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jennifer-jeong · 6 months

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Angst + Fluff | Ryomen Sukuna x Reader Next time

hehehe see what I did with the header picture, they're leaning on each other (you'll get it if you read)

SUMMARY Sukuna promises you he’ll be better for you in your next lives.

CONTENT NOT SPOILER FREE, suggestive, angst to fluff, gender neutral reader, it’s supposed to be a happy ending if you pretend that things don’t go according to canon LOL, very OC Sukuna so he actually has emotions, near death experiences, injuries, blood, death, suicide, ALL CHARACTERS ARE 18+

AUTHOR NOTES I can’t write canon Sukuna because he doesn’t even like humans 💀 Basically this is pookie Sukuna LOL There’s a lot of deviation from canon in this fic. I'm probably going to make a smut portion to this in a separate fic so stay tuned hehe, I'll link it here if I finish it!

WORD COUNT: 2244 why did this turn out so long... maybe I actually do like him

Back in the Heian period (a millenia ago), Ryomen Sukuna, “the king of curses,” peaked in power. At the same time, you were just getting started with your adult life. Unfortunately at this moment, however, it seemed that it would be cut short. A strong, locust-like, curse manifested in your village and you’ve been trying your best to stop it but to no avail. In fact, it’s currently pinning your body to the ground, trying to bite your head off. You imagine that the curse came to be due to the fear of famine in your farms, but you didn’t think it’d be this strong. You struggle but the curse is much larger than you are. You don’t even know what your last words should be, your mind going blank in panic. Your life starting to flash before your eyes-

“I suggest you fuck off my turf,” says a dangerously domineering voice. The curse looks up down the road and sees something you can’t in your current position. You barely need to look to figure out who it is though. The curse above you freezes in pure fear and eases up on crushing your body in a jolt. You hear the same voice “tsk” at the curse’s “disrespectful” hesitation and suddenly the giant bug flies in a seemingly random direction before essentially exploding due to the force. You sit up slightly with shock evident on your face, you turn around to finally see your unfortunate savior. He takes your silent shock as confusion and explains “the area is mine… filthy curses have no right to do as they please around here.” Your body feels heavy from the sheer aura of power he gives off but you can’t help but still make a mildly disgusted face at him for what he’s saying. You’ve heard he treats humans like livestock and you have always despised him for having power like that and choosing to do this instead of something good. He makes an angered face back saying “hah?” and just when you start to regret your choice of facial expression, he rolls his eyes and walks away. You pause for a few seconds before taking a breath you didn’t know you were holding. You mutter a “thanks” that you don’t think he hears before heading back to your home to tend your wounds.

Sukuna had been watching you recently. It was no coincidence that he appeared in front of you that night. He first noticed you when you were able to kill any of the curses that attacked your village. He watched, quite amused, that you continued to struggle with no fear against these monsters while the rest of your idiotic village sat back and watched, some even calling you insane despite you saving their lives. Sukuna doesn’t understand why you don’t just beat up the humans that don’t listen. You let them take advantage of your kindness even though you could wipe them all out with an arm tied behind your back. You’re overly kind but you still have the guts to stand up to someone like him. He heard your small mutter of gratitude while he walked away and smiled slightly. He’s never met someone he actually felt bad for in this way. He’s found something he feels pity for, and it’s enough to make him want to protect it, treat it like it’s special.

So now you’re here, a few days later in his temple, bowing 90 degrees in front of him with an offering in your hand. You came here to show him respect for not killing you or the other villagers. He’s impressed you even found him and more impressed that you made the trek here. He walks towards you and reaches for your chin with his hand to make you look at him and stand up. His eyes inspect your slightly flustered face while his thumb very slightly caresses your chin. He releases his hold on your face and takes the offering. You stand there, still on guard and weary of the man. But you know he hasn’t done anything to your village in the time that you’ve been alive, you just know he’s the “disgraced one” and that it can’t be good.

For the next few weeks, your time is spent half at the village and half at Sukuna’s temple. He decided to help you with the journey by just teleporting you with a “simple” technique that you couldn’t comprehend. You slowly discover that Sukuna is actually just so strong he’s bored, no one really stands on equal ground with him. Even if all the sorcerers in the world fought him, he’s confident he’d win, and you don’t doubt it (canon).

He thinks it’s cute that you still go back to the village to help out here and there. He’s only okay with it now because he can watch over you and intervene if anyone wants to be rude. Many of the villagers are kind to you from a distance, only some actually approach you to thank you from time to time. A small group of the villagers unfortunately highly suspect you to be a curse of some sort though and don’t trust you because you’re so powerful. You’ve only ever done good with your power and you know that for a fact, so you ignore them. Sukuna, however, sits in his temple absolutely fuming whenever they interact with you, he’d maim them if you told him to, but you specifically told him he can’t hurt any humans unless they attack first.

Sukuna enjoys watching your little daily endeavors, smiling whenever you’re clumsy while cleaning or when you accomplish hunting down and killing some curses. It brings a sense of innocent joy to his life that he hasn’t ever really had. He’s had violent, murderous joy in his life, but nothing like this before. Some might say it made him soft, but really it made him stronger in a sense, he finally had something to protect.

As time goes on and seasons change, you and Sukuna only grow closer. You can’t explain why you’re still here with someone you used to hate with every fiber of your being. You think it might have something to do with how he actually sees you. He sees your struggle and your kindness and properly appreciates you for it. No one else in your life has done that for you. No one protects you and cares for you like he does. You also learned that he’s always been pretty good or at least neutral in using his power too. Only killing humans when attacked, beating up strong sorcerers but not killing them, and killing curses that bother him in his land. He was never actually as bad as the rumors made him out to be. Basically, Sukuna fell first and fell harder before you realized that you had fallen all the same.

Sukuna can’t help but be a little obsessive over you. You’re the only one he has eyes for afterall. He always checks in to make sure you’re safe when you aren’t at the temple and actually learns how to cook new dishes so he can feed you. His touches always linger on you: his hands on the small of your back, fingers brushing through your hair, lips ghosting over your skin. When you spend nights together, he’s essentially worshiping your body, telling you how beautiful you are and how he’s all yours. You make sure to return the favor and make him feel loved, it makes his heart feel so full and only deepens his love for you.

You’ve discovered overtime that Sukuna is actually human, he’s just so unbelievably strong and feared that people think he’s a curse. It was strange, you could almost draw a parallel between Sukuna and yourself. Both of you were feared by some because they just didn’t understand you or your intentions. It was an unfortunate part of this reality, but as long as you could live happily together, you didn’t really mind.

Another unfortunate part of this reality, though, was that things never go according to plan. Your plans of living happily together with Sukuna quickly fell apart soon after your 3 year anniversary. The sorcerers knew that they could use you to bait Sukuna and have a much better chance at defeating him. So that’s exactly what they did. They caught you when you were out in the village in the late summer. You were strong, but there were too many of them.

It was doomed before it even started.

In the end, Sukuna is out of energy, being forced to fight offensively instead of defensively if he wanted to save you. You managed to escape to return to him and help, but you were both quickly overwhelmed since the sorcerers decided to play dirty like this. You were both sitting outside of the temple, having teleported away to buy some time. You both just sit and talk. “Have we even killed anything other than curses recently?” you question. He chuckles at your seemingly lighthearted question in this situation, “not that I can think of… I think this was always coming for me though.” You look up at him with concern, he can only smile back even though you can see the clear sorrow in his eyes. “Humans are always scared of what they don’t understand. It’s just how it is” he says as he closes his eyes and enjoys the sun. The warmth drying the blood on both of you, some of it belonging to you both, most of it belonging to your attackers. You’re silent, not sure of what to say in what seems to be your last few moments. He leans on you and you turn your head to touch foreheads. He sighs and says “I’m glad I met you at all though… You showed me what being loved is like. It was something I never thought I’d find or deserve.” You start to tear up and reach a hand to caress his cheek. “You always deserved love, darling. I’m sorry the world was so horrible to you,” you say to him in a gentle voice. “Don’t apologize, love” he says as he kisses your forehead and wraps an arm around you.

“Maybe if we can get them to hate us enough, they’ll curse us together and we can live on like that” you say jokingly. He chuckles and says “wow you really do like me, huh?” You both laugh and hold each other.

A group of sorcerers are within view and are approaching fast. You give him one last kiss and speak your last words to him: “maybe we’ll reincarnate together someday. Maybe as curses, maybe as humans.” His eyes soften with sadness written all over his face “if that happens, I promise our lives won’t be like this one… I want to be a good man for you next time… I’d give all this power up if I could just live a long and happy life with you.” You close your eyes as tears fall. Your eyebrows scrunch as the pain washes over you, physically and emotionally. You see him tear up ever so slightly and whisper “I’m sorry for all the trouble, my love.” “Just make it up to me next time,” you giggle. He knows you never blamed him. He smiles.

You always knew what you were getting into when you approached Sukuna. It was dangerous, delusional, and stupid. But you know you would’ve never had it any other way.

You both still sat side by side, foreheads touching, holding each other. You quickly charged two shots of cursed energy. One piercing his skull, the other, yours.

You eventually become a small part mentioned by people when they retell the tale of the king of curses. Many described you as a traitor or as a curse. But some could see that you prevented Sukuna from spiraling deeper into his distaste for humans. Without you, he might have become a sadistic psychopath as time went on since no one would have any way to kill him. They praised you for that, thinking you did it on purpose to save the nearby villages. Both these ideas were lost in history though. In modern times it’s only written in some books at jujutsu high as hypotheses. No one truly knew what happened.

Sukuna’s powers sealed into his fingers upon death. A technique he used on himself before he met you and one he long forgot about. The sorcerers, out of fear, scattered his indestructible fingers to prevent anyone getting their hands on them and reincarnating the king of curses. Hoping to keep the man dead.

Again, reality makes sure things don’t go to plan, and it’s Yuji’s first day meeting some of his classmates. Sukuna has been wondering what to do since he’s been reincarnated into Yuji’s body. He’s been uncharacteristically quiet in Yuji’s mind and it makes everyone question if Sukuna is really the evil being they all thought he was.

Sukuna is barely paying attention until he feels a familiar warmth walk into the room, not even needing to see you to know who you were. He couldn’t believe it, he almost laughed, thinking that the universe really brought you two back together after more than a thousand years. But he paused, suddenly serious because he realized he had a chance to make things, not right, but different.

After class, Sukuna switches with Yuji, and lo and behold, you show him the exact same disgusted face you made to him centuries ago when he came to greet you in Yuji’s body. It made him smile as he let out a whisper,

“I missed you.”

|| MASTERLIST ♡ || Thank you for reading! ||

#jjk x reader #jjk angst #jjk fluff #jjk x reader angst #jjk x reader fluff #sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #reader x sukuna #sukuna ryomen x reader #sukuna angst #ryomen sukuna angst #sukuna fluff #ryomen sukuna fluff #j's silly ramblings

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ross-hollander · 3 months

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Lesser Known Legends...

...of the Inner Sphere and Beyond: everyone knows their The Bounty Hunter and their Black Marauder, but some notables never seem to really find the fame they deserve. For instance...

"The Grinch", name unknown, attacked Christmas tree farms in a pine-green Hatchetman across the Commonwealth in the years following the Jihad; speculated to have been disgruntled with the omnipresent holiday season sales advertising. Never apprehended. The damage was estimated to have been in the tens of millions.

Willy Divou, the "Red Paper Clip Bandit". Started in a raggedy CattleMaster, broke into military bases ranging from the Capellan Confederation to the furthest reaches of the Combine, swapping for a new, better 'mech each time. Arrested and executed after being baited with a rumors of an 'experimental improved Atlas'.

Theodora Mirene, the "Brick Wall". A Civil War mercenary whose grotesquely modified Stalker avoided differing weapons restrictions and parts availability in the various systems she operated in by not having any. She butted and body-checked over twenty enemy 'mechs down over her career, before retiring from battle strain.

Toni Anathol, "The Solaris Menace". Active from 2904-6 as the only person to ever reach double digits (27, all told) for streaking in the 'mech arenas. Was captured when he twisted an ankle brutally mid-run, but fans demanded his release. His career was over after that, though he received the only official Solaris Medal of Spontaneity.

"The Possum Pilot", spotted across numerous battlefields but consistent in their tactics during the Andurien Crisis. Always piloted an Archer so dilapidated as to appear to be a wreck, then sprung up and fired on unsuspecting FWL troops. Killed when stepped on by a Zeus that took them for underfoot wreckage. Body was unidentifiable.

Susan Ravenwater, "The Party Bus", a Hell's Horses pilot active during STAMPEDE with a dicey strategy of ordering every Elemental in their Nova onto their 'mech, and moving as a flanker to drop twenty-five Elementals into the fight when the enemy was fighting what they assumed was elements of a standard Star.

"Big" Boots A. Tajag, a mercenary for the Dominion during their war against the Combine. A dedicated Trebuchet pilot who practiced the self-taught "art of 'mech-jitsu". Never scored a confirmed kill in the field: only ever knocked over or tripped enemy 'mechs. Died to a Locust whose reverse knee joints baffled his technique.

Jared Hada, the "Turtle of Terror". Piloted a massive, over-armored Rifleman which would drop into planetside docks and depots, firing on anyone trying to enter or leave until a ransom was paid for access to the supplies. This worked until a Lyran supply depot simply waited him out, breaking in and arresting him when he fell asleep during the standoff.

#3151posting #mechwarrior #battletech #battletech memes #battletech meme #rh.txt #battletech mercenaries

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astra-ravana · 2 months

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Astra's List of Baneful Components

I hope to make this list as comprehensive as possible and will be adding to it whenever I discover something new. If anyone has any suggestions for things that should be added, please let me know. 🖤

Herbs/Plants

• Bloodroot- Substitutes blood

• Jezebel Root- Wickedness, ending relationships, punishing cheaters

• Bindweed- Binding, ensnaring

�� Dogbane- Deception

• Rue- Misery

• Saffron- Destruction

• Lemon- Sourness/bitterness, reveals damaging truths

• Lemon Verbena- a boost of power, ending relationships

• Lime- Sourness/bitterness, encourages deceit

• Lobelia- Discord

• Hemlock- Discord, sadness

• Spanish Moss- Bad luck

• Vertiver- Silence

• Mace- Misery, strife

• Slippery Elm- Bad luck, negativity

• Bittersweet- Loss, sadness

• Mandrake- Misery, strife

• Mistletoe- Isolation, confusion

• Wormwood- Delusion, misery, strife, madness

• Sumac- Bad luck, negativity

• Mullein- Spirit work, nightmares

• Patchouli- Illness

• Mustard Seed- Strife, discord

• Hemlock- Destroys sex drive, break ups

• Poke Root- Confusion, upset

• Blackberry Root- Distress

• Myrrh- A boost of power

• Tobacco- Subs any baneful herb

• Belladonna- Discord, conflict, illness, suffering

• Cinquefoil- Discomfort

• Ague Weed- Confusion

• Blueberry- Confusion

• Cloves- Domination, stops gossip

• Stinging Nettle- Jealousy, discomfort

• Cramp Bark- Pain, illness

• Licorice Root- Domination

• Tormentil- Distress, harm

• Asafoetida- Drives enemies away

• Henbane- Emotional instability, melancholy, storms, spirit work

• Hot Peppers- Anger, fighting, discord

• Blackthorn- Illness, bad omens

• Elder- Suffering, spirit work

• Dittany- Mistakes, setbacks, depression

• Garlic- Disgust and repulsion

• Yew- Spirit work, destruction

• Onion- Disconnects relationships, strife

• Poppy Seeds- Intoxication, confusion, discord

• Foxglove- Manipulation, heartbreak, devastation

• Alum- Stops communication and speech, impotence

• Wolfsbain- Madness, loneliness, rage

• Knotweed- Binding, trapping

• Black Pepper- Revealing the truth, binding

• Green Apple- Unrequited love

• Radish- Sexual shame, STDs, infidelity

• Yohimbe Bark- Impotency

• Chicory- Discord

• Agrimony- Return to sender

• Datura- Psychic attack, nightmares, misery

• Bay Berry- Depression

• Angelica Root- Misery, strife, distress, discord

• Dragon's Blood- Destruction, pain, misery

• Chili Powder- Anxiety

• Bladderwrack- Illness, weakness

• Boneset- Distress, confusion

• Black Locust/Hawthorne Thorns- Struggle, agony, injuries, wounds

• Calamus- Control, domination, commanding, compelling

• Cocoa- Bitterness

• Black Mustard Seed- Confusion, discord, non-stop trouble

• Sumac- Discomfort, bad luck, painful lessons

• Willow Bark- A dose of their own medicine

• Stagger Weed- Disabling, trips them up

• Bar Berry- Stops progress

• Black Nightshade- Sickness, depression

• Oleander- Devastation, silence, doom

Crystals

• Opal- Amplifies negative energy (Black Opal works best)

• Ruby- Focuses intent on target

• Malachite- Anxiety, fear, cowardice, nausea

• Peridot- Confusion

• Obsidian- Reveal their darkness

• Petrified Wood- Ruin, abandonment

• Clear Quartz- Amplifier and energy holder

• Black Moonstone- Deceit, distrust, confusion, paranoia

• Onyx- Breakups, loss

• Amethyst- Self destruction, nightmares, paranoia

• Garnet- Siphons target's energy, steal their love/friends

• Diopside- Reveals a target's true colors

• Bloodstone- Sucks the life force from enemies, chaos, frailty

• Carnelian- Pain, anger, rage

• Black Quartz- Darkness

• Sardonyx- Return to sender

• Jet- Cloud their vision/blind them

• Serpentine- Illness, unsteady ground, mishaps

• Jade- Domination, control, manipulation

• Amber- Trapping, cause obstacles and setbacks

• Hematite- Negativity

Misc. Ingredients

• Salt- Painful cleansing, salt in their wounds

• Sulphur- Stops plans, causes harm

• Alcohol- Makes the work last

• Vinegar- Souring, dissolves relationships

• Pins/Needles- Pain and agony

• Thumbtacks- Makes the work stick in them

• Razor Blades- Sadistic actions, sharp words

• Broken Glass- Cut ties, emotional wounds

• Scorpions- Betrayal

• Spiders- Danger, ensnarement

• Wasps- Punishment, non-stop pain

• Grave Dirt- Enlists spirit's help

• Snakeskin- Removes them from your path

• Cigarette Butts- Snuff their will

• Thorns- Annoyance, pain

• Dog/Cat Poop- Rottenness, depression, life stinks

• Sticker Burs- Crippling emotional shock

• Spiderwebs- Crossing, binding

• Coffin Nails- Stay home, withdrawal, binding

• Lead- Weigh them down, make them late

• Black Salt- Misery, strife, banishment

• Dog Hair- Agression, combat

• Cat Hair- Passive-Aggression, conflict

• Bad Water- Stagnation, depression, illness

• Murder Scene Dirt- Crimes, complete ruin, terror, demise

• Nails- Binding, pain

• Thumb Tacks- Pain, discomfort

• Broken Glass- Disaster, accidents, injury, pain

• Blood- Longevity, boosts curse power

• War Water- Chaos, psychic warfare, banishing

• Razor/Barbed Wire- Pain, restriction, loss of freedom

• Fish Bones- Decay, bad reputation, loss of friendships

• Moths- Fragility, tunnel vision A

• Goofer Dust- Crossing, misfortune, illness

• Bone Ash- Instability, weakness, demise

• Storm Water- Destruction, upheaval, chaos

• Potato Eyes- Rot, loss of control, sickness

• Cat Claws- Helps curse cling to target, sudden agony

• Egg Shells- Breaks down barriers and boundaries

• Ants/Ant Hill Dirt- Annoyance, overwhelming, banishing

• Hospital Dirt- Illness and injury

• Bullets- Devastation, destruction, suffering, demise

• Iron- Banishing, destruction

• Super Glue- Permanence, binding, damage

#satanic witch #satanism #withcraft #demons #demonolatry #lefthandpath #magick #witch #dark #baneful magic #baneful #curses #cursing #spellcraft #spellwork #traditional witchcraft

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year

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Comet Donati [Chapter 7: Heart Attack]

A/N: Hello all! Only 3 chapters left!!! 🥰 Thank you so much for loving this fic and giving all my eccentric AU ideas a chance. I’m currently in Washington DC visiting one of my best friends, so if I’m a little bit tardy replying to your comments/messages then that’s why. Don’t fear!! I will check in as soon as I can, and I am still amazed by and will forever cherish your support. 💜

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (+18), drugs, alcohol, smoking, Shelby being a bigger plague than the locusts of Egypt, mental health struggles, references to violence and abuse, New Jersey, pregnancy, mini golf, lots of content for the Cregan girlies.

Selected Chapter Quote: “We’re meant to be together. We have so much history.”

Word count: 6.2k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @doingfondue @catalina-howard @randomdragonfires @myspotofcraziness @arcielee @fan-goddess @talesofoldandnew @marvelescvpe @tinykryptonitewerewolf @mariahossain @chainsawsangel @darkenchantress @not-a-glad-gladiator @gemini-mama @trifoliumviridi @herfantasyworldd @babyblue711 @namelesslosers @thelittleswanao3 @daenysx @moonlightfoxx @libroparaiso @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @mizfortuna @florent1s @heimtathurs @bhanclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @heavenly1927 @mariahossain @echos-muses @padfooteyes @minttea07 @queenofshinigamis @juliavilu1 @amiraisgoingthruit @lauraneedstochill @wintrr13 @r0segard3n @seabasscevans @tsujifreya

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

You type into Google as you hide in the public bathroom stall, pink tile walls and mint green porcelain, very 1950s, phantom drips of water and humming florescent lights: Can Plan B make your period late?

You scroll through the results, clutching your iPhone with both hands. Faintly, you can hear the rest of the band outside, chattering, laughing, slurping on Slush Puppies, smacking trees and rocks with their golf clubs. Yes, the consensus seems to be; Plan B can delay your period. Incidentally, so can pregnancy.

“Fuck,” you whimper. You peer down at your panties, as if you can force bloodstains to appear: sparce rosy threads of warning, dark red splotches like rust, you aren’t particular. You’ll take anything. “Fuck,” you say again, defeated. You get dressed, wash your hands, and head back out into the cloudless afternoon sunshine.

“Stargirl, it’s your turn!” Aegon shouts as you trot over to them: tenth hole, shaped like an L, featuring an intimidating loop de loop. The course is dinosaur themed; Rhaena picked it. Aegon points to Jace. “This deformed bastard wanted to skip you.”

“I told you,” Jace moans. His speech is garbled and lisping, his face comically swollen, bruised yellow-emerald-indigo and drooling blood, stitches above his left eyebrow. He just had his dental implants placed yesterday; the four teeth that he lost at Club Camelot could not be readily located for reattachment. “I can’t keep track of who’s next. I’m on like four different opiates.”

Baela frets over him. “Shh, shh, baby. Try not to talk.” There’s something about watching someone get almost-murdered that makes you want to forgive them, you suppose.

You grab your club and golf ball, dark blue, from where you left them by a tree. Rhaena gives you a covert little thumbs up and raised eyebrows. Everything good? You smile—too widely, insincere, a liar—and nod. Technically, you have yet to obtain concrete evidence to the contrary.

You take your turn, somewhat awkwardly due to the splint that still encumbers your dominant hand. You are thinking about anything but mini golf. Your ball goes halfway through the loop de loop and then comes rolling back. How many strokes? Four, five, you lose count, it doesn’t matter. Aegon is snickering, though not in a mean way, never in a mean way. Aemond is watching you. He does this constantly; you can feel his eyes—river water, otherworldly atmosphere—on you all the time, you can see him on the periphery of your vision. But when you glance at Aemond, he looks away. You’re wearing flip flops, a black NSYNC t-shirt, and bright pink shorts that Baela insists are of the very short variety. Aemond is staring a little extra hard today. Shelby alternates between glaring at him and at you.

Jace putts next. He misses the ball twice. On the third try, he hits it into a nearby pond. Golden koi fish scatter beneath the rippling sheen of the water.

“Loser,” Aegon declares mildly. “Criston, why the fuck are we in New Jersey?”

“Because you’re playing three shows at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford,” Criston says as he putts; his green golf ball sails through the loop de loop, bounces off a wall, and then rolls straight into the cup, a hole in one. “One Direction did it, Taylor Swift did it, and now you’re going to do it too. And if you don’t make it too unbearable for me, I’ll even take you to the beach while we’re here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Aegon agrees. He slurps on his Slush Puppie. “Oh, Aemond, I need the Netflix password.”

“You forgot it again?!” Daeron says. Jace, groaning softly, lies down on the ground in a patch of shade. Baela gets a bottle of Orajel rinse out of her purse and starts pouring it into his mouth.

“Get your own account,” Aemond snaps at Aegon. “I think you can afford it.”

“Bruh, that’s not the point! I don’t know where I left off in Grey’s Anatomy!”

They keep bickering. You stop listening. You can only hear the sounds of rustling leaves, squawking seagulls, the whistling of the warm August wind. You can only feel the weight of Aemond’s half-fascinated, half-resentful gaze on you. He wouldn’t believe me, you think. If I really am pregnant, he would never believe that it was an accident. He would never believe that I was that guilelessly, unambitiously stupid. Hell, I did it and I barely believe it.

You steal a glimpse of Aemond—black shirt and black sunglasses, white shorts, Adidas sneakers—and he turns away, pretending to pick dirt off his golf ball. Interestingly, he will talk to you about things not related to that night in Tokyo; perhaps it would be too suspicious not to, a neon sign for the rest of the band to read. But he never allows himself to be alone with you. And he never touches you, not even a grazing of hands or an absentminded bump as he passes you in aisles or hallways.

Bump, you think miserably. An inauspicious choice of words.

“We should watch Se7en,” Aegon is saying now. “Comet fam movie night.”

You mutter: “We’re not watching Se7en.”

“What’s Se7en about?” Rhaena asks.

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“What’s in the box?!” Aegon shouts dramatically—quoting the beautiful yet doomed David Mills, a name he once borrowed to schedule a Zoom meeting with you—and then cackles. It’s his turn. He clobbers his golf ball and sends it flying through the loop de loop; it pops over the barrier and disappears into a bush. Startled squirrels dart out of the leaves.

“Loser!” Jace slurs as he lies sprawled across the ground, vindicated.

“Stop spitting blood everywhere,” Aemond says. He putts next, and badly: poor depth perception. “You’re getting it on my sneakers.”

“Watch it, cyclops.” Jace points to his own stitches, bruises, surgically replaced teeth. “I let you have this one. Now we’re even. But next time I won’t be so charitable.”

“You’re not even,” Aegon tells Jace, abruptly severe. He whips off his aviator sunglasses, crouches over Jace, glaring and thunderous like a storm. Baela observes this warily. “Not even close.”

Jace is intrigued. “No?”

“No. Your face will heal.” Then Aegon pokes him in the jaw and Jace screams, tears slithering down his puffy, mottled cheeks. Cregan yanks Aegon away before Baela can scratch his eyes out. Criston repossesses Aegon’s blue raspberry Slush Puppie as punishment. Luke wins the game, five under par.

Comet’s first shows in the United States this tour start just like the last few in Asia: Jace is iced, painted with concealer, thoroughly medicated, numbed into semi-consciousness. He does lines of coke in the bathroom under Cregan’s supervision. He can’t perform without it. Criston tried to negotiate a month off for Jace, but the label’s message was clear: get him on stage, we don’t care how you do it, we don’t want to know about it, here’s a blank check, figure it out or we’ll find another manager who can. Now Criston watches Jace with his arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes wounded and anxious, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of what he believes is failure.

The story released to the press is that Jace fell down a flight of stairs but is recovering smoothly. He can barely sing; his mic is turned up, and during Jace’s verses Cregan or Luke layer their voice with his. He wobbles and flubs his way through Night 1 in East Rutherford. You spend the show staring up at the stage without seeing it. Baela and Rhaena are with you, but you aren’t really with them; you feel like if they reached out to touch you, their hands would find only translucent emptiness like a mirage. Shelby is flocked by fellow influencers that she’s invited in from New York City. Aemond is somewhere, somewhere: lurking in shadows, brooding, avoiding, musing, suffering, jotting down starlight-colored judgments in his black-paged notebook.

Per tradition, the band and their entourage coalesce in Jace’s suite after the show. Jace himself, the gracious host, promptly collapses on a couch and lies there senseless as the party spins around him like the planets of a solar system. Baela is perched dutifully beside him, holding ice packs to his jaw, wiping away drool the color of one of Aemond’s Brambles. A tattoo artist is inking a goldfinch, New Jersey’s state bird, to the top of Jace’s right foot. Criston is across the room and speaking—rather tensely, it seems—with cigar-smoking label executives. Shelby is snapping photos with her friends; they take turns posing each other out on the balcony, adjusting elbows and wrists and knees, swiping away stray flecks of mascara, rearranging hair, recommending plastic surgeons. Aegon is typing WhatsApp messages—mostly emojis, from what you can see—to Miley Cyrus. At Luke’s prompting, Aemond begins sharing his comments to the presently sentient members of Comet. He puffs on one of his Benson & Hedges cigarettes as he reads aloud. He kindly skips over any criticisms of Jace’s performance.

You can’t stand hearing Aemond’s voice; not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because there isn’t, because you can’t stop remembering what he said to you in that florescent-white bathroom at Club Camelot in Tokyo, because he uses his words on so many people who aren’t you, because sooner or later your time with Comet will be over and you’ll only ever hear him again through Spotify songs and YouTube clips from before the accident, because he will one day be a ghost who haunts you, rattling doorknobs and chilling pockets of air but never speaking. You escape to ask the bartender: “Can I get a Coke?”

“A rum and Coke?”

“No.”

“Like…white powder coke?”

“No, a Coca-Cola. With nothing else in it.”

“Okay, whatever,” the bartender says, perplexed. He fills a glass with ice and dark liquid that pops and fizzes with carbonation, then slides it across the counter to you. You meander out into the hallway where you can be alone, where you don’t have to pretend to be okay.

The carpet is gold but frayed, the walls adorned with faux marble columns and scuffs from recklessly handled suitcases. Even the hotels are worse in New Jersey. You sip your soda—nonalcoholic, huh? you think, then push it aside—and roam past suite doors and vending machines until you reach the cove of elevators. There’s a full-length mirror hanging on the wall there, gilded, gaudy. You frown at yourself, a reflection that suddenly looks a bit like a stranger. You’re wearing a short seafoam green dress, gold earrings and sandals, and an eerily vacuous expression. You turn and move your hair aside so you can peer over your shoulder at what’s been indelibly penned there since Rome: the tiny comet, the lyrics that encircle it.

I wanted to remember this band forever. To remember Aemond. You can feel your stomach drop as it grows heavy with dread. The pulsing music from Jace’s suite has followed you down the hall, Sugar by Robin Schulz and Francesco Yates. I think I might just have more than a tattoo to remember him by after all.

One of the elevators dings and opens. A man lumbers out, towering, broad, monstrous. You gape up at him: brown threadbare coat, heavy boots, unruly dark beard, grey eyes like a bleak winter sky. There is a miasma that colors the air around him with smoke and alcohol, sweat and earth.

“Hello there,” he says, politely enough. His voice is such a baritone rumble that it’s difficult to understand. He has a British accent, but not like Aegon’s, not like Aemond’s. He reminds you of someone you can’t quite place. “I’m looking for a certain young gentleman. I’m hoping you can point me in his direction.”

“Sure,” you reply, trying to disguise your shock so you don’t offend him. He could be someone important. He could be an eccentric producer or a consultant. Or a drug dealer. “Who…uh…who was it you were hoping to speak with…?”

He smiles: sharp canine teeth yellowed by nicotine, glinting eyes like silver coins. “Cregan Stark.”

“Okay,” you stammer. Drug dealer?? “Okay, okay, I’ll…uh…I’ll go get him.”

You hurry down the hall and into Jace’s crowded, smokey suite, clinking glasses and flirtatious titters in dim lighting like late twilight. You return your empty drink to the bartender, then tap Cregan on the shoulder and inform him that someone out in the hallway is asking for him. He doesn’t seem surprised to hear this. Drug dealer, you think confidently. Cregan gulps his vodka shot and follows you out of the suite. He steps through the doorway. He turns towards the stranger. And then he stops dead. His eyes go wide. The blood drains from his face. And Cregan—immovable, inscrutable, unflappable Cregan—shrinks until he is a child again.

Immediately, you know you’ve made a mistake. You reach for him. “Cregan, wait—”

“My son,” the monstrous man sighs. And of course now you’ve realized exactly who the mirrorlike grey of his eyes reminded you of. “My son.”

You can’t stop him. How could you stop him? Faster than you can think, he has crossed the space between you and entombed Cregan in a stifling embrace. Cregan stands paralyzed, his eyes shifting, searching for escape. Tentatively, appeasingly, his hands slowly rise to hug the man in return.

“Criston?!” you shout. But within the suite, he cannot hear you over the music and the berating of smoke-veiled, bejeweled label executives.

“Did you forget about me, huh?” the man asks Cregan gruffly. And as he steps back he grips one of Cregan’s shoulders: not like Criston would, not like a father, like a vice, like a bear trap. He shakes Cregan once, not too hard. “You can fly your private jet all over the world but you can’t call your own father back? Huh? Huh?!” He shakes Cregan again, harder.

“Criston!” you scream. “Security! Somebody!”

Nobody can hear me. Nobody is coming.

You sprint into Jace’s suite, seize Criston by one hand, drag him out into the hall. On the blurry periphery of your vision, you can see Aemond getting up off the couch to follow you. The second he spots the monstrous man, Criston is roaring. “No no no, get away from him!” He pushes between Cregan and the giant, terrifying, wrathful. The man dwarfs him. Criston doesn’t seem to know it. “You can’t be here. We’ve been over this, you’re not allowed to be here—”

The man tries to reach around him to clutch at Cregan’s shirt. Aemond pulls you away from the scuffle. Criston hits the man in the solar plexus; he is momentarily stunned, wheezing. By the time he straightens up, Criston—louder than you, bellowing and fierce—has summoned security. They are swarming the man and escorting him back down the hallway towards the elevators. Aemond goes to Cregan. Criston looks at you. You’re quivering, penitent.

“I had no idea…he asked for Cregan…I would never have…I thought maybe he was a friend of the band…”

“He’s on our no fly list,” Criston says. His voice is tired yet patient. “But you wouldn’t know that.”

You try to apologize to Cregan, but he isn’t listening to you. He’s listening to Aemond. Aemond is speaking to him, low and calm, too quietly for you to hear. “I’m okay,” Cregan says unsteadily. “I’m fine.”

“It’s alright if you’re not,” Aemond tells him.

And you know that right now you are unnecessary, intrusive. Criston goes downstairs to figure out how Comet’s security guards in the lobby didn’t catch this and—presumably—to ensure that the invader is properly dealt with. Aemond slings an arm across Cregan’s shoulders and leads him back to the party where he is cared for, welcome, valued, safe. You hide in your own suite and try not to think about the dates on the calendar—missing blood, summer days ticking down towards zero—as you steep in a hot bath and attempt to scrub everything you’ve done wrong, today, yesterday, ever, off your skin. Then you change into an oversized Backstreet Boys t-shirt and your favorite Cookie Monster pajama pants.

You try to sleep but of course you can’t, surrounded by a silence that only gets louder. When you hear the swipe of a keycard and the creaking of your door, you don’t know who to expect: Cregan, Criston, Rhaena, Luke, Baela, Jace, Daeron, Shelby, Aemond, ghosts. The clopping of his Crocs gives him away, neon pink to match his tank top. “I’m really not in the mood for anything resembling sex.”

Aegon replies as he kicks off his Crocs: “Did I ask, succubus?” He crawls into the bed, throws an arm casually across your waist, rests his head on your belly as your fingers thread through his chaotic blond hair, fond and tender. He burrows into you, into your softness and your warmth and your truth and your mysteries. Sometimes you feel like you’ll give until he falls into you like a trapdoor, the bones of his hands tangling around your spine, his blood vessels spilling into all of your rage-scarlet cavities, hollows of the flesh, hollows of the soul. “You’re sad.”

You stare up at the ceiling. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what. That’s the strange thing. Usually I can tell.”

“You’ve been gone.”

He looks up at you, confused. “I’ve been right here.”

“You know what I meant.”

Aegon doesn’t argue with you, doesn’t try to defend himself, doesn’t make promises both of you know he could never keep. He only lays his head down on your belly again and pulls himself closer to you, closer, closer, melting into your melancholy, dissolving into dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I was eleven when he broke my arm. Thirteen when he cracked my skull for the first time. Then I got big enough to hurt him back.” Cregan looks out over the waves: blue currents, white froth, sunbeams like glinting blades. As Criston promised, Comet is spending an afternoon in Seaside Heights. You and Cregan are sitting on the sand together twenty yards from the others. “I grew up in a two-bedroom cabin with no electricity or running water. We had a metal wash tub outside, ate deer and squirrels and rabbits, never had clothes that fit, never saw a doctor except when what was wrong might kill us. We had a woodstove and chopped down trees to burn in the winter. I had eight siblings, six of whom are still alive. Barnett overdosed. Courtland drove his friend’s Nissan into a brick wall. I’m not sure it was accidental.”

Your words are soft like a whisper, like gentle hands. “Cregan, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not…” His voice breaks. He stops for a while, composes himself, begins again. “It’s not something I talk about. Not because I’m trying to forget it. I can’t forget it, I’ll never be able to, I understand that, believe me. There’s just nothing to be gained from talking about it. I never feel better afterwards. I always feel worse.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

You wait, watching him. There’s something he needs to say. Down the beach a ways, Baela is doing yoga, her bare feet sure and agile in shifting sand. Rhaena, Luke, and Aemond are flying kites in the breeze: black dragons, green dragons. Shelby is, predictably, filming them from where she stands on Aemond’s good side. Aegon and Daeron are swimming so far out that you’re beginning to worry about sharks. Criston is parked under an umbrella with an unconscious Jace, reading Memoirs Of A Geisha and eating a sandwich full of something called pork roll.

“After Comet happened, I got all of them out,” Cregan continues. “My mum, my siblings. Good houses in safe neighborhoods. Security in case Dad makes an appearance. He does, every once in a while. He’s locked up, he’s free, he’s locked up again. He has nothing else to do but haunt us. I’ve been waiting for him to die since I was old enough to understand what a graveyard is.” Cregan looks at you. “Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” you answer immediately.

“The thing is…” He holds out one large hand, palm down, like he’s resting it on a table. Then he shakes it. “Nothing ever feels stable. Nothing ever feels safe. No matter how much money I see stack up in accounts, I lie awake at night wondering what I’ll do if it disappears. So many people rely on me. I can’t stop worrying I’ll end up back in that cabin somehow. I can still hear drops of rainwater seeping in through the gaps in the roof. I can still smell burning wood.”

“The fact that you feel this way, given your history, is completely logical…even if the fear itself is not. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Cregan says. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Do you think it would help if we sat down and looked at the numbers and did some math? Because I suspect that even with a hundred dependents, you’d easily be able to float them for the rest of your lifetime just using the money you already have. And there will be royalties from Comet’s songs forever. Maybe if we can show you exactly how improbable your worst case scenario is, that fear will begin to fade a bit. Not go away, not completely, maybe not ever…but I think you’ll be able to quiet it down.”

“I’ll give it a try. If you recommend it.” Cregan lights a cigarette and takes a drag. Criston glances over and then pretends he didn’t notice. “I have a daughter,” Cregan says; and you can’t stop the shock from hitting your face like a fist. He smiles faintly, wistfully. “I know. I’ve worked very hard to make sure she is kept away from…” He gestures broadly. “All of this.” Fame. Debauchery. Tabloids. Reddit threads. “I was way too young. And her mother and I…we were never really together. It was contentious for a while, but we’ve sorted through things. I support them financially, obviously. And when I’m not on tour or in the studio, I disappear up to Lancaster for a few weeks at a time and no one is the wiser.”

You study him as wind tears in off the Atlantic Ocean, as seagulls swoop and screech overhead. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate how you’ve protected her once she can understand.”

“I don’t know how to be a father. Not a good one. But I try. I don’t just show up for movie nights and birthdays. I take her shopping for school supplies. I put her back to bed when she has nightmares. I take her to the dentist, to the park, to the library. She really likes pigs, so I adopted a few from a farm animal rescue and we learned how to raise them together.”

“You caring about being a good parent puts you ahead of a lot of people already,” you say. “Nobody in Comet knows?”

“Just Aemond. Once, years ago, her mother needed something and I was out of the country. I had to let somebody in on the secret, somebody I could trust. I chose Aemond. I chose right.” Now Cregan is amused. “He’s the one who suggested the pigs.”

“Of course he did,” you say; and you can’t help but smile. “How old is she?”

“Six and a half. Do you want to see a picture her?”

“Absolutely. If it’s alright with you.”

Cregan pulls his iPhone from his pocket, swipes around for a while, and then turns the screen so you can see. She looks like him, a lot like him, but with round cheeks and long dark lashes. And Cregan is beaming as he says: “Her name is Iris.”

“So you didn’t have to do the Maury paternity test thing.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “No. I knew from the second I saw her she was mine.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

Cregan shrugs, pensive, evasive. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” And he believes that you mean it; you can see it on his face. Aemond is watching you and Cregan, you notice now. He glances over, pretends he didn’t, glances again. You gesture to the crashing waves and say to Cregan: “If Aegon gets attacked by a shark, will you jump in and punch it or something please?”

Cregan chuckles. “Yeah. That’s my main job here, I think. Stopping people from dying.” And then, seriously: “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything that warrants it.”

“No. Really.” Cregan reaches out, takes your uninjured hand, squeezes it briefly before releasing you. “Thank you, Stargirl.” Then he stands and walks to the water’s edge, letting the surf rush up over his ankles, for just a moment feeling nothing on his shoulders but the sunlight.

Aemond gives Shelby his kite and, as she glares bitterly, makes his way over to you. He takes off his sunglasses so he can see you better and hooks them on the waistband of his swim trunks: black, of course, his usual color. You’re actually wearing black today too, a flowing coverup over a pink swimsuit. You feel very much like hiding. When Aemond speaks, there is perhaps a hint of envy, green like leaves of poison, gleaming like snakeskin. “What were you and Cregan talking about?”

“Fatherhood.” And then you realize how it might sound.

There is a split second where Aemond looks startled; then he remembers Iris. “Right. Not so easy for people like us to navigate.”

People like us. Celebrities, boy band members, haunted men. You scramble for a nonchalant way to feel out the subject with him. “How does Louis Tomlinson handle it?”

“He’s a saint,” Aemond says. And you think: Patron saint of baby daddies? “Freddie was very, very unplanned. The mother was a nobody, a rebound. And a lot of people assumed she did it on purpose to try to keep Louis. Or to get eighteen years of a luxury lifestyle out of him. Or to just get fame in general. Personally, I believe it was all of the above.”

“Right,” you say, sweating heavily beneath your coverup.

“But none of that is the kid’s fault, and Louis is a good enough guy to realize it. So he plays nice with Freddie’s mother and they don’t go to war through tabloids anymore.”

“So, uh…” How can I put this? “You’re good with kids too. Cregan told me you had the pig idea.”

And the look that crosses Aemond’s face, the look: caustic, incredulous, night-dark, self-loathing. “Are you insane? Have you met me? I terrify kids. And I should, but not just because of the eye and the scar. What the hell do I know about being a decent father? What do I know about being a decent anything? I’d have no idea where to start. I’d fuck it up even if I tried desperately not to. I’d end up with kids like Aegon: addicts who hate themselves, people who are irrevocably lost.”

You say meekly: “I think Criston is something like a father to you. He could be a role model.”

“I’m not half as good a man as Criston is.”

Change the topic, change the topic, before Aemond gets suspicious. And there’s something else you’ve been meaning to ask him. “Aemond…after you almost murdered Jace…when we didn’t know if or how he was going to be able to perform until he healed…did anyone ask you to come back to Comet and fill in for him?”

“No,” Aemond says. And he’s thunderstruck by the thought, appalled, petrified.

“You don’t think that it might have been a good idea? That it might make sense?”

“No,” he says again instantly.

“But…in Tokyo…when Daeron made that speech at the last show…I think the crowd’s reaction was pretty powerful, don’t you? People still care about you. They love and respect you. And I think…maybe…it might help you with what you’ve experienced. To get back on stage—even just one last time—and prove to yourself that you still have what it takes. To know that if you do leave Comet, it’s your choice, not anyone else’s.”

“They love who I was,” Aemond says. “Not who I am now. And that’s easy to do. They don’t have to look at me.”

“Goddammit, there’s nothing wrong with how you look, Aemond!” you burst out. “You look fantastic. I never get tired of looking at you. I want to look at you all the fucking time. I’d hang life-sized portraits of you on every wall in my apartment in Kansas City. That’s how much I enjoy looking at you.”

He thinks you’re joking, he thinks you’re trying to make him feel better. You can’t stop him from thinking these things. And yet still, as he turns away, he is smiling: just a whisper of a curl at the corner of his lips, secretive, fragile.

As Comet is leaving the beach, you stop at a souvenir shop on the boardwalk to buy your keepsake for this tour destination. You settle on a pink frisbee that has I love the Jersey Shore! embossed on it in large, abrasive letters. You think your parents’ Australian cattle dogs will enjoy fetching it when you get home. Home feels so much closer—both literally and figuratively—than it did just a few weeks ago.

Criston is browsing through the t-shirts. “Hey, what size is your mom, Aegon? Medium?”

“How the hell would I know? Probably.” He holds up a pair of red, white, and blue bikini bottoms that say Firecracker across the ass. “You think my dad would mind if you sent her these?”

Criston is blushing. “Aegon, stop.”

“You could get her a bikini top too. Oh look, that one over there is red, it matches. And it says MILF across the tits. So that’s pertinent.”

“Stop!” Criston cries, distressed, and flees the store.

Halfway through the hour-long drive back to the hotel, Aegon insists that Criston stop the Escalades so he can get a hoagie from a Wawa. Aegon has never had a hoagie before. He says he cannot truly experience America without one.

At the ordering counter, Jace—slightly less bruised and swollen today, and thus in better spirits—taunts Aegon: “Are you sure you need all that bread? You’re going to be wearing a muumuu on stage by the time we get to the Midwest.”

“You know, just because you said that, now I’m going to get two hoagies…”

On the television mounted inside the Wawa, CNN is reporting on a group of tornadoes that just struck Wichita. And it occurs to you that tornadoes don’t have trajectories to calculate like hurricanes or airplanes or comets; they are climatological sharks. They strike quickly, indiscriminately, and then they’re gone again. They aren’t named. They aren’t enshrined. They don’t even have a belly to cut open and retrieve pieces of your loved ones from. If they take someone, they’re just gone.

While the rest of the band is in line to order their food, and Aemond is scrutinizing the dried fruit and nuts selection, you sneak through the other aisles.

It’s time. I have to find out eventually. I have to know.

You pluck a pregnancy test—cute, pink, nausea-inducing—off a rack, purchase it with truly impressive speed at the checkout counter, and race to the bathroom. It’s surprisingly difficult to piss on a tiny stick of doom, especially when your primary hand is in a splint and only partially useable. Eventually, you manage. You put the cap back on the pregnancy test, set it on top of the toilet paper dispenser, and stare at the metal door of the stall. The Wawa speakers are playing The Fray’s Over My Head.

It won’t be positive. It can’t be positive.

You think of pregnancy test commercials you’ve seen: happy couples rejoicing, happy single women getting negatives. How are you supposed to react to bad news? Nobody ever tells you. Do you scream, sob, beg for forgiveness, schedule an appointment at Planned Parenthood? Do you kick the bathroom stall door down in mindless feminine fury? Do you throw yourself off a balcony?

There’s no way it will be positive. It was one time. Just one goddamn time.

And who knows if that will ever happen again with Aemond. This does not improve your mood.

You pick up the pregnancy test. It is unequivocally positive.

You shove it into the small rectangular trashcan for pads and tampons, things you won’t be needing in the immediate future. You get dressed, leave the stall, go to the sink and wash your hands. Then you grip the cool, slick, white porcelain and gaze at yourself in the mirror under nowhere-to-hide florescent lights. What do you feel? Everything, nothing, things you can’t name yet. You’re a raw nerve, you’re completely numb.

The bathroom door swings open. Shelby enters. She squares up with great purpose. Your eyes roll to her, slowly, with no tolerance left, not a drop of it. “Stay away from Aemond,” she demands.

“Make me.”

She is in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what?”

You turn all the way towards her. “Fucking make me, Shelby.”

“I knew you wanted him,” she says, she seethes. “I saw you in those paparazzi photos from Reykjavik and I knew you were already twisting your claws into him.”

You hold up your hands to show her; your thoughts are fuzzy, dazed, without inhibition. “I have no claws whatsoever. If I did, you’d know about it. Believe me. You’d be able to look down and watch your heart beating through the gashes.”

“You don’t belong here. Some Midwestern farm girl running around in flip flops and Cookie Monster pajama pants? You’re trash. You’re a user. You’re a nobody. And if you’re trying to steal a taken man, then you’re a whore too.”

“I’ve been called worse things by better people.”

“I can make them hate you,” Shelby says indignantly. “Comet. The world.”

“Good luck with that, Malibu Barbie. Nobody even knows I exist.”

“Stay away from Aemond,” she says again, trembling with her futile bleach-blond rage. “We’re meant to be together. We have so much history.”

“And yet no future.” You smile sweetly, breeze past her, step on one of her perfectly pedicured feet with a thoroughly unpretentious flip flop. By the time you return to them, the band is almost ready to leave Wawa.

You’re not hungry, but Aegon coaxes you into taking a few bites from his hoagie. You’re not able to focus on what people are saying, but you hear Aemond mention that he wishes Comet had time to visit a planetarium in some nearby town called Toms River. You think about what it would be like to lie side by side with him under the stars, under the sky where comets appear again after vanishing for centuries. You wonder if there’s anyplace where you and Aemond could ever be truthful with each other.

At night you can’t sleep. There is no shortage of reasons why. You wander from your bed to the gold-carpet hallway to the vending machines, where you stare brainlessly at the options. Am I supposed to not be drinking caffein? Did I get any Vitamin D today? How much sugar is too much? You buy a bottle of apple juice—surely a safe bet—and head back to your suite.

As you walk by Aemond and Shelby’s door, your steps slow. Some nights you can hear them in there arguing: Shelby reiterating all the reasons why they’re perfect for each other, clearly a rebuttal to an accusation you weren’t privy to. Some nights you hear muffled casual conversation or episodes of Cosmos. Some nights you hear nothing at all. Some nights your imagination colors in the gaps before you can stop it: his hands on her, his mouth on her, things you know you have no right to dread and yet you do. But tonight, Shelby is momentarily removed from the scene. You can hear the distant pattering of the shower, and then Aemond alone in the living room gathering up plates and glasses. He’s singing something very quietly, so quietly it takes you a while to recognize it. It’s not even a Comet Donati song. It’s Through The Dark.

You sit down in the empty hallway, your back to his door. And you lean your head against it as you listen to Aemond singing softly to himself, doubt sinking into you the same way that trapped blood fills a bruise: Maybe it wasn’t as good for him as it was for me. Maybe he doesn’t talk to me because he doesn’t want to. Maybe I don’t belong here anymore. Maybe I’ve invented a history that we don’t really share. Maybe he didn’t mean it when he said he loves me.

“What am I going to do?” you whisper, scalding tears brimming in your eyes, shivering hands settling on your belly. In a few months, you’ll be showing. “What the hell am I going to do?”

#aemond one eye #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond x reader #Aegon Targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #Aegon II Targaryen #Aegon Targaryen II x reader #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #Aegon x you #aegon x y/n

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wtfgaylittlezooid · 5 months

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Saw your Bug!Vicagent.

... could you please give us some more tidbits of them in your Au? Because I've been staring at that post since you posted it lol-

I'm so normal about them /j

Sure! :DD I don't have any references for them on hand, but these two images show their designs pretty decently.

Agent is a pretty rare case of a tall dragonfly, so he's one of the lucky few bug species who can still fly.

Victim is a very special case: a cordyceps fungus in a locust host. Cordyceps are pretty rare, and locusts are just as rare. Locusts aren't born, they are triggered. Usually from a grasshopper or cricket, after going through an extreme trauma they become locusts, but the only locusts discovered are dead. Victim is no different.

Cordyceps are also pretty weird. Most cordyceps simply take the body and woe. zombug be upon ye. However, ancient Roaches wanted to try and replicate immortality and thus began the kidnapping of other bugs and experimenting on different species and themselves with cordyceps. It IS possible for somebody to live on thanks to the fungus, as the fungus can take and hold memories rather than replacing them. Only thing is, those cases tend to be artificial due to the extremely specific requirements

That being magic and a strong body. Poison and Ice are the easiest kinds of magic to work with, and one of the few species that can physically handle the cordyceps and magic without overloading the fungus are moths.

Victim got lucky. He was Alan's first little experiment when he discovered that bugs come from little larvas and eggs and if he grows his own bug then he can have endless entertainment. Victim couldn't fight back well against Gammas or whatever other Deadlanders Alan threw at him, but Alan is observant. He knows bugs use roach crystals to heal by hitting them. So he basically impales Victim alive with a crystal and murders him lmao

Cordyceps finds Victim's body and attaches to it, and he got lucky enough to where the tiny shards of crystal stuck in his system was just enough for the fungus to hold his memories and self. So victim basically becomes the fungus.

BUT THAT IS STILL NOT GOOD. It was sheer luck and because hes not even a moth the connection is pretty unstable. In a strong bond, there would be no worry about reverting to the zombie-like state, but since his connection is so unstable it can get triggered.

On the bright side, this makes him a living magic detector. Its how he finds one of the shards of the Wasp King's crown so easily, which allows him to brainwash Chosen One. On the ugly side, you get this:

This happens after Victim tries and fails to kill Alan. He basically gets really pissed that Alan doesn't want to kill him anymore, that he isnt even trying to fight back, and starts mentally spiraling because of it. He compares himself to the other Hollows which are all sorcerers and have magic, and chalks up his failure and lack of control over the situation to that lack of magic.

So to fix that he basically ditches everyone and goes to Snakemouth Den, aka the original lab where the Roaches experiment cause goddamn that place is potent with it you can literally see it in the air. Basically goes there and something something recreating the events of trauma so you can control the outcome, smashes a shit ton of the crystals into smaller shards.

Agent brings the color gang into this (the only mercenary who knows about vics situation) because he had a feeling shit would go wrong and boy was he right. Victim drives the crystals through his exo-skeleton and

he does it. he gets poison magic. but he still gets knocked down easily so rinse and repeat of him attacking, getting beat, healing by impaling with a crystal, and so on. But yeah the more magic he siphons from the roach crystals the more it makes the fungus kinda lose it and slowly but surely the grip the fungus has on his memories and self starts slipping and the instincts from the fungus and the sentience starts getting blurred. Yeah sorry victim in your obsession and greed for control for others you lost control of yourself

Basically a boss fight at that point, feral zombie vic vs his loyal lapdog of a bug and 5 children. At first its just operating off of the instinct of getting them OUT of the territory, but he also burns through the magic really quickly which means he needs more and oh look at that cute little bee hes full of magic. Basically a stalling game of blocking off the exist and making sure he doesnt rip the crystal stuck in seconds head out.

Eventually they win and after a quick revive from Second, an unconscious victim gets carried to an inn by Agent and everyone leaves the caves that day with so much trauma yippeeee

#they call me the yapper #anim vs bf au #vicagent #ava victim #anim vs #ava agent #body horror

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vibrantbirdy · 1 year

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hi! i was hoping i could request a poe dameron x reader where he has a huge crush on the reader who works a small part of the resistance but he keeps making a fool of himself in front of them but the reader finds him cute anyways. thank u!!

Yes anon, thank you! This is such a cute request. I hope I've done it justice.

Requests for Character x Reader fics are currently open in my Asks. Please read the guidelines first before requesting.

-Birdy

Title: Crush Fandom: Star Wars: Skywalker Saga Genres: Sci-Fi; Romance; Fluff Setting: Sometime later on in the Force Awakens Characters: Poe Dameron; Reader Pairings: Poe Dameron x Reader Chapters: 1/1 (Complete) Warnings: None :) Perhaps extremely mild, fluffy, sexuality Word Count: 2805

Summary: You work for the Resistance at the Base on D'Qar. Wing Commander Poe Dameron has a crush on you and he's surprisingly awkward about it...

It's late, and you are walking the empty corridors of the Resistance Base on D'Qar. You like the base at this time of night. It's peaceful and your long trips between the various offices and briefing rooms and your own place of work, the records room, give you time to think.

You're making your final trip back to the records room for the night. In your hands is a box full of data sticks and holo chips. Every time there's a skirmish, a raid, or an offensive to plot against the First Order, Resistance Officers descend upon the archive, stripping it like locusts. They are looking for information, knowledge, maps, schematics anything that might help them understand the weaponry, tech, locations and terrain they might be up against.

You have tried to explain that if they really have to take records out of the records room, they really do need to bring them back. If this information gets lost, so too does the history of the Republic, the Resistance, the First Order and its Imperial predecessor, the Galactic Empire. No one listens. You don't mind that much. It is wartime after all.

So you spend your nights too-ing and fro-ing until you've gathered up all the records left abandoned in consoles and holo readers and on the tops of desks. You really have had to burn the candle at both ends recently and you think you know why. There are whispers spreading through the base that General Organa will soon need to launch an attack on the First Order's monstrous weapon on Starkiller base.

You take pride in what you do. It's not flying an X-Wing, but it's important.

Someone who does fly an X-Wing - and does it very well - is Wing Commander, Poe Dameron. But right now, he's scrabbling about on the floor with you, trying to salvage the precious hoard of information that went flying in a shower of little plastic bits when his droid barrelled into you from the opposite direction and sent the box flying from your hands.

"BB-8!" he exclaims, bending down to scoop up handfuls of data chips and throw them in the box he has righted for you, "C'mon buddy, how many times have I told you to watch where you're rolling!"

The little round ball of orange and white metal chitters indignantly. From your sitting position on the floor, you pause in your work to reach over and give BB-8 a reassuring pat on his semi-spherical head. The droid vibrates and makes a docile purring sound. You can't help the small laugh that escapes you. You've always thought he was the cutest little astromech around.

When you raise your eyes, Dameron is staring at you, slightly open mouthed. You're seen him around the base plenty of times, but this is the first time you've really looked at him up close. His handsome face is framed by a crop of brown curls and adorned with deep set eyes that are so dark they are almost black. Still, they sparkle like a night full of stars.

Wordlessly, Dameron reaches out a free hand to you and you take it as he pulls you back onto your feet. You pick up the box and he funnels the last of the data sticks balanced precariously in the crook of his elbow into the receptacle.

"So, how come I've not seen you around before?" He asks.

"Oh, I've been here," you laugh, "I think you've probably just been too busy to notice."

"Yeah, I'm busy, not blind..." he mutters, more to himself than to you, "Uh, I mean..."

He looks awkward and you cut him off to introduce yourself and save him from his unease. Still, you feel a pleasant blush creep into your cheeks at both his insinuation and the fact that appears to be slightly flustered in your presence.

"Poe," he responds, confidence returning with a dazzling smile that you are certain must get him into trouble.

"I know," you reply, allowing yourself to give him a cheeky smirk of your own.

"Do you always walk around the base this late at night?"

"Yes," you say simply, then, after a pause, you throw the question back at him, "Do you?"

"No," he chuckles wearily and rubs the back of his neck, "Couldn't sleep."

He does look tired. Upon closer inspection, there are dark circles under his eyes and a five o'clock shadow sits upon his well-defined jaw and creeps up towards his sharp cheekbones. There have been a lot of skirmishes with the First Order lately and a lot of good pilots have been lost, pilots under Dameron's command. You feel a flash of deep sympathy for him. You don't envy the responsibility he bears and it is clearly weighing heavy on him tonight.

"Well. Goodnight, Commander," you say after a lingering but not uncomfortable pause.

You hope he'll maybe get some rest tonight at least.

He nods at you and smiles softly.

"Goodnight."

BB-8 cheeps a farewell.

************************************************

In all the time you've been on D'Qar. You've never once seen Poe Dameron, ace pilot, in the records room. Yet here he is at your desk with BB-8 in tow.

"Hello Commander, what can I help you with today?"

"I..."

Poe draws the syllable out as he leans forward conspiratorially across the desk. He raps his knuckles on its cheap plast-cast surface. He's stalling for time. He's here to see you, you realise, and it sends a giddy little thrill through your body.

"...am here for some records," he finally says and you can tell he instantly regrets it.

He attempts to give you his trademark winning smile but it's really more of an embarrassed grimace. He looks away from you with a imperceptible shake of his head that sends a few of his rich, chocolate curls spilling across his forehead. He runs his hands through his hair, sweeping the dark tendrils back off his face.

You can see that he thinks he looks stupid. He's clearly not used to it, and you want to say something to make him feel better. You think it's sweet that he's come to see you.

Was he just passing, you wonder? Or did he plan it?

You never get the chance to ask. The sudden din of the pilot scramble alert swallows any potential words you might say whole. It is accompanied, as always, by the emergency lighting system which sets off flashing red pulses throughout the entire base.

Poe Dameron doesn't move. He's studying you intently with those endless eyes that are paradoxically both dark and luminescent.

"Uh. Commander?" You point upward to the nearest emergency light which is flashing just above your head.

Slowly, as if reluctant to tear himself away, his gaze leaves your face and follows your finger up to the ceiling.

"Right," he says, then starts and looks around wildly as if he is only just hearing the blaring alarm for the first time. "Right!"

He turns and sprints away from your desk at an alarming pace, BB-8 whizzing after him. He spins clumsily halfway down the room, momentum almost sending him barrelling into a row of desks where readers can, usually, study in relative peace and quiet. A haughty looking admin officer seated nearby rolls his eyes.

"I'll be back for those records!" Poe shouts back at you, as if it's the most important promise he's ever made.

It makes you laugh, and you hope to the Force he has the opportunity to do so as he and BB-8 disappear round the corner to prepare to take to the skies into some awful fray.

"Saved by the bell, huh?"

You jump, startled out of your reverie, and turn to see your colleague Marjane who has sidled up beside you. She's a gregarious, older lady with big heart and a preference for men half her age.

"That young man has never been awkward around a woman a day in his life," she says sagely, pointing to the spot where Poe had stood moments ago as if the outline of him were still tangible, "What spell did you use and can I have it?"

You grin and hold your hands up defensively.

"He's got a crush on you," she winks slyly and walks back to her desk.

**********************************************

The next time you see Poe Dameron it's milliseconds before he crashes into you at speed in the same corridor, on the same corner where BB-8 sent you sprawling only a few weeks earlier.

You've smacked your forehead right off his sharp, chiselled cheek bone and the two of you are are nursing your wounds either side of the corridor. You are resting your sore head against the nearest cool durasteel wall, and he is leaning his back against the opposite one, holding a palm to his face which is stricken with a comical expression of surprise.

BB-8, perhaps the most compassionate droid you've even known, rolls back and forth between you both, as if unsure of who needs the most of his sympathy.

When you finally feel like you can open your eyes again without seeing stars, you turn away from the wall and find that Poe has moved to stand directly in front of you. He's wearing a white tank top and lightweight cargo pants and he has clearly been running. His broad shoulders rise and fall from his interrupted physical exertion.

A lot of the pilots keep fit by jogging through the endless maze of corridors within the labyrinthine base during the heavy torrents of rain that occasionally lash the otherwise temperate D'Qar.

"Are you ok?" he asks, concerned, and he cups your face gently in his hands with exhilarating forwardness to examine the red mark that is blossoming on your forehead.

It's a surprisingly intimate gesture. You wonder if he can feel the heat growing in your cheeks, but his hands are already warm from exercise. You can feel the course pads of his finger tips exerting a reassuring pressure against your skin.

"Force, what a shiner, I didn't know my head was that hard!"

"You've got a good one coming in too," you say, snaking your hand up between the two of you to carefully press a finger against the clear point of impact on his cheek.

"Ow!" he breaks away dramatically and you both laugh. "I'm not sure we can blame the droid this time," you say.

BB-8 chirps and wobbles cheerfully on the floor.

"No, this one's on me. I mean you too, I guess. It takes two to uh...you know..."

"Collide in a corridor?"

"Yeah, that."

There's a stilted silence and you hope he might say something more, like, wanna hang out sometime? or I know this great place to watch the stars or let's go for a joyride in my X-Wing... but he doesn't.

"Well, I better ..." he makes a little jogging motion with his arms, "Sorry about the whole running and the crashing and the headache thing."

You smile, and try to hide the little twang of disappointment you feel.

"Of course," you say, "Good evening, Commander."

He taps two fingers off his forehead in a mock salute before jogging past you in the opposite direction from your way of travel.

BB-8 doesn't follow immediately, sitting at your feet for moment longer. You look down to see his dark, glassy photoreceptor fixed on you. You shrug at him and he gives you a consolatory whirring sound before rolling off to catch up with his master.

*************************************************

It's Poe's birthday and General Organa has given everyone strict orders to have a good time. The Resistance leadership are having to launch so many sorties against the First Order lately that she's had to place a complete ban on alcohol consumption lest the pilots have to enact an emergency scramble. This doesn't appear to have dampened the mood one iota and as you enter the hanger, the party is in full swing.

The whole base has turned out, as you'd expected. The hanger is packed with people chatting and dancing. Some of the engineers have obviously been hard at work wiring up whatever miscellaneous light sources they could find to hang rustic makeshift fairy lights from the durasteel beams and support columns. The upbeat music pulses through ancient, crackling speakers and is joined melodiously with people singing and raucous bursts of laughter.

It's a glorious feeling. Wartime hasn't been easy. You all need this.

Before you can even get yourself a drink or find your friends, someone takes your hand and leads you into the crowd of dancers. Your heart skips a beat as you realise it's Poe. He's a good dancer in that way some men are - all bent knees and elbows, but somehow able to make it rhythmical. You are grinning at each other like idiots, mirroring your energies, lost in the music.

Finally, you think.

Then, without warning, somebody jostles past you and grabs Poe around the waist. Then someone else comes. And another. And another. You soon realise it's members of his fighter squadron as they cart him away from you through the hangar and outside onto the landing grounds.

You laugh as you are swept along in the stampede of excitement that follows. Of course, you remember. It's tradition amongst the flyers to soak the birthday boy or girl with the emergency fire hoses.

Finn, the ex-Stormtrooper who has recently joined the Resistance, has the courtesy to give you an apologetic smile as he races past you to join in on the action. As a close friend of Poe, you have a suspicion that he is probably more aware than the others of the moment they have just interrupted. You don't mind. Not really.

Once outside underneath D'Qar's clear night's sky, Poe barely has the chance to ready himself when four powerful jets of water are turned on him. He jumps this way and that in a futile attempt to avoid the deluge. Any time it looks like he might escape, someone grabs him and spins him around so that he redirected back to his watery fate. He is wet through in seconds.

The gigantic, gruff but beloved Second Engineer, Toko, notices BB-8 by his feet and he picks up the little droid who screeches in alarm. Poe shouts over the noise, pointing at the big man with one hand as he skips around, trying to deflect a myriad of water blasts to his face and body.

"Not my droid! NOT MY DROID!"

Everyone laughs. The Engineer, only teasing, sets the wriggling mechanical ball down gently and gives him a pat on the head.

Finally, the hoses are turned off and Poe's squad rush towards him cheering and shouting. He shakes himself violently and flicks his dripping hands over his nearest assailants. His flyers drag him to the ground and they all collapse on top of him in a soggy, giddy heap.

*************************************************

There has been a skirmish with the First Order and the atmosphere on the base has been tense all day. The sun is setting on D'Qar and finally, finally, the fighter squadrons are retuning.

You count the X-Wings as they land, your heart racing. They're all here, you realise. Every single one of them has come back. It's so rare these days.

Your friend, Maya, claps you on the shoulder as she speeds past to greet her twin sister, Selina, the two young women colliding into a rough embrace as the latter leaps out of her X-Wing.

You are overcome with emotion and you clasp your hands over your mouth and fold in the middle. With a disbelieving laugh you put your hands on your knees and push yourself upright slowly.

Then, you are looking for him. For Poe. Your eyes scan the hanger and the landing pads beyond, a sea of orange flight suits. There. In the midst of the joyous commotion, there he is. He's checking on his flyers, slapping them on their backs, giving and receiving hugs, grasping arms tightly with comrades in relief and celebration.

As if he senses that you are looking for him, he locks eyes with you across the hanger. With a purposeful gait, he strides over until he's so close you can feel the victorious energy vibrating off his body.

He surveys your face intently with those deep pools of midnight, flicking his gaze between your lips and your eyes. He's trying to suppress a smirk, a muscle working in his cheek.

"I think I'd like to see you more often," he finally says.

It comes out funny, almost like an order, but it's the most direct he's ever been. Without hesitation, you grab him by the lapels of his orange flight suit and pull him into a deep kiss.

Fuelled by adrenaline and the heady jubilation of the moment, Poe drops his helmet, and without breaking your embrace, he circles one hand around your waist, and uses the other to support the nape of your neck. Then, he dips you almost parallel to the ground as you kiss like a scene from a romance holo.

A ripple of cheers and good natured laughter passes around the hanger as Poe sets you, breathless, back on your feet.

A dashing grin spreads wide across his handsome face.

"I'd like that too," you say as you lean in for another long awaited kiss.

#star wars fanfiction #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x female reader #poe dameron fanfiction #poe dameron fanfic

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lloydfrontera · 9 months

Text

"I don't run fast. I may be faster than ordinary people, but I am not confident I can outrun the locusts. But you are different. You are fast." “But with you on my back, I cannot ascertain that I will succeed. You could have easily run away if I stopped them in the front," Javier reasoned. "I'm doing this because I don't want that." “...” "Come on. Do you have some fantasy to become a hero in your head? Why do you keep trying to die so often? You did this back in Cremo as well." “...” "Let's just stretch the idea, and you stay behind so awesomely and die. And I live because of your sacrifice. You think that would make me feel good? Huh?" "Master Lloyd..." "I don't want that. So run faster. Come on! Giddy up!" [...] "Anyway, let's leave this place together alive. It won't be right if one stays and dies while the other runs away and lives. It's also just unfair." “...” Lloyd Frontera. Javier wondered how much truth was in his words. Sometimes, no, most of the time, the young master puzzled him. But he knew one thing for sure. He wanted to get out of this place alive together. "I like the sound of that."

bk moon setting up that lloyd doesn't see javier dying for his sake as an aceptable price to pay all the way back in the giant locust attack,,, lloyd not wanting to sacrifice javier, not even for his own life, even back then,,,, this is a hundred chapters before lloyd even admits they're friends,,, setting up the crux of the conflict of the latter half of the story more than two hundred chapters before it's even introduced,,, ultimately foreshadowing the ending,,, sick and twisted and i really fucking dig it

#i talk a lot <3 #tged #the greatest estate developer #lloyd frontera #javier asrahan #llojavi #ch 107 #i gotta admit... the man does know how to write a good novel... which is more than i can say from so many other authors kajhdjksfsd

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tyitri · 7 months

Text

Entangled Heart - Chapter 1

Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley/Reader

Summary: The world had gone to hell a few years ago. No one cared about preserving other beings, endangered species. The crown of creation was quickly deemed a threat, and the hunters became the hunted.

The world changed, we were no longer at the top of the food chain. The plants were.

They passive-aggressively spread, allowing a new plant species, called the 'Verdantia aurea' or Goldleaf Fern, to thrive. No one knew it was an invasive species. Other regional plants died, throwing the world out of balance. Many still remember the initial reports.

It felt like the Seven Plagues of the End Times, written as if in the Bible.

You're part of that fucked ecosystem now together with a few survivors who made an oath to save humanity or at least whats left of it. One of them in particular doesn't seem to like you, everyone calls him Ghost. And you're pretty sure it's not because of the report when you were found nude, nestled between a bush of Goldleaf Fern itself by some Scientists.

Tags: Post Apocalyptic,Slowburn, No use of Y/N, Nicknames, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Mild Gore, Violence.

Wordcount: 2,6k

Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

"What do you mean, you're in charge of the medbay for today?"

The chair you were just sitting on tilted backward as you suddenly got up. Your palms slammed onto the typical school desk that had been brought over from the neighboring facility. Old, wobbly, and already smelling musty from years of use. The table had seen better days, probably even before the apocalypse.

"Come on, Milow! Max! You two can't leave me alone with this group!"

You looked at the two of them with concern and disapointment. You were almost sure that Milow would accompany you, if you would ask Desperately.

"Your little sister needs help, so please don't let me hanging, maybe you coulds ask if one of the medics can switch-"

before you could even finish speaking, Max raised his hand to stop you.

"No chance, Ghost explicitly said I should keep an eye on the newcomers. Who knows what they might have brought in."

He took a sip from his steaming cup and looked at the locked door across the room. It had a sign with a radioactive symbol on it, at least you think that that's what is displayed on it. It had seen better days for sure.

"Milow, what about you?"

You looked pleadingly at the gaunt guy, silently sitting in the corner of the old sofa. He was currently solving a crossword puzzle in an old soggy newspaper, but Milow just shook his head and gestured towards Max. He wanted to stay with him

"Alright, I see. Fine, just great."

You narrowed your eyes into slits before a sigh escaped your throat and you repositioned your chair, sitting down in frustration.

The world had gone to hell a few years ago. No one cared about preserving other beings, endangered species. The crown of creation was quickly deemed a threat, and the hunters became the hunted. The world changed, we were no longer at the top of the food chain. The plants were. They passive-aggressively spread, allowing a new plant species, called the 'Verdantia aurea' or Goldleaf Fern, to thrive. No one knew it was an invasive species. Other regional plants died, throwing the world out of balance. Many still remember the initial reports. It felt like the Seven Plagues of the End Times, written as if in the Bible.

There were reports of wandering locusts searching for habitable areas. Fish died due to lack of food. The sun's radiation increased, making daily wandering through the city torture. Then the animals went berserk, attacking their owners as if they were all rabid beasts, and ultimately, people started behaving differently. Once at the top of the food chain, now they fought for survival. But against what? What was the cause of all this? If one glanced out during the day at the streets of Berlin, one could see golden reflections, a shimmer that might lure a greedy fool.

Too late the humandkind realized that it was a mere plant, the Goldleaf Fern that changed people, animals, and the whole ecosystem. No one knew what it really wanted, if it could even think, but in many eyes, it had a goal: to eradicate all life to create something new. There were some who thought differently.

"I won't forget that."

You murmured as a warning. Your feet swung onto the table. Coughing could be heard from the next room, a side effect when exposed to the spores of the Goldleaf Fern. Just recently, the 141 team had rescued a group of survivors from an old collapsed farmhouse.

They talked about being locked up, how the strange plant had blocked their way, as if it came from a completely different genus, the genus of Dinonaer, the Venus flytraps. But you had no idea about that, you couldn't remember anything, at least the two years you apperantly were out there and survived on your own. Milow and Max were in charge of medicine and gardening of useful vegetables. Secretly you were nervous that the tomatoes they harvested last week might turn into concious venusflytraps too. They, along with 6 others, observed the quarantined survivors.

If one of them was infected, surely they all were. Max talked a lot about the events in the quarantine areas when he had the chance to. People died left and right. It usually started with shortness of breath, then with ravenous hunger, and ultimately with plant-like growths and complete brain death.

Despite the morbid disease, Max could never stop making jokes. He teased you about believing as a child that if you swallowed the seeds of a watermelon, a tree would grow inside you. Now that horror had become a reality.

As you looked back at Max and Milow, they strangely raised their gaze as if looking behind you, observing something that made them uncomfortable.

"Morning, Lieutenant."

Came from Max, who then returned to his book. As you leaned your head back to look up at the lieutenant, you were first met with his cold gaze.

"Rookie, we expect you downstairs in five."

Lieutenant Ghost. That's how everyone else here knew him, nobody except for his closest friends knew his real name. Since your arrival, he hadn't been very hospitable or inclusive. You couldn't even answer before he was gone. He was very taciturn and seemed to enjoy making your life a living hell.

He was also in charge of assigning tasks, and more than once, he had given you tasks that were the worst. Cleaning the restrooms, getting rid of any biodegratable trash, so that no plants can access it or the guarding dayshifts. After those dayshifts everyone kept their distance. Understandable noone wants to sit or stand next to a sweaty and sleep deprived piece of shit. The few times he did speak to you, he only asked about your file, which wasnt ready when you departed in the USA, or if you had done your blood test yet. You could deliver neither, and honestly, it probably never would be, not with what the other doctors and scientists at the US base had discovered.

Even in front of Max, you kept the past at bay. After he flew to Germany for his medical studies, everything went downhill. Frank died, and you were left alone in a shitty suburb in the USA. A few old friends of Frank's, from his biker gang, occasionally stopped by, after all, they had known you since you were a child and you had worked in the diner next to their Gas-Station.

You would argue that it had been tough years, had you not retreated into the world of video games and occasionally attempted hacking for some money, albeit unsuccessfully. In hindsight, it would have been much easier to strip in the local pub, had you had enough courage.

You still remember the day when the spores took over their hosts. It was January, doctors suspected a simple flu wave. No one could have guessed that the affected people would become more aggressive, whole stores would be looted, and countless people would die. But once again, it was blamed on something else. Theorists blamed it on some radiation, others thought it was the video games.

No one could have guessed so quickly that it was an unknown plant species posing as a normal shield fern. Biologists only became aware of the plant when it was too late.

"So then Max, Milow, have fun nursing the sick."

You gave them a brief, not entirely serious, contemptuous look.

"Have fun searching for the sick."

Max repeated, grinning.

"Go on, your buddy is probably waiting for you."

He added smugly. Chuckling, you shake your head and leave the break room. The right corridor was guarded by a few other rookies, ensuring that no one left quarantine or entered without permission. So your path was the left one.

With heavy steps, you shuffle along the corridor, your gaze fixed on the wall. The wallpaper was partially torn, probably out of fear of mold or something similar. Sooner or later, everyone would succumb to the Goldfern anyway. A little mold should be the least of the worries. You disliked the smell of the building as much as its appearance. Musty and uninhabitable, but you'll have to manage. With a certain bounce in your step, you took the stairs to the ground floor and headed to the hotel reception, to Jade.

"Evening, Jade."

You lean half on the counter and grin at her warmly. Jade was one of the few female survivors here. Just like you, there were occasional issues with feminine hygiene products.

Since you weren't able to stock them up yourself yet, she was kind enough to share with you, as long as you shared your findings with her.

"Evening, Fern."

She smiled casually at you while checking a vest, as well as a revolver and a rifle.

"Ghost already informed me. Your first outing with the team, huh?"

Her long golden hair fell over her shoulder, down towards the rifle.

"That's right. He seems to talk a lot about me, if thats the case"

You show her a broad grin and accept the equipment she had just inspected and now passed over the counter.

"Might not be a good thing, Take care of yourself, okay?"

Her gentle maternal smile had disappeared, and she now looked at you warningly.

"You know me."

You respond amusedly and casually grab a packet of ammunition. The packet, you can barely grasp properly with your delicate hands; you can still remember when König teased you for it during training in the USA.

"I mean it, Fern. Ghost and his team have often returned without rookies."

You pause and then look at her. "You're just trying to scare me," you reply cautiously, laughing to lighten the mood. She, on the other hand, just shakes her head.

"The last one was shot because he went alone into a building and apparently had official contact with the Goldfern."

She emphasized the 'apparently'.

"Then it was probably his mistake," you say cautiously. Jade rolled her eyes and sighed strenuously.

"Fern, listen to me, even if Ghost and Price have command here, you shouldn't necessarily trust them or turn your back on them. With a snap, you're gone. If you're not worth it, you're gone."

She hissed and roughly placed a knife on the counter, which you promptly stuck into your boot.

Ghost seemed like someone who would shoot you in the head without a second thought if you didn't follow an order. Price, on the other hand, seemed different to you. Neutral. As if he cared about everyone. "Jade, hey. I'll be careful, okay?"

You shoulder the rifle and knock twice on the wooden counter, which wobbled a bit. Already musty.

"Until later."

You give her one of your familiar grins and then quickly head for the exit. Speaking of not following orders. you were late.

"Two minutes late, Rookie."

Atleast his watch was working. Ghost admonished you, looking at you disdainfully. You could be wrong, after all, he almost always looked like that.

"We won't let it happen again, Sir."

You assure, hoping that would be the end of it. He nodded to Price, who then pointed in a direction.

"We're patrolling within a one and a half kilometer radius."

He explained and marched with Ghost leading the way. Just the thought of it made your feet hurt. How much you'd give to sit in the break room with Max and Milo right now, browsing through an old comic or doodling in a magazine. You walked in the middle and kept an eye on your surroundings. You were just starting to register who was there. You could spot another rookie trailing behind Price and Ghost, playing the lapdog.

You knew Soap as well; he was close with Ghost and Price, also pretty team-oriented and accommodating. There weren't any more, probably not necessary anyway.

The world had changed, and honestly, you thought it looked more beautiful than before. Everything was overgrown. The Goldfern seemed to have an influence on the local flora as well. It spread faster and grew better.

Even during dusk, you could see the newly discovered property of the plants luminescing. Probably a mutation or a simple selection of plants that were no longer able to survive and had to find other ways to prevent going extinct.

Surprisingly, the life-threatening environment calmed you, as if it were something familiar, something rooted deep down in your heart.

Suddenly, you ran into the backpack of the person in front of you, and you stumbled back a few steps.

"Watch it."

he hissed, looking at you hostilely. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Soap, amused by your mishap. Price and Ghost had stopped. A figure sat on the road worn down by roots and vines. She was wrapped in fabrics and seemed to be twitching, as if crying.

"Why are we stopping?"

you ask and take a few steps towards the person. Soap held you back by the arm and shook his head.

"Nuh-uh, we don't do that."

Your brows furrow, and you look at him confused.

"Someone needs help, and we have beds available."

But before you could protest, the rookie sprinted ahead of the group and raised his assault rifle. "Damn it, hands up!" He shouted and aimed directly at the figure on the ground. A bit too intense for your likings. The figure stood up but made no noise, no sound.

"Are you deaf, hands up!"

Now Ghost and Price also drew their weapons, aiming at the figure wrapped in rags. You remained rooted to the spot. Soap followed. It's movement were too soft for it to be human.

As you examined the figure, something caught your attention. It seemed not to touch the ground; it seemed to be floating?

There was an unpleasant crack, and the figure seemed to lift its head; it was pale, bony. Its eyes milky. It didn't move on its own; it was as if it was being moved.

"Get back, that thing doesnt seem safe!"

You screamed and tried to reach for the guy. Everything happened so fast; a root shot out from the lifeless body of the figure and surged towards the rookie. The tangle pierced his stomach, and the root, which had formed barbs within seconds, clutched onto his back. A blood-curdling scream pierced through the seemingly pointless hail of bullets which had started only mere milliseconds ago, and he was dragged across the ground slowly, as if the thing was teasing and humiliating us.

The rookie desperately clawed at every uneven surface, hoping to fight against the monstrosity.

His horrified gaze fell upon us, who could only shoot and watch as he was pulled towards a small hole in the wall of the ruin, pleading bitterly.

"Make it stop, get me out of here!"

Shooting at the vine was futile; you'd either hit him or just the ground beside the root. It was a waste of bullets. You watched in horror as the rookie, who had just been alive moments ago, fought against his inevitable death.

"There must be something we can do, damn it!"

Just as you were about to go after him, a final shot rang out from Ghost's direction, abruptly cutting off the screams and pleas.

"Let's go, it's had it's fill,"

the shooter replied disgustedly, throwing you a brief warning glance, as if to say, don't make the same mistake as that idiot.

Just as you were about to turn your head towards the group, you heard a crack and a sound akin to the preparation of meatballs.

He had disappeared into the hole. All that remained were some shreds of fabric and the blood trail leading to his ultimate end. You could only stare into the darkness of the hole for a moment until Soap nudged you in the side and pulled you out of your stupor.

"Come on, we're not waiting long."

With those words, you absentmindedly continued with the others to continue the patrol.

#simon ghost riley #ghost cod #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #fanfiction #simon riley x you #ghost x reader

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justinspoliticalcorner · 24 days

Text

Chloe Simon and Reed McMaster at MMFA:

On September 9, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance claimed that Haitian migrants had “abducted and eaten” pets in Springfield, Ohio, seemingly referencing debunked social media rumors. Though local officials explained that there was no truth to the claim, right-wing media immediately jumped on the bandwagon, amplifying Vance’s allegations and pushing racist narratives about Haitian immigrants. Some right-wing figures accused Haitian migrants of consuming “cats and ducks” and comparing them to “zombies” and “locusts.”

JD Vance falsely alleged Haitian migrants are kidnapping and eating people’s pets, continuing long-standing right-wing media attacks on Haitians

JD Vance wrote on X that he had previously raised concerns about “Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio” and “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” While Vance did admit in a subsequent post that “it's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he doubled down by telling by telling his “fellow patriots” not to “let the crybabies in the media dissuade you” and encouraged them to continue making “cat memes.” [Twitter/X, 9/9/24, 9/10/24, 9/10/24]

The claim Haitian migrants are eating cats seemingly originated from a commentator at a local meeting, Facebook rumors, and a video of a woman accused of eating an animal. The video used as evidence took place in Canton, Ohio, not Springfield, Ohio, and The Guardian reported that the woman did not appear to be a Haitian immigrant. [The Guardian, 9/9/24]

Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck says there is no truth to the story. In a statement to ABC News, Heck said that “in response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” (Vance had previously cited Heck in a Senate Banking committee meeting about issues Springfield has had with housing for Haitian migrants.) [ABC News, 9/9/24]

The debunked attack on Haitian people is the latest in years’ worth of racist right-wing media tirades against the country. In the aftermath of the deadly 2010 Haiti earthquake, right-wing media said that the “Haitian pact with the devil is historical fact” and that the country was “so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” Then in 2018, when Trump had labeled Haiti a “shithole country,” Infowars’ Alex Jones backed him up, saying it is a “literal craphole” and a “hellhole.” [Media Matters, 1/14/10, 1/20/10, 1/21/10, 1/12/18; NBC News, 1/11/18]

Right-wing media gin up anti-Haitian racism with the false "Haitian migrants are eating pets" BS.

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quirkwizard · 1 month

Note

Apologies in advance, Wizard, if you have any phobias related to insects or being eaten alive: Food + Queen Bee?

That doesn't scare me. Men with sack masks and evil highschoolers, on the other hand.

New Quirk Name: Locusts

This Emitter type Quirk allows the user to make a cluster of bio-mechanical locusts from their body, forming dozens of them at a time. The user can control these locusts and send them out up to a five-meter radius. The true power of the Quirk comes from the locusts' ability to eat, shown by their buzz-like teeth and mouths. The locust is able to eat their way through various materials, including tougher ones like metal and stone, before quickly digesting them. This even applies to more dangerous materials, such as poisons or other waste. The user is always aware of where the locusts are and what they are eating. This gives the user a dangerous ability, eating away at whatever may be in their path. They can eat around defenses to get around, chew away at their foes to deal damage, cluster them together to block an attack, disable hazardous materials, or simply horrify people with the ravenous locusts. The bugs are fragile and can be destroyed, especially with large scale attacks, and eating too much too fast can end up slowing them down while they digest them. The bugs seem to have issues with organic materials as well as larger and tougher materials, being slower to eat through them.

#My Hero Academia #Quirks #Quirk Marraige #Soramitsu Tabe #Food #Kuin Hachisuka #Queen Bee

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theknightmarket · 10 months

Text

"Choke on it."

In which Dark finally helps the person he wronged. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - AO3 TW: cursing, possibly abusive relationship, heavy violence, destruction of property Pages: 29 - Words: 11,500

[Requests: OPEN]

It was nearing midnight when your heartbeat finally calmed down. Not even setting foot into Mark’s apartment had been a relief, not when you were so close to toppling over the cliff of a heart attack. Your friend had yet to say a word since you got him out of the manor, and the distant expression on his face was little comfort. At least he still had a face. You didn’t want to know what that maniac would have done to him if you hadn’t come out of that bathroom in time.

Questions of that man swirled around in the forefront of your mind while your body acted on autopilot – Mark would have to settle for the sixteen-hours-on-set-in-summer protocol, which started with you laying him on the couch and getting two glasses of water. It was a good thing that you were used to this, too, because your focus was split between him, yourself, and the stranger.

You hated that. You hated that he distracted you from helping the person you cared about. You hated that the dozens of questions that plagued you like locusts refused to leave even as you retrieved the med-kit from a bathroom cabinet. Staring back into the mirror, you tried to fight them back, or redirect your attention to the present. The last hour didn’t matter, stopping your panic did.

Were you panicking? You couldn’t tell. When you tried to inspect yourself for injury, your eyes blurred your skin so much that you couldn’t differentiate between a shadow or a possible bruise. Didn’t matter. You knew that Mark was hurt. You could check yourself out afterwards.

He was exactly where you’d left him; lying on his back, spread longways on the couch in the living room. He didn’t look any more coherent than he did before. You didn’t expect that to change anytime soon.

The inside of the med-kit was rammed full of miscellaneous equipment. There was a pack of unlabeled pills, some Advil, three rolls of gauze but no band-aids, a cloth, and a couple of bottles. The edges of the box were surprisingly battered, as if it had been thrown around in the moving truck. One of the latches was nearly falling off. Was it ironic to have a broken med-kit, or just stupid? Not that it really mattered all that much. It was still a container if the lid wasn’t on it all the way. Nobody was breaking in to get at your random assortment of drugs. Or maybe they were.

Eight minutes you had spent staring into the med-kit.

You struggled between trying to tether your mind to the present – the feeling of the microfiber smothered in disinfectant – and it escaping back into the wilderness of questions. It got lost in the bushes as you brought your hand to Mark’s head. You had propped him up at some point, or maybe he’d pushed himself to a sitting position, but that dazed look was still present.

That daze was broken when the chemicals leached into his cuts. There were multiple in the same place, as well as the bruises from that psycho’s fist, so it made sense to tend to those first. The hiss that shocked the air was an understandable response, and you were glad that it was that to take him out of the haziness.

“Hush,” you muttered, almost inaudible, “we don’t need this swelling and making your head any bigger than it already is.”

Starting bits wasn’t part of your protocol, but you couldn’t stop one from pushing past your lips. It only made you feel slightly guilty when Mark didn’t laugh, or even respond in any sense of the word. That hiss was the most brought out from him.

“That was a joke.”

The lack of band-aids meant you had to fetch some scissors from the kitchen and cut out a sizable square of the gauze, with a slightly bigger one of medical tape to go on top of it. Apparently, there wasmedical tape in the box, too. You shifted your attention to his jaw.

“That didn’t go to plan.”

You leaned back at Mark’s words. That much was obvious.

“No, I didn’t think it did. Can’t exactly base a ghost show off a living man beating the hell out of you.”

The spit of, “Living…” did not fly over your head, but you assumed it was just natural spite. He didn’t like his pride damaged, and being battered, even if it wasn’t life-threatening, wasn’t exactly a badge on his boy-scout sash.

You continued to pepper the disinfectant around the most important areas, pausing for Mark to take one of the known pills, and then resuming your care. This being Los Angeles, you weren’t a stranger to helping out with injuries, especially when shoots wrapped up late. This one, though, confused you more than a random alley mugging.

“What was that guy’s problem?” you asked as you cut up another gauze and tape.

“I’m sure he has plenty of them.”

“Was that place even abandoned?”

“Not exactly.”

You blinked. While you hadn’t been asking questions for no good reason, you didn’t expect an answer, especially not one that put you on guard. Not exactly. That wasn’t a promising response from the very person who had told you it was safe not four hours prior.

Your eyes narrowed. “Mark.”

He didn’t take a breath before he rushed to his own defense. “The studio said we were going to use it, so I took it upon myself to check it out. If we hadn’t, we might’ve encountered that man halfway through filming.”

That eased your suspicions somewhat, enough for you to wrap the last injury and pack up the med-kit. The look in his eyes was somewhere between pleading and self-justifying, so you let it go. It wouldn’t do you any good to pick a fight when the dinginess of the encounter was wearing off finally – you quite liked being able to think, thank you, and if that meant backing off from Mark for the day, you were fine with that.

So, sighing, you grabbed the kit and rose from the couch. His eyes trailed after you as you made your way back to the bathroom. “I guess so,” you said, rounding the coffee table, “just don’t make it a habit, yeah?” The light chuckle you heard calmed your heart some more. He seemed to be in good spirits after the whole ordeal, and you weren’t about to go breaking that. He’d get an earful from the makeup department the following day, so that took the lecturing off your plate, and you wanted time to think about everything before you launched into an argument. You wanted answers, something to back everything up if he got on the attack; getting the full picture normally disproved a lot of Mark’s points.

Your feet brought you to the edge of the hallway. You didn’t like planning for a fight, but, with Mark, they happened too often to let yourself be willingly vulnerable. It would have a better outcome for you if you weren’t in the dark.

Though, there were things that you still missed. For instance, Mark’s whispered words of a forewarning promise that slipped by you. “Trust me, pet.” He made himself more comfortable on the velvet cushions. “I already got exactly what I wanted.” Ever the dramatist, he knew nobody would hear him, but being able to say those words aloud, and for them to be true, was one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.

The clock in the kitchen read quarter past one when you were readying a meal for yourself. The last thing you ate before arriving at the manor had been a slice of pizza you’d scavenged from the tech room, and that gave you the smallest boost of energy you needed to get back to the apartment. Now that you were out of danger and had missed dinner, you were starving. Mark had gone to his room before you asked if he was hungry, so, while you had the oh-so-generous thought of waking him up to eat, you ignored it in favor of the oh-so-appealing thought of just throwing down whatever you wanted and then collapsing on your bed for the next eight hours.

You rifled through the cabinets and fridge until you came up with the basic ingredients needed for a sandwich. Simple, quick, and good enough that it would get you through the night. It required no cooking and barely any clean up!

Brushing your commercial thoughts away, you settled down on one of the stools and took a bite. You’d suspected it for a long time, but, in that moment, you made concrete the revelation that things always tasted better after the worst possible day, at the worst possible time, with the worst possible thoughts in your head. You almost bit your fingers clean in two with the distractions floating about – the questions flitting around your mind like a plague of locusts that refused to leave – but a solid taste brought you back to some modicum of awareness.

However, only those first few bites were satisfactory. What you had was an addict’s high, as stupid as it sounded in comparison to eating food, because as you filled your stomach, the thoughts strengthened. They poked and prodded and pulled, demanded that you pay attention to them, the one thing you steadfastly refused to do. You squeezed your eyes shut, no help, you opened them, and took the lesser of two evils by forcing them closed again.

The sink was directly in front of you.

Goddamnit.

The manor was fine to think about, right? It wouldn’t hurt any to reflect on the day. It was just a building. An old building, which housed a violent mania— it was just a building. As far as you could remember, you didn’t like reflecting on things. Being in the moment, as people called it, wasn’t how you liked to spend your time. You could be out doing things that mattered, and the past had already happened, so why bother devoting a second more to it? Despite that reasoning, you’d found yourself reflecting more and more recently.

Like a bad habit.

You weren’t hungry anymore.

You wrapped the sandwich in plastic, placed it in the fridge, and wandered off to the living room. Something to distract you, that was what you needed. A bad show or reruns of a movie that was seared into your memory from how many times you’d seen it already. Anything but the stillness and quietness and void that pulled you into thinking.

A laugh bubbled up from your throat when you let yourself fall onto the couch Mark had occupied before. Most people liked thinking. The pillows were still disheveled, more so after you launched them into the air. One landed on the floor next to your foot, but you didn’t pick it up, choosing instead to search for the remote between the seat cushions. It didn’t take long to find it, drudging up a couple coins, some string, and a whole leather wallet alongside the thing.

You brought a hand up to your face, and, with the other, clicked on the TV. Whatever was on already was fine, you were too tired to change it, or even listen to it. Making that sandwich really sapped your energy, it seemed, teasing you into an early food coma. What was the lightweight version for food? Was there one? Could you make one? You rubbed your eyes until they stung, and your mind fogged up with the pressure. Everything was falling in on you, all at once. A headache knocked at the edge of your brain, stirred on by your own merciless hand and a swarming static in your ears.

You groaned. Great. Amazing. Now the TV was breaking. You glared at it from the corner of your eye, but it didn’t right itself; the silvery sparks danced across the screen, repeating and reemerging from every corner. You saw them as you looked away and as you looked back. Just what you needed, more problems to add to your pile of issues you weren’t ready to fix. A yawn stretched your jaws open. Screw it, you’d deal with it in the morning. You had time. For the moment, you could just switch it off and ignore it all. Or, apparently, with your thumb jamming into the button, you couldn’t.

The universe hated you. The damn thing wouldn’t turn off, and the static was overwhelming you, and you were tired, and you couldn’t sleep with that thing next to you, and you figured you might as well wait out your demise on your comfortable bed. Huffing loud enough that you wondered if Mark had woken up, you tugged your body off the couch and pulled your legs to the edge of the room. You had to get out quickly or the fixing chore would soon be a replacing chore.

You resisted sprinting down the corridor away from the living room, but you compromised by glaring at everything that passed. The windows, the lights, the paintings. You flipped one of them off out of spite. You knew you were being petty, but did you care? Not really. No one was there to see you, you could make as many obscene and nonsensical gestures as you wanted, as long as they didn’t wake Mark, and you had gotten pretty good at keeping quiet.

As you trudged around a corner, you noticed how many paintings Mark had. You’d once spent an entire day off counting them, but he must have gotten more in the meantime – one, because he was Mark and everything did was over the top, and, two, because there were some you didn’t recognize.

You ran your hand along the frame of a winter wonderland, then crossed to a split-screen of a brilliant disco and a monochromatic office. The third one felt more homely; a painting of a Victorian living room so detailed it might as well have been a photograph. You stopped at the last one. In the row of four, this was the one that gave you pause, knocked you off your rhythm, made you feel ill. It was… nothing. Just a black canvas. Completely empty, like someone had made a mistake and dumped a bucket of the darkest paint they could find on top of it.

When you moved your head, you saw the light reflect off it, bringing your attention back to nothingness. You moved again. You missed it again. Whatever it was, it was giving you a headache, not that you would be free of one given that you could still hear the static from the television.

What were you doing?

Right.

Bed.

You’d have to avoid this hallway when you woke up. There were enough rooms that it was possible, and you were going to take full advantage of that. You were well aware that you could cut off an entire section of the house by going in a different direction – you had found that out when you avoided Mark for a day and got on just fine. It did take some watching through a crack in your door for when he'd leave his bedroom, which was helpfully stationed opposite yours, but it worked, and you were proud of it.

Speaking of your room, as you rounded another corner, you spotted your door. Relief washed over you at the thought of your comfy sheets and no more static. If you heard it inside, you might have just thrown yourself out the window and called it a day.

Fingers on the handle. Still there. Pushing the door open. Still there. One step forward taken. Still there. Another step. Still there. The door drifted closed behind you.

Thank fuck.

If you silently pumped your fist in the air, nobody knew. You trapped the static right outside, you were the goddamn winner, you deserved an award, you were really tired. Stumbling over to the foot of your bed, you gripped the edge of your shirt and fully debated just sleeping in your clothes, and you probably would have, had you not been distracted by the figure appearing in a swirl of smoke in your full-length mirror across from you.

Your body sprang into action, fists pulled up, legs steeled in the stance you’d seen in movies before. You could question why the maniac from the manor was in your mirror when you knocked his lights out, and you could wonder if that was possible after you tried.

He held his hands up placatingly. “Easy, easy!” he said, “I’m not here to fight.”

That didn’t stop you from moving closer, eyes narrowed at him. “Yeah? What are you here for then?”

“You.”

He spoke as if it were simple. As if you were supposed to know that already. And, somewhere in your gut, you thought that you did.

“I just want to explain.”

“Go on. Explain.”

His eyes flickered, leaving trails of red and blue in the sockets. For a moment, you were worried he was bleeding, but you didn’t care. Why would you care? Maybe you didn’t want a dead body in your mirror.

You frowned.

“I can’t do it here.”

Your frown deepened.

“Why not?”

“He’s nearby.” Considering it was only Mark and yourself in the entire house, you could guess who he was talking about. “Anything I say, he’ll use against me, and you, too. We can do this on a level playing field.” He stopped. Last time you had spoken, albeit less speaking and more yelling, he had seemed desperate. Angry, but desperate. He had pleaded with you, for something that he didn’t receive, and then he conceded. Earlier that day, you were able to leave the old manor with nary a glance over your shoulder or a thought to the man until you arrived home. Now, he was different. You didn’t know whether it was because there was a screen of glass protecting him, or because Mark was asleep, but he was collected. His words came out confident and calculated. You weren’t about to admit that you preferred it.

After nodding to himself, he tugged at the edge of his jacket. “The manor is still open; you can meet me there.”

“And that’s a level playing field, is it? Your home turf?”

“Going anywhere else would be much more complicated on my end, and I need to get this done as fast as possible. It’s urgent.”

It was urgent? It was urgent. Something stirred in you that whispered to bite back, to send a petty remark, but not one that was fit for the person who assaulted your friend. More as though he had taken the last donut at the studio, apologized, and then left. You didn’t need to be angry, it told you, you just had to joke back to break the tension.

“Please. We need to talk.”

Another pang. It was almost hurting now. You didn’t like it. It was all wrong. You didn’t know how, but it was wrong, and, in order to make it right, you had to accept.

Begrudgingly. Of course.

“Fine—” because he was dangerous, “—tomorrow morning—” and he was untrustworthy, “—the manor—” and he would definitely use you against Mark, “—we’ll talk.”

So, aware of all that, why did you almost copy his smile when it spread along his face. He was relieved. Normally, you weren’t a fan of being out of the loop, but you felt no reason to ask. What you did want to ask, however, was something much simpler.

“In return,” you said, “you could give me your name?”

“Ah, yes, I always forget that part.” He shifted on his feet, both hands springing to his jacket. “Dark. You can call me Dark.”

Although you wanted to tell him that his name was actually an adjective, you held back and just nodded. You could bully him in person tomorrow. More fun that way, and you could think about that instead of the fact that you were putting yourself in the path of a metaphorical rolling boulder.

Or the light chuckle that you let out when Dark said a quiet, “Thank you.”

Your new acquaintance disappeared in a puff of smoke, the kind you’d see in TV shows, but it didn’t seem that odd to you. You got over the strangeness of the whole ordeal quickly, which you supposed was a good thing – though, whether you got over it or were ignoring it was up to debate.

After pulling off your shirt and reaching for the nightwear thrown over the bed frame, you paused with the fabric in your hands. Did you have to tell Mark? You knew that you should, it was only right for him to know. You wouldn’t not go if he told you to, but he should have been aware of it. Shouldn’t he?

You vaguely registered sitting down before you were overwhelmed by indecision. On one hand, Mark was your friend. You trusted him, and going behind his back to, what, meet with his assaulter was unfair. On the other hand…

You just didn’t want to tell him. It was so simple that it made you feel sick. You had to keep this from him. He wouldn’t want you to go anyway, and, if nothing came of this little event, then it didn’t matter if you told him or not.

For once, in the life that you could remember, you decided that it would be better for Mark to not know, and you carried on your routine without a second thought to it.

It was cold outside the manor, but it was infinitely better than standing inside. Preparing with deep breaths and calming thoughts was going to be no use when you were standing in the maw. Better to do it on the gravel, where you could turn tail and run if you couldn’t do it. But – deep breath in, deep breath out – you knew you could do this.

The door swung open before your fist could come within an inch of the wood. It revealed the foyer, the staircase, the rubble, a room devoid of life. A glance around didn’t help its case. Whatever had caused the door to open didn’t stop you from stepping tentatively onto the floorboards, but the twin shivers racing up and down your back stopped you from moving any further. Paralyzed, you settled on calling out to the ancient manor’s walls.

“Hello?”

Your voice echoed. Not a creak or a crack to reply. You were somewhat surprised the little word hadn’t caused the place to collapse around you, but weirder things were happening to pay attention to it. Your gaze zoned in on the mirror at your side, like a moth drawn to a flame.

It was difficult to blink as you looked at yourself through it, harder to take your eyes off it than inspect every inch of the glass and frame. The wood had intricate designs that coiled up and over, disappearing behind the dusty reflection of the rest of the room. Instinctively, you brought a hand up to your cheek. It felt the same as it ever did, but that didn’t stop you from brushing a thumb over every pore and rough patch.

When you pulled yourself away, like removing your body from fly paper, you didn’t try to suppress another shiver. You could convince yourself it was from the cold of the manor, but that was undeniably a lie.

“Who’s pretentious enough to own a manor?” you muttered, stepping back into the middle of the foyer.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Oh, shit—” You managed to not trip over your feet, but you whirled around far too quick to appear stable, “—don’t do that.”

Behind you, or now in front of you, stood none other than the man who had invited you here. Dark was still in the same outfit as when he’d shown up in your mirror; the black suit and white dress shirt, both uncreased and unwrinkled, even when he shifted his arms behind his back. The more you stared, the more you noticed, though you stopped at the faint red and blue lines that curled away from him. Weird.

Dark opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then opened it again. “I apologize,” he said. “I… it’s nice to see you, under better circumstances than yesterday.”

“Attacking my friend isn’t a good start.”

He recoiled at your words, but which aspect was most appalling was lost on you. “That is what we need to talk about.”

“Well, you can start by apologizing again for hitting Mark in the jaw. It’s his best redeeming quality.”

“That I cannot do.”

“An even worse start.”

How was this supposed to work, then, if he refused to apologize for the simplest wrongdoing? And what even was this, anyway? Dark had managed to be both blunt and vague at the same time, leaving you gasping for breath in a sea of confusion. You didn’t know whether taking this seriously would help you, because Dark’s way of speaking to you didn’t give you anything to go off of that would let the few meaningful words have any weight.

“By the end of today, if all goes well, you’ll understand why I won’t.”

Ah, so you were here to forgive him. Great. Okay. And what did that achieve? You hated being in the dark more than you hated knowing painful truths, so you wanted to speed this along. He must’ve seen your restlessness, because he hastily ushered you towards the archway that connected the foyer to that kitchen. You tried not to look at the sink, but you still found yourself seated in the same stool as last time with Dark in the one next to you. A pair of teacups still steaming on the marble had you questioning how much he had planned this morning out.

“You’re gonna have to start explaining, I have no idea what any of… this is about.”

Dark cleared his throat while one hand reached to tug on his jacket. Your first thought was that he had a weapon, but it just appeared like a nervous habit. You paused as he thought through his words. It wasn’t natural for him. The way his hand moved to the side ever so slightly before it lunged for the fabric made you think it was a replacement, and not a good one.

An artificially calm tone brought you back, Dark asking, “Can you promise to believe me, if only for the duration of this talk?”

That was counter intuitive. If you agreed, then what was the point of being told at all? Blindly believing someone was never a good idea, you would know, and an insane stranger was not a good candidate for it – why would you know – really, this entire situation screamed trap, and his request made it clear that whatever he was going to tell you was too outlandish to be taken seriously.

You nodded, ignoring the sense of reason that you shoved further back in your mind by taking a sip of the tea.

The story that followed sounded exactly that; a story, crafted with rough hands that produced cracks and faults the kind that made it impossible to hold itself together. A shoddy job, which definitely made you regret promising to believe Dark, even before you were halfway through. Everything was convoluted and paradoxical. Not a single word of it made sense.

So, why were you nodding along with the sections, filling in the blanks yourself, and acting less surprised than if you heard the lady down the street had lost her fifth cat? Why did it make sense that you were, apparently, somehow, the shadowy leftovers of a 1920s district attorney, shot in the chest by a colonel – who was still around there, somewhere –, and left for dead by your current best friend, who was really a century old actor? Oh, but don’t forget that the man sitting in front of you was three spirits, two of which were your childhood friends of a seer and the goddamn mayor, inhabiting your body after they trapped you in the mirror that you had seen when walking in.

You wanted to not believe it, so badly.

Dark watched you placed the cup back on the countertop. You weren’t angry, that was good news, but you hadn’t said anything since he’d began to talk. He was familiar with the old adage that ‘no news was good news’, but the silence made his throat dry, and his breath escape him shakily. Back to square one, looking at you as he hoped you would say anything, please.

You cleared your throat, and then said, “Except I can’t remember any of this. How does that fit?”

Dark’s shoulders lowered. Your tone wasn’t condescending, and it genuinely sounded like a question. Only, it was one he couldn’t satisfyingly answer.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I was hoping you would be able to fill me in on that.”

“Do you have any physical proof that this happened?”

“Not as such.”

“Any witnesses?”

“None who would make it any more believable.”

“Right, then.”

With that, you rose from your seat, pushing the teacup away from the edge, and moved your gaze from his. Panic crossed out any other thought in Dark’s brain. You couldn’t leave now. You’d be going back to Mark, and he’d never have a chance of helping you again. You’d be stuck, and he’d have failed, and everything would continue to be wrong.

“Come on.”

What?

Your shoes unmoving on the tiles of the kitchen, you looked down at Dark. The movement of your head indicated you wanted him to follow. But weren’t you leaving?

He brushed himself off as he got to his own feet. “Where are we going?”

You spoke as you began to lead him back to the foyer, though you stayed well away from the front door. “If what you’re saying is correct,” you started, “and my friend has been lying to me for three months, and I’m really the—” you found it difficult to keep the laugh out of your voice, “—what, ghost, reincarnation, of a district attorney who died one hundred years ago… then we’re gonna see if we can’t recover some memories through good ol’ exposure therapy.”

You didn’t remember the layout of the manor, but the way you moved, hurled yourself around the banister, walked backwards up the first few steps of the staircase, certainly made it seem like you did. Like this was all natural to you. Dark hoped it was, even if it were just muscle memory, because that gave you a chance. It gave him a chance.

Hope was a hard thing for him. Frustratingly intangible and always disappearing at the last moment. However, as Dark inspected your face for deceit, he thought that, maybe, hope was something he could hold onto, if only for the rest of the day. There was something familiar in your eyes. It wasn’t the same as the 1920s, but neither was Dark, and he would find no comfort in something from the time he hadn’t participated in. That would be for Damien, or Celine, or the extra entity. The risky flame in the color that flirted with the paper white around it was just for him.

He placed his hand next to yours on the end of the banister and followed you up to the first floor.

This was proving more difficult than he had thought. For the past three hours, Dark had taken you around the manor – a tour through the most valuable places that might contribute to your memories. The office that housed Abe’s suspect board was a bust, but that was never going to be of any help to anyone. The room you had slept in on the night of the party yielded no results, save for your tripping over a loose floorboard that Dark had to right you from. Both the master and the other normal bedrooms were useless. Peeling out of the last room, he was gradually losing confidence in this not being another wasted venture.

That meant he had to think of the consequences. You couldn’t keep living with Mark but getting you to understand the danger you were putting yourself in was the only way of convincing you. It wasn’t as though anyone else in the manor was going to help. Benjamin was still annoyed about his kitchen and Wilford was—

Coming down the hallway.

His hopes dampened further.

“Oh, hello! Fancy seeing you here!”

The newcomer was a sight, to sum it up. Dressed entirely in pink and yellow, practically candy-coated, and oozing a manic aura that made you take a step back. He didn’t seem to take offence, too caught up in seeing you, apparently, again.

“Hello?” you spoke carefully.

The stranger moved closer, past Dark and past the door you had just come from, to walk around you, as though you were a zoo animal to gawk at.

“In the flesh, too.” His whistle was punctuated by a poke in between your ribs. You didn’t try to keep still, and, instead, slapped at his hand and crossed another over your stomach to protect as much surface area as you could. “I thought it’d take more to get you back, but I should have had more faith in our friend here, eh?”

Our friend? Well, whoever this was, he was involved in the events that you’d forgotten, but further judgement made it clear he was going to be just as vague as Dark in giving you information, if not more with a flair for the dramatic. A fluorescent pink moustache wasn’t the style of a straight-lace guy.

He came to a stop from his shark-esque circling next to Dark. “Though, really, I did not expect to see you with Mark.”

“And why would that be?”

He huffed and the hairs of his mustache shifted slightly. “From our last chat, between the two of us, I’d say I was the more sympathetic to him. Don’t tell me your flame’s gone out.”

The issue with having moved from where you had been standing before was that you were now trapped between the end of the hallway and the wall. It gave you no space to get away from the man who was now leaning in closer. The melodramatic attitude sapped away, exchanged for something more threatening.

And then he was gone. Not disappeared but planted further down the corridor than he could have moved in the second you took to notice. Creepy, but you preferred it to his invasion of personal space.

“Ah, no matter,” he announced, hands on hips, looking quite sure of himself, “it won’t take much to stoke that fire. You’ll be right as rain in no time, as long as Dark does his job right—” the wink he tossed was met with furrowed eyebrows, “—and I trust that he will.”

He patted Dark on the shoulder once, firmly, decisively, before spinning on his heel and marching back down where he had come from. That left just you and Dark, yourself staring at the retreating haze of color, and the latter looking anywhere but.

“That’s one of the witnesses?” you guessed.

“Correct.”

You barely took a breath before you replied, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

While you processed the new not-stranger, Dark carded a hand through his hair. He knew he looked disheveled but what else was new? He hadn’t been anything else since you had been taken, and now that you had returned, he was even more unstable than before. This effort to restore your lost memories was taking a larger toll on him than he would admit, especially when he had already reached the last resort.

The last resort, which he had conveniently forgotten was completely destroyed.

You whistled as you set foot through the library’s door, Dark’s face dropping behind you into a grimace that you missed when you walked forward. The toppled shelves and collapsed desk were all pushed to the side, as if to make way for the whirlpool of pages and books and bindings. Seeing the mess that he’d made sent another pang of regret through him to his core, but you were not deterred, likely because you didn’t know it was the man behind you who had created it.

You stepped carefully over a pile of the healthiest books and proceeded into the centre of the ring. From what you could glean of the covers, a lot of them were faux journals, framed as entries into some magical cyclopedia, while others were playscripts. You stumbled over a collection of Shakespeare’s tragedies but landed with a curse on spirit interaction guide. In a situation like this, you had no clue where to start, so you just dropped to the ground in a crouch and started rifling through the legible documents. At one wall of the library, Dark followed suit, scanning the higher up books for a hint of something to help you.

Ten minutes passed. Nothing. Thirty passed. Nothing. An hour passed. Nothing. Two hours passed. Nothing.

Dark prided himself on his ability to plan. He would map out every possibility and consequence of those possibilities in his mind and react accordingly. It helped in keeping people away from the manor and, although it had slipped in recent months, keep an eye on Mark.

Yet, certainly because of you, those plans were thrown out of the window and into a smoldering pit where they burned to a crisp. It was something about you that threw him off but let Mark keep afloat. His plan to recover your memories, foiled by either Mark or you or even himself. Nothing was working how it should, like it used to, and the only different component was you.

You lodged a spanner in the works and tore down the front Dark had managed to painstakingly construct of power and order.

Now, he was just some fool, searching through empty bookshelves for optimism and forcing the stress and the anger to the forefront to avoid thinking about why you had such an effect on him. Coming up empty after another half hour of skimming page after page only added fuel to the fire.

And all of that wasted time had no effect on you. You had returned to your spot in the middle of the library after searching in an arc for nothing in particular. He’d watched you out of the corner of his eye as you waved a hand over the viable covers or browsed the exposed pages for a line to give you any strong emotion. You’d even picked one up and laughed to yourself about a recipe’s annotation. How you were getting enjoyment out of this was beyond Dark. Hell, how you were still going with that slight grin on your face had him questioning whether you were taking this seriously.

He could only hope you were. For both your sakes. If he lost to Mark again, he didn’t know what he would do.

But he couldn’t let himself worry. Worrying would damage the dam he had set up to keep the emotional side of him away. He could worry after you were safe. For now, he would have to be stressed if he wanted to get anywhere. Dark forced himself to keep moving.

You were surprised to see Dark stepping away from the shelf – he hadn’t moved an inch in the last twenty minutes – and that surprise strengthened when you realized he was moving towards the door. Quite quickly, in fact. You narrowly missed tripping on one of the books in your effort to chase after him.

“Why isn’t anything working?” he muttered to himself, rushing in the direction of the staircase. You caught up with him as he rounded onto the first step, skidding to a stop against the dusty carpet. Dark was at the bottom before you could think to descend, and then he was turning the corner just as you reached the last step.

You were halfway to winded when you wound up next to him. Back in the foyer, back near the front door, back near the mirror, which he was staring very intently at, like the answer to his problems should have been written on his forehead. You didn’t stop the light chuckle at the thought from escaping you, going so far into the bit as to follow his line of sight.

Your throat dried up and your breathing froze inside. Every inch of your skin went numb to the outside, but you felt the blood course against the surface and your organs churn. Heart batting a dozen against the cage of your ribs. Mind focusing every conscious and unconscious thought onto the image inside the mirror. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Dark. It was something else. You wanted to throw up. You wanted to look away. Neither of those you followed through with.

Against the backdrop of a void laid a body as clear as daylight, but, god, did you want it to be shrouded in darkness. The flesh was pouring off the bone, melting eyeballs staring right at you, taunting you, and the smirk of chipped lips from a face turned almost 180 degrees. A red robe molded itself into the divots and dips that the caved in skin left, making it difficult to discern between the crimson fabric or blood. The stuff pooled around his head to create a sick halo.

“Anything?”

You couldn’t talk. All of the breath was knocked out of you, stolen by the exotic corpse. Its smile grew wider.

“This was a horrible idea.” You barely registered Dark’s sigh. “Can you give me anything at all?”

You snapped your head to face him and immediately shivered. Stiffly, you replied, “Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t invite myself here.”

After taking a breath in and letting it out, you risked a glance back. Gone. Gone? The body was gone.

“You say that like you don’t care.”

A voice whispered to you that this was, indeed, a horrible idea. You shouldn’t have come at all. You should have brushed Dark’s appearance in your mirror off as the product of an adrenaline high, or simply a dream. It would have been better than this.

Dark took your silence for resignation, to which he took offence. “If I’m correct,” he practically spat, “you are living with a murderer.”

“And that’s a very heavy if. Mark’s my friend.”

“He’s not your friend.”

“Because I can trust the person who I watched try to kill him.”

Stop. Slow down. Don’t do this. It was happening again. You were getting into an argument when more important things were at stake.

“Look at me,” Dark spoke, trying to be as calm as he could manage, “tell me I look like some maniac who would attack someone with no reason.”

And look you did. Up and down, you inspected him. While he was right, he didn’t look like he’d assault someone for kicks, you couldn’t admit it. Because then you would have to admit that Mark was not who he said he was, and that you had to take this seriously.

All you could muster up was a faint, “People do things for so many reasons.”

Dark could tell you didn’t believe that. Your sentiment didn’t meet your eyes, and he’d spent long enough looking into them that he knew when you were genuine. “Then give me my motive,” he offered. “If not for revenge, why did I harm him.”

“Oh, who knows!” The hiss came out stronger than you thought it would. “It’s not as though you’ve been trying to convince me I’m a dead attorney for the last four hours. Give me some leeway here.”

“We don’t have time for a casual stroll down memory lane, you could be in danger.” In fact, he knew you were. You just needed to see that.

“It’s Los Angeles, it’s impossible to be safe.”

“Stop making light of this.” The command was stern and offered no alternatives, but he knew that had never stopped you before. “He murdered our friends, he left you for dead, he trapped you in a void—”

“He got me out!”

Who did Dark think he was? Barging into your life and taking away those happy moments that were the only things keeping you going, ruining the treasured feeling of sun on your skin and wind in your hair and the ability to walk ten paces to the left without seeing a dead body in your peripheral! He thought that it would be such a good idea to drag you back to the darkness. And you almost let him. You agreed to go along with it and go on a wild goose chase for something you doubted would even matter, because you couldn’t have this life without Mark. Being free meant being with Mark, and you knew it wasn’t true freedom, but the alternative was going back to that mirror.

Although you had only said four words, you were knocked breathless. Dark was similarly surprised, mimicking the shock on your face before it broke apart, half eager, half pained.

“I said you acted like a child, that you were being selfish.”

“You stole my body.” You wanted time to think about this, you tried to stop the response from shooting out, but you couldn’t.

“I minimized your suffering to explain my actions.”

“I was stuck in complete darkness.” The taste of metal spread in your mouth.

“I stayed away for three days after that.”

“I kept seeing Mark’s corpse.” You didn’t understand what you were saying, like the thoughts were coming from someone else and you were just acting as a conduit. But they felt right. They made sense, even if they didn’t to you.

Dark’s breath became labored at his final admission. “And I never got you out.”

“You left me for one hundred years.”

You both came to a stop. Cars going too fast that crashed into the same wall. Flames danced in your eyes, and wreckage collapsed in Dark’s. Tears trailed onto your chin, carving out the shape of a snarl, but you paid it no mind. You were caught, face to face, with this stranger. According to your statements, you should’ve despised him, if they were all true, but, now that you’d slowed down, there was something else. The accusations told you Dark was cruel, and yet the emotions behind them whispered otherwise. You cared for the monster, somehow, you cared for the man who had abandoned you. Mark might had left you to die, but Dark left you in your death. You didn’t know what to do about that, because your muscles spasmed against your brain that held them back from reaching out for him.

You didn’t know everything yet. Some of the most important memories were still trapped, and Dark knew how to unlock them.

He was running towards his office before either side could win you over.

“Oh, you are not leaving again!” Your yell echoed after him, following your shadow on the ruined wallpaper up to the first floor. Wherever he was going, you were going, too.

Although, he didn’t go far. You caught the edge of the door before it could close behind him and stalked into the office. Everything was so pristine compared to Dark, who was bathed in the streaks of bright light from the window. He looked almost ethereal. You knew he was no human, but it was undeniable now.

You stopped moving when you were a few steps away from Dark. He wouldn’t be able to get back out the door, but he clearly had no plans. Instead, he had pulled open one of the draws of his desk and was keenly searching it, with more vigor than in the library.

A book was pushed into your grip within seconds. Your skin burned against the cover, though Dark’s hands on the other end prevented you from dropping it. You couldn’t help the fearful look you shot him, your own hands shaking and words crumbling in your throat. You only managed a meek, “What?”

A gentle smile and the book cupped in your hands were all you were offered, but you still took a breath. It was just a book. Why did it hold so much weight?

“Go on.”

Damn it. Damn it. The soft look in Dark’s eyes, his encouraging smile, damn it. You had called him a monster, but he had gone so far to help you, and now, after you insulted him over and over, he was being kind to you. You didn’t know whether to laugh or sob.

You settled for opening the book to the first page.

Immediately, you were greeted by a sight you were all too familiar with. No memories from months ago were needed to recognize the signature on the white paper, you’d seen the thing just a few days ago when Mark had signed off on a year-long contract. A dramatic, emboldening crimson was the only difference. The flourish at the end like a blood splatter made your stomach churn.

The cold didn’t seem to affect you as much anymore. You were still aware of it, of course, but you got better at accepting that it was there. A long time ago, you had tried to exercise to generate your own heat, but this was better. Everything was better. You both hated and loved that it was. On one hand, it had taken a century to get to this point. The loneliness and fear had no reason to it anymore. But, on the other hand, it was over, even if its happening didn’t matter. You knew why it was better, too.

Dark’s arrival was a miracle. Behind the teasing and the pettiness, you were truly grateful to him for showing up – you could have done without the wait, but better late than never. You would admit that there was a tipping point when you stood on the cliff and looked over the edge into that ‘never’. You had been so close to taking the leap and letting go of everything. Lucky for you, the years of waiting strangled your perception of time, meaning the days you took to decide weren’t the seconds it could have been. And, even luckier, it was during those days that Dark chose to talk to you.

You didn’t get to the bottom of what he wanted, but you didn’t care anymore. The warmth that flooded you was enough that the need to know didn’t bite at you like it normally would.

You were happy. What a weird thing to say. You liked it.

With your nine o’clock soirees becoming habit, you were able to handle the void better. The aforementioned cold, the darkness, the body. Hell, you even risked a look in your peripheral just to show it that you could get better, and that you had and—

No. No, no, no, no, please, no.

“Hello, darling.”

The body was standing, but it wasn’t just a body anymore, because it wasn’t that same body. Frozen exactly how you were, you were able to see the corpse on the ground, splayed out just as it was before, but it was rotting. The more pristine duplicate was not wearing the robe, and it wasn’t snapped at an odd angle. No, this one was decorated like an alter to a forgotten god, sporting a red jacket, black tap shoes and a damnable smirk that made you want to throw up.

The Devil wore a suit and tie, after all.

You stumbled back in a blind panic, back to the mirror that you had been staring out of. “No, no, you do not get to do this, not now!”

Mark laughed. “If I knew I was going to get this reaction, I would have come a lot earlier.”

Your order unheard, you resorted to the only thing that you could trust in the void, though you had to get closer first. You braved every step you forced your body to take and swung at his jaw. Miss. The spot you would have landed on was empty, and, next to you, a puff of smoke revealed him again.

“Now, now, none of that.” You moved to get as far away from as possible while he teased. “Fisticuffs aren’t my forté. I came here to bargain.”

“Yeah? And what could you give me that’ll stop me giving you another broken neck.” Make him match the shell he left behind.

His command of the void got under your skin and made your blood boil. Celine may have worked in the dark arts, but at least she knew when to stop. Meanwhile, Mark took all the power he could get, and then some more. He disappeared and then reappeared again behind you in whirls of shadow.

His breath fluttered against your neck, as he whispered, “Freedom.”

You spun around to see him further than he was supposed to be.

“That got your attention.”

Bartering with this demon was a terrible idea. It was the worst-case scenario, the bottom of the barrel, but there you were, standing before him and asking, “What do you want for it?”

“Oh, just a small thing. You’d barely notice it’s gone.”

“You’re a dramatic bitch, Mark, just spit it out.”

“Okay, here’s the deal—” you hated that he was so prepared for your attitude, “—I will let you out of this mirror, if you promise to come with me and stay with me, willingly.”

Sneaky bastard. It was like dealing with the fae; you needed to know every term and phrasing of a contract to agree with it, or you’d be giving up more than you thought.

“You’re avoiding the question,” you spoke. “What do you get out of this?”

His hand leaped to his chest, and he recoiled. You, meanwhile, didn’t try to keep your eyes still. “You don’t believe I can do this out of the kindness of my heart?"

“I don’t believe you have a heart.” He still didn’t look actually offended, although it played it up as such. Redirecting your gaze, you sighed, “You said a bargain.”

“I’ll get the smallest bit of revenge. That’s all.”

A man like Mark had to be in tune with everything around him to get where he was. Every action and every emotion were things he had to be able to sense, in order to use them to his advantage. Playing on your hesitation was child’s play.

“You can feel the sun on your skin, the wind in your hair. You can talk to people with no connection to your death.” That word sent knives through your chest and needles through your brain, as though your body was trying to reject the notion that it shouldn’t be functioning anymore. Still in the denial phase, after one hundred years.

You were on the edge of accepting. Mark could see it in your body language. Your attempt to broaden your shoulders and make yourself look intimidating was hindered by your worry – and when you tried to make eye-contact with him, you missed. So, he surmised, you just needed a little push.

A step and he was close to you. That shark’s grin widened when you didn’t move away. “You can live.”

“I just have to do that in your presence.”

“Is that so much to ask?”

It was. It was so much to ask because, and you reminded yourself as you stared at his outstretched hand, Mark was the one that prompted your death in the first place. Without him, you would have died of old age or in a boating accident or robbery gone bad or something other than this horrid immortality. You would have had an actual life.

And you wouldn’t have to sacrifice the one you are being offered.

“Do we have a deal?”

The Devil wore a suit and tie, indeed.

You would do it, take the new life and use it wisely. As soon as he finished doing whatever meant you could leave, you would take revenge on him, instead, for yourself, for Dark, for all the victims of this bloodied monster. And once he was dead, you would return to the manor, find Dark and… you weren’t quite sure what you would do then, but it was an appealing enough fantasy that you suffered through Mark’s frigid touch to take his hand.

Up, down. The deal was done. Nothing had changed, but a burst of confidence washed over you, allowing you to pull Mark forward and grab at his jacket’s collar. “The moment I am out of this mirror, I am going to cave your face in.”

Your snarl met a smirk. “I can’t wait.”

Slowly, he leaned down and brought your clasped hand to his lips. If you had more time, you might’ve killed him right there and then, but the explosion of smoke and ash whisked you away before you could. The cage, for once, was missing its prisoner, and the warden stood inside. He was proud of himself for tricking you – you had been a force to reckon with back in your prime. He’d seen you argue a case with just a few loopholes to go off of in court. However, your skills had waned in the years of disuse; you hadn’t even caught the cold terms of the agreement. It made him sigh a breath of relief that you hadn’t asked what you’d be missing, and the little thing that you wouldn’t notice was gone were your memories. He didn’t lie, after all, not that you would remember the trick he had pulled.

Good. The first step in his plan was an undeniable success. With the other hand to the one you had held, Mark withdrew a calligraphy pen from his jacket and turned towards the mirror screen, underneath which laid a single, old book.

You were sobbing when you came to. Clutching the dampened pages of the book, your book, ‘The Lady in the Lake’, your heart thundered against your ribs harder than it had before. The restriction in your throat compelled more tears, to the point that the ink on the paper disappeared into mush. You ruined it. You’d ruined everything. It was all your fault.

“You’re okay,” someone whispered in your ear. You registered the pressure on your shoulders before you met Dark’s eyes. You cried harder. Regret, shame, a terrifying horror filled you; you had hurt him, emotionally and physically, and sided with Mark to do it. Could he ever forgive you? You assumed he hadn’t considered anything yet, given how he spoke to you in such a soft tone. “It’s all okay.”

“Dark, I—” The words choked themselves in your throat. How could you explain yourself, you couldn’t just say you had a plan. It was a foolish plan, anyway, it didn’t deserve the strain it would take to convey it.

But Dark didn’t care. His hands tightened on your shoulders, eyes fluttering around your face like he couldn’t believe you were you again. “I know, I know, I know. You’re safe now.”

You believed him. You believed him more than you believed yourself right now. You should have trusted him from the very beginning, but you hadn’t, and now you were here, collapsed on the floor of his office and lunging to do the thing you had wanted to before you were taken.

Dark was a lot firmer than you had imagined him to be. You half expected him to disappear into smoke underneath your touch, but he stayed put, letting you wrap your arms around him and just hug him. The fabric of his suit was a comfort, but his neck against yours as you buried your head into his shoulder made you want to never let go. You had yet to bask in the ability to touch, too caught up with fully being conscious with Dark for the first time in months. You shifted, barely, when you felt his own hands come up to grip at your shoulder blades, the most comfortable position so that you could continue for as long as you wanted without losing feeling in any of your limbs.

If you were to ask him after the fact, after the two of you had separated and looked each other in the eyes again, Dark would deny the tears that formed at the bottom of his eyes, but he would gladly confirm the way you made him feel. Loved. Simple as that.

“I’m sorry, Dark, I’m so sorry,” you muttered, using one hand to try and fix his hair, “I thought, I thought I could… I’m so sorry.” Trying to explain it would only cause you to choke up again, so you were grateful for Dark’s ability to just nod, mutter that he understood, and attempt to correct your collar.

A wet laugh bubbled up. You could have really used a mirror.

You didn’t think you could look at another mirror ever again. After being trapped for so long, you’d take your chances looking like the corpse you were supposed to be.

But speaking of corpses…

Gingerly, you got up from the ground and put a hand out for Dark. He gladly took it, hoisting himself to his feet, and following your example of brushing yourself off. You were tired, after all this, but a good sleep was third on your list. First of all was the mission of finding and dealing with Mark.

You took Dark’s hand again after his go-ahead, grinning as though you had just won the lottery.

“Let’s go make good on my promise.”

If you had it your way, you would have picked up some gasoline and matches on the way back to Mark’s house, but an agreement with Dark meant that you were going to face him immediately. You supposed this was better. You hadn’t thought through the implications of brutalizing a popular actor, who, in the eyes of his coworkers, was self-centered but not evil. It put a damper on your mood to know that you couldn’t outright kill him, but it worked to stabilize you enough to come up with a plan. You could go in, beat Mark with your bare hands, stage a home invasion, leave a little of your blood, and then leave with your pride and dignity intact.

Mark being the only witness would be helpful, and he couldn’t rightly tell the truth about the situation. No, he’d have to come up with something new, and that would give you the time you needed to come up with more plans. You knew just the person who would be eager to help with that.

That was exactly why, not half an hour after you’d left the manor, you were again greeted by Dark in the entrance hallway’s mirror of Mark’s home. This time, you were able to appreciate the irony of seeing him behind a screen of glass, but you weren’t overjoyed to see it, like how you imagined you would be months prior. Instead, you shot him a smile and a wave and moved towards Mark’s bedroom.

Kicking down the door was fun, you had to admit. Seeing Mark’s shocked face was better.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, “I was worried when you weren’t in your room, I thought—”

“Shut up.”

God, that felt good! And Mark looked dismayed to hear you say it before his expression melted into fear at your approach. He stumbled up from his seat at his vanity. Helpful. It was easier to swing your first into his jaw, landing directly onto the spot Dark had hit before, to which he released a pained yelp and curse. You didn’t give him the chance to take a breath, shoving him into the wall and taking a mirror down with him. Deserved him right for owning so many.

“W-woah, pet,” your fists ached to hit him again, “think about what you’re doing.”

For a brief moment, as you lifted Mark by his collar, you felt bad. Not for Mark, no, but because it was so similar to what you had done to Dark. When you hadn’t realized who he was, when you had fought on Mark’s behalf. The monster you were risking touching earned everything you were going to do to him.

“Oh, I’ve thought about it, and I have never been more confident in my decision.” A manic grin split the bottom of your face in two. “I said I was going to cave your face in, Mark. Took a bit longer than I’d have liked but, y’know, we work with what we have.”

He tried to smile, but the shock of pain from his jaw stopped him, leaving him to cough out a laugh. “You’ve got this all wrong.”

“Hmm, go ahead, then.”

His silence was the best noise you’d heard.

“Turns out explaining isn’t your forté, either.”

Unblemished skin bruised like a peach every time you landed a hit. No blood, only blooming violets telling you what had happened. You lost ten minutes to that haze. Repeated punches and kicks where you could fit them in, the temptation of using a weapon the only thing you were aware of when you had to brush it off. It was when you knocked Mark into leaning against his vanity that you slowed down. Huffing and puffing, you reeled back your fist, then stopped.

He looked awful. He deserved to look awful. That wasn’t what had you pausing and lowering your clenched hand.

It was the sight of Dark in the fitted mirror. He was watching you; you had known that since you started, but he didn’t look happy. Conflict, if you had to label it, a war waged between a two parts of him. One that encouraged the fire, the flame, the inferno of bloodthirst propelling you forward in this unfair fight – and another that just wanted it all to be over, so that you could return home and you could start to live without Mark. On the outside, Dark looked cold. You liked that less than the soft, caring side you’d been shown before.

You gaze trailed downwards, to the monster that you’d been using your anger against. There wasn’t a spot you hadn’t damaged, nor a bone you hadn’t knocked. You were sure you had broken one of his ribs sometime in that fog. He was breathing at the same rate you were, forcing you to steady yourself and get back to a better rate.

Rubbing a hand on your shirt, you glanced around the room. It was destroyed enough, you only needed to shatter a window to sell the story of an invasion, done so in quick fashion with your shoe.

A look back to the vanity, you saw a beaten Mark, and Dark behind him, looking pleasantly surprised.

You walked slowly towards the door, crushing mirror shards underneath your feet.

“We had a deal.”

The choked reminder of a dying god.

“Choke on it.”

And you, a happy heretic, gathered the few sentimentals you had gained during your time there and collected them in a rucksack.

“Could you come back to the manor now?” Dark asked from the void of the mirror in your room. “We have matters to discuss.”

“We sure do.”

Your smile wasn’t as manic as it had been before. It settled more comfortably on your face; it suited you better. You were sure you would keep it for years to come if you stayed by Dark’s side, and, as you set off to return to the manor, you were reminded of the second point on your list.

You were going to admit every feeling you’d ever had for Dark.

[I was hoping to post this yesterday, but better late than never, eh? In all seriousness, thank you for reading, thank you for supporting, and I hope to see you guys in the next - and, hopefully, final - part that will be major fluff. Of course, there's going to be some angst, because I'm writing this, but it will be as wholesome as I can physically make it!]

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