps his arm around Jeri’s waist, slipping the other underneath Jeri’s arm that is cradling the baby. Seeing this baby, that he and Jeri might not even get to raise, he simply cannot understand people like his parents, who have child after child after child, and then abandon them like they’re nothing, he doesn’t understand why the Thunderhead ever allowed it.

Over the next two days, Jeri and Greyson take it easy and simply take time out to love over the baby and bond with her, making sure she has an amazing first two days of life, full of warm milk, snuggles and kisses and lots and lots of love. Though all the time, they are nervously waiting for the phone to ring and for Caroline to tell them the birth mom has changed her mind. But, thankfully it never happens, and at 8:00 A.M. two days after the baby’s birth, she officially becomes the newest member of the Soberains-Tolliver family.

Right now, both Greyson and Jeri are lying in bed, with the baby curled up on Jeri’s chest and Greyson lying curled into Jeri’s side.

“So, what should we call her?” Greyson asks, stroking the baby’s dark curls.

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve been thinking that I’d like to give her a nautical themed name, since the sea and being the Captain of a ship was such a huge part of my life. I’ve been looking up some names, how do you feel about Isla Cordelia Soberains-Tolliver?” Jeri asks. They’ve had this name in mind since they met the baby, but of course they and Greyson did not want to name her while she wasn't officially theirs, but every time Jeri looked at her, they could only think of her as Isla Cordelia.

“Isla, Isla Cordelia Soberains-Tolliver, yeah I like it. What do you think baby, do you like that name?” Greyson coos, stroking her cheek. The baby doesn’t stir, and continues to sleep peacefully. “Ignoring me already, we’re going to have fun when you’re a teenager.” He adds with a smile. Jeri laughs and kisses the baby’s head before placing a quick kiss on Greyson’s lips.

“So you like it? The name?” Jeri asks. Greyson nods.

“I love it.”

That evening, while Jeri makes up some bottles of formula for Isla, in the kitchen, Greyson sits with her in the living room, unable to tear his eyes away from her.

As Greyson watches Isla taking in all her surroundings, he makes a split second decision, that (without him yet knowing) will change everything, forever.

He reaches over to the coffee table and picks up an ear piece that he bought on a whim, a few months ago. Holding Isla in one arm, Greyson slips the earpiece into his ear, and takes a deep breath.

“Thunderhead.” He quietly says in a shaky tone. “Thunderhead, are you there?” There is silence for a few seconds, in which Greyson feels like his heart is about to burst out of his chest, before a familiar, calm voice replies.

“Good evening, Greyson.” Greyson closes his eyes, as the voice of the Thunderhead brings memories flooding back. He takes a shaky breath and holds Isla close, before speaking again.

“I know it’s been a long time since I spoke to you, you know why that is, and honestly I didn’t intended to speak to you again anytime soon, but then I became a dad and I... well I want my daughter to know you, since you basically brought me up and were my only friend for a long time. So, Thunderhead, I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, Isla Cordelia Soberains-Tolliver.”

Again there is a brief silence, before the Thunderhead replies.

“She is beautiful Greyson, congratulations. You are going to be a wonderful father.” It says.

“I... I’m never going to forgive you for taking over Jeri’s body without their permission like that, for using them, and Jeri and Isla are always going to come first now, they’re my family now, but... I do think Isla should have the choice to talk to you when she’s older, so I will talk to you again, provided you’re not going to make Isla unsavory too?” Greyson asks, with a hint of bitterness in his tone.

“No, of course I will not make her unsavory.” The Thunderhead replies. Greyson nods curtly.

“Okay, well... I’m going to spend some time with my family now, maybe I’ll contact you again tomorrow. Bye, Thunderhead.” Greyson says.

“Goodbye, Greyson.” And with that, Greyson removes his earpiece and leans back against the sofa, with a sigh.

A few seconds later, Greyson begins to hear shouting out on the streets, and is about to get up and see what is going on, when Jeri rushes into the room, a look of shock and disbelief on their face.

“Greyson, you’re not going to believe this!” Jeri exclaims.

“What? What’s going on?” Greyson asks in a confused tone, getting up from the sofa and crossing the room to meet Jeri.

“I... I’m not unsavory anymore, I was using my phone to check the time, and suddenly the big red U just vanished.” Jeri explains in a breathless tone of disbelief. Greyson’s eyes grow wide in shock.

“I... Jeri, I just spoke to The Thunderhead for the first time in three years, I introduced Isla to it and told it I want Isla to be able to talk to it as she grows up, if that’s what she wants. Do you... do you think it took away your unsavory status because it knows how much I love you, and how much you mean to me?” Greyson asks. Is it possible that this is the Thunderhead’s way of apologizing to Jeri?

“Maybe, can you ask it?” Jeri asks. Greyson nods and grabs the ear piece again, quickly slipping into his ear.

“Thunderhead,Thunderhead are you listening?” He demands.

“Yes Greyson, I am.” The Thunderhead replies.

“Did you take away Jeri’s unsavory status? Did you do it because I love them, as an apology to them?” Greyson asks.

“Yes, yes I removed Jericho’s unsavory status because you love them, because they mean so much to you, and yes I also did at as a way of apologies. But Jericho is not the only one I have redeemed. Everyone that I made Unsavory after the sinking of Endura, is now no longer so. Being introduced to your daughter, Greyson, has given me a new faith in humanity and so I have decided to forgive them.” Greyson and Jeri share a look, of both delight and disbelief. They know the Thunderhead isn’t messing around, it never does, and certainly not about something this serious.

“I... okay, thank you.” Greyson says, before pulling the earpiece out and looking down at Isla, nestled in his arms, still taking in all her surroundings.

“Jeri, I think our daughter just kind of saved humanity.” Greyson says in a serious tone. Jeri laughs and nods, as Isla wraps a tiny hand around Jeri’s finger.

“Yes, yes I think she did. Greyson, if people know The Thunderhead forgave humanity, because of Isla, she’s going to be famous, like you were when you were The Toll, people will want to meet her and see her, it could ruin her childhood.” Jeri says in a tone of concern. They don’t want their daughter to be a celebrity figure to the world, they want her to have a normal, ordinary childhood.

“I know The Thunderhead, and it’s not going to tell everyone exactly why it chose to forgave them, especially not when it involves an innocent baby like Isla. The Thunderhead won’t tell everyone, so if we don’t either, no one has to know. We can tell Isla when she’s older and then she can make the choice of whether or not to go public with it.” Greyson says. Jeri nods and their shoulders droop in relief.

A few hours later, while Isla naps, Greyson and Jeri place her in the middle of the bed and lie on either side of her, Greyson holding and stroking her little hand while Jeri strokes her thick black curls, both of them admiring their beautiful daughter.

“I can’t believe we get to raise her and be her parents.” Jeri quietly says. Jeri has only really started wanting to have a child, in the last 2 years, since they and Greyson got married, but every time they presented for an adoption case but were not chosen, Jeri’s heart broke a little, they desperately wanted to be a parent and it had begun to feel like it was never going to happen, but then Isla came along and put Jeri’s heart back together and made them the happiest person in the world.

“Neither can I, I feel like the happiest man on earth, I have such a perfect family, like I always wanted. I love you, both you of you.” Greyson softly says, leaning up to kiss Jeri.

That night, Jeri and Greyson are awoken to Isla’s loud, high pitched cries. The sound breaks Jeri’s heart, and they quickly get out of the bed and scoop Isla up into their arms, kissing her forehead and holding her close.

“It’s alright sweetheart, I’ve got you. What’s wrong huh? Are you hungry?” Jeri coos, lightly bouncing her.

When Isla hears Jeri’s voice, her cries immediately die down and she snuggles into Jeri’s chest, gripping Jeri’s shirt with her tiny hand, nuzzling her head into Jeri’s chest.

“Oh sweet little baby, were you lonely? Did you miss me?” Jeri quietly says, kissing Isla’s forehead and taking a minute to revel in the weight of her in their arms. “Come on, lets go out into the living room so we don’t wake your dad, he’s a grump when he first wakes up.” Jeri adds in an amused tone. Greyson is not a morning person, and can barely function before 9:00 A.M., if he has to get up before 9 he is a total grump and takes at least half an hour to fully wake up, but Jeri doesn't mind of course. Jeri loves how Greyson’s hair looks first thing in the morning, and thinks his grumpiness is adorable, Jeri loves to greet Greyson in the kitchen in the morning, with a cup of coffee and a kiss.

Half an hour later, as Jeri stands in front of the living room window, with Isla cradled in one arm, suckling on her bottle, Jeri feels a pair of arms slip around their waist, startling them from their thoughts.

“Hello gorgeous, what are you two doing up?” Greyson quietly asks, placing a kiss on Jeri’s shoulder before resting his head on Jeri’s shoulder.

“Isla was hungry, and she missed me.” Jeri replies, gazing down at Isla.

“Oh? Did she not miss me?” Greyson asks in a teasing tone. Jeri laughs lightly and says

“No, only me, but I missed you.” Greyson grins and leans in to kiss Jeri on the lips.

“I missed you too, come back to bed.” Jeri sets Isla’s bottle down, as she finishes eating, shifting her so that she is held against Jeri’s shoulder.

“Alright, I should wash her bottle but I’ll do it in the morning.”

Soon the small family are curled up together in bed, Isla laying stretched out on Jeri’s bare chest, as Jeri rubs soothing circles on her back, and Greyson curled into Jeri’s side, one of Jeri’s arms around him.

Greyson falls back to sleep almost instantly, as does Isla, but it takes a while longer for Jeri to drift back off, though Jeri does eventually get back to sleep, happier than they have been, possibly in all their life.

The next morning, Jeri is awoken to the sun shining in through the window and onto Jeri’s face. Jeri groans and rubs at their eyes, their arms automatically coming up to encircle Isla, on their chest. However, when Jeri goes to put their arms around their daughter, they find Isla is not there, nor is she in her bassinet, and Greyson isn’t in bed either.

Jeri gets up and throws on a light bathrobe over their bare chest and old sweat pants, wondering if Greyson has taken Isla out for a walk or something.

When Jeri walks into the living room, they are met with possibly the most beautiful sight in the world. On the sofa, are Greyson and Isla, side by side, Isla propped up by the back of the sofa. With one hand, Greyson is drinking a mug of coffee, and with the other he is holding a bottle of milk to Isla’s mouth, and both her hands are around the bottle. It is such a beautiful father daughter scene, Jeri feels as though their heart may melt.

“Ah so Isla’s getting in our morning routine is she? You have your coffee, I have my tea and Isla has her milk?” Jeri asks in a teasing, amused tone, coming around to the front of the sofa and bending to kiss Greyson before kissing Isla’s forehead.

“You got that right, it’s a Soberains-Tolliver family tradition now, to have a hot drink in the morning, with your family.” Greyson says, beaming up at Jeri.

“Well I like the sound of that, I like the sound of it very much.”

1 year later, on the morning of Isla’s first birthday, Jeri sits at the kitchen table, one arm resting on the table, watching Greyson sitting on the floor beside Isla, who is playing with her toys. Jeri is drinking tea, Greyson is drinking coffee, and Isla is drinking warm milk, which she keeps pretending to hand to Greyson and then pulling away at the last minute, laughing herself silly each time.

Jeri can still hardly believe what a perfect family they have, and how privileged they and Greyson have been to love and raise Isla and be her parents, it is certainly one of the best things Jeri has ever done.

As Jeri observes their husband and daughter playing together and laughing and smiling, they make a decision to mention something to Greyson, that has been on their mind since Isla was about 10 months old.

“We should have another one.” Jeri says in a direct tone, hoping Greyson will feel the same way.

When Greyson turns to look at Jeri, his eyes have gone wide, but there is also a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He looks between Isla and Jeri, and thinks for a moment, before nodding and saying

“Yeah, okay, let’s have another baby.”

Just want to give a big thank you to a friend from the AOAS group chat here on Tumblr, who would prefer to remain anonymous, for allowing me to use their headcannon of The Thunderhead being introduced to Greyson and Jeri’s baby and then forgiving humanity, it’s such a great idea and thank you for letting me use it!

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 6 years ago

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Humans are Weird “ Lime Green Headphones”

Thank’s for reading guys, and as usual feel free to ask questions, comment, critique suggest ideas or message me. I love any and all of the above.

This story was adapted based on an idea one of you gave me, so your suggestions matter :)

The world around them was alight with colors. Flares of purple, pink, and red light arced into the sky and then swung low down low over the crowd to coast over their heads. The people and aliens were only silhouettes against lights, dazzling Sunny as they made their way with the crowd towards some unknown point. Though she could see over everyone’s heads, it was difficult to see where they were heading.

This is one of the things she liked about being aboard a human ship, she was always the tallest, back home she had never been the tallest. Even in a room full of adolescents, it was a tossup if she would be able to see over them all. Sunny had always been the smallest in her family, and of her unit. She had stopped growing very early after hitting adolescence, a fact that annoyed her greatly, and brought a lot of teasing from the other Drev.

Comparatively, she had what humans might call a “baby face” everyone always thought she was several years younger than she actually was. It had made trying to find a mate impossible, despite her brightly colored carapace, metallic blue and purple, which was highly desirable, the height sort of negated that. Instead, she had tried to impress with her prowess in war, which included her sheer power, tactical ability, and proficiency with weapons. However, the war with the humans had put a stopper on many of her plans, and now here she was, the biggest, strongest and tallest….. well comparatively with bruit force anyway.

She looked down at Captain Vir and Krill, Captain Vir pulling Krill by the arm as the strange little insectoid floated behind him. Captain Vir was a good warrior, he had injured Sunny once using a sharp rock, Krill was squishable, but he was also ridiculously smart, and a surgeon, so she supposed he wasn’t all that bad.

As they made their way through the crowd, Sunny could see everyone staring at them. There were a lot of humans here, so she knew it wasn’t because of Vir, like it usually was, it was definitely for her. Though the lights dazzled her eyes and shadows pooled on their faces, she could see contempt. It was an easy human expression to read, she had a hard time telling the difference between happy faces, but angry faces were easy to pick out.

They were growing close to their location, when they were stopped by a group of burly looking humans. Two of them were a good inch taller than Vir, though she still dwarfed them by at least a head, and maybe a half.

They glared at Sunny, but Vir got between them as she prepared herself for a fight.

Three against one hardly seemed fair to Sunny, in the Captain’s favor of course.

“What the F*** is that THING doing here.” The man snarled.

“Move aside.” Another growled

Vir crossed his arms, “No, she’s a member of my crew. Try hurting her and I hurt you.

Sunny took a step forward, but was stopped by Krill placing one of his limbs on her leg holding her back. She looked down, and he held up one of his legs to stop her shaking his head. She reluctantly held back, watching as the humans fanned out to surround the Captain.

One of the men spat on the ground at Vir’s feet, “Traitor, you bring one of those things onto a HUMAN colony, after what they did. People died in that war, people were ripped in half. That thing probably DID.”

Vir kept his arms crossed and squared up to the man until they were chest to chest, Sunny knew what that meant, that was a dominance move.

“I know what they did, I was in the ninth fire team when they killed all of my men.” He reached down and tapped his metal leg, “And I was a member of operation Steel-Eye, so don’t F***ing tell me what I already know or what I can and can’t do. Now BACK OFF!”

The man seemed quite surprised and took a step back. Captain Vir shouldered past him knocking the man back a step, “Come on Sunny, Krill, let’s go.”

Sunny did as told walking past the group of men without so much as a backward glance.

Though they received some more glares as they passed, no one said anything openly.

Sunny could see their destination now. It was the raised platform where the lights were coming from. The entire thing was made of metal and plastered in lights, and framework. The platform itself was covered in strange contraptions and strange people. Some of them were wearing odd black material that sort of glittered softly in the lights, like certain types of skin tend to do. A few of them wore lots of spikes, and a few of the humans had brightly colored hair.

She wondered if it was a way to attract mates like the Drev, but she couldn’t have been sure.

They stopped in the crowd. She was about to lean down and ask the captain what they were doing here, but he shook his head at her and pointed at the stage.

The lead human walked up to the front of the platform, an odd contraption hanging form a strap around his neck. His hair was completely white, and his shirt didn’t have any sleeves, “How’s everyone doing tonight.”

Sunny was surprised to hear his voice magnified out over the crowd. The humans roared in response. Sunny didn’t really understand it.

The human grinned, “Well it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the second annual interstellar concert ever.” More cheering, “Now, I know we have more nonhumans than we did last year, so we’ve put some precautions in place. The decibel levels of some of these songs are going to get really high, so heed the warning you saw at the entrance, additionally we will give warnings before those songs come up. Also, human music has been known to cause drug-like effects on certain species, so be aware of what is under you so you don’t accidentally trample someone. The venue will not be responsible for your medical bills….. Everyone understand?” Another roar went up, but Sunny reacted too late.

Something tapped her on the knee, and she looked down to find Krill motioning to come up. She reached down two of her arms and lifted him up so he could see over the heads.

He patted her on the shoulder.

“Now this concert is designed to introduce you to as many genres of human music we can get into you before you leave, so let’s not waste time going from earliest to newest.”

Sunny excitedly lifted her head listening as the lights went low, and the slow long mournful sound cut through the darkness. It was followed by many similar sounds all combining into one interlocking and uniform melody. The further it went the more sounds that came in, some like the call of war horns, others the light whistles of cavern singers, and the occasional rattle of a thundering war drum. She closed her eyes trying to pick out the individual sounds but they slipped through her fingers before she could do anything crawling deeper and deeper into her chest as it did tingling through her limbs.

She almost fell over as the song ended opening her eyes to find Krill practically passed out in her arms. He was stirring just as the next string of music began, using strange sounds that moved quickly from high to low pairing the same sound at higher and lower pitches in equally distant frequencies. The strange sounds slowly began to incorporate the human voice in repeated lines making her shiver.

This time, Krill had been practically passed out, and it remained the same now. She shook herself lifting her head and opening her eyes to listen to the next string of music, a pleasant mix of that war-horn sound, but brought down where it was soft and paired with a pleasantly raspy human voice. She swayed back and forth as the light glittered form the golden horn. The soft lights of the stage rolled over the crowd.

Once that song was done Sunny watched as a red light flared on the stage, and a warning rolled across a set of screens. The first human came up, “Alright, this next bit of music is going to get very intense. These singers have the ability to break crystal glasses with their voices, so if you have a noise sensitivity, take your precautions.

Sunny Stepped forward in excitement bumping into Vir who pushed her back and patted her elbow, “Calm down>”

She grew still watching as two humans moved forward onto the stage dressed in very strange dark costumes faces covered by half masks. The woman began to sing.

Sunny shivered as her voice danced around from one side to the other gong high dropping low opening her mouth wide to bring in a sound that shouldn’t have been made by someone that small. When the male human joined, they interwove their voices together, him dropping low her throwing her voice high both of them holding their voices until it seemed as if they would pass out from dropping to the floor, but they held it longer, threw it higher until the woman was holding a note that should have been inhuman. Seconds continued, the man dropped his voice lower dancing around her as she kept holding, holding, holding. And then she dropped the note, took a breath and immediately rolled into the next note. Krill was practically blacked out, Sunny felt her body trembling a bit.

Captain Vir looked board.

The song finished, and the man moved forward to the front of the line peering out over the crowd, “Some of you look half dead, and I’m talking about the humans too…..” He grinned, “I know you’re here for.”

The humans shifted, and the man threw his hand down the strings roaring over the crowd.

The humans began to scream and roar. Sunny began to roar following along with the humans.

The roaring of the instrument built up until his fingers were dancing on the instrument rolling in multiple notes and sounds over the room. And then the drums came in, thundering like the sounds of war. The humans were roaring, the instruments were roaring. Then the humans began their singing. They took the power from the masked humans and combined it with the sound of war. She roared with them, she loved it.

Below her Vir was singing along.

The humans were waving their arms leaping up and down. She lifted her arms too.

She loved it. She loved the drums, loved the roaring of the instruments and the howling of the humans voices.

Lights flashed around them beams rolled around lights flashing blue pink and green.

It was like being high.

Did humans feel like this when listening?

More drums.

She thought they were singing about war, she understood some of what they were saying.

She loved it.

Krill was mostly unconscious, but she kept him secure held in her lower arms as she raised her upper hands high.

By the end of the night, she was exhausted, the human was exhausted.

***

Her incessant pestering of Vir to show her how to find the music ended with him buying her a pair of lime green headphones and one of the human music-containers with multiple music apps. Technically you could do a lot of things on it, but Sunny just wanted the music, and there was SO MUCH!

She loved all of it, the classical, rap, hip-hop, techno, but she especially LOVED rock and all of its related genres, hard rock, metal, grunge, post grunge, Indi, emo, and so much more.

Sunny Loved human music.

#humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #earth is space australia

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dragonologist-phd · 5 years ago

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Prodigy: Chapter 1

Sometimes, a family is three deadly Archons who care about each other a little more than they'd ever be able to admit.

(AO3)

Bleden Mark was an archon of immense power and skill, and he resented being assigned to babysitting duty. Tunon didn’t call it that, of course. He referred to it as ‘evaluating the potential of promising trainees to select those who would best serve the glory of Kyros’. He’d always been fond of stating things in the most dramatic fashion possible.

Whatever the wording of the task was, it required Bleden Mark to spend his time- which, he reminded Tunon, was incredibly valuable- watching over the children that Tunon called soldiers and deciding who would be advanced to higher positions above the completion of their training, and who would serve as cannon fodder. If he was luck, he might even unearth a few traitors in the ranks; that would at least be good for a little entertainment.

Unfortunately, the newest batch of candidates was devastatingly boring. Even Tunon’s newest favorite, a pet mage who he’d singled out as showing high potential, was a disappointment. Perhaps Mark shouldn’t have expected much to begin with; Tunon had always favored obedience over creativity.

Oh, his new star pupil was talented enough. Powerful, even. She’d make a perfect little war mage, and she’d serve Kyros well.

But she was predictable. That much was obvious from the beginning, when Bleden Mark watched her sparring sessions with the other mages from the shadows. The girl threw arcs of crackling lightning at her opponents with a flawless, textbook technique that allowed Mark to mentally calculate her every move and stance ten seconds before it happened. In fact, he was able to pinpoint the exact moment she left herself open to attack- and so was her opponent, who took advantage of the opportunity to release a wall of flames in her direction.

The opponent was no exemplary mage either, and the girl recovered- although not without a few burns and a singed robe. But even as she narrowly snatched up her victory, Bleden Mark couldn’t muster up any genuine admiration. He could certainly see why Tunon liked this girl, but it took more than flashy magic and raw force to impress him; he appreciated cunning, and it didn’t appear that this girl had much of that to offer.

Or at least, that’s what he thought until he caught her in the act of stealing scrolls from the restricted section of the mage’s library.

Lilith did not steal. She intended merely to borrow.

And what was the difference, so long as Tunon never knew? This section of the library was so rarely used, anyway. At least someone would be getting some good out of it for once.

“Whatcha got there, kid?”

Lilith whipped around, fingers still locked tight around the scroll in her hands. The first thing that struck her about the man in front of her was the crimson red of his face paint, the only flash of color standing out from his otherwise dark figure. Then she noticed the way he didn’t quite seem to be all there, the way shadows clung to his silhouette and caused him to flicker in and out of clarity. That was when she realized who was standing before her: the Archon of Shadows.

Bleden Mark raised an eyebrow, and when Lilith didn’t immediately answer- it was strange, she usually had no shortage of retorts, but at this moment her voice seemed to be caught in her throat- he grabbed the scroll from her hands. The movement was so quick that Lilith barely had time to realize what was happened before he was once again on the other side of the room, studying the scroll’s contents.

“A spell like this is a bit above your station, isn’t it?” he mused, and Lilith’s hands tightened into fists at her sides, fingernails digging into her palms.

The barb did, at least, finally help her locate her voice. Lifting her chin high, she replied, “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

The Archon studied her for a moment, then snorted dismissively. “Oh, I’m sure you can, kid. And I’m sure your teachers would agree and are completely aware of your intent to learn it.”

Panic shot through Lilith’s veins, but she did her best to keep her voice steady. “They are.”

“Don’t lie to me, kid.” The Archon’s teasing smile vanished. “Especially not when you’ve been caught in the middle of the night with your hand in the cookie jar.”

“I-” Lilith started to protest, but faltered. He was right about one thing; there was no use denying her intentions. “I was going to put it back.”

The Archon tilted his head, remaining silent for a moment. At last, he said, “Of all potential thieves, Tunon’s favorite little mage wouldn’t have been my first guess. Aren’t you afraid of invoking the Adjudicator’s wrath?”

“He won’t be angry if he doesn’t find out.”

The Archon’s answering laugh was so loud that Lilith jumped, but he didn’t seem worried about being overheard. “That’s a bit more to the letter of the law than the spirit, don’t you think?”

“I…” Lilith faltered, unsure of how to respond. Were this Tunon, it would be easy- just sing the praises of the law and nod along with every compliment paid to Kyros. But Bleden Mark was hardly anything like Tunon.

“Just tell me this, kid,” the Archon continued. “Why risk it for this spell?”

“It’s not about that specific spell,” Lilith said. She chewed her lip nervously and looked down with a sigh. “Not really. I need to be stronger. The instructors won’t teach me more, so I’m going to learn on my own.”

She’d always been leagues ahead of the other mages. Always. Always smarter, more powerful, a natural at arcane warfare. And rightly so; it was her entire life, and had been for as long as she could remember. That life had taught her one very important thing- a person survived by being the best. By learning everything they could and performing it to perfection.

But lately she’d been slipping. Not enough to cause an issue, not yet, but she could feel it coming. The others were catching up to her. Mastery of the paltry magic her instructors taught her was not enough. Storm spells like the one held in that scroll were just that type of power- not the classroom variants, but real wartime spells, the kind that could cause explosions on the battlefield. That was the kind of real power Lilith needed.

She didn’t have the words to express any of these thoughts out loud, but as Bleden Mark held her under his scrutiny she wondered if he just knew. At last, he said, “This won’t make you stronger.” The certainty in his voice stung, but Lilith tried not to show it as he held the scroll out in front of her. “But if you want it so badly, come and take it.”

It was a trap. It was obviously a trap. But dammit, Lilith needed that scroll.

Before she could think about it too long, Lilith summoned a spark of lightning in her hands- even the Archon of Shadows could be paralyzed, couldn’t he?- but before she could test that theory he was gone. Lilith’s sparks crackled uselessly into thin air, and then he was behind her, delivering a kick to her knees that sent her sprawling across the floor.

“Is that the best you got, kid? Flashy lights and a temper that makes you stupid?” He shook his head. “That’s not gonna win you anything.”

He leaned down, holding out a hand as if to help Lilith up, but she’d had enough of his tricks. With a huff she pushed away and hauled herself to her feet, ignoring the aching in her knees and the massive blow to her pride. “If you’re so wise, then what’s your secret?”

He chuckled, dark eyes glinting cruelly from behind the red paint. “I don’t have to be strong when my opponents are weak. Now run along before your teachers come investigate what’s making so much ruckus.”

Rage boiled inside Lilith’s chest, and she could feel the static crackling along her skin, but she forced the storm to remain inside. He was right; she had to be gone from here before anyone found her. “Are you…are you going to tell Tunon?”

“You know, I haven’t decided yet. I like to keep my options open. Let’s see how well you take my advice.” And then he was gone, as if he were never there to begin with, and Lilith was left with nothing to do but return to the mage barracks.

The next three days were spent swinging between fear that Tunon would call her to the Court for punishment and the strange, nagging desire to know just what the Archon had meant by his ‘advice’. Lilith ran over the encounter in her head, remembering his words. I don’t have to be strong when my opponents are weak.

On the third night, she returned to the library to pull an atrophic spell from the records, and this time no shadows came to stop her.

The little mage didn’t seem to know when to give up.

Bleden Mark watched her next sparring match with no small amount of amusement. He was almost impressed by how swiftly she’d adapted to her new strategy. Almost- she still threw her lightning around with more reckless abandon than was necessary, but the youngsters always had always loved their dramatics. Mark could put that aside and admit that her new trick of weaving shades of atrophy through the air alongside her lightning was something that warranted approval.

By the time her opponent realized what she’d been doing, it was too late. His energy had been sapped away, and he could barely maintain a standing position, let alone an offensive one. He moved to put one last surge of effort into an attack, but before he could form the spell the girl’s staff whistled through the air, connecting with his knees with a loud crack.

Mark waited until the arena had cleared before materializing at her side. “You’re a fast learner.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice, then tried to cover her surprise by crossing her arms and raising her chin defensively. “I know,” she retorted in a tone of forced authority.

Young and stupid, Mark thought. From the perspective of an Archon who’d been around for centuries, that statement was true of just about everyone. Still, it fit this girl more than most- barely fifteen, but proud and brazen and utterly convinced of her own talent. And, unfortunately, not entirely wrong on that last point.

“Interested in learning more?” Mark asked. It wasn’t often that he took on new students; it was even less often that those students made it through the training. Tunon wouldn’t be fond of Mark snatching his favorite pupil away, but as the girl had pointed out already, the Adjudicator didn’t need to know everything.

The girl studied him warily, taking her time to answer even thought they both know what her answer would be. “I don’t trust you,” she said plainly, and Mark chuckled.

“Good. There might be some brains in that head after all.”

The next time Bleden Mark met with Tunon, he concurred with the decision to promote the War Mage Lilith to Fatebinder.

Tunon was pleased. He saw only the girl’s skill and willingness to serve. He didn’t see the ambition that would either get her killed or, one day in the far future, make her a very real threat. Mark didn’t feel the need to enlighten him.

Either way, it would be interesting to watch what happened.

#tyranny #tyranny fanfic #ch: lilith #fatebinder lilith #bleden mark #remember that found family fic ive been threatening to write forever?#well it was gonna be a oneshot but the first part ended up over 1500 words so now its multichapter

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khfankeri · 5 years ago

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Day #7 of Give Adrien a Hug Club

Adrien and Chloe

“Come on, Adrikins!! Just come for a short visit today? We haven’t hung out in forever! I know your fencing lessons were cancelled!”

Adrien sighed. It had been a long time, and despite her faults, she had been there for him through thick and thin. He looked around the school courtyard and saw no one else was nearby.

He turned to her. “Okay, I will today. But promise you won’t tell my father. He’ll kill me.”

“Promise! Oh, Adrikins! I’m so excited!” She said embracing his neck from behind.

He pried her off kindly like always. “Calm down, Clo. I’ll see you later okay?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Okay! See you soon!”

Adrien sighed. Hopefully this wasn’t a bad idea.

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

“Welcome, Adrikins!!”

He walked in and looked around her room and balcony. Not much had changed. Despite her self proclamations of only wanting the newest trends, she tended to hang on to the old stuff behind closed doors.

“Thanks for having me!”

She beckoned for him to sit on the couch. “Sabrina was busy today, so it will just be us two! What do you want to do??”

“Well, we could always play foosball. Like we did in the old days? If I remember, you gave me a run for my money.”

“But foosball is so... tacky.”

“You scared I’m going to beat you?” Adrien asked mischievously.

Chloe huffed. “As if! Juan Claude! Bring the foosball table!!”

Soon they were playing an intense game, and Chloe was totally focused. It made Adrien remember their childhood and how glad he was she had been there. She wasn’t the best superhero, but maybe one day she could still find a way to be a better person?

“Haha!!! I won!!” She cried victoriously.

“I demand a rematch.”

She looked up with a glint in her eyes. “Let’s do it!”

It was a close call, but Adrien did win.

“Ugh, this is ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous!”

“Let’s do a tie breaker! Loser buys dinner.” Adrien challenged.

“Oh, you’re on! Prepare to lose, Adrikins!”

It was an intense bout, but Chloe won it much to Adrien’s chagrin.

“Haha! Not only am I fashionable, I win at a game against Adrien Agreste! Now I want sushi.”

Adrien laughed and shook his head. “Good game, Chloe. And you shall have sushi.”

She looked so triumphant, and he couldn’t help but feel a little like it was old times again. He made a phone call to have the sushi delivered and they chilled out on the couch while waiting.

Much to his relief, Chloe didn’t seem to be interested in putting the moves on him today. Perhaps she was feeling nostalgic today herself.

After the food was delivered, they ate while Chloe talked on and on about the latest fashion trends. Adrien only cared as far as it pertained to his father’s brand, but he listened respectfully anyway.

“Do you know what you’re going to be modeling next?”

He shrugged. “No idea really. And to be honest, I don’t think Father would tell me.”

“Your father is still a stick in the mud, huh?”

He sighed. “It’s gotten worse since Mother disappeared. It’s like he’s missing half of himself.”

Chloe put down her food, and she took Adrien carefully into her arms. Almost as if she didn’t know how to comfort someone. Adrien was shocked. Was she hugging him?

“I have some choice words for your father, but it won’t help now I suppose. Just remember, I would do anything for you, Adrien.”

Adrien hugged her back. Perhaps there was hope for both of them yet. Being rich wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when your parents were hardly there.

“Thanks, Clo. I know you would.”

She pulled back and looked slightly embarrassed. “Come on, let’s finish this food. I want another rematch.”

To be fair, I think there’s still hope for a Chloe redemption arc. Thomas Astruc has straight up lied before with anything having to do with spoilers, so I hope that’s the case with Chloe. Chloe just needs better adult role models in her life. Also that Chat Blanc episode. I need something happy in my life after that one.

#miraculousladybug #adrien #miraculous #adrienagrestehugclub

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thewritingcaptain · 5 years ago

Text

The Internship: Chapter One

“Don’t bother with the rest of the interviews.” He stood up, grabbing his cup and nodding to the door. “I want him.”

Her expression brightened slightly. “Really?”

He took a drink and sighed. “Really.” Then he glanced back over his shoulder to check the progress of the calculations. All the ones he’d started running had finished, including the one he’d corrected from Peter’s suggestion and run again.

Only one of them had turned green.

Summary: AU. What if Peter really got an Internship with Tony Stark.

Notes: Now that I’ve realized I only ever posted the title and not the chapter... here it is. Yipe.

It had been a long, boring day for Tony Stark.

Which wasn’t a good thing, because Tony didn’t deal well with long or boring, especially when it wasn’t productive. And today had certainly not been productive.

How he’d been roped into this, he still could hardly fathom. After everything that had happened to him, and how busy he’d been in the past few years with… well, being Iron Man and all… Pepper had been trying to convince him for a while now that he needed some extra hands to help with the business. Tony wasn’t big on hiring new people, though. Not to work closely with him. Hell, the one man he’d grown up with and thought he could trust had turned completely and utterly against him and had tried both to have him killed and, when that failed, to kill him himself. To say Tony had trust issues would be an understatement.

Pepper, however, had no such qualms, and wasn’t so easily dissuaded. If he really wanted to completely reinvent Stark Industries, then perhaps he needed to completely reinvent himself, too - or at least his public image. And that was more than just giving out money hand over fist. Money, when you had as much as he did, was easily given away; time, on the other hand, was much more valuable. And what better way to show he was investing in a better future than to work with youth?

This idea didn’t resonate well with Tony. Kids? He didn’t do well with kids - not teaching them, nor really being around them in general. He didn’t have the patience - or the filter - to be around them for any extended period of time. That’s why he preferred the distanced approach. Besides, what kid didn’t like money?

But Pepper had never failed him before, and after everything he’d put her through, he decided a compromise was in order. She was right about one thing: he had no family, no heirs to speak of, and while he had no intent of passing on any time soon, he needed someone he could trust to leave the company to. He didn’t know when he’d made the decision, likely unconsciously, that it would be her - but at some point, he knew he had realized that was exactly what he wanted to do. But it had never occurred to him that, if she didn’t want it, or if something happened to her, he had no one else he remotely trusted to leave his life’s work with.

With these things in mind, he’d agreed on a compromise. An internship. If she hosted some interviews and sent him the most qualified candidates, he would review them, and if he found one that was remotely suitable, he’d allow them to intern with the company - with him - in the hopes of both lessening his stress load and hopefully resulting in someone he might one day be able to leave the company to. If they were skilled enough and didn’t drive him mad in the time it took him to train them. Not that he intended to broadcast that part; it would be promoted as an internship only, with possibly a future job opportunity, if they lasted long enough.

He promised her a trial period of at least two weeks with whoever was chosen; but if he didn’t see any potential in them… well, they would go, and he could say he tried. His conscience would be temporarily eased, at least. If it failed… well, maybe he’d just give the company to her sooner.

So far, unfortunately, it hadn’t failed.

In all honesty, he didn’t know how that whole thing was being publicized, and if there were any specific students that were supposed to be applying. All he knew was that his personal assistant and head of security had been irritatingly unavailable for at least two hours every day for the past few weeks due to these interviews. Apparently, a lot of kids had applied.

At least, before yesterday, that was all he had known. Now, unfortunately, it was time to do his part, which subsequently meant that he suddenly knew a lot more.

Today was their second day of follow-up interviews; meaning, the kids who had impressed Pepper (and, to some extent, Happy, although he didn’t necessarily have as much sway as she did, due to his opinion on the matter being more in the direction of Tony’s; he was more there to screen the kids’ pasts than their qualifications) were now back for second interviews, of which Tony was required to attend.

And so it was the second day of this - spending long days in his boardroom, pacing, working on the holographic board in the back and half-listening to kids get screened by Pepper and Happy for the second time. As with yesterday, none of them said anything particularly interesting; certainly nothing that caught his attention. Many of them had the same qualifications - they were simply high school kids, after all - so there was little to distinguish them there. Half of them weren’t even smart enough to dress the part, and there was no way in hell he was allowing a kid who couldn’t even tie a Windsor knot near any of his precious work.

About midway through the day, Tony was sitting in the back of the room, feet propped up on his desk as he messed with the holographic design in front of him. He was throwing around theoretical calculations for the design of a new arc reactor. He wanted to make one that was slimmer, more powerful, but also more cost and energy efficient. Especially considering the design of his newer suits, it needed to be more powerful, but also needed to be packed into a smaller model, and if he could get the reactor’s design to be as sleek as that of the newest suit… well, he liked his uniformity, to say the least.

They were on a break for lunch, at the moment, although that didn’t stop Tony from toying with the design in the back of the room while he waited for his food. When Pepper came in and brought it to him, he nodded his thanks before picking up the sandwich, unwrapping it just enough to take a bite, continuing to work with one hand.

Pepper took a seat on the opposite side of his desk without being invited to. Tony glanced at her once, cocking his head. She was never so bold when he first hired her - but, then, she’d become invaluable to him and she knew it, even if she wasn’t one of the only two people in the world he actually trusted at the moment. Perhaps she could afford to be a little bold.

That said, she still wouldn’t have approached him when he was working without a valid reason. She never did. He swallowed his food and took a drink before turning to face her. “Yes, Miss Potts?”

Pepper regarded him for a moment with those startling blue eyes of hers. He held her gaze, waiting for an answer.

Finally, she spoke. “Mr. Stark. It’s been two days, and we’re more than halfway through the candidates. You really have no interest in any of them?”

Tony shrugged, looking back at his work and continuing to virtually disassemble the reactor. He wanted to analyze every part of the design of his current one, to look for technology that was outdated, or could be upgraded, downsized, or replaced. “None,” he told her, flippantly. There was no point in lying. He would only take somebody who he deemed fit, and despite her best efforts, that didn’t seem to be anyone in this pool of applicants.

“Why not?”

Tony heaved a sigh, rolling his head back towards her, still working on the model with one hand. “Because none of them are remotely qualified. I see no reason I should waste my time on trying to have a conversation with half of these kids, let alone let them near something anywhere near even this level of work.” He gestured to the hologram with his sandwich, then took another bite. “And this is basic, in this business.”

Pepper made a face that he knew her well enough to know meant she was trying not to roll her eyes at him. “No. Physics is basic, and that’s likely the most you should expect these kids to know. They’re not supposed to come fully trained and ready to work, or it wouldn’t be called an internship. It would be a job.” She stood up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt like she always did when she was agitated. “Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Stark. The next candidate will be here in fifteen minutes.” She turned away.

He let her take a few steps before calling, “Pepper?”

She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Yes, Mr. Stark?”

“How far are we in the list of candidates, anyway?” He regarded his disassembled holograph for a moment before looking back at her.

She checked her clipboard. “We’re at the Ns. About ten candidates left.”

Ten candidates. At least another two hours of this bullshit, if most of them managed to talk for their allotted fifteen minutes, which they usually did. Teenagers were almost as narcissistic as he was. He sighed heavily. “Thank you, Miss Potts. Go eat something before the rest of the monsters show up, why don’t you.”

Pepper shot him a look somewhere between amused and exasperated over her shoulder. “I already have, Mr. Stark, but thank you for your concern. Perhaps you should focus on eating yours instead.”

“Will do. But Pepper?” She stopped, looking back at him again. He looked back at her this time, raising an eyebrow at her and silently daring her to argue. “Seriously. Take a break.” Then he turned back to his work, letting her go for real this time.

He spent the next several minutes talking to Jarvis, manipulating the designs and running hypothetical scenarios through the computer, testing all the different substitutions and cuts of materials he could use to rebuild the arc reactor - with improvements, of course. He hardly noticed when Pepper and Happy came back in, nor when the next student came in, or the next. He was flying through calculations by that point, running scenarios mostly in his head and with the aid of Jarvis mostly as a calculator. Running different programs was harder when he couldn’t openly communicate with his AI aloud, and doing so would have been… well, if he was honest, if what he was doing now was borderline rude, that would be pushing it. No doubt Pepper would filet him if he was openly not paying attention.

It wasn’t until the second to last student came in that he found something to pay attention to.

The interview started out as boring as the rest. The kid came in - decently dressed in a suit, with at least a passable suit and tie look - shook hands with Pepper and Happy, and sat down to do his interview. He was very polite, which Tony was tuned in enough to tell pleased Pepper greatly. He started to slip back out of focus when they fell into the same routine he’d heard literally forty times in the past two days.

“You go to Midtown Science and Technology, right?” Pepper was asking.

“Yeah, yeah! That’s right. In Queens. I’m a sophomore,” the boy responded.

Interesting. A nice background, at least. Although he was a little young…

Pepper seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Only a sophomore? You’ve got quite the academic record for a sophomore, Mr. Parker. And why, at your age, are you interested in something like this? You’ve got the rest of high school to get a better idea of what you want to do.”

The kid - Parker - shifted in his seat, taking a moment to honestly consider the question. “Well, in all honesty, Miss Potts… why else would I make the choice to go to a STEM focused high school if it’s not something I want to go into? And I don’t think it’s ever to early to try to get your foot in the door for something that could shape your future the way an opportunity like this could.” He paused. “Besides, I’m a fan of Mr. Stark’s work. I admire his ethics and his decisions, and I think I could learn a lot from even just seeing him work.” He glanced over his shoulder, looking back at where Tony sat with his feet still propped on the desk, throwing calculations into the computer at rapid speed. “Just look at him go.”

“I get to ‘look at him go’ every day, Mr. Parker.” In more ways than one, of course, but she wouldn’t say that to him. Still, Pepper couldn’t suppress a smile at the wonder in the boy’s face as he watched Tony’s hands fly. “Is there anything else you’d like to say? Any questions for me or…well,” she stopped, knowing interrupting Tony would likely be a bad idea, “...for me to pass on to Mr. Stark about the position?”

Parker’s eyes were still glued to Tony, watching him curiously. “Um, no, thank you,” he told her. He turned around slowly. She could almost see the gears in his head turning as he asked, “But, between you and me, does he ever have anyone check his work?”

“Check it?” Pepper blinked and leaned back, surprised. It wasn’t exactly the question she’d expected. Most kids wanted to know about money, or how closely they’d be working with Tony, if they’d get to see him in the Iron Man suit, etc. “I… why?”

He shrugged, standing up and glancing over his shoulder again. “Well, I could be wrong, but… it looks like he made a mistake in one of his calculations.” There were several lines of calculations scattered across the screen - either red if he had already ruled them out, or blue if they were still in progress. He pointed to one in the top right corner of the screen.

At his name and the word “mistake,” the world snapped back into focus. Tony blinked, once, twice, then turned to him. “What did you say, kid?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Stark. Don’t stop on my account. I just said - and I could be wrong, absolutely - it just looks like you’re a decimal point off on this calculation.” He took a few steps closer, pointing to it again.

Tony turned back to the screen, scanning through the lists of numbers until he found the one he’d was referring to. He studied it with narrow eyes, finding the spot that he was pointing to and moving the decimal back to where it should be before running the whole calculation again. It would take several minutes to finish.

Tony straightened, taking his feet off the table and turning fully to face them. He looked at him for the first time since noticing his suit - actually looked at him, taking him in. Scrawny as a rod rail, but he looked clean and presentable enough. He didn’t seem to have any meat on him, but he didn’t look unhealthy, either. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Peter, sir. Peter Parker.” He stuttered slightly, but he put it down to nerves. He’d sounded fine when talking to Pepper.

He cocked his head. “You have any experience with this sort of thing, Parker?”

Peter nodded. “Yes sir. Some. I’ve taken basic physics and engineering, and I was on the robotics team for 2 years.”

“Was?” He wasn’t taking anyone with behavior issues. Or worse, he could have been kicked off for incompetence.

“I quit, sir.”

Ah. “Why?” Tony repeated.

Peter hesitated, as if unsure how to answer. “Family things, sir.”

“Quit calling me sir every time you talk.” He crossed his arms. “Do you have any experience outside of schooling?”

Again, that hesitation, as if unsure, or as if he were going to say something and thought better of it. “Yes, si-... yes. I build computers. Sometimes, I mean, in my spare time. You know, programs and such from scratch...” Peter shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if uncomfortable.

Tony held up a hand to stop him, and he let the sentence trail off. He studied him for a moment. Something about him - the voice, maybe the way he moved - seemed so familiar. And that was odd, especially for Tony. He could barely be bothered to remember people he met with multiple times a year, let alone someone he’d run into once, so he doubted it was one of those types of scenarios. This was a gut instinct, something that made senses go on edge. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. “I see,” he said at last. Then he nodded to Pepper.

She understood the signal, thankfully, and stepped forward, offering her hand for Peter to shake. “Well, that’s all the time we have for today, but thank you for coming in, Mr. Parker. We’ll be in touch.”

“Oh, thank you.” Peter shook her hand, shouldering his bag again and nodding to Tony. “Mr. Stark. Good luck with your calculations.” Then he let himself out.

Tony was still staring at the door when it closed behind him, watching his back thoughtfully. Pepper rushed up to him. “What was that?”

Tony tore his eyes from the door to meet her questioning gaze for a moment before shrugging and sitting back down. “He’s a sharp kid. You wanted me to show an interest, didn’t you? I did. There you go.”

Pepper put her hands on her hips, tilting her head at him. “But did you like him, or were you just being a smartass?”

Tony glanced up at her, mildly surprised. She didn’t curse at him very often. “Oh, you know me, Miss Potts. I’m always a smartass.”

She frowned, narrowing her eyes a bit at him. “That’s not an answer, Mr. Stark. Should I continue with the interviews, or are you not going to bother to show any interest at all throughout the rest of them? Because I could save us all another hour of pointless chattering and just cancel the rest.”

Oh, she was getting sassy now. Tony turned completely back to her, quirking a brow at her. “Am I irritating you, Pepper?”

A small amount of flush colored her cheeks at his tone, but she held her ground. “I just don’t understand why you agreed to let me do these interviews if you were going to completely blow off everyone and not even listen to half of what the kids had to say.”

She had a fair point. He frowned, unsure of the answer himself. “I…” he stopped, pulling a face when he realized he was drawing a total blank. “Well. Let’s just do it this way. Don’t bother with the rest of the interviews.” He stood up, grabbing his cup and nodding to the door. “I want him.”

Her expression brightened slightly. “Really?”

Only one of them had turned green.

He cursed to himself, then turned back to the holograms long enough to tell the AI to send all the possible changes that could be made based on his calculations to his downstairs lab before simply shutting it down.

Including the one the kid had corrected - the only one on the last set that had shown up green after a half hour’s worth of calculations towards one part of it.

Pepper was still smirking when he brushed past her and headed downstairs. This was going to be fun.

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basementtreasure · 6 years ago

Text

After the War

A fic based on a prompt/conversation with @inkedinserendipity about Kravitz dying and becoming a reaper during the Relic Wars, and Taako finding out.

Ships: Taakitz, some Blupjeans

Characters: Taako, Kravitz, Lup, Barry Bluejeans

Words: 7.1k

Spoilers through the end of the Balance Arc

EDIT: Now on AO3

It starts with a letter. Taako usually doesn’t pay much mind to the fan mail he gets after the day of Story and Song. Most of it is the same old thing, and now he has Ren to organize them and send out pre-made replies. Before he gives them to her, though, he always like to read through them. He claims it’s a nice ego boost, but there’s a certain softness in his eyes, in the gentle way he holds the paper, that hides beneath his usual preening at the praise.

He likes to be reminded of the people he’s saved. It helps dampen that feeling of guilt from when the crew of the Starblaster watched the world turn on itself because of their creations. He’d never admit it, though, not even to Lup (who knows anyways, but lets him pretend to be more vain and selfish than he really is).

This letter, though, this one is different. He’s laying across the couch in the living room, boots propped up on the armrest as he tosses read fan mail into a pile on the table. The sound of Kravitz moving around their shared home breaks up the long silence. It’s the last letter of the day, and Taako doesn’t think much of it as he opens up the envelope.

Dear Mister Taako, it starts. They never seem to know what to call him. It’s always something weird and too formal for Taako’s taste. He’d rather they all just stick with Taako—cha boy’s got a brand to maintain after all.

You probably get a lot of letters, being a savior of the world and all—thanks for that, by the way! Really appreciate not being dead! That’s new. Taako might not act like a full-blown hero most of the time, but saving the world is hardly ever an aside in these letters. Usually he gets a full page of nothing but thanks before they write anything else.

This is a little weird, and probably not something you’d like to talk about, but I don’t know where else to turn. I live in a small farming village named Greensborough near the edge of the Felicity Wilds. At the edge of town is a remnant left from the Relic Wars. From the Philosopher’s Stone. Taako sits up from his reclined position and clutches the letter in his hand. The paper wrinkles and warps the words he just read, but he can still see them, as if they’re burned into his mind.

“Taako? Is something wrong, babe?” Kravitz’s voice is enough to calm Taako to the point where he’s no longer in danger of ripping the page. Taako holds up one finger and continues to read. As he does, he feels the couch shift as Kravitz sits beside him. A hand starts to rub soothing circles into his shoulder. Taako rests the hand he had held up on Kravitz’s wrist, a silent thanks he knows Kravitz will understand.

During the Relic Wars, someone used the Philosopher’s Stone to turn several townspeople here to gold. Their bodies are still there to this day. Taako’s blood turns cold as he closes his hand tighter around Kravitz’s wrist. The little voice that he had gotten so good at tuning out starts screaming this is your fault this is your fault your fault yourfaultyourfaultyourfault.

It had been so much easier not to care, to think of everyone else in the universe as dust. The crew were the only ones that mattered. But then a little boy with glasses wormed his way into Taako’s long closed-off heart. Then it was a charming reaper. An excitable cook. A batty old witch. Suddenly this world was his home and all these little specks of dust were his specks of dust. And he had let it go to shit for so long, only intervening when he didn’t even remember he was to blame. Retroactive guilt was a real bitch.

“Love,” Kravitz says, low and soft. Taako can feel him shift to get a better look at the letter, but he angles it away and bids Kravitz to wait with another squeeze of his wrist. Kravitz sighs and Taako can feel his breath on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t push and Taako is idly reminded that he loves this man so, so much. He continues reading.

We’ve made our peace with what happened then. The site has become something of a memorial for those we lost, in the Relic Wars and on the day of Story and Song. But the thing is, well, solid gold is a little hard for small-town farmers to protect. There have been a few incidents with bandits and marauders. Luckily, none of them have been successful so far. Still, I can’t bear to think that the people we lost might one day be a prize for some greedy, awful thieves. None of us here in Greensborough have the power to turn gold into anything else. I was hoping that as the most powerful transmutation wizard in the world, you might be able to come and finally put them to rest. It’s what they deserve.

Taako folds the letter back up and hold it to his chest. “Babe?” he says, his voice too hoarse for his own liking.

“Yes?” Kravitz brushes Taako’s hair over his shoulder, fingers gently trailing over the nape of his neck.

“Can you take me somewhere quick with your reaper-portal thing?”

Kravitz’s fingers still on his skin. After a moment’s silence, he moves his hand down to take Taako’s, lacing their fingers together. “Of course. Where do you want to go?”

Taako almost doesn’t get up, not wanting to give up Kravitz’s touch that’s kept him grounded so far, but he has to. He makes his way to a large bookshelf, mostly filled with Angus’s collection of books—or at least one copy of his collection, which has duplicates at both Magnus and Merle’s places since he moves frequently between the three men’s homes.

Resting against the newest Caleb Cleveland novel is a rolled-up map. Taako takes it out and spreads it on the table. Kravitz stands to look over his shoulder, hand resting on Taako’s hip. The motion is almost automatic, and Taako holds in a sigh of relief at being held again. Man, a decade of touch-starvation really did fuck him up, didn’t it? He’s not sure he knows exactly how he feels about Kravitz being able to read him so well, always offering the exact kind of comfort he needs. Not even all the seven birds managed that, only Lup (of course) and Barry (who Taako suspects got some tips from Lup sometime during their voyage).

Taako finds the Felicity Wilds on the map with little issue and begins scanning the areas around it. There, near the northern edge is his destination, no more than a speck with tiny letters reading Grnsboro to label it. Taako points at it. “Take me there.”

“Right now?” Kravitz sounds concerned but willing, and that’s good enough for Taako. He’ll feel much better when he puts this all behind him.

“Right now.”

Kravitz takes another look at the map, and then steps away from Taako. His skin fades away as he reaches a hand out and closes it slowly into a fist. His scythe appears just as his fingers are in the perfect position to wrap around it. With a flash of light glinting off steel, he slashes through the air, opening a rift.

Kravitz takes a moment to re-materialize his skin before holding a hand out towards Taako. Taako takes it and finds himself surprised by how cold it is. He’s grown used to Kravitz’s recently raised body temperature, but it still takes time for him to warm up after going skeleton-mode. If he’s being perfectly honest, which he rarely ever is, it’s uncomfortably foreboding given what he’s about to do.

Kravitz squeezes his hand and there’s a rush of warmth. Not quite as warm as a living person, but soothing nonetheless. Together, they step through the rift.

Kravitz’s rifts weren’t exactly meant for living beings. As Taako passes through it, gripping Kravitz’s hand like a lifeline, he feels a strange falling sensation deep in his chest—maybe his soul?—that reminds him a little too much of dying.

The moment passes, and they’re standing on a worn dirt path. A general store and a tavern stand to their right, and to their left is a few small houses, behind which large green fields roll gently over the hills. Every single person in what passes for a town square here stops what they’re doing and stares.

A young human woman with mousy brown hair and a face full of freckles stands next to a well, holding a bucket. The bucket falls as her hands go limp, water splashing out and soaking into the dirt around her. She steps forward as if in a trance, her boots squelching in the newly damp earth, then smiles. “You got my letter.”

Taako clears his throat and quickly schools his expression into a practiced nonchalance. “Yeah, well, I was bored. Thought this might be a bit of a challenge, y’know? Don’t have many of those since I saved basically everything in existence.”

Taako expects Kravitz to see right through him, for him to sigh and smile fondly, not telling anyone how much Taako cares but giving him that knowing look anyways. But Kravitz’s fingers are loose around his hand, and when Taako looks over, he’s blinking owlishly at their surroundings.

“Babe? You doing alright?”

“Huh?” Kravitz’s eyes snap back to Taako’s face with the wide, confused look of someone who’s just been woken suddenly. He shakes his head and gives Taako an unconvincing smile. “Yeah, sorry, I’m fine. This place just… seems familiar for some reason.”

“You probably caught some necromancer here a thousand years ago or something. I’m sure you can’t remember all the places you’ve reaped some poor schmuck.” Taako doesn’t really believe the words coming out of his mouth—then again, when does he?—but he really wants to leave. Kravitz is being weird and this woman is looking at him with tears in her eyes and somewhere nearby there’s a monument of people he’s killed. He’ll say whatever he has to in order to speed this up. Save the worrying and thinking and remembering for later.

“No, I remember all the jobs I’ve done for Her Majesty,” Kravitz says. He sounds a little disappointed, like he was hoping the answer could be that simple. “I haven’t been her servant for that long, you know. You, Magnus, and Merle were my first big job. Most of my time was in the Eternal Stockade before then.”

“Huh. That explains a lot,” Taako says blithely, filing away that piece of information for his growing To-Be-Processed-And-Dealt-With-Later list. He turns to the young woman. “Lead the way. Let’s get this thing done.”

The young woman is babbling as she walks, showering Taako in praise and thanks that he’d normally savor. He can’t seem to focus on any of her words though, and as he follows her, Kravitz stays in place, still staring at the town around them. Reluctantly, Taako drops his hand and leaves him to muse on his deja-vu.

As Taako walks away, Kravitz focuses in on the tavern. The sign is faded beyond recognition, but there’s something in the back of Kravitz’s mind that he can’t quite place.

The townsfolk slowly go back to their activities, still sneaking glances at both Kravitz and Taako. An elven man pushes open the door to the tavern and Kravitz catches a few notes from an old piano. He can feel a phantom sensation of worn, well-loved keys on the pads of his fingers. Kravitz has heard plenty of pianos over the years, but this sound…

It’s the sound of the piano he learned to play on.

Kravitz gasps aloud as the faded memories return. He remembers wandering into the tavern when he was too young to be there, ducking behind tables to avoid the bartender’s gaze so he could stay and listen to the old woman at the piano. He remembers the way she played with her eyes closed, letting the music wash over her until nothing else mattered. He remembers when she finished her last piece of the day, opened her eyes, and looked right at him.

“A fan of music, are we? Do you know how to play?”

It only takes a second for Kravitz to remember what else happened here, in the village he grew up in. The reason Taako must’ve wanted to come in the first place, and why he seemed to be barely holding himself together. Kravitz turns on his heel and runs after Taako.

It’s unnervingly easy to rush down the dirt path and take a sharp turn around the back of a storage shed, like the past decade away from the town never happened. He’s moving purely on muscle memory, surprised by how well he remembers every twist of the path that leads to the edge of town. He hops over a fence that wasn’t there when he was alive—likely built to block off the scene of the tragedy, he thinks with cold dread pooling in his stomach.

“Taako, wait—" he calls out, but he can see it’s too late.

Taako and the young woman stand before five golden figures. The figures are arranged in a rough semi-circle, all facing the point where Taako is standing now. Their faces are distorted in pain and fear, some holding their hands up as if to shield themselves from a blow. One of the figures is no more than a child with fat, golden tears running down his cheeks.

Taako’s eyes are locked onto the face of the figure in front of the child, his arm flung out in an attempt to stand between the child and their attacker. Taako looks into the figure’s familiar eyes, eyes that he’s woken up to each morning filled with love. These eyes are wide and frightened and just a little hateful.

This is how Kravitz looked at his murderer, Taako realizes. It was his relic that did this. How fitting that look survived until it found him.

Faintly, he hears Kravitz step towards him. “Taako, love, I…” But there are no words. What could he possibly say? Taako killed him.

The young woman’s gaze flickers nervously between Taako, Kravitz, and the golden corpse. Wisely, she says nothing and takes a few steps back to give them some privacy.

Kravitz walks closer, but doesn’t try to touch him. Taako lets out a short, wet laugh that hurts more than it probably should. Even when they’re looking at the proof that Taako killed him, Kravitz is still able to read him so well.

Taako finally pries his eyes away from the golden Kravitz and turns to the (sort of) living one. It’s only in that moment, looking into Kravitz’s sad, vulnerable eyes, that Taako realizes how angry he is. He’s angry at himself for making that fucking stone, angry at whoever used it to hurt these people, angry at Kravitz for not telling him.

The anger must show on his face, because Kravitz stumbles back a step with an expression like he just got slapped. A part of him takes some sick satisfaction in making Kravitz back away, running away from Taako like the monster he is.

Without a word, Taako moves to one of the other golden figures and fishes a small stone out of his pocket. He never actually used this when he was adventuring, did he? He takes a breath and curls his fingers tightly around the transmutation stone with one hand, and places the other on the figure’s shoulder.

He doesn’t pray, because Taako doesn’t do prayer, but he does send a little thought Istus’s way as he concentrates on the figure.

I know this stone isn’t really powerful enough to change them, but they were killed by another stone made by me and one of them turned into my reaper boyfriend, so that’s gotta be enough bond juice for you to help me out, yeah?

The golden figure darkens, and small chunks begin to fall away and scatter on the ground until there’s nothing but a pile of rich, dark earth at Taako’s feet. He moves onto the next figure, and one by one turns them to dirt. He saves the child for second-to-last, and then finally moves to stand in front of the golden Kravitz.

There’s a moment where he just stares at his face, committing his last living expression to memory, letting the statue of his love focus all that fear and hatred on Taako. Then, he places his hand on Kravitz’s cheek, and feels him crumble away.

When it’s done, he rubs his fingers together, feeling the grains of dirt that stuck to him. He turns to the young woman and says, “Plant something nice here. I made sure there’s lots to feed it.”

The woman nods, equal parts frightened and thankful. “Thank you.” She glances at Kravitz, whom Taako pointedly does not look at. He instead turns away from the town, and just starts walking.

“Taako,” Kravitz says, trailing a few feet behind. “Please, at least let me take you home.”

Taako pulls at a cord around his neck, revealing his Stone of Farspeech. “Lup.” There isn’t an answer, and Taako can’t keep his hands from shaking anymore. “Lup.”

Kravitz is talking again, but it’s just buzzing in Taako’s ears. He grips the stone so tightly that the cord starts to hurt his neck.

“Barold,” he tries, his voice unsteady.

“Taako?” Barry’s voice comes out of the stone, and Taako almost falls to his knees at the sound.

“I need you to pick me up.” He doesn’t know when he started crying, but it’s clear in his voice by now.

“What’s wrong?” Barry’s voice becomes panicked. “Are you alright?”

“Please,” is all he can manage.

“I’m coming. It’s gonna be fine, I’m coming right now.”

Taako finally looks at Kravitz and says the first thing he’s said to him since he saw Kravitz’s body. “Go.”

Kravitz doesn’t push him—he never pushes him, he’s too kind, too good for Taako. He closes him eyes and nods, resigned. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s gone, leaving only the sound of a raven’s wing flapping in the distance.

Taako barely has time to wallow in his misery before Barry is there, pulling him into a tight hug. Taako must’ve looked pretty bad, because Barry started talking in his Soft Voice. It was the one he’d used on those rare occasions when Lup had died without Taako, and he couldn’t do anything without feeling an oppressive void at his side. The whole crew was gentle with him, but Barry was the one who sat with him, always wrapping an arm around him and filling the silence with his voice, making sure Taako was never alone. It kept him sane as he waited for the year to end.

“I’ve got you,” Barry says, and Taako can’t help but cling to him. “I’m getting us out of here, okay?” There’s the falling feeling again, and then Taako is being lowered down onto Lup and Barry’s couch.

“Why didn’t Lup pick up?” Taako asks, voice small. He holds back a hiccup and tries to maintain some semblance of dignity.

Barry cups Taako’s face in his hands and starts to wipe away his tears. “She’s on a mission for the Raven Queen. Her stone is silenced. I can override it, just give me second.” He reaches for his stone and it pulses with red arcane energy for a moment.

Taako knows the right thing to do is stop him. There’s really nothing Lup can do to make this right, and he’d be pulling her away from some cosmically important mission. But dammit, Taako wants his sister, and he can’t be bothered to give a shit about much else.

Barry turns away as he whispers into his stone, probably because he’s telling Lup how awful Taako looks right now. Only now does he realize that he never even put on his usual Disguise Self before going out. Gods only know what Barry must be thinking after finding him alone in the middle of nowhere with his home face on.

Lup appears in a literal flash, and hot air blasts out from her rift. She’s got strange black smudges on her clothes and cheek, but she wastes no time in kneeling on the floor nest to Taako and looking him over. Her hands flutter over his arms, both reassuring him and checking for injuries.

Satisfied that he is physically uninjured, Lup takes Taako’s hands and holds them tightly. “What happened?” There’s an edge to her voice, an implied I’ll kill whoever hurt you that only makes Taako feel worse. After all, he’s the bad guy in this story.

Taako breaks. He can’t understand half the words coming out of his mouth and his ears are ringing and he doesn’t pause to breathe for so long that his chest hurts. He stumbles his way through the story, and then rambles about guilt and Kravitz’s face and it’s unfair it’s so unfair he killed Kravitz he killed him.

Taako’s half-nonsense devolves into sobs as he buries his face in Lup’s shoulder. He spends several seconds doing nothing but trembling as Lup holds him. “It was supposed to be over,” he mumbles into the fabric of her robe. “We won. The end. No more relics.”

“It is over,” Lup says. “Kravitz died a decade ago. It’s not your…” Lup seems to realize that Taako won’t believe it’s not his fault and stops herself. “It’s not starting again. I promise.”

“Can I stay here tonight?”

“Of course. Wanna help me make dinner? I was thinking tacos.”

Taako snorts. “Now you’re just flattering me.”

“Is it working?” Lup leans away to give Taako a devious smile.

“Hell yeah.” Taako’s smile isn’t quite his usual one, nor is it his sincere one, but it’s a start.

Barry is absolutely not allowed in the kitchen while the twins work. He tries to follow them (Not to cook, he was just trying to be supportive!), but they usher him out, telling him that his mere presence will spoil the food.

Lup doesn’t try to talk more about what happened with Kravitz, but she does pull out one of their aunt’s old recipes for a side dish, so Taako knows he’s getting the little twin treatment today. (They don’t actually have a record of who was born first, so they take turns being big twin and little twin whenever it’s convenient for them. Usually Taako’s not too hot on being the little twin, but today seems to be a day of exceptions.)

Lup works close to Taako, always bumping their elbows together and leaning on his shoulder to watch him work whenever she has a free moment. He teases her for it and she teases right back, and they dance around the subject of why so well that they should get a goddamn trophy. Or at least a spot on Fantasy Dancing with the Stars.

When dinner’s ready, Taako goes to let Barry know his exile has ended while Lup sets the table. But as Taako approaches the living room, he hears Barry speaking. Then, he hears a voice that is not Barry’s.

��—just want to know he’s okay.” Kravitz. Taako’s heart races as he pokes his head around the corner. Barry is talking into his Stone of Farspeech, and Kravitz is not in the house. Taako doesn’t know whether or not he’s happy about that.

“Well, ‘okay’ isn’t how I’d put it,” Barry says. “But he’s here, and you know Lup and I are gonna take care of him. I think it’s best if you wait a while, give him some space.”

“Right. Of course.” Kravitz’s voice is strained. “I… I should go, then.”

“Bye, Kravitz.” Barry waits for a moment with no response, then sighs and tucks the stone away. Taako ducks back behind the corner and waits a hopefully un-suspicious amount of time before walking into the room and announcing, “Soup’s on, Barold.”

Taako manages to compartmentalize enough to enjoy dinner. The food is warm and familiar and tastes amazing—natch. Lup links their ankles under the table and Barry drones on about the finer details of some research paper he’s working on. He manages to avoid necromancy talk and honestly, Taako might’ve been interested in a better mood. But for now, he half-listens and ribs Barry about wanting to study after already being one of the multiverse’s most accomplished arcanists and having said accomplishments implanted into everyone’s minds via Voidfish.

When they’re ready to go to bed, they don’t even bother with the pretense of making up the guest bedroom. Taako’s kicked Barry out of his own bed before, but tonight the three of them pile on together.

Waking up next to Lup is familiar enough that for a second, Taako doesn’t think about why it’s not Kravitz next to him in bed. He listens to Lup’s snoring as yesterday’s events settle in his mind. He lifts his head enough to check the rest of the bed and doesn’t find Barry—he must already be up for the day. He was always more of an early-riser than the twins. With just the two of them there, Taako can almost pretend it’s the old days again, back before the IPRE, with no one in his heart but his sister, who would never let him down. Of course, they never had as nice a place as this to crash in the old days. Even when he closes his eyes, the sheets are too soft for the illusion to fully set in.

Eventually, he sighs and props himself up on his elbow, resigned if not ready to face the morning. He leans over to kiss Lup’s forehead before rolling out of bed. He pulls his fingers through his hair as he walks towards the kitchen, taming his wild bed-head into a more manageable mess for now.

The smell of coffee drifts through the air and Taako enters the kitchen to find Barry leaning against the counter with a mug. He raises it in greeting, and then nods at the spare mugs. “Want some?”

“Made by you?” Taako scoffs with no real bite.

“It’s Fantasy Costco Instant,” Barry says with a roll of his eyes. “None of my kitchen-curse on it.” He’s already pouring Taako a mug, which Taako takes mostly for the warmth rather than the taste. He holds it near his face after sips to let the steam lift past his face.

“So,” Barry says, absolutely failing at nonchalance. “Do you wanna… talk about it?”

“Depends. If I ignore it long enough will it go away?” Taako’s glad he has the mug to hide some of his expression. Barry’s too good at reading him. He leans back against the counter and tries not to look as hopeless as he feels.

“Probably not.” Barry leans next to Taako, just close enough that he can feel Barry’s arm brush against his. “Kravitz called last night. I get if you’re not ready to talk yet, but you can’t avoid him forever.”

“Everything was easier when I just had to wait a year for none of my actions to matter anymore.” He knows Barry understands what he really means: It was easier when they were all dust and I didn’t have to care and get my heart broken.

Barry sighs and they drink their coffee in silence. Taako leans a little more towards Barry, enough that he can still deny it was intentional, but also enough that Barry will see right through that.

“Listen,” Barry breaks the silence. “Lup and I have got to go to work. The Raven Queen gets that we’re family-first, but that mission Lup bailed on last night… We gotta go clean that up or it’s not gonna be good. Will you be okay by yourself?”

“Okay as always,” Taako says. He tries for dry humor, but it comes out as weary cynicism. He waits a second before speaking, unable to keep back the question burning the back of his tongue. “Will Kravitz be going with you, too?”

“Yeah. We’re meeting him there.”

“Tell him… Tell him he can come by today. I want to…” Taako trailed off as he realized he didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. Talk? Apologize? Yell? Just see him again?

Luckily for him, Barry just nodded and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We’ll come by after work. Lup and I will be right there for you.”

Taako nodded back, unable to even think about more words to say.

When Lup wakes up she fusses over Taako the entire time she’s getting ready. He lets her more because it makes her feel better than him. By the time she and Barry are ready to rift out, he’s reassured her at least twelve times that he’ll be fine, which fools precisely no one in the room.

Finally, Lup and Barry say their last goodbyes and leave. Suddenly, Taako realizes he now actually has to deal with being alone. He stands in the living room for some time, staring at the spot where his sister and brother-in-law just were. The house feels a lot bigger without the two of them, and that annoying little voice in his head that keeps reminding him of every way he’s ever screwed up is having a field day.

Taako decides it’s time to start baking. He enters the kitchen and starts opening cupboards to take stock of everything at his disposal. Luckily this is Lup’s kitchen, which means it’s always got the basics and then some (unlike a certain fighter he could mention that doesn’t seem to get that a full spice rack isn’t optionable if you’re trying to make an edible dinner).

He starts out simply enough with whipping up a quick bread dough. There’s not much bread left in the pantry, and Lup and Barry will be lucky to find bona-fide fresh Taako bread when they get home. And if he’s a little extra rough kneading the dough, who’s going to know?

As the day passes, Taako’s creations get more and more complicated—works of art, if he does say so himself. He gets so lost in his work that it isn’t until his stomach starts growling that he realizes he’s never even stopped to really eat any of the pastries and goodies that have slowly been swallowing up the counter space. Sure, he’s taste-tested through the process like any respectable chef, but it’s almost mid-afternoon and all he’s really put in his stomach is the instant coffee Barry made.

He wipes his flour-covered hands on his apron and grabs a jelly tart off the top of a plate piled high before dropping unceremoniously into the nearest chair in the dining room. He takes a bite and the flavors are nothing short of perfection, but somehow chewing it feels like a chore. He tries to put his finger on what’s wrong. The texture is just right, the ratio of filling to dough is there.

He swallows the first bite and raises the tart again to his lips but doesn’t open his mouth. Fuck, he’s tired. He can’t even hold up the pastry anymore and lets his hand drop down to the table. His other hand supports his head as he leans over himself, really taking note of the weariness deep in his bones.

For a second, he’s afraid he’s going to start crying again, and what a sad sight that would be. Absolutely mortifying. But tears don’t come. He emptied himself out last night and now there’s just a big old nothing left inside.

He manages to push himself up and walk back to the kitchen, depositing the half-eaten tart back on its original plate. It’s only his family who’d eat it anyway, and they don’t mind. He really should eat something, though. He looks around the kitchen nearly overflowing with food of the highest quality (i.e. his own) and finds nothing that actually motivates him to start eating.

He closes his eyes and, in his mind, starts going through everything he’d found in the kitchen while doing inventory earlier. There’s some leftover soup that’s ready to eat with just a quick prestidigitation.

He’s never really been one for leftovers. When he and Lup were small, there wasn’t a guarantee they’d be able to eat later, so they stuffed themselves until their plates were empty. Later on, it was Magnus who cleared the plates so they never had leftovers. But apparently in the Taaco-Bluejeans household, there’s enough soup to put away. It’s definitely Lup’s cooking, and that makes it easier for Taako to get through a full serving. He still feels a vague longing to put his head down on the table and never get up, but he has enough energy now to muster the dignity to resist.

There’s still hours before Lup, Barry, and… and Kravitz are due to be back. Taako briefly considers a nap, but decides if he lets himself rest, there’s no way he’ll get up to face Kravitz. Besides, lying down with nothing but his own thoughts isn’t something he’s feeling right now. He needs to keep himself busy.

He starts by putting all of his baked goods in the kitchen away. Storing and organizing everything takes the better part of an hour, and Taako stretches it to two by reorganizing the food several times over.

He calls Ren about some finer business details he’s been putting off since almost the beginning of building the Taako brand. He’s pretty sure she knows something is up, but she doesn’t say anything and pretending to listen to her talk about the minutiae of licensing is distracting enough.

After he hangs up, he looks at the Stone in his hand. There are a few voices he could use hearing right about now, but he hesitates. Magnus would rush over, no doubt, and Taako’s not sure he can handle more feelings talk before Kravitz shows up. Merle would give him a truly Pan-awful sermon. Angus is too smart for his own good and would see through any lie Taako tried to pull about how okay he is (not at all), and he’s not ready for any more honesty.

In the end, Taako spends his remaining time pacing around the house, pulling out his Stone and fiddling with it before putting it away, and restlessly adjusting anything he can get his hands on. Lup might kill him for how completely he’s reorganized the kitchen. (It’s better this way anyway; he’s told her a million times his system is the best.)

Finally, there’s a soft knock on the door. Taako jumps nearly a foot in the air. He almost thinks it’s not the reapers, because they could just appear inside any time they wanted, but when his shaky hand turns the knob, Lup is standing on the other side.

“We figured coming through the door might be better than popping in on you,” she says, answering Taako’s unasked questions as always.

Lup enters the room and puts an arm around Taako’s shoulders. Taako can’t see Barry and Kravitz behind her, but they can’t be too far.

“You ready?” Lup asks.

“No. Tell him to come in.” Taako drops onto the couch, then straightens up, trying to remember how to fake confidence. It didn’t used to be this hard.

“Barry and I will be in the other room. We’ll give you two space, but if you need us just call.” Lup tucks a strand of Taako’s hair behind his ear and lets her hand linger for a moment. Taako closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them again, his gaze meets Lup’s and she nods. Now or never.

Lup pulls away and ducks her head out of the door. “Come on in.”

Barry enters first, and he and Lup make their way further into the house and out of sight. Taako watches as Kravitz shuffles into the center of the room, standing as stiff and still as—well, as Death. Taako thinks he might not even be breathing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kravitz opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He sighs and looks down at his shoes, his posture still perfect and stiff. “The answer isn’t going to make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to feel better. I want to know why you didn’t tell me I murdered you.” Taako’s voice sounds foreign to even himself. There’s no emotion. It’s that nothing inside of him speaking now.

Kravitz takes a tentative step forward. When Taako doesn’t respond, he continues until he’s sitting next to him on the couch. He doesn’t try to touch Taako, which is good, because Taako might just blast him with a fireball if he tries to pretend everything is okay.

“I didn’t realize it until after the Day of Story and Song,” Kravitz starts quietly. “My memories from when I was alive are fuzzy at the best of times, and it wasn’t until I fully processed that you made the Philosopher’s Stone that I realized what that meant for me.” Kravitz glances up at Taako’s eyes hesitantly, as if he’s asking permission to make eye contact. “I was already in love with you Taako, you know that. It didn’t change my feelings.”

“You’re supposed to be honest with the people you love,” Taako says, like a hypocrite. He’s not sure if he’s trying to hurt Kravitz or himself with the remark.

“Taako, love…” Kravitz closes his eyes and balls his hands into fists, not in anger, but in the way one does when they know there’s nothing to be done. Defeat. “I knew how much it would hurt you. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That was wrong, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Taako looked away, staring at the opposite wall instead. It hurt less to look there. “How can you not think of me differently? How am I supposed to look at you? I’m the reason you died.”

“I know this isn’t going to be what you want to hear, but I’m trying this thing where I’m honest with the people I love.” Kravitz’s voice gains back a little of its usual lilt with the dry humor. Taako forces himself not to smile. “That day… I’ve never thought of it as my death.”

Taako starts to argue, but Kravitz puts a hand up. His expression is firm. Taako likes it a lot better than his guilty, docile face.

“That is the day my Queen took me into her service. She took my soul and made it something new, gave me purpose. The person I was before didn’t matter anymore because of her. I was her servant, and she made me feel whole.” Kravitz stops and smiles, his eyes far away. “It was… sublime. The small-town pianist was a speck of dust compared to my new being. I have always been faithful to my Queen, Taako. She gave me a place in the world. Maybe who I was died that day, but the me that I am now was created because of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Taako furrows his brow and tries to sort through all the protests that spring to mind. Most of it amounts to a petulant voice that keeps insisting, But you died! He doesn’t know how to say it without sounding like he hasn’t listened at all.

Kravitz carefully takes Taako’s hands in his. Taako surprises himself by letting him. “I should’ve told you. But I never once blamed you, and I hope you can stop blaming yourself. I’m not dead, love. I’m a reaper.” Kravitz moves Taako’s hand to the side of his neck, where a warm pulse beats beneath the skin. It’s faint, and not quite as warm as a living human, but it seems to grow stronger and warmer under Taako’s touch. “Do you feel that? My heart started beating again when I fell in love with you. You’ve made me more alive than I’d ever been, even in Greensborough. I’m here, I like the being I am now, and I love you.”

“Did it hurt?” Taako feels tears that he thought were long gone start to well up. “Did I hurt you?”

“I don’t remember.” Kravitz cups Taako’s face with one hand, stroking his cheek with his thumb. His other hand stays holding Taako’s hand against his pulse. “I remember stepping in front of that child, and when the Raven Queen remade me, I always knew what happened, but I don’t remember the feeling.”

“What if I hurt you again?”

Kravitz has the gall to smirk a stupid, beautiful smirk. “I’m a big strong reaper. I can handle myself. And you’re a lot kinder than you give yourself credit for.”

Taako doesn’t even make the decision to lean forward and kiss Kravitz. It’s simply a fact that he must be kissing him right now. If he was just a little sappier, he’d say he could feel Istus pulling him into Kravitz’s embrace with her threads.

When they pull apart, it’s not more than an inch. Just enough for Taako to say, “I love you.”

Kravitz leans their foreheads together and Taako takes a long moment to enjoy the touch of Kravitz’s skin. Taako hums contently, then says, “You know Lup and Barold have definitely been listening in on this whole thing, yeah?”

“I figured.” Kravitz sounds just as blissfully unbothered as Taako feels.

“No, we haven’t!” Lup shouts from around the corner of the hallway.

Taako feels Kravitz’s laughter entwined with his own. Lup comes out of hiding with a smile and a respectfully-abashed Barry. “So, who wants dinner?”

Taako’s stomach growls as he remembers his pitiful eating habits today. “Sounds perfect, Lulu.”

As Lup heads into the kitchen and Barry awkwardly looks away to give them a semblance of privacy, Kravitz leans into Taako and says quietly, “Are you okay?”

“No.” Taako tucks his head into the crook of Kravitz’s neck. “But I’ve got you back, so that’s a start.” He only gets to enjoy a moment of peace.

“Taako, my dear brother whom I love with all my heart?” Lup calls from the kitchen, her voice light and airy in a way that means she’s about to lose it.

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck did you do to my kitchen?”

#taz balance #taako taaco #kravitz #taakitz #lup taaco #barry bluejeans #me stuffing a bunch of tangentially-related headcanons into a fic? its more likely than you think #this was supposed to be like four pages and its 25 what happened

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