#its my own private chamber where no one can tell me my jokes are bad

[thewisherr]

The best part of having zero followers is that everyone always laughs at my jokes! And by everyone I mean the echos of my own laughter bouncing off the chamber walls. And also the spirits that haunt me.

[writingithink]

Improbable Multiversal Transcending Temporal Spacetime Event Pairing: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Rated: T Word Count: 7,101 Summary: The best way to show someone you care is to blow up their job ... right? Notes: I'm back! And it's not a Tangled Timelines update (sorry!) But it is something? I've had this in my WIPs for awHILE now, and when I was cleaning my studio the other night I found a planning page for it in a random tote bag and was like ... oh yeah. And the ending just came to me and I love it when that happens. Hopefully there will be another chapter up for Tangled Timelines soon, though!

As always, infinite thanks to my wonderful beta, @hey-there-juliet​ who is fine with me randomly sending her fics at all hours and with no warning XP

All mistakes are mine, as always.

<<READ IT ON AO3>>

If the other him in the other universe had taken the time to imagine their human life together in a parallel universe, the Doctor doubted he would have pictured this. His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was always quite whimsical. Happiness had made him impractical, really. Because despite all of the drawbacks, all of the reasons he currently loathed himself, the Doctor knew every single reason why the other truly felt like this was the best possible option.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Sometimes, despite it not occurring too often, he was wrong.

They had spent five and a half hours on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay.

(I create myself.)

She had been so upset; said that after everything they’d went through, everything she did to get back, the other him owed her a proper goodbye. She had stopped speaking to him when he told her that, actually, he would never give her a proper goodbye.

And she didn’t let him explain why. Now that he finally could.

Now it had been 57 days since she’d last spoken to him. Since he’d gotten more than a brief glimpse of her with his own eyes. That he’d spent piecing together a picture of what her life had been like here, without him. Such a short time, really, now that it was over (almost over), but yet also some of the worst moments of his entire existence.

It seemed fair that the multiverse would demand just that extra sequence of pain, considering everything he could potentially get in return. What another version of himself could only hope for, bitterly gambling eternities, following their timeline through all of it’s complicated swirls and turns, names weaving around each other, stamping themselves on the structure of creation.

Forever isn’t something that ends.

(How long are you going to stay with me?)

Quite the opposite, actually. And he knew, eventually, she would remember that. Knew it, but didn’t feel it.

The Doctor finally understood what all of the human writers meant about falling in love. Not just the terrifying sensation of the unstoppable freefall, but also the immense pain of crashing into the immovable object at the end of the journey.

They had sat on opposite ends of a Zeppelin. He had gone back to the Tyler Manor with Jackie, and Rose had gone back to her flat. Hoping to see her, talk to her, he had immediately joined Torchwood (once they agreed to his very detailed, highly specific, entirely ironclad contract). Their paths rarely crossed, and when they did it was just tiny, insubstantial moments.

A flash of her at the far end of a hall. Her name in a report (a lot of reports). Snatches of her voice, there one moment and gone the next.

It all made everything hurt so much more, somehow, having her so close but yet further than he could have possibly imagined.

But yet …

His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was still quite whimsical. So when he tried to think of the bigger picture, waxing poetic, alone on his office couch, the Doctor tried to look at the last few years as the impact, and this as the aftershock. Still, philosophical jaunts weren’t exactly a solution to his problem. A temporary solution was moving his office even further away, so that’s what he did. 

Plus, he found it kind of fitting, commandeering the inside of Big Ben. UNIT may have it in the prime universe, but in this universe he had the fancy landmark office. Well, office-slash-home (without Rose Tyler, a proper house with doors and things was absolutely unthinkable). Not that it was just about having a private laugh. The gears soothed him, the sound of ticking helped the gnawing emptiness that had filled his mind ever since the TARDIS dematerialized without him in it. The Doctor had thought it was kind of fitting - the closest he could possibly be right now to time.

Not that he wasn’t spending every possible spare moment working on the baby TARDIS, just a tiny piece of coral still, currently sitting in the extended electro-percussive environment chamber. He wondered if, in three years (his best-possible projected timetable), when the new TARDIS would be ready for flight, she would still not be speaking to him.

Incidentally, the emergence of that thought and the start of his supposed ‘self-isolation’ coincided to an alarming degree for how coincidental the two really were. The fact of the matter was, he was busy. Tons of experiments to run, alien equipment to identify, classify (and more often than not remove from Torchwood entirely), a baby TARDIS to tend to, and a backlog of Rose’s mission reports to hack into made spending slightly over three weeks in his tower easy.

The problem was the fact that during that time the Doctor avoided sleeping, barely remembered to eat, and existed on overly sugared tea alone. Not sleeping didn’t put the demons at bay, but at least when he was awake he wasn’t forced to confront the man he never wanted to remember being.

It had been 57 days since Rose Tyler had last spoken to him, and the Doctor detonated a bomb in the abandoned annex Torchwood had scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt.

Then the counter reset to zero.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled, barging into the top floor lab where he had been checking the readings on the EEPEC.

Everything that he wanted to say to her, and the Doctor was struck mute.

“Whatever plans you think you have, however good of an idea it is, for the good of the planet or, or the galaxy or what, you don’t just go blowing up buildings without a word to anyone! Do you know that everyone else was too scared to come up here and have a word with you, because that highly confidential ridiculous contract you drew up made its way through the gossips and isn’t so classified anymore. Now no one wants to go toe to toe with the man who ‘speaks for the planet’,” Rose growled through the air quotes. “So tell me, Doctor, what genius reason you’ve got for blowing up the Records Annex?”

A slow smile spread across his face.

“It worked.”

“What?”

“Remember ‘run’?” he asked, bouncing away from the baby TARDIS and circling her, picking up his new sonic screwdriver as he did and deadlock sealing the only door off the floor.

“Run?” she frowned as he circled back.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear as he passed, running up a small set of stairs to flip a giant switch that activated the clock-lights outside of their automated timer. Likely no one noticed outside with the sun still out, but it lit up the lab. “Henrik’s basement, Nestene Consciousness, shop window dummies, you and me. How did that night end?” he asked, with a manic grin as he skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Oh, that ‘run’,” Rose breathed, trying to fight back a smile. “You blew up my job.”

“I blew up your job.”

She huffed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and crossed her arms. His shoulders fell, exhaustion pressing down onto each and every bone of his new, much more fragile body.

“I just want to talk,” he told her, only a moment away from begging.

“Alright then. Talk.”

Everything he wanted to say to her, and all of it felt disjointed in his overtired mind. Yet she was here now, and if she left he didn’t have a new idea for getting her back again. So he talked.

“I’m sorry. That I made this choice for you, even if it was technically a different me who did it. I’m sorry that this is the best option, the safest option. I’m sorry I never got the chance to explain everything to you before. But I am never going to say goodbye to you, Rose. Never. And I know that the power of words doesn’t translate as well for you, the science of psycho-kinetic-telepathic influence on the elements of creation. But there are some things I can never risk saying aloud. There are some beings that exist, at least in our original universe, that could easily- … still, no matter what universe we’re in, I’m never going to say it. Forever, Rose Tyler. It’s longer than you can comprehend. An eternal silence stretching infinitely ahead, timelines swirling in every direction. This one is ours, if you’ll- if you could just- if you could see in twenty-odd dimensions and focused on individual temporal waveforms, the quantum reality of specific-”

“Doctor!” she shouted when his legs gave out, immediately grabbing hold of him, joining him on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but when he moved to get back up she easily held him down. Rose gently manipulated his face, giving him a basic medical check. He couldn’t help but smile a little at how much she had learned while they were away, only to then frown at how hard he imagined it all must have been for her. Floundering, he tried to make a joke. “So, I’m still the Doctor?”

Which went ignored.

“You look like a wreck,” she told him, and it wasn’t new information. The Doctor now made much more frequent trips to the restroom and was well aware of how pale he was, of the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He had at least been making a disjointed effort to shave, which was another activity that had increased with his meta crisis, and admittedly it had slipped his mind for a couple days.

“It’s not easy, doing this without you,” he admitted. “But if you need more time, I want you to take it. I really am alright. There’s just so much I need to tell you, now that I can.”

“What do you mean, ‘now that you can’?”

“Different universe, firm walls in between. I don’t have to worry about using the wrong words at the wrong time and having cosmic consequences … for a lot of things, not all things. With our timeline in a different dimension and reality back as it should be, at least for the moment, I can tell you all sorts of things. Though the most important one, the one I’m never going to miss an opportunity to say, is that I love you, Rose Tyler. Forever.”

“I love you, too,” she sighed, caressing his cheek for a moment before helping him up. “But I’m still mad at you. Now you need sleep.”

“But I’m not done talking,” the Doctor complained, dragging his feet as she led him over to the sofa in the corner.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve gotten some rest, okay? I promise.”

“Thank you,” he sighed, more horizontal than he remembered being just a moment ago. Something soft and warm ensconced his body. He hadn’t realized how cold he had been until just then.

Another breath and black oblivion overtook him. Peaceful until it suddenly very much wasn’t. 

A shockwave. A rift in time and space. A breached void. A crack in reality. A big red button. No more. Howling, howling, howling.

“Wake up!”

His eyes snapped open.

He didn’t know where he was. Nothing felt right; not the air, not time, not even his own body. The Doctor tried to do a quick systems check, and the results were all wrong. His hand flew to his chest, where only one heart was beating.

A choking scream echoed through the space, which seemed to be tick tick ticking, and he didn’t realize that it was him who shouted until soothing hands were brushing through his hair. Vision focusing, he saw Rose Tyler kneeling next to him, or at least it was something that looked like Rose Tyler. She felt too cool. Or maybe he was too warm.

“Are you real?” he asked, hoping that she wouldn’t lie to him.

Just one heart working, and it was beating too fast, refusing to slow down. The air was too thick, he couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah.” A sad smile. “I’m real.”

The Doctor didn’t know if he believed her, closing his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see the moment she inevitably vanished. “I’m dying,” he told the being-who-might-be-Rose as he shuddered and collapsed back onto some sort of sofa.

“You’re fine,” she lied, but it was a lie she seemed to believe.

“Only got one heart beating,” he admitted, trying to get his breathing under control as his malfunctioning body began to sweat. The room ticked away, and he wondered if all of this was about to explode, if he should be running, if he even could run. His legs felt like lead. So did his arms. The air was too thick, dragging him down.

“That’s-”

The Doctor shut his eyes tighter, tears escaping that he hadn’t even realized were there. She must have vanished, just like he knew she would. And if she was never real to begin with, why did it have to hurt so much for her to go?

A weight rested on top of him, and he would never forget the feel of her. He vaguely wondered what it meant for him, to be having tactile hallucinations. Olfactory hallucinations. Even the buzz of time that had never left her skin after she took in the vortex was present.

“You’ve still got two beating,” Rose whispered as his arms wrapped around her in a tight hold that didn’t feel nearly strong enough to keep her. He wasn’t strong enough to keep her.

Her heart beat steadily over where his right heart had failed.

“I’m scared,” the Doctor admitted, eyes still closed though it was oddly easier to breathe.

“I’ve got you.”

“Please be real,” he whimpered, even as his mind grew foggier.

She said something, but he didn’t know what. Everything was fading away, darkness becoming darker, becoming void.

Nothing.

The Doctor awoke alone on the couch in his office. According to his time sense, he had slept for eighteen hours and twenty-one minutes. He felt better than he had in weeks, but also so much worse. He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it.

“What’s wrong now?”

The pillow dropped from his hands and his eyes locked with Rose’s as she raced up the slight stair onto the platform that separated his primary workspace from the rest of the top floor.

“What?” His voice cracked.

Rose Tyler sat next to him on the couch, hand immediately resting on his forehead, primitively gauging his temperature. The Doctor cleared his throat before trying again.

“Rose, what are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad, I’m so very, very glad you’ve come.” Her hand dropped away and he was able to get a good look at her, dressed in a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts (Jackie had bought him a ridiculous amount of clothes before he left the manor, all of which he sent out to be cleaned). He swallowed audibly. “W-why are you wearing my clothes?”

“‘M locked in here. Door’s deadlock sealed.”

Flashes of memories began to speed through him. Attaching a re-calibrated Tziklian implosion grenade to a newly-repaired retroreflective Clishtahrr drone. Obsessively trying to circumvent his vision in order to peer at his own timeline, making himself sick. A contained rift event in the lower levels of the tower that made him feel like he had looked into the untempered schism again.

(Run, run, run!)

“I’m sorry. I don’t … I’ll just …”

He pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, found his sonic screwdriver and unsealed the door. And he wished he hadn’t trapped her with him, even if he was starting to remember why (inky black terror crawling up his spine, wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe).

“Do you remember what happened yesterday?” she asked, following him as he went to check the TARDIS on autopilot, looking as if she was worried he would collapse (again).

“It’s coming back to me,” the Doctor admitted. Still had a good four hours to go before the shatterfry process would be complete. He straightened his shoulders, trying to stand tall as he turned to face her. “Things got a little, uhm, unpleasant. I’ll do better.”

“Unpleasant,” Rose scoffed. “I’m pretty sure you had a bleedin’ breakdown!”

“It’s been a difficult regeneration,” he deflected, turning away, leaving the platform and making a beeline to the tiny kitchenette tucked off to the side. Tea. He just needed more tea.

“So, this how it’s gonna be, then? All that stuff about wanting to talk, but now you’re just done?”

He nearly spilled the kettle with the speed of his turn, brows furrowed and mouth falling open. “What? Of course I want to talk!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Just, er, what did I say? Before?”

Memory was still a bit of a blur. Successful energy funnel for the TARDIS’ growth tank. Vodka tasting different in a universe without potatoes. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. No contact.

“You don’t remember?”

“I said it was coming back to me, it’s just not coming in the right order.” he sighed, refocusing on the tea.

“Well, what’s the last thing that you vividly remember?” Rose asked, moving around him, easily finding mugs and sugar and milk.

“Thirteen days ago, creating a temporal disruption chrono-field manipulator. Needed to siphon rift energy for our TARDIS. She needs a very specific growth environment.”

“Thirteen days?! Wait, siphoning the-” She leaned against the tiny countertop and covered her face with her hands. The only sound for a few moments was of the electric kettle quickly boiling the water. “Our TARDIS?”

“If you want,” the Doctor muttered, lifting a hand, wanting to touch her, but then thinking better of it. He clenched his fist as it dropped to his side.

Rose groaned as she turned back to him. “Of course I want that, you daft alien git! But you don’t exactly make things easy, do ya? I spent years getting back to you, and then suddenly there’s two of you and one of you abandons me just like I was always afraid of, but one of you stays and I’m expected to be able to process any of it? And then for weeks it’s an effort just to give myself space, knowing that wherever I go you’re so close, part of me wondering why I’m even trying to stay away when all I wanted for ages was to be back with you. Then suddenly you’re gone! I still know where you are, but there isn’t a chance that I’d actually run into you. And I still don’t know what to feel, but coming here yesterday, seeing you … I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so broken.” There were tears in her eyes. His nails dug into his palms with the effort it took not to wrap his arms around her, to wipe them away. “I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.”

“It’s not. It’s my own fault. You haven’t done a single thing wrong,” he assured her.

“That’s not true and you know it,” she tried to laugh, but it came out watery. “I’ve been an absolute cow. And I still haven’t answered your question. You’d said some things about words being a type of science, and that you could say things here that you couldn’t in the other universe. Like you were paranoid, under surveillance or something? I think you tried to describe how your time sense stuff works, but you almost fainted.”

“Fifty-seven days without you and that’s what I was talking about?” The Doctor grimaced.

The kettle clicked off.

“If it makes you feel better, it was kinda romantic. The stuff about not saying goodbye and forever and blowing up my job.”

“Blowing up your what?!”

“That’s why I had to come here. You blew up the old Records Annex.”

“Riiiiight. That explains the drone bomb. It’s not like they weren’t going to blow it up anyway. Didn’t I help?”

Rose rolled her eyes before moving to fix both their teas. “We’ll get into that later. Right now I don’t even want to talk about us. I wanna know about you, what you’ve been doing these past two months. Because I didn’t even stop to think what this all must be like for you.”

Cuppa in hand, the Doctor led her back to the couch as he tried to think of how best to explain something that he barely understood himself.

“I was created in a two-way human-Time Lord instant biological meta crisis. Hundreds of years as one being, then suddenly two. Exact same mind, almost the exact same body, but different enough that I can barely comprehend existing in it. If you remember, the first forty-eight hours of the regeneration cycle are complicated and dangerous. Barely a few hours into mine I was dropped outside of the prime universe that all Gallifreyans are meant to exist in, cut off from all telepathic contact as the walls of reality continued to sway, slowly falling back into place. It’s been … an adjustment. Sometimes things don’t feel real, even when they are. Sometimes things feel incredibly real, even when they aren’t.”

“You had a nightmare,” Rose told him, placing a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing soothing circles through his layers. “I woke you up, tried to help. You didn’t think I was real. You thought you were dying, because you only had one heart.”

He tried to smile, and the action felt painful. “Sounds about right.”

“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so selfish-”

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for. I want you to put yourself first.”

“But I can’t stand seeing you in pain like this. What can I do to help?” she asked, a desperation in her eyes that he couldn’t bear.

“You’re already helping,” the Doctor sighed, finally giving in and leaning into her touch, lying his head on her shoulder. It was the closest he’d felt to time since they’d been left on that bloody beach.

Memories were still racing through his head. Energy coils radiating artron energy into a centrifuge. The smell of burnt flesh against the remains of a Bverni navigational system. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. No contact.

“The other Doctor said that you needed me.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yes, because he needs you. He also said that I was dangerous. I am. He is. We are. But you already knew that. It’s easy, you know, to yell at yourself. Not often that there’s actually a separate you there to yell at. I destroyed the Daleks, but we’d already done that before we met. In fact, so did you. The other me was lashing out, knowing what he would have to do but not wanting to do it.”

“That’s another thing,” Rose said, moving to face him, dislodging his head, “you said that us being here, in this universe, was the best, safest option. What was that about?”

“Something’s coming. Has come. Ended and began. There’s a massive paradox surrounding me in the other universe. Incredibly dangerous, potentially catastrophic. All I know is that it has something to do with a woman named River Song who claims to be my wife.”

“Your wife?!”

“I said claims. And she did seem to be telling the truth, besides the fact that what she was saying was entirely preposterous. My soul is entirely bound to yours.” The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it. “So I think I have an idea of the kind of man I’ll have to become in order to keep the universe intact.”

“What’s that?”

“A liar. If she is going to believe that I could possibly join myself to someone else, someone who isn’t you, I’m going to have to lie. I’m going to have to forget. I’m going to have to lie so well and for so long that even I believe the fiction I’ve created for myself.”

He wondered what the other him in the other universe would think, then, whenever he caught a rare glimpse at their timeline surrounded in gold, bound with Rose’s for all eternity. What kind of explanation he would craft. The Doctor shuddered.

“But that sounds horrible!” she cried.

“It’s the sacrifice he’s making for the sake of the universe. My timeline is dangerous and someone, something is tampering with it. You and I made one tiny little paradox and it almost destroyed everything. This one is circular, might be able to be maintained, but the scale of it, Rose. And who knows if it will even work. River seems great and all, at least I hope so, but I don’t think she has much of a handle on time travel. That, or she’s a manipulative psychopath. Suppose that’s a surprise for the other me to find out.”

Rose sniffled and he pulled her into a hug.

“He’s going to be all alone.” The words were muffled into his shoulder, his shirt growing damp with her tears. He cringed and tried to think rationally, that of course she would feel this way, that it had nothing to do with how she felt about him him. But then again, maybe it did.

“He won’t be alone. He’ll find someone. I always do, eventually.”

“B-but I-”

“We’ll figure it out. How to get you back there, once it’s safe,” he whispered into the top of her head. Maybe that would be it- what she needed this him for. And if so, it would be enough. It would have to be enough.

“Really?”

The Doctor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“So it’s not- you really weren’t abandoning me here?” Rose lifted her head, eyes brimming with a hope that had been missing before.

“Never.” The word felt as if it was torn out of his very being.

She cupped his cheek, stubble beginning to smooth out into the beginnings of a beard. He really needed to shave.

“I thought you said to never say never ever?”

“That was before.”

It occurred to him that he had tea, so he took a sip - it had gone cold.

“Oh, right, all the, uhm, psychic-kinetic-telepathy science stuff.”

He opened his mouth to correct her - she was very close, though - but was interrupted by the ringing of the giant clock. It was heavily muffled by the sound proofing adjustments he had made while setting up the office, but still audible enough.

“It’s eight now, yeah?” Rose asked, even as she moved away.

“Yes.”

She walked over to his desk, where the Doctor now noticed a pile of her folded clothes sat. He frowned when she brought them over to him.

“Do you think you could sonic these clean for me? I’m gonna quick hop into your decontamination shower.”

“Th- there’s a proper shower, it’s two floors down. First left, third right, door marked ‘Security Level Alpha’.”

“What, really?”

“Didn’t want random lab techs using it. Has a retina scan. It’ll let you in.”

Rose laughed, ruffled his hair, and gave him a kiss on the cheek before disappearing to get ready for work. The whole thing left him confused. He went through his list again, checking and double checking to make sure that this all was real . It was, just as it had been all morning.

More memories. Recalibrating the tower’s new sub-basement weapon’s vault. Burnt toast and no more jam left. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. Contact made.

It wasn’t fair that she had spent almost an entire day with him yet he had missed most of it. Still, he sonicked her clothes, as well as his tea. Finished his cuppa, and then had a second before Rose came back from her shower.

“Why’s there no one around?”

“Dangerous radiation leak,” the Doctor shrugged. “I fixed it almost as soon as it happened, but apparently there’s ‘procedures’. How’d you get in?”

She bit her lip, fighting a smile. “Mighta shot a few of your doors,” Rose admitted, picking up an electro-pulse blaster off of a nearby cart. Non-lethal on organic matter. Very effective on fancy doors. “Nobody told me anything about a radiation leak, though.”

“Classified radiation leak.”

“And why’s that?” she scowled, hands on her hips.

“Everything to do with time travel is classified to this office. Bethany is not being very cooperative about putting you down as a liaison-whatever. Please believe me, I wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret.”

“Oh.” Rose glanced over at the EEPEC, absently biting her thumbnail.

The Doctor didn’t know what she was thinking, didn’t know if he should ask. After a moment she disappeared into the loo to change, promising to be back in a tick.

It was a funny multiverse, really, that his reunion with Rose Tyler would be such a stilted thing. That it would be about him and her, but not this him. Acknowledged with a few questions after his health, sure, but that was just polite. She’d always been compassionate, caring for others. Rose didn’t see him as the Doctor. Not the proper one. Sure, she used his name, but it would be easier for her to do that this time around.

He looked just like him.

He was him.

But he wasn’t.

Memories were still coming. Adjustments to Torchwood’s alien tech retrieval protocols. Nutrition shots. Reports reading: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. Contact made.

He went through the list again. Still real.

Unless it wasn’t.

Unless he wasn’t.

What would have stopped the other Doctor from knocking him out and uploading him into a matrix? Giving him a half-life with a programmed Rose Tyler?

The air here felt wrong.

(Wrong universe. Wrong universe. Wrong universe.)

“Doctor!”

(Daleks exploding. “What have you done?!”)

Pressure against his hands. Why was it so dark?

The Doctor opened his eyes to see Rose in front of him, pulling his fingers away from his palms. Oh. He was bleeding. Hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry, sorry.” He spun away from her in order to grab the first aid kit from his desk.

“What happened?” she asked, vibrating with barely contained panic.

“Nothing, nothing. Things just got jumbled for a second,” he assured her, efficiently cleaning his palms and wrapping them in gauze in a practiced motion.

“How often do you-”

“Hard to say. I’ve been graphing them. Seems to be stress contingent, but generally decreasing. My senses are gradually acclimating to this universe, so I have to hope that once they do, I’ll be fine. Perfect. Molto bene. No inconvenient lapses.”

“Stress? What h- oh.”

He didn’t like the sound of that ‘oh’. The Doctor clenched his jaw before facing her.

“We still haven’t talked about us,” Rose pointed out, approaching him slowly. Like he was a wild animal. Like he would hurt her. “And you … you don’t really remember yesterday still, do you?”

“Not really.”

His hands hurt. His body ached. One heart, and it was beating so quickly that he was sure it would give out.

Rose wrapped her arms around him and he automatically returned the embrace.

“Maybe I should just call in,” she suggested as she pulled away. “We can just take the day?”

“Or don’t and stay anyway,” the Doctor couldn’t help pointing out. “Some bits have come back, and didn’t they send you here?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my god, they did!”

And it was beyond words, how great it was to hear her laughing again. To see her smiling.

But …

That was wrong.

Rose was upset with him.

Time didn’t feel right.

The air tasted off.

Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe.

The Doctor staggered backwards.

His respiratory bypass was malfunctioning. It was like it wasn’t even there. He couldn’t get air into his lungs.

Everything went black.

There was a shot of gold, and then a different kind of black.

“Doctor,” said a whisper in the dark. “The timer went off for the TARDIS. ‘M I supposed to take her out of that thing?”

A TARDIS timer?

TARDIS … timer …

The timer for the extended electro-percussive environment chamber!!!

The Doctor shot up from where he had apparently been lying on the couch and ran over to the EEPEC, swiftly shut it off, removed the tank housing their baby TARDIS, and then poured in the pre-prepared aqueous nutrient solution before inserting the tank into the quasi-dimensional artron chamber (currently set to it’s highest opacity setting). 

“Hah!” he exclaimed, punching his fist in the air and itching to switch the chamber’s outside view settings to transparent. He turned to Rose, opened his mouth to ask her, and then paused.

It all came back to him, all of it, not just the jumbled recollections he had been getting earlier. Apparently he had fallen into a healing coma, and it seems to have been just what he needed … but it all truly hadn’t been fair to Rose. Though, to be fair, she was currently smiling like it was Christmas, so-

Christmas. Healing comas. 

Huh.

“Shall we switch it to transparent?” the Doctor asked, unable to reign himself in any longer. “It was clear when Benny - quite the coincidence, right? - helped me set it up. This is a quasi-dimensional artron chamber. It’s funnelling in rift energy and centrifuging artron particles, and the end result in that chamber is the specific environment needed to properly grow a TARDIS. Well, along with the chrono-nutritio aqueous habitat. Benny describes looking into it as being similar to taking DMT, which, by the way, is completely inaccurate. It’s exactly like looking into an Eye of Harmony. If it’s malfunctioning, it’s like looking into the untempered schism, which I don’t recommend. But everything’s stable now, we could-”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to look into the vortex?” Rose interrupted, and …

“Right … erm, well ,” he hedged, scratching the back of his neck, “I mean, it isn’t actually the vortex, but you’re probably not completely wrong. Best not risk it.”

Excitement abating, the Doctor slumped against the chamber and at that moment realized that he had been changed into jim jams.

Jim jams. Healing comas.

Huh.

At least these were his own pajamas, and not some ‘friend’ of Jackie’s, though how strange was it that he owned his own pajamas in the first place?

“C’mere,” Rose said, beckoning him back toward the couch, which she was sitting next to, but not on. Not your typical decision, but he had likely taken up all of the space earlier. “I made you some tea.”

It really wasn’t worth it, cataloguing the similarities between this and when he had first regenerated into this body … even though the list did seem to be growing.

“Perfect! Just what I need!” the Doctor smiled as he walked over, taking a seat next to Rose on the floor.

Silence fell as he sipped his tea, and he found himself unsure of what to do or say next. There was too much to say, and he’d certainly done a piss poor job of organizing his thoughts earlier. 

“Feeling better?” she asked, after another moment. 

Small talk. He could definitely do small talk.

“Mmm yes, very much so.”

“Better enough to talk?”

The Doctor coughed, having swallowed his tea incorrectly (bloody hybrid body, still acting up), before nodding. Rose moved onto the couch and he scrambled to join her. 

“So,” she began and paused, face scrunching up in concentration (it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who found this whole business incredibly awkward), “I guess … what is it that you actually want? Aside from a working TARDIS, that is.”

His brows furrowed.

Sure, there were plenty of ways he could answer that question and have all of them be true, but he had a feeling that she was looking for a specific type of ‘want’. 

Problem was, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure what that was .

“What?” he asked, in lieu of any better things to say (as the runner up response was to ask for some jam, or maybe a banana, or some of the takeaway from the shop down the corner and blimey, he was hungry). 

“This whole time, all of it, since you c- since you were- since you stopped just bein’ a hand- ” the Doctor had a list of complaints and corrections that he barely held in “- nobody’s asked what you wanted. The D- the other Doctor chose for both of us, really, and I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. An’ I wanna know. What do you want?”

Removed from the actual experience itself (and therefore not feeling incredibly, deathly ill), visions of the slight peek he’d gotten four days ago of his own timeline played in his head.

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand, weaving their fingers together.

“I want this.”

She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Care to elaborate?” she asked with a slight laugh.

“Nope,” he replied, popping the ‘p’. “Because as long as you’re happy, everything else is just- just semantics. I mean, obviously it’s going to be a bit dull until the TARDIS has grown enough for proper travel, but I think we can make do?” At least, he really hoped so. It hadn’t been going swimmingly so far, but the Doctor sincerely hoped that he could chalk all that up to the initial side effects of the meta crisis, compounded by all of the, er … technical difficulties he had run into while constructing the TARDIS’ growth tank. Also, his new hybrid body needed much more maintenance than he was used to, including sleep. Really was rubbish without regular sleep. Such a waste of time.

“So, if I were to suggest you moving into the flat?”

He opened his mouth, intending to immediately agree, but then frowned. The TARDIS was here, after all. And he absolutely could not move her. Not at this stage. Not until she could connect to other dimensions on her own. The Doctor looked over at the quasi-dimensional artron chamber, once again wishing that he could switch it to transparent and watch the process unfold.

“How moved in is moved in?” he asked once he forced himself to turn back toward Rose.

“You’d sleep there, shower there, eat some of your meals. Most of your clothes an’ stuff would be there. Y’know. It’d be where you live. With me. If you want.”

“And that’s what you want?” he double checked, trying not to telegraph his surprise - he must have missed a lot while in a coma, as last he knew they were teetering on the edge of a row.

Rose rolled her eyes, and that was much more in line with where he thought they were at, er, relationship-wise.

“Well, I don’t fancy living in a clocktower office. When I’m done working, I’d like to not still be at work, ta.”

She did make some excellent points … but still, it all implied that they would be staying together. And that was what he wanted, of course it was, but the Doctor still couldn’t help but feel he had missed something crucial despite the fact that he could now remember everything clearly.

“You blew up my job. ”

“I love you, too. But I’m still mad at you.”

“You’ve still got two beating.”

Maybe there wasn’t something to have missed. Human emotions were relatively complex, after all, and there was no rule requiring them to happen in isolation.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked, realizing as he did that to Rose it was coming from seemingly out of nowhere.

This was confirmed as she blinked, brows furrowing.

“I don’t know. Maybe a little, but …”

“But?” the Doctor repeated, unable to stand the suspense.

“It’s hardly the first time we’ve had a fight, yeah?”

He nodded, unsure of where she was planning on going with this and hoping that he wouldn’t need to begin apologizing for every insensitive thing he’d said or done since they first met. It would take ages.

“Well, we always end up workin’ it out. And we did live together, travelin’ on the TARDIS, whether we had a row or not, so …” Rose shrugged, now examining her fingernails.

Speaking of the TARDIS, though …

“First things first,” the Doctor began, rubbing the back of his neck as he stood up and began pacing, “I want it on record that I would absolutely love to live in a flat with you, with carpets and doors and things. Assuming we’d spend much of our time traveling about, that is.” He turned back toward her, having paced his way back over to the TARDIS’ QDA chamber. “The thing is, it’s … I don’t want you to think that- the TARDIS. She needs me here. This is a critical development period. For the next three to six months, the TARDIS will be growing in the chamber, learning how to connect to and create dimensions. Until she can manage it, I can’t move her and she requires near-constant monitoring. Every hour or two.” 

“She’s like a newborn baby,” Rose commented, getting up and joining him at the chamber, where she stroked the side.

“Exactly.”

“Well, I suppose this’ll have to do then,” she reluctantly … agreed? “As long as we’re living in the flat as soon as she’s moveable, mind. The bathroom here is two floors away.”

“It’s a clocktower, Rose! There’s only so much space.” The Doctor scrunched up his face as he said the word. 

“Then why’d you pick this place? I know because of the Rift, but doesn’t it stretch further than just the tower?”

“Nope,” he shrugged.

It’s not as though he hadn’t checked. 

“Really?”

“Small rift.”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed, “a small rift right under Big Ben.”

The Doctor laughed with her, amazed that he finally could.

Then he frowned.

It was all a little too good to be true.

Was this real?

“Hey.”

He refocused. Rose was right in front of him, their eyes locked.

“You were getting that look in your eyes,” she informed him.

“Look? What look?” the Doctor asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew. Some sort of dazed tell, some sort of glaringly obvious indicator that his grasp on reality was failing him.

“This look you get when you start thinkin’ you’re in the wrong universe.”

Wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe.

“Well, I am in the wrong universe,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Yeah, I know. Me too. But y’know what?”

Rose wrapped her arms around him, and it was almost as if she were his tether, grounding him to this new reality they’d found themselves in.

“It’s better with two.”

[jungcity]

love, eternal. | viii

genre: reincarnation!au, fallen angel!au

[supernatural!au-ish, angst, use of blunts and intoxicants, extra asshole jaehyun, smut, vulgar words]

pairing: jung jaehyun x reader

words: 9k

note: listen to arcade by duncan lawrence while reading this chapter!! (thanks to @cherr-e for introducing me to the song) chapter unedited

“do i still taste of war?

can you still feel the battles on my skin

stitched across my back

am i still rebuilding

bone by fragile bone?”

— what does forgiveness taste like (r.n.)

Jaehyun feels as if he’s going mad. The ashen look of your face and the continuous froth coming out of your mouth sent an unfathomable type of ire inside him. He was certain of it; he was certain that he would bring you home safe and sound— without a trace of scratch in your body. But as you lay unconscious into one of the many chambers in Doyoung’s mansion— your knee displaying a long gash of wound, your face drained out of color, your hair disoriented and frizzing— all that Jaehyun wanted to do was burn the world to soot.

He wanted to find and punish the creature who did this to you; he wanted to wrap his hand around that cretin’s neck and squeeze the air out of its lungs. It’s been less than one hour since you started to convulse underneath Jaehyun’s touch, but he felt as if you were insentient for eternity now. It didn’t help that the memory of Aurora dying currently flashes in his mind, reminding him that he is a stone throw’s away in experiencing that kind of world-shattering moment again.

A commotion from outside broke Jaehyun’s reverie, he decided to let go of your hand; so cold against his. Before he could finally stand up and find out whose voice echoes down the floor, the door swung open and revealed Sicheng; a vampire like Taeyong.

“Her sister,” He nudged his head behind him, and he was pushed aside by a girl as he said the words.

The girl let out a strangled cry before kneeling on the floor beside you. She was mewling and hugging the frail body laid lethargic on the bed; praying for you to wake up. The sight was like burst of sunlight in Jaehyun’s eyes— it stings and he never wanted to witness an innocent girl begging for God to wake her sister ever again. So he departed the room, leaving your sister to have a lone time with you.

Jaehyun looked out at the view from above the stairs, Taeyong was tending for the wounded Ten. He was shot by a cross bolt at his right leg. Jaehyun decided to descend the stairs to look out for his comrades who bravely assisted him in rescuing you. At least, he needed to commend their stoutness.

“How is she?” Johnny quickly stood up from his seat when he saw Jaehyun. The man blames himself for what happened to you, but Jaehyun told him he’s done more than enough. Plans aren’t always executed perfectly. Yet Jaehyun could not deny that you, poisoned, was not what he’d expected as a loophole.

“Benumbed, still. But Doyoung assured me that the poison has slowed down already.” Jaehyun explained. Doyoung, and the other warlocks have been awake all night to check up on you. They slowed down the poison, that’s why it hasn’t reached your heart yet. But they warned Jaehyun how grave your situation is, despite the poison being just a nightshade. It is one of the most common poison in Netherworld; easily cured, but still could kill someone if used in high dosage. Doyoung suspected that a dosage of ten drops were commixed into the liquid that you drank; whoever poisoned you wanted you dead instantly.

“I— forgive me, Jaehyun. I was too occupied in protecting her against the guards that I’d missed the danger behind me.” Johnny said the same apology for three times already, yet the remorse in his eyes never lessened. Jaehyun clapped his friend on his back, telling him the same ‘it’s alright, don’t blame yourself’ sentence. Before Johnny departed the living room, he nodded at Jaehyun with reverence. In times like this Jaehyun wished he wasn’t respected as someone who is above netherworlders.

“Are you alright?” He asked Ten, who’s currently laid on the sofa, with Taeyong bandaging his wound.

“Of course. Ant’s bite.” He answered, but then he screamed when Taeyong accidentally touched the wound. Jaehyun shook his head and moved on to the other person beside him, Lucas.

He was not with them in Fairie lands, for Jaehyun appointed him to guard your sister in your apartment. Chaelin had gone with him, since she believed that it would freak your sister out once she saw a man outside the door. The purple patch of bruise beside Lucas’ lips proved Chaelin’s prediction.

Jaehyun need not to ask the young man about what happened. Lucas simply shook his head and said, “I politely knocked yet she welcomed me with a punch instead,”

“She was able to reach your face with her height?” Jaehyun raised a brow, the young man threw a pillow his way, “You need a thorough practice,” With that, Lucas buried his own face into the pillows. Jaehyun let out a toneless chuckle before Chaelin called him from up the stairs. Her thumb pointing to your room.

A surge of electricity bolted inside Jaehyun’s body as he thought of the million reasons for Chaelin’s calling. He stood up and ascended the stairs two steps at a time. When he finally reached your room, his shoulders slumped from seeing your enfeebled body again. You have not moved a finger.

“What- what’s gonna happen to her now? Is she gonna… die?” Your sister, Yuqi, asked as she sniffed with tears still falling down her cheeks. The last word was a shot of arrow in Jaehyun’s heart. He knew your sister felt the same for the word left her wincing, her crying inconsolable.

Chaelin softly held her close to her, as if afraid to rattle the girl. They sat on the nearest couch, Jaehyun across from them. “No, she’s not going to die. I won’t let that happen.”

“What happened to her? Where has she gone to?” Yuqi asked in between her sobs, her eyes fixed on your unmoving body.

Jaehyun sighed, just thinking about how would he explain the Fairie lands to a human gave him a headache that would last for a day. He leaned, his elbow propped on his hips. “It’s… complicated. I don’t think you would believe it.”

Yuqi wiped her nose, her eyes turning to Jaehyun with a fire that told him she would not back down until she’s known the truth. “I deserve to know since you refused to bring her to the hospital. What happened to my sister?”

It’s true. Jaehyun indeed refused for a medical aid reserved for mortals. The medicines and apparatuses they have won’t do anything for your current state. In fact, the doctors would have pronounced you brain dead already. So he sighed, and told your sister about Yuta, his mother, their plan, your being trapped in Fairie lands. After a lot of talking that left Jaehyun’s mouth dry, he expected your sister to scoff and tell him he’s mad. But she only fisted her palms in annoyance, her next words bewildering Jaehyun.

“That Yuta hasn’t done anything other than hurt my sister. I knew it. Behind those white hair of his lay secrets that are not of this world.” She stated with enough contempt, “Sometimes, when they were still together, he would talk as if he’s an ancient god from hundreds of thousands of years ago. Now I understand why. Never really trusted that guy.” She has stopped crying now, but her eyes are still red. “But… how did you rescue her? Without any magic, I doubt you could enter the Fairie lands.”

Jaehyun and Chaelin exchanged a look, both of them reluctant to answer your sister’s question. “I think you’ve heard enough of complicated things tonight, you should rest.” Chaelin told her with a smile. Your sister was quick to get the hint and did not force them for any answers anymore.

“I want to sleep here, beside my sister.”

“I’m afraid that is not possible. Our friends has to check up on her later, and what they’ll be doing would just cause you headaches.” Chaelin explained, “It’s best for you to stay in the room we’ve prepared for your accommodation. I promise you’ll be the first one to know whatever happens to her,”

Yuqi’s brows were knitted as if she would complain and insist. But she only looked at Jaehyun’s way. “Does she trust you?” She asked, holding Jaehyun’s eyes with enough intensity that he saw the warning inside your sister’s orbs. Do you trust Jaehyun? After all that he has done to you? But he could not afford to burden your sister— the only family you have left— any further. So he nodded with a private uncertainty.

“Alright, then. I won’t insist. If she trusts you, then I trust you. But don’t make me regret it. I would kill you myself if something bad happens to her,” Yuqi warned. In ordinary times, Jaehyun would have laughed. The thought of a mortal threatening him was a joke to his perspective. But he understood your sister’s feelings; she is afraid, so afraid to face the possibility of you dying.

“I promise, nothing bad would befell your sister as long as I live.” Jaehyun’s words sparked the ember of feelings he has towards you. The words are like tattoos, permanent now in his heart. And he only hoped that he could hold up to that promise.

Chaelin led your sister to her own room, leaving Jaehyun with you. He stared at your face, his hands holding a towel to wipe the froth coming out of your mouth. Your chest, barely rising. He swallowed the fear as he pushed back the hair out of your face.

“I’m sorry,” He’s lost count of the times he said the words against your ears while holding your hand tightly with his. “I am so sorry,” He kissed the back of your hand, your palm, your wrist. A slight twitch of your finger sent Jaehyun’s nerves into frenzy; he’s certain he wasn’t imagining things.

“Y/N… chérie, are you awake?” He whispered, holding your hand more tightly now, waiting for any sign of life. Your finger twitched for the second time, Jaehyun let out a sigh of relief and leaned closer to you, waiting for your eyes to pop open.

But something is not right. The froth coming out of your mouth is thickening, your body starting to convulse again. It started from your hands, then the spasm worked its way to your whole body. Jaehyun shouted for Doyoung, for anyone. Every beat of his heart frantic from watching you.

“What’s happening to her?” He demanded as Doyoung reached the room. He was followed by Taeil, Jaemin, Renjun, and Yangyang. They circled you, all of them laying their two fingers on your wrist, feeling your heart. Then they exchanged glances. Jaehyun wished he doesn’t know what those looks meant. But he does.

Doyoung looked up at him, “This is bad.”

He tried to calm down, his fist on the sides of his body, “How bad?”

“Too bad,” Doyoung answered, his voice gravelly.

“Her pulse. I couldn’t feel it.” Yangyang stated from beside Doyoung.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, then the small body of your sister was suddenly inside the room; her sobs filling the whole space. “What’s happening to her?” She cried and pushed the warlocks away from you, her tears falling on your body. Chaelin pulled her away and hugged her as she continued to sob.

“Jaehyun, her pulse. We couldn’t feel it.” Taeil once again stated.

Jaehyun was locked in his place, the chaos of the room rocking his system; the sobs of your sister, the shushing of Chaelin, the chants of the warlocks and the silent stares of his comrades seems to be all too overwhelming for him. Then all went silent. Your body stopped convulsing. It would have relieved Jaehyun— but the stillness of your chest was like a nuclear bomb in his body.

“No,” He whispered. “No!” He could feel his pupils dilate, his blood flowing in his veins frenetically. Then he shoved away the warlocks to get to you. No. No. No.

“Y/N. Wake up.” He tightened his jaw to stop himself from shouting. Nothing. “Chérie, I don’t like this game.” He said with gritted teeth. “Wake up, Y/N.” He cupped your cheeks, his eyes stinging with his teeth aching from gritting it together too much. “Wake up!” But you didn’t. He wanted to shake your body until you open your eyes, but his hands felt leaden as he held you, lifeless and cold.

Somebody put a hand on his shoulder, “Jaehyun, let it go.” It was Taeyong. Jaehyun could not hear anything, the world seems to fade away. No, Y/N. He shuts his eyes, your unconscious body in his arms. This is not happening, again.

He laid you slowly on the bed, then he whirled on his comrades. Their heads are bent down, not daring to see the view unraveling in front of them. Yuqi continues to cry, but Jaehyun could not hear her sobs against the mayhem in his mind.

“Doyoung, do it again.” His voice was almost a whisper, even he could not hear himself despite the moving of his lips. Doyoung exchanged glances with Taeil and they both walked towards you, fingers sparking up magic. Jaemin came back with potions in his hand, Jaehyun did not even notice when he departed the room. He set the potions beside Doyoung, both of them exchanging silent stares as Jaemin started to mix up the vials of liquid.

Jaehyun did not know what to do. His hands are on his waist, his feet pacing the room back and forth. He is Lucifer, he could do something. But if he truly could, Aurora would have been alive until now.

“Jaehyun,” Doyoung called out, the sadness in his eyes sending Jaehyun’s insides to mayhem again. Then the warlock slowly shook his head. It was a boulder of rock to Jaehyun’s chest, the feeling was like a push on his last bit of sanity.

“No!” He shouted. In his peripheral, he saw your sister flinched at the loud scream. He wasted no time to stand face to face with Doyoung, his eyes searching for something; a little hope, just a little hope. “Do it again.” He commanded, but Doyoung shook his head.

“I couldn’t. We couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

When he grabbed Doyoung’s collar, the men behind him quickly ran to pull him away from the warlock. But his grip was tight and nobody in the room has the same strength as his.

“Do it again. You are not a warlock for eight hundred years for nothing.” He seethed while fighting the yanking being done by Johnny and Lucas to his body.

“If we push her body any further, her system won’t be able to take all the magic, Jaehyun. Remember, she is a mortal.”

Mortal. Jaehyun could not take it anymore. He ran, far from the blackhole that is your death in Doyoung’s mansion. He ran for his car. He exactly knows where to go.

The road was empty, with the moon providing the light in the path. The eerie shadows of trees painted the asphalt road a gray and black colors as Jaehyun rode through the night. His grip on the steering wheel was so tight he was afraid it’d break. But his mind screams and his heart is shattering to care about anything one bit. Why is it crueler this time? He’s thinking about his punishment. How the Almighty seems to take away his source of happiness from him again. Not so soon. He begged, and he never once begged.

He watched Aurora die, helpless as he was in the corner of her room. He watched as her last breath was a release of the body she once had in the Earth. And he did not do anything, then. Aurora died without him giving a fight. She died, and he let her die. Now you lay dead on the bed, Jaehyun didn’t even see your eyes for the last time. You died helpless, too. You died without seeing your sister. You died as if you did not deserve to say goodbye to your loved ones.

The tires screeched, a signal that Jaehyun has reached his destination. He breathed. Without a second thought, he departed the car and the church’s façade loomed over him. Every step he took towards the structure was a dagger at his heart. How many years has it been since he last visited a church? He couldn’t remember. But now he is here, ready to face his Creator— for you.

The iron door of the church was locked, with a flick of a finger it opened for Jaehyun. Moonlight infiltrated the whole interior of the church, the white rays of it touching the floor and the rows of long chairs. The altar stood proudly at the end, the image of Jesus Christ staring at him in wonder.

His feet halted at the very base of the stairs leading up to the altar. “Bring her back,” He sounded so pathetically hopeless that the tone of his voice was enough to make him want to strangle himself. He swallowed despite the shame that he felt, “Father, bring her back to me.”

It was embarrassing of him to wish something like this to his Creator. He was a traitor, a betrayer. He does not deserve mercy. But he would try, he would do it, just to see your smile again.

Jaehyun heard nothing, the whole atmosphere was silent. He would feel it if the Almighty deemed him worthy of a conversation, but there’s nothing divine in the air.

“Bring her back to me!” He’s lost it, he screamed— voice echoing everywhere. Jaehyun does not even realize that he’s crying. The droplets of his hopelessness shines on the floor. His breathing was ragged, his sight blurry. But he won’t stop until someone talked to him. Your face flashed in his mind, how the brightness of it turned to ashen, how your body felt cold in his hands. He couldn’t take it anymore.

Jaehyun knelt.

He knelt while crying, his heart full of thorns. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible amidst the silence.

“Have I not suffered enough, Father?”

Stillness. Silence. Jaehyun could not accept that it went in vain. That he would comeback and see your cold body on the bed. That you would start to decay and leave the world as if you were just a leaf in a tree in fall.

Mortals. It baffles him still how your lifetime seems to be just a minute compared to his. And right there he wished that you were one of the faces. Right there, he wished that you were like Aurora. Would you call him heartless for wishing that?

A blaze of white light suddenly filled the church. Jaehyun looked up to see what it was with tear-stained cheeks. He could not make up the figure because of the brightness, but when it landed in front of him, he could not stop himself from smiling in astonishment.

“Michael,” He breathed. The figure was the Archangel Michael; clad in his armor with his sword strapped in his waist and wings tucked in his back. He’s looking at Jaehyun without emotions in his eyes.

“Brother,” The Archangel said. Jaehyun’s heart warmed from it. How he longed for his brother to call him that again. How he longed to return and be with the soldiers of God a second time. “Rise, Lucifer.”

He did what he was told. He rose from his feet, and now standing face to face with the Archangel.

“He hearkened to your wishes; our Father.” Archangel Michael stated with calmed down voice. Jaehyun could not answer. He wanted to stare at his brother, because he knew that this could be the very last time they would see each other.

“Did He… bring her back?”

A ghost of a smile past the Archangel’s lips. “Fear not, brother. The girl is safe.”

Jaehyun felt his knees wobble because of that. A relief surges through his body like a bolt of lightning. He looked up at the Archangel again. “Thank you,” He breathed and the words felt so foreign in his tongue.

Archangel Michael nodded at him, “It warms my heart to see you again, Lucifer.” The baritone of the angel’s voice was not of this world. It carries the tone fit for a warrior in heaven.

Jaehyun nodded, “I feel the same, brother. I feel the same.” Then he wasted no time, he ascended the stairs and gave the Archangel a hug. He expected to wrap his arms on a phantom wind, but what he boxed inside his arms was the stout body of the Archangel. A low laugh escaped from their lips.

“I hope to have you beside me in Heaven once more, Lucifer.” Then the Archangel surged up like a star blazing towards the heavens. He hopes for that, too— more than anything. For a moment, Jaehyun envied the glory the Archangel has as he flew; he once had the same majesty when he served as a soldier of God. But Jaehyun could not stay in that envies knowing that he could see you again, alive. So he ran for his car, and rode again into the night. Back to the house and back to you.

—

“Am I dead?” You asked as you opened your eyes. The sun is bright, all its rays absorbed by the lake in front of you. The water gleams gold underneath the blue sky. Butterflies flies everywhere, wildflowers circles the lake. Is this heaven? But the lake seems oddly familiar, you’ve seen it once in your dream.

“You are not,” Her familiar voice captured you. Aurora. The crunch of her feet against the dried leaves mixing with the chirping of birds were behind you. She was on her usual white dress; her black hair shining, her eyes an ethereal blue.

“I was poisoned, right? Why am I here again?” Even in your own ears, you sounded tired. Tired of all the things that’s happened to you. Tired of reaching out to know your true identity just to know nothing.

“This is the last time I’m visiting you,” Aurora sat beside you, her voice toneless. You saw her bare feet as she sat, slipping out the hem of her dress.

“Why is that?” You asked, not sure if you really want to know her answers.

“Y/N,” The syllables of your name sounds strange in her voice, like it came from the other part of the world, “I will not force you your destiny. I had accepted it wholeheartedly when I was still alive—”

You couldn’t help but interrupt her, “So you’re really dead?”

She nodded at you, sadness swirling in her pupils. “I accepted it wholeheartedly that I had lost my body in the process.” She sighed, “But you, you are stronger than I was, Y/N. Braver, even.” She reached for your hand, held it tightly with hers. “Do as you like, but be sure that whatever it is you want, it would make you happy.”

“Thank you,” Even though you do not know what it is that would make you happy, your heart feels euphoric for what she said. “But I do need to know… who really are you?”

“I am Aurora. I’d lived my life in France. One hundred years ago. What you see is just a phantom of who I was. Behind this projection, I am nothing but dust.” She smiled dolefully at you. You supposed it should perplex you to know that Aurora is dead, and that she was one hundred years older than you. But you felt nothing, your mind seems to have anticipated the information already.

“Is Jaehyun your past lover? I saw him crying in the corner of your room in one of my dreams,”

“Jaehyun? That must be his cognomen right now.” She chuckled, “But yes. He was. And now yours,”

With that, you chuckled. “No. He is not my lover. He does not want me because he is a coward,” Then you scoffed. It’s funny to think that Jaehyun could make you feel this way.

“But you love him,” There wasn’t a hint of disdain in Aurora’s voice, only curiosity and juvenile happiness.

“Would it be awkward to admit it?”

“No, not at all.” Aurora shook her head, “But he does love you. He’s loved your soul for eternity now. And the truth is, you’ve loved him one hundred years ago through me. I wish you do not stop now.”

You’ve loved him one hundred years ago through me. What does that mean? You have no idea. But right now, you feel the nearest to the answers to your questions more than ever. Yet it does not calm your nerves, your agitation intensifying as you understand what Aurora tries to tell you.

“Why… how—” You don’t even know what to ask her, or how to ask her the things that’s spiraling in your head. “Are you saying that I am you one hundred years ago? Your… your reincarnation?”

“Thou shall bear a love for one soul, remember?” Aurora stood up and faced the lake, her hair billowing against the wind. “We are one, Y/N. Our soul is one.” You guessed she’s trying to console your disconcertment by giving you her warmest smile. “And we are tied to him, forever.” Then she was gone.

—

The tires screeched again. Jaehyun jumped out of his car, heart thudding in his chest. It’s eleven p.m., but the house was still alive. The huge mansion of Doyoung providing the shadows in the grass. Jaehyun’s shoes crunched into the soppy grass and dried leaves. When he entered the house, he saw Mark and Jeno propped into the living room, the two wolves bolted up from their seat as they saw him. Jaehyun just gave them a look before he ascended the stairs.

He saw Doyoung cleaning your face as he entered the room. Your sister, Yuqi, baffled beside you as she stared at your chest moving at last. Jaehyun sighed in relief, it was real. You’re alive. He ran a hand through his fog-sodden hair before sauntering up towards you.

“She’s alive. She woke up earlier and vomited all over the floors. But she’s too dazed to talk so I’ve put her to sleep to regain her strength,” Doyoung explained.

“What about the poison?” Jaehyun asked, his eyes never leaving your body.

“There’s still some left in her body. But she’s out of danger now. I don’t know what happened— it’s a miracle, Jaehyun.” Doyoung breathed, astonished beyond reckoning. Jaehyun thinks it’s the first time the warlock has seen something like this in his eight hundred years of living.

“No, it’s God.” Jaehyun stated, because it was indeed the work of God. You are alive because of Him. Doyoung stared at Jaehyun in disbelief, but he did not ask anything. Jaehyun isn’t ready to talk about it either, so the warlock nodded and laid the towel back on the basin. Then he departed the room, leaving Jaehyun with you and your sister.

“What happened? Where did you go?” She asked while sniffing.

Jaehyun sat on the nearest chair beside you, “I… did what I had to do to bring her back.” Explaining the whole thing would only leave your sister’s mind in chaos. Not that Jaehyun thinks she could not understand, but he doesn’t want to burden your sister with the knowledge of the unknown.

“I guess you wouldn’t explain it again,” Yuqi said, her voice laced with uncertainty. “But I am still thankful for what you’ve done.” She looked at Jaehyun with red-rimmed eyes, “Whatever it is. Thank you.”

Jaehyun nodded, “I’d do anything for her.”

—

Sunlight burst into the interior of Doyoung’s mansion, the briny tang of seawater from the distant ocean filling the atmosphere. The chirping of birds and the colorful wings of the butterflies sending hopes of a great day ahead for the netherworlders. Some of them still slumbered on their beds, some having breakfast, and some exercising in Doyoung’s yard.

In the silence of your room, Jaehyun slept with his arms propped on the side of your bed. He never left you, he never let go of your hand as you slumbered for he wanted to be the first one you’ll see once you open your eyes. He’s sure he’s dreamt of you waking up, with him peppering your face with kisses. In his dreams he was the happiest with you.

“Jaehyun,” It was Chaelin, nudging him to wake up. He slowly opened his eyes, squinting at his surroundings. The first thing he saw was your unconscious body on the bed. Despite that, the slow rising and falling of your chest was enough to make his day a little bit brighter and better. At least, the color of your face has returned, no matter how frail you might look like.

“Clean yourself. You stink, dumbass.”  

“Good morning to you too, Chaelin.” He greeted sarcastically. But he does know that he needs to take a shower. “How about Y/N? What if she wakes up and I am not here—”

Chaelin shushed him, “I will call you once she wakes up. Trust me, you wouldn’t want your current state as the first thing she sees once she opens her eyes,”

Jaehyun sighed and departed the room without another word to shower. Chaelin was right; his disheveled hair, the moons under his eyes, and the untended slash of wound on his cheek greeted him as he stared at his reflection on the mirror. He looked devastated.

The water running through his body and into the tiled floor of the shower were mixed with little flakes of dried blood, a proof that Jaehyun hasn’t washed the memories of their battle in Fairie clean off his body yet. No matter how he thought of it, he always comes back in blaming himself of what happened. It was hard not to when the Queen clearly stated she wanted power more than anything, and that power she longed for belongs to Jaehyun.

He touched his cheek, the wound wasn’t painful but it stings. He needed Doyoung to tend him for the blade that slashed his face was an angel blade. It would have been enough to kill Jaehyun, if the fairie guards were only swifter than him. How had the Queen managed to get an angel blade, he does not have the slightest idea.

Jaehyun thought he was going to die when he couldn’t see Taeyong and the others anymore. He would die and he won’t be able to see you again. But the thought of you back in mortal lands, safe and sound, coerced him to accept whatever fate he had in the Fairie lands. It’s better him, than you.

The Queen had the advantage, or so she thought. All that Jaehyun needed to do was shout— shout that he knew the Queen’s true name. It is the bane of every fairie’s existence; someone knowing their true allonym. For when you knew a fairie’s real name, you’d always be one step ahead of them; you can bend them in your own will. The Queen would never put herself at risk, so she ordered her guards to back down. But it was a lie, Jaehyun lied. He does not know the real name of the Queen. It was pure luck and wit. Yet the trump hand was for Jaehyun to take, so he wasted no time to wrap his hand around the Queen’s throat. Her son, Yuta, did not even flinch by the sight. He was dazed, and out of his head by all the chaos that was happening in front of him.

Then your face was in Jaehyun’s mind as he squeezed the life out of the Queen; you would never want him to kill someone for you, no matter how contemptuous the person might be. So he made the Queen promised to give up her throne for her son instead. She was stripped out of all her title and was secluded in the lone island in Fairie— Jaehyun made sure of that.

Now, Yuta hails as the king of the Fairie lands. He could easily be manipulated. Jaehyun could dispatch him if he ever laid his finger on you again. He made the new king sign a treaty that their kingdom would tithe to Jaehyun until the very last moment of the Faes existence for the trouble they’ve caused him and the danger they’ve put you through. Once they failed to send their tithe, Jaehyun would annihilate them without a thought. Yuta agreed to all of that, because what choice does he have left? Nothing. Jaehyun left him with no choice and a broken kingdom.

He changed into new and clean clothes that was provided by Taeyong. The fit was small but he does not have the time to go home and change for there was a commotion brewing in the living room again. Jaehyun walked out of his room to see what the tumult was about. Some of his comrades are in their wolf form; Johnny, Mark, and Jeno. While the vampires are baring their teeth at the figure standing at the entrance; Yuta.

Jaehyun descended the stairs in a dash, grabbing Yuta’s collar so tight as to stop the breathing of the fairie king. “Do you really wish to die?!” He growled.

The fae king only looked at Jaehyun with depthless eyes, “Before you tear me off to shreds, I would like to ask for your forgiveness,”

Jaehyun bared his teeth, “Well fucker, I don’t have any forgiveness to spare you. So get the fuck away from here.”

“Jaehyun, I think we all need to calm down,” Taeyong commented. Jaehyun would have screamed at him to shut up, if not for the voice that spoke behind him.

“Jaehyun, let him go. I want to talk to him.” It was you. He spun around to face you while still holding Yuta by his collar, you were looking so weakened and pale that it’s a wonder how have you managed to get up from the bed. Chaelin and Yuqi were beside you, guiding you as you descended the stairs.

“Outside, Yuta.” You said, voice hoarse. Jaehyun doesn’t want himself to let go of Yuta not until he’s bleeding underneath him. But the look you gave him was enough to loosen his hold of the fairie king. The longing and the wanting to wrap his arms around you, feel your heart beating against his, vanished and was replaced by a sadness you alone could inflict on him. Yet all he could was watched as you both departed the living room, away from the ruckus and away from him.

—

You heard the voices first— voices of two women speaking about you. Your head swam into the familiar pit of nihility, that you couldn’t even make up the faces nor the voices of the women speaking in normal voices. The heaviness of your body was unbearable, you could not even raise a finger. There was something like acid in your stomach, making the bile rise up in your throat. Two seconds, then you retched all over the floor, the gasps of the women filling the quiet room.

The other woman pushed back your hair and patted your back as you continued to retch, the other woman started to clean off the vomit on the floor. A glass of water was pressed in your mouth after heaving all your intestines out, you forced yourself to sip a little of the liquid. A small gasp escaped your lips as you felt the water grazed down your throat for what seemed like the first time.

You felt cold sweats on your forehead as you try to refocus your sense of sight, your eyelids heavy as you squint to get a clearer and better view around you.

“Y… Yuqi?” Even the vibration of your voice against your throat was painful. You felt as if you were drained out to the bones. After you succeeded in opening your eyes, the familiar face of your little sister welcomed you, tears falling down her cheeks.

“Y/N!” She hugged you as if she never wanted to let go. Is this real? You asked yourself. It felt surreal, to be able to hug your sister like this again. “How are you? Do you need anything? Are you hungry?” She bombarded. You tried to chuckle, but your mouth feels as if they were glued together— the edges of it were viscous with something you could not name.

“No… I… I need a shower,”

“I’ll ready your bath,” The other woman said from beside you. It took you a moment to recognize her  because of the blurriness of your eyes.

“Chaelin?” You asked. She smiled the same smile that you remember; sultry yet friendly.

“I am glad that you’ve woken up, Y/N.” She stated, eyes glistening. You tried to smile at her while Yuqi wipes your mouth with a wet towel. Then she gave you a kiss on the top of your head before departing the room. But she halted as the three of you heard shouting from below the floor.

“Do you really wish to die?!” The voice was angry, furious. Your ears are still muffled by the longevity of your slumber that you couldn’t make up whose voice it belongs to.

Chaelin gave you a look of concern before dashing out of the room. When she came back, her breathing was ragged and her eyes are widening. “It’s Jaehyun. With… Yuta.”

Yuta. Instantly, the fear of being trapped to Fairie and the darkness of the dungeons came back to you all at once. Yet you know that you have to talk to him, right now. It doesn’t matter how weak your body feels, or how tired your eyes are, you glanced at Yuqi and Chaelin to guide you down the stairs where the commotion is brewing.

“No,” They both said at the same time. You knew it, of course. Nobody in their right minds would let you face the man who literally planned to steal you away to their kingdom and marry you without you even knowing. But you stubbornly want to get rid of Yuta once and for all. So you stood up, but your knees wobbled. Your sister was quick to put her arms around you to steady your slightly shaking body.

“If you don’t want me to crawl my way down there, you better guide me already.” You chuckled, throat tightening from the rhythm of your voice. They exchanged glances before sighing in exasperation and guided you towards the exit and down to the living room.

You sucked up in a breath upon seeing the view down at the living room; three huge wolves are ready to pounce on Yuta at any second, while the other men are baring their fangs towards him. If you were Yuta, you would have run away and never dare to come back. But what snatched your breath totally away was the man holding him like he wanted to kill him on the same spot he’s standing on; Jaehyun.

You would identify him even from miles away and he feels so far away now, despite the four steps separating you both.

“Jaehyun, I think we all need to calm down.” Taeyong softly told Jaehyun. By the state of Jaehyun, you could swear he would scream at Taeyong and maybe punch him right at his jaw.

So you decided to inhale and speak, “Jaehyun, let him go. I want to talk to him.”

You saw him tensed as he heard your voice. How you wanted to wrap your arms around his, to feel his heart beating against yours. But you need to make things right, or at least you need to make yourself understand why Yuta did what he did. As Jaehyun stood now, facing you, you noticed how tired he looked; there were bags under his eyes, his pale skin doesn’t look healthy– he looked so sick. And there was sadness in his eyes as he looked at you take a step towards Yuta, not to him.

“Outside, Yuta.” You said hoarsely. Yuta has an expression of wanting to guide you towards the yard but you let yourself walk ahead of him even though it pains you to do so. Yuta must’ve seen the agony in your every step for he held your arm but you quickly winced and snatched your arm away from his hold.

You both sat on one of the benches in the yard, the insects and butterflies flying all around you. “Sana, what happened to her?” You felt Yuta’s stare boring into you. The question was unexpected, you supposed.

He cleared his throat, “She’s dealt with, Y/N. I am truly sorry for what she has done to you,” At least, he sounded sincere. You nodded, what’s done is done. Even though she almost succeeded in killing you, you could never bring back the time to change your decisions of trusting her.

“Who are you, Yuta? Why did you lie to me?” You asked him that question while looking at the trees at the distant forest.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I am Yuta, and that is all I could offer you.” He sounded apologetic, that you did not push him any further. He is one of the Fae, their nature was a labyrinth of mystery to humans and to you.

“My mother judged me as a noddy for loving a mortal woman when I spoke to her about you,” He started, “but I insisted. No matter what she told me. Then you acquainted me with your new lover, Jaehyun.” You have a bad feeling to where this is going, “The night at the bar, I never would have anticipated him to see behind my glamour. But he did. He confronted and told me that I am not human. Right there, I fathomed out that he is Lucifer,”

The trueness of it still perplexes you. Jaehyun, Lucifer. How is that possible? All your life you’ve believed that Lucifer was locked up into the pits of hell. And only when Jesus Christ comes back to Earth would the devil be released. How old Jaehyun must be to be Lucifer? You couldn’t grasp the reality of it. He was an angel, now he is a fallen.

“I had pondered about it for weeks,” Yuta continued, “Then it thwacked me… like a lightning. What if I ask my mother again, but this time it would not be in vain. I could offer her something; I could offer her the world,” You shifted on your seat, readying yourself for whatever Yuta has in his pockets to tell you. “I told her about your attachment to the Fallen. Then we concocted our vicious plan together. That was to make you as a bait, for the Fallen. So mother could have the authority to bend the Fallen to her will. After she has what she wants, she would let me marry you.”

You nodded, heart suddenly heavy by all your realizations. It was my fault. “But why did you let her throw me into the dungeons?” With that, you let yourself look at the man beside you, to search for the answers in his eyes.

“It was foolish of me not to see it coming,” He looked so pained, “But I did not plan for that to happen. With that, I am so sorry, Y/N.”

Perhaps it was a bad idea to talk to him, perhaps all of these is a bad idea. But how long would you continue to run and be blind by all that is happening? Yuta wanted you, yet you showed that you want nothing to do with him by introducing Jaehyun as your lover. No matter how you see it, all that befell you was because of your own doing.

“I have to go, Y/N.” Yuta stood up, “And this is probably the last time we would see each other,”

You couldn’t bring yourself up to speak, so you watched as Yuta turned and walked away from you. It should make you happy and free, but your conversation with him only made you feel tired than you already are.

“Y/N,” It was Yuqi. “Let’s get you inside.”

—

Yuqi helped as you wash your body, and she is now lathering your hair with watermelon-scented shampoo that was given by Chaelin. She hums while you close your eyes, the conversation you had with Yuta repeating in your mind.

Jaehyun was nowhere to be found when you came back inside the house, Doyoung told you he’s gone to the beaches to unwind. Doyoung’s mansion was marvelous, it has too many corridors leading up to different rooms. It seems like it was built to accommodate their whole group. The isolation of it from the buzzing of the city was perfect for your peace of mind, yet you knew that you couldn’t stay any longer. However, Doyoung insisted you stay for one more night, just to regain your strength that you’ll need for the long ride home tomorrow.

Johnny conversed with you earlier, before you decided to take a bath. He apologized for his carelessness that resulted to you being poisoned. You told him it was your fault for being so naïve. It was Fairie lands, yet you let your vulnerability get the best of you and easily trusted someone who showed you a little bit of kindness. No matter what Yuta did to Sana, you still hoped that she’s alive. Or maybe not. Your feelings are mixed with hatred and pity that you don’t even know what you should allow yourself to feel.

You decided to break the silence, “Aren’t you surprised about everything that’s happened, Yu?” Yuqi sighed, her hands massaging your bubble-coated hair. She was the one you’re the most concerned of. Yuqi is a practical girl— the wolves, the vampires, and the warlocks, must’ve been too shocking for her to comprehend.

“I was. I thought I’d lose my mind from thinking of you in danger. Then Lucas and Chaelin told me I needed to go with them. You know me, I was in doubt first. But I saw the sincerity in Chaelin’s eyes. She wanted me safe, so I packed my things and then we drove here,” She explained, still lathering your hair. You supposed it was too grimy and dirty that she needed to wash it again.

“What did you think of them? They aren’t humans,” You told her while popping the big bubbles on the surface of the water.

“I was… shocked. Perplexed. I might sound stupid, but I do think they’re kind. I mean, they won’t rescue you and they won’t protect me if not, right?” Yuqi then grabbed the head of the shower to rinse your hair, the sound of water dripping filled the whole room. “They are werewolves, vampires, and warlocks. Chaelin told me she’s not one of those. What do you think is her true nature?” Yuqi asked. The conversation was too light, like you were just talking about dinner.

“I don’t know… maybe she’s a witch?” You bit your lips as the words rolled out from your mouth, “Oh no, that sounded rude.”

Yuqi laughed, “It does not. I’ve already asked her about that though.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said she’s just a naughty girl who defied God,”

“What does that mean?” You closed your eyes as the bubbles from your hair ran down your face.

“I don’t know. But she said her real name’s Lilith,” Yuqi started to rinse your arms, “Do you remember Mama’s story when we were kids? She said Eve isn’t Adam’s original wife, it was Lilith,”

By that, you twirled to Yuqi’s direction. You know the story, but it couldn’t be. “You mean, Chaelin is Lilith? She’s alive and saw Eden?” Your mouth gaped from the realization. Yuqi nodded, a small smile creeping in her lips as she took your surprised expression.

“Yes. And you shouldn’t ask her about it, she really doesn’t wanna talk.” Yuqi then guided you out of the tub to dry your body with the towel. You feel as if you’re a five-year-old girl in her mother’s care. Yet it warms your heart to experience this kind of treatment from your little sister.

“Then how did you squeeze the truth of her identity from her if she doesn’t wanna talk about it?” You raised a brow, Yuqi chortled nervously as she tied the ribbon of the billowy dress behind you. You would have preferred a simple shirt and jeans but Yuqi forgot to bring you clothes, so you ended up wearing the dress bought by Chaelin earlier.

“That’s a secret,” She continued to giggle as she escorted you out of the bathroom and into your room.

After your bath, you came back to your own room to rest and wait for dinner. You offered to help Doyoung and Taeyong but they nicely refused and guided you back to your room instead. Yuqi was nowhere to be found, you supposed she’s with the boy named Lucas, who’s been with her all day while taking care of you.

In the tranquility of the room, you let your mind remember the dream you had with Aurora. Where she told you her true identity. France, one hundred years ago. Jaehyun lived through the pain of losing the love of his life because of time and sickness. You wouldn’t survive that kind of heartache yourself. The idea of it was too complex; how someone would continue to live as the lives of the people around him wink out of existence like a candle blown out by the wind. It was one thing to witness your lover die, but it is another thing to wait for them to reincarnate into another person— without the certainty of when.

Yet the fact that you are Aurora’s reincarnation still makes you uncomfortable and doubtful. Why did she start to show up in your dreams when you began working for Jaehyun? A signal, you thought. Meeting Jaehyun was a signal for your past life to come and crash into your present. Does that mean you’d die, too? You’d die of loving Jaehyun? You’d die because you are tied to him? What a bitter reality. And what a superbly tragic novel it would make.

Would you tell him? Could you burden him with the reality of his lover coming back to life through you? Yet he was your lover one hundred years ago, that Aurora made sure you understand; you shared her life, and she shared yours through your one soul.

“Thou shall bear a love for one soul in a thousand faces, and suffer as the face cease to exist but the soul, perpetually.” You memorized. It was meant for Jaehyun. Because he’s the one who’d love a thousand faces but one soul in his eternity. He would suffer as the face of his lover cease to exist, but her soul would transfer into yet another face— for him to love, for him to cherish, and for him to watch as she wilts away to nothing and back to dust.

You hadn’t realized that you were crying by thinking of all of it; of all the start, and the end, the love, and the lost. Jaehyun was alone. And he would forever be alone. But right now, you’re going to make sure he isn’t. So you wore your slippers, and wrapped yourself in a scarf.

To the shore, you go.

—

It’s been hours. Yet Jaehyun still doesn’t have the energy to come back to the mansion. The moon was a big ball of white hanging in the heavens, yet it was alone, a starless sky. There are bits of sands pressed in Jaehyun’s body, his face tacky from the atmosphere of seawater slapping on it for hours on end. The ocean stretched out in the horizon, its water gleaming silver underneath the moonlight. The only sound accompanying him was the slap of waves into the boulders of rocks. And then there was a rustle.

Jaehyun was on his feet in an instant, the bits of sands flowing back into the shore from his body. The rustle became nearer, then your body emerges from the darkness, looking more paler under the moonlight.

“Y/N, you shouldn’t be here.” Jaehyun stated. No matter how happy he was to see you, and to realized that you’d followed him here, he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate because he knew the walk here from the mansion took too much of your energy.

“Would you like me to come back?” You raised a brow, a small smile playing on your lips. No, of course. Jaehyun sighed, and stretched out his hand to you. Your smile spread wider and took his hand, then you both sat on the warm sands.

Silence. The sound of the ocean overwhelmed the whole atmosphere that you shared. Jaehyun still holding your hand as if afraid to let go.

“So… you’re Lucifer.” He heard you chuckle, the sound made his heart jump inside his chest. What an unexpected question. But he nodded.

“I am. Are you scared of me?” Please say no. He wanted to plead before he could hear your answer. The Earth is as old as him, and the mortals branded him as something to disgust, to loath, to contempt. No matter how much he thinks of it, he couldn’t read what would be your reaction to that fact.

“No. Not when you look like that,” He knows it’s a joke. Yet he couldn’t help but make you elaborate.

“Why? What did you expect?”

You searched for his face by leaning closer to him, your eyes searching something with your mouth twisted on the side and your brows knitted together. Jaehyun wanted to kiss you right there and there, but that might ruin the mood.

“I don’t know… maybe red eyes, huge horns, razor-sharp teeth—”

“That’s ridiculous,” A laugh reverberated in Jaehyun’s throat, followed by yours. “But yeah, mortals think that I look like what you just described.”

Jaehyun could feel the tension in your body no matter how you tried to hide it. You were suddenly silent for a moment, your eyes distantly staring at the gleaming waters of the ocean. He looked at you while you looked away. And he’s never seen such beauty before.

“Yuta and I… we’ve talked.” It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. But that’s what he needed to know; your conversation with the boy king. You tightened your hold on him before continuing, “It’s my fault Jaehyun,” No. He wanted to protest, and he supposed his face gave away too much of his disagreement for you squeezed his hands tighter, “It is my fault. If I didn’t introduce you as my boyfriend, this wouldn’t have happened. All of this.” Your eyes gleamed, the tears threatening to come out.

“Do you think Yuta would have thrown away his vicious plan if he’d known about the truth of our relationship? He won’t.” Jaehyun sighed, “Do you know why they captured you?” He asked as he stared right into your irises. He saw in your eyes that you knew why, yet you still believed that all of what transpired was your fault. “Perhaps it’s the bastard fae’s doing, but his mother wouldn’t have agreed of it if she didn’t know about your connection with me,”

“That’s the point, she—”

Even if it pains him, Jaehyun cut you off. “She would think that you were just a mere mortal and she wouldn’t have wasted her time on you,” You were staring at him speechless now, your eyes like a pool of water ready to flow, “But because she knew about the Fallen— about me— she agreed to her son’s plan to lock you up in Fairie.” Jaehyun’s hands were on both of your cheeks now, “The Queen thought she could control me through you. You would have never experienced the trauma and the fear if it wasn’t because of me. You never would have been put through that kind of horror if I didn’t allow myself to love you.”

By his last sentence, your lips quivered, then the silent tears flowed down your cheeks at last. “You…” You breathed, “You love me?” Jaehyun knew then why the sky was starless that night, because the stars and the constellations gathered in your eyes.

Jaehyun nodded, his own lips trembling. “I love you, Y/N. I love you more than life itself,” Jaehyun let his forehead rest against yours while saying the words. And it should make him happy, to be able to hear it from his own lips, to be able to admit it to you. Yet he feels tormented now more than ever, “But… I am not brave enough to face that love, chérie.”

You let out a sob, it was bullet in his heart. Jaehyun feels as if his whole world is in chaos, crumbling before his very eyes.

“Why?” Your voice cracked, then you stood up.

Jaehyun was on his feet too, “If I continue to love you, your life would always be in peril.”

You harshly wiped the tears from your cheeks, and there was hatred in your eyes as you pinned him down with a stare, “Why are you so coward when it comes to me?”

Jaehyun closed his eyes, You’ve fucked up really bad, Jaehyun. “Y/N, you do not understand—” He tried to hold you, but you flinched away from his touch.

“I do, Jaehyun. I understand that you’re not man enough to love me,” Your voice was full of scorn that it made him wince. He never once imagined himself in this position, almost wanting to kneel for your forgiveness. “You did it one hundred years ago, but why can’t you do it now?”

Jaehyun stared at you then, really stare at you. What do you mean? His heart was running a mile as he asked you the question, “What do you mean, Y/N?” Tell me that it isn’t what I think it is. He pleaded with his eyes.

“Thou shall bear a love for one soul in a thousand faces, and suffer as the face cease to exist but the soul, perpetually.” You breathed, “That is your punishment, right. Yuno.” You stated, voice vapid.

How did you know all of that? He wanted to ask you but his throat has gone dry, his voice nowhere to be found. All of his insides are in a frenzy, legs wobbling from the reality of it all. No.

“How… how did you know that name?” Jaehyun was exasperated. He feels as if dying. Yet he clings on to that hope that these are just coincidental. That you don’t really know about his punishment and the name he’d used and spoke only to Aurora one hundred years ago. But when you answered his question, he knew. He knew why God kept you alive. It wasn’t mercy. It’s his punishment after all.

“I know… Because I am Aurora.”

[modernpace]

Loki x Reader chapter 6

A/N: IMPORTANT AUTHORS NOTE AT END

Chapter 6: “She’s dangerous” “So am I”

You, Thor, Sif, Hogun, Volstagg, and Fandral in the banquet hall for dinner. You had gotten used to how rowdy it got in the evenings. You learned quickly it was an every-night thing to throw bangers for dinner.

Tomorrow was the day--you were going to go up against one of them.

You went to take another sip of your wine but widened your eyes when you realized your chalice was empty. Your anxiety was definitely overwhelming you a bit. You poured yourself another glass but promised yourself that was your last one. You couldn't risk getting hammered before a big fight.

You picked at meat in front of you as you all chatted and laughed.

Then Vostagg addressed you, "So, Lady Y/n, what did you learn from your training?" He raised a playful eyebrow as the rest of them looked intrigued.

You laughed to yourself when you pointed to Thor, "He's bigger than me," you shifted your finger to Fandral who was next to you, "taller than me." You moved your finger to Hogun, "And he's older than me." Then Sif, "and stronger than me." You finally pointed to Volstagg, "and his arm's a little bit longer than me."                 (Please tell me you get this reference).

They all looked at you with confused and concerned faces.

"If that's all she's learned, she's doomed," Hogun said concerned.

You giggled, "It's just a song, you guys." You tilted your head and smiled thankfully, "No, I learned a lot, I swear."

"She definitely has tricks up her sleeves, gentlemen," Sif said smirking. She placed a piece of fruit into her mouth and winked at you.

Thor nodded and rubbed his stomach, "Oh, believe me, I know." He lightly shivered as he remembered something. "I thought she stabbed me, but her clone went right through me."

Laughter echoed through the banquet hall as the six of you continued to chat and joke til late.

With your books in hand, you made your way to the dungeon. You hadn't seen him yet that week. You told yourself you needed to focus on your training for the fight,  but you couldn't help finding yourself feeling guilty. Why? No fucking idea.

You slowed your pace as you approached his cell, finding him lying on his bed. You nodded curtly and turned to leave.

"Look who finally decided to show up."

You smoothly spun around with a cheeky smile, "Aww, did you miss me?"

He leaned up, letting his elbows rest on his knees, and chuckled, "Not you, per se."

You mouthed 'ah' as you moved closer. "Well it's not like you need company," you jabbed as you gestured to the other cells. He narrowed his eyes and smiled dryly. You chuckled as you sat down on the floor and reclined your legs. You were relieved to be wearing your regular clothes again... that's why you'd go to the dungeons so late; hardly anyone was awake to criticize you breaking the rules.

You opened your books to read and take notes from where you left off. You could feel his stare clawing at you for attention. "Can I help you?"

He shrugged.

You nodded and continued reading, but the goddamn fucker would not stop staring. "Okay," you said annoyed, "this is getting creepy, Loki. What do you want?"

He hesitated.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" You raised an eyebrow at him as he continued. "Your 'big day' is tomorrow. Isn't this...what did you call it... self-sabotage?"

You laughed, "Wow, look at you, picking up on the psychology I've been spewing." He rolled his eyes and you shook your head. "It's not like I'd actually get any sleep. And why exactly do you care, Troublemaker? Wouldn't that just be another thing for you to shit on me for?"

He smirked, "Oh, no, darling. You'll lose either way. I get that pleasure, regardless."

You scrunched your nose and shook your head. "Such a wise-ass," you mumbled. "Well, if it's any consolation, I caught your--Thor by surprise yesterday."

He raised an eyebrow curiously, "Is that so?"

You nodded proudly, "Yup. My clone stabbed him. Never thought I'd see the day where I scared the Almighty God of Thunder." You laughed to yourself as you thought about his expression--shock and betrayal. You furrowed your brows, "It was kinda unsettling. He looked genuinely traumatized."

Loki let out a laugh and you looked at him. He was reminiscing about something, "That, would be my fault." You leaned forward but he didn't continue. "Well done, though. Wouldn't have expected a Midgardian to pull that off."

I shrugged and leaned onto your arms' support, letting the backhanded compliment roll off your shoulders.

You looked around his cell. He had fresh fruit and pheasant from the banquet. You figured Frigga sent the food, and then diverted your gaze to his books. No new ones.

"What do you do when you're bored?"

Loki looked at you as you blankly stared back, but didn't answer.

"Is that the point of this?" You gestured to the cell, "To slowly get you to be silent with your own thoughts? So you can face what you've done, but internally?" You pulled your legs up to your chest and hugged them. "You'd definitely go insane at some point. I mean I just don't ge-"

"Enough."

You quickly shut your mouth at the harsh tone in his voice. You were trying to get him to open up, possibly let his guard down...just a little. He stared at you, his eyes now filled with disdain and something else you couldn't make out. "I...I'm sorry. I di-"

"Leave." He said quietly, but sternly. You went to respond but this time he yelled. "LEAVE!"

You flinched and gathered your books. You stood and made your leave. Quickly glancing back, you caught one last glimpse of him.

His back was turned to you as he stood, his hands were clenched, and his body was stiff.

The next morning you made your way to Thor. One of the guards told you he was still in his chambers. You picked at your fingernails as you contemplated knocking or just leaving.

You couldn't stop thinking about last night. You felt bad for pissing Loki off that bad. You never saw him that angry and you certainly weren't expecting it. Did you deserve to be snapped at like that? Probably. But it was still...

Just as you turned to leave his door swung open. Thor looked down at you with confusion, "Y/n? What are you doing here this early?"

You scratched at the back of your hand, "Can we talk? Privately?"

He nodded, "I actually need to speak to you about something important."

He led you outside to a garden. It was empty as the two of you walked its grounds.

"Something's troubling you." He stated. You nodded, trying to find the right words.

"I don't think this is working."

He furrowed his brows and stopped walking. You halted as well. "What do you mean?"

You ran a hand through your locks and sighed. "He's not going to open up to me. I'm not helping. He's too...guarded." You looked up at the fluffy clouds and furrowed your brows, "And being locked up, definitely isn't helping my case or his."

"What are you getting at?"

"How bad of an idea do you think it would be for me to ask your father for some...leniency?"

His eyes widened, realizing what you meant. "Y/n," he started.

You looked at him seriously, "I know,  I know it's unlikely... but every time I think I'm getting somewhere he pulls back and hides away in a shell of himself."

"My father doesn't even know the full extent as to why you're here."

You tilted your head while crossing your arms and raised an eyebrow suspiciously, "Oh, come on. You don't actually believe that do you? He's Odin, the All-Father."

He let out a sigh, "As much as I would love to see him out of there, it's not a good idea. Not now, at least."

"What do you mean?"

"Firstly, you've only talked to him five or six times, yes?"

You nodded reluctantly, "Well, yeah. But I doubt anything would change. You know your brother, Muscles. He's too guarded, and being put on display like an animal at the zoo isn't hel--"

"There's something else." You raised an eyebrow for him to continue. "I need to go back to Earth."

"What?"

You followed Thor at a fast pace to Heimdall. He filled you in on the way. Heimdall could no longer see Jane.

Looks like that fight was put on hold. Thank God, you thought.

You could tell he was worried and told him you were coming with him, no arguments. You argued it was cuz you were his responsibility both on Earth and in Asgard. He didn't have the time nor patience to argue so he silently agreed. You gave a quick hello to Heimdall and he made a quick conversation with Thor, before opening the Bifrost and sending you both to Jane's last location.

You arrived and looked around. There were several industrial shipping crates. Your eyes landed on two brunettes talking a few feet away from you.

Suddenly the sky opened up and it started pouring. "Great," you grumbled getting drenched.

Both brunettes looked in your direction, and one of them stormed over.

"Jane," Thor said. She reached a hand up to his face and then slaps him. Your mouth drops and you step back giving them safe.

The rain stopped and you looked around confused. It was no longer raining directly on you. You went to say something but stopped when Jane slapped him a second time, "Where were you?!"

Thor's face was full of concern, "Where were you? Heimdall could not see you."

As the two talked Darcy approached and you went up to her. "Hi," you said relieved to not be focusing on the awkward conversation between Jane and Thor.

She turned her head. "Hi?" She said confused. "Have we met?"

You shook your head, "Right, no. I'm Y/n. A friend of Thor's from...work?"

She nodded, "I'm Darcy, an intern for Jane." She pointed to a guy being detained at a car behind you, "And that's my intern." You nodded awkwardly and bounced on your heels. You glanced back at the two. They were about to kiss until Darcy interrupted about the weird phenomenon with the rain.

"Hey, is that you?" she asked Thor. The rain stopped as Thor looked up.

"Um," Darcy started, "I'm pretty sure we are getting arrested."

Jane gave a dry smile to Darcy and her eyes landed on you. "Um, hi." She turned back to Thor. "Hold that thought," she said before running toward the police.

Darcy and Thor greeted each other as you three made your way to Jane and the cops. Just as you're about to reach her, the cop reaches out to grab her. Suddenly a bright red light and a strong force burst out from them. Everyone gets pushed back and Thor screams out for Jane.

He runs to her and you help Darcy up. "Are you alright?" he asks.

The cops draw their weapons and slowly approach them, telling Jane to stand down and put her hands up. Thor tries to reason with them.

"Look, officers, you don't know what's happening, neither do we. But it's best if you all stepped back," You warned.

The cop shook his head, "She's dangerous." You rolled your eyes.

"So am I," Thor responded. "Y/n." You nodded and moved closer to them as Thor grabs Jane.

You could feel the wind pick up around you as the Bifrost opened. You noticed Jane tightened her eyes and you chuckled at her response. It was definitely something that took time getting used to, you would know.

You arrive back and sigh in relief that the brief rollercoaster ride is over. "We have to do that again," Jane said with an excited smile. She noticed Heimdall and greeted him with a shy smile.

"Welcome to Asgard," he said, smiling in return.

_______________________________________

A/N:

AHHHHH HIIIII Okay, so I know this doesn't entirely fit the canon storyline. But I figured the whole "bringing peace back to the 9 realms" happened before Y/n arrived in Asgard. Idk exactly lol, but that's what I'm going for

AlsoOoooOoo I'm finally ahead of my chapters! When you read this, both chapters 5 and 6 will be published this week.

I'm setting a schedule for new chapters: Two chapters a week, usually posted on the weekends.

AHHHHHH Things are finally picking up. I have a few other NON-CANON things planned so please try to understand that it's not gonna be exactly the same.

Love yall.

xx Izzy <3

QOTD: What is your favorite cartoon?

AOTD: Recently it's been Rapunzel's Tangled Adventures.

[fuckingfinwions]

I see what you mean! Also the image of Curufin specifically being humiliate/paraded is very evocative! I guess I want 2 know if there are ever times when maedhros tells nolo/fingon+curufin to do something and curufin tries to refuse/slack off bc *he* feels humiliated by it and fingon/nolo are just like 'shut up and go along with it, itll be over faster/don't get me in trouble too'? i imagine they were much gentler towards their own family ofc but fingon seems to (rightfully) hate curufin. is nol

*nolo ever like 'curufin you literally used to do this all the time--don't you remember how much all of you relished in punishing 'disobedience''? it just seems like a fascinating power dynamic where ostensibly curufin, nolo, and fingon (and tyelpe later) are on the same 'level' but they dont actually all like or trust or work together and maedhros does treat them differently (he seems more affectionate with fingon?). so them interacting alone or while with mae is so interesting bc they are cons

*constantly scheming to try and make things better for themselves or at least Not Worse but totally could fuck it up for each other. i also wonder if nolo/fingon are gentler with celebrimbor once he finally comes of age and joins them? do they like...tell him what to expect when he's afraid of it happening in the future, or give him any adivce, or comfort him when it does happen? does curufin do that either or does he just refuse to think abt it? i cant iamgine nolo/finno being mean to tyelpe

wondering eg--maedhros has to go deal with something urgent & to save time tells curufin/fingon to prep each other. does curufin actually do it well? does he do a good job? does fingon? obviously neither want to touch each other, but if its nolo+fingon they have an incentive to cooperate just to make it easier on each other. do curufin & fingon actually work towards this? does fingon do a decent job bc he knows there will be consequences? what would punishment actually be if there would be any?

also i have to say its darkly ironic that being so 'low' spares fingon & nolo some very poignant humiliation that maedhros inflicts on curufin. do they still get ordered to do things to each other at parties or was that just something the feanorions did as teenagers & maedhros has 'grown out of'? (also do nolo/fingon ever get to write letters to turgon&aredhel? would they get a chance to see them if they visited? do t&a ever try to rescue them? would they rescue curufin/tyelpe too?)

There are definitely times when Curufin refuses to do things, but Nolo and Fingon would rather get it over with. Maedhros doesn’t call them all to his chamber that often, but when he does it’s for something elaborate. Also, Maglor has permission/access to them as well, and once he gets over it being weird to fuck his (former) brother, he’s going to want full on erotic plays. Curufin has been “broken in” enough that he no longer tries to run or attack, but he still has his pride. He mostly realizes that he has to obey orders for outright sex acts, but if he feels like he’s the butt of a joke, he’ll just stand there. Or sometimes if a chore is particularly humiliating, he’ll also refuse to do it, even if it’s moving something heavy that really needs multiple people.

When Curufin’s being uncooperative, Nolo will try to reason with him. “There’s only two ways this is going to end. You do it now; or you stubbornly refuse to until they punish you and then you do it. I know it’s unpleasant, but there’s no way around it.”

Fingon, by contrast, doesn’t expect reasoning with Curufin to work. If Curufin’s the only one who will get punished, Fingon leaves him to it. If not, Fingon will try to physically force him to go along. Maglor’s script calls for Curufin to crawl on his knees; Fingon trips him. Maedhros wants them all to leave their robes in their room and come to him naked on the balcony, so there’s nothing to worry about getting blown away; Fingon grabs Curufin’s hand after his bath and starts walking. It turns into a physical fight once or twice, until Maedhros makes it clear he’s far too busy to deal with them fighting, and next time anyone is punched, both of them (or perhaps even all four) will be whipped. After that, they’re both careful to keep it to plausibly deniable “bumping into each other”.

When Curufin actually disobeys in front of Maedhros, there’s really nothing Nolo or Fingon can do.

Fun fact: Since Curufin is locked up in Maedhros’s bedroom for a week straight, it falls to Nolo and Fingon to look after Celebrimbor. He’s a terrified thirteen year old who just had his entire life upended, so they both have a lot of sympathy for him. (And he never hurt them, as that was a sexual privilege reserved for adults.) They teach him how to do the tedious chores, and where lunch is served for all the servants, and where extra cleaning supplies are kept if you run out of rags halfway through polishing the mirrors. They also explain how he’ll be expected to behave, and make sure to quickly greet any nobles they see in their work so that Celebrimbor can echo their response.

They don’t really know how to comfort Celebrimbor - him “losing” all his uncles, who he actually liked, is different than it was for Fingon - but they try. Nolo reassures Celebrimbor that Curufin will be back soon, after a few days he’ll be trusted enough to be out Maedhros’s direct sight, and Curufin was not seriously injured last time Nolo saw him. Fingon assures Celebrimbor that your father being trained to be a sex slave doesn’t actually mean he’ll stop loving you or wanting to hang out with you, though of course Curufin and Celebrimbor will have far less free time than they did before.

When Curufin here’s about this he’s furious. (This scene takes place with Curufin chained to a wall in the Servant Nolofinweans’ quarters, because that’s where  Maedhros put him for the night.)

Curufin: “Get away from my son! I won’t have you perverts corrupting him.”

Nolo: “What have we done that’s so perverse? All I’ve taught Celebrimbor is some useful cleaning tips.”

Curufin: “You’ve fucked your own brother, and your children! Fingon rode his brother’s cock in front of half the court, and your daughter spends most of her time in the palace naked and covered in seed.”

Nolo is not going to punch someone who is tied up and unable to punch back. At least, not unless directly ordered to. “You were often the one who ordered such, and yet you think yourself above us?”

Curufin: “I’ve ordered mules to carry things, and I’m above them too.”

Nolo: “You’re one to talk, with how you were gagging for Maedhros an hour ago.”

Curufin: “That’s different! He forced me to do it, you walked in there on your own two feet.”

Nolo: “I walked in because I knew I’d be dragged otherwise. I desire it less than you do.”

So yeah, they’re not exactly friends. Also, Fingon locked Celebrimbor in Aredhel’s old bedroom (with himself outside the door) when the argument started, to shield him from Curufin’s anger and humiliation. Hell get to talk to Curufin once Curufin is no longer talking about sex though.

eg--maedhros has to go deal with something urgent & to  save time tells curufin/fingon to prep each other.

First off: Curufin is still definitely attracted to Fingon and Nolo. He resents being told what to do, but if ordered to fuck or touch one of them he will take the excuse to get his hands all over them. He probably still won’t do a useful job though - more of playing with Fingon’s nipples or cock with one hand, while one finger of the other is in Fingon’s ass so Fingon can’t pull away. Fingon considers prer to be defined as stretching and lubing Curufin enough that Maedhros will enjoy sticking his cock in, with Curufin in little enough pain that he can come if Maedhros tries for that. So Fingon just goes with three fingers from the start, and uses Curufin’s moment of surprise to reach back and prep himself a bit better. Sure, Curufin would be punished for doing a bad job, but Fingon would be stuck with inadequate prep.

Fingon doesn’t push Curufin away because Maedhros could be back at any moment, and he ordered them to prep each other rather than themselves. (Maedhros finds the thought of his sex slaves “playing with” each other very arousing, even though he knows it’s just a show for him.)

Maedhros goes for the thematic/ironic punishments. The next night, Maedhros orders Fingon to prep Curufin as badly as he was prepped, and then puts a giant dildo in Curufin. He can take it out when he comes, and he’s not allowed to touch his cock.

That’s assuming that Curufin’s bad prep “just” caused pain or injury to Fingon. If Curufin actually did such a bad job prepping Fingon that Maedhros had to wait, or felt pain, that would be terrible. Maedhros would beat him with a crop, and then chain Curufin’s hands behind his back - if he’s not going to use them as ordered, he doesn’t need them. If Curufin apologized very, very well the next night, Maedhros might unchain his hands before putting the dildo in.

(Fingon’s prep of Curufin is judged as adequate, especially if he touches Curufin’s cock enough to get it hard before Maedhros gets back. Fingon knows what his “audience” wants.)

Getting ordered to do things to each other at parties is mostly something Maedhros “grew out of”. He’s king now, and has a whole lot more power than just making “low” people fuck on his command. Possibly Maglor still orders it though. And Maedhros does like private shows, he just doesn’t need a big audience for his sex salves fucking each other.

I don’t think Maedhros would allow Nolo and Fingon to write letters back and forth with Turgon and Aredhel - too easy to plan an escape, even if Maedhros reads the letters too. He’d probably allow one way communication though.  Tugon and Aredhel can write letters to their family that will be read by a guard, but will reach their destination. Maedhros will occasionally have Nolo or Fingon attend him at court (clothed) so that everyone can see their subservience, and Turgon and Aredhel can know they’re still alive.

They would be standing beside Maedhros’ throne, fetching notes he left in his room, or a drink of water, or his lunch; wiping up any spills immediately, whether on the throne or the floor or Maedhros’s robes. Occasionally holding a book or similar where Maedhros can see it, without wrinkling his robe by setting it in his lap. After a year or so, Maedhros has Curufin attend him as well - in a beautiful gag the first couple times, just in case.

[lady-of-the-lotus]

Fractured Ice - Ch. 4/7

Xue Yang whisks a solipsistic Lan Xichen off on a murder roadtrip to raise Xiao Xingchen and Meng Yao from the grave. Because that will solve all of their problems, right?

Xue Yang reaches around Lan Xichen’s head, ties the strip of white cloth over his eyes, and lies down beside him. There’s little room between them on the narrow straw mattresses, and the last thing Lan Xichen feels before he drifts off to sleep is the whisper of Xue Yang’s breath on his neck.

XueXiao & XiYao - Rated M - Read on AO3! Tumblr: Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 5

Chapter 4 - turned all the mirrors around

It takes Lan Xichen three days to surreptitiously gather money for the trip. Upon his return from his mother’s house before Lan Qiren’s lectures, he’d noticed that the purse he kept in his rooms was gone, but it hadn’t mattered until now.

Uncle’s hidden hand, no doubt. Worried about what he’d do if he were able to escape the Cloud Recesses.

He meets Xue Yang before dawn at the gate of the Cloud Recesses. Lan Xichen’s heart is beating fast. It’s thrilling, being out so late—early?, sneaking around, breaking a half-dozen rules without so much as a pang of guilt—

All right. Just one pang. Until he reminds himself that nothing matters, that if he can’t trust his own judgment, trust his own senses, then all that matters is how he feels .

Xue Yang tosses him a qiankun bag.

“Your clothes,” he says. “All right, then. Break the gate seal, and let’s get out of this miserable place before I choke to death on all the stuffiness.”

“You didn’t try to break the seal on your own, did you?”

Xue Yang shakes his head in an exaggerated display of pique. “I’m not stupid, Zewu-jun.”

Lan Xichen is examining the gate. “Did you touch it at all?”

“I leaned against it, if that’s what you mean. I was waiting for almost an hour.”

“Sit on the stairs, then!” Lan Xichen quickly draws a shining blue symbol in the air and sends it flying at the gate, but it’s too late. The talismans protecting Cloud Recesses have been upgraded since the Wen invasion, and the second a headband-less Xue Yang had touched the gate it had triggered an alarm.

“We might be able to make it—”

But it’s too late. A dozen white-robed cultivators have arrived, swords drawn, together with—

“Uncle,” Lan Xichen says, bowing deeply. So they had been watching him. Normally, Lan Qiren wouldn’t have been the one to respond to a routine perimeter alarm likely caused by one of Wangji’s wayward rabbits.

Lan Qiren gestures for the other cultivators to fall back. “Xichen, where are you going?”

Lan Xichen finds that Shuoyue is in his hand. He grips it tighter. “Just to Gusu, Uncle.”

“At this hour? Without telling me?”

“He’s the Clan Leader,” says Xue Yang. He’s twirling his hair, a gesture of pointed disrespect. “He can do whatever he wants.”

Lan Qiren looks confused at this sudden departure from courtesy from someone who had always treated him with almost cloying deference in the past.

Xue Yang puts his hands together and bows low, as if rethinking blowing his cover. “Begging Elder Lan’s pardon, of course.”

Lan Qiren turns to Lan Xichen as if Xue Yang isn’t worth his time. Xue Yang smirks slightly, but his jaw is slightly clenched. Then, almost immediately, his face smoothes itself into its usual expression of bland civility.

“Xichen, return to your chambers at once,” Lan Qiren orders. “This is unseemly. We will discuss it in the morning.”

Pressure is building in Lan Xichen’s chest.

“Xichen! Return to your room at once!”

A warmth. A blooming.

“Xichen!”

Energy is flowing through the air around him, crackling, buzzing, a thousand dots of heat and light all converging on Lan Xichen, sending a current of awful energy through him, an expulsion of pure light—

A glowing blue arc tears from his sword, striking Lan Qiren and the cultivators, sending them flying into the rocky steps, the trees, the stone path and stairs. The sound of bone breaking, of groans—

Xue Yang grabs Lan Xichen’s arm and flies off with him through the gate, setting down and landing a few times, finally settling down in the middle of the trees blanketing the mountainside, far off the path, where the rush of a small waterfall masks their voices.

The sound of breaking bone is still echoing in Lan Xichen’s ears.

“Put these on.” A white-and-gray robe is draped over his arm. “They might be a little small, but ordinary people don’t have private tailors, so it will help our story.”

Lan Xichen just stands there, staring blankly.

Xue Yang sighs and shoots him a keen look. “Worried about whether or not you killed anyone?”

“I—I—I need to go back and—check—”

“Don’t bother. I saw everything, and nobody died. Just some broken bones. Get changed.”

“White is too conspicuous,” he hears himself saying. He’s too numb—no, not numb—what is that feeling? Euphoric? Could you be both numb and euphoric?—to offer more than that.

“I thought you could travel as a priest. People help priests. I’ll be your cultivator companion. Protecting you, as it were.”

“Why white?”

Xue Yang purses his lip, then shrugs. “I thought you’d agree more readily to white…”

Lan Xichen reaches for the robes, but Xue Yang pulls away suddenly as if unwilling to let him touch them.

“You’re right. Here. I have backups.” Xue Yang hurriedly tucks the white robes away and unrolls a new set of clothes, exhibiting them to Lan Xichen as if he’s a silk merchant unrolling a bolt of expensive material for a prospective customer.

Peasant clothes.

Xue Yang watches him closely in the dusky pre-dawn light, drawing more amusement from Lan Xichen’s reaction to the clothes than Lan Xichen thinks he, Lan Xichen, has ever taken in anything in his own life.

“Don’t worry, Zewu-jun would look good in anything.” Xue Yang, who appears particularly giddy tonight, winks at him exaggeratedly, and Lan Xichen finds himself smiling despite himself at how utterly ridiculous, how utterly crazy, how absurdly out-of-control everything is.

He’d attacked his uncle, hurt the man who raised him, flung his own people into the mountain hard enough to shatter bone, and all he feels is weightless.

And sick. But mostly weightless.

Wangji attacked and badly wounded thirty-three clan elders, he reminds himself, and now he’s the Chief Cultivator.

Meaning: there is still a way back.

If I want to take it.

He reaches for the clothes.

Normally dressing is something he lingers over—used to, anyway—but there’s nothing to linger over here. A pair of grayish homespun trousers, an undyed tunic, and that’s it. It feels odd to have the shape of his legs showing, and he tugs almost self-consciously at the short hem of his tunic.

“Glad you appreciate them.” Xue Yang has already changed into his own peasant clothes. All-black, with a longer tunic and simple black strip of cloth binding his hair. He sits on a rock, munching on a bag of candied peanuts from his bottomless qiankun sleeve. “If you think it was easy to find peasant clothes to fit someone your height, think again.”

“Couldn’t we travel as merchants?”

“Where’s the fun in that? All right, then, my friend. Off with that murder weapon atop your head, and smooth your hair into a simple knot. Three bumps in front, a knot, the rest down like this—”

Lan Xichen stows his silver hairpiece in his qiankun pouch with the rest of his belongings. “Shall we start?”

“Two tendrils of hair down in front like mine, to better hide your face—It’s too bad we can’t shave a bit of bone off that chin of yours, but I’d never recognize you like this. Although—”

He reaches out, takes hold of the two elbow-length tendrils, and cuts them so they fall no farther than his throat.

“Better.” He raises an eyebrow at the silent Lan Xichen and sits back down with his peanuts. “Not going to say anything?”

“What good would it do? The hair is already cut.”

Another grin. “You’re passive. I like that in a man.”

Lan Xichen winces. “Please stop with those comments.”

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “It’s just a joke.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Look who’s standing up for himself! Well, let’s see how you do on this, then: headband off. Complete the transformation from butterfly into caterpillar.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Xue Yang tosses a nut in the air, catches it in his mouth. “I thought you Lan liked poetry and stuff. Headband. Off.”

“I—” Lan Xichen feels an odd tingly sensation in his hands, his lips. A sudden coldness runs up and down his legs. “I can’t.”

“I’ll do it, then.”

“No!” Lan Xichen steps back.

He knows Xue Yang is right. The Lan would be after them, and with the Lan Family headband on, he may as well be wearing an “I Am Zewu-jun” sign on his chest with an “If Found, Return To Cloud Recesses” sign on his back.

But—

“Much as I’d love to sit here and watch you wrestle with thirty-odd years of indoctrination, we don’t have all day.” Xue Yang tucks his bag of nuts away. “We need to shake a leg before the Lan gets their act together.”

With trembling hands Lan Xichen reaches behind his head.

And stops.

Xue Yang coughs.

Lan Xichen unties the headband. Cups it in his palm. The silver ornament is so cold against his skin it almost burns. The blue silk ribbon is fragile, almost translucent, where it never was before.

“Zewu-jun?”

Lan Xichen swallows hard, tucks it away in his pouch, and follows Xue Yang down the mountain.

* * * * *

By “Leave it to me,” Xue Yang had evidently meant “Watch me ferret out the dodgiest inns in any given town we’re in or rough it outside.”

Out of necessity, he claims, but that doesn’t explain why he’d already had the peasant clothes prepared as a so-called backup before Lan Xichen attacked Lan Qiren. Xue Yang thrives in these awful places, seems far more at home than he ever did in the refined Cloud Recesses.

“Less pretention,” he replies when Lan Xichen mentions it one day. “These people are angry at someone, they hit them. Something is funny, they laugh. No two-faced hypocrites talking out of both sides of their mouths.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t quite see that, but then again he keeps mostly to himself while Xue Yang enjoys getting into conversations with whomever happens to be around them at the time.

“I’m surprised I haven’t heard any gossip about a runaway clan leader who went berserk,” Xue Yang says one evening.

“You didn’t hear about my brother wounding thirty-three clan elders either, did you.” He knows he shouldn’t have said that, but it’s hard to filter himself after having decided the filter doesn’t matter anymore.

Delighted, Xue Yang looks up from where he’s spreading a blanket out over the grass, his bed for the night. “When did that happen?”

“Thirteen years ago.”

“Really? The ice king? Fuck, I might actually like him now.” Xue Yang produces Jiangzai in a shower of orange sparks, lays it out beside him on the blanket, Shuanghua nestled up under his arm. “I’ve been everywhere, and I never heard a word. What do the Lan do to stop them from gossiping, cut out their disciples’ tongues?”

“It’s called ethics, my friend.”

Xue Yang grins, stretching himself like a cat. “Says the man who just called me— me —a friend.”

Lan Xichen laughs. “My options are few.”

The inns, when they can find them, are smelly, the food barely palatable, but Lan Xichen enjoys the time between, the long stretches of travel through the countryside where he can just be Huan the Peasant. Prior to setting off, it had been a long, long time since he’d been anything other than well-fed and well-taken care of, numbed into a haze by luxury, and now he feels oddly awake.

The earth is firm beneath his feet as they walk. Stable. Sturdy. Cloud Recesses is a hazy blur, a fading dream. The world around him is real, the trees and birds and sunshine, the loud, smelly people, the leaky inn ceilings, the rocky mountain paths and drenching rains and cool breezes of approaching autumn.

He’s stopped dreaming of flying.

“What did you do during the Sunshot Campaign?” Xue Yang asks him as he stares down into a cup of what was certainly not Dragon Well tea, no matter what the innkeeper claimed. They’ve been on the road almost three weeks, and, as they don’t dare stop at any respectable tea house, this is still the closest he’s gotten to decent tea. “Did they cart luxury tents out into warzones for use by the gentry?”

“I don’t mind this. Truly—”

A crash. The busboy has dropped a tray. Lan Xichen turns away as the innkeeper turns on the busboy, backhanding him into a wall hard enough to leave a mark.

“You keep making faces at the tea.”

Lan Xichen had been wincing at the sight of the abuse, but he doesn’t want to dwell on that. Best not to dwell on the uglier side of life, especially now. He’s seen shocking things these past several weeks, things he didn’t realize existed in his territories, but best not think about that. Doubly so now that everything feels far too real. “Something about this particular inn reminds me of…the past.”

Not just this in. Every inn. The rooms A-Yao had rented during their time living together had been in sticky little inns just like all the sticky little inns they’ve stopped in.

Painful memories, for the last year. But now he lies awake at night intentionally recalling his time living with A-Yao in their cramped little garrets. And for the first time in sixteen years, he doesn’t veer away from the memory of the grief and uncertainty of that time, the unrelieved dread.

He stares up at the ceiling in bed that night. The room is small, barely enough room for the two straw-stuffed mattresses crammed inside. Xue Yang lies facing Lan Xichen, holding Shuanghua to his chest, his maskless, disarmingly young face pressed to the sheeny white hilt so tightly that the patterned grip has left marks on his cheek.

At least he’s not sitting up murmuring to the spirit-trapping pouch again, as he tends to do when he thinks Lan Xichen has fallen asleep first. Lan Xichen needs complete silence to sleep, and Xue Yang’s nocturnal mumblings have been a trial. As have been the times he’s woken up to find Xue Yang staring at him.

He doesn’t hold it against him. The rooms have been small. Not many other places to stare if not at the person lying directly across from you.

Jiangzai lies on the floor between them, its elegantly brutal blade gleaming dully in the faint light from the window. It’s set at an angle, resting against Xue Yang’s straw mattress, giving Lan Xichen a glimpse of his reflection in the highly-polished metal.

A stranger gazes back at him. By Xue Yang’s suggestion, he’s been growing a beard and moustache to hide his distinctive chin and jaw. They work surprisingly well, he thinks. His hair is still bound in an unadorned knot on top of his head, face framed by the foreign half-bangs that keep getting in his eyes.

He stares at himself for a long time.

He can get used to this. To being an entirely new person.

Except Qinghe is only days away, and with it everything he’d just escaped. The Jin’s social structure is the most elaborate of the four main clans, but it’s hedonistic and the Family is free to indulge itself as it wishes. But the Nie Clan—they’re rigid like the Lan, unyielding like the Lan, obstinate, uncompromising, and self-righteous.

The fact that someone like Nie Huaisang is in charge would make him dread it less, had it not been for the fact that Nie Huaisang had engineered A-Yao’s death in cold blood and then lied to his face about it.

“Do you think my uncle has cultivators waiting for us in Qinghe?” he asks Xue Yang in the morning.

It’s a thought that has never been far from his mind, but somehow avoiding Lan cultivators on the road had seemed more important.

Xue Yang looks up from where he’s fixing his hair. He’s unexpectedly fussy about his admittedly glorious hair, though he never does more than wind it into a simple knot, leaving the rest free. Lan Xichen would never offer to help him arrange it, of course, but he gets the idea that Xue Yang wouldn’t allow anyone to touch it anyway.

Xue Yang shrugs. “They wouldn’t dare grab you against your will, not in front of the Nie.”

"True. And I doubt he would trust Nie Huaisang with the truth of what happened. But still...”

Lan Xichen lingers by the front door as Xue Yang settles their bill with the innkeeper. Normally they’d have to pay up-front in a low-class place like this, but Xue Yang had been the one to handle the preliminaries, as usual, while Lan Xichen had gone up to the room, and he’d told Lan Xichen that he’d worked something out with the innkeeper.

He watches as Xue Yang yanks the innkeeper’s head down, cracking a cheekbone on a table, and pats the man’s face with his knife, slicing half his long droopy moustache off with the razor-sharp blade.

Oh. So that was what he meant by “worked it out.” Has he been doing this in every inn? Lan Xichen has plenty of money. Is this kind of thing fun for him?

Tremendously, going by the look on his face.

Lan Xichen steps outside. The busboy is sweeping the front stairs, his face a mass of bruises. Lan Xichen passes him a piece of silver.

“For you,” he says. “Not your master.”

“ Passive ,” Xue Yang had called him. Well, here he was, doing something.

It felt nice. Not just the act of charity. He’s done plenty of charity in the past. The doing.

“What good is that going to do?” Xue Yang asks as they walk down the street. “You should have just killed the innkeeper, if you wanted to help the boy and not just make yourself feel better.”

“Just…killed him?”

“Why not? You’re stronger than him.” He looks almost angry for some reason. “You’re as bad as he ever was.”

“He—”

“Not the innk—forget it.”

“Robbing the inkeeper was enough.”

“It’s not like he was a good person,” says Xue Yang, as if the delinquent cultivator even knew the definition of the term. “Aren’t the Lan preoccupied with justice and all that?”

“I agree that his treatment of the boy is wrong, but he broke no law.”

There’s a surprising amount of bitterness in Xue Yang’s voice. “And laws are always right and breaking them is always wrong?”

“No, I’m not saying that, but without general rule of law, society would break down.”

“Because it’s been doing so well with rule of law.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t respond. He’d prefer not to think about how much he does, in fact, agree with the man beside him, despite knowing he shouldn’t.

Xue Yang’s lip curls, and he looks down at his left hand. It’s still bound with bandages, but they’re fitted around his palms, leaving all fingers but the little one exposed. Ready to grasp a sword hilt if needed. “He deserved disembowelment, if you ask me, but I figured we don’t need more people on our tail.”

Lan Xichen glances over his shoulder. They’ve spotted many Lan cultivators over the past several weeks, with a few narrow escapes before his beard came in. “So you didn’t kill him.” He feels a sense of relief. The world had been feeling too sharp and real since they’d left Gusu for that to be something to hand-wave away as he might have when everything was fogged and hazy and dreamlike.

“Of course I didn’t kill him.” Xue Yang gives a little cough, tapping his teeth with the tip of his knife. “Not even a little.”

“So—”

“Ah, here’s the gate. Any money for the exit toll?”

They keep their heads down as they pass through the gate. Two Lan cultivators are nearby, watching the crowd.

“If your people had more brains than a dumpling, they wouldn’t strut around in those white getups,” Xue Yang says. “You were right about white being conspicuous. They stick out like pigs in a henhouse.”

“ ‘Rule 819: Only the cowardly conceal themselves.’ Rule 820: Walk with candidness and sincerity. Rule 821: Do not carry concealed weapons.’ ”

Xue Yang laughs at that one. “Should I just whip out Jiangzai, then?”

Normally, Lan Xichen would laugh too—he’s been laughing more these past weeks—but he just shakes his head as if Xue Yang had actually meant it seriously. Qinghe’s mountains aren’t as lush as Cloud Recesses’, and the grim, rocky terrain is weighing on his already low spirits, and the gritty light of the overcast afternoon only makes things worse.

Lan Xichen shaves in the town nearest to the Unclean Realm after a frugal supper at an inn.

The inn is almost empty. He risks returning to the main room after Xue Yang, who sits drinking sweet white wine and staring at the table.

Xue Yang looks up. “Back to your old self, I see. I thought you were going to meditate?”

Lan Xichen shakes his head slightly. He hasn’t been able to shake himself of his habit of morning and evening meditations, vastly shortened as his sessions are. The one sense of structure in his newly untethered existence. It’s been a way to avoid negative thoughts, but now—

“We’re too close,” he says.

Xue Yang runs a finger around the rim of the wine jar. He’s not drunk, but there’s a melancholy air about him that Lan Xichen has never sensed before. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself…Have you given any thought about what you’re going to do if we fail?

“I…no.”

Xue Yang holds up his cup, examining the chipped ceramic in the dim candlelight, teeth slightly bared. “There’s always a chance. A chance your friend will remain trapped in that coffin. Spirit tormented for an eternity, forever remembering how he ended up in that coffin—”

Lan Xichen reaches for the wine jar.

The rest of the night is a blur. Suddenly Xue Yang is helping him up the stairs to their room, the smallest room yet. Two small straw mattresses with no space between them, filling up all available floor space.

Xue Yang lays him out flat on his bed and kneels facing him on his own mattress, something odd in his eyes. Reaches inside his tunic, pulls out a long strip of white cloth from the left side.

“Here,” he says. “Why don’t you put this on so you can sleep better? I know you’re sensitive to light, and it’s too bright in here, isn’t it?”

Normally Lan Xichen would suggest simply closing the window, shutting out the moonlight, but his alcohol-fogged brain doesn’t even consider it.

“And you can use these as a blanket,” Xue Yang adds, producing the gray-and-white robes he had shown him back in Gusu and spreading them out over Lan Xichen. His hands are trembling slightly. “They’re thin, but better than nothing. I know you still aren’t used to the chill.”

Lan Xichen blinks at him with bleary gratitude. “Thank you, my friend.”

Xue Yang reaches around Lan Xichen’s head, ties the strip of white cloth over his eyes, and lies down beside him. There’s little room between them on the narrow straw pallets, and the last thing Lan Xichen feels before he drifts off to sleep is the whisper of Xue Yang’s breath on his neck.

* * * *

Lan Xichen sleeps late the next morning, finally woken by the feel of something sliding off his face, around his head. He sits up. Xue Yang is holding a long strip of white material in his hand—one of his bandages?

He massages his aching temples. “What happened last night?”

Xue Yang’s eyes are red, as if he hadn’t slept at all last night. He smiles at Lan Xichen, but it’s not a happy smile. “You had a bit too much to drink, my friend. Now, let’s get moving. We want to reach the Unclean Realm before nightfall.”

Lan Xichen changes into his old clothes outside the town. Blue and white. Hair half-up. Back straight.

He avoids looking in the mirrored blades of their swords.

“Don’t forget the headband.”

Lan Xichen stares down at the strip of silk and silver in his palm. It’s heavier than he remembers.

Xue Yang idly tosses his knife in the air, catching it after its sixth rotation. “Hand cramp?”

Lan Xichen ties on the forehead ribbon.

* * * * *

Up Next: Nie Huaisang is (almost) utterly useless.

Or: The Nie chamberlain’s very bad, no-good day. Also some tomb robbing, if that floats your boat.

Chapter 5

[akimmito]

Heroes are made by the path they choose

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Master List

Chapter 12

After his mother leaves, Damian contacts the MT base so that he can go there and train a little, getting Kaalki to open a portal and go through it taking with him Agatha and Edgar, the other German shepherd. He sneaks to avoid being discovered that he has brought his dogs to the scene, since he's not allowed to.

He goes to the weapons room, where the reserves are kept and they will not know if any are missing, not as if he were taking those in sight. He cannot choose a katana, everyone would see that he has it, and he cannot risk being found out by removing weapons from the MT without permission. Grab a couple of knives, Swiss knive and a few small tear gas bombs, barely the size of marbles (usually used by Chloe and Marc).

The next thing in his plan is to convince Kaalki to help him find John Constantine. He could barely find a location on his own and it must be one of two, London or Los Angeles, but he admits that it's easier to use the powers of a Kwami if he want to do it without someone noticing and Hugo is very good at noticing when something is suspicious. He doesn't want to risk it, so he can't be out past lunchtime, which gives him three hours to get there in time to eat and look like he's just had a backyard adventure with his two dogs.

Find the Kwami in the kitchen with Sass and Mullo, the three of them are eating their breakfast, so everyone is already awake.

"Kaalki, can you do me a favor?"Longg joins his friends to have a meatloaf and let Damian talk, he knows that only Sass will not agree with what the boy intends, but neither will he be able to change his mind and none of them will say anything if don't ask them directly.

"What is it?"

"Can you take me to John Constantine?" He doesn't especially enjoy being so nice when asking, but it's always better to stay in his good graces, especially if he needs his help (and he doesn't know much about all of them to know how to do the same as with Plagg).

"The man Plagg lives complaining about?" Kaalki swallows a cube of sugar after asking, he sees that th"What do you want? "He probes, maybe he can get it if he wants something specific.

"I want sugar cubes with muscovado sugar, the last time I ate one was when Marie had not yet founded the MT. Max doesn't like it and she doesn't buy it. ”She pouts, she loves that taste.

"I'll make it." Damian smiles, why do the Kwami love a certain type of food so much?

"Great. I will open a portal to his house."e boy nods and thinks about it. "Why should I? What would I gain?"

"What will you do, Damian?" Sass asks curiously, he doesn't trust the boy to carry two German Shepherds with him who are almost his size and who is reputed to easily drag adult men, nor does he trust that the boy doesn't carry weapons with him.

"Talk. "

"Then let's go." Kaalki opens the portal at that moment and they find the sight of an old place and many things. "I've come once we looked him with Marie. "The Kwami smiles proudly.

"Let's go. "

Damian enters the portal followed by four Kwami and his two dogs, he smiles. It was better than he thought.

--------

Marc @MarcAC_twt

I had a sudden urge to scold someone.

Chloe B. @BourgeoisQueen

@MarcAC_twt I thought I was the only one

Alix @LostHeroBunnix

@MarcAC_twt @BourgeoisQueen It's our instincts that already know when one of us has done something stupid, what did you do @Epic_originalChampion?

Epic Kim @Epic_originalChampion

@MarcAC_twt @BourgeoisQueen @LostHeroBunnix It wasn't me, I swear. I'm not the only one who does stupid things, @AdrienAgreste does them too

Adrien A. @AdrienAgreste

@MarcAC_twt @BourgeoisQueen @LostHeroBunnix @Epic_originalChampion Oh no, blame someone else. I just woke up

Marc @MarcAC_twt

@BourgeoisQueen @LostHeroBunnix @Epic_originalChampion @AdrienAgreste I don't know, but something has happened

---------

Marc looks for Luka and Max, walks through the main halls of the headquarters: the training room, the kitchen, the dining room and the infirmary. He goes to private areas like the food warehouse and then to the individual rooms, where he finds Max dozing again after breakfast.

"Max, can you come over? I want to talk to you about something I noticed. ”Max puts his glasses back on and follows him. "I didn't find Luka... although this place can sometimes be a maze..."

"Did you look it up in the library or Marinette's domain?" Max asks. Marinette's domains are four special rooms: a meditation room, a laboratory that serves to create potions and where all the ingredients for a large amount of spells are kept, a small library with all kinds of books on magic and the occult, in addition to a study where she locks herself up when she becomes obsessed with a case. That without counting the magic vault where the box is kept and where only she has access.

"No, I didn't go there... you know nobody enters."

"Luka uses the meditation room a lot." He replies simply, that room is Luka's favorite because of the acoustics and the tranquility it generates.

"Oh, it's true. Are you will wait for me in front of the computer?"

"Sure."

Marc runs towards the mentioned sector. The first time he entered the MT, he couldn't believe how big it was and how organized everything was, to fill any need they had. There's even a living room where they can store their art supplies and there are some great computers for art use or video game play, great graphics cards. Sure, it wasn't so well equipped at first, but as they were making money they were putting together an excellent place for them to socialize and spend time if they needed an outside location of their life.

Luka is with his guitar in the meditation hall, his eyes closed and practicing a melody that has been spinning in his head for weeks, but does not flow completely when he takes it to real life.

"There you are, I want to talk to you about what I noticed while checking the security cameras." Marc feels bad for interrupting, but they are there to work on the butterfly case and not on other matters, although he understands the creative frustration that can arise. Luckily he always steps in front of Nathaniel and never falls behind in his weekly deliveries.

After the small interaction, the two of them head towards the main computer... in the room without a specific name and that everyone calls differently, perhaps they should agree on a name so that they should mention the big computer as a frame of reference. But that, Marc thinks, is a concern for another time.

Max is already settled in front of the computer, he's looking around, the shadow of concern in his eyes.

"Something is wrong?" Luka asks, realizing that more than concern is strangeness.

"I haven't seen Kaalki in several hours."

"Leave them alone, they spend all day with us, they have the right to a break." Marc lets him through, Mullo enjoys exploring and running around, he must have convinced the other two Kwami to play and they must be flying around in secret areas that surely they exist because Felix and Marinette are so detailed (and paranoid).

Max says nothing about it, although it still seems strange to him not to have seen or heard them anywhere.

"So what did you see?"Luka let the previous topic die, after Marc explains everything, they can look for the Kwami and ask them what they have been doing. Not that it' of their business, but is for Max to relax and they not have to face a surprise disaster like when Trixx released the panther from the zoo, after being away from Nathaniel for a few minutes.

"I was struck by what I didn't see. "Marc explains and displays the cameras closest to the scene and the adjacent ones where the butterfly came from, plays the footage and can see in real time that the butterfly comes from nowhere, without passing through the other chambers, the butterfly is present in the one closest to its objective. "I was thinking that maybe our villain approaches the victims so that we don't have a notion of their real location, but it's also not seen that he or she wanders around... I can only assume that it's their civil identity, but suspicious people didn't appear either."

"What if he's in a car?"Max asks, Gabriel was traveling by car to contact Rossi (a pity that they didn't get strong evidence to blame her and Agreste didn't say anything). Max takes control of the computer to check all the license plates of cars that passed through those streets at the same time that the Akuma appeared.

Around twenty cars passed through the area, not counting motorcycles and cargo trucks, although he takes them into account anyway, leaving a total of forty vehicles and that is forty people who begin to track according to the license plates. .

The three stay reviewing the history of each person on the list, they continue like this until lunchtime, when they see the Kwami again because they look for them to eat. Neither thinks much in that later.

-------

It's not the MT

Needle: Guys, we have some new information

Almost Pretty: Tell me it's enough to have someone to hit

Kiss my ass: I also have information

Kiss my ass: While traveling through Romania, I heard rumors that someone is paying criminals to revive crime in Paris

Three balls: It's a joke, isn't it?

Kiss my ass: I wish it were like that, boy

Immune to liars: I'll see if any of my informants on the streets know anything

Almost Pretty: I bet my firstborn that he's the damn butterfly

The Antibiotic: This makes it more difficult... Maybe it's time to include a new vigilante, right?

It’s a Nara: We should not rush, when we have more information, we will devise an action plan

Aithusa: What if the pump was made to order?

Three balls: That would be gnarled

Dragon Tamer: We'll see if we get more information

Wild goat: I have a couple of witness statements and I have been putting together the case with Detective Fontaine, I will give my discoveries about the bomb when Mari returns

Needle: There seems to be a general meeting

Divine gift: I will clear everyone's agenda

Silent Hill: Also mine?

Divine gift: Of course, I'll also schedule you a flight and an appointment with Miss Marie to take measurements of the dress you've been requesting. The first sketches are already

Silent Hill: Unexpected. Thanks, Hugo.

Oscar de la Rosa: I will take care of escorting Master Fu and Miss Marianne from London, they must want to meet their grandson

Three balls: Who knows how to summon demons?

Immune to liers: Does this mean we will all know each other? Why so sudden?

It’s a Nara: I think Felix and Mari have something to do with this

Almost Pretty: The villain is getting into other leagues, this would already enter as terrorism and organized crime. We could end up dealing with Akuma internationally

Needle: Assuming he's the one who wants to reactivate the crime

Plasticine: It's obviously him

Silent Hill: or she

Perfect Crime: His Akuma are thought through in detail, not careless, he waited for something to happen that would attract a wave of negativity not only to get a victim but to take us all vulnerable. Furthermore, he managed to catch us off guard with a non-dangerous, but highly troublesome Akuma. He's just been analyzing us

For all shit: I think it's time for the network that we started to create a few years ago to be fully established, in addition, it will be the first official meeting of the new Order.

Three balls: Great. Mari, can you summon demons?

Not in Hell: No need to summon anyone, I just booked my flight

Plasticine: Oh, I wanted to learn how to invoke

Perfect Crime: Yes, don't even think about it. We have enough trouble adding more

-------

Soooooo.... what do you think?

[dangerouslyclassyhottub]

now im just imagining that one day Roddy goes to ratchet or first aid for a checkup, and taking a look at the patients spark chamber isnt necessarily part of a routine checkup but sometimes its tood ti check roddys since, you know he got shot. you can see where im going with this.

dude I somehow missed the notification for this but yeah...

First Aid blinked behind his visor, unsure how such a routine check-up could have taken such a turn. He felt his tanks do a flip as he looked up at his Captain, who eyed him expectantly.

“Well? Am I dying or can I go now? I have some time scheduled with Drift before Magnus hunts me down for more paperwork.”

First Aid straightened up stiffly before raising a digit and opening his intake to reply. Except he didn’t have the words. So he promptly shut it after a few moments of silence.

“Ok ‘Aid, very funny, but the jokes over. You’re actually starting to scare me now.” Rodimus said as he tried to peer down into his own chest to see what was causing all the fuss.

“Um, just one moment Rodimus, I’ll be right back with Ratchet.” First Aid said quickly, he turned and was out the door before the Captain could call him back.

First Aid didn’t like admitting when he didn’t know what to do, but in this case he didn’t feel at all bad about seeking the help of Ratchet. This was much more personal than medical as it was, so he felt almost as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have. He hoped Rodimus wouldn’t be angry with him for what he had seen--for what he now knew about the speedster.

“Is Rodimus’ check up done already?” Ratchet chimed as First Aid approached the CMO’s desk, “That was fast, he must be in a hurry--” Ratchet’s words faltered when he looked up for his work and caught the energy in First Aid’s field.

“Is something wrong?”

“Has uh,” First Aid looked around to make sure no one else was around and listening in, “Has Rodimus ever told you about his sparkmate-- who it is?” First Aid asked hurriedly.

“He doesn’t have one, his spark ignited without a name on it’s casing.” Ratchet said, quirking a brow at him.

“But have you ever looked?” First Aid asked in a harsh whisper.

“What’s all this about ‘Aid?” Ratchet stood from his desk, leaning over at him.

“J-Just now, as I was checking his spark casing, I--uh... I saw a name.” First Aid shrank back a little as Ratchet’s optics narrowed.

“Though I’ve never checked myself,” Ratchet said slowly, “I’ve seen his medical files. It wasn’t ever some bluff he made, he really had no name on his casing.”

“Ratchet, I’m telling you,” First Aid said insistently, “There is a name.”

“Whose name?” Ratchet asked, still soundly incredulous.

That made First Aid pause. He didn’t even want to say it out loud. Doing so would acknowledge the very private thing he had seen.

“Whose name, ‘Aid?” Ratchet repeated, growling.

“You should probably see for yourself.” First Aid said after swallowing dryly around his words.

~

Rodimus flailed his arms after the medic as he left him sitting on the mediberth, his chestplates parted to the open and chilly air of the medbay.

He sat in silence, trying to keep his nerves from rising. He hadn’t had a flare up in years, now all of a sudden his casing was bothering him again. From the look on First Aid’s face, he might actually have something to worry about. He supposed his luck had to run out at some point. Perhaps breaking the Matrix meant that he had inadvertently caused himself damage? Maybe it had been keeping him alive this whole time and now that it was gone he was starting to die?

Rodimus chuckled airily to the empty room, “That would be a real bummer.”

He didn’t want to die. He still had so much he wanted to do still. He had so many things left undone, including his quest to find the Knights. He let out a shuddering breath and wondered briefly how many of those he had left in him.

He jolted in his seat as the door opened and Ratchet entered the room, First Aid in tow. He tried his best to put on a front of embarrassment.

“Ratchet! Knock first! I’m all exposed in here!” Rodimus chided, covering his spark with his hands and turning away coyly.

“Ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before.” Ratchet said as he approached. Despite his efforts, the medic definitely caught his nervousness in his field. As Ratchet projected comfort and reassurance with his own.

“So...” Rodimus looked between the medics, “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all!” First Aid said quickly, “Nothing life-threatening, I assure you.”

“Gotta admit, that last part isn’t as reassuring as you think.” Rodimus said as he fidgeted with his hands.

“First Aid wanted me to double check something he thought he saw, Rodimus. It’s not a big deal.” Ratchet said, approaching and silently asking to see behind Rodimus’ still parted chest plates.

Rodimus narrowed his optics but allowed the medic to proceed. After all, if there was one bot he could trust with his life, it was Ratchet. He relaxed and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to vent evenly. 

The medic peered inside his casing, whispering to First Aid, “Where was it that you saw it?”

“Down here, see it there?”

“That looks like a weld.”

“No, just below it, it runs along the edge there.”

There was a pause before Ratchet uttered something that made Rodimus’ want to jump out of his plating.

“What? What is it?” Rodimus demanded angrily, sitting forward suddlenly.

“Calm down Rodim--”

“I will not be calm! I just heard you swear an oath to Primus out loud!” Rodimus thrust a digit at the medic, “Tell me what’s wrong right now!”

Ratchet turned to First Aid who was cowering behind him, “I’ll handle this from here, thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

The other medic nodded and retreated from the room, which was quickly beginning to heat up from Rodimus’ outburst. Ratchet drug over a stool and sat down in front of Rodimus.

“Firstly, I have a few questions. You’ll probably be able to see where I’m going with them.” Ratchet unsubspaced a datapad, “The first thing I want to know is if you have ever faked any of your medical files.”

Rodimus was taken aback, “No? Why would I need to?”

“Your medical files confirm that you were ignited without a sparkmate’s glyphs on your casing.”

“Yes, I even looked a few times myself with a mirror... Ratchet, why?” Rodimus felt a little numb, he could see where this was going, but his processor didn’t want to jump ahead.

“Well,” Ratchet paused to scratch his chin, “Hot Rod might not have had a sparkmate... but Rodimus Prime does.”

There was a pregnant pause between the two. Rodimus almost glared in disbelief.

“How is that possible?” Rodimus asked after a long time.

“No idea. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it.” Ratchet said.

There was an air of tension surrounding Ratchet still. Which made Rodimus hesitant to ask what he was dying to ask.

“So,” Rodimus started, “Who...?”

Ratchet’s face fell for a moment, “Just so you are reminded, me and ‘Aid are sworn to confidentiality, we won’t ever tell anyone.”

Rodimus didn’t like that answer, “Ratchet you’re kind of scaring me.”

“To be honest, I’m a little scared too kid.” Ratchet unsubspaced a mirror, “You should probably see for yourself. I’m afraid you might not believe me.”

Rodimus gently took the mirror and, with Ratchet’s guidance, found the name on his casing.

“Who is... Nortagem?” Rodimus quirked a brow ridge at the medic who gave him an exasperated look.

“Read it backwards.”

[itsomgitsgreenblogging]

It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You): A Critical Role Fanfic

Guess who’s back? Honestly, I have to thank the Essek Fanclub Server for this. You guys are awesome, and an amazing inspiration. 2019 was a pretty bad year in terms of my writing, but, it ended amazingly because of the Critical Role Fandom. Here’s to 2020! Have some hot wizard yearning and sexy dream sequences inspired by my favorite song by the 1975. 

Enjoy!

Warning: Explicit Sexual Content

Read it on AO3

Preview:

This was all because he hadn’t seen the Mighty Nein in a month. He was...getting all confused and acting like some sort of lovelorn maiden from one of the trashy Empire smut novels that he definitely didn’t read after he confiscated them.

“By the Luxon, let them come back soon, or else I might really go mad,” Essek muttered to himself.

“Where are they?” asked a courtier. The question was hissed at Essek as he paused in the Lucid Bastion, the green-lantern glow washing his face out to a pallid hue. 

“I do not know,” Essek said simply, with a smile, finding it better than lying. 

____

“Where are they?” Professor Waccoh grumbled at Essek, over the tops of the papers she had stacked on her desk. Reports, ideas, and death machines all found their place there, scattered like snowflakes or ashes amongst the heap. 

“I do not know,” Essek responded, still smiling. 

____

“Where are they?” the Bright Queen demanded, hand dripping with jewels glinting like knives in the light as she slammed it upon the table. 

Essek smiled, and shook his head. 

____

“Where are you?” Essek asked the empty house, but the windows remained darkened. It stared back into him, searching, and he didn’t have a response. 

____

“Will you be long, Shadowhand?” 

“Not too long, but I do wish for some privacy,” Essek told his shadow with a sidelong look. In the next moment, the shadow disappeared. For a moment he remained outside the temple, just relishing the stolen moments of being alone, before slipping inside the building without any further delay. Really, it was better to get this over with. 

The Temple of the Lord of Light that was closest to the Bright Queen’s abode was a lavish affair. The ceilings were crowded with rows of geometrically patterned lanterns that cast a glow that could be hard for Essek’s eyes to handle. Carved into the walls were the sculptures depicting the mythology of the Lord of Light, His Glorious creation, the Vanquishing of the Spider Queen, and the Ascension of the Bright Queen. Along that were prayer altars that various drow and other citizens of the Dynasty huddled by, to light their own candle and pray. Often when one saw Essek float by, they bowed their heads out of respect for him. 

He approached the private praying rooms, and as he did so he apparently caught the eye of one of the clerics. Essek recognized her as Derise, one of the head clerics of the Lord of Light. Though he loathed to do so, he dispelled his levitation magic. His heels clicked as they touched the floor. Clerics could be touchy about the appearance of power in their sacred spaces, and many of those with power among the clergy did not like him for a litany of reasons. He was young, not of one of the storied bloodlines, rather recently adopted in comparison to others, and yet he had gained remarkable power within his first life. They didn’t like him because he wasn’t one of their little puppets and he knew all their secrets in a way that perhaps only the Luxon might, and that made them afraid of him. 

(Though he didn’t wish to think of them, it was part of the reason he had found certain members of the Mighty Nein so refreshing. Religion without certain pretenses had its own charms.)

“Lord Shadowhand,” Derise said, pointedly not bowing her head. She held her head up high instead, as if issuing him a challenge. Essek, instead, smiled as he usually did. He curled his fingers behind his back in a display of complete openness. 

“Lady Derise, I pray the Light finds you well on this day,” Essek said, not bowing because he was certainly still wearing his back brace. Instead he inclined his head an inch. A vein jumped at her jaw. Amatuer, Essek thought derisively. 

“And may it find you well, too. It is a lovely surprise to see you haunt these halls,” Derise said, with a tight smile. “I am sure the Bright Queen will be pleased to hear you are working on your religious studies today.” 

“Matters of security tend to keep me from my spiritual needs. A bad habit of mine, unfortunately.  The Bright Queen understands, of course, being the leader she is.”

“The Bright Queen is certainly accommodating with her favorites,” Lady Derise said, looking down at him from her nose.  

“I am afraid that I am far too stubborn to be accomodated,” Essek laughed lightly as he walked forward only pausing to look back at her. “Your daughter, however, is a very accommodating creature. I know she was so pleased about her cousin’s engagement to General Dozall, that is how she ended up at his house at the witching hour.”

“That--it was---” Derise sucked on the air like it had been punched out of her chest. she coughed hastily, like being caught on her own deceit was physically painful. Really it was pitiful when those older than him were so easily tangled in the web. He almost felt bad for her. Almost. But it wasn’t in his nature to pardon stupidity. 

“Hm? Well, all’s well that ends well,” Essek said evenly. “You really ought to go to a healer. I can always have one of my shadows escort you, just like they did for your daughter. It wouldn’t do to have you in trouble, my lady.”  

“I am too busy to entertain bad jokes, Lord Shadowhand,” Derise said, her tone clipped and icy. “May the Light keep you.” 

“And may it keep you as well.”

Derise stormed off. Essek found the royal prayer chamber, which he was allowed to use due to his position as Shadowhand, off of the main cathedral. It was a beautiful chamber with lofted roof painted with images of the constellations and the sun and the moon. In the center was a large fountain, portraying one of the first lives of the Bright Queen holding her arms aloft with the dodecahedron, about her were creatures of the forest and behind her was the fountain styled as a waterfall. It was popular among artist renderings of the queen to have her placed like that, though the fountain of youth iconography was a bit on the nose for him. Essek enjoyed the arts, but hadn’t had time to properly commission something since he had his portrait painted. 

He cleaned his fingers within the blessed waters, before kneeling before the altar. He cleared his mind, closed his eyes, and prayed in Undercommon, 

“Oh Glorious Lord of Light, You who were first in the Universe and Master of All Creation. Keep me and bless me, in this life and my future lives. Let Your glow illuminate the darkness inside, so that I may reach new heights. Show me the way as you did Our Most Righteous Queen, so that I may never be led astray. Let me pray for ascension, for consecution…” 

There was the sound of delicate footsteps upon the marble and rustling fabric. Essek opened his eyes and looked to see the Bright Queen. As always she was arresting to look at, today fashioned more like a river-bathed-in-moonlight. She was without the armor she tended to wear at court, but adorned with a necklace made of platinum and blue topaz that clasped high at her throat and spilled across her skin like the tide. He began to stand, but she lifted her hand and he remained where he was. 

“Your recitation of the Book of Madark is quite beautiful,” the Bright Queen remarked, looking towards the altar with the deeply fervent expression she always did. “I always did prefer Madark. He made me sound quite grand.” 

“He never overstated your glory, your majesty,” Essek said honestly, bowing his head slowly. 

“Madark was quite in love with me, I’m afraid,” the Bright Queen sighed, smoothing out her dress that shimmered like the scales of a fish. “Quite boorish about it too. I do not like men who overstay their welcome.” 

“Or women who flirt and swoon,” Essek added before clearing his throat, “And the glorious star herself, may She guide us forever. Our Eternal Blessed Queen, who Heralded the Truth. Beauty Incarnate, who sets the heart ablaze with a single look-- ” 

“Oh, the Book of Terawane. Ghastly stuff. I always told her that she was much better suited to singing than to writing. So melodramatic,” the Bright Queen said with a long-suffering hum. “I can bear it when you recite it, Essek. But do not make me listen to the High Priest give his lecture of how my breasts are twin fawns and my lips are a violet ribbon one more time.” 

“Are you asking me to sanction his disposal?” Essek asked, taking a seat beside her. 

“Nothing so dire,” the Bright Queen laughed, her voice silvered bells upon the marble and high ceiling. She looked into the fire of the candlelight thoughtfully. “No…” 

Looking upon her, he often wondered what she felt. She had achieved perfection, she was the umavi. And yet as the firelight danced across her cheek, Essek wondered if she ever tired. She broke his revelry with a tap of her fingers against the stone bench. 

“I’m sure you need no news,” the Bright Queen said. “The Mighty Nein have met with King Dwendal after being missing for so many weeks.” 

“I was aware.” 

“What do your shadows tell you that the human arcanist did not? Was it right to pull back the assault do you think?” 

“Yes, it was. It was the cultists who were utilizing our assault to better their aims, we have confirmed reports of a Priestess of the Dawnfather being in cahoots with the conspiracy, and the Mighty Nein dispatched her. Now they work to broker peace. They are being asked to coordinate a parlay between Empire and Dynasty, by giving us back one of the beacons. In their private talks, they are anxious about finding a neutral location, but have not seemed to betray us. Though, Beauregard did state she infiltrated us to get closer to the enemy.” 

This was all really just a formality. She knew what he knew, and he knew what She knew. Just another part of the game, Essek thought. The game in which they would all be winners or they would all be losers. It would be up to the Mighty Nein, and the prospect was somewhat terrifying. 

“Just that claim is enough for me to have them killed on sight,” the Bright Queen warned him. 

“Considering the slipshod job they did of infiltrating us, I find it very likely and compelling that they are just saying what they need to say to retrieve the beacon. That was the assignment given, and that seems to be what they are doing. Besides, they did not hinder our operatives while in the Empire.” 

“One of the reasons you amuse me so is you are such a delightful pacifist,” the Bright Queen said. 

“So long as it amuses you, your majesty.” 

“You would be all I wish you to be, then? Have you no thoughts of your own?” the Bright Queen dared. 

“All I have ever done, and will ever do, I do to serve at your leisure. I am just one of the voices you allow to fill up your ear. However, considering you chose and continue to choose to fill it with mine, it gives me some hope about where your opinion lies.” 

“And where is that?”

“The long game, your majesty. It would do the Dynasty no good to rip the Empire out by the throat, utterly decimating their population and society. It would only serve to prove the Empire’s propaganda right, and move the masses against us. Instead, we take the high road. We show the Empire citizens we are not the monsters they claim us to be. And then, slowly, we can...improve upon their society,” Essek said simply. 

“You care for the masses.” 

“I must admit my bias for the common people, no matter their country of origin. At my core, I am still very much the street rat Skysybil yanked off the street.” 

“And does it not concern you that they haven’t messaged?” 

“I’m sure they are just busy, saving the world and all that,” Essek stated. 

"Are you sure you are not just lonely for your wizard pet?" The Bright Queen's asked.

"This is far more amusing," Essek promised with a smile. 

The Bright Queen's considered him. She reached out to cup his face and turn it up towards the candlelight. Essek blinked rapidly, but was docile and allowed her to do what she wished. 

"Tell me something that no one else knows, Essek," she commanded him. 

"I have no secrets from you, your majesty," Essek said, unable to help the way his head tipped to the side in curiosity. "What would you have me tell you?" 

"I would have you look at me, unhindered by the mask you wear," she bid him, her fingers running in his hair. "And tell me your feelings, uninhibited. Do you believe that I am in the right?" 

"With all of my heart," Essek said without hesitation, "I believe in you, for you are my sovereign."

"And you live to serve me, of course. But do you trust in my judgement?" 

"I do, but I do not trust those who may seek to influence your decisions. You are divine, my queen, but not infallible. Though I am devoted to you with all of my heart, I will do my best to change your mind should I think you wrong.” 

"With most of your heart," the Bright Queen's corrected, releasing him. "I hope you don’t take me for a sentimental idiot. You are a mortal, and your desires are that of a wild young foolish creature."

“I’m sure it seems that way.” 

“They cannot be changed, my dear Shadowhand,” the Bright Queen said mournfully. “My nation will only ever be safe when the Empire has been decimated. It is within their nature to expand and conquer, and even if we broker a peace now it will not last.” 

“If you believed that, I would be out of the job,” Essek informed her. 

“Perhaps,” the Bright Queen stated. “But for now, what can we do besides pray?” 

Between that breath and the next she was gone, leaving him in the prayer chamber alone. 

 _____

"Will you require anything else, my Lord?" 

Essek looked up from his reading to see one of his servants. Essek smiled at him, and watched as the servant relaxed minutely and settled the tray with tea by the bedside table. This one was a newer hire, an assistant to the cook when he wasn’t completing general housekeeping tasks though Essek had the sneaking suspicion he would prove to be a better cook with time. It was important, to know and cultivate your assets. 

“No, Amald, you are dismissed for the night,” Essek said. “Tell your wife I send my regards and well wishes to her health. She is with her third, yes?”

“And ready for the end of it, I’m afraid,” Amald said, tusks showing with his smile. “This pregnancy has not been easy on her. Our Denmother believes the birth will be difficult too.”  

“Well, I shall send for my personal healer then,” Essek said, closing his book. He held up his hand at Amald’s immediate attempt at response. “Do not worry about the cost, I shall take care of it. Consider it my gift to you and your wife, and a favor I may ask repaid.” 

“Of course,” Amald said his voice rich with feeling and gratefulness, bowing so deeply that Essek was worried he would topple over. “You are most kind, my lord.” 

 Essek blinked at the sight, fighting off his frown easily. Essek often enjoyed compliments. He was handsome, talented, shrewd, powerful, generous any number of things. Kind though? Not one of the usual ones. 

“Until tomorrow,” Essek said, and Amald took off. 

Essek enjoyed the remainder of his tea, a wonderful blend of ginger, licorice root, peppermint, and chamomile. He always found going into a trance so much more pleasant on the tail-end of nice tea and a good book. He could almost hear his Denmother lecturing him about the importance of trance, after collapsing with exhaustion during his first year of his education. 

Essek slipped into bed, laying down among the sheets and pillows. It was always easier to trance when he wasn’t sitting, or his back would protest. He listened to his heart beat, to the breath in his lungs, felt the way his ribs moved beneath his skin, fell deeper...deeper…

He was in his Denmother’s salon. Not his Denmother yet...at least not on paper. Mathulsda Theylss was frowning at him severely, looking him up and down as if all his faults were written upon his features and could be categorized accordingly. 

“Smile in a way that doesn’t make you look like you swallowed a frog,” his Denmother scolded. Essek’s reflection looked back at him. A sixteen year old Essek looked annoyed at best, contemptuous at worst. “Smile.” 

“I don’t want to smile,” Essek snapped at her. 

“You are lucky you were born in this era, boy,” his Denmother scoffed, leaving his side for a moment to take a sip at some wine. “Or you wouldn’t have a choice about what was done with your pretty face. You were the one complaining about the way they treat you, listen to my advice or don’t bother to complain.” 

“How is smiling better going to help me? They hate me because they think me common,” Essek demanded, and was given a pinched cheek for his question. She released him and he held his cheek, glaring at her. 

“No, they hate you because they know you are anything but common,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She looked at herself in the mirror, and Essek looked at her reflection and saw the transformation. She was truly arresting, in the way she smiled and turned her head just so. “It is easy then, to change hatred to love. You suss out those who hate you, and then you go to their friends. You find their weaknesses and can exploit them easily, because there is nothing for them to hate about you. Your professors will adore you, and will teach you all you wish to know. The noble dens will look at you and say, what a wonderful boy. The Bright Queen will favor you. Forget how to frown, Essek. That horrid little street urchin you were doesn’t exist. You are pretty, pleasant, considerate, and you smile. It is no longer a mask you can slip on and slip off when you play your childish little games with Skysybil. It is who you are now, forever.”

“I’m not like that, that’s not who I am,” Essek said, staring at himself. “I’m…”

“Essek Theylss is,” she said softly, as if it were a mercy. Her hands were upon his shoulders. “If you wish to be Essek Theylss, it’s who you will become. If you cannot get along with them, if you cannot make allies and cannot play the game, we have no use for you. There are other children with talent, though maybe not as talented as you, but they can become far more useful to us if you will not. So? Are you willing?” 

Essek watched his own reflection as he schooled his face into a soft smile. It fit onto his face cleanly, naturally, as if this were the way he was always meant to look. Maybe it was the way he was meant to look. Maybe she was right. If this was what everyone wanted then this was for the best. The Denmother patted his shoulder, in a mockery of fondness that tore that thought out by the root. 

“Very good, Essek,” she praised, standing in front of him to fix the collar of his uniform. She was taller than him, looking down at him with cruel delight. “Isn’t that so much better? We must always look our best, don’t we--?”

Wake up!

Essek tore himself out of that trance, jerking up so fast that his back twinged. He pressed his hands to his face, taking a few moments to just breathe. He knew better than this, Essek thought, thoroughly annoyed at himself as he lay back down with a huff. A trance was a fluid state, a visitation of memories or dreams affected by waking emotions and thoughts.  Bad thoughts led to bad memories or dreams which led to bad trances. 

“All I have are bad thoughts,” Essek said as he breathed out to the ceiling, resigned to his fate. There was just too much jumbled together in his mind, too much worry. 

Something you don’t know? Essek thought crossly. I miss the Mighty Nein, their shenanigans and their quirks that make me feel like I am not altogether that odd and that I have my life in a workable order. I don’t believe that I have a mask anymore, there is only this. I don’t know how to be without a smile. I don’t even know what it’s like to be that person anymore, but I feel as close to it as I ever have when I am with Caleb Widogast of all people. I want them to like me. I want him to want me, whoever that is.  

Essek continued to breathe, though he felt that it was a struggle. He needed to rest. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be as sharp as he needed to be. 

Rest, Essek told himself, forcing his eyes closed. Rest.

Entering into a trance again, he was greeted with a dark space. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was a comforting absence. It was a night sky without stars, the inside of your eyelids, the feeling of being underwater, in the warmth, in the bath--

"Essek," Caleb murmured. 

Essek was in bed, somewhere comfortable and soft. A weight on the bed next to him, a body pressed deliciously to his as if searching for warmth. This wasn’t what he wanted, Essek thought dizzily. He wouldn’t be able to rest like this, not when his body suddenly felt so alive. 

“Essek,” Caleb called again. There was a dip in the bed, the sensation of being straddled, a press of a kiss to his neck. Essek shuddered at the soft touch, the way he was being kissed like he was precious. Like he would shatter at a harsher touch. He gasped as his eyes fluttered open. 

“Oh,” he sighed, reaching up to touch Caleb’s face, brushing across his cheek with the back of his hand. Caleb leaned into the touch as if he chased it. His eyes were the powdery blue flowers painted in the mural on their barbarian's wall, regarding him with a tender, searching expression. The emotional whiplash almost took Essek right out of this, but he was anchored by the feeling of Caleb’s body against his. 

“Will you stay with me?” Caleb asked him, catching his hand. He nuzzled it sweetly, causing goosebumps to ripple across Essek’s skin, before cradling Essek's face in his hands. Caleb didn’t smile as much as he should, in fact, Essek had gotten the distinct impression that Caleb had long since gotten out of the practice of smiling. But he would look so lovely, if given the opportunity. Essek’s traitorous heart told him that perhaps he would be the one to offer those opportunities, if Caleb would let him. 

"Yes," Essek said, managing to get the word out from his heavy tongue. Caleb managed to remedy that problem by dipping his head down and catching Essek in a kiss. Essek tipped his head, to deepen the kiss, to let it linger as long as he could. To feel the imprint of teeth and the stroke of the tongue that left him tingling all over. Essek trailed his fingers over Caleb's bare arms, feeling the hair there, the rough criss-cross of scars against sun-worn freckled skin. 

They kissed and explored each other without worry or haste, until Essek lay breathless beneath Caleb, allowing Caleb to pamper his skin with attention, to lavish him with his desire in a way that had him shivering. Essek couldn’t untangle himself from Caleb, from his legs or his arms, and he didn’t want to. Essek was caught there and he never wanted to escape from Caleb’s arms. 

"You are so beautiful," Caleb whispered, nipping his collarbone. Essek's breath caught in his throat. 

Essek regarded Caleb through a half-lidded gaze, memorizing the exact way Caleb’s hair escaped his tie, and the constellation of freckles dusted across his nose. The adorable little human curve of his ear, the human thickness of his body. Essek had seen the way that others looked at Caleb, with a desire that soaked in one’s skin like a warm summer rain. It made Essek covetous and proud, because Caleb had eyes for him.  They were a well-matched pair, in Essek’s opinion. 

"Please, do tell me what you find so beautiful about me," Essek bid him. 

“Smug,” Caleb chuckled. 

“I am merely asking for the facts of the matter,” Essek told him, sitting up. He climbed into Caleb’s lap, something very bold and daring for him, but it was nice to be somewhat taller than Caleb in that moment. Essek found the shell of Caleb’s ear he had previously admired, tracing it with his lips and the barest brush of his canine, letting Caleb shudder under his touch. He curled his arms around Caleb’s neck, looking deep into Caleb’s eyes as he pulled his head back with the softest tug. Caleb bared his neck to him easily, so easily submitting to the touch, and it set upon Essek the fire of desire “Tell me, be a clever boy and tell me what I want to hear.”

 “You are the most powerful and beautiful man I’ve ever laid my eyes upon,” Caleb groaned, moving their hips together in a way that made Essek shudder. “I need you. No one else could ever compare to you, Essek.”

“Yes,” Essek gasped, feeling Caleb hot and hard and longing against him. It was driving him crazy. He had spent so long without a lover, without sampling the pleasures of flesh. He hadn’t needed it, and he hadn’t missed the few and sparse flings of his youth. They had been bare-boned things that couldn’t even be called romance, a simple almost instinctual satisfying of urges, a useful distraction, a way to utilize his pretty face to get what he needed. Knowledge, power, the game of politics had been so much more entertaining, and intellectual curiosity being quenched was so much more satisfying. People were easy to manipulate when they were kept at an arm’s length, it was so much easier to smile when there was nothing at stake. 

But this? This was something else entirely. He couldn’t even control his body, couldn’t think through the haze of desire.  He resurfaced and had to have pushed Caleb underneath him, because suddenly his hands were digging into his shoulders and his hips were moving desperately to the staccato rhythm of his heart as Caleb dragged him harder and more deliciously against him. Pleasure tore him open, it filled him up, it was so good--!

“Look at you,” Caleb moaned, pressing his flame-hot hands against Essek’s belly. “So lovely, so beautiful wrung out like this, just for me. What a treasure you are…” 

“More,” Essek demanded, not sure how much longer he could last but wanting to wring out this moment as long as he could. Everything was on fire, on a pin-needle edge, but he wanted to be greedy. He wanted all the things he couldn’t allow himself, all the things that Caleb could give him and that he could give to Caleb in equal measure. 

Oh by the Light, they were making love. The realization made Essek lightheaded, it made his back arch with the intensity of the sensation, it sent his teeth on edge. He would be ruined for everything else, Caleb would ruin him, but he had to give in. 

“You are exquisite,” Caleb gasped, reverently, desperately--lovingly and then he gave in to the pleasure, forcing Essek over the edge with the intensity. Essek wilted upon him, no more strength in his limbs to hold him. Caleb stroked him through it, with him. For a few blissful moments, there was nothing else in his mind. 

Slowly though, he emerged. Essek peppered Caleb’s face with kisses, curling his leg around him, burying his face into Caleb’s shoulder and his soft, fragrant hair. Caleb’s fingers scratched the back of his head, in a way that made him sigh with sated pleasure. 

“It is time to wake, Essek,” Caleb chuckled, voice amused and hazy with warm gentle lovemaking. 

“No,” Essek grumbled, more firmly pressing himself to Caleb. It was a stubborn childish thing that well in his chest, but he didn’t care. In that moment, completely divulged of his mask, he just wanted to be selfish.  

“Yes, it is,” Caleb said wistfully, and as Caleb gently stroked Essek’s back in soft comforting waves that drew him deeper, further...softer…

Essek resurfaced having drooled into his pillow. He sat up and looked at himself in the mirror, at his mussed bed-head and very inelegant splotches across his cheek and--his dream! 

His face burst into heat, he grabbed the closest pillow, buried his face into it, and bit into it hard to stifle his scream. Oh by the Light! Had he reverted back into his second decade? He thanked the Luxon and all the Gods above and below for the gift of living alone. He didn’t think he had ever been so mortified in his entire life. 

“I’ll never be able to look at him again,” Essek said mournfully, spitting out feathers he had managed to rip out with his fangs. He brought his blessedly cool fingers up to press to his hot cheeks. 

This was all because he hadn’t seen the Mighty Nein in a month. He was...getting all confused and acting like some sort of lovelorn maiden from one of the trashy Empire smut novels that he definitely didn’t read after he confiscated them. 

“By the Luxon, let them come back soon, or else I might really go mad,” Essek muttered to himself. 

His reflection in the mirror seemed to agree. 

[providentially-demonic]

Stand as One, Undivided: Ch. 1

So, since there was some interest in seeing this, I present the first chapter of Stand as One, Undivided (Title taken from the song “With you by my side”) written with the lovely @phantoms-lair​.

Summary: Cassandra returns to Corona after a year away for Rapunzel and Eugene's wedding. She doesn't come as a guest, but instead to keep things from going wrong, because nothing ever goes as planned for those two. Cass has come back to make sure things go smoothly for their wedding, since things tend to blow up (sometimes literally) around them. Things... do not go according to plan.

Chapter One: Back to Corona

(This literally came to be because of a comment Phantom made about the reason we didn't see Cass at the wedding was because she was in the rafters. Things grew from there. I promise it'll make sense in the next chapter.) 

This is obviously New dream, but I swear if you see hints of other ships, I don't mind, though that is strictly up to personal interpretation.

Back to Corona

It had been a year since she’d seen Corona.

Cassandra hadn’t intended to be back this soon, but a flyer spotted in Vardaros had made her hurry back as fast as Fidella could carry her. Thankfully, Fidella was in fine fettle, it was spring and there was no end of bounty for one mare. Cass herself was a little thinner, but her own skill at archery and Owl’s willing assistance had allowed her to keep herself fed. She hadn’t had to dip into the pouch of coin Rapunzel had pressed onto her before she’d left too much.

Cassandra pulled her hood up as they reached the bridge. Best not to show her face. There were sure to be factions who had neither forgotten nor forgiven what she had done a year ago. Fidella’s ears perked up and she danced in place, whickering excitedly. She was happy to be back, at least. Cassandra gave the mare her head and she cantered across the bridge, practically prancing with her head up and tail flagged.

Chuckling softly, Cass reached down and scratched Fidella’s neck. “I know, girl. You can’t wait to see Max again.” She lowered her head, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t you ever tell Eugene I said this but I can’t wait to see him and Raps again.”

Fidella whickered and playfully bucked in place before stretching her legs into a gallop. The closer they got to the city proper, the more signs of the festivities Cassandra could see. She grimaced playfully at a large tapestry being hung. A year and they still hadn’t gotten Eugene’s nose right. “It was much more obnoxious than that,” she said aloud to Fidella.

The city looked much the same as it had looked in her youth, but here and there she could see the scars of a battle hard-fought. A wall that had the distinctive shape of a spire of black rock carved deep into it. A series of holes from the same rock punching  a pattern in the wall of a house. But the scars weren’t that numerous and many had been transformed into something beautiful. Here, another set of holes had been inset with pieces of stained glass representing the sun-crest of Corona. There, a tumbled wall had been made into a terraced herb garden, the green tang of the growing things adding a distinctive scent to the air.

She could see Rapunzel's hand in all of it, every painted line and pocket of greenery. Corona’s beloved barefoot princess hard at work in restoring the damage done, a great deal of it by Cassandra’s own hand. She unconsciously clenched her hand in its custom armored glove and had to force herself to relax it when she felt the pull of the scars. It was long since healed but still bothered her in cold or wet weather.

She passed a giant dovecote and winced at the clamor of whirring wings and coos. Yep, that was King Frederic’s addition to the festivities. His motto should have been go big or go home, she thought with a snicker. Not that the queen was much better, she thought, laughing aloud at the sight of a massive net full of floating lanterns.

In spite of everything, it felt good to be back. Wheeling Fidella, she sent the mare down a side street away from the worst of the festival preparations. She spotted a familiar wall ahead and thumped her heels into Fidella’s ribs, loosening her grip on the reins. With a gleeful whinney, Fidella launched herself into a headlong gallop toward the obstacle. Cassandra laughed with delighted abandon as the mare took the jump over the wall with ease. They landed in what had been her private training ground, a space at the back of the guard barracks. It had suffered some damage in the invasion, but still looked so familiar that she smiled, running her fingers along a battered training dummy. She swung down from the saddle and pulled her hooded cloak close around her.

After unsaddling Fidella and leaving her to crop the grass, she followed along the wall until she came to a grate. She hefted it to one side and was pleased to see the tunnel was still clear. She slipped in and pulled the grate closed behind her. Even without a light, her feet still knew every step of the way. She found the small door at the opposite end and cracked it carefully to peer through. The sight of a familiar head bent over a desk sent a pang through her. Maybe she should have come back sooner. “Hi, dad—”

Her father upset his chair, he whirled so fast. “Cass!” There was delight in his face, even as tears ran down his cheeks. When his arms closed around her a little too tight to be comfortable, she laughed wetly, tears pricking at her own eyes. “I missed you, dad.”

He chuckled, that rare laugh that she had delighted in teasing out of him when she was a little girl, rumbling through where he held her pressed close to his chest. “I knew you couldn’t stay away, not from this.”

She shook her head, pushing back lightly to give herself enough room to look into his face. “Dad—”

“Rapunzel will be delighted to see you, honey.” he beamed.

“I’m not here to be seen, dad.” Cass said.

“But—”

She raked a lock of hair out of her eyes. “When have things ever gone smoothly for those two, dad?” she retorted. “I’m only here to make sure nothing interferes with Rapunzel’s big day, oh, and the pretty boy’s too.” She laughed softly. “I’m just here to see that they get their moment without anything going wrong.”

“Honey, you know the princess has missed you every single day. She’d want to know you were here.”

Cassandra shook her head again. "Maybe I'm not ready to be seen. I'm weak, dad, and she could so easily convince me to stay."

He sighed and released her. "Is it bad that I want her to? I miss you, honey. You know Rapunzel does. So does Eugene, even if he won't admit it."

She punched him playfully in the arm. "You've softened! I didn't think you ever would."

He scoffed. "Hardly softened. Only person I'm harder on is myself. He's learning, but he doesn't have my level of experience."

"What are you doing now? I mean you hadn't said anything about finding another position before I left."

"I'm the guard coordinator now. I schedule patrols and plan where they patrol. Not quite as glamorous as Captain, but—" he chuckled, ruffling her hair. "It's good, Cass. I promise. And he still consults with me for my experience, so—"

"But are you happy, dad?" Cassandra asked. "You took so much pride in being the captain."

"I am, sweetheart. I can still protect Corona this way.  And you know there is only one thing that would make me happier."

"Dad—" she sighed, blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes. "Let me find my own destiny for a bit. Whether it's here or out there somewhere, I still have to figure out. But I promise I'll come back, even if it's only for visits."

He sagged a little. “I— I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you didn’t belong here. I kept you out of the guard out of my own selfishness. I didn’t want to see you hurt, because our first duty as guards is to protect others, even if it means putting ourselves in harm’s way.”

She blew air out her nose in a scoff. “I know, dad. And maybe I was bitter about it then, but I like to think I’ve grown a bit.”

He measured a space above her head with his hand. “Maybe just a teeny bit.”

Cassandra elbowed him. “Not again with the short jokes!” But she was smiling.

He laughed. “You set yourself up for that one, sweetheart.” Still smiling at her, he settled himself back into his chair. “Tell me what you need.”

“Where’s the ceremony being held?”

“The Grand Chapel. You know King Frederic would accept nothing less.”

“Urgh, that makes it harder. Too many entrances and far too many places for trouble to hide.”

He shot her a reproving look. “Trust me on knowing where to station people. I’ve got guards on every entrance and regular sweeps through the chapel up until the ceremony.”

“And you know if someone is determined enough, that’s not going to stop them." Cassandra leaned against the wall. "Here's your measure. Could Eugene; in his bad old days as Flynn Rider, break in? If the answer is yes, or any variation of probably, possibly, or even maybe, you need to tighten security."

Her father blew a long breath out, his eyes full of fondness. "Only you, Cass. Only you could think along those lines. Will doubling the guard be enough? Or should I institute more patrols too?"

"Some of both, dad. Put more guards on the obvious entrances, and more patrols and guards inside, covering the less-obvious ones. Hey, didn't Fitzherbert say something about promoting Varian to a royal alchemist before I left?"

Her father nodded. “Royal Engineer is the princess’s chosen title. He has a lab built out of the old secret chamber under the Vault. He's probably there right now..." His voice lilted a little on the end, making it almost a question.

"Stop trying to make me see people who'll go out of their way to convince me to stay, dad. Have him make up some of his old pest traps, portable ones that the guards can all carry and set one each on several of the most likely entrance points. Give him a blueprint of the chapel and he'll outdo himself with traps."

"Cassandra, you do realize there will be guests at the wedding?" He reminded her with no little humor in his voice. "I dare say some of them will wander about before the ceremony itself."

She smirked back. "Think they'll try to cause an incident because their shoes were glued to the floor? I'd look to anyone who does as a prime suspect." She muffled a snort of laughter into one glove. "I know Raps invited the pub thugs. Those guys would take it as a challenge if they got caught in one of the kid's traps."

He stood and ruffled her hair. "Sweetie, I sometimes forget how ruthless you can be." Reaching into a drawer of his desk, he pulled out a plan of the Grand Chapel and unrolled it over the top of the desk. "I have men stationed here, here, here and—"

Cass joined him at the table, leaning her shoulder into his as she traced lines and moved markers to stand for guards. It felt familiar and like home. She pushed the thought aside in favor of the plans. She had a job to do, after all.

[shythesheep]

29 days whump challenge

challenge by @yuckwhump

Day 9: Car wreck II Starvation. CW: starvation, vomit, manipulation, creepy whumper, captive. 

Previous II Next

Dayle was drenched in sweat, and his breath is coated in a thick layer of foul-tasting spit. Has he been vomiting? There are no memories in his mind from yesterday’s banquet, well he does remember drinking cup of wine, but that is it. His head is hurting, and clutches him, turning onto his side to crumble into a small ball. He wants to kick the blanket off, it is warm and scratches his bare legs. He has never experienced this nauseating feeling before, it’s absolutely horrific, he prays to the gods that the king won’t want him playing today, the idea of him so much as putting the flute to his mouth makes him wince. Suddenly he feels a pull and his body heaves as liquid is forced up his throat and vomit splutters onto the side of the small cot, he his laying on. He takes a deep breath, still feeling as if some vomit might come up again, and it does. This time he expected the pain from the acid liquid burning his throat and nose, but none the less it made him shudder.

“A goddamn mut you are. I put a damn bucket on the other side but you still barfed all over the floor.” A guard without his amour is standing at the door, holding decanter with water and small clay mug. He sets it down quickly on a small stool before leaving the room. Dayle just looks at the direction he left with lazy eyes and his tongue slightly sticking out of his mouth. It tastes nasty. He glances over at the decanter, and makes a reach for it, but his arms are as heavy as stone and as soon as he has lifted the arm it plops down again by his side.

“Shit.” He mumbles and rubs his temples. He wriggles his body slightly, so he is turned to the other side, and the blanket ties itself tightly around his legs. He sees the bucket that the guard was talking about, he feels slightly bad about using the floor instead of it. But then he remembers his times in the warm chamber and all the times the guards would beat him senseless. Let him clean my vomit, he thinks, with all the intentions of not using the bucket.

“You look like a mess.” The guard grumbles as he enters the room with a bucket of soap water and a cloth. When he passes Dayle he scrunches his nose. “And you smell like it too.”

“Why thank you.” Whispers Dayle weakly, closing his eyes with a sigh.

The guard either didn’t hear him or chose not to reply. He is quick to wash the floor and as he gets up, he takes the bucket filled with now dirty water and puts it under Dayle’s head, which is laying a bit over the cot’s side.

“Oh, for gods’ sake.” Dayle screeches and flails to get away from the smell.

“Only fair that you smell it too.” Laughs the guard and removes the bucket, he places it in the corner of the small room and then he goes to fill the mug with water from the decanter. “Here, you need to drink.” The guard holds the mug out for Dayle to take. Dayle just stares at it, making no attempt at reaching for it. The guard's mouths twisted. “Listen, you need to drink. Otherwise you’ll dehydrate.”

“I don't think I can hold it without dropping it.” Dayle bites the inside of his cheek, his eyes never leaving the mug. The guard shook his head and open his mouth as if to say something but stopped. Dayle looks absolutely pitiful, his dark curls are plastered to his forehead with sweat and his blue eyes are distant and foggy. He is too pale for it to be healthy, and thin as well. The guard grunts before sitting down beside Dayle's body on the cot. Dayle attempts at getting further away but a firm hand on his shoulder stops him. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, his mouth drawn in a thin line of anticipation. Recognition dawns on the guard's face, he has seen that expression of Dayle’s on many new recruits, after they have been roughhoused by older guards or knights. Why does a personal servant of the king expect a hit from a guard who just cleaned up his vomit?

“I'm not going to hit you, but you need water, so let me help you.”

“How can I be sure. You are a guard...”

“More the reason for you to believe me.”

“I think we have very different opinions on that.” Dayle snaps but turns pale as soon as the words left his mouth, he tries to hide his fear by scowling at guard.

“Gods be damned. Just let me help you drink the water.”

“It’s not poisoned or something, right?”

“Oh, for fucks sake. Just drink.” The guard reaches his hand behind Dayle’s head to help him lift his head and then tilts the mug slightly, and Dayle lets him, too thirsty to struggle, vivid memories of his dry throat in the warm room is still present in his mind.

“Thanks.” He says out of habit. The guard simply nods and then turns to leave.

“Someone will come and check on you in an hour so, get some shut eye.” He says and the bids his farewell.

Dayle tosses and turns on the cot. His body still exhausted and aching, after yesterday’s punishment and of course the alcohol. But other than his nausea, he is feeling more relaxed than he ever has while staying at the castle. There is still a nagging voice that reminds him that the king could turn up any minute and demand his presence for either showing him off to some noble or to just have him in private play his flute or other activities. Dayle whimpers and turns to hide his face in the pillow. His thoughts drift to Alard and the others, he has long ago come to terms with the fact that they probably aren’t coming for him, for even if they knew of his situation, how would they ever be able to get him out of this mess. A few musicians against a King with knights and guards, sounds like a tragic ballade to tell. Of course, he still has a lingering hope that pulls at him, makes his heart ache for the long travels in their small caravan, with Lily and Tom running beside it, playing tag like any restless kids would, laughing. Alard’s old man would sit in the back with his old mandolin and play for his wife, Freya who would in turn read out stories from the old book she always carries with. He misses Alard’s carefree attitude, how he always had a joke or a song to sing when things got gloom. How his hands would fit so perfectly in Dayle’s own, warm to his cold. Sun kissed to pale. Opposites but compatible. Dayle takes a shuddering breath, he cries.

No one comes to check on him, not that he minds an awfully lot, he is feeling rather vulnerable and his happy that no one is here to exploit it. But he is starting to feel an immense hunger, he can’t remember the last time he has gotten a meal, and his stomach has been emptied a long time ago with all his vomiting. He won’t die, sure, but it doesn’t make his situation any more comfortable. Maybe someone will come soon.

From what he has gathered by seeing the sun rise and fall outside his window, he has been left to his own demise for at least three days, someone has been refilling his water decanter while he has been asleep, but no food has been left behind, and his head is now almost constantly swimming and making him feel as if the world is shaking if he as much as dares to move. On top of that he feels as I his stomach is burning on the inside, as if has started to dissolve itself. At first when these burning sensations started, he also threw up. Only liquid but it still charred the inside of his throat and mouth, and he quickly learned that water doesn’t help erase a bad after taste. The water doesn’t even make him feel full, there is never enough. He has fits now and again, or at least that is what he calls them. It is periods of time where he just feels as if his whole body is vibrating, like he is containing a storm inside, a storm of hunger likely.

 “How are you feeling?” Dayle can barely move, he has a thundering headache and he just manages to moan at the person questioning him. A hand is laid on his stomach, as if is trying to feel how empty he is. No one beside himself can feel that though. “Dearest.” Dayle freezes and fear dawns on him, the man sitting gently on his cot, is his master. His master is here, that can’t bode well. With weak conviction he pushes his left arm on to his master’s arm, to remove it from his person. His master misunderstands the gesture, or maybe he doesn’t, and grabs Dayle’s hand in his. He holds it tightly, gives it a light kiss on the backside.

“Please… s- “

“shushshush. Don’t waste your energy. I brought something for you.” His master slips his hand and turns to the maid standing by the door, she comes over with a plate filled with different kinds of fruits and what looks to be a piece of bread at the size of a fist. Dayle is uncertain of what this is supposed to mean, is the food for him? Is his master going to give him food, or is it once again one of his sick tricks? “Why so glum, Dearest, I have brought you the finest fruit, freshly plucked from my gardens.”

“For me?” Dayle laughs groggily and feels like he is about to cry.

“Of course, it is for you!” his master grabs his head and kisses his forehead, Dayle flinches at the action. The king grabs a few red grapes, and holds them up to Dayle’s mouth, and forces two into it. Dayle scrunches his eyebrows but chews slowly on the juicy fruits. The taste is overwhelming, and he must have made a grimace for the king giggles. “Good boy,” he says and pulls out Dayle’s flute, it had been hiding under the kings red jacket, sitting in his belt. “But now as a good boy, you need to earn your food.” He lays the flute into Dayle’s slack hand and makes Dayle’s fingers close around the instrument. “play me a small tune.” Dayle glares at the wretched thing in his hand but starts playing on it. He chooses to play a short piece, but he is still out of breath when he finishes off. A fog has been laid in his mind, and he grabs at the blanket to stabilize himself. “You truly are a good boy, Dearest, here.” His master takes the flute, and, in its stead, he puts the piece of bread. Dayle is about to bite into the bread, when he has finally gotten his breath back, but a hand clamps down on his mouth.

“You’ve forgotten something Dearest.” With wide round eyes, Dayle looks up at his master and a knot is tied around his throat. What has he forgotten? His muddled mind searches in desperation for something, but he can’t seem to find anything. He played the flute. He ate off of his master’s hand. What could he possibly have forgotten?

“A polite thank you master would suffice. Don’t you think so dearest?” Dayle nods weakly, and the hand is removed from his mouth.

“I apo- apologize master…” he takes a deep inhale. “Thank y-you for the food, ma…master.” He forces the sentences out, feeling dirty as they are spoken out loud.

“Anything for you Dearest.” His master replies, and as Dayle eats he starts to talk about what have been going on around court, as if Dayle is an equal and not just a toy for his amusement. Dayle listens as he eats, although he isn’t really listening, for he cannot seem to concentrate.

[imagine-loki]

Speculations Galore

TITLE: Speculations Galore CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: One Shot AUTHOR: MaliceManaged ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine people speculating on your and Loki’s relationship, saying you’ll end up together if not outright assuming you are already. You both hear about it so much that you start to wonder if maybe they’re onto something and you just haven’t figured it out yet, so after some debate you kiss… and feel no romantic spark whatsoever because sometimes friends are just friends. You are both very relieved. RATING: G NOTES/WARNINGS: Sequel to There Was A Process

__________________________

    “Did you hear the news?” Maribel said by way of greeting as she walked towards him along the top of the ridge he was leaning against.

    Loki eyed her curiously. “What news?”

    “We’re getting married!” she replied cheerfully, throwing her arms up and almost toppling off to the side before she managed to catch herself.

    His eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “Married? Is that what they’re going with now?”

    “So it would seem.” She reached him and he picked her up by the waist and set her down on the ground before him. “Sometime in the spring, if I heard right.”

    “Norns have mercy,” he heaved a frustrated sigh, “I hope my parents do not pay too close a mind to court gossip.”

    She snorted amusedly. “If they did; either you’d be dead or we’d already be married.”

    He slapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course; I forgot, you are carrying my child.”

    “Some father-to-be you are!” she huffed, hands on her hips.

    He fell to his knees, grasping her hands and holding them between them. “I can only beg your forgiveness, my love,” he declared melodramatically.

    It lasted all of five seconds before they burst out laughing, with her unable to stay upright and dropping to her knees as well. When they managed to stop, they moved to sit on the ground side by side leaning against the ridge, her head on his shoulder.

    “You know, as annoying as this can be; I prefer these kinds of rumours,” she spoke up after a while, absently taking one of his hands in her own to toy with his fingers, “They assume we’re already together, as opposed to the other half of them, circling like vultures hoping to catch us at it.”

    “It certainly is less invasive, true,” he replied, conjuring one of the many puzzle cubes Frigga had gotten her from her bedchamber and replacing his hand with it. “It is doing no favours to my actual love life, though,” he huffed in annoyance, “Do you how hard it is to find someone worthwhile when everybody thinks you are already taken?”

    She raised her head to stare at him blankly. “No. No, I do not.”

    He looked down at her and smiled apologetically. “Apropos of nothing; how goes your quest?”

    “Aborted,” she replied with a huff, “He got hands-y after the fourth drink.”

    “Shall I turn him into a slug?” he asked conversationally.

    “Don’t tempt me.”

    Loki chuckled then wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a half-hug. “I’m sorry.”

    “S’okay,” she replied with a slight shrug, “Always better to know the assholes from the good ones before you get too involved.”

    “Too true.”

    “How’d it go with What’s-her-face, anyway?” Loki grimaced in response. “That bad?”

    “I truly have no idea how her family managed to slip her past mother’s screening process, but it was most definitely to my detriment. To call her a vapid brat is an insult to vapid brats everywhere.”

    “Ah, the perks of nobility. Sucks to be you.”

    He scoffed and shifted his arm to pull her face closer to his. “Keep that up and I really will marry you and take you down with me.”

    “Oh, hell no; get off me!” she cried, bringing a hand up and pushing his face aside, earning a laugh.

    Letting her go, he sat back again, prompting her to do the same. After a moment of silence, he spoke up. “I do know someone who has asked after you…”

    “Oh?”

    “She works with the kitchen staff, and has brought my breakfast on occasion. She asked about the rumour that I was courting you, but you had already accepted Reigar’s invitation.”

    “Aw.”

    “She might still be interested, though. You should ask.”

    Maribel tapped her lips in thought then looked up at him. “What did you think about her?”

    Loki breathed a laugh. “She is a palace servant and I have a reputation; do you truly think she would be herself around me? I’m shocked she even approached me about it at all.”

    “You’re really not a very good wingman, you know that?”

    He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it time for your lessons?”

    Maribel’s eyes widened and she took her phone out of her pocket, glanced at the screen and swore before leaping to her feet, bidding him a hasty good-bye and rushing off back to the palace as he laughed.

****

    As it turned out, his would-be prospect did not take his rejection very well; raising a fuss and attempting to turn the court against Maribel, who she maintained was the reason for Loki’s lack of interest in her. Granted, the higher positioned ones knew better than to even hint at going against the All-mother’s protégé, but the whole thing still had him putting out metaphorical fires for the better part of a month. Maribel, of course, was completely oblivious to it, though it had largely been by his design. She had other things to worry about that an idiot’s misguided jealousy.

    Plus, the less she knew about the situation, the less she could reveal about his revenge against said idiot if asked.

    As he dismounted his horse, having just returned from a quick trip to his favoured apothecary in the markets, he noticed the conversation a group of stablehands nearby were having abruptly stopped, and he rolled his eyes, having a fairly good idea what they had been discussing. He pointedly held out the reins with a raised eyebrow and one of them hastily broke away from the group and rushed to tend to his horse. He looked at each of the rest as he passed them and to a one they looked away; as he left the stables, he decided their fear of what he’d do to retaliate would take care of the matter for him.

    As he made his way to his chambers to finish his current work, he ran into Maribel. Or rather, she ran into him, and it was only his quick reflexes in wrapping an arm around her waist that saved her from the floor. “How many times must you be told to watch where you are going?”

    “All of them,” she replied uncaringly, practically vibrating with excitement as she grabbed hold of his shoulders, “I did it!”

    “Did what?” he asked bemusedly, wondering what she had been up to this time and how concerned he should be about it.

    “It!” she replied unhelpfully, too lost in her accomplishment to bother with proper explanations, then ducked out of his hold, grabbed his hand and tugged him in the direction she had come from, “Come see!”

    “Bel…” he made a token effort to resist, but curiosity had already blown past any defences he might have thought to put up, and he allowed her to lead him.

    She took him all the way out to the gardens, and to a greenhouse that Frigga had set aside for her personal use, which was currently filled with dozens upon dozens of orchids of every colour, and he fully understood her excitement. He had snuck off to Midgard some time ago and brought her back a potted white and red orchid to cheer her up, as she’d been feeling a bit down, and she had later expressed curiosity over whether the flowers could be grown on Asgard. Neither Frigga nor the palace gardeners had any idea if it were possible or not, and so it had become a project of hers to find out.

    “Impressive,” he praised, earning a delighted grin. He walked up to one and touched its petals – pure black with green spots – then looked back at her with a raised eyebrow.

    “I may have gotten a tad carried away with the magic…” she admitted, blushing a bit.

    He chuckled, shaking his head, and let her lead him around the room, showing off her work and rambling about her process, half of which he didn’t even understand. Green magic was never really his forte. When he finally got her to stop long enough to learn she had predictably worked through lunch on the finishing touches of the Working, he dragged her back out to the gardens and to the private dining area where they often ate with the queen, sending word to the kitchens for some much needed food and glaring at the less than subtle looks they got from the servants who brought it.

****

    Maribel wasn’t sure what the feast was for. She’d been told, of course, she just couldn’t remember. It hardly mattered, in any case. She ate and drank and made fun of others with Loki until duty took him away to pretend to be interested in another potential match, after which she mingled for a bit before getting bored and wandering outside. A glowing moth caught her attention, and she followed it across the grounds and up into a tree, which was where Loki found her when he finally managed to escape.

    “Dare I ask?”

    “Moth,” was all she replied.

    “Naturally.”

    She looked around her for a bit. “Umm… I have a problem…”

    “Just the one?”

    “Ha.”

    “You are stuck, aren’t you?” The silence that met the question was more than telling, and he chuckled then moved to stand under her, holding his arms up towards her. “Come on, then.”

    She shifted carefully on the branch she was perched on, making sure the skirts of her dress weren’t caught on anything, then took a breath and jumped down into his waiting arms, clutching him tightly until her feet were safely on the ground again.

    He picked a twig out of her hair with a chuckle. “You, my dear, are an absolute disaster.”

    “Hey, at least I’m cute,” she joked with a shrug, earning a soft laugh.

    “That you are.”

    He brushed her hair back from her face with a fond smile and she smiled back, before noticing some movement behind him, and a look of irritation settled on her features. He turned and found a group of Ladies watching them with looks ranging from smugness to disapproval, and he hastily took a step back from Maribel, wondering just how long they had been there.

    Maribel, for her part, stepped around him to glare at them. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she snapped, startling them and sending them scurrying off back inside, “Vultures!”

    Loki sighed frustratedly. “Well, that certainly won’t help the rumours.”

    “No, it won’t,” she agreed with a huff. There was a heavy silence and she looked up at him, noticing something was clearly on his mind. “What?”

    “Bel, I have been… thinking…” At her questioning look he glanced away. “What if… they are right?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “About… us,” he looked back at her “What if they are right? This has been going on for so long; what if there is something and we are just not seeing it?”

    “I mean, they’ve also speculated everything from you abducting me to keep as a pet to me bewitching the entire royal family, so…” she reminded him.

    “Well, yes, but…Well, I do care for you.”

    “So do I, but it doesn’t really have to mean that… Does it?” she asked dubiously.

    “But what if it does?” he pressed.

    “I don’t know; I never really thought about it.”

    “I cannot say I have either, really.”

    She frowned, giving it some thought. “Well… I guess… Maybe we should just… kiss?” she suggested uncertainly, “Y’know, just to be sure?”

    “Yes; I suppose it would be an easy way to know,” he reluctantly agreed.

    They moved closer, facing each other nervously, then he took her face in his hands and leaned down, hesitating a few millimetres from her lips before closing the distance. For a moment neither of them moved, simply pressed their lips together rather awkwardly, then she parted hers and kissed him properly, causing him to reciprocate.

    When they parted, they simply looked at each other for a long moment, expressions nearly identical in their anticipation bordering on fear, until finally she broke the silence. “I got absolutely nothing.”

    “Oh, thank the Norns!” he breathed out in undisguised relief.

    “Nothing?”

    He shook his head. “Whatsoever.”

    She let out a relieved laugh. “Oh, good!”

    “It’s nothing personal,” he quickly added.

    “Oh, no, absolutely!”

    “We are just-”

    “Not that,” she finished for him, and he nodded.

    They looked at each other for a moment then laughed, at themselves and the entire situation. “We are utterly ridiculous.”

    “Yes, we are,” she agreed. She brushed down her skirts then held out her hand. “Shall we?”

    “We shall,” he replied, taking her hand and leading them back inside.

    They fell right back into conversation with Thor and his friends, neither paying any heed to whatever gossip was blooming around them this time, or aware of Frigga eyeing them from a distance with a knowing smile.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Lena, Number Eight [Part 3 of ?]

The moment Lena steps out onto the sidewalk, her hands start to shake in her pockets. Her stomach threatens to revolt, and her attempts to breathe through it don’t go unnoticed.

"Lena? Lena, hey!” Kara trots down the shallow steps to join her on the street, iron gate creaking shut behind her. Her hand touches Lena’s elbow briefly before drawing back. Lena hates the hesitation, worried it’s fear or disgust, but she’s also grateful. Her skin crawls beneath her clothes, prickling in a way it hasn’t for years. “Hey..."

“I’m okay,” Lena grinds out. She forces a smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Kara meets her smile with a soft grin of her own. “Yeah, that-- was definitely something.”

The words sound awkward, but calm. It slowly spreads to Lena enough to dissolve the lump in her throat, but her muscles remain taut, clenching against bone and sinew, clamping her in place. Trapped. It’s all she ever was-- stuck.

She looks at Kara, and her friend visibly melts at the tears in her eyes. It’s clear she has questions-- she must have so many. But she packs them away so that the next words out of her mouth are as mundane as possible.

"Let's get some lunch."

Kara gets lunch. Lena gets coffee.

Neither of them touch their prize, except for Lena to curl her hands around her mug to leech the warmth from it.

Kara tries not to pry, but Lena slowly opens up. About the circumstances of her birth-- and those of the others-- and their subsequent acquisition by Hargreeves. She tells Kara how Hargreeves sent her away, and how Lionel had been decent to her until he died.

Beyond that, she doesn't offer any details. Not about how she went from being from one family's science experiment to another's. Not about how when Lionel died, Lillian studied her even more thoroughly than Reginald had. Not how the precision and control she'd displayed at the house was the result of countless hours spent training and honing her gifts, until her nose bled and her skull felt like a red hot poker had been shoved in her eye or through the top of her head or the join of her neck.

She says nothing of the six months she'd spent in a medically induced twilight sleep, neither sleeping nor waking, in an attempt to enhance her precognition. Nothing about the months she’d spent rebuilding the muscle she’d lost in her semi-vegetative state.  

What she does tell Kara is that she doesn't use her powers anymore.

"The DEO can't know, Kara. No one can know."

Kara swallows. The hero in her reaches out for a kindred spirit, despite her better sense. "But Lena… with abilities like yours, you could help so many people--"

"I'm not that person, Kara. I'm sorry, but I'm not." Lena stares into her coffee, mourning the tepid feel of the ceramic under her palms. “I know it must seem so wondrous, but-- it isn't. It's brought me nothing but misery."

She turns her mug in her hands, scraping the bottom against the table.

"Being in National City... building a life with you in it-- That's the real wonder, Kara."

The air hangs thick and heavy between them. Lena looks up to find Kara’s jaw twitching with the urge to speak, but in the end her friend simply sighs. With that tiny breath of sound, Kara seems to release her expectations, and the need to try and fix it.

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” she says finally. “All of it. I know it can’t be easy. And I’m sorry if I pressured you to revisit a time and place you didn’t want to.”

Shaking her head, Lena can finally smile honestly. The weight on her shoulders lifts, little by little. “No, I’m glad you did. If I hadn’t, I think at some point, I might have wondered what could have been. Now I know.”

For a long moment, Kara’s focus turns inwards. Lena watches as her best friend seems to come to a decision. Her chin lifts, and she meets Lena’s gaze with an exculpatory grimace just shy of a true grin.

“It might be a little anti-climactic after everything,” she starts, tilting her head in that way she does when she’s nervous and can’t deflect attention away from herself, “but in the spirit of reciprocity, I also have a secret.”

Lena’s chest seizes suddenly, her heart jack-hammering at the prospect of another confession. A private one. One that could either burn her secret fantasies to the ground-- or set them aflame.

Slowly, Kara reaches up and slowly removes her glasses. Then she removes the elastic from her hair, letting her locks hang loose around her shoulders. Those two changes alter the planes of her face, almost morphing them into features equally familiar.

“I’m Supergirl,” she says in a low voice.

When the small cafe bubbles with Lena's laughter, Kara knows it was the right thing to say.

When Lena’s coffee goes cold, she doesn’t bother to replace it. They make their way to a nearby park and slowly walk the vacant paths. The city’s gloom still hasn’t lifted, but Kara’s hand in hers fills Lena with warmth.

"Are you ready to go home?" Kara asks. By now Lena can breathe again, and she takes her time considering her response.

She’s wanted to go home since the moment they got off the plane. She’s never liked Metropolis, with its gray buildings and gray skies and gray faces. Being here reminds her of the cold, excruciating days of her childhood, and puts the joy of her life in National City in stark contrast.

To her own surprise, Lena hesitates. "Not yet,” she says softly. “There's one more thing I need to do."

She leads them to an older neighborhood, where tall buildings house long, narrow apartments. Kara agrees to wait outside, leaving Lena to make the long walk up to Vanya's apartment alone.

When she knocks, she knows Vanya will answer.

She's not prepared for the shadow of a woman who opens the door.

"Vanya," she says, covering her surprise with an awkward smile. "Hi, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I’m--"

"Lena," Vanya supplies. She blinks, eyebrows shrugging as she seems to curl in on herself. "I know who you are."

"I'm sorry to barge in on you, but..." Lena reaches for the right words. "You weren’t at the house earlier, and I wanted to offer my condolences..." She lets her voice trail away to nothing as Vanya’s features darken in a mixture of grief and resentment towards a father who was never quite a father.

“Or the appropriate equivalent.”

At that, Vanya lets her in with a tiny smile of appreciation. They settle on the couch, and sit in awkward silence until Lena spies the violin sitting on the chair by the window.

"I heard you play, a few years back" Lena confesses. "With the chamber orchestra. You were good."

Vanya’s hesitant smile turns queasy. "Oh, uh... that probably wasn't me you were hearing then. I was only fifth chair."

"It was you." Lena holds her gaze, brooking no argument. She softens her features with  another smile. "I read your book too."

Flat, detached eyes slide away from Lena.

"I imagine most of the family feedback hasn't been positive, but difficult honesty is something I've always appreciated. I also appreciate you leaving me out of it."

At that, Vanya shares a commiserating shrug. "You'd gotten out," she explains. "Didn't feel right dragging you back into it."

As they continue to speak, Lena probes carefully. Vanya's choice of narration, from the perspective of an outsider... feeling powerless against a family who ostracized her...

"I have to say, I was a little surprised to read it. I knew you weren't included on any of the publicized missions, but... I don't know. I guess I'm surprised it got so bad."

Vanya looks away, tucking her palms between her knees. "Being the only non-powered kid in a family of superheroes gives new meaning to black sheep, huh."

Alarm bells clamor at the back of Lena's mind. She struggles to make the connection, searching for the joke in her words, but finds none.

"You know,” Vanya continues, her voice tight in her throat, “after you left, I wanted so badly to be adopted too. Dad would have been out another disappointment, and I'd get a family like yours."

Lena stiffens, but keeps quiet. Vanya doesn’t need to know that the Luthors weren’t anything to be proud of. But Vanya grimaces a moment later, well aware of the headlines that had swamped national news for months on end following Lex’s arrest.

"Of course, that didn't really hold up, I guess. I'm sorry."

Lena shrugs her forgiveness with a tight smile. The reminder doesn’t sting so much, coming from someone who understands the struggle of family neither chosen nor born into. Vanya sighs. “But at the time, thinking you were happy and free was like a fairytale. And if one person without powers could get a happy ending, why not two?”

Vanya echoes her shrug. “Guess not.

"I had no idea it had gotten so bad," Lena gently maneuvers. "What changed?"

But Vanya can only shrug helplessly. "Nothing. That was the problem. When no powers ever manifested, there just... wasn't any room for me."

Lena blinks, searching for the joke, but doesn't find one.

"You know, after you left... I used to dream Dad would let me be adopted to too. I figured, if one person without powers could get out, why not two."

Lena hesitates. "Vanya... I don't know why Hargreeves told you all that I lost my powers, but... I didn't." She sees Vanya's disappointment and feels it all the way down to her bones.

“Oh.”

"I'm so sorry."

"No, it's not your fault. It's good you still have them, right? Losing them after having them... that would have been-- At least I never had any. Can't miss what you never had, right?"

Again, it’s said without a single ounce of irony. Lena’s disquiet heightens, but when she opens her mouth to respond, the chime of the clock interrupts. The hour is later than she anticipated; if she waits much longer, it’ll be too late to fly, and Lena isn’t willing to spend the night in Metropolis.

“I’m sorry, I have to get going,” Lena sighs. “Here…”

Reaching into her pocket, Lena pulls out a business card. She scribbles her cell number on the back, and hands it to Vanya, who takes it with fingers that stutter on the cardstock as though numb.

“This is my personal line,” Lena tells her. “You can call me, if you ever need anything. Even if it’s just to talk. I’d… like to get to know you.”

Vanya stares at it, as though she can’t quite fathom its function. "Why?” she asks, blinking. “I mean, why me?"

Lena reaches out and touches her knee. "Because you were honest when the world would have rather swallowed a lie. And because I know how hard it can be, to feel like you're completely alone. You don't have to be."

“Oh,” comes the soft response. After a moment, Vanya nods, lips trembling. "Okay, yeah. I think I will."

"I look forward to it." Lena smiles. "I should get going."

"Right, yeah." Vanya follows her to the door. Just as Lena is about to step out, Vanya speaks out. "I remember you."

"Sorry?"

"Before, you weren’t sure I’d remember you. But I do." Vanya swallows thickly. "I remember that you were kind."

Lena gazes at her, unsure how to respond even when Vanya’s eyes began to glint with moisture.

"None of the others have ever seen me play. They only read my book so they could hate me after. And none-- none of them even called when Dad died."

Vanya swallows, ducking her chin to avoid Lena’s gaze. "You were always the kind one."

Lena hesitates, then gives in to the urge to wrap Vanya in a hug. Vanya hugs her back readily.

"I'm sorry your new family sucked," Vanya mutters against Lena's coat. "You deserved better."

"So did you, Vanya.” Her words hit Vanya with a jolt, before she squeezes Lena tighter. "You deserved so much better."

When Lena emerges from the building, Kara is waiting right where she'd said she'd be. She doesn’t say anything, and only slows enough for Kara to fall into step next to her. They walk for almost thirty minutes before Lena has the sense to hail a cab to the airport.

Only when they’re in the air does Kara break the silence. “Do you really feel it was worth it? Coming back?”

Lena shrugs. "There’s value in knowledge. Even if it’s just knowing that some things never change.”

“Like what?”

“Like… Number One still thinks he’s hot shit. And Diego is consistently an inch away from a homicide charge.”

“And Vanya?”

“And Vanya… is completely normal."

Kara knows her too well. She studies Lena, and discerns the uneasiness that ripples beneath her words. "What's the trouble with that?"

Lena looks Kara dead in the eye. "Vanya has never been ordinary."

Continued in Part 4

[hotblondespanishclass]

in the wrong place at the wrong time

so here’s my secret santa present for @chasingforeverandaday​ ! 

Prompt; Wellenore and Magic

Summary: HG Wells works in the Department of Mysteries and ends up walking through the wrong door. 

Most people would describe HG Wells as brilliant.

He would describe himself as “uh, well, um, er, what was the question again?”

But it was true. HG Wells was simply brilliant.

He’d been the smartest wizard Hogwarts had seen in decades. Sorted into Ravenclaw, he’d quickly risen above his fellow classmates. By 12, he’d been granted use of a time turner so that he could take several OWL-level classes as well as his usual studies. That’s where the fascination with time travel started, he supposed. Time was such an interesting fo concept, that everyone understood but also never really did. Some (a certain Eddie Dantes sprung to mind) laughed at him, but no one had been laughing when he was offered a job in the Department of Mysteries straight out of Hogwarts.

He worked in the Time Room, to the surprise of nobody. Being an Unspeakable was lonely.

But it was what he did best.

***

He hadn’t meant to walk through the wrong door (and how it had let him in, he had no idea).

He was standing in the Death Chamber, not the Time Room where he knew he should be, yet he made no effort to leave. HG had always been too curious for his own good. Plus, it wasn’t his fault that someone (Krishanti, he supposed) had left the door unlocked where anyone could just walk right in. I mean, could you blame him?

There’s a strange archway with a tattered, black curtain in the middle of the room that HG immediately knows to avoid. He doesn’t know much about the Death Chamber, but he’s not completely daft. The pensieve to the far right of the room, however… it really shouldn’t have been left there where anyone could accidentally fall in. Really, he wasn’t to be blamed at all for walking over there and tripping. He tripped. Truly.

At least, this was what he said to himself as he found himself inside someone else’s memories.

He was inside what appeared to be a woman’s bedroom, a guess that was confirmed by the woman standing in front of a mirror, beaming at her own reflection. HG stared at her - she was gorgeous. He immediately felt guilty about thinking that - she was very clearly in a wedding dress. A man walked into the room (he figured this was the groom), sneaking up on the woman. HG suddenly felt like he was intruding on a very private moment, even if it was only a memory, but his curiosity got the better of him and he stayed put.  

“Guy!” The woman exclaimed, and her voice was that of an angel. “What are you doing here? It is such bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.’

“I just couldn’t wait.”  the man - Guy, said. The two smiled at each other, and HG got that twang of he really shouldn’t be here again.

“Lenore!” Guy suddenly exclaimed, and HG realised that must be her name. “You’re burning up! I must fetch you a physician.”

Before he realises what was happening, the memory was shifting and Lenore was lying on a bed and she was dying and then she was dead and he really, really shouldn’t be here.

Once again, he finds himself in the Death Chamber, except this time he isn’t alone.

(He probably should have seen that one coming.)

He’s about to desperately explain himself when he realises who the other person is. It’s her.

Lenore.

He expects her to yell at him, or throw something at him, or something.

Instead she just says; “You’re back.”

And that makes no sense at all.

He doesn’t think too much on that, however, because he just watched this woman die a minute ago.

“You’re a ghost!” He blurts out, and she raises her eyebrows as if to say duh. HG’s seen ghosts before, of course, but none of them he’d watched die. Not even through memories. It’s… jarring, to say the least.

“That’s me. Lenore Poe, Lady Ghost.” She replies, sticking out a hand for him to shake. HG braces himself for his hand to glide right through hers, gets ready for the cold feeling that one gets when in contact with a ghost. It never comes. Instead, his hand slots neatly into hers, the warmth radiating from her hand up his arm. He stares at her, because that’s impossible. Ghosts couldn’t feel. Ghosts couldn’t  shake people’s hands. He stares at her, and she stares back, a smirk creeping up her face as if she knows exactly what he was thinking.

“How-” He begins, and she interrupts.

“I’m not really a ghost. Well, I am, but not like a normal ghost. For one, I didn’t choose to come back. Some witch called Krishanti brought me back, I don’t know how. Two, I can go corporeal. When I want. Not that there’s much point, since I can’t leave this room. I guess that’s number three. So there you go. Any questions?”

It’s a lot to take in, and he stammers as he tries to formulate a reply.

“I’m- I’m HG. Wells. HG Wells. I work in the Time Room.” He stutters, releasing her hand.

“What does the HG stand for?”

He stares at her again (It’s rude. He should probably stop. He doesn’t.) because that’s really the question she’s going for?

He goes along with it anyway. “I couldn't possibly tell you. It’s terribly embarrassing.”

“Who am I gonna tell? Krishanti” She laughs, and it’s like sunshine and roses and everything right with the world. “Is that why you work here? Because you’re used to being embarrassed?”

He doesn’t get that she’s joking until it’s too awkward to laugh it off, so she changes the subject.

“So what were you snooping in my memories for?” She asks, and he blushes. Right. That.

“I’m sorry. I had no business to do so.” He says, though he knows he’d do it again.

“It’s okay, I guess. Not like my death’s a secret. It’s the afterlife that’s the big thing.” She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. HG figures that Lenore clearly does not want to be trapped in the Death Chamber for all eternity - no one would, of course. Did she even want to come back?

‘I’m sorry,” He says again. “Have you seen your fiance at all?”

The smile fully slips from her face this time, and she looks at the ground. “No, actually, he died too. Shortly after me.” She lifted her head, looking directly at him. “Killed himself.”

“Because of-”

“Yeah. Because of me.”

A heavy silence fills the room, and HG regrets saying anything at all. Both of them break eye contact, and a heavy silence fills the room. HG regrets saying anything at all.

“I suppose if I were him, I’d be extremely sad too.” He says. Lenore smiles, if only a little bit, but it’s more than he had hoped for. He doesn’t know how he wants her to reply. Turns out, she doesn’t have to reply at all. The doorknob is turning, and HG is panicking. There’s no other door for him to escape through - but HG has never needed a door before.

Pulling the time turner out from his robes, he shoots Lenore a final glance and turns it once. The room shifts around him, the familiar pull of time travel coursing through his veins. It stops suddenly, and once again he’s in the Death Chamber. Lenore is there, but of course she doesn’t know who he is yet. He ignores her question of “Where did you come from?” and quickly leaves the chamber (He leaves the door unlocked, which solves that mystery.) The ticking of the Time Room helps calm his nerves.

What on earth just happened?

----

HG visits Lenore again a week later. She’s surprised when he walks in, as if she thought him vanishing a week ago meant he’d simply blinked out of existence.

“You came back.” She says simply, her smile lighting up her entire face. HG can’t help but beam back at her.

“I did.”

He’s not sure what to say next. He’s found he never really know what to say around her. What do you say to a ghost-but-not-really?

What he does end up saying is “What was your life like before you died?

And so she tells him.

She’d only died five years ago, when she was 23. She tells him about growing up with her brother, Edgar who was apparently “the biggest emo ever known to mankind”. She tells him about Annabel Lee, who’d been her best friend and who Edgar had been absolutely infatuated with. She doesn’t tell him that she misses them, but it’s evident on her face and he feels another pang of guilt that she can’t leave. She tells him about going to Hogwarts (HG does the maths, and she would have been in the seventh year when he was in second) and being sorted into Slytherin. She tells him about people whos names he doesn’t know, Oscar Wilde (friend), Charlotte Bronte (frenemy), and John Proctor (first crush) who she misses as well. (HG thinks she might just miss other people). She tells him, with a sad smile on her face, about falling in love with Guy and getting engaged, only to die from a mystery illness right on her wedding day - HG had seen that part in the pensieve.

“Then Krishanti somehow brought me back, except I can’t leave this room. I’ve tried. So yeah, that’s me! What about you HG, what’s your life story?”

He’s never been one to talk about himself, but he does it because Lenore asks. He’d probably do anything, if Lenore asks.. So he talks. He talks about breaking his leg as a kid and being able to do nothing but study. He talks about Hogwarts, and being sorted into Ravenclaw and getting his first time turner. He talks about Ernest Hemingway, the Gryffindor who was the polar opposite of HG in every way yet had been his only friend. He talks about Eddie Dantes, who’d laughed at him until HG had been offered his job. Finally he talks about the Department of Mysteries, telling her everything that he couldn’t tell ordinary witches and wizards. The Time Room, and all its secrets he’s trying to unravel. His experiences with Time travel (“Well that explains a lot from last week,) and being an unspeakable. It was nice, he told her, to be able to speak to someone now.

His hours nearly up, and he knows he needs to leave before Krishanti or any of the other unspeakables show up. What he’s doing could get him fired and obliviated, not to mention the illegal time travelling he did last week. He hurriedly says goodbye and is out the door before Lenore can say goodbye herself.

When he gets back to the Time Room, not even the constant ticking can distract him from thinking about Lenore.

***

Another week passes, and HG finds himself back in the Death Chamber.

Lenore still seems surprised when he shows up, as if he hasn't spent the whole week wanting and waiting to see her again. He thinks it’s probably not healthy, how enthralled he is by her, but he can’t help it. Every word she says is the most fascinating thing in the world to him.

“Do you think you could do something for me?” She says tentatively when he slips into the room.

“Anything.” He replies. Anything and everything, for you.

“Could you…” She hesitates, and he gives her a reassuring smile. “Could you find Annabel and Edgar and just see if they’re alright? Talking about them last week made me realise how much I miss them. They don’t even know I’m here.”

She looks so sad, and HG wants to do nothing but help her. He knows it would be breaking 50 rules and a dozen laws, but he finds himself agreeing. She beams - a proper, real smile, and hugs him. It still shocks him how real she feels.

He doesn’t want to leave her and have to wait yet another week to see her again, but he leaves anyway, jogging out of the department to the elevator and flooing home. He sends an owl to the ministry about having come down mysteriously with an illness (then regrets using that excuse as he thinks about Lenore) and apparates to the address Lenore had told him before he’d slipped out the door.

He knocks and is greeted by a smiling woman with long red hair (this must be Annabe) who looks surprised at the fact that a stranger has shown up on her doorstep at 8 in the morning. Iit takes him a moment to remember that it’s not normal human behaviour to show up at a strangers house uninvited. He goes to explain himself, but what exactly is he going to say?

Hi there, I’ve been talking to your friend who you know to have been dead for five years.  I’m not even supposed to know her but I think I might be a little bit in love with her, and she wanted me to check up on you. How’s your weekend going?

Instead he says “Hi, Miss Lee. I’m HG Wells and I work for the Ministry of Magic. Do you have a moment to talk about Lenore Poe?”

The smile of her face drops, and she looks lost without it. “Lenore’s dead.” She says simply.

“Yes, well, we believe that the unknown illness that caused her death could become an epidemic in the Wizarding World and we wanted to see if her case matches the other instances we’ve come across.”

It’s a lie, but Annabel falls for it easily. “Oh, of course, come in!” She says, the smile returning. HG takes a seat at the small kitchen table as Annabel flicks her wand at the kettle.

“Edgar!” She shouts up the stairs. “Come down here, there’s a man from the ministry here to speak to us!”

Edgar (who HG can immediately tell is the exact opposite of Lenore) trudges down the stairs, nodding at HG and taking a next to Annabel.

“Are you two… together?” HG asks, for Lenore’s sake.

“We are! Married last year.” replies Annabel, and Edgar smiles. “Lenore would have been so happy, she always was rooting for us.”

(Lenore IS so happy when HG tells her, practically skipping around the chamber and cheering.)

“Yes, about Lenore…”

***

He recounts his visit to Annabel and Edgar to Lenore during his visit a week later, and Lenore was so overjoyed that she hugged him again.

“You have no idea how much this means to me.” She murmurs once they broke apart.

He smiles. She smiles.

And then he couldn't see her smiling because she was kissing him.

He didn’t know how Lenore could possibly be regarded as dead when against his lips she was clearly so alive. Time seemed to stop, speed up, and slow down all at once because Lenore was kissing him and he was kissing her and oh my god oh my god oh my god.

They pull apart and he clearly isn't very good at hiding the dazed look on his face she smirks at him

“So what does HG stand for?”

Of all the things to say.

“Herbert George. Told you, terribly embarrassing.”

“That’s a terrible name.” She laughs, leaning back into his lips.

***

He doesn’t know how, but he’ll get her out of the Death Chamber. He’ll get her to see Annabel and Edgar and everyone else that she’s missed. He’ll help her get control of her powers and understand just what exactly she really is

HG Wells is brilliant.

Lenore is utterly incredible.

They’ll figure it out. Together.

- fin -

note; it’s 1:30 am i just finished this it might need a bit of editing but i had to get it up for the deadline now i need sleep merry christmas

[gyrlversion]

Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

Photo: Shutterstock (pigeons)

Depending on how you count, I’m in between four and 18 active group chats, across half a dozen different apps that occupy most of my time on my phone. Right now, I’m in a one called “Ramius’s Boys,” which is devoted to sharing quotes from the film The Hunt for Red October and submarine-related links; another called “News and Politics Discussion Group,” for arranging Mario Kart matches and, most important, talking shit; and a third, “No More Furry Nudes I Promise” — though, to be fair, that one probably shouldn’t be counted as “active” because no one trusted the promise its creator made in the title. One friend described to me a group chat she’s in with one “overriding rule”: The only thing allowed is GIFs of the Hulk. Another friend told me she’s in a group chat dedicated to sharing photographs of Cobb salads called, naturally, “COBB COBB.”

In some ways, group chat feels like a return to the halcyon era of AOL Instant Messenger, once the most widespread method of messing around with your friends on the internet. But in my life, group chats — on Apple’s iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, or any number of other apps or platforms — aren’t simply additional modes of socialization, drawing on the IM conversation or the chat room. They’re an outright replacement for the defining mode of social organization of the past decade: the platform-centric, feed-based social network. For me, at least, group chats aren’t the new AIM. They’re the new Facebook.

Like Facebook at its best, they’re pocket sources of interpersonal nourishment. Some of my group chats were created for utilitarian reasons, like planning a bachelor party, but have since outgrown the limiting stricture of “having a particular reason to exist.” Most have been freewheeling and themeless since their inception, cast haphazardly and sustained by gossip and boredom and the opportunity to make fun of someone else’s typos. The paradigmatic message of the group chat is one my friend Sam sent recently: “Wanna see something mildly funny?” In group chats, the answer is always “yes.”

It’s easy to forget, 15 years, 2 billion users, and an ethnic-cleansing controversy or two later, that Facebook was a place for this kind of purposeless sociality before it was a place for repeatedly blocking and reporting your step-cousin. More than that, it was a piece of essential social infrastructure — a new layer of life that efficiently, and aggressively, reorganized social existence, describing and enabling friendships, cliques, parties, and even memories, formalized as they would eventually be by Facebook photo albums uploaded on hungover Sunday afternoons.

As it happens, Facebook’s mandate was never to facilitate social life. It was to draw new users in and keep them there, even in alienating and potentially antisocial ways. Over the years it grew beyond the original, limited social contexts in which it began, and chased user engagement at the expense of its users’ well-being. The arrival of parents and bosses into the same social space as college friends, and the introduction of the implicitly competitive News Feed, with its opaque multi-metric ranking system, created the sense that this once-friendly space had turned against us. But by the measurements important to investors, it was successful, and the endlessly updating, always-available feed was adopted as the model for all social networks. The result was, depending whom you talk to, either every single bad thing that’s happened in the last five years, or just most of them.

As feeds grew hostile, though, the rise of the smartphone, with its full-screen keyboard and its array of free messaging options, gave us a new, context-specific, decentralized social network: the group chat. Over the last few years, I and most of the people I know have slowly attempted to extricate our social lives from Facebook. Now it’s the group chat that structures and enables my social life. I learn personal news about friends from group chats more often than I do on Facebook; I see more photos of my friends through group chats than I do on Instagram; I have better and less self-conscious conversations in group chats than I do on Twitter. I’m not alone: The Avengers are in a group chat; the actresses of Big Little Lies are in a group chat; Beyoncé is in a group chat with her mother and Solange. (Jay-Z was apparently not invited.) Group chats have become so fundamental to daily life, in some cases, that they are the first place people turn for help: During the shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, on May 7, BuzzFeed News reported that students took to group chats to share moment-to-moment updates.

And Facebook knows it. “The future is private,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers at the company’s annual F8 conference on April 30. “Over time, I believe that a private social platform will be even more important to our lives than our digital town squares.” He unveiled a new design for the Facebook homepage that emphasized private, user-created Facebook Groups, rather than the default-public News Feed, and announced to the crowd: “This is about building the kind of future we want to live in.” I doubt everyone is as invested in group chats as I am. But if Facebook has its way, they soon will be — on Facebook.

To me, the reorientation of Facebook around private groups feels less like the company “building the kind of future we want” and more like its attempt to force itself back into a social life I’d rescued from its feed. Last year, the technology writer Navneet Alang wondered in a column in the Globe and Mail if it would be possible “to save social media from Facebook.” That is, could we extricate from the globe-spanning behemoth that is Facebook, Inc., the many uses and experiences that can make Facebook, the website and app, so enjoyable? The flowering of group chats points us in one direction. In almost all ways, I find the group chat an improvement over the machine-sorted feed. Freed from the pressure to stand out from thousands of other posts, conversations on group chats tend to be comfortably subdued — even appealingly boring — in a way that Facebook status updates or tweets never can be. Because most group chats exist on platforms or apps that don’t rely on advertising money or user engagement to support themselves, they’re only as addicting or exploitative as any social interaction might be.

You don’t “check” chats the way you check an endless feed: Conversation flows when enough people want to have it, but there’s no algorithm to find and surface an unseen chat message that you might engage with. What you get instead is distraction the old-fashioned way: with intention. The feed, at its worst, is a passive and slack-jawed experience. The group chat requires some level of active engagement. Whatever conditioning has led us to seek validation from the glass-and-metal rectangles in our pockets is obviously at play in the group chat as it is on other social platforms. But it occurs at human scale, with distinct reactions from a handful of friends for a minorly funny joke, rather than at the alien scale of behemoth platforms, with likes endlessly mounting for a Facebook post in which you dunk on the president.

Like any social network, the group chat has its own social mores and prerogatives. Every group chat contains recognizable archetypes — the out-of-it person who asks “wait, what?” about every conversation; the (psychologically self-actualized and professionally successful) member who keeps the group chat on mute, meaning they don’t get alerted every time someone sees a Cobb salad — and undergoes regular cycles of high and low activity, depending on the schedules and time zones of participants. Every group chat has smaller orbiting sub-chats featuring new constellations of the original group’s members, created to plan surprise parties, or, worse, to complain about the guy who keeps asking “what, what?”

Which is another way of saying that group chats aren’t always beautiful and healthy expressions of friendship. The distraction of the group chat may feel more fulfilling than the distraction of Instagram, but it’s still a distraction — sometimes even from fulfilling in-person socializing. Orienting your social infrastructure around sharply circumscribed friend groups might help avoid the dreaded collapsing of social contexts that occurs on Facebook, but it can also reinforce cruel in-group/out-group dynamics. (Though, in their defense, because group chats can’t be crashed by angry strangers or malicious trolls, they’re only ever toxic in the familiar and reassuring ways that friend groups have been since middle school.) Private group chats can create echo chambers as distorting as the decontextualized noise of a public social feed.

Nor are any of the many companies whose products I use to talk to friends particularly benevolent. Apple’s iMessage, my most frequent group-chat app, ties my phone number up in difficult-to-extricate ways with its proprietary system, and splits friends in two tiers — blue and green. (My friend Dan became so incensed at being left out of iMessage group chats that he rigged a home server so he could receive iMessages chats on his Android.) WhatsApp is routinely accused of being a vector of misinformation in India, where it’s been linked to mob violence, and in Brazil, where it’s a source of far-right “fake news.” (Not surprisingly, WhatsApp is also the most “frictionless” of any chat platform, and it’s telling that the first step in reducing the flow of misinformation on the app is to disable the “forwarding” button.) It’s also owned by Facebook, the very company I took to group chats to get away from.

But even if most of these corporations are untrustworthy, at least there are many of them. The key advantage of the group chat is that “social graph” of your friend network exists in your head, and not only on a server in Iceland, which means you can easily abandon one platform for another without any trouble — or, as most of us do, occupy many platforms at once. The result, as Facebook knows all too well, is an internet much closer to the one we might want. “The only thing I still enjoy doing online/with technology is texting,” Sam, the friend who wanted to share something mildly amusing, told me. “All of the rest of it is torture/agony/hell. But I fucking love iMessage.”

*A version of this article appears in the May 13, 2019, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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[beochanpaiseanagustaifeala]

💖”Star🌠Gazing”💖 Part 3 (and NOT the finale....yet)

Well, this is gonna take longer than I thought to get to the very end and it’s gonna be a “breather episode” but I hope you’ll still enjoy this!

Tommy’s POV/Story (You get the drill)

Years after the event, Sanjay and Craig predictably finding themselves separated by region; Craig was a soldier in the nation of In-Between, fighting in the raging war between the nicktoons and the Cartoon Network while in the meantime Sanjay was serving as the late Spongebob and Patrick’s bodyguard and trusted knight in the mother country; I had no idea how Craig felt about his new job (must have had a heck of a time wrangling those troublemakers though!) but I could tell Sanjay was very bittersweet about his new position, while he was proud to take care of the two princes, he felt sad about having to be separated from the one who loved him the most and while he was a proud knight, fighting off any baddies who would assassinate, rob or threaten the princes and wouldn’t be afraid of bragging about how tough he was for his age, I’d sometimes hear him softly crying in his chamber every night about Craig~ I felt bad and decided to comfort him one night.

Rubbing his back, I whispered: “Hey now, don’t cry.”

Sanjay, with his messy hair and wide, tearful eyes looked up at me and replied: “How can I be happy without him? he was so nice to me....he was the most wonderful person I’ve ever met...why do I feel this way?....we’ve only been with each other for days on that ship and I’m so close to him.....”

“You know, when me and Helga left to find recruits, me and Kimi felt the exact same way you do, in fact, on the very day we set sail I reached into my pocket and gave Kimi a beautiful charm as a promise of me returning....and uh if you’re wondering what that feeling is called, its 💕.”

“💕?....that sounds nice.....I like the sound of 💕.....you know, Craig told me we’d be reunited again some day....”

“A very good sign all around that you two are a perfect pair, I wish the best for you two, now let’s get some shuteye.”

The morning that followed was pretty calm, I freshened myself up, got myself a warm latte and sharpened up my screwdriver sword to welcome a new day but when I got out of my chamber, all bell broke loose! the princes hid in the throne room in fear, the hounds (descendants of Spike btw) went mad and started barking up a storm, alarms where activated and screaming was heard; it must be those pesky hooligans at the Cartoon Network again.

I threw on my armor, grabbed my sword and marched outside roaring out: “JUST WHAT IN THE NAME OF ARLENE AND GABOR IS GOING ON HERE!?”

What was going on in the name of Arlene and Gabor was not pretty; I saw Lori and Rambamboo tackling a familiar face from some time ago, but it was a little hard to tell because he couldn't get up and walk and was covered with bruises and blood so I couldn't put my finger on it until he opened his mouth.

“I NEED TO-!” *SLAP!*

“Shut your mouth, the queen’s gonna have an aneurysm if she sees an intruder like you hiding in her garden!”

“And then we’ll get in trouble with her!”

“I NEED TO SEE SANJAY, ALRIGHT!?”

I felt like a bolt of lightning went through my body and shocked all my innards; it was Craig, who have appeared to have been beaten to a pulp to be kept silent; luckly Helga came to the rescue to break it up and scold the two while I dealt with Craig in a nice, private place away from the palace.

“Dude, I’m really sorry you got beaten up by the guards...”

“That’s okay, as long as I get to see Sanjay again, all will be fine.”

“But if you get into the castle chock full of surveillance, Angelica would kill you no matter if you where a nicktoon from the start! she hates anyone who isn’t a resident of the mother country or has left for somewhere else.”

“But....I promised Sanjay....that I would return.....and we could be happy together...”

“Maybe we can arrange a private meeting.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere Angelica and her goons can’t get you, that’s for sure!”

“You think the beach would be a good place?”

“Bikini Upward? the place Patrick and Spongebob where found? of course, its hailed as a sanctuary for those with families separated by the two regions and even though she allows mother-country nicktoons to go there, Angelica won’t touch it because she’s envious of the very thought of Spongebob and Patrick stealing her throne...did I mention the hotel there has excellent service?”

“Sounds good, I’ll sneak to that beach and you can invite Sanjay there so we can meet today.”

“Okie then, what time?”

“3pm sharp.”

“Sounds good mate, see you there!”

“Thanks, I owe you one.”

And with that, Craig became a snake again and slithered out of reach before the magic would wear off again; later on Sanjay got his luggage, took my hand and I drove him to the shores of Bikini Upward and let me just tell you that nobody was not joking when they said it was a sanctuary, the sand was crisp and warm, the cool waves where all sorts of blue/teal/green shades, all sorts of toons there where having a blast over there!

“I’ll go change, be right back Tommy-sama!” Sanjay laughed and rushed to one of the booths.

“Okay then.” I replied, smiling.

Craig eventually arrived in his human form, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, dark green swim trunks, a straw hat and sunglasses, while his scars where still visible somewhat, he was in much better shape than before; “Tommy, buddy, did he show up?”

“He’ll be out in a minute, he’s changing into his swim wear~ imagine how happy he’s gonna be when he sees you again?”

“I bet he’ll have-”

“THE BEST DAY EVER!!” Sanjay cheered as he ran to Craig, hugging him.

“Sanjay, my man, how are you!?” Craig hugged him back and blushed noticed the cutesy red bottoms he wore, plus a lei and a starfish adorned on his head.

“Doing fine!”

I chuckled, telling the two: “Tell you what? I’ll treat you two birds and myself with our own surfboards and I’ll pay for all three of ‘em! sound good?”

the two nodded in agreement and followed me to a small shack offering them; it was chock-full of ‘em in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes~ it was like a house of mirrors you’d see at a fair or carnival except if you replaced them all with surf boards! Sanjay picked out one with a traditional hibiscus pattern, Craig got one that had a flame decal and me? one that resembled a goofy shark....*blush* okay I said too much.

“Three surfboards, please.” I asked the manager at the store, who was none other than an old friend of mine, Otto Rocket; who used to serve in Angelica’s court until he was impeached for getting sand in her potato salad.

“Alrighty my gnarly bros, that’ll be ¥900.″

Well, darn, I only had ¥600 in my pockets! but since I didn’t wanna be selfish, I decided to let Sanjay and Craig get their surfboards while I hoped maybe I could find some coins buried in the sand later on; “I’m a little short on cash, I’ll come back if I find some moolah buried on the shore and buy mine.” I replied.

“Okay then...” said Otto in a sympathetic, unusually calm tone tone until: “...but I hope you know well that you can’t pay with sand dollars.” with a hardy laugh coming from both of us before we both signed off with a “Smell you later!”~ I was a little bummed out since I felt as if I was missing out on all the fun Sanjay and Craig and because all I found was candy wrappers, shells and a tiny crab who clasped on my nose (Ow!); suddenly, a little shed of light fell upon me in the form of another old friend of mine who was casually strolling on the beach.

“Tommy, whatcha doin’?” she asked in her as-per-usual friendly tone.

“Hey there, I was just looking for some yen to pay for a surfboard since I’m short on cash but I can’t find any.” I said in a tired tone.

“Maybe I can be your surfboard, I am a shape-shifter after all.”

“You’d do that for me? well, thanks Jenny!”

“No problemo~” she said in a chirpy, sing-song voice.

Now I was really having a ball! I joined up with Sanjay and Craig who where just getting started.

“You got your surfboard? nice!” said Sanjay.

“Let’s just say I got a pretty sweet discount.” I replied, chuckling.

🏄

After that, we all agreed to get some grub to satisfy our growling stomachs~ Craig wanted to get some pizza, Sanjay craved wings, I didn’t know what I was gonna get but my “surfboard” spoke up and announced: “I hope they sell oil cans!”; naturally, Sanjay and Craig where a little startled at first but quickly grew amused, asking me: “Who said that?” and I answered by setting the “surfboard” down and like a transformer, Jenny returned to her default setting.

“Who are you?” asked Craig.

“My name is Jenny, I’m a friend of Tommy’s.” Jenny replied with a loving, friendly smile.

“Woah....I really like your hair~” said Sanjay, following: “I was wondering if you could doll me up like that.”

“We’ll find a way!” She chirped back.

The rest of the day and night was filled with joy: we went diving, we played a games like volley ball and limbo with other Nicktoons, we tried some seafood right off the grill and even saw some hula dancers performing! what a party, huh? however when I was gonna take Sanjay home so we wouldn’t get in hot water with Angelica, the unpredictable happened.

“Tommy, I don’t want to leave here.” He replied in a stoic, somewhat solemn voice.

“Because you and Craig wanna spend some more time together? don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow!” I tried to reassure.

“...Me and Craig are actually gonna live here, together.”

“Oh.”

Isn’t that cute? they made plans to live the rest of their lives in a paradise where they can live together without any laws restricting them but...

“You’ll need to save enough, find a home here and resign from your duties to live with Craig here, are you sure you wanna go through with this so early?” I suggested, hoping Sanjay wasn’t accusing me of being just like Angelica in some sort of cliche but thank the splat he didn’t, instead he asked me some advice about finding money in the sand like I talked about earlier.

“About that...(^^’)”

💕 See you next time, where things go down right into the soup! 💕