#i need some more solid answers from the doctors on multiple fronts but

[dredshirtroberts]

Everyone in here is already in the phone tree for when we go kill my parents, right? (for legal reasons this is a joke)

echocardiogram provided a few revelations for me. Well... it provided one, but then there followed several stemming from that one so you know. six a one, half a dozen a the other, etc.etc.etc.

I need to schedule to see the cardiologist for real this time (so far it's just been cardiology-related tests and therefore mainly techs and nurses i've dealt with there), because they found an Anomaly in my heart wall that allowed a little of the red color to go where only blue color was supposed to go, and also that anomaly was really the only physical thing they could see, which doesn't explain the tachycardia symptoms i'm also having. This is a very fun ride to be on, in case you're curious, by the way (sarcastic).

There are better tests with which to diagnose whatever the anomaly was, but one of the things we floated around was a possible hole allowing blood to go where it wasn't supposed to go yet. Because i have brain beasts that get feisty when I don't know information about medical stuff, I finally decided to look up potential causes for holes in the heart, or other wall-related weaknesses.

Almost all heart-holes are there from birth. the symptoms for children match up really scarily well with my childhood (and also for my today me).

The symptoms also match things my mother would frequently complain about. And her father - who i was at one point told had a heart murmur? but i cannot confirm this at this time, and i keep forgetting when I'm on the phone with him and grandma to check if that was a real thing i'm remembering or if i've cross-remembered onto him from someone else.

Did you know if you already have a congenital heart defect or a family history of them, your child is likely to have one too?

Did you know this makes me furious because I've spent my life hiding my shortness of breath because I was told the only reason i'd breathe like that after small bouts of exertion would be because i was out of shape or fat. yes. even while i was running half marathons, and swimming, and tap dancing, all at the same time. yes even as a child who - i've gone back and seen pictures of me as a kid - was not a large child. (and if I had been, that still would not have warranted the teasing and scolding i would get about eating too quickly and breathing so hard, or exertion, or about a million other things related to me feeling poorly and unable to control it - fat is not a bad thing to be and doesn't mean you deserve poor treatment, and it does not mean that you don't deserve care and it doesn't make you a bad person, and none of us deserved that).

I've made bad health decisions. I've done shit to my body that is 100% my fault. I've done shit in my *life* that was bad for me and 100% my fault.

I know when to take blame for shit that's my fault. I also am VERY good at taking blame for things that are in no way my fault nor do i have any control over them whatsoever.

I'm getting slowly better at finally placing blame where it belongs when necessary. Not getting care as a child was not my fault, and I am not to blame for the issues caused because of that. My parents are. Specifically my mother because she was the primary parent who was stay-at-home and also shared the symptoms i have the biggest problem with now. I mean I know it's hate on my mom week but like. I was not expecting to have a whole new reason to be upset with her like this.

My dad's an ass, and he sucks for a lot of reasons but he wasn't home a lot when i was a kid and he was very much Working when he was home more later. It's an explanation not an excuse - he should have still noticed shit. but i get why he didn't.

I think i'm hella fucking lucky the strep throat+cold combo i had for like 3 weeks in fifth grade that the doctors initially thought might have been mono didn't kill me. I think i'm fucking *amazing* for having done as much physical activity as i did for as long as I was able to keep up with it considering i was not allowed to "slack off" because no one believed I was experiencing the symptoms i was having.

I think i'm a goddamn warrior for getting to the point where i could actually take care of myself and frankly i think i'm doing a hell of a lot better physically than i could be considering all of the contributing factors to how i feel most days.

I am surrounded by love and affection and it's more than i can bear sometimes, especially looking back at how alone I used to be. I pick that smaller me up in my arms. I hold her and I tell her it's going to be okay.

And then I sit down because i should not be holding anything larger than a cat for anything longer than a couple seconds or my heart goes nuts.

[cosmerelists]

AITA Posts on Roshar: Part 2

[You can find Part 1 here!]

Once again, we are imagining that the Reddit forum “Am I The Asshole” exists on Roshar, and that the main characters from Stormlight like to post on it. What might those posts look like?

1. AITA for talking about poop on a first date?

I really need help here, Reddit. I (LE/M/24) am not good with women--well, I’m very good at flirting with them and getting dates, but I am NOT good with keeping them. I’ve never had a relationship last longer than a few months, and my dad is always me grief about it. In fact, it got to the point where my cousin arranged a casual for me with a woman (LE/F/17) I’ve never met. So I’m engaged now! But it is only a casual, and if this woman does not like me, the engagement isn’t going to last. I’m lowkey stressed about this, because she’s really pretty and really smart and I think I like her a lot.

Okay but to get to the actual situation. I arranged a sort of first date with the woman I’m engaged to (I’ll call her S) at this wine house. Classic, right? And I was telling her about all of my heroic battles and stuff, like you do, and she seemed to be pretty into it. But then suddenly S interrupted my battle story to ask me how I, well, poop while wearing shardplate. So that’s the first thing--she brought up the poop thing first! So I answered, of course, since she asked, but then she was asking MORE poop-related questions, and I ended up admitting that yes, I have shat myself in Shardplate on multiple occasions. My shard-plate wearing bros know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, weirdly, I felt like the date went well?? But later I was telling people about it, and they all said I DEFINITELY messed up because no woman wants a man to talk about poop on a first date.

Plz help. I really like her. AITA? Should I apologize?

2. AITA for wanting to destroy evil?

Humans are so weird about it! I’m a sword (NE/NG/1000) that was literally created to destroy evil! But every time I destroy evil, people say things like “Oh god the bodies” or “please stop trying to eat my soul” or “I am going to lock you in a closet. You are a menace.” What gives? AITA? 

3. AITA for being against murder?

In before “but we’re at war.” I know we’re at war. When isn’t there a war? The fact of the matter is--violence is never the answer. You can’t save someone through killing. I know--I am a surgeon (oh right--DE/M/50), so my business is saving people.

I have one son (DE/M/20) (my other son died). I raised him to be a surgeon, and he was really good at it. And before anyone says “why did you force your son to be like you,” I didn’t FORCE him. He wanted to be a surgeon. But he ended up being drafted into war, and then he never came home. Well he did, technically. But it wasn’t him. It was a murderer.

He is ALWAYS killing people. He says he’s a soldier now, and not only does he keep killing people, but he keeps killing people in front of me! We’re occupied right now, and the other day, some of the enemy soldiers came to my surgery and wanted to move some of the unconscious patients. Just move them. No evidence that they intended them harm. But my son FREAKED out and MURDERED the solider who came to take the patients! Just straight up murdered him! In a place of healing! And when I told him this was NOT okay, he grabbed his unconscious friend (who definitely needs medical care) and ran away. And now nobody knows where he is.

My wife is pissed at me. I can tell she thinks I drove away our son. But AITA for not wanting my son to be a murderer??

4. AITA for saving my friend?

I (DE/M/20) am a soldier in an occupied city. I’m also one of the radiants, and almost all of the other radiants in the city have fallen mysteriously unconscious. My dad is a doctor, and he’s been watching over them. Only my dad doesn’t believe in resisting occupation; he’s a pacifist--like, an extreme one. So when the enemy soldiers showed up to take away the unconscious radiants, I resisted. Because I knew what they were going to do with them--they were going to kill them (or worse). Otherwise, they would have just left them there. And one of the unconscious radiants is a dear friend of mine, a man who stuck with me through some of the worst moments of my life, and I wasn’t going to just stand aside and let him be taken. So I fought back. And I managed, barely, to stop them. Then I took my friend and left so that I could hide him and protect him.

But my dad started freaking out about how I had killed someone in a place of healing, and he called me a monster. I’m not saying I’m not a monster. But I think I did the right thing in saving my friend. AITA?

Edit: Wow so apparently people found my dad’s post? 

5. AITA for stealing?

I (LE/F/17) can’t go into too much detail without potentially doxxing myself, so I will have to be vague. My brothers and I had a very rough childhood. We are talking physical abuse, mental abuse, all of it. And now both of our parents are dead, and we’re about to lose everything thanks to some bad decisions our father made. But there is one thing that might save us--there is this woman (a heathen!) who owns an item, and if it were ours instead, it would fix all of our problems. I can’t go into too much detail, so I will call it the thingamajig. 

The thing is, no one knows where the woman got the thingamajig in the first place, and it’s probably not something she should have as a heathen. She doesn’t HAVE to have it--like it isn’t keeping her alive or anything--whereas my brothers and I are in fact doomed if we don’t get one. So we decided to steal it. It’s not nice and it’s not ethical but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive, you know?

And it all sounded good when it was abstract, but the thing is, the woman is actually pretty cool and very pretty and once I got to know her, I didn’t even want to steal from her! But then she did something horrible. Again, I can’t get into detail, but trust me when I say it’s like “haunts your dreams forever oh god the screams” sort of horrible. So I figured--storm it. If she’s going to be terrible, then I’m going to steal from her and I’m going to save my family. So I did.

But tbh the guilt is eating me alive! She STILL hasn’t noticed that the thingamajig is gone unless she HAS noticed and she’s just waiting for me to CRACK under the pressure!

You guys have to help me--AITA?

6. AITA for being stick?

I am a stick. I am not fire. AITA?

[icasttourniquet]

Common Misconceptions: Raising the Dead (CPR)

Let's start with the bad news: basically all the CPR you've seen in movies and TV shows is performed terribly.

Here's the good news: most CPR is performed on dead patients, which means even bad CPR is better than nothing.

What is CPR?

CPR stands for (googles hurriedly) Cardio-Pumonary Resuscitation. It has two parts: 1) chest compressions and 2) rescue breaths. Here's a video in case you're still confused, but most people have seen CPR performed a ton of times during the climaxes of medical shows. It comes right before either a) the nurse yells "Clear!" and the patient comes back to life or b) the EMT says "I'm not losing you" and injects the patient with adrenaline right to the heart, and then they come back to life.

Raising the Dead

CPR is generally performed on dead patients. That is, patients without a pulse. In the first responder business, the situation doesn't really get worse than dead, so it provides a unique opportunity for authors because you can't really get it wrong.

Here are some questions I've heard people ask while learning CPR:

Should I perform CPR on pulse-less patients who have chest wounds?

Can I continue performing CPR if I break a rib?

Should I perform CPR on pregnant people?

What if I can't give rescue breaths? Should I still give CPR?

My patient has a lot of broken limbs. Should I fix those before performing CPR?

My patient was electrocuted. Should I give CPR?

Here's the trick to answering all your CPR questions. Is my character dead (no pulse)? Does performing CPR put a) the first responder, b) another patient, or c) a bystander in danger?

If you can answer (yes) (no, no, no), congratulations! Your first responder can perform CPR, even really crappy CPR, even CPR that is ineffective, for as long as the plot requires (ModN's WFR instructor tells the story of a 6-hour CPR session on a dead patient during a journey to care that included a toboggan ride).

(NOTE: there's actually one solid contraindication: if the patient is severely hypothermic, their heart rate may be so slow and weak as to be undetectable. In this case (and pretty much only this case) chest compressions may actually do more harm than good. Other than that, obvious signs of death like decapitation or rigor mortis indicate you don't need to start resuscitation, but there are still plenty of compelling interpersonal reasons to do it – at that point you're doing CPR for the responder and survivors rather than the patient.)

Otherwise, your character should go for it!

The bad news about CPR

Time for the bad news (other than you having a dead character on your hands). In general,* CPR is not enough to bring someone back. Its role is to continue circulating oxygenated blood while you wait for a defibrillator like an AED to arrive. The AED or manual defibrillator is what actually convinces the heart to stop fluttering/beating erratically, and allows it to resume something like a normal rhythm. That means that in the wilderness, CPR is almost never going to work. That said, ModN's WFR instructors had a couple tales of AEDs falling from the sky (via helicopter, not under their own power), so it's worth trying regardless.

* The exception: lightning-struck patients can at times restart regular rhythms with just chest compressions. This leads to interesting triage considerations when dealing with the aftermath of lightning, but that's a subject for another post.

How to perform non-crappy CPR

There are a million videos on YouTube that can talk you through every sort of CPR. Keeping in mind, of course, that some CPR is better than nothing on a pulseless patient, here are some quick tips that could indicate your character has some training:

Your character distinguishes between adult and pediatric CPR. Because children don't tend to get heart attacks, pulse-less children almost always have a trauma or respiratory cause. This means responders give children more rescue breaths.

Your character keeps their elbows locked. Here's a playlist of some examples of bad CPR (and some are really quite bad). Actors generally can't lock their elbows because they'd risk injuring or even killing their scene partner (so, okay, fine, that's a decent excuse), but people with real training will know better.

They do not always give rescue breaths. Any CPR is better than no CPR. Rescue breaths can put the first responder at risk because they can involve lip-to-lip contact, assuming no PPE is available. I once had a paramedic say bluntly that he really only gives breaths to children—it's just not worth the risk to him for anyone else. If this sounds callous, remember, CPR is (almost) only performed on dead patients, and the number one priority in any disaster is yourself.

(ModN edit: in a professional setting your character will always have some sort of PPE for rescue breaths: a face shield at the minimum, or in the front country a full-blown bag valve mask (BVM) that allows them to use their hands to get air into the patient.)

Your character does a blood sweep before staring CPR in a trauma injury. You may have heard the rule no pulse = chest compressions immediately. This is almost always true, especially in the frontcountry, when most pulse-less patients you encounter will have had a heart attack. However, in the wilderness, we can run into a bad situation: chest compressions that pump all my patient's blood out the gushing wound in their side.

Maybe you're thinking, hey! I thought you said my character could always do CPR on a dead patient and they'd be fine! And yes, I did say that—thank you for listening. If your character performs CPR on a patient with no pulse and arterial wound, they have not killed their patient. This is because the patient was already dead. They have not "sped up" the bleeding out process because this patient has basically already bled out. So, I'm not blaming your character for anything.

That said, the pro-est of pros will do a blood sweep after finding no pulse and stuff/apply direct pressure/tourniquet as necessary. As an added note, your character with no pulse and the arterial bleed? Probably not going to survive.

This leads me to...

Writing more realistic necromancy

If your character's CPR is successful, your character has just raised the dead. Thinking about it this way can help you write more realistic resuscitation scenes. Here's the number one thing that will make all your CPR more realistic:

Your dead patient does not go from dead to walking and talking in a few seconds.

When the body has no pulse for a while, it gets unhappy. This is because all its internal organs are dying and also because it is dead. CPR replicates the pumping of a heart, but not particularly well. Most people whose organs are all dying don't get that shot of adrenaline to the heart (this is not part of any WFR or EMT protocol but whatever) and then go back to swashbuckling adventure after a quick sip of water.

In fact, in real life, checking the pulse of your patient is an important part of performing CPR because sometimes they come back to life and you don't notice.

So how might you accurately describe someone who's just come back from the dead via CPR (possibly plus defibrillation)? May I recommend some of the following words (no need to cite me—just plop 'em in your writing):

Unconscious

Unmoving

Pale

Clammy

Weak pulse

Non-responsive to pain

Not dead!!!

An added point: absolutely no one whose heart stopped is now "okay" because their heart restarted. They are "not dead" because their heart restarted. Admitedly, not dead is pretty good in the first response business, but they need to see a doctor. As soon as possible. This is because something caused the heart to stop and CPR did not treat that underlying cause. Many people who come back from the dead die again soon after, and could come back and die multiple times before picking a state more permanantly.

Wilderness-Specific CPR

In the wilderness, we have get one (1) special CPR-related ability and that is the ability to stop.

In the US, there's a thing called patient abandonment that can get folks in trouble. Basically, if you start treating a patient, you need to keep treating them until 1) they are dead, 2) they are conscious enough to refuse further treatment and do so, or 3) someone else with an equivalent or higher level of training is treating them (ModN: as a W-EMT this is tricky – it's hard to find people more qualified in the wilderness to hand a patient off to!).

Because WFRs and EMTs cannot declare patients dead, and a dead or unconscious patient cannot refuse treatment, that means you are treating them until someone else is treating them. (As a side note, my first first-aid instructor told the story of performing CPR for 30 minutes in an ambulance on a patient missing part of his brain [this is bad] because the police officer at the scene didn't want to declare him dead on the highway, which would mean shutting down the road for a few hours).

CPR is unique, however, because it's performed on dead patients. The law doesn't want a poor WFR to be stuck in an endless CPR loop because they can't abandon their patient, so in the wilderness only, your character can stop CPR:

After 30 minutes of sustained pulselessness.

If another patient needs more help.

If continuing is dangerous to self or others.

Otherwise, backcountry and frontcountry CPR are pretty similar.

Summary

CPR is generally performed on dead people.

It is difficult to get worse than dead.

Garbage CPR is better than no CPR.

Recovering from being dead takes time and always warrants more care.

WFRs have a superpower and it is called stopping CPR.

Good luck raising your characters from the dead!

[whimperwoods]

Part 9 of Gozukk and Anna

Anna has a doctor’s appointment. Gozukk turns down an offer to join the church. Jak helps out.

[Note: One of the d&d canon things I particularly don’t like is that the ‘evil races’ have their own separate evil gods particular to their race. I’m aware that there are halfling and elf and dwarf pantheons also, but the thing is that those generally have deities of multiple alignments (rather than only evil ones) and those communities seem to be allowed to serve any gods they want, in practice. In my d&d world, orcs can too, and this particular tribe, to the extent to which they’re religious, is affiliated with Kelemvor. Not everyone worships him, and there are some individuals with other faiths, but he’s the god they have a shrine and a cleric for/from. (I’m not sure it matters that much from a worldbuilding standpoint, but I’ve taken an overall position of “no-race-specific deities,” which does also throw Moradin and the like out with the bathwater, but that’s probably alright.)]

The masterpost is here and includes a cheat sheet with character names, since the list of people she’s met in the community just keeps getting bigger.

tw: slavery (past), tw: PTSD, tw: past rape/noncon (barely referenced), tw: past abuse, tw: fantasy religion (no religious trauma), tw: panic attack, tw: drug reference (past), tw: date rape drug (past)

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Tag list: @redwingedwhump, @nine-tailed-whump, @thehurtsandthecomfurts @kixngiggles, @bluebadgerwhump, @dragonheart905, @carolinethedragon, @whumpzone, @newbornwhumperfly, @cupcakes-and-pain, @much-ado-about-whumping

****

Anna’s legs shook faintly as the healer shouted for her and her master to enter, but she tried to keep her face steady as she ducked under Gozukk’s arm and in through the flap of the tent.

The space was small but comfortable, the furnishings generally not quite as nice as Gozukk’s, with the exception of a smallish but very fine altar, richly carved from solid wood. A set of heavy brass scales sat on it, held up by a skeletal hand, the same image that was carved along its sides, and that she recognized from the box in Gozukk’s room, and a small collection of candles sat around it.

Gozukk knelt briefly in front of the altar, going down on one knee with a quick bow and then rising to his feet again before turning to the healer, Mukzod. “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about our newest guest,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t paused at all. Anna felt certain she should kneel, too, but somehow she found herself frozen, unable to move farther into the tent, or to do anything at all.

Mukzod was dressed in dark grey robes, well-made and clean, with the same skeleton-arm scales embroidered carefully across his chest, but looked fresh-faced, too young for such serious, formal vestments. He was a half head shorter than Gozukk but just as wide, with dark messy hair that flopped into his eyes as he nodded toward her and made her shudder and freeze up. He looked almost nothing like Master Kir, but that hair, the length of it, the little flick of his head to get it out of his eyes - her chest tightened with fear, her breath shortening.

The healer’s smile was warm, but she couldn’t slow her racing heart.

“Hello, guest. Anna, is it? Did I hear correctly?”

Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t answer. Gozukk reached a hand halfway toward her, but then stopped and she suddenly, desperately wished he hadn’t, wished she could bury her face in his chest and not see this new stranger, with his new hair, and his new tent. But that was a foolish thing to wish, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” Gozukk answered, his voice softer now, as if to put her at ease even though he was talking to the healer. “You’ve heard right. I already know she’s wounded, but I want to make sure she isn’t also cursed or marked or being tracked.”

“You know, if you just gave a little bit more of yourself to Kelemvor, you could do it yourself,” Mukzod said jovially. “We all know your piety is genuine.”

Gozukk laughed. “For the last time, cleric, a paladin oath is out of the question. The tribe has to come first. You know that. A holy life is not in my cards.”

Mukzod held his hands up, “I know, I know! I only ask because I know you’d be good at it.”

Anna watched the exchange, trying to follow. Kelemvor was - was a god of - of something. Scales. Justice? But no, that was Tyr, everybody knew that. The skeleton, though - the skeleton - her eyes widened, and her body began to shake.

“I - I didn’t realize you worshipped - umm -” Her voice was thin, tense, and surely one of them would bark at her to speak up. She tensed, awaiting a slap for interrupting, or for doing it poorly, or both. Instead, both men turned slowly to look at her, their posture open, hands away from her.

“It’s alright, Anna,” Gozukk said, “He’s not a god of death. He’s a god of the dead, which is something else.”

Mukzod had his hands up, the palms out toward her. “The chief is right. We don’t kill, not unless we have to. Not unless we’re fighting undead things. I’m more about healing. And curing diseases. And burying bodies we find unattended in the desert, which happens a little more often than one would hope.”

She shivered. She’d seen a body like that, had watched the men in the caravan dragging another man’s corpse away from the hooves and wheels that had crushed him to death, only to leave him lying in a heap alongside their caravan route and keep moving at Master Kir’s orders.

She opened her mouth to ask if they’d found the man from the caravan, if they’d buried him properly, but then she couldn’t. What if they thought she’d had something to do with it? She still remembered the beating she’d gotten after they stopped that night, how unsure she’d been whether her master thought she’d done something to distract the dead man, or whether he was just frustrated. She’d known her place. She hadn’t needed to be reminded. She didn’t need to be reminded now.

She sank onto her knees and felt both safer and less safe, in over her head and drowning in uncertainty.

Gozukk knelt beside her again, taking her hands gently in his own, so gently she could have pulled away, but she knew her place, and maybe soon he would realize she knew it and she wouldn’t have to be so scared.

“It’s alright, Anna,” he said, running his thumb gently over her knuckles. “You don’t have to worship him. Plenty of folks don’t. But I do, and Mukzod does, and he’s got some magic that can help you, if that man did anything that’s lingering.” He scowled, but over her shoulder, not at her. “Anything magical, anyway.”

The cleric placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on Gozukk’s and she flinched heavily before she could stop herself.

“Is it alright if I do a quick magic detection spell? If all is well, I’ll won’t see anything, and we’ll know the human doesn’t have any magical hooks into you. If there is something, I’ll have to do some tests, but we can fix that, too.”

His voice was soothing, but she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at the hair falling into his eyes, scraping his shoulders around the back of his neck. She was shaking, and she couldn’t stop. She gripped Gozukk’s hands tighter, hoping he would allow her nearer. He squeezed back gently and she scooted forward on her knees until she was close enough to whisper into his ear.

“Please, Sir -” she flinched, but decided not to correct herself and maybe he wouldn’t notice, “I - can I -” He let go of one of her hands and then reached up and brushed her hair behind her ear, a gesture that was increasingly becoming a familiar one. She steeled herself and caught her breath. “May I put my head on your shoulder again, please? Like yesterday, when I was -” she didn’t have a word for what she was, “Please, Gozukk, I’m sorry I’m weak, I just - I can - I can do this. I can be good, please, I just - I need - please.” Her breath gave out, her body shaking even harder.

Yesterday, she’d leaned into him with both of their hands between them, his pressing hers to his chest. Now, he wrapped one arm around her carefully, keeping hold of her hand with his other one and drawing her just slightly closer. “Is this alright?” he whispered into the space between them, “Does this help?”

She shook, and wasn’t sure how to answer, but she knew what she’d wanted at first, knew what she’d wanted, and thought she still wanted it. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, her breath coming in deep gasps, and he removed his arm from the small of her back as she kept fighting for air, tracing his fingers through her hair at the temple instead.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I’m here to help.”

After a moment of his arm hovering beside her, he let it fall to his side, not touching her as she knelt up against him, watching him breathe and trying to time her breaths to his.

“Are you ready for the spell?” he asked.

She nodded against his shoulder.

“We’re ready, Mukzod.”

Nothing happened. The cleric said a few words in a language she didn’t understand, and then he fell silent, the air in the room unchanged.

“Nope, all clear,” he said after a moment. “Your pendant’s lighting up like a candle, Chief, and the altar, and some of my stuff, so the spell’s working, but she’s not got any magic on her. Not that lingers, anyway. I can try a dispulsion anyway, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing there to dispel.”

Gozukk leaned his cheek against her temple, sighing in relief. “There we go. You’re safe. Now we know it for sure.”

“I -” Mukzod cleared his throat. “Can I be of any other service? I’d thought you might have come for healing. Or perhaps a calming spell?”

A calming spell? Anna had never heard of that, but as soon as she thought too hard about it, she found herself remembering the times Master Kir had - what had that been - he’d put something in the wine, she’d known there was something in the wine, but he’d made her drink it anyway, made her drink it, made her choke trying to swallow as he forced it down her throat and then he’d - and then he’d -”

She sobbed, her head suddenly spinning, her entire body tingling like there were bees buzzing just inside her skin, and her head on Gozukk’s shoulder wasn’t enough to keep it at bay, wasn’t enough to keep anything at bay, wasn’t - wasn’t -

She grabbed desperately for the front of his shirt, closing her hand into a fist around the fabric and forcing herself to keep breathing. His free hand came up alongside her head, but he didn’t quite touch her, just kept it hovering there, like he was shielding her from the sun. As another wrenching sob tore itself from her throat, she pulled herself closer to him, into that protection, and everything else be damned.

“We’re done for the day,” Gozukk said, his voice rough-edged with anger, like it never was when he talked to her, and she flinched but didn’t dare pull away, couldn’t afford it when he was the only thing steadying her spinning head, couldn’t afford it when it might make him angry, couldn’t - couldn’t - she couldn’t breathe. She gasped for air.

"She’s allowed to feel what she feels,” he snapped at the cleric, “She’s doing fine.”

His own breathing wasn’t quite as steady as she knew it could be, deepening as if he were holding himself together, holding back the snarl she could hear at the edge of his voice.

But then the snarl was gone, and his voice was velvet-gentle again, his hand stroking carefully through her hair. “It’s alright, Anna. You did well. It’s been a stressful day. You don’t have to do anything more. Mukzod just wants you safe, same as me.”

The gentleness was for her. It was just for her, and she was a fool, and she believed it, and she knew she was a fool, but she could feel herself starting to shake apart, could feel the way the buzz under her skin threatened to become the way she felt in the dark, at night, like a fire burning itself out, like she was dying a piece at a time, reducing herself to ash as she went, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t die now, not while she was in a place she was fool enough to half-believe might be better.

“Do you want me to carry you back home?” he asked, his voice still soft, rumbling through his chest and under her cheek, and when had she twisted her head sideways like this, resting more fully on his shoulder? “Or do you want to wait it out here and then we can walk back together? I think you need some quiet for a little bit. You can take another nap, like yesterday. You’re still healing.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, letting go of the front of his shirt, and he took it as an answer, rearranging immediately to gather her up in his arms and cradle her against his chest.

When he rose to his feet still holding her, she didn’t shudder this time, but she wondered if that was only because to shake any more than she was already shaking might be to shake herself to pieces.

The softness in his voice was gone as he looked up at the cleric and ordered, “Open the flap for me,” all of a sudden in control again, the chief whose feet she had been thrown down in front of. But then he was bending his neck to speak softly in her ear again, the gentleness returned to his voice. “Squeeze my neck when you’re ready for me to walk, and we’ll go. Just tell me when you’re steady.”

She squeezed his neck, desperate to be away from here, as if the bees in her skin would leave her alone out in the sun.

They didn’t, but Gozukk let her bury her face in the side of his neck and kept holding her, his arms solid around her and his breath steady, now, soothing.

Halfway back to the tent, small footsteps joined them, a voice she didn’t recognize piping up from below. “Whoa, Uncle Gozukk, is something wrong?”

“Get the flap when we get to my tent, Jak,” he said, the imperiousness gone again, as if it had never been, his voice warm and normal, but without the particular softness he seemed to save for her, and what did that mean? She sobbed in spite of herself, about nothing, or maybe about everything, but her head was full of bees and her skin was full of bees and she couldn’t think.

“She’ll be alright once she has a little peace and quiet,” Gozukk explained, tone patient, “She’s just a little overwhelmed.”

A small hand patted her dangling ankle and she pulled away instinctively before she realized the boy was no threat.

“Oh,” he said, “That makes sense. Does she need a calm down cloth?”

She could feel Gozukk’s chuckle, deep in his chest. “Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. Why don’t you go get one after you help me inside? And then you can go back to whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Got it!” The footsteps sped up, then stopped again, waiting for them to catch up.

Anna clung to Gozukk the rest of the way to the tent, relieved when Jak’s footsteps pattered away as soon as she and Gozukk were inside.

The fine chair he’d been seated in to meet the caravan was inside, now, set behind the table in the front room, and Gozukk settled her into it. She grabbed at its arms, surprised, and squeezed them tighter when Gozukk squatted down in front of her to look in her eyes. She couldn’t get out of the chair and down to his level. He didn’t want that. She had to stay. She had to stay.

Her breathing was still ragged, too fast, and she knew it, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Anna, can you hear me?”

Everything was still too much, his words clear enough to make sense, but then immediately gone to her, as if they had never been. She nodded, trying to keep hold of the question.

“Alright. You did a good job this morning. I want to make sure you know that. It’s alright if you need to stay in here the rest of the day. I’ll try to come check on you when it’s time for lunch, but if you get hungry before I come back, you can go find Djaana or one of the twins, and they’ll look after you.”

She was breathing. That, she was sure of. His voice was soothing, reassuring, and the things he was saying were reassuring, and she couldn’t make them mean anything. She nodded. Reassuring. He was being reassuring. She could be reassured. She kept breathing.

Gozukk nodded back. Her breathing eased a little. Good. He was pleased.

Jak came running in, and she got a good look at him for the first time. He had the same dark hair as Djaana and Gozukk, but his eyes were a lighter color, a green she hadn’t expected, and even with some lingering baby roundness to his face, she could tell there was something about his cheekbones that must be like his father. Gozukk stuck a hand out to slow the boy before he could run all the way to her, and he blushed, looking bashful.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot about the quiet.” He held out a damp, white cloth, in her direction, and she wasn’t sure what to do but take it.

The boy’s green eyes stared at her, his arm drifting behind his back so he could wrap his hand around his elbow, still staring. “Thank you,” she said quietly, aware that her breathing was loud and her voice wasn’t.

“Why don’t you explain to Anna how it works, just in case her mama and grandmother didn’t teach her?” Gozukk asked, something of the softness he always aimed at her in his voice as he addressed the boy.

“Yeah!” Jak said, his face brightening! “It’s easy, Miss Anna! You just put it on the back of your neck, and it’s nice and cool so it feels good, and then you just breathe real steady and think about cooling down and noticing that it feels good, and then when it gets dry, you can go back outside and play or try what you were doing again. Or I guess you can - I dunno. What do you like doing?”

She had no answer, but there wasn’t enough time for it to become awkward. Gozukk laid a hand on Jak’s shoulder. “Why don’t you wait and ask her that in a couple of days? You wouldn’t like it if somebody asked you a bunch of questions while you were trying to calm down, would you?”

“Oh! No!” He mimed locking his mouth closed with a key and tucking it into his pocket, and Anna found herself smiling in spite of everything. She put the cloth against the back of her neck to prove she’d been trying to listen, though there was a lot he said that she hadn’t been able to keep ahold of, the words slipping through her fingers as half of her kept getting wrapped up in her own breath.

He was right. It felt lovely, cool and soft. She closed her eyes, half instinctively, and managed a deeper breath.

She could hear a smile in Gozukk’s voice as he said, “Take all the time you need. We’ll be back to check on you at lunch time.”

Then both sets of footsteps walked away, out the door, and she was alone.

She slid out of the chair and onto her knees, where she felt more herself, but kept the cloth where it was, steadying her breathing as much as she could and thinking about the coolness, the dry air pulling water from the cloth, the dampness sitting against her skin, and nobody touching her.

When the cloth dried, she wasn’t calm, but she was close.

[ransomedrogue]

Tales of Woe - Scenes from S1

oops, meant to get this out before Monday but minor delay due to editing! 

this week - a scene to start the episode and one to end it...

1.3

Weller's emotional rollercoaster of a day started before the previous one had even ended - with a phone call just before midnight.

He hadn't been home all that long after wrapping up the Gibson case when his cell began to ring and he saw that it was an agent from Jane's detail. That alone flicked at his anxiety, making him flash back to the fear he'd experienced seeing her crashed car. Then, when the agent started describing what had happened at the safe house, Weller's blood pressure instantly shot through the roof and he almost walked out the door in just his PJs before he realized he needed to bring his badge and gun.

Rushing to the scene, Weller only managed to resist breaking numerous driving laws by constantly reminding himself that Jane hadn't sustained any serious injuries and was currently chaperoned by multiple FBI agents and cops. Yet he was still much too aware that those same agents had just let a guy sneak into her safe house and it was entirely possible that she would already be dead if that had been the man's goal.

Ice cold dread ran through Kurt at that thought. He could have lost her again, so soon after finding her. Even if they hadn't tested her DNA yet, he was sure that she was Taylor, somehow brought back to him after twenty-five years away.

Pulling up to the scene at an unreasonable pace, Weller saw that it was already getting busy with more agents arriving and the coroner showing up to deal with the body. He flashed his badge to get past the yellow tape and immediately started scanning until he saw Jane sitting on the couch, scowling at the paramedic trying to look into her eyes with a penlight.

"Ma'am, you've been hit hard enough to lose a tooth and your pupils are still dilated. I really recommend that you come to the hospital and get examined by a doctor."

Instead of arguing with the EMT, Jane saw that Weller was approaching and gave him an exasperated look. And suddenly he was transported back to a moment forgotten for so long that he hadn't known that it was still there.

In his memory Kurt was nine and crouching in front of an annoyed four-year-old, doing his best to put antiseptic on her scraped knees as she rolled her eyes at him and complained.

"It's not even bleeding, Kurt," she'd groaned, desperate to get back to the game they'd been playing. "You're such a worrywart."

Weller remembered the internal pressure he'd felt, babysitting his wild little neighbour. It had been a responsibility he took pride in and he'd hated having to tell Emma that Taylor had hurt herself again, attempting some stunt. Or, even worse, explaining that he'd stepped on Taylor's hand, causing her to fall from the tree. Not that Emma had ever blamed him for any of the bruises and cuts; instead, she'd always reassured him that it was all part of an active childhood. Still, he'd been the older one, the one in charge. So he'd always felt like it was his fault if Taylor hurt herself, no matter what anyone else said.

Looking at Jane now, he felt exactly the same way. He obviously couldn't protect her, not even with the power of the FBI behind him. And failing in his duty made him angry and anxious; overprotective to the extreme.

Kurt flashed his badge and told the paramedic that he could go, explaining that he would deal with Jane and make her see a doctor. The EMT exhaled in relief as he walked away from his stubborn patient and Weller took the man's place, standing in front of Jane, who was still seated on the couch.

She looked tired yet agitated, sitting there holding her swollen cheek. He could see that it was already bruising and Weller internally flinched as he imagined her getting hit hard enough to knock out a tooth.

"I knew him," she said immediately. "He's the man from my target training memory. The one that was outside the building before we almost got blown up. He knows me and he was following me. We have to find out who he is."

"Whoa, Jane," Weller replied, crouching down to look at her more closely. "Slow down. We will do everything we can to find out who that guy was and how he's connected to you. And I do want to know exactly what happened here. But first, tell me are you okay?"

Jane looked a little startled by his question, as if she'd completely forgotten about everything else while fixating on the dead man in her safe house. Then she glanced down at her hand on her cheek and wrinkled her nose.

"My face hurts. But otherwise I'm fine," she muttered.

"You still have to get checked out by a doctor," Weller said. "He must have hit you really hard."

Jane brought her hand down from off her jaw and gave him an irritated look.

"It's been a long day, Weller," she groaned. "I really don't want to go to the hospital."

Weller flashed back to earlier that day, having the same argument with her after she'd crashed the SUV. He'd pretty much guilted her into it then. But right now Jane sounded so tired and on edge that he didn't want to battle with her.

Yet it was clear she needed to see a doctor and at least get some x-rays of her jaw. So Kurt thought the issue through until he arrived at a solution that could placate both of them, even taking the time to figure out how best to present it to his recalcitrant patient.

"Well, you can't stay here," Weller finally said. "It's a crime scene now. We'll find you a safer place."

"And you need to be cleared by a doctor before you can come back out in the field with us," he added. "That's standard protocol."

Jane's frown deepened and she exhaled wearily. Weller could hear that he'd chosen the right selling point - she was desperate to stay involved with the case and be out on missions with the team.

"So either I take you to the hospital right now or you pack up some stuff and we go to the NYO. You can sleep in the medical bay until the doctor gets there in the morning to check you out."

Jane gave him a long look that indicated she knew exactly what he was doing. Yet, for once, she didn't argue, just giving him a tired shake of her head instead.

"Okay, I'll see the doctor at the NYO," she sighed.

Weller held back a grin at her begrudging response and offered her his hand. Jane gave it a long suspicious look before grasping it and letting him pull her up to her feet.

The drive to the NYO was silent, even though Kurt was full of questions. He desperately wanted to know everything that had happened that night but knew that it wasn't the right time to ask. Jane was quiet and obviously still shaken from what had happened; so Weller decided to leave his questions for the morning, after she'd been seen by a doctor.

As they neared the office, Kurt glanced over at Jane once more. He had thought her silence was due to her own head being full of questions too, or continued stubbornness about getting medically checked out. But it turned out that she'd just fallen asleep now that all the adrenaline had fled her system, her head lolled back against the headrest so the bird tattoo was perfectly exposed.

He had never before met such a vibrant, tenacious woman. And even though he had no proof yet, Weller knew in his bones that she was Taylor. He'd gotten her back; been given a second chance. And this time, he wasn't going to let anyone hurt her.

Again he glanced over at his sleeping charge, feeling a warm tickle spread through him as he realized how relaxed she now looked. All the tenseness she'd been wearing at the crime scene was gone as she murmured inaudibly and leaned in his direction.

Weller resisted the urge to reach over and brush a wayward strand of hair out of her face, forcing himself to focus on the road. Yet he still found himself looking to his right far too often, as if his eyes were magnetically drawn to her.

It was impossible but he believed it with every cell in his body.

She was Jane and she was Taylor.

And most of all, she was his to protect.

###

Jane's emotional rollercoaster of a day ended with two solid answers; yet her head was still full of questions as she stood there, clinging onto Weller's arm.

After all that arguing with Weller and Agent Reade's open questioning of her role in the investigation, it had been a major relief to be told by Mayfair that they had all supported her being armed and part of the team. Jane was sure that Weller had pulled rank with his agents to get that kind of unanimity but she hadn't even had time to really thank him for backing her before Patterson showed up and gave them the other, unbelievable, news.

She was Taylor Shaw. Weller's neighbour, who had disappeared without a trace twenty-five years ago.

Jane stared at him and he stared right back. She watched a wave of joy pass through Weller's expressive blue eyes and felt his elation ripple down her spine as well. Not only had they finally found out something concrete about her, it tied her intricately with Kurt and explained his name being tattooed on her back.

For a moment Jane wondered if it was normal, how much Weller could make her feel. She'd spent most of the day being furious with him for keeping secrets and refusing to let her participate fully out in the field. But then he'd insisted on going with her to the hospital, despite Agent Reade's vocal objections. Which had paradoxically made her feel both protected and nervous, because it was clear that Reade had touched on the truth.

Then, as soon as they were in danger, he had given her a gun without hesitation, fully trusting her to watch his back. Which had been a good thing, considering how close he'd gotten to having a full round of ammunition pumped into him, point blank. Even as it was, Jane had almost been too late - she'd seen the gunman's trigger finger moving just as she shot him dead.

The relief she'd felt seeing Weller alive was as fierce as any emotion she'd experienced yet. And then there had been a whole new set of feelings after he told her he thought she was his childhood friend, the little girl who went missing when he was ten. That revelation had finally put the entire day into perspective, completely flipping her understanding of his behaviour.

The argument with Mayfair. His sudden overprotectiveness. His blow up when she disobeyed his order and put herself in danger.

Weller had been under such immense personal pressure. She wondered how long he'd been thinking of her as Taylor. Clearly it had been influencing his actions all day.

Jane flushed a bit remembering how furious she'd been with him during his tirade about protecting her. At least she wasn't angry with him anymore. That hadn't felt good at all.

So much was running through her mind that Jane suddenly realized they'd been standing there for ages, just holding on to each other and staring silently. Patterson had left somewhere along the way and it now was just the two of them, with the mind-blowing piece of information hanging between them.

Weller's eyes were still teeming with an emotion she couldn't quite identify. She could see that he was fighting to contain himself now that his suspicion had been confirmed.

Jane flashed back to him telling her that she could trust him, that he'd been looking for her all his life. It made her feel warm and a bit tingly, to be to closely tied to Weller. But there was also pressure to being the girl he'd sought for so long - to mean so much to a man she barely knew, a man who already made her feel everything so strongly.

"Are you okay?" he asked, finally finding his voice.

"Yeah," she replied slowly. "It's just… how is this even possible?"

Weller shook his head, a look of wonder still in his eyes.

"I don't know," he said.

"But we will figure it out. We're going to find out what happened to you."

He sounded so sure but Jane was realizing that getting answers had only opened up an onslaught of new questions. If anything, being Weller's childhood neighbour made the whole situation even more confusing and implausible. Also, what had Casey meant by Orion? Was that a clue to where she'd been taken after being kidnapped at age five?

The wave of questions was about to engulf her when Jane felt a squeeze on her elbow and remembered that Weller's hand was still on her arm. Looking up at him, she suddenly felt drained from everything that had occurred in the past day. She'd barely gotten any sleep after the attack at her safe house and then had an extremely emotionally and physically taxing day.

"Hey," he said, studying her closely. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Jane shook her head. She needed some time to think before she asked him any more questions.

"Okay then, how about some food?"

She furrowed her brow at him, confused by the abrupt change in topic. But Weller was just giving her his usual warm concerned look, like he hadn't said anything out of the ordinary.

"I bet you haven't eaten all day," he added. "It's been over twelve hours."

Food was the last thought on her mind, especially after such an intense day. But, thinking about it, she realized that he was right on both counts. And then, precisely at that moment, as if her body was in collusion with Weller, Jane's stomach growled.

Weller grinned at her and Jane swore she even saw a twinkle in his eye as he slipped his hand down her arm until his fingers were entwined with hers.

"Well, that settles that," he said. "Let's go get something to eat."

"Weller," Jane muttered, unsure about his proposition. Going to a restaurant with Weller sounded both enticing and nerve-wracking. Especially with everything that had happened between them that day.

"It's fine, I'll order in later."

"No," he replied sternly. "We're going together and I'll take you to your new safe house after. We won't talk about any of this until tomorrow. But I want to make sure you eat some real food."

Jane's instinct was to argue and push off his concern. But then she remembered the sadness in his eyes as he'd told her about his little neighbour, how he'd been there the night she was taken.

Weller wanted to protect her. And as much as it was sometimes irritating, it also made her feel safer knowing that he was looking out for her so fervently. So maybe it was okay to let him care a bit too much, especially when it felt so good to have his fingers laced between hers.

"Okay," she sighed, giving his hand a squeeze.

She didn't yet know what to say, or how she felt about being his missing girl. But Jane did want him to understand how she was grateful for everything he'd done for her already and for how much he cared.

"Thank you," she finally said, offering him a timid smile. "For everything."

"I'm so glad you found me."

[aleator]

day 03 - soulmate au (thor/tony)

Tony spends most of his life trying not to touch people. His soulmate clearly doesn't appreciate it, so why would anyone else?

The words are clear as day in big block letters on his arm-- "Do not touch me again."

So Tony keeps to himself, hands shoved into his pockets or arms crossed over his chest. He flinches at the friendly pats on the shoulders and doesn’t offer handshakes or hugs. If people find him cold or rude, so be it.

He doesn’t share his words with anyone, though a select few do find out over time. Rhodey, of course, learns early on that Tony doesn’t like being touched, and he’s the first person outside of Tony’s family who he voluntarily shows his words to. Pepper finds out accidentally after she becomes his assistant, during an incident which is never to be discussed again.

And then there’s Obadiah.

Obie touches Tony without hesitation, gripping his shoulder or patting him on the back, and Tony lets him because Obie’s always been good to him. He trusts Obadiah to do right by him.

Turns out he was wrong, and his soulmate’s words on his arm have never resonated so strongly, so clearly. Maybe his soulmate’s got the right idea.

He doesn’t try to look for them, whoever they may be. He stopped yearning for a fairytale ending to his story years ago, even before his parents went up in smoke. If his soulmate is out there, they’ll find him, and he’s certain they’ll be just as disappointed as he is.

Funnily enough, he usually likes being right, but not this time.

The words come when he least expects them, from a man not even of Earth, a warrior prince with no recognition in his eyes as Tony retorts,

“Then don't take my stuff.”

Asgardians don't have soulmates, not in the way humans do, with mysteriously inked words on skin. So Tony’s soulbond is left there, open and exposed, dangling without any connection like a stripped wire, ready to hurt whoever comes close.

Tony doesn’t say anything. They stop Loki, stop the Chitauri, save the day. Thor leaves, taking Loki back to Asgard. Tony goes on with his life. He thinks that’s the end of it.

But then Thor comes back, and somehow Tony’s got multiple Avengers living in his tower, despite the expectation one might have after renaming said tower. It’s just that it’s hard to not think about soulmates at all when his own soulmate is living under his roof.

Unfortunately, Thor is nice. He’s funny, he’s smart, and he’s curious about Earth and its customs. Even worse, he likes to ask Tony for answers about those things.

“So everyone has these soul words, then?” Thor says, sipping chocolate milk from a tall glass with a straw. “Do you have a soulmate?”

Tony grits his teeth and doesn’t look up from the onions he’s caramelizing in a sauté pan. “So they say,” he replies.

“You haven’t met them?” Thor asks, looking far too curious for Tony’s taste.

“Do you see them around?” Tony shoots back so he doesn’t have to give a real answer.

Thor glances around the room as if they’d actually be hiding in a corner somewhere. “Hm. What are your words?”

Tony accidentally scrapes his spatula against the bottom of the metal pan in his frustration. “Can we not talk about this right now?”

Thor raises an eyebrow at him. “All right. Do not get your panties in a bunch, as the Midgardians say.”

“Please don’t call them panties,” Tony mumbles, still angrily stirring his onions.

The truth of it is that Tony doesn’t have any plans to tell Thor. There’s no point--he’s not Thor’s soulmate. He’s not going to drag Thor down with him over some stupid birthmark that honestly probably doesn’t even mean anything.

He does a decent job of hiding his words for a while, until one day after a successful mission clearing out another Hydra base it finally comes out into the open. Tony’s gauntlet is badly mangled, practically melted in places, and Tony winces as he rips the broken pieces away.

He swears when he sees how the burnt remains of his undersuit cling to his arm, and Thor’s striding over to his side in seconds, gently taking his arm to steady him and carefully peeling back the sleeve so it’s no longer touching Tony’s skin. Tony doesn’t even have time to react, not expecting it at all, and so he doesn’t pull his arm away before Thor can see the dark black letters of his soulmark, dirtied but legible.

Both men freeze, staring down at Tony’s arm until Steve’s voice shakes them out of it.

“Thor, take Tony to medical,” Steve says, not realizing what’s happening between the two of them. “Natasha, you should have someone look at that ankle.”

Thor moves first, guiding Tony away without a word while Natasha argues with Steve that her ankle is fine. The sound of their argument fades into the background as Tony walks in front of Thor, trudging along like he’s being taken to his execution.

Thor doesn’t say anything as a medic looks at Tony’s arm and patches him up, but he doesn’t leave either. Tony submits to the doctor’s attentions without his usual complaints, and when his arm is all wrapped up the doctor excuses herself to go see to Natasha’s leg.

“Those are my words, aren’t they?”

Tony nearly jumps, having forgotten Thor was even there. He turns to look at him, but Thor doesn’t move from his spot in the corner.

“I’m meant to be your soulmate,” Thor continues, not waiting for Tony’s response. He already knows what the answer is.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Tony says at last. “You people don’t have soul words.”

Thor studies him silently for a moment longer, then abandons his post in the corner, looking around the drawers and cabinets for something. He pauses when he finds whatever it is, back to Tony, and a few moments later he turns back around and comes over to Tony with his arm extended.

He’d written Tony’s first words to him in black marker on his arm, a simple “Then don’t take my stuff” in Thor’s messy handwriting.

Tony snorts and shakes his head. “Are you purposefully trying to rub salt in the wound? Because I gotta say, buddy, it’s working.”

“Was I correct that day on the Helicarrier after all? Are humans really so petty?”

“Okay, again, this really isn’t working for me,” Tony starts to say, but Thor takes hold of his good hand and cuts him off.

“Soulmates are not built on a foundation of measly little words. Soulmates are formed on solid things, trust and respect and affection. I have all these for you, Stark, and more.”

The fight goes out of Tony then, slowly being replaced by the first inklings of hope that Tony’s felt in a long time.

“What are you saying?” he asks, because he needs to hear it straight.

Thor gently squeezes his hand. “I could court you, if you wish it. I would be happy to do so.”

“You want to date me?”

“Aye. I want to date you,” Thor says with an amused little smile.

Finally Tony allows himself to relax completely, grinning up at Thor like a complete fool. “You’ll regret this,” he warns him, which is only the polite thing to do.

“Mmhm,” Thor says placatingly, nodding. “How about we start by finding something to eat?”

Tony hops down from the exam table he’d been sitting on this whole time, legs feeling a little wobbly as he follows after Thor, not realizing he’s still holding Thor’s hand.

“I think you should get that tattooed, by the way,” he tells Thor, looking thoughtful. “Can Asgardians get tattoos?”

“We’ll discuss it,” Thor replies, squeezing Tony’s hand again, and for once in his life Tony thinks that being touched isn’t so bad after all.

[afictionaladventure16]

Remember Me (Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff x Daughter!Reader)

Chapter 13

Remember Me Masterlist

Previously on Remember Me... 

Word Count: 2,461

Warnings: Uhhhhhhhhh violence?? 

A/N: Thank you @rae-is-typing​ for editing this fic! Sorry to my readers for taking so long to post! I know this chapter has been long-awaited but with the whole thing with COVID-19, life has been crazy. This transition from face-to-face to online classes has got me stress so this fic has been in my docs for a while waiting to be edited! So I hope you all enjoy this chapter! We are close to the end! I hope to get the next chapters edited with some free time I have tomorrow! Feedback is appreciated! Love you all and stay safe! Wash your hands!  

Fury watched as Natasha’s eyes never left the pages in front of her, tears spilling like an uncontrollable waterfall. Bucky’s arm found its way around her waist, pulling her in for a comforting embrace. Fury wasn’t sure if he was doing it just for her or for the both of them. 

 “She’s been working undercover with Alexei Sokolov, who you both know as Alexei Jones. They have been working for Zemo in his new project,” Fury continued as he let out a shaky sigh. 

“She’s alive,” Natasha sobs out. “And she’s been in our lives, she’s been…”

 “I know this may be hard to hear, but she may be there when we arrive and you both need to know that she won’t remember you. She’s been wiped many times,” Bucky winced. He had yet to say anything, his mind was still wrapping itself around the fact that his daughter was indeed alive. Yet, the thought of his daughter enduring the same pain he had gone through was everything he had feared. “She’s also been injected with multiple serums. Her powers aren’t known to the full extent, we don’t know what we are facing when we see her and I need you both to be fully prepared.” Natasha glanced over at Bucky who’s tears had yet to spill. Their daughter was alive, they had found her and they were going to save her. “I need you both to focus on getting your daughter while the team recovers intel, can you do that?” Natasha intertwined her hand with Bucky’s, gently squeezing it. His eyes flit up to hers. She gave him a smile as a tear fell down from her eye; she wasn’t going to give up anytime soon and Bucky knew that. They needed each other more than ever.

Fury knew he was asking for a lot from the parents, but he had to make sure this mission didn’t go south. “I need to know that you guys understand.” 

Natasha looked over at Fury, “We understand. The team will recover intel while Bucky and I focus on Y/N.” 

Fury nods. “There is a high chance that she will be with Zemo,” he glances over at Bucky, his metal hand clenched into a fist at the mention of that name. “Do whatever it takes to get her out of there.” Fury clears his throat. “That’s an order.” The director walked away, leaving the couple to themselves for a bit. 

“She’s alive,” Bucky choked out. “Our baby girl is alive,” he let out a soft sob as he leaned his head against Natasha’s shoulder. Natasha raised her hand, placing it in Bucky’s hair as sobs escaped her mouth. 

“She’s been in our lives this whole time,” she choked out. Bucky lifted his head from Natasha’s shoulder, his vibranium hand finding its way towards her cheek, his thumb rubbing away a tear that has drifted down to her chin. “If I had known,” she began. 

Bucky shook his head, “we would have never known,” he whispered. “It’s been years since we saw her and we both knew we didn’t know what we were searching for,” He admitted. His eyes searching hers, for hope and love. It was a quick search because it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. “There were times where I searched for five years olds because I wasn’t sure what they had done to her.” 

Natasha let out a soft chuckle, unsure as to why she found humor in his confession, but it wasn’t just his confession. It was hers as well. Natasha was guilty of it. She had searched for a five-year-old, even though it’d been more than ten years since they took you from the. But in Natasha’s world… In Bucky’s world too. They didn’t know what to search for. 

“Let’s go get our daughter back,” Natasha said as she wiped away the last of her tears. Bucky gave her a smile before quickly pressing his lips with hers. 

“Let’s go,” he said as he stood up. 

~

“I don’t understand why we’re here,” you stated as you walked into the building alongside Alexei. He had been silent the whole trip, you were not sure if it was because of the argument last night or because he was nervous. “I don’t need another training session,” you began to say, feeling your heartbeat thump harder against your chest with every breath you took. “I-i think I can handle my powers fairly well, Alexei.” 

Alexei gave you a glance, a hint of hope in his eyes. You weren’t sure if it was his way of saying that everything was going to be alright or not, but you were holding on to it. Although you may hold a grudge against Alexei, you may question if he actually cared for you. The moments he showed any amount of thoughtfulness towards you made you feel as though he cared, even now. You let out a deep breath, making a mental note to apologize to Alexei later for last night. 

“There they are,” a guard said as he spotted the two of you walking down the hall. “He’s been waiting for you both.” The guard opened the door to reveal a couple of doctors near an all too familiar chair. 

Your eyes widened as the memories surfaced. Your heartbeat began to quicken, you stepped back but couldn’t go any further. Your back hit a solid mass. Whipping around, you noticed the guard staring down at you. You step back towards Alexei. 

“It’s about time you two made it,” Zemo commented as he appeared from a different side of the room. “I was beginning to think that my assumptions were right and you grew soft on me,” Zemo peered over at Alexei. 

Alexei lowered his head, “I am loyal to Hydra, sir, I would never.” 

Zemo scoffed at Alexei’s comment, he had no solid proof to not believe the man. He didn’t want to make a mistake of losing a good soldier, even with all his questionable actions. “I fear that our mission has been compromised. Someone has given valuable information to the Avengers, information that can ruin everything.” Zemo’s eyes directed towards Alexei,  a small smirk playing on Zemo’s lips. “Alexei, won’t you humor me and give me a mission report?” Alexei nervously looked over at you, trying to find the words to say, a small stammer escaping his lips. His heart began to race, how could Zemo had figured him out? He had been so careful to not mess things up. “Or maybe we should have our lovely Widow’s Bite to tell us?”  

“No!” Alexei yelled, he quickly stood in front of you. “I-I mean, I’m the one overseeing her, shouldn’t I be the one to give you the mission report?” Alexei stammered. 

“It’s too late, Alexei, why don’t you just go and work on some files?” Alexei’s eyes glanced over at you, you gave him a knowing nod before Alexei let out a soft sigh. He made his way out of the room. “That’s a good boy,” Zemo commented with a smirk on his lips. Alexei shot daggers into the back of Zemo’s head with his eyes before walking out of the room.

~ 

Alexei walked down the empty hallway, his mind racing. He tried his best to remain a cool posture on the outside, but it was hard when all he could do was panic. He didn’t have the time to talk to you or to even try to stir the way of your thoughts, maybe give him some more time for his plan to work the way he had thought it out in his head. 

“Dammit!” He muttered to himself as he continued down his path. He felt a sharp pain on the back of his head and in an instant, everything turned black. 

Bucky stepped back from his spot in the corner of the hallway. He glanced down towards Alexei as he laid unconscious on the floor. Part of Bucky wanted to tear the man into pieces, ignorant of the damage Alexei had caused his daughter, yet again, Bucky didn’t know if this man that laid in front of him was going through the same thing that he had. Bucky wasn’t sure if this man was guilty of the crimes he had imagined in his head. For once the term “shoot now, ask questions later” didn’t apply to Bucky, he had questions he needed answers to and that meant keeping Alexei alive. 

“Here,” Natasha stated. “This room is empty, with no surveillance.” Bucky gave her a nod before dragging Alexei’s body into the room. 

“Steve, what’s your status?” Bucky held his finger up to the comm in his ear, watching as Natasha tied Alexei’s hands and feet together before leaning him up against the wall. 

“We’re making our way inside,” Steve responded. 

“We don’t have long,” Bucky informed Natasha. 

“Time for a wake-up call?” Natasha asked, a smirk forming on her lips. Bucky let out a small chuckle as he watched Natasha slap the man, who was unconscious, on the face. He woke up with a jolt, taking in his surroundings, his mouth moved but no words came out. “Don’t even try to talk your way out of this, Alexei.” 

He let out a heavy sigh “This isn’t how I wanted you both to find out,” he confessed. 

“What do you mean?” Natasha questioned. 

“How did you want us to find out?” Bucky asked as his eyebrows perched. 

“One question at a time,” Alexei said with a soft chuckle. 

Bucky wasn’t having it, his hands meeting Alexei’s through, applying pressure. “You think this is funny?” 

Alexei choked for air, “N-no” Bucky quickly let go. Alexei caught his breath, “I had a plan,” his voice strained.

 “What plan?” Natasha asked further. 

Alexei glanced at Natasha, her tight lips and narrowed eyes. Alexei wouldn’t say it out loud, but he was deathly afraid of Natasha, maybe even more than Bucky. He knew all about Natasha’s background and how she became one of the top assassins. 

“What plan?” Bucky pressed. 

Alexei cleared his throat, “When I took this mission, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it’d be this simple escorting mission. Escort Widow’s Bite to get some intel and that’s it. That’s how I treated it anyway.” Alexei’s eyes danced from one parent to the other, their eyes still as hard as rocks. “That was until I began to notice what Zemo had done to her. It started off small like she would question why children would play hide-and-seek, and I knew, what I was doing was wrong. So, one day Zemo wanted us back for a mission report, or so we thought, it was his way to get her to the base so he could mistreat her. He even enhanced her…” Alexei’s voice began to break, the memory of seeing your unconscious body that day resurfaced. “Said I should thank him, that bastard. That day, I found her files, and I started my plan to help her escape from Zemos grip.” 

Bucky crouched down, meeting Alexei’s eye level, his eyes searching Alexei’s for the lie that he couldn’t hear in his voice. “How can we believe you?” Bucky’s hoarse voice sent daggers into Alexei, did they not hear the emotion in his voice? Had they gone deaf? Alexei let out a soft sigh, trying his best to understand the situation the couple had gone through. 

“I know a code that will bring your daughter’s memories back, now it’s only up to you to put your trust in me. Otherwise, I doubt there is hope you will ever get her back.” 

“Liar,” Natasha snarled. “We will find a way. We found a way with Bucky, we will do the same with her.” 

Bucky eyes continued to search Alexei’s. Everything within him was telling him to trust this man, trust the man that could potentially lead them to their death? Bucky knew what this man may have gone through, the torture he had endured, but why change? What led Alexei to change for the better? Bucky didn’t know, but what he did know was that his gut was telling him to listen to Alexei. 

“He’s not lying,” Bucky glanced over at Natasha. She looked at him with disbelief in her eyes, she couldn’t wrap her mind around what Bucky had just said. “I think we should trust him.” 

“Trust him? God knows what he has done to our daughter, Bucky!” 

“I didn’t do anything to her, you can trust me! I would kill myself before even thinking of laying a hand on your daughter,” Alexei exclaimed. 

“How can we believe you!?” Natasha yelled with rage in her voice. 

“Because I was in your shoes once!” Alexei confessed. “I had a wife and a daughter and I did everything in my power to protect them, but I couldn’t. Trust me, Natasha, when I say that I never hurt your daughter and all I want is to reunite the three of you.” Natasha stood there dumbfounded, unsure whether to believe the man that was in front of her, but she was all too familiar with the pain in his voice. “If you untie me, I can lead you back to where she is, I can say the code and your daughter will remember who you both are.” 

Natasha looked over at Bucky, he gave her a small nod. She let out a sigh before walking over to Alexei and untying him. “Don’t make me regret this,” she whispered to him. 

“You won’t.” 

Alexei massaged his wrists before getting off the floor. “Alright, what’s the plan?” Bucky asked. Bucky held onto his weapon tightly, in case Alexei tried anything. 

“I will use one of you as bait. Zemo has been questioning my loyalty to him for quite some time now, so bringing one of you in will show him that I’m still loyal.” 

“What about the other?” Natasha questioned. 

“Your highly-trained assassins, you can sneak around without being heard. These vents,” Alexei said pointing towards the vents. “You will be able to follow me through there, they lead towards the hallway and into the room where your daughter is in. Once we know Zemo has taken the bait, the one who is in the vents can drop down and ambush Zemo.” 

Natasha sighs, “Alright, who are you taking in as bait?” Bucky and Alexei glanced over at Natasha, “Seriously? Me?” 

“Come on, Doll, you know it has to be you.” 

“That’s sexist.” 

“Zemo knows I can’t take down the Winter Soldier, but he’d be convinced if I was able to capture you,” Alexei explained. 

Natasha sighed, knowing very well that they were right. “Fine, but no one hears about this. Especially Sam.”

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[xmenshenanigans]

Hey, it's me again, lol!

Well I've been thinking about this pretty a lot and, I don't know if this is your kind of post, but I was wondering who would be like date someone of x-family, but you are an outsider. Like... not of other country or other necessarily human, but... I mean they live in a school and almost don't get out but to stop villains, so they are probably in their own world inside the school. I really hope you got it because I made a mess to explain.

Anyway, how would be to date a member of x-family begin an outsider?

I think I understand!

I did my best to answer, but I may have gone more in depth than you were thinking. I’m not sure exactly who you mean by X-Family, because they’re all one big family. So, I added a lot of people! 

NOTE: I did not put Erik and Charles in because they are kind of the parents of X-Family, and you specifically asked for X-Family. I don’t know if the parents would date anyone besides the other.

I don’t really do character x reader stuff, but this was a fun prompt. I hope I cover everything! Tell me what you think—feedback is appreciated! As always, thank you so much for the ask. Keep them coming! They are a lot of fun!

WANDA MAXIMOFF– Wanda likes domesticity. We saw that in WandaVision! I think you would likely meet her at the movie theatre, or a coffee shop. She can be a bit of a sap for things like that. She would be closed off at first, but if you could make her laugh, she would fall pretty fast. After that, it would be drive-in movies with popcorn fights in the front seats, references to sitcoms that the two of you watched together, and other fun dates (playing Twister, making cupcakes together, pretending to be witches and/or a witch and wizard attending Hogwarts together, etc.). Wanda might even show off her magic a bit to make you smile! It would be very two-way. Both of you would get a lot out of the relationship. Charles would likely dote over you if you could make Wanda smile. He would be the parent that constantly asks Wanda how her girlfriend/boyfriend is doing. Erik would probably be skeptical until he saw you making Wanda happy. Pietro would play lots of jokes on you to see how you react—do you take it well, or get mad? That would determine how he views you. 

PIETRO MAXIMOFF— Pietro does have a life outside of the mansion. He gets away every moment he can, and because he’s so fast, there’s nothing his parents can do to stop him. You would probably be a friend of his that he met on one of his excursions from the mansion. It would start as just a friendship. But then friendship would probably turn into fun practical jokes that you could both laugh at. Karaoke nights would start to get later and later as the two of you refused to watch the clock and just spent time with one another. Halloween would be a lot of fun—I think Pietro would probably want to do a couple costume. He would refuse to call it that, though. Everyone else would meet you first as a friend, and then the psychics (Jean and Charles) would catch on that there was something more to it. They would make lighthearted fun of the two of you, but because they are both so caring, they would also take you under their wings, so to speak. Erik, on the other hand, may threaten you if you hurt his son. And Wanda would probably judge you. 

JEAN GREY— Jean is studying to be a doctor, and I assume she still goes to classes outside of the Xavier Mansion. In order to get her attention, you would need to prove that you don’t like her for looks. She has had a rough love life, and they always seem to want her because she’s pretty. If you could prove to Jean that you like her because she’s funny, CRAZY smart, and fun to be around, then she would start inviting you to things. If you let her make the first move, she would probably like you even more. Dates would include long drives where the two of you could talk about anything and everything, book store dates where you would buy each other books, and the occasional food fight. Jean has a fun side that she rarely shows: she likes to be a kid, too, not just a superhero that studies medicine. She likes to make a mess, dance around, and stay up all night telling scary stories. If you were into that kind of thing, Jean would be a lifelong lover. She’s very heart-to-heart. Erik would probably look at you and nod slowly, because he could see the love in Jean’s eyes. Charles would be the skeptical one here. He would not want to see Jean get hurt, and it would take a few weeks for him to warm up. The other kids would probably adore you—after all, you would be someone totally new that can bring out the good in just about anyone.

RAVEN DARKHOLME— Would You Date Me? That was the song (yes, from the soundtrack of X-Men: First Class) that Raven would think when she met you. You would probably meet her on the battlefield. Raven is attracted to bad boys/girls. You would probably be a villain, and she would be a reformed hero. She would meet you and want to know more. You would not hurt her in battle because you have a softer side, and she would want to understand why. That would lead to her sneaking out of the mansion in the middle of the night to meet with you in various places. The dates would include was-that-fighting-or-flirting and a lot of heart-to-heart talking. Raven needs body positivity, and if you gave it to her, she would be eternally thankful. When you eventually would meet the rest of X-Family, it would be a little awkward... you would have tried to kill everyone in the room multiple times. Charles forgives easily, so he would accept you quickly. Erik has been in your position before, so he would like you, too. The other kids might take some time though!

ORORO MUNROE— Ororo used to be a pickpocket, and I think you would likely meet her by trying to pickpocket her. She would see you and decide that she wants to help you. You would start by meeting up for coffee and lunch where she can help you overcome your desire to steal. After that, you would open up and start to trust her more, but you would also want to spend more time with her. She would meet up with you at any time, whenever you needed her. Dates would include dancing in the rain and Ororo taking you up into the clouds to watch the sun set. She would teach you to garden and give you self-worth until you no longer felt the desire to steal to get by. The others would accept you very easily—if Ororo likes you, you have to be good.

SCOTT SUMMERS— Scott is very traditional. He would probably rescue you during battle—maybe a stone tower was going to fall on you or something, and he blasted it away. He likes to be the hero. After that, the two of you would start meeting up in all the cliche ways. He would take you to the movies or out to food. He would throw pebbles at your window, and send you long texts about how beautiful you are. Scott has gone through many lovers before, but the others would see the way he looks at you through his visor and quickly decide that you’re one of the better ones.

KURT WAGNER— Kurt is super religious, and I suspect you would meet him through church. He would be very shy, but if you were able to look past the blue, two-fingered, tailed exterior, you would find the softest of hearts. He would bring you flowers with small poems attached, and take you on short vacations—teleporting, not traveling—to the beach or to the big city. He would like to see your smile. There would be a lot of surprise gifts, too. If you ever needed him, he would teleport to get there as fast as he could. The others would think it is adorable that you make Kurt smile so much. They would invite you over all the time, for dinner and for game nights. 

ROGUE— The poor woman is so touch-starved. You would probably meet her on an occasion that she snuck out, the little rebel. She would like to give you hugs (without skin to skin contact) and run her hand through your hair. The two of you would spray paint walls and have water gun fights as often as you could. She would probably leave you gifts outside your door on a weekly basis. Because she is, well, Rogue, I doubt she would tell the others about you for a couple of months. She would not want to make a scene. She’s also just rebellious like that. When she finally did, though, she would get a talking-to from Charles. Erik would want to meet you immediately, because he would think that you sound awesome. Charles would come around to that view, too. The other kids would probably be a little wary... until they met you.

KITTY PRYDE— NERDS! She is such a geek, and you would probably meet her through robotics or something. It would start as a school girl’s crush, complete with sending one another notes and giving each other looks when no one else is around. Once you got together (she would probably make the first move, but if you beat her to it, she would definitely say yes), she would make bad pick up lines and puns all the time. She would meet up with you to do things like fly drones over restricted areas. When she would take you to meet her family, she would make a big deal out of it. She’d make sure that it was a formal dinner with everyone on their best behavior, and... yeah. The others would find it endearing, and with a good first impression, they would easily accept you into the family.

LOGAN— This one is fun. Logan is a lone wolf. You would likely meet him on a separate mission, possibly in Japan. You would need to chase after him. He would not make the first move. If you chowed him that you really cared for him, then he would start to get protective and try to keep you safe. There would be a lot of late nights drinking and whatnot... I’ll leave the ‘whatnot’ up to your imagination. I mean, this is Logan. But he would love you very deeply. Seldom does Logan fall in love, so when he does, it’s a big deal. That being said, it would probably be a long distance relationship. You would probably not meet the rest of X-Family for a couple of years, until the relationship was solid and he wanted to take you back to the States to meet everyone. It might even be the wedding. If it was the wedding where you finally met the X-Men... expect some laughs. They would tell every embarrassing story about Logan, just to make him flustered.

Holy cow, that was long. I hope you liked it, and I hope it answered your question!!

[wafflesetc]

I’ll be there for you, Chapter 6 (previously) 

A/N: This one is long. So buckle up! I owe a kidney to @kkruml​ who has looked at about 6 different versions of this. And to @walkinginland​ and @happytoobserve​ who also read multiple versions, held my hand through  some tough parts, and gave encouragement along the way.  I couldn’t do it without you guys. And you know, the end of this chapter is a little NSFW. I mean, most people are working from home now.. But you’ve been warned.

The One With The First Fight (Part 2) 

Jamie 2:30 AM 

He looked down at the screen of his phone. 

‘Just tell me you are safe.’ 

He had said things he hadn’t meant. He had said things that were sore. He had said words that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life.  

He thought back to growing up and having fights with Jenny. His Mam used to tell them to take back the words they had spoken to one another, that they were brother and sister, by tomorrow  all would be forgotten because- that’s what family does.

He closed his eyes and took a sip of whisky. The bar was still somewhat alive, even for a Tuesday night. He could picture her right there almost as if she were standing right next to him: The bright red hair he had inherited from her, her soft grey eyes and that strong brow his sister had. He could see it: her hands on her hips, the small raise of her brow and a glare in her eyes that scared him deep into the marrow of his bones from the time he was a small lad. 

“Ye are not here to help me with this one, mam.” He whispered to himself. 

He knew better than to storm out in a rage, yet this was uncharted territory.  He and Claire had moved so fast there had barely been time to realize that they had yet to set some boundaries in regards to their relationship. And Claire- the stubborn, fierce, strong woman that she was, was carrying newfound cargo- a life that was half of him, half of her. It was a surreal and sobering  thought, the idea of bringing a new life into this world. Someone he’d have to love unconditionally, someone who’d need him for the rest of his. And by some miracle, it was also not just this small life, but Claire that was in it with him. She was no doubt his forever, surely he did have a small say in some matters. 

He took another drink of his whisky, emptying the contents. He raised the glass signaling the bartender for another round. 

Just this one more and then he’d go home. 

He felt a hand on his shoulder and a familiar voice in his ear, “Fancy seeing you out.” 

He turned to find Mary smiling at him. He saw the glimmer of a ring on her finger. A small sense of relief flooded through him. It wasn’t that he’d dodged a bullet, but in some ways he was thankful for Mary for letting him go- for she was the reason his daft mind finally made all the pieces click- that he’d been in love with Claire from the beginning. He was thankful she’d seemed to find the same happiness he had found.

“Looks like congratulations is in order.” 

“Ah yes,” She took the seat next to him. “It was rather quick but I guess when you know, you know.” 

The bartender arrived asking what she wanted. “A whisky, neat please.” She hung her purse on the edge of her barstool and smiled, “How are things with you?” 

“Och,” He let out in a small Scottish grunt. “I am sitting alone in a bar in the middle of the night, how do ye think it’s going?” 

“I know you, Jamie…” The server placed her drink in front of her and Mary reached for it, taking the first swig. He looked at her with pleading eyes, a sense of helplessness running through him. 

“You’re a good man- a loyal one no less. I also ran into John at the store a few weeks back, he said you and Claire were finally together.” 

“We are.” He smiled ruefully and took a sip of his own drink. “Happened rather quickly, but we are… And uh, we’re actually expecting too.” Jamie felt the tips of his ears burning. 

“Seems like you sure move fast then too!” Mary grabbed her tumbler and tipped towards him, “Cheers then.” 

“Uh…Cheers.” He attempted to seem like he was in good spirits, but he could tell Mary knew it was just a facade.

“Still, you’re not a man who tends to sit at a bar, alone, in the middle of the week.” 

“And ye are no’ a woman to be here in the middle of the night like this either.” 

She laughed at that and nodded, “You’re right. My fiance’s flight is delayed because of a mechanical problem… If I had gone home I would fall asleep. Figured I would catch a dram before I get him.” She took a swig of her own beverage. “But you, look like you need to talk.” 

“It’s a long story…” He tried to stop there but she raised a brow at him and ordered another round of drinks.

And it came pouring out him-all of it. He hadn’t known he needed to talk about- least of all his ex girlfriend- but apparently he did. He told her about Claire-  how she grew up, how she became a doctor, how he had moved in with her, how they had happened. She listened and listened, and finally once he was done speaking shook his head at her in sheer exasperation. 

“Ye are a smart man, Jamie Fraser, but ye sure are a daft one sometimes.” He saw her laugh at him. 

“I need ye to explain that one, lass.” 

Her breath shook as her phone buzzed on the counter. “You are right- she needs to be more careful and she needs to listen to your concerns… But Jamie, she also is right. She’s a doctor and a good one from what I hear. She won’t do anything that would harm her or your child intentionally, but it’s her body. Only Claire can be the one to know when enough is enough.” 

Mary stood and pushed her barstool in. “Neither one of you wants to concede to the other and I’m not saying there’s a winner in this fight, but Jamie… Giving her space and allowing her to be in control seems to be a big piece of who she is. This is all as new to her as it is to you, except she’s the one who’s growing the human.” 

“So what is it ye are telling me to do?” 

“Weel, I am telling you, that you need to tell her how you feel- but you need to be okay with whatever her decision is. It’s teamwork and compromise. You’ll find your balance, you both will.”

And with a smile she hugged him and was on her way. He felt a sense of peace rush through him, in some ways he thought it was almost relief. He would forever owe Mary for making him realize what he had with Claire. Mary had been good and kind to him, nurturing his soul in ways  that he wasn’t sure he would ever fully understand. Yet, through the ups and the downs there had always been the one constant piece in all of it. 

Claire. Sorcha.

He threw the cash on the bar top and shook his head knowing exactly where he was headed.

Ye wee daft man, ye must go and repent yer words while you still can. 

Claire 4:45 AM 

I heard the deadbolt. 

He turned it slowly and opened the door. I knew he would know I was waiting for him. He always had a keen sense of things like that. 

“And just where do you think you’ve been?” I finally asked once the door was closed.

I watched as he tossed his keys onto the table and shrugged his shoulders, “Out.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question…” I sat up on the couch and wrapped the plaid blanket tighter around me. 

“Sassenach… It’s late. Ye havena had a good night’s sleep in at least two days and I am exhausted. Go sleep in our bed.  We can talk when yer rested.” 

That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Just earlier he had reprimanded me for coming home and wanting to sleep and not talk- now I was the one who wanted to talk and he was telling me to go to sleep.

Circles, we were running around each other in circles. 

It was infuriating me. 

We’d talk, now, whether he liked it or not. 

“James.” I rose from the couch and crossed my arms. I seldom used his full name like that.“You were out all night after getting mad at me when I said I didn’t walk  to talk. I think I am owed the decency of knowing where you were!”  

I could feel frustration oozing out of me. 

I had worked nearly three days in a row. There had been accident after accident, trauma after trauma. I had nearly doubled my surgeries from my last three rotations earlier that week with this weekend stint at the hospital. 

I barely had time to enjoy a cup of coffee, let alone a minute to tell Jamie what was going on. I hadn’t come home to eat, sleep, shower, or give him the knowledge of what was happening.  

“Claire,” He breathed. I could hear a small sense of anger rising in the pronunciation of my name. “I went to clear my head, I stopped at the place down from here, the one that is open late.” 

He took a step closer towards me and came into the dim light. He was still in his office clothes from the day before- he wore a solid white button down with khaki pants, but now he looked tired and worn down. Though the small light from the lamp on the end table didn’t illuminate the entire room, it was bright enough for me to still see a small piece of red lipstick on the outside of his collar. 

I kept my arms folded, standing my ground. The anger and exhaustion was catching up to me. Tears were near the surface.

“Och!” He threw his arms up in frustration when he read the look on my face. “Ye really want to do this, then?”

I pursed my lips and nodded. 

“Like I said,” He hissed through his teeth, “I was at the place down the street, I have receipts if ye must see them!” 

“That’s not what I want to talk about and you know it!” My voice was louder than usual but cracked at the end. It was taking everything in me to remain even the slightest bit composed.

He fisted his hands and took a step closer to me. We were now just a foot apart. I could smell the whisky coming from him. 

“What is it, then?” 

I scanned his eyes and saw he was completely helpless- he really had no clue.

“There’s lipstick- on your collar.” I could feel the tears rising to the surface. It was a mix of exhaustion and hormones, that I was sure of. 

“Sassenach…” He whispered my name, I could hear the plea behind it, “Ye dinna think, that I…. Ye mustn’t?” 

I shook my head and sat down on the edge of the sofa, “No….NO.” I put my face into my hands. “I know you didn’t…” 

“Let me explain.” He took a seat next to me but kept some distance away, but placed a hand on my knee. 

“I was sore, said things to ye before that I dinna mean.” I turned my head and looked at him. His face was earnest and I saw a small hint of a smile. “I went there to clear my head, hoping ye’d get tired enough and just crash… But I see no’ telling ye where I was was no’ wisest choice.” 

That earned him a laugh as I shook my head, “No, you bloody Scot. You kept me up worrying!” 

“Aye, I see that.” He scanned my face and scooted a little closer. “I was finishing up when Mary walked in.” 

That sent a flash of anger through me and caused me to stiffen in resposne. 

“Let me finish.” His voice was shaky but I could hear the determination in it. He closed the distance between us- our knees were touching, my hands in his. “She’s engaged now… And  she was waiting to pick up her fiance from the airport. We just talked. I told her all about you.” 

It still wasn’t enough to make me feel better. 

“I told her about the wee lass.” He reached and put a hand on the small swell of my lower abdomen. “And she helped put things into perspective for me.”

“And just how did she do that?” I was jealous. I had never disliked Mary- she was a kind, smart, well rounded woman. Her helping my Jamie in a way struck a chord in me that I didn’t know I had. 

“She gave me warmth, when I was questioning all of my choices.” He took a deep breath and tilted my face to his so we were eye to eye. “She gave me understanding and a sense of enlightenment when I needed it most.”

Daft man. I laughed out loud and could feel my own fists clenching. 

“That’s what I am supposed to be, for you! You bloody Scot” My voice was louder than usual and cracking.! I took a breath and shrugged my shoulders, “At least, I think that’s the way this is supposed to go!” 

I laughed again and steadied my voice. “This is our life we’re working through. Our relationship, our child, our future! I know we went from zero to one hundred rather quickly.. But you need to talk to me and no one else!”

He laughed at me and I let a tear fall. “Ye are just as daft as I, mo nighaen donn.” 

He wiped the tear with his thumb. “Ye are for me what I am for you, but this..” He rubbed my stomach, “Has turned our world upside down rather quickly and we dinna ken what we are doing, together. We ken what we would do when we were alone and no’ together, but it’s no’ like that anymore.” 

Slowly, I was starting to realize what he meant. 

We had both been overworked, over tired, and stretched thin. He hadn’t been understanding of the requirements of my job and I hadn’t been receptive of his issues, especially since I was carrying our child. Instead, I had walled myself in and closed myself off. I had thought only of myself through all of this, with little regard to Jamie’s concerns at all. 

This was new to me- new to him. We were in uncharted waters and if it was scary for me then I knew it must be for him, as well. But at the end of all of this, I knew there was no one I’d rather navigate treacherous waters with, than him.

“I have you, and we have her.”  He kissed my forehead. “We dove into this head first and havena stopped since. We need to set some boundaries-  and I must be more understanding of  the circumstances of yer job.” 

“And I need to clue you in a bit more…” I turned my face to his, nuzzling our noses.  “And be more cautious of the cargo I am carrying.”

“Aye.” He breathed.

He kissed me, soft and slow. His tongue traced my bottom lip and I reached for his neck, pulling him on top of me.  

Swiftly, his hands were on the waistband of my scrubs. In one fluid motion he had them off and strewn somewhere in the room. It was a flurry of events: my hands were in his hair and then I was scrambling to lift his shirt over his head. I could feel the sense of urgency pulsating through him. The need for reassurance, the closeness we were both seeking. Our lovemaking was always a risk- exposing our most vulnerable parts to each other, yet my soul was safe in his hands. I always knew that.  

His mouth was hot and heavy on my neck as I fumbled with the button on his khakis, “I want ye Claire. I want ye so bad I can scarcely breathe. Will ye have me?” 

I laughed into his next kiss, surprised he was asking, but finding it oddly romantic, “Yes… Yes I’ll have you.” 

It wasn’t like I was going to say no, bloody Scot. 

He trailed kisses up my chest as his hands found their way to my scrub top. Slowly he pulled it over my head and tossed it into the abyss. I laid my back down onto the couch as I watched him discard his shirt. His muscles tensed and even in the dimness of the room, the moon illuminated his every definition. 

By some miracle he was mine. 

His shirt fell just between the coffee table and couch. My eyes followed the curve of his abs as his hands hastily pulled my undergarments down my legs.

“Mo Chridhe,” he whispered, “Mo nighean donn.”

His hand worked quickly to rid himself of his clothes as I took in his full form. He wanted me, he wanted me badly. 

Jamie lowered himself onto me trailing kisses from the small swell on my stomach until he reached my mouth. He fisted his hands into my hair while reaching for my hips so he could align my body just right. 

He stopped for a moment, his fingertips pulsing against my skin, but his eyes locked on mine. His face scanned mine looking for something. What- I didn’t know nor did I care. 

All I wanted was him. Body and soul.

I was quite literally bare and naked before him- nothing to protect me. Yet while I was in my most vulnerable state, Jamie saw right through me, as he always did. 

Whatever he was searching for he found the answer. He situated himself between my legs and guided himself into me. We were as close as we could be, yet it didn’t seem like it was enough. It never was.

His movements were slow and methodical. He was taking the time to make sure I knew he was mine just as I was his. 

As his pace started to gradually pick up, I could feel the wave building and building. Our eyes met and I saw a small smile form on his lips. We rode it together knowing whatever murky waters we might face in the future, so long as we were together, that was all that mattered.

[rocknrollsalad-moved]

“Halloween costume party meeting a blind date but oh it's my high school squeeze who broke my heart and is only back in town to shut down the candy factory”

Thanks to a lovely conversation with @moongoddess2k4 we are now blessed with this amazing, amazing prompt, if you will, for a Halloween Hallmark story if they did them like the Christmas ones. 

Read on to see how I ran with that idea and created a quick little something for the season. It was super fun to write and I wish I could have done a whole thing with it but there’s too much on my plate right now. 

Word Count: 3400 Triggers: some mentions of drinking/being drunk, loss of jobs, and implied future money struggles

Halloween wasn’t going to be the same this year. Decorations still adorn most doors, yards, and windows. Costumes seemed to disappear from shelves along with bags of candy. The traditions carried on as neighbors helped neighbors, a silent thing to keep a town that was built around Halloween in the spirit.

Hanging over the head of every resident, a joint burden, was the knowledge that this was the last Halloween for them. Stark Sweets and Treats would be closing its doors on November first. In those storm clouds not chased away by the sun was the reality that many of the people living here would be out of a job. Generations of candy makers, sorters, and wrappers now left on their own, without a severance package, one last bonus, or even a thank you card.

There was no future in candy anymore. Processed sugars were falling out of fashion and while no child wanted a box of raisins or an apple, parents wanted to hand out sustainably grown, sugar-free alternatives. Buzzwords, Bruce knew as much as people online spouted recycled rhetoric about saving the planet with their shift to these different treats. He’d argue with each post. Typing his nights away about the jobs they were taking, about the fallacy of that sustainable or organic sticker. GMOs weren’t what people were saying they were.

But no one listened.

What did a small-town high school science teacher know about genetically modified anythings? Never mind the multiple doctorates he held. Never mind the qualifications he had to speak on the subject. People couldn’t be reasoned with on the internet. Bruce was shouting into the void and doing nothing more than boiling his own blood.

It was mad worse by everyone pointing out he didn’t have a horse in this race. Not directly. There would still be children to teach. Year after year of the same projects and battling against boring lesson plans. He wasn’t losing anything. Instead, he’d be left to watch. Left to stand in front of his classroom trying to teach kids who carried the same weight as the adults, without the ability to bear such a thing. That’s who he fought for. These children didn’t need to know this level of hardship while trying to navigate their way to adulthood.

Most of their parents, their baby sitters, and classmates were putting on a brave face, though. Halloween kept this town afloat and while it was their last, they weren’t going to roll over and let it pass. Every annual event went just like they had for decades. Some people had done so well at pretending they weren’t waiting for the hammer to drop that they were actually having fun. And for it a moment that normalcy and false happiness rubbed off on the cranky science teacher who was never one for holidays of any sort. Even in a town built around Halloween.

As an outsider, Bruce wasn’t born with the Halloween spirit. It was gifted to him, though, year after year. Townsfolk who took pity on his pathetic attempts at decorating. Neighbors who baked treats and desserts left on his doorstep. Coworkers who brainstormed costume ideas and dragged him to parties. Each year that passed it got easier and easier for everyone to twist Bruce’s arm until they didn’t have to.

For the past few years, he’d been leaving cookies for his neighbors. A little charred on the bottom, decorated simply, but not a single house complained. The change must have emboldened some of his coworkers though as they recruited him for a night of costumed speed dating. It was the last time the town was doing something like this. They laid the guilt on thick. 

Bruce was among four other staffers who weren’t married, even one of the teachers who was dating someone went to witness it all. Many emails were exchanged for days leading up to the event. Who would wear what, despite Bruce’s numerous protests that knowing that would ruin the event. How they’d get there and which bar they were meeting at to discuss all the details. A never-ending stream of planning by people who should have been teaching their classes but everyone coasted around the holidays. 

The night would be simple enough. Bruce would go dressed in a ruined bed sheet, make sure that no one was interested in him, skip the gossipy drinks, and then two nights later at the big Halloween bash everyone would get to see their matches without obstruction.

In reality, this was a smart idea. Everyone was given a fair chance. Not to be judged on the superficial, with the exception of those few distasteful costumes that tried to sneak in, but on their personality. Answers to questions, conversational skills, it was what dates should be founded on. Not that Bruce thought he’d find a date here, no matter how ideal it was. Tagging along, instead, because his social circle was going. Because participating and being a part of the events was better than hearing about them the next day.

So he sat through a grueling two hours of three-minute dates. Listening to people both mock him for not trying and appreciating his classic callback sheet-ghost costume. Having insufferable conversations with people who didn’t understand how to listen or have the spotlight off of them. The worst was the number of Scream villains that were there, leaving a few to accessorize just to stand out. Which should have made Bruce’s costumes one of the better ones, at least he was unique. 

There was a particularly sweet Jason Voorhees that Bruce could have stood to have another three minutes with and that was far more than he’d expected to happen. He gave her favorable marks but, again, didn’t expect them to be returned.

In the last fifteen minutes, though, when Bruce was eyeing the door and thinking there was no way the last five people were going to be better than anyone before them, a werewolf sat down at the table. Promptly explaining that he wasn’t any werewolf but the Teen Wolf, hence the basketball shorts. Teen wolves were apparently very crucial to the basketball team. It was a reference Bruce didn’t get and the man seemed used to hearing that, if not still a little dejected. Running through the basic questions got them to Bruce’s job, to his doctorates, his expertise, and somehow to an argument about the merits of various alternative energy forms. A solid two minutes was spent citing facts and studies, managing to get heated enough that the host had wandered over to stand by their table.

What the host didn’t know was it was the most exciting conversation Bruce had had all night. An unnecessary argument that neither needed but both wanted. They were both right and though he couldn’t explain how, he knew they both understood the pointlessness of their argument. Both sides were right but the conversation was well informed, the Teen Wolf didn’t back down, and if Bruce thought he wanted to talk to Jason for three more minutes, he could have fought with this werewolf for three hours.

The few dates that followed were a blur, Bruce wasn’t sure he even spoke to the one. More than once he caught the werewolf looking back at his table. Whether the spirit of Halloween was watching over the town or it was fate, Bruce left the event with an unexpected feeling of success and far too many thoughts in his head. The one thing he didn’t count on had happened. He found a match.

He’d gone home, as he’d planned, but his coworkers brought the gossip to him the next morning. Waiting in his classroom with coffee. Everyone gushed (quietly as there was more than one hangover in the room) about the people they spoke with and Bruce made sure to wait until just before the first bell to say he found a werewolf who caught his interest.

Never before had his computer chimed with so many alerts. He had to mute it in order to teach but he was distracted and the kids weren’t any better. They dissolved various Halloween candy staples, carved pumpkins because someone donated their overflow and no other teacher wanted to deal with the mess, and Bruce kept the day easy. Everyone’s mind was on the party quickly approaching. And for the first time since moving here, Bruce found himself wishing it would come just a little faster. Not just so it’d be done and life could go back to normal until Christmas break.

For those few days, it seemed like no one talked about the factory closing. It wasn’t who was out of a job anymore but who was driving the tractor for the hayrides. Collectively a town decided to ignore their impending doom and had Bruce not been so wrapped up in it himself it would have been an interesting study.

Though underneath the excitement were murmurings that a Stark was in town. No one knew what for. Some hoped for the best, that’d they had seen things clearly and were going to announce that the factory would remain open. Others didn’t even try to mask their threats. The rest used logic, the town hall meeting on the first day of November was likely going to be led by Tony Stark as he thanked the community for their years of loyal service, offered nothing, and made himself feel good before going back to one of his many mansions to never think about them again. Comments that passed as quickly as they came, replaced by where to find a recipe or if the grocery store had taken eggs off the shelf yet.

Eventually all the gossiping and planning came to it’s natural conclusion. Halloween arrived and without sight or word from Stark. Bruce thought he must have some sense if he’s staying out of the way. Yet another thing to add to their list of Halloween blessings. Had Stark not been doing what he was, Bruce would have given him a bit of credit for allowing the festivities to carry on without him.

For most of the day’s events, Bruce stayed at home. He graded papers, watched a few shows, and kept things on an even keel. Not because he didn’t want to go out, he had no reason to since he didn’t have any children. He stayed home for his sanity. Crowds were never his thing and because he’d decided last night to attend the big dance in hopes of a speed date match, Bruce needed all the energy he could store. Though it did afford him far too much time to think about what it would feel like to learn no one wanted the reveal.

Staying home until he couldn’t handle the busy work anymore, Bruce made his way to the center of town. Talking to kids he currently taught, kids he’d taught in the past who were carrying children of their own, and running into a couple of people from work all helped to wrap the event in a warm feeling of welcome. The brisk air mixed with the food and blew around leaves, creating something nothing short of picturesque. As he took it all in, Bruce’s heart broke with the knowledge that the town would never feel like this again.

He bought popcorn balls from some grade school kids, drank what felt like a gallon of apple cider, and stocked up on candies for the rest of the fall. Bruce found a greater sense of peace and calm out among the crowd than he did at home but slowly families started to make their way home. Children were left with babysitters, teenagers went off to their parties deep in the woods that they thought no one knew about, and left the adults to their barn dance.

The nerves Bruce had been trying to avoid found their way to him as he wrote his name on a sticker, drew a little ghost and pressed it over the pocket of his flannel shirt. When the matches were posted right at center stage, Bruce held back. Maybe if everyone else paired up he wouldn’t even need to see. Except he needed to know. Before he could force his legs to carry him up to his fate someone stood in front of him.

“You? You were under that sheet?” the man asked

“I was. You were, uh? I don’t see your name tag.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think it went with my outfit.”

“Who says stuff like that?”

“I don’t know, me I guess.”

“I feel like I know you,” Bruce said, squinting in hopes it would help him figure it out.

The man stood there, watching Bruce with a single arched eyebrow, holding his breath in waiting. It took a minute, far too long if you asked either of them, but Bruce’s eyes went wide.

“Tony? Tony Carbonell? No! It can’t be. What are you doing here?”

“Business,” Tony said. Not exactly lying.

“God, I haven’t seen you since high school.”

“Science High. Home of the best or something like that.”

“Only if you applied yourself,” Bruce laughed at his own joke and it didn’t feel like it was his voice. He’d not laughed like that since...high school.

Repressed feelings came flooding back. The memory of how badly he wanted to talk to Tony when they were fifteen. They were from two different worlds but in constant competition for the top of their class. Bruce would have let Tony win if it meant they got to talk though. He hadn’t pinned for anyone as much or as hard since. Now he was standing face to face, talking to him like they were long-lost friends.

If that realization wasn’t enough, Tony decided to pile on when he said “If I’d have known it was a classmate under that sheet, I’m not sure I would have marked you down as my match.”

Bruce almost dropped his drink. “What?”

“Yeah, you were the only interesting conversation the entire night. I was just bummed we didn’t have another minute. We could have got ourselves kicked out.”

“Wh-” before Bruce could finish repeating himself he sucked in a hefty breath. “The werewolf?”

“Teen Wolf. I told you, man. C’mon, I thought you were smart enough to hold a thought for a day.”

“It’s been two and a half.”

“That’s still not that long.”

Scanning the room, Bruce desperately tried to find a familiar face. Anyone to help out with this situation. He was in over his head and had forgotten why this was a good idea. He wanted to bolt for the door. Not even the door, if he could break through the nearest wall and just run home it’d be preferred.

None of that happened. He was left to stand there with his first crush and talk about flirting with each other. In the course of the conversation, Bruce had fully regressed to his teenage self. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know where to put his arms. Why didn’t he have something stronger than cider to drink? Of which he needed another gallon because his throat had never been this dry.

“Who was your pick?” Tony asked.

“Huh?”

“Who did you write down on the form? Who’d you wanna meet?”

“Um, you. The Teen Wolf.”

“Really?”

Bruce nodded to the stage, nearly clear now as everyone had found out whether or not a match had been made, silently telling Tony to go check if he didn’t believe him. Which Tony did. Walking away without a word. As soon as his back was turned, Bruce doubled over, hands on his knees, and breathing like he’d finished a marathon. Now was his chance to run. Yet, again, his feet didn’t want to move. Glued to the spot, waiting for Tony to come back and confirm what Bruce knew to be true. After all these years they’d finally matched.

Before he could coordinate his mind and body, make a swift but likely clumsy exit, Bruce stood up to find himself staring at one of his coworkers. She thought she’d put down a guy she had great chemistry with but they didn’t match and she was distraught. Not that she knew which of the men in the room were the one she was looking for so they were all suspect. Each of them awful in a randomly assigned way.

She’d made the assumption that Bruce hadn’t made a love connection either given he was standing alone and Bruce could have used this as an out. Escort her to the bar, drowning her sorrows, and lay low. Yet those words didn’t come out. Instead, he explained the situation. That he was waiting on confirmation from the tall, dark, and handsome man walking towards them. They had both written down each other’s disguise. Though he did leave out the part that they’d gone to high school together.

Tony came in just in time, nipping the protests and cries of how unfair it was that bordered on insulting. A charming grin that Bruce did not remember him having in school. In fact, Tony had little in common with his high school version. Whereas Bruce wanted desperately to grow another foot, Tony had. He looked like he worked out. Not in a lab, like Bruce, but a gym like people were supposed to. Everything was immaculate, his hair, clothes, smile, all of it. A far cry from just another one of the nerds. If Bruce didn’t know better, Tony almost looked like the kind of person to shove nerds in lockers.

But that couldn’t be true. Tony extended a hand towards Bruce. The slow music, a room full of people swaying back and forth as they excitedly talked about the speed dating and its outcome, Bruce knew what that meant. He’d watched enough movies. Trying to hide wiping his hand on his shirt before putting it in Tony’s, he accepted the dance. Gliding through this dream. So many other places boasted the magic of Christmas but in this moment, it didn’t hold a evergreen scented candle to Halloween.

The last time Bruce had danced with anyone, he’d been a child playing pretend with family. And yet it came easy, his hand in Tony’s, their arms around each other, and just enough distance to talk as they moved around. Like everyone around them, they talked endlessly. The conversation came easy, as unusual as that was for Bruce.

Somewhere between memories brought up by the songs the DJ played, what they’d done since high school, and watching as the dance floor emptied, the sun had gone down. Replacing that warm autumn light with string after string of lights above their head. The perfect glow as the smell of popcorn and funnel cakes had burnt off and bonfires had taken over.

“So what brings you here?” Bruce finally asked. The question had been sitting behind everything else they’d discussed. “It’s pretty far from where we met and I know my path here but you...you don’t live here, I’d have seen you before.”

“I don’t, I live in New York. Would you buy that I came for the spirit of Halloween?”

“Plausible. It is why most visitors come but you strike me as more of an Amityville Horror Halloween than caramel apples and corn mazes.”

“You’re not wrong,” Tony laughed. “Have you been there?”

“No, and you’re changing the subject.”

“And you’re too smart to fall for it. What if I told you no one has called me Carbonell in so long I almost forgot it was me?”

Bruce stopped the lazy circle they were shuffling in. “What do you mean?”

“It’s my mom’s maiden name. I went by it in school because my dad’s last name is, uh, recognizable and I didn’t want to be recognized. I mean, I still don’t want to be recognized as his but I’ve got his company, I’m trying to make it better. Make the name better.”

Facts were connecting for Bruce and he didn’t like where they were going. The data made sense but he needed to hear it. “What’s your last name then.”

Around them, the world seemed to stop and slowly fade away. Without the music, Bruce had come to a complete stop, staring at Tony and daring him to give the answer they both knew he would. The answer that would ruin Halloween.

“Stark.”

[boogiewrites]

No. 9: The Body

Chapter One

Characters: Diego Hargreeves & OFC Eve Corpuz

Summary: Eve, once a rebellious runaway had turned her life around through the help of others to now be a doctor. She tries to return the favor these days. When a mysterious man keeps popping up in her life, what will her natural talent for healing become when it finally meets someone else with abilities like hers? The introductory chapter.

Warnings/Tags: Meet Cute. Some medical/blood/injury stuff.

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT!

From the view from her apartment window, only slightly obscured by the fire escape, Eve looked out on the gloomy sunrise falling over the New York City street below. The fog and steam from the light drizzle on the street grates blended with the haze of her coffee cup as she took a moment to gather herself, feel the calm at the moment before the chaos of her job began.

Eve was all about function over fashion these days. Her childhood had held many questionable punk ensembles and thrifted, or even stolen pieces that were worn down to bare threads. But now her clothes usually consisted of scrubs, so she opted for comfort usually. She savors the last of her coffee and the peace of her small home and makes her way out into the world to begin another long, chaotic 12-hour shift.

The phrase, “business as usual” couldn’t really apply to work in an Emergency Room but when you worked an ER in New York, literally anything could be called as such. So the day began, and so did the rush of decisions, needles, charts, and blood as the job called for. She changed out her off duty uniform of pants that compromised mostly of spandex. For the season warm fleece-lined leggings were her go-to currently. Her boots needed replacing, as she’d bought new sneakers for work but neglected her everyday ones. What a metaphor for her life that was. You couldn’t really wear anything but boots in the city winter as the mess on the streets would seep through anything else. She peeled off her layers of a tank top, t-shirt, hoodie, and jacket to stuff into her locker and got into her sterile looking and feeling scrubs that served as her protection from whatever the wild night of New York emergency room drama would unfold. “Doctor Corpuz to the ER please.” She heard the intercom over her headphones. It was already starting. —

The night had been average, traffic accidents, assault, chest pains, overdose, nothing that would throw Eve off her game. Her years of residency had assured that. As usual, she became drained the longer the night went on, hitting the caffeine hard to make it through the last hours.

“Uh, hey, Eve we’ve got this guy in room 3 and he’s being…. a bit belligerent,“ the woman rolled her eyes as she casually leaned on the counter “He’s scaring the intern, you might wanna go help deescalate.” A half-smile that made it clear that the news delivered was something said more times than either of them could count now. “Since you’re so good at it and all.” She cracks her gum and even though it’s delivered sarcastically, the jab was actually true.

“Ugh.. why do I have to be the one that’s good at this?” She huffs and shrugs with heavy arms as she throws a playful pout her friend’s way. “Why can’t you just go yell at them? It sure scares me.” Eve quips as she stretches to prepare herself.

“I already did and he did not respond well to authority so… in you go Mr. Rogers.” She hits Eve on the shoulder with the patient’s file and she dramatically grasps it.

“Tired of being good cop. Let me yell at the next one alright?” She says back as she walks away.

“Got it Doc.” She answers as she begins to walk away.

Eve takes a deep breath and focuses before entering the room, trying to bring up that positive side of herself for the task at hand.

“I told you what I told ya, alright?” She could see from the chart and the bleeding man lying on a bed in front of her in a stance all black and leather ensemble. Her first thought was oh god what did he get stabbed with? He looks like he’s been at some BDSM party that went south, in the bad sense, and fast. It was multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and he was ready to be sewn up but wasn’t agreeing to be still despite the pain medicine he’d been given.

“Hey, dude we can we just shhh a little? Bring down the volume a touch?” She asks as the black-haired man turned his head her way. His dark brown eyes were glazed and he was clearly feeling the pain pills. A heavy brow lay low and angry as he sized her up a bit slower than he was accustomed to.

“Who are you?” He asks with a bite.

“I could ask you the same thing. I’m the ER Doctor tonight, Eve Corpuz. And you are?”

“I’m nobody.” He answers at a lower volume.

“Well Nobody, looks like I’ve got to stitch you up. Would you mind if I got to it?” She snaps on her gloves as the nurse pushes a tray with her instruments on it towards her.

“I need to get out of here.” He says, voice now at a more acceptable volume.

“If you let me sew you up you’ll be out of here right after and then we’ll all be happy, alright?” She gives smile his way that was softer than her tone. “I think I’ve got it from here Sherry. I won’t be needing any help will I Nobody? I can sew you up real quick and we can get on with our nights? Since you seem so busy and all?”

He looks to the other nurse and back to the doctor, muscles still tense but in a much more passive body language. “Yeah…okay.” He nods and his clearly scowling eyes kept on the nurse.

“Alright we’re good here. I’ll finish up and you can get Mr. Nobody here some pain control to take home ready?”

“I’ll be back in with the forms.” She responds, another way to let the doctor know she would be close by. After a shared nod, they said, “Yes I’m sure.” She was left alone with the scowling stranger.

“I don’t like her.” He pointed and laid back down on the table.

“That’s fair.” Eve shrugs, seeing a calm and casual approach was working best. “I just want to get you as best prepared as I can to heal up well, alright? I’m not gonna hound you for info like they were. That’s not my job.” She gives a humorous smile as she preps the areas on his stomach.

He blinks at her, looking down at her hands as she touches the wounds, and his nose twitches from pain. He says nothing as his attention is averted and her tone not aggressive and being reasonable with him.

“This part is gonna hurt. I’m not gonna bullshit you alright? But it’s not as bad as being stabbed so… Got me?”

His eyes meet hers. his round and partially, deep-set against full dark brows and goatee against his brown skin. “What kind of doctor says bullshit?” He asks with a head tilt.

“The kind that gets shit done.” She smiles and shrugs. “I’ve been on the other side of this situation before, I know it sucks and I’m not here to be the bad guy. I’m not a snitch… a narc or whatever, I’m just Eve and I wanna help. Because I know what it’s like.” She says earnestly and he doesn’t detect any bullshit as she’d said. He could read people, and he found her a little odd but… genuine.

“You been stabbed before?”

“I have.” She nods. “It fuckin hurts doesn’t it?” She laughs and nods, testing the equipment.

“Yeah. It does.” He gives a huff with a more relaxed expression before wincing.

“Where did you get stabbed?” He asks, brain still trying to read her.

“In the arm.” She nods casually.

“Ow.”

“Yeah ow.” She smiles he continues keeping her focus on cleaning up her space and open her tools.

“Why?” he asks.

“Why did you get stabbed?” she gives him a no-nonsense glance

“I was saving a cat from a tree.” his testy tone was full of pain med induced confidence.

“So did the tree stab you or the cat stab you with a 4-inch blade?”

“The cat.” He responds was as snarkily as she had in their back and forth.

“Mean cat.” She replies with a more casual smile as they begin to feel each other out.

“Yeah. He was a real asshole.”

She begins tapping the area and he doesn’t react. “Think we’re good now. Don’t move, please?”

“Kay.” He nods and lets his head fall back. As she works he watches her face. “So how did you get stabbed?”

“Would you believe a cat got me too?”

He gives a little confused smile. “I wouldn’t actually.”

“Then we have that in common.”

He grunts in appreciation for her attitude. Guess he’d have to work harder to figure her out. She looked warm, yet severe and her faded tattoos peeking out from her collar and sleeves were proving very interesting to him. She didn’t look or more interestingly feel like a doctor to him. He was used to pretending to be things he wasn’t, but if she was, she was better than him at it.

“Looks like I need to get more stuff.” She mutters, looking around the room. She covers two of three wounds and sighs. “I’ll be right back okay?”

“Okay.” He says with a face that she believed. But it wasn’t the first time her caring nature would’ve been taken advantage of, and the entertaining stranger was gone when she returned to the room. Nothing but the blood left behind and a warm indent on the bed. He was good, she thought. Actually, she was downright impressed he got past her. It’d be a headache for paperwork later but a good story to tell at least.

————————————

The next night the stranger named Nobody was the farthest thing from Eve’s mind. She was enjoying her take out, the container in hand, and chopsticks tapping to the playlist titled “classical: chill”. She’d made it to play when she studied in school and during residency and apparently she’d conditioned herself to be more relaxed while she played it.

The sun had just gone down and the winter chill was heavy around her windows. In her functional fashion, she wore sweats and slippers and layers topped with a hoodie. She was swaying and focusing on how good cold lo mein could be. The light of her standing lamp illuminating the solid rectangle of open space that was her kitchen and living room. Much like her fashion, it was cozy and functional. Nothing brash or bold, just neutral colors and lots of comforts.

Eve was winding down to sleep off her last shift, making some time to eat and enjoy herself before having to get back to it the next morning. Her dark hair was damp and twisted on top of her head, glasses mended with floss sat unsecured on her nose as she ate with her eyes closed. During the weeks where she had close shifts she usually took it easy on herself, her hours could vary wildly, and sometimes that worked in her advantage and sometimes it didn’t. But it wasn’t anything new to her. She figured if she made it through residency she could make it through anything, and right now the coziness, the juxtaposition of inside her little warm home and the biting January cold that lay just outside the windows. They sat with curtains that fell ceiling to floor, mostly drawn. Being on the third floor she had never been too worried about anyone seeing into her windows. But perhaps she should have been.

That, forgotten in this moment, Nobody was taking full advantage of the small space left by the curtains. He peered in, watching her. He drummed his gloved fingers over two healed fresh scared marks near his ribs. He could find anything sinister about her. She wasn’t any sort of plant in the hospital and she wasn’t there looking for him. She seemed like a nice enough woman actually, but he knew there had to be something he was missing.

He continued this for days. He would follow her around, trying to figure out what her deal was. He’d become a bit preoccupied with it, as was his nature. Since his return to the city, he’d been going from vigilante case to case to distract himself. It felt like old times in fleeting moments, but when the chaos that had surrounded him recently came rushing back at him, he wasn’t one to wallow in his sadness. Rather it hung around as he decided to go back to doing the thing he knew best. Without connects at the police anymore he was left with that familiar feeling of being a lone wolf . He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it, and it wasn’t on his list of things to contemplate soon. So a mystery woman, ironically enough was what the doctor ordered when it came to distractions.

So far she was pretty boring. As far as people with powers went, he guesses. She liked coffee, take out. Nothing that interesting, except that he was now totally healed, scarred and the pain was only a memory. She was a doctor, sure, but he’d never healed that fast in his life. He’d worked himself up to conspiracy theories of her using some new medicine that was being tested on civilians without their knowledge. But he found nothing of the sort. There wasn’t a lot on her when he searched her name. First-year doctor at a hospital, went to medical school and college, what you’d expect. She spent most of her time working, goes out with some women she works with on occasion, then went home. No following her to a seedy alley for a secret meeting or her making coded phone calls. No, she was just a woman who left her curtains open and he felt like he’d hit a wall on the investigation. So for now, she remained a collection of scribbled notes in his apartment.

His other antics, most that involved fighting and men with guns and knives, understandably led to frequent injuries for him, most ones he could handle. But it just so happened next time he got really hurt, he knew exactly which doctor to go to.

—————

Eve got there early, a shoulder gunshot wound and a split open brow. A not unusual combination. She approached the room, and no one but her seemed to recognize the man that lay in the bed.

She noticed he looked almost relieved at the sight of her, which she wasn’t used to.

“I got it.” She says a nod to the nurse as he approaches him.

“Listen, Doc you gotta get me out of here.” He begins.

“Yeah I knew that was you…” she gives him a side-eye. “I think you need either new hobbies or new friends because this is the second time in what… a month you’re in here?

“You do recognize me.”

“Of course I do you know how much of a pain in the ass paperwork is when you disappear?”

“No.”

“Clearly since you ran last time.” She says more severely as she begins the usual process again.

“Look, I saw an opportunity and I took it. Nothing personal.” he offers with a shake of his head. “ This time there’s gonna be cops and you can’t let them in here. They’ll see me and arrest me and I don’t want that.”

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do they want to arrest you?”

“Because they think I did something.”

“Did you…?”

“No.”

She considers his eyes for a moment, whether he was being honest or not. “…What’s your name?”

“So you can tell the cops, yeah no thanks.”

“Fair…Then tell me how you got stabbed.” It was more of a demand than a request. A terms of service agreement for her involvement.

“I was after a bad guy and he fought back, then more bad guys showed up and one of them got me.” his response was as vague as he could get away with, they both knew that.

“You’re the good guy in this instance?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you some undercover…something-er-other?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Just a wanted criminal?”

“Wanted. Not a criminal.”

She sighs and he hisses as she begins to work on him. He notices her lips purse and her eyes making a decision beyond watching the work she was doing?

“Doctor Corpuz, there are some policemen that want to ask you some questions.

“Tell them I’m finishing up a procedure, to stay by the front desk and I’ll be out.”

“Yes, Doctor.” the nurse bows.

“Are you gonna help me or not?”

She stays quiet, finishing up sewing and reaching for a bandage. “Yeah.” she nods.

“Good, I didn’t want to have to hurt you.”

She swings her eyes his way in a clear glare that told him she did not find his joke funny. “You aren’t helping your case any random nobody who’s been stabbed multiple times in the past month. You clearly are good at making decisions, maybe I should tell them about you.” she retorts with more sting and she gives his stomach a harsher pat before moving away.

“Uh…it was..it would be funny if you knew me. I don’t want to hurt you…Eve Corpuz.” he glances at the tag and then her face.

“No, we’re back on a Doctor-patient relationship now.”

“But you’re still gonna help me get out?”

“Yes, fuck, I said I would already.” she shakes her head at him and motions for him to sit up. “I’ll have them at the front desk and distract them, and you go out the back way. You’ll get some attention, but not from them.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re the coolest doctor they’ve ever met?”

“They haven’t actually. Usually, they’re too busy screaming in pain when we meet.” she cleans the space and begins to walk out the door as he catches her wrist.

“Thanks. Doctor. Eve. Whatever.”

“Well, you’ll owe me I guess. What good that does me when I don’t even know you’re name, huh? Just get out as quietly as possible, alright? Don’t make me regret this.”

“You won’t.” he nods and releases his grip on her.

[doctorthedoctor]

Long thasmin (mostly Yaz) rambles under the cut. I have a lot of feelings about it, but that’s nothing new.

tl;dr Yaz is queer and I really hope this is where they actually plan on going with it.

I wish we knew if they’re planning on making Yaz canonically queer. If they are, I’m so interested in where she’s at in terms of her relationship with her identity. We’ve gotten a glimpse into her past, but there’s still so much we don’t know, like why she was bullied and what prompted her to run off. She’s clearly had to pull herself out of a very dark place, yet we hardly know any details about what bought her there (funny how that sounds exactly like the Doctor).

I know a lot of people are of the belief that Najia is the captain of the thasmin ship, but I’ve personally never felt that way. To me, she doesn’t look or sound thrilled by the concept of Yaz seeing the Doctor when she asks about it. And Yaz doesn’t seem very comfortable with the question. She initially responds with a disgruntled, “Not now!” and punctuates the exchange with, “Please, can we not have this conversation now? And not in front of [Robertson].” And between those lines, neither she nor the Doctor give Najia a clear answer.

This is just my take and it could very well be wrong, but the fact that Yaz expresses multiple times that she doesn’t want to talk about it tells me that a conversation of this nature has happened before. And judging by the tension between them, it probably didn’t go very smoothly.

I mean, nothing about this exchange looked or sounded comfortable to me:

It’s notably different from how Najia and Yaz interact later when the same question is asked about her and Ryan. The two respond with an immediate and definitive, “No.” Najia seems disappointed by their answer, yet she doesn’t press the topic and the story moves forward. This exchange ends up being significantly shorter than the first, solely because Najia accepted their answer the first time around.

Does anyone smell some heteronormativity in the air? Queer people are painfully familiar with having to spend time explaining their identity to others. It’s a conversation we’re forced to have over and over throughout our lives. That definitely sounds like an experience Yaz can relate to.

Ryan and Yaz look uncomfortable when she asks (which is understandable), but Najia looks much happier about the concept and disappointed when she finds out they aren’t dating:

And even the staging is interesting. Najia is positioned between Yaz and Ryan in the second scene, as opposed to being placed next to Yaz with a desk between them and the Doctor. When she’s talking to Yaz and Ryan, she’s on the same level as them and sounds friendlier. But when she’s talking to the Doctor, Yaz is sitting while she stands and assumes a more authoritative position/tone.

Sure, the Doctor is a stranger and Ryan is a childhood friend, but the Doctor was so nice to Najia when she met her. As far as I can remember, she never gave her a solid reason to be suspicious. If anything, she was too nice, given the way Najia reacts to the hug and compliment about her daughter, then proceeds to distance herself. She’s not Yaz’s mum, she’s Najia. And at the end of the episode, she continues to press Yaz about the Doctor, but never mentions Ryan again.

We know that there’s been a strain on her home life at some point after hearing her conversation with that officer, because she mentions Yaz’s parents not understanding her (not getting “what’s up”). As they they talk, the officer mentions Yaz wanting to run away from everyone, including herself. In trying to convince her that these feelings will pass, she essentially tells her there’s something good waiting on the other side if she runs toward herself instead—which is something queer people really need to hear.

It’s obviously not the only factor, and like I said, I could be wrong but...this sure does look like something that would make a person run from who they are:

After all, Yaz did promise her mom she would tell her about the Doctor when she got back from picking up bread, then proceeded to run off with her. As far as we know, Najia is still in the dark about their relationship—whatever that happens to be.

Aside from that, Yaz is the only one in the fam who hasn’t had any romantic interactions outside of the Doctor and the Master. I guess we could also count Ryan (I’m not against it because I headcanon her as bi) but I genuinely get more of a sibling vibe from them. Regardless, we all know the Master cozied up to Yaz because she fits the mold of who the Doctor has traveled with in the past. I can’t speak to classic who, but from Nine and on, the Doctor’s got a type and we all know it, including the Master.

Then we have all of the parallels between thasmin and various couples in the show. I’m not even going to begin to list them, but the crumbs are abundant and delicious. That gay cop and astronaut? I mean, come on.

On top of all that, the one really Yaz centric episode we’ve had dealt with themes of prejudice and a love within her own family that broke away from societal norms. Like, shit. The Doctor married Prem and Umbreen in a small, private ceremony because she was the only one who was willing to look past their religions. And because this was a relationship that went unknown to Yaz (for a vastly different reason, but still), even she wasn’t happy with the Doctor for agreeing to it at first.

Though private, their marriage was an act of rebellion against outside forces. And who did Umbreen specifically have tension with about the concept of marrying someone who was Hindu? Her mother. But she and Prem even created a new wedding tradition that celebrated their own love by tying their hands with the rope that fell in the water. “Now it can be our thing, if we want it to be,” Umbreen said.

(This is a side note, but if Najia truly isn’t chill about Yaz being queer, I really want to see Umbreen tell her about Prem. I want to hear her recount her experiences with her own love being scrutinized and challenged. I think it would be a cool way for Najia to learn who the Doctor really is, and just how much of a positive impact she and Yaz have made on her life already.)

Yaz struggled in Demons of the Punjab because everything she believed to be true about Umbreen’s life (and her own by extension) turned out to be so different from what she expected. But what she witnessed in that episode helped her understand that people deserve to share their experiences on their own terms. If that doesn’t translate into a narrative about Yaz’s own identity, I don’t know what will.

In season 12, Yaz spent this entire time focusing on the Doctor, but it was executed in a way that furthered her own development. Yaz clearly has feelings for her, but now we have a better understanding of what traveling with the Doctor means to her as a whole. Yaz idolizes her, constantly thinks about what she would say or do. She wants to impress her, prove herself capable of solving problems and saving people. In the process of doing this, she’s grown more confident in her own abilities, independently breathing hope and action into situations that feel paralyzing and hopeless. This is exactly what Yaz has wanted all along, with or without the Doctor. Yaz wants to matter and she wants to do work that matters. The Doctor gives her this. She tells her they can’t have a universe without her. She gives her the chance to make an impact in a way she doesn’t feel like she can at home.

I think their relationship could serve as such a wonderful catalyst for Yaz to step into her own identity and eventually find her place without needing the Doctor. Like Graham said, she doesn’t have a time machine or a sonic, but she’s doing the whole human race proud. Yaz deserves a “You were fantastic. And know what? So was I” moment.

I love thasmin as much as the next person, but I’m honestly less interested in seeing her feelings reciprocated by the Doctor than I am in witnessing Yaz’s journey to confront her feelings in the first place. I want to see or hear her express them in a way that leaves no room for doubt. Everything feels so blatantly intentional at this point, but there’s still just enough ambiguity for me to worry that they’re not going to follow through. They’ve planted all these wonderful little seeds along the way, it would be such a disservice to all fans (not just queer fans) if we never get to see them bloom.

[applepiewinchesters]

Sick (Crowley x Reader)

*REQUESTS ARE OPEN*

Requested by: @walkingencyclopediaofweirdmayo and @dapper-gamzee

 You’d been sick for weeks now and Crowley was more than worried about you. He knew how easily susceptible humans were to sickness, and you’ve gotten colds before, but this was more like the worst flu you’ve ever had.

All you did was sleep mostly, curled up in the silk sheets of Crowley’s large bed. When you were awake, you barely ate, and when you did, Crowley had to feed you. You spent most of your time awake just cuddling with Crowley, thankfully, due to his demonic form, he couldn’t catch whatever nasty bug you had.

You had some good days, and some bad. One day you were up most of the time, awake and bubbly, the next day you slept for twelve hours.

It was worrying Crowley more and more, you weren’t getting better, but you never got worse thankfully. He bought whatever food you wanted, even if it was just popsicles, got you multiple kinds of flu and cold medicine, and did everything he could to make you feel better.

One night, you woke up coughing rather harshly, Crowley was already in bed beside you and his eyes shot open the minute you started hacking. He rubbed your back, coaxing you through the horrible coughing fit. Something that wasn’t exactly new to him.

What was new was the metallic taste in your mouth and you pulled your hand away to see splotches of blood covering your palm.

“That’s it,” Crowley said, quickly climbing out of bed, “we’re going to the hospital.”

“N-No,” you spoke, your voice raspy, feebly reaching out to the demon as he hurried towards the closet, stripping off his pajamas as he went.

He emerged from the closet fully clothed, already putting his sunglasses back on.

“I don’t want to go,” you whimpered, you hated hospitals, always had, never knew why though. 

You were sitting on the edge of the bed now, a fluffy blanket wrapped tightly around you, you looked so small, so helpless.

Crowley knelt down in front of you, “I know love, I know,” he spoke, reaching up to wipe at a few tears that had fallen down your cheeks, “but you need more help than I can give you.”

He gathered you up in his arms and carried you out of the flat, grabbing the keys to the Bentley as he did.

You were there in five minutes flat given the crazy speed Crowley drives and he carried you into the emergency room. After explaining what was happening, the nurses brought you to a bed and checked you over.

Crowley could only watch from beside you as you were poked and stuck with needles. You were exhausted, nearly falling asleep as they did tests on you.

When they finally let you sleep, Crowley sat beside you, holding your hand as he waited for the test results, it was almost six in the morning before a nurse finally came to tell him what was wrong with you.

“It seems they have a severe case of pneumonia, it’s nothing we can’t fix here, so don’t worry, we’ll get them admitted as soon as possible sir,” the nurse told Crowley, he sighed, running a hand over his face as he nodded.

The nurse left, leaving Crowley to watch over you while you slept, he pulled out his phone, dialing Aziraphale’s number quickly.

He picked up after the third ring, “Crowley, it’s rather early to be calling,” Aziraphale said, his tone making it more of a question than a statement.

“Y/N’s in the hospital angel, I-I don’t want to be alone,” Crowley admitted.

The angel was silent for a moment before answering, “Which hospital?”

*

Finally, about seven in the morning you were admitted to an actual room, Aziraphale had arrived approximately half an hour prior to that, so he sat beside Crowley in your room, both of them watching you silently.

“Pneumonia? That’s what the nurse said they have?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley nodded, head in his hands, “Severe case apparently,” he spoke, lifting his head to look at you. They’d given you a bit of a sedative, mostly to help you sleep without hacking up a lung.

“They’ll be fine dear boy, the doctor said you brought them in just in time” Aziraphale said, reaching over to rub Crowley’s shoulder comfortingly.

For once Crowley didn’t push him off, he needed someone else to be there, to reassure him you’d be alright.

Aziraphale was right though, a few days in the hospital and you were back to your happy and healthy self. Crowley was a bit over protective in the days after, if you so much as sneezed he panicked. You had to reassure him you weren’t dying.

Crowley was honestly just happy you were no longer hacking up a lung every day. You were eating solid food again, leaving the flat, and most importantly, you were still here with him.

  A/N: Hello lovely people! First off, I’m really sorry it’s been taking me so long to do the most recent requests. I honestly got a little burnt out on writing and needed a break, my mental health also took a turn for the worst but I’m doing better now, I promise to try and write more now. I am starting school Monday so I may not have as much time to write as I’d like, but don’t worry, I won’t leave forever of course :). Also, unfortunately I seem to have lost some of my previous requests, so, due to that fact, I am opening requests up again! I hope you guys like this one and thank you so much for all the love you give me! Love you all! ~ Sara <3 

[nightroze]

Untitled

The world slowed to a full stop as her ears filled with a strange roaring. She watched as the monitors went flat and the female’s chest stopped rising. She watched as her own body let out it’s last breath and heard her mother’s wail of heart broken anguish. Her father tried his best to take his grieving wife away from the warm corpse. It was strange, really, she’d expected more, she expected the blinding white light and the fear, a hand reaching out to her and bringing her to some other world. In the end she felt… numb, a faint grasp squeezing her poor heart. She tried to stop the spill of nonexistent tears as she reached for her parents one last time. Her parents- they lost a child- they lost something which they had brought into this world, created, and then be destroyed. It happened much too quick, too quick for her to even begin processing. 

The midnight bugs buzzed in the silence of night, the drunk driver coming around the corner couldn’t be seen because he was too intoxicated to know that his own damn headlights weren’t on. He swerved into her lane as he saw her coming, swerved towards the light. She barely had time to react before he hit her, the car spinning out and going over the railing, down a 200 foot descent. It was like a roller coaster, her car making flips and and airy turns, turning her stomach inside out and making her heart flutter.

“Oh sh-,” was the only thing she was really able to say as she came to the terrifying realization of the situation. On impact she let out an oof sound, glass shattered, a muted pain already spreading throughout her limbs. Her body shook with adrenaline and she looked around wildly. Warmth escaped from her nose and the broken glass clattered down her body with her shifting. The seat beneath her groaned and the car lurched down. Something felt off, like the gravity wasn’t holding, like the ground beneath her would escape at any moment. The girl had the sense to freeze and hold her breath as the car around her groaned again, tilting forward as a strong wind blew. 

“Oh gosh… please please no..” She whispered to whatever god was listening. The car tilted further and further till the branch that was supporting the heavy machine gave way, giving her a clear view of her impending downward descent. The fall was too fast for the girl to do anymore than let out a shout. When the final impact hit, the metal around her bent and contorted, the world upside down, it was suffocating. Panting and panicking she struggled against her confines, the adrenaline too high in her body for her to really feel the true extent of her injuries. 

“Hel- Help..” She mumbled as she tugged and twisted in her seat, the roof of her car closed closer to her head and blood pooled on top of it, her blood. 

“H… help me someone.” She tried to say louder as she finally managed to rip her seatbelt off. Her limp limbs tried their best to kick at the door next to her. A yelp ripped from her lips as her broken body hit the solid build. Her world started to spin as her body temperature increased rapidly, little black spots dancing in her vision. Whimpering again, that woozy feeling increased tenfold and she finally fell unconscious. By the time she came to, sirens sung in the distance, flashes of color filling her mind, flashing into her still closed eyes. Help… help was on the way. 

The tube in her throat was the worst, stung like no other. The multiple IV’s and lines around her body made her feel crushed, crowded. They stitched up her broken and bruised body, hung bags after bags of blood to keep her body working, but it wasn’t enough. She could faintly register crying and a hand holding her own. Someone was speaking, almost like a script. She heard faint clicking as the lines and the IV’s were removed, then-the tube helping her breathe. ‘Finally, I’m getting better.’ she thought to herself. This was a good sign.. Right.. Removing her from the machines. As the tube left her throat, panic filled every cavity within her as she tried to take a breath but realized she couldn’t. She tried to struggle, tried to talk or move anything that would let the health care workers know that it wasn’t working, she couldn’t- no response. None. She wouldn’t move, she lied there still in the bed. Her body on fire, like someone was tearing her apart limb from limb. With one final burst of energy she sat up, a scream tearing from her lips. 

“Mom, dad.. I’m ok!” She stuttered out and it was true. She felt fine, she could breath and move and talk.  No reaction. None at all. Her mother still wept at her side as her dad looked distant in the background, silently grieving for his child. The doctor was still going through her script as she kept removing the machinery. Her body- her body now lay beneath her, still, unmoving. A sense of cold fear rang through her, grasping with its dark claws to surround her.

“No! No! Don’t…. Give up! What are you doing?” She tried to yell at the nurse with the pity filled eyes. Their voices were muffled. She hopped off of the bed and waved a hand in front of his face, no response. ‘They… can’t see me. They can’t see me.’ She thought to herself, another wave of pure fear rushing through her spine once again. 

“This can't be happening. This isn’t happening.” Kitty said aloud, more to herself than anyone else. Well, no one would have been able to hear anyway. She couldn’t do anything else but sink to the floor, needing to feel the solidness of it beneath her, needed it to ground her to this new reality. 

She watched, watched as they wheeled her quickly coldening body down to the morgue, watched as her parents filed whatever paperwork they needed to and eventually took the liberty of driving home to prepare for what she was sure to be her funeral. It was like she was frozen, a spectator of her own sick end. She stayed curled up in her little ball in her little room which had yet to be refilled. Eventually, the tears stopped, leaving her numb once again in their wake. She could feel it, like a phantom limb, that emotion. She wanted to be sad, wanted to grief fully, but her brain simply wouldn’t let her. She stared blankly at the wall as the world around her continued on. She was alone, so alone and void and angry and sad-

“Katherine” a voice hissed from outside the room. Her head whipped in the direction of the door. A person. It sounded clear, much clearer than the doctors’ and her parents’ voices had been. She leapt up. Body preparing for the woozy feeling from doing so so quickly, but nothing came. ‘Right, I'm dead.’ She thought as she exited the room, even the smell of the hospital was muted, as if she didn’t exist. 

Around her, the hospital buzzed, the world moved through her. She looked left and right in search of the hissing voice, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. At the nurses station a woman was scribbling on a chart, a man coughed from somewhere within the hall. 

“Katherine,” the voice hissed again. There, from the left, towards a dark hall.

“Well, that's not terrifying and mysterious,” she nervously said to herself as she took a step in advancement towards the noise. 

“The name is Kitty, doll, Katherine was much too formal for my tastes.” Her voice wobbling slightly as she tried to put on a fake facade. The mysterious voice chuckled from within the hospital as she advanced, for a second sounding inhuman- dangerous. 

“Is, doll,” the voice corrected her in a mocking tone. 

“Is? But I’m not alive anymore. Who are you? Show yourself.” She demanded, maybe this person can give her answers. A flicker of movement was seen in the hall, Kitty’s head tilted as she watched. Till she watched, to her horror, what became in front of her. 

A tall, shadow creature with billowing black wings and glowing blue eyes towered over her. She stumbled back some, every instinct left in her mind telling her to run from such an unnatural thing. She stuttered around for a response, but nothing came. 

“Kitty, you said..” The thing spoke and all she could do was nod her head. “You are correct.. You are dead, there is no going back,” her heart dropped to the floor at the creature's words. Dead. She was dead. There was no hope. There was nothing at all. “And yet, unlike most humans you are here. Why?” She looked up at the thing. 

“Why? Well aren't you supposed to tell me that.. Uh..” She stumbled in her words, wondering what to call it. 

“Azazeal,” the creature- Azazeal- bowed down. “But I do not know either, young one.. It seems that this is a task for the both of us to accomplish.”

“Well, Azazeal, it's been super nice meeting ya hon, but…” Kitty started, but she truly had no excuse as to why she needed to get away. It's not like she had anywhere to go. She was stuck here, like he said. “Well, what do you mean?” She said slowly, her words still trying to form. She was still trying to wipe away the fog of grief. 

“It is my duty to help the ones like you, the ones who get stuck here in the in-between, it's not the natural way of things, something is holding you to your past life. We just need to sever the tie and you can be on your way to eternity,” Azazeal’s expression had no movement as he spoke, his voice flitting around the room as if it didn’t belong to him. 

“Sever the tie… my past life,” Kitty pondered aloud, “Does that mean there is a possibility I could go back?” Hope bloomed in her chest as she looked at him. 

“No,” he responded almost immediately and her heart fell. It was finally sinking in, “Your body is dead, you are no longer.” Dead. She was dead. She tried her best to just stand there and nod, to have no reaction, to be strong. Her emotions had other plans. She broke down, crumbling on to the floor, a broken sob heaving out of her. Her parents. Her friends and family. She’d never see them again, never interact with them again. 

“M..Mom, mommy.. Dad,” another cry left her lips. Scared, so scared and alone. Her whole life had changed in one night, changed because of one man’s stupid decison. Dead. She was dead. So she pathetically broke down in front of the creature. Azazeal just watched, stood there in silence and said nothing. This wasn’t the first dead one he helped and it won’t be the last. 

After a few hours spent between wailing and staring at the floor, Kitty finally lifted her head. A brand new fire in her eyes as she looked at Azazeal.

“Help me get past this, help me move on. It’s what they would have all wanted, maybe I’ll get to watch over them, who knows. Maybe I’ll get to see their lives progress, so help me.” She said in a whispered tone as she held out her hand. Azazeal simply nodded and together they went. 

[bytesnbolts]

Glass and tile cracked as the pair dropped from the window into the public washracks. The stench of congealed, rotting solvent reached their olfactories, and both cut all resources feeding into that particular part of their frames. From a servoful of the baths, faint blue light barely pierced the sludge and dimly lit the vaulted ceilings and rising fumes.

“We investigated the pumps some cycles ago. Unfortunately, they are clogged; it will take too many resources to undo the situation, so it must remain as is until the needs are met.”

“What are they clogged with?”

Requiem tossed Nanostorm a look (optical ridge raised) over his upper shoulder, and no words were needed to grip the actual situation.

Nanostorm fell silent and trailed alongside Requiem through the musky building. Their green and purple biolights mingled across the walls and plumes, reflecting back at them occasionally.

“What will we be searching for when we reach our destination, Commander?”

“Signs of the Sparkeater.”

“Forgive me, but do not the autopsies completed by the Good Doctor and the actual remnants that were melted down count?”

Nanostorm frowned behind their mask.

“I am not trying to prove the Sparkeater existed; that is not the purpose of my search.”

= = =

It took another groon to arrive at the furthest known location of the attacks. The habitat complex rose up above their helms several stories and would have housed frames of even Nanostorm’s size. The front entrance and nearly every window had been boarded up at some point, probably to keep the residence.

The frame at this particular building had been found in a subterranean storage space. It was the kind of room where bots would gather to play cyber poker, watch old sports holovids, reminiscence and gossip. It had taken a scan to find the frame inside; they would have not stumbled upon it until the building was inspected for restoration; that would have been centuries from now.

The pair entered, keeping their sense about them. Just because it was abandoned did not mean the building was safe.

“Commander?”

“We are looking for any spot of entry. With this building being secured during the Plague, it would have to enter by unorthodox means.”

“It would prove more efficient to separate and check multiple locations. I will do a scan of the upstairs.”

“Be careful. Comm if you need assistance.”

“Always, Commander.”

Nanostorm watched Requiem set off up the stairwell before descending down to the storage space.

The room had not changed in the least since the photos had been taken. Half-finished games sat at tables along with stale cubes of energon. A busted monitor was smashed in the corner. A public notice screen fritzed silently on one wall. No claw-marks in sight.

Nanostorm did their best not to disturb anything as they searched. They looked at the ceiling vents, but none of them appeared to be loose. There was no openings behind any of the wall fixtures. After much effort, they managed to get low enough to look at a grate near the bottom of the wall, but were only greeted by the squeak of a retrorat fleeing.

The jet was just finding their pedes again when a crash from upstairs sounded.

:: Requiem? Status? ::

When no answer immediately came back, Nanostorm shot up the stairs two at a time, up and up and up until they reached the floor Requiem had been investigating. Their gatling guns deployed as they charged down the hallway.

The car-hauler was in the furthest apartment, walking across, in a great show of grace and balance, a beam. The floor had dropped two stories all around him, carrying everything down with it. He stepped off of the beam and on to the yet solid flooring.

“Commander, pardon my lack of reply, but I required focus.”

The ex-vent Nanostorm had not realized they were holding was a whirlwind in the quiet between them as it released to see the other unharmed.

Requiem turned and gestured toward the window.

“I have found the entrance, but I would not recommend advancing closer.”

Looking across the chasm, deep furrows from claws clearly stood out against the window’s sill, and Nanostorm knew they did not have them on file. How had Starprowler missed them?

“I did not see any markings on the outside.”

“May I suggest it leapt from the neighboring building? The window was open when I entered. The legends cite that sparkeaters are quite physically powerful; I do not imagine it would be too difficult a jump.”

Nanostorm tried to judge the distance between the window and the next building’s rooftop. From what little Nanostorm had seen of the beast, and the reports from their team, the sparkeater would probably be capable of the jump. However, was it really feasible with the addition of a frame, unconscious or otherwise?

“Let us check the neighboring rooftop.”

Nanostorm led the way out, gaze searching down the hall as they exited; there were no drag marks visible in the hall nor in the stairwell.

It was only more frustrating when the rooftop showed no sign of the creature.

The alleyway between the two habitat complexes only surrendered up busted sheet metal fallen from some of the windows above, and impossible to know from which it had come. 

[billyspotato]

Memories - Bucky Barnes

Words: 2.288 words

Type: Angsty (the whole movie scene) & Fluff

Summary: You’re there when Bucky remembers Steve and how he ended up in Hydra (Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Bank/Erasing memories scene), and you promise him something.

Warning: English is not my first language. Sorry if I misspelled something. CA: Winter Soldier spoilers

Part 1       Part 2

A/N: Gif’s not mine :)

You jump out of the car and open the door of the bank, not caring that you didn’t hold it for the people behind you. You need to see him, the Winter Soldier.

You were once the soldier that Hydra used for everything. You were caught by them 4 years ago, they turned you into a super-soldier and erased your memories, just to make sure that the experience was officially perfected.

You never hesitated into doing something for Hydra, because you knew that if ever did, you would regret it. A lesson that you earned once and learned it right in that same second.

You later became one of their favorite soldiers, but that was until they woke up the so-called: Winter Soldier - who does your and more advanced dirty work.

You are still active when it comes to following orders and doing missions, but since his appearance, you’re rarely needed.

You two started ‘talking’ when in missions together, in which required communication. But the people that work for Hydra aren’t dumb. They knew it right in the second that you started caring for each other, you more than him.

With that, they tried to wipe his memory multiple times, but it never worked for some unknown reason that no scientist could justify. Every time he would see you after being wiped, he would start caring even more, and being more protective.

So Hydra gave up after some months of trying.

Now, the soldier had left for a mission and you were called over to the bank where Hydra had him, just to try and calm him down.

You walk through the dark wooded doors and you saw him, right away.

“Miss, he’s not…” A man tried to say but you ignore him.

Once you open the metal gate something in him snapped, in an act of defense, his arms shoved the doctor away, making the man fly to the corner of the room.

Every man in the room lifted their guns, aiming at the visibly unstable soldier, and something in you twitched.

“Put your fucking guns down” You hiss and the men do what you order.

You walk slowly in his direction and his eyes stayed glued to the floor, almost as he's in the state of chock. You grab the chair that the poor doctor was sitting previously and you drag it closer to you, slowly sitting down and taking a good look at him.

“What’s wrong?” You whisper and his eyes quickly move from the floor to you, ready to snap, until he almost completely relaxed at the sight of you.

He doesn’t answer, he stays silent, looking back to the ground.

You, then, lift your hand and drag some of his hair that had fallen onto his face to behind his ear, cupping his cheek.

“What happened?” You whisper again, leaning closer to him.

“I…” He starts and you nod so he could take his time, “I remember…” He says and you interrupt him.

“All of you” You start not even looking over your shoulder, “Leave” You order with a solid tone of voice and you hear one man behind you scoff at your order.

You grab a tool that was down at the metal tray next to you and throw it in his direction quickly, making what looks like a syringe, bang loudly into the metal behind the man. That same man stood in total shock and with a look of pure fear as the syringe you just threw, was capable to cut the inside of his pants and now it’s stuck to the metal drawer on the wall behind him. The cut behind only some inches away from his crotch made him almost go into panic mode.

You hear everyone start to walk out of the vault and the two of you stay silent. Once you hear the door close, you look back at him and he looked back at you with an expression that showed complete fear and confusion.

“I-I knew hi-him” He sobs in a whisper and your heart tightens at the sight, “And- He knew who I-I was”

“Who? Who knew who you were?” You ask in a whisper putting both of your hands on his cheeks, cupping his face.

“The-the man on the brid-bridge” He whispers and you nod.

“What’s your name? What did he call you?” You ask quickly, not wanting to waste any time. Alexander must be on his way here already.

“He called me Bucky” He says with a tone as the name sounded familiar to him. “It triggered something in me… I-I remember what happened to me… That man screamed my name- My arm was… Gone… After I fell from... Something” He says everything and you listen to every word, even though they didn’t make complete sense to you.

“Do not tell them anything” You say when leaning closer to him. “They’ll wipe you if you say something”

“I can’t lie to them” Bucky says and you shake your head.

“Then, I’ll remember it” You whisper, “I’ll try to make you remember again” You reassure and he nods.

You hear the bank front door close and you close your eyes with a sigh. You kiss his lips hard, in an act of desperation and Bucky kisses back. You pull away quickly and look him in his blue eyes.

“I love you, Bucky” You whisper to him, “Be careful with your words, please”

“I will” He promises while you clean his tears. “Just stay here with me”

“Always” You whisper.

The gate of the vault opens and the armed men step in once again, already pointing their guns up to Bucky's head, whose eyes go back to the ground.

“Sir, he’s unstable… Erratic” The man outside says and you look over at the ground.

Alexander Pierce, one of the leaders of Hydra, walks in the room with even more armed men behind him and you get up from your seat before looking over at Bucky. Alexander lowers his hands to the ground, signalizing the men to lower their guns and you step out of the way as they do it.

Alexander, while putting his glasses in the inside pocket of his jacket, looks over at Bucky and says the words that you learned to hate after so many missions.

“Mission report”

Bucky’s eyes stay glued to the ground and stayed silent.

The memories are most likely playing over and over again on his brain, confusing him even more by the second.

“Mission report, now” Alexander repeats with a sterner tone of voice.

But Bucky once again stayed silent.

The silence in the room was swallowing everyone. Everyone was ready for anything to be said or done, slowly fearing the outcome.

Alexander steps closer to Bucky and it took everything in you to not stand between them.

The sound of a slap breaks the silence and once you look over at Bucky, his head is tilted to the side and some of his hair made it's way back to his face.

“There was a man on a bridge” He starts talking and you visibly tense up. “Who was he?”

“You met him early this week on another assignment” Alexander answers him.

‘Captain America. Steve Rogers.’ You think.

“I knew him” Bucky confesses, looking at Alexander.

Alexander then takes a seat where you were previously seated and gets ready to talk to the soldier once more.

“Your work has been a gift to mankind” Alexander says and you hold in a scoff.

Yes, you’ve been working for Hydra for many years but you aren't dumb. The last time they wiped you was years ago, so you've already have studied, did and watched the same things for 4 years. And you're 100% sure, those things aren’t a ‘gift to mankind’.

“You shape the century” Alexander continues his speech, “And I need you to do it one more time. Society has been in a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning we’ll give it a push. But, if you don’t do your part… I can’t do mine. And Hydra can’t give the world the freedom that it deserves”

As stupid as that sounded to you. Those words got to Bucky and you know it. His brain has been wiped too many times to not be easily manipulated.

“But I knew him” Bucky says and your heart tightens again.

Alexander sighs at his reply and gets up from the chair, looking over at the doctors standing beside him.

“Prep him” Alexander says.

“But he has been out of Cryo for too long” One of the doctors says.

“Then wipe him, and start over” Alexander says and Bucky immediately looks at you, his eyes holding the look of pure fear.

You could at least try.

“Alexander” You say making everyone look at you, “Are you sure there’s no other way?”

“Of course there’s no other way” Alexander answers you after taking a long look at you, “You know this can’t work if we don’t wipe him”

The look of hatred engraves in your face and Alexander smirks.

“Don’t let her close to him or the machines until the wiping is finished” Alexander orders and two men walk to you, standing right beside you and grabbing your arms.

You lock eyes once again with Bucky and the two doctors walk around the chair that he is seated. Both of them pull him back to lean on the chair and you try to stay calm as he looked at you.

The doctors turn on the machines and you try to escape the hold of the men beside you, but their grip is too tight. Once you try to hit one of them with your elbow, they had both a different idea, the one to you right hits the back of your knees while the other brought your arm behind you, making you kneel into the ground and look at Bucky.

One of the doctors holds the rubber mouth guard in front of Bucky’s mouth and he takes it without hesitation.

Alexander looks over at you and the hatred that you hold towards him is now fully visible in your face.

The machine starts working and Bucky’s body tenses up immediately against the leather of the chair, but it wasn’t long until the metal arms of the machine lower to his head and closes, making the electric shocks sound throughout the room.

Bucky’s screams of excruciating pain then fill the silence of the room and your eyes lower to the ground as you close them, trying to control your breathing while listening to his screams.

Even some of the men look away as it happens, not wanting to see what can happen next, while Alexander smirked at your state while walking out.

Alexander knows that the way to punish you is by making Bucky suffer. You tend to listen more and follow orders more frequently and he’s happy to know about that.

(…)

After the wiping was finished, you stayed seated on the ground as the armed men let you go, while the doctors finished working on Bucky’s bionic arm.

Only an hour later, you all start walking out of the vault and getting in the cars so they would drive you back to the Hydra headquarters.

You stay silent while walking and sitting beside Bucky on the backseat, letting him have his space and his silence.

Once the car stopped at the Hydra headquarters, they let you out of the cars and into your bedrooms, thankfully.

You walk behind him to the door of the bedroom in silence and he opens it, letting it wide open for you to get in. You close it behind you and Bucky sits down on the corner of his bed, exhausted.

“Do you want to go to sleep?” You ask him in a whisper and he nods. “Do you need help with the jacket?”

Bucky shakes his head but you give him a small smile, he’s still stubborn even after so much pain.

He tries to take off the jacket but gives up right away, too tired to have any strength left.

You walk to him and you quickly open the jacket for him, sliding it off his arms. You then help him out of his boots and jeans and he lays down on the bed, groaning out of soreness from his muscles.

You help him go under the covers and throw them back on top of him. You close the windows halfway and lay down next to Bucky after taking your boots off.

You look over at Bucky, who is laying on his side to look at you, and he's almost falling asleep. You give him a small smile before laying your head on the pillow next to his, trying to relax and ignore all the images in your head.

You kiss his cheek while moving this hair, once again, out of his face. As his eyes close when feeling your hand on his hair, you leave one last kiss at the side of his head and lean over his ear.

“Your name is Bucky. You remembered your name after meeting Steve Rogers, a friend of yours in the past, in a mission today. You remembered how you ended up in Hydra before Alexander Pierce decided to erase your memories” You whisper calmly.

Bucky’s eyes open once again and he looks over at you in total confusion.

You cup his cheek and you look him deep in his eyes.

“I promised to make you remember again” You explain.

“But I don’t” He says, almost feeling guilty for it.

“I know, but you will” You whisper with a comforting smile, “I’ll make sure of that”- - - -

Not gonna lie... I’m very proud of what I wrote.

(Edited: 04-17-2020)

- - - - -

🌸✨Sorry, but I’m not writing in this account anymore. Go check out my new one @twinklelilstarkey✨🌸