#i simply cannot start another wip so if anyone wants to take this and run with it pls do

[unhinged-nymph]

I know it's only 4:30 pm on a Monday but I find myself thinking about rhett buying a thrusting machine and becoming obsessed with it until he realizes he needs the real thing

[justabigoldnerd]

Find The Word Tag Game

Oooo this is interesting!!! Thank you so much @the-golden-comet for the tag!!!

Rules: Share snippets of your work containing each of the words the previous poster selected for you (optional addition: if you can't find the word in your WIPs, or you simply don't have any WIPs, you can just write a sentence around the word)

My Words: car, bright, stand, live

Your Words: rock, deny, sweat, trail

Car: (From an untitled PWP ficlet)

The day was beautiful and serene– a rarity as precious as a gemstone. A rarity that deserved celebrating. So Solo brought out an expensive bottle of champagne, put it on ice to keep it cool, rolled up his sleeves, and tied his most sentimental apron around himself to get started on an elaborate meal. Gaby was on the other side of London working on her project car in a garage U.N.C.L.E. deemed safe, and wouldn't be home until just after dinner was complete. Illya had been gracious enough to run to the grocer down the street from their apartment for an ingredient they were missing, but he wouldn't be gone for longer than ten minutes.

Bright: (From "The X-Men From U.N.C.L.E.")

Solo set his jaw, but said nothing. The woman was seeping stress that was simultaneously metallic and electric, like licking a live wire. She didn't bother with greetings, she just threw out her arms and demanded, “Where’s Lehnsherr?!” “He'll be joining us shortly,” Charles closed his eyes and pressed two fingers to his temple, “In approximately thirty seconds, to be exact. He's been to pick up a last minute addition.” On cue, another car rumbled into view, rolling to a stop near them. The car had waves of coppery anger rolling off of it. Anger and grief and the barely-there, rotting taste of fear. Its source thundered out of the passenger seat with every predicted emotion etched onto his beautiful face. Charles rushed the absurdly tall man brightly, increasing the fear stench, if only briefly. “What a pleasure to have you change your mind, Illya,” he trilled, shaking the newcomer’s hand, “Truly a delight! Please, allow me to introduce Moira MacTaggert, Napoleon Solo, and Gabriella Teller.”

Stand: (From an untitled Library AU)

Illya looks up from the newspaper he's stamping and nods curtly. She calls out a whispered thank you and hurries towards the auditorium while he neatly stacks the papers and magazines into piles of “Checked In” and “Not Check In”. He stands from the rolling chair and reaches the wire rack where they keep the book lists in one step. A low whistle and a laugh from behind him makes him roll his eyes, fondness warming his chest all the same. “I'll never get used to that,” Cheri teases from her desk, leaning to the side to see around her monitor, “You sure you don't wanna coach my son?” “I did not run track, you know this,” Illya reminds her. “Whatever you say, Mr. Six-Foot-Five,” Cheri chuckles to herself, then disappears behind her computer screen again.

Live: (From "The Most Dangerous Game", a Whumptober response I am expanding on!)

"Gentlemen, I cannot begin to properly express my apologies for this mess I've made. My misguided intentions could have cost you your lives, and for that, I am deeply sorry," Waverly removed his glasses as he stood and cleaned them with the handkerchief in his breast pocket, "I'm afraid I've overstayed my welcome. You're free to discharge yourself whenever you're ready. Please take care of yourselves. I'll see you three in office in a few weeks. Or less, if you're up for it."

Soooo I may have cheated a little and included plurals/adverbs but I don't have many WIPS that actually have writing in them yet lmaooo

Anyway, no pressure tagging @pippinoftheshire @huggiebird @yallwildinrn @too-young-to-fall-in-love @times-up-alone-tonight

@nicijones @cha-melodius @heytheredeann @thattripleabattery and anyone else who wants to join!! 💕💕💕💕

[baladric]

For the writer ask meme!! 🎀 🪄 💌 (I wanted to ask everything but I showed restraint- if 3 is too many just do one or two ok love yooouuu)

hey i LOVE u :')

fic writer ask meme!

🎀 Give yourself a compliment about your own writing

oh boy hmmM well hey there little guy, you sure can write a sentence that punches people in the face!!!!! and you're very good at naming ocs, and your worldbuilding gets lusher and lovelier every time you sit down with it!!!

🪄 What is your post-writing/sharing aftercare? How do you take care of yourself or celebrate yourself when you've finished a fic?

answered here!

💌 Share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

i say it a lot and i KNOW y'all always tell me to hush but i feel SO BAD that all i ever wanna talk about is pirate au, and yet there's nothing out here for anyone to READ!! STILL!!! nearly a year later!!!!! but it's so in progress, and it only gets better, and i literally cannot wait to tie off the first draft and start the editing pass to make it cohesive from the start—at which point we'll start posting it! like post as we edit kind of a thing!!

so. i mean. UH. HERE'S A FUCKIn PREQUEL PIRATE FICLET IN ITS ENTIRETY a;ldkfjwl;f shhhhh nobody tell celebros i shared her xmas present before we posted the fic (jk she reads my tumblr)

He did not know why he was surprised, but all told, it took a good long while for sailing to become fun. He had theories, of course—six years of running wild with only Freja to impose a schedule had evidently done a number on his habits—and now there were work shifts to keep track of, and problems to solve with only one right answer (“When in doubt, call for Sozu or Arnezha or Iölo or me or literally anyone other than Sinker, I beg of thee, darling.”) There were knots to learn—a startling discovery, as he had thought he knew them all already—and terminologies and what do you mean, there are two ships?

Simply put, it was a lot, and Maia took care not to harbor regrets, but it was occurring to him in drips and drabs that this was maybe a teeny tiny little bit of a mistake. That, perhaps, Shaleän had been right, and he was not necessarily cut out for the sailing life. That maybe Paris had had a point when he hinted that Maia could have been of just as much help (if not more) at home, with Freja.

He was tired and he was sore in places he hadn’t known he owned and he missed his warm little bed in Freja’s warm little cottage and this was all just so strange. Idolatry was a child’s game in which he had seriously overinvested, and now it was like being struck over the head to realize that Shaleän on her gilded pedestal was a criminal—a pirate, the King of pirates.

He’d had an inkling, of course, but it was one thing to fantasize about his rake of an aunt, the glint of her saber raised in the battle cry, and another to stumble across a frightened goblin child in the same cargo hold in which he himself had hidden not two days before, her hair shorn in a servant’s crop and one of her ears notched in a clear sign of past cruelty. It had been another thing entirely to calm her down and bring her to Shaleän, propped on his hip, his collar still damp from her tears, and learn that she was part of a matched set squirreled away in a secret room on the ship, and that her mother was as yet too deep in the megrims that sometimes stole over a person whose situation has taken a sudden, hopeful turn to keep a proper eye on her michen.

Was this smuggling? Soul trafficking?

“No,” Shaleän had said, her frown heavy and fitting far too well on her face; lines Maia had attributed solely to her broad, bright grin suddenly made more sense. Frown lines. Scowl lines, like wheel ruts worn into the hard-packed earth of her. “It is liberation, Maia. We offer what freedom is available in this blighted world to the people who need it most, and my only regret is that I cannot give it to everyone suffering under the weight of man’s cruelty and greed.”

So, he was… adjusting, one could say. In light of the insistence with which he had forced his way into this world—onto Shaleän’s ship, into Shaleän’s so-called business—he found this struggle to be more than a little embarrassing.

It was not fun—it was work. Good work. Work with an undeniably positive influence on the world, regardless of who might label the unlicensed liberation of indentured servants a crime.

Maia brought a smile to the fugitive Min Pallared’s face within an hour of meeting her properly (And Cstheio Cairei, was the hold in which they hid their refugees small) and it was work, but he felt that spark of light as a tectonic shift in the bedrock of his soul. Paris was wrong—he could help here, without a sword. And so he did it again with their next lot of escapees—a family of Telvar, whose anxious tails and too-wide eyes made Maia sick to his stomach in the imagining of the lifetime of cruelty required to so damage them. They reminded him too much of himself, those first few months away from Edonomee, and when he laid in his hammock between shifts and caretaking duties, he could not help but sink into gruesome thoughts of what he himself would have become, had he been left to Setheris’ cruel hands for a lifetime.

It was work, to be sure, but he had never felt so alive as he did in those first months aboard that two-faced ship.

All around him were people, storied and vibrant, and he doubted he would ever tire of cracking them open, that they might tell him of their families, their dreams, lost loves and the folklore that belongs to single blood lines. Sozu Khalamar and his grandmother’s insistence on the ill omens of curdling milk. Sinker Shipsblight and the long string of willful calamities that had earned him his moniker, and the respect of Paris. Iölo Marin and her repeating dream of sprouting wings to fly away from everything she had ever known.

And, of course, there was the music. He had not expected the music.

Sometimes, as they drew to the end of a hard sail, Paris would turn a blind eye to the halving of the usual night shift in favor of a sleepy skeleton crew abovedecks, and everyone else would retreat to the ship’s galley and drain the last kegs of ale dry. It was a raucous thing, everyone thoroughly soused, and then someone would start singing—Sinker, usually, lusty and loud as the south wind.

The repertoire were things Maia had heard before, having spent nearly half his life in sailing communities: rowing songs, shanties, bawdy ballads. He knew the tunes to most of them, if not the lyrics—and the ones he did not know came to him quickly.

Almost six months on, he felt he had nearly gotten the hang of it all. He could scale the mizzenmast in sixty seconds, rarely got tangled up in all the different words for wind, and could wail a bawdy drinking song with the best of them.

They had just finished one such song, and Maia’s cheeks were hot with drink and the youthful embarrassment of singing about breasts with a zealous lot of sailors on a dry spell and a trio of especially fervent marnai. He was fully considering tapping out from the excitement of it all, when someone cried over the merry shouting of the men, “Let’s have Maia lead one!”

The roar that rose at the idea was a thing of beauty. It sped Maia’s pulse, for he doubted that even an ocean’s worth of ale could fake such unmistakeable delight. The clamor rang of something like acceptance, and Maia was helpless to resist the hands that chivvied him to stand atop the swaying table.

Someone pressed a fresh flagon of ale into his hand, and he heard shouts of “Let’s have it, lad!” and “Put thy chest into it, sprout!” as well as a clangor of song requests—and, so dizzied, Maia startled himself as much as everyone else by belting out the opening call of his favorite shanty:

“Ye nations have your princes, you kingdoms have your kings,

But we who set to sail the sea

Bow only to the Wind!”

Laughter and cheers of recognition met the first bit of the tune, and though his voice shook with sudden nerves at the start, by the time he reached the chorus, he had built to a jubilant shout. He raised his flagon as all joined in the singing.

“So follow me, lads,” the crew of the Glorious Dragon wailed as one voice, and Maia stomped the tabletop with all his might.

“‘Fore he storms upon the fray!

Corat’ will whip you down to dust

And blow you straight away!”

The beating of fists and stomping of feet raised the beat of The Ballad of King Corat’, and Maia did not think he had ever smiled as hard as he did then, singing of his legendary aunt, the King of Pirates.

“The baron sees no bloodshed, the emperor no rain,

But the Serpent King who skims the sea

Reigns only over pain!”

The men howled, and a jostling in the crowd caught Maia’s attention—the crew shifting to give Shaleän, Corat’ herself, space as she waded towards the table, her grin a rakish slash of white in the warm dimness of the galley. Maia beamed and reached to haul her up beside him, and they stomped out the chorus together, arms around shoulders.

“So follow me lads!

‘Fore we heel to his domain!

Corat’ will crush us down to dust

And rinse us down the drain!”

“Your krakens and your sirens,” Maia sang, thrilled as Shaleän joined him, her voice rough and far from tuneful.

“Your leviathans and all

Know better than to raise a hand

To Cruelty the Squall!”

She clashed her flagon to his, dousing them both thoroughly in ale, and Maia did not know if he had ever been so happy in his life. It was such a simple feeling, yet so large that it brimmed over all of his shakily sketched borders, rendering him a jubilant creature in Shaleän’s tight grip.

“So follow me, lads!

‘Fore he finds us in a pall!

Corat’ will strike us down to dust

And spell a fell downfall!”

And so they sang and stomped and crowed for the whole sprawl of verses, telling a blazing tale of Shaleän’s conquests—and her pressed to his side all the while, loud and calamitous and alive alive alive. The both of them, so very, wildly alive.

Maia’s voice was shot by the end and his blood ran hot with a palpable sense of belonging unlike anything he had ever felt. Joy, repeating. Life, glorious and wretched and reeking of too many people in too small a space.

Shaleän embraced him then, like she knew what brilliant cacophony was brewing in his chest. Like it was the work of her life to hold him in one piece, whether the shaking be a thing of joy, or of grief.

“I love thee, my heart,” she murmured for him alone. “More than every jewel in thy Lady’s starry sky.”

“Oh,” Maia said—a silly thing, for he had long known the timbre of his aunt’s love. It was only that having this talented, determined crew respond to him with nothing but delight in their collective voices had stripped him raw, and it brought to the surface that little part of him that still curled into a protective ball when he slept. And that part was ever so hungry for all Shaleän and her crew offered.

“I love thee, too,” he replied, squeezing her tight enough that she gave a little Oof of surprise. “More than the whole sea.”

“More than the mermaids?”

“More than every blessed fucking fish in the place.”

Their laughter was lost beneath the clamor of their crew, which was just fine with them.

[jordyn-degas]

All my life

Characters: Naruto Uzumaki x fem! reader

Warnings: characters are aged up; blood; mentions of death; angst and fluff and smut and whatnot;

💀 NSFW! Minors DNI! 💀

Notes: i found myself writing away on this while taking a break from my main two WIP - just my brain being overloaded

Special note: this is a spur of the moment, emotions fueled story i wrote for my babe @uchihamylove26 that i appreciate so fucking terribly 🥰 nothing but love love so much love - yes, it's kind of a last moment surprise 😏

Mood 🎧 LABRINTH - Forever

"All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name." - André Breton

There was a time when you would believe anything that anyone would tell you. Of course, no one can fight or oppose the innocence of a child even if they were born in a world where the powerful are either praised or hunted, in a world where being different does not count much in the eyes of others, in a world where you have to find a way to belong while forced into it, in a world when your only chance is to be the best there is. That is what the innocence of a child has to fight and endure before failing terribly, diminishing into nothing but the purest form of maturity when there should be none. Losing too much and too many, fighting too much and too many, feeling too much for too many, bleeding too much for too many, crying too much for too many. That is how your heart was on the brink of turning into ashes, scorched by the darkness of a world you no longer deemed necessary. Why should a child face the world without their beloved parents? Why should a teenager not be capable to love as they see others doing it? Why should they be subjected to pain when it's their time in life to run around and play aimlessly? Why should you become the person in need of saving? Why should you feel that it is alright to die?

Questions roamed your mind right on the brink of death, no longer caring that each individual had a unique life, you have deemed yours unnecessary for quite some time now and it was alright. Through all the pain, the suffering and the darkness, you have managed to find a purpose. That is what life is about, right? Roads that lead you to the final purpose, the final act.

"You." you hissed pointing your finger at the person in front of you that was caged painfully to the ground. "Remember when we first met? God, I was a menace."

Ignoring completely the danger your senses screamed about, you dragged your feet along the ground, dust clouds lifting with every step, blood trickling down the arms and pooling into your chest. The purpose had to be fulfilled.

"And somehow you managed to save me." a chuckle escaped before gradually turning into a hoarse laugh. "You were relentless. I contemplated cutting your head off at least once. You simply did not give up on me. You refused."

Whoever was watching from the sidelines could easily say that you had a massive death wish. Your body was angled forward, the limp in your left leg getting more painful by the second, a black rod embedded into your right shoulder as it became heavier with each step you took. The purpose had to be fulfilled.

"Why the hell did you come into my life?" you sighed rolling your eyes. "Why the hell did you cared?"

Grunting, leaving trails of blood behind you, your hand wrapped around a black rod that was embedded into the body of one, if not the only, person you loved so much you would die for them. Well .. you already chose to.

"Because of you I started to feel again." you snorted, amused terribly by the fact that you actually had a functioning heart. "You made me want to be the strongest, to be the greatest, to love and protect. You made me want to be ME again."

The other hand wrapped around the rod, under the other, pulling it out with all the force you had left. Wanting to grab another one, you were pulled backwards by the collar of your half-ripped blouse, bandages wrapped around your torso and half of your arm.

"Futile." Pain's voice boomed into your ear.

The only, rational thing you could think of was to laugh. A clear, happy laugh that had even him slightly surprised. It was, however, short-lived as another black rod slashed right through your stomach, blood exploding out of your mouth and flowing down your chin, neck and chest, Pain's fingers letting go of your collar, waiting for you to make your grand drop to the ground. How disappointing! You were still standing, barely, but it did not matter.

"Y/N .." the voice you, oh, loved so fucking much spoke as you could feel your spirit shattering piece by piece along with the last few breaths.

Your head moved slightly to the right, tilting it a bit as your eyes comprehended the body of a girl with the purest of hearts, one of you've always yearned to have. A dear friend that was mercilessly punished for acting on the same love you possessed. The smile of sadness graced your lips as you wished for her to see that the fight she put up with was not in vain. You were going to set free the person that your hearts gravitated towards even if it was the last thing you do in this poisoned world.

"P-please .. stop .." sad, angered tones pinched your eardrums and you tilted your head into the opposite direction.

Bright blue engulfed into a never seen before shock melted into your eyes, seeing on the face you could never get enough of a fear of such purity it had you shake your head slowly. Can you imagine? Standing before the person you love, accepting the trade of your life for theirs, knowing that this is the last scene. Memories and emotions exchanged through teary eyes, the curtain settling slowly as you approached the last minute of the final act.

"Your dream to become Hokage?" you asked before coughing a copious amount of blood. "Don't you dare disappoint me."

Eyes flickering with pain, you were watched and admired as you slammed your palms together, Chakra snapping powerfully in between them. With a laugh that could warm the coldest of hearts, the black rods you aimed for all this time broke in half, knees hitting the ground as freedom graced your presence. That was it.

"Y/N!" a heart shattering scream was the last thing you heard before your succumbed into an infinite darkness.

You fulfilled your most desired purpose, the one that fueled your will to live and do it purely: to love and protect Naruto Uzumaki.

→ 4 years later ←

"This was the last time." you said grabbing the bra and shirt from the floor. "I mean it!"

"You said that .." Naruto chuckled wrapping his arms around your waist. ".. the last three times as well."

His warm breath caressed your neck, lips trailing small kisses from behind the ear and along the shoulder before he softly bit on it. A deep sigh left your body, fingers intertwining with his on your belly.

"Naruto, don't be an idiot." you replied pulling away from him. "You're getting married in a month."

"It's not my fault you decided to return the exact same night I proposed to Hinata." he replied wrapping his fingers around your wrist and pulling you back, breasts colliding against his toned chest. "It was as if you sensed it, I swear."

"I had no idea but it also wasn't a surprise." you said averting your gaze.

"What do you mean?" he asked, index and middle fingers settling under your chin and pushing it up so his bright blue eyes could capture yours.

"I mean .." you coughed slightly. "Hinata always loved you and you were bound to notice it at some point. She never gave up and got what she wanted."

"You sound .. different." Naruto squinted a bit as if he was searching for that burning answer to the question he has asked himself since before the war. "Does this bother you?"

"W-what?" you asked swallowing hard. "No. Why would it?"

Trying to hide under Naruto's deep gaze, you turned around and covered your breasts with the bra, pointing at him to help you close it. The hot tips of his fingers danced around the skin on your back, each movement being met by goosebumps and you quickly put the shirt on. You could feel his gaze following you around the room with a suspicion that shouldn't have been there in the first place. That bloody organ inside your chest betrayed you once again, heartbeats intensifying while trying to get dressed and leave as soon as possible.

"This is not fair, Naruto." you sighed standing in the doorframe, back turned as you were unable to face him. "For her, for you and .. for me."

"For you?" he asked feeling a glimmer of hope bubbling.

"It's done." you cut him off quickly. "Go out there and be an amazing, loving husband."

"Alright." Naruto caved as much as he did not wanted to.

Squeezing your eyes shut as if you were in pain, biting the inside of your cheek, you left his bedroom, his hallway and his home. Stepping quickly into the middle of the busy street, head falling backwards to meet the dark sky and its stars, you felt doing something you haven't done since the war ended.

"You being here means only one thing." Shikmaru said as he sat at the edge of the Third Hokage's sculpted head.

Not replying, you walked up next to him and sat down, legs crossed, hand shaking as you pulled out a packet of cigarettes, unable to pull one out on your own. Tears streamed down your face as Shikamaru, your better half, placed a cigarette in between your trembling lips, the sound of a lighter filling up the air. Crackling slowly under the pressure of the flame, your cigarette started burning, lungs punched with the undeniable feeling of a vice.

"I-I can't think .." you whispered, smoke coming out of your mouth.

"Come here." Shikamaru said throwing his arm around your shoulders. "I'm here."

"Why didn't I come home earlier?" you asked overlooking the village. "Gaara didn't needed me anymore for quite some time."

"Because you were afraid." Shikamaru replied, his lips touching your temple. "You have always been afraid to let yourself love and you cannot be blamed for it. The loss of your parents and sister, comrades and friends broke you."

"I died for him, Shika." you breathed, the hotness of the cigarette pinching your lips. "I loved in that moment so much that I was alright with me being gone, with him finding happiness, with him loving someone."

"You thought of yourself as being dead." he replied. "You are very much alive and everything you had wished for Naruto back then became a reality. Living in the Sand Village with Gaara, away from everything that ever broke you, was the decision that mended your heart, your soul. Do not regret it."

"That is the thing." you sighed as he wiped off a couple of tears. "I don't regret a single thing that I did. Including sleeping with him behind Hinata's back when they are about to get married. You know I trust you with my life and I cannot lie to you .."

"In those moments you felt that he is yours." Shikamaru stole the exact thought your were about to put into words. "Do you want to know what I think?"

"Hm?" you turned your head to face him, flicking the finished cigarette into the air.

"He will always be yours." Shikamaru shrugged. "And you .. his."

Lower lip trembling, hands tugging at his vest, tears rolling down your puffy cheeks once again, Shikamaru smiled softly and pulled you into his lap, body curling into him in hopes of disappearing. You never thanked him for being the best friend you have ever wished for, that better half capable of keeping you grounded but .. Shikamaru knew. He always does. All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

➢➢➢

A week later you found yourself staring at multiple dresses while holding the invitation to Naruto and Hinata's wedding in your hand. It was one of those days when you contemplated between burning it and keeping it. Every single moment of your life seemed as if moving in slow motion, barely active in any conversation with your friends, unable to maintain a trail of thought, your mind completely filled with every single touch Naruto has ever inflicted upon you, every single kiss that blessed your lips or skin, every single sweet nothing whispered in your ear, every single morning with breakfast in bed. You were remembering a life that you could've had, one wrapped in a hidden lie known only by those you both trusted. The common occurrence of passing past by each other in the street, shoulders brushing, fingers slightly touching as a deep pain suffocated your heart, small smiles being stolen over a bowl of ramen at Ichiraku's with friends, innocent touches that would only fuel the fire in your heart.

"Y/N?" Sakura asked squeezing your shoulder. "Have you decided?"

"Can you come again with me tomorrow?" you asked eyeing the ground.

"Of course." she replied with a small smile. "It's no rush."

"Thank you." you smiled placing the invitation in your bag. "Are you coming tonight to Shikamaru's?"

"Yes!" Sakura grinned. "I need to get some drinks in your system."

"Please!" you groaned as you both left the shop.

"It'll be just us two and Ino." Sakura said with a sly smirk.

"What about Ten Ten? Hinata?" you asked surprised.

"Both in a mission." Sakura replied stopping to buy some medicinal herbs.

"Then come over and we can go from mine." you said relieving her of one of the bags.

Throwing your arms around each other's waists, holding one bag each, you made your way towards your home feeling a bit better, feeling as if tonight's going to be a great night. Right?

➢➢➢

And that is how you found yourself spread wide open on a desk somewhere in Shikamaru's house, friends laughing and drinking outside while you had the man you love ravage you in the darkness. Fingers playing with one of your nipples while a tongue swirled deliciously on your wetness, the other fingers exploring the inside of your pussy. Back arched against the wooden piece of furniture, arms thrown back in pleasure, moans softly cutting the silence. And all you had to do was to flirt with Kiba while sitting on his lap. The image of Naruto furiously dragging you inside the house and the way his tongue worked its magic had the building orgasm spill, legs shaking as his hands moved to hold your thighs, drinking in all of you and more.

"Not so tough now, eh?" Naruto asked with a smirk plastered on his face, the faint moonlight revealing his cum smeared lips, an image that could easily send you over the edge again.

"With those lips you kiss your soon-to-be wife?" you bit back viciously, a wave of deep satisfaction washing over you.

A shrill sound came out the moment his hands wrapped around your ankles and pulled them upwards, legs resting on his shoulders, a dark shade of blue taking over his usual eyes. Hands grasping your hips, pulled to the edge of the desk a bit more, Naruto let his body weight press on your legs until you were exposed under his lustful gaze more than ever before. The tip of his cock grazed your entrance and you jumped slightly from the contact much to his amusement. This man was so incredibly sexy it was almost bewildering to you. Hair hanging on his forehead as there was nothing to hold it in place, cum smeared lips slightly apart, biceps tensed as he held onto your body, a pale blush caressing his cheeks as he eyed your exposed pussy as if it was the first time seeing it. You could never understand the obsession of women with Sasuke when there was Naruto, at least in your eyes. Satisfaction could be read on his face as your eyes started to widen, inhaling sharp breaths as his cock slowly pushed past the muscle ring, slowly making its way inside of you. Your pussy welcomed him with excitement, having it stretched out being its favorite meal of the day. Mouth opening wider, uneven breaths coming out as you adjusted as much as possible, Naruto's tongue finding yours, lips melting into each other with him bottoming out in your hungry pussy.

"I'm sorry." Naruto whispered against your lips as he pulled out.

"For wh-.." words caught in your throat as he slammed into you in one go, a dragged out and loud moan erupting from your lungs.

You're mad at me. You thought as your arms fell backwards again, his delicious cock being sucked in by your wet pussy, every thrust being fully pumped into you, skins slapping against each other with vulgar noises. Hands finding their way on his back with nails scratching Naruto on purpose, a low growl resounding into your mouth, picking up the pace with every scratch, mercilessly bullying the gummy walls your pussy blessed him with. You were getting off on the high of Naruto trying to explain the claw marks on his back, the nastiness and viciousness of your own thoughts arousing you even more, clenching around the best cock you've ever had in your entire life, that earning yourself sweet moans from the man that could not stay away from you. Keeping your hips in place, Naruto pushed himself even more into you and you gasped from the sensation of your cervix being hit so perfectly, hot juices spilling out of your pussy, splashing all over his pelvis and thighs, dripping on the wooden floor. Your mind was filled only with him. Him and his throbbing, hard cock claiming you completely, ravaging your pussy to the point of not being able to walk properly after.

"So good for me." Naruto breathed into your mouth. "This perfect, tight pussy only for me."

"Only f-for you!" you moaned as the desk started moving along with the powerful thrusts he pumped into you.

The squelching sounds your pussy was making as his cock slammed deeply inside of you was messing with your mind terribly. Your want and arousal for Naruto combined with his hunger for your was driving you over the edge, the swollen spot being completely under his control, nerves electrified to the maximum, teeth clashing in the sloppy kisses you were exerting on each other.

"God, you were made for me!" Naruto moaned with every clench of your pussy. "Fuck!"

"You fill me up so good!" you started rambling from the pleasure, losing all sense of reality. "So, so big in my little pussy!"

Through all the thrusts, the moans and incredible pleasure, you didn't even realized how out of it you were before as next words rolled off your lips.

"I love you!" you moaned digging your nails into his back, wanting nothing more than to write your name on it. "Fuck! So fucking much!"

The words shot through Naruto's entire body and nervous system, gasping when hearing them, wanting nothing more than to consume you and absorb you into himself for life. Picking you up, he sat on the desk as he felt your were both close, your knees digging into the wood, not slowing down the pace, bouncing up and down his big cock with his head falling backwards. Sucking him in, clenching constantly around the throbbing shaft, Naruto placed one of his hands behind your neck and pulled you forward until your foreheads were flushed against each other.

"Say it again." Naruto growled eyes fixated on yours.

"I love you." you whispered feeling the coil in your stomach tightening.

"Again, baby." he followed capturing your lips in a deep kiss, his heart beating as never before.

"I love you so fucking much, Naruto." you said breathless, eyes rolling into the back of your head as he started meeting your thrusts halfway.

Tensing slightly, your pussy clenched around him like never before and the coil snapped, releasing you into a crashing orgasm, mouth wide open, moaning your release into Naruto's as he fucked his cock into you a bit longer, chasing his own while completely enthralled with the words he always wished he'd hear one day. With your lips wrapped around his, Naruto let himself go, spilling into you completely as you always loved the way it felt when filled up by him.

"Fuck!" you whispered pulling back a bit shocked, only now, realizing what you said not too long ago. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not marrying her." Naruto said still inside of you. "No one in their right mind would do such a thing when they love someone else."

"W-what?" you asked swallowing hard.

"I can't marry her when I'm in love with you." he said again not knowing how'd you react seeing the expression on your face.

"Say it again." you cupped his cheeks.

"I can't marry her when I'm in love with you." Naruto repeated seeing tears building into your eyes.

"A-are you?" your voice shaky and unsure. "R-really? R-really?"

"I love YOU." he smiled brushing off a couple of tears that escaped your eyes. "I always did."

"B-but .." you tried speaking but were too overwhelmed.

"Wrong timing." he whispered against your lips. "Do I have to say it again until you understand?"

"Yes." you nodded searching in his eyes for a second-guessing that was not there.

"I love you, Y/N." Naruto said stealing a kiss. "I love you!"

"Oi!" Shikamaru banged on the door and you both froze. "Are you two done fucking on my desk? The dinner is ready."

"Shit." you whispered pushing yourself off Naruto. "I have to clean myself."

"THIS IS NOT A SECRET FOR US!" Ino yelled from the other side of the door.

"Two minutes!" Naruto announced taking your hand into his. "Come on, baby. Let's get you all cleaned up."

Putting your clothes back on, arm wrapped around your shoulders as yours went around his waist, you both stepped into the bathroom next door with your friends grinning while gathered in the hallway. You were going to worry about Hinata and the fallout tomorrow. Tonight? You wanted to hear that 'I love you' being whispered once again into your ear at the dinner table.

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

And now I can.

Naruto Uzumaki.

[northofdespair]

Well. This was going to be a 500-character anonymous ask. I had no plans of using this forgotten Tumblr account. And then I wrote 2k in one sitting this afternoon.

So, Clem, this is for you! Hats off for drawing me out of the abyss to pen a little pseudo-fic for my favorite pairing of all time. Forgive (m)any mistakes and the informal style, I suppose I really could have refined it, but I wanted to get this out here before it went to collect dust with the rest of my 30k+ of Obikin WIPs due to crippling perfectionism. 😅 I will say it’s a bit angsty and a departure from Anakin finding Obi-Wan’s fighting nothing but sexy… there is nothing to say he didn’t in the past, but my brain just went on auto-pilot and this is what happened. Hope you get a little enjoyment out of it anyways! 😘

For those of you who have not read it yet, you’ll get a lot more out of this post if you read @obiwanobi’s posts here, here, here, and here. <3

~*~

So Fight Club AU, right? What if Ahsoka and Anakin make their way down to the lower levels, following a lead on their latest undercover assignment. They decide to split up to search for what they’re looking for and Ahsoka soon finds herself weaving through the cheering and jeering crowds of a club that is far too loud and flashy. She peeks curiously over the tops of various creatures’ heads to see what they’re shouting about and sees a human and a Devaronian trading blows. A fight, whatever. They happen all the time in the lower leve-IS THAT MASTER KENOBI?!

That is DEFINITELY Master Kenobi and boy, she’s never been one to rat out fellow Jedi, but even if he’s grinning like a madman, he is hurt, and oh she is getting Anakin right now, because she doesn’t know exactly what to do, and Force knows that if Obi-Wan will listen to anyone, it’s Anakin. He’s not far away, and when she drags him into the club, he goes a little pale at the sight of Obi-Wan in the ring, standing victoriously over his opponent. 

 She thinks that he’s going to go get him, pull him aside and do something to fix this, but suddenly someone else in the crowd spots him. Suddenly the cheers and taunts are directed at Anakin, and Ahsoka has no idea what the kriff is happening. All at once Anakin is being pulled and pushed, and then both of her Masters are in the ring, eyeing each other up and down and squaring off. Obi-Wan flirts with Anakin as though he expected him to be there, as though he were an enemy, and her jaw drops as Anakin flirts back. Anakin quickly glances at Ahsoka over the crowd, and they begin.

 It is both everything and nothing like watching them spar at the Temple. She sees all the ways in which they are familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses, but here the graceful arcs of lightsabers have been traded for brutal, bare-knuckled blows. They sweep under and over each other, deftly avoiding blows as much as landing them, and the crowd loves it. She spares a glance at the bookie, who looks like the tooka that caught the mouse-droid.

 As the fight goes on, Ahsoka realizes two things. 

 One, this is not the first time that they have fought in this ring. Even for Jedi–an identity that they are suppressing extremely well considering the circumstances–they are altogether too at ease with the brutal hand-to-hand combat. The way they dance around each other and strike viperously quick would be beautiful if it weren’t so horrible. It is certainly awe-striking, and while all Jedi are trained in hand-to-hand, she’s never seen them fight like this.

 Two, Obi-Wan is incredible. Anakin is holding his own and powerful in his own right, but even after knocking that Devarionian to the floor, bruised, bleeding, and tired, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a force to be reckoned with.

 In a flurry of movement, Obi-Wan pins Anakin to the ground, just managing to overpower his former student despite his injuries. Ahsoka can barely see over the crowd as he sits on top of his Padawan, then offers him a hand up. She can’t discern their expressions, but they do not say anything to each other and make their way out of the ring, going in vaguely the same direction. 

 Ahsoka presses her lips together and follows Anakin to demand what in Sith Hells just happened. Suddenly the mysterious bruises that Anakin had started showing up with–the ones that he thought he was hiding well–make some sort of surreal sense.

 She catches up to him in an abandoned alleyway seven blocks or so away from the club and opens her mouth to lay into him, but before she can draw breath, Obi-Wan’s figure melts out of the shadows from the other direction. Neither man has seen her, and something about the intense look on Obi-Wan’s face makes her slip into the shadows herself. 

 She has to slap a hand over her mouth to tamp down on a surprised squeak a second later as Obi-Wan takes Anakin by the shoulders, slams him into the wall, and kisses him hard. Anakin kisses him back, hands coming up to scrabble at Obi-Wan’s shoulders, and breaks the kiss to get out, 

 “Wait, Obi-Wan,“ he gasps as Obi-Wan bites at his neck and Ahsoka wants to flee, but she feels rooted in place. “Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, she- hhhn- stop, would you?” He finally brings his hand to the side of Obi-Wan’s face, catching his attention for long enough to realize that he’s serious, if a little dazed. “Ahsoka saw us fight.” 

 His voice is quiet, but Ahsoka has always had good hearing, even for a Togruta. Obi-Wan freezes, and the two stare at each other for a long moment, breathing heavily into each other’s space. 

 “She led me to you because you were hurt,” Anakin whispers, and the tender concern on his face as he brushes a thumb over Obi-Wan’s swollen cheekbone is enough to cause Ahsoka to avert her gaze. 

 “Anakin, you know-“ Obi-Wan’s voice is different from any time she’s ever heard it, deep and rumbling with an emotion she doesn’t... quite want to think about, but Anakin cuts him off. 

 “I know, Master. I know. But she was worried, and I don’t... think she was wrong to be,” it comes out hesitant, and she looks up to find that Anakin looks like he’s prepared to flinch away from a blow. 

 Before tonight, Ahsoka never would have thought that her Grandmaster was capable of dealing any such hit to Anakin, but Anakin’s split lip and blackened eye prove her wrong. She still can’t believe it, and her heart tells her that even now he would never hit Anakin outside of the ring or the training salles, but it’s a hard thought to reconcile with as her Master stands before her with such prominent injuries.

 Obi-Wan stares at Anakin again before sighing softly. “You don’t want to fight. You don’t want me to fight,” he says, and it’s a flattened-out question. Anakin bites his lip, wincing at the painful reminder of the cut there. 

 “Not- not like this,” he whispers. “Obi-Wan, I... I know that this is an escape from everything. I’m not saying it’s even bad, Force, I’d be one hell of a kriffing hypocrite to tell you that. I know I’ve given in to my own methods of escape, but Master, I-“ His voice cracks and he breaks off, working his jaw as he stares at Obi-Wan with an expression so open that it hurts. “I have you now, and you’re- you’re all I ever wanted. You’re all I need. Obi-Wan, if I’m not- if I’m not enough, then tell me how-“

 Obi-Wan cuts him off with a kiss, raking his fingers through Anakin’s golden curls and holding him there. Anakin’s eyes flutter shut as he lets out a whimper from the back of his throat, and Ahsoka has to avert her gaze once more. She’s intruding on something so viscerally personal, but she still cannot command her feet to move. 

 So she listens to the sound of lips parting for little kisses that make a larger whole, that bring a low moan from Obi-Wan’s throat in answer to Anakin’s desperate pitch. She listens until they part, and then risks a glance up at her Masters. 

 They are somehow closer than before, foreheads resting together with their eyes shut, breathing each other in as Obi-Wan strokes Anakin’s hair and Anakin shivers. 

 “Dear one,” Obi-Wan whispers. “You are enough. I… was afraid, my love.” Anakin’s eyes open in shock as the confession falls from Obi-Wan’s lips. “I was afraid that this... was the only way I could have you. It’s different down here. What happens here stays here, and I thought-“ 

 “Obi-Wan. I only ever came down here in the first place because I want you. All the time. Force, I want you so badly it hurts. I don’t want this to stay here. I- do you really-“ 

 “Yes.” 

 Anakin chokes a laugh and fixes Obi-Wan with a fondly exasperated look. “You don’t even know what I was going to say,” he accuses, resting his head back on the wall. 

 Obi-Wan leans forward to pursue him, placing a gentle kiss to the side of his mouth, then another directly on his lips. “I do, darling. Of course I do.” 

 And as Ahsoka watches Anakin’s expression change from incredulity, to wonder, to overwhelmed adoration, she knows that her Grandmaster was not simply speaking of knowing the question that never left her Master’s lips. 

 “Me too,” Anakin whispers, voice thick, and Ahsoka can see the shape of Obi-Wan’s grin even from the severe angle that her perspective offers. 

 Anakin smiles back and flinches again as his lip pulls taut. Obi-Wan hums and reaches up to brush his thumb over the wound.

 “Not a good look on you, is it, darling,” he remarks. 

 Anakin scoffs, rolling his eyes playfully. 

 “You should see the other guy,” he smirks. 

 “Ha, ha,” Obi-Wan intones dryly, and Anakin laughs. 

 They sober quickly, and Ahsoka holds her breath as the air and the Force around them seems to charge once more. She knows by the look on Anakin’s face that he’s working towards saying something, and Obi-Wan runs bloodied fingers through his curls in patient strokes.

 “I won’t tell you to stop,” Anakin finally speaks quietly, looking down between them. 

 “But you want me to,” Obi-Wan matches his volume and sincerity. 

 After a moment, Anakin nods quietly, still averting his gaze from Obi-Wan’s face. Her Grandmaster lifts Anakin’s chin with a gentle hand, and their gazes meet once again. 

 “I meant it when I said you are enough, my dear. This habit... if I’m honest, it started when I failed to release certain feelings into the Force. The fighting cleared my mind and it was a good physical release. I don’t need it. Not if I have you.” 

 Anakin’s eyes grow wide, and Ahsoka thinks that she sees tears glimmering in his eyes in the low light. 

 “The Code, Master,” he croaks softly. 

 Obi-Wan shakes his head and strokes Anakin’s chin before tapping it lightly and resting his hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. We’re good at that, you and I. And we shan’t break the Code if we’re simply in a relationship, you know that.” 

 Anakin squeezes his eyes shut, and tears at last track down his cheeks. “It’s not just a relationship. Not to me. I- I love you, Master. I’m atta- attached. I’ve struggled with this all my life and I can’t let go. Of you, or Ahsoka.” 

 Her heart skips a beat at her name, then warms with a sad fondness for her Master. Oh, Anakin... he really thinks that Obi-Wan doesn’t know? That she doesn’t know? They do and they love him right back just the same. Ahsoka hadn’t truly known about the nature of her Masters’ feelings for each other before tonight, but she had suspected. Both she and Obi-Wan love Anakin with all their hearts.

 “Oh, Anakin.” Obi-Wan pulls him into his arms, and Anakin clings to him desperately and buries his face in his throat. “Dearest, love is no trespass, and attachment can be conquered. It is a part of human nature. It is nothing to fear. I am sorry I ever led you to believe otherwise, Padawan.”

 Anakin gasps a single, muffled sob into Obi-Wan’s throat, and his Master presses a kiss to the top of his head. They stay like that for a while, rocking slightly back and forth and holding each other tightly until Anakin’s breathing evens out.

 “You’ll stop fighting, then?” Anakin asks softly. 

 “Yes, dearest. I’ll stop,” comes the quiet affirmation. “And Anakin,” he steps back slightly so they are both looking each other in the face once again before murmuring, gentle as a spring breeze, “I love you too.”

 Anakin’s face crumples before a smile overtakes his expression and he lets out a tiny, overjoyed laugh. Obi-Wan’s hands slide up to frame his face once again and draw him into a gentle kiss that slowly deepens. They break apart to smile at each other before coming together more urgently than before, and Ahsoka knows that it’s time for her to go.

 She lets out a little breath–hopefully silent–and steps backward out of the alley. Once she has crept well away, she slumps against the wall herself. She... she’ll probably have to tell Anakin what she has witnessed. She really hadn’t meant to eavesdrop for so long, but she had needed to hear that promise from her Grandmaster almost as much as Anakin himself. As it is, she breathes out a sigh of relief knowing that for the moment they are both safe, happy, and that better times are coming. For all of them.

  They’ll figure this out together.

[suoyou]

[wip] 凤凰涅槃; phoenix rising

incomplete wip. 9034 words, rated t.

wangxian court intrigue + wuxia + wingfic au, in which wwx is the lost phoenix and lwj is royal scholar. this is actually a collection of scattered scenes through the first act of the fic!

dwell too long in the fire and even the phoenix will burn.

Wei Wuxian holds a rotting mango in his hand. 

Pungent, slippery as an oiled wok and twice as dangerous, it’s just a few days too old for optimal flavor—but he does not plan to eat it. No, he’s going to throw it. 

A well-aimed piece of fruit and the right audience and a stomach just empty enough that the metallic edge of hunger has begun to bite makes for a good show. Wei Wuxian teeters like a gargoyle on the upturn of a roof, all his weight balanced in a crouch, waiting for the fishmonger to pass by beneath him. The market teems with citizens who have come early to buy the freshest kills and produce that the morning has to offer, the smell of frying jianbing wafts in thick curls up to Wei Wuxian’s perch. His belly rumbles. His last meal had been during sunrise the day before. 

“Fresh fish!” shouts the fishmonger. His mule’s head bobs dark and feisty as it tugs his cart along. Behind them, their wagon is crammed with quivering tubs full of water and writhing fish. “Fresh from the docks this morning! Fresh caught! Carp and eel and shrimp! Killed and scaled and gutted if you ask! Fresh fish!”

Wei Wuxian rocks up onto the knobs of his knees. The tiled roof digs into his skin--what are you doing here, flightless bird? His weapon of choice bleeds a thin, honeyed line of juice from his wrist to his elbow. He takes aim. 

A little commotion in a crowded market goes a long way. One spooked mule, one fishmonger, and a wagon full of uncovered tubs of live catches? What could go wrong? The sun hammers on his back, asking him what he’s waiting for. The mule’s flanks are exposed around its saddle and harness. Wei Wuxian screws one eye shut and sticks the tip of his tongue between his lips as he raises his mango, and--

“I’ll bet my daughter!”

A disturbance rises above the cheerful twang of the market below. It comes from the gambler’s stall, tucked away by the liquor stand. What a smart, slimy placement. 

“Is this man crazy?”

“What kind of father are you?”

“How disgusting, to gamble with your daughter’s life!”

Wei Wuxian frowns. Below him, the fishmonger passes, and the crowd molds around his wagon like ants around a snail. A pustule of a man hunches over the gambler’s stall with a girl of no more than nine or ten in his grip as he snarls in the proprietor’s face. His clothes are stained and dirty, and his eyes are yellow with jaundice. Anger flares hot as a kicked hornet’s nest in Wei Wuxian’s belly, muting the hunger, when the drunkard yanks on his daughter so hard that she trips into the table. 

Without thinking, Wei Wuxian shouts, “Hey, you, ugly dog at the gambler’s table!”

Dozens of heads turn to stare. 

Wei Wuxian lobs the mango with all his might. 

It whistles over the street like a lumpy, bulbous pigeon, dripping as it goes. The man is too drunk, or too hungover to move out of the way--he simply watches, jaw slack, not seeming to realize that he’s in the way until it splatters him square in the face and explodes in a shower of golden muck. He howls, clawing at his skin, and in the process lets his daughter go. She falls because she’d been unbalanced, hard into the street on her elbows. Some of the mango carnage had splattered onto her. Orange-brown bits drip off her chin like fat, gummy tears. 

The drunkard points a trembling, furious finger at Wei Wuxian. “You--!” 

��Me? What about me? Worry about yourself first. Worry about your daughter!”

A small crowd has gathered to watch the spectacle--this man, covered in sticky mango goo and attracting flies, and this vagrant shaking with laughter on the roof. He is so close to the edge, yet balances in place without any unsteadiness, with the surety of someone who is always in high places. 

“You are a coward, staying on the roof! Get down here and fight me with your fists, like a man!” shouts the drunk. His daughter tugs on his sleeve behind him as the crowd thickens.

“A-die, A-die, let’s go--”

“Let go of me, you useless girl.” He shakes her off. “Good for nothing, waste of space. Not even good enough for gambling money.”

Wei Wuxian frowns. A hushed gasp races through the bodies below as he stands and tips from his perch on the roof, tumbling once before alighting in the street. His shoes stick to the pavement from the tack of juice. The man barely makes it up to his chin, and his skin is splotchy from alcoholism; his clothes are patches which means he had family members whose kindness he did not deserve at home. 

“What,” says Wei Wuxian, tucking his hands behind his back. He’s not above mango-throwing, but he’s not going to fight a man in front of his young daughter. Now that’s just bad manners. “You really want to fight me? Just take my advice, sir. Go home. Take your daughter and your money and buy some food, and go home. Don’t make me throw another mango at you. That was going to be my lunch.”

“I’m not scared of men like you. Arrogant and scornful, just looking for a fight! I ought to break your--”

Wei Wuxian intercepts the man’s fist before it can connect with his face.

He fights like a commoner would, crude and unpolished, with his thumb tucked inside his fingers. Rookie mistake. His eyes bulge like a frog stepped on as he tries to force his way through Wei Wuxian’s grip, face turning the color of puce as he fails comically. Wei Wuxian digs his nails into the back of the man’s hand, trembling with the effort of holding him in place, and then he shoves him back. 

The man goes sprawling in the street, and the crowd shuffles back, as if to avoid a particularly filthy swine. 

“A-die,” says his daughter, trying to help him up, but he swats at her. “A-die.”

“Go.”

Not without spitting at Wei Wuxian’s feet. He simply laughs, because it’s such a silly, juvenile thing, and then, like an infection clearing, the citizens around him scatter back into the day. 

Wei Wuxian claps his hands together, then wipes his palms on the seat of his robes. “You really ought not to entertain patrons who have clearly started to lose their control,” he says to the proprietor of the gambling stall. They wipe down the edges of their table with a dusty rag where the carnage of fruit clings. “Soon he will trade his whole family away for nothing but a nugget of gold.”

The proprietor scoffs. “And who are you?”

“Someone nice enough to clean his mess up. Sorry for this, by the way,” says Wei Wuxian. He starts straightening sacks full of supplies--coin bags, a set of rings, vases clinking fluted and musical against each other. They must run a games stall elsewhere in the city; Wei Wuxian has seen these prizes before. 

“Who asked you to be a vigilante, anyway.” The proprietor shakes his head. “You look for trouble, boy.”

“The only thing sweeter than trouble is justice,” says Wei Wuxian, laughing at the distaste the proprietor levels at him. He chases a few escaped scrolls that have tumbled from their sack.  “Ah, don’t be like that. I really am sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere with business, okay? I just don’t like to see--”

One of the scrolls has unfurled enough for Wei Wuxian to catch a glimpse of the ink painting. Beneath the glimmer of midday sun the paper is so buttery that Wei Wuxian expects for his fingers to come away slick when he picks it up, letting the scroll’s weight pull the painting the rest of the way open. 

The brushwork is unfamiliar. Mountains studded with frosted clouds, a lake, a tiny figure of a man at the silver waterline. A spray of peonies cradles the scene in its petals, done with a brush so fine that the artist could have drawn it with a single human hair. Wei Wuxian doesn’t recognize it--not the art. He hadn’t opened it for the art. 

A red seal dots the corner of the painting like a button of blood. Wei Wuxian would recognize it anywhere--anyone should recognize it anywhere. Being in possession of something with a seal like this, without explanation, could earn an axe to the neck. 

“Sir,” he asks, staring at the painting, “how did you come across a painting done by the imperial family?”

The proprietor’s eyes widen, and they make a wild lunge for it. Wei Wuxian is taller, though, and jerks it out of reach, rolling the scroll back up so the paper won’t tear. “Give it back!”

“Aha! What is it? Tell me. How did you come across a treasure like this?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Hmm. So if I simply walk away with it, you will also simply shrug, and let me be on my way?” Wei Wuxian raises his eyebrows when the proprietor glowers. “Ah, so it mustn’t be nothing. Not with a look like that. Do tell.”

“It’s none of your business.”

Wei Wuxian chews on his lip, smiles. His stomach rumbles, already two cartwheels ahead, but he needs to slow down and think. “Can I pawn it from you?”

“I’d like to see you try, boy. Give it here!”

Wei Wuxian sighs. “I would not try. I would give it back to you, if you asked nicely, but oh--oh, the danger of another person knowing that you have a painting with an imperial stamp on it, with no way to explain how. Unless you’d like to tell me. But you’ve made it clear as day that you’re not interested in letting me know, so you’ll just have to let a stranger go, knowing he carries this secret, not knowing who he is, not knowing what he’ll do.” He holds the scroll out now. “But of course, I cannot take what’s mine. Shame. Here you are.”

The proprietor had listened to him speak with a vague, mounting fear in his eyes, and when Wei Wuxian shakes the scroll at them, they shrink back as if he’s shaking a dismembered arm at them.

“What, don’t want it now? Didn’t you want me to hand it over?”

“What are you playing at,” the proprietor asks. “Are you a palace spy? What do you want?”

Laughter leaps from Wei Wuxian’s mouth. “Me, a palace spy? Oh, no, no, no. I’m afraid not. Palace spies have much more important things to do than to sniff out thieving proprietors. Tell you what. I take this off your hands and you don’t have to worry about your neck, or your family’s necks, and in return, I won’t tell them where I found it. Hm?”

“You plan to give it back to the imperial family?”

“Of course,” says Wei Wuxian. “All things return to where they belong in the end.”

So as it goes, Wei Wuxian is one mango poorer, but one imperial painting richer, and he cannot tell if he is better off for it. He tucks the scroll into his knapsack and the key that hangs around his neck back into his collars and scans the market for weak spots, opportunities to win more food than he has money for. The rotten mango had been stupid luck, and luck is a finite resource which Wei Wuxian does not have much of to begin with, so he’s going to have to work for the rest of his food today. 

A surreptitious scrap of pink peeks out from behind the liquor stall and Wei Wuxian only catches a glimpse of the girl before she tucks herself behind the wooden beams again. Oh--the drunk’s daughter. She’s alone now. Irritation bubbles in the pit of Wei Wuxian’s stomach when he pictures the man shaking her off, lumbering towards another gambling stall that will entertain his time, and he has half a mind to--

“Fresh meat buns! Made this morning. Pork and chicken and mushroom!”

Wei Wuxian catches up to the bun cart, falling into step with the vendor. “Shifu, how much for one?”

“One bronze piece for three.”

“Can I get five for one bronze piece?”

“Are you deaf or just stupid? No. Get lost.”

“Please, shifu,” Wei Wuxian says, he gestures behind himself in the direction he’d seen the little girl, “my daughter, she hasn’t eaten in days, and we’re here to see the doctor and he turned her away on account of the fact that we have no money, and she’ll only get sicker if she doesn’t have any food in her system, our family is still waiting at home, please have mercy--”

“Heavens! Good heavens, fine, here! Take these misshapen ones, they’re an eyesore, anyway.”

“Thank you!” Wei Wuxian fishes the bronze piece out of his money pouch, fingertips poking through the holes in the bottom like eyes, and collects his spoils. “Thank you, Shifu!”

“Get outta my sight.”

Wei Wuxian holds his armful of buns to his chest, and their heat warms him through his clothes down to his bones. It’s a relatively cool day, even for autumn. When he turns around again, the girl scrunches herself back into the safety of the shadows, and he chuckles to himself. The liquorist eyes Wei Wuxin warily when he approaches, but he simply seats himself on the other end of the stall and opens his carrying cloth full of lopsided buns. Ugly, unwhole, but still good for hunger. Still good. 

“Could I interest you in a bottle of rice wine?” 

“Ah, no, it’s fine,” Wei Wuxian flaps his hand. “I am not wont for liquor, but perhaps some company to share these buns with. I have far too many to finish on my own. But I don’t know who’d want these ugly buns. Certainly not you, Shifu, I’m sure?”

The girl peeks out from behind the stall, and Wei Wuxian smiles. “Want one?”

She scampers to sit down in front of him, reaching out with sooty hands for a bun at the top of the bile. The skin of it is pearly in the noon sun, giving under touch, the way only fresh steamed buns are. Then she hesitates, looking into Wei Wuxian’s face as if expecting to be struck.

“Go ahead,” he says, holds the bun out. “Eat.”

She snatches it and crams half of it into her mouth, and Wei Wuxian chuckles again. He knows hunger like this, and takes his own portion to tear into. The sweet smell of pork and mushroom and oil floats up into his eyes, and for a moment the meat sears on his tongue before it settles into a taste. 

“Is it good?” he asks.

She nods. 

So it’s good.

“Where have you been? Wei Wuxian, I ought to cut you off at the kneecaps! A-Jie’s been worried sick, you were supposed to be back over a shichen ago.”

“I ran into a friend, Jiang Cheng. Lighten up, will you? Here, I got buns.”

“Keep your stupid buns. Where’s the fish you were going to get?”

Wei Wuxian scratches at the back of his neck. “Ha. Well, about that.”

“Seriously? I can’t believe you. If it weren’t your birthday, I really would cut you off at the legs.”

“But it is, so instead, you need to be nice!” Wei Wuxian crows triumphantly. 

Jiang Cheng sighs, a gust of hot summer wind that picks up stinging sands. A wisp of his hair flits with his breath. He’s wearing his nice clothes, no doubt because A-Jie made him, with a polished belt tucked around his waist like the coil of a sleeping snake. It’s a formality that they hardly ever bother with anymore, not in such a provincial town as this, leading a life as threadbare as theirs. The shine of the buckle comes off of him in bright flashes. 

“Whatever. Come on, A-jie made noodles. Where’d you get buns?”

“Oh, so you do want one. Here, I know you like chicken.”

“Don’t tell me you managed to snatch all of these,” Jiang Cheng asks, but he takes the one Wei Wuxian offers anyway. “Who likes chicken,” he mutters, mostly to himself.

“I just harnessed a talent that you have never quite mastered, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says. “Charm.”

“I ought to smack you.”

“There was a hungry kid. I didn’t want her to go hungry.”

Jiang Cheng is quiet. “We all are, why go help a stranger?”

“Wouldn’t you have wanted someone to help us back then?”

At this, a grunt. Which, coming from Jiang Cheng, is as enthusiastic a yes he’ll give, so Wei Wuxian smiles to himself and slings his sack of food over his shoulder. He’s down to two now, and he figures he’ll just give both of them to A-Jie who deserves much more than two pork buns, but it’s the best he has. One day he’ll get her expensive candied mangoes and hawthorn berries that the baker makes in the market in the next city over--the one that glitters.

“A-Cheng, A-Xian! You’re back!”

“Found him scaling the wall back into the hutong,” Jiang Cheng grumbles. “Punk.”

Jiang Yanli, too, is wearing her nicest set of robes today, with a hair ornament that Wei Wuxian hasn’t seen her with since the new year. Her face clears of worry when she sees them, and she reaches up, straightens a lock of Wei Wuxian’s hair where it’s caught over his ear. “A-Xian, you’re not--you know that you shouldn’t--” 

“Scale walls, climb to great heights, jump off roofs, I know, I know,” Wei Wuxian says, vividly recalling that he has done all of the above and then some today. “Sorry to make you worry, A-Jie, I’m fine! I got you buns. You can have them both.”

“But what about the fish? A-xian, we were going to make one for dinner for you.”

“Ah, fish or no fish, it’s no matter. Noodles are good enough. As long as I can live a long life, luck will always come back around.” 

“What if your whole life is plagued with bad luck?” asks Jiang Cheng as they duck back into their hut of clay and brick. The curtains are open, a rare moment of Jiang Yanli letting daylight peek inside, and it lights up their matchbox home in a wash of sunset. Bowls of steaming noodles are set out on the rickety slice of table, with the biggest in front of the seat where Wei Wuxian always sits. His heart swells. He’ll be forcing mouthfuls of noodles into his siblings’ bowls when they sit down, he’s sure, but for now his heart is the pulse of afternoon sun in the window. 

“Then my next life,” says Wei Wuxian. “My next one won’t be nearly as bad.”

The Lost Phoenix is lost. I think that’s the point. No one will ever find them. You will die looking for them.

Wei Wuxian is built from broken things. 

He sees rubble and thinks, that is a home. He sees blood and thinks, that is a heart. He sees himself reflected in the slow meanders of swamp-green lakes lazy with dragonflies and skeeters and tries to remember, that is a human, that is a human, that is a human.

“You may not be human, but that is what makes you worth loving,” is what A-Jie says. 

“You? A human? With an appetite like that? It’s like trying to feed a void with you,” is what Jiang Cheng says, which is basically the same thing. 

Wei Wuxian is built from broken things, but the uglier, eyesore-pork-bun truth is that he is born from destruction. He is born from the fire of things, and the ashes of himself; his body waits for the wither. 

The Lost Phoenix is dead. His ashes were scattered in mountain, sea, and sky.

The Lost Phoenix is alive! Everyone knows that leaving behind but a single ember can spark a wildfire. Fire has wings.

No human, ghost, or demon has ever seen the Lost Phoenix. If they had, wouldn’t we have heard by now? They are only a legend.

There are scars on his back to prove what he once was and never will be again, and Jiang Yanli tells him, The world was not ready for you. The world, perhaps, will not be ready for the Lost Phoenix to return for as long as we still walk upon it, A-Xian, but maybe when one day when everyone is gone, when A-Cheng and I are gone, you’ll--

He always cuts her off there. Usually he can’t see her face, because she’ll be sitting behind him and rubbing oil into the muscles that can never seem to loosen around his shoulder blades, the ones that line the edges of the scars like mottled mountain peaks. Just two of them, in straight lines as long as a hand, glaring at each other over the expanse of his back, the winding groove of his spine. Phantom pains. Human or not, the body will miss limbs when they are gone. 

Tonight, Jiang Yanli does not tell him the world isn’t ready for him. It hurts to listen to her say it, because it’s not a pain that Wei Wuxian can beat away with his fists or even his words. There’s a quiet noise of the bottle being unstoppered, then the cloying scent of liniment oil wreathing around him as he sits with his back bared to her, hair swept over his shoulder. 

“A-jie,” he says. 

“Hmm?” Her hands are small and warm against his back, and he hisses in pain when her finger catches on a tight knot immediately. “Sorry, Xianxian.”

“It’s okay. Uhm, I have a stupid question.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. Ask.”

“Which birthday did we celebrate tonight?” he asks quietly. 

The inside of their hut is a dark, uneven indigo now, the fires of the village filtering in through their window. Jiang Cheng has gone to bathe, so the only answering noise above the sound of a city settling in evening is Jiang Yanli’s soft laughter. 

“Your thirty-first, A-xian.”

“How many years have passed in this life?”

Her hands disappear as she dabs more liniment oil onto her fingers. “Since your reincarnation?”

“Yeah.”

“Thirteen.” 

“Thirteen,” Wei Wuxian repeats. “Thirteen.” He rolls it over his tongue, trying to figure out how it tastes. Bitter, a little. like medicine. Maybe it’s the liniment. Jiang Yanli runs her thumb down the edge of one of the scars, massaging out a few particularly gnarly knots there. 

“Is there something wrong?” she asks. 

“Not wrong, exactly.” Wei Wuxian pushes his fingers into his folded robes in his lap, pretends the fabric is sand and silt at the bottom of a lake. He almost expects handfuls of snails when he pulls them back out. “It’s just that, with every passing year, I think maybe this is it--this is the year I’ll remember. This is the year I’ll remember the things about my life before this one. Remember when I tried to teach you and Jiang Cheng how to catch fish with your hands, in the river, A-Jie? You said you could see them beneath the surface, but when you’d reach in to grab it, it was like the fish were never even there.” 

“I remember,” says Jiang Yanli. She is quiet, waits for him to go on. 

“Trying to recall my first life is like that. I know it happened. I can see it right there, flickering under the water, but. But each year comes and goes, and not only do I not remember anything, it feels like more and more of what I thought I could remember slips away,” says Wei Wuxian. “I was excited in the eighth year of this life. Then I was excited in the twelfth. Thirteen is no good, is it, A-Jie? I’ve run out of lucky numbers to count on.”

“Would it make you happy to remember, Xianxian?”

“I think so. When I think about it--it’s funny, you know. Maybe you know. I can’t recall memories from it, exactly, but when I think about my first life, I think I remember being happy. Like when you roll over and the sun is already up. You can feel the warmth on you even if you don’t see the light.” Then Wei Wuxian snorts. “That doesn’t make any sense. Sorry, ignore me, A-jie.”

“It makes sense. Of course it makes sense. Is that all you remember, a feeling?”

They’ve been over this before. A hazy, murky image of something from Before, dredged up from packed soil. Jiang Cheng will always say, “Who knows? Why do you think I would remember?” waspish, and Jiang Yanli would always give him a soft, “Perhaps it was, A-xian.”

“I remember,” he says, “that we were in a noble family, once.”

This is an easy one. She always says yes to this one. “We were.”

“I remember that the palace walls were lined with bronze, not gold like a lot of the common folk think.”

“Yes, they are.”

“The accident.” The one that has turned him into this. 

“I wish you did not,” says Jiang Yanli.

“I don’t--not really. I just remember the pain. My body does, anyway.”

“Muscle has memory,” she says. “But because you are who you are, so does your blood and bones.”

Wei Wuxian fiddles with the gap-toothed key that swings from his neck. It thunks hollowly against his bare chest without the robes to hold it in place, and he tugs the deerskin rope that loops around his neck so that the knot tying it together comes down, down, down, through the hole in the key, up, up, back up again, a miniature comet’s orbit. 

“You were a princess,” he says, quiet again.

“Princess is a strong word.”

“But you were.”

“In my own way.”

And then, the most solid memory he has—a figure in white, with hair that fell to their waist, holding a smudge of pink in their hand. Solid, but blurred, like Wei Wuxian is trying to see them through a sheeting waterfall. The lines of their body were straight and crisp, except for the pink. The pink was always soft, parting the mud of his memory. 

He doesn’t mention this one, usually. Wei Wuxian holds it close to his heart where it has roots. Year after year, no matter the rains, nothing has flowered. Seasons have passed. 

“A person,” Wei Wuxian murmurs. 

Jiang Yanli’s hands slow. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” says Wei Wuxian. “Just a person. Their back is to me, so I can’t see their face, but it’s too blurry for me to see them, even if they’d been right in front of me. And they were just standing there--just standing. Nothing else. I don’t even really know if they’re real, but it’s the best memory I have.” He digs his nail into an indent in the key’s teeth. “Do you think they were real, A-Jie?”

“As real as the Lost Phoenix is.”

Wei Wuxian laughs weakly. “The Lost Phoenix is as good as myth.”

A myth meant to scare people.

A cautionary tale.

“The Lost Phoenix needs to stop squirming, or I will poke the sensitive parts of his scar, and I know he hates it when I do,” Jiang Yanli says. 

A story about a monster.

“Maybe it’s better to forget some things, A-Jie.”

“A-Cheng and I only want you to be happy, Xianxian. Whatever that means to you. Whether that means remembering or forgetting.”

“I want to remember, because your happiness is my happiness,” Wei Wuxian insists, turning around. Jiang Yanli lifts her hand away as he rearranges his legs in a half-lotus, one foot stretched out onto the floor. “I want to remember because I know this life isn’t one you and Jiang Cheng would have chosen if you both had a choice. You can’t say I’m wrong about that. No noble family member would choose to live in a rundown hutong if they had a choice.”

“A-Xian--”

“I know you won’t tell me what happened before my reincarnation,” says Wei Wuxian. “I know you want to forget. But if anything ever happens that means we can go back to it--you have to say so, okay? You both are the only family I have left. Let me do something for the people who have somehow kept me alive for thirty-one years. I can’t remember eighteen of them. As if I started reading in the middle of the story. There are things I know without knowing how I know them.”

Whether it be a story, a tale, legend, or myth, one thing was certain: the Lost Phoenix is the last known survivor of the Phoenix Rising, once the most revered noble family of the imperial city, the warrior family that protected the throne. 

Forged from the Sacred Fires of Scarlet Mountain, the Phoenix Rising once was so formidable that simply meeting one of them in their true form was a sign of luck and good fortune. They were, as their family name suggested, bewinged humans who lived and died and rose again from their own ashes. They were skilled in combat, nimble in war, with the ability of flight. They harnessed Taoist magic that was only spoken of in books. 

A secular world did not have room for magic.

“Our A-xian,” says Jiang Yanli, shaking her head, “always hurts himself trying to make us happy before he remembers he has a heart, too.”

“Ah, what good is a heart if I can’t deal it out in pieces for my didi and my jie?” says Wei Wuxian. “It’s not like anyone else has any use for it.”

“That’s not true,” Jiang Yanli murmurs. 

“Hm? What’s that?”

“Nothing, Xianxian.”

“You have my promise, A-Jie,” says Wei Wuxian. “It’s us three until the end. Never apart. If I can bring you and Jiang Cheng back to the glory days before this life, then I’ll do whatever it takes.”

She’s quiet, then dabs a light gauze over his skin to absorb the excess liniment oil. Both of them know it won’t be possible--even if they were a lower noble family, there wasn’t a ticket back into the royal city unless you saved the emperor from death or something equally as momentous. Save the empire, or something. Wei Wuxian dreams big, but he’s realistic. 

“Thank you, Xianxian,” she says, finally. 

“It smells like old people in here,” Jiang Cheng announces, as absurdly loud as new year firecrackers when he comes back inside. He smells of freshwater and sand, and he tracks an inky line of water where his wet shoes stamp footprints into the floors. “I know you’re another year older now, but you’re really getting started early.”

“If I’m so old, then you better talk to me with respect, punk,” Wei Wuxian says. Jiang Cheng may be loud, may be messy, but he chases away the strange, yearning sadness that tugs like a deep saltwater current on Wei Wuxian every time his birthday comes and goes. He loves his stupid, loud brother for it. “Hey! Where’s my kowtow? Where’s my ‘ge,’ then? Where’s my ‘Wei qianbei,’ huh? I’m so old, Jiang Cheng, pay your respects!”

“Screw you, Wei Wuxian. I’d sooner call you Old Man Wei. You’d have to rip out my tongue first.”

“Okay, come here then, my hands are free.”

“Gross! What’s wrong with you?”

And so night falls on another day, another year, and Wei Wuxian feels a little empty and a lot full, like a planet is breathing inside him. Jiang Yanli tugs on Jiang Cheng’s hair, makes him sit down so she can wrestle the tangles out of his drying frizz, and Wei Wuxian holds the lantern for light.

It’s enough. 

So what happened to them, the Phoenix Rising? Why have they disappeared?

Because they had power. Because they were loved, feared, and respected, all things an emperor should be.  

In the beginning, it was an honor to be the emperor that controlled the Phoenix Rising, for it took an equally distinguished ruler to command such a family, and for generations, the Phoenix Rising served the throne with grace. For generations, the empire was a glowing, golden city upon which the sun glittered, and the common folk called it the City of Gods. 

But at the end of a weak dynasty, the throne was seized by a bloodthirsty family that feared the Phoenix Rising and the power they held. People, monsters, kings, or gods? Did the citizens respect the throne? Or did the loyalty of their hearts lie with the strange, winged family that had for centuries been revered as the beacon of luck and fortune?

 Humans fear what they do not understand. Humans seek to destroy what they fear. 

And so the Phoenix Rising paid the steepest price.

“Did he mention it to you at all yesterday?”

“No! He never brought it up. That punk. I’m gonna wring his sorry little neck.”

“A-Cheng.” A rustle of wind through paper. Then, “We need to ask him where he found this. He could’ve been caught. He could’ve been killed.”

Wei Wuxian wakes to his siblings whispering. Whispers always come through dreams like shouts, and he’s having a very strange dream about walking through wire, except instead of coals at his feet, there is ash, and in the ash there are hundreds and hundreds of keys glinting red as squirting cherries. His feet are burnt and blistering, but he can’t run, can’t turn back, can only walk forward. 

There are no secrets in a single-room shack. No matter how quietly Jiang Yanli whispers, Jiang Cheng speaks loud enough to wake the whole town. 

“Nicked it, probably,” says Jiang Cheng now. A grudging respect colors his voice. “That’s probably why he took so long to get back yesterday.”

The bamboo sleep mat crackles beneath him as Wei Wuxian rolls over, then sits up. For a moment the world is a spinning top. Jiang Yanli turns, lowering something, and smiles when she sees him awake. Jiang Cheng, of course, is already swinging. 

“You dumbass! Where did you get this? If someone comes looking for it and finds it with us, do you know how dead we are?”

Then Wei Wuxian sees it--the painting that he’d charmed out of the hands of the gambling proprietor at lunch yesterday. Jiang Yanli holds it like a broken bird in her lap, and Wei Wuxian ducks when Jiang Cheng aims another swat at him. Mostly half-hearted, but he leaps to his feet and skips out of reach. 

“I was going to surprise you!” he says. “I didn’t even have a chance to tell you what I was planning. You don’t know how much money this could bring in the black market, Jiang Cheng, an imperial painting? Just think about it. I can just disguise myself, go at night--cover my face, you know--and we could stop living here. We could live in a real house, and we wouldn’t have to all share one sleeping mat.”

“A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli gets to her feet, too. Always graceful in a stark contrast to her two brothers, the lantern from which two wild tassels would dance in the wind. She lifts the painting up high so that she can point to the red seal in the corner. “Do you recognize this?”

“The imperial seal, right? Sure. Everyone does.”

“I’m going to puke blood,” says Jiang Cheng. 

Jiang Yanli ignores him. “You’re not wrong, A-Xian. But this is an imperial seal of a concubine.”

Wei Wuxian blinks. “Of the emperor?”

“Yes. Judging from the seal design, not just any concubine--she must be a consort, at least.” Jiang Yanli holds the paper closer to her face, trying to discern the characters. “Mo,” she mutters, unsure. 

“So we could sell it for even more money,” Wei Wuxian concludes.

“No, we are not going to sell it for money,” says Jiang Cheng. His face has darkened. 

“Are you crazy?” Wei Wuxian asks. “You said it yourself, if someone finds us in possession, it’ll be our heads. The faster we get rid of it, the less likely anyone is to know it ever passed through our hands at all.”

“Yeah, well, you probably should have considered that before you nicked it, genius,” Jiang Cheng snaps. “It doesn’t matter. Now that we have it, we’re going to use it.”

“Use it how, if not for money, then?” Wei Wuxian struggles to keep his voice low. Jiang Cheng is not making any gods damned sense--isn’t he the one who constantly talks about leaving this hutong under the guise of hating how cramped it is, when really, he and Wei Wuxian agree that they should move closer to the imperial city where there would be better houses and perhaps a respectable man for their sister to marry if she so wanted? 

“We’re going to use this to return to the imperial city.” 

A silence falls like a tree toppled in storm between them. 

“A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli begins. 

“We are?” asks Wei Wuxian. “How would that even work?”

“You’re the best at telling lies.”

“Well, yes, I’m glad you have seen the light.”

“Think about it,” says Jiang Cheng. “An emperor's consort. It means she must have been in favor with the sitting emperor, Jin Huangshang. A painting with her seal on it. How would a painting by a favored concubine of the emperor end up out here?”

“Wound up in a gambling stall, no less,” Wei Wuxian says. Now that Jiang Cheng puts it that way--it’s more than a little strange. “Fine, say that we could use it as our golden ticket back into the imperial city. We’ll be lucky if the consort is dead. She won’t be around to ask any questions if there are holes in our story. What if she’s alive? What if she’s not a consort? What if she was hated, what then?”

“A-Xian,” says Jiang Yanli, setting her hand on his shoulder, and the touch is firmer than he’s used to. “Stop. You too, A-Cheng. Returning would be dangerous for us.”

“Dangerous how?” asks Wei Wuxian. There it is--that gap of the first eighteen years of his life rearing its mangled head. Sometimes it’s like trying to read a page of text with half the words blacked out, the ones left behind still beautiful, but without meaning. “A-Jie, I thought we were…”

“We were a lower noble family then, Xianxian. But it does not mean that the court is a safe place for any of us.”

“Jie!” says Jiang Cheng. 

“No, A-Cheng. We’re not going back. It’s not just for A-Xian’s safety, it’s for all of us.”

“Would we really be in that much danger?” asks Wei Wuxian. “If no one knows I’m the Lost Phoenix but the three of us, nothing would happen.”

Right?

“Jiejie,” says Jiang Cheng, his voice quieter than Wei Wuxian has ever heard it, “the Crown Prince has never married.”

Jiang Yanli’s face, for a dizzying heartbeat, is stricken. Something like pain and longing flashes through her eyes quick as the swing of an axe in cloudy morning, but then it’s gone, and she sighs. 

“What does the Crown Prince have anything to do with A-Jie?” asks Wei Wuxian. 

“That isn’t any of our business. Not even yours, A-Cheng,” she says. Wei Wuxian has never seen his sister like this, drawn up tall with her chin held high, and for a moment he sees the princess that she must once have been. Jiang Cheng, who is easily a head taller than her and twice as broad, crumples under the weight of her gaze. “We left because we wanted to. We’ve lived by this choice and we will continue to live by it. Now, both of you listen--A-Xian will do as he planned, sell this painting for whatever sum that traders will offer, and we won’t speak of it again. Understand?”

The tension swells like a fever between them. 

Wei Wuxian should be happy that his sister is on his side for this--when is it that she ever picks sides whenever he and Jiang Cheng argue? Any other time, he’d be hooting with laughter, rubbing it in Jiang Cheng’s face, but there is a deeply strange, melancholy expression on his brother’s face that does not suit him at all. 

“Fine,” says Jiang Cheng. He takes the scroll from Jiang Yanli, rolling it up with care, then shoves it into Wei Wuxian’s chest with considerably less care. “Get this shit out of my sight. I’m going out.”

Wei Wuxian watches helplessly as Jiang Cheng moves around their hut with jerky movements, jaw set with the pulse of anger. He gathers his knapsack and what meager rations of buns left over from the day before, no doubt stale and hard by now, and loops it around his shoulder. 

Then he’s gone, without another word. 

Wei Wuxian gnaws on the soft inside of his cheek. “A-Jie--”

“Don’t think too much about what A-Cheng said, Xianxian,” says Jiang Yanli. “He won’t show it, but he worries. You needn’t take what he said to heart.”

Jiang Yanli will say no more, no matter how hard he presses. He’ll press anyone until they give, but not her. She ducks her head when Wei Wuxian turns to her with his confused, hurt silence, as if she is waiting for his anger. He’d never be angry with her. 

“I don’t understand, A-Jie.”

“A-Cheng and I simply have different ideas of what it means to keep our family safe. He thinks it means returning. I think it means to stay.”

“But why would we be in danger?” he asks. “Does this have something to do with the Crown Prince? Did he know who I was? I guess so, or else why would Jiang Cheng bring him up? Did you know him? Could he help us?”

“No, he couldn’t.”

Wei Wuxian sets his mouth in a line. “Well, I should be off too,” he says. The sun has already started to burn back the clouds; he needs to find tonight’s dinner for the three of them. Maybe he should go after Jiang Cheng, press him for more details. Their sister, despite what anyone might think, gives far less easily than either of them. 

“Be careful, Xianxian,” she says. “Oh, are you taking the painting with you?”

“There’s no way I’m going to leave it here in case anyone finds it and you’re here by yourself. Worst case scenario, I throw it away, and we can pretend none of this ever happened.” He takes Jiang Yanli’s hands in his, squeezes them ruefully. “I’m sorry, A-Jie. I just thought it would help. I didn’t want you to argue with Jiang Cheng.”

“It’s okay.” She tucks his stray hairs over his ear. “Go. Come back safe, A-xian.”

He waves at her once when he steps out, and once more when he makes it to the end of the hutong and she becomes little more than a quilted patch of terrycloth in the distance, as he does every morning when he leaves. Jiang Cheng can’t have gone far in the time that he’s gone, unless he took off at a sprint, so Wei Wuxian lets the scented chill of autumn fill his lungs.

The Crown Prince. What a strange person to bring up. Wei Wuxian rifles through what he remembers hearing in taverns and pubs, filtered through the thick veil of alcohol. The Jin family sits upon the throne now, after staging a coup against the Wens and seizing power just over a decade ago. The Crown Prince would have to be a Jin prince. The Jin Emperor was said to be quite the philanderer and had more than enough sons from too many concubines to choose from. The Crown Prince must be quite a favorite, for an emperor with so many sons would not pay any mind to choosing the Empress’s sons if he so liked one from his concubine better. 

And this Crown Prince, according to Jiang Cheng, has never married. 

The look on Jiang Yanli’s face--frozen, bruised, a bird shot from the sky before it begins to plummet--was not one Wei Wuxian expected to see when she heard this news. If they’d known this prince, then he must have been around even before Wei Wuxian’s reincarnation. Jiang Yanli must have spoken of him. 

But all his memories can offer him are vague smudges of color and a person with pink like a fire in their hands. 

It’s too early for the fishmongers just yet, but the market brims with life as it always does. Wei Wuxian narrowly dodges a cart full of fresh flowers, a toothless grandfather with a bamboo hat pulling it along weakly. One of the wheels is crooked, wood squeaking against the stone pavement. 

“Shifu, your wheel,” says Wei Wuxian, plucking the canteen of oil tucked low against the cart. It dribbles out in a black splash. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“Thank you, young man,” says the grandfather, and Wei Wuxian waits for him to turn his back to the street before plucking a lotus from the back of his cart and tucking it into his knapsack. For A-Jie, as penance for upsetting her so early in the morning. 

Jiang Cheng is not hard to find. He is poor at concealing himself, both in body and in voice, and he really is very bad at haggling. Wei Wuxian sidles up to him at a fruit stall, arguing with the vendor over a particularly ugly dragonfruit that looks more like a leathery handful of meat left too long in the sun than any respectable fruit. 

 “Now I think,” says Wei Wuxian, plucking it out of Jiang Cheng’s hand and ignoring his indignant scoff, “shifu, if you let this fruit sit out in your display, it would ruin the look of all the rest of your fruits. ‘Ah, look at this lovely display of dragonfruit. But what do we have here? A misfit! A miscreant! A monstrosity, really!’ And then you lose business. So really, we’re doing you a favor.”

“A favor?” says the vendor with disbelief. “What gall.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, then tosses the fruit back and forth between his hands and gives a quick jerk of his chin. “What do you say? Half off?”

“I can’t believe you weaseled him into giving it to us for less than half off,” says Jiang Cheng five minutes later. “You could talk your way out of your own--”

Wei Wuxian tosses his dragonfruit from hand to hand. “My own what?” Jiang Cheng’s knapsack hangs flat and sad against his back, crumpled like a dead leaf, so Wei Wuxian holds it open and drops the fruit inside. 

“Nothing. Never mind. What are you doing out here with that--thing?”

“Do you think I was going to leave it with A-Jie? No way. Imagine if she were alone and someone found her with it.”

Jiang purses his lips, nods. He tucks his thumb into the strap of his knapsack, a deadknot slung over his shoulder. “Have you thought about any stories?”

“What stories?”

“About what we’d say, if we brought it back to the imperial city.”

Jiang Cheng resolutely does not meet Wei Wuxian’s stare. 

“You want to go?”

“I just think that if we have a plan, A-Jie might be more willing to go. To be honest with you, if it were just to the two of us, it wouldn’t matter as much. We could sell the stupid painting, use the money. We could eke out an existence. It would fucking suck, but we could, and I wouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

“Ah, Jiang Cheng. You’re finally talking sense!” Wei Wuxian claps him on the back. When Jiang Cheng doesn’t shake his hand off, his smile falters. He must actually be worried. “Okay. We have to consider multiple scenarios, then, if we want this to be foolproof. We don’t want to make up a story where the concubine is alive when she’s dead. Or vice versa. So the first order of business is to figure that out.”

Jiang Cheng nods. “And what kind of favor she’s in with the emperor. The better, the easier for us.”

So, like peddlers, they spin their stories. 

+

The night blooms blue and foggy, the moon dropping light in handfuls of glass through the forest, and Wei Wuxian straightens to see that he is not alone. 

Someone else is in the mist with him. It’s thick enough that he cannot see their feet, so they could be floating. A man--just a bit taller than Wei Wuxian himself. His sword is drawn, lowered, as if he’d been pointing it before Wei Wuxian sensed him and stopped. The folded steel blade flashes. 

Blood sheets heavily down Wei Wuxian’s leg where the muscle has torn around the arrowhead, and haze sloshes in his skull. His brain is an upended bowl of goldfish. He grasps for words, for his thoughts, but they slip through his fingers. The stranger stares at him a bit in shock, a bit in horror, mostly in surprise. He opens his mouth. He closes it. He is wearing so much white he could be glowing, a star abandoned by its galaxy, and Wei Wuxian is the only one to find him. 

They stare at each other in the gloom. 

Wei Wuxian’s scattered goldfish thoughts say, Pink.

“Are you here to kill me?” asks Wei Wuxian. His words come out slurred even to his own ears. He needs to find Jiang Cheng. They need to get back to A-Jie. He needs to get out of here. 

“No.” The stranger steps towards him. “We mistook you for a prey animal. Are you badly hurt?”

“This? No, no. I’m fine. I need to go.”

“Your leg is injured.”

“It’s fine. I need to get back to--my wards,” Wei Wuxian says, catching himself before he says anything too revealing, pats himself on the back for staying in line even as his thoughts unravel. He picks his favorite story and sticks with it, hopes to any god that is listening it won’t get any of them killed. “My wards. They were with me. I was looking for Jin Bixia.”

The stranger has come so close that Wei Wuxian can make out every stitch of his robe. “What business do you have with the emperor?”

“I have a painting,” he mumbles around the haze. It’s a dark one, now. “My mother’s painting.”

Then darkness kisses his eyelids, and the night pulls him under. 

+

The scroll unfurls with the quiet hush of paper that has gone undisturbed too long. Even mounted on fine silk, the edges of the hemp and mulberry fibers have begun to wither, time nibbling as cruel and hungry as moths. The paper stretches on forever, nearly as tall as him fully unfurled. The cherrywood stick clacks upon the floor. 

Wei Wuxian’s mouth goes dry. He stares with seeing, then without comprehending, then without believing. 

The ink color has faded, like the paper, with age. Once the red might have leapt off the page, the greens so bright that spring grew from the painting itself, but all of it has flattened. It’s a simple composition. Where Mo Fu Ren had let her human subject be lost among the trees and sweeping landscapes, this painting is only one person, draped in textured golds and silk brocade embroidered with dragons. 

Simple, perhaps, but done by the hand of someone who held them beloved. 

His fingers shake when he reaches out. They hang back, and he pulls away, afraid that touching it might make the entire painting dissolve in his hands. 

Smiling serenely back at him is his own face, thirteen years younger, thirteen years less hungry—but it is him. His eyes are downcast, with a rabbit cradled in the crook of his elbow and a bird perched upon his shoulder. Without a doubt it is him. Even if he could not recognize his own face, the characters that march in little terracotta soldiers down the paper leave no room for guessing. 

The black ink is fresh, as if someone has run a brush through the strokes every year so that they can never fade. 

Wei Wuxian, they say. 

This can’t be right. He must be misreading. He blinks hard. 

His thoughts trip over each other’s ankles. They come in a clamoring flood, each wanting to be heard first, pored over first. Wei Wuxian. Had there been another before him? It is not a common name. It is not a name that would show up twice in the royal city if every noble family had the names of their descendants planned out for generations, no matter if the Phoenix Rising had been slaughtered by order of the emperor. Why is there a painting of him rolled up and locked away in the private study of Hanguang Gexia, second head of the scholar house to Emperor Jin? 

Did they once know each other?

How could it be that a key that Jiang Yanli gave him would unlock this desk?

There are corpses sleeping under their feet. This earth has been burnt and salted. 

An old ache starts in his spine. 

We were a lower noble family then, Xianxian.

Fire without coals. 

There was a person. Just a person.

Do not exhume these bodies. 

We left because we wanted to.

Something terrible must have happened to him. 

[themerriweathermage]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hiya, Nonnie! Honestly I saw this and was really confused until I realized that I was the dumbass who reblogged the Director's Cut post. You sent me five stars?! Of my choosing?!

So I have five series running right now (three are published, two are not.) It would take me way too long to talk about why I wrote each one, so I'm going to pick a set of lines from the published WIPs, most likely from unpublished chapters and give some of my thoughts about it. Under the cut because of a long post.

House Enduring (Celeborn X OC)

“My marriage is annulled and I do not love her in the way you speak of! If Eru has given me another chance to find love again, then why should I reject such a gift!?” Celeborn finally snapped. “Get out!”

Sensitive subject, Elrond thought, unfolding himself from the chaise and trying to check Celeborn over but the ellon in question bared his teeth at the touch, smacking his hand away. “OUT!” Something dangerous sparked in Celeborn’s eyes. He may not have had the strength to pick up a sword and fight, but he was exerting his presence over Elrond, daring the other ellon to challenge him. Celeborn set his jaw, drawing himself to his full height. He still barely met Elrond’s own and Elrond seemed hardly intimidated by the show.

“I am not some whelp of an ellon that I would cower beneath your presence, Celeborn.” Elrond replied.

“You will leave. Or I will make you leave.”

“With what strength? With what power? You have exhausted yourself in the pursuit of healing.” With one fluid movement, Celeborn had picked up Elrond by the collar of his robes and slammed him so hard against the door that it cracked where Elrond’s shoulders made contact with it.

My thoughts on House Enduring...

Why did I choose Celeborn?

He's not particularly popular character and I see even less content of people shipping with him.

But he's married!

Yes, he's married to Galadriel canonically. I mean, technically, even in the beginning of this story, he's married to Galadriel. So why did I choose to annul their marriage rather than just twisting canon so that the relationship never existed? There's a concept that elves can fade to heartbrokenness, that they can simply just wither and die-- so what if after centuries upon centuries of being in a political marriage, Celeborn starts to fade. Does it mean that his soulmate lies elsewhere? Galadriel seems to think so; that's why she lets him go.

Brenior is a shapeshifter? What does that mean? And why did you make the pronouns switch from time to time?

Brenior is a shapeshifter. I went with animals, mythological creatures, and people-- and not people in the sense that he can change into other people he sees, but he can shift his features to look the way he wants to.

So, this brings me back to my own questions. Why do I have multiple pronouns in this story?

Ah, this was a question in my mind that initially made me extremely nervous about posting House Enduring. Brenior identifies as male. He would be what is considered AFAB (assigned female at birth). Does he have multiple forms, including a female form? Absolutely. Does that mean he is not male? Absolutely not. For purposes of the story, I intentionally point out she/her for female forms. That being said, Brenior is comfortable with she/her, they/them pronouns, but prefers he/him pronouns. I am not trying to invalidate anyone's experiences in this story; I am trying to explore myself. If it is offensive to you, I encourage you not to read it. This story may have a plot that is fantasy and be set in a world beyond our own, but I based Brenior on me, my traumas, my past... and paths what could be my future.

Beauty in Brokenness (Glorfindel X Reader)

He recognized the signs on you. Arda has become the home to many wayfaring strangers and you were not the first. You’re just now realizing the bleakness of the situation you were in. You’ll be the first one to survive longer than the other humans. You’ll be the first to survive longer than humans borne and raised here. Valar knows, you might even outlive the race of elves. You looked so torn, and there was no way that you weren’t mourning the loss of everything you’ve ever had, and for once, Elrond looked at you and even saw the same twinge of darkness that had frightened you so badly. Your path was unset; only you had the power to set it.

My thoughts on Beauty in Brokenness...

Reader is in a courtship with Glorfindel. What happens next?

A lot of things happen next, but the path of healing must be the first thing. After that, I'm considering merging some modern human ideas with Elvish culture. Also this is set during the timeline of The Hobbit so there will at least be a little bit of leeway and peace in between the two timelines.

Reader is immortal?

Reader is immortal! Reader does have the chance to outlive the race of elves. Interestingly enough, I have a feeling that Valinor will eventually be a question for Glorfindel and I think... I think it's likely he'll raise hell if Reader can't sail with him.

My Loyal One (Rewrite) Lindir X OFC

“Do you have other family, elven-kin?” Lindir asked, curious about Eryniel. He’d only ever seen her in passing, delivering messages to Erestor or to Lord Elrond, never actually meeting her himself.

“I do. I have three brothers.” Eryniel replied, sitting back on her heels for a moment, considering the family she had left behind in Lorien.

“I suppose they chose to sail as well?”

“No. They are part of the Galadhrim. They stayed behind to fight. And they cannot care for a mortal, I don’t think. I know now that my parents’ decision was to leave me in the House of Elrond, although I think I would have preferred knowing that decision myself.”

“Elrond has been like a father to many.” Lindir murmured, although he certainly did not agree with the decision that her parents had made. How cruel.

My thoughts on My Loyal One...

Why are you rewriting it?

Simply? Because it has way more detail than an X Reader fic should have. Because I want to include way more detail than would be appropriate for an X Reader fic.

Eryniel?

Means daughter of the woods. The root will probably seem familiar-- Eryn Galen, Eryn Lasgalen, etc.

Are you really changing that much detail in the rewrite?

Immensely so. I'm not just changing it from second person to third person. I'm adding in details, smoothing out scenes, solidifying the brother/sister relationship between Haldir and Eryniel, and revealing the internal struggle within Haldir as he wars with telling her the full truth right out the gate.

[deiliamedlini]

WIP Wednesday 1

I’m posting two WIPs today because they’re both currently being absorbed into another fic and will never again see the light of day in this form! So here is the first one!

This BOTW scene, but written in a modern fantasy way is: Link saves Zelda from a Guardian with a pot lid, which is a scene from Zelda’s diary.

Goes along with this other scene that happens a little later with this same Link and Zelda where Link gets assigned to guard Zelda personally.

~~~

“Hrmmm,” Robbie hummed to himself as he looked through Zelda’s notes. “This is interesting, I’ll admit that. But the way I read it, it’s too flawed. Tell me more. Let’s think this through.”

Robbie was the lead researcher on Project Guardian. His posture was perhaps the most telling part of his personality; his hands were always on his hips, straight backed, almost like a superhero. When others would cross their arms to think, Robbie would go straight into his superhero pose and hum loudly to himself.

His goggles held his white hair back from his face. The goggles were a staple of every one of his outfits. He worked more with the large machinery, building prototype after prototype until he was forced onto a break by anyone higher than him, or Purah, who technically matched his position.

Both were young, doctorates before they were even out of their twenties and neither yet nearing thirty. Both Sheikah, ensuring that the artifacts were treated with the respect and reverence that their culture demanded. Both the brightest minds in all of Hyrule.

Zelda felt intimidated near them, but she was learning from the best. So when the Robbie asks you to tell him more, one tells him more.

“Okay, my idea is that we come up with some kind of injectable serum that we place markers in. When the Guardians go to attack the threat, but they see, say, me rather than a Yiga for example, they’ll scan for the presence of that marker and cease to fire on me. Instead, they’ll attack the real enemy.”

“Hrmmmm,” Robbie said, though he’d just read all this in her notes. “Money and funding for such a task aside, how do you propose we go about injecting nearly 30 million people?”

“Mandate it, of course.”

Robbie scoffed, forgetting for a moment that he was speaking with the Princess of Hyrule. If she wanted to mandate the injection, of course she could.

“You will have those who refuse,” he said instead. “Or those too unhealthy or who reject the serum for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s toxic to our first trial participants. Perhaps it won’t work as well on a Sheikah or a Rito as it will on a Hylian. You must also think of some other, faster, more effective ways.”

Zelda sat at the desk, resting her hand on her cheek. “I suppose it could be a type of paint. Something that goes onto a person rather than into them.”

Robbie surpressed a laugh at the Princess’ expense. “Well, perhaps someone forgets their paint? Maybe the weather will wash it off. Or someone cannot afford it. Or runs out. Perhaps the Guardians attack them, and their children. What then?”

“Fine,” Zelda hissed, getting his point but feeling frustrated. It had been such a good idea, she thought. “I don’t know. If only we could set them to auto-pilot, then we could—”

Robbie smiled, knowing where her mind was going before she even got there.

She stopped, her mouth open. “We need pilots. We need a conscious mind to control them. The large ones we excavated… those would be too wild to use without a pilot, even if we theoretically could. A pilot would negate those fears. They’d see friend from foe.”

“How many pilots can we afford to train?”

That had Zelda stop immediately. “I… I don’t know.”

Robbie didn’t expect everything from her. “I don’t think we can have each Guardian with their own pilots. We start with four, one for each of the four larger ones. We take samples, record data, and see if we can synthesize a program for an autopilot. If we can, then I think we should work on incorporating that into the smaller Guardians. Perhaps we can have a lead Guardian each time, and those would have its own pilot, and a string of others will follow?”

“See,” Purah said, looking up from her phone where she’d been taking notes in the corner of the room. “Told you she had a good idea.”

“You did indeed, Princess,” Robbie said with a winning smile. “I’ll get straight to work on it. I’ll draft a proposal and send it to your father immediately so we might be able to recruit the first pilots who will champion this project. I’ll have it in to him by tomorrow.”

“Dr. Robbie,” a researcher said, coming in with a tablet. “You asked for a briefing on the latest trial run?”

Robbie hesitated, not wanting to ignore the presence of the Princess. 

But she read the room. “Don’t worry,” Zelda said, standing up. “We should be going anyway. I look forward to hearing how the proposal goes.”

“I’m sure you’ll know before me, Princess. Good night.”

“Night, Robbie.”

Purah led Zelda out from Robbie’s office, taking the route past the prototype Guardians.

Researchers were mulling around, some in lab coats, some in street clothes, all of them looked busy. And most of them had their eyes on her as she passed by.

“Next time,” Zelda muttered, “we take the quieter route.”

“Understood and agreed. Come on, let’s go to my lab. I can show you the Slate I’ve been working on.”

But they didn’t get the chance.

A deep scream rang out, crying “look out!” to anyone within earshot. Perhaps it was instinct from being in the dangerous lab often, but Purah took a flying leap forward behind one of the pillars that held up the balcony of the second floor, unsure what she was looking out for.

But Zelda didn’t have that reflex.

Instead, her head shot around, looking for the threat so she could hide in the most appropriate location. Was it a Yiga attack? Should she find something to defend herself with? Was it a chemical spill? Did she need to take heed at all if it was simply a broken glass that someone nearly stepped on.

So she didn’t see the red laser aimed in her direction, and worse, she didn’t see the blue beam of energy that followed it.

When she was knocked backwards, she was surprised to find herself on the ground at all, let alone to find someone lying on her, covering her entirely from the blast.

The white sleeve of his lab coat was smoking, burned nearly clean off and exposing singed skin beneath it, fabric melted into his flesh, and hairs on his arm gone. His hand shook, and he dropped a large piece of Sheikah tech that looked far worse than his arm, a hole burned clean through the thick piece of metal that had taken the brunt of the impact off them both, though his arm appeared to have suffered regardless.

When Zelda noticed those two things, her eyes widened, and her heart sped up. “Oh Goddess!” she breathed, her head falling backwards with a harsh thud before she remembered the man on top of her. “Are you okay?”

Her hand went to his chest to help push him up, and she felt something hard under her hand. Something hard that she knew... something like the body armor her guards used. She let her fingers move. Solid, not human flesh; definitely the armor. Her eyes darted immediately to his ear next. And above his blue earring, she saw that her suspicions were confirmed. His ear wasn’t empty, but a very familiar earpiece with a wide hidden by his disheveled hair and low ponytail that had hidden it.

He was not a scientist. He was one of her undercover guards.

“How did you get to me so fast? Where even were you?” she asked, finally understanding why some strange scientist had risked his life to reach her. But she and Purah had been alone on this side of the room. Everyone kept their distance. Everyone stayed out of reach, and he’d been there in an instant.

He stood up, off her almost as quickly as he’d dove in front of her in the first place. “Are you alright, Princess Zelda?” he asked, oozing formality and professionalism, as if he hadn’t just nearly died. He offered her his hand before wincing and retracting it, offering her his other, non-singed one. As if nothing had happened. As if she’d simply tripped.

Now, she was stunned into confusion, trying to put the events in order, to relieve them and understand. She blindly accepted his hand and felt a shockwave of energy pass between them, sending a harsh shiver down her spine that had her attention immediately shift to the man who’d saved her.

He was slightly older than her, though it couldn’t be by much. She was almost surprised her father actually employed any of the younger agents to be her guards. She’d only ever really noticed the older ones. But this man was familiar somehow, though she was sure she’d never seen him in person before today. He could have been her guard in the past, expertly blending in as was his job. But she suspected something more.

His blue eyes were brilliant and captivating. Alert and on her, like he was thinking something about her rather than simply waiting for her to answer him, his eyes were straight out of a crayon box, like the lightest and purest of the blues had been picked for his eyes, one that a child would use for the daylight sky. But the color wasn’t all that was intense about them. It was in the way he looked at her, like she held the answers to the world. His gaze was that intense. It was unnerving.

“Yes,” she finally managed. “I’m fine, thank you.”

He managed a short nod and stepped backwards, allowing her to pass. Purah had grabbed onto Zelda, rambling about how she needed to get checked. But Zelda’s eyes drifted to the burned Sheikah tech on the ground. A hole had gone through the metal. His arm had been burned. And he’d gotten to her in time. 

He was good, apparently. Good at his job. Too good. She’d have to be more alert to the locations of her guards.

“Was he near us?” was all Zelda could ask Purah as they headed out of the building, the other researchers proceeding to clean up the mess.

“I don’t know. Your guards are always near us. But Zelda, are you okay? That could have killed you! That was nearly the end of your life!”

Zelda chuckled nervously, rubbing at her hand, still feeling the agent’s in hers. But what she didn’t realize was that the attack from the Guardian hadn’t nearly been the end of her life, but it was the start of it.

[dorminchu]

15. anything you need [wip]

(A short (short??) scene from an upcoming AoT fic. Post-canon, VC!Annie, Marley AU, LOTS of headcanon. Yes that's a low roar reference in the title I'm a sap okay)

Three weeks together in tenuous silence and no alcohol have steadily eroded what patience he had left, and the sense of security brought within solitude; he’ll hear her moving around at early hours, possibly a leftover habit from their enlistment. Other times he’ll catch her staring at him when he thinks he’s alone, and the one time he had the heart to ask what she was doing she grew quiet, taciturn.

He ought to have been nicer, perhaps. But she ought to have given him a proper answer.

This is the morning where he swivels his head around and simply asks: "Why'd you really come back?"

She goes still, in the process of tying her hair up. Her jaw tightens. His eyes narrow.

“You show up at my door without an explanation. You look at me as though I’m going to slit your throat the second you let your guard down. Am I supposed to believe you aren’t a mole?”

She looks away. “I have no reason to turn you over anymore.”

"Why, now?” Her shoulders lock up. “Don’t avoid the question,” he snaps.

"My father is dead," she retorts, "and unlike you, I don't have anyone else to help me."

The quiet is thick. She looks at first like she’s going to hit something, but as he watches, she shrinks into herself.

“Dead?” he repeats.

“Of course, you wouldn’t understand, your parents have been dead for--”

The chair scrapes the floor and her eyes turn to him in the same moment he stands up.

“What do you think I wouldn’t understand?” His voice is low, very low. He crosses the space between them in three strides, leaning on his better leg. “That your tenure is up? You said it yourself, you have nowhere else to go.”

“What are you doing?”

His scowl deepens. “What?”

“There’s no war to fight, and you just wake up every morning like you’re going through the motions. You let me live here, for what? Company?” She’s sneering. “What do you think is going to happen when one of us starts to deteriorate?”

He goes quiet, but his eyes glitter with something she doesn’t want to face. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

“You’d kill me?” His face falls. Not grief, but disappointment. “No, you wouldn’t. You can’t, and likewise I can’t put my life into your hands if you’re going to be--”

He grabs her arm with surprising force. She cannot back down. “You think I feel nothing? That I never wished there could’ve been an alternative plan? That it didn’t cross my mind what’s going to happen to us eventually?” His voice is shaking, the familar furrow in his brow an echo of the person she used to know. “I can’t protect you from that, no more than you could protect me. I don’t understand what else you want.”

Annie looks helpless, but not in a way he can assuage. Her mouth is set. “I don’t want your mercy. It never did either of us good.”

“Then--”

“You’ve done more than enough good, by allowing me to stay,“ she says in a voice tinged with agitation, “so why do you want to understand me? I don’t give you trouble. Do you want me to leave?”

"Of course I don’t want you to leave,” he retorts, “I just--”

He doesn't know what he ought to say. There's too much time to fritter away without a war on the backburner, and her eyes are boring into him. Every time they look at each other he gets that same, absurd itch in the back of his mind that sharpens his tongue and makes him want to do things he doesn’t think he should attempt whilst sober.

So of course, he does the sensible thing, leans down and kisses her. Annie goes rigid. She doesn’t kiss back or kick his ankle out from under him. She doesn’t do much of anything except stand there, breathing unevenly.

He pulls back, realising his mistake. In a brittle voice, he repeats: “I don’t want you to leave.”

Her hands slowly rise and fist in his jacket, pulling him down to her level. She looks at his mouth and then back to his face, terse. Her eyes widen when he closes the distance. Her tongue slashes at his jaw and he groans, biting her lip; she sucks on his tongue.

It’s not warm outside, this time of year, but all of a sudden he’s itching to get her out of her jacket about the same time as she scrambles to undo his shirt. In a few seconds he's guiding her back against the counter without thought, shedding his jacket and unbuttoning her shirt.

He gets down to the second button before patience fails him; scattering buttons, baring her shoulders. Annie's eyes snap to him, her chest heaves. Military-grade brassire.

"Ah," he says, snapping out of it. "You can have one of my—"

Her mouth collides with his, her arms locked around his neck. He gauges this for a second before bracing on a hand behind her, tugging the remains of the shirt down her belly, kissing down her chin, the pulse in her throat.

"Wait," she murmurs, palm on his chest, "Jaeger."

She reaches behind her back to undo herself. At first he's a little impressed, vaguely envious, until her brow furrows and she mutters fucking hell under her breath.

Eren smirks. "Need a hand?"

She scowls. "I only have one of these." In a moment she tugs it down.

Whatever scarring has become more pronounced with time, not unlike a lye burn. She doesn't smile, exactly; her eyes are dark.

"Take off your shirt," she says.

Eren stops. "Are you sure?"

"You're just like me," she says, unimpressed.

He scoffs. "All right. You have to promise you won't faint."

Annie rolls her eyes. "Just take your goddam shirt off."

He obliges. He looks intact from the front, but there's a more evident, gnarled patch of damaged skin running from the nape of his neck down his spine where he'd once been disconnected. It's a good enough reason to keep his hair up.

She goes quiet, wide-eyed. "How long have you been like this?"

He shrugs. "About a year. It hasn't gone away since then." He's not about to elaborate. "Are you…?"

"I'm the same as you," she reiterates, looking at him intently.

He can live with that, he thinks, and kisses her breasts. A pleased hum works out of her throat and she lets him have a bit of fun before she tugs him up and rasps: "Get up here."

He restrains himself somewhat with her chinos, drags them down in a bunch and she's kicking them off as he straightens up, teasing her through her underwear until she's properly flushed, and he pulls it aside.

By now, she's made sure his trousers are unbuttoned, fishing out his erection and givng him a good pump before he can get his bearings; Eren hisses through his teeth. Her mouth curls against his throat and she works him over. His knees collide into the counter.

He catches her wrist. "You better stop that."

"Oh, am I that good?"

Five years ago he might've scoffed; six, he would have brushed her off for pride's sake. But now he just kisses her hard, hungry, murmuring: "God, yes, you are."

She hums curiously into his mouth. He cannot stand to make her wait another minute, another second another year so he takes himself in hand and kisses her jaw, knowing there will be time to do this again, knowing it surely as she throws her legs around his waist and he buries himself to the hilt.

She's quieter than him; a subtler grunt overshadowed by his answering groan. He fills her bit by bit, watching her brace on a hand, jaw clenched, a pretty mess atop his counter. With his brow against her cheek he glances down in time to see her take him in.

"Eren." She's panting, burning up under his fingers, brow furrowed. He wonders for a second if he's done something wrong but then she grunts: "Move."

And why deny her? Why deny himself the very thing that's been itching in the back of his mind for weeks? She's alive, beautiful and whole. With his tongue thick in his mouth, he thrusts, slowly; no need to speak. Eyes fluttering, she groans through bared teeth. He touches her face, and her eyes flicker to him.

“Jaeger." He can't help but kiss her. She murmurs: harder, and he obliges. She's moaning his name and it pierces his thoughts; he hauls her into his lap, crushing against the wall, confidence turns to ravenous want. He wants to go slow, watch her come apart, and then she's at his ear, moaning, "harder, you coward," and he will have many more times to do it properly but this, this is for the both of them and so he pins her, dragging her hips forth and fucking her as she likes.

She's biting her fist; he takes that wrist and puts it around his neck, worries her lip with his teeth until she's groaning, rocking slower, slower as she tightens up. Her jaw slacks; he shunts her to the wall and starts drawing noises out of her he's never heard before, keening and sweet. He's definitely not going to last much longer, kissing, nipping at her breasts, her collarbone, tonguing a stripe up her throat. She rears back, squeezing him with a brusque cry and he can’t last after that, grunting sharply, jostling her in the next second when his bad knee gives out.

He apologises for this, once he can speak. Annie kisses him.

[rebelmeg]

Author Meme!

I was tagged by the cutest ever @weethreequarter!  Thanks, doll!

Author Name: rebelmeg

Fandoms you write for: Nearly exclusively for the MCU.  I’ve done a couple for the Harry Potter fandom, just the one is posted, and like one fic for a couple other fandoms, but not posted.

Where you post: AO3, and I share to Tumblr

Most popular oneshot: SI Internship Team -  Tony's got two good kids spinning great ideas in his lab on a regular basis. It was inevitable that he took their research and efforts a step further.  (Gen, Tony & his Science sons, no romantic pairing, 4004 words)

Most popular multi-chapter fic: How To Save A Life (It Just Might Be Yours) - The Winter Soldier is sent on a mission, to take out the head of Stark Industries. There isn't supposed to be anyone else there, but the Asset is used to adapting in order to accomplish his mission... until he lays eyes on the baby in the backseat of the car.  On the run with a baby in tow, the Asset's conditioning breaks down, his humanity returns, and it's hard to tell who saves whose life as the years go by and James raises Tony as his own son.  (Teen, Dad Bucky & Kid Tony, 23,037 words)

Favorite story you wrote: I CANNOT CHOOSE BETWEEN MY BABIES.  So here, have the next three most popular ones.

Iron Savior -  The universe needs Iron Man. But Morgan Stark also needs her dad. You think the daughter of the most brilliant mind of his generation is gonna do anything less than save him?  (Gen, Tony & Morgan, background Pepperony, 1320 words)

Coming Home -  An offhand comment from Tony gives JARVIS a protocol to follow that he didn't intend.  (Gen, Tony & JARVIS, 1203 words)

Endless Suffering In Silence - Tony is involved in an accident that renders him mute. His recovery and struggles with coping are accompanied by friends old and new.  (Gen, no pairing, 6183)

Story you were nervous to post:

The unspecified romantic partner thing made me nervous with this one.  I knew it wouldn’t get much attention simply because if people are searching for a ship with Bucky, this would never pop up.

Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) - A letter from Bucky to his love back home during the war.  (Gen, Bucky/Unspecified Romantic Partner, 477)

I got impatient to finish this one, so it’s an odd mishmash of moodboards and little vignettes that read like headcanons, more than a story.  I still like it, but I worry I could have done it better.

Flowershop Row - A little sidestreet in New York offers up a kooky variety of just about any kind of flora you could possibly want, with all the character that a bunch of shop owners could possibly have.  (Gen, no pairing, 2220, lotsa moodboards)

How do you choose your titles: Eh, it depends.  I like it when I can skim the fic and a certain phrase will jump out at me, like, “Yep, that’s the one, that’s the title.”  Sometimes I have a title in mind before I start writing.  If I get stumped, I’ll try googling the theme of the fic, and see what comes up in quotes and such, see if I get a spark there.

Do you outline: In a disorganized way, yeah.  Sometimes I’ll write out a thing, a basic plot, and put it at the beginning of the fic so I know where it’s going.  I leave notes throughout, usually between asterisks so I can distinguish them easy.

Complete: I have 119 completed fics on AO3!

In Progress: WIPs that have their own Word document (meaning they are at least one full page of writing, single spaced), I have 59.  Oh, and.... 4 collabs, I believe.  A couple of which are close to being done!

Coming soon/Not yet started: I have a Word document specifically for bits and pieces that are either little snippets, dialogue exchanges, or anything short enough that it doesn’t get its own Word doc.  That whole doc, including the MCU timeline at the end, is over 25k.  Which is absurd, but there ya go.

Do you accept prompts: I LOVE prompts, but I can take a long time to get to them.  I’ve got so many screenshots and stuff on my computer that I’ve gotten just from comments on my fics, ideas for other fics or continuing a story or such.  And I have every intention of doing all of them, but I know it could take years.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: My IMBB fic has been a rollercoaster to write, I’m way excited to finish that!  Another Endgame fix-it that’s quite a bit longer than the other ones.  A meet-cute with Tony and Rhodey meeting Maria and Carol, that one is super cute and fun.  All my collabs!  A few AUs that came outta nowhere and are super fun.

I’m not sure who to tag, so let’s just say that if you see this and wanna play, CONSIDER YOURSELF TAGGED!  Yes, I’m being serious!  Even if I don’t know you!

[hanalwayssolo]

Of Prophets and How They Save The World

A/N: First of the three-part thing I wrote feat. a pre-game Ardyn, which I’ve had since December. This all started thanks to this fanart I came across c/o @clave-razon, then I set this story idea aside for awhile, but then I saw another brilliant fanart, this time a WIP from @hanatsuki89 and I’m like, I gotta get my shit together haaaah anyway

Link in AO3 | Tagging some fellas per usual: @eternallydaydreaming2015 @lazarustrashpit @bleucommelhiver @louisvuittontrashbags @hypaalicious @mooshinspace @animakupo @noboomoon 

Ardyn rarely counts the days he is away from the Crown City, but today, he is starting to feel the weight of the time that has passed.

Perhaps the unusually blazing climate is to blame. Ardyn is no stranger to the tropical regions in Lucis, but this year has been hotter than the Infernian’s fickle flame. The season has transformed the roads of Cleigne into a parched wasteland, the soil cracked and bone-dry in the searing heat. In his growing discomfort, Ardyn rolls the sleeves of his loose white dress shirt that now sloppily clings to his frame thanks to his own sweat, and he ties his red-violet hair into a messy bun. Nero, his ever faithful chocobo companion, can even sense his unease that the majestic black bird descends to a slow trot down the dusty road.

Behind Ardyn, Gilgamesh steers his own ride—an equally majestic golden chocobo named Weiss—and sidles up to him.

“My lord, the next town should already be nearby. I apologize if the route we have taken has caused you any inconvenience.” Gilgamesh politely offers, bowing his head. Despite his daunting appearance, Gilgamesh’s display of his gentle courtesies and utmost propriety directly contrasts his massive height, broad shoulders, and striking amber eyes; even his long silver hair parted like braided curtains on both sides of his face does little to help encourage a less menacing look.

Ardyn faces Gilgamesh with a cheeky smile. “My dear friend, there’s no need for you to apologize on behalf of the machinations of nature. It is what it is.”

“But are you exhausted, my lord?”

Ardyn hesitates, but he lies, “No, I’m perfectly fine, Gilgamesh. I appreciate your concern—“

Nero lets out a loud kweh! that Ardyn pulls into a halt. Gilgamesh finds it difficult not to laugh.

“It seems that the bird only knows how to tell the truth,” Gilgamesh says, amused. “We’ve been on a long journey, after all.”

Four months, three weeks, two days...

Ardyn sighs and offers no response, and he fails to notice that Gilgamesh is keenly watching him. The weight of four months, three weeks, and two days begin to manifest in Ardyn’s face; his eyes reflect a heavy weariness, his lips tighten to an exhaustion he refuses to acknowledge.

It is true that Ardyn embarked on this noble expedition for a genuinely good cause; for months, he dedicated his time traveling from one bustling town to another, visiting houses of people afflicted by the unknown malady rampantly spreading all throughout Eos, and blessing them with his gift of healing. He treats them all with profound care, and not once did Ardyn fail to welcome the wounded and weary at his feet, the sick and dying, the lost and uncared for.

His stubborn younger brother insisted that Ardyn did not need to bear the burden of their powers alone; but with his stubbornness directly proportional to his own, Ardyn still pursued this rigorous journey, despite knowing that the eleven-year-old Somnus is right. His brother might still be a child, but Ardyn found him too wise and brazen for his age. He loves him for it, and fiercely so.

Let me protect you, brother. Let this burden be my cross to carry.

And if he could only allow himself one moment, or a fraction of an hour, or a breath of a second, Ardyn would admit how much he misses his brother. Or just simply how tired he truly is, how he condemns the frailty of his own flesh, how he wants to strip away his body’s limitations, to rid himself of his own weakness when people around him are suffering and dying and—

“My lord?” Gilgamesh finally cleaves the silence with the sudden sharpness of his voice. He is still looking at Ardyn, confused and concerned. “We shouldn’t be much farther now. Are you—”

“You worry too much, my friend,” Ardyn chews and swallows all of his inhibitions into a flashy smile. He pats Gilgamesh on the back before he pulls in Nero's reins, galloping away, leaving his trusted steward’s worries to wither at the corner of his mouth.

Your trembling hands are calloused as the day your lover left without a word.

Not that it matters now, anyway. What matters now is that your hands quiver and shake that you lose your grip around the porcelain bowl, slipping away from your fingertips, and gracelessly meeting the concrete floor with a wild crash. Your bandaged forearms are burning without fire, and you bite the inside of your cheek as you shuffle around your little hut in a frenzy, searching for that vial of remedy you had personally concocted to relieve the pain, if only temporarily.

But you cannot seem to find it. So instead, you whisper a sincere prayer to the Six to grant you a swift death.

You have been enduring this scourge—or blight or daemon’s curse or whatever name the villagers of Lestallum have decided to coin this monstrous disease—since the day your lover discovered the patches of ghastly gray erupting from your skin. The same day they probably decided should be the last day to be around you because, well, what’s the point in staying with a person about to die, anyway?

Again, it doesn’t matter now. You squeeze your eyes shut, hoping that the pain either subsides or kills you in a moment’s time.

But the sound of a hundred footsteps and excited voices jolt you out of your silent suffering.

You drag your feet and you press an ear against your front door. You cannot bring yourself to open it and let the people see your current state, so you only listen. “The Healer is in town!” You hear someone announce amongst the collective chatter, and your heart stops.

Lestallum may be a small canyon town, but with the occasional mercenaries and peddlers passing through, it is no surprise that the news about this Healer have been circulating around to both travelers and townsfolk alike. Even someone like you who live far off the main thoroughfare and all the way on the outskirts of the town have heard about this Healer. Revered and respected by many, people claim that the man works miracles. They say that with just his touch, the blind could finally see, the cripple could walk, the deaf could hear.

The ones with the scourge are reported to be cured, too.

Gods be good, if this is hope...

You are, in every way, a skeptic right to the bone. But today, you decide to take your chances and gamble on otherworldly wonders and miracles and whatever this Healer has to offer.

So you snatch your cloak and you bolt out of your door, still throbbing in the agonizing pain. Past through the barren fields, past the baked pastures, and past dry stone huts and wooden houses and withered trees, you run across the sweltering road. From afar, you can see the crowd gathering like a wake of vultures over a carcass, all squawking in morbid anticipation. You try to squeeze your way in, only to fail miserably.

“If I may so humbly request everyone to please settle down,” a booming voice suddenly commands, and like some sort of sorcery, the townspeople fall into hushed whispers. You tiptoe to get a better look behind the menacing voice, but you are only able to glimpse, even for a mere second, a gigantic armored man with beautiful silver hair and frighteningly piercing eyes.

Is he… the Healer?

Another voice speaks up, and it is not the silver-haired man.

“We thank you all for such a warm welcome,” the voice starts, and whatever the person says next gets drowned by people hollering and cheering. Piqued with intense curiosity, you back away from the crowd and you find yourself climbing on top of the roof of a nearby house. Not your finest moment, you admit, but desperate times call for very desperate measures.

At this distance, you spot the Healer’s face among the throng of spectators.

You are somehow surprised to find that the man possesses a young face: comely and handsome, with the exception of his striking velvety hair. The armored man stands on guard beside him, hovering menacingly, as if ready to shred anyone who dares to pose a threat. And yet, despite his efforts, the Healer seems to pay him no mind as he welcomes a sick man infected with the scourge with open arms.

And with all honesty, you did not exactly prepare yourself to witness something so… strangely ordinary.

Perhaps you should not have expected the Healer to perform some sort of spectacle or riveting spell out of his so-called miracles. There is no bolt of thunder nor a single spark of flame, nor did the earth part beneath his feet.

And yet, there’s something so gripping in this strange ordinariness. One by one, he attends to the needs of anyone who comes to him, and he beckons for them to come closer with such patience and gentleness, treating them with a benevolent kindness, like he owns a well of affection inside of him that never runs out. He carries children with utmost care, holds the sick with unfailing compassion, touches the foreheads of men and women who seek his blessing, and he does all of these things—these strangely, brutally ordinary things—over and over, repeatedly as if in a perpetual loop, all with a solemn smile on his beautiful face. And the people walk away crying out of joy and gratitude, having been freed and cured of their afflictions with the simplest of his touch.

It is a bizarre sight to behold, watching these people from all walks of life celebrate and rejoice that it made you lose track of time. Like being engulfed in a trance that makes everything feel so possible, or infinite. Little by little, you mindlessly watch as more people come forward and walk away, until the waves of people begin to ebb, happily retreating to their homes, and the Healer and his steward start to march away, about to leave town…

Gods be damned, I am a fucking idiot!

“Wait!” You yell as the pair already depart riding their chocobos. In your panic, you hastily climb down from the roof that you scrape your knee—an additional pain to your many other pains, which by now you have no time to pay any attention to—and you break into a desperate run.

“Wait, please—“ you yell again in between heaving breaths, but they cannot seem to hear you. They are already halfway outside the town, and you are still running to catch up...

Until you see that they stutter into a halt.

Unlike your broken porcelain bowl, the Healer staggers to his side, slowly slipping away from the saddle of his black chocobo, his body gracelessly meeting the ground with a quiet thud.

For what it’s worth, Ardyn is pretty certain he has not returned yet to the Crown City, but he finds himself in his room. He knows it’s his room when he immediately recognizes the desk drowning in multitudes of books and scrolls, the dusty shelves behind it, and the unmade bed at the corner where his brother is now sitting.

“Why do you always push yourself too hard, brother?” Somnus asks, his voice low and lonely. He raises his head and looks at Ardyn, his dark blue eyes curious and searching.

But Ardyn only responds to his brother’s question with a faint smile. He approaches the boy and wraps him in a tight embrace.

“I’m fine,” Ardyn finally says, pulling away and ruffling his brother’s well-kept raven-black hair.

Somnus protests with a groan, “No, you’re not fine. You’re sick.” He stares at Ardyn and in a whisper, he tells him, “Please come home.”

“But I am home, Somnus—“

“Please don’t go, brother.”

In a blink of an eye, Somnus’ gentle face changes to something grotesque—eyes bleeding black, his skin paler, mouth foaming with blood.

Terror washes over Ardyn and he seizes Somnus’ face. But with his touch, the image of his brother only blurs before him. And he tries to scream but his voice would not come out, and the silence only grows around him until he is completely devoured by darkness.

Ardyn wakes up thrashing in a cold sweat with the fullest intent of killing you.

Well, at least that’s what it feels like when he has his hand wrapped around your neck, wringing the life out of you. But Ardyn does not mean you any harm, and you know it; for the past few days, you have been watching him restlessly drift between consciousness and his nightmares, and right now, you just happen to be within the perimeter of his worst nightmare yet.

And it’s a good thing that Gilgamesh is quick on his feet. He hurriedly steps in between the both of you and he pulls Ardyn back.

“My lord, let go—“

“Where am I?!” Ardyn demands in a hysterical fit. “And Somnus, is he—“

“Your… brother is... not here,” you cough out, and you struggle to explain as you try to pry Ardyn’s hands off your neck, “And… you’re… in my house…”

Ardyn turns to you, and in an instant, he calms down and he returns to his senses. He drops his hands, and the realization of what he has just done finally dawns on him that his face reddens in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Ardyn falters, and he looks at Gilgamesh. And then at you. After a painful second, he sheepishly asks, “How long have I been... asleep?”

You and Gilgamesh trade a knowing look.

Gilgamesh clears his throat and answers, “It’s been five days, my lord. Our host has generously taken their time to take care of you.”

Gilgamesh begins to explain what happened. A flash of urgency crosses Ardyn’s pale face. Like drawing strength from an empty pit, he weakly smiles at you and croaks, “Thank you… for your hospitality. But I believe we must go—”

Before Gilgamesh could even protest at Ardyn's ridiculous suggestion, you beat him to it. “Are you mad?” You return Ardyn’s smile with a frown. “You’re still burning with fever. Look at you.”

Ardyn sighs, “But you have done so much for me—us—that I can’t bother you any much longer—”

“With all due respect,” you curtly interrupt, “refusing to receive help when you are in dire need of one is not an act of selflessness but an act of foolishness. I understand you are in a hurry, but wouldn’t it be best that you rest for the long journey ahead?”

Ardyn does not answer. Gilgamesh is stunned by your audacity, and he only nods in agreement.

Before the silence could stretch any longer, Ardyn politely asks, “May I know your name?”

This time, it is you who do not answer. Ardyn steps closer to you, and you notice him eyeing your bandage-covered forearms. You turn away, and you can feel his amber eyes burning a hole at your back. After a while, you say, “I’m afraid my name is of little importance.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m just a nobody,” you respond, albeit a little too tartly. You face him and offer him an empty smile before you take your leave.

[qqueenofhades]

The Rose and Thorn: Chapter XIV

summary:  Sequel to The Dark Horizon. The New World, 1740: Killian and Emma Jones have lived in peace with their family for many years, their pirate past long behind them. But with English wars, Spanish plots, rumors of a second Jacobite rising, and the secret of the lost treasure of Skeleton Island, they and their son and daughter are in for a dangerous new adventure. OUAT/Black Sails. rating: M status: WIP available: FF.net and AO3 previous: chapter XIII

Flint was confined to bed for the rest of the week. As he was well aware that he was extremely lucky to be alive, even he did not complain – at least any more than usual. He did try to get up and carry on as normal on Wednesday morning, which led to him almost falling down the stairs and otherwise causing a disruption, and he was packaged straight back to bed with considerable scolding. After that, it was somewhat easier (if only somewhat) to convince him that a few more days of rest and recuperation were in order, and by Saturday, he was almost feeling his old self, albeit with a nasty, still-knitting gash that would require close minding. They had had to cut his hair on that side of his head to tend it, which gave him a slightly mangy look that he disliked, so Miranda fetched the shears and evened it out. “There,” she said dryly, with a final snip. “I’m not certain that our most pressing concern is your vanity, my dear, but there you are.”

“Better.” Flint inspected his new trim critically in Violet’s hand mirror. It had been a long week for everyone – needing to take care of him, wanting to further their investigation into Gold but also wanting to stay close to home in the event of another attack, and waiting tersely for another potential instruction or complication from Gideon – and tempers, while holding reasonably well given the strain, were still fraying around the edges. No constables had beaten down the door to accuse them of collaboration with the Jacobites, at least, so that seemed to remain secret enough, and perhaps the tip that David had given the redcoat captain had led the authorities to nab some of the conspirators. Flint had not wanted them to question Charlotte without him, so Violet and Lucy had been over at the Bell household for most of the week, to keep up a casual, unsuspicious conversation and otherwise not startle Charlotte into running if she thought they were onto her. What there was to be “on” to, if there was anything at all, they still had no idea.

“I don’t think you’re ready to jump back into full action quite yet,” Emma said, as Flint appeared to leap out of the chair and do just that. “You might be able to go visit Charlotte with us, but even then, we’re not getting information out of her if you just – ”

“If he behaves like himself, you mean,” Miranda supplied briskly, unscrewing a small tin of liniment, dabbing up a few fingers, and carefully applying it to Flint’s wound. “Do you suppose you could possibly manage not to, James?”

Flint hitched his face up into a hideous simulacrum of a friendly smile. “Does that help?”

“Not at all, really.” Miranda continued her examination to see how the flesh was granulating, seemed moderately satisfied by what she found, took the fresh-boiled cotton wool and clean bandages from Emma, and began to tie up the new dressing. “As an old friend once told you, you will need to keep your temper for the duration of the meeting, not merely its inception. One hole in your head is quite enough for you to be getting on with.”

Wisely warned by the shortness in her tone not to make any more remarks of his own, Flint held his tongue and sat still until his wife had finished her work, was then not pleased by his resulting partial resemblance to an Egyptian mummy, and sought about for a hat to disguise the infirmity. The only one he could find was a battered old tricorne of Henry’s, that when he put it on made him look rather like a villainous highwayman (this impression being, after all, not entirely inaccurate) and which was strengthened when he shrugged on his cuffed black cavalier’s coat and slung his pistol bandolier over his shoulder. “I swear, I won’t shoot unless someone shoots at me first,” he said, in response to Emma and Miranda’s renewed askance glances. “But I’m still not walking in unarmed.”

Sensing that this was clearly the best they were going to get, the women fetched their own cloaks and shoes and made ready to go. They had decided that it should be the three of them to question Charlotte, as they knew the most about Gold and any link she might have with him, and if it did go sour, it could be blamed on them without tainting Charlotte’s friendship with Henry and Violet. Flint, of course, was of the opinion that if this was the case, good riddance, but Emma and Miranda hoped that they could restrain it from undue manifestation. Henry had tentatively gone back to the print shop, as he needed to work to support his family, so David was left in charge of protecting Violet and the children. He had taken quite well to his role as surrogate grandfather; he and Mary Margaret had no children of their own, and he was to be observed playing with Lucy and Richard in the back garden as they left. Flint shot him a very dark look over his shoulder, but for once, did not comment.

It was a pale, breezy, early-September day, the very slightest edge taken off the worst of the summer heat. As they set off down the lane, it only being a brief walk to the Bells, Flint said abruptly, “It’s Sam’s birthday tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Emma had not forgotten that tomorrow was the seventh, as she had not forgotten Killian’s birthday a fortnight ago, and her heart twisted. It was getting harder and harder to repress the unbearable thought that she might never see her younger son again. “We. . . we should have supper. To mark the occasion.”

“You don’t think – ” Flint started, then stopped. “Never mind.”

“No. What?”

“You don’t think a young man of Sam’s. . . talents, who traipsed off to fight with overheated notions of chivalry and gallantry, who has been getting into trouble before he could walk, and cannot tell a lie to save his life, might have become embroiled in some other mess apart from just the war? If someone in the army worked out who he was, if they found themselves in need of an assistant or an underling for some excursion or endeavor or what have you, is there not a chance they’d settle on Sam? I’d pick the boy from the notorious family of pirates, since I’d know there was a nearly unlimited supply of ways to ensure his compliance. Sam could never resist an adventure, no matter how hare-brained. So. . .?”

Emma glanced at Flint with one eyebrow raised in the way that Killian did so well, as she thought it was a bit rich of him to be casting stones at anyone else for their proclivity toward hare-brained adventures. Still, the rest of what he was saying made a certain amount of sense, both oddly reassuring and further worrying. If Sam had been recruited into a side job or personal favor for someone, that could indeed be the reason he had not come home, rather than that he was badly injured or dead. However, it also meant that he could be literally bloody anywhere in the New World, in God knew what circumstances, with God knew which consequences for failure (or, for that matter, success). There was always the possibility that he had made it back to Savannah with the English army’s retreat, been extremely puzzled to find his entire family gone with not even a note, and settled in to wait until they got home, but that was most unlike him. He’d set out to look for them at least, and something else, that lingering sense that Emma could only categorize as motherly intuition, continued to tell her that this was not the case. She didn’t think he was dead, or simply could not seriously entertain the possibility and stay sane, but she didn’t think he was safe, either. Oh God, where are you?

“I don’t know,” she said heavily, after a moment. “We still can’t find out right now. Come on.”

They reached the Bell residence in a few more moments, went up the front steps, and knocked. All of them were doubtless wondering if there would be some excitement in its answering, but after a moment, the latch clicked, and Charlotte opened the door. “Yes, can I – oh.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Bell.” Emma tried to make her voice as polite and pleasant as possible. “Could we by any chance have a word?”

Charlotte’s eyes flickered warily to Flint’s guns. “Is something wrong?”

“No. We’d just. . . well. Only a few questions, I promise.”

Charlotte considered for a moment, then stepped back and beckoned them inside more or less graciously. The house was smaller than the Swans’, and nearly devoid of possessions; it was very clean and well kept, but sparsely furnished and lightly lived in. Charlotte led them through to a sitting room with a threadbare divan and one armchair; Cecilia was playing on the floor with a rag doll, but glanced up in startlement at the adults’ entrance. “Run upstairs to your room, Ceci,” Charlotte said firmly. “Go on, hurry.”

“But Aunt Charlie – ”

“Room. Now. Off with you.”

Cecilia picked up her doll and scuttled out, not without a frightened look at Flint. At Charlotte’s gesture, he, Emma, and Miranda squashed themselves onto the divan, and she herself sat neatly in the armchair, smoothing her skirts. As if anticipating what they were going to ask, she said, “I did not send that man after you.”

“I believe you,” Emma promised. “But it’s possible you know something that can help us find who did. Did you speak to anyone about anything you might have heard – or inferred – from Violet?”

“I was asking a few questions at the docks,” Charlotte said, after a pause. “It could be that some of the men I approached were connected to the ones dealing with you, but I did not explicitly say anything about you, or tell them where to find you.”

“And yet they knew exactly how to thwart our plan,” Flint said coolly. “Why is that, would you suggest?”

“I don’t know.” Charlotte glared at him, and Emma could not help but be impressed that this young, pretty, brown-haired girl was managing to hold her own against a man who had terrified many other full-grown, much older men. “They made a lucky guess.”

“I don’t believe in lucky guesses.”

Miranda cleared her throat. “Might I point out,” she said, “that the success of the stratagem did not necessarily rest on intimate knowledge of ours. Of course they would have the wits to carry out their illicit activities as normally and unsuspiciously as possible, not because they were craftily suspecting us of some devious attempt to ambush them. The events at the rendezvous point itself can be entirely explained by a drop of common sense on their part – a quality I note to be rather lacking among certain other participants in them – so the only question we would have genuine need to clarify Mrs. Bell’s role in is whether she sent the assassin. And as she herself killed the man, I for one concur with Emma that this is signally and insultingly unlikely!”

Despite himself, Flint’s mouth twitched. “It’s a pity they don’t let women be barristers,” he remarked. “I’m fairly sure you would put the fear of God into the lot of them.”

“Perhaps I should start by putting some into you.” Miranda clearly had still not forgiven him for his near-death capers. “Now, shall we continue the conversation constructively, or do you have something else to divert us with, my dear?”

“No,” Flint said politely. “Please, proceed.”

Miranda gave him one last extremely pointed look, then turned back to Charlotte. “Excusing my husband’s rudeness,” she said, “we have had a difficult fortnight. And we also think we may have an inkling as to who was potentially responsible for at least some of it. Have you ever, by chance, met a Lord Robert Gold?”

All of them watched Charlotte’s face very hard at that, but there was not even a flicker of momentary recognition. “No,” she said, baffled. “I recall the name from somewhere, but I’ve never met him. Besides, isn’t he dead?”

“That is what we would like to know,” Emma said. “He was considerably dangerous to us in the past, and I doubt his opinion has improved at all. On that note, I do have to ask if you could help us in some way, and what brought you to Philadelphia. Who exactly is Jack?”

Charlotte hesitated, as she always did when the subject arose. Finally she said, “Oh, very well. He’s my husband.”

“Is there some reason you couldn’t tell us that before?” Flint asked, somewhat less sarcastically than he otherwise might have.

“It’s – never mind.” Charlotte sighed. “Anyway, yes. Two years ago. We escaped England, but couldn’t bring A – my friend. Believe me, we had tried.”

“All right,” Emma said, trying to keep them on course. “What does Jack do?”

“He’s a – he’s a soldier.”

“And where is he presently?”

“Somewhere in the Caribbean. He was taking a job to make us some money and help liberate my friend. As you can see – ” Charlotte gestured at the shabby, bare sitting room – “we are hardly living in the lap of luxury. I still have a little money left, but that’s not much, and I don’t expect it will stretch beyond another few weeks. Otherwise, I’ll have to think of something else.”

“I have some money.” Emma remembered painfully well what it was like to struggle to feed yourself and a young child, and the constant worry that it would run short. “I’ll see you and Cecilia taken care of.”

Charlotte looked at her awkwardly, surprised but not unwilling. “I – that would help. Thank you.”

“That is all very well and good.” Flint clearly thought that all this tender concern for women and children was rather sorely beside the point. “Why don’t you know where Jack is? Who is his commanding officer? Why all this secrecy about who he is and what the both of you are doing? Why are you so determined to get this friend of yours out of France? Is it possible, say, that you and Jack are not married at all, and this is some clever deception in service of – I don’t know what, exactly, would you care to fucking enlighten us?”

Both Emma and Miranda started to say something at once, outraged, but Charlotte held up a hand, white-faced, eyes snapping. Then she whirled around and marched out of the sitting room, leaving Flint to be thoroughly glared at by his womenfolk. “If I ever get my hands on this Jack,” he muttered, “we will see who thinks they’re the clever little – ”

For a moment, they thought Charlotte had simply stormed out and put an end to the visit (Emma could not exactly blame her if so) but then they heard angry footsteps on the stairs again, and Charlotte returned with a neatly folded piece of paper, which she unfurled and took the liberty of thrusting directly under Flint’s nose. “Does that,” she enquired, with truly impressive icy courtesy, “possibly answer some of your questions?”

Flint, Miranda, and Emma looked down at it. It was a marriage certificate from the city of London, issued by a parish church in Marylebone, confirming that on 21 May 1738, Miss Charlotte Goode and Mr Jack Howe had been joined in the bonds of Holy Matrimony. It was duly signed by the priest, Charlotte, a bold black scrawl that must have been Jack’s, and two witnesses; by the looks of things, their surnames were Goode as well. This did shut Flint up for a few moments as to whether the marriage was real, but he quickly found another thing to harp on about. “Jack Howe? Haven’t you been telling us that his name – your name – is Bell?”

“It is his name,” Charlotte snapped. “Howe was his father’s name, and his father is – was – a monster. He uses his mother’s name now instead. Any other questions?”

“Oh, plenty.” Flint started to get to his feet. “And if you don’t feel in the mood to provide some actual substantive answers – ”

Emma and Miranda both grabbed at his arms, but Charlotte was faster. Evidently the marriage certificate was not the only thing she had gone upstairs to fetch, and she plunged a hand into her skirt pocket, whipped out a pistol, cocked it with an expert flick of her thumb, and pointed it directly at him. “Believe me,” she said. “I don’t want this at all. But you know how good a shot I am. Try to hurt me or Ceci, and I will do it, I swear.”

Concerned though she was that Flint might get another perforation in his already aired-out skull, Emma could not help but further admiring this – as a former female pirate captain, she was quite sure that Charlotte would have made an excellent one. If Jack was anything like her, no wonder they were such a formidable match. Nonetheless, despite the strong possibility of him deserving it, Emma could not let her aged father suffer a second serious injury in a fortnight, and she got to her feet, moving between them with hands outstretched, as if to separate a young lioness from tackling a grey-maned elder statesman of the pride. “Everyone, take a breath and sit back down. Especially you, James.”

Slowly, not taking their eyes off each other, Flint and Charlotte backed to their respective items of furniture and did as ordered. Charlotte put the gun back, but her hands remained tightly knotted in her lap, her eyes flickering to the ceiling in clear alarm that Cecilia had heard the uproar. “I don’t know what else you can get from me,” she said. “I don’t know where Gold is. I don’t work for him. I didn’t send the assassin.”

“All right,” Flint said grudgingly, surprising everyone. “But if so, one last question. You know who I am, don’t you? You said so, when I caught you snooping. You called us pirates.”

“I. . . guessed a few things, yes.” Charlotte’s lips tightened. “You have been plastered over half the broadsheets and bill-papers in London, you know. And given what Henry’s said about his family, I. . . read between the lines.”

“Clever girl.” Flint likewise had to recognize a display of skill from a rival, however unwillingly, and he raised a gingery eyebrow. “But then, if we’re taking you at your word, you didn’t rush to alert the authorities about us. Did not tell them that the fearsome Captain Flint was strolling in their very midst. Even expressed your interest in having me potentially work for you – in a rather unorthodox fashion, but never mind. So could we perhaps infer in reverse that you and your husband are no allies of the English crown, and that whoever Jack is working for in the Caribbean, even if not Gold, is bloody well not King George?”

Charlotte blinked. Then she wet her lips, clearly taking a moment to think about her answer. Remarkably skilled as she might be at this game, Flint had been playing it since before she was born, and Emma herself was a step behind him on this; she had not realized that he had put the pieces together to turn the question on its head. There was a silence in which the only sound was the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantel. Then Charlotte said reluctantly, “No. It’s not King George.”

“So you two are Jacobites, then?” Flint moved to the next most logical option on the list with surgical precision. “Part of the network here, so you might hear things about what we were doing – and what Gideon Murray wanted – whether or not we told you?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “We’re not Jacobites.”

“So. . .” Flint considered, for a long, fraught moment. “That leaves. . . who, exactly?”

“He’s a free agent,” Charlotte said, almost defiantly. A brief gleam of pride lit her eyes. “He works where the money takes him.”

“A mercenary?” Flint’s lips went thin. Not necessarily due to any moral objection to the vocation, but because the last mercenary they had tangled with was Henry Jennings, a prospect to chill the very soul. “Who’s he working for now?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because,” Flint said. “I think you know that we’re more your folk than the mindless, loyalist sheep of His Majesty’s Britannic Government. Your choice. I could be wrong.”

Charlotte considered them closely. She opened her mouth, shut it, and started again. Then at last she said, “Jack works for the Spanish. He has since we came here. It was the best way to get close enough to France, and there were other attractions. With the war, there’s been plenty to occupy hm. So there. Are you going to turn me in as a traitor?”

“You know I won’t, or you wouldn’t have told me.” Flint shrugged. The two of them were once more staring intently at each other, locked in a high-stakes chess match, testing the other’s gambits and defenses. “Well. That does explain your secrecy, I will grant you. And why you felt comfortable with Violet, once you’d worked out who we were – there was at least a better-than-even chance that you would not be hanged as the result of an unguarded comment. But if Jack works for the Spanish, while originally an Englishman, he must be a quite convincing actor himself, as well as having several interesting connections. What if we were in fact to strike a bargain? If you were to help us find Robert Gold, we would rescue this friend of yours from France. Depending on where my son-in-law has ended up, it might be on the bloody way anyway. What do you say?”

A brief, vulnerable, desperate hope flickered in Charlotte’s eyes at this, as much as she tried to hide it. “Oh?”

“Can you help us find Robert Gold?”

“I know a few of Jack’s contacts,” Charlotte said cautiously. “Only by name, we’ve never actually met. He was working with Governor Montiano in Florida, I know that much. There was some traffic with Governor Güemes of Cuba, as well.”

Everyone’s eyebrows went up at this, as these were some of the highest-ranking Spanish officials in the New World – no wonder Charlotte had been closed-mouthed, if anything, any word she did not consider carefully might lead hostile parties down this dangerous path after her. “If this Gold is who I think he is, though, he won’t be hiding among the Spaniards. He’ll have some base in an English territory. The obvious starting point might be Antigua, but – ”

Flint grimaced. “We’d all rather avoid Antigua if we could help it.”

“I don’t think he’d be there,” Emma said. “It would be too obvious. He prefers to lurk in the shadows, just off the side of things, and if he returned to Antigua, the word would be out at once. He needs secrecy to operate, it’s where he thrives. Jamaica, likewise, is too high-profile. We know he’s not on Nassau, we’d certainly have heard, and he’s not remotely foolish enough to try his luck there. Much too dangerous.”

“So that leaves what, only a few dozen islands to narrow it down to?” Flint scowled ferociously. “Perhaps if we sail around to each of them, hat in hand, we’ll have gotten half done by Christmas? If we’re not dead, that is?”

“Well,” Charlotte said. “Some of them are out. A man like that needs at least some structure to operate, doesn’t he? No good to have cunning plots if you’re in the middle of nowhere and can’t do anything about them. So somewhere lower-profile, but with enough connections to run his empire. That would rule out the smaller islands or places that are too far off the beaten path. That still leaves a list, yes, but a shorter one.”

Flint looked at her appraisingly. “Are you coming, then?”

“I can’t leave Cecilia,” Charlotte said, “and I am not sure I could justify bringing her into danger. Jack’s last assignment was supposed to be finished weeks ago, though, and he’s not been this late before. He was planning to bring back the money for us before he took a new posting, and. . .”

“Well,” Emma said. “It happens we have a few family members likewise unaccounted for, and we can’t leave Henry and his family alone here either. If you were to bring your niece with them. . . my brother Charles works on Nassau, and has plenty of connections there. Besides, it was our home, a long time ago. I think we could find something for Violet and the children.”

“You do remember what happened when we let Thomas and Jenny go there?” Flint demanded.

“Of course I remember,” Emma said, a bit shortly. “But at least Silver isn’t there anymore, is he? Not to mention, Nassau would be the best place for us to start our hunt for Gold. It has its ear to the ground on most, if not all, of the Caribbean’s sordid gossip. If there is any whisper of some shadowy deal broker, anything like that, any hint of Gold doing what he does, if we are in fact chasing the real man and not just the ghost, someone on Nassau will know. Besides, I thought you wanted to go back?”

“I – ” Flint struggled visibly. “I said I couldn’t go back, that Captain Flint once more setting foot on Nassau’s shores would set off a total fucking firestorm. Of course they would know something, they always know something, but is it worth the risk? And not just me, but all of us.”

“I think we’re rather past such calculations, aren’t we?” Miranda looked weary. “I can’t say I’m particularly eager to see the place again either, but if it is what will give us what we need, we shall have to simply grit our teeth and do it. You know we will never be truly safe again, if Robert Gold is alive and has once more made himself a position in which to interfere with our lives. If he is not, and it is only conjecture and baseless fear, we are reprieved, we can return to our other difficulties. But I do think it would explain a great deal if many of those difficulties were discovered to originate from Gold, and that we could douse the bonfire itself, rather than dashing about in a vain attempt to smother each ember.”

Flint, Emma, and Charlotte looked back at her with a variety of expressions. Finally Flint said softly, “My sweet, you shouldn’t have to – ”

“I’ve made it this far – in better shape than you, I might add – and someone has to be the voice of reason, James.” Miranda got to her feet with only a slight wince. “You yourself already noted that it would be quite relevant to our present entanglement with Lord Murray if we were to find his father. And perhaps you and I always knew that we would have to face Nassau once more in our lives. If we already managed Charlestown, perhaps this is not so terrible – at least we were happy there, once, perhaps. So if Mrs. Bell and her niece are willing to accompany us, then yes, I say we go. Emma?”

Emma hesitated. To her, this felt as if it might take attention away from the job of finding Killian, even as she agreed with Miranda that none of them would be safe as long as Gold lived. But she could not deny that there seemed to be a slow-moving avalanche pushing them further and further in the direction of the Caribbean. Nassau, Skeleton Island, Gold’s possible hideout – and, if Flint’s earlier speculation was anywhere close to accurate, her son Sam could be somewhere down there as well. That alone was reason enough to agree, and Emma had a feeling that if either Gold or Killian caught the slightest whiff of the other’s presence, they would go to any length to pursue a confrontation. Killian had never forgiven the man for destroying his life, and Gold was likewise the sort to hold grudges until Judgment Day, especially considering the ruin of his schemes – he would want to force a reckoning. As much as the prospect frightened her, if she found Gold, she very well might also find Killian.

“Aye,” Emma said, and set her shoulders. “I say we go.”

It was after dusk when Killian and Regina finally left the Admiralty, faced with the prospect of either rushing to the docks to arrange passage to Barbados immediately, or spending what was sure to be an extremely chilly night in some cut-rate Covent Garden lodging house (which, if Killian knew Covent Garden at all, would come with at least three floozies eager to help him warm things up). Both of them were extremely hungry, having not really eaten since yesterday morning in France, so they stopped long enough to buy a pasty from a food seller on her way home for the evening. Killian wolfed his down in about three bites, and even Regina did not manage to be much more dignified. There was nearly a moment where they smiled ruefully at each other, but awkwardness reasserted itself almost at once. The damp wind whisked at Killian’s jacket and Regina’s skirt, reminding them that they should see about accommodation one way or the other, and they made their way to one of the many public houses along the docks, which catered to sailors and merchants and passengers about to embark. It was dark and grimy and smelled as if something had long ago died in their attic kingdom, but at least it was a roof to keep the rain off, and they’d trawl the ships at first light tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Killian, however, barely noticed. He once more could not sit or rest, possessed of a manic energy that translated even less well to a tiny garret than it had to the Navy record office. Finally Regina, having had more than her utmost limit, exploded, “Bloody hell! If you don’t sit down right now, I swear I don’t care what Liam would think, I’m killing you!”

Killian, who had been in the middle of running through a feverishly detailed fantasy of how slowly was too slowly to strangle Gold (a question of exceptional mathematical precision, especially when you only had one hand) whirled on her. He was more than ready for her to actually try something, not that he thought she would give him the satisfaction. “Oh, as if you have ever cared what Liam would – ”

“I’ve been his wife for twenty-two years. I do care what he thinks.” Regina stared him down. “And for all you claim that you’re doing this to protect your family, I’m not the one who has been spiraling uncontrollably down a black hole of vengeance this entire time. You’re doing exactly what you hold against Liam. You’re not taking responsibility for what you want, and are disguising it in some grander purpose of sacrifice for your loved ones.”

That, despite himself, hit Killian hard. “I’m not – ” he said, somewhat less than certainly. “You already agreed that we should go to Barbados, that we – ”

“I have to admit,” Regina said, cutting over him, “I’m not a selfless person. That is how I’ve managed to keep your lunkhead brother alive all these years, because he genuinely never thinks of himself. But he’s not really living. He gets through the days, he manages them, he endures. He’s not happy, he’s not unhappy, he just is. For all you used to think that you needed him, that you couldn’t live without him, he’s had a far harder time living without you than you have without him. I know you’re a grown man, can’t go back and be his little brother again, and he would not want that for you. Now you’re asking me to give up the one thing I have, asking Liam to give up the one thing he has, and seeming to enjoy how much it hurts both of us. And after everything he’s done for you, no matter your opinion of its morality or necessity or methods, and after I have watched him struggle for over twenty years with what he’s done for you and your family and what happened that last night in Charlestown, when I tried everything I know to save Miranda McGraw, after I thought Jennings was going to kill Liam, rape me, desecrate Miranda’s body, and do God alone knows what to Henry and Geneva, after Liam finally, finally killed him but part of him died for good as a result – how dare you talk about what Liam feels. How dare you mock me for it. How dare you.”

Killian felt as if she had swung something very heavy into his face. He tried to speak, but only a faint croaking noise came out. He was tempted to reach down and feel if he still only had one arsehole. “I. . .” he managed at last. “Regina, I. . .”

She held up a hand. “Save the speeches for Liam. If we ever find him, or if it’s just more important to do anything else but. In which case, be so good as to tell me. You have the right to do whatever stupid thing you want, I can’t take that away from you. But I want to know, so I can leave before it’s too late. If you truly think that I might find him by going to Barbados with you, I’ll go. Otherwise, I’ll make my own arrangements. My concern for you on Liam’s behalf extended as far as getting you out of France. Now that’s done. I have no obligation to save you from another reckless revenge quest, and neither does he. But he wouldn’t share that opinion, would once more twist himself in half trying to stop you, and he can’t do that again and survive. So. What’s the truth?”

“You were. . . right,” Killian said, after a moment. “With what you said earlier, about me punishing him. I have, for a long time, and. . . I’m not proud of it, but I have. But remember, Lady Fiona is Gold’s sister. If she is anything like him, she’ll want to gloat, she’ll want to rub it in. I don’t know if they’re working together, but I doubt it. Power is never absolute as long as someone else has any of it, after all, and those two would never play nice together. Liam is nearly as delicious for Gold to torment as I am, so of course Lady Fiona would want to dangle him under her brother’s nose and then jerk him back. If nothing else, she’ll want to eliminate him as a rival and competitor. If she knows he’s in Barbados, and I am betting you anything he does, she’ll go.”

Regina considered this. “Take your brother to settle scores with her brother?” she said. “How. . . symmetrical. I don’t deny it’s the sort of thing to appeal to a certain kind of twisted mind. And that is a better argument than anything you gave me in the Admiralty. But if you’re wrong – ”

“Then I’m wrong, aren’t I? That happens. There would be nothing else I could do about it. I’m not going to deny I want to get to grips with Gold. I want it very badly. And I also think that my family is in danger as long as he lives. But I also think there is a very good chance that Liam will, in fact, be involved somewhere in this. Bloody hell, they can’t have left that far ahead of us, and if they are going to Barbados as well, we could catch them up. Come on, love. Trust me. Just a little. I know I don’t deserve it, but. . . we have to start somewhere.”

Regina looked at him uncertainly. He could tell that, significantly against her natural instincts, she almost wanted to. That, however, would also involve Killian trusting himself to deal with this logically, not keep pushing and pushing just in the name of getting to Gold, and not to completely lose the forest for the trees. He knew himself well enough to admit that this would be difficult for him, and he had already made a fine start at flying off the handle, but nothing had not yet been done that could not be taken back. He could calm down, take a deep breath, try to rid himself of that nearly mystical madness that the mere mention of Robert Gold’s name had the power to conjure over him. Both he and Regina held grudges sometimes past all sense or justification, to the point the ones they were hurting the most were themselves, and yet, if they were to make any success of this, those painful, decades-old resentments would have to be chipped at, loosened, shifted somehow. And in the question of who Killian wanted hurt for old sins more, Liam or Gold, it was not even remotely close to a contest. The silence lingered.

“Fine,” Regina said, breaking the spell. “We should get some sleep.”

This was easier said than done, as they were kept awake half the night by the creaking of the stairs, the boom of a nearby church bell relentlessly sounding the hours, and the nonstop wheezing of the bloke on the other side of the thin plaster wall, who was apparently dying of consumption on the instant (at least if he did, it might be quieter). They finally dropped off for a few hours, were rattled awake by the dawn carillon, and got dressed. There was still a lingering stiffness in the air, but they seemed slightly more cordial than yesterday, and they managed to collect their things, head out, and obtain breakfast without a major argument.

This accomplished, then began the unappetizing prospect of searching the docks for a captain willing to take them to Barbados on Regina’s limited remaining funds, and not ask too many questions about their names and business. Some of the merchants were planning to return to the West Indies for the winter, but did not want to put themselves to the trouble of passengers, and Killian felt an instinctive revulsion at the idea of approaching any of the vessels flying the distinctive ensign of the East India Company, red-and-white-striped with the Union Jack in the upper left corner. On the one hand, the Company was not hand in glove with the British government, as they hated Westminster’s constant attempts to tax their lucrative proceeds and interfere with their independent bylaws. On the other hand, they for obvious reasons regarded pirates as the scum of the earth, and all it took was one of them to have heard of Captain Hook to blow the whole thing sky-high. Gold probably had all manner of friends in the Company as well, who would be more than happy to drop his mortal enemy in his lap, trussed up like a chicken.

After they had been turned down half a dozen times, Killian was starting to get desperate. There were not terribly many vessels left to try, and it was either the last sailing of the season or close to it; it was this or nothing. He had just started to wonder what the odds were of swimming to Barbados when a voice called, “Sir? Madam? Are you in need of something?”

Startled, Killian and Regina turned to behold a handsome older gentleman of possibly Indian appearance, with a shaved head, keen dark eyes, and a navy-blue, gold-trimmed caftan and polished boots. “My apologies for surprising you,” he said. “I could not help but notice that you have been canvassing the docks for some time. What is it you are in search of?”

“Ah, well. We’re in search of passage. To the Caribbean, actually, but it doesn’t seem there’s anything bloody left.”

“I am sailing for the Caribbean in two days.” The gentleman raised an eyebrow. “Have you asked me yet?”

“Wh – you have a ship?”

“I do, yes. Where are you wishing to go?”

“Barbados,” Killian said, watching the gentleman’s face closely. “Bridgetown.”

There was no particular knowing look or flicker at that, and the gentleman nodded. “That is not far from where we are bound. If you are willing, I can take you.”

Killian was about to accept, then stopped. He could not help but wonder if such a generous offer, the apparent answer to their prayers, came with some nasty strings attached. “What does it cost? Exactly?”

“I am a wealthy man. I do not have particular need of money. If you wish to pay me, of course I shall accept, but it is not necessary.” The gentleman inclined his head. “Captain Nemo, at your service.”

“Ah – Killian Jones, at yours.” Perhaps he should have tried harder to think of an alias, but the truth occurred to him too instinctively. He took Nemo’s offered hand, and they shook. “This is my sister-in-law, Regina.”

“Madam.” Nemo took her hand in turn, and kissed it. “If you would follow me, I can show you the ship. Then you can decide if you wish to take passage.”

Cautious, but curious, Killian and Regina followed him to the eastern end of the docklands, the less desirable spaces where foreign merchants without London connections or regular bribes paid to the port authorities were sequestered. Nemo led them across the labyrinth of quays to the place where a large three-masted junk, built in the Chinese style with angular, pleated sails, rode at anchor. The hull was varnished in smooth black lacquer, the name inscribed on the high stern in polished red letters, both in English and what Killian thought was one of the South Asian languages, which he could not be sure. NAUTILUS/நாட்டிலஸ்.

Nemo was watching them avidly, as if waiting to see if the sight of such a decidedly non-European ship would shock their delicate sensibilities beyond all speech, but he seemed somewhat  pleased when it did not. “If she is to your satisfaction,” he said, “we depart two days from now, on the morning tide. Do you agree?”

“Ah – yes. Yes, thank you. It’s just – I’m grateful, mate, believe me. But why are you helping us?”

Nemo smiled faintly. “Perhaps I felt you needed it.”

“We – well, we do. But. . .” Killian wasn’t even sure why he was pushing so hard, but to say the least, he had had enough of voyages under unexplained circumstances, with unknown masters. “What do you want? Really?”

Nemo considered for a moment. Then he said, “Did you know a man named Edward England?”

“Er – yes, I did.” Killian blinked. Edward England had been Charles Vane’s quartermaster after Jack Rackham vacated the post, a genial, gentlemanly Irish rascal whom Killian had worked with during the defense and battle of Nassau, and who had invited Killian to come with him to continue his pirate escapades in the Indian Ocean. “I’m going to guess you met him. What happened to him?”

“He died. Quite a while ago. He was marooned on Mauritius with a few of his men, after he refused to kill the captain of a ship his crew had taken. They mutinied and stranded him. After a few months, they managed to sail to St. Augustine’s Bay in Madagascar, which was where I met him. He was deathly ill of tropical fever, and indeed he passed away just a few days later. But he had much to say. The natural wish of a man facing mortality and wishing to have his life remembered, his conscience cleared. I myself had recently traveled from Philadelphia, where I had taken another man of England’s old acquaintance. We spoke at length. The conversation has stayed with me.” Nemo shrugged. “You are the Killian Jones, yes? Captain Hook.”

“I. . . yes.” Killian blinked again. “Wait – another man of England’s acquaintance? Another pirate, you mean? Who did you take to Philadelphia?”

“When we picked him up in his makeshift ketch,” Nemo said, “he called himself only Odysseus. Like England, he had too had been marooned on a small island for some time, and had been without human society for at least a year. As he returned somewhat to his wits, he told me that his real name was James. It had once been Flint. He was no longer certain if it still was.”

“Y – ” Killian’s jaw dropped. “Bloody hell! You were the one who rescued Flint from Skeleton Island?!”

“You know him too, I assume?”

“Aye, he’s my father-in-law! He and his wife adopted my wife as their daughter a long time ago. We’ve never known how exactly he escaped, or what happened there. Did he. . . did he tell. . .?”

“That was over twenty years ago,” Nemo said. “And what he did say was often less than coherent. I remember nothing that would be particularly enlightening to you.”

“Oh.” Killian could not help a slight disappointment, even as he wondered if Nemo was being entirely truthful. “Well. You’ve certainly already done a great service to our family, then. We would be even further indebted for another.”

“It is no trouble,” Nemo repeated. “Truly. Two days from now?”

“Aye. Two days.”

Said two days were less than enjoyable, not least because it rained without cessation and they were trapped in the upstairs room of another dubious lodging house, but it finally cleared the night before, as they went aboard so as to be ready to leave with the ship at dawn. They scarcely had much luggage, though Killian had at least managed to acquire one other set of clean clothes, and the junk was large enough, with multiple small bamboo-walled cabins, that he and Regina could have their own apiece, which was a bloody relief. Everything was crisp and tidy, with a berth and desk of teakwood, a painted screen covered with whimsical designs from some Chinese tale, and small books of fine onionskin paper, calligraphed in elegant characters.

Nemo’s crew looked to be of the same pastiche, some Chinese and Japanese, some Ceylonese or Indian like their captain, others North African Mussulmen, still more with the look of Pacific islanders from even more far-flung places. There were at least a dozen languages spoken on board, though Tamil was the lingua franca, and the language in which Nemo gave his orders and communicated decisions; those less fluent got a friend to translate into their particular tongue. Several of them also spoke English, until Killian – himself a reasonably multilingual man, who could count reading of Greek and Latin, and a bit of spoken French and half-remembered Irish to his credit – was thoroughly impressed at their versatility. If he was going to have some time on his hands during the voyage, he should try to pick up at least one.

Killian slept, to his considerable surprise, well that night, and awoke before sunrise, rolling out to dress and ready himself for departure. He was unlikely to be any use to the Nautilus’ general functioning, but he was understandably not keen to spend any extra time belowdecks, and emerged topside to watch the crew check the tide, unfurl the sails, and set course. The Chinese method of navigation was via astrolabe, rather than by compass and chart, and Killian watched interestedly, he of course being a connoisseur of all things nautical and navigational. The junk moved away from the quay, beautifully out of place among the drab grey rooftops of London, and down the Thames, with a smoothness like silk or polished glass. Mist rose in ethereal silver vapor from the surface of the river, creating the impression that they sailed within a fine crystal orb, forever seeking the edge but never quite reaching it, doubled back again, circled upon itself. The distant black specks of seabirds winged overhead as the stars began to fade, the smell of the air changing as they reached the estuary and prepared to enter the Channel. Killian supposed he could wave at France again as they went by.

The golden horizon was behind them as they pointed west, the rising sun slowly spilling over the high deck. Still conscious of staying out of the crew’s way, Killian could nonetheless not help but investigate further. The Nautilus carried a full complement of cannon, the mouths of the guns carved like roaring dragons so that they would breathe flame when fired, and to judge from the speed they were already making, she could easily outstrip heavier, slower square-riggers. Killian wondered what exactly it was that Nemo did; surely it was not merely charity errands for stranded pirates? The ship bore signs of far travel and hard use, and he felt a brief, unexpected pang of nostalgia, of jealousy. Not that he would trade his family and his settled life and home for anything, but Nemo must have traveled the entire world, to far uncharted lands, to places that one could only dream, seen sights beyond imagination, had grand and thrilling adventures. Some part of the temptation remained in Killian too, the ever-constant lure of the sea and everywhere it could carry you. I chose, though. And I am choosing again.

“Do you like what you see, Captain Jones?”

Killian turned with a start, having been examining the star chart (at least so he thought it was) carved into the main mast, to see Nemo regarding him with an expression of gentle amusement. “Oh no, you do not have to apologize,” he said, as Killian straightened up hastily. “Your interest, as a seagoing man yourself, is natural. What do you think?”

“She’s beautiful,” Killian said honestly. “Made me miss my old girl – the Jolie Rouge. You haven’t run across her, have you?” It was worth trying, if Nemo had made inadvertent acquaintances of several other old colleagues. “Formerly the Imperator, captained by Rackham and Bonny?”

“Not that I know of, no,” Nemo said. “But some part of a captain’s heart always belongs to his ship. This is not the first one I have sailed to bear the name of Nautilus, and I remember those as well, for different reasons. Would you like to walk with me?”

“I. . . yes.” Killian was unexpectedly touched. He had of course been wishing he had someone to talk to, missing Sam, needing an equal, a sympathetic outsider who was not his family and was not beholden to that inner circle, but in whom he could confide, and he already felt that he might be able to do so with Nemo. He followed the captain up to the sterncastle, his hair whipping in the fresh breeze. After the dark, cramped, starving hell of his month aboard the Pan, it felt like a gift never again to be taken for granted. They came to a halt at the rail, surveying the goings-on below, and Killian asked, “So how many other Nautiluses have there been?”

“Two,” Nemo said. “The first was the Indiaman that I served on, when I led the crew in an uprising, took over the ship, and set them all free, and we sailed as our own men thereafter. That, I think, is something familiar to you?”

“Aye.” Killian laughed in rueful acknowledgement. “How did that happen? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Not at all.” Nemo did not seem offended by his curiosity. “My father was the captain of a Barbary corsair, and my mother was one of the many daughters of the Mughal emperor. They were married as part of an attempt between the Ottoman and Mughal courts to form an alliance against their common enemy, the Persians – indeed, Nadir Shah sacked Delhi with tremendous ferocity just last year, and I fear it may be a blow from which my mother’s people cannot recover, especially with Britain eyeing it like a hungry wolf. In any event, in retribution for my father’s many successful raids – nobody took more slaves for the Ottomans than he – I was captured by the same British at the age of nine, and raised in service. That the son of such a prolific slave master should become shackled in bondage himself – it is perhaps only justice, though I certainly did not feel that way at the time. I was recognized to be intelligent and talented, and was placed on one of the East India Company’s ships at sixteen. I was twenty-three when I overthrew her command and became captain instead. That was my first Nautilus. I sailed her for twelve years.”

Nemo hesitated for a long moment. Then he said, “Soon after we took the ship, I fell in love with a young woman we rescued. She loved me as well, and we were married. We had a son. She wanted to leave the sea, to make a real home. I told her that we would, soon. But the East India Company did not forget that I had captured one of their ships so egregiously, dared to revolt, set a dangerous example. They viewed me as little better than an upstart pirate and a Barbary monster myself for those twelve years, and finally they caught up to me. There was a battle. We were outgunned. My Nautilus was destroyed and sunk. My wife and son drowned.”

“I. . .” Killian recoiled from even trying to imagine it. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

“I survived, obviously,” Nemo said, “and became consumed with the desire for revenge. So if you follow, I wished revenge for their revenge for my revenge on their revenge on my father, at least. I captured my second Nautilus, a Spanish man-of-war, and gathered to me anyone who would help me in such an aim. If they promised me my objective, I listened, no matter how dangerous or forsaken such men might be, how empty their promises, or how little it would ultimately satiate me. This, I think, you will also recognize?”

“Aye,” Killian said, much more slowly. He was unsettled for obvious reasons, given how he had spent the vast majority of his time since discovering Gold was alive, and the circumstances that had first precipitated his descent into Hook. He almost wanted to walk away before finishing this conversation, but he had a feeling that Nemo, however gently, was not going to let him. “And?”

Nemo shrugged. “It ended as it must. We attacked and destroyed a British ship near the coast of Norway, which we had mistaken for a Company vessel, hunting and pursuing many weeks to get it alone and without hope of aid. It was not. We realized that only when we had left no survivors. In my greed and blindness, we had drawn too near the dangerous water there, the place the locals call the Moskstraumen – the Maelstrom. It drew in the ship and pulled her under. For a second time, I survived the destruction of my Nautilus, but was left with nothing. Neither family nor revenge, neither pride in the past nor hope for the future.”

He paused again, looking over the sea. “This is the third Nautilus,” he said at last. “She sails as a free ship with free men, with those I have found in chains of one sort or another. We do not seek for anyone’s revenge, or speak of our pasts, or bow to any country or crown – or hold them as our enemy. We fight only if attacked, and not before, nor for personal gain or worldly enrichment. This is the place where men come when they have put aside such old things.”

Killian opened his mouth, then shut it. He reckoned that he and Nemo had to be nearly the same age, the other man perhaps three or four years older, and that perhaps their lives were bending on eerily similar trajectories, parallel and yet opposite. At last he said, “Which Nautilus did you rescue Flint with?”

“The first,” Nemo said. “The Indiaman. The one I sailed as a younger man, the one I took from my captors with the strength of my own hands, with my wife and then my son at my side, when I still envisioned a home away from the sea. I took him to Philadelphia because I pitied him, this man so broken by the world as to barely recall his own name, so harrowed by revenge and grief and guilt that only a shell of him remained, and all had to be learned anew. I thought, then, the worst fate in the world would be to end up like him, and vowed that I never would, that of course I could prevent it by my efforts and worthiness. I was, of course, quite naïve.”

Killian was quiet. It was clear to him that Nemo was a name chosen anew for this man as Hook had been for him, as Flint had been for James, but to quite the opposite purpose. He wanted to say something, but did not know what, especially when Nemo turned to him and said calmly, “So. Why is it that you and your sister-in-law are traveling to Barbados?”

“We. . .” Killian hesitated. He did not want to lie, especially after Nemo had just been so honest with him, but nor did he feel quite up to the truth. “I thought there might be an. . . old friend of mine there. I. . . it’s been complicated.”

“Of course,” Nemo said courteously. “Life is scarcely anything less. The prospect of seeing an old friend, however, would normally make a man much more joyful.”

Killian squirmed again. “Not a friend, exactly.”

Nemo’s expression said that he had suspected this, but he did not rub salt in the wound. He once more turned to regard the sea, until he said, “I imagine Captain Hook must have several such men, that he has darkly dreamed of seeing again. Would this be Robert Gold, then?”

“How did – ” Killian stared at him, wondering if Nemo had also concealed a talent for reading minds, before it struck. “Ned England told you about our battle against him in Nassau, and his particular grudge against me. Didn’t he.”

“He did,” Nemo said. “And I have heard other rumors, but never mind that. It must truly be an outstanding grudge, that it weighs so heavily against all else. Your sister-in-law. . . would that be your wife’s sister, or your brother’s wife? I suspect the latter.”

“You suspect correctly.” Killian stared down at his hand and hook on the railing. With that, since he could no longer help it, he told Nemo about Liam, and his resistance to seeing him again, and how long he had stayed away, and what Regina had said to him, and his own dawning, uncomfortable realization that she was right. That while constantly acknowledging and dwelling on his own flaws and failures, he had nonetheless become comforted by the idea that he was still better than Liam at grappling with them, that he was somehow more honest, more self-aware, braver. Had his own family now, and was determined, beyond all reason, to prove it.

Nemo did not interrupt as Killian spoke, listening politely until he was certain that he had finished. Then he said, “That is a sad story. I am sorry for both of you, that it has been this way.”

“Aye.” Killian found that his voice came hard, scraping in his throat. “Do you. . . do you think he’s right? Or that I am?”

“I suspect it is altogether more complicated, as you yourself pointed out earlier.” Nemo inclined his head. “But let me tell you – if you will indulge me once more – a story. Only a brief one, and this time not about myself. It is a story about when the Spanish conquistadores first arrived in the New World, several hundred years ago, and found a beautiful, glittering, advanced civilization. The Aztecs and the Incas had pyramids, had cities, had calendars and science and clean running water, had maps of the stars, had art and literature, had myths and legends, had – as all men do – their own bloodthirstiness and war. And what did the conquistadores see? What did they dream of? Gold. There must be mountains of it, they thought. There must be gold. They looked at the Aztec temples and saw the mosques of the Mussulman, the ever-present enemy of Christendom reborn, and so they called the men they met Turks. They judged them worthy to live, or not, depending on how much they thought they were like the Turks. Gold and savages. That is what they saw. Not what was there, but gold and savages. And so they destroyed everything, and set up the cross instead, and blessed themselves for a job well done. That is what happens, that is the damage that is done, which can never be taken back, when all a man sees is Gold.”

Killian could not help but admire the elegance of this turn of phrase, even as he also could not miss the underlying warning. “So what? You think Regina’s right? We should just go back to searching for Liam, and not – ”

“You and your brother have had a long struggle,” Nemo said. “I understand that. But I must ask what you are so frightened he can possibly take from you. You have parents-in-law, wife, sons, a daughter, grandchildren, friends, a long and rich life. Your brother and his wife have not. Not by your fault, but not by your innocence, either. You do not owe him anything, of course, nor does he to you. Yet I would have thought you might have found it in your heart to open the door you have so long held shut, just a crack, and see what light shone through.”

“I thought – ” Killian started, then stopped. He was grateful for the spray that blew on his face as he looked away. Finally he said, “I’m. . . I’m sorry.”

“It is not your apology which I need,” Nemo said. “Nor do you need my forgiveness. I note, however, that my crew, who have often lost their entire families, been torn from the land of their birth, who have served years or decades as slaves under white men, would think you exceptionally fortunate to have the dilemma of deciding whether or not to return to the bosom of the man who loved you first, and raised you as best he could. I do not recall the name my mother gave me. There must have been one, and sometimes if I strain, I can just remember the shape of her smile. But I do not remember what she called me. Nor I will not call myself by the name the British gave me, for that was never me, but an artifice of my overseers. I chose Nemo long ago, and it has served me well enough. But I would give anything in the world, journey anywhere, sacrifice anything, to hear my mother speak to me, and have her whisper my name once more, my true name. Yet you spurn your brother, when he lives still and wishes nothing more than to see you, and have done so for years, with no cost to you and much to him. As before, I understand why you stayed away. But it is my most honest verdict that it is an act of immeasurable and, one hopes for your sake not unforgivable, selfishness.”

“I. . . always have been.” Killian took a slow breath. “Selfish. In one way or another, and then I loved Emma, and married her, and had my children, and they were my world instead. I had no need for my own self anymore, not when I could give them everything, and see them happy. Perhaps I feared that if I looked again – and now I have – that I would discover that old selfish soul still lurking beneath. With Liam, with facing it, I. . . I did. I was.”

“We are all terribly tender and torn-apart creatures,” Nemo said. “It is to your great credit that you know so, as many selfish people never once do. I will not counsel you what to do one way or another. If you still wish to go to Barbados and confront Gold one last time, I will take you there. I only ask that you think, and think well, on what you mean to do, and if it is remotely worth what it will cost you.”

Killian nodded, at a loss for words, and Nemo clapped a hand on his shoulder. Then, leaving him there with his thoughts, the captain turned and walked away.

They sailed steadily for the next several days. The Nautilus continued to make surpassing speed, and Nemo told Killian about the Chinese admiral Zheng He, the fifteenth-century explorer, soldier, and sailor who had been to Arabia, Africa, Java, and the Indian Ocean, with a vast fleet of over three hundred junks and thirty thousand men. He had made seven fabled voyages, rather like the fictional hero Sinbad of A Thousand and One Nights, the stories of which Nemo also knew well. He spoke at least eight languages, and seemed to be genuinely loved by his men; if he had plucked them from dire situations, perhaps that explained it, but Nemo said that he had never forced anyone to join or to stay. “If you found that you wished to serve with us for a time,” he said, the fifth evening out, having invited Killian and Regina into his cabin for supper, “we would of course welcome you.”

“I’m fifty-three and I’ve got one hand,” Killian said wryly. “I’ve enjoyed this journey far more than my last one, but I’m not sure what use I’d be to you. Besides, either way, I have to get home to my family. I can’t just run off for a lark without telling my wife.”

“Of course,” Nemo agreed. “In any event, the offer stands. What of your sons? Are they sailors too?”

“No. It’s my daughter, Geneva, who’s the captain in the family, and a damned good one.” Killian grinned with pride. “My elder son – stepson, but no matter – Henry, is a teacher and printer, has a wife and two children. My younger son, Sam, he’s. . . well, he’s still making his way.”

At that, he glanced sidelong at Regina, suddenly aware that it might be delicate to talk about his children in front of her, but she was perched almost on the edge of her seat, as if hungry to hear as much about them as she possibly could. Killian himself missed the lot of them so agonizingly that he would have happily held forth for hours, told both Regina and Nemo far more than they ever wanted to know, but at that moment, they were unexpectedly interrupted by a knock on the cabin door. Nemo called, “Come in.”

It opened, and the first mate entered with a look of some anxiety. He crossed the floor, bent down, and spoke to Nemo in low-voiced Arabic, to which the captain listened with a slight frown. Then he stood up. “Excuse me,” he said to Killian and Regina. “Mr. Rahman is of the impression that we are being pursued.”

Both Killian and Regina stood up as well, as anyone on their tail was unlikely to be good news, and hastily followed Nemo out onto the deck. The late-evening gloaming had almost, but not quite, deepened to true black, and several crewmen were gathered on the stern, pointing at the sea behind them, as Nemo and his guests hurried up the stairs to look. One of the sailors handed his captain the spyglass, and Nemo peered at the darkening sea, as Killian strained his own eyes, not quite as keen as they had been. There was a low-lying fog bank about a thousand yards astern, in which could possibly – but not certainly – be discerned the outline and movements of what looked like another ship. If so, they were clearly trying to approach in secrecy, and for that matter, doing a good job of it. The lanterns were doused, and it was taking care not to sail ahead of the fog – a maneuver which required a skilled captain to pull off, well aware of the confluence of current, wind, and the ship’s capabilities. Killian had a brief memory of a battle during the war of the Spanish succession, almost forty years ago now, when he and Liam had surprised and defeated a French fifty-gunner by concealing the Imperator with a similar move. For a moment, he had an utterly absurd idea, then stopped. Bloody hell, of course not.

Nemo shut the spyglass. “Load the cannons,” he ordered. “It could be nothing, and we will not engage if they do not, but I prefer to be prepared, just in case.”

He turned to repeat the order in Tamil, as the first mate gave it in Arabic, and another man in Chinese. The crew dispersed like a well-oiled machine, more sail was loosed, and the Nautilus moved so quickly over the choppy water that it felt as if they had wings, but the other ship – she was starting to become clearer, it was not their imagination – was still gaining. Now she was eight hundred yards astern, now only five hundred, and then the long nines boomed and flashed, the shot whistling and splashing into the water barely shy of the Nautilus’ keel.

“We are not flying British or Spanish colors,” Nemo said. Considering that his ship had just been fired on, he still sounded remarkably calm. “Neither nation should have cause to attack us, thinking us an agent of the other. Mr. Rahman, what is their ensign?”

“British, I think.” The first mate opened the spyglass to look again. He added something else in Arabic that made Nemo frown again and turn to order the crew for more speed, and perhaps a warning shot of their own. Even in wartime, there were codes of conduct that governed firing on another ship unprovoked, especially with no enemy flag to justify a first attack, and these ill-behaved newcomers were flouting them, which was good as flying a red streamer to signify no quarter. The Nautilus’ stern guns thundered and flashed in response, throwing an eerie orange glow against the sky long enough for them to get half a glimpse of the oncoming ship. It looked like a brigantine, slender and two-masted, built for speed. For another wild instant, Killian thought that Emma’s old ship, the Blackbird, had been resurrected from the watery grave where Henry Jennings had sent it long ago, but of course that was not the case. But if he could just figure out what was putting his hackles on such edge about this, apart from the obvious fact of being fired on, and to do so in time to –

The other ship was still closing on the Nautilus’ starboard aft quarter, running hard with the wind, almost a match in speed. In another few minutes they would be level enough to try a broadside, and Nemo barked at his crew to man their own guns in the case of such an eventuality. But Killian, following an instinct he had no time to explain, took the spyglass from Mr. Rahman, balanced it in his hook, and fiddled the lens with his hand. Pointed it at the deck of the other ship, at its captain, the man by the helm, the –

In that moment, the shock completely stopped his heart.

In the next, the world exploded.

[ssaori]

Hi, Saori! I see you blog a lot about Sterek and I was wondering if you read fanfiction too? If yes, can you rec me some fics to read? If not, can you recommend a blog that you think recs good fics? I find your taste in Larry fics similar to mine and I was hoping you can do the same with Sterek as well. Thank you!

Oh boy, honestly I have no idea what to say, I’m just glad that not everybody’s fed up with my Sterek spams (probably a lot of people are but oh well) :D

First things first, you should check out @theofficialstereklibrary @wheredidhiseyebrowsgo @underappreciatedsterek @acountrygirlsfun @christinesficrecs @eternalsterekrecs and if you like Larry too then @nottooldforthisship recces  awesome stuff all the time, (her sterek fic rec tag is a blessing) (my fic rec page is kind of a mess, but you can find some there too)

As of my recs, I usually don’t do it cuz I’m always anxious I’ll rec something the other doesn’t like, but since you asked so nicely here are some of my faves:

The Undisclosed(109k) - For once the pack doesn’t panic when a new hunter arrives. The gleefully sadistic man has labelled himself a collector of all things rare in the supernatural world and wants one of the rarest creatures; a werefox. Content that the pack is safe, the wolves focus on why their human member is acting so strange, ignoring the fact that Stiles only started once learning who the man wanted…

I’ve read this like, how many times? Way too many to be healthy? Seems accurate. And I’m totally not re-reading it again, nope.

Baking My Way Into Your Heart(179k) - Derek is an uptight college student, all work and no play. His carefully scheduled life is thrown kilter when his regular barista is replaced with someone new.

This fic changed my life tbh.

As Luck WouldHave It (I’m already smitten)(188k, WIP) - When Stiles meets his Dom for the first time, it’s nothing like the cutesy, lovey-dovey Subflicks he used to drag Scott to when they were thirteen. There’s no burst of sunshine when they collide, no sudden swell of violins when their eyes meet; only a really big dent in the front of his Jeep and a seriously pissed off Alpha glaring at him from the sidewalk.

When I see the e-mail I shut down and don’t even look up until I finished reading the update. It’s by far the most exciting fic I’ve read, and I read A LOT.

Do Not Go Gentle(108k, WIP) - Derek Hale, Beacon Hills Alpha, is thrown into a dark cell which already contains another captive.   Someone quite young.  Someone who’s clearly been badly treated.  Someone who cannot speak and who has a cruel collar around his neck.Derek is both a Dom and an Alpha.  What do you think he’ll do?

Same with this. Mondays can’t come fast enough. Dark, but worth it for me.

Home(160k, WIP) - January seventh. Seven days since the start of 2015, and seven days since his father’s death.The bastard, he thinks bitterly. The past year Derek Hale had made it blatantly obvious that he hated his scrawny guts, taking every given opportunity to shove him up against a wall, growl threats in his ears and roll his eyes whenever he stepped into the room, muttering some snide comment about how spastic or idiotic he was.So why did he fucking volunteer to take him in?

You can’t even imagine what this fic does to me. It’s everything.

Once Bitten(183k) - Stiles gets bitten by a werefox that’s running loose on Hale lands.The pack helps him deal with his new were status while searching for the fox who bit him in hopes of reversing the bite. But is the werefox really their biggest problem?

My favorite trope in this fandom is fox!Stiles and we need more of it.

Werewolf-Friendly(27k) - Derek is a junior in college, never could get the hang of social interaction, and is, you know, a werewolf.  A werewolf and a virgin.  And it isn’t like anyone is banging down his door to hop on his werewolf dick, save for the few pervs who acted like he was some kind of exotic toy to be played with and experienced.  So, when he sees Stiles’ ad on Hot Men 4 Rent, Derek is… interested.  And who is he kidding, he’s read that bio every day since that sad evening with the chocolate chip cookies, and has every facet of it memorized.  Stiles, no last name.  Eighteen.  Student.  Good conversationalist.  Likes to crack jokes.  Fan of junk food but enjoys running.  Werewolf-friendly.  Werewolf-friendly.  And there is his phone number and an email address.  Plus all the moles.

This was actually the reason I didn’t give up on Sterek after some stuff in the fandom. And it’s awesome and hot, so. :D

Run Little Red Fox (18k) - Fox!Stiles. Living on the run might not have been the best way to survive, but when you’re a Werefox with no family and no friends, what other choice do you have? Narrowly escaping hunters, getting mixed up in a war with alphas, Stiles is positive that life is out to get him. The weird vet is convinced that Stiles will be able to help defeat the alphas and protect the pack, but what can one injured Werefox do against a pack of murdering alphas?

Yeah, so I love this fic a lot and I need to re-read it, excuse me!

Not French but probably a mistake(8k) (you need to have an acc for this) - A witch’s curse sends Derek into a parallel universe where his life is a TV show. At first, Derek thinks he’s lucky Stiles got sent into this universe with him. He’s a little confused when Stiles starts kissing him furiously.Dylan isn’t sure why his boyfriend is acting so shy all of a sudden. It’s kinda cute. And he’s totally down to roleplay Sterek again, that’s always hot.

I’m a sucker for everything bleep0bleep does, plus French Mistake is my everything, so bear with me when I say READ THIS!!

Can’trely on me(116k) - Set at the end of season 2, Gerard beats Stiles up, but it’s a lot worse than anyone knows. The pack let him down, that’s not really a surprise lately.When Danny finds Stiles nearly bleeding to death the next day it’s the start of a beautiful friendship.Can the pack make amends before it’s too late? Will Stiles ever forgive them for not being there for him when he needed them the most?

This fic is so good. So good! I only didn’t like the ending but otherwise ohmygod.

Kiss Of Life (ThisSweet Pool is Everblue)(7k) - (Canon-AU for 2x04) “Yeah, kiss of life, d'you want me to say it in another language, Derek? Latin would be cool but I’m still not fluent yet so how about Spanish? Spanish worked on Jackson before. Beso de vida.“In which: Scott isn’t even lethally late—he simply doesn’t show up at all. Stiles does the saving and things railroad from there.

If you’ve seen the show you know this should have happened. YOU KNOW IT.

Anteocularis(19k) - Allison meets a strange deer in the forest. Derek may have found someone who can match his level of bullshit. Stiles is running from a murderer. Pack-feels and cross-species bonding.

I know, I know, but give it a try I promise it’s worth it :D Sassy deer!Stiles, who needs more?

Strike Softly (Awayfrom the Body)(35k) - Derek is a bodyguard and Stiles his spoiled, resistant client.

A bit fun, a bit dark but sooooo good!!

Youwon’t have to reach out for me (6k) - Stiles is having trouble holding himself together and he’d do anything to have Derek’s hand on him again–needs the relief like he needs oxygen, maybe more–which is exactly why he can’t let Derek touch him. Because Stiles knows Derek, knows exactly where he ranks his own pain in terms of importance, and he knows that Derek would ignore the pain completely if it meant giving Stiles something he needed. Stiles refuses be a source of pain for Derek–there are too many other people lining up to do the job–so he makes sure to hold himself at a safe distance.            

It’s painful and beautiful!!

In Case TheDaylight Never Comes(82k) - There’s a relentless dark shape tearing through the pack and that’s only the half of it. Stiles just wants to sleep and stop being haunted by the faces of his night-time tormentors. His dad thinks he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress, Scott thinks he’s suffering the after-effects of the ritual; Stiles thinks they’re both reasonable theories, except for the part where Derek Hale is the only thing that can take his nightmares away and it seems that fact is no coincidence. 

It’s very dark, so if you’re not into that kind of stuff… but otherwise excellent piece of work!

(I’m sorry I didn’t include the authors but that would have been taken even longer, but I send my love to all of them a lot, there are so many fics I love, but let’s not do this again, please. :D Have fun reading!

[cracked-roleplay]

[Drabble] A Feline’s Company

Character/s: Glitch (my OC) [featuring his cat, Twilight].         [ Portrayed At: @reality-glitched  ||  WIP + Inactive At This Time ]

It was rather late into the evening, far past the time where those few humans that the Figment associated with on a regular basis went to sleep. Well, it was presumable that they were resting, at least. Riley had informed him that they had an exam the following morning, so they were surely in bed at this hour. Vincent’s students had testing this week as well, so if he wasn’t asleep, he surely should have been by now. And as for Jared, his stream had ended hours ago, so as long as Anti wasn’t pestering him too much, he ought to have already dozed off...

The list ticked by in Glitch’s mind absently before causing a faint frown to twist onto usually straight lips. It had been a long night for the Figment, filled with pesky humans and paperwork that he couldn’t have cared less about these days, not to mention the occasional surges of discomfort that came with any of those emotions he couldn’t properly process.

All in all, he would have liked some pleasant company at the end of it. A glass of wine with Riley Reese, some time picking at Vincent’s fragile little mind.. Hell, even ‘babysitting’ Anti would have been nice; it wasn’t as though he necessarily disliked spending time with the chaotic little glitch. Just a bit of company, before returning to the unfeeling world of the void to recharge...

        “We simply cannot always get what we want.                                                                       It’s no matter.”

His voice came in a low growl to the empty shadows around him before reality shifted, distorting out of place as he traveled through it. Soon enough, he reformed in the kitchen of Vincent’s apartment, breathing an absent sigh as his figure glitched with stress - bright neons flashing and blurring around him before finally settling and softening, much like a VHS that wasn’t working quite right.

A brief survey of the room revealed the expected: the coffee pot had already been turned off for the evening, various electronics had been left on the counter where they couldn’t distract his human counterpart from an attempt at sleep, and the lights were out. Shaking his head, Glitch stepped over to the counter to straighten the appliances, snatching up Vincent’s headphones and properly wrapping their cords before setting them neatly on the laptop. Next was the other’s cellphone, which ought to have been kept on him but apparently he’d decided was too much of a disturbance tonight; turning the device off, as it was simply wasting battery life when left in another room anyways, the Figment shook his head in the darkness.

        “Honestly, how difficult is it to keep your belongings iN orDER, Vincent-dear?”

Not that anyone was awake, let alone in the room, to hear the comment. It was nearly a habit, picking at the other’s irritable ways, regardless of whether such commentary would be heard. As it were, the pet-name fell from his tongue without a hint of actual affection, sounding closer to a chastising insult than anything else. He would have to remember to look around the rest of the place later - the longer there was a mess about, the more it would grate at his nerves, after all. But for now...

        “Lacking in the humans’ company does not mean there isn’t any to be found.”

The words slipped out in a murmur, less cruel than those previous, before he shifted to pour himself a glass of red wine. The little things in life, that was how one was meant to keep ‘sane’ - if such a thing was even a possibility for a living glitch - and this seemed the night to indulge in those frail concepts of pleasure. Wine in hand, he shook his head once more before walking into the dark livingroom that connected to Vincent’s kitchen, maroon eyes glowing closer to crimson as his gaze flickered about in search of company.

                                              “There you are, Twilight.”

It was nearly a purr, though not quite, and his expression - while it remained stiff and stressed - did soften slightly. As for the cat that had been addressed, she groggily lifted her head from where it had been resting between her paws on the sofa, and then let out an extended yawn. The closest thing to a ‘greeting’ that anyone was going to get from a sleepy cat.

Gracefully taking a seat on the sofa at the feline’s side, the man allowed himself another sigh - this one actually betraying the stress rather than merely annoyance - before taking a sip of wine. It had been a long day, the night seemingly longer, but now was the time to.. unwind, if such a high-strung creature was capable of that. 

After a few minutes of sitting there in silence, drinking his wine and contemplating the past several hours, however, the Figment had started to relax a bit. Shifting to set the glass down, he reached over to run his fingers through the soft black fur of his companion, the edges of his appearance still blurring vividly in the dark room. It was a lucky thing that, after all this time, Twilight was accustomed to her owner’s strangeness; otherwise, the whole ordeal may have spooked her. As it were, that hadn’t been an issue since she was a kitten, and for that...

Well, it was one of the few things that Glitch was glad for in his 'life’.

                                   “This has been a dreadful day, you know.”

Another comment that fell carelessly from a silver tongue, despite the fact that he rarely spoke about himself or his own day to anyone. That was the beauty in having an animal around, though - they couldn’t tell a soul, and they wouldn’t comment apart from what little sounds and gestures they could manage. It was considerably easier than dealing with the humans, in which he was always busy with manipulation and scare-tactics.

Twilight pressed into her owner’s petting, an absent ‘mew’ the only other response to his words, and he found a humorless chuckle slipping past his lips.

        “A dreadful day, and by the time I actually am able to see anyone, they’re all asleep. I ought to have woken somebody up, the iGNorANt—”

A sharper ‘meow’ caused the man to cut himself off, glancing down at the feline he’d been petting. His fingertips glitched, neon flashing even more violently, before abruptly straightening and settling back into the stressed blur it had stayed at for most the evening.

Taking a breath, he paused, fangs quietly gritting together as he took a moment to figure out what the little creature was fussing about. Of course, once he’d settled from that surge of annoyance, it wasn’t difficult to figure out: as his anger and stress had begun to flare up, that high pitched ringing that sometimes accompanied his voice had also started. Twilight had never been a fan of that.. then again, it likely hurt the poor thing’s ears even more than it could a human’s. Tsk’ing softly, the Figment’s eyes fluttered shut, putting the necessary focus into his unstable reality to silence the sound.

No sooner had it stopped and his eyes had flickered back open, Twilight was nuzzling affectionately into the pale hand that still rest in her fur, all displeasure forgotten. Glitch returned to lightly petting her, shaking his head slightly as he returned to speaking.

        “Yes, I suppose waking any of them wouldn’t have a real point. Vincent does need to be rested for the students, and Riley for their own test. As for Jared.. well, we can’t have his health declining, now can we? That wouldn’t be any good for when Anti fronts, after all.”

The exasperation was clear in his tone, but it wasn’t necessarily irritation now. More like.. boredom, coupled with a distaste for the humans’ need to sleep in the first place, and that ever-present loneliness that always crept into his gut no matter how hard he tried to banish it.

                        ‘Lonely...                                        That’s what this really is, isn’t it?’

Fangs snapped together harshly in his mouth and a low snarl slipped through his teeth at the thought. Loneliness. That’s what it always went back to, wasn’t it? At the end of the day, no matter what the Figment did, it seemed as though he always ended up exactly like this.

Of course, there were days that manipulation left him with a pet, a human whose mind had been twisted and melted into submission for his entertainment, but... It always felt so short-term and meaningless, no matter how much sick satisfaction he got from it at the time. Later, when the cards were dealt and the human was either broken or had grown boring, Glitch still found himself lonely - time and time again.

                        All because pathetic little Vincent wouldn’t step aside.                 Share the spotlight. Get out of the way.

                                      "I’m AlWAyS FucKInG ALoNE—”

The comment had practically tore itself from his throat, lurching out of his mouth in a desperate attempt to banish the thought process whilst still getting it out of his brain and into the air. Something voiced, unfortunately, couldn’t be taken back, and he would later curse himself to the void and back for having such an emotionally charged outburst like that, but instability, too, was a fact that could not be changed. 

                                                                                                            Meow.

Dark eyes blinked slowly, the feline’s sound registering to his ears even more prominently than his own growling voice. After a moment of silence, he looked down at the cat, mostly to ensure that - in his brief rage - he hadn’t accidentally tugged at her fur or anything of the sort. Thankfully, he hadn’t, but she had curled up in a different position now so that she was looking up at her owner. Green eyes met red, the cat calmly blinking at him even though parts of his physical form were still glitching near-violently from the surge of emotion...

'Lacking in the humans’ company does not mean there isn’t any to be found.’

His own words played back almost tauntingly in his mind and, after a moment, the Figment gave a shake of his head, free arm glitching forward to retrieve his wine glass from the table. A long drink followed, then another, but after that, some of the distortions were starting to die down, and his throat didn't feel quite as tight as it had before.

                        “At the very least...”

Carefully breathed words, quiet and precise, the tone was frosty now, but it lacked the venom from his outburst. And that, despite what some may think, made a large difference in revealing how he truly felt. The pause was slightly longer than usual, during which his hand returned to gently stroking the feline’s silky fur, his voice echoing throughout the space almost cryptically.

                                           “...You are always here at the end of the day.”

Nothing at first, and then the cat stood, hopping into Glitch’s lap before curling back up, her black tail lazily flicking back and forth until she had properly settled. The Figment paused, an eyebrow quirking upwards slightly at his pet before he gave in, breathing a sigh that, far as he could tell, didn’t have an emotion to match it.

        “Tsk...                Just try not to get any fur on the white parts of my suit.”

Returning to petting the creature, they fell into an almost comfortable silence, one that was only broken nearly an hour later - to the soft mumble of,

                                                         “...You’re a good girl, you best know that.”

[flauntpage]

The Eagles Didn’t Draft a Good Running Back, but Everyone Will Survive

The Eagles’ running game has been the topic du jour since the Birds traded for Ronald Darby and partially fortified their undermanned secondary. We deviated for a day or so to bitch about screen passes, but now we’re right back to square one.

Much of the debate focuses on why the running game is struggling – lack of called running plays, poor offensive line play, lack of decent running backs, etc.

As an aside, I am firmly in the “running game is fine, you just need to actually run the ball” camp. Most of the offensive line, from an individual talent standpoint, is a known quantity. The Eagles have had success running behind these guys in the past.

As for the running backs, Darren Sproles is obviously not an issue, Wendell Smallwood has shown he can at least be effective in spurts, and LeGarrette Blount is a nine-year NFL veteran. You don’t play nine years in the NFL with no running ability. I honestly believe that the answer is giving them more opportunity and some patience. In other words, trade everyone to New England!

I don’t want to talk about the actual running game, though. That topic has been analyzed and debated ad nauseam.

I want to discuss another topic that has spurred a lot of recent debate: the Eagles walking away from a “historic” running back class with nothing but a 5’8”, 176-pound change of pace.

With the recent running game struggles, and the early success of rookies like Kareem Hunt and Tarik Cohen, the masses have taken those events, rolled them into a half-baked narrative about the Eagles leaving the draft with only Donnel Pumphrey, and are now passing it around for everyone to take a hit.

Here’s why that’s wrong.

Defining A “Historic” Class

Once or twice a year, Howie Roseman makes a comment that ends up haunting him forever. Calling the 2017 running back draft class “historic” was one of them. These quotes tend to make for good storylines but are often taken too literally or way out of context.

There’s no doubt that this was a good rookie class. In fact, it probably does actually qualify as historic, but only because it was full of players who could potentially stick on an NFL roster. It doesn’t mean that every running back in the class will end up being great, or even good for that matter. Just like every other draft class, there were potential stars at the top and then a bunch of spare parts further down the pecking order.

Beyond the top players, some, like Alvin Kamara, were good in the passing game, but questionable elsewhere. Others, like Corey Clement, were decent running between the tackles, but didn’t have the athleticism to be every-down players. Then there were players like Jamaal Williams, who had a well-rounded skill set but lacked the overall explosiveness and athleticism to warrant high draft investment.

Let’s just slow down on the “historic class” narrative. It was taken out of context. The reality is, the Eagles would’ve had to spend significant draft capital to get anything more than the second coming of Wendell Smallwood, not to mention the opportunity cost of leaving other, more critical positions weaker.

Now that the running game is struggling, it’s officially time to use our 20/20 hindsight to determine who the Eagles should have drafted.

Here are all the running backs the Eagles missed out on in the draft and the players they took instead http://pic.twitter.com/iS4cgUHE9b

— Carlin & Reese (@CarlinReeseWIP) September 19, 2017

Let’s dissect this list…

  The Early Rounds

I’ll start by saying that I can completely understand anyone who preferred Dalvin Cook or Joe Mixon to Sidney Jones. By all accounts, the Eagles wanted Cook over Jones, too. While perhaps slightly disappointing, that decision is at least defensible.

Jones was considered by many to be the top cornerback prospect pre-injury and the Eagles were in desperate need of help there. Questions obviously surround his health, but in today’s NFL, as we’re now seeing with Ezekiel Elliot, the character concerns that Cook and Mixon presented were no less problematic.

The real debate, for reasons that I cannot understand, is with the Rasul Douglas pick. Some want to retroactively select future hall of famer Kareem Hunt with this pick. That would prove difficult, of course, given that Hunt was off the board 13 selections earlier!

More realistically, the Eagles actually could have passed on Douglas and drafted another running back like the human joystick, Tarik Cohen, but there are a few major flaws with that idea too.

First, I don’t think there’s much debate as to what the Eagles biggest need was heading into the draft. Jalen Mills was the best and most experienced corner on the roster. 94 WIP and 97.5 the Fanatic were flooded with complaints about the gaps in the secondary. Imagine, for a second, the Eagles taking a running back in the third round and heading into the third day of the draft with only one cornerback in tow, one who probably wasn’t even going to play in 2017. There would have been a revolt in the streets! Draft Town would have been turned completely on it’s head!

Secondly, Cohen is all the rage now, but I must’ve missed the clamoring for him back in April. What I didn’t miss, however, was the uproar over drafting a certain 176 pound running back and the barrage of statistics showing how unlikely it is for him to succeed in the NFL. Cohen was only three pounds heavier than Pumphrey. Are we going to pretend there wouldn’t have been the same uproar over Cohen? We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

Some have also proposed that the Eagles could’ve traded up from 99 to select Hunt.

In other words: Eagles easily could have traded 99, 139, and 230 to get Kareem Hunt.

— Brandon Lee Gowton (@BrandonGowton) September 8, 2017

Again, imagine heading into the third day still searching for a cornerback, then subtract two more draft picks from which to find said cornerback. There was context to the situation. We can’t just completely ignore it out of convenience.

Lastly, when considering the value of a good cornerback versus that of a running back, the decision is a no brainer. One position is infinitely more important than the other and it’s clear that the Eagles understood that.

  The Later Rounds

Potentially whiffing on the Pumphrey pick is a tough pill to swallow, no doubt, and it looks like a bad pick. But let’s not pretend, that by selecting Pumphrey, the Eagles missed out on some potential game-changer. There’s a reason that these players were around in the fourth of seven rounds. They’re just guys.

After the draft, many were upset that the Eagles took Pumphrey over Williams, Marlon Mack or Wayne Gallman. Let’s take a quick peek at how these players are doing so far in their rookie seasons:

Four carries for 15 yards. Fire emoji.

Whew. Imagine how dynamic Eagles offense could be with another 1.3 yards per carry in their stable?

The Giants have one of the worst rushing attacks in the league, yet Gallman has been a healthy scratch for both games. I’m sure he’s about to break out though.

What about the other backs drafted after Pumphrey? How are they doing?

Obviously the one that stands out is Chris Carson, who has gotten off to a great start. To be clear, Carson was selected with pick 249 in the seventh round. Other teams, Eagles included, passed on him 248 times, for good reason I’d have to think. It’s hard to fault the Eagles on this one. If any team had a clue that Carson would be any good, he would’ve been selected much sooner than the seventh round.

Aside from Carson, explain to me how any of these other players could provide the Eagles with anything more than what Clement, an undrafted free agent, provides them right now.

The Eagles could certainly have gone in another direction early in the draft, but there were a lot of needs to fill. All things being equal, investing in pass rushers and cornerbacks should always take precedent over a running back. Even if you would have preferred the Eagles take a runner, their strategy has to at least be somewhat understandable.

Regardless of what kind of player Donnel Pumphrey turns out to be, the idea that the Eagles’ 2017 draft was a complete failure is simply not true.

The Eagles Didn’t Draft a Good Running Back, but Everyone Will Survive published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv