#jakobs grip

[cuteloot]

Level 37 - Rustler's Coach Gun

Jakob's shotgun with double barrels, a matching grip, and the Rustler's prefix to add an additional two pellets.

[bitchinbarzal]

Red, White & Blue | M Barzal

part three of blue, white & orange

-

Mat was miserable and it showed. It fed over into practices and his on ice performance.

The islanders bailed out in the second round, no thanks to Mat’s horrible playing.

He spent the off season at home, not his usual extravagant plans with you by his side. He only flew back to BC for a few weeks before he got home and back to work. He needed to get his mind off you.

You’d blocked him and seemingly moved as he dropped by your apartment only to meet a nice Swedish man named Jakob living there now.

Your jacket and jersey still hung over his dining room chair where he dropped them that night he got home. The jersey was still dirty from the floor and the jacket still smelled of her perfume.

When the season rolled back around in August Mat was all eyes forward. He still hadn’t heard from you and he was slowly but surely getting better.

The season opener was in Madison Square Garden, facing off against the rangers. He wasn’t worried, he just wanted the game to be done with. This team brought him nothing but horrible memories and feelings.

The game started strong, the islanders were on a positive beginning. They were leading by three going into the third. Mat was confident.

That was until he saw you on the jumbotron.

His breath caught in his throat when he saw your face, the smile he missed and loved so much. You were sat there wearing the thing that started all of this, that stupid jersey. The red, white and blue made Mat feel sick.

That threw him off. They lost. He just wanted to go home.

While heading back to the bus he heard someone shouting his name, turning to see Alexis calling for him.

He scowled “What do you want?”

Alexis rolled his eyes “Don’t forget she was my fiancé first… anyway, here” he thrusts a post it note into Mat’s hand

“What’s this?”

“That’s her new address” he explains and notices Mat’s confused expression “She still loves you Mat and all I ever wanted was for her to be happy if it was with me or you”

Mat took the post it with a shaky hand a soft smile “Thanks man…”

He gripped it tightly on the way back to UBS. Staring at it, as if trying to memorise it.

When he got back to his car it was the first thing he did, punch that address into his GPS.

When he arrived he sat in his car staring at the window of the apartment he had figured out was yours. It took him an hour before he finally had the nerve to go into the building and knock on your door.

He heard you call out “coming!” Before opening the door. You looked shocked to see him, suddenly aware of what you were wearing.

The blue burned Mat’s eyes. He wishes he could rip It off but he knew better.

“Mat-“

“I love you. I love you in this jersey, in my jersey - I mostly prefer you without anything to be honest!” He rambled, his hands flapping around

“You gave her my jacket” you mumble, curling back into yourself.

He shakes his head, scrunching his eyes closed “I- I didn’t give her it! Please just- she took it! She was cold and I turned my back for like a second. I had the jacket because I was coming to find you, to make up for what was happening between us”

You bit your lip “How do I know that?”

He shrugs “I can’t make you trust me but you know how much I love you, that’s never been in question. We fought, we were each jealous because we love each other so much so please don’t stay away from me any longer I can’t take it”

Your bottom lip quivered “How do you know we’re not bad for each other Mat?”

“Even if we are… I’m willing to take the risk”

You let out a shaky breath “Come here”

He immediately steps into the apartment and kisses you, both of you stumbling back a few steps. You feel him lifting up your jersey to reveal nothing underneath

“Mat!”

“I lied, I don’t love you in this jersey please get it off”

[r0wdy-rat]

Face Down

pt i pt ii pt iii pt iv pt v

Masterlist

AN: hey team wouldn’t it be funny if i dropped off the face of the earth for 4 years and then returned and wrote another chapter randomly on a sunday afternoon? i think it would be funny

Summary: You enter a period of growth and knowledge. Unfortunately for Levi, you do not enter a period of temperance.

You found Levi’s apathy towards you had its limits. One such limit was Furlan.

You didn’t know if it was because he brought you on the raid or if it was something else, but, as always, Levi reached the end of his patience abruptly and without warning.

Furlan was standing in front of you, hips between your spread knees. Now that you had punched him in the head and learned of Levi’s overall involvement in the plan, your temper had cooled enough to allow him to be near you without wanting to plunge a knife into his ribs. His hand grasped your chin, bony fingers tilting your face up so he could get a better look at the gash running across your brow. Furlan hummed, the sound high in his throat as he dabbed a damp rag at the dried blood around your cheek. He scrunched his nose, lips parting in concentration as he leaned closer to you to get a better look at your wound. You just blinked at him, studying his swollen and swelling eyes, until the rag pressed against something tender, and you hissed out a breath through your teeth at the sudden sting.

Furlan startled, but before he could say anything he was gone.

Now, Levi was there between your thighs, invading your space as you sat on the counter. Your cheeks pinked at the proximity, at the intensity of his gaze leveled right at you. No, not at you. At the cut. He still wasn’t looking you in your eyes. You twitched, trying to turn away in frustration when his fingers curled into the hair at the nape of your neck, holding it tightly. He used his grip to steer your face back where he had wanted it, his features now shuttered with annoyance.

“It won’t need stitches.” Furlan huffed from where he was shoved across the room. “The risk of infection is honestly higher than anything right now. She needs a bath. Or two, with all the grime on her.”

Grime, you mused

What an odd thing to call Jakobs brain matter.

You were on your third bath. 

 Surely, you think, the water will stop turning red at some point. Surely, it will slow, you pray, as you step into the cold bath, and watch the pink spread. 

You were covered. In Jakobs, in the woman who killed him, in your own blood. Three full tubs of water, and it was still caked beneath your nails and in your hair and you could still taste the iron in your mouth. You scrubbed, and scrubbed, and turned as pink as the water around you from your roughness before Ma came in. 

Sweetly, she pulled your hands away from yourself. She bathed you like you used to bathe Miss Kuchel when she was too sick to move. When she was done, she dressed the fresh wounds you had carved into yourself with your nails in your haste to get the blood off. 

“Oh, child,” she tutted, tears in her eyes, as she tugged a dress over your head, “there was nothing you coulda done for Jakobs, But I’ll see to it that something is done for his family. They’ll be taken care of.” 

Despite her kind words, you still felt the weight of your mistakes pressing into you. You stared off into space. After the thrill of finding 3DMG wore off, you were only left with the aches. Your hand from punching Furlan, your heart from losing Jakobs, your soul from Levi’s estrangement. 

He still couldn’t look at you.

If you weren’t so numb, you might be mad. 

But you were numb, and what lay beneath that buzz was a wave of emotions you felt would overtake you if you let them, so you chose to reside in the static instead. 

Ma, as it turns out, left as soon as she was done caring for you. She took the horse and carriage to deliver her and Jakobs portion of the goods to a salesmen, and then gave his earnings to his family.

It took the government a day to find her. 

News of Ma’s arrest reached your ears in even less time. 

You sank deeper into the numbness. 

Kur tried to comfort you, told you that Jakob’s family got their share before they caught her, and that at least one end was tied up. But the one finished story with Jakobs just made the unfinished ones glaringly obvious. Ma, nurturing, kind, crackshot Ma, was gone, aboveground and lost to you. Ponye was trying to keep spirits light, but even his devil-may-care attitude was brittle. Furlan did his level best to not piss you off anymore, since you’d given him a second shiner. Levi...

Levi was still refusing to look at you. 

You knew he was still around. You could feel his eyes on you, but by the time you’d find his hiding spot he was usually already moving on. Everything felt wrong, disjointed. You felt like you were missing a limb. You had never fought like this. Even over the earthworm. Even over your disappearance before Miss died. Even during your most heated arguments about the benefits and risks of you signing up with her old pimp, he had never seen fit to ignore you.

Nothing felt right. You wanted to go back to the way things were before.

Furlan called a meeting. 

The five of you sat in a huddle in your little warehouse, and you tried not to notice how Levi sat beside Kur, not beside you. Ponye grinned at you and scruffled your hair when he noticed your sad face, and you tried to let it lift your spirits, but you still felt...

Numb. 

“We can’t sell the 3DMG. The government is tracking it. We’re enemies of the state, after what we did.”

Kur protested, his soft voice ringing out in the stale air. “But you told us they were already stolen.” 

Levi scoffed. “No, they won’t want anyone thinking that a person inside their military would steal from the king. They want to pin all of this on us.” 

That’s all well and good, Levi, you thought, but why won’t you look at me.

As if sensing your thoughts, Levi looked at Ponye, next to you. You had never felt such homicidal rage in your life. 

The only thing beneath the numbness is anger. You try to shove it down. It keeps rising back up your throat, though, like bile. Your chest aches, and you fear what you’ve been keeping beneath your anger and your apathy. You know it will sweep you away and crash you against the rocks. It will rip you apart with its tide, and you won’t have a safety raft to cling to. 

“So, you led us into a trap?” Ponye asked, surly and mistrusting, “Is that why you won’t look at her? You feel guilty you didn’t keep her far enough away? How much are they paying you?”

Levi bared his teeth at the blonde, “I look at her enough,” he growled, and as if to prove a point, stared dead at you. 

You felt pinned by his gaze. The yearning you had felt for so long had suddenly vanished as if it had never existed, warmth filling the hole in your chest. Your heart shuddered inside your ribs. Had you always felt like this, when he looked at you? Or had the loss of his gaze driven you to new heights?

But... it was different. His eyes were shuttered, now, when he looked at you. He looked like he was a magnet, being repelled by his twin. 

The warmth in your chest soured. You felt like you’d be sick.

What had you done?

In the end, the solution to your problem was quite clear. You couldn’t sell the 3DMG. So, the only remaining option was to learn to use it. Surely, being able to soar in the air like a bird would make your heists all the easier, and Ponye was more than enthusiastic to be the first one to try it out.

The boy was whooping and laughing, even as he sent himself crashing into every surface possible, even as he bruised himself and dislocated his arm from not being able to keep his balance in the damn thing. You would have laughed, if you weren’t busy chasing after the bastard to make sure his head was still attached.

Meanwhile, you watched as Levi soared overhead like he’d been doing this his whole life. Prick, you thought gleefully, showing everyone else up, as always. Your heart was fluttering in your chest, and your stomach was flipping in your guts. Even when he was acting like a stranger, you still couldn’t help but root for him with everything in you. You didn’t want to help it. Levi, for all of his fussing, was yours. Yours to chase after, yours to keep safe, yours to be with. He would never be alone, regardless of how prickly he decided to act towards you. Even if you hadn’t promised Miss to keep him with you, you feared this inclination would be just as strong.

A hand pulled you from your reverie. Gripping a harness, Furlan grinned roguishly at you, “Let Kur start chasing this moron around the alley and go join Levi up there. We haven’t even seen you try it yet.”

You pressed your lips together, contemplating, and then grabbed the harness. “Alright. Don’t worry, I’m more than happy to show you all how it’s done!”

Furlan laughed, ruffling your hair and shoving you towards the fuel cannisters that lay nearby. “Yeah, yeah, just try not to die from a broken neck. Levi would have my head. Bastard barely even let me give you one a’those.”

You frowned at that, eyes going to trace him as he soared above you. He was so far out of reach with you down here. And by the walls did you want to yell at him right now. “Well, don’t you worry about that Furlan. I’ve got this all under control.”

As soon as you managed to get into the air properly, you nearly let go of all your anger.

Despite the rough tugging on your hips when you latched onto the Underground’s structures, despite the way your shoulders cried out at every shift and turn, despite the way your hands cramped from clinging to your triggers…

Walls, this was the most amazing thing.

You felt so free. Freer than a bird. Freer than you had ever, ever been trapped down here. It was like all your fears were left on the ground. No sneering pimps weighing your worth like a butcher with a piece of meat, no MP’s to leer at you from dark alleyways, no thugs to compete with for jobs. Fuck, with this gear, your group would be the only thieves that mattered down here. You felt the laughter rising in your throat as you raced after Levi, faster and faster. Free. Like a damn bird. You whooped, unable to hold the joy in any longer, and Levi turned to you. His hair was whipping in his face as he took in your chipper cries as you pelted after him, arms extended towards the undergrounds ceiling. You were gorgeous, looking happier and lighter than he’d ever seen you. Even when you were a child and he and his mom had taken you in, fresh-faced and naive, you hadn’t looked this happy. You’d taken to the gear nearly as quickly as he had, and seemed to feel invincible in it, if your raucous cheering was anything to go by.

Finally, he let himself land on a building top, and you came right after him with a screech. While you had figured out flying easily enough, landing was an entirely different story.

You plowed into him, knocking the both of you off of your feet and making you skitter across the rooftop. You wheezed when something heavy landed on you, crushing the wind out of you. You felt him shudder, hot breaths puffing on the sensitive skin of your neck as he tried to catch his breath before he propped himself up on an arm.

And then there he was. Levi. Above you. Eyes still dark, pretty lips parted, hair ruffled and messy as he stared breathlessly down at you. No, not at you. At the cut, healing to an angry shade of pink and bisecting your eyebrow.

You bucked your hips with a growl, and he was tossed from you. He was just so surprised by your sudden attack that he let you straddle him after too. You seated yourself firmly on top of him, thighs clenching around his hips and calves wedging under his knees. He bared his teeth at you, hissing and writhing, and you crammed a hand beneath his head, fingers gripping the hair there and forcing his face where you wanted it. Still, his eyes wouldn’t meet yours, even as his teeth grit from your grip. You shook with rage, all that fury from before rushing back. You wouldn’t let him leave you behind.

“Fucker,” you snarled, “Fucking look at me, Levi.”

He pursed his lips, before his eyes darted to yours and then away. You twisted your fingers until he hissed and writhed, bucking his hips under yours. “I said look at me.” You ordered, getting impossibly closer to him until you could feel the panicked puffs of breath leaving his mouth ghost across your face.

That was when, again, and with no help from Furlan, Levi reached the jagged end of his apathy.

Pt vi

[mcntsee]

Her smile

Summary: I taught you everything you know. Her words resonated through his mind. I saved you. And she had. He couldn’t deny it any longer. It’s not like he ever had; he was just too much of an asshole to admit it to her.

Warnings: A little bit of angst, but mostly fluff. Good ending (maybe…). Violence, blood, etc… There’s a little of Kaz’s backstory mentioned, but it has slight changes. I think a curse word here and there, I can’t remember. This was a little bit rushed, so expect grammatical mistakes. One or two uses of “Y/n”.

Quick clarifications: Y/n is a year or two older than Kaz, not more. This is kind of written from Kaz’s point of view. You get a glimpse of his thoughts, which are in italics. You might also see the constant use of the word “ja”, that was just me trying to add a little Kerch touch to the story. ( Ja = Yes. )

Author’s note: I am still trying to figure out this new writing style, but actually really liked how this turned out. I tried not to make Kaz that ooc, but I’m unsure of whether I succeeded or not. Comments are extremely appreciated!

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

Keep running. That was the only thing Kaz could think of. Run or be caught and end up like Jordie. So he ran. He ran, and kept running until his legs gave out. Get up. Keep running. But he couldn’t.

The temperatures were dropping, he had cast off his wet pants, but his shirt still clung to him, reminding him of the dew-laden grass back in Lij that would stubbornly stick to his bare feet. I need a different shirt.

As he gasped for breath, contemplation filled the moment, presenting an opportunity to plan his next move. Though he knew some clothing stores were open, the absence of funds and a nagging doubt lingered – in Ketterdam, who would spare a glance for a kid in drenched clothes?

I could bite another kid. He thought, but he knew the chances of acquiring more clothing items out of acting like a rabid dog were slim. Moreover, he pondered the peculiarity of another child rummaging through the barrel at this hour. Think, Rietveld, think.

A moving shadow caught his attention from the corner of his eye, triggering the instinct to flee from potential danger. Yet, just as he prepared to sprint, he discerned the diminutive size of the shadow, halting him before he could take off. They can’t be much older than me.

To his credit, it had seemed like a brilliant plan. Biting the other kid had secured him a new pair of pants, albeit snug in certain areas craving more breathing room. Regardless, they were dry.

Why, then, should he have anticipated the petite shadow to swiftly twist his arm at an angle before the opportunity to enact his rabid dog performance even arose?

“I haven’t seen you around before.”

Kaz had expected the shadow to be many things, a girl, however, had not been one of them. Jordie would have died laughing if he saw this.

“Cat ate your tongue?”

“It did not. No.”

“There you go. What business?”

He had heard that question before – in the alleys, the pleasure houses, along Geldstraat, Jakob Hertzoon.

“No business.”

With a huff, the mysterious girl relinquished her grip on his arm and nudged him with a push. Run, Kaz. Run. But something else in him had told him to stay.

“What is it that you want then, …-“

“Kaz.”

“What do you want, Kaz?”

Multiple answers ran through his head, all of them something that he desperately needed- Jordie, my da, money, food, Hertzoon. “I want a dry shirt.”

“Is that why you’ve been scaring kids off?”

“You’ve been following me.”

“Can you blame me? You caught the attention of a lot of people after biting the kid.”

Admittedly, he was aware of the fact that it had not been his brightest idea, but he was desperate.

“I suppose I could help. Wait here.”

And just like that, she was gone. Not even leavening the sound of her footsteps behind. She won’t come back. Ignoring his mind, he decided to wait. Wait and hope that she would return. Hope is dangerous. Still, he waited.

Not long after, a whispered “Kaz!” was heard from the shadows. “Come here!”

And went he did. His gaze jumping from corner to corner, trying to figure out why the mysterious girl suddenly had the urge to whisper.

“Here you go.”

“Wha- Where did you get this from?”

“That store over there.”

“I don’t have money to pay you back.”

“Pay me back? It was free.”

Free? He doubted that. Ketterdam did not seem like the place where free clothes were handed out to kids in need. So, how did she get a free shirt? Oh.

“You stole it?”

“Ja.”

“How?”

“You really are new here, huh?”

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“Jakob Hertzoon?”

“That’s what I said, ja.”

“No clue. Never heard that name before.”

How could she possibly not know Hertzoon when she knows everyone in this forsaken city?

“He is a scammer. A thief.”

“You are going to have to be a little more specific than that, Kaz.”

“Old, average height, beard.”

“Sounds to me like everyone else in Ketterdam.”

Great. He had truly believed that she would be able to help him find Hertzoon, but it seemed like luck hadn’t been on his side for a while now.

“Anyone you can think of?”

“No, not really.”

“He has a daughter. Saskia.”

And he assumed that was the key detail she sought because the moment the name escaped his lips, she froze. Maybe luck is on my side.

“Red ribbon girl?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, Kaz…”

Maybe luck is not on my side.

“What?”

“There is no Jakob Hertzoon.”

He hated her. So much. No one believed him, and just when he thought he could trust someone again, she went and crushed it like it was nothing.

“There is.”

“No, Kaz-“

“Why won’t you believe me?”

He felt like crying. He felt betrayed. The same way he did the day Jordie had him climb up to the window to peek inside, only to find that Hertzoon was gone. That they had been betrayed.

“I do believe you.”

“Then-“

“That’s not his name.”

“He said it was-“

Oh. You idiot. Of course that was a lie too.

“The person you are looking for is Pekka Rollins.”

Pekka Rollins.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

Since that day, Kaz had remained by her side, recognizing that an ally in an unfamiliar city was preferable to navigating it alone.

“And you are doing this because…?”

“None of your business.”

“All of my business, Kaz.”

In moments like this, Kaz found himself longing for the chance to rewind time, back to the day they met, and enact his plan of biting and escaping.

“I want to do something nice for someone.”

“Mmh. What you’re trying to say is that you fancy someone, ja?”

“Ja.”

Once again, that stupid smile adorned her face. However, he comprehended the reason behind her teasing. After all, he had been seeking her assistance to conquer his phobia throughout the entire past week.

“Of course I’ll help you, Kaz. You just need to wait a week.”

“Why?”

“The old man wants my help in some stupid job.”

“What job?”

“I’m just meeting with some contractors, nothing fun.”

Initially intending to wait, he seized the chance when an opportunity unexpectedly presented itself.

It started off small, with him merely removing his gloves for brief intervals, but soon he opted to take it a step further.

Had he waited a mere couple of hours, perhaps he wouldn't find himself holding an ice pack to his left cheek right now. Unfortunately, impatience got the better of him.

Believing that taking on a job without his gloves was a clever shortcut, he hadn't anticipated Borj assigning him the task of restraining someone.

It had been too much, too fast, forcing him to release the individual. He had inadvertently granted someone an escape opportunity, all because of a girl.

“Kaz.”

Run. Hide. Yet, after the brutal beating he endured, he lacked the strength for either option.

“Kaz.”

“What?”

“What happened?”

Despite the strong urge to snap at her, to demand solitude, he found himself disheartened and in pain. So he told her everything.

“Where’s Borj?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

But apparently, she had cared because as soon as those words escaped his lips, she was on her feet and walking away from him. You are weak, Brekker.

Not long after she left, a commotion outside caught his attention. Initially inclined to ignore it, given the commonality of fights in the barrel, he changed his mind upon recognizing her voice. Rising to his feet, he went in search of her.

"Does it make you feel powerful, Borj? Stronger, or better than everyone else?”

There she stood, an accusatory finger pointed and rhythmically striking Borj in the chest.

“Does beating a kid make you feel like you matter?"

"Get out of here before I beat your ass too, kid."

But defiance laced her words as she challenged, "Try me."

And try he did.

That marked the final encounter Kaz had with Borj.

Of course, that's excluding the occasion when she assisted him in tracking down Borj, enabling him to exact his own revenge.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“Breathe, Kaz.”

“I am.”

“You are not.”

He truly wasn’t. Despite an hour of attempting to crack the lock, he couldn’t find the pressure point she kept talking about.

“Stop.”

“No, I almost got it.”

“Stop.”

With a sigh, the lock picks he had previously been using clattered on the table, his gloved hand reaching up to rub at his temples in frustration.

“If you keep jabbing the lock picks in, you won’t be able to find where to push down on.”

This was a stupid idea. He had witnessed her effortlessly open various locks within seconds and believed that asking her to teach him was a brilliant plan.

It wasn't her fault, really. He simply had a tendency to get frustrated when things didn't unfold as he intended.

The fact that he was embarrassing himself in front of her wasn't helping in the slightest either. How was he supposed to steal her heart if he couldn’t even learn to pick a lock?

But then she flashed that smile, and everything seemed to get better.

“Here, let me show you again.”

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“Aim higher.”

“I can’t aim any higher unless you want the bullet to- hopefully, hit a bird.”

With a sigh, she stepped closer to him, her hand extending.

“May I?”

A nod of his head was all she needed before she carefully grabbed his arm, pushing it slightly upward.

“There. Try again.”

A single shot echoed through the air and this time, unlike the many others, the bullet hit the mark.

“Attaboy.”

And, saints, if he hadn’t been smiling already because of his success, he knew he would've struggled to suppress the grin that would've undoubtedly appeared on his face at the sight of her twinkling eyes and smile.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“Please just go.”

“I won’t until you tell me what’s wrong, Kaz.”

What isn’t wrong?

“I won't be able to fix all of your problems, but you'll never have to face them alone.” With those words, she stepped closer. His breath caught, his body responding as it always did. His stomach churned, hands trembling, and sweat starting to form on his forehead. “I may not have all the answers or solutions, but I do have all the time in the world for you.”

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Who exactly was he thinking about, he wasn’t sure. For all that mattered, it could’ve been her, Jordie, or even Pekka- again. But most of all, he detested what he’d become.

I hate you, Rietveld.

“It's alright if things are going differently to what you had planned, Kaz.”

But it isn’t.

“It's alright if your life is taking turns you never could've predicted.”

It has for a while now.

“It's alright if you're feeling overwhelmed.”

I am. Constantly overwhelmed with dreams and hopes that I just can’t pursue. I am not strong enough.

“Kaz, there is no rulebook for existing.”

I wish there were.

“Watching you move through life with your head held high and your strength radiating, even on the tough days, has been such an eye-opening and inspiring experience.”

But it was fake. He was not strong. He was scared.

She could sense the turmoil inside his mind. She didn't need to hear it to understand the dark narrative he was weaving for himself. The destructive lies his brain was pleading with him to believe.

“I can't protect you from everything,” another step closer, “but I'll do my best to make sure you're safe.”

Soon, she had reached his bed, and with a subtle nod, he silently granted her permission to sit beside him, his gaze still fixed downward.

“I trust you, with the entirety of my heart.” Carefully, she lifted her arm, waiting for his response. Anticipating him to tell her to stop, expecting him to push her away as he always did.

But this time, he didn't. He inhaled deeply and, with deliberate effort, raised his body off the bed using his arms, moving closer to her.

He could feel the heat radiating from her, even at a distance. He could feel her warmth, and he longed for it. He yearned to draw nearer.

He longed to break down and cry, wishing for her embrace to envelop him. Imagining her tender hand soothingly moving up and down his back while he heard the gentle thumping of her heart.

“I hope you never forget that I believe in you. Wholeheartedly. With every fibre of my being.”

In that moment, he let his eyes brim with unshed tears, and for once, he allowed someone to see it. His gazed slowly moved up from the ground, halting at the sight of her face, and then delicately tracing down her features, pausing at the captivating allure of her smile.

And for the first time ever, he allowed himself to fall into her welcoming arms.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“How did you do that?”

“What?”

“The pen thing.”

“Magic.”

“Teach me.”

For the first time ever, she was asking him to teach her something. He never thought this moment would come. He had believed that there was nothing she didn’t know how to do.

Yet, here she was, seeking his guidance to unravel the secrets of a magic trick. A small shift, perhaps, but an unexpected and welcomed turn nonetheless.

“A magician never reveals his secre-”

“Oh for Saint’s sake, Kaz.”

“All right, all right.”

Saints. That smile.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

“You are not thinking clearly, Brekker.”

“I’m thinking clear enough to know that you are not helping.”

She is right. Deep down he knew that. She is always right. But today, he wouldn’t accept it.

He had a solid plan. The only issue was that the blueprints he had acquired were not up to date, and the building he was meant to be in was old.

“You are going to get yourself killed, Kaz.”

“So what?”

Numerous opportunities for death had come his way, but it hadn’t claimed him yet. So, what was another risk going to do? If he was meant to die, he would.

“If you don’t care, I do.”

“Ja?”

“Ja.”

Of course, she cares. Yet, he wasn’t about to abandon his plan that easily. Unless she had a better one, he wasn’t going to heed her advice any longer.

“Let me go in.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Listen to me-“

“No.”

He was reckless, yes. But not reckless enough to send her into the building. He knew the risks, and he wouldn’t take the one that could potentially lead to losing her.

His chair was suddenly yanked back from his desk. In an instant, he found himself pinned to the wall, her foot next to his shoulder, blocking him from moving the chair back to its original place.

“If you won’t listen, I’m going to make you listen.”

Kaz's face suddenly reddened, the close proximity and her position evoking an unexpected sensation within him.

Saints.

"If you go in there and something happens, we both know you won’t be able to make it out." she stated firmly. “This is not the way to take down Rollins.”

He was in no position to deny it. He wouldn’t make it out, that was for sure. His leg had been bothering him for the last month, which had also made him slower. Made me weak.

“I can. You know I can.”

With a swift move of his leg, he hit hers, causing her to fall to the ground sideways. This gave him the perfect opportunity to stand up.

Just like she had, he positioned his foot right next to her shoulder and leaned down, close enough so that their faces were almost touching.

“Not so fast now, are you?”

“Asshole.”

Help her up. But he resisted the urge to. Instead, with their faces so close, he said, “If risking your life to prove that you’re better is what makes you leave me alone, then do so.” And with that, he moved.

Her face displayed fury, brows furrowed, mouth in a thin line. But, he didn’t care enough to spare her a second glance. Instead, he sat back down on his chair and moved it back to his desk.

“You would be nothing without me, Brekker.”

“I disagree.”

“I taught you everything you know.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, darling.”

“I saved you. Don’t forget that.”

And just like that, she was gone, leaving nothing but the echo of a slammed door behind.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

I taught you everything you know. Her words resonated through his mind. I saved you. And she had. He couldn’t deny it any longer. It’s not like he ever had; he was just too much of an asshole to admit it to her.

No. No, no, no! He refused to accept that it was over. That she was gone, vanished in the blink of an eye. That she had died believing that he was ungrateful. Believing that he hated her.

He could never hate her; he loved- loves her. I love her.

Run. That was the only thing Kaz could think of. Run or risk her dying. So he ran. He ran, and kept running until his legs screamed at him to stop. Don’t stop. Keep running. And he did.

He ran until he reached the remnants of the building she had been in. The building I let her go into.

"Help!" he yelled at the rest of the crows, hoping they would start running and come to help him find her.

Dig. Dig. Dig, and keep digging. he urged himself, desperation mounting. Every rock he picked and discarded elsewhere only revealed more rocks underneath. No sign of her. Dig until your hands bleed.

It felt like an eternity before Jesper yelled at them, “She’s here!” Before Jesper even had the chance to finish what he was saying, Kaz had already gotten up and started running towards him. “Where?”

“Where, Jesper, where?”

Kaz’s gaze trailed along the path indicated by Jesper’s finger, only to find a bloodied hand underneath the rubble. No, no, no.

He swiftly dropped to his knees, fervently tossing rocks in all directions. Keep digging, were the only words in his mind.

Kaz could hear the sound of his gloves ripping, but in this moment, he paid it no mind. He persisted in his efforts until her top half emerged from beneath the rubble. “Darling?”

He could feel the ghosts of his past clutching at his back, attempting to drag him under the water. But he couldn’t let them. He wouldn’t.

Come on, Rietveld. His hands were shaking, and he could hear his friend calling his name, asking him to move aside, to allow them to pull her from beneath the rubble, but he ignored it.

He couldn't bear the thought of living without her by his side, without her guiding him through everything he longed to learn.

He couldn’t fathom the thought of never seeing her eyes sparkle or living without ever hearing the sound of her voice, the resonance of her laughter.

He couldn’t imagine a world where her stupidly beautiful smile never graced his sight again.

With shaky hands, he seized her from underneath the shoulders and pulled.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

Three fractured bones, two dislocated joints, a canvas of cuts and bruises, and head trauma.

That’s what the medik had told them. Those were her injuries. Injuries caused by my stupidity.

She must’ve been anticipating the collapse and realized that escaping in time was impossible. The medik also conveyed the belief that the position she deemed safer to take had ultimately saved her life. Smart girl.

To him, witnessing her so unnaturally still was a disconcerting sight, one he never wished to experience again.

In the time they had known each other, Kaz had only seen her injured three times, including this incident. Ironically, each of those three instances where she got hurt was somehow connected to him.

“Brekker!”

“Ja?”

“I’m going to murder you.”

He could see the fury in her eyes, and for a second, he entertained the thought that she might actually kill him.

He was well aware that he was breaking every rule she had set up for him. These rules were not akin to the ones parents give their children – no candy after seven, brush your teeth before bed, and so on. No, these rules, according to her, had been crafted to keep him safe, to keep him alive.

But he just couldn’t stop thinking about Rollins. He understood that venturing into the Dime Lions' turf was risky, downright foolish. However, he felt compelled to get a closer look at him, to learn everything about him in order to destroy him, to make him pay.

“One rule, Kaz. One rule.”

He was slightly surprised at how quickly she had found him. It hadn’t been that long, perhaps just an hour, including the time he spent walking from the Slat to the Emerald Palace.

“I’m fine!”

“You won’t be once I lay my hands on you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.”

He knew she was furious; he could see it in her eyes. He had observed that whenever a surge of anger swept over her, an intense glare would manifest, with a sharp focus on whatever had incited her wrath- in this case, him.

Her pupils would also dilate, at times with rapid changes in size, set against narrowed eyelids.

But still, he could sense her smile attempting to break through the anger. He watched as she fought against it, resisting the grin that sought to make its way to her face.

“Come here, you tall idiot.”

He had finally reached that age when it felt as if one night he went to bed shorter than her, only to wake up the next morning towering over. He liked it.

“Coming.”

What neither of them had been expecting was the shot that rang out as soon as he stood by her side.

Quickly and without thinking, he took her arm and pulled her behind the wall, providing them with a safe place to hide.

“That was close.”

“Kaz-“

“Come on, we have to go.”

“Kaz.”

Before he even had the chance to fully turn around, he heard the distinct sound of a body hitting the ground. When he saw her, he felt like he was trapped in a dream. Or rather, a nightmare.

He could hear her choking, struggling to breathe, gasping for air as her lungs filled with her own blood. He could see her desperately holding her neck, applying pressure in a futile attempt to staunch the flow.

He could see the pool of blood forming underneath her. Not just any blood, but her blood. “No.”

It had been nothing short of a miracle that he had the strength to drag her all the way back to the Slat without passing out himself.

By the time they made it back, she had lost all the color in her face. Her once pink lips were now tinted with her own blood. Her body had begun to grow colder, and his clothes were completely ruined.

The doctor had advised him not to hope for anything. He told him to adhere to the harsh reality that there was nothing more the doctor or anyone else could have done for her. That she might not make it through the night, or wake up.

“Kaz.”

“She will.”

“Hope is dangerous in the barrel, kid.”

“She will wake up.”

“Kaz?”

“She has to.”

And she had. So why won’t she wake up now?

“Kaz!”

“What?”

And just like that, he was snapped back from his memories, and reimbursed in reality.

“You need to eat something.”

“I’m fine.”

“You haven’t eaten a thing since…”

“Since the day she almost died because of me. Go on, Inej, you can say it.”

Inej’s gentle exhale echoed as she delicately set down what he assumed was a plate with food, before leaving. Her steps quiet enough for the subtle sound to blend seamlessly with the room’s stillness.

He permitted his thoughts to return to their previous dwelling as soon as the door clicked shut behind Inej.

Growing up with Y/n at his side was a privilege he didn’t often acknowledge. “I’m sorry I have taken you for granted.”

He meant it from the bottom of his cold heart when he said, “I genuinely know I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for you.”

The fondest memories etched in his heart were those shared with her, doing whatever they had been doing. He cherished every moment they spent together, even if he didn’t show it at the time.

I want to keep creating memories with you.

“Seeing you happy make my heart smile.”

It did, truly.

“There is nothing more that I want than to see you live the beautiful life you deserve.”

He couldn’t even remember the amount of times she had helped him. With anything and everything.

“Please wake up.”

* ੈ✩‧₊˚

He succumbed to nourishment under the watchful eyes of Inej and Nina, relenting only after their threats to stabilize his racing heart and administer sustenance while he was unconscious.

Immobile, he had lingered by her bedside without the slightest shift since the day he carried her back from that ill-fated job.

It felt like it had been ages before his breath caught as he saw her stir, a subtle movement that held the weight of an entire universe of emotions. Her eyes fluttered open, meeting his.

“Y/n.”

In that instant, her radiant smile graced his world once more. He had yearned for this moment, the warmth of her smile rekindling a flame in his heart.

He didn't resist this time. All pretense crumbled, revealing a genuine smile on his face, a rare sight that echoed the warmth he felt in his heart.

“I am sorry.”

“Kaz-“

“No. You deserve this. You deserve an apology.”

Slowly, he moved closer, his bare hand extending toward hers. Unexpectedly, there was no tremor, no unsettling unease in his stomach, and the haunting echoes of the past seemed momentarily muted. It was a rare instance where Kaz felt a measure of control over his thoughts, his body, and the outreached hand.

“You saved me countless times, in ways beyond measure. Over and over again. You’ve saved me in more ways than anyone could ever fathom.”

She saved the shivering kid that had crawled out of the harbor. She provided refuge and became an ally.

“You gave me a chance. You gave Jordie a chance.”

She gave him control—over his body, over his fear. She provided him with armor when he needed it the most. A second skin—the gloves that would later weave a legend around him, making people fear him.

“You gave me peace.”

Throughout it all, she never gave up. Standing by his side for hours on end, teaching him the essentials of survival and imparting the knowledge crucial for his survival. And, not just that, she taught him everything he longed to learn. Things that had ignited the curiosity of a kid.

Over and over again, she defended him when he was too weak to defend himself. She shielded him from everything and everyone, regardless of the consequences.

“You stood by my side and never left. Even when I begged you to.”

She imparted the skills of combat, manipulation, and information extraction. She taught him the art of thievery and pickpocketing.

She nurtured him with care, ensuring his well-being in a world that often demanded too much. She prepared his favorite meals and gently reminding him to take breaks, to rest.

“You keep me young, healthy. Powerful.”

She offered him her shoulder to lean on when the burden became too heavy, not just once but repeatedly. Through it all, never once did she judge.

She was there for him, patiently listening to everything he had to share—plans, troubles, the past, the present, and the future. Through it all, she sat beside him and listened.

“You have grounded me on so many occasions and guided me towards a better life and a happier heart.”

She made his heart feel like it was beating again, as if it had come back to life. As if Kaz Rietveld had not quite died, but instead merged with Brekker and came out only with her.

“You are the most amazing person I have ever met. I am always in awe of your kindness and compassion for those around you.”

Growing up next to her had been nothing short of magical.

She's the anchor in his chaos, the silent strength in his storm, the guiding light through the murky waters. And despite the irritation she causes every now and then, he wouldn't have it any other way.

She was the one he wanted to love. Freely and without fear of what might happen. He wanted to love and be loved by her. He wanted to be by her side every second of the day.

He wanted to make her smile all the time. He needed to see her smile.

“I-“

Come on, Kaz. He wanted to tell her. He needed to let her know. He wanted to unravel the feelings he had kept hidden for far too long. “I-“ It was time to break free from the armor he wore, allowing himself to embrace both the love and the pain that might come with it.

“You…?”

“I love you.”

And in that moment, her smile was the only affirmation he needed, telling him that he had chosen the right words.

“I love you too, Kaz.”

Ghezen, that fucking smile.

[accidentalmistress]

New Fic - To Have a Voice

Alrighty, here's the new story that I've been working on for quite a while now. I hope y'all enjoy these new characters, because I sure as hell do. This story takes place in the same world as Accidental Mistress, Vibrahnem, but where Accidental Mistress takes place in the country of Schorseau, To Have a Voice takes place in the neighboring country of Merseheim. The events of To Have a Voice take place around the same time period as Accidental Mistress.

Title: To Have a Voice

Word Count: 9,772

Content and Warnings: snz - male, allergy

In which a young Archivist stumbles into a chance encounter that may well change the course of his life, though he certainly doesn't know it at the time.

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

PART ONE: THE CAT

Jakob's mother had taught him from a young age that one must treat others as one wished to be treated. This, she advised, would ensure that one was well-liked by one's peers, which in turn would propel one into a successful and happy future. Jakob had now reached an age in his adult life where he suspected that his dear mother, though well-intentioned, was sadly misguided. For though he was nothing but kind to everyone he met, seldom raised his voice or lost his temper, and strove to always maintain a cheery disposition, these qualities had not brought him friendship and acclaim so much as they had relegated him to what felt like the background of his own life.

Which is all a very roundabout way of saying that, as his one and only close friend Vera liked frequently to remind him: Jakob Steiner was a people-pleasing doormat.

Still, the habits drilled into him by his moral upbringing could not easily be shaken. So when he saw the cat lying motionless along an exterior wall as he left the Archives of the Order, he felt compelled to do what he believed to be right and check on it.

His work in the Archives had kept Jakob late, as usual, while he fulfilled the various requests made of him that he could never quite bring himself to say “no” to. Night had fallen, and rain slicked the streets of Onteburgh with a glistening sheen. Thick cloud cover blocked any moonlight, and the city instead was awash in the soft golden glow of many arcane street lamps. The rain and quality of light made it difficult to tell if the animal was even alive, but if it was, then perhaps it needed help, and Jakob could no more turn a blind eye than he could call off the rain with his thoughts alone.

He approached the creature slowly, the rain whispering in a soft patter on the umbrella he held in a tightening grip.

“I hope I don't regret this…” he muttered with the tone of a man intimately familiar with regrets.

 The cat looked like little more than a lump of soaked, black fur on the pavement, its tail encircling its legs as it lay there curled up on its side. Jakob crouched down next to it and took a long look at the animal. If it had died of an illness, he didn't want to touch it and risk contracting some sort of contagion. After a few moments, however, he observed the cat's chest rise and fall with a shallow breath.

“Oh dear. So you are alive, poor thing. Are you hurt?”

The chance of illness remained, but he could not very well aid the cat without touching it, so Jakob reached a hand towards the pitiable creature and brushed two fingers along its head, between its ears. One eye opened, a distinctive shade of violet that took Jakob by surprise. He’d never seen a cat with such unusual, haunting eyes. Though, to be fair, he didn't spend much time around cats. He didn't spend much time anywhere that wasn't the Order's Archives or his own quarters.

 The animal lifted its head and looked at him, its strange eyes half-lidded, and opened its mouth. The meow that issued was so faint as to be nearly inaudible over the rain.

Well, I certainly can't leave it here now, can I?

With a sigh, Jakob set his umbrella aside and gently scooped the soaked creature into his arms, a few fat raindrops splattering across the round lenses of his glasses in the moments he was uncovered. The animal didn't protest or make any sort of indication that he was hurting it, but it seemed so weak Jakob couldn't be sure it could if it wanted to. After cradling the drenched little cat in the crook of an elbow, he took up his umbrella again and continued on to his quarters in the Order dormitories.

 When he arrived, he placed the cat carefully on his bed and murmured the chant that would activate the lamps in the room. The soaked umbrella he left leaning against a wall by the stout wooden door. If there was one thing that Jakob was satisfied with in his life, it was his living quarters. To be sure, there were far more luxurious places to live, but Jakob was fortunate enough to enjoy one of the most spacious apartments in the entire building. The main room was large enough that, with the help of a pair of folding screens, he could divide it into separate living and sleeping areas. It was also equipped with a private bath, a privilege that was not even afforded to many Knights. His role as an Archivist provided him with a life that was, if not glamorous, more than comfortable enough for a solitary bachelor.

Carrying the cat had thoroughly wetted Jakob's robe, and so he shucked the garment, only to find his shirt also soaked through to the skin. He stripped this too, then caught sight of himself, naked to the waist, in a panel of mirrored glass hung on the wall. The corner of his mouth twitched into the hint of a frown as he studied his reflection. Straight brown hair that brushed his chin. Pale skin that spoke to time most spent indoors. Eyes that were an almost yellowish shade of green. He'd been slight of build for his entire life, which was perhaps appropriate for someone of a scholarly bent. All that echoed in his mind, however, was the jeering voice of one colleague to another, words scarcely whispered behind their hands. “Goddess, no. He's far too scrawny…”

Jakob quickly turned away from the mirror. He had the cat to attend to.

Said feline had not moved from where Jakob had deposited it upon his bed. He fetched a towel and brought it over to dry the cat's fur. He gave a sniff as his nose began to run a bit, then rubbed the appendage with his forearm. At first he thought nothing of it, but then he groaned as realization hit.

“Oh no. Already?”

He'd thought that with the cat being wet he might not have a reaction to it, or at least not much of one, but it seemed this was too much to hope for. Cats always got him allergic to one degree or another, and this one looked to be no exception. At this point, however, his conscience would not allow him to do anything but see this task through, allergies or no. So he wrapped the little cat up in the towel and set about carefully drying it, even as his eyes began to water and a spot of irritation flared in the back of his sinuses.

“Stars of the Sister, -snnf- the things I get myself into…”

The poor creature was worryingly cold. Jakob could feel that clearly as he gently wiped the towel across its fur. Afterwards, he set the dampened cloth aside and instead wrapped the cat in a soft blanket, which he cradled to his bare chest. At least the blanket would keep the cat from touching his skin. His nasal passages were not quite so lucky, that irritation soon building to an intensity he could no longer ignore as an unsteady hitch threaded into his breaths.

“O-oh dear… hh… hh'nxtch!”

Jakob managed to turn aside and stifle the sneeze that seized him.

“Sorry,” he muttered on reflex, quite forgetting that the only other being in the room was the cat. The animal was already feeling warmer and had opened its strange violet eyes to look up at him. Under that intense gaze, it almost felt like he was talking to a person.

“I'm afraid I'm, um… hehhih'nxgch! Sorry. I'm a bit a- aller- allergic… to… heh-CHT! Heh-ITCHU! ISSHIU! HISHIU! Nguh…”

This time his attempt to stifle the tickle failed spectacularly, resulting in a rapid fit of sharp sneezes that misted his shoulder and slid his glasses down his nose. To Jakob's great surprise, the cat wriggled out of his grasp and slunk to the foot of the bed in an instant, wide-eyed. He didn't think the cat could move at all, let alone so quickly.

“S-Sorry, I… I-I didn't mean to sca- scare you- hh'xtch! Oh, goodness…”

He managed to stifle again, but the cat seemed no more interested in coming closer.

“Well of course it won't if I'm sne- sneezing like a ma- a ma- hhp'cht! Nhuh… a maniac,” he muttered, stifling yet another itchy outburst.

Rising from the bed, Jakob fixed his glasses and rummaged about his bedroom until he found a clean handkerchief, and none too soon as he buried his twitching nose in the cloth.

“heh’ISSHIU! ISSHIU! ISSHIU! Oh gods… HETCHIU!!”

He smothered another fit before blowing his nose. At work he was a habitual stifler in the sepulchral quiet of the Archives. Though dust was blessedly not among Jakob's myriad allergies so far as he knew, the Archives were so thick with it, and it was so inescapable, that he would be more surprised if he didn't sneeze at some point during his work each day. That stifling habit bled into his time at home, but this allergic tickle was so intense that he knew continuing to stifle would only serve to make matters worse.

“Don't worry -snf-,” he assured the cat, still staring at him from the foot of the bed. “It'll pass soon… I think.”

Several sneezing fits later, however, it was clear that Jakob's allergy attack had no intention of releasing him from its itch-inducing grip.

“Of course this would happen when I haven't got any allergy medicine… hehhp'tchiuhh!”

The living area of Jakob's quarters was equipped with an economical kitchen, complete with a small cooler-box. The thick-walled metal cabinet bore an arcane gem with an affinity for ice affixed to the door, and any food stored within was kept perfectly chilled. From this Jakob withdrew some leftover chicken from his dinner the previous evening. If the cat wasn't as physically injured as he'd imagined, then perhaps it was weak from hunger combined with the damp chill. It was thin, though Jakob knew quite well that slim did not always mean starving. Perhaps it was not the same for cats, but he could not count how many times in his own life he'd needed to assure one well-intentioned person or another that, yes, he was, in fact, getting enough to eat.

He placed a small portion of chicken on a plate before returning to the bed, where the cat still huddled against the footboard. Jakob stifled another couple of sneezes into his arm as he offered the plate to the cat, setting it down near enough for the animal to reach. The cat stretched its neck out and sniffed at the meat before snatching a hunk of chicken off the plate and devouring it in a few bites. A smile played at Jakob's lips as he watched the little cat tear voraciously into its meal, until at last the plate was so clean that there was nothing left for the cat to lick but its whiskers.

“Well, someone was hungry. Speaking of, I ought to eat something myself.”

He heated the remaining chicken for himself, and spent the rest of the evening alternating between attempts to befriend the cat and retreating to another part of the room so as not to traumatize the animal with his nigh-constant sneezing.

PART TWO: THE CURSE

In the morning Jakob awoke with a start and the realization that he had fallen asleep on his sofa. Bright sunlight streamed through his windows; the rain, it seemed, had moved on. Moments later his eyes fluttered closed and his chest heaved as he was drawn helplessly into a prolonged sneezing fit, his sinuses once more protesting to the fact that he had deigned to spend time in the presence of a feline, and overnight at that.

Once able to catch his breath, he cast about the room for the cat in question but did not immediately see it. Had it somehow snuck out in the middle of the night as he slept? Were it not for his furiously tingling nose and streaming eyes, he might think the whole thing had been a dream.

“Erm, kitty? Here, kitty-kitty… -snf-”

After an anxious minute of searching, Jakob was relieved to see two violet eyes staring back at him when he checked under the bed.

“There you a-are- het'chh! Sorry! Sorry. I know you don't like that…”

He sat back and scrubbed his nose with his palm, trying to quell any further sneezes. For the most part, he only succeeded in eliciting an unpleasant squelching sound.

“Mmh… Well, I-I've got to get ready for work. I'll need to leave you alone for a while, I'm afraid. I might be able to pop back on my l-lunch- heh-heh! Oh, goodness…”

A fresh tickle fluttered through his sinuses like a feathery wave from his quivering nostrils to the bridge of his nose, teasing him with a false start.

“On second thought, perhaps I ought to use my lunch break to get more a-allergy medicine… eh-tchiuhh!”

Jakob dressed in a hurry, the night spent on the sofa and morning search for the cat having completely thrown him off of his normal routine. He left a bowl of water and a bit of cooked fish out for the cat before heading out the door and rushing to the Archives.

“Jakob? Are you actually running late? Perhaps I should play the lottery.”

The elderly voice that greeted him pronounced his name in the Old Merseheiman fashion, using a “y” sound for the “j”. Yakob.

“S-Sorry, Mrs. Neumann…”

With how congested he was, he could hardly say her name properly. It almost came out like “Doybin”.

The ancient woman in front of him stood all of four and a half feet, and that's if she wasn't perpetually hunched over. While not exactly tall, Jakob's respectably average height still meant he practically towered over her. He sometimes wondered if there were fey somewhere in her lineage. Her hair was mostly silver yet shot with black strands, even at her advanced age, and was pulled back into a severe bun. Her skin reminded Jakob of a walnut.

She tutted with her tongue as she shook her head. “Oh, and you sound awful to boot. You could have simply sent word that you had taken ill. I would have given you the day off, you know. Sister knows you do not take enough time off as it is. Which is probably why you are—”

“I-I’m not sick, Mrs. Neumann.” Jakob cut her off before she could launch into a full tirade. “It's my allergies, that's all. You know how bad they get. I'm f-fine, re- real- ah-heh!” He managed to turn aside and throw a sleeve over his nose. “Huh’tchiuh! … -snnf- Really.”

The look she gave him was so flat you could build a house of cards on it, but she merely sighed and dropped the issue, much to Jakob's relief.

“Very well. A shipment arrived early this morning. Three crates containing a mixture of artifacts and written materials donated from a museum that is, unfortunately, in the process of shutting down. I need the items to be sorted and cataloged.”

Jakob bobbed his head, sniffling and rubbing his nose with the back of a hand.

“Understood, Mrs. Neumann. I'll get started on it right away.”

Receiving and cataloging new acquisitions was an aspect of Jakob's work that the young man truly enjoyed. Even the most mundane objects contained the stories of the people who once owned them, and within every shipment the Archives received was the possibility of coming across something truly extraordinary. In only his first year as an Archivist Jakob had cataloged a rather peculiar artifact, which he discovered had been mislabeled and was, in fact, a relic of such importance that it was now used as a holy symbol by one of the Order's Knight Sisters.

Though he highly doubted that he would be uncovering any holy relics today, there was nearly always something of interest to be found among the pieces the Archive received. He located the three small, wooden crates stacked in one of the store rooms. It quickly became evident from the appearance of the wood, aged and discolored, that they had not been packed recently. Whatever was inside must have already spent quite some time in storage at their former home. Jakob hunted down a small pry bar and set about working the lid off the top crate, but after having remained sealed for so long it was proving a stubborn task. After a few minutes he managed to create a small gap around the perimeter of the lid, as well as work up a slight sweat.

“I hate to admit it,” he huffed, “but Vera is right: I need to exercise more…”

After wiping his sleeve across his brow, Jakob thrust the bar into the gap he’d created and wrenched it with all of his strength and bodyweight. The wooden crate creaked, then groaned, and finally the lid came popping off with a loud crack before it clattered to the floor.

Jakob heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness…”

Panting like he’d jogged up a short flight of steps, the young Archivist noticed the rising plume of dust, motes sparkling in the beam of sunshine coming through the window, a split second before his nose twitched.

“Oh no, n-hh-heh! Heh! hhHIT’SHHiuh!”

It hit him too fast and strong to stifle, and his face colored with a burning blush at the noise. He buried his nose in the fabric of one hanging sleeve in an attempt to stave off any further dust, but it did not change the fact that he’d already gotten a face full of it.

“hh’chgt! hah-esshht! hhh’CHXT!-CHXT!-CHXT! Nhuh… huh-kssht! hhshhgt! hh’nxssh!-chiew… Oh Goddess…”

“I thought you weren’t allergic to dust.”

The sudden voice made him jump so badly he nearly dropped the pry bar. He spun and found a young woman with warm brown skin and long, curling hair of raven black done up in a high ponytail standing behind him. Her dark eyes glittered as the corner of her full lips turned up in a slight smirk.

“V-Vera! hh-CHT! Good Gods, y-you could have said something be- before- HUH-cndsh! Before you were right behind me.”

She tipped her head and gave him a one-shouldered shrug, the picture of nonchalance. “I tried to, but you were too busy sneezing your head off to notice. Don’t tell me you’ve developed another new allergy?”

Jakob pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, shaking his head.

“No… No, I don’t think so. -snnf- I was already having an allergy attack. Since last n-night, actually. Huh’chggh! And you know everything sets me off when I’m like this.”

“Right… I guess nothing spicy for lunch, then. So much for my idea. I was gonna take you to this new stall that opened up along Market Street. They make a wicked curry.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that,” Jakob moaned, “I love curry.”

Vera folded her arms in front of her chest. She almost seemed to be enjoying taunting him.

“Well, don’t forget to take your allergy meds next time.”

“I didn’t forget! I-I haven’t got any!”

“Then maybe don’t wait until you completely run out to get more!”

Unable to think of a valid argument against that, he stifled another round of sneezing into his handkerchief instead. Vera walked around him and peered into the now-open crate. Whatever was inside was still concealed by a layer of wood wool packing material, as yet a tantalizing mystery.

“What are you even working on?” she asked.

Jakob made a vague gesture towards the crate. “New acquisitions. -snf- From a defunct museum. Mrs. Neumann asked me to c-catalog them- hh’tsht!”

“Want some help?”

Jakob waved a hand. “Oh, don't trouble yourself. I can handle it.”

Vera raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “I’m not troubling myself; I'm doing my job. I'm an Archivist too, you know.”

Jakob closed his eyes so she wouldn't see him rolling them. “I'm not saying you're incapable, I'm saying you don't need to step away from your own work just because you find me especially pathetic today.”

The heat behind those last few words surprised even him, and the hurt that flickered behind Vera’s eyes hit him like a knife to the gut.

“Wait, Vera, I—”

“Is that really what you think of me? That I’m only here because I pity you?”

The tone she used was so low and insulted, he almost would have preferred she shouted at him.

“N-no! No. Vera, I'm sorry. I don't- I didn't mean for it to come out like that. That's not what I think at all. I know you're trying to help as a friend, I just…” He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes with a sigh. “I'm all out of whack this morning, and I feel horrid on top of it. But… I still shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm really sorry.”

Hard eyes glared at him for a moment more before Vera sighed and some of the stiffness went out of her posture. Still, her arms remained crossed in front of her, like one last barrier he had not yet broken.

“Alright, fine. I accept your apology. This isn't like you, though. Did something happen?”

Immediately Jakob's thoughts went to the cat, with its curious eyes and the presence it had when he spoke to it, like it could somehow understand him. Was he imagining it? He had to be.

“N-no. Er, maybe? I don't know… I found this stray cat last night—”

“A cat? Aren't you super allergic to cats?”

He nodded, taking a moment to blow his nose again and give it a thorough rub in the process. While this did not satisfy the itchy burning in his sinuses—nothing short of a miracle would at this point—it did at least succeed in pushing it to a background annoyance rather than an immediate concern.

“Why do you think I'm currently a sniffling, sneezy mess and sound like my sinuses are stuffed with cotton? I was around it all night.”

“Hold on a moment. Are you saying you found a stray cat… and then you brought it home?”

“Well, yes. It needed my help.”

“Jake…” She drew his name out in exasperation.

Jakob spread his hands. “I couldn't leave it! It was just lying there on the ground getting soaked by the rain, a-and it was so weak it could hardly even meow at me. The poor thing was freezing. It might have died if I hadn't done something!”

“Alright, alright. I get it. You brought an injured cat home and were up all night sneezing. I suppose I can see why you’d be out of sorts.”

Jakob rubbed the back of his neck. “I-I did manage to fall asleep for a little while on the sofa…”

Vera sighed and finally dropped her arms to her sides. “You ought to go home, then. Get some rest. I'm sure you're worried about the cat, too. I can handle these crates.”

“I'm fine, Vera. It's not the first rough night I've had with my allergies. Besides…” He turned back to the open crate and its mysterious contents. “I have got to know what's in these.”

Another sigh from Vera, this one more resigned.

“Alright, but I’m staying and helping you. I won't take no for an answer. And put a mask on or something, for Sister's sake. These things look like they're full of dust, and I am not carrying you to the infirmary again.”

“I-It was one time!” Jakob stammered, his voice squeaking up an octave.

“Yeah, one time too many.”

Unpacking the crates and sorting the contents did go faster with Vera's help. The cloth Jakob tied around the lower half of his face at Vera's insistence served to keep the dust out well enough, but when the fibers brushed against his raw, chapped nostrils in just the right way…

“hh-hhih’chh! Nnggh… Sorry.”

Vera waved off his apology without a word or even looking up from the fragment of ancient text she was examining at a nearby table with practiced care. At this point in their friendship, she seemed to take little more notice of Jakob's sneezing than she did of him simply breathing. After a few moments, though, she turned her attention to him for another reason.

“Jake, what do you make of this?”

“Hm?”

He came to peer over her shoulder at the text, her finger extended to a particular section of the parchment, yellowed with the passing of untold years.

“I think these are Tulyranese runes, but you've always been better with them than me.”

Jakob adjusted his glasses and leaned closer, squinting at the text she’d indicated.

“Mmm, yes. Definitely Tulyranese. Third century, I should think. See the way this first character is drawn? With the sort of looping tail coming off of it? That's typical of the style used in official and religious texts of that era.”

“So, we're looking at this being, what, seven, eight hundred years old?”

“Thereabouts.”

Vera gave an appreciative nod. “Wow. It’s in pretty good condition, then, for its age. I mean, whatever binding this text had is long gone, unfortunately, but the pages themselves are in good shape. The ones that are here, anyway. I’m almost certain they’re part of a larger work.” She glanced up at him before carefully shifting the pages in front of her with gloved hands. “Did you find any more pages in the other crates?”

Jakob shook his head, the motion almost setting off another sneeze. “N-not individual pages, no. -snf- Some scrolls that I’ll have to examine later when I have the proper tools. I’m honestly not even certain any of these items are related. Most of them aren’t even from the same continent, let alone the same era. And I can't believe that nothing is labeled! What sort of ‘museum’ was this place, anyway? No wonder they shut down. I mean, they sent us a cheap replica of the Five Seals of the ruling houses of Schorseau, like the ones they sell to tourists— Wait!”

He placed an urgent hand on Vera’s arm as something on the page she was currently handling caught his eye. With his other hand he pointed to an illustration near the center of the page that depicted a spindle-shaped object with three bands around it.

“That. That object there. That was in one of these crates!”

He whirled around, eyes scanning over a handful of broken pottery, a collection of handheld farming tools, and a number of figures carved from soapstone before his gaze landed on the object in question: an obsidian spindle that was a little longer than his hand and had three metal bands wrapped around it: one around its center and two more on either side of the first, equidistant between the center band and the artifact’s pointed ends. Jakob rushed to retrieve it, so caught up in his excitement that he forgot he had taken his own gloves off a few minutes prior when his hands had begun to sweat inside them.

“Jake, your gloves!” Vera snapped, just as a shock pricked the middle finger of his right hand where it touched the center ring.

He jerked his hand back with a slight yelp as a tingle ran up his arm. “Ah! S-sorry! I- hh-hhih'chh! Hih’CHH! eh-TCHIU! Nnh… I-I wasn't thinking.”

Vera rolled her eyes. “If you develop an allergy to artifacts, I'm forcing you to resign.”

“Oh, hush,” Jakob grumbled as he tugged his gloves back on, “It was only a static shock. It surprised me, that's all.”

His annoyance was quickly forgotten as he took up the artifact and carried it carefully over to the table with the texts. He set it down next to the page with the illustration, a grin hidden by the cloth over his face but present nonetheless.

“Look at the similarities! It's the same shape, the same color, and it has those three bands around it.” He leaned in, examining the metal bands more closely. “Wait, there are carvings here.”

“Tulyranese?”

He slowly shook his head. “I'm not sure… They're very worn. Could be, though. I'll need to examine them with a magnifying glass to say what they are for sure, I think.”

“Still, you're right that this artifact is a very close match to the illustration,” Vera agreed, “It's almost certainly related, somehow. Even if it's not the exact same object, it's at least a similar one or a replica.”

Jakob took the artifact in his hands again, turning it in the light.

“It can't have been a common item. I've never seen anything like it.”

Vera was bent over the pages again.

“You know, Jake… I may not be the best with Tulyranese runes, but I think this says something about a curse.”

He looked at her sharply. “What? A… a curse? Um, l-let me see.”

“Let's hope you were right about that shock just being from static,” Vera said as she stepped aside for Jakob to move in, “Do you feel strange at all? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Oh, of course not. I feel fine. Well, as fine as I can be on a bad allergy day,” he replied as he began examining the text in detail, “True curses are extremely rare, and I think we'd know by now if we'd set one off.”

“If you’d set one off. I didn't touch the damned thing.”

He shot her what he hoped was a withering glare, but which probably lost much of its effectiveness with the cloth mask on. Then he huffed out a breath and turned back to the text, trying to decipher the runes.

“Alright, let me see here… This first section refers to the First Sovereign Emperor, ‘the one of great wisdom’. It seems he… hid the artifact in, um… someplace underground. ‘The subterranean place, the hidden deeps below the earth, the domain of Death.’”

“So, like, the underworld?”

He held out a hand, palm down, and tipped it from side to side. “Ehhh… The literal translation of these characters for ‘Death’ is ‘That Which Follows’, and there's still some debate on whether they were an actual death deity or a type of… collector of souls.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Well, one causes you to die, the other just sort of waits around for it to happen. Most likely the place it's referring to is a tomb or burial site of some kind.”

“So, if your interpretation is correct, the First Sovereign Emperor of Tulyran hid this artifact in a tomb?”

“I think so, but I'm making a very rough translation here. This next part… seems to be a number of praises for the Emperor. This means ‘to raise one’s lips to the sky’, so they are, ah, shouting their praises. ‘The one of great wisdom’, ‘the ancient power’, ‘the one who… brings changes’? I think?”

He could hear Vera tapping her foot impatiently.

“Okaaay, but is there anything about a curse?”

“I'm checking. I'm checking. Uh… Oh, here's something about ‘trespassing’. Um, ‘those who trespass upon the domain below’, if they ‘violate the’… ‘seal’, I think. They ‘shall be—’” He paused and glanced over at Vera before speaking the next word. “‘—cursed… Banished into shadow for all eternity.’ You were right, it does mention a curse.”

“I knew it! Are you sure you're okay? What if there’s some kind of ancient magic still active on it?”

“I told you, I don't feel any different. The only thing I feel is my damned sinuses itching.” He reached up to rub his nose through the cloth, which was apparently a mistake as it ignited a fresh prickle that flared up from a sore spot at his septum. “Oh dammit, and I fe-feel like I'm gonna- gonna sn- snee-hheeze!”

“Oh, Hell no! Mask or no mask, you are not sneezing on the artifacts!” Vera snapped, shoving his shoulder.

Jakob managed to turn and put his back to the table just as his lungs pulled in a sharp breath.

“Hihh! hh’ishht! Heh-chght! HEH! HH-CHHT! Nnh… S-Sorry. Excuse me.”

As he lifted his glasses to wipe a few tears from his eyes, Jakob turned to find Vera with a hand on one hip and another of her trademarked smirks on her face.

“Maybe you've been inflicted with a sneezing curse.”

He rolled his eyes. “If that's true, then I've been suffering from it my entire life.”

He pulled the cloth mask away from his face so he could blow his nose into his handkerchief, wincing at both the tenderness of his abused nostrils and the sounds he was making. The congestion in his nasal passages was so thick that the air squeaked as he forced it through. His best friend’s expression softened.

“Jake. Go get some allergy meds from the infirmary, and then go home and get some rest. Please.”

“But—”

“No buts. You are a mess. You said you wanted to know what was in the crates. Now you know. I can handle it from here. And these artifacts aren't going anywhere; you'll have plenty of time to study them later.”

Jakob sighed. Vera was not one to back down, especially when she knew she was right. And she definitely was right, though he was loath to admit it.

“Alright, fine.” He allowed a smirk to creep across his own face. “Just don't go hogging all the interesting discoveries, okay?”

Vera put a hand to her chest in mock indignation. “You wound me, sir! Would I do something like that?”

His response was deadpan. “Yes. You have. Repeatedly.”

“Well, okay, but never anything important. Besides, is it so wrong to have a thirst for knowledge?”

Jakob snickered. “Better than some of your other thirsts.”

That earned him a scoff. “You're just jealous that I get all the cute boys. And some of the girls.”

He poked Vera with an accusing finger. “Then I suppose there's more than one area of your life in which you ought to learn how to share.”

Vera gave his arm another shove. “Oh! You are in such a mood today! Are you sure you're not cursed? Or is this still that cat’s fault?” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “What are you going to do with it, anyway? The cat, I mean.”

Jakob rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly abashed. “I don't know… I was thinking, um, maybe I could… keep it for a while.”

Vera looked at him like he'd just declared his intent to marry the animal. “You… want to keep… a cat?”

“Just for a while! Maybe I'll get used to it! And I'll take allergy medicine—”

“You know what? Fine. If it'll get you to actually take your meds, go right ahead. Now go to the infirmary!” Vera grumbled as she practically shoved him out the door of the Archives storage room.

PART THREE: THE MAN

By the time Jakob arrived back at his quarters, he was already feeling better from the dose of allergy medicine he had taken as soon as he'd acquired it at the infirmary. In his hands he carried a small wooden case that held more tiny vials of the pale green elixir, enough to hopefully get him through the next month or so.

He pushed the door to his quarters open carefully, hoping that a little black blur wouldn't dart out and vanish down the street. When nothing appeared in the crack of the doorway, he swung the door in fully and stepped inside.

“Um, kitty? I'm home…”

He checked the plate of fish he had left out and found it clean, which he took as a good sign. Soon after he located the cat itself, curled up asleep at the foot of Jakob’s bed. It raised its head and fixed him with that twilight-purple gaze that struck Jakob so. When it continued to do naught but stare, he felt a sort of weight pressing down on him, like he ought to say something, anything to break the sudden awkward tension. Going with what was literally at hand, he held up the little box.

“I-I got some allergy medicine! Now I won't be, um, sneezing quite so much. Although I suppose I should warn you that I tend to sneeze a fair amount anyway. Just the way that I am…” He trailed off with a self-conscious laugh that dissolved into a defeated groan as he closed his eyes and brought a palm to his face. “Am I seriously talking to a cat?”

Prrrp.

A little trilling sound, almost like a soft chirp. Jakob looked up, found the cat staring at him just as before, but he knew he had not imagined the sound. He was not so foolish as to believe that the cat had actually responded to him out of genuine understanding, but it was the only sound the animal had made since that first pitiful meow in the rain. And it even sounded friendly.

“Oh…”

Jakob deposited the box on an end table and approached the bed. Perhaps it was simple exhaustion, but his steps possessed an almost dreamlike quality, as though he were sleepwalking while awake. He slowly reached out a hand towards the cat, not to grab or even pet it, just close enough for it to smell him if it wanted to. The little black feline leaned in toward his hand, sniffed him once… twice… Then it pressed its small, wet nose against his fingers and rubbed him with its cheek. Jakob could not help the delighted gasp that escaped his lips, followed by a chuckle as the cat brought its face back around for a second rub.

“You like me, huh? Or is this your way of saying ‘thank you’ for bringing you in out of the cold and giving you something to eat?”

Shifting his hand to stroke the cat’s head and down its back, Jakob was pleasantly surprised by the silky softness of its fur. The last time he had touched it, the cat had still been damp with rain, its fur slick and matted to its body. Now that it was dry, he could scarcely believe that he had picked the animal up as a bedraggled stray. This was the sort of cat that Jakob imagined would warm the laps of wealthy ladies or appear in royal portraits.

Maybe the cat was an escaped pet, a fugitive from some noble household who slipped out on a lark that soon became a misadventure. Or perhaps the cat had been spirited away from its home by force, to be sold or held for ransom, and had managed to flee its captors only to be unable to find its way home again.

Jakob felt around the cat's neck, giving it a few chin scratches in the process, but did not feel any evidence of a collar. Not everyone collared their cats, though. The absence of one was no guarantee that the cat was feral. Still, even as he imagined an owner, fretting and distraught over the loss of their beloved pet, there was a part of him that hoped that there was none.

Jakob's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, familiar itch.

“Uh-oh- heh! Etchiu! Etchiu!”

A quick, sharp double sneeze hit him, and he barely had time to turn and bury his face in his elbow. The cat flattened its ears and took a few cautious steps back, though at least it did not outright flee this time.

“Sorry! Sorry. It's not you, it's just me being, um, me. Er, well, it might be you a tiny bit, but it’s not nearly so bad as before.”

As the cat moved across the bed, concern sprouted in Jakob’s chest as he thought he saw it favoring one of its back legs. It had squirmed from his arms so quickly the previous night, and then hadn’t moved much afterwards, so he hadn't noticed anything wrong with its gait then. He scrounged up a bit of string and took a few minutes to observe the cat, teasing it back and forth across the bed. There was indeed something odd about the way it moved its right hind leg: not the pronounced limp of a fresh hurt, but the slight, stiff unevenness of an old wound that never quite fully healed.

Jakob frowned. Perhaps the cat really was a stray. He couldn't imagine that the owner of such a beautiful animal would allow their pet to suffer an injury like that without treatment. At the very least, the animal must have been living on the streets for several months, if not longer. Jakob took a seat on the edge of the bed and tried to coax the little cat nearer again. When it settled within arm’s reach, he went back to stroking its back.

“I'm afraid I'm no healer,” he told it softly, “but I'll do what I can to help you get better.”

Perhaps he was anthropomorphizing the cat too much, but he couldn't help thinking of the purring that vibrated beneath his hand as an expression of gratitude.

For the next several days, Jakob spent his time at work studying the strange artifact and text that he and Vera had uncovered, while his time at home was largely spent bonding with and caring for the cat. Sadly there was not much in the text he could glean about the artifact beyond what he had already translated. Vera was right that the pages appeared to belong to a larger work, and upon closer inspection Jakob determined that they were not consecutive—they all came from different parts of the original book. The page with the illustration was the only one they had that referred to the artifact at all.

The artifact itself was no more forthcoming on the particulars of its purpose and history. The runes carved into the metal bands, when he examined them more closely, did not match any Tulyranese runes Jakob was familiar with, nor any other script he knew besides. It did not possess any moving parts, so far as Jakob could tell, and though he could detect a faint echo of potent magic upon it, whatever power it contained in the distant past was long spent. It would no longer be cursing anyone to the shadows, it seemed, if it ever truly did at all.

As for the cat, Jakob consulted with a veterinary physicker and came home with a healing salve to be rubbed on the cat’s injured leg. The feline in question was surprisingly tolerant of this treatment, much to Jakob's relief. He thought for certain that he would have to hold the cat still in a death grip while he massaged the medicine through its fur and into its skin. Instead the cat lay quietly while he worked on its leg, almost as though it knew that the treatment was intended to help. There was no guarantee that the old wound would ever be fully healed, but after a couple of days of application Jakob swore he saw improvement in the cat’s mobility.

One night after Jakob had come home from the Archives and had already eaten supper, bathed, and tended to the cat’s medication, he lay on his back in bed while the little black cat perched on his chest with all of its paws tucked beneath it, a content purr rumbling in its chest. Jakob stroked it absently with one hand as he mulled over the artifact and the warning of its curse.

“Those who trespass upon the domain below, should they violate the seal, shall be cursed: banished into shadow for all eternity…�� he muttered. “I don't think I've been banished to the shadows.”

He looked down at the cat watching him with its violet eyes, and smiled.

“What do you think, hm? Do you think I've been cursed, little one?”

It trilled at him in response, and Jakob chuckled. He grabbed the cat under its front legs and held it up, much to the animal’s consternation judging by the grumpy meow it gave.

“Oh, don't be cross with me. You're so cute! How can I not want to pick you up?”

For a moment he thought the cat might try to scratch him, but it simply lashed its tail and hung there, its back paws resting on Jakob's chest while its forelegs dangled in the air.

“Hm. If you're going to stay with me, I think you'll need a proper name. I'm not sure if you're a boy or a girl, though… Well, perhaps it can just be something neutral. Let's see… Vesper? No… Maybe Noctis? Eh, no. How about… Onyx? Hm, no…”

The artifact text came to mind again, “banished into shadow for all eternity.” In the original Tulyranese, the word for shadow was ahkre. Jakob perked up, pulling the cat back in close so they were nearly nose to nose.

“Ahkre… How about it? Would you like to be Ahkre?”

The cat stared at him, wide-eyed, like he had just personally insulted every single one of its ancestors. Jakob laughed and, with a grin, leaned in to give the cat a little kiss.

Everything went dark.

Weight.

Warmth.

Pressure.

Something was pressed firmly against his mouth. Something warm and wet and delightfully soft. Complete disorientation gripped Jakob's mind like a spider wrapping its prey. What the hell had just happened? In the next moment, sharp clarity pierced the haze as he realized that the thing pressing against his lips was… someone else's.

He was being kissed.

“Mmph?!”

He jerked his head back as far as he could in the limited space. Wave after wave of heat washed across his face, radiated down his arms and legs, and coiled up in his core as he found that he was now being pinned to his bed. By a man.

The man pulled his own face back, his expression just as confused as Jakob felt. His skin was a rich brown that reminded Jakob of river clay, and his face was framed by waves of long, silver-white hair. Jakob flushed even hotter. Oh, stars above, this man looked like he'd been chiseled from stone in the image of a god. High cheekbones. A strong, angular jaw with a perfect dimple in the center of his chin. A long, sharp nose with a slight bump in the ridge of it. Those soft lips that had been on Jakob's own just moments before. The man blinked slowly, like someone just waking from deep slumber, and as they locked gazes Jakob's stomach did a flip.

The man’s eyes were violet, like a band of vivid color across the twilight sky.

“Y-You… you're…” Jakob's voice came out as little more than a squeak, and it was of course at that moment that his traitorous nose prickled with abrupt, urgent intensity. Maybe bringing the cat so close to his face had been a bad idea. Panic began to set in as he realized that his arms were pinned at his sides. He clamped his jaws shut, pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth—anything to hold back from sneezing with this gorgeous man on top of him.

“P-Please, I’m- I'm gonna- hehh!”

No good. His breath hitched in his chest as the tickle insisted—demanded to be satisfied. He screwed watering eyes shut and did the only thing he could: turn his face into his shoulder as far as possible and try his best to stifle.

“G-gonna- heh- heh! HH’ISHHT!”

The man jumped up and sat back on his haunches, still straddling Jakob’s hips on the bed and revealing that he was completely, maddeningly naked. He held up his hands in front of his face, turning them over and over and flexing his fingers with a look of slight terror on his handsome features.

“I-I am so sorry!” Jakob stammered, “I d-didn’t mean to, um… hh’tssh! Sorry! I-I-I just… I mean, you were a- ah! Hih’CHH! Nguh, -snf- Y-you know, a-a cat, and, um… W-weren't you?”

Instead of replying the man scuttled backwards, flailing, and fell against the footboard of the bed with a hoarse, wordless cry that was practically a whimper. Jakob pushed himself up on his elbows and rubbed his nose, forcing the itch into submission for the moment.

“Oh my, are you alright? Well, no, I suppose you're not. You were a cat just a minute ago. You… were the cat, right?”

Jakob rose until he was sitting upright, but still the man didn't answer. Another raspy moan passed his lips, then a cough. He looked on the verge of panic, and it was this, more than anything, that eased Jakob's own nerves a little as the familiar role of caring for the needs of another before his own settled over him like a well-worn pair of slippers.

“H-Hey, it's alright. Don't be afraid.”

No response. He couldn't seem to get through to the man at all, who was hugging his arms around himself as his breath came in quick, shallow pants. Jakob's heart wrenched when he saw tears standing in those beautiful violet eyes. What could he do? There was no handbook for this, no instructions for what to do when the cat you've been keeping for several days suddenly turns human.

“Um… I…” He cast around, as though the answer might be written on the walls, but he knew that nothing and no one was going to swoop in and rescue him. He returned his gaze to the man before him and was suddenly reminded of a lost child, confused and afraid. So Jakob did the only thing he could think of: throw a warm blanket around the man’s shoulders and pat him gently on the head.

“Shh… It’ll be alright. No one's going to hurt you.” He murmured, stroking his hand across the man’s silvery hair. It was soft. Softer than anything Jakob had ever felt, he thought, like strands of silken moonlight. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

The man’s breathing eased. He looked up at Jakob, really focusing on him for the first time.

“That's it. Deep breaths,” Jakob said, keeping his voice low, as though talking down a skittish horse. “I'm, um… Oh, I never told you my name, did I? Well, I-I don't think people usually introduce themselves to cats… Um… B-But anyway, I'm Jakob. Do you… have a name? Er… Can you talk?”

The man’s lips trembled.

“Bh… Buh…”

He gasped, as though the simple act of trying to speak cost him great effort. He swallowed and gazed at Jakob for several eternal moments, straining and clearing his throat, before at last forcing out a whisper:

“B-Balthasar.”

He let out a breath, like a sigh of relief, and sat up straighter, and Jakob's face flamed as he found he was now the one needing to look up. Balthasar had the kind of body that many people would kill for, and not a few would kill over. A man like this had wars fought in his name. And he was sitting naked in Jakob’s bed.

“Um, i-it's nice to meet you, Balthasar.”

Balthasar’s mouth opened and closed a few times, his jaw working with the stiffness of disuse.

“Hh… S-Sorry… I… Mm… This is… strange.” He spoke in a bare rasp, difficult to make out.

Jakob leaned closer to hear. “Strange?”

Balthasar nodded. “Strange,” he croaked. “Strange to… b-be in this… body. Strange to… h-have a voice.”

“Oh…” Jakob nodded slowly, feeling like his thoughts were running through mud. “Er, yes. I-I suppose it would be.”

“I…” Those violet eyes couldn’t quite look at him. “Sorry for… kissing you.”

Another wave of heat washed over Jakob as he waved both hands in front of him. “Oh! N-no, no, it’s fine! Really, I-I think it would be my fault, if anything. B-But I had no idea that, uh, kissing you… would… um…”

“How—” Balthasar broke off and coughed before trying again. “H-How did… you know?”

Jakob looked at him quizzically. “Er, how did I know what?”

“Ahkre. Tynn bat’tam ahkre.”

“Oh, um… Well, I'm an Archivist. A-A historian, I suppose. I’ve been studying this ancient Tulyranese text and artifact…”

Jakob trailed off and his frown deepened. ‘Tynn bat’tam ahkre’ was the original Tulyranese that translated to ‘banished into shadow for all eternity’. He’d only said ���ahkre”, so how did this man know the rest of the line from the curse? Jakob's eyes widened.

“Wait, you don't mean— You were under the curse? It turned you into a cat?!”

Balthasar nodded. “Mm. For a long time. I did not… I thought no one could… um…”

He spent a few moments in thought, then made a motion with his hands like he was snapping something.

“Break the curse?” Jakob supplied.

“Yes! Break. I thought no one could break it. I am… I must…”

To Jakob's great surprise, Balthasar suddenly placed his hands in front of him on the bed. He then bowed low, the blanket slipping down from his broad shoulders, and he touched his forehead to the sheets. Jakob couldn't help but notice the way Balthasar's silver hair fanned across the dark skin of his back, his eyes then drawn to the lithe curve of his ass as he bent forward. Jakob's heart began crawling up his throat. When Balthasar spoke, his voice sounded the firmest it had ever been.

“I am in your debt. I pledge myself to you. My life is yours to do with as you see fit.”

Jakob threw a hand over his mouth, his blush volcanic. “P-Pledge yourself? To- to me?! Oh, no. No, no, no. Y-You don't need to do that!”

He reached out and took Balthasar’s shoulder, warm brown skin beneath pale fingers, and urged him to rise. “Please, this is all very strange, and- and honestly a little overwhelming, so c-can we not talk about pledging oneself to one another right now?”

Balthasar looked at him, silver brows drawn together in confusion.

“But… You took me in. Cared for me. Healed me. Broke my curse. I owe you a debt. My life. I have nothing else to give.”

“Th-that doesn't mean—”

Suddenly Balthasar took Jakob's hands in his, a note of desperation entering his voice.

“Please. I will earn my keep. I swear it. I admit, I have a… a reason that is… it is… selfish. I-I…” He looked at their clasped hands and suddenly released Jakob's as though stung, his own face flushing. Then he cast his eyes down into his lap, his shoulders dropping and his long bangs falling across one eye. “I have no home. Nowhere to go. I wish to stay here… with you. Please.”

Jakob took a breath and tried very hard not to consider the implications of the “with you” part.

“But… What about your family?” he insisted, “Friends? Surely they must be worried about you.”

Balthasar did not raise his gaze, only shook his head. “They are gone. All gone. There are none left who mourn my absence.”

Something caught in Jakob's mind, then, puzzle pieces falling into place. Balthasar spoke with an accent he could not place, and the way he had spoken Tulyranese was like that of a fluent speaker.

“Balthasar… How long were you cursed for, exactly?”

He glanced up at Jakob's question, but quickly looked away to the side. As the light from the bedside lamp shifted across Balthasar's striking features, Jakob noticed a smattering of freckles across his cheeks.

“I do not know. A very long time. I stopped… stopped counting the years when I left Tulyran.”

Jakob's jaw nearly dropped. Though he had the suspicion, it still beggared belief. “You… You're actually from Tulyran?”

Balthasar nodded.

“But— But Tulyran has been dead as a civilization for… for… for hundreds of years!”

Again, a silent nod from Balthasar, and Jakob could only continue to gape, leaning in closer.

“Are you telling me that you lived as a cat for centuries?”

Balthasar turned, a flicker of heat behind his violet eyes that made Jakob flinch backwards. In an instant, the air around Balthasar changed: one moment he was steeped in mournful uncertainty, and in the next he radiated quiet strength.

“You do not believe me? My years as a human are a- a fraction of my life. I may as well be more cat than man. I watched as the people around me— they were born, they grew old, and they died. Over and over and over. Undying. Alive within the- the sea of humanity, yet ever an outsider. Witness to life's richest fruits, yet unable to touch. That is the true curse. To do nothing but… watch as everyone and everything you hold close in your heart… leaves you behind.”

By the time he was done speaking, his voice had grown hoarse again. Balthasar's pain was laid bare within his words—words fueled by centuries of torment. Silence reigned in the apartment for a long moment. Jakob knew that nothing he could say could soothe so deep a wound, yet he had to offer what balm he could. He spoke softly, his words infused with a gentle tenderness as he reached out to place his hand on Balthasar's. The other man's hand was large and sinewy, the hand of a warrior, yet it trembled beneath Jakob's fingers.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to imply that I didn't believe you. I do. It's just a lot to take in, that's all. And my gosh, I have so many questions, but…” Jakob swallowed his nerves and took a deep breath. “You can stay with me. For a while, at least. B-But I don't want you pledging your life to me, or anything like that! Um, how about… starting as friends?”

He offered a shy smile, but the one that lit up Balthasar’s own face as he took up Jakob's hand in both of his made the Archivist’s heart skip a beat or three.

“Friends! It would be my honor. You have my deepest thanks, Jakob, my… my friend.”

As Jakob took in Balthasar's dazzling, beaming grin, his expression of pure joy, and the thundering of his own heartbeat like a herd of horses galloping through his veins, one thought suddenly rose above all else:

Stars above. How was he ever going to explain this to Vera?

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

End: "To Have a Voice", the first tale of Cursebreaker.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

What I think disability aids made by Borderlands gun manufacturers would be like. CW for mentions of systemic ableism and weight loss.

Atlas: Sleek and fancy, but also expensive as hell and prone to accidents. Sort of like IRL fancy prostheses or wheelchairs - they seem cool but are actually kinda sucky and very pricey. Don't expect the average Promethean to afford one. Though in this case, it's because they're often loaded with purely experimental tech that was probably shipped too early.

Hyperion: They make a few prosthetic and implant models and that's it. Pretty much all their stuff is aimed at their own employees trying to get "ahead" and not actual disabled people, so give up trying to find one fitting your particular needs. At least they're pretty fucking sturdy (but not against hacking). And no, they haven't thought of adopting those exoskeletons their engineers use for other needs.

Maliwan: Similar to above, but aimed at their general customer base instead. These guys are hipsters who try marrying form and function, and in many cases that means augs of some sort. I wouldn't really call them transhumanist though, that implies respecting bodily autonomy, human rights and not being ableist; these guys would sell arms with tracking chips and neural interfaces that fry your brainstem if you don't pay the subscription fee. And then tell you to lose weight with the new fad diet their marketing department cooked up. The hoverchairs and flavored chewelry are pretty great, tho.

Dahl: They wouldn't. They claim to be reliable but they're actually the biggest cowards in the Six Galaxies. If one of their soldiers loses a leg or something that's grounds for being (dis)honorably discharged. What exoskeletons or other devices they make are purely for war. Plus, the one Dahl employee we see having a prosthesis (Helena Pierce) doesn't seem to have a Dahl brand one. Aside from weird metal rank implants and funky gun-inspired fidget cubes they don't do much in this department.

Torgue: Expect everything to be painted like a Hot Wheels toy and probably explode somehow - either on you or on your enemies. All the mobility aids have jets attached for either smacking ableists with great force or speeding through town. I think Torgue himself wears a hearing aid (from all the explosions) and it looks like a fucking microphone with car parts on it, complete with exhaust.

Jakobs: Steampunk baybeee!!! Of course, the subgenre of said steampunk depends on the quality of the aid. The most basic ones are IRL Victorian era metal arms: flat, spiky, inhuman, but still quite ornate. The ones custom-tooled for execs and their families (looking at you, Alistair Hammerlock) are more "sleek" steampunk, with fine chassis of signature Jakobs brass and filigree engravings. They also make genuine wood canes with organic rubber grips that will outlive you if you take proper care of them... which is definitely shown in their price tags. The Jakobs stim toy line is half weird gear contraptions, half competition with Dahl's fidget cubes.

Vladof: Heavy, clunky, dieselpunk style. But damn if they aren't effective. A standard Vladof boostchair could break through a wall and be completely unharmed. A Vladof AAC device looks like an electron tube supercomputer that you have to haul around in a cart. That's all I really have to say here.

Tediore: I have no idea.

[ultralightpoe]

Can you please do “You might be sleeping” by Jakob ogawa w. Clairo for Aemond x reader?🥺😩

You Might Be Sleeping - Aemond Targaryen

Authors Note: Amazing! Hope ya like it

Warnings: none i think

Word Count: 745 (It's a really short song so I just made a sweet and short blurb)

IF YA WANNA MAKE A SONG AND CHARACTER REQUEST LOOK HERE

Enjoy!

Baby, when you're near

It's warm inside

Sometimes when you stare

Our hearts entwine

There was something funny in the way that Aemond ran cold. 

He was surrounded by a thick summer heat and the burns of a dragons flame nearly every day of his life, but he could never get warm. His mother, always the worrier, always treated him as if he was ill. She would drag the Maestors to his room nearly every morning when he was young and tell them to help Aemond. 

But he grew up, and the family learned that it wasn’t an illness that made the boy cold. It was just him. 

His father liked to joke that Aemonds heart was frozen, and it was freezing the rest of him. Aemond often thought Viserys should have lost the eye rather than him, for the man talked so much but he didn’t actually do…….well anything. 

But then he met you, and for the first time in his life Aemond felt warm. An intense heat, the kind that had him kicking off the blankets just to breathe. 

He had taken you as his mistress, though you deserved much much more than that. And he makes you live at a small cabin far away from the family so he might fly to you whenever he needs because sometimes he freezes and needs you to warm him. 

Everytime he lands outside you greet him, arms wrapping around him tightly and pulling him in, you then cup both his hands in your own and drag them up to your mouth to pant hot breaths on them, staring up at him as you do so. 

He feels like he might melt everytime you do so.

And in the morning I'll be here

You might be sleeping without a care

And in the morning I'll be here

You might be dreaming

Play with your hair

It was rare that he would stay for more than a night, having been dragged back and forth all the time you always felt like a burden. He would simply remind you that you weren’t and kiss you on the head before he left. 

But lately he can’t find it in himself to leave. 

He was addicted to mornings with you, waking up to find you curled up under the fresh morning sun as he gets to watch you. You looked to care free in these moments, like nothing could bring you down, and that happiness and warmth spread throughout him in a protective manner. 

He would play with your hair softly, running it through his fingers as he hummed one of the old songs he learned from Rhaenyra when he was young. He hoped you could hear them in your dreams, he hoped you dreamt of him. 

When I think about you, boy

My sadness disappears

I could lay around forever

You wipe away my tears

He makes it to you first the night he kills his nephew. 

You had been asleep when he stormed into the cabin, gasping awake with a scream at the unknown intruder as Aemond just fell to his knees sobbing. The second you see that it’s him you step forward, trying to catch your breath as you take him into your arms and pull his wet body into the warmth of your hug. 

He explains what he had done as the sobs racked through his body, gripping onto you like you would disappear any moment. But you just sit with him, wiping his face of the tears and humming the same song he hums to you, gently rocking him back and forth as he cries. 

He wants to stay with you forever, never return to the war. 

And you want him to more than anything. 

And in the morning I'll be here

You might be sleeping without a care

(Without a care)

You finally dragged him to bed at some point, holding him in his sleep until sleep claimed you at last. When he awakes his first instinct is to look for you, gripping you like his life depended on it. 

There was that serene face again, even after hearing what monstrous thing he had done you still felt safe enough to sleep beside him. Carefree and safe. 

Aemond felt himself leaning in and laying on you as he closed his eyes once more. When you wake up he would be there, and that’s how it would be for the rest of his life.

[godofclosure]

TOA Anniversary Munday!!

I, too, have stolen this from Neffi. I’m sorry you keep getting robbed crime has truly become such an epidemic in TOA it’s a shame really. Will no one keep our streets safe 😔 (if it wasn’t obvious that was a joke ty neffi)

Name: Metal

Pronouns: She/Her

Birthday (no year): 10/6

Where are you from? What is your time zone? PST! (So like 3 hours ahead of TOA time), AMERICA RAAAAHHHHHHH‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️🦅🦅💥💥

-

How long is your roleplay experience? That. Is complicated. Not entirely sure but let’s just go with 3 years i think.

How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? Okay so like looking back I was totally roleplaying with friends in elementary school via text but like we didn’t call it that so that didnt even register until I’d already been in TOA for a year so idk if that counts

How were you introduced to TOA? Mindlessly scrolling the Fire Emblem Three Houses tag and for some reason some random acceptance post caught my attention and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it

-

Do you have any pets? One dog, two cats!! Do not ask for pictures you will never stop receiving them this is for your own good

What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) Winter because the bugs are dead and I can live without fear!!! (+ I live in some weird climate vortex where the temperature never gets lower than 60 or higher than 80 so I don’t have to deal with whatever temperature nonsense is going on everywhere else)

What is your IRL occupation? Student x2 😔

Some interests and things you like/enjoy? Hatsune Miku has me in a death grip. My world is a shrine to her being. So is yours. So is everyone. Hatsune Miku is all. The world is hers. SEKAAAIIIII DE—

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Genshin, pjsk, pokemon, sometimes I stare longingly at persona 3 but I haven’t had time to actually play it yet, whatever random farming game has decided to trap me in my room for the next month straight

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Fire and Torchic :)

-

How did you get into Fire Emblem? I’m ashamed to say I’m one of the smash players who was confused by the random anime men 😔 at some point mentioned it to a friend while playing and he was like “oh the mobile game is a good starting point” and forced me to download it which started the spiral (my disappointment when I learned Sakura is not actually a cat and it was just a Halloween alt was immeasurable)

What Fire Emblem games have you played? Three Houses, Heroes, Fates (all three), Awakening, Engage (+I own Shadows of Valentia but I haven’t opened it I’m sorry I’m a fake fan)

First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: First: Heroes 😔 but if that doesn’t count then Birthright, Favorite: Three Houses

List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! No particular order: Edelgard, Plumeria, Líf, Yuri, Kagetsu

Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! Ashe. I have no idea why. I do not feel this way now I forget he exists frequently sorry buddy

If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: First: Chrom (accident, wanted Henry), Now: Chrom (on purpose)- Fates: First: Jakob, Now: Kaden- Three Houses: First: Ashe, Now: Yuri- Engage: Kagetsu. And I’d do it again. Love that guy.

Favorite Fire Emblem class? Dark Flier

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? I want to say “random village npc that lives a peaceful life and doesn’t get involved in the war” but every school I’ve ever been to has had the stupid house system so I cannot deny the truth. I am random academy phase npc that dies on the first mission.

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? Realistically Golden Deer but my heart lies with you beagles

If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Reason & Riding, Banes: Faith & Gauntlets, Budding Talent: Heavy Armor

If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? Probably Firene if only because I would die in any other climate

-

How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔 letters. It took me months to understand why everyone kept talking about toasters

Current TOA muses: Elise and Embla!!

Past TOA muses? Constance, Sothis, Kaden, Kagetsu

Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? Constance, but I don’t see that happening. The more I looked into her character the more I made connections to stuff irl that I felt like I didn’t have the right to talk about and that fear of accidentally offending someone slowly killed her off

Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? I have three moods: “blonde girl that dyes her hair purple sometimes”, “hyperactive man”, and “what”

Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? Plumeria my beloved writing you would make me so uncomfortable which is technically IC but I can’t put myself through that I’m sorry girl I’m not strong enough 

What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? I like the silly. I do very much enjoy the drama of course also though. Haha emotional pain :)

Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? TOAAAAA!!!! DROP AN ASKR MUSE, AND MY LIFE, IS YOURS. (No pressure to anyone though of course!)

Favorite TOA-related memories? So many. Too many. Cannot list them all here this is long enough as is. I love you TOA :)

Normal size text, small text, no preference? Small text is too much effort for me but I don’t ever notice the difference unless it’s right next to normal text tbh

Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 He lurks. Every day he grows stronger. I don’t know how long I can fight off his return. He has a sword and he is strong and he knows it. Also Metodey for some reason??

[sc0tters]

how does Bianca miscarrying and calling timo go?

Nico went for a run as he needed to clear his head fully thinking that it was his fault that the baby didn’t make it. As she had been six months pregnant Bianca had to give birth to the baby.

Having to go through that alone killed her so by the time she got out of there Nico wasn’t there and Bianca called the only guy she could think of when she saw Nicos phone on the table next to her hospital bed “Bi you okay?” Timo had gotten to the door of his car when he heard Bianca’s panicked voice.

Tears streamed down her face “Timo where are you?” She sobbed as she gripped at her phone “where do you need me?” Timo knew something was wrong when Bianca called him even as he knew Emilia had Jakob for the night “hospital.” She pleaded chewing at her cheek “the baby is gone.” Somehow those four words made Timo drop his date as he knew she needed him.

[ladylooch]

Sophie’s first day of kindergarten.

Nico and Lexi have done this twice before. They’ve packed up their little girl with her new clothes and her new back pack and white sneakers. They’ve driven the same route to school every morning with two other little girls in the car. But this year is the start of school is different. Today, there will be three babies dropped off at school. 

The last time they will drop off one of their children for their first day of Kindergarten. 

Lexi didn’t even make it out of the driveway before she cried. 

Nico’s hand slips into hers, resting on her thigh for the entire drive. He squeezes her fingers as he turns into the school parking lot. He parks. Lucie flings her door open, Mack on her heels. Sophie stays in her car seat, swinging her legs nervously, wide-eyed as she looks at the brown brick building in front of her. 

“You ready, sweets?” Nico asks Sophie as he undoes her seatbelt. 

“What if I forget how to spell my name?”

“That’s okay. Just ask for help.” Nico assures her. 

“What if something happens and you or mama can’t come get me.”

“Like what?”

“Like… what if I get lost in the school. How will you know?”

“Baby, you’re not going to get lost. You’ll be with your whole class.”

“What if I have to go potty?”

“You’ll be able to go.”

“What if my shoe becomes untied and I can’t get the rabbits together like we practiced?”

These questions and what if scenarios continue the whole way into school. Nico is patient and loving with each response, soothing each of her worries like only Nico can. Lucie and Mack are dropped off in their respective classrooms first. They both hug their baby sister goodbye, then trot into their classes without a look back at their parents. Sophie’s sneakers squeak against the tile as she tightly grips both of her parents hands, not wanting to let go.

“Mama.” Sophie whimpers as they get to the door of her class. She remembers the yellow paper and bumble bees on the door from when they came to her open house a few weeks ago.   Hers is in the left hand corner next to someone named Jakob. “I don’t wanna go to school.” Lexi purses her lips, thinking of how many times she will hear this from her youngest daughter over the years.

“You are going to have the best day. I know it feels big right now, but when we pick you up right here in a couple of hours, you’re going to be overflowing with fun stories for us.” Lexi murmurs, being brave and strong to be a role model for her daughter. Nico coughs, clearly getting emotional watching Sophie and Lexi hug. 

“We love you, Soph. We can’t wait to hear all about your big day!” Nico exclaims as he hugs her too. Him and Lexi stand, then nudge Sophie into her classroom. “We love you, baby.” Lexi digs her fingernails into Nico’s side to not cry as Sophie looks back, seeming so small with her oversized back pack, and waves one last time to them.

“Maybe they’ll let us stay here all day…” Nico trails off. His face mirrors a physical pain similar to what Lexi feels in her chest.

They watch as a teacher directs Sophie to put her backpack in a cubby, then encourages her to go into the room and play. Sophie is shy, looking around at the other kids with big green eyes. She looks back at the door. Nico and Lexi give her a wave. 

“We should go. She will go play if we leave.” Lexi coaxes Nico to walk to the right with her. 

Nico swallows hard to force down the lump in his throat. 

He makes a living by thriving in tough situations on the ice. But no amount of training or practice could prepare him for this one.

[words-ofthe-prophets]

Rest Now, Mama

@timelessxmemories

She’d been in bed for days now, it was clear she wasn’t getting better. In fact, she was getting worse, much worse.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Fable whispered, her voice strained. Despite everything, she smiled. A gentle smile, genuine despite it not reaching her eyes. It was clear she was tired. So, so tired.

“Mama…” Jakob whispered, carefully holding her hand between his. He could feel her pulse beneath her skin, a weak flutter that held desperately onto life. “Don’ fight it…”

The words hurt to say. A tight grip on his very soul, pleading inwardly for his voice to retract his words. He wouldn’t cry, he couldn’t. Not while she was still here. Exhaling heavily, he held her hand against his bowed head, feeling the bones of her knuckles above his eyebrows. Stilling the tremble in his hands, he rocked at the hips, an easy motion that he lost himself it.

“Ain’t no one should suffer like this. ‘Specially not you. Rest now, mama. You’ve done your part,” As he spoke, he felt her pulse grow weaker. Weaker still. Until the thrumming stilled completely.

“Rest now, mama…” Jakob repeated, closing his eyes tightly, his hands gripping hers like a vice. He wanted to beg, scream and cry until she opened her eyes again. Until she continued to fight for her life. But he knew he couldn’t. She had done more than enough, so much more. She deserved her rest.

He continued to rock, holding her hand tightly as he steeled himself. Keeping his head bowed, he held her tightly. His voice cracked as he whispered, an echo of the man he was…

“You can rest now…”

[cuteloot]

Level 5 Sidewinder Bushwack

[lohstandfound]

how can you love me like this?

cant stop thinking about richjake angel x demon so here we go i expanded on what i originally wrote. once again i forgot where i was going with this maybe i should actually plan before writing

A shaky breath left his lips, staring down at half a broken halo. He was gripping it so tightly, dark ichor began to pool in his hand. His own, from a lifetime ago. A painful transformation. Ripped from his head. Or maybe it shattered when he fell. The events remained a blur in his mind and all that was left was bitter curses to yell and scream at the sky.

Jake didn’t know why he kept the damn thing.

He stared in the mirror, stretching out one leathery wing. The wings were a different story. They used to be soft, feathery. Gentle. Fragile. Something so delicate would not survive a fall so great. They were replaced with his newfound curse, so the loss of his old ones didn’t matter.

Jake hummed, flexing the wing. His shoulder. Twisting his arm around, trying to see if he could reach back enough to touch the base where his wing met his skin.

His smile. It was so light. Happy. It made Jake feel at ease, it made him feel comfortable in a way he hadn’t felt for so long. His smile was warm. His smile lit up his entire world. Everything bad just seemed to melt away the moment he looked at him with that smile of his.

He figured out he could reach the base of his wing. That was easy.

Jake looked at the halo again. Nothing else was going to be strong enough. A regular kitchen knife was barely going to leave a graze, there was no way it would cut through the wing. He took one last look at his wings. He’d been hating them a lot lately.

One last look, stretching them out behind him. The last time he would see them attached to his back. The last time he’d have control over them. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lost limbs like these. But this time, it was entirely his choice.

His wings were gorgeous. Soft. White. Delicate. Jake forgot how soft they felt, but he could never forget how fragile these wings could be. He touched them with light fingers, never too rough. Whenever he hugged him, those feathered wings were always wrapped around him too. Jake had forgotten all about that feeling. He couldn’t ignore the stark contrast with his own wings.

Jake gripped the halo tighter, staring at his reflection for a moment longer before deciding he could not watch himself.

So he turned around.

So he reached behind him.

So he dug the halo into the base of his wing.

So he held back a yell as tears pricked his eyes.

The pain was searing, over-bearing. It burned. It stung.

He fell to his knees, twisting his body to try cut off his wing.

It eventually fell off. The feeling was… odd. Uneven. Lopsided. Fucking painful. Flexing those muscles hurt like a bitch. He took a shaky breath and dragged the wing in front of him.

Jake stared at the wing before he took a deep breath and raised the halo again, reaching behind him. One more to go.

The house was awfully quiet when Rich arrived home.

“Jake?”

There was no response. Rich frowned, slowly shutting the front door behind him.

“Jakob? Are you home?”

Rich wandered through the house, looking for any sign of Jake.

He paused as he walked past the bathroom door, then backtracked.

He pressed his ear to the door.

There was sobbing.

Rich frowned and knocked gently on the door. “Jake?”

The sounds of sobbing abruptly stopped.

“Jake? Are you in there?”

“I-I’m fine!”

“You don’t sound fine… Can I come in?”

“N-no!” Jake responded all too quickly and that just made Rich frown more.

He hesitated before trying the doorknob.

Jake forgot to lock it.

Rich ignored Jake’s frantic pleading for him to go away, to not come in, to not open the door.

Rich couldn’t decide if he should have listened to Jake or not.

His eyes flicked between the dark ichor pooling on the white tiles, Jake’s stained hands, the broken halo. Rich didn’t even want to question where the halo came from, not right now.

Not when the most important thing was the torn leathery wing that had once been attached to his boyfriend’s back was lying in the middle of the bathroom floor.

Not when Jake’s other wing seemed to be barely hanging on to his back; the sight made Rich wince.

Not when Jake was sobbing and covered in blood.

“What did you do?” Rich spoke softly.

He watched as jumbled apologies tumbled from Jake’s lips, half not making any sense.

It took Rich a moment before he forced himself to move. He stepped forward, carefully avoiding the severed wing. Jake scrambled back but Rich knelt down in front of him. Jake flinched as Rich carefully cupped his cheeks, making the demon look at him. Rich looked into Jake’s eyes for a moment before he gently wiped his tears away.

“I’m sorry-” Jake began to apologise, but Rich shook his head. He wrapped his wings around Jake as he pulled his head down to press a kiss to his forehead.

“It’s okay, you’re okay…” Rich said softly. “I love you…”

Jake shook his head. “How?”

Rich hated how painful Jake sounded.

“How can you love someone like me?”

Rich frowned at that. “Because I see good in you. I see kindness, I see gentle hands, I see love. I see so much love…”

“I don’t understand how you can love someone like me. How can you see what you see in me when I’m-” Jake shook his head. He covered his mouth to hold back a sob, leaning forward to rest his forehead on Rich’s shoulder.

“Is that why you…” Rich didn’t even need to finish for Jake to know what he was asking.

Jake nodded. “I thought it would make me less of a demon. Then you could love me, then it would make sense for you to love me but just because I get rid of them- it doesn’t change what I’ve become.”

“Jake, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about all the things you did. Because your wings don’t define you. I see good in you. And I love you, no matter what. Leather wings, feather wings, no wings, I don’t care. I love you regardless. I don't want you to change who you are for me.”

[r0wdy-rat]

Face Down 

pt i, pt ii, pt iii, pt iv, pt v

Masterlist

Summary: You and Levi come to an agreement. You meet Isabel. You're so blindingly happy. That makes what happens next so much worse.

In hindsight, you had pushed him too far. An emotional Levi was an overwhelmed one, a cornered one, and you knew that, but...

You were so hurt.

He had never hurt you like this before. You didn't know what to do. You felt like you'd missed your shot with your 3DMG's anchor and were in free fall. You felt out of control. Miss Kuchel would be ashamed of your lack of poise. Only the Walls knew what Kenny would've said, seeing his charges wrestle like this on a rooftop.

Probably something indecent.

As it was, Levi abruptly flipped the two of you again, and you got the distinct feeling that he had been tolerating you earlier, instead of being genuinely startled. You growled in frustration, fingers tightening in his hair until he retaliated, tangling his own hands in your locks and yanking savagely. You yelped as your head was wrenched back, squirming under him as you tried to mitigate the strain on your scalp.

"Motherfucker," you grit out through clenched teeth as you wrenched your own grip in his hair. You felt something give under your wrath, and you shoved at him with your free hand as you bucked and struggled. Despite this, he still pinned you easily, only infuriating you more. He huffed, emitting a sound that could have been a laugh but was too throaty. His breath puffed across the underside of your chin, your exposed throat, and you wriggled all the harder for it.

Fucker, you missed when he was smaller and weaker than you sometimes.

You hissed in frustration, air leaving your clenched teeth in a whine. You wriggled even harder now, until he abruptly gave you a rough shake with the hand in your hair. "Fucking quit it, you goddamn brat," he snarled, furious and close to your ear. It was such a foreign tone you startled and went boneless beneath him, enough for him to pin your other arm beneath his knee. You felt ready to catch fire, restrained like this. Levi, likewise, was getting tired of your struggling.

"Are you fucking done now?" he asked, annoyed, and then tightened his grip before you could start up again. You whined at the burn, a gasping, foreign sound, and Levi went still above you, finally taking stock of what he was doing.

He was above you, weighing you down with his larger mass, pinning your hips with his. One of his legs had tangled around your own, preventing you from getting leverage to buck him off. The other knee was bent to pin the hand that had been ripping his hair out. Your lower halves were flush together. His breath wheezed out of him at the realization. He was so close his shirt brushed against you with every inhale, and every exhale stirred the baby hairs framing your face that weren't slicked down with sweat. One of his hands was wrapped around your wrist, long fingers holding you hostage and pressing you into the rooftop. The other was tangled tightly in your hair. At the realization of how rough his hold was, his fingers loosened somewhat from their death grip, now cradling the back of your head instead. Your chest was heaving, your lips parted, and your face flushed. And your eyes...

He hadn't actually looked at you in a while. He could admit that. Something about the sight unsettled him now, took him back to that moment when he realized that the woman on the other end of his knife was you, the woman who had stared down the barrel of a gun was you. Beautiful, steadfast, irreplaceable you. His couldn't look into your eyes without seeing that scar that bisected your brow, coming so close to blinding you, without thinking of how you could have ended up like Jakobs, slumped into a wall with your insides spilling out. Now, looking at you felt like all the terror he should have felt in those moments, but didn't because he didn't realize what he was in danger of losing.

And now, looking into your wide eyes, staring up at him in frustration, he realized he had done something inexplicably cruel to you these past few days.

Livewire, Kenny had called you, wildcat. But here Levi was, trying to pin you down, trying to make you, someone who had always freely followed him, submit to his will by shaking you around. Walls...

You looked fucking furious.

More than that, you looked fragile like he hadn't seen since your mom died, when you were being shaken around by a pimp. Even when his mom had passed, you had remained carefully in control of all your emotions after you got back with the medicine. You looked like you may fall apart if he did the wrong thing. He was frozen with the knowledge, for once unsure of what path to take. His hold on you slackened further... just enough.

You grit your teeth and crashed your forehead into his chin.

In the aftermath of your sudden attack, you wriggled free from him, standing on your own two feet. That, you knew, had surprised him. Your legs were shaky, aching from the exertion with the 3DMG already. Yet still, you were determined to win whatever pissing contest was happening on this roof. He may be stronger than you now, but there was a time you had to save him from the assholes down here, and he was a fool to have forgotten that. The first time he had looked at you since that meeting and it was like he had never even seen you before. Like he was staring at a wild animal, a stranger. Not his best friend, not the girl who had bartered stolen medicine for a house instead of the life she had intended it for, not the woman who had stayed by his side for years. And yeah, you got it, you'd known him long enough to understand how his mind worked. Nearly stabbing you had freaked him out a little, but for fucks sake, you'd been cut by him, not fucking killed. Kenny had done worse to you in training when you were a child.

"Whatever overprotective, controlling, bullshit is going on with you," you finally murmured, voice low and burning, dark eyes pinning him to the rooftop as you glowered down at him, "it stops right now."

He glanced up at you from where he was kneeling, mouth twisted in aggravation from your cheap shot, and went still. You were shaking with rage, standing there and staring him down like you didn't know him. You felt all of 9 and begging him to look at Miss when she was sick, all of 13 with your hands covered in another boys blood and Vic's entrails cooling in the dirt behind you, all of 19 and in another fight he started with some pervert leering after you. Where was the damn henning then?

"I don't know when you decided you could make decisions for me, but you're dead wrong Levi.” You continued, running a shaking hand through your hair in frustration, “You don't get to decide if I go on raids, or if I’m allowed to use the gear that I stole. The fact you've even been trying to is... it's insulting. I don't want to be bottle fed bits of information you think I need to know, like Furlan’s content with. I need the full fucking story from here on out. I need us to be a team again. No more secrets, or I swear I'll..." you trailed off, suddenly losing steam. Or you'll what? You didn't know. You didn't think you could ever leave him, realistically. Even what you had now, this hollow shell of what you used to be, was better than the thought of walking away from him for good.

He looked at you from where he knelt on the rooftop, eyes wider than you'd ever seen them as he took you in. You were practically glowing with anger, shoulders right and chest heaving. You were plotting on continuing your tirade until you saw the fight go out of him with his next breath, like a puppet with its strings snipped. His hand came up to curl around the back of your knee, his other grasping your fingers as he gazed up at you.

"Okay." he finally said, a small smile on his pretty mouth, "Okay, you win, crybaby."

That damn nickname. You huffed, rigid form loosening as you stamped your foot, "I'm not a crybaby Levi! I haven't cried in years," you whined, even as you used your interlocked hands to tug him to his feet. He grinned, slinging an arm over your shoulders to tug you in and ruffle your hair.

"Yeah, yeah, all you do is cry, brat. It's every damn day with you."

Still, he sounded so fond as he said it, and you finally felt that chasm that was hollowing out your chest begin to close. Levi, you thought, as you tucked your face into his shoulder to bite him, I missed this.

Isabel Magnolia crashed into your life like a boulder, and you wondered if this is how Kenny felt trying to keep up with you and Levi when he first found you. She left you feeling winded.

Probably not, you conceded, you and Isabel hadn't tried to stab each other yet, after all. Then again, you'd like to think you'd never done anything deserving of being stabbed in your life, unlike Kenny, the rat bastard.

The girl was cheerful and determined, and her energy levels were through the fucking roof. You could barely keep up with her most days, tiring out early more often than not. Levi and Furlan adored her, almost as much as you did. Your little trio easily became a quartet, and you let her use your gear to learn how to fly, coaching her from below as she tested out her new wings.

She was quick to smile, quick to laugh. She called Levi bro, called you sis. Your heart felt full to bursting in a way that it hadn't since Kur and Ponye left to expand your little crime syndicate on the other end of the underground. Leave it to Isabels raucous personality to fill the hole left by two people.

"We're like a family," she said one evening, "Especially with how you and Levi bicker like you're married."

You had choked on a laugh, coughing harshly into your hand. "Walls, Iz," you chastised, coughing harder now, "warn a girl before you say something crazy like that."

Levi, from where he was sharpening your blade in the corner, watched you with dark eyes as you got your fit under control.

"What would that make Furlan then?" you mused, voice rougher now, and Isabel laughed, delighted.

"Well, he's probably the family pet!"

Never needing an excuse for a brawl, Furlan hollered in outrage from where he was counting money on the table. He threw himself at Isabel and jabbed her sides with agile fingers until she was crying from laughter. You smiled fondly at the familiar sight; your little house far fuller than it had ever felt. Levi nudged your shoulder, steaming cup in hand. "Here," he offered, "for your throat."

You smiled up at him, something warm and soft curling in your chest as you took the tea from him. Must've already had the kettle going. "Glad I robbed that fancy vendor for us now, aren'tcha?" you teased softly, and he huffed, ruffling your hair as he sat next to you on the sofa, knees spreading until your thighs were flush. His arm dropped around your neck once he was done messing up your hair, and he looked at you warmly.

"You make it easy to justify keeping you around, I'll give you that."

You laughed, sipping your tea and leaning into his chest as you watched Isabel and Furlan roll around on the rug like animals, swinging playful punches at each other. This is perfect, you thought, smiling at your friends while curled into Levi's body, his heat warming you through, "I want us to always be like this," you murmured, a secret wish for only him to hear, "I want to be together, forever. It's so... warm."

Levi hummed, the sound vibrating through his chest and into your ribs, and any tension left in you dissipated. You were so tired... this would be as good a time as any to rest, you decided. So, you finished your tea swiftly, setting your cup down before curling deeper into Levi and closing your eyes. As you drifted off, you felt his arm wrap tighter around you. Something warm pressed briefly to your forehead, and you felt incredibly, unfathomably safe.

But for all your happiness in that moment, you still lived in the underground. It was not a place for wishing. You never should have let yourself forget that.

[fe-fictions]

are there some leo fics still lying around somewhere? 👉🏼👈🏼

(YES!! Here's one of Leo taking care of a hurt Corrin! U V U)

“You’re a fool. A naive, ignorant, irresponsible fool.”

Leo’s words were harsh, but they lacked the usual bite while he bandaged your wounds. It was just the two of you, sitting in your room while the young prince tended to the bloody mess that was your body.

“I know, I know.” You mumbled, leaning against his shoulder. 

“What were you thinking? There are dozens of people, just like them simply waiting for an opportunity to attack you! Why would you just give them that chance? Are you stupid?”

“It’s because I was on patrol and didn’t realize I’d wandered too far out?” You replied tiredly, fingers gripping the sheets when he bound up a particularly sensitive cut.

“You could’ve died tonight. Does that not mean anything to you?” Leo said, his volume growing.

You shushed him quickly, pulling back from him to look at the man properly.

“It was dark, and I thought I was still with Jakob. I didn’t realize where I was, and-- watch it! ...I paid the price. That’s all there is to it.” You explained, the pain not easing your agitation levels. 

Leo sighed heavily, finishing up another wound and moving to dress the incisions on your arm. He lifted it gingerly, careful not to upset the bleeding cuts any more than they already were.

“Still, you shouldn’t have been so reckless!” He scolded you sharply, cleaning the blood away. “I was worried sick about you. If I hadn’t shown up…”

“Don’t worry about that.” You mumble, pressing your face against his neck in a comforting manner. Leo fell silent, wrapping another cleaned injury. “You found me, and you’re taking care of me. That’s all that matters.”

“You could’ve bled out on the dirt and we would’ve been none the wiser. You can’t just play this off.”

“I’m not playing it off.” You protest softly, lifting your hand to stop his movements. The bandaging paused. “I’m grateful you saved me. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.” You pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. “Thank you.”

When you pulled away, you caught sight of something you never thought you’d witness; a teardrop rolled down his cheek.

“Leo…”

“I was scared, damn you.” He grumbled, tugging you to his chest and wrapping his arms tight around your body. He held you close, burying his face in your hair. “Don’t thank me for saving your life. I thought I was going to lose you.” 

Your hand came up to his head, stroking his hair gently. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Even though we’re in the middle of war and the chances of me getting into danger are on the daily-”

“-Corrin.”

“Sorry. I’ll try not to let myself get stuck in that situation again.” You promised him, and he pulled away from you, trying to play off the tear stain on his cheek.

“Good. If you did I’d probably kill you off myself, anyway.” He grumbled, eyes softening. “Now give me your arm. I’m not done yet.” 

“Hold on,” You stopped him, thumb rubbing his cheek and ridding him of the track left behind by the salty drop. “You had a little something on your face.”

“Tch, you’re so annoying.” He muttered, cheeks turning pink instantly.

You just smiled, resting on his shoulder once more while he dressed the rest of your wounds.

[llaevateinn]

thoughts still brewing in my head but there's something about the water of the primordial sea being found in a cave ... and the abyss having been depicted as being "below" somehow in previous times we encountered such things ... but the abyss and abyssal powers also visually being connected to stars and the night sky ... and the primordial sea or cosmic ocean in mythology was often depicted to SURROUND the world rather than be contained within it ... and how there are theories that teyvat was TURNED UPSIDE DOWN (outside becoming inside, up becoming down) and how that might have affected the primordial sea's nurturing and life-giving properties into becoming deadly and life-draining instead ??? INVERTED STATUE OF THE SEVEN ANYONE ??? i guess i'm thinking the primordial sea is linked to the abyss (see also jakob ingold, elynas etc.) and THAT might be why the oratrice mechanique d'analyse cardinale pronounced childe guilty of the serial kidnapping (or rather serial dissolving by primordial seawater) BECAUSE HE HAS AWAKENED "IT" INSIDE HIMSELF ?? his abyssal powers re: foul legacy ?? SKIRK ?? SOMETHING SOMETHING HIS HYDRO VISION BEING WONKY AND SHIT ?? i'm just gripping the edge of my seat until act 3 i guess PLEASE this is such a cool mystery