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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 3 years ago

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Mind The Gap: One

Summary: In an age of Heroes, there's always one more Villain. Can Shang- Chi handle his girlfriend needing to walk a Hero's Journey of her own? And how will he handle the two of you not being the only "people" in your relationship?

“Where are you?”

“I’m safe- well. Relatively speaking.”

“Y/N-” He tightened his grip on the phone like it was a life line. Like if he clung on hard enough, he could find you somehow.

“I promise to explain it all when I get back,” you say slowly, in what you hope is a relaxed tone of voice. It’s a little had to do with a desert Eagle pointed directly at your nose but for Shang-Chi, to keep him out of this you’d try.

“Please,” he whispered. He could hear the difference in your tone. It wasn’t your usual easy going voice. The one that filled him with a sense of calm. There was a sharpness. And under current he’d only heard once before. And it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“Tell Katy I’m sorry I have to miss Karaoke night,” you try, hoping to break his concentration. “I have to go, I love you.”

And before he can get anything else out, the line goes dead. The line goes dead and he can feel a hollow ache in his chest. One that tells him you’re in trouble. Big trouble. And without being able to keep you on the phone, there’s no telling where you went.

“She’s smart,” Xialing said frowning. “Either she’s done this before or she was warned. But we couldn’t get a fix on her.”

“She’s an archive,” Shang Chi said, trying not to sound bitter, “Smart is an understatement.” He folded his arms and looked over Xailing’s shoulder frowning. There had to be a pattern. Something had to make sense. You were a creature of habit. Very particular habits. When you ate and when you slept was a strict schedule. And on the run you’d be trying to hold on to something… Unless that was all part of your cover, too.

“What happens if-”

Shang- Chi felt his head jerk up and his eyes narrow, making Katy flinch reflexively, “If we can’t find her?” he finished.

Katy nodded hesitantly and he exhaled slowly trying to rein in his temper, “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

____

You toss your phone away carelessly and listen to the sound of a heavy boot crushing it under heel and scattering the pieces. But still, you don’t look away from the man pointing a gun at you.

“Not bad for a librarian… A little on the nose don’t you think?” he scoffed.

You force yourself into a nonchalant shrug and smile a little, “The best place to hide is in plain sight. At least some of the time.”

And that’s the last thing you managed to get out before that Desert Eagle cracked across the side of your face, sending you into the dark once more.

________

Wenwu watched his son pace, trying to stem the tide of panic. Your phone had gone from ringing out to nothing. Straight to voice mail.

“You got me, leave a message. Or don’t. Whatever.”

“Does she have enemies?”

Shang-Chi exhaled slowly and took a deep breath, “None. At least none that I know about. She avoided the snap but… There’s a bit of time before she wound up in the City she doesn’t really talk about.”

“So she could have enemies?”

He stopped and carded his fingers through his hair, “If not enemies because of who she is then… maybe because of what she is.”

“What she is?”

Shang Chi nodded reluctantly. He wasn’t even sure he completely understood. He only knew that your brother had warned him. Told him that there were things you could do that were… rare. That might attract attention. And he wasn’t sure if he could share that information. Even if it might bring you home. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. For all he knew you could be dying. You could be dead and it could already be too late. But if there was a chance… No matter how small, he could take your anger. He could take you never speaking to him again. As long as he knew you were alive.

She’s an- an Archive,” he said slowly. “At least. That’s what the world knows them as now, I guess.”

He watched in apprehension as he saw his Father’s eyes widen in understanding and it was clear that he’d met, or at least heard of the Archives before.

“What does she hold?” he asked, seriously.

“Secrets. Things that are hidden.”

Even as Shang-Chi heard himself say the words, he knew he didn’t understand, not really. That had been what your Brother had told him. Quickly. Quietly. While you were distracted with a tea kettle and getting out the mugs. And even his most intense searches could turn up no information.

“Secrets?” Wenwu repeated, “Such as?”

And all Shang-Chi could do was shrug. He’d seen you at work. Your fingers brushing the spines of books. Tenderly. Almost lovingly. And he’d thought that it was cute. That it was an extension of your curiosity. A love of knowing. He thought of the way you’d told him once that Libraries were where you felt at home. Where you felt safe. He thought of the evenings when he came to walk you home. The serenity in the security lights. The way you smiled at him. And his chest throbbed. The secrets you knew probably didn’t include any martial arts.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, leaning heavily against the table, hanging his head. “The only information I have came second hand from her brother. And even then, he only told me that she isn’t human. At least not all human.”

He didn’t like to think about it. And he didn’t like to think about the distance he tried to put between you when he found out. Or how that distance had lead him here. The reaction that had made you avoid coming to him for help. He felt the hand on the back of his neck. But it didn’t register. Not really. In the back of his head, he could hear you. A casual fact. Things about Aliester Crowley. Or Agrippa. Or the Knights Templar.

You’d always written off questions about it as being a weird kid. Or by reminding people that you had a doctorate in Anthropology. But it wasn’t… It never felt like that. It felt like you had just… said it.

Shang Chi didn’t need to be looking at his father to know he was frowning. Thinking. “If we can’t get to her, I need to try to call her brother.”

“What is her brother?”

“An engineer,” Shang Chi said smiling a little. And a former Marine. But he was going to keep that to himself. He had a hunch that your best chance wasn’t going to involve his Father going on a recruiting mission simultaneously.

Wenwu’s frown deepened but he nodded as he watched his son pull a card from his wallet and dial the number.

“Kai-”

“We have a problem,” Shang Chi said quickly, “Y/N is missing.”

“Missing missing or went camping for a couple days?”

“Missing, Missing,” he clarified, “I got a phone call an hour ago and she hung up before we could trace it.”

“Let me call you back-”

And the line went dead before he could say more. “Shit,” he hissed. He wasn’t sure what Pandora’s box had been opened with that phone call. And he hated bumbling around in the dark. He hated not knowing if you were safe. If you were hurt.

“He said he’d call back,” Katy said helpfully, “Maybe he’s calling family.”

“I don’t know if there’s any family to call,” he said pinching the bridge of his nose. He could kick himself for not pressing you for answers. He hadn’t because he’d not been prepared to give you any. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to drag you into his life but. It was looking more and more like he might not have any choice.

When the phone in his hand rang he almost dropped it and had to fumble with it for a second before he could answer, “Kai-”

“I’m assuming you aren’t alone,” the other man said shortly, “I’ll text you the coordinates. Get there as quickly as you can. I’m not sure if we’re going to extract her or clean up the mess. Those idiots have a tiger by the tail and they don’t even know it.”

The call ended and all Shang-Chi could do was stare at the phone for a second, “What the fu-”

“Y/N,” Katy demanded, “Our Y/N? The dirty chai loving, vintage wearing Y/N that cried for 30 minutes at the end of the brave little toaster?”

“Evidently-” he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Does anyone else here have a secret badass origin story?” she yelped, “What the hell?”

_________

The coordinates were, So far as anyone could tell, in the middle of nothing. A waste land of tall grass and trails left by herds of cattle in Montana.

But, even without asking he knew he was in the right place. There was a palpable sense of… mayhem in the air. Like the feeling before a nasty storm. Rising anxiety and energy crackling on the wind. Everyone was affected and everyone was quiet.

It wasn’t until they got closer that Shang-Chi and Katy could pick Kai out of the small knot of people. And it was something of a comfort that he looked relaxed. Or at least unconcerned.

“Hey,” Kai said taking a slow drag off his cigarette and exhaling a cloud of smoke towards the sky. He didn’t seem the least Perturbed that Shang-Chi hadn’t come alone. Or that they were all dressed for a fight.

“What-”

“We’re waiting,” Kai said shrugging. “She’s got to take the vortex apart. Then we mop up whatever comes out of it.”

Almost on cue, a Motor Cycle comes roaring over the flat ground as an explosion rattled the ground beneath their feet. “2 hell hounds and at least a baker's dozen in demons, grades 4 to 2.” The words sound like they're coming from you but. You don’t look like you. Skin coated in soot and eyes shining like silver in moonlight. It makes Shang-chi want to shake you.

“Y/N-” He starts, but when you look at him, he doesn’t know what to say. Or where to start.

“You’ll know what it is when you see it,” you say, spitting a mouthful of blood into the grass. “Take it down quickly. Headshots. If it doesn’t go down run for me. Demons don’t play. And, I make better bait. The rest of you are kinda like designer purses. Nice to have but ultimately disposable.”

“Is the vortex closed?” Kai asked grinding the cigarette out with his heel.

“With half the Golden Dagger on the other side of it. Everyone else scattered before I could get anything else for Lea.”

And then there wasn’t time for you to answer anything else. As the small hoard surged into the open field, Kai almost lazily tossed you the other sword he’d had strapped across his back and it was all a blur.

You were a blur. Almost preternaturally fast as you dismembered the bodies that hurtled towards you. It wasn’t until the last demon crackled on the fire that you crumpled like paper, sagging heavily against Shang-Chi who had made his way to your side.

“Shi-” he caught you, if only just. The dead weight taking him by surprise. And the warmth of the blood running over his hands. He could only gasp before the rest of Kai’s team descended like a plague of helpful locusts, loading you quickly onto the nearest stretcher and starting to try and repair the damage.

“I wonder how long she was out,” Kai mused, lighting another cigarette. “Or if she remembers anything. She doesn’t always.”

Shang- Chi opened his mouth to ask, wiping blood off his lip with the back of his hand, but Kai only shook his head. “She told you she’d explain. Let her do it.”

“Will she be okay?” He heard himself ask, but as he watched you loaded into a helicopter, nothing felt real. He’d just watched you dismember a demon. You’d looked at him… But hadn’t seen him. You didn’t look at him like you even knew who he was.

“She will,” Kai answered, looking at him sympathetically. “It takes time… but. The Archive has a vested interest in keeping her alive.”

____________

“Hey.”

“You look like hell.”

“Gee thanks,” you sigh, wincing as you try and sit up straighter. “You should see the other guy.”

“I did,” he said. And he can’t stop the frown when he looks down at your hands. They’re clean now. No trace of the black blood you’d been coated in. You looked like you. Your eyes were the same color that they’d always been.

“I’m sorry that I lied,” you tell him. “That I didn’t come clean when you came back from Ta-lo with Katy. I just… I guess I was still holding out hope that I could be normal.” You look away from him, taking a deep breath. “Becoming an Archive… I always hoped it wouldn’t be me. And then it was. And it was… it was a blessing and a curse.”

“You weren’t born an Archive?”

You shake your head and exhale slowly, “I was born a witch. If Lea and my grandmother can be believed, the most powerful witch born into this family in 400 years. I became An Archive when I was 12.” You swallow hard and take the hand that reaches for yours. “It- I remember the pain. I don’t remember much from before. I remember smoke and screaming. And I remember… I remember hunters and- and- when I woke up I was here.”

Shang-Chi squeezed your hand and reached up to touch your cheek, wiping away tears with his thumb. He’d been ready to be angry. He’d been hurt. But now all he wanted was to pull you closer. “The scars on your back-”

“I’ve been told it’s best that I don’t know,” you murmur. “Lea- She knows but.” You stop and take another deep breath.

For a moment, there is silence. It stretches out around the two of you while Shang-Chi digests those pieces of information and you try to try to put together a coherent explanation. Beyond the door, you can hear voices mingling in the kitchen. Katy. Kai. Lea. Wenwu. Xialing. Cousins. Your Grandmother. Both familiar and strange.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Shang- Chi asked quietly.

“Calling you… I know I told you I’d explain I just- I don’t know how.”

Shang-Chi smiles a little, “It’s probably harder given there’s a lot you don’t remember.”

“A little,” you murmur. “Sometimes, the Archive condescends to tell me what they’ve been doing with my body but other times? It feels a little like waking up from closing down the Karaoke bar.”

“How much time are you missing now?”

“A day. Maybe two. I’m not sure.”

“What’s the longest time span you don’t remember?”

“Close to a year,” you sigh. “If my physical body is in danger, The Archive will take the driver’s seat until the danger has passed OR It’s deemed that I can handle it on my own… Now that I’m older and I’ve grown into the powers I was given I spend a lot more time driving.”

“Even when you’re with me?”

“The Archive seems to think it can trust you. Though if it’s just with my physical body or with the things we know I’m not sure. Sometimes it views those things as one and the same.”

“Do you- I mean. When we’re alone?”

“You mean when we’re having sex?” The blush that blooms over his cheeks makes you smile a little. “I mean. The Archive lives in my head. Sometimes it has notes though… I don’t know how it would know-”

“Notes?”

You nod and roll your eyes. And even if he’s confused and a little offended, he can’t help but chuckle, “What kind of notes?”

“Ugh-” you groan, “No. We’re not humoring the freeloader in my head.”

#Shang-Chi #Shang-Chi x reader #fluff #angst #cannon violence

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minor-solemnity · 4 years ago

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Invention and Intrigue pt.2

Tag List: @jinxqsu @cakesarecute @naps-and-lemons @mainlynonsense @riddles-wifey

He’s looking at you as though he knows you, as though he sees something familiar in you. The thought makes the hairs on the back of your arms stand on end. He reaches out, cups your cheek gently and then lets his hand drop to his side. “Show me the spell.”

You spend the next week swinging wildly between panic and resignation. You can’t figure out why Riddle wouldn’t go to the Headmaster - he’s Head Boy. As far as you’re aware, he’s never broken a rule in his entire academic career and it’s no secret the kind of company he keeps. So why on earth would he allow you to get away with what you’ve done? It’s this question that sends you half-mad with paranoia and anxiety. You see Lestrange glowering at you whenever you pass him and there’s a large part of you that’s beginning to suspect that Riddle hasn’t told any of the professors because he and Lestrange are planning something far worse than expulsion for you. Revenge is the only explanation you can think of.

Melanie, bless her, remains blissfully unaware of the fact that you’re spiralling into a vortex of paranoia and worry. She chats happily to you over breakfast on Thursday morning about George Warrington, about how he’s been a perfect gentleman so far. He pulls her chair out for her in the lessons they share together, offers her his cloak when she complains about the cold, laughs at her jokes even when they’re not funny. You smile and nod and hum your happiness for her in all the right places but your eyes remain fixed on the Slytherin table across from you.

You absently take a sip of your tea and almost spit it back out when Riddle suddenly looks up from his breakfast and meets your eye, as though he knew you’d been watching him this whole time. He cocks his head to the side and even from this distance you can see the amused smirk playing on his lips. He raises his glass up and inclines his head slightly in a mock toast. A toast to what? Your idiocy for cursing Lestrange in public? The knowledge he has over you? Your impending demise? He takes a long sip of his drink and you don’t want to notice (but do anyway) the elegant column of his neck, the shift in his throat as he swallows. He maintains eye contact and smirks, a thumb rising to dab at his mouth. You’re gaze snaps to your porridge in front of you and ignore the way your cheeks feel suddenly hot.

“Are you alright? You look rather flushed,” Melanie asks, finally halting her increasingly giddy descriptions of George’s skill with his broom to look at you quizzically.

“Mmm, fine. Just, you know tired. Dreading Herbology. The usual.” She purses her lips in a way that suggests she doesn’t quite believe you but you’re saved from having to answer any of her questions when George makes an appearance next to him. She beams up at him and you watch with mild nausea as he kisses her on the mouth. You’re no prude by any means, but watching your best friend and her new beau learn the crevices of each others’ mouths before nine o’clock is a little much. You cough a little pointedly but Melanie is evidently too distracted to notice so, with a roll of your eyes, you grab your satchel and head for the exit.

You’ve still got another half an hour before Herbology starts but it’s a nice day so you settle down on one of the stone benches by the greenhouses and pull out the book you’ve been reading. It’s a deceptively thin, nondescript text and you’ve read it cover-to-cover at least three times already. Still, it’s one of the most useful books you’ve found on breaking down spell components to their most fundamental parts. You’re so engrossed in your reading that you don’t acknowledge the person who has just sat down beside you.

A flash of gold and onyx obscures the print and Riddle is plucking the book from your hands. “Excuse me, I was reading that,” You squawk, making a grabbing motion to retrieve your book. Riddle looks entirely unperturbed, he’s lounging out on the stone bench, long legs stretched out in front of him. He looks positively regal. He ignores you as his eyes flick rapidly over the page you’d just been reading. “Do you mind?” And maybe it isn’t particularly smart of you to snap at him the way you are. He has more than enough ammunition against you to ruin your life and the fact that he hasn’t yet only serves to make you warier of him. But you hate people touching your things. It reminds you too much of all the times in your first few years at Hogwarts when little snot-nosed purebloods had taunted you by messing with your things.

“Not particularly, no,” He says at last and you don’t like the amusement that laces his voice. You don’t like it one bit. It reminds you that when you peel back the layers of good manners and cultivated gentility, Tom Riddle is just as snakelike as the rest of his house. “This is an interesting choice,” He continues as if he’s oblivious to your less than charitable feelings towards him. “Though perhaps less surprising considering your, ah, extracurricular pursuits, no?” He hums in amusement at the shuddering sigh that escapes you.

“Speaking of those pursuits, I’d like it if you would meet me after dinner tonight. Eight o’clock by the statue of Artemisia Lufkin.” The way he says it, you can tell it’s more of a demand than anything else, but something that looks suspiciously like uncertainty flickers across his expression before he can hide it. Despite yourself, you find yourself oddly endeared.

Part of you (the sensible part of you that you should really start listening to more often) wants to protest and make an excuse but you remember the position you’re in - the position you only have yourself to blame for - and are forced to swallow your reservations. At your very small, very reluctant nod, Riddle smiles widely, eyes gleaming with unspoken triumph. “Lovely, I look forward to it.”

When he hands your book back to you, his fingers brush yours and linger for just a moment too long.

***

“What? No. No, absolutely not.” You’re staring in horror at the cage that Riddle has placed on the desk in front of you. Inside the cage, there’s a large fluffy cottontail rabbit. It’s nose twitches. It’s very cute. From somewhere behind you, Riddle sighs in exasperation.

“You realise that to demonstrate your spell for me, there will have to be a living target?” You wrinkle your nose at the patronising tone he uses. “And whilst I appreciate you might favour practising on Slytherins, I cannot in good conscience allow a repeat performance.”

“That was different,” You say and wince internally at the slight whine audible in your voice. “I’m not a sadist-”

“No, you’re not. That’s hardly what I was trying to say,” He cuts in, still amused, still pleasant, still utterly in control. He moves to your side, close enough that your arm brushes his, close enough to tell that despite the deceptive pleasantness, there's an undeniable air of excitement clinging to him. “Forgive me, but I’m finding it difficult to understand why you, a muggleborn, would spend time inventing such a spell and then test it out on a pureblood unless it was because there is a part of you that really does wish to inflict pain on those you deem worthy of it. Tell me, what got you interested in such dark magic to begin with? It’s hardly an interest commonly pursued by people of your status.”

You feel decidedly out of sorts at his appraisal of you. You don’t like to think of yourself as a violent person and you certainly don’t like that other people might see you as one. But it’s difficult to deny the obvious logic behind his questioning: you’d known exactly what that spell would do to Lestrange and you’d known that there would be a chance that it would do more damage than you’d intended. You just… hadn’t cared. You’d wanted him to suffer, to hurt, to feel fear as intimately as you have for years. You’d wanted him to look at you and know that he was lucky to be alive. “An interest in dark magic is hardly a statement of intent.” You say, at last, determinedly ignoring the fact that almost draining a man of all their blood in an abandoned dungeon probably is. He raises an eyebrow to let you know that the irony is hardly lost on him either and you sigh.

“Magic is… You know the first time I performed accidental magic it was to smash my teacher’s favourite paperweight?” You can’t help but laugh at the memory. At the time you had been so angry over some perceived injustice that you can’t even remember anymore. She’d been so upset and seven year old you had been so pleased with yourself. “I think the second time I did the opposite - fixed a vase my mother had dropped. My point being, magic is about-”

“Intent,” He summarises softly, watching you with unabashed interest. “You don’t think there’s a distinction between light and dark magic.”

It’s not a question. You nod slowly in agreement anyway.“That spell could easily be used in conjunction with a blood replenishing potion as cure for blood diseases. And...” You trail off uncertainty setting in as you regard the boy in front of you. Riddle hasn’t shown you any animosity, on the contrary, he acts as though he wants to know you, as though he’s seen something in you that he likes. You feel like you could maybe trust him. “And I don’t feel guilty for defending myself against someone who’s told me that they want me dead just because of my heritage.”

You’re not sure what you’re expecting from Riddle, but it certainly isn’t the glint of recognition that sparks in his eyes. He’s looking at you as though he knows you, as though he sees something familiar in you. The thought makes the hairs on the back of your arms stand on end. Riddle fixes you with a look of such intensity that you can’t bare to look away. His eyes never leave yours as he reaches out and cups your cheek gently and you have to fight to keep your breathing steady. “You should never feel guilty for demonstrating your power against those weaker than you.”

He drops his hand and moves to stand behind you, closer than is strictly necessary. Leaning forward slightly, he murmurs in your ear, “Please, show me the spell.”

And this time, god help you, you do.

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

#tom riddle #tom marvolo riddle #tom riddle x oc #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle imagines #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle fanfic #tom riddle fanfiction #tom riddle fic #minific #jinxqsu

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agentmarymargaretskitz · 4 years ago

Note

Prompt: Gary having epic Wrecker head trauma moments

(Been watching the Clone Wars and the Bad Batch so buckle your seatbelts. And canon....we don't know her. We're playing fast and loose here today)

The first time Gary heard it, the voice was a bare whisper in the back of his skull in the middle of the night. Even though it woke him up, he quickly fell back asleep. That was all he thought there was to it. Probably a remnant of a nightmare or an old childhood memory.

Children listen to their fathers.

A week before the Bureau was disbanded, Gary used the systems one last time to check on his half-siblings through the timeline. Oddly enough, many of them had disappeared from it. The ages of disappearance and years varied, but it was all on the same day. It was the same night he had heard the voice. A weird coincidence and yet there was no detectable connection to their father. Thankfully, he could still account for enough of his siblings not to be too concerned yet.

But then the voice came again months later. He and John had been on a case of possession in Houston. The demon had smacked him into a wall hard and his head had hit a shelf. Gary was thankful he just walked away with a scrape and the worst headache ever, but for a moment he had heard the call in his head again. The same message, a little louder and a little clearer, but it didn't make sense to him. His father was dead.

"You good, squire?" John had asked afterwards as Gary massaged his temples, wincing.

"Ah, just a headache," he said. "Probably dehydrated...I'll pick up some pills and water on the way back."

That one did go away, but it wasn't the last of them. A rough landing while helping the Legends on a mission led to another one after hitting the backrest wrong. It brought the voice back again. This time, he kept his mouth shut for more reasons than one. The Legends had found out about the disappearance of one of his sisters while searching for some other missing girls in 18th century Italy. He wasn't quite ready to tell them about the shared connection.

His head had screamed the whole night with fragments of the voice slipping through until he pleaded Gideon to give him something. She had, as well as some unsolicited advice about secrets.

A week later, Behrad and Nate were trapped and in need of rescue. Gary was in on the retrieval party and assigned to get to the control room. He hadn't known there was going to be a guard there. There had been a struggle. When Gary was thrown back into the control panel, his finger squeezed the trigger as his head made contact with the panel.

Children listen to their fathers. Children listen to their fathers. Children listen to their fathers.

Gary keeled over as the phrase kept repeating itself. His lips started to form the words. "Children...listen. Children listen....children listen...."

Someone was shouting his name, but he couldn't hear them. Gary clutched his head and groaned with pain. He knew the instructions of what he had to do. Children listen to their fathers. He had to get a knife and cut his hand. Let the blood flow. He'd be found then. If anyone stopped him, he had to take care of them

"Children listen to their-"

No, he couldn't do that. Whether it was a means to an end or not, the Legends needed him. Nate needed him. Behrad needed him.

"Gary, where are you?!" Ava's voice broke through the repeating voice in his head. "We need the power down now!"

Shaking his head, Gary pulled himself up to the panel and threw the switches he needed to before limping out of the room. When he got back to the rendezvous point, Ava was shouting about what was taking him so long while keeping Behrad upright. Gary winced at the loudness of her voice (even if it drowned out the one in his head) and asked her to keep it down.

That lasted until they got to the ship.

"Gary, what the hell!" Sara snapped as soon as they were back in the safety of the time vortex. "What were you doing down there?"

Children listen to their fathers.

"Captain Lance, please," he begged, bringing a hand up to his temple. "I need a minute."

"You got that minute when you were dicking around in the control room while Ava and Mick were nearly sliced to death!"

His teeth ground together. It was like his head was ready to explode.

"Gary, what the hell is going on with you?"

"Are you okay, man?"

Behrad's voice bled through the chaos. "Dude, what's happening?"

Children listen to their fathers.

"Is he having a psychotic break or something?"

Hands on his shoulder. "Squire, look-"

"STOP!" he screamed, the whole room spinning now.

Children listen to their fathers. Children LISTEN to their fathers. Childrenlistentotheirfatherschildrenlistentotheirfatherschildrenlistentotheirfatherschildrenlisten-

"Captains, there has been a breach in the cargo bay!"

"Really, right now?"

"Gary, look at us."

"Someone get him to the med bay. There's bigger problems right now."

He couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't keep fighting. There was too much happening around him. Giving in....it sounded so easy. Maybe...just for a second.

Mick's hand was pulling him upwards.

Children listen to their fathers.

"Children listen to their fathers," Gary whispered in sudden quiet of the bridge.

"What the-"

Gary's fist met his throat before he could finish his sentence. His grip left Gary as he stumbled back coughing. Looking around, he saw a room of enemies and obstacles. He had to take care of them and then get the knife out to do the rest.

"Gary...." Behrad came forward, reaching out his hand to him.

He shoved Behrad away from him and ran out of the bridge. Expletives rang out as he hurried down the hallway. The lab would be the best place to get a signal out. He would get there, lock the others out, and then-

"Hello there!"

A tangle of limbs fell down onto him, sending him to the floor. Gary tried to clamor free but someone kept climbing on top of him. He slammed his head back, feeling the contact of a nose possible breaking. Then he wriggled free only to see a sandy haired man running at him. A quick spell shouted and this one was thrown into the wall.

The victory didn't last long as the first person- oh, he knew one person whose limbs worked like that- wrapped himself around him again. The second man swept his legs out from under him.

"Scandal, I got him!"

He was being held down but Gary could see a knife as another man ran forward. When he tried to surge forward, this one shoved him back down. Why were they in his way? He had to follow orders! He had to get picked up to help Father.

Gary made a second attempt to get the knife before something hit his arm. When he looked down, a needle was being pulled out. The world was already darkening as he saw three more people walking down the hall, one of them he knew all too well. Then there were the sounds of the Legends coming to a stop nearby.

They couldn't stop him. They couldn't. He just...he just needed to close his eyes for a moment.

"Who the hell are you?" Captain Lance was asking.

"Who the fuck are you?" came from someone on the other side as his eyes slid closed.

Children listen to their fathers. Children listen to their fathers. Children listen to their-

#somebodyhelpthenotdeadfreds #ask box #legends of tomorrow #gary green #team legends #secret six #scandal savage #savage siblings #a missed opportunity #fanfiction

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silyabeeodess · 4 years ago

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FusionFall Fic: History Repeats

Samurai Jack didn’t second-guess his decisions anymore whenever he was forced to abandon his life’s mission for the sake of others. He couldn’t afford to: It was just his nature and little would change the choices he made in the moments he did. If returning to the distant past and defeating Aku erased the history he made in the present, he still couldn’t bring himself to walk away from those in need of his help even when the key to getting home was just a breath away. So, as he handed off the Temporal Stone to the group of young, fellow time-travelers from Dexter’s experiment, he convinced himself that he felt nothing. It needed to be done.

It wasn’t like he knew how to properly use it or the Timestream Vortex anyway. He’d only done so once: They couldn’t work on their own and he couldn’t figure out how to use them while limiting the damage to the altered timeline. A future without Aku meant a future saved for many, but might also potentially destroy that for others. It was just one of many worries: The creation of time loops, paradoxes, and wormholes; the idea that his efforts to change history had the potential to be the catalyst of current events... There were far more people who toyed with time than he ever imagined and the more of them he met, the more his resolve wavered. Meanwhile, what attempts Jack did still make to return to the past always ended up in vain, either thanks to Aku or his own actions.

After his fight with the Guardian, he’d started wondering if he was truly meant to go back in the first place. Maybe he had no other choice but to accept his new place in the timeline...

Beside him, Mandark watched the research participants race off to their next task and then eyed the warrior carefully. “Sending them back first is our best option,” he said, as if Jack himself wasn’t already aware, “At least under Aku, we’ve still got a world to save. If Fuse wins, we won’t even have that left.”

Of course, that brought on a whole new slew of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘maybes,’ but Jack still felt it was the right call. Since Aku had long gone into hiding, that made Planet Fusion the biggest immediate threat. If returning home erased his part in this war, if he helped Earth win now, his knowledge of it could lead to an even greater victory the second time.

Moreover, he’d been at the Battle of Tech Square, when the research participants first arrived in the future. He’d seen them on the airship afterword and the despondent look in their eyes when they found what their world had become. It was so much like his own arrival... He didn’t want them to share that pain. It made him feel a small kinship toward them, one that stirred an even bigger sense of personal responsibility than normal.

Jack sighed, “I only hope the jump this time is less dangerous than the last.”

Mandark smirked, unable to help himself from savoring his rivals’ error even after this long, “Of course it won’t be! I’m the one leading the operation!” The young genius’ thoughts turned inward, “Maybe this whole mess will teach them what happens when you work for an amateur like Dex-dork. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them apply for my company instead as soon as they make it back.”

While he didn’t approve of that arrogance, he choose to ignore that last comment, not wanting to start an argument, “Will this also correct the trouble with the wormholes?”

Mandark’s proud expression shifted back into a frown. He’d rather have been praised... “It should help stabilize them, but I’m not promising anything. The wormholes have linked the past and future in a way they never should’ve crossed. The return jump might relieve some of the damage or whatever those labrats take with them from here might make things worse. We won’t know the extent of it without long-term observation. And, sad to say, that’ll probably be something for another, future me to play around with...”

The scientist almost sounded disappointed. Of course, for however bad the situation was or however it started, there also had to be a part of his mind that was absolutely ecstatic about the potential discoveries to be made. However, whether this timeline was erased or Earth met its end by Fuse, he wouldn’t be around long enough to see them.

Jack wasn’t as interested in the science of it all as he was the results. “You are certain though that no harm will come to the time-travelers?”

He brushed the warrior’s concerns off with a wave of his hand, “Ah, it should pretty much be like waking up from a long nightmare! They’ll blink and be back before they know it. And if the shock gets to them, well, then I hope Dexlabs has a few, good therapists lined up.”

It wasn’t quite what he meant: Jack was more concerned about their physical states than mental ones. No, he didn’t think the jump would cause any deformities or mutations--that was pretty much a constant from each experience he heard about--but he did wonder if the initial accident may have caused side affects all the same.

Like his own... Jack didn’t know what exactly it was, but he could tell that something was very wrong with him. The more years passed, the more uneasy he felt. A part of him pinned it on the fact that the world was just a far different place than anything he’d been used to: It was impossible to keep up. Nevertheless, in a world where change and growth was the natural order of life, he felt so... constant. He didn’t even look much different than when he first came to the future. It was starting to scare him.

If there was anyone else who experienced what he was going through, he’d never heard of it. He wanted answers, but at the same time, he hoped there wouldn’t come a day when he and the research participants shared that in common as well. Either way, he was going to keep an eye on them. Even the version of him that existed before this war would see to that.

A light on his communicator blinked to life, alerting him that the research participants were drawing close to the first point to triangulating the Timestream Vortex and awaiting orders. Jack took another breath and smiled, ready to guide them.

#fusionfall #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #video games #i feel like i just repeated all of my headcanons for Jack for this but there just isn't enough action taking place in the scene #oneshot

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ellsey · 4 years ago

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Agents of Shield Rewatch 7x09 As I Have Always Been

First of all, we’re not going to discuss how many times I’ve seen this episode because...welll...the number is pretty high. But this is legit my #1 favorite episode of all time. This episode is an example of this show firing on all cylinders and just at it’s absolute best. And it’s really one of the last times we get to see our family all working together, and that’s where I think this show gets its strength.

Anyway, this may get super long idk I just have a lot of feelings about this ep.

The number of times Chloe must have had to film waking up in this thing is probably pretty high

Ok first things first, my very favorite thing is Sousa using that box of gloves as a pillow because having spent a good portion of my lower to mid-20s in labs I will not pretend like I haven’t considered doing that

“I was so much happier asleep” MY MOOD EVERY SINGLE DAY

94 km away...I’m going to try and keep track of these numbers

Sousa’s face at the smell of Deke’s 80′s cologne hahahaha

And now we’re in our loop #2 (but who knows the real number)

Ok, since I used to be a med tech (aka I worked in a hospital lab), I have questions about why they have so many green and blue tubes there. I mean...green tops are heparin tubes so I guess you can use those for basic chemistry tests, so that might be usable for multiple things. But those blue tops? That’s sodium citrate and the only thing I know of we used those for were coagulation tests. Which require some specific equipment. Does Jemma plan to run that many PT/PTTs?? And on what???

LOOK I HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT OK

And yes I remember those anticoagulants by heart still

The repeating title card is :chef’s kiss:

Daisy very quickly realizes she’s looping

91 km now

I’m wondering if there was something cut here by the way Sousa says, “See?” to Simmons as if we are missing some part of a conversation they had

My guess would be Jemma was all “You can go rest in your bunk you know Agent Sousa” and he’s like “Nope, gotta make sure Daisy rests” and Jemma’s like “...do you though?” and Sousa’s all “Yep. She will not do it on her own. Trust me.”

Maybe there’s enough for a fic plot in there

Ok, we’re now on loop #3

Daisy also very quickly realizes that she’s waking Sousa up with her boots and is very quiet so he can get some sleep

Awwww

I kind of wish I knew what May was sensing from Daisy right about now

I love love that Robo Coulson is so over this

The way he says “This guy” KILLS ME

So Coulson knows of 87 loops, but we know in this case Daisy didn’t wake him for 2 loops this time...we’re going to be doing some mathing soon lads

Also we just covered loops #4 and #5 since the ep started

Coulson says this is loop #90 which matches up still

And loop #6 for us now

Daisy was kind of loud there but didn’t wake up Sousa sooo...idk

79 km now

I love that Daisy realizes that to solve faster she needs the entire team

This must be loop #7 because Deke now says they are 65 km from the vortex

“It’s kind of hard to access” YOU DON’T SAY

And now people know about Jemma’s implant which...FINALLY

Phlebotinum is an amazing word bless

Making yourself cough like that seems like a rough day of filming

And directing

Deke’s face when Nana is dead though :(

Loop #8

It was sabotage!!!

But also Daisy died so we’re starting over memory-wise

Loop #9

48 km

Daisy legit forgot about her boots waking Sousa up too ha

Loop #10

And this time we wake up Coulson again

41 km

Enoch, Deke, and Jemma standing there is so freaking hilarious

Jemma is so done even though she doesn’t remember any of this hahaha

Loop #11

This is the one where we try to get Elena out and helping

Loop #12

Phlebotinum!

Sousa finally woke up on his own I guess

That smile when he says, “Reminds me of my SSR days” like

He lives for this chaos he just doesn’t want to admit it

Also look at him being a smart agent here

And let’s talk about the trust Sousa has in Daisy for a sec

He not just immediately believes her about the time loops, but he immediately understands what she is saying about what is happening. Thus he knows this isn’t really a sacrifice play because he’ll come back AND he’ll have saved her the trouble of forgetting. But also, he trusts her so implicitly that he’s willing to risk his life for her.

It’s beautiful y’all

And poor Daisy has to add watching Sousa die to her list of traumas cool cool cool

Although that does give me writing ideas...

Loop #13

Daisy immediately pops up to ensure herself that Sousa is still there napping away and like

I legit thought this was going to be the peak Dousy moment in this episode when she stops and just watches him breathing for a bit hahaha

She does not want to leave him there either and then the way she says, “We’re making progress” then adds a kind of soft “thanks to Sousa” like

Daisy is going through some stuff here

Coulson is going through some stuff too

Clark Gregg is killllllling this

And Coulson realizes that Enoch is the problem

“Oh dear” ENOCH HAHAHAHA

Loop #14

“Why do you care?” “Because you don’t”

Ummmmm MY HEART

But Daisy is not just accepting that he’s willing to die for her, she wants to know why now

Which obviously we will circle back to in a few loops or so

See, Jemma says she has to be awake to remove them implant...I guess the difference before was that Enoch wasn’t removing it?

Idk that makes no sense

Loop #15

Send in Sousa to distract Enoch

That “Hello!!” omg Sousa no

Sousa is surprisingly bad at this

Sousa’s muffled “Sorry” KILLS ME

As does Daisy’s face

Loop #16

Appeal to Enoch’s sense of irony

Loop #17

Have Jemma countermand her previous order

Loop #18

Bring in the whole gang

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS KILLS ME

“Where’d he get all those weapons?”

Poor dead Deke

Them realizing it doesn’t matter because they’ll all come back

The way May looks like she’s relaxing

Sousa’s feet framing Daisy’s face

Legit this is amazing and I love it

Loop #19

“Actually, I can take a loop”

WE LOVE TO SEE IT

“It all phases me, just maybe not my face”

Ummmmm sir

Your face

While lovely it definitely gives you away

The saddest thing to me about this is that Daisy can’t seem to understand why he’s always willing to help and wants to watch over her. It’s like she still doesn’t think she’s worthy of being treated like this.

“Some of my favorite people are people like you” I CRY

Whew there’s a lot to parse here.

First of all, I think Daisy actually really likes that Sousa is seemingly not phased by anything (or at least, not super bothered by it) because her life is always going to be chaotic that’s just facts

Second, in this very short time of knowing her, Sousa definitely has her pegged. He knows that she craves other people, but is also probably a bit scared to want to be around other people. He knows she’s hopelessly stubborn, but that’s because she cares so much. And he knows that she needs someone to have her back no matter what, because she won’t have her own.

Of course, there’s also a personal element here as indicated by the next part of their conversation.

Also of note, when Daisy is pressing with the questions, wanting to know why he’s always there for her, she’s leaning forward while he sits back.

Now though, when the question is a bit more personal, she sits back in a very protective stance. I think she’s a little scared of what he’ll say to her question. Because she realizes that she likes him. A lot. And what if he’s just like a generally good guy and this has nothing to do with her?

But of course, it has everything to do with her as indicated by what Sousa says next. “Not for everyone. It helps if they’re fun to be around, and if they say what they mean, and if they have that super power where they can rock things around which is very impressive.”

And Daisy’s immediate response?? SHE SMILES. Like...this is what she needs and what she wants but what she’s been too afraid to go after. And here it is just falling in her lap.

Now that everything is out in the open, they are both leaning towards each other...

Also I love that she says, “That’s awfully specific” and he doesn’t shy away from her. He just agrees with her. They both know what that really means.

And they both like it

Legit here I was chanting KISS KISS KISS but I thought it was a missed moment

I am so happy I was wrong

So the new plan is to misdirect Enoch by having Sousa go in to take the implant out, but really Sousa is leading Enoch into a fight with him, Mack, May, and Elena and like what a squad

But also this was a super plan, and I wonder if Coulson was involved or if this was Daisy/Sousa original

Either option seems likely

“Next time, same thing but faster”

Daisy is really good at following instructions y’all

Loop #20

Daisy asks for help and Sousa immediately agrees to help and THAT IS WHAT DID IT FOR DAISY JOHNSON FRIENDS

Like...I know she’s feeling under the gun for time because Coulson said same thing but faster

But also, peak romance is someone just wanting to help her no questions asked which, given her history makes complete sense

She needs a constant, someone who will be there for her no matter what

I feel like this started in some ways with Lincoln. He was just so sweet and helpful to her. And granted he had his own demons to deal with, but in the end he was willing to give up everything to save the world and Daisy herself.

But he also showed Daisy that she could expect love and support and she was worthy of that (even if she doubted it later)

So here’s this guy, who’s just smart and kind and good and clearly into her

So, knowing that this could be one of her lasts chance to do this and realizing that at any rate he’ll totally forget about it anyway, she makes a move

And like this kiss?? It’s hot y’all

You can tell Daisy just like lol Imma kiss him, but then they are both caught in this moment and go back for me

But also he definitely led for that second kiss

“That was nice” like hahahaha amazing undersell Daisy

And then she traces his collarbone like whoa I need to fan myself for a bit

“Now we need to drop a space robot”

I can’t tell what Sousa is more confused by- that statement or the kiss itself

Imagine being Sousa though. You just got woken up by this beautiful woman who asks for you help then kisses you when you say “Sure thing.”

He’s truly living the dream

Oh also we’re 11 km from the vortex now

It turns out Enoch is the answer to all our problems

But also we have to kill him in the process :(

And then poor Simmons has a breakdown over leaving Alya presumably, but also she’s a better mom than me because after 3 years in space with one of my little super geniuses I’d be more than ready for a vacay idk

I love my kids but they are...a lot

And finally, Loop #21

I guess Daisy left Sousa to sleep for this loop

<1 km from the vortex too eek

Enoch immediately understands what is happening :(

I love that Enoch has reached the point where he feels like this entire crew is his family and would sacrifice themselves for him

Enoch didn’t feel lonely until he had friends :((

This whole thing is breaking my heart...not just Enoch in the process of dying, but Coulson actually talking about his deaths and Daisy having to try and process all this

“Yet, this is the nature of families. I have seen it countless times on countless worlds. People arrive so we celebrate, and people leave us, so we grieve. We do what we can with the time in between, but the cycle is always there. No one escapes it. Not even me.”

This really got to me. My family has changed a lot through the years. People have come and gone. Babies have been born. People have died. And nothing I do can change this cycle. Sometimes it makes me happy; sometimes it hurts. But nothing I do can change that process, and that’s not always easy for me to accept.

I think Daisy and Coulson are having a moment here too, where Daisy is telling both Coulson and Enoch that even though they are not human, that doesn’t make them any less alive to the people who love them

RIP Enoch, you were the bestest Chronicom to ever robot

And of course we get one last buzzkill with Nathaniel and Kora

Queen Kora you deserve better

Ok first some timeloop math. We saw 21 loops on screen, but loop #5 was loop #90 for Coulson. So if we figure Daisy died say...every 10-15 ish time loops and it took her 2 or 3 to wake Coulson up, we can probably add an additional 25 time loops or so. So we’re probably looking at around 130 loops roughly.

Of course this begs the question, did Daisy decide to kiss Sousa more than once? It’s possible. I kind of like to think she did.

First of all, mad props to Joel for nailing that death scene. He was absolutely incredible. And clearly this episode rates 1000000000/10 on the Dousy scale because like...everything. The talk, the kiss, the sacrifice...amazing. I was 95% sure I was getting ending Dousy after this. This episode also gets 50000/10 on the Teamwork! scale because our team did so well and were strongest when they worked together. And of course Enoch gets a 10000000000000000/10 on the Good Chronicom scale because he legit was the bestest Chronicom that could ever not-live.

Since we’re in a timeloop and not in a particular time period, I’m going with the Dousy-est of songs, “peace” by Taylor Swift.

youtube

#aos #aosrewatch #aosrewatchs7 #dousy #daniel sousa #daisy johnson #phil coulson #jemma simmons #enoch #deke shaw #melinda may #alphonso mackenzie #elena rodriguez #time loops #so many time loops #this really got so amazingly long #I regret nothing

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jacscorner · 3 years ago

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A Rose's Thorns

Another bit of flash fiction, clocking in at 1,416 words, but this is a little more...experimental. Hopefully some people like it, but I won't hold my breath.

Fair warning though, as the following story contains:

Genderbent and Femboy versions of Ruby and Yang, Bondage, Edging, and Teasing. Proceed with caution~

"Dammit, Yang! Listen to me!"

Ruby knew it was useless to try and scold his brother; Yang cared very little for his authority as Team RWBY's leader. Not that he expected him to, but it was so frustrating to try and take charge only for Yang to shove him aside again. The problems with being the younger brother.

Yang then said, "Rubes, come on. There's no need to freak out," he said as he walked into the dorm room they shared with Weiss and Blake. "We didn't die; in fact, we killed the Grimm. What's the big deal?"

"The 'big deal' is that you didn't follow orders! You could've gotten yourself killed! And nearly got Weiss crushed by a tree!" Ruby was determined to get this through to Yang, but he got no real reaction as Yang threw his bag onto the bed.

"Yeah, can you just text me a memo or something, Rubes? I gotta go. Plans tonight in town. Gonna hit up Junior's."

Ruby was frustrated before, but now she was pissed. Of course Yang would be blowing him off to go to some club. His reasons didn't matter, especially when Yang had to have known that they had plans to study tomorrow and Yang would be absolutely useless half-awake at best.

Something snapped in the short leader. Ruby couldn't describe this moment, but it was as if every moment of his older brother blowing him off ran through his head. He loved Yang, he truly did, but every moment of frustration just boiled over.

Suddenly, Ruby burst into a mass of petals. He dashed and spun around Yang like a vortex, getting the brawler to squeak as he flailed about.

"What the hell! Ruby!" He shouted, fighting his natural instinct to throw punches, not wanting to actually hurt his brother. but suddenly, a loud 'CLICK' rang in his ears and Yang found himself fallen onto the bed with a light 'THUD'. "Huh? W-what the-" Yang tried to get up, but found his hands cuffed and now behind his back. "Ruby, what the hell is this?!"

"Your punishment." Ruby said as he re-materialized behind Yang. The blond rolled over on the bed, and flinched. He was staring at his naked, chiseled body, save for the yellow crop top he wore under his jacket and his orange thigh highs.

"Ruby, this isn't funny!" Yang warned. This wasn't the first time he was naked in front of Ruby, so this wasn't too embarrassing. But being bound and helpless like this wasn't Yang's thing. He tried to break the cuffs, but he failed to get out of the stainless steel.

"I didn't wanna have to do this. But you left me no choice." Ruby began to dig into the pockets sewn into his hood. "But as Team Leader, I need to bring you into line."

Yang growled as he watched Ruby pull out a feather. "Ruby, I'm serious! I'm not playing around today!"

Silver eyes leered into Yang's lilacs. Ruby then marched over to his bound teammate and knelt down in front of the bed. Yang's face was turning a soft shade of pink as Ruby just grabbed at his brother's dick.

"H-hey! Wait, l-let go!" Yang shouted, "wh-what are you doing?!"

"Oh shut up. You act like this is the first time someone's grabbed this before." Ruby rolled his eyes as Yang continued to glare.

Yang forced a smirk onto his face, "so, what are you gonna do? Is your big plan to punish me giving me a blowjob?"

Ruby said nothing to reply. He took his feather and began to gently glide the tip of the vane across his flesh. Yang couldn't help but shudder as Ruby began to lightly brush the feather against his cock. He let out a couple of gasps as Ruby continued at a teasingly slow rate, tickling the shaft of Yang's dick, but the blond didn't feel like laughing.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Yang grunted, trying not to show just how awkward he felt. Goosebumps ran up his spine as he couldn't help but shiver from pleasure. His cock was growing erect and the pleasure was starting build up like a damn. He glared at Ruby, expecting an answer of some kind, but Ruby was silent.

The tip of the feather began to glide up the shaft again. This time, Ruby began to twirl around the head of the cock, making Yang's legs twitch. He desperately tried to hump Ruby's hand, but he had a firm grip and wouldn't give Yang even an inch of wiggle room. But that didn't stop Ruby from catching the beads of pre-cum starting to leak from the tip.

"F-fuck, this feels good..." Yang grumbled as Ruby began to glide the feather back down the head of his dick, wiping away the pre-cum that was on the feather as Ruby continued to tease his cock. The pleasure was overwhelming; Yang's knees were starting to buckle as his legs trembled. "S-so...close."

"Already?" Ruby asked as he focused on Yang's dick. More pre-cum was starting to pool and spill over his cock. "We can't have that."

Yang couldn't find the words to question what his brother meant, but it was already too late. Ruby began to slow down. Now the feather would barely touch his dick, giving quick flicks against Yang's dick. It would send ripples of pleasure through Yang's body, but it would vanish just as quickly. Yang was just on the edge of coming, but now it was dying down, leaving the bombastic blond frustrated.

"Ah, f-fuck..." Yang grunted, "w-wait, I-I was gonna cum! R-Ruby!"

"This is a punishment." Ruby repeated, "if I just let you cum, then it wouldn't be a punishment."

Realizing what was going on, Yang raised a leg to try and kick at his brother. He was desperate to get away, but he suddenly felt Ruby grab at his balls. It wasn't a hard grip, but it made Yang pause.

"Ah ah ah~" Ruby sang as he looked up at Yang with a smirk. "You wouldn't wanna do that, would you?" Yang grit his teeth, now sweating bullets. "

"Y-you...you wouldn't."

"Try me." For a second, there was a stand off between the two. Ruby was daring Yang to resist with his eyes. Yang would normally be gungho and 'dared', but Ruby looked serious. He felt Ruby's grip tighten, just a little bit, but even that small amount of pressure was enough to make Yang give out a small cry of discomfort.

"O-okay! Okay! I-I'm sorry! R-Ruby, please!" Yang withdrew his leg and set it back down. Ruby smiled; it was a sweet smile, but Yang could feel the malice radiating off of him as Yang felt the pressure on his balls ease up.

"Good boy." Ruby leaned forward and gave a kiss on his balls. Yang couldn't help but moan as Ruby brought the feather back up and started to tease his dick again. "See how much harder it was when you disobeyed? That's every time you act like a brat and go off on your own."

Yang grunted again as he felt another orgasm come on. "O-okay! I-I'm sorry! P-please let me cum this time."

"Aw, that's better." Ruby smiled before suddenly pulling the feather back. "But no."

"Fuck, Ruby! Please!" Yang cried, dangling just over the edge again, but couldn't finish. So close, yet so far.

Ruby giggled a bit, leaning forward and kissing the tip of Yang's dick. Yang bit her lip, giving a loud moan as desperately pleaded for more with his eyes, but Ruby wasn't gonna give it to him. His cock poured out more pre-cum, but it was in vain.

"Maybe next time, you'll listen to your team leader instead of acting out on your own, won't you?" Ruby asked, looking up at Yang with a wink.

"Y-yes, Ruby..." Yang whimpered, watching as the silver-eyed warrior got up from his knees and headed for the door. "H-hy! Wait! W-what are you doing?!"

"Oh, well, you ruined my feather with all your jizz, so I'm gonna get another one."

"Wait, what about me?!" Yang shouted, "I'm still handcuffed over here!"

"Hmm..." Ruby looked Yang up and down. "Oh, yeah, you still are...well, maybe Weiss or Blake will help you out."

"RUBY!" Yang shouted as Ruby quickly dashed out the door and closed it behind him, giving a naughty giggle before starting to walk off, leaving Yang naked and helpless for anyone to just walk in on.

#RWBY Smut #JAC Art #Ruby Rose #Yang Xiao Long #N/SFW #Femboy RWBY #Femboy #Rule 63 #Femboy Ruby #Femboy Yang

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teacupfulofstarshine · 5 years ago

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the crossroad of our destinies book one: earth

summary: virgil isn't sure how he got roped into this crazy adventure. somehow, he's traveling around with the avatar, his blind earth bending younger brother, a chipper air bender, and a banished fire bender prince, and they're supposed to save the world? virgil can't even tell them he's a water bender. he's not cut out to save anyone. little did he know, they're cut out to save each other - and maybe the whole world in the process.

(OR: an avatar the last airbender!au, centering around a water bender virgil)

a/n: i . . . wrote the entire first chapter in one day . . . how i still do not know . . . the confusion is real. huge, huge, HUGE amounts of thanks goes to @lovelylogans for cheerleading me through this and also beta reading the first chapter. this wouldn't exist without her, and i love her, and i am so eternally grateful

CW: atla-typical fantasy violence, brief nonspecific allusions to child abuse, angst, background death of minor unnamed OCs, family angst, mentions of burns

wordcount: 5882

read it on ao3!

“This is gonna be so interesting!” Patton says, draping himself on his belly over the ball of air beneath him. “I’ve never seen real earth bending before!”

“That would imply that there’s such a thing as fake earth bending, which there decidedly is not,” Logan says, adjusting his shirt with a huff. Virgil glances up from where he’s sharpening his knife next to the fire, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ve done all kinds of reading about earth bending!” Patton says, seemingly oblivious to Logan’s indignation. “There are scrolls about it all over the Air Nation temples, but I’ve obviously never seen one! Earth benders went extinct so long ago that -”

“What?” Thomas says, lifting his head to stare up at Patton.

“The Fire Nation desecration reaches beyond our home?” Logan asks, one hand curling into a fist at his side. “They have burned more villages to the ground than ours?”

Roman pokes at the campfire with a stick, keeping his eyes cast to the ground. “The Fire Nation is trying to wipe out all other benders. They don’t want anyone left but us. Why do you think I ran away from home? My father told me that the other nations attacked us first, but . . .”

“Falsehood,” Logan snaps. The earth begins to shake beneath him. “We would never do something so horrendous! The Earth Kingdom is a peaceful settlement, we - we would never -”

“Calm down, Rocky, I’m not accusing you,” Roman says. The campfire flares up, and Virgil’s eyes flicker to the waterskin at his side. His hands won’t move fast enough if Roman’s temper causes him to lose control. Something else might, but he refuses. “I’m just saying, there’s a lot of propaganda in the Fire Nation. We’re not all heartless evil bastards. Some of us are just trying to protect our homes. I abandoned a lot when I saved you and your brother from my father’s army.”

“Oh, yes, like what?” Logan snaps. “Like a cushy life in the palace? Like your status as the next in line for overlord of us all and destroyer of my people? Like -”

“Like my twin brother,” Roman says coolly, tone betraying the way the fire surges and sinks in time with his heavy breathing. “Like my best friend, the boy I was to marry. I loved him so much, and he helped me escape, and - and my father probably killed him for his insubordination. I’ll never see him again, and whose fault is that? Mine!”

The fire surges up in a pillar. Before anyone can react in a meaningful way, a vortex spirals to life around the flames. In a flash, all the oxygen is sucked out of the fire. It dies instantly, leaving a pile of half-charred twigs. Patton lets his bending stance drop, and the vortex falls away.

“Everyone,” he says quietly, “needs to take some deep breaths. It’s going to be okay. Everyone here has suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation. Everyone here has lost something. It’s okay to acknowledge that pain, and hurt, but it’s not okay to blame each other or ourselves. Roman, you can’t control what your father did to you any more than Thomas and Logan can control the fact that they’re earth benders.”

“I am an earth bender,” Logan says quietly. “Thomas is -”

“The Avatar,” Thomas says. He studies his hands in silence, and Virgil slides his knife into his boot.

“Yeah, well, Avatar or not, you were born an earth bender,” he says. Everyone looks at him in a surprise that he mirrors internally; he’s not really one for speaking up during moments like this. There have been plenty since they all started traveling together, but Virgil typically keeps his mouth shut.

“What?” Thomas asks. Logan turns his head towards Virgil’s voice. His unseeing eyes bore right through Virgil, as though they’re peering into his soul.

“You were born an earth bender,” Virgil repeats. “That’s the whole damn point of the Avatar cycle, isn’t it? The Avatar spirit gets cycled through all the nations so that each Avatar gets a new and different experience to the one before. No matter what anyone says, you’re an earth bender. Just ‘cause you’re the Avatar too, that doesn’t change your birthright.”

His voice slips away from him, falling into the familiar cadence of his grandmother telling him stories as a young child. “You are an earth bender. You were born with the pull of Mother Earth in your bones. The Lion-Turtles have gifted you with an awareness of what is beneath us, always, a firm and unyielding constant in a world too fluid to appreciate it. You must hold steadfast to what is right and true, because no one else will do it for you. Air, flighty and fluid; fire, scorching and shifting; water, rapid and raging; all these will move from one form to the next as it suits their needs. You must anchor them, or no one will.”

He blinks, snapping himself out of the strange trance he lulled himself into, and becomes aware of the other three staring at him. “What?” he snaps defensively.

“That was . . . something,” Thomas says. “Where’d you get a story like that?”

“My grandmother,” Virgil says, pulling a knife from inside his robe. He makes sure that everyone catches the sharpness of its edge glinting under the half-full moon before he goes back to sharpening it. “She would tell me stories of the other benders all the time, how every element has its strengths and drawbacks. She told me that every element plays a role in keeping the world balanced, and that someone would have to repair what the Fire Nation was breaking without destroying the Fire Nation in the process.”

“And why not?” Logan asks - not accusing, genuinely curious. He shifts one foot a couple of inches and a rock springs from the ground next to Thomas, allowing Logan to sit down.

“Because if we lose fire benders completely, we lose everything we worked to rebuild. We need harmony between all four elements. That includes Princey and his fire bending.”

Roman thrusts a fist forward, and the campfire reignites itself as a small fireball bursts from his fist. “Thanks, Waterboy.” Virgil flinches a little. “What? You’re from the Southern Water Tribe, aren’t you?”

“What? Yeah. What about it?”

Roman just shrugs and goes back to the campfire.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan is amazing at earth bending.

Granted, Virgil knows next to nothing about the techniques, other than the fact that they involve a lot of foot movements and heavy grounding. It seems to be the complete antithesis of Patton’s air bending and Roman’s fire bending, both of which appear to center heavily on movement. Still, it’s plain to see that Logan is something of a prodigy. He moves as though the earth he bends is an extension of his own body, controlling it with an easy, fluid grace that belies his solid stances.

It’s hard to believe, watching him, that he’s the younger brother. It’s hard to believe that he can’t see anything. Roman comments as much, and Logan sends him flying with a blunted earth spike without so much as turning to face him.

“Ow!” Roman shrieks. He’s unharmed, of course; Patton had swiftly leapt into the air to catch him and return him to the ground. “What was that for?”

“I can so see,” Logan retorts. He barely comes up to Roman’s shoulder, but he’s solidly built, despite his young age.

“I thought you were blind!”

“I am. My eyes have never seen a day of my life. That does not mean I cannot see, you moron. I simply do not see with my eyes. I use my feet to see. The ground tells me everything I need to know. You, for example, are currently clinging to Patton like a terrified lemur, and he is hovering approximately as far above the ground as my forearm is long.”

“How do you do that?!” Roman says, dropping from Patton’s arms to land on the ground. “Also, there’s no way that you’re strong enough to take me down.”

“And why not?” Logan asks. “I could so take you down.”

“This is a bad idea,” Virgil says.

“You could not!” Roman boasts.

“This is a bad idea,” Virgil repeats.

“That sounds like a challenge,” Logan says, turning in Roman’s direction and tilting his head in a clear act of dismissal. “Unless you are afraid to face a young, blind earth bender, Prince Roman?”

Roman’s face changes from pride to ice in a split-second. He’ll tolerate Virgil’s “Princey” jabs, but he hates being called by his proper title. “You’re on.”

“Not here!” Thomas yelps. “We are standing in a very flammable forest, and none of us can water bend!”

“Aren’t you the Avatar, master of all elements?” Roman says testily.

“Only in the Avatar state, at the moment, which I cannot trigger on my own! If you guys set the whole forest on fire, people will come and investigate! We can’t risk being found - I can’t risk being found!”

The sound of his older brother’s voice seems to snap Logan out of it, at the very least. He shifts his left foot, and Virgil shivers as a small earthquake rumbles through the ground. It’s low-scale enough that anyone else who notices it will pass it off as normal seismic activity. For their little group, however, it’s much more than that; it’s Logan checking the nearby terrain.

If that isn’t enough to terrify Roman into surrender, Virgil seriously worries about the state of his brain.

“There is an isolated rocky plain not far from here,” Logan says. “I suggest that we have our battle there. Will tomorrow suffice?”

“Fine by me,” Roman spits, stalking away. Patton drops to the ground and begins to croon to his giant sky bison Remy, stroking his nose. Remy huffs out a breath that rustles the trees around them. Virgil is inclined to agree.

*~*~*~*~*

“I have said it before, and I will say it again. This is a BAD idea.”

Virgil tugs his thick jacket on over his loose tunic and pants. Logan sits next to him, controlling a small mound of earth like it’s wet clay. With every shift of his perpetually-bare feet, he changes its shape.

“I will not be injured,” Logan says. “Roman will not intentionally injure me. He considers me an opponent beneath him, and he is too gallant to harm a child.”

“How old are you, anyway? Not judging or anything, I’m just . . . curious.”

Logan’s earth mound trembles. “I am . . . twelve years and six months old.”

Virgil just blinks at him. He’d thought that Patton, newly fourteen, was the youngest member of their crew; he and Roman are both sixteen, and Thomas is seventeen. He’s assumed this whole time that Logan is around Patton’s age, maybe a few months older, despite his slight stature. “That’s . . . younger than I was expecting.”

“Are you going to remove me from your expedition?” Logan challenges. He clenches his fist, and the earth mound shatters into dust. “I will not abandon Thomas. He is my brother, the only remnant I have of my family. Of my village, my people, my culture. He is everything to me. I will not return to an ashen husk of my home because you do not consider me mature enough for this journey.”

“You’re the most mature person here, and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot,” Virgil says, holding up his hands in an “I-mean-no-harm” gesture. He says it because it’s true, because he believes it, but he also says it because he can see the way the earth trembles below Logan. It reminds him of the sea, in a way - calm and quiet, but constantly roiling beneath the glassy surface.

Logan takes a deep breath, air in and out, and the earth calms to stillness on his exhale.

“Thank you, Virgil.”

“You’re welcome. Now that the mushy shit’s out of the way - this is a terrible idea and you shouldn’t fight Roman. Not because you’re young or weak or anything like that, but because if one of you gets seriously injured, it’s not like we can waltz into the nearest village and ask for help.”

Logan shakes his head, smiling. He looks much older than twelve and a half.

“Trust me, Virgil. This will not be much of a fight.”

*~*~*~*~*

“If I could talk him out of this, I would,” Thomas tells Virgil. They’re sitting on a tall mound of earth that Thomas had bended up from the plain. Patton hovers casually behind them, sitting cross-legged on a ball of air. Logan and Roman stand facing each other, arms at their sides.

“The duel will end when one of the participants is unable to bend, or when one participant cedes to the other,” Virgil announces. He’s still not sure how he got roped into refereeing this crazy death match. Patton bends the wind so that his voice carries down to Logan and Roman, but he doesn’t have to. It’s so silent that Virgil could hear for miles. “No attacks shall be permitted which may result in death or grievous bodily harm. Are these rules understood by the participants?”

“They are,” Roman says. They’re different than the rules to a Fire Nation duel, Virgil thinks, judging by the slight confusion that crosses Roman’s face before he settles back to cool indifference.

“They are,” Logan says. He and Roman are an arm’s-length apart.

“Bow!” Virgil calls. Logan and Roman each take a step backward and bow from the waist, a sign of respect between duel participants. Despite their bickering, they do respect each other. (Virgil thinks.)

“Turn and walk! Ten or fifteen paces!” The traditional standard is ten paces, but Logan’s legs are much shorter than Roman’s, so he has to walk fifteen paces to cross the same amount of ground that Roman does in ten. They turn around and walk, and once they’ve made it the designated distance they turn back to each other.

“Ready your bending stances!” Roman squares his shoulders and lifts his hands, curling them into fists. Logan spreads his feet apart, planting them shoulder-width apart. Virgil raises a hand up high, bringing it down sharply to connect with his palm like a knife slicing through a fresh kill.

“Begin!”

Roman immediately launches a huge fireball at Logan. It’s red, the lowest intensity Roman is capable of producing. Virgil laughs internally; Logan was right. Roman is holding back. Thomas makes a worried noise, but Logan is unaffected. He shifts one foot, thrusts his hands out and flicks them up, and suddenly a massive wall of earth rises in front of him. Roman’s fireball slams harmlessly into it, singing the upper layer of dust but otherwise having no effect.

“I knew you would temper your attacks for me!” Logan shouts, dropping his wall. “If that had been your usual strength, my wall would have disintegrated!”

“And you took that risk?!” Roman says.

“Because I knew you would go easy on me! That is not the point of this duel, Roman! Fight me like you mean it!” Logan stamps his foot, and two massive pillars of earth rise up beside him, one on either side. Another stamp, and the pillars segment into disks. Logan begins to move, still between the pillars as he hurls the disks of earth at Roman.

Roman dodges the first few disks easily, but Logan is relentless. For every few disks he throws, he stamps his food again, and the pillars rise up again. He draws more and more earth up from beneath him, and it’s all Roman can do to keep himself from being crushed.

“Are you trying to kill me?!”

“I thought you were a prince! You should be stronger than this!”

Roman stands perfectly still, and Logan sends a disk hurtling towards him. Roman screams and throws his hands forwards, and a massive burst of golden-orange fire roars out. It engulfs the disk, pushing it backwards and melting it. Molten rock splashes to the ground, and Roman runs forward. He has twin flames clenched in his fists, like knives, and Logan grins wildly.

“Finally!”

The ground grows soft beneath his feet. Roman yells, thrusts a fire-knife forward like he’s going to stab Logan in the head, and Logan vanishes. He drops down, sinking below the earth, and Roman whirls around, confused. The pillars sink down into the ground, and Roman growls.

“Get up here and fight like a man!”

The ground rumbles beneath him, almost like Logan is laughing, and then a pillar of earth bursts up beneath Roman and sends him flying into the air. As he falls, another pillar flies up, smashing into him, and then another and another and another. Roman is knocked around like a ragdoll; he fire bends in the air, hurling jets of flame at the earth, but Logan is apparently so far underground that he is unaffected.

Finally, he slams onto the earth, flat on his back. Logan pops up from underground, covered in a layer of dust, breathing heavily. He takes a single step towards Roman and collapses.

“Logan!” Thomas shouts. Roman pushes himself to sit up, placing a hand along Logan’s neck. The earth bender doesn’t stir. Roman says something, but it’s inaudible. “Patton, please!”

“On it,” Patton says, bending Roman’s words toward them.

“He’s alive,” Roman rasps in their ears. Thomas stands, slamming his foot into the ground, and a curved chute carves itself into their observation mound. Another stamp, and a flat piece of earth appears at the mouth of the chute. Thomas leaps onto it and begins to surf down towards Roman and Logan.

“A little help?” Virgil asks Patton dryly. Patton offers his hand, pulling Virgil up into his arms, and then they’re flying.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan sleeps for about six hours before sitting up, rubbing at his eyes. “What hit me?” he groans. “Did I lose the duel?”

“You both lost, morons,” Virgil says shortly.

“You and I are the only ones here - no, wait, someone else is laying by the fire. Roman?”

“Yeah. He’s sleeping off what you two did to each other. Patton and Thomas are off by the river getting water, because if I have to watch Thomas mother-hen over you two anymore I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” He stabs angrily at the fire. “You over-exerted yourself with that crazy tunneling move.”

“I . . . have never tried it on that large a scale before,” Logan admits, shakily sitting up. “Even now, my bending feels . . . exhausted. My vision is foggy. I - for the first time since I learned to bend, I feel truly blind.” He sounds like a scared kid, and it’s enough to evaporate what’s left of Virgil’s anger.

“Hey, you’re alright,” he says gruffly. “No one’s dead, and you two hopefully have a better understanding of each other’s power now, right?” Logan nods, silent. “Good. Just know that if you ever scare your brother and Patton -” ( and me, he doesn’t say) “- again, I’ll drown you in the fucking river.”

Logan cracks a smile at that, and it doesn’t fade, even when Thomas returns from the river and practically tackles him into a tearful hug.

*~*~*~*~*

Sometimes, Virgil has regrets.

Remy coasts through the sky, Patton seated on his head with a loose grip on the reins. Logan, Thomas, and Roman all huddle together, Roman in the middle so that his warmth exudes out to encompass them like a bubble. Virgil is starfished on his back, staring up at the sky. It’s so different to the one that he’s used to seeing over the Southern Pole.

He misses home.

He misses the familiar sting of ice and snow against his skin. He misses the scent of seal jerky drying out next to the campfires. He misses packing down the firm snow to create walls for the igloo, misses hunting with his friends and family.

He misses bending.

The Fire Nation thinks that they have eradicated water benders from the Southern Pole. They believe that Virgil’s father, whom they cruelly killed on their last raid, was the final water bender.

They think incorrectly.

Virgil’s father sacrificed himself to save his son. The pendant Virgil wears around his neck, carved from the rib bone of an ancient and mighty Lion-Turtle, was the only thing he was allowed to keep when his father’s body was prepared for burial. His mother gave it to his father when they were married. She died bringing him into the world, and the Fire Nation made him an orphan.

“Virgil?” Thomas asks, shifting on Roman’s chest. “Are you okay?”

Virgil exhales, rolling over so that he’s facing his sleepy friends. “Yeah, Thomas, I’m okay. Just homesick, you know?”

“I get that,” Thomas says. He reaches over and gently touches his sleeping brother. “At least I have Lo with me, to remind me of home. You don’t even have that. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Virgil says easily. “It’s not like I have a family to go back to, anyway.”

A sad look crosses Thomas’s face, but he doesn’t push. Virgil can’t decide if he’s grateful or disappointed.

*~*~*~*~*

It’s amusing to watch Logan drill Thomas in earth bending. Every time Thomas messes up, Logan throws a pebble at him, and not with his earth bending, either. He will literally pick up the nearest chunk of rock and throw it at Thomas. He hits him in the arm without fail.

Virgil snickers from where he’s darning a tear in his pants. He has a bone needle in his pack, and it doesn’t take a lot of skill to find plants that he can twist into sturdy fiber thread. He’s already got a pretty sizable ball of thread rolled up beside him.

“You can sew?” Roman asks.

Virgil flinches at the sudden noise, nearly pricking his finger with the needle. “Don’t scare a guy like that, Princey!”

An upset expression crosses Roman’s face, but he brushes it off. “Still!”

“Yeah, I can sew. In the Water Tribe, you have to learn to do stuff for yourself.” Especially when the Fire Nation kills your parents, he doesn’t say.

Roman bounces eagerly. “Do you think you could teach me to do that?”

“Why the hell do you wanna know how to sew?”

“If something rips, I have to be able to fix it myself,” Roman says firmly. “Teach me, please?”

Virgil sighs. “I only have one needle, so you have to wait until I’m done with this actual work before I start teaching you. You will prick your fingers a lot, and you are not allowed to bitch at me for this. You brought this upon yourself.”

Roman just grins, sharp and wild. It’s the grin of a Fire Nation child, and it should strike terror into Virgil’s heart. He’s almost more terrified by the fact that it doesn’t.

*~*~*~*~*

Virgil quietly creeps away, after ensuring that everyone else is soundly asleep. They’re fortunate enough to have camped near a river this time, despite the fact that they’re still in the middle of the woods as they travel. What their endgame is, Virgil doesn’t know. For now, they’re just traveling so that the Fire Nation doesn’t catch them off guard, complacent in one place.

He steps into the river, and the feeling of water around his ankles is soothing. “Hello,” he breathes.

Virgil knows that his father wasn’t a water bender. He doesn’t think his mother was a water bender, either, although it’s impossible to say. The pendant that she gave his father was carved by water bending, tiny thin streams of water manipulated skillfully along the surface until they etched grooves. It doesn’t make sense that she would have trusted its creation to someone else, but if she had no choice . . .

Despite his insecurities, being in the water always makes him feel closer to both of them.

He slowly lifts a hand, and a stream of water coils up to meet him. It wraps around his wrist, like a vine, like a friend, coiling up towards his neck. Virgil exhales, tips backwards, and lets himself fall into the water. He moves his hands as he falls, bending the river water so that it flows around his head. The water rushes through his ears, and Virgil is at peace.

He stares up at the full moon, pretending he can see his father’s smile staring back at him in the craters on its surface.

*~*~*~*~*

“There are spirits in this place,” Thomas says. His eyes aren’t glowing the way they do when the Avatar State overtakes him, but there is an unnatural shine to his irises. “They are here, and they are angry.”

“Why?” the village leader asks. Thomas turns his head towards the village leader’s young daughter, sees the way she cowers away from her father. Virgil doesn’t have whatever supernatural perception Thomas does, but he doesn’t need Avatar State eyes (or whatever the fuck is going on) to see the bruises that litter her arms under her tight sleeves.

Thomas takes a step forward. The earth shakes beneath him. Logan shifts to a bending stance in a single breath, but Thomas puts a hand out to stop him. Ice-blue wisps of fog coil up around him, and Virgil takes a step backwards as a massive spirit-dragon appears in the village square.

“They are angry,” Thomas repeats, and his voice reverberates with a power well beyond his years.

Yeah. Virgil’s pretty angry, too.

*~*~*~*~*

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Logan comments idly, as they fly away from the village. He’s holding tightly to his brother; without the ground to, well, ground him, he tends to cling to Thomas. “With the spirits.”

“You could sense them?”

“Not with my earth bending. They’re not solid. But I could feel them. I knew they were there, and . . . and once you spoke, I knew they were angry.”

“No child should be hurt,” Roman says darkly. He’s slumped over the side of the saddle, watching the ground pass by below him. “No - no child. No child should be hurt.”

Patton is silent, clutching Remy’s reins with white knuckles. He’s been silent since they left, but Virgil is too attentive to miss the tears streaming down his face. They’d saved the day, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a pit in all their stomachs.

*~*~*~*~*

When the Fire Nation soldier bursts through the bushes, everyone moves in an instant.

Patton and Logan spring in front of Thomas immediately; Logan is in an earth bending stance and Patton has wind spiraling around his fingertips. Virgil draws a knife from his sleeves and grips it tightly. The soldier looks to be in his mid-sixties or so, with gray-white hair pulled back in a topknot and a beard flowing down his front. He has a round potbelly, but there is something sharp and militant in his eyes.

Roman is the only one who hasn’t moved. “U - uncle?!”

Everyone stops and stares at him. “Uncle?” Patton echoes. The Fire Nation soldier blinks at Roman, and his entire face softens.

“My beloved nephew.”

Roman throws himself at the strange soldier, and the soldier catches him, hugging him and holding him close. “Uncle! Uncle, you - what happened?! After I left, Remus, Dee - what happened to them?!”

“I will explain all in time,” the soldier (Uncle?) says. “But first, perhaps you should tell your new friends that I am not a threat before they kill me?” There’s a wry smile on his lips as he looks at them all, a bedraggled group of teenagers ready to fight and kill.

Roman just hugs the strange man tighter, and Virgil sheaths the knife when he hears Roman’s muffled sobs. Despite their constant bickering, he knows that Roman really, truly does miss his home, and now he has a small piece of it back. Virgil imagines he’d react in a similar way if a member of his family showed up right now (even though he has no one to show up). He can’t begrudge Roman this little scrap of comfort.

*~*~*~*~*

The Fire Nation soldier is revealed to be Roman’s Uncle Emile, brother of the current Fire Lord. “My brother,” Emile says, stroking his beard slightly, “can only be described as . . . a little bitch.”

“Remus,” Roman repeats, sitting next to his Uncle and gripping his hand. “My brother, Uncle, what happened to him? What happened to Dolos?”

“Your father was furious at them for letting you and the young earth benders escape the capital,” Emile says. “He dared not wound Prince Remus, but Dolos is only a noble’s son. He was spared no such courtesy.”

“Is he dead?” Roman whispers. He’s shaking; Virgil wonders if he should attempt to offer some sort of comfort.

“He is not dead,” Emile says. “Your father challenged him to an Agni Kai - a traditional fire bending duel. Dolos barely fought back. He knelt, prostrated himself, begged for forgiveness. The Fire Lord did not grant it. The left side of his face and torso are badly burned. But he will survive.”

Roman blinks, and tears pour down his face.

“Your father banished him, and you as well,” Emile says. “Remus has been sent on a mission to capture the Avatar - to capture you.”

“Where is Dolos?” Roman rasps.

“Remus insisted on taking him with him. He told your father that he would leave Dolos in an outlying colony somewhere, but he remains below deck on the ship. He is healing from his wounds. He will be scarred for life, but he will still have a life.”

“I want to see them,” Roman says.

Emile shakes his head. “Prince Roman, no. It is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“If you are spotted on board the Fire Nation ship, the crew will have no choice but to take you back to the Fire Nation as a prisoner. You are a fugitive. It cannot be risked.”

“I’ll risk my own safety if I damn well please!” Patton flinches at Roman’s shout, but Emile remains calm.

“I will not risk your safety, Nephew. Will you risk the safety of your twin? Your betrothed? Your new friends?”

Roman’s fire-angry glare shifts to them, to Virgil, who meets his eyes coolly even despite his terror. He won’t let Roman know that he’s afraid. He knows how much Roman hates it when they look at him as though he’s a fire bender to be afraid of. Roman exhales, and the campfire flares but he remains calm.

“I . . . I won’t. But I miss them, Uncle.”

“I know you do,” Emile says. “My status as a disgraced general has finally come in handy, for I have been assigned as your brother’s advisor on this so-called fool’s errand. I will do my best to keep him safe and out of trouble.”

Roman fidgets with his hands. “Could . . . could I write them a letter?”

Emile hums, considering. “I suppose that could be arranged.”

Roman scribbles down two scrolls and passes them to his uncle. “Please take care of them for me, until - until I can come back and take care of them myself.” Emile nods, kissing his forehead.

“I am proud of you, my nephew.”

He disappears back through the bushes he came from, and Roman stares longingly after him. “Roman?” Patton asks. “Would - do you want a hug?” Roman stands stiff, back straight, shoulders pushed back. For a moment, he doesn’t look like their friend. He looks like a soldier.

Then he turns around, and his eyes are wide and wet, and there’s snot dribbling down one corner of his face. “ Yeeeeeeeees,” he wails. Patton smiles, opens his arms, and lets Roman come crashing into them.

*~*~*~*~*

Before they head out the next morning, a bird flutters down to land in front of Roman. He gasps when he realizes what it is, gathering the sharp-taloned bird into his arms and crooning over it. He showers its head in kisses. Virgil is lost.

“This is Dragon! He was my pet back home, he’s a messenger hawk!” The bird chirps, nibbles on Roman’s ear lobe, and presents him with the parchment tied to his leg. Roman snatches the scroll, unrolling it eagerly, and Virgil peers over his shoulder.

The upper half of the scroll is a near-illegible scrawl, with a splotched signature that Virgil can barely make out as “Prince Remus” accompanying some doodles and a splatter that looks almost like blood. The lower half is in shaky but beautiful calligraphy. The opening address is “My darling flower,” and the ending signature reads “Yours forever, Dolos.”

“My love,” Roman whispers, tracing his fingers over Dolos’s signature. “And my brother . . . I love them . . . so much.”

“You gave up a lot to be with us,” Thomas says. “I appreciate everything that you’ve sacrificed. Logan and I would be dead without you.”

“I’m glad no one is dead,” Roman says softly, voice wavering. “I just . . .”

“You love them,” Patton says. “We understand.”

Roman strokes the parchment. His fingers come away slightly black with ink from the upper portion that his brother scrawled, and he exhales. “I am going to write them back. I’ll send Dragon to them. I’m not losing touch with my family, not again. Not this time. Remus and Dolos aren’t going to leave my life, not this time. They’ve got just as big a bone to pick with my father as we do. They can give us usable information.”

“Will that endanger them?” Logan asks.

“Uncle Emile is there, too. He can help them be discreet. I’m not abandoning my old family for this one, but - but I won’t betray you to my father, either. That’s not what a prince does.” Roman squares his shoulders again, and Virgil blinks in surprise. Roman doesn’t look ridiculous, like a child-soldier, or militant, like an enemy. He looks proud and strong and regal.

He looks like a real prince.

“I support you,” Logan says, startling all of them. “You are a prince, even if you are not our prince. I trust your judgement.” Roman seems the most shocked of all of them by Logan’s bold proclamation, especially considering the heated duel they’d had just three weeks ago, but Logan’s milky grey eyes look like they’re staring into Roman’s soul.

Virgil is familiar with that look.

“If Lo trusts you, I trust you,” Thomas says, and he smiles widely. Patton nods, smile bright and bubbly, and Roman looks to Virgil. He offers a thumbs-up and ruffles Roman’s hair. Roman squawks and bats at him, pushing him away. Virgil laughs and falls over easily into a back-bend.

“Once you’re sure Thomas is solid on his earth-bending, we’re going to a sacred Fire Nation site on the fringes of the empire,” Roman tells Logan. “Fire comes next in the Avatar cycle, right? After earth?”

“I think so?” Thomas says.

“I know so,” Logan confirms. “And I think he’s ready.”

Roman nods, and the fire blazing in his eyes is the most reassuring thing Virgil’s seen in quite a while. (It’s strange to say, considering Roman is a Fire Nation prince, but Virgil’s used to people judging him by appearances. He’s learning to reconsider his assumptions.)

“Alright then,” Roman says. “I’ll write back to my brother, try and find out what sites might be relatively empty so that we can camp ourselves out there. Fire Nation, here we come.”

#starshinewrites #avatar!au #platonic TLAMP #sympathetic remus #sympathetic deceit #romantic roceit

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oswildin · 5 years ago

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Fell Too Hard ~ Dhawan!Master x F!Reader (FINAL - Option 2 - to ‘Unlucky in Love’ Series)

~ You have picked Option 2! Enjoy! Thank you for your support with this series! ~

Summary: The Master arrived too late... It was time to go get (Y/N), with the help of the Doctor.

Warnings: Sad, but not really...

Read Part 5 before reading - https://oswildin.tumblr.com/post/190290230270/reckless-dhawanmaster-x-freader-part-5-in-the

The room was empty, as The Master growled, kicking a nearby piece of metal as The Doctor looked on in defeat.

“Where is she?” Yaz asked, her eyes searching the room before falling on her friend.

“They’ve taken her.” The Doctor said quietly, fear in her voice. The Master ran to the teleport, trying to figure it out.

“What are you doing?” Ryan asked as he frantically began pressing buttons.

“I’m going to get her.” The Master told them, as the Doctor turned to her friends.

“Go back to the TARDIS.” She ordered them as she also stepped towards the teleport.

“We’re not leaving you.” Yaz argued as the Doctor snapped.

“Do as I say!” She exclaimed, causing the girl to step back. Graham placed a hand on her back, as he decided to lead Ryan and Yaz out of the room.

“This is your fault.” The Master hissed, anger flowing through his blood.

“Not now. We can play the blame game later.” The Doctor said, getting out her sonic as she aimed it at the machine, pressing a button as the room around them faded, revealing a large silver room. “My guess is this is their ship... Somewhere orbiting the planet.” The Master looked around, seeing large cyber weapons as he marched over, grabbing one of the guns as he turned angrily to the Doctor. She felt a shiver down her spine as he glared at the woman.

“Don’t lecture me.” He ordered her. “It’s effective.” He pulled the trigger, blowing a hole in one of the walls as he began to march towards it. The Doctors hard gaze followed him as she trailed behind. The Master walked through to a control room, seeing a shell of a Cyberman as it hibernated. He growled at it as he continued forward.

“We need to find the upgrading room.” The Doctor told him as she walked over to a monitor as she used her sonic to show a map of the ship. “There!” She pointed at one of the rooms. “It’s a few floors down.” She stood back up straight as the Master instantly wandered off as she sighed, running after him. She knew he wouldn’t stop. He would kill anything in his way.

They finally found the upgrading room, after a tense walk down. The Master held the gun up, cautiously looking around him. It didn’t take long for them to be stopped.

“You will identify yourself.”

A robotic voice ordered as the Master narrowed his eyes at the creature.

“Your worst nightmare.” He hissed as he held the gun tighter. “If you don’t tell me where you’ve taken the human, I will destroy you with your own weapon. And then I won’t hesitate to blow up this whole ship.” He spoke darkly, as the Doctor sent him glances.

“Identify.” It repeated, as it stood in front of them.

“I’m the Master.” He told it proudly. “Look me up in your database.”

“Master?” It questioned, as he furrowed his brows.

“Too much talking-“

But the Doctor reached out, grabbing his arm.

“No! Stop...” The Doctor stepped forwards.

“Identify.” It repeated once more as she tilted her head at it.

“The Doctor.” She told it as it paused.

“Doctor?”

The Doctor felt her hearts stop. She shook her head, feeling sadness overcome her.

“No...” She mumbled as the Master looked confused.

“What is it, Doctor?!” He asked exasperated. “You’re not seriously going to defend this thing are you?!” The Doctor stepped towards it again.

“I’m sorry.” She told it as the Master looked confused.

“Doctor!” The Master exclaimed, shaking the gun in his hands as she turned back to look at him.

“It’s her.” She told him sorrowfully. The Master wore a brief smile before turning back dark as he wore a tight glare.

“What do you mean, it’s her.” He blinked a few times. The Doctor gave him a sad stare.

“Master.” The Cyberman said, as he looked past the Doctor at the metal man. “You know what they say.” It started. “Lucky at dice, unlucky in love.” The Master’s eyes widened as he dropped the gun down to his side.

“(Y/N)...” He breathed out, shaking his head. “No...” He felt rage burning through him as he lifted the gun back up, shooting around them as the Doctor watched hopeless. “No!” He shouted, his whole body shaking as he began to heavily breathe. “No.” He said in a whisper, his chest rising and falling.

“I’m sorry.” The Doctor repeated, feeling her own hearts break for her lost friend.

“Go.” The Cyberman, (Y/N) said. They looked at the metal appearance. “This ship will self destruct in two minutes.” The Doctor realised what she meant as she send a sad smile.

“She’s blowing up the ship...” She told the Master as he shook his head.

“Leave now.” It ordered, as the Doctor sent her a sad smile before turning to leave. The Master stayed put as she turned to him.

“She’s saving us.” The Doctor told him. “We owe her to survive.” She said sternly as he took one last glance at the metal machine, before following the Doctor running away back to the teleport.

The Master stood in his TARDIS, feeling emotions run through his mind. He shook his head. He knew what he had to do. He pulled a lever, his TARDIS groaning as he flew back into his own time stream. The TARDIS landed back in the space station, however, in the room (Y/N) was trapped in.

(Y/N) furrowed her brows as she saw the Master’s TARDIS appear in the room, the outer shell appearing as a metal sheet like a part of the station. The door opened, revealing the Master, holding the same gun he had back on the Cyberman ship. He shot the Cyberman in front of (Y/N) as he looked at her, his expression desperate. The station began to shake, the floor cracking.

“Quick!” He waved her to run to him as she did as she said.

“What about the Doctor?!” She exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, she’s fine.” He told her as he closed the door, running to the console as he threw down the gun. He quickly relocated the TARDIS, heading back into the vortex as he turned to look at her. He looked at her sadly. She could tell something was wrong.

“What?” She asked. “What’s wrong?” She stepped towards him, a worried stare on her face. He walked up to her, looking down as he put his hand on her cheek, stroking it attentively. She felt her heart race as she glanced down at his hand. He leant forwards, closing the gap as he kissed her. He kissed her with desperation, longing. She instinctively responded, placing her hands on his waist as she held him close. He eventually pulled away, leaning his forehead against hers. “I died... didn’t I?”

He stayed quiet, as he looked into her eyes. He looked down briefly as he pulled away, walking back to the console.

“That’s why the space station was crumbling... you fractured time.” She told him, shaking her head. “Why?” She felt tears in her eyes. “You’ve changed history!”

“I had to!” He exclaimed. “If the Doctor can do it, so can I!” He told her, flying his TARDIS as she walked over to him.

“But the rules-“ She began but he cut her off.

“Screw the rules!” He exclaimed. “The universe isn’t kind.” He told her, repeating her own words to her. “I know that better than anyone.” She looked at him, her eyes glossy as she shook her head.

“You know I have to go back, right?” She told him softly. “It’s happened... I died.” He clenched his fists as she spoke. “And it’s ok.” She gave him a small smile. “How long until the whole universe fractures?” She asked, raising a brow. He looked at her, furrowing his brows, shrugging. “Why don’t we go on an adventure?” She smiled slightly. “One last trip.” He sighed, giving her a tight smile.

“One last trip.”

#reader insert #13th doctor #dhawan master #dw #oneshot #doctor who imagine #doctor who #the master x reader #master x reader #dhawan!master x reader #dhawan!master #sacha dhawan #13th doctor x reader #thirteen x reader #dr who

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a-deadly-serenade · 5 years ago

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The Shield and the Sword: Chapter 10: There’s No Place Like Home [Alucard/Reader]

You’re a witch that is skilled in herbology, one that has been persecuted by the church for practically your entire life. In spite of this, moving throughout different towns has allowed you to pick up some chatter about a woman in a village called Lupu. She is supposed to be a wonder when it comes to medicine, and this immediately perks up your interest. So after plucking up some courage, you’ve made it to her door… hoping that she takes you as her apprentice.

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16724856?view_full_work=true

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When you awoke you’re surrounded by darkness, your head still reeling from what just happened. But… what exactly happened? Did you kill those monsters? How did you do that…?

The last thing you remember is a bright white light and then suddenly, you were on the ground. You thought of the colosseum, and of its blue flames that resided within the cobblestone torches. Had… had you used the fire to amplify your magic?

The idea seemed ludicrous. Sure, you were good at using your pryokinesis skills, but there was no way that you would be able to pull off such a thing… right?

Right.

But, then again… where were you?

You felt a chill in the air and goosebumps on your skin, and to your surprise, you looked down to see that you sported no shoes. Black, inky water rippled in pools around your feet, and you wondered just how it was you were standing here.

Frankly, it was difficult for you to even look in an attempt of gauging where you were because it was so dark. How were you ever going to navigate around this place?

With a snap of your fingers, a small flame erupted between them, slowly growing in height as you focused your magic on it. It flickered around your shallow breaths, your legs trembling slightly as you took the first couple steps deeper into the unknown depths of the darkness.

You had no idea if you were making any sort of progress, everything around you looked exactly the same and there were no landmarks to help track how far you’d gone.

This is ridiculous, you thought. There has to be a way out of here.

Splash.

Your heart leaps into your throat and you whirl around, eyes wide with fear as you frantically move your flame around in search of what made that noise.

Something… something definitely moved out there.

As you feel your breath starting to even out, you turn to continue on your way, thinking that maybe your mind was starting to play tricks on you. That is until you noticed something out of the corner of your eye.

A white shimmering deer.

The flame in your hand quickly disappears within the palm of your hand, and you lower your head to avert your eyes from their gaze.

The forest spirits had found you.

Your body trembled, but it wasn’t from fear. The power they exuded… you could feel it radiating off them in waves… sharp bursts that felt like tiny needles pricking the tips of your fingers.

The water slowly sloshed all around you as they began to circle you, and even though your eyes were closed, you could just feel their intense stare… feel it down to your very atoms.

What did they want with you? Why had you been brought here? Had you done something wrong when you killed all of those monsters?

That’s when you heard it; a horrible, high pitched wailing that shook you down to the core.

It was unlike any sound you had ever heard before, an eerie wail that seemed to tremble with trepidation and despair. Your soul felt heavy, and your body grew weary, the cries of the forest spirits worming their way into your head. They called out to you, their ancient voices swirling around you like a vortex.

It was becoming too much, streams of tears freely flowing down your face as you covered your ears in an attempt to shut them out. But they were so loud, so unnaturally loud… you felt as though this sound would be permanently sewn into you, haunting you for the rest of your life if you bared listening to any more of it.

“Please!” you begged, and shake your head. “Please stop!”

Your legs give out from under you as the ground begins to shake, a powerful tremor that has you screaming and falling to your knees. Your sobs are ragged, and all you can do is plead over and over that they hear your call, and allow you to see why it is they brought you here.

The same hopelessness that almost took over at the colosseum was beginning to reclaim its territory, and this time, you truly felt lost, as though this is where you had been cursed to spend the rest of time… trapped within the darkness, surrounded by the bereavements of ancient gods.

But then… there’s a tug… at your heart.

A warm presence emerges from the cold, and silence rings out into the air, relief washing over you. It was like you could finally breathe, the weight of their presence finally loosening their grip on your shoulders and you relaxed.

What made them stop?

Your eyes fluttered open, and you are shocked to find that you are surrounded by light. You rubbed away the sting with the back of your hand, and when your vision finally adjusts, it’s only blurred again moments later when your gaze lands on a woman standing before you.

It was as though you had been transformed into a fawn, your legs wobbling like a newborn as you struggled to stay up and run over to her. When you felt her arms wrap around you, her hair tickling your nose, and her smell overwhelming you, that’s when you believed it to be really her.

“Mom…” you whispered hoarsely.

You felt the embrace around you tighten slightly, a fresh round of tears pouring from your eyes when you pulled away to look at her.

She was exactly as you remembered, her smile radiant and beaming and eyes brimming with warmth. She cupped your face with her hand and gave you a kiss on the forehead.

“My beautiful baby girl,” she said, her own tears cascading down her cheeks. “How I’ve missed you.”

You gasped and tried to wipe away the tears that seemed to never stop flowing. “I can’t believe that you’re here…”

She smiled at you, and pulled you in close to whisper, “I’m not the only one here.”

Confused, you looked around you, and slowly, from within the thick fog, walked out groups and groups of people.

Your hands reached up to cover your mouth in shock, more tears pouring from your eyes when you see them… see them all.

Your coven.

Familiar faces surrounded you from all around, your grandmother, your childhood friends Sophia and Zoë, and a dozen other families that had all made their little impacts on your life.

“I can’t believe…. you’re all really here,” you repeated before your voice tapered off as more tears streamed down your face. You look over at your grandmother, and run to her, hugging her tightly before you did the same to your friends.

Zoë’s thick dark curls tickled your nose as you rested your forehead against their shoulders, Sophia’s slender arms encircling your waist as the three of you laughed and cried together.

“I’ve missed you,” you mumbled, and then pulled away from them, eyes gazing upon your friends and family. “I’ve missed you all so much…”

“And we’ve missed you,” your grandmother is at your side, her wrinkled hand taking a gentle hold of yours. “We’re so proud of you, sweetheart, how far you’ve come.”

Your breath catches in your throat and your head whirls around to face your mother. “You’ve… you’ve been watching over me?”

“Of course,” Zoë said, her voice light and filled with just the faintest amount of surprise. “What? Did you think we were just going to leave you alone?” she gives you a smile, her dark brown eyes filling with tears, and she laughs and attempts to wipe them away. “Don’t think you’re getting rid of us that easily.”

Your teeth sink into your bottom lip to keep it from trembling, and you lean into your grandmother’s embrace. “I’m so sorry,” you babbled. “I’m so sorry about everything that happened…” you look towards your mother and grip tightly onto her hands. “If only I hadn’t run… maybe… maybe then you’d be--”

“Hush now,” she said and stroked your face. “Do not say such things. It was my choice to put up that barrier. If there was a way for both me and our coven to survive, I knew that I had to keep you safe. And look at you now… what a remarkable young woman you’ve become.”

You smile, and frantically go to wipe more tears that had managed to slip past. “I’m so glad,” you said and swallowed a lump in your throat. “I’m so glad that I’ve been able to make you all so proud.”

“What, like we’d think otherwise?” Sophia said, and your grandmother chuckled.

The sight of them all here, so happy to be with you, it was an indescribable feeling. Ever since you had lost everyone that you’d held so dear, there had been an unfillable void within the center of your soul, something that you knew would never truly be healed. But, being here… and getting to see them all…

It was as though you had been transported to paradise.

The tricky thing about paradise though, is that you usually never tend to want to leave. It’s a place that entices you to stay, your own personal heaven that lies in wait till it’s time for you to finally leave the mortal coil and join the spirits in the realm of the gods.

And who were you to deny such a gift?

“I’m so happy,” you said, a smile spreading across your face.

Your mother looked at you, her eyes swimming with a mixture of emotions as she leaned down to place a lingering kiss on your forehead. “I know honey, and you have no idea how glad I am to finally see you again, to hold you again… but…”

Her voice tapered off and your head snaps up at the tremble in her voice. “You can’t stay here, my love.”

You recoiled from her embrace, as though she had burnt you, eyes wide from fear. “What… what do you mean? I want to stay here!” you shouted back, as tears began to flow down your cheeks again. “This is all I’ve ever wanted, to be reunited with you, and now you’re telling me to go? ”

“Now listen here, young lady,” your grandmother snapped, but her tone was thick, words tumbling out of her mouth like molasses, betraying her own underlying sadness. “You must listen to what your mother says. You have so much more good to do, more than you realize,” she ruffles your hair playfully and bops the tip of your nose. “You know in your heart that you belong back there… back there with your new family, back there with him.”

Your heart fluttered in your chest, and although it pained you so… you knew that she was right.

The spirits had offered you the greatest of temptations, and yet, here was your family telling you to ignore their call. They weren’t going to lose you, not on their watch, not when you had so much more life to give.

Your gaze lingered on your grandmother before you turned your attention back to your mother, who smiled down at you and pulled you into a tight hug. Fresh tears welled up within the corners of your eyes, and you shut them tight, for you knew this would be the last goodbye… at least, until fate decided it was time for you to be reunited once more.

“I love you so much,” she whispers, only to you, her voice muffled by your hair. “I love you so much, my beautiful, wonderful daughter… I’ll always be watching over you, my dear, sweet child…”

Warmth seeps through your fingers, through your veins, down to the very marrow of your bones, and when you finally open your eyes, everyone is gone.

You’re startled when you find a flower resting within the palm of your hand, a delicate white poppy, its petals brushing softly against your skin. Where had this come from?

An airy mist swirls around you and your body feels so heavy, your eyelids drooping from exhaustion as you go to lay on the ground. It’s soft, and plush, as though you were laying on a bed… and there’s a smell… it’s sweet …

Lavender?

A voice startles you, someone whispering to themselves in a silent pleading,

“Please, please… if there’s anything out there listening, anything at all… please, just help her wake up… please.”

Who was that?

It’s time to wake up.

Huh? And who said that?

Sweetheart, it’s time to wake up…

Wait… that voice…

Wake up!

A harsh gasp erupts from your throat as you surge forward from the bed, inhaling deep lungfuls of air as you struggled to catch your breath.

You feel the sheens of sweat that covered your body, your clothes and hair sticking uncomfortably tight to your shaking form and your tongue darted out to lick your dry lips, only just noticing how parched you really were.

“Oh thank the gods!”

You nearly jump out of your skin when you hear a voice beside you, and feel the bed sink under their weight. Your head whips around to find Lisa at the foot of your bed, her hands clasped together in silent prayer as she whispered ‘thank you’ over and over again into the duvet.

“Lisa?” you croaked out and flinched under her intense gaze.

Her face was stained from tears, and her hair was a disheveled mess, long, frizzy and curly, resting on her shoulders, as opposed to the loose braid she usually wore. The tip of her nose was red, and her eyes puffy from crying, but when she smiled at you, the shock from everything that had just happened seemed to slowly melt away.

“I’m so glad,” she said and sniffled. “I’m so glad that you’re alright,” she laughed and took a firm hold of your hand. “When Adrian came to us, your body lying limp in his arms, I thought the worst had happened to you while you’d been down there…” she shuddered. “You were so pale and so unresponsive… I thought we had already lost you.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was thanks to Vlad that I knew you were still alive… he guessed that you just needed a couple of days to rest after expending so much magic, and oh, am I so glad that he was right!”

At the mention of magic, you looked down at your hands and flexed your fingers. So… it was you who killed all those monsters.

“I never knew…” you whispered, and cleared your throat. “I never knew I was capable of something like that.”

Lisa blinked back a few more tears, and then shakily rose to her feet to pour you a much-needed cup of tea. “When Adrian told us what happened, I was furious.” she let a spoonful of honey drip down into the drink, and then stirred in the rest. “But… I had to focus on you. Even though I wanted to go down there and tear those monsters limb-from-limb myself, I trusted that my husband would be more than capable of dishing out a punishment befitting of those foul beasts.”

She handed you the cup, and you gratefully took it, gulping down mouthfuls of the sweet tea. “I had no idea… I had no idea creatures as powerful as them even existed.”

“Yes well,” she sniffed and took her seat beside your bed once more. “You won’t ever have to worry about encountering those things again.”

She reached over and squeezed your hand again, as though making sure that you were really there, really alive. “Adrian was absolutely hysterical, you know,” she said and chuckled lightly to herself.

Your eyes widened a bit, shocked at this confession. “Hysterical? Adrian?”

She nodded her head. “He refused to leave your side, and I’ll admit that he got on my nerves quite a few times while I checked over your vitals, but I knew that he just needed some reassurance that you were doing alright.”

“I see…” you replied and sipped your tea in quiet contemplation.

Lisa was quiet for a moment, and she opened her mouth as though she might say something before a small argument behind your closed door caught not only her attention but yours as well.

“Adrian, for the last time your mother has wished that she not be disturbed!”

“Did you not hear voices just now? She must be awake!”

“I’m sure it was just your mother--”

“No! I’m certain that it was more than that!” “Adrian, I am telling you to stay back and let your mother do her-- Adrian!”

Too late.

The door swung open as Adrian burst into the room, and when his eyes landed on you, his body seemed to sag from all of the relief washing over him.

There was a sense of urgency within his stride and he made it to the side of your bed in no time at all, where he wasted no time in pulling you into a warm embrace.

A tiny squeak of surprise escaped you, the gesture catching you so off-guard that it took you a couple of seconds to even process what had happened. Your arms trembled slightly as they slowly wrapped around Adrian’s neck, and you buried your burning face within the crook of his neck to shield yourself from the bewildered looks both of his parents were giving the two of you.

“I’m so glad that you’re alright,” he whispered and pulled away to delicately move a few stray hairs from your face. “I was… I was so worried,” he chuckled and gave you a sad smile. “I thought… from the way you looked… I thought--”

“Adrian,” you said. “It’s alright, I’m here, I’m okay,” you smiled. “We’re both okay.”

His golden eyes seemed to sparkle in the low light of the waning sunset that shone through your bedroom window, and he smiled again before pulling you into another tight hug.

This outward display of affection is something that you never expected to see from Adrian, much less in front of his parents. So you quickly tapped him on the shoulder to further prevent your plot of somehow turning to liquid and seeping through the wooden cracks of the floor to hide from becoming a reality.

He gave you a shy smile as he jostled his arms back into his lap, and fidgeted with his hands a bit before settling them by interlocking his fingers together. “I apologize, I should have probably given you some space to breathe a bit considering what you just went through.”

You chuckled nervously and shuffled around a bit to get more comfortable on your bed. “It’s alright… I… didn’t even know I could do something like that. The monsters--Lisa said that they had all been disintegrated,” your gaze focuses upon Vlad. “Is that true?”

He nodded his head. “Yes… it is.” he carefully made his way inside and pulled a chair over to have a seat beside his wife.

“Could you tell me… could you tell me what happened?” you questioned. “I--I mean when you found me, that is.”

Vlad heaved a heavy sigh and gently placed one of his large hands over Lisa’s, who had begun to tremble slightly. “Adrian had transmuted the two of you to us, which came as a right big shock because we had merely been reading in the library together. When I first got a good look at you, I knew immediately that your body had gone into shock from expelling a large amount of magic. I could feel it,” he explained. “Your magic. It was trembling and making a huge muck about your system. I had to calm it down, so I gave you some of my own.”

“What?” you croaked out. “You… gave me some of your magic?”

“Little one,” he chuckled. “I may not look it, but I do have my fair share of abilities up my sleeve. If I had not given you anything, well…”

You look down at your hands and flex your fingers. You really could have died? Geez.

“I had no idea something like that was even in me,” you replied. “It was such a reckless move…”

“No,” Vlad countered. “It’s what saved both of your lives. You just need to practice some more, that’s all. Your body is just not used to producing so much magic within such a short period of time.”

“I…” you began, and nervously swiped your tongue across your chapped bottom lip. “I don’t know if I even want to learn how to control that,” you caged yourself behind your arms as you thought back to those brief moments you can remember amidst it all. The flames… the heat… the burning in your arms… the overwhelming smell of death.

“It’s not something you have to talk about now,” Lisa said, a light bark to her voice as she interjected herself into the conversation. “Right?” she shot her husband a look and he coughed into the crook of his arm as he nodded his head in agreement.

You gave one of Lisa’s hand a firm squeeze to express your gratitude but still held your gaze with Vlad. “I have to know though… just what were those things down there? The way those things spoke to Adrian… it was absolutely abhorrent.”

“I knew who they were once Adrian had described them to me; Valhalla Knights.”

“Valhalla?” you repeated. “You mean… the Norse’s version of Paradise?”

“Yes well,” Vlad said with a roll of his eyes. “These are far from the group of holy men they once were. The only reason I kept them around was because of their fierce loyalty to me, that part of their reputation I did not doubt.” his eyes then narrowed slightly as he cast a look over at Adrian. “I see that that loyalty did not extend to even my own son.”

“It’s not your fault,” you quickly interjected. “We should have been more careful--”

“No, little one,” Vlad interrupted with a smile. “There is no reason to defend my past decisions-- they’re what put the two of you in danger, which is absolutely unforgivable.” in a flourish he got up from where he sat, but not before he leaned down and kissed the top of Lisa’s head. “I am off to have a talk with my supernatural guardsmen. This is my home and I will not have some demons running amuck with my family.”

He bowed before the three of you and with one final glance, he vanished within the blink of an eye, off to go deliver his word to his very terrified followers.

“I’m glad that he’s finally having a talk with them,” Lisa said. “I would sometimes worry that you would wander into some corner of the castle and run into a less than understanding creature that wouldn’t take ‘I’m lost’ as an excuse,” she sighed and ran a hand through her frazzled hair. “I think I’m going to go downstairs and start dinner… it’ll keep my mind busy.” she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your forehead, which made you blush.

“I’m so glad that you’re alright,” her eyes shined with new, unshed tears, but she quickly excused herself before they could fall. “Oh, Adrian,” she said from the doorway. “If you wish to join me later, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“I will mother,” he replied, but then his eyes found their way back to you and he smiled. “Just… in a bit.”

She gave him a knowing smile and closed the door with a sly, “Well, alright!”

With the two of you now alone, you become keenly aware of how close Adrian was sitting next to you and it sent blood rushing to your face again. You did not know what to say, and your heart hammering in your chest and your palms becoming all sweaty from nerves wasn’t exactly helping things either.

“I don’t suppose I properly thanked you for well, saving my life earlier,” Adrian finally said, with a teasing lilt to his voice. “So, thank you.”

“Oh please,” you snapped back. “If you hadn’t acted like a fool and gotten yourself stabbed and on top of that, tried to perform healing magic that was clearly out of your league, then maybe I wouldn’t have had to go all… I dunno, Hephaestus on them!” you practically shouted, and you felt yourself twinge with annoyance when Adrian merely began laughing at your response.

“What’s so funny?” you grumbled and huffed when he just started laughing harder. “Adrian!” you groaned and lightly punched his shoulder. “You know I’m right!”

“That’s exactly,” his laughter died down to a chuckle. “Why I’m laughing. I cannot believe I thought I was strong enough to heal that wound. What was I thinking?”

“I don’t know! That’s what I want to know!” you teased and started to laugh along with him.

The moment was sweet and it felt nice to joke around and have a laugh after something so traumatic. You felt yourself relax, but then it’s almost as if a pit drops in your stomach, one that you wish could swallow you whole, when he takes one of your hands into a gentle grip.

“You really did save my life back there though,” he smiled. “And Aria’s too,” he added, his fangs gleaming under the light of twilight. “I really don’t know what would’ve happened if you weren’t there.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes at him. “Oh come on Adrian, I’m sure that you managed fine without me.”

“It’s strange,” he said and leaned in just a bit closer. “We haven’t even known each other a year now, but you’ve somehow made my home feel more… complete.”

You felt your breath catch in your throat and a sense of panic begin to overwhelm you.

I know where this is going, you think to yourself. At least, I think I do… oh please tell me that my sixth sense is all wrong about this!

But the telltale signs are all there; the way he nervously fidgets in his seat on the bed, the way the grip on your hand grew just a fraction tighter, and the way… the way that he’s looking at you.

You feel your heart break in two, unworthy of such a gaze filled with unparalleled amounts of adoration and… and--

“I… I think I’m in--”

Before he could even think of finishing his thought, you put a finger up to his lips to silence him. Your arm began to shake when he opened his eyes in surprise, and then his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, clearly not understanding what was going on.

“Please,” you begged, and your arm slid down from his face and landed onto the bed with a heavy thump. “Please don’t say it…”

Your head lolled forward and you kept your gaze locked onto the comforter of your bed, unable to bring yourself to look at him. There was a tense silence that lingered in the air and for a brief moment, you hoped that he had turned himself into mist or transmuted out of the room, but then his chair scratched sharply against the hardwood floor and the door to your bedroom was harshly yanked open. A heavy, sad sigh permeated the quiet air between the two of you before the door was closed with a controlled sense of desperation, leaving you alone.

That’s when the tears came, hot, heavy globs that streamed down your face as you sobbed until you had nothing left, and buried yourself into your covers so that you may sleep and hide away from the world.

___________________

It was an understatement to say that there was a shift between the dynamic you and Adrian had shared within the walls of Castlevania. The personal lessons you had with each other stopped altogether, you practically avoided him at all costs, and if there was an opportunity where you could eat alone, you took it. Obviously these games could only go on for so long without the other two residents in the home picking up on the obvious tension.

Lisa had been the first to try and make an attempt to talking about it with you, but you had immediately dismissed her questions by directing it instead to a new technique of sutures you wanted to try based on a particular stitching pattern you’d seen on one of the dresses Crina had made.

Vlad had been equally as unsuccessful in getting anything from you, even if he believed his idea of asking you in the garden was a great one. When he tried to bring up Adrian, you broke off the conversation and said that you had to head back to the greenhouse to tend to some of the plants,

“Those rosemary have been acting really finicky lately, I should go check on them.”

Sure, rosemary. He knew you were avoiding Adrian, he wasn’t born yesterday. But all he could do was let you be on your way-- it’s not like he and Lisa were having much luck getting anything out of Adrian either.

You knew that it was a bad idea to act like this, to just avoid the problem and hope that you never had to confront it, but Diana had been right; you needed to talk to someone about this, you felt like you were going crazy with the amount of lying and dodging you’d been doing these past couple days.

Surprisingly, you had found your comfort amongst an unlikely pair of confidants: Adrian’s familiars. Well, the three that didn’t believe you drank the blood of the firstborn and made contracts with demons.

Aria had naturally been the first one to approach you, telling you that even if her master refused to speak to you, that didn’t mean you two couldn’t still be friends! She told you that Amore had been in absolute hysterics when she found out what had happened and that Lockette had murmured something about a, “stubborn lock refusing to break.” Yeah… you knew exactly what she was talking about.

She had been the one who suggested that you visit Hatred and Cereza down in the underground caverns since they might be able to shed another opinion on this whole situation. Hatred had initially acted a bit feisty towards you since you did kind of break his master’s heart and all, but after Aria had filled him in on the talks the two of you had shared, he seemed to calm down.

Cereza thankfully let you know that she was going to try and remain impartial during all of this and settle her opinions once she was able to properly make up her mind. And so it soon became a part of your daily routine to find time to head down to the cave that Hatred called home, with Aria always trailing behind you and Cereza not too far behind so that you could really just… vent.

“Anything happen today?” Aria asked while picking through a porous rock to try and excavate the tiny gem she swears she saw.

“Just Lisa cornering me in the library again,” you said and scratched Cereza under her chin as she hung beside you on a low stalactite.

“You know you can’t avoid her forever!” Hatred chastised. “I just wished you would sit down and talk to her.” “And say what?” you snapped. “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry that I broke your son’s heart because I’m an indecisive mess that thinks she’s undeserving of love.”

Hatred growled and threw a rock in your direction. “I am so sick of this!” he snarled. “Why do you think that?”

“Think what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me!” he hissed and stomped over to where you sat. “Why do you think you are undeserving of happiness? You’re living a life that some people would do anything to have.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you scoffed.

“Am I being ridiculous?” he put his hands on his goat hips and glared at you with his red eyes. “You forget that my kind specializes in making deals with you humans. I’m sure there are plenty alive out there that would offer up their own soul to be in your shoes. Someone with a respectable job, someone that’s living in a life of luxury-- fresh food for every meal, nice clean clothes always at the ready-- and of course, someone that has people that love them.”

He gave you a harsh jab on the knee with one of his long pointy nails. “You two have been acting like such spoiled children-- both you and my master. You can’t even offer the woman who took you in an explanation?” he huffed and shook his head at you disapprovingly. “Honestly.”

Your mouth hung open in shock at Hatred’s speech, with even Aria and Cereza falling silent.

“What?” Hatred wondered. “Am I wrong?”

“No… I…” you’re rendered speechless by his brutal honesty, and it takes you a few minutes to organize all of your thoughts. “You’re right… goddess, I can’t believe I’m actually agreeing with a demon.”

“Hey!”

Aria and Cereza giggled as Hatred’s outburst, and Cereza let out a couple of squeaks and twitches of her ears as she said something to Aria to translate.

“Demon jokes aside,” Aria said to Cereza, who merely cocked her head to the side feigning innocence, “Cereza and I both agree that it’s time for you to come clean with yourself. But, you should at least let someone know what’s been going on,” she flew up off your shoulder and kissed your cheek. “They’re your family. They can help… definitely a lot more than us familiars can.”

You cupped her gently in your hands and kissed her head. “You three have helped me even more than you know. I suppose… I’ve just been afraid to tell them all of this. It’s an awful lot to put on someone.”

“But that’s the whole point of family!” Aria exclaimed. “They’re there so you don’t have to put up with all of this on your own!”

Cereza let out a couple rapid squeaks out to express her concurrence.

“See!” Aria said and pointed to Cereza. “She agrees with me!”

“You’re right,” you said. “I… I need to be more open about all of this,” you got up from where you sat and dusted off pieces of shale from your pants. “I think I’m going to go and find Lisa.”

Hatred comically wiped away some sweat from his brow and collapsed onto the hard stone floor. “I’d say ‘hail Satan’ but I know he doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

You chuckled and thanked the three of them one last time before you exited the caves and quickly made your way back inside the castle to find Lisa. It seemed as though fate was on your side that day, and as you darted down a hallway you practically ran into her, who seemed to be on a mission of her own.

“Lisa!” you exclaimed out in surprise. “I was just looking for you.”

“Really?” one of her fine eyebrows were raised up in confusion, the expression in her eyes a bit more distant than you would have liked. “Because it seems to me that you’ve been hellbent on avoiding us.”

You flinched under her harsh gaze, and sheepishly lowered yours, unaccustomed to her being so upset with you--not like you didn’t deserve it. “Yeah… I’m… well, I wanted to apologize for my behavior.” you took a deep breath and steeled your nerves to look her in the eyes. “I wanted to find you so that I could have a chance to explain myself… if you’ll let me.”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes widened a bit. That appeared to catch her off guard and her expression softened a bit. “Yes, of course,” she replied and followed you to your room and took a seat at your desk while you sat on your bed.

It took you several tries to finally find the right words to say but after a couple of deep breaths, you were ready to begin. “First of all, I wanted to say how truly sorry I am for ignoring you and Vlad this week. I’m not… I’m not exactly good at dealing with this sort of thing.”

“I hope you know that neither one of us wanted to pry,” Lisa said. “We just wanted to try and help.”

“I know,” you replied. “I’m just…” you sighed, and then chuckled quietly to yourself. “Frankly, I was terrified.” “Terrified?” Lisa repeated. “Sweetheart, what were you terrified about?”

You felt your lip begin to tremble and let out a bittersweet round of laughter. “Lisa, my life has been marred with tragedy, death, and prejudice. The number of times I found myself surviving with nothing more than the clothes on my back, are too many to count. I thought I was destined to live in destitute for what I was, maybe it’s what I deserved…” you’re quiet for a moment as you let your words settle, and then continue.

“But then I was given a second chance, and it all seemed too good to be true. A family had taken me in knowing what I was, and they didn’t care. They welcomed me as one of their own, re-instilling a sense of purpose within me I thought had long since died. And even though everyone around me has been screaming that I deserve all of it… for some reason, I can’t bring myself to believe it.”

Lisa’s face crumpled under your confession and she left her spot on the chair to join you on the bed and wrap an arm around you. “Why in Heaven’s name do you not think you deserve all of this?”

“I don’t know!” you blurted out hopelessly. “For some reason, I’ve convinced myself I’m cursed and I can’t risk…” your chest heaved as you took a deep breath. “I can’t risk anything happening to you.” your voice cracked as you looked at Lisa, fresh tears streaming down your eyes. “I would never be able to forgive myself if something were to happen to you, or Adrian, or even Vlad because of me.”

“Sweetheart,” Lisa took a tight grip of your hand and forced you to keep looking at her. “What happened…” she faltered for a moment, carefully choosing her next words. “What happened to your family was a tragedy, but surely you must know that it wasn’t your fault?”

“I… I know,” you sniffled and wiped away at the tears that kept leaking from the corners of your eyes.

“Good, because it wasn’t. Nothing is going to happen to us because of you. Your family died at the hands of ignorant people clouded by fanatical judgment, not you. It saddens me that you’re letting them strip away the pride you’re supposed to be feeling towards your heritage.”

“What do you mean?” you questioned.

“You’re berating yourself for feeling happy because you’re a witch, are you not?”

Your cheeks flushed in embarrassment and your lip pursed into a thin line as Lisa hit the nail right on the head. How she was able to read you so easily honestly astounded you, and more tears fell as you broke down in her arms.

“It’s…” you whispered, and took a harsh breath. “It’s been so exhausting have to hide and lie my way through life just so I can stay alive because of what I am. I sometimes feel ashamed… my coven was filled with such strong, proud women. Witches are supposed to be fierce and ethereal, a guiding light to the other side of the veil that people are supposed to admire and turn to for help. It’s kind of hard to feel, much less embody any of those traits when the whole country wants nothing more than for you to be burned at the stake.”

“I know times have changed,” Lisa said and brushed some hair away from your face. “But what makes you think that you haven’t taken on these roles even now?”

“What?”

“Come now, little one,” she gave you a lighthearted grin and bopped the tip of your nose. “Ever since you started your studies, you’ve been slowly growing into the witch you were meant to be. How many times have I said how thankful I am you found us? Far too many to count, right?” she gave your hand another squeeze and smiled at you. “I know it’s going to be hard to let go of all of these anxieties, but I hope you know that there isn’t a moment where I’m not indebted to whatever forces brought us together.”

You sniffled and wrapped your arms around Lisa as you brought her into a tight hug. “Thank you…” you whispered. “For everything…”

“Of course,” she replied. “I hope…” she wiped at a stray tear that managed to slip by and gave you another radiant smile. “I hope that you know you’re deserving of everything that’s happened, that you’re deserving of a second chance here with us. And I know Adrian has been in a mood lately, but I’m sure he more than agrees with me.”

You cringe at the mention of Adrian and untangle yourself from your embrace, fiddling with a stray thread on your shirt as you worked up the courage to bring up just what had transpired between the two of you. “Yeah… about Adrian--”

“There you are.”

You whip your head over to look into the doorway to find Vlad standing there in a rich red long-sleeved shirt and black pants, his long black hair having been neatly tied back with a silk red ribbon.

Shying away from his gaze to try and make it look like you weren’t just crying, you hear Lisa clear her throat and ask him,

“What can we do for you dear?”

“I apologize if I interrupted anything,” he said. “But… it’s time.”

You blew your nose into a handkerchief and gazed up skeptically towards Lisa for an explanation on Vlad’s cryptic statement. What does he mean it’s time?

“Oh!” Lisa suddenly exclaimed. “Right, I almost forgot,” she took a hold of your hand and pulled you up with her. “You’re going to want to see this.” was all that she said to you before she leads you out of your room, quick to follow her husband’s long strides as you went up stairwells and whipped around corners until you arrived at a tall wooden door.

Vlad pushed it open with ease and you swallowed nervously at what lay inside. Large gears turned and clanked beside you as they churned who knows what throughout the castle. Occasionally, a pipe would hiss out a stream of steam, and you yelped as one went off near your head.

“What is this place?” you whispered to Lisa.

“You know,” she said, as she looked around the room herself. “I’m not quite so sure myself!”

You gave her a deadpanned expression. Great.

“All I do know is that you shouldn’t take a gander off to the sides,” she pointed over at the edge of the high bridge you were currently walking on. “I think that sight would make anyone queasy.” You swallowed a lump in your throat and shuffled closer to Lisa. “That’s reassuring,” you mumbled.

A large, magnificent window embellished with an extravagant gothic frame stood at the very end of the walkway, and illuminated within the bright morning light was a strange object that appeared to be floating above its pedestal.

You had never seen anything like it and as the three of you ascended the small number of stairs to stand before it, you were entranced by the golden adornments that covered its pitch black body. It was fairly large, but as for what it did… you hadn’t the slightest clue.

“Is everyone all here?” Vlad asked.

“Yes.”

You felt your stomach turn to knots when you heard his voice and in spite of everything that you had talked about with Lisa, you still couldn’t bring yourself to look at him. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see that Adrian stood beside his father, who let out a surprised chuckle when he noticed his son.

“Good, now,” he turned his attention to you. “What’s about to happen may seem alarming but rest assured, everything will be fine.”

“Uh…” you drawled out. “Alright? I… I’m sorry, what is going on?”

“Just watch,” Lisa replied and pointed to the strange trapezoidal cube.

Vlad stood with his back to the rest of you, his shoulders squared back, and as he lifted his hand before the strange item, it slowly began to let out a bizarre whirring sound and split apart before your eyes, spinning so rapidly that it appeared instead as a large glowing golden orb. Several gears that had been inactive started to turn and the entire castle trembled beneath your feet.

For a split second, you thought maybe your eyes were playing tricks on you because everything outside appeared to be flickering in and out of your view. The trees were there one minute, but then the very next, they were gone. This happened several times before the vast expanse of the Transylvanian wilderness vanished within the fraction of a second and was instead replaced by the glittering white sands and towering cliffsides surrounded by the deep blue sea.

The castle lurched you all forward as it stabilized itself, the cube assembling itself back together and the gears slowing to a halt as you reached your destination.

“What the hell was that?” you uttered.

“Did I never tell you?” Vlad wondered aloud as he turned to face you. “This entire structure is a traveling machine, and I can pilot it to any location on Earth.”

“You can’t be serious,” you said, voice laced with skepticism. “There’s no way you’d be able to move an entire castle within the blink of an eye.”

He merely smiled and instructed that you look out the window with a wave of his hand. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

You were still suspicious even as you walked up towards the window, but as you pressed your face closer to the glass and really took a look… you knew where you were almost immediately and you really couldn’t believe your eyes.

“But, this is impossible… ” you muttered.

“I told you I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Vlad teased as he walked over to stand beside you. “Welcome to Caliacra.”

So it was true. You were in Caliacra.

“This is where we will be staying for the next month or so,” Vlad explained. “Our party is taking place here as well, and is going to be co-hosted by my sister who has dominion over these lands.”

“We’re staying here for a month?” your face was split with a wide grin and your eyes sparkled in delight at this news.

“Yes,” Vlad said with a small smile. “We try and come here every year or so to visit my sister, and being able to escape the cold weather isn’t bad either.”

It was like a dream come true having the opportunity to be back... and for a whole month too. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been here, it surely had to be shortly after… shortly after--

“Do you…” you said all of a sudden. “Do you mind if I went down to the beach?”

Vlad blinked at your forthright request but then he smiled and nodded his head. “Of course. There’s no need to ask me for permission--”

You had taken off out of there before he could even finish his sentence, sprinting down the halls and jumping down two, sometimes three steps at a time. You were a woman possessed, and the only thing that would satiate you was feeling that cool ocean breeze on your face and smelling the sea air as you dug your feet into the warm sand.

Shoving open the back door, you nearly tripped over yourself in your own excitement when you could confirm that yes… this was real. You were in Caliacra. You were back home.

Giddy laughter bubbled up from within your chest and it erupted from you as you began to spin in circles around the cliffside. The view was breathtaking and you were mesmerized at the sight of the white waves crashing against the treacherous rocky shore down below. It was only then that you realized just how picturesque this spot was, and it seemed to be only a couple minutes stroll down the hill to reach the beach, so that’s exactly where you headed.

You ditched your shoes about half-way there, kicking up sand and rocks in your haste to reach the pristine shores at the bottom of the valley. When your toes finally sunk into that sand… the joy you felt at that moment was unparalleled.

The sun shone high above you in the sky and as you looked over the neverending expanse of the ocean before you, all you could do was sit and take it all in. Rays of sunlight dance across your skin and you closed your eyes in contentment, stretching out your limbs like a cat getting ready to take a nap. It was quiet, with the only sound being the waves crashing against the shore and an occasional gull cawing away as it searched for food. You felt more at peace now than you had in years.

You had no clue as to how long you stayed out there, basking in the sun’s rays and letting the waves lull you into a state of utter tranquility. You likely could have been there all day with no care for how much time had passed, not worried about anything, not thinking about anything. All that mattered was that you were on a beach in Caliacra… a place you never thought you’d see again.

You scooped some sand into the palm of your hand and let it seep through your fingers, the fine particles scattering in the wind and disappearing from your grasp in a matter of seconds. You chuckled to yourself as you kept doing this, and a small part of you wished that some things in your life could vanish just as easily.

The sound of footsteps crunching against the rocks and sand snapped you out of your trance, and when a shadow loomed over you, blocking the sun, you couldn’t believe who was standing there.

Adrian. With… a basket?

It was a little awkward, what with you on the ground staring up at him looking completely bewildered and him, merely standing there, the expression on his face looking completely unreadable. You weren’t sure exactly… what he was doing, but this bizarre stand-off was starting to get you agitated, so, you said something.

“Do… you want to sit down?”

That seemed to snap him out of it, and you picked up on a couple quick, mumbled apologies before he clumsily sat down beside you. He had his hair tied back again, with the sleeves on his dark blue shirt rolled up to his elbows. His arms rested atop his knees and the basket lay between the two of you, acting as an invisible barrier.

Neither one of you said a thing and you nervously tucked some hair behind your ear to try and not explode from how stifled you felt. Was he going to say something or not?

To your surprise, he leaned over and reached inside of the basket pulling out a sandwich, which he handed to you. “I…” he cleared his throat, his eyes darting away from your gaze. “I know this all might be a bit overwhelming, but you should still eat.”

Your eyes widened in surprise and you were sure they were about as big as saucers, a shy ‘thank you’ tumbling from your lips as you took it from him and let it rest in your lap. You saw him take one out as well and bite into it, and even though you thought you were too nervous to eat, your stomach let out an obnoxious growl, proving you wrong. Sheepishly taking a few bites, the two of you ate together in silence, and even if this all still felt incredibly awkward, you were thankful that… well, he even still wanted to be around you. You’d be lying if you said you had no feelings for him but it’s not like you hadn’t made a big mess of things. Denying his feelings the way you did wasn’t exactly going to win you any favors.

You heard the clink of glass and turned to find him taking out two ceramic cups and a mason jar, pouring out a serving for each of you. “Food and a drink?” you said and took a sip. It was sweet, but besides that, it didn’t have much flavor to it. “What else is in that magic basket of yours?” you joked.

You noticed the sides of his mouth quirk up a bit as he held back a smile. “You should know by now that I lack the finesse the pull this off,” he replied and knocked back some of his drink.

“Oh? Then who do I have to thank?”

“My mother.”

“Ah,” you said and nodded your head. “Lisa always seems to be one step ahead.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “She has a way of knowing just what do to… must be that maternal instinct of hers.”

You let out a quiet chuckle. “She’s helped put me back on track--definitely more than once.”

“She was the one who sent me down here. Said she was tired of the way I had been behaving and wanted me to try and mend things,” he let out a sigh and stared straight ahead, gazing out into the vast expanse of the ocean.

You felt your throat go dry and you downed the rest of your drink in one big gulp. “Oh… oh yeah?” your voice stuttered a bit, and you started to play with the sand to try and compose yourself.

“She explained some things to me and well, I…” he cleared his throat again. “I just wanted to apologize for the way I’ve been acting,” he finally turned to look at you, a sad smile gracing his features when he realized you weren’t looking at him. “I should have been more understanding of the situation and I should have caught on that maybe you waking up out of a possible coma wasn’t the best place for me to start confessing my feelings.” You couldn’t help the laughter that escaped you, and your cheeks burned as you turned to face him. “I’m sorry,” you blurted out. “I’m not laughing at you-- what you said, it was--”

“It’s alright,” he said and gave you a kind smile. “I’m… I’m glad that you feel comfortable enough to even be around me. I know how much of a brat I must seem, throwing a whole tantrum and refusing to speak to you and all that.”

You scoffed. “It’s not like I was any better,” you said and gave him a playful smile. Your hand trembled a bit as you reached out and placed it on his shoulder, the action causing Adrian to nearly jump out of his skin. “I should probably apologize as well. I didn’t exactly handle things very well. I’m just…” your heart fluttered in your chest. “I’m just glad that you don’t hate me or anything.”

“Hate you?” Adrian sounded absolutely baffled. “Why would I hate you?” You cringed a bit and removed your hand from his shoulder to shrug. “I could take a few lucky guesses.”

“You know that I don’t hate you. In fact, you should know that I--” he suddenly stopped himself, mouth gaping open like a fish out of water. “Ah, there I go again,” he muttered and chuckled quietly to himself.

He seemed to pull away a bit, and in your panic, you grabbed a hold of his hand. “Adrian,” you gasped, surprised at even yourself for pulling such a bold move. “I… I…” you huffed, frustrated, and looked down at your hands to try and pull yourself together. “Adrian, I care about you… a lot, it’s just… I need some time to think.”

“Think about what?”

“Let me finish,” you snapped. “I… I don’t want to hurt you, not any more than I have. So I need to come to terms with myself about a few things before anything else happens. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you…” your voice trailed off and you gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Or that I don’t want to see you. I… I’ve… missed you…” you mumbled, and quickly retracted your hand so that you could turn away from his intense gaze.

“What was that?” he said, a teasing lilt in his voice.

“I said that I missed you…” you pouted, your back still to him.

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that.”

“I missed you, okay!” you conceded and glared at him from over your shoulder. “I’ve gotten rusty with my sword skills. I tried showing Marius what I learned the other day and nearly cut off one of my limbs.”

At the sound of his laughter, you twisted back around to lightly shove him away from you. “It’s not funny! I’m lucky he didn’t ban me from his shop!”

“I’m sure he and Diana are going to have a field day with that story,” he joked and leaned back on his palms to rest more comfortably in the sand.

“I hope they’ll be alright,” you said as you thought of Lupu and of all the villagers you’ve come to know as a second family.

“They’ll be fine. Not even a harsh Romanian winter can claim a life treated by doctor Lisa Tepes.” he joked and then gave you a reassuring smile. “It’s only a month, we’ll be back home before you know it.”

Home, you thought and looked around you. It was about time you came clean about this place, huh?

“You know this is where I’m from?” you said casually as if dropping a side comment about the nice weather.

“What?” Adrian asked completely stupefied. “You’re from Caliacra?”

You nodded your head. “Yup. This is where I’m from,” you got up from where you sat and walked a couple of inches closer so that your feet were barely in the water. “I used to spend all of my time on the beach when I was young. Well, the time that wasn’t occupied by classes, that is. I would go hunting for creatures in the tide pools,” you hummed and started to walk along the shoreline. “You never knew what you would find, be it a tiny crab or even a slippery octopus.” you stopped your quick stride and checked over your shoulder to find Adrian trailing right behind you.

“Tidepools?” he asked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never explored low-tide!” you gaped at him. “Your father said that you tried to come here at least once a year! That is inexcusable.”

“It’s not my fault we were constantly occupied with family,” he grumbled. “It’s all about formality with us vampires.”

“That’s rough buddy,” you teased and slid out of the way of his carefully timed playful jab. “Hey! Watch it! It’s not my fault you were denied this as a child!” you laughed and started running across the shoreline. The wet sand easily sunk beneath the weight of your feet, and your jubilant laughter danced along with the wind as Adrian chased after you.

Your heart hammered in your chest as you raced each other, but you had to slow down once you had reached higher up on the bank since it started to shift from soft sand to rough sticks and stones. You panted from the exertion of such an exhilarating run and placed your hands on your knees to catch your breath. It had been quite a while since you had done something like that.

“What was all that about?” Adrian gasped as he caught up to you, and a part of you appreciated that he had actually run with you, he could have easily used his sneaky vampire speed if he had wanted.

“I…” you gasped out and looked up to face him. “I’m not sure… this,” you finally stood back up and looked around you. “I dunno there was this,” you took a couple of deep breaths and slowly found yourself facing the other direction.

A large lush forest lay just beyond the edge of the beach where the sand started to part off into soil. There was this… sense of familiarity, a feeling in the back of your mind that seemed to pull you in. You carefully made your way to the edge of the woods, heart hammering in your chest and palms beginning to sweat.

“I think… this is what called me here,” you said and gazed up at Adrian. You took a few quick glances around some of the brush and then pushed past a branch, allowing yourself to be enveloped by the thick covering of maple leaves and small aquatic plants. A thick underbrush of ferns appeared to part at your feet as you walked along the mud trails covered in thick plush moss. You weren’t exactly sure where you were going, but you had trusted your instincts this far, right?

You easily hopped over logs and skipped over withered, moss-covered branches, occasionally making a stop here and there to get a look at the many swamps that dotted the area. Occasionally you had to slow down to make sure that Adrian was able to catch up with your quick movements. Apparently, he was unaccustomed to making his way through thick vegetation.

It wasn’t until you reached a specific spot that you knew just why you had been lead here. There was a distinct feeling here, at this juncture, a sudden pressure that hits you just behind the sinus’s, one that makes you take a step back to get a second look at things. As you took another step forward the surge of magic that hit you left you a little breathless. It was unlike anything you had ever experienced before, but it quite literally felt as though you were having magic poured in you.

The plants, from the grass to the trees to the flowers and the tiniest leaves called out to you in a wonderous symphony; it was as if the entire forest was heralding your miraculous return.

You had finally made it back, back home.

Laughter pours out of you as you start to skip ahead, bouncing with every step and occasionally spinning around to get a good look at everyone. Ferns grabbed at your fingers and ankles, desperately trying to keep you close, with even the grass curling around your toes in affection. Large trees seemed to sing with the wind, their trunks humming a beat as their leaves chimed in a beautiful soft tune. It was simply magical.

“I can’t believe it!” you cried out and spun around with your arms outstretched. “This,” you gasped and ran over to Adrian. “This is my forest! My forest!” you shouted. “The one that surrounded my village,” you added when Adrian only looked at you as though you had gone a little mad.

He looked around, albeit a little nervously, for he sensed that he wasn’t exactly welcomed here. Perhaps it had something to do with him being a man?

“This forest protected my coven from so much, and we protected her in turn,” you said and rested a hand on a nearby tree trunk. “She was where I found refuge shortly after the attack on my village,” you said forlornly, and you felt the whole forest sag with you at the mention of that day. “This place had also been damaged by those men,” you spat. “They had burned quite a handful of very ancient trees, ones that we all still miss very dearly,” you said and brushed your fingers along a handful of honeysuckle plants.

“This is where I really learned to hone in my healing and plant magic,” you explained and walked over to where Adrian stood, listening to you with avid fascination. “It was through the teachings of the forest nymphs that I was able to harness all of this anger and resentment that I had festering inside of me and turn it into something good.” you looked all around you, a smile on your face. “I honestly don’t know if I’d be here today if it wasn’t for this place.”

“That’s…” Adrian began, but his voice failed him as he ran his fingers through his now messy bun-hair. “I never knew…” he finally said.

“It’s okay,” you said and took a hold of both his hands. “I only ever told your father about all this, but even he doesn’t know this much,” you brought up your hands and gave him a smile. “Can’t you feel it? This place is practically humming with life.”

You close your eyes for a brief moment and take a deep breath. Within a few seconds, a bright green light emanates from your palms and as it passes into Adrian’s hands, his arms jolt as a surge of pure magic seeps through his veins.

His golden eyes are blown wide in surprise and he is utterly mystified by what he just felt.

“That was…?” he asked, and you nodded your head.

“That was a portion of the magic that lies inside the very roots of these woods,” you said and smiled.

“That’s incredible,” he said in awe, curiously looking over all the trees and plants now.

You felt butterflies dance in your stomach as you watched Adrian appreciating such a sacred place to you. It felt so nice to be able to share it with someone who was a part of your new life.

The snapping of a twig from behind you caused you to whip your head in that direction and cautiously stalk towards a bush that seemed to be rumbling.

You let out a cry of surprise as five shapes leap from out of the brush and latch themselves onto you.

Adrian calls out your name and when he receives no response, he races over to where he last saw you, his magic coiling around the tips of his fingers as he readied himself to blast whatever it had decided to mess with you--

“Adrian no! It’s okay!” you gasped through a fit of laughter.

When his gaze landed on you, he discovered that you had been captured by a viciously clingy group of… forest nymphs.

They were tiny things, with big round colorful eyes and silky hair that seemed to mingle in with the rest of their body. Their hands appeared to be long strings of vines that currently had a tight grip on your arms and legs, and he noticed dozens of flowers that had sprouted on different parts of their body. When you finally corralled them off of you, they stood about knee-height to Adrian, and a few of them gave him curious glances, but most downright ignored him.

They babbled away in their high pitched voices, going on-and-on about how much they missed you and how they had so much to tell you!

“Girls,” you said, stopping all of them mid-sentence. “I’m so happy to see you as well, but you’re not just going to ignore this new guest, are you?”

They all simultaneously turned around to face Adrian, who gave them a nervous smile and an awkward wave.

“You brought a man into these woods?” one said sternly.

“Oooh, it is a man!” another one giggled.

“What’s his name? What’s his name?” another whispered urgently.

“This is Adrian,” you said as you introduced him. “He’s the son of a doctor I’ve been learning under.”

“Oh he seems more than that,” one of them teased, and when you glared down at her, she giggled and vanished into a pile of leaves.

“Ooh I see why you brought him in here now!” one of them whispered to you, then they all started to laugh and before you could even reprimand them, they would vanish from sight by turning into a plant. Mischevious little things.

You huffed as the final one sprouted up as a fresh daisy and turned to Adrian to offer your apologies.

“No, it’s alright,” he chuckled. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

You blew some hair out of your face and dusted off your hands that had become covered in dirt. “No, they’re just…” you frowned as you tried to find the right adjective. “Shy?” you settled for, but you knew that was about as far away from the truth as you could get.

Even if they had disappeared from sight, you could still feel them around you and every once-in-awhile you could hear them giggle and gossip to one another. They seemed to be following you, but as you neared closer and closer to a visible clearing, they slowly came to a halt. As you and Adrian exited the forest, you looked back and saw the group of them standing near the very edge of the woods, waving you goodbye.

As you two started to walk down a small hill, you took the opportunity to get a look at where it is you ended up. It was a field, a large one that spread out across a nearby coastline, the sound the ocean being a faint hum against your ears. Getting closer you were able to see what the flowers were and in that moment, time seemed to stand still.

This place… you thought. I know this place…

You walked further into the field until you were knee-deep in the tall, soft grass and surrounded by these gorgeous white flowers that looked like pearls shining in the sunshine. You felt a tug on your heart, one so powerful that it brought you to your knees, one that made everything so clear. The forest… the nymphs… the feeling of familiarity that you had once you stepped out into this place…

Hot tears streamed down your face as your vision focused on the flowers swaying in the wind around you. Poppies… they were white poppies.

Images from the vision you had of your family flashed in your mind and you remembered the white poppy you had found yourself holding after you had said goodbye. You heaved a heavy breath as you gently reached out and touched one of the flowers, practically trembling as their soft petals graced your fingertips.

You heard your name being called out, but…

You felt yourself slowly lay onto the grass, letting yourself become encompassed by these flowers as tears quietly slid down your cheeks.

It wasn’t long until Adrian found you though, the call of your name becoming filled with shock and a sense of urgency when he spotted you laying amongst the plants.

“Are you alright?”

You felt the grass around you flatten under his weight and when you opened your eyes, you saw that he had started to kneel down in front of you. Slowly getting up from your position on the ground, you give him a smile.

“Adrian,” you said, your lip trembling. “This is where my village was… this was my home.” fresh tears leaked from your eyes as you said this, and you quickly tried to wipe them away.

“Are you sure?”

You vigorously shook your head. “Yes… I can feel it,” you said and gasped as more tears fell down your face. “This place… it’s beautiful,” you whimpered and brought your hands over your eyes as you quietly sobbed.

For so long you wondered just had happened to this place. Had the forest regrown and nature reclaimed what was once hers? Or had the area suffered so much bloodshed that the very earth was contaminated?

The amount of relief that you felt seeing this… at being able to feel that their spirits were at rest… it was indescribable.

“I’m so happy,” you finally said and leaned your head on Adrian’s shoulder, a gentle breeze caressing the two of you as you sat amongst the dancing poppies. “I’m so happy they were all able to find peace.”

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bytheangell · 6 years ago

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ELLE ELLE ELLE YOU TOLD ME TO SO IMMA DO IT (kezia here btw). What I really want is a magnus introspective on magnus’ thoughts when he was sending asmodeus into limbo, you can hear some sort of feeling in that ‘goodbye father’. Because if you think about it, he did spend a few centuries with asmodeus and there must still be some sort of filial affection for asmodeus because after all they are family, he called him father after all and not asmodeus. Like how conflicted must he have felt when(1/2)

Goodbye, Father(Read on AO3)

Magnus doesn’t confront Asmodeus as soon as he gets back inside from speaking with Maryse. He knows that would be a mistake - his father is a clever, calculating man, and rushing into this in a swirl of heated emotions would only sabotage himself. Asmodeus loves him, perhaps, but only when it suits him, and only for his own gain. The moment he’s aware that Magnus is no longer on his side or willing to play his games, this charade they’ve been living since Magnus got his magic back will officially be over. And Magnus knows he needs to be level headed to come out with the upper-hand.

He doesn’t say anything immediately upon re-entering the apartment, the door shutting behind him with a now ring-less Maryse in the hallway. He doesn’t say anything for seconds, for minutes, for nearly a full hour, hating that he’s conflicted about what needs to be done. He despises the part of him unwilling to banish his father again, once and for all. The part of him that knows what he should’ve done the moment he had his magic back and had his father in front of him.

Against all reason, Magnus tries to talk to Asmodeus one last time. He isn’t sure what he expects from him - sympathy? A change of heart? A sudden understanding of everything Magnus has here… everything he had here, before Alec gave it all away for what he thought Magnus needed? The ring, for something so small, feels so heavy in his pocket. He’s aware of its presence, of it shifting as he walks, pressing against his body through the thin layer of fabric it’s tucked away in. A ring that should be on his finger now, with Alec by his side.

Magnus knows with sudden clarity that he shouldn’t be here playing family with Asmodeus, he should be home with Alec; Alec, who loves him for who he is, not his lineage or power or potential, but who he is right now.

There’s nothing Magnus wants more in this moment than for his father to see that - to realize the importance of the life he has here and the people in it. Instead Asmodeus scoffs at the idea of marriage, repeating Magnus’ worst fears of fate and destiny, of following in his father’s footsteps, of being one in the same. There’s no getting through to Asmodeus, and Magnus was a fool to think even for a second that he was truly there for Magnus’ sake and well-being instead of his own.

Magnus can feel his entire body tense with every word Asmodeus speaks. With his hands balled at his sides Magnus fights for control, jaw clenching in an effort to keep from shouting and lashing out without a plan. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when the argument reaches its turning point, as its likely to do if things continue on in this manner. For all the strength and power his father claims he has inside of him Magnus still isn’t positive he’s strong enough to do what needs to be done here and now.

Not until the moment comes.

“We could control the entire Demonic Plane.” This isn’t about love or wanting to have Magnus by his side because he’s his son… because they’re family. It’s only about the joint power they could wield, about control… of edom, and of him. That’s all this was ever about, and it feels like a knife to his gut to see that truth behind every word Asmodeus says, to see nothing behind his father’s eyes besides a thirst for power.

“I should banish you back so Lilith can deal with you instead.” There’s a hint of regret in Magnus’ eyes, a rueful half-smile on his face at the idea of it. To banish Asmodeus would be a kinder fate than what he deserves, and yet even that much would hurt. The short time they spent together, despite the false pretenses, almost felt like a missing piece of his life returned to him. The care of a father who looks out for him and his best interests, who doesn’t want to see his son suffer, who is willing to do whatever it takes to help him get what he wants… a glimpse of a life that might have been, once upon a time.

A glimpse of a life that was never meant for him. Not with the family he was born into.

The idea of leaving Asmodeus for Lilith to deal with isn’t ideal because Lilith’s torment would be worse than anything Magnus could do - it’s because Magnus still isn’t sure he has the strength to do what needs to be done on his own. Not physically, but mentally. Lilith wouldn’t bat a perfectly curled eyelash over ensuring Asmodeus received the sort of punishment he deserves, but Magnus looks into the eyes of his father - imagines his own yellow eyes mirrored back at him - and stops short every time.

“Don’t you get it? I’ll just keep finding my way back to you.” Asmodeus’ touch on his shoulders, the fingers wrapped possessively around his arms, makes Magnus cringe. It’s a touch tainted by the threat of Asmodeus’ promise to never leave him alone, not now, not ever.

He can’t allow Asmodeus to remain here, and if he banishes him back to Edom he’ll only return again the moment an opportunity presents itself. There’s only one other option and Magnus feels sick to his stomach at the thought of it. A fate worse than banishment… a fate worse than death.

He almost doesn’t want to consider it. Even after everything… this is his father. The man who took him off of the streets and raised him, who helped him feel less alone in the world. He did terrible things, unspeakable things, but it would’ve been an upbringing befitting a proper Prince of Edom had Magnus wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father loved him - and still loves him - in his own way. A way where what Asmodeus thinks is best is the only option and he refuses to accept any alternative.

Magnus steadies himself, bracing for what comes next - out of options and time to stall, this is it.

“True. That’s why I won’t be banishing you back to Edom.” Magnus wants to. He’d never admit it to anyone else, certainly not to the man standing in front of him, the man he knows he’d be willing to give second and third and fourth chances to time and time again against his best judgement. Sure, it wouldn’t be for another century or two after the sting of this betrayal and disappointment eventually fades, but a day would come when Magnus would think for the briefest flicker of a moment that maybe his father’s changed and that maybe he could truly love Magnus for himself, for the man he’s become, and not the man Asmodeus wants him to be.

He’d be just as wrong then as he was today.

Magnus opens the portal behind his father.

Red magic snakes out from his fingertips, cords forming that wrap around his father and bind him, pulling Asmodeus down to his knees. Suddenly fearful, Asmodeus’ eyes plead for silent mercy. Another act? Not this time, Magnus thinks, and his heart aches further.

He wishes he could simply banish him, comforted by the thought that he’ll see him again one day. That there’s always the possibility of later, of next time, when things might be better.

But he can’t. Not this time… something is different this time. He’s different, since Alexander. And to think that he almost lost one of the most important people to ever enter his life, all due to his father’s manipulation? That this man who claims to have his best interests at heart intentionally brought Magnus down to one of the lowest points of his entire life just to build him back up again in his image? Magnus can’t go through something like this ever again.

“Do you know what happens when you enter a portal unconscious?” Magnus hears the slight tremor behind his words, strained from the effort of keeping both the portal open and the magic binding Asmodeus as strong as he can manage.

“You- you get lost in limbo.” Asmodeus’ voice is also strained, the dawning realization of the fate that awaits him hitting hard and fast and leaving very little time for surprise or any attempt at self-defense. Magnus almost smiles at that. It wasn’t too long ago that Magnus helped to create the portal, a revolutionary discovery that his father has clearly kept tabs on. If he’s aware of its inner workings then surely he knows that it was his son who invented it, who shared his findings with the world around him. It’s just a reminder of the legacy Magnus is building for himself, a far cry from the one his father wishes for him.

“Forever.”

Magnus’ hand lashes out and his father’s body falls unconscious before flying backwards and disappearing through the swirling vortex of the portal. It closes. The magic fades from Magnus’ palms and he stares shakily at the now empty space in front of him.

“Goodbye, Father.” Magnus’ eyes are damp, shining with the hint of tears he refuses to shed. He shouldn’t mourn for what he’s done, for the loss of an already absent father. It’s better than Asmodeus deserves from him after all he put Magnus through centuries ago and everything he put him through since his trip to Edom.

That doesn’t erase the sadness. Faults aside, Asmodeus is still his father. Magnus may want nothing to do with him but that doesn’t erase the bond of family and magic that they share, and it doesn’t make Asmodeus’ words any less true: if Magnus wants it his lineage is there, destined for greatness in the realm of Edom. It’s in his blood, a birthright of his demonic pedigree.

Except that isn’t him. That isn’t what he wants. Magnus is the sort of warlock who helps others, Warlock, Downworlder, Nephilim, and Mundane alike, not the sort of warlock who claims status and rank to get what he wants. Magnus Bane is trusted, not feared. And what he wants isn’t to rule Edom, or any other facet of this world.

What he wants is a foolish Nephilim who sacrificed everything he wanted to make the person he loves feel whole again. What he wants is love, and the chance at a happiness he never imagined possible for himself anymore.

It truly is a shame that after all this time, after decades and centuries, Asmodeus could never bring himself to simply be content with Magnus’ happiness, his success in the pursuits he chose. Maybe things could’ve been different.

But they aren’t.

Asmodeus did what he did, and Magnus reacted in turn. And now they both have to live with the consequences of those actions.

Forever.

#magnus bane #asmodeus #shadowhunters #shfanficnexus #alec lightwood #i hope you like it!!#something about it feels iffy to me but I can't place it and reading it a million times is only making it worse so #HERE WE ARE #elle writes a few deadbeat lines

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whenimgoodandready · 5 years ago

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Ever wonder where you’ll be in 10 years? What kind of job you’ll have, or if you’re married with kids, or if you’re rich and famous or maybe even dead? Sorry! I got dark again😅 but still! And what about the heroes? Is Marinette gonna be a fashion designer? Is Adrien gonna continue to be a model? Will they be married with kids together along with their pet hamster “What’s-it’s-face”? The futures unknown to us and the only way to see it is to wait and move forward toward it! Let’s see where or “when” this goes:

*Timetagger-Mr.Pigeon is at it again. For the 24th freakin’ time in row! (sigh) Okay, you know the drill:Pigeon control powers, Blah Blah Blah, Gimmie your miraculous, Blah Blah Blah, Lucky Charm, Blah Blah Blah, Cataclysm, Blah Blah Blah, Audience takes pics of it, Blah, Blah, Blah, “De-evilize”, Blah Blah Blah, Miraculous Ladybug, Blah Blah Blah and Pound it, Blah Blah Blah................why? Why the Pigeon Dude!? Seriously! Is Hawk Moth even trying anymore!? Ugh!

Hey Hawk Moth! How ‘bout a little something different over here, huh!? (a hip hop styled and rapping supervillain w/ a spray can paint gun weapon from a vortex pops out) Now that’s what I’m talking about! Who’s this rhymes on a dime fella from time causin’ some crime you wonder? It’s Timetagger! He’s from the future! OOOOOOOH! He uses his weapon to send others in time and can travel through time space! You’ve outdone yourself there Hawk Moth! Glad you’re steppin’ up your game in the future!

He’s so competent that Ladybug and Cat Noir call in extra help in the form of a new superhero! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the holder of the rabbit miraculous, Miss Alix Kubdel! A.k.a. Bunnyx! (trumpets sound) from the future! (trumpets give triumphant end sound). Present Alix is there too. I knew it! I knew Alix would get the rabbit miraculous! (it was foreshadowed in the Season 2 opening) and it suites her cuz she’s the fastest girl in Marinettes class. BUT! Her power is not superspeed like we all assumed it would be. Odd, rabbits are known to be fast, so why isn’t it superspeed? Instead it’s the same powers as Timetagger. Wait, time traveling? What does that have to do with rabbits?...........Well, I guess if you run fast enough you could time travel, so okay, sure. Her miraculous was her pocket watch from her birthday “Timebreaker” which was guessed by the fans was a hidden miraculous (now I get the “ahead of its time” joke) and her Kwami is a rabbit named Fluff w/ her weapon being an umbrella. Her power for time traveling is called “Burrow”.

Lots of time traveling and space time traveling in this episode. Present Alix was given a note from her future self in her miraculous to go find the dynamic duo at a certain time and place for an emergency and sure enough, it was to help them deal with Timetagger. The space time traveling fight was cool, he sent her to the ice age, dinosaurs, Pompeii! Except it got old quick what with Timetagger and Bunnyx constantly using it to battle one another and it was getting nowhere! It was all:Take that! Ha! Sent you back in time! Boom! I’m back! Lather. Rinse. Repeat (sigh) I could see Cat Noir was getting bored with it too. By the looks of it, Timetagger was winning cuz Bunnyx was getting exhausted. I’m impressed, Hawk Moth was smart to create a time traveling supervillain to do the job and-(record scratch) Wait what!? Gabriel Agreste isn’t Hawk Moth in the future! Don! Don! Don!

Here’s what we learned from the future:Chris follows in his brothers footsteps as a D.J, teeny tiny Alix hits a huge growth spurt, Ladybug and Cat Noir become more badass than ever and there’s a new Hawk Moth! It was kinda hinted that Timetagger, him rapping like the app game he wasn’t allowed to play and calling the heroes babies like how he hates being treated. It was all there! Then we have Alix as the future rabbit miraculous holder with the name Bunnyx. These are getting too easy for us (older) fans predicting the shows plots. We all knew her “ancient hologram” pocket watch was a hidden miraculous and that she’d be the rabbit miraculous superhero ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. As it’s revealed, Cat Noir accidentally damages her miraculous with his Cataclysm in the future (luckily prevented now) which results in Timetagger sending her to ancient Egypt and concealed in a stone wall for possibly about a decade! (how the Hell did she survive!?), so Future Alix uses Present Alixs miraculous that hasn’t been damaged yet. Bunnyx is known as the “Hero of the Last Chance” when things get too serious that even Ladybug and Cat Noir can’t stop it and call up “Fluffy Tail”. Time travel is also dangerous to use and as we know from tv/movies, it causes time paradoxes which is why she’s the biggest emergency use. The fandom got their wish as we saw (sorta kinda) future Ladybug and Cat Noir! I wonder if in the future their teen superhero selves are renamed “Mini Bug and Kitty Noir” like Bunnyx says or if she was just teasing? As for their relationship, it’s ambiguous as to where it stands and from what “Fluffy Tail” said, it looked like she was demonstrating the love square. Does she know who they are outside of costume? Do they even know!? Cuz if they still don’t know after about 10 f**king years, I’m gonna be really pissed off! They better know by then! They get stronger with their powers expanding instead of a one-shot use, but the future looks intense from what we heard too. The villains get more powerful with a deadly doctor, terror twins, Monsieur Rat and an alien invasion! It’s no wonder Ladybug rounds up her own Justice League for this! Not mention a 7th interstellar war!? WTF is goin’ on in the future!? The other big question is who’s the new Hawk Moth!? It’s not Gabriel Agreste anymore! From his theory, it can go two ways; A. He succeeds in getting what he wants (Emilie) so he won’t need his miraculous anymore and some one else takes it, or B. He fails at getting what he wants and some one else takes it. Whoever they are, they seem to be x10 smarter than Gabe at creating supervillains (well, Timetagger still failed thanks to Present Ladybug sending Future Ladybug a note on how to defeat him) cuz some of his work was pretty careless. Honestly, he’s akumatized a baby more than once! A robot who outsmarted him and then there’s the Pigeon Dude! This new Hawk Moth doesn’t f**k around and really wants Ladybug gone ASAP. But just who are they that they’re more competent? Is it even a male? Could be female? Chloe? She’s losing her faith in Ladybug after her forced retirement (“Miraculer”), Nathalie? She knows Gabe is Hawk Moth and is secretly in love with him (“The Collector”/Queen’s Battle”) or how ‘bout Lila? (gasp!) Lila! Don! Don! Don! Of course, it all makes sense! She hates Ladybug more so than Gabe/Hawk Moth and she’s working for both of ‘em! But how is she the new Big Bad? Well, If we go by Gabe’s theory, it can go two ways; A. He gets Emilie back and becomes a happy family again w/ Adrien and doesn’t need Lila anymore, so she gets upset and discovers his miraculous and steals it as revenge for being used or B. She gets annoyed with Hawk Moth taking forever to destroy Ladybug and discovers Gabe has the miraculous and steals it to quicken the pace. She’s already gone to the dark side and she’s shaping up to be the Bigger Bad. She’s the new babysitter for Alya and Ninos siblings! (and I thought Vicky was bad!). She’s gonna akumatize them in the future! Timetagger, those terror twins and Monsieur Rat! Oh no wait! That’s Cats fault (should’ve stuck with the former option of leaving town). Let’s not panic just yet, the futures not set in stone.

#miraculous ladybug #timetagger #miraculous ladybug timetagger

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lokis-lady-death · 6 years ago

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Doesn’t Play Well With Others

In heat Jotun!Loki x Reader (Ice mutant) SMUTT!!!!

Warning: SMUTT! Things get a bit rough, little bit of struggling. He’s in heat so... it’s not meant to be fluff. Use your best judgement and (hopefully) enjoy ;D If I tagged you and this isn’t your type of fanfic, please disregard or send me a message!

Lady Death: A one shot, a two shot, I have no clue. Just an idea I have been developing for some time that finally got finished XD

Doesn’t Play Well With Others

Times were finally starting to look up. The world had maintained peace in the last few years since Thanos’s defeat, leaving little work for the Avengers aside from the run of the mill arms dealer handling alien warfare or the occasional powered up villain that decided to blow up a city. With it being the weekend, Stark Tower was even more quiet with the majority of the Avengers either out on their regular patrols or returning home during the seemingly tranquil time. Even the employees that worked for Stark Industries itself were off, leaving only those who called the tower home.

You were one of those who lived there, calling the tenth floor your own for the past several years. After S.H.I.E.L.D. disbanded and left you- a mutant that could manipulate water and ice that had been trained in military combat- without any real career options, you took up an offer to become a part of the Avengers from Tony Stark himself.

What you didn’t sign up for was to become a babysitter to a god.

“Loki?” you repeated as you walked between the shelves of the library. “Loki!”

For every time you said it, you became just that much more irritated. Him hiding from you could mean one of two things. He has done something bad and doesn't want to speak to you about it. Or, the more concerning option, he was up to something at that very moment.

“LOKI!”

“Lady y/n! Is there something I can help you with?” You turned your heels and nearly face planted into Thor's chest plate. When you glared up to him, he was notably nervous.

“I'm looking for your brother. Where. Is. He?”

Normally you wouldn't be so pointed at Thor but ever since your fellow Avengers let Loki move into Stark Tower- at the god of thunder’s request- he had been nothing but trouble. And as much faith as everyone had for Thor, he was simply too trusting of his brother and let him get away with practically anything. Which is why, despite your grievances, you had been assigned as the god of mischief’s ‘keeper’.

~“Just keep him out of trouble,” Stark had propositioned you after the first few- horrible- mission fails. “He just needs some tough love, someone to set him straight, pull the leash when he gets too rowdy..”

“Like I do for Tony,” Pepper commented from across the room.~

But the truth of the matter was Loki has been and always will be difficult to handle. On missions he was uncontrollable, reckless, and, worse than that, he couldn’t follow orders or stick to plans. Though he had proven helpful time and time again, his inability to play well with others was becoming a headache.

And now, while you were supposed to be meeting with him over basic training, he was MIA. Your own logical conclusion? He thought he was too good for your help, an unfortunately reoccurring issue you were having since the beginning.

~“I don't need your instruction on piloting your primitive engines!” he had told you the first time you were assigned to show him how to operate a vehicle- which happened to be Stark’s personal Audi R8. You warned him and tried to show how to use the gear shift but he grabbed the keys and drove.

Right off a cliff.

Fortunately Loki was fine. The car, however, not so much.~

“Thor,” you said sternly, poking your finger at him in warning, “You know he can't just avoid me forever. Tell me where he is.”

There was an obvious concern in the Asgardian's face as he debated whether he should or shouldn't tell you. It wasn't entirely unlike Thor to cover up for Loki but it was usually done over something minor. And it certainly wasn't to help him avoid lessons he very much needed if he was to become an asset to the Avenger team.

When he still didn't answer, you threatened, “Tell me or I'll get Wanda to read your thoughts.”

His eyes widened at that. You wouldn't really ask the Scarlet Witch to abuse her power for something so remedial, but he didn't know that. And as far as you could tell, it was the right card to play because he finally let out a sigh. “Alright, Lady y/n. I'll tell you where my brother is.”

The words struck you, not so much in what he said, but how he said it. There was something solemn in his tone that was so unlike the usually cheerful god of thunder. It made you wonder what type of mischief Loki had gotten himself into now.

“Well?”

Thor looked around uneasily, making sure no one was around before grabbing hold of your shoulders to back you down an aisle of books. In a hushed tone, he whispered something to you.

“What?”

“He. Is. In. Confinement,” he enunciated, his brow furrowed.

But that doesn’t make sense, you thought. Up do date Loki hadn't done anything near deserving of the confinement chamber- an impenetrable jail cell Tony had designed in case Stark Tower ever had need for such a thing.

“Well what did he do?”

“Nothing.”

Now you were more confused. “Then why is he in confinement?”

“Because he asked.”

“You're telling me he asked you to lock him up?” When he nodded, all you could do was shake your head, more confused than ever. “But why?” you pressed on, “There has to be a reason. What did he tell you?”

Thor looked away from you this time, letting out a huff as he admitted, “He told me nothing. All he asked was for me to secure him in the lowest level of the tower inside of the containment cell and tell no one.”

You squinted your eyes, fighting the urge to chastise him for following such an off request without getting more information. This was exactly the type of thing that made him useless in controlling the god of mischief.

“My brother was very worried, Lady y/n,” the God of thunder spoke as if seeing your apprehension written on your face. “He quite rarely asks for my assistance and when he tells me something is important, I don't bother wasting time with the details. He only instructed me to lock him in the cell for the duration of the weekend, and on Sunday evening I shall release him.”

The first thing you had to ask, “Does Stark know? Because I'm sure he will want to know if an x evil villain is having mood swings in his basement.” Despite how you felt about Loki or how much you wanted to believe Thor, the fact of the matter was that this was Tony's building and everyone living there had a right to know if the god of mischief had become a danger.

Thor’s eyes darkened as he went on, his tone far more serious than you had ever heard it. “You may all see Loki as some murderous monster, but I trust him about this. I have gone down there and checked on him and taken him anything he could need. He seems well enough, but insists on staying there until the last day. I assure you, lady y/n, I have this under control. He told me this was temporary and gave me all of the necessary precautions to handle it.”

You stared at him a long moment before you finally asked to be sure, “So am I right to assume no one else knows about this?”

If looks could kill you were certain you and Thor would have mortal wounds from the daggers you glared at one another. You couldn't just stand by and let Loki pull a LOKI right under your feet. What if he was regressing back to his old ways? Could you trust Thor to do the right thing before it was too late?

Another terrifying thought entered your mind. So startling you couldn't keep from saying, “Do you think this has something to done with Thanos?” It had been months since Thanos's defeat but it had become rather common knowledge that he still lingered somewhere on in the vortex of space and time, possibly to return. But there was a lesser known fact that led to your concern: Loki had once been controlled by Thanos, even under his control enough to destroy half of New York. Who was to say it wasn't happening again?

“Take me to him,” you said suddenly.

Thor quirked a brow. “I don’t think that’s necessary, Lady y/n. As I said, I have this under contr…”

“Don’t feed me that shit. I’ll decide if you have this under control,” you said, unwilling to waver. “The fact remains that I am in charge of Loki and you know that. If you want to keep him locked away, fine, but you will either take me to him so I can be sure he isn’t an immediate threat. Or I am calling Stark.”

You could see Thor’s jaw clench, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. Since his brother had become such an issue, the two of you butted heads over the god of mischief on a regular basis.

But never like this.

Never threatening.

“I suppose I have no other option then,” Thor seceded. He waved for you to follow him and after a moment of collecting your thoughts, you obliged.

Since moving to Stark Tower a few years back, you had been to nearly every floor, every room, of this massive place, but you had never been to the basement. After what had to be the longest elevator ride in history, the two of you finally came down to the bottom level. You stood still when the doors first opened, unsure of what to make of the scene in front of you.

Unlike the parts of the tower you had explored, this floor was dark, hardly lit by the few fluorescent bulbs that weren’t flickering on and off like in some cheesy horror film. Set off in their own cubicles were large, meticulously stacked crates with inventory numbers that were practically unreadable from years of wear and tear. Off in the corner were old, unused forklifts covered cobwebs. You shuddered to think what Pepper would do if she knew Tony had a room so unkept.

“Lady y/n,” Thor broke your train of through, “this way.”

You tentatively stepped out, following a few steps behind the god of thunder as your eyes scanned the different boxes. It wasn’t until you saw Thor stop beside a cubicle marked X91 that you realized the extent in which Thor and Loki had gone to keep this a secret.

The god knelt down and dug his fingers into a crate, lifting it and the two on top of it with ease, then setting them gingerly to the side as if they weighed nothing. And there, in all it’s explicit glory, was the vault door to the containment box. You knew that the containment box had originally been set up on a different floor, so finding it here meant the Odinson brothers had managed to move the colossal unit here on their own without getting any unwanted attention.

Thor began punching in a code on the vault door’s keypad. Once it dinged with acceptance and slid open, he stepped to the side to allow you to enter. You narrowed your eyes at Thor before looking into the room. There was a faint glow within from a few small light sources around the interior of the box, but otherwise it was utter darkness.

“You wanted to see him,” Thor insisted when you didn’t move. “Well. See him.”

You cut your eyes back at him before grunting and stepping inside to get a better look. It was only when you entered that you were able to make out a figure in the corner, lying on a small cott just inches off the ground. The figure shifted at the sound of intruders.

Just then, you heard a heart stopping clang from behind you, followed by a distinctive click. Your head jerked around but it was too late.

Thor had locked you in.

The abruptness of it all signaled the lights to come on and the containment cell went aglow like a newly lit star, blinding you at first.

“Thor!” you hollard as you ran to the door and began banging. “Thor, you asshole, opened this door or else….”

A glass panel exposed itself to you, showing Thor’s childishly apologetic eyes. “I am truly sorry, Lady y/n, but you leave me no choice. My brother instructed me to keep his imprisonment a secret and I cannot risk you telling Tony Stark. I swear on Asgard that I shall let you go free as soon as Loki…”

“So you’re going to leave me locked in here with this lunatic all weekend?!” You couldn’t believe it. You knew that there was no chance anyone would think to come looking for you in the basement so you were at the god of thunder’s mercy. “Thor, you can’t! Let me out, we can talk to Stark together about it, don’t leave me here like this!”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot let you out.” Before shutting the window, Thor offered you an innocent smile as he suggested, “Perhaps you would do well to spend this quality time with Loki. After all, you are to be combat partners. This time together could help you both sort out your differences.”

“THOR!” you screamed as his face disappeared, busting your fist as hard as you could into the vault and leaving a mild, iced over dent in the steel frame. Your cursed and pulled your hand back, regretting the decision immediately.

“You are normally more composed, little one,” you heard from the other side of the cell. “Could it be you’re afraid of the monster lurking in the dark?”

You closed your eyes while taking in a quick breath, easing your nerves before you turned to face Loki. You were angry, more angry than you had ever been at the god of mischief. It may have been his brother that locked you here, but it was practically under Loki’s command that he did so. When you were finally ready to give him a piece of your mind, you turned to face him.

But you didn’t get the chance.

Just as you were moving, Loki had gotten up from the cot and, with incredible speed, pinned you against the door of the cell. He pressed his entire body against you, his hands taking hold of your wrists and bringing them up behind your back to secure you in place. “You. Are not. Supposed. To be here,” he breathed in your ear, his words choppy and anxious. Strangely you noticed his touch was much colder, like frost coated his skin..

“You can blame your dumb ass brother! Now call him back to let me out!” you commanded. You tried to hide your panic, but this was a side of Loki you had never seen and it was beginning to make you nervous. Even in combat training he never got this forceful.

Rather than release you, the god’s grip tightened on your wrists, slightly pulling your arms back further. You let out a soft groan in pain, but knew he could be much rougher if he was truly trying to hurt you.

“I cannot do that,” he replied curtly, his face drawing closer to you just before you heard him take a long breath through his nose.

He was taking in your scent.

Your chest thumped at his words, realizing you may truly be in danger. Remembering your S.H.I.E.L.D. training, you tilted your head sideways before slamming the m your temple against Loki’s. The strike itself wasn’t that hard, but the suddenness of it was enough to make Loki let go. You dropped to the ground and swiped your leg out at him, kicking his feet out from beneath him. The god landed flat on his back. Wasting no time, you leapt on top of him, straddling his hips as you created a blade of ice in your hand from the water molecules in the air around you.

It wasn’t until now that you actually got a look at the god of mischief. Where he was normally as pale as snow, now his skin was as brilliant as the bluest sapphire with intricate lines that looked seared into his flesh. But it was his burning red eyes, once a light shade of green, that took the breath out of you. Like staring face to face with a demon.

And yet, somehow, as terrifying as he looked, he was just as mesmerizing.

Startled, you hesitated, losing the upper hand enough that Loki was able to roll on top of you. Hovering over you, he grabbed onto your wrists until you were forced to release the ice blade. You were so stunned you simply stared up at the god, wide eyed and unsure what to do. You knew you were no match for him physically, but the idea that something more was going on that could cause him to change form and even last out violently was terrifying.

When his face lowered, you flinched. Again you could hear him inhale your scent.

The tickle of his breath in your ear sent an unwelcome tremor down your body and you could feel Loki’s reaction. His fingers dug into your wrists, his thighs squeezed your sides.

“You are not supposed to be here,” he repeated in a hoarse voice.

“Then let me out,” you pleaded weakly. “Call Thor, have him let me go. I won’t tell Stark you’re here. Whatever you’re going through, I won’t interfere…”

“I told you, I can’t. I have no way to call my brother.”

The words weighed heavy on you and the realization that you were trapped for two days with the god of mischief while he was in this bizzare form that caused him to act at like an uncontrollable animal hit you like a ton of bricks.

He pulled back his face, looking down with those ravenous blood-colored eyes as he brought your hands to hold together. You were unprepared for the cold that emanated from his touch, letting out a gasp when he grabbed hold of your jaw with his free hand.

“Loki…” you said softly, trying to calm your nerves as you fought the urge to scream. “Loki, whatever is happening with you, I can help you through it, there’s no reason to fight. I’m not your enemy.” His expression didn’t change, remaining stoik and cold while he watched you. “I didn’t mean what I said, you’re not a lunatic. You’re not a monster. Whatever this is, this isn’t you…”

“Oh, shh shh shh,” the god quietened you by pressing a finger to your lips. “Darling. You talk far too much about that which you don’t understand.” His normal smirk graced his face and for a moment you wondered if he was becoming his normal, smart-ass self. But the smile was quickly gone just as his finger traced your lips.. “I have always known you were beautiful, Lady y/n, but in this moment, lying helpless beneath me, I dare say you are the most enchanting creature I have ever laid eyes on.”

Loki’s words took you so off guard you inhaled sharply. It was only when he began maneuvering on top of you that you felt it, the swollen growth between his thighs that dragged down your leg as he situated himself. You took the opportunity, pulling your hands out of his grip while he was distracted by himself. Before he could react you were able to press your hands to his chest and urged yourself to freeze him in place. Worst case scenario, he would be angry after he defrosted in a few days. You put your everything into it, but to your horror, it was as if his body only absorbed the power you poured out.

You stared dumbly up at him, unable to think of anything to do when your greatest weapon failed you.

Heart pounding, brain frazzled, you looked back up to meet his red eyes. “Oh, little one,” he grumbled. In an effortless move, he stood while taking a fistfull of your hair in his hand to bring you to your feet. You stumbled, grunting at the sudden movement and gasping out loud when he slammed your back against the cell wall. “You just don’t understand, do you? Well, allow me to enlighten you.” He closed the space between you, using his grip on your hair to tilt your head so that he was whispering in your ear. “Outside of this cell, I am expected to follow your command. But here?” He let out a dark chuckle. “You are mine, y/n. Here, you will be my plaything and I will do with you as I please.” He buried his nose in your hair, again taking in your sent before letting out a quivering breath. “But I can be a kind master. All I ask is that you obey.”

The audacity of his words sat stronger on your than his grip on your hair. In a fit, you reared back and brought your fist against his face striking as hard as you could as fast as you could. It was, however, all in vein. His inhuman strength and durability were more than your midgardian fists could break and even your mutant powers were useless. You felt a wave of helplessness wash over you, even as he released his grip on your hair. Landing on your feet, you ran through every scenario in your head and tried to think of anything that could get you out of here.

Nothing.

“So you’re choosing the hard way, little one?” he asked with a hint of malice and a devilish grin gracing his face. “I was hoping you would.” Loki put two fingers into the collar of your shirt and, in a swift motion, ripped your shirt down the front, exposing your bra. You moved to cover yourself but he took hold of your arms, using them to lift you up and pin you back against the wall. The force knocked the breath out of you and you struggled under his grasp but nothing could be done. His lips found the soft skin of your neck, his tongue sweeping over your flesh in a way that sent a surprising shiver down your spine.

Despite yourself, you couldn’t suppress a moan.

It was enough to spike the god of mischief as he dug his teeth into your tender skin, making you let out a cry. His mouth came crashing into yours and you weren’t sure if he was meaning to truly kiss you or silence you, but you were mortified when you had the desire to kiss him back. His tongue tangled in yours while he lowered you back onto your feet. His hands made quick work of your remaining clothes, simply tearing at the fabric like a wild animal.

“Loki, stop!” you managed to gasp between frantic breaths, feeling him clawing away at the last bit of your clothing. It was no use. There you stood before the God of mischief, nude and trembling, like a lab brought to be sacrificed.

But while you expected him to lunge at you again, he instead stepped back, his eyes rolling over you to take you in. You could see the heavy heaves of his chest as he became more excited just by watching you.

His eyes were locked onto yours as he began undoing the fastenings of his belt. Loki’s manhood burst through after the second button was undone and you could properly see him, his cock as blue as the rest of him but with thicker lines forming several rings around his shaft.

When he stepped closer, you were compelled to move back, only to hit the cold metal wall with your bare back.

Without warning, Loki grabbed hold of your hair again. Using it like a steering wheel to turn you around to face the wall. He reached up and dragged his nails down your back as his eyes mapped over you, taking in the delicious curves of your bottom and thighs before wrapping an arm around your waist to bring you back towards his hips. The realization of what was coming turned your blood to ice and you couldn't fight the need to try and pull away. The action was punished by one hard slap across your ass. “I am using what little restraint I still poses to keep from tearing you apart, darling,” the god warned, “You would be wise to take that to heart and be the good little pet I know you can be.”

The threat resonated with you enough to make you stay still, even as you felt his tip lightly graze over the folds of your lips. You swallowed just before putting your hands on the cell wall to brace yourself for him.

“See? That's a good pet, and for that I'll reward you,” he cooed in your ear, his whole body draped over you with one arm still holding you in place while the other explored your front. It was first his fingers to dip inside of you, his extra long digits curling in your moist warmth. “For all the fighting, you certainly are dripping for me, aren't you, pet? Could it be you're just as excited as I am?”

You didn't answer because at this moment you weren't even sure anymore. Though your initial reaction has been to get away, a small part of you was secretly feverish at the idea of him taking you. The quick witted back and forths, the never ending arguments, the strict tension the two of you always suffered from was all erupting in this moment.

While lost in your own inner battle, you didn't notice him situate himself at your entrance. It wasn't until you felt the stretch of you womanhood from merely the tip of him that you let out a gasp.

At the tiniest sound from you, Loki was driven to bury himself inside of you in one, hard, powerful thrust. You screamed. It was so rough and unexpected that you nearly slipped on the wall, but you managed to prop yourself with your elbows. As he began to inch himself backwards, you could make out the individual rings along his cock, each one caressing your most sensitive areas one bump at a time. You did your best to keep quiet, fully aware that the smallest sound you made would only drive him more. You bit down on your lip and steadied yourself for his return.

The god moved his hands to take hold of your hips, his nails digging into you as he held you still. This time. He entered slower, enough that the ridges again rubbing along your insides in a decadent way that threatened to make you cry out in pleasure.

He pulled back out before moving in again, steadily building up a rhythm of his hips rocking against yours. You couldn't muffle yourself as much as you could before letting out a few quick breaths.

And though you begged yourself not to, when he slightly angled himself differently, a moan escaped you. You could hear him let out a deep throated growl just before the thrusts became harder, driving so violently into you that you thought you might rip.

“Loki!” you cried out, feeling yourself beginning to peak. “I… I'm about to…!”

You didn't expect him to pull out of you at the sound of his name, but you had little time to think before he turned you around and lifted you up, urging your legs around his waist before shoving himself deep inside of you.

“Oh no, pet,” he spit out between husky breaths, “No, you must look at me when you finish. I want to see your ecstasy mount as I take you. I want to watch as you succumb to your god!”

You clung to his shoulders, your nails so tightly burrowed into him they began to draw blood. But that didn't deter him, rather it helped his own excitement to grow. You let out another cry, your back violently banging into the wall behind you while his hips punished you relentlessly with one brutal pound after another with his claws latching onto your ass as he buried his face in the nape of your neck. Your cries never softened but instead morphed into loud moans you couldn't contain anymore. You could feel Loki's cock becoming more engorged as the ridges swelled inside of you.

Again you felt yourself close to the edge. “Loki,” you whimpered, your thighs lightly vibrating against him from the excitement building inside of you.

He knew what you needed as he paused his motion, staying deep inside of you while he moved to press his forehead against yours. One of his hands snaked up your body to grab hold of the back of your head. “Beg me,” he ordered in a low growl. “Beg me and I'll give you what you want.”

You did as instructed, looking up into those red eyes as you felt yourself come closer and closer, begging, “Please, Loki, I… I'm so close…”

Loki smiled, making your heart drop as he pulled all the way out of you before driving back in, keeping a steady, fast pace that left you breathless. You cried out louder as your legs tightened on his hips, your muscles threatening to fail you at any minute as the two of you sailed further and further in a spiral of ecstasy.

His cock had become so thick that you couldn't even feel the ridges anymore, his manhood forming a lump in the very pit of your stomach as he filled you so completely you thought you would burst. Then, so abruptly you gasped, you finally came.

You went limp in his grasp, but it made little difference to him as he used his body to support you between him and the wall, still moving in and out of you as he wrapped his arms around you to bring you as close as he possibly could. That's when you felt it, unreal and quite distinctive. His boiling hot seed poured into you, making you spark back to life enough to cry out one final time.

For a fleeting second, you expected Loki to discard you, just toss you to the side now that he had finished with you. But to your surprise, he didn't. Instead, he clung to you harder.

It was an unexpected sentiment until you felt another onslaught of seed spilling out of him. You clung to his shoulders, smothering yourself into the crook of his neck. His cock remained swollen and emptying into you over and over until finally, you felt him began to relax his grip.

Still cradling you in his arms, he removed himself from inside of you before setting you in his lap as he leaned back against the cell wall.

Your eyes closed and you felt yourself slip into unconsciousness from the sheer physical exhausted you had endured.

But Loki hadn't noticed. While he held you in his arms, he himself was recuperating from the massive amount of strain he had endured, all from simultaneously restraining and divulging his animalistic needs. His chest heaved while he slowly regained his composure.

When he finally felt a sense of normalcy, he reached to pet the top of your head to check on you. To his delight, his skin on his hand had already returned to its original pale peach tone. “Lady y/n?” he spoke softly. When you didnt move he caressed your cheek, noting your fallen eyelids. He let out a soft scoff, half disappointed you were asleep but also enchanted by your restful expression. Without disturbing you, he waved a hand over your body, creating a soft golden glow that left you in the normal Avengers labeled track suit you wore on your days off.

Leaning his head back against the cell wall he couldn't hide the grin on his face.

You didn't know how long you were out, but when you did finally begin to stir your eyes fluttered as you took in the harsh brightness of the fluorescent lights in the containment cell.

“So it wasn't some messed up dream…” you mumbled to yourself as you began to shift, laying a hand on Loki's inner thigh without meaning to.

“No, I'm afraid not, little one,” Loki told you, watching as you scrambled to leave his lap.

You stood up and glared down at him, realizing you were dressed and he was the skin tone you were accustomed to. “Didnt you destroy my clothes?” He simply wiggled his fingers up at you, sparks flying from his fingertips to explain. “Magic. Right. Well why are…” You flapped your hand to indicate his body, “Ya know, not all Smuffetted?”

His eyes narrowed at your comment but after letting out a sharp sign, he answered, “That is my true form. Apparently when I…” Throat clearing, “Finished... I regained my ability to hold this appearance.”

You stared at him, noting the uncomfortable change in his gaze. You recognized something you had never seen on the god of mischief.

He was embarrassed.

You felt a bit strange seeing this vulnerable side of Loki. But you wanted to know more and understand what just happened. “So…Does Thor go blue?”

“No. Thor is a true Asgardian.” He let out another sigh. “I’m what is known as a frost giant.”

“Frost giant? I guess that explains why my powers had no effect on you.”

He nodded and went on. That's when you learned the truth of Loki’s past. How he was truly the son of Laufeyson and not Odin, how he originally hailed from Jotunheim as its rightful heir, that it was kept a secret until he discovered the truth for himself. How as he had gotten older there were times when he would lose the ability to maintain the facade and transformed to his natural form, often becoming overwhelmed with an instinct to reproduce. “Which is why I had Thor lock me away down here. I thought I could get through this cycle without anyone finding out the truth. I certainly didn't expect my foolish brother to deliver you here. He only knows I transform, he doesn't know about… the urges.”

You had stood silent, taking in everything the god of mischief had to say. When you didn't react to anything he had told you, Loki let out a grunt. “I suppose since you now know the truth you'll want me to leave the Avengers.”

That struck you, but not the way Loki expected. “I wouldn't make you leave over something you can't help,” you explained. “In all honesty, growing up a mutant, I know what it's like to be judged for things you can't control. You coming down here shows you wanted to keep everyone safe. I just don't think you went about it right, you should have told me. We're supposed to be partners.”

“Apparently I should have. I'm sure you would have made a better prison keeper than Thor.”

Despite the tension in the air, you had to laugh. Thor, with all his good intentions, had practically fed you to the beast. “To be fair, him bringing me to you seemed to be just what you needed.”

You would be lying if you said that you didn't partially want to thank Thor. If he hadn't done this, you wouldn't have been able to make such a connection with Loki. You held your hand down, offering him help to stand though he didn't need it. He smiled up at you through the sentiment, taking your fingers gingerly in his as he gracefully lifted.

“You're quite a peculiar midgardian, Lady y/n. Perhaps I was wrong to think we were so different.”

“Perhaps you were.”

You smiled at one another with eyes of understanding as you heard the vault door begin to open.

“Lady y/n! Brother?” Thor gasped, surprised his brother had returned to normal. “Are you well again, Loki? You look like your normal self?”

“Yes,” he said simply, “It seems Lady y/n was just the cure I needed.” The god of mischief shot you a quick wink before tilting his head to the side. “Now, dear brother, what in the nine realms possessed you to lock her in here?”

“Well….” Thor looked between the two of you as you shot him daggers with your eyes. “I know she has ice powers. And you're a frost giant. I assumed whatever ailed you, she could help or at least give you some sort of comfort.”

“Comfort,” Loki scoffed with a half clocked smile. “You were not wrong.”

Pinching the bridge of your nose all you could do was shake your head. “Well, I'm ready to enjoy my weekend,” you said as you headed past them towards the vault door. You made sure to put a bit more swing in your hips when you moved, pushing through the pinpoint pains you were feeling in your abdomen from the pounding you had taken from Loki. Behind you, Loki and Thor stood still as they watched you leave, both feeling a tug in their groins as they followed your sway with their eyes. But it was Loki who’s fists formed so that he could fight back that deep, dark urge to come after you again.

You stopped, barely turning to look over your shoulder as you smiled at the brothers’ dumbstruck features. “I’ll be seeing you boys Sunday night.”

It wasn’t until it was too late that Loki snapped back into his right mind, realizing you had purposefully began the locking process of the vault door.

“Y/n!” he bellowed after you, “Wait!”

Once you knew the door was secure, you stepped up to the small glassed window and opened the hatch to see the Odinsons glaring out the eye whole.

“Lady y/n, you have made your point. We have both acted in poor judgement,” Thor admitted, a sincere concern etching his voice. “Surely you’re jesting, you wouldn’t really…”

“I think you both deserve a bit of time to yourself,” you cooed at them with a wink. “I’m sure it’ll make handling you both much easier once I get off the telecom with Stark and let him know about what’s happened while he was away.

“You can’t…”

“Toodles!”

After the window slammed and you had made your way down to the elevator, you turned back one last time to the massive sign hanging above the now exposed cell in X19. Of course you wouldn’t rat the boys out, not really. This was a secret you would keep to yourself, they just deserved to panic for a little while.

But there was that concerning, scary fact that you, when completely alone with both brothers in Stark Tower, had become subjected in a way you had never expected. From being locked in the cell to the sex with Loki, you couldn’t help but wonder if you really knew the Norse gods as well as you thought.

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initiala · 6 years ago

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Hook-Echo (6/9)

Summary: They’re in a rut. That’s what Deputy Emma Swan tells herself over and over again as her boyfriend, Killian Jones, grows more and more distant, and more frustrated, due to complications with his dissertation research on tornado formation. But storm season’s more than halfway over and this dry spell is doing nothing to make things easier for him–or their relationship. Will everything blow over, or is there a greater storm on the horizon?

Rating: E

Content warnings: Graphic depictions of injury resulting from natural disasters, minor character death

I’m sorry. That’s all.

Thanks again to @optomisticgirl, @spartanguard, and @idoltina for all they did on this.

This is also on AO3 or FF.Net if that’s how you wanna roll.

There'd been more than a couple of times in Emma's life when she'd felt like she was preparing herself for war: her first day at the police academy, when she'd been outnumbered almost ten to one by the men; the first day of school in a new school district; every day she told her social workers about the abuse and neglect from various foster parents; the day she thought Ingrid was sending her back, only to have the whole day turned on its head when she was told about the adoption papers. She wasn't a stranger to conflict, and while her armor was a little rusty, it wasn't completely out of use.

However, she didn't like feeling like she had to prepare for war with Killian.

She'd gone to bed the night before and turned over all the usual self-pitying thoughts: what did I do? Why is he mad at me? Why didn't he call? What did I say? What, what, what. Why, why, why. She'd tossed and turned and made the sheets too hot and the pillow felt too warm to be comfortable, and when sleep finally claimed her, it was fitful and full of unsettling but ultimately forgotten dreams.

So going downstairs in the morning, she was tired, she was hurt, and she was pissed off.

"You painted," was Killian's mumbled greeting from the couch.

Emma stood in the doorway, her hands going to her hips as she tried to figure out if that remark would be the last straw or not. He lay prone on his back, one arm thrown over his face to block out the light from the windows over which she hadn't hung the curtains back up.

She didn't really feel bad about that.

"I did," she said. "Didn't really have anything else to do, what with all the last minute change of plans and all."

He sighed, heavily, and sat up with what seemed like an enormous amount of effort. He also looked like he'd been run over by a tractor, which gave her some kind of schadenfreude after how bad she'd felt for almost all of last night. "I did tell you-"

"No," she said, interrupting him. The last of her patience evaporated in that moment, gone over the last week of worrying about him and not hearing anything except for the national news, over a bad night of sleep and missing him terribly, over his fucking brother putting awful ideas into her head. "Do you know who told me you were just going to high-tail it out of here for a week or more? Your advisor. Dr. Bhavsar called me after you left to give me the head's up, because he thought you'd be too, what did he call it - forgetful about what was really important. And because I love you, I didn't say a word about it when you called me from Nebraska-"

"Kansas," Killian said quietly.

"Whatever. You were hundreds of miles away before you even thought to call me." Her eyes burned and she didn't know if she was just tired or if she was actually going to angry-cry over this. "Did you think I was going to stop you?"

"I don't know."

"Killian, I want you to be done just as much as you want to be done. You don't-"

"Do you?"

Emma blinked as he got to his feet, a hard look on his face as he stared at her. "What? Of course I do! I see how frustrated you are, how it affects us."

His hands flexed and she saw the silvery scars on his left hand standing out against pale skin. "If you really wanted me to be done, you'd take your ridiculous restrictions off of me-"

"Ridiculous? You could have died!"

He laughed without humor, holding up his hand. "But clearly I didn't, with only some scars and stiffness to prove anything happened. No, you just want to keep me coddled and tucked away, while the real professionals are out there at all hours to save lives."

Hot anger was giving way to cold rage and Emma tried to keep a handle on her temper, or else she'd say something she was going to regret. "First, if you want to save lives so much, become a first responder. We need that kind of help. Second, you don't have time to be out at all hours to save lives, because whenever you're not out chasing, Liam has you working yourself half to death at the bar."

Killian snorted. "You really think he doesn't want me to be done with this, that he'd rather I waste away at his dive bar for the rest of my life?"

"I think he's a little blind when it comes to you," she said, trying to remember what Ingrid had said. "And I think he wants to protect you, because that's what he's always done, and he can't protect you if you're out there throwing yourself into a vortex of death."

He scoffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Liam's not the one chaining me to the back porch like a dog who might run off after the slightest noise. Liam actually wants me to complete my program, to focus on what's important."

If she'd felt cold rage before, now her blood was turning to ice. "Oh right, I forgot. Liam knows what's best. Liam, who never wastes any time correcting me or talking down to me or treating me badly for no other reason than I'm dating you. Liam, who wouldn't raise a goddamn finger to help me if my car rolled over into a ditch."

"Don't you dare question what he would or wouldn't do-"

"He as good as called me a whore, Killian!" she shouted. "He calls me a whore and all you get is a slap on the wrist, because he's fucking blind when it comes to you. He just wants you to stop fucking some hussy and finish your degree, like the fact that I love you has nothing to do with it or the fact that I have no goddamn control over when the weather happens and it's fucking sucked this year! You and him are the same, you're both taking out all your anger about your fucking program on me, when I can't do a goddamn thing about any of it!"

"You could let me go!" Killian shouted, stalking up to her. Emma didn't flinch away, not now, not when she felt so cold she might actually break if he touched her. "I could have been done weeks ago if you weren't so selfish, that storm had an actual formation-"

"Selfish?" Emma asked. "Selfish? I'm selfish because you almost died? I'm selfish because I don't want to pay for your funeral?"

"Well at least one of us has the money to do it if I did die," Killian snarled, and her heart plummeted into her stomach. "You think I like living like this, waiting around and twiddling my thumbs because I can't contribute to anything? Because I'm constantly scraping to get by and paying for everything on bar tips and photos? You just went and painted our fucking house, Emma. You didn't ask, you just did it, because it was your money and you'd have the final say anyway."

"We talked about this!" she cried. "I didn't do it to throw money in your face, you know how tight our budget is anyway! We've been talking about getting rid of that stupid wallpaper, and I had nothing else to do while you were off doing fuck-all across the goddamn country, because my friends either work or are about to have a baby, and I'm not going to face your stupid brother when he's insulted me and you don't even have the balls to stand up to him for me."

His face was dark, his eyes like ice under his heavy brows. "Well I'm sorry that I'm all the entertainment you have," he said, his voice heavily layered in sarcasm. "I didn't realize I was your only plaything, seeing as how all of your friends seem to actually have their lives together. As for Liam, I did, as you say, have the balls to stand up to him - I told him to piss off about whatever we did together, that he had no right to speak to you as he did. And he reminded me that the last time I was this involved with someone, it ended badly then too."

She was trembling with rage and fear and dread, but she refused to look away from him. "Well I'm sorry you hate living here so much," she said coolly. "What with me flinging my paycheck around in your face and all, and dreading the day you don't come home because a chase went badly. If I knew that me caring about you at all was causing you so much pain, I would have told you to get out."

His eyes flashed, and in another moment he was stalking towards the door. "A fine idea that is," he snarled, grabbing his keys from the hook and slamming the front door behind him.

To her own credit, Emma managed to wait until she reached the couch, hearing the rumble of the TIV disappearing down the street, before she quite thoroughly went to pieces.

How she was able to pick herself back up, get ready for the day, and stomach any food, she didn't know. All she kept doing was replaying the fight in her mind over and over, like she was half asleep on the couch after watching a DVD and the start menu was playing on repeat again and again and she couldn't wake up enough to turn it off.

But she was awake. She couldn't turn off her brain. All she could do was kick herself for letting her temper get the better of her, for lashing out, for telling him to leave.

Remembering the look on his face as he'd left was like a dagger of ice in her heart.

"Emma?"

Graham was trying to get her attention, but Emma shook her head. "I'm fine."

He leaned against the door, arms crossed and a worried look on his face. "Sure, and I'm Bono. Just forgot me sunglasses. Did something happen?"

The word 'yes' stuck in her throat - admitting it to someone else made it real, made it not some kind of nightmare that she could shrug off and pretend never happened. So she stayed silent and just shook her head again, not even really aware of what she was writing at her desk. "Do you need to take some time off today?" he asked.

"No."

"Emma-"

"I'm fine, chief. I'll do patrol today, I need to go do something," she mumbled, and went to grab the keys to the cruiser before Philip, the usual patrolman, could.

She drove around town at random - Storybrooke wasn't that big, after all, so it's not like she had a really set area to stick to. She did have to make herself avoid Foxglove Lane - Killian would have no doubt gone back to his brother's place, and as much as she wanted to find him and try to make up with him, she also didn't know what to say to him.

Weirdly, all she really wanted to do was call him and tell him she'd had a fight with him.

Was that strange? Emma had several people she could call or go and see - Ingrid, Ruby, Mary Margaret, her cousins Anna and Elsa who lived in Missoula, any number of the people who have taken her in as their own over the years - people she could vent to and cry on their shoulders. But the only person she wanted to talk to was Killian.

Killian, who she told everything to. Killian, her best friend. Killian, who always made her feel better.

Except this time, Killian had been the one to make her feel this way.

She parked the cruiser near the edge of the road on its way out of town and watched for speeders, but this time of year and this time of day held little promise for anything interesting to happen. The fastest thing to cross her path was a squirrel, but even then it stopped a few times in its lazy hops across the road and she mentally scolded it to keep going in case a car actually went by.

She played with her phone for something to do with her hands as she watched clouds scuttle by above - puffy cumulus clouds, white and wispy at the top and carrying no sign of any rain that might wash away some of the dry dust that always seemed to settle over everything this time of year. She didn't know if she'd feel better if it was supposed to rain; at least a chance of rain might bring a chance for Killian to get another chase in, a chance to get the data he needed and be done with all of this.

Emma sighed, resting her head on her hand, her elbow propped up on the door. Even if, by some miracle, he did get everything he needed, would he still be mad at her? Would he forgive her for what she said?

Would he ask for forgiveness?

Would she even give it?

Her eyes blurred again and it stung, the skin around her eyes sore enough as it was, and she hated feeling this way. Blinking back tears, she threw the car into drive and headed for her mom's shop; it was the middle of the day, but Ingrid would put everything aside if Emma came in the way she looked right now.

Luckily, there was someone else helping at the front counter when Emma went in, the little bell above the door signaling her arrival. Ingrid smiled at first when she saw her, but the smile vanished into worry when she got a good look at her daughter's face. Without a word, Emma was bustled into the back room, the door to the front closed firmly behind them, and she fell into her mother's arms just as she started crying again.

Ingrid soothed her, drawing the story of what had happened out of her a little at a time; Emma was made to sit and given a bottle of water while she talked, and then she was given a milkshake that was made with rocky road and far more chocolate syrup mixed in than anyone was ever served out front.

She tried not to think about cliches and ice cream and things that soothed a broken heart.

They weren't broken up, they were just...

Broken.

"Oh my sweet girl, I'm so sorry," Ingrid said, holding her again and stroking her hair.

Emma leaned against her; her entire face hurt from crying so much in one day, how was that even possible? "I don't know what to do," she mumbled.

"You don't need to do anything right now. You both need space and distance from it before you can do anything rational."

"All I want to do is call him and tell him about it," Emma whispered. "Like when he's gone, we'll call and talk about our day, and all I want to do is be like 'hey, so I got in a huge fight with my boyfriend and it sucks' and talk it out with him, but he's the one I got into a fight with and he knows."

"I know, sweetheart."

"And he just looked so mad. He was so mad at me and I don't even know why."

Ingrid paused in her gentle ministrations for a moment. "I think he was mad about a lot of things and it just came out wrong. Same as you."

She thought back to that morning, wondering what the final straw would be, and thought maybe Ingrid was right. "I'm just... I'm just tired, Mom. I'm tired of missing him all the time when he's right there, I'm tired of feeling like it's my fault he's not done yet, I'm tired of feeling like I'm always putting him first and not getting anything in return. And I'm tired of Liam."

She felt Ingrid sigh more than she heard it. "I don't know what to tell you about Liam, other than you can pick who you love but you can't pick who they're related to. As for the rest... I can't fix any of it for you and I wish that I could. I'd like nothing more than to march over there and shake that boy until his teeth fell out for treating you so badly."

An immediate protest lept to the tip of her tongue - that Killian didn't treat her badly - but she stopped to consider her mother's words. If she were in someone else's shoes, looking at this, would she think the same way?

She was taught in school to look at a case from all the different angles, to try and distance herself from anything that might make her biased. She tried that now, looking over things as her mother might see it, as Ruby might see it.

They'd had their slips and rough spots before, but nothing that any normal couple hadn't faced. They'd talked and made up and compromised and worked together to make things better. And that had held true until the last several weeks.

Over the winter, as they'd gotten settled into the house, Killian had talked eagerly about the coming spring. He'd anticipated a wet spring with plenty of tornadic activity, his grant from the university to be renewed to continue chasing outside of the state, finishing his research and starting work on finalizing his dissertation. "This is it," he'd said one night as they lay together under the blankets of their bed. It wasn't even a proper bed at that point, they just had the mattress on the floor while they waited for the bedframe to be delivered. "This will be the last spring I'll need to finish everything, and then I'll be done. This is the start of something wonderful in our lives, Swan, I can feel it."

"There's probably something poetic in there about spring and new beginnings and whatever," she'd teased, her foot hooking around his calf and bringing his leg between hers.

"Probably and whatever," he'd agreed, and he'd kissed her, the sex that night giddy and full of hope.

But one wrong thing after another - the grant fell through, a dry spring, another delay on his work - and the stress started to grate on him. She understood and they'd still worked together to make do with what they could, but there was only so much she could do to support him, and she thought he'd understood that.

But maybe he did? "It's been a rough couple of months for him," Emma said finally. "I think it's like you said - he's mad about a lot of things and it came out wrong."

She wasn't angry anymore, not after spilling the whole story. She was hurting, yes - God, her chest ached and she missed him and she just wanted to sit down and talk with him. And she was hurt over some of the things he'd said, and she felt guilty about what she'd said in return, both of them spitting daggers before realizing they weren't actually mad at each other - they were just angry at the world and the things they had no control over and the final straw hadn't just broken the camel's back, it had caused the whole camel to shatter under pressure.

Okay, maybe she was a little mad at him about some things. Like he could have called. And he could do more to stick up for her to Liam.

But neither of those things were worth destroying everything they'd built together.

Ingrid pulled away, getting a paper towel and wetting it before coming to kneel in front of her, dabbing gently at Emma's cheeks. "I know you, sweetheart; you've already forgiven him, haven't you?" she asked softly, wiping away what was probably the worst raccoon eyes Emma had ever had in her life.

"No," she said, surprising herself. "But I'm open to the idea, if we talk first."

Ingrid smiled. "Look at you. You've grown so much in all the time I've known you."

Emma pushed herself off the chair and threw her arms around Ingrid's neck. "Thank you," she whispered. Not for today, though that helped; no, her mom knew what she'd been like for years, she'd commented on it just last week. Emma came to her a broken girl, hardened by the world, and it had taken a lot of patience and a lot of love from this woman to make her able to even consider having this kind of conversation with Killian in the future. "For everything, Mom."

She told herself she was imagining the little sniffle she heard, but she knew it was a lie as Ingrid's arms came around her and held her tight. "You're very welcome, my darling girl."

Three years ago…

To his credit, Graham did not, in fact, laugh her out of his office when she broached the subject of going out with Killian, but the look on his face said that he dearly wanted to. Emma would have been offended, except that she knew she was being overly cautious and ridiculous and, if she was being honest with herself, a little bit classically-Emma in trying to find a way out of entangling herself with another person romantically. Which was also why it had taken her two weeks to gather the courage to even ask in the first place. So instead of laughing at her (chuckling didn't count), she and Graham wound up having a very interesting discussion about how cops and criminals walked very fine lines around each other, how easy it was to befriend someone on the other side as long as they kept business out of it, and how this could easily wind up with cops turning dirty.

Most importantly, he told her that a simple spot check did not a criminal make, and if she really wanted to go on a date with Killian, she was allowed to.

"Now, if it turns out you break my bartender's heart, I might have a thing or two to say about that, but-" This time Graham did laugh as Emma reached across the desk to swat at him, her cheeks burning red.

"One dinner doesn't make or break anything," she huffed, sitting back down and avoiding looking at him.

He sounded odd as he responded, "One dinner can make or break anything, Emma."

She glanced up and was struck by the wistful look on his face; his gaze wasn't directed at her, instead looking off towards something she couldn't see. "Graham?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing. I think we've spent enough of the morning gabbing, let's get on with the business of the day."

By the time she got home, had dinner with Ingrid, and got up to her room, Emma had mostly forgotten the conversation she'd had with Graham that morning. She showered and got into her pajamas; it was early for bed, but she was just tired of wearing real pants and a bra. She was halfway through an episode of the show she was binging on Netflix before she remembered.

Hey. You busy?

She didn't think that blurting it out without knowing he could respond would help the cloud of butterflies that had erupted in her stomach. If he was working and it was a busy night at the bar, she didn't want to tell him and then sit there waiting and wondering and maybe he'd decided it wasn't worth it and he wasn't interested anymore and she wasn't worth it or -

Her phone buzzed. Got some time. How goes, Swan?

Emma swallowed, her mouth suddenly very dry. Okay. You?

Keeping busy.

Cool.

A pause.

So I talked to Graham.

Another pause.

He said it's ok. He didn't laugh at me, but he wanted to.

Still no response.

For the dinner or whatever you'd asked me about.

Another minute ticked by.

My answer is yes, if it wasn't clear.

More silence.

I know I'm ridiculous, by the way.

Now when there wasn't a response she started to get worried. No, it wasn't worry, it was outright nausea. Emma fought the urge to just throw her phone across the room and ignore it and keep watching her show, and now she'd missed like ten minutes of the plot and she had no idea what was going on and -

Bloody hell, sorry, Liam has the worst timing. As do I, apparently. I'm very glad to hear you want to go to dinner and that there are no restrictions on it. And I will take you to a proper dinner, but it's going to have to wait a few weeks.

What happened?

I'm leaving tomorrow on a chase, I'll be gone at least a week. Maybe more, if another system crops up. My grant got approved so I have time/money to get more research done before the opportunities drop off.

Her stomach was now somewhere under her bed. Now Emma wanted to throw her phone across the room for another reason, mostly so she could pretend this conversation had never happened and she could ignore reality for a while. Oh, she typed back, not sure what else to say.

She set her phone aside and skipped back a bit on her show to pick up where she'd missed things, but as she settled back down on her bed, her heart wasn't really in it. She curled up with her pillow and tried not to beat herself up about it; if she'd talked to Graham earlier, if she'd just ignored her worries and said yes like she'd wanted to, maybe they wouldn't have to wait - or maybe it wouldn't feel like some kind of contrived excuse for blowing her off. Maybe she really had waited too long. After all, she hadn't gone to the bar since he'd asked her out, not wanting to give him hope or give him the chance to talk about it when she hadn't actually checked to make sure it was okay. So really, there were plenty of reasons why he may have changed his mind, thought it wasn't worth waiting around for her.

Her phone buzzed on the bed - not a text tone, but an incoming call.

Emma's brow furrowed as she picked it up. "Killian?"

"Love, I am not doing this over texts, it's far too easy to misunderstand intent. Please don't take this as an excuse, it's not. This is the first good system I've had a chance to chase in weeks, and the opportunity exists for more. I need to get more research in this season or else I get another delay on my dissertation and graduation. I very much would like to take you out this weekend, but unless you can spring for a surprise week vacation and prefer eating at whatever fast food establishment I can find in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming, I'm afraid we have to wait."

She reached over and paused her show; if she'd heard him right, he somehow had gotten into her head in the last ten minutes. "How the hell did you know that's what I was thinking?" she asked.

"You're something of an open book, Swan."

Emma made a face. "Not something a cop likes to hear."

"Well, maybe your tough policewoman act works better on the seedy underbelly of Storybrooke, but not on me."

She had to laugh at his phrasing and his half-smug, half-provocative tone. "Don't forget, I had to make sure you didn't count as one of those seedy underbelly people."

"Ah, but who's to say I'm not? Maybe you just haven't found that side of me yet. Please, though, just inform me beforehand if you have to do a strip search so I'll be sure to have on clean boxers."

Emma snorted and covered her face. He really was ridiculous. "Didn't picture you as a boxers guy," she said.

"What, picturing me as more of a Calvin Klein man?"

She bit her lip at the image that brought to mind. They'd definitely be an improvement over the tighty-whities she'd seen him in that first time. Still, she'd gone there and she was only giving as good as she got. "Actually, I pictured you as more of a commando kind of guy."

There was an odd noise on the other end, and then it sounded like he dropped the phone altogether. Emma blinked. "Killian?"

"Uh - yeah," he said, his voice sounding oddly high, then he cleared his throat. He stumbled over the start of another sentence and she raised an eyebrow, her amusement growing at how flustered he sounded. Giving him a taste of his own medicine seemed to be working out amazingly. "So - dinner. As soon as it can be managed. Two weeks?"

She settled back against her pillows. It was a bummer that they couldn't get together before then, but at least she wasn't feeling as low about it as she did before. "Are you going to be back by then?"

"Swan, after what you just told me, I'll put some damned wings on the TIV if I need to."

Emma laughed, her stomach resettling in her abdomen and the leaden feeling leaving her as he charmed and flirted her bad mood away.

They kept in touch over text when they could over the next week or so. He didn't have good signal that often and she was often out on patrol for work, so sometimes an hour or more would pass between exchanges.

So, tell me more about how I go commando?

That one came just after she'd gotten into the patrol car to start her morning shift. She replied after she parked on the edge of town to watch for speeders.

Says the guy who made his first impression in some tighty-whities.

Nothing came until she got to the school to help with the pre-school year safety checks.

Intimate details, Swan, I want intimate details.

Unfortunately for him, she had to let him sweat it out while going over the new safety rules and school safety officer schedules with the district's principals and superintendent. After that came a long discussion on how to handle the sports schedules and the station's plans for the football season, and she only managed to reply just as her shift was ending.

Imagine, I could be telling you those intimate details in person if we were on a date right now.

In fact, since telling him in jest, she'd definitely had a few thoughts about the matter and could probably offer a few intimate details. But given the circumstances, and his interesting reaction to the comment in the first place, she wanted to see what he'd do if she actually did tell him in person.

His reply to that came as she was getting into bed that night, and it made her smile wryly.

You know how to cut a man deep, love.

She kept glancing at the clock, her leg bouncing so much that it was causing the pens and miscellaneous knick-knacks covering her desk to rattle around. Ruby kept giving her a Look whenever she happened to walk by and hear the minor racket she was causing, and one of the deputies, Arthur, had complained about noise earlier until Graham had told him to shut it. Arthur had continued to grumble under his breath, just loud enough for Emma to hear, but Graham had to threaten to send him out on patrol duty unless he knocked it off.

No one really liked either of Graham's deputies, but Arthur was easily the most disliked.

Towards the end of the day, Graham sauntered over and perched on the edge of her desk, his added weight offsetting the relentless bounce of her leg and quieting the rattling. "Officer Swan, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were nervous."

"Shut up," she said, finishing up a report.

"Is that how you talk to your boss?"

"Shut up, sir."

He laughed, then pretended to think. "Now, why is it that you might be nervous? Do you by chance have something important happening tonight? A date, maybe?"

Emma glared up at him. Sometimes it was hard for her to balance the two sides of him that she knew: Chief Humbert was a sensible man, good-natured, but able to make you jump to attention with a single look. Graham, meanwhile, could be sillier than a basket of puppies and she'd been in a field of wildflowers with more sense than he had in his head. And God help her when the two occasionally mixed. "Did you need something, sir?" she asked pointedly.

"Nothing really, just checking to make sure you have the permission slip I gave you for your excursion tonight."

She groaned, dropping her head down on the desk between her arms. "God, shut up."

He chuckled somewhere above her. "You have to admit, Emma, it was a bit ridiculous."

"Like you didn't make any stupid mistakes when you were a rookie," she grumbled. She sat up and finished saving her report, moving the file to the shared drive and shutting down her computer. "I'm out for the evening."

Graham moved in her way before she could leave. "Seriously, though, have a good time," he said. "You deserve a bit of happiness, Emma, and I think he could do you a world of good in that regard."

She felt her face heat up; she never would have expected something like that to come from her boss. From Mary Margaret, sure, or even her mother, but Graham? "I - thanks," she said, her tongue feeling thick and clumsy over the word.

He let her pass and she went out to her car, still silently shaking her head over the exchange.

As she got ready, she kept second-guessing every single one of her decisions: did she really need to go out and buy this pink dress? Did it make her look too girly? Her hair - she'd curled it and then decided she wanted to wear it up, but would he like her hair in a ponytail like that? Should she go for false lashes? Did she really want to wear those shoes? Would they make her taller than him - come to think of it, there weren't many times when she'd seen him not behind the bar, and she couldn't remember how much taller he really was.

At some point she sat down on her bed in disgust and wondered if it was too late to call the whole thing off.

Then she remembered how she'd felt when he'd had to postpone everything, and thought better of it.

But the whole effort was worth it when she went to answer the door and his mouth fell open at the sight of her. "You look stunning, Swan," Killian said.

Emma's eyebrows rose as she took in the sight of him; she'd never seen him outside of a Pour House t-shirt and some worn out jeans - the first time in his underwear didn't count - so this well-dressed Killian was a treat in and of itself: tight black jeans, short-sleeved button-down shirt that brought out the color of his eyes, black vest. "You… look…"

He shrugged, an easy grin on his face. "I know." He pulled one hand from behind his back and offered her a single red rose. Emma took it, her face warm; she couldn't remember the last time, if ever, anyone had bought her flowers. "Shall we?" he asked, offering his arm.

Emma grabbed her purse and locked up behind them; Ingrid was working that night, after being sworn not to make a big deal about one date. She took his offered arm and he walked her down to a car she knew wasn't his; he'd told her about how he'd turned his truck into the TIV and hadn't bothered getting a second car.. "Liam's," Killian said, opening the door for her. "Only indulgence he allows himself, this old muscle car."

She knew nothing about cars past how to keep her vintage Bug in working order, so she just made what she hoped was an appreciative noise as she slid in and he closed the door behind her.

They were both oddly quiet on the drive to the restaurant; Emma fiddled with the hem of her dress, caught between wanting to talk and feeling like she had nothing interesting to say. Killian didn't seem too perturbed by it, opening the door for her and leading her in without pressing her about it; he'd made a reservation and they were seated almost immediately, and he even pulled her chair out for her. "Such a gentleman," she said finally, grateful for something to say.

"I'm always a gentleman," he told her, sitting across from her with a wink.

"I've seen you toss out disruptive patrons; the look on your face could hardly be described as 'gentlemanly'."

"Aye, well, ensuring the continued atmosphere and content of my patrons certainly is."

"Always worried about the atmosphere."

She wasn't sure at all how he managed to grin at her in such a pleased yet sultry way, but he managed to make it work, and from there the evening continued without any of the earlier awkwardness.

They decided to take a walk after dinner, continuing their conversation from dinner about her career plans, her hand grasped firmly in his. Privately, Emma thought they were just looking for an excuse to continue their time together, but waiting for some of the wine they'd had over dinner to work its way out of their system was as good an excuse as any. They meandered through the downtown area before slipping onto some of the side streets, the late-summer cicadas providing a soundtrack to their talk as it shifted to books. She wasn't as much of a reader as she used to be - she just didn't have the time - but she was able to hold her own when he started talking older books.

And she trounced him in Harry Potter trivia, which she delighted in teasing him about.

"I did move here when I was quite young, you know," he grumbled as they turned a corner.

"Doesn't matter, it was a global thing. You should at least know your House."

The street they'd turned down was less inhabited, or at least most of the houses on the block looked dark; after all the patrols she'd done and all the calls she'd gone on through town, she knew the area fairly well - retirees, empty nesters, no one who really went out past nine if they didn't have to. So when Killian turned her and pressed her back up against a tree, Emma felt quite reasonably assured that no one would be peeping on them at this point. She wet her lips, her heart racing as she looked up at his face - too close to hers to be thinking about doing anything other than what she hoped he was thinking - and in the dim light she saw his eyes flick down to her lips briefly before looking at her again. "You're kind of a geek, Swan," he told her softly.

"Says the giant science nerd who built a giant armored science tank."

"Then I'd say it takes one to know one," he breathed, his lips brushing hers, and a moment later he was kissing her fully.

She'd been kissed before. She'd had kisses that made her weak in the knees, kisses that stole her breath, kisses that made her forget her name. But never, before now, a kiss that did all three and then some. His hands came up to cup her face, his palms rough on her cheeks. She shivered as they moved down her neck, skimming her shoulders and down her arms. His lips were as gentle as his touch, dipping in once, twice, three times at different angles and with varying degrees of pressure. His hands settled on her hips and she felt intensely aware of every point where their bodies touched, but none more so than the feeling of his tongue tentatively tracing the seam of her lips.

She opened for him, eager for more; her arms went up around his neck and she groaned into his mouth as his tongue slid against hers. Her fingers slid through his silky hair and she was filled with the urge to grab on tight and use it as leverage to take this to the next level. She felt drunk, her skin tingling at every touch, dizzy and muddled and like she could do anything as long as he just kept kissing her.

She rose up on her toes, pushing off the tree, and he stumbled backwards a little; his hands slipped, her skirt bunching up, and she whimpered at the feeling of his fingers on her thighs. He made a questioning noise and she sighed an assent and her pulse quickened when he let the fabric slide over the hands that rose up to tease the edges of her lacy panties.

She actually squirmed when the tip of one finger caught under the edge and traced the line of her panties back and forth. There was a fire building between her legs and he was only stoking it higher and higher and she was definitely, definitely going to have to do something about this if he kept going -

A dog started barking down the street, distant enough that they weren't the cause but still close enough to make them jerk apart. Absurdly, she felt cold as soon as Killian stepped away from her, despite the warmth of the evening and how flushed she felt. "We should - we should head back," he said and she really, really liked how thoroughly wrecked he sounded.

He held out his hand and she took it, following him on legs that felt far too wobbly for some kissing and light petting. "I might not make it that far," Emma admitted sheepishly.

He just smiled at her. "I'll carry you if I have to."

But they made it back to the restaurant without having to resort to that, though she did entertain quite a few thoughts about how that might feel, and he drove her home without further incident. No driving down to the outskirts of town to go parking. Or kissing. Or hands where they shouldn't be.

Which was really disappointing.

He did insist on walking her to her door, though, and Emma claimed another kiss from him. This one was more chaste, with his fingers entwined with hers and her foot popping up precariously from sheer bliss. "Will you go out with me again?" Killian asked hoarsely, his nose brushing against hers and the question spoken against her lips.

She kissed him again instead of answering, squeezing their fingers together. "Text me."

Emma half expected her mother to turn on the porch light, they stood there so long lingering in each other's spaces, but Killian was the first to break, taking a reluctant step back. She moved to unlock the door, knowing if she didn't move now, she never would. "Good night, Killian," she whispered.

"Good night," she heard him reply, and then she slipped inside, closing the door behind her and leaning against it with a happy, yet a little overwhelmed sigh.

She was so, so fucked.

#captain swan #cs fanfic #cs ff #cs angst #csbb #amanda writes #oh the angst #ohhhhhhhhhhh the angst

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