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mimik-u · 4 years ago

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Flower Child, Chapter 16: “Yellow (II)”

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Poppy took little care to disguise the surprise in her pale face, her brows disappearing into her hairline as she visibly struggled to comprehend why her employer might be asking such an unexpected question.

“Ahhhh, y-yes?” Came the clumsy, fumbling reply. “H-he is, ma’am. Room 11037. I sent the flowers there—just as you asked!”

She clearly assumed that she was in trouble, an assumption that Yellow made no haste to correct as her cool gaze traveled briefly to the brass plate on her own closed door—Room 11812—which she knew to be somewhere on the sixth floor from the snatch of conversation between nurses she’d heard from the hallway earlier. She supposed this meant that their rooms were relatively close to each other, give or take an elevator ride or two.

Perfect.

“Excellent,” she murmured distractedly. “Good.”

An audible sigh of relief that wasn’t her own punctured the clinical air.

Pursing her plump lips, Yellow Diamond pulled one leathery thumb over the other and twisted to face Poppy again, who was staring at her expectantly, her ambiguous knitting long forgotten as she leaned forward in her seat, perched almost—if not exactly—birdlike. The woman had wide eyes, bright and yearning, a lovely daffodil yellow. They were almost childlike in their keenness, achingly young, and perhaps it was this reminder above all which made the businesswoman’s own eyes soften minimally as she addressed her with all her usual brusqueness of being.

“Poppy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please,” Yellow grimaced, “if only for this conversation, and ideally, all the ones to come, you can drop the ma’am’s.”

It had been gratifying to be called such the first five years of their acquaintance or so, a marker that the CEO had come into her own as a figure to be deferred to with such honorifics. (Once upon a time, she had merely been the CEO’s daughter, a title which came with no accolades other than privilege and patronization.) However, she supposed that since they were drawing close to ten years of having known each other, of having cohabited the same space for so many hundreds upon hundreds of days, that the relationship between them was already well established.

Poppy was once again stricken blind with no time to recover her face.

Her thin mouth popped open and then shut in a comical, half-moon shape.

“Yes… of course, ma—um,” she floundered, her fingers spidering nervously on her lap. “Of course…”

Yellow’s lips twitched involuntarily, a gesture she duly paid for as a sharp pain cracked through her cheek—no doubt owing to the seven stitches laced there.

Oi.

“Semantics aside”—she waved her uninjured hand vaguely and suppressed a wince—“when you called up here… were you able to discover what was wrong with the kid?”

Poppy frowned, her pointed nose twisting in consternation as she thought upon it, and it was with a small sigh that she shook her head.

“No, ma’am”—she blushed furiously —“I mean, n-no. I don’t think they could tell me for patient confidentiality protocols… I apologize, Mrs. Diamond. Should I have pressed for an answer?”

“No,” Yellow returned shortly, her voice suddenly weary. “No, you did well, Poppy.”

“T-thank you.”

And they lapsed into a silence then that wasn’t entirely natural, taut like a wire that had only recently been strung. Yellow Diamond did not care for the silence—so alien to her and so heavy, like an intrusive embrace from a stranger. And yet, for the past four and sundry years, this very stranger had been living in her damn suite, taking up space on the couch she slept upon in the study, and accompanying her down the empty halls as she kept one ear primed to her left where the door of the master bedroom was perpetually cracked open, never closed lest she go in there and find her wife—

The stranger didn’t pay rent either.

Bastard.

Yellow went back to rubbing her thumbs together again, distantly soothed by the way that the striations of each digit intersected every so often before breaking apart again, over and over, like trains gliding over the rails of long worn tracks.

It was true she could just have asked her wife what was wrong with the boy.

Could have opened that tentative line of communication just a little further.

Could have stuck one of her heeled boots just inside the door.

But perhaps that was the unbroken thread in the grand scheme and scope of Yellow Diamond’s life, the recurring truth that reared its ugly head through the bars of her ribcage every time she so much as breathed.

Hypotheticals.

That was all she had anymore.

Mere possibilities.

Grains and ash and dust.

Teasing her empty fingertips.

Salting them.

I could have talked to Blue.

You would have— I would have—if only she would just be sensible .

(She’s never sensible anymore.)

(And you’re too demanding.)

(She called you cold, Yellow.)

(You’re cold. )

The thought struck Yellow Diamond cleanly, like a steel-edged blow. Her breath hitched, the strain pulling at her sore chest.

I shouldn’t have yelled at Pink that night.

I could have gone into her room.

It didn’t have to end like that.

But it did—and she did—and that was that, the damage irrevocable and irreversible and done, the finality of it all echoing pitifully through the emptiness of space and time. Like ink, its blackness spilled across the pages of her memory, seeped and spread and poured. Like sour wine, it was impossible to ever really swallow.

But, Lord, how the woman had tried.

She had wanted to move on, to limp forward the best that she could.

She had felt as though that this was the only conceivable way she could exist in a world without her daughter.

This was the means by which she could wake up every morning to a merciless sun and live with herself—dammit.

Leave Pink Diamond behind.

Allow the very image of her to become obscured by the rubble.

Run.

But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps she had been wrong this entire fucking time, and she was only now realizing it, and it was too late to be realizing it because time, oh God, time—

Time made fools of them all.

It slipped down an hourglass and through her fingers with all the mere possibilities of the life she and her wife and her daughter could have lived—grains and ash and dust.

As fading sunlight slumped through the window like a body on the floor, Yellow’s eyes dared to burn as she stared at her long hands emptily. They were stilled on her lap, intertwined lightly, with all the tenderness of a feathery kiss.

Kissed, she thought to herself.

When was the last time she had been kissed?

How long had it been since Blue Diamond’s lush lips had pressed against her own with a kind of intensity that had consecrated them both divine? Oh, God, how inseparable they had been back then—colliding stars dancing together in the darkness of their room, the rumble of their voices the only echo of a sound in the space between them. They created supernovas every time they so much as breathed into each other’s skin; they expanded, and they collapsed into each other, and they knew each other, and they tangled in the stardust of their own bare radiances.

With all suddenness, they fell apart.

Their daughter died.

And neither of them could barely stand to look at each other lest they see the reflection of that twenty-one year old girl mirrored in each other’s eyes—her vivid smile, the heels of her red sneakers flashing against the hallway floor, the way her freckles used to bundle together when she laughed.

“Mrs. Diamond?” Poppy prodded uncertainly, and it was with a jolt that Yellow remembered that she was not entirely alone. Her gaze refocused itself on the maid as a dull flush suffused her sharply hewn cheeks. Her temples throbbed. Her entire body ached.

She missed Pink.

(Dead, gone, never coming back…)

And she missed Blue.

(She was terrified to so much as look at her.)

“Poppy…” She began reluctantly, and this in and of itself was an unstudied phenomenon, for Yellow Diamond was never reluctant.

The syllables strangled themselves in the cylinder of her throat.

“How…” She winced at her own weakness—she loathed herself—she pressed on anyway. It was all she knew how to do. “How have I done it?”

She paused heavily as she raised her head to greet the maid’s wide-eyed gaze. The white Peter Pan collar of Poppy’s blouse pressed innocently at the base of her slender neck. She wore a necklace strung with white imitation pearls.

“Done what, ma—Mrs. Diamond?”

“How… have I inspired your loyalty all these years?” Try though she did, it was impossible to subjugate the open wound in her voice into her usual cadence of tone—the hardness, the calmness, and the simultaneous assuredness of being which so defined the image of herself she projected to the world.

But there was no such thing as the world in that tiny hospital room.

It was only her and Poppy and the gentle humming of nearby machines.

“Heaven knows I pay you well,” she continued haltingly, “but if there’s one thing I know about money”—and the multibillionaire knew a hell of a lot—“it’s that sometimes… it can prove to be insufficient payment.”

Sometimes, there was just not enough money in the world to fix, to heal, to ameliorate, to restore.

Blue Diamond had called her cold.

Do you really think I could be so callous, Blue?

You act like it sometimes.

Perhaps she had a point. (She always had a point.)

“Forget it,” Yellow said abruptly, glancing away. This was stupid; she was being childish. She suddenly wanted to be left alone so she could revel in just how stupid and childish she was being without a one person audience to watch. “I’m being silly.”

It was not a dismissal at the same time that it was a clear dismissal; she folded her arms across her stomach and neglected to be gentle with the left one.

A dull ache spasmed through her hand.

She refused to meet the maid's gaze.

And yet, for all this, for every subtle and unsubtle portent that had been bluntly thrown her way, Poppy Aurelia did not move.

For nearly a decade, she had been by Yellow Diamond’s side, attentive to her every need, a feat which was only possible because she had become attuned to every microscopic nuance in her employer’s face, her voice, her body language. So she knew that she’d been dismissed, or more exactly, Yellow knew that she knew.

So, why then was she moored to her hardback chair, staring at Yellow from those pale, lamp-like eyes of hers?

Why then, with all the silent alarms trumpeting their signals, did she stay?

Poppy’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet as she began to talk; she fed her stuttering words to the floor, not daring to look directly Yellow in the eye. The flat of her left shoe bobbed nervously against the cleanly tile floor—tap, tap, tap.

But still, she spoke.

And she said, quite clearly, “I… I don’t think y-you’re being silly at all, Yellow Diamond… I… just think you’re… er… asking the w-wrong question.”

It was the first time in the entirety of their acquaintance that Poppy had ever interrogated the validity of Yellow’s words. She opened and closed her spindly fingers on top of her lap; every tense line in her body looked as though it was preparing for a retribution that didn’t come as the businesswoman only raised a brow in the surest measure of her restraint.

“What question should I be asking then?”

She obliged.

She played along.

She felt compelled to.

She had no choice if she wanted an answer, if she wanted to know why there were still people in her life who tolerated and endured her, who stayed and didn’t leave. (The list was growing precariously short with the passing years, but to be fair, it had never been especially long in the first place.)

“Ask me why I came in the first place, Mrs. Diamond. Ask me why I accepted your job offer all those many years ago.” A pause and then a hurried addendum, rushed, like a spillage of tea: “Only if you want to, though, of course. Please.”

Yellow Diamond simply stared at her—puzzled, floored, and somehow, incredibly enough, haughty all at once.

“You came because I stole you right from beneath Peter Hoffman’s snooty nose,” she returned immediately, almost flippantly. “He always thought he was better than everyone else just because his brother-in-law was the governor, but I showed him—”

Poppy cut across her.

Another first in their decade long relationship.

The maid at least had enough courtesy to look abashed at what she had done, her cheeks scribbled pink, and yet, she pressed on anyway, waving her long hands frantically.

“Not that part, Mrs. Diamond,” she said hastily. “I-I mean, it’s related to that part, my apologies, but… a-ah… do you remember what you said to me then? In the dining room? You were there for a business meeting, and all the other executives were heading into the lounge to smoke… but you… you lingered, Mrs. Diamond. You stayed.”

It was vague—she hadn’t thought much about the exchange even in the moment that it had happened—but snatches of that night began to collect like wispy clouds across the canvas of Yellow’s mind, swirling and listless, faint but undoubtedly there.

She’d just turned forty-six, and she was on top of the goddamn world.

She had straightened her tie in the same moment she had straightened from her chair… and there had been a girl, standing at the periphery of everything, who couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

She stared at her hands as so many suited men left the room, wincing each time one of them so much as glanced her way.

So many of them glanced her way, taunting.

Lecherous.

“I pulled you aside because Hoffman had said something stupid,” she recalled, in that same dismissive tone from before. Hoffman, a big technology magnate in Empire City, was always saying something stupid. It was a wonder his entire body didn’t sag under the weight of his massive ego.

But Poppy shook her head slightly.

“It wasn’t… just something stupid,” she corrected softly. Every premature line in the maid’s sharp face testified to the fact that she remembered these events with perfect clarity, the words that were spoken over a sumptuous roast pig, how maybe even the shadows of the candelabra danced across the gilded walls. She continued to curl and uncurl her fingers on top of her lap for the want of something to do with them. She saw images that Yellow didn't, heard echoes that the executive had scarcely deigned to register as sounds in the first place. “He told his colleagues that while I was a good maid… it was a shame I didn’t have more of an a-ass on me. I was just twenty-three, and that was my first major job, and h-he said things like that to me all the time, Mrs. Diamond. He was awful—that man. He likely still is.”

Another quick memory.

A sharp glimpse of it.

A wedding invitation that had sat on her desk for a few weeks before Yellow had unceremoniously shuffled it into the trash with the rest of the junk—in the fall, Peter Hoffman would be getting married for the third time, and his latest soon-to-be-bride was a thirty-four year old model from Europe.

He was getting close to seventy-three.

Poppy sniffed rather loudly and tried to hide the fact of it surreptitiously, swiping her beaky nose against the sleeve of her blouse.

“So, you pulled me aside, Mrs. Diamond, and you gave me a job, yes, but you also said something to me that I haven’t forgotten since then,” she continued.

And then, quite unexpectedly, with a suddenness that Yellow dimly recognized to be bravery, the tiny maid looked her employer in the eye, daffodil striking burning gold, and somehow, withstanding the heat.

Refusing, quite defiantly, to wither.

“You told me to never accept what I didn’t deserve, Mrs. Diamond,” Poppy said matter-of-factly, her voice confident, unwavering, irrefutably sure. She straightened a little in her chair, squaring her slender shoulders. “That I had a right to demand better than what I was being given, and that what I was currently being given wasn’t deserved. It’s advice I’ve taken to heart from the moment I accepted your offer, and it’s advice that has kept me in your employ all these years.”

“Poppy—” She hastened to interject, to protest, to contradict—consummate contrarian that she was. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, only that whatever she said would be an attempt to stem the praise she could not possibly deserve. This had all been nine years ago; she had simply wanted to get back at a cantankerous old bastard whom she had always despised; words were nice, but they were never reliable measures of conduct.

But again—amazingly enough—Poppy Aurelia was faster. Again, she boldly interrupted Yellow, leaning forward in her seat. The sun from the window haloed her blonde hair, highlighting even the parts of it which stuck up at the top.

“I-I know you’re not the easiest person in the world… I’ve watched you and your family, and I’ve worked for you, Mrs. Diamond, a-and I know you, I think. You can be harsh, and y-you’re often demanding. Y-you get irritable when you’re tired, and y-you're honestly always tired… but that doesn’t make you’re a bad person, Mrs. Diamond. That doesn’t make you a monster.”

Poppy paused then, and she deliberated, and she chewed on her lower lip, seemingly weighing her next words against the risk of speaking them into existence.

Perhaps they were offensive.

At the very least, they were likely inappropriate.

In the end, though, she inhaled bracingly.

She ignored all the carefully drawn lines of etiquette.

She chose to let them fly.

“That just makes you… human.”

Five words, six nervously uttered syllables.

The sentence landed with a kind of finality between them, and there was tension in the air, electricity, as the two of them stared at each other over its heaviness.

Poppy’s eyes were protuberant with anxiety, the fear that she had finally overstepped scrawled all over her face in red blush.

Yellow Diamond could have been carved from stone for all that she could muster herself to move, her lips parted slightly.

She swallowed thickly.

A feeling like eruption constricted the column of her throat.

And then, through the silence, despite everything awful that the silence was and had ever represented, she said, very softly, very quietly, “Thank you, Poppy… I needed to hear that.”

Poppy’s mouth collapsed into a trembling smile.

She fell backwards into her chair, seemingly exhausted with relief.

Courage cost something after all.

“Of course, ma’am,” she said weakly. “I-I mean, Mrs. Diamond. I’m sorry! I—!”

But far from being affronted, Yellow Diamond laughed—actually laughed—the sound hoarse and a little reckless, half-mad and almost, if not explicitly, fond.

“You’re hopeless, Poppy.”

The maid's smile became teasing. She picked up her knitting needles again, holding up her scarf-sweater-doily-thing up to the light pouring in from the window to inspect it better.

“O-only a little, ma'am.”

ii.

When Yellow Diamond returned home from the office that evening, opening the door with far more force than the gesture typically required, she discovered her wife tucked into the far end of their white couch, knees pulled up to her chest, an open book perched cozily in her blanketed lap. The flames from the nearby hearth bathed the living room in warm, flickering tones—autumnal oranges and honeyed ambers deep enough to get lost in, tentative golds that seeped across the spruce floor.

Readers balanced carefully on the tip of her nose, Blue didn’t so much as glance up at her arrival, absorbed by whatever she was reading—likely some verbose classic or anthology or theological theory one. She pressed the closed end of her highlighter to her lips absentmindedly, almost appearing to chew upon it. Her long, brown hair was swept across the side of her neck, billowing in graceful waves over her left shoulder.

Yellow peeled her snow-dusted overcoat and scarf off with disgust and slammed each of these articles onto the adjacent coatrack, nearly sending the pole to the floor with the harshness of the action. She flashed a hand out and caught it just in time, but…

“Fuck!” She spat, glowering at the damn thing for daring to be so unsteady. “Shit.”

And it was with a soft sigh, knowing —in that almost haughty manner of hers—that Blue replaced her bookmark between the folds of her pages and finally looked up, her dark brow lifted along the lines of her weary amusement.

“I take it you’ve had a bad day?”

“No,” Yellow growled immediately, stalking over to the couch and plopping down next to Blue’s covered feet. Perhaps in the mood to defy all the studied rules of decorum tonight, she spread her legs wide and hunched forward, shoulders impolitely slumped.

A pause.

Her wife’s lips twitched in the place of a reply.

“Yes,” she broke. She admitted grudgingly. She dragged fingers through her stiff, blonde hair, pleasuring in the sensation of finally being able to muss it up once more. It took liberal amounts of hairspray to tame it into some manner of acceptability every morning. “My mother… we got into it again today.”

As she was only thirty to White Diamond’s sixty-eight, slowly but assuredly, there was a transition of power taking place at the older woman’s pride and joy, the company upon which she had built her titanium bones—Diamond Electric. Now a multinational conglomerate, it had begun simply enough by selling top of the line household appliances… but recently, beneath Yellow’s watchful eye and grasp of the new age market, the company was sinking its teeth into more contemporary avenues of growth, dabbling in radio and television broadcasting, as well as vehicle manufacturing.

“You’re always getting into it,” Blue said dismissively, but all the same, she placed her now closed book on the arm of the sofa—(Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard)—and leaned forward to listen more attentively, encircling her legs with her flowing sleeves. Her vivid eyes searched Yellow’s face in that singularly incisive way of hers, as though she was combing the woman from the inside out, taking her measure without so much as saying a word.

It was always an odd feeling.

To be so thoroughly seen, understood, and adored by another.

X-rayed, diagnosed, and still, somehow, against all odds, loved.

“But do you want to talk about it?” She pressed.

“No,” Yellow flushed immediately. She had seized involuntarily as firelight caught the warm expanse of Blue Diamond’s exposed neck, and, for the first time since her workday had begun, a feeling other than thinly suppressed frustration rose up the column of her own throat. Her mouth was suddenly dry… the beginnings of a mischievous smile rose on her lips, crooked at the corners. “There’s a different way I can work through my feelings, I think…”

She leaned forward then, very much intent on pressing her lips on the exact place fire had already touched her wife first, but with a laugh that was both exasperated and incredulous, Blue placed a slender hand on her chest and pushed her back playfully.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Yellow!” She shook her head, her lilting voice swinging with its own amusement. “Are you aroused by your own anger? Are you so neolithic that you think a hickey is going to make your problems with your mother go away?”

Rebuffed, rejected, disappointed, and intolerably aware that Blue had a point—the woman always had a point—Yellow slumped back against the couch and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling uncomfortably as though she was just another one of Blue’s pupils being scolded for putting a hand in the damn treat jar.

“Well, maybe it would if you’d let me try…” She muttered impetuously, sticking her lips out.

“Later,” Blue promised, a slight purr in her otherwise light voice. “But please forgive me if I’m not especially tantalized by the idea of disrobing knowing you’re thinking about your mother.”

Another point made.

It was no wonder she was a celebrated academic.

“Touché,” Yellow groused brusquely, and it was with all the petulance of a teenager that the heiress stared upwards at the white stretch of ceiling, so as to delay the inevitable moment when she would have to meet her wife’s all-knowing gaze again. The black fan whirled through its circular rotations rhythmically, cleaving the air with long blades that reminded her forcibly of her mother’s expertly manicured nails, lacquered the color of pitch and seven inches long.

Sharp.

Potentially fatal.

Yellow Diamond had grown up knowing what it was like to be stroked softly by them—loved by their cold embrace.

Sometimes, it wasn’t so bad.

The woman had loved her the best that she knew how—and this wasn’t an especially affectionate love, granted—but, at the very least, it was something.

She was not entirely unbending.

She was not wholly cold…

Other times, though, White Diamond’s love was like having a knife raked down the canvas of her skin.

She never nicked blood, but the threat was always implicit in the cut of her nails.

“She doesn’t trust me, you know…” The words were seemingly spoken to the empty air, drifting upwards with the fumes from the fire. It almost felt nice to get them off of her chest. Cleansing. “I make one call for the company, and she makes another, but everyone automatically sides with her because she’s just… she’s so… well… you know how my mother is…. You know what she does to a room.”

Just by entering a door, her mother could part the Red Sea and turn it blue if she so pleased; shoulders stiffened to obeisant attention; spines straightened; people paid attention to the words which poured silkily from her black lips.

If White Diamond said jump, employees at Diamond Electric were trained to already be ten feet from hitting the ground.

This was what authority was after all—control, power, unquestioning, unwavering respect.

“And she undermines me, Blue,” Yellow continued hoarsely, her fingertips digging into the soft press of her skin where she was holding on to herself. “And she makes me look like a goddamn court jester in front of the employees I’m supposed to be in charge of one day. Today, she called my inventory markup naïve in front of our entire team of accountants and proceeded to deconstruct why it was so inadequate for the next thirty fucking minutes… and all those bootlickers, damn them, they snickered behind their hands like were were in high school for God’s sake.”

The memory of the unpleasant meeting seared her wide-open retinas.

Much to her horror, her golden eyes burned where she sat.

She told herself it was simply the smoke.

There was a shift on Yellow’s left—the shuffle of sweeping fabric, a gentle thud as a woolen blanket fell gracelessly to the floor. And within a few seconds of these events, Blue Diamond was pressed against her side, soft and warm and faintly sweet—her clothes, her hair, her smooth skin wreathed with the scent of her favorite floral perfume.

“Blue, you don’t have to—“

But Blue silently held out a hand.

There was a raised eyebrow of quiet invitation.

And with an immediacy that was instinct, and with an instinct that was sure, Yellow pried her arms away from her chest, and without thinking, without hesitating, without deliberation, rhyme, and reason, threaded her angular fingers together with Blue’s more slender ones until their palms touched, lifelines intersecting.

Together, they grounded each other.

They made each other whole.

“I’ve given you my thoughts on your mother before,” Blue began delicately, and these was a certain hesitancy in the polite intimations of her voice that Yellow knew was only thinly disguised disdain. The two had rarely seen eye to eye before, over matters both macroscopic and minute—but mostly over the problem of how best to love Yellow. The question, implicit but nonetheless distinct, often was, What did the woman deserve?

Softly spoken words of affirmation, generously given?

Or the type of tough, disciplined love which had allowed the thirty-year old to graduate at the top of her Harvard class, accolades upon accolades showered down upon her already impressive name?

“However… what I will say is this and leave it be for the night if you so choose…” Blue Diamond took a deep breath, as though steeling herself to utter something rather revolutionary. A long strand of her dark hair fell gracefully between her eyes.“She’s scared, Yellow.”

The effect was instantaneous.

Disbelieving, humored, scandalized, and perfectly unconvinced, Yellow laughed harshly and waited for the punchline that never quite came as she searched her wife over for all the telltale signs of humor, but the woman’s long face was quite serious, her thin brow collected cerebrally above her sea-sprayed eyes. “Have you met my mother, Blue?” She asked incredulously. “The woman’s got gems the size of a damn—”

But Blue Diamond cut across her incisively, frowning thin. “Don’t be crass… but I mean it, Yellow. Don’t you see? Your mother is nearly sixty-nine years old and the company is approximately half her age. She’s raised it as much as she claims to have raised you. This is her baby, whom she has cradled so tenderly for so many decades—her firstborn child that the emperor of age is now demanding that she gives up to him. Understandably, you’re too busy arguing with her to actually listen to the words she’s saying when she’s arguing back, but the message she sends is clear enough.”

“And what would that be?” Yellow returned testily, jerking her head.

Her mother was always a sore subject, tender to even touch.

But Blue, having long been accustomed to the recurring problem at hand, was unfazed; she continued with the maddeningly patient air of a teacher explaining that two and two made four to a toddler who had not quite gotten the concept yet. Her shoulder brushed gently against Yellow’s, brows bent almost pityingly.

“Every time she undermines you, she’s indicating that she’s not ready to part ways with Diamond Electric yet. Cutting you down reassures her that she’s still needed, that she hasn’t yet been rendered obsolete. Her critical eye is always going to be trained in your direction until you can prove to her that you’re ready to fill those ridiculously high heels of hers.”

“But that’s absurd!” Yellow cried. “She wants me to inherit the damn thing. That’s all she ever talks about—how I’m going to inherit the damn thing one day.”

“Yes,” Blue agreed softly, “but who said that human beings are always rational, Yellow? Our hearts are so often at war with our heads, and sometimes, logicality is subsumed by the primal. Your mother can want you to inherit Diamond Electric and also half-resent you for doing so all in one go.”

“If she’s feeling all that, then she needs to go get her head screwed on a little tighter. That’s stupid.” The words seemed peevish to her before they even left her mouth; she chewed on her own lip sullenly as the smile playing across Blue Diamond’s lips grew.

“Yes, well, I didn’t say you had to like it.”

They lapsed into brief silence then, unbroken except for the faint crackling of the fire in the hearth. The redolence of the smoke and the scent of Blue’s perfume wreathed Yellow with soothing familiarity.

She breathed in slowly.

And she breathed out.

Her heartbeat evened.

And all that suddenly became important to her was the notion, the fact, the incredible, undeniable proof that Blue Diamond was warm by her side; there was not an inch between their brushing shoulders; they spoke wordlessly with the interlinking of their hands.

“So what do I do with this information now that I have it?” Yellow asked after a few moments of this, to which the school teacher laughed lightly.

Her pupil had just asked another awfully stupid question after all.

“You simply remember it going forward,” she replied matter-of-factly.“You use it to understand your mother. And by understanding her, become better than her. You can avoid the mistakes she made. You can rise above her shortcomings and know—intimately and proudly—that you did.”

Yellow’s skepticism must have shown in her face because Blue only shook her head at the expression in it, cutting across her just as she opened her mouth to respond.

“Prodigious though White Diamond is, she has yet to realize her Achilles heel—that she, too, is vulnerable, that she, too, feels and aches and fears. And the longer she restrains herself from this self-knowledge, the less she resembles you, Yellow.”

“Me?” Yellow couldn’t help but laugh; it was her last defense against the unexpected knowledge her wife seemed to possess concerning the nature of her mother. Where she was coming up with all this, the woman could scarcely figure it out. Yellow had studied her mother for thirty years and still felt as though she was barely scratching that pristinely cut surface, smooth all over.

(Honed around the edges. Dangerous to behold.)

“Yes, you, Yellow Diamond,” she said fondly. “You, who feels so deeply. You, who loves with abandon, the telltale signs of your care scrawled all over your face in permanent ink. You and you alone.”

Blue leaned forward then, slowly, carefully, so that their foreheads were touching.

It was a familiar gesture, one that Yellow completed automatically, all instinct.

She pressed her lips against Blue Diamond’s hairline, tasting the scent of her fragrant shampoo.

“And that, my dear, is one of the many reasons why I love you,” she finished quietly. “Because I know, beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt, that you love me back.”

Yellow’s throat suddenly tightened; she swallowed, tried to regroup, and pitifully failed.

And she failed because she couldn’t stop thinking about how right her wife was; she had a point.

She rarely ever didn’t.

“Always,” she finally whispered, grateful, overwhelmed, adoring, undone. “Always, Blue.”

“Yes.” Blue’s lips grazed her own as the shadows on the wall swelled around them, flickering, dancing, expanding, convulsing… snow swirled across the tall floor to ceiling windows, flurrying white against an infinite night sky… “I know.”

They sunk together into the couch then.

They danced and expanded, swirled and convulsed.

Infinite.

iii.

With an abruptness that was almost violent, and an almost violence that sent a sharp pang up her injured arm, Yellow Diamond braced her shaking hands on the edge of the sink in the bathroom attached to her room. There were a few lacerations on her knuckles where they had scraped tiny bits of glass and debris when she had lurched forward in her seat during the accident.

Fresh, they stood out lividly against her skin.

She examined them with vague disinterest for a handful of seconds as a way to stall for time, to distract from the inevitable moment when she had to look up.

Brush her hair.

Adjust the collar of her pajama top.

Throw a little blush on for the hell and sake of it.

Face herself in the mirror.

Her sweat-slicked palms cooled on top of the scratched porcelain; the seconds whiled down and away, teething upon themselves with each minute she stood in that abysmally tiny room, with its cheaply tiled floors and dingy lighting.

It smelled like hand sanitizer.

Her head pounded, each thud forming a singular accusation against her temples.

(Coward.)

(The name spat itself out at her, landing directly between her eyes.)

(Coward.)

(There was no defense against its validity, no sheathe to blunt the force of its blow.)

(Coward.)

(The raw truth of it wrapped its hands around her organs and squeezed.)

In the end, she was so well-practiced in how to put on a face, that she finished getting ready to leave her room without needing to glance at herself. When she exited the bathroom, she palmed the light a little harder than was necessary.

Room 11037.

The nurse who came by to remove Yellow’s IV earlier had indicated that it was on the fourth floor in the Truman Ward, where chronically ill patients were usually admitted. This wasn’t necessarily news to the businesswoman—she had known for a couple of days now that the kid was rather sick. But even still, there was something about hearing it aloud, in such an objective fashion, that made it feel less abstract than it had when she had briefly talked to Blue about him, so overwhelmed had she been by the fact that her wife was standing in her doorway, seeking her out.

Wanting her.

It didn’t register then, like it was registering so sharply now: Blue was friends with a chronically ill kid.

A kid who might very likely die.

For the last four years, the woman had become a master at inviting her own misery, wrapping it around her shoulders like one of her favorite silken shawls.

Sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, Yellow pulled on her black loafers with painstaking slowness and tried not to resent the fact that her wife was pursuing someone whose death may very well kill her.

(For the last four years, Yellow Diamond had collected each and every last one of her resentments just beneath her skin, where they had writhed. God, how they had seethed.)

As a last minute preparation, she shoved the left hand sleeve of her pajama shirt over her brace and stood up in a motion that would have been fluid were it not for the fact that she teetered dangerously, catching herself at the last second on the post of the bed. She gritted her teeth.

She swore violently.

And then, with terrifying rigidity, unbending to the last, Yellow Diamond moved forward.

It was all she knew how to do.

One foot over the other, each step meticulously measured.

What exactly was she moving towards? The woman couldn’t very well say, much less articulate to herself in a manner that satisfied her rational faculties. Physically, it was the boy—it was the child called Steven, a stranger at the same time he was an increasingly intrusive specter in the household of the Diamonds, a ghost there with all the rest.

The simplest answer was that she wanted to see him for herself, wanted to lay eyes on the human who had miraculously healed her wife.

But the simplest answer was almost pleasant.

In the right light, it could even be construed as kind.

Yellow Diamond was many things.

She was not, in fact, kind.

iv.

“Argh!”

It was scarcely 4AM when the sound of silence shattered with an abruptness that was quite awful. A baby’s high, inconsolable, agonized wails pitched down the narrow hallway and into the half-opened door which led into the master bedroom, where Yellow Diamond’s sleep-laden eyes opened with a start, uncomprehending of what she was hearing for a handful of disoriented seconds until her wife stirred beneath the angle of her arm. Enveloped in the lock of Yellow’s limbs as she was, Blue struggled at first to lift her head from her pillow. They wrested for a few seconds in the disoriented awkwardness of it all, but eventually, Blue propped herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair sweeping sideways down her back.

“Pink,” she whispered unnecessarily, glancing at the clock on her bedside table. “She may need changing.”

It was more than likely then that this was true; Blue had an uncanny knack for sussing out which of their daughter’s cries corresponded to each need.

“Wait,” Yellow yawned, swiping her free hand across her tired face. “I’ll get up this time. You need to get some more sleep. Big conference today.”

Blue didn’t need any more convincing.

“I love you,” she sighed in grateful relief as she slumped back down on the pillow in a movement that wasn’t entirely graceful. “Endlessly.”

“Don’t be so affectionate yet,” Yellow teased darkly as she snuck her arm from around her wife’s curving waist. “You can cover 4AM duty tomorrow night.”

“Aye,” came a faint voice muffled by blankets. “There’s the rub.”

Yellow chuckled quietly and pressed a kiss against Blue’s warm cheek before pulling herself out of bed in a flurried mass of tired limbs, bare feet hitting the plush carpet with a thud as she unfolded into the dark air. By the time she had gained the ten or so steps to the doorway, her wife was already asleep again, her light snores drifting upwards from somewhere behind her shoulder...

The path down the hallway to Pink’s room was smooth and familiar after nearly six months of having traced it night after night, called Siren-like to the inescapable sounds of the baby’s screaming. Yellow took the trip at a jog—mostly to wake the parts of her body that the crying hadn’t already—and gently pushed upon the incompletely closed door leading into the nursery.

Softly lit by the waning beams of moonlight pouring through the high window, the crib at the center of the room seemed almost incandescent—ethereal—even if the sounds emitting from it were anything but. Her eyes still half-gummed with sleep, Yellow proceeded to the side of the cradle, bracing her fingertips on the wooden frame as she looked down at her daughter—her beloved, her beautiful, her squalling daughter, Pink Iphigenia Diamond, whose tiny, button nose was all twisted in the agony of her continuing cries, face red and wet with the exertion.

It was with a certain steadiness that Yellow bent down and brought the baby into her arms, tucking her small head gently against her neck as she patted her bottom and bounced her up and down, up and down, as she’d done so many times before.

“Shhh,” she pleaded, cupping her palm around Pink’s back. “Shh, I’m here.”

The baby continued to whine for a few more minutes still, but the intensity of the sounds lessened the longer Yellow held her and rocked, back and forth, shifting her weight from one leg to the other until the six-month old was nearly quiet in the embrace of her arms. It was then that she made quick work of changing the dirtied diaper, discarding the soiled one in the garbage, and redoing the clasps on Pink’s onesie, always cursing how many of them there seemed to be.

Now laying agreeably on the changing table as Yellow fastened the last button, Pink stared at her curiously, the tender skin around her dark eyes still edged with the trace remnant of her tears. “Between you and the alarm clock,” she told the baby sternly, “I’m never going to sleep again.”

Pink gurgled in unknowing agreement.

From the changing table, the pair of them proceeded to the rocking chair next to the crib, which Yellow flopped into quite unceremoniously, even though she was gentle, ceaselessly careful, as she cradled Pink in her arms, swathing her in the woolen blanket that White Diamond had sent from her latest retirement travels in Peru. The woman was always sending Pink expensive trinkets from sundry countries, and with them, neatly written memos about the welfare of Diamond Electric.

Sometimes, Yellow swore her mother continued to keep up with the company’s stocks better than DE’s team of expertly trained accountants did.

She was also positively sure that this didn’t reflect well on that team of expertly trained accountants.

Between the lines of asking—(demanding)—for more pictures of Pink and declaiming—(boasting)—the exotic natures of her travels, White Diamond’s more pressing message was clear, even if it was subtle, in that overwhelmingly honeyed way of hers.

Keep moving forward.

Continue advancing.

There was never a finish line for success, and therefore, no room for complacency, so darling, my dear, keep one eye on the road and the other over your shoulder lest the wolves attack from behind…

As moonlight dripped gently upon their heads, Yellow glanced down at the now slumbering baby in her arms, whose tiny fingers failed to encompass the whole of her mother’s thumb. The glow of the night settled softly on her milk white face, darkening the freckles spread like cookie crumbs across her cheeks.

She wondered to herself, very quietly then, had her own mother ever held her like this, so softly and so tenderly in the calm of early morning?

It was absurd to imagine White Diamond as being anything other than immaculately put together, arranged in a striking jumpsuit, balancing a portfolio beneath one arm and pressing a phone against her ear with the other.

Softness, tenderness, gentleness, grace—these were not words that readily stuck themselves to her stick figure frame.

She resisted those labels.

Unfailingly mocked them.

How she’d hate to see her own daughter even now…

Pressing an almost defiant kiss against Pink’s smooth forehead, Yellow concluded that it was unlikely her mother had ever yielded to a night like this; that was what the long line of nannies and governesses had been for after all.

She didn’t feel any particular resentment at the fact; she had long made her peace with the fact that the mother-daughter relationship between them was more or less transactional, unless, of course, they were bickering and fighting.

And yet, as she rocked her own daughter in that chair which ever so slightly creaked with each rhythmic sway, Yellow pitied her mother, who—last time she had checked—was apparently drinking thousand dollar bottles of wine in Paris and still finding time to criticize her only child.

It sounded vaguely unpleasant, going through life with eyes wide open all the time, head perpetually tilted over one’s shoulder.

Surely, she thought, the woman had to be tired.

If Yellow Diamond attracted one pair of eyes as she crossed the clinically white hallway, then she attracted two dozen of them as nurses, doctors, patients, and visitors alike all stopped to stare at the spectacle to which they were being treated—the city’s most renowned CEO stalking through a hospital ward, wearing golden pajamas that were somehow finished off with polished business shoes.

Whispers hissed like tiny faucets all around Yellow as the engraved numbering on the doorways increased on either side of her.

11029.

“That’s her. Yes, I’m sure…”

11030.

“She was in a wreck, I think. Saw it in the news.”

11031.

“Looks like someone’s lit a fire under her ass.”

“Shhhsh!”

Yellow scowled, her fingers twitching irritably by her side, but nonetheless maintained a distinctly cool expression until she arrived at the fifth and equally unassuming door on the right hand side of the corridor.

11037.

The door was incompletely closed, which allowed the soft murmur of the television within to seep beneath the cracks, advertising what sounded like some… some kind of kid’s show with its high pitched voices and jaunty background music.

For there was a kid on the other side of this door.

A mere child.

And for the first time since she had conceived of this plan—(it was hardly a plan and more of an unsubjugated impulse)—the CEO faltered, staring at the wood blankly. A choice branched before her, the very dimensions of it almost tangible as she simply stood there, on that hard-tiled floor, feeling the bareness of her own self beneath the thin layer of her pajamas, feeling the cold draft of the hospital prickling uncomfortably against the back of her neck.

She could proceed forward into the room and glean something new about her wife.

For that was what it was all about, right?

At the end of the day, at the very end of this infernal world which they had inhabited together for so many years upon years, she was whom her entire life revolved around in all of its many facets.

Blue and Blue and Blue.

(Who was this mysterious boy to give her cause to smile?)

Or, Yellow could cut her losses as they were and let this final door remain unopened; she could walk away and assuredly regroup. Burying her hurts deep beneath her skin, letting them seethe there with all the others, she could tell herself—command herself even—to be satisfied with the outcome of a battle surrendered, her weapons laid down at the threshold of the final gate that was filled with noises from a children’s television program…

Her stiff fingers reached up and gripped the polished door handle, the brass so cold that it simply burned.

And she hesitated a little.

She bit her already cut lip.

She deliberated.

She was deceiving no one but herself.

She had long already made up her mind.

Because Yellow Diamond, for all that her rigidly composed exterior implied, did not know restraint.

She had spent a lifetime and an eternity scaling mountaintops in search of the next highest peak to climb, to conquer, to revel in, to find herself alone upon.

And so, she couldn't stop.

She wouldn't stop now.

She hauled her hand downwards in a singular vicious movement.

She pushed inwards.

And the door slowly opened to a room filled with dying sunlight, orange fractures slivering onto the walls like great, yawning cuts through the slats in the window blinds.

And there, to her left, propped up in the hospital bed, was the boy named Steven, staring at her from widened eyes.

She was shameless, appalled, entirely uncomprehending; she stared at him quite wildly back.

The nakedness of shock electrified the space between them.

After all, she was a stranger who had just bursted into his room without so much as a cursory knock.

And he was—there were no other words for it—a sickly, sickly child, small and emaciated, dwarfed even by the sheets which swathed him. Wires and tubes snaked across his body, invading him all over—his oxygenated nose, his arms, his chest. There were even a few protruding from his blankets. He had curly, black hair and big, brown eyes that were sunken in his face, grooved beneath with purple shadows.

Her wife wasn’t merely just friends with a sick kid.

(That would have been too simple, too uncomplicated, too convenient for them all.)

No, she was friends with a goddamn corpse.

The thought arrived before comprehension did, and she frowned at herself immediately, scolding.

Sickened.

Steven recovered first, hastily arranging his face into a polite smile that made one of his cheeks look swollen. With a click of his remote, he muted the show he had been watching—some kind of colorful cartoon, which, for unfathomable reasons, featured a crying egg.

Sunny side up.

“Hi,” he ventured; there was tentativeness in his voice but a certain curiosity, too. Yellow glanced to his side and only vaguely comprehended that the sunflowers she had tasked Poppy to send to him were sitting on his rolling side table, haughtily arranged in their vase. She crossed her golden-sleeved arms across her chest defensively and suddenly wished the maid hadn’t made such an appropriate choice in flora.

“Hello,” she returned abruptly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The room was much like her own, except a little smaller, maybe. Perhaps, though, it was the presence of so many machines hovering around his bedside which offered such an illusion of confinement. They were all hooked up to him in some form or fashion, humming and whirring. “You’re Steven, yes?”

“In the flesh,” he grinned cutely. “Steven Universe to be exact.”

She stared at him incredulously.

He had to be joking.

“What kind of name is Universe?”

He stared at her back.

Confused.

A little indignant.

His button nose scrunched up, quivering the oxygen cannulas.

“Well, I think it’s a good name,” he huffed. “My dad chose it for us.”

“It sounds contrived,” she returned haughtily, sniffing.

“You’re one to talk! Your name is a pun!”

Steven Universe covered his mouth quickly then, disturbing a nest of wires at they lifted into the air with the rash gesture, but the damage was already done; it was clear, painstakingly obvious, that the boy already knew her name.

“You know who I am then?” She asked sharply, demanding confirmation all the same.

“No!”

But when Yellow arched a supercilious brow, he broke just as quickly, uncovering his hands from his mouth and letting them fall with a dull thud on top of his blankets. “Well, I mean… not technically… but uh, you’re wearing golden pajamas, and when Blue Diamond dropped by earlier, she said that you’d been in an accident… and it wasn’t difficult to, well”—he peered at her nervously, wincing—“put two and two together… you’re Yellow Diamond, right?”

But Yellow wasn’t really listening any longer.

Because Blue Diamond had dropped by earlier.

She’d been here, talked to him.

Communed.

For some reason she could not entirely rationalize to herself, the thought of it compelled her to want to hit something; she made an awkward, jerking movement, which she only dimly recovered from by leaning her shoulder against the nearest wall, collapsing against it roughly.

“The one and only,” came her affirming reply.

She hardly knew her own voice, how bitter it was and how cruel.

Steven Universe simply stared at her in silence, his mouth parted slightly for a lack of words to say.

vi.

The years scurried forward, dashing across the sands of time with tiny, pattering feet. Pink Diamond became one became three became five in the interim and the rush, her chubby limbs elongating with each passing day that she scampered around the penthouse suite despite her mothers’ protestations—both to the scampering and to the inconceivable idea that she was growing up. She had once been so small, a minuscule bundle in the warm expanses of their arms. But now, the tuft of brown hair which had once barely covered her bald head had bloomed into a spray of curls that framed the sides of her freckle-splattered face, poking up a little at the top.

She was a funny little creature.

Exceptionally opinionated to be so young.

She liked her ballerina lessons, but she didn’t like her instructor, who she said smelled like socks. She had a bright, high laugh that often threw itself down the echoing halls as her various caretakers chased her down their lengths. Her chosen color was pink independently of her name (though yello’ and bwue were pretty colors, too). She loved dinosaurs—how they stomped and bit and roared. Her favorite foods were chicken nuggets.

And yes, these were obviously shaped like dinosaurs.

The little elf, they all called her: the various employees of the Diamond household, her tutors, her imperial grandmother, her mothers most of all. This was partially because she resembled an elf with her slightly tapered ears and big, mischievous eyes, but it was also a nickname derived from her uncanny knack of getting into places she wasn’t supposed to be: the kitchen cupboards, her mother’s claw-footed wardrobe, her other mother’s study—often hiding beneath the mahogany desk to lie in wait for someone to scare.

Usually a maid who was cleaning in there, but sometimes, Yellow herself if she could manage.

(Sometimes, amazingly enough, she managed.)

When the then thirty-six year old entered her office one sun-splashed autumn evening, anticipating a call from Hélène Colbert—a high-up ambassador for a steel manufacturing company in France—Yellow made a cursory glance beneath the furniture just to ensure that there was no silently giggling child tucked into the darkness there. But there was nothing—only that secluded strip of carpet and a few dust bunnies the maid had missed during her last sweep through of the study.

Satisfied, she straightened in her chair and snatched up a nearby pen so as to jot notes on the legal pad she kept on her desk at all times.

It had been a damn good week.

If she could secure an alliance with Colbert, it would be an even better one. The steel company had a plant just off Delmarva’s coast, and if they could work out a reasonable deal, then Diamond Electric would no longer have to import the bulk of their steel supply from a few states away. It would save the company a hell of a lot of cost in overheads, and it’d make the Diamonds that much money more…

The landline rang just as Yellow scrawled that it was September 30th on the top of a fresh page; her plump lips tipped upwards in a lazy smile as she picked up the receiver.

“Hello? Yellow Diamond, I presume?” The woman had a low, pleasant voice that rolled with her French accent.

“The one and only,” came her confident reply, and the two began to negotiate, back and forth, sparring gracefully with their words, back and forth and around the bend again. If they continued at this pace, Yellow could have an initial affidavit sent to Colbert’s office by morning… hell, she could make one of the interns drive down to Delmarva tonight.

“Thirty-five percent,” Helénè countered.

“My highest offer is twenty,” Yellow volleyed back.

And on and on.

Fifteen minutes in, just as the conversation was becoming less jocund and more argumentative, there was a dull thud against the door.

Plunk.

Yellow’s golden-eyed gazed narrowed as she stared at the diminutive crack beneath the door; a slight shadow played there, moving along the edge.

Perhaps it was that awful cat of Blue’s…. ugly creature… it shed everywhere.

“With all due respect,” the ambassador continued, irritation edging her carefully constructed words,“we would be supplying the steel for your latest line of airliners, which is no mean feat, Mrs. Diamond. We deserve at least thirty percent of the cut.”

“Steel you only manufacture for less than ten percent of the cost it requires for Diamond Electric to actually produce the planes in the first place,” Yellow reminded her smugly.

“That’s—!” Hélène seemed to be rendered temporarily speechless. DE’s accountants had done their due diligence when it came to researching the company.”That’s beside the—“

Plunk.

The door was rattled again—twice. Hélène paused mid-blustering tirade; apparently, this time, she had heard it, too.

“Pardon?”

Plunk.

“Excuse me,” Yellow said shortly, her jaw locking. “Let me just handle this… I won’t be more than a moment—“

Straightening from her chair, Yellow Diamond placed the receiver on her desk and swept to the door in a few magisterial clicks of her heels, wrenching the knob violently. If it was that damned cat again—

It was not the damned cat.

The swinging doorway gave way to none other than Pink Diamond, who was sitting crosslegged on the hardwood floor, a bouncy ball caught between her grubby fingertips, the unmistakable expression of guilt caught between the freckles spanning her face. The triangle of light from the study fanned across her tiny form; she crouched in her mother’s lengthened shadow.

“Pink!” The word pried itself loose from her mouth more harshly than she had intended. (Hélène Colbert was on the line… they were so close to securing a deal… she didn’t have time to deal with childish trifles… her nerves prickled just beneath her skin.) “What are you doing?”

“Playin’!” The child smiled sheepishly, her gapped teeth revealing themselves with the gesture. She lifted the toy and just as abruptly let it go, where it crashed to the floor with a massive plunk. “Ball!”

“Where’s Sonya?” She glanced down the hall, as though expecting the day governess’s tall form to suddenly materialize at the end of it, stammering her obsequious apologies. “Why aren’t you in the playroom?”

Pink tilted her head uncomprehendingly as the ball landed with yet another echoing thud; the cavernous ceilings did little to mitigate the acoustics of the sound.

“I don’ know…”

“Well”—she pinched the bridge of her nose in a concerted effort to stem her annoyance—“go and find her, honey. Momma’s working.”

“But I don’t wanna play with Sonya! I wanna play with you!”

“I can’t—“

“But why, Momma?” The child wheedled.

“I told you,” she said it forcefully—she almost growled it—as though she expected the five-year old to grasp the nuances of a rational refusal. Couldn’t she see that her mother was busy? “I’m working.”

“But—!”

“ Pink, ” she snapped, slamming her hand against the doorframe, “ not now! ”

The child's protestations were snatched into silence.

Horrible, gaping, protracted silence.

And then, there was a tiny sniff.

A trembling lip.

Yellow Diamond realized seconds too late that she had gone too far, had crossed the invisible line between scolding her daughter and yelling at her— scaring her. Pink Diamond’s face reddened immediately, the beginnings of tears standing in her eyes, her tiny chest heaving in the telltale signs that she was about to cry.

“Wait, dammit—Pink, don’t—“ But any words of comfort were stifled in her mouth as Sonya finally came running down the dark hall from the direction of the playroom, her horn-rimmed glasses askew, dark strands of hair falling out of her usually meticulous bun. She scooped the child in her arms, uttering her excuses rapidly between every one of Pink’s awful cries, which were now freely being wept. “—playing hide and go seek… got away from me… so sorry, Mrs. Diamond… won’t happen again.”

“Sonya. I mean, Pink. I—“

But before she could finish objecting, could explain, could thoroughly justify why she had made her daughter cry, the lithe governess had already pivoted in the opposite direction just as quickly as she had come, stroking Pink’s feathery hair and whispering soft words of consolation against her head, for the child had buried her face in Sonya’s turtleneck.

Like ghosts, they disappeared together around the corner.

And in the resulting quietness, the remaining darkness, Yellow glanced down.

Pink’s bouncy ball remained—red, abandoned, and ultimately harmless now without the agitations of its owner.

She kicked it away to release some of her feelings.

It plunked, plunked, plunked down the empty hall.

Slightly disoriented, irate, her chest prickling, the CEO eventually returned to her study, closing the door behind her with a click and apprehending the receiver again, where Hélène Colbert had waited, her silky voice armed with renewed rebuttals as to why the deal needed to be renegotiated. They sparred, and they fought, and Yellow unsheathed the best and worst that her blunt tongue had to offer.

And when they finally closed half-an-hour later, with Hélène swallowing twenty-five percent as pleasantly as she could manage without breaking the decorum of her own forced politeness, Yellow Diamond poured herself a celebratory glass of Moscato and reminded herself that she deserved it.

Pink was only a child.

She couldn’t possibly understand…

One day, though…

When she was older…

vii.

The silence staggered thin between the two of them for what seemed like an infinity, and within its breadth, for the first time since she’d woken up that morning in an unfamiliar bed, Yellow wanted to collapse beneath the weight of her own tiredness.

She was exhausted.

She was always exhausted.

When had there ever been a moment, in four goddamn years, when she had not been a corpse cruelly animated by the beating of a heart that was exhausted—spent, empty, irreparably, irretrievably drained?

Her entire body was the bruise that she leaned all her weight upon simply by standing upright as she met Steven Universe’s shy gaze in that crowded hospital room. The wall propped her up, rescued her, preserved what was left of her fragmented dignity; fleetingly, she thought of Blue Diamond’s silver cane.

“So…” Yellow hesitated, reluctant, unsure, lingeringly bitter. She attempted to subjugate these vulnerabilities into a voice that only barely managed to pass as level. “… my wife came by.”

She supposed, in the end, that it wasn’t this child’s fault that her marriage was on the brink of dissolution.

And so she concluded, if this indeed was the case, that she frankly couldn’t hold it against him.

(For the most part.)

“Not for very long,” Steven offered quickly, as though he thought that would help. “She looked really tired… she said she’d been in your room all night.”

It wasn’t lost upon Yellow Diamond how remarkable of an image that must have been: Blue sitting by her side—diligent, solemn, studiously concerned, her silvery brow skimming the tops of her oceanic eyes. For years, it had precisely been the other way around with them, the vigils she had observed by her wife’s calcified form long and unbroken. The sun would spread its arms around the morning sky, washing pink across Yellow’s weary face in gentle, ritual greeting. She would get up then, from the hardback chair where she sometimes sat, and begin her day anew: drink a cup of coffee, arm herself in a three piece suit, make business calls, go to the office, and call Livia constantly throughout the day for updates. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Sometimes, she would kiss Blue’s wrinkled forehead before she left.

Other times, she couldn’t bear to so much as look at her.

Acid would rise up the column of her throat.

Anger would scrape her fingers into fists.

Resentment.

It simply poisoned her.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

“I see,” Yellow returned unimpressively, glancing downwards; there was a scuff mark on one of her shoes, aberrant and unfathomable. (There were so many scuff marks across the neatly polished contours of her life; she could see every one of them clearly now, how they pulsed, how they bled, how they so inexorably bruised.)

Steven shifted in the bed as much as the tubes encumbering him would allow.

She looked up again.

“Blue also said you hadn’t been injured too badly… but I’m really sorry you were hurt in the first place.”

He paused uncertainly; the silence limped forward between them; it dared to approach.

The child had big eyes, brown and rather deep, even though they were sunken in unnatural hollows.

Pink’s eyes had been brown, too, chocolate smooth.

Playful and mischievous and kind.

The parallel did not invite comfort.

She would never see her daughter again.

“Are… are you okay?” He asked, his voice soft.

Tender.

It extended a warm hand across the silence between them; it tried to breach the gap. And this, above all, was the most inscrutable behavior to the practically minded businesswoman. This, above all else, simply galled her. Steven Universe didn't know her. In the three minutes since she had arrived here, she'd done nothing more than rudely abused his name, and still, he tried to breach the gap. Still, he was kind.

“You look like you’re... tired.”

“What’s it to you?” Yellow shot back instinctively, the words forsaking her before restraint held them back. Ashamed, irritated, weary, exhausted—she was always exhausted—she rubbed a chastising hand across her mouth, the heel of her palm rough against her lips. “I mean—shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You don’t appear so rosy yourself.”

Even though she had just insulted him (again), Steven laughed, his bright eyes cutting through the gray flatness of the room.

“Maybe not,” he grinned, “but that’ll change soon enough… I’m getting kidneys today!”

He puffed his chest out proudly.

His smile, incredibly enough, widened.

And in that moment, his joy, his happiness, his unburdened, unmitigated relief was almost so tangible, that Yellow Diamond could barely stand to look at it. Painted in broad strokes all over his sunken face, it was impossible to miss.

Dying, somehow, he was the most alive entity in the room.

“You are?”

“Yup,” he laughed—exuberant, simply radiant. It was simply spilling from him now. “We just got the news this morning. Dr. M—she’s my nephrologist—she’s gone to get them… oh, but you wouldn’t know Dr. M… Dr. Maheswaran, I mean. She’s really…”

He babbled on.

It was inconceivable to Yellow Diamond—downright unfathomable—that he could be so buoyant and light, ensnared by so many running tubes and wires as he was, buried beneath them, dependent upon them, trapped. She tried to comprehend how he could nurse such pure emotions in a world that had been nothing but unkind to him. Always a rationalist, even to the bitter end of a universe which made no sense, she attempted to understand how anyone could still find it in themselves to be so good.

But when comprehension failed her—as it so rarely didn’t—she itched to be away from him.

The feeling swelled in her chest.

It choked her.

And yet, the woman couldn’t look away either, drawn, magnetized, inexplicably compelled like a flower leaning towards the sun, bent towards its light and warmth.

Was this what Blue Diamond had sought when she had befriended Steven Universe—this travesty of a human, this mere child?

Was she, too, looking for some of his sunshine to grasp onto, to bask in, to claim and call her own?

And if this hypothesis had merit—as so many of her hypotheses often did—then how could Blue Diamond possibly stand it?

(Blue, who had stretched out in the darkness of their unshared room for so long. Blue, who had decomposed in a bier of a bed that had been made for two. Blue, whose long face was lined with weary shadows. Blue, who was but a mere shadow herself. Insubstantial. Spectral. Going but never entirely gone.)

Steven Universe’s face, the very expression in it, was sunshine.

It was unbearable.

It was irresistible.

And it was unmistakable most of all.

Tenderness and goodness and an eruption of kindling, all-encompassing warmth—they had long evaded Yellow Diamond��s searching grasp, and now they stared at her openly, from the face of a small child in a hospital bed.

He smiled at her, and somehow, the very act of it was miraculous.

Because he, too, had been wrung out by the machinations of the world—he, too, knew its cruel hands, its ceaselessly grinding gears—and somehow, even still, he smiled.

The thought came to her, unbidden, that she once knew a child who would have done the same.

“Everyone’s so happy,” Steven finished, slumping backwards in his bed. It appeared as though the simple act of talking had worn him out.

The heart monitor on the wall fluttered a little more rapidly than sounded normal.

“And I’m also happy… and a little sad… but happy at the same time.” His brow furrowed as though it, too, was confused by the contradiction of emotions he was seemingly experiencing.

He coughed into the back of his hand, and the sound was rather terrible; it wrenched his entire body in a convulsive motion.

Yellow stared at him baldly while he caught his breath.

“I get the happiness,” she returned bluntly. (She didn’t really get it at all, but she wanted to—she was desperate to—and perhaps that made up for some of the difference.) “But why the sadness?”

He was going to get to live, and so that was the end all, be all, was it not?

Herein marked the end of his struggles?

Forever and ever—amen?

But the boy’s expression suddenly became modest again; he glanced away, a dull pink just barely layering itself over his cheeks which had ever so slightly paled further from when he had coughed.

“Well… I mean, everything happy is always a little sad, too, isn’t it?” He asked, and it was clear from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t particularly looking for an answer. “S-someone… died, so I could get their kidneys… and I guess… you know… that’s something to be sad about, even when I can be happy at the same time.”

Yellow Diamond hadn't expected this.

In all the tortured imaginations she had given to the faceless boy over the past couple of days, agonizing over who he was, and tormenting herself over what could be so special about him, and half-convincing herself that there was probably nothing really extraordinary about him at all, she hadn’t anticipated—in all her haste, her haughtiness, her great offense—to be proven wrong.

Because the words he had just spoken complicated everything she had hoped to confirm in the child.

For he was sage beyond his years.

His face looked as though as it was about a hundred years old.

He seemed to understand, in a more intimate way than Yellow had ever grasped in an entire lifetime, that emotions were not binaries, nor were they monoliths unto themselves.

It was entirely possible, Steven Universe said, to be happy and sad at exactly the same time.

It was possible, Poppy Aurelia had implied, to be neither good nor bad but some mixture in-between.

It was human, very likely, to experience so many things all at once: grief and joy and aching relief and horror and kindness and sadness and warmth.

Perhaps then, it was conceivable… rational even… that she could worship the very ground her wife walked upon and still be angry with her.

She could be goddamned relieved that she was doing better and equally bitter that it hadn’t been because of her.

She could love Blue Diamond and wonder why she hadn’t been enough.

Why they hadn't been.

The realization staggered her.

Simply undid her.

And perhaps the naked emotion must have shown across her face because Steven winced, as though he had perceived he had done something wrong.

“I’m sorry… was that too much?” He asked, averting his eyes. “I know that’s kinda, like, weird to think about.”

“No,” Yellow Diamond replied immediately, and she was surprised to discover that her voice wasn’t entirely unkind.

Her lips jerked.

It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t quite a frown either.

“No…” She repeated distantly, and somehow, the sound became softer in the ensuing echo. “It wasn’t too much at all.”

In fact, maybe, just maybe, it had precisely been enough.

“D’you want to sit down?” He asked softly, inclining his head towards the empty chair next to his bed. “I don’t think my folks’ll be back for a bit…”

His smile was its own invitation.

It tilted lopsided across his mouth.

Yellow hesitated, and she chewed on it, and she ultimately shook her head, inadvertently loosening a crick in her stiff neck.

“Well," she said dryly, "I suppose I have nothing else better to do.”

Blast him and damn him, Steven Universe simply beamed.

viii.

“Here, Starlight.” Extending a skeletal hand from the swaths of woolen blankets covering her lap, White Diamond pressed a handful of quarters into her granddaughter’s outstretched palm. Caught by the stark, gray light leaning in from the window, the matriarch’s complexion seemed especially frail and powdery next to the thirteen-year old’s smooth, unbroken skin. “Take these and buy yourself something interesting from the vending machine.”

“Thank you, Gran,” Pink returned hastily, flustered, flushing, pleasantly surprised. She, like her mother, had expected this visit to comprise of White lecturing her over the tiniest details: her dyed hair, the length of her shorts, the couple of piercings running up the length of her ear. But instead, she was being handed a readymade out after only ten minutes of being informed that she needed to buy clothes that didn’t have artistic tears in them. Her fingers flashed to a close on top of the coins before she unceremoniously shoved them in the back pocket of her “too-scant, hardly appropriate, vaguely promiscuous” shorts, where they jangled next to each other with a telltale clink.

“Just avoid the crackers, darling. They’re awfully stale.” White’s darkly painted lips curled upwards in an encouraging smile. “And take care not to choose anything too sugary either. Heaven knows the damage you could wreak upon your teeth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pink grinned—(her grandmother didn’t catch the implicit sarcasm)—before she flounced off, the heels of her red sneakers clipping against the tiled floor with each exuberant movement.

A door opened, and a door just as abruptly closed, and the cheerful footsteps died down the hall, leaving Yellow Diamond alone with her eighty-two year old mother.

There was silence then.

Strained.

Fraught.

And a wordless tango that only the two of them knew.

They stared at each other coldly, appraising each other without so much as saying a single word—one sitting stiffly in a fancily upholstered armchair, while the other somehow wore her wheelchair like a throne. The matriarch’s bony elbows rested judiciously upon the armrests, fingers templed delicately beneath her pointed chin. Her spiked hair was combed back in its usual fashion, voluminous and almost wild looking, rather like the mane of a lion.

It was an impressive effect—it always was with White Diamond—marred only by the unexpected context of her surroundings. Ritzy though the Spire certainly was—by plebeian standards anyway—it was still an assisted living home, and because it was an assisted living home, because it implied age and dependence and a lack of self-possession, it was an affront to the founder and former CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Desultory to the regal majesty with which she had always comported herself.

Offensive.

“I was beginning to believe you had forgotten me,” White began, the sugar in her voice acquiring a crystallized edge. “What has it been? Two weeks? Three? Forgive me for not knowing the intimate details, dear. Senility, you know.”

“Please,” Yellow rolled her eyes. “Spare me the histrionics, Mother. This is a temporary arrangement until—“

But White interrupted sharply, breaking the bond of her hands to wave one airily. “Until my physician concurs that I have fully recovered from an incident that I could have perfectly rehabilitated from in the comforts of my own manor. Yes, I am well aware.”

Nine weeks ago, she had stroked out and only barely survived to complain about the tale. She laid in a hospital bed for weeks upon weeks. It had only been luck, if such serendipity existed in an unthinking, unfeeling world, that the maid was cleaning that day, that she’d found her employer stretched out across the marbled floor in the kitchen.

The line of Yellow’s pursed lips thinned.

“You’re being too cavalier,” she said bluntly, shifting a little in her chair. “You almost died.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t, and now I’m here, and my own daughter can hardly spare a moment from her schedule to visit her poor mother in the nursing home she consigned her to.”

“Your doctor recommended—“ She began hotly.

“My doctor, wuss that he is,” White cut across her again, her thin nostrils flaring ever so slightly, “indicated that the fate of my whereabouts rested in your capable hands, and I see that you have chosen to wash them both free of me, a Pontius Pilate arranged in an Armani suit. How charmingly novel.”

Each word was expertly chosen, a weapon drenched in syrup so sweet, that to swallow it, was saccharine.

Silence simmered between them again, electric like exposed wires seething through the air.

They challenged each other with nothing more than their eyes.

They waged a quiet war.

And Yellow lost.

Spectacularly.

A recurring theme when it came to her mother.

“I’ll arrange for you to be sent home tomorrow,” she folded, her voice clipped, almost petulant. Her arms covered her chest so tightly that she imagined she was leaving an impression exactly upon the spot where they laid.

“Thank you,” White returned, equally curt. “That is all I have asked for.”

Then cut.

End scene.

Cue the curtain descending upon a familiar stage.

This was how appointments with her mother usually concluded after all, with her asserting the final word and Yellow tucking tail to run, hide, nurse her shining wounds, and pretend that they had never been inflicted in the first place come the next morning.

But then, complicating everything that Yellow had ever known about her, upending every assumption she had ever made in forty-four years of having been her daughter, White Diamond did something quite unexpected.

She sighed, the sound filtering thinly through her nostrils.

It was just a sigh, but it was also an implicit gesture of vulnerability.

An admission to weakness from a woman who had marketed her entire persona upon being impenetrable.

And the both of them knew it.

Rather than acknowledge it, though, White glanced away immediately, staring out into the wide window which stood next to her wheelchair. The pale light gently touched her face, bringing the lines etched into those leathery folds into starker definition. Countless botox injections and cosmetic surgeries had not entirely worked their magic, for Yellow saw, in that protracted moment—viscerally understood—that her mother was getting old, if she was not considered old already.

The thought gripped her.

Inexplicably stung.

On top of her blankets, the ridges of the matriarch’s bony fingers trembled slightly against an invisible cold.

“Mother…?”

“Starlight is getting so tall these days,” White murmured, as though Yellow hadn’t said anything at all. “You were tall, too, when you were her age, I believe… but you always slumped your shoulders, dear, and it detracted from the effect. I scolded you when I caught you at it.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the autumnal day collapsed down Yellow’s rigid spine. She had never once, in so many unflappable years, ever heard her mother engage in nostalgia, an emotion she had always more or less derided to be regressive.

Looking backwards, after all, distracted from the now.

White’s ebony gaze never left the window, though she continued to speak, her voice ever sharp but somehow, simultaneously distant .

Detached.

As though the two women, scarcely four feet apart though they were, occupied two different realms of existence.

“I scolded you tor so many trifles, Yellow,” she went on, giving no visual indication that she remembered her daughter was in the room. “Your grades, your occasionally taciturn personality, the very way you spoke sometimes, fearing naturally that your youthful shortcomings would reflect upon our hallowed name.”

“Mother,” she tried again.

Yellow wanted it to stop.

For nearly five decades, their relationship had been a contract that they had both meticulously observed, and now, before her very eyes, White Diamond was ripping it cleanly asunder.

She was looking back, and she was sighing.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go; this wasn't how their world turned.

“You don’t have to—“

“And maybe,” White Diamond hummed, the sound glasslike, almost fragile in that light filled room, “I scolded you too often. I instituted so many boundaries upon your life and nary gave you a means to shake them… goodness knows I likely didn’t intend you to… you are, after all, everything I ever dreamed in a progeny—successful, confident, shining… but I wonder… mmm, I suppose… no… no…”

She trailed off then.

The words fell emptily to the ground and laid, injured, at her slipper-enclosed feet.

Yellow Diamond attempted to pick them up the best that she could, though they shivered in her palms.

“You did your best, Mother,” she said, her voice strained.

Small.

She almost felt like a child again, standing outside her mother’s study, hoping to be let in.

“That counts for something, yes?”

There was a pleading note in her voice.

She loathed it.

She despised herself.

She had long since convinced herself she didn’t need her mother’s approval to illuminate the successes of her life, and yet, here she was—forty-odd years later, still begging for it, nearly on her hands and knees to get it.

White Diamond sighed again, the gesture infinitesimal. She never quite divorced her eyes from the window. Mist swirled across the flat expanse just beyond the glass, smoking the world beyond it silver, shroud gray.

“You should take a day off every now and then,” she only replied. “Accompany Starlight to buy less vixen-like clothes. Perhaps arrange a vacation between the three of you. Paris is always lovely in the fall.”

It was unexplainable, even to herself, but anger suddenly seared her chest as she realized what White was driving at.

“Mother—“

But before she could continue, before she could defend herself against White Diamond’s unsubtle accusations, before she could point out the hypocrisy of it all coming from her of all people, the door opened again. Pink came back in laughing—she was always laughing—boasting of her acquisition of the last pack of gummies in the vending machine.

And in all the commotion, washed beneath the noise, Yellow almost didn’t catch the words that slipped from the side of White Diamond's pinched mouth.

“Maybe I should have taken you to Paris, too.”

ix.

The adjustment from the wall to the chair next to Steven's bed came with no small relief, her body reveling in the sensation of finally being able to rest her tired bones. For Yellow, admit it though she never would, had overexerted herself, had walked too long and stood for even longer. As subtly as she could manage, she massaged the outer part of her right thigh where it had struck the side of the door during the wreck.

Without really knowing it, she knew—almost certainly—that the impact had left a bruise.

(Oh, well.)

(It could join all the rest—the contusions and scrapes and cuts and aberrant scuff marks.)

(Just another quantity more in the collection of open wounds that made up her life, that haunted it, haunted her.)

Careful not to disturb any of the lines and tubes which tethered him to so many humming machines, Steven Universe painstakingly twisted his tiny body to stare at her through the rails of his hospital bed.

And Yellow Diamond stared at him just as intensely back.

And somehow, quite instinctively, she gleaned the impression that he pitied her.

She shrunk uncomfortably beneath the emotion.

Protestation immediately sprang to her defense.

But in the end, he was kind; he only asked her a simple question.

“You sent me those flowers, didn’t you?”

With a small smile, he tilted his head to the tray which now stood directly in front of Yellow, where honeyed light from the window caught the petals of so many sunflowers crowded in a blue vase. She cursed Poppy once again for choosing such a metaphorically apt arrangement; she despised, viscerally, how one of the flowers seemed to drip below its peers, its long neck broken.

Hopeless.

Pathetic.

“And what of it?” She asked stiffly. Irascibility remained her go-to safeguard against uncomfortable questions, all those pesky, prying things. “That’s simply what you do when someone is in the hospital. You send flowers. You tell them to get well.”

But, once again, Steven was brighter than she had initially given him credit for because his rebuttal was such that even the Zircons couldn’t have refuted it, prodigious at making counterarguments though they were.

“Sure,” he grinned, mischievous, shit-eating. His dark eyes twinkled with his own playfulness. “But that’s not really something you do for total strangers, right?"

No, no in fact, it was not.

Damn him.

“At ease, Sherlock,” Yellow scoffed, simply fuming. She half-hated this child still. She crossed her arms over her chest and felt as though she would never unbend them from her stony frame again. “You only received them because of your relationship to my wife, of what you mean to her.”

But even the very mention of Blue Diamond did something to her, transformed her in the instant it took to articulate her existence.

Her golden eyes softened.

Her hands clenched on top of her lap.

And she was weak; she almost felt indecent; she glanced away.

“You mean a lot to her,” Yellow shrugged, hesitant, almost childish. It was childish to talk about one's emotions in such a bald way. “And that, in return, means something to me.”

She could feel his dark eyes settle upon her, sensed the intensity of them, the quiet warmth, and once again, the hackles of all her best self-defenses attempted to stir to her aid, dull anger writhing in the pit of her stomach.

She stared outside the window, at the indigo drapes that were pulling themselves over an orange sky, and tried to master herself.

She returned her gaze to the sunflowers almost against her will.

And found yet another thing to hate about the whole arrangement.

How the vase was midnight blue.

“You... you mean a lot to her, too, you know,” Steven whispered. Each word fought to be heard over the sounds of the many machines which kept him alive, but still, they fought; they ached to be heard. “She loves you… she’s just… she’s—”

“What?” Yellow pounced upon the words harshly. She clung to every last one of them as though they promised the secrets of the universe in their hesitant syllables. She didn't even attempt to strangle her question into a murmur to match Steven's own.

She was desperate.

Craven.

Blue Diamond loves me, but what?

What unspoken things remained in the gulf between them? (There were so many, likely too many to ever really surmount.)

What final barrier tore their collective world asunder?

(Was it Pink? Was it grief? Was it Yellow herself? Perhaps, simply enough, it was everything; it was all.)

Steven was gentle, almost apologetic, as he proffered an answer.

"She's... forgotten how to say it, I think," he said. "And she's trying... she's really trying... to remember how."

It was three mere words.

They were trite and cliché; every child knew them.

I and love and you.

And yet, for the first time in four years, Yellow understood her wife perfectly; she knew that it could hardly be as uncomplicated as that.

For it was those same three words that never came easy, even if they were said, even if they were masterfully articulated.

Because love was not a string of syllables.

It was not a phrase, nor a trivial, commercialized thing.

It was bigger than that, grander and more terrible.

More inconceivably profound than three words could ever possibly hope to suggest.

Love was action.

It was light and touch and sound.

I and love and you.

"I love her too." The words came before Yellow Diamond ever really registered them; they seized at her constricted sternum; they eviscerated her raw throat.

"... but you've forgotten how to say it," Steven finished for her.

Yes.

But she couldn't bring herself to admit it, so she nodded thickly, and somehow knew, from the way that he smiled sadly at her, that Steven Universe understood.

Dusk fell through the high window in Yellow’s study in strange shafts of amber light, illuminating the stack of papers she was attempting to decipher in the growing dimness. Her readers sliding down the edge of her nose, her mouth moved soundlessly to the heavy cadence of the words, the words, the words—but her tiredness unmoored her; her comprehension only barely kept pace with the speed with which her eyes skimmed the long sentences. So it was a relief when a faint knock at the door gave her a tailored excuse to set the damn thing down for a brief moment.

Indeed, she was so glad not to be reading a dense passage on consumer statistics, that she forgot to sound irate at being interrupted.

“Come in,” she called, her voice hoarse from hours of disuse.

Obligingly, the heavy door creaked inwards, and there, in the triangle of light thrown forwards by the lamp on Yellow’s desk, stood Pink Diamond in that ratty, old hoodie that Blue so despised, a pencil caught in her feathery pink hair, an apologetic smile caught on her lips. She had only recently turned seventeen a few weeks ago, and for some reason, right then and there, it struck Yellow Diamond that it absolutely showed.

Gone were the traces of baby fat from the girl’s heart shaped face, replaced by a certain angularity which bore the trace distinctions of pride, confidence, and the beginnings of a distinct ego. Gone were the gapped teeth that had defined many of the photos from her childhood. Gone were the awkwardly lanky limbs that had made her so self-conscious during her tween years; as she entered the office, her movements were graceful, shaped by all those years of ballerina lessons. She walked on the tips of her toes, gliding silently across the wooden slats.

Her daughter had grown up somewhere in the rush of so many years.

And somehow, it had escaped the woman’s attendant notice.

Was it not just yesterday that she had fit perfectly in Yellow’s arms, cooing at her softly through the darkness?

Was it really today that she presented herself before her mother as a young woman, so close to becoming an adult and simultaneously so far from actually being one?

Pink broke the trance first by collapsing into the armchair in front of Yellow’s desk, pulling her spindly legs up from the floor, so that she could cross them. There was a My Little Pony bandage on her left knee where she had only recently scraped herself trying to shave.

For some reason that she couldn’t entirely articulate to herself, the presence of it soothed the businesswoman.

Reassured her, perhaps, that there were some parts of the child who still remained.

“Well, Mother,” Pink sighed heartily, “I’ve finished my History essay. Can I go to Carmen’s party now?”

Carmen Luíz, as Yellow knew, was both a classmate of Pink’s at the private school she attended and the daughter of two wealthy business executives who were highly reputed in all the important social circles as parents who let their underaged daughter throw raucous parties in their manor on Wide Island any time they found it upon themselves to celebrate their wealth by taking vacations.

They often celebrated their wealth.

Yellow exhaled through her nose and returned to her papers; the paragraph on statistics hadn’t become any less incomprehensible in the couple of seconds it had taken for Pink to ask her asinine question.

“My answer hasn’t changed since the last time,” she returned, her voice clipped as she adjusted her readers, pushing them back on her nose. “You know my position on parties.”

“But—“

“But nothing, Pink.” Yellow never entirely looked up, uncapping her favorite red pen to make a few scratch marks on the packet. They were less in the service of productivity than they were the illusion of it. “My word is final.”

Pink fell silent; she knew better than to cross her mother’s carefully drawn lines so late at night; instead, she picked sullenly at one of her mismatched socks, the pink one with patterns of roses embroidered across the cloth.

Yellow scowled, partially in response to the particularly dense sentence she was trying to divine meaning from, and partially because she hated when her daughter grew taciturn. It was a tactic which worked well enough on Blue when Blue was feeling merciful, but she, on the other hand, had as much tolerance for moping as she did country music—which was to say little all.

“Is there anything else you needed?” She asked pointedly, glancing up once more. “I’m rather busy—”

But her daughter’s dark eyes had shifted away, her ever veering attention suddenly caught by a point of interest somewhere just behind Yellow’s shoulder. Yellow followed her gaze slowly and immediately understood that she was staring at the photograph perched on the shelf there; the sunset caught the edges of the silver frame and swept an orange hue over the subject it contained.

With a faint jolt in her stomach, she recognized it at once—a picture of White Diamond holding Pink on her third birthday. The two of them were sidled together in an armchair, the toddler sitting on her grandmother’s lap. White looked ever impeccable in a stunning black jumpsuit, which was cinched at her tiny waist with a silver belt. She wrapped her bare arms around Pink and placed the point of her sharp chin atop of that abundant spray of brown curls.

Meanwhile, Pink was laughing in the image, her childlike exuberance radiating across the space of so many elapsed years, her face covered in what looked like the vestiges of chocolate cake.

A smile that was remarkably genuine pulled at the corners of White Diamond’s black lips.

Somehow, amazingly enough, her eyes creased pleasantly beneath all the botox.

It was the happiest Yellow had ever seen her own mother, and perhaps that was why she kept the reminder in her study.

It was a testament to the damn near miracle that the woman hadn't entirely been made of ice and burnished steel.

That she had loved—incrementally, sparingly, meticulously—in the best way that she knew how.

“Gran,” Pink murmured, a small smile threatening to disturb her freckles. “I’d forgotten she always wore a lot of eyeliner.”

“When I was younger,” Yellow returned slyly, “she used to inform me that there was no point in putting on makeup unless it was to create an intimidating effect.”

“Which explains the black lipstick,” Pink laughed, miming the act of drawing a smile across her lips with an invisible tube.

“Precisely.” Her own laugh was like a bark, short and rather blunt. Amusement climbed up her chest and nostalgia—the press of so many memories in the span of a handful of seconds.

But then, to her horror, there was a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with either emotion.

White Diamond had only died a year ago, but sometimes, only sometimes, the fact of it still caught Yellow off guard when she was least expecting it.

It had been her time.

Assuredly.

Absolutely.

She had been eighty-five.

She had had another stroke.

But still, the woman—her mother—for all her many faults, had always been there—the stubbornly unyielding presence at her shoulder.

Unshakeable.

Invincible.

Some days, it registered with Yellow a little more forcibly than usual that she would never pick up the phone again to be treated to a forty-five minute lecture on production inefficiencies at Diamond Electric.

And more often than not, this realization did not come on the heels of relief.

“It’s weird,” Pink said quietly, voicing what her mother had silently been thinking, “but sometimes, I kinda forget that she’s gone, you know? She only dropped by so rarely… it’s almost like she could still be vacationing in Rome, Milan, Tokyo, or any of her other favorite wine spots.”

She had many favorite wine spots.

“Yes, well”—with some effort, Yellow pulled her head back to its forward position—“that feeling goes away eventually.”

She tried to glance down at her packet again.

The words glittered malevolently beneath the lamp.

“I mean,” Pink pressed softly, “I don’t know… it’s kind of comforting to think she’s still out there somewhere, right? I-I know she’s not, but, like—“

“You’re right,” she returned flatly. “She’s not…”

The dismissal in her voice was clear.

She dared to glance up again and saw that an embarrassed flush had scrawled itself across Pink’s cheeks. But this time, the teenager obediently unfolded from her seat, stretching her limbs high over her head before bringing them down by her sides.

“Yeah… I’m just being silly,” she said, glancing away. “I’m going to go see if Mom’ll edit my essay for me. My conclusion paragraph’s shit.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, dear.” Yellow penned yet another useless mark on her paper. “You know how she feels about plagiarism.”

“True,” Pink smirked, regaining some of her youthful jauntiness, “but she hates the idea of me making anything less than an A even more.”

“Touché.”

The door opened and then closed once again, leaving Yellow Diamond alone in an office full of dusk and dust and thin, fading light. With as much delicacy as she could spare in the silent seconds that followed, she replaced her pen on top of her desk and templed her hands lightly on top of her stomach, breathing in deeply.

Exhaling harshly through her nose.

Perhaps it was the rationalist in her—militant, rigid, almost unfailingly correct—who took no comfort from the fantasy that her dead mother was still somewhere in the world, enjoying a fruity cocktail, smiling lazily beneath a European sun.

Or perhaps it was the pain which such an image inexplicably wrought.

Subtle, though sharp to even prod.

For there was no comfort in death, no assuaging its keen sting.

There was only the coldness of its reality, the aching bitterness, the confrontation of an unassailable truth...

But perhaps she had been premature in teaching Pink that.

Perhaps she had been too hasty in preventing her from holding on to one last childish daydream more.

After all, the seventeen-year old had plenty of time to grow up—to learn, to know, to intimately understand that the world turned viciously, perpetuating its endless cycles over and over again—recapitulating them.

It turned and turned and turned.

And sometimes, all they could do was turn with it.

#bellow diamond #yellow diamond #blue diamond #pink diamond #steven universe #s: steven universe #mimiku #flower child #;-; oh my god it's finished

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khunfounded · 4 years ago

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We’ve Still Got Time

[ This is work is part of a collab I did with the wonderful, stupendous, and amazing @sweetpopcornkat for Day 2 of Khunbam Week. Find it here! Our chosen prompt was Reunion and this fic goes with the song Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard!]

Bam was back with everyone again, but he somehow still felt like he was a thousand, million pieces of himself all milling about. He was the Slayer Nominee, and the Sweet and Sour teammate, and the Irregular, and Viole, and the 25th Bam. He was something different to each person in the Wolhaiksong compound, and he had no idea how to reconcile that fact within himself.

He missed the simplicity of the Floor of Test. No, he missed being able to confide in someone about the complexity. He and Khun would sit out on the balcony and talk and talk, or never say a word at all. On one miraculous night, they stayed up until dawn just listening to all kinds of music on Khun’s pocket, watching the shinsu stars dancing about.

Bam didn’t know what happened. Khun was so distant now, always busy and eyes always somewhere else even when they were talking. He worried that it was because of what happened at Arlene’s hand or maybe because Bam had spent years putting them all in danger. The worst thought that dared tread water in the light of day was that Khun didn’t like the way he’d changed, how much he had changed. That Khun had seen his darkest heart and decided to turn away.

Because Bam wasn’t just Bam anymore, he was so many things and it was all complicated and twisted even in his own head. He hadn’t had to stop and think about it when he was in FUG because there was never time to stop. He was always training, and killing, and clawing his way through the dirt just to survive, even as they all decreed him a god. But now, he was out, and suddenly his mind was collapsing in on itself.

One evening, after a long day of training and trying to figure out who he was around new and old friends, his feet found themselves walking him to a balcony, like his subconscious was telling him that this was what he needed, the moon filling his bones and the stars racing through his veins. He never understood why Rachel wanted so much to see the real night sky, but he could appreciate the beauty of this false one.

He gripped the railing tightly, as all his pieces fell in on themselves, and he was just Bam. It felt like being naked on the battlefield, all his defences gone. He wanted to scream, and lash out, and tear off his skin at the beautiful unfairness of it all. He was safe, he was with all of his friends, but he didn’t feel like he was back. For one glorious night he had, when they first came back and he fell asleep in the arms of his two best friends. But nothing was ever so simple. The water had rushed up, and Bam had spent his days trying to build up the dam just to meet it. But the pressure was too much on his dam of broken bones and broken promises, and it fractured and fragmented and fell apart.

Under the soft, fake light of the moon, Bam cried. Tears mixed in with his long bangs and he brought his forehead down onto the railing. He was here, on the balcony, where everything was supposed to just fit together, but nothing was right. He missed Khun.

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Khun rubbed his eyes as he leaned back from his lighthouse. He had been at this for hours and he didn’t even need to be done with it for days, but it was a small price to pay for being distracted from his thousand, million thoughts. Ever since they had come to the Wolhaiksong compound, his worries had multiplied. The first night together had been a blessing, but when Khun had awoken with Bam gone from his and Rak’s arms, it was like a wakeup call.

Bam had needed him during the Floor of Test, he had been of use. But now Bam had so many better people around him who could do so much more. Khun needed to prove to them all that he was someone that they needed, that he was someone worth Bam keeping.

He had seven years of catching up to do, but for now he couldn’t let Bam see his weakness. So he kept himself busy, and planned and trained and absolutely did not hide himself away in his room. It was only partially an excuse anyways, he had to make sure FUG never touched Bam again and he needed to hunt Rachel down to keep her grimy paws off of his best friend.

That was another thing. Rachel. If Bam ever found out what he had really been doing for five years, or what he was planning on doing now, Khun wasn’t sure he would ever be forgiven. Even after Rachel had pushed him, had caused him seven years of hell, Bam seemed more conflicted and confused than angry, like Khun would be. So if Khun ended the story before Bam could reach the conclusion, and his friend found out, Khun was absolutely sure he would be dropped.

But it was something that needed to be done. Khun could never let her get away with what she had done, and he could never allow her to do it again. So she had to die, no matter what.

Khun found his mind once more drifting to the balcony of the second floor, where countless times he was able to see the shinsu starlight reflected in sunshine eyes. He taught Bam so many things about the world, and learned countless things about the boy in return. His favorite time, that still played in his dreams, was when he first taught Bam about the music of the tower, and they rested upon each other until dawn as songs played softly from his pocket. Bam was ethereal, eyes closed and smile blissful. Khun had never wanted to kiss anyone before that night.

He stretched his aching limbs and rose from his desk. He needed to get away from his thoughts, being here obviously wasn’t helping them.

He let his feet take him somewhere else, anywhere else.

Khun ended up at the balcony, where he was shocked, and yet somehow not, to see Bam, long hair twisting in the wind, shaking against the railing.

Bam hadn’t seen him yet. He should back away, go somewhere else, give him space.

“Bam,” He said.

Golden, sunshower eyes, hidden beneath curtains of hair, turned towards him.

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“Khun-ssi,” Bam, surprised, couldn’t keep his voice from cracking.

His most precious friend’s face scrunched up in helpless concern, lovely sapphire eyes turned sad. Bam would have done anything in that moment to change it, even though he was the one at fault. Especially because he was. He wanted Khun to smile. He was so, so beautiful when he smiled.

“Are you alright?” Khun was still in the doorway, at the barrier.

Yes, he was. Yes, he had to be. Yes, because if he wasn’t he was something else, something scary.

“No”.

Tears fell to the floor and he shook. Then, like something in Khun had broken, too, he rushed towards him and brought him into a tight, terrified hug. Bam clutched at his back, burying his face in Khun’s neck.

“I missed you,” Bam whimpered, “I missed you for seven years. I missed you for forever”.

A fractured sound came from Khun’s throat and Bam felt wetness on his shoulder as his friend sunk deeper into him.

“I missed you, too. When I saw you, it was like waking up from the worst nightmare I’ve ever had”.

“Then why are you gone?” Bam wailed, “Why are you gone when I need you here?”

“I don’t know,” Khun whispered, rocking both of them from side to side, “I don’t know.”

“I thought you hated me”.

“I thought you didn’t need me anymore”.

“I’ll always need you”.

“I’ll always love you”.

“Then stay,” Bam begged, trying to bring them impossibly closer, to keep Khun from going away again, “Then stay”.

“Okay,” Khun promised, bringing his head up, bringing their foreheads together, “I’ll be here”.

Bam saw his lovely, wonderful face again, and the tears that were falling down it.

“Forever,” Bam pleaded.

“Forever”.

Then, soft lips were at the corners of his eyes and brushing lightly against his cheeks. Khun was kissing his tears away, Bam realised. He nuzzled into those soft kisses, before doing the same. He brought his lips to Khun’s face and soothed his pain away.

“You know,” Bam said, reluctantly pulling away, “I had to learn how to dance. To improve my agility and endurance in fighting”.

Khun, in a rare instance of not getting the picture, said, “I want to kill them all”.

Bam rubbed their noses together before taking one step back. He took his pocket out of invisible mode and played the song that had him thinking of Khun throughout his entire time in FUG. He had so many songs he wanted to show him, but this one had to go first.

As the song began to play, crooning out, “I don’t know you, but I want you all the more for that,” Bam reached out his hand.

“Khun,” he started, “Aguero, will you dance with me?”

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“Words fall through me, and always fool me, and I can’t react”.

Khun stared down at Bam’s hand, then up at his face. Bam was smiling at him like Khun was the only thing in the world, like he was the only thing that mattered.

Khun took his hand and Bam tugged him in, bringing a hand to his waist. They glided around the balcony, fingers threaded together. Khun needed to see those golden eyes more clearly, so he pushed Bam’s bangs out of his face. He kissed Bam’s forehead, and Bam hummed lightly.

Then, their eyes locked, and it was like everything was falling into place.

“Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time”.

“I’m finally awake now”, Khun felt the need to state.

“Good morning,” Bam giggled, and Khun couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. He knocked their foreheads together lightly.

“Hey, quit teasing. I’m being serious”.

“I know, it’s one of my favorite things about you”.

Then Khun was twirled around and brought safely back into loving arms.

“One of?”

“I have a list, I can show you sometime”.

“Please don’t. My heart might explode”.

“But, Aguero,” Bam whined, “It was one of the things that kept me sane in FUG. Are you saying you don’t care about that?”

“Fine, you can tell me. Later. And only four points”.

“But I have over three hundred! And they’re all very important”.

“Oh, god”.

“Falling slowly, eyes that know me, and I can't go back”.

Bam laughed, beautiful eyes crinkling.

“Just for that, I’m going to make a list of my own. See how you like it”.

“I’ll love it, just like I love you”.

Khun’s heart wasn’t able to handle this man. So, as a defense mechanism, he twirled Bam around, just so he could have a few seconds safe from those eyes. But then they were back, and Khun was falling again

“I missed touching you,” Bam said, “I think you were my anchor”.

“I know you’re mine,” He replied, then, “You can touch me as much as you want”.

“You have no idea how happy that makes me”.

“Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice. You'll make it now”.

“I think I have an idea”.

Khun’s eyes roved all over Bam’s face, drinking him in, before stopping at his smile. His gaze flickered up, and he saw that Bam was equally as enamored.

Then, like it was fate, like it was always meant to be, like a thousand million perfections, their lips met. Khun smiled into the kiss. Bam hummed. It was home.

They swayed together, Bam’s arms coming around his waist and Khun’s arms around his most precious person’s neck. They stayed in that perfect, lovely, loving moment, until they had to part.

As they rested in each others’ arms, Khun stared into the eyes of the man he loved, utterly enraptured, as Bam sung the last line.

“Falling slowly, sing your melody. I'll sing along”.

#my writing #tog #tower of god #tog spoilers #khunbamweek2020 #day 2 #khunbam #khun aguero agnis #25th bam

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gridoc · 5 years ago

Text

he woke up to rain

tried my attempt to write a Doc/Grian meeting in my pirate au sooo enjoy?

7.5k grian/doc pirate au

Its quiet- the sound of crashing waves along the sides of the ship could be only heard. Grian however, hears only his heart- beating out of his chest. He isn’t scared- not at all but the stars seem a bit dimmer, the diamonds seemingly hiding from the bloodscape of the inevitable. Grians' chest goes numb from the constant thumping of his heart as he stands before the most feared pirate of the seven seas and tells him to fight him.

And maybe, he could have done something else- jumped overboard and tested his chances, but he’s stubborn and stupid. More the latter many would say if they saw him right now, two feet on deck in between the bodies of his own crewmates and- god, (you don’t even believe in god, Mumbo would say) Grian could have saved his own hide- so easily.

But he didn’t, so too the corpses around him mock him. Bodies of his crewmates, the men he laughed, drunk with- lay around with deadly wounds dealt by pirates.

The moment he saw The Golden Goat appear, Grian should have known people won’t survive.

But, as he stands with his own sword pointing towards the Pirate Captain- a smirk coming from him, a confident smile knowing it's for an easy fight - Grian is glaring in response and he knows in his heart that it’s not his own time to die, today isn’t his last day. He’ll make sure of it.

His last day couldn’t be this- he woke up to rain.

Small taps rocked the navy ship, wooden boards acting as windows cracked and clacked outside, the rain running against them, tinning delirious warnings to an ever coming storm. Grian nearly falls out of his hammock as the thunder outside crackled, a siren call about the soon future- Grian groaned forcing his eyes open, an eyelash into one of them and such tears leaving him in annoyance. So many bad omens for only a minute into the day.

Already dressed for action, he used his sleeve to wipe his tears as he got out of the hammock. The red sleeve staining due to the liquid. It’s in his right eye, he rubbed it knowing it's just going to make it worse but the inflorescent tears didn’t stop coming- the other eye bleak and dry at least. “Grian!” The voice of the first mate jostled him to look up, a visceral of his heartbeat quickening and ready to make any order come true. “Grian!” The voice grew closer as the First Mate appeared on the stairs leading to the deck. “It’s your shift, what are you still doing here?”

He scoffed as Grian quickly ran past him at the warning- was it that time already? The sun isn’t even up- Grian hit himself in the head as he realised, the storm, its clouds hiding the sun forcing him to be late.

Poking his head onto the deck, his face was immediately met with rain hitting his face. Grian put up his arm on instinct, hiding his eyes away from the water. But as the weather absorbed into his coat, he decided to put it back down and just continue on.

Looking around, he saw this shift's crew members running around panicked trying to keep the ship in control during the weather. The tempest was gulfing out water onto the deck, trying to escape itself- coughing out waves and rivers onto the boat like a sickness. The boat moved, shifting under the weight of the furore, Grian having to grab a rope to keep upstanding.

Water began covering the deck in a thin layer acting as a bowl slowly filling in the corners. A few crew members were desperately shovelling water out before it reached a too late point. Just for the sea to return it as if they lost it and it was giving it back to its rightful owner. Some others were running around pulling ropes, cutting them off- tying them, to change the sails periodically to keep up with the rising winds.

“Hey!” Another voice snapped him back to reality- a crewmate who was holding onto a rope tightly called for him, boots into the wood as they tried to settle themselves against the wet floor not to slip away. “If you have time to gawk, you have time to help us!”

He got distracted, he felt annoyed at himself. Sure, it's bad weather, he thought as he ran up to the person and grabbed the rope, helping out to pull back the sails- but they've seen worse, he’d seen worse: much worse. Spitting out hair from his mouth, the wind driving the hairs around his face in a frenzy, even his own ponytail threatening to unravel itself in the conditions. With a final pull along with his crewmate the rope finally got back far enough to tie it around the railing of the deck. Just as he pulled along and tied a knot around it- another shout came from the opposite end of the vessel. Turning around, seeing yet more people battling against the water, trying to roll barrels and supplies from the deck into shelter- into the crew, captain quarters, securing cargo from the deck.

“All hands on deck!” The captain shouted over the wind- and much more of his own crewmates emerged from the bottom of the barrels, some of them are putting on their coats and boots as they are getting up to the surface- getting met with the sudden gust of wind. At Least Grian was lucky enough to be woken up earlier alone, it must be chaos down there now.

Along with sea, the deck began being flooded with more sea, the rope he was earlier struggling to get a knot around was taken over by another pair of hands. There were a lot more people around quick, the Captain did say ‘all hands on deck’ after all. Sails and masts were being tied down quicker than before, the cargo disappearing in the scuffle. At the moment everything was secure, but just then the storm picked up in the distance large waves crashing into one another, sending ripples throughout the ocean like an echo towards them the wind propelling it towards the keel. The crew had a mixture of shouts as a particularly strong wing enveloped them, the boat violently seesawing, some people falling past to the bottom of the boat- hitting themselves on the walls.

The Captain and First Mate were at the helm, the wheel working against their will and using both the mens might to keep from going haywire. Grian once again was distracted and only realised that when someone grabbed his arm, forcing a thick rope into his hands. With muscle memory working for him, he grabbed the rope; a few more crewmates lined up behind him and before also holding onto the cord and pulling. Grian heaved it within rhythm with everyone else, rubbing elbows with the people around him as they used their might to get the sails to close so they didn't propel themselves into the nearest landmass. But the wind was stubborn, and refused to work with them.

But, in the midst of the storm: between the water crashing into waves, collecting lifes and realisations along the depths and floors of the ocean, the peaceful waters became sharp and dangerous threatening to destroy them any minute, people started singing.

“Oh!” One strong voice began, guttural and loud, “We’d be alright if the wind was in our sails!” and although Grian didn’t know this one, he still sang along. “It would be all right!” They all sang in unison with another pull and push, moving along the deck, “If the wind was in our sails!” the sound of the earth trying to shatter them, to drown them, the voices of everyone being drowned out by the winds but the energy, the ripples of energy of the song still was heard. Not even the first mates orders were heard, now one of the many voices echoing through the sea singing the song that they might die singing.

“We'd be alright if the wind was in our sails!” Grian let out the song with a throaty rasp, but he did with a unison of other throaty rasps- “And we'll all hang on behind…” the unity of everyone fighting against whatever force put this upon them outnumbered the killing intent of mother earth.. He stepped back, another shout from everyone as they pulled, people upfront guiding what to do as they stared at the sails and onto the sea.

“

In reply, the crew replied with a shout of glory compared to a thousand soldiers' army about to fight their last battle. It's funny how a little storm can test your life and realise that you aren't safe on this boat after all, but here they are anyway. Waking up to the possibility of your death, that the sky you looked under for so long had the intention to kill you.

People stopped singing and let go of the rope as they instead went to run back and forth to tighten different ropes, everyone in a hive mind set the course towards the spot of light, hoping it was not the one at the end of the tunnel.

Grian didn't expect that however, and some others as well- people upfront let go of the rope throwing off the harmonious balance upon the middle, and the force of certainty and relalibalty of the pull was gone. Grian felt himself falling forward and seeing the person before him fall as well.

But Grian didn't spend training with his sword for his reflexes to fail him right now, Grian let his chest fall back- sliding his leg behind him and the other before him. And just as quick the back one slid to the right followed by the other one, his footwork always being excellent and this was to show as he watched a few of his crewmates falling upon on each other like dominos.

Turning around, he sang along to the continued shanty, "-if we make it around the horn!" the strong voice passed by him, the song continued around him as people ran around stringing the masts.

The wind struggled to overpower the hopeful men's voices, "We'd be alright-" he sang along with the first half, watching the bodies of red scurry and sing around, in reply everyone else sang "if we make it round The Horn!"

The ship of the military men forced itself through the waters towards the sight of hope.

The voyage was clearly ofcourse, even Grian , one of the many crewmates- the last one to be told the details of the journey or not even in mind to inform, knew this. They were heading towards the Hermiatic oceans to get to a military town to pick up and change through crewmates who were due to retire or leave. And Grian has been at sight of these exchanges, old men with bitter bones who he played cards with left towards nowhere, even men younger than himself would never return- he remembered them coming onto the ship, bushy tailed and wide eyed on being part of this and serving the King just like Grian once was, then a voyage later the spark gone as well as an arm, and the one who sung with a guitar in the deep nights gone to never be seen.

And they weren't headed there, the course sidestepped due to the furious storm and thunder, not even a care for the repercussions of this task if they were going to be lost or be able to find their course nor will they be ontime for the handoffs. But even as Grian knew of this stupid decision, he didn't question it, himself wanting to head to the very spot he himself pointed out. So, he won't complain.

As they headed closer the rain held up, the waves calmed as they crossed through the threshold- the stomach of the ship letting out a breath as it digested the tension every soul within it let out during the situation.

People stopped running around, stopping to look up with a smile. However some were already holding brooms and mops and forcing the water back to its source, the wood stained and dripped through. Grian hissed, it must have gone to the crewmate quarters, he already knows he's going to sleep either on the floor if they decide to put them up to dry or just sleep on a damp hammock. He isn't happy for either. Well, so it goes.

God (Mumbos voice once again ran through his mind)- he’s tired.

“Hey!” A hand waved before him, the quartermaster, “Use your gawking for something useful and go to the birds nest, spot us some land why don’t you?” With a ‘yes sir’ Grian turned around to climb up the mast, ropes and ladder making it easy and he hoped he's going to be able to come down just as quickly.

...He didn’t, yawning hours later after someone brought him up some soup and bread he was still up looking for any land, and his fear that they got turned around away from land and into the large and into the uneding Eremeetis- where pirates roam circling the land like prey, waiting for a stupid navy ship to sink their claws in.

He raised his spyglass, his heart freezing as he saw it. The sun was going down behind it but there was no secret what it was. A custom ship, seen years of wear sailing through the ocean, as if the sea itself was falling upon itself to make way for it, red sails doing nothing to camouflage the ship against the blue ocean, and the red flag with a skull and crossbones didn’t hide who- what it was.

The Golden Goat.

He’s heard of this ship, legends, stories, rumours- and there it was. He never expected to see it, never expected to lay his eyes on it. Intimidating, large and on its way towards them- getting bigger and bigger in his vision. He gasped, his spyglass falling down to the floor of the nest. Shocked, and terrifying he looked down and with all his might shouted into the deep,

“PIRATES !”

And that's when the first cannon went off, and the pirates missed, but the force of the waves rocked the ships- sending Grian flying off the birds nest.

He barely registered what was happening, the wind breaking under him- the air in his lungs beginning to taste metal, he screamed. Looking up, the nest and sails looming over as he grabbed the first that ended up under his hand, his stomach dropped and arms pulled as he held on tightly onto a piece of horizontal wood at the bottom of the sails. Blinking numbly against the pain, he tried to breathe but couldn’t, “Drop!” He heard a voice under him, and, he did. He didnt think about it, his fingers were slipping anyway. He let himself fall further- and closed his eyes for the impact of the floor of the ship….

But it never came. Instead he landed on something softer, opening his eyes to see some crewmates around him, linking their forearms to make him a landing pad. Seeing him okay, some let go to go load up cannons or help to sail away from pirates.

“You okay?” a young one asked, one of the bushy tailed types, Grian couldn't speak- air knocked out of lungs. “Go-” he rasped his hand on his chest, heart beating canons into his brain. “Pirates-” the other seemed to understand. Leaving him to go help out.

Grian took a deep breath, and one more regaining his lifeback- they, they need to leave. He looked around and well, there wasn't much to do than go on normally, a cannon shot won't do right now, it will knock them back again. And then, the first normal shot went off- and the young boy who he just talked to was shot point blank, his body slumping over and falling down against the floorboards.

The sun has completely set now, the darkness returning into everyone's minds as more bullets flew past. Grian ducked behind some barrels- as more shots from both sides overcame and he heard more and more bodies hit the floor, the echo of their souls departing onto the wood never forgetting, and another and another and another- and he heard laughing, unknown laughter from faraway, The Golden Goat was coming closer. Then, another body fell by him, and in his hand- a gun. He took it.

He popped his head over the barrels, and shot. And hit, a strong ‘fuck!’ was heard- an unknown masculine voice from the other side. He hit a pirate- he hit a pirate! Of course he did- they didn’t see him so he had the window of opportunity. He popped his head out, seeing one less pirate up on the deck. But with a large hit, as the two ships collided with one another. They were probably going to put down a plank for the pirates to come and raid the ship Grian was on. And he didn’t want to be already the first victim to be sliced by the sword, in the moment of distraction and bullets Grian crouched up, gun in hand.

He vaulted across, moving behind barrels and just any cover. Moving up the stairs toward the helm, and his bread hitched seeing the dead body of the first mate. The same first mate who woke him up this morning, the one who told him that it's his shift- who woke him up before everyone else. And now he was lying dead on the floor, a bullet through his head bleeding out on the wooden boards. Grian tried to stop his gasp, tears in his eyes as he crouched down to avoid being seen. He peeked over the helm however, seeing a plank on the space between the two ships, The Golden Goat grander in size yet smaller in crew but with the amount of bodies on their ship it should be the other way around at least.

But, the pirates were lurking around right now. A man, with brown hair in a ponytail roamed around on deck- shooting whomever breathing. A woman with short brown hair disappeared down the stairs to the cargo hold.

Guess the red, no mercy flag was no joke. However, where is the captain of the pirate ship? He peered up higher, looking for the fabled captain, a monster who was ever worse than any of his crew, ruthless and emotionless and no pleading will help you when before him.

But, it isn’t whoever is on the navy ship right now, the man with the ponytail was a contender but as one of Grians crewmates pleaded for his life [the voice of the man, was deep and naturally loud. The one he heard leading the shanty during the storm], telling the pirate about his children and wife. The pirate hesitated, it was seen in his demeanor, the gun at the forehead of the navy did not set off immediately, it lingered. The pirate stepped back, and looked away. Then shot.

The body of the father, husband, singer fell onto the floor- slumped. Draining his blood onto the floorboards, forever staining the deck.

Grian fell down, sliding and sitting down- hand over mouth to resist a gasp. Grian knew the red pirate flag- no mercy even if they plead for life. He heard about it, the legends, but- but- he never really believed it until now. He had to face the facts, as they are alive onboard right now.

Looking around, he took a deep, quiet breath. He needs to get out, there is a lifeboat on deck.He needs to get into it, and just go. Or die trying. Hopefully not the latter.

Grian looked back up, seeing now another woman with long blonde hair onboard along with the ponytail pirate.

He needs to sneak past them. Can he distract them? But how? He looked around, seeing a bottle- empty glass bottle by the helm. He frowned, was the captain driving the boat, drunk? Where is the captain anyway? Is he dead? Where is the Navy Captain?!

He sneaked down the stairs again, in one hand he had the gun in the other the glass bottle. Crouched down and walking down slowly, he was staring at the other two pirates as he did so. He ducked beside the barrels again, walking over the dead body he grabbed the gun from earlier. The lifeboat is where the pirates are, he needs to distract them-

“Wait- Wait!” His captain's voice rang out, Grian peeked out seeing the captain being dragged up from the lower deck by the brown haired woman, “I can tell you- where the gold is- don’t kill me! Don't kill me!” The captain was hiding under the deck, as his crew was killed. As his first mate was shot. Aren’t the crew supposed to be family?

The brown haired woman threw the captain before the other two, Grian peeked out further- could this be the distraction? Is it okay for him to use this as a distraction to save his own skin?

The ponytailed pirate raised his gun. The captain looked around panicked, for something to help him, save him- then they locked eyes.

The captain looked straight at him, Grian was too far out- he was seen by him. And now, he just hopes that the captain won’t see him as what is needed to save his own hide.

“There!” The captain shouted, pointing at Grian. A wish is too weak.

The long haired blonde pirate looked at him directly- as a shot rang out and the ponytailed pirate earned his second kill. Point blank, no mercy. And as he put his gun back into his holster, he also looked at Grian.

Grian started shooting.

The blonde woman immediately went towards the short haired woman, throwing them both to the ground- the ponytailed pirate shooting back before moving towards Grian. Is he not scared to be shot?! Grian tried to shoot again, but instead- blanks. He ran out of bullets, he clicked and clicked onto the trigger and nothing but air and his hopes left the gun.

The ponytailed pirate arrived at him: With a well placed kick to the chest, Grian stumbled back. And overboard into the water. Grian was about to plummet into the ocean- but the deja vu of before, of falling off the mast again. So, once again he grabbed the first solid thing under his fingers. And then, with a familiar gut into the throat and a stretch of the arm, he grabbed a piece of wood from the side of the ship. But this time no ones going to be there to tell him to drop, and this time he won’t.

With a sense of determination, of remembering his crewmates, who cared enough to stop in a midst of a pirate attack to make sure he's safe, the new crewmate who stayed behind for him to make sure he's fine- who died because of that. Grian can’t fall, how would he be able to face them in the afterlife? Or in the next life? Or whatever the gods have planned? But as he's dangling from the side of the ship, which in the past two years he felt safe in- who he gained new and old friends- which it all disappeared in the hour as their blood drip through the floorboards. Do gods even exist? Is Xisuma, the god of sailors, laughing right now or crying over this loss? Has he created the storm who got them here?

It's a sick joke, Grian thought as he lodges his feets into some crevices between the wood, and clumb. He had no gun, no bottle- the gun fell into the water, and the bottle was still on deck. But he doesn’t have any use for it now does he? Grian took a deep breath, as he put his foot up again- bracing against the water, then the next- and so to the hand. Hissing as he felt water hit his back, the sea water engulfing his seasons as he clung to the ship that threw him up.

He finally came back up to the top, peering over again, the pirates back where the navy captain's body was. There was another one however (a pirate), still not the captain however, as they seemed to be arguing with him. He had white hair and a black mask on, a bandage on his arm. He couldn’t hear what they were saying from this distance. Vaulting over the railing, he landed feet first- crouching again. This time they were seriously distracted, but still by the lifeboat.

He moved again, to the right behind more closer barrels, quickly sneaking between the empty space. Hearing them a bit better now.

“You could have left ONE Person alive!” The white haired man shouted, annoyed. “Now we don’t know where their safe is, their important cargo- what were you thinking?!”

The ponytail shrugged, “I- I! Well- I thought more people were left?”

“Doc is going to be mad, you know that right?” The blonde woman pinched the bridge of her nose, “And then we’ll be on cleaning duty along with-”

“I don’t care if Doc is mad!” Ponytail replied, throwing his hands up, “How difficult is it to find some safe?”

He turned around towards the captains quarters, “That captain grassed out his own crewmate! He probably has it under his bed or something.”

“Come on, False” The short brown hair said towards the long blonde hair, (False, Grian hears her name is), “Let’s distract Doc for a bit, before he wonders why we’re taking so long.”

False sighed, glaring at ponytail, then looking back at short hair with a “I don’t think Doc can take losing at poker against me again.”

“He’s going to have too, lets go.” Short hair gently pushed false towards the pirate ship. Which the other decided to just go. White hair followed ponytail into the captain's quarters.

Grian grinned, it's his chance! With nothing left to lose and a clear path in front of him, Grian didn’t even think as he ran across the deck- a bad plan in mind. Grab the boat, turn it over and throw it down onto the sea overboard, dive into the water and get into the boat. It's foolproof.

It was too easy to run across, ripping off the ropes that kept the boat to the ground. He didn’t pay attention to his surroundings, panicked and quite hopeful he threw away the ropes. Then he felt his hair being pulled back violently, he was thrown back by his hair back onto the floor. In the same way the captain did too him- and saw ponytail again. Oh no.

“Thought I threw you overboard.” He said looking down at him, saying so as he placed another bullet into the chamber of his pistol. “I should have waited for the splash I guess.” with a click, the weapon was loaded, and the pirate pointed it at Grian. Straight at his forehead.

“Ren!” A new voice entered the fray, deep and accented. The authoritative voice echoed through the ship, calling the name. The pirate about to deal his death sentence turned around, he must be Ren.

Grian used this opportunity and dealt the same fate Ren did to him earlier, so he kicked him. Kicking his hand holding the pistol, the gun was thrown somewhere else- Grian didn’t have time to watch where, but concentrated on standing up and dealing a punch to the pirate.

The pirate fell back, and in this distraction Grian ran back to the boat- and once again was pulled by his hair. This time the white hair was back, and threw him face first to the ground, arms behind him and he felt them being tied up with rope.

“Amu, you’re annoying.” He could hear Ren's voice, he was standing back up. As white hair pulled him up to his knees. “Thanks Etho.” Ren said to the white haired pirate, as he walked up to the two. Etho started talking, but the two went silent as a set of footsteps were heard.

Footsteps, belonging to the voice which called out Ren- in the middle of the loud sea, the loud, heavy footsteps walking across the bridge between the ships were the only things heard. They were slow and confident, taking their time. Grian was too nervous to look up to who they belonged to, already having a feeling. “Is this why you were taking so long?” The accented voice returned, the footsteps changing to creaks, indicating it landed on the navy ship.

Ren coughed- “Well, we were about to ask where they have the safe.”

The footsteps grew closer, and Grian still watched the floor- the pale oak floorboards looked darker now. Much more redwood. Why isn’t he looking up? He could kick a pirate who he saw kill twice earlier, he blindly shot another pirate earlier- but the silence the two went when these footsteps arrived, told him to shut up and look down. “I’ll ask.” And the steps were before him, well, the shoes. Black boots- stained dark at the heels and soles.

And like that, then the feet crouched down- squatting down and Grian still stared at the floor. Then a hand was grabbing his face- forcefully and squishing his cheeks, making him look up at the owner of the voice.

It was alot to take in.

First thing he noticed was the teeth, there was a smile on the person's face- it was sharp, twisted- and smug. The teeth were so too, sharpened alike to sharks, created for biting, for violence, for hurt- nothing peaceful. Then, it was the eyepatch across the person's right eye, black and a scar peeking from beneath the fabric. Smoothed back brown hair, a stubble on his chin- with a white eye. But, the white eye seemed to make sense with the green textured skin, a monster. The legend echoes, staring at the Captain- many calling the Pirate King- he was a monster through his actions and through his own self. The smile however, was the most terrifying thing about him.

“So, where's the gold?” He asked, the low voice once again coming through. Grian stared, stared at the captain before him. Earlier, he was scared because of the concept of this man, of the idea, of the silence- but his confidence came flooding back for the second, aswell as the sounds of the seas and the rotten and mournful realisation of: he’d going to die anyway. So:

He spit onto the Captain.

The Captain immiedietly recoiled back, closing his eye with a “Fuck-” Grian grinned watching the pirate stand up, wiping his face from the saliva. The Pirate King looked back at Grian, “Take him to the plank.”

Wait no- Grian thought as he felt himself being pulled up and pushed towards the edge of the ship, where there was a gap between the railings, a long board beside it. This time, Grian doesn’t know if he will be able to catch himself if thrown off.

Ren placed the board onto the gap, halfway so it won’t immediately fall off, Etho pushed him towards the plank. And with his hands literally tied, Grian couldn’t do much as he began walking onto the board. He looked back, seeing the Pirate captain, not even looking- not even witnessing his order just wiping his face and not paying attention.

Grian gritted his teeth, “Go.” Ren said, seeing him not moving, both him and Etho had their feet onto the board to keep it steady as Grian walked but instead he stood still looking at the Captain he just offended.

“Duel me!” Grian shouted. Its a stupid move, idiotic- He;s the pirate king, he never looses. This is a suicide mission, just a way to make his death slower and more painful. Delaying the inevitable.

The captain looked up, hearing that. ‘Paying attention now, are you?’ Grian thought.

“He won’t duel you, move along.” Etho scoffed, letting his foot leave a board for a second, making it wobble, Grian however, didn’t care- still looking at the Captain as he steadied himself under the moving board, the roar of the sea under him beckoned, waiting for a new snack as the sacrifice dangled above in the form of him. Grian didn’t show any weakness, back straight and looking straight on, as the waves clung up trying to grab him for dinner.

The Captain didn’t even spare a second thought as he walked over- the same confident walk as before. “And what's in it for you?” He asked, the deep voice making Grian shiver, but the contents of the sentence made him angrier. For him? The pirate is already assuming that this will end with Grians defeat.

“You let me go.” Grian said his terms, feeling worse when the two other pirates laughed at this.

“I let you go?” The captain smirked at this demand, “And if you lose?”

“I tell you where the safe is- as well as navy trade routes, plans- which ports aren’t properly guarded with valuable cargo.”

“And then I let you go as well?” The pirate crossed his arms, an amused smile still on his face.

Grian shook his head, a gulp before finally speaking. “Then you kill me.”

The two other pirates looked at the Captain, it was a good deal- if Grian only offered the safe it would be easy for the Captain to just order for him to plummet to the sea.

But, Grian worked in the navy long enough to be trusted with secrets, and is able to see and know where too, he has valuable information. And it's only a duel for them.

The Captain stared at him, the smirk falling, a more serious face actually contemplating this.

“Doc…” Ren began, making the captain look at him. They shared a look, which Ren shook his head during.

“Okay.” The Captain said, earning a look of disappointment from Ren. The smirk was back, “Untie him, give him a sword.” The captain ordered and turned around, taking out his own sword from his belt.

Grian looked at Etho and Ren, who once again shared a look before beckoning Grian to come back. Which he gladly did so, Etho took out a small knife from his pocket- cutting off the ropes with a quick slice. Grian instantly takes them apart, going to rub at his sore wrists.

Ren looked around, walking away towards a corpse and taking the sword off them. Throwing it at him- Grian catches it.

Looking across, he sees the Captain with his own cutlass already out, with the same annoying smile. It's confidence, it's relaxed, he knows he will win. All the odds are in his favour, Grian is much shorter than him, he’s been thrown about the past hour and his arms are sore from catching himself constantly as well as a headache due to the hair pulling.

But, even with those, Doc is going to lose, Grian was determined to stay alive. Today isn’t going to be his last day. He woke up to rain.

Grian stepped forward, standing up straight- sword out, one foot behind the other, and one arm behind him. Grian isn’t going to die, not within a duel- he remembers all the navy training he had, all those days he skipped to practice sword fighting with Mumbo, the only thing he was top of his class in.

And he was also determined for that Captain to stop with that annoying smile.

And if Grian knows something about sword fighting, then he knows it's going to take a few seconds to cut it off.

Suddenly, a wave crashed into the boat- making the occupants recoil, moving around to tighten their feet onto the ground. And suddenly Grian felt something hit his foot, he looked down- the glass bottle. Grian looked back up, to see the pirate captain raise his eyebrow, “Having second thoughts?” He asked, with that same, irritating, so sure of himself smile.

“No.” Grian smiled back, and in fell swoop- grabbed the glass bottle and threw it at the captain- once again having the benefit of surprise as he began the duel with a bang. The captain exclaimed, putting up his arms as the bottle hit them- and when he put them back down Grian was already before him, a split second earlier the duel would have been done with. But the Pirate still had his reflexes in the close quarters, reflecting the blade quickly- pushing Grian back but with nosense of self-preservation Grian was already back hitting the other blade again.

Grian pushed, the pirate captain walking back as he continued the deflect the sword hits, the sore sound of metal hitting one another echoing throughout the ship with buoyancy, Grian was going to get him in a corner and he’s determined to maybe even throw him off the ship- but after a few more sword deflects the captain was sick of this, and with one more strike the captain used the sense of confidence Grian had and kicked him when least expected- Grian falling back onto the floor, blinking his eyes open and with an reflect he rolled away from the sword about to stab into his chest- the captain's sword lodging itself into the wooden floor where Grians body used to be.

Grian stood up, and before the Pirate could take out his sword he launched himself at the pirate, pushing him down onto the floor. Sword gone, the captain rolled across the floor. But, quickly collected himself again, looking up with a deadly glare. Grian gulped, the glare at the others' faces replacing the annoying grin from earlier, and this time- Grian saw in the pirates expression that it's serious now, that his ruse of being weak is up- and that the pirate will show no mercy.

As Grian was realising the tone shift of the battle, the captain used his own trick against him- moving up during distraction. The pirate ran at him, grabbing his sword out of the floor as he pushed it at Grian. Grian reflected again, the two roles reversed as Grian walked back, this time the one being pushed over the edge.

The parrying continued, and this time Grian was in a corner, concentrated on keeping Grian in front of him, but Grian didn’t want that- he needed to get out of this. Break the rules, think outside the box, both of them were too confident and the beginning and those feelings both faltered during the fight, putting on equal level but Grian couldn’t have equal. Grian wanted- needed to win, his life depended on it, and he doesn't plan on dying today.

With another reflect, Grian ducked down- and headfirst ran onto the pirate, pushing them both down onto the floor. Grian sat up, straddling the captain's legs as he went for the kill with his sword. But the captain again had good instincts, putting his own sword up to defend himself. Grian pushing down onto it, trying to somehow bypass it.

The captain gritted his teeth, pushing the blade up and with a loud clang of metal in the reflect; the other was pushed back giving the pirate an opportunity to sit up and roll the two again- this time Grian on the floor and the pirate over him, swords once again gripping against each other in the midst of their own duel of which one will break first. And over the sparks, in the seemingly dead end within the battle with no rules, Grian took a guttural breath- and once again. Spit onto the pirates face.

It worked, the Pirate fell back, rolling off- closing his disgusted eye at this. Grian stood up, filled with adrenaline, his own sword in his hand- and pointed it at the pirate. Placed under his neck- the pirate doesn't even notice until he stops wiping his eye, looking up at Grian with a surprise. The pirate blinked, looking up at Grian with- with an unfamiliar expression. A beat passed between them, both breathing heavily, the wind passing through them. Grian let out a smile, he won.

And then two more swords were at Grians own neck. Right, the other two.

“Put the swords down.” The Captain said breathlessly, after nothing happened, he repeated the order, a much stricter tone “Did I stutter? Put the swords down, the man won!” He gestured at Grian. At this the swords disappeared from under his neck.

Doc looked at the sword Grian was holding with an incredulous look, Grian stared back not sure what he meant for a second before- “Ah, ri- right.” He stuttered, putting his sword back.

“What's your name sailor?” The pirate asks, standing up.

Grian did not want to give him his name- but, he feels like he owes him that after this but first- “What's your name?” Grian asked in response to the question.

“Now, that hurts.” The pirate stated, with a slight smile and a rolled eye, he bowed ceremoniously, clearly in mock. “I am Captain Doc. Surprised you do not know my name already.”

“The wanted posters don't give out your name-” Grian tried to excuse himself, before realising how that sounds.

“And yours?” Doc asks, disregarding that- but a smile still on his face showing he understood what he meant.

“Grian.”

“Grian.” The pirate repeated, in his deep, rumbling voice that made Grian shudder. “Well, Grian-” Grian realised that he regrets giving out his name, just for the sole reason of having to hear the pirate say it. “You won, we will let you go.”

Grian finally turned around, away from Doc, to see the other two pirates had flipped over the lifeboat he was trying to get too early. They were setting up to lower it, he looked back at the pirate. Doc put his sword back at his belt, hands in pockets and no ulterior motives to be seen.

Grian walked over to the lifeboat, sitting down before looking at the other two pirates with distrust. It's not like he’s going to ask to go get his things from under deck. Sitting down, he saw the two other pirates beginning to lower it down to the sea. Which calmed down fortunately, and as Grian looked back at the bright ship from above- he saw the Captain peer down overboard, crossed arms on the railing, just watching him.

It's as if he knew that Grian was angry he wasn’t paying attention the first time he was being plummeted to the bottom, and as he stared at Grian and Grian stared at him- well, Grian lost. He might have won the duel, but in the staredown he was defeated as he looked away back at his rowboat- his heart beating faster as he heard a chuckle from above. He looked back up and saw the captain gone. And as he was fully lowered, the other two pirates disappeared too. And Grian let out a deep breath.

“He- He had important information!” His crew was angry at him, Etho exclaimed when they passed back onto the boat, “Now- we killed an entire crew and we still couldn’t find the safe! You had your fun, you could have just forced the information out of that navy-”

Doc stared at the sea, completely ignoring his crew, the ship behind them where the duel took place was long onfire crumbling upon itself and the bodies it had onboard. The gold and cargo falling to the bottom of the sea.

He shrugged at the complaints, “He won.” He only said, staring out to the calm sea.

It seemed only Doc realised the fact he won, that that random navy defeated The Captain of the Golden Goat, in a duel. Maybe the crew was avoiding the topic, or didn’t understand the implications of the fact but Doc himself has- since the moment the sword was under his chin and he was looking up to the blonde man.

“Grian…” he murmured out, turning around- a smile returning to his face. “Huh.”

#hermitship #hermitshipping #gridoc #pirate au #my writing

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arknights-imagines · 4 years ago

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Decided to combine both of these into one imagine since I think they go really well together! 💕 Anons, I hope you don't mind~~ 💖 Also, thank you both for the requests and nice messages! 🌸🌸 I really hope I did SilverAsh justice!!

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“ you are & always will be precious to me . ” + “ shh , it was just a nightmare . you’re safe . ”

Imagine format; lots of it is from SilverAsh's perspective

Contains: SilverAsh, gender neutral Doctor, Doctor being upset after a nightmare, implied established relationship I guess loll??

Word count: about 1.7k

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There was no room for compassion in war.

But despite the fact that SilverAsh believed and stood by that, he couldn't deny what he felt for the Doctor. With his position and what he faced daily, warm emotions weren't something he experienced often. His front was shrewd; a man who would do anything to get what he wanted.

But even then, he was always gentler to the Doctor. They were an old friend, someone he held dear - very dear, in fact. With them, his intentions never held ulterior motives; with the Doctor, SilverAsh was always in his most sincere form.

Night was calm at Rhodes Island, even if it wasn't completely quiet. People were up late, unsurprisingly, filling the facility with a light buzz of chatter or footsteps. While he knew it was important to get proper rest, it was easy to feel restless while staying in his room for hours on end, and some fresh air never did anyone any harm.

Standing on the Rhodes Island deck, the Feline stared up at the night sky, leaning on the railing. While it was just a blanket of dark spotted with stars, he always found the dark sky calming to admire.

Yawning just slightly, the Feline blinked as he heard footsteps approaching. Making sure he looked decent, he turned around with a formal facial expression, ready to greet whoever was coming closer, only for it to leave his face in an instant at who his eyes fell upon.

It was the Doctor. By the looks of it, they were planning to go to bed as well, but for some reason, they were here, running into him. Walking a little idly, they stood beside him, face turned away.

He waited for them to speak, but they didn't move or even make any gesture toward him. Lifting a brow just slightly, SilverAsh placed a hand on their shoulder, speaking in a quiet tone, "...it's late. What are you doing awake at this hour?"

A breeze passed by, and they hugged themselves just slightly. The Doctor came looking for him often, to ask about battle formations or just to see him. He didn't mind their company, not in the slightest, but they didn't seem to be acting as usual; they seemed a bit more urgent than usual - almost distressed.

Their reply came delayed, "I didn't mean to bother you. Could I…stay here for a bit?" They avoided his eyes, shifting their weight from foot to foot.

The Feline blinked, his brow lifting again. Something felt wrong - but it was late at night, they could've just been tired; perhaps they had walked to the deck just to get some fresh air. Still, the Feline felt like that wasn't at all the case; he came to the deck quite often, and they knew this. He didn't believe this was coincidence.

Nevertheless, he nodded a bit, "You can certainly stay. Though, you should know, it's improper for us to meet so late at night like this." He said this lightheartedly - he and the Doctor were far from being strict colleagues, and he wasn't bothered by them wishing to stick around him, no matter the reason. Still, at his words, they didn't give much of a reaction.

Quietly, they thanked him, folding their arms over the railing, tilting their face to look up at the sky, "I didn't mean to bother you so late. I just…needed to come see you. I looked in your room but you weren't there." They looked to the floor as SilverAsh , his gaze trained on them in concern.

"What could've urged you to do so at this hour?" He asked, squinting as he noticed how their facial expression seemed contoured in discomfort, "Do you feel ill?"

They shook their head, "No, I'm fine." The Doctor seemed to be biting their tongue, but SilverAsh didn't want to force them to speak if they didn't want to. "Just…a bit worried I guess."

His brows furrowed in concern, the Feline placed a careful hand on their shoulder, taking note of how they tensed under his touch for but a second, "Care to elaborate?" The stars nor the moon provided much light, he couldn't see their facial expression in much detail.

A meek shrug left them, the air around them uncertain and hesitant. Finally, the Doctor looked toward him, and it was only then that he realized how pallid they looked. Trying to hide his concern, his grip on their shoulder tightened by just a hair.

The Doctor spoke, words leaving them slowly, "I guess I'm just wondering…my role in all of this."

SilverAsh blinked for a moment, "Your role? We all have our roles to play, my dear." His voice was soft, as was his touch as his hand fell from their shoulder to place itself over their own hand. The Doctor seemed to relax at his tone, but whatever was bothering them didn't leave.

A small shake of their head came in reply, "Your role relies on my orders, that much I think I get at this point. But…how am I supposed to do that role when my memory is completely gone?"

SilverAsh's eyes snapped to theirs. So that was it; "You're concerned your memory loss will hinder your abilities?" Gently, the Feline squeezed their hand, catching their attention. "My dear, you may not remember, but you have never disappointed anyone I can recall, and you have never disappointed me. You've always done your job to the best of your ability, and that is enough in trying times like these." The smallest smile graced his lips, "It's always intrigued me, how you're able to show compassion even in war. I used to think that was naive, that it was useless. But you proved me wrong."

The Doctor gaped at him, eyes widened and lips open. They opened their mouth to say something, but the Feline placed a finger to their lips - there was more he wanted to say. If he was honest, SilverAsh had wanted to tell them these things as long as he could remember, but there was never a good time. Now, with them alone and the Doctor giving him their rapt attention, he didn't think there would ever be a more suitable time.

"Many here are counting on you, but the same people are prepared to support you - including myself. You may not each of remember them, and your memory…it may not return to you, that is true." He shifted, his body turning toward them as he gingerly took both of their hands, "But you should know, even at your most vulnerable moments, you will always have somebody to support you here at Rhodes Island. And even when you're unsure about that, you should always remember,"

SilverAsh looked at them with a tenderness they didn't think was possible in their world of ruin. His next words were quiet, meant for them and only them; "No matter what may happen…you are and always will be precious to me."

The Doctor stared at him, their face slowly being overtaken by shock. Even at the pallid look they were giving them, the Feline kept his eyes on theirs, hands still holding their own. He wasn't expecting himself to say such reckless words, but he didn't regret them - he wouldn't regret them, even if the Doctor reacted poorly.

However, when their reaction finally came, it was so sudden SilverAsh barely even processed what was happening.

"I…" Their words were fragile, almost being taken with the night breeze, and when they looked up at him, their eyes were brimmed with tears. He almost didn't notice under the dim lighting they were in, but in a moment, they were crying, as if they couldn't hold back their emotion any longer. The Doctor blinked, recoiling as if they had been slapped across the face, "Enciodas…I'm sorry-"

Lifting a hand to their face, careful not to stare them, SilverAsh spoke, snapping from his shock, "My dear…" A frown came to his face, his stomach sinking at how distressed they really were, "Will you tell me what truly happened now?"

They seemed embarrassed, but were in no condition to brush him off anymore. "I had a bad nightmare. That's why I came by…I couldn't go back to sleep." The Doctor confessed; their words were interspersed with small sobs and sniffles, but they continued regardless, "Everyone got hurt, and I couldn't remember what to do, I-"

The Feline hushed them softly, "Shh." He didn't let them finish; he didn't need to hear any details. Without hesitance, he wrapped his arms around their form, holding them close to his chest as they sniffed in frustration.

They gripped hard at the fabric of his shirt, biting down on their tongue to try and stop their crying, "Sorry--"

"Stop that, don't apologize." Hoping to help them calm down, he ran a hand up and down their back, "It was just your imagination, my dear." Rocking them back and forth, he finally began to coax them to calm down, "Shh, it was just a nightmare. You’re safe."

That's all it had been - a dream. There was the possibility that it could someday become a reality, but SilverAsh didn't believe so. As long as he was there, they would be safe. There were no contracts or conditions behind such a vow.

Slowly, the Doctor relaxed, their breath slowing and their crying going quiet. Nuzzled against his chest, they nodded, wrapping their own arms around his waist.

"Enciodas…thank you." Their tone was muffled and shaky, but he didn't miss the sincerity it held.

Smiling just slightly, the man nodded. "Anytime, my dear." Neither of them moved - they stayed there, the air around them light and comfortable. The night was a little chilly, but when he focused on their breathing, SilverAsh couldn't be bothered with much else.

The Doctor was very dear to him, and he wanted them to know that more than anything else. With his sisters, the Feline hadn't accomplished that. SilverAsh wasn't a perfect man, he had made mistakes and like anyone else, he had regrets. He regretted not being there for his sisters like he knew he should've before it was too late. He regretted not caring for those close to him until it was too late. He regretted his mindset that there was no room for care on the battlefield.

But if nothing else, even without doing anything else but standing pressed to his chest, the Doctor had taught him that such a mindset was wrong. Maybe he was being impulsive, maybe his own drowsiness was causing his thoughts to be scrambled; In war, there wasn't a place for a fairy-tale like relationship, but the Doctor meant more to him than they could imagine, and he would make sure they knew that, no matter what nightmare life put them through. And that, he knew he would never regret.

#I didn't really know how to end this sbjsnd #arknights #arknights imagines #arknights fanfics #arknights writing #arknights silverash #arknights doctor #arknights imagine #imagines #writing

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sugar-kisser · 5 years ago

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Diamonds & Suits - Kim Hongjoong

warning: violence, cussing, blood, mafia affiliated acts

“You know most people don’t go out of their way if they want to talk to me,” the deep blue almost black-haired man calmly states his hands lazily raised in the air as seven other men surround him, gun barrels facing him.

“Well Mr. Kim Hongjoong you aren’t just any other guy,” you smile devilishly at him, “lower your weapons boys. Wait outside for me.” You wave the other seven men off and they follow your orders.

“So why does the all-not-so-mighty Y/N Y/L/N want to talk to me?” Hongjoong asks lowering his hands and reaching for his now cold cup of coffee.

“I’m here to offer you something you can’t refuse,” you explain, “cliche to say, I know. But I want to be sure I can trust you and that you’re ready to give 100% to this idea I have.”

“Why should I even bother to help you? You’ll just throw me back out on to the street again when the job is done,” Hongjoong sneers as he eyes you from the corner of his eye.

“We both know that wasn’t my call to make,” you angrily respond.

“And it’s now suddenly your call?” Hongjoong asks, face scowling, and he quickly approaches you. His face inches away from yours, and his eyes stare you down.

“It is,” you answer, eyes meeting him in the same deadly stare, “I no longer associate myself with that man. I broke things off a long time ago.”

“A year doesn’t seem very long,” Hongjoong counters.

“It is when you’re busy building a new team and climbing the ranks at the same time,” you tell him, “and you’re the last piece I need.” You poke his chest and slightly push him away.

“If you don’t want apart of stealing the one thing the two of us stole in the first place. Then fine by me. I’ll go find another petty theft,” you growl.

“You’re going to steal the diamond?” Hongjoong asks, his attitude and anger instantly dropping.

“Yeah that’s the plan,” you annoyingly remark as you turn around to leave, “I was hoping to get someone who knows the place so I don’t have to teach it, but clearly you want no part.” You continue to make your way to the door and Hongjoong contemplates with himself over the opportunity, but what might happen afterwards slightly holds him back.

“Wait!” Hongjoong calls out an your turn your head to face him, “if I help you. What’s in it for me?”

“You help me,” you say as you turn around to face him completely, “you’ll have a permanent spot on my team and you’ll have a more stable place to live. You won’t have to worry about anything other than risking your life when we have things to get done.” Hongjoong stares at you for a minute and chews on his inner bottom lip.

“Deal,” Hongjoong states and walks up to you and holds out his hand for you to shake to agree, “but if you break thi-”

“You know I never break deals,” you tell him and he stares at you for a second as he relives back to when you two worked together although it was a brief time, and he nods his head.

“Before we doing anything or leave,” Hongjoong speaks up pulling his hand away from hers, “why did you throw me out. You knew I was good. We worked well- in more ways than one.”

“My father didn’t want you near me anymore. You were becoming a distraction,” you tell him before looking away, “when I found out my father had plans to kill you I had to get you out and far away as possible. You know I wouldn’t do it willingly, but you’re life was on the line.” Hongjoong stares in disbelief at you, his face dropping, and a wave of guilt floods him momentarily.

“I’m sorry I could never tell you. I was afraid that if I tried to even contact you they would find you,” you tell him meeting his eyes again, “I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry.” Hongjoong swallows the build up in his throat and nods his head understandingly.

“But anyway,” you change the topic and smile at the completion to your team, “welcome to the A TEAM.”

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

Four weeks is all it takes for Hongjoong to adjust into his new team and home. Everyday is hell as they train and plan accordingly to steal the diamond. You and Hongjoong remade the original plan that you two had to steal the diamond from the original owner. You two then made edits and changes accordingly to the new home of the diamond.

You see... most kids in the mafia usually kill or overthrow their parents and take over their mafia to show power and to scare others away. But you? You’re a little bit different. You know how the game works and you’d rather piss someone off and take them out little by little while rising in the ranks rather than hit all at once. You know you’re team is just made up of rookies, but their the best rookies you’ll ever find. You also know that if you were to charge in and take over your father’s mafia group you would be slaughtered easily and you’re not about to risk the lives of your eight boys for something that can bee done over a period of time.

After a straight week of playing out your plan and teaching the rest of your team what they have to do you’re finally ready to put everything into place, and just in time for your father’s annual ball.

You watch from the back of the hallway over the banister at the group of eight boys dressed in red velvet suits with their layers of gold necklaces, chatting amongst themselves. You push off the banister rails and walk down the staircase, the small train of your dress following you down a step behind.

“Well now one of us is gonna have to change,” Seonghwa jokingly grumbles when you reach the end of the stair case. Everyone laughs but quickly calms down to do a final round of checks.

“Everyone has their ear pieces?” You ask making sure the disguised matching earring everyone has is hanging from their ear, “now for the invitations?” You look at each member in a quick swift motion then back to San who pulls out the pristine white envelope.

“Do we also have our facial recognition put in there?” You ask turning to Wooyoung, the hacking specialist. He nods his head and you break into a joker smile.

“Well let’s get going then,” You call out to the boys who all cheer and run out the front door towards the limo waiting at the end of the driveway.

“You ready to go steal something for a second time?” Hongjoong hold out his arm for you to take.

“When am I not?” you challenge sweetly. The two of you are the last to enter the car and you hand over the directions to your fathers address.

“Everyone knows our cover story, yes?” You ask one final time looking over the boys and just as Mingi opens his mouth you’re quick to stop him, “Mingi if I even hear about the invention you want to talk about tonight I swear you will not have chicken for a week.” Mingi closes his mouth and the rest of the boys bite on their lips to stop themselves from laughing.

Everyone exits the car once the limo makes its way to the top of the driveway. Hongjoong exits before you and hold out his hand for you to take. You step out of the car and your arm wraps around Hongjoong’s and the two of you lead the rest of the team up to the security at the door.

You all pass the dumbfound photographers who question how such a young group of entrepreneurs could be attending such a formal events with other world class famous business men and women.

You hand your invitation over to one of the men waiting by the front door and you let all your boys go through facial recognition before you. They wait for you to lead them in to the large ballroom.

“Okay. You know what to do. Everybody knows your teams and where to go. Good luck my boys,” you smile over your shoulder to your boys. You meet eyes with Hongjoong for a minute before he and Wooyoung go off to complete their part of this mission. Yeosang quickly joins your side handing you a glass of champagne.

“Why thank you dear,” You smile immediately playing into your role. You look around the room and quickly spot your father starring your way, his friends around him laughing over something probably stupid. You lead Yeosang and cut straight across the room earning everyone’s attention. You’re red velvet lightly hugging floor length dress almost shimmers under the light cascading several different shades of red. The three layers of gold necklaces hang around your neck at different lengths and glimmer slightly under the light. You even looked better as Yeosang matches you entirely in a red velvet suit, making the two of your look like a hell of a power couple.

“Father,” you force a sugar sweet smile upon your lips as you approach the man and his group. His group silences as you approached and dare not to make eye contact with you.

“I don’t remember putting you on the guest lists,” you father states, the tone in his voice rather low and threatening.

“Looks like you did. How else would I have gotten in here?” You ask rather sarcastically. You mentally begin to prepare yourself to keep your cool during your father’s rage fit, which will be the signal to finally grab the diamond and bail out of this place.

“But enough chitchat. My husband and I have people to meet, allies to make, and champagne to drink,” you tell your father before turning around to walk the way you came, “three two one,” you whisper.

“You’re what?” Your father voice booms silencing the room. The two of your stop and you take a deep breath before letting go of Yeosang and turning around to face your father.

“Do you have a problem with that?” You ask calmly.

“Do I have a proble- hell yeah I have a problem! You are set to marry another man!” You father hollers at you. You stand facing him unfazed, facial expression flatter than paper, but your heartbeat picks up.

“Go wait in the car,” you tell Yeosang. The last part of the mission has finally be set in place and the diamond should be out of the mansion within the next minute. Yeosang walks past the crowd of people and out the door and you face your father once more.

“I was never going to marry that low-shit man you picked out for me,” you growl, “I’m tired being used a doll to your advantages. I have been for a long time. I just can’t wait to watch you fall.” Your fathers face scowls even further and you pretend to tuck some of your hair behind your ear, but instead place your ear piece into your ear to hear how the rest of your team is doing.

“I think you underestimate me daughter,” you father growls walking towards you.

“No,” you back back even louder, “I think you underestimate me. I’ve got more power and more brains than you and your top team.”

“We have the diamond. You have about ten seconds before the alarm goes off,” Wooyoung speaks into his coms which relays to everyone. You take a deep breath before staring at your father. Just as your father goes to open his mouth the alarms go off and he looks around and then at you who breaks into a joker smile. Everyone else in the room begins to panic and you blend yourself in with the crown and make your way outside successfully. You pull your hair out of its high ponytail and manage to tie up the long dress to hang at the knees for you to be able to run faster. You pull off your heels and hand them randomly to someone telling her she could keep them.

You hurry through the yard and as you turn around to see if anyone has followed you, you bump into someone. They manage to grab you before you fall and you turn to face Hongjoong.

“Hey,” you smile as you catch your breath, “did we get it?”

“Wooyoung and San are already in route back to the house,” Hongjoong smiles as he helps you stand straight up, his arm still wrapped around the lower of your back and your right arm holding onto his bicep.

“We really did it, didn’t we?” You ask looking at him.

“Yeah. We did. Pulled it off twice,” Hongjoong says, “best partners. Best thieves in the game.” You two slightly chuckle before Hongjoong inches closer to you as you inch closer to him. You hear a gun shot and then Hongjoong falls on top of you onto the grass. He cries out in pain as he tumbles over onto his back. You notice blood seeping through his red vest as the color gets darker. The bullet enter through the back shoulder blade and just under his right collar bone. You quickly grab the blade that strapped to your ankle and throw it at the shooter who falls over, the blade piercing the side of his neck.

“Come on. We gotta get up,” you tell Hongjoong and help him up. You two some how quickly hurry off through the tall bushes and to the dark alley way and into the car Mingi drives.

“What happened?” Jongho asks as he closes the door behind you two.

“Hongjoong got shot. It doesn’t look good. Mingi step on it!” You yell. Mingi floors the car and quickly gets onto the highway and weaves in and out of cars. Hongjoong groans with the constant movement of the car.

“Give me your jacket,” You ask Jongho. He quickly pulls it off and hands it over to you.

“This is gonna hurt,” you tell Hongjoong and quickly place the jacket over his wound and apply pressure to it. He cries out in pain and you try to hush him.

“Eden’s already waiting on us for him,” Jongho gets off the phone with someone from the team. You nod your head and watch over Hongjoong. You can feel the blood seeping through the jacket so you fix it and reapply the heavy pressure causing his to cry out in pain again.

You guys quickly arrive home and Jongho helps you take him out of the car and Eden takes your spot and the two boys help carry Hongjoong in and to the infirmary. You stand practically numb next to the remaining members of your team. You start to feel your legs give out under you but San is quick to grab you and pick you up. He carries you inside and to your room.

“He’s going to be okay,” he tells you as he ties your hair up into a messy bun and begins to take your make-up. You stare ahead at the wall, mind spacing out but it doesn’t bother San. You two are like siblings, he was the first person you recruited to your team and you two had a bond like no other. He finishes taking off your make up and pulls out clothes for you to change into and leaves your room.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, you don’t realize till they are half way down your cheeks but you’re crying. You haven’t cried in a long time.... actually the last time you cried was when you had to get rid of Hongjoong for his safety. You didn’t want to leave him, and he sure as hell expressed that he didn’t want to leave you.

You pull off your dress and change into the large hoodie and sweats San picked out and you lay on your bed, but choosing to not fall asleep. A quiet knock at your door gets you attention and you lift your head up as Eden pops his head in.

“He’s going to be okay. He’s stable and resting now,” he explains as you quickly get out of bed, “you can go see him. I’ll be down in the morning to check on him.”

“Thank you,” you tell him hurrying past him and to the other side of the warehouse. You quickly open the door and walk down the steps into the basement and you see Hongjoong peacefully sleeping on one of the three beds in the room. You quietly grab a chair and set it down next to his bed. You take a seat and just look over him. A large hoodie is covering his bandages and he’s under a few blanket due to how cold the room is- even you’re shivering.

You eventually fall asleep, your head resting on a small part of his bed and your hand lightly holding his. The two of you sleep soundly next to each other for a little while before Hongjoong wakes up. When he see’s you sleeping peacefully in the chair with your head resting on his bed he smiles softly.

He lightly shakes you awake without moving too much incase it hurts him.

“You’re awake,” you sit up and rub your eyes.

“Yeah. It’s cold in here,” Hongjoong tells you quietly.

“Eden likes it cold for some reason. Even when he’s not here,” you laugh but stop and look over at Hongjoong, “how are you feeling?”

“Pretty damn sore if I’m honest,” Hongjoong answers shifting around a little to get comfortable.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, “the only person that should of gotten hurt tonight was me.”

“Hey stop,” Hongjoong grabs your hand to get your attention, “things happen. We were both in a moment that should of waited. We can’t blame anyone.”

“But I’m the leader of this team. I feel like I need to be at blame. I can’t be putting you at risk like this over some feelings,” you tell him.

“Wow you’re going to give me a cold heart again. We really gotta start over from square one?” Hongjoong sassily remarks causing you to try not to break into a smile when you’re wanting to have a serious conversation.

“Y/N, I’m going to be fine. We don’t need to worry about what happened,” Hongjoong tells you. You look over him with sad eyes and he pulls your hand and lightly kissing your knuckles. You break into a little smile and you shiver after his warm touch leaves you. It doesn’t go unnoticed by him and he shuffles over in his bed and pulls the blankets open.

“Come on. You’re cold,” Hongjoong tells you and pats the spot next to him.

“No. You need the room. I don’t want to take it,” You quickly decline. Hongjoong groans in annoyance and grabs your wrist and tugs at you.

“Fine, fine,” you give in. You climb onto the bed and under the covers and pull them over your shoulders. You lay on your side and face Hongjoong as he lays on his back and turns his head to the side to look at you.

“Now go to sleep,” you tell him.

“I will once you go to sleep,” Hongjoong counters.

“No, no, no. Not how it works,” you tell him.

“That’s always how its worked,” Hongjoong reminds you and you bite back a small smile.

“Just get some sleep,” you tell him. You close your eyes and almost immediately fall asleep and when Hongjoong hears the all familiar soft snores he smiles and looks over your sleeping face.

“So beautiful,” Hongjoong whispers, “but so fucking dangerous.”

#ateez #ating #ateezxreader #ateez hongjoong #ateez kim hongjoong #kim hongjoong #hongjoong #ateez imagines #ateez drabbles #ateez mafia #ateez au #mafia au #ateez scenarios

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glorious-blackout · 4 years ago

Text

Self-Indulgent Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino/Simulation Theory Crossover Part One

(Should probably think of a better title at some point but for now I’ve got nothing)

@rock-n-roll-fantasy It’s about time I finally stopped teasing and started posting something, isn’t it? 😅 I should be able to post Part Two tonight as well and technically Part Three was the initial teaser (which due to being written beforehand doesn’t line up as perfectly as I’d like, but I’m too lazy to change it right now) so I’ll link those as soon as I can. Hopefully the rest won’t take too long! I’m now at the stage of having spent so much time thinking about this behemoth that I’m a little sick of it, but I hope you enjoy it! 🥰

Part Two, Part Three

Mark thinks he could live a thousand lifetimes and still never get tired of this view.

Not so much the hotel itself, though he supposes that makes for an impressive enough sight. With its sleek curves carved into smooth cream-coloured stone - designed to resemble a natural rocky outcrop rather than a man-made construction - it’s little surprise that guests willingly travel through the inky blackness of space to rest here for a while. Beneath his perch on the hotel’s impressive outdoor balcony, a turquoise pool stares invitingly back, the shimmering waters undisturbed by so much as a breeze. In the distance, resting in a cove upon the roof, he can hear the distant chatter of guests enjoying a luncheon at the newly opened taqueria. The restaurant itself is concealed from view by an overhanging blood-red canopy, but he can visualise the diners clearly, paying a fortune for the best food the moon has to offer while gazing out towards nearby gentrified apartments and undulating valleys.

The taqueria represents the newest addition to the premises. The hotel already plays host to a pair of Italian and Japanese restaurants, alongside an all-you-can-eat buffet for those who prefer to stuff their faces without judgement, but all three have been outshone of late by the new arrival. Mark had pursued the outlandish idea following a drunken remark from one guest who decried the absence of good Mexican food on the moon. If he’d realised that said taqueria would go on to become the prime topic of several mind-numbing meetings then perhaps he’d have let the joke die without further comment, but he himself had been too drunk at the time to possess that level of foresight.

By this point he’s so sick of hearing about it that he had to be physically forced to read the glowing reviews upon the restaurant’s grand opening. He would have been much happier simply relegating them to the nearest bin, though admittedly the less favourable articles had given him a good chuckle. Buried among the countless four-star reviews had been a particularly unimpressed critic who managed to fashion a terrible pun out of ‘taco’, ‘taqueria’ and ‘tacky’ for his headline, before awarding Mark’s efforts with a pitiful two stars. Mark had been so tickled by it that he’d immediately ordered the article to be framed and hung on his office wall.

Pulling his gaze away from the hotel itself, he draws his attention to the nearby town which has cropped up in recent years, predating the hotel by only a matter of months. The surrounding area once served as a camping ground for scientific projects, populated by scattered white tents and forklift trucks, but little trace remains of those good intentions now. Mark’s surprised he’s even allowed to lay eyes upon the town, so reserved is it for the richest of the rich. Gaudy apartments have sprung up around a narrow, elevated highway like overgrown weeds, with more and more buildings creeping outwards as the years go by. No doubt it won’t be long before his view is completely obscured by giant lumps of steel and tall windows. The topmost floors carry a price-tag of millions, or so he’s been told; their suites offering splendid views of the deep canyons on the lunar surface and the towering space station on the outskirts. Those properties must be a haven for nosy old dears enjoying their unearned retirement, content to sit by the windows as they watch the rockets come and go. In quieter moments, Mark likes to imagine the casual conversations that must take place on those uppermost floors as he ponders how the other half live: “Look love, there’s another one coming in now!”, “Russian or American?”, “Think it might be English, actually...”, “Oh, not those bastards!”

Mark had been offered a first-floor apartment prior to his arrival, though he suspects the proposal had been made in jest. The eye-watering price-tag for rent alone had been enough to persuade him that his humble suite on the hotel’s fifth floor would be perfectly adequate. He can’t say he’s ever regretted that decision; the holier-than-thou attitude of the locals is insufferable enough without him being forced to live among them. Besides, this way he’s guaranteed a better view.

A droning hum draws his eyes skyward and a tight smile tugs at his lips. Just on time. The new arrival cruises lazily across the thin atmosphere, the rocket’s hull a deep fire-engine red as thrusters spill black smoke and bursts of flame from the rear. A private vessel, most likely. Company starships don’t tend to be so kitsch for fear of throwing off rich clients with elegant sensibilities. No doubt this particular ship is some playboy’s new toy – the space-age equivalent of a 70s Lamborghini – but so long as it comes bearing plenty of paying guests, Mark certainly isn’t in a position to complain.

He watches as the ship prepares for its final descent, drifting towards the spindly tower situated five miles away, notable for the endlessly flashing lights adorning its clinically white exterior. A lighthouse for the modern age. The thrill of watching spaceships come and go has started to waver in recent years. Knowing that what he’s seeing has less to do with the wonder of space travel and more to do with commercial ventures has sucked the childish wonder from his heart, but there’s still enjoyment to be found in watching the crafts make their landing. Once upon a time, railway-watchers must have gleaned similar amusement from witnessing steam-trains pass by, while they munched on their picnic sandwiches and squinted through binoculars with bleary eyes.

For all that he’s allowed himself to become jaded by certain aspects of his new home, he finds comfort in knowing that one sight will always ignite wonder in his heart.

In the far distance, resting peacefully against a vast starry sky, Earth stares back at him in all her glory. No photograph has ever successfully captured the brutal beauty of that hulking mass of deep greens meshed with delicate blues, overlain by thick swirling clouds and snow-capped mountains. His eyes trace the subtle variety of colours, from deep forest-greens to the industrial greys of vast cityscapes, to the golden hues of sun-battered deserts. The view is ever-changing - ever-turning - and he smiles as his eyes latch onto the more populated areas, bathed in pinpricks of golden light like decorations on a Christmas tree.

It’s impossible to spot England from this distance, tiny as she is and persistently buried beneath swirling clouds. The hulking mass of Africa stretching from equator to pole is visible enough however, and if he squints, he can just about spot the sharp stiletto-heel of Southern Italy. If darkness hasn’t yet fallen back home then it surely will in a matter of hours. He smiles as he imagines amateur astronomers wrapping up warmly in their oversized parkas, dragging themselves and their gear to the peak of the closest hill with the intention of gazing up at the tiny civilization planted on the moon. No doubt he’d have done the same when he was a boy. There’s no specific memory to latch onto, but a vague recollection of glow-in-the-dark stars glued to the ceiling above his bed is assurance enough that he must have made the trek with a cheap telescope of his own once or twice.

Only, back then there’d been no burgeoning society to gaze upon. The only sight that would have greeted his tiny eyes would have been deep untouched valleys carved into endless grey rock.

It’s unclear how long he spends losing himself to the whims of malformed childhood memories, but when the moment is finally broken by a playful finger poking none-too-gently at his temple, Mark leaps out of his skin with a startled curse. The new arrival can’t help but laugh, seemingly glad to have broken the spell that was threatening to consume his friend. While Mark waits for his heart to stop beating a samba in his chest and grips the smooth railing of the balcony with bone-white knuckles, he somehow manages to resist the urge to fire a sharp “Fuck off Jamie!” in the direction of the man who currently has mischief dancing in his eyes.

“Hey,” Jamie says with a gentle smile once his mirth has settled, raising another finger to Mark’s temple and pressing more softly this time. “You gettin' lost in there again?”

He must be, Mark thinks with a sigh as he clenches his eyes shut and tries to anchor himself in the present. Jamie is often a quiet, comforting presence but he’s never that quiet. The fact that Mark had been too lost in his thoughts to notice his approach is likely a sign that he’s long overdue a nap.

Not wanting to concern his friend more than he already has, Mark offers a sincere smile before responding to his question with an evasive, “Hey yourself.”

If Mark is currently coiled like a tight spring, Jamie exudes a level of carefree bliss which is mercifully contagious. In contrast to Mark’s sharp suit – a reliable mask for the guests’ benefit – Jamie has chosen a pair of battered old jeans and a faded white t-shirt. With his long hair tucked lazily behind one ear, he could almost be mistaken for a glorified sixties hippy, albeit Mark doubts he’d appreciate the comparison. He doesn’t need to act like a professional until the hypothetical curtain rises on their evening set, and it appears that the nervous thrill of performing to a new pack of guests couldn’t be further from Jamie’s mind.

The reminder that Mark himself is due to sing with the lads tonight sends a flurry of excitement through his veins. Closing his eyes and letting the music flow through his soul while he sings into the mic has always granted him more contentment than the mundane inner-workings of the hotel ever could.

Taking Mark’s ongoing silence as an invitation, Jamie turns to face the hotel complex, resting his back against the metal railing seemingly without a care for the steep drop on the other side. He doesn’t remain quiet for long, and Mark inwardly braces himself for his friend’s teasing when he spots the formation of a shit-eating grin stretching across his handsome features.

“Amazing what you’ve done with the place, it truly is,” Jamie declares, adopting a ridiculous impersonation of the Transatlantic accent that characterises the vast majority of their clientele. A trained ear can easily spot the Yorkshire twang lurking beneath the pompous act, but he almost sells it. Enough to have Mark straining to hold back a grin at any rate. “I’d wager this is a three-star establishment, easily. Might even push it to four if I’m feeling generous!”

“Oh, stop it!” Mark scoffs, stifling his laughter and bowing his head to conceal the sudden heat flaring in his cheeks. Kudos to Jamie, however, for his antics have the no-doubt desired effect of releasing some tension from his tightly-wound frame, and he glances towards his friend only to spot a victorious grin. This isn’t the first time a similar joke has been made at Mark’s expense. The need for him to sell the hotel to prospective guests has resulted in him having to adopt the role of sleazy businessman on multiple occasions. Doing so has always made him feel gross and he doesn’t particularly like himself when he’s caught up in his act, but his friends seem to find amusement in his alter-ego at least.

It is somewhat reassuring that they’re able to recognise that, despite the vast quantity of masks he regularly adorns, he’s still the shy kid they grew up with underneath it all.

“I don’t like playing salesman,” he admits, not for the first time. “It’s just part of me job description.”

“I know that,” Jamie says without missing a beat, squeezing Mark’s shoulder gently and banishing any remaining tension in the process. “I were only messin’.”

Mark smiles and leans into Jamie’s comforting touch. He knows. Of course he does. It can just be difficult to unwind sometimes; the weight of responsibility seems to crush his spine more often than not, leaving little room for levity. The lads help when they can, but for the most part it feels unfair to drag them into hotel business and burden them with his problems. They agreed to hop onto an entirely new celestial body with him for the opportunity to continue playing as a band, not to get caught up in the internal politics of a company they barely understand.

A low grumble disturbs the air, causing the ground beneath their feet to quiver. Two pairs of eyes are drawn to the illuminated space station as the playboy rocket finally makes its descent, the thrusters sputtering like a broken match as they release one final gasp. A mechanical whine resonates in the distance as intricate machinery clamps onto the ship’s hull, keeping her secure while her passengers – ten in total according to the updated guest list – gather their belongings and prepare to disembark.

This is the moment Mark has been waiting for all morning, whether out of excitement or dread he cannot tell. His time for dawdling has been cut short. In a matter of minutes, he will be forced to make preparations to travel to the space station and greet his new guests upon their arrival. It’s one of many added perks advertised on the hotel’s website; further proof of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino’s first-class service. Albeit this particular gimmick tends to be reserved only for the richest of guests; those prone to frequenting the suites on the uppermost floors, with transparent ceilings offering an unfiltered view of the stars. Mark can’t remember whose idea it was to have the manager await the guests on disembarkation – certainly not his – but as with a great many details concerning the running of the hotel, he is powerless to refuse his services.

The quickest route to the station is the highway; an elevated road built on steel platforms and sheltered by a curved tunnel, offering a direct means of travel from the station to the hotel while branching side-roads spill onto the town’s quiet streets. No doubt Mark will return that way in a rented limousine rather than his beloved Bentley, but for the outgoing trip he’ll likely elect to walk.

Pre-dating the highway by several years, an underground tunnel lurks in the underbelly of the town, offering direct passage to the Arrivals Lounge of the station. In the fledgling days of the hotel, Mark had found the tunnel unbearably claustrophobic and suffocating, but as more and more people have elected to drive over time, he has learned to enjoy the solitude that comes with wandering through its depths. The sleek, curved interior with tangerine tiles and dark alleys branching in all directions reminds him of the stylish Kubrick movies which headline the hotel’s vintage cinema, and the perpetual brightness offers a closer approximation of daylight than the spotlights surrounding the hotel ever could. The walk will take much longer than a simple car ride would, but he’s well-practiced at this. What with all the fuss regarding interstellar passports and customs, he could twiddle his thumbs for the next half hour and still have time to greet his guests with feigned politeness at the exact moment they rock up to the station’s exit.

His approaching duties don’t seem to be lost on Jamie either as he gestures to the rocket dismissively before remarking, “Guess that’s a couple more audience members for tonight, then?”

A weak smile tugs at Mark’s lips, and one glance at Jamie’s face implies that he’s not particularly keen on the idea of Mark having to dash off so soon either.

“You could come with me, you know,” he offers, though a sinking feeling in his chest is enough to inform him what the response will be long before he hears it. His friends have never much cared for the managerial responsibilities of the hotel, nor have they ever accompanied him to the station. Why on Earth would Jamie agree to come with him now? “I bet you’d butter ‘em all up with your charm.”

Sure enough, Jamie’s handsome face morphs into an expression of scandalised disgust, not unlike the time Mark and Nick dared him to swallow a platter of oysters without gagging.

“Absolutely not!” he insists, as though Mark has just proposed that he leap naked into the pool and subject himself to the delighted ogling of lunching diners and afternoon gamblers alike. “They can be charmed by me guitar-playin' all they like, but that’s all they’re gettin'. I don’t do meet and greets.”

“Cool and mysterious type, eh?” Mark teases with a wink, a warm sense of pride flooding through him as Jamie scoffs at the accusation. “That’s why you’re their favourite you know.”

“Nah, that’s bollocks. They’re just grateful for the distraction from your ugly mug,” Jamie shoots back with a wicked grin, reaching an arm around Mark and pulling him in close like an overbearing older brother.

Rather pathetically, Mark finds himself being so grateful for the human contact that the thought of reprimanding Jamie for his remark doesn’t even cross his mind. Besides, while confidence is hardly his strong suit, he’s had enough proposals from female – and occasionally male – guests to pay a visit to their suites after-hours to know that his ‘mug’ is far from undesirable.

It strikes him as odd that he’s never been inclined to take any of those prospective partners up on their offer. As the only unattached member of his friend group, he technically has free rein to spend his nights with whomever he pleases, and yet he’s consistently elected to sleep in his own bed, alone. Perhaps it’s the impermanence of it all that stops him from indulging in drunken mistakes. One-night stands have rarely appealed to him, and there’s little hope of developing a genuine connection with someone who’ll be returning to a different planet within the week.

That’s not entirely the reason, however. On the rare occasions where he’s been drunk enough to consider an invite fully, his initial emotional reaction has always been one of guilt. The mere thought of inviting a stranger into his bed feels like an unforgivable betrayal. God knows why – he’s sure he would have remembered if he had a sweetheart waiting for him back home – but no degree of logic has ever succeeded in banishing those feelings from his heart. Perhaps he’s simply married to his work, as Matt has often joked, but he’s not sure that explains why he’s prone to feeling so fucking lonely.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” he finds himself asking before he can stop the words from spilling forth, though he doesn’t have the energy to berate himself. He leans further into Jamie’s warm embrace, wondering if the strong arm draped over his shoulder is the only thing keeping his feet on the ground. Without further prompting, Jamie squeezes him a little tighter and Mark’s eyes close in momentary relief.

When he opens them again, he finds that all humour has drained from his friend’s face, only to be replaced with a genuine concern that has guilt gnawing at his bones. There’s no need for him to worry his friends about problems that don’t exist. He’s fine, honestly. It just feels like he isn’t sometimes, and he’s yet to figure out why.

“Sorry mate,” Jamie says finally, sounding like he genuinely means it. An apologetic smile tugs at his lips and Mark returns the gesture with a weak smile of his own which is easier to summon than he expects. “Promised the missus I’d treat her to lunch, and she’ll give me a right bollockin’ if I back out now.”

A spontaneous laugh breaks free from Mark’s chest as he takes a moment to enjoy the mental image of his bandmate being royally admonished by his tiny, yet undeniably formidable wife. If Jamie minds him laughing at his expense, he doesn’t show it, seemingly content to watch as the remaining pressure is lifted off Mark’s shoulders. No doubt it’ll return with a vengeance later, but for now he opts to enjoy this rare moment of lightness; it’s amazing how easily his friends can make him feel human again.

Much as he wishes they could linger here for the rest of time, teasing each other until one of them finally cracks, the minutes tick by relentlessly to the point where neither of them can justify further procrastination. Jamie has his date with his wife to attend to – having finally arranged to judge if the ‘Information Action-Ratio' is truly deserving of four whole stars – and Mark has his appointment with the new arrivals who will no doubt be hoping to collapse onto their beds for an afternoon of beauty-sleep before enjoying the evening’s festivities. Neither party are likely to be happy if kept waiting without good reason.

Jamie draws him into a tight hug before Mark can pull away, and he sinks into it with a sigh. The embrace is broken far too soon, forcing Mark to school his expression into one which does not betray his disappointment when Jamie begins the trek back to the hotel’s interior, seeing him off with a wave and a hurried, “See you at rehearsals, yeah?”

Mark waves back and utters an affirmative which he doubts Jamie hears, before watching him vanish behind a set of automatic doors. And then he’s alone again, with only the overhanging Earth for company. Not for long though; his round trip to the station and back should only take three hours at most, and then he’ll be free to spend time with the lads and rehearse the set for the evening. In a matter of hours he’ll be standing onstage – the only place that truly feels like home – flanked by his closest friends as he sings his heart out to a drunken crowd. Whether the guests approve or not is of no concern to him. So long as he gets the opportunity to lose himself in the music, that’s all that truly matters.

For now, he has other responsibilities however. The present moment is not calling upon him to be the frontman of the hotel’s house-band, but rather the renowned owner and manager of the establishment. It may not be a role he particularly enjoys, but it’s one he’s good at and it would serve him well not to neglect his duties. Formal complaints from guests are thankfully a rarity, but he can’t say he appreciates the bollocking he gets whenever one manages to slip through the cracks. The degree of paperwork alone is horrendous.

Fuelled by a newfound conviction, Mark casts one final glace over the impressive view with a resigned sigh, before tearing himself away from his quiet haven to face the music.

#writing #Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino #simulation theory #Muse #Arctic Monkeys #my fic

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vannahfanfics · 5 years ago

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Could I request a Nami and Bepo friendship fic with the theme "Mittens," please? I'd just love a cute fic starring my two favorite navigators!

Here it is, lovely! I threw some dashes of LawNa in there just because I know you love them so much LOL. Thanks for the wonderful prompts and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

EDIT: This lovely image was drawn by @searchfortheonepiece whom from this moment forth has all my love and affection.

Even Polar Bears Need Mittens, Too!

Nami was painfully aware of two things upon waking up that morning. Dirst, the ordinarily comfortable warmth of her bedroom had been replaced by a bitter, breath-fogging chill. Second, the soothing rocking motion of the waves beating upon the Thousand Sunny was eerily absent. Panicked, she threw the covers off herself. She immediately hissed in displeasure and flung the warm, soft blanket back on as the winter air leaped forward to dig into the sensitive bare flesh of her legs with eager teeth.

She rubbed her palm over her legs to find that goosebumps had already sprouted. Treading more carefully this time, she gathered the comforter around her body to serve as a fluffy shield from the cold and eased out of bed. She hopped around, not wishing to touch the icy wooden floors with her bare feet for too long until she found the slippers she always kept at her bedside.

After a few minutes of digging, she was able to procure a set of winter gear— slim-fitting, dark jeans, black combat boots, a maroon knitted sweater, a black overcoat inlaid with ginger faux fur, and a pair of maroon gloves with a matching beanie complete with a black pom-pom. Dark colors absorbed the sunlight better and made Nami’s tresses of tangerine hair pop all the more (because a girl always had to consider her image!).

She walked out into the hall, and it was no wonder it was so cold. Snow flurries buried themselves into her hair, decorating her like glitter, while others spiraled down the current into the hall to flutter lazily down to the iced-over wooden floors. Shivering, she carefully walked up the icy steps out onto the Thousand Sunny’s main deck.

The Grand Line’s unpredictable weather patterns had struck again; the Sunny looked like it had ventured into the Arctic. Snow was steadily falling from the cloudy heavens. It had piled up on the deck about half a foot deep and decorated the balustrade in a fluffy layer. Everything else was completely encased in a sheath of fine, crystalline ice. It wove fern-like patterns within the glass windowpanes, the only reference to the green world in this universe of white and gray and blue.

“Zoro?” she called as she tromped through the snow. Sinking up to her calves, Nami had to take extra-large steps to keep from tripping in the thick icy fluff. The swordsman was often awake in the wee hours of the morning. Yet, he was usually taking an early morning nap around the time the others were awakening, and Nami knew that the dense man could easily sleep through a snowstorm and awaken with hypothermia or frostbite— if he didn’t just wake up a solid blue corpse.

Thankfully, it seemed the chill had roused him plenty. He came stomping through the snow dressed in a coat, though the lout insisted on keeping his chest bared to the unforgiving winter’s bite. Sanji, with a small snow shovel propped on his shoulder and wearing a blue winter coat lined with cotton, came tromping along after him.

“Nami-swan! Please tell me you know when this damn blizzard is gonna end!”

“Why does that matter? We can just sail out of it,” Nami shrugged.

“Not exactly,” Zoro grunted and gestured to the railing of the ship. Nami sloughed through the snow until she got to the edge of the boat and immediately groaned in annoyance. The sea was frozen over in a solid block of ice. Even if they attacked it with pickaxes and tried to coax the Sunny to the faint line of warm blue water hovering at the ice’s edge, it would take days to do so. Nami grimaced at the thought. Who knows how long that’ll take, and it’s cold as balls out here!

“Guess we’ll just have to suffer,” she moaned. Raucous laughter at the end of the deck caught her attention; she turned to see Usopp, Chopper, and Luffy gathering up little handfuls of snow and flinging them in each other’s faces. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth; they were idiots sometimes, but it always did do her heart good to see them having some good plain fun.

“Hey, why don’t you make us all some hot chocolate?” she called to Sanji. “I’ll see if Law is okay in the submarine, too.”

While the cook tossed heart eyes her way and dashed off to cater to her whim, Nami walked the edge of the boat until she reached the place that the Polar Tang moored against the Sunny.

After the business in Wano, the Straw Hats and Heart Pirates’ alliance had decided to appreciate their company a little longer (which was more Luffy’s doing than Law’s). Franky had rigged up a handy contraption to allow the submarine to the Sunny without damaging it when they were fully underway, and by combining the natural sailing capability with the submarine’s engine, they had improved their speed by fifty percent as well.

“Law? Hey, are you guys popsicles in there?” she called as she climbed down the set of ladder rungs leading to the submarine. The soles of her boots striking the surface of the uppermost deck made dull clunking noises. She walked across the deck to the door, preparing to knock, but was startled when it was suddenly thrust open. She instinctively jumped backward.

She pinwheeled as she lost her balance and tipped back, but before she could land on her behind, the submarine’s captain grabbed her firmly by the elbow and hooked his foot under one of hers to brace her. He held her up by the strength of one arm, which brought a hint of rose to Nami’s cheeks and reminded her once more of how strong Law was even though he hid all his muscles under that long coat of his.

“Careful, Nami-ya. I wouldn’t want you hitting that pretty head of yours.”

Nami’s relationship with Law was an interesting one; one never knew what would come out of their mouths, whether it be purred compliments or insulting jibes. They yipped at each other like a couple of cunning foxes in a perpetual game that dangerously bordered on courtship; it was not uncommon that their words and looks mirrored those of two individuals in a saucy game of “hard-to-get.”

Sure enough, his mouth curled in that undeniable smirk that just begged Nami to retort with some minxy jibe, but with the persistent cold seeping beneath her coat to nibble at her skin, she decided to save it. Using Law’s grip as a bracer, she straightened herself up and ensured that she had a solid stance on the ice. It was only then that she could get a good look at him and see that he too was not immune to the brisk weather, as he had zipped his coat up to hide his sprawling tattoos and had white gloves on his hands.

“So, I imagine that we won’t be escaping this climate anytime soon,” he guessed with one glance at the surrounding ice.

“Nope.” She glanced up at the sky to analyze the speed of the clouds. “The system is moving pretty slowly, so I guess that we’ll be trapped in this ice storm for at least a few days or so.”

“Damn… It’s taking our heating system all it can to keep all the metalworks from freezing over…”

Before the two of them could exchange any more words, a snowball exploded in Law’s face and sent him shooting back into the depths of the Polar Tang. The furry bulk of the arriving Bepo provided a soft landing, thankfully. Nami made no attempt to stifle her laughter as the Surgeon of Death came stalking back out, shaking snow out of his face and hair. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who had flung it at him, either. “Straw Hat-ya, you imbecile, now is not the time for games!”

“Trafalguy! Come have a snowball fight with us!”

“Did you not hear me?!”

“A snowball fight?! We wanna play!” came the simultaneous chiming of Penguin and Shachi from the entryway, and Law let out a strangled urk! as the two boys muscles past him to scamper out onto the deck of the Polar Tang. They slid around on the ice like a couple of buffoons for a few minutes trying to reach the ladder, eventually resorting to easing over on their hands and knees.

“Aw, come on, Law, they’re just having fun. We might as well play in the snow; there’s nothing better to do,” she smiled as she listened to his crewmates’ raucous hoots and hollers of laughter drift down from the Thousand Sunny with the occasional stray snowball.

“I don’t play, Nami-ya.”

“Law! Will you come build a snowman with me?”

As Chopper’s innocent sing-song voice preceded his little furry form and hopeful eyes peeking over the railing of the Sunny, Nami watched Law’s body stiffen. He flushed pink and pulled down his hat, mumbling under his breath for a moment, before he thickly called up, “I’m coming, Chopper-ya…”

Nami chuckled heartily as she watched Law Room himself up beside Chopper, who jumped up and down and hugged his arm elatedly. Not even the Surgeon of Death can say no to our sweet little Chopper.

“N-Nami?”

The navigator turned her head as the polar bear Mink abruptly addressed her.

“What’s up, Bepo?” His watery black eyes could not bear to meet hers but flickered downward to train on the intricate icy patterns adorning the wood. His nails clicked lightly as he tapped them together in a nervous fidget. “Would you mind teaching me more about maps?”

Nami blinked slightly in confusion. In the time that the two crews had spent together, the talented cartographer had been sharing her knowledge of maps with him. Still, she wasn’t sure why he wanted to do such an everyday activity when the opportunity to do something new and fun had presented itself.

“Wouldn’t you like to come play in the snow with us, Bepo?” she suggested with a bright smile. The poor thing couldn’t blush, but she could tell that he was embarrassed from the way he flattened his ears to his head and twitched his massive body.

“I can’t… My paws get cold.”

Nami had no idea how a polar bear’s paws could freeze but considering the circus troupe of colorful people she sailed with, anything was possible.

“Everyone else can play just fine because they have mittens, but we’ve never been able to find any in my size,” he lamented while holding up his clawed paws. Naturally, no market would sell mittens for a bear. Poor thing! He doesn’t deserve to have to sit out while everyone else has fun! Nami thought as a pang of pity pierced her heart. She grinned brightly and reached up to grab one of his furry paws with both of her hands.

“Don’t worry, Bepo! Come with me. I’ll whip up some mittens for you!” she assured him before whirling on her heel and pulling him across the deck of the Polar Tang. The bear just silently shuffled along behind her.

She trekked back through the snow covering the spacious deck of the Sunny. It was falling so heavily that the small trench she had produced just a few minutes ago had already largely filled, forcing Nami to track a new path through the thick fluff. The layer had already thickened up to her knees. Nami pulled out her Climatact to help shovel the snow to wither side to help clear her way, but only with marginal improvement; very soon, her arms were aching.

“Jeez! You wouldn’t think snow would be so heavy. I’ll have to get Franky to shovel some of this stuff off before our deck collapses!” she panted. Bepo, despite his bulk, seemed to have no problem pushing through the snow; after a moment of watching her struggle, he let out a nervous mumble before lightly tapping her on the shoulder. Nami paused to turn around, leaning on her Climatact for support. His tiny ears fluttered, and his little nails clicked together as he considered something silently for a moment. Then, to Nami’s surprise, he leaned down to pull her gently into his big furry arms.

“U-um, I thought it would be easier this way…” he admitted shyly while scratching the side of his head with one claw. Nami beamed, wrapped her slim arms around his thick neck, and nuzzled her nose into his fluffy cheek.

“How considerate! Thank you, Bepo.” She felt the bear’s skin warm as he did the Mink equivalent of blushing, and his words were an incoherent gush of mumbles. Feeling a burning gaze, Nami glanced over her shoulder to see Law staring intently from across the deck.

“Jealous?” she called over while sticking out her tongue. Law snorted in derision and pulled his hat down over his face, but Nami could see the haze of pink over his cheeks. “Don’t worry, Law, I’m sure Bepo would carry you too if you asked him!” she laughed while rubbing the top of Bepo’s head through his hat.

“Ugh, Nami-ya, that’s not what I—” he snapped at her, then flushed further. Grumbling under his breath, he whirled around to instead re-focus his energy on the half-finished snowman that Chopper was molding with his hooves. Nami laughed mischievously again before looking back at the polar bear, who was just trying to pretend that Nami hadn’t been so boldly flirting with his captain.

“Mittens, right? Let’s go!”

Bepo carried her the last leg across the deck in record time. He gently set her down on the steps once they arrived, and Nami carefully picked her way down them, holding one hand against the frosty wall to aid her balance. She would hate to ungracefully slip and tumble down the stairs to earn herself a bruised bottom or sprained ankle on a day that promised a lot of fun.

She led Bepo to her and Robin’s room. His massive frame barely was able to squeeze through the threshold, and he took up a large amount of space, requiring Nami to navigate around him as she searched her belongings for old clothes that she could retrofit into a pair of mittens for him.

“I’m sorry if I’m in the way…” he sighed apologetically and resorted to his nervous tick again. Nami smiled brightly up at him as she rifled through one of her trunks of sweaters.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Bepo. You’re never a bother!” It was no secret that he was a little insecure, and so Nami always tried to do her best to encourage him. He smiled shyly and shuffled his feet, indicating that Nami’s compliments were warming him a little.

“Ah-ha!” she cried merrily as she procured a lovely yellow wool sweater patterned with black stripes. “It’ll match your jumpsuit, too!” she grinned as she poked at the jolly roger emblazoned on the fabric as she passed him. She walked over to a small sewing machine situated on a table in the corner.

With how much Nami loved clothes and saving money, she of course knew how to sew, and with the boys tearing their clothes to shreds all the time, she had invested in the small machine to make quick work of the many repair jobs. Bepo lumbered over to stand over her shoulder to watch her work, ears fluttering in curiosity; smiling, Nami leaned back so that he could observe her handiwork.

“You’re going to make mittens from that sweater?”

“Mhmm. There’s no sense in letting this fabric just collect dust,” Nami nodded as she cut out the patterns of the mittens using a large pair of shearing scissors. Tossing the rest of the fabric aside into a little basket for later use, she turned on the sewing machine and put the fabric in place. She felt Bepo release an awed breath over her shoulder as the needle began punching thread into them at high speeds.

Nami’s nimble fingers guided the fabric to form the seams. In no time at all, she had produced one bear-sized pair of mittens, complete with holes in the fingertips so his claws wouldn’t shred the fabric. His ears flattened to his head as she whirled around in her little stool to hold them up. “Here you go! Try those on.” He very gently took the mittens in his paws before slipping them on, pushing his claws through the added holes and flexing his hands experimentally. He then gave Nami a huge smile that crinkled his already small eyes.

“Thank you, Nami! They’re wonderful! Now I can play in the snow too!” he rejoiced and jumped from foot to foot. Nami giggled and stood up from her chair.

“I’m so glad you like them.”

“Nami! Will you make snow angels with me?!”

“Of course!” She grinned, then gasped in alarm as Bepo suddenly took off to squeeze out of the doorway and hurry up the steps. “Hey! Not so fast; you’ll fa—”

She heard a startled yelp followed by a series of rapid thunks that could only be the polar bear Mink tumbling down the stairs.

She exhaled deeply with a wan smile, shaking her head before walking out to see if he was all right. She found him on his back at the base of the steps in the process of rolling over; it seemed the fall didn’t do much, as he immediately scrambled back to his paws and went shambling up the stairs with an excited, impatient, “Come on, come on!”

“I’m coming!” she assured with another laugh and carefully followed him back up to the winter wonderland that the Sunny had become. For the next several days, the two crews busied themselves with all sorts of winter revelry, and Bepo made sure he showed everybody the marvelous mittens that the gracious Nami had made for him…

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to perusemy Tableof Contents!

#one piece #nami #cat thief nami #bepo #heart pirates #straw hats #straw hat pirates #navigators #fluff #friendship #friendship fluff #oneshot #oneshots #oneshot collection #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfics #one piece fanfiction

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wistfulcynic · 5 years ago

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Drink the Wild Air (2/?)

@thisonesatellite continues to be awesome (she can’t help herself), and so here is Part Two of her birthday fic. Perfect for soothing hangovers (but maybe some paracetamol as well, just to be safe ❤️❤️)

IN WHICH pirating is done and we meet a mysterious new character.

SUMMARY: Once upon a time a princess fell in love with a pirate. This is their story.

A Captain Duckling high-seas adventure tale in which princesses are kidnapped (OR ARE THEY), sea battles are fought, SWASH is BUCKLED and CASTLES are STORMED.

(also EVIL is VANQUISHED and FAMILIES are REUNITED)

@darkcolinodonorgasm @kmomof4 @teamhook @stahlop @mariakov81 @resident-of-storybrooke @thejollyroger-writer @shireness-says @snidgetsafan @xarandomdreamx @winterbaby89

(please do say if you would like a tag or if you would like not a tag)

(Also on AO3) (Tumblr: Part One)

PART THE SECOND: THE TWO PIRATES

The sun rose in spectacular fashion that morning, the bending light of its rays painting the sky in a wash of delicate pink and orange streaked with gold. The light traced a shimmering path across the becalmed ocean, bathing the royal flagship in a warm glow and reflecting its image cleanly in the flat surface of the water. Every detail of the finely carved decorations that adorned the hull, the tall, square-rigged masts, even the lettering on the Queen’s standard hanging high atop the mainmast was lovingly caressed by the rosy dawn.

As the first narrow sliver of the sun itself crested the horizon the pirates attacked.

Their ship appeared as if from nowhere, moving swiftly across the water in defiance of the lack of wind, coming up alongside the flagship’s port stern with cannon at the ready. The first volley of their attack was loosed with stunning force and precision, easily piercing the flagship’s thick hull, shattering her rudder and plunging her gun decks into chaos.

“How the devil did they manage that?” cried the flagship’s first mate, leaning over the railing of the quarterdeck and gaping at the massive hole in the side of his ship. “What kind of guns could they possibly have?”

He trained his spyglass on the pirate ship—or rather, on the place where the ship had been, but the smaller vessel was nowhere to be seen. He spun about, scanning the horizon until he spotted the pirates just off his starboard bow. Through his spyglass he watched as they loaded their five guns —only five!— and loosed a second volley, one that blasted a hole in the starboard hull to match the one on the port side and took out the mainmast in a burst of jagged splinters. The fist mate watched in frozen disbelief as the huge beam bent beneath the weight of sheets and sails with an earsplitting creak then came crashing down across the quarterdeck, crushing the ship’s helm and—though he tried his best to leap clear of its path—knocking him down and trapping his leg beneath it.

He was quite a young man, this first mate, perhaps too young for the responsibility he carried on his narrow shoulders, but he had carried it for so long now that its weight was as intrinsic to him as the blue of his eyes. Those eyes glinted now with a grim determination as he shoved at the mast, feeling certain that any attempt to dislodge it could only be a vain one but unable to abide inaction as the pirate ship swung about and came up on the flagship broadsides. He pushed against the mast with all the surprising strength of his thin arms, bracing his shoulders and putting all his weight behind them, but it refused to budge.

With a growl of frustration he ceased his efforts, collapsed back against the ship’s rail and watched helplessly as the pirates began to board the Queen’s vessel and subdue her crew. The manner of their attack caught his attention and caused his frown to deepen: methodical, dispassionate, and far more terrifying in its cool efficiency than howling, frenzied bloodlust would have been. This was clearly not their first cotillion; not only had their gunner known precisely where and how to hit the naval vessel to disable her completely, but the pirates themselves carried out their onslaught on the decks with a strategy and discipline that rivalled that of the military itself. Or rather, it was precisely the sort of onslaught that standard military discipline would most struggle to repel.

Interesting.

The first mate watched the events on the lower decks unfold thorough eyes narrowed in speculation, taking in every detail. The Queen’s men fought as valiantly as could be expected, considering most were conscripts like himself and more concerned with their own survival than the glory of their monarch, but they were no match for the pirates’ skill and ruthlessness. One by one they fell, each more easily than the last, and by the time the pirate captain sauntered up to where he lay pinned to the quarterdeck the first mate had accepted that surrender was his only option

“Are you the captain of this vessel?” the pirate inquired, and the first mate took his time in answering as he assessed the man before him. Fairly standard pirate, he concluded dismissively, all black leather and dark-rimmed eyes with elaborate embroidery on his bright red waistcoat. The first mate was far more interested in the figure at his side, a slender, lithe one, dressed in tan breeches and a blue coat with a long tail of golden hair just visible beneath a sweeping feathered hat.

A woman, the first mate marvelled. There could be no question of it now that he was close enough to see the delicate lines of her profile, the curve of her waist as she rested her hand on the pommel of the sword at her hip. A woman, who had fought alongside the captain and now stood beside him as an equal. One whose skill with her sword had caught the first mate’s eye even in the midst of the battle fray— smooth and daring and masterfully controlled. One he’d seen with his own eyes vanquish at least five of the Queen’s crew. This—she—was a good deal more intriguing than the pirate captain himself, with his poncy coat and his eyeliner.

The pirate raised an eyebrow. “Well?” he prompted.

“I’m the first mate.”

“And where’s your captain?”

Probably in his cabin, polishing his sword, thought the first mate with an internal sneer. Their captain owed his position to his unfailing loyalty to their Queen, but loyalty did not equal ability and it most certainly did not denote courage.

“Well, I’d ask you to take me to him,” smirked the pirate. “But you appear somewhat incapacitated. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to direct us to his cabin.”

“And why should I do that?” snapped the first mate. He might have accepted the inevitability of his surrender, but he didn’t have to make it easy for them.

“We are prepared to offer you (we the first mate noted, glancing again at the woman) the same deal that we offered your crew. Pledge fealty to us, and we will see your wounds are treated and you are given quarter, and a place on my ship. A share in both the work and the spoils.”

(We offer you, but my ship. Fascinating.)

“Fealty,” echoed the first mate. “That’s a strong word for pirates. Who are you, exactly, to make such a demand?”

“I am Killian Jones, captain of the Jolly Roger. And this—” he indicated the woman with a soft, involuntary smile that sang of tender and abiding love (the first mate’s jaw dropped) “—is Princess Emma of Misthaven.”

“Princess Em—” scoffed the first mate, but then the woman turned her head to look straight at him. The rising sunlight hit her face and the first mate gasped. He had seen a rendering of Princess Emma —long ago, he did not care to think on it— and barring some miracle of false resemblance, this was surely she. Dressed as a pirate. Fighting in pirate battles. With a pirate captain gazing at her as though she’d hung the stars.

Well that more than adequately explained their demand for fealty, the first mate reflected, though he found it odd that they should be so free with the princess’s identity. A missing princess, specifically Emma of Misthaven, was a thing in which his Queen —among numerous others— would surely take the keenest interest. Yet here they were, announcing her openly as if the quarterdeck of a sinking ship were a bloody palace ballroom.

“Your Highness,” he said, bowing as best he could whilst sprawled out at her feet with his leg crushed beneath the fallen mainmast. “Lieutenant William Jones, First Mate of Her Majesty’s Ship The Soaring Raven. At your service.”

“Jones,” said the princess, with a teasing smile at the pirate. “Relative of yours?”

“It’s a fairly common name, love,” the captain replied. “I’m sure I’d know if I had any close relations still living.” His tone was light but a small frown creased his brow as he regarded First Mate Jones more closely, taking in the shape of his cheekbones and the colour of his eyes. “So what say you, lad?” he challenged. “Will you join us, or will we leave you here to bleed out on the deck?”

Lieutenant Jones gave the pirate a hard stare. The man’s face wore a smirk that the younger Jones would love to punch off it but there was intelligence in his eyes and courage in his bearing, and a crew behind him who had captured the finest ship in the Royal Navy as easily as drawing breath. And a princess at his side who looked at him with as much love as he clearly felt for her— as though he’d hung the moon to match her stars. It seemed there was more to Killian Jones than black leather and attitude, and despite himself William Jones was intrigued.

The young man made his decision. A rash one perhaps but fully his own, and he found that the rush of choosing his fate for himself, whether wisely or not, exhilarated him. The sea was in his blood but the Queen’s navy had not been his choice, he reasoned. What did it matter what flag he sailed under so long as he sailed?

With a smirk of his own he met his new captain’s eyes. “I pledge my fealty,” he said. “I will join your crew.”

#cs ff #cs ff au #enchanted forest au #cs fic #the action begins #but there will be more of them falling in love #we'll see how they got here #in the next chapter #profdanglaisstuff #drink the wild air

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ckret2 · 5 years ago

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Like Lover and Owner and Worshiper

anonymous asked: If you are still taking requests about Ghidorah... Can you make one where the monster is having admirer /human/ and he didn't killed her, because she is the only one who like him... Felt like I need something sweet like this :) thank you in advance :)))

So apparently read mores don’t work in asks anymore so this gets its own post! *jazz hands*

I kinda feel like u mighta wanted to ask for a reader insert but didn’t wanna say so lol; so in case u did I left the main character unnamed, so it could be anyone. (In my head it’s AU Vivienne Graham who’s really really into Ghidorah, because from now on all Sally Hawkins characters have a thing for monsters. BUT you can substitute in anyone.)

It’s slightly bittersweet—some relatively surface-level talk of going through Seasonal Affective Disorder because Antarctica, some Ghidorah being like really super absurdly lonely, some kinda obsessive levels of affection—but it’s mostly sweet.

This is gonna get proofed llllater because im tired but wanna get it out. There’s a high chance that some pronouns got messed up because nobody has names and the pronouns switch between viewpoint characters. feel free to lemme know if you spot any of those. (or any other typos. always open to typos.) but don’t feel obligated to since this ain’t proofed. EDIT: Hey this is proofed now!

###

Few people last very long at Monarch if their first instinct upon seeing a monster taller than the London Eye with claws and fangs longer than their own body isn't to whisper, "Magnificent."

"Isn't he?" Serizawa asked, beaming. "Or aren't they, perhaps I should say."

"You said there are three heads. I can only see two. Where's...?"

Serizawa pointed at each of the obvious golden blurs in turn, and then at a murky patch of ice with a spotlight trained on it. She saw nothing through it. "The ice is still too thick for us to see all three," he said. "But the scans have revealed the whole body. He has two tails, as well."

"Absolutely magnificent."

Aboveground, the only thing currently protecting the crevasse they'd dug to reach this frozen titan was a chainlink fence and two very cold guards. There were a few temporary trailers set up nearby, bright orange and flying black-and-white Monarch flags; winter was coming soon, and they'd either have to work fast to establish a base that would hold them through the winter when most other seasonal bases has shut down, or withdraw to an established base for the winter and monitor the site from a distance. Japanese Showa Station was within sight of the crevasse when the weather was clear—had been the ones to discover the titan underneath, in fact—and someone, certainly, was already working out how to arrange for Monarch to move a few operatives into their facility while navigating their strict policy of secrecy concerning titans.

But all of that coordinating wasn’t in the here and now. Here and now, there was only a golden titan, glittering faintly through the ice from the spotlights put on him, and she stared at the blur that was one of his heads in wonder. How long was it going to be until they'd carved and chipped away the ice, and she could see his scales and wings and all three serpentine necks and heads in all of their glory?

She couldn't wait.

She leaned as far as she could over the railing of the rickety scaffolding that had lowered her and Serizawa to look at the monster, and she brushed the tips of her gloved fingers against the ice.

###

They were used to being cold.

They spent most of their life cold, frozen in the heart of an asteroid they pulled around themselves like a cocoon, soaring from world to world, unconsciously aware of how gravity tugged on their body and how the shell around them changed temperature when exposed to sunlight, but not even dreaming.

It took so long to travel from world to world, longer to travel from star to star. Staring at the same pinprick of light for years without any noticeable progress toward it was enough to drive them mad, enough to make them feel like they were going blind from staring so long at the same point, enough to make their heads ring with the silence and the inability to hear their own roars, enough to make them bite and tear at their own necks just to feel something, even if they had to rip off one of their own heads in order to feel. And then they might lose sight of their star and be lost.

It was easier to sleep away the centuries.

They slept now, in the cold, still and immobile. Their unconscious mind was certain that they were sheltered in an asteroid, floating between the stars. Only a few things could wake them from a sleep like this.

One was the feeling of an impact, jolting them awake as they made planetfall. One was extreme heat, warning that they were drifting too close to a star and needed to crack free and fly to a safer distance before falling in. One was other minds, alien minds thinking and dreaming outside of their shelter.

They felt minds now.

Once upon a time, when they were new, they could tell what others were feeling. They had long lost all but a whisper of that sense. They didn't know if it was because they now moved only among alien minds too strange to comprehend, or if it was because isolation and mutation had atrophied the ability.

But when they slept between worlds, when their eyes and ears and noses and tongues were numb and their touch was muffled by the steady pressure of their frigid cocoon, they could again sense what the minds around them were feeling.

The minds they felt now weren't enough to stir them to full wakefulness. (They should have been; but they were not, as their sleeping minds assumed, in an asteroid cocoon, but something different and worse.) But the minds were enough to shake them from deep hibernation into a dazed doze, dully monitoring the small emotions floating around them.

They were the usual feelings of industrious aliens—focused and interested, occasionally fluctuating with the pleasures and sorrows and frustrations that came from the daily private dramas all thinking things had. When the aliens focused on them in their cocoon—they could always sense when someone was focused on them—they were interested, nervous, awed, wary.

Except one mind.

One mind was consistently rapturous.

Dazed and half-dreaming, the other minds were like distant starry pinpricks in infinite black space, maddeningly far away—but this one's rapture was like an approaching sun, rushing up to meet them, filling their tired body with warmth, bright and welcoming and heralding the end of a long journey.

When had their presence been welcomed with such joy? Such unrestrained bubbling glee and dizzy euphoria? They couldn't remember if they had ever been so welcome—not on any world. Paralyzing terror, helpless anger, sickening dread, those they were all used to, those they all enjoyed. Those feelings were a sort of rapture, to be sure—the sort of rapture inspired by a devil. Never had they been on the receiving end of a rapture that was like—like what, exactly? Admiration? Love? The feeling of gazing upon something divine.

It was so warm. So warm, in the cold.

###

Everyone at Monarch, of course, agreed that Monster Zero was spectacular. But she began to realize that most people meant that differently from her. Sure, everyone thought he looked cool. What wasn't to like about a three-headed golden dragon? But no one else was as... as enthralled with him as she was.

He worried them.

The first she realized how widely her opinions differed from her colleagues' was when she discussed how they were going to safely remove him from the ice, and everyone at the table looked at her in surprise. They had all taken it as a given that they'd leave him where he was—incased in ice that was shaved down enough to let them get a good look at him, but not removed, and given extra refrigeration so that their surrounding equipment and lights wouldn't cause the ice to melt further. She'd looked back at them in just as much surprise—surprise at herself for not thinking that obvious. Because of course they would leave him frozen. That was Monarch policy. Hibernating titans were left to hibernate: contained in whatever tomb they'd been found in.

That was what they had to do. They had no idea what his personality was like; they couldn't wake him. They shouldn't wake him.

Even so, the knowledge that she wouldn't get to see him fly was devastating.

Everyone else found the possibility of his flying to be somewhat alarming.

Her colleagues saw his fangs, his spined tails, his clawed feet, and saw only the damage they could do. When they mentioned how much taller he was than Godzilla, it wasn't with a sense of knee-weakening amazement at the sheer grand scale of him, but with the implication that on some level they were calculating proportionately how many more neighborhoods he'd crushed if he ever decided to go strolling in San Fransisco. When she fantasized about what he would look like flying, his wings stretched wide, his scales glinting in the sunlight, her colleagues imagined only the terrible storm his flight would summon.

Everyone had their favorite titan. Even though everyone was wary of the titans' strength and dedicated to ensuring that they never posed a threat to humanity, most of them—certainly all the scientists, the multitudes of biologists and zoologists and environmentalists—had been drawn to this line of work out of love and fascination. They all, to a greater or lesser extent, collectively adored these dangerous giants. And they all adored one or two more than the others.

Of course, they teased each other good-naturedly about their favorites. Serizawa, who refused to keep a plaque on his door listing his official position in Monarch, once showed up for his shift to find his office had a shiny new plaque reading "Godzilla Public Relations Department". Years ago, Ilene Chen had received a giant caterpillar doll for her birthday, which was later seen in possession of her sister—holding it up to the glass window in front of Mothra's egg as though she was showing it off, beaming—and later still in the possession of Dr. Russell's young daughter, who would sometimes carry it like a baby and sometimes use it in battle against her dinosaur toys.

As the most excited scientist in Antarctica, she quickly gained the nickname Fangirl Zero. Sometimes, when people inquired about her work, they'd ask how her "husbands" were doing. It was always good natured, always laughingly, and with the understanding that everyone had That One Titan and was open to ribbing for it.

Even at that, though, she was pleased that when people thought of her, they thought of Monster Zero.

###

They could track its mind. Wherever it went, wandering back and forth, they felt it. They knew where it slept, because they could sense its dreams. They knew the spot where it spent most of the day.

They knew when it thought about them. Its mind shined upon them like a flashlight, calling to them.

It was sometimes so near to them that, if they weren't in their asteroid, they could bend down and lick it. And it would stay there, near to them, for so long at a time.

When had they ever been so worshiped? Never—not in a way that was inspired by tremulous devotion rather than trembling dread. When had they ever been so adored? Never—not since they had become they, rather than one and one and one all separate, cooed over as a trio of precious clumsy newborns. When had they ever been so loved? Never, never, never.

They were graced with every point on the spectrum of unconditional glorification—the upward-gazing glorification of a worshiper to its god, the downward-gazing glorification of an owner to its beloved pet, the equal-level glorification of lover to lover. How could one mind hold so much glory inside it without exploding? The mere spillover nearly melted the cold from their limbs.

Their worshiper grew unwell from time to time. Its emotions grew tired and dull and unhappy and quiet, like a heavy weight was pushing its mood down from above. Even when it was thinking of them, its rapture didn't reach the euphoric heights it used to. Sometimes, when it was close to them, they could feel it trying to force itself to feel euphoria in their presence. It rarely worked.

Every once in a while, it would leave. If they focused hard, they could tell where it went, feel its mind curving away in a long arc as it crossed the surface of the planet. When it settled somewhere almost halfway around the world, they were seized with an unconscious grief. The only consolation was that they could tell it still thought about them. Its worship was a star twinkling far away.

It left because something had been pushing down on its mind. They wished that they could sing for it. As their ability to hear emotions had atrophied, they had instead gained the ability to speak emotions. It took them a long time to figure out the exact notes to sing in order to change a new alien's mind, to enthrall and control it, to make it feel what they wanted it to feel. But unless they reduced a world to ash faster than they could puzzle out the native minds, they always did figure it out. They didn't want to control this mind, though. They didn't need to. They only wanted to turn the coffin lid pressing down on its emotions into a vaulted ceiling again. Maybe it wouldn't have had to leave, if they could have sang for it.

But after a while, it came back to them, happier again.

And so they didn't fear the next time it left.

###

During her lunch breaks and when she was off-duty, she would frequently bundle up and sit in a folding chair near his ice, gazing up at him, studying his faces, wings, scales. She'd sometimes bring books and read to him—if anyone gave her a quizzical look, she'd laugh and say she couldn't help but think he must be lonely in the ice. Oftentimes they were myths about dragons, hydras, and serpents, often sent to her by Dr. Chen as she tried to find more historical sightings of Monster Zero. She'd read him a story and then ask him whether it was true, false, or about a different titan entirely. She'd tell him about paintings they found that seemed to depict him fighting against Godzilla, and ask whether that was him or just another titan that looked like him, and what his relationship with Godzilla had been like. Of course he didn't answer. That was fine. She felt like, somehow, he knew she was there.

Nothing made her happier than working in the same facility as Monster Zero.

It made her almost as happy as Antarctica made her unhappy.

Sunlight was indirect and at times of the year sparse. Even in the summer, the temperature barely ever rose to zero. And except for a few quick, frigid walks she sometimes made herself take for her own mental health, she got very little of what sunlight was available. Almost all of her time was spent in Outpost 32, deep in ice. Even when she slept in her heated room under her many blankets, she could still feel the distant chill pressing in on her bubble of warmth, looking for a way to make her cold.

Most Monarch staff had their permanent assignments somewhere farther north, cycling through Antarctica for a shift of one or two months roughly every couple of years. Nobody wanted to be in the frozen, barren, dark tundra; nobody wanted to share a tomb with the devil with three heads. She was the only one who requested the position, insisted that she be permanently stationed in Antarctica. Because of that, she quickly became the most important person at the outpost: the expert not only on Monster Zero, but also in getting the satellite Internet to work again, in repairing the constantly malfunctioning coffee machine, in finding where the spare bulbs were kept, in coping with the soul-sucking isolation and inhospitable climate at the bottom of the world. She was officially put in charge of the outpost before the construction was finished. Time and again, her colleagues told her that she was invaluable.

But they also told her that they were worried. She understood. She didn't want to—for a while, she resisted it—but she did. Antarctica sucked the light from her mind as easily as the warmth from her bones. She grew tired, sullen, listless, irritable. The base was full of sun lamps, and she was shipped one antidepressant after another to try, but none of them fully mitigated the effects of being trapped underground and surrounded by ice. She couldn't stay there permanently. So for three months of the year, from July through September, when Antarctica was its darkest and coldest, she transferred to a post in the northern hemisphere.

And so, she became a reverse Persephone: every winter, she left behind hell and its king, to return eagerly in the spring.

###

They woke as their asteroid shuddered, cracked, and crashed apart.

Waking was a sluggish process. It took them a long time to remember where they were and what had happened: they hadn't been in space, drifting between planets. They had been trapped underground. They had been thrashed and defeated and discarded. They had been left broken in the frigid slurry of their melted battlefield, too weak to move and sinking. The water had come up around them and froze.

They hadn't finished with this planet.

They would now.

It was good that there were so many little creatures scurrying around under their feet. The creatures made excellent target practice to resharpen their senses, and the guns pinging pellets off their scales helped to wake them up. They hadn't recalled that any creatures on this world had guns. How long had they slept?

Not long enough for the little king to die out. Unfortunate. Excellent.

They were awake now—awake and alive and freezing and furious and ecstatic.

But through the swirling wind and ice shards and shrapnel, through the screaming and shooting and dying vermin, through the darkness and the flashing yellow and blue light, through the electric life crackling up their throats—they felt a point of light piercing their minds like it was the only light in the universe.

The little king had fallen—dropped into the pit he had frozen them in—they wouldn't have to worry about him for a moment. They broke off their search, twisting around, scanning in separate directions for the light.

There, far below, a dark speck on the white ice: one of the vermin fleeing for their lives. There was their worshiper. They had spent so much time unconsciously following its mind around that, even awake, with their empathic sense muffled, they could still dully register its emotions. They had never felt it fear them before. But even so, they could still feel its awe piercing through the fear, in breathless fluttering bursts. Were they everything it had ever hoped for?

They bent down, all together, wings spread wide for balance, studying the vermin up close from three angles. It stopped running and turned to face them, even when the other vermin looked back at it and started shouting.

Within its gaze, they glowed. Yes, they were everything it had dreamed of and more.

It raised a hand, reaching for the middle of them, and they jerked back. No, that wouldn't do. Electricity crackled across the surface of their scales; at times, they had amused themselves by finding vermin hardly larger than their worshiper and brushing lightly against them to watch them sizzle and fry. They did not want their lone worshiper to end that way.

They would give it a different gift. They had wanted to sing for it for a long time.

They reared back, stood straight, and let out a single, high, trilling trichord. It wasn't as loud as they could sing—but they didn't need the whole planet to hear them.

It clapped its hands over the sides of its head, as did most of the other vermin; but they could feel as its mind lifted, floating, filled with light. And may whatever had weighed it down never do so again.

They could hear the little king stirring. If they fought here, their worshiper might be crushed. They gave it one last look—they might never see it again, and a million worlds from now they would want to remember what it had looked like—and then they turned and took off. They flew over the pit the little king was still trying to claw out of, whipped his face with the spines of one tail to knock him off balance, and soared past him as he fell again, daring him to pursue them—away from the vermin on the ice.

They could still feel their worshiper's love.

###

She could never have imagined how much more beautiful Monster Zero would be as a living creature, moving and tensing and flexing, glowing in the dull light, crackling with lightning. All the simulations and theorizations Monarch made about how he would behave, all their CGI models predicting how he would move, all the scans and samples they used to guess at his biology and abilities, and still he was so much more than they ever came close to predicting.

He was as awesome and terrible as she’d always hoped and feared.

And he had stopped to bend down and look at her. Only her. Did he know her? Had he heard her in his sleep? She could barely hear her colleagues telling her to run as she reached a hand for him.

With the sound of his roar, her ears rang and her bones vibrated, and she felt static in her lungs. A moment ago she'd thought Monster Zero was going to be the death of her—and if she had to choose how she'd die, she would choose no other way, even if she would prefer it wait a few more decades—but at his roar she knew it was not possible that he would hurt her. Euphoria poured into her mind like sunlight, like ambrosia overfilling a cup, and her soul sang with lightning. For a moment, she couldn't see, she couldn't feel, she couldn't breathe. She didn't need to breathe. Everything was dust and glitter and enlightenment.

The echoes of his roar faded, and she felt herself settle back on the Earth; but something had opened up in her. She felt lighter than she'd been in years.

Her knees gave out, and she sank gracelessly to the ice, watching the way its necks and tails rippled each time it beat its wings.

Someone said, "Wow. Wow. Did the rest of you feel that?" Someone else said, "Did we know he could do that? That's new, right? We didn't know about that."

Her heart pounding like it was trying to break free of her ribs, she watched him until he disappeared over the horizon.

###

Comments/reblogs are welcome! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of Ghidorah-centric and Rodorah fics, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.

#ghidorah #king ghidorah #godzilla #spoilers #kotm #fanfic #my writing #anonymous #ask

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littlesoufflecafe · 6 years ago

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One For The Road | Chapter 9 Cut Scene: “Karaoke, Billiards, and American Accents”

A/N: This is from an early draft of One For The Road, chapter nine! I knew I wanted The Doctor to hop up on stage and sing “Pretty Woman” to Clara at the end of this chapter, but building up to that scene and making everything flow nicely took a few tries, and this was the first of them. Please note that this cut scene (and many others of mine) end abruptly, as I usually don’t continue writing dialogue/descriptions if I don’t feel like they’re going anywhere. Enjoy!

-----

The last time Clara stepped foot in a place like this, the air was damp.

She had reluctantly dressed herself in an outfit she loved, smeared liner under her eyes for a smoky effect, and topped it off with a pair of Nina's three-inch pumps. It wasn't until she teetered across the threshold of the bar that she realized how little it mattered. If anything, she felt overdressed as she shouldered her way through the throng of university students, the hazy lights and overcasting scent of alcohol and sweat making anyone a fair target of attraction.

The anxiety in her bubbled and burst as she perched herself on the edge of a bar stool that had just been vacated, wisps of her fringe already stuck to her forehead by a thin layer of sweat. The twenty year-old had no interest in indulging herself in her legal privileges, but felt the need to conform to her own environment as she ordered a drink and focused on the bartender's hands as he prepared it.

The entire room felt saturated in everything—like a picture with a filter turned all the way up. Her friends had long since left her side to mingle as any other conventional student would, treading in lively waters when Clara couldn't even keep her head above the surface. She was drowning in a sea of gregarious extroverts and crystalline glasses and smoke, and wondered why on Earth anyone would want to spend time in this congested, miserable place.

This time around, it was nothing like that.

The Doctor kept his hand on the small of her back as he guided her into the bar, his gaze flicking to hers constantly, as if to confer that she was okay. The place was warm, kept alive by intimate pockets of conversation—held up by mainly business people with heavy eyes and loosened neck ties. It felt a lot more mature than the one she had been to in university, though Clara supposed that was a given. It was a Monday night, work hours were ending, and no one looked to be younger than they were.

"B-52?" a waitress with blonde bangs asked them upon entering, plucking a shot glass from the tray she was balancing on her shoulder. "It's on the house."

The Doctor shook his head politely, flashing the woman a quick smile. "No thanks, I'm the designated driver for tonight." He looked towards his companion. "You?"

Clara looked at the concoction—the way its layers separated in the shot glass like oil and water—and pursed her lips. "I'm good, thanks."

They found themselves a small table adjacent to the bar and ordered mozzarella sticks to share just as a band of college girls teetered up onto the stage, their faces flushed by the light of the karaoke projector as they balanced precariously on their skinny three-inch high heels. The leader of the group, a brunette wearing a silky pink slip dress, snatched the mic off of the stand as it blared slightly from the impact.

"This one goes out to our best girlfriend Brittney, who's turning twenty-two years young tonight!" she announced, the slur in her voice only partially noticeable as the crowd answered back with a series of claps and cheering. The beginning notes to Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face' filled the speaker system as the girls began to speak-sing the lyrics, their voices fading in and out as they tried to maneuver around the cramped stage in their stilts.

Clara picked a mozzarella stick from the platter that had just appeared before them and dipped it into the marinara sauce. "You were right," she said, taking a bite. "I can see why you find this fun."

The Doctor grimaced as one of the girls began molesting her hair. "You know, I've never actually watched one of these fully sober."

"Brittney sure is a lucky girl."

"Dear god," he murmured, face reddening as he turned to look at Clara. "That girl's breast is about to pop out of her top if she keeps doing that."

"Oh, no no no, you can't look away now," she urged, eyes glued to the stage in a sardonic sort of fascination. "They're just getting to the good part!"

She began bopping her head to the beat as the chorus went into full swing, the girls doing their best to enunciate their P's as The Doctor leaned over to whisper in her ear. "You don't need to lie and say that you're actually enjoying this."

"Oh no, I am loving this," she promised him, reaching across the table for another mozzarella stick. Her eyes were still affixed on the train wreck unfolding before them as she leaned over and took a sip of water. "Best decision I ever made, coming here. Thank you Doctor, I am feeling much better now."

He opened his mouth to object, but was stopped as the crowd—and Clara—erupted into revelry as the birthday girl herself hiked onto the stage without even bothering to use the stairs, her velvet dress shimmering under the light as she swung her linen napkin over her head like a lasso. And despite himself, The Doctor couldn't help but crack a smile, not because of the girls on stage, but because of the one sitting next to him. She did look relaxed, her features a mix of bewilderment and rapture. The young man couldn't help but adopt a similar expression. She was just that contagious when it came to him.

They bore witness to several more honorable performances, the two travelers singing along to the songs they knew, nodding their heads in support of the ones they didn't. It wasn't until an elderly couple began cooing 'Somethin' Stupid' by the Sinatras that the place began to subside from the hype, Clara's feet propped up on The Doctor's lap as she leaned back in her chair, mouthing the words silently.

He wanted to reach out for her in that moment, grab her hand and squeeze it before pulling her close to his chest so that they could dance, swaying in tune to the gentle, lapping waves of the music. What was stopping him? Fear, perhaps. Pure, unadulterated terror. Something he seldom faced when it came to taking chances. He didn't know what to make of it.

Gently lifting her sparkly feet and setting them back on the ground, he excused himself to go locate the toilet, resisting the urge to smack himself with each passing step. Idiot, idiot, he kept telling himself as he scrubbed his hands for the sake of having something to do, forcing himself to face his reflection in the foggy mirror. He saw a young man shriveling in his tweed coat, staring back at him.

"You are a coward," he murmured to himself, the words dying on his lips as a man with a red goatee pushed into the restroom with an unlit cigarette dangling between his lips. The Doctor mumbled out an apology before crossing the threshold again, not wanting to leave Clara by herself for too long as he desperately tried to derive another way to make her smile without making his intentions so overt.

He actually found it not a moment later, in the form of cue sticks and worsted green wool. Returning to the table with a wide smile on his face, The Doctor shared with the young writer his most recent discovery.

"Clara," he prompted excitedly, not even bothering to sit down as he jabbed a finger towards the back room. "They've got billiards here!"

His companion craned her neck to meet his gaze, wringing her hands atop the table as she stared at him with a blank expression. "Do they not have billiards back in London?"

"No silly, of course they do," he replied, blinking back in confusion. "Now come on! You can play me in pool," he urged, the smile on his face faltering as he saw that she wasn't budging. His shoulders slumped slightly.

"I haven't played in years," she admitted. "Stars, I don't even think I remember how to play."

"Even better! I can re-teach you."

Her gaze drifted towards the stage longingly. He rolled his eyes.

"Clara, watching drunk people make fools of themselves isn't having fun, it's being cruel," he accused, frowning as he beheld a thirty year-old man weep the lyrics of 'Time After Time.' "At least...get drunk with them. Spare them the judgement of the sensible person in the room."

She pursed her lips into the corner of her mouth, watching silently as the performer on stage gripped the microphone in an ardent desperation.

"Okay, I'll play you in pool," she muttered begrudgingly, standing from the table and following him towards the back room. It was a cozy space tucked behind a velvet-lined curtain, two sets of pool tables lined-up side by side. The Doctor beamed at the vacant of the two and immediately began teaching Clara the basics, from the history of the game to choosing the right cue stick based on one's size, in which he selected for her the shortest one. She appreciated the bit, although she swiped the thing from him more forcefully than intended.

She caught onto the rules fairly quickly and watched as The Doctor took the first shot, accepting his help for her first few turns before insisting she could do it herself. Her gaze had zeroed-in on the exact pocket she wanted the ball to go in when a party of four drew themselves to the adjacent table. A young man with tawny brown hair and rolled-up sleeves gestured to the abandoned pool game with his drink.

"Is this table taken?" he asked the two. The Doctor straightened from inspecting his own game, an idea bursting into his head at the last second.

"Nah man, it's all yours," he said casually, his voice lowering as he adopted an American accent. Clara was thrown as she made her shot, cursing under her breath as the ball flew past its intended target and smacked into the railing. No one seemed to notice her spasm, or the deception behind The Doctor's self-satisfied smirk, for that matter.

"Mind me saying, but I recognize that accent. Are you from New York?" the young man asked, setting his glass on the lip of the table as his friends began preparing their table. Clara drove her cue stick into the floor and eyed her friend in suspicion, The Doctor's face breaking out into the biggest smile she'd ever seen.

"Where else?" he proclaimed, gesturing towards Clara affectionately. "Me and the missus are actually on a road trip to San Fran, trying to catch the Giants game on Wednesday."

She didn't know what shocked her more—The Doctor continuing to refer to themselves as a married couple, or the fact that he actually knew when American baseball season was. Nevertheless, she couldn't shake the discomfort of this character he had devised on-the-spot, with his lack of flailing and naturally fluid stance. It was so unlike his actual self that she began to question what she really knew about him.

"So you guys are Yankees fans, I take it," the stranger surmised.

"We prefer the Mets," The Doctor admitted, no doubt having learned his two cents from Amy. Clara was at his side in an instant, her arm sliding into the crook of his in a rigid grip.

"Uh...Doctor?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I talk to you for a second?" she asked, a plastered smile on her face. She pulled him away from the conversation before he could respond, her mind burning with questions as she drove them towards the nearest corner and began whispering to him. It came across as more of a hiss than anything.

"What's with the accent?" she blurted, infuriated by the cue stick still in her left hand. She leaned it against the wall and set her hands on her hips. The Doctor's hands had retreated into his pockets, a sheepish grin on his face as if she'd just asked if he'd done something wrong. He shrugged.

"Thought I'd try it out, you know, be one with the locals," he whispered back excitedly, his natural accent returning to him as if letting her in on some sort of covert secret. "What do you think?"

Clara blinked. If she were honest, she'd have said it was good. Really good, even. "I dunno, it sounds like your voice plunged off the face of the earth, and it frightens me."

"Oh. Sorry," he said, furrowing his brow. A second passed before he asked, "But didn't you think it was at least a tiny bit cool?"

Her smile was askew as she folded her arms across her chest. "What, pretending to be someone else?"

"Pretending to be a New Yorker! Pretending that I actually know how baseball works! I was really convincing back there Clara, didn't you see?"

-----

Read the full fic here!

FanFiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12799845/1/One-For-The-Road

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986580/chapters/34731947

#onefortheroad #doctorwho #whouffle #clara oswald #eleventh doctor #dw #fanfiction #jenna coleman #matt smith #whouffle fanfiction #archive of our own

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nitewrighter · 7 years ago

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Of Blades and Broomsticks Pt. VIII

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Witch AU on AO3

----

The door to the house of Junkenstein creaked open as the doctor walked in, running his fingers through his hair. “Two days,�� he said to himself, “Two days---” he thumped the heels of his hands on his forehead, “Come on, think, Jameson, think!” He withdrew the small vial of the fiery, glowing liquid (he really wasn’t sure if you could still call it ‘blood’) from his coat and stared at it. He tossed the vial up and down in his palm. “It would bloody help if you explained one little bit of the things you can do to me. ‘It’s magic,’ this and ‘It’s not humors’ that.” He caught the vial in his palm and eyed it, then pressed it against his brow. “Think,” he said to himself again. “The blood of a woman who can...” he gave a glance to his latest creation, his wheel of lightning, “...conduct... lightning...” he said slowly. He paced around the wheel, glancing between it and the vial. “Perhaps if...yes---no--yes---but--yes--” his pacing quickened, “But she was a living thing,” he shoved several leafs of paper around on his table before stopping and wagging his finger and nodding to himself, “I’ll need a living thing to properly conduct that power...or... something living things are made of...”

His eyes flicked from the lightning wheel to a chalkboard that he had covered with a sheet. he walked over and yanked the sheet off, revealing a chalk sketch of something similar to the Vitruvian man.

...if the Vitruvian man was 7 feet tall and had a pig face.

Junkenstein lovingly ran a hand down the sketch. “I never thought I would get a chance to create you,” he whispered with all the tenderness of a lover, before giving a glance to the vial in his hand, “But now it seems I have no choice but to try.”

—-

Genji held a green glowing amulet in his hand, and his eyes flicked to the gold bracelet on his wrist. She had stopped calling him. Was she dead already? Or had she simply given up hope?

“You are sure about this?” said Zenyatta.

Genji looped the amulet over his head. “I’m sure,” he said.

“As you don that amulet, you cannot be banished back to this realm, however another attempt at banishing you like the one that brought you here could destroy you,” said Zenyatta.

“So I’ll just avoid chalk circles,” said Genji, smiling.

Zenyatta gave Genji one of his steady looks.

“What?” said Genji.

“Regardless of her magic, this is a lot to risk over one mortal,” said Zenyatta.

Genji thumped his chest, “I am Genji, Demon of the North Wind,” he said with that same smile, “‘Daring’ just happens to be my specialty.”

“This goes past ‘daring’ and well into ‘inadvisable’ while edging significantly into ‘foolish,’” said Zenyatta.

“Are we really so afraid of mortals?” said Genji.

The tentacles hanging from Zenyatta’s face flicked and gnarled with some irritation. “I do not fear mortals,” said Zenyatta, “I will long outlive this earth and the star it circles. You, however, were a mortal once, and it’s clear at this point that mortals have the means to harm you, perhaps even kill you. Part of the reason I am coming with you is to see this power for myself. I fear magic is waning from your world, and the mortals are burning it out.”

Genji considered Zenyatta’s words, twisting the gold bracelet on his wrist tentatively as they walked through Zenyatta’s slimy dark tower with several green eyes hovering behind them. Finally they reached a hall that smelled more strongly of brine and rot than the rest of the tower, which was really saying something and Zenyatta walked to the far end of it, where two statues of beings similar to himself hovered on either side of what looked like a spongy section of the wall lined with... Genji thought they looked like something between barnacles and lichen. Zenyatta held his hand up against this section of the wall and it gave a little under the pressure of his hand. He pushed forward and it stretched and thinned. He gently floated aside for genji and motioned at the spongy section of the wall. “Push through,” He said simply.

Genji braced his own hands against the membrane and pushed forward, finding the wall stretching and thinning. Not feeling like stone at all but spongy, then rubbery, then thinning out to slimy tissue.

They passed through the membrane and found themselves in a dark hall full of hooded robed figures all chanting with their faces bowed toward the ground. Genji stumbled through first, peeling a bit of the wretched-smelling caul-like material off of his shoulder, when he glanced at the crowd. They fell dead silent. They had not seen someone pass through that veil in centuries. Then Zenyatta passed through and a gasp rippled through the crowd.

Genji looked at the crowd, clad in robes of purple and black, some donning bright green amulets that seemed like a crude tribute to the green eyes that floated about Zenyatta. It smelled of death in this place, both fresh and old death. The sweet iron scent of fresh blood and a deeper, more ancient death-smell, of rot and yellowed bones. Genji’s eyes flicked to the stained glass windows which featured jagged nightmarish images of creatures with many eyes, many teeth, and hundreds crooked, curling tentacles wreaking untold madness and misery upon sad and twisted human figures. Genji glanced over at Zenyatta, who seemed equally confused by the dozens of robed figures.

“Uh… Master?” Genji started.

“This seems… familiar…” Zenyatta said thoughtfully.

“It’s him…!” one robed figure stumbled forward from the crowd and turned to the rest of the macabre congregation. “He has returned to reshape the world in his image as prophesied!”

“As prophesied!” the crowd echoed back in a roar.

“All hail the Master! Zenya’taa! Dread Dreamer! Messiah of Madness! Voice of the Void!”

“Voice of the Void!” the crowd echoed again.

Zenyatta snapped his tentacle-like fingers. “Oh now I remember.”

“Remember what?” Genji said warily as the crowd of robed figures seemed to close in around them, hushed murmurs rippling through the crowd.

Zenyatta cleared his throat and addressed the crowd. “It is I,” he said simply. This sent the crowd into a frenzy. They started chanting and wailing, leaping and dancing, it was all Genji could do to simply stick close to Zenyatta and not be buffeted by the flailing limbs of the robed congregation.

“I…may have been worshipped as a god last time I came to this plane,” said Zenyatta.

“May have!?” said Genji, looking at the robed figures, some of which were bowing prostrate, some railing and leaping and dancing, and some rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues in some mad faith-driven ecstasy.

“They built a few ziggurats to me, a few human sacrifices here and there…I was young and impetuous. I didn’t expect the religion to last this long since—-“

“Master! Master!” a cultist broke from the crowd, fell to his knees before Zenyatta and gripped at the hem of Zenyatta’s robe. “Tell me thy bidding, Master! I am but a humble worm in the face of your incomprehensible greatn—“

“A blasphemer has touched the master!” another cultist shrieked and arms surged forth from the crowd and gripped the offender, yanking him into a storm of bodies. Genji saw the glint of several daggers rise above the crowd and his own hand instinctively went to the blade at his hip but Zenyatta put a hand in front of Genji and Genji stayed his blade. Genji watched as the offending cultist was dragged through the roiling sea of bodies, little more than a ripple moving through the crowd until he reached the center and stopped. Then the knives, held aloft in the hands of the mob of worshippers were brought down again and again, the blades surfacing from the crowd wet and red.

“…since they tend to do this a lot,” said Zenyatta, finally finishing his thought and gesturing at the crowd of worshippers now reveling in the blood of the blasphemer sacrificed in the name of their Master. Somehow the sight of a man destroyed by a raving crowd made Genji think of Mercy again. His Witch. What horrible things were being done to her in the name of faith now?

“We need to get going,” said Genji.

“Master!” a cultist fell prostrate before Zenyatta, “We have waited for you for centuries! For millennia! We have made blood sacrifices to you in hopes of your return! Wherefore you take your leave of us so soon!?”

Zenyatta gave a wary glance to Genji. “I have pledged my help to a dear friend,” he said.

“Help?” one cultist piped up.

“What help?” said another.

“Does the master require our blades? Require our services?” another cultist emerged from the crowd, this one donning some circlet that seemed designed after the eerie green eyes that were always hovering about Zenyatta. She took a knee before Zenyatta and gestured at the crowd of cultists behind her. “We will fight and kill and die for you, O Abyssal One, name only whose blood we shall shed.”

Zenyatta gave a glance to Genji. “An army might be nice in liberating your witch,” he said.

“An army...” Genji repeated, and he looked at the cultists, “An army! Of course! Well--their training obviously seems lacking but in terms of a diversion---” he unthinkingly touched Zenyatta’s shoulder and a loud gasp rippled through the crowd.

“What?” said Genji, and his eyes trailed to his hand on Zenyatta’s shoulder, “...oh.”

“Blasphemer!” A shriek came from the back and several cultists at the front raised their knives

“Kuso,” said Genji.

With a wave of his hand, Zenyatta opened up a swirling green portal. “Go. I’ll calm them down and meet with you later.”

Genji nodded and leapt through the portal.

—-

Mercy watched the smoldering embers of the torch Junkenstein had left beside her cell. Her mind fell to Genji again. It kept turning to him. To how afraid he looked as the light consumed him, the way his fingers trailed down that lock of her hair which now hung more irritatingly than flatteringly in her face, to his stupid cocky grins, to all his stupid bragging and how dearly and painfully she missed it. As mad as it sounded she missed his voice in her mind.

“Witch Mercy, There is no one like you.”

She remembered breathing him in like smoke, feeling him inhabit her like lightning in her veins, giving her all of his strength but letting her keep all of her freedom. She shook her head. Lonely silly fool, she thought to herself. He was dead. Or damned. Or had abandoned her. Thinking of him now would only hurt more.

She opened her palm and let a flame spin itself into existence there, tried to sustain it as long as she could, but then would feel it fizzle out. Stupid. She was stupid. All this time she thought she was so clever and yet here se was, waiting to be burned like a fool. She bowed her forehead against her knees.

“You aren’t going to get anywhere holding back like that,” she heard a voice and flinched, looking around the dungeon, but there was only the smoldering torch.

“I’m going mad now,” she murmured to herself before curling into herself once more.

“Madness? Madness? Do you think I would let the last bearer of my flame succumb to madness? Pathetic.”

Mercy flinched and sat up again and her brow furrowed. No one else called it a flame. If the guards had seen her spinning fire into existence in her palm, perhaps they would call it a flame. Perhaps they were playing a trick on her, but then again, she had made a point of never speaking of the cave where Gramercy passed the flame down to her.

“If there is someone here,” Mercy said slowly, “Come into the light.”

There was no response.

“Mad,” Mercy said again with a sigh, “I’m going mad...” She sighed. There was no natural light coming into the dungeon, except by the door, which was closed. She had no way of knowing what time it was. She knew she would burn in two days. There was no bed in her cell. Not even a pile of hay. Just a chamber pot that was little more than a bucket in the corner. Mercy did her best to curl up on the stone floor, knowing no part of it would soften for her. She cushioned her head on her hands, her own shackles cold against her cheek. She slowed her breathing to try and bring the sleep faster.

Then a hand, blackened and smoldering with red-orange veins of embers shot up from the floor and clamped over her mouth, crackling and blistering against her skin. Several more hands shot up, two gripping her wrists as she moved to flinch away from the burning hand, several more wrapping themselves over her torso and legs, fingers sinking hot against her flesh. The hands were pulling her against the stone, which itself was gridded with ember-glow fissures, then there was a crack and a rush of sparks and she fell through the floor and into a burning place, the hands falling away from her and letting her drop. She landed with a thud on the ground and groaned. She got up and saw the flames all around her.

“Do you fear hell?” the Witch Hunter’s voice echoed in her mind, but she glanced down and saw her arm in one of the flames. She felt the warmth but not the burn. Her brow crinkled in some confusion. She turned her hand over, still in the flames and saw that it was the palm she had cut to give blood to Junkenstein. She watched as the line along her palm closed. Then something dark passed behind her hand and she glimpsed up and saw she was looking at a pair of legs, though there was definitely something off about them...notably the three clawed toes and the fact that the legs themselves were covered in scales.

“Up,” said the same voice she had heard earlier.

“What?” said Mercy.

“Get up,” the voice said more insistently and several of the same ember-hands from earlier rose out of the floor and the flames and hauled Mercy to her feet. Mercy’s breath caught in her throat as she found herself staring into a pair of fiery amber eyes. A woman. A dragon. Neither. Both. Ancient. Beautiful. Terrifying. Mercy remembered a painting in a cave on the night the old woman died.

“Who are you? Where am i? What--what is this?” said Mercy.

“You know. Not out of prison. Divine intervention,” the woman replied calmly.

“Divine--?” Mercy started confusedly.

“Did you take the words ‘forge of creation’ so lightly?” said the dragon woman, folding her arms. She snarled, exposing fangs and stepped around Mercy, still gripped by the several smoldering hands. One hand gave Mercy’s arm a squeeze. She huffed.

“Soft. Weak. Is this what my fire in the mortal realm has been reduced to?” she spoke, walking around Mercy. Mercy wasn’t sure if she was talking to her or to herself, “It was once borne by warrior kings, by magi with the blood of gods and demons in their veins, and now it has fizzled down to...” she stopped back in front of Mercy, “...you.” She sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped. No one appreciates the old gods any more...”

“I-I don’t understand--The witch hunter had to have covered the outside of my prison with sigils--lined it with salt---You shouldn’t---”

The amber eyes of the dragon woman flared. “For your own good I suggest you never speak of me like I am some petty imp to be dispelled by apotropaic frippery again. I predate your witch hunter’s religion. I was born when this universe burst forth in flame and creation. I helped shape this world. No salt and no sigils can contain me.” She put two fingers to Mercy’s chest, “You have no idea of the boon that has been gifted you.”

“I could tell you that much,” Mercy muttered a bit bitterly, glancing down.

The dragon woman brought her hand up to the level of Mercy’s eyes and snapped her fingers, causing Mercy to flinch back slightly, and a fire alighted on the tip of her finger. Dark marks appeared over each of Mercy’s eyebrows at the presence of the flame.

“So it still burns within you,” said the dragon woman. She closed her fingertips together and the flame shrank into nothingness and the dark marks disappeared from Mercy’s forehead, “...but you still can’t seem to call it forward.”

“Yes well, the person who gave me this power died immediately after so she didn’t exactly have the chance to tell me what to do with it,” said Mercy, frowning.

The dragon woman snickered a little. “Does fire think? Does fire need lessons on how to burn? Fire lives. Fire breathes. Fire consumes. Creates. Destroys. You didn’t need lessons to breathe. Fire has but two choices: burn or die. Which will you choose?”

The arms gripping mercy crumbled away into sparks and embers, and suddenly large chunks of the fiery realm seemed to be collapsing, like a long-burning log falling apart.

“Wait--!” Mercy called out as the burning place collapsed around her. The dragon woman herself was consumed in flames, closing her eyes. “No, this doesn’t help! You have to tell me how to--Please! You can’t leave now! You can’t---”

Mercy’s eyes snapped open and she found herself in the cold stone floor of her cell. She couldn’t be sure how long she had slept. She sat up in her cell. “Burn or die...” she said to herself, then shook her head. “That’s ridiculous--I’ll be dying by burning...” she said, letting a flame spin itself into existence above her palm. She frowned and closed her hand into a fist, snuffing the flame out. “Lessons to breathe-- it’s the smoke that kills you first if you’re lucky...” She sighed in a huff.

Her breath left her in a plume of fire.

She slapped a hand over her own mouth and scrambled back against the wall of her cell, eyes wide in terror and awe.

#gency #witch Mercy AU

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theeurekaproject · 5 years ago

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Imperatrix in Alba

“Acidalia-Planitia Cipher, are you willing to take this oath?” “I am.”

“Do you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of the empire of Eleutheria, and the dominions thereto belonging, with righteousness and mercy?”

“I do.”

“Will you, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the virtues upon which Eleutheria was built?”

“I will.”

“Will you, to the utmost of your power, further the pursuit of knowledge in this realm, protect the liberty of the peoples upon which you reign, and serve your subjects dutifully through peace and war, health and plague, life and death?” “All this I swear to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep.”

As Acidalia finished the vows, she felt her mother’s eyes upon her, shining a strange and alien blue. The glow glinted off the platinum of the Imperial coronet, as bright as the sapphires that made up Neptune and the lapis lazuli of Earth’s sky. She didn’t look very enthusiastic about relinquishing the crown; who would? Nobody wanted to be the Imperatrix who put a bastard child on the throne.

***

Eleutheria always came to life at night; this evening, as they celebrated a new sovereign and a new era, was no different. Flashes of light fell from the sky in a stunning display of starbursts, casting an orange glow over the river’s sparkling surface. Pinpoints of luminescence glowed in the sky, the lights of thousands of spacecraft celebrating their nation’s newest monarch. Far beneath the palace, people sang the Imperial anthem in one massive chorus, interspersed with occasional interjections of “Vivat Imperatrix!”

“At least somebody is happy that I’m alive,” Acidalia remarked.

Her brother laughed. “Eh, they probably want to kill you too. They just don’t know it yet.”

“Nice, T,” she said, knowing he was right. The majority of Eleutheria’s people loved Acidalia like they’d loved every other Imperatrix before her, from her ancestors to her mother, but those who didn’t… well, they were the loudest voices, and they were heard the most. People were already calling for her death and it’d just been a few hours since she’d been crowned.

“I’m not joking, you know,” he said. “Keep your eyes open. Do you know how much danger you’re in already? You’re standing out here on a balcony without even a guard to keep you safe—“

“I know you aren’t a murderer, T,” she replied.

“But what if I had been? What if I decided to shoot you dead right now and steal that crown off your head? It’s not out of the question, you know. Sororicide.” He looked pointedly at her. “I wouldn’t do it, but—“

“—others might,” she concluded, sighing. “I know that better than anyone.”

“You’re smart, but you’re not invulnerable,” T said, “and I worry about you. It’s dangerous up here.”

“As if you live more safely?” she asked. “You’re going down to ground level later today. That’s incredibly dangerous.” “Well, on ground level nobody is actively trying to kill me and me specifically,” he sighed. “You should have listened to me ages ago and just run away to Mars and left this horror show behind before this turns into another War of the Roses.”

“War of the Roses? There aren’t enough noble houses for that anymore,” she said. “Besides, what kind of leader would I be if I just up and abandoned my civilization? We’ve been on the edge of another civil war for years. Our father is irrelevant; people are ready to kill each other with every new law passed.”

“Yes, but we certainly don’t help,” he sighed. “You should have been born male. Then she could just throw you in the army and tell people you don't exist like she does with me.”

“Sometimes I wish I had been a boy. Then I couldn't be the dauphine.” Acidalia traced the ornate carvings on the railing of the balcony, made of marble and glass. “But I’ve been in this position for two decades. I’ve been training to take the throne, and the capabilities it provides, since I was born. I can’t just abandon it now; it would lead to a war of succession.” “No it wouldn’t,” he said. “Principissa Aleskynn.”

“Aleskynn is not capable of any kind of leadership right now,” Acidalia argued. “And she’s only thirteen. She may be of high-breeding, but people would still be angry that Alestra could stay regent for the next seven years. And you know our mother; she’d never want to give that up. She’d sooner kill Leski.”

“She’d sooner kill you,” T said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you went the same way as Avina, Harmonia, Celestia—“

“I’m not as naïve as Celestia or as stupid as Harmonia,” Acidalia replied, “and I have a better cult of personality than Avina. My mother wouldn’t kill me now. She knows the outrage it would cause, and she is nowhere near prepared to deal with another war, not while we’re fighting this ridiculous war of attrition.” She motioned towards the sky. “I have no idea why we’re still trying with the Mira. Nobody’s going to win. We need to start diplomatic talks immediately instead of just firing guns at each other, gaining no territory and no resources, because our ancestors insulted their ancestors centuries ago.”

“I’m less worried about the aliens in the sky and more worried about the war down here.” T glanced at the doorway skittishly. “Listen, Alestra may not kill you yet, but you know she’s going to try. And even if she doesn’t get to you first, one of her followers will. Just because she’s smart and patient doesn’t mean the rest of the Nova are.”

“Listen, T,” Acidalia said, “I understand what you’re trying to do. You want me to be safe, and I want you to be safe, too. But you know that my safety is secondary to the safety of my people and my planet. That's the sacrifice you make when you become a monarch."

"You don't have to make that sacrifice," T said. "Leave with me." "I can't do that." She looked down across the expanse of the city, the lights sparkling between buildings like a starscape. "I'm a servant of this state. If service means I have to die, then so be it." "You sound like when they start indoctrinating the little boys who all think dying in battle is romantic. They act like it's some glamorous, honorable thing to die at the hands of the military machine that sends fifteen-year-olds into battle without the consent of anyone involved." He shook his head. "If there's anything the army has taught me, it's that sacrificing your life for this empire is worthless. A hundred million people can die and what will Alestra do but replace them with more soldiers? If you die, they'll just replace you with our little sister and continue on as normal, and the wars will happen anyway. It's not worth it, and we need you." "Don't mention that," Acidalia warned. "Not here." She spared a glance at her surroundings, careful not to let anyone overhear. "I've been doing this for a very long time, T. I will be okay. I'm a good shot, I have the Imperial Guard, and everyone in our movement is looking out for me. If an assassination attempt happens—and I'm not saying it won't, it's a very real possibility—I will probably make it out alive. And if I don't, I'm a martyr. My postmortem impact will be just as large as that of my life—people will rally around me, and that'll be excellent for propaganda."

T sighed. "Listen, I just... I've seen enough people die. I don't need my big sister dead, too."

He suddenly looked very young, his dark face lit only by the occasional bursts of fireworks, big brown eyes shining in the sporadic showers of light. He and Acidalia lacked the Cipher eyes—bright blue irises flashing with gold and green, the symbol of the Imperial family for generations. There was nothing that screamed bastard more than plain brown eyes.

"We have this argument every time we meet," Acidalia said, "and I'm not dead yet." She knew how hollow her words sounded; there was a very real chance that she'd be dead on the morrow, poisoned or shot or stabbed by somebody seeking her throne.

"Yet being the key word here." T frowned. "All I'm saying is that you have to be careful. Don't underestimate what our family can do." Acidalia thought back to snapped ankles and burning pointe shoes, broken tiaras, shards of crystal and quartz on the floor of her bedroom, smashed computer screens and holographic projectors, bruises on her collarbone hidden with concealer. There was no denying that Alestra had a temper, and she'd do whatever it took to get the planet back under her control. "I won't," Acidalia said.

"Promise me you'll be careful?"

"I swear." She smiled in an attempt to be reassuring. They stood there in the darkness, together but not speaking, until a harsh male voice rang out from behind them.

"Immunus TB-2115, what the hell are you doing?"

"Nothing," T said, rolling his eyes. He was as high-ranking as his birth warranted—a full fledged, three star immune at seventeen—but even immunes had to listen to their superior officers.

"Really," Acidalia said, "it's of no bother."

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said, suddenly flustered. Acidalia had forgotten in the aftermath of the coronation that she was now the commander in chief (or perhaps co-commander in chief, alongside her mother) of the Eleutherian army, fractured as it was. Something was funny and a little surreal about watching these grizzled praetors, combat veterans, fall over themselves to obey her, a barely 20-year-old girl in a white dress and a crown.

"Pardon granted," she said, smiling slightly. He relaxed, not significantly, but enough for it to be noticeable.

"If you'll allow me to retrieve this young immune, he needs to be in place for the ceremony—"

"Of course." She nodded her head. "It was a pleasure speaking with you. I hope to discuss this matter with you again."

"Likewise." T held out a gloved hand, which Acidalia shook. He slipped a tiny, discrete data chip into her palm, affixed to a sheet of paper. As T left with his superior officer, Acidalia turned towards the balcony again and unfolded it.

Weekly updats was written on the label. Acidalia recognized the handwriting immediately as that of her friend Andromeda, fellow Revolutionary. She'd misspelled "updates." Making a mental note to check it later, and thanking God that her coronation dress had pockets, she slipped it into a slit cut into the ballgown's skirt.

She didn't even remember which ceremony was coming next. Another parade, another wardrobe change, another interview—she was starting to lose track. It was probably the flyover of the starcraft and aircraft belonging to the Eleutherian military. She slipped her high heels back on—they were absolutely massive, six inches tall, and she'd been trying to keep them off of her feet for as long as possible—and set out for the corridor. Evidently everyone had been so busy keeping track of the coronation that they'd forgotten to keep track of the Imperatrix herself, because the hallway was deserted.

She rejoined the procession outside under a grove of cherry trees. They were officially supposed to be a gift from Iaponia, but it was common knowledge that Alestra had simply taken them for her own, and nobody had been brave enough to argue the matter with her. Acidalia’s ladies-in-waiting sat alongside those of her sister and her mother, creating a disorganized mess of babbling, twittering young women. As Acidalia approached, they arranged themselves into a complex pattern, organized according to a rank and order Acidalia didn't remember. She had a dozen or so ladies in waiting, but she couldn’t recall any of their names. They came and went like the wind, and they were tried for treason and executed so often that she found it fruitless to even attempt getting closer to them. Not that any self-respecting lady of the court would want a relationship with the Martian half-bred anyway, Imperatrix or not.

Acidalia was right at the front of the procession, flanked by her entourage and the Imperial Guard, a colorful mix of caste Magistratum and actual military officers. Two Aquilifers from two different legions bore eagles on each side, for ancient America and ancient Rome, while more Signiferi held spears and swordsof various sizes. Acidalia had long forgotten their symbolism, if they even had any to begin with—her mother always liked to introduce more meaningless customs and traditions that existed only to increase the size of her ego. The endless drone of the cornicenes and their clarions combined with the bang! of falling fireworks began to give her a migraine, causing her pulse to beat audibly in her ears.

"I have a headache," Aleskynn complained, stepping up beside her. She technically wasn't supposed to be standing up here, being a principissa and one rank lower than the Imperatrix Ceasarina, but nobody seemed to care much. She was the daughter of Alestra Cipher and a specially-selected, genetically perfect soldier, while Acidalia was the product of her mother's affair with a Martian man—it wasn't difficult to see why the planet favored Aleskynn. She was fully Eleutherian, the spitting image of her mother in name and appearance, and the whole empire's darling, with her curly blonde locks and bright Cipher eyes.

"So do I," Acidalia muttered, though she doubted anyone could hear her. Still, she marched onwards, trying to catch a glimpse of her brother, hidden someplace among the other immuni.

"This is stupid. I want to go home," Aleskynn whined. "The planet doesn't want you, anyway. This should be my coronation."

"There's no law stating that one must be the child of a specific man to inherit the throne," Acidalia said mildly. "The code says only that one must be the eldest daughter of the former Imperatrix and be at least twenty years of age."

"I don't care if it's a law, it's a president." "Precedent." "Whatever. This is dumb." She looked around at her ensemble for reenforcement. A gaggle of teenage girls offered up their mostly irrelevant opinions—"yeah, Aleskynn, this is so dumb!" "This is totally ridiculous!" "You're so pretty, Aleskynn!"—while Acidalia's own court ladies remained suspiciously silent.

Of all the women around her, Acidalia could only recognize a few. There was Cassiopeia Generalis, last of her name, the famously unhinged and violent Nova supporter who would probably sell Acidalia's soul to Satan for one credit. Next to Cassiopeia was Proregina Artemis Minora, back from the the Lunar Colonies for a week to pretend she cared about all this excessive celebration. On her wrist was a bracelet that Andromeda had given to her for her fourteenth birthday a decade ago; Artemis was also a member of the Revolution, but Alestra didn't need to know that. It made Acidalia feel slightly better that at least one other person here wanted to keep her alive, though that one person would be returning to the Moon come morning. Artemis snuck her a glance and smiled, pointing to the bracelet. Acidalia smiled back.

Then there were heaps of other women who all looked the same, with white-blonde hair and artificially bright eyes. They copied the trends Alestra set, making Acidalia's dark hair and warm skin stand out in the crowd even more. Despite the variety in their ages, they all looked twenty-something, and they'd probably look like that forever, thanks to the wonders of genetic modifications and cosmetic surgery—not that Acidalia hadn't been put through the same processes herself, before her mother realized that no amount of silicone could change the fact that she was Martian, and had declared it the same as putting lipstick on a pig.

In between the ladies of the court and the servants of the rich, she spotted a few notable outliers: the daughter of a member of the Imperial Guard, wearing the uniform of the position she’d one day inherit; the CEO of one of those mega corporations that practically worked as its own little government; some particularly important “journalist” who’d recently been granted the Imperial Medal of Freedom for a piece she’d written glorifying one of Alestra’s latest bloody, violent attacks on an organization she suspected of being a rebellion. They were unique, certainly more so than the dozens of identical ladies-in-waiting, but they all deserved to be here, clearly. But next to Aleskynn sat another girl, a girl with soft gray hair and a dress with the tag still on it, and Acidalia felt the hair on the back of her neck rise.

Sororicide is not out of the question, she reminded herself, wondering who here could be a spy. But Aleskynn spoke to the girl like she was a friend, and Acidalia doubted somehow that Aleskynn would think of a plot this obvious. Strategy was never her sister’s strong suit, so Acidalia breathed in deeply and tried to relax. She muttered a word of greeting to the stranger, who looked as if she’d just been personally blessed by God himself.

The crowds all blended into one another, fading into one mass under an inky black sky. On a planet of billions, the 1% was more numerous than Acidalia ever could have imagined, even though she’d spent her whole life around them. There were aristocrats—dozens of them, from the last of the Generalises to the daughters of the prolific house Dictatorum—in rows, all in white and gilded platinum. Then there were celebrities, famous actresses and musicians of caste Incentor, tirelessly working to keep up their stage personas. There were war heroes and police heroes, men and women in uniforms that looked the same save for the color scheme; Eleutheria had long since stopped pretending the military and the police force were any different. And finally, there were literati: intellectuals, researchers, scientists and writers, nurses and doctors, the people who kept society together, who kept humanity striving towards the future and made money for themselves in the process.

And then, scattered between the affluents, the “haves,” were the “have nots.” Harried Suffragia whose votes didn’t matter any more than their voices, dead-eyed Cantatores who were only free on paper, pretty young women with futures as dim as the evening sky. They were hard to ignore, specks of black clothes in an ocean of white.

One of them, a girl whose thick, wavy curls and elegant features couldn’t take the attention away from the emptiness in her eyes, helped Acidalia into a carriage. Afterwards, she looked at her hand like she’d just been touched by a god. To her, a simple touch from royalty might be the best, most memorable achievement of her life. Acidalia felt like having such an impact on somebody else should have felt nice, but it was too strange to even really think about. What separated the Imperatrix from a Cantator but circumstances, anyway?

She touched the data chip in her pocket. She couldn’t feel its engravings beneath her silken gloves, but it was there.

In front of her, the horses moved slowly, painfully. Alestra had wanted pegasi, so pegasi there were; horrific genetic abominations, horse DNA and bird DNA forcibly stitched together by somebody who hadn’t done a very good job of it. The animals were miserable, but they looked good on camera, despite the fact that they were never supposed to exist. Alestra could bend the laws of nature if she so desired; she was only slightly less powerful than a god.

Well, two could play at that game. Ciphers were Ciphers, regardless of whether they were perfectly bred super soldiers’ daughters or half-bred Martian bastard children.

But that didn’t matter yet. Acidalia hoped it never would.

She tried to turn her attention back to the procession and the fireworks, but her mind kept wandering back to her brother, back to the data chip in her pocket, back to the Revolution. Back to things that could get her killed. Occasionally she’d see a flash of blue and make eye contact with Alestra, which was somewhat akin to looking at the sun; the image burned itself into her retinas, glowing every time she closed her eyes. There was no escaping from her watchful, icy gaze, not even for Acidalia, her newly crowned co-ruler but her least favorite daughter. Her irises were the palest blue, white-hot, as dangerous as a strange star, and her pupils were a black hole from which nothing could emerge. Acidalia knew, logically, that she was as human as any other, but that was difficult to believe, watching her stand in the moonlight, looking as ethereal as she was terrifying.

Nobody saw Alestra’s dark side like Acidalia did. They thought of her as a strict ruler but a good leader. She crushed dissent with an iron fist and killed with ease anyone who dared oppose her; of course everyone thought she was brilliant, they had no choice not to. But even with the threats and propaganda aside, the people knew that as tyrannical as Alestra was, she at least brought stability to a volatile empire. There could be no civil wars when every revolution was squashed down the second it emerged.

Well, every revolution except one.

#eurekaproject #on the edge of eureka #POV Acidalia #Acidalia #T #Alestra

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