#i tried some coding stuff on the ao3 page if you would like to look and give an opinion.

[wowowwild]

"Maya, what are you- Franziska?"

"Franziska?"

"Miles Edgeworth!"

"Nick!"

"Miss Fey?"

"Phoenix Wright!"

"Alright, I think we've established who all is here, thanks.”

FranMaya has been secretly dating and WrightWorth is... They'll figure it out.

“Hey, uhh, so you’re going to be busy tonight, right?” “With the case? Yeah. Edgeworth is going to come over to help me, though,” He replied absentmindedly. “Oooh, Edgeworth? I’m almost sad I’ll have to miss it, but it’s probably good for you two to have some privacy.” “M-Maya! We’re not like that, and you know it. And where are you going?” “Unlike you, Nick, I don’t kiss and tell.” “You’re not even going on a date, are you? I bet you’re just going to convince Gumshoe to share what little noodles he subsists on.” “Hey, it’s your boyfriend who keeps cutting his salary, and if he wants to share noodles with me, then that’s his choice.” “You’re a leech.” “But you love me!” “Yeah, yeah. Now let me focus on this. If I can’t figure out where this case went wrong, my case will be ruined!” “Good luck with your nerd shit.”

This pleased Maya greatly.

MF: We’re on.

FvK: Are you certain?

MF: Absolutely. He is going to be soooo distracted he won't even notice. He also came to the conclusion that I'd be hanging out with Gumshoe which helps as long as they don't talk to each other.

FvK: He'd be hard pressed to speak with Scruffy on special noodle night. He will be eating microwave noodles that cost exactly $1.38 more and watching an old monster movie.

MF: He'll be hard pressed alright. It's also v cute that you know that.

FvK: It is not cute, it is impossible not to know when he so foolishly announces every single move he makes to the nearest set of ears. I do not, however, understand your first statement.

MF: I'll explain it later. See you tonight "at precisely 5:35 PM".

FvK: You shall.

Now the only thing left was to wait.

-

Maya was being ridiculous. Edgeworth was not his boyfriend. He totally could be if he wanted, but he clearly didn't want to. If Master of Logic Miles Edgeworth couldn't connect these dots, the world was doomed, therefore he totally knew and wasn't about that. Which was fine. He was still Phoenix's best friend and he wouldn't give that up for anything. But right now he had to focus on the case because once Edgeworth was there it was a 50/50 chance he wouldn't be able to think at all. If only he could figure out what was missing…

"Wright, honestly, you're going to make your back even worse leaning over like that." "Edgeworth! Uh, hey. I was just trying to figure out how this case is related to my current one, but I can't seem to get the pieces to fit." "You're hopeless." Edgeworth picked up the file and moved to the couch. "What are these notes? You think it was the same culprit?" Phoenix flopped down next to him. "Not the same, but related. I think this murder happened because that one wasn't properly solved." "I see… Assuming you're correct, do you think the victim in this case was the perpetrator in that one?" "Could be. I don't want to make too many assumptions up front and miss something." "Actually thinking things through for once? I'm impressed."

That smug grin sent butterflies to his stomach. What was he saying? Come on Phoenix, you can't lose it all yet!

"I always think things through, you just aren't privy to my grand plan." "Privy? I see that thesaurus I got you is going to good use." "Ugh," Phoenix grinned and playfully shoved him. "Now, Wright, if you continue your violent streak, you'll be the one who needs defending." "Would you defend me?" "I would tell Franziska to prosecute you and wait for the paperwork." "Aw, gee, Edgeworth, I didn't know you felt that way." Phoenix laughed. "Ahem, yes, well, I think right here needs more clarification, don't you?" Edgeworth turned so that Phoenix couldn’t see his face.

Right, too much, Phoenix. Keep it friendly but not too friendly. Edgeworth is doing you a courtesy by not calling you out.

"Yeah, I can't figure out what they were trying to hide." "Well let's think about what someone could gain and then follow to who that someone was."

They talked it over, pulled up more information, and plowed through any remaining questions fairly quickly.

“Wow, I’m feeling better about the case already.” “Aren’t you forgetting something vital?” “Hmm? Like what?” “Evidence, perhaps?” “Aw, you know me. I’ll scrounge up what I can and everything will fall into place when I get the culprit on the stand.” “Unless the culprit is the first witness, you’re going to have to actually put in some work to get them there.” “Sure, but I’ll find a way. And I do have some evidence, thanks. Making this case fit in was the last piece I needed. My client will be walking free soon enough.” “Don’t get too cocky now, Wright. You have an impressive record, I will admit, but feeling overconfident can make you miss even the most obvious of details.” “Trust me, I’m not overconfident. But if I went around lamenting how hard I’m going to fail, that wouldn’t exactly set me up for success either.” “I suppose not. What did you find, anyhow?” “You’re not going to believe what I found in the victim’s trash.” “The trash?!” “Not all of us have detectives on their side, you know. We’re lucky I was allowed to root around in there.” “I suppose…” “Now let me show you my case.”

-

Franziska von Karma was perfectly punctual as she was in all things. At exactly 5:35 PM she slipped through the door of Phoenix Wright’s foolish office and silently made her way to the back room Maya would be in. It was quiet with no sign of Phoenix Wright, but Maya had not said he had stepped out so she remained cautious.

Ever so quietly Franziska knocked on the door she knew Maya was behind. It opened softly revealing her date for the evening. This of course brought a smile to both of their faces. It was then that voices were heard coming from the kitchen area. Phoenix Wright had a guest. This must be why Maya said he would be distracted. As they moved to sneak out, however, they moved closer to the source and she began to feel that the second voice was very familiar…

She stopped in plain view of the kitchen, but their backs were turned to her. What in the world was her foolish brother doing there at this hour? Helping the foolish attorney with a foolish case? They had both taken off their suit jackets and rolled up their sleeves. How utterly foolish her brother was to be at this man’s beck and call but still refuse to announce his feelings.

Maya couldn’t help herself, Fran’s face seeing Edgeworth there was too much. A snicker or two made it out, catching Nick’s attention.

"Maya, what are you- Franziska?" "Franziska?" Edgeworth whipped his head around. "Miles Edgeworth!" "Nick!" Maya whined a bit at being caught. "Miss Fey?" "Phoenix Wright!" "Alright, I think we've established who all is here, thanks," Phoenix noted. “Miles Edgeworth, what are you doing here?!” “I could ask the same of you, Franziska.” He stood and took an awkward posture, suddenly unsure of himself. “I- well- I asked first!” “Wait, Maya, I thought you were hanging out with Gumshoe.” “Actually I said I don’t kiss and tell and you assumed some things I let you believe.”

Phoenix looked to Edgeworth incredulously.

“That is a strange thing to assume from the context.” “Well I didn’t think she had an actual date!” “What can I say, Fran and I just have it more together than you.” She gave each of them a meaningful look. “And what about you, little brother? Have you finally announced your feelings or are you foolishly clinging to your safe deniability?” “Come on, Fran, we’re gonna be late if we try to start that conversation now. Let them sort it out.” “Hmph. Our reservation has saved you this time, little brother. Let us away.” Franziska pivoted and offered her arm to Maya. “Away we shall.” Maya took her invitation with glee.

-

Miles Edgeworth regretted a lot of things in his life. Preserving his friendship with Phoenix Wright rather than admitting to romantic feelings was not one of them. Or so he told himself.

“Did you know they were dating?” “Hmm? No, I was not aware. Though that would explain where she disappears to whenever she’s here.”

Hopefully Wright wouldn’t ask for clarification as to what she was talking about.

“So, uh, you have feelings for someone?”

He jinxed it.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about. She seems to have gotten an idea into her head and you know as well as I, there is no dissuading her.” “Edgeworth… You don’t have to hide it from me. You know I’ll support you no matter what. I think it’s great you found somebody you like! You should go for it!”

If he was so supportive, then why did he sound so upset?

“It’s really neither here nor there. He’s not interested.” “Oh… I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

And yet he sounded more happy at that than his previous statement. Maybe he was nervous at the thought of being left behind? Larry only seemed to pop back up when he had been dumped, though Miles hoped Phoenix knew him better than that. Nothing would ever be more important to him than the bond they shared, even if years down the line someone else captured his heart. Which was unlikely, for the record.

“It’s really nothing to dwell on.” “I suppose. But just so you know, I think you’re a great guy, and you deserve someone who can give you everything you want. This guy is a total loser for not seeing that.”

Oh, the irony.

“For what it’s worth, I’m kind of in the same boat, so if you want to talk about it…” “Really?” He tried to hold back his shock a fraction of a second too late. Phoenix looked confused and responded slowly, as if he was piecing something together before he revealed who the true murderer was. “Yeah, actually. It’s uh, my guy’s not interested either. Which is totally fine! I love being friends with him, it just, uh, kind of sucks. But it’s fine! And I wouldn’t trade our friendship for anything.” “Your ‘guy’ is a ‘total loser’ as well, then.” “Ah, you think?” Phoenix chuckled. “I do. You are the best man I know, with more passion, determination, and heart than seems possible. Anyone who spends even a moment with you can see that.” “Oh… Say, Edgeworth…” “Yes, Wright?” “Uh, I mean… This is awkward. I’m just now getting the feeling that I might have been wrong about something.” “About your case.” Phoenix looked confused, as if he had entirely forgotten why Miles had come over in the first place. “No, not the case. Just an assumption I had made.” “You should know better to assume. Weren’t you just saying that earlier?” “In my defense, a significant amount of evidence pointed towards my assumption being correct, but I had failed to consider one unlikely option.” “Is that so? What conclusion have you come to now, then?”

It was bound to be profound and earth shattering, as all of Phoenix’s revelations tended to be.

“Am I your guy?” “W-what?!”

Damn that man and his brilliant mind. Miles should have kept his mouth shut.

“I am, aren’t I?”

Why did Phoenix seem so… excited?

“Please tell me if I’m right or not… Well, I’m always Wright, but-” “Yes, you are correct,” Miles cut him off to avoid hearing that joke for the millionth time. “Ok, so then I have a big question, what made you think I wasn’t interested?” “… What?” “I mean, I’m just wondering. Since you’re my guy, too.” “I’m- You- What?!” “Yeah, This whole time I thought you could tell so I figured you weren’t interested, but clearly I was wrong. About multiple things. But so were you, so you can’t make fun of me.”

That was a little bit too much. Though it did explain what Miles had picked up on earlier with Phoenix’s words not matching his emotions. And the more he thought about it, much of Miss Fey’s teasing could have been implying Phoenix had romantic feelings for him. And it wasn’t like that was all Miles had struggled to piece together when it came to Phoenix. Retroactively, this explained a lot.

“Wright.” “Edgeworth?” “You’re telling me… You’re telling me you have romantic feelings for me?” “Uh, yeah. A lot of feelings in general, but romantic ones are in there. And you?” “Yes. I also have those kinds of feelings for you.” “Great! … That feels like it was too easy. Like something dramatic should have happened. Do you think one of us is about to die?” Miles gave him an incredulous look. “What are you blathering on about?” Phoenix paused before breaking out into laughter. “Well I’m glad nothing’s changed!” “I wouldn’t say nothing,” Miles mumbled. “Oh, right. Can I kiss you?” “What?!” Miles felt a heart attack coming on. Maybe Wright had been… right. “Too soon, huh? That’s ok. I can wait.” “That reminds me, how long exactly have you felt this way?” “Oh, uh, haha…” Wright trailed off. “That’s actually kind of embarrassing. Um, you know how we knew each other for like, 4 months back then?” “Wright… You can’t be serious.” “I mean, that was just a silly childhood crush, but it was a really formative time for me. And when I saw you again in the paper… Crush renewed. Becoming a lawyer was probably 50% because of you and 50% to save you, so… yeah… And you?” “I’m… I’m afraid I can’t say quite the same, though I can’t deny those 4 months were formative for me as well. It wasn’t so immediate when I saw you again, either. It crept up on me… and then you did save me. And I couldn’t deny it any longer. Feelings for you had started to grow.” “Oh wow. So we’ve been kind of silly waiting around this whole time. No wonder Maya and Franziska are so annoyed with us all the time.” “Mm. That would be a fairly sound hypothesis. I think I would like to answer your question, now.” Miles could feel himself blush as he turned away, not quite confident to say what he wanted while looking Phoenix in the eye. “Huh? What question?” Idiot. “You can kiss me. Phoenix.” “O-oh. Ok! Yeah!”

-

Maya had a fantastic evening with her lovely girlfriend whom she adored. They had accidentally stayed at the restaurant until closing time, talking and laughing, trying to get as much time with each other as possible. She had figured Nick would be in bed by the time she got back since he was practically geriatric, but she was surprised to see the lights still on, and-

“Hey, isn’t that…” “My fool brother’s car?” “… How safe do you think it is to go up there?” “… You know my hotel room has a hot tub-” “Sold.”

[snek-panini]

As promised, I've got more books to share and they are all fic binds. Have a look at this new one:

This is Among the Stacks by MeinirRhos, and it's one of the few post-s2 Good Omens fics that I've liked enough to bind. It's canon-compliant and full of pining, fluff, angst, and a memory loss plot and I knew before even finishing it that I wanted it on my physical shelves.

I kept it pretty simple on the outside, with Library Summit book cloth and white HTV for the title. Large parts of the fic have to do with libraries and library books, so I thought it would be fun to make it look like a library rebind, something that looks innocuous and blends in to the shelves but it's actually going to be your new fave once you open it up and start reading. I wanted very badly to have the titles hand-written in embossing inks but I couldn't get a clean enough line with the textured cloth, so this handwriting font saved the day.

More photos under the cut; I'm really proud of the typeset for this one!

Top view, with pre-made end bands and a ribbon bookmark. Going with the library rebind aesthetic, I didn't think it ought to have handmade end bands, so these were perfect. Honestly I'm not sure the ribbon bookmark fits the theme, but you can pry that from my cold dead hands. All my books have them and I love them too much to leave it out. The endpapers are cream-colored cardstock, and while they look plain they feel nice. I tried out a new-to-me corner style, the library corner, where you don't trim off the excess material at the turn-in. It's supposed to be more durable than other styles and is common in rebinds. Library Summit is stiffer than most of the other book cloth I've worked with, so it was a little challenging to get it to lay flat while drying, and it's a bit bulkier than I'm used to, but it's perfect for the theming. Unrelatedly, it also holds a hinge crease really well.

Title page. I could not be more pleased with this title page design. I showed it to my husband after I finished the text block but before I had the cover on it, and he didn't realize at first that it was one of mine. I have cracked the code of professional title pages. The graphics were, at the time I put this together, available for free on rawpixel. I'm in love with it. It is sexy as hell and it will never be equaled.

Couple more interiors. The chapter header font is called Book Ends and I found it on DaFont. You add in the little plants and stuff with symbols. I haven't done much with custom fonts until this batch of fics, and in some of the others I've got in the pipeline I went a little nuts with them, but I think this one's my favorite for how well it fits the story. I also started experimenting with formatting text messages in this fic, and I'm very pleased with how those came out as well. The Renegade Bindery discord has resources on this kind of formatting, so check them out if you haven't already. I'd never have gotten them so professional-looking otherwise.

And that's it for this bind! I started working on it back in April and I'm thrilled to finally be able to show off the finished product. Thanks @rhosmeinir (Hi! It's Amberfly from Ao3!) for giving me permission to bind it nearly six months ago.

[performativezippers]

Personally I would love a part 2 from Lucy. I love the way you write them. Also, poor Kate, having to take an Uber to the hospital because she doesn’t have anyone to call. 🥺

Okay part 2 got too long (shocking i know) so i wanted to put both part 1 and part 2 on AO3, even though they're way less polished than my usual stuff but AO3 is currently down for maintenance! So they'll be up later today or tomorrow, but you can read all of part 2 here. it's too long for tumblr but we can prevail!

but like...uhhhhhh...if you want to also leave a comment on ao3 when it's back up that would be like........extremely fun of you.

anyway! enjoy, or whatever it is i should say before feeding you some angst!

Part 2: Lucy

[part 1 fit within canon; this part does not and definitely happens before 1x19]

It’s been a long day. They all seem to be, now, the hours that used to feel exhilarating and meaningful becoming more and more of a grind. It should be the opposite: since the breakup, Lucy’s had so much less to do after work, so the work hours should feel like less of a burden—they’re not keeping her from something anymore—but they don’t. She feels like she’s been worked down to the bone, just ground down into nothing.

It's late, the sun went down hours ago, but she’s still buried in a report Whistler brought over a couple hours ago.

It’s easier for Lucy to think of her as Whistler, here at work. Whistler, who works at the FBI now, and seems to be enjoying not having to block them at every step anymore. Whistler, who Tennant is bringing into more and more cases. Whistler, with the crisp ponytail and creds hanging from her neck. Not Kate. Not Kate who wore tshirts and loose shorts and only pulled her hair up if it was getting in Lucy’s face in bed. Not Kate who pretended like Lucy mattered to her, like she felt what Lucy did, like what they were building in the sanctuary of her apartment meant something to her.

Not Kate who cheated on her. Not Kate who lied to her face, over and over, for months. Not Kate who broke her heart into a million pieces. Not Kate who Lucy was fucking in love with and who was seeing someone else the whole time.

Not Kate who Lucy let herself picture a fucking future with, a life with, a comfortable house and a cat and sunrise jogs and coffee runs and late nights whispering affection under the covers.

It wasn’t Kate who dropped off the files before leaving for the day, it was Whistler, and that’s the only way Lucy can get through these long, exhausting, grinding days.

Whistler had put the files together in a hurry as a favor to Tennant, so they’re not as neat as what she usually brings over. Not color-coded or cross-tabbed or any of the nerdy shit she likes. It’s a loose collection of file folders and even a few errant pieces of paper, which is very unlike her. Her DIA habits run deep—she always protects the intel.

Lucy tries not to think about how good she is at that, how well she protected the intel from Lucy. But, no. That was Kate, and this is Whistler, and Lucy has to keep it compartmented or she’ll fucking lose it right here in the bullpen and she’s not interested in doing that again.

She flips to the last page in the pile, and it takes her a second to figure out what she’s looking at. It’s not an official FBI document, and she feels like her brain is going in slow motion, but as soon as the words pierce the fog in her brain, she feels her heart drop into her gut with a wet, sickening thud.

It has the Queen’s Hospital logo on the top left. Then it says KATHERINE M. WHISTLER, with her birthday and her medical record number. In the middle, prominent and bold, it says RESULTS FROM ECHOCARDIOGRAM.

Lucy blinks at the document a couple of times, like maybe the paper will morph into the financial details of their suspect if she just tries harder. This can’t…no.

She immediately understands what happened. Tennant was rushing Whistler, and she grabbed the stack of files and papers off her desk without triple-checking them like usual, and this personal paper was underneath the stack. It’s a mistake Lucy can barely imagine happening, a mistake that is so un-Whistler-like that if Lucy didn’t have the evidence in her hand, she’d be wondering if something was wrong with Whistler.

But yes, something is obviously wrong with Whistler, because healthy people don’t get Echocardiograms. And having a health problem is distracting enough to not triple-check a stack of documents, sure. It all makes sense, except all of Lucy’s feelings are dialing up instead of easing back now that she’s solved the mystery.

She flips rapidly and erratically between confusion and fear for a minute before she firmly settles on rage.

She’s fucking furious.

She’s furious with Whistler for dropping this paper on her desk by mistake, making this Lucy’s problem. She tries to focus on that, but it doesn’t work. She tries to hold herself there, but the target of her rage keeps sliding from Whistler for being careless to Kate for being…something. Something that Lucy wishes were “secretive” but might be “hurt.”

She’s fucking furious at Kate for being sick. And she’s fucking furious this is the way she’s finding out—late at night, in the bullpen, by accident in a way that would absolutely horrify Kate if she knew about it.

She’s out the door before she’s decided what to do, seeing red, the paper crumpling in her white-knuckled grip. She drives to Kate’s apartment on autopilot, so angry that the waves of sadness that always swamp her when she thinks about the last time she was here barely catch her attention. She’s focused and furious and intent.

She knocks on the door and tries to hold onto her rage as flashbacks of Cara’s blank, expectant face threaten to drag her under and try to bring tears to her eyes.

It’s Kate who opens the door this time, and Lucy forces Cara out of her mind. It’s Kate, not Whistler, because she’s in yoga pants and a Northwestern tshirt that Lucy know she sleeps in, and her hair is down and fluffy like she showered after work.

“Lucy?”

“What the fuck is this?” Lucy holds out the paper, wrinkled now from her sweaty, clenched fist.

Kate looks confused—understandably, because Lucy hasn’t been here since that night and they’ve barely talked but they’re trying to get to a place of being civil at work, and now Lucy’s here at her apartment, after nine at night, cursing at her with no context.

But then Kate realizes what the paper is, her eyes catching on the hospital logo, and Lucy watches as the blood drains from Kate’s face, leaving her ashen and somehow haggard.

“Where did you get that?” Kate snaps, ripping the paper out of Lucy’s hand.

“It was in with the Smith files,” Lucy says and watches as all of the fight leaves Kate’s eyes, her shoulders slumping and some part of her defensive façade falling away. Lucy had gotten so used to seeing it, to seeing Kate with armor up, that she’d forgotten what Kate looks like without it.

She looks too lost and tired and resigned now to be beautiful, exactly, but she makes Lucy’s heart hurt anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Kate manages to say, and Lucy can see that she’s fighting through a lot to be able to speak at all. She’s not sure if it’s embarrassment or shame or fear or maybe a little bit of the rage Lucy feels, but it’s a lot. “That was unacceptably unprofessional.”

Lucy’s trying very hard to stay furious and not slide into something like afraid and in love, so she rolls her eyes.

“I apologize,” Kate says stiffly, pretending she’s Whistler even though they both know she’s not. “Thank you for returning it to me.” Saying Whistler’s lines without Whistler’s armor makes her look remarkably naked, like a child pretending to be a warrior.

Lucy could slice her in half without breaking a sweat. Lucy could destroy her, and she should want to, but, even full to the brim with rage, she doesn’t want to.

“What happened?” Lucy can hear that her voice is harsh and a little snappish, too loud and not at all caring, and she likes it.

“I had it on my desk and I must have picked it up with the other—”

“No,” Lucy interrupts. “Why the fuck did you have an echo, Kate?”

Kate blinks a couple times, and Lucy wonders when the last time she called her “Kate” was. Probably the last time she was actually inside this apartment, back before she knew Kate was a lying, cheating, broken asshole.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kate says, but Lucy takes a step forward and something almost happy flickers in her chest at the way Kate takes a quick step backward. She’s not a match for Lucy—not ever, and especially not right now when Lucy is on fire with anger.

“Talk,” Lucy orders, and Kate shakes her head but she steps back again, clearing the doorway and wordlessly inviting Lucy inside.

Lucy steps in and slams the door loudly behind her, not bothering to take her shoes off. She doesn’t say anything, just stares, her jaw clenched and her arms crossed over her chest.

“It was just a precaution,” Kate says, moving a little slowly now, like Lucy’s a dangerous animal and Kate is trying not to be skittish or otherwise remind her of prey. “It came back normal.”

“Bullshit,” Lucy says. Precaution for what, exactly? Yeah, no. That’s not the whole story, not by a long shot. “Try again.”

Kate looks like she can’t decide if she wants to smile at the way Lucy knows her, or shove Lucy out of her apartment for demanding information she has no right to. Or cry.

“I fainted a few weeks ago,” Kate finally says. “They weren’t sure why.”

Lucy blinks again, more times. “You…what? When?”

She doesn’t remember anyone talking about it, and if Tennant or the guys knew, they’d have told her. She’s—frustratingly—seen Whistler almost every day since she started at the FBI, and she always seemed fine. When the fuck could this have happened?

“Um…the week before I started at the Bureau.”

She’s twisting her hands together like she’s nervous, and Lucy’s investigator brain wonders what she still has to be anxious about, what she still hasn’t told Lucy.

“Where?”

Kate tilts her head a little. “What?”

“Where were you when it happened?” Lucy knows that she’s slipped into interrogation mode, but she can’t be bothered to stop. It’s the fastest way between point A and point B, and Lucy’s not trying to linger on the journey, not when the journey involves being alone in a room with Kate Whistler, a room where she used to feel cared about and valued and loved, back before she learned it was all a lie.

“Here,” Kate says softly.

“You were alone?” Lucy asks, and Kate clenches her jaw. Lucy’s heart sinks even further—she wasn’t alone. She was with someone.

Cara, probably.

That’s why her fingers are turning white in her grip, why her breaths are high and fast in her chest, why she still looks pale but with embarrassed splotches of red on each cheek. She was with fucking Cara, and everything she said that night, everything about Lucy being more than she’d bargained for, about breaking it off for real—that was all a lie too.

Lucy wants to throw up, or maybe deck Kate in the face.

But then Kate says, “Yes,” and the way she says it—looking down, scuffing her bare toes against the floor, makes Lucy believe her.

She was alone.

So if not Cara, if she’s not ashamed of still being with Cara or of seeing someone else, then what? What’s the other shoe that she’s so afraid of dropping?

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Lucy says through gritted teeth. “From the beginning.”

Kate seems to have accepted that she’s not getting out of this interrogation until Special Agent Tara is satisfied, and maybe she’ll get a lighter sentence if she starts fully cooperating. “I woke up on the bathroom floor,” she says, and already something pinched and horrible is seizing Lucy’s heart. She can picture it perfectly—blonde hair splayed out on pristine white tile, long limbs akimbo, unsteady breaths puffing out onto the floor.

“I…there was blood,” Kate says, quickly, like she’s trying to get this part over with. “It was from my head. I must have hit it when I fell.” She touches a spot behind her right ear, and the vision in Lucy’s mind shifts.

The floor is no longer the clean, pristine white tile that Kate is obsessive about cleaning, but is now smeared with thick, coagulating blood. It smells like hot metal and pain in her imagination, and the blonde hair on the floor is clumped and clotted with blood. The face underneath is paler, and the breaths leaving condensation on the floor are shorter and shallower. Her cheek is stuck to the tile with a layer of sticky, drying blood, and it’s running down her neck to her elbow and under her shoulder blades, sinking into her shirt and dripping off her forehead.

“They ran a bunch of tests at the hospital, but they didn’t find anything,” she says, almost rueful. “I got a few stitches, and that was it.”

Lucy pictures Kate in a hospital gown, pale and bloody, unsteady and wavering on her feet. Alone under a white sheet, up against a white wall, hooked up to white machines, every non-answer striking fear deeper and deeper into her heart that she’d leave the hospital as confused and afraid as when she arrived.

Kate is taller than Lucy by a good six inches, but she seems small right now, curled in on herself, like she’s bracing herself against something heavy and devastating.

Lucy’s forgotten to be angry for the last few minutes, too focused on figuring out the mystery of what is making Kate so twitchy, on picturing the woman she loved lying in pool of her own coagulating blood, but as the answer makes itself clear to her, she can already feel the rage starting to simmer in her gut again.

It’s the only gap in the timeline. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

All she has to say is, “How’d you get to the hospital?” and Kate looks up at her, pressing her lips into a thin, white line, the worry lines in her forehead standing out, stark and deep against the unhealthy pallor of her face.

Kate doesn’t bother to lie to her. “I took an uber,” she says, and, there it is.

Lucy fucking loses it.

The image of Kate in a fucking stranger’s car, huddled in the backseat, hiding her blood and her fear from some strange man, someone who could have taken advantage of her, hurt her even more. He must have smelled the blood, seen the clots in her hair. Lucy finds herself wanting to rip his head off; he, who was there at Kate’s most vulnerable moment, when he did fucking nothing to deserve it.

He, who was there when Lucy should have been.

The fury finds Lucy again and sweeps her off her feet, carrying her along in a wild current. She can tell that underneath the rapids are huge boulders of fear, but she lets herself skim the surface, only letting the pure rage touch her.

“You don’t take a fucking uber to the hospital, Kate!” Lucy spits at her. “You fucking call someone! I’d have thought someone as smart as you would have known without being told that if you wake up in a pool of your own fucking blood, you fucking call someone!”

“I was fine,” Kate protests, but Lucy scoffs as loudly as she can.

“You were bleeding,” she spits. “You were bleeding and alone and you could have died, and then what would have happened?”

The corner of Kate’s mouth twitches, which makes Lucy even angrier. “Well, nothing else would have happened for me, if I were dead,” Kate says like this isn’t fucking serious, and Lucy feels herself actually snarl.

She’s a step closer now, and the light fades from Kate’s eyes at the look on Lucy’s face. “This isn’t fucking funny, Kate,” she snaps, and Kate nods quickly, like she’s trying to pacify Lucy.

“I know it’s not,” she says softly. “I know it’s not.”

“You should have fucking called me,” Lucy says, breathing hard like she’s been running.

“I thought about it,” Kate admits, small again. “But I didn’t…” Her lips twist again, almost into a smile, but this one is wry and self-deprecating and very aware of every single thing she ever did to hurt Lucy. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

Lucy has been furious for a long time now—since Kate told her about the blood, since she found the document, since Cara opened the front door and ruined everything—and she’s tired. She’s exhausted. She’s sick of being so angry and sad all the time, so tired of reminding herself to play nice with Whistler at work, so fucking over pretending that looking at Whistler doesn’t make her want to burst into tears, every fucking time.

She’s exhausted and the days have been such a grind and the spike of fear and adrenaline from finding the letter about the echo has faded, so now she’s just mad and tired and so, so painfully sad.

She wants to say something nicer, something more neutral, but instead she hears herself yelling at Kate. Actually, honest to god yelling, her voice loud and cracking, her hands balled up fists, tears in her eyes. “You don’t get to make me into the fucking bad guy,” she yells at Kate’s sad, pallid face. “You broke my heart. All I did was love you, and you lied to me and cheated on me, and I refuse—no, let me say this—” Her voice breaks, and she can feel herself crying now. “I refuse to be the reason you almost died alone in your apartment, Kate. If you were too scared or ashamed to call me, that’s on you, not on me.”

The silence after she closes her mouth is thick. A horrible, loud silence, broken only by her own harsh ragged breaths, and then the heartbreaking sound of Kate trying not to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says, shaking out her fist and then holding up her hands, palms out. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

She also didn’t mean to say that she loved Kate—she’s pretty sure she said it and she knows she meant it, but she hadn’t meant to say it. Had never meant to let Kate know, to confirm to her how deeply and convincingly she’d played Lucy, how far gone for her Lucy was when all Kate was doing was fucking around.

“No,” Kate says, but she shakes her head and that makes the tears slip out of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I keep—it’s the last thing I want to do, but I just keep hurting you.”

Lucy considers her for a long moment, and then says something so true that she shouldn’t have said it at all. “The thing that would hurt me the worst is if you were seriously hurt, Kate.”

Kate looks up at her, then, like she’s trying to figure Lucy out. To measure her, to rewind and replay that moment with the subtitles on, to figure out if the tiny swell of hope Lucy can see in Kate’s eyes is justified.

“I’m okay,” she says softly, this time like it’s for Lucy, not to protect herself from Lucy.

“You were hurt,” Lucy says, somehow not over it even though she can see Kate standing in front of her, tall and clearly okay, even though she’d tried not to look but her eyes had caught on the words no abnormalities detected on Kate’s echo paperwork.

“I was,” Kate says, and there’s something different about her softness now. Before she held her naked vulnerability like it was a weakness, like she wanted to protect it from Lucy, but now she’s giving it to Lucy as a gift. Here, she’s saying. Here’s my soft underbelly, here’s myself, and I want you to see it. I want you see that I want you to have it. “And I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Lucy wishes she were still angry, that it didn’t feel so fucking awful to rage at someone who so clearly doesn’t want to rage back, who bore all of the abuse Lucy threw at her like she deserved it, who clearly absorbed all of the criticism into the soft animal of her body like it belonged there.

Instead she’s right back here, crying in Kate’s apartment, standing too far away from a person she so badly wants to fling herself at. She wants to press a gentle kiss to Kate’s stitches, to hold her hand, to put her head on Kate’s chest and hear that steady heartbeat for herself.

She brushes the tears off her cheeks, and Kate looks at her like she’s making a decision, weighing if she should say something or not.

“I loved you too, you know,” Kate finally says, conversational, like it’s nothing. “I mean, I never stopped—I still do. Love you. I hope you know that.”

Lucy shakes her head. That can’t be true. Kate can’t have loved her, because Kate broke her heart. Kate ruined everything; she built it on a foundation of lies and then she threw it all away.

“I’ll never say it again if you don’t want me to, but I need you to know it,” Kate says, soft but unyielding. A bit of her usual steel back under her gentleness. “I lied to you, I wasn’t honest with you, and I hurt you, but it was never because I didn’t love you, that it didn’t matter to me. That you didn’t matter to me. Because you did. More than you could know.”

Lucy wonders if Kate’s concussion shook something loose in her brain. “That’s hard to believe,” she says, and Kate nods.

“I know,” Kate says. “Sometimes the truest things are.”

Lucy wonders if she needs an echocardiogram, if her heart is still beating right or is even in the right place. She can hear a heartbeat thundering in her ears, like it’s trying to drown out the sound of Kate saying those words, but they’re all Lucy can hear anyway.

“Okay,” Lucy says after a long pause. “Okay, well. I’m going to, um…” She can’t stay here any longer. Not now that she’s not furious, not now that Kate is saying these impossible things that are making her reexamine everything that’s happened, forcing her rewrite the story of what happened between them, to replace so many periods with question marks.

“Okay,” Kate says, still so soft and open.

Lucy doesn’t know what else to say. Bye sounds too final, and take care too pointed. See you at work is crossing the streams between business and personal that they’ve tried so hard to keep separate.

She ends up just nodding at Kate before turning and letting herself out the front door.

She doesn’t make it down to the parking lot. As the elevator passes the fifth floor, Lucy panics and smashes the button for the fourth floor. She steps quickly out as soon as the doors open and immediately jabs the up button, tapping her foot and muttering until the other elevator shows up to take her back up eight floors.

She knocks too loudly, and the Kate who opens the door has red eyes and looks as startled as Lucy feels.

Lucy can’t look at her. She flings herself into Kate’s body, and she hears a little oomph as Kate absorbs her impact, Kate’s arms coming up around her without hesitation, like they belong there. Lucy can feel Kate’s chest shuddering, and she digs her fingers into Kate like something is going to try to rip her away.

Kate’s holding her tightly, her palms pressed hard against Lucy’s back, her fingers twitching like she’s not sure how much she can touch, how much she can have.

Lucy can feel Kate’s fear fighting with her desire as one hand slowly slides up, settling at the base of Lucy’s skull like Lucy is the most precious thing she can imagine.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Lucy mutters into Kate’s neck. “I’m sorry you were alone.”

Kate makes some little humming sound into her ear, still shaking against Lucy.

“Promise you’ll call me next time,” Lucy demands, speaking mostly to her favorite of the moles on Kate’s neck. “Promise me.” She hopes Kate knows she doesn’t just mean if she faints again, or hurts her head, but if she needs something. If she’s sick or she’s scared or she just needs to call.

“I promise,” Kate says, her fingers sliding through Lucy’s thick curls.

Lucy gives herself five more breaths. Five more deep breaths, where she can smell Kate’s skin and feel Kate’s arms, strong and afraid, tight around her back. Five more breaths to dig herself as far into Kate as she can, to live in this fantasy moment where everything bad is behind them.

After five, she pulls back.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” Kate says, her smile like a rainbow during a thunderstorm. Like maybe one day this part will be over, and there will be something new between them.

“See you tomorrow,” Lucy says, and Kate nods.

“You will.”

Lucy makes it to the parking lot this time, and into the car, and all the way to her apartment.

She’s not angry anymore, Kate’s scent still in her throat, the ghost of her smooth skin under Lucy’s fingertips, and for tonight that will have to be enough.

[lucysarah-c]

Flowers

Summary: Well... We kinda reached a milestone in ao3 with the number of subs in the story and I wanted to do a little gift for all of you, it's a little side story. Nothing special but I couldn't add it to the past chapter and decided to do it a bit more extended and added as a small spin off.

Hope you like it! Thank you, thank to all of you who support this story <3 It truly means a lot to me. And, despite the main focus being in the past, YN and Levi as some old married couple makes me so soft and warm inside haha. 

Pairing: Levi x reader stablished relationship

Words: 1485

Year 849

Exhausted tired eyes scanned the bookshelf in search of what he needed. His tongue clicked as it was the fourth volume he had taken out and it yet didn’t have the information he was looking for. Pushed another out with strength as the squeezed books refused to go out as they had been stored with pressure to make them fit.

“Fuck,” He cursed as the big red leather book came out with another in the process, a smaller one what had been hidden between the military law’s books.

“Everything ok?!” A female voice came from the attached bathroom, extremely loud to get her point across the falling water from the shower.

“Yeah! don’t worry,” Levi replied as he bent down to pick up the small notebook, hissing as the muscles of his thighs hurt from heavy training that day. His fingers grabbed the cover as it had splitted in two on its trip to the floor and the interior splashed on the floor “Fucking shit,”

Resignated, he squatted down to pick up all the little objects that the book apparently contained. 

“Levi! You ok?!” The shower water stopped momentarily as she inquired once again.The alluded man scoffed slightly entertained at her worryness that was, somehow, endearing as he questioned what she could probably do in case he, humanity’s strongest, was in danger.

“Yeah, just keep going”

It was late at night, both of them done with their formal working hours. His hair was slightly wet as he refused to shower after her, insisting that she always used all the hot water. A pair of light grey drawstring sweatpants hanging loose from his hips and a loose white long sleeve t-shirt. Walking back to his desk and slacked against his chair, his hand full of all the stuff that came out of the small notebook trying to comprehend what it was and how to put all that stuff back on its other. Legs parted and tilted to the sides. 

The pages were slightly stuck to each other as the ink on it had run dry. He quickly spotted the handwriting of his girlfriend, the dates on top of the pages.

“I shouldn’t read this,” Levi murmured to himself as quick as he realised that it was one of her old diaries, probably ended up there by mistake. Putting the little notebook away with all the extra content at the corner of the desk.

Levi tried to focus back on work, as the paperwork wasn’t going to fill itself and then remembered why he’d gotten up in the first place. ‘I still need that damn book,’

She came out of the shower, Pjs on as hair slightly wet as her hands scrunch it with the towel.

“In which volume it’s the training petitions inner codes?” Levi wondered to his girlfriend who knew her way around the books better than him.

“The number 5,”

Her lazy steps against the wood pranks echoed in the place as he climbed the bookshelf. Y/N’s strong gasp got his attention, making him turn around hastily only to find out his girlfriend's angry face.

“You ruined my flower!”

“Your what?”

“My flower!” She insisted, showing up a small dry bouquet of baby-blue flowers that was obvious that was missing a piece.

“Ah. It fell from the shelf,” Levi replied uninterested.

“Well! Obviously!” Her irritation didn’t go away. “Four years I had this well preserved and you ruined it!”

Levi remained stoic as it seemed stupid to get worked out for a piece of plant. Book in his hand he went back to sit down on his chair and she kept looking at him with demanding nature.

“I don’t even get why would you keep that shit,”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember what this is,” her grave tone made him look up to her just showered appearance.

‘I fucked up,’ He quickly concluded when her faked up anger changed to “You better answer correctly if you want to keep your balls,” tone. Levi had the intentions to come up with a worthy reply but his silence was delator.

She scoffed loudly, sitting in her chair trying to put everything back on its respective place inside the diary. Noisily complaining as she cursed under her breath. The captain chose to remain quiet, hoping that the incident would wash away.

“This is the flower you gave me when we started dating!” She returned to the topic after a few minutes “Don’t you remember that? With the chocolates?”

‘Ah.. that,’

“Why did you keep that? It’s been ages,” Levi argued and he quickly notice that didn’t help his case “What I mean it’s that I’ve done you better gifts than some random cheap flower,”

“Because it makes me happy,”

Her broken tone as she pouted looking at the broken flower made him feel guilty somehow, even when it was an accident.

“I can try to glue it,” he insisted as reaching across the desk but she pulled away.

“I even remember what I wrote,” She murmured as if didn’t feel guilty enough.

“You wrote about some cheap fair’s chocolates and picked flowers?”

“Of course!” She insisted and then proceeded to search inside the notebook. Then it was read outloud, as her anger washed away and was replaced by a highly contained smile and blushed cheeks. Levi remained stoic. She sighed as if love took over her, then her eyes locked with his, expectant “What did you think back then?”

“Wait… you think I thought all that shit that you wrote?” Levi got suddenly terrified as if he was put on a pedestal that he hardly deserved.

“Well… I got it close at least?” her loving eyes became a soft frown as his silence gave him away once again “What were you thinking?” She insisted.

“Tch, Y/N, I’m not that romantic and you know it,” Levi replied as he took a sip of his tea “I don’t remember what I wrote in yesterday’s grocery list and you want me to remember what I was thinking around five years ago?”

“Levi!”

Her insistance made him click his tongue “I don’t know, probably that women like sweet shit, like chocolates and flowers. I didn’t have money for both so I brought the chocolate and picked one up on my way, that’s it.”

Her faked offended face didn’t disappear as reality was extremely more disappointing than fiction. She refused to face him as a cat, ignoring being called. Levi glued his eyes on her as after all these years he knew that her pain wasn’t real, a mere scene.

“So… you don’t think that our indefinable love can only fairly be represented with something as pure as a wildflower?” her voice as a whisper echoed in the place as how desperately she pretended to be offended made him chuckle.

He moved across the desk to plant a kiss on her humid hair “I think my love is loud enough because I keep letting you get away with your hairs getting stuck in the shower’s drain,” 

Levi perhaps wasn’t the most romantic man inside of the walls and he was well aware of it. Those actions hold no value for him, or at least not in the way she desired them. He felt touched that she decided to keep the most small details so dear, he valued that. He also adored how happy she even appeared just for the memory, which meant that he had made her even happier back in the day with the gift itself. Flowers and chocolates made her happy, and she made him happy. So it was a win.

So when he crossed the door frame of their shared office after he came back from a meeting with the military board at Sheena with Erwin, he was holding her a small bouquet of peonies. Her parted lips as she left out a quiet gasp, her crystal eyes of emotion as she blushed intensely.

“Oh my god!” She started to do little jumps of happiness “They are beautiful!”

He groaned a sort of positive reply as she grabbed his face to give him repeated little peaks on the lips.

“I’m going to put them in water!” She rushed to it but stopped abruptly to turn around back at him “Thank you so so much! I love you!”

Levi nodded before murmuring “I love you too,” as he took off the green coat and hung it next to the door.

“Shut up!” her exclamation made him wonder what was the deal now. “Did you do it on purpose?!” She exclaimed as her finger pointed to her sweater and the flowers colour. Both of them in a purplish slightly bluish pink colour.

“Y/N,” Levi sighed as he picked up part of his abandoned paperwork “I know you backwards. You truly thought I would show up here with stupid flowers that don't match your clothes?”

[actualaster]

Okay, I got curious about how the "lloyd shipping dynamics" pie chart got broken down since I knew there were more Lloyd ships than just those in that specific chart, so I decided to check it out for myself. Wondered if maybe they didn't have any fic on AO3, or if there was some other reason to exclude them (plenty of reasons for that depending on the type of data you wanna look at--like if you only look at pairs not trios, or if you only want to know about ships that have more that one fic and such)

I did try to do a pie chart but no matter what I did, some fics just... Never were displayed because it could only display so many entries (especially when they were tiny %) that the smallest slices just.. Got excluded. I tried.

I was also curious how it would break down if you took into account the fact that ship tags are not mutually exclusive and thus fics can have multiple ship tags on them. Why are there two sets of numbers here? The first is "the % calculated comparing the ships to the fics. The second is pure ships. Basically first being "this is what % of the fics are tagged with these ships" the second is "this is what % of the total ships each one makes up".

Anyway, the data and some extra details about what data was collected and how and such below the cut.

Basic takeaways: Colloyd, Zelloyd, and Kralloyd are the Top 3, but Lloyd gets shipped around a bit, with 10 different canonical character's he's shipped with (either via a single pairing or as part of a trio) and several OC ship fics. Popular guy!

First breakdown, what % of the surveyed fics are tagged with each ship?

Colette: 55.30%

Zelos: 33.06%

Kratos: 6.03%

Sheena: 2.08%

Genis: 1.66%

Colette/Lloyd/Zelos: 1.66%

Yuan: 0.83%

Kvar: 0.62%

OC: 0.62%

Colette/Lloyd/Genis: 0.42%

Lloyd/Sheena/Zelos: 0.42%

Genis/Lloyd/Mithos: 0.21%

Kratos/Lloyd/Yuan: 0.21%

Lilia: 0.21%

Lloyd/OC/Sheena: 0.21%

Lloyd/OC/Zelos: 0.21%

Presea: 0.21%

Second breakdown, what % of the total ships does each one represent?

Colette: 53.2%

Zelos: 31.8%

Kratos: 5.8%

Sheena: 2.0%

Genis: 1.6%

Colette/Lloyd/Zelos: 1.6%

Yuan: 0.8%

Kvar: 0.6%

OC: 0.62%

Colette/Lloyd/Genis: 0.4%

Lloyd/Sheena/Zelos: 0.4%

Genis/Lloyd/Mithos: 0.22%

Kratos/Lloyd/Yuan: 0.2%

Lilia: 0.2%

Lloyd/OC/Sheena: 0.2%

Lloyd/OC/Zelos: 0.2%

Presea: 0.2%

I'd be curios how this would change if I included data from sites like FFN, honestly. Or even if I could find some old archives with ToS fic, or maybe DA, or possibly even Wattpad? Mostly because I wonder how many ships I'd find that didn't make it to AO3 (there's at least one lloyd/mithos fic on FFN, for example). However the sheer amount of work that would be to compile the data across multiple sites and try to correct for cross-posting gives me a headache just thinking about so. Lol nope, not happening.

Moving on to info about the data collection, and such...

First up, some base info on the data gathered:

481 fics total, 500 tagged ships total.

All from AO3

Data taken as of March 10th, 2023. Uh... Let's say 7am, -6GMT.

Data was gathered manually by going through AO3's entire 1,461 and manually tallying things up. (Including repeated checks to make sure no new or updated fic posting messed with stuff)

By this I mean "I had a sheet of paper and color-coded the tally marks as I went so I could check every 10 pages that I was getting everything I wanted to include and my math was adding up

(...I still have the feeling I overlooked a few but at this point I've spent way too much time on this already for an informal survey so.)

Counting by hand ensured that I didn't overlook ships for not thinking about them (Kvar/Lloyd, a few of the trio combinations).

(Fun story: I discovered that the Lloyd/Lilia tag, if you click on it, points to the Lloyd/OC tag which is incorrect. For those who don't know, Lilia is a canonical minor character from Dawn of the New World, the sequel game. In DotNW it's revealed that Lloyd proposed to her. It makes some sense in context but yes it's still weird, and yes the fandom had an understandable fuss about it at the time. Also, yes people are still annoyed by it.)

ANYWAY. Moving on from that... For a fic to be included, it needed to meet the following two criteria

Ship must be tagged in the relationships field. So adding a ship in the additional tags field would not get it counted.

Ship was a romantic and/or sexual pairing.

Some additional notes on that:

Ship was marked as implied, mentioned, or any other indication it was not a major focus but was still tagged in the relationship field: included

Ship was indicated as one-sided: included

Ship included a ship event (e.g. a ship week) but did not include a ship tag in the relationship field: excluded

Additional tags made it ambiguous if the author intended for a fic to be considered romantic, sexual, familial, and/or platonic: excluded

Furthermore, no fic was excluded due to content--so you have the fluff-fests and the fucked up darkfic all included in the above data.

Honestly if I were to do something like this again I did learn several things that would make it go smoother, but at this point I have spent over 30 hours over the last... IDK, 2.5 days or so? on what started as idle curiosity because my brain got locked into an obsession spiral and refused to let me drop it so I'm not going to go through and try to do this again anytime soon. At least not unless it's for a fandom with a hell of a lot less fic lol.

Anyway, based on my own data stuff I assume that OP of the pie chart actually used ships for their sample size, not fics because that was the only way I was able to get close to reproducing their results when looking at those ships only? Not something that matters much in this case, however--they did their math based on ships and it all checked out so.

[cordsycords]

Okay okay okay actually writing a reply so I can do some proper propaganda.

I'd been looking to move off of Google Docs lately, mostly because I don't like the idea of keeping everything in the cloud, I want to have everything on my computer. So I tried using LibreOffice for a while, and it's fine for a word processor, but now I didn't have the ability to write on my phone anymore, and I tend to have a lot of middle of in the night inspiration that doesn't get written down if I can't get it on my phone. I tried setting up a local network share, which meant I could also write on my laptop as well as my desktop, but that only works while my desktop is on.

So the next option is Scrivener which, while not free, is a one-time purchase deal, so that's nice. It kind of(?) has syncing, but it requires a Dropbox account. And it doesn't have an android app for some reason? So that's not helpful. Scrivener also has so many options that I just... Don't use in my writing process. I don't want a complex tool that has an opinion about how I write, I want a simple tool that I can adjust to my needs as I grow. Also, I'm not writing for print format, I'm writing for web, and I want a word processor that reflects.

Which brings me to my final point: I need to be able to see everything in my processor as I would see it in a web browser. I also need to be able to easily export things in HTML. I do not trust the Rich Text Formatter in AO3 to do exactly what I want it to do, I trust HTML (ok the HTML editor in AO3 also has some strikes against it, but that's a whole other point). Now, with limited formatting (paragraphs, bold, italic, the occasional heading), accomplishing this was pretty simple, I just turned off page layouts in my word processor, and then used the Google Doc to AO3 tool to HTML-ize it (another mark against LibreOffice was that this whole process became much more irritating, copy-pasting from LO to GD was not one-to-one, so I often had to reformat my chapters once I put them in GD).

However, this process became magnitudes more difficult as soon as I started to include more complex HTML elements in my fic, mainly footnotes as well as using HTML to simulate social media points, because at this point I didn't need just a word processor, I also needed an IDE.

Another point against GDocs is that it only supports footnotes, and not endnotes, which is technically closer to what I want to accomplish when using a web-based format. LibreOffice has endnote support, but once again those endnotes don't copy and paste one-to-one in GDocs, and are even worse when you put them into VSCode. Footnotes also have additional HTML that the GDoc tool can't do, so I have to create that myself. Luckily I was mostly able to automate this process via RegEx, but it still required occasional manual input on my part.

Which brings us to the social media stuff. Now, several lovely people on AO3 have made it their job to post HTML templates and CSS for various social media platforms mobile apps, etc all so people can use them in their own fic, and their work is super important, but god does it still suck to edit HTML like this. There is no simple way to automate it (I said simple, could I make a node script or something to consume some JSON and spit out a Reddit post? Yes I could. But as a developer I am inherently lazy, and I refuse to write actual code for what is basically a hobby (okay I did eventually end up doing that but that's a later point)). Now, we come to our final issue: previewing.

Arguably, you want to be able to preview your rendered HTML before you paste in AO3, because even though AO3 comes with a preview option, the post button is right next to the preview button and that's Scary. Okay, then just start up a local web server on your machine and preview there. However, if I've learned anything from development, it's that you want your dev/staging environment to be as close to prod as possible. Which means downloading a copy of AO3 from GitHub and hosting it locally, which I have done btw, but that's neither here nor there because trying to properly preview your fic before you post it to AO3 should not require you to know how to use Docker.

Okay, now that the gripes are over, meet my saviour: Obsidian.md (after a cut because this has already become to long)

Obsidian.md is technically just a notes app, but it has some really great features that makes it really nice for writing fic:

The base app is completely free! It can be installed on any device you can think of. There is a paid syncing service that they've built that's also really useful, but I'll talk about that later.

All your files are stored on your device, no keeping it up in the cloud, you own what you write

All your files are also stored in plain text (Plain Text is King), in the Markdown format. That means no proprietary file format, and no weird file encoding. If you open up a markdown file in Notepad, it is just as readable as it is in the Obsidian editor. So if Obsidian goes down, you still have access to all your files, completely readable. Also, if Obsidian pisses you off, you can switch to pretty much any other word processor or notes app dead easy.

This thing is super lightweight! LibreOffice and GDocs chew up just a shit-ton of memory. Seriously, LibreOffice would crash all the time on me, and I would occasionally lose paragraphs of work. Obsidian saves as you write, not on a minute-by-minute basis, and I've never had it crash once.

Linking! Obsidian makes it super easy to link files to one another, and uses the WikiLinks format. Just type out two open square bracket "[[" and it'll give a list of notes that you can link to. If you type in the title of a note you don't have, it'll create it for you! This is useful if you like making separate notes for all your world building info and you need to be quickly able to reference it in the text. (Also I can imagine this feature would be Great for dnd notes, for PCs or DMs)

Canvas mode! Do you like to preplan your story beats out before hand? Are you more of a visual person? Canvas basically lets you draw out diagrams of notes, rather than typing then. Canvas' can also be linked to regular notes in the way I described above, regular notes can be fully embedded in a canvas diagram, and entire canvas diagrams can be fully embedded in regular notes. Canvas notes are also stored in plaintext JSON, so again completely readable and accessible by you even without the Obsidian editor.

Obsidian Sync. So the creator's of Obsidian also made a way for you to sync your files across all your devices! Yay! It is a subscription service (~100USD if you pay yearly) which I'm generally okay with, because syncing involves servers, and servers are an ongoing cost that have to be paid for. The good thing is that if you end your subscription, all the files that got synced to your devices will stay there, they just won't continue to sync up with one another.

Another nice thing about Sync: all your files are end-to-end encrypted with a password you can set yourself, which is also encrypted, your data is private

I should also note that there is a way to sync between devices for free, It just involves using third parties like DropBox or OneDrive as the intermediate

HTML PREVIEW. So the nice thing about markdown, is that all html is valid markdown. Which means that if you feed HTML to a markdown interpretor, which is what the Obsidian editor is essentially, it will render it properly. For example, there's no way to centre a paragraph using Markdown syntax, but you can do it in HTML. So, in the Obsidian editor I can just write:

And press enter:

Boom. Centred text that I can just directly paste into AO3.

To expand on this, I can put entire TWEETS into Obsidian as HTML, and it'll render it for me. I am using the exact same CSS in Obsidian (you can add your own CSS snippets, as well as completely overhaul the theme if you want to, seriously i wish word processors were more like IDEs) that I use as my Workskin on AO3. (Also ignore the weird links in the screenshot, I'm in the middle of moving into the new environment, so these were direct-pasted from A03)

And there's that as HTML gobbledegook:

(Seriously though we're not even at the best part)

PLUGINS. this completely changes the game, and makes the decision to move to Obsidian all the more easier

Obsidian has an open-source API that allows the community to create Plug-Ins and add functionality to the app. There are OVER 1200 plugins already

Now you're think: omg cordelia did you actually write a plugin just to make AO3 HTML snippets

NO

I DIDNT

SOMEONE MADE IT FOR ME

kind of. Obisidian has a pretty basic Templates tool, and the plugin Templater is that on steroids. It let me write some simple JS scripts that I can feed JSON (also written in Obsidian, it can do syntax-highlighted code snippets i am in LOVE) into it and spit out fully-formed ready-for-ao3 html. I've also got the JSON templated as well, so it's half-written for me and I just have to fill out the right values.

Other plugins I use:

Better Word Count: Obsidian comes with a base word counter that will count everything in the current note you're in. This allows word count based on selection, can track and display how many words you write in a day, and can also show the word count of each section under a heading, if you tend to write everything in one large document

Copy document as HTML: what the title says. Adds a command to copy the entire document to your clipboard as HTML, you don't even need to select anything! No more GDoc extension.

Smart Typography: Automatically use curly quotes instead of straight quotes if you're into that. Also converts three periods into ellipses and multiple dashes into en- or em-dashes

Also, if your super into all the extra tooling that Scrivener gives you, might I introduce you to the Longform plugin

Reblog for sample size!

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Protector

Prompt: if prompts are still open: virgil as an adventurer who keeps accidentally befriending the monsters he’s supposed to be fighting (aka the other sides)? have a wonderful day! (and don’t feel any pressure to do this at all, and if your inbox is meant to be closed absolutely delete this ask)

Thanks for the prompt, babe!

Read on Ao3

Warnings: sympathetic remus & deceit, some ptsd flashbacks but nothing super explicit

Pairings: LAMP, DLAMP, DLAMPR, can be platonic or romantic but Virgil’s definitely got some gay panic in there

Word Count: 8153

 Virgil’s got a simple code when he’s not on a hunt. Don’t hurt whatever you don’t absolutely have to, and odds are, it won’t hurt you. Now and then there’s a bit of an, um, incident where that doesn’t quite work out as well as they’d hoped, but by and large they get by.

Or: 5 times Virgil helps a monster he was supposed to kill, and 1 time the monsters help him

He sighs as he walks outside, grabbing the pair of gloves from the rickety tray and tugging them over his weathered hands. The front garden isn’t nearly as overgrown as it was when he found this little cabin in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got a long way to go before he can walk through without tripping over at least one overgrown bramble.

 There’s a very persistent mint plant that’s slowly and surely trying to choke the flowers. Virgil bends down and starts to toil in the dirt.

 “Come on,” he mutters, because he’s allowed to talk to plants when no one else is listening, “let’s stop doing that, you don’t have to be literally everywhere…”

 The mint doesn’t protest verbally, because it’s a plant and plants can’t talk, but Virgil would swear it tries to hold onto the dirt as he pulls it up, holding his hand under the roots to catch the dirt.

 “Alright, come on out, then, let’s just…put you in here.”

 There’s a plot of dirt in a crate resting at his knee. He pats the soil. Fresh enough. The mint plant looks almost contrite as he tucks it into the corner.

 “Next time I go see the townspeople I’m sure you’ll make some tea-shop owner very happy.”

 The rest of the garden goes similarly. By the end, he’s filled the crate almost halfway when his hand catches something sharp.

  The blade gleams as it flashes through the air. The child screams. His eyes widen—

 “No,” he grits out, flattening his hands into the dirt, “no, it’s…it’s okay. We’re okay. It’s…hhhh.”

 As he exhales, his shoulders slump, head bowing almost to his chest. The sounds of blades swinging through the air fade as the breeze rustles the leaves surrounding the cabin. The faint smell of mint cleanses his nose of blood.

 Virgil opens his eyes and carefully moves his hand away from the rose.

 “When’d you get here,” he mutters, carefully lifting the leaves to examine the stem, “don’t remember seeing you.”

 The thorns snag on the little pieces of dirt hanging from his gloves. He glances around. There aren’t any other roses nearby, not that he can see. And it’s probably not very good for it to be growing in the middle of this choked soil patch.

 He stands and makes his way back for the sharper trowel.

 Something hisses.

 His grip on the trowel doesn’t waver but he turns his head casually to glance over his shoulder.

 Something crouches in the garden, just barely visible over the crate. A tuft of hair, not dark enough to be a bear cub, not light enough to be a squirrel. His arm relaxes against his side, trowel snug against his thigh.

 “Hello,” he calls, watching closely, “is someone there?”

 He blinks in surprise when a cat pokes its head over the crate.

 “Uh, hey, there,” he manages, “uh…what’re you doing all the way out here?”

 In response, the cat leaps elegantly over the crate. It’s a slim thing, but not underweight. Its fur is bluish-gray, almost like a stormcloud. As Virgil watches, the cat sneezes and its fur turns a dappled brown.

 Virgil sighs. “So you’re the mischievous sprite I’ve been told to get rid of.”

 The neighboring village has tried several times to make him seek and destroy the sprite’s nest. Apparently, it’s been causing all sorts of problems. Books going missing, glasses breaking in the middle of the night, jars of preserves broken into. Now, that’s not really what Virgil calls a punishable offense, but the villagers were insistent that he find it and fight it. He’s done one of those things.

 Well, technically, the sprite found him.

 “There’s not much here that would interest you,” Virgil says, gesturing at the unkempt garden, “but if you want to tell me what you do want, then—hey!”

 The sprite, of course, doesn’t wait for him to actually finish inviting it inside. Instead, the door creaks as the cat darts between his legs and vanishes.

 “Be careful,” he warns, “there are sharp things.”

 He pushes open the door to see the cat perched on a precariously high shelf, sniffing at the books. He sighs.

 “I can get those down if you want, it might be easier than doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing now.”

 The cat ignores him, pawing at the thick leather cover. He sighs and pulls off his gloves.

 “Alright, just—wait a damn minute.”

 Virgil grunts as he lifts the book of the shelf and carries it over to the table, opening it and waiting. The cat jumps up onto the table and sniffs at the pages. Its tongue laps at a word.

 “You want more about that? Okay, let’s just—“

 Yes, Virgil is talking to this sprite. He’s allowed to do that in his own home.

 He turns the pages until the cat chirps.

 “This? This what you want?”

 The sprite stares at the page. It goes unnaturally still.

 The hairs on the back of Virgil’s neck stand up.

 Then it breaks; the cat shakes itself off and jumps down.

 “That’s it? You done now?”

 The cat’s tail twitches gracefully as it struts back to the door. Virgil rolls his eyes and follows it out.

 “Well, I’m glad I could be of service,” he mutters as he closes the door.

 Something rough touches his hand. He looks down. The sprite looks back up at him and licks his hand again.

 “…you’re welcome.”

 The cat sneezes, its fur changing back into the deep bluish-gray. Without another look, it takes off, leaping effortlessly over the crate and disappearing into the woods.

 Well, stranger things have happened in Virgil’s life.

 Shaking his head, he gets back to his garden. He glances at the rose before deciding that, eh, what the hell, it can stay another day. He finishes filling the mint crate and sets it near the front door, ready for his trip to the village tomorrow.

 “Ah, thank you!” The tea shop owner beams as he hands it over. “I’m sure this’ll be plenty.”

 “I’ve got more than enough, I promise.”

 “Well, since that sprite disappeared, I won’t be running out nearly as often!”

 Virgil blinks. “Huh?”

 “Oh, the sprite you got rid of!” She smiles. “Thank you kindly for that, it was ever so pesky.”

 Virgil just nods.

 ————————————

Virgil opens his eyes and doesn’t quite reach for the dagger he keeps in the nightstand but it’s close.

 “There’s a dog in my bed,” he mutters, “standing on top of me, drooling on my face.”

 The dog just barks. And changes color.

 He sighs. “Are you the same one from last time? Was the book not enough for you?”

 The dog barks again, jumping off the bed and trotting to the kitchen, its nail clicking on the floor. Virgil lets his eyes close for a second before getting up and following it.

 “Alright, the book it—whoa.”

 The dog is, um. Not a sprite.

 A huge mastiff elemental sits in the middle of his kitchen. It looks up from when it was nosing at what remained of a chicken carcass and rumbles. Virgil raises his hands.

 “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says lowly, “even though you did break into my house and wake me up. What do you want?”

 The elemental turns and moves through the house, out toward the woods. Virgil stuffs his feet in his boots and follows, tucking a slingshot and his knife into his pockets as he goes. The elemental moves through the trees with an inhuman grace, the very edges of the leaves it passes smoldering. A thin tendril of smoke wafts past Virgil’s nose.

  “She’s still inside!” The guard shouts as Virgil wrenches his arm away. “I have to go get her!”

  “Sir, you’ll die!”

  “She’s still—“

  The top of the house crashes down as—

 Virgil closes his eyes and brings his kerchief up to his nose. He breathes deeply. Freshly baked bread. Honeysuckle. The slightly tacky smell of leather oil. Breathe in, breathe out.

 When he opens his eyes again, the elemental has paused, glancing back at him.

 “I’m coming,” he says quickly, “I’m coming. Keep going.”

 He shrugs the old ghosts off his shoulders and follows.

 The elemental leads him to a clearing. Underneath a large, dead white tree, there’s a small den of moss. Virgil’s breath catches in his throat.

 The villagers had sent him a warning about a curse in the area. Fires had been going out. It had been impossible to keep warmth in the houses over the long winter nights. They’d been seeing figures in the smoke, sightings of, well, a mastiff. They’d contacted him to try and get it to leave.

 Well, the mastiff elemental is here, under the tree, looking back and forth between Virgil and something he can’t see, buried in the moss.

 “Is there something you wanna show me,” he asks softly, coming a little further into the clearing, “in there?”

 The elemental whines. He walks forward until he catches sight of a stone in the middle of the bed of moss. It’s cracked in two.

 “Is this what you wanted to show me,” he calls, shifting into a crouch, “this stone?”

 The elemental huffs, nudging his hand. It reaches past him and tries to pick up the stone in its mouth, only for it to drop. It puts its nose down and whines.

 “…was this your favorite stone to play with?” The elemental butts its head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry it broke. How’d it happen?”

 The elemental points its nose toward a jagged boulder in the corner of the clearing.

 “Ah, I see.”

 And you know what? Yeah, Virgil gets it. He’s dropped shit where he shouldn’t have dropped it before and it broke. What does it matter that this elemental is so upset over accidentally breaking its favorite toy that its warmth is so low the nearby villagers think it’s a curse?

 “Hey,” Virgil murmurs, reaching out to cup the two halves of the rock in his hands, “it’s okay. This rock—good choice by the way, very good choice—it’s part of the Perse Mountains, right? So it’s susceptible to fire magic.”

 He reaches into his slingshot bag and pulls out two small rocks. Using one on either side, he sandwiches the two halves of the broken rock together and holds it out to the elemental.

 “Now breath on it.”

 The elemental exhales carefully, bathing the rock in a steady stream of fire. Sure enough, in a few moments, thanks to Virgil holding it steady, the rock glows a soft yellow and reforges.

 “That’s good.” He takes it carefully between the stones and rolls it around the moss, trying to cool it. “Okay. Try now.”

 The elemental takes the rock gingerly between its teeth and yips.

 Virgil chuckles. “I’m glad I could help.”

 The elemental spins in a circle before turning back into the dog and licking Virgil’s cheek, barking excitedly.

 “Okay, okay, you’re welcome, jeez.” He half-heartedly shoves the dog’s head away. “You’re getting slobber all over me!”

 The dog pulls away and takes the rock into its mouth again, snuffling happily. Virgil shakes his head and gets up.

 “If that’s all, then I’m gonna go home.” The dog licks his hand one more time. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

 And if a fire is already burning when he gets back home, well, that’s just a surefire way to know there was never a curse for the villagers to worry about.

 Get it? Surefire?

 Shut up, he’s hilarious.

 ————————————

“Ah, Virgil!”

 Virgil turns. The blacksmith waves at him from the market stalls. Dodging fruit carts and weaving his way through passers-by, he stops in front of the man and gestures to the new wares.

 “Good season, Anbel?”

 “Oh, the best!” Anbel gestures to the coin chest behind him. “You know how it is, goes in and out of season.”

 Absentmindedly, Virgil rubs at the scars on his arms. “I know the feeling.”

 “Anyways, I got that dagger you gave me to repair.”

 Anbel reaches behind him and pulls the dagger out of a leather bag. He holds it up. The deep gouges in the blade are gone, the handle isn’t tarnished anymore, and it looks…good.

 “Thank you, Anbel,” he says, reaching for it, “so how much?”

 “No charge.”

 “Come on.”

 “No charge,” Anbel repeats, “not for you.”

 Unbidden, a flush rises to his cheeks as he tucks the dagger into his belt. “Anbel…”

 “Alright,” the blacksmith says, holding up his hands, “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

 Virgil sighs. “What’d you do?”

 “Why do you assume that I did something?”

 Virgil just gives him a look.

 “…alright but this time it wasn’t me.”

 “Uh-huh.”

 Anbel smacks his chest. “I’m serious, there’s something wrong in the woods outside of town.”

 Virgil sobers, taking a step closer. “What is it?”

 “Dunno. But my horses won’t go past a particular stretch of land and I need to be able to make the trip next moon.”

 Virgil chews on his lip, thinking. “Did they run away or just refuse to go near?”

 “Refused to go near.” Anbel shakes his head. “Don’t know what’s gotten into them. They’re good mares.”

 “Have any others reported anything?”

 “Cindi had trouble getting through too.”

 “Where is it?”

 “Just before the bend in the river. Near the trees.”

 Virgil sighs. “I’ll have a look.”

 That’s how he finds himself wandering down the main road on the next cloudy day. He glances around to make sure there aren’t any other villagers nearby before he starts looking around. There’s a small grove of trees near the riverbank, a mound of rocks next to the bend in the road, and a rapid system rushing just out of sight.

 Maybe the horses were scared of the rapids? They’ve been known to spook before. But no, Anbel makes this trip every season. If the horses were going to spook at the rapids, they’ve done it before.

 Virgil frowns, coming to a stop in the middle of the grass between the road and the river. What could they’ve been startled by? There’s not enough space to hide anything here. The rocks are on the wrong side of the road. The river isn’t close or loud. And the trees aren’t close enough together to hide anything between them.

 …between them.

 Virgil holds very, very still.

 Out of the corner of his eye, one of the trunks shifts.

 He doesn’t move quickly, doesn’t draw his dagger, just lowers his eyes to the grass and turns, facing the trees, and takes a step backward. Then another. Then another. When he’s over ten yards away, he looks up.

 “I mean you no harm,” he calls, “I have no wish to interfere. I was told that there was something that scared a few horses and wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

 The breeze rustles through the leaves.

 “I am happy to leave you here,” he continues, risking a step closer, “but I know that…this is probably not where you’d like to be. This isn’t an especially damp forest.”

 The trunk shifts again.

 “If there’s something I can do to help—“ he risks another step— “I’d be happy to.”

  There.

 The trunk shifts and seems to shrink inside as a jaculi unwinds itself from around its base. It blinks lazily at him with amber eyes, golden scales rippling in the faint light from the cloudy sky.

 “Hello,” Virgil waves, “can I—will you let me come closer?”

 The jaculi hisses and lays its head near the ground.

 “Thank you.” Virgil walks forward carefully, stopping a few feet away and crouching down. “Now, what brings you here? You look like you’re an awful long way from home.”

 The jaculi hisses again, its head swiveling toward the river. Virgil looks. Across the bank, he can see a much denser forest and what looks like a storm brewing.

 “You’ll be hurt,” he realizes, “if you try and stay here…”

 The jaculi coils tighter around the tree trunk.

 “How’d you get over here,” Virgil mutters, “you’d’ve needed to swim across…and that also won’t go well for you.”

 There’s a soft rustling as the jaculi buries its tail in a pile of leaves near the base of the tree. Virgil glances over to see it rubbing its face halfheartedly against the bark.

 His eyes widen.

 About a month ago there had been a terrible storm. His little cabin had barely held together. He’d heard reports from the tavern owner that it’d blown one of the old trees right over.

 “That’s how you got across,” he murmurs, mostly to himself, “you climbed across the tree. And now it’s gone and you’re stuck.”

 The jaculi blinks remorsefully at him.

 “Okay,” Virgil mutters, “okay, we can…we can figure this out.”

 They’ll have to do it at night. There’s no way the jaculi will feel safe enough to move while it’s still light out. There’s an old barn that never finished construction just over the ridge. One of those timber pieces is probably long enough to get over the river. And he can make a bridge wide enough to support the jaculi’s weight.

 He explains his plan to the jaculi, feeling a little ridiculous, but he’s allowed to explain what he’s doing to help someone, it’s fine, and says that he’ll be back. Promise.

 The landowner gives him a weird look when he asks to borrow the timber.

 “It’s too long for you to do anything with it,” he says, still helping Virgil load it onto a sled, “and much too tough for you to cut by yourself.”

 “It’s fine just the way it is,” Virgil says, “and thank you.”

 He waves Virgil off. “Keep it. You’re doing better than I am with it.”

 Virgil’s back at the river bend by sundown. He can’t see the jaculi anymore—it’s probably hidden itself for safety—but he calls out when he arrives.

 “I’m going to use these to make a bridge for you. It shouldn’t take me too long.”

 The pieces of timber are ungainly, to make a colossal understatement, but Virgil grits his teeth and slides them out of the sled. He wades a little into the river and—

  The water is so cold it burns. He has to keep going. It’s gaining on him. He’ll be safe in the water.

  The growls get closer and his foot slips—

 “No,” he mutters, “no, it’s not that. I’m fine. I’m standing, I’m not hurt, I’m not drowning.”

 He blinks down at his boots, the water swirling around his ankles. The timber in his hands shifts as he breathes. He’s fine. He’s fine.

 “Okay…okay.”

 He grits his teeth again and heaves, bringing the piece of timber with him. He wades further until it’s swirling around his waist. The piece of timber is just long enough to reach the other side. Onto the next one.

 He gets the five of them stretched across the river just as the last of the light vanishes. Panting, he struggles back up onto the side of the river bank and splays out onto his back, eyes closed.

 A low hiss sounds in his ear.

 He just manages to avoid a scream.

 “Hey,” he gasps instead, eyes flickering open to see the jaculi coiled up a few feet away, “uh…please don’t do that.”

 The jaculi just blinks at him.

“Uh…why don’t you, uh…” Virgil holds a hand to his chest, trying to get his breathing back under control. “…try out the bridge?”

 The jaculi slithers closer, flicking its tongue out against the timber. It looks back at Virgil.

 “Go on,” he encourages, “you can do it.”

 It slithers on, testing the boards against its weight.

 Virgil holds his breath until the jaculi vanishes into the trees across the river banks, slipping further and further into the darkness.

 Anbel leaves on his trip the next moon.

 ————————————

Honestly, when the kraken explodes out of Virgil’s well, he just sighs and fetches his bath so he can get the poor thing out.

 “Easy,” he grumbles when the kraken squirms so much he almost drops it, “you may be a young one but you’re still heavy.”

 Panting, he drops the tentacled beast into the full tub, his arms flying up to shield his face from the shower of sparkling drops. Judging by the happy trills and clicks, the kraken likes it in there. He shakes his head.

 “So that’s why I’ve been asked to fight a monster in the sewers,” he muses, watching the kraken’s tentacles writhe giddily in the metal tub, “just how did you end up so far inland?”

 The kraken, of course, does not deign to answer. Instead, the tentacles latch onto the side of the bath and threaten to tip the whole thing over.

 “No, you idiot,” Virgil shouts, grabbing onto the other side and weighing it down. He winces when more water spills onto him, drenching him head to toe. “Now look what you’ve done.”

 What the kraken has done, apparently, is get Virgil close enough so that its tentacles can haul Virgil into the tub.

 “Hey!”

 Virgil spits water out of his mouth, much to the kraken’s delight.

 “That was rude.”

��The kraken just chirps happily and wriggles around. Its tentacles stick to Virgil’s clothes and pull him through the water.

 Virgil’s chest tightens.

 One of the first things they teach you about krakens is never get in the water with them. The second thing they teach you about krakens is do not get in the water with them. The third thing they teach you about krakens is not to get too close to their tentacles so they don’t pull you into the water with them.

 And yeah, this is Virgil’s bathtub, not a river, a tide pool, or the open sea, but you can drown in an inch of water.

 Virgil presses his back up against the rim of the tub. The kraken seems to realize something’s wrong and settles, burbling softly.

 “Hey, bud,” Virgil says shakily, “I, uh, what’re you doing here?”

 The kraken twitches a few tentacles and more water slops over the edge.

 “Right…” Virgil shakes his head. “Okay, well, uh, I would rather not sit here and soak through all of my clothes, so I’m just going to—“

 As soon as he tries to move, the kraken wraps a tentacle around his leg and tugs.

 “Okay, okay, not leaving, not leaving, um—“ Virgil reaches down and takes a handful of the grass. Worst comes to worst, he can tip the tub and get the kraken back in the well.

 The kraken lets go as soon as he settles back in the water. Virgil looks at the creature carefully.

 There’s a mark on its head. Discoloration, probably, but still obvious. As he watches, the kraken burbles to itself and starts making little ripples in the surface of the water with its tentacles. After a moment, it starts gently pushing the water towards Virgil.

 The water laps at Virgil’s knees in little waves, not enough to wet him anymore—not that it would matter at this point—but enough to bounce back and make more patterns. The kraken trills softly and keeps doing it.

 Does it…want to play?

 Slowly, Virgil lifts his hands up and starts to push the water back. The kraken, realizing that Virgil is indeed committing to the idea that he is going to play with this kraken, trills louder and uses more of its tentacles to move the waves bigger.

 “Yeah? Is that how it works?” Virgil moves his hands. “Like that?”

 The kraken chirps.

 He’s not really sure how long they stay there, playing with the water, but it’s long enough for the sun to go down in the sky and Virgil to get more than a little chilly in the water.

 When the kraken notices that the water is rippling more around Virgil and he’s not moving his hands any faster, it wraps a tentacle around his ankle and tugs.

 “What? You tired?” The kraken leans its head against the side of the tub. “Okay. Well, I don’t know how long you can stay in here—“

 He cuts himself off when the kraken jabs a tentacle toward the well.

 “You wanna go back in there? It’s so small and cramped, and the sewers in town aren’t much better.”

 The kraken insists.

 Sure. Why not.

 Virgil grunts as he lifts the kraken back into the bucket, carefully lowering the creature down into the well. He hears one more trill before splashing sounds indicate that the creature is gone.

 Funnily enough, reports of the sewer beast vanish overnight.

 When Virgil wakes up panting from a nightmare of ropes around his neck, the glass of water on his bedside table is perfectly cold.

 ————————————

Virgil curses as the sole of his boot slips. He just manages to catch himself against the cliffside before splitting his knee on a harsh spire of rock. Gritting his teeth, he forces himself onward.

 The cliffs frown over him as he makes his way up the pass. The rocks crumble threateningly as his boots crunch, crunch, crunch. The sword on his hip feels too heavy. He curses, tugging his glove the rest of the way onto his hand.

 He never was one for dragon hunts.

 The message came in a week ago. Some poor terrified soul had come screaming into the town, ranting about dragons, missing people, curses, the whole lot. Virgil had taken up the call and set off, promising to get to the bottom of it.

 He never promised to hurt anything.

 Thunder rolls ominously in the distance and he bites back another curse. There’s a cave up ahead, he can see it just over the next ridge, he’ll rest there.

 In all honesty—and he can be honest, now there’s no one else around—he hates these kinds of missions. Finding something is one thing. Going to get something is one thing. Rescuing someone is one thing.

 This feels like something else.

 There’s something in his boot. There’s a wrinkle in the thinnest shirt he’s wearing. The sword belt is digging into his hip. The voices in his head won’t shut the fuck up.

 The cave is right there.

 He all but collapses to his knees as soon as he makes it inside, just as the first drops of rain land on the back of his armor. He breathes a sigh of relief, heading further into the cave, into the safety, out of the storm.

 It’s quiet here.

 He takes the knife out of its loop on his belt and sets about setting up a fire. There’s a reasonable stash of dry wood here, probably enough to keep him going throughout the night. He makes a small bundle and lights it, blowing on it until it catches and burns merrily.

 Shrugging off his pack, he leans it up against the wall and starts to dig out the dried meat. He tears off a long strip with his teeth and chews slowly, staring into the flames.

 There’s something nice about fire. Not all fire—he’s got the burns to prove that—but this fire. Controlled fire. He sits back on his hands, brushing aside the eggshells to lean against the cave wall.

 Controlled fire is…justified chaos. It’s strange, to think of chaos as being justified. But that’s what it is. A controlled burn. Snapping and sparking amidst a small mound of wood, warm. Safe. It’s strange to think of fire as safe, too.

 Virgil sits back, finishing off his meal and closing his eyes. The fire is very, very warm. Much warmer than he would expect for just a small campfire. And a little irregular, too. It comes in waves, pants, almost.

 …wood, eggshells…

 Okay, look.

 Look.

 Virgil’s tired, okay?

 It’s not like this is what normally happens to him on hunts.

 He knows what he’s doing.

 He does!

 It’s fine.

 This is fine.

 This is so utterly fine right now.

 But…okay, yeah, maybe Virgil’s not been paying as much attention as he should be. And maybe he’s fighting down a panic attack right now. And maybe he’s frozen in fear to the floor of this cave and not sure how he’s survived this long.

 Whatever.

 Virgil cracks an eye open.

 “…hey, there, dragon.”

 Surprisingly enough, his head does not get immediately bitten off. Instead, the dragon looks at him, nostrils puffing hot air into his face. The smell of dank cavern air mixes with what Virgil really hopes isn’t decomposing human.

 “Um…fancy seeing you here?”

 The dragon huffs louder, still staring into Virgil’s soul. He risks a glance over its shoulder to make sure that yes, this is the only dragon in this cave, there aren’t suddenly going to be five of them. He spies the scales trailing further into the darkness, muscular legs, long, powerful tail. The dragon growls, snapping his eyes back.

 “Hey, uh—didn’t mean to invade your cave.” Virgil scoots backward. “That was absolutely my fault. I can, uh—well, I can’t really promise to leave you alone, but I, uh…rain check?”

 As if on cue, thunder booms from outside.

  Shit.

 A lower growl sounds from the dragon as its mouth curls up. Wow, those teeth are long…

 “Can you, uh—so I know that this is a pretty big request, considering I just, you know, invaded your cave, but uh—maybe don’t eat me?”

 Judging by the growl, that’s a no.

 “Okay, I, uh—“ Virgil risks a glance around. His fire is still burning. Maybe he can at least get the dragon to back up before he—

 He pauses.

 Near the fire, the dragon’s leg looks…wet. Its scales are stained with a dark splotch coming from somewhere higher up. As he watches, the dragon shifts its weight and it gets wetter.

 “You’re hurt,” he says softly, “you’re—oh, god, you’re hurt.”

 He looks back up. The dragon’s snarl doesn’t quite soften, but its mouth relaxes a little.

 “I’ve got salve and bandages in my pack,” he says cautiously, “if you let me get them, I can—I can help?”

 Slowly, ever so slowly, he moves his hand to his pack, keeping the other one raised as he opens the flap and takes out the bottle and the bandages.

 “Can I have a look, please? I’m just gonna…”

 The dragon huffs cautiously as Virgil turns, moving around its body to crouch next to its injured leg. Now that he’s closer, he can see what’s happened.

 A shard of metal is lodged in the soft space between two of the scales. Every time the dragon moves, it shifts, spilling more and more blood. Judging by how loud the dragon is breathing, it must really hurt.

 “You poor thing,” he mutters, “how long has this been here?”

 No response.

 “We gotta get it out,” he says instead, looking for something he can use, “if we leave it in you might get infected, or…something else bad will happen.”

 He pulls a pair of pliers from his pack and the dragon snorts.

 “Easy, easy—“ the dragon’s eyes go wide at the glint of the flame off the metal— “hey, it’s okay, I’m gonna use these to get that metal outta you, yeah?”

 It seems an hour before the dragon calms, gingerly stretching out its leg so Virgil can see the shard. Taking a deep breath, he hooks the pliers around the edge of the metal.

 “Ready on three, okay?” He grits his teeth. “One…two…three!”

 He yanks.

 The dragon roars as the metal shard comes out in his hands, the side release almost sending him toppling back into the fire. Quickly, he discards the tools and reaches out to soothe the dragon, petting its scales and hushing it gently.

 “Shh, shh, it’s out now, it’s okay, it can’t hurt you anymore.” He runs a hand over the dragon’s heaving back. “I’m gonna help you, okay? I’m here to help.”

 It seems to calm the dragon, its breathing slowly but surely calming down as Virgil continues to speak softly to it. Honestly, if it were this easy to calm himself down, he would have a lot fewer problems.

 “I’ve got to clean it,” he says after a minute, “just to make sure you don’t get infected. Then I’ll be done, okay?”

 The dragon swivels its massive head around, looking at the wound, then back at Virgil. It heaves a great sigh and its chin comes to rest on the floor, staring at him. Guess that’s as close to permission as he’s gonna get.

 “Thank you. This, uh, this may sting a bit.”

 He barely gets a flinch as he starts cleaning the cut. Dragons. Once he’s wrapped the dragon’s leg as best he can, he turns to peer at the shard of metal he pulled out of the wound. He holds it up, examining it in the firelight.

 It looks…wrong.

 It’s too thick to be just something that happened to get in there, but too jagged to be something natural. It looks like it snapped off of something, but it’s not the right shape to be an arrowhead or a piece of a building. So what…?

 He turns when the dragon starts to move.

 It heaves itself to its feet, testing out its weight on all four legs. When the pain doesn’t shoot through, it lumbers off, further into the cave. Its head dips down, out of sight for a moment, before it turns and starts back toward the fire, dragging something in its mouth.

 Virgil’s eyes widen when another bag is dropped in front of him.

 “Is this…is this someone else’s?” He lays his fingers carefully on its surface. “Did…did you…did someone else come here before me?”

 The dragon huffs.

 With trembling fingers, he flips open the bag. There’s a good store of meat in here, a change of clothes, something for armor, it’s a provisions bag. One side has a little loop attached with nothing inside.

 “…someone tried to stab you,” he realizes in horror, looking back up at the dragon. “Someone tried to fight you but couldn’t. So they stabbed you in the leg.”

 His fists clench.

 “They hurt you.”

 Another huff. Then the dragon nudges the bag toward him again.

 “Is there something else in here?” Virgil starts sorting through the possessions. He lays the clothes to one side, the bottles to another. When he gets to the food, the dragon leans forward and snorts, blowing hot air into his face.

 “This? This is what you want me to get?” He looks at it. It’s just more dried meat. It, uh, it actually looks a little better than his. “Are you hungry?”

 The dragon snorts at Virgil’s pack, then at the food in his hands.

 “…are you…giving this to me because I’m still hungry?”

 Another huff, longer this time, and the dragon’s head comes to rest on the floor, eyes staring up at him.

 Virgil swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. “Well, that’s—thank you.”

 The dragon rumbles as he starts to eat, eyes blinking lazily. Virgil tries not to mind too much.

 And…honestly? It’s not that bad. He’s had worse audiences when he’s just trying to eat. The dragon switches its tail every now and then, huffing gently to keep the fire going. It’s…nice.

 Virgil finishes eating as much of the food as he wants and tucks the rest away. He takes a moment to just…look.

 “The other person,” he says eventually, “the one that hurt you…they—I think they wanted to kill you.”

 The dragon stares at him like he just said the sky is blue.

 “No, really, I—I don’t think they wanted anything else.” He shakes his head. “We’re not near enough to any villages for that to be the reason, there aren’t any traveling paths through here, there’s…there’s no other reason. I think they just wanted to kill you.”

 The cave falls quiet as the rain pours outside.

 “…I think they wanted me to kill you too.”

 Virgil’s chest aches. Something in his right hand tingles.

“Why do they always want me to kill you?”

 And he’s not just talking about the dragon now.

 It’s always the same.

 Fight this. Kill that. Rescue us from this. Save us from that.

 What if you’re not the ones that need to be saved?

 Virgil lets his chin drop to his chest and sighs. His sword hangs heavy at his hip. His hands tremble in the burning light of the fire.

 “I hate to impose,” he manages through a sluggish tongue, “but…may I stay? Just until the storm passes?”

 A low thud makes him look up. The dragon shifts, its tail curled in a half-circle around Virgil and the fire. It huffs softly.

 “Thank you.”

 ————————————

Sometimes he has sleepless nights. Drifts in blackness and emptiness until it’s time to get up. Or he’ll close his eyes for what feels like an instant before he wakes up the next day.

 Sometimes he has restless nights. Can’t sleep, can’t manage to get more than a few minutes of tense darkness before his eyes shoot open and he has to reassure himself that’s he can sleep.

 Sometimes he has good nights. Dreams of sunshine and warmth and the safety of a hot drink between his palms. Closing his eyes and just hearing the peaceful hum of his cabin.

 Most of the time he has nightmares. The good ones are just mixes of monsters he can’t see coming, kills he wishes he didn’t have to make. Losing someone he should’ve been able to save.

 This one’s a bad one.

  Jaws close down on his arm. The creature whips its head back and forth, shaking him like a rag doll. He grits his teeth and tries to—

  His eyes widen as the burning roof collapses on top of him. A heavy beam falls onto his chest and he can’t move, he’s going to—

  The cliff face collapses under him and he plummets, fingers scrabbling for a hold against the crumbling face. He can’t reach, he can’t reach—

 “….shut up, you’re gonna wake him up!”

 “If you stop shouting, then he won’t.”

 “Shh, the both of you.”

 “This is certainly working, I think we should all keep talking like this.”

 “Oh, don’t you start!”

 “Hey, hey, shh! He’s waking up!”

 Virgil is waking up, as a matter of fact, and he also has no idea where he is or what’s going on. He does know there are at least five people in this room with him though. That’s either a good thing or a really, really bad thing.

 He can feel rocks under his head. Is he still in the cave, then? How other people…here? Where’s the dragon?

 “Hey,” one of the voices says, “are you okay? You kinda, uh, well, you weren’t looking very good for a little bit there.”

 “Back up, you morons, you’re gonna scare him!”

 “We’re not scary, shut up.”

 “You’re scary.”

 “All of you be quiet,” the first voice says, before it softens again. “Hey, can you open your eyes?”

  Well, I’ve definitely made worse decisions.

 He wholeheartedly concurs with that thought when the first thing he sees is genuinely one of the most attractive people he’s ever had the pleasure of meeting face to face.

 “There you are,” the beautiful person says, “good morning. Is your head alright?”

 “Uh—“ not now gay panic— “uh?”

 “Back up, Logan,” another person says, “let me see.”

 Logan—great name, sure, why not—moves out of the way, and oh god there’s two of them.

 “Hi!” The other attractive person leans over Virgil and gods— “are you hurt? You looked a little upset while you were sleeping.”

 “You—“ Virgil does not squeak— “you watched me while I was sleeping?”

 “Well, you fell asleep and Roman got worried, so—“

 “I’m sorry,” Virgil interrupts, “who—who are you?”

 The person in front of him tilts his head. “Don’t you recognize us?”

  I would absolutely fucking remember meeting you, and I do not.

 “Patton,” Logan says, “he’s a mortal. He won’t—we are not as we were when he met us.”

 The butterflies in Virgil’s stomach ice.

 These…these are creatures. Is he—what supernatural force did he piss off?

 Logan smiles at him and winks. First off, rude, but—

 Virgil squints. One of the man’s eyes is a deep bluish-grey. The other one—the one he just winked with—is a dappled brown.

 Oh.

 “…you’re the sprite.”

 “I am,” he says, “my name is Logan.”

 Something nudges his shoulder. Virgil looks over to see Patton offering him a round stone.

 “…the mastiff elemental?”

 “Patton, actually.” Patton smiles and gestures over Virgil’s other shoulder.

  Why are there five of them and why are they all so pretty?

 “Can you guess who they are?”

 One of them rolls his eyes. “Yes, that sounds like a perfect use of time that isn’t at all a waste.”

 “Okay, so you’re the jaculi.”

 He smirks. “Janus.”

 The one near the entrance to the cave just cackles and bounces on the balls of his feet. Almost like…

 “You made me spill the bathtub over my whole yard!”

 He cackles louder. “Yes, I did!”

 Virgil rolls his eyes. He’s not fond. He’s not.

 “Remus,” Logan scolds, “you said you were just going into the well.”

 “He took me out!”

 “Yeah, because that thing is cramped as hell.”

 “Aww,” Patton coos, “how sweet.”

 “Well,” the last one says, smiling softly from one of the darker corners of the cave, “we knew that, didn’t we?”

 Virgil turns, looking hard into the darkness. The last person stands, walking over slowly, leaning most of his weight on one leg. As he moves into the light, he sits down on the log and reaches down. Virgil’s eyes widen as he gets handed the last of the dried meat.

 “You’re still hungry,” the person says softly, “I can tell.”

 Virgil cannot eat right now, thank you very much. Instead, his eyes are fixed on his bandage, still tied sloppily around the person’s leg.

 “You’re the dragon.”

 “I am. But you can call me Roman.”

 “…does it still hurt?”

 “Oh, this?” He smiles and moves his leg. “A little. But it’s almost better,” he finishes, reaching over to gently bump Virgil’s shoulder, “thanks to you.”

 Yes, hello? Virgil would like for someone to explain what’s going on, please.

 “I’m sure you’ve got questions,” Logan says, also sitting down, “and we can do our best to answer them. But first…are you alright?”

 Uh, no. “Why do you think I’m not?”

 “You’re breathing faster than most mortals do at rest, your face is more flushed than it was, and you were troubled while you slept.”

 …shhh…

 “I, um…I was having a nightmare.”

 “Ooh,” Remus says, plopping down on the floor with his chin propped up on his hands, “was it a bad one?”

 “…you could say that.”

 “Remus,” Patton chides, “don’t.”

 Remus pouts but hushes, reaching out to toy with a stick. Patton rolls the stone between his hands.

 “You did seem upset,” Janus says, “can we help?”

 “H-help?”

 Janus raises an eyebrow. “Yes, help. Or is that not a thing most mortals do?”

 Um. Well. Uh, hang on.

 “Are you just going to be mean to him,” Logan sighs, “or are we actually going to make an effort to be friendly with the person we have decided to befriend?”

 “Can one of you explain what’s going on?” Patton nods to Virgil. “Before he decides we’re all mad?”

 Roman sighs. “Virgil? Are you still hungry?”

 “Huh? No, no, I’m…I’m okay.”

 He smiles. “Good. This…this might sound a bit strange, but…try and keep up?”

 “As weird as it might sound, this isn’t the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

 Roman blinks in surprise, a small smile coming over his face. “Isn’t it?”

 “Well, you must have some idea of what I do for a living.”

 Roman’s smile only grows. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we do.”

 Logan clears his throat. Virgil turns, seeing the book from his cabin appear in Logan’s hands.

 “Did you—is that my—“

 “I can assure you,” Logan says softly, “that I did not steal your book from you. Rather, this is a copy, generated from the information I was able to learn.”

 “What did you want?”

 “We were cursed.” Logan closes the book with a snap. “Cursed to take on forms that were hated or feared or simply a nuisance.”

 Virgil’s stomach drops. Cursed?

 “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “that sounds…awful.”

 “It was,” Janus mutters, “completely inconvenient and an utter waste of time.”

 “You say like it wasn’t your fault.”

 “Oh, right, it was absolutely only my fault.”

 “You two,” Patton huffs, “enough.”

 Virgil’s still trying to wrap his head around everything. “Wait, hang on, so—you were cursed? Were? Past tense?”

 “Well,” Janus gestures to himself, “I don’t exactly look like a snake anymore, do I?”

 He raises a finger when Virgil opens his mouth.

 “Careful, dear.”

 Virgil snaps his mouth shut.

 Roman rolls his eyes and places a hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “You broke the curse, my friend. Or at least…you helped us break it.”

 “But how? I didn’t—I didn’t do anything.”

 He raises an eyebrow and gestures to the bandage. “You don’t consider this doing anything?”

 “Or this?” Patton holds up the stone.

 Logan taps the cover of the book. “You helped us. When you had no reason to, past the goodness of your heart.”

 “We would’ve been hurt,” Janus says quietly, “or hunted without you. They certainly would’ve killed me.”

 “And me,” Remus says.

 Patton nods. “And me.”

 Roman simply taps his leg. Right. They already tried to kill him.

 Virgil blinks. “So…me helping broke the curse?”

 “You caring broke the curse,” Logan corrects gently, “and, well, when you...when you seemed to be in need, we wanted to care for you too.”

 Oh.

  Oh.

  Oh, fuck.

 “So,” Roman says, smiling up at Virgil, “how can we help?”

 “Help? With—with what?”

 “The nightmares.”

 “Oh,” Virgil mumbles, averting his eyes, “you, uh, can’t. Not really. They’re not a curse or magical or anything. They’re just nightmares.”

 “But there must be something we can do.”

 He shakes his head sadly. Believe him, if there were anything five unfairly attractive people could do, he’d tell them. But there isn’t. “They come with the job. There’s not—no one can do anything.”

 He can practically hear Patton frowning. “That’s not very fair. You do so much for others, don’t they—don’t they care?”

 Virgil shrugs. “Life isn’t fair.”

 “So take what it won’t give you.” Janus folds his arms. “They don’t care for you. Even though you care for them.”

 “They do care for me,” Virgil argues, “they’re kind. They help me.”

 “Not with this,” he shoots back, “not with what you really need.”

 “You protect everyone,” Roman says softly when Virgil opens his mouth to argue again, “who protects you?”

 Who protects the protector?

 “…no one.” Virgil shakes his head. “No one but me.”

 “Well, you’re right. That doesn’t seem fair at all.” Logan sets the book aside and it vanishes into the darkness of the cave. “Perhaps we should endeavor to fix that.”

 “F-fix it?” Virgil’s head jerks up. “How?”

 “Let us protect you.”

 “Protect me?”

 “Do keep up,” Janus sighs, but he’s pretty sure he can see him smiling over there, “at the very least, we have magic. That should offer you something.”

 “You don’t have to decide right now,” Roman says quickly, “but…thought we’d offer. Think it over.”

 …well, if ‘protection’ involves seeing them more often, Virgil can definitely work with that.

 “While I think it over, will you tell me how you got cursed?”

 “So it was entirely Janus’s fault—“

 “It was not!”

 “Yes, it was!”

 As Remus and Janus start arguing, Virgil smiles and leans back against the wall of the cave. Roman waves his hand and the cave wall warms, almost cradling Virgil. Logan settles on his other side, weight solid against his arm.

 Yeah, he could get used to this.

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[get-shiggy-with-it]

Ch. 2

Shigaraki Birthday Celebration! 18+ MINORS DNI

Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x fem!reader 

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: reader is marked fem cause Tomura is a little sexist and hates you cause you’re a woman, no pronouns, incel!shiggy, collage au/no quirks, tomura is an asshole, gratuitous swearing, like so much, shiggy has a dirty mouth, mentions of shigs being anxious, brief male masturbation, tags will be added for smut in the next two parts

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

Summary: In which studying is done, unwilling connections are made, and Tomura thinks about the way you smell a totally normal amount. 

AO3 mirror

Taglist: @dillybuggg​ (just shoot me an ask if you want to be tagged!

Tomura hadn’t stopped staring at his phone since he left the apartment. It was second nature by now—head down at a nearly ninety degree angle, hoodie pulled up to hide hair he hadn’t bothered to comb in weeks, and phone out, held just far enough away that he could see the pavement behind the screen. 

He’d found that people tended to naturally avoid him this way and he didn’t have to risk accidentally making eye contact. It was still a bit nerve wracking to venture into buildings he didn’t expressly have to for classes, so he was still hesitant to make the voyage from his apartment to the library.  But he’d made the mistake of mentioning plans to his roommate and the bastard wouldn’t leave him alone about it afterwards until he was practically shoved out with the door locked behind him. 

He was half tempted to make up some excuse last minute and go hide out at the only cafe on campus he could tolerate, but Tomura knew he was just delaying the inevitable. Biting the bullet now would help to not prolong his suffering. 

Your text thread glared up at him in stark white on blue as he pushed past a crowd of students by the library entrance and flashed his ID to the attendant. 

Group Project Bitch:

— hey I got us a room on the third floor, all the way in the back

—text me when you’re here I’ll wave you in, it’s kinda hard to find T-T

                                                                                                     sounds good— 

He shot off a quick text to you that he was hoping on the elevator. The other two guys in the lift may have given him a dirty look for only going up to the third floor, but Tomura sure as hell wasn’t going to risk the physical exertion of stares when just the thought being stuck in a small room alone with you for god knows how long already had him sweating. 

When he stepped out, you were leaned against one of the 90s-green shelves, scrolling aimlessly through your phone. He panicked momentarily, thinking he’d have to get your attention cause just walking up without saying anything would be weird right? 

He wasn’t sure. 

He didn’t do shit like this. 

Thankfully, you looked up at the chime of the lift and waved him over. His red sneakers squeaked as they scuffed the linoleum floors and he already regretted choosing his tighter fitting pair of sweats. The tapered legs that hugged his ankles and thin calves rubbed against his skin and stung the raw patches. 

“Hey, thanks for coming,” you said softly and he nodded, following as you began to weave through the stacks. “Sorry it was short notice, graduation’s coming up so I'm swamped with meetings.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t have anything going on.” 

He cringed internally at the way his voice cracked, trying to keep the usual rasp to a minimum. His roommate said it was from the innumerable hours he spent shouting at his monitor or on discord, which was probably true but to you he was sure he just sounded like a fucking teenager. 

“Cool, I’ve been set up for awhile so feel free to move some stuff,” you talked a bit louder now that you’d both stepped into the study room and shut the door. 

Tomura looked around. You’d snagged one of the nicer ones at least, with the big monitors he could cast his screen onto and those comfy chairs he liked but could never beat anyone too on the lower floors. 

You were right, there was shit all over the big table at the center of the room. Notes and printed out readings with highlights galore and sticky notes littering the pages were scattered all over. What a show off. You probably tossed all this stuff out so he’d think you were actually intelligent or some shit. 

Kicking a pile off of the nearest plush armchair, Tomura took a seat and pulled his laptop out. There was a jack in the middle of the table and you plugged yours in to cast onto the big monitor. 

You made a fucking power point for him. 

This couldn’t be real. 

“So I know I ran some stuff by you in class but essentially I was thinking we make like a simple Twine type thing using the rhetorical argument Swift is making…” 

You started rambling again and Tomura almost immediately tuned you out. His eyes drifted between the rough outline you were flicking through on the board and the laptop you had your nose buried in. 

It was covered in stickers, pretty obviously stereotypical for someone as obsessed with being ‘cool’ as you clearly were. But as he scanned through the various old meme phrases and aesthetic shit, he caught a couple of game references he recognized and a panel cutout from one of his favorite manga. 

He almost fell into your trap for a moment, feeling a rush at the prospect of someone—much less a chick—being into his main hyperfixations. 

But it was quickly crushed under everything his years trolling subreddits had taught him. People like you didn’t actually have interests beyond the attention and dick it got them. Plus that manga was pretty popular anyway, you probably didn’t even read it, just thought the line was funny or made you sound quirky. That had to be why you felt the need to drop it in your first texts. 

“What do you think?” you asked, making good on your new habit of startling the hell out of him. 

Tomura blinked, gaze instinctively turning to you but the blatant way you stared made his mouth turn to sand paper, so he looked resolutely back at the color-coded bullet points on the screen. 

“Look’s fine,” he mumbled. 

The more he glanced over it, the more it actually did look fine. A bit more than fine, really, which pissed him off even more. The little choose-your-own debate style story was not a terrible way to make fucking Whatever Swift interesting and it kinda looked like you’d bothered to google some simple coding which gave him a better idea of what you were looking for. 

It was...good. 

And that so fucking annoying. 

Well, he wasn’t sure if annoying was the right word for it, but the proposal coupled with your apparent lack of disgust at working with him made his face hot and that only ever happened otherwise when his roommate left the dishes out for weeks or when some newb on his server fucked up their raids. 

Then, you had the audacity to plop down in the chair next to him and— 

“You can tell me to fuck off if you want,” you began, shuffling in the chair to cross your legs on the cushion, “but I was hoping you’d be willing to show me how you do some of the coding stuff? I tried on my own, but I have literally no clue what I’m doing.” 

He could smell you again, like the whole fucking health and beauty aisle at the grocery store. When he turned his head a bit to look at you around the curtain of his hair, you were crooked—back against the armrest and facing him. 

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, sounding a bit less rude than he would have liked to. 

You just fucking stared right at him though, didn’t wrinkle your nose at how greasy his roots were or how he was wearing the same hoodies as yesterday. 

“I’ve always been interested in it, but my program is kinda stressful and I don’t have much free time so I never learned,” you offered and for once Tomura found he didn’t feel his skin crawl under your unwavering gaze. 

The dry, cracked area around his eyes burned though as sweat beaded on his forehead and he quickly wiped at his face with a loose sweatshirt sleeve. The garment hung off his shoulders, bought a size too big that he never ended up growing into. 

“What’s your major?” 

He found the words slipped easily from him. It was the quintessential question you asked of anyone in college when you met, but he’d never been interested in the answer before. 

You babbled a bit about your specific area of study and your voice was surprisingly not as infuriating as he remembered it being before. It was softer, he thought, than when you were soapboxing in class about the sexist implications of old as fuck poetry—it had a less grating quality and was almost pleasing to the ear. 

Or Tomura would have said that if he thought you deserved the compliment. 

But, obviously you didn’t. 

So he didn’t. 

He just pretended to care about what you were saying and didn’t hang onto every word at all. Actually he was more enraptured in the way your lips moved when you talked. You used your hands a lot too, but his eyes were ensnared on the way your mouth quirked and dipped, at the occasional flash of your tongue between strong teeth. When he leaned in a bit, he could smell your breath too: fruity gum and the remnants of whatever you were always drinking in that loud as fuck cup. He wondered now what exactly it was, so he could buy it and get a better idea of what you mouth might taste—

Nope. 

No, see this was exactly what he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. How were you doing this to him? What a fucking slut. 

Tomura steeled his nerves as you started explaining the extracurriculars you did on the side. 

“My roommate freshman year actually started a gaming club and so I’ve gotten more into that over the years,” you explained, pointing at the stickers on your laptop case. 

“Are you talking about The League?” 

“Yeah, I didn’t know if you’d heard of it,” you shrugged.  

He knew of the gaming club on campus. He’d thought about joining when he enrolled but the allure of anonymity online gaming provided was too strong. Plus his discord server didn’t have annoying weekly meetings. 

The thought of you, up late and illuminated by the blue light of a tv screen, tucked away in one of the basement rooms in the media building was...strange. It also prompted an array of new images—you in those fucking cat ear headsets, seated in his lap as he trashed you in Mario Kart which was even stranger. 

Tomura had to physically shake his head to dislodge the thought. 

“Uh, we should probably work on this right?” he cringed at the way his voice cracked compared to your own, smooth tone. 

You should narrate those fucking sleepy time mediation things. His roommate used to hide wireless speakers in his room and blast those when Tomura stayed up too late. It was annoying as shit then, but if it was you talking, he probably wouldn’t have minded so much. 

Or no, no he would definitely mind. 

Yes. It would have been worse if anything. 

“Oh shit, you right. It’s been like two hours.” 

He glanced down at his laptop and saw that it had, indeed, been two hours since he got there. He’d willingly spoken to you for two goddamn hours. It felt like no time had passed at all, but the sun was definitely setting, the overhead fluorescent bulbs taking over as the main light source in the room. 

Weird. 

So you settled back in your chair, typing away like you always did, but the sound wasn’t nearly as frustrating as before. Occasionally, you’d glance over his shoulder and ask questions about what he was working on, but mostly the two of you settled into a comfortable silence. 

This pattern continued for the next few weeks. As the weather warmed, you began to show a bit more skin. He never worked up the nerve to comment on the thick expanse of bare thigh that tapered off nicely into your calf, or the curve of your arms not hidden behind knit sweaters—hell even your fucking shoulders were hard not to look at. 

Maybe all those high school dress codes weren’t actually so full of shit after all. Cause he was definitely distracted by the way your neck swooped into the exposed skin of your shoulder and down your back on more than one occasion.

Did all girls know that? Was it some kind of massive conspiracy to crumble the patriarchy or some crap to go flashing bare shoulders everywhere? 

Regardless if you really were trying to hypnotize him into liking you, Tomura stayed resolutely in his monochrome, long sleeved attire, and if you noticed the behavior you never said a word. 

Never said a word about his allergy ridden skin, peeling lips or scarred throat. Never commented on his terrible posture or said his eyes were creepy. Even when he’d occasionally toss a negative remark your way, you never retaliated maliciously. Just brushed him off with a jovial ‘don’t be a dick’ and a playful, but hard slap to his chest or the back of his head. 

The two of you always met in the same, secluded room on the third floor. You’d talk with him in class sometimes or shoot him texts about random bits of inspiration or a late night game memes, but for the most part, your conversations were confined to that room. He found he preferred the study room ‘you’ best. You weren’t as stiff. There was more of a solidity to you, like he’d seen when you told off that Kai bastard. 

It...grew on him. 

He was irrationally anxious that there would be a time when you couldn’t secure this particular room—with it’s big monitor and comfy chairs and less annoying ‘you’—but he’d been reassured after your third work session. 

Someone had knocked softly at the thick, wooden door and a head of wild, bright pink hair peaked around the crack. 

“Sup bro,” the intruder quipped, as they stepped fully into the room. 

“Hey, Spinner,” you mumbled back, looking up momentarily from the essay portion of your presentation before going back to typing. 

Spinner had seemed to notice him at that point and offered a small wave in his direction. “Oh hey, sorry, thought you were alone,” he said quickly. 

“Nah, this is Tomura,” you said, glancing up again and jerking your thumb in his direction. 

Tomura nodded and tugged at his hoodie strings to stop from scratching under the newcomer’s gaze. He’d gotten used to you, but other people still made him a bit nervous. 

“Nice to meet you,” Spinner had a nice smile, bright and flashy when he spoke. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms, looking around the room. “You got the nice one, huh. How’d you manage that?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” you half closed your laptop and stretched a bit. “Jin was working the front desk, so I’ve just been bribing him with vending machine snacks.” 

“He hasn’t gotten himself fired yet?” Spinner laughed incredulously, but not unkindly. 

“Surprisingly not, but he’s completely corrupt now,” you were picking at the cuticle of your thumb and Tomura fixated on the way the skin split off at the nail. Just like his. “A couple packs of chips and a Monster and I get the most bitchin study room whenever I want.” 

“Damn,” Spinner chuckled again and Tomura really wished that he’d leave already. He was beginning to feel himself fading into the upholstery as the conversation left him in the dust. The divergence of your attention away from him or the project was even more annoying that you were. “Well, are you coming to The League meeting tonight? We’re busting out a Smash tournament.” 

“That’s tonight?” you asked, eyes perking up but sliding subtly in Tomura’s direction. “Sorry, I think Tomura and I are gonna be working on this project for a while longer and I’m kinda burnt out. But next time, yeah?”

Spinner rolled his eyes but nodded and kicked off the wall. “That’s not very sexy of you,” he chided and waved a hand in parting. “Gonna work yourself directly into the fucking grave.” 

“Jokes on you, I welcome death.” 

You buried yourself in the screen again and Tomura actually felt a bit grateful for you ending the conversation before he got too painfully awkward. 

But Spinner stopped before he left, looking Tomura up and down from the frayed strings of his black hoodie to the tips of his worn red sneakers. 

“Nice to meet you, man,” he said with a wide grin. “Feel free to tag along next time if you want, we always need more players.” 

The door clicked softly shut behind him and Tomura relaxed back into the silence.

He did end up tagging along—though he spent most of the time hanging off your heels like a lost puppy—to the next meeting of your gaming club and the one after that. Frustratingly enough, he learned that your interests did also extend into skills as you almost bested him in a few rounds Smash. Your profile, lit only by the flashing screen lights, was even more striking outside of his imagined imitations. 

So much so that it found its way into his head late at night when he was too tired to log onto his server. So much so that it had his cock growing firm and tenting his grey sweats without even the visual aid of his go to porn clips. So much so that sometimes, he felt inclined to do something about the throbbing between his legs. So much so that he thought about the way you picked the skin by your fingers. How it looked like his. How your hand might feel like his but softer. Smoother around the edges. With your sweet voice whispering in his ear, making him whine and pant and spill white ropes of release onto his stomach. 

But it was only because you were hot. 

And you were practically begging for him to jack off to the thought of you with those outfits and liking all the shit he liked and noticing when he shrunk away from conversations or including him in them when he started to feel that awful sense of fading into the background. 

Yeah. 

Everybody jerks it sometimes to their group project partners if their ass is nice enough. 

Right?

[princesscyr-fn]

Brothers x Autistic! MC Tidbits/Headcanons

I figured I’d do one as I’m autistic and I wanna be included in things. At the same time however, autism is a spectrum and each of us experience different behaviors and such. As such, each MC for each brother is different so everyone feels included! These are meant to be platonic but you can interpret this however you want. I’m asexual so writing actual romantic stuff makes me very uncomfortable lol.

|Masterlist is here|

MC is gender neutral, yall

Available on Ao3, Wattpad

Lucifer

♡ Clashing with one another from the get go. ♡ Lucifer tends to criticize you, and its mostly unintentional. He’s just looking out for you, though his pride prevents him from admitting that he cares about you. ♡ One day though, the usual comment that falls from his lips about you ends up making you snap. As a result, you are calling him every name under the blocked sun in the Devildom. (Satan LOVES this.) This is when Lucifer realizes he made a fucky wucky. (Thanks @error-code-606 lmao) ♡ Lucifer gets a super harsh reality check from Satan, reminding him that you are autistic and that constant put-downs is bad for a persons self-esteem/image issues. For once, pride feels guilt bubbling in his gut. ♡ From then on, Lucifer is more mindful of how he words his issues with you. (Still staying blunt, which you appreciate.) All the while he praises you from time to time for all the good stuff you’ve done thus far. ♡ Lucifer would keep mental notes of all your stims and triggers. ♡ Entertains stim toys and isn’t bothered by such as he tries to work. ♡ Lucifer would play soothing music for you, mostly classical or easy listening. Something to tingle your sensory. ♡ He stops your meltdowns before you could fully lose control of yourself. ♡ Soft hands are your weakness and Lucifer’s hands don’t disappoint. He’ll let you hold his hands anytime you desire. ♡ Lucifer's office is the best spot for you to have quiet time. ♡ You can talk his ear off and he would love every second of it, deep down.

Mammon

♡ He was quick to pick up on your behaviors before you could push him away. ♡ He is able to joke with you, both of you laughing like hyenas all the way. ♡ Mammon would never make fun of your stutter or mispronunciation of words. He’s patient and tries his best to help you. He absolutely hates when the other demons (not his brothers) make fun of you for something you have no control over. ♡ Both of you would find comfort in each other. ♡ You would absolutely adore his hair. Being a fan of bright colors and his hair being as white as angel wings. Bless his heart, he will allow you to play with it while denying how much he likes it. ♡ He knows the sound of coins is one of your favorite sounds sensory wise. He always makes sure to have some coins on him. ♡ Mammon would remember all of your fixations and then try to shower you in gifts relevant to your current likes. ♡ He loves music and will sing with you no matter how goofy you both sound. ♡ Late night Hell’s Kitchen runs are mandatory. ♡ You are the only person he would try so hard not to steal from. (He’d fail miserably and just keep your stuff instead of selling it.) ♡ Class would be hilarious with him, he’s a class clown. ♡ While he may be a class clown, I think he would somewhat try a bit harder on his work because you encourage him to do his best every single day.

Leviathan

♡ Things between the two of you are tense at first as both of you are socially awkward and standoffish. ♡ Though once you’re both comfortable, you will talk each others ears off about anime, video games, and everything under the blocked sun of the Devildom. ♡ You two will develop a secret language that the other brothers won’t understand. Imagine all that shit talk. ♡ You’re both stimmers! While Levi has physical and vocal stims, yours are mostly vocal with the occasional twitch and thigh slap. ♡ You both are major plushie enthusiasts. Prove me wrong. (You can’t.) ♡ Eye contact is difficult to maintain between the two of you, with both of you either yelping, blushing, and looking away while sputtering nonsense. ♡ Mention your love or interest in aquatic life or the sea and watch him fall in love with you, (he’s a sea monster, duh) though he will deny it smh. ♡ You both share a love for slime and will buy a lo of it on your trips to the human world. (When you two feel like doing things like that.) ♡ Levi will most certainly dress as a cat maid so long as you do it too. ♡ Stim games are 100% your favorite games to play with him. (Minecraft, Terraria, Fortnite, No Mans Sky...) ♡ Levi figures out that the sound of the ocean soothes you, and will imitate the sounds in his fish tanks to help you relax. ♡ You two make the best cosplay duo. No question about it.

Satan

♡ He is more understanding than you were led to believe. (Shame on you, Lucifer.) You avoided him at first until you found yourself in a heated debate with him regarding human world fauna kingdom. This conversation, though heated, gave you the chance to actually talk to him. It was then the realization hit that Lucifer intentionally kept you two apart. ♡ You two end up becoming close friends. ♡ You hate reading alone as its not engaging and gets boring quickly. So you tell Satan that you would like for him to read to you, which he’d accept without a second thought. ♡ He would remember your likes and dislikes. He would always encourage you to talk about your latest obsession. He’s always interested in hearing about what you have to say. ♡ Jingle cat ears. No explanation needed. (Might dress up as a cat maid with you and Levi, tho.) ♡ He would learn all your stims and triggers so he can help you when you need it. ♡ If you’re the artsy type, you bet he will learn all the crafts for you. ♡ The sound of turning pages satisfies your sound sensory. ♡ Nature walks, lots of them. Quiet moments together means the world to the two of you. ♡ Occasionally you fall asleep next to him as he reads to you. His voice is soothing enough to lull you to sleep. ♡ You two are so close in fact, he rubs it in Lucifer's face. ♡ Satan always finds himself holding your hand whenever you two go out to crowded public places.

Asmodeus

♡ Physical contact wasn’t your thing until you met the avatar of lust. ♡ He took it personally at first when you would stand awkwardly whenever he hugged you or how you would pull your hand away when he would try to hold it. ♡ Once you explain that you are autistic and physical contact was a weird subject for you, he is quick to understand. After all, he is all about consent and wanted to make sure you were comfortable. ♡ Friendship blossoms between the two of you quickly and smoothly. ♡ Asmo would help you with being more extroverted by inviting you to parties. ♡ He would make note of your stims and to satisfy your sensory, he would buy lotions and perfumes. ♡ Getting your nails done is fun and Asmo is perfect for that task. ♡ You have a best friend who will listen to you intently and give you good advice. ♡ Going shopping is less nerve wracking with him. Plus he would give you fashion tips so you can look and feel your best. ♡ The first time you gave him a hug on your own, he wept tears of joy. ♡ Spa days are mandatory. ♡ There is a love between the two of you that does not require a relationship to be valid.

Beelzebub

♡ Beel warmed up to you quickly, especially when he witnesses your appetite at dinner. ♡ He is always curious and asking you questions to better understand you. ♡ You are quick to share your food with him and vice versa. ♡ Eating competitions, though you would lose to him always, unless if he was going easy on you. (Good luck, chief) ♡ Playful and friendly flirting/banter. ♡ Beel would be interested in whatever you obsess with that week. ♡ He is patient with you and doesn’t judge you for things you have no control over. ♡ Includes you in all family activities because hes all about family first. ♡ You two will gush to each other about any and everything. ♡ Hell’s Kitchen dates? Fuck yeah. Those are mandatory. ♡ Though you are picky in terms of texture, Beel would gladly eat whatever food you won’t. ♡ You aren’t a very active person, but that will change with Beel. Eat first, then run it off, human.

Belphegor:

♡ Warmed up to you quickly despite killing you, mainly because you forgave him and still treated him with kindness despite the fact. (Simp *cough* *cough*) ♡ He is very understanding in regards to your sensory, stims, and meltdowns. ♡ Loves laying in silence with you (and vice versa) ♡ Belphie would show you constellations with his magic to help you sleep. ♡ Slime? You bet Belphie would be as entertained as you are on that subject. Cloud slime would be one of his favorites. ♡ You two communicate with each other better in silence. ♡ He would share his cow pillow with you. ♡ Your sensory craves anything that is soft. Belphie would be surprised at first when you mindlessly play with his hair as you lay together. ♡ Your troubling dreams became a little more peaceful with Belphie at your side. ♡ Both of you are big plushie enthusiasts and have a plushie club hangout spot with Levi. ♡ Belphies voice does satisfy your sensory. ♡ Tea time is a fun activity between the two of you. It leads to good naps as well.

[onecanonlife]

In which Tommy travels back in time and tries to prevent a nightmare from happening to everyone he knows. Everyone else, meanwhile, is highly concerned.

(fic masterpost w/ ao3 links)

(first part) (previous part) (next part)

(word count: 4,152)

--------------------

Part Seven: Ranboo

Page 1

I’m not really sure how to start this.

One of the most important things to know is probably that this is a different journal from the other one. So just in case you forget: this isn’t your memory book. This is for something different. But it’s still really important that you keep track of this one. Maybe not as important as the memory book? But I’m not really sure.

So don’t lose it.

Now’s the part where I’d say exactly what it’s for, except I don’t really know yet. I don’t know anything. You’d think that wasn’t anything new for me, but this is… different. I keep putting that it’s different without explaining why. Words are just not my friends.

I think I’m wasting ink.

This is a dream journal, I guess? I don’t know how else to put it. Because I’ve been having some really, really weird dreams for the past few weeks, and it’s gotten to the point where I just. Feel like I need to be keeping track of them? Because it’s kind of weird that I’m having so many dreams at all considering what usually happens when I fall asleep (check the memory book? for that? if you need to?), so I just don’t know. I don’t know anything. Which is nothing new, but still. I feel kind of bad that I bought a whole book and a whole new pen just to write down how much I don’t know stuff, but it’s okay. I’ve been winning more recently so I had enough money.

The thing about the dreams is that they’re really vivid. Almost like they feel real. The details always go fuzzy after a while, so I don’t actually have anything specific to write down here yet, but I know they’re weird. There’s just something about them.

So, new book. Dream journal.

Next time you have one of them, remember to write it down here.

---

Page 2

Okay so I forgot I bought this for like a week but I remember now. And I just woke up and I had one of those really weird dreams, so here’s what it was about:

There were some people with me. I don’t remember what their faces looked like. I think they were all shorter than me, but that doesn’t really narrow it down. There were… three? Maybe? I think there were three of them. And I felt like I knew them. Dream-me knew them, I mean. I have no idea who they were.

They were talking about something, and I was talking too, like I knew what they were talking about, even though I definitely didn’t. That’s something weird about all these dreams—I’m pretty sure that while I’m in them, it always feels? Right, I guess? Even though I definitely don’t know what’s going on literally ever?? But anyway they were talking about something, and I don’t really remember what but they seemed upset. I think I was upset too. I felt kind of upset.

They had swords. Really fancy ones.

It was cold??? But like really, really cold. Colder than I think I’ve ever been? Or at least colder than I remember ever being, so it’s kind of weird that my brain could make up something that cold.

There’s not much else to write because I don’t remember what the conversation was about. It just felt like there was something bad happening. But I don’t feel like the people were bad. The people felt good, actually. Safe?

Oh, and one of them hugged me at the end. Which was weird because I don’t usually like to be hugged or touched by people, especially people who I don’t know, but in the dream I was fine with it. I even liked it. It felt… safe’s a good word to use. It felt warm and safe and I didn’t feel so scared anymore. It was a really good hug actually. I kind of wish it weren’t a dream because if someone hugged me like that I think I wouldn’t mind hugging so much.

I think that guy had wings. Or maybe it was a really big, weird blanket. I don’t really know. Felt good though.

---

Page 3

I had another one. All I remember is a name.

Who’s Michael?

---

Page 4

I think tonight was a normal night. I don’t remember anything in particular but I woke up feeling really unsettled for some reason. So it was probably just a regular dream, or maybe a nightmare. I was in the same place though, so not sleepwalking I hope.

I can’t stop thinking about the name Michael. It feels really important. I wish I knew why.

---

Page 7

It’s been a week of weird little fragments and strange feelings and things I can’t remember, but I remembered more when I woke up this morning.

I was running with someone. Two someones? I think there were two. But they were different from the people from before. Or at least I think they were. I still don’t remember what they looked like. I think I didn’t know what they looked like in the dream either. I don’t know if that’s because I was dreaming or maybe all of this really is just my brain making up stuff and it just can’t invent whole people for me to look at.

I wouldn’t be surprised, actually. This whole thing is probably pointless.

But anyway, we were running, and that was pretty much the whole thing. There was a really loud noise too, and it was making my ears hurt. And I remember I felt really scared. Not just for myself, but also for the people I was with. That’s one of the things that makes me not so sure that these are normal dreams, because even if my brain was making up hazy not-real people for me to do stuff with, would it be able to make up the feelings that I have for them? Whenever there’s someone with me in a dream, they always feel really important to me. I’m usually worried about them.

I still can’t remember what they were saying or the sound of their voices. I feel bad about it. Probably worse than I should.

They’re just dreams, right?

---

Page 10

Dream.

---

Page 11

Not sure what that was? Note to self, do a better job at including context.

---

Page 13

A crack in the earth and a break in the code and something old something waiting something watching something that calls in the dark and in the shadows and in the corners and in the mirror and it is waiting it is waiting it is waiting it is waiting it wants it wants it wants blood and it will have blood it wants blood and it will drink and the skies will break apart and the ground will shatter and it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have blood it will have

---

Page 14

I had another pretty clear one. It was really hot. I think there was a lot of smoke. I was scared again, because there was… someone coming? Maybe?? Or something coming. I’m not sure. But whatever it was, it was bad, and we didn’t want it to get there.

There were three people again. I think I didn’t like one of them. When I looked at them I felt really, really angry. But that one, the one I didn’t like, they were kneeling on the ground, and there was a book in their hands? I know it was a book but I couldn’t see what it said. Isn’t that supposed to be a thing, not being able to read in dreams? I don’t know.

I think that person was reading from the book. I couldn’t understand the words, but the air felt weird. Heavy. And then I think there was a fourth person too, and then I think there were people trying to stop the person reading because they were doing something bad? They were going to hurt someone? It got muddled here and I don’t know why we were trying to stop them all of a sudden when I think we were fine with it at first, but I guess dreams don’t have to make sense.

None of this makes any sense.

But anyway, something happened, I think. Something really, really bad and I don’t remember what, because that’s when I woke up. But something went wrong. I think the bad thing got there.

I think there might also have been blood. But I’m not sure.

I’m not sure of anything.

---

Page 16

Wait, what happened on page 13?

I can’t read what it says. Did I cross that out?

---

Page 17

I can’t help but wonder if these are dreams at all. I’ve already got memory problems so who’s to say this isn’t just some more of that, just in a different form?

But the thing about that is, if these are memories of some kind I’ve got no idea when they could’ve happened. And I know my memory’s not great, but could I really forget being on a completely different server?

No, I could definitely forget being on a different server. I definitely could. I don’t even know where I came from originally. But I know I’ve been on Hypixel for years. I know I’ve been here, even if I don’t really remember a whole lot of particulars, so when did any of this happen?

I don’t know if I want these dreams to be memories. Some of them feel really scary.

---

Page 18

I woke up crying.

I think someone was dead in my dream. Someone I really really cared about.

I’m still crying a little bit. It hurts. I don’t want these to be memories. I don’t want to have lost someone like that.

---

Page 21

I defintiely dont want these to be memories I’m still shaking and I dont I cant

---

Page 22

Okay. I’ve calmed down. I need to write this. I need to remember later.

I think I hurt someone. Really, really hurt someone.

I’m going to describe this as best I can.

The whole thing felt dim and kind of hazy, but not in the normal dream sort of way. Like there was an actual haze in the air. And everywhere I looked it was all red, like I was wearing tinted glasses or something. I was with other people. Different people from any of the ones before, I think, and I felt different about them too. I wrote down how usually I’m worried about the people I’m with, but it wasn’t like that this time.

I think I hated them. I’m not sure. I don’t really know what that feels like.

But anyway, we were going somewhere together. There was something like an island, only it was in the sky. Like a big chunk of floating rock. And we were trying to get up there, and then we did and there was someone waiting for us. I can’t picture what they looked like except I think they were weirdly blurry? But everyone in these dreams is weirdly blurry. I don’t know, this felt like a different kind of blurriness. I think this person was trying to talk to us or stop us or something, but it was really easy to get past them. Almost like we could go straight through them.

And then we were inside. There was a building of some kind. Big and kind of pretty? Maybe? It was hard to see details, because of the haze and blurriness and everything, and it still all looked really red. There was someone else waiting for us inside. I remember this part because it was really weird, because at first this person was like, normal sized. And then they got super big. So many feet tall. Taller than me, and that’s weird. That doesn’t happen very often.

And then we were all fighting this person. I don’t remember this part super well. Somebody got hurt I think, and maybe there was also lightning?? I think I remember lightning. And the fight went on for a while, and then I went somewhere else so I don’t know how it ended, whether the big guy won or the people I was with or what.

But so I went down this hallway. And then a bunch of hallways and then I was in a bigger room. This is the important part. There were three people in this room. One of them was sitting with their back facing me, one of them was kind of in the middle, looking my way, and the other one was really little and sitting in the corner.

I don’t

I don’t know why I did what I did next. I’m not even sure that I wanted to. It was like I was watching myself do it, almost. Like there was something else moving me and I didn’t like that at all and I really don’t want to think about it more but there it is.

And then I

I don’t want to write this

The whole room lit up. There was some kind of glowing design on the ground. The person with their back to me was on the edge of it, and the person in the middle was. In the middle. Of it. And they saw me. They looked at me and I felt

I don’t even know what I felt.

And then it was like the whole world just. Stopped. I don’t know how to describe it. And the other person shouted something and then I just

And then I stepped forward, and I grabbed the first person by the hair, and there was a sword in my hand, and I think I

I slit their throat.

The other person was screaming. I don’t know what happened to the little one.

And then it all went dark, and I woke up.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t even want to remember this, even though I guess I should. If it’s more than just a dream, but I don’t want it to be more than just a dream.

And if this is a memory or something, I don’t know what to do.

Should I turn myself in? What would I even say? Hi, I think I murdered someone. No, I’m not sure, but I had this weird dream you see, and it’s actually possible that I might have done this because sometimes I do things in my sleep that I don’t remember later and my memory is just, incredibly bad in general so it’s actually super possible that I killed someone and then forgot about it.

Would anyone even believe that? Should I try?

I don’t want to hurt someone.

---

Page 24

The dreams keep coming, but none of them have been as detailed as that last one.

I still don’t know what to do.

I wish someone would tell me what to do.

But I don’t think I can tell anyone about this. Who would I even tell?

Can I put myself in prison? Can someone do that? At least I would know for certain that I’m not hurting anyone.

Sometimes I think I have blood on my hands and I just want to scrub it off so bad but that’s not a good idea for obvious reasons but I just

I really need a solution.

---

He’s wandering around one of Hypixel’s hubs when he sees the news. Hypixel’s pretty good for that: news from other servers. Probably because so many players from so many places converge here. But he’s never bothered very much with that kind of stuff. There’s not much to bother with, considering that he has no idea where he was before he was here, and he has no idea where he’d go if he ever left. It’s not like he knows anybody. Literally. Anywhere. It’s kind of sad, if he’s being honest.

But for some reason, Ranboo hears the name ‘Dream SMP’ and stops dead in his tracks.

Which, not his best idea ever, considering that this is a crowded hub, so someone bumps into him pretty much right away, and then they glare at him right in his eyes, and he has to duck his head and apologize because oops, he’s inconvenienced someone so now he’d like the earth to swallow him whole, please, and also eye contact. Hm. Not good. He doesn’t like that. It makes his chest buzz and his head ache and every bone in his body go all stiff and tense.

So he makes himself start walking again before he can cause any more trouble. He just makes sure he heads in the direction of the news cast. For no particular reason, it’s just—that name. It strikes a chord in him, and he’d like to know a little more, that’s all.

There’s a few people hanging around, obviously with the same idea. They don’t pay him any attention, which is nice, because that means he can just stand there and listen without worrying about having to talk to anyone.

The newscaster is talking about an election. Being held on this server, the Dream SMP. He’s not sure why something like that would matter here, especially after the newscaster goes on to say that there’s only a few dozen players on this server in total. Except then it turns out that people don’t have to be on this server to vote in this election, which doesn’t make any sense to him at all. Something about how influential the server is? So other people get a say in stuff?

He’s not going to bother writing that part down, because he wouldn’t understand it even if he did.

And then the newscaster starts talking about the people who are running for office in this country on this server. And there’s. Pictures. And he’s pretty sure that his heart is trying to crawl up his throat and literally outside of his body. Because. Okay. Most of these people, he has no idea who they are. Which is absolutely what he expected.

But then, the news shows the current president. Who is also running. And the current president’s vice president. And—he doesn’t recognize this Wilbur person.

Somehow, though, he sees TommyInnit, and he almost bursts into tears, which, wow. Strong reaction much? And he tries really hard not to cry if he can help it, which makes this even more weird. It’s not even that he recognizes him, because he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t. Or if he does, he can’t place where he knows him from. But he looks at this guy—and he doesn’t look like anything special, really, just a guy, a teenager, blond hair and kind of lanky, red and white t-shirt—and feels a whirlwind of emotions in him, rising up, threatening to bubble over, and it’s strange and confusing because he doesn’t know why.

Just to be sure, he pulls out his memory book and leafs through it. No mention of anyone named TommyInnit, or even just Tommy. He pulls out the dream journal, too, but it’s the same. The only name in there is Michael. No Tommy.

There’s plenty of other things written in there. Things he doesn’t want to think about. Even though trying not to think about them kind of just makes him think about them more, and then he feels terrible, and then—

“Huh,” the guys standing nearest to him says, very suddenly. “How about that.”

He’s scared for a second, because he thinks the guy might be talking to him, about him, that he’s read some of his writing over his shoulder or something. But no, the guy is looking at the screen, still. His eyebrows are raised. Ranboo focuses on them, because he’s found that if he looks at people’s eyebrows, it’s close enough to eye contact that people won’t ask why he’s not looking at them, and it’s far enough that he’s not bothered. Best of both worlds. And it’s also probably better to stare there than at the guy’s big, curling horns, or the way he’s dressed. In a fancy suit—and that’s odd. Not the suit part, because Ranboo likes to wear suits himself, when he can get them. Because they’re cool and snazzy. Mostly, it’s just the fact that it’s so well-fitting. Obviously expensive, even to his eyes.

He doubts that this is the sort of person who competes in the tournaments.

And then, the guy turns toward him, and he regrets. So very much, so very intensely. He shouldn’t have stared at all.

“The hell are you looking at?” the guy says, and. Um. This is not very good, actually.

“Sorry,” he says, and averts his eyes really, really far away. Back to the screen. “You just. I mean. You talked, and no one else here really is, so I just. Yeah. Sorry.”

The guy laughs, so maybe he’s not mad. “Don’t sweat it, kid,” he says, but then, instead of leaving him alone, he keeps talking to him. Oh boy. What has he started. “You interested in shit like this?”

What does he say to that? He’s not even sure what this is, exactly.

“Kind of?” he ventures. “I guess I just wanted to know what was going on.” That’s good. Nice and vague.

The guy shakes his head. “You and me both. Never woulda thought Wilbur had something like this in him. Politics was never his shtick. But hey, best of luck to him, right? I’m rooting for him.”

Oh! So this guy knows one of the people on the server. The president. Wilbur Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was, He Forgot.

“Do you,” he starts, and breaks off after the guy turns back to him. But no, he wants to know. This is a reasonable question to ask, he thinks. “I mean, do you know how somebody might, um. Go about trying to get on this server? If they thought there was someone there they knew?”

The guy laughs again, louder, and he cringes back. “Trying to get on that server?” he says. “Good luck with that. They say Dream’s exclusive as hell with who he invites. If you’ve got someone’s private comm code, you might have some luck there, be able to plead your case, but you’re shit out of luck otherwise. Unless you wanna try hacking, but I wouldn’t recommend that. Shit’s too much of a risk, not enough payoff, especially when it’s Dream you’re dealing with.”

“Oh,” he says. “Um. Dream. That’s the admin?”

“Bastard,” the guy says, nodding. “Banned me, the asshole. Not that I care about being on his shitty server, but it’s the principle of the thing. You get it, don’t you?”

“Sure?” He doesn’t. Or, well, maybe.

His brain has gotten a bit stuck on the idea of hacking. Which is not a good idea, of course. Not a good idea at all. Even if he managed to get on, somehow, he’d be kicked off before he could do anything, surely. And if he failed—he’s heard stories. Rumors, more than anything. Players who get stuck in the void, locked out of any server at all. Players who mess with their own code by mistake, causing glitches, mutations, splices. Players who are never seen again.

Hacking’s a dangerous kind of magic. Not something to be messed with lightly.

“What’s your name, kid?” the guy asks, and he jolts.

“Um. Ranboo,” he says. “I’m Ranboo.”

“Ranboo,” the guy repeats. He doesn’t pronounce it quite right. “Weird fucking name. Well, good luck with whatever the hell you’re doing, I guess. If you do anything illegal, it’s nothing that I told you about.”

“Of course?” he says, but the guy’s already walking away. He’s got a confident kind of walk. Ranboo feels uneasy, watching his retreating back vanish into the crowds of the hub.

He looks back at the screen. The news has moved on. He wishes it hadn’t; he would’ve liked to hear it all again so the details were fresher.

Because this—this should go in the memory book. He’s not entirely sure why. But it’s important, and he doesn’t want to forget important things. What he’ll do with the information, he’ll figure out later.

Hacking. He shouldn’t. He definitely shouldn’t.

But something about this Tommy—

He brings out his memory book and his pen, and he starts to write.

[ollieofthebeholder]

I Remember the Fallen, Do They Think of Me: A Rusty Quill Gaming fanfic

Also on AO3.

They’re none of them in very good shape, really. Well, except for Skraak, who seems to have managed to avoid getting a finger or tendril laid on him the whole time they were in Svalbard. He seems fine. The others might be fine physically, but that purple migraine that came out of the floorboards in the Council chamber did a number on their spirits. Cel’s the worst off, although they’re doing a bit better since their mutagen wore off, but they’re still edgy and tense and more strung up than usual. Azu just looks marginally grumpy, which isn’t a good look on her. Zolf almost wants to say something about how this party only has room for one sourpuss, but he probably won’t be able to make it sound like a joke, and it isn’t really a joke anyway, and Azu is quite capable of taking his head off, literally, if the mood strikes her. Which it well might. She looks like she’s itching to kill something and Zolf isn’t keen to be it. Hamid mostly looks tired, as well he ought with all the spells he cast. There’s a part of him that wants to compliment Hamid on his conduct back there, on strategic use of his spells to help his party members and keeping his head and not only finding the kill switch but figuring out how to use it to save them all, but it probably won’t come out right. Hamid will probably think he’s being condescending or something, or use it as an excuse to pick a fight. They’re both tired, really. And Zolf is feeling every one of the blows he took; nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure, he supposes, but at least that’s the worst of it for him.

So he doesn’t protest when Einstein teleports them back to Other London and Wilde insists they get some sleep in the back of Gragg’s old tavern rather than risk breaking the surface in the state they’re in. Skraak does, and surprisingly, so does Azu, but all Zolf has to do is point at Cel, looking miserable, and they back down.

“Got a room upstairs,” Gragg says, pointing upwards. “Lots of room for you all. I’ll be down here. Oh—Mr. Smith, right?”

“Yeah?” Zolf frowns at Gragg.

“Letter came for you. From the Poseidon lot. Their messenger said they thought I’d know where to find you.” Gragg shrugs, a little helplessly, and holds out an envelope. “I didn’t, but you’re here.”

Zolf sighs and takes the envelope with a muttered “thanks”. He’s done with the Poseidon lot, has been for close to two years now, but it seems they’re not done with him. He looks over at the others. “Go lie down, the lot of you. I’ll see what this is all about and then I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Surely it can keep until the morning, Zolf,” Wilde says. “Or whatever passes for morning right now. It’s kept this long.”

“Rather not try and sleep with this hanging over my head,” Zolf replies. “Won’t be but a minute.”

“Hmm.” Azu looks at him, then nods once and starts shooing the others up the stairs. Gragg gives him a nod, too, then disappears into the back.

Once Zolf is alone, he sinks down onto a barstool and immediately wishes he hadn’t. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable, or that it’s too tall for him, or even that now that he’s sitting he doesn’t want to get up. It’s that the last time he sat on one of these stools, it was less than twenty-four hours after meeting Hamid and Sasha (and, unfortunately, Bertie), back when he was still just a mercenary, or a Cleric pretending to be a mercenary, or a mercenary pretending to be a Cleric, or just a disillusioned and drifting person desperately looking for something to believe in. Back when Other London was a bustling city full of people trying to live their lives and Gragg wasn’t responsible for anything more than having enough food and drink to last the night. Back before Zolf doomed the world.

He allows himself precisely five seconds to wallow in the guilt of the past, then props his elbows on the bar and turns the envelope over in his hands. ZOLF SMITH, CLERIC is scrawled on the front in extremely shaky, spiky handwriting, along with a series of letters at the bottom that’s obviously in some sort of code, since it’s got far too many X’s and no vowels except a couple I’s. The back is sealed with some very old wax that looks like someone literally just dripped a candle on the envelope and pressed a seal into it. Zolf sighs as he recognizes the shape—it’s a dead match for the ring he still wears on his own finger, his last connection to his family. The Spade of the Harlequins. This letter might have been passed on by a member of the Cult of Poseidon, but it’s coming from a Harlequin.

Probably it’s Curie, writing to say she isn’t dead after all, although why she’d write to him of all people is a bit beyond him. He’s also not sure why she would feel the need to emphasize his Cleric status on the address. But...whatever. Might as well get this over with.

He slides a finger under the flap of the envelope and loosens the seal, then pulls out the folded papers within. It’s a thick sheaf and surprisingly heavy, and when he unfolds them, something slips from between the pages and lands on the bar with a thump and a clatter. Zolf looks down and sees a dagger, etched with some arcane symbols he doesn’t recognize. Great. A magic dagger. That bodes well. He huffs at it. If they want him to identify it, they’re going to be out of luck; that’s not his area of expertise. Maybe he’ll ask Wilde or Hamid in the morning.

He turns his attention back to the letter. It’s the same scrawl as the front of the envelope, scratched out in some places, odd splatters of ink in others, and there are a couple places where it looks like the ink’s run a bit. Gods, he hopes he’ll be able to read this.

Less than a line in, and his blood runs cold as the rest of the world drops away.

Zolf -

It’s gone bad. It’s all gone real bad. I don’t know when this letter’s going to get to you, except I know it’ll be sometime after you left in Prague because—well, you left. You wouldn’t have left if you knew all this before. But it all went wrong, and I need you to know what happened.

It didn’t go wrong right away. At first it was kind of okay. Hamid and I went out and tried to see how many restaurants we could go to, and that was nice. It helped us both, I think, because we both missed you already, but neither of us said anything about that. Like if we pretended it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t hurt. And it worked, at least at first. And then we found Bertie at the last one we went to, and he was causing a huge mess, you know what Bertie’s like. You were right about that. After that it just kept getting worse.

I woke up the next morning and I didn’t feel good again. Everything was bleeding again and I looked kind of bad, but I pretended I was okay and Hamid and Bertie didn’t notice. Well, Bertie never noticed anything that he didn’t want to, but Hamid, I think he was still upset. I dunno. Anyway, I went to the Temple of Artemis to get healed. The lady there wasn’t like you, she didn’t really make me feel all that...I think that’s just what the Artemis lot are like, though. Everyone I’ve met who’s from Artemis, they do what needs doing and go on to the next thing. I didn’t know that then, though. Anyway, I asked her why it kept happening, why I kept waking up hurt, and how to make it stop, and she made me tell her a bunch of stuff and then said it was because I got brought back to life wrong and I’d have to go to a Temple of Aphrodite to get healed right.

Then there were zombies. Loads of zombies, and they were attacking in the middle of the square. We went to fight them off and that’s when we met Grizzop, he’s—he was a Paladin of Artemis, and he helped us fight them. Bertie had this ring, he said it was supposed to make the undead go away, but instead it made them come closer to him. It made me come closer to him, too, and that was really not a lot of fun, Zolf, I didn’t like that at all. I fought it, though. I fought it really hard and it mostly worked. But there were loads of zombies, and even though we fought them off okay, the four of us, I was real worried about you. Part of me wanted to go find you and make sure you were okay, but I knew you didn’t want to be found, so I had to trust you would be all right. Grizzop said he was supposed to be hunting down a rogue mage that was probably making all the zombies, and we were still supposed to go up to the University and stuff, so we said we’d go with him in the morning.

Everything opened up again overnight, so I had to get healed a bit. Hamid kept asking me if I was okay, and I kept telling him I was, partly because I knew he couldn’t do anything to fix it and partly because I’m just so used to pretending I’m fine when I’m not, and partly because I didn’t want to worry him more than I had to. We went up to the University like we talked about, and it just kept getting worse and worse. Mostly by Bertie being Bertie, but also because the rogue mage, Franz Kafka, he had a book that came from Rome and it drove him crazy. He was a Harlequin, the council told us, and they were all Harlequins too, they had rings like yours and Rakefine’s, and they’d kind of lied to Grizzop because they didn’t want people to know it was one of them doing the zombie thing down in the city, but they asked us to go take care of it and we said we would. So we went back down to Prague and fought loads of stuff. We had a map with all the plague pits on them, Kafka was raising zombies out of them, so we decided to try and clear out as many as we could. Hamid had got tickets for the opera and the ley lines crossed at the opera house, so he thought Kafka would choose to try and spring his trap there, but Grizzop and I said it’d be better to take out the zombies before that. We got him to agree in the end, kind of, but we didn’t manage to get all the zombie pits cleared out before the opera was supposed to start.

It got really, really bad at the opera, Zolf. I don’t know if you were still in Prague then, I don’t know if you heard about it, but it was  real bad. The basement was full of zombies and Grizzop and I tried to fight them off, but there were so many and a couple of them were really big and even though I had all these bombs I made and Grizzop had his bow and arrows and all that, we couldn’t kill them all, so we had to run up to the top. Then when we got up there, we found out that Hamid was right, that Kafka had tried to attack at the opera, and everybody was frozen and Bertie and Kafka were both flying and facing off each other, and Hamid—Hamid was gone. He was nowhere in the theater, and when I got to the stage I saw his bracelets and what was left of his clothes looking like they’d been torn apart and I knew, I knew Kafka had killed him somehow, and it was my fault because I wasn’t there to help him. And Kafka didn’t just have Bertie, he had Hamid’s sister—she was singing in the opera, it’s why Hamid wanted to go so bad—and he told Bertie that he had to pick whether he’d kill Bertie or Aziza. Don’t think it’ll surprise you which one Bertie picked.

But Kafka cheated. He killed both of them. I wasn’t fast enough, I couldn’t stop him—I tried, Zolf, I tried so hard, but even with Grizzop shooting arrows at him I couldn’t kill him fast enough to stop him from killing both of them. And, I mean, I kind of would have wanted to kill Bertie myself, or let Hamid do it, or at least let Hamid yell at him a lot, but even though Bertie wasn’t a very nice person, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. And his sister—she was just singing. She was just there and doing what she loved and Hamid was so proud of her, Zolf, and Kafka killed her just because he could. It wasn’t right. The guards finally showed up, but they were too late to help. Bertie was dead and Aziza was dead and Hamid...

Well, Hamid wasn’t dead after all. Grizzop found him on the roof of the opera house. Kafka put a spell on him and turned him into a monster, and the monster ran away. So at least he didn’t hurt anybody and not know it. He’d have hated that. I’d have hated that. Grizzop would’ve just killed him, I think, and then I’d have really been alone and I don’t know what I would have done. But he didn’t and I wasn’t, not then. They fixed us up and we had to tell Hamid about what happened. I didn’t tell him about Bertie getting to pick. He was hurt enough by what happened. And we almost got arrested or kidnapped or something like that by the Cult of Mars, but Wilde showed up and got us out of it.

As bad as Hamid wanted to go home with his sister and make sure Bertie was taken care of and all that, when they gave us a job to do, he agreed to do it before Einstein teleported us to Cairo. So then we went into Newton’s study and found his pocket dimension, and it turned out that there was somebody working there who’d been working with Kafka and Edison on Mr. Ceiling, or on something like Mr. Ceiling anyway. And it turned out that she was an old friend of Hamid’s. I think they were dating once. She really didn’t like him anymore, though, so even if she hadn’t done the work that meant Mr. Ceiling could happen, I wouldn’t have liked her, because she was really nasty to him. And he just stood there and took it. He didn’t fight her and he didn’t argue with her and he didn’t try to stand up for himself. He just kept saying she had to come with us.

You’d be proud of him, I think.

Anyway, after that Einstein sent us to Cairo. We wound up in the middle of a real bad sandstorm—Hamid thought we were probably in the middle of the desert, but then it turned out we were on the main street and not that far from the Temple of Aphrodite. That’s when we met Azu, and that was a pretty good thing, but that was the only good thing really. They told us at the Temple they’d been having lots of really bad weather, like they were having in Dover when we were there. I like the rainstorms a lot better than sandstorms, but it still wasn’t fun. And that was the easy bad thing.

This part’s not easy to talk about, and it feels really selfish when I think back on it, because I didn’t handle it in a way that you’d be proud of. I went to talk to one of the healer people about whether or not they could fix how I kept waking up hurting and that the person at the Artemis temple had said I was a little bit undead. He checked me over and said that I wasn’t just a little undead, I was really undead, and that I only had about a month left before I turned into something else. Hamid and Grizzop called it a lich—I hope I’m spelling that right, it’s not like they ever wrote it down, but that’s what it sounds like. Grizzop said they were evil, but Hamid kept saying that maybe I would be the first non-evil lich. Which, I mean, I guess that would have been okay, but...

Eren Fairhands said there were only three ways to fix me—to die all the way and go for a resurrection, to get a necromancer to follow me around and do magic on me to keep me just plain undead, or to get this artifact called the Heart of Aphrodite that the Meritocrats had all locked up because they don’t want powerful magic just floating around for anyone to use. I told Hamid and the others that I didn’t think they’d agree to let me use something that powerful, just for me; Hamid insisted they might because we’d saved the world a couple times, and also his other sister worked for the Meritocrats so maybe it would be okay. But I didn’t believe him. The world doesn’t work that way for people like me, you know? And the other two options...I might have trusted them if you were there to do them, but not someone I didn’t know, or a god I didn’t know.

Anyway, we went to Hamid’s family’s house. Hamid was really scared about seeing his family again, but, I mean, it had to go better than seeing Barret did for me, right? And it sort of worked out okay, at first anyway, but everybody was real upset, not that I blame them. They had the funeral the next day, and it went okay, but a tall figure in a hood like the one that hung out with Barret showed up. We watched it and then it disappeared, but it was after Hamid’s brother, and we didn’t want him to lose anybody else, so we were trying to protect him. And then it came back and we attacked it and we managed to kill it, but I just, I didn’t handle it well at all. I fell apart and then I just shut down. I think I gave up. I decided I was just going to die and that was all there was to it.

Like I said, I don’t think you’d be very proud of me for that. I had options, even if they didn’t seem very likely, but there was still a chance and I should have held onto that. You would have. But I didn’t and that means I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done.

Hamid’s brother was working for Barret. Kind of. He got in debt and he owed Barret money, and Barret wanted him to rob the bank that Hamid’s family works for to pay him back, but things went wrong and someone died. That’s what Barret gave Hamid the ring for, he wanted him to give it to his brother, but Hamid wouldn’t because he’s a good person and he didn’t want to make his brother suffer. But because someone died, the bank was going to arrest him, but Hamid’s father said he would take the blame instead. Hamid tried to make him not do that, tried to make him see that his brother needed to face the consequences, but his father did it anyway. Then Hamid came back and told us what was happening, and he asked us for advice, and I said a lot of really mean things about his family. Well, all of us did, I guess, but...it’s different with Grizzop and Azu, you know? They didn’t know him. Not like I did. I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have said because I was upset and scared and hurting and I wanted to make Hamid feel that way too, and I shouldn’t have because he already was and I should have known that and it wasn’t fair. I won’t say I didn’t mean what I said, because I did, but I still shouldn’t have said it. And I didn’t mean it about Hamid, at least. He’s a good person, Zolf, he really is,  even with what he did before, and he wanted us to help him and all Grizzop and Azu would say was that his brother and father deserved to be punished and I said they could get away with not being punished because they were rich and...

I wish you were there. You would have known what to say, what to do. You wouldn’t have made such a mess of it like I did.

I thought about you a lot that night, about what you would have said and done, and the next day when we went down for breakfast, I tried to do like you would have. I asked Hamid and Grizzop and Azu how their talk went after I left, and Hamid apologized to them for trying to keep his brother out of trouble and mucking it all up, and then he told us what happened to him. He got kicked out of university because someone he thought was his friend tried to get him to make a potion as a prank, but he wrote it down wrong and then the not-friend made it bigger and a bunch of people died, so he joined up with you—us—to try and make up for what he did. He was really worried that all he did was make things worse, because he said you didn’t think what we did in Paris helped, and then he didn’t think he helped at all in Prague. But he did, and he’s trying, and Grizzop said that was what was important. And I pointed out how much better he’s gotten since we met, because I meant it but also because I think you would have said it too, and he said it helped, me saying that. So we had a little bit of good, at least. And Hamid said a lot of really nice things about me when we met Apophis later that day, and Apophis agreed that we could use the Heart of Aphrodite to fix me. And it worked, Zolf, it really did. I’m good as new. Better, even, Fairhands even grew my finger back for me. For a little bit, everything was great, and the only thing that would have made it better was if you were there too.

And then it went bad again. We had to go to Damascus because there was information in the vaults when we got the Heart of Aphrodite that Edison was doing a bunch of stuff with the factories there, and that it might be involved with the Simulacrum and everything. The first factory was run by goblins and they were real proud of what they were doing, and they even gave me a dagger made of adamantine. When we went to investigate the other factory, though, they wouldn’t even let us in and it was really suspicious, so we sneaked in in the middle of the night to have a look around. They’d fired all the people who worked there and they had monsters in the warehouses to guard them, and they were building things like the Simulacrum. Loads of them. We had to fight our way out and then, well, we were going to go back to Damascus and find Wilde and tell him what was going on when someone showed up at the door with two more of those tall things like we killed at the funeral, and I think it was one of Bertie’s friends, you remember those people with the carriage from the Simulacrum unveiling? Wellington. Him. Anyway, Grizzop shot at him and he went away, but then they dropped a body in, only it wasn’t dead. It was Barret and he was tied up and beaten up.

You’d be proud of Hamid. He was all calm and serious and firm, just like you used to do when you were getting information out of bad people. I half expected him to threaten to drown Barret in a bucket. Would’ve loved to see the look on his face if he did. Anyway, Barret eventually told us he was working with the Cult of Hades. They’re the ones who suggested he get in touch with us about the Serpentines, and they’re the ones who helped him take all the kids out of Other London that got sent to Paris to be used for Mr. Ceiling. Then he told us the Cult of Hades had infiltrated the Meritocrats, and that he had too, and he gave Hamid a list of names. Grizzop and Azu wanted to just kill him. Hamid thought he should be arrested, but then they asked me what I wanted to do with him. If you’d been there, I’d have said he was a good candidate for a sacrifice, but...that didn’t seem right. Not just killing him. It’d be too easy to be just like him, and I never wanted that. So Azu and Hamid took him to Damascus to give him over to the Artemis lot to be put in prison, and they said they’d talk to Wilde and come back while Grizzop and I stayed and watched the factory and made sure nothing else bad happened. I went and checked one of the warehouses, and it was like it was raining in there—there was an aqueduct and they were piping water through, which I thought was weird because water was so expensive and hard to find in Damascus. Wilde showed up and asked us to show him the warehouses, then said we had to go because he’d arranged to have the factory destroyed. He said things were getting really bad, that there’d been the riots in London and Other London and a whole bunch of other places too, and that with the Meritocrats being compromised he didn’t trust anyone but our group, which kind of made me feel good and bad at the same time.

I like Wilde. Didn’t think I would, but I do.

Anyway, Apophis came in and turned the whole thing into glass, but there was steam coming up from a crack in it, so we slept on it and then investigated in the morning. There were pipes and tunnels and all sorts of things, and we almost got caught in a couple traps, but we came through okay, and then we found the secret part of the factory where they were making the outsides of the Simulacra (Hamid called them robots, I kind of like that better, actually). It turned out they were stealing the river, too, to make the factory work, so we started destroying it, because they were evil, or at least using evil things to do the work. It was all going so well for once. We were really doing good, even when we had to fight off an assassin that kept trying to turn us into stone.

And then...and then we got a weird magic message. I can’t really explain it in detail, maybe Hamid can tell you about it better, but the Cult of Hades sent us a message and told us that we needed to stop, or else. When we tried to argue with them, they showed us what they’d done.

They took our families.

Bi Ming, and Azu’s big brother, and one of Hamid’s little brothers, and a goblin who must’ve been important to Grizzop (I never got the chance to ask him about that). They had them tied up and trapped, and they said they were in Rome, and if we didn’t go and rescue them they’d...

Well. We weren’t going to let that happen, were we? We couldn’t. At least Hamid and I couldn’t. I think Azu was a little torn, because her brother can take care of himself and all, but Hamid and me, we couldn’t wait. We thought we’d pop back up, tell Wilde what was going on, get him to send in people to take care of it, and get on to Rome. We knew it was dangerous, but we had to. Grizzop argued with us about it, he said the mission was more important, and in the end he stayed behind and took care of everything while we went on to Rome with Einstein.

I’m sure you’ve heard about Rome and what it’s like. You’ve been loads more places than Hamid or I have, you’ve got to know the stories. I don’t think you can really know what it’s like unless you’ve been there, though. Best way I can describe it is, remember when we got across the Channel and you were telling me about that place you sailed through in a storm once, where you could see all the shipwrecks and things? Like that, but on dry land. Nobody lives there but monsters and the ghosts of memories. The air felt bad, and it did weird things to magic, too. Sometimes Hamid’s spells worked really well and sometimes they didn’t work at all and sometimes they were normal, it didn’t make any sense. Azu couldn’t do many spells at all, because her magic comes from Aphrodite and the prayers weren’t working. She said it was like Aphrodite couldn’t hear her, but I think now it’s the other way around—that Aphrodite could hear Azu just fine, but Azu couldn’t hear Aphrodite’s reply, and I think that’s worse. Because it means whatever was strangling Rome wanted people to feel like the gods abandoned them, but also wanted the gods to suffer knowing that people who believed in them and all that were desperately reaching for them and they couldn’t do anything but listen.

It wasn’t easy. It was hot and hard to move around sometimes, and things kept attacking us, all kinds of monsters. Einstein was basically useless, so it was just Azu and Hamid and me having to fight, and I was really glad I wasn’t trying to do this and also not turn into a lich, ‘cause not being able to heal would’ve been really bad. Worse for Hamid, though. He nearly blew himself up and it scared me half to death, but I was honestly too happy he was safe to really yell at him for it. We hid out in a basement overnight to sleep and heal, and the next day we found the place where our families were being kept...kind of. We had to sneak into this big building, and when we got in, we found a big purple cloud, like a hole in the universe or something. I don’t know the details of the magic, that was more Hamid’s thing, but the people we loved were inside it, and there was this Paladin of Apollo there, too, someone who apparently knew Bertie, and he went in there and got stuck. Grizzop got there with Eldarion, she’s—she was my teacher when I was in prison, kind of in prison anyway, and she wanted me to stop running around getting in trouble and go back somewhere safe, but I told her I wasn’t going to do that. Eventually she gave in. Einstein said he’d wait for us to teleport us out when we got out safely, we didn’t know how long it would be, because the magic led to another plane and time might not move the same way there.

Actually getting everybody out wasn’t so hard. It was like a puzzle. I kind of like puzzles, actually. We had to fight a couple monsters, nothing too serious, except one of them broke my favorite ice dagger and I was kind of upset about that. But Bi Ming was okay, and so was Issak, and Azu’s brother, and Grizzop’s friend, and even Ed. We got everything and we got together in a circle and Eldarion transported us back.

And that’s when it went really bad. At least for me.

I couldn’t hold on. There was just so much going on, and my hand slipped, and then I couldn’t grab Bi Ming’s hand quick enough to stop from getting ripped away from the group and getting lost. I didn’t come back with the others.

But, obviously, I’m writing this letter to you and it’s going to get to you, I know it will, so you know I’m not dead and I didn’t go to another reality or anything like that. I landed on the floor, and I recognized the floor of the place I’d been in before, just...newer. Brighter-looking.

I went back in time, Zolf. Grizzop too, his grip slipped too. He said Eldarion stepped out of the circle before we left the other dimension—there were too many of us, she couldn’t guarantee she’d get everyone back safe if she didn’t let go, I think—but she’s not here, so I don’t know where she ended up. But Grizzop and I came here. To Ancient Rome, in the days before it was destroyed. Literally days. I’m alive, I’m healthy...and I’m trapped two thousand years before I was even born, or anybody I love.

It’s still fresh, I don’t know if I can talk about it, but I’ll try. We tried to help, Grizzop and me. We went looking for the Cult of Mars, and the Cult of Hades, to try and take them down and see if we could stop Rome from being destroyed and the world from getting bad in the future.

We couldn’t.

We tried, honest we did, but the fight...it was too much, it was too bad. I think I should have died, but Grizzop took a spear that was meant for me. And then he kept getting hit, but he wouldn’t stop, he was trying to take down the captain. He did, but...but they killed him. I was right there and he went down and then they knocked me out and when I woke up I was strung up from the ceiling like I was going to be fed to something and there were all these dragons and Grizzop was still on the floor and he was dead and I wasn’t and...

I can’t, Zolf. I just...I can’t. Not now. Maybe, maybe someday I can, but not today.

The point is that we didn’t stop the cults, and we didn’t stop the dragons, and we didn’t save Rome, and we didn’t save the world. Maybe we couldn’t have. And Grizzop died and I didn’t. I checked when I got free, after the dragons got away, but I’m not a healer and I’m not magic and I’m not...there was nothing I could do. And I couldn’t even take him with me. I had to leave him there or I wouldn’t have got out.

I think I shut down again. I don’t remember a lot of the walk out of Rome. I just remember telling this man we’d met—his name is Cicero—I told him to show me the way out, and I followed him, and I made sure he didn’t die, because he was the only person I knew anymore and I was not going to lose anybody else. And along the way, there were—there were other people trying to leave, trying to get away, and I just, I grabbed them and I brought them with us, because I wasn’t going to leave them behind, because I couldn’t. Maybe I couldn’t save everybody, but I had to save the ones I could.

That’s all we ever can do, right?

We found a place. It’s...it’s a home. It’s warm, and dry, and safe. I can stand on the roof and see for miles around, but it’s close enough that I can get supplies if we need them, and bring in more people. Refugees from Rome, mostly. People who need a place to be safe. There aren’t as many as maybe you’d think, a lot of people just stop here before going on somewhere else, but some stay. Mostly kids. The ones with families, parents and kids, most of them go on after a while, but the kids who don’t have anywhere else, anyone else, they stay, and I’m trying to take care of them. Trying to teach them a bit.

It’s all been a way of marking time, really, up until now. I know, in my heart of hearts, that Hamid and Azu and the others made it back safe and sound. And I know Hamid won’t give up on me. Every day I’ve been expecting to see him, or a magical effect of some kind. Something to get me home. I’m trying to be patient, trying to tell myself that just because time’s going on for me doesn’t mean it is for you lot. It’s not going to be instant, it’s not—it’ll happen, I keep saying. I’ll get another chance. I’ve just got to wait.

But today, I—Cicero and the kids, they surprised me with a party. I’d told them I didn’t know when my birthday was exactly, which is kind of true because the months aren’t the same here, but I didn’t think about it until today. I got back from a supply run and they’d set up a celebration for me. Cicero told me that since I couldn’t remember when I was born, they’d decided that my new birthday was the day he met me, the day my new life started, I guess.

It’s been a year. A whole year.

I made it through the party, somehow, but as soon as I could I got away and came up here to my room. I was upset and scared and missing you more than ever, you and Hamid both, and I thought suddenly that maybe you didn’t know I was alive, that maybe Hamid thought I was lost and didn’t know where to find me, so I was going to write Hamid a letter at first, but...but I really wanted to write to you.

I really needed you.

I’m a little bit calmer now, though, and I’m thinking a little more clearly. Maybe writing all this out helped some. I just imagined I was talking to you, and that helped, too. I’ve never been all that great with words, but I’ll try here. There’s some important stuff I think I need to say.

Hamid and I were the same age, did you know that? We talked about a lot of stuff while we were going to the different restaurants in Prague, and one of the things we talked about was our birthdays. We thought it was kind of cool that we both had the same birthday. We were both twenty-three.

We were kids, Zolf. Just a couple of dumb kids who thought we were grown up. I’ve got a bunch of dumb kids of my own now, and I know what I’m talking about. We thought we knew everything about everything, and it’s probably one of the reasons we didn’t always get on so much. We both thought we knew how the world worked, and because the way I saw the world and the way he saw the world were so different, we both thought the other didn’t know anything about anything. I’d never been out of London—I’d barely been out of Other London—and Hamid, for all he’d been places, he hadn’t really seen the world, just the part of the world that rich people let their kids go. We had a lot to learn.

We needed you. I don’t blame you for leaving, I know you needed that too, and I meant what I said about how none of us were forced to be there and you could leave if you wanted to, and we both trusted you’d come back when you were doing better. And maybe we both thought we’d be okay on our own. But I thought the whole world worked like Other London and Hamid thought the whole world worked like Cairo and Cambridge. Azu and Grizzop both saw how they thought the world should be, but the difference was Azu didn’t realize that it wasn’t like that, I think, and Grizzop just tried to make it like that. But you knew how my world worked, and how Hamid’s world worked, and how the rest of the world worked, and when you were there, it was a lot easier to see things how they really were and not just how they would have been if we were where we were used to, you know?

But it’s not just that. I didn’t get to be a kid, not really. And now that I think about it, Hamid didn’t really either. I had to be a thief and he had to be a banker’s son, and there were rules and things we had to do and things we were expected to be, and we didn’t get to figure out who we were and who we wanted to be. But you let us be that. You made it safe for us to start figuring ourselves out, even if it upset you sometimes, but you were there to catch us if we went too far. And even when you yelled at us, I think we could tell you weren’t really mad. We both had a lot of growing up to do still, even if we didn’t think so, but we weren’t going to do it without someone to show us how. And you’re the only person either of us ever met who was willing to do that for us.

I don’t know if you can get me back. I know I can’t get back to you from here. Magic isn’t what I’m used to, or the people who can do that kind of magic...don’t. I keep thinking about something Apophis said, about how the Meritocrats took a lot of magic things away from humanity because only the rich people could get at them, and I wonder if it’s not something like that, that I’m just not rich enough to get to someone powerful enough to send me home. But  I think I’m going to have to wait, and hope. I’m not giving up that hope, because I know you wouldn’t want me to, but...but maybe there’s a reason I’m supposed to be here.

These kids, they need someone too. Like I did. And right now, I’m what they’ve got. If I leave, I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. So this isn’t me saying “don’t keep trying to find me”, this is me saying that if you can’t get me back...I think I’ll be okay. I just keep asking myself, every time I run up on something that I’m not sure about, I think, “What would Zolf do?” And so far I’m not doing too bad, except for the part where I had to tell Maximus he couldn’t threaten to drown his little brothers and sisters in a bucket every time they annoy him. I’m doing my best, though. That’s all I can do. I’m trying. I’m trying to be you for them.

And it’s a little bit like I’ve got you here with me.

But Hamid doesn’t. He doesn’t have you and he doesn’t have me, and his sister and his friend died, and his father and his brother are going to prison, and someone he thought was his friend doesn’t care that she was doing work that got used for horrible things. He’s still just a kid really. And Azu’s solid, but she’s not what he needs. She sees the world in black and white. Either you’re her friend, or you’re her enemy, and if you’re her friend, you’re a good person. Hamid needs somebody who sees him for who he is, and cares about him as a person and not as what he can be or do. He needs you.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to finish this letter, and I’m going to take it to the Temple of Poseidon up in the town, and I’m going to ask them to find a way to get it to you. And then I’m going to come home, and I’m going to get all the kids together, and I’m going to tell them stories. I’m going to tell them about the ocean and the rain, the stars and the sand. I’m going to tell them about monsters and mechanical men and magic. I’m going to tell them about Azu and Grizzop and Wilde and even Bertie, my friends, and I’m going to tell them about Hamid, my brother, and I’m going to tell them about Zolf, the best dad I could ever have asked for.

And what I want you to do—it’s a big favor, but I’m hoping this letter won’t get to you until you’ve had a chance to get right. I want—no, I need you to go find Hamid. Maybe it hasn’t been very long, maybe you’re getting this right after we left, in which case, go to Rome and meet him when he gets back. Or maybe it’s been a bit and you’ll need to ask Wilde. He’ll know where to find him. Tell him I sent you if you have to, if he won’t listen to you, but please, please go find Hamid. He needs someone to be there for him, and I have a feeling you need someone too. Someone who believes in you, too. I’ll feel better knowing you’re together, that you’re helping each other, keeping each other safe. Tell him I’m sorry, for what I said about his family. Tell him I miss him, and I love him. I miss you, too, and I love you, too. I mean that with everything I have in me.

We’ll see each other again. I know that. In your time or mine, in this world or the next. I know I’ll be able to see you both again. And I hope that when I do, I’ll be able to look you in the eye and know that I made you proud.

Love always,

Sasha.

P.S. I want you to have my fire dagger. It’s probably not safe to have around just now, it being magic and all, and I want you to have something to remember me by.

Zolf lowers the last page of the letter slowly to the bar top. For a long time, he doesn’t move, just stares at the sheaf of papers and the dagger without really seeing either of them.

Then he takes a deep breath, slides off the stool, and trudges slowly and quietly up the stairs.

The upper floor of what used to be Gragg’s tavern consists of what can only loosely be described as “rooms” because there are two walls, each going about a third of the way across the room, dividing it into nominally two separate spaces. There are a few crates of supplies scattered about, mostly blankets from what Zolf can see in the half-open ones, but one of them has Skraak curled up inside, sound asleep. It’s not hard to find the group, in a sort of nest of blankets tucked up against one of the dividing walls. Azu lies on her back, one arm flung over her face. Cel’s hair is just visible over the edge of a ball of blanket up against Azu’s side; Zolf can’t see their face, but he guesses they still feel pretty terrible. Sumatnyerl sleeps on her side on the opposite side of Azu, back to the party and face to the dividing wall. Einstein snores lightly, cuddling Azu’s outstretched arm like a teddy bear. Even Wilde is there, half-sitting and half-slumped against Azu’s side, a blanket loosely draped over his lap and one hand resting in the space next to it, looking for all the world like he was trying to sit up and wait for Zolf but fell asleep anyway.

Hamid is nowhere to be seen.

Zolf tries to tamp down his instinctive panic. There’s only one way in or out up here, unless Hamid climbed out a window, and he wouldn’t do something like that. Nothing could have got up here without Zolf hearing it, he’s sure—well, okay, he was lost in the letter, it’s possible, but surely the others would have heard something. Hamid’s got to be nearby. He’s just...not sleeping with the others, for some reason. Maybe as he gets more dragon-ish, he gets more like the kobolds and prefers to sleep somewhere he can’t be found easily. Maybe he just doesn’t want to sleep on the floor and has figured out how to make himself a little bed, or found a bed somewhere.

Unless an assassin with Sasha’s level of skill but no morals sneaked in through the window. Unless there’s another thing like the thing they fought in Svalbard that burned their clothing and damaged their spirits. Unless the one Hamid sucked into the kill switch got out somehow and attacked him. Unless Hamid did do something stupid, maybe testing out a new spell he’d discovered or ability he’d developed...

Zolf moves as quickly and quietly as he can into the other half of the room. It’s been mostly picked over and cleared out, those few boxes remaining pushed to the sides of the room. One, a longer and narrower box than some of the others, is up underneath a single window at the far end of the attic space. And there, sitting atop the box, is Hamid, staring out the window even though it’s pitch dark and he can’t possibly see anything.

Inhaling sharply with relief, shoulders relaxing, Zolf crosses the space. He’s still trying not to wake the sleepers, but he’s pretty sure Hamid can hear him. He sits at the other end of the box from Hamid. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hey,” Hamid says. He sounds the way he did in Paris after they destroyed Mr. Ceiling for real—weary and beaten-down. The thought makes Zolf hurt all the way through, partly hating himself for the person he was then and partly because Hamid’s got no reason to feel that way now and partly because it makes him think of Sasha, not that she’s far from his mind right now.

Hamid turns away from the window and looks in Zolf’s direction; he can’t possibly see him in the total lack of light, but Zolf can see him just fine. He almost looks worse than he sounds, and Zolf has a brief moment of wondering if he’s hurt worse than he’s letting on before he convinces himself he’s just being alarmist. It’s just the shadows and dim lighting making things seem worse than they are, combined with the stress of the last day.

Now that he’s here, Zolf has no idea where to start. He tries to think of the best way to begin, then gives up and decides to just say the first thing that pops into his head. The words that come out of his mouth remind him why it’s a bad idea to do that. “Did you seriously almost blow yourself up in Rome?”

Several emotions play across Hamid’s face, too fast for Zolf to read in the darkness. He expects a shrill protest, or an angry denial, or a stammering justification, but to his surprise, Hamid simply sighs and nods. “Sort of? We were fighting something invisible. It had just attacked me, so I knew it was near me, and Azu and Sasha weren’t, so...I cast a fireball centered on me. It should’ve been fine. I can stand up to fire pretty well, so I thought even if I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, I’d be okay. But something in Rome made magic go...weird...and it was more powerful than I thought it would be. I got lucky, I guess.” He looks up at Zolf, and this time the look in his eyes is easy to read: guilt. Zolf’s not sure why. “When did Azu tell you about that?”

“She didn’t. I—” Zolf flounders for a moment. There’s got to be a better way of saying this. Finally, he just sighs and hands Hamid the letter.

Hamid makes a weary, practiced gesture, and Zolf blinks as the by-now familiar tiny dancing lights appear between them. Hamid blinks, too, then flinches. “Sorry,” he mumbles and starts to make the gesture to dismiss them.

Zolf reaches over and stops him. “It’s—fine. It’s fine,” he tells Hamid. “Nothing out there hunts by sight. Gragg says they can’t get in buildings anyway. I trust him. You’re fine.”

Hamid swallows and nods. Now that the lights are there, Zolf can see him a little better, and he reevaluates his previous assessment. Hamid does look worse than he sounds. He looks either ill or injured, with dark hollows under his eyes, which have a slightly bruised look to them, his skin ashen. There’s a smudge on his forehead of dirt or slime or blood or some combination of the three, he looks like he’s run his hands through his hair in frustration or despair, and his ever-present eyeliner is smeared down his cheeks.

It hits Zolf all at once that he’s literally never seen Hamid not perfectly groomed. Even in the catacombs under Paris, when he’d been injured and panicking, his first instinct had been a shaky prestidigitation to clean himself up. He fusses over his appearance more than anyone Zolf has ever met, with the possible exception of Wilde, and he remembers that Wilde always looked worse off than he was when he couldn’t use his own prestidigitation. It’s no wonder Hamid looks sick. Zolf resists the urge to comment on it and simply waits.

Hamid sucks in a sharp breath as he starts to read, and even more color drains from his face. His eyes fill with tears, but to Zolf’s slight surprise, they don’t fall. He smiles briefly a couple of times, barely more than a flicker, but Zolf also sees him retreat slightly into himself. And Zolf can tell when he gets to the part after they got separated coming back to Rome, because Hamid’s hands start shaking, ever so faintly.

When he reaches the end—apparently—he stares at the paper for a long moment, much like Zolf did, then takes a deep breath, folds the letter back up, and hands it back to Zolf. Zolf isn’t sure whether to be impressed or worried that Hamid hasn’t dissolved into a complete emotional mess.

“She’s right,” he says softly, and his voice is choked and shaking, but he’s not actually crying. “I was just a dumb kid. Still am, I guess.” He looks up at Zolf. “I keep—I think I’m getting better, and then I do something utterly stupid because I think I know what I’m doing, and then I argue with you when you call me out on it. And then I have the nerve to act like you’re—” He chokes off the word and looks away, taking a couple more deep breaths.

Zolf realizes, all of a sudden, what Hamid is doing. He’s trying to stop himself from crying, because he doesn’t want to be overly emotional. He’s trying to be sensible and practical and, well, grown-up about this.

Before he can say anything, Hamid looks back up at him. “I’m not—I’m not trying to justify why I’m right. I just want you to know where I...” He swallows. “When I was growing up, if I made a mistake or—o-or did something wrong, no matter what it was or how bad it was, all I had to do was admit it was wrong and apologize, and everything would be forgiven and it would go away. Like it never happened. And you—you’re kind of the opposite? At least, that’s how it looks to me sometimes. If something goes wrong, it’s in the past. Apologizing for it or—or acknowledging that it might have been a mistake doesn’t change that it was done, so there’s no reason to. Just...move on and try to do better the next time. And I know that’s the better way to handle it, but—”

“It’s not,” Zolf interrupts, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s—look, I don’t have all the answers either, you know. I act like I do, but deep down, I’m just as scared. And I don’t always know the right thing to do. When we were in Paris, I spent three days in my room wallowing, blaming myself for everything that went wrong, every mistake I’d ever made, not just the whole Mr. Ceiling thing, you remember that? The more we went on, the more I questioned everything I’d ever done, and by the time we got to Prague, I couldn’t get away from the doubts. So I walked away, from Sasha and from you, because I didn’t trust myself not to repeat my mistakes. And then Wilde tracked me down and told me you’d gone to Rome and you were gone and...” He swallows hard. “Look, you know how Sasha talks about her...shutting down and just blanking out? I did that, too, I reckon. I blamed myself, thought if I’d just stayed you’d have been okay, but...at that point, Wilde needed an ally and I needed a purpose, so I shut out the past and focused on the present. And it was easier to live like that, for a while, so I just kept doing it and it got worse.” He tries to smile. “There’s got to be something in between, right? Something between ignoring the past and dwelling on it?”

“Yeah,” Hamid says softly, looking down at his hands. They’re dirty, too, smeared with plant matter and ichor and grease, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “And there’s got to be something between acting like acknowledging a mistake makes it all go away and acting like—”

“—like not acknowledging it also makes it all go away,” Zolf completes. “And I think there’s got to be something between ‘this was the only right answer’ and ‘this was the right answer with the information we had so it’s fine,’ yeah? Like your fireball in Rome. You didn’t think that was the only solution, did you?”

“No,” Hamid whispers. “It was a calculated risk. And I didn’t think about magic going...screwy. But I wouldn’t have done it if Sasha or Azu or Einstein had been close enough that it would have hit them. I was the only one in danger, so I thought it would be okay.”

Zolf’s heart lurches, and he has to try twice before he can speak. “If you ever decide to do something like that again...just make sure I can’t see you, all right?”

Hamid looks up at Zolf and attempts to smile. “So you don’t have to yell at me?”

“So I don’t have to maybe watch you die.” Zolf keeps his voice down with an effort. “I can’t—I can’t do that, Hamid. Seeing Wilde’s body after the crash, I—that was bad. That was real bad. If I’d had to actually see it happen? I don’t know that even pushing things into the past would’ve helped. And next to Wilde, you’re the person I’d like to think I’m closest to. I don’t want to watch anyone die if I can help it, but you? Please don’t make me do that.” He swallows hard. “It’s why I took the risk of having us jump into the plant. I thought it would just...lead us straight through to wherever it was connected to, but it was that or watch you torn apart by a bunch of evil trees, and I was not going to risk that. So yeah, it was a bad idea and if I’d known what I know now I would have tried to come up with a third option, but with what we knew then, it was the best hope I had of not losing everything I cared about. Again.”

Hamid makes a tiny, pained noise that sounds like it might be a sob and goes straight to Zolf’s heart. He presses his lips tightly together for a moment, obviously forces back an emotional response, then nods. “I promise. And—and I promise not to yell like that again. I’m sorry. I am. I got scared and I took it out on you and that wasn’t fair.”

“I accept your apology, and I forgive you. And I’m not great with the whole...talking thing, but I promise I’ll try in the future.” Zolf takes a quick breath. “I do forget how young you are sometimes. And I don’t mean that as an insult, just...I forget you don’t always have the experience of the world to understand why I make the decisions I do, and then I get annoyed with you for questioning them, and that’s not fair, either. I’m sorry for that.”

“You don’t—I accept your apology, and I forgive you,” Hamid half-whispers. Zolf can tell he’s not just parroting the words, he’s sincere about them. And he appreciates that Hamid stopped himself from saying you don’t have to apologize. Because Zolf did have to apologize, and they both know it. Hamid looks down at the letter again. “She’s right about that, too. I did—I do need you. I’m...you make me a better person.”

“No,” Zolf says, putting the weight of an entire lifetime’s experience behind his words. “Nobody else can make someone a better person. You make you a better person, Hamid. I just believe you can be one.”

Hamid’s head comes up abruptly, and he stares at Zolf in genuine shock. Zolf is terrible at...people, and emotions, and all that, he doesn’t usually get them, but Hamid’s emotions are so close to the surface and so genuine that even he can read them. Nobody has ever told Hamid anything like that, ever, and Zolf is the last person he would have ever expected to hear it from.

And something inside Zolf breaks.

He reaches out and pulls Hamid into a hug, tighter and more desperate than the one he gave him right after the first quarantine all those weeks ago. Hamid hugs him back just as tightly, burying his face in Zolf’s shoulder. Zolf feels the tears begin hitting his skin, reminding him in a remote, distant way that that purple thing dissolved his shirt and coat and he’s sitting around in nothing but his breastplate, but he pushes the thought out of his mind for the moment.

“She’s right,” he says into Hamid’s hair. “I am proud of you. You stood up for yourself, and you stood up for Sasha. You didn’t give in even when it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. And back there, in Svalbard? You did a good job. You kept your head and you didn’t argue, you figured out what that device was and how to use it. And you made sure the rest of us stayed safe. I might argue with you, I might yell, but I will never not be proud of you.”

Hamid cries harder. His emotions are usually loud and messy, but whether because he’s trying to keep quiet or for some other reason, his tears are silent. “I missed you,” he whispers, the words muffled into Zolf’s shoulder. “I missed you and I was scared something would happen to you in Prague, and then I got back from Rome and Einstein told us how long it had been and what was going on and I was scared you were dead, and then I saw you again and I was—I was so angry at you and I don’t know why—”

“It’s because I wasn’t there,” Zolf says with a rare flash of insight. “It’s because I left and suddenly everybody around you started getting hurt and dying, and then you came back and everything was different, and you didn’t know what was going on. You were confused and scared, and when you get scared these days you get angry. And I was there to be a good target. You couldn’t be angry at Azu because Azu was angry too, but me—”

“You were safe,” Hamid says softly. “I—I trusted that I could be angry at you, because I knew you’d—you’d let me be angry and we could still be friends after I was done.”

Zolf tightens his arms around Hamid, recognizing the truth in his words. “I missed you, too, you know. As soon as I walked away, I regretted it. If I could’ve taken you both with me, as stupid as that sounds, I would have, but I had to be on my own to get right. But I hadn’t been gone three days before I knew I’d be back. And then you were gone, they told me you were gone for good, and I—I wasn’t lying when I said I’d mourned for you both, but I never gave up hope. I’ve been studying the planes—I was determined, when I had a moment, I was going to go looking for you. I just, I couldn’t leave Wilde and...”

“No, I get it. I get it.” Hamid squeezes him again, then eases back and manages a weak smile up at him. “Thank you. For trying. For not giving up. Maybe...maybe that’s the only reason any of us made it back, was because you had hope.”

“Maybe.” Zolf settles back as well and manages a smile back. “I’m not giving up on her, just so you know. Even though we got that letter from her when she was older...I’m not giving up. Maybe someday...”

“Yeah. Maybe not any time soon, but someday.” Hamid wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. The gesture makes him look impossibly young. “I’m not giving up either. I can’t. She wouldn’t have given up on us.” He pauses. “Zolf—she didn’t know you weren’t with Poseidon anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s probably why the letter came through the Poseidon lot,” Zolf says. “They’ve probably been looking for me since I walked away, so to speak.”

“No, I mean she didn’t know you weren’t with Poseidon. If she lit a candle at the Temple of Artemis for Grizzop every year, and her letter to all of us came through the Cult of Aphrodite...Zolf, what if that’s why Poseidon kept trying to help you?” Hamid’s eyes are wide. “Because Sasha asked him to? Would—is that how it works?”

Ice water floods through Zolf’s veins, and he mutters a word in Dwarfish he hasn’t said since the cave-in. “It might. I don’t know. I’m not—”

“No, I’m not—I don’t think you should go back to him. I mean....clearly he wasn’t—maybe he was Sasha’s god, not yours. I just...wondered, that’s all.” Hamid rubs his face. He looks like he’s lost a fight with a fireplace, there’s so much dirt and kohl smeared over his cheeks.

“Maybe...Hamid, you sure you aren’t hurt?” Zolf gestures to his own face. “You...look a mess.”

“I...oh.” Hamid looks embarrassed. “Sorry, and I—it’s all over you, too. Here.” He snaps his fingers, producing the familiar flurry of handkerchiefs, which set to work on both Hamid and Zolf.

Zolf unbuckles his breastplate and sets it aside, wincing at the sticky sound as it peels away from his chest and the last fragments of his shirt and jacket fall away. “Thanks,” he says. “For the record, though, I wasn’t...complaining about you looking bad or whatever. I was just worried. Last time you didn’t immediately come out of a fight and tidy yourself up was...”

“Paris,” Hamid completes softly. “I know. I-it did feel...a bit like that, I guess. I just didn’t...I don’t know.” He glances over his shoulder uncertainly towards the other part of the room.

Zolf glances over, too. “They’ll be okay,” he assures Hamid, thinking he’s worrying about Cel. “Once I’ve had some rest, I can meditate and get access to a couple spells that’ll help. You and Azu, too. You said it hit you some?”

“Yeah,” Hamid says with a heavy sigh.

The handkerchiefs vanish, and Zolf sighs, too. “Right. C’mon, let’s go in the other room and get some sleep. You want to use the lights so you don’t trip?”

Hamid hesitates, for just a second, then says uncertainly, “N-no. No, I’m—I’m fine.” He snaps his fingers and the lights disappear. “Um...after you?”

Zolf stares at Hamid. He’s usually a skilled liar, almost on par with Wilde, but either because he’s tired or because of what that thing did to him, he’s not doing a very good job of it right now. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Hamid protests, even less convincingly.

“Hamid.”

It’s all he says, but it’s enough. Hamid’s shoulders slump. “I just...I don’t think I’m welcome in there right now. Azu’s mad at me. A-about the kobolds and—”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Zolf interrupts. “She’s asleep right now, so she won’t be yelling at you. And she’s not....feeling well, is she? Whatever happened to you three, she’s—she’ll be fine once we get that taken care of.”

“She meant it, Zolf. She just wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t...like this. And she wasn’t wrong.”

“She might not have been wrong, but that doesn’t mean she was right,” Zolf says firmly. He puts his hands on Hamid’s shoulders and looks him in the eye, despite knowing Hamid probably can’t see him. “Just like Sasha. Just like me. Just like you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hamid whispers. Tears fill his eyes again. “I—I really didn’t—I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that, Zolf. I’m sorry. I just—I guess I was still upset about what Aziza said and—”

“Wait, who—?” Zolf suddenly realizes that he wasn’t the only one who went through what he went through when they jumped through that plant. His shoulders slump slightly. “I’m sorry. I should’ve—we should’ve talked about this, but—”

“When have we had time?”

“Yeah, exactly. Look, I—when we jumped through that plant, before it tied us up and we fell through those planes?” Zolf sighs heavily. “I was back in the mines. With my brother. He blamed me for leaving, tried to convince me he’d still been alive when I...” He swallows. “So I was...kind of raw, too. Even though it was nothing I haven’t been saying to myself for decades. Even though I knew it wasn’t really him.”

“It wasn’t?” Hamid’s voice is small and fragile, like he was in the catacombs.

“Oh, Hamid.” Zolf hates this, hates every minute of it. “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t them. Whoever you saw—your sister, right? The one who died in Prague?”

“Yeah. She—she said it was my fault she died. And that I hadn’t done enough to—after. That I was still making everything all about me and not—”

“Yeah, if it had really been her, she never would have said any of that, ‘cause it’s not true,” Zolf interrupts. “You were humming in the garden. I heard you. She was walking with you. That was really her. I could feel my brother with me too, I kept willing him to go away. Cel and Azu, I’m sure they were with someone they’ve lost too. What that—that thing showed us, that was a twisted version of them. Something to make us regret, make us give up. They were lies, Hamid. What happened to your sister, that’s not your fault. You did everything you could. Kafka’s the reason she died. Well, and maybe Bertie too.”

“I didn’t know that,” Hamid whispers. “About him—about Kafka giving him a choice.”

“Tell you what.” Zolf squeezes Hamid’s shoulders. “When this is all over, we’ll go find a necromancer, find where they’ve got Bertie buried, and have him turned into a zombie so we can kill him again ourselves.”

Hamid actually laughs, a bit wetly. “Only if you take the first shot.”

“Sure. We’ll use Sasha’s dagger.” Zolf pulls Hamid in for another hug. He’s not usually the touchy-feely, sort, but it’s just the two of them right now and Hamid’s one of three people he’d be willing to hug like this.

The fact that one of those people is someone he may never get the chance to hug again—or at all—makes his heart ache, but he tries not to think about it.

Hamid hugs him back, and Zolf feels him relax. After a few moments, he pulls back and manages a smile up at Zolf. “Thank you. For all of it.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” Zolf smiles back, then slides off the box. “Come on. You need rest.”

This time, Hamid slides off the box too, and he matches stride with Zolf as they head back into the other room. He starts to go off to one side, but Zolf doesn’t let him. Instead, he grabs a blanket and pulls him over to join the pile that is the rest of their friends. Hamid looks reluctant, but he doesn’t argue. Zolf’s glad. He’s tired and strained and really doesn’t want to have to try to choose which of the two people he cares about most he’s going to try and protect tonight.

Wilde half-stirs when Zolf settles down next to him, but doesn’t fully wake, just shifts slightly to lean against him and shoves the blanket in his direction. Zolf tucks the blanket he grabbed around Hamid before accepting the other half of Wilde’s blanket, and he doesn’t object when he feels Hamid’s head drop onto his shoulder.

“Night, Dad,” Hamid mumbles, sounding more than half asleep.

A lump comes into Zolf’s throat. He has to try twice before he can choke out the words. “Night, Hamid.”

With one hand resting on Hamid’s head and the other gripping Wilde’s hand tightly, Zolf closes his eyes and drifts into sleep, feeling, for the first time in almost two years, like some of the grief has been lifted from his heart.

[kinglazrus]

Not Your Danny – Ch 4. Who Understands

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Word count: 3739

The memorial notebook sits open on Jazz's desk. For the twenty minutes, Jazz has sat here with her rule and pencil carefully tracing out a template for the event schedule. The hour of the event, pencilled in as one to two p.m., is broken into fifteen-minute increments which have three bullet points each. The bullet points, along with the fifteen-minute boxes, are colour coded and measured out to perfect, equal distance.

At the top of the page, the words "Memorial Schedule" are written in a loose, flowing script and dark ink. Eraser smudges behind the ink are the only indication of how much time and care Jazz put into making those letters.

Now, the blank schedule stares up at her, waiting only for Jazz to finalize the plans. The memorial itself is still three weeks out, but it is still too soon. Even though they buried Danny a fortnight ago, the memorial feels more final. Jazz doesn't want to say it, but she already knows why she feels this way.

Danny was a halfa. He was her sweet, human brother, but he was the town hero, too. There's a chance, no matter how slim, that he might still be out there as a full ghost. There has to be a chance. It doesn't matter that he died as Phantom. It doesn't matter that Sam and Tucker themselves were there to see his ghost half fizzle out, see the human body it left behind. There has to be a chance.

The funeral was for Danny Fenton, but the memorial is for Danny Phantom, for the whole city to mourn the loss of their hero. For Jazz to acknowledge that her brother, in his entirety, is gone forever.

Suddenly, looking at the notebook makes her feel nauseous. She closes it and shoves it aside. It's late enough now that she could go to bed, but she doesn't feel tired, not physically. After the fiasco at dinner, Jazz wants to shut everything out for a little bit. Pretend she lives in her own bubble where everything is fine.

How could she have forgotten? Seeing Dani's human face certainly took her by surprise, but she was not unprepared for it. Unlike their parents, Jazz didn't have trouble separating Fenton from Phantom. They were the same to her and looking at Dani's ghostly face was already close enough to seeing her little brother. Instead of the face itself, Jazz was stunned to see Dani in human form at all. At the same time, it brought her comfort. Dani and Danny, no matter how similar, are not the same. But having her here, seeing her do the things Danny used to do...

It's so easy. Having Dani fill her little brother's place on the couch when the watch TV. Having her by Jazz's side when they cook. She can't help it. It's almost like having Danny back, so soon after they lost him. And every time Dani doesn't fill that hole, it hurts in a way Jazz never expected.

She rubs her eyes and leans back in her chair. Maybe she should go to sleep after all.

—

"You want us to host... a memorial?" her mother asked. It was obvious Maddie had been crying that day, her eyes red and puffy. Perhaps not too long before Jazz came to talk to her parents.

Jazz herself had been in tears not too long ago when Sam phoned her with the idea. She nodded. "Yes. I know it's only been a few days, but this is Sam's idea and I think it's a good one. Mom, Dad..." she took a deep breath, bracing herself. "I knew. All along, I knew about Danny being Phantom. And it was so important to him. A memorial to Phantom could help you come to terms with not knowing about this side of Danny."

Maddie's hand, flat on the table, curled into a fist. "Jazz, we haven't even... the funeral is tomorrow. I've been on the phone with Alicia all day because she can't make it down in time. Chartering a plane costs too much and there isn't a flight out for weeks. I know this is important, but—"

"I think it's a good idea," Jack said. Stretching forward, he reached across the table and patted Jazz's shoulder. "But I think what you mother means is that we need time to consider it. It's hard adjusting to all this."

"I know. But promise me you really will think about it? It would mean a lot to him." Jazz waited until her father nodded. "Okay. I'll just... yeah. Think about it."

She left the kitchen in silence. That went okay. A shorter conversation than Jazz would have liked, but small steps are still steps. She needed to text Sam later and let her know the verdict, as tentative as it was. For now, she will leave her parents to think, hoping they eventually agree.

Halfway to her bedroom, a noise from Danny's room made her pause. She couldn't be certain, but it sounded like the squeak of his bed springs. Tip-toeing closer, Jazz stared at the crack under his door. A faint white light shone through.

"Danny?" Jazz whispered.

There came another creak.

Jazz's breath stopped, caught in her throat. She crept closer, pressing her hand against the door, and eased it open. In the dark of Danny's room, the figured outline in glowing light leapt from the shadows, impossible to miss. The aura, far brighter than the dim light of hall, nearly blinded Jazz, but its colour was unmistakable.

She pushed the door open. "Danny!"

The figure flinched and threw themselves into the air, twisting around to face Jazz. She slapped her hand against the switch on the wall, flooding the room with orange light. No longer blinded, she found herself now face-to-face with a Phantom. Not Danny, though, but Dani-with-an-I.

She looked horrible, her white hair caked with mud, dirt smeared along half her face. Suit wrinkled and damp.

"Oh, my God, Danielle." Jazz gasped.

"It's true?" Tears welled in Dani's eyes. "It's true? He's gone?"

"I'm so sorry, I didn't even think..."

That was all Dani needed to hear. She spun away and bolted, flying through the wall.

"Dani, wait!" Jazz called after her, but the young halfa was already gone. Jazz threw the window open, leaning out over the alley to a dangerous degree. Searching the sky, she tried to find and trace of Danny's clone, but everything around her was dark. Not a single glimpse of silver light to be seen.

Jazz pulled herself back inside and dropped to the floor, hands pressed over her mouth. She had forgotten, completely, that there was another person out there important to Danny, someone who wouldn't know about his death right away. In the days since Danny's death, Danielle's existence hadn't crossed Jazz's mind. It made her feel rotten. Dani had been important to Danny, but she slipped so easily from Jazz's memory.

However, through the wave of guilt, Jazz could not forget that single moment before she turned on the light. No more than a second, but still the happiest she felt in days, when she saw the aura of a Phantom and believed that her brother had not died after all.

—

The star shirt fits well, better than Dani expected it to. She drapes her hoodie across the back of Danny's desk chair before sliding in front of the mirror. It fits and it looks good. Looking herself up and down, Dani blushes. She has never thought of herself as a self-conscious person but seeing herself in something other than her regular hoodie fills her with warmth. She likes wearing something that doesn't look two times too big for her, showing off more of her form.

Although she has never said it out loud, that is part of the reason why she likes being in her ghost form so much more. The pants, the crop top, she likes them so much better than her human clothes. Until now, they were her only option, since she didn't want to cart around a backpack full of clothes, but now she has a room. She has a place to keep things, her things.

She could actually have things. The temptation to own stuff has always eluded her, but the longer she stays at Fenton Works surrounded by things that are not hers, the more she understands.

Dani rarely stays in one place for so long. Only a week and one day, but it feels so much longer. Looking at herself in the mirror, she's struck by the realization that this is home now. She has a home. Her mind still struggles to wrap around the idea, but the word does not feel so foreign anymore. After Vlad, all she wanted was freedom, and she got it. But while roaming the world was fun and exciting, it was also incredibly lonely.

She had always had Danny, though. Their relationship wasn't perfect, and they never acknowledged how they were related beyond the loose label of cousins, but she had him. And then he was gone without her even realizing.

Dani didn't know what to expect when Jazz extended her the offer of moving into Fenton Works. And, to be honest, she still doesn't know. Things are strange, and still lonely sometimes, but not bad. That has to count for something, right?

She toys with the buttons of the shirt, wondering if she could somehow tie the bottom, wear it shorter than it is. As she considers the style, her hands drop to the waist of her shorts, bright red and loose. They don't go with the shirt very well. Unfortunately for Dani, she has already been through all of Danny's clothes, and she does not like any of his pants, even if there were some smaller, older pairs that might have fit her.

There is a hint of promise, though. Dani has seen how much junk fills the Fenton garage. They are the kind of people who hold on to things until they absolutely do not need it anymore. Judging by Danny's drawers and closet, clothes get the same treatment as any other junk.

Jazz must have a few old pants lying about. A skirt sounds nice. Dani has never worn one of those, but girls always look so pretty in them.

Her door is open when Dani makes the trek down the hall. Jazz herself is slumped over at her desk, arms folded under her head.

Dani walks into the room and pokes Jazz's shoulder. "Did you sleep at your desk last night?"

Jazz wakes with a start, flinching at Dani's touch. She rubs her eyes, then the side of her face. A thick red mark overtakes her cheek where it had been laying on her arm.

"Dani?" Jazz's voice is thick with sleep. She sits up, stretching her arms and arching her back until it pops. Her neck cracks a few times as she roles her head. "What are you doing?"

"Do you have any old clothes?"

Jazz blinks. "It's rude to walk into someone's room without warning them."

"You were asleep, though. Clothes?"

Blinking a few more times, Jazz clears her eyes and looks Dani up and down. Her gaze lingers on the shirt. "That’s..."

"Found it in Danny's closet. I can't believe he actually wore something like this."

Jazz shook her head. "No, he didn't like it. Sam got it for him as a joke, because of the stars. I don't think he ever wore it."

"Really?" A smile breaks out across Dani's face. If Danny didn't wear this shirt, then technically that makes it hers. She owns something now.

"Yeah. Did nothing else of his fit? It's okay if you want to wear it. I think that would feel better than packing it all up," Jazz says. "You don't have any clothes besides the pyjamas Mom bought, right?"

Dani actually forgot that she has those. "I went through his clothes already. Didn't really like them much. Do you have a skirt?"

Jazz's eyes go wide. "A skirt?" For reasons' Dani can't fathom, Jazz says it like it is the strangest thing in a world. Dani wanting a skirt? Preposterous. "Danny never liked skirts."

There it is. "Duh, Danny was a dude."

"I know, but I mean. He wasn't comfortable in that kind of clothing before he transitioned. Your hoodie and cargo shorts aren't so different from what he used to wear, so I thought..." Jazz trails off, but her point is already made.

"Jazz, I'm comfortable being a girl. I like being a girl. Being made from his DNA doesn't make me his clone."

Jazz opens her mouth to correct Dani.

"You know what I meant." Dani wraps her arms around herself, feeling small like she did her first day here. "I don't know why I need to keep saying this, but I'm not Danny, okay?"

Jazz grimaces. "I know, Dani. I'm sorry if I made you feel like you were."

That isn't what Dani meant, but she doesn't press further. "So, about that skirt?"

—

Later that day, when Jazz asks Dani if she wants to watch a show, Dani says no.

—

"What did you do when you weren't in Amity Park?" Jack asks. The question comes out of nowhere, as they always do. In the few days since he took Dani's samples, she has seen him outside the lab far more often. Joining them at mealtimes, coming upstairs in the evening. Sometimes she hears the heavy beats of his approach moments before he pops into the room with a question on his tongue, like now.

Dani holds a moment, her gaze lingering on the models surrounding Danny's desk, before spinning in the chair to face Jack. "I travelled."

Jack, rightfully so, takes her answer as an invitation and comes further into the room. "Oh, yeah?" He sits down on the bed facing her. "Where did you go?"

"All over. I mostly stayed in the United States, at first, but there's so much stuff to see out there. The pyramids were awesome."

Just as Dani found her rhythm with Maddie and Jazz in her first days at Fenton Works, she and Jack seem to be finding what works for them. She likes the time they spend together. His questions feel genuine. Sometimes, he asks her about what being a ghost is like, what abilities she has. His eyes glow with fascination every time she answers. Dani has never seen anyone so engrossed by a single topic before.

But her favourite times are when he asks about her. What does she like? Does she have any hobbies? She gets the feeling that this is how Jack shows interest in people, by asking about themselves, and she returns the favour whenever she can.

"Have you ever been to Egypt?" Nudging the desk, Dani pushes herself back and forth on the chair, turning slowly in place. Her eyes keep catching on the models she had been examining when Jack entered.

Danny had a lot of models, all of them related to space, apparently. Planets, spaceships, little astronaut figures. Much like the posters on his wall, Dani sees no use for them, but Danny obviously liked them. He has two spaceships that look identical. One sits on his desk, safely kept behind a glass box. The other stands tall on the shelf above the desk.

"No." Jack's voice pulls Dani back to the conversation. "Mads wants to go, though. What was your favourite place that you saw?"

Dani has to pause and think about this. The pyramids are high contenders. She went to Japan for a few weeks last year and explored the natural landscape. There was so much beauty there. She has been to a lot of beautiful places, but none of them are her favourite.

"I don't know where it was. It was back when I could barely hold myself together, when I was destabilizing, remember?"

Jack nods. Dani told him that story only yesterday.

"Flying was really hard then, and it made me tired. I got lost a lot between cities if I wasn't following a highway. When I was heading back to Amity Park, I passed out once when flying." Dani hugs her knees. That was one of the scariest moments of her life, second only to melting in Vlad's lab. Before passing out, she could barely see, the sky and the ground blurring together. Her very core ached and, when the darkness started creeping in, she thought she was done fore.

"I woke up in this woman's home. She found me out in the forest and took me in. Didn't care that I was a ghost. I stayed with her for a few days. She actually... she offered to let me stay forever." Dani said no, of course. She had to get to Amity Park, to Danny, to get fixed. "She didn't even know me, but when I told her I didn't have any family beyond a cousin, she just... said I could stay. I left as soon as I could fly again. Haven't been able to find my way back."

Jack's heavy hand settles on her head. He ruffles her hair, the small act of comfort filling her with warmth. "Sorry you didn't get to take that chance, kiddo."

Dani ducks her head and rubs her eyes. There are no tears, but she needs the excuse to look away. There is a weight behind Jack's words, one Dani can feel, but not decipher. She thinks, perhaps, that Jack's words aren't entirely for her.

"So, what were you doing just now?"

Grateful for the distraction, Dani slides the chair over so Jack can see the desk. "Looking at stuff."

Her endeavour of going through of Danny's things has proved harder than she originally thought. It's so easy to get distracted by some small trinket, and she often finds herself wondering what Danny did with it, why he kept it all. Cheap toys from fast food restaurants. Paper airplanes stuck between book pages. A ball of rubber bands bigger than Dani's fist.

At first, she only wanted to look, commit these items to memory. Jazz said it took time before people put away a lost loved one's things, and even though Dani didn't understand, she would respect it. But Jazz's comment about the clothes has been lingering in her mind all day.

Despite Dani's own assurance of her personhood, was there anything she could like only because Danny did? She thought she might find the answer if she pondered long enough, but so far all its done is made her question why people collect things.

She touches the box encasing spaceship.

"That was his favourite."

Dani starts, jerking her hand away from the glass. For a moment, she forgot he was there. His face is turned toward her, but his eyes fixate on a point to her left. Dani doesn't need to turn back around to know what he's looking at.

"What is it?" she asks.

"Space Shuttle Columbia, the first of the Space Shuttle program. At least that's what Danny said it was. I can never tell the difference."

Dani looks from the Columbia to the second model on the shelf, this one smaller and lacking a protective case.

"Are you sure they aren't the same shuttle?" she asks.

Jack chuckles. "Absolutely. Danny never let it go if anyone mixed the two up."

"What's so special about this one?" Dani taps the Columbia's box.

"It was maybe the third model that he got? The first two were pretty cheap. He saved up for them himself. Took a while. I didn't even realize he had them until he mentioned wanting a third. Didn't even realize he liked space so much... I bought this for him a week later and gave it to him after school."

Dani nods along as Jack speaks, although she doesn't see the point yet. Lots of people have expensive things; that doesn't automatically make them special.

"We built it together. I wasn't interested in stars and astronomy, but Danny asked me to help him with it, so I did. I never got why it was his favourite, though. He had better ones, models he saved up for penny by penny. He made that one"—Jack nods to the model on the shelf—"with Sam and Tucker. But sometimes, I think..."

Jack falls silent.

Dani catches his reflection in the glass display case. He has one hand pressed over his eyes, the other fisted at his side. Dani has yet to see either Maddie or Jack cry since coming to Fenton Works, and she thinks that streak is about to end.

"I know we weren't the best parents. There've been times when we've... neglected our duties to focus on ghosts instead. I never thought about it before, but it couldn't have been easy on a couple of young kids. All I ever wanted was for Danny to follow the Fenton family footsteps. But space was his. And sometimes I think he liked this model the best because it was the first time I showed any interest in something he liked."

Jack shudders as he exhales.

Dani resists the urge to go invisible. This heart-to-heart stuff really isn't her thing. Their little question and answer sessions have been fun, but talking about the woman in the forest was already deep enough for Dani. Now things are getting a little too intense.

If Jack does start to cry, she might flee out of sheer awkwardness. He doesn't—thank God—but when he pulls his hand away from his face, he looks old and tired.

Dani racks her brain for something to say. "I think... maybe... he liked it the most because it showed that you loved him, not just because it was about space. Or something."

Jack meets Dani's eye through his reflection and cracks a smile. "I guess if anyone could say what Danny might think, it would be you."

The words cut through her.

"Right," Dani says, her voice empty. "Sure."

Jack nods, as if Dani has revealed some great truth to him, and turns away. His footsteps are louder as he heads for the door, more like his regular self. Dani has no doubt that Jack is leaving this room feeling brighter than before.

All Dani feels is an uncomfortable twist in her gut.

Previous | Next

[unholyobsessions]

snapped in two (it’s actually a torus fracture)

Description: Luke did not expect to be awoken on a Saturday morning because his girlfriend's little brother broke his arm, but that's what happens and he doesn't hesitate to help him.

Requested: Yes

a/n: don’t know if i actually fullfilled the request but i like this (also posted on ao3 under unholy_obsessions)

Warnings: none

Word Count: 1.7k

Masterlist

Luke’s phone is ringing. He grumbles at the loud noise that wakes him from his afternoon nap and rolls out of his unmade bed. He’s confused on who would be calling because Julie is camping with Flynn and has no service, Alex is on a date with Willie, Bobby has the morning shift at the record store, and Reggie refuses to wake up before three pm on Saturdays. 

For a minute he considers not answering the phone, thinking it will most likely be a spam call that will leave him in a sour mood for the rest of the day but he eventually decides against it and walks to the other side of the room where his phone is charging on his shelf. 

He doesn’t recognize the number but it’s an LA area code so he swiftly slides his thumb over the screen and presses the device to his ear. 

“Hello?” He grumbles, voice thick with sleep. 

“Mr. Patterson? This is Henry, I coach Carlos’ baseball team.” That wakes him up. Luke’s posture straightens and his eyes narrow in confusion. Why is his girlfriend’s little brother’s coach calling him? As if the man could read his mind, he continues to speak. “I’m calling because it seems like Carlos has had an accident and he insisted that I call you.” 

Luke doesn’t even have to think before answering. “I’ll be right there.” He hangs up the phone, shoves his feet into his sneakers, snatches his keys and runs out the door. He doesn’t even bother to turn on the car’s air conditioning before he backs out of the driveway and speeds all the way to the baseball field where he knows Carlos always has his games, which is thankfully not far from his home. 

Parking the car haphazardly in the first available space he sees, he rushes to the fence, having to stop the urge from jumping over it before getting to the open gate. He freezes when he sees Carlos sitting on the bench with various teammates surrounding him and silent tears streaming down his face. He is holding his arm and Luke can only guess that it’s probably broken, considering the pain clearly displayed in his eyes. 

Luke approaches cautiously, making eye contact with the coach and laying a hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “Hey little man,” Carlos takes one look at him and buries his head in Luke’s chest and Luke doesn’t hesitate to wrap an arm around him. Coach Henry gets his attention, asking if he should call an ambulance. Luke grimaces, knowing that the team will in no way cover the expenses of having the ambulance travel to the field and it will be much faster to just take Carlos himself. Luke tells the coach as such and helps Carlos stand up, basically carrying him to his car, that once he sees, notices just how awful his parking skills are. 

Not wanting to waste any time, he opens Carlos’ door and rushes to the driver’s side, starting the car and pulling out before even putting his seatbelt on. The ride to the hospital is silent, the only noise being Carlos’ quiet sniffles of pain. Luke grimaces at the sound, wishing that he could be of more comfort to the boy. The silence however gives him time to think. Why did Carlos call him? Sure he has known him since the kid was eight, having known Julie since eighth grade and dating her since sophomore year, but he has never been the person people call when they’re in need of help. He loves Carlos as his own brother and would quite literally put his life down for him but he didn’t think the kid though that much of him. 

He also kicks himself because he always makes an effort to go to Carlos’ games, especially when Ray can’t. But then again, he always goes with Julie and she wasn’t home to tell him about it. 

At a red light a block away from the hospital, Luke spares a glance at Carlos, who is staring out the window and taking long, deep breaths. He’s about to say something but the light turns green and he turns back on the road before accelerating, flipping his turn signal on and pulling into the parking lot. 

He guides Carlos into the building with a hand on his shoulder and he is thankful that the pediatrics ward is mostly empty, meaning that it won’t take long to get them checked in. 

After about fifteen minutes of sitting in the waiting room, Luke having filled in all the forms, not even having to ask Carlos for the information, they call them in. It takes about two hours of looking Carlos over, performing an x-ray and getting his arm in a cast after determining that it is indeed broken. In that time, Luke has called Ray who said he would be back immediately. Luke reassured him that it was fine and that he didn’t mind staying with Carlos for the rest of the weekend. After getting a very reluctant Ray to finish his photography conference, Luke signed the discharge papers, picked up the prescription pain killers, and took Carlos home. 

The car ride back is much less stressful, with Carlos dozing off in the passenger seat and Luke turning on the radio to play some soft music. He keeps glancing at him from the corner of his eyes, trying his best to decipher how the kid is feeling. 

Once the car is parked in front of the Molina household, Carlos is suddenly hit with a burst of energy as he runs inside and immediately dials his best friend’s phone number. 

Luke rushes after him but is not fast enough because he has to get the stuff from the car. He walks through the door and catches the end of Carlos’ sentence. 

“Yeah dude broken. Like snapped in two,” he says it way more excited than someone with a broken arm should be. 

“It’s not snapped in two, you have a Torus fracture.” Luke mumbles with a roll of his eyes and a fond smile on his lips. Carlos obviously ignores him and goes on to tell his friend that he can sign his cast on Monday. 

After hanging up, Luke guided Carlos to the kitchen where Ray had told him there were left overs in the fridge for them to eat. Carlos eyes the spaghetti in the tupperware and Luke has a feeling that this is not the first time that he has had spaghetti this week. Placing the lid back on top of the container, Luke turns to Carlos ready to negotiate.

“Tell you what, we’ll order pizza if you don’t tell your dad.” Carlos grinned and nodded his head, running out of the kitchen to bring the phone to Luke.

. . .

“You know when I first started dating Julie I thought you didn’t like me,” Luke states, glancing down at the boy pressed against him on the couch. After stuffing themselves with way too much pizza, Luke and Carlos retired to the living room to watch whatever movie was playing on cable. 

“Huh?” Carlos questions, narrowing his eyes in confusion, the movie playing on the tv fully forgotten now. “Why would you think that?”

Luke shrugs. “You didn’t talk much and you always preferred to hang out with Reggie when we all came over.” He tried to sound nonchalant, not wanting Carlos to think that he is jealous (he used to be, not anymore).

“I did like you, I actually really look up to you.” Carlos turns back to the TV, letting his eyes rake over the action sequence. 

Now it is Luke’s turn to be confused. “Really?” 

“Yeah I mean, you’re so cool! You play guitar, everyone likes you, and you make Julie happy.” 

“Then why…” he trails off. 

“You were always making music, locked yourselves in the studio. I didn’t want to be a bother.” Carlos’ voice turns sad, and Luke shifts in order to be able to look at him properly. 

“You’re never a bother Carlos. You could have joined us and learned a thing or two.” Carlos picks on the edges of his cast, avoiding eye contact. 

“Music was always mom and Julie’s thing and she always said she would teach me one day, but then,” Carlos stops and takes a deep breath. “And I couldn’t ask Julie and then she joined the band so it felt like I would be intruding, somehow.” 

Luke thinks back to all the times Carlos has stayed during soundcheck for their shows, completely fascinated by them. He always thought he was looking on with pride at his sister, but now he understands that it was much more than that. He felt left out, Julie played music to connect with her mom, in order to feel her watching over. Carlos couldn’t share that connection. 

“I could teach you,” Luke says after a second. Carlos’ head snaps up, eyes disbelieving. 

“What?”

“Yeah, I’m not really an expert on the piano but I can teach you how to play guitar.” Carlos’ eyes lit up with something Luke couldn’t quite describe. In a flurry of movement, Carlos throws himself on top of Luke, who is quick to reach out and avoid falling off and further injuring the young boy. 

“Thank you,” Carlos whispers. 

After a few minutes of hugging, Luke stands up and pulls a notebook out of his backpack. It looks old, with pages falling off the seams and others taped together from loose sheets of paper. It was his first music journal that he carries everywhere even though he has no purpose for it, already knowing all of the cords scribbled down like the back of his hand. He hands it to Carlos who eyes it warily. 

“Well, I can’t teach you how to play right now so while you are recovering you can learn the cords, proper placement, all that jazz. And once you get that cast off I’ll teach you how to play,” Luke gestured down and Carlos hesitantly opened the notebook and started examining the pages. 

“You really do have horrible handwriting,” he comments. Luke gapes at him for a second then starts laughing, pushing his shoulder. Carlos smiles then starts laughing as well and then they both laugh for about twenty minutes, forgetting what actually caused them to laugh in the first place. 

[c0ffeebee]

you got any rare kliego fic recs? i’ve probably read the first five pages of most kudos’d results but i know there are a ton that slip thru the cracks

ok, i'm sorry for replying so late, nonny, but i guess looking at the list you'll understand why ❤

i'll be honest with you once i've gotten into kliego i read through their entire tag of ao3 [at least those fics where i was ok with the tags and summary felt intriguing] so now i literally went through it again and picked those of the fics the names of which i remembered, and there's A LOT 😀 some of those are really popular, some not at all, but i remember loving those ❤

at first i thought i would tell you a bit about every fic on the list, but it would take me forever, so i will just give you titles/links, authors and summaries, hope it's fine ❤ look out for the tags tho, to know if you’re fine with everything! and some of those are benkliego ❤

i'm sure i forgot or missed something, but i did my best, trust me ❤

so without further ado i present to you: 

bee's big kliego rec list (in no particular order)

till you can breathe on your own by iwishii

Diego has never been more frightened than he is now, trying to help his brother reach the surface in time.

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practice makes perfect by iwishii

Klaus doesn't want to show up to parties totally inexperienced and virginal, so he asks Diego to help him get some practice in.

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master of my domain by achilleees

“You’re asking five 13-year-old boys not to jerk off for – it can’t be done,” Luther says. “Now that we’re older, it would be different, but back then –”

“Excuse me, I could do it,” Five says. “I could certainly outlast all of you.”

They all look at each other.

“Oh, no,” says Allison.

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the year that wasn't by achilleees

Diego turned to Five. “I’ve already, uh, lived today. This has already happened.”

Everyone went still.

“Ooh, that’s a mind-fuck,” said Klaus.

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The Weight of Himself by sarkywoman

If he could, Diego would unfurl his middle finger.

For the 'can only move the eyes' square at badthingshappenbingo. Reginald's experiments have devastating consequences on Diego, but both he and Klaus refuse to let that be the end.

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Laid Bare by MilenaDaniels

“So,” Five continued matter-of-factly, “you’re in a cramped, human sized box, in a graveyard where you can’t see light or hear sounds. What are the odds that you’re above ground?”

Diego blinked. He thought he’d been smelling the iron of his blood pooling and drying under his head but it was humid in here, and musty.

“Fuck,” Diego said.

Diego and Klaus are buried alive together.

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Flies in the Kitchen by yourfearlessleader

Klaus is sixteen and love is a rot.

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Before, During, and After by yourfearlessleader

Before the apocalypse, life was making the best of a bad situation, and Klaus found that he grew up to be very good at it.

During is, for lack of a better word, hard.

After they try to kill Vanya, after the apocalypse, after they jump through time to avoid it, after they survive and make up and a million and one other things, here they are.

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break it like you're breaking a code by findyourfortunefalling

"Are you planning to sit in a chair like a person today, or are we all eating our breakfast off of you this morning?"

"Kinky," Klaus purrs, but he rolls off the table anyway, and piles himself into a seat near the head of the table. Diego puts the plate of pancakes in front of him; he's put blueberries in them today. "Thank you, chef."

"Eat," says Diego. "Quietly."

Instead of replying, Klaus picks up a pancake with his fingers, stuffs the entire thing into his mouth at once, and chews noisily.

Diego sighs, and goes back to the stove. "Man, I remember a time when you were house trained."

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two boys emerging from shadowed hallways by spikeymarshmallows

After Ben dies, Diego drags a broken Klaus out of the Academy. They're both determined to never return, to find their own way out in the world.

Things are not as easy as they would like.

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the things i can't say by  spikeymarshmallows

"Diego, wait!" Klaus shouted, clutching Diego's arm.

"You look like Antonio Banderas with long hair," he choked.

*

Five times Klaus doesn't say 'I love you'.

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Into the Night by  spikeymarshmallows

"Hey," Klaus whispered, "hey, Diego, wake up." Diego grumbled, dragging his blanket higher up his body before settling again. "Hey." Klaus tried again, voice a little louder. "Hey, wake up." He poked at Diego's arm insistently.

*

The Hargreeves siblings go on late night adventure to get doughnuts

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all tangled close by spikeymarshmallows

They were all going to have to deal with the pheromones for however long Klaus' first heat lasted.

Diego was, in a word, screwed.

*

Five times Diego and Klaus have heat sex; and one time they don't.

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the kliego genderswap/sexswap by spikeymarshmallows

The name speaks for itself.

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The Fools' Journey by sweetstuff

After his release from prison on a manslaughter charge, Diego tries to leave behind the life he adapted to survive on the inside. He finds himself drawn to a beautiful and peculiar sex worker named Klaus in a local bar, and when danger strikes Diego makes a decision that will have them both running for their lives.

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and death i think is no parenthesis by laiqualaurelote

“You guys seem really chill about all this,” observed Ben. “By this point most people are running around screaming.”

“Occupational hazard,” said Klaus.

“I’ve lost a lot of blood,” said Diego. “I’m just accepting everything at face value right now.”

Allison is the best damn realtor in the business, and she is going to sell the Hargreeves Mansion if it kills her. Never mind that it’s packed to the rafters with the ghastly relics of grisly murders, or that there’s a vampire in the basement who looks like a 13-year-old, or that the medium she hired to exorcise its inhabitants keeps flirting with some of them, i.e. the one with the knives and the one with the tentacles. Or that if they all spend enough time together, they just might cause the apocalypse.

NotSiblings!AU that is basically The Umbrella Academy as American Horror Story: Murder House, though you need not have seen any AHS to read this.

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i got troubles (they won't let me be) by antipathy

“I don’t understand why you’re hung up on this.” Five didn’t bother to mask his scowl. “Let me spell it out for you: either you two fuck, or we all die.”

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Eye Of The Storm by shadowhive

Diego decides to surprises Klaus by taking them on a weekend trip, but it doesn’t go as planned.

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Mine, All Mine by Electra_XT

“No!” Klaus said. “Move the other way.”

“What are you trying to get a good look at, exactly?” Diego said.

Klaus blinked at him. His eyes were wide and kohl-rimmed, as fetching and alluring as the rest of him. “Why, your ass,” he said. “That thing is fine.”

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On Sight by Electra_XT

“Oh,” Klaus said, stopping in his tracks with his hand on the mouse.

Ben leaned over his shoulder. ��‘Cute Latino camboy gives a show’?”

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Practice Makes Perfect Sense by punk_rock_yuppie

“Practice… kissing?” Diego asks.

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Aftershocks by punk_rock_yuppie

Saving the world is hard work, is Klaus’ last thought before succumbing to the heat of the puppy pile he and his other siblings have formed.

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Passenger by Cunninglinguist

“And you’re sure that’s okay?”

“I mean, yeah. It’s fine with me. All we have to do is ask Diego.”

“And you think he’ll be...cool with it?”

“Dunno.” Klaus shrugs and stirs his smoothie with his straw. “But I’m on board with it, and he usually gets on board with whatever I’m on board with, so. I’d say it’s at least worth an ask.”

Klaus feels Ben’s eyes burning into him as he sips his beverage. Sure, the idea of Ben possessing him had initially been about as appealing as a coffee enema, and the first few times in practice had been more than slightly traumatizing. But once they’d established ground rules and worked to get more in tune with one another, Klaus had come to find the experience to be...interesting. It could be pleasant, almost zen—there is no sensation in the world quite like being a passenger in one's own body. And to be privy to both his own sensations as well as Ben’s? Well, that’s something else entirely.

Which is why the idea of Ben possessing his body during sex both freaks him out and turns him on in equal measure.

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i am a dark and wicked thing by Cunninglinguist

Klaus is staring at Diego with hollow eyes, straw still perched between his lips. No reaction, not even a spark of joy or schadenfreude as he watches Diego disrupt breakfast. Diego shifts. He’s seen corpses before, and were Klaus not sitting close enough to touch, chest rising and falling visibly with his breath, Diego could easily mistake him for one.

Vampire!Klaus AU

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The Diamond Sinners by Cunninglinguist

Another drink and a half later, he’s finally back on the right side of numb. The house lights dim and a new dancer is announced. He’s gazing across the club, eyeing the buffet with semi-tipsy hunger, thinking that it’s probably time to call it a night, when suddenly, his heart stops dead in his chest.

There, onstage, rolling his lithe body sensuously against the pole like he was summoned out of one of Diego’s wet dreams, is Klaus.

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Broken Like Me by Starrstruck_64

“This s-s-stuff will kill you,” he says plucking the cigarette out of Klaus’ fingers, delighting slightly in the fact that he’d only partially stumbled through the sentence.

Klaus smirks and it’s such a far cry from his fun loving brother he had two weeks ago that Diego nearly flinches.

“Ever stop and think that’s the plan,” Klaus says moving to stand and reaching to snag the cigarette back.

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sing it out, hard as you can by plingo_kat

The first time it happens, Klaus doesn’t notice.

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Soft by Dirty_Corza

Sometimes, between the boxing matches and vigilante business, Diego likes to be soft.

Klaus and Ben surprise him by liking the softer side of him, too.

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Wait for it by nishiki

A mission gone wrong, a dream shattered.

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all that i have to lose by UnrememberedSkies

Diego does some good, and Klaus pays the price. 

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wasp by Chelseylovesllamas

Diego is scared of bugs, Klaus saves the day.

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Friday at Four by Kliegology

Diego's life takes a nosedive when he's forced out of work and into an art therapy class. He's clinging to his last shred of normality when he meets Klaus, who takes one look at him and threatens to tear it away.

“I think you’ll find you have a lot in common with the other people there,” The Therapist said, watching him shrewdly.

Diego was vividly reminded of the jittery, barefoot man in the pink fluffy cardigan. He snorted. “I don’t think so.”

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[thewritewolf]

After the End Chapter 25: Study

First | Previous | Next | Last

@marichatmay

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3

“So is this everything you’ve got from daddio?”

Adrien looked at the mountain of paperwork, spread across folders and binders and ledgers, stacked precariously in his father’s old office, then looked back at his best friend with disbelief.

“Did you want more to go through?”

“Chill, bro. Just tryin’ to get the lay of the land, ya know?”

Alya put a hand on both of their shoulders. “Don’t worry, this is more than enough to work with. Let’s just start going through all this with an eye for detail and see where it takes us.”

“I just don’t know what we’re hoping to find.” Adrien let out an exhausted sigh as he pulled up a seat and grabbed a stack at random. “I’ve been pouring over this stuff for months now. What else could there be to find?”

“Adrien, my chaton, I think the world of you, but you don’t have a deceitful bone in your body.” Marinette took up a spot near him and took a ledger. “Besides, you haven’t exactly been in the best mindset while you’ve been on your own.”

“Having a bunch of extra eyes lookin’ at this stuff is only gonna do us some good. I’d bet my hat on it, bro.”

“I’m hoping you’re right.” Adrien’s eyes went distant for a moment as he frowned at a paper in front of him. “Otherwise, I don’t know how we’re going to tackle the Gentlemen.”

The next hour was spent with each of them pouring over documents from the elder Agreste, from anywhere between fourteen years ago and a month before the battle that ended his life. Despite his fears that it would be another tedious slog like it had been the first time, the off and on conversation with his friends kept things lively. At least, as lively as they could be while they were digging through his dead dad’s stuff.

With Marinette sitting so close to him, he was the first one to realize that something was up. He noticed that she was flipped back and forth between two pages, her nose crinkling in the way that he’d long come to associate with intense focus while she was in the mask.

He craned his neck to look at what she was, but it just looked like some internal memo from a couple years ago. There were vague memories of him looking through it weeks ago but it was just another dreary Agreste communication.

“Something up, m’lady?”

She held up one finger without looking up. By this point the others had started paying attention to her. All three of them waited for her to finish whatever it was she was doing. After a few minutes her eyes widened and she gasped.

“That’s it!” Her eyes locked onto his. “There’s some kind of message hidden here!”

“Wait, are you sure?” Adrien leaned over her shoulder but didn’t see anything out the ordinary.

“Yes!” Marinette pointed out a couple words in the middle of the memo. “There are a couple letters that have been randomly capitalized here.”

“Well, Nathalie was usually pretty overworked so I’m not too-”

“But its not just that! There is a lot more paragraphs than what a tiny memo like this would really need. And if you pull out all the capital letters from each paragraph…”

She sketched some notes on the side. Spaced out like she said and with the letters in place, they almost looked like a small sentence. A sentence with completely jumbled up words, but still.

“Okay…” Adrien felt a spark of excitement. He hadn’t expected to find something so quickly. “What do we do now then? It doesn’t make any sense like it is right now.”

“That’s where we come in.” Alya took the paper from Marinette’s hand. “Nino, M - keep digging through those memos. Adrien, find as many of those as you can to pass to them.” Alya pulled out her phone and began typing furiously. “And can you give me any important words that your father might have used as a cipher?”

After another hour of frantic work, they’d compiled a few whole papers of transcribed secret messages. They’d even pinned down that the only ones with messages were memos on the Wednesdays of each week, for whatever reason. And eventually Alya cracked the code - naturally, the magic word had been ‘Emily.’

Working as a team, they managed to get an entire one sided conversation decoded.

“Any idea where the other half could be?” Adrien said as they finished up.

Alya shrugged. “No clue. But these were internal memos, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So the Gentlemen had to have at least one person on the inside of the company.” Alya frowned and tapped at her chin.

“I’d bet that he also had them respond from the inside then too.”

Nino gave him a confused look. “What makes you say that, bro?”

“He was a control freak. There was no way he’d let it go out into something he couldn’t control, like the newspaper.”

Alya frowned in thought. “You might be onto something there, but we don’t know for sure right. We’ll have to make do with what we have right now.” She looked over at Marinette, who was pouring over the notes that they had made. “So… what’s it all worth, M? Was it worth two hours of our time?”

Marinette nodded slowly and looked up at them with her lips pursed into a thin, pale line. “This was without a doubt worth the effort to get it.”

“Well don’t keep us in suspense, girl! Spill the beans!”

“They’ve been working on this for a while, but basically?” Marinette took a deep breath. “They’ve got pieces of the old Guardian monastery and are using that to turn off kwami powers.”

They exchanged looks with each other.

“You’re… gonna have to explain that to us, girl.”

Marinette rubbed her temples. “Okay, so the Guardians are responsible for taking care of the miraculous, right?”

“Yeah…” Adrien glanced at the other two, who were just nodding along.

“Well, Hawkmoth wasn’t the first time a chosen has gone rogue. So they made their main base out of stuff that was pretty resistant to the powers of the miraculous. Or, well, they enchanted their stained glass and masonry to be that way.” She looked at Adrien. “If you tried to Cataclysm their building at the height of their power, it would have absolutely no effect.”

“But didn’t they get wiped out by an amok?”

“Yes - the powers of an amok, not the miraculous itself.”

“Seems like a pretty big flaw,” Alya said, crossing her arms.

“To be fair to them, those powers are both the hardest to account for, and have the miraculous holders easiest to take out in a one on one fight. After all, the butterfly and peacock miraculous don’t help much in a direct battle - they’re only good for attacks from a distance.”

“So - what?” Nino rubbed his temples. “They nicked some old rocks and that makes ‘em supes powerful?”

“Something like that.”

“Wait.” Adrien held up a hand. “Didn’t the old monastery get restored by the Ladybug cure years ago? Wouldn’t the monastery have resisted that?”

“Apparently the enchantments wore off a lot, and they had to spend years restoring them.” Marinette smiled. “But you’re right - the monastery is back. Which means they won’t be able to get more pieces of it, at least not without fighting a bunch of mystical warrior monks who know this stuff way better than they do.”

“But where does that leave us now?” Alya asked, elbows on her legs as she leaned forward.

“It means two things.” Marinette held up one finger. “First, it means that we know what these… let’s call them lodestones will look like. Old masonry, maybe something glass or jewel-like.”

Adrien’s eyes flew open. “Like that egg the Gentlemen dropped to get out of the alley!”

“Exactly! And two,” she held up a second finger. “Once their current stock is gone, they have no way of getting more. I’m also going to bet that they won’t be keeping all their lodestones in one place - between each one being a huge source of protection, from what I understand of Guardian magic, having them charged like this and too close together would break them. ”

“So… where do we start, then?”

“The lodestones need to be activated to work, and I doubt they’re going to keep them turned on all the time even though we know where they are.” Marinette started pacing. “And we know that since Chat’s transformation didn’t immediately drop that powers active before the lodestones are introduced are unaffected.”

Marinette stopped and grinned at them.

“I have a plan.”

[preciousthingsareprecious]

Finding Us Chapter 21

Alright! Here I am at last with another Tim chapter! I hope you guys enjoy it. 

AO3 Link

~

Tim couldn’t deny the excitement bubbling up in his chest at the idea of progress in the stalker case. It fueled his desire to keep moving in other directions, while he waited on Damian to finish his sketch he dove back into work on the Alkali case.

Currently, he was trying once again not to backseat hack as Barbara was finally digging through the Alkali’s files. After their trip to the physical location, Babs had used the access gained through Stephanie to create her own back door and they’d sat on that for a little while to make sure no one found it.

It was early the morning after Damian’s encounter with the creepy man and Tim was in the belfry standing over Barbara’s shoulder because there was nothing to currently do on the stalker case. Tim hadn’t recognized Damian’s sketch of the guy he’d seen, and so they were waiting on facial recognition to grab his identity. The kid’s sketch was definitely good enough for the system to pick something up, they just had to wait.

“Have you found anything interesting yet?” he asked, trying not to bounce on his toes.

“Lots. Nothing we’re looking for. Though, there is a guy here who’s last name is Bandersnatch, which is pretty cool.”

She was teasing, but Tim could also hear the note of warning in her voice. When she found what they were looking for she’d tell him, and he shouldn’t keep pushing. He sighed, and turned to step across the room, over to a mini fridge installed for snacks.

“Want a soda?” he called.

She shook her head, “It’s too early for that, toss me a tea.” she answered.

He grabbed a bottle of tea out for Babs and a can of orange soda for himself and moved back over to the computer.

“Thanks for helping on this.” he said, handing her the tea, then cracking open his soda.

“Of course, the sooner we get these guys the better.”

Tim agreed, and sipped at his soda while he played a matching game on his phone in an attempt to both distract and stop himself from tossing advice Barbara’s way. He got stuck on a particularly difficult level and found himself totally lost in it for a while, trying again and again to win. It made the waiting a lot easier, even if he also kind of wanted to toss his phone out the window and watch it crash at the bottom of the building.  

“Got something.” Babs said at last.

Tim looked up bleary eyed, blinking away red diamonds and orange squares. It took his brain a moment to register what she’d said before he stood up, the chair shaking.

“Great!” he hurried over to look at the screen again, “What’d you find?”

“Well, under the private files I found some that were locked with a password, after cracking that I found these.”

The file she’d opened was filled with unreadable text.

“It’s encrypted?” Tim asked.

“I think it’s some kind of cypher. See it follows a sort of pattern. Nothing too overt or easy like a caesar cipher. It’s got to have a key.”

Tim hummed, she was right, the text was filled with letters and numbers and broken up in a way that looked like lines of real text, if they’d been in any kind of legible order.

“Well then we’d better get to cracking it.”

They worked for a couple hours trying to figure out what cypher had been used, and testing various codes to no avail. Eventually they decided to give it some time to breathe, and their brains time to think of new ideas. Babs forwarded him the files so he could keep looking over them later and Tim left her to work on other projects.

As he was leaving, he found Cassandra waiting for him down at the base of the Belfry. She was eating a cinnamon roll like it was a doughnut.

“Hey.” she said, handing him a cup of coffee, and shaking her wrist and the plastic bag hanging off it.

Tim took the offered cup, then tugged the bag off her free hand checking inside. A second cinnamon roll sat tucked into a nest of napkins. He fished it out, careful not to spill his drink then copied Cass, taking a huge bite out of the side.

It was still warm, and the taste of cinnamon and sugar danced across his tongue in a way that made him think of home. Of early Saturday mornings with Alfred, stirring together a bowl of butter, sugar, and cinnamon so the man could carefully spread it across dough. Or of Bruce dropping off a few in his room, ruffling his hair, and telling him he should probably finish his homework before working on another case.

“Ready to head back?” she asked.

He washed down the bite of bread with some coffee and nodded, “Yeah, I think Babs and I have done all we can. How’re things back at the manor?”

Cass shrugged, “Everyone is still waiting on the results of the search, so they all split up to work on other things.”

They moved to the car Cass had brought to pick him up in, it was one of Bruce's many cars, black and not too fancy. Tim held a hand out for the keys and after an eye roll Cass dropped them in his palm.

“I drove here.” she argued.

“You drive too fast for me and my coffee.” he replied.

“Fair.” she shrugged.

As Tim pulled away from the clocktower, still munching on his cinnamon roll Cass pipped back up.

“Can we stop at the craft store?”

He glanced at her, “Sure, but why?”

“Damian wanted some more colored pencils. He sent a list and asked me to stop if I had time.” She tugged a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and opened it to show him.

A detailed list of colors, brands, and what not to buy’s filled the page in Damian’s neat, tight, handwriting. Tim was surprised to find a little picture of a dog at the bottom of the page, it wasn’t as detailed as Damian usually did, and smiling for some reason.

“He drew it as a thank you, and promised to make me a better one with the pencils.” Cass said, catching where Tim’s eye had fallen, then she added, “Eyes on the road.”

Tim flicked the turn signal on the car to indicate he needed to go left, towards the craft store Damian frequented, “Why didn’t he come if he wanted to restock?”

Cass shrugged again, and folded the paper instead of crumpling it back up. She set it in her lap, fingers tapping on the paper with gentle tip taps.

Damian rarely missed a chance to get his own art supplies. He was as picky about them as Tim was over film or lenses for his cameras. Sure it was just a few replacement pencils, but even those Tim knew Damian would linger over for an hour if he was left to it. He wondered briefly if his mild concussion had anything to do with staying home. Maybe Alfred had told him he couldn’t leave? But no, it had been days at this point, he was probably cleared at last for most activities.

Maybe it was because he knew Cass was headed to pick up Tim.

He tried not to think too hard on that thought. They hadn’t really talked much lately. Both had been busy with their own things, and besides that, they didn’t really talk a lot to begin with. He’d thought they were doing better, but at the same time Tim knew they weren’t.

Tim reached out to snatch his coffee and take a sip from it. Now that he thought about it, maybe they were doing better after all. Damian had called him by his first name the night before. And he’d gone looking for clues as to Tim’s stalker. A queasy feeling bubbled up in Tim’s stomach. He’d been quick to dismiss Damian’s attempted apology back when they’d been at the mall, and now he was starting to wonder if he'd been really trying to mend that bridge. T im loved the idea of having a little brother, and way back when he'd first met Damian he'd been happy to have one, for all of two seconds. Still, sometimes he thought they had found that perfect spot of being siblings, and other times it felt like there was a gaping hole between them. Especially lately.

He pulled into the store’s parking lot not even realizing they’d made it there, his body on autopilot. Cass cheered as she climbed out of the car, and Tim stayed quiet.

When he looked up at the storefront he figured it out.

He might be jealous. Of the squirt.

Maybe it wasn't their past that was bothering him so much lately, but their present. Tim thought he'd shaken off those feelings in regards to Jason and Damian, but maybe he hadn't. Even in the wake of the family’s eyes turning on him Tim still couldn’t stop thinking about how Damian seemed to draw everyone in all the time. Dick, then Jason, Bruce with his fretting after they’d gotten hurt. It was--it was like he fit in a way Tim couldn’t quite imagine himself fitting again.  Like they were both the same piece, and there was only one spot left on the puzzle, and Damian had swooped in just in time to fill it. Even now, he felt odd about the attention. Like the moment everything was done his family would stop looking at him again. Stop seeing Tim, because he’d messed up. He’d failed to be the one to fix everything and he no longer deserved to be seen.

“Tim?”

“Coming!” he said, locking the car door.

Inside he was hit with the smell of paint and paper. The whole place was a kaleidoscope of colors and supplies crammed together in a space that should have felt cluttered, but instead actually seemed homely. He followed Cass to the pencils and held each as she selected them, reading Damian’s list carefully, then making Tim double check “ just in case” .

He thought they’d be in and out, but once they’d found Damian’s stuff Cass insisted on browsing. Tim followed her, feeling a bit like Titus pattering after Damian as he instructed the dog on something very un-dog-like and soon his arms were full.

Cass had added extra packs of less high quality colored pencils, crayons, thin markers --not thick, because apparently those didn’t trace well-- and made him pick out a coloring book. She selected one full of animals, and Tim picked one that was more abstract. Like black and white stained glass. He and Cass locked eyes on an adult swear word coloring book and both grinned.

“For Jason?” Tim asked.

“And one for Dick.” Cass grinned.

Soon they’d selected adult coloring books for the whole family. Some simply because they knew they’d get a laugh out of them, and others from the knowledge of the recipient getting genuine delight from it.

By the time they left, Tim was feeling better. His day brightened even more when Cass hooked an arm through his at home, and dragged him into the living room.

“We are going to color and watch She-Ra.” she declared.

He could have argued and said he had work to do. But he knew Cass would tell him a break was good. And wasn’t that what he’d just told Babs? He could have fallen into other cases or dug out his 3Ds to play some Animal Crossing. But the best idea in the whole world right then was sitting on the floor and coloring with his sister, and he wasn’t going to pass it up.

He filled in two whole pages, first lined with marker --Cass had been right about the thin ones-- then colored in as dark as he could with his own box of colored pencils. At some point the sounds of She-Ra had been turned down as he and Cass chatted about everything.

She told stories of an adventure with Steph. He talked about Mindbender and how weird it was to have Jason in the house again. Then about how cool it was to have Jason in the house. Cass told him about a ballet she’d seen. All of it, whether it was little nothings or big changes, ebbed and flowed to the scritch scritch of pencil on paper, and legs folded up or kicked into the air.

At some point, Alfred brought in cocoa and water. Then sandwiches. Dick breezed through and gasped over his book, stopping to color in all of an F before getting bored and breezing back out. Jason cackled over his book, and then genuinely thanked them for thinking of him. Damian collected his pencils, didn’t complain about a single one, and stared at his own book of animals to color like it was made of gold before tucking it under an arm and scurrying away.

Bruce stayed the longest, lounging on a couch to add his own commentary between theirs, infrequent, but enough to say “I’m here, I’m listening, I love you.” before he too was called away. He planted a kiss on each of their heads before leaving.

It was Stephanie who broke up the peace. Showing up like a tornado, and stirring them from settled spaces into laughter. They traded pencils for controllers and fired up Smash Brothers for a wholly different, but still perfect, adventure.

There, surrounded in waves by his family Tim wondered if he’d been wrong earlier. If maybe the puzzle had room for all of them. And every time someone new came in, it just expanded and made room for them. He certainly felt like he fit in, and it was really nice.