#i remember being really proud of this piece so it's wild to see how far I've come

[hahren-tabris]

Since the latest DA news got me in the mood again, I decided to revisit my old design for Anwen Hawke's Tarot card 🦅💗

[bunnwich]

Bunbun, how do you think Leona got his scar??

How Leona Got His Scar and Other Thoughts

So this is for sure something I’ve thought about a lot and how Leona’s Scar relates to him as a character. I get that it's very likely he was simply given a scar by Yana to mirror his Great Seven counterpart of Scar...but you guys know I love to create my own lore. I personally find the little information we do get on Leona’s scar interesting. In one of Leona's chats, Ruggie asks Leona where he got his Scar and notes that The King of Beasts also has a scar on his left eye.

Of course, Leona, being Leona, brushes off the question and says he doesn't remember, but logically, we know it would be silly for someone to forget how such a prominent injury was received. And as far as we know, he doesn't have any other scars besides this one. 

So, he’s avoiding the truth. Either so the writers can be cheeky about it all, since Scar’s scar origins have had many recons. OR, if you wanna look deeper, maybe there is an implication that Leona prefers not to talk about it because the memory is upsetting. So, he brushes it off with a smirk.

Since I love angst, I prefer the latter. But, let's put a pin in that for a sec.

I think an interesting aspect to all this is that in the Magical Archives (I believe) it's mentioned that scars are something to be proud of in Sunset Savanna, which always kinda puzzled me.

We know that Twisted Wonderland has a skewed perception of the respective Disney villains, but it's still an interesting choice.

In the Lion King lore, a scar is essentially a bad omen. After Scar's death, two characters, Kion and Kovu, are condemned to others viewing them negatively. It's treated as a "Mark of Evil" in the Lion Guard show and even used as a symbol of Kion's deteriorating mental health. There is a symbol found on the ground that they refer to as a “Mark of Evil" where Scar's spirit manifested. TBH, even the treatment of Scar himself borders on ableism and the fact that people refer to him BY his disfigurement is kinda wild.

(Lion Guard wiki)

Since we kinda get conflicting lore from TLK and Twisted Wonderland on how scars are viewed...this really made me think about how it affects Leona. 

I like to believe the view of scars is nuanced in the Sunset Savanna. Maybe now with the younger generations, there is a different attitude regarding scars and they no big deal. Maybe because of the King of Beasts more positive influence, they just are seen as a more "heroic" thing in general. 

But, going back to Leona-

I think with what we know of his backstory a chunk of his people view him as this “bad omen” already due to his unique magic. And maybe after Leona received his “mark,” at some point as a child, some folks (maybe older ones) became even more apt to view him as a cursed prince. In Leona’s overblot flashback, we see how the servants in the palace fear and gossip about him.

Since we don't know the full truth of it, since the writers love to deprive us of Leona lore… My headcanon is this- When he and Falena were young, someone went to attack Falena and because the guard’s attention was so focused on the direct heir, Leona was hurt in the crossfire. Not only this, Leona has quite an adverse reaction to being attacked (perhaps for the first time physically as I also HC he was a weak child) However, he was still a child with a powerful Unique Magic, one he maybe couldn't control well at the time. So he attacks the attacker, who was maybe even just another child playing rough or perhaps just a rowdy peasant? Either way, this doesn't end well, he perhaps fatally injures the attacker and is punished for it. And so, begins the series complexes he has as the grumpy Lion we know now.

The desire for him to always be in control and be proficient at magic and magical defense.

His cynicism confirmed. Being reminded again of his place in life. Being only viewed as "a spare heir" compared to his brother. An unnecessary piece.

The disconnection he feels with his family and their disapproval of him and his actions.

Perhaps, this is why Leona is so good at defensive magic (like he mentions to Riddle who failed to collar him at first in Chapter 2.) Maybe this is why he chose to take up sports and self-defense, to protect himself from others despite preferring his intellect to fight. We know he at some point learns from Kifaji how to wrestle in the Catch the Tail Tournament. All this to say, I believe whatever happened is something traumatic for Leona and linked to his insecurities as a person. (Kinda like in many of Scar's backstories) I get into that a bit in this fic I wrote of Yuu comforting Leona. I just find it interesting to think about how the memory of receiving his Scar has affected him as he got older. While cocky and good at acting nonchalant, I do believe, deep down Leona feels uneasy about others' commenting about it or touching it.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts, as per usual! Thanks for asking I enjoyed yapping!

[scrunggly]

I’m gonna yell into the void here for a minute.. it’s gonna be a long one so like—keep scrolling if that ain’t it for you.

Nobody tells you how to handle the gradual progression of improvement in your artwork. Because honestly, how could they? But like, I’ve been drawing my whole life (and I’m basically prehistoric at 31), and I have also low key hated my own work for the duration of that time. But then this really weird thing starts happening when you start committing the time you’d give a full time job to your craft, where like— you actually improve.

And I’m not just fishing here because I get plenty of recognition to satiate my recognition complex three times over daily from the goblins here. But I made this piece, the night swimming one, and I look at it and there’s not a single thing I would change…and I don’t know how to handle the feeling of looking at my own work and not hating it. Beyond that, the sheer imposter syndrome from looking at something I made and feeling like I lied on my resume because I genuinely have no idea how I did it. I mean mechanically I understand, and I could walk those same steps over and over but it wouldn’t illuminate my mental process at all.

Then the people here ask me questions like I remember doing to artists I idolized when I was younger and I remember never feeling like I got a great answer and in response to that I struggle so hard to give people something tangible to their questions because I really want to see everyone grow and succeed. I want happiness and self fulfillment for each and every person on this earth, tbh. But I still struggle to find the words to help people.

What’s more is continuing on to create more work. I don’t know how to do that in the shadow of something that I was and still am so proud of. I’m terrified of letting myself down. Because, let’s be real, I make artwork for myself first. I love interacting with the community and turning their blurbs into fully realized artwork but I would be creating artwork regardless of whether or not anybody saw it because it’s what makes my soul feel alive. But now I’m faced with this hollow pit in my chest that makes me unsure of how to continue because I just don’t know how I’m going to live up to the impossible standards that I continue to set for myself.

I always tell people to be compassionate to themselves first, maybe I should just take my own advice and allow myself the space to stumble. Not every work is going to be a masterpiece and being human means allowing myself that realization to sink in.

Maybe it’s the full moon tonight. If you made it this far you’re a real one because honestly this could’ve been a diary entry….and I’ve never been the type to keep a diary so the void gets seated with my turmoil instead. Wild because I’m typically the void that yells back, not the one peering into the depths.

[threeeyesstudio]

Spotlight on the Murdoch House

One of the things I wish I could do on this blog is to share with you the artwork that I am making right now. But because I work on a TV show, I can’t do that, I have to keep it secret until the show airs. Now I wholeheartedly agree with this, not just because it lets me keep my job but also because I know how shitty spoilers can be. But what I can tell you about is the work I did on previous seasons. Today I want to revisit the drawing of the Murdoch House.

This project gave me the opportunity to imagine things that don't exist and fill in the gaps using problem-solving and creativity, which i love to do. And in my art, I want to include and celebrate people just as they are, in this illustration, I got to do that in a bit of a sideways way. I was able to celebrate the work of Bob Sher the production designer for Murdoch Mysteries. He had designed a really beautiful interior set for the Murdoch House and with this drawing, I could help show that off. I wasn't drawing his portrait, I was drawing his work and I think his work is an extension of himself.

I really wanted to do this justice because I wanted Bob and anyone else who had worked on this set to feel proud of what they did because it was beautiful! I also really enjoy imagining spaces that don't exist, I got to fully imagine what this fictional house is like, filling in the gaps that were left after filming.

My task was to draw the exterior view, and a plan view (the top-down architectural drawing) and highlight a few of the architectural features.

The exterior view is based on a quick establishing shot of the front door of the Murdoch house. I got to do a little bit of Architectural design as I changed the proportions of the actual house filmed in the show to match the story we were telling. There seems to only be one shot that is reused over an over again for the exterior and the shot only gives a glimpse of the front door. It was filmed on location in the outskirts of Toronto and as far as I know, we will never return to that location again. There was also an old pixelated photo of the same house. So what I had to go on was this one piece of footage, a pixelated photo, the interior set layout and the verbal description of how Bob envisioned the exterior.

Sets are not built like a house, one room doesn't logically lead to the next and could be on the opposite end of the studio. The different rooms are pieced together in how the actors move through them and the editing process. So I needed to alter the plan view of the set to match how the audience perceives the Murdoch house and not how it is actually built. I based what I drew on the actual set, but made changes to the layout, moving rooms around to make sense like a real house.

Going on the deserted set of the Murdoch House and taking reference pictures was really enjoyable. Being on that quiet and darkened set felt so peaceful and I got to see all the lovely details that the designer and build team had put in. It's wild but it feels like a real home and that isn't always the case with sets. Finding the details that would accompany the exterior view and elevations was easy. The hard part was whittling them down to just a few that would fit on the page. Showing off the doors was a specific request and those were designed by both Ryan O'Connell the set designer and Bob the production designer.

This drawing was for one of the early episodes of season 17, it was supposed to be placed above the mantle in the Murdoch living room. But I don't think it ever made it to camera! I remember there being some issues in regard to continuity from episode to episode. (We film out of order) And in a later episode, there was something scripted that had to take its place above the mantle. But I got a great deal of satisfaction from making it. I got to imagine a place that doesn't exist, helped to tell a story and I got to celebrate the hard work of creative people. And I know that it made Bob happy because it now has a lovely home in the hallway just outside the art offices.

[assassiowl]

Emotive landscape (Dec 14th 2024).

This post is about looking back at your older work and seeing how you look at it differently now. Pictures beyond the read more are older and contain spoilers for Outer Wilds.

There's also an eclectic collection of characters from different fandoms and I talk about how these pieces played a role in my growth. They're older pieces by now, but if you're interested in my reflections then read on.

I've been looking back at some of my pieces from even as little as a week ago and noticing just how much I've changed in my approach.

The colours, the perspectives, dynamics, anatomy, linework, just everything, these were all pieces that I was really proud of when I made them and being so excited to share them.

When I look at them now I can't help but feel a little saddened, I remember them being a lot 'better' at the time of creation. I'm not going to be super harsh on myself, I was still learning the tools, and taking on board a lot of new concepts and not being afraid to just try them.

This is more of an acknowledgement that some pieces in the long run end up being just that, you don't know how they're going to turn out until you try it, but maybe you learned something along they way.

I think these pieces convey the emotions that I wanted to, they're technically clunky, but they were my lines, I did that, and I've learned a lot since then, I'd tackle them each so different now. But I wouldn't have been able to get where I am now unless I went through those clunky steps. Stumbling around the program and just guessing colours.

I remember making these, they each represented such a jump in skill.

If I keep stepping back, I can see this common thread of attempts at emotive character studies, janky foreshortened hands and a consistent misunderstanding of light on clothing haha, I suppose that much still hasn't changed.

But I remember after each piece I'd step back and say, "Dang I think this is my best one yet", but that was definite by virtue of feeling like I had learned something, ready to take forward into the next piece, be it, how to use the tool better, or a little more about colours or lighting.

I think that growth mindset came from making all those sprites, I think as an artist being able to stop and say something is good enough for now is key, getting sucked into an endless "it has to look good" spiral is just going to demotivate.

The thing is I think being curious enough to learn more and to be genuinely reflective enough to acknowledge what your strengths while also being able to identify what challenges or areas to tackle next is the key to growing.

Stopping to beat yourself up about things you don't know that you don't know yet is going to make you want to quit. The common thread I've been running off is: "This looks weird, why is that?" then trying things until I found out the reason. I had janky colours, then I realised I have janky lighting, then it's janky anatomy, composition, backgrounds which don't interact with the figure.

The ball builds off the last and you take what you learned from the last piece, build on it, try something different and see what changed.

This piece on Phos is when I started digital again, there's a lot of issues, but I think even from the jump I was trying some wild stuff, even if I was spending more time wrestling with the tools.

I guess this curiosity got me to where I am now, I think it's nice to stop and reflect on where you came from from time to time, just to see how far you've come, it's an important reminder for those days where things feel like you've just forgotten everything, and can't get anything down, it's your mind telling you you're improving and that your expectations of yourself are rising again.

Sit back and remember not everything has to be a milestone magnum opus cornerstone representation of improvement. Breathe a bit, you're probably doing a lot better than you're giving yourself credit for.

Anyway, I learned a lot from making these pieces, I look at them now and think I could probably revisit these at some point, but there's still so much I want to learn and try before I do that, who knows. In the mean time I'll keep trying things, and when I've shifted my style and learned a bunch of things along the way, I'll remember how impressed I was with myself when I made these.

[3lkin]

Hey y'all. 2024's almost done, ain't that somethin. what a wild year.

(sappy stuff under the cut)

So. Here we are. December 24th, wowza.

Honestly, Imma just start out by saying thank you. Thank you to all the people who followed, or liked my work or reblogged, or even just saw it in passing and kept on scrolling. Thank you to anyone who saw any of my friend's work, or even just existed in the mcyt community. Y’all are my inspirations, and I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now without the incredible support I’ve gotten this past year, especially from my friends over on the Desert Life SMP <3

I wasn’t really sure if I actually wanted to post this over here originally. The art I tend to post are the pieces I’m the most proud of. I don’t like posting sketches or unfinished pieces because they feel messy, or like I didn’t try hard enough. But I also think it’s a valuable thing to show progress, and show where you came from as an artist, as short a timeline as 1 year might be.

Funnily enough, when 2024 first hit, I was the least involved in the mcyt community that I’d been since 2020. I hadn’t really watched Secret Life, I was sort of scooting away from the QSMP, and I was barely paying attention to Hermitcraft (dark times, I know). So what was I up to early 2024 in my art journey? Well, I was finishing up my first Outerwilds animatic (which, as of yesterday, just crossed 4k views WHAT THE FU-). It’s strange, because I remember when working on it, I made the choice not to show the main, player, characters face til the very end, which one may classify as stylistic, but nonono, I just really hated drawing humanoids lmao.

When I finally put that animatic to bed, I wanted to pick up a new project, and for some weird reason, even though I wasn’t really even paying attention to the mcyt community at that time, I drafted up a Life Series Winners animatic. And that’s basically the only thing I worked on, February, March, and April. Looking back on all that now, I’m still really proud of what I set out to make. At the time, I know how happy I was with that style, and how excited I’d been when I first figured out how to tween and started attempting a bit of animation. That animatic got me a place on my first MAP, where I met so many wonderful people, many of which are such large parts of my life now. And after that, the year just took off.

throughout June and July, I participated in Art Fight for the first time, and was exposed to so many incredible artists. I went back to using line art, relearned how to shade and utilize color. August hit, and I was convinced to jump on Tumblr. Was that a good decision? Um. Well it certainly fueled the Desert Duo brainrot I’ll tell ya that. In all truth tho, having the ability to show my work to the wider community was something I didn’t really have up until that point, and seeing how excited people were about Wild Life or other mcyt goings-ons was such a cool experience.

If someone walked up to January 2024 Elkin, and showed her the last three months of work I’ve done, I don’t think in her wildest dreams they would ever think it was them who was going to make it. I’m honestly so proud of where I’m at with my art right now, and how far I’ve come over just this past year. Whether it’s through colors, anatomy, composition, effects, I’ve learned so much from so many wonderful people, and I can’t thank them enough for being such large inspirations.

Damn this got long fast lmao, was meant to be only a couple paragraphs :/ If for some reason you’ve made it all the way down this post, thank you to you as well, for taking the time to be here and read this absolutely blabber. Hope all y’all have a wonderful holiday season, and a happy New Year. Here’s to 2025 :)

[lenzimanot]

are you ready for a bit of a flora lore drop? then gather 'round! bc I did mention how far back Wilhelm & his novel go for me, but never the full story so here it is: I think it all really started with me really being obsessed with historical novels. I'd written bits and pieces until then, but somehow this felt like the perfect genre for me & so at 13/14 I started working on this story set in 16th century germany (my hyperfixation back then), pretty much in the area where i grew up. It's still crazy to me, but yeah over several months i wrote a novel about this common girl & a knight & their love, how they're torn apart by war & circumstance & yet manage to find their way back to each other (tbh quite bland, typical historical novel stuff from my current pov & not well written, bc i was a teenager who knew nothing about writing & crafting a story). The whole idea I had spanned over a time of 20 years, included their kids & so so many obstacles for Wilhelm & Cecilia.

I think I was still working on the second (of 4) books & only a few people knew (bc at that point it was meant as a birthday present for my mum who's gotten me into historical novels in the first place), when a small publishing house opened in my home town & my dad encouraged me to give it a try & at least approach them, even if nothing would come of it. So my 15 year old self did just that, with a courage i dream of having today as an adult & they were immediately intrigued & asked me to send the manuscript. Looking back I know I only got this deal bc i was that young, but I was so proud & i still am of that accomplishment. Oh I should also mention that I wrote the whole ass things by hand & my dearest grandma took the time & typed it out for me, so I had the digital version (that makes this whole thing even more special to me, bc writing used to connect us & it feels like she at least lives on a bit in what she did for this novel). A week before my 16th birthday the book was officially published (in 2012) & that was one of the craziest times of my life ngl, like I actually did some presentations & signings & although it scared me it was also sooo much fun. this was also the first money I ever earned which is also?? wild?? I still ended up writing the whole rest of the story, 2 more parts (I think that stretched until i started uni), but sadly for personal reasons the publishing house couldn't continue in the end, so those manuscripts just still sit with me.

When it comes to Wilhelm himself, it's funny bc he really wasn't my focus when I first started. Like I loved him dearly ofc, but to me Cecilia was just the main main character, if that makes sense. Then around 2016 I started rping on tumblr & inspired by other ppl writing their amazing ocs, I eventually made a blog for Wilhelm (I think 2017?). I can't remember why but I think while continuing to write the novels & more of his pov, Wilhelm just crept his way even deeper into my heart & the brainrot was so strong & that's why he got the blog. I had such a great time & honestly it helped me develop him & get a feeling for his character even more. I think I just disappeared from there bc other muses gripped my attention & he was still quite niche after all. still can't believe that we are back now, over 10 years after he started to take shape in my head.

& with the experience I have now, with the knowledge about research (& an unfinished history degree lmaooo) & writing itself, I sometimes look back on those manuscripts & I have a vision for what they could be. perhaps one day something will actually happen there, we'll see :')))

[jigschosai]

The Dawntrail Review no one asked for

Lots of spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

Initially after I finished Dawntrail I had to write a short piece featuring Jigs and Nashmeira to help convey how hard it hit me, and at the time that's what I needed. Now with a bit of time and space behind me I'm in the mood to toss out my 2 cents about the expansion as a whole.

I liked it - a lot. And I feel it was really well done, and generally an improvement over everything previously.

I'm not going to rehash the entire plot, because if you're reading this then you likely know it already. But I did want to touch on a few key things that I think really set it apart.

The first was for the bulk of it, we weren't the main character. It wasn’t about the WoL, though we do see things from their perspective, it was about Wuk. It was about how she matured from a goofy sheltered kid with a skewed view of the world into a leader you could be kind of proud of. In some ways it mimicked Lyse and Stormblood, but I felt the execution was a lot better because when we got to the end we weren’t blindsided by someone being put in charge where it made little sense. Wuk earned it (as did Koana).

From a broader perspective it did something else that was really needed after Endwalker. It made the WoL’s power moot. Sure we could punt Bakool Ja Ja and Zarool Ja into next week – but really, it wasn’t our fight, or our place to do so. And while I’m never a fan of playing a different character such as when you play Wuk versus Bakool Ja Ja, I easily understood why I needed to. It wasn’t an irritation like some many times before. Ok, not as much of an irritation.

In a game like FFXIV, power creep is always going to be an issue over the long term. You want players to feel like they’re getting more powerful, but over time the threats get more and more absurd when you take a step back. For example, where was Meteion when everything else was going on up until Shadowbringers? By making the bulk of the story about Wuk, it avoided a lot of the power creep problem. We didn’t need to have a giant villain come out of the blue that didn’t make a lot of sense, which was one of my primary complaints about Endwalker. Yes it was great to see everybody again for the finale, but it never felt like a proper ending the way Shadowbringers did. It felt like an epilogue, a snippet of story to remind you of the characters that are not going to be back, along with a villain that really didn’t matter.

And a quick side note as I’m about to move on from Wuk. I’ve seen a bunch of complaints about her voice actress, and I don’t get it. The delivery always seemed fine to me, not that I have the most discerning ear. I can’t remember any point where I felt the voice was way off from how Wuk was acting or appearing. On top of that it was great to finally here some non-English accent voices, which helps with the diversity of the world.

Loosely that brings us to the trip with Erenville back to his home as we got what we wanted, a pass through that big door. This was probably the slowest the game was for me, but it still wasn’t bad by a long shot. In other expansions this lull hit hard because I kept feeling like “The world is ending! Get to the point already!” This, the “big stuff” so far as we knew was over. So doing a quick little adventure in a wild west type town wasn’t bad, it was something to do as we wandered around. This break was welcome, and it made sense. We weren’t waiting to get back to the main plot, we were waiting to see what it was, which is much easier to deal with.

Then we get to Solution Nine! Finally, a spot in FFXIV where the modern clothing we’ve had for ages looks like it fits in. The FF series has always been neat to me because of how it mixes magic and technology so well. There are variations, and a couple things that do it better (coughXenogearscough) but the way the cyberpunk theme was worked into the game went pretty well. Perfect, no, I feel time travel is always a bit sketchy, but good enough. I haven’t enjoyed running around a city this much since the Crystal Tower in Shadowbringers.

The only part I couldn’t figure out in this section was Galool Ja. I imagine there’s a side quest I haven’t done that explains it, but the fact he was around at all is a bit confusing to me. It almost felt like he was the time travel in Endwalker where “oops, we wrote ourselves into a corner.” But if I dig around a bit I may find it better thought out.

Finally – Living Memory. To say this part hit me like a train is understating it severely. Turning off each section and having it so final was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a game (different kind of hard than Elden Ring). Knowing that inevitably we’d turn off Cahciua’s section and she’d be gone too was rough for some very personal reasons. But I think anyone who had to deal with losing a loved one to a terminal illness probably has a good idea why. You always want one more adventure, one more meal, one more day. But inevitably, it all has to come to an end. My biggest complaint is there was not a proper hug between Erenville and Cahciua; but I know there’s some level of projection on my part going on there.

That brings me to our v-tuber-esque villainess Sphene. I mean the v-tuber-esque as a compliment, love many of the designs out there and Sphene, even though she is not a v-tuber, is no exception. As the big-bad, I feel like she’s a step behind Emet, but they got her right. You’re brought along with her to understand her, and just like with Emet, see you’re on two opposite sides of something and there is not middle ground to meet in. It’s the WoL’s way, or a way that stands against everything the WoL stands for. Just like with Emet, conflict is inevitable, despite how long it was put off and how much the WoL (and the player) has come to understand them.

Those kinds of villains make me think about the WoL, and their place in the grand scheme of things. Will there come a point where we’re the villain? Where like Emet and Sphene, we’re doing everything we can to protect our people, and doing so at the expense of others? So far we’ve largely been spared that (maybe don’t ask Garlemald). And at the end we get our special Azem inter-dimensional sippy-cup. And I think that is a good way to setup for the future where everything on our star is fairly well settled, and we can start exploring others. Maybe even properly revisit the first.

Lastly the upgrade to the difficulty is largely welcome. I’m a bit slow and have had a tough time figuring out some of the mechanics in a timely manner, but it’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed having to toss out clemency and cover far more routinely. The content is a lot more engaging and a bit harder to blindly memorize which makes doing roulettes routinely less of a mindless chore.

I know I’m in the minority, but this is my favorite expansion so far. It made up a lot of short comings some of the other expansions had, and I’m way more excited for future expansions than I was about Dawntrail. I feel like the more technical sides of the writing (e.g. avoiding power creep), and the pacing of the story (e.g. lulls when they’re a good fit) has improved a lot. It’s going to be interesting to see how things change in the future.

[sarandipitywrites]

saran's year of writing (2023)

hey y'all! saw a couple posts like this floating around and thought i'd hop on the train, because this year has been WILD for my writing (in a really good way). let's start with the bullet points version and i'll put the details under the cut. here we go:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

shared snippets of my work with other, actual humans!

made friends?!

started (and finished!) draft 2 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

wrote 1 short story for every week in october (that's 5 stories in a month! that's great for me!)

first NaNoWriMo in 10 years (and i finished it!)

drafted and re-drafted The Art of Empty Space

started draft 3 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

details, links to projects, me getting maybe a tad too personal, and those all-important wordcounts under the cut:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

i just realized i only started participating at the beginning of october, but it feels like i've been hanging out with you all the whole year 😅 maybe that means i should cut back a bit? nah...

really though, this year was the year i started taking my writing more seriously (not in a 'gotta get published' kind of way, but in a 'writing makes me happier than anything else and that's enough reason to set aside time and energy for it without feeling hella guilty' kind of way) and seeing you all posting your work and being so positive and encouraging to each other was what helped me get up the nerve to join in. and i can say without a doubt that it's the best choice i've made all year. y'all are such a supportive community and i've never once felt like i was encroaching or didn't belong here (and for me, that's really saying something)

so i guess what i'm getting at is: THANK YOU! i've loved reading your snippets and projects this year, and i'm way more confident in my own than i've ever been 💜 y'all are good peeps

Dead Roots, Dark Water

word count (edited and written): 187,789

that's a lotta words! DRDW is both my longest work wordcount-wise, and the work i've dedicated the most time to... probably ever. and i'm SO happy with it, it's a little concerning (/positive)

DRDW is now on its THIRD draft, and (assuming i don't do a massive re-edit) should be ready to start posting in 2024! *excited screaming* i've never released anything i've written in its entirety (the snippets i've been posting are actually a lot more than i've ever shared before), so this is MASSIVE for me and i'm both excited and terrified! overall, though, it's a very, very good thing

Short Stories

this october, i decided to challenge myself to do several things i don't ever do: write short stories; write them on a timeline; and share them. and i did! i wrote one short story for each week in october, and posted them here. they're far from my best work, and due to the timeline, they never could have been my best, which oddly i think helped make it easier to post them? they were also the first pieces i shared here (or anywhere)! they're not awesome, but i'm proud of them and i'm proud of myself for sharing them

NaNoWriMo and The Art of Empty Space

i've done nano once before, ten years ago. i was in college and had a lot more time then (and a job where i could spend the entire day just writing - i didn't know how good i had it), and even so i remember struggling to reach my word goal. but by the power of writing everything in wingdings so i can't second-guess my word choices, i made it this year! and even though i decided to challenge myself by writing a romance-heavy project (something i've historically avoided because IT'S HARD FOR ME, DAMNIT), i love AES and its characters and that feels fucking awesome.

even though my brain decided to spring a surprise plot restructure on me and now i have to rewrite like half of it. it'll be better for it, though, so it's all good 🥲

What's Next?

my plan for early 2024 is, of course, going to be to work on draft 3 of DRDW with the hope of getting some chapters posted (they are LONG, so i'll probably post to tumblr in chunks and the full, unbroken chapters on Ao3 due to formatting). once that's ready, i'll be able to return my attention to AES and getting draft 1.5 all written up. i've mostly figured out where the plot's going there, so it'll just be writing it up to figure out the gaps. if i'm able to write something for november again next year (which i really hope i will; nano did some great things for AES), it'll probably be one of the other Jak & Daxter fics i have kicking around in my head, because i am Obsessed (and switching it up between working on fanfic and original fic seems to work well for my brain).

i've been not super active here for the last month or so because Real Life Work is kicking my ass, but hopefully that will calm down and i'll be able to do more of what i want: writing wild shit, reading your wild shit, and screaming about it together 💜

good vibes and best wishes to everybody in the new year 🥂

[wretcheddthing]

This Is @pricemarshfield's Fault

all of them? i will do my level best! i liked ur answers for tav btw. ily

under the cut

Your Tav as a Companion

What would your Tav's greetings be (at different levels of approval)? Already Answered :)

Describe their tent setup! What's on the outside? The inside? she has a closed tent that is that nice sorta emerald green/teal color i usually have her in. inside is a chest of clothes and a string tied up with random notes clipped to it, outside she has a soft rug to sit on, a short table to write on, and a stack of notes and books about the weave, wild magic, and magic suppression strewn around. there are also bottles of clothing dye, a makeup kit, and a random instrument arranged around her chillin' area.

What would their character quest be titled? Why? Already Answered :)

What would your Tav's romance scenes look like? How many would they have? ideally, one scene for each act. i don't think she'd have a dedicated romance one for each act, but definitely character moments that could lean that way. she'd probably get a fully dedicated romance scene in acts 2 and 3 tho. i'm trying to think of her outside of terms as a protagonist because romancing gale was a bit of an outlier situation for her, i'm trying to consider how she'd really be. her first scene would be Tame i feel. she'd be upfront about feeling some sort of attraction, but she doesn't think it would be fair to indulge those feelings when she already has so much more going on. this is also where she'd admit to not actually being a wizard, but being a sorcerer. she wouldn't delve too deep into her reasons for it yet. her second scene would be after a character scene where she fills you in on the rest of her backstory. her university admissions project/excavation, finding the ruin, remembering bits and pieces of being taken control of to kill her friend, watching her 3 other friends do the same, being granted a volatile magic against her wishes, trying to gather information on how it happened and being rejected, her plan to pose as an inexplicably skilled and reclusive wizard ready to enter academia to trick her way into gaining the respect of people who can get her the information she's looking for. in the romance scene itself, she'd go a little deeper in explaining her relationship to the person she was forced to kill, how it feels to have wild magic almost ripping through her veins at every given moment, the guilt of being surrounded by people who think they're friends but don't know her at all, how frustrating the search has been. and then they could say something nice and kiss her or whatever idk. her third one would come After resolving her personal quest where she's just really happy to have finally been able to make some progress on what felt like a fruitless quest and being happy someone was willing to help her out and that she's equally proud of how well they've done in handling the absolute crisis so far. idk this one's kinda hard for her bc i can only see her with gale <3 so if she were to be played as an origin character or romanced in a gale origin run, there would be Way more content for the two of them. in my heart.

Describe their idle animations Already Answered :)

How would the player go about meeting them in Act 1? What is their introduction? i think you'd find her at the ruin where you find withers. maybe she's being hassled by the looters who are set up there, trying to talk her way out of whatever fight they have in store for her. she's freshly tadpoled and not near as powerful as she was, so this is a situation she wants very badly to be able to talk her way out of but might not be able to without help from the player. if you get the looters to leave through a charisma check, that's instant brownie points and she'll ask to stick around first after the whole tadpole mind meld thing. during that, btw, you'd hear a description of how she got her power. a cold, damp darkness, shattered memories, distant screams over a chittering cackle. she is super super mega against people delving into her mind like that, so if you're caught trying to look deeper she'll get Pissed. if you trigger a fight, she'll be kind of annoyed but still thank you for getting her out of that. if you leave the encounter without helping her, she'll get injured in the fight. if you return to the ruins later on, she'll be gone. she can be found again in the grove getting healed and she'll Not be happy to see you again.

Describe their arc. How would a player help resolve it? What choices can be made? Can your Tav be turned down a dark path, or pulled to a lighter one? venali is a strictly good-aligned character so she will get Mad if you try to make her do bad things. not only will she get mad, she will Leave if it's egregious enough. like killing the grove? not only will she yell at your for considering it, she'll try to fight you if you insist. her arc has a lot to do with learning to be at peace with her circumstances despite trying Very Hard to change them. she'd disapprove if you tried to persuade her from her search despite it being obvious that it's stressing her out. if you do successfully persuade her, she'll be a bit lost. it's occupied so much of her time and she doesn't know how to be happy with her situation because it never crossed her mind to try. she will insist that how her magic feels is not the same as how other mages feel. to her, it's an actively harmful element she cannot get rid of and she is Always uncomfortable with it. that doesn't mean she can't learn to find appreciation and utility in magic outside of necessity. she will fight the process of getting there, though. also she’d have something huge with the sussur tree and everything going on in lenore’s tower in the underdark given the effect of the sussur flower and the nature of Lenore’s research. and she would also be able to eat the noblestalk if you find it to try to remember what happened to her more vividly, but she wouldn’t like it very much. even if it does aid her search significantly.

After Act 3, what does their life look like? What are they talking about at the reunion party? she's getting ready to hit the road again, with or without an invitation to the player, depending. she'll mostly be talking about how strange it is to see everyone again

Back to Basics

9. What's the significance behind your Tav's name? fantasynamegenerators.com :)

10. Does your Tav have a last name? Is there a meaning behind it? Yes, Kelvyre. Also No, i just thought it sounded good with venali.

11. What is your Tav's go-to comfort food? a chunky stew i think. And mashed potatoes with cheese.

12. Does your Tav have any tattoos or scars? Why? Already Answered :)

13. What is your Tav's main color palette? Why do they choose those colors? i swap it up between acts! in act 1 it's Red + secondary color. depends how I'm feeling. sometimes just the red dye, sometimes it's the furnace red and black dye, but usually just the red one so her accent color can still be gold and not look bad. act 2 it's the blue and black dye and her accent color becomes silver. act 3 is the faewild green and dunn dye which looks super good with the gold accents again and also just suits Her so well. most of my screenshots for her are from act 3 because that's just quintessential Venali 2 me. she chooses to switch it up because that's just what she likes to do. she likes playing dress up and looking pretty.

14. Where are they from? What was home like? she is baldurian and is initially very protective of her home because everyone she's ever loved is from there. this stops being the case after That One Reveal in the wyrmway in act 3 (FUCKING ********!!!). she feels just kinda. gross about it all because of finding out her magic is sourced from the far realm and the emperor says some weird shit to her about it.

she had a good childhood, though. relatively peaceful. her parents didn't get along and her father stopped inviting her over for visits (her mother stayed in rivington, her dad stayed in the lower city), so she spent a lot of time with her pretty large friend group going on adventures and making "discoveries" at the ruins along the chionthar

15. Is your Tav more likely to fight/flight/freeze/fawn? it depends! if it's a more social setting, she'll be likely to fawn if something comes up to appease any tensions as quickly as possible. if it's out in the field and her life is being threatened, she's more likely to fight For a couple reasons. 1) she adventured on her own quite a bit while looking for answers on what sources her power and how to sever to connection to it and that comes with encountering dangers in the wild. i think she was about a level 10 sorcerer before getting tadpoled. 2) her magic is BEGGING to be used, otherwise it backfires on her more severely. it's like a constantly building pressure that needs release.

16. What do they do for fun, when not adventuring? What are their hobbies? Already Answered :)

17. Do they have any enemies outside of the main plot? Any friends? i like to think she has a sort of academic rivalry with another wizard in baldur's gate who is just. a Real Wizard about stuff. it's more of a petty annoyance to her, though. her real enemy is the thing that forced magic onto her and her friends, whatever it is. i have some ideas but nothing solid which i think. kinda might be the point of it. she has some other wizard acquaintances who would call her friend, but she wouldn't be comfortable calling them friends because she's not sharing her real self with them. her actual friends are the ones who went into and left the ruin with her. zela, currently a ranger. askal, currently a healer. and ambition, currently a part-time musician. they all have the same aspects of wild magic as venali and all were forced to kill one of their friends before being "granted" that power. it hinders them in the same way it hinders her, but venali feels she shoulders the most responsibility for it and insisted on being the one to find a "cure" if possible. the ones who died were maude, killed by venali; samti, killed by zela; gailhard, killed by askal; and ganur, killed by ambition.

18. Where/with who do they feel safest? with her mom, with gale, or in her little cottage she posts up in at a village between baldur's gate and waterdeep. after the game, this becomes gale's tower in waterdeep.

19. What is their MBTI Type? idk i think we stopped doing these?

Deep Dives

20. What is their relationship to touch? Do they shy away from it? Do they need it to feel present? she is a Very tactile person and usually just does it to show familiarity or affection. obviously if that isn't someone's jam she'll respect their boundaries, but she loves casual hugs and hand holding or just a gentle hand on their arm or shoulder.

21. Describe a defining moment from their past, which makes them who they are today! i don’t have the whole thing typed out to copy paste AUGH it’s in bits and pieces and the full story exists only in my mind. which is why i said i’d write it but have you considered that that’s hard and i get nervous.

anyway. Basically what happened was venali was working on an admissions project for a prestigious university so she could study history. her focus was the ruins of faerûn, the previous occupants, what they did, and what currently resides. she finds a ruin a ways outside of baldur’s gate that locals have really strange memories of, in that they speak of it as if it’s been there for centuries but written records don’t show its appearance until 50 years back. what struck her as odd was the records didn’t show it was recently discovered, but also referred to always having been there.

so she’s excited and is like. hell yeah i get to make a cool discovery this will Super impress the admissions board. she gets her friends together and organizes an excavation. they’d done shit like this for fun for years, which is how developed an interest in it. now she wants to do it ethically (and with funding). things are going well when ven discovers a mechanism that opens an archway leading deeper into the ruin. everything after stepping through the threshold is where everything gets fuzzy.

she remembers it was dark, Really dark. their torches hardly cut through it. there was a damp sort of Liveliness to the air. the walls looked wrong, like they were too soft and pulsating, but they were cool and rough to the touch. they walked further in, as if willed to do so. venali, to her knowledge, never even thought about turning back. there was a presence deep in an inner chamber, it spoke to them in their minds. whatever it was surrounded them, promised them power, Demanded they took its power, the price was low. logic overruled, everyone started realizing something was very wrong. with just a shred of competence left, they tried to leave. they couldn’t. the presence wanted them to leave with something, very badly. they only had to make a small sacrifice.

the next thing venali knew, her best friend’s head was in her hands, and jerked to the side in an instant. ahead of her, zela’s arm sliced her blade across samti’s gut. beside her, ambition was screaming as her hands choked ganur. she couldn’t see what happened to gailhard, but askal’s wailing was enough to know he’d met a similar fate to the other three.

venali blanked. for the first time she didn’t know what to do. and then her skin burned all over, something in her connecting to a new thread of reality. her arms crackled and spit with electricity, a rock wall formed to her left, cats and mice appeared at random around the room, the air thickened to the point of choking, a deafening Boom shook the chamber and the ceiling began to fall.

zela managed to take action and lead the other three to the exit, dodging rubble as it fell on them. venali was hit by a few large pieces, splitting her forehead and lip.

after crossing the threshold, her mind cleared but her blood still tingled. she was quickly losing what had just happened. the other three had casual expressions as if they had already lost it entirely. until confusing set in. venali was the only person who retained even a shred of memories, and those were fading fast. she had to relay what she could to the others before it left her completely and hope they believed her.

it didn’t take much convincing, as she was the first to discover she could conjure a fire bolt, having never previously done this. the others tried smaller forms of magic as well, finding they could now manipulate the weave. but it was Wrong. stirring and bubbling and Demanding to be used. and not every effect was intended. some harmful, some odd. few helpful.

the end :)

22. How is your Tav's relationship with their family? Their parents? i just wrote a novel so forgive me if this is short

no siblings, close with mom, not close with dad. her parents didn’t get along, they never married. dad tried A Little Bit to be present when she was young, but had a hard time acting like he wanted to be. her visits became few and far between, though she still tried to write. she would sometimes get a response.

she has an aunt and some cousins on her father’s side, but they lived several miles away and weren’t very fond of ven’s mom either. her family was most her friends, and that got halved pretty quickly. and badly.

23. How does your Tav act in situations of stress? In moments of peace?

stressed really depends. social stress she can handle like a champ. she’s very graceful in those situations and can think quickly on her feet. having to fight shit she doesn’t like so much because her best weapon is her magic and that often goes bad for her. she can’t control the wild magic surges, so at the very least she’s Adaptable in a fight.

in moments of peace she tries very hard to be relaxed, and occasionally she can be, but her mind is always at least slightly occupied by the worst thing to ever happen to her. either as regret, or in planning her next moves, or deciphering the information she does have.

24. What does your Tav consider to be their own biggest character flaw? Already Answered :)

25. What is something they would die on a hill over? uhhh probably something something wizards don't own academia and trying to gatekeep and weave-ify knowledge makes you an asshole. idk i feel like there would be real beef between wizard academics and regular academics. and ven would have opinions about it having posed as a wizard to gain access to information she was barred from otherwise.

26. Give us one of your Tav's secrets! other than The Big One? idk. she's really a bit of an open book in all other instances. she doesn't hide her personality or interests so much as she's just spent a long time misrepresenting herself. OH also. she doesn't mind her name being shortened to ven, but the reason she absolutely will NOT allow anyone to call her veni is bc that was maude's nickname for her.

27. What is the worst thing they've ever done/said to someone they love? for sure it would be killing maude. i feel like that is a pretty significantly bad thing that happened, even if it wasn't of her own free will.

28. Describe a smell that reminds your Tav of childhood. sea salt, brackish water, rotting wood, dusty stone, and baking bread. that's many smells :)

29. What fears keep them up at night? she has nightmares of what happened in the ruin, even seven years on, because that incident has been a driving force as much as a source of torment since it happened. she worries over what will happen if she never gets closure on that part of her life, being stuck with a volatile magic as a major hindrance forever. she's also terrified of the dark and cannot sleep without some form of nightlight.

30. What does your Tav want more than anything? to have just a normal, relatively peaceful, quiet life. she wants to try to go back to school, focus on her interests, start a family, and not wake up every day actively fearing what she doesn't know. she just wants peace of mind.

and I think that’s all of it. i can and will talk about her forever tho. btw.

[epersonae]

Tagged by @adickaboutspoons - thank you!

Rules: Go to your published works on AO3 and list the first fic you ever published there, the last fic you published, any fic that you wrote for a fandom/ship only once, your favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship that has the most works, the fic you wish more people read, the fic you agonized over the most, the fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort, and a work you are proud of—for whatever reason. <3

First fic - A week at a day spa, which is the first fic I ever wrote, and the first time I'd written any fiction in years. It was a bit of an experiment, right before I became completely obsessed with my rarepair. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. I'd be tempted to take another run at that moment from another direction after everything else I've written.

Last fic - end up several worlds away, the missing scenes companion to for the benefit of all the broken hearts. I just added a chapter with Stede seeing Mary's art for the first time. At the moment, this is my only active WIP; I have a partially written chapter in GDocs that I might work on again soon.

Only fic for a fandom/ship - The dead and the living, my one and only Star Trek (TOS movies) fic. During my time between TAZ and OFMD, I got into a Star Trek Slack and we have done watch parties for a bunch of the movies. somewhere in my head/gdocs I have the start of a long heavy fic about Khan's wife, but this little piece just kind of popped into my head after we watched Star Trek III. I love Carol Marcus a lot.

Favorite fic in the fandom with the most works - Did I really write one hundred and fifty fics for The Adventure Zone????? I sure did. Obviously I have to pick The Reckoning Arrives, which is my longest fic in any fandom, the fic that Ryn and I worked so hard on, the fic that kinda saved my life. But also I was poking through some of my other TAZ fic, and there's actually quite a few of them I still love, but The Woman Who Wasn't There is a fave as far as fics that aren't in my larger continuity. (readers of for the benefit of all the broken hearts will notice a theme about bringing the wife back into the story, which I hadn't really considered until today.)

Fic I wish more people read - another one I found while poking through old TAZ fics: Don't forget to remember. NGL, it's kinda fucked up, but at least it's short? But it's just a tight little story about coping and trauma and memory, and honestly it gave me an outlet at a time when I really needed it. Of my Our Flag Means Death fics: probably the whole devil's threeway series, which is about to be completely decanonized and I'm totally okay with that. I still think I got a vibe that I'm really pleased with and it ended up being the only reunion that I've written, which I think is genuinely funny.

Fic I agonized over the most - for the benefit of all the broken hearts, which I agonized over in so many ways. both in terms of WHAT AM I EVEN WRITING HERE and in the actual work of writing (and the bonkers choice to not name the protagonist in the text), and then in the actual work of editing. I put the most effort into this of literally anything I've ever written in any medium for any purpose.

Fic that sprang fully formed - nice either way, aka the beard fic, which I wrote over the course of a single afternoon driving along the Columbia River Scenic Highway (that was a weird week). Although to be honest, I would say almost any fic less than 1000 words is likely to have sprung fully formed, especially a lot of my earlier TAZ works when I was kind of continuously writing. (Again: 150 works)

A work I'm proud of - it really does have to be for the benefit of all the broken hearts, I worked my ass off on that one and it occupied my whole brain for several months. It was a wild thing to attempt to do, both as a story and as a technical challenge, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

Tagging (as always, no pressure but have fun with it!) - @naranjapetrificada, @nekosd43, @gaypiratebrainrot, @mxmollusca, @oatmilktruther, @emi--rose

[weirdoldmanhoho]

I was gonna say, give me a list of ways Al completely outclasses Ed, but that might never end... howabout some thoughts on how the Resembool kids would spend their days? What kind of Calvin & Hobbs shenanigans did they get up to? How much did all the other kids fear/hate them. etc.

jafkldjafljdlsa you know me too well

(Look, I do love Ed a lot, I just feel like Al gets overlooked in some ways with Ed as the main character, so I just feel the need to sing his praises lol)

Oh my gosh, pure unadulterated insanity is what they got up to.

You have three incredibly brilliant child prodigies living in a very small town that likely has one school and a handful of teachers if not just one . They were probably SO BORED in class. Actually, we KNOW they didn't pay attention in class because that's actually canon lol. Ed and Al spent all their time reading alchemy books under the table and Winry literally slept through classes because she'd stayed up all night dismantling her radio to see how it worked or helping Pinako in the shop. They were so far ahead of the material being taught and so under-stimulated I bet they were absolutely terrible to teach. The only reason they didn't start skipping school completely is because none of them wanted to disappoint their parental guardians.

And then the chaos they got up to OUT of class - oh boy. The combination of skilled but not quite polished alchemy and engineering genius sounds like a wild combination.

How many weird things did they try to create? Ed reads one sci-fi book about robots and that's the whole afternoon right there. It never does start working, but it does manage to absolutely terrorize the neighbor's cat.

One time there's a new house being built and there's all this leftover scrap material and the three of them decide to build their own house because honestly, how hard can it be, right?? They construct a full fort and while it's not the prettiest thing ever, it does stand upright and attracts basically every other kid in the neighborhood to come play mock battles and sieges in it until one concerned parent demands Trisha make them tear it down before someone gets hurt. Every kid in Resembool mourns Fort Elricbell. Or Fort Rainbow. Or Fort Dragon. No one could agree on a name.

(And I know young Winry is depicted as being scared of alchemy, but I have to imagine that she got used to it growing up next to them. It became normal, and then it became a tool for shenanigans, and then it didn't become scary again until, well, you know. Afterwards.)

You know Winry tries to take apart like every piece of machinery in her house. Pinako is a terrible influence on this habit, because she completely understands the obsession, and she wants to encourage Winry to figure out how things work on her own. The only rule is that she has to figure out how to put it back together when she does.

Hohenheim is also, surprisingly, a big encourager of this because he loves encouraging learning and he's just so proud to see his best friend's granddaughter take after her.

Winry has one really faded memory she barely remembers of Ed and Al's kind of scary dad approaching her when she was over for dinner one night and telling her her grandma had said she's really interested in machines, then revealing a tiny wind-up automaton he found at the same kind of place he went shopping for vintage armor. (Winry still has it. It's been buried in a drawer in her room ever since Ed and Al's weird dad left and they got sad about it.)

They went on SO MANY adventures. They were certain that they were going to trek to the capitol once, packed bags full of snacks and chalk and clothes, and set off in the general direction and when it got dark, Trisha and Yuriy gathered them up and helped them set up a tent in the Rockbell's backyard, promising they could start up their journey to the capitol as soon as the sun was up. Ed tried to tell ghost stories and scare Winry, but he and Al both ended up being too scared to spend the entire night outside, and in the morning Winry smugly told them she won.

I think the other kids of Resembool maybe thought they were a little odd, but also loved them, because if you hung out with the Elrics and Winry for the day, YOU KNEW you were going to have the most fun and most crazy day of shenanigans ever. Al would go up to a group of kids at recess and be like hey, after school we're gonna try to dig a tunnel all the way to Aerugo because Winry told me it isn't possible, but Ed and I think that if you made sure to reinforce the structure of the walls so it doesn't collapse, and had enough people to dig, you absolutely could, so we're gonna prove her wrong, wanna help? Everyone would be like hell YES we do that sounds amazing. And then Trisha would have 15 kids in her backyard trying to dig a tunnel with Alphonse standing over them ordering them all around in a nicely organized system while Ed tries to figure out what the right alchemical circle would be for this situation and Winry tells them loudly several times that it wasn't going to work.

They were crazy smart kids with too much curiosity for their own good who grew up in a small country town where they could run free and if they did anything REALLY wild, Ms. Hart down the road would definitely let Trisha know, they got up to SO MUCH insanity.

(And when things go weird, the rest of the kids in town think, huh, it would be the Elrics, wouldn't it?)

Fantastic ask, thank you!! I loved thinking about this!! Also the association of young Resembool trio and Calvin & Hobbes is perfect.

[wkemeup]

The Only Kindness

summary: In the early days of Bucky’s captivity in Hydra, the only comfort he knows is the kindhearted doctor assigned to mend his wounds. At least when he's with her, he knows he isn’t alone. pairing: bucky x reader word count: 9.7k warnings: torture, canon level violence, unwanted sexual advances, hydra's attempts to brainwash bucky, hella angst, a/n: this is meant to sit in the world of canon and what we know eventually happens to Bucky at Hydra sooo do with that what you will. I am genuinely really proud of this one so I hope you can forgive me for the pain I cause

The first thing Bucky remembered every morning when the sting of florescent lights woke him in a cold sweat was that the arm attached to his shoulder was not his own. The realization of it hurt worse than the day before; with unforgiving metal seared into his skin, leaving behind bubbled scars and a revolting, oozing smell.

It weighed him down, slumped on his spine, pulled at his neck, and he struggled to even push himself upright. Sitting upon the thin mattress laid amongst an otherwise baron room, Bucky supposed he might have preferred the floor if not for the dark red stain at the center of the concrete.

Then, the familiar clicking of locks echoed against the walls and Bucky gritted his teeth as a stout man with rounded features and an arrogant grin strolled into the room – no, the cell – alongside two men strapped with rifles.

He clutched to the solid metal of his arm as if holding it might take the pressure off his shoulder, might subside the pain as it spread through his veins, or stop the twitching in his cheek as he tried to stifle the pain, but it was no use. He held on anyway in favor of wrapping a hand around the scientist’s throat.

“Ah, good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” Zola greeted, though there was something unpleasant in his tone. A threat, perhaps. A taunt. It was always something of the sort.

Bucky could barely muster the energy to look the man in the eye, but as he did, it was hidden under a dark, loathing glare. He spat on the floor by Zola’s feet.

“Go to hell.”

Zola jumped back and brushed at the toe of his shoe. It was amusing, at least, to see the rage boil in the man’s chest; all red faced and round and steaming from the ears. Though Bucky’s triumph was shorted lived as Zola waved a single hand at the armed guards beside him.

They lunged forward and with heavy hands, clawed Bucky into their grip by his biceps. He met concrete within seconds; the red stain laid beneath him. His knees barely had time to heal from the day before and they stung as he struggled under the guards’ grasp, raw skin and blistering burns shielded by paper thin fabric.

His face was pushed down into the stone and for a strange moment there was relief; it was cool to the touch, a break from the feverish heat on his brow.

But then, while a guard pinched at the nape of Bucky’s neck, nearly choking the air straight out of him and the other jabbed a knee to his spine, he remembered there was no relief within Hydra.

“You have a long day ahead of you,” Zola announced, a smirk growing upon his face as Bucky let out a hollowed whine. It slipped past his lips before he could smother it down. He knew then that he had lost whatever game they were playing; the win-lose of a man in chains to his captors with scalpels in their hands and venom on their tongues.

He didn’t know how long it had been since the fall; since icy waters and plummeting down to a ravine he wished most nights had swallowed him whole. He didn’t know how many times he was cut open in an unsterilized room, thrown onto a rusting metal table and operated on with cheap anesthetic. He didn’t know how many times he was strapped into a chair that set fire to his veins and left him feeling numb and empty, how many times he felt a lingering sense of dread he couldn’t quite place.

He didn’t know much at all, really.

But he knew his name. He knew his serial number. He knew Steve would come for him like he did before. He knew he’d get through this. He had to. He didn’t have a choice.

“We have much to do,” Zola announced, admiring how Bucky’s face pressed down into the concrete, how the prickles in the stone scraped against his cheek and cut at his skin— pleased to see a man brought to his knees, bowing before the greatness of Hydra. It brought Zola a sense of pride whether the Sergeant resisted or not. He would give in soon enough.

The guards didn’t loosen their grip on Bucky’s arms as they yanked him back to his knees. They didn’t give him a chance to stand either before they started to drag him from the cell.

The grip on his right arm was sure to leave bruises behind, ones to accompany the mess of blue and purple coloring his skin, but it was the pain on his left that rendered him paralyzed. It felt like his arm was being ripped straight from his body, pulled at every nerve ending until they snapped. He could hardly move.

It wasn’t until Zola made a sharp left at the end of the hall that a familiar sense of dread dropped into Bucky’s stomach. Whether it was fear, panic, resilience, he wasn’t sure, but he started to fight back as they neared a dark red door with six locks running up the side.

“No,” he gaped, barely a whisper, but it caught Zola’s attention.

Bucky thrashed in the men’s grip, using his weight as leverage despite the searing pain in his shoulder and the blood trickling down his ribs from where metal fused to flesh. His heels dug into the concrete, trying to catch against the wall to slow them down, to stop what he knew was coming.

Zola merely smiled.

It was no use, and perhaps Bucky knew that from the start, but he couldn’t be strapped into that chair without a fight. He still didn’t know its purpose but he knew it brought him pain. It disoriented him, made him forget his own name and the monsters that chained him. It forced him to remember all over again that he was held prisoner, thousands of miles away from home, presumed dead, and he couldn’t -- he couldn’t do it anymore.

“Please,” Bucky gasped and it sounded foreign in his own voice – broken. He hated it. He despised how his voice cracked, how he fell to his knees in front of his captors and begged.

Zola grabbed a firm hold of Bucky's chin, stump fingers digging into his cheeks and demanding attention. As he pulled in closer, Bucky caught sight of something strange in the reflection of Zola’s glasses.

He didn’t recognize the man staring back at him; hair grown and wild, unkept beard on his face, dirt and blood covering most of his skin. Amongst the scratches in the glass and the clouds of dirt, the reflection of the man looked tired, with hallowed eyes and sunken cheeks. He wasn’t strong enough to fight back. He wouldn’t survive if he tired.

Bucky slumped in the guards’ arms.

“That’s what I thought,” Zola jeered, a lingering chuckle etched into the trail of his voice. He waved a hand at the guards and Bucky was placed into the chair, all dead weight and positioned like a doll.

Thick, metal bars strapped down around Bucky’s wrists, his biceps, his ankles to hold him in place. He did his best to let go of himself, to find somewhere far beyond the walls of this room, away from the men who ripped him to pieces and broke him to the bare bones. He imagined something better, safer, where he was clean shaven and in fresh clothes, where Steve was waving from the end of the street and the war long behind them, but the dream was torn from him as soon as the panels clamped against his temples.

Electricity jolted through his system and his whole body tensed. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

But he could scream.

It ripped through his lungs and he was certain he’d break straight through the mouth guard and shatter his teeth if they didn’t turn off the machine soon. The sound echoing through the room was strained, broken, and Bucky might have mistaken it for nails to a chalkboard if he didn’t feel the burn in the back of his throat.

He started to lose time, unsure if it was on for seconds or hours. It was blinding. It was all-consuming. It was swallowing him whole.

“Enough!” a voice broke through. A woman’s. It wasn’t one Bucky recognized.

“No, keep it on! He can take more.” Zola.

“Are you insane!” the voice shouted again. “You’ll kill him!”

Let them.

The thought startled Bucky but it slipped from him in the seconds it took to arrive; searing pain, white hot fire washing through every muscle down to his bones. His eyes began to flutter closed, a strange sort of emptiness pulling him under, a darkness he couldn’t place, and he welcomed the escape.

There was yelling again, though this time it was coming was across the room. The machine began to power down, the whirring sounds of electricity in his ears leaving him with a numbing silence. The dizziness took hold, the hollowness, and he was surprised to find a woman staring back at him, her hands wrapped around the lever that pulled him from the fire.

“What the hell are you doing!” Zola roared, accent thick and slurring his words together. He bounded forward, attempted to push past the woman but she held her ground, hands planted on her hips.

“I’m saving his life,” she grunted back, unfazed by Zola’s finger pointing up into her face. She swatted it away, ignoring the shock upon his rounded features. “You brought me here for a reason, didn’t you? Let me do my damn job.” She glanced around the room, eyed the men with guns aimed at the ready, barrels trained in her direction. “Give me the room.”

“Not going to happen,” Zola snapped but quickly silenced as she shot him a glare that had him cower several steps in retreat. His cheeks were burned red.

The woman turned back to the man in the chair and he slumped limply in its clutches, her narrowed eyes centering on the rapid rise and fall of his chest. She held up two fingers, eyeing him carefully before she slowly moved to press them against his throat.

He winced before she could even touch him, flinching at the air itself, and she paused, bringing her hand back to her chest. She gave him a minute to watch as she demonstrated what she was trying to do by pressing the tips of her fingers to her own neck.

She tried again and this time she held his stare; calming aura nestled between the vibrant shades in her eyes, a gentle kind of patience he didn’t expect, and he hardly noticed her fingertips against his skin as she felt for his pulse, feather light and paper thin. They were cool to the touch, a comfort in the burning heat of metal surrounding him and he caught himself before he could lean into her palm.

“His heart rate is through the roof,” she said tensely, turning back to Zola and withdrawing her hand. “Unless you want your multi-million-dollar project to go to waste, clear out before he has a goddamn heart attack.”

Zola eyed her suspiciously in what appeared to be a competition of wills. She straightened her back, arms folding over her chest, and she towered over the scientist’s small frame. He glared up at her and the fury was palatable on his face; upper lip twitching, eyes narrowed, hands curling into fists.

She held her ground.

“Fine,” Zola grumbled, waving a hand to the line of men behind him until they bring their weapons down to their sides. “Give the doctor the room.”

As if she were waiting for the men to leave, she exhaled a breath like she had been holding it for quite some time. When she let her hands come back to her sides, puncture marks were left in her palms.

“I’m leaving a man behind for your safety,” Zola threw over his shoulder at he reached the door, almost like a threat.

She swallowed; jaw clenched. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Maybe not today, but it will be.”

Then, he was gone.

The door locked shut behind him and a single guard remained by the door, positioned with his finger on the trigger.

“Finally,” she exhaled, turning back with a gentle smile on her face that felt almost unsettling to be in such a cold and unforgiving place. “Can you tell me your name, soldier?”

“Uhh,” was all that left his lips and he hardly recognized his own voice. He searched in the back of his head for the answer, felt it on the tip of his tongue, and still… nothing. He glanced back up at her with clenched teeth because he knew what would happen next, what always happened next.

But instead of a harsh hand to the side of his face or the blunt edge of a weapon to his crown, she nodded, offered him a sad sort of smile, and simply said, “that’s alright.”

She glanced down at the clamps restraining him to the chair. His skin was raw underneath, bleeding a little, and she frowned. It crinkled up into her forehead, pursed out at her lips, and he decided he liked it much better when she smiled.

“Your name is Sergeant James Barnes,” she said fondly and it sounded familiar as she said it, but it still felt distant— wrong in some way. She seemed to notice the contemplation on his face. “It’ll come back to you soon. Might take longer than the last time, but it will. They haven’t perfected the science of the chair yet, it seems.”

There was a resentment laced into her words as she glared back at the armed man standing guard with disgust. She softened as she turned back to face the man she called James. It was within that moment the anger washed from her features, a kindness replacing the hatred, and she ran her fingers on the edge of the chair before she pulled away.

“I’m going to undo these, okay?” she told him and he was surprised that she waited for his nod before adjusting the mechanics on the machine until the metal snapped open and a rush of cold air swept against the blistering skin. He hissed at the sting of it.

“Come,” she requested, gesturing to the examination table in the corner of the room. “Let’s get you out of this thing, huh?”

He was thankful for that. He couldn’t stand the sharp edges anymore or the blistering heat of the arm rests. Her touch was so gentle he wondered if it could push right through him as she bent down to help tug his right arm over her shoulders.

Just as she nearly had him positioned well enough to get him to his feet, the guard standing in the corner of the room stepped forward, gun raised.

“I wouldn’t do that, ma’am.”

She clenched her jaw. “I’m fine. Let me work.”

“He’s dangerous,” the guard grunted back.

“He’s not going to hurt me,” she argued. There wasn’t a trace of hesitancy in her voice, even as she turned to the man hanging off her arms. “Are you, Sergeant Barnes?”

He shook his head.

“See?” she gestured. “Now leave us be.”

The guard stepped back, lowered his weapon, and she smiled.

“Alright then, James,” she started, “think you can help me get you to that table over there? I know you’ve lost some muscle mass but you’re still pretty heavy.”

A short ghost of a laugh escape as he let himself lean on her shoulder, allowing her to guide him towards the table. It surprised him as it left his chest, the feeling of laughter, because he hadn’t so much as smiled since the fall. It hurt, almost. But it was a nice kind of hurt.

She helped him sit on the table, just high enough to give her decent leverage, and he spotted a bag filled with what appear to be medical supplies. It contained with what he would expect; a stethoscope, bandages, depressors, but there were also needles, and shiny metal tools that made him clench his hands around the lip of the table.

“I’m a doctor,” she said, noticing his stare. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Zola’s a doctor,” he muttered back feebly, sharp images of lying awake on a cold, metal table much like the one he currently sat upon plagued his mind, memories of scalpels in his shoulder and needles in his arms.

She nodded, contemplating what he said before she frowned and countered, “Zola’s a mad scientist with a God complex.”

A smile tugged at his lips. It broke a little, but it remained.

“You can call me Y/n if you like,” she said as she began digging through her bag. She found the stethoscope and placed the ends in her ears. “I’m going to press this to your chest, alright? It might be a little cold.”

She exhaled a breath on the side of it for a moment to try and warm it, rubbing it with the palm of her hand. He was mesmerized by the small details; how she positioned herself strategically between him and the armed guard behind her, how she told him exactly what she was doing before she did it, how she gave him time to prepare, how she hadn’t once touched him without asking first.

He didn’t understand her or why she was here, but he was thankful.

He nodded at her and she leaned in closer, pressing the piece to his sternum. It had a slight chill to it but he could still feel the warmth left behind from her breath. He took a deep breath in as she instructed. She took her time, slowly moving to his ribs, and then his back. He took more deep breaths, felt the pulsing of his heart steady under her touch.

“Looks good all things considering,” she told him. Her eyes drifted to the burn marks on his right wrist, fingers ghosting over the reddened marks and her lips tug down into a frown. She masked it as she faced him again, pushing out a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Might as well attend to this, too, don’t you think?”

Yeah, might as well.

He offered her his hand.

He sat quietly while she worked, listening to her hum softly under her breath. She was impossibly gentle with him, so delicate he could hardly feel it until it was gone. Her hands were a little cold but he found them soothing against the burns. The alcohol she placed on the wound stung, made him grit his teeth and grip to the table’s edge, but she moved quickly, wincing at the way he sucked in a harsh breath as if his pain meant something to her.

When she was finished, she wrapped his wrist with a bandage from her bag and gently tapped on his knee.

“Not a lot my patients would have sat still through that without some kind of numbing agent,” she grinned, praise in her voice, smile on her lips, and it sent a flutter through his chest. “You did good, James.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he’d known worse, that the pain of alcohol to his wounds was nothing in comparison to the mutilation on his arm or the electricity of the chair. So, he focused on something else, a distant memory edging its way back to the surface, something that didn’t lie within the pages of Hydra’s files.

“Bucky,” he choked out, voice a little dry. She raised an eyebrow. “My name… it’s Bucky.”

She smiled at that.

“Bucky,” she repeated, testing it on her lips, “it’s nice to meet you.”

***

It wasn’t the last time he saw Y/n.

No, he found himself under her care more days than not. It was a simple system, it seemed. Hydra would do its best to break Bucky to pieces and they’d send in Y/n to stitch him back up; glue him together with needle and thread or scotch tape and paper mâché. She did her best to heal him and while she could not cure every wound on his body, she gave him something he didn’t have before – something to look forward to.

A kind smile. A gentle hand. A voice so soft it nestled deep into his chest and warmed the hollow ache that had made a home by his heart.

Even through the pain, through the chair, through the long hours he spent overworked in a boxing ring, he knew she’d be waiting on the other side. It didn’t hurt as much when he thought of her, he realized – the only kindness he knew within Hydra.

They hadn’t attempted to use the chair on him in a while and for that he was grateful. To save him from the pain of the electricity and the emptiness that followed, but lately, to allow him to hold onto her memory. He didn’t want to forget her name, her kindness, her light within the darkest corners of hell.

He only ever saw her in short glimpses, brief moments when the guards pushed the boundaries too far and cracked open a scar that wouldn’t stop bleeding or dislocated his arm again or fractured another bone. They’d drag her into his room, rough hands on her wrists that made a knot form deep into Bucky’s stomach, and give her minutes to work before they hulled her away.

He healed quickly, he came to find. Certainly faster than he should. Maybe in another world he would have been pleased with this. A perfect soldier. Always ready for battle.

In this world, it meant shorter recovery between trainings. It meant pushing him beyond his limits and testing the extent of his newfound abilities. It meant few and distant meetings with the kind doctor whose smile made it impossibly difficult to despise every last ounce within Hydra.

***

A few weeks since their first meeting, Bucky found himself dragged by his wrists on a familiar path into what looked like a room much like his own, only there were a few small comforts inside; a bed, a desk, a lamp, and a series of books piled on a small dresser.

Y/n jumped up from the desk, pen falling to the concrete as she stared back at the guards, agape. “What the hell did you do to him?!”

They dropped Bucky to the ground, his own arms too weak to hold himself up, and felt the harsh crack of concrete to his jawline. Blood dripped down into his eyes, clouding his vision with crimson pools of red, but he could hear the quick patter of your bare feet as you slid down to the floor beside him, shooing away the guards.

Hands ghosted over his shoulders before you paused, watching the way he sighed into the cool embrace of concrete. She glared back up at the guards, waiting on their answer.

“He’s weak,” one of the guards spat, thick accent spewing down to land on Bucky’s bare skin. “The fist of Hydra is an embarrassment. He crumbles under pressure. He needs to be pushed, to be taught what he is.”

Bucky couldn’t quite register the way her hands curled up into fists or how a harsh exhale burned deep in her chest, but she swallowed it the best she could as she muttered, “get out.”

A toe nudged at Bucky’s leg – one of the guards behind him – and he groaned as it dug into a dark purple bruise from the days before.

“You’ve done enough,” she pressed again, swatting away his leg as he tried to push Bucky over to his back to see his good work. "Now leave.”

“You don’t give us orders, princess,” the other guard smirked, yellowed teeth bared.

“We’ll be back for him soon,” the first one said, nudging his friend to stand down. “Make sure he’s ready to go again tomorrow.”

The door slammed shut and within the echo, Bucky felt the cool touch of a breeze nestle against his skin. It was a relief, as kind as the concrete, that sat in sharp contrast to the burning heat on his skin.

“Are you alright, Sergeant Barnes?” an angelic voice called. It sounded muffled, and a bit distant, but it was one he recognized.

He nodded slowly, though the concrete scratched at his skin.

“You don’t look alright,” she countered, a touch of lightness in her tone and it came as a welcomed relief.

“You kidding? I look great,” Bucky teased, half muffled by the ground. She laughed, pressing a hand over her lips, and Bucky swore for the smallest of moments that all the pain had washed from his body completely.

He could hear her riffling around the room, gathering supplies and laying a blanket down by his side, then a pillow. She was talking to herself, words he couldn’t quite hear or understand, but they were a comfort nonetheless.

"Still with me Sergeant Barnes?"

“Bucky,” he grumbled, just as she came down to kneel beside him again. “S’my name, remember? I’m supposed to be the one with the memory problems here.”

There came that laugh again, though she tried to suppress it. “That’s not very funny, Bucky.”

“Give me an ounce of humor here, doll,” Bucky smirked. It ached in his lips where the split tore through, burned in his cheeks from the swelling on his face, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t often he had much reason to smile these days. She seemed to bring it out of him.

Y/n smiled, shaking her head. “Think you can turn onto your back? I’ve got some cushioning here for you. I’m sorry I can’t lift you to the bed.”

“Nah, this is perfect.”

Bucky summoned as much strength as his body could muster as he pushed down into the concrete with his right hand. He started to shake as pressure burned into his left shoulder and he gritted his teeth, face contorting in a wash of pain as his smirk faded away in an instant.

She must have noticed because her hands slipped gently onto his right bicep, gently easing him to turn over the metal shoulder and lay onto his back. Her touch was so feather light, he questioned for a moment if it was even there at all, but then he felt a soft squeeze, the cool press of her palms, and he sighed.

Her hands were the only ones who did not mean him harm. She healed. She nurtured. She cared.

“What are they doing to you...”

Her voice was hardly a whisper, the shock on her face evident enough of the damage on his own. He didn’t want to imagine what he looked like, but he knew it was bad. It hurt to speak, hurt to even part his lips, and his vision was tunneled and dark, cast over in shadows, and somehow, she was still clear as day.

“Dunno,” he responded, recognizing the slur in his voice. “Training me for something, I think.”

She stilled; muscles rigid as she reached into her bag for something to bandage his wounds. He could see the contemplation on her face, the worry, but she swallowed it back, pushed out that gentle, reassuring smile he’d come to rely on and began to work on the cut along his cheekbone.

“It can’t be anything good, Bucky,” she said quietly, eyes flickering to the door as if she were worried about what laid on the other side. He knew the feeling well.

***

He forgot her for the first time a few days later.

The scars were starting to heal; the gashes open on his face just days before nothing but a thin discoloration on his skin. He knew the look on Zola’s face as he emerged in his cell that morning - smug and grim, eager to wipe away the decorated prisoner of war and turn him into something empty and broken. The smirk that crept up his face was unsettling, jarring, as it crinkled lined into his forehead and a vile look in his eye.

They slammed him down into the chair, locked the restraints into place, and he only spotted her rush into the room as the machine powered on. The horror in her eyes as she met his, the quick transition to rage as she turned to Zola, and the pain took over until it consumed him whole.

He lost some time because the next thing he knew, he was sitting on a metal table and the room had emptied, save for a single guard standing in the corner over the shoulder of a beautiful woman who eased a soothing gel onto the burns on his wrist.

He studied her as she worked, quietly humming to herself, telling him what she was doing before she dared to touch him in a voice so gentle it startled him. It was familiar, he realized, the delicate intricacies of her tone, the warmth in his chest when she touched him. He wasn’t afraid of her like he was the others. He didn’t flinch under her touch.

“Your heart rate is still pretty high,” she noted, her fingers pressed to the inside of his right wrist. “Can you take some deep breaths for me?”

She embellished her own, chest rising high as she inhaled, air blowing out from her mouth in the exhale. She nodded for him, something encouraging and kind, until he followed suit. But even through the tender smile upon her lips there was a sadness there, a disappointment, and it hurt him deep into his chest.

“I know you, don’t I?” he finally said after he mimicked a few of the breaths as she requested.

She smiled at that and he felt an instant relief. Something warm and gentle. Kind.

He narrowed his eyes upon the slight curve of her lips, drawing up to her eyes where he was met with a linger sense of calm, of peace, of reprieve. “Why don’t I remember you?”

She sighed, a cautious glance back at the guard behind her who seemed to be watching with the intent to overhear. Her eyes were downcast, a nervous brush of her tongue over her lower lip, and she pushed out a smile for him.

“You will, Bucky.”

He hoped that were true.

***

Bucky was barely tied together with string and tape, broken and bleeding and covered in bruises, and yet, a smile etched onto his broken lips as he turned to find Y/n stumbling into his cell. She shrugged off the grip of a guard with an aggravated huff before he slammed the door closed behind her.

She was no longer shocked by the state in which she often saw him. His accelerated healing made the brutal look of his mutilation a bit easier to swallow he supposed or perhaps he was getting used to it. It was like a mask he’d come to wear, fading in and out depending on the day, but always present. It didn’t seem to lessen the pain in her eyes as she sat down beside him, extending a hand towards his face to touch gently at the markings.

“I hate that they keep doing this to you,” she said softly, though there was a rage nestled into the crook of her tone. She shook her head, a tense breath exhaled as she reached into her bag. She pulled out a few swabs of gauze and alcohol wipes.

“M’alright,” Bucky slurred and it didn’t seem to help his case.

“They’re monsters.” Y/n dabbed at the gash on his forehead as gingerly as she could manage. Bucky didn’t mind the sting of it, not when she was touching him so tenderly, like she was handling something precious.

He’d figured out a while ago that she was just as much a part of Hydra as he was. He never dared to ask, but he’d seen the way she looked at Zola, how she despised him as an enemy. He’d seen the clothes she wore and how they were tattered on the seams, how they discolored with use, how she'd wear them over and over again while the men in the room wore pristine lab coats and freshly laundered suits. He’d seen the dark circles under her eyes, the knots in her hair, the way her collarbone began to protrude the longer he knew her.

She was a prisoner of Hydra, too.

“They’re monsters,” Y/n repeated, tears burning in her eyes and it warped deep into Bucky’s gut. He wanted to reach out and wipe them away. He wanted to make her smile again because she’d been nothing but a light for him and now, she was flickering and fading and he was certain it would destroy him completely until she uttered, “and... and so am I,” and his whole world fell apart.

“No,” Bucky shot back almost instantly. “Don’t say that. You’re not one of them.”

“I might as well be,” she said, brushing at the tears as they spilled down her cheeks. “I’m still complicit in what they’re doing to you – whatever that is. I’m still helping them.”

“They’d kill you,” Bucky argued. “They’d kill you if you tried to resist.”

“They’re practically killing you now! How is that any better?” She pressed her palms to her face, shielding herself from him and Bucky slid down onto the floor, kneeling on the concrete in front of her, and gently rested his hands on her knees. She struggled to catch her breath between the sobs. “I keep fixing you up just to send you back out there and—and—Bucky, I feel like I’m handing you over to slaughter and I can’t-- I can’t--”

“Stop, please,” Bucky begged. He could feel the splinter nestle into his heart, cracking at the edges as it tore a sliver down the center. It burned and ached and threatened to rip him to pieces worse than the foreign metal on his arm, worse than the guards on the other side of the door, worse than the chair that stole his name and his memories, because the woman who saved his life over and over again was crying and he simply couldn’t take it.

“Look at me,” he eased, drawing his hands up her thighs, along her arms, until he met her hands resting against her face. Gently, he pried his fingers under her palms and when he was met without resistance, he pulled them away from her face. “You are the only shred of good within this place. You are the only kindness I’ve known since they threw me on that table and remade me. You are the only thing keeping me going when they’re beating me within an inch of my life, the only thing I want to remember when they try to take away everything I know. Please, don’t think for a second that you’re one of them. You’re saving me, Y/n.”

Bucky wondered for a moment if he said too much as her lips parted into shock, her eyes staring at him shocked and wide. Her breaths were coming in slow and steady as she watched him, almost as if she were waiting for him to recant, but he held his ground.

“You are good, Y/n,” Bucky continued. He squeezed her hand in his right, letting his left fall down to his side to shield her from the evil from which it was born. “You're the reason I keep coming back.”

“I’m scared, Bucky,” she exhaled, voice so low, so shaken, he could barely hear it. She squeezed his hand back. “I’m scared of what they're going to do to you.”

“I’ll have you, won’t I?” he smiled, because it was all he had left. There were no guarantees, no promises he could make to ease her fears. “As long as I’ve got you with me, I’m okay.”

He just wanted her to smile again, to be the woman who fought against Zola in a crowded room of armed Hydra agents and won, who was fearless in the face of evil, and gentle and kind in her touch.

Bucky realized that the more time he spent with her, the more she’d grown to care for him, the more he’d found himself missing her— the more dangerous they were to one another. If Hydra knew...

“You have me,” she said suddenly, a stroke of confidence returning to her voice, drawing Bucky’s attention away from the door and the men that laid beyond it. Bucky met her eye and she raised a palm to his cheek, slow and steady, always giving him the time to prepare before she touched him even when it wasn’t necessary, even after he’d grown to trust her above anyone else. She cupped the side of his face, smiling sweetly for him, sadly, as she said, “as long as they’ll let me, Bucky. You’re not alone. You’ll have me.”

Her thumb traced over old scars she’d mended, over raised edges and dried blood from the mess left behind by the dozen Hydra agents he’d met earlier that day. The tenderness within her touch was unlike anything he knew how to quantify. It sat in such contrast to the hands of men who battered and beat him within an inch of his life, to the torture of the chair, to the scalpel in the hands of mad scientists with god complexes.

There was something in her touch. Something that felt a lot like love.

Bucky found himself leaning in closer, wanting to close the space between them because any space at all was simply too much. He wanted to engulf her into his arms, protect her from the evils that waited for them outside these walls, take her away to somewhere warm and safe, somewhere she didn’t have to check over her shoulder when she smiled. It terrified him how badly he wanted it because he knew there were no fantasies in Hydra, no dreams, no happy endings. He knew it would be taken from him eventually, she would be taken from him, but it didn’t stop him from clinging on as tight as he could.

His lips touched hers, broken and splintered, and still, beautiful. He could taste the salty tang of her tears against her lips, her fingers curling around his long, unkempt hair and twisting along his scalp, breathing him in. There was a sanctuary within her arms, under her touch, that seemed impossible within these walls, and yet, here she was.

Tangible. Real. Kissing him as if he could be ripped from her at any second.

And he was.

The door swung open and Bucky jolted away from her. Y/n jumped back against the bed frame, her head hitting the cement wall.

In the frame of the door stood a guard Bucky had become familiar with; blonde, broad, reminded him a bit of Steve if it weren’t for the cold, dead look in his eyes. The burn mark across his jawline helped to obstructed the similarities.

The guard’s eyes lingered a little longer on Y/n, focusing on the quick rise and fall of her chest, the slight swell in her lips, the mess in her hair, before he gritted his teeth and turned to Bucky.

“Times up, Soldat,” he grunted, wasting no time as he pulled a wand from his belt, flipped a switch at the end, and burned the jolts of electricity into Bucky’s side. He barely registered the desperate crack in Y/n’s voice as she begged for the guard to stop.

Then – darkness.

***

“We need to be more careful.”

“They’ll find out how I feel for you and they'll hurt you.”

“I can’t lose you, Bucky.”

He couldn’t get the words out of his head. Familiar voices: a man’s and a woman’s. He’d heard them spoken aloud; of that he was certain. But they were distant, far away, as if he’d heard them uttered on a film screen in passing. They couldn’t be his own memories. He was a blank slate. He was empty.

A woman stood across from him, approaching him slowly as the machine powered down. It was loud in his ears, echoing enough to pulse tremors into the back of his head. He didn’t dare show an ounce of the pain he felt. He’d come to know the consequences of that, even if he couldn’t quite remember what they were.

“I’m going to help you to the table, alright?” the woman said, gesturing to the metal desk to her left. There it was again— that familiarity.

She smiled kindly at him, as if looking into the face of a man she knew, but he did not know her. She must have sensed his hesitancy because she held up her hands out for him to see.

“I just want to examine you. Make sure you’re okay. Can I do that?”

He narrowed his eyes on the woman, listening intently to her heartbeat. It was a strange sound, one he shouldn’t be privileged to hear, but he found the skill useful. He could listen for the inflections in the rhythm, pulse points and skips that told him when a person was lying.

Hers was steady. Even. He nodded.

He was surprised at how easily he allowed her to guide him to the table, how he didn’t question as he let her place a hand on his inner wrist to check his pulse, how he didn’t flinch when she approached the scars on his shoulder. It was like he knew the routine, understood the subtle intricacies in her gestures warning him of what she was about to do before she even laid a hand on him.

A relief was evident in his muscles. He felt a calmness wash over him the longer she stood at his side, recording his vitals, running a hand soothingly along his arm. It seemed personal, the way she touched him, like she was preserving something – or guiding something home.

He wanted to ask her name, why she was treating him so kindly when all he knew within these walls was the cruelty of violent men, when the guard who stood at the back corner of the room cleared his throat.

“You almost done, sweetheart?” The guard spat the pet name like an insult and the kind woman standing beside the Soldier flinched. She tensed quickly after that, mustering out a brave face as she turned back to the armed guard defiantly.

“I’ll be done when I’m done, Bronski.”

The Soldier wanted to smile, though he wasn’t sure why. A swell of pride beamed in his chest as Bronski’s smirk dissipated, replaced with something colder, darker; a bruise to his ego. The woman turned back to the Soldier, exhaled a heavy breath and offered him a short smile; calming, reassuring. The edges of his lips started to curve in response until –

Bronski crossed the room in four long strides, grabbed a tight hold of her arm and yanked her swiftly away from the Soldier. She collided against his chest, caged against him under the firm hold of his grip.

“You think you can mouth off to me, bitch?” Bronski sneered, shoving her against the desks at the far side of the room. Viles of serums and chemicals spilled over at the impact, glass shattering, and the Soldier began to stand from his position across the room, his hand curling into fists.

“Stop looking at him! He’s not going to help you,” Bronski taunted as her eyes flashed back at the Soldier, pleading at some unknown force he couldn’t quite understand, though he listened to its call. Bronski towered over her, easily overpowering her frame, and pinned her to the wall.

The Soldier took another step forward, another inch closer to what he was sure were near fatal consequences, but there was a voice screaming in the back of his head, an instinct he couldn’t drown out, a desperate need to protect a woman he didn’t know.

“You think we didn’t notice, huh?” Bronski growled, his hand sliding down her side, tracing over the curves at her waist and the Soldier felt a sudden twist in his stomach, a dead weight sinking him into the ground at the sight. “You think we can’t tell you got it hot for the asset? He’s weak. Pathetic. Why don’t you try being with a real man instead? I’ll show you a good time, princess...”

Her eyes were on the Soldier, holding his gaze though she was shaking; trembling and afraid. He didn’t like that.

“Get away from her.”

Bronski froze. He managed a slow glance over his shoulder to find the Soldier standing just a few feet away, hands clenched at his sides, fuming as his eyes flickered between the Hydra agent and the woman he held pinned to the wall.

“Don’t be a fucking hero, Soldat,” Bronski spat back.

But the Soldier did not move.

“Get away from her,” he repeated, his voice low, mechanical. He could feel the rush of adrenaline building in his veins, the chaos of the rapid thumping of his pulse. He wasn’t used to such reactions, such intensity, when all he’d come to know was a crippling emptiness. It was unpleasant.

“What are you going to do about it?” Bronski taunted, a sick smirk upon his face. He dismissed the Soldier, didn’t dare to think he’d disobey direct orders, and turned back to the woman.

She tried to slither out of his hold, but his grip on her wrists was so tight his nails had dug puncture marks into her skin. She was shaking, tears burning into reflective lenses over the gentle hue of her eyes; kind eyes that should not bare such a weight.

Bronski leaned in closer, his mouth pressing against her neck, her whole body stiffening at the touch, and the Soldier snapped.

He rushed at them, his left hand clamping down around Bronski’s neck until he started to gag. Bronski released her wrists, allowing her to sink to the floor in a fallen heap. Bronski scratched at the hand at his neck, gasping for air as his skin turned bright red, then blue, but he was only met with metal. It could not feel. It could only maim.

There was a rage storming inside the Soldier, a mission he’d assigned for himself, as he threw Bronski across the room. It didn’t take much effort. The Soldier was stronger than most men. They underestimated him, believed him to be feeble and weak because he was submissive. But not now. Not when they threatened her.

“Soldat!” Bronski choked out, his voice damaged. Broken windpipe. The Soldier smiled.

Slowly, he took a knee at Bronski’s side, grabbed a firm hold of his collar for leverage, and barreled the closed end of his fist into the man’s face until he could no longer see the smirk that had pressed upon his mouth as he dared to touch his girl. He didn’t stop until Bronski was no longer begging, until he was silent, and blood caked between the panels of metal in his fist, until he heard a voice calling behind him—

“Bucky! Bucky, stop!”

He froze. There was that name again...

He blinked a few times, a sharp piercing in the back of his head painful enough to obscure his vision and he dropped Bronski from his hold. A hand slid down over his shoulders, guiding him away from the body on the floor. It was that same familiar touch; one he knew well.

“Bucky, look at me.”

He did.

Her hand pressed sweetly to the side of his face, like she was trying to memorize him. He leaned into the touch, something he was sure he hadn’t done in years, and yet, within her arms it felt like the most natural thing in the world, like maybe he’d done it a dozen times before.

When he met her eyes again, he understood why.

“Y/n?”

She nodded, tears spilling over her cheeks as she threw herself into his arms. She molded so perfectly against him, his healer, his savior. Bucky knew they wouldn’t have much time before the Hydra infantry arrived and discovered what he’d done. He didn’t dare spare a glance back at the body on the ground.

“Y/n... I—”

The doors swung open, slamming in echoing shocks against the walls, and chaos ensued. Swarms of armed Hydra agents ascended into the room and tore Y/n from his arms, separating them as they restrained Bucky back into the chair. It was the only thing that could hold him.

“Leave her alone!” Bucky roared, that same rage returning to him in fire as two guards pinned Y/n’s arms behind her back, holding her steady as she desperately fought against their hold. “Get your hands off of her!”

Zola appeared at the frame of the door, eyes narrowing on Bucky. The room fell silent.

“Impossible.” He followed Bucky’s eyes to where the guards were restraining Y/n. “The programming should not have failed so soon after he was wiped. How?”

“He’s got a crush on the doc, sir,” one of the guards reported snidely. Bucky recognized him from the many trips he spent dragged along the hallways smearing blood into the concrete before he was dropped off at Y/n’s door.

“Interesting.” Zola crossed the room, hands grasped behind his back as he paced. His eyes fell on Y/n, studying her. “And is it... mutual?”

She didn’t respond, though when her tear-filled eyes flashed over to Bucky, he had his answer.

“Wipe him,” Zola ordered.

The machine started to power up and Bucky found himself fighting against the restraints though he knew it would do no use. Tears were openly streaming down Y/n’s face as she watched him, his name on her lips as she desperately tried to break the guard’s hold on her.

Zola seemed unbothered by the scene. If anything, he was amused, like he was watching lab rats in a cage. “Separate them. I don’t want her interfering with his programming again. We’ll make use of her when the time is right.”

Bucky tried to call her name, but the electricity had already taken hold, submerging him into the darkness.

***

The Soldier was used to his routine. Breakfast at dawn. Then training. Dinner at sundown. Sleep. It was reliable. Simple. The Soldier found a peace in that.

It had been months since he’d seen anyone outside of the two guards at his cell, the parade of uncontrollable human experiments, and the short, stout scientist. It was better this way, they told him. Less stimulation. He was important, meant for incredible things to better humanity. They needed him focused and alert.

He had little room for anything else. Focus on the mission at hand. Complete the task. Reward will follow.

Something as trivial as memories got in the way of that. The Soldier could not afford such a distraction. He was not tied down by a name or a family, by relationships or desires. He was a weapon. Made to be used. He was not capable of more.

“I want to have you looked over before we send you out for your mission today, Soldat,” the scientist said as he examined the Soldier from across the room. The man carried power within Hydra but he was small, cowardly, and he would not dare enter a room with the Soldier without a guard in place. He gestured to the door and the guard with a thick burn down his jaw moved towards it. Blonde hair, blue eyes, broad. He seemed vaguely familiar, though it felt distasteful in his mouth.

A woman was pushed through the doors and into the baron room. She shook off the grip of a Hydra agent with a grunt before she realized where she was. Her eyes fell on the Soldier and he expected her to cower in fear; they all did upon seeing him. Word traveled fast of what he was capable of. And yet –

There was relief in her shoulders, a sigh. She almost smiled before Zola turned in her direction and she pushed it away into a tight frown. The Soldier narrowed his eyes.

“Get to work, Doctor,” he ordered, though it sounded more like a warning.

She nodded, stepping in closer to the Soldier though she was hesitant in her movements. She wore dark circles under her eyes, a redness within the whites. Her clothes were old, torn a little at the edges, and dirty with use. But still, she offered a kind smile as she approached.

“How are you feeling?”

The Soldier didn’t know how to respond to that. No one had ever bothered with his answer. He stayed silent.

“You can talk freely,” she encouraged gently as she approached his bedside. He sat on the edge of the cot, tension burning through his body as it always did when he wasn’t alone. One word out of turn resulted in punishment. He knew well enough not to tempt it.

She seemed to understand he would not fall into the trap, and she nodded in acceptance.

“I’m going to take your vitals, alright? I’ll start with your heart rate.” She held up two fingers, gesturing as she pressed them against her own neck. Seemed harmless enough, though he suspected he didn’t have much of a choice anyway. It was strange she acted as if he did.

Regardless, the Soldier nodded.

As she touched him, something seemed to break. She clenched her jaw tightly, trying to focus on the rhythm of his heartbeat, but he could hear the distress in her own. Quick, pounding, uneven, and she pulled her fingers away before he questioned the slight tremble in her touch.

He wanted to ask if she were alright because something about seeing her upset was unpleasant for him. She wanted to say something, that much he could tell, but she bit her tongue.

“You’re here for a reason, Doctor,” Zola taunted from his position in the corner of the room. The woman flinched though she kept her back to him. Her eyes flickered to the Soldier as if he were an anchor. Zola smirked. “Go on. Test our programming. Why else do you think we kept you around?”

Then, he exited the room. The guard followed behind him until the Soldier was alone with the woman.

She swallowed; eyes cast down as if she were afraid to speak. For a while, she continued to take his vitals – checking his blood pressure, his eye movement, examining the mess of scars on his shoulder as they attempted to heal. All the while, so impossibly gentle, so kind in her touch, that he started to wonder if he’d felt it before.

When she was finished, she took a step back. It was only then that the Soldier noticed the reflective marks on her cheeks. Had she been crying? Why did the thought alone make his stomach twist into knots painful enough to nauseate him?

“Bucky?”

He narrowed his eyes, confused. She reached out for his hand, though she stopped herself before she could touch him. It seemed agonizing; the restraint visible on her features.

“Bucky, please tell me there’s still a of piece of you in there,” she begged. He found himself wanting to lie, to pretend to be this man she craved, just to make her happy. He didn’t know why he cared so much, why it bothered him to see her cry. She was a stranger.

“You don’t recognize me at all, do you?” Her voice was so small, so broken. She was never afraid of him, he realized. No – it seemed she was more afraid of his answer. He did not respond. He didn’t know how.

She nodded, clenching her jaw as tears spilled from the corners of her eyes and the Soldier managed to break the heart of a woman he didn’t know. Another casualty in his wake.

“Excellent,” Zola sneered, appearing back in the doorway. The doctor took a step back and it surprised the Soldier when the space between them felt like an assault. Zola grinned as he moved closer to the woman. “Hydra thanks you for your service.”

“Fuck you,” she spat, just before she landed a closed fist against the bridge of the scientist’s nose.

The Soldier flinched, stunned by the woman’s brazen as she stared into the face of the mad scientist. The tears hadn’t yet dried and still – she was fearless. Zola laughed as the blood dripped down into his mouth. A guard wrapped a vicious hold around her wrist, beginning to drag her out of the room, but she turned back to the Soldier.

“Don’t give into them, Bucky! You have to fight this! You’re good, do you hear me? You’re not one of them!”

Her voice echoed in the room even as she was shoved through the door and down the hall. He listened for the last remaining vibrations of her voice, of her struggling, until it was silent. He wondered about this man she referred to, why she thought he was worth fighting for. He thought about whether he was the man she spoke of.

“Distractions, Soldat.” Zola tsked. “You are magnificent. You are the fist of Hydra. Do you understand?”

He nodded. It pleased the scientist.

Zola explained the mission he was about to embark on at dawn. He listened to the instructions, the details, the purpose – all the while wondering about what became of the kind doctor who called him by a name he didn’t recognize.

Then, when he was finished, the scientist left and the Soldier was alone— just as he always had been.

---

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

[robininthelabyrinth]

i've been keeping a list of possible prompts for you and there's one i have no memory of adding that just says "courtesan nmj????" so i guess that's the prompt you're getting lmao

What Does the Fox Say - ao3

“Second Madame Nie!” a disciple shouted, rushing into her little garden. She didn’t recognize him, but he was solidly built and well-muscled like most of the others – truly, the Unclean Realm was a rapturous feast for one with eyes to see it. Yum, yum. “Second Madame Nie, I have bad news!”

Boo. She hated bad news: bad news meant she’d have to do something, usually, and right now she was seated very comfortably in a pleasant piece of sun in the garden path that’d been made up just for her and to her preferences, with her feet up on a chair and a full plate of fruit from the kitchen on the table in front of her just begging to be devoured, morsel by delicious morsel.

Her schedule was packed!

“I regret to tell you, but your husband has been killed!”

“Oh,” she said, frowning slightly. “Has he? How obnoxious of him.”

How unreliable. Men.

She sighed.

“Second Madame – Second Madame – you don’t understand!” The disciple was all red-eyed and weepy, which was a look she liked, especially in big, stout men like this. The salt added a bit of spice to the whole thing. “You must flee at once! He was killed by Sect Leader Wen in an act of outright aggression – Sect Leader Wen has declared war – the Wen sect is invading!”

She nodded and picked up another lychee to start peeling it. She’d get around to fleeing in her own time. As long as this Wen sect or whatnot was being led by a man, she wasn’t terribly concerned.

“They intend to wipe out the inheritance of Qinghe Nie! They will rip out the child in your belly!”

She hummed noncommittally. Really, how attached was she to having a child of her own? Really?

“They will slaughter civilians – execute Nie-gongzi –”

Her hands stilled.

“What,” she said, and the disciple took a step back automatically, proving that he, at least, had something more of a survival instinct than her late husband did. “Hurt my little meat bun? My darling rice roll? My savory zongzi?”

She stood up, diminutive height and over-large belly and frilly clothing doing absolutely nothing to diminish the vaguely menacing aura that darkened the sky around her. She bared her teeth.

“Who does this upstart Wen dog think he is?!”

The disciple blinked owlishly, but nodded, seeming relieved that she’d finally accepted his concern, though she could see on his face that he was thinking that her reasoning was – characteristically – a little strange. But then again, and she could see this thought process on his far too honest face, it was well known that the second Madame Nie been quite strange ever since Sect Leader Nie had found her in some lonesome place with no family or background and brought her back to be his new wife nevertheless.

Such a charming man. Pity about his loss, really.

“You have to flee at once, we can’t possibly fight so many people,” the disciple said once more, and this time she nodded in agreement. “We can escort you to a hidden exit –”

“No!” a little voice called. “We can’t go.”

She turned to look, and there was the little pork-and-shrimp dumpling himself, chubby-cheeked and earnest-eyed, looking as delicious as always.

“What do you mean, fish cake?” she asked. “Of course we have to go. Didn’t you hear what this strapping young man said? This Wen person wants to kill you!”

“If Father is dead, then I’m the sect leader,” her stepson said. He was serious and solemn in a way that made her want to pinch his cheeks and bury her face into his belly to blow raspberries, and also possibly to eat him right up, flesh and marrow and gristle and all. “That means it’s my responsibility to preserve the Nie sect.”

“Nie-gongzi, no!” the disciple cried, throwing himself to his knees in a dramatic display of loyalty. “You would only die – far better for you to run, and live!”

“Then isn’t the same true for everyone else?” the tasty little dish asked, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. Possibly he was trying to put on a fierce expression, maybe, she couldn’t quite tell sometimes. He was so cute. “Why should I live, and them not? I refuse to buy my life with their deaths!”

“But – Nie-gongzi –”

Her charming little honey cake shook his head and held up a hand to stop the disciple, turning to look at her instead.

“Second Mother,” he said, and he had that wholesome trusting expression again that was such a perfect little one-shot-kill to the heart, ugh. “You always said you’re the best at hiding. The best in the world, no one better among all the gods or demons!”

She was, too. She couldn’t help but preen a little, proud.

“– can’t you do something?”

“Oh, darling cabbage bun,” she said, not without fondness. “I can hide myself from even the net of Heaven itself if I so choose, from gods and demons alike, and I can most certainly hide a small group from any mortal eyes that dare to look, if you don’t mind being a little tiny bit dishonorable about the business. But an entire sect? That’s a bit much, even for someone as talented and skilled as me.”

Her stepson looked up at her, all straight-steel sincerity and upright righteousness wrapped into a perfectly edible little snack-sized package. “If we split them up, the sect could be small groups,” he said eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something then?”

He was so cute, and he trusted her. He trusted her, believed in her, felt that she could perform miracles with a wave of her sleeve if only she so wished.

It was awful.

She couldn’t bear it.

“Oh all right, you nummy little slice of roast pork belly,” she said, yielding. “But I’m telling you now, it won’t be the least bit honorable! There’s only so many excuses you can come up with for having a lot of strong men with wide shoulders and women with thick thighs hanging around, and not a single one of them has the slightest bit to do with what you people consider to be appropriate.”

“That’s all right. Preserving human life comes first, always.”

The disciple looked between them, clearly completely confused. Clearly all his effort had been spent on developing the muscles in his arms (quite nice) rather than his brain (quite slow).

“What?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re saving the sect,” Nie Mingjue announced happily, clapping his hands together. Too precious, too precious entirely; she’d have to make sure no one else even thought about going near her darling little snackling. “Tell everyone to prepare to evacuate.”

“That will take too long,” she said, and smiled, with teeth. “Let me call some friends to help.”

-

When the Wen sect arrived at the Unclean Realm, they found the gate open.

That was unexpected enough, but when they entered, they found that the entire place had emptied out – not just of people, but of everything else, too. There wasn’t a single intact chair or table in the entire place, not a scrap of cloth nor a bit of food, like it’d been swept clean by locusts or wild monkeys come to pilfer whatever they could.

Even the paving stones where arrays had been laid out by the Nie sect’s ancestors had been pried up and carted away.

Sect Leader Wen ordered a search, but there wasn’t any trace of it – of the people, of the stuff, anything.

No one ever found out what happened.

-

Jin Guangyao despised social events, he’d found.

It was one thing when it was something he’d planned himself, where the work was interesting enough to distract him, but when he was an honored guest for someone else…miserable. Utterly miserable.

The only thing more miserable was when the host was his erstwhile father, from whom he’d forcefully extracted recognition. With Wen Ruohan as his backer, indulging his favorite torturer as if a beloved pet, there wasn’t much Jin Guangshan could do to refuse, and neither could he force Jin Guangyao to do anything on his behalf, either. And so Jin Guangyao, sitting as always by Wen Ruohan’s side, right beneath his sons, was now an honored guest at his father’s house, getting offered his pick of prostitutes as if the man had no notion of the irony.

Maybe he didn’t. Jin Guangyao couldn’t quite tell if his father had just forgotten his origins, thinking his bastard son too unimportant to remember the details of, or whether it was meant as a deliberate insult – who could tell?

“Oh, right,” the simpering idiot in front of him, a nephew or cousin of some sort to the sect leader, said. “Our dear Jin Guangyao is known not to like the gentle flower queens, even when they come from the finest houses in Lanling. Isn’t that right, cousin?”

Jin Guangyao’s fists clenched. A deliberate insult, then.

Despite that, his face remained neutral. Instead, he chuckled and said, “The appeal is limited. After all, I have seen the best of them.”

Beside him, Wen Ruohan nodded and smirked. He appreciated Jin Guangyao’s devotion to his mother, though Jin Guangyao suspected it was because he thought it funny that Jin Guangyao would bother to honor such a lowly woman – but what he thought didn’t matter, not really. All that mattered was that he let Jin Guangyao pay his respects to her to his heart’s content.

“Well, you’re in luck!” the idiot Jin Zixun said, looking absurdly smug. “We have something of a different flavor than the usual tonight – we’ve invited entertainment from the local branch of Splendid Spring.”

Jin Guangyao barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

The Splendid Spring Palace was a series of brothels that had popped up fully formed just about everywhere some years back, with madams and girls and musicians and bodyguards of all sorts. It was so patently a political move that Jin Guangyao had barely bothered to pay attention to it once he’d become actually powerful, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t paid attention to it at all. After all, in the unlikely event that the business really was backed by a cultivation sect that didn’t care about its face any longer, anyone who needed to use such a façade to gather power was clearly beneath notice.

Jin Guangyao had paid only very little attention, but to different and unusual aspects of the place: by all accounts, they were surprisingly decent employers as far as places like that went. They didn’t steal girls or accept unwilling goods – they had some connection with the merchant caravans, or at least one of the companies that helped coordinate routes and provide protection to such things, and they were as meticulous about checking things over as they were about seeking refunds if they were dissatisfied – and they did accept married girls fleeing unhappy marriages, which not everyone did. They did buy up all the girls in the local markets wherever they were, but they swept them away and brought them back transformed, even the ones that wouldn’t sell because they were too ugly; Jin Guangyao assumed that meant they had people who were talented in make-up and clothing, since the usual rumors of the girls being blessed with a yao’s enchantment were obviously ridiculous and nothing more than the usual marketing gimmicks that brothels since time immemorial had tried.

Even once they had the girls in hand, the places were pretty decent: they had physicians on staff to help with the usual side effects of the business, made sure their girls were clean and healthy, and were said to even limit the number of customers a girl would be obliged to take on in a given evening…honestly, knowing as he did the brothel business, Jin Guangyao sometimes wondered how they’d managed to bespell enough people to even make money in the early days. At any rate, whatever they’d done, it’d worked, because by now they had a solid enough reputation to trade on.

In short: a decent enough place, far better than the usual run of the mill. Once he’d had the ability to do so, he’d even pulled a few strings and arranged for the better of his mother’s old compatriots to end up there, since he couldn’t convince them to leave their old professions behind entirely.

Anyway, if they also seemed to have a sideline in information brokering and assassinations, well, let them. In the cultivation world, where the only thing that mattered was strength, real strength.

A little thing like that wouldn’t make any real difference.

Or so Jin Guangyao had thought.

He found himself re-thinking that, though, when the entertainment in question came out. There were the usual set of attractive (albeit in a wider variety of shapes and sizes than usually seen) dancers, dressed up in silks that seemed actually high quality, and plenty of strapping young men carrying sabers – dancers as well, once assumed, to provide some spice to the entertainment, and implicitly on the offer for men who cut their sleeves or women with more flexibility, like widows or ones with especially permissive husbands. Wen Ruohan’s wives were in that latter category, and they were already whispering to each other excitedly, looking at them.

They’d even brought in the local madame, who was…

Well, she was actually breathtaking, even by Jin Guangyao’s extremely jaded standards. She had hair that fell almost all the way to her ankles, shimmering in the light, and dark eyes shining with liveliness, a smooth and ageless face that simultaneously suggested youth and health but also winked at knowable experience, the features characteristic of what his mother’s employers had called the ‘fox-face’. As if to emphasize that, the lady was wrapped in fox-fur and draped in embroidered brocade, with little stylized foxes running up and down the hems of her clothing and along the gazy silk draped on her shoulders.

It ought to have looked absurd, looked gaudy and overwrought and overdone, but it didn’t.

She was a thousand dreams of wealth and beauty and power and sex appeal all wrapped up in one, and even Jin Guangyao – who was in his personal preferences quite firmly a cutsleeve – couldn’t help but intrigued by her, wondering what it might be like to touch the hem of such a glorious creature.

And next to her…

The lady was accompanied by two men that seemed completely different from each other. One was a slender and winsome young man, fluttering his eyelashes from behind a fan with a charming smile, emanating the appeal of softness and weakness, ready to be indulged. While the other…

Jin Guangyao swallowed.

He was the exact opposite of the first man. Clearly strong, muscular and powerful, and tall to the point of towering, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, a chest that you could lean your head against and an ass that begged to have someone’s hands on it – and there were his hands, big and broad, perfect for holding someone down or up if they so wished and of a size that was very promising as to what was only hinted at under his clothes. His face was hidden behind a veil as if he were a woman, marking him, like his comrade, as one of the available courtesans of the Splendid Spring, but his body was visible under clothing clearly cut to put it to the best advantage.

And oh, what advantages it had…!

“It seems we found something to the tastes of dear cousin Guangyao after all,” the idiot said mockingly, sniggering and snorting like the pig he was, and for once Jin Guangyao didn’t even care.

“Who’s the woman in front?” Wen Ruohan asked, ignoring their interplay. He seemed utterly fascinated, almost spellbound, and Jin Guangyao couldn’t blame him one bit. If this woman had been at the same brothel as his mother, there wouldn’t have even been room for jealousy or shame; his mother would have gone straight up to her to ask for some tips. “She seems…familiar, somehow.”

“That’s the madame of the Splendid Spring,” Jin Zixun said proudly, as if he’d done anything at all in relation to this – nonsense, of course. Everyone know which brothels were backed by the Jin sect, and Splendid Spring wasn’t one of them. He was acting as if he deserve a pat on the back just for the introduction! “That means she’s not for sale.”

His smile faded a little, twisting in a small bit of bitterness. “Or so she told my uncle, anyway…although I’m sure if it were Sect Leader Wen asking, the answer would undoubtedly be different.”

Probably because Jin Guangshan couldn’t slaughter prostitutes with impunity if they said no to him, whereas no one could stop Wen Ruohan from doing any damn thing he pleased.

Wen Ruohan grunted, pleased by the answer – he was a possessive man, in the rare events that he did exert himself in the realm of women, and there had been more than one instance where he’d stolen away some girl his sons had been eyeing first just for the joy of having had her first – and raised a hand, catching the lady’s eye and gesturing for her to come over, which she did.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She laughed. “You can call me Hu Jiuwei. With the ‘Hu’ being the character for fox.”

Jin Guangyao tried not to choke. There were false names and then there were false names – the lady’s theme was already clearly related to foxes, given her fox-face and fox-fur lining and the foxes embroidered onto her robes. Was the over-the-top name really necessary?

“It’s a fake name,” she added, unnecessarily.

“I see,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding a little choked himself. Possibly it was the woman calling herself ‘Foxy Ninetails’ and then kindly reassuring them all that the name was false as if she thought them too dumb to figure it out that was tripping him up a little. Jin Guangyao couldn’t tell if she was doing it deliberately in order to make her frankly inhuman beauty a little less frightening, or maybe she was blessed with so much beauty that she hadn’t bothered to cultivate her brain at all. “Are you our entertainment for the evening?”

She smiled, and any complaints Jin Guangyao (or indeed Wen Ruohan) might have had about her intelligence faded away at once.

It was that type of smile.

You could wreck nations with that type of smile. Jin Guangyao couldn’t help but wonder: how had a woman this extraordinary ended up in a brothel, of all places? How had no one snatched her up to keep her all for himself before now?

“My sons and I –” she gestured at the two behind her, “– would be more than happy to provide you with all the entertainment you could possibly want.”

Her smile widened.

“We’ve been hoping for an opportunity like this for a long time.”

[raineydays411]

Oh, what am I supposed to do without you

Loki x daughter!reader

Summary: Loki thought he was in a good place. He was married, happy and having a child. He should’ve known the universe wasn’t that kind.

A/N: God I’m so sorry about this one lol. Not much of the reader but I will be  making a second part. I hope yall like this one though. Inspiration came from “Mr, Loverman” and this fic.

Master list

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

The silence was rattling. It creeped into the room, slowly,menacingly. Threatening to make him go mad. It wrapped around his body like a familiar friend. Making it hard for him to breath as it suffocated him. He knew they were staring at him. Trying to figure out what he would do next, whether he would break or not. Truthfully he didn’t know what he would do. For now he just starred as well. Not at them, of course not. He stared at the one thing that mattered. His reason for waking up and living. The one person in this entire universe who gave his world color. He reached out to touch her. Touch the hands that were always so warm against his cold skin. Hands that held his firm and sure as she pulled him along behind her, a smile on her beautiful face. Hands that were now cold and limp, the radicant glow she had been known for gone dark. The colors she brought to his world dimmed to dull, gre, muted hues. Then a sound broke through the silence. two sounds actually. One a wail of new life, a baby taking her first breaths, and another. A wail of a man who has lost everything. A wail of agony and pain.

As the healers bustled around him, Loki had only one thought in his head. 

“What am I supposed to do without you”

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

Three months later and Loki still felt the emptiness left by his love. He heard her at night, humming sweet melodies as she stroked his hair. He hears her heartbeat as he eventually falls asleep, worn out by his constant tears. His room is in shambles, his clothes strewn about the floor, furniture smashed, everything is destroyed. Except for the things that belong to her. Her silk dresses that draped on her body perfectly were still hanging, untouched. The books she spent hours reading and re-reading remained on the shelf, collecting dust as they were no longer used. He doesn’t let anyone in their chambers. The space where they both shared. Space where they fought, made up, made love. To let someone else in would be tainting it. Soiling the memories they made together. That was one thing he could never do.

Another was look at the little monster who is responsible for this tragedy.

It was a girl. The daughter of one Loki Odinson and his beloved. 

Ironic. This child was supposed to bring happiness with its birth. Not even cleaned and it already managed to take away Loki’s light. He can barely stand looking at it. He tried, of course  he tried. But within minutes he had to call the nurse to take it away. Why? 

Because she has her mothers eyes.

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

“Loki”

“Get out”

“Loki, it's been nine months since your child was--”

“THAT THING IS NO CHILD OF MINE”

Frigga was taken aback. She knew her son was heartbroken, devastated at the loss of his wife. But to disown his daughter, that was something she didn’t see coming. 

“Loki, you are being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable? My wife has died because if that creature--”

“It is a child. A babe who has no idea who her father nor her mother is.”

“And as far as I’m concerned she never will!” Loki shouts, finally looking up at his mother. 

Frigga heart breaks for her son. She sees the utter agony he is in, the inner torment going on in his soul. Even if she didn’t see it in his face, the state of his room and self gives it away. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in the nine months that has passed. His clothes were rumpled and wrinkled, hair unkempt and wild. His face was pale and hollow, as if he was only eating enough to survive. He had dark bags under his eyes that showed that he hasn’t been sleeping well.  He truly was a man who was broken, almost beyond repair. 

“My son” Frigga said carefully,” I can never understand the pain you are going through, I pray to Valhalla I will not have to anytime soon. But please if not for yourself or that child, for the memory of her, attempt to see your daughter before making a rash decision.” And with that, she walked out of his chamber, leaving Loki to the silence again as he stared at the spot his mother stood. considering her words, he got up. picked up his room, went to bathe and walked out of the room for the first time in nine months. 

His face held no emotion as he walked down the hallways. He saw the servants stop and stare at him, shock filled their face as they saw the prince. He glared at them, sending them scurrying at the dark glance. He reached the nursery, the maid who oversaw the nursery tried to stop him. 

“My lord, you--” 

“Where is the child.” He said, calm and cool. The maid looked at him in fear, not knowing how to respond. At her silence, Loki scoffed and pushed her away, marching into the nursery. Upon entering he froze, memories of him and his beloved discussing the design they wanted for their child

**“Darling, why does the color shade matter? It’s not like the child has expectations.”

Laughter fills the air, “Loki, we must put every effort into showing our child they are loved. That includes finding the perfect shade of green to go with the room”

Loki looks at his wife, gently smiling.”If you say so my dear”**

The room was perfect. The walls were a beautiful shade of green that allowed the light into the room. There were vines and flowers crawling up the walls and draped over curtains. A white and gold crib stood in the middle of the chamber. A veil draped over it, preventing Loki from seeing the child inside. He was thankful as he worked up the courage to walk up to it. He looked out the window, seeing the stars that covered the sky, the lights of Asgard covering the earth. 

She would have loved it.

He took a deep breath and walked toward the crib. He pulled back the veil only to see that there was no child in there. 

“The babe is with your mother my lord.”

He turned to the maid. Embarrassed that she might have witnessed him reminiscing.

“And where is my mother” He asked

“In-in the dining hal--” 

He walked away before she was able to finish her sentence. He took long strides to the hall, wondering his his mother had tricked him into eating with the family.On the way, he passed a window overlooking the garden. He thinks of the times where he used to sit in it and listen to her read.

***  “...exquisite, in question more. These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows”

“My love, why do you insist on reading these midgardian stories?”

Her laughter  reaches his ears, “Because beloved, it's a different perspective to something familiar”

“Oh? and what is that ?” 

“Love”  ***

“oki--”

Hearing his name, Loki is brought back to present times once more. He looks to see Thor, watching him with careful eyes. 

“Brother, it is wonderful to see you.”

“I wish I can say the same.”

Thor laughs, a soft chuckle compared to the booming laughter Loki knows he is capable of. 

“Ah Loki, your dry wit has been missed”

Loki rolls his eyes and starts walking and Thor follows. The two walking in silence. 

“What is it like?” Loki says softly. Thor looks at him in confusion.

“It?” 

“The child.”

“Oh brother, Y/n is--”

“Y/n?” 

That was the name she wanted. If they were to have a girl. She was determined, seeing the name in the book she loved to read. He remembers when they were telling his family she was with child.

*** Everyone was seated, servants bustling around the long table. Laughter filled the hall as the sun was setting. 

“Loki, you said you had news to tell us” Frigga said, taking a sip of her wine. 

Loki smiled, looking at his wife. Her face absolutely radiant as she flashes a smile of pure joy.

“ Well,” Loki waits till Thor has taken a large swig of ale, “ My beloved and are are expecting a child.” 

Gasps fill the room as well as Thor's hacking, ale being spewed on the table. 

“Oh Loki that is wonderful!!”  Frigga exclaims standing from her seat to embrace him. “Oh my dear, this is the most wonderous news,” 

“BROTHER I can’t believe it!” Thor exclaims, lifting Loki in a crushing hug. And for once, he didn’t mind it.  He turns to her and hugs her more gently. “ You are just full of surprises aren’t you, starlight”

Laughter, “Thor, I thought I told you to stop calling me that”

Silence fills the hall as Odin clears his throat, “ Loki, you have made me proud.”

Loki smiles as his love beams at him. 

“Thank you father.”**

They reached the dining hall. A cold feeling formed in the pits of his stomach. He can see his mother, talking with a maid as she bounces the child. He can’t see it, as Frigga's back is turned to him. Odin’s presence is notably absent, a small relief on Loki's part. 

Thor notices his brother’s nerves, he pats him on the back and says, “You can do this Loki.” Then walks off to join his mother. He kisses his mothers cheek and smiles at the child. He picks her up, bouncing her a few times  prompting a small laugh. Loki gimances at the sound. 

Thor walks up to him with the baby. 

“Loki, this is Y/n Odinson”

He looks at the child. He takes in its features, Beautiful curly hair, already thick and voluminous even at this age. Brown skin, unblemished and clean. Cheeks, chubby with baby fat. And...its eyes. Those damn eyes, he could barely stand it, (e/c) eyes, the same as his lost love. In fact, almost all it’s features that once belonged to his darling. A pain filled his body. He really couldn’t stand looking at this child. 

Not when his beloved wasn’t there to gaze upon their child as well. 

No, this was not his child. Not anymore. 

“Get rid of it.” 

Shock filled the faces of both Thor and Frigga. 

“Loki you cannot be serious.”

“Brother..”

“I SAID GET RID OF IT” Loki shouts. “I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THAT LITTLE MONSTER.” 

And with that he leaves the dining hall. Leaving behind  his mother, brother and the last piece of his wife he had. He hears it’s cries fill the silence.

He had only one thought in his head as he entered his chambers.

“What am I supposed to do without you”

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

[midearthwritings]

Be Mine

A flower, for he must know your heart belongs to him.

Words Count : 2,138

Pairing : Dwalin x Hobbit!Reader

Warning : None

Author's Note : A little Valentine's day special because I'm soft for Dwalin and hobbit reader. Sorry not sorry (at all).

And because I'm feeling extra nice, here is an article that will tell you all about Valentine's Day's origins, back to its pagan roots.

Cradled in your hands, the fragile flower was lying comfortably, waiting for you to finally make your move. Its red petals were big and bright, free of any damage the weather or wild animals could have caused. They were staring back at you, reassuringly. You could almost hear them whisper soothing words. Carefully, you brought it to your face and inhaled the lovely smell, black pistils tickling your nose. It wasn't as beautiful as the ones you grew, back home. And if you had been in the Shire, you would have gathered a big bouquet. But you were not in the Shire, you were on the road, probably walking to your ultimate death. And there wasn't any garden, only wilderness. So this single wild tulip would have to do.

Before, this day had meant nothing. It had been an excuse for those who where merely interested in you to gift you with bouquets. And each time, they had been met with rejection. Until now, the only love you had ever felt had been for your friends and your garden. Back in the comfort of your Hobbit hole, only the Sun rising each morning had been able to make your heartbeat quicken.

Now, it was different. The feelings had taken you by surprise, and for long you had refused to acknowledge them. But when you were traveling with the one your heart so desired, and had to see him at every moment given, it was hard to stay in denial.

The flower was still there, reminder that you were to gift it to him.

But how?

You turned around, looking at him from your spot. Even doing something as simple as packing his belongings, he looked so very intimidating. Centuries separated the two of you. He had seen war, disasters. He knew of sorrow and death. As for you, well, a piece of pottery you really liked fell to the floor, once, it had made you sad. Compared to him, you were just a simple Hobbit from the Shire that everybody would forget about after they passed.

You sighed and your eyes dropped back on the tulip. Gently, you brushed the pad of your thumb against a petal. It was soft under your touch. Like an infant's skin.

"What is it that ye have there?"

Startled, you jumped—quite harshly—, sending the flower to the ground. With an annoyed squeal, you picked it up and blew on it a little to get rid of any dust or dirt that had found its place on the poor vegetal. You stood up, facing the dwarf.

From afar, he had been intimidating, but here, right in front of you it was worse. His tall frame, taller than the others, swallowed you up whole. His insistent gaze was piercing right through your soul and you felt your blood rushing to your face.

Perhaps, now was your only chance. The company would have to depart soon and you wouldn't stop until night. The pounding in your chest was echoing in your entire body.

With one last glance at the delicate little thing, you held your hands out to him.

"It is, ah, it is a flower." You stuttered, looking anywhere but at him. " It is a flower for, for you."

Maybe you had spoken louder than you intended to, because you were surrounded with silence. To make it even worse, you knew all eyes were on you, as if you were some sort of strange creature no one had ever seen before. Actually, you were, given the fact that most of them had never met a Hobbit before. But that was not the point now, was it?

Brush of rough fingers against yours made you look back up and you watched, embarrassed, as the soldier took the flower away from your grip. His eyes were glued to the tiny looking plant in his hand, and his eyebrow rose up slowly.

"A flower?" He asked, his eyes meeting yours again. "For me?"

Another shy squeal escaped your lips, and you nodded rapidly.

"What d'ye want me to do with it?"

The words were like a punch right in the stomach. It had taken you time to pick the prettiest out of the lot. You had chosen it with care and love. Did he not like it? If the feelings were not returned, why would he take it? To publicly humiliate you, or something like that?

Defeated, your shrugged your shoulders and brought your hand to your lips. A bad habit of yours when you were feeling down, and today was no exception. You began to chew on your thumb before having your hand batted away.

"Don't do that. Ye'll make yerself bleed."

You muttered a quiet apology. Dwalin shook his head and placed the flower in one of his pockets, on his chest. He patted the place and you frowned. Now this was unusual. In the Shire, if one didn't return another's feeling, they wouldn't take the gift. They would politely reject the offer and move on. And hadn't the dwarf just rejected you?

"Pack yer things, Halfling, we're leavin soon."

And with that, he walked away, leaving you alone and confused.

That day, the weather was on the company's good side. The Sun was clement, so was the wind. You were walking in the front, alongside of Thorin's nephews, unaware that you were being watched. You hadn't been the only one left tormented with the events of the morning. All the way in the back of the line, Dwalin was lost in his thoughts, the flower still secured in his pocket. His mind was filled with questions, such as why you would gift him with a thing as useless as this one. At the broken look on your face when he had asked, he hadn't been able to find the strength to refuse. And so, the soldier was now traveling with a flower stuck in his clothing.

Carefully, he approached the only one who he thought would be able to help him out.

"Burglar."

The same way you had this morning, Bilbo jumped, startled by Dwalin's deep voice. His hand found its way up to his chest, resting in the place of his heart.

"Master Dwalin, you have to stop creeping behind people like that. One of this days, someone's heart will stop beating."

Sensitive Hobbits. So easily scared. The dwarf was still wondering why the wizard had brought the both of you along. A poor excuse of a burglar and you. But he was in no place to question the decision. And so, he got along with it.

Carefully, to avoid damaging it, he grabbed the flower and showed it to the Hobbit. The latter frowned and held his hands up.

"Ah..." He began, his cheeks reddening. "I am very flattered but, ah well, how to say that? The feeling is not returned."

The burglar's nonsense made Dwalin shake his head. It was terrifying the quantity of absurdities Hobbits mouths could produce.

"What are ye sayin burglar? Yer little friend up there..." He explained, pointing at you. "Yer little friend up there gave me this. Why?"

Bilbo's eyes followed the direction of the Dwarf's fingers and his eyes met yours. He watched as you quickly looked away. A smile grew on his lips, illuminating his face. Now, this was very interesting. A merry event, indeed. A strange choice, he thought. But well, it was not his place to say anything. In all those years of friendship, he had had to watch you refuse gift after gift, bouquets after bouquets. Love wasn't made for you, you only loved your friends. Or so you had said. He snickered, rather loudly.

His face radiating with a joy that made the dwarf uncomfortable, he explained :

"Well, Master Dwalin, it is a tulip. Oh, those we grow in the Shire are so much prettier. But I find this one to be very beautiful, very well chosen. I must say a bouquet of this specie would look very lovely and I would-"

"Will ye tell me why or not?"

Bilbo nodded at the soldier's interruption of his rambling.

"Once a year, Hobbits give flowers to those dear to them. It is a day to honour the ones we have wed, or confess our feelings. And tulips, Master Dwalin, in the language of flowers, mean the first confession of love."

Intriguing creatures. But not an unexpected gesture, coming from them. Dwalin looked down at the small plant. It didn't look the same. It was softer, like you. Its scent reached the Dwarf's nose. He hadn't been there for long but he could remember the essence that had floated in your home. And it smelled like it, like your home. It reminded him of you in every way, no matter which angle he looked at it. Now, he could see.

"I need yer help some more, burglar."

The night wasn't particularly scary to you. It was something peaceful, even. And night was often the time of grand parties amongst Hobbits. Yet, far from everything you knew, it wasn't comforting either. Silently, you sat on your bedroll, far from the fire.

You sighed. Sometimes, you felt very lonely. You missed your friends dearly. Oh yes, you were happy that Bilbo was there with you. It made things a bit easier to go through. But it was not the same.

The tulip was still haunting your thoughts. Bright, beautiful and proud, living its best life in your beloved's garment. It had been mocking you all day long, the vivid color reminding you of the answer you were not given. Or rather the upsetting one he had served you. Childishly, you kicked at the ground and crossed your arms on your chest. It was unfair.

You froze, when a big hand was laid on top of your head.

"Ye seem mad, Halfling."

At the familiar voice, you relaxed. Although there was still tension in your shoulders. It seemed Fate wasn't done with you and wanted to torture you a little more.

You shook your head, chasing the hand away.

"That, I am not. Anger makes you stupid, and stupid gets you killed."

His laughter, loud and deep, pulled a little smile out of you. You stayed still as he sat down to your side.

"This is very well said. Yer startin to think like a real warrior."

At his compliment, your heart swell, and your body threatened to burst out with pride. In the corner of your eye, you could see the red glint of the petals, and the feeling died down. You wanted to rip it out of here, throw it on the ground and step on it the same way it had stepped on your love. But at the same time, you wished it would live timelessly for the dwarf to keep and cherish.

You sighed, for the hundredth time, when a folded piece of fabric came into your sight, making you flinch a little. Curious, you inspected it. It was simple, and you were certain it had been ripped from a clothing. The bumps told you there was something inside.

You looked up at your friend.

"What is it?"

"Take it. For ye." He replied, pushing it closer to you.

Hesitantly, you obeyed. With a swift of his hand, he ordered you to take a look inside.

Slowly, you unfolded it, revealing what it contained. The small branche decorated with dozens of tiny purple flowers caught your eyes first. It was radiant, and you couldn't believe he had managed to find some in the little time that had been given to him. You smiled, bringing it up to your face to inhale the sweet perfume.

Putting it back down, you noticed there was something else. A tiny piece of steel with a hole in it. It was engraved, the patterns really clear and neatly made.

"Yer burglar friend said Hobbits court each others with flowers." He explained, pointing at the plant. "Us, dwarves, we court with clasps we braid into our partner's hair."

Your head shot up. There was no hint of mockery on his face. You had offered him your heart, and he was now offering you his.

"Master Dwalin I-"

"Now, will ye deny me?"

You shook your head. That, you would not do. For sure. If it was no jokes, and it didn't look like one, you would not be as foolish as to deny a thing you had hoped for.

Delicately, you picked the small piece of hair ornament and handed it to your soldier, a soft smile tugging at your lips.

"Will you braid my hair, then?"

And so he did, working his strong fingers through your mane gently, while you cradled his other gift close to your heart.

Lilac, for the first feeling of love.