#longer (and never did) exist. and externalizing that pain as violence of course.

[frogs-in3-hills]

i should make like a “stupid synthesis” tag or something for when i make stupid connections between pieces of media that have next to nothing in common. i do it too much and i’m the only one who thinks it’s funny. wouldn’t you say the traumagenic nature of superpowers in worm chaining people to their most vulnerable moments and externalizing that pain as violence is rather like the inverse of the “coffin motif”. the panopticon / the perpetual motion machine. in a way, aren’t all parahumans like the rose bride

[underforeversgrace]

searching for the severed tether (let me return)

title: searching for the severed tether (let me return)

words: 9893

summary: Danny’s core won’t stop hurting and he isn’t entirely sure why - is it just exhaustion? Something else? He would quite like for it to stop hurting, instead the pain’s getting worse.

Meanwhile, Jazz gets called for an assembly.

And then it all goes to hell in a hand basket.

WARNINGS: GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE/DISSECTION

AO3

It was times like this when Danny really, really wished the only other true halfa in existence wasn’t a damn fruitloop.

Danny rubbed a hand against his chest as his core spasmed again, a small sound of pain escaping him. His core outright hurt.

“Dude, are you sure you’re okay?” Tucker asked beside him, placing his hand on Danny’s shoulder as the halfa tucked in slightly on himself, instinctually trying to protect his core despite there being no external threat right now.

“Yeah, I think I just tried to overexert the duplicate last night and my core is just being whiny about it.” Danny said, trying to draw in a deep, calming breath. When his core got even angrier at that, though, he decided that - since breathing was optional anyway - he was just going to… not breathe. Not until his core stopped sending shocks throughout his entire body with every convulsion.

“I don’t know, Danny. Something seems wrong. What happened, again?” Sam said, frowning as Danny leaned against his locker, trying to pull himself together before first period started. Figures, the day he’s actually on time, he’s in a weird type of pain. Sure, he’d been in pain before - and come to school with varying degrees of would-be-fatal injuries more times than he could count - but his core had never done this.

“I’m not fully sure,” Danny answered. “I haven’t had any issues with duplication since I got the hang of it a few months ago. There was a low level ghost last night and I decided to practice letting the duplicate handle it. It was just a small animal ghost. Me number two trapped it and came home and dumped it in the Zone. I think.”

“You think?” Sam said.

Danny shrugged. “I don’t actually remember what happened once the duplicate got home. It’s just… blackness. I felt some pain and then the, uh, I don’t know, the feed from the duplicate cut out? But the Thermos was in the lab when I went to check it in the morning and it was empty.”

“Are you positive the duplicate returned?”

“That’s the only thing that could cause me to lose access to the duplicate’s eyes and ears. I either can sense them or they’ve been snapped back to me. It’s happened before, in fights.”

Sam frowned at him. “Something’s up, Danny, and I don’t like it. Let us know if it gets worse, okay?”

“Of course.” Danny lied. In all honesty, it had been steadily getting worse since he lost the duplicate, but there was no use worrying them. He’d just overextended a power he still only had minor control over and his core was fatigued or something. 

After all, what else could cause him to lose the duplicate’s input? Duplicates were a part of him - he saw through a duplicate’s eyes right alongside his own, in his mind. He felt his reactions transmit through to the duplicates. As far as he could tell, the duplicates he created had no mind of their own - it was just… hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t a ghost. It was still one body, one mind, that reacted and thought, just multiple instances of the same body doing so and there still being one main body?

It wasn’t worth trying to explain, they couldn’t understand. He barely did. But he knew it - if he couldn’t feel the duplicate, it no longer existed. He’d tested that.

Another spasm flared in his core and he gritted his teeth, swallowing the grunt of pain that tried to spill from him. He didn’t want his friends to worry for him. He’d survived worse - he was fairly certain of that. Even if he didn’t exactly know what he was suffering from. Surely, it was just exhaustion and overexertion. The duplicate hadn’t even been harmed - he always got the damage his duplicates sustained when they faded and snapped back to him and he was injury free.

What else could it be, then, other than pushing himself too far? Clearly, he was fine. 

The alarm indicating five minutes until the first bell rang overhead and Danny forced himself to stop leaning against the locker, holding his weight with his own two feet. Apparently even that was too much energy for his tired core - it sent another convulsion, but he managed to hide it as well. Pain happened in waves, sometimes. This, while the source and type of pain was different, was still a pain he knew.

They set off towards their first class, English with Mr. Lancer, and Danny tried to force the conversion to a more normal topic - namely, homework, which he had not done.

That was one of the reasons he was pushing his duplication so hard. He needed to be in two places at once if he was ever going to manage satisfying his ghostly Need to protect Amity Park and the human desire to pass high school. Until he got it down pat, Need would always overwhelm desire.

They settled into their seats near the door and Tucker pulled out the homework, setting it on the corner of his desk, where Danny shamelessly copied some of the shorter and multiple choice questions. There were two long-form essay questions at the bottom that he knew he’d never manage to answer in the - he looked at the clock - two minutes and seventeen seconds until the tardy bell rang. As he copied, Sam kept a close look out the door, where Lancer stood with his back to them, monitoring the halls. She’d alert Danny if Lancer turned around so he didn’t get busted cheating.

Satisfied he’d done enough to earn at least a 65% (D’s gets degrees!), he shoved the completed assignment into his binder as the bell rang, still studiously burying every single flinch and whimper his body tried to produce when his core continued to rhythmically flare within him. He shook his hands some, an odd feeling around his wrists that he couldn’t place, a pressure he couldn’t identify pressing against his flesh. Great, was this nerve damage? Could he get nerve damage?

When Lancer came around to collect homework, Danny hurried to grab the worksheet he’d ‘forgotten’ to pull out of his binder. Was the show unnecessary? Maybe. But it helped him feel more at ease and less like he’d give Lancer suspicions of his… he didn’t want to call it cheating (he had enough trauma around cheating, okay?) but it was technically minor cheating. Lancer collected the paper from his hand and upon seeing it lacked any answers for the two essay questions, he sighed.

“See me after class, Mr. Fenton. You haven’t turned in a complete worksheet in three months.”

Danny turned red and sunk into his seat slightly as the class laughed. He… hadn’t realized that. Lancer just shook his head and walked away, his aura of disappointment almost as visible as Danny’s own glow when he was Phantom.

Danny almost missed when Lancer’s reactions to him were indifference, if he was being honest. When his reaction was just to give him detention, smirk, and then promptly forget Danny existed in favor of praising some jock for some good athletic thing they’d done. Now, though - after nearly two years of Phantom existing and Danny a junior in high school - Lancer had changed. He’d changed sometime last year, no longer indifferent to the struggling teenager, instead he kept trying to push Danny to do better and was let down every time Danny failed.

So, yeah, Danny really wished Lancer would go back to not caring. He got enough disappointment from his parents, thanks. The next ache in his chest wasn’t from his core, instead a tug of sadness on his very human heart. Life really wasn’t getting any easier for him. Today, he would at least try to learn something, he decided as he actually followed the lecture Lancer was giving.

Suddenly, all of the students (and Lancer) half jumped from their seats as the door to the classroom slammed open, Jazz stumbling in with panic etched on her face.

“They’ve got him!” She yelled, eyes fixating on Sam and Tucker. Confusion replaced panic as she saw her brother, though. “Danny?”

“Jazz? What’s wrong?” Tucker asked, throwing a glance towards Danny.

Jazz didn’t get the chance to answer as ice seemed to flash freeze his veins while fire burned into his chest. Danny couldn’t stop the outright scream that pulled from him as he slammed his hand against the feeling of fire. The feeling pulled against his skin - starting up near his collarbone and seeming to move diagonally.

“Mr. Fenton! What’s wrong?” Lancer asked, hurrying towards where Danny sat.

“Fenton must’ve broken a nail.” Dash said, snorting with laughter.

Danny didn’t hear any of them even as Sam, Tucker, and Jazz surrounded him. All he could focus on was pain. 

“What the hell?” Sam breathed, staring at where he felt fire. Was something actually there?

He clawed at the neckline of his shirt, ripping it in his desperation to see what was going on, uncaring what anyone else saw. The fire eased momentarily then began in his opposite shoulder, following the same slanted path as the previous one, pulling towards the other burning path.

He grabbed and pulled the shirt, successfully exposing where he felt fire.

“Dante’s Inferno!” Lancer yelled, having pushed his way between Sam and Jazz to see him, staring at what Danny revealed. His friends and sister made similar exclamations of shock, Jazz throwing her hands over her mouth as tears welled in her eyes.

Danny couldn’t look anywhere but his exposed flesh, though, as fire continued to tear and drag along the skin of his chest, his core’s spasming increasing in violence and pain.

“What’s all the fuss?” Dash demanded, pushing Tucker out of the way. Tucker, still staring at Danny in shock, was easily thrown back, barely catching himself as he was thrown into the desk he’d abandoned. “What the fuck, Fenton?” Dash screeched, summoning the rest of the class to get a better look.

Sounds of horror, disgust, fear, and one person losing their breakfast descended across the room. In the mere minute since Jazz had arrived, the entire mood of the room had shifted.

No one entirely knew how to react as they watched Danny Fenton’s flesh appear to be magically cut apart, a bleeding Y slowly forming on him as he sat in his desk in the formerly normal English class, painting his entire chest in the shiny red of wet blood.

~~~~~~

Jazz settled into her desk, dutifully pulling out the completed homework (and extra credit assignment) out of her backpack, gently smoothing the already smooth paper, reading over the neat handwriting all across the page, rereading the work she had done.

She listened to the other seniors in the class mumbling amongst themselves, questioning various parts of the assignment they’d had difficulty with. Jazz, who hadn’t had any difficulty and actually found the assignment quite enjoyable, remained silent. She had long since learned that people didn’t want her help, would glare at her and call her names when she did with ease what they struggled to do. She’d offered to help since she was young, but the smarter her peers realized she was, the more they resented her.

It was just jealousy, she knew that. She knew she was brilliant and many people wished academics came as easily to them as they did her. It didn’t make the rejection hurt any less, no matter how often she rationalized it. She, maybe better than anyone, knew that emotions couldn’t always be rationalized. Emotions weren’t logical.

So Jazz kept her head down as more of her class trickled in, ignoring the questions around her she knew the answers to.

Sometimes, Jazz wondered if they’d be as jealous of her if they knew her life. They all knew she was a Fenton, that had kept the jealousy at bay for years until they truly realized how bright Jazz was. Who would want to be a part of that family?

But would they be jealous of the nightmares she had, of finding her brother dissected in her own basement? If they lived with the chill that permeated their home ever since the portal had opened, leaving her unable to escape the cold of death even within her room? The first aid kit under her bed, the blood that frequently stained her hands as she became an expert of giving stitches through sheer practice? The constant fear of her parents unknowingly - or even worse, knowingly - killing someone she loved?

She quite imagined no one would be jealous of her if they knew that, though. It had hurt, when some of them had passively aggressively mocked her for not graduating early, something she’d thought she would do ever since middle school? But she’d ignored it, done her best to not take it to heart.

Did her best to not become overwhelmed and yell about how she could’ve graduated two years ago and left them all behind, a fact she kept from everyone, even Danny, because she needed to be there to check the lab every time he didn’t answer her calls.

It didn’t matter, though. She had her books and her brother. His friends had become hers too, though not to the same level with her as with him. She had her family’s love, even if it was wrought with secrets and fear. She was part of something bigger, she helped protect the protector of their town, one of only three in the world who did so. It was enough.

She was a Fenton and Fentons protected the people they loved, above all else.

“Alright class,” Mr. Jordans said, pulling the door shut behind him as the tardy bell rang. “I know we had planned to launch into some of Shakespeare’s more obscure works today, but there has been a change of plans.”

Jazz watched the teacher with rapt attention, as she always did, though now she was curious. Mr. Jordans was stern, strict, and unyielding. His syllabus hadn’t changed or deviated in over a decade, according to rumors, even once ghost attacks became a thing they had to worry about. What could persuade him to change it now?

“We will be in the auditorium for first period today - all of the senior class will. You can leave your things here, though, I’ll lock the room.”

“What’re we doing? Another assembly about graduation?” One of her classmates asked as everyone lifted out of their chairs, the scrapes of the metal feet against plastic tile squeaking loudly as so many people moved at once.

“It’s a demonstration that the administration has been planning for a while. Come along, the speakers will explain in more detail.”

The seniors filed out of the class, Jordans locking the door behind him. Jazz glanced at her wrist, confirming the presence of the inconspicuous wrist ray. Ghost weapons were still weapons and therefore not allowed on school property, but Jazz decided some rules were worth breaking. Besides, it looked like a normal bracelet anyway and couldn’t hurt a human. She left the rest of her things in the classroom.

More senior students joined them on the trek to the auditorium, some wondering what they were doing, others hoping this wasn’t yet another lecture on colleges and the various testings they all needed to have done as soon as possible.

For Jazz, though, a sense of unease tickled at her. Unscheduled assemblies weren’t something they had very often. A few during the beginning of the ghost outbreak, sure, as they learned how to navigate rapidly changing evacuation plans, but the ghost protocols had long since been ironed down and they hadn’t had a meeting like this in a long time.

She reached the auditorium and sat near the back, watching as others began to fill the other seats steadily.

Finally, movement stopped and everyone had settled. One of the other senior teachers walked onto the stage, testing the mic.

“Good morning!” The teacher (Mrs. Arnolds? Mrs. Armando? Jazz wasn’t sure, this wasn’t one of her teachers) called out. Shouted and mumbled responses filled the space. She held up a hand and the crowd hushed again. “I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re all here.” Brief noises of agreement. “We actually have a ghost demonstration for you all, at the request of the school board. Please, join me in welcoming Dr. and Dr. Fenton!”

Even before her parents came onto the stage, Jazz’s cheeks burned red. What humiliation was she about to endure? Judging from how some classmates glanced at her, some with pity and some with smirks, the other students were wondering the same thing.

The teacher handed off the mic to Maddie and quickly bolted. A glance around the room showed all the teachers had left the room. Figures. No one wanted to be near the elder Fentons any longer than necessary. Especially Jack Fenton.

Still, the unease in her mind grew. Something just felt… ominous.

“Hi kids!” Maddie called out cheerily, her hood pulled up and covering most of her face. “We have a demonstration to show you all! It’ll be fun and informational!”

“And messy!” Jack provided unnecessarily. That was when Jazz realized his hood was pulled up as well. The sense of wrong increased, worry joining it. Her father didn’t often wear his hood.

“Well, yes, messy too,” Maddie said with a laugh. Jack disappeared off stage for a moment, returning with a large box in his hands. “So the first few rows should wear these or move back!”

A mass exodus occurred from the first several rows, everyone moving back. In the end, only a dozen or so students ended up in the ‘splash zone.’ What were her parents about to do that had the first five rows as at risk of getting gooped?

“Don’t worry about not getting a close up view, we’ve got a video feed rigged up!” Jack said, his large grin taking up the entirety of the visible portion of his face, gesturing to a machine in front of him that stood tall and then hooked over, the camera pointing down. Why was he so excited? What was this camera for? What were they about to do?

“Jack, dear, if you’ll go get the specimen.” Maddie said, Jack again disappearing off stage. Jazz’s heart skipped a beat. Specimen. Danny tried so hard to keep all the ghosts with more sentience than a blob out of her parents hands, had they caught one? “Now, unfortunately, only the seniors will get to experience the demonstration. Some younger students may get sick and apparently there’s a junior who is likely to stage a protest against this, so the whole grade was excluded. But it truly is once in a lifetime! We’ve been planning this for several months, we just needed to get a suitable specimen to do the demonstration with, which we successfully obtained last night. So, sorry for the last minute notice! I promise it will be worth it!”

Jazz didn’t really have a moment to process her mother’s words or her practically tangible excitement as a green glow began getting close from the side Jack had disappeared to.

As Jack and the specimen came into view, Jazz’s screams were mixed with other students.

Jack wheeled what looked like a gurney onto the stage, a glowing green shield fixed to it and moving with him as he slid the table under the camera, the feed going live as he did so and displaying in theater-like size on the wall behind him.

Danny Phantom was on the table, strapped to it, though he didn’t appear to be harmed - not yet. The camera picked up on his noises and they could hear him screaming through the gag in his mouth, tears tinged with green sliding from his eyes, where terror shone brighter than the green of his iris. He was struggling, clearly trying to fight for his life, but he seemed weaker than Jazz had ever seen him. Why hadn’t he shifted to human long before now? Had they neutralized his powers somehow?

“Now who’s ready to watch the live dissection of a ghost?” Her mother called out, as though pumping up an excited crowd, a scalpel gripped in her hand.

Noise erupted - but none of it the excitement her parents were clearly hoping for. Jazz’s pulse quickened, she needed to figure a way out of this and she needed to figure it out before they disfigured her brother. Luckily, the other students seemed outraged as they railed at her parents.

“What the hell are you doing?” One called.

“Let him go!” Another yelled.

“You can’t hurt him!”

“What is wrong with you people?”

“He’s our hero!”

“He keeps us safe!”

Their voices rose as the students did too, pulling up from their seats. Jazz looked at her brother’s glowing body, the sobs and screams muffled in the gag. Okay. Okay. She needed to get Danny out, without exposing his secret to anyone, without outing herself as a Phantom helper to her parents or classmates, and without hurting her parents.

That fourth goal was optional, though.

Okay, Jazz. Figure it out. Figure it out.

She took in the entire scene again even as her heart constricted painfully. Danny had never looked so afraid. Two things struck her - the presence of a ghost shield and the apparent lack of Danny’s powers. A conversation from dinner weeks ago drew itself forward. Her parents had been working on making a ghost shield that was designed to keep ghosts in, she remembered, to make them easier to capture and fight. Lure and trap method. That must be it! The ghost shield was trapping him and neutralizing his abilities. She needed to disable the ghost shield.

She needed Tucker and his PDA.

She had left her phone in the classroom.

Jazz was preparing to bolt when her parents finally subdued the crowd, the angry yells fading away as they were informed that this demonstration was for a grade, was not optional, and had been cleared by the school’s leaders as well as the school board. 

Jazz had a feeling the dissection may have been approved, but the subject on the table absolutely was not. The teachers here had long since warmed to Phantom and the countless times he’d saved them.

Frozen with indecision, Jazz watched her classmates return to their seats, merely grumbling. On stage, her mother sliced clean through the top half of Danny’s suit.

Jazz wasn’t sure if the gasps of pity, horror, and disgust were from his suit being cut away, the various scars from ghost battles glowing softly against his tanned skin, or the Lichtenberg Figure that spread across his left arm and chest, a shimmering green. Maybe all of the above, actually. Jazz still got ill sometimes when she saw some of her brother’s deeper scars.

She needed to get Tucker - she knew what class he was in. But she also needed to delay the… the vivisection long enough to get to him and get back here.

Her parents were talking still, talking about the steps and procedures they’d need to follow, their hypotheses for what they’d find when they opened it up, and continual reassurance that the thing on the table couldn’t feel pain or true emotion - it was faking right now.

She needed them to keep talking for as long as possible.

Jazz turned to the classmate directly beside her, gripping his wrist suddenly. She thinks his name might have been Steve, but she wasn’t sure.

He jumped slightly towards her at the sudden touch, his mouth opening, but she cut him off. “Tell everyone to ask questions and keep those two distracted.” Jazz hissed, glancing at her parents to make sure they didn’t hear her, though she was definitely too far away.

“What?” He asked lowly, pulling his wrist from her. “They’re your psychotic parents!”

“Which means I know how to get Phantom out.” Jazz practically growled. She’d wanted to keep it a secret that she helped the town hero, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “Pass it down. Keep them talking. Ask questions to Jack, specifically. Mention fudge. Just keep them talking.”

Steve looked at Phantom’s face, the ghost’s sobs still echoing the room, then returned to her. “Hurry.” He said, already leaning into the person next to him.

All Jazz could do was hope this worked, surely she just needed a few minutes.

Jazz jumped up and ran from the room when neither of her parents were looking in her general direction, her flats slamming against the floor as she ran for Danny’s life. Of course, Lancer’s classroom had to be clear on the opposite side of the school. Those VR workouts were apparently helping, though, (or maybe it was adrenaline and fear) as she never once let up on her speed, slamming open the door, causing many of the people in there to jump. She couldn’t care less about anyone else right now, though.

“They’ve got him!” She screamed, some small relief growing in her as she quickly spotted Tucker and Sam. Those two were known (suspected) Phantom helpers, she didn’t need to worry about outing them. Looks of confusion were all she received as she noticed Danny sitting close to the door. Huh? Was one of them fake? Was it actually Amorpho or a ghost like him, either here or on that table? “Danny?” She questioned.

“Jazz? What’s wrong?” Tucker asked her, though an awful scream from her brother prevented her from answering, instead drawing herself, his friends, and Lancer to his side.

~~~~~~

“Mr. Fenton! What’s wrong?” William Lancer asked as he moved with the grace of a former cheerleader to Daniel’s seat, the scream of agony still ringing in his ears. He vaguely heard Mr. Baxter say something - probably rude - but Lancer ignored him for now, inserting himself between Ms. Fenton and Ms. Manson.

“What the hell?” Manson asked as Mr. Fenton began to rip at his shirt. Lancer was stunned into silence as red began to stain through Daniel’s white shirt, just under his left shoulder.

“Dante’s Inferno!” Lancer cried as the teen successfully ripped and pulled at his shirt in a frenzied, panicked hurry. William didn’t know how to react as he saw the freely bleeding, inexplicably clean cut starting at Daniel’s left collarbone and slanting down, another cut pulling open skin directly in front of him, no blade in sight.

Daniel seemed stricken into silence as well as he saw what was happening, saw the injuries just appearing in his flesh. He was still making sounds of pain, tears slipping from his eyes, but Lancer didn’t think he even realized it.

“What’s all the fuss?” Mr. Baxter asked. Lancer didn’t even get onto him as the jock pushed Mr. Foley out of the way.

Lancer’s brain was still… struggling.

“What the fuck, Fenton?” The quarterback yelled, drawing the rest of the students, who all ogled at Mr. Fenton like an odd circus attraction.

The three who had first ran to Daniel - Ms. Fenton, Ms. Manson, Mr. Foley - were the first ones to snap back into action.

“Back off him!” Samantha yelled, bodily pushing away some of the people closest to her.

“Give him space!” Tucker added, roughly pushing Dash back away and reinserting himself. “Jazz, get the bandages out of my backpack!” He added, pressing his bare hands against part of the wound.

Oddly enough, it was that action that spurned Lancer back into action. Mr. Foley’s phobia of anything medical, of blood, was well known, even being a note in his school record. Yet, the teenager had launched directly for his friend, not even flinching as blood began to drip through his fingers, hiding his dark skin until his hand looked more red than anything else.

“Everyone, back up!” Lancer yelled. The students, in a rare show of obedience, all immediately pulled back. “We need to get him on the floor, so he doesn’t hurt himself if he passes out.” He barked to the three aiding Daniel. Samantha and Tucker looked at each other and nodded, easing Mr. Fenton out of his chair and onto his back on the floor as Jasmine pulled a rather large medical kit from the backpack, quickly pulling gauze out, trying to apply enough pressure to his wounds to get the bleeding to stop. Lancer didn’t ask to help, he just grabbed more of the gauze and mimicked what Jasmine was doing. All three looked at him but a sharp scream from Daniel drew them immediately back to him.

“Jazz, talk.” Tucker ordered, a sureness and confidence Lancer had never seen from the boy surprising him. The gauze in Lancer’s hand was already saturated and he tossed it to the side, pulling more to him and trying to keep pressure up but the blood just kept coming. It pooled on the floor beneath him, turning his knees wet as he continued to kneel in his student’s blood. He watched as some flowed from the upper part of his chest, slightly settling in the hollow of Daniel’s throat before more began to drip down into it, causing it to overflow the small indentation. Two thin red streams ran across either side of Daniel’s neck, making the gruesome scene look even worse.

“I don’t know what’s happening! All the seniors were pulled in for a demonstration - it was my parents - they have Phantom and are planning to autopsy him - I guess they’ve started by now - he’s in a shield that negates his powers - I don’t know how there’s two of them - Tucker you need to hack their shield.” Jasmine answered, each sentence short and to the point as though she was used to giving information quickly in urgent situations.

Samantha and Tucker shared another look, both seeming to realize something at the same time. Simultaneously to the apparent revelation, another scream came from Daniel, louder and longer than any yet. Lancer felt a small pop beneath his hand and briefly lifted it to check if something had happened. The skin beneath him almost seemed to be moving? Becoming looser and blood flowed harder. The popping continued even as Lancer pressed down even harder. It was almost like his skin was being torn from the muscle beneath it? 

Tucker cursed and stood, grabbing one of the students behind him and pulling her forward. “Press down here and do not stop applying pressure.” Tucker ordered Star, who looked pale, but did as she was asked. Daniel looked at her but he didn’t really seem able to see any of them as he continued to wordlessly scream.

“Dash, Kwan!” Samantha yelled, not moving from her spot. “Do not ask questions. The Fentons are in the auditorium with Phantom. Go there and get them the hell away, I don’t care how, but do not take no for an answer!” She barked, clearly expecting her orders to be followed.

“Maddie is a black belt, be careful getting in close quarters with her. Jack isn’t much of a fighter but he has size on his side.” Jasmine added.

Dash and Kwan (along with a few other athletes) ran from the room, not even acknowledging the instructions they’d been given.

“What does Phantom have to do with anything?” Lancer asked, feeling the bandages in his hand saturate once more. “We need to get him to the hospital!”

“Call an ambulance and I will personally make sure your body is never found.” Samantha growled. Normally, he’d brush it off as teenage overexaggeration but… the way she looked at him. The fierceness in her eyes, the danger that she seemed to be projecting. Lancer fully believed her in that moment and elected to keep quiet. 

They were quickly running out of gauze that wasn’t saturated straight through. When Daniel screamed again, Lancer found himself wishing the poor child would just pass out from blood loss or pain already. Judging by the size of the pool he knelt in - the growing size, at that - Lancer was sure he should’ve been unconscious by now.

Lancer was fairly certain he should be dead by now, if he was honest.

“Danny is Phantom.” Tucker answered, furiously pressing at his PDA. “There’s no keeping it a secret, at least from this class.” The boy looked up from his PDA, glaring at the classmates still gathered in horror, long since stunned speechless from the horror of their classmate apparently being autopsied alive in front of them without a single weapon in sight. “And you all will keep it a secret or you will regret it.”

The class nodded furiously. William wasn’t sure if it was because they were in shock, didn’t believe it, adored Phantom, or if Tucker Foley was just that terrifying in that moment. Lancer would never in a million years have called the technology obsessed teenager intimidating, especially with an old PDA in his hands, but he cut a striking figure right now - anger and determination in his eyes, his voice, his body, coated in the blood of his friend beside him, khaki pants more red than beige at this point, blood splattered across his shirt, his face, his arms. Ms. Manson, visible behind him, looked absolutely feral, similarly covered in blood.

Lancer felt like his entire brain was shutting down. Daniel Fenton was Danny Phantom? The idea was ludicrous and if he’d only heard it, he may have actually laughed it off. But Daniel Fenton was bleeding beneath Lancer’s hands, screaming himself hoarse in agony. Danny Phantom was being autopsied in the school. Daniel Fenton had wounds no human should survive, much less be conscious for. Guilt surged in him. All the detentions he’d given, all the times he’d said Danny could succeed if he just put forth a minuscule amount of effort. All the failed tests, missing or half done homework, all the times he’d fallen asleep in class.

Lancer had been so, so wrong. This student may be one of the most hard working he’d ever seen. Everyone knew Phantom was up at all hours, everyone had seen Phantom bleed green at this point. Yet still, Daniel Fenton tried, despite being a hero.

Despite being dead.

How had Lancer not noticed his student died?

“Jazz, Sam, try to stitch him up, see if that helps the bleeding. Lancer, continuing applying pressure.” Tucker continued, offering up no other information on the absolute bombshell he’d just dropped. The two nodded and immediately went into action, pulling out string and thread and trying to hurriedly sew up the large wound.

Lancer wasn’t sure if the calm, practiced ease with which they did this was a good thing or bad thing. Good, because it meant Daniel was being cared for. Bad, because how often it suggested he needed to be cared for.

The screaming began to quiet down, no new injuries or popping sounds occurred. Lancer hoped his students hadn’t gotten too injured fighting the Fentons away, but at least the athletes that had gone to face seemed to have succeeded.

Lancer felt… slightly out of his body right now, if he was being honest. He couldn’t think well, a feeling he had never truly encountered before. But this was his student, this was a hero, and by Charles Dickens himself, Lancer would do everything he could to help the teenager beneath him, even as his pants began to feel cold and wet, as so much blood seeped into his hands he wondered if permanent discoloration was possible. 

“What’s happening? How are there two of him?” Jasmine asked, her voice shaking, even though her hands didn’t.

“He lost a duplicate last night,” Samantha answered, Tucker entirely engrossed by his PDA, visibly biting his lip. “He thought he just had tried to use more energy than he had, that it absorbed back into him, because he couldn’t sense the duplicate anymore.”

Jasmine - in a motion that would’ve shocked Lancer speechless on any other day - swore loudly. “They got the duplicate and the shield cut the connection. The duplicate is ectoplasm, so it can’t get through the shield to reabsorb.”

“And apparently the shield doesn’t stop the damage transfer.” Sam concluded.

“Got it!” Tucker yelled, jabbing victoriously at something in the PDA screen.

Not even a moment after Tucker did that, Daniel screamed again, back arching involuntarily. White rings appeared along his waist, blinding Lancer.

~~~~~~

He held the Thermos securely in both hands, while his other body’s hands pulled the comforter up higher, snuggling into the warmth. He attached the Thermos back to his hip and began to head home. It had been an easy capture, he hadn’t even really had to fight the animalistic ghost. He thinks it was an animal, at least. Not one from this dimension, though, as he had never seen an animal like it before. And, with how many teeth it had in its five mouths, he didn’t really want to ever see the live version of that creature.

The duplicate Phantom flew in from beneath the house, like he always did, phasing up through the floor and immediately pressing the Thermos into the canister release on the portal.

Maybe he should’ve actually checked his surroundings, though, or at least attempted invisibility. It being three a.m. didn’t mean he was the only one awake in this house.

Electricity buzzed through the air as green encased him. He stiffened at the sound, rounding to see who was behind him. Mercifully, no electricity shocked him, though the air was still heavy with its charge.

“Got it, Mads!” Jack exclaimed from beyond the shield.

“It really isn’t very intelligent, is it?” Maddie asked, stepping closer until she was just outside the sphere.

Not as dumb as you think! He thought, reaching for the core of his true body.

He felt only emptiness, only his half core. He had felt his whole body just moments ago, why could he no longer reach it? He was moderately surprised to find he was thinking on his own, even if he realized it was only surface level thoughts.

Still, he did not like being cut off from his body, he didn’t like the emptiness in his mind, in his chest. He felt empty and torn, in a quite literal way.

Plan B, then. Phantom determined, tugging his invisibility forward, planning to invisibly shift human, clear the shield, then return to his body.

The electricity flared again, though this time it was more than just sound. It felt like he was being struck by lightning in multiple places, currents of electricity criss crossing his entire body in a patchwork of pain. He collapsed to his knees once it stopped, pulling in ragged breaths as his body shook from the aftershocks. He felt like half of himself right now, but apparently pain still managed to be just as painful. Lovely. Just… lovely.

“Good job on the power nullification, sweetie!” Maddie said, reaching up and pecking Jack lovingly on the cheek. “It worked perfectly!”

Seeing they had successfully incapacitated him, the two approached, clearing the shield with ease. Phantom didn’t have time to respond as Jack shot him point blank in the face, throwing him backwards into the shield, where electricity danced inside him again even as his face felt half burnt off.

Judging by the slick feel of ectoplasm lazily falling along his neck, they may have actually burnt him that badly. He didn’t have a single moment to fight, to beg, to explain as Jack pinned him to the ground, one foot pressed firmly against Phantom’s chest and digging him into the ground as Jack leaned forward, nearly crushing the ghost under his father’s weight.

Instinctually, he tried to go intangible, only to feel the harsh currents penetrate his body again. He cried out in pain, his limbs again heavy and foreign as his fingers twitched through the electricity’s remnants. His mind scattered, unable to form a cohesive thought, as Maddie knelt next to him, quickly binding his wrists and ankles, forcing a gag into his mouth.

By the time his mind was clear again, he was strapped to a cold metal table, jaw forced open too wide. He tried to fight, but he was too weak and the restraints too strong. The green glow of the ghost shield still encased him, still cut him off from his body, unable to call for help or return to his soul.

“I’ll call the school in the morning and let them know!” Jack said from somewhere behind him, out of his line of sight.

Phantom’s heart sank. School? Did they… did they know? Who he was? Tears entirely unrelated to pain began to fall. Why else would they need to call the school? What were they going to do? Unenroll Danny Fenton, pretend they were shipping him off to some military school for delinquents or something?

What would they do when they found Danny Fenton, asleep and sound in his bed, come the morning?

His parents left, chattering excitedly about all the tools they needed to prepare, his mother wondering where she had left the most recent shipment of scalpels, she wanted to make sure she used the sharpest they had.

He fought the restraints as hard as he could, he kept forcing down sobs. He could have a mental breakdown after he escaped, rejoined his body, and fled into the Ghost Zone. It had always been the plan - if his parents didn’t accept him, he would run to the Far Frozen.

He had always been afraid they’d never accept him, but some part of him had done its best to let him never truly believe they’d kill their son. But now they had caught him, they were calling the school to pull out Danny Fenton, and then they were going to dissect him. All without caring he was their son.

By the time he fell asleep, the injury on his face had healed and bruises littered his ankles and wrists, his jaw ached dully from being forced open. He hadn’t allowed himself to fully cry, to do more than broken sobs, the entire time.

Morning came far too quickly - the clock on the wall when he awoke said it was 5:30 in the morning. Well, once he was able to read it. Apparently the best way to wake up their son/a ghost/a prisoner was to use an ecto-taser and force him awake. He looked around the room in a panic, wondering if he was about to see his true body down here with him, but he was still alone. He attempted to sigh in relief, the sound halted by the gag in his mouth. Maybe they just wouldn’t check his room. Maybe the primary him could get out without being seen, could get to school and find out what happened when he undoubtedly got asked why he was there when his parents had pulled him.

But he knew he was fine for now. He was still fueled by the core. He would still fade if the core did. He could still feel a small strand of the core, fueling this body, even if he could not feel the soul within his true body.

At least it was him - a simple duplicate - who was caught. Any snap back damage would be severe, yes, but no one needed to release him. Someone just needed to get that shield and he could reabsorb into himself.

Jack and Maddie’s voices were again behind him. 

“They’ve given the okay! They’ll call the seniors from their first period classes and we’ll all meet in the assembly. Principal Ishiyama said we should probably be able to start by 8:15.” Maddie said.

If he was capable of frowning right now, he would. What were they talking about? What did any of that have to do with him? After all, he knew his parents. They would not delay the chance to mutilate him, they wouldn’t do anything that didn’t involve him, a metal table, and a scalpel until they were well and done with him, until he learned if it was possible to kill him. 

“Shame it’s just the seniors.” Jack said with a yawn. “I wish Dannyboy could see his parents in action!”

Uh. What?

“I know,” Maddie said, placing a placating hand on her husband’s shoulder. “But we’ll video tape it and show him when we get home! And Jazz will be in the audience!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack whined. “I still would prefer it being a family experience. I guess the video will have to be enough.”

“It will be. Also, did you load all the supplies into the GAV, dear?” Maddie asked.

“Yeah, all the boxes and at least five copies of everything, and like twenty scalpels.”

“Good! Then I actually believe at least half of that actually managed to get put in the GAV.” Maddie teased, giggling. “Don’t want to delay the demonstration!”

Wait. Wait. What? His brain - still cut off from the primary processing of his full mind - sluggishly pieced together their words. School. Danny is still their son. Demonstration.

Was he about to get dissected in front of the damn school?

Still, if he had a heart right now, it would be calming down. Casper High’s students wouldn’t let him get hurt, too many idolized him. Jazz would be there.

He would be saved.

His parents continued to chatter, loading him - table, shield, and all - into the GAV. He wished he was more of a morning person, maybe his main body would’ve seen him strapped to the table and stopped this. Phantom wondered how his body was faring. He had no doubt the connection was severed from him as well, but how was his core handling sustaining a duplicate for this long?

One of the numerous bumps (likely curbs they ran over) they hit on the way to the school made one of the boxes of scalpels fall. None fell out, but they clattered within the box, the metallic sound still setting his teeth on edge. No matter how sure he was of rescue, he was still afraid.

They arrived at the school, transferring him and all the equipment into the back room behind the auditorium stage. He was left alone a few times as his parents brought everything in.

There was an analogue clock on the wall near him and he could hear every tick of the second hand. Despite his belief in rescue, he was still afraid and each tick closer to being wheeled on stage pushed him closer to the edge. Fear and helplessness eventually overwhelmed him and he cried silently.

Besides, tears would encourage the teens to help him. They all believed he could feel - because he could! - and he wanted to be saved as soon as possible.

…sometimes, he did wonder if his parents had a small point about ghosts being good manipulators.

His ears perked up as he heard the morning bells, his parents returning to him, making one last check they had everything. Jack had, amazingly, remembered over half the things he was told to bring, so they had at least one of every sharp tool and reading instrument mad scientists would need to perform unethical experimentation. Footsteps echoed in the room, the chatter of the students amplifying in the space. Danny closed his eyes and strained his ears, listening. The whole super sensitive hearing thing was nice - would be nicer if it didn’t require so much focus to use.

Eventually he found the sound he was searching for - Jazz’s watch. It was a Fenton invention, so it had a unique sound. He mentally latched to that sound, letting the regular whir of the internal mechanisms consume him. Jazz was here. Jazz was safety.

No school employee came by even once while they waited. Phantom was curious if they knew he was the specimen the Fentons had. He sincerely doubted it. Some of the teachers had even told him if he ever wanted to finish school - since he died so young - they would be more than happy to teach him. While he didn’t need it, he couldn’t deny his joy when the offer had been made. It had been acceptance of him, finally, from adults of Amity.

He heard the teacher welcoming the students and introducing the Fentons followed immediately by the sound of her fleeing the room.

Yeah. Sane people didn’t stay near the Fentons.

His mom went out and explained what they were doing, the educational opportunity here, and eventually his father wheeled him out, shield still attached to the table casting everything in a green tint, settling him under a camera. He screamed and cried, renewing his struggle against his bonds as he came into view.

Phantom cried in relief as he heard what he’d been expecting - anger, commotion, protest. But his parents eventually reigned them in, the students eventually quieting down.

He would be lying if he said that didn’t make him panic a little. Or a lot. But he still heard Jazz’s watch, he still latched onto that, desperately seeking the comfort of his sister as his mother cut away the top of his jumpsuit. He heard Jazz tell another student to keep his parents distracted before hurrying from the room. He listened to her watch until she was out of range, but he also heard the order ripple through the room.

Distract them, it said. Jazz Fenton is going to get him out.

And the students obeyed. Ridiculous question after ridiculous question was asked. But it wasn’t enough. Even as Jack repeatedly got distracted and went off on tangents, Maddie would pull it back in, get him back on topic.

Eventually, she just let him talk, a loving smile on her face as she watched Jack, even as she moved to Danny’s side, pulling a scalpel from the nearby tray.

He heard the students screaming at her to stop as it projected onto the wall, he heard them try to distract her with anything and everything, he heard them flat out begging the Fentons to stop.

“It’s alright, kids!” Maddie said, irritation evident despite her voice being so perky. “It’s just a thing! It can’t feel!”

And then the scalpel was pressed into his collarbone. Jazz’s watch was still beyond his hearing. He couldn’t hear Tucker’s PDA or the locket Sam wore, with machinery inside just so he could always find her.

He was alone and his mother was slicing him open.

Phantom screamed, he thrashed and cried, but it was to no avail. The students cried, too, even as they continued to watch, unwilling to leave him alone to his fate but unsure of how to help. He heard them whispering as much, trying to come up with ideas and never finding one. But he had no thoughts, only pain, only his parents torturing him in front of teenagers. All he knew was the feel of a scalpel and the feeling of hands pulling skin from muscle, displaying his insides.

He heard as the doors slammed open. He heard Dash and Kwan scream in disgust at the sight before them, followed by screams of anger as they charged, more footsteps behind them. He could only see colors and shapes around him, his eyes too blurred by tears to see anything more clearly, but there was the undeniable thud of bodies as Dash and Kwan slammed their bodies into Jack, who clearly hadn’t anticipated that, so all three of them were sent tumbling to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Maddie demanded, leaving Phantom to go check on Jack, granting him a brief moment of respite, which he feared the end of. But Dash and Kwan all but worshiped Phantom. They would not let him be tortured more. 

“Madeline and Jack Fenton! What the absolute hell do you think you’re doing?” Principal Ishiyama yelled. “You had permission to do this to a non-sentient ghost! Not to our town hero! Paulina, go release him.”

“All ghosts are non-sentient!” Maddie protested, standing in front of the table Danny lay on.

Phantom didn’t get to hear anything further. The green of the shield fizzled out, he felt the ache of his core, and he ran back to his soul.

Danny opened his eyes, an ache as his duplicate’s memories forced themself into his head, though it was dull in comparison to his chest.

“Phantom?” He heard Mr. Lancer whisper.

Danny tried to remember the set of memories from this body, but agony was all he knew. He blinked several times, forcing himself to see through the fog. He felt a tug to his jumpsuit and panic immediately choked him and he tried to sit up. Which was a very bad idea as the pain slammed into him full force, sending him back to the ground.

“Stay down, Danny. We weren’t done stitching you up, yet.” Jazz said, running her hand through his hair comfortingly. She pulled her hand from him and grimaced - her hand was covered in blood and flecked with ectoplasm.

He felt the tug again and realized it was Sam pulling down the zipper. He considered trying to calm himself with deep breaths, but… maybe breathing immediately following being fucking autopsied was a bad idea. 

Cool air greeted his inflamed skin as the jumpsuit was gently pushed off. As soon as he was bare chested again, Jazz and Sam immediately resumed the arduous task of putting him back together. He was surprised when Lancer leaned forward as well, pressing gauze to a spot his sister indicated.

“Hey, dude.” Tucker said softly, sitting behind him and gently scooching closer, letting Danny rest his head in Tucker’s lap, letting him prop up slightly, a welcome change after the hours he now remembered being strapped to a flat table.

That was when he saw that they weren’t alone and registered that Lancer had called him Phantom. His eyes widened as he saw his classmates, all looking at him with a mix of awe and horror. He could see the pool of red blood he was splayed in, that coated his friends like a bad slasher movie, green now mixing beneath him. Of everything he saw, for some reason it was Lancer being covered in his blood that shocked him the most. His friends and sister, he expected. But Lancer? He couldn’t imagine Lancer jumping to action like that, but the proof was in the blood (and ectoplasm and the copious amount of both staining his clothes and skin).

“My secret?” Danny asked, suddenly finding his voice hoarse. Oh. He had screamed a lot, hadn’t he?

“Poof.” Tucker said, miming an explosion with his hands. “You… dude. You were… well, there was no hiding it anymore.”

“Our priority is your life. Your secret comes second.” Sam added.

~~~~~~

Lancer was almost relieved when Daniel had transformed into Phantom. The injury had been covered and the blood that seeped through when they re-exposed it was green. It was less terrifying.

But the relief had been brief as he realized this was still Daniel Fenton, this was still his student bleeding out onto his floor, this was still a teenager getting what amounted to major medical attention from other, untrained teenagers as stitches resumed.

“Phantom disappeared!” Dash yelled, banging through the door, all the others who’d left following behind him. They stopped dead when they saw Phantom.

“Get in and shut the door!” Samantha said, not looking up from her work. They were nearly done, at least. Lancer was less applying pressure now and just trying to sop up the ectoplasm so the girls could see what they were doing easier.

Dash obeyed, ushering Kwan, Paulina, and the three others into the room and slamming the door behind him with too much force.

“Mi amor, you’re okay!” Paulina said, stepping around Kwan and trying to get closer to the ghost boy she famously crushed on. She stopped short as she got an eyeful of the very not pretty picture.

The blood pool had continued to grow, green ectoplasm pushing it out even further. The Y incision practically glowed on his skin, dark green despite the incision being closed. All of the people around him macabre paintings.

What looked like old injuries didn’t help either. Pale scars dotted his chest, a green glowing lightning-looking scar also practically sickening, if you tried to imagine what could cause something like that.

Lancer had seen the numerous scars on Daniel’s… other form? other side? disguise?, but they were so much worse on this side of him. The green scar was entirely new, he hadn’t seen anything like that on Fenton.

“Where’s Fenton?” Dash asked, though the tone of his voice and the stricken look in his eyes indicated he already knew the answer to that, had pieced it together. If nothing else, the fact Phantom’s in the same spot Fenton was and the blood pool was multiple colors were… not exactly subtle.  

“Oh. Right. He wasn’t here.” Tucker said, then pointed at Daniel’s head in his lap. “Danny’s Phantom.”

Dash didn’t really say anything, just sinking into a nearby chair with shaking legs. Kwan looked ill, a hand pressed against his mouth and stomach. “We… he was… on screen…” Kwan tried to say, pressing his hand harder against his mouth and shaking his head viciously.

“‘m sorry you saw that…” Phantom mumbled. He had begun to doze once his stitches had been finished, though his jumpsuit was still pulled off his chest.

“The video.” Jasmine said, grimacing. “They had a camera showing it so we could see all the details.”

Dash just nodded, Kwan’s eyes were pressed closed, Paulina hadn’t spoken another word, only falling into a chair behind her.

Ms. Fenton’s words slammed into William Lancer like a train. All of today - the whole less than one hour of it! - finally hit as well.

His student was a ghost. He was dead.

His student had just been dissected and was bleeding on the floor, at the hands of his own parents.

His students had just stitched up their best friend as he nearly bled to death on a classroom floor.

Several of his other students had seen inside Phantom’s chest, blown up larger than life and in high definition.

Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom!

He’d been giving detention to the teen just for Daniel to turn around and save Lancer only minutes later sometimes! 

Lancer looked at his bloody hands, his bloody clothes as life continued to crash into him like a tsunami. He looked at the blood on the floor. On the others.

A very large wrench just got thrown into the already chaotic life of simply being in Amity Park and Lancer had never felt so lost.

Studying to be a teacher didn’t cover topics of ‘how to help a student who’s been dissected heal’ or ‘what to watch for in students who got an up close look at their dead classmate’s insides - it may create trauma.’

“This secret does not leave this classroom. Understood?” Lancer said, drawing himself up from the floor, nearly slipping in the blood beneath his shoes.

When the students all nodded at him, he believed them. 

If nothing else, no one wanted Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom undergoing another autopsy. No one wanted to cause those screams again.

[persephoneyss]

The Monster.

Pairing: park jimin x f!reader.

Genre: Yandere, dark themes, anguish.

Summary: ❝You can be reborn like spring, but your nightmares will follow your footsteps at night.❞

Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsession, voyeurism, Jimin is a little delusional, implicit murder, death threats, a little violence, stalking, death of secondary characters, reader idolizes his mother, humiliation.

Number of words: 6000+

︙ Author's note: this is my first fic here, sorry if there are errors. My first language is not English and I don't speak it fluently either, so I used the translator. Sorry about that. I hope you enjoy it, I am open to criticism. Thanks!

(Puedes leer este y más fics aquí en español.)

To block.

Your mind felt strangely familiar, like it was processing the same situation all over again. And then the same thing happened again.

Blocking.

You never noticed those little details, invisible to the eyes of others. Or maybe you took too seriously the message and advice that your mother always told you when you were afraid of being left alone in your room because of the obvious and silly repetitive story of the monster under the bed, you were crying looking for your mother's room in the middle of the night. You were looking for refuge in her arms. However, the only loving words she had for you were: "Ignore him and he will go away, darling."

It seemed very clever to you, you began to close your eyes ignoring your worst fears and in a short time you could do what most children could not at your age, sleep alone in the dark.

Your mother was wise, maybe that's why you never understood why your father left her overnight. She never commented on the subject and little by little it was forgotten in her daily lives. Your father never existed, you never saw him again.

In his small town no one was exceptionally well known, unless he had done something good or bad enough to be called a hero or, in the same way, a villain. You were barely seven years old when it happened, a family with a lot of money had chosen your town as a decent land, enough to build their luxurious house where their children who came from golden cradles would grow up. According to the gossip, they were foreigners coming to invade their town and rule it, when in reality the Parks never got more involved in politics than necessary.

They were just rich, spending money.

Young women from all over the world and even from other distant towns came every day to try to conquer the privileged children of the great mansion built finely and strategically in the middle of the main square. The young women were beautiful, many times you stood at the door of your house admiring their distinguished perfect faces and you wondered if the children of the Park family were really worth it so that young and beautiful women who had previously been rejected would come back again. in search of new opportunities.

Your mother sometimes stood next to you with a smile and released another phrase that ended up marking your style of thinking, her voice sounded so ethereal: "Money compensates for external beauty, plus the dignity that you lose to those who possess it, it will never have a price."

Your lost look made her smile beautifully badly, then that same sweet voice that taught you things that other women would see as irrelevant, she too moments later she orders you to come home to eat. You thought about it so much, your mother was beautiful, she could remarry if she wanted to. However, she never did, or at least until that day.

You were poor, you were never afraid to accept it. You noticed it almost immediately, when you saw other children playing with toys that seemed impossible that you will ever possess, your mother was friends with the one who was best friends with your father, a carpenter who seemed to be very kind. He always gave you toys that came out with small defects and he couldn't sell, he was a good man until he seemed to misinterpret the situations and her relationship with your mother, unexpectedly asking her to marry him. Obviously you had to stop seeing him after the rejection. However, you were stubborn like the woman who gave you life, almost every day after finishing school you walk two streets to her local.

"How is your mother? Any suitors who weren't rejected the first time?" You laughed, helping him finish his last job. You shook your head, Peter was always very nice and honestly funny, you still didn't understand how your mother could reject them, but you never got into adult affairs. You were just an eight-year-old girl.

"She still misses dad." You whisper trying to drive a nail into loose wood, before being interrupted by Peter.

You look curiously at his downcast face of hers, as if she was keeping something deep within himself. But he quickly changes his expression as well as the subject. "Very good girl, no more help for today" he says, removing the dangerous tools out of your reach, you let out a exhausted sigh wanting to help him. Deep down you felt guilty. "How are you doing in school? I heard that the Parks will start a new campaign to help more in the education of the children, maybe you can see someone from the family up close."

You move your head in distracting affirmation playing with a piece of wood, Peter watches you for a moment and then sighs. You really were special, and if I could tell what happened to your father, you would let go of that glow for sure.

The following days passed in the same way, there was only a radical change in your routine. Now they forced you to stay longer in school so that you could take art classes with the children of the Park family. You had heard many mothers talking to yours about how handsome they were, and since their daughters would undoubtedly have a chance with Jimin, who was the eldest son and of course the first-born heir, you thought for a long time about a tall man with more years than all those young women who hallucinated with the perfect millionaire husband. However, it was all an illusion. Jimin was not a man, he was a seventeen year old teenager.

Perhaps the young woman who did win him over would be very lucky to marry someone her own age and not a bitter old man who only had money. Jimin was everything, young, handsome and a millionaire, the best bet of any woman.

His first class was alongside his current teacher, introducing each child in the Park family. They were all very handsome, but Jimin seemed to shine brighter than the stars in the dark night. You wondered if his younger siblings would become jealous of him, it would be an interesting concept considering you had no siblings.

Your hands moved the clay very patiently, your classmates seemed to enjoy these classes and they were undoubtedly fun.

"What a beautiful flower ..." You smiled nodding, no one would ever think that someone like Jimin would be delighted with the common drawing of any girl. Her gaze traveled around your pure and innocent face, as if she couldn't get enough of you. She sat next to you, admiring how your hands continued to play with the dough creating new shapes and I certainly enjoyed every second.

She had never met someone who would attract so much attention from her, you were ethereal. Jimin was immediately drawn to you, your gaze clear as daylight and your soft features, maybe you were just a girl but you seemed to tempt his attention incredibly badly from him. He felt the strange sensation of making sure you were okay, safe, probably in his arms.

He followed you closely, always arriving at the same time. Her mother used to say that Jimin was very irresponsible, she never complied with the basic principles of being a Park: Discipline, order and punctuality. Jimin was different, his siblings may have fulfilled those three bases just to give what they wanted to their parents and receive more affection from him, but not him.

Jimin was obsessive. Impulsive, and he had self-control issues.

The biggest dangerous trait that his parents noticed since he was little, is that he suffered attacks of anger against anyone without caring about the consequences of this. More than three of his babysitters claimed that little Jimin had hit them, slapping and shoving them. But all of this was radically ignored by the Parks, who turned a deaf ear claiming that their son was simply too controlling, and in a way, he was. Jimin liked to have everything under control, at his disposal.

Jimin found himself fascinated with your little eyes looking at him without fear and, even though it was painful for him, without love. For you, he was nothing more than a stranger. He tried to change that, sitting next to you every day and talking to you a few times when he could get more than two sentences out of you. He liked art, I could tell by the way you focus too much on a small painting of an insignificant tree.

If you liked trees, Jimin could buy a forest for yourself.

You loved roses, he could plant thousands in every corner of town.

Or maybe, your obsession with the smell of vanilla. Jimin went wildly for the most expensive vanilla scented lotion, hoping for some praise from you and he really didn't fail.

No, when the next day he sat next to you and your gaze turned to him with a kind smile. "It smells great, Mr. Jimin." Your soft tone and your minimal compliment was enough to make his entire body shake, his hands began to sweat and his voice seemed to falter. It was amazing how you managed to make him so nervous, while he was still a child.

"Y-do you like it?" She asked even knowing the answer, your head bobbing in a quick nod and an even bigger smile adorns your features.

You put your painting aside for a moment to continue responding, Jimin feels elated to see that his plan worked. Now you're just looking at him, as it always should be. "It smells like vanilla, I like vanilla." You say honestly.

"I see, I also like vanilla." You seem shocked, Jimin increases the tension of him fearing that he said something wrong. He really wasn't lying, maybe vanilla wasn't something he used constantly but he didn't dislike it either, he was just disguising and embellishing a crude truth.

And before long, Jimin feels his life take an unexpected turn, people had started to notice his closeness to you. They called him an angel when in reality he was a devil, rumors and silly praise that he would be a good father were not lacking and the young women who came to his door every day to look for a date with him increased in an exorbitant way. You were oblivious to all that, clearly. However, you could not ignore all the looks that fell on you when you accompanied your mother to the market, as from one day to the next you became someone important just because you were the focus of attention of him Mr. Jimin, as you used to call him with respect. Peter also suffered the consequences of this, you had not stopped going to his store and the young women looking to conquer Jimin or at least get his attention began to follow you wanting to win your affection so that you will speak well of them with their desired man, no you were interested in what they could offer you but the biggest problem was that they did not like to receive a clear 'No.' as a reply.

They were insistent and often annoying. They followed you closely, even when you went to school or to visit Peter who now only went twice a week, you did not want to go out and have to face the pity that it gave you to see many beautiful young women begging for a vague love and that I was looking for more money arrangements than anything else. Also, not all of them had good intentions with you. Your mother made sure of your safety in the face of any incident, and with that came her last word, her strict order not to approach Park Jimin again until he found a wife.

The rest would be history.

He would surely forget you and start forming his own family, having his own children and likewise, looking for his own problems. Instead, that never happened. Jimin had discovered your plan, he was angry, he couldn't believe that you were ignoring his attempts to approach you in such a way. Your attitude was so pure but you were hurting her so much.

He was delusional, she knew he was. But he didn't want to stop. So, he did the only thing that would make you stay by his side.

You felt strangely calm, you had been to and from school with no one following closely in your footsteps. Until you noticed that the whole town seemed to look at you with superiority, with caution. Peter never stopped taking care of his store, however, that day it was closed. You gave little thought to that coincidence, walking home with slow steps. Deep down you were scared.

Maybe you thought you could feel it, in front of your house a crowd of people lay watching the most unexpected marriage request. Your mother was uncomfortable, you could tell by how her face was distorted, and how her hands seemed to shake for reasons not yet known to you. You watched in horror as Jimin knelt before her with a smile pulling a ring out of a small red box.

For a moment, you thought about your father. You felt strange, you always wanted to have a warm fatherly hug but it made you uncomfortable to imagine Jimin occupying that place, you did not want him, you did not love him as a daughter to his firstborn or as another similar relationship. He was a stranger.

Your body fell into the seat reserved especially for you, your eyes observed any place in the church trying to disperse your mind. Your little shoes brushed against each other, your hands rested on the wooden seat waiting for the wedding to end as soon as possible. You never wanted to oppose your thoughts to the idea of ​​your mother falling in love or getting married again, you really didn't care much as long as that person was good for her.

However, he was Park Jimin. You felt disgusted when her mother looked at you from afar with despicable eyes, just as anger consumed you when Mrs. Park tried to embarrass your mother in front of everyone. You didn't ask for this, nobody asked for it.

Maybe you spent too much time thinking around you to notice that Jimin was unhappy. A little upset. He had done what he had to do, chained you to him in some twisted way, marrying your mother and he felt happy, at first. I could see you walking through the church, you were wearing a little white dress to match your mother's and for a sinister moment I imagine that you were the one walking towards him to be named his wife. But he quickly came back to reality, you weren't his fiancée. You wouldn't be his wife.

Deep inside him, he knew how gross it was to feel like this.

Your mother's eyes reflected how unhappy she was, her gaze was uncertain. Jimin smiled seeing how you kicked the decorations that fell to the ground, you were completely oblivious to everything and more to the look of her that she followed you closely. Many called him a good father. Seeing nothing but his protective attitudes, but under the circumstances there were only hints of what might come next. You weren't allowed to leave Jimin's house, his father had left the mansion where his whole family used to live.

Mrs. Park could find no better excuse to leave than the sudden tantrum of her first-born son for marrying an older woman, a widow, and a daughter. This is a mockery and disgrace to her family's last name. Jimin just let her go, he wasn't even there the day her mother boarded the first train to her grandmother's house.

Your mother flatly refused to leave her house at first, she did not want to leave the little cabin that your father had built with his own effort so that both of them would live there and in the future raise their children, you always lived there and you did not want to leave either. But you never had a solid vote, your mother ended up agreeing from one day to the next, you did not know how Jimin managed to change his word so suddenly. Maybe there was never one reason, but you became all of them.

You were painfully present at all times. You observed how little by little, the wispy and wise glow that your mother possessed was getting lost between her empty eyes and her bent body, her head was never raised as she taught you it should be. She was a stranger, you felt scared in her presence. You remembered very well how her face seemed to light up when she saw you coming home from school and how she taught you something new every day.

"Mommy..." You spoke, your hands were still busy with the picture that you hadn't finished painting. But curiosity began to attack your mind.

Your mother came out of the kitchen with a little gray apron, she smiled when she saw you sitting on the floor. "Yes, honey?"

"Why do people get married?" Your gaze lifted from the sheet of paper, wincing at her glowing eyes.

"It depends, it's not necessarily for love. Maybe for money, comfort or ..." her voice trailed off, she still staring at you she leaned down to take your face in her hands. "Because they found someone, as cute as you!"

"Mommy ... I want to marry you!" Your mother began to laugh, your gaze traveled all over her face, joyful of hers and for a moment, you swore that you would hate anyone who dared to take away the great happiness of a genuine smile.

You finished your drawing, just in time because the front door echoed through the entire cabin. Your father appeared with a small drawer in his hands, your mother seemed to be illuminated with an angel when she saw him enter with a kind smile. Both were such for which. They were, more than lovers and husbands, lifelong best friends. Your life seemed to have something that many do not get even after death.

An outer and inner peace. It was perfect.

Almost so perfect, it wasn't true. White roses were always your favorites. However, you began to detest its soft light petals when it seemed that all the townspeople bought the same bouquet of white roses for the funeral of your, now, deceased mother. You took a seat next to her grave, ignoring everyone's greetings and goodbyes, who apparently forgot how her criticism of her increased even as the days, months and years of her wedding with Jimin passed.

You couldn't blame anyone. Or you just didn't want to.

Because the rope around his neck was not placed by them. And the multiple scars on his wrists weren't his marks. A small part of you felt helpless, angry and respectively, disgusted with yourself. Could you help her? Yes. No. Maybe if you had ... And he had stayed in the past.

The little white rose in your hand fell to the floor, everyone had left the room to go to the large buffet served at the reception. You froze, then with the same rage you began to step on the already dead flower at your feet, the petals of it were no more than a pure color, now they were disgusting and dirty. Jimin appeared minutes later, your gaze fell on his hand that was holding a black and a red rose.

"We should go, honey." He whispered as if afraid to scare you even though you were already looking directly at him. Your immobile figure instinctively ran into his arms, which greeted you with an incredibly loving warmth. The roses were placed on top of the coffin, a smile spread across your face when you saw the color red stand out against so much white, and for a second you came to compare the beauty of an outstanding color with your mother.

She stood out in a world where everyone wanted to paint themselves pure white.

Jimin was even more welcoming to you now. He pretended to sleep waiting for 11:30 to arrive so that he could hear your footsteps on the way to his room, you had developed a great amount of fear of loneliness. Jimin knew you always did that, but before it was with her instead of him. You would walk for several seconds looking in the dark for his room, which was next to hers, then I would always hear her voice singing for you, making you rest in his arms. For a long time, I want to be her. But now he was gone and I knew it was a matter of time before your steps stopped at his door.

She loved the closeness of your body to hers, how your hands clung to her nightshirt when you were cold or a horrible nightmare was projected into your dreams. Jimin horribly wishes he could see beyond your dreams, although that would be disrespectful to your privacy, he wouldn't mind breaking your trust too much if he could be sure that you would never walk away from him, even in your dreams.

He managed to chain your life to his, your scared look was the most beautiful thing I have seen before. I want to touch your little face and kiss your soft lips that tempted him every time the word "dad" came out of it.

Time was his greatest enemy.

Your presentation was no better, your hands were trembling again while your feet moved from here to there restlessly. Jimin just watched silently, but the distance between you and him was gigantic, he just wished that the damn bitch that was presented before him would shut up and leave his house. It was remarkable how you seemed angry, maybe it's jealousy, she has feelings for me. He thought sickly, a smile spreading across his face discreetly at his incoherent thoughts of him. The young woman sitting on the sofa in front of him smiled thinking that her talk had caused some pleasure in the young and widowed man.

Jimin admired her face, she was very cute, also she seemed to have good manipulation technique in people. She noticed it quickly when she walked through the door, her smile that seemed uncontrollable and genuine lit up his childlike face. He took a few seconds, he knew he shouldn't do it but he couldn't help comparing the woman to you. You were shorter, you were obviously younger and your gaze was more pure. Jimin was proud of your firm stance, knowing that in the two years since your mother's death you had developed a closer connection with him, and likewise, you were a beautifully perfect copy of him. Your hard gaze and your legs crossed with each other showed your firmness, and your silent opinion.

You wanted the fucking bitch sitting across from your stepdad outside your house.

You laughed at the very idea of ​​one day finding a really good replacement for your mother. You couldn't replace a rose with bad herbs. For you, as selfish as he was, Jimin was your father, and he was your mother's love from the day he married her. No one would replace his position.

It was all three of them, and a part of your mind conned that Jimin still wasn't over the love he had for her. Or he would have remarried long ago, when the young women stood in front of the door of his house asking for a date with him. In those moments you didn't care, Jimin was a stranger, but now he was your father and you were his only daughter. No one had the right to ruin their harmonious relationship, they were both alone and someday serious like him.

You will be successful, you will make a lot of money and you will be able to marry someone you love.

But for now, your gaze fell on the little worn and dirty shoes of the woman in front of you. A smile crossed your face, your gaze lifted surprising the woman. While Jimin waited with his arms crossed for your following action.

"Woman." Your voice seemed to cut her tranquility, her face lost total color of life and a small grimace of fear passed over her fragile face. "I can't allow shoes like that to step on the carpet in my house ..."

The woman looked at Jimin who seemed indifferent, distracted by the painting on the wall.

"I'm sorry miss" she whispered trying to remove her shoes, his hands seemed more clumsy than usual. Her face burned when your hand moved closer to hers to prevent any further movement.

"Go away." A tiny part of you felt sorry for his embarrassed face and flushed cheeks. But it quickly came to your mind that she thought she was good enough to believe she was your mother. When she couldn't even challenge a stupid girl who acted like a spoiled brat. "Get out of my house, or I'll have to ask you not to just take off your shoes."

"I-sorry, I'll go now-..." A sob interrupted her dialogue, her hands searched for the notebook she was carrying but she gave up making a quick bow to Jimin and running outside.

The garden was your favorite part of the big house, the walls constantly made you believe that you were going to be eaten by them. Every day you came out of your lair admiring the many roses of many different colors growing beautiful and healthy. Your school stage was about to begin and you did not want to neglect your garden, which was also a tribute to your late mother.

So you hired a gardener. You were seventeen years old and soon to be eighteen. To say that you managed to experience the best of all those years was ridiculous, and deep down inside you, you thought that all of that was possible because of all the things Jimin did for you.

You had a debt, which you planned to pay in the future. You thought about leaving and letting him have a quiet life from now on without having to run to solve your problems, even if you never asked him to.

Jimin had eyes watching your every move, he clearly remembers how he put security cameras throughout the house, observing how you slept, what you did in the comfort of your room and privacy. Even when you walked into the shower and your hands ran over your body covered in water. Sometimes he felt guilty, for how he seemed to enjoy those moments that seemed so short.

However, it was repeated that as long as you were safe.

Breaking your trust wasn't that important.

Your eighteenth birthday was moderately quiet, Jimin was not used to throwing parties, and honestly, you never asked for one. So you just stood at the door of your house receiving expensive and cheap gifts from people who when they gave you the gift had a forced smile that told you many things. Most were familiar faces, of women who had previously sought a date with your father, obviously being rejected.

The little birthday cake looked so monotonous, the candles were the only thing you could stand out for. You were never aware that you had started to be privileged and extremely ambitious since Jimin proposed to your mother and forced her to marry him, pointing a gun at her pathetic silly little head. You had it all, and in your previous years maybe you managed to get excited about the new toys and accessories that were brought to you from other countries, you had everything that others did not, and a strange epiphany collapsed over you.

It was you, it was déjà vu. You were them, and those who were before, were now you.

You had all of them, and they didn't. Now, by your side, they were all poor. Jimin showered you with gifts, causing you to gradually lose interest in money. You remember your thoughts when it all started and likewise, you still remember the woman with the dirty shoes. You will be successful, you will make a lot of money. It was what you thought in the future for yourself, but now that was it, in a nutshell. Completely boring. You stayed for a moment thinking about them under the watchful eye of your stepfather who tried not to smile when you saw you, you were an adult now and he could finally take you as his own. They would be husband and wife, as it should have been from the beginning of its history.

And you will be able to marry someone you love. You still had only one option left, you blew out the candles with a single sigh causing Jimin to clap his hands and approach you to hug you fondly. The maids behind you only blushed when his boss started showing all of his affection. They weren't used to seeing him so often, Jimin had a firm and tough stance with everyone but he seemed to become as soft as clay in your presence. You came to mold Jimin in your favor, making him a cold person in front of his own demons and then, you left yours.

"I want marriage proposals, father." A gasp came from the mouths of the maids who just immediately fell silent. Lowering their head as they were taught. "I am ready to get married."

Jimin hummed still keeping his arms around you, your body was trapped in theirs. Your skin burned when his fingers squeezed your skin, leaving permanent marks. There was no reaction from you, you were used to this kind of unexpected treatment and it just didn't hurt.

"Get married?" His arms pulled away from you in disgust, there was no other reaction either. Jimin taught you not to object unless you knew you should. Stay calm and you will win. "And can you tell who would want to marry you? Useless little girl."

"Useless?" Your low voice seemed to make him happy for a moment.

Quickly his hands took the utensils to cut the cake, with a soft and sweet voice he continued: "Honey, men do not look for a girl with a lot of money like you. They look for someone to tame, and you, you could easily crush everyone with a wave of your hands."

A piece of the cake perfectly positioned on the plate was placed in front of you, a sob escaping your lips. You were really pathetic, eh? You clearly wanted to live something that has been claimed many times. You weren't going to get married, not without having it all like Jimin said. Then, you would lose everything and go back up to crush the others with greater pleasure.

"Aren't you going to eat? It's your cum-..."

"I will go to a neighboring town, I will finish my studies there."

Jimin looked down at his plate, ignoring how you got up from the table and put your cake aside. Then, your sweet voice finished destroying his self control that he thought he mastered long ago.

"I never liked that cake taste."

And it was the end.

You went back to the start again. You were planning to leave tonight, your bags were ready. Everything you needed was never in that house, it was never him. They were those that never existed in your present continued.

Your shoes did not seem to contrast with the dirt on the town's floor, you were also aware that those would end up in the trash. You didn't care, they were just shoes Jimin bought for your birthday, insignificant.

People were observant, and often foul-mouthed. It was no different than they spoke far from you or close to you, yet their mouths moved in a fussy way exaggerating reactions and creating new lies.

"_____...?" Your posture was decreasing, you no longer had to pretend. A smile covered your face, framing many emotions in one. "Come in please, it's your house."

Peter stepped aside, leaving room for you to enter. Your hands trembled but this time from cold, you still did not get over the harsh winter that suddenly passed. You took your shoes off quickly, briefly forgetting that this was no longer your home. You had sold the little cabin at a minimal price, and you were even happier when it was Peter who chose that place as his future home to live with his wife and his future child. Now he had two more. The little children ran in the tiny room playing with each other, a feeling of nostalgia invaded you when you saw them. You used to do the same before, together with your parents.

Those moments.

"Glad to see you around here, daughter." Peter hadn't changed, he was still the same kind and understanding person as ever. The opposite of you, of course. "Do you want to have tea? I heard on the streets that you would go to study far from here."

"Coffee, please." You responded still reluctant to talk about your departure.

Peter just laughed at your exaggerated denial, nodding and leading into the kitchen. You took a seat at the small table looking around. "You didn't change the decoration."

"Uh? ...." He seemed surprised by your observation, but he quickly smiled. "No. Actually, I think I liked it from the beginning how your ... er ... your mother decorated it. Besides, my wife loved it too. For her, it's beautiful as spring."

"Spring?" You ask, avoiding looking at it. You look down looking for some reason not to feel sad, in a way, you had compared your mother to spring as well. However, Jimin said that you were his. You never liked being called a light, because you always tried to be in your mother's shadow. And you liked it. "She believed that she is very wise, my mother was like spring."

"Thanks." A voice whispered from behind, your gaze fell on her and her face very much like your mother's. But they were obviously completely different. "I never doubted that you were just as wise. Spring represents the new beginning, a new beginning. Did you manage to find yours?"

Peter tried to intervene, clearly noticing the way his wife was trying to make you talk about your life after your mother died.

"I did. That's why I'm leaving here tonight."

"I'm glad we all need to be born again at some point."

You affirm with a small movement of the head, concentrating your gaze on the coffee cup in your hands. The smoke fell directly on your face hiding your grimace of disgust. Nobody deserves to talk about her like that yet.

"Ok, honey." Peter began by sitting across from you, with a cup of green tea and a serene expression. "Are you planning to go alone or with someone? I heard that travel today is very dangerous."

"Actually, I am accompanied by an acquaintance. His name is Jungkook, he also planned to leave and started working for me as a gardener to get the necessary money. We became good friends." You spoke remembering the adorable smile of the young man, he used to accompany you everywhere you went as if his job was to protect you. At first it was cute, but then it was annoying. Even after all that, you preferred to travel with him rather than alone.

"Oh that's very nice. I'm glad you managed to meet your goals. Good luck."

Your goals?

"Thanks, Peter."

His gaze lingered on your face for a moment, then he seemed to remember something very important. She gave you a smile before getting up to leave the kitchen.

"I have something for you, you are old enough to know this."

It was an envelope. Common and ordinary, but its envelope was beginning to deteriorate, showing that it was an old and very reserved letter.

You questioned your decision but took it, not wanting to read it in front of anyone even more when you read who wrote the letter.

You sat on the small wall, the trees and the cool breeze boosted your adrenaline. Small pieces of paper fell to the ground. So, you weren't thinking correctly at those times.

"I only married a man that I loved in all my life, I was happy. I had a daughter. I lived years of solitude and then, I was chained to an empty love."

"I know what you're reading this now. You're weak, darling. Maybe that's what made us mother and daughter. Because from the beginning I never had the courage to tell you that Jimin put a ring on my finger and a gun to my head. Or maybe, I was weak when I didn't get in the way of his errand, I should have told him that I hated him and that he could put a bullet in my head before giving it to my daughter. And maybe, I should have told everyone who passed by me that He was the same one who murdered my husband, he never left. I made you believe that. You never asked. "

"I saw you so happy today, you were running between the garden and the wedding. I could see his gaze following your hurried steps, I was almost completely sure that he was trying to get closer to you at all times. I told the woman next to me, But she shut me up saying that I can't be jealous of a father and daughter relationship. You weren't her daughter. She also ordered me to let them create a closer relationship, because I already had Park Jimin's heart in my hands. Liars."

"I always loved your curious voice. You used to ask me everything, and why everything was like that. But lately, I don't know what to answer. Why am I crying? Why is there a dark stain under my eyes? Why is there blood in the bathroom? Why did I never ask for help? I see you worry and you don't let me give you affection, because you prefer to give it to me. I also see how I start to bother him, I am a hindrance. Now I understand, I knew it but I never wanted to accept that it happened. He was everywhere, and likewise, I was never part of the plan."

"There were only two things I didn't tell you. I love you and my last piece of advice. Honey, lock it up and fly to the start, whenever you feel lost. A fresh start and never forget spring."

You stifled a sob. Covering up your pain. You had not noticed that the night had covered the sky, a dark blue blanket arrived. It took you a long time to assimilate that all the fragments were torn papers, and it was not a letter. It was an envelope filled with, apparently, incomplete sheets torn from a notebook. There was a fragment that was not part of the leaves, but rather was written later.

"Lost parts of a sad widow's diary.

Peter."

They were from your mother's diary. So where was the rest? What actually happened? A message came to your phone, you read it quickly still drying your tears.

JUNGKOOK:

Our trip is in an hour, I hope you said goodbye to everyone.

Received at 7:05 p.m.

I still do not:(

Received at 7:06 p.m.

Along with both messages was an attached picture, a photo of him and his grandmother. Jungkook talked a lot about her, and hers, her brothers. You smile, still wiping the tears from your face.

Your feet moved, the leaves in your hands seemed too heavy. And yet it was something you needed to do.

"Are you at home." His monotonous voice invaded you, he was busy reading a book that rested in his hand. The maid came over leaving a cup of coffee beside him, greeting your presence politely. "I have some things to discuss with you, darling."

"Me too, Jimin." It was the first time you had said his name without due respect, he seemed surprised for a moment. But his expression changed to one of happiness, as if he had been waiting for it. "I couldn't say goodbye, I'm leaving today. I think you already know that, though."

"Actually, no. But it's nice to hear it from you."

"I ..." Your voice dried in your throat, a giant doubt fell over you. You didn't want to leave without telling him how much you hated everything about him. His attention, his affection, his smile, his gaze, his voice. Everything about him was disgustingly charming. "I think I'll go get my bags."

Jimin nodded, ignoring your presence. Still distracted with reading him.

"Before you go, can you give me that back, darling?" Your gaze followed where he pointed his finger. Your hand. The leaves were still there.

"It's something of mine-..."

"Oh I don't think so. It really is very easy to threaten someone, just suffice to say that you can put a bullet in their head to make them your obedient little puppets."

"I do not understand your..."

"Me? It was obviously me. I'm surprised you thought your mother would be smart enough to leave a confession letter to her ex-lovers, days before her death. You really had a lot of credit for her." His chatter was accompanied by a laugh. You were paralyzed, shaking in your useless state of shock. "But I will not say that I did not plan, I hoped that you would never have the courage to try to leave my side. And even if that were the case, I knew that you would say goodbye to the only person who reminded you of her. Peter, she has a family. lovely."

Nor did he expect you to have the courage to cheat on him with another man. Oh, the gardener. Poor Jungkook, his body now rested leaving behind your favorite flowers. Jimin bit his lip, another mocking smile peeking out with intensity remembering the cutthroat figure of the innocent but guilty young man.

You were his...

"How can you be so cruel?" The doubt in you seemed to want to keep growing, passing second by second through your head. You weren't sure you could understand that everything that happened in front of you was actually planned by the same person who swore never to leave you alone. The same man who disguised himself as a sheep so he could eat you like a wolf. "Did you kill my mother ?!" Jimin seemed surprised by your desperate tone, he did not expect to be able to unbalance your state so easily.

It was lovely. Certainly.

"No sweetie." He murmured closing the book in his hands, setting it on the table next to the steaming cup of American coffee. "But it would have been exquisite to be the reason for his pain. Unfortunately, it was your father who won that title."

"Where did you get this from? I know she wrote it, and I also know that she would never give it to you knowing what a monster you are." Tears were running down your cheeks like water, you knew you were a mess but Jimin seemed to look at you like you were a perfect work of art.

"I found it." He spoke casually, getting up from his seat. Walking slowly towards your trembling figure. "It was a coincidence, I like casual things. It was a coincidence that you studied at that school, that your mother was a widow, that your father died. That he will make me fall in love with you."

What is your goal now?

"I love you darling."

Escape from the monster.

[seijuurouxryuu]

Title: I am you, and you are I Author: Shiro (TeitoxAkashi [AO3]/ seijuurouxryuu [tumblr]) Rating: T Pairing: Kozarto Enma/ Sawada Tsunayoshi; Giotto/ Cozarto Event: @khrrarepairweek Prompts: Mistaken Identity AU | Courting Tags/Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warning, Graphic Depiction of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warning

Day 1: Storm Day

In all the years of Tsuna's life, he had never expected that one day, he would find a child bundled in long, dirty cloak right in front of his humble abode. Mouth opened in mid yawn, Tsuna stared at the body with bulging eyes. He blinked once, twice, thrice, and to his horror, the child was still there.

AO3

The sky was dark, clouds heavy and looming as it brought the lightnings and thunders that flashed and roared. Bright and loud, both blinding eyes and rattling bones, created a cacophony for the harsh rain that came down as though in anger and grief. As if they were the tears of heaven as heaven abandoned their beloved child.

With the storm raging above, a cloaked being rushed through the forest, soaked from head to toe and panting from fatigue of running for hours on. Traces of blood trialled behind, mixing with the soft mud that got kicked up by the boots. One step wrong and the being slipped hard, slamming to the group. The being hissed, pained by the fall but clambered up and continued running despite limping in pain, more blood soaking through the already dirty cloak.

The being could not stop running because once stopped, death will arrive.

Beyond anyone's knowledge, a tear dripped down the being's face and disappeared with the raindrops.

.

In all the years of Tsuna's life, he had never expected that one day, he would find a child bundled in long, dirty cloak right in front of his humble abode. Mouth opened in mid yawn, Tsuna stared at the body with bulging eyes. He blinked once, twice, thrice, and to his horror, the child was still there. Mouth clamming close, he slowly crouched down a good meter away, and stared intensely at the pale dirty cheek peeking out from the cloak. It seemed bloodless, but to Tsuna's relief, they were moving slightly from the shallow breathing. He sighed and hung his head.

If only the child was dead, he would not be in such a dilemma. He could have just buried the child and forget as time rolls by. But the humane piece of him that was dormant for years woke up, beyond happy to know that a young life was not lost.

Tsuna stood and pulled the sleeves of his robes up slightly. He reached over and carefully lifted the seemingly weightless child up, gently holding the child close to his body. Cold, he noted. The child was shivering and feverish all at the same time. Injured too, Tsuna deduced from the strong smell of iron mixed with the smell of rain and mud. Ignoring how dirtied his previously white robes were, he turned back into his small wooden shed.

He paused for a moment and turned, side glancing to the edges of his barrier, through the boundaries that separated him from humanity, his eyes flashed bright orange.

The ghastly death dissipated unreconciled.

His door closed shut with a quiet click behind him.

.

It was only ten days later that the child woke up, much to Tsuna's relief. He almost had to visit his own friend for advice, which he definitely did not want to, if not for realizing that the child's wound was healing up without any external aids. He was out finding fruits and nuts when the child's eyes opened.

Blood red eyes dazed for a moment at the sight of wooden roof. The child's breath slowed down quietly in alarm as eyes shifted around to take in any possible danger and any escape route. Moments later, the child realized that there was no one else around, and that it was as safe as it can be, the held breath was let out in a gentle, relieved sigh.

The child slowly sat up and glanced at the warm, thick covers that slid down. It was comfortable, the child felt, despite just waking up. Intuitively, the child thought that the owner must be a warm and kind person, having to take in a stranger and lend their bed. Reluctantly, the covers was pulled off but before it was truly away, the child was stunned in place at the tiny pair of hands.

"What?!"

And Tsuna came back to the sight of the child hugging the mirror tightly, staring into the reflection in horror.

Not particularly surprised at the reaction, Tsuna put away his haul onto the dining table and tilted his head at the child. "You're awake." He stated, smiling. He found it rather amusing at the sight of incredulous thoughts fleeting through those pair of muddy red eyes. He pointed over to the table beside the bed and said, "Your clothes are there, but I doubt that they would fit you now."

Yes, Tsuna knew that the child was not really a child, but a child-sized adult. He speculated that either the other's body was too heavily wounded that it transformed into a smaller and easier body to heal, or that it was a curse. It could be anything, honestly, and Tsuna wouldn't know because his senses were sealed, unfortunately.

"What did you do to me?" Tsuna almost laughed out loud at the horror that took over the chubby face at the squeaky voice. It was hilarious, and Tsuna had not seen anything funny in years.

"I did nothing. When I found you, you were already like this."

Truth.

Muddy red eyes narrowed. Lips pursed and those tiny hands clenched the mirror tightly, almost shattering it if not for the warning creak. Tsuna watched as the other put down the mirror back to where it was on the shelves and thought things through. It wasn't hard not to understand what was going on, and neither was it easy to accept it.

"I... Thank you for saving me, I owe you one." A grimace at the squeaky voice, but it was steady and full of convince. "I really should not impose you any further but, as you can see, I am not in my best state. So, can I shamefully bother you for a little longer? If it is not possible, then--"

"Sure."

"I--I'm sorry?"

Tsuna smiled, the corner of his eyes crinkling. "You can stay a little bit longer. After all, it has been far too boring recently so a company is still better than none. Of course, it wouldn't be a free stay. You'll have to help out with chores. What do you say?"

Delighted, the child-adult nodded. "Yes! Thank you very much! Once I recover, I will be sure to repay the favour!"

Tsuna waved it off carelessly. "We can talk about that after." He walked closer and reached out his right hand. "I'm Tsuna, you?"

Tinier hand touched his and shook it. "Enma." Enma smiled. "I'm Enma."

.

A month later, Enma was still in child form.

Depressed by the lack of changes despite being fully healed, Enma sighed gloomily as he stirred the stew he was making. For a month living with Tsuna, he realized that Tsuna was really, really bad with taking care of himself. He would only eat raw fruits and vegetables, meat being out of the picture since he sucked at catching live animals. He could not cook so much without hurting himself too, which Enma always found painful to look at. Two days into cohabitating and Tsuna burnt his own hand trying to cook congee, Enma decided to took it to his own hand and cook.

Despite his smaller stature now, he was very familiar with cooking. After all, he had been doing it for years. Mami always liked his cooking, so he wasn't afraid of accidentally poisoning his benefactor. In fact, cooking was one of the things that Enma loved doing. It was a stress reliever. And he missed doing it after... After that time.

Nostalgia flooding his muddy red eyes, Enma unconsciously smiled at the memories of his younger sister. He missed her.

Stuck in his memories, Enma failed to realize Tsuna's presence when the other snuck up to him. It was only when a shadow loomed over him with an eager 'Oooh' from his back that he snapped out of it. Jumped, he turned around and looked up at Tsuna with a surprised face.

"You're back! I thought you said that you would be back in late evening!" Tsuna had went out early in the morning, saying that he had to check on the barriers around the forest. He said that the storm previously might have ruined parts of the fences and he wanted to repair it before any feral animal barges in. Honestly, Enma doubted the existence of a fence that spanned almost half the forest as how Tsuna had described. Even if he couldn't recall everything that happened the night he found Tsuna's shed, he knew he didn't come across any form of barrier, much less a fence.

Still, everyone has their own secret, thus Enma did not question him and nodded.

Tsuna hummed at that, still savouring the delicious smell of stew. "Well, thankfully there's no damage this time so I came back early. And look at what I found at the other side!" He grinned as he showed Enma a piglet's corpse.

"It was dead when I found it and it’s a waste to just bury it so, why not eat it? As a thank for mother nature for the feast."

Enma was amused, clearly, but his muddy red eyes were shining brightly at the thought of meat after so long. He missed eating meat. "So your idea of repaying mother nature is eating its creations?"

"Of course, eating is appreciating."

Enma laughed and shook his head exasperatedly. He nodded nonetheless. "Fine, fine. Help me out then, I can't exactly carry it with these miserable tiny hands."

Enma hated how small they were, ugh.

Tsuna snickered. He, albeit clumsily, helped carrying the piglet onto the chopping board and listened to Enma's instructions on dealing with it.

Despite joking around while helping out, the piglet was dealt with and cooked properly in an hour's time. Tsuna's mouth was watering by the time Enma plated it.

Hopping down the steps, Enma washed his hands, sat down opposite of Tsuna by the dining table and said, "Bon appetit." He smiled when Tsuna immediately dugged in and moaned at how delicious and how long he had had abstained from meat just because he can't catch one himself.

Enma found him so cute.

Honestly, he really shouldn't be having any good feelings for a practical stranger despite the other being his saviour and all. Who knows what he really wanted to do to Enma, but he couldn't help it. After all, they had only known each other for about a month, and neither knew much about one another other than their name, who can or can't cook, Tsuna loving to laze under the sun, Tsuna occasionally telling him about the myths of the forest, Tsuna checking if he was healing up well with worried face, stupidly strong Tsuna, Tsuna smiling at him...

That was beside the point. That was all besides the point.

Enma really, really shouldn't develop anymore attachment towards him. After all, once he was back to his original form, he would have to leave, right? Tsuna did let him stay because he was in a child form right now, and Tsuna was so sweet and soft and concerned about letting him go off like this. 'Tsuna...' Enma's muddy red eyes softened at how happy the brown hair man was, glinting slightly under the light.

Tsuna lifted his head from his plate when he finally realized that Enma had not started eating, and blinked curiously. He tilted his head and asked, "Are you not eating, Enma?"

Enma snapped out of his trance and coughed into his hands. "I am, I am." His voice cracked a little, but he feigned ignorant as he tried to be as casual as possible while eating. Gears running in his mind, he desperately looked for a change of topic. "By the way, do you mind if I ask how long you have been living here?"

It was a genuine question, so he managed to turn the attention around. He had been wondering about it for quite some time now. The shed was very deep into the forest, far, far away from civilization. Too far, actually, that a trip down to the nearest village at the edge of the forest would take a day and a half. Although Enma knew some people can live in seclusion away from others, it would rather be difficult to do so. If any consumables such as ink, parchment for letters, candles, or even clothes, were to run out or spoil, would not it be inconvenient to restock them? Granted, so far, it seemed that there was never a lacking of these items even though Enma was sure that there was no store room to hoard them.

Not to mention, judging from how old and well lived in this shed was, he doubted that Tsuna lived here for a mere year or three.

Tsuna hummed at the question and shook his head. "I don't mind. It has been..." He frowned, mentally calculating the years he spent alone. In the end, he shook his head again. "Too long, I don't remember anymore."

Enma's heart lurched, but his face remained unchanged. He had some speculations, but neither of it seemed valid. "I see," He did not pry further. "Then are there anyone else living in the forest? Sounds a little bit lonely if you are the only one."

"Oh! There are. My m-- friends. They're around. Somewhere. In the forest. Well, they rarely come visit because they are busy with their duties but they live near enough for me to get to them if I have an emergency." Tsuna explained, but he did not provide the full details. Rather, he couldn't. After all, none of his friends settle around for more than two to three days, and they could easily disappear for almost half a decade without contact. It was true that if Tsuna had an emergency that needed their help, he could find them easily though.

"I see. That's good. I'd be very worried if there isn't anyone."

"Why?" Tsuna did not understand, but Enma's face started to flush and he started to stammer. "W-w-well--"

'I would be very concerned if you're alone every day once I leave. I would be wondering if you have eaten properly, if you have slept well, if you have smiled. I would be wondering if you missed me, if you feel lonely, if I can be with you to chase away that darkness. I...'

The loud sound of impact that resonated from the middle of the forest saved Enma from actually answering. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Enma looked out of the window and saw a flock of birds flying away, squawking in a way that sounded like fear.

He frowned, wondering if something bad happened. The tip of his fingers tingled.

With him turned away from Tsuna, he missed how Tsuna scowled and how his eyes turned bright orange from the usual brown.

"I'll go check." Tsuna announced, eyes turned normal again as he smiled. He pushed himself off the chair as Enma turned to him with a surprised look. "That sounds dangerous." Enma wanted to follow, but he knew that with how he was, he would be more of a burden than help. Still, he didn't want Tsuna to go. Not when he didn't know if it’s truly dangerous.

Tsuna smiled. "Don't worry." He said, petting Enma's on his head, something that Enma liked yet find it irksome because that meant Tsuna took him as a real child. Tsuna did not realize the changes and walked over to a small cabinet beside the sink, pulling out a pair of worn-out mittens and a dagger. There were engravings on the handle, but Enma was too far to clearly see what it was. Tsuna wore a cloaked and kept it by the time he walked back to Enma.

"I'm strong, you know it." Enma does. He knew. For a man that is slightly shorter than his own height, Tsuna's strength was actually stronger than his by a degree. (He did not want to remember the time Tsuna one handily pushed the heavy wardrobe full of clothes away just to reach for something that had fallen behind it like the wardrobe weighed nothing. Nope. He definitely did not want Tsuna to use his strength on him as well. Definitely nope.)

"But still..."

Tsuna grinned. "I'll be back faster than you'd think!"

"... Alright, stay safe!"

Tsuna paused a moment, figure softened at that. It had been so long since he last heard people wishing for his safety, he couldn't help but cherish it for a moment longer. "Hmn!"

Enma watched the door close shut and sighed.

"He will be alright..." He whispered to himself.

.

They did not talk about what happened when Tsuna came back bloodied yet uninjured. Enma wanted to ask, but Tsuna skirted around the topic and Enma stopped. He told himself, as long as Tsuna was uninjured and safe.

He asked whose blood it was that had stained Tsuna's cloak and mittens, however, as he watched the other wash away the blood stain in a very practiced manner.

"Oh, it was a deer's blood. Poor thing had stabbed herself with a protruding branch." Tsuna offhandedly replied.

Enma was suspicious. "A deer's blood."

"Yep!" Tsuna cheerily replied.

Enma did not believe that, because for all he knew, he smelled the stench of human on Tsuna.

He kept quiet.

(When he had fallen into deep slumber that night, Tsuna was still awake. Sitting on the roof with the will-o'-wisps whispering into his ears, he sighed.

"Not yet." He whispered, archaic and foreign. "Not yet."

The will-o'-wisps burned indignantly.)

.

Three and a half months later, Enma could not wait any longer. He was clearly all good, and that his power was still with him. It did not disappear nor did it weaken. In fact, the capacity increased, his power strengthened. He could feel things more vividly, like how the world shift and ground tremble. He was stronger than ever, and yet he was still in a child form.

Honestly, Enma wanted to stay longer, but he could not, not when his mission was incomplete still, not when his family and friends were still waiting for him. He had thought of it; he wanted to bring Tsuna along, wanted to introduce him to his family so that Tsuna would no longer be lonely.

He did not want Tsuna hide that sad look whenever he thought Enma was not watching.

But Enma couldn't. With his mission, with the safety of his family and friends, with his own secrets... He couldn't. He couldn't bring Tsuna even if he wanted to. (Not to mention, that incident did not happen just once and every time Tsuna settled it, he would always bring home the smell of human and blood that was not his nor an animal's.)

Enma's heart was in pieces as he tore himself to make a decision.

"Tsuna," He began, looking straight at Tsuna's eyes. They were sunbathing by a river near the shed and Tsuna was lying beside him with his arms as pillow like a content cat. Making a sound to acknowledge Enma's call, Tsuna squinted his eyes at Enma, light from the sun blinding him momentarily. "What's wrong?"

"... I think it's time I contact my comrades."

Tsuna blinked once, twice, and 'oh'-ed. He sat up and looked at Enma carefully. He nodded, hiding the reluctance and unwillingness in him. "Yes... Yes, it's probably time. They are most likely worried sick about you."

"...Yes." Enma found that Tsuna was being weird. "They most likely are."

Sighing inaudibly, Tsuna dropped the eye contact and stared at the ground, legs crossed as he ran a finger over the grass. "How--How are you going to get in touch with them? Anything I can help you with?"

Enma pursed his lips and shook his head. "No, I... I will leave this evening and reach out to them."

"Oh." Tsuna said again.

"I'm sorry."

"No, no. It's okay! I understand, really! I-- well, I guess this is it?"

"Hmn. I will definitely repay you for your kindness someday."

"Oh, you don't have to, really." Tsuna laughed awkwardly. "I mean, you already repaid me with the delicious meals you cooked every day and the company. I really appreciate that, you know? I--it's been a long time since I... I had company."

Enma's heart hurt. It hurt to see how Tsuna closed himself off so suddenly, but he couldn't say anything more. He couldn't comfort him while he was the cause and that he was the one who wanted to leave. If he did comfort Tsuna, he knew it would bring the latter more pain than before.

Anymore, and Enma could never leave anymore.

However, Enma couldn't help but blurt out one thing: "I liked accompanying you too."

Tsuna smiled sadly.

"Well, when?"

"In a bit." Tsuna nodded. "Alright. Alright. I guess I won't be sending you off?"

"Hmn."

"Then," Tsuna turned to him with a grin. "Thank you, Enma. I hope your future endeavors go smoothly." He reached out his right hand. Enma's eyes softened, muddy red brightening slightly. "Thank you, Tsuna." He said too, grabbed the hand and shook it firmly. "For everything. I will find a way to repay you soon."

Tsuna waved him off with that. "Like I said, you don't need to." He seemed a little sad. "You can't even if you want to, anyway..." He whispered beneath his breath, so low that Enma couldn't catch it properly.

Enma did not say, but he would really do as he say, he would soon figure out a way to repay Tsuna. Definitely after his mission, of course. He stood up from the ground and patted away the dust and dirt. "Take care, Tsuna."

"Hmn."

Tsuna pointed off into a distance and said, “That way, it’s safer.”

“Thank you.” Enma bowed one last time and turned, leaving without turning around and looking at Tsuna one last time.

Glows of fairies chattered angrily beside Tsuna’s ears as he watched Enma’s back disappear into the forest, some even kicked him on his arm. It didn’t hurt, of course, and he paid no heed to their anxiety until he was sure Enma had disappeared from sight.

“No.” He flicked one of them off his head gently. “Don’t hurt him.” He sighed once again and lied back down. His eyes were closed, hiding the blazing orange under the thin skin. “Anyone who dares to touch him, you know what I will do to you later.”

Shadows all over the forest scattered back into their hiding spots as the threat resonated into their soul, planting fear in them. The fairies flew away too, leaving Tsuna alone beside the river.

Quiet, at last.

Tsuna thought.

‘Too quiet.’

.

“What the fuck happened to you, Enma?!”

Enma regretted immediately that he had reached out to Aoba instead of Adelheid. Aoba’s eyes were literally bulging out as he tried to make sense of Enma’s form like Enma is some sort of specimen. It made him uncomfortable, but he had no choice. Aoba was the only one who is the most sensitive towards nature than the others; others may not necessarily sense his call but as long as Enma uses his power on one of the nature’s vein, Aoba can sense it immediately. Adelheid is sensitive enough towards his power that she could do it herself, but her strength in that regard was not as good.

And since Enma did not know his exact location, he could only count on Aoba. At least it wasn’t Shitt. P. He didn’t want to be taken as a specimen for her various weird experiments.

“Don’t ask.”

“Well, I already did.” Aoba sassed as he poked Enma’s chubby cheeks. “You looked exactly like how you were young, did you regress?”

“I’ve no idea.” Enma was on wits ends by the prods and swatted the next attack harshly. He usually wouldn’t be so harsh with his friend, but being in such a tiny body did strange works on his temper. Plus, he was in a bad mood from parting with Tsuna.

“Adel will shit her pants…”

“She will kill you if you don’t bring us back, Koyo.”

“Shit, you’re right. Let’s go.”

Enma grabbed Aoba’s hands and finally turned back to look at the forest one last time. His eyes glowed bloody red as he and Aoba disappeared with a gush.

When the wind settled, the shadows popped out and whispered to each other, hushed and frantic. Each and every one of the creatures questioned their lord’s decision, but none had the courage to find him. Their lord was still in foul mood after all. Despite his gentle temperament, his rage was not something they weak followers could handle.

Without a solution, they could all only dissipate silently and wait for their lord’s next move.

.

After a series of arguments and laughter from his friends and family, they finally came to a conclusion that Enma was cursed by the forest’s guardians, and it was far too archaic for them to break. It was not strong, but it was strange and none of them knew if anything would happen to Enma if they forcefully break it.

Adelheid was pacing around the room, muttering to herself as she tried to figure out a way to break it without any whiplash. Julie watched from the side while Shitt. P and Ooyama flustered around Enma. Well, Ooyama was flustered, Shitt. P was just prodding and poking while asking series of questions that Enma couldn’t even understand.

“It doesn’t make sense… That forest had been deserted for years, and none of the guardians there are strong enough to put such complicated curse on Enma.”

“Maybe all of the creatures there banded together to do it?” Kaoru quietly voiced out, to which Adelheid shook his head.

“No, impossible. Even though it’s no strong, the amount of spiritual energy that has to be put into use is far more than all the creatures could every contribute. Not to mention it was far to complex that any little disturbance would render it useless.”

“Then what do you think?” Julie drawled lazily, but his eyes were particularly focused. “What do you think could have been the one who put such a curse on Enma? It’s not even a dangerous one other than putting him in a child form.”

Adelheid’s steps paused. Her head raised and she looked at Enma with an incredulous yet anxious look.

“No… It wasn’t intended to harm Enma… The coronation—” Adelheid gasped. “The coronation! Enma can’t possibly be crowned if he’s in this stead! No one would allow it, much less those that still oppose the Shimon!” She bit her finger nail, eyes flitting as she tried to figure out the culprit. Who, exactly? Who had such grudge with the Shimon? And with archaic knowledge at that?

Remembering all the names of those that opposed their rise since the last generation, Adelheid’s mind halted at a particular name, one that she had not remembered for a long, long time. “… The Vongola?”

Julie scowled at the name as the others all fell silent, listening carefully.

“They had been annihilated for so long, what makes you think the old skies would hurt us? Not to mention, it hadn’t been us who killed most of them all. It was the previous generations that they should have a grudge with, not us.”

“Yes, which is why they did not harm Enma, but rather cursed him into such state! They were probably trying to stop the coronation ceremony from happening, so they could counter attack.” Adelheid ruffled her hair, frustrated. “Shit, they really did used their advantage! With how their historical records burnt down during the siege, no one knows how their powers were passed down and used! No one knows how to break them either! Once they achieve their goal, we’d all be dead!”

Julie fell silent in a thoughtful manner. Enma pursed his lips. “I don’t think they really wanted to kill us…” Adelheid gave Enma a hard look as his voice faltered.

“Did you not remember the history? Did you not remember how bloodied the siege went? All except the four children survived! And these children were banished down to purgatory without anything else but their clothes behind their back! Even if we were not the one who did it, those kids, would they not harbour the grudges of the death of their loved ones? Would they not desire for revenge? And since the previous generation has passed, would they not transfer their hatred to us, just like how we did to the Varia back then?”

Enma did not reply. He knew that that was the most likely explanation. Vongola and Shimon had long broken apart from one another that the tangled wires of misunderstanding and hatred could no longer be separated.

It hadn’t been like that; Vongola and Shimon were once allies, and their leaders were once best friends. Vongola ruled the skies, while Shimon ruled the lands and seas; it had always been like that since the first sky leader and first gaia leader came to existence. It always had been, until one particularly greedy Vongola subordinate betrayed them; the creature besieged the Shimon on ground, taking them off guard. The creature killed a lot of them, friends, family, comrades, beloved.

Shimon finally managed to weaken and capture the creature, but not without a huge cost. The first gaia leader was gravely injured and had fallen into a coma.

Enraged, Shimon demanded an explanation and compensation as well as help from the first sky leader to save the first gaia leader, but they got none of those. Instead, the first sky leader turned away from their indignant voices, and Vongola pressured them to release the creature.

What could Shimon do at that time? They were far too weak with the decreased manpower and they were without a leader. Vongola was too strong, especially after the Mist and Cloud guardian took over the manpower distribution.

The creature was returned to the skies.

Still, a lot of the Shimon was still hopeful that the Vongola would help them, that the first sky would hear them and save their dying leader.

Until the day their first gaia died, Vongola paid them no heed.

Shimon could not swallow the anger and started a siege. Thousands of years later, Vongola was annihilated and fallen to purgatory, with the mercy of allowing four children live as a repayment for Vongola letting go four of theirs during one of the clashes.

Shimon since then turned the sky and land over and became the rulers of both.

And Enma was the tenth in line for the crown.

Enma’s head lowered. He hated that story. He hated how their people died, how arrogant Vongola was, how the thousands of years of war washed the skies and lands in red. He was not born then, but growing up listening to such horrifying story, Enma grew to hate conflict. He grew to hate how everything ended up with people dying, and vowed that so as long as once he was the leader, he would never allow anything to escalate to such degree.

He would never allow another bloodshed to happen.

And even if Vongola wanted revenge, he would not allow that to happen either, bloody red eyes narrowed.

“… Adelheid. First, look for the traitor. During the previous mission, I was ambushed but a group of reapers; the location of that mission was supposed to be top secret so someone must have leaked it. There must be someone who was controlling the reapers as well because it did not distinguish between good or evil, find them if possible.”

Adelheid nodded.

“Second, tighten the security around the palace ground, especially the inner palaces and library. We mustn’t let anyone unauthorize into these areas or else we would be as good as showing our back to the enemies. And third,” Enma paused.

“Call Cavallone leader in. Besides Shimon, Cavallone was the one who was closest to Vongola back then. They might have some idea what this curse is.”

“Understood.”

.

It was late into the night where most creature had slept, leaving the shadows and nymphs awake to accompany Tsuna. He was hiking up a mountain, path hidden and messy. He would have got himself lost if not for the little glowing swallow that guided him, Jirou. In his grasp was Natsu, his familiar, purring as he listened to the fairies’ chatters.

“Soon, alright? Stop nagging me all day long, you’re going to talk my ears off.”

The fairies were incensed and tugged on his hair. They were too weak, however, that it felt like a mere tickle to Tsuna. Still, to avoid their attacks, Tsuna quickly placated them.

“Yes, yes. I understand. After all, it has been so long; your queen must’ve been very anxious. We’ll capture—We’re here.”

Jirou chirped as they reached a cliff, surrounded by trees and bushes. Before the edge of the cliff, to the side was a very steep ascend up to the tip of the mountain. It seemed normal, like any normal wall of soil a mountain would have, but Tsuna could see a glowing mark, one only those of blood could see.

Vongola.

“Please be patient.” He said, and went to touch the wall. None of the fairies dared to come close, the powers radiating from the glow far too powerful for them. Tsuna smiled and his eyes glowed.

He walked into the mark and disappeared from sight.

Left behind, the fairies decided to trust Tsuna and waited there along with the shadows.

Inside was as dark as outside where moon did not shine, but Tsuna could see perfectly fine. Jirou who sat on Natsu’s head chirped once, twice, a signal for his arrival, as he moved further in until a door.

Without even knocking, the door swung open and closed heavily behind Tsuna when he walked in.

“Long time no see, Reborn.”

Beyond the door was a large room, not unlike a lounge a palace would have. There were sofas, chairs, tables with beverages and snacks. The only weird thing about the space is that other than the door Tsuna walked through, there were many doors all around and no windows. Reborn, a creature with ghastly shadows was lying on one of the sofas, languidly resting his eyes. At the call, he cracked an eye opened.

“Yo, dame-Tsuna.”

Tsuna rolled his in fond exasperation at the nickname, shaking his head as he made his way over to the sofa. He nudged the latter over and sat down beside him, patting Natsu as it purred at the sight of Leon on Reborn’s head. Reborn grunted and sat up, still lazily leaning against the cushions with his long limbs spread apart.

“You’re being a nuisance, Reborn.” Tsuna grumbled, but letting Reborn place a leg on his lap. He was far used to his old friend’s antics. Also, he sorts of missed such physical contact with him. Reborn scoffed.

“Not like you’d die.”

“I’ve already died once, thanks but no thanks death. By the way, where’s the others?”

“They’re here.” The moment Reborn replied, some of the doors swung open at the same time and came in a group of people.

“My lord!”

Tsuna smiled at them, more delighted to see his family than he let on. He wanted to chat with them, but they had an agenda to plan. “Come on, lets start the meeting. It’s going to take a long time.

.

Cavallone could not help them. Their current lord had no idea what the curse was and how to break it safely. It was far too out of their scope of knowledge, and none was like the ones recorded in Cavallone’s history books.

Adelheid almost strangle the second in command to death. She was far too at the edge that she ended up snapping at everyone including Enma. Enma understood though, because none of their plans fall in place. The traitors were not found and the curse was still unknown. The only thing that went well was the tightening of security.

Too well, actually, that Enma found it suspicious.

Mami patted Enma on his head—she liked to do that now that she found him shorter than her by more than a head—and said, “Don’t worry, nii-chan. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

Enma smiled at her and nodded. “Hmn. I believe you, Mami.”

Mami grinned.

Adelheid almost blew her fuse at how relaxed he was but managed to hold it back because Mami was there. “Enma, my lord, we must figure out a way to turn you back. The old advisors all had heard of your current predicament, and I doubt that they would not have a plan on pulling you down with the charge of ‘cursed’! You know how bad most Shimons are with the word ‘cursed’! Those advisors would surely take this chance to nominate their heirs for the position!”

Enma sighed. “I know, Adel. I know. But there is nothing we could do. I want to forcefully break this curse now with the consequences be damned, but who is to say that we will succeed? At first glance it doesn’t seem that we need a lot of strength to break it, but I can feel that it is not the case. Even we might not necessarily be able to forcefully break it.”

“But—”

“Adel,” Enma cut off, frowning not in irritation for a subordinate’s disagreement but rather in concern for his friend’s wellbeing. Adelheid could tell, so she shut up and listened. “Adel, I know you’re worried. After all, if I don’t take up the position of the leader, we’d be besieged by our own instead. Our peace faction will fall and those who preferred war would reign. We cannot have that happen; I know. But right now, we are truly out of options—no.”

Adelheid frowned. “’No’?”

Enma suddenly remembered someone. “… Maybe he can help.”

.

Enma hated going down to the prison; he hated the grim and darkness, hated the stench of water, hated the claustrophobic environment. He loathed the most is the fact that they had imprisoned people, stripping their freedom away from them for eternity.

At the deepest end, there was a door; heavy in metal and locks, sealed by countless of spells and curses.

The very last survivor of the Vongola other than the four children: Ricardo.

Enma nodded at the guards and peered into the prison through the small bars where they deliver food and drinks. “Ricardo Vongola.” He called, respectful despite being the next in line for Shimon.

Ricardo did not so much as react to his call, sat on the chair he was chained to with his head lowered, eyes covered by his messy hair.

“I’m Enma Kozato of Shimon, I presume that you know me.” He continued and yet Ricardo still did not react.

“I need your help.” At those words, Enma could feel the guards looking at him with incredulous gaze, but they were in no authority to question their future leader—even if they were curious as of why he was in this form. At that, Ricardo peered up slightly.

“…”

“I’ve been cursed by someone—I’m now stuck in this child form and I can’t return back to normal.”

Ricardo finally looked up carefully and sized him up. Despite the ragged and dirty form, Enma could tell the second Vongola sky was prideful—his eyes were alive despite thousands of years of captivity. Enma admired him, how strong he was in the face of Vongola’s fall, how he pulled up Vongola during the war when their first sky fell. Enma wished to be as strong as him.

“Please help me.”

“… Tell me, young Shimon,” Ricardo rasped, voice hoarse after years of silence but was still steady and firm. It has an archaic tone. “What gain do I have to help you who cursed my people to death? Why should I help you whose blood belongs to my enemy?”

Enma clenched his hands into fists.

“… Because once I successfully gain the position of a leader, I will bring you out and clear the misunderstanding between Vongola and Shimon.”

Everyone was stunned. The guards exchanged a look of shock but they could tell that Enma was serious.

Even Ricardo could tell.

“What misunderstanding is there? You Shimons were the one who stole our treasure and then when our people fought to bring it back, you guys claimed we mass murdered most of you for greed! You thieves stole the vitality of our people and dared to say we Vongola was the one who did you wrong! What great voices you have, that now Vongola is viewed as cruel killers!”

“Insolent--!” One of the guards started, hissing in anger. Enma quickly shot him a glare that shut him up, before turning back to Ricardo.

“I know.”

Ricardo looked at him with a piercing stare, seemingly stripping his soul bare. Enma let him. “I know the truth; I know that it is us Shimon who has wronged Vongola, and I want to let the world know—

“I want to reveal the truth that broke the friendship between us Vongola and Shimon.”

Ricardo studied him, analysed, contemplated. He was a Vongola—still is—and like all Vongola skies, he could tell if Enma was telling the truth. He knew the man thousands of years younger than him was speaking of the truth. Enma really knew what happened years back when only the first sky, first gaia and him knew.

Should Ricardo really trust him?

“… I will speak to you alone.”

.

On the day of the coronation, the sky was crying. It was not an uncommon sight; all the coronation of the previous Shimon leaders would be accompanied by rain, a symbol of washing away the past and accepting the future. It was a symbol of peace and blessing.

Enma loved the rain.

Adelheid grumbled beside him as she checked and double checked his attire, making sure that it was neat and tidy. She pinned the Shimon insignia onto the coat carefully with an edge of agitation. “I can’t believe you actually believed that guy. And talked to him alone! Without the guards protecting you!”

Enma looked up at the sky from the window. “He wouldn’t hurt me. Not when his agenda is the same as ours.”

Adelheid gave him a glare. “Still, he’s unaware that we are on the same side. What if he decided you’re not worth it and offed you?”

“He won’t.” Enma repeated with a smile. “He will never.”

Adelheid did not understand. Grumbling still, she gave up on scolding Enma and picked up the cloak in silent protest.

“Adel, I know you’re worried, but look, aren’t I back to normal?”

“… Can we even trust him? It’s not even a permanent solution!”

Enma was back to his normal form. It felt weird being tall again but Enma appreciated the bigger hands that let him grip things properly. Tightening the scabbard of his sword, Enma sighed, feeling more comfortable than ever. “Yes, we can. Besides, didn’t he say we would be able to find the culprit during the coronation? At that time, we will be able to force them to break the curse.”

(“I don’t believe you. I know you know why. But I will help you. It is not permanent—no one other than the caster can break the curse—but it’ll last you through the coronation ceremony. The culprit will most probably show up then, so you’ll see to it yourself. I just hope that you’d carry out what you’ve promised. Remember, the skies are always watching.”)

“As if the culprit would actually do it even if we capture them…”

He gave her a feral grin. “Well, we have you, don’t we?”

Adelheid rolled her eyes but said nothing more. As soon as she finished putting the cloak on him, there was a knock on the door, signifying that the ceremony has begun. She sighed and readied herself.

“Well, there’s no going back at this point.”

Enma smiled. “No, there isn’t.”

The ceremony begun.

.

“My lord, Tsuna,” Gokudera called out, voice carried steadily to Tsuna’s ears through the wind. “We’re arriving.” Tsuna looked away from the Vongola ring on his middle finger and looked up. He was sitting on Natsu as it flew up the skies to the palace where the coronation takes place. The rest of his friends and family followed closely behind, with Gokudera opening the path with Uri. Breathing in the air, every part of him screamed home.

He missed the sky palace.

“Okay, get ready guys.”

Yamamoto began to whistle loudly, warning cry sharp. Tsuna gave Ryohei and Lambo a look. They both nodded and broke apart from the group, Gyudon bringing them around the palace ground unnoticed. Chrome and Mukuro switched from Tsuna’s side to the back of the group, letting Hibari guard him.

At position, Yamamoto whistled again and this time, it was a war cry, loud enough that all creatures of the sky heard—even the Shimon.

.

The attack by Vongola was taken by surprise, obviously. Everything happened in a blink of an eye. One moment, the coronation ceremony was going well where Enma took the Shimon ring and put it on, the next, a sharp whistle followed by a sky lion’s roar reverberated through the hall.

Enma’s guardian immediately surrounded him as Shitt. P casted a spell around them, creating a dome-like shield. The guards reacted immediately, but none of them were a match for Vongola’s skylark as he descended in a furry of attacks. The advisors tried to run, but the twin mists covered each other and surrounded the palace as a whole in a never-ending illusion of loops.

They were thoroughly surrounded by the Vongola, and there were only six of them.

Enma wasn’t surprised, because after all, Vongola belongs in the skies while Shimon belongs to the lands. Shimon would never be able to win against the rulers of skies.

What surprised him, however, was Tsuna.

Bloody red eyes widened, he stared at Tsuna as his guardians forcefully killed a path open for him, straight to the throne where Enma and his guardians were. Tsuna was smiling, yet Enma could tell that it was a sad smile.

Enma’s heart hurt for Tsuna.

“My lord! What should we do?!” Aoba shouted, watching carefully to prevent any of the Vongola or anyone else who wanted to fish in muddy water approach them. Plants surrounded them; thorns sharp towards the outside away from them. His powers were limited, however. Unlike on ground, these thorned plants can never be an iron fort. Against the illusions Chrome and Mukuro made, they were nothing.

Enma did not pay a heed, however. All he could think of at that time was how beautiful Tsuna looked in a suit—he was always wearing casual attire during the time he stayed with him so it was novel.

Enma liked Tsuna.

Their eyes met somehow as Tsuna made his way towards them and memories flitted through their mind. It surprised them, but Tsuna did not stop, and Enma started making his way to him too.

“Wha—Enma!!” Adelheid called out, trying to grab him and pull him back into the dome when a chain smashed against where her hand was. “Do not interrupt, herbivore.” Hibari snarled as he continued fighting against the countless of guard.

Strangely enough, none of those he knocked down were dead or gravely injured, Julie noted. The smile on his face slipped slightly.

When Enma and Tsuna came close enough, they stopped.

A pair of bloody red eyes and a pair of bright orange eyes glowed.

They smiled.

“Time to take back your place.” Tsuna jested. “I can’t believe you’d actually fallen for the trick.”

Enma sighed. “Yes, it’s time.” He shook his head and pulled out the Shimon ring and handed over to Tsuna. “Death really did me over with that curse.”

“Enma what are you doing?!” At that shout, the fight stopped. It wasn’t much of a fight, anyway. Gokudera and Yamamoto were in charge of holding back most of them while Hibari knocked down the stubborn ones; Chrome and Mukuro had the whole palace under lockdown. The Shimon stopped and gasped, some even started shouting at Enma to not give in to the enemy.

Enma did not even bother looking at them.

Tsuna grinned, laughing. “Death had fun.” Instead of taking the ring, he pulled out the Vongola ring too and hand over to Enma. “I had fun too, when you come find me.” This time, not only the Shimon was shocked into silence, even the Vongola guardians were stunned. “Tsuna?” Yamamoto asked uncertainly.

They exchanged the rings. The moment both of them had a firm grasp of the rings—Enma with Vongola and Tsuna with Shimon—flames ignited from the rings.

Enma’s bloody red eyes softened down to bright orange while Tsuna’s bright orange eyes darkened to bloody red.

Everyone gasped.

Standing where Enma was, Giotto sighed. “Too long. It has been too long.” He said, nostalgia as he looked at the ring. He looked up at Cozarto. “Right, Cozarto?”

Cozarto at where Tsuna was, agreed in a heartbeat. “Agree. It has been too long. It shouldn’t have been… So many of ours had died…”

Giotto nodded, forlorn and regretful. “Yes… If only we could wake earlier. But I guess, better late than never?”

“Yes.”

He turned around and smiled at the Shimon’s youngest guardians. “Isn’t that right?” He said again, looking straight at Julie. “Better late than never, huh, Julie?”

Julie scowled. “I don’t know what—”

“Or should I say, Daemon.”

The dome that protected the guardians broke at the name and all of them scattered far away from Julie, weapons pointed at him.

Julie gave them a bewildered look. “Wha—What are you guys doing?! Why are you believing an enemy’s words?! We should all trust each other especially at this time!”

“We all knew who you truly are.” Ooyama said. “Since the beginning.”

Julie gritted his teeth. “I can’t believe you guys. Years after years of friendship, estranged like this all because of a word from someone who’s supposed to be dead?!”

“No,” Adelheid refuted. “It wasn’t just a word. The Vongola had long contacted us about this. We knew all this while that you aren’t Julie.” She sounded as though she was grieving. “Julie… He… He’s long dead.”

Julie was stunned in place.

Years ago, when the war was at its peak, eight children of Shimon ran away from their home, a hideout where Enma’s father built for his family and closest friends. Their location was leaked, and Vongola, to seize Enma’s father who was a general at that time, attacked them. At first, they merely wanted to subdue them but for some reason, all of the Vongola soldiers’ eyes turned indigo and they started slaughtering with abandon.

Enma’s mother noticed that something was wrong the moment the first blood was shed, and immediately ordered Enma to bring his sister and the other kids to run. There were only eight of them then, so they ran and ran and ran, away from their home and into the woods. Vongola chased them, but the shadows held them back; the creatures of the forest screaming at them for harming their own.

The eight of them managed to escape and hid in a cave. It was safe at first; they could stay there until Enma’s father come to them. However, Kaoru and Ooyama was gravely injured, and Aoba fell ill. They could not wait any longer. Thus, Julie, being the oldest among them, went looking for herbal medicines and food. He never came back.

Ooyama soon fell into a coma from heavy loss of blood and stopped breathing the next day. Kaoru so to not be a burden forcefully stopped his own breathing the following day. Aoba lasted longer, but his cold was too serious and he died in shock.

Four of them died. And four of them were left behind hungry, cold and scared.

After burying their body, Enma and Adelheid decided that they could not stay any longer. Mami, too, was falling ill and Shitt. P was barely holding onto sanity. In the dark, they made a decision to leave and find their parents in the frontline.

In the end, they were captured by the Vongola midway. They were the four children who were released by the Vongola, the children that they let go and not killed.  

“That time, we actually tried to look for Julie, but he was gone. The spirits of the forest said Death took him, and there was nothing else we could do.”

Julie was persistent. “But I’m here! I came back!”

“No,” Shitt. P shook her head. “No, you did not. You infiltrated us. Julie never came back; Daemon you took over his soul and killed his chance of coming back with Ooyama, Kaoru and Koyo. You killed our big brother.” Her eyes were teary, but blazing with rage. Shitt. P was closest to Julie besides Enma then, but no more.

Julie gritted his teeth. He lowered his head and his shoulders trembled. He looked like he was crying in frustration from the lack of trust of his comrades, but they all knew better.

Cozarto and Giotto walked over and stood in front of them, shielding them in a sense.

“We all know what you did, Daemon.” Cozarto said. “Its over; don’t torment the children with that face anymore.”

Julie suddenly tilted his head back and laughed, almost maniacally. Shadows stirred and swarmed him. Indigo mist tinted in midnight blue burned his skin and suddenly, his form changed. “My, my. You guys truly, truly played a trick on me.”

Daemon clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Well play, honestly. But so what if you know who I am? My goal is almost achieved after all.” He showed them a deck of cards—50 pieces. All bloodied and with the horrific face of the dead figures of both Shimon and Vongola.

They were the cages of those who held significant power in Shimon and Vongola.

“2 more, and I will get my wish.” He laughed hysterically, as though he could not believe it. “And these two… I reserve them for you two, Cozarto, Giotto!”

Daemon threw over two soul catchers.

Giotto sighed and closed his eyes. Cozarto smiled sadly at him as they reached for each other’s hands. ‘This is the end…’ Upon seeing that, Ricardo, who was brought out by Ryohei and Lambo, shouted, “No!!”

The rings in their hands joined together and a bright, blinding light flared, forcing everyone to close their eyes.

When they can finally open their eyes, Daemon, Giotto and Cozarto disappeared; the deck of cards and two rings were left behind.

Ricardo pushed off Ryohei, who was healing him and reached to grab the rings. “No, why…? This is not what they told me, why?!”

Death approached him and sighed. Reborn crouched down and looked at the rings, glowing faintly. “It’s their repayment.”

“Fuck their repayment!” Ricardo sobbed. Reborn’s expression was shadowed as he pulled him in.

“No, w-what happened? Where’s Enma?!” Adelheid rushed forward and questioned. “Why is the first gaia still alive?! Why did the first sky take over Enma’s body?! Where is he?!”

“Reborn-san, where’s Tsuna?! Didn’t he say nothing will happen?! That we will be able to live happily after all this ends?!” Gokudera snapped. Among all of them, the ones who rejected this plan the most was him, because no matter how he calculated, he could not figure out the way Tsuna can defeat Daemon, the defect. If it wasn’t for his trust for Tsuna, he would have long vetoed the plan till the end.

Reborn looked at the both of them. He was silent, but still explained in the end.

“Both of them were long dead.”

When Enma was released by the soldiers along with Mami, Adelheid and Shitt. P, it was not without a condition; for Enma to be the Vongola heir, Tsuna’s, servant. Of course, the Shimon were not willing, but for their youngest survivors’ lives, they had no choice. Enma had no choice too, so while the three girls were brought back home, Enma was brought up to the sky.

That was Enma and Tsuna’s first meeting.

Tsuna was a kind boy, hidden deep in the palace by the leaders of the Vongola. He was pure and innocent, but he was not ignorant. He was aware of the war outside, and he was aware that Enma was brought in to be his servant. He could tell that the boy was unwilling and was just as lost as he was with the arrangement.

Tsuna’s first decision was to make him his friend instead.

And so Tsuna dragged Enma everywhere, telling him to call him by his name, chat with him about things that fascinate him, protecting him from the other Vongola’s sneers and insults. He outright called out anyone who dared to bully Enma in front of the court and the leader—his father—and demanded punishment.

After three times, no one dared to treat Enma any other way than with respect.

“Why? Why would you do this?” Enma asked one night as they cuddled under the blankets watching the stars shine. Tsuna was yawning, tired from playing around all day. He looked at Enma and smiled with his bright orange eyes glowing. “Because you’re my friend. Because you bleed the same red blood as I do, feel the same pain in your beating heart as I do, breathe the same air as I do. But more importantly,”

He paused, flushing slightly.

“Because I like you.”

Enma was stunned.

He smiled back, eyes soft and fond.

“I like you too, Tsuna.”

Their hands intertwined under the blankets.

Three months later, Enma and Tsuna sneaked into the mausoleum where the first sky and his guardians’ remains resided. Tsuna wanted to tell him about the first sky, wanted to explain that history was not as it was.

They had never expected that they would find not just the first sky, but also the first gaia.

“They look just like us.” Giotto said words archaic and ancient all the same as he mused to Cozarto, both watching the children who was in awe and vigilance. “Just like how we were when we were brats.”

Cozarto laughed and nodded. “Exactly the same.”

“A-are you the first sky and gaia?” Enma, shielding most of Tsuna with his body, asked warily.

Cozarto smiled. “Yes.”

Tsuna gasped. “You guys are still alive? P-please, your eminences! Please stop the war! T-there’s too much bloodshed! Too many innocent lives are sacrificed, and even those in purgatory were dragged into this!”

Tsuna was just a child, but he was so, so pure. His wish was solely for the blood to stop; for the war to end; for the peace of his dead friends. (Yamamoto had gone first when he accidentally stumbled into a crossfire; followed by Lambo who was abandoned by his parents in an alley on lands without the knowledge of the rest; Mukuro shielded Chrome from a Shimon suicide soldier; and Hibari died protecting the creatures of the skies when Shimon set fire to the nursery in retaliation for the forest fire on land.)

Enma’s wish were the same. He wanted peace for the three who were waiting for him, wanted them to smile and live without danger.

Giotto shook his head. “We are no longer living, child.” He crouched down in front of them, sadness crafted deep into his eyes. “It is our fault—we should have ended it while we could, and now we can’t…”

Cozarto patted him on his back comfortingly, yet he said nothing because that was the truth.

Enma clenched his hands into fist, understanding what he meant easily. “Please. You must have a way. Otherwise, both of you wouldn’t stay here for so long even after death.”

Cozarto looked at him in the eyes. “… Indeed.” He admitted. “We do have a way, but we both do not have enough strength.”

“Tell us! We’ll help!” “Yes, we’ll do it regardless of the cost!”

The first gaia and sky exchanged a look.

Half a year later, the Shimon found their way up to the sky palace and ambushed them. Tsuna and Enma was hidden deep in the palace, so they were as safe as they can be, but somehow, one of the Shimon managed to enter the restricted area they were in.

“Young master! I’m so glad that you’re safe! Please step back so I can eliminate him—”

Enma and Tsuna smiled at each other and injected their souls into the rings; Enma with Vongola ring, and Tsuna with Shimon ring.

They both disappeared into the rings. In their place, Giotto took the face of Enma and Cozarto took the face of Tsuna. Both of them fainted and forgotten their memories.

The Shimon soldier took Enma back and left Tsuna on the ground, death hovering around both.

.

It happened like this:

Years back, when Vongola and Shimon was first established, Giotto and Cozarto took because the first sky and gaia with the former taking the sky and the latter taking the land. Both were good friends and partners, and both of their guardians got along. They were happy, holding the world up together in peace. Every day they will watch over the world, smiling as all creatures lived, helping in small ways they could in disasters, praying for them if they couldn’t. They will, together, guard the meaning of their existence—

Each other and the world.

One day, a plague spread across the lands and took millions after millions of lives. Cozarto could not do anything, for that was the curse of Death and Death could only obey the rules of the world. Helpless, he could only watch on even as the pleads of the creatures reached his ears. He could only hold onto Giotto as they supported each other, praying for the end of the plague.

It did end after a long while, but not without many lives lost, especially Cozarto’s people since they lived on land. They were in grief and rage that Cozarto did not save their loved ones, unable to understand why Cozarto only watched on.

There was a break in the bonds of the Shimon—one that hated Cozarto and wanted him dead, and one that supported him even if they did not understand.

Cozarto kept mum.

Death had once said: “These people may be yours, but so as long as they do not understand, they will not follow you. Why not—"

“Reborn.” Cozarto, the corner of his eyes red in anger, glared at Death. “They are my people still. They are Shimon, and so as long they are, I will accept them.”

Death closed its mouth and Reborn turned around to find Ricardo. Giotto did not so as much as give him a look as he grabbed Cozarto and pull him into a hug. “I understand, Cozarto, you know I do.”

Cozarto buried his face into his shoulder, holding on. “I know.”

Soon, it wasn’t known if someone from Vongola leaked it or that Shimon discovered from the old archives, the Shimon discovered that Vongola housed a creature—the queen of fairies who can call upon the souls of the dead and let them speak to their loved ones—and started demanding for the queen to lend them their power.

They called upon the skies for the fairy and under the reason ‘as a compensation for watching their beloved die’, they pled for the fairy to call upon their loved ones for one last farewell.

And how would the Vongola allow? How would the queen of fairy do that? Yes, she could call upon the souls of the dead, but that was under the premise that death allows; so as long it don’t, she couldn’t do so. And even if she could, how much strength does she have? Calling upon one soul took almost a quarter of her strength; how could she call upon thousands after thousands?

Naturally, even if she wanted to help, she couldn’t. Not even her spouse, Daemon Spade, the first sky’s guardian, would allow.

Cozarto also denied their pled for his aid and tried to dissuade them. A lot of them were not satisfied, so they banded together and kidnapped the fairy queen, forcing her to call their loved ones.

Daemon Spade was infuriated and descended onto them in vengeance. In the process, when he saw how his wife was dying from the torture, his eyes turned indigo and he started slaughtering those who kidnapped her.

He failed to bring her back as she fell into purgatory, barely saved by the other fairies who brought her back to the Tree of Life.

“Daemon, please. Calm down. You have killed all of those that laid their hands on Eleanor. Please, stop doing anymore unnecessary bloodshed.”

Daemon, who was brought back bloodied and chained, glared at him, eyes dark indigo and turning midnight blue. “No, it’s not enough! You did not see the state of my beloved; any longer and she would have died! I will never forgive those dirty blood, never!”

Giotto frowned, concerned about not only Eleanor and Daemon’s state, but also Cozarto who had to do damage control on the lands. He too was helpless in this state, because the wrong was in the Shimon just as much as it was in Vongola turning a blind eye to the Shimon’s plight.

All Giotto could do was lock Daemon up.

“Cozarto, how…?”

Cozarto shook his head, temple throbbing in pain from stress. “No, none of them wanted reconciliation. They… They’re starting to turn everything around and say that all faults belong to Vongola. I… No matter how much I try to explain, none of them would listen.”

Giotto sighed. “I guessed just as much… I’ve locked Daemon up for now. Hopefully he’ll calm down soon and then, we can do an announcement to both Vongola and Shimon. I’ll try to get Death to explain.”

“Will he though? I thought Reborn hated explaining to the living. He wouldn’t even tolerate us if it wasn’t for Ricardo.”

“We have no other choice; no one wanted to listen to us. Only Reborn as Death itself can help us now.”

Cozarto hummed, exhausted both physically and mentally. He was tired and hurting, not just because his people were rioting, but also because Daemon caused the death of many. But he also knew the Shimon were at fault even if he understood the reason for their desperation. All and everything were just giving him a huge headache and he felt like he couldn’t even breath. On one hand it was his people; on the other it was his friend’s guardian. He was stuck.

His only solace at the moment was Giotto—one who understood him from the beginning till the end.

“… I miss you.”

Giotto smiled sadly, palming the ginger’s face on the mirror. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass, imagining the warmth, and said “I miss you too.”

They both thought that as long as they held on, they would eventually be able to overcome this crisis.

But the rules of the world had another idea.

Daemon broke free. Daemon was a genius of his own, different from G who invented many, many technologies. Daemon created many spells, seals and curses, all with the inner strength all living creatures possess. He had even wanted to spread his creations one day to everyone in the world so that they can learn and strengthen their power, to live a stronger life.

Who would have thought, because of the incident, he no longer wanted them to have this knowledge but he wanted to kill them all with the tortures he invented?

Daemon sacrificed his corporal body and turned into mist. He knew Giotto would stop him, so he temporarily decapitated his soul and took over his body. Because Alaude, who could usually tell, was no around, he managed to trick the other guardians into thinking that he was Giotto. And so, he created his plan.

Since the Shimon wanted Eleanor to call upon their dead family, he would fulfil them. He created a deck of empty cards, 52 of them. He would capture the souls of those who are truly desperate and seal them in the card. Once all 52 were filled, he would bring them to Death in exchange for those who died before. Death would not be able to reject him because he had Ricardo in his hands.

And when those who died before are brought back to the land of living, they will be his puppets; and he would make those sealed in the cards watch how he torture their beloved just as they did to his spouse.

Giotto was so spiritually wounded by him that he could not respond to Cozarto’s call.

Cozarto realized soon enough that Giotto was unresponsive and immediately tried to find him, but instead, Daemon took the chance to heavily injure him as well.

“You, as their leader, shall take the blame as well.”

Cozarto fell into a coma.

When Alaude came back, it was too late; Daemon had long killed the Vongola guardians when each and one of them realized what was happening. In the end, Alaude, too, was sacrificed in order to wake Giotto up and expel Daemon from his body. Giotto was spiritually broken then, but in his last breathes, he connected with Cozarto’s spirit on land and developed a plan.

Like Daemon, they both abandoned their corporal bodies and wait for an opportunity. Who would have known that Daemon had long thought of that and planted a curse on their souls? So long as they are no longer bound to physical body, they could no longer find another and no one could see them.

Cozarto and Giotto could only stick to each other as they watch Vongola and Shimon fall into war.

It was only until they saw Tsuna and Enma years later that they had a chance. The children had to exchange their souls with theirs so that they can break the curse. It was all at the cost of their lives and no matter how Giotto and Cozarto explained, they wouldn’t back down. So they exchanged. And they couldn’t do it alone, so they asked for Death’s help whilst passing a message to Ricardo.

“Soon, a child will come to you. He will tell you that he wanted to expose the truth behind the war, why it started and how it had come to be. He will tell you that he wanted peace, that he wanted Vongola and Shimon to reunite. Help him.”

“Who is he?”

“My prodigy,” Giotto smiled. “He will survive.”

“But will you, brother?”

“… Yes.”

“… Alright. So as long as you promised to come back, I will.” Giotto smiled sadly and said nothing.

Years later, the child came, and everything fell in place.

.

Enma and Tsuna were asleep, in the Tree of Life, hands intertwined. Eleanor watched as they sleep, smiling sadly.

She looked up to the sky and sighed.

“Daemon, my love, I will see you soon.” She scattered and her powers were transferred to the two children.

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

A/N: WELP YET ANOTHER YEAR! HAPPY KHR RAREPAIR WEEK!!!!

as usual, its unedited because am busy with studying. Finals!!! qwq

This is a mess of a story and I can tell yall, that summary of mine is v click-baity. Its not even that good. Its full of plot holes and you guys can tell where I gave up and where I started miserable attempts to patch the plot holes lmao. Just imagine that its not there :3

Anyways to summarise this confusing story of mine, basically a few centuries or so (timeline what timeline?), plague happened, shimon on land died, urged vongola in the sky to help, no help, war. Cozarto and Giotto died in attempt to find peace, and because Daemon is cray cray, so they ended up possessing Tsuna and Enma respectively. You can tell this is where I try to make it mistaken identity AU lmao. I don't even think its this AU but whatever, right? :D

I was surprised that it went 11k tho... Hope you guys enjoy this messy 'little' story and stay safe!

[I apologize for any grammar, spelling, etc. etc. mistakes]

[florbelles]

L Y R A + vowels? ❤

ty lovely!! xx content warning for lyra-typical content ( torture, violence, sex, death, her standard bullshit ). unavoidable angst on the y despite the titular fluff asks because this is the hell that i’m always living in.

A CTIVITIES. what do they like to do with their s/o? how do they spend their free time with them?

— torturing nonbelievers, killing the unworthy, fucking in the blood of sinners ( sin can only be cleansed with blood, they say; blood cleanses all, they say; not all, sayeth shaggy, stage left with the mop ), watching each other work, seedsplaining their life stories to heretics, monologuing like they’re on a helium inhale, tormenting shaggy, never shutting the fuck up, making the flock at large crave the release of seven years in a bunker apart from them, laughing at their mediocre-to-terrible jokes they believe are terribly witty, causing joseph immeasurable pain in behaving reprehensibly during sermons when he’s too occupied to give them the Look of Discontent.

in all seriousness, the main thing she does with her husband that she can with absolutely no one else is nothing at all. the closest thing they have to an off switch is with each other. look at them, nuzzling in the rocking chair on the porch. look how in love they are. they might be anyone. they might be entirely unburdened of who and what they are. they might simply exist, for a moment. they might simply be happy. how sweet. do not look too closely at the blood drying under her claws. do not listen too closely to the sounds from the shed. do not try to identify that lingering scent emanating from the fire pit; surely it’s only the hickory.

E QUAL. are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

— neither; lyra could never be in a partnership with someone she does not consider her equal in every respect. all her life she assumed she would be alone precisely because she knows what she is; she would never ask anyone to be in that position. she would never ask someone to live at a disadvantage. she would never want to be with someone who could not know the worst of it and choose her anyway. she needs someone who can keep up with her and can keep her on her toes. she needs someone who’s like her, who sees her, who understands her, who can meet her at her level. she truly needs her match; she would never accept anything less, for the sake of both her interest and her comfort level.

I NSPIRATION. did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?

— on the contrary, they both hold the belief that everything they've been through and done and become has led them to this point ; they were meant for this, they were meant for each other, but they have already become who they need to be by the time their paths cross. everything led them to here, to each other, and for that, they can forgive the world nearly anything. 

they don't alter each other, they don’t seek to, but they do bring out the extremes in the other; they fuel each other's fanaticism, messianic complexes, sadism, all of it. they indulge each other. they love each other completely, as they are, even the worst parts. perhaps especially those. 

it might be said they temper the others’ self-destructive propensities, to an extent. she is perhaps more cautious because of him; she will never be truly cautious — not even he can give her impulse control or self-preservation instincts — but she is no longer quite so as expendable; there will be ramifications for someone who is not herself if she dies. she is no longer simply another damned soul, preying on the predators until she herself is slain. ( she has met her match, he did not slay her, he loved her instead; that was far more terrifying ). she is monstrous, but she is the monster he loves. she is nothing instead, but she is something also. ( lyra is obviously no longer at war with herself after finding her purpose in her the project, which is a fairly fundamental shift, but that can’t be attributed to john; she would have joined the project with or without him ).

of course loving him changes things, not in who she is, but in how it’s externalized ( this is how he saves her; all of her rage, all of her wrath, all of the passion and intensity and emotion and impulse that brews inside her, all of it is poured into loving him ). theirs is an obsessive, all-consuming, codependent love, and while being with him means she is wanted and loved and accepted and happy and at home for the first time in her life — and of course that changes things, of course it does, she is no longer afraid of herself, she is no longer consumed with loathing for what she is, because perhaps she is a monster, but god must love her, must, must, she must have done right, because go brought her here, god gave her him — but this also means that losing him leaves a truly irreparable void.

O N CLOUD NINE. what are they like when they are in love? is it obvious for others? how do they express their feelings?

— terrified. agonized. as giddy as a schoolgirl. she is deliriously, excruciatingly, passionately in love, or not at all; it’s everything or it’s nothing. ( she’s poor at expressing it with words. words she grew up with. words are so easily misunderstood. words are so easily fabricated. she cannot say she loves him. the words feel too weak. she is afraid they will rot in her mouth. she is afraid they will be as empty as every other time she heard it in her life. such a stupid word. such a small, stupid word ). nonetheless, it’s obvious, blindingly so, even from external observation; she lights up; she flushes; her heart still lurches when she sees him. she still feels drunk with it. she always will.

lyra’s love is ultimately something she demonstrates through acts, with sweat and tears and blood. she proves it with her body; physical intimacy is the only kind of intimacy she knows how to express. ( forgive me; i know only how to love violently ). she proves it with a simple, i see you: i know you; i am going to let you see me. i am going to let you know me.

she does not say i love you. she says i chose you, and he knows what it means.

she drops into warm familiarity; her enemies are greeted with “hello, darling,” her husband gets a simple “hi, john.” she does not mask her soft, light voice. she curls around him when he sleeps to feel the blood beating through his veins and his breath on her neck. she murmurs insensibly to him. she willingly surrenders all of her defenses.

( they could kill each other. they could destroy each other. they have always known this. they have always known what they are ).

she decides she’s going to let him.

U NDERSTANDING. how well do they know their partner? are they empathetic?

— she knows him better than anyone. she knows him immediately. she sees him. she recognizes him. she understands him. that’s all she’s ever wanted, to have that with someone. for them to know her. she wouldn’t even asked to be loved; she knows how much that asks. but yes. she does. he’s her own heart; whatever he feels, she does.

Y EARNING. how will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

— she simply does not.

her separation anxieties with john go deeper than simply missing him because of the fact that joseph insists that, if he should die young, he dies alone, so whenever she is parted from him for any substantial amount of time and he is left alone she is actually, physically crippled. she was separated from him once for five days at the beginning of the reaping; she couldn’t keep anything down. she couldn’t sleep. mary may found her crawling on the floor of the spread eagle dry heaving on the second day, and it was downhill from there.

she’s entirely comatose immediately following his death; she shows little improvement for months. she wears nothing but his trench; she won’t wash because his blood dried on her skin before the end of everything, because she’ll never have him inside her again and she can’t scrub him away, because she can’t move, because she can’t swallow or scream and her insides have run too dry to swallow or cry or blink. ( it’s entirely possible she never would have functioned again, had joseph not told her the voice returned to him; he had almost given up on her survival by then; surely there was little human left in her ).

she might externally be more or less restored to her former self after that, but the truth is that she never recovers, not really; she slips out to his grave every night and sleeps with her fingers buried in the dirt. she talks to him, sometimes, or hums, or sings, even though he’s not there, even though she can’t feel him. all her life she’s played roles, and she plays herself exceptionally well, but a fundamental part of herself died with him. she is playing someone who no longer exists. she is a phantom. the new world is her purgatory.

( he is her whole heart, don’t forget. )

she watches it ripped from her chest.

she keeps breathing.

she bleeds out for seventeen years.

she still counts herself the happiest woman who lived.

[venusmelody]

personal reasons: seishirou/subaru as erotic horror soulmates

I've written in the past about why I don't like soulmates—in brief, external factors like fate pushing two people together always feel weaker than those who choose—but there are certain tropes or subversions that do work for me. All of them are, in fact, encapsulated by Seishirou/Subaru: my favourite ship that both leans into and deconstructs soulmates. And thus: a mini-manifesto why I love them. CW: dark fictional relationships.

Seishirou and Subaru are high-key Soulmates, in the way CLAMP does soul-mates. Their storylines merge, they always meet, one chases eternally after another in a way that consumes their entire lives, artwork features literal red threads, but fate doesn't dictate how they're together. In one universe (TB/X), Seishirou has ruined Subaru's life in every way you can imagine, and they're fated to be enemies on every battlefield they face: onmyoji with opposing morals, family feuds rising from this, and opposite stars across the battlefield during the X/1999 apocalypse. In another universe (TRC), Seishirou is a hunter/priest trying to hunt down vampire!Subaru for unclear reasons, trading away one eye just for the chance to follow Subaru across worlds. Subaru pretty clearly misses him in both. But they are fated enemies; the trick is that being together would be a defiance of fate, rather than being in its throes, and it is always about choice.

Despite the throes of fate, their relationship is because of who they are as people, rather than their positions or what fate dictates. Subaru is a kind, compassionate, selfless person who wants to give to the world; this is true with or without spirit powers. Seishirou is a psychopath who doesn't understand compassion, or feel love. When they meet in Tokyo Babylon, they are shaped by powers, yes. But Subaru followed the voices of ghosts in pain because he wanted to help them, and only because of that side of him—him, not the Sumeragi heir—did he meet Seishirou. And Seishirou is just stunned that anyone can be that kind and innocent, and amused, and curious about whether that kindness can touch him. He's fascinated by Subaru's kindness first, rather than abilities of powers, before anything else.

Despite being on opposite sides, despite the pain, tragedy, and violence, the draw between them is there. They fit. They complement each others' loneliness, despite the vastly different sources: Subaru loves everyone and therefore no one (except Hokuto) is special to him. Seishirou cares about no one, and therefore no one is special to him. Except the other person worms their way in, despite Subaru's distance from the world, and Seishirou's apathy. Someone new matters.

It feels perverse and wrong to say that they provided something fundamental the other needed, given how abusive the relationship is, and yet. Subaru was innocent, but he wasn't whole in TB. He was a person without self-esteem and was selfless to the point of self-destructiveness. Subaru needed someone who could actually make him selfish, before he burned himself out and died, and as sad as it was, he finally found someone he couldn't just give up even for the greater good. Seishirou needed someone to... kill him, because good god that guy, but it needed to be someone he loved. Subaru and Seishirou both needed to have one person they considered special, and they found it.

Even the ultimate tropes of soulmate marks and mysterious blood connections link Subaru and Seishirou, but nothing either was born with. Subaru has marks signalling he's Seishirou's because Seishirou put them on himself, after already becoming fascinated. And they're not meant to be marks of love, however Subaru later regards them, but the sign of prey. In TRC, there is some sort of connection between a vampire that Turns a human, and again: Subaru made the choice to give Seishirou his blood, though we never find out why. Soulmate marks, soulmate connections, but created by choice, not fate.

What external factors do to Subaru and Seishirou can be further seen by Hokuto's fate. Hokuto—who I love dearly—does her best to push them together, mimicking the idea of fate, friends, relatives, circumstance. But the ultimate legacy of her involvement becomes another reason to push the two of them apart—Hokuto's death.

They are both terrible at communication and self-realization and it shows; we're left with so many what-ifs. If Subaru realized earlier that he loved Seishirou, or recognized Seishirou's moments of composure breaking—all but outright telling Subaru he wasn't to be trusted, with his talk to seventeen-year-old Subaru about corpses buried beneath Sakura trees!—or was affectionate back. If Seishirou realized that, maybe this person he couldn't keep his hands off, found adorable, drove him to shatter mirrors with his fist, cuddled closer even when no one was watching, who he sacrificed his right eye to keep safe (for dramatic effect, I assume), might mean something, even if that something wasn't whatever he thought love was. If Subaru realized it. They don't. There were plenty of opportunities, which neither Subaru nor Seishirou took, to be honest.

It's ultimately their undoing. At the very end, they meet on Rainbow Bridge, but lets be real: it's personal. The apocalypse-battle and its deaths is a backdrop to the private tragedy that plays out. Seishirou thinks Subaru wants to kill him for revenge. Subaru doesn't know what Seishirou wants, but thinks it's definitely nothing to do with him. Seishirou's last act fulfills what he thought Subaru's wish was—his death—but he was completely misguided about what Subaru wanted, as Subaru was in turn.  They already have what both of them wanted but didn't say until the end: Subaru wanted to die at Seishirou's hand so that he could matter to Seishirou, not knowing he's perhaps already the person that matters most to Seishirou (as a toy or anything else). While Seishirou wants to possess Subaru in every way possible, not realizing that he already does. I'm already trapped in cherry blossoms, as Subaru says in their last fight.

Of course, in the end, did it matter if Subaru realized it all? What better way in CLAMP-verse to mean the most to someone, to be someone they never move on from, than dying at their hands? Seishirou makes Subaru kill him and then leaves his remaining eye to Subaru. Which, for ClampKink reasons, Subaru takes, letting Seishirou erase the lasting mark that someone else left on Subaru, marking Subaru forever as hiiiiis, and doing his best to stop Subaru from ever moving on. Subaru has to live on after killing the person he loves most in the world; in the aftermath, he can no longer raise a seal's kekkai, because whatever he wanted to protect on Earth, it died with Seishirou. As much as Seishirou died, so has the last part of Subaru that existed at the beginning of Tokyo Babylon—Subaru, not the Sumeragi heir.

But there was no other way, and no other path, than this. Because what dooms them isn't being on opposite sides, but themselves—that obsession, that lack of communication.

The fault isn't in the stars. It's in themselves. Especially the murderous psychopath, but I digress.

Which is, in the end, the most intriguing and affecting version of soulmates.

[chericoco91]

My thoughts on Mass Incarceration

 I would like to highlight certain aspects of Human rights violations and the racial disparities in the prison system. The human rights violations in the arresting, sentencing, life in the prison, and even life after release. Law enforcement today has made common practice dismantling lives and communities, making black men six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, and black women incarcerated at four times the rate of white women. A system designed to make it easier for the state to strip away the human rights of African Americans.

The 13th amendment was ratified on Dec 6 1865. It was the year that black people set sail on liberation and the chains were supposedly cut loose. Section 1 of the 13th Amendment clearly states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The 13th amendment never truly abolish slavery, it merely constructed conditions.

After slavery allegedly ended, Southern states criminalized minor offences. It was a crime to speak loudly around white women. It was a crime to sell the products from your farm after dark. It was a crime to walk beside a railroad. Anything from being drunk, or loitering, to spitting. The most damaging of all of these laws were the vagrancy laws. In every southern state a person became a criminal if they could not prove, at any given moment that they were employed. African Americans were essentially left to fend for themselves. They couldn’t count on sympathy from northerners, or the federal government. One thing they could count on was more and more attacks and animosity from southerners. Slowly state by state, new laws were passed that effectively criminalized black life. At this time, only ten percent of prisoners were white. It is very likely that white people didn’t commit less crimes because, historically, lynching was at an all-time high. Jails would rent prisoners out to companies for labor, and exchange labor for the companies paying housing of prisoners. The highest rate was reserved for the strongest workers and longest sentences. It was the nation’s first prison boom.

In between World War 2 and the 1970, black people were needed for work in factories during which time, black people weren’t needed in jail. Even while Jim Crow and racism was flourishing. It wasn’t until the need for factory jobs dried up in the 1970’s that another boom in the prison system. African Americans began to go back to prison in record numbers. The Nixon era returned once again to destroying African American families, with the launch of the “War on Drugs”. Nixon’s adviser John Enrilchman stated “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we

couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”(LoBianco, Tom.)

This was a war on specific groups of people, not drugs. Ronald Regan extended the power of the prison system further by pushing for mandatory sentences and “no knock” warrants. Reagan, knowing that the new drug “crack” was prevalent in black neighborhoods and cocaine was largely in white neighborhoods, placed mandatory sentencing for crack which was far harsher than cocaine charges. The presidents to follow passed more policies that contributed to mass incarceration.

Fast forward today, and the prison system is a complete mess. Prison is intended to be a place where people are sent to be punished and learn their mistakes, hopefully deterring others from breaking the law. Punishment, corrections and deterrence. However, society has adopted a line of thinking wherein prisoners are external to society. Prisons do have high walls with barbed wires and gunman separated them from civilians. Society has forgotten that millions of prisoners are released each year. Today’s prisoners are tomorrows neighbors. If this were considered with more prevalence, society would think that corrections would be the most important part of the equation. In reality, this is far from the truth inside the prison system. Correction takes a dusty, distant back seat to punishment. America contains only about 4% of the world’s population, however, it is home to 25% of prisoners world-wide. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In the last 30 years that number has increased 400%. With 41% of juveniles arrested by the time they are 23, while rates for black women in particular have risen by 800%. African American men make 37% of the prison population but only making up 13% of the general population. African American woman account for 58% of drug offences; they are greatly affected by the “War on Drugs”. Denying the implication of these facts becomes impossible when examining the ratios in many states. New Jersey incarcerates 12 black men to one white man. Wisconsin; 11 black men to one white man. Iowa; 11 black men to one white man; the list goes on. There are more African Americans in prison than college in America. Children as young as 13 have been sentenced to die in prison.

Solitary confinement is a human rights violation. Our prisons violate internal standards, with solitary confinement that increases instability, and violence between inmates, to an extent that is considered torture by international law. In America, the practice is not regulated by anyone other than the prison officials. No judge, no jury. It’s arguably the most inhumane practice in prison, with no available appeals process. Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact, often with the exception of members of prison staff, for 22–24 hours a day, with a sentence ranging from days to decades. (“Solitary confinement.” Wikipedia,)It is mostly employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a

prisoner, usually for violations of prison regulations. However, it is also used as an additional measure of protection for vulnerable inmates. (“Solitary confinement.” Wikipedia,) Prisoners are at high risk of suicide, anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The U.N. says anything longer than 15 days is torture, however, in America people may stay in solitary confinement for years.

The lack of health care in these prisons is a violation of human rights. Overcrowding, violence, sexual abuse, and other conditions pose a grave risk to prisoner health and safety. Mistreatment of prisoners is based on race or disability remains far too common. Juveniles who have been placed in isolation repeatedly and held in five point restraints for days on end. A prisoner whose diabetes went untreated, causing him to lose 90% of his eyesight in one eye. A prisoner who repeatedly complained of chest pain and shortness of breath suffered a heart attack and was left to die alone in his cell. Multiple prisoners who are denied auxiliary aids and services for their hearing, vision, or mobility disabilities. Prisoners with disabilities are also not provided accommodations in the parole hearing process, leading to denial of parole, longer stays, and contributing to overcrowding, often leading to overuse of solitary confinement, including putting two prisoners into an isolation cell designed for one. This practice has resulted in death on several occasions. All of these effects are amplified disproportionately upon African Americans. (“Overcrowding in Nebraska’s Prisons Has Led to Constitutional Violations.”)

A significant contributing factor to overcrowding in prisons occurs when people get arrested without sufficient money for a lawyer or bail. Most people are bribed with a “plead deal”. For example, a person is offered the opportunity to take 5 years in jail or be faced with a trial that may result in 50 years. Most people who don’t have money for a lawyer will likely not take the matter to trial. The accused could be innocent man or woman doing 5 years because they didn’t have money for bail or a lawyer. The primary cause for this practice is ridiculously long mandatory sentence that was set in place. 97% of people that get locked up never see a trial, marking one of the worst human rights violation in the U.S. In the event a person were to bring the matter to trial, regardless of their situation, they could sit in prison for years until seeing a court. By overloading the court system, the right to a speedy trial is cleverly bypassed. What essentially is being done is, the courts punish people more for fighting a case.

Another problem generated by the prison system occurs when returning to civilian life. America makes it intentionally leagues more difficult to get a job in America once a person has been convicted of a felony, and the right to vote is removed indefinitely. Convicts are ineligible to get student loans, welfare, food stamps and public housing. They are often disconnected from support on the outside. In addition to having high rates of returning to prison, inmates have high homelessness and suicide. They are stripped away from their rights as an American. So many aspects of Jim Crow are legal again, once a person has been branded a felon. Jim Crow did it’s job by locking people of color

into second class citizens. Jim Crow and slavery were caste systems, which resemble the current system of mass incarceration flawlessly.

Options for people in this situation are now very limited. Voting out the people who established these policies is not an option, as the right to vote for felons no longer exists. African American community are affected, and as a minority group, many of them can’t do anything alone to fix it. Not being able to vote, and having a discussion on your life and community is a human rights violation.

One might argue, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the time.” However, there are drugs all over campuses and yacht clubs. I don’t see the swat team busting in their doors. The circumstances are different for low income neighborhoods. If rich kids get in trouble they go to rehab, if poor folk’s kids get in trouble they go to prison. African Americans have been affected the most. When there are disproportionately high incarnation rates with black men and women. Mothers and fathers are taken away from their homes. Homes are broken and when mothers and fathers come back jobs are hard to obtain, boosting the criminal activity in their neighborhoods, making the neighborhoods unsafe. All while the property taxes going doing in said neighborhood. The children are not just affected at home, it affects their schooling as well. In low-income neighborhood schools get money off of people’s property taxes. Schools in those neighborhoods don’t get as much money. Not giving a child equal opportunity in schools, is also a human rights violation. Society is spending $100,00.00 keeping that kid in prison, when we could’ve spent less helping him become a NASA scientist, or anything they want to be. When these people come home, they aren’t given the opportunity to start over. They leave a physical prison for a social prison. There are more African American people in prison today then there were slaves in 1850.

Through the review of incarceration statistics and socio-economic analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that the American prison system today is and always has been wielded as a replacement for slavery, abusing the 13th amendment to accomplish the violation of human rights disproportionately in the direction of African Americans. A system designed to revoke the rights to voting, freedom from torture, freedom from unpaid labor, entitlement to a speedy trial by jury, and devastating equal opportunity in schools, housing, and employment. Indeed, the prison system is stacked against the rights of many African American’s to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness defying the very notion that all men are created equal.

[tryingthisfangirlthing]

@viennainspringtime I am so glad you like Nikola’s dialogue! Writing him is always a bit tricky for me, trying to mimic his natural melodrama without coming off as “cliché villain” or hokey. Nikola and Helen are both characters that are just a bit larger than life, though, so giving them grandiose lines doesn’t seem quite as “off” as it might otherwise. Also that vampire-bites-giving-a-high is just my own vampire headcanon I couldn’t help sneaking in there. I actually came up with it a while back for a different fic that is still not published, but I found I really really liked it (because wouldn’t it make evolutionary sense if your food source liked you feeding from it? and it tosses all sorts of lovely ethical quandaries and gray areas into vampires feeding from humans). 

Teslen vampire/hunter AU, Part 3 (Also, I lied. This will be more than 5 parts because parts 4 and 5 are basically one scene/chunk that I decided to split up for readability, and wow, do these two still have a long way to go until I can actually see them together but I want to make them happy!)

Contains: violence, guns, mentions of the offscreen deaths of canon characters (Henry and Ashley), major medical emergencies, close calls, and a cliffhanger because I am mean

---

He was ready for her, next time. It was a point of pride now, practically — three times already she had gotten the jump on him, and no one did that. He had several different backup plans in place. She wrecked all of them.

 First it was the exterior alarm. Put the entire house on lockdown: metal shutters, steel door reinforcements, steel plating over everything that wasn't brick or stone.

“Don't you think that's a little extreme?” She arched an eyebrow at one of the external cameras, before reaching up to examine it more closely, tilting down.

“No, not really, considering I have a murderous stalker.” He steered it back up, and she tilted it down again, and for a few moments it became almost a little game, back and forth.

“Fair enough.” Then she disappeared from the camera, though he heard the rustling of a bag, and then a quiet, mechanical hum. Several moments later, his sensors told him the outer shell had been breached. Laser cutting implement, most likely, which meant she was better-equipped than most. Never mind: he still had several more layers of defenses.

The intercom system still worked; he used it primarily for music, but it came in handy at times like these.

“Can't we just — postpone this? You take out everyone else and then come back for me? I'm just one vampire, and surely there are easier targets.”

She exhaled, loudly, and he could pinpoint her location now — she would be facing the laser grid by the northern entrance. “I have been postponing it. But I also can't save the most powerful until last — they'll only become more powerful in the meantime. And I take out the major threats as they come.”

“Should I be flattered or insulted you've taken so long to get around to me?” He sighed, and deactivated the steel reinforcement, sending off an alert to the police station as if a normal alarm system had been triggered. “I'm giving you an easy way out. The police have been notified of a breaking and entering, but you can still leave.”

“Are you afraid?” There was a bit of a laugh to her voice, and she ignored his offer. “I've left you alone for a very long time, Nikola Tesla, but I'm afraid that time is up.”

“Exactly how long has it been since you started this hunter gig?” He ignored her taunt. Truth was, he was a little afraid, and he looked down at the small device on the table beside him. It wasn't large, a glass rod that fit easily in his hand, with metal contact points at both ends, but the shock it delivered would be lethal.

“Longer than you would believe.” She was somewhere else now, moving… How? Note to self: install cameras everywhere next time.

“Vampire, remember? I've been around for more than a century. I'm actually inclined to believe a surprising amount of things with a little evidence.” Like that “thrall” effect. It shouldn't make him feel a little sick to his stomach, no more than that natural high he gave a donor, but it did. He fed off of a different person each time now, or bought from blood banks, and he put anything he got through his blood matrix scrubber, to remove any potential poisons, since he had no established trust with the source any longer. It was all an enormous inconvenience, and he was glad he only needed to feed once a week.

“And I'm not a vampire, as I'm sure you've noticed.”

“I have.” He had yet to hear of a vampire hunter who was a vampire themself, but he was sure one existed. And yet, he was equally sure that whatever she was, she wasn't a vampire, not a full-fledged one at any rate.

“All right, then, what's your story?” He leaned back, eyeing the status of his security systems, and deactivated the laser fields. “Did someone you love die before their time and you have since sworn to eliminate the entire race instead of just the individual, like you would otherwise if it were a human or, say, a tiger that had killed you beloved child-sibling-parent-spouse-other-important-person?”

“Yes, you've got me. You have me all figured out.” She didn't sound sincere, more distracted, likely trying to take apart his new field emitters.

He wasn’t sure if she was being facetious or not. “So… tell me about them.”

“What?” Sharply. He had her full attention now.

“Tell me about them. Whoever it was you lost.” It would be information. Ammunition, a clue to her weak spot. He'd tried looking her up, but even with his rather impressive resources the little he knew hadn't given him any useful results. It wasn't like he actually cared, despite her being one of the most intriguing beings to cross his path in a long time.

“Why would I want to do that?” Her voice held disdain.

“You don't wish to educate me on the sins of my people? Should I not know in whose name you intend for me to be murdered?” He checked the status of the layers of containment fields — still holding. Police ETA: 5 minutes.

There was a clicking sound on her end, metallic, and he was nearly sure she was trying to take apart the field emitters — she’d receive an unpleasant warning shock in a moment — and then came her voice. “Henry and Ashley. My children. They were brave, and smart, and they died because of —” she let out a noise of frustration, of anger, and then fell silent.

“I'm sorry. About both of them.” He could practically feel her anguish, and stilled for a moment at his console. “I am truly sorry.”

She inhaled, slowly. “Thank you.” He wasn't sure if the words were perfunctory or not.

“Do you want to tell me anything else?” he asked softly.

“Henry was a wizard with electronics. Always building and tinkering. You were one of his personal heroes — what he knew of you. Ironic, isn't it?” Her tone was flat, and yet he suddenly wondered if she had ever had anyone else to tell about this, to talk to.

“Just a little.” He waited a moment. “And Ashley?”

“She was following in my footsteps.” Short, clipped, and then the fields flickered.

“What the hell are you doing?” He stiffened, his heart up in his throat. There was a lot of current running through those emitters, to generate a field of the strength he needed, and they were not to be trifled with. “If you get shocked from your own stupid meddling —”

A crackle, a cry, and a pained hiss echoed over the intercom, and Nikola snarled. “Idiot!”

There was only silence. “It's your own fault if you're dead, you know.” He counted the seconds — twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six… Then he lowered the field and hurried to the spot where he was sure she lay, the sounds of sirens faint in his sensitive ears but growing louder, his anger rising. It wasn't his fault, wasn't his damned fault, but it was yet another death, yet another act of violence in his orbit, and they ate away at him. “Of course she has to go and meddle and get herself killed, infuriating little twit.”

He rounded the corner, quickly, using his speed, and then jolted to a stop. She lay prone, crumpled, tranquilizer gun in hand that he knew held a more permanent sort of sedative. He swore under his breath, a litany of curses in every language he knew, and knelt beside her, setting his fingers against the pulse point on her neck. Her pulse fluttered under his fingertips, shallow, erratic, but she was still breathing, against all odds.

There was a first-aid kit in his lab, with a defibrillator, and he rose to head there, pulling his phone from his pocket and punching in the emergency number. A quiet groan sounded from behind him, and he turned again, to find her gazing at him, dazed, her brow wrinkled.

“911, where is your emergency?”

She tilted the barrel of her gun up, slightly. He stumbled back, snarled, turned again to run. A shot, sharp, loud, again — and fire tore through his left thigh. He limped back to his lab, gasping his address and the need for an ambulance into the phone, the toxin seeping through his veins searing him from the inside.