#ive been staring at this for days since she sent me the SKETCH and THEN!! the finiSHED VERSION???

[missmonsters2]

The Color of You || Part VII

PAIRING: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader/OFC

Summary: It was another mission Natasha was assigned to. Nothing she hasn’t done before. Same mission, different people. Sent undercover to investigate William Cain, suspect to funding terrorism and smuggling weaponry. Under the disguise of Natanya Rovinski, Natasha is ready for another routine mission. Until she met you, William’s fiancé. 

Warnings: There are dark elements to this series. Also, smut later on. Please note this part includes abuse & torture (semi-graphic).

NOTE: This is a pretty dark chapter about reader. Lemme know if you want to be on my taglist for this series, any natasha stories I do, Wanda stories, or everything

PART I || PART II || PART III || PART IV || PART V || PART VI 

PART VII of X

Count: 3249

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10 years ago...

Your name was being shouted from a distance. You turned your head, seeing your mother calling you back into the house. Closing your sketchbook, you got up, dusting your pants before making your way back in.

“Really, you shouldn’t be outside too long,” your mother half-heartedly scolded you.

“Why not? We’re in the countryside. There are no neighbors for miles and miles away,” You rebuttal, a little upset that you had to come in.

Your mother merely raises her brow at you. “You’re getting a bit more of an attitude every day, missy. I didn’t say anything when you got your tattoos, but no sass-mouthing me.” 

She says it so jokingly that you can’t help but smile along.

“It’s going to rain today,” you say, and your mother seems confused.

“Really? The weatherman said it’ll be sunny all day,” she muses.

“It will rain,” you confirm. 

“Best get the laundry in then,” your mother rushes off.

You grin, watching your mother runoff. Your family was wealthy with your father running his own company, but even so, you lived in a beautiful house out in the countryside, away with people and no hired help. Well, you used to have a maid at least, but she had quit saying the countryside was not settling well with her body. Your family paid her a lot of hush money.

Your family adored you, and when they discovered your strange gift, it really worried them what could happen to you if anyone knew.

The worry that people would take you, want to experiment on you, or take advantage of you pushed your parents to make the decisions they did.

So, you and your family took care of your daily things while your father would go run his company, often coming home late at night. 

It was a simple life.

Everything was good.

Or so you thought.

“I just...I don’t know what we’re going to do. I may have to claim bankruptcy. We’re hardly making the payments we need to do. The company just keeps getting worse, and I don’t understand why. I had to lay off 80 people today. I’ve closed down many factories in the last month.”

You stood quietly at the door, slightly ajar for you to peer in to see your father in a stressed state as your mother tried to comfort him.

“Should we move back into the city?” Your mother suggests, but your father shook his head.

“No, it’s worse for our daughter out there. You know that. There are too many people and sounds. It triggers the visions.”

Your mother purses her lips but agrees. They sigh stressfully together, your mother’s head on your father’s shoulder.

“We’ll figure it out, darling, we always do.”

It made you feel awful. 

That night you stared at the ceiling in bed, praying an answer would come.

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You were in the field again, resting against the tree, sketching the view before you.

It was peaceful, but in the sense that it’s the calm before the storm. You were anxious.

Last night, you were getting horrible visions of a man in a fiery crash. He was stuck in the vehicle, screaming a name you couldn’t hear. The vehicle caught on fire, and there was so much blood.

The crash had disfigured his face, but his expression haunted you.

You weren’t sure what to do with it because you didn’t know who this man, where he was, or when it was happening. 

Hell, you couldn’t make out his face without the blood and shards of glass.

A part of you wasn’t sure if maybe you were just having nightmares.

But the same vision kept coming over and over the next few nights. You were getting ragged, and your parents could tell. 

They were happening more frequently, with more details each time, but it wasn’t like you had any more understanding. 

You spent a day, just trying to mimic what the man was saying in the car before he died. Your mouth followed his movements, but you weren’t getting anywhere. 

You felt like you were going to go crazy, watching the same man dying.

It kept going, and going, and going, and going, and going...

Until one day, it stopped. 

A part of you was relieved, but there was a drop in your stomach wondering if it stopped because it happened, and it was no longer a future possibility. 

The days were peaceful once more. 

Well, as can be. You could tell your parents were getting more stressed as they were running out of money, getting closer, and closer to bankruptcy.

You were sure the peaceful days were coming to an end, and you felt so guilty you couldn’t do more. 

“--rry, I’m just really lost. How do I get back to the main road?”

You turned your head, stretching to see a tall, handsome man with a couple dirt stains on his suit. 

He looked shy.

Your mother merely laughed at his sheepish boyish grin.

“Well, let me draw you a map. Why don’t you come in and grab some tea? Must’ve been some adventure, huh?”

The man laughed and walked inside. 

You quietly crawled through the tall flowers, peering inside the kitchen glass door to see the man sit down. 

You tilted your head to the side, observing him.

He was obviously wealthy, catching his Rolex watch on his wrist.

You did find it a little weird for someone to get lost here. This was quite out of the way of anything.

He turned his head, and then your eyes met. 

He looked shocked, mouth agape. 

He actually flushed and looked away. 

Since you were caught, you stood up, coming through the side door of the kitchen. Your mother looked shocked to see you. Even a little wary.

“This is my daughter,” Your mother told the man, introducing you.

The man stood abruptly up, coughing slightly as he stuck his hand out towards you.

“I’m William Cain.”

Your mother hummed. “Your dad doesn’t happen to own Cain Holdings, does he?”

William nodded, and your mother gave him a sympathetic smile.

“I heard about the accident. I’m really sorry to hear about him.”

William merely thanked her with a half-smile before looking back at you. You tilted your head down, looking a the map your mother drew and hummed.

Grabbing the pen, you re-drew the path he should take.

“Is it wrong?” Your mother asked.

“No, but...the roads are tricky over there. It is best he takes this route back to the main road.” You quietly say, passing the sheet of paper to him with a small smile. “It was nice to meet you.”

And then you left. Your mother is someone that doesn’t like you meeting strangers, so it’d be best to limit interactions.

She heard small noises from downstairs, but soon, William was on his way.

She thought that was the end of that.

Until he showed up again.

And then again, and again, and again. 

The next couple of times, he came with small gifts like chocolate, cookies, or little trinkets, saying it was a thank you for helping him.

The next couple of times, he would come up with ridiculous lies to say he was visiting. 

One day, he merely said he wanted to see you.

Then the reasons no longer mattered. 

You couldn’t classify that you were in love with William, your heart just didn’t feel that way. But you weren’t unsatisfied to be with him. Especially knowing he could help your father.

Before you knew it, he wanted to whisk you away, back to his estate. He thinks you just have a frail body, which is why you’re in the countryside. He promises your parents of a quiet place for you, where you can still have fresh air, and lots of room to draw and paint. 

He promises a partnership for your father’s company.

And with your reassurance, they hand you to him. 

“Don’t tell William about your abilities, dear,” your mother tells you as she helps you pack your clothes. “I know he loves you, but you never know.”

You nod, feeling your throat burn as your about to leave your parents. 

“We can visit at any time. Heck, we may even decide to move back to the city,” your mother tries to reassure you, but you’ll miss her anyways. 

With hugs and kisses goodbye, a final piece of advice, you part ways with your family.

Never to see them again.

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William’s place is quiet. 

Much more quiet than you had expected. There are no pictures on the wall, only paintings and trinkets. You meet his mother, who’s just thrilled to have ‘such a young, graceful lady around.’

She seems sweet but also distant. She looks out the window a lot like she’s expecting someone to come home at any time. 

William is still finishing university, it was a wonder how he found so much time to visit you. On top of that, he was busying himself to take over his father’s business. 

You’re still getting used to the city air. It’s not quite the same as the countryside, but you find that you don’t mind it at all. 

William seems to be keeping you a secret because, as the years pass, you never meet anyone new. You’ve visited your parents rarely, and it seems to be getting more infrequent.

There’s an unsettling fear in your stomach, and you don’t understand why. It feels like you’re being tested. William asks your opinion on everything, trying to gauge your reaction.

You’ll purposely choose the wrong thing or say the wrong thing because your mother’s words can’t escape your head.

You’re now having reoccurring nightmares of the man dying in the car crash again. He’s screaming and screaming, but you can’t hear what he’s saying. Waking up in cold sweats and an empty bed, you’re scared out of your mind. 

You want to leave. 

So in the dead of night, while William is gone, you sneak into the hallways. 

Suddenly, you hear footsteps and noises. Panic overtakes you as you scramble through a door you haven’t been through before. You shut the door, leaning against it as you listened to the footsteps and voices walk right past you.

Sighing in relief, you stood up straighter and turned around. It was dark, but the moonlight outside illuminated the room enough for you to see. 

You realized that it wasn’t so much a room, but a hallway. Against the wall were portraits lined up side by side. Walking over, you looked at the photos one-by-one. Typically, this was a room you weren’t allowed to enter. William or a maid always led you away.

This must be generations of men in William’s family, you thought. 

You come to the last photo. It must be William’s father. You haven’t really seen a big, clear picture of the man before. Even in news articles, they were always taken from afar. 

You stood before the large portrait that seemed to loom down on you, staring at you with his clear features and eyes.

A sharp pain shot through your head as you hissed, hand coming to your eyes as the images rush through your head.

It’s the dying man again.

But you can hear everything this time, see more clearly.

“WILLIAM! WILLIAM!” He screams, desperately trying to unbuckle his seatbelt. The car is incredibly hot, a small fire coming from under the hood with smoke. Shards of glass are stuck in his face, and there’s just so much pain. 

He can hear a car door shut just a few feet from him. He turns his head to see his son come up to the window.

“WILLIAM, GET ME OUT OF HERE!” He yells, pulling at his seatbelt again. A truck just came out of nowhere, and the fire was starting to grow.

William stood by the driver’s side, careful to not lean too close with the broken glass as he crouched down, his face stoic. 

“You don’t understand our legacy, father. You’re going to ruin everything our family has created for generations.”

His father watched as William got up, walking away without even stumbling. 

“WILLIAM! WILLIAM!”

He called and called, but his voice was soon drowned out by the sound of the vehicle exploding.

Your head felt heavy as you were gasping in pain. It was like your right eye was throbbing. 

“You know, don’t you?”

You whipped around to see William, who just turned onto the hallway, casually leaning against the wall.

You stumble back a little bit, but then your back hit someone else’s. You turn your head to see Evelyn, the last maid you had.

“Evelyn...? What are you--”

“It’s fine, release her,” William cuts you off. 

Evelyn lets go of your shoulders, and William walked to stand before you.

“You know what I did, don’t you?” William says to you again, his arms crossed over his chest.

“N-No, I don’t--” You stuttered.

“Don’t lie,” William tsked at you. “I heard from our little rich circle years ago about your parents who had a darling little girl...but something was off about her, she was always predicting things that happened.”

William uncrossed his arms, lifting his hand to caress a strand of your hair. “I paid Evelyn a lot of money to see if it was true. Then I swept you away...keeping you here to see myself.”

“So,” William drawled, “What else have you seen?”

“N-nothing,” you say, and it’s true, at least nothing related to William. 

William merely smiles at you.

“I guess we’ll have to change that.”

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It was dark.

And cold.

You don’t know how many days you’ve been in this...hole.

Evelyn has taken you deep into the basement. You’re sure you’re well beneath the floor in this cell. 

They dropped you in here with no way of getting out.

It felt like you were in a well. 

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Your screams were echoing.

Arm out as your hands stretched to reach...reach something.

“I don’t like it when you run, don’t you understand that by now?” William’s voice sounded disappointed with you. 

The blade he held carved into your skin, and you could feel a warm liquid dribble out and slide down your sides.

“P-Please stop...” you begged with tears in your eyes and throat raw from screaming.

“Don’t run from me anymore.”

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You were back in the dark.

Knees crouched to your chest, you had your head down. 

Evelyn came by, and you were mad at her. Hated her with every fiber of your being. 

You want your parents, your parents will know you're missing if they keep visiting and you’re never around.

Evelyn says your parents won’t visit anymore.

You won’t get to see them until you’re dead, she tells you. 

You don’t know what to do anymore. 

You’ve been in here for weeks. Your back has begun to scab over, but you refuse to give anything to William. 

You stare straight ahead, even if you can’t see anything.

You start to wonder if you should give up and join your parents.

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“Still nothing?” William says to you as you’re forced to kneel before him.

He comes up to you and gets down on one knee. Your face is bruised, and he cups it gently like he cares about you.

“I don’t want to treat you like this, you know. I meant what I said to your parents when I said I’d take care of you. You need to let me take care of you.”

You clench your jaw at the mention of your parents, but you don’t say anything.

William moves in to try to brush his lips against yours, but you vehemently turn your head away.

For a second, you think he might hit you again, but he just sighs.

“Evelyn, take her back,” William says, but he turns to you again. “I want you to help me, but if you can’t, I don’t have any problems achieving what I need to without you too. Don’t become useless to me.”

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Your back rests against the slightly curved wall. Your hair feels matted, and you just feel grimy in general.

William's words keep replaying in your head, but you can’t help but feel hopeless.

You’ve stopped eating the meals Evelyn brings you. 

It doesn’t matter anymore, you think. 

You stare into the nothingness so long you think you’re eyes have adjusted. 

People think that the dark is just black, but it’s not. There are no words to describe the lack of colors around you. 

A sharp pain hits your head again as you hiss, bringing your hand to your eye.

The sudden colors are so vivid and bright, it almost hurts you. 

You see flashes of red hair, luscious lips, a black suit, and a pair of piercing emerald eyes.

You just see quick flashes of different scenes, but you know one thing for sure.

She’s going to take down William.

“Natasha,” you whisper to yourself as if to test the name on your lips. 

It makes you feel warm.

And you get a feeling that you haven’t felt in a long time.

Hope.

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“Then I got myself together...forced myself to give into William and paved his way exactly the way it had to be to bring you here.”

You feel something wet hit your bare back.

Turning your head as far as you can to see tears falling from Natasha’s eyes and it trickles down her face, hitting your back a couple more times.

You wonder if it’s awful to think she looks beautiful when she’s crying too. You turn your body over, Natasha adjusting herself so you can do so.

With your bare chest exposed to her, you lift your hand and cradle her cheek, smiling a little when she presses herself more into your palm.

“Why are you crying?” You ask her softly, using your thumb to wipe a tear that was falling.

“I’ll kill him,” Natasha says, turning her lips into your palm as she kisses the area tenderly. 

You chuckle softly because you’re not sure if she really will or not, but it warms your heart nonetheless. 

“Do you want to know something interesting?” You ask, your other hand pulling on her shirt, so Natasha will lean down closer to your lips.

Natasha hums.

“When I saw you...I held onto you. Through every dark night, painful crying, and feeling so wretched...I remembered you.” You whispered as Natasha’s lips got closer. Your thumb stroked the softness of her cheek as Natasha gripped onto your sides tightly, screwing her eyes shut as you told her what she meant to you.

“You’re such a beautiful color, Natasha. You’re the soft blue that comforted me, the yellow that brought me happiness, a pure white that gave me light the darkness, and the green that brought me hope. Do you understand me?”

You’re so desperate for her to understand.

Because without her, you would’ve never made it out alive, and you need her to know that.

Your lips brush against Natasha’s as her body lines up with yours. You shiver, feeling her cover your chest.

“You saved me.”

Natasha won’t let you say anymore as her lips crashes onto yours, but you feel her emotions dripping into you as she kisses you deeply. Her grip loosens as she pushes her arms under your back to hold you closer. 

“You’re mine,” is all Natasha can say.

PART VIII

[artificialqueens]

star-uncrossed [jackie x jan] - pinkgrapefruit

A/N - this is a prologue of sorts to ‘i do like you’ but it’s mostly just more jackie and jan fluff featuring my favourite dialogue ive ever written. hope you enjoy it! <3

*

They meet on their first day of college and fall in love. Okay it’s not that simple but they do meet on the first day of college and they do fall in love.

Jan didn’t read the email properly.

(She’s from Jersey, screw it, she knows New York and she doesn’t need to read some stupid instructions to find her way around.)

She didn’t read the email properly so she ends up outside the Lillian Verge school for International Relations even though she enrolled in Tisch and quite frankly she’s just incredibly confused. And then she meets a sweet girl with dark brown hair and a loosely Canadian accent and she finds herself feeling a little bit less lost.

“You okay?” The stranger asks with a kind smile. “You seem lost.” And Jan smiles because goddamn, only she could be a damsel in distress in a city that she’s known for years.

“Just a little,” she admits as she stares at the name on the buildings signs - hoping maybe they’ll transform and she can just walk into her 10 am seminar on Performance Movement.

The pretty lady chuckles and bows her head. “What school are you in?” She asks, “you don’t strike me as an international relations student.”

Jan wants to be indignant, play the can’t judge a book by its cover card but she’s dressed in tight leggings and a pair of worn Nikes with a hoodie from her last regional theatre performance and a dance bag slung over her shoulder. She takes a second to look over the brunette and realises that if Jan doesn’t look like an IR major - she most certainly does. She has a white button-down tucked into a pair of light-wash-straight-leg jeans with a beige and red silk bandana in her hair and a leather satchel.

“Tisch,” Jan responds, doing a little twirl for emphasis because if she’s going to be seen as a ditsy blonde theatre major she might as well do it right but the response isn’t what she was expecting.

“Damn, you must have real talent.” The brunette says with genuine sincerity.

Jan decides she wants to marry her on the spot.

The woman pulls out her phone and fires off a quick text before she looks at Jan again. “I was just letting my friend know I’ll be late for brunch,” she states quickly as if it is normal to adjust brunch plans for someone you have never met before and then she grabs her wrist and starts walking.

It’s a fourteen-minute walk down ninth street followed by a three-minute walk down the second avenue in which Jan learns both everything and nothing about the stranger. She learns she’s supposed to be meeting her old pen-pal for lunch near Parsons because she’s an international student from Paris, that she’s fluent in French and Farsi and that she’s lived alone in New York for two years since she turned sixteen because she values life experiences over possessions.

In return Jan lets her know that she’s allergic to shellfish, will do anything for a smoothie and is gay as all hell prompting an in-depth discussion about the rights of LGBT people across the world, a topic that Jan was vastly underprepared to discuss at 10:03 on a Tuesday.

They arrive at Tisch with a start and out of breath but Jan has to stand there a minute longer before she can brace herself to go in.

“You look like you carry a pen,” Jan says, causing the Brunette to raise an eyebrow (although she reaches into her back pocket and produces one anyway). Jan grabs her hand and scrawls her number on it in a veritable chicken scratch before she hands it back.

“I’m Jan,” she says with a smile and an open palm.

“Jackie,” then non-stranger replies.

(Jan starts her first semester at Tisch on a negative grade. It’s worth it.)

*

Jackie texts her at three in the morning asking if she’d like to go for a smoothie tomorrow and Jan replies asking if it will be postponed due to her inhuman kindness.

(Jackie responds not to bite the hand that feeds you but she’s delirious and there is definitely a french word thrown in there somewhere.)

The brunette is laid across the end of Nicky’s bed waxing poetic about Jan’s blue eyes as she had been for three and a half hours and the Frenchwoman is getting very close to kicking her longest friend out of her dorms and forcing her to walk to her own apartment for the night but she knows there would be no point.

They’ve been pen pals since they were seven having long rambling conversations in french through decorated envelopes and sticker-covered letters. As they got older the letters for longer and they evolved into care packages too. Boxes would arrive full of foreign candies and stationery and a book here or there. One year, close to Jackie’s birthday, Nicky sent her a pair of fluffy socks and the letter she received back was tear-stained.

Nicky runs a hand through Jackie’s hair and sighs.

“”This sounds remarkable simple you know,” She offers up with a wry smile and exasperated tone.

“Yeah but it’s not,” whines Jackie in response as she rolls onto her front and lets out a dramatic sigh. “She’s cute and blonde and knows about gay rights.”

“I’m cute and blonde and know about gay rights,” Nicky reminds her.

“Yeah but you’re french,” Jackie responds with her tongue stuck out.

“God. you’re like Romeo and bloody Juliet, what was it - Star crossed lovers?” Nicky grabs a shirt out of her draw and tosses it so it lands on her friends head. “You’re making it so fucking hard for yourself. You’re basically star-uncrossed lovers. There is literally no issue.”

Jackie presses her face into the duvet and moans. “That made no sense you french son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, but you understood me.”

(She did and she’s not happy about it. The whole thing is refreshingly uncomplicated and that makes her very nervous.)

*

Jan wakes up and texts Jackie that it is raining. It’s not that she’s never encountered this before - she just feels the need to share it with someone and Jackie seems appropriate.

Jackie sends back a smiley face and a request for the address of Jan’s dorm and when Jan responds, she tacks on that she will meet her in the lobby at eleven.

Looking at her purple alarm clock, Jan has the realisation that it’s ten am on a Wednesday and she is yet to leave her bed so she rolls out of bed, hits her hand on the drawer of her bedside table, yanks her phone off the charging cable and takes herself to the bathroom she shares with the rest of the floor before deeming that her hair does not need a wash.

(It probably does but it’s dyed a much lighter shade of blonde than it is naturally so she doesn’t want it to fade and she’s not feeling a cold shower this morning.)

By the time she has dressed herself the rain bounces a few inches off the ground and the roads have turned into rivers which is why it is all the more adorable that Jackie meets her in the lobby with a massive black umbrella. She holds her hand up (she’s written Jan on it in black marker) and waves like she’s in an airport which only makes the blonde scrunch her face up in happiness even more.

“Morning!” Jan exclaims with a huge smile and an enduring positivity.

“Morning Jan,” Jackie smiles back, linking their arms and settling the umbrella above their heads so they can walk through the automatic doors and onto the still busy streets.

They banter and bicker the whole way through smoothie bowls whether it’s over the best Disney film (Jackie says Beauty and the Beast but is entirely willing to watch them all with Jan to make sure), guilty pleasure foods (Jan waves her EpiPen as she raves about cocktail shrimp) and their respective majors.

By the end of it, Jan’s learnt her fingers fit perfectly between Jackies and she’s just about ready to put down a deposit on a three-bed two-bath house in Harlem.

They wander home in the early afternoon sunshine, fingers loosely intertwined and Jackie realises quickly that they could count quarters together and she’d be entertained.

They kiss in the lobby and Jan watches the way Jackie’s eyes flit from her lips to her eyes and back down before going in for a second. And then a third. And her mouth tastes like cherry and somehow cinnamon and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to get a smoothie again without recognising the taste.

*

“It’s so easy,” Jan moans with her head on Gigi’s lap. The taller girl is paying very little attention to the blonde but still cards her fingers through her hair occasionally as she sketches a blazer.

Gigi goes to Parsons but her accommodation got messed up so she ended up next door to Jan and they became friends rather fast. Gigi would define friends as someone she tolerates and Jan would define friends as her heart and soul so they both get everything they want out of the situation.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re an emotionally distant bitch,” Jan asked over pot noodles the day they first met.

Gigi smiled and said thank you and that was that so now Jan is disregarding any requests for personal space and is quite happy to just exist in Gigi’s gorgeously decorated dorm room and pilfer the french candy that she gets from a ‘friend’ who Jan happens to know is very loud in bed.

“I really don’t see the issue,” Gigi replies, looking down at the blonde with a raised eyebrow.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Jan states passively. “But thank you.”

“Anytime. Now stand up so I can measure your proportions.”

*

‘Did you know that in the war, Oscars were made of plaster?’

‘Did you know that the gestation of the Indian Elephant is 22 months?”

‘Did you know I love you?’

*

Turns out it’s absolutely that simple.

[agentbarton12]

Sticky Business

AN: and here we have it folks! ive been putting off posting this cause im lAzY but i finally did. most of the chapters are already done so updates will vary. this is a post homecoming fic btw

masterlist | series masterlist

CHAPTER ONE

Ah, New York. A beautiful place, truly it is. Amidst all the commotion and flying aliens and mutants, I always manage to find some sense of calm. Be it the rhythm of the car horns beeping, or the occasional yelling of an angry passer-by, there was always something to be seen, to be captured, which is why I found myself situated on the roof of our apartment building, against my mother’s wishes.

I am not a rebellious child, truly I’m not. But when I believe strongly in my opinion and a figure of authority happens to contradict said opinion, you best be sure that I am going to stand for my beliefs. If it means a few days of detention, I couldn’t care less. I actually don’t care. I have never been to detention — well I have never been sent to detention, but I make my occasional visits to the hollowed out and depressing classroom — and I know that it is because my teachers are afraid that I will say something about the social injustice of how I am not allowed express my opinions without getting reprimanded because it does not conform to the way they want me to think. Or something like that.

So, there I was, sitting on the roof of our janky old apartment building, sketching the dumb corner that blocked me from seeing anything. Even at this height, I was never able to see around or over that dumb corner. It’s not like I was expecting something to pop and surprise me, I lived in a pretty boring part of Queens, so I wasn’t looking for anything.

But then a man swinging through the alley caught my attention. Sounds went through my ears and a yelp of confusion caused me to lean forward a bit. Just slightly.

That’s when a flash of blue and red swung by me but came to a halt mid-swing and let of his webbing. Spider-Man. Queens very own vigilante.

He stopped short and stared at me on the roof. So, I guess I must’ve looked suspicious sitting on the railing of a roof with nothing but a notebook and pencil. I understand why anyone would be worried that I might do something irrational while I was up there. It made sense. But he just stood there on the ground without saying anything. I pretended to ignore him, and I continued sketching.

“You okay up there, Miss?” he asked tilting his head up to me.

I wasn’t expecting him to say anything. I thought he was just going to stand there until he made sure I was okay and then move on. No such luck.

“Yep. Just sketching,” I said back to him. I kind of shouted, but not really because I did not want to attract the attention of my mother.

He looked confused and glanced around him, looking for something. “What exactly has caught your attention?’

I snorted. He wasn’t wrong. There was absolutely nothing interesting to capture here. Where I was, it was just garbage can after garbage can. But there was something there. I just seemed to be the only one who could see it. “This is New York, Spidey! There’s inspiration everywhere.” And that was true.

I think he chuckled, I was too high up to really hear. “And what inspires — ”

“My purse!” a voice shrieked from somewhere nearby. Spider-Man held up a finger to indicate that he’ll be back and swung into action.

I craned my neck and watched as he disappeared around the corner. Once he was out of my sight, I went back to my sketch. My legs were dangling aimlessly over the railing and the sense of fear wasn’t kicking in. I guess it was because I wasn’t worried about falling because I’ve done this before.

Spider-Man came swinging back a few moments later. He stopped in the same place as before and gave me what I assumed was an apologetic look. I couldn’t tell with the mask and everything.

“I’m back.”

“So, you are.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, and I shrugged nonchalantly in response. He looked up for a moment, not at me, but he seemed to be thought. He snapped his finger like he got the answer to a question he had been stuck on. “I just remembered what we were talking about.”

I looked at him blankly. I was not looking to continue the conversation. I just wanted to sketch my corner in peace.

When I didn’t respond, he spoke again, “I believe I was asking what inspired you about an — ”

“ — MICHELLE!” Dang it. I visibly tensed up as my name sounded throughout the apartment.

My mother’s angry voice scared me enough to send me toppling over the railing and landing on the floor of the roof. No sound escaped my lips, I made sure of it. I silently cursed and got up. I quickly grabbed my bag and headed for the door.

“MICHELLE! I swear if you are on that roof again!” My mother yelled from the terrace of our apartment. I knew she couldn’t see me, but it felt like she could, so I quickly and quietly slipped through the door and started heading down the stairs. I stopped for a moment when I heard my mother yelp.

“Spider-Man? What are you doing here?” she asked. Good question. Why was he still there?

My mother never gave him time to answer though, she just ploughed on with the questions. “Are you here to help Miss Crux? Did she misplace her keys again? Poor soul, she loses them almost every day.”

“Oh no. I was just passing through. But if you could be so kind and check on her for me, that would be great.”

“Sure...um, okay.”

I thought the conversation was over, so I continued down the stairs.

“Uh, Spider-Man, you wouldn’t have happened to see my daughter up on the roof? Dark, curly hair, brown skin? Nose in a book?”

I froze in my step. If Spider-Man rats me out, I’ll be grounded for a week. (Not like I have anywhere to go, it’s just the thought that is chilling.)

I waited for the blow to come, but it never did. Instead I heard him say, “Oh no, I haven’t. Sorry.”

I let out a sigh of relief and ran down the stairs quickly. I jumped the last few and ran to our apartment.

“Michelle!” my mom screamed. “I want you here right now. Miche — ”

I opened the door and was in the kitchen before my mother got back from the terrace. “I’m here. Relax.”

She gave me her don’t mess with me look. “Where were you?”

I shrugged. “I was visiting Mr Torres downstairs because I know how lonely he gets during the afternoons and I thought he could use some help. It has been a while since we visited him, y’know,” I lied partly. We really hadn’t seen him in a couple of months.

My mother thought for a while then let out a sigh. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were on the roof.”

“When I know you don’t want me there? I would never.” I said with mock shock.

She rolled her eyes at me. I could tell she believed me. She wouldn’t have apologised otherwise.

“You need to tell me when you leave, Michelle. Tehy could be watching and they might see you and—”

“—I know, Mom. I know. Stop worrying, no one saw me.” Except Spider-Man, I thought to myself. Speaking of which…

I leaned over the kitchen counter and put my bag on the table. “Who were you talking to?” I asked, acting oblivious.

She looked hummed in confusion. “What?”

“On my way up, I thought I heard you talking to someone. Who was it?”

“Oh, no one.” She tried to brush it off, but I’m better at that than she is. I gave her a look that showed I was not buying any of it. She sighed in defeat. “I was just talking to Spider-Man.”

I snorted. Staying in character. “Eww. You were flirting with Spider-Man? You do realise that he could be a seventy-year-old under there, right?”

She rolled her eyes at me again. “It wasn’t flirting, it was just friendly conversation.”

I scrunched my nose in distaste and rolled my eyes, moving into an upright position. “Still gross.”

As if something occurred to her, she moved to her room and came back with her bag. “You reminded me. I need to check on someone.”

She gave me a kiss before leaving the apartment. I had a feeling she was going to see Miss Crux. Look at her, being a good citizen, listening to Spider-Man. Good for her. (That was sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice.)

I grabbed myself a slice of bread and buttered it. I poured some juice and grabbed the jam from the fridge. I ate in silence.

I was surprised when my mother agreed to check on Miss Crux. She’s never been one to…follow authority. I had assumed she was just saying she would do it but was actually going to lounge on the sofa with a cup of coffee. But when she actually walked out of the apartment and sounds of high-pitched laughter came from Miss Crux’s apartment next door, I was completely baffled as to why my mom did it.

I’m not saying she’s a bad person, she’s not, but she’s not the best in the world. She’s done some things and I think she feels bad about them, I don’t know seeing as she never talks about them. She’s moved on, I guess, from that life. I wouldn’t know. I can only hope that she has.

I cleared away everything I had used and washed my dishes. Even though my mom was feeling like the Good Samaritan today, didn’t mean that she won’t lash out on me as soon as she finds dirty dishes in the sink.

Once all that was done, I decided that I was going to visit Mr Torres — for real this time.

I stepped out and locked the door, slipping the key in my back pocket. I knew my mom had a spare and I just hoped that she hadn’t left it in the apartment. I shrugged the thought off and continued down the stairs.

Mr Torres lives in the apartment below ours and there was a time when my mom and I would constantly visit him, but when time and reality kicked us both in the butt, majority of the things we did together came to a halt.

Was this halt sudden? No, it wasn’t. Was it expected? After a while, yes. There was a time when I stopped inviting my mom to school stuff because I knew she wouldn’t be able to make it. She stopped inviting me to Take Your Kid to Work Day, because I always had homework to do or a book to read or something else. It never occurred to me that maybe we were just avoiding each other. Avoiding the awkward and emotional conversation that would leave us both bawling our eyes out.

We’ve never been those to wear our emotions proud for everyone to see — it’s one of the things we have in common — which is why I think we’ve been avoiding the conversation. It would lead to us openly discussing our feelings. Eww.

I didn’t realise that I had reached Mr Torres’ door. I shook myself off. I raised my hand to knocked on the door but stopped midway. I wasn’t afraid of him. I just didn’t know how he would act, you know having someone be there then disappear without so much as a warning and then poof! magically reappear. It made me feel like dirt.

When I finally knocked on the door, and heard a faint, “Who is it?” I took a deep breath in.

“It’s Michelle. Michelle Jones? Jo’s daughter. I stay upstairs and — ”

The door opened. In all my rambling, I didn’t notice the shuffling going on, on the other side of the door. Mr Torres greeted me with a smile and I gave him a lame one in return — tight-lipped, slightly forced and lopsided — noting that he probably didn’t notice it.

His smile never faltered, even as he ushered me in, even though I knew my way around, I allowed him to lead me. He gestured for me to sit down in the general direction of the chairs. I didn’t sit. I watched as he felt his way around looking for his arm chair, and only sat myself when I knew he was seated. I sat down.

He looked over to where he thought I was, and I shifted in my seat a little just to be in his line of vision. “It’s so good to see you again.”

That stung. I’m not sure if he was saying it out of habit or if he was making a joke or if he thought I forgot about his condition, that made me stiffen and suck in a breath. He must’ve noticed, because he let out a hearty chuckle and tapped his belly. “Only playing, Michelle.”

I nodded knowing full well he couldn’t see me.

Mr Torres was blind. Or visually impaired if you want to beat around the bush. I don’t know for how long, I never asked him. Thought that would be personal and emotional and…feelings. I assume he wasn’t born blind, because he seems to have memorized the layout of his apartment pretty well, seeing as he can get around without a cane.

“Can I help you with something, Michelle?”

It just then dawned on me how quiet I was being. Usually when I initiate a conversation, I know exactly what I want to talk about and I steer the conversation in that direction. But coming down here had been a spur of the moment decision. I had no time to think of what I would say, or do once I got here, and Mr Torres’ unintentional guilt tripping wasn’t making it any easier for me.

I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “I-uh…I just wanted to talk. It’s been a while and I thought we could catch up.”

His eyes lit up (if that’s even possible) and he gave me an infectious smile. I smiled back even though he couldn’t see it. “I’d like that.”

And so, we talked. He told me about his nieces and nephews, about this lady who visits almost every week to check up on him. About everything I missed out on. And I told him about AcaDec, about how I was named captain and how I might have friends.

He never once asks about why my mom and I stopped visiting and I’m very glad for it because I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it. He seemed to understand because anytime the conversation was headed in that direction, he subtly steered it away. I guess he knew that I’d talk to him about it when I was ready to.

| next |

[traitorwhoyoulove]

The election had ended just as the conflict with China had begun to escalate. Abby Griffin had won by the largest margin in the last fifty years, her popularity skyrocketing after she’d turned her own husband into the federal government for ‘treasonous activities.’ No one could deny her patriotism after that.

The public loved her, but even more so, they’d seemed to love Clarke. She’d been raised to smile prettily at the cameras and keep calm in the public eye. She played the role of the perfect senator’s daughter. When the tabloids had found out about her relationship with prominent socialite Finn Collins, there’d been a storm of rumors about scandals and cheating. Thanks to an anonymous tip, US Weekly had discovered a girlfriend he’d been hiding away in Brooklyn. Clarke found out from a magazine cover.

Her life changed the day she gave the press release against the advice of her mother’s staff. With Raven Reyes at her side, she gave an honest speech, firm in her assertions that neither girl knew about the other girl’s existence and assurance that both had cut contact from their mutual suitor. It was polished, poised, and reckless in a way that she’d never been in front of the camera. And the public loved it.

By the time her mother took over the White House, it seemed Clarke couldn’t go anywhere without the cameras following her, and it was soon clear that further security measures would be necessary. She would have a personal Secret Service member with her at all times, in addition to the standard security teams.

Enter Agent Bellamy Blake.

And look, Clarke really didn’t mean to fall in love with her security detail, okay? They’d disliked each other immediately, his feigned callous exterior grating her nerves and the silver spoon in her mouth rubbing him raw. It had taken a year to learn he’d spent two years in the Marines so he could get his little sister a GI bill for college. It was another two months before she learned his mom had died of a drug overdose when he was seventeen, and even longer until she’d learned his sister’s name was Octavia, and that she’d thrown away the college education he’d worked so hard for, only to get involved with the wrong people. She’d died a year before he came to work at the White House.

Two years and seven months after her mother took office, she’d kissed Bellamy for the first time. The next day, the world went to shit.

The Battle of San Francisco had resulted in nearly five thousand casualties. After that, negotiations with China had stalled, nations taking sides against one another until the entire world seemed isolated from their neighbors. It wasn’t just on the battlefield this time, it was everywhere. Cyberattacks that blacked out entire states for weeks at a time, drone strikes that targeted military leaders and innocent civilians alike. There were rumors of biological warfare between Russia and the Ukraine, a virus that wiped out anyone who came in contact with it. World War IV, they’d called it. It now seems that it would be the last.

Clarke is sketching on her bed when the sirens first sound, the blare pouring through her open window and ringing in her head. No. It can’t be. There’s a knock on the door just seconds later.

“Miss Griffin,” Agent Boggs says as she barges into the room. “You have to move. This isn’t a drill.”

Clarke watches in silence as she retrieves her emergency bag from beneath Clarke’s bed where it had been stored months ago, processing the agent’s words.

“It’s happening?” she whispers.

Boggs nods and shoves the bag into her hands.

“Agent Marshall is outside the door, and he will escort you. Your mother will meet you there.” She looks at Clarke with an intensity that screams authority, but it does nothing to mask the fear in her eyes. “You know the plan. Go. Now.”

Boggs turns to the windows, beginning to shut them with a force that makes the glass panes rattle.

“Wait,” Clarke breathes, “What about Blake? Have you heard from Agent Blake?”

She stops tugging at the curtains for just a moment, her shoulders seeming to sag. She turns to Clarke.

“Their plane was grounded this morning due to weather. They never left.”

Clarke can’t breathe. Bellamy had been sent to Seattle the day prior to arrange for personal security measures for an upcoming trip with her mother to rally the troops assigned to the west coast. He’d insisted on going, arguing that he didn’t trust Clarke’s security to anyone else, especially not in the area where the fighting was most intense. It was supposed to be a quick turnaround, back this morning before she’d even woken so he could escort her on the trip tomorrow. And now he was stuck where China’s missiles would strike first.

The rush to the bunker beneath the White House is a blur. She’s pretty sure Agent Marshall is forced to half drag her most of the way as she fights through the panic that keeps her lungs in a vice grip.

Bellamy isn’t coming home.

Her mother is as white as a sheet when Clarke walks through the door to the metal room. She wraps her arms around her and presses her cheek to Clarke’s hair. Clarke does nothing but stand there.

“A satellite phone,” Clarke finally rasps. She turns to the agents that line the walls with wide eyes and holds out her hand out. “I need a sat phone.”

Agent Byrne, her mother’s head of security, looks at Clarke with sympathetic eyes.

“Miss Griffin, this bunker is five stories underground. The odds of getting a signal—”

“I said,” Clarke growls, “I need a sat phone.”

Byrne hesitates for only a moment before she hands it over. Clarke dials the number she knows by heart and prays it goes through.

“Clarke?” His voice comes to life through the static.

“Bellamy,” she breathes. “Did you hear?”

Her voice is rough, like sandpaper as it tears through her throat. There’s a moment of terrifying silence before he answers.

“Yeah,” he says. “They say we only have a few minutes.”

A ragged breath breaks through her chest as she takes it in, because this isn’t happening, this can’t be happening.

“Are you safe?” he asks.

She nods, only to remember he can’t see her.

“Yes,” she assures. “We’re in the bunker.”

Tears pool in her eyes, her chest burning with sobs she can’t release. Her lip trembles as she tries to force down the lump in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “I should have never let you leave, I should have—”

“Hey, no,” he says. “Clarke this isn’t your fault. This isn’t anyone’s fault but those bastards that fired those missiles.”

“Bellamy, you have to go somewhere,” she says frantically. “You have to find somewhere safe, somewhere underground.”

“There’s no time,” he says. “And even if there were, you and I both know it wouldn’t be enough to protect us.”

“No,” she insists. “There has to be somewhere—a basement, a subway tunnel, a—”

“Clarke,” he urges.

“Bellamy, you can’t give up. You can’t just—”

“Clarke.” She stops, her breathing fast and uneven, her heart pounding as she struggles to understand what he’s saying. It’s over. There’s no time. “Clarke, I need you to listen to me. Are you listening?”

Her lip quivers as the first tear falls, her eyes squeezing shut to stop the flood she knows is coming.

“Yes,” she says. Her voice breaks with it. “I’m listening.”

He’s silent for a few seconds.

“I love you,” he tells her. “I’ve loved you ever since you stopped arguing with me long enough for me to get to know you. And maybe even before then, too.”

A breathy laugh falls from her lips.

“And you are strong,” he says. “And whatever comes after today is going to be hard, but you’re going to be okay. I know you’ll want to take care of everyone, but make sure you take care of you, too, because I—” He pauses. “I won’t be there to do it. Can you do that for me?”

It’s agony, hearing these words from his mouth. The backs of her eyes burn, and her chest feels like it’s exploding with the screams that beg to be freed from her throat. She takes a shaky breath and forces herself to be here, present with him in these last moments.

“I will,” she promises. She swallows hard. “Bellamy?”

His voice is raw when he answers.

“Yeah?”

“I’m so thankful I get to know you,” she whispers. “Thank you for showing me what it feels like to be loved. And for letting me love you, too.”

The noise that comes through the phone is just somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She can hear the smile in it, can almost picture him with tears in his eyes as he stares at the horizon.

“Clarke, please just remember that I—”

Deafening static breaks through the phone. The line is dead.

For @stargirlclarke​‘s prompt: “bellarke during the first apocalypse that happened in canon.” In other words, you have Alyssa to blame for this steaming pile of angst. Thanks for helping me celebrate 2.5k girl, this was super emotional to write and I lived for it

Got a prompt? Check out this post.

@as-inevitable-as-morning @millerhasmybackpack @starboybellamy @johnmurphe @broodybellamy @babybellblake @bl-ake @the-ships-to-rule-them-all @bellesolo @deadshotbellamy @frecklessbellamy @griffinnblake @beachfckerblake @still-watching @bellark-e

[dumbledearme]

chapter thirty-five—return to the sea

read Child of Land and Sea here

Act IV — To Stop The Tide

Part X — Your hocus-pocus isn't tough enough and your mumbo-jumbo doesn't measure up.

The room was small, but Andy sat as far away from the others as humanly possible. The gladiator fight had somewhat broken her spirit. Usually, she didn't feel bad about killing monsters, but just the thought that it was for entertainment, that people were amused, it made her feel sick.

Anthony didn't try to comfort her. He seemed thankful she didn't want to be close to him which saddened her even more. He kept his mind on Luke. "Something was wrong with him," he kept saying. "He was acting so strange."

"He looked pretty pleased to me," she answered. "It was a nice day torturing heroes."

"No. There was something wrong with him. He looked... scared. I know him. He wanted to tell me something."

"Probably wanted to invite you to stay and watch him kill me. He has a great sense of humor."

"Whatever, Andy," he said and looked at Rachel. "Which way now?"

Rachel didn't respond right away; she'd become quieter since the arena. "We'll follow the path," she said. "The brightness on the floor."

"You mean the brightness that led us straight into a trap?" Anthony asked.

"Just leave her alone, Anthony," Andy told him. "She's doing the best she can."

"Right," he said getting up. "Since you girls don't seem to need me, I'll take a walk." And he marched off into the shadows.

Andy rolled her eyes. "Something is wrong," she said, "but with him! Like this place isn't horrible enough. I don't know how much longer I can take."

"I think he's afraid," Rachel declared.

"Afraid of what?"

"You're gonna think I'm crazy," she said softly, "but I think he's afraid of you."

Andy blinked. "Of me? Why would he be afraid of me?"

Rachel shrugged like she thought that was something Andy should find out by herself. "You were right to bring me here," she said. "I can see the path. I can't explain it, but it's really clear." She pointed toward the other end of the room, into the darkness. "The workshop is that way. The heart of the maze. We're very close now. I don't know why the path led through that arena. I... I'm sorry you had to do that. I saw your face when... I thought you were going to die."

"I'm usually about to die," Andy told her. "That wasn't the bad part."

Rachel studied her face. "Do you do this all the time? Fight monsters? Save the world? Don't you ever get to do normal stuff?"

"I don't even know what normal is anymore," Andy admitted. And then something occurred to her. "Hey. How about your family? Won't they be concerned?"

Rachel's face turned bright red. "Oh... they're just... Not likely, you know? I could be gone a week and they'd never notice. I'm really tired, Andy. I'll sleep for a while, okay?" And she curled up, using her backpack as pillow.

A few minutes later, Anthony returned. "I'll take first watch," he said. "You should sleep."

Without arguing, Andy lay down, feeling miserable.

She woke up with Anthony shaking her shoulder. "Andy, wake up! Earthquake!" Sure enough, the room was rumbling. The three of them grabbed their things and ran. Hundred tons of marble was crashing down behind them, but they kept moving. The earthquake only stopped when they reached a stainless steel hallway.

"This way," Rachel said, beginning to run. "We're close!" They arrived at a set of metal double doors. Inscribed in the steel, at eye level, was a large blue Greek delta. "We're here," Rachel announced. "Daedalus's workshop."

Anthony pressed the symbol and the doors hissed open. Together, they walked inside. What shocked Andy the most was the daylight – the blazing sun coming through giant windows. The workshop was like an artist's studio.

"Di immortales," Anthony muttered. He ran to the nearest easel and looked at the sketch. "He's a genius. Look at the curves on this building!"

"And an artist," Rachel said in amazement. "These wings are amazing!"

The wings looked exactly like the ones Andy had seen in her dreams, so much so that Andy couldn't bare to look at them. She walked to the window and stared at the view. "Where are we?"

"Colorado Springs," a voice said behind them. "The Garden of the Gods." Standing on the spiral staircase above them, with his weapon drawn, was Quintus.

"You!" Anthony said. "What... Where is Daedalus?"

Quintus smiled faintly. "Trust me, boy. You don't want to meet him." He walked pass them and stood beside Andy by the window. "The view always changes," he told her. "Everyday is something new."

"It's an illusion?" she asked.

"No," Rachel answered for him. "It's real. We're really in Colorado."

Quintus regarded her. "You have clear vision. I knew a girl like you once. Another princess who came to grief."

"Oh my gods," Andy breathed out. Now that he was so close, she could see clearly too. "You're Daedalus," she accused. "I've seen... You're an automaton. You made yourself a new body."

"That's not possible," Anthony whispered.

Quintus glanced at him. "You know what Quintus means?"

"The fifth, in Latin."

"Yes. My fifth body."

"You found a way to transfer your animus into a machine?" Anthony asked. He sounded extremely disgusted. "That's not natural."

"It's still me," Daedalus said. "Our mother makes sure I never forget that." He tugged back the collar of his shirt. At the base of his neck was the mark Andy had seen before.

"A murderer's brand," Anthony said.

"For your nephew, Perdix," Andy guessed. "The boy you pushed off the tower."

Daedalus's face darkened. "I did not push him. I-"

"Let him die."

Daedalus gazed out the windows. "I regret what I did, Andy. I was angry and bitter. But I cannot take it back, and Athena never lets me forget. As Perdix died, she turned him into a small bird – a partridge. She branded the bird's shape on my neck as a reminder. No matter what body I take, the brand remains."

"Why did you come to camp?" Andy asked.

"To see if your camp was worth saving. Luke gave me one story. I preferred to come to my own conclusions."

"So you have talked to Luke."

"Several times. He is quite persuasive."

"Well, whatever he said, he lied," Anthony said to Andy's surprise. "You can't let Luke through the maze!"

"The maze is no longer mine to control. I created it, yes. In fact, it is tied to my life force. But I have allowed it to live and grow on its own. That is the price I paid for privacy."

"Privacy from what?"

"The gods," he said. "And death. I have been alive for two millennia, hiding from death."

"How can you hide from Hades?" Andy asked.

"A clever man can do almost anything. The gods don't see everything. I have buried myself very deep. Only my greatest enemy has kept after me, and even him I have thwarted."

"Minos?"

Daedalus nodded. "He hunts for me relentlessly. Now that he is a judge of the dead, he would like nothing better for me to come before him so he can punish me for my crimes. After the daughters of Cocalus killed him, Minos' ghost began torturing me in my dreams. He promised that he would hunt me down. I did the only thing I could. I retreated from the world completely. I descended into my Labyrinth. I decided this would be my ultimate accomplishment: I would cheat death."

"And you did," Anthony marveled, "for two thousand years."

A loud bark echoed and Mrs O'Leary appeared. "There she is," Daedalus said. "My only companion all these long lonely years."

"You let her save me," Andy said.

"Of course I did, Andy," he replied. "You have a good heart. And I knew Mrs O'Leary liked you. I wanted to help you. I felt guilty..."

"Guilty about what?"

"That your quest would be in vain."

"What?" Anthony said. "But you can still help us. You have to! Give us Ariadne's string so Luke can't get it."

"I told Luke that he needed the eyes of a mortal girl, but then again, who would love him enough to come down here? He was so focused on the idea of a magical item. He can't understand that love is the best guide, that love sees all. And, of course, the string works. Though it isn't as good as your mortal friend here."

"Where is it?" Anthony asked.

"With Luke," Daedalus said sadly. "I'm sorry. You are several hours too late."

With a chill, Andy realized why Luke had been in such a good mood. Anthony's face was turning a bright shade of green. He seemed about to puke.

"Kronos promised me freedom," Daedalus said. "Once Hades is overthrown, he will set me over the Underworld. I will reclaim my son Icarus. I will make things right with poor young Perdix. I will see Minos's soul cast into Tartarus, where it cannot bother me again. And I will no longer have to run from death."

"That's your brilliant idea?" Anthony growled. "You're going to let Luke destroy our camp, kill hundreds of demigods, and then attack Olympus? You're going to bring down the entire world so you can get what you want?"

"Your cause is doomed. I saw that as soon as I began to work at your camp. There is no way you can hold back the might of Kronos. I'm doing what I must. I'm sorry."

Anthony violently pushed over an easel. Architectural drawings scattered across the floor. "I respected you. You were my hero! You... You built amazing things. You solved problems. Children of Athena are supposed to be wise, not just clever. Maybe you are just a machine. You should have died two thousand years ago." Although he was clearly on the edge, he didn't raise his voice once. Andy was impressed by his self-control.

Daedalus looked down. "You should go warn your camp."

Suddenly, the doors of the workshop burst open and Nico was pushed inside. Then Kelli and two Laistrygonians marched in behind him, followed by the ghost of Minos. He fixed his gaze on Daedalus. "There you are, my old friend."

Daedalus's jaw clenched. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Luke sent his regards," Kelli said, repeating what one of the princesses had said before killing Minos. "He thought you might like to see your old employer."

"This was not part of our agreement," Daedalus said.

"No, indeed," Kelli agreed. "But we already have what we want from you, and we have other agreements to honor. Minos required something else from us, in order to turn over this fine young demigod. He'll be quite useful. And all Minos asked in return was your head, old man."

Daedalus paled. "Treachery."

"Nico," Andy called. "Are you okay?"

He nodded morosely. "I'm sorry. Minos said you were in danger. He said you needed... my help."

"You wanted to help me?"

"I was tricked," he said.

Andy glared at Kelli. "Where's Luke? Why isn't he here?"

The she-demon smiled. "Luke is busy. He is preparing for the assault. But don't you worry. We have more friends on the way."

Then all hell broke loose.

Anthony stabbed the empousa in the stomach and with an awful screech, Kelli dissolved into yellow vapor. Minos called other spirits and Nico tried to stop him.

"You do not control me, fool," Minos said. "I've been controlling you!"

"I am the son of Hades," Nico insisted. "Be gone! All of you."

Minos laughed. "You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!"

"No." Nico said, this time very softly, in such a threateningly way that Minos stepped away from him. "I am." And with unimaginable power, he somehow made a crack on the ground and Minos and the other spirits were sucked into the void.

Rachel grabbed the nearest chair and threw it at the windows that broke into a million pieces all around them. Andy breathed in. She focused on the water below.

"Brace yourselves!" she warned. And then she shouted, letting her power take over. Not a minute later, water erupted into the workshop. Andy tried her best to control it. She made the water grab her friends and get them out of there, returning to the sea. She stayed behind and trapped the monsters into balls of water and pressed them until they exploded.

Then everything stopped. Andy was in the destroyed workshop with Daedalus coughing in the corner. She glanced at him one last time. The inventor was cut in a hundred places and bleeding golden oil instead of blood.

Andy turned her back at him and threw herself out of the window into the ocean.

They were all wet and extremely upset.

"The workshop moved," Anthony said looking up to Daedalus's hill. "And there's no telling where."

"How do we get back in there?" Andy asked.

"Maybe we can't. The empousa said there were others coming. If they found Daedalus and killed him... he said his life force was tied to the Labyrinth. The whole thing might've been destroyed."

"He isn't dead," Nico said with certainty.

"How do you know?" Andy asked.

"I know when people die," he said giving her a glance that made clear he hadn't completely forgiven her yet.

"We need to get into town," Anthony decided and the others agreed.

Rachel found another entrance to the Labyrinth easily. The dirt tunnels turned to stone, but Rachel had no trouble guiding them. To Andy's surprise, Anthony and Rachel started up a conversation as they walked. Turned out Rachel knew something about architecture from studying art.

Andy took the chance to focus on Nico. "Thank you for coming after us," she said.

Nico's eyes narrowed. "I wanted to see Daedalus," he said but it sounded more like an excuse. "Minos was right. He should die. Nobody should be able to avoid death that long. It's not natural."

"You were after him," Andy guessed. "A soul for a soul. You were gonna trade him for your sister."

"It hasn't been easy," he admitted weakly. "Having only the dead for company. Knowing that I'll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respect me, and they only do that out of fear."

"You could be accepted," Andy told him. "You could have friends at camp. If you want."

He stared at her. "Do you really believe that?"

Before Andy could answer, everybody stopped. There was a dark tunnel to their right. Wind was coming, as if an exit was near, and it brought the smell of eucalyptus.

"There's something evil down that tunnel," Rachel said.

"And the smell of death," Nico added.

"Luke's entrance," Anthony guessed. "The one to Mount Othrys." Unable to stop herself, Andy started forward, but Anthony held her arm. "Don't."

"He could be right there," she said. "Or Kronos. We need to see what they're doing."

Anthony hesitated. "Then we go together."

"No," Andy said. "I'll go. You guys stay. They can't have Nico or Rachel. You stay here with them. I'm just going to check it out. I promise."

With a miserable expression, Anthony handed her the Yankees cap. "Be quick about it."

It was like a stab to her back seeing Ethan Nakamura there with a bunch of telkhine. "At least we salvaged the blade," one of the monsters said. "The master will still reward us."

"Great," said Ethan. "Now, if you're done with me, I-"

"No, half-blood," another one said. "You must help us make the presentation."

The weapon was a scythe – a six-foot-long blade curved like a crescent moon. It was the weapon of Kronos, the one he had used to slice up his father, Ouranos.

"We must sanctify it in blood," a telkhine said. "Then you, half-blood, shall help present it when the lord awakes."

Andy dashed into a main hall and found the sarcophagus. Luke wasn't there. No guards. No nothing. It was too easy. Andy stood over the coffin. Her hand touched the lid. With a single move, she pushed back the golden lid and it fell to the floor. She lifted her sword, ready to strike, but when she looked inside, she didn't comprehend what she was seeing.

Luke was in there. Eyes closed, skin pale.

Then the voices of the telkhines were behind her. "What has happened?" one of the demons asked.

"Careful," the other one warned. "Perhaps he stirs. We must present the gifts now. Immediately."

They shuffled forward and knelt, holding up the scythe. "My lord," one said. "Your symbol of power is remade."

Silence.

"He requires the half-blood first," the other one said.

Ethan stepped back. "What do you mean?"

"Don't be a coward! He does not require your death. Only your allegiance. Pledge him your service. Renounce the gods. That is all."

Andy took off the cap. "No! Ethan, don't!"

"Trespasser!" The telkhines bared their teeth.

"Ethan," she pleaded. "Don't listen to them. Help me destroy it!"

"I told you not to spare me, Jackson," Ethan said sadly. "'An eye for an eye.' You ever heard that saying? I've learned what it means the hard way. When I discovered my godly parent. I am the child of Nemesis, Goddess of Revenge. And this is what I was made to do." He turned toward the dais. "I renounce the gods! What have they ever done for me? I will see them destroyed. I will serve Kronos."

The building rumbled. The coffin began to shimmer. Luke sat bolt upright. His eyes opened but they were no longer blue – they were golden. He leaped out of the coffin and looked at Andy. "This body has been well prepared. Don't you think so, Andy Jackson?"

She stared at him open-mouthed.

Kronos laughed. "He feared you, you know," the Titan said. "His jealousy and hatred have been powerful tools. It has kept him obedient. For that I thank you."

Ethan collapsed in terror. The telkhines trembled. Then Andy lunged at the thing that used to be Luke, thrusting her blade straight at his chest, but his skin deflected the blow like he was made of pure steel. He looked at her with amusement. Then he flicked his hand and she flew across the room.

Andy slammed against a pillar. She struggled to her feet. "What have you done to Luke?"

"He serves me wit his whole being, as I require. The difference between us is he feared you, Andy Jackson, and I do not."

That's when she ran. Time slowed down around her; the power of Kronos was slowing her down. Then Rachel called her name. Something flew past Andy and a blue plastic hairbrush hit Kronos in the eye.

Andy limbs were free and she ran straight into Rachel, Nico and Anthony, who were standing in the entry hall, their eyes wide with dismay.

"Luke?" Anthony called. "What-" Andy grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him after her. She ran as fast as she could, straight out of the fortress. They plunged into the Labyrinth and kept running, the howl of the Titan Lord shaking the entire world behind them.

[willelbyers]

Roses

Summary: Jane Ives is who she was supposed to be.

011 is what Papa made her to be; what the men in the white coats called her. 011 was a pawn, a soldier.

Eleven is the girl who found her place with friends and allies, who found a home (however briefly) for the first time in twelve years.

Jane—just Jane—is what her sister called her; the name she offered to become something other than a number.

Jane Hopper is the name on the paper in Dad’s house, carefully placed in a drawer.

El is her choice.

(Or: Kali shows her flowers and concrete.)

Pairings: None. El & Will friendship, and really really background byeler if you squint.

Notes: This takes place four years after the events of Season 2 and mostly focuses on how Will and El's connection might develop based on their shared traumas. It mentions vague events that indicate an imaginary Season 3 in which a lot happens, but the most relevant point is that Will goes missing for four days until the Party finds him in the abandoned lab. It also deals with an idea I have that after Chicago, El might have a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that she attacked multiple innocent people and almost killed a man while with Kali and thus creates a sort of psychological disconnect between "Eleven" and "Jane". On top of that there's her identity as "011", permanently marked on her by Brenner. She's got a lot of guilt to deal with, and a lot of anger. And Will shares a lot of that burden, while their friends and parents don't know how to help but want to.

The idea was kickstarted by the Shakespeare quote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This is posted on Ao3 here as well as written out below the cut. Enjoy!

Eleven sometimes thinks about how lucky she is. She escaped the prison she had been in, she found a real father, real friends, the start of a real life. She lived.

But then she thinks about Jane.

She thinks about how unlucky Jane Ives was, the Jane Ives who is officially dead in the eyes of the government, the Jane Ives who died at the hands of Papa. She thinks of how unlucky Momma is, Momma whose child died. Momma whose child found her all those years later, but who no longer was Jane Ives.

She thinks about how her life might have been like if Momma hadn’t done the experiments, if Papa hadn’t taken her to the Rainbow Room, if she had gone home on her birthday and grown up and put on clothes and gone to school and been called Jane Ives.

She thinks it would be a lot different.

She tells Will about Papa, because she thinks he might understand.

And he does, sort of, and she knows because his face twists and he says, “Yeah. Me, too.” He offers her his hand, and she pushes up his sleeve.

And she doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know when but she doesn’t think she needs to ask any of that at the moment. Instead, she holds out her own arm and yanks up her own sleeve and says, “011.” Not Eleven. 011.

Will is quiet for a moment and then he turns his hand and links their fingers so their numbers are pressed together. “After the Mind Flayer came back—when we were all in the lab and you couldn’t find me. He was there. Brenner. He had me for that whole time, the whole four days, and he did this to me.”

And it makes sense to her because they found him tied to an operating table in the locked-down east wing four days after he went missing for the second time.

Why? she asks him. Why didn’t you say?

I wanted to wait until we were alone. I needed to tell you. “I’m sorry.”

She pushes closer to him, her free hand curling against his collarbone and her head dipping low to hear his heartbeat. He’s alive. “Don’t be. I understand.”

She feels him shake his head. “But I’m still Will, even with this. I don’t think you’re 011,” he tells her.

“No?” she asks, pressing her lips into a line, and he sighs, chest rising and falling once slowly before he shakes his head again. “Jane?”

He breathes. “Your name is Jane Hopper, but I don’t think you’re Jane, either.”

She lifts her head to meet his gaze. “So… who?”

He looks at her and then looks away, staring disconnectedly at the wall. “I think you’re… El.”

And friends don’t lie, so that must be the truth.

Mike tells her that she needs to choose what she wants. That El needs to make her own decisions, and that he can’t do that for her. He can’t, Dad can’t, Will can’t. No one but her.

Some of that is easy: she chooses her friends. She chooses to apologize to Max, to hug Lucas and Dustin and Joyce again, to talk to Nancy and Jonathan and Steve (at least before they leave for school), to read more with her Dad. She chooses to stay with Will as often as she can, to grip his hand tightly and talk until the sun sets and then until it rises. She chooses to apologize to Mike, because she can’t be who or what he wants her to be.

And that seems easy. Compared to defeating the Mind Flayer, compared to grappling with the knowledge that Papa is still out there… it’s easy.

But choosing Jane isn’t, maybe because El doesn’t want her.

Sometimes she’s gone out of her own head and when she finally wakes up, Jane has already done her work.

El cries at night, quietly and under the covers as to not wake Dad up, as she tries desperately to reassemble the broken pieces Jane left behind. She wears long sleeves and steals Joyce’s makeup to hide the marks.

Eleven envies Jane, thinks about how she is so lucky that only El feels the sting of cuts and bruises in the aftermath. Jane is the one who shatters glass and fractures wood, Jane is the one who is dangerous, but El is the one left with the scars from it.

Will is wrong: she is Jane, even if she really isn’t. She tells him as much, showing him her shaking hand.

He takes both her hands in his, his skin cold like it has been since they were twelve, both their numbers dark against pale wrists. “You did this?”

She shakes her head, violently, curls flying as she accidentally knocks a book off the shelf when she looks at it. “Not me. Jane.”

Will sits back, still holding her hands. Confusion is etched across his face—because of course he knows her legal name. “El. What do you mean? Who… who’s Jane?”

Not for the first time, she curses her limited vocabulary. Years of extra lessons and a year of school haven’t prepared her enough for this. “Jane is… me, but not me.” Tears are running down her face and she’s not sure when that started, but the world is blurring around the edges. “She’s in my head and I can’t get her out.”

Will’s face shutters slightly at that, and she knows why: even now, almost four years after his possession, the Upside Down hasn’t left Will. The monster is still in his head—she sees it all around him in the shadows as they bend, the leaves as they die, the people as they move away, the static as it crackles, the objects as they move. Will is like her but isn’t like her, he can only do these things because of the creature in his brain.

But the monster isn’t like Jane.

“Sometimes I remember, mostly I don’t,” she explains, sniffing, gesturing to the disarrayed room they’re sitting in. “But I wake up and I know that Jane did all of this. Since Chicago.”

El told Will about Kali and Chicago almost a year ago, explained how much sway she had let Kali hold over her. How she had almost killed that man. How she had seen Papa and hurt people and been shot at. The way she had been Jane to her sister, and how much she missed her no matter how terrible she felt about it.

“Could Kali help you?” he asks her now. And it’s been four years, but…

She looks up, startled. “Maybe. But she isn’t here.”

“No,” he agrees. “But we could go there.”

They leave in the dead of night, tossing their bags into the car Dr. Owens had given them as what he called a “settlement”. An apology, El guesses, for what the lab did to them. They don’t really use it, but now they’re grateful they have it.

They talked about telling their friends about their plans. But they didn’t, because Lucas would be angry, Dustin would be scared, Max would underestimate the stakes, and Mike would put himself in danger for them. Their parents are no better.

As Will turns the key with fumbling fingers and pulls out of the driveway, El takes his hand. They’re both shaking with nerves—from the fear of being caught, from the guilt of running away—but she sends a pulse of comfort through their link and feels him send one back.

She thinks about the note they’d left on Joyce’s kitchen table, in Will’s distinct handwriting: We’re safe. We’ll be home soon. She thinks about the way she had stopped him from writing I’m sorry. She thinks about how her hand had shaken as she signed El at the bottom under Will’s name, remembering not to write a J at the last second. She thinks about the drawing they had left right under it—one Will had sketched in blacks and grays and browns and purples as they closed their eyes and sent out a wave, searching—of a girl with dark eyes and long purple hair and a black jacket. The caption written in El’s own careful print: 008. She called me Jane.

They also recorded a message on the supercom and set it to send in the morning.

El doesn’t know why Will does it to himself.

She’s reclined the passenger’s seat as far as it will go, eyes closed, as Will keeps driving down the barely lit highway. A sudden jolt of white noise in her head catapults her to full consciousness, but she doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t open her eyes because she feels shadowy tendrils snaking around the radio, and she knows that it’s Will and not the monster.

Back home, Joyce isn’t awake yet, she knows, and neither is Dad. But something on the radio tells her that someone is, and that someone heard their message.

“No no no no please no…”

The air shifts, and in one moment Will’s mind is her own and she hears him say, Mike.

“Will,” she says, and the shadows drop suddenly. The radio turns off. She opens her eyes. “Stop.”

“I’m sorry,” he replies, staring resolutely in front of him, wiping a hand under his nose. His finger comes away red. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “It’s okay. You needed to make sure he knew. I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and all she can do is take his hand—his right in her left—and miss the way his number usually burns into hers.

“Kali?” she calls as she walks down an unfamiliar Chicago street, Will trailing behind. She tries to remember the other names, the other people she had met, but it feels like so long ago. “Kali?”

The concrete flickers under the feet, suddenly, and then whirls until they’re no longer standing in an alleyway at night. Grass sprouts on the ground and the sky lightens until they can see the sun coming up on the horizon. The buildings disappear and are replaced with hills. They're somewhere beautiful.

“Whoa,” Will mutters behind her, and she remembers how she had felt when she saw the butterfly—this is more than just a bug.

“Jane?” a voice says, and then Kali is there, right there. But she isn’t Jane. Can’t turn into her again.

But. “It’s me,” she says. “Jane. But I’m El. That’s the problem.” She feels Will come up a little closer behind her, enough so that she can feel his pulse.

Kali notices—she notices everything, El thinks. “Who is he?”

“Will,” she answers. “My brother.” And she says it without thinking, but it’s true—they don’t live together and don’t share parents (yet, anyway), but Will is a sibling to her. And then she remembers the number. “Yours, too.” She holds out her arm and Will does the same.

Kali looks at them. “I thought you were gone.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she replies. She glances at Will, hesitant.

Will understands, looks at Kali. “We need your help,” he says. “El needs your help.”

They do it by Kali’s rules, not that either of them like it. Kali doesn’t falter once, to her credit, and calls her El.

She brings El back to that paradise every day—sometimes with Will, sometimes without. El doesn’t even realize she’s counting the days again until she realizes, day eighteen. They’ve been gone for over two weeks.

We can’t stay here forever, Will says to her.

I know, she replies.

Kali grows roses in the meadow with a wave of her hand. El watches the petals unfurl and darken.

El gingerly touches one, unsurprised when it flickers out of existence for a moment. “Petals. Pretty.”

“And the thorns?” Kali prompts.

El looks at them. “Dangerous.”

“Do you know what these are?” Kali asks.

“Roses,” El answers.

Kali smiles slightly. “Yes. But tell me, what are they really?” The vision fades out for a second.

“Pretend.” Lies. Friends don’t lie.

“Exactly, Jane.” Kali looks at her expectantly, and El doesn’t know what she wants. Doesn’t know why she’s suddenly calling her Jane again.

“I don’t understand,” she confesses.

Kali just stares at her. “The roses, Jane. They are like you.”

And then it sinks in: the flowers, the name. Kali’s images, the pretty and horrifying things she makes, aren’t real. It’s beautiful, but it’s fake. The paradise doesn’t exist.

Jane is pretty and dangerous and fake. Jane has no real power.

The vision strips itself away until all El can see is Kali, sitting, hand on the pavement. Strong and solid and oh so real.

“This, El,” she says, tapping the concrete. “This is you.”

They stop in Lafayette on the way back home. They don’t need to, but halfway back to Hawkins the car starts to shake from the pressure of having two on-edge telekinetics inside and El decides to call it a day.

They book a hotel room, not at all protesting when they are told there are only rooms with one bed left. Will instead whispers in the manager’s ear, wisps of black smoke trickling from his lips, and persuades him not to write them down on the register. (And if he gets them a fifty-percent discount, well, no one has to know.)

They lie in the darkness, sides pressed together because that’s the only way they can ward off the evil anymore. Will folds the shadows around them, cocooning them in a shield in case anything does happen. Which it shouldn’t.

What do you think they’ll do? he asks her. When we get back. What will they do?

She squeezes his hand. I don’t know.

They only run into trouble once on the way back from there—if it can even be considered that—when they stop at a gas station and something that is undoubtedly an Upside-Down escapee screeches at them. But they turn around and it’s gone, and they’ve only caught a glimpse.

For all their powers, it’s good the haven’t turned into huge dark energy magnets. That would suck.

Nevertheless, El keeps a stronger shield up around them for an hour as Will drives, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Then she crawls into the backseat and sleeps, bloody tissue clenched in her fist.

She only wakes when Will pulls into his driveway and climbs out. She lies there for a moment longer, basking in the effects of lingering sleep, but then she hears a noise of collision and sits up.

“You can’t just do that,” Mike says quietly, clutching Will’s shoulders before pulling him into a hug. “You can’t… you can’t do that to us. To me.”

El watches Max’s face appear in the Byers’ window. The redhead smiles and disappears, and El sends out her mind to find what she really already expected: everyone is inside, waiting for their return. They spill out onto the porch; Joyce looking haggard, Max looking excited, Dustin and Lucas looking sleepy, and her Dad, relief and disappointment warring on his face. Mike is still crushing Will in a bruising embrace.

My choice. I chose this.

With her thought, she feels Jane press against the confines of her brain, but she just thinks, not real, and forces it down.

She thinks it isn’t a dream, but even if it is she knows it’s real. Will stays close, and she feels his shadows circling.

“011,” Papa says, and she and Will whirl.

He’s standing there, suit impeccable, face paler than she ever remembers it being.

“No more,” she tells him. “No more.”

His lips spread into a thin smile. “I made you, 011.” He looks at Will. “Him, too. It’s been too long, for both of you, and you’re sick. Do you feel it?”

“No.” She doesn’t. She feels the blood under her nose, the energy in her fingertips, the six years that separate her from the lab, the five years in freedom that have let her survive to age seventeen, and the something that festers deep inside her heart—it feels like anger. But it isn’t sickness.

“You know it’s true, 011,” he insists. “You know that there is something inside that needs to be fixed, and that only I can help you. You can come back to me. Both of you.”

And suddenly her mouth can’t move because she understands what he means but doesn’t know how to tell him that she doesn’t need him. It’s her choice, it’s Will’s choice, and they don’t need fixing. They don’t need to fill the voids trauma has left with pointless missions, they don’t have to mindlessly obey destructive orders like Papa used to make her.

But she can’t say it.

Will does it for her. His eyes flare and his hands twitch, blood collects on his upper lip, and then the shadows bend until Papa is almost invisible, trapped in a ghostly shell.

“You heard her,” Will says—does he shout? El can’t tell. “No more.”

She steps forward to stand by his side, hears his concession to her in her head. It’s your choice, El. If you want to do it, do it. If you don’t, I’ll let him go.

“011, you don’t have to do this,” Papa—Brenner—says. His voice is deceptively calm, but El reaches out and feels rather than hears his fear. It rattles around in her chest, rasps out when she breathes. Hears him think, even as he says it, “You can’t.”

Jane is pretty and dangerous and fake. Jane has no real power. 011 has even less. That’s what Brenner is banking on.

But Eleven isn’t Jane. Isn’t 011.

���Yes,” she says and she feels the strength and solidity and the reality of it all. “I can.”

Jane Elizabeth Byers-Hopper graduates from Hawkins High School in the summer of 1989. The diploma goes in the new drawer—the drawer her adoption papers are in, along with her legal name change and the marriage certificate between James Hopper and Joyce Byers—the one that now resides in the Byers-Hopper residence, the one that belongs to her parents. William Byers puts his diploma in, too.

Joyce Byers-Hopper organizes the party, Jim Hopper cries (a lot), and Jonathan Byers comes home to take photos of his new little sister and same-old little brother. Nancy comes back to watch Mike graduate but Steve can’t make it so he calls instead. Lucas, Dustin, and Max pool their money to get Will new paints and El a skateboard, which Max promises to help her with. Will and El buy everyone CDs from the new music store in town. Mike gets them all flowers (he’s got a job at the florist’s), and El smiles wryly when she notices the red and white roses in hers.

It’s that night that Will tells her something—two things. Or one and a half.

You look happy, he tells her, him sandwiched between Mike and and a couch cushion, her squished against Lucas’ arm by Max, who’s play-fighting with Dustin. Their parents, Jonathan, and Nancy are laughing in the kitchen. You look more like you than you ever have before.

Thank you, El replies, raising an eyebrow at him from across the room. Everything okay? Because she can feel his mind racing and it’s kind of giving her a headache.

I need to tell you something, he says, and she waits. I, um. Friends don’t lie, and so… He hesitates, and she knows.

She doesn’t need to hear him say it, because she already knows, even if he can’t tell her yet. Will. Hey. She remembers Kali, and the roses, and the shadows, and Jane. You just have to be you.

He smiles at her across the room, and El is finally sure that Jane was never a choice at all.

I hope you guys enjoyed! Reviews are, as always, appreciated. Find me on Ao3 here.

[cooperjones2020]

Second City, chp. 9

Summary: Sometimes she worries she’s settling — for a smaller job, a smaller city, a smaller life than she’d promised herself — but that was before she found out Jughead Jones lives in Chicago. That was before she found out the final secret of Jason Blossom’s murder.

ao3–>http://archiveofourown.org/works/11409360/chapters/26199753

Second City one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight (ao3)

Nobodies Nobody Knows one / two / three / four / five (ao3)

In which Betty finds out where the bodies are buried

It’s almost impressive how the universe has decided to screw with her. It’s also just sick. She realizes, looking at the date stamp on the printout, that it has been 12 years to the day since Jughead left her, one year and seventeen days after Jason’s death.

She feels him enter the room behind her. And (she might be imagining it, but) she feels the air pressure change when he realizes what she’s holding.

“Betty—”

“What is this, Jughead?”

She turns and he’s leaning against the doorway, wearing only the towel from earlier wrapped around his waist. His arms are crossed so tightly the tattoo on his chest bulges and she can see all the veins in his forearms.

“Security footage.” She glares at him and he sighs, his whole body sagging, before scrubbing his hands over his face.

“You remember the tape?”

“Of fucking course I remember the tape.”

“Well it didn’t show…all of it. Hal was there.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

She tosses all the photos but the one back onto the desk and moves to push past him, but he grabs her arm. “Where are you going?”

“To get dressed.”

“What?” For just a second, he squeezes her wrist so tightly it hurts. Then he drops it like a hot coal.

“You are going to tell me what this is. But I’m not talking about it while we’re both practically naked.”

She rushes to the kitchen and shoves her jeans back on her body, dropping her bra in the tote still sitting on a chair. When she returns, Jughead’s bedroom door is closed, so she sits on the couch and pulls her hair up into a tight little ponytail on the top of her head.

When he comes back out, he drops his beanie on the coffee table and sits in the armchair to her right. He pulls a comb out of his pocket and proceeds to brush his hair. He does all this while staring at the wall over her shoulder.

She waits silently. Eventually he lets out a deep exhale and stands, throwing the comb down on top of the beanie. He disappears down the hallway and comes back with two mugs, a chemex, and an electric kettle. He leaves and returns with spoons, a jug of milk, and a roll of paper towels.

She lets him fiddle with his props a while. When he’s folded a paper towel into a square and set a steaming mug of coffee—prepared the way she still likes it, only with milk—on top, she lays the photo down on the coffee table between them and says, “What was he doing there, Jughead?”

“I don't know. I've been trying to find out.”

She thinks of the laptop, the notebook, the manuscript. “And you were what? Going to write about it?”

Out of the swirling vortex of emotions her mind is currently unable to process, anger emerges and she clings to it like a buoy. Except for the moment he grabbed her wrist, he has been so calm. She wants a rise out of him. She wants some indication he’s feeling even an iota of what she does. This situation is so unbearably familiar.

“Yes! No. I don’t know.” His hand clenches around the handle of his mug. She watches the tendons pop out then fade again. “I’ve definitely thought about writing about it.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me?” The look he gives her would be funny if they were in any circumstances but the current ones.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms the past dozen years.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Your father’s!”

“What?” Anger gives way to an anxiety that bubbles in her stomach and claws its way up her esophagus. For the first time in a long time, she has difficulty keeping her hands from balling into fists. She snatches up the paper towel Jughead had placed her coffee cup on and commences shredding it into smaller and smaller pieces.

“I’ve been trying to find out what he was doing there—what he knew—since it happened and—”

“What do you mean since it happened?”

He looks confused at her interruption. “Oh. No, not it as in Jason. It as in us. Since my dad’s trial. Do you remember Viper? He started bartending at the Wyrm the fall after we broke up. Told me there was another camera that Keller fucking missed. Helped me and the lawyer pull the footage.”

“Wait the lawyer? What about Mary?”

“She couldn’t represent FP. She doesn’t do criminal law and her bar license had lapsed in New York. The Serpents had their own lawyer, anyway.”

“Okay. But why was my dad there? What does this have to do with us?”

“Can we maybe just focus on the Jason Blossom murder plot for now?”

“Fuck no. You’re not wiggling your way out of this anymore. What. Is. It.”

Jughead stares at her for a moment and at first she can’t tell if he’s angry or annoyed or what. She sees his jaw working back and forth. But then she watches the decision to tell her wash over his face. She couldn’t tell you the moment, couldn’t tell you what individual feature change made it happen, but it’s as if a mask he put on in the parking lot of Pop’s twelve years ago finally comes off. Every plane of his face is etched in pain but the flint in his eyes tells her his fury simmers under the surface.

“You know how Southside got out of school a week before Riverdale that year? Well, one day I was hanging around the Wyrm waiting for it to be time to pick you up from school and your dad showed up. He said—” Jughead laughs but the sound is sharp, bitter. “God, I remember it exactly. He said, ‘Your relationship with my daughter has gone on long enough, don’t you think?’” His eyes cut to hers.

“He told you to break up with me? And you listened to him?”

“Actually, he threatened.” A roaring noise fills her ears and she becomes aware that she’s breathing way too fast. Jughead is staring at her as if he’s either expecting her to start crying or to explode. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to touch her. She’s sure if he did she would cry, she wouldn’t be able to stop the panic tears she’s only barely restraining now. He just waits a minute for her to get herself under control, then picks up the photo.

“He WHAT.”

“Well, he did try bribing me first.”

“What the hell did he trying bribing you with?”

“Nothing I wanted. So he showed up again later that summer. I asked you once how far your dad would go to protect Polly. To protect you. And I found out. Betty, he said — he told me he was there, that night, at the Worm. The night Clifford Blossom shot Jason. He said he was willing to testify that FP was an accomplice. That he didn’t just clean it up but that he helped Daddy Blossom plan it. It would have meant fifteen years, Betts.” His voice cracks on her name.

They argue their way around his apartment. In the kitchen, he gets her a glass of ice then turns to wash the dishes they’d just created. When his back is turned, she pulls out a cube and moves to stand next to the trash so it won’t make a mess as it melts. He tells her about finding the video too late. Two months after she’d stopped calling him. He tells her about the night Sheriff Keller brought her dad in for questioning. He tells her her parents own a stake in the Whyte Wyrm. That that’s why Hal said he was there. That Keller bought his story. That Hal smirked and nodded at him as he left the station. Like they were in cahoots. Like they had a deal.

When they leave the kitchen, she moves her bags with them, if only to keep having something to do with her hands. Then she stands outside the bathroom while he replenishes the store of toilet paper under the sink from the closet. While he refills the hand soap, he tells her about FP’s trial. About her dad’s testimony. He tells her and she hates that she’s not surprised she didn’t know any of this was happening.

He leads her back into the spare bedroom. He gets down on his knees while she tries not to stare at the photos she’d tossed so haphazardly across the desk. They seem indecent now. Like crime scene photos. Which they sort of are. Only the crime isn’t just Jason Blossom’s shot and leaking body, it’s this moment and that moment and all the moments in between in which she wondered what she did wrong.

What she did was be born to the wrong parents. And FP paid for it. Jellybean paid for it. Jughead paid for it.

He slides a banker’s box out from under the desk and sits with his legs spread around it as he lifts off the lid. She drops down beside him. He hands her a manila file folder off the top. It’s FP’s record. Tampering with evidence. Obstruction of justice. Mishandling a body. Perjury. Five years.

They’re details she already knows but it’s as if she’s had the outline sketch and now he’s suddenly filled in the color. “You didn’t put any of this in the book.”

“What? No, no I didn’t.”

“That’s a pretty fucking important thing to leave out, don’t you think? You wrote about everything else. You wrote about Clifford Blossom’s suicide. You even put some of the trial stuff in the afterword. You wrote about…” But her voice cracks and she can finally feel the tears coming, so she stops. She blinks quickly to keep them from falling.

“I didn’t want you to find out that way. I didn’t want you to find out at all, but definitely not that way.”

“So you lost your father so I wouldn’t have to lose mine?”

“I was losing him anyway. FP was guilty, Betty. Keller’s a dick but he was right. FP did let the Serpents kidnap Jason. He did tamper with the evidence. Hell, he tried to toss the body. And I knew I’d get him back if I kept my mouth shut. You couldn’t un-know this. I always knew who FP was. I always knew he wasn’t a good guy. If you knew, you’d lose Hal forever.”

“But I still did. Don’t you get it? I still lost him. I’d already lost him. I lost him when he sent away my sister. And I lost you.”

Betty fights to control her voice, her hands, her tears. The whole time, Jughead keeps his head down, looking at the file on her lap. She didn’t need him to protect her from who her parents were.

“I wouldn’t have judged you for picking FP over me, Juggie. I would have told you to.”

“I know that. But I didn’t want you to have to. It wasn’t a choice you could make for me. It—and the guilt—were mine. I couldn’t let you absolve me of them. By the time the trial was over, you hated me. I hated myself. And I had no cell phone and I was being babysat every fucking second of the day. For months I thought of nothing but coming after you and telling you what I’d done. But then when everything kept coming up roses for your dad—If there was even a chance he could come up with some evidence, they could always try FP again. It’d be a new charge. I couldn’t risk calling his bluff.”

“So you let him bully you. You let me believe you didn’t love me anymore. You let me give up on us.”

“What did you want me to do, Elizabeth?”

In some small corner in the back of her mind, Betty has been marvelling at how incredible this conversation is. She can still hear the picnickers on the boulevard outside. Shafts of sunlight and laughter swing between the billowing curtains. But inside, in the shadows of his apartment, Jughead is quietly and methodically dismantling everything she’s known about her life. Except for the occasional cracks, everything has been measured, calm. Now, though, now his anger begins to bleed through.

“You should have told me.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference! I still would have had to choose.”

“But I deserved to know! It would have made a difference to my life. My dad was the guilty one, Jughead.”

“He was your father.”

“He was guilty. How can you stand there and defend him?” Her anger is feeding on his and all she wants is to whip them both into a storm that will purge them of a dozen years of hurt and anger and betrayal and longing. But he’s right. She can’t un-know. And again, he manages to put the lid back on.

“I’m not. God, believe me I’m not. But I have had a bit more time to process this than you. I hate him. I will always hate him. But I can’t blame him for doing everything in his power to protect you, even though he thought he had to protect you from me. I would have done the same.”

She’s suddenly aware that the wooden floor has been digging into her knees. She shifts and draws them up against her, massaging out the lines the floor has cut. Now, though, they both lean against the wall, nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“You were right.”

“What?”

“I told myself it was for your own good. To protect you. That it was inevitable anyway so I was just setting you free. But that wasn’t it. I don’t know if I was more afraid of taking your dad’s offer or rejecting it. It didn’t matter, I was afraid of screwing up. So I let him choose for me.”

It’s what she’s always known, but somehow it hurts more to hear the words aloud. Somehow the explanation hurts more than the excuse.

“But don’t you get it? I had to. I had to do it, Betty. Even if you’d known. If Hal had come after us. Me. If he’d come after FP and you knew—you would have tried to stop it. We would have done stupid things to try to stop it. This wasn’t just breaking into convents and finding abandoned cars. I couldn’t get through it if I had to be worrying about you every second of the day too.”

“And that’s it, isn’t it?” she says quietly. She’s been fighting it off, but the pain swamps her then. It whooshes through her. Concussive. Massive and totalizing in its intensity. She stands and staggers back into the living room.

“What?”

When he follows her, she continues, “You know, there are a million reasons it didn’t work out with Hunter, but one of them was that no matter what I did or what I achieved, he always treated me like I was something fragile, something to be protected. You didn’t. Or I thought you didn’t, but I guess I was wrong. So I just need a minute—” She squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself, once again, not to cry. Not over him. Not where he can see. But it would take more than a minute to fit the broken pieces of her heart back together again.

He remains in the doorway to the spare bedroom, as if the liminal space, somewhere in between knowledge and memory, past and present, truth and fiction, will somehow protect him.

“When I was deciding to call off my engagement, I thought about all the men I’ve loved in my life. Hunter. Archie. My dad. Kevin. Even Reggie and I were pretty close friends at one point. And I realized, even Archie and Hunter, I loved them like I loved Kevin. Like I loved Reggie. I thought maybe the butterflies and the fireworks were just because we were in high school, that real life, that grown up love didn’t look like that. I thought maybe I didn’t get to have it. But that’s not true. What’s true is that apparently I’ve never been in love with anyone since you. And even you didn’t know me well enough or care about me enough to know that I didn’t need you to protect me. I just needed you to be honest with me. To pick me. To trust me. You should have told me.”

“God, Betty.“

“I have to go.”

“What? Betts, no—”

But she’s already out the door.