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harryspet · 4 years ago

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good girl. bad habits. [2] peter parker

[Warnings] alpha!peter parker x omega!reader, omegaverse, boarding school au, dystopian au, soultmate au, suppressant pills, misogyny, hella angst, heat, intense sexual content (wear a condom kiddos)

A/N: this took way toooo long but overall im happy with how it turned out!

part one

In which Alpha Peter is persistent and you tried to hold onto your power.

word count: 4.5k

taglist: @peterztinglez @lovelynerdytraveler @buckybarney @hollandsdream @micki-smiles @buckybarnesplumwhore @arts-ismything @saharzek @lovemassivelybeautifulbouquet @what-is-your-wish @marvelslut-musicalnerd @brattypeony @hermayone @buckysugar @yanderepeterparker @ttqueen05 @belleknows @write-from-the-heart @sad-ed-noise @quaksonhehe @halparkebitchb @bangtaninyourareaxox @blondesforlife

Wanda was lucky it was Sunday. It was easier to skip Sunday service than regular classes and her severe hangover told you that she wasn’t getting out of bed anytime soon. You walked over to her twin bed and, although you had your own right across from her, you snuggled into her bed.

“Ugh,” Wanda groaned.

“That better not be for me,” You frowned.

“It is for you,” As you laid down, she wrapped her arm around you, resting her head on your shoulder, “You’re the one who gave me the booze.”

“It’s not my fault you can’t handle your liquor,” A small smile tugged at your lips until Wanda’s next words met your ears.

“Goddess, you smell like Alpha.”

“And what do you think you smell like? Is your virtue even still intact?”

“A lady never tells,” Wanda giggled but you scoffed, “I can’t believe that you of all people landed yourself an Alpha. A rich and powerful one too.”

You wish you could react like Wanda. You wished that you could switch a flip and you could see the world through rose-colored glasses, “I wouldn’t say I landed him. He was just acting like a territorial jerk like the rest of them. Who knows, maybe he has a thing for lots of girls. Being a council member's nephew … I’m sure he’s popular.”

“I don’t think so,” You could tell she was smiling by the way she was talking, “Peter didn’t dance with any other girl at the Ball. You’re like Cinderella and he’s your prince charming. Just promise you won’t forget me when you’re royalty.”

“I hope you know I’d rather swallow a knife than be associated with that family.”

Wanda didn’t listen to you as she continued, “Maybe it is true that opposites attract.”

Word spread fast around the Stark School and every question someone asked you was about Peter and whether or not you were mates. You denied any connection that you had with him and you made sure to have a scowl on your face when you did. This whole situation was hurting your reputation and making you appear weak. Before the ball, girls didn’t dare approach you out of fear that you’d poison their precious minds.

You preferred when people were scared of you.

To make matters worst, you woke up thinking about you-know-who and almost all your thoughts were starting to revolve around him. That was enough to drive you insane.

You decided that for the next few weeks you’d be on your worst behavior. You managed to break your previous record for your number of infractions within a single week. Every teacher that tried to scold you for misbehaving, you snapped back at. Your skirt got shorter and your makeup became even more extravagant.

Today, you finally managed to get back at the girl who always kicked your shins when you played soccer in physical education. Once she shoved past you, you reached back to grab a fistful of her hair. She cried out as she fell back and you heard the screaming of a whistle though you ignored it.

It was like all the frustration of your life had reached its boiling point. You hated everything about how your life had turned out. You knew the world wasn’t fair but now it just felt cruel.

Wanda had to pull you off of her to keep you from punching her, “Y/L/N, off the field now!” You heard your teacher say. Wanda was saying something, trying to calm you down, but you shrugged her off. You were already walking away from the field and towards the bleachers.

You figured you’d walk all the way back to dorms to let yourself blow off steam but you found a familiar face waiting behind the bleachers.

Your face fell and you thought your knees might give in. Clad in his uniform, his red tie, and a blazer that held the Asgard symbol completed the look. He looked put together unlike you. Your knees were bruised, your hair a mess, and your gym clothes were now covered in grass stains.

“What … What are you doing here?” You asked the young Alpha and, as he looked you over, he almost seemed concerned.

He stepped closer, his eyes burning holes into your skin, “I came to watch you play but … I don't think you’re making the team anytime soon.”

“Don’t you have your own life to worry about? I don’t know, maybe school? Or does your uncle have too much influence for you to have to worry about pesky things like grades?” Peter opened his mouth to retort but you interrupted him. His lips pressed into a thin line of frustration as he let you finish, “You know what, Alpha-boy? I really can’t do this right now.”

You gritted your teeth as you turned to walk away, only for a strong hand to wrap around your wrist. You turned to last out but, like a candle blown out by the wind, you felt your anger melt away. The calm settled on the features of your face and then it traveled through the rest of your body.

You looked down at his hand touching your skin, realizing that he was the source, “I meant what I said last time,” He spoke calmly but you could hear the seriousness in his tone, “You’re mine, Y/N.”

“How did you do that?” You asked, your eyebrows furrowed. Your voice was small once again and it made you wonder how long you had been raising your voice.

“Do what?” Peter smirked and, as much as you wanted to scowl, you couldn’t, “Isn’t this better? Having a moment where you’re not so angry at the world? If you’d just give me a chance, I could help you.”

“And what’s in it for you?” You already knew the answer. There was a part of him deep inside that craved the intimacy you could give him. He wanted someone to care for and to protect but he also wanted territory that he could claim and heirs to carry his name. As Peter searched your face, he could tell you already knew his answer, “I’m never going to want to be someone’s property, no matter what magic you try to work on me.”

“It’s not magic,” Peter insisted, “It’s a mate bond. I think … I think our souls are somehow connected.”

You couldn’t deny that you thought it was true. You could resist him but not the connection you were feeling, “Then we’ll break it-” Your mouth shut as if your body was mad at you for even letting those words escape your lips.

His eyes turned black, “Give me time with you. I’ll convince you otherwise.”

You finally pulled your arm away from him as a group of girls walked past, heading back towards the school. Some stared in awe and others whispered to each other, “I can’t believe this,” You whispered, letting the anger seep back in, “There will be no us time because you’re not even supposed to be here.”

“Winter Break,” He spoke simply, not paying the girls any mind, “You’ll come stay with my family. My Aunt May wants to meet you and Pepper thought it would be inappropriate to ask you herself …”

You blinked, wondering why the hell he wanted you, of all people, to meet his family, “The answer would’ve been no … I have to shower before Calculus.”

You turned away, your arms crossed but he called for you as you walked away again, “Where will you go then?”

“I don’t know, I’ll have Christmas with the nuns and the groundskeepers or something.”

You looked back to see he wasn’t chasing you. He only took a deep breath and stuffed his hands into his back pockets, “I’ll see you around, Y/N.”

Peter was used to quiet dinners with his Aunt and Uncle. Usually, when he talked, Tony would respond with something snappy and condescending. Peter had learned over the years not to shake things up but that only led to anger and frustration being built up within. Peter was an Alpha but Tony was an Alpha of Alphas.

“You’ve been skipping school,” Tony didn’t meet Peter’s eyes as he brought a piece of steak to his mouth. Peter tried not to freeze or show any hint of guilt on his face.

Peter had come to visit you multiple times after the situation on the soccer field. As he expected, you rejected him with every chance you got but that didn’t stop him from trying to get to know you. His friends teased him for falling head over heels for someone he barely knew. Alphas were supposed to be above that and let the Omegas crawl to them but Peter enjoyed chasing you.

“Who told you that?” Peter asked casually.

“You don’t think I have eyes everywhere, genius?” Peter's lips pressed into a thin line as he gripped his fork tightly, poking at his food.

“Pepper finally confessed. She’s been going behind my back in order to help you,” He felt cornered and the fact that Pepper wasn’t here to defend him only made him more uneasy, “All this for a rebel sympathizer?”

Peter often disagreed with the man who sat upon his golden throne. Within the walls of his million-dollar home, Peter doubted there was a way Stark could possibly even understand the grievances of the people below him.

“She’s … she’s my mate,” Tony paused and shot Peter a hard glance.

“I’m sorry, she’s what?”

“I have a feeling, sir.”

Tony rolled his eyes, “A mate? My nephew has a mate …” Tony spoke to himself, “If I want you to be anything like me, Peter, then I should allow you your independence. However, I won’t have her embarrassing this family, so whatever you have to do to correct her behavior, you’ll do it.”

Peter instantly nodded, “I will, I promise.” Peter felt a glimmer of happiness at his Uncle’s acceptance.

“Who knows, maybe converting her will be good for my image. Our image, Peter.” It didn’t surprise Peter in the slightest that Tony’s mind was now working to see how it would benefit him.

The quiet dinner continued until Pepper arrived with news that would surely steal any light Peter felt in his own heart.

You had finally escaped the Stark School.

The city was cold but the people were colder. The harsh winter and the busy, holiday season left people tired and caused their words to be terse. It was why you preferred the hustling and bustling city of New York. The rankings existed but it seemed everyone was rude to one another. It was nice to see.

Besides that, in a city of millions of people, you were invincible. With the suppressants you were now on, no one could outwardly tell your ranking and, as long as you kept your head down, no officers asked for your identification.

The first couple of weeks were stressful but everything seemed to fall in place. You moved your way in and out of shelters, picking up jobs that paid under the table in order to earn money in order to buy more suppressants.

Omegas were almost as rare as true Alphas. Most people were middle ranking which meant the council controlled them but they were at least treated like human beings. If anyone found out, the council was the least of your worries.

That’s why when you thought you were having an allergic reaction to them, you stormed down the alleyway where you usually met your dealer, fire in your eyes, “You gave me a botched pills,” You pressed the bag of pills into Loki’s chest.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” He pushed you back with ease, causing you to stumble backwards as he casually stuck his hands back into the pockets of his black jacket. He looked around, trying to seem inconspicuous.

It was freezing outside but your body was overheating and your anger was boiling over, “Look at me,” You spoke with gritted teeth, “Do I look okay to you?”

“No, you should probably see a Doctor, darling,” His lips turned up into a smirk, “If you don’t mind, I have other matters to attend to.”

As he stepped around your body, you felt a weight on your shoulders. You tried to take a deep breath as you realized how much you were panicking, “Please,” You called after him, grabbing a hold of his arm, “I just need pills. Real pills. I’ll give you the rest of the money that I have.”

Loki looked over his shoulder and down at you, “Council is cracking down on suppressant sellers. They raided a ship carrying them a few nights ago so I wouldn’t expect anymore for a while.”

The man who called himself Loki searched your face, noting the look of desperation in your eyes, “What am I supposed to do then, huh?”

If he cared for your situation in any way, he didn’t show it.

Your hands balled into fist as he walked away but, in doing that, you realized how much your muscles were aching, “Don’t, please,” You walked after him, wincing in pain with every step. He didn’t seem to slow down for you as you tried to catch up to him on the sidewalk. Pain shot through your body and fire surged through your veins.

As your vision began to blur, you lost him in the crowd of people. Snow fell around you but that didn’t ease any of the burning pain. You tried to push yourself further, somehow find shelter, but with each step you felt even more helpless. When your knees finally gave in and you bit down on your own lip so hard that you tasted blood, no one paid you any mind. To them you were a simple bump in the road.

The place you woke up was the opposite of the buzzing city. The quietness was serene and the cool white light shining down on you was calming. You turned your aching head, wondering what new mess you had gotten yourself into. You found yourself staring out a window, the city outside but it was clear that you were on one of the highest floors of the hospital.

As someone cleared their throat, your head snapped in the other direction, as you lifted yourself up in the hospital bed. With wide eyes, you stared back at Tony Stark who was comfortably sitting at the chair beside your bed. As you moved, you realized that there was metal keeping you chained to the bed.

“Morning, sunshine,” Your head began to pound again, most likely because of how fast you had sat up. You knew you weren’t anyone’s favorite but you never thought your deviancy warranted a visit from one of the most powerful men in society … but then you remembered Peter, “... from what I’ve heard, you’re not known for being quiet.”

You shut your eyes tight as you tried to clear your racing thoughts, “Are you here to personally escort me to prison?”

“Sadly, no,” He said, folding his hands as he looked over you, “None of the council members know I’m here and no one knows you’re here either.”

“... so then you’re killing me yourself?”

Tony grinned, “No, sweetheart. Why do you think I had someone patch you up? That poison was making you malnourished and then your heat was draining you even more.”

You froze, “My what?”

Tony raised an eyebrow, “I’m guessing this is your first one but I’m sure you’ve read up on it in your studies. They say meeting your soulmate can trigger it …” It looked like he was connecting the dots in his own mind, “There were a lot of things you didn’t consider, Y/N.”

“He’s not …” The words burned as you tried to let them out.

“Or maybe you ran because you knew the bond was real. Your body, naturally, probably didn’t like the fact that you were rejecting him. Did you consider what it would do to him?”

Something pulled at your heartstrings as you finally thought about how Peter reacted when he found out you’d ran away, “... did something happen?”

Tony cocked his head to the side, “No damages big enough that I couldn’t pay for … am I sensing remorse?”

“I’m not sure how you could when it’s something you’ve never felt,” Tears stung your eyes, the reality of your world settling in, but you still held your head high, “If you’re here to preach, I don’t want to listen. And you’re not getting any gratitude from me.”

He could end your life with the snap of his finger yet that didn’t stop the venom on your tongue.

With a hard glare, he stood from his seat and took a step towards the bed, “I already agreed with Peter that he will be the one to take care of your … attitude. I truly hope that the next time we see each other you’ll be worthy enough for my nephew. You’re a pretty thing, this anger doesn’t suit you ....may the Goddess with you.”

The black car traveled down the gravel road surrounded by evergreen trees. Snow fell lightly and dropped onto the window glass and you watched it melt away as you neared your destination.

You were expecting doom and gloom as you pulled into the driveway. You didn’t expect the cabin to actually look like a home where happy people could live. Calling it a log cabin wouldn’t be fair to the money that probably went into building the luxury home. You could practically smell the expensiveness as you exited the car, not bothering to let the driver open the door for you.

You spun in a circle, your boots crushing the ice beneath your feet, as you took in the sight. You saw rolling hills of snow, tall mountains, and a blue-purple sunset that painted the sky.

When you saw him this time it was different. So much had happened since that night at the Halloween Ball and you didn’t expect him forgive you for being so cold to you but-

He called for you and, as you turned to face him, arms were tightly wrapped around you, “You could’ve died,” Were the first words that left his mouth. You didn’t embrace him back, you weren’t sure how, but your body instantly relaxed against him. It was the same feeling you got at the soccer field.

You were still speechless when he finally pulled away. His hands were still grabbing your arms as he looked you over for wounds. You were sure that your only flaw was the bags around your eyes from the lack of sleep you’d had over the last few days.

“Do you understand that? Someone could’ve taken you or you could’ve killed yourself.”

“I know-” He smashed his lips against yours, taking the words from your mouth. You pressed your hands against his chest but you didn’t push him away. The kiss was long and deep and, for a moment, the earth stopped spinning on its axis, “I don’t know how to do this, Peter.”

Your foreheads pressed together and his heavy breath fanning against your skin, the two of you tried to catch your breath, “Y/N, it’s okay,” Your name on his tongue was heaven, “This is real and I know you’re scared but it’s okay to accept this. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Do you promise?” You asked, weaker than you’ve ever been. As much as you wanted to blame it on the raging hormones of your heat, you knew what you wanted deep down.

“Yes,” Peter breathed, “And I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you.”

Peter led you into the warm home, helping you out of your coat, and keeping his hand on the small of your back. Your meeting with Pepper and May was brief. They sat in the kitchen sipping their hot cocos and they only gave you kind glances as Peter informed them that he’d take you up to your room. He could sense that you didn’t want an audience to your pain.

There were photos on every wall and sentimental ornaments. You had a feeling that by the end of winter break you’d know the story of each item.

“This is where you grew up?” You asked, your eyes wandering your new room. It was more spacious then any place you’d ever lived and the heat from the fireplace only added to the coziness the room provided.

“We spend every winter here. My Uncle Ben built this place,” Peter spoke succinctly.

“It’s straight out of one of those lifestyle magazines,” You felt Peter’s eyes on you as you slowly walked around the room, “... how did he die?”

“Someone shot him,” His gaze seemed to darken at the memory.

“I’m sorry,” You meant your words but you couldn’t help but feel a sense of deja vu.

“Don’t be,” He shrugged, “I mean, it was a long time ago … I guess I’ll leave you to settle in.”

You sensed he was trying to avoid a touchy conversation and you were more than willing to let him. Just being in his presence was calming but extremely overwhelming. The smallest things he did would cause your thoughts to race and, lately, those thoughts hadn’t been pure. Your mind had been replaying that kiss a million times in your head in the past twenty minutes.

As his hand gripped the door handle, a sudden wave of heat traveled beneath your skin, “Ah,” You rested your hands against the bed as you bit down on your lip to keep from crying out. It was the same overwhelming fire that you felt that day with Loki.

“Y/N,” You looked up, realizing that he hadn’t left. He walked towards you hesitantly, “.. you should take off those clothes.”

Your eyes widened, “What? No. I’m fine-” You winced as another wave passed through you, “I’m fine!”

“You’re overheating!” Peter exclaimed and it seemed it was taking everything within him not to do it himself.

“Peter, I’m fine,” You spoke through gritted teeth, “I can handle it on my own.”

“No, you can’t,” Peter stated nervously, “Sit down on the bed. Let me help you.”

“No,” You said again as you panicked, “I don’t need your stupid Alpha hormones messing up mine. You’re making it worse!”

“I said sit down,” He didn’t raise his voice but there was something different in his tone. Powerful. Your body moved like it never did before. Your body, against your will, sat down on the bed obediently.

You were left speechless for a moment and Peter seemed to stare at your abnormal behavior but not for long. He kneeled down and began to pull off your shoes and socks, “Peter-” You clutched your side.

He tossed the clothing to the side before standing. He leaned over you, pulling off your sweater and undershirt. When he finally made it to your belt, your eyes connected, “Don’t say no to me, Omega. I don’t like it, ” Again, your body moved before your mind and you nodded.

Stupid Alpha hormones.

Without the clothes, you instantly felt better but there was still burning in your veins, “Lay down,” Peter’s hand connected with your shoulder and you felt a coolness soothe the area as he pushed you down. Your back pressed against the soft mattress as you felt your jeans being undone, “There you go.”

“It hurts, Peter,” As the words left your mouth, you felt a kiss against your stomach. Your senses were completely out of whack and the simple touch sent waves of pleasure through your body. He kissed down your stomach to where he was pulling down your jeans. He pulled them down the length of your legs before deciding to rid himself his own clothes. You sat up on your elbows as you watched him reveal himself.

His body was perfectly crafted, the sight of him causing your core to ache for him. You moved up on your elbows as he stalked closer once again, “Bare your throat to me,” He demanded, lust in his eyes. Your heart began to race and you slowly moved further and further back on the bed as he followed you, “You want me to quell that fire inside, don’t you? I can take that pain away …”

It wasn't a command. He wanted you to go against every standard you’d set for yourself and willingly show him the ultimate sign of submission. He grabbed your hands, moving them so they were pinned above your head, as he settled between your legs. You felt his growing member pressed against your crotch, teasing you.

“Please don’t,” You begged and you watched his lips tug into a small smile. He leaned down closer, holding your smaller hand in his tightly, and you couldn’t run from that feeling anymore, “Peter, I can’t-”

“But you want to, Omega. You want to be tamed. You want me to be by my side, protected and loved for the rest of your days,” Peter grunted, pressing himself further into you. All you wanted was his lips on you again, “Now be a good girl for me.”

Your eyes shut tight as you turned your head, exposing your neck to the Alpha that called you his soulmate. He took the sign of submission as a green light to ravish your body. He pressed his lips against the skin of your neck, leaving rough bites along your skin, and you thought you might go deaf from how loud you were screaming in pleasure.

Peter kissed every inch of your body and you found yourself desperately trying to taste him as well. You realized that a switch had flipped inside of you a long time ago and you weren’t sure how you managed to resist it for long. Like a predator who finally captured his prey, Peter devoured you.

Your first times were nothing like the movie. You didn’t feel any sort of pain and your bodies were so synced that you felt anything but awkward. You felt like you knew him completely in this life and your past lives before,

“Please, please, please.”

He sunk deep inside of you, rocking the furniture and destroying the room, “You take me so good,” You nodded eagerly, the sound of his wanting voice driving you insane, “Fuck, get on top of me.” He smacked your bottom and your lips tugged into a tired smile.

After taking you in missionary, you switched positions, and you rode him until your second climax. Your arms wrapped around each other as you moved your hips. When he finally came he was deep inside you, his moans were enough to send you over the edge for the third time, “Peter, I’m gonna--again!” Your arms wrapped around his neck, you kissed passionately as he filled you with his warmth.

“You were fucking made for me,” Peter breathed against your lips, “Thank the Goddess.”

Tears slipped down your cheeks but Peter brushed them away with his thumb. You hadn’t realized the love you’d been lacking until now. You didn’t know a stranger's love could be so unconditional but it seemed he wasn’t a stranger at all. Whatever consequences came from this, you thanked the Goddess that you could feel again.

i might write a part three to this but i left it on a happy ending in case it takes me awhile to get to it!

#dark fic #peter parker x reader #peter parker smut #dark peter parker #alpha!peter parker #omegaverse #omega!reader #a/b/o smut #avengers a/b/o #peter parker x y/n #dark!peter x reader #dark!peter #black!reader #peter parker x black!reader #alpha!peter parker x omega!reader #dystopian au #wanda maximoff #peter parker #peter parker au

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ts-waywardchildren-au · 4 years ago

Text

Wings

so I finally got tumblr to stop being a bitch and let me post the full thing!

AO3 link

taglist: @theimprobabledreamersworld

Word count: 4330

TW: mentions of religion/church, mentions of alcohol, shouting, implied homophobia, implied past transphobia.

Anyone who knew Mr. and Mrs. Harte would quickly realize that, if there was any couple in the world who should not raise children, it was them.

Mr. Harte was, in the nicest way possible, both a workaholic and an alcoholic, despite his preaching that the Bible should be followed to the letter, which meant every time he opened a bottle he sinned. But, of course, the bible applied only to other men.

Mrs. Harte was what most would call a busy-body who cared much more about her appearance to her neighbors than she did children. She was the kind of woman who everyone only pretended to like but then gossiped about her behind her back. Despite her insistence that she was the most important woman in the world, she made none of her own choices, only followed the latest beauty trends, and did as her husband said.

This is why, when the Hartes decided to have children, everyone was slightly concerned, to say the least.

The Hartes saw children as vessels for the parent’s ambitions, as dolls to dress up or as little creatures to be trained to impress friends and family. Ten years later, their only child Patton was none of these things. He was not a prim and proper girl like Mrs. Harte had wanted, nor was he the kind of boy who played every sport known to man.

Patton was the kind of child who would prefer to play in the dirt rather than keep the tiny suits his mother had picked out for Sunday church perfectly spotless, the kind of child who would rather chase dragonflies across the soccer field than kick the ball. The kind of child, who, among other things, wanted nothing but to play with his friends and to ride on his father’s shoulders, and to bake cookies with his mother.

But Patton was also the kind of child who never got to do these things. This is perhaps the reason why, when he saw a door in the trunk of a tree, did not immediately run back to the park where the church kids played. He had organized a game of hide and seek with the other children, and while the other children could be quite dull, none could pass up a game of hide and seek, not even the older kids.

He wiggled out from his hiding place from under the bushes and tiptoed towards the tree trunk-door that should not be there. He turned his head to the side, looking at the door from all angles. Up and down, side to side, inspecting every inch before raising a hand to knock on the gray wood. One, two, three taps, and the door creaked open. Where one would expect to see the inside of a tree, there was instead a hallway.

Figuring that inside a tree would be an even better hiding spot than under a bush, Patton stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Unseen light sources allowed Patton to see as he walked away from the door. Had he looked back, he might have noticed that where the door should have been was a blank wall with not even a crack to suggest an opening. But Patton did not look back- he just kept walking, his footsteps echoing on the floor of wood paneling until he came to a staircase going upwards.

There, on the first step, someone had planted a sign.

“Be sure,” Patton read aloud. “Be sure… of what? I’m sure this is a very good hiding place!”

He had a habit of talking to himself, something his parents very much did not approve of, and it was through his conversation with himself that Patton deduced that he must be quite sure that he wouldn’t be found. Had he known how correct he was, perhaps he might not have gone up the stairs. But Patton was ten years old and had a sense of adventure, so he began to climb.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, spiraling upwards without end. But as soon as he thought about giving up and going back down, Patton saw the end of the stairs.

“Hello?” Patton called out from the top stair. It only now occurred to him that this could be someone’s house he just walked into!

There was no reply, and Patton stepped off the stairs onto the landing. It didn’t seem like anyone’s house, because Patton couldn’t think of any houses that had no roof or walls! The floor of the not-house seemed to be… tree bark? Patton looked up and saw the sky, bright blue and cloudless. He didn’t know it at the time, but the sweetness in the air was the lack of pollution and car exhaust, and his ears had stopped ringing because there wasn’t the constant noise of cars. It was so quiet… so pretty!

“Young man, what are you doing up here?”

Patton let out a small squeak of surprise and turned to face the adult who had walked up behind him.

“Oh- um- I- I’m sorry, ma’am- I found a door and I was playing hide and seek, and I walked up the stairs, and now I’m talking to you, and- I- um, I’m sorry!”

“Oh!” The adult’s face softened from the glare she had before Patton stuttered out an apology. “It’s quite alright. What’s your name?”

“I’m Patton! Um… is this your house?”

“You could say that. So, Patton, are you sure?”

Patton didn’t understand what he was supposed to be sure about, so he did what all children would do: say yes and hope there weren’t consequences.

At his affirmation that he was sure (even though he was not), the adult clapped her hands and smiled. As she moved towards Patton, he saw what made this adult so unlike the rest of the adults that he knew.

“Why do you have wings?”

“I’ve earned them. And someday, Patton, you will too.”

That answer only slightly satisfied Patton, but it was good enough for now- even a ten-year-old realized that he wouldn’t be getting any further clarification anytime soon.

“How do I get them?”

“Well, Patton,” the adult turned her back and beckoned Patton to follow her. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I am!”

That was the first time Patton had felt sure, though he didn't know what it was for- he only knew that he was sure he wanted answers, sure that he wanted wings! The other children would want to be friends with him then, right?

“Very good. Now stand here, beside me.”

Patton did as he was told, and for the first time got a good look at the new, strange adult. She was tall, taller than his mother, with long silky black hair that Patton thought looked quite like one of the ties his father wore to work- straight and shiny.

Patton had been told, like all children, about stranger danger, but this adult… Patton didn't know why, but he knew that he would be safe with her.

“Take my hand, Patton, and don’t let go, alright?”

Patton nodded and gripped tightly, something his mother would have scolded him for. But neither his mother nor father was here to tell him off, and Patton knew that as long as he didn't cause too much trouble, nothing bad would happen.

Before Patton could ask what was going to happen, the ground was far beneath him and the adult. He let out a shriek but remembered to hold on to her hand and not let go. He kicked his feet, searching for solid ground.

The wind rushed past his ears, tangling his hair, making his eyes water.

Every time the adult flapped her gigantic wings the noise of hundreds of feathers made his ears ring with the thunderous movements.

But… his curiosity overtook his fear. Would he get wings like that?

Wings like the birds he saw in the park? Or maybe like the dragonflies in his garden? Maybe like the colorful butterflies that he always attempted to coax onto his finger? Or perhaps the black and red ladybugs he liked to let crawl all over his fingers?

As suddenly as the ground had left from beneath him, Patton stood upright once again, this time on the greenest grass he had ever seen.

“This is my home, Patton. You may stay here for as long as you wish.” The adult gestured to a ladder hanging from a tree branch, connections to something obscured by the dark green leaves that were as big as Patton himself.

“Oh! Thanks! Um, what should I call you?”

“You may call me whatever you wish, but my name is Noelani.”

“Okay! Thank you, Miss N!”

***

Over the years, Miss N became Miss Noelani, which simply became Noelani, who became Patton’s friend.

And over the years, Patton sprouted his wings- they had come through small and itchy at first, and he was unused to the new weight on his back. His feathers had grown in, small and fluffy at first but becoming larger and sleeker and his wings grew. He had been in this world, the one he began to call home, for almost two years when he could finally fly on his own. Noelani had taught him, by coaxing him to jump off tree branches and trust he would catch himself. He had been afraid, at first, even terrified. But Now?

Now he flew everywhere, stretching his arms in the wind, laughing as he let the air blow through his feathers, grinning as he plummeted towards the ground and caught himself at the last second.

There were contests held every full moon, and Patton had competed in them for as long as he had been able to fly. He had started wobbly, unsure, but once he grew into his wings?

He was unbeatable. He was the best flier there was, darting in between trees and taking sharper turns than any others dared to.

The cheers of the audience fueled him to go faster, faster, faster! He stretched a handout, reaching for the finish line.

“Come on, Chick!” Noelani’s shouts of encouragement could be heard over everyone else’s cheering.

A burst of speed and Patton flew ahead of the other competitors by a full wing length, stopping only when he landed on the branch behind the finish line. The wingbeats of other races still hadn’t stopped, though one by one they joined Patton on the branch. When the last competitor landed, everyone began to give their congratulations.

“Good race! That was close!” Patton smiled at the second-place finisher, who in turn shook his hand.

“Maybe I’ll beat you next time, Pat!”

“You can certainly try!”

“Chick! You were amazing!”

Patton turned to see Noelani coming through the small crowd, a grin on her face. Her hair was shorter than when Patton had first met her, and the feathers on her jet black wings had dulled, but her smile was still the same.

“You know, when I was your age-” Noelani was cut off by Patton’s laugh. She glared and continued. “When I was your age, I could never have done that!”

She took Patton into a hug and handed him a towel when she pulled away. “You’re so sweaty! Gross!”

“It’s not that bad!” Patton wiped his forehead and grimaced, “Okay, maybe it is that bad.”

“Come on, Chick! Clean up and I’ll get you some food.”

Patton nodded and turned back to the other racers, giving them a final grin before leaving.

“Hey! Patton! Wait!”

He turned around to see the second-place finisher running towards him.

“Here, I wanted to give you this.” He handed Patton a small pastry. “I made it myself. Don’t eat it yet, save it for when you start to get sore.”

“Oh! Thanks! I’m sure I’ll enjoy it!��

Patton slipped the pastry into his pocket and waved as he began to fly after Noelani, allowing himself to glide in the wind instead of frantically flapping his wings to propel himself even faster.

It was only after a meal of freshly picked fruit and homemade bread that Patton remembered the pastry he had been given by the second-place finisher- what was his name? Something that began with a D… oh well, Patton would have to thank him later!

“Someone gave this to me,” Patton said as he took the pastry out of his pocket, several crumbs falling onto the table. “Would you like to split it?”

Noelani shook her head. “It’s yours.”

Patton nodded and took a bite, and immediately felt the tightness in his shoulders and wings disappear. He was always sore after a race, and usually was for a few days after that, but not anymore.

Before Patton could take another bite, Noelani gasped.

“Patton! Patton, you-”

He looked at Noelani, and before she could make another sound, Patton let out a scream.

“I- 'm- I can’t see my hands- what’s happening to me!?”

Noelani grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug. “Patton, listen to me. Listen to me! Whatever happens, you can find your way back. You can find your way back, and I will be waiting here for you.”

“But- I don’t want to leave! Noelani, what’s happening!? Noelani-!”

One minute, Patton was holding tight to his friend and in her home, and the next he was surrounded by a pile of feathers on the asphalt of an old weathered playground, illuminated by glaring streetlights in the absence of the sun.

“No! No! Let me back… let me back!” Patton pounded his first against a tree, begging, pleading for a door to appear until his hands became bloody.

Crying, begging, pleading for a way home.

A gust of wind began to blow through the park, and Patton began to frantically grab his feathers from dispersing in the gust. He wouldn’t let what was left of his home be scattered away from him. sand

With an armful of gray feathers and eyes full of salty tears, Patton began to walk to where he remembered his parents’ house to be, his bare feet leading him across the cold concrete sidewalks of the too-bright neighborhoods.

He wondered briefly what someone would make of him, an unfamiliar teenager walking barefoot through the street, carrying nothing but a bundle of gigantic feathers and wearing a sky blue tunic with an open back.

Already he missed his home, missed the familiar weight of his wings, missed the way Noelani’s feathers would tickle his cheeks when they hugged.

He paused at the sidewalk leading up to the house where he had lived for the first ten years of life yet had never truly called home. His home would always be at Noelani’s nest, where he would spend hours leaping between branches to find the sweetest fruits, where he would chase after the crows and sparrows, could bake the perfect meals on top of a fireplace, where he could practice racing around her tree-

He took a gasp of breath, and before doubts could creep into his mind, knocked at the door and winced as another cut on his fist opened up.

After a minute of waiting, he began to worry. What if his parents had moved away? Then where would he stay while he waited for his door to come back? Or what if they no longer remembered him? Though he had never called this place home, he still loved his mother and father! What would he do if he never got to say goodbye, to tell them where he was?

The door opened with a familiar creak.

“Patton?”

“Hi, dad!” Patton put on a smile, a performance for his family.

“What- Patton!” His mother appeared behind his father and put her hand over her mouth in disbelief. “Where have you been? And- how- how do you look so much older-?”

“What do you mean? Mom, I’m sixteen and Noelani always said I had a baby face!” He chuckled, although laughter was the last thing on his mind.

“Patton, you’re twelve! You’ve been missing for two years!”

“Patton, come inside. Tell us everything you can. Should we call the police? Honey, I think we should call the police!” His father added.

“The police? Why would you do that?” Patton tilted his head to the side in confusion, a habit he had picked up from the birds that he had befriended.

“BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING FOR TWO YEARS! BECAUSE YOU LOOK SIXTEEN WHEN YOU SHOULD BE TWELVE!”

His mother shouted and looked surprised at herself for being so loud. His father put a hand on his shoulder and led him to the couch- a different couch than the one Patton remembered. This one was new, shiny leather, while the one he remembered had been soft red fabric. He felt his hair get staticky, and the feathers in his arm- which his mother seemed to just now notice, and wrinkled her nose at the sight of them- began to stick up.

“Patton, tell us what happened. We care about you, son,” his father said gently. Patton didn’t know why, but the thought of being called ‘son’ brought out an emotion he didn’t like. So he did what he always did: ignored the feeling and began to talk.

He talked about how he had been hiding and found the door that didn’t belong, how he walked through the hallway and climbed up the staircase, where Noelani had found him and taken him to her nest. He told them what Noelani had said, that the world was full of magic, that birds were the carriers and messengers of that magic, how the birds gave all humans wings so they could fly between the gigantic trees that held houses, or sometimes even cities.

He told his parents about racing, and about the war he had always known he would have to fight to protect his home. He told them about the racing he did to distract himself from his visions of battles, the training he did so that when the war came, he would be able to protect his friends.

And he told them about the last race he ever won, before fading away while pleading to stay with Noelani, to stay in his home, to stay in the world of birds and flight and magic and everything else he loved. The world where someone cared about him for who he was.

When he finished his story, there was a beat of silence before his father spoke up.

“Patton, I think you should get to sleep. We kept your bed in your room, and you can borrow some of my pajamas for the night. We can talk about this more in the morning.”

And with that, Patton was sent up the familiar stairs to an unfamiliar room. Everything left in there was coated in a layer of dust- only a bookshelf with some stuffed animals and old books next to a bed he didn't remember being that small. Patton knew there should have been more things- toys strewn across the floor, a baby-blue rug, a lego set of a cat. His parents must have cleaned up while he was gone.

He realized he still had his feathers in his arms. He dropped them to the floor and dragged the neatly made blanket off the bed, and began to build himself a sleeping nest like the one he had at home.

When he was satisfied with his work, he lay down and covered himself in the largest feathers he had carried from the park- his dark gray flight feathers.

It took him too long to fall asleep, but when he awoke and went downstairs, he found his father waiting for him.

“Son,” he began. “I’ve done some research, and I think the best place for you to be is a boarding school. Thomas Sanders’ Home For Wayward Children. I heard he deals with… cases… such as yours.”

***

A week after the conversation that Patton had no say in, he found himself carrying a bag and a suitcase across a cobblestone pathway to an imposing, mansion-like structure where a man waited for him at the door.

“You must be Patton, right?” The man asked, holding out his hand in greeting.

“Yes, sir,” Patton replied, attempting to hide the fear in his voice. He hadn’t been with his parents in years, but he still remembered that any school he would be sent to was almost guaranteed to be one of religious teachings.

The man waved him off. “No need for formalities, you can call me Thomas! Or Mr. Sanders, whichever you prefer. Now, Patton, may I ask what your world was like?”

“My- my world? Um, I go to church every Sunday and-“

“No, no! Not this world! The one you call home. Mine was one of the trees of every color, with the softest grass, and fairies hiding in every flower, dryads in every tree. And not the kind of fairies your parents likely despise! Oh- sorry, that was probably a little odd. Never mind that, tell me about your world!”

Thomas led Patton through the sturdy oak doors into the house- if it could be called that. From the outside, it looked like a single house had been built onto until it became a sprawling maze of living rooms, and the inside was even more confusing.

The entry hall alone had painted portraits that looked like they belonged in museums, not hung on wallpaper that looked like it was from the seventies. A crystal chandelier cast oddly shaped shadows across the multitude of doors that connected to the hall.

“My world… my world was one where birds carried magic and gave it to any who they thought was worthy. I made friends there. Some were like me, humans who were given wings. Others were birds. Sparrows, crows, finches, ravens, robins… I loved them all. And- and I want to go back.”

“I understand, Patton. Almost everyone here wants to go back. It’s my job to try to help you and these other kids not be so homesick while we all wait for our doors.”

“Th- thank you. I haven’t been away from home for more than a week and I already miss it.”

“You will never miss home any less, but I hope the weight of missing it gets easier to carry. Now come on, let’s get you settled. I can-“

Thomas was cut off by a crash coming from what sounded to be far above their heads. He cringed and continued. “I need to go fix that. Ah, Nico can show you your room. Pryce, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, stop it! Nico!”

Thomas took off in a sprint through one of the doors, leaving Patton alone in the entry hall until another man came running in.

“Hi, you must be Patton! I’m Nico. Nico Flores-Sanders. I help my husband around the school. I’ll show you to your room, and make sure Janus doesn't kill you,” he laughed and took Patton’s suitcase.

“Uh, that was a joke, right?” Patton asked tentatively.

“Mostly, yes. We did have to break up a fight between them and another student, though. To be fair, the other student was being, ah, quite a jerk.”

Patton nodded. Don’t be a jerk, and don’t start a fight. Those seemed like easy enough rules to follow.

“Here, up this staircase and the first door on the right. If you get lost, you can always ask your roommate for directions. Somehow they were faster at learning their way around than I was!”

“You went here, too?”

“Yup! Though back in my day, it was called Eleanor West’s Home. She didn’t actually run this building, she ran one on the upper east coast. Thomas and I met when we were both in school, and when he took over, I helped him run it.”

“Oh! You two must be really good friends!”

Nico began to laugh, and Patton couldn’t understand what he had said that was so funny.

“Ooo-Kay. Here’s your room. Janus! Your roommate is here!”

Nico knocked, and Patton’s new roommate opened the door.

“Uh, hi. I’m Patton.”

“Janus. They and them pronouns. If you call me he or she, I will break your knee.”

“Janus, what have we said about cryptic and threatening introductions? Please make Patton feel welcome,” Nico scolded.

Janus rolled their eyes and gestured with a gloved hand for Patton to come in. They waved at Nico, who gave a smile and closed the door. In the dim light, Patton could see the odd appearance of the person he’d be sharing a room with.

Janus wore a black bowler hat, a bit of wavy brown hair sticking out of it and hanging in their eyes, which Patton could tell, even in the dark, were two different colors. The most startling thing about their appearance, though, was the scar that ran from their left eye down to their chin.

“That’s your bed, on that side. I hope you don’t mind the dark because the curtains stay closed at all times. I have a space heater, so if it gets too hot in here, I will move it but under no circumstances will I turn it off. And I meant what I said, if you use any pronouns for me besides they and them, I will not hesitate.”

Patton did not ask “hesitate to do what?” because he was pretty sure he knew the answer. However, he did ask, “why are your pronouns they/them?”

“I am non-binary. Neither a man nor woman. It falls under the transgender umbrella.”

Patton just nodded and thought for a minute. “Am I non-binary, too?”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “You can be if you feel like it fits you.”

He began to unpack his suitcase and bag, putting his feathers on the bed and clothes in the dresser. He had refused to let anyone touch his feathers, his reminder that his home had really existed, that he wasn’t just making things up like his parents insisted that he was. When he was done making a proper nest on the floor with the pillows, blankets, and what was left of his wings, he turned to Janus.

“I’m Patton, and I think I’m non-binary, too. I went to a world where birds were magic and humans could get wings. And, um, thank you for not breaking my knees.”

That night, as Patton curled into his makeshift nest, he felt like she belonged somewhere for the first time since he had faded from Noelani’s hug.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #patton sanders #ts patton #janus sanders #ts janus #nico flores #ts nico #karrot kings #pintroverts #platonic moceit #sanders sides au #sanders sides fic #wayward writing

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blasphemings · 5 years ago

Text

the definition of not leaving

in my dreams i am kissing your mouth and you’re whispering ‘where have you been?’ i say, ‘i’ve been lost but I’m here now. you’re the only person who has ever been able to find me.’ (sue zhao)

(everyone lives but it’s complicated. 12k words, ao3 link)

we are hard on each other and call it honesty, choosing our jagged truths with care and aiming them across the neutral table.

“Jotaro? Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” He yawned, not taking his eyes off the street. Heat like this always left Jotaro feeling drained, and despite being on the water, Port Said gave no respite from the humidity he had come to expect from Egypt in the summertime. It left the air feeling heavy, weighing damp on the back of his neck.

He leaned back as far as the folding chairs supplied by the café would allow and winced a little when the wood creaked under his weight.

“Might be a good idea to wait until we have some kind of idea where they’re taking it,” Polnareff mused, blowing a loose silver strand out of his mouth. Why he put all that crap in his hair every morning when the heat consistently melted most of it away by noon, Jotaro could never understand. “Assuming it’s an arrow, anyway. Kakyoin’ll be here by then so we—”

“Who?” He scanned the street absently, only half paying attention. Funny. For a second it almost sounded like Polnareff said—

“Kakyoin’s meeting us here,” Polnareff said cheerfully. “Or, well, he might just go straight to the hotel. I gave him the café address but—hey!”

Jotaro had nearly lost his balance in the already precariously tilted chair, forced to slam the legs flat on the ground with a loud crack that drew the attention of the sparsely populated neighboring tables. They hadn’t, of course, seen his second set of arms catch the windowsill. It just looked like he had good reflexes.

He did have good reflexes. He was just nowhere near present enough to use them.

Polnareff stared at him. “Are you—”

“Who?” Jotaro repeated incredulously.

“Kakyoin? Noriaki Kakyoin?” He reached forward to push a glass that had slid to the table’s edge back from danger. “Our friend?”

Our friend.

Jotaro nearly snorted. The chances of Kakyoin still considering him a friend were minimal at best. If he was lucky, the man wouldn’t hate his guts.

He was rarely lucky when it came to that sort of thing.

“Polnareff,” Jotaro muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why the hell didn’t you ask—why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because he—he’s an exceptionally powerful Stand user? I imagined you’d agree we can use all the help we can get. Honestly, I’m surprised you hadn’t contacted him earlier.”

He felt a headache coming on, the prickly sort of pain that started somewhere behind his jaw and crept towards the base of his skull. The one time he had been tired enough to complain about the feeling at home his mother had clucked at him, assuring him the headaches were a direct consequence of how much time he spent clenching his teeth.

Unlikely that Jotaro would kick the habit anytime soon considering that more often than not he clenched his teeth in order to hold his tongue.

“Besides,” Polnareff continued breezily, “thought it’d be fun, you know, like old times. A shame Avdol has his hands full at the shop…”

“Yeah,” Jotaro said. His voice came out uncharacteristically faint. “Too bad.”

Six years ago Jotaro knew his gait well enough to recognize the beat of it from across the room without looking up, but his shoes clicked uneven on the sidewalk now, carrying his weight differently enough that he didn’t register who was approaching until it was too late to prepare himself. A limp. A very slight limp, and not one that seemed to slow him down very much, but one had had to compensate for all the same.

The screen door swung open and he felt hot and cold and a little nauseous all at once. He had been watching the street so carefully for signs of danger, only to miss the most glaring of them all; for though the man who now crossed the threshold would never be an enemy, at present he could be nothing but a threat. Briefly he considered making an excuse to leave. Make a run for it.

Because that had worked out so well last time.

Jotaro stared at a spot on the tablecloth instead, listening to him approach. After injuries like that it was something like a miracle that he could even walk at all. Any reasonable person would hardly find it surprising that he came out of it with a limp.

Nothing to get worked up about. He relaxed his clenched fist with practiced steadiness.

“Salut! You made it!”

“Polnareff,” came the soft voice, and only with great effort did Jotaro stop himself from flinching at the sound of it. He could hear, without looking, that Kakyoin was smiling. “You seem well.”

Polnareff clapped him on the shoulder. “You look good. Glad you made it in so early.”

A tired chuckle. “You know, I’m just glad I won’t have to wander around here in the dark without anyone to—seems like a good place to get lost.”

“Oh, certainly. Certainly. I borrow Jotaro’s sense of direction, myself.”

“Do you,” Kakyoin said, his tone noticeably chillier.

Jotaro gazed at the empty chair, feeling the weight of both sets of eyes, wondering if it would be the polite thing to pull it out for him or whether Kakyoin would take that the wrong way. He had just decided it was useless to care when a slim green tentacle wrapped around the chair legs and dragged it back. Jotaro withdrew his hand.

Polnareff continued to chatter happily about the flight from France, the local cuisine, the hotel, how hard he found it to read the maps despite Avdol’s patient attempts to teach him the Arabic alphabet. Jotaro looked anywhere but at Kakyoin’s face. All he registered were shapes he refused to allow into focus; a sleeveless sweater in forest green and a white scarf despite the heat. Coat draped over the back of his chair. Why had he even brought one? He had to know what Egypt would be like in the summer.

Slowly, despite his best efforts, details leaked back through. Pale red hair, the narrow and familiar shape of his face. He made the mistake of looking directly at Kakyoin’s hands, at the long fingers and scars he hadn’t given himself enough time to watch heal.

“—and how long has it been since you two saw each other, anyway?”

Polnareff looked from one to the other expectantly. Jotaro suppressed a grimace. He opened his mouth, at a loss.

“Quite some time,” Kakyoin said coolly before he could think of a delicate way to put it. “It’s good to see you again, Jotaro.”

He said Jotaro’s name like it was a dirty word, though the quiet disdain went completely unnoticed by Polnareff. Jotaro felt he would have preferred to be slapped.

“Yeah,” he managed. “You too.”

Kakyoin allowed the stony silence to drag on for a bit, looking down at his fingernails with more interest than they warranted. Polnareff raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“You’re busy men,” he said. “Although you are both living in Japan, aren’t you? I mean—”

“Japan isn’t exactly a small country,” Kakyoin interrupted crisply. “Polnareff, I apologize, I think I’m just a little—from the travel, I’m a bit tired. Would you mind?”

“You—oh! Of course, of course.” Polnareff waved him away. “Go on, you must be jet lagged as all hell. You—I gave you the address, right? For the hotel, I mean.”

Kakyoin nodded and smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I remember it.”

“Good, good.” He looked around and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I have a lead on a possible—”

“Polnareff,” Jotaro growled, eyes on the street. “Not here.”

“Right. Right.” Polnareff grinned and winked at Kakyoin. “You never know…we’ll talk tomorrow. Don’t get lost before then, yes?”

“I’ll try not to.” Kakyoin stood and Jotaro tried not to notice the way he put extra weight on the chair in order to account for his bad leg. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Au revoir.”

Jotaro watched him through the window, confident now that he didn’t run the risk of meeting his eyes. Only a sideways glimpse of his face but it was enough to recognize the bright eyes and wide mouth, enough to wish he hadn’t.

“Less talkative than usual,” Polnareff commented.

He nodded listlessly. He didn’t have the heart to say I wouldn’t know.

Across the street, as though he could feel the eyes on his back, Kakyoin paused. He looked back over his shoulder to see, through the unfamiliar lettering on the café window, that Jotaro had already turned away.

the things we say are true; it is our crooked aim, our choices turn them criminal.

Six years. The correct answer to Polnareff’s question, what neither of them had been capable of admitting, was that it had been six years since they had last seen each other. Kakyoin had last seen Jotaro when he briefly regained consciousness after several hours in surgery to find the other boy asleep on the floor of his hospital room. When Jotaro raised his head he’d had imprints on his cheek from the plastic mattress cover on Kakyoin’s bed. It made Kakyoin smile, and Jotaro could only stare, trying to burn the image into his memory.

The problem was that if he had stayed, if Jotaro had given him the chance to make his case, Kakyoin would have succeeded. Because he always knew exactly what to say, and furthermore he would have been half right about it. He would have said it isn’t your responsibility. He would have said I can take care of myself.

Half right. Kakyoin could take care of himself, and that was the worst part, that he was strong and brave and clever and where had all that heart and strength got him in the end? Smashed into a water tower, bleeding out. It didn’t matter how capable he was.

It wasn’t Jotaro’s responsibility, but it was still his fault. There was no way around the fact that if Kakyoin hadn’t been there, if Jotaro had been smart enough to tell him get lost fifty days earlier when Kakyoin walked into his mother’s kitchen and announced that he was coming too, he would never have come within arm’s reach of death on an unfamiliar rooftop in an unfamiliar city, thousands of miles from home.

How willing he was to believe that he could only make his life mean something by throwing it away. He had implied as much any number of times when they sat awake by the campfire in the early hours of the morning, neither willing to admit to the nightmares that kept them from sleeping, both grateful that the other was there. It scared Jotaro to death. He had never known what to say.

Somehow it hadn’t felt real, whether he took it as a threat or a promise, until he was kneeling in the bloody mud beneath the water tower, clutching Kakyoin’s broken body, trying desperately to keep him awake as the approaching sirens grew louder and louder. Kakyoin, thinking the other half of death would come for him momentarily, had tried to use the moment to say goodbye, and Jotaro could only snarl back at him to shut up, shut up, you’re not going anywhere, as though losing him too was something he could pound into submission if he could only figure out how to get his anger to outweigh his fear.

Standing there in the hospital, listening to the soft whirr of the medical machinery that stood between his best friend and oblivion, all he could do was remove the cause Kakyoin had nearly died with a smile for. It would mean hurting him, it would mean living with the knowledge of how heavy that hurt would be, and in that moment, watching a shaft of moonlight illuminate his pale face, he felt as though he would rather die than leave.

He stood with his hand on the doorframe, wanting nothing more than to collapse back to the floor at Kakyoin’s side, wanting to stay there with him until he woke up and tell him about Dio, about the World, about how afraid he had been, about how afraid he still was. Kakyoin would listen. He might even understand.

If I don’t get to say goodbye I’ll kill you, Jotaro.

He had mumbled it before losing consciousness again, the last thing Jotaro had heard him say. He thought of that as he closed the door behind him, leaning against it with closed eyes. The metal was cool against his forehead.

Hate me, hate me, just stay alive. Stay alive.

It had been easy, on the surface, to return to his life alone. After all, he had been alone for a long time before Egypt, and he was good at it, deflecting the questions, waving off concern. According to Joseph, who had paid the bills, Kakyoin had been transferred to a hospital in Tokyo once he was stable enough, and had gone home to his family not long after that. He had, of course, not actually been the transfer student he claimed to be, that first day, and they lived separate lives. Jotaro couldn’t tell if the feeling in his chest when he considered the possibility of Kakyoin just showing up and confronting him in person was terror or hope, but whether it was due to anger or resignation, he never did.

By the time he was old enough to wonder whether he might have made a mistake, it had already been years. There were times when he stared at the phone like it was a venomous animal, stared at the scrawled phone number he had retrieved from Polnareff, wondered what would happen were he to dial it. Imagined the worst case scenario. Tried not to think about the best case.

Too much time had passed, he always told himself as he carefully refolded the paper and tucked it back into his wallet. He wouldn’t know what to say.

of course your lies are more amusing: you make them new each time.

Jotaro stared at the checkered tablecloth, willing it to come into focus. His eyes burned in a dull sort of way. He remained unsure of whether or not he had actually been asleep at all, or whether he had only convinced himself he had managed it. Reliant on the placebo effect of lying alone in the dark.

Wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.

“Long night?”

He jumped slightly. He had forgotten how quiet Kakyoin could be.

“Something like that,” Jotaro mumbled, watching him take the seat opposite out of the corner of his eye. Kakyoin crossed his legs carefully, hands folded over one knee.

When Jotaro finally glanced up at his face, he was gazing vacantly at the vase of bright orange poppies placed just off center of the table, mouth pressed into a thin line. Judging by his glassy eyes, he hadn’t slept much either.

He hesitated. “Jetlagged?”

Kakyoin didn’t look up. “Something like that.”

Jotaro snorted softly. Silence fell, stiff and heavy, and he wondered whether he should try to think of something to say. Even if he had he doubted he would have the nerve to say it out loud. Stupid to be more afraid of an old friend than he was of homicidal enemy Stand users.

Though, when he thought about it, the worst thing they could do was kill him. And Kakyoin was a Stand user, even if he didn’t quite seem homicidal as far as Jotaro was concerned. Yet.

“Could we get one more?” he said in halting Arabic when the waitress set down a mug of steaming coffee. She nodded, smiling.

“Anything else?”

Jotaro shook his head. “Waiting for someone.”

He slid the cup across the table like the first syllable of an apology he had no idea how to give. Kakyoin stared at it, still silent, but something softened very slightly around the tired edges of his eyes.

“That was kind,” he said at last. “Thank you.”

Jotaro shrugged, averting his eyes. “Look like you need it.”

“I must really look like shit.”

He blanched. “I—didn’t mean—”

Kakyoin watched him stumble with an expression not unlike a smirk.

“Not like that,” Jotaro muttered.

The summer heat hadn’t quite burned through the morning yet and a lingering breeze swept across the patio, ruffling Kakyoin’s curls and raising goosebumps on their exposed shoulders. Jotaro folded his arms.

“I did want to ask you.”

He froze.

“If you could catch me up,” Kakyoin continued calmly. “On where things stand with all of this.”

Jotaro suppressed a sigh of relief. “Polnareff didn’t…?”

“Oh, no, we talked about it.”

Kakyoin dropped a sugar cube into his coffee, absentmindedly breaking it into pieces with the wrong end of the spoon with a vaguely sheepish expression. “I just—thought your perspective on the situation might be a little more…um.”

“Realistic?” Jotaro offered.

“Tactical,” he said delicately.

Jotaro chuckled before he could stop himself, Kakyoin glanced up in surprise, and for the first time in six years, half by accident, they looked each other straight in the eyes. Something cold twisted deep in his chest when he recognized the exhaustion on Kakyoin’s face, a look that ran much deeper than one sleepless night, though it still wasn’t enough to kill his vicious spark.

Kakyoin saw nothing he hadn’t expected, though he felt it was almost worse, being right.

Jotaro nodded, looking a little dazed. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

Nothing about it felt natural, nowhere close to the easiness that had existed between them as teenagers, but he found it less painful to talk business. At least, when it came to this sort of thing, Jotaro knew what to say.

He was careful to avoid speaking in direct specifics, and Kakyoin caught on quickly, adapting his questions accordingly. He laid out how long they had been looking, what they had found, what had got in their way. How close he figured they were to hunting down an actual arrow (not very). How close they were to understanding the spiderweb of Stand users that seemed conveniently positioned to oppose them at every turn (moderately, assuming they could finally convince one of them to talk). He did know that many of the users they had encountered had been clumsy, reckless, overconfident. As though that power were new at their fingertips.

“Made,” Kakyoin said slowly. “Not born.”

“Yeah.” Jotaro paused. “Reminds me of me. The way they are. So I can tell.”

“Can you.” He considered, the ghost of a smirk back on his face. “You were a little graceless.”

Jotaro grunted noncommittally.

“And you think they’re being…mass-produced. Intentionally.”

“That’s…I don’t know if I’d put it like that, but—someone’s doing it. Someone has to be doing it.”

“Does it seem organized?”

He shook his head. “Hard to tell. But I don’t think…I can’t imagine it’s motivated by…anything good.”

“Trial by fire,” Kakyoin murmured, half to himself. “Sounds like they’re being tested.”

“Tested.”

“Well, yes.” He gazed thoughtfully at the dark grounds left behind in his now-empty cup. “Gave them the—give it to them, see if they’re any good at using it. See if they’re any good at keeping their mouths shut, too.”

It wasn’t impossible. It did rankle, a little, that Polnareff had been right about having Kakyoin around.

“That’s smart,” Jotaro said.

“You’re not the only one who remembers,” Kakyoin replied coolly. “Seems as though you may be acting as someone’s meat grinder for a second time.”

He winced. Their roles, admittedly, had been different then. Kakyoin, born with his Stand but never before having used it for combat; Jotaro, a fighter all his life, but still unfamiliar with his new power, still unsure whether or not he could trust it, let alone whether he wanted to. Dio’s first intended sacrifice of many ultimately sent his way.

“Never really seemed like he was testing people,” he muttered. “Felt more like cannon fodder.”

“Oh, I don’t think he was testing us.”

Reluctantly raised his head, trying to read the strange look on Kakyoin’s face.

“Jotaro, he was testing you.” He shook his head, exasperated. “A new St—someone new to it, you see? Measuring performance against any number of people who knew what they were doing?”

A flash of silver hair appeared in the doorway and Polnareff began to wind his way through the tables towards the corner where they sat. Jotaro’s eyes stayed fixed on his hands.

“And why,” he said, voice dangerously even, “do you think someone might be measured that way?”

“You would know better than anyone,” Kakyoin told him. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Know what?”

Polnareff sat heavily between them and both men flinched. Jotaro took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of flowers, coffee, sharp French cologne.

“It’s all right,” Kakyoin said slowly. “Don’t worry about it.”

The tone of his voice left Jotaro unsure whether it was a reassurance or a threat.

Jotaro glanced at Polnareff. “You sleep okay?”

“Sure. Well enough.” He stretched, pulling a face when his shoulder popped. “Ugh.”

“Old injury?” Kakyoin asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Polnareff yawned. “Well—we should get out of here, yeah? Have a meeting to catch.” He grinned.

“Polnareff.”

“Mm?”

“This ‘meeting’.” Kakyoin rested his chin in one hand, watching him critically. “How likely is it that things might get…messy?”

“Messy,” he echoed. “Hmm. Depends on whether it’s a decoy or the real thing, I guess.”

“I see.”

“But we’ve got Jotaro, you know? The World has pulled us out of tight spots more than once. I mean, as long as you can talk him into using it.”

Kakyoin went pale. “The World,” he repeated faintly. Jotaro stared hard at the tablecloth, feeling slightly nauseous again.

“Polnareff.”

“Sorry! Sorry.” Polnareff held up his hands in surrender.

A moment later he was gone again in search of the front desk and whatever maps they might have to offer, and Jotaro was left alone with Kakyoin’s eyes boring what felt like a hole into his skull.

“The World,” he hissed.

Jotaro closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“You can stop time.”

“Yeah.”

“Like him,” Kakyoin said. “You can stop time like him.”

Jotaro paused. His ears rang with high, condescending laughter, punctuated by a sharklike smile.

“Exactly like him,” he replied flatly. “Which is why I won’t use it.”

Kakyoin made a soft noise of disbelief. “You won’t use it?”

“I don’t—only if I—if there’s no other option.”

He studied Jotaro with a reproachful expression that set his teeth on edge. “Let me get this straight.”

“If you have to,” Jotaro grunted.

“You can use the World.”

“Yes.”

“As effectively as he could.”

“Yes.”

“And you refuse to.”

“Correct.”

“Why—” Kakyoin shook his head. “You’re saying you can, you have this, this extremely powerful ability and you—what’s the point of having it if you won’t…?”

“Don’t look at me,” he muttered, staring at a dead fly on the ceiling. He wondered how it had managed to get crushed all the way up there. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“How long have you been able to do this?”

“Since…” He hesitated. “Since Cairo.”

Kakyoin’s eyes widened slightly.

“I see,” he breathed. “I had wondered how you managed it.”

It was the last thing Jotaro wanted to think about, let alone talk about, let alone talk to Kakyoin about. Let alone the fact that Kakyoin seemed more concerned with Jotaro’s distaste for using it than his having access to the same power that had come close to killing him six years ago.

“It’s not like refusing now will change anything that happened back then, Jotaro.”

He had forgotten how frequently Kakyoin used his name. He did it on purpose, it seemed, to make it more difficult to tune him out.

“Honestly, it seems a little foolish,” Kakyoin continued. “After all, we both know you’re pretty good about not getting caught up in the past.”

The air escaped through Jotaro’s teeth with a sharp hiss. When he looked up Kakyoin was watching him with a defiant expression, daring him to retaliate. Almost looking as though he wanted him to.

It was a game to him. Always about who gets the last word. Of course he wouldn’t take it seriously. Of course he hadn’t changed. For Kakyoin, of all people, to sit there and call him a fool…he had some kind of nerve.

Jotaro looked down at his clenched fist, still resting on the table. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Kakyoin laughed. “Right,” he said softly. “Of course not.”

His eyes were bright and cold, lavender ice freezing over a once-familiar smile.

your truths, painful and boring repeat themselves over & over perhaps because you own so few of them

It continued much like this, in the way of taciturn silences and chilly looks, a weight on the spaces between. Kakyoin had a gift for making pointed remarks that were subtle enough for Polnareff to miss, and Jotaro, unable to justify holding that bitterness against him, could only grit his teeth and nod. Largely they avoided being alone together, preferring to have Polnareff’s easy chatter as a buffer whenever possible. If the Frenchman noticed any tension between them he was exercising an uncharacteristic level of tact in not mentioning it, which led Jotaro to believe he was not, in fact, aware that anything was wrong at all. Meeting Kakyoin’s eyes felt to Jotaro as though he were intentionally shoving a fork into an electrical socket, and though the aversion seemed to be mutual, sometimes he felt he was being watched when he lowered his head to read or compare Polnareff’s notes to various maps. It made his skin prickle and he had to remind himself he wasn’t in any real danger.

He wished he were in danger. He wished Kakyoin would just grow up and punch him already. It would have been easier to get it out in the open rather than play at half-baked normalcy. It made Jotaro unimaginably tense, and every time he snapped at one of them Kakyoin looked at him with a grim sort of satisfaction.

Neither of them were getting anything close to a reasonable amount of sleep.

Polnareff’s original lead turned out to be a dud, and it was three days before they were able to find the right vendor to bribe, another eighteen hours between that and the actual meeting. The heat grew worse over the course of the week, and Jotaro spent most of his time down at the pier, watching low waves break against the rocks, wishing he had thought to read about the local marine life before they arrived.

“Looking for something?”

Jotaro closed his eyes, willing his heart to slow. “Do you have to sneak up like that?”

Kakyoin didn’t respond. He folded his arms, kept his eyes on the sea and his face carefully blank.

“I’m not.”

“Come again?”

“Looking for anything,” Jotaro muttered. “Don’t know what to look for around here anyway.”

“Monk seals.”

“Sorry?”

“Monk seals,” Kakyoin repeated, still watching the water. “They live in the Mediterranean. Though I haven’t seen any yet.”

Jotaro blinked up at him, taken aback. He shrugged.

“I like them,” he said shortly.

Helpfully his brain supplied him with a series of useless fragments, none of which he felt capable of saying out loud. Monk seals can weigh up to 900 pounds. Monk seals have been known to kill and eat octopi whole. Monk seals prefer to hunt in open spaces.

The reason you haven’t seen one is likely because there are less than one thousand monk seals left alive in the wild.

Strange, bulbous animals. The sort of creature that looked like it should fit in your arms but in reality was large enough to crush you to death.

“You can look for fish later. It’s time to go.”

“Seals aren’t fish,” he mumbled, looking up at the overcast sky. The lack of sunlight only made the mugginess worse.

Kakyoin snorted and Jotaro raised his head, staring at his outstretched hand as though afraid of it. Tried to read Kakyoin’s expression and found it enigmatic at best. Looked back at his hand.

“Come on.”

He steeled himself and took Kakyoin’s hand, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. His strength seemed undiminished, though he shifted his weight to account for the lingering handicap. He released Jotaro quickly. Both had noticed the clamminess of the other man’s palms.

For what felt like the hundredth time Jotaro wondered if he was overreacting. Kakyoin started back down the pier, his footsteps nearly soundless despite the creaking wood.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “If I see one.”

Kakyoin paused without turning around. His shoulders relaxed very slightly.

“I’d appreciate that.”

The transaction was to take place at the old lighthouse, the tallest on the continent and one of the city’s landmarks. It was still active, manned at night, but according to the merchant who overheard the conversation, the buyer had asked to meet during the day, when it would be largely vacant. It seemed believable enough.

They met Polnareff in an alley by the building. In hushed tones he explained that he’d seen a middle-aged woman enter fifteen minutes ago, and a short, dark-haired figure in white follow shortly after. The woman had been holding a canvas-wrapped bundle.

Kakyoin watched the door as Jotaro and Polnareff had a whispered argument about the best approach. Eventually he held a hand up to silence them and pointed towards the lighthouse, and the woman hurriedly closing the door behind her, who no longer held any sort of bundle.

“Now,” was all he said.

Jotaro followed him across the yellowing grass with Polnareff trailing behind, mumbling something about locks and breaking and entering in broad daylight. Kakyoin shot him a withering look and pulled the door open, withdrawing Hierophant’s limb, which he had slipped between latch and frame as the woman left, preventing the lock from catching.

The interior of the lighthouse smelled of pine and some sort of pungent cleaning product, illuminated only by dull gray sunlight slipping through a small window. Jotaro wrinkled his nose, kicking at a stack of old newspapers. He glanced around, searching for places someone might hide, but found the first floor fairly barren.

All three tensed when a set of light footsteps began to tap down the spiraling stairs overhead. The rhythm was almost lyrical, as though they were dancing rather than walking.

Jotaro and Kakyoin exchanged a look. Kakyoin crept back, retreating into the shadows.

“No need to hide. I know you’re here.”

He froze. The voice was high and smooth, like a child’s, and the shadow preceding its owner seemed dangerously small.

“That’s…”

The boy coming into view was short and slight, black hair cropped into a bob, wearing a white suit and two carefully placed gold barrettes. He crouched on the stairs, watching them warily with clear blue eyes. He couldn’t be older than fifteen.

“That’s a kid,” Jotaro hissed. “I’m not gonna fight a kid.”

“Let’s not fuck around, hmm?” The boy clapped his hands, smiling. “You’re in my way, stronzo.”

Italian. The kid was Italian. What kind of idiot would import teenagers to do his dirty work?

“Kid,” began Polnareff, “just give us the—”

Kakyoin shushed him sharply. “You have a name?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you at liberty to share it?”

“Don’t see a reason to.”

Kakyoin sighed. “Listen, you can’t be—how old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

The boy looked him over with narrowed eyes, silent.

“Whatever you’re involved in—whatever they told you, believe me.” Kakyoin shook his head. “I mean, if it’s—do you need someone, do you need help? We can—”

“Enough shit talking.”

Jotaro stared at the shape materializing behind him, white and blue and eyeless, a single gold zipper stretching the length of its torso. A Stand?

“I don’t have time for you,” the boy snapped.

The look in his eyes left a metallic taste in the back of Jotaro’s mouth, and he recognized it. As young as the kid was, he recognized it.

“Kakyoin.”

“I know.” I saw it too.

Jotaro wondered, briefly, who it was the boy had killed. Why he had done it. If he thought about it, heard the sound of it in quiet moments when there was nothing left to drown out lingering memories.

Enough to really fuck a kid up. Enough to make him feel like radio static was filling his brain every time he tried to sit still, or put him on a first-name basis with death rattles. Enough to turn him into a threat.

“Out of the way,” Polnareff said sharply, pushing past them. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Wait—”

“I won’t kill him.” He set one foot on the stairs. “Silver Chariot!”

The boy’s eyes followed the silver saber, watching Chariot and its strange mournful face curiously. When Polnareff’s Stand darted towards him he stood very still, making no move to avoid it.

Which seemed like a bad sign.

“Polnareff,” Kakyoin murmured. “Withdraw it.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Just do what I—”

“Sticky Fingers!” the boy shouted, and with a sound like a zipper coming undone, the figure hovering behind him twisted over his shoulder and punched Chariot twice. Not hard, not even enough to slow him down, but it quickly became apparent that wasn’t his aim.

Polnareff stared at his arm, nonplussed.

“Is that a zipper?”

“You catch on quick,” the boy said calmly.

He had unzipped Polnareff at the elbow and the knee, rendering both his sword arm and his left leg useless, though he seemed more confused than pained as he slid to the floor. Jotaro had the feeling that had the boy been any more practiced with this ability, they would have been detached entirely.

Zippers. That was new.

Kakyoin glanced at him and nodded, their Stands emerging in unison. The boy took one look at Star and Hierophant, spat something in Italian that Jotaro didn’t need to translate in order to understand, and turned on his heel to bound back up the stairs.

As they gave chase it quickly became apparent that Hierophant was better suited for this fight, the distance it allowed him to keep protecting Kakyoin from being unzipped somewhere critical. The boy was quick, though, and dodged most of Hierophant’s limbs easily, his Stand—Sticky Fingers?—shielding him from the rest without bothering with zippers. But he had condemned himself to being cornered; he would reach the top eventually. Then it would just be about who was faster, and Star was always faster.

He tried not to think about how young the kid was.

Kakyoin yelped, clutching his wrist, and Jotaro’s heart skipped.

“Are you—”

“Fine,” he huffed, wincing when he looked down at the zipper stretching the length of his forearm. “I’m fine.”

Hierophant had finally landed a hit on the Stand but he moved too close, got his arm clipped. They stared down at the strange swirling darkness that appeared where the zipper gapped open. Kakyoin swallowed. The boy glared down at him, his own right arm hanging at his side.

“This fucking kid,” Kakyoin muttered, wrapping one of Hierophant’s appendages around his arm to keep it from coming open again. “They usually like this?”

Jotaro’s ears were ringing. Kakyoin snapped his fingers an inch away from his eyes. “Hey. Focus.”

“This is the first homicidal teenager, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He sighed. “Great.”

The kid sped up towards the top of the stairs and Jotaro slowed, suspicious. If he wanted them up there…he couldn’t think he was escaping in an enclosed space. Even if he were able to cause sufficient damage to one of them, there was no way he could incapacitate both men before he himself was taken down. Unless he had some other reason for luring them to the top.

“Be careful,” Jotaro told Kakyoin, who rolled his eyes.

“Worry about yourself,” he said, and pushed past.

Hierophant looked back at Star, lifting its shoulders in an unmistakable shrug.

The boy leaned against the exterior railing, his Stand nowhere to be seen. His posture was relaxed, casual. He smiled when he saw them and opened his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Trap, Jotaro thought. Kakyoin glanced sideways at him. Trap, his eyes said.

Made both of them crazy how even when you saw it coming there never really seemed to be a choice.

Star came at him from the left and Hierophant from the right, and Jotaro thought with absurd amusement of the words pincer attack, how danger had switched the two of them into a different gear, one that knew better how to remember each other, understand without speaking or looking.

The impact was nearly instantaneous. He stumbled back, staring in shock at the opened zipper running along the deck, at the blue-and-white fist that had caught Star Platinum just under the ribs at an odd angle.

“Jojo!” Kakyoin yelped, slapping a hand over his mouth when he realized what he’d said.

Knocked the wind out of him, sure, but the kid didn’t have enough force to slow him down. He didn’t seem to have been successful in placing a zipper, either. Clever trick, though, to come out of the ground like that. Hadn’t seen it coming.

“Don’t move,” the boy snarled. He wiped at his eyes; a cut Hierophant left behind was bleeding. “Don’t you fucking move or I—I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him.”

He was addressing Kakyoin, Jotaro realized. Which meant he must be talking about…

Jotaro opened his mouth to reassure him, tell him it was a bluff, he was fine, and found he had no air to speak with. He tried to take a step forward and his legs buckled unexpectedly.

“Jotaro?”

Kakyoin’s voice was high and thin. Afraid.

“Why didn’t you—”

“You people are too much fucking trouble. Don’t,” he added, seeing Hierophant rearing. “Pull that thing back. Unless you wanna see what your big friend over there looks like with a collapsed lung.”

Lung.

That was why they hadn’t seen it. The kid hadn’t failed to land a zipper at all. Jotaro would have groaned if he had the air to do it with. His chest started to burn.

Eyes wide and feverish, Kakyoin looked from the boy to Jotaro and back again.

“Jotaro, come on,” he croaked. “You have to. You have to do it.”

This is what you’re thinking: how long can he stay underwater?

“Are you stupid?” Kakyoin’s voice rose. “Are you fucking stupid? Are you trying to die? Just do it!”

Jotaro remembered the fishlike Stand’s face, the dead-looking, downturned eyes of its user. They never had learned that man’s name.

“You want to die? You want to die to make a fucking point? Are you fucking with me?”

He slammed Hierophant’s limbs down like fists and the metal deck shook underneath them. His face, coming in and out of focus, first rigid with fear, now contorted in rage. He had never seen Kakyoin so angry.

I’ll kill you, Jotaro.

It had nothing to do with making a point. He knew there was one way to save himself. He knew what he needed to do, as he sat there on the cold steel with spasming lungs and darkening vision, even as he found himself thinking I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, because he looked at Kakyoin and he thought of blood mixing with falling water, he thought of knives gleaming silver in the moonlight. He thought of the World, punching through a red-haired teenager in the stillness of silenced time.

I can’t.

“What the FUCK—”

Kakyoin screamed in frustration, sending pale tentacles flying in every direction.

“—is your PROBLEM?”

His eyes filled with green light and flashed, twice. The boy’s eyes filled with green light and flashed, twice. He stared straight ahead, blank-faced.

“You’re going to take the zipper off him now,” Kakyoin said.

Jotaro gasped for air so hard he sent himself into a coughing fit. His lungs burned resentfully, free of any handicaps.

One of Hierophant’s appendages had snaked underneath the railings, curving up to hook into the back of the boy’s neck from behind. Green threads trailed from Kakyoin’s fingertips to the boy’s eyes, his ears, his mouth.

“You’re going to take the zipper off the man downstairs. And this,” he added, gesturing to his own arm. “You will nod when you’ve done it.”

The boy nodded vacantly.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Kakyoin crouched down to place himself at eye level. “We are not a threat to you. We are not a threat to your employer. You will remember this.”

He nodded again.

“You can tell me your name now.”

“Bruno Buccellati,” the boy said tonelessly.

“Do you know who you work for, Bruno?”

Bruno shook his head.

“Okay.” Kakyoin sighed. “You’re going to show me where you were hiding that package you got earlier.”

Slowly Bruno reached for his own chest, unzipping the surface from collarbone to stomach. He pulled the canvas bundle from the cavity, offered it to Kakyoin. The empty look in his eyes turned Jotaro’s stomach.

Polnareff emerged from the lighthouse, arm and leg reattached. He looked around with his mouth half open, disoriented. He stared at Bruno, then at Kakyoin.

“Decoy,” Kakyoin said, still dangerously calm as he handed the undeniably wooden arrow back to Bruno. “The kid was cannon fodder.”

“A fake?”

He nodded. “Unfortunately.”

Bruno swayed slightly. Jotaro noticed Kakyoin’s hand shaking.

“If you remember anything else—if you know when the real trade is happening, Bruno, you’ll tell me now, okay?”

“Was meant to meet his guy at the docks tomorrow to hand it off. Then was going home.”

Kakyoin straightened up slowly.

“You won’t remember us,” he said. “You want to leave now. You want to leave and you won’t remember anything that happened here.”

Bruno nodded.

“All right. Go.”

He snapped the threads with a quick jerk of his hand, though the green light in both his and Bruno’s eyes lingered as the boy turned and started down the stairs. He didn’t look back.

“The hell was that?” Polnareff demanded, rubbing at his forearm where the zipper had been. “Thought you didn’t do possessions anymore.”

“It’s closer to hypnosis.” Kakyoin’s face was void of any expression, voice deadly soft. “Still can’t quite stomach full possession, but I—even this makes me feel…dirty, I suppose, is the word. Though we all have things we would rather not do, don’t we?”

He turned on his heel and vanished into the lighthouse’s dark interior, leaving Jotaro and Polnareff alone on the deck. Jotaro shut his eyes, taking a deep breath of salty air, trying to keep his mind blank.

“Hey—did something…?”

Jotaro shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No. We’re fine.”

a truth should exist, it should not be used like this.

Jotaro stared at Kakyoin’s back as he stalked away across the dusty carpeting. He had been silent from lighthouse to hotel, walking stiffly a few feet ahead of the other two with that same blank expression on his face. Had he screamed or sworn or slapped him he doubted it would have put the same sort of pit in his stomach.

“Kakyoin,” he began.

He froze with his key still in the door.

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” Kakyoin growled. “Just don’t.”

Jotaro blinked. “I—I’m just trying to—”

“Apologize? Are you trying to say sorry? Is that what you want to do?” He laughed, eyes wild and bright. “It’s a little late, don’t you think?”

Another pair of guests jostled past and Jotaro stepped forward to give them more space, unintentionally closing the gap between himself and Kakyoin. They stared at each other.

“Are we still…”

He hesitated. He had thought what he wanted was to face it head-on. It had seemed like that would be the easy way.

“Are we still talking about the lighthouse?”

“Does it matter?”

“You tell me.”

Kakyoin snorted and turned away. He paused, hand on the doorknob.

“No wonder,” he muttered. “No fucking wonder you’ve got the same one.”

For a second Jotaro considered just letting the door close behind him. Walk to the pier. Stare at the waves until his chest unclenched, until he stopped thinking, stopped remembering, stopped wanting much of anything at all.

If he left now, he could let that be the last word. He could leave angry. He could tell himself there was nothing to be gained by following Kakyoin into that hotel room.

“What did you just say to me?”

When Kakyoin turned to face him, his grim satisfaction had returned. Only now, with Jotaro standing before him, did he recognize that this was the rise he had wanted out of him all along.

“It makes perfect sense.”

He spoke slowly, deliberately, watching each word sink in.

“You’re the same as he was, aren’t you?”

“Kakyoin, that’s fucking low.”

Kakyoin smiled and it was almost warm. “I almost didn’t believe it, at first, you know. I thought you couldn’t—there was no way your souls could be close enough to move time the same way. But then I thought about it.”

He was getting under Jotaro’s skin. It was what he wanted, of course, and Jotaro could only watch him the same way he would watch a match being dropped into an oil slick.

“You want the same thing he wanted,” Kakyoin said quietly. “You want to be somewhere no one can reach you. You want to be someone no one can reach.”

“You’ve got no idea,” Jotaro breathed, “I can promise that you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You want to have nothing to lose, don’t you?”

Kakyoin took a step towards him, and he stood frozen, the rabbit not caught in the headlights but cornered at last by the fox.

“That’s what he wanted, and that’s what you want, and you’ll kill anything that gets in the way—you’re just like him, you’re destroying everything that ever touched you—because you’re a desperate man who’s terrified of being weak and you’ve convinced yourself if you’ve got nothing to come home to then you’ll have nothing to lose. Isn’t that right, Jotaro?”

Triumphantly he examined Jotaro’s stricken expression. “And that’s why it makes sense,” he said. “You and him both created a place where you could finally be completely, completely alone. So it does surprise me, honestly, that you won’t stop time—”

“That’s not—”

“—expect you to jump at the chance to go somewhere no one can touch you, I imagine that’s why it manifested for the two of you in the first place—”

“It almost KILLED YOU!”

Kakyoin froze mid-sentence. Neither of them had noticed their voices rising.

“It almost killed you,” Jotaro repeated, trying and failing to stop his voice from shaking. “That’s why I can’t—not when you’re—I can’t. I had to know that, I had to live with that shit. I had to live with knowing there was something about me that—that I had the same, the same capacity for—”

“For what?” Kakyoin demanded. “What, exactly, do you think will happen? What the hell are you so afraid of?”

“You think this is just some stupid little thing, don’t you? You think I’m just being stubborn, is that it? For no reason? For no good reason?”

“I think I almost had to watch you die today,” he spat. “For no good fucking reason. You want to talk about people dying? Do you really want to go there with me right now?”

Look at anything but his eyes. The wooden ceiling fan. The undisturbed bedsheets. The alarm clock set fifteen minutes behind, fifteen minutes too late.

“I am scared of it.”

Kakyoin moved closer again. His hands trembled, but his voice held steady.

“The fact that you can do that, it scares the shit out of me, and so what? So what if I’m scared? You think that’s the end of the world? You don’t think there might be worse things than me being scared?”

“It’s not about that,” Jotaro growled, staring at the carpet. “I tried to tell you—”

He was close enough now for Jotaro to see the loose threads on his sweater, the scrapes on his forearms. The scars connecting the freckles on his shoulders, turning them into tiny constellations.

“What scares you?”

You, Jotaro thought. You, you, you.

“You want me,” he said slowly, “to ask for something I can’t have.”

“Why?” Kakyoin’s voice sounded dangerously close to breaking. “Why can’t you have it?”

Jotaro fixed his eyes on a framed photograph of the ocean hanging on the wall opposite. He clenched his teeth. He remained silent.

Kakyoin stared at him for a long moment, waiting.

But he was so, so sick of waiting.

Both alarm clock and photograph crashed to the floor and Jotaro jumped back, startled not by the breaking glass, but by the howl of frustration tearing out of Kakyoin. A tangle of green tentacles thrashed in his wake, but it was the rage twisting his face that made him appear, for the space of a heartbeat, to be anything but human.

“Well,” he snarled. “You’re certainly better at it than he was. Should I congratulate you?”

The broken alarm clock flashed, the inaccurate time replaced by a flickering red 00:00.

Time will resume.

“How does it feel to have nothing?”

Kakyoin’s hands were balled into fists, shaking at his sides. He appeared to be focusing on preventing Hierophant from attacking Jotaro directly.

“How does it feel to know you did it to yourself?”

For the second time Jotaro imagined walking away. He imagined closing the door behind him with those words ringing in his ears and having that be the end of it, of all of it. It would be so simple, to leave like that. The anger, the feeling of betrayal—that would be easy to keep.

“Every night.”

He might even be able to convince himself it was hate that had its fists in his heart.

“Every night I dream about it,” he said, voice rising in volume with every word. “I dream about you on that tower with a hole in your fucking stomach, Noriaki, and in the dreams it—it isn’t him who put you there, understand?”

“Yeah? Do you? You want to know what I dream about?”

Kakyoin with the permanent look of exhaustion. Kakyoin with the weary eyes and the tired smile and defiance born of necessity, because he had survived despite everything, despite Jotaro, despite himself.

“I dream about you,” he hissed. “I dream about you taking that hit for me. I see you get ripped clean in half sometimes, did you know that?”

He laughed again, quick and dry.

“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

Kakyoin didn’t flinch, hardly even blinked when Jotaro finally broke into a scream. He never did.

“It was—you almost—we were seventeen! And you almost died, because of me, you almost died in my—I would have—”

“I was ready to die for you.”

He said it like a judge delivering a death sentence.

“Don’t,” Jotaro croaked, suddenly dead quiet. “Don’t say that.”

“I would have done it,” Kakyoin said fiercely. “I wouldn’t have regretted anything.”

“I never asked you to. I never wanted that kind of—I never wanted that from you, I never—”

“That’s not—that’s not the fucking point, Jotaro!” He turned on his heel, eyes flashing furious green. “It’s not about what you wanted, it was never about what you wanted from me, it was—that was my decision, it was my decision to make, and you made it for me, you took that away from me, because you think you’re the only fucking person anything ever happens to—”

“You don’t understand,” Jotaro snapped. “You don’t fucking understand what I—what I went through, what I’ve—you have no idea what it’s been like—”

“Yeah! You’re right! I don’t have a clue! Because you won’t fucking tell me! You won’t even look at me—like you think I’m gonna break if you breathe on me wrong, I’m not fragile—” one of Hierophant’s appendages cracked like a whip and Jotaro wondered wildly if he really might attack this time— “I can take care of myself, I’ve been taking care of myself for six years!”

“Kakyoin, that’s—I know that—that’s the whole—”

“And you still,” Kakyoin spun back to face him, “you still won’t even use that shit in front of me, like you think I’d—you’ve got some kind of gift for protecting people in all the wrong places, you know that?”

“Oh, you don’t understand.” Jotaro laughed, soft and defeated. “I was so stupid to think you ever could.”

For the first time it was Kakyoin who was shocked into silence. He stared at Jotaro as though seeing him for the first time, his Stand slowly disappearing behind him.

“Fucker,” he said hoarsely. “Look at me. Would you just look at me?”

Jotaro stayed still, face turned away.

“…Please.”

Unfamiliar words in an unfamiliar language drifted towards them from the street below. The voices were raised. An argument.

What scares you?

What would happen if he turned around? What would happen if he met Kakyoin’s eyes, told him I’m sorry for thinking it was my responsibility to break your heart?

“I wish…”

Why can’t you have it?

“I wish I could forget everything about you.”

Because it’s not mine.

The falling silence belonged to the aftermath of a gunshot. Jotaro felt a slow sort of horror twisting into place, as though he were watching himself crash a car in slow motion. He exhaled through his teeth in a long, soft hiss.

“I wish you would,” he said.

Kakyoin stood looking dazed, his mouth half open. His eyes widened very slightly and he started to lift his hand, started to reach, but the door had already closed the door behind him.

Jotaro was gone.

if I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?

He was on his fourth cigarette when Polnareff found him at the top of the hotel fire escape, sitting cross-legged with a vacant expression. For a minute or so Polnareff stood there, looking down at him with his hands on his hips.

“Be trouble if they see you up here,” he said at last.

Jotaro shrugged, stubbing out his cigarette and moving on to the fifth. Polnareff slid down to sit beside him, and though Jotaro didn’t particularly want him there, he found that he didn’t necessarily want him gone, either.

Besides, Polnareff never bummed cigarettes, attached as he was to that French brand he always carried. Gauloises Brunes. Filterless, which turned Jotaro off to them completely, but something Polnareff seemed to enjoy.

They smoked quietly for a while, longer than Polnareff’s usual capacity for silence, and Jotaro was grateful, though he knew it couldn’t last.

“Something happened,” Polnareff said, and this time it wasn’t a question.

Jaw set, Jotaro wondered if there was any point in denying it. He had little to say, even if he had wanted to talk about it.

“I saw Kakyoin.”

“Ah.”

“He didn’t say anything,” he continued. “Don’t know what exactly it was that happened between you two except that it had him looking like he just watched someone step on a land mine, but.”

“Wonderful,” Jotaro muttered.

Polnareff watched him stub out number five and light number six. “Gonna go through a whole pack like that, you know.”

“Probably.”

He watched Jotaro thoughtfully, taking a last drag on his cigarette before crushing the butt beneath the heel of his boot.

“If you’d rather not—if you want I can go with him. You can stake out the solo position. If it’s…if you need some space.”

“No,” Jotaro said, a little too quickly. “I want to be—I’ll go with him. It’s fine.”

Polnareff nodded, looking unsurprised. “Yeah. Had a feeling.”

“Appreciate it, though.”

“Sure.”

He stood, stretching, and winced as he always did after the familiar pop of his shoulders.

“Was like that for a while,” he said. “With Muhammad, I mean.”

Jotaro bit down on his cigarette and the taste of tobacco flooded his mouth, made his eyes water.

“Scared to let him out of my sight.” Polnareff shook his head. “But also just…scared.”

The first stars began to fade into view overhead. Jotaro looked up, knowing even once they had all appeared there would be no constellations he recognized, and felt suddenly, violently homesick.

“I walked out on him,” he told Polnareff, without meaning to, without really knowing why. “After Cairo.”

Polnareff barely even blinked. “I know,” he said. “Figured that out pretty quick, actually. You guys act like a couple of divorcées.”

Jotaro snorted.

“Look, I don’t…I’m not gonna try and tell you what to do.” He scratched the back of his head. “But, you know, if you need anything.”

“Might need a new pack of cigarettes,” Jotaro mumbled, and Polnareff chuckled.

“Easy enough.”

Jotaro glanced up at him. “Thanks.”

“Pas de problème.”

He watched Polnareff disappear down the fire escape and sat back again, smoking another cigarette as the sky filled with unfamiliar stars.

The interception was meant to be a simple one. One of two candidate locations for the meeting at which the real arrow would be sold. The secluded beach, due to being more isolated and thus more dangerous and thus more likely to be the real one, had been marked a two-man job. Polnareff would stake out the other, a high-traffic restaurant, where he would be safer. Presumably all they would need to do was watch to see if a trade really was taking place, get eyes on the parties involved. Trail whoever ended up with the package, if possible.

Jotaro had remained firm on staying with Kakyoin, despite their having barely exchanged a word with one another since Jotaro left the hotel room. Earlier in the week their silences had been frosty, there to make a point; now, they were silent simply because they had nothing left to say.

Near the water the fog grew thick and damp, a pale gray mist the waves carried to shore. Jotaro took a deep breath of ocean air, attempting to center himself with the taste of salt. The deserted beach was all sharp contrasts, black water and white sand, red rock and gray sky. He imagined it might be beautiful, even without the fog burning off, through the right eyes.

Kakyoin crouched silently at his side, one of Hierophant’s tentacles snaking into the sand and out of sight. Whatever he was doing with it, he hadn’t considered it important enough to explain.

“Someone’s here.”

The tentacle erupted from the sand about ten meters to the right, throwing white clouds into the air that just barely left behind the staggering outline of a man. He flickered once, twice, before the transparent shape was filled in with a young man, early twenties at most. He was nearly as tall as Jotaro, wearing a plain black hood and striped pants.

“Don’t suppose there’s any point in asking what you want,” Jotaro called.

The man raised his chin and gave them an appraising look with crimson eyes.

“No, there’s not,” he said, and the next thing Jotaro knew he was vomiting a pile of iron nails onto the sand. Shock saved him from most of the pain, but he heard the sharp hiss to his right, saw Kakyoin fall, spitting out what appeared to be a small, bloody pair of nail scissors into his open hand. He threw it to the side and Jotaro watched it fly towards the water, dissipating into a cloud of dust before it could reach the surface.

He clutched his throat, wiping blood from his mouth. A Stand that could make you vomit foreign objects? Either way, it had range.

Kakyoin backed away, shouting something incoherent as Hierophant sent a wave of emerald projectiles flying towards the red-eyed man. He vanished from view briefly, only to reappear when one of the emeralds struck him on the shoulder.

Distance. Keep your distance.

“Stay away from him,” he hissed.

Kakyoin glared at him. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

To Kakyoin it was just another attempt to protect him in the worst way possible. Kakyoin was sick to death of it, wanted no part of it. He said none of this. He set his jaw and circled away.

What both of them knew, making it mercifully unnecessary to say, was that they had been outmaneuvered, and as such they were now facing what was undeniably an assassination attempt. The man in the hood fought quick and bloody, and he was far, far more formidable than the teenage Bruno and his zippers.

Two against one might have given them an edge, ordinarily, but they were out of sync, communication fractured, the once effortless anticipation of one another’s movements disrupted completely. Jotaro watched Kakyoin out of the corner of his eye even as Star bore down on the assassin, taking a risk only half-calculated.

He howled and Kakyoin whipped around in time to see him yanking half a pair of scissors out from underneath the skin of his forearm, but pain only ever made him hit harder, and the assassin stumbled back, clutching his stomach. He spat and grinned up at them with bloody teeth.

The haze began to lift and Jotaro recognized what it meant, that it didn’t matter if they were out of his range as long as their Stands were inside it, in time to see Hierophant rising behind the assassin, close, too close. He inhaled sharply, he sent Star forward again, he punched from behind, the assassin fell forward, towards Kakyoin, but he had said stay away, he had to know about the range, he wasn’t stupid, he had to know, he would move—he had to see what had happened—

But Kakyoin didn’t move away, Kakyoin moved closer, Hierophant’s limbs thrashing against the sand, his eyes flat and shining, he was beautiful and he was terrible and it would never be enough to save him, and Jotaro saw the look of victory on the fallen assassin’s face, but he had reached too late, and by the time he opened his mouth in warning the razor blades were already under the skin of Kakyoin’s throat.

Kakyoin froze, and he turned, looked Jotaro straight in the eyes with his own wide and shocked, and in the lavender Jotaro saw something lost but impossibly still there, still there, still there—

It’s you. It always had to be you.

He reached up to claw at his throat and as panic blinded him to everything else still he saw the terror on Jotaro’s face with perfect clarity, all he could think to do was reach for him, all he could think to say was help me.

“The WORLD!”

His scream was cracked and deafening, and when time settled, Kakyoin’s expression had gone bright with different remembered fear. Jotaro took a deep breath.

You don’t think there might be worse things than me being scared?

“Okay,” he murmured. “Okay.”

The complete silence, the complete stillness, it always caught him off guard. He remembered what Kakyoin had said, about stopped time being the only place he could truly be alone.

Star reached for Kakyoin’s neck, holding the back to stabilize it with one hand as it pulled the razor blades out flat with the other. The movement was precise and gentle in equal measure. There would be wounds, but no arteries had been damaged. Not fatal.

As he watched the blades hang in the air, temporarily immune to gravity, he thought of the floor of his mother’s house, an unconscious teenager, a growth choking his brain. He thought of Kakyoin’s eyes snapping open, murderous and full of fear. The first thing he’d done was call Jotaro a bastard.

Sometimes he wondered if he hadn’t known he was doomed to love him even then, when he said hold still, and Kakyoin held still, because despite everything, what he wanted most was to live.

I was alive, but I wasn’t living, he had said once. I don’t know if that makes sense to you.

It hadn’t then. It did now.

Jotaro rounded on the Stand user, the assassin, and Star Platinum’s howled ORA rang across the beach, the echo persistent even after time resumed. Rare, to hear the Stand itself cry out in pain.

The user collapsed to one knee with a disoriented gasp, clutching a broken collarbone, and before he could look up, before he could realize what was happening to him, Jotaro had slammed his fist down on the crown of his head. He hadn’t bothered using Star.

The third punch might have been playing it safe. After the fourth it was clear that the assassins wasn’t getting up. By the fifth he had fallen into bloody overkill, he hardly even saw the skin split, hardly felt the bones break. Jotaro had gone somewhere no one could touch him, and that world was nothing but a roaring crimson blur.

His fist stopped moving. He had not decided to stop moving it. Jotaro turned and there he was, Jotaro’s wrist caught in his hand. Kakyoin had stopped him mid-swing, Hierophant wrapped around Star Platinum to hold its arms still, the two Stands almost appearing to embrace.

“You can stop now,” Kakyoin said, soft and kind. “You don’t have to keep going. You can stop.”

Jotaro stared down at him, ears ringing.

“You can stop,” he repeated, tightening cold fingers around his wrist. “It’s okay to stop.”

Green light started to break the crimson haze apart and though he wanted to help it through he didn’t remember how, he barely even remembered his own name, and it didn’t matter. Kakyoin had already caught him. It was over the moment he had stopped the blow from landing.

Jotaro took a deep, shaky breath, in freefall. Slowly he lowered his fist, though Kakyoin didn’t loosen his grip. At his side, Star Platinum went still in Hierophant Green’s arms.

He looked at the still figure beneath him.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Kakyoin glanced down, at the half-open eyes so full of blood that the whites seemed black, and he understood, nearly too late, what it had cost Jotaro to save him.

“It’s okay, it’s—you’re okay, it’s okay, but we, we have to go. We have to get out of here—can you run, are you—?”

Jotaro nodded mutely.

The first drops of rain clung to their clothes, their hair, their eyelashes, mixing with blood and sweat as they fled, so close to the feeling of tears on their cheeks that they could hardly tell the difference. Kakyoin led him by the arm at first, then dropped his hand to lock their fingers together as though it were second nature, all the while repeating it’s okay, you’re okay, it’s okay, until it lost all meaning, like a prayer in a language he couldn’t speak, like the fact of believing was the only true thing and it didn’t matter if there was a God to hear or understand because Jotaro was there, and Jotaro heard him, and Jotaro felt something long numb start to prickle deep in his chest.

The rain began falling in earnest and Kakyoin pulled him towards a deserted-looking church, unlocking a a half-hidden door towards the side of the building with Hierophant in a single swift movement. The hall itself was empty and dark, and though it smelled of candles the only light came from floor-length windows behind the altar that faced the neighboring beach.

It occurred to Jotaro that Kakyoin had known where this building was, had known enough about it to expect it empty, known where the side entrance was and seemed practiced at unlocking it. But he’d had the pier. It was stupid, to assume Kakyoin wouldn’t need his own place to be alone.

He looked around, nodded, and the two of them collapsed to their knees almost simultaneously, the exhaustion hitting them from every direction, and they stared at each other in silence until Kakyoin grimaced.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said breathlessly. “I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I—I don’t know what the hell I was saying, I didn’t—”

His face twisted with remorse. “I shouldn’t have said it, I was just trying to—trying to hurt you, I don’t know why, I don’t want to—I was so angry but I shouldn’t—I didn’t mean—”

Kakyoin abruptly fell silent. He looked across at Jotaro, who had grabbed his face in both hands, unable to think of any other way to get him to stop apologizing.

There was too much to say. There was nothing at all to say.

“I know,” Jotaro said gently.

He couldn’t say I didn’t mean it either, though he wanted to, though he wished it were true, because sometimes he did wish Kakyoin could forget him, though not for any of the reasons he would think. Not because he didn’t want him there, but because he did. Because he did, and when Kakyoin made his case, he would always win, and maybe that did make Jotaro weak, maybe all of it had been pointless, and maybe, for once, both of those things were okay.

Wordlessly Kakyoin leaned forward and rested his head against Jotaro’s chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. For a moment, they let themselves be quiet.

When Jotaro reached Kakyoin on that Cairo rooftop, his heart had already stopped. He had no way of knowing how long Kakyoin had been dead for, only that he couldn’t let it be true, and it had been Jotaro who reached into his chest and touched his heart while it was still and cold, begging him not now, not you, not here. It was Jotaro who called him home, Jotaro who clutched his heart like a rosary until it skipped and began once more to beat.

He had no idea how to tell Kakyoin that he remembered, with perfect clarity, how it felt to hold his heart in his hands. He had no words to begin telling Kakyoin what he meant.

“Thank you,” he whispered into Kakyoin’s hair. His voice cracked, and it didn’t matter.

Through the window behind the altar he looked towards the sea, and from the rocks, just barely close enough to recognize, a lone monk seal watched him with its strange, round eyes. For the first time in what felt like weeks, Jotaro smiled.

Oh, Noriaki, if you only knew.

He closed his eyes and in his head echoed it’s okay, I’m sorry, it’s okay, I’m sorry, like a broken record, like the three-layered beat of a skipping heart.

your body is not a word, it does not lie or speak truth either. it is only here or not here.

Jotaro figured he had spent enough time sitting in hospital waiting rooms to last a lifetime. The antiseptic smell gave him a headache, but he had told himself he wouldn’t leave until Josuke was out of surgery, though he had been assured by multiple doctors that his injuries weren’t life-threatening, and had then spent another twenty minutes convincing Okuyasu of the same thing.

“Jotaro!”

He whipped around and smiled wearily when he saw the red-haired figure nearly sprinting towards him, limp long since cured at Josuke’s insistence.

“Hey,” he sighed. “You’re he—”

The rest of the sentence was cut off as Kakyoin slamming into his chest knocked out the air he had intended to use for it. He laughed, more relieved than anything else.

“Are you okay?” Kakyoin demanded, pulling back without releasing his viselike grip on Jotaro’s hands.

“I’m fine,” Jotaro said. “I was never in danger.”

Only half a lie, really.

“Kids got the worst of it,” he added, glancing down the hall towards the operating room Josuke had been rushed off to.

“Yeah, you said…” Kakyoin shook his head, eyes growing serious. “God, they’re only sixteen.”

“We were seventeen.”

“Which is still older than sixteen.” He squinted at the directory. Kakyoin had allowed Josuke to heal the injury to his spine, but not his eyes. He claimed it was because he was so used to the scars he had convinced himself he liked them. Whatever his actual reasons were. “Are the others—are they all right?”

“Mostly.” Jotaro hesitated, remembering what Josuke had mumbled in his painkiller-induced haze. “Something…happened…to Okuyasu. But he’s, you know. Josuke. Was there.”

“Something happened,” Kakyoin echoed, raising his eyebrows.

“Said his heart stopped for a pretty long time.”

“He—his—it what?”

Jotaro looked down at his hands. “Wasn’t there. Kira got him. He’s, I mean, he’s right over there,” he said, gesturing towards the other end of the room where Okuyasu had fallen asleep in one of the blue plastic chairs. “He’s okay. Just seemed like it freaked Josuke out pretty bad.”

“Jesus,” Kakyoin breathed. “Tell me you—you got him, right?”

“He’s gone.”

He considered for a moment. “You have to use it?”

Jotaro nodded slowly and Kakyoin squeezed his arm sympathetically, saying nothing. They were quiet for a while, listening to the soft hum of the lights, raised voices in the distance. Okuyasu shifted in his sleep, sighing restlessly.

“You know it—that it happened with you too, right?”

Kakyoin blinked up at him. “Sorry?”

“You heart was out too. For a while.”

“Oh.” He paused. “I mean, I…I did know, yes.”

“Could’ve done with Crazy Diamond back there,” Jotaro muttered, and Kakyoin chuckled quietly.

He wondered if this was the right time to say it, the right place. He figured it probably wasn’t. He decided to say it anyway.

“There’s something about that I didn’t…never told you.”

Kakyoin tilted his head slightly. “Oh?”

“I mean, medically, you were dead. For, for I don’t know how long.”

“Right.”

“I was the one who—it was me. Who restarted your.” Jotaro made a vague hand gesture that was presumably meant to represent a heart. “I’d done it before with Star, during the…so I knew it would work. Could work.”

Kakyoin leaned back and watched him, bemused. “I know that,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve always known that.”

“You—” Jotaro stared at him. “You what?��

“Well, yes.” He shook his head. “I didn’t realize you thought I didn’t know.”

He looked back at Okuyasu. It was a strange and terrible thing to have in common.

“How?”

“Hmm?”

“How did you know?”

How did you know?

Much of it was still hazy, would always be hazy, given the thin line between life and death he had walked that night. He had been on both sides of it, though he couldn’t quantify how he had known he was dead, only that he knew what had pulled him back, the sound he would always know, a heart loud enough to drag a dead man home.

He thought of saying I know the way your hands shake when you’re afraid. He thought of saying you’ve got a desperate soul, Kujo Jotaro. It’s a miracle you ever manage to control it at all.

Instead, Kakyoin smiled up at him. “You’ve got huge hands,” he said. “Impossible not to recognize.”

Jotaro snorted, looking almost relieved again. Kakyoin got to his feet.

“Josuke will be here in the morning,” he told Jotaro. “And if he does get out, Okuyasu is probably the one he should see. Let’s go back.”

Jotaro stayed where he was for a moment, watching Okuyasu sleep, a twin miracle to his own. Then he stood, and he followed Kakyoin home.

#jjba #jotaro kujo #kakyoin noriaki #jotakak #cringe as i type this but i know i have to #feat. jotaros catholic guilt #i hate ships i hate fan fiction i only write about gay people being bad at being in love #i tend to call this version of events everyone lives but at what cost #long post

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keelywolfe · 5 years ago

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FIC: Situation Normal (baon)

Summary: This wasn’t at all what Stretch expected from a simple knock at the door.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationships, Angst, Brotherly Bonding, Hurt/Comfort

Notes: Why let the Fell brothers have all the fun? The Swap bros deserve a chance.

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

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Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

The knock on the door wasn’t exactly ominous or anything. People did stop over to the house from time to time during the day, actual adults, even, not just the neighborhood kiddos. Undyne, Toriel, even Alphys sometimes although that was usually for her to run a test and boy, howdy, was Stretch loving a chance to play test subject in his own living room.

He suspected Edge and Alphys thought they were being kind by keeping him out of the lab, so he was gritting his teeth and bearing it, but damn, guys, no.

Anyway.

Stretch was perfectly capable of playing host to anyone who stopped by, thanks. Especially if there were some of Edge’s cookies to plate up for the latest gossip sesh; he might not have Red’s little network of spies, but Tori hopped up on coffee and sugar always had some tasty dirty laundry to share.

But having a brisk knock interrupt his nap wasn’t exactly putting him in the mood to pull out the cookie tray.

Stretch dragged himself upright with a yawn, kicking the blanket back towards the sofa. It clung stubbornly to one foot, resisting his attempts to get free until he shook his foot hard, almost falling as it finally let him loose.

The knock came again, harder, and Stretch groaned, scratching at his pelvis as he wandered to the door. It took him two tries to unlock it, because of course it was locked, Edge would sooner leave the house without his skull attached before he’d leave Stretch in an unlocked house. It clicked on the second attempt, the door swinging open to reveal his brother, beaming up at him with starry eye lights.

“bro?” Stretch said, sleepily confused. He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand, trying to wake up enough to go through his mental calendar. It wasn’t their normal day to have lunch, they hadn’t made any plans, so what was…?

“Good morning!” Blue chirped crisply. He pushed past Stretch into the house, wiping his feet in the door rug.

“well, hey, come on in,” Stretch said dryly, biting back another yawn and closing the door after him.

“Thank you, I will. Glad to see you’re enjoying the lovely fall morning!” It was just this side of snarky and that made Stretch grin. Far too many people saw his brother as endlessly sweet, maybe even a little naïve. Stretch knew better, thanks, his bro could be a shit when he wanted and today looked like one of those days.

Blue stood with his hands perched on his hips, surveying the room. Probably taking in the crumpled blanket on the sofa, the half-full coffee cup thankfully set on a coaster. That first moment Blue came in always felt like one of Judgement, his brother looking at their home and deciding its worthiness.

It prickled a little, every time, but Stretch wasn’t sure how to quantify it. If he said something, Blue would probably say he was imagining things. He might not even be wrong, who the hell knew, but it was how Stretch felt, damn it.

Whatever he saw, Blue seemed to deem it worthy. He turned back to Stretch, his starry eyes lights sparkling and said with mock sternness, “I’m hurt, here I am, an uncle, and I haven’t met my chicken nieces.”

“haven’t you?” Stretch said, surprised. He wracked his memories, but yeah, that seemed possible. Any time he’d been sick or otherwise indisposed, Stretch asked Papyrus to take care of the ladies for him, a task he managed with great enthusiasm and probably volume. Not that he didn’t trust his bro, but when Stretch was in the hospital, Blue tended to be there. Any other time it was a habit to call Papyrus as a chicken-sitter was all. “guess you haven’t. sorry, bro, must be agony for you.”

“Terribly hurt,” Blue said solemnly. “Deep inside, except we don’t have any insides because we’re skeletons.”

Stretch snorted. “yeah, bro, and you can’t play an instrument in church cause you’ve got no organs. come on, i fed them earlier, they should be ready for some attention.”

His sweatshirt was a heavy one, but it was pretty chilly out despite the sunshine, so Stretch pulled a jacket out from the closet and slid it on.

“Papy, a hat!” Blue scolded.

“it’s not that cold, i’m fine, bro.” Except for a sudden itch for a cigarette. Stretch ignored it, stepping into his untied sneakers and leading his grumbling brother out the back door. He had a pack upstairs but smoking in front of Blue wasn’t going to be worth the lecture.

The chickens were out in the little fenced yard of their coop and they perked up eagerly at the sight of skeletons and possibility of scritches. They barely waited for him to open the gate, already gabbling. Stretch sat down right on the ground in the fallen leaves, ignoring the dampness creeping through his jeans and laughing as all three of them made a beeline to him.

“So you’re the ones who’ve been making the eggs Papy brings me.” Blue didn’t sit on the ground, crouching instead. His first hesitant stroke over Dumpling’s vibrant feathers firmed as she immediately saw potential for extra affection and turned his way. Blue laughed softly as Nugget jealously pushed in close, trying to impose herself between her flock mate and Blue’s hand. “They’re very friendly, aren’t they. When you first told me about them, I wondered what Edge was thinking, giving you chickens, but they seem like nice pets.”

“guess it is a little odd,” Stretch shrugged a little. Noodle was happy to have his complete attention and he patted her fondly. “but they work for us. not like i was getting a kitten anytime soon.”

Blue didn’t usually care for reminders of Stretch’s little issues, but to his surprise, his brother smiled, a touch sadly, “No, those go to Red, don’t they. I would have thought him more unlikely than you to take on a cat.”

“heh, i think cats suit him just fine.” Matching teeth, Stretch thought with a private shudder. “edge says he’s taking good care of the fuzzball.”

“I’m sure he does—“ before Stretch could parse his brother’s tone, Noodle decided she’d had enough of being ignored by the newcomer and hopped onto Blue’s knee. Her weight was enough to knock him off-balance and he yelped as he fell back into the leaves with Stretch, laughing as Noodle immediately clambered onto his chest to inspect him more thoroughly. Two more chickens joined her and Blue giggled as the three of them walked over him with their scaly little chicken feet.

“heh, looks like they like you.” Stretch reached over to take Nugget before she could settle on Blue’s skull as if it were a giant egg. She settled into his lap amicably enough, crooning blissfully as he smoothed her feathers. ”they like edge, too. try to hop all over him whenever he’s out here.”

Blue shooed the other two brats down enough for him to sit up. “And he allows that?”

Yeah, there was that tone again and this time Stretch frowned. “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not a thing.” As if his sudden breeziness was going to fool his own brother? “I’m only surprised, is all.”

Stretch sighed, rubbing a thumb beneath Nugget’s little chin. If he could thank his therapy for anything, it was he’d learned that trying to dance around a subject only worked if your partner was willing to boogie. And he definitely wasn’t, not about Edge. “you know, you and edge used to be good friends.”

He could see the surprise in his brother’s face, quickly masked as he said, “We’re still friends.”

“no offense, bro, but you sound as friendly as the bubonic plague. i mean it, you two used to hang out, cook together, do your stitch and bitch,” and when Blue opened his mouth to object, Stretch didn’t stop. “don’t try to tell me you both are busy or some shit. you used to be tight, so what happened?”

A kaleidoscope of emotion crossed his face and what it settled on was not one he easily recognized, not on his brother. “Our friendship was a little disrupted when he crushed my brother’s heart and yet somehow still managed to convince you to go back to him, anyway.”

Stretch could feel his own mouth dropping open because what the fuck? “okay, leaving aside that it was none of your business even then, that was years ago. we had a rocky start, yeah, but we’ve been together for a while and we’re married. why the fuck are you bringing that up for now, sans?” And it felt odd, calling his brother by his real name. Stretch couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it and he wondered how it felt for him to hear it. From the way his shoulders hunched, maybe nothing good. “mind telling me what’s going on, little brother?”

That was a deliberate goad. Blue seemed to forget sometimes that Stretch was the damn older brother and he’d managed pretty well when they were younger, back before…well. Before everything. Going through a bad patch didn’t mean he lost older bro privileges forever.

“Nothing is going on,” Blue said hurriedly. He swallowed, too hard, like the taste of it was bitter. “I’m sorry I brought it up, brother, you know very well I’m happy for you. I wouldn’t have stood up at your wedding if I wasn’t.”

Stretch was starting to wonder about that, but anything he might have said went winging out of his head at the first tear that fell from Blue’s socket, trailing down his cheekbone. He watched dumbly as it ran down his jaw, hanging from his chin in a translucent jewel of magic before falling to splash on Noodle, disappearing into her feathers.

Okay, fuck this. Stretch pushed Nugget off his lap, ignoring her outraged squawk, and grabbed his brother, hauling him into his lap despite the protests of the other two chickens. That turned the waterworks on full-force and Blue clung to him, sweatshirt fisted in both hands as he buried his face into Stretch’s chest and wailed like he hadn’t since he was a child.

His brother’s weight wasn’t exactly insubstantial, he was short but he was damn solid. Stretch didn’t give a shit, ignoring his protesting femurs and joints as he held his brother close, rocking him gently. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew how to handle this, even if it’d been years since he’d done it.

He hummed softly, as automatic as breathing, a wordless song of comfort that hadn’t changed since Blue, Sans, had been so much smaller, his starry eye lights eager, ready to join the guard and capture a Human.

Yeah, maybe that was a memory best forgotten.

Slowly Blue’s sobs eased into hiccoughs and all too soon he drew away, his face drenched in teary magic. Stretch wiped it away with his sleeve like he had when Blue was only a baby bones, drying his cheek bones. It sent a fresh wash of them down, Blue’s eye lights shrunken to dots as he looked up at Stretch.

“I miss you,” Blue blurted suddenly. He choked out another sob, trying to stifle the tears that kept falling. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t, but I do! I miss waking up and seeing you, I miss coming home and not having you there! It’s so selfish of me, I should be used to it by now, but I miss you, Papy!”

“sans…” Stretch whispered, shocked to his marrow. He didn’t even know what to say. Blue was cringing miserably, like he expected him to be mad, but how could he be? Blue wasn’t wrong, not at all; when he’d started dating Edge, they’d gone from mornings and nights together to not so much, and when he’d moved out, it was even less. They had lunch together once a week and Stretch stopped in more often now that Jeff was living there, but. He grabbed hold of his brother’s shoulders, hauling him in for a tight hug.“i’m so sorry, kiddo. i didn’t mean to abandon you like that.”

“You didn’t,” Blue said with some asperity and wasn’t that his bro all the way, trying to protect him, even from himself. He drew back and scrubbed at his face with a hanky he’d pulled from his inventory. “You didn’t, Papy. You were sad for so long and I suppose I got used to taking care of you. I told you I was being selfish and I am. You were finding yourself and I wanted to hold you back.”

“you didn’t, though.” Stretch scrubbed his knuckles lightly over Blue’s skull. His brother’s grin was watery, but he leaned into the touch.

“I hope I didn’t. I didn’t mean to spring this on you either, only—“ his sigh was deeply conflicted. “Jeff won’t be staying with me long, I think. He and Antwan seem to have gotten over whatever was troubling them and he’s so very happy. Like you were right before you moved in with Edge. I am happy for him, truly. I suppose I was only enjoying having someone living with me again.”

Well, that was a concoction of happy and shitty, wasn’t it, and not a problem Stretch really knew how to fix. Wasn’t like he could put out an ad for ‘Roommate wanted. Must allow mama bear-ing and be willing to eat pasta. No smokers.’

Blue stood up, dusting leaves away briskly. “It’s all right, brother, it’s my problem to deal with.” He grimaced, a trace of shame crossing his face. “Please don’t tell Edge what I said? It was unkind and he doesn’t deserve that.”

“tell you what, i’ll keep mum if you come over for dinner tonight.” Edge wouldn’t mind and if he did, well, Stretch would remind him of Red’s invite earlier that week. If he could do chili dogs with the gremlin, Edge could manage playing nice with Blue. Probably wouldn’t need to manage if they got to talking about recipes.

But Blue only looked unhappy at the offer. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, Papy. I really shouldn’t have said anything.”

Yeah, that wasn’t gonna fly. “come over,” Stretch insisted, “bring andy and antwan. c’mon, mettaton has a new special tonight, right?” mettaton was no napstatton but he could see Blue wavering and he added the kicker, coaxingly, “i heard it’s a musical.”

That stitched it. Blue glanced down at Noodle, who was inspecting his shoelaces in hopes of finding a wormy snack, then said uncertainly, “If you think Edge won’t mind…?”

“he won’t,” Stretch said firmly. Or if he did, he wouldn’t say. Stretch wasn’t a bad host but Edge would put Martha Stewart to shame when he wanted.

His smile wasn’t quite the starry happiness that Stretch lived to see in him, but it was hella better than crying. “Okay, then, I will. Let me go home and clean up, and I’ll come back over tonight.”

“sounds good, bro.” Before Blue walked off, Stretch caught his arm, hauling him in for another tight hug. Blue returned it with equal ferocity, clinging for a long, long moment. Then he let go, offering a happier smile, and went out the gate to the front.

The second he was gone, Stretch took a shortcut upstairs, then right back down, cigarettes in hand. The tip wavered as he tried to light it and Stretch had to chase it with the lighter flames til it caught, breathing in a cloud of nicotine-laced smoke. He smoked the whole thing, then lit another before he texted Edge.

okay if my bro comes for dinner tonight?

The reply was almost immediate. Of course. I’ll text him and see if he’d like to bring an appetizer.

His soul constricted in his chest, so filled with love that it ached. Because Blue would be happier if he could contribute and Edge knew it, and wasn’t that Edge all the way? Even if his friendship with Blue got sort of derailed by their relationship, Edge never hesitated to be kind.

Fuck, but Stretch loved him so much.

But he only sent a thumbs up emoticon back along with a string of hearts before dropping his phone back into his pocket and focusing on the task at hand. Namely smoking half this pack before going in to scrub down so no one would be able to smell it.

He’d fucked up, fucked up bad, Stretch thought grimly. Made his brother feel abandoned level of fucked up, yeah, that was par for his course. Didn’t mean he couldn’t do better, damn it, and if he felt like shit about it, well, time for damage control.

He wasn’t stuck in a revolving door of resets anymore and his brother deserved to be happy, too. They’d figure it out, he was sure of it.

But after his third cigarette, he went ahead and sent a text to his therapist’s office to set up an extra appointment this week.

Somehow, he got the feeling he was gonna need a chance to talk.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #by any other name

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fictional-affliction · 5 years ago

Text

Under Pressure, Chapter 3

Rating: T (Next chapter will be M)

Words: 1,750

Link to previous chapter: https://fictional-affliction.tumblr.com/post/185639350520/under-pressure-chapter-2

Saturday night had come too fast. Somehow as much as Courtney prayed that they would get a blizzard in the middle of April, which wasn’t too unlikely for Canada, there was no threat of bad weather in sight. Not that it would’ve stopped Geoff’s party from happening. He would just tell everyone to snowboard on over.

“We’re only staying for an hour, tops.” Courtney told Cate as they walked into Geoff’s house. Courtney looked around with the expected amount of disgust. Upon her first glance it was everything Courtney thought it would be.

The party was in full swing. There was electronic music playing by an artist that she’d never heard of, the scent of beer and liquor in the air, and teenagers doing various activities she frowned upon like playing beer pong and making out in public. Of course Lindsay and Tyler were among the people making out. They’d been dating for a month and Lindsay still couldn’t remember his name half of the time.

It was packed. Geoff’s parties were always open invitation. He was such a chill dude and was friends with everyone. All Courtney could think was that this was going to be a nightmare to clean up, and hope that for Bridgette’s sake Geoff wouldn’t be grounded until eternity if his parents found out. Speak of the devil, because Bridgette threw her arms around her.

“You came!” Bridgette was giddy and had a red solo cup of beer in hand. When she stepped back she looked Courtney up and down and almost spilled her drink as she gestured.

“Look at you!”

“The most she would let me do is curl her hair and put on mascara.” Cate exasperatedly complained. Courtney didn’t see the point in looking any different than she normally did. She’d put on a pair of jeans for once but wasn’t going to make an effort when this was going to be a quick trip.

“You’re lucky I let you leave the house in that skirt.” Courtney admonished Cate but Cate had spotted some of her friends and left without heading her words.

“C’mon Courtney loosen up! I’m so happy that you’re here!” Bridgette was definitely tipsy but Courtney still appreciated the sentiment. “And I know there’s someone else who’s been waiting all night for you to get here.”

Courtney already knew who she was referring too and rolled her eyes.

“Well, I’m not staying for long.” Bridgette either didn’t hear her over the noise or chose not to listen, because she took her hand and guided her through the crowd until they had gotten to the kitchen.

“Babe, this girl needs a drink!” Bridgette called to Geoff who was uncapping a beer for himself.

“That won’t be necessary Bridge, I’m driving.” But Geoff was already handing her some concoction.

“Just have one drink now and you’ll be sober by the time you leave.” Geoff encouraged and Courtney took the drink. She had every intention of pouring it out into the nearest plant when no one was looking.

“So where’s the delinquent so can I prove that I’m here?”

“He’s around here somewhere.” Geoff scanned the crowd until he caught the sight of green hair.

“There he is!” Courtney followed his line of sight to see Duncan with his arm resting on a wall, the other holding a cigarette. She was mostly used to the bad habit by now, but the senior girl he was with, that was so obviously flirting with him, caught her off guard. The girl acted familiar with him. Her hand was on is shoulder and she kept whispering in his ear. Her short and tight dress showed off her long legs and if she bent over she would be exposing herself. Courtney tightened her hand, unconsciously crushing her cup. Some liquid spilled over onto the floor.

“Court!” Bridgette warned loudly and Courtney drew her attention to the mess.

“Shit, sorry Geoff.” Courtney hurried to find paper towels.

“No worries I’ll get it later.” Geoff assured her. Courtney wasn’t one to just be able to ignore a mess but Duncan heard the commotion and was staring right at her.

She wasn’t jealous. She wasn’t. So it couldn’t have been jealously that made her clean her hand by sucking on her fingers. She told herself it wasn’t because she was jealous. Couldn’t be, but it was so satisfying when the senior girl, Amanda was her name if she recalled correctly, looked offended that she’d lost his attention.

It was even more satisfying when he ditched Amanda for her.

“Can’t believe you actually came.”

“Not like I had a choice.” He looked genuinely happy to see her, so much so that his lingering smile was making her face tingle unexpectedly.

“So what is it that you do at these things?” Courtney asked and waited for specific instructions.

“There’s not an itinerary Princess, then again you don’t know how to have fun.”

“Just because my idea of fun isn’t the same as your’s-”

“Your idea of fun isn’t the same as anyone’s-” Bridgette stepped between them.

“I know what we can do!” It wouldn’t be the first time Bridgette intervened when Duncan and Courtney started going at it, it was in her nature to be the peacemaker. Besides, a little friendly competition would occupy both of them.

A table was set up in the kitchen with teams on opposing sides. Everyone that was playing at the ready. Dj was watching closely by as the designated referee.

“One...two...three...go!” Dj prompted the teens to start chugging their drinks, LeShawna for the girl’s team and Owen for the boy’s. Down at the end of table, Duncan and Courtney were the last ones up for their teams.

“Sure you can handle this?” Courtney rolled her eyes at his attempt psych her out.

“If you’re trying to distract me it’s not going to work.” She trained her eyes on Bridgette, her whole body itching with anticipation. There was such a rush that went through her anytime she faced a competition, even if it was one as trivial at Flip Cup, it didn’t matter, she wanted to win.

On Bridgette’s second try her cup landed face down and Courtney let go of her inhibitions and downed the contents of her cup. She had started drinking before Duncan and was sure she would be victorious.

That was until he’d somehow flipped his cup before her.

“What! No way!” Courtney exclaimed in outrage.

“Sorry Court, the boys are really good at this game.” Bridgette tried to reassure her that the chances of them winning weren’t high to begin with.

“Malibu’s right, you didn’t stand a chance.” Duncan rubbed it in her face but Courtney wasn’t a quitter.

“I demand a rematch!”

“Courtney are you sure you want to-” Dj butt in, worried for Courtney’s lack of alcohol tolerance.

“I’m sure. Let’s go!”

Three more games later and the girls still hadn’t won.

“Face it Princess, you’re not gonna win this one.” Nevertheless, Courtney was relentless, and even if she didn’t have an advantage, she wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off of Duncan’s face.

“One more game.” Courtney narrowed her eyes at him. “This time, we start.”

“Whatever. It won’t change anything.” They set up the game one more time and Dj reluctantly counted down again. Courtney eyes bore into Duncan’s as they both chugged and finished at the same time, but as Courtney went to flip her cup she made a point of bending over the table enough so that Duncan could see down her top.

Duncan froze, his cup on the edge of the table poised to be flipped perfectly into place. She wouldn’t stoop that low would she? This was Courtney. The same Courtney who said women shouldn’t use their sexuality to get ahead. No way that she would do just that; but from Duncan’s point of view he could see her light pink bra and her full cleavage. Then she looked up at him with that not so innocent smile, and before he knew it she had flipped her cup.

“Dude!” Geoff prompted and Duncan came out of the trance. He struggled with his cup, overshooting and then undershooting. By the time Geoff got to start drinking, LeShawna flipped her cup and the girls were celebrating their victory.

“What happened bro?” Geoff asked Duncan, more concerned than upset at the loss.

“She cheated.” Duncan accused loudly enough for Courtney to hear him.

“Did I? Can you prove it?” Courtney raised her eyebrows expectantly, that same innocent look on her face. Admittedly the alcohol made her do it. With her inhibitions lowered and her need to win growing, it felt like a good idea at the time. Plus, Duncan’s face was priceless and she didn’t mind the attention when it was coming from him...

Duncan wasn’t about to tell Geoff or anyone else how easily he’d gotten distracted by barely getting a glimpse of her chest. He still had the image in his head and that alone was making it hard for him to think straight.

“You look a little frustrated. Maybe you need to cool off.” She really needed to be taught a lesson.

“Cool off you say?” Courtney was all smug smiles until Duncan picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

“What are you doing!” She cried out as he took her from the kitchen to the backyard. The air was chilly as it whipped Courtney’s hair into her face, obstructing her view. When she was able to tuck it behind her ears she saw that they were standing in front of the pool.

“Don’t you dare! Duncan. No. This isn’t funny.” She pleaded as she tried to get free.

“But I thought I needed to cool off.” Duncan took a step closer, not even minding how her nails dug into his back.

“I didn’t mean literally! You’ve made your point, now put me down!”

“Put you down?” He tilted them towards the water as if he was going to throw her in.

“Duncan this isn’t a joke! The water is freezing!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before.” Duncan was getting a kick of out this but Courtney had learned her lesson so he put her down. Although, he hadn’t accounted for it being Courtney’s first time drinking and not being stable on her feet. As soon as she was upright again, the alcohol hit her. She swayed to one side and grabbed onto Duncan, and they both splashed into the pool.

#duncney #under pressure #fanfic #total drama #uh oh

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icharchivist · 6 years ago

Note

(1) In Kanda's backstory, it is shown that he often sees the illusion from his past memory. The lotus he often sees is also part of those past memories/illusions. He also sees the woman (past!Alma) and his past self's death and they are overlapping with the present scene. On top of seeing them, he's also hearing them as well.

(2) Do you think he still sees/hears them even now? If so, then it must be pretty tough for him when the illusions are overlapping with the things he is seeing at present. Do you think that's the reason he often looks confused?

oooh yeah those illusions!

i think the visions were at their worst anytime he was near Alma tbh. Alma was often the one to trigger said illusions (one that comes in mind is when Alma does his round of hellos to the pools, and Past!Alma appears and says “we wanted children didn’t we”) and i could see that at least the Past!Alma visions stopped with Alma’s “death”, but not the lotus’s.

While I do think they were less frequent however I completely believe Kanda still had them for multiple reasons:

1) First the fact Zhu repeats to him a lot that the flowers are illusions and that we have a flashback to that when Kanda is an adult, far before the Alma’s arc. To me it sounds set post-Incident, of trying to have Kanda get used to it. Why? Because the reactions the scientists had to Kanda’s illusions in their past wasn’t “it’s just illusion”, it was “we need to kill him and restart his reincarnation process again”.

The fact that Kanda remembers his past life was something the scientists considered dangerous. It’s implied that it’s not the first time they had to work through that actually, that they consider that once the ressurected gain their memories back, they become unstable and likely to rebel against them and hurt them. If anything, Kanda’s major crisis and well, Alma’s breaking point were proof enough that it was true. (even if.... We will never know if, if they had told them what happened, prepared them, didn’t infantilize them to the point of also telling them they’re not really humans... Yeah I don’t think they handled it the best even if it’s to be expected the horrors of their past would be coming back).

Every Kanda’s illusions were treated by the scientists locking him up, getting him away from Alma who yet was an emotional anchor for him, considered drugs to numb him, and when Kanda was sure he remembered, planning on killing him.

They realized the horrors they put those kids through toward the end, which is why they let the massacre happen (a bonus specifies that they forbid Fou to interfer, i suspect it was also to dissuade the rest of the Order to carry on their experiements. Irony would have that Bak’s mother died protecting Lenny who ended up being the one in charge of the Third Exorcist Projects...)Zhu, specifically, and the rest of the Chan family seen by Bak, have a lot of regrets with letting all of those happen and have extended those regrets by extra care of Kanda.

So imo, once Kanda was back in the Order under Tiedoll’s protection (so the Order couldn’t touch him anymore), Zhu would have accompagnied Kanda in a path of recovery to try to not be haunted by the visions. Because there’s no wonder those had haunted Kanda (that AND the PTSD of not only having to kill Alma, but to litterally have to tear Alma into pieces over and over to make sure he wouldn’t regenerate. Because yeah. That was a thing. That was the point that made Johnny puke. I mention it bc a translation i’ve read online missed the point. Fun fact the sound effect of that was added in the anime :) )

2) My second major proof of that is the fact that in Kanda’s room, there is a lotus flower in a hourglass- an actual one.

(it’s an omake from volume 9 btw, but i don’t find a good scan online for the whole thing)

it could be interpreted as a way for Kanda to remember the flower after the illusions ceased, but imo i think it more as an anchor type? Of knowing “this one is real, the others are not” if he’s having an episode? This could work a lot for Kanda to at least try to work through his episodes when he has to.

While i’m at it, said flower is right in front of Kanda’s bed and is the only object it Kanda’s room. So it is pretty important for Kanda to have around. while the emotional value or reminder of his goal cannot be disguarded, I think the fact it’s right in front of his bed is relevent especially after nightmares. After waking up from one and all, having this one anchor to reality.

If we reach too, the Room bonus also emphacize that Kanda doesn’t seem like he will be fixing the windows of his room anytime soon, which makes me wonder if Kanda just... ended up breaking windows by accident. We know he doesn’t train in his room - there’s training grounds around the Order for that and his room barely have space for sword practice. So unless some are due to random anger moment that have nothing to do with his trauma, I could see a harsh reaction after a nightmare or a particularly bad hallucination that left Kanda panicked enough to kick around the place.

3) Another major point toward this theory is the fact that Kanda sees the flowers again in front of Alma yet manages to remains locked into his denial that it couldn’t possibly be Alma. While it could be interpretted by... just major denial, a relapse after allt hoe years (and honestly the amount of flowers seems abnormal regardless) I could see it because Kanda had been used to see those illusions from time to time so he might think “this one is a particularly bad episode and it cannot be because of Alma.” (also we do see more illusions later during Alma’s death which make me think again Alma makes the illusion worse).

4) I also think that the fact Kanda’s Mugen abilities all are based on Illusions showcase that those illusions never truly went away. Kanda has a particular bound with his innocence dating back from that time, and I think there is something to say about how he is weaponizing the very illusions that drove him forward in life, thus i wouldn’t be completely disregarding that the illusions are still there and a fuel for Kanda.

5) Also i’m almost certain we see Lotus Flowers during Zhu’s death, way after Alma’s death, when Kanda get Mugen back. I fanything it goes forward to prove Kanda still see those flowers everywhere.

The flowers are our best physical representation of Kanda’s illusions since those are those we have proof about. But I personally would bet he had others illusions and some could have been worse than others.

I’m tending to think he perhaps stopped the That Person illusions once Alma “died”, because they were too tied to what Alma was doing at all time. at best, they faded away, each time further out of reach, so much further than they used to be. Enough to carry Kanda ahead, but still fainted enough because Alma is not around. Past!Kanda’s death seemed mostly present when Kanda didn’t know he was a man who died before, so I could see eventually those calming down after he realized what happened to him. However I think those illusions could still take him, in front of nightmares or particularly nasty akuma.atmosphere that could bring him back there. (kinda dying to see what Kanda’s reaction to be in the Campbell’s wheatfield will be like since it looks like the place he was killed (and probably is the place where he was killed).

The flowers and sounds, yeah I definitly think he still has them. I think he might have had them a l o t. Which could explain some of his habits to be more quiet and stoic, in case an illusion would interrupt and disturb him. It would explain his confusion sometime, some moments where he knows he’s having an episode but can’t make sense of what’s BEHIND that episode. Which would be a mess to have say in the middle of important conversations or in fights. Tbh that could also explain why Kanda’s patience could run thin in some settings and not in others, if some illusions makes him annoyed enough to be done with the previous conversation. I just hope the episodes are never bad enough when he’s doing an important fight.

And it’s not to count again, everything that comes from Alma and not just the past life. But those would be just supposition, but his time with Alma must have left some scars to him. Even if i think it was just a supperposition to show us it reminded him of Alma, the fact we see baby Alma near Johnny when excited from Kanda’s perspective before Kanda smiles softly loks like Alma still haunts Kanda in some sort of ways, and it would be unlikely to think it’s not the case toward the rest of the series. (mainly, Mattell, any mention of the Exorcists Projects (2nd and 3rd), his whole insistance on how “anything that is human can die” to Skinn as if to push himself to remind himself Alma died human, or having to consider killing companions in arms before they become a harm to the whole facility (I believe Kanda’s distaint of Allen by the Paris arc was a part of that tbh. Of “one day he’ll snap and it will be like Alma all over again”.))

I’m willing to bet that Kanda has all sort of nightmares and triggers, that he has a lot of illusions.

I’m tending to believe that first, around Alma, they get more vivid, more frequent, those are where Kanda sees That Person the most. Memories of his death popping up once in a while. After he killed Alma and left, there is the time Kanda spent with Marie and then Tiedoll that is to take into account and there’s no way Kanda was emotionally stable there, even if i count on the others two to have helped. I think those illusions may have got particularly painful because too interwinded with the PTSD from Alma’s death.Then in the Order he was still adjusting himself when he got into it, and as time went by probably started to develop some coping mechanisms, some anchors, from Zhu’s reminder and the Lotus in his room, in order to deal with the episodes that would be bad.Developping Mugen and its illusions may have been a way to sieze control over those episodes in some way.But mainly, he still has them enough that he can still be in denial in front of Alma when the flowers start to bloom all over him.And he seems to still have them after Alma’s death, so they haven’t stopped. He probably just found more peace with them.

... hope that makes sense? but yeah basically what i think about it dkjhf

#now i'm sad about Kanda and Alma again..#ichafantalks dgm #ichameta dgm #Anonymous #ichareply

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aelin-and-feyre · 7 years ago

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Circumstance (Part 8)

Ok! They are finally meeting for real this time! This chapter is kinda weird because it’s long but everything in it takes place within like twenty minutes...

Anyway, tagging: @a-courtof-fangirls-and-fanfics @autumn03 @rhysandpurred @crazybookladythings @readinggiraffe @devilsadvocate15 @marimarac@carolineherr15@musiccbeach @illyrian-wingspans @illyrianinterrasen@meowsekai @iwishitwasrocketscience @gavrielthelionn @throne--of-sass @2-bookmaster-2 @bluephoenix222 (let me know if you want to be tagged in future parts!)

Fic Masterlist

“Princess Emberlei, it is an honor to meet you,” Cadewyn, future High Lord of the Night Court bows to Crown Princess Emberlei Whitethorn Galathynius of Terrasen and... it all clicks into place.

It’s not his eyes, though they are the exact same blue-violet she has been seeing in her dreams since she was five, nor is it his gorgeous face or his beautifully styled black hair. It isn’t his scent that is now fully intoxicating the princess as he stands in the same room with her, though Ember is starting to feel a bit lightheaded. Rather, it is his voice. The deep but still young sounding timbre that settles into her very bones that makes Ember realize the answer to the question she’s been wondering for two weeks.

Only now she realizes she has been searching for the answer since the first time she saw him, almost fifteen years ago. Cadewyn straightens from his bow, looking identical to his father with the slight smirk placed on his enticing pink lips. Ember nervously searches his eyes - violet eyes - for any sign of her own inner turmoil reflected there. She finds none. He doesn’t know. Or he’s very good at hiding his shock.

He’s her mate. Cadewyn is her mate.

Her eyes have not left him since she put her book down, and Ember is not sure she has the strength to tear them away anytime soon. He’s amazing. Tall, powerfully built, with a strong jawline and cheekbones that look sharp enough to cut her finger. His hair is delightfully tussled from the winnow, and looks long enough to tug - if she wished. Cadewyn’s arms are corded with muscle that she can clearly see under his Terrasen styled tunic.

Terrasen. He’s been living in Terrasen. With her family. Gusty has spent time with this man, has learned countless things about him on her behalf. Ember can’t help the surge of jealousy that courses through her at that thought. Quickly, she pushes it down.

She met the male five seconds ago, there is no reason for her to be jealous. ‘He’s your mate.’ Ember contradicts herself, an inner argument battling in her mind.

The princess still has not looked away from Cadewyn, who now stands there, six feet from the bed, awkwardly assessing her just as she is assessing him. Suddenly, those six feet are too many.

Swinging her legs swiftly over the side of the mattress - while still not looking away from the boy - Ember stands. She takes a small step forward. Five feet between her and her mate.

Hooking her right ankle behind her left, like she has done hundreds of times, Ember sinks into a curtsy, deeper than it should have been but the princess barely notices. For the first time, her eyes drop from the male and flicker to her feet as her gaze lowers. She notices with a small bit of dissatisfaction that she’s shaking, but only slightly. Rising from the curtsy, Ember almost subconsciously takes another small step forward. Four and a half feet between her and the male she is supposed to be with for the rest of her life.

Still, he shows no signs of feeling what she is. The madness in her head as her mind runs in circles trying to comprehend what is happening. The pull in her gut urging her forward, toward him. The tingling down her forearms and to the tips of her fingertips, aching to touch him, hold him.

Not sure she can speak but knowing that she has been silent too long, Ember opens her mouth. “Honor as well, for me too, I’m sure, Cadewyn,” Her eyes grow wide as she realizes the jumble of words that just came from her voice. She doesn’t miss the glance Cade throws at her still parted lips before he laughs. Ember blushes profusely, bunching up her skirt with her hands and then releasing the fabric once more only to grasp it again. She had stopped that habit when she was just a little girl. What is this male doing to her?

His laugh makes a delightful chill travel from the base of her skull down her spine. Her betraying mind imagines what it would sound like for him to laugh while his face is buried in her neck - what it would feel like. One again, Ember furiously shuts down the thought before it can go any further. She must gather her wits if there is any chance of making any sort of good first impression.

“Would you like to try that again?” Cadewyn asks, pretending to wipe imaginary tears from his eyes as he recovers from his laughing fit. In any other circumstance, Ember knows what she would do in this moment. She would cross her arms, stare at the male with an expectant and unamused expression and wonder aloud who, exactly, would dare to laugh at the Crown Princess. She would make any boy squirm until he apologized for his behavior.

This boy, however, is her mate. Her mate. The word is still foreign in her mind.

So, incapable or unwilling - she’s not sure which yet - to do her usual routine when dealing with inappropriate males, Ember simply laughs nervously. She rakes a hand through her hair. Silently, the princess curses herself for not preparing for this. Her attire is completely inappropriate to meet her mate in. Although, thinking back to her mother’s state when she met her father, Ember feels a little bit better. And, in her defense, she thought she had been meeting with a rowdy young male, who didn’t respect people’s privacy, and who had an odd fascination with her eyes.

Her eyes. His eyes. That’s what the dreams had been trying to tell her!

Ember can’t dwell on the sentiment for too long, as Cadewyn is still expecting an answer. She shook her head slightly, trying to clear her mind, and smiled at the male. “Sorry, I was caught up in my book, coming back to reality takes a moment.”

His hands - strong, large, calloused hands - clasp behind his back as Cadewyn nods slightly in agreement, fully sobering and his eyes softening. “I know the feeling,” His gaze trails to the book now sitting on the bed. “Mind informing me on the piece of literature you are lost in at the moment?”

Casually - so casually Ember is sure that he is not feeling what she is - he starts walking toward her. He’s now three feet away. Two feet away. One foot away. But he wasn’t striding for her exactly, but the bed behind her. His shoulder brushes her own as he passes, though, and Ember gasps, unable to contain her surprise at the jolt of electricity that courses through her entire body at the contact. Down to her very toes, the princess feels the touch, and down to the tips of her hair, she mourns the loss of it.

Dropping onto the bed easily, as she is sure he has done hundreds of times before, Cadewyn picks up the novel she had been perusing. Vaguely, she remembers her plan that only a minute and a half ago had been perfectly executed so far. Leave it to the mating bond to ruin a week of scheming.

Slowly turning, still feeling the phantom of his arm against her own, Ember watches with rapt interest as he flips through the pages, skimming here and there. He takes a deep breath in and Ember’s brow furrows. Without looking up at her, Cade comments, “This bed smells like you now.”

The princess suddenly feels extremely self-conscious. She thought that he might like her smell, being her mate and everything. She surely enjoys his very much. What does it mean if he doesn’t appreciate her scent? Does that mean he will not like her? That his adverse reaction will drive him away from realizing the bond between them? Her palms are beginning to sweat.

“I-I’m sorry,” She tries, her voice feeble. Usually very good in stressful situations, Ember is truly kicking herself for being so weak. Cadewyn cuts her off before she can continue.

“Don’t apologize, it’s not a bad thing. I rather like your scent, reminds me much of Terrasen actually.” The mental sigh of relief Ember experiences is unlike any other. He drops the book back down on the bed and stands. The princess quickly realizes that she did not use that time to appreciate him laying in a bed in front of her. She severely hopes she will have another opportunity. “That book is boring, I hope they’ve shown you the library at least. I know how much you enjoy a good selection of literature.”

Ember finds herself nodding. “I’ve spent much of the past two weeks in the library, it is a wonderful place.”

Absently, Cadewyn nods along. Ember finds herself the object of his intent gaze, and once against blushes. This is all so new, so confusing, so frightening. She is not sure what to think and the one person she would go to at a moment like this is all the way back in Terrasen. Gusty would know what to do. That girl has been obsessed with the magic behind soulmates ever since she learned about their parents’ love story.

From the corner of her eye, Ember notices Cadewyn’s hand rising, and realizes his aim. Knowing she will not be able to control herself if he does it, Ember quickly pushes back the strand of hair behind her ear, trying not to notice the almost disappointed look on the future High Lord’s face as he lets his hand drop limply to his side.

“So... I heard you wanted to meet me,” He gestures to himself, Ember taking the invitation to drag her eyes up and down his body once, indulging her inner urges for a moment. “Here I am.” His violet eyes twinkle slightly, the corners crinkling just a bit when he smiles and Ember’s heart skips a beat.

“Here you are,” She murmurs unintentionally. Quickly clearing her throat, Ember gestures to a small table by the window, two chairs on either side and a quickly cooling teapot patiently waiting on top. She had almost forgotten it was there. “I wanted to talk with you.”

Truly, this is not the girl Cadewyn was expecting. Sure, he had only met her ten minutes ago, and positively she is the most beautiful female he has ever seen, but this is not the girl that Gusty had described.

Her sister had told him that Emberlei is cunning, quick, and witty. She thinks on her feet and always has a well thought out response in a second. Most of all, she almost never apologizes.

Now, Cadewyn would never say that Princess Gusty is a liar, but he would possibly say that she may stretch the truth.

Of course, Cade is still majorly fascinated by the female who is now walking over to the table by the window, each step seeming like a struggle. He wonders if she is feeling alright. “Are you well, Ember? You seem out of sorts.”

The tug still pulls him towards her, but it has died down considerably in the last few moments he’s spent in her presence. It is thoroughly bewildering him.

Breathlessly, she laughs, the sound meeting Cade’s ears and sending a small shiver through his bones. He decides he will do almost anything to have her laugh more. “You have never known me in sorts, how would you know?” She seems to rethink her statement for a moment as she sits. “Oh, that’s right, my sister.” She shakes her head slightly, her eyes drifting from him to stare off for just a moment before lifting back to meet his own. Some emotion - an extremely strong one - shines in her eyes.

“Your Highness, are you absolutely sure you are okay? Can I get you something?” He asks worriedly, suddenly realizing that he would literally get her anything she needed in this moment. He figures it’s the fault of the pull.

The princess shakes her head again, gesturing towards the table across from her. “I am quite well,” She practically chokes out. “Please, sit with me.”

Dreadfully worried, Cadewyn joins her at the small setting. His knees brush her own and he doesn’t miss the small intake of breath. It’s the same gasp she had when his arm had brushed her a few minutes ago. Perhaps she was not open to being touched. Or perhaps she felt the same pull that sung in his own gut at the contact. Whatever the case, Cadewyn quickly drew his legs away from her. Emberlei’s body slumped, but only slightly, and Cadewyn took it as a sign of her relaxing a bit.

What an odd first encounter. Surely not what he had been expecting when he winnowed in here. Nonetheless, a window looking out onto Velaris at his side, another gorgeous view sitting in front of him, Cadewyn feels calm, at peace.

The female pours them both tea. She sips her own a bit hesitantly, the liquid seeming to relax her a little more. She studies him over the rim of her cup while he gazes out at his city. Several minutes pass by in this manner, and Cade finds that he is perfectly okay with it.

When he notices her hand placed halfway towards him on the table, a strange urge overtakes the male to grasp it in his own and never let go. He shakes the sensation away but finally sets his teacup down, turning to look at the princess that has not taken her eyes off him yet. He knows he is being assessed, he’s just not sure for what purpose.

“You’re wasting precious minutes with me, Angel, I’m leaving at the end of the day,” Cade relishes that he is able to make her blush.

She sets down her tea as well. “Don’t call me that.” Her voice is once again strong.

Cade grins. Here is the Crown Princess. He can see her coming through, slowly but surely. He’s not sure what is was that made her so timid, but he’s prepared to keep working and draw her out. “Don’t call you what, cupcake?” He wonders innocently, his smirk growing when a small growl escapes her lips.

“Don’t even start with me, Casanova,” She threatens, a wicked glint in her turquoise eyes that Cadewyn finds he absolutely adores. “I will win.”

Getting excited at her sudden confidence, Cade readjusts so that he’s slightly leaning across the table, elbows supporting him. His knees scrape gently against her own and Ember’s eyes flutter shut for just a moment. A quick flicker of confusion passes through Cadewyn’s mind at the movement. He decidedly brushes his knuckles against the tips of her fingers, just to see what would happen. He’s still staring at her, a challenge in his eyes.

“What are you gonna do, button?” He asks, genuinely curious to see what her response is. He notices her gaze drop to his lips for a moment and considers the possibility that she may kiss him. Instead, the princess bites her own lip, drawing his eyes to her pink mouth and distracting him for a moment.

So quick, Cade’s mind doesn’t even register the action, Ember slips her hand into his own and farther so that her nimble fingers are gripping his wrist. He grasps her own wrist, feeling the muscles hiding beneath soft skin.

Her breathtaking eyes frantically search his own. Cadewyn’s not sure what she’s looking for or what he’s supposed to be portraying, but she doesn’t seem to find it.

Her expression not losing intensity, Ember says, “I can do things to you that you have never comprehended in your wildest dreams.” And knowing her father and uncles, Cade is sure she can. Although, his mind takes the more inappropriate route. He decides not to indulge that side of his brain in the presence of a future queen.

“Careful, buttercup, anything happens to me and your sister will be stuck without a ride home.” He quips, expecting a snarky comeback, but instead, Emberlei’s eyes lose their challenge and her hand slips from his. His body immediately regrets the loss.

The princess’s eyes narrow. “Gusty is here? In Velaris?”

Her tone is accusing. Cadewyn is instantly wary. “Yes, she wished to come, I brought her along.”

“You what?!” Ember is out of her seat, grabbing her shoes. “Where is she? You decided to let a fifteen year old girl wander a strange city alone? What were you thinking?”

Cade watches helplessly as she scurries around the room. “She’s with Brexton! She’s safe!”

“Like Hellas, she is,” She suddenly points to him, all commanding queen. “You are going to take me to find her. Now.” Standing from the seat, tea forgotten, Cade nods. He extends his hand for them to winnow. Ember simply looks at it a moment and shakes her head. She stalks over to the window seat, throwing open the largest glass panel and then turns back to him. “We’ll be flying.”

Masterlist

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ramajmedia · 5 years ago

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Dragon Ball Super: 10 Storylines That Were Never Resolved

Although Dragon Ball Super isn’t technically over, the anime has been quiet for quite a while now. The series officially continued with Dragon Ball Super: Broly and has been chugging along comfortably in the manga as the Moro arc transitions into its next major phase. The anime may not be around, but Dragon Ball Super is still active.

Unfortunately, all these different continuities do mean that Dragon Ball Super as a whole feels far messier than Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, or Dragon Ball GT in some areas. Specifically, the anime ended with a number of plotlines left unresolved—plotlines that Super likely won’t get around to in either the movies or manga.

RELATED: Dragon Ball: 5 Things GT Did Better Than Z (& Vice Versa)

10 The Trip To Planet Sadla

Planet Sadla has been teased since the Universe 6 Tournament arc, and it seems unlikely Veget and Goku will actually visit their alternate homeworld anytime soon. While Sadla does appear in both the anime and manga, it’s only to establish Cabba, Caulifla, and Kale’s characters leading up to the Tournament of Power.

Considering just how often Planet Sadla would become a point of discussion for both Vegeta and Cabba, it’s strange that Super would use primarily as motivation for Vegeta. But that’s really what it is, though. Planet Sadla was always built as a means to push Vegeta in the Tournament of Power, for better or for worse.

9 Twin Universes

Twin Universes really should have been a bigger deal than Dragon Ball Super made them out to be. The series hits the ground running with the Universe 6 Tournament, a story arc that focuses almost exclusively on the concept of Twin Universes, but it does so without getting into the specifics. By the Goku Black arc, the concept is all but thrown out.

It’s a disappointing turn of events, especially considering how much fanfare Twin Universes were given. It seems like Toriyama and Toyotaro didn’t want to stick with the idea, instead opting to make each remaining universe has its own identity.

8 Yamoshi’s Identity

To Dragon Ball Super’s credit, it’s perhaps for the best that Yamoshi wasn’t revealed at any point during the story. Modern Dragon Ball has a very bad habit of romanticizing Saiyan lore to the point of recontextualizing the entire franchise as an interconnected epic that begins with Freeza taking over Planet Vegeta.

Of course, there’s still plenty of time for Toriyama to reveal Yamoshi’s identity if he so chooses to. It would more than likely be a mistake since further Saiyan lore more often than not thins the franchise’s scope, but this is just what Dragon Ball is like these days.

7 The Namekian Book Of Legends

Many fans theorized that this would be Piccolo’s get out of free card during the Tournament of Power—the key item that allows him to fight on the same level as the gods. Instead, it goes completely ignored as Universe 6’s Namekians all merge together and Piccolo is unceremoniously knocked off by an invisible foe.

What makes the Namekian Book of Legends so interesting is the fact that it’s brought up casually, only to be more or less immediately forgotten. It’s the most important piece of worldbuilding the Namekians have seen since the Namek arc. Hopefully, the Moro arc dives a bit deeper into this detail.

RELATED: Dragon Ball GT: 10 Storylines That Were Never Resolved

6 The Dangers Of Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken

Goku using Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken against Hit stands out as one of the most important moments in Dragon Ball Super. It was the moment the anime became more than just a lackluster continuation. Which made it all the more surprising that the manga veered in a completely different direction.

While the anime does follow up on the dangers of Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken, the fact that the former is a Toei invention and thus not in Toriyama’s outline means that there’s no room in the actual narrative to comment or develop the form’s downsides. It immediately becomes just another tier of Super Saiyan Blue for Goku.

5 Goku And Hit’s Rivalry

Hit is one of Goku’s more interesting rivals in that he doesn’t actually do much expected of a rival. Outside of a filler mini-arc, Goku and Hit’s rivalry is ignored completely by Toriyama and Toyotaro. In the manga, the two never have their rematch, and the anime version of the Tournament of Power acts like the Hit mini-arc never happened.

Worse yet, Hit doesn’t even bother resolving his rivalry with Vegeta before the series is over. He’s eliminated from the Tournament of Power before he can properly settle the score with Goku or Vegeta. As far as rivals go, Hit is probably Goku’s least active foil.

4 Future Trunks’ Fate

While Future Trunks’ story reaches a conclusion, it doesn’t exactly reach a real resolution. He’s shipped off to another timeline by Whis, and that’s the last fans see of him. It would be as if Dragon Ball Z simply ignored Trunks after he went back to his timeline instead of dedicating the end of the Cell arc to wrapping up his story.

Bizarrely, the manda adds a bonus chapter that features Trunks deciding to stay in the main timeline only for Gohan to convince him to leave. All things considered, it’s a rather sloppy and undignified way of kicking Future Trunks out of the main cast.

RELATED: 10 Best Dragon Balls Moments (That Have Nothing To Do with Fighting)

3 Goku And Toppo’s Rivalry

Goku’s rivalry with Toppo being unresolved is way worse than his rivalry with Hit considering Toppo was the character who formally kicked off Goku’s pursuit of Ultra Instinct. The Universe Survival arc starts with a rivalry between Goku and Toppo, not Goku and Jiren. Which makes it more disappointing when Vegeta ends up competing against Toppo while Goku fights Jiren.

Certainly not helping matters is the fact that Toppo is an infinitely more interesting character than Jiren. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t have as natural of a connection with Vegeta as he does with Goku. The Universe Survival arc should have simply left Toppo in the main antagonist role.

2 Goku’s Mastery Of Ultra Instinct

The second half of the Tournament of Power sees Goku trying to activate Ultra Instinct time and time again, each instance getting better at using the technique. By the end of the Tournament of Power, it seems like Goku has actually mastered the form. This is something both the anime and manga focus on.

Both the anime and the manga to reveal that Goku can’t master Ultra Instinct just yet. Where Dragon Ball Super: Broly ignored Ultra Instinct completely, it seems that the Moro arc is finally bringing it back into focus. So, if nothing else, this little bit of DBS may not be unresolved for much longer.

1 Everyone’s Arc In Dragon Ball Super: Broly

Dragon Ball Super: Broly represents the best and worst of modern Dragon Ball. It has an undeniable sense of style and feels appropriately fresh, breathing genuinely new life into the series after decades of cash crabbing. It also barely does anything with its plot or cast, instead opting for what feels like non-stop action.

The action is good, granted, but it results in every single character in the movie failing to complete anything resembling a proper character arc. Even Broly, who the film basically dedicates its first hour to, says nothing of value once he transforms into a hulking brute. A good first half followed by an entertaining, if substanceless, second.

NEXT: 10 Best Dragon Balls Moments (That Have Nothing To Do with Fighting)

source https://screenrant.com/dragon-ball-unresolved-storylines/

#screenrant

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killiansbutt · 7 years ago

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Finding Firelight (ch.4)

pairings: nalu – mentions of albis, gajevy, gruvia words: ~5000 tagging: @natsusluce read on FF and ao3.

summary: Lucy Heartfilia has a lot of reasons for attending summer camp, but getting spooked by campfire stories and falling in love with her best friend isn’t one of them. modern summer camp au.

prev: [one][two][three]

Four

“If ya two are done flirting with each other, we should get back,” Gajeel interjected, snorting when Natsu and Lucy jumped. Lucy was positive her face wouldn’t return to a normal color anytime soon and she shot Gajeel a nasty look, climbing to her feet with more dignity than she someone accused of flirting with their best friend was meant to have.

Natsu had no such problems, a grin stretching across his face till his stupid canines were flashing. He began a confident stride towards the mess hall. Gajeel hadn’t told them where they should have been going, but nonetheless, he and Lucy fell in step beside Natsu.

Lucy combed a hand through her hair, trying to fix the kinks from having it in a pony-tail and nearly stumbled when Natsu spoke. “Metalhead wouldn’t know what flirting was if it punched him in the face,” Natsu commented with his hands folded behind his head. Gajeel gave him a look that could make a lesser person shiver, but Natsu merely raised a brow.

Lucy pointed out the obvious. “Does this mean you’re flirting with him every time you hit him? I mean, the only person you hit more than him is Gray,” she said. Both boys came to a stop and she almost kept walking, but halted at the last minute, rocking on her heels to see what they thought. Gajeel’s face was akin to someone eating an entire lemon, but Natsu looked – dare she say it – thoughtful.

“No, he’s practically my cousin, I can’t flirt with him.”

“Does this mean if he wasn’t, you would?”

“Bunny girl,” Gajeel growled.

Lucy waved him off, curious for Natsu’s answer. Things of any romantic nature seemed to go over his head and Lucy was curious, almost painfully so, to have some insight into the way his brain worked. Not for herself, of course, just for science, but despite this protesting thought, she had a sudden image of herself with piercings, a messy mane of dark hair, and red eyes. She shivered, shaking the thought away. Even if Natsu was interested in someone with looks like Gajeel, that didn’t matter to her.

“Not really, I’m not interested in him like that. Sorry, Gajeel, I hope you find someone who makes you happy.”

Gajeel let out a relieved breath and Lucy suppressed a giggle with her hand.

“How about Gray?” Lucy asked, spotting a figure over their shoulders. The two did have a weird sort of chemistry and although she wasn’t sure if fighting was exactly the healthiest way to show affection, she wouldn’t fault either of them for using it to communicate. Far be it from her to judge her friends and their love lives.

“Lucy, that’s horrible, why would you ask that?” Natsu moaned, clapping his hands over his ears. “I don’t even want to be friends with the stripper, let alone… anything else.”

“That’s relieving to hear,” said Gray dryly, freshly out of the showers from the looks of his clean clothes and the wet hair clinging to his brow. “I hate you too.”

“Don’t say that, you two are like best friends.” Lucy laughed.

“Us?” Natsu and Gray chorused. When Lucy laughed again, they shot the other venomous looks and started walking once more, pointedly ignoring the other. She stifled the snort that nearly escaped when she noticed the identical little stomps the two boys were doing; Gajeel didn’t comment at all, merely grunted and followed after them at a distance like he didn’t want to be caught dead with two – three, he would say with a pointed glance at her -- idiots.

“C’mon, Lucy!” Natsu called over his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

Lucy picked up the pace till she was shoulder to shoulder with Natsu. His head tilted to her, beaming, and though she wasn’t sure what made him so cheerful, she returned it with one of her own.

…

The mess hall was teeming with people when the rather strange group arrived, but they made a wide berth around Lucy and the boys despite the lack of space. She bristled, but Natsu growled something at Gray and she figured the other campers had a point. Gray and Natsu together was cause for alarm, definitely, but adding Gajeel to the mix meant they were one step closer to an absolute catastrophe of which nobody wanted to see. She wondered what she added to the group – it was unlikely that any of them feared her, but as she collected her tray and the first grilled cheese she could find, Lucy noticed an abundance of looks on her.

She shifted uncomfortably, accidentally jostling Natsu’s overfilled tray and only his swift tilting kept the whole tray from splattering the floor between them. “Careful, Lucy,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to subject you to the kitchens again,” she replied, eyeing the food on his plate. The food station looked no worse for wear. They were familiar enough with some of the campers eating habits, but she didn’t particularly want to see if they had enough accident forgiveness to load up another tray for Natsu in the event that his became Humpty-Dumpty.

Natsu ignored her comment. “Let’s go find somewhere to eat.”

“Lu-chan! Here!” Lucy squinted, trying to spot the voice in the crowd. Levy was short and though she could project her voice to be heard to everyone in the room, it wasn’t much useful for actually locating her. Unless one of them happened to learn echolocation. Gajeel, who had been standing on the opposite side of a crowd leaving the mess hall, merely pointed her out and Lucy spotted Levy in one of the corners, only the tips of her fingers waving over the crowd’s heads.

Gray waved off their invitation to join them, heading towards an orange-haired boy.

As they approached Levy’s corner of the room, Lucy could make out Gajeel’s voice: “You were better off standing on the table, you shrimp.”

She bit her lip, wincing in sympathy at Gajeel’s surprised yelp. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of Levy’s kicks, but she also wasn’t so stupid as to comment on her friend’s shortness aloud. Levy had told Lucy the first night of camp that she had heard comments about her shortness her entire life and her first instinct now was to kick first, ask later. As Gajeel was figuring out the hard way.

“Excuse me?”

Natsu sniggered, but Lucy elbowed him carefully. “Hi Levy!” Lucy said cheerfully, interrupting Gajeel’s response.

“Where did you go? You weren’t in the cabin I woke up.”

“Neither was Erza though,” Lucy pointed out.

“The only time Erza is still in the cabin in the morning is when we do the games,” Levy said, waving her hand. “You, on the other hand, have to be hit in the head with Cana’s mysterious bag of booze before you wake up.”

“If you know what’s in the bag, why is it mysterious?” Gajeel interrupted.

Levy shot him a look. “How she fit so much booze in one bag is beyond scientific explanation.”

“How she hides it from Erza, too,” Lucy admitted, cutting her grilled cheese to pieces with a plastic knife. Natsu rolled his eyes, taking the knife from her and setting it down on her napkin. He grabbed his grilled cheese as an example and held it up to her, ripping it into smaller pieces in less the time and effort. Lucy stole a piece of his and chewed on it, scowling at him. “Well, nobody asked you.”

Natsu snatched one of her evenly cut slices, dipped it in his ranch dressing and ate it in one bite.

She narrowed her eyes, plucking a fry off his plate. He retaliated by swiping some of her chips.

“Swooping is bad,” she told him evenly.

Natsu frowned. “What happened to sharing is caring?”

“Who told you that?”

“You.”

“That’s a lie, that doesn’t sound like me at all,” she said while taking another one of his fries, flicking him gently when he tried to grab a chip.

Levy leaned forward, elbows on the table as she watched. “Do they do this a lot?”

Gajeel shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You’re like a third wheel, huh?” she commented, grinning. The glee on her face made Lucy giggle; she covered the noise with a drink of water, but not soon enough. Levy’s eyes landed on her with a thoughtfulness that made Lucy shiver, fearful of whatever her small friend would think to ask. “So, Lucy, where have you been all day? You didn’t answer earlier.”

Lucy thought this was a suspiciously easy question. “I had… detention… all day and then I went to play baseball.”

Levy blinked. “Detention? Baseball?”

“Because I ran off with him—“ She jutted her chin towards Natsu. “—so Erza considered me an accomplice. I woke up at dawn to clean up the arts and craft cabin place thing with these ones.”

“Cabin place thing, very clear,” Natsu noted with a laugh. “What happened to all the fancy words in your letters?”

“There’s a difference between writing something and saying something,” she said defensively. “I can look over my writing for errors or search a dictionary for the exact word I need, but I can’t exactly do that when I’m talking.”

“Thought it was instinctive,” he said, shoving half of his burger into his mouth in one smooth move.

She eyed him with some disgust. “Only parts of it.”

Levy snapped her fingers before Lucy could begin her tirade about writing. “Lu-chan, focus.”

“Sorry.”

“So, how’d you end up playing baseball and, more importantly, did you win?”

“Of course I won, who do you think I am? I’m a Heartfilia, we don’t lose.”

Natsu laughed, choking on his food. Gajeel tapped him – she used the word generously, because Natsu slammed forward into the table, narrowly avoiding landing face first into his ranch soaked plate – until the coughing subsided. Lucy glared at him, a vicious thought of letting him choke in retaliation for wounding her pride, but she let it go just as quickly when he shot Gajeel an offended look. With the fire in his eyes, the messy pink hair, and the bit ranch on his nose, Lucy thought he was cute.

She thought Natsu was cute.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, glancing around, but nobody had her mental slip. Sure, he might have been a little cute, but to think it so… so blatantly was scandalous. It was the type of thing that would send the rest of the camp into an early grave – and death by cackling was not the type of thing people wanted to put on their tombstones any more than she wanted to put death by humiliation on hers.

Her weird thought and movement went unnoticed and Lucy dropped her hand with an inward sigh that quickly changed to a surprised gasp.

In her brief lapse into thoughts – read as: panic – the mess hall had fallen into an all-out food fight. Strangely, it wasn’t the fact that Gray was suddenly by their table or that Gajeel and Natsu were in the middle of shoving an entire burger up the other’s nose or the fact that fury-faced Erza was lamenting the loss of her strawberry cake that made Lucy pause, it was the fact that Levy in all her glory was standing on the table, throwing salad at anyone that got too close to her.

Lucy gapped at them, sliding out of her seat at the exact moment that Gray slammed into the table where she had been sitting, bits of ketchup smeared across the left side of his face and bits of lettuce clinging to his hair.

“What did you guys do?” she hissed, words turning a yelp part-way through when a glob of something came soaring towards her face. Gray snarled when it plopped against his ear, flinging himself back into the melee. Lucy scrambled under the table, face peeking between the bench and the table with a grimace. Natsu stumbled back into the table, his shirt drenched in the remnants of their drink and a look of almost gleeful happiness on his face and she narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to get us all in trouble? Master won’t be happy if we make a big mess!”

“Lu-chan! Stop talking with the enemy!” Levy demanded, flipping her bowl of salad over Natsu’s head.

“What? What enemy? What’s happening? I was only thinking for thirty seconds!”

Levy’s eyes flickered to hers, but only briefly as Natsu was shaking the lettuce off his hair like a dog. Lucy batted a piece away before it could get her in the eye and therefore could do nothing when Natsu grabbed a fist-full of her chips and flung them into Gray’s face. “Natsu!” Her hand shot out, fingers gripping the edges of his dangling scarf and jerking him down; he yelped, dropping to one of his knees. “I was going to eat those still!”

“I mean… you still could,” he wheezed, tapping her fingers. She let his scarf go with an apologetic grimace. “But I wouldn’t.”

Lucy glared. “I wanted those chips.”

Natsu stared at her for a long moment, his eyes flickering from her steely eyes to the pout of her lips, and she forced herself not to react, not flinching in the face of scrutiny. Another moment passed. Finally, he sighed in defeat. “Fine, I’ll get you another bag, alright?”

“Hmm…”

“Don’t get greedy,” he joked. “I’m only getting you one bag.”

Interesting, she thought. “Does that mean if I beg, you’ll get me more?” She asked quizzically, folding her hands on the bench and poking her head out from beneath the bench. When a piece of food flew too close for comfort, she ducked back underneath with a flinch.

Natsu stepped forward, blocking her from view, a grin on his face as he crouched to be closer to her. “I could, but I didn’t expect you to beg,” he said, laughing. Movement behind him caught her attention and she blinked, preparing to shove him to the side, when he struck his arm out and flung the offender’s food away before it could make contact with either of them.

“I didn’t say I was going to, just questioning. Don’t be weird,” she said, relieved to avoid that mess.

“Says the one hiding under a dirty bench.”

“Says the one who started a food fight. What are you, twelve?”

“Gajeel and Levy started it.”

“Oh, sure, I can totally believe Levy did it. She’s a sweetheart.”

“Lucy… She’s dumping soda on Gajeel’s head right now,” he said with an undertone of pride as they both peeked over at Levy and Gajeel. Levy hopped between tables with deadly grace, joined by two or three other people who followed her, and her current table put her just above Gajeel’s distracted head. Lucy held back a snort when soda landed on the boy’s head.

“Gajeel’s a big boy, he can handle it,” she replied cheerfully. “Besides, I think they are flirting.”

Natsu squinted. “I don’t see it.”

Gajeel yelped and whirled around, murder in his eyes. “Shrimp!” He shouted at her retreating back, scrambling around tables to chase after her. The chaos of everyone flinging food at each other should have made it more difficult to see – after all, Lucy had already lost sight of Levy – but she heard a yelp in the distance that told her Gajeel had caught up.

“Okay, you might be right,” Natsu noted, seeing something that Lucy couldn’t see. She tugged on his pants and he explained, “He’s carrying upside down on his shoulder. It’s not a Gajeel move, I expected him to put gum in her hair.”

“What is he, five?”

Natsu shrugged.

“BRATS!”

Lucy giggled when the room came to a sudden, horrified stop. For once, she wouldn’t be the one to get in trouble for this; they couldn’t even label her an accomplice when she was clearly hiding, not a trace of evidence in her hands. Natsu fell back onto the bench, trying to roll underneath the table to hide with her and she giggled again, poking his back and shoving him to the floor. “No, you face the consequences,” she told him mock sternly.

“Lucy,” he muttered quietly, panicked eyes flickering between Makarov and her. “I thought you said it was more fun when we’re together?”

“Oops, too late,” she said cheerfully just as Makarov approached them, his face impatient and red, though Lucy couldn’t help noticing the little twitch of his lips whenever he caught sight of some of them. She figured it was a little hard to be mad when someone had two buns stuck to their face like Gray’s brother did.

“I came to assure everyone that their mail arrived safely and could be picked up before dark,” Makarov started, his hands folded behind his back. Lucy’s eyes widened. The crowd perked up, dropping their food onto the table or – in most cases – the floor, though Lucy only noticed dimly, her eyes locked on Makarov, waiting with bated breath for him to finish. “But the front cabin will be closed by the time you all finish picking up. I imagine you’ll have to wait till breakfast tomorrow to pick up your mail. Oh, what a series of unfortunate events, but I suppose that’s the price we pay to have fun.”

She let out a breath and Natsu helped her out from underneath the table, squeezing her hand briefly before he joined everyone else in the cleaning. It was a slow process, even with everyone’s excitement and Makarov’s watchful eyes, and it was only when Erza, nearly as red as her hair, stated her apologies loudly that productivity increased by ten percent. Lucy, Bisca, and Droy were the only ones to avoid clean up, but after a few minutes of watching the pitiful – yet amusing, if Bisca’s snorts meant anything – of watching their fellow campers, the other two pitched in with the effort.

Stubbornly, Lucy cleaned off a spot on the table and climbed up, feet resting on the bench and absently watched Natsu scrub ketchup off the walls. Feeling eyes on him, he glanced over at her and offered a cheery wave. Lucy returned it mechanically, an unpleasant bubble forming in her stomach that seemed very unlike everyone else’s excitement. Mail came once a week, often in a bundle since outsiders were limited to one day a week of access to the camp to protect the campers, and it was strange to realize she had been at camp for a whole week. It felt like yesterday she had just arrived, worried and uncertain, but determined.

A whole week. She couldn’t believe that in that time she had forgotten, mostly, about her home.

She wondered if her father noticed her absence yet. When it came time for camp, Lucy hadn’t even said good-bye to him, merely let Virgo escort her to the meet-up in town where a bus would take her to another meet-up that would take her to camp. Was a week long enough for him to notice and miss her absence? It was the longest time either of them had been separated in a way and she hoped, perhaps futilely, that the space was exactly the thing he needed to remember that he had a daughter who needed him.

Lucy really missed her dad and she hadn’t even realized how much till now. Lucy sighed, foot bouncing on the bench as she waited for Makarov to dismiss them for the night. Her father was a smart man, she bet that he realized she wasn’t there after the first dinner. She would bet anything that by the next night, he was curious about her and how she was doing, how the silence of their dining room would be worse than usual and he would want to write to her, just to make sure she was safe at the camp or having fun. If she was lucky, that is.

It’s called Love and Lucky, that has to count for something, she thought with a hopeful smile, jumping off her bench as Makarov sent everyone out to the beckoning bonfires.

…

Lucy slept badly despite her cheerful thoughts, dreaming of the letter her father left her that apologized for the last year, dreaming that for every day she was gone she had a letter in his sharp, pointed handwriting. Each dream made her smile, but they always ended after a moment as squeaking noises roused her from sleep. She never got any farther than recognizing her father’s handwriting before she awoke, heart racing and ears pricked for the rustling nearby, and as the hours crept by, one after another in a slow-moving dance, Lucy thought she would never fall asleep at all.

As quickly as the thought came, it passed and Lucy was sound asleep.

The next time she woke, the sun was well on its way, beaming at her through the window and she mumbled sleepily, rolling to face the other way and snuggling into the warmth of her blankets. Her body felt heavy still, craving sleep for a few hours longer after such a rough, up-and-down night, and she nearly gave into its demand.

Levy chattered happily about getting a letter from her mother. Cana laughed, talking about a letter from her friend, Kagura, and the letter her dad would sneak into the mail as well even though he was asleep in one of the other cabins. Their happiness was infectious and Lucy snapped awake, sitting up so quickly that Levy startled in her own bed, squawking as the book she held clattered to the ground.

“It’s mail day?” Lucy asked sharply, tiredness fading from her face at the first nod. She threw herself out of bed, legs tangling in the blankets and she ripped them off in her frenzy. Her dreams had lit a fire beneath her, one that drowned out the last year of heartache, leaving behind a frantic sort of excitement. The letter was going to be there, the one that was going to fix everything. Well, maybe not everything, but it was going to be a start that she would grasp eagerly with both hands.

Levy and Cana watched her with astonished faces, but she had no time to explain or words to give as she shrugged off her pajamas, letting them flutter to the floor forgotten as she tugged on the nearest pair of clothes she could find. The shorts were snug on her hips, but she ignored them, brushing her teeth and then her hair, darting out the door with her hands still gathering blonde tresses into a messy ponytail. It was a rush job, but her looks were the last thing on her mind.

The door burst open behind her as Levy and Cana scrambled after her. “I didn’t expect to see you so excited,” Cana noted, her eyes narrowed.

“This is the longest I’ve been away from my father ever!” That wasn’t precisely true, her father went on many trips that lasted weeks. Once he had left for two months and his arrival back had only been because her mother had fallen so ill that she couldn’t rise from bed. She amended her statement, forcing away that awful memory, “This is the longest he’s been away from me, I mean he usually has someone with me when he’s on business trips so he can just ask them how I’m doing. But this time he can’t! Master and Gildarts are the only ones with working phones up here! I want to know everything that’s happening back home and he’ll have to tell me if he wants to see how I am!”

Levy frowned, but Cana slung her arm around Lucy’s shoulders, drawing her to the other girl’s bosom. Lucy blushed. Cana laughed and said, “Well then, onwards! We’ll get you breakfast while you get the mail – what do you want? I’m thinking waffles.”

“Oatmeal. Maple and brown sugar,” Lucy replied, thinking of her father’s favorite breakfast with a grin. She let out a relieved giggle when Cana let her go. With a salute and a nod, Cana and Levy headed for the mess hall, gesturing animatedly about the camp’s event later today.

Lucy smiled and raced for the main cabin – it was attached to the mess hall like a shed, but it’s entrance was on the opposite side of the mess hall’s. As she entered, she could see a few other campers collecting their mail from a cheery faced Mira and Lucy waited in line, so excited that it took everything in her to do nothing more than tap her fingers against her side. When it was her turn, she nearly leapt to the counter, but controlled herself enough to approach it like a normal human being.

From the amusement on Mira’s face, she didn’t necessarily succeed.

“Hey Mira, can I get the mail for Cana, Levy, and I?”

Mira smiled, flipping through a stack of neatly organized letters, plucking one that she could see was for Cana from a section labeled A. Her finger ran down the alphabet, but when she came to H, Mira paused, her smile dropping. Lucy felt the world tilt. “I don’t have any mail for you, Lucy,” she said apologetically, eyes darting up and then widening as she spotted Lucy’s disheartened face. “Let me go check the back, it might have been— “

“No, it’s okay,” Lucy interrupted, a lump rising in her throat at her own foolish hope. “Can I have Levy and Cana’s? I told them I’d bring it to them.”

Mira hesitated, a war playing across her face, before she went back to her stack of letters to pluck out Levy’s. She passed both of them over with a grimace. “I’m sorry, maybe next week though,” she whispered, aware of the sudden silence in the room. As though everyone knew that the Heartfilia girl wasn’t worthy of getting a letter from home. Lucy sucked in a shallow breath, offered a small broken smile, and then left the main cabin, walking slowly towards the mess hall.

For once, it was quiet, just the shuffling of paper and a low murmur of voices.

She ignored this, walking to where Levy and Cana sat, sinking into the open seat beside Levy. Both looked up at her, faces growing alarmed, and she forced a smile to her face, pleased when they calmed a fraction. She had no wish to talk, not here and not to anyone.

Shakily, she offered over her friend’s letters. Cana pushed over the bowl of oatmeal in thanks, only pausing when she noticed the lack of anything else in Lucy’s hands. “Hey, Lucy,” she started slowly, sharing a look with Levy that spoke volumes. “Did you, uh, get anything from home?”

Lucy smile fractured slowly, piece by piece, and then she lowered her voice. “Of course, I just want to read it in the cabin,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. Then, because she didn’t want to be alone, but she also didn’t want to talk about herself, she asked, “Who is yours from?”

Cana stared at her a moment longer, glancing at Levy once more, then said, “My friend, Kagura. She’s too old for the camp now, missed the cut-off by three months.” Love and Lucky was, unfortunately, for younger children and teens from twelve to eighteen, which was possibly why Lucy found it so bizarre that her parents had fallen in love here after a single summer. Less than year, when you thought about it, and yet they knew after camp ended the first time that they were meant to be together.

Levy and Cana began to read their letters while Lucy wondered, scooping a bite of oatmeal into her mouth, what it was like to be loved so swiftly and unconditionally. For her father’s faults, Lucy didn’t doubt that he loved her mother from the beginning till the end and she knew – she knew – that he loved her to this day.

Maybe that was why he didn’t look at Lucy anymore. Maybe the pain was too much, maybe he couldn’t stand to look at her any more than Lucy could stand to see her photos of her mother. How would it feel to see the face of someone who loved you looking back at you every day?

But then Lucy knew because she saw that same face every day and she didn’t have the luxury of looking away from her own reflection.

She swallowed the oatmeal, setting her spoon down slowly because her stomach rolled and protested against the sudden rising desperation, so different than the excitement that had awoken her.

An entire week of not hearing from her and he didn’t care at all to see if she was okay, to see if she needed him.

Not that she did. No, Lucy was practically an adult, she didn’t need her father, but there was a part of her aching with her parents’ absence, the piece growing larger every day, and Lucy realized she didn’t need her father maybe, but she certainly wanted him. She tried to recall the last time she had hugged him, a distant memory springing to mind of a red-haired doctor ushering her into her father’s arms after Layla had died. Jude had hugged her tight and she had pressed her face into his white shirt, tears streaking down both their faces at the unexpected tragedy of the day.

That was the last time, really, because she couldn’t recall her father during the funeral, just Virgo’s grip on her shoulder, the maid unsure of how to comfort her, but offering her presence nonetheless. Lucy had felt like she had lost both her parents within days of each other and the empty, hard shell left behind was not the father who had given her a new bow every time he came back from a business trip away from home. Now the man who came back seemed to look at her impassively, eyes sliding past her as though she were little more than an average wall decoration.

Lucy bit her lip hard, forcing back the lump in her throat and prodded at her oatmeal. Maple and brown sugar sounded less appetizing now than it had a few minutes ago and she only managed to choke down two bites before the rustling paper and silence drove her mad. She stood up from her table, some eyes following her movement then drifting down to their letters or to their private conversations, and she dumped her oatmeal in the trash and her bowl into the sink, heart aching too fiercely to even speak when someone called her name.

Her body moved on automatic and she took calm, even steps toward the exit.

The moment the door shut behind her, she walked faster.

The moment she was out of view from anyone eating inside, she ran.

The moment her trembling legs gave out and sent her crumbling to her bottom in a familiar cove, she lent her face into her hands and cried.

#nalu #fairy tail #ftfanfics #ficsforvera #fynalu #nalu ff #my fic #mine #finding firelight

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