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snowdice · 4 months ago

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Big Bang Editing Story [Day 123]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story years ago, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag ‘proofread stories.’ I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53 Part 54

There won't be much of this today honestly lol. I have no motivation.

Chapter 55 (Logan)

Virgil was beginning to be able to read some of the common instructions in magic books, but Logan still made sure to read out the instructions to him at least twice before setting him loose. He’d started to jot down notes to himself about things, though these notes were not words, but various symbols that only made sense to the boy himself.

Logan had asked about their meaning at one point and received an answer that, while earnest, was unintelligible. The symbols were mostly just pictures of things to represent certain steps in spell casting, but they were filtered through Virgil’s rudimentary penmanship and often bizarre perception of the world.

Though, despite the fact that Logan could not often decipher his chicken scratch, it did seem to help him produce more and more quality charms even as Logan began to introduce more complicated processes to make them. He was a very good student even if he didn’t have the best foundation for learning.

“I add lavender for the next step, right?” Virgil asked, his finger on a word in Logan’s magic book.

“That is correct,” Logan confirmed.

Virgil looked back at the book and mouthed the word ‘lavender’ to himself before turning back to his potion. He grabbed a few sprigs of lavender and threw them into the cauldron.

The liquid popped and bubbled violently, but Virgil didn’t flinch as he once would have, prepared for it now.

After the lavender, Logan knew that it would have to simmer for 5 minutes. Virgil looked down at the boiling liquid, contemplating it for a long moment.

“Can I soak a knife in it?” he asked.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Can I soak a knife in the potion once it’s done?”

“In that potion?” Logan clarified. “In the emergency hand warmer potion?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think a hot knife would be useful,” Virgil said.

“For what?”

Virgil shrugged. “Cooking food on the road,” he said, “burning wood, stabbing someone and immediately cauterizing the wound.”

“That is… not a standard use for this potion,” Logan said.

Virgil titled his head at him. “Would it work though?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Logan contemplated. “Perhaps. The potion can cause burns if one uses too much of it or if it is used without an appropriate layer between it and the skin. If one were to pick a knife with enough surface area and let it soak long enough, it could in theory get hot enough to do as desired. Hmm…” he thought about it. “There would perhaps be the problem of the potion not sticking to the knife very long as it is intended to soak into fabric. However, cardamom could solve that issue as long as it doesn’t interact with any other ingredients. Let me see that spell.”

Virgil stepped out of his way so he could study the page. “Yes,” Logan said after scanning through all of the ingredients. “I think cardamom would work for something like that. Let me go find some.”

He turned to walk towards where he kept his supplies of potion ingredients. Virgil followed on his heals.

“Can we use a serrated knife?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea, Virgil,” Logan said, nodding as he searched through the cupboard that should hold the coriander. “The knife being serrated would help keep the potion stuck to the blade after many uses and would increase the surface area.”

“That was certainly my intention,” Virgil said smoothly. There was something odd about the tone that had Logan turning and blinking at him. Virgil just smiled at him innocently and Logan turned back to the cabinet finally locating the cardamom.

“So how are we going to use that?” Virgil asked.

“We’ll put it in right before the last step and let it sit for about 3 minutes,” Logan said. “If it doesn’t quite work, we may need to make another batch. There are options other than cardamom, but that’s the first idea that comes to mind and it’s a lot simpler if it works.”

He continued to speak of the many other options they could try as they returned to the caldron as well as how they could test the hot knife. It was already about time for the next step and Virgil did it without interrupting Logan’s rant.

Virgil listened to his suggestions with interest all while still making sure the potion he was making was progressing well.

Logan did eventually take over to finish the potion with the revised steps he’d come up with and they ended up with a potion that looked perfect except it was a few shades darker than the one they’d originally been planning to make.

“Well, it looks good,” Logan declared. “We will need to acquire a knife to test its effectiveness, however.”

“There are a few good ones in the kitchen,” Virgil pointed out. “I especially like the one 10 inch one with the black and white handle.”

“You have been eyeing up the kitchen knives?” Logan asked.

Virgil rolled his eyes as though that was not a perfectly reasonable question to ask him. “We should steal that one,” Virgil said.

“Do you think we’ll be able to sneak past Ms. Heart to steal a knife from her kitchen?” Logan asked.

“We can’t,” Virgil said. The ‘but I can’ was implied.

Logan almost didn’t believe him… and then he remembered the water pouch incident. “It’s the dinner rush,” Logan said. “We should probably wait for a bit.”

Virgil was shaking his head. “The dinner rush is the best time,” he said. “Everyone will be distracted, and all of the knives will be out and in prime stealing position.”

“And if Patton’s mother catches us messing around in her kitchen during her busiest time of day, she will have Father ground us for a week.”

“Then we just won’t get caught,” Virgil said.

“I’m not sure if it’s that simple,” Logan said with a frown.

“You can stay here if you want,” Virgil offered. “I’ll just go by myself.”

“No, I’ll come too,” Logan relented, though he did still have some reservations about the idea.

He let Virgil lead him towards the main dining hall. By now, Virgil knew the kitchens and dining hall very well.

“Stay here,” he said. They were in a hallway a few feet down from the staff entrance to the main kitchen. “I’m going to do some reconnaissance.”

“What type of reconnaissance?” Logan asked, but Virgil had already vanished before his very eyes. With a blink, Logan looked up and saw a dark figure disappear onto a balcony overhead.

Well, Logan really had no choice but to wait there for him. It wasn’t like he could follow him. He could hear the clatter of silverware on plates from the dining hall down the corridor as he impatiently waited. It only took Virgil a bit over five minutes to return. He dropped suddenly from above and landed in front of Logan in a crouch.

“Well?” Logan asked, letting a bit of irritation into his tone so Virgil knew he was displeased. Virgil did not seem to care.

“Got it,” Virgil said with a wide grin, brandishing a large kitchen knife.

Logan flinched back at the unexpected sight of a weapon.

“You said you were doing reconnaissance!” he sputtered. “Not…” he trailed off remembering that while they weren’t in eyesight of anyone right now, they could be in earshot of someone. He lowered his tone, “stealing the knife already.”

“I was doing reconnaissance,” Virgil said with a shrug, “and then I used the information gathered by that reconnaissance to steal a knife.”

Logan narrowed his eyes at him.

Virgil just smiled. “You would have gotten in my way.”

“I would not have,” Logan insisted.

“How many times has Patton’s mom caught you stealing food from the kitchens in the past?” he asked.

Logan pursed his lips. “That is Patton’s doing,” he said.

“Sure,” Virgil said with an eyeroll. “I’ll have you prove it some other day, but for now,” he twirled the knife around in a way that made Logan cringe even though he did seem to have an expert handle over it. “We have a knife.”

“Right,” Logan agreed with a nod. “We should continue the experiment.”

Virgil stored the knife away… somewhere on his person, and they snuck back to Logan’s rooms.

When Virgil handed over the knife, Logan did have to admit it was a perfect specimen for their project: long and saw-like with a heatproof handle.

Logan carefully set it in a shallow dish and proceeded to pour the potion they’d made onto it. They let it sit for a little under half an hour before carefully pulling it out of the concoction with tongs and letting it airdry. Meanwhile, Virgil suggested they set up a testing area with various old sheets and clothing. They’d even found and decorated an armor stand with an old suit that Logan particularly disliked.

“Well,” Logan said once he’d tapped the handle and had not gotten burned by the potion. “I think we can test it now.” For safety, he made Virgil put on thick heatproof gloves before handing him the knife.

“So how do I make it work?” Virgil asked.

“The original potion works through light friction,” Logan said.

“So just start stabbing things?”

Logan went to respond, but before he could, Virgil had already twisted around and sliced through one of the sheets hanging in Logan’s potion room. There was a sizzling noise as the knife cut through the sheet like it was tissue paper leaving two aflame halves flapping about.

Logan leapt forward to tear the pieces of sheet down and the two of them stomped on the flames to put out the fire.

“It’s perfect,” Virgil said with a grin once the charred remains of the sheet were extinguished.

“It does seem to work as intended,” Logan agreed.

“Let’s do it again,” Virgil said.

“Er, well, perhaps we shouldn’t…,” Logan started, but Virgil had already set his eyes on the armor stand they’d set up. That suddenly seemed like not such a good idea to Logan.

He stabbed the armor stand viciously. It went up in violent flames. Logan’s eyes widened as the blaze only seemed to get bigger as Virgil drew back the knife.

Virgil did not seem to share Logan’s worry as he turned and stabbed another piece of hanging clothing, setting it ablaze as well.

“Virgil, no! You’re going to burn the room down!” Logan yelped.

The armor stand, at that very moment, decided to fall to the ground. They had, perhaps, not set the testing area up as well as they should have because it fell directly onto one of Logan’s rugs and set that on fire as well.

“Oops,” Virgil said, eyes wide.

Above the sound of crackling fire, Logan heard a tapping on the door between his bedroom and work room. It opened slightly after a moment and Logan’s father’s voice called out as he was sticking his head into the room, “Um, what do you mean Virgil… is burning the room down!”

The moment Logan’s father fully processed the presence of the flames, he was bursting into the room. He at least remembered that there was a fire extinguishing powder stocked in Logan’s work room even though that fact had slipped Logan’s mind in the chaos. (Perhaps Logan should have thought to set it out when they were testing a fire knife, but Logan would just add that to his growing list of regrets.)

The king managed to put all of the fires out within 30 seconds of poking his head through the door, but the fire left in his eyes when he turned to look at them afterwards was perhaps more dangerous.

Virgil slowly hid the knife behind his back. It was probably a bit late for that.

“What were the two of you doing in here?” the king asked.

“Nothing,” Logan said. Virgil shot him a look that told Logan what the boy thought about his lying abilities.

Logan’s father put his hands on his hips. “‘Nothing’ set the rug on fire?”

“We may have been doing a small experiment,” Logan said.

“What experiment?” the king asked.

“…I do not wish to say.”

“Logan.”

“Virgil wanted a fire knife.”

“A what?”

Virgil frowned over at Logan. “Your resistance to interrogation techniques is deplorable.”

Father turned to look at Virgil and obviously spotted the fact that Virgil was holding something behind his back.

“Give it here,” Father said, though his tone was a bit gentler with Virgil than it had been with Logan.

Virgil debated it for a moment, but then offered over the knife with a pout on his face. Father gingerly took it and the fire-resistant gloves from him. “Where did the two of you even get this knife?”

“You can’t tell her,” Logan said.

“You stole a knife from the kitchens?!” the king asked.

“We borrowed it,” Logan said.

“Can it be used for cooking anymore?”

“…Well.”

“In the intended manner.”

“No.”

“Then you stole it.”

Logan just frowned and looked away.

“I’m going to go put this in a secure location,” Father said, grimacing at the fire knife in his hands. “No more experiments for you two for a month. I’ll sic Patton on you.”

With that, he picked up what was left of the fire extinguishing powder (just in case) and turned to exit the room.

“Well,” Logan said once he was gone. “That was irresponsible.”

“I could steal it back from him.”

“N-no don’t do that.”

“I definitely could though,” Virgil said.

“I did not hear you say that,” Logan said, putting his hands over his ears. “I am not responsible for any more of your actions in this matter. I am going to the library.”

He walked out of the room then and Virgil followed him to the upstairs library. He said nothing more about the fire knife, but Logan would be a fool to suppose he forgot about it.

Chapter 56 (Thomas)

“Good day for a picnic,” Helen commented as she handed over the basket Thomas had requested from her a few days before. He was taking Logan, Patton, and Virgil to the cliffs today and it was perfect weather for it. Spring was truly here, which meant that those of Thomas’s duties that had laid dormant over the harsh winter were about to start up again.

The world had been on pause for a bit considering no armies or agents from any kingdom could get through the snow the last few months, but the concerns of last fall were showing their heads once again.

Thomas had just gotten word a day ago that the queen of Lamir had routed out a second assassin hiding in her ranks over the winter. The assassin had been sent shortly after it was made clear that the queen wouldn’t bow down after the assassination of her mother. Luckily, the assassin sent for Queen Cecil had not managed to complete her mission during the winter months.

While there had been no similar attempt on Prijaznia soil, Thomas couldn’t help but feel it was only a matter of time now that the snow had melted. They were already working on increasing security in the coming weeks and, though it was doubtful an assassin had managed to hide in the castle all winter without revealing themselves, they’d be closely scrutinizing all of the newer staff members.

It would be a stressful time in the coming months, which is why, despite everything Thomas needed to do, he was still going to take his son and his son’s friends on a picnic today. Logan had already started taking on royal duties as of late, but he still hadn’t taken them all on quite yet. Considering this was last summer before Logan was of age, they should at least try to take advantage of it where they could. Patton was a year younger, but the sentiment held for him as well.

Then there was Virgil. Despite their best efforts, they still didn’t know enough about Virgil, but Thomas was fairly sure he’d never had a summer to enjoy until now.

“Thanks for prepping lunch for us,” Thomas said to Helen with a smile.

“No problem,” she said waving them off. “I put in some of Virgil’s favorites.”

“Great,” Thomas said. “Do you know where the kids are?”

“Patton said they were going to go pet the cats, so I’d guess they’re in the gardens.”

Thomas thanked her again and told her to have a good day before exiting the kitchen. There was a nearby door that led straight towards the part of the gardens Patton and Logan had always favored. He figured they’d either still be around there or they would have wandered towards the stables by now knowing that they’d be taking horses to the cliffs.

So, he decided to simply walk the normal path from the door to the stable, hoping to find them.

His prediction ended up being hilariously correct. They were indeed on the path Thomas had chosen. It was clear they (or at least Logan) were attempting to make it to the stable. However, as was typical, a portion of the party had been waylaid by whimsy.

Logan was standing further down the path, arms crossed and frowning as he watched his friends. Patton and Virgil were surrounded by cats. Patton was sitting down, holding two of them in his lap and watching Virgil’s legs being swarmed by the rest of them, maybe two dozen in total.

Virgil looked confused, but not unhappy about the presence of so many cats. He was leaning down to try to pet them all.

Logan met Thomas’s eyes as he approached and waved a frustrated hand at the two of them. Logan couldn’t help but smile.

“Virgil fed one of them,” Logan complained as though he wanted Thomas to somehow go into the past and prevent this crime.

Patton and Virgil looked over at Thomas, noticing him when Logan addressed him.

“You’re going to make Princess Marisol jealous,” Thomas said. Logan frowned at Thomas as he used the ‘Princess’ label for the cat.

“Princess Marisol decided not to come,” Virgil said with a shrug. He continued to pet one of the cats.

“She’s probably sleeping on my pillow,” Logan said, sounding grumpy.

Thomas just chuckled. Princess Marisol was technically Logan’s cat, at least that’s what the kids said, and she did spend much of her time in the royal rooms. However, she was very clearly actually Virgil’s cat. Virgil just spent a lot of time in the royal wing as well.

In fact, Thomas still didn’t know where Virgil was supposed to be sleeping. He and Mr. Deknis had actually tried to tail him a couple of times, but he always ended up sleeping in Logan’s room those nights.

Knowing Virgil, he might just sleep in the walls. Though that still did not answer the question of where his parents or guardians were. They still had not figured it out. Thomas would assume he was an orphan who’d snuck onto castle grounds for safety, but Virgil had told Mr. Deknis during their first meeting that he was supposed to be in the castle, and it had not been a lie.

Then again, it had slowly become apparent that Virgil was good at dodging the multrum’s powers. It was starting to seem more likely that he’d somehow inserted a second meaning into his answer to Mr. Deknis that night than he somehow had some ghost guardian no one was able to locate working in the castle.

“She deserves the pillow more than you,” Virgil said, bringing Thomas’s thoughts back to the situation at hand. The look of audacity on Logan’s face made Thomas chuckle.

Thomas cut in before it could become a fight. “I could get Princess Marisol a pillow, so she doesn’t sleep on yours. Or we can get you a new pillow if you’d prefer, Logan.”

“It’s not about the pillow for her,” Logan argued. “It’s about her inflated sense of superiority.”

“She deserves it,” Virgil declared. Thomas could tell he was just trying to rile Logan up, and Thomas was sure Logan knew it too, but still his son reacted exactly in the way Virgil wanted him to.

“You have enabled and encouraged this behavior from the start!” Logan seethed.

“She’s a Princess.”

“She is not a princess!”

Patton shook his head while squeezing the cats in his arms, completely used to this behavior at this point. He ran a chin idly over one of the cat’s heads while watching the argument.

“We’re never going to make it to the picnic at this rate,” Thomas said to him, “and after your mother made all of this wonderful food.”

“You’re the dad,” Patton said. “Make them stop.”

And, of course, Patton did just mean that he was Logan’s dad with that statement. However, when he glanced back up at the silly argument still going on between his son and the cat covered boy on the ground, it did almost look like a fight between siblings.

Especially with the dark hair and stubborn but mischievous look in Virgil’s eyes, Thomas could almost imagine the boy being his own child.

He shook away the thoughts and glanced at the picnic basket in his hand.

“We do have a lot of food in this basket,” Thomas said, pitching his voice up so that Logan (and more importantly) Virgil would hear them clearly.

Virgil immediately turned to look at him, abandoning all interest in antagonizing Logan to look at the basket curiously.

Thomas was never sure if he should be amused or worried about how food motivated Virgil often was.

“What’s in the basket?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not sure,” Thomas said. “Patton’s mom made it. We’ll just have to see once we get to the picnic area.”

Virgil nodded in understanding and began to gently scoot all of the cats out of his lap. Logan rolled his eyes, but didn’t seem inclined to continue the argument he’d been dragged into. Virgil and Patton got to their feet and they continued on their way towards the stables.

The horses Thomas had requested be prepared for their trip were already in saddles, though the stable hand who had been handling Mr. Apples seemed a bit dirtier and more exhausted than the rest.

The stable hand seemed as happy to hand Mr. Apples over to Virgil as Virgil was to have Mr. Apples handed over to him. Thomas received Bella with a smile and Logan and Patton got their own horses as well.

The Cliffs were about half an hour's ride from the main castle. There was a mostly well-maintained path to it, though it was easy to get lost if one didn’t know the way. Mr. Apples knew the way perhaps better than Thomas himself and seemed annoyed by the fact that Thomas was trying to lead the way.

Virgil and Thomas ended up side-by-side whenever the path allowed it to placate him.

He still marveled at how willing Mr. Apples was to let Virgil ride him, especially when he tossed his head in Thomas’s direction, a horse’s equivalent of giving Thomas a stink-eye.

“Are you excited for the picnic?” Thomas asked the boy beside him.

Virgil glanced over at him and nodded.

“I am too,” Thomas said. “It’s always beautiful this time of year. I’m glad I could find the time to take you all there this year.”

“Are you very busy?” Virgil asked curiously.

“I am king,” Thomas reminded, “and now that the world isn’t snowed in anymore things will be busy.”

“With the war?” Virgil asked.

Thomas paused for a few seconds. “Yes,” he confirmed. “With the war, but you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Virgil asked.

“You’re just a kid,” Thomas said.

“I’m 14,” Virgil said.

Thomas glanced at him. “Exactly,” he said, “a kid, and luckily, you’re in a place that can afford you the luxury of being one.”

“What do you mean?”

“The war has been mainly fought on Mocnejsi soil in recent years. Our boarders have held strong against invasions. Unless something goes horribly wrong suddenly, it would take a long time for the main conflict to get here. The only real threat in the castle would be assassins sent after me personally.”

“Right,” Virgil said. There was an awkward pause in conversation before he spoke again. “You’re winning the war then?” he asked.

“Something could always happen,” Thomas said, “but for the most part, yes, we have quite the advantage right now.”

“Oh,” Virgil said.

Thomas shook his head as they were coming up to a narrowing of the path. “Anyway, today is a day to not think about war. Today we’re going to have a lovely picnic and do some bird watching.”

“Right,” Virgil agreed from behind Thomas as Bella took the lead (to Mr. Apples discontent.)

When the path widened again, Thomas did his best to direct the topic to lighter subjects and soon they made it to The Cliffs.

Chapter 57 (Virgil)

Virgil had never been to a picnic. At least, that’s what Patton had informed him when Virgil had described his past experiences of eating outdoors. Logan had agreed even though he’d admitted that the definition of “picnic” was only eating a pre-packaged meal outdoors which Virgil had done plenty of times.

From what Virgil could tell, the main difference was just how much stuff one brought to a picnic.

In addition to the basket full of food (that Virgil still hadn’t gotten to look in yet), the king had brought a large soft quilt that he had Logan and Virgil spread out on the ground for them all to sit on.

Patton and Logan had also packed some things themselves to bring along. Logan had brought along a book to read, and Patton had brought along a board game (thankfully not checkers but something Virgil did not recognize). Virgil hadn’t brought anything (except for the fire knife he was definitely not supposed to have and was definitely not letting the king see) because he hadn’t known he was supposed to bring things. He wouldn’t have known what to bring anyway.

The blanket was soft and a much better alternative to sitting on the ground, especially because, while there was grass at the top of The Cliffs, there were also a good number of rocks.

The king set the picnic basket in the middle of the blanket once it was spread out and then lowered himself down to sit on one side. Patton quickly followed him, already fiddling with some of his board game pieces, though he wasn’t setting it up yet. Virgil highly doubted that Logan was going to be allowed to read his book unless Patton eventually got bored of the game.

However, they would, hopefully, be allowed to make use of the basket the king had brought along.

Virgil followed the king and Patton’s lead and got to his knees on the blanket across the picnic basket from the king. He peered at the basket curiously.

He didn’t quite know what picnic food was, but Patton had told them they’d be getting ‘picnic food’ and he was very curious about what that meant.

King Thomas smiled at him. “Let’s see what Patton’s mom packed us, huh?” He reached for the basket and flipped it open as Logan sat next to Virgil. “There is a lot more food than usual in here,” the king said, sounding amused. “Let’s see.”

He began to pull out packaged food and glanced in each package to identify it before setting it out.

“We have a few types of mini sandwiches,” he said, putting them down, “and some pasta salad.” He set down the bowl.

“We also have… er something else.” He showed it to Logan.

“They’re hot cauliflower bites,” Logan said instantly upon seeing them. Virgil perked up in excitement. That was one of his favorite foods.

“Ah,” King Thomas said, but shrugged and set it down. “We also have two desserts apparently: cookies and mini apple pies. That last one’s a bit extra for a picnic.”

“They’re very good,” Virgil said happily.

“And we also have.” King Thomas paused, looking confused. “Chicken alfredo?”

“Yes!” Virgil said.

“Why do we have chicken alfredo for a picnic?”

“It’s a Virgil picnic,” Logan groaned. “She packed us a Virgil picnic.”

“Hey, at least momma sent us something too,” Patton said.

“I think I’ll stick to sandwiches for today,” King Thomas said. He looked at Patton and Logan. “Do either of you want…?”

“No,” Logan said. Patton shook his head.

The king nodded and offered the entire covered bowl of chicken alfredo to Virgil. “Here, this one’s yours,” he said.

“Really?” Virgil asked tentatively. It wasn’t exactly strange for people here to offer him food, and he’d expected and anticipated getting to eat on this venture, but the king of the country offering him an entire bowl of his favorite food was something else.

“It’s not really my idea of a picnic food and you seem excited for it,” King Thomas said with a warm smile, still holding it out.

Virgil took it reverently. Despite the time it had taken to get to the cliffs, the bottom of the container was still warm. Virgil assumed it was one of the heating spells the kitchen sometimes used.

“Thanks,” Virgil said, setting it in his lap.

“Of course, Virgil,” the king said.

The bowl was enough for four people to have a little bit, but for one person it was a lot. Still, Virgil was offered a little of every other food in the picnic basket (and he ate a good number of the hot cauliflower bites).

“Where do you put all of that?” the king asked when Virgil finished polishing off the chicken alfredo bowl.

Everyone else seemed to have finished eating long before Virgil, though Patton still had a small plate of grapes, and he occasionally popped one in his mouth. King Thomas was currently setting up the board game they’d brought on the blanket between all of them.

Virgil shrugged in answer to his question. “It’s good,” he said, “and I don’t want to waste any of it.”

“You know we can just take the leftovers back to the castle and eat them later,” King Thomas said. “You don’t have to eat it all now.”

Virgil just shrugged again, watching as the king set out a group of 8 figures on the board.

“Here, which character do you want to be?” the king asked Virgil, gesturing at the group of figures. Virgil had not noticed the figures were different at first glance. They were all copper colored and about the size of his thumb, but they had slightly different shapes. He squinted at them each carefully, finding they all looked like people, but with different clothing. Some worse pants and some skirts, a few had hats, and one was even carrying a book.

After a few moments, he pointed at one that looked like it had vines wrapped around its arms and was wearing a floppy hat that almost covered its eyes.

“That’s the druid,” King Thomas told him with a grin. “Good choice, and luckily not one that anyone usually fights over.” He glanced at Logan who didn’t react to his father’s gaze. He just plucked the figure clutching the book off the board for himself.

Patton and the king picked pieces for themselves. Patton picked one with an apron that kind of reminded Virgil of his mom and the king picked one that was in a suit of armor before putting the other 4 figures away.

Unlike checkers, this game wasn’t just for two people, and so no one had to sit watching people play while bored out of their mind.

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They played a practice round so Virgil could figure out how the game worked, though honestly it wasn’t that complicated, so it wasn’t really necessary.

The theme of the game was all about stealing. They were supposed to steal special tokens from other players as well as characters in the game and the first person with 20 tokens won.

The other three players argued that stealing was not the point and not the main mechanism of the game, but considering Virgil was consistently winning the entire time, he would argue they were just playing it wrong. He managed to collect 20 tokens before anyone else. In second place at this time was Logan with 9 tokens.

Logan insisted on continuing to play the game to determine 2nd and 3rd place, so Virgil ended up watching them play for a bit. Virgil didn’t mind sitting and watching other people play this game, mostly because he still had the joy of victory running in his veins.

Thomas was definitely going to lose, he noted. He kept wasting his money feeding the nonplayer characters who lived on his lands. Virgil didn’t mention this faulty strategy to him in case Virgil ever played him again.

When Logan took too long thinking about his next move, Virgil took in their surroundings.

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He’d been a bit too distracted by the prospect of food and then trying to understand (and then win) the game to truly take in The Cliffs. They were settled a good distance away from the cliffside but Virgil could still see how quickly the edge dropped off. He couldn’t see the large river he was told was at its base from where he was sitting, but he did see a few of the promised wild birds (including doves) flying around. The king had promised they’d bird watch for a bit, and Virgil figured that would happen after the game was over.

A cool spring breeze brushed across Virgil’s face, and he put his hand in his hoodie pockets to warm them. Instead, his fingers hit something icy cold.

For a moment, he didn’t remember what it was. The crescent shape of it was familiar when he put his hand over it, but he had never felt it cold before.

It was the protection charm: the first charm Virgil had ever made with Logan so many months ago. It was meant to ward off small threats as well as warn you about larger threats by changing temperature…

It had always been warm.

“What?” Patton asked, having noticed Virgil suddenly tense. Virgil, despite how he drilled into his friend’s heads to stay alert had gone soft. He’d let himself be distracted by a full belly and warm blankets and fun games.

He didn’t answer Patton. He filtered the other boy’s worried face out as well as Logan’s face as he glanced at him and the king’s still focused on the game for now. He filtered out the picnic blanket and smell of food still lingering in the air and the vine covered figure set in the middle of the board on the winner’s space. He filtered out the sound of the breeze and the breath of his companions and the distant chirping of birds.

And he heard a whoosh.

Chapter 58 (Patton)

If Patton hadn’t already been looking, he probably wouldn’t have had any idea what happened.

Everything had been fine. Virgil had been sitting cross legged, idly watching the conclusion of the game they’d been playing when his posture had suddenly changed. Patton had looked over at him only to see an expression on his face he didn’t recognize, but it didn’t seem good.

“What?” Patton had asked, but the question didn’t seem to register to Virgil.

Logan had glanced up confused and also noticed Virgil’s face. He’d just opened his mouth to also ask what was going on when chaos descended.

Virgil was suddenly moving, crashing into King Thomas who hadn’t even looked up to see something was wrong at that point. Patton realized after the fact that Virgil had swiped up the board of the game they’d been playing as he jumped over it, the pieces previously stacked on it scattering all over the blanket. There were three thumps as some things hit the thick board, imbedding themselves into the surface.

When Virgil discarded the board in favor of the picnic basket, Patton saw there were small darts in it oozing a dark black liquid. The parts of the board they touched were dissolving, the grass under the new holes beginning to wilt rapidly.

Logan seemed to notice the oozing liquid the same moment Patton did and was quicker to realize what it was. He grabbed Patton’s arm and yanked him away from the board so hard he almost dislocated Patton’s shoulder, not that Patton was too worried about that. He scrambled away from it when he realized what it must be himself.

He could hear the sound of glassware smashing above them. Logan and Patton had rolled off the blanket in their quest to get away from the smoldering, melting board and apparently Virgil had pulled the picnic blanket fully over the king at some point.

Virgil himself was now gone from where he’d been the last time Patton had looked and it took him a moment to figure out where the boy had gone. The person who had been shooting poisoned darts at them had been drawn out of the wooded area they’d been hiding in by Virgil’s attacks.

They were cloaked in dark green from head to toe, explaining why they’d been difficult to spot when they were in the woods. Whoever they were, they were significantly larger than Virgil, possibly an actual adult or almost adult assassin, but they were also clearly a long distant fighter. They had not been expecting resistance let alone resistance in the form of a so quick he was almost a blur fellow assassin.

They had a bow strapped to their back, but they hadn’t had a chance to get it. Instead, they were trying to fight Virgil off with an arrow they’d managed to draw from their quiver. Virgil, meanwhile was lunging at them with a broken piece of plate in one hand and the picnic basket in the other.

Virgil dodged out of the way of the arrow striking towards his arm, though Patton didn’t think it was because he was afraid of getting scratched by an arrow, but because it may also be poisoned tipped.

Virgil was distracted by dodging for long enough that the older assassin managed to hit him in the face with the arm not holding the arrow.

He went down, but he took the older assassin with him, sweeping their legs out from under them. Patton hadn’t noticed (his mind working too slow for how fast they were moving) but they were on a slight incline. They went rolling in a tangle of arms and legs towards the edge of the cliff and skidded to a stop only a few feet away.

Virgil ended up on top, his piece of broken plate in his hands. He moved to slash it across the other assassin’s throat and managed to draw blood, but the assassin’s fist came out to shove at Virgil’s chest at just the right moment, causing the strike to veer off course and slice across the assassin’s cheek instead.

Virgil jerked to the side to avoid a second strike to the chest and went back for another slash. The other assassin rolled to the side as he did and the plate only managed to nick their ear. The point of the motion hadn’t been to dodge, however. They were lunging for the arrow they’d dropped a few feet away while they’d rolled. They grabbed it with their right hand and in the same motion stabbed back behind them towards Virgil.

Virgil rolled to avoid the hit, already slashing up with his plate as the assassin turned back towards him.

87295

He didn’t hit them this time but his swipe managed to stop them from stabbing him when they tried again. They shoved themselves back to avoid Virgil’s swing, putting a bit of distance between them. Both of them managed to make it to their feet during the momentary reprieve, but both also stayed crouched, eyeing each other.

They both lunged towards each other at the same time. The assassin went for a stab to Virgil’s neck with the arrow, but Virgil was already ducking down. This time, he wasn’t going for a kill shot. He grabbed the assassin’s wrist and at the same time drove his piece of plate into the assassin’s arm, slicing down from the elbow to wrist. The assassin spoke for the first time, cursing in a language Patton didn’t recognize as they were forced to drop their arrow.

Virgil took a moment to kick the arrow away from the assassin and it ended up falling off the cliff.

However, this pause gave the assassin enough time to regroup. Despite their arm bleeding profusely, they still decided to use it to backhand Virgil across the face viciously, leaving a long line of their own blood across his face.

Virgil lunged back forward, but the assassin was able to get a leg between them, kicking Virgil squarely in the chest and sending him flying back a few feet parallel to the cliff’s edge.

The assassin went to grab their bow and another arrow from the quiver still strapped to their shoulder.

Virgil, however, apparently went for another weapon too and he was much faster with a knife than any archer. A knife appeared in his hand, having been strapped to his ankle and was embedded into the assassin’s chest before they could even full remove an arrow from their quiver.

The assassin promptly burst into flames, fire catching their clothes (and from the smell of it their skin) ablaze. Panicked and dying, they stumbled two steps to the side. They stepped directly off the cliff.

There was a second of silence. They heard the sound of the body hitting the ground far below and then the flap of wings and screeching as birds below fled from the startling sound (and possible soon to be forest fire).

…

“Uh, Virgil?” King Thomas said. He had managed to get the blanket off his head at some point. When, Patton didn’t know, but seeing any of it was probably enough.

Oopsie.

#proofread stories #not writing

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ars-matron · 1 year ago

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The Tarot Sequence Reread

Nothing has given me brain rot in a long while like the Tarot Sequence by K D Edwards has. And since I just finished reading all the supplemental stuff right when my hold for The Last Sun came back up I thought I would do something I have only done once before-and in a much less flattering way for a book I hated-and live blog my reread.

There's just so much in this series I need to pay closer attention to. And usually I would go on here and read some metas, but there is literally nothing!! The only things in the tags for this series is people wishing there were more people reading it, a handful of very wonderful fanarts, and an account of the decline of a discord that evidently used to exist for it. So, maybe this will encourage some people to read the books too.

Because there are some heavy topics in this series anytime I talk about such topics I will tag for them, but if they don't come up in the chapters I'm reviewing, I won't. So if you have certain things back listed you might not see all my posts on it. Anyone who is reading along and is curious about it can DM me.

NOW! Predictions and things I want to pay attention to under the cut for spoiler reasons.

The Tower. At the end of the prologue of the first book my thoughts were, " So we trust NO ONE!!" Except Queenie, because why would Rune and Brand live with her if she was evil? Then the children showed up and I had to trust them, they were too young to be part of the, whole thing, plus they are so cute. You have to trust them. And then Addam came along, and of course we trust him, he's an Addam, he's a giant dancing teddy bear and I love him! So I read the whole series (that's out so far) expecting we would find out the Tower was an evil guy, that he had had something to do with the fall of the Sun Throne. Honestly by the end of the third book I didn't think that any longer, and I was starting to before that after finding out he was also Qunn's godfather because!!! There is no way Qunn wouldn't have seen if the Tower revealed he had been a part of all that. (I'm still asking myself HOW exactly he or Mayan wouldn't have noticed an astral projection listening device being installed in Rune's room at their freaking tower that is super locked down! But then it happened for two other locations that were supposed to be super warded and protected my other companions too. So maybe it isn't his fault. I do think he might blame himself, I do think that some of his stand-offishness might also be guilt for not being able to stop the attack on the Sun Throne to start with. We will see...) I'm going to go into this read through with the assumption he is just lonely and sad and not a bad guy.

QUEENIE!!!! Because, WHO THE FUCK IS QUEENIE!? I was already suspicious because every time someone asks Rune and Brand where she came from, or how long she's been with them, they say "She's been with us forever." Every time! It reeks of mind fuckery. Then Eidolon and the epilogue that wasn't came along. Current theory is that she is the Empress, and also that she's probably Rune's mother. I would be willing to bet she was the woman at the end of the third book who spoke up to the river after everyone else. Edwards did a good job of making her disappear in the background, but I'm gonna be hunting for every mention of her and how she acts around everyone.

Ciaran, just because I love him and at first also suspected him of evil deeds. But he's just your gay vodka uncle and he loves all his adopted family so much and I just want to keep a closer on him at the start of the series.

Kellum. We only see him once in the second book, but he's mentioned in Eidolon by the Fool (Or Queenie pretending to be the Fool, again I'm not sure, there's Queenie interference for sure) And he was in one of the supplemental novellas. I think he will be making a bigger appearance in the next book.

Quinn's prophecies. I'll probably make a list of those for a separate master post.

Tallas. The Atlantean soul mates. This is a MAJOR spoiler. Rune says that Brand and he formed a talla bond the night of the attack. That it was what brought Brand out of the geas and got them to safety. The bond was gone when he woke up in the hospital and he's spent this whole time thinking he's somehow broken their talla bond. Something definitely happened between him and Addam in the Westlands, and I don't think Addam was wrong in assuming it was the budding of a talla bond. Because something sort of bond-like is also there now after the Hourglass Throne, after he used his bond with Brand to get him and Addam back to their time. My theory here is that they might be each other tallas, all three of them. Together. We know that it doesn't have to be a sexual relationship, though I don't think Addam would mind that one bit. Everything is pointing to the three of them being tied together somehow, and my theory is mostly that, before they were together together, no one talla bond could form and take precedence over the other. Now that they are together all the time, going on missions, living together, they have more opportunities for a bond to fully form and take hold. Assuming it involves all three of them.

And with that, I'm going to go read!

#the tarot sequence #k d edwards #the last sun #rune saint john #brand saint john #max saint john #quinn saint nicholas #addam saint nicholas #the hanged man #the hourglass throne #the eidolon #booklr #ttsrr

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positively-knotted · 6 months ago

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Dissertationposting 2: Curvature & Hypersurfaces

(Note: I'm not gonna say anything about what I mean by "curvature", as if you haven't already seen it in some context I don't think you're gonna get much out of these posts :/. But for clarity, I'll only ever talk about scalar curvature and call it R. If you're used to Gaussian curvature written K, this is the same except R = 2K. Oh also all my manifolds are oriented.)

It may not be immediately obvious why we would want to consider hypersurfaces when trying to understand curvature - after all, R³ is flat, but contains surfaces with all kinds of curvature. So a motivating example may be in order. This is in fact the example that spurred all of the developments we'll talk about, and is of particular importance in theoretical cosmology! Maybe I'll say more about that later.

Consider a manifold homeomorphic to the n-torus Tⁿ - or more properly, Tⁿ with a choice of geometry (Riemannian metric). Intuitively, this shouldn't be able to have R > 0 everywhere, in the same way that T² can't. Proving this is surprisingly hard, but one sensible approach would be to try induction. After all, T³ is just T² × S¹, and S¹ is easy to understand. Thought of the other way around, we want to find nice hypersurfaces and do inductive descent until we reach dimension 2, then apply Gauss-Bonnet.

But if any old hypersurface doesn't say much, what about particularly nice ones? The obvious candidates are so-called stable minimal hypersurfaces. These are minimal points for area, in the sense that if you perturb them very slightly, their area must increase (e.g. the meridian of a standard torus in the motivating example). The big result about these is as follows:

Lemma 1.

If Σ is a stable minimal hypersurface in a manifold (M, g) and f is any function on Σ, then [1]

Here the left side is the gradient of f (in the normal calculus sense), and \II is the second fundamental form, a number that tells us something about how Σ sits inside M. You can think of it as a kind of error term, but the important bit is that it's squared, so non-negative. R is the scalar curvature of the ambient manifold M, and R_\Sigma is the induced scalar curvature of Σ.

You've probably never seen this before, even if you've done differential geometry. I don't know why this formula isn't better known, it's super useful, as with clever choices of f it gives big results. Just taking f=1 shows that for a stable minimal hypersurface, the intrinsic curvature has to be greater on average than the external curvature. This is a pretty big step forward!

Ok, so we have our choice of useful hypersurfaces. Now we just need to show that they always exist. And they do! In fact, they exist for each homology class:

Lemma 2.

Let (M, g) be a closed n-manifold, 3 ≤ n ≤ 7. Then for any class α ∈ H_{n−1}(M), we can find a closed stable minimal hypersurface Σ such that [Σ] = α in homology.

Let's unpack this a bit. We can think of hypersurfaces as living in a particular homology class in the usual geometric way. It's a standard result from differential topology [2] that we can in find a hypersurface living in any homology class, and that slightly perturbing it won't change that class. The interesting bit here is that we can always take a stable minimal representative, in sufficiently small dimensions. [3] Annoyingly, this means everything from here on out only applies in dimensions less than 8, even though there's no good topological reason why it isn't true more generally. (It definitely is true more generally, we just need a stronger version of this lemma and that makes it an analysis question.)

Next time, we'll use this to show that Tⁿ doesn't admit positive scalar curvature! Notes below the cut.

[1] Proof of Lemma 1. Start with the usual Gauss equation. Take the trace to pass to Ricci curvature, then again to pass to scalar curvature. It turns out that the irritating terms from varying dimensions cancel out! More detail in the screenshots below:

[2] Remember that there is a bijection between H¹(M) and homotopy classes of maps M -> S¹, pairing [f] with f^*(ω), where ω generates H¹(S¹). We can assume f is smooth, choose a regular value t, and set Σ = f^{-1}(t). Then [Σ] is Poincaré dual to f^*(ω).

[3] The actual argument here is pretty standard for the analysis I'll be omitting. In general, if we want to show that an object in space X with property P exists, we'll pass to a bigger space Y where standard results give us an object with that property; then somehow argue that P implies that it's actually of type X. Here, we pass from submanifolds to currents, and minimise area for currents in a given homology class. By measure theoretic magic, this minimisation forces the singular set of the current to have codimension at most 7, so in dimensions less than 8 it is in fact a submanifold.

#dissertationposting #math posting #cognisance #topology #math #algebraic topology #differential topology

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ameftowriter · 2 years ago

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FINALLY I WROTE THIS AFTER 2 AND A HALF DAYS!!

Whew... I'm sorry for it being so late on this one.

But I did my best after being inspired by this wonderful art. Thank you @k-chips and @zomandfriends and @wyrdle .

Also this is based off @k-chips 's Dadvell AU yes xD

Thank you for reading and I hope you like it. I apologize for any errors as well.

Under the cut cause it's a bit long and also spoilers.

EDIT: I forgot to add some important tags I'm so sorry also some information cause I rushed to post this and I'm forgetful

Title: But what about you?

Tyme walked through the hallways to speak to Clavell at his office. Everything was going well so far she thought to herself. Everything was going smoothly and even issues that rose were quickly fixed and resolved. She was happy to report to Clavell that there were many willing volunteers to help set up for the first Academy Ace Tournament this Friday and the participants for the battles itself have all signed up.

But as she opened the door to the Director's office, she saw the one last big issue to resolve.

Clavell continuously paced around his office. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over again. He stopped and looked like he thought of something.

Then he grumbled and began pacing around again.

Tyme sighed to herself... There was indeed one last thing that had to be dealt with first.

And perhaps she's the only one who can resolve this problem.

She approached Clavell who kept going and going, as he didn't realize who was already there next to him.

"Director...." Tyme began.

"And there's still the board meeting...." Clavell muttered to himself as he walked away, not noticing Tyme.

"Director Clavell..." Tyme repeated herself as she walked to follow him.

"The Tournament is this Friday... I still need to get a speech prepared..."

"Clavell."

"But of course... I still need to provide more support for Arven and his friends..."

"Clavell!"

"Oh!" Clavell quickly turned to see that Tyme was standing next to him with her hands at her hips and looked at him with the most annoyed expression.

"M-Miss Tyme..." The flustered director spoke, "My goodness... I didn't see you come in... How long were you--?"

"I just got here, Director Clavell...." Tyme shook her head. She could feel the tension within him.

"I must apologize then, Miss Tyme.." Clavell bowed at her, "I have been quite busy with various affairs."

"I'm sure you are, Clavell..." Tyme sighed as she dropped the title, "Though I believe you may have overloaded yourself with too many affairs."

"... Do you think I have?" Clavell wondered, a lot of events have occurred in this school year alone after all. But he was the director, a lot of things are his responsibility.

"Definitely." Tyme nodded, "You need to take care of yourself once in a while, Clavell. You won't be able to help anyone in your state. "

"I suppose you're right but I..." Clavell paused for a moment as he thought of what he needed to do. "Ever since I found out the truth about Team Star and around two years ago... I have to make sure these kids are doing well for themselves now and the school isn't giving them too much trouble ...."

"Yes ..." Tyme did not want to be reminded of that shame she felt when she was told of the truth behind the entire incident. But she has noticed then that the Team's members have started coming back to classes and have been opening up to the teachers and other students... Especially her student, Penny...

"Then the Academy Ace Tournament is this Friday... We need to make sure everything is set up and we got the proper permissions for the location and the shops..."

"Of course..." Tyme and various volunteers have already gotten the permissions needed to set up the Tournament. Chairwoman Geeta already compiled it all for them. She wanted to tell him this, but the man kept on pacing...

"Jacq needs assistance in his classes and his Pokedex as these Paradox Pokemon that Sada brought in have a lot of information to bring up and even to other Pokemon Professors..."

"That's not a rush then is it?" Tyme tried to reassure him, at least to lessen the burden.

"Speaking of Sada, and the Paradox Pokemon..." Clavell already changed the topic as the thought of the incident that happened a couple of months ago, "Dear Arceus... Those kids... I still need to check up on them and their well-being... A couple of months have passed already, I dearly hope that they are still doing okay since then..."

"I'm sure they're doing all right, Clavell..." Tyme remembers seeing the four students in question, enjoying each other's company and having quite a loud yet joyful chat in the cafeteria yesterday. She was quite happy to see that.

"But also Arven...." Clavell clutched his head as he counted in his mental checklist, "I have been worried for him since the incident in Area Zero.... When we found out that his mother had been gone far longer than we realized, then down there to meet the AI and... And..."

"Clavell!" Tyme had grasped his shoulders firmly, and jolted the man awake from his self induced trance, "For Arceus's sake, settle down."

"I... I apologize..." Clavell muttered.

"I know you have a lot to do, but please take care of yourself first." Tyme pleaded with him with the softest look possible, "I worry about you."

"I..." Clavell felt his face heat up by that. "I'm really sorry Tyme... For making you worry for me."

"You've gone through a lot under a span of a year, even more than anyone should." Tyme reassured him again, "You don't have to be sorry for this."

"I know but I..." Clavell began to remember his mental checklist again, "I feel like there is still much more to do..."

Tyme sighed, here we go again.

"I still need to check on the kids...." Clavell counted, "And Arven... He still needs my help, I need to be there for him more..."

"Clavell..." Tyme spoke softly.

"I'll also still need to talk with Team Star, I want to make sure they're doing well too..." He counted it again.

"They're all right...." She reassured him again even though it fell on deaf ears.

"Jacq needs help as well..." Once again he does it.

"That can wait. Even though he knows it's not a priority..." She continued.

"Then there's the tournament... I can't just leave it..."

By then, Tyme had enough and pulled the man to her and enveloped her arms around him, hugging him so tight.

"But what about you?" She says to his ear, "You silly old fool..."

"Tyme... I..."

"I've said it before and I'll say it again... You need to take care of yourself. If you don't then I will... For your sake ..."

"Tyme..." Clavell repeated, as he was unsure of what to say or do. "You don't have to..."

"But I want to." Tyme answered back, "You need this. At least for now..."

Clavell could feel the tears well up in his eyes as he brought his hands upward to return the hug she had given him... "Yes... Yes, please... And thank you."

The two remained like this for a good while as Clavell quietly sobbed as he grasped Tyme's sweater. He was grateful to have her around at his moment of weakness and felt himself relax for once. Tyme rubbed circles on his back as she, herself tried to hold back her own emotions. She hated seeing him like this. When she found out about everything this poor man had gone through in just the course of this school year, she brought it to herself to accompany him more and help him more than ever. It was the best thing she could think of right now. So despite it all, she was relieved that she could finally help him.

As the two finally went silent, Clavell sighed, "Thank you Miss Tyme... I needed that..."

"Good! Now that wasn't so bad, is it?" The two let go of their hug but their hands still on each other. Then the two stiffened.

The realization that they're so close to each other had clicked in for them and they have once again fallen into silence.

"I...umm..." Clavell was the first to speak, with his face flushed red and his hands letting go of Tyme's waist, "Th-thank you Miss Tyme... For that support..."

"O-of course..." Tyme felt her face heat up, and her heart skipped a beat... she never really realized how... good looking... Clavell is up close like this...

"Is there something else wrong, Miss Tyme?" Clavell managed to speak as he felt his own heart rate speed up after being so close to her like this. "You still have your hands on my shoulders..."

"Oh... oh! I... I apologize, Director Clavell!" Tyme quickly removed her hands from him as she felt flustered, "I'm... I'm just glad to help!"

"Of course!" Clavell gave her a soft smile, as he still felt relaxed and happy to be by her side. "If you have time then, shall we have some tea?"

"That would be wonderful!" Tyme smiled at him back. The two are simply delighted to have each other at this time of vulnerability.

"Oh... My... Arceus....." Penny muttered as she peeked through the office door. She was actually there to try to meet up with Director Clavell to talk to him about the STCs and its steady progress and various records with it. But instead she had just witnessed something she definitely wished she could have recorded.

"Well... This can wait..." She said to herself as she slowly closed the door as silently as possible to not get their attention, "Priority one is to gossip this to Riley, Arven, and Nemona.... They're gonna be so happy to hear about this!"

She then silently walked away from the office ready to head back to her friends.

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon spoilers #pokemon scarlet and violet spoilers #clavell #director clavell #pokemon clavell #tyme #miss tyme #pokemon tyme #ame writes fics #ame's fics #thank you for waiting #work killed me #i tried my best #i hope you all like it #pokemon sv #pokemon scarvio #stemshipping

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namelessmewmew · 2 months ago

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Old Art Archive Part 5.

Original captions under the cut.

1 - 3. Title: Petals, Sparkles and Unicorns [+ bonus of the other two pieces I have of her, that also happen to be old, left being newest of said two]. More csp testing stuff. Went a bit ham with its built in decoration brushes, Petal Brush, Grass Brush, Sparkle Brush [There's even a glitter brush, which I'm sure I will use at least a few times] ……. Happy enough with how this came out. Def need to draw her more.

4. Title: The Heart of My Eye. Uni stuff has been getting more hectic so haven't been able to draw as much [and what I have been drawing has been stuff that won't see the light of day until late this year probably]. Had the idea of a loveletter head character so just made this in csp, don't really like how this came out but oh well. Also probably going to redesign them a bit whenever I draw them again.

5. Title: The Imp Stick. Redesigned Nameless because I wanted to make him more self indulgent [I like horns, imp tails and faceshadows alot]. Used my usual method of exporting each frame as a image and then throwing them into ezgif, I think I should learn how to use clips built in animation abilities.

6. Title: Don't cry over spilt glitter. Uni work busy and hard, and been making a bunch of stuff I don't to post yet so dipped into my favourite thing, aka redesigning "old" characters [like it as much as designing new ones].

7. Title: Kitty Kitty Cat. Just a little cat, shes actually a pretty old character of mine, just redesigned her recently. I really need to draw and post more often.... Sort of like how the shading came out by I'm still kinda shit at it Might draw some more cause I have alot of old animal characters to redesign.

8. Title: Old Gay Cat named Juliet. Another cat laby, this time Sarah's mom, Juliet! Shes also been redesigned but not as much as Sarah. Going to do Sarah's other mom next [which until recently didn't have a design at all but still working on it a bit] Really like how the pose of this came out [still iffy on the shading though..]

9. Title: 2022 Pride Icon. New Icon/Pride Icon [might use this after pride month and just swap out the bg, or might a new one later]. and yes I used a very similar pose to my last upload, I just liked how it looked so used it again. Happy Pride Everyone!

10. Title: Filters and Fingerguns. I have been trying to draw more stuff lately :], liking the stuff I have been making, especially like how the hair and eyes of this came out of this came out :3. The character here is Eve, Juliet's wife and Sarah's second mom.

11. Title: Smiles and Glitter. I know I should be drawing the characters I have already more hut I really like designing new characters..... k? and felt like I needed another sparklecat....[I need more sparkle anything really] Also tried to emulate the look of those old blingee? gifs and it looks okay enough. Going to try to figure out how to do it better.

12. Title: Metamorphosis. Yeah another bright sparkly cat.....a character I have actually been thinking about designing for month's, A trans flag coloured lynx with a lil golden bell that shines like a rainbow in the light. A mascot-y character that's meant to idk be anti-thesis to how big corps pretend to like us during pride months by just changing their logos to rainbow and selling overpriced pride merch, then just change their logos back and don't do anything more about it for the rest of the year, I guess? Like a mascot thats undeniably queer in colours and otherwise I guess. My brain feels a bit slow and foggy right now right now so I might not be articulating well.

13. Title: Splat. Haven't posted here for a month and lost steam for artfight not long into it [will post attacks I did once month is over], but I did make my first game, a rpgmaker game that is about 10 to 15 minute rpgmaker game for a mini jam. Thought maybe I should post about here at least once, https://namelessmewmew.itch.io They technically can be named whatever by the player but I wanted to give me a 'true' name as well, so here is Splat./colour-less

14. Title: 'Fuck you! Catboys your Demon'. I can't just not put my sona/main character though multiple redesigns/design updates, I wouldn't be NamelessMewMew, if I didn't! Going the opposite route in terms of adding things to his design lol compared to my old sona [casanova, a cat like creature that I added demon features to, I need to redesign them again at some point.] I need to learn how to draw stubble properly... and also maybe change the eyes a bit, you looks kinda uh high rather than just tired.

15. Title: Aging. Just feels weird, so a little doodle thing.

16 - 17. Title: Prancing in the night. Wanted to start another art practice dump to practice shading, decided to do my personal characters to motivate me more but then got really into it and added more and more shading/lighting, then thought this would look very stupid without a bg, then added lighting to that bg and then wanted the stars to sparkle.... [which I hope loads as its not loading in the preview I'm seeing now] yeah I guess I can make this its own deviation. The bg is a bit mid quality but I'm glad I did because I don't do proper bgs much, but I do really love how the Plushie came out in this, especially the pose [and shading]. Though the gif site I use makes transparency kinda uh line-y? Basically the lighting and shading looks smoother than this originally, though I don't mind how it looks

Anime Girl Art Dump:

Title: Art Practice: 1. Ramble-y stuff: Been in a hating my art phrase because there's lots of parts of art I'm not great with, shading, anatomy, perspective, backgrounds..... so forth But can't get myself practice without also posting it but also it has to be good enough to post [when I feel my art is bad then I feel like I can't waste the time spent on it by not posting it but I also feel like I'm somehow a bad person for being bad at art]..... so going try to do dumps like this where I try to focus on certain things. Hopefully I can improve at least a bit this year. About the art: This is mostly Hair Shading + Faces + Eyes Practice, but also tried to draw various different hairstyles. Want to do more experimenting with how I draw eyes and hair...

Hands and Eyes Art Dump:

Title: Art Practice: 2. More art practice, this time hands [done mostly by memory and a bit by using my hands as ref] + eyes [more just the irises and pupils rather than eyes as a whole]. Like where I am getting with eyes but really need to work on hands alot more.... Can't think of anything else to say really cause tired... other than its 4 days till I'm 20 which is wild.

#Nameless Creates #Nameless Archive

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ibelieveinghost · 8 months ago

Text

4/30/24

last entry before leaving for a trip to visit my parents tomorrow!

i'm at the komeda in kichijoji, seated at my favorite spot. had their gloriously humongous pizza toast (yum) and 2 coffee down, planning to get a bit more work done before leaving to go on one last shopping trip&a nice little walk in the park.

speaking of walk, i hang out with domi the other day(same park haha):

(it is getting summer-y day by day. nice, cool late-spring-breeze)

since i don't seem to be able to put feelings into words these days, i will just post a bunch of photos of my past week(s) of existence.

(last Sat, hanging out with M+K; M's fuckass sweatshirt + the perfect sunset)

(fancy tea--- live a pretty life! drink fancy tea!)

(the day i went to see memento+full moon)

(lunch with 先生＋souvenirs from 軽井沢... yea i refused to spend money on non-miffy stuff）

i really gotta write about my 軽井沢trip don't i. in all honesty i tried... but words...they! just! won't come to me! in all three languages i speak!!!

it's okay. they'll come back. and i'll write my heart out then.

so! i've been thinking about cutting down on these 3 things: 1. alcohol intake 2. coffee 3.sugar bc i'm sure i've been consuming these a wee bit more than what is considered healthy.

ohhh i got my film developed too!! they turned out perfect? should i make a separate entry for those??? yea, yes i will

haha, so much for today! until next time

#日记 #diary

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altaroracleguidance · 2 years ago

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Hi, Isaw your post about free reading and it could've have come at a better time than now. I'd really like one please.

My initials are BLM and my question is why can't I detach myself and stop having feelings for KK-P.

Thank you sm for your time and energy ❤️

Much love <3💞

Hi BLM! I'm Alexandra and I'll be completing your reading today 🦋

10 of Swords – This card jumped out of the deck as I was shuffling. It represents hurt, pain, and betrayal. It suggests that in the past, K has really hurt you. They may have betrayed you, lied to you, and taken advantage of your compassionate and trusting nature. I believe that your romantic connection ended due to this betrayal, as your connection became rather toxic, leaving you feeling unhappy and wounded. You entered into this connection with genuine feelings and wholesome romantic intentions, but sadly K could not reciprocate the same.

Temperance – This card represents your hopes. I think one of the reasons why you are struggling to let go of your feelings, is because deep down you hope that things could work out. You hope that one day, K would apologise, take accountability and beg for forgiveness, improving their behaviours. A part of you wishes that K would just turn the clocks back, showing genuine remorse for their actions. You wish for a healthy relationship with them, you wish for things to be different, which is why you optimistically hold on to those feelings.

The Devil – This card represents a person who is toxic, problematic, and sometimes even dangerous. Again, this card acknowledges the fact that through K’s actions, they betrayed you, leaving you feeling wounded and vulnerable. Its important to remember that they are a very toxic individual, and unfortunately will never be able to offer the happiness and improvements you are hoping for. So, let go of your feelings, cut ties with K, and move on to meet better people! ❤️

I hope this reading was insightful for you lovely! As an energy exchange, I would really appreciate it if you could leave feedback in the comments of this post, or in the comments of my pinned post. You won't be able to get another reading until you do! Since this is a side blog, we won't be able to respond to your comment, but we will definitely see it!

If you haven't already, don't forget to follow this blog, and reblog the pinned post to help me reach more people! 💕

If you're interested in a more indepth paid reading at any time, I accept donations of any amount. Please submit an 'ask' if you are interested in this, and we will direct you in the next steps 🔮

Thank you so much for your support ❤️

- Alexandra

#psychic readings #tarot #tarot reading #spiritual #spirituality #free psychic reading #free tarot readings #free readings #tha-tgirl22

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missusplum · 2 years ago

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Since Nadia kicked Arman out of the club now, do you think he'll take Thony up on her offer to stay at the clinic? Perhaps the writers won't address the issue again but it seemed like they made a big point of her kicking him out both times (maybe just to underscore the change in the status of their relationship?) Kind of surprised that Arman seemed like he still wanted to save his marriage through most of the ep. Love his character and liked the episode but really Arman?! He still seems confused, lol. I hope the writers don't try to backpedal on the marriage again. Time to move on. I would love to see Arman and Nadia have competing clubs next season! What did you think of the ep?

hello anon! in general i quite liked the episode! aside from arman’s absence for half of it 😤

personally i don’t think he’ll stay at the clinic, though it’d be interesting if he did. i think that bit of dialogue was just to show that thony’s caught onto his marriage issues?

more to the meat: i’ve read a lot of people being frustrated with arman trying to save his marriage and while i totally understand why, i feel the need to defend him a bit lmao. incoming long post about arman/armony under the cut:

k to preface, this is all just my interpretation and me trying to make sense of the show so far, because like i’ve said before i don’t think the writing has been super clear either way. it could all change by next episode and i could change my mind and this could all be moot lmao. and it’s probably worth noting that a lot of these thoughts are mostly based on how the characters have been written this season only (because if i try to contextualize too much from last season we’ll just get into the same consistency issues we’ve already talked about lol)

ok first of all, while i totally get that it would be the most straightforward if characters made split decisions and stuck to them and moved forward and never looked back, i just don’t think humans work this way, and certainly not the characters in TCL lol. they’re all a mess in their own ways, and arman is no different. i don’t think that makes him a frustrating character, just a human one

my understanding of arman this season is that he’s more or less lost control of everything in his life that he knows. aside from the money issues, here’s a brief list of things that he’s lost this season: his place as hayak’s second, his business acumen (being forced out of the gun business and that’s all he’s known), his ability to run the club, his dignity while working for kamdar who’s intent on humiliating him, and now his home and marriage. when your seemingly stable life is unceremoniously thrown into chaos, i think it’s human nature to want to cling onto the familiar and cling onto what was your normalcy, and that’s what i see arman doing. he’s trying to salvage the clientele at the club, he’s trying to escape kamdar and buy the club, he’s trying to save his marriage so he can get back that stability again and piece back together the life that he had before

while it would make things so much easier for us shippers if arman just up and fell out of love with nadia, again i don’t think that’s generally how humans operate. melissa carter has said that she sees arman as being in love with the two women; obviously i don’t think he means to string anyone along, but i think they represent different parts of him: nadia in part represents his old life and the life that made him who he is. they had a life together that worked, they were a formidable business team, their goals were compatible. and like i said, putting back together his old life has basically been arman’s main focus this season. not being able to save his marriage (or at least save nadia from kamdar) would also be admitting that there’s a part of his old life that is lost forever. and while that may be true anyway, i think actually coming to terms with that and accepting the end of something you once loved and valued is easier said than done. he also doesn’t want to hurt her and wants to do the ‘right thing’. there was a really good meta piece written a few weeks ago that explained how blaming kamdar and thony for their failing marriage has been convenient for both arman and nadia instead of facing the core issues in their relationship. i’m not 100% convinced that the writers are leaning into this as much as the triangle/quad, but personally i think it makes a lot of sense. the relationship has its own issues, and i think a key piece is the introduction of thony in arman’s life

meeting thony has shifted his values and changed him from the man nadia married, so much so that even if arman did manage to retain everything from his old life, i’m not convinced that he would be truly happy anymore. i think thony has fundamentally changed arman (like he has changed her). it’s not necessarily that he consciously wants to be with thony yet, but i think the way that she challenges him on his decision-making and has this unfailing belief that he is a good person has awoken a subconscious need in arman to be good. being recognized as a good man is something he actually craves, and imo this is a large part of why he’s so unwilling to cut ties with thony. nadia doesn’t care if he is good or bad; thony does, and the reality is that arman does too. nadia has often mocked arman about having a complex to be thony’s hero; to me this clearly demonstrates a fundamental misalignment of their values and a core cause of the dissolution of their relationship. nadia literally cannot comprehend why it’s important to arman to do good things (helping luca, not immediately willing to sell opioids, etc), especially when they inconvenience their business goals, so she reasons it as infidelity and the silly need to be a hero. but to arman, it’s so much more than that: thanks to meeting thony, i think he’s growing more and more fed up with committing crimes just for the sake of climbing up the next rung on the ladder. the more thony challenges him, the more he craves the reassurance, the need to prove to her and to himself, that his soul isn’t completely rotten so he can live with himself at the end of the day

but i don’t think that arman is really aware or has fully recognized this, especially not this season when he’s been so solely focused on getting his old life back. and let’s not forget, thony has been actively trying to help him get his life back. it’s not like she consciously wants to be with him either. thony herself is too morally righteous and prideful to willingly be the reason why someone else’s marriage fails. in many ways thony and arman just want to help each other without anything in return. there’s a real beauty in this!

moreover i think arman and thony represent to each other some element of unknown that can be exciting but also cause for trepidation. i think they have a love for each other but at this point are they in love? i don’t think either of them would say so. like i said, in its current state, the nature of their relationship is very confusing and hard to define for them both — the physical attraction and emotional connection is clearly there, but they have such different lives and backgrounds that in many ways it doesn’t make sense for them to get on as well as they do. there are so many unknowns and enough excuses why they should be incompatible that i think it’s fair for both to question whether or not a romantic relationship would even make sense or be sustainable. even though this season has shown the boundaries of their personal lives blurring a little bit, it seems they’re both still trying to maintain some distance there. this was evident in their argument in ep5 where they talked about the motel guy threatening her family and kamdar threatening his — their families are still considered separate entities; they still see their lives as separate entities. does it really make sense for thony to invite a criminal into her home life and into luca’s life? does it really make sense for arman to give up on the club and wade into the unknown world of prescription meds? would it all just crash and burn?? maybe, maybe not. but i don’t blame either of them for shying away from it in favour of the lives that they’ve lived and known. and i think this juxtaposition of what should make sense to them vs what actually does is what makes their dynamic so intriguing

i don’t really want to get into the business of predicting what scenes or storylines will come up since every time i do i just end up expecting too much and getting disappointed lol. but if thematically the main development in armony’s relationship from s1 was that they trust each other, i think (hope?) maybe that the main development in s2 will be that they need each other. however it plays out, to whatever degree, romantic or not, i’ll leave up to the powers that be. and i’ll just keep hoping and praying that we get a season 3 so that we continue to see them develop and grow!

and thus ends another unnecessarily long word vomit about fictional tv characters

#the cleaning lady #asks #the armony brain rot is real 🫠🫠

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argumentl · 3 years ago

Text

The Freedom of Expression Ep 71 - The Freedom of Expression flier, made by Kaoru.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru, with the week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Jo, Tasai, Welcome. Uh, last week we talked about the live at Tokyo Garden Theater, but the time before that (or thereabouts), we talked about making a flier, didn't we?

J, T: Yeah, we did.

K: We did the live show pretty soon after we had that conversation, so...I made a flier.

J, T: Ohh!

J: Here it is!

T: Finally Freedom has its own flier.

J: These were handed out at the live, and we got given copies too. I took a photo of it and put it on my Insta, cause a lot of people couldn't actually go to the live itself. Its a great design! Who actually made it?

T: You're right, Joe.

J: Who made it? Did you make it, Kaoru?

K: You are pushing it towards this point..

J: Thats right!

T: Hahaha. Kaoru, this is really good.

K: No no no, it was just cutting and pasting.

T: Well, no, it looks like it was quite detailed work.

J: Right?

T: How many days did it take to make this?

K: It took me about 2 days. After I finished rehearsal...

J: Really??

T: Hearing that makes me so happy!

J: If you look closely, its not only photos on here, but also like memorable catchphrases from the show and stuff. Like the lazy man-food we did recently..

T: Oh, thank you.

J: Yeh, thats on there. Also, that disastrous typo incident..and that time we went to eat in Sendagaya, 'catching all the onions in one spoon'.

T: That famous Kaoru saying.

J: Yes! Thats here too. Eh?! How did you actually capture all these shots?

K: Well, I just took a load of screen shots, printed them out, and cut and pasted them together.

J: Agh, that sounds hard.

T: This is quite detailed though, like in the upper left corner where Kaoru's face gets bigger and bigger.

J: Yeh, yeh.

T: And if you look closely, you can see one laughing face snuck in there amongst them.

J: Yeh.

T: There's like a playful sense to it. And then there's this small picture of Kaoru????? in the top right.

J: Oh, yeh. Also that hand-drawn...giraffe? Haha, was it a giraffe?

T: Yeh, like would it wear a bow tie at the top or the bottom of its neck?

J: Yeh, yeh!

T: I'm pretty happy to see this here!

K: With the giraffe, and a few other bits, the image didn't come out clear enough when I printed it, so for those parts I had to put them over the top of it digitally, just so they would be easier to see.

J: Ehh? Thats hard! Uh, is that curry in the upper right corner?

K: Yeh.

T: Haha

J: Is it the one we made here?

K: No, its at Hosojimaya.

J: Oh, Hosojimaya?! Ahhh, I was even thinking of taking this flier to Hosojimaya.

T: You should put it up in there!

J: I can show them that they're on here, haha.

T: We could put it in bars and stuff.

J: Kaoru, are there any other unusual bits on here that you could tell us about?

K: Well, in the middle, next to the show's logo, that is the pressure cooker.

J: Oh yeah!

K: Its a bit difficult to see at first, right? I thought it could be fun if I used this kind of design where you discover more things the longer you look.

T: Oh, absolutely, yeh.

J: Ah, yeh. But people who didn't go to the live won't have got one of these, will they?

K: Well, yeh, but I've put it up on my blog, so they'll be able to see it there.

J: Ok, so if you sign up to TheTheDay, you can see it.

K: Well, we can show it a bit on this screen too.

J: Oh, right. Good. You know, when I posted this on my Insta, someone asked, "can we copy this and hand it out to people?"

K: Oh, please do that! Copy it, and give to it people.

J: Thats ok? Its allowed! People can ask in their fave stores etc to put it up on the wall.

K: Yes, exactly.

T: Ah, that would be great!

Kami: Uh, Im so glad you've been able to make this into a reality.

T: Yeh.

Kami: Right above the middle, it says, 'Kami-sama'!

T: Haha, Of course you noticed that.

J: Yeah, it does say that.

Kami: I thought that was kind of you.

K: He really is happy about that! Hahaha

J: Well, that may just be the natural kindness of our Leader showing.

Kami: Yeah, I was happy about that. The only thing that bothered me is that I was never there when you went out to eat on location.

T: Ah, of course yeh.

Kami: I have no gripes other than that, though.

K: There isn't much we can do about that, haha.

J: There isn't, no. Like, he is up in the sky, even if he wanted to, he couldn't come. And he is often busy with his part-time job..

Kami: Oh, there's no need to bring my job into it. I'd rather take a day off.

J: Oh right, haha.

Kami: Yes...

J: You really wanna join us on location?

Kami: Yes, I do.

J: Ok, well we'll have to think about that, won't we, Kaoru?

K: Yeh....Ok, so, moving on... This is a bit of a plug, but we have one more flier here.

*They all pick up the other flier*

K: I will be putting on a panel exhibition in August of the two charaters I drew, Krim and Zon.

T: Where will it be?

K: Tokyo and Osaka.

T: Its been a while since your last art exhibition, hasn't it?

K: Uh, its been 2 years.. It was in 2019 last time. Well, that one was Krim&Zon plus one other theme, but this time its only Krim&Zon. So, it may feel a bit smaller, but it will be a treat for the eyes, as well as the ears.

J: The ears too?

K: Yes

T: A panel exhibition that you can listen to...

K: Haha, well, yes.

J: So will more details come out about this soon.

K: Well, at the time of recording this, I'm not sure when the info will be out, but if it is out by the time we broadcast, it might come up on the screen here.

J: I see

T: Im looking forward to this.

J: Right? I'm definitely gonna go.

K: Oh, you don't need to come.

J: Why?! Am I not allowed to come?

K: Well, no, but no need for you to come.

T: Hahaha

J: Eh?! Haha. No, I'm definitely coming!

T: Joe, what are you planning?

J: I don't know, haha.

K: Well, anyway, including making these fliers, I'm busy with various different things at the moment, so everyone can look forward to it all.

T: This is great, Kaoru.

J: Yeah, and to make this after rehearsals too.

T: Yeah, and this Krim&Zon exhibition too. Its great.

J: Yeah, and then after that, a tour in September.

T: Yes

J: Exciting!

K: Well, thanks for watching.

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #translation

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imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl · 4 years ago

Text

Stay With Me (Pt. 02 of 09)

Pairing: Daryl Dixon X Reader

Word count: 2.4 K

Summary: Daryl found you surrounded by the dead, stuck in the backseat of a car. You were wishing for death to take you away for quite a while now, but, as you slid back and forth into consciousness, there was only one thing keeping you alive. Him, the man with blue, worried eyes and kind voice. Your beaten up body was ready to give up, too wounded and broken to keep going. But this man, who went out of his way to save your life is the only thing in the world holding you up. And, because of him, you feel something you haven't felt in a very long time: hope. Wherever he's taking you, you want to get there, and not only to be buried. For what it feels like the very first time, you want to live. He takes you back to Alexandria, but even there, the nightmares and the terror from all the torture and pain you've been through keeps creeping closer, and Daryl, your hero, is the only one who can keep that all away.

Warnings: Mentions and description (not graphic) of past abuse; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); some violence at the end of the story (a little bit graphic, but not so much); blood.

<- Previous part (01)

Next part (03)->

{The Walking Dead Masterlist}

I want to thank my awesome friend @jodiereedus22 , who helped me (and still does) a lot to get this story done. She's also a writer and she's amazing so please go check her work!!

Fear

As much as you're trying to stay alive, to live, if there's still a life worth living, you have to admit it's hard. It's harder than dying. Death doesn't hurt this much, you think. It's been only a couple of days since Daryl brought you here, and if it wasn't for him, and also Carol, you wouldn't be able to do more than stay in bed.

Your body will take long to heal, says Denise, who comes every day to check on your wounds. The talking soon started. You often overhear Carol in the hall, muttering about how you don't talk. About what happened before. They know your wounds were inflicted. It's quite obvious. But you do talk, just not to her. You have exchanged some words with Daryl, not much though.

Today, after Carol helped you take a bath, you pull the blankets up, over your shoulders. You would like to wear pants, but the wound on your left leg is too deep, Denise said, bone-deep. So she doesn't want anything covering it, not wanting you to move in your sleep and cause the fabric to pull and squeeze it. You don't complain though. This wound is the worst, you soon realized. It doesn't mean the rest is any better, but the leg... It kills you. The painkillers only work for a couple of hours, and you have to endure the pain until you can have the next dose.

It's a nightmare.

It's only worse when you try to sleep.

Whenever you close your eyes, the memories overcome you. Keeping your eyes open in the darkness isn't much better. That's when you realized you don't have to be asleep to have nightmares.

“(Y/N).” Daryl's voice gets your attention, and you roll to lay on your back. He comes in, looking down at you, worried. As usual. “Carol told me ya don't wanna to go outside.”

That again. “No.” You mumble. Carol wants you to get some sunlight, on the porch. But you rather be in here, away from people's eyes.

“Why?”

Breathing heavily, you push yourself up, biting your tongue when pain takes over. Moving backward, you release the air you were holding when your back reaches the headrest.

“Ya need it. To soak in some vitamin D.” He furrows his eyebrows in the end, and you wonder if he's just repeating Carol's words. “Nobody here will hurt ya. Trust me.”

“Would you stay with me?” Your voice still sounds weak for not using it. Looking at your hands, you wonder if you should even ask this of him.

“Wouldn't ya feel more comfortable with Carol?”

Slowly, you shake your head no. Carol has been very kind, but still... You can't bring yourself to feel safe around her. Not completely.

“You don't have to.” Despite the constant need to be around Daryl, to feel safe, you can't force him to be around you. It's not fair. Clenching your hands into fists, you close your eyes. The thought of leaving this room without Daryl makes your whole body shake, tremble. “You don't have to. But I'll stay here. I-if someone out there sees me they will–”

“Hey, hey.” You feel the mattress moving, eyes opening, terror creeping over at the feeling of someone near you. But when you find Daryl's blue eyes, your whole body slows down, and you have to fight back the urge to touch him.

“I'm sorry.” The words come out, but not the sound.

There's a battle inside you. Maybe your mind is way too wrecked, as far as your body, and it's struggling to take a grip on reality. The only thing you know is that you can't go outside without Daryl. He will protect you, keep you safe from anyone who tries to hurt you. And without him... You're an easy prey. You always have been.

“That's not it. I just... I don't get why ya want me around.”

You don't understand him, why he sounds so... Sad. Desolated, even. You haven't noticed until now, but looking further, you recognize something in his eyes. Something you're sure people can see in you too. Pain. Suffering. A past that almost killed you, not only physically.

“You're my hero.” Whispering, you tell him, wondering if you've been looking for too long into his eyes. “I... I know you'll keep me safe.”

“C'mon then.” He finally says after almost a minute of silence.

You're starting to move, pushing your right leg to the floor with a groan when Daryl gestures for you to stop before picking you up. He's careful with the blanket, keeping it around you. A moan escapes your lips when a sharp pull makes your leg burn.

“Ya ok?” Eyes closed tightly, you nod. “Sorry.” He mutters before he starts walking. You finally get a look at the house. The walls are a light pale blue, with not much for decoration. Downstairs, the living room feels cozy, with two couches and a fireplace.

“You got her out!” Carol exclaims, causing you to cling more onto Daryl, heart racing suddenly. “It's good to see you down here, (Y/N).” She gets in your sight when Daryl turns a bit, coming from the kitchen with a smile on her face.

“Gonna stay out there with her.”

“That's good.” She happily nods. “The sun will warm you up.”

You know you should say something. Or smile. Somehow respond to her kindness, but you just can't. You just rest your head on Daryl's shoulder, a hand tugging on the collar of his shirt.

“Alright, let's go.” You're relieved when he starts moving again. Until you're outside.

The sunlight casts a soft, golden light on the street, and a cold wind messes with your hair. This is beautiful, peaceful if you consider the world you live in. But your eyes start looking for any signs of people, anxiety building up as Daryl puts you down on a wooden chair. When he let's go of you, your hands immediately grab the edge of the chair, so hard the muscles of your arms burn.

“Hey.” He calls, kneeling in front of you. “Relax.” Daryl takes both your hands, removing it from the chair. “I'll be right here with ya.” He then stands up, stepping back to lean against the white wooden railing.

With your eyes locked on his, you rest your back on the chair, taking a deep breath. It's good to be out, and the sunlight falling on your face and neck feels nice. You can't remember the last time you enjoyed it, the last time you even had the chance to just sit in the sun. Opening the blanket, you allow the sun to illuminate the skin of your arms. But your eyes start following the bruises, purple and greenish, the grazes and the scratches...

“Daryl.” An unknown voice gets your attention and you turn your head at the source. A man climbs the steps, and you start breathing fast. His beard reminds you of one of them. The one who smiled as he sliced your skin. “Is this (Y/N)?” His eyes fall on you.

How does he know your name?

When he steps in the porch, you look at Daryl, reaching out your hand. It takes a while until he understands, until his hand touches yours. Through the corner of your eyes, you see the man coming closer, and you need to hide, to run away.

In a jolt of adrenaline, you pull yourself up, almost stumbling down, your body finding no other way but to collide against Daryl's chest. A groan leaves your lips as you lose your breath and hide your face. Both your hands grab his shirt, all your weight on the right leg.

“Hey, ‘s alright.” His chest vibrates as he speaks, but you don't move, you just want to disappear, to stay away from whoever this man is.

“I don't get it.” The man says, making you flinch, tears already rolling down.

When your leg gives upholding you up, you almost fall, but Daryl is quick to hold you up. “ ‘S alright. C'mon.” He takes you in his arms again, and you hide your face on the crook of his neck, eyes tightly shut, as if it would make you disappear.

Your body shakes when a sob comes, the image of that bearded man filling your mind. ‘You'll beg me to do this to you in no time. You'll learn to enjoy the blade slicing your pretty skin open.’ He said, laughing, giggling. He holds you down, his body making it impossible for you to move.

“(Y/N).” Daryl's voice brings you back, and you notice you're in bed again, still holding on to him. “Look at me. Hey.” His hand comes to your face, but you can't open your eyes. “Ya need to listen to me. Yer safe here, I promise.”

“No.” You mumble, forcing yourself to look at him, his face close to yours, foreheads almost touching. “H-he looks like that man. He... He...” A hand comes to your side, to the cuts under your breast. “I need you to stay with me.” It comes out as a cry, voice cracking, sobs out of control. If he let's go of you, you'll break down. “Please. Please.”

“Slow down.” You feel his arms around you, and you curl up against his chest. “ ‘M right here with ya. Calm down.”

His arms are the only place you're safe. The only place you won't be hurt again.

“Daryl. Rick wants to speak to you.” Carol says, her voice low and soft, fading in the end.

“Tell him to wait,” Daryl mutters, a hand caressing your hair.

“I'll get her some water.”

“Alright.” He answers, pulling away. “(Y/N), look at me.” Blinking a few times to push the tears away, you meet his eyes. They look like the sky during summer, or like the ocean, steady and calm. “That was Rick. A friend of mine. He's been with us since the beginning, he would never hurt ya.”

“I... I...” Stuttering, you try to catch your breath. You don't know what to say, you just need to stay away from anyone who isn't Daryl. “Don't let him come here.”

“I won't. But I need ta’ see what he wants.” You immediately shake your head no, not wanting to be left alone. “I'll be right there.” He gestures at the door. “I'll be right there in the hall and then I'll come back ta’ stay with ya, 's that alright?”

No, it's not. “Ok.” You tell him, not hearing your own voice.

The cold creeps over your skin the moment he let go of you, so you pull the blankets closer, eyes on his back, on the wings... Until they disappear. Carol comes soon after with a glass of water, sitting on the bed and handing it over to you.

“Drink, (Y/N).” She urgers and you do as she says, hands shaking as you take a sip.

Daryl's low voice reaches you, along with another voice, from that man. Rick. He said he's name is Rick. You never learned the name of the one who cut you, they never allowed you to know anything about them. It was part of the torture, probably.

“She needs to be introduced to the group. They need to know who she is. Who she was before, you know that.” The man says, his voice coming from the hall outside the bedroom.

“She's wounded. Ya don't know how much.”

“I get it, but we take no exceptions. We can't. She's been here for days.”

“(Y/N) doesn't even talk yet.” Daryl raises his voice a little, annoyed. Your eyes are on the open door, waiting for him to return. “Something happened to her. People hurt her.”

“She speaks to you, doesn't she? I heard her–”

“She's not ready yet!” His thunder voice makes you shake a little, and you exchange a glance with Carol.

She gets up, moving to the door. “Could you take this downstairs?” She asks them, stepping back in and closing the door.

You start moving backward, a groan of pain escaping when your sore muscles complain. You wait for it, the noise of the door closing once again, soaking out the light, the click of the locks that imprison you in complete darkness. The cold that hovers over as you wait for the next day. The next one. The next torture.

“Don't.” Daryl's voice cuts in, a force of itself, pulling you away from the memory, back to reality. Daryl holds the door before it closes. “Keep it open.” You don't know how exactly he knows it, but you're happy he does.

Carol nods, returning to sit on the bed. “You two have something going on that I don't know about.” She mumbles, and you look down at your hands.

“She needs time and she'll have it. If Deanna wants to throw her out, tell her I'm out too.” Walking fast, he's soon back in the bedroom, gesturing for Rick to leave. Daryl's angry. You've never seen him angry. “Carol get out.” He mutters, not bothering with her eye roll. He stands beside the bed, and you reach for his hand.

“I'll talk to Rick. Put some sense into his head.”

He doesn't answer, sinking down on the mattress in front of you. His expression softens when you look into his eyes, the anger from seconds before vanishing. “Ya need to talk.” He begins, keeping his voice low. “Ya need to tell me what happened to ya. Who did this to ya.”

Blinking a few times to push the tears away, you look at your hands, clenching them into fists.

“If ya tell me, I will tell the group. Ya won't have to ever say it again.”

The last thing you want is to revisit all that happened. Your mind already does that, a lot, bringing you back to the place where you learned what real fear is. What pain and suffering are. The place where your worst nightmares had to flee. They were nothing compared to what happened there. And speaking of it is far worse. It brings it back to life all over again, make it happen all over again...

But it's better to tell Daryl then than to anyone else. This Rick or this group Daryl talks about. No, that you couldn't. If you tell Daryl, he'll understand. He'll keep you safe, keep you from ever going back there.

“Alright.” You mutter, taking a deep breath, feeling as your ribs ache when the air fills your lungs. Bracing yourself, you start.

@funeral-7 @heyyy-hey-babyyy @twdeadfanfic @soraitmnt @winchester-angel @bvbwestfall @shawtygonemad

#daryl imagine #imagine daryl #daryl x y/n #daryl x reader #daryl x you #daryl fanfiction #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #imagine daryl dixon #the walking dead x reader #imagine the walking dead #the walking dead imagine #the walking dead fanfiction

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mypimpademia · 4 years ago

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SFW alphabet with Kuroo Tetsuro

Kuroo x reader

TW: Maybe some swearing

Note: You can also request SFW alphabets for other characters on my character list if you'd like

Template creds:

https://phantom-nen.tumblr.com/post/624557493194047488/sfw-alphabet

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Kuroo is very affectionate. Usually shows it through lots of kisses and hugs.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How did the friendship start?)

He'd probably be the crackhead ass best friend that convinces you to do dumb shit with them.

It would most likely start in middle school in a super cliche way. He'd probably be running in the halls and run into you, say sorry really fast then keep running. And the next day come to give you a real apology and you guys just hit it off.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Kuroo loves to cuddle, and khen cuddling with him, hes always the big spoon. Has your back to him chest with his arms around you, while you're sitting up, chest to chest laying down or on your sides, anything where he can have you super close really.

Hes also the type to be reluctant to letting you get up to use the bathroom because he doesn't want to stop

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Once hes absolutely sure that you're the one, he'll start wanting to settle down. But he won't actually do it till he's ready.

He at least has basic knowledge, he can make spaghetti, rice, a grilled cheese, all of that, but can't do anything super complex. He definitely has potential to learn though.

He's pretty good at cleaning, it just the staying clean part that doesn't always work. I feel like he lives in chaotic cleanliness, meaning it'll look out of order but he knows where everything is. But if you simplify it and put everything into small units or something, he'll be really clean.

E = Ending (If they break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

The longer you've been together, the easier he'll let you down, but the harder it'll be for him.

Depending on why you're breaking up, he'll talk it out with you. If you're going out on good terms, he'll ask if you'd like to stay friends. But if its on bad terms, he'll cut all ties with you.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel commitment? How quickly do they want to get married?)

Like I said on domestic, he'll want to settle down and get married once he realizes he's got the right person. Doesn't really care when, as long as youre both ready and able to do it.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Physically, he play fights a lot and gives really tight hugs, but he wont if you ask him not to.

Emotionally, hes pretty soft for you. He'll open up to you when he feels a good amount of trust, and he'll make if clear that he'll be your shoulder to cry on when you need it.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Kuroo loves hugs, and he hugs you whenever he can. Usually hugs you in an almost back breaking grip, he might pick you up and spin you around too.

L = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Always said it when you guys were friends, and when you were dating he kept saying it. But never said it in a romantic way till about 10 months into your relationship, so decently fast

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they're jealous?)

Kuroo is confident, and doesn't get jealous too often. But when he does, he gets pretty jealous. He'll get super touchy with you, hold your hand, and your waist. If you're talking to someone he'll just stare at them, and drag you away when he reaches his limit.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Kuroos kisses are usually rough, and passionate. But they'll be softer if he's in a soft mood.

Kisses your lips and face the most, and if youre short than him he'll kiss your forehead and the top of your head.

He really only ever likes kisses on the lips and jawline. He'll take anywhere else, but those are his favorite places.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Kuroo is the type to get used as a jungle gym by little kids. But he'll probably play tag and hide and seek with them. He's like the fun dad type around little kids, and his parental side come out around them.

When theyre not playing, he's lying down with all of them watching a Disney movie while they're hugging him.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Kuroo likes to sleep in, so mornings with him are spent going in and out of sleep while you hold each other. And once you're completely awake, you'll probably lay in bed for about an hour just talking.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Kuroo is a night owl, so the two of you will stay up, playing games, talking eating, etc. Then you'll go to bed around 1 - 3 am

O = Open (When would they start revealing themselves to you? Do they say everything all at once, or wait awhile to reveal things slowly?)

Since you guys were best friends before you were dating, there wasn't much to open up about. But opening up romanticly took him around 6 months. He's an open book, so there wasn't too much to say, so he said it all at one.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

Kuroo is super nonchalant, so he really does ever get mad. It takes a lot to make him angry, so don't expect to see him heated too often

Q = Quizzes (How much do they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Kuroo surprisingly remembers a lot about you. He doesn't remember everything you say word for word, but he knows a decent amount. He knows you favorite color, food, family names (even if you've only mentioned them once), favorite flower, etc.

R = Remember (Whats their favorite moment in your relationship?)

The first "I love you" will forever be his favorite. It was such a soft and vulnerable moment, he just knew it'd be something he'd never forget

S = Security (How protectively are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Kuroo let's you freely talk to anyone, but if he gets a weird vibe from someone, or youre talking to someone that he knows isn't good, he'll make sure to keep an eye on you.

Normally either keeps his distance and watches you from afar, or stands next to you with an arm around you.

Doesn't really want protection, he wants to be the one protecting you. But if he had to choose, it'd be to defend him when hes mot there to defend himself.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, and everyday tasks)

Kuroo is a very driven and passionate person, so he puts a lot of effort towards your relationship. However, it will falter if he sees that his partner won't reciprocate that energy.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Kuroo likes giving tight hugs, and rough kisses, and he's even rough during play fights. So his bad habit is that sometimes he gets too rough, hits you a little to hard during play fights, and squeezes you too tight during hugs, but nothing that hurts for more than a few minutes.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Again, Kuroo is very confident, so he never gets too concerned with his looks. People even call him bed head, which is probably true. He'll come out of the house without changing his hair from how it was after waking up and still feel like he looks good.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Once he's really into your relationship, he'll definitely feel like something is missing when hes not with you. Hes not clingy about it, but its not the same without you

X = Xtra (Random hc about them)

Kuroo takes a lot of pictures of you to the point where you make up 50% of his gallery. He even has them categorized; selfies, full body photos, cute pictures of you sleeping, you making dumb faces, etc.

Y = Yuck (What are somethings they wouldn't like? Either in general or in a partner.)

Kuroo wouldn't enjoy a partner that has nothing that they strive for. They don't have wants, or a goal, they're just there.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Kuroo moves around a lot in his sleep, but when you're next to him he moves a lot less. And he's a generally heavy sleeper, but tends to wake up if you even get out of bed to use the bathroom.

#kuroo scenarios #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsurō #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo x you #haikyuu kuroo #tetsurou x reader #kuroo tetsuro scenarios #sfw alphabet #haikyuu #hq kuroo #hq

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angelicjeonghan · 4 years ago

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4 Lives

After committing a crime so cruel that even an execution won't do, Wonwoo finds himself as a Goblin, searching for the one soul destined to take his sword out of him. But throughout his long, long lifetime, he finds himself meeting that soul, Mingyu, again and again until Mingyu reaches the lifetime in which he has to take Wonwoo's sword out.

4.4K words

Note: Goblins are immortal and have the ability to travel to different places by opening doors (open the door to your bedroom but end up in another place) ! Just some info so you’re not comfused if you haven’t watched the drama :-)

Hello! This is the second fanfic I’m writing on here! I posted this on Asianfanfics.com but I thought I’d put it on here too :-) Also! This fic is HEAVILY inspired by the popular K-drama, goblin! But I changed a lot of things and the plot is completely different, its just a few things that I chose to keep. Regardless, this fic was inspired by Goblin so if you like this fic, you should go watch it!

They say that humans have four lives, and that afterwards, the soul finally gets to go to a higher place. They say that those who’ve killed themselves become grim reapers, and that those who commit heinous acts will be cursed as immortal until they find their brides. They say all of that, but who really believes it?

Wonwoo didn’t mean to slaughter a whole village. He didn’t know what he was doing, he just knew that whatever the king wants, the king gets. It didn’t hit him that he and the group of soldiers that he led single handedly took the lives of countless individuals until he found himself kneeling in front of the king with his hands bound to his back and an executioner fastening a blindfold to his eyes, preparing him for what’s to come. His whole body shuddered as beads of sweat dripped down his face. He wasn't sure if it was out of fear or out of heat. Maybe both. His execution was scheduled for the night, so there were rings of fire circling him, illuminating what was to come.

He realized in what was supposed to be his final moments that he didn’t do what the king wanted. He and his soldiers were only supposed to kidnap the king, but the selfish desire deep within him that he didn’t know existed caused him to kill a village.

He uttered one final apology, finding that there were no tears left in him as he prepared himself for his death.

The sword piercing his body felt like nothing to him. Even when he felt himself choke up blood and his body begin to burn in pain, he felt nothing but guilt. He was a monster and deserved this. He deserved to die the death of a public execution. He deserved to die due to the war that was to ensue due to his actions. He didn’t deserve to open his eyes ever again.

So when they did open, he was confused.

He scanned the barren fields around him, and was greeted with an old man who appeared beside him in an instant.

“How am I here? How...Why am I here?” He asked quietly, afraid that somebody from the town might somehow hear him in the vacant fields. He looked down at his stomach and saw the sword that stabbed him days prior. But it was different now. It was transparent and glowed, but if he chose not to focus on it, he wouldn’t see it. He tried to touch it, but his hand went right through it. He gave the man a questioning look.

The old man sighed deeply as he scanned the young man before him.

“Have you ever heard of a Goblin?”

The first time he met Mingyu was in a small town in England. He decided to leave Korea as a whole and move somewhere he’d never be found, and decided that England would be a good start.

Besides, he had an eternity to learn English.

Mingyu, who’s name at the time was Mark, worked at a local bakery in their rural town away from the Royal Palace. Royalty didn’t seem to matter to their quaint way of living. Wonwoo was the only foreigner in the town, and was often questioned about his whereabouts and how he traveled from the orient to here. He couldn’t lie and say that he teleported, because they’d just try to burn him for witchcraft, so he lied and said that he travelled from China to import tea.

They didn’t need to know that he was Korean, anyways, because to them it was all the same.

Mark was one of the only people who didn’t question him for not being European, and their friendship soon grew.

Wonwoo found it easy to suppress certain feelings throughout his life, from being in training, to being in battle, to then having to go into hiding.

It was easy to suppress these feelings when he couldn’t relax and bask in them, but sitting here with Mark made his heart beat just a little faster than he would have liked.

Mark grew up strictly catholic and made no advances towards Wonwoo, but the lingering stares and the jolts of electricity that ran through their bodies as they brushed their fingertips over tea was enough to suffice.

As Mark grew older, he began to question Wonwoo’s age. They’d been friends for ten years, and Mark was now balding and developing wrinkles, yet Wonwoo kept his pristine complexion and didn’t seem to age at all.

Wonwoo always brushed him off with a comment along the lines of “Asians don’t age”, but Mark wasn’t stupid.

Mark knew deep down that there was something supernatural about his friend, but he didn’t push on it. Even when he laid on his deathbed in their shared apartment, fifty years later and completely bald, wrinkled, weak and brittle, he didn’t question Wonwoo’s youth.

Wonwoo pressed a kiss to his forehead as he said goodbye to his friend, and prayed that it wasn’t Marks last life.

That was the first time he felt the pain of a Goblin. He had initially felt grateful to whomever the old man had been before, but now all he felt was sorrows and regret. He thought that his execution was enough, but he knew that he deserved this.

The second time he met Mingyu was 100 years later in New York, United States.

Shortly after Mark's death, Wonwoo decided to leave Europe to forget about him, hence finding himself in the busy streets of New York. He initially didn’t like the big city, but he felt like the growing city was a good way to forget about his past “lover”.

He even got an education. He was immune to diseases and wanted to help people, so he became an ER doctor to save lives.

This was his way of making up for his past. For every person he killed, he would save ten people.

With his new task and busy work days, he soon was able to forget about Mark.

That was until a fateful day in the hospital, where Michael, a respiratory therapist from the other hospital along with his assistant, Siyeon, came in to treat an ill patient.

Wonwoo wasn’t assigned to the patient, but checked in during his break to see if he could be of any assistance. He didn’t look at Michael when first entering the room, not out of rudeness but out of simple concern for the patient. However after doing a quick rundown of whatever procedure needed to be done, he turned to Michael to ask if he needed help.

But Wonwoo didn’t hear a word Michael said, because all he could feel is a rush of electricity pulsing through his veins and tingling in his feet as he looked into Michael's eyes.

Siyeon politely nudged Wonwoo after a short period of time, asking if he was okay. She explained that he’d been staring at Michael for a few seconds without saying anything.

Wonwoo nodded his head, clarifying to the duo that he had a long shift and that he just needed some fresh air.

He spent his lunch break outside, barely touching his sandwich as his mind raced with the previous events.

He’s alive

But his thoughts were cut short quickly as Siyeon, the assistant, called out to him as she jogged over, her lunch bag clutched in her fists.

“I’m going to be blunt with you, Dr. Jeon.” She started, staring deep into his eyes. “Are you a Goblin?”

Wonwoo’s eyes widened as his mouth hung open.

He blinked a few times at her, mumbling a few times about why she’d ask that, before she interrupted again.

“I’m a grim reaper.” She stated, sitting down on the bench next to him. “And I think you’re a goblin because I can’t get a read on you. I don’t know when you’ll die, so I’m assuming that you’re a Goblin, right?"

Wonwoo scanned his surroundings, deciding that they were secluded enough to talk in public.

“If I wasn’t a Goblin, then what would I be?” He questioned.

He didn’t understand why she was confused about what he was. If she couldn’t get a read on him, wouldn’t that make it perfectly clear?

“You could also be a lost soul. You know, somebody who is supposed to die, but doesn’t?” She explained, leaning back in her seat comfortably, eyeing Wonwoo as he processed his new information.

“Oh…” He trailed off. “Well, you were correct, I’m a goblin. I didn’t know lost souls existed.” He said.

“Really?” She asked, taken aback. “But a lost soul is gonna be the person to save you.” She grinned at his confusion, explaining further. “You’ll save a person one day, whether that be

through your job here at the hospital or through your powers as a goblin. But they’ll then develop supernatural abilities that will allow them to see your sword.” She pointed to the protruding sword from his torso, cocking her head to the side.

Wonwoo’s eyes went directly to his torso, where the transparent sword glowed.

“They’ll be able to pull out your sword and then you’ll be able to die. So, save as many lives as you can.” Siyeon patted Wonwoo’s shoulder as she got up, getting ready to go back to her shift.

“But you have plenty of time. I know you remember Michael from his past life. He will be the one to pull your sword out, but not in this lifetime.”

He never tried to see Michael again after that, but he had faith that he’d meet Michael’s soul again.

The third time he met Mingyu was 100 years later in Quebec City, Canada.

After “getting another job offer” in Canada, Wonwoo studied up on French and moved to Quebec. He decided to take a break from being a doctor and focused on music. He decided that saving lives isn’t just medical, and that music can help and heal people just as much as medicine. The pay was significantly lower than he was used to, but his savings kept him afloat as he performed gigs at local pubs and coffee shops.

Technology was growing, so he was able to record a CD with his songs. He was amazed at what humans were able to do, and was almost thankful to have been able to live to see the change in the world.

Wonwoo finished up his last song for the night at the coffee house he’d been performing at, and graciously accepted the applause. He spent the rest of the night in a local pub with a few friends, one being Siyeon, as they drank the night away.

Siyeon quit her job as a medical assistant due to her deaths rising up and getting in the way of her work.

Her grim reaper priorities were far more important than her other jobs.

She found an interest in French music and bought a vinyl with a familiar name to the title, and eventually she made her way up to Quebec to annoy Wonwoo.

But he wasn’t annoyed by her at all.

She kept him company, and it was nice to know that when their friend group dies, she’ll still be there to mourn with him.

The group drank until they could barely walk, stumbling up to Wonwoo’s fancy apartment.

His friends often asked how he managed to afford the place, but he brushed them off and claimed that it was inheritance.

However Wonwoo’s apartment was a few floors up, and living in Old Quebec, there were no elevators available, so the group had to force themselves up the stairs.

What was normally an easy, but tiring, walk soon became a marathon for Wonwoo.

He wasn’t usually this clumsy, but after missing a step, he found himself falling flat onto his face.

“Are you alright?” A worried voice asked.

Wonwoo brushed it off as one of his friends, holding his hand out for one to take.

But the jolt of electricity that was brought to his fingertips sobered Wonwoo up completely.

He stood up, wiping away at any dust that might’ve been left on him, before looking up at the man before him.

“Hi..” The man started “Are you alright? I noticed you fall, and…” He trailed off.

“I’m great.” Wonwoo said, feeling heat rise to his cheeks as he stared deeper into the eyes of the man before him.

“Oh!” The man exclaimed awkwardly, pointing to the door adjacent Wonwoo’s.” I’m Mattheu, your new neighbor.”

Wonwoo grinned, reaching out to shake Mattheus' hand again, feeling himself melt into his touch.

Siyeon eyed the two of them, raising an eyebrow as the duo made heart eyes for each other.

She ushered the rest of their friend group out of the apartment building, promising a place to sleep in her apartment a few stories down.

It was clear as day to Siyeon that Wonwoo’s relationship to Mattheu was going to be a lot different than the ones he’d had with Mattheu’s soul before. In the past, they could never be together in public, however in the 20th century city of Quebec, the duo can live the way they want.

Wonwoo had never experienced happiness like what he experienced with Mattheu. Their good morning kisses, their homemade dinners, and the love they had for each other made Wonwoo’s heart swarm with warmth and joy.

Until Mattheu began to get sick.

It was little things at first, but Wonwoo knew after a few weeks what was happening.

Mattheu had told Wonwoo about his past lovers, and how there were many nights that went unprotected, but he truly thought that he wouldn’t be one of them.

One to get AIDs, that is.

Wonwoo knew he was safe from it, but that just made him feel worse. His lover would have to die, and he couldn’t even die with him.

Mattheu hung in there for a little while, trying his best to keep his routine but becoming weaker and weaker as time went on, until one day, Mattheu didn’t hum in contentment as Wonwoo smothered him in his good morning kisses, didn’t sigh deeply as he felt the duvet being pulled from him, and didn’t open his eyes to see the love and adoration that Wonwoo held in his own.

Siyeon tried to help him, holding him as he cried and tucking him into bed every night, but he couldn’t stay anymore. He couldn’t stay in this apartment, in this city, in this country anymore. It was time for a change.

The fourth time he met Mingyu was 80 years later in Seoul, South Korea.

He needed to go home after Mattheu passed.

He put off going to the country that hated him in fear that he’d be ridiculed and exempt from ever stepping foot on Korean soil, except...it didn’t hate him.

Because what he did centuries ago didn’t even make it to the textbooks, and as it turns out, his actions never caused a war. The other villages grew defensive once they heard about the attacked village, however after hearing about Wonwoo’s death, they decided to accept it and move on.

So he felt comfortable again in South Korea.

He went back to being a doctor after moving back, and prayed to whomever may be listening that French music never makes its way over to South Korea, because he grew a bit of a following and didn’t want to be known as the “Hot, singing doctor who knows French”.

Siyeon also followed Wonwoo, deciding that she, too, would like to go home.

Siyeon never really knew what she did to make her commit suicide, so she wanted to see if being in Korea would trigger something in her.

Wonwoo ran a hand through his hair as he looked down at his clipboard of things to do, scribbling down a few notes here and there as he enjoyed the calm morning environment.

But that was quickly replaced by chaos as a new nurses rushed in a patient who’d seemingly been hit by a car.

He quickly rushed over to her bed and examined her current state.

Her arm was nearly dislocated, her chest seemed to have taken a big blow with the blood ushering through a wound, and her face was completely scratched at.

He told the nurses to grab some anesthetics as he began to prep her for emergency surgery, however she began to plead weakly as he vocalized his plans.

“I'm pregnant” she repeated to him through labored breaths. “Be careful and save my baby”

Wonwoo’s mind raced as he thought of what to do.

He knew that if he played it safe, she’d be able to make it, but a fetus so small that it was barely visible to the outside world wouldn’t.

And he couldn’t let his patient down.

He scanned the room again to ensure that nobody had their eyes on him before he told his patient to close her eyes.

He put his hand over her stomach and used his powers to heal her. Not completely, but just enough to ensure that whatever may be growing inside of her does so with no problems.

He rarely used his powers to heal others, opting to stick to his medial knowledge. But he swore to himself that if he could save somebody, he'd do it no matter what.

The nurses rushed in with needles and other equipment seconds after he finished, and he thanked whomever may be up there that they didn’t see what he had done.

He let another doctor take control of the patient's surgery, and visited her only after she was fully healed and was able to sit upright.

He hoped that she would have been too out of it to have noticed what he’d done to her stomach, but once the nurses that took care of her left for their other patients, she tapped on her stomach and smiled.

“My eyes were closed, but the glowing that came from your hand was too bright to not notice.” She smiled softly. “I won’t tell anyone, but I just wanted to say...thank you.”

Wonwoo smiled back at her, wishing her the best of luck on her pregnancy and journey throughout motherhood.

He turned to leave the room before glancing back at her, a question popping into his head.

“Do you have names picked out?”

His patient pondered for a moment, rubbing her stomach as she thought.

“If it's a girl, I’d name her Eunwoo.”

Wonwoo grinned. He liked the name a lot and complimented her on it.

The patient took another moment to think, cocking her head to the side as she decided.

“And if it’s a boy, I think I’ll name him Mingyu.”

The fifth and time he met Mingyu was 20 years later in Seoul, South Korea.

Wonwoo made his way to the library, enjoying his first few days of his break from working.

He again made the decision to take a break from being a doctor, deciding that he wanted to learn how to write instead.

He thought about his life and how big of a hit it would be to write a book on it.

So that’s what he decided to do.

He sat down in his usual spot as he began his writing process: make a bullet point list of the progression of events, then write for an hour, and then scroll on his phone.

The new iPhone came out, and he was over the moon with what he could do with it.

Siyeon called him out for still having a flip phone in 2020, so he finally upgraded to an iPhone.

He loved all of the social media apps, but he found himself drawn to twitter the most.

He could tweet out anything he wanted and it would be there forever. Amazing.

He leaned back in his chair as he scrolled, giggling to himself as he read the tweets from a few of his favorite artists. He felt like a little kid, but it made him happy.

It almost made him miss the way the person across from him stared at him.

Or rather, his torso.

Wonwoo glanced up from his phone and raised an eyebrow to the person across from him.

And then he felt a familiar tingle again.

But this time, the tingle came from his torso as he saw the sword appear before him again, glowing brighter than ever before.

The man across from him got up and made his way over, giving Wontoo a toothy grin as he pointed to the sword.

“So...I see you have a sword in you.”

Wonwoo’s mouth went dry and his hands began to clam.

Is this it? He thought to himself. Am I gonna finally die today?

“Uh…” The man continued “I’m Mingyu, your "Bride", by the way. I’m assuming you’re the Goblin I was destined to save?”

Wonwoo nodded his head weakly, his arms trembling as he reached out to shake Mingyu's hand.

“We don’t have to do this now, you know.” Mingyu reassured, patting Wonwoo’s back in an attempt to calm him down.

But they did. Once you meet your bride, you need to perform the execution within the next few hours. Otherwise, the Goblins bride could be in danger.

Wonwoo melted in Mingyu's touch as a deep sigh left his lips.

He looked up at Mingyu after some time to introduce himself as well as to tell him his story.

He told Mingyu about what he did to become a goblin, about all of the places he’d lived, and about the times that he met Mingyu’s soul. He told Mingyu about his plans to write a book about his experiences, about the long, long life he lived. He told Mingyu that he almost wishes that he could live forever at this point. Almost. But he's ready to leave this world, now.

Mingyu smiled at him, rubbing hands reassuringly.

“Humans have four lives, right?” Mingyu asked, earning a nod from Wonwoo. “So after this life, I’ll go to...wherever souls go, right?” Wonwoo nodded again.

“So we will be together then, Wonwoo. Mark, Michael, Mattheu, and I. We will be there with you when I’m done living this life.”

The thought of being reunited with Mingyu’s soul for eternity brought tears to Wonwoo’s eyes as he began to sob quietly.

Mingyu stayed with him until Wonwoo calmed down, picking up his phone to call Siyeon, who quickly rushed over to meet the duo.

They said their tearful goodbyes, and Siyeon promised that she only had a few lives left to take before her duty as a Grim Reaper was over. Afterwards, she’d join him up there and keep him company as he waited for Mingyu’s soul to finish living it’s last life.

Wonwoo and Mingyu held hands as they made their way to a barren field on the outskirts of Seoul.

Wonwoo thought it would be best to do it here, as there would be nobody around to watch him disintegrate into thin air.

Memories of waking up in a similar field, complete confusion and the start of his new life washed over Wonwoo has he took in his final moments.

Mingyu, despite only meeting Wonwoo for the first time today, felt a deep sense of sorrow as Wonwoo stopped in his tracks, turning to face Mingyu with a soft smile.

Wonwoo felt content with his surroundings, he felt content with Mingyu beside him, and he felt relieved to finally be done with living.

Wonwoo took Mingyu’s reluctant hands and placed it onto the sword, squeezing it slightly as a signal that he was ready.

“Wonwoo…” Mingyu started, tears forming in his eyes.

“Hmm?” Wonwoo asked, looking up at him.

“I’ll see you again before you know it, alright?”

Wonwoo nodded, smiling softly as he felt the sword finally leave his body.

Then he felt himself float.

Then he felt nothing.

Jeon Wonwoo was gone from this Earth, but he was watching from above.

The last time he met Mingyu was in his heaven.

Wonwoo felt someone pepper his face with kisses as he stirred awake.

He opened his eyes slightly to adjust to the light that cascaded through the blinds by the window.

He knew that window.

He rubbed his eyes before opening them again, reevaluating the room.

This was his apartment in Quebec.

The kisses plastered to his face stopped momentarily as a pair of hands grasped at his cheeks, turning his face to the side.

There he saw Mingyu, grinning at him as he pulled Wonwoo into a kiss.

Wonwoo melted in his touch, feeling slightly delirious as he held onto Mingyu’s hand.

“M-Mingyu...You’re here?”

Mingyu nodded, pushing a few strands of hair from Wonwoo’s forehead before pressing a kiss to it.

“I’m here. Do you know why we are here?” Mingyu asked.

Wonwoo shook his head, scanning the room again.

“It’s our heaven, Woo.” Mingyu said.

“I..I thought I was in heaven…” Wonwoo trailed off.

Prior to here, he’d been with Siyeon as they wandered around with their friends.

He was happy there.

But being here with Mingyu, that was indescribable.

“You were in your heaven, but now you’re in our heaven. This is where we live now. Together.”

Together

Hey guys! If you liked that, I also have a few fics on Asianfanfics.com! I might post a few on here depending on how well this does lol. Thank you for reading!

#Seventeen #seventeenfic #Meanie #wonwoo #mingyu #carat #kpop #Svt #jeon wonwoo #kim mingyu

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