#looking forward to the day she is able to communicate what monsters were pretending to be

[lyallblacklupin]

Now that all is over.

TW: Implied Sexual Assault/Nightmares.

Voldemort is killed with all aspects which is how the Second Wizarding War has ended. Fortunately, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin have survived. They have a godson to look forward to make up for the lost times, the world is serene and ill-free, and especially, they have each other. Life cannot have been any sweeter.  However, one miserable night, Sirius jerks out of the worst nightmare he has ever seen in his life. He is screaming and looking anywhere for help but Remus Lupin, who has been sleeping beside him. Will Remus be able to calm him down without having to touch him, or even come close to him?

There are a lot of things Remus Lupin should be thinking right now, which included his indecisiveness for accepting the job Dumbledore has offered him again, now that the story of Voldemort had ended once and for all. Also, the fact that he needs to move out from Grimmauld Place for the sake of his-boyfriend? Fiancé? Lover? He doesn’t understands what they are, but he knows that they are certainly not teenagers anymore. They had endured wars, losses and especially, ducked down from their own deaths, together. They finally have another chance to live, and this time it is without the fear. The fear that had been looming like their shadows since they can remember. This was THE chance.

However, as Remus exchanges the bill with the cash the red-headed girl is giving him for the Oscar Wilde’s poetry—which becomes a good distraction because the girl looks timid and strongly reminds him of Lily Evans picking up poetry from the Hogwarts for him, then she would smile at him with a teasing glint in her emerald eyes when it was Wilde’s queer poetry—he is stuck with his brain flickering the image of what happened today morning at half past five when Sirius jolted out of his sleep, running away from nothing but Remus.

“Sirius, honey—“

“NOOOOO!” Sirius’ eyes were screwed shut and he was pulling his hair like a madman, squirming in the most corner of their bedroom, with his knees glued to his chest as he quivered violently. Remus didn’t know what to do because this was something that he had never experienced in their togetherness. Sirius did have the tendency of having frequent nightmares even in Hogwarts, but never once he had pulled Remus away when he had reached and took his trembling body to tuck it against his own. He didn’t even need to ask his permission which was evidently clear that Sirius could recognize his presence without even looking him. However, this time Sirius’ wide eyes were staring him and yet he was shrieking when Remus inched forward to touch him. All of this was giving Remus only one answer: The nightmare was about Remus.

“Okay, Sirius, I’m not touching you, I’m not coming to you, see…” He steps back and sits on his bed across the very scared looking Sirius sitting on the floor. He pretended that didn’t have assume the reason behind Sirius’ behavior, looking very calm, “Did you have a nightmare, love? You can tell me, I’m not going to hurt you. I promise you, Sirius—“

His words died in his throat and suddenly something very heavy settled on his chest because Sirius is shaking his head.

“Don’t lie.” Sirius whispered and Remus thought that all of his surrounding was turning upside down. He hadn’t felt so helpless before. It had never been like this. Sirius had always been too tactile with him, no matter what. He couldn’t do anything, he was running out of ideas and strategies to deal with the situation. His mind was ringing and he started feeling nauseous as if some vial is refluxing from his stomach. His fisted the bedsheet and squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to call out Sirius but he could hardly hear his own voice when a certain ringing sound is somewhere around him. He could tell nothing except the regrets and the what-ifs that were screaming in his head: What is happening to us? Are we falling again when the chance is finally here? Why now? What if Sirius had dreamt that the wolf has killed him? What if Sirius has now realized that he was bound with a monster? What if Sirius has believed that nightmare? He shouldn’t have been with me! He deserves more! Someone who is hundred times better than me! What will I do without him? And again? Weren’t those twelve years enough for us? Why isn’t the universe a little merciful on us?

And then what came out from his mouth was a sob. His body was shaking as it  racked through him. He manages to breathe as he lifted up his head and there was Sirius looking at him with his tear-stained face, inching forward towards Remus’ legs by the bed. Remus wanted to throw caution to the wind and embrace him with all his strength and love, but he had to be very gentle to not make him flinch. He carefully raised his hand, not breaking his eye contact with him. Sirius nods hesitantly. It broke Remus’ heart to see the doubtful face of his lover. His fingers touched the skin of his arm, and fortunately there was no hint of discomfort in his face.

“What’s happened, Sirius? What did you see?”

Remus deliberately jerks himself out of the flashback because what Sirius explained him after that, was not failing him to shudder every time he plays that memory in his head. He realizes that he has to go to the therapist he has been seeing since a month. He likes Dr. Holly Meyer, and she knows about his relationship with Sirius. He thinks that she was the right person to talk.

His shift at the bookstore ends at quarter past two as he hurries for his appointment.

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

“Does Sirius have any past trauma related to rape or any sexual assault he has experience from his loved one?”

“Umm, no, he never mentioned.” Remus replies to Holly’s question. But he highly doubts that Sirius was never sexually molested by his family because one of the days at Hogwarts, when they were dating, he saw an angry looking bruise on Sirius’ hip which jolted him to his cores. However, Sirius never talked about it and neither Remus had the audacity to ask him who did that to him.

“Remus, have you ever done something which has terrified him? Any physical gesture or…I hope you know what I am talking about. Something that might have prompted that memory out of him, which also might have influenced him through this nightmare?”

Remus felt sudden surge of heat beneath his cheeks, and he doesn’t know how to answer. They haven’t physically interacted with each other in a while. The last time he can remember is when Sirius gained health after being in comma for five weeks when Bellatrix had hit him with a very complex curse at the Department of Mysteries. They were reunited in Grimmauld Place after the healers discharged him, both of them brimming up with emotions as they tried to express their undying love for each other. After that blissful moment, they got too busy with the approaching war, that they could only spare time for quick snogging and whispering ‘I love you’s incase if they never see each other.

“No, we haven’t…I mean didn’t-we didn’t…” He was not looking at the doctor because Remus could feel her smiling at him. “But why me? Why was it me in the dream doing those horrible things to him?

“Remus, dreams can be quite deceptive, and not to mention our mind has the power to take shapes of our fears the most terrifyingly in our dreams.”

Remus is speechless, and he is feeling something ugly erupting in his chest. He is quite precise about it. It is guilt. For not taking care of Sirius’ mental health.

“Remus?” Holly calls out very softly. Remus looks up sheepishly, despite the burning sensation creeping his neck and cheeks. “The case is quite clear here. Sirius has something in his hearts of hearts that he isn’t telling you. Something that hasn’t just left him ashamed or traumatized but also he is quite uncertain if this is something he should talk about. I assume that he is not giving it the importance to discuss this with you. And at the same time, you are not giving him the attention he wants from you. You two have been through misfortunes that has left you both listless and empty. You need to fill each other with love and happiness. Any love gestures will do. Let the other know that you are here for them in every possible way.”

Remus feels like his legs are giving out, even though he is sitting on a very comfortable armchair.

“Go, get your man. He needs you. He just doesn’t have the heart to bear loneliness. He is suppressing himself for you because he think this is what you want.”

No, this is not what I want! He makes a mental note to himself. And how could I not want Sirius? Remus knows that he is lying to himself about the war being the only reason for their lack of physical contact. He knows that there has been lack of communication which has followed the current problem, landing them here.

“I shouldn’t have left him alone in that house.” Remus mumbles.

“No, Remus, you did the right thing.” Holly retorts gently, “This is what he needed. To think straight with himself and be sane. You being there would have been too suffocating for him. Clearly, you needed someone to put sense in you. Your welcome.”

She is smiling amusingly, and Remus can’t help but agree. He is leaving when Dr. Holly calls him out and he turns to her.

“Say, Remus, what flowers does your better half loves the most?”

Roses. It is an automatic reply like he doesn’t need to think for even a second. Red Roses. Very cliché Sirius Black. Remus bites back a chuckle and tells her.

“Oh boy, Remus, you have a hopeless romantic in that house sulking alone, and what you are doing to him is brutal.” She is grinning at him, and he is quite grateful of her for not scolding him because he suddenly feels that he deserves it. He was too distant while being next to Sirius. He would much rather prefer to take responsibility for all of this, and make things right between them.

He apparates in front of Grimmauld Place 12, clutching a bouquet of fresh red roses. He grimaces when the scent fills his nostrils, and the idea of being above forty and doing such gesture is making him nervous. He enters the house, and suddenly stops in his track to find that the hallway is not dark anymore, it is kindled up by so many candles and enchanted stardust floating in mid-air, taking various beautiful colors. For a second, he thinks he is somewhere else. Maybe 11 or 13 Grimmauld Place? But then Sirius emerges with a pop, wearing an apron, his hair is neatly tied in a bun. He is also wearing black robes, and he has shaved but there are dark circles under his eyes.

“Hey!” Sirius walks towards him and he is saying a lot of things with the weak smile on his face, but Remus is staring him with utter fascination. He is suddenly feeling very young to realize that Sirius can still make him fluster with nothing but looking like that. Remus cannot let out a word from his mouth, but then he is broken out of his trance of swooning when he registers those silver orbs are widening, and then glistening. Remus feels an unexpected panic rising in his stomach because now tears are streaming down Sirius’ cheeks. And before he knows it, Sirius has crashed his lips on his. Remus cannot help but kiss him back. His damp is skin rubbing his, and they both rests their forehead against each other.

“Thank you.” Sirius whispers, pressing a kiss on his nose. Remus has forgotten that he have brought roses for the love of his life until Sirius is taking them, which is when he realizes the reason for why Sirius started crying suddenly. A weak grin appears on his lips, and Remus realize that he has never felt so happy in a longest while. “You remembered that I like roses.”

“Of course, darling.” Remus says teasingly, reaching forward to capture Sirius’ lips again, but then Sirius is laughing merrily which instantly warms Remus’ heart. Even so, he leans further and kisses him a little more earnestly. Sirius laces his arms around him, and Remus takes their height difference as a benefit to scoop him up in his arms.

“Moony…”

“Yes, love?” Remus nuzzles his nose against Sirius’ cheeks, as they stumbles in the nearby drawing room.

“I’m sorry about today.”

Suddenly, the awkwardness returns.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Remus says, “It was a bad dream, Sirius. I know that you love me, and I love you. It’s enough and we should be forever together and we should probably get married and have a new life and live in a country or something far away from everything and all and—“

Sirius is gawking at him, dumbfounded, and Remus realizes that he is rambling. He wants to slap himself right now. He might have ruined the night he is intending to make the most opportune.

“I mean…I—Sirius…” He knows that he is still scared. No matter how much the therapist has tried convincing him, he knows that no one can convince him completely, but Sirius Black. He wants to walk past the layer of no communication, and he does.

“Sirius…I can never hurt you. I can never even imagine of hurting you that way. I certainly have hurt you emotionally in the past, and maybe I still am, and if you feel like it then please talk to me, tell me if I have hurt you. But I have never hurt you physically, Sirius. I have never. It is worrying me. Have I done anything? Don’t fear, Sirius, I promise you that I am not walking unless you order me away.”

Sirius slightly shakes his head at the end of Remus’ statement. He cups his face and places a lingering and soft kiss on his forehead.

“It is you. The real you.” He whispers against his skin, and it confuses Remus. “Remus…It was not you in the dream. It was you in front of me but this…” Sirius ran his hands on the latter body, squeezing his arms with fondness swimming in his eyes, “this feeling of you, your arms, these hands and…just you... were not  in the dream. It was him. The same feeling.”

“Him?” Remus knows where this is going. He already has his suspicions.

“My father.” Sirius’ reply doesn’t fail to make his eyes instinctively wide. The thought makes him shudder and Sirius slips away from his embrace, looking miserably lost.

There is one question that is still not planning on leaving his mind and he feels he needs to ask this from Sirius, no matter what the answer, and he does.

“Why still me?”

Remus expects that he will receive a very disgusting reply from Sirius, or a glare, or maybe he has completely ruin their night and Sirius will be shutting him out for good. But—

“I came face to face with my boggart the other day in the ministry.” Sirius replies, looking straight in his eyes. Remus can recall that Sirius’ boggart was his mother when they discovered in their third year’s Defense against the Dark Arts class. However, Sirius must have read his mind when he continues, “It is not my mother anymore.”

There is a brief, tensed silence between them.

“It was you.”  Remus’ heart suddenly stops. He fights to keep a poker face. “You were there looking at me with disgust and…” He can see that Sirius is struggling through his words as if they are causing him physical pain. “…you were looking at me with such hate and you said you were leaving me because you were tired of me. You…you have never looked at me like that…”

Tears are spilling from his grey eyes.

“You have always looked at me with warmth and humbleness, but that image of you is not leaving my mind. It is there and it is making me believe that it is true, Remus, because I don’t deserve you. You are so worthy of love, I am not. I was never worthy of love. I drove you mad in our relationship. I betrayed you once, and then made you believe that I can betray you twice. But you…you never did anything like that. You compromised yourself for me, in every way. You dealt with me for a very long time, and I won’t blame you if you don’t want to deal with me anymore. It would hurt. So much, because for me, it’s hard to imagine my life without you after everything we’ve been through, together.”

Remus is numbly standing, just looking at Sirius’ face flooding with tears. He feels like his heart is breaking and mending, breaking and then again mending, back and forth. He wishes internally that Sirius’ words may leave his heart mended, because he knows he cannot deal with another heartbreak, another loss, or another tragedy.

“Know this,” Sirius comes close and touches his wet cheeks, which is when he realize that the tears are also silently rolling down his own face. “…that I love you, Remus. I know you can’t hurt me. You’ve never because you have a pure heart, Moony.”

This is when Remus doesn’t take anymore. He shoves Sirius in his arms and sobs in his shoulder. He feels Sirius relaxing into his embrace because he is placing feather-light kisses on Remus’ exposed neck.

“I’m so sorry. I am so sorry, Sirius.” He doesn’t know for what he is exactly asking his forgiveness, but he knows deep down inside his heart that it is for everything that has happened in their lives.

“But no,” He pulls out to face Sirius, desperately reaches his hands to intertwine with his, “I am not leaving you, not because I can’t but because I don’t want to be away from you. I can never be tired of you, Padfoot! And I can’t be surer about that. You think I compromised my comfort for you? That was not a compromise. That was my love for you. And it still is, here. I never regretted our relationship because of you. I did once because of myself because you had to deal with me, my cursed and poverty-stricken life. I am nothing compared to you, and yet you want me. How can I not love you? How can I disgust you? Or hate you? It’s something that can never exist when it comes to you. I don’t think I loved anyone like that except for you. I still want you, only you. I love you, a little too much, please believe me.”

Sirius has his forehead pressed with his, as he murmurs against his cheek, “I believe you, Remus.”

They kiss and they kiss for Merlin knows how long. Remus is suddenly yanked back into one of his favorite memories with Sirius, when they were at Hogwarts and it was their seventh year. He remembers that those days were Christmas holidays because they were fooling around in their dorm very peacefully, with no fear of James or Peter interrupting them. The both lovebirds were the only ones who didn’t leave for their homes. The erratic breathing, the electric excitement in their bodies, the eagerness to explore each other’s mouth is something Remus can distinctly recall from that day, at this very moment because it feels just the same as if they are seventeen again.

He reaches for Sirius’ robes to unbutton them when Sirius pulls back gently.

“Wait,” For a second, Remus thinks that this is not what Sirius wants before he smiles romantically, “I hope you have guessed why I am wearing an apron?”

“You cooked?” Remus gapes at him that makes the other laugh gleefully. That laugh makes his heart flutter again like happiness was bubbling out of him. Sirius nods at him.

“I thought I should make up for disrupting your morning, and I know you must have taken a lot of stress at work because of me. So I made your favorites.”

“You didn’t have to do this, love, I know cooking is not something you like to do.”

“Wrong!” Sirius gasped dramatically, “I love to cook for you! And besides, you bought these roses for me…” He picks out the bouquet, sniffing its scent, admiring the handiwork, and smiling the entire time as he brushes his fingers around the rims of each petals of the roses. Remus just stares at him like that. He could see the pink flush appearing on Sirius’ cheeks, and he thinks to himself that this is the most scenic view to look at. He suddenly recognizes that all of his exhaustion has dissipated from his body, and he is very much looking forward to the rest of their night.

“Come on, first dinner, and then we’ll see.” Sirius winks, taking him to kitchen when Remus stops him gradually.

“Tell me you are not frightened of me, are you? Be honest with me, Sirius.”

“I was never, Remus. I was frightened of being alone. My own mind was playing tricks on me. But not you, never you.”

Remus sees his eyes are promising.

“Promise me that you will talk to me, about anything like we used to. Just like the old times.” 

“Just like the old times. I promise, Moony.”

Sirius’ eyes returns the glimmer, and they are shinning like they used to before war, or Azkaban. Remus feels the contentment spreading in his heart and comes to a realization that it is all he have been yearning for.

[mrsgreenworld]

So, my one-shot has turned into a monster 🙈 Might become a multi-chapter fic. But for now, here's the first part.

It's a pure speculation as well as canon divergence because the grandma doesn't show up just yet.

I don't own any of the characters, all of them and the show belong to the writers, production company and FOX channel.

____________________________________________

A Technicality

Serkan was sitting at his desk in Art Life office, deep in thought, contemplating all the mess he had managed to create for and around himself as well as his already very fragile relationship with Eda.

It wasn't how he had imagined everything going when he had asked Eda for those three wishes. The first one was her unconditional trust, which Eda, sadly, couldn't give him. And Serkan started suspecting that it wasn't really about Eda not being ready to trust him again. Serkan had a feeling that Eda's pride and stubbornness were to blame as well as lingering hurt. She hadn't completely forgiven him. Her denying him what he so desperately craved - herself - was her form of punishment. But in her desire to punish and teach him a lesson, Eda was only causing both of them more distress. And that's what Serkan found so frustrating. That is what actually pushed him to these extreme measures.

"Oh god, what am I doing? Unbelievable. Look, Eda Yıldız, at what you're making me do" Serkan thought for the upteenth time in the last couple of days.

It started the night Eda fulfilled his second wish and came to him. Although it wasn't much of a surprise for him because he just knew it in his bones, felt it in every cell of his body - that she would come. Balca's visit, however, was unexpected. And the moment Serkan saw the woman at his doorstep, a crazy idea sprung up in his mind - to invite her in just to push Eda's buttons. He cringed internally at his own suggestion they had dinner but desperate time called for desperate measures. And Serkan really was desperate. Call it a manipulation, and maybe it was, maybe that's what Eda would claim to be yet another attempt at controlling her, but Serkan was literally starting to go out of his mind. He could no longer stand being so close to her, with no more secrets between them, yet sometimes it seemed they were oceans apart. Eda was slipping away, she had erected a wall around herself, not allowing Serkan to get too close. Every time he thought they had made a step forward, Eda threw them three steps back by bringing up the contract.

Oh, how he hated the damn thing! He wanted to burn it, scatter the ashes in the wind and then proceed with wiping out every electronic copy out of existence.

So, he was basically grasping at straws, when he decided that Balca's presence could help him finally make Eda crack. He wasn't going to act interested because, for one, it would never work, he wouldn't be able to pull it off while Eda even as much as breathed in his general direction. He had, however, noticed Balca's interest, and decided to play along with that, pretending to be clueless about her advances. So he acted polite whenever Balca found an excuse and came to him. He ignored her sitting too close to him, supported her with his arm when she lost her balanced, fought the urge to pull away when she leaned over him or brushed his arm. He turned a blind eye on supposedly accidental touches. And all of that seemed to have been paying off because Eda looked more and more like a ticking bomb ready to explode.

But then their non-date on the skating rink happened and everything was so perfect that Serkan, unable to contain his happiness and feeling light-headed, confessed to Eda in a rush his grand plan to stir jealousy and force her to claim him as her man. Everything Serkan earned after this confession was yet another slap across his face and a "You're unbelievable, Serkan Bolat!".

Today, in the office, Eda had been sulking and demonstratively ignoring him. Add Balca and her unwanted attention, which was getting too bold to remain comfortable, into the mix and what you got would be a very annoyed and exhausted Serkan Bolat.

A knock pulled Serkan from his thoughts. He looked up to see Melek. She smiled blindingly at him and gave him a small wave:

"You busy, Enişte?"

Serkan felt a smile forming on his face upon hearing the word "Enişte", which now between himself and Melek had turned into a form of endearment.

"No, I am free for you. Come in" Serkan said with fondness.

Melek came up to his work desk and pulled a chair to sit down.

"So, what is it? Is it Eda? Is something wrong with Eda?" Serkan felt panic spreading in his chest and looked past Melek, at the open office space, frantically searching for Eda.

He relaxed a little when he saw her sitting at her regular place, studying something closely on her computer.

"Calm down, Enişte. Everything is fine. Dada is fine. Well, apart from being an idiot, she's fine"

"Hm, what? An idiot?" Serkan asked, confused.

"Yes, you are both idiots. Sitting here, brooding, instead of just talking. Look, Dada trusts you. And she wanted to tell you this that night on the skating rink but then you told her that you had been making her jealous on purpose. You know our girl, of course she got pissed off. To her it just looked like another one of your attempts to control her"

"I know that, Melek! I know it was dumb and manipulative. I just... I just wanted her to finally stop hiding behind the contract and do something"

"I understand that. And, I think, Eda does too now. She sees how much you've been trying to change. But you don't have to or need to change change, you know. She's not expecting you to become a different person"

"I am trying to be a better person, for her"

"And I am happy to hear you say that. But... just make sure you're doing it for yourself too, ok? Because you know what Dada said to me yesterday?"

Melek looked at Serkan with a small secretive smile.

"She said:

"Yes, he is a robot and he drives me crazy half of the time with his robotic tendencies. But he's my robot, Melo, you know? And what if he suddenly stops being my robot? What if I come to the office one day and there's a... vanilla prince charming instead of my robot? Looking like him but not actually him".

And then she turned into a crying mess. But my point is - she loves you for who you are. Faults and all. She just has trouble telling you that. I guess a communication problem is something you two have in common"

Serkan just full-on belly-laughed at Melek's comment. He suddenly felt so much lighter. All the worry, doubt, fear and insecurities of the recent days just... vanished. A sense of calm certainty settled inside of him instead. He believed now that him and Eda were gonna be okay. No matter what. No matter who.

Serkan was just about to open his mouth and thank Melek for having put his mind and heart at ease, when another knock echoed in his office and he saw Balca.

"I am sorry for interrupting but I need to discuss something with you, Serkan" said Balca and waved a yellow folder in her hands at him.

"Well, I was actually leaving. You two do your work thing and I will also go, do some... work. See ya around, Enişte!" Melek rambled and jumped to her feet.

"Melek! Thank you! We will talk a bit more later, ok?" Serkan said when Melek was about to exit his office.

"Yeah, sure thing, Enişte!"

Serkan switched his attention to Balca.

"I am listening, Balca, what is it?"

The young woman came to Serkan's desk and pulled out the chair, previously occupied by Melek. Balca took a seat and rolled closer to Serkan, which made her elbow bump into Serkan's forearm. Serkan shifted uncomfortably and tried to focus on the documents Balca had put before him. Balca started explaining that several business magazines wanted to publish interviews with him. She also showed a couple of press releases for him to approve. All in all, she remained professional and the next ten minutes or so passed relatively quickly.

"Ok, you can get in touch with the magazine, tell them I am ready to give an interview. But only on the dates I have mentioned"

"Got it. I will let you know once I hear from them"

Balca started collecting the documents and Serkan looked past her, his eyes searching for Eda. She wasn't, however, at her computer. Serkan scanned the open office space but there was no sign of Eda. So, when Balca rolled back in her chair and stood up, Serkan also got to his feet.

"Are you leaving?" Balca asked.

"No, just want to stretch my legs a bit. Shall we?" Serkan answered and motioned to the doors.

They exited Serkan's office together, with Balca walking closely. Serkan felt Balca's eyes on the side of his face but ignored the weight of her gaze. He noticed Melek sitting at one of the desks and approached her quickly.

"Melek!"

"Enişte?"

"Where is Eda?"

"Oh, I think she went to get a coffee"

"Ok, thank you"

Serkan moved in the direction of their office cafeteria when he noticed Balca following him. He stopped abruptly and Balca almost collided with his back. Serkan turned to face the woman and asked:

"Is there something else you want, Balca?"

"No, I think we've discussed everything" she answered with a smile.

"Then where are you going? I think you wanted to call the magazine and arrange that interview"

"Yes, of course, I will do just that. But I wanted to get some coffee first"

Serkan nodded and motioned for Balca to go forward. They entered the cafeteria together and Serkan immediately noticed Eda at the coffee machine. Eda heard approaching steps and turned her head in the direction of the sound. She visibly tensed upon seeing Balca and Serkan together.

"Eda, can I also get a cup of coffee?" asked Balca, coming to stand beside Eda at the coffee machine.

Even Serkan raised his eyebrows at that.

"By all means, be my guest" Eda motioned to the coffee maker with one of her hands.

She took a half-filled cup in her other hand and brushed past Balca. Eda moved to leave the cafeteria but Serkan quickly followed behind and caught her by the arm.

"Can we talk for a moment, please?" he said in a hushed whisper.

"There's nothing to talk about" Eda responded stubbornly.

"I think there is"

Serkan took Eda's hand and, threading their fingers together, pulled her in the direction of the stairs.

"What are you doing? Let go of my hand! Where are you taking me?" Eda protested.

"I am taking you to my other office on the second floor so that we could talk in private"

"Talk in private? I don't want to talk in private!"

Serkan stopped and turned to Eda with an exasperated sigh.

"You will talk to me"

Serkan pulled on Eda's hand but she refused to move.

"Eda, stop being a child. Let's go"

"I don't want to go. What are you gonna do? Throw me over your shoulder and carry me there?"

"You know, it's a great idea actually" he said dead serious.

Eda's eyes widened comically.

"Don't be ridiculous. Are you crazy? You cannot do such a thing"

"Oh, I can, Eda Yıldız. Because my patience is wearing thin"

"You won't do this"

"Try me"

Eda lifted her hand, still holding a coffee cup, higher.

"You wouldn't dare! I have hot coffee in my hand!"

"So what? You can splash it in my face all you want but then I will definitely throw you over my shoulder"

For the first time since Serkan got to know Eda Yıldız, she seemed lost for words. Serkan stepped closer to her, looked into her big eyes and said, softening his voice:

"Please, let's go and talk"

He tried to pour all his love, all his longing for her into his gaze. He mouthed a "Please" again. Eda's defences crumbled and she nodded quietly.

Never letting go of Eda's hand, Serkan led her upstairs to his office. Once they were inside, Serkan locked the door to prevent anyone from barging in. He moved to the couch and Eda followed, taking a seat beside him. Serkan shifted so that he was facing Eda who was now awkwardly nursing a cup of coffee between her hands. She brought it to her lips the same moment Serkan said:

"So, I am your robot"

Eda choked on her lukewarm coffee and started coughing violently. Serkan cursed at himself and took Eda's cup from her hands.

"Sorry" he mumbled.

He put her cup on the coffee table and handed her a tissue. Eda wiped at her hands and face, still coughing.

"Let me get you some water"

Serkan grabbed a water bottle from the coffee table and uncapped it for her.

"Here, drink this" he said, offering her the bottle.

Eda took it and made a couple of long gulps.

"Thank you" she finally managed to say.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I am, I'm fine" Eda nodded.

"So..."

Serkan rubbed his hands together and looked at Eda pointedly.

"Oh, shut up!" Eda exclaimed in embarrassment.

"I didn't say anything!"

"Your smug face is saying plenty"

"Well, I cannot help myself" Serkan said with a wide smile, his dimples showing.

"Melo told you, didn't she? Of course she told you! Offf...ya!"

Eda covered her face with both of her hands. Serkan moved from the couch and onto his knees, directly in front of Eda. He took her hands in his and pulled them from her face.

"Hey, look at me" he said softly.

Eda lifted her face, her cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment, and looked into Serkan's eyes.

"There's nothing to feel embarrassed about because nothing about what you said is silly or untrue. I am your robot. Yours only" Serkan told her with conviction.

Eda's face lit up with happiness, adoration and so much love. She cupped both of his cheeks with her hands, her eyes finding his.

"I love you, you know that? For who you are. Just the way you are. You don't need to change for me to love you" she told him.

"But I want to change. I want to be better for you" Serkan said.

"Well, if you want to... Just don't do this because you think it's something I want from you. All I need is you. Your love, your trust, your respect. Let's give each other all of that, ok? If we trust and support each other and talk to each other, we will be okay"

"We will, right?"

"Yes" Eda nodded with a smile and pressed her forehead to his.

Serkan closed his eyes, just living and breathing in the moment. They were sitting like this, in comfortable silence, for several minutes when Serkan finally whispered:

"You want to know my third wish?"

Eda chuckled and pulled away slightly.

"You know I do, I am curious like that" she said with a smile.

Serkan reached into his pants pocket and pulled out Eda's flower ring. He heard Eda gasp: "Serkan!"

"I know now is not the right time. But very soon, when you're ready, I want you to put this ring back on and never take it off again. And once it's back on your finger, I want to put another one here" he pulled her left hand from his face and ran his thumb over her ring finger.

Serkan watched Eda's eyes fill with tears when he asked in a whisper: "Okay?"

Eda nodded and whispered back: "Okay".

___________________________________________

The rest of the day went in a blur. Serkan felt like a teenager. Only he never felt this light, happy and carefree when he actually was a teen.

He was basically useless at work, unable to concentrate, so he just stopped trying and was watching Eda instead. From time to time he would ask her to come into his office. She pretended to be exasperated but the smiles she couldn't contain betrayed her.

Balca came by several times. She caught on his mood change immediately:

"You seem different. Happier. You weren't like that in the morning"

"Well, I received some good news"

"That's wonderful! Care to share?"

"It's personal"

The second Balca left his office with a tight smile and a dry nod, Serkan's eyes drifted to Eda but she wasn't at her desk. Serkan got to his feet and went out of his office, in search for Eda. He peaked into the conference room but found it empty and went to check the cafeteria. The only person there was Melek.

"Melek!"

"Enişte!"

"Have you seen Eda?"

"Hm... no. The last time I saw her she was working at her computer"

"Well, she isn't there now"

"She was going to leave earlier because she's got classes at the university but it's not the time yet"

There was clicking of heels and both Serkan and Melek turned to the source of the sound only to see Balca.

Serkan brought his attention back to Melo:

"Well, if you see her, please, tell her that I am looking for her"

"Will do, Enişte!" Melek responded enthusiastically and retreated, without even acknowledging Balca's presence.

Serkan moved to the coffee maker. Taking a cup for himself, he turned to Balca, who had taken a seat at the counter, and asked:

"Coffee?"

"Yes, thank you"

Serkan took another cup, placed it next to his own and switched on the coffee maker which started gurgling.

"Can I ask you something?" he heard Balca say.

Serkan looked at her and nodded silently.

"Why does Melek keep calling you her Enişte?" Balca asked, confused.

Serkan furrowed his brows, puzzled by the audacity of the question.

"Because I am her Enişte"

"But you and Eda are not married"

"Not on paper, not yet"

Serkan heard a telling click of the coffee machine and turned to fill the cups with hot liquid. He faced Balca again, who was watching him with an unreadable expression, and placed one of the coffees in front of her.

"Anyway, it's just a technicality. Because it feels like we are. Married, I mean" Serkan said and took his cup.

He held it up in a "Cheers!" move and dropped a "Enjoy your coffee" before exiting the cafeteria.

Once Serkan entered the open work space, he noticed Eda immediately. He approached her desk with: "Eda? Can you come into my office for a minute?"

Eda nodded silently and stood from her seat, following him. Once they were in his office, Serkan placed his coffee on the desk and turned to face Eda. She came to stand before him, but there was too much space between them, so Serkan took her hand and pulled Eda to him. She stumbled forward and basically fell on his chest with a chuckle.

"What are you doing? We're at work, remember?"

"Oh, I do. Otherwise I would be kissing you right now"

Eda's cheeks turned red.

"Stop it" she whisper-yelled at him.

"Why? That's true"

"You're such a dork"

"And you're perfect" Serkan said, meaning it with every cell in his body, every drop of his blood.

Eda shook her head with a smile:

"Romantic robot"

"Your romantic robot"

"Yes, my romantic robot" she agreed and added in a whisper: "I love you, Serkan Bolat"

"Our feelings are mutual, Eda Yıldız" he whispered back.

They kept staring at each other with dopey smiles on their faces for several more minutes before Serkan asked:

"Where have you been? I missed you"

"Don't be ridiculous, I just went to the ladies' room. I was away for like five minutes"

"Well, felt like an hour to me"

"You're hopeless. What are you gonna do when I leave in an hour and you don't see me until tomorrow morning?"

Serkan looked at her confused:

"What do you mean I won't see you until tomorrow morning? I thought we would meet after you finish your classes"

"Well, I finish quite late and then I have to go home because I promised Hala to help her with something"

"Well, I could pick you up after you help your aunt"

"I think it will be too late for us to go anywhere"

"Then we will just spend time at my place. You could stay the night" Serkan suggested, licking at his lips nervously.

Eda bit on her bottom lip and Serkan's eyes zeroed in on it, as if he was being hypnotized.

"Hey!" Eda's fingers snapped right in front of his face.

"Hm? Yes?"

"I am saying: we will spend the whole day together tomorrow. And I promise that we will leave work together and then do whatever you want or go wherever you want. And..." Eda moved closer to Serkan to whisper into his ear: "I might stay the night".

Serkan choked on air as well as his own saliva. Eda moved away from him with a suggestive smile.

The next hour was spent daydreaming and sneaking glances at Eda. Then Pırıl came with yet another crisis and Serkan got a bit distracted, managing to finally focus on something for the first time during the day. When at some point Serkan had a chance to lift his head from the papers, scattered before him, he noticed that Eda was gathering her things, getting ready to leave. He was about to stand and go to her, but Eda shook her head "No" with a smile and motioned for him to continue with what he was doing. She just looked at him for a moment and then mouthed: "I love you" - add blew him a tiny kiss.

Serkan grinned at her and mouthed back his own "I love you".

The rest of the day was surprisingly busy. By the time Serkan had dealt with all problems at the office, it was rather late. He texted Eda to call him once she was free. Then he drove home, went about his evening routine, checking his phone every now and then. No messages or missed calls from Eda. Serkan was getting anxious, when he finally heard a tell-tale sound of an incoming video call. Blowing out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding, Serkan answered his phone and finally felt himself relax, when he saw Eda's face, with her blinding smile and eyes that were dancing with mischief. They talked until Eda literally fell asleep holding a phone in her hand. Serkan looked at her peaceful sleeping face for several minutes before he finally disconnected the call. He felt uneasy, however. The moment he could no longer see her face, a strange nagging feeling settled somewhere in his stomach. He did his best to ignore it and tried to sleep.

____________________________________________

The morning found Serkan Bolat completely beaten. He practically hadn't slept all night. When he did manage to doze off, he was pulled from sleep by a strange feeling. It was a physical discomfort, reaction akin to anaphylactic shock that he had experienced only once in his life. Going into full-on panic mode, a hypochondriac that he was, Serkan called his family doctor. Once Delek Hanım came and examined him, she told him that he was completely fine physically and his condition was purely psychological. Serkan argued that there was nothing that could have triggered basically a panic attack. Quite the opposite - things were finally looking up for him and Eda. He had her back.

"Well, this can be the reaction to some impending stress. Maybe there's something important, some event coming that you might be worried about?" Delek Hanım asked.

Serkan just shook his head. He then thanked the doctor and after she left, immediately dialed Eda's number. She didn't pick up.

"It's fine, everything is fine" Serkan mumbled to himself while looking through his call log.

Once he found Melek's name, he started a call. Melo picked up on the third ring:

"Good morning, Enişte!"

"Good morning, Melek. I called Eda but she didn't answer. Is everything ok?"

"She's probably driving, that's why she didn't pick up. She left early today. Ayfer Abla had some special orders at the flower shop so Dada volunteered to help. She will go straight to the office once she deals with the flowers"

Serkan calmed down a bit after having heard that but there still was uncomfortable tightness in his chest. He was rubbing at the spot while he was driving to work, but it only got worse once Serkan arrived at the office. A tie around his neck started choking him so he had to get rid of the damn thing.

Melek came but there was still no sign of Eda.

Alarms started going off in Serkan's head when a concerned-looking Ceren showed up. Serkan came up to her while she was talking to Melo.

"What's going on? Where is Eda?"

The girls looked at each other, then at Serkan, and Ceren said:

"We don't know. None of us can reach her. She's not answering any of the calls or messages"

Serkan almost growled in frustration when his phone started ringing. He pulled it from his pocket hustily, only to see that it was his mother calling. He picked up with: "Mom, it's not the right time, I will call..." but stopped dead when he heard a sob and his mother's weak "Serkan, dear...".

"Mom?..." he asked timidly and didn't recognize his own voice.

Because it wasn't his voice, it wasn't the voice of a grown-up man, it was a boy's voice, the one a scared child would have.

"Mom, please, tell me she is okay"

"I am so sorry, dear..."

His phone slipped from his fingers and cluttered to the floor.

(to be continued... maybe 👀)

[pluviophile-bookworm]

HSMTMTS 2x12: Don't say we'll have to let it go...

After a very stressful morning and several moments in which I was close to a full sanity slip completely unrelated to this, it is high time (heck, it's the highest of times, if you know what I mean) I got to the new HSMTMTS, the last one for a while.

I'm honestly scared, though. This morning I thought nothing could make me more nervous today than the whole ordeal I had to go through, but now that I'm here, I'm super scared and anxious. I don't even want to say it, but... what if this is... you know what I'm thinking. We're all thinking it. I just hope we're wrong in a good way.

I feel like I might die of anxiety, so I guess I'll just dive in. Whatever will be, will be.

Supportive Nini is best Nini. Honestly, I haven't liked her all season as much as I do now. The background, behind-the-scenes role seems to fit her a lot better than the lead. I hope to see more of her like this when (fingers crossed!!!) the show comes back.

Ashlyn, on the other hand, is a perfect lead. She was born for this, and it shows. It shows so much that everybody has finally noticed it. They took their time, didn't they?

Ugh, I hate, hate, hate this kind of moment that happens every time when someone has prepared a surprise for someone else — and we saw that twice this season — once with Carlos at his Quinceañero, and now with Ashlyn. I mean the moment before they find out about the surprise and they feel like they've been forgotten and it's all so sad... at least I know whatever my boy Reddy has planned for his girl will make up for that sort of feeling. I can't wait!

Ahhhhh @redlyncentral you called it! You called it big time! I can't say I wasn't expecting it to be something like this, though, because I trust your sixth sense more than I trust mine — and I trust mine a lot. Also, if anyone deserves to have their name in lights, it's Ashlyn. And remember when she told Big Red that, to make things light up, he just had to walk into a room? Or when he told her that the only thing he'd throw at her was a brighter spotlight? You know, I think that, just like airports are Portwell's thing, lights are Redlyn's thing. And that is so beautiful... I am legitimately crying.

Yikes... see, it's one thing when Nini calls Ricky 'Richard'. But it's another thing entirely when Kourtney calls Howie 'Howard'. Gosh, I hope they clear things up. If Howie has something to say (as in, some secret to come clean about, if you catch my drift), he'd better do it now. I was never too invested in Kowie, but it still hurts to see tension between them.

Ok, but... these two are too dorky for words! I mean, you're telling me Howie was acting that way just because of how nervous Kourtney's talent made him? Oh well, I feel like I can understand that, actually. She's a powerhouse. But also, everyone around here needs to learn a lesson or two from Redlyn. About communication, reciprocity, expression of feelings... it's no accident that they're the parents of the drama club. But this is not about them. Oh, who am I kidding? With me, everything is about them. Unless it's about Seblos or Portwell. Never mind. Moving on.

I am trying very hard not to have a visible or audible reaction because my brother is in the room and I'm supposed to be working, but... EJ had his dad put in a good word for Mr Mazzara at Caltech. And that is something that makes me feel feelings I can't very easily put into words. Also, what does that mean for Mr M's future at East High?

As clear as the imprint of Jamie's words is to see on EJ's face, I feel like he's not giving up on Portwell quite yet. 'Play it by ear' sounded quite promising to me, all things considered.

Not Ricky and Nini writing the same thing in slightly different words... again! I absolutely get why people ship them, at least on the surface level I do, but I really can't see them as a couple anymore. That is not to say, however, that I'm not rooting for them on their way to figuring out how to be 'just' friends. (See, I'm not a big fan of the expression 'just friends', as if it's something less than a romantic relationship, so...) They could be the best friends ever. If, and only if they learn to communicate properly. All kinds of relationships require good communication. I feel like I'm saying that a lot, but, you know, if it's true...

I can't look at Miss Jenn the same way after last week's episode. The Menkies have turned her, quite frankly, into a monster. She's too obsessed with beating Zacky Roy to notice how she's treating her students who have always been nothing but devoted to her and the play. Well, some of them anyway... I feel like it's time for Carlos to reconsider his opinion of her... and I know it must be painful, and the least thing I'd ever wish for him is pain, but... sometimes certain painful things are necessary. I just hope everyone comes out of this alright. I think I might not, though. I've been crying for a while already.

No... why is Gina crying? My girl needs a hug... Oh, here comes Nini. This seems like it's been a long time coming.

This was beautiful... only one character played by an actress named Olivia will be redeemed today. And it's the right one, if I do say so myself.

Alright, who called it? Gina connecting Nini with her brother about her music, I mean. I know for a fact someone here called it. If you happen to be that genius and you read this, please come forward in the notes to get the credit you deserve. This is... a little too perfect to be true, but I feel like it's the best way to connect and wrap up several storylines with one blow. And I love when that happens. Gosh, why does this feel like a series finale? Please tell me I'm wrong. I am not ready. I will never be ready. Ok, maybe one day I will be, but not anytime soon. Please tell me my feeling is deceiving me this time.

Oh, good, it's being addressed. The 'jump off of something high' comment, I mean. It would have been wrong not to address it. I kind of really liked the way they did it, too. Also, 'getting there' really is the most accurate answer to the question whether Ricky is happy. I feel like he's got a long way to go before he does get there, but he really is closer to that destination than he's been in a while. This boy deserves all the happiness. He's been through way too much. And I'm glad Miss Jenn is finally seeing her part in his struggles throughout the year.

Ahhh it's the song! I've been so excited for it all week, ever since that teaser leaked. But, once again: why does this feel like a finale? I want to curb my anxiety and watch this episode with a free mind, but the episode itself just isn't helping me. Ok, let's go back to the song for now. Whatever will be, will be.

No... EJ's verse... just no. Somebody tell that boy not to be so hung up on the words of somebody who doesn't even know who Gina is today. I've had 'the majestic S.S. Portwell' for a couple of weeks and I'm not ready for it not setting sail after it was almost out of the... port(well). Have I ever told you I make bad puns when I'm anxious?

Carlos doesn't even remember being on stage... that's too relatable to be overlooked. See, I used to perform on stage (I've decided to quit for good now and it makes me cry only slightly), and that has always been how I've felt about it. I feel like my favourites are who they are because I relate to each one of them to an extent — some are who I think I am, some are who I used to be, and some are who I wish I could become... and so much more on top. I'm being so emotional. I'm not ready to let these kids go. Please someone tell me I won't have to, at least not quite yet.

The Wildcats' reaction to... Capital-B-witch and Fake-French-Git-who-is-apparently-French-for-real (as I've taken to calling those two because calling them by their real names would mean showing them respect which they don't deserve) was exactly the same as mine. No one invited them there. They're not supposed to be there. Someone kick them out.

'Big Red... you were... also there!' Um, excuse you, he was not just 'there'! I mean, I know we didn't get to see him on stage (we've been robbed!!!), but I'm sure he was the most amazing LeFou to ever grace a theatre stage. That being said, we have been robbed! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I want to see what Big Red's reaction will be. I've been fantasising about this moment for weeks now.

Ok... so I said a couple of weeks ago, in my post on 2x10, that Ricky has been given a chance to prove what kind of friend he is right then and there... and, well, this wasn't exactly how I envisioned it, but it was nice. I think that's the word for it. Nice. Ricky is just too nice to do what I kept seeing in my fantasy. And Big Red is doubly too nice to do it. But I... I surprise myself sometimes with how aggressive I can get in defence of other people. Maybe it's better this way than my way.

Did that capital-B-witch just say what I thought I heard her say? Because there's no way she just said that. Also, 'sometimes people deserve a second chance'... well, yeah. And sometimes they don't, you... well, I don't use words like that, but you guys can put two and two together, right?

'I'd trade it all for this group right here tonight'... me too, Eej, me too. I'm not even going to pretend I'm not crying because, guess what, I'm bloody bawling my eyes out! I kind of stopped for a moment when you-know-who and her second-in-command came in, but now I'm crying again. I am so not ready to let these kids go.

So... they're dropping out? Just like that? Well, that was anticlimactic! But hey, I absolutely get it. That's the Wildcat spirit, after all, isn't it? They did win already. They won something that some of North High's students can never understand. And that's more important than just about anything. [side note: I've got to say I appreciate the fact that my boy Reddy is now able to joke about his opening night predicament. See, that's another thing I relate to. I go through the craziest stuff, and then I laugh and tell stories to anyone who will listen. And I think that's the best approach to that kind of stuff. I just wish I could be less dramatic about the little things, too. It seems to me it's easier to laugh about the big, serious stuff once it's over, but not about some things that most people would deem unworthy of their attention. But hey, I'm working on that. Also, this post is not supposed to be about me. Moving on.]

Bless Ashlyn and the fact that she's good at communication. Even if she's a little late. She's not too late yet. Portwell might still be saved.

No, Ricky, you so did not just call you-know-who! I will not stand for any of that. Unless it's to shut her off once and for all, in which case I say go for it and go full steam. But why do I get the feeling it's not going to be like that? Ok, never mind, let's set that one aside and focus on Portwell for a second.

Ok, that was... that was going to be so beautiful, and then they cut it off. Is Portwell about to be Redlyn 2.0? Oh well, if it really is, that isn't going to be so bad after all. But now all I can think about is... when are we getting the renewal? How am I supposed to sleep at night until we know for sure?

Not them making me cry with a BTS montage... as if I wasn't crying hard enough already. I'm not alone in the house, you guys! In fact, we're having a bunch of guests from overseas in... wait, I think they're at the door. I'm not ready for people! Not now. Pray for me, you guys! (In all seriousness, though, don’t pray for me. Pray for a season 3 announcement to come soon)

[marie-dufresne]

Fast forward; the fall of ShinRa. Geostigma is on the rise and Rufus is reduced to a wheelchair. Marie manages to find the lodges and sees her former employer for the first time in almost a year.

@ivory-paragon

There were memories and there were dreams. Lady Marie Devereaux could not tell them apart.  How could she, when all of her life had been dictated to her. An accident had wiped her memory entirely, or so she’d been told, and as she ‘recovered’, she was fed stories and pills, stories and pills, stories and pills.

Her husband, Colin, only wanted to see her well again.

Why then, she wondered, despite all his attentiveness and patience and benevolence, did she harbor a raw, deep seated fear of the man?

The things she recalled before she woke up were not real, she’d been told. They never happened, and yet they felt so real. So concrete. She could see faces, hear voices, feel textures.

But for all the things she was told happened?

There was nothing.

Why couldn’t she conjure up a shred of a memory? A familiar smell, or image?

It felt wrong to doubt him when he was waking her up with gentle kisses on her forehead, serving her breakfast on a tray in her suite. They didn’t share a bed in this manor. She needed to recover, he claimed. Then they could be intimate.

It suited Marie just fine. She felt no attraction to her husband as guilty as she felt to admit it, but he’d mentioned they’d been trying for a baby the past few years. They’d try again when she was well.

After three weeks she was left only with a slight limp from where her hip had been injured and after two months, there was no physical evidence left of the accident and she took to what she’d been doing for—how long had they been married? Fourteen years?

It seemed odd to her, to be married for fourteen years and not seek medical help to conceive. If that was right, she’d been all of eighteen and in prime shape for child bearing when they married.

Over the months locked up inside the grand estate, Marie did not begin to trust the past life she didn’t know. Not with the expensive clothes he dressed her in or the jewels or the gourmet foods served to her day in and day out. Instead, she began to doubt.

Her memories, the ones she thought could be real, had faded into nothing more than strange feelings of nostalgia and a recurring nightmare of a bustling street, a telephone, and her crying out for a friend. Or perhaps a lover. She didn’t know.

She didn’t even recall the name.

It happened by accident, her discovery that would either save her or ruin her. Too hasty in picking up her morning tablets, too slow to catch it before it tumbled down the drain. Ah, that was alright. Skipping one dose wouldn’t kill her. They were only meant to keep her balanced. It had been almost a year since she’d been taking them. Surely she’d be fine skipping one dose.

She didn’t tell Colin. It didn’t feel right to tell him, and she carried on, planning out the next season’s gardens, deciding to add an elaborate water feature to the grounds. He liked when she tinkered with the estate. It kept her busy.

Combing through a catalogue of plants, a question popped into her head that had her sitting upright.

What happened to Midgar?

Midgar? She laughed quietly, shaking her head and turning the page. She hated the idea of cities. She hadn’t ever been there, had no desire to be there, so why she was thinking about it now, she didn’t know. And what happened to it? Nothing as far as she knew. Why would anything happen to it? How silly.

The question wore on over the afternoon and it ate at her. It ate at her so much that while Colin was in a meeting in his study, she meandered into the library to tackle the archived newspapers, if only to quell the obnoxious mantra of a question.

That was until she discovered there wasn’t a single newspaper in the library. For a man who made a point of keeping up-to-date on the planet’s happenings…why didn’t he keep newspapers?

She briefly considered asking him casually. How was Midgar these days? Should they make a trip into the city? They were society elites after all. Shouldn’t they show their faces?

Sighing, Marie tapped her fingers onto a standing globe before giving it a little spin. No. She hadn’t been permitted to leave the property since the accident.

Another thing that didn’t sit well with her.

Feeling fuzzy, she opted for a nap. That evening, before bed, she dropped another tablet down the sink.

That night brought her dream, this time with flashes of colour. One colour. Red.

The morning brought her nausea, vomiting, and chills. The dream was gone. The second question Colin asked after her wellbeing was if she’d taken her medication.

He counted them. She’d been smart to dispose of them.

It was all she needed to know something was wrong in her household and through the pain and the sickness, she continued to forego the ‘necessary’ medication. Her dream was stronger, bits and pieces of what seemed like a fantasy were reappearing in her mind, and her fear of Colin Devereaux only grew stronger.

There wasn’t any communication to the outside, save the telephone but she was smarter than to try. They did have an extensive collection of encyclopedia, so again she took to the library. This time it was while he slept, at half past three in the morning. The night, dyslexia, and the tail end of her detox all working against her.

She had the orange pill bottle clenched in her right hand, flipping through the pages of the volume she’d selected, finding nothing. She read the name of the medication seventeen times, working letter by letter to no avail.

She sat back with a sigh, flicking off the tiny lamp she’d brought with her before turning it back on again, eyes roaming the bottle and finding an ‘active ingredient’. That was available in a different volume, and her stomach turned to stone as she read it, chills of a new kind settling underneath her skin.

“….working as a memory suppressant in several trial drugs thought to aid victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Never fully tested, it was pulled from all clinical trials due to ethical controversy and potential for misuse.”

With her hands pressed against her mouth, Marie stopped the sobs that shuddered up from her chest. Not here, not now. She had to make it back upstairs, back to her suite where if she was found, she could pretend to have had a nightmare. After that, she had to leave.

It didn’t matter wholly what the truth was anymore, what were memories and what were dreams and what were fantasies. What mattered now was survival.  For going on ten months she’d been living with a monster. A man drugging her and manipulating her to what end, she wondered.

The next morning she had a name, a name from her dreams and she felt a little better. It also brought with it a number. She’d always been good with numbers and when she spied the telephone from across the parlor after breakfast, she wondered if he would answer if she dialed.

She had a friend somewhere out there in the world, or had at some point. Maybe he could help her.

But calling him from here was not an option. What if he didn’t remember her? What if she’d done something terrible?

For three days, she resisted the urge to flinch when Colin walked in the room. For three days, she kept her hands busy with estate work and leisure so he couldn’t see them shaking, and for three nights, she combed the encyclopedias until dawn, looking for something she could use to give herself a head start.

Finally, on the fourth night, she added some liquid from a sleeping gel into her husband’s nightly cognac. He wouldn’t sleep suddenly, but he would sleep longer and far more deeply once he turned in.

With only a few pieces of jewelry in her handbag, she slipped out of the one blind spot the estate security offered, and ran into the night.

At sunrise, she found herself in civilization. A small town by the looks of it, directions written on a wooden post at the crossroads. Junon wasn’t far, but she wouldn’t be able to walk there. She’d worn her most sensible shoes, but she’d been running for nearly six hours.

She traded a ring for a a bath, hot breakfast, and a truck ride from the innkeeper who was more than eager to do whatever she needed of him.

In the city, her first stop was a jeweler. Even without memories, she knew that trading would only get her so far. She needed cash. Whether she was truly Lady Devereaux or not didn’t matter; she held herself well enough not to be questioned and left the establishment with a purse full of gil, less the bribe she’d paid to have any evidence of her being there destroyed.

Next, a cellphone. One that couldn’t be traced, that had no bill. What did they call them?

“A….burner phone, ma’am?”

The clerk shifted uncomfortably at the woman before him. She didn’t seem all there.

“Yes,” she replied, straightening a bit. “I need a burner phone.”

“No one who buys one of these it up to anything good, you know,” he joked, “you’re not dealing, are you?”

Handing over the gil, Marie looked up with an icy glare, unappreciative of the humor.

“I’ve just left my abusive husband,” she said, lifting her chin, “and I must find Reno.”

The young boy didn’t hand over the box, instead offering to set it up for her. He didn’t know who this ‘Reno’ was, but if what she said was true, maybe he should help.

“I’ll also need to know the fastest route to Midgar,” she informed him, “I think I belong there.”

The second clerk froze from stocking shelves to look over at the counter, sending the boy a questioning glance. Where was this woman from?

“You’ll uh…you can take a boat,” he settled on, “uh…buy a ticket to ‘Edge’ though.”

Marie accepted the phone he handed her, slipping it into her purse. “Edge?”

Realizing this woman was either off her rocker or had been isolated for too long, the young cashier didn’t want to upset her, so he shrugged with a small smile. “New Port Codes, I think,” he told her instead, “maybe it’ll end up being safer for you too.”

Satisfied with this, Marie headed to the harbor and bought the next ticket on the fastest ship. Alone in her cabin, she lowered herself to the bed. If Colin was after her, there would at least be enough distance between them that when she got to Midgar, she could vanish. Or if not vanish, possibly enlist the help of someone.

With the phone in her hand, her heart raced. She had a number, and she had a name. Aside from that, she had nothing. She didn’t recall this ‘Reno’ or why they were of any importance to her. When had they met? Were they involved with her accident?

She wouldn’t know unless she tried, so with trembling fingers, she dialed.  After four rings, there was a voice on the other end.

“Yo listen you got the wrong number.”

Marie’s brow wrinkled. What an odd way to answer the phone.

“…Reno?”

A little sigh, followed by a groan. “Ayyy okay so you ain’t got the wrong number but if this was about the other night, I was drunk and—“

“Reno it’s Marie.”

Silence.

She prayed it wasn’t confused silence. She prayed he knew who she was. She prayed that he was someone who would help her.

There was shuffling on the other line, followed by a slamming door. “Where the fuck have you been.”

The demand came out as a hiss, but the tone of concern did not go unnoticed by her.

“I don’t know; I—“

“All I get is this freaky voicemail, you go missing, and a week later the fucking world starts to end! What the—“

Her eyes widened as muffled groans and growls of frustration came through.

“The President is in a bad way, Marie. He…we could really use you, and you��you were just gone. No one just vanishes like that unless we make it happen. You know that.”

She didn’t know that, and she didn’t understand the cause for concern but she did know about the voicemail. She’d relived it almost every night since she’d stopped her suppressants. Wherever she’d been—Midgar, she assumed—she’d been running from someone. She’d called him for help.

He hadn’t answered.

By the time his voicemail beeped, she’d been snatched and all she could do was scream.

In this moment, she knew it was Colin Devereaux himself that had taken her.

Taking a breath, she leaned forward. “…why…would Winston ShinRa have any use for me?”

She was terrified of the answer. The President’s reputation was a filthy one riddled with cheap affairs and illegitimate offspring. If she’d had any part in that…

“Winst—what the—No! Rufus, blondie! How can you not even—what happened to you?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her hand coming up to cradle her forehead, “I…I’ve been forced to take memory suppressants. I only just stopped taking them and I can’t…I’m sorry but I just can’t remember anything about myself.”

More silence, and she thought for a moment how almost comical it was. Reno was never silent. It pleased her that she knew this.

“Well that’s great,” he sighed, “scrambled eggs for brains. Well seriously, you should get here. Brick wall memory or not, you might be able to do somethin’ to lift his spirits.”

Her?

“…why me?”

This silence was different, as if it were a subject he wasn’t used to, or perhaps was uncomfortable broaching.

“…because you’re in love with him.”

Marie stared ahead at the wall of her cabin, any words she might have had to object swallowed by the fact itself. Who was she?

Luckily for her, Reno wasn’t in the mood for dwelling on sentiment, if he ever was, and charged ahead, a familiar teasing tone directed at her.

“Yeah, you don’t remember? You were always up his ass like some kind of pet or something.”

He cursed. It was low and under his breath, like he couldn’t believe the situation they were in, like he didn’t need more on his plate, but it was followed by a low groan.

“Tell me when you’re scheduled to dock. Rude will pick you up.”

When she’d given him the information she needed, the call ended and she took a breath, the phone trembling in her hands. She realized she didn’t know—or remember—what sort of person Rufus ShinRa was. Was she jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire? Reno might have known she loved him (maybe everyone knew), but he hadn’t said anything about the president’s feelings for her. What if, especially in the bad way he was in, she was met with resentment or rage?

She had, after all, disappeared.

At the port, this ‘Edge’, Marie recognized nothing. Where had her city gone? Panic rose up in her chest and as her eyes searched for anything familiar, she felt her body freezing her where she stood, grumpy passengers pushing by her as she stood in the way, so out of place in her glamorous, tailored clothing and sophisticated hairstyle.

A hand on her shoulder took her attention away from the sight before her and she looked up, met by an unsmiling face and sunglasses. Unsmiling, but not unkind. She knew this man—or had, at some point.

“Rude?”

His hand slipped from her and he beckoned her forward with the smallest of nods. Dutifully she followed, sliding into the car, clutching her handbag. After a few miles of silence, she looked over and smiled.

“I’m sorry I don’t have much to say…I’ve…had a confusing year and I don’t remember you enough.”

“…”

His lack of response didn’t seen to be from displeasure or annoyance, so she smiled again and tried to relax enough to sit back.

“…it’s fine.”

She believed him.

Marie didn’t keep track of the time they spent driving and she didn’t try to initiate any more conversation. Maybe she could have asked questions to prepare her for what he was taking her to, but she found herself tired of being told about what her life had or hadn’t been. She’d have to see for herself.

He lead her into the lodge and though first her eyes settled on Reno lounging on a sofa, the moment she caught sight of Rufus, confined to a wheelchair, the tightness that had been building in her chest burst.

She knew his face. She knew it.

The room tilted, memories assaulting her. Small, brief flashes of moments. A swirling pool of mako, a slaughtered lamb, a pink fluffy pen, the smell of a cappuccino, a knife at her face.

His hands on her.

She shook, standing there, her life seeping in through the cracks and she felt something stronger than anything she’d felt before.

Despair.

“I…”

There was so much she could have said, that she wanted to say, working her way through the confusion of sorting out everything before her, but there was only one place to start and in only a few steps, she was before him, falling to her knees, tears she understood and justified brimming in her eyes, but as they fell, no makeup smudged, not anymore.

“I’ve failed you, sir.”

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

voiceless Jaskier AU (part 6)

I EMERGE! With... uh, angst. I’m so sorry. It’s getting better, I swear to god it is

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) Now on AO3

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

The road to Mahakam was not particularly long, but it seemed slow. By the third day on the road, Jaskier was confident that Geralt was traveling slower intentionally, and he wasn’t sure how to take it. It was probably concern, that mother hen instinct that Geralt absolutely had and denied at every turn. Jaskier’d seen it, the man was… well, all right, he was very bad at nurturing, but he also tried, and that was the important part.

The other option was that he didn’t want to go to Mahakam, or didn’t want to go with Jaskier, and that sat less easy with him. Was it that he felt like finding words for Jaskier that weren’t spoken seemed like giving up? Jaskier could understand that; he felt like that himself, in a way, and though he was trying to see it as a boon it was not lost on him that learning another language, especially one so alien to his experience, would take time. Time that they could’ve spent trying to get his voice back, if that was something so easily done. If it wasn’t easily done, well, it might be worth spending this time first, so he wouldn’t destroy himself through his forced silence.

But also… the reticence Geralt was showing in their travel could come from Geralt not wanting to be caught up in this. Jaskier wouldn’t blame him. He didn’t even sign up for a bard, not really, but at least before Jaskier could largely take care of himself. Now he’s just a voiceless nothing, draining on Geralt’s always-limited resources, not even pulling his own weight as much as Roach did.

Jaskier took a deep breath, from his perch on Roach’s back (at Geralt’s insistence), and then let it out slowly.

Geralt turned back to frown at him, because of course he did. “Need to stop?” he asked, and Jaskier wanted to kiss him and kick him in equal measure. Jaskier pulled out his tablet and scribbled, his letters large and a little wobbly thanks to Roach’s gait.

Fine, keep walking.

Geralt didn’t seem to fully believe it, but turned forward and back to leading. It would be okay. Geralt would take him to Mahakam, and whether he stayed or not, Jaskier could learn a hand sign speech and find someone to translate for him. There had to be those in Mahakam who could hear but knew this hand speech who’d like to leave, like a reason to leave, that working as a translator would grant them. If Geralt wanted to leave him behind, he’d be all right. He could manage.

He always had.

**

We’re going really slow.

Jaskier held the tablet out as Geralt chewed his dinner (rabbit, not rations, thankfully). Deciding to broach the subject had taken a while, but ultimately he just wanted to get where they were going. Once they were there, he could start learning, and have something to do with his evenings by practicing.

(Once they were there, maybe the noise and the people and the purpose would make the world stop feeling distant and unreal, like it was mist he could disperse with a wave of his hand, if he could bring himself to go to the effort of moving it.)

Geralt seemed a bit taken aback by the comment, and looked between Jaskier and the tablet a couple of times, that little crease appearing between his eyebrows that meant he was confused. (Jaskier wanted to kiss it until it turned into the thin-lipped, surprisingly frownless expression of exasperation. When had it gotten so hard to box up these feelings and put them aside?)

“You’re hurt,” Geralt said, and it was a declaration, sure, but Jaskier knew him. Knew what it meant. I thought you were hurt and reacted how I thought I should, but now I’m not sure anymore. The giant idiot. Jaskier rolled his eyes and reached over to gently smack Geralt upside the head with the tablet. The confusion deepened, and was joined by irritation. “What the hell, Jaskier?” he asked, more sharply than Jaskier thought his light love-tap warranted, but it was better than the just-this-side-of-too-gentle that he’d been getting. Nice as it was to be looked after tenderly, from Geralt it felt wrong, after a point.

Can’t talk, he wrote in the wax, the letters carved almost awkwardly deep in his rush. Not injured. Nothing healing. Can go faster.

“Hm,” is the only response Geralt gave as he read the words, frown firmly in place, and Jaskier could scream from the frustration of not being able to say what he meant and shout at Geralt for being overprotective and making him feel more broken than he felt already. He got up abruptly and all but stalked a few feet away to get on the other side of Roach and actually do it. He pressed his forehead to the mare’s side, grateful for her patience, took a deep breath, and just screamed.

If anyone could’ve heard anything but a sharp exhalation of breath, it would’ve been loud and long and absolutely feral.

It didn’t help as much as he’d hoped; his throat felt raw and strained in a way that probably meant he’d overdone it despite Yennefer’s magical healing, and the lack of sound made the catharsis feel hollow and empty.

Like a pie with no filling.

A few more deep breaths, trying to get air back into his empty aching lungs, and he went back around to sit down again, picking up his tablet. Geralt looked concerned, openly concerned, not just hidden in specific grumpy frowns, and Jaskier pretended he didn’t see.

I’d like a bath if we can afford to stop, he wrote, taking the time to write it completely, not leaving out unnecessary words or working quickly. And then, after handing it to Geralt, Jaskier left it with him, his bedroll already laid out, waiting for him.

Geralt waited a long time, and Jaskier had actually nearly fallen asleep, before he climbed in to curl around Jaskier as usual.

Jaskier sighed in relief that he’d come, muscles unspooling, and drifted off to sleep bitter that he was so comforted by the warmth of the witcher at his back.

**

Jaskier got his bath.

The water was still being warmed when Geralt strode back into their room to grab his swords.

“Found a job in the next village,” he said gruffly, strapping them on.

Jaskier scrambled across the room to grab his tablets, carving into it as quickly as he could, turning it back toward Geralt.

He didn’t look.

“Has to be tonight. Sprit only shows up on the new moon,” Geralt continued, and Jaskier tried to catch his attention with his tablet more insistently.

He didn’t look.

“Should be back in a day at most. If it’s two, don’t panic.” And then he strode out - not cruelly, not angrily, just in a rush. Trying to get to the neighboring village and its nighttime, new moon monster.

Jaskier was left in the room, holding his tablet in his lap as what just happened sank in. As his complete lack of being able to communicate, in any way, was taken and shoved back in his face like an old sock someone never wanted to see again.

Geralt. Didn’t. Look.

The girl who prepared his bath started to leave, and he gestured wildly to get her attention, then turned back to his tablet to scribble on the side he hadn’t written to Geralt on.

Is room and food paid up? Go ask please? The girl squinted at the words, carefully sounding them out with her mouth, and Jaskier was just glad she could make them out at all, to be honest.

“I’ll ask,” she said helpfully, and ran off. Jaskier undressed anyway, even though she could theoretically return any moment, and got in the tub, not bothering with salts or oils. There was a sharp knock and Jaskier tried to ask who it was, but-- oh. The girl opened his door and stuck her head in, carefully. “Miss says the room is paid for three days, but food was not included,” she said in the cadence of someone who was repeating something precisely. He smiled tightly, both in gratitude and because he didn’t have any coin to tip her with, because Geralt of Rivia set off with his coin purse firmly affixed to his belt, and Jaskier could feel his stomach sour already with the stress of it.

He sat in the tub for too long, everything feeling wrong, his heart feeling like it had been torn out and chopped up and stitched back into him in chunks. He had a room. He had no food. No way to pay for food. And Geralt had been right there and–

He sank into his bath water, holding his breath until he couldn’t anymore, surfaced and gasped until he could breathe again, then submerged again.

On his tablet, an unread message, carved too quickly into the wax, read, Everything paid for??

**

He’d write a letter, he decided. He’d write Geralt a letter about how upset he was by the fact that the witcher left him, without any way to buy his own food, and it was quite rude not to look at his message asking about it. He managed to look sad enough at the innkeeper downstairs that the man parted with a few sheets of parchment meant for his books, with promise of repayment once Geralt was back.

He started the letter quite sensibly, and reasonably. Laying out the facts and why it upset him. He only had his writing to communicate. If he’d been able to speak, he could have shouted and protested. If he’d been able to speak, he could have simply sung for his supper, which he couldn’t do anymore.

He made it about half a page before his handwriting was getting looser and larger as he scribbled, his words that had been so trapped in him spilling over and onto the page.

He ran out of paper quickly, and with a silent fuck that no one would hear, he reached into his bag, pulling out his journal, ripping a chunk of pages out from the back without thinking about the possibilities or repercussions. They were small. They were meant to be used with his usual cramped handwriting, and a few of the pages in fact included a few lines in faint pencil. Nevertheless, he starts letting his looser, angerier, cooped-up-in-his-throat words bleed out over the pages in ink.

I didn’t ask for this.

You fucking abandoned me.

I don’t want pity.

You can’t just fucking LEAVE.

I know I’m broken stop trying to convince me I’m not.

Fuck you fuck you fuck YOU.

It was like yelling, so fucking, not-quite, deliciously like yelling, and when he finally ran out of things to write, he made sure to spread them across the surfaces of the room. The bed, the little table, the floor. It wasn’t yelling, but he let an exhausted little breath out anyway, cathartic energy already drained.

He left enough room on the bed to climb into the far side, and all but collapsed into sleep.

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) Now on AO3

[yourdeepestfathoms]

Baby Moon

(Read Anne as Courtney!Anne)

Word count: 2959

———————

The queens first found her outside in their backyard seven months after their reincarnation. It was the middle of the night, they were watching a movie, and the full moon was out, bathing the city in hues of sterling and glimmering grey. And there, in their backyard, stood a naked girl with her head towards the glittering black sky.

She was paler than any person they’ve ever seen, as if the moonbeams had zapped all the color out of her skin and then bleached her with its own light. Her hair was the color of washed out gold, with only a few brown roots weakly reaching out from her scalp. If you were to cut open her wrists, they were sure her blood would come out silver.

The queens watched her from the windows and back door for a long time. They theorized that this girl was another reincarnate, but they had all been clothed when they came back, along with the ladies in waiting. Plus, it had been raining and day time. The night was clear with not a single cloud in sight.

Where had she come from? Who was she? What did she want?

So many questions ran through their mind, but only one thing kept blaring in Kitty’s over and over and over again.

Monster.

The girl outside doesn’t move. She just stays very still and keeps her head angled up to the moon. Rays of light were cascading down her back and rear and legs like a silver and white waterfall, painting her entire bare body with the essence of the night.

“Should we call the police?” Cathy asked nervously. Her hands were winding in the hem of her shirt like they did when she was worrying over something.

“She is trespassing,” Cleves agreed.

“No, wait,” Aragon said. “She isn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Aside from being naked on our property,” Jane muttered under her breath.

“I’ll go see what she wants.” Aragon said.

The others protested, but she assured them everything would be fine. However, she still brought a kitchen knife outside with her just to make them feel a little better.

Slowly, so slowly, Aragon crept up to the stranger. When she got closer, she could see the moonlight dripping into her skin, sinking into her back, melting into her chest. The others might not have known yet, but Aragon knew just looking at this girl—she was moonborn, called out only by the power of the moon.

That word, moonborn, made no sense to Aragon at the time. She had never heard of such a thing before and it sounded like a silly title pulled right out of a children’s tale, but something in her head told her it was important. It was important, but it would soon become the cause of great pain nobody would ever be able to fathom.

Aragon took another step forward and gently touched the girl’s shoulder; her skin was as cold as ice.

“Hello?” She called out. “Who are you?”

The girl shuddered under her hand. She turned around very slowly and Aragon gasped at the silver moons that blinked back at her.

———

The moon child asks to be called “Joan.”

It is difficult to communicate this at first, but then Aragon allows her to write it. Even when the color she chooses is bright chartreuse rather than the standard black, she doesn’t stop her. She’s been allowing her much recently.

———

Music is not a foreign thing to the moon child, although she was always lost in a tangle of thoughts and objectives. It‘s easy for chattering and scratching and flipping of parchment to drown out a melody, but it‘s easier for a weary body to absorb it.

It’s not the moon. It does not heal; it doesn’t even provide the respite that a bed does. But it is soothing, and it makes a rumble of something warm rise in her chest.

(She likes to rumble and trill and coo along to music, not really singing, not really vocalizing, but just following with soft noises of her own.

Kitty called it “alien speak.”

She stopped soon after that.)

For that, it is enough. Joan bows her head in gratitude after every rehearsal, thanking whoever was singing for the moment of peace. Sometimes she says it out loud, in her weak, creaky lunar voice. Other times she just smiles gratefully.

Aragon and Anne don’t seem to mind her silence. The moon child thinks they might even like her, just as she likes them and their songs. Even when the dark matter of Joan’s being weeps through the cuts in her skin and her bow is more akin to a slump, they still sing to her, even though she cannot answer their concerned glances.

But Kitty and Jane think she’s broken.

“Why doesn’t she speak?” Jane would ask, pleasantly pretending like she wasn’t in earshot. “We all spoke pretty easily after reincarnation. It’s been a month and she’s spoken, what ten words? But for some reason, she can learn several songs on a piano easier instead?”

“I don’t think we left her out in the moonlight for long enough,” Kitty would titter, and she would know that Joan was nearby. That’s why she said those things—to make her feel bad. “Or maybe aliens aren’t just suited for life on earth.”

Joan starts talking more, after that. She says things like a normal person and not a reincarnated lady in waiting from five hundred years ago that was strangely born from the moon. She acts normal, acts how she should, and acts the way people want her to be.

———

The moon child understands how goodbyes feel now, even if she’s not accompanied by a headless corpse or a weeping mother that’s foaming at the mouth.

Beyond that, she understands what it means to be taken by something, be it sickness, or power, or fear. Or grief. That one, too, will make you its own. That one especially.

Is her entire being not proof of that?

In the end, it is not just the river’s waters lapping at lonely London shores, having foreshadowed this weight. It is not just the mist of essence fading in the place of a friend. It is not just her mother and father, warping and vanishing in a strange, confusing dance. Not just her queen that bore a gown as silver as her eyes, resisting in the face of her own realization that the lunar being belonged to her more than the hot pink fiend. Not just the moons that gave her life.

It is so much more.

It is everything she cannot have and everything she does not want to do. It is frustration and selfishness and bitterness. It is want.

The moon child wants so badly. She wanted for her brother, and so she took what she could of what he gave, and built herself a name out of a throwaway title. She wants so badly for more of him, even if it means fighting. She wants back the little moments of closeness with anyone at all, moments she hadn’t thought to hold onto back when she was still under the illusion that she could keep them, keeping getting more of them.

How easy would it be, to solve things without just the cry of a voice if she hadn’t been destined to be silent and unloved?

How much easier, to bring life to fading hope and provide friendship for others? For herself?

She wants painfully for the small things like the shinier markers at the store, like the odd affectionate touches John used to give the top of her head. Like Aragon’s humming or Anne’s hugs or Jane’s forehead kisses or being one of the players in the theater games Cleves will start up or someone that inspires Cathy to create a character after her in one of her books. She even wants to get one of Kitty’s weird head bumps just to know she was important enough to receive one. She wants to hang out with Anne and Aragon more often because they tell stories and she likes that, and she wants the other ladies to accept her as one of them and not shun her as a creature of night that just so happens to know how to play piano.

But just as with the rising of the sun, none of this want means anything at all.

———

This much is clear: the moon child is a being of wanting. And she is regret, too, born of night and darkness, tucked and shaped into a frame too small to hold all this need. It is no surprise when the hairline fractures grow into cracks, nor when the cracks widen into gaping holes where the flesh has begun to collapse.

Joan is collapsing.

———

It gets easier to speak and act like everyone else as the days go by, but the jealousy and longing grows with it. She’s talking normally, but she’s envious all the time. She laughs and smiles and does everything as she should, but she’s always itching for affection.

The moon child begins to do things. Not bad things, just—things. Painting, for one. She thinks that if she makes presents for people then they’ll start to like her more, and it works for awhile, but then everyone just gets used to her offerings. Nobody hangs them up, unlike the art of fans, which get to be put up regally on bulletin boards and the sides of mirrors and on tables. Jane and Cathy even had their Instagram profile pictures as drawings some fans made for them.

But all of Joan’s paintings and sketches and colorings were pushed aside, tucked away inside drawers and crumpled up in purses to rot away into nothingness.

Nothing. That’s all they’ll ever be. And it’s all she’ll even be, too.

———

A bassist was sitting by one of the windows, staring dejectedly at the rain droplets pattering on the glass. The moon child notices when she’s making copies of some sheet music. When the bassist notices the moon eyes drilling into her, she turns away from them.

“Go away, Joan. Allow me to wallow in my own misery in peace.” She mutters harshly.

Joan would have left, if it weren’t for a nagging feeling in the back of her head telling her to stay. She stands right where she was. Bessie raises her head.

“What are you doing? Leave. Go away. I have nothing for you. Go back to your music director business or whatever. Chase after Jane for the hundredth time for all I care. Just leave me alone.”

There was another job to be done, but Joan wasn’t sure what it was exactly. Bessie just repeated for her to leave the longer she stood. Again. Again and again and again. When the moon eyes refused to move, the bassist’s voice got increasingly more frustrated.

“Do I have to escort you out myself?” She hisses, standing and glaring deep into those pools of liquid silver.

Joan shook her head.

“Then what are you doing here?”

She doesn’t know.

“Let me be depressed in peace!”

Still there.

“Do you not understand what I’m saying?” Bessie opens her hands like they were claws.

Joan still stares at her.

“I am not going to fight you, if that is what you are looking for. This is hardly an appropriate place.”

Joan wasn’t looking for a fight. No, there is something else.

“If you are looking to gloat, just get it over with already!”

She isn’t there to gloat.

Even when Bessie drew her arm back, she still did not leave.

“Why are you still here?! It’s not like you care!” Bessie yells, flinging something nearby—a picture frame. It barely brushes Joan’s arm, and explodes into a cloud of glass against the wall.

Bessie was prone to aggressiveness and anger, but she would never attack so sloppily and so carelessly.

She wasn’t herself.

“Get…get out of here…”

Bessie’s voice cracks, crumpling to her knees. She hunches over on herself taking in a shuddering breath. Her shoulders began trembling as her entire frame was wracked with irregular shaking. High-pitched sobs emanate from her.

She wasn’t okay.

Joan took a small step forward. She wasn’t like Bessie, but maybe she could be like her for a little bit. There was quite a noticeable size difference between the two, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

Joan kneels behind her, wrapping her arms around the bassist. She felt Bessie freeze up, breath hitching for a second. She squeezes a little, rests her chin on the older musician’s shoulder, and closes her glittering eyes.

A hug. Would that make her happier?

The sobs became quieter. Joan remains crouched and hugs her, letting her grieve. She wants to say something, anything that might bring her more comfort, but the most she could do is hug her a little more and hope that it brought her some happiness like it did long ago.

After an unknown amount of time, she finally stops, slowly pulling back.

“Joan…?”

Joan responds in that silent way of hers, tipping her head in a form of recognition.

“Why did you do that…?”

“Affection makes people happier.” Joan verbally answers. She wants to ask if she was happier.

“You know...people—Jane and Kitty— said you’re just an empty monster...you’re supposed to leave. You’re not supposed to care.” Bessie mumbles, head hanging down. “You’re not supposed to care about anyone…so why did you stay? Why did you hug me? Why me? Why? I just-“

A tear was dripping down her left cheek, almost as silver as those moon eyes staring down at her with so much concern and longing. She rears back when Joan tries to touch her again.

“You’re not a monster, are you…?” Bessie whispers. Joan stares back in silence. “You’re not a monster at all. You’re none of those things. You’re...you’re good.”

———

“I know you're angry-” Jane was saying to the creature of night after yet another painful rejection. “But with how you were created-”

“Born.” The moon eyes burn. “I was born. And I've committed no crime by existing.”

———

Anne watches the moon child sitting at her side. She had come over to the queen’s house for a reason she couldn’t quite remember, but was now stuck inside due to a raging blizzard. She sat on the couch in the living room, on the opposite end of Anne, like she was afraid her presence would taint the queen with an infectious black matter.

What did she want?

The moon child brought her legs up and folded them against her chest slowly, as if through water, her joints stiff.

“It’d be better if I weren’t here.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

That made Anne blink. “Of course not.”

“You hesitated.” She brought her face close to her knees, letting her too light hair fall over her too shiny eyes.

Stop doing that. Stop reaching out and then pulling away. Can’t you see I’ll do anything you want, if you’d just tell me what that is? What do you want?

Anne lifts her head a few inches, stretching out the sore spots in her neck.

“Joan, come here.”

Joan remained curled into herself.

“I will not ask again.”

That seemed to work better. Joan shifts sideways, drawing closer to her former queen. Her shoulders jolted a little as Anne wrapped an arm around them, pulling the two against each other. And then, she was tugging the awkwardly scrawny and small moon child into her lap.

(Where she belonged.)

“I will protect you,” She chose her words carefully. “To the best of my ability.”

That didn’t seem like a good place to leave off. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I can’t be everything you want,” She continued, softer. “I can’t be Jane. But I’m here. And I want to take care of you, darling.”

She watched Joan’s head on her chest rise and fall with her breaths. A few beats pass before a small hiccup sounded from the lunar girl.

There were a few more hiccups that built up before they erupted into sobs, Joan’s shoulders heaving as they wracked through her. Loud whimpers and whines filled the air as Anne ran her fingers through the thick blonde tangles, rocking the poor, lonely moon child in her arms.

Joan cries steadily, head buried in her chest. Anne realizes that she didn’t even mind that a mess was being made down the front of her shirt.

Eventually the cries settle down, mixing together with the dull white noise of the television before fading off. Joan calms in her arms, snuggled up nicely, and it only gets better when Aragon joins their cuddle on the couch. Both queens hold the moon child, not caring about what anyone had ever said about her being wrong or weird or messed up compared to the other reincarnates. To them, she was perfect.

Their love filled Joan like the moonlight did. She had never felt anything so wonderful. She fit perfectly in their arms, like she had always belonged there.

And then, there was the gawker by the staircase. Joan could feel Kitty’s congealing resentment even from a distance. She could also feel Aragon and Anne’s love again, already half detached from everyone else, including the youngest of the bunch—Anne’s baby cousin. But Anne was just ready to give all her love to the moonborn pianist, not a distant family member born of daytime and rain.

Sorry, Katherine, Joan thought, settling back into the warmth and affection. Out there is my moon. And these are my mothers. And you will never be a part of that world.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Dragon Dancer IV: The Journey to Dreams

I wanted to leave the Kabuki school as soon as I could to get back to Lu Mingfei and Erii. If I didn’t return in time, the woodblock would be used, Lu Mingfei would turn into a monster. They would kill him.

That Beowulf family of monstrous hybrids likely would delight in devouring them, in feeling that rush of drinking pure dragon blood, the first they had tasted in generations They didn’t see Lu Mingfei as innocent, like I did. They’d already pronounced their death sentence.

My knees wobbled, twitching with anxiety while Chime sat serene in front of a mirror. He painted his face a stark gleaming white, as white as his long ivory hair that cascaded down a shimmering white and silver colored Kimono. 

The Kimono reminded me of a white dragon, the silver markings were like the elongated scales of a fish. Underneath a bright red robe peeked out from the silky folds. It was all tied together with a black obi belt.

With a brush, he applied dark powder to his eyebrows and eyelids, exaggerating the corners and giving the illusion of large eyes.

He finished with bright shiny lip color, pressing his lips on crimson paper. Finally, he tied up his hair in a top knot with silver ribbon.

He then turned to me. The flash of his red eyes from his white face sent my heart racing. 

He asked in a soft, smooth voice. “Are you ready?”

He held out one hand without looking behind him. A student hurried forward with an ornate wooden box, carved with serpents and lacquered in bright red. He opened it and, nestled in blue velvet depressions, were a pair of long fans. Chime gripped them in his pale fingers and rose up, like a ghost from a crypt.

He approached me, his feet sliding forward, moving imperceptibly. His shadow fell over me, as well as the cold light in his eyes. He wasn’t smiling. “It’s time to go.”

I stood up, breathing rapidly. He was so different from the person I remembered who was so easily moved to tears and now more closely resembled the one I saw years ago in the winter dark of the Comemnus Building. Back then, I didn’t know him or Herzog. He came at me like a demon from my nightmares. I’d used Release on him and when he looked at me he was completely different, weak and vulnerable.

This was the power of the woodblock. A power that Chime was now freed from. Now if I used Release, he wouldn’t change into someone else. He would stay the same as he was now, smiling with a cool, shrewd glint in his eye.

“What’s wrong?”

Would Mingfei turn into someone like this? Someone with such an insufferable intimidating aura? “Mingfei... you said... he isn’t the person I should have met.”

“That’s correct. The person you should have met was altered by Herzog long ago.” His dark lids hooded his laser red eyes, surrounding them in darkness..

“I don’t want to lose Mingfei. He’s my friend. Without him... I never would have found Chu Zihang. He always had faith in me. He...” I looked up at him desperately. “I don’t know if what I’m doing is right. Enxi... I don’t really know her.”

Enxi’s sad eyes. Her sudden apology. If what I was doing was right... why was I so scared?

“Meixiu... you are a loyal friend. However... the legacy of Herzog must be erased from this world for this world to ever see peace, for humans or for Hybrids.

With a sharp shake of his wrists, the fans he held snapped open in front of my face, revealing two large painted eyes, surrounded by draconic script. The script began to read itself into my brain. It swirled and cascaded into my vision, blinding me.

I gripped my head as it filled with whispers.

“Chu Meixiu. You have to listen to me now. You’re going to take me to Erii’s compound. You are going to take me to Mingfei and no matter what anyone says, you’re going to allow me to take him into the world of Nightmare.”

Like a cage suddenly slamming shut around me, my mind lost control of my own body. I was still thinking, I was still scared. But my body was no longer reacting that way. My heart beat slow and steady, my breathing was even. I smiled.

What was happening? Chime... what did he do to me?

“I was hoping you wouldn’t have second thoughts. I know this is difficult. But the Personality separation Treatment has to be eliminated from the knowledge of Hybrids. If you hate me later, I accept that.”

While I struggled to break free, my hand was reaching out and taking his hand into mine. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t even produce any tears. I suddenly saw an image of the compound in Tibet where Erii waited for me. 

Wait.... Wait!

The darkness closed in and in three seconds we had arrived at the temple where Erii and Mingfei had been hiding. Chime let go of my hand but I was still under his spell. 

Blood Rage... Use Blood Rage! But it was like a communication line between my mind and body had been severed. It wasn’t listening.

“Meixiu!” Mingfei’s bright voice greeted me. He was jogging towards me, with a smile, waving with his one arm. “I take it the mission was a success!” 

No! Mingfei! Run away! You don’t know what’s about to happen! My mind fought against Chime but I couldn’t free myself from his overwhelming paralysis.

“Meixiu?” His smile faded when I didn’t respond.

Erii followed him, accompanied by her translator, her expression grim. 

Her translator spoke in a nervous tremble. “EVA is assaulting Tsukino Usagi It will be a few minutes before our hideaway collapses.”

“What? How? How did they find us?” Mingfei asked, slacked jawed.

“We were hacked. Someone in Cassell hacked us.” She looked up solemnly at her her brother, Chime.

“They are coming with the woodblock sound. They plan on taking control of you two.” Chime said. “I’m here to hopefully shield you from that.”

Erii’s eyes widened in terror and her hands flew to her mouth. Then she looked confused. She held up her two fingers and looked questioningly at Chime.

Mingfei’s eyes narrowed, like a shadow had passed over him. His gaze grew distant and his eyes shifted as though looking at something right behind him. What was it?

Mingfei’s fists balled at his sides. “I’m sorry, Erii... You won’t understand why, but this is ... this is my fault.”

Erii looked up at him in confusion. 

He looked down at her and sighed. “It’s... It’s hard to explain.  But... I should have known. I never should have come and stayed with you. I put you in danger.”

Erii shook her head. She clapped her hands on either side of his cheeks and pulled his face down to hers, staring into his eyes.

I was as confused as she was. What did he mean by put her in danger?

“There’s another part of me you don’t know about. The real reason I was able to beat Herzog.” Mingfei’s voice broke. “The real reason I was able to hide out in the Hydra clans as Akira Ryuu.”

She stared into his eyes, baffled.

Chime filled in the blank. “Like Ruri Kazama and Chime Gen... Mingfei’s personality has two parts. When he hears the woodblock sound, he loses control and becomes a Devil.”

Erii suddenly let go of him. Her eyes swam with tears and she shook her head in disbelief.

“It’s true.”

“Miss Erii! Miss Erii!”

A monk came running out of the compound. “The airport has been completely overrun by unknown aircraft and troops! All communication and roads are being blocked off!”

Erii signed with sharp and commanding gestures. “Get the townspeople into the mountains! Sound the alarm! We can’t let innocent people get hurt!”

She turned back to Mingfei and the embraced him, holding him tight. She signed sharply. “I will kill them all for you!”

“No! You can’t! If you hear the sound! You’ll be as helpless as me! And if you use your Word Spirit Judgment... you could turn into a devil even without the sound!”

She signed. “I don’t care. I wanted them to leave me alone. They’ve come to hurt you, to take you away from me!”

From my inner prison I wondered how much she really understood. Erii was often ignorant about basic things of the world, but when it came to life and death as a hybrid, she was instinctively insightful based on her own experience.

“I won’t let them take you away from me.” Erii signed again.

Mingfei suddenly seemed distracted. He clutched his head. “Will you stop it!” He turned and looked at a patch of empty grass.

His outburst startled everyone there to witness it. He turned, looking at me, mortified.

“I uh... pretend you didn’t see that.”

Chime’s voice interrupted. “Mingfei... you have to become one to fight them. If you give in to the woodblock... all is lost.”

A loud buzzing suddenly became audible. We all turned and saw a phalanx of black helicopters zooming towards us on the horizon.

Erii grabbed Mingfei by the wrist and dragged him inside the dark temple. We all followed her in, down a stone staircase and into a fall out shelter with a metal door. She closed it with a loud bang and locked it shut.

I was very serene on the outside, but I watched Mingfei with an increasing panic. A sweat had broken out on his face. He was shaking.

“Now...” Chime said. “Mingfei. Have you decided?”

Mingfei straightened up. His face was a blank. All emotion had been swept away and replaced by a dull, self-deprecating smile. “Do I really have a choice?” He laughed. “Ah... This day had to come I guess.”

He turned to Erii and walked up to her. “Look.. No matter what happens. After this. I want to put a ring on your finger.” He held out his hand and she accepted it.

He raised her hand and kissed. “I love you Erii... Don’t forget it.”

Tears rolled down her face and she clung to him.

“Sh... don’t talk.” He whispered. Then he pulled her hands away, giving them a loving pat. “I’ll... be right back.”

He approached the ghostly figure of Chime. The two men faced each other. 

“I will take you to the land of Nightmare. There are no Soul Skills in that place. It will be your mind at war with itself. The one that comes out the winner, will forever rule the body.”

Chime... Did it really have to be this way? I thought from within my body.

“I want to take Meixiu with me.” Mingfei replied.

I wondered if that was possible.

Chime beckoned to me and I was coerced into walking over to stand next to Mingfei. 

This time Chime’s fans opened slowly and in a small undulating gesture of the painted eyes, my vision grew blurry.

His voice was like like a trembling bird’s song.

“In the flow of time, the heart-wrenching things come and go.  I don't even know the heart that separates me from here.”

Why was I understanding what he was saying? The words of the song weren’t in Japanese, Chinese or English. He was singing Dragon Words.

The waving of the fans was hypnotic. I couldn’t look away even as the world around me melted and became indistinct. I saw my family’s faces, scenes from my childhood. I was back on the stage dancing on point, spinning, surrounded by the ghosts of my past.  

“It doesn't matter if it moves from the beginning. It flows into the clear space of time. Before I realize it, the seasons have changed. They just change. If you feel troubled, listen to the fading words of your dreams.”

I lifted up my head and opened my eyes. I wasn’t in Tibet any more but on a boat, kneeling on the deck. Waves lapped against the hull rocking it. I lifted myself up from the wooden planks and stood. They sky was dark and stormy. Lightning and peals of thunder rumbled in turbulent clouds. But the sea itself was tranquil.

Mingfei stood in front of me, staring at a boy in a black suit, seated on the railing.

[thepersephonecabin]

Questions of Faith (fic)

Short daisy/basira fic about daisy stepping in when some Islamophobes in the station have something to say to basira.

Just as a heads up, I’m not a Muslim, so I’d love input from Muslims about Basira’s characterization and how Islamophobia is dealt with in this fic!

Check out full list of warnings and notes on AO3

The Hunt was the only religion Daisy had ever known, even before she’d known it had a name.

But that didn’t mean she had never had a crisis of faith.

Being a gay cop, even after the Thatcher era, was never easy. Turns out, that even if you did replace the bastards who led the witchhunts and raids on gay bars and BDSM clubs back in the day, it didn’t erase centuries of systemic oppression, no matter how hard you tried.

Believe it or not, Daisy first joined the force for that exact reason. To take out the trash.

She’d gotten the idea in the late 90s. She was sixteen at the time, and had snuck into a local gay bar with a fake ID. It was her first interaction with the gay community, the first time she’d tasted beer. She was so naive back then, a baby butch with a fresh boycut and leather jacket she wasn’t allowed to wear with her school uniform. Not that that had ever stopped her. In truth, she was rather proud of herself when the school’s nuns ripped her a new one for donning it over her green plaid skirt and white blouse, even if the traditional sweater was cozier.

 She’d always been a bit of an agitator, just like her Dad, a staunch Welsh nationalist. So she did the things most “bad” kids did. Listened to loud music, snuck smokes outside the school gates, kissed girls she shouldn’t. Mum and Dad didn’t like that last one one bit.

 But she did it anyway. Really, going to the bar was just the next phase of her teenage rebellion. She was pretty excited about it, too. At least until the butch bartender caught onto the fact that she was underage. That bartender was about halfway through manhandling her out the door saying, “Look, kid, it's nothing personal. It's just sometimes things go down in places like this that a kid shouldn't be here to se-"

 Daisy was about to tell her to take a goddamn hike and that she'd seen plenty of things no one her age should've seen anyhow, thank you very much, when a whole squadron of police officers burst in and chaos erupted.

 Long story short, an hour later, Daisy was sitting in the police station wearing a pair of handcuffs surrounded by a dozen or so drag queens and kings, men in leather, and assorted other characters from the club- the bartender, a young lesbian couple barely older than her who looked scared shitless, leaning on each other for support as much as their restraints would allow. The police were responding to an “anonymous tip” about a drug deal in progress, but from the looks on the faces of the others who were taken to the station with her, it seemed that this an excuse they’d heard many times over.

 They were booked one by one, but it seemed that she was the only one shepherded into the captain’s office after fingerprinting.

 The chief- Reynolds, collar number PC2729 according to his uniform and badge- was a white man with grey hair and facial hair that was still a tad brown in some places. He had smile lines and crow’s feet, and for some reason that made her angrier than anything else did.

 He gave her a smile as she was pushed into the room and onto a cold, metal chair in front of Reynolds’ desk. Daisy sneered at the officer that had brought her in, pulling her arm from the woman’s iron grip with a little more force than necessary simply for the sake of being contrarian. Reynolds’ smile widened.

 As the door shut behind the female officer, leaving Daisy alone with Officer Reynolds, the man cleared his throat and said, “Alice Tonner, sixteen years old, no priors. Booked on possession of a false driver’s license, underage alcohol consumption, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer. Normally, for someone your age, a first-time offender, I would simply confiscate that fake ID, call your parents, and let them handle it.”

 “But?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

 “But, assaulting an officer is a very serious charge, Alice. According to the briefing my officers gave me, you struck one officer in the face, elbowed and kicked several others until you were tackled. It makes me wonder if this is truly your first time getting into things you shouldn’t, or if you are simply a repeat offender who hasn’t been caught until now,” Reynolds said.

 “Don’t see how it’s your business anyhow,” she challenged. “Maybe I have done something like this before and maybe I haven’t. If your subordinates can’t do their jobs and stop crime, that sounds like your problem, not mine. And if your subordinates didn’t assault innocent civilians in that club first, I don’t think that I would have had to defend myself against them.”

 “When criminals pose a significant threat, it is sometimes necessary to use appropriate force to subdue them,” Reynolds said calmly, and still smiling. “It’s simply every officer’s duty to enforce the law.”

 “Sure,” Daisy laughed, shifting forward in her chair. “Enforcing a tip from an ‘anonymous do-gooder?’ I don’t think so. Dispatch records and calls to the authorities are public record, after all. Charge me if you want, but the first thing I’m doing if you do is calling my father’s attorney and submitting a FOI request. Do you really want to pretend that I’ll find a call from some worried mum that would justify- what did you call it? Appropriate force?” Maybe having a nationalist parent wasn’t so bad after all. At least it taught her her rights.

 Reynolds wasn’t smiling now. “How does a nice little girl like you get wrapped up in a place like that anyway? If you’re so concerned with the quality of policing in your-” he made a face, “      community    , maybe you should try our jobs and see just how easy it is, Alice.”

 Daisy saw red. “My name is Daisy, actually, and if you knew anything about me at all, you’d know this little girl isn’t so nice,” she snarled. “Thanks for the tip, 2729. Maybe I will try your job, and maybe when I do I’ll come for criminals in higher places. Like this office, for instance.” She took a minute to appraise the room exaggeratedly. “Nice trophies.”

 Officer Reynolds stared her down for a moment. Daisy didn’t know what he saw, but whatever it was, the next thing he did was call the female officer back in and say, “Officer Nicholson? Take Miss Tonner up front and telephone her parents to pick her up. She’s free to go.”

 Officer Nicholson wasn’t exactly pleased with the decision to let someone who had struck several of her fellow officers only an hour ago free without even being formally charged, but in the end it wasn’t her call. Daisy was released to her parents with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a stern warning noted in her permanent record. All things considered, if mouthing off was all it took to get out of an arrest, it made a little more sense now why Calvin Benchley had gotten away with everything for so long.

 Two years later when she appeared for her police academy interview, and the officer in charge asked why she wanted to be an officer, she remembered Reynolds, and his too-wide smile and his crow’s feet. She was coming for him. Maybe not even him, maybe just the very idea of him.

 At first, it was tough. The other officers made no secret as to how they felt about a dyke like her in their ranks, but Daisy was more ruthless than any of them could hope to be. She closed more cases, by any means necessary and left those impotent, rent-a-cop, busybodies in her dust. When she got sectioned, it almost seemed like the natural next step for a person like her, but now she had scarier suspects to go after.

 Years passed, vampires burned, and Daisy never really considered that along the way she might have started to become the same type of monster she joined up to stop. By the time a new officer fell into her precinct, the homophobic pricks that had fueled her for so long were afraid of her. They were at least smart enough to keep their slurs to the locker room. Whenever she did catch wind of them running their mouths, she made sure to give them a scare, and she reveled in the way they fled with their tails between their legs. Or she did, at least for a little while, but soon, it felt like it wasn’t enough. It was getting boring.

 The new officer, Basira Hussain, was a new sort of breed, she thought. They didn’t know each other well at first, since at first, Basira wasn’t sectioned like her, but Daisy liked Basira. She liked the way her name rolled off her tongue-      Ba-si-ra    , she would whisper to herself in the comfortable isolation of her own darkened rooms at night, just to taste the shape of the syllables. But most of all, Daisy was surprised to find that she liked the way Basira wasn’t afraid of her. It was refreshing, she thought, to finally have someone around with a backbone.

 When she wasn’t tracking, interrogating, or disposing of suspects, Daisy dedicated her time at the office to dissecting Basira’s movements and habits. It gave her an excuse to ignore the paperwork.

 Unlike her, Basira likes paperwork. Once when Basira was happily depositing reports in the proper outbox, she caught Daisy staring and demanded in a teasing voice, “What? Unlike you, some of us actually complete our reports, and even enjoy getting work done. Shocking for you, I’m sure.”

     She’s been watching me, too    , Daisy thought with a delightful thrill. Daisy plastered on a playful smirk, and stretched her arms over her head, catlike and languid. “What’s that old saying? Something about working hard or hardly working?”

 Basira rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth quirked up. “Mock me if you want, Tonner, but I don’t mind the tedium of it. It feels nice, to be able to mindlessly do a task and check it off your to-do list.”

     How adorable    , Daisy thought.      How positively quaint.    “I suppose I can understand that. But if you ask me, desk duty’s a waste of your talents. Also, you can call me Daisy.”

 Basira raised one perfect eyebrow at her, “And what talents are those,      Daisy    ?”

 Daisy shrugged noncommittally, hoping it wasn’t entirely too obvious how something deep inside her purred at Basira saying her name like that. “Well, you don’t seem to mind me being around, so I assume that means you’ve got balls. Someone like that should be out there,” she jerked her chin at the window, “handling the real police work. Not stuck inside.”

 “Filing reports is just as important to our job as handcuffing people,” Basira retorted. “Otherwise, how would we account for everything, and make sure we’re not taking advantage of our authority.”

 “And do you think everyone is truthful on those reports?” Daisy asked, leaning forward on her elbows, the way she did in interrogation rooms.

 Basira was silent for a long time, appraising her, and finally she said, “You’re strange, Daisy Tonner.”

 Daisy wasn’t sure she knew what that meant, but she categorized it as a win and moved on.

 After that, Daisy and Basira were a bit closer, trading playful conversation whenever Daisy was actually in the office. It was strange, how Daisy was usually itching to go out on assignment, always ready for a stakeout, but now, she actually missed the opportunity to sit at her desk across from Basira for a while.

 One day, she came into the office to find Basira crouched behind Daisy’s desk, facing the wall. She was rolling out what looked like a small rug, and tensed when she realized Daisy was standing there, watching.

 “Sorry,” Basira blushed. “I just need a place to pray. I usually do it here since the position is right and you’re usually out. I can find somewhere else, if you like.”

 Daisy blinked, feeling dumbfounded, “No, no, it’s fine. Carry on. I’ll be quiet.”

 As she slid into her chair, and heard Basira shifting, and then begin muttering to herself softly carrying a quiet harmony, Daisy pondered this.

 Daisy had never really spent much extended time around Muslims before Basira. She knew Islam was the second most common religion in Wales, but her community had been predominantly Christian. In London, of course, things were a lot more multicultural, with a high population of immigrants and asylum-seekers. But still, she’d never found herself thinking that much about it.

 Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed by how much she really didn’t know about Islam, and she was a bit discomfited by it. She didn’t like feeling like she was fumbling around something, and she liked the knowledge that she’d spent a few months sitting across from Basira without giving any thought to her culture even less. Now she was sitting on her desk flipping through a folder and not taking in any of the information, just to stop herself from Googling stupidly obvious questions about Islam while Basira was right behind her.

 Unluckily, she didn’t have much time to stew in this, because some of the other officers, Shadley and Packwell, her mind helpfully supplied, began stalking toward them with intent.

 Daisy looked up from the file, brows furrowed, glare on, but Shadley and Packwell didn’t notice her at all, their gaze was decidedly fixed on Basira. A quick glance told Daisy that Basira was tuned out, still in the motions of raising and lowering her body to the ground in prayer. Daisy whipped an arm out, and moved to stand, to prevent the other officers from interfering, but she was a second too late, and Shadley pushed right by to stand inches behind Basira.

 “Hussain, get back to work,” he ordered loudly. The whole room had to have heard him, but horrified, Daisy looked around, and everyone- every single person but her- was ignoring it, steadfastly going about their business with their heads down.

 Basira’s brows furrowed, but otherwise, she made no sign of having heard Shadley. Clearly, she was used to this.

 “Did you hear me, officer? Someone’s got to go over these traffic reports.”

 “Step off, Shadley,” Daisy growled, fists clenched. “She isn’t bothering anyone. Go do your own damn reports.”

 “She’s bothering me,” Shadley retorted.

 “And me,” Packwell pitched in.

 “I’m warning you,” Daisy told them, doing her best to shoulder her way between them and Basira. “Walk away.”

 “Or what, Daisy dyke?” Packwell asked. “Got yourself a little girlfriend?”

 Daisy ignored that. This wasn’t about her. It was about keeping Basira safe.

 But then quick as a flash, when her eyes were on Packwell, Shadley reached down, put his hand on the headscarf Basira wore, and      yanked    .

 Red flooded Daisy’s vision, and distantly she heard Basira make a surprised, pained grunt. Daisy’s body was on autopilot as one hand reached over, grabbed her leather jacket off her seat and tossed it at Basira, and her leg kicked out and smashed into Shadley’s shin hard.

 Shadley howled with pain, but Daisy didn’t give him time to recover. She wrapped her hands around his collar and threw him up against a file cabinet with an audible bang. A dispatcher manual toppled from the top of the cabinet from the impact, but Daisy didn’t hear it over the almost inhuman growl that ripped through her throat.

 “Don’t fucking touch her,” Daisy snarled, putting her nose right up to his, “or the next time I swear to everything, I’ll rip you limb from limb, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

 Shadley whimpered, pathetic, and nodded. He was shaking. She liked that.

 “I don’t want either of you to say a word to her unless it’s specifically related to a case. If I catch you so much as looking at her with ill-intent, you’ll regret it. Now get out of my fucking sight.”

 She pushed him with all her might at Packwell so that they collided and toppled to the floor messily. They both scrambled to their feet and got away as fast as they could. The other people in the room hastened to look away, pretending as if nothing happened once again.

 Daisy was still seething, sneering at the place Packwell and Shadley had vacated. She wanted to hit something, she wanted to      kill    something.

 Then, as suddenly as they came, the thoughts dissipated as she felt a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder, and heard Basira say, “Daisy.”

 Daisy let the tension in her shoulder release, and foggy through the adrenaline, she turned to look at Basira’s stern face, her hijab readjusted so it looked as if it had never been out of place at all.

 “It’s alright,” Basira said. “I can handle myself.”

 “I…” Daisy began, and then blinked a few times to clear her head. Shame began to creep in. She hadn’t meant to overstep her boundaries. “I know you can, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made such a scene.”

 There was something unreadable in Basira’s eyes, but her mouth twitched, and she said. “It’s alright. It’s good to know you’re looking out for me. But maybe next time, don’t assault another officer in the middle of a police station with everyone watching, yeah?” She pressed Daisy’s leather jacket into her hands. “Thanks for letting me use this, by the way.”

 Daisy was too stunned to make heads or tails of how quickly the mood had shifted, and soon Basira had gathered up her prayer mat, and had returned to her own desk, quick as you please.

 The next day, when it was time for Dhuhr (Daisy had spent some time that night looking up the proper times for prayer throughout the day), Basira gave her a nod as she walked around Daisy’s desk and rolled out her mat. This time, Daisy stood once she was through, and made herself a physical curtain between her desk and the file cabinet, so no one would get through. She idly looked over and ticked boxes on the report she’d been working on before Dhuhr started, but mostly she just stood, feet shoulder width apart so she was ready to protect if anyone tried anything, throwing looks at anyone who passed by.

 When she was finished and had rolled up her mat, Basira asked, “What are you doing now?”

 Daisy tried to sound playful, but also a little submissive as she spoke, wanting to show Basira that she would listen, if Basira told her to stop. “Doing my paperwork as you’ve so frequently recommended, Basira, dear, and stretching my legs of course.”

 “I see,” Basira said, quirking a smile. “And the timing of your leg stretching wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with yesterday, would it?”

 “Of course not,” Daisy said with mock surprise. “Not everything is about you, you know.”

 Basira rolled her eyes and snorted, “Sure, it’s not. Whatever, see you again at afternoon prayer.”

 “Looking forward to it.”

 From then on, during all their time at the Met, whenever it came time for Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and oftentimes even Isha, because Basira so frequently worked late, Daisy stood watch, and they never had any incidents like the one with Shadley and Packwell again. Basira often rolled her eyes at Daisy’s “guard dog” nature as she called it, but never objected to it. Daisy knew she was being overprotective, and territorial, but as long as Basira was safe and happy, it didn’t matter.

 No, Daisy Tonner had never known a religion but the Hunt, but she was beginning to think whatever she had with Basira could be one.

[pushspacetocontinue]

Monster/Cryptid Verse

Don’t know if I’ll add this one to the verse page. We’ll see. But yes, here is a Monster/Cryptid Verse AU.

Name: Russell.

Nickname: Custard. Professor Giggles. Luna Moth.

Age: 26

Birthday: 9th October 1993 (Star sign: Libra)

Gender: Cis Male (he/him/his pronouns)

Sexual Orientation: Homosexual.

Species: Human/Moth - Hybrid, more moth than human though. 

Powers/Abilities: Flight (can fly silently). Agility and dexterity. Super sensitive hearing and sense of smell. Able to jump long distances and height. Can go for long periods of time without needing food. Can vomit at will to deter attackers, but doesn’t like to do this often. Minor healing (his wings and antenna will eventually repair themselves if damaged). 

Weaknesses: Fire. Bone density is significantly lower than that of the average human, leading to easy breaking if he isn’t careful. Pretty much nocturnal and can barely function during the day. Can’t fly if his wing lose too many scales, or if they get damaged enough; he has to wait for them to heal. If his antennae are covered up (or if he loses one and has to wait for it to regenerate), his senses get dulled in turn. 

Ethnicity: White (well, his fur-colour is white) 

Current Residence: Travels around, but is currently in Endlebridge, Washington (note, I made up the city, it is fictional, just for ease of writing so I don’t have to focus too much on the accuracy of a real place. It is only brought up when necessary (such as when someone asks where they are,) and for the most part, I can leave locations ambiguous for ease of muse interaction.)

Former Residence: Boston, Massachusetts

Nationality: French-American (French Father (although unknown to him), American Mother). 

Mother: Cassandra Anderson (now deceased) - Pretty much threw him out of the house when his moth traits started coming in during puberty, so he he’s had to survive. 

Father: Unknown

Height: 5'2"

Weight: 90lbs 

Body Type: Thin but athletic.

Hair: Dirty-blonde, kept in an undercut with volume and fluff at the top.

Eyes: Blue

Languages: English, French, and American Sign Language (ASL). Knows a little German because of his old neighbour Freyde as well.

Distinguishing features: Covered in a thin layer of white fur, with the exception of his arms and legs. Although humanoid, the colouring from just above his elbows and just above his knees is a pinkish hue.

He has six limbs; four arms and two legs. He usually keeps two of his arms hidden beneath his clothing. A pair of long fluffy antennae which he often wears a hat or a hood to hide; and a pair of large green wings (even bigger than the rest of him.) He usually pretends the wings are a coat or a blanket.

Scar tissue on one of his right arms, shoulder and part of his chest because of a car accident. Some faint white scars on his wrists, you only notice them if you’re looking for them (and by putting his fur). Deep scratch marks (from fingernails) on his left shoulder. A couple of cigarette burns behind his right ear (hidden by his hair). A small birthmark on his abdomen that he shares with his father. Tip of his pinky finger on his right hand is also gone, missing just below the knuckle. He gets by well without it though. His mouth is also smaller than that of the average human. 

He stammers when he tries to talk too quickly, often getting stuck on a syllable or a particular word. It happens when he’s nervous or embarrassed too. He also has a awkward chuckle that comes out whenever he’s particularly uncomfortable about something. He prefers to communicate in sign language or by writing things down. 

He used to suffer an alcohol addiction, but has since gotten that under control. He wishes he had an easier time with the bouts of insomnia he gets. However, he has a concern over taking pills for it and so hasn’t tried to yet.

Far-sighted so he wears glasses to read, play games, and other close-up tasks. He’s also left-handed.

After a group of thugs tried and failed to murder him (despite coming close), one of his right arms becomes stiff, twitchy and painful in cold weather or if too much weight is put on it. It had gotten stabbed during the assault (they were aiming for his neck but he rolled away in time) and suffered some nerve damage.

Hobbies and Interests: Parkour and running, reading, space, videogames (he owns a multitude of game and consoles he got from saving money), mythology and the supernatural, steampunk, vaporwave, and drumming.

Occupation: Just does odd jobs and other such things. He has to find a lot of night time work and barely does things where there’s the chance he’ll meet other humans. 

Personality: Quiet and rather shy. He’s a bit of a doormat and finds it hard to speak up about a lot of things. But he’s also very kind and helpful whenever he can be, and has a lot of empathy and compassion for other people. He finds himself nervous around humans, believing himself inferior to them, or that they’ll hurt him for the littlest reasons. 

However, this sadly can lead him into getting mixed up with the wrong kind of people. He also has some basic fighting ability and will fight dirty if he has to, as much as he would rather not. He’s incredibly loyal to any friends he makes as well, willing to put himself between them and any danger that might come their way, even at a risk to his own life. He also has a slight temper, particularly when frustrated or when he’s allowed negative feelings to build up inside for too long. He does his best to keep that reined in.

He has some hope for the future, despite a previous attempt at suicide when he was twenty and a current battle with depression and he feels that things will look up. He’s trying to remain optimistic. He’s managed to get off alcohol since that too. He’s doing his best to keep moving forward.

Basic Backstory: He didn’t have the best childhood due to his mother being the awful woman that she was. She would act manipulative, lock her sons outside as a punishment, become violent, physically, verbally, and emotionally lashing out at them and other horrible things.

His mother kicked him at fourteen when his moth traits started to come from due to the onset of puberty. She was disgusted and horrified by what he really was, and so told him to leave. He has found random jobs and places to stay since then, accumulating money and finding things to keep him happy while hoping to find his true home. 

His first home (where he put down roots for longer than a few months) wasn’t good to be in. It was actually scary. His housemates tried to drag him into dangerous act and they were the ones who got him started on drinking alcohol at a young age. While they weren’t necessarily bad people (not to him at least), he was worried that he would be killed or something equally as awful if he stayed, due to some of the questionable deeds they got up and the enemies they had made. Accidents happened, and fights among them and people outside were getting worse. Even his housemates admitted they shouldn’t have dragged him into that living situation. While it left him constantly stressed out and scared, it was where he learned how to use his speed and agility in a fight, and how to implement basic first aid. It did little to make him feel better. 

But he’s gotten out of there, and currently lives out of a bag of things in an abandoned house that he managed to find. At the moment, that’s where he currently stays. 

[boarix]

Wraith in the Ruins: A Fallout 4 Story Part XVIII

Lighthouse

Trigger warnings: canon violence/language/gun, alcohol and drug use. Mature/sexual content - not explicit  

Bloody Mess warning!

Please Enjoy!

 Marie stood in the doorway, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. After about five minutes or so, she began tapping her foot in a staccato of irritation, “Did you want something or not? I’m very busy.”

Atom’s Assassin didn’t bother to turn around, “You are massing in Crater House, yes? We had agreed to wait.”

“My followers are impatient.” Despite not having been invited, she briskly walked around the chair the ghoul was lounging in to fold her arms and glare down at them, “This is taking too long. You are taking too long.”

Infamy’s leader was toying with their favorite weapon: a combat knife with a serrated, wicked-looking blade. Flipping it around the back of their hand and thumb with remarkable speed, they locked eyes with her, “You have no followers. Those with you follow Atom. Atom rewards patience.”

“Yes, well, while you sit here and patiently wait for this church’s roof to cave in, my followers and I will take back Kingsport Lighthouse!”

“You will be annihilated.”

Anger caused her to react without thinking; swatting the knife out of the ghoul’s hand and sending it spinning to a dark corner. In the space of a heartbeat the ghoul was out of their chair and lashing out with a backhand that sent the young woman crashing to the floor.

“You will bring those Children back to this church. You will all wait.”

As the glowing one moved to retrieve the knife, their radiance illuminated the room which revealed a large number of ferals, standing perfectly still, in arcing rows around the chair. Marie hadn’t even noticed their presence and felt the whole thing to be incredibly unnerving.  

“But, what are we waiting for?!”

Turning, the ghoul went to the doorway just as an Infamy runner stepped through. There was a brief, whispered conversation before Atom’s Assassin turned back to her.

Cackling madly, they brandished their knife and spun in a circle, “They are here! Ahahaa!”  

“Who? What’s happening?!”

The mad ghoul roughly pulled Marie to her feet and shook her, “It won’t be long now; the Pretender’s doom has arrived in the Commonwealth!”

  “Did you make those pants?”

Shaun looked up from the workbench, “Yeah why, are they weird?”

“No, I like the color. Green is a good color on you. They look like they fit nice…”

He favored her with an indulgent smile, “Grandma, do you want me to make you a pair of green slacks?”

“Oh ho, not pants but slacks?” Her smile broadened when he rolled his eyes, “Yes, please make me a pair of slacks.”

“Are you coming back home after ghoul training?”

Wraith didn’t answer at first. She wanted to but since she had no idea how long learning to influence feral ghouls would take, let alone if she was even capable, she didn’t want to make promises she couldn’t keep.

She had intended the past week to be a vacation of sorts, but found herself elbow deep in reports and meetings instead. In addition to the seemingly random attacks, Infamy had taken to raising radiation levels in some of the southern settlements.

She also spent as much time as possible with Danse; helping Curie with his rehab and his occasional skips in memory. Now, with it being her last day, she was spending it with Shaun and found that she really didn’t want to leave at all.

“Oh, honey… I don’t know… There are too many variables to give you a definitive answer.”

“You’re using lawyer-general speak again,” He stuck his lip out and nodded, “I could go with you…”

“No. Absolutely not.”

His caramel complexion couldn’t hide his flush, “Why not. Is it because I couldn’t defeat Infamy? Do you think that I’ll be a burden?” He had balled up his fists, “I know I screwed that up but…”

“I don’t find you to be burdensome. You didn’t screw anything up! I need you to stay and help Mac…”

“That’s brahmin shit! That’s what YOU TELL LITTLE KIDS WHEN THEY WANT TO HELP YOU BUT YOU THINK THEY’LL BE IN THE WAY!” When Wraith didn’t cut him off and start yelling back he lost some of his momentum, “I’m sorry I let Danse and RJ get hurt!”

“You three were a team. Not one of you failed to fulfill… ugh… Okay, no more lawyer speak.” She got up from her stool, “I can’t lose you. And it’s not just you! I’m keeping Mac, Danse… I’m being completely selfish, I know… If I can keep all you strong fighters together, you will be able to keep each other safe, when I’m… gone.”

“Are you going to let the Valentines leave?” Her honesty had taken the wind out of his anger, “I’m surprised you let Grandpa John go.”

She furrowed her brow, “For the last time; I’m not a tyrant! I’m not going to hold innocent people against their will! I want them to stay and I already made my case, plus Curie wants to study Ellie’s pregnancy… wait… Grandpa John?”

Shaun’s blush deepened, “Cause you two… you know… he asked you to marry him. What the heck am I supposed to call him?!”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. Are you going to start calling Mac ‘grandpa’ too?”

“No, that’s weird.”

She nodded after a couple seconds of rapid blinking, “Okay, I guess that tracks.”

MacCready opened the door and stuck his head through, “Hey guys, Danse, Curie, the Valentines and dinner are here so stop yelling at each other and come in the house.”

“Technically speaking, RJ, the workshop is still in the house.”

“Who’s ‘Dinner’, they sound nice.”

MacCready sighed and slumped his shoulders, “Hilarious. You two done?”

“Did Dinner walk here on their own?”

Shaun started giggling, “How many legs do they have?”

 Dinner was very nice and the conversation pleasant. Although space was limited the group squeezed together amicably and Valentine, a wonderful story teller, was regaling them with child-friendly versions of the behemoth and alien artifact cases.

“… climb the whole way up with me tied to her back! Of course, I told her she’d do just as well building castles in the air…”

“Mr. Colonel Garvey Minuteman has a castle! He said that grandma Wraith fought a monster there this one time and it was really big!” Duncan threw his arms out wide, knocking his cup off the table. His father neatly caught it however, and not even a drop was spilt. His excitement turned to dismay at the near loss of juice and he hung his head, “Sorry, daddy.”

MacCready tousled his hair, “Don’t be sad, Dunk. Spilt drink never hurt anybody; just work on your aim.”

“I still say I could’ve pulled us up and out with no problem.”

Valentine smiled and shook his head at her, “You are aware of a distinction between could and should.”

Wraith stuck her lip out in much the same way Shaun had, “You never know unless you try.”

“I tried cheese today!” Duncan’s confidence had returned.  

Danse grimaced, “You’re a braver man than I. The smell reminds me of the training mats in the Citadel…”

As Valentine finished his tale, with he the unfortunate ending of Imogene, Curie leaned slightly forward and her eyes tracked his mouth with a hungry intensity.

“And this alien artifact, where has it gone?”

“Well… I’m not sure, actually. I was in and out at the time.”

“It’s put away.” There was a warning edge to Wraith’s voice. “I’d have destroyed it if I could.”

“Oh, but why? Surly this item would be of great use, not only to the scientific community, but to the studies of medical…”

“No!” Wraith gentled her tone, “No, Baby Bird. It is evil and cannot be used for anything but.”

“It’s like the One Ring!” Shaun deliberately directed his comment at MacCready.

“Oh, jeez. Not you too! I’m surrounded by nerds.”

“What’s this now?”

“Oh, Danse, it’s from this great book grandpa John let me borrow. You hav’ta read it!”

MacCready smirked, “Yeah, just when you’re finally starting to feel better…”

Shaun took the snide remark rather personally and so his retort had real venom, “You’re face looks better, now that you shaved that beard!”

Danse’s eyes snapped up to lock with the sniper’s, “You grew a beard? A full beard?”

“Yeah, so what?” His shrug was meant to be nonchalant.

Danse expression was unreadable, “Nothing, just surprised.”

“You’re surprised that I grew a beard? I’ve had a goatee…”

“Surprised that you’re physically capable of growing more than those rat whiskers you normally sport.”

Normally such banter would quickly degrade into actual bickering, but after giving Danse the One Finger Salute, (making sure Duncan didn’t see) MacCready laughed and flashed a bright smile.

After dinner, the group settled in to play cards: the children, Danse and MacCready playing Go Fish while the other four grown-ups indulged in Euchre. After a couple of hands, Wraith began making a conscious effort to memorize the evening. She planned on using bright-spot memories like these to battle against future bouts of her berserker rage.

Acknowledging her addiction to Buffout was only a small step in combating her tendency to slide toward madness. She had publicly denied, on more than one occasion, that she was a tyrannical monster but didn’t want to fall into the trap of declaring yourself a savor to the people whose house you’re burning.

  “I’m sorry I scolded you, Curie.” Wraith had followed Danse and Curie out the door and across the yard. Watching Danse use a cane made her feel all the more guilty over the decision to keep the artifact’s location secret. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like you’re a kid…”

“Ah, Madame, please don’t worry about it. Forgive me for saying so, but I feel you have been treating me as your daughter since almost the first time we met.” She arched her arms out to mimic her Miss. Nanny silhouette, “Even when I was just a metal egg.”

Wraith chuckled, “Well I guess it’s reassuring to know that I have at least some maternal instinct.” She took her by the shoulders, “I know why you would want to study it. I don’t blame you but… it has a way of… pulling at you. Shaun’s analogy wasn’t that far off.”

“I… understand. I was only, so excited! Here was a thing from another world! A… a science beyond the capabilities of the one I am only barely familiar with. One with an almost unlimited capacity for healing…” She looked at the clinic door that Danse had just struggled to open, “He gets lost in his memories and he’s still, so very thin…”

“Time, Baby Bird. With you caring for him, maybe not as much as you think.”

“It was a group effort that saved mon amour. Even Monsieur MacCready, with his Beard of Solidarity…”

“His… what?”

She laughed, “Danse had told me a story of how, when a member of your unit is badly damaged, so that they cannot shave their chins, the rest of the group stops this as well. This is done regardless of the team member’s gender, of course. Those who cannot grow a beard will sometimes shave their head… the focus on hair in this instance is rather fascinating, don’t you agree?”

Wraith felt a surge of pride in MacCready, “He takes such care with his goatee. They bicker so much I had no idea that they were that close.”

“Perhaps it is like siblings, oui?”

“How did Mac find out about the hair thing?”

“He came to me and asked what he could do. For some reason telling him the story that mon ours told me made me feel a little better. And when I saw that he was honoring him this way, why, I felt… I’m not sure how to put it…” Curie’s face lit up, “Robert is a protector, and this act was very much him shielding and bolstering my resolve. Which, is what I believe, it is meant to do.”

  She could feel the heat of climax pooling below her navel even as MacCready began to shake beneath her. Bearing down as he thrust upward, the breath was driven from them both each time their hips came together.

Their lovemaking would appear a desperate, clinging act; exciting and needful as their first. Yet, it was practiced and refined with each moving in concert toward and against the other. They fought to hush their moans and gasps of pleasure, as to not disturb the sleeping household.

The realization that they might finish together heightened the anticipation of release and Wraith couldn’t stop her cry of passion at the mere thought.

Pushing himself to an almost seated position, MacCready attempted to silence both their cries by kissing her fiercely. Head swimming, he came almost as soon as he felt her muscles contract, somehow maintaining enough control to last until she finished.

Collapsing back to the bed, he kept his arms around her, holding her to him to feel that wonderful sensation of oneness that was almost better than the orgasm.

Almost.

“Shit, Wraith… That was amazing!”

“Ah ah ah, potty mouth. You’re lucky Hancock isn’t here to punish you. Not that you’d mind.”

“Not that I’d mind.”

Wraith nuzzled his chest, “I wish the three of us could be together more. Not that I mind havin’ a bedfellow at every port…”

“Every port?!” He raised his pitch in mock indignity, “Are you sleeping with jabber-jaw?”

She pushed him playfully as she rolled away, “That’s not nice!”

“Ha ha! Doesn’t change to fact that you knew who I meant!”

“I’m gonna tell Piper on you!”

After a bit of cleanup, a check on the children and MacCready settled in her arms, Wraith let her perpetual exhaustion take hold and settled into a light doze.  She entered a dream almost immediately.

The cave was dark and full of the echoes of dripping water. At first random and natural, it swiftly changed to a rhythmic percussion.

Voices. No longer was it mere water. A multitude of vaguely familiar voices, chanting her name.

“Wraith! Wraith! Wraith! WRAITH!”

Then, like smaller streams coming together to form a great river, the cries became a defining torrent.

“WRAITH! WRAITH!”

It was cold! And the voices swirled around and through her. She desperately tried to ask them what they needed but when she opened her mouth, their chant poured forth.

“WRAITH! WRAITH! WRAITH!”

Then, with a flash of light, the voices ceased. The darkness returned, this time heavy and oppressively hot. There was a sizzling noise, like a burning fuse. The outline of a figure materialized from the inky black.

“Pippa…” Deacon lifted his face; glasses gone, his eyes shone, as if from within, “Pippa please…”

“Yes! Tell me! Anything. I’ll give you anything! Please, tell me what…”

“Please…” The light from his eyes spread until his whole body glowed.

“DEACON!”

“Please, don’t; you’re killing us.”

  The following morning dawned grey and the clouds in the east were leaden with the promise of rain. Wraith didn’t want announce her departure to anyone who may be watching and so planned to use the settlements back, secret door. She had extended a tunnel she found in the basement of one of the original houses, so that it led further into the hills north of Sanctuary. Doubling as Bear’s tannery, it was rarely used by the community due to the odor and its true purpose known by only a select few. After saying her final goodbyes in the kitchen, Wraith, dressed as a male settler, left by the office door and walked briskly to the last northern house on the left.

“I still say this is crazy,” Bear’s deep, rasping baritone rolled like thunder from a dark corner, “like something from Astoundingly Awesome Stories.”

“It’s ‘Tales’, Bear. I thought you were just going to drop off my kit, whatcha need?”

“I never gave ya yer present. Catch!”

Wraith easily caught the object the large ghoul tossed to her. Turning it over in her hands, she gasped in appreciation of the artistry: using the pale hide of the albino deathclaw she had slain on her way to D.C, he had created a helmet in the likeness of her defeated foe. There were a pair of horns, beautifully intricate scales and a visor sporting a pair of faux eyes outlined in blackened steel.

“Oh, Bear! This is the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen! It’s so light!”

“Light in weight but super heavy-duty, thanks in part to the ballistic weave. There’s some in the suit too.”

“You made a whole suit?!”

“Yeah, I wanna see you in it before you leave. I couldn’t do a final fitting cause it was a surprise, so haveta make sure it fits ya.”

It fit perfectly, of course. It came in four pieces: a vest, jacket, pants and over-the-knee boots. And it wore exactly like her modified wet suit; allowing her a range of motion as if she wore nothing at all.

“I suppose it’s fine.” Bear’s overly critical eye scanned her from toe to crown, “Ya lost weight again.”

“Tch. It’s your imagination. This is so awesome!”

“One more thing,” Not wanting to risk injury, he passed her a wrapped bundle. “I found this in the armory. It was a little bit beat up so I replaced the fittings for ya.”

When Wraith returned the stolen egg to a distraught deathclaw parent, she had found a gauntlet festooned with the sharp, blade-like claws of a deathclaw near the nest. Picking it up, she considered it a consolation prize, but had never once used it. Now, she slipped it over her hand and struck a dramatic fighting pose.

“How do I look?”

“Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Start calling you General Deathclaw.”

“Ugh, don’t I have enough nicknames?” She embraced him carefully.

“There’s throwing knife pockets throughout, even in the boots, a belt with clips and compartments for extra storage and the jacket should fit over your shoulder holster… are you wearing it out?”

“I sure am! This is perfect; I’ve used Phil the Settler too many times anyway. And if anyone should happen to see me, they’ll probably think I’m a raider boss.”

“Well, I’m happy if yer happy, Wolf.”

 The midmorning rain beaded on the armor and rolled into the channels that Bear had strategically crafted; wicking the water away from her eyes and face. She had greatly lamented the loss of her original custom Marine helmet to the ruin of Gunner Plaza, but found that the range of peripheral vision in this new one to be far superior then even its replacement. With the horror of the previous night’s dream forgotten and delighted by the sense of freedom, she flew through the bush unimpeded by the weather and almost completely invisible to any of the Wasteland’s people or fauna.

Just as the warehouse and fence of Wicked Shipping came into view, she felt an odd prickling sensation and instinctively dodged to her left.

A trio of feral ghouls rose from the underbrush.

“Well, Zen time’s cancelled.” She crouched slightly and waited for them to rush her.

“Not to worry, General,” The echoing and otherworldly voice belonged to a glowing one. Dressed in the humble robes of the Children of Atom, he beckoned to her from the shop roof, “come along inside, sister. They surely will not harm their friend.”

Harkness yawned and waved at her by way of greeting. He was sitting in an office chair with his feet up on the desk of one of the former Flynn brothers. “Those are some fancy duds there, General Dragon-Lady.”

She removed the helm and wrinkled her nose at him, “Nice. You two just get here?”

“Nope.” Groaning, he stood, stretched and removed a pot of steaming water from a hotplate, “We headed out from Goodneighbor as soon as I got back. Sun called ferals to him the entire way; it was pretty surreal.” He waved a mug at her, “Tea?”

“Actually, yes, thanks.” She accepted the mug and idly played with the steeper. “You said he called to them?”

“Not very many and not out loud. He says that when you’re done, he will lead them to the Glowing Sea.”

“Like a Pied Piper, huh?”

“I actually think I know that reference.”

“As do I. And I approve.”

Sun of Atom swept into the room with a floating grace that left Wraith green with envy. Almost immediately the prickling sensation returned and she outwardly flinched away from the ghoul.

“Apologies, Mother’s Chosen One; I’ll turn down my intensity.” He smiled warmly at her, “It is extremely gratifying to learn that you are so receptive. Perhaps this training will go swiftly and we each can return to our chosen paths.”

She forced a smile of her own, “I’ll bank on your optimism, but please refrain from using that title,” The forced grin had started to make her cheek twitch, “if you must be formal, please call me General Wraith. Although, I’d prefer you refer to me as…”

“Wraith the Undying?” Harkness had a stole-the-last-cookie grin, “Or maybe, Death in the Shadow?”

Determined not to let him nettle her, she continued as if he hadn’t spoke, “as Wraith. Just ‘Wraith’ is perfect. How may I call you?”

“You may use ‘brother’ or ‘Sun’ as you are comfortable, sister Wraith.” He accepted a mug from Harkness, “Will you be leaving us, brother? I know you are resistant to rads, but it may yet be too dangerous for you to stay.”

“Oh no. I’m not going anywhere. I haven’t finished fixing the fencing and besides I’m going to stay and make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

The ghoul laughed, “I am well practiced, and I can assure you that no harm will come to your friend.”

He leveled a stern gaze at Wraith, “I’m not worried about you harming anyone, Sunny.”

She wanted to argue, but considering their past encounter, felt she couldn’t blame him. Her guilt must have made a clear mark on her face because Harkness’s softened almost immediately and he brought a hand up and rubbed the back of his head.

“I’m sorry. I’m really tired and it’s made me a grouch. Are you two going to start right away? I kind of wanted to watch.”

“I’m afraid there won’t be much to see until the fence is done. I’m holding them here for now but as soon as I let go they’ll either attack or wander off.”

“What about the glowing one in the warehouse?”

“She’s pushed me away every time I’ve asked her. She is very strong and I may be unable to hold her.”

“Was she here already?”

Harkness frowned and shook his head at her, “She came yesterday; just sort of appeared in the yard outside. We left the warehouse doors open and she went in by herself.”

“I believe she heard me and was curious. And now I am feeling that she’s waiting for something.”

Harkness washed his face with his hands, “That sounds really ominous.” Letting his hands fall to his sides, he shook his head to crack his neck, “I guess I’ll go finish up the fence.”

“It’s still raining…”

“The wet fence, then.”

Wraith frowned at his back, “How many ferals are out there?”

Sun crouched over a pack in the corner and began rummaging through it, “I managed to call twelve on the way here…”

“And Our Lady of Perpetual Radiance makes thirteen.” Harkness’s shoulders sagged as he stepped out into the drizzle.

“Lucky thirteen.”

Having found what he was looking for, the ghoul waved Wraith over to him, “We can use this to sit on…” He spread a woven, padded mat on the floor, not unlike a picnic blanket, “no sense in being uncomfortable, any more than we have to.” In one fluid movement, he descended to a seated, cross-legged position and motion for her to sit across from him.

Wraith set her jacket over the back of the chair and removed her boots before joining him. “It’s been a while since I’ve meditated. Over two hundred years, in fact.”

Probably something that would have helped me. I could teach Shaun and we could make mats!

“I think that you will find this to be a very similar practice.” He looked into her eyes, his omnipresent smile warm and disarming, “Why don’t we start with your overall impression of feral ghouls. What was your first reaction?”

She frowned, “Unfortunately the first ferals I came across were some of my neighbors from before… Ms. Rosa and… and her son. They rushed me and… well… I honestly didn’t know it was them until after. Her dress… I recognized her dress.”

“I’m sure, at the time, you had no alternative.”

“I didn’t understand what they were at first. And now; as much as folks think they’re mindless… sometimes I can see a glimmer… when they pick up a teddy or even a pencil, and put it in their pocket,” She lifted her hand and closing it, made a fist around an imagined object, “I can see the flash of memory, of a time when they were people, and not monsters.”

Sun’s smile faltered but he held up his hands when, assuming she had offended him, Wraith attempted to apologize.

“It is alright, sister. I myself am no longer human and because of my glow, am considered to be a monster, even amongst non-feral ghouls. But, having witnessed horrific calamities that those still yet named human have done; I count myself instead as, not a monster, but closer to Atom. And there is a domain that I happily occupy, no matter what others deem me as.”

“If you and Infamy are closer to Atom and doing his bidding, then I say you are well within the realm of monsterhood.”

His smile went out like a candle, “I cannot abide Infamy’s tactics. Their use of ferals as fodder is unforgivable! I would rather see them mercifully slain than used as soulless killing machines.” He steepled his fingers, “When Brother Harkness came to me for help and described who you were, I took it as a sign. I came without hesitation because I knew that it was His will.”

“I can admire your conviction to your beliefs, but they aren’t mine. I’m having a real hard time with this whole plan. I question the idea of assuming the identity of a religious figure. No matter what good I might do, it’s still a lie.”

“I’m not here to convert you. But, I know that you are part of Atom’s plan.” His smile had returned, “Ask me anything. I embrace questioning my faith. After all, what credibility would it maintain if it couldn’t stand up to scrutiny?”

She narrowed her eyes, “Give me one truth.” She leaned away and folded her arms, “Let’s start there.”

“I too have traveled to the Sacred Spring, drank from its waters, seen visions provided by the Mother. Among some that were terrifying I was struck by a singular image,” He abruptly stood up and went to his pack. “I made a sketch as soon as I was able to hold a pencil.” He handed her a piece of paper as he sat down, “The Mother spoke to me; she named them ‘Harbinger’.”

The crude drawing was of an upright, humanoid deathclaw.

“The Mother showed me you.”

“Hmm. That… does look a little like my armor.” She wrestled with the fact that she had just received her gift that morning and no one apart from Bear had seen her in it.

“I left the Capital Ruins because Harkness is a good, trustworthy friend. I had a suspicion of your significance but wasn’t sure until I saw you today. You and the Harbinger are one and the same. I came here to help him, but it has been revealed that I am meant to help you!”

“Okay, Sun. I will agree that you came here with good intentions. And whether or not that,” She tapped the drawing gently, “is me, shall remain to be seen.”

“It is a place to start.” He returned his sketch to his pack and returned himself to the mat. “When you are ready, I’m going to reach out to you, and I want you to describe how it feels.”

Telling herself not to flinch, Wraith closed her eyes and nodded, “A little like a static charge; doesn’t hurt but it feels a little… zappy.”

“Do you feel any impressions? See any images?”

“Nope.”

“Very well. This time I want you to try and push back. I want you to imagine a wall or shield, blocking the zappy feeling. It may help you to think of it as an attack. Find where it is hitting you, and try to stop it.”

For several minutes the two sat across from each other, quietly waging war.

“We should stop for now.”

“Oh, thank god. I have to pee so bad…”

Sun tilted back his head and laughed, “Is that what it is? Your attention was very strong up until about fifteen minutes ago, ha!”

“You mean I’m actually doing something?”

“Certainly. Your light is very bright, even at rest. It is no wonder you’ve been able to ask them for help without any training.”

“My light?” She shifted her weight, uncomfortable but stubborn in her excitement for knowledge.

He laughed again, “Go to the latrine!”

On her way back, she spotted Harkness. At that moment he happened to pull his arms up over his head, stretching and yawning, affording her an opportunity to size him up and watch him move in the light of day.

He really is a big one. At least as big as Danse… he moves a little lighter though…

“You know, General Death in the Shadow, most people would get pretty excited, having someone as important as you, eye them up and down like that.”

“And what? You’re not most people?”

Jeez! He irks my very soul!

“I don’t see wanton eyes filled with lustful assessment. It’s not flattering; it’s scary.” He came to stand directly in front of her. Almost toe to toe, “I see you deciding how best to kill me.” He folded his large arms and glared down at her, “How did you put it? Ah, yes; ‘rip me in half’.”

“Ouch.” Reminding herself that he came a very long way to help and that she did in fact threaten to kill him, Wraith tried hard to be peaceable, “I truly apologize for both my actions and demeanor when we first met.”

He tilted his head to the side and squinted, “That’s it?”

“I’m sure that I would find ripping you in half to be… at least half again as difficult as I may have suggested.”

Letting his arms fall to his sides, his blue eyes widened before he erupted in bombastic laughter. Shaking his head, he patted her none-to-gently on the bicep, “Harley’s right; you are the scariest person ever!”

He had no idea how much those words hurt her.

“Yeah, that’s me; the Commonwealth Monster.”

“Tell Sunny I’m just about done with the fence. I’ll come in and make food when I’m finished.”

Noting the grim line of Wraith’s mouth, Sun turned up his glow and literally gave her his brightest smile, “Harkness is a moody sort of person. He fusses at me a great deal as well.”

“It’s not all on him. I just wish… nope… We need to focus on the ‘here and now’.” She forced a smile of her own, “Tell me about lights.”

“The lights of the soul,” He settled back to the mat, “you may see them in your mind. You’ll call out to them, guide them and push them.”

“So, when you’re pushing at me, my light is where you… aim?”

“If that analogy helps you, then yes.”

“So if I can see your light, can I talk to you? Make you do stuff?” A horrible thought had crept through her mind, “Even if you don’t want to?”

“Ah, yes. This brings us to something very important. Wraith, you must always be the brightest light.” He set his hands together and briefly touched their tips to his scarred lips, “Most sentient beings carry a light inside them and most of those are strong enough to withstand any attempts at manipulation. It is possible to be overwhelmed however, so think of yourself as a lighthouse. Your radiance is a strong beacon of hope and you gather the smaller lights to you. You offer them peace, direction, safety and tranquility.” Separating his hands he waved them in a gesture of dismissal, “You do not ever go to them. Don’t follow the lights!”

“I’m sorry, but why? I know that they aren’t just…”

“Infamy and I are not the only Children who have herded feral ghouls.” Sun’s eyes filled with pain and sorrow, “Some of the other parishioners started to call us The Necromancers.” His smile was sad, “I’ll admit, I thought it was very cool and along with our friends, I began to act like… well, rather high and mighty. Some of us, rather than simply move ferals to more convenient and safe locations, started aiming our small collections at wastelanders who might have offered us some slight.” Now his eyes filled with guilt, “It went too far, of course. People died; people who didn’t deserve that level of admonishment.”

“So, the Necromancers became infamous… then Infamy?”

“Yes. At this point I was still a member, but I was having problems reconciling the deaths… and I wasn’t the only one.” He leaned toward her, “There was a power struggle within the group; those who wanted to return to The Necromancers and those who chose Infamy. Each faction had a leader and when the two faced off, Atom’s Assassin came out on top. Multiple ferals were used in their attack, and once their opponent was lost in a sea of overwhelming lights, Infamy took hold of what little of their mind was left and bent them to their will.”

Brow furrowed, Wraith stuck out her lip, “Wait… and you… you all think I’ll somehow be able to…”

Leaning back, Sun waved his hands dismissively, “Oh, no. This isn’t a coup d’état; it should be sufficient for you to simply demonstrate your ability to herd fearls. We are seeking to establish credibility to the claim that you are Chosen and therefore not a pretender as Marie has claimed.”

Suddenly overwhelmed, Wraith surged to her feet and bolted for the door. At that moment Harkness was heading inside to prepare a meal and so the two nearly collided. Near tears, she muttered an apology as she ducked under his arm and twisted away.

She didn’t get very far. Just past the remains of the semi-trucks were the three feral ghouls she had seen that morning. She stopped and crouched, instinctively preparing for battle. They all but ignored her, continuing to pick unknown detritus from the grass and putting it their mouths. As she watched them she patted herself down, stopping when she realized what she was searching for.

“Need a cigarette?” Harkness, seeming to appear from midair, leaned against a truck cab and offered her a pack.

“No, thanks. I’m after something a little stronger.”

“Oh, yeah. Buffout, right?”

“Christ! Does everybody know?!”

Pushing himself away from the vehicle, he folded his arms and gave her a pitying smile, “Hancock didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Let me guess…”

“No, it wasn’t Harley either.” He watched as the ferals shuffled away toward the warehouse, “I figured it out on my own. When we met you acted so out of character from what I was expecting that I knew something had to be off. That and the ability to lift me off the ground with one hand…”

“It’s been getting steadily worse; every time I got scared, or even nervous, I’d pop a Buffout ‘just in case’.” It was easier to watch the ferals then meet his eye, “I’d take one and I’d calm down because then I was strong enough to handle what was coming. The times that I’ve lost control… I didn’t take it because I wanted to… no matter who they are or what they’ve done the people I’ve killed are, well, people. When I go berserk there is a good chance I won’t remember the little details of the murders I’m committing. Curie has warned me that it was all psychosomatic; I thought I was controlling myself with the chem when it was actually all in my head.”

“Let’s fight.”

“I don’t wanna fight with both myself and you.”

“No, I mean spar.” He widened his stance, bent his knees slightly and raised his fists, “Harley says you used martial arts to help Cait overcome her lingering cravings. Maybe it’ll help you too.”

“That’s not a bad idea, actually.”

Plus, I might get to sock you one - guilt free.

They spent the next few moments testing each other with quick jabs and minor kicks. Nothing connected as they each skillfully deflected the others probing attacks. Wraith found herself thoroughly enjoying the exchange and let herself relax and focus on the movements of her opponent.

He’s really quick! He may have Danse’s frame but he moves like Deacon. I wish the two of us could’ve done some exercises like this. Although, if it was anything like sparing with Hancock then other things would have… No, he never thought of me that way… What a thing to think about now!

Sensing her distraction and hoping to capitalize, Harley stepped in close and aimed a knee at her midsection. Dropping her hips to guard, she wrapped her arms around his torso and hefted him into the air while swinging him slightly forward. On the backswing she used his body’s momentum to pop him up and over her back and slam him to the ground.

“OOOFFFHA!” Utterly defeated he made the time-out signal with his hands and attempted to gain air into his lungs.

“Ooo! Gotcha good that time.” She hoped her smile wasn’t too obvious, “You let me know when you’re ready for round two.”

Wheezing, the large man took her offered hand and let her pull him to his feet, “No thanks! I don’t want to wrestle anymore today.”

She held on to his hand, “Thanks for this, really. I was freaking out and… you made me feel better.”

Laughing ruefully he placed his other hand atop hers and gave it a pat, “I’m glad you tossing me around made one of us feel better.”

Sun had come to look for Wraith and was confused by the juxtaposition of fighting and laughter, “Are the two of you… well?”

“She’s better and I’m going inside to cook because my ego and I need to prove that there is something I’m capable of being successful at.”

“The… fence looks… complete…”

“Thank you, Sunny. I can always count on you to be mildly complementary.” He lifted a cautionary finger, “Don’t let go of the ferals just yet, I want to make another circuit before you do.”

As the three of them headed back to the office, Wraith felt the now familiar sensation of a mental intrusion. Sun, who was slightly ahead of her, felt it as well and he stopped and turned toward the warehouse. The three feral ghouls had stopped feeding and were standing perfectly still; staring intently at the building that contained the feral glowing one.

“She’s calling us… she… ah, she’s lost interest.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to keep her in there? If she’s that powerful…”

“Not to worry, sister Wraith. I am quite proficient in my craft. Even if I cannot move her as I like; I’m confident I can keep her in a state of peacefulness.”

Wraith’s tone was grim, “And if that fails, I am confident in my proficiency of my craft.”

  After they ate, (Sun more out of polite interest than necessity) Harkness asked the other two to clean while he made a final check of the fence, “I’m going to circumambulate one last time before you take off their mental leashes. It would be less than polite to let them wander off into someone’s tato plot.”

Wraith and Sun spent the remainder of the day cross-legged on the mat, quietly sparing until the sun made the western hills its grave.

Exhausted from the training, Wraith fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down for the night.

She was back in the cave.

“I have to find the source!”

The dripping water proved directionless; echoing through her ears and reverberating from the rough, pitted walls. She spun in a circle: searching, searching, searching… Drawn to the faint light cast by glowing fungus she moved as though floating. A faint flicker at the corner of her vision caused her to flinch and spin away.

“Pippa, you need to stop.”

Deacon phased in and out of focus, as if he was using a glitching Stealth-Boy, and no matter how she twisted and turned, she couldn’t see him but from the corner of her eye.

“Please stop or we’ll die.”

His voice came from directly behind her. She spun around; putting her back to the mushrooms to see him fully. His tear-streaked face was a pallid green from their illumination.  

“Stop what?!” She tried to go to him but could no longer move, “Stop how?!”

As before his eyes began to glow, brighter and brighter it spread until his whole body shone. It created a strobe-like effect when combined with his flickering in and out of sight. Then, ever so slowly, he raised a hand. Clutched in his fist was a single glowing fungus and he offered it to her as if it were a rose.

“This one is yours.”

  Wraith’s next three days followed a pattern: breakfast, meditative combat, lunch, meditative combat, sparing with Harkness, dinner, meditative combat then bedroll. Thankful that the cave dream didn’t manifest again, she got some much-needed sleep each night.

On the fourth day she had a breakthrough.

“HA!” Her forceful shout corresponded to a particularly successful mental push. The result of which knocked Atom’s Sun over and made Harkness jump out of his chair.

“What?! What’s happening?!”

Scooping the ghoul from the floor, Wraith spun them round, “Eeeeeeeee! That was awesome!”

“Please!” The glowing one somehow managed to look even more green, “I’m about to be sick!”

“I take this to mean that progress has been made.”

“Yes, very much so.” Grateful to have his feet touching the floor, he wobbled slightly but was smiling, “Congratulations, sister Wraith. Now we will work on refin…”

As if in response to their celebration, there came an incredible psionic pulse from the warehouse’s glowing resident. It was so powerful in fact, that Harkness turned along with the other two to stare toward the building next door.

“Whoa!” Wraith’s voice was hushed in awe, “Radiance just threw down the gauntlet.” She pointed toward the ceiling, “Let’s go check up on her.”

On one of her previous ghoul-problem checks, Wraith had created a makeshift bridge between the roofs of the two main buildings. Once the trio crossed over they quietly moved around the catwalk until they could see the feral glowing one.  

And what a sight she was: bathed in light of her own making, Our Lady of Perpetual Radiance stood perfectly upright with her arms slightly raised and palms facing her hips. Sensing them, she turned and took several elegant steps in their direction. Her poise and grace called to mind an expert ballerina. Further, rather than the normal growths, welts and malformed lumps caused by ghoulification, she was adorned in glowing funguses of varying pastel hues. There was a large concentration trailing up her spine to encircle her scalp which made it look as if she had been crowned by luminescent jewels.

“She’s a queen.” Breathless, Wraith couldn’t take her eyes off her.

Tilting her chin slightly downward, Radiance gave the other woman an intensely scrutinizing look while sending out another powerful mental challenge.

“She’s here… for me…”

“Wraith!” Harkness stepped between them, “Hey! Snap out of it.”

“Sister Wraith, we should return…”

Nodding wordlessly she followed behind them in a haze.

 The next 3 days passed with much the same routine. The difference being that after her sparing with Harkness, Sun would take her to the warehouse roof where they would alternate trying to connect with Radiance and the other feral ghouls.

This made Harkness very nervous and he made several comments to that effect. When asked “why” he couldn’t properly articulate his forbearance, “It’s dangerous. The other ferals… that is what you came here to learn but her… I don’t know. We didn’t bring her, she brought herself.”

  On the ninth day, Wraith awoke with a start and leaped to her feet. She could hear voices, raised in anger, coming from outside. One of them was Marie’s. Quickly donning her new armor, she slipped out a window while activating a Stealth-Boy.

Once outside, the early dawn light shown over a grim scene: the bodies of several ghouls, both feral and clad in Infamy’s darkened Children’s robes, lay across the grass in between two of the semi-truck trailers. A few living members ringed a kneeling, and obviously injured Harkness while Marie held Sun of Atom at gunpoint. A glowing one, whom Wraith presumed to be Atom’s Assassin, sat on the top of one of the trailers, letting their feet swing in and out of the opening.

Marie’s voice was shrill, “How could you?! How dare you kill your own people?!”

“Tch. Don’t waste words on that foolish, old Necromancer.” Infamy’s leader had their dagger out and was playing with it in a way that was clearly meant to be menacing. Pitching forward, they did a perfect flip and landed lightly on their feet. Purposely bypassing Marie and her hostage, they held their blade under Harness’s chin, forcing his eyes up slightly to meet their own, “Where is the Pretender, hmm? Where is Death in the Shadow?”

“She’s no pretender, Infamy. I promise you; Wraith’s the real deal.”

Infamy was intrigued.

“Don’t listen to this… blasphemous lout! He himself aided Morningstar in infiltrating the Apostles of the Holy Light by acting as a member! He is no less an enemy than she is!”

Marie had taken to waving her pipe pistol around as if it was a visual aid. Distracted by her wrath, she was easily disarmed by Sun who, in turn, put her in a headlock with the muzzle at her temple.

“Oh! Unhand me you… bastard!”

Infamy was amused.

“Hear us out. Please, my… please.”

Arching a hairless brow, Atom’s Assassin sheathed their weapon and folded their arms, “I’m all ears. Oh, hahaha; that’s funny cause I haven’t any! Ha ha heeee!” They gave Sun a dismissive wave, “By all means, kill that obnoxious psychotic. Ha! We only need one in our party and I am more than sufficient! Hahaha!”

Instead, Sun released her and backed away with his hands in the air, “She’s barely more than a child.” He directed his emphatic smile at her, “You have your whole life in front of you. You can be anyone and do anything. You can stop this right now; by telling the truth!”  

She spit in his face.

Wraith flinched. She was unwilling to act because she couldn’t figure an attack pattern that would guarantee the survival of her friends. At war with herself, her patient side was winning, but the berserker would not be silent.

In a gesture of good faith, Sun returned the pistol to Marie. Raising his hands he turned back to Infamy’s leader. “Wraith is by no means a false profit. In fact she makes no claims of prophecy herself. High Confessor Tektus proclaimed her Chosen because she, being granted the Mother of the Fog’s holy Icon, aided in the preservation of our sect in Far Harbor.” He placed his palms together as in prayer and brought his hands to the ruin of his nose. “I too have made the pilgrimage to the Sacred Spring. Atom has not yet granted me the clarity to fully understand the visions I received, but ultimately, I believe Wraith to be our friend and ally.”

“Lies!” Marie returned to waving her weapon, “She is the destroyer of Crater House! She has slain countless of our brothers and sisters! She is no friend; she is a heartless killer!”

Infamy fixed her with a withering glare, “Be quiet for now or I will silence you forever.” They set a finger to their lips and shushed her. Then bringing the digit away from their face they shook it back and forth in the air, “Ah ah ahhh, Sunny boy. I myself have heard the settlers speak of their leader as a ‘master over ghouls’ and they call her ‘priestess of Atom’ awayyyy up north. If she didn’t start this herself, as you claim, then she certainly didn’t stop it, as I know.” They put their hands on their hips and leaned toward their fellow glowing one, “Infamy doesn’t care much for those to garner fame at Atom’s expense!”

“She is no self-proclaimed priestess, and is prepared to denounce this publicly over Radio Freedom.” Sun smile was sly, “As for her ghoul mastery; we are prepared to give you a demonstration of her abilities… as a Necromancer.”

Marie, in an attempt to hybridize scoffing and laughter, ended up chocking and coughing instead.

Infamy was confused.

“How? Unless my mother was right and I’ve finally gone blind, she is no glowing one; feral or otherwise.” They folded their arms and turned to where Wraith was hiding, “Please, by all means, show me your power.”

Wraith deactivated her Stealth-Boy and walked out to them with her hands in the air, “I’d say you’re far from blind.”  

Marie hissed.

“I don’t know how you put up with her.” She gave Harkness a searching look, “How bad are you?”

“I’m fixing to live.”

Atom’s Assassin closed the distance between them remarkably quickly, “Take off your helmet, if you would, General. I’d very much like to see your eyes as we speak.”

Wraith refused to flinch away from the heat as the ghoul placed their face less than an inch from her own. She couldn’t prevent the involuntary gasp of air however, and was once again amazed that a being capable of generating that much heat and light would do so with a complete lack of body odor.

“You’re defiant of Marie’s claim that you are a heretic of the Church of Atom? That these rumors of your prestige are in fact, the propaganda of others and not of your making or design? Do you have the ability to call and control feral ghouls? Did you lay waste to the settlement of Crater House and slay the Holy Guardian at Kingsport Lighthouse?”

The rapid-fire questions put Wraith back on her heels, “Yes.” She lifted her chin defiantly, “I didn’t know that Kingsport was a claimed site. Outside of the… guardian, there wasn’t anyone there when I scouted it for a settlement. I destroyed the war camp at Crater House due to repeated attacks of the established Minutemen settlement, and only after my attempts at diplomacy…”

“I care not for your reasons.” They leaned away and waved Sun over to them, “What exactly did you see on your pilgrimage?”

“A figure with a remarkable resemblance to General Wraith, named as ‘Harbinger’. I know not of what she proceeds.”

“All Atom’s knowledge is granted to the patiently devout.”

The now familiar sensation of a glowing one’s summoning buzzed in Wraith’s mind. Shortly, a quartet of feral ghouls shambled their way over to stand in a row in front of the group.

“Now, I shall release them…”

“Wait! She is but a novice…”

Infamy’s eyes blazed at the interruption, “Atom will protect her, if that is his will. That being said; you have five minutes or I’ll kill you all.” They clapped their hands, “Isn’t this fun?! Wheeeee!”  

Marie snorted.

“You can do this, Wraith.” In pain, Harkness’s voice was strained and horse.

Almost immediately the ferals rushed her. This fostered suspicion that they had been ordered to attack rather than simply “let go”. She stayed ahead of them; happy to move them away from her friends.

During her training she had found that tapping into her berserker side had actually helped her when connecting to the ghouls.

Two sides of the same coin, it seems.

Donning her helmet and relaxing her mental self-restraint, she sent out a tentative greeting to her pursuers. As soon as she saw their lights she knew that these were reavers. Atom’s Assassin had deliberately chosen some of the most powerful of his arsenal to test her. Little did Infamy’s leader know that she had been practicing with a feral of Radiance’s caliber.

Come to think of it; why hasn’t she been throwing challenges at Infamy? Maybe I just piss her off…

As she wooed the ferals she felt what could only be an attack from Infamy. Distracted, she stumbled and was hit hard on the side of the head by one of the feral ghouls. Thankful for her armor, she spun away from the reaver unhurt.

Infamy’s attack made her angry, but she channeled it into an attack of her own and broke through to two of her assailants. These immediately rounded on their allies and pinned them to the ground.

Infamy was shocked.

“Well… well...” They snapped their fingers and the guards surrounding Harkness immediately broke away and retreated through the hole the group had cut in the fence. “It seems as though Atom has seen fit to grant you special abilities. We will be returning to the Capital Wasteland now. Once there, I shall meditate long and hard on this Holy Lesson…”

“You CANNOT BE FUCKING SERIOUS!” Spittle flew from Marie’s mouth as she shrieked, “YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULD DESTROY HER! SHE IS A MONSTER! I WILL NOT LET HER GET AWAY WITH THIS…”

She shot Atom’s Sun, point blank, in the temple.

Infamy, Harkness and Wraith all ran to them but Wraith, already lost in her berserker’s rage, reached them first.

She ripped Marie in half.

At that exact moment the garage door of the warehouse burst open in a white-green blast of radiation. Surrounded in a nimbus of prismatic light, Our Lady of Perpetual Radiance seemed to float across the grass as she came to Wraith’s side. The two of them together was an image out of the darkest of nightmares: Wraith in her blood and intestine draped deathclaw armor and the apparent queen of all radioactive monsters.

The others could only stand back and watch as Radiance reached forward and grabbed Wraith’s head in her scorched and twisted fingers. She pulled her forward until their foreheads met, then spun away toward the south east. Not even slowing down when she met the fence; she simply melted her way through and continued on at a swift pace. All the remaining feral ghouls followed her through.

And Wraith followed with them.    

  Thank you so much for reading! Like what you’ve read? Looking for more? Please see my master link post in my tags under Wraith in the Ruins. As always, my ask is open for questions/comment/concerns. More to come! =^..^=

[snickerl]

Of Monsters and Men, and a Woman.

- I think I smell smoke. -

I wished we had seen a dialogue like this in season 11.

Many thanks to the more than helpful @chekcough and @unremarkable-house for volunteering as beta-readers and their valuable input.

Tagging @today-in-fic

“Oh, isn't this nice? A family reunion."

A cold, familiar voice suddenly filled the air and made Mulder and Scully look in the direction it was coming from. A figure appeared slowly from the shadows a weapon trained at them, showing them a smug smile.

"Spender," Mulder spat.

They had been trying to find an exit out of the huge, run-down and abandoned factory complex where they had found Jackson hiding from his pursuers. Initially, the boy hadn't been willing to let his birth parents interfere, insisting he could look out for himself, but eventually, he had called for Scully through the communication channel he had used before. He was still a teenager, only seventeen years old, traumatized and alone after the assassination of his adoptive parents. Of course, Scully and Mulder had rushed to their son's side, armed and more than ready to protect him from whoever wanted to harm him.

They hadn't expected their old foe to show up at the scene, though. Not after the enemies had been presenting themselves as Purlieu lately. But the agents should have known better, should have anticipated that this man was pulling the strings in the background and would make his appearance somewhere along the road. So, here he was: Carl Gerhard Busch, C.G.B. Spender, Cancer Man, the Cigarette Smoking Man...good God, if there was one person they could name as the evil incarnate, it would be him.

Spender's voice was sugar-sweet but full of dishonesty as always. "Hello, Fox. Dana. I see you have reunited with your offspring after having cut the ties so harshly when he was a baby. Congratulations. I'm happy for you." A disdainful sneer was spreading on his face, proof of his feeling of superiority. He pulled a trademark cigarette out of his pocket with his free hand, put it to his mouth, fished for a lighter in the same pocket, lit it, took a slow, deep draw, then calmly watched how the smoke was leaving his mouth. "The three of us haven't seen each other in a while." His eyes fell on Scully. He scrutinized her from head to toe, unable to conceal that he liked what he saw. "Dana, you look fabulous. What a great pleasure to see you again after all we've been through together."

Scully took a few steps backward, wrapping her arms around herself. "I can't say that I'm sharing the sentiment. If I had been given a choice, I wouldn't have gone through anything with you," she snapped.

Spender only smiled at the unfriendly retort as if he hadn't expected anything else from her. He hadn't been lying though, he was enjoying this immensely. He had been looking forward to this particular moment for a very long time and he was going to savor every minute of it.

"Why so rude, Agent Scully? I remember fondly the nice little road trip we took some years ago, the three days and nights we spent together, the gourmet dinner at a deluxe restaurant prepared by a renowned chef. I will certainly never forget how stunning you looked in the dress I gave you. The black one with those little straps and low neckline." His eyes fell on her chest. "I sincerely hope you let Agent Mulder see you in that dress."

"I burned it," Scully hissed. The knot deep within her tightened. Of course, she remembered the trip, but not with the same glee as the Smoking Man. She felt shame and embarrassment, even guilt when she thought of how naïve and imprudent she had been to follow him without telling Mulder. Not only had it left her with nothing but a blank CD-ROM and empty promises but also with a cracked partnership. It had taken them a while to repair their relationship, until Mulder was able to forgive her and Scully to forgive herself.

"What a pity. It was such an expensive dress. And it suited you so well. You were a feast for the eyes for everyone in the restaurant that night, Dana."

Spender let the words roll off his tongue with a delightful smile on his lips. Unabashedly, he ogled Scully's body, his eyes wandering slowly from her slender waist, across her chest, and up to her face. He looked into her eyes probingly before starting to walk around her, giving her the once over. When he took a luxurious draw on his cigarette, his eyes resting on her backside, Mulder had enough.

"Cut the crap, you sick bastard! What do you want?"

Spender kept his eyes on Scully for another beat, then turned around in exaggerated casualness, tsking and looking at Mulder with disapproval.

"Fox, that's not the way you should speak to your father."

A sour laugh escaped Mulder's throat. He shook his head and threw a side glance at Jackson. The boy had no idea of what was going on in front of him but watched the adults intently. His biological parents had a history with this threatening old man, but not a friendly one. The way they had been addressed by their first names instead of their customary way of calling each other by their last names had sounded like a mockery, not like a sign of familiarity or friendship.

Spender had his weapon pointed alternately at each of them and enjoyed his position of advantage. Scully had positioned herself in the line of fire in movements so small they were barely perceptible, sheltering Jackson off the weapon's potential trajectory. This, thankfully, had gone unnoticed by Spender but not by the boy, and it made him feel protected and cared for but also anxious. This man meant business, that much was clear.

"If you came here to satisfy your sick need of feeling more powerful than us, go ahead. Make fun of us, remember all the moments you held our lives in your hands, but leave our son out of it. Let him go." Scully's voice was strong and full of determination. If she was apprehensive, she did a hell of a job not showing it.

"Aaaw, mama bear is protecting her cub,” the Smoking Man snarled. “How sweet. You should have stood by your son during his childhood instead of giving him to two ignorant and completely overstrained people who'd never had the ability to protect him. Did you really believe it would be that easy to hide him?" He fell silent as if giving her time to answer, watching as Scully exchanged an anxious look with Mulder, he then chuckled. "I always knew where he was. I knew of his broken arm at the age of five, I attended his Little League games, watched him celebrate his first home run, and I know his childhood sweetheart's name was Chelsea."

"What the fuck?" Jackson cried out, shocked by what he was hearing. He had no idea who this man was and why he had such an interest in him. Before he could say any more, Scully took a few steps forward until the man's weapon almost touched her chest, shielding Jackson even more. Her back and shoulders were straightened and her chin was up, but her face had lost its color. She was pale and her voice was a bit shaky now.

"Ever heard of the Constitution, Spender? The 14th Amendment and the Right to Privacy?"

Her question was met by a laugh. Spender put his cigarette to his lips, drew with relish, then let the butt fall to the ground and stepped on it. The grinding noise of the sole of his shoe stubbing out the smoking butt on the floor reverberated through the place, grotesquely amplified by the high concrete walls surrounding them.

"Is that really meant to be a serious question, Agent Scully? You know as well as I do that the Constitution is nothing more but the democratic fig leaf for governmental institutions to pretend they let legitimacy and righteousness guide them. You and Agent Mulder also haven't always played by the book as far as I remember, so spare me your moral indignation."

"What is your interest in our son?” Scully asked. “Have you been afraid of losing your power over us, is that why you spied on his childhood? To use him as leverage over us after all?"

The Smoking Man shook his head and grinned. "Agent Scully, I've never lost my power over you. Have you forgotten the little something in your neck?"

Jackson didn't understand what this meant and why it was knocking the wind out of his birth mother. The man's words were clearly meant to provoke her, and it was working. She gasped and touched a spot at the back of her neck right at the bottom of her hairline. Jackson didn't know what that 'little something' was and what it had to do with anything, what he saw were Scully's trembling fingertips rubbing a spot on her neck as if it itched. The man definitely had succeeded in rendering her speechless.

Not so Mulder. He looked like he was regurgitating a dustball when he spoke and his voice sounded like a rabid dog's growl. "You son-of-a-bitch!"

"You have something to say, Agent Mulder? Fox?"

"Scully asked you a question. What's your interest in Jackson? Why are you here?"

Spender only hummed, pulled another cigarette out of his jacket and lit it. The package was empty now. He crumpled it up and let it fall to the ground next to the butt he had thrown there already. Jackson had to think of his mama who had taught him never to litter. Despite the tenseness of the situation and the much worse things this man was clearly capable of, this childish act of disrespect made the boy's blood rise. His birth parents were scared by this guy who was playing a game of cat-and-mouse with them, that much was obvious, and Jackson asked himself if they remembered that he had a biological advantage he could use to chase this unbearable chain smoker away.

"I told you at the very beginning that I was looking forward to a family reunion. Have you not listened? A father wants to see his son once in a while," Spender supplied.

"Bill Mulder was my father, you have never been a father to me."

"Well...son...genetics don't lie. A biological fact is a biological fact. You may call Bill Mulder whatever you want, all you got from him was his name. But that's another story. Anyway, I wasn't talking about you and me, Fox."

As the last words were leaving his mouth, Spender turned away from Mulder and laid his eyes on Jackson. The boy froze, every muscle of his body strained. Mulder and Scully looked at each other with slack expressions on their faces. The already strung up atmosphere was tensing up even more.

"Who were you talking about then?" Mulder hissed.

Of course, there were not that many other possibilities of who he could have been talking about. Although Mulder, Scully, and Jackson were anticipating an answer, they were also fearing it. It seemed like time was standing still. Somewhere in the factory there had to be a broken pipe because the constant dripping of water could be heard. It echoed through the deserted place, which was cold, dirty, and scarcely lit. The way the Smoking Man's face was illuminated whenever he drew on his cigarette reminded Jackson of his first slumber party when his papa told creepy stories and scared them holding a flashlight under his chin. This man was also creepy, but not in a playful manner like his papa. This man was dangerous and Jackson felt unease running up his spine as the man fixed his cold eyes on him, saying nothing, simply staring at him.

When Spender finally chose to answer, all three of them seemed to hold their breaths. Looking noticeably at Jackson and in a tone of voice more suitable for ordering a glass of Chardonnay in a fancy restaurant than wrecking the life three people had just begun to re-establish together, he said, "well, Fox, if you can't put two and two together yourself, it shall be my pleasure to break this to you: when I said I was looking forward to seeing my son, I was talking about this young lad here."

Boom! The bomb had exploded and nobody had thought of taking cover.

Scully's head flew around. Her hand had left her neck and clutched at her chest instead. She bore her eyes into Spender’s as if she wanted to read his mind, backing away from him at the same time. Mulder's brows were drawn together, his glance darting between Scully and Spender looking for answers in their faces. Jackson was just standing there like a pillar of salt. This guy, this horrible smoker, had just suggested he was his father, now being the third person claiming this particular family bond with him.

How had his life become such a mess? A few months ago, everything had still been fine. He had some peculiar abilities, granted, but he knew how to handle them...most of the time. He had a mama and a papa who loved him dearly, he had a home, he had friends. His life was in order. And then the broad-shouldered men in black suits had shown up, sitting for hours in armed dark limousines across the street, observing him, and an alarm inside his head had gotten off. Then the visions had started, visions of spaceships, of a worldwide pandemic, an apocalypse, and of a woman with red hair. All of this had brought him here, to an old, chain-smoking moron who was telling him he was his father. What a freak show his life had become.

“Bullshit!” Mulder grunted eventually, pulling Jackson out of his dark thoughts. “After all these years, you think we’d fall for your dirty tricks, Spender?" Scully's hand was still pressed to her chest. Slowly moving further away from the Smoking Man she whispered, now unable to conceal her apprehension, "what exactly are you implying?"

"I'm not implying anything, just stating the biological facts. Aren't facts something you've always been so keen on finding, Doctor Scully? And the fact is that I am William's...uh, sorry, young man...Jackson's father. He is my son, not Agent Mulder's."

Hearing him speak it out loud only made things worse. All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Mulder, Scully, and Jackson could barely breathe. The mere idea was earth-shattering. It turned their world upside down, a world that had just begun to reset since the three of them had been reunited. Jackson looked helplessly at who he believed to be his birth father - Mulder - the man who had hugged him so fiercely while whispering in his ear, "I've been looking for you forever", and "I held you when you were a baby".

Mulder was thunderstruck himself, hit to the core, struggling to process the words the old man had just spoken. It was Scully who rediscovered her voice first. "I've never heard such nonsense," she grunted, parts of her self-confidence regained. "If it wasn't so damn sickening, I'd laugh. Wouldn't I know if we had intercourse?" Mulder's face contorted into a pained grimace at that. He winced unmistakably, earning himself the Smoking Man's pitiful smile. Then Spender turned toward Scully again, the corners of his mouth curving up in a smug smile while answering her in a too-sweet voice, "how would you know? You were sedated."

Mulder groaned again, but Scully remained composed, stoic almost. "You mistreated me while I was unconscious."

It came out like a statement, not a question. Jackson was impressed by how calm she sounded. No, impressed was the wrong word. Confused. How could she make such an outrageous allegation and remain so cool? Unlike her, Mulder was not able to keep his composure. The words were growing from the deep of his throat, raw and desperate. "If you harmed her, you’ll pay for it. I will make sure you do, even if it's the last thing that I do."

"I didn't harm her, I gave her what she longed for the most. What you couldn't give her, Fox."

"What do you mean?"

"Hadn't you donated sperm for Agent Scully to get pregnant just a few months earlier, and hadn't the procedure failed? Well, I was more successful," Spender said with twisted satisfaction.

Scully threw Mulder a worried glance and wrapped her arms around her waist once again. She swallowed uncomfortably before she spoke. "You impregnated me? You?" This time, it was a question. An unsettling, agonizing, disgusting question.

"Not the way you may think, Dana. With science. I got you pregnant with science. I had the best doctors care for you and perform the transfer of the ova we had gotten from you, inseminated with sperm I had provided. You would have been thrilled to be a part of a scientific experiment of this immeasurable value, had I been able to tell you then."

The man was speaking in a manner so calm and unfazed he really had to believe that what he was saying was totally normal, whereas, in fact, it was totally crazy. The words 'sedation', 'insemination', and 'experiment' were swirling around in Jackson's head and it made him wonder what kind of trouble he had ended up in. This crazy shit, which had started with the men in the black suits following his every step, seemed to get weirder every day.

"Those weren't doctors, those were rapists. You are a rapist. You hadn't gotten my ova, you'd taken it from me against my will. That was medical rape, twice, and no scientific experiment. Highly unethical and a violation of my right to physical integrity. I can't remember signing a declaration of consent."

Again, the restraint with which she was talking was remarkable. Mulder, who could hardly contain himself, who looked like he wanted to put his hands around Spender’s neck and press until the last bit of air left his lungs, was puzzled by her cool demeanor. Hadn't she just been told that their baby wasn't theirs but hers and…? He couldn't even bring himself to think the unthinkable. The mere thought of it made him want to gag. It would mean Jackson wasn't his son, but his half-brother. It would mean Scully hadn't conceived, carried, given birth to and nursed his son, but that Cancer Man's. He felt a tingling sensation at the back of his throat.

Spender clicked his tongue. "A declaration of consent...you amuse me, Agent Scully. You of all people should know I act on behalf of a circle of people who don't let formalities bind them. Your consent is irrelevant. We are working toward a larger goal, a goal you know fairly well."

"Creating a superior race and ruling the world," Scully spat out indignantly.

"Creating a human-alien hybrid, achieving what herds of scientists have tried but failed so far. William was our first success."

The world started to spin around Jackson. What had this caricature of a human being just called him? A human-alien hybrid? He had understood by now that this kid they were talking about all the time, William, was him. He was Jackson Van De Kamp formerly known as William, the Alien. How on earth had he been drawn into this crazy shit?

"He isn't yours, he is ours. Mulder's and mine. He is not one of your lab rats. He is our son, and we made him."

She sounded so sure and Jackson wanted to believe her so badly. He didn't want to have anything to do with this unhinged, nicotine-addicted lunatic. He didn't want to be special, let alone superior. He wanted normalcy, he wanted to be just a normal boy. Kids his age shouldn't have to deal with crap like this. He wondered how his birth parents had managed to get themselves into this fucked-up mess and if his adoption had anything to do with it. His birth mother, Dana, had talked about bringing him to safety when she had spoken to what she had believed was his dead body in the morgue.

The Smoking Man was standing in front of her, towering over her. His legs apart and his chin up, he was looking down on her with a self-satisfied expression. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly before he spoke. "Dana, how can you be so sure?" The way he called her by her first name again, his voice a mix of superficial friendliness and subtle wickedness, made Jackson's blood run cold. He didn't know this man who was inhaling one cigarette after another, but he radiated malice with every fiber of his being. The way he conversed, how he played with his birth parents, how he gloated when he was shooting his poisoned arrows at them. But what was clearly meant as a fatal wound bounced right off of her this time.

"Do you really believe I was so naïve as to accept my pregnancy as a God-given miracle?” she asked, her lips curving into a slight smile. Spender's expression froze. “I knew my medical condition, that I was barren, a situation you were not entirely blameless in. Of course, I asked myself how I had been able to conceive. Emily's short life and what had been done to me during my abduction was ample proof of what you and your kind were able and willing to do. I needed to know my baby was normal and healthy, so I sought proof of what I felt so strongly - that my baby was Mulder's.” She looked at Mulder, throwing him a reassuring glance before she turned back to Spender and continued. “I’m a scientist, and scientists conduct scientific tests to get proof. That's exactly what I did. As soon as William was born, I had a DNA paternity test done. Three times. I supervised all three procedures myself to be a hundred percent sure the results were reliable. They were, and they showed a match between Mulder and William. There is no doubt whatsoever that they are father and son."

The Smoking Man's once self-assured outer appearance was cracking even more. He nervously fingered the lighter in his hand and his right eyelid twitched when he spoke. "That's impossible! I watched over your insemination. I was told the transfer of the fertilized eggs had been a success. And you were diagnosed as pregnant shortly thereafter, weren't you? So it had to have been successful."

"The transfer might have been successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean the eggs made it into the uterine wall, especially if there already was an egg attached to it, an egg that had gotten there naturally. I did the math, believe me. I calculated the possibility of ovulation, natural conception and implantation back and forth, it's highly plausible that I was already pregnant when you took me on your little trip. Unbeknownst to me, and obviously also unbeknownst to you and your so-called doctors. They neglected to test for pregnancy before they performed the transfer, which is, by the way, a standard procedure in every fertility clinic."

Spender's cool appearance was now falling to pieces before their eyes. He looked like a deflating balloon. He hadn't seen this coming. Just a few minutes ago, he had felt so superior, but this woman was making him dizzy with her scientific narrative. "I...I don't believe this," he stammered.

"I was pregnant with Mulder’s child," Scully continued coolly. "A real scientist rules out everything that has the potential to ruin an experiment, but your doctors weren't thorough enough. Too bad for you.”

She waited, letting her words take effect. After what seemed an eternity to all the people listening to her, she went on.

“You were wrong all these years believing William was your genetic offspring. You may have a biological connection to Mulder, but that's all there is. You don't belong to this family, it's just the three of us: Jackson, Mulder, and me. Now get your sorry ass out of here before I put a bullet through your head for all the times you abused me and the ones I Ioved."

Spender swallowed all of it, every word, and he had difficulties getting them down. But he was a vicious man used to dealing in vicious circles, he wasn't knocked down easily. He wouldn't have survived all these years among reckless men, had he not had the capacity to take a blow. He strolled over to Scully slowly placing one foot in front of the other, his eyes never leaving her. He drew a circle around her so small he was almost touching her, lighting yet another cigarette he procured out of a new pack.

"I am the one with a weapon in my hand, Agent Scully. You are aware that I could shoot you before you even pulled yours out of the holster." His firearm trained at her, he circled her once more until he came to a halt in front her, eyeing her intensely. "Give me your gun!” He demanded harshly now, holding out his hand, palm up.  

Jackson was amazed by how fast the man had recovered. His ice-cold eyes, bereft of any sign of emotion, bore into his birth mother. She held her ground for a moment but then obeyed and handed him her gun. Then he turned to Mulder who reluctantly pulled his weapon out of his hip holster and let it dangle on his outstretched index finger in front of the man's face. The smoker unhooked it with a satisfied grin and put it away. He was in possession of three firearms now, he held all the power despite the momentary crack in his façade a few minutes ago. "Do you still feel like threatening me, Agent Scully?" he asked, mocking his now defenseless opponents.

"One day, you will pay for what you've done, Spender. One day, justice will be served and you will rot in hell where you belong," Scully spat at him, her chin up.

Jackson admired her for her bravery, for how she stood up to that man who was holding all the aces. The boy hummed a low-key Hallelujah, so silent only Mulder, who was standing right behind him, could hear it. He acknowledged it in return with a muffled snorting only audible for Jackson. Father and son in shared admiration for this tiny woman's greatness.

Scully had impressed Spender too, but he wouldn't let anyone know. He made sure to thread enough irony into his voice replying, "ah, Dana, let me compliment you on your bravado and your optimism, but for men like me, there will always be a way out. I'm not so sure about you though. It seems to me your current position is quite precarious." He lifted his gun, pointed it at her forehead, and released the safety catch. The metallic click was so loud, amplified by the surroundings, it made Mulder's and Jackson's eardrums vibrate.

Mulder's right hand tingled. Not many people knew he still carried a second weapon at his ankle. If only he could reach down there, he might be able to get it out before Spender realized what was happening. He bent forward and groaned, holding his stomach with both hands as if he was about to throw up. When his ankle was within reach, he slowly stretched his right hand out, continuing the gagging sounds to keep up the illusion. He was almost there, could already feel the hard steel under the fabric of his pants leg, when the sound of a weapon falling to the ground echoed through the factory hall.

Mulder looked up, expecting to see Spender's gun still aimed at Scully's head, but what he saw was Spender's face twisted in horror. He was holding up his empty hands and was gasping for air like a fish out of the water. Mulder had never seen this man in anything but a smug pose, arrogant and overbearing, but this was fear, mortal fear.

Mulder rose completely and caught Scully's sideways glance. By the look of the confused lines on her forehead, she was as clueless as he was about what was going on. They both watched as Spender stumbled a few steps backward and tripped over his own feet transfixed by something behind them. His mouth opened but no words came out, only a choked scream. Scully and Mulder looked wildly around for the source of his terror but saw nothing. The building was completely empty save for them and quiet but for the whimpers of the now weak, powerless man.

Mulder looked over at his son and noticed that he was the only one who seemed to be in control. And then realization dawned him. Jackson was pulling one of his tricks. He was creating an alternate reality for Spender, maybe one of his gruesome monsters. Mulder couldn't tell, he couldn’t see what Spender saw, and neither could Scully, given the puzzled look on her face.

In the end, it didn't matter what the smoker saw, the only thing that mattered was that he got on all fours and started crawling away, whining like a baby. Watching him coil in mortal fear was striking a chord within Mulder that surprised him. He never imagined he could rejoice in the suffering of another human being, not even a man he loathed from the bottom of his heart, but all he could feel was satisfaction. It would have been easy to reach for his weapon now and bring this to an end for good, to make Spender pay with his life for all he had done to them, but Mulder couldn't bring himself to do it. He just watched as their enemy of twenty-five years got awkwardly to his feet, his tail between his legs, and started running without turning back to them once again.

When the Smoking Man was gone, Scully turned around to look at Mulder and Jackson. "What the hell was that?" she asked, still unable to understand why he had fled. "One minute he’s threatening to shoot us, and the next he can't get out of here fast enough."

"Jackson?" Mulder only said, throwing his son a challenging look.

"He must have seen something that scared him a bit," Jackson replied looking at the space between his feet.

"A bit? He was terrified!" Scully said.

There had to be something really interesting on the floor because Jackson wouldn't look up to meet his birth parents' eyes. "Yeah, well..."

"You created a false reality for him, right? Like you did for us when we were at your parents' house."

Jackson answered Mulder's question with a shrug of his shoulders. He had used his powers more than once for the wrong reasons, to tease people or scare them just for fun, and had been berated for it repeatedly. This had seemed like a good moment to use them, but he wasn't quite sure if it would be appreciated or not. "Someone had to do something. I couldn't stand this asshole and his self-satisfied grin any longer," he offered as an explanation.

"Why didn't we see it?" Scully asked.

"I didn't make you see it, only him."

"You can decide who sees what you create and who doesn't?"

Jackson nodded. "You were the only one who saw me as Peter Wong in front of the hospital."

Scully's heart ached a little thinking back to that moment. She had been longing for contact to her son for so long, and then he had been standing in front of her, talking to her, touching her, and she hadn't known it had been him. She had felt a strange connection to this man who had bumped into her, who had been so compassionate about the broken snow globe and who had smiled at her when she told him she liked this particular windmill she was holding in her hands.

"Did you bump into me on purpose?"

"Sure."

"Why?"

"I was curious about you after what you'd said to me in the morgue."

More heartache. Unknowing of what he was doing to her, Jackson continued. "You sounded so sad and so...honest. And I also had to make sure you'd gotten my message about the windmill. The snow globe in your hands showed me you had."

"So our meeting at the gas station wasn't a coincidence either."

"Of course not. I had something else to say to you."

If filled her with joy that despite her giving him away as a baby, he had wanted to establish contact. Even if without revealing his identity.

"The Malcolm X quote," Scully supplied.

"Right. I hoped you'd draw the right conclusions and realize it was me you'd talked to."

"Mulder recognized the quote and we both realized at the same time it must have been you. My heart almost burst when I saw myself talking to my son, my living son, on the surveillance tape."

"Surveillance tape?"

"The gas station had a CCTV system," Mulder explained. "On the surveillance tape, you were being you and not some pickup artist."

"Yeah, well, my mind is just so strong. I can manipulate people's perceptions but not a machine."

"Still, it's a powerful talent you've got there," Scully noted.

"A talent?" Jackson chuckled. "I see it more as a curse. It makes me an outsider. People think I'm a freak. Which I probably am. It has come in handy a few times lately though."

Scully took a step toward him. She would have liked to embrace him, pull him to her chest, just like Mulder had done at the motel when the two had first met, but instead, she only put her hands on his shoulders to make him look at her. "Listen, Jackson, you are not a freak. And none of this is your fault. You are who you are because you are our son, and from now on, Mulder and I will care for you. We will protect you. You are not alone."

As much as Mulder enjoyed watching mother and son talk to each other, he also got increasingly nervous. What if Spender had a backup? What if he knew and simply forgot for a moment about Jackson's ability to create alternate realities and realized he had been fooled once he had run far enough and cooled down his nerves? They had to get out of this building and off the premises as quickly as possible.

"Guys, let's get in the car and out of here. Spender doesn't work alone, and I don't want to be here when one of his cronies shows up to finish what he hasn't been able to do."

"You're right, Mulder. Come on, Jackson. We'll get somewhere safe," Scully said, nudging the boy forward with her hand on his shoulder.

They ran outside through the same steel door the Smoking Man had fled through and jumped into Scully's SUV. Mulder took the seat behind the steering wheel, Scully the passenger seat. Jackson climbed into the back. "Buckle up, Jackson," Scully tossed over her left shoulder in full maternal mode, "we will have to take some unexpected turns if someone follows us."

But no one followed them. It was a quiet ride, each of them taking their time to process what had happened and what had been said in the factory building. It was Jackson who finally broke the silence.

"You really are my parents, right? Both of you." His eyes met Mulder's in the rearview mirror, Scully turned around in the passenger seat and looked at him. It took him a moment until he was able to meet her intensive gaze, but then the direct connection enabled him to clarify. "What this man said was bullshit. That I am a product of a scientific experiment, that he...uh...that he made you pregnant with me against your will."

"He tried, but he failed," she said, maintaining their eye-contact without blinking. "I am absolutely certain that you are our son, Jackson. Mulder's and mine. You are not an experiment. You were conceived in an act of love." Scully glanced briefly at Mulder after having put so much emphasis on the word 'love' that her voice trembled. He kept his eyes on the street but nodded and smiled. "Not in a laboratory," she concluded.

"But..." Jackson left the rest unsaid. He threw his hands in the air and let himself fall back against the backrest.

"But what?" Scully probed.

"Why am I like this? So...creepy?"

Scully unbuckled her seat belt and climbed across the middle console into the back to join Jackson. She didn't want to talk to him about this any longer twisting her neck. She needed to be able to look him in the eye. She would have wanted to take his hands in hers and squeeze them to assure him but didn't dare. "You are not creepy," she said, laying her hand gently on his lower arm instead, hoping he wouldn't pull it back. He didn't. Not instantly anyway, but after a short moment. She berated herself inwardly for invading his personal space against her better judgment. Had she known that he didn't mind her touching him as much as she thought and that his awkwardness around her was caused by not knowing how to interact with a woman he felt so close (she was his mother, for God's sake) and yet so distant rather than resenting her, it wouldn't have hurt quite that much.

"You haven't seen what else I can do, Dana. Uh, you mind me calling you Dana?" Jackson asked, suddenly uncertain.

"Oh, uhm...no, not at all. Dana is fine."

"I mean since he," Jackson tilted his head in Mulder's direction, "calls you Scully."

"Well, that's a thing between us going back to the time we started out as co-workers. People outside of work usually call me Dana. Friends and family anyway. So Dana is perfectly fine."

It was a start, wasn't it? Scully didn't dare to hope that one day Jackson would call her something more affectionate, like 'mother' or maybe even 'mom'. She had been a mother to two children and had never been addressed as such by either of them. It was a wound which had never healed.

Unaware of Scully's inner struggles, Jackson resumed, "great! So, Dana, you haven't seen me do these other things I'm capable of. Like make people explode, for one. You were freaked out, weren't you?" the boy asked looking at Mulder who was observing them in the rear view mirror more than he should, given the fact that he was running at more than 80 miles per hour. "I was glad you made me duck!" he joked from the front, but the joke never made it to the back. Scully and Jackson were too much involved in their conversation to appreciate his effort.

"Whatever it is that you are capable of, Jackson, it doesn't make you a freak. Most certainly not in our eyes." Scully did her best to assure him of Mulder's and her determination. He needed to know that this time they would stand by him come what may. "You are our son, our flesh and blood, and we love you. Even if you might think otherwise because you were given up for adoption."

"But why am I like this? If you are my biological parents, and I wasn’t created by this chain-smoking moron, why am I not normal like you? You seem like pretty normal people to me. You are not some aliens or hybrids or whatever this guy was saying I was. You may be a little crazy, but still, you're normal, everyday people."

Scully sighed. "As you might have guessed, we have a history with this man, this chain-smoking moron. He's been using us to his own ends, mistreated us, harmed us time and again. I was abducted as a young woman and had become involved in a sinister, abhorrent plan of a group of ruthless men. Unethical tests were performed on me and my DNA had been tampered with. And the same happened to Mulder, only a few years later. He had been experimented on, manipulated, and mistreated so much that he almost died."

Scully saw no use in telling Jackson that Mulder had indeed been dead and buried, and that his coming back to the living had been nothing but short of a miracle. What the boy was hearing had to be disturbing enough, giving him more disconcerting details wasn't helpful, so she continued with the facts he needed to know to get the picture.

"What I'm trying to explain to you is that our genomes have been manipulated, and I take it that's the reason you are who you are. You're a combination of both of us. It's for everyone to see in your looks. You have Mulder's hair and his height, and you have my eyes and my freckles on your nose. Your abilities...well, they are likely a result of what they have done to our genetic material. I don't have any other explanation."

"Wow," was all Jackson said, "you aren't as normal as I thought."

"A lot of people would call us crazy as well. And a bit spooky. At least when it comes to me," Mulder tried for another joke but failed again. Neither Scully nor Jackson laughed.

"You already had powers as a baby, Jackson. You had spun the mobile above your crib once in a crying fit, and you had made a piece of rock hover above your face. And when I had realized that there were people out there holding an interest in you, the man you just met being one of them, I thought the only way to protect you was to hide you in another family far away from us."

"You gave me away to protect me, not to get rid of me." He didn't need to pose this as a question, he had understood.

"Yes," Scully breathed. "It was the only way to get you out of reach of these people."

"Well, your plan obviously didn't work out. The things he told you about me, they were all true. It creeps me out to imagine this maniac has been watching me all the time."  

Jackson thought back to his childhood, to some of the events the Smoking Man might have been present at: his first day of school, when he scored the decisive penalty which had secured the championship for his soccer team, prom night and his first kiss... A cold shudder ran down his spine.

“Spender might have watched you, but so have we," Scully said, only now taking the time since she had climbed into the back to buckle herself up.

"You have?" Jackson asked incredulously.

"We have?" Mulder echoed, looking flummoxed. Scully had never told Mulder that for all these years someone had been holding a hand over their William, someone who hated the Cigarette Smoking Man just as much as they did. She had feared that had Mulder known there was indeed a way to their son despite the closed adoption, that one day he would have tried to track him down.

"When I gave you up, I asked a friend to keep an eye on you because I knew that if we did, we would lead them right to you. His name is Jeffrey, and he helped me find you when you started communicating with me through the visions. I demanded he breaks the promise to never disclose your whereabouts to me."

Mulder took a sharp intake of breath. His molars were grinding when he asked, "you hired Jeffrey Spender to protect our son?"

"I didn't hire him. He..." Scully was struggling for words. "Mulder, you were gone, I was all alone in this and I didn't know what to do. He had come to me, had tried to protect William from you-know-who by secretly injecting him with magnetite. Jeffrey Spender was the only ally I had."

He'd been injected with what? Magnetite? For protection? Jackson remembered how the results of his blood work had always made his doctors frown. This story was getting crazier by the minute. But there was something else that had piqued his interest even more. "Spender? This guy's name is Jeffrey Spender? Haven't you called the smoking asshole Spender, too?" Jackson asked.

"Yes. Jeffrey is his son and my half-brother," Mulder explained. This new information cleared something up Mulder had racked his brain over for some time. "Now I understand why he called me when you were in the hospital after your seizure, Scully. I didn't know what to make of his warning on my voicebox that someone was coming after us."

"This man's son helped you protect me? He's worked against his own father?"

"This man is also my biological father. It speaks for itself that both his sons loathe him that much, doesn't it? It speaks for how profoundly evil he is."

Jackson let that sink in for a moment. He couldn't imagine a life where there was so much hatred, so much mistrust, and fighting against each other. He had been brought up by people who loved and cared for each other, he had always felt safe and protected, at least until these strange men in black suits had first shown up. He didn't know his birth parents very well yet, but Dana had spoken of love, both in the morgue and just now, and Mulder acted like he cared about her very much. They were good people, driven by love, not by hate. They made him feel cared for. Since the assassination of the Van De Kamps, he had felt alone and entirely on his own, but it seemed he had belonged to someone all the time. Maybe he had been wrong, maybe Dana and Mulder, his birth parents, were able to protect him after all. He could at least give it a try, couldn't he? "Where are we going?" he asked.

"We have a house out in the countryside," Mulder answered from the front. "It's secluded and well protected. We should go there, get a hot drink and some food and decide in the comfort of a warm, safe place what to do next. We'll be there in about an hour."

"Good idea, Mulder. Let's go home," Dana agreed.

Jackson turned his head away from Scully on the word 'home' and looked out of the window to hide his happy smile. His limbs felt light all of sudden as if a lead weight had been lifted off his body. He was glad that the rest of the trip was silent, that neither of them tried to engage him in a conversation. Mulder focused on driving them to their place as fast as possible, pushing the speed limit, and Dana leaned her head against the headrest. Surprisingly, she was asleep in a matter of minutes.

"She always falls asleep in the car," Mulder said when he caught Jackson's puzzled look at her sleeping form. "The motion lulls her to sleep."

Jackson only nodded. For the rest of the ride, he watched the dark scenery passing by outside with a feeling of warmth spreading through his body. The feeling replaced the cold fear he had been so used to during the past months, and it was more than welcome.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Eyestealer 12 - ao3 link

Fandom: Naruto Pairing: Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama (mostly gen, hints of other relationships)

Summary: Hashirama really doesn’t approve of the thoughtful way his father looks at his younger brother’s bright red eyes. He’s sure it doesn’t mean anything good for anyone.

He’s right.

——————————————————————————————

 It’s all Hashirama’s fault, really.

(Hashirama is not oblivious: he’s aware that this is a state of events that is, regretfully, not that uncommon.)

In his defense, he’d never been able to control his mouth.

But – really!

The confrontation with Zetsu had just been so - anticlimatic.

With Itama’s help, they’d gotten out of their binding and fought their way out of the cave to where a red-haired woman who’d initially introduced herself only as Itama’s foster-sister had been waiting patiently. Itama hadn’t even explained; he just said it was an emergency and she’d immediately followed them as they made their way back to the village by means of the hiraishin that Tobirama had apparently taught Itama through their correspondence.

Their highly illicit correspondence.

The Uzumaki had cut off communication for fear that Itama would remain too tied to his former homeland, but being told ‘no’ had never stopped Tobirama before.

(Hashirama is very proud of the fact that he’d been the one to solve the issue, suggesting that if they both signed the same summoning contract, their summons could pass along messages between them. It’d worked wonderfully, and Tobirama – who likes writing – had enjoyed having someone to tell everything to in the same way that Hashirama – who hated writing – liked pouring the same everything into his only nearby brother’s ear.)

Anyway, they’d appeared at the edge of Konoha and run inside, only to find a confrontation in the middle of the main street, with a very confused Madara attempting to hold back a hissing and homicidal Tobirama who was demanding to know who the not-Hashirama and not-Izuna really were and where his brother actually was.

The Zetsu had been trying to explain, but as soon as the real ones arrived, it took one look, merged back into a single black-blob entity, and ran away before anyone could react.

It hadn’t even bothered to wait until the Uchiha activated their Sharingans to figure out who was who!

Hashirama, who’d been looking forward to trying to prove himself and was a little disappointed, had opened his mouth and said the dumbest possible thing.

“Well, that was easy.”

Which means, of course, that when – less than twenty-four hours later – Zetsu had returned with a set of kidnapped Uchiha and the kyuubi in tow, all of them raging mad, possibly brainwashed (it was under debate), and intent on destroying the village, it was all Hashirama’s fault.

At least Tobirama’s ridiculous senses had allowed them to find out about the upcoming invasion early enough in advance that they could go out to try to stop them further off.

That battle had – not gone well.

At all.

To say the least.

Zetsu had laughed at them, and, honestly, Hashirama thinks he’s really starting to dislike the thing.

Madara had been the one to call it a failure and ordered the retreat. They’d done only enough damage to stop the kyuubi from rampaging further that day, buying them some much-needed breathing room, and in the meantime they’d fallen back to Konoha to debate their very few remaining options.

“Genjutsu would be an option if we had the Eternal Mangekyo,” Izuna argues, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s been tightly wound up ever since they successfully chased Zetsu away from the village – as the one who’d been captured by Zetsu the longest, he’d been certain that Zetsu would return, intent on achieving his goals by force now that treachery had failed.

He’d been right, too.

“For the last time, Izuna, no,” Madara snaps. “I’m not going to give up all of that work we all did modifying the Senju’s healing technique to keep our eyes from deteriorating quite so rapidly in favor of an approach that leaves you blind.”

“But –”

“Your clan’s records suggest that the Eternal Mangekyo requires sacrifice,” Hashirama agrees. “We have no idea if you would be able to take Madara’s eyes in exchange, or even someone else’s, and I’m not interested in testing it out.”

“We need to do something,” Izuna argues. “Or are we just going to let the kyuubi destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to create?”

Hashirama shakes his head. That’s not an option. “There’s still the first method I proposed,” he says. “I could hold it with the Mokuton until Itama and his friend Mito seal it into a person.”

They were all currently pretending that Mito, a smiling red-haired woman dressed in warrior’s clothing (but walking as if she was more used to fancy kimonos), was not, in fact, the princess of the Uzumaki clan, because admitting that would require trying to send her back and no one wanted to even suggest that.

Hashirama also had the additional motivation that admitting her identity would force him to actually talk to her about the tentative arrangement between their clans that they marry in a few years when Itama came of age and honestly the longer he can push off that conversation, the better.

Not that Mito isn’t great!

She’s great.

She seems very sharp and clever and funny, and Hashirama totally wants her to be part of his family. It’s just that the very idea of talking about marriage gives him the chills, and that’s not exactly a good thing right before a major battle.

“I still maintain that’s a terrible idea,” Madara says.

“Absolutely. The kyuubi never attacked before,” Itama agrees. “Not either clan, even when we were ripping up the entire forest with battlegrounds. There has to be a reason it’s doing so now, even if we don’t know what that reason is yet – though given the Uchiha Zetsu took, I think we all have our suspicions.”

“I was more thinking about consequences,” Madara says. “If we end up with a contained bijuu, then what? The other countries will declare war for fear that we will conquer them, and who knows, maybe the other bijuu will attack as well.”

“We could try to trap the other bijuu too?” Hashirama suggests, glancing at Mito who’s nodding in agreement. “Then we could spread them out –”

“No. Don’t – just – you’re a strategist, how can you not see how terrible of an idea that would be?”

“Yes, well, compared to the other available options – which is to say, nothing – ending in a mutually assured destruction scenario doesn’t seem that bad.”

“We seem to be at an impasse,” Izuna says. “That is, unless Tobirama can pull another ground-breaking new jutsu out of his ass to give us an advantage over a bijuu, or at least something that can nullify what may or may not be a Mangekyo genjutsu capable of controlling a bijuu that none of us Uchiha can break.”

Everyone looks at Tobirama, because, well, that’s more or less what he specializes in doing.

“Not out of there, no,” Tobirama says, rolling his eyes at all of them. “But there is something we might be able to use, though it may require the Uchiha elders to finally agreeing to give me full and unfettered access to your scrolls to figure out how to best utilize it.”

He looks at Hashirama pointedly.

Hashirama winces.

Of course Tobirama knows; he should never have doubted it.

Well, at least this way they don’t have to have an awkward conversation about it?

Tobirama rolls his eyes again, clearly following Hashirama’s line of thought, but he looks more amused than anything else.

“There is?” Madara asks, crossing his arms. “Is this something else related to the Uchiha that you Senju forgot to mention? Again?”

“Um,” Hashirama says. He hadn’t thought about the awkward part of telling Madara about it.

“Do I know about this?” Itama asks.

“Um,” Hashirama says again. Another thing he hadn’t thought about.

“Is this something that should have been shared with your allies?” Mito asks, her eyes dancing even as she pretends to scowl.

“Um,” Hashirama says.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re amazingly bad at information exchange?” Izuna says. “It’s actually shocking how bad you are. Why is ‘hide everything’ your first instinct every time?”

“Clearly it’s because our family’s guardian spirits are a burrowing species,” Hashirama says brightly, relieved by the change in subject and ignoring the way both Madara and Izuna look pained at the reminder. Tobirama’s completed Susanoo kitsune apparently has something of a magnetic effect on their own tengu, leading to some fairly hilarious results. “Tobirama, it’s yours, so if you want to share, go ahead.”

Tobirama nods and closes his eyes to concentrate, his chakra tugging lightly at Hashirama’s own to pull in what he needs.

Hashirama turns to look at everyone’s faces.

Sure, there’s a gigantic chakra monster heading towards his beloved village, intent on destroying it, and probably everyone’s going to hit him for keeping this a secret for so long (he’s going to get punched until he’s black and blue, he just knows it), but he’s only going to get to see their first sight of the Rinnegan once, and he plans to savor it.

Tobirama opens his eyes.

“What the fuck?!”

(It’s totally worth it.)

[artisticallys]

              omg hey... what’s going awn  ?  i havent dont an intro in soooo long i dont even have anything fun or interesting to say about myself errrrrr my name is sam  !  i use they/them pronouns we big chillin.... im real bad at answering messages but i get to them eventually i schwear. yep that’s all if anyone wants to plot or whateva just lmk okie  ?  there’ll be a tl;dr at the bottom before plots if u dont wanna read all this it’s a lot-_____-  without further adieu may i present miss scout kang.... 

﹤𝙺𝙸𝙼 𝙲𝙷𝚄𝙽𝙶𝙷𝙰, 𝚂𝙷𝙴/𝙷𝙴𝚁, 𝙲𝙸𝚂𝙵𝙴𝙼𝙰𝙻𝙴﹥; * - hello SCOUT KANG. long time no see. i know a lot about you. like how you're TWENTY TWO, how you're a GAME DEVELOPMENT major,  and in fact.. how you KILLED YOUR TWIN BROTHER AT HIS REQUEST AND LIED TO YOUR FAMILY ABOUT HIS PASSING AWAY TO STAY IN THEIR GOOD GRACES. would be a shame if it got out, wouldn't it ? so let's play a game. 𝚃𝚁𝚄𝚃𝙷 𝙾𝚁 𝙳𝙰𝚁𝙴 ?

ok so yeaaaaah her secret is kindve a lot ! we gone get there... but first i gotta discuss her childhood u kno ? set things up <3 scout was born to 2 vewy loving parents with a twin brother. there were complications in the pregnancy some medical shit i cba to research but basically her brother wasn’t getting all the nutrients he needed to develop with a good immune system. scout was born two minutes before him, he never let her forget it with his hag jokes and she never let him forget when it came to calling shotgun. 

as i said her brother was born with an auto immune deficiency it left him in a place to get sick very, very often. almost anytime he caught the flu he was hospitalized and generally his life was lived through a glass case from the outside world. and oddly enough it made scout feel trapped too as he was her twin flame, they were the best of friends and wherever he was she wanted to be. there came a time where his health plummeted drastically, doctors weren’t sure he’d make it and the pressure of it all finally cracked down on their father

not being able to watch his own flesh and blood rot away in a hospital bed he took his chance to get out while he still could and vanished into the night never to be seen again. scout remembers hearing an argument between her parents before pretending to be asleep when he came into her room and gave her a final kiss on the forehead and secured her blankets about her body.

it was a shock, really, when her brother pulled through and was somehow stronger than ever. an elaborate hoax was curated by their mother but scout knew, and deep down she thought her brother knew too. but it’s hard to give life to such a grievous monster and so it stayed in a grave.

life went on, doctor and hospital visits became routine and her brother never let things get in the way of living his life. in high school they were quite the pair. mostly it consisted of conversations about where they wanted to run off to after graduation, who their dream spouse was ( he always wanted to marry the student body president while scout had dreams of marrying some degenerate *her brothers words* ), things theywanted to do before dying. they wrote that stuff down on an old study guide scout was using to cheat off of for ap chemistry....

which was something she did often as early middle school days, her mother planted the seed of her going to medical school. to find a way to help people like her brother and at first it was a welcomed idea, do good for people like the one she loved more than life. time went on though and the pressure to have a 4.0 to get into a good premed school with tuition help was mounting. it made dreams that had been forced upon her to morph into something ugly but there was no hopes of standing up to her mother, not when she was already looking forward to such a future. but scout didn’t have the best work ethic when she wasn’t really invested in something, she was smart yeah but that just... wouldn’t cut it and she found that out real fast

her scenes changed quickly during the summer of junior year. her brother had fallen incomprehensibly ill, worse than she had ever seen him and the fear she had as a child slowly crept back, licked up her neck and nested on her shoulders making a home there. reports came back soon enough and he was diagnosed with leukemia. at first it was manageable, some chemo and radiation should do the trick, they said. then it became bone marrow transplants and blood transfusions and fluid drips. she was the first to volunteer, obviously as his twin, for marrow transplants, blood, any organs he might need. 

desperation came in the form of a crying mother after news that he wasn’t going to live past christmas came. it came to scout as her mother accused the doctors of knowing nothing and doing nothing for her son. and it lastly came to her brother when he had been going through these treatments for 2 years and he still could feel how his soul was rotting away. how he was just a carcass in a paper thin nightgown. 

it was then he proposed the idea they travel and cross things off their bucket list and scout both ready to escape greyed walls and sterile affections as well as their small town agreed, readily. took every penny she earned from working, even opened up a gofundme for this trip and was lucky. things went well, so well in fact, that the pair forgot that half of them had one foot in the grave already.

until one day his pain became unbearable, too much for him to handle anymore, and he asked scout as she was helping him into bed after an attempt at leaving the house that day. it was hushed, whispered in shame and fear. had what he just said really happened? was the summer sun getting to be too much? it wasn’t until he had cleared his throat and said it with his chest, “i want you to kill me.” 

call her wrong but she actually laughed. retracted from him with brows creased and a confused laugh slipping out. there’s no way he could be serious. but when he didn’t laugh too she knew he meant it and that’s when she knew she had a choice to make.

it took a week of pondering the thought before she came to the conclusion that she’d end her brothers suffering. they spent the next few days doing something that haunts scout to this day really: planning the best way for her to kill him. for her to end her twin flame. 

their last night together was something memorable, spirits were shared and tears were shed. he left her with only 2 promises to keep.   1. never reveal to anyone that she ended his suffering and 2. to stop letting their mother decide scout’s life and future

she didn’t go to his funeral. didn’t want to replace what she had left of him with what was in that coffin, spent the night drinking homemade sangria and watched star trek. his 2 favorite things. 

this obviously didnt go over well with her mother, went even worse when scout announced she had dropped from pre - med and planned on becoming a video game developer. she was called an embarrassment, a failure, and that she would end up nowhere. and for a while she believed it, still does. 

she got really lucky though when the streaming community got more recognition and now she plays video games for a living and attends classes to make good games. 

TL;DR 

scout grew up w a really sick brother, their dad left, and scout basically became her brother’s keeper. was forced into studying shit she had no interest in and when her brother had enough suffering asked her to take his life, which she did. now she streams video games with hopes of making her own and somehow finding her mother’s love again. 

𝑃𝐿𝑂𝑇𝑆𝐼𝐸𝑆  ? 

got the songs it’s you & bang bang stuck in my head rn maybe some romance shit off theeeees? dunno...

dudes... some people who knew her AND her brother growing up like maybe they went to hs together idk maybe they’re like girl what ever even happened...

ex’s yupppp gimme

her bestest friend(s) maybe even shares her world w them u kno? im in it...

maybe something unrequited or like some sort of clueless sheet who knows!

frenemies...? like enemies that actually just have some weird tension they gotta get through :kissing:

literally anything u think scout would be good to fill like if u got any wcs?

OMGGG wait last one. i really want someone who her brother was in love with or like had feelings for and shit got crazayyyy after he died we can discuss

[cherry3point14]

Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Pairing: Dean x Witch!Reader

Prompt: Imagine being a former BMoL and powerful natural witch, who over the years has fallen in love with Dean, and to save him from the Mark, you transfer it on yourself - thus tying yourself to the Darkness, and forcing Dean to finally come clean with his feelings and propose to you before it's too late. By the brilliant @assassinofmasyaf

Words: 9,490.

Warnings: Like there’s a little angst, I’m sorry magic is angsty. A tiny bit of fluff, I’m not a monster.

A/N: Fic 2 of my follower celebration! This got away from me a little. I mean the lies, the heartache. It’s all too much. I’mma cutch my pearls and go lie down.

Ao3 link if you prefer.

The earth feels like fire beneath you and air has been replaced by water. Everything around you is wrong, muddled, confused by the doubt that taints this decision. Spellwork requires clarity of mind and surety of spirit but the road you’ve traveled has not been paved with either.

It’s been a path forged out of lies and secrets.  

Your body is humming against the power that surrounds you, not with it. You know you’ll need to right yourself before you’ll be able to do this, and you have to do this. There’s no scenario where you don’t do this for him.

Where you were on knees, leaning forward with your palms spread out in the dirt you force yourself to sit back on your heels. Your hands flat against your thighs as you adjust your spine until your posture is as straight as an arrow. A lightning rod against the ground. You need to be the attracting force in the universe.

Each rise and fall of your chest is a commune with the energy that envelops you. Every intake of air you use to clear your mind of distractions. Every exhale you use to expel the negative forces from your body completely.

It takes time, minutes or maybe longer. You don’t rush or try to speed the process. You only have one opportunity to get this right, falling short at this stage would be disastrous. Apocalyptic even. No. It cannot be rushed. It has been some time since you attempted to command power of this magnitude, but you know that you are capable. The magic is not something that has left you, or ever will, and your suppression of it does not make you less than. If it takes you longer than you would expect to be ready, then so be it, as long as it is done right.

Your eyes close as your mind becomes settled and focused. When you open them again the sky is showing the first signs of sunset, splashes of pink and red painted in broad strokes against the fading blue. The setting sun feels like work of your own hand and that’s when you know that you are ready. When nature becomes yours and you become its.

The mark calls to you still. Even from your distance, its existence is like a beacon. Good. Rowena has not been able to finish what she thinks she can start. No good can come from the book of the damned and the mark of Cain must not be destroyed lest it awakens the original evil. Rowena is a fool or so blinded by her own self-service that she’s ignoring the cost. Either way, it cannot be left in her hands to deal with.

Your body rolls forward until you’re in the same position you began in. Hands spread over the ground, body folded in a semblance of prayer. Not to god, to the magic that you serve. You are ready now. Everything is where it should be like a neatly stacked shelf of books.

This time when you sit up your body is relaxed. Shoulders hanging low in a moment all your own before you make this sacrifice.

You pick up the bag next to you filled with all the ingredients you need. Rowena and Sam, even Cas, are all looking for impossible things because what they are trying to do should be impossible. There’s a reason why it should not be done. Everything you needed was easy to procure. Most of it was already in the bunker, the Men of Letters from any continent liked to keep ingredients on hand. The rest are not ingredients but connections. Something of Deans and something of yours.

The strongest connection is forged by blood and the memory of how you got Dean’s fills you with shame. With a straight back and a few deeper breaths it eases away, but you need to avoid allowing yourself to become clouded distractions. You remind yourself of your justifications, he will understand in time and if he doesn’t then it won’t matter. You will have saved him and maybe the world. For once it will be you who makes the sacrifice.

Perhaps this will be your final atonement for your sins. Not that you will pretend to be doing this to ease your soul. You’re driven by the love of a good man. A force which has guided so many of your decisions. The bond is strong and uniquely your own. It may be unrequited but it’s still unyielding.

The wind begins to pick up around you as you place the bowl in front of you, whipping faster with each ingredient placed inside. As if the air itself knows that you should be protected while you work. It’s enough to allow the smallest curve of your lips and the faintest glow of pride in your chest. You are doing what is right, what must be done.

You begin to lowly chant words to summon the necessary power while you pour Dean’s blood into the concoction. The ground begins to vibrate beneath you in response. Here, it says. Take the power you need. It charges you like electricity through every nerve in your body.

The sky is stained much deeper now, gone are the soft colors replaced with violent hues of oranges and burgundy. Almost deep enough to match the crimson that seeps from you as you sink your knife into your palm, and then the other. Allowing both weeping hands to rain your own blood into the bowl as the final ingredient.

You speak the spell clearly into the coming night knowing that it comes faster for you.

“Ab manu sanguine hoc viro. Hoc sanguis meus. Maledictionem ad mutare. At eadem manere.”

For a moment there is nothing, even the air freezes, halting every blade of grass in the field where you sit. Everything falls silent. You’re not sure your muscles could twitch if you tried. The darkness that sweeps over you is a falsehood, you can sense the day behind it still, but your spell has created this. Or stolen it rather. Your spell has borrowed everything it needs, light, air, sound.

A clap of thunder is the first noise to break the nothingness. Then a flash of lightning. Finally, a gust of wind with the force of a millennia years old curse knocks you onto your back.

Your flesh sears. It bubbles and burns. It would be agony if it wasn’t so exquisite. Because it worked. Your relief is overwhelming enough to mask the pain. The mark is taking its place on your arm, on your soul, and you will bear it. You will use your power to keep the curse safe.

Or, if this turns out to be the last thing you ever do, then at least you have freed Dean.

When your eyes snap open again, not that you remember closing them, you’re looking up at the tranquil pinks of dusk again. You bring your hands in front of your face in time to see the cuts heal without a spell. The mark has protected you.

When you do look at your left arm, where the mark has chosen to imprint itself, the skin is raised and red, but you quickly realize your fist is clenched holding the muscle taught. With a few deep breaths, again, your fingers unfurl, and your arm relaxes. The mark doesn’t go away but the color pales a little.

It’s not that you think you’re better than Dean it’s just you think you can control the side effects with your powers, the powers that he is only acutely aware of. You simply think you have a better chance.

Oh. And you love him obviously. Love will make an idiot do anything. Give up her career. Sign her own death sentence. Take the mark of Cain from the object of her affections.

When you make it back to the car you borrowed from the bunker garage there is a multitude of missed calls on your phone. Sam, Dean and strangely one from Crowley. You didn’t even know he had your number, but you supposed everyone needs an antagonist, what would life be if yours couldn’t reach you?

Dean is the first one you call back. It rings through to his voicemail. Hearing his voice, even a recording, makes your body flush.

You call Sam next, you need to tell him to stop whatever he’s trying but his phone also rings through to his voicemail. Him you leave a message, strict instructions not to let Rowena try anything.

It’s with a deep sigh that you finally call Crowley of all people but another voicemail. His recorded message wasting time to include several claims as to his position as hell’s king.  

It seems impossible that they are all out of range. Then it dawns on you. Maybe you are.

That’s when your body slumps across the front seat.

You don’t open your eyes this time. They were already open, you just weren’t behind them. You sit up letting out a shuddering breath as you roll your shoulders against the seat. The nature of your collapse leads to believe that your body didn’t need rest, your magic did.

This time when you pick up your phone and dial, Dean answers.

He starts talking without the formalities of greetings. “I’ve been trying to call you, the mark…”

Your laughter interrupts him, it’s unexpected and fills up the car, “it’s gone? It’s really gone?”

He was free. Even before he confirmed it you could tell just by the lightness in his voice. You had him back, your Dean.

“Yeah, how did you… what did you do?”

Normally a question like that you’d quip with him. Teasingly ask him why he assumes you did something. Instead, you let your laughter die to promise earnestly, “you’re ok. I’m handling it.”

“Y/N.” His tone is warning but it’s after seeing him at his worst, with the mark, it’s nothing in comparison.

Sam is in the background and although you don’t make out what he says you hear that he’s agitated.

“What’s happening there? Where are you?” Your concern always with them.

“Don’t worry about us, we’re in this restaurant and I think I-”

The line goes dead forcing worry to ebb at you. Suddenly there’s no time for tamping down your powers to hide them anymore. Urgency pushes you forward as you get out of the car, hopefully, Dean will forgive you for leaving it. With two feet planted firmly on the road, you recite the words, waiting for the ground to change beneath you.

Teleportation is always a tricky master and being out of practice at that level probably makes you prone to mistakes. You’d asked to be taken to Dean, but the literal translation of the spell was ‘home of my heart’ so, it's only a small surprise when you open your eyes and find yourself standing in the bunker.

It’s quiet and peaceful despite the state of the place. The books still piled high ready to be burnt and the furniture strewn about without care.

Your fingers graze the edge of a table in the library as the last conversations in this room enter your head. How you’d begged Sam to stop, told him that he couldn’t, shouldn’t, do what he’s trying to. You’d find another way. Of course, he hadn’t believed you. He had no idea what you were capable of. And Dean, so broken after Charlie and the Stynes that his rage was unparalleled. Watching him walk out while Cas sat bloody and beaten had been your breaking point and you’d known then, with the threats he spat for you all, what needed to be done.

It’s an effort to quell the spark of anger that surges through you at those memories now. You’d have to make a spell for that, experiment until you could create something to control the unruly waves of violence.

It had been years since you’d played with magic like this. Dean and Sam knew you were a witch and since you’d gained their trust before revealing that side of you they’d been shockingly accepting. Although you feared that was only since they didn’t know the extent of your powers. You’d forced yourself into years of minor tricks. Never commanding the arts like you knew you were able to. They simply never questioned how easily you performed any spell they asked of you.

A part of you had feared that if they saw your real power they might think you too dangerous to allow your freedom. That you were the kind of witch they’d kill without question.

Not that it mattered anymore. What was the phrase? In for a penny, in for a pound. You couldn’t undo any of it now. They’d find out soon enough, there was no hiding what you’d done.

Admittedly acceptance of your situation felt like shedding a heavy blanket that you’d been trapped under. Throwing off a thick material and feeling fresh, cool air again. You could feel the crackle of your power under your skin, so grateful for its freedom, so relieved.

There’s a groan from somewhere that startles you out of your thoughts. You walk towards it unthinking of the possible danger. The fact that people have been here destroying and pillaging, and that there could be more of them, doesn’t concern you or even enter your head. Worry only etches into your features when you see who it is. Cas, broken again, like he’d been when Dean… but he’d healed from that. You’d seen him heal so this must be new, different.

“Help me,” falls from his lips in a voice so soft that you wouldn’t believe the sound came from him if you weren’t looking into his face as he said it.

Falling to your knees next to him and shushing him you put your hand to his face. Magic flows around his head. Not angelic anything but spellwork. You can taste it on the back of your tongue. The bitterness of the attack spell makes you sneer.

“What happened?”

“Rowena.”

Of course. She must be free and worse than that, you’d be willing to bet the farm that she has the book. Fury coursed through you unencumbered this time. Fast and unwavering. You fall back from Cas for a moment making a physical effort to beat it into submission as the familiar sound of the bunker door sounds out.

“So, you think Y/N. had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know, she knew Sammy. She knew it was gone and you said yourself Rowena didn’t finish the spell.”

“Sam? Dean?” As you stand up from where Cas is you see them putting bags down. Both of their faces melt into softened smiles at the sight of you making your heart ache for what you heard, and what you still have to tell them.

Their boots thud as they both close the gap to meet you, but you raise a hand to stop them where they are. It takes a substantial effort to not use magic to keep them in place, your abilities being primed at the tips of your fingers and begging to be used. “Stop, Cas is…”

You don’t need to finish because they both boggle at the angel lying at your feet.

Only after they’ve lifted him and placed him into a seat in the library do they both return to you, taking it in turns to wrap their arms around you.

Sam is pulling away and whispering about the mark being gone even though Rowena never finished when Dean’s voice reminds you of the short sleeves of your shirt.

“What the hell did you do?”

Dean had been so angry you’d needed to keep a hand on your arm to remind yourself that he didn’t still have the mark of Cain.

It only made him worse when your defense pretty much revolved around repeating the words, “I saved you.”

He told you he had been handling it and he had a plan. Sam pointed out that his plan was outer space and you filled the questions about that away for another time.

“You weren’t handling it. You weren’t you anymore.” Your words are a whisper. Not because you’re scared but because it’s taking all of your strength not to lash out. His tone is like catnip to the mark as if it recognizes it’s former host. It’s pulsing away on your arm begging you to fight back.

“Y/N, how did you even? We’d spent months looking for the book of the damned, working on it…” Sam is patient. You’re not sure if it’s the mark or your own guilt that makes you hear the end of his sentence despite him trailing off.

Charlie died for that book. The elephant in the room. It’s going to make your admission so much worse.

“I created a spell. A transfer was easier.”

Dean seems to quiet down but then his brow creases, he’s not calm he’s confused. “Created a spell? You’ve never done more than simple stuff before. Even Rowena needed the book.”

Anyone who’s ever tried to write Dean off as nothing but a trained soldier has never seen a moment like this. They've never seen him work something out before anyone else in the room.

For once you can’t bring yourself to watch the realization as he makes it. You normally love seeing his face light up when he has an answer. For how Dean treats self-deprecation like a hobby, the moment he works something out was the complete opposite. It was pure confidence and you usually reveled in watching a moment of genius smooth out his features before it would achingly fade away.

Except for this time, it would be your end. This was the moment he was either going to hate you or kill you. So, you keep your eyes on the floor instead.

“Y/N. How did you do it?” The flat tone is enough to tell you he that’s not what he’s asking. He’s asking how powerful you are.

There aren’t words left or at least no way to answer him. There’s no fitting description. There’s not a yardstick you can measure against. So, you get up out of your chair and walk calmly over to Cas. You sit on the table in front of him while he grips the arms of his chair tight, doubled over in pain as he fights the magic inside of him.  

With your hands cupping his cheeks you bring his eyes to yours and speak, “ad officium consummatum est.”

“Cas?” The word you’ve heard Dean say so many times before stings like a cut and almost breaks your concentration. He asks it in that worried way of his, endless concern in one syllable. As if you would hurt Castiel, your friend, any more than you’d hurt Sam or him.

Cas shakes in your grip although it’s not as violent as you expect. You keep your hands tight on him, your focus on ensuring the spell leaves his system. His eyes clamp shut with a final grunt and when they snap back open his pale blue irises widen impossibly.

Ah, the angel has caught up as well.

None of them move or even blink, as you slide off of the table and back away some steps. “I’m going to go and wait in my room and let you talk. If you decide you want me to leave I’ll go. I won’t- I would never hurt you.”

Your eyes are boring into Dean’s with the last sentence like you could tell him with a look how very true it is. How everything you do, everything you’ve done, is to stop him from hurting. Because the world needs him almost as much as you do.

You’d seen pictures of both Winchesters in the extensive briefings and endless case files you’d read. These two hunters had apparently stopped the end of the world. The sentence was ridiculous to even think. Hunters are barely more than muscle, they’re the dancing monkeys to your organ grinders.

Except you had to stop thinking like that. You’re part of the first wave on this god forsaken continent and you have the most important role of anyone in this recolonization project. You had to get close to and gather intel on the Winchesters. Apparently, they’re the key to this whole thing whether they realise it or not. Get the Winchesters and get America.

You thought it was obvious why you’d got the job. Your rank and abilities. However, with the way Dean Winchester looks you up and down, even from a distance, you fear that maybe you were selected for a more primitive reason.

It certainly didn’t help change your opinion that hunters were no more than upright apes.  

But there was the annoying fact that none of the pictures of him had quite done him justice. None of them had enough detail to see the freckles dusted over his nose and cheeks. Not one profile correctly captured the strength of his jaw. And, most audaciously, there was no picture taken close enough to highlight the green of those eyes. Even in this dimly lit cesspool with him sitting at the other end of this sticky bar they were striking, the colour reminded you of spring mornings back home.

Not that you were weak for that kind of thing. You weren’t weak for many things, there wasn’t room for weakness in the Men of Letters. And with the way you’d seen Dean drink so far you figure he wasn’t aware of that rule.

Today was only reconnaissance thankfully, no contact. You were dying to get out of the outfit you’d been given. Tight jeans and a tank top that had appeared to be child’s size before you managed to squeeze it over your head. And now that he looked about ready to get up and come and talk to you it meant you could finally leave. You push some money forward to the surly bartender and stand up. Slowly of course. If you had been chosen for less than professional reasons then you’d use all the tools at your disposal, popping your hip and flashing him a smile before you turn to the exit. An extra wiggle as you walk away.  

You knew the hunt they were in town for and tomorrow you’d ‘accidently’ meet them on their outing posing as a hunter yourself. Thus, would begin the slow and steady plan to win over the Winchesters. It had been decided much higher up than you that this was the best way to gain their trust. You just have to hope that you can pull this off. Although it would be quicker you know that planting memories is not always perfect. Sometimes trust is easier to earn the old-fashioned way.

To think that weeks ago your life was as normal as it got for you. You’d hunted a werewolf in Albany. Even though the mark on Dean’s arm had still been forefront in all of your minds the hunt itself had been so regular.

The car, the motel, the bad diner that didn’t know how to make a decent BLT. You and your boys. But now their conflicting voices could be heard even from your room. Not words exactly but the rumble of discussion.

You crossed your legs at some point and closed your eyes in an attempt to quiet your mind and silence the court that was in session.

He didn’t even know everything. None of them did. Not even Cas. You’d been careful over the years to never let the angel into your head, which itself is quite the feat. The number of times he’s offered to heal you after hunting injuries and you’d had to insist he didn’t waste his angel juice. The risk was too great that he might stumble over one of the many secrets you held on to so fiercely.

None of them knew how you came to be in their lives. The organization you used to answer to. The people that had probably added your face, your picture, to the Winchester files. Deceased it will say. The first agent to infiltrate them was wiped out. Knowing your superiors, they may even have tried to blame the boys. But if there’s one thing the British knew how to do it was repress. Stiff upper lip. It had been how you’d lived with yourself all these years. Repressing the truth and living a lie.

Eventually, the voices fade to nothing, but no one comes to tell you the verdict. You’re climbing the walls now, your bedroom more of a cell than a home. Tentatively you crack open your door but see no one in the hallway. Trying to remain as silent as possible, you creep back to the library you’d left them.

Straight away you can see Cas is gone. Where you don’t know. Away? Or resting somewhere in an empty room? He would be capable of leaving now that you’d removed the spell.

“I can hear you, sweetheart.”

His voice is thick with emotion and as you take enough steps to be in the room proper you see his hand wrapped around a glass of whiskey. After all these years and he’s still not found the answer he looks for in the golden liquid.

“Dean, I’m so-“

He silences you with a hand held up. Not the one holding his drink, of course, that’s currently engaged in tipping a hefty serving down his throat. You watch the length of his neck tighten and relax again as he swallows it down.

“You’re a witch.” It’s all he says. It’s dull and empty, but at least he’s speaking to you.

You take a step towards the table he’s sitting at but don’t sit down quite yet, you need to gauge the atmosphere first, “yes. Technically you knew I was a witch yesterday too. Just, you thought I was less powerful.”

Dean never had been one for technicalities, “and exactly how powerful are you?”

You shake your head at his second attempt to ask this, “there’s not a grading system. There are so many things that determine a witch’s capabilities.”

He snaps his head up to you meeting your eyes for the first time since you’ve come into the room. He looks tired and you hate to think that you’ve added to the lines at the corner of his eyes. The rest of his face is hard, steely, it’s his cut-the-crap stare.

“I’m a natural. We’re rare. I don’t know what else to tell you. I can do some things others can’t and vice versa.”

“Like take the mark of Cain with a spell you created yourself? No book of the damned or anything?”

You’re not sure what he’s more annoyed by, your magic or that you took the mark. It seems likely that it’s the former considering that Charlie died for the something they didn’t need, but then he grumbles, “what the fuck was you thinking?”

Somehow, it’s more antagonizing than any of the shouting that’s already happened today. The mark can sense the frustration behind it. The mark tells you that he thinks you’re pathetic, he thinks you’re stupid. It whispers right into your heart that he could never love you, never think of you like that, a witch and a liar.

Your hands curl into fists, nails cutting crescent shapes into your palms. You grind your teeth together in an attempt to stop the frustration welling up in your chest from exploding out your mouth. You can feel the scream in your throat vying to escape. He can see it too. He can see your struggle since until very recently he was the one fighting.

His face softens and his lips downturn, but he tries to help. He holds both hands up defensively as he rises from his chair at a glacial speed. “Y/N, just breathe sweetheart.”

“Shut up.” It’s barely your voice that says it for how deep it sounds.

His hands move back a little further in a silent affirmation.

All of the air getting to your lungs travels through those still gritted teeth, canines bared, and nose snarled.

“I’m going to leave now, and I will be back tomorrow.”

“It’s the middle of the night…”

You don’t need to mention your previous command for silence, the widening of your eyes does it for you.

“I will be back tomorrow.” Is all you repeat. The last of your resolve goes into closing your eyes and concentrating on a place. The motel a few towns over, the one with the late checkout and thick-ish walls. It doesn’t matter that Dean is right there or that he’ll only see you disappear without explanation.

It’s easy this time. No mistakes. Later you’ll wonder if that’s because of the mark, if it’s helping you somehow but for now, you simply admire landing directly into an empty room. A click of the lock and you’re checked in so to speak.

This time when you pull yourself cross-legged into the middle of the bed your hands clench your knees painfully while you try to mutter spells into the quiet of the room. As if you just need to find the right combination and everything will return to normal.

Progress report 36:

After the unsuccessful previous hunt, which required a necessary injury on my part, the Winchesters finally took me to what they call “the bunker” aka US01. As far as I have been able to tell US01 remains in a state of acceptable upkeep, however, I have been unable to check the priority rooms, 6, 15 or storage facility 3. Once I have accessed these locations of interest I will report back on the status of all artifacts as per briefing 12.

Yesterday D. Winchester offered me a permanent room in “the bunker”. I advised him I would consider this offer, to lessen any potential suspicion that an immediate acceptance might bring. It is my hope that with my current injuries I will be left alone with time to investigate some point within the next week.

The morning comes quickly since you don’t remember falling asleep. You wake up on your back, spread eagle over the bed. For the briefest of seconds, you don’t remember where you are or why you’re here. You weren’t on a hunt, you’d have changed at least.

The memory hits you square between the eyes. You’d wanted to hurt Dean. You’d teleported in front of him. Nausea rises from your gut and makes you run to the bathroom only to dry heave over the sink. How could you go home now? How could you call it your home at all?

You pace the room desperately hoping to find an answer in the peeling wallpaper and faded shag carpet. Unfortunately, there was only one conclusion the dated décor gave you.

You needed to leave them.

Maybe not as dramatically or murder-y as Dean had but you should leave. It was safer. Until you can find a way to control the mark. Especially since you gave the mark access to magic, no demon skills required.

It might even be good for you to get some time away. You hadn’t been apart from them since, well, since you moved in. There had been days here or there of course but meaningful distance? Not since you gave up the only life you’d ever known to be with them. To be with Dean.

You could say goodbye. It was the right thing to do. Say goodbye and explain. Assure them you’d be back, and everything would be fine. You’d take care of it. They’d let you leave too. If they hadn’t decided to kick you out before then you could be sure that they’re probably of that opinion now.

You’d bloody teleported in front of Dean.

You sink down onto the side of the bed and pick up the plastic phone handle that’s seen better days. Surprisingly there’s actually a dial tone and you punch in Dean’s number without even thinking.

“I know I don’t deserve it but please, can you come and get me?”

It would be impossible to erase your existence entirely. And from this distance. From so many people. Even for what you intended to do you’ve enlisted help. An item in the Men of Letters storage. Sam and Dean had no idea what it is, or for, they’ll never miss it. Its explanation will be buried in the archives somewhere and even then, its sole purpose is to concentrate magic.

You lied to them again. An old friend needed help on a hunt you’d said. They had offered to come with you, but you’d told them it would be fine, he didn’t like new people. You’re sure the look on Dean’s face at the mention of him was just suspicion.

Now you sit in this nice hotel room. The first one since England. Ever since you’d got here it was motels and then the bunker. Not that the bunker wasn’t nice, but these were Egyptian cotton sheets and comfort was a necessity right now.

There are several spells to work and it has to be tonight, or tomorrow morning as it currently is in England. They’re all together and won’t be again for another fortnight. You’re not sure you can keep up the pretense any longer.

The mirror you’ve balanced in front of you is faded like it’s dull with age, but the smoky quality is actually your tracking spell, locating the meeting. When they appear, you watch for a few minutes, making sure they’re all there, The Old Men. The only face you know is Doctor Hess from the academy, the others aren’t very public and until recently you were loyal to the rules that forbade your intrusion. Now you plan to tear those rules apart.

You’re using a revelation spell to lower their warding spells. They’re prepared for magical attacks, although they assume their enemies wouldn’t have the foresight to attack their warding first. They would never assume one of their own would use knowledge of the wardings against them.

It feels like it takes hours when in fact it’s minutes. Were you not on a tight schedule you might take some time to recover. You only have an hour though and the next spell will be the trickiest. Ten minds to alter. Ten memories to plant.

The mirror, which had lost its connection briefly, is alive with their faces again. They don’t seem aware of what is going on. So far so good.

“Memento fabulam. Memento fabulam. Haec sit vera. Super omnia. Verbum meum”

There is a flicker in the glass but nothing more. You repeat the spell, keeping the false memory you intend in the front of your mind. Holding the stone you’ve taken from the bunker wrapped in your hands. Pushing your power from your chest and forcing it to them, over land and sea through the link in the mirror. You don’t feel the blood trickle from the corner of your eyes, but you taste it on your lips while you chant over and over. The lights in the room start to crackle as you pull energy from around you until finally, you see them all react one by one. Doctor Hess presses the back of her hand to her forehead, another elder closes his eyes for a moment. All of them look as if they have a minor headache but that’s not what’s popped into their heads.

What’s appeared is the new truth you’ve put there. Of your death on a hunt. This project is too dangerous for an undercover agent.

The mirror shatters in front of you when it’s done. Hundreds of spider web cracks in the glass. The connection is broken. Their warding will repair itself now. In theory, they should never know what you’ve done.

There’s still more to do tonight. Your own protection, the glimmer spell you have designed to hide from prying organization eyes that may still be watching Sam and Dean. But all of that can wait because for one beautiful second, even with blood staining your cheeks and your lungs still gasping for air, you take a moment to appreciate that you’re actually free.

His voice had been laced with sleep on the phone, so it had been impossible to guess his reaction. He’d barely said more than a few gruff noises. Confirmation that he’d come to get you and that yes, he’d knew the motel you were talking about.

When you slip into the passenger seat he doesn’t say anything first. It only takes two minutes on the road for you to crack under the silent pressure.

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs without looking at you, “take my advice, blanket apology everyone you know. ‘s easier.”

The corner of your mouth twitches as you reply, “maybe that was my blanket apology for you, ever think of that?”

This time he does tear his eyes from the road to take you in, and after a moment that feels like far too long to be safe while driving, he smiles. The kind that crinkles his eyes and warms your cheeks. If you could live in that moment, curl up in it and keep it forever, you’d give anything. You’d watch the world burn to stay looking at that smile. Or even if you couldn’t look at it, just to keep it on his face.

You’re a coward but you suppose Dean is too. Right now, anyway. You’re not mentioning leaving because then he has the drive back to convince you otherwise. If he wants you to stay that is. And he’s not mentioning the mark or your magic. Because then you have the drive back to apologize. Instead, you both fall into a comfortable silence. Hyper aware of each other and the things neither of you is saying but happy to live in this limbo.

What he’ll never understand is you can feel him. In this proximity, you know his soul. You don’t know why you can feel him without a physical connection, but you can, and you’ve always been able to. The black and decay caused by the mark. The deterioration. All gone. What’s left is the same thing you’d felt the first time you spoke. A soul heavy with burden but still so good. A soul almost as green in color as his eyes. That’s what you’d always known about Dean, the biggest secret you ever kept.

Dean could call himself dark, a murderer, a thousand other things. He could command the world to see what he thought he was, but you could see what he truly is. You can see the good, the selfless, the brave, the protector. Everything that was there before this curse ate away at him and everything that was still there now. It reinforces your decision to save him.

He pulls into park outside the bunker and huffs out a lung full of air still gripping the wheel, “so when you leaving?”

He’s not telling you, he’s asking, and the difference means everything.

“Today if I can. Until I can get this under control.”

You watch his eyes close and his lips struggle to put his words in order. “Death couldn’t do anything about that mark except send me away. You think you can stop it?”

It’s a good question. One that makes you sound conceited and power mad but it’s a good question.

“I can’t stop the mark, I mean, eventually it will turn me into a demon like Cain, like you were. I only think I can slow it down. Stop the violence and the anger. And maybe I’ll get a few decades. So long as it’s not you or Sam coming to kill me if I turn into a big bad. That’d be awkward.”

You’ve done your research on the this while trying to cure Dean. You know why the mark has to survive and you’re not willing to risk the darkness. All you want is a little time. As much as you can have living with the boys and saving as many people as you can. To give your life some meaning before you become one of them.

Maybe once you do turn you’ll be able to control it like Cain. Maybe. Or a natural witch turned knight of hell might be the end of the world. You’d have to find out when you get there.

He doesn’t laugh at your joke about them killing you, in fact, he leans forward, his forehead pressing against the wheel like he’s hurt. “You’re talking about becoming a demon sweetheart. Yesterday I found out you can freakin’ teleport and now you’re picking out china patterns for your holiday home in hell.”

Your nose wrinkles at the idea of living in hell. “Someone has to bear it and it was killing you, Dean. I think I can make it kill me slower. It’s worth a try.”

“Stay.” He whispers into the space between your heartbeats.

“What? I can’t. This magic is dangerous. I might be dangerous.”

“Then you should stay. Keep it inside the bunker. We can keep you safe.” He’s looking at you this time, imploring you with his lips barely parted and his eyes bright in the daylight.

Despite your promises yesterday, which you still meant, you’d never intentionally hurt them, you have to ask. “What if something goes wrong? Who will keep you safe from me?”

You’re both silent for a long moment until you find the courage to ask the question that haunts you, “if I find a way to control it, can I come back?”  

He lifts his head and stares as if you’ve just spoken another language. He looks almost childlike in his confusion, not the tired man at the end of his tether than he claims to be. His answer is the sincerest thing you think you’ve ever heard, “I’m counting on it, sweetheart.”

Five weeks later

Last night had been the closest you’d come to a kill. Not a monster obviously but a human kill. No weapon required. You knew enough spells to murder and maim but last night it had been your fingers wrapped around his throat. The rest of the people in the dive laid unconscious at your feet, that was magic, but this guy? This hulk shape of a man who had decided you were what he fancied for the evening, his windpipe had been under your thumb. You’d felt it get narrower under the pressure you applied, watching his face become red while he clawed at your arm.

Your left arm.

It’s only thanks to the temporary spell you’d fashioned weeks back that you manage to soothe the bloodlust enough to let him go. He crumbles impossibly small for a man his size but when you hold two fingers to his throat he’s still alive.

It had been too close for comfort. You’d barely got your spell out. Yes, you knew it was a magical band-aid at best, but you were ending up with less and less time to say the words. The mark getting closer to making you a murderer, again.

You’d killed before. You’d felt life slip away under your hands. The Men of Letters had taught you well. Trained you well. But that was a different you, the one from before the Winchesters. You didn’t kill humans anymore and you were terrified that one slip and you’d become that person again. Someone who doesn’t even want to stop the mark. So yes, in spite of the anger you’d sighed gratefully when his pulse thumped against your fingers.

But today there’s a hopeful guide in your inbox. A book you traced to a tiny library in Scotland and a friend who’s scanned the volume for you. You’re not crazy enough to risk a visit back to the UK yourself. There’s not a border you could cross without signing your own kill order.

The book in question has spells so old that it’s said they predate magic as you know it. Some words are so obsolete that it’s impossible to decipher everything. Even looking at this book as PDF’s on a screen there’s an energy in the air like reading brings something ancient into existence.

It takes hours to do even a first read of the entire thing and you end up with furiously scribbled notes to remind yourself of meanings, or possible meanings. However, once you’ve finished you’re able to narrow down some points of interest. There’s a chapter on curses, casting them that is, but reversal is normally not that difficult. Then there’s the part that really interests you. The equivalent of a magical lock box. Potentially somewhere you could put yourself, magic free, if you ever got out of hand.

By mid-afternoon, you want to try. You’ll start small obviously, but you’ve been surprisingly decisive these past weeks, in a way you haven’t been since you lived by a strict code that left no room for indecision. When you’d found the book’s whereabouts you hadn’t agonized over whom you could trust or if you should go. You simply made the call and continued with other things, other spells and practice while you waited for the email. So now you want to start. Which means ingredients, so that means a supply run.

There’s this little new age store run by a tiny woman who appears to be dramatically shrinking due to the curve of her spine. You’re watching Margret bag up your herbs in brown paper when you feel a tap on your shoulder.

You spin around to see Sam, suited and booted, smiling down at you like he’d only seen you that morning and your face drops for a moment. Your lips part and your eyebrows quirk, stuck in a moment of genuine surprise until you notice the flash of rejection across his face. Quickly you remember yourself.

“Sorry, Sam. Hi, how-how are you? What are you doing here?” You wrap your arms around his middle in the semblance of a hug you might have given him as friends, but you pull back too quickly for it to be normal.

His smile is polite, “I’m good. We just got in, one of our old hunting buddies wanted some help with something weird in town.”

“In this town?” you fail to hide your surprise. You’d set up shop here a few weeks ago because of the lack of supernatural activities.

“It might be nothing,” he starts trying to reassure you like you’re scared, “Dan was just at this bar last night and some stuff went down so we said we’d come and check it out. I think Dean just wanted to get out to be honest.”

Of course. You’re only some two away from the bunker and you’d never thought to consider if there was a hunter in the bar. Not that it would have stopped you, but you would have skipped town by now.

You change the subject while you wonder how fast you could get out of dodge, “Dean’s here?”

There’s an attempt to mask the hope in your voice with a casual glance around him, but Sam sees straight through you. He thinks he’s so clever, “he misses you too. I mean we both do but Dean misses you.”

Sam can’t possibly know what he’s talking about. As well-meaning as your friend is he simply has no idea.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Sam. But um… I’m really sorry but I need to get going.” You turn back to Margret who is holding out a bag for you as you hand her some money with a rushed, “keep the change.” You could have given her ten dollars or a hundred, you don’t know, you just wanted to leave.

He catches you though, a hand on your shoulder when you try to get past him and concern seeping out of those bloody puppy dog eyes, “wait, hey. How are you doing? You know, with the mark.”

He mouths ‘mark’ like it’s a secret which already stokes the flames of your frustration. Not to mention him touching you is added fuel for the fire. So, there’s a little bite to your tone as you shake off his hold, “I’m fine. It’s fine, I’m dealing with it. Don’t worry about me.”

“What are you talking about? Of course, I’m worried about you, we all are. Cas too. Dean- he’s- we just want you to come home.”

You don’t mean to, but your face tightens, and you look up at Sam from under creased brows, “Forget about it ok. If I come home, I’ll do it on my own terms. Nothing to worry about, I have it handled.”

You’re away before he can catch you. You turn back once you’re on the sidewalk again, seeing him as he dials his phone and starts yammering into it.

It was pretty obvious who he was calling and whether Sam had worked out that you were the problem in town, or was just worried about you after the encounter, it was time to leave.

The rain wouldn’t have normally stopped you, but it was, in a word, torrential. If you didn’t know any better, having seen a few apocalypses at this point, you might think it was the end of days. You loved the rain normally. You just didn’t love driving in the rain, at night, on dimly lit highways and pitch-black backroads.

You’re packed and ready to go except for the ingredients you have out. If you’re trapped here until the morning the least you can do is keep trying.

The first spell, unfortunately, works. You manage to create a small box of nothingness. You only know it’s there by the way the light seems to shimmer at the edges. It’s a shape of nothingness, that it, until you put one hand into it.

The buzz of magic in your veins is cut off at your wrist like there’s a lead wall separating your arm and hand. You don’t ever remember a part of you feeling so empty. Even the years you’d spent limiting yourself in the bunker, magic had still always been there just not utilized. The sensation is odd, almost to the point that it doesn’t feel like your hand. You’re aware that you’re the one moving your fingers, but it feels like someone else. A phantom limb.

A shudder ripples through you as curiosity turns to discomfort and you pull your hand away. You’re quick to reverse the spell and thankful that you can move through the space again without experiencing that. For the first time, there’s a true sense of dread that somewhere in your future this may be your only option. Locking yourself away without powers. Barely imaging the sensation, no connection to the world around you like you’ve had all your life, makes you feel lost. You start to fear that you can’t fix this as neatly as you hoped.

Not for the first time your phone flashes and Dean’s name glows on the screen, however, it is the first time in five weeks that you answer. Fear has apparently weakened your resolve.

“Hello?”

“What room are you in Y/N?”

The sound of the horn from the Impala just about makes it to your room through the rain. You jump up from the floor as if it physically touched you.

He must have heard your gasp, but he repeats calmly, “what room?”

“Nine. First floor.”

The line goes dead, and you stare your phone utterly convinced it was a dream. Ready to write it off when the sound of knocking tells you otherwise.

It must take you hours to make it to the door, or it feels like hours. Pulling the thing open there’s Dean drenched from only walking the few feet from his car.

“You promised me you were coming home.” Dean’s normally stoic face looks on the verge of breaking into a thousand pieces.

“What?”

“Today. To Sam. You said if you come home.”

The fact that he’s still standing in the downpour has been lost to you both while you scrunch your face in confusion. “I didn’t technically promise.”

You don’t know why you’d said it. Of course, you wanted to go home. Everything you’ve ever said to Dean is a promise whether he knows it or not. And now he’s pressing his lips together to stop himself saying something that’s on the tip of his tongue.

Instead, he nods stiffly, “fine. Ok.”

His body turns to leave and you call after him, “you came here just for that? Why do you even care?”

It has never, in any of the days and nights spent thinking about him, during the hunts or the breakfasts or the road trips, never has it occurred to you that he might feel the same as you. It’s too impossible.

Until his rain-slicked lips are pressed against yours. He’s tentative and patient with his mouth against yours, kissing you enough to tell you everything but then pulling away just in case. However, his hands hold you still, fingers curled around your neck and thick, wet thumbs brushing your cheeks. You don’t have to kiss him but he’s not letting go.

You’re grateful for the moment to breathe with his forehead against yours. Breathing grounds you and you’ve never felt more like capable of floating away than you do right now. Dean just kissed you.

You’re still not entirely convinced this isn’t a dream and the only thing you can think to do is reach up and press your mouth to his again. Your tongue darts over his lips, a hand in his hair, nails scratching at his scalp. You’re getting wet now having been the one to close the gap this time, but a little rain never hurt anyone.

You’ve been home for a month when you’ve done it. It took a mash-up of several spells and endless experimenting. It took spells that went wrong and one that went really wrong. It took late nights sitting in the dungeon because it was the only place that felt safe and bouncing magic off the walls hoping something would stick. It took reading more spells books and grimoires than you knew existed.

But you did it. You found the right words in the right order. Spoken under the full moon and amongst the stars.

The mark is still there, of course, it will still corrupt you eventually. It will have you in the end and there’s no clue how long it’ll be before your eyes turn black.

All you know if that for the first time since sitting in that field and working a spell to save the man you love, you feel wholly yourself again. The murderous rage is under its own lock and key just like the darkness, because you continue to bear the curse. Except now you have some semblance of control.

Sam and Dean are on a hunt when you manage it. You hadn’t told them you were attempting it again, not after the last time, you didn’t want them to worry. So, the first thing you do is sleep. You sleep well into mid-morning the next day. And then Dean texts you that they’re on the way back and, well, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you tell them over text message.

You devise a plan. Because they’ve both been so patient with you. They hadn’t taken the bait when you’d frequently tried to agitate them. Dean had coached you through some of the worst rages, even when you’d said things to him so awful that he should have left you on the spot.

They deserve to come home to some good news.

You go out and pick up everyone’s favorites, plus a pie because you’re not stupid, and you lay everything out in the kitchen. You almost call Sam when you start getting impatient, but you settle for a text and he assures you they’re ten minutes out.

When your phone rings you don’t even think to look at the number. So wrapped up in your own excitement that you assume it’s one of them. Not thinking that they wouldn’t call you this close to home, they’d just show up.

“Hello?”

The line crackles for all of a second before a smooth voice you know trills at you, “Y/N Y/L/N? My, my it has taken me so long to get in contact with you.”

Your mouth flaps soundlessly for all of a second, “Toni?”

“Obviously. It’s good to hear your voice Y/N. Although I’m not sure the elders will agree when they find out you’re not as dead as they all believe.”

[huntertales]

Part Two: Let’s Get a Few Things Straight. (We Need to Talk About Kevin S08E01)

Episode Summary: Two years have passed since the unexpected death of the reader. Sam and Dean Winchester have continued without their hunting partner, believing that she is gone forever. However an accidental run in on a college campus makes the boys wonder if someone they had lost has come back from the dead, the reader. Dean quickly realizes it’s her. But there’s one problem, she has no idea who she really is. Will the boys be able to get her memories back and figure out what happened? Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Temp. OFC x Reader) Word Count: 6,059.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

Back in the day when you were still alive, Dean had this routine he used to do. This was when you were living at home with your days filled with endless research and the idea of hunting and saving the world as a passing thought of “What If?” before it disappeared for another day. Sam was at school and Dean was hunting with his dad, sometimes taking the odd job by himself if a case consumed John to the point where he wanted to work alone. Dean would always check up on you every few months to see how you were doing and if things were all right, but it wasn’t always announced.

He had this little habit of just following you around town, watching as you go on your daily routine and completing a list of errands. Get some groceries, stop at the post office, pick up a few new books of lore you found at the bookstore you didn’t have to learn about a new creature you thought you were never going to hunt. Every so often Dean would take you by surprise, pretending to come up for a visit when you were home from your running around town.

The smile on your face when you saw him always made him laugh, it was almost like a private joke with himself. More like the satisfaction of seeing how happy you got when you saw him. You had grown to enjoy living on your own. You kept yourself busy enough to pass the time, with mundane tasks one has to do as an adult, along with other things like reading about all sorts of different topics and watching a copious amount of TV to pass the time. And the research asked from the Winchesters was enough to fill your time in between when you were out of tasks for yourself. You might say you enjoyed living on your own, but it got lonely sometimes.

You admitted one night over dinner, tipsy from the wine you had been drinking as Dean nursed a beer, that you liked it when he was here. The house felt a little bit less scary. You still suffered from nightmares about the day you saw your mother’s dead corpse possessed by Azazel for the longest time. At times you wished that things were different and the brothers would be able to put their differences asides to be a family once in a while. You respected Sam’s urge to go to college and John’s unhealthy obsession with abandoning everyone to hunt down a monster.

You adapted to the Winchester’s ways of showing love and affection—Distance and communication every once in a while to make sure one another wasn’t dead.

You tried for so long to bite your tongue, that was, until you started hunting with the brothers and saw John and what kind of “bullcrap” he’d been putting you and the boys through. (Your words spoken in a fit of rage.) That's when the real Y/N started to come through. You were more tough, you spoke what was on your mind and you stood your ground on what you did and didn’t like. You were stubborn at times, but you meant well. You wanted nothing more than to hunt and do things that benefited the world from outside of your house. The more you spent on the road with the boys, the closer all of you became. You were the glue that kept the boys together. Dean desperately wanted you back more than ever to help fix things back together.

Despite the reunion with his brother that went more in a bitter direction than Dean pictured, the boys put asides their personal differences to work on the strange situation in front of them. Sam worked on finding any sort of paper trail made this Y/F/N Thompson a real person and any kind useful information they should know. Dean bruised himself most of the afternoon following this Y/F/N around from college to sitting in the college parking lot until about four when she emerged with an armful of papers tucked in one hand and the handle of a messenger bag draped over her shoulder. She seemed innocent enough as she waved at her fellow coworkers and smiled at what Dean presumed might have been a few of her students.

Y/F/N patted around her pockets for her cell phone she accidentally dropped after bumping into Dean, not realizing it was sitting in the man’s palm. He watched as she struggled for a minute or so until she gave up and got into her car, driving off to the first location. First stop was to pick up a dress in town and a few groceries, along with some other places. Seeing all of this made Dean feel for a moment like he was back into his old routine with you. But it was when Y/F/N went home when reality came crashing in like a freight train, making him realize the woman he had been following around for the past hour and a half wasn’t you. She was a complete stranger.  

Dean pulled into a rather modern suburban looking neighborhood, where every house looked the same and all the lawns were prestigious and green. It was the complete opposite of where you used to live. Ella, your mother, bought a house that was big and a little bit rundown, with a homeowner who wanted it off their hands. He remembered the times he used to be over when he was much younger, his father helping fix up things even if Ella protested such help. She wanted the place perfect for you. You thought it was home, the boys thought of it as their own as well when they were younger. It had been Sam’s first taste of normalcy. Ever since you had died they hadn’t even stepped foot back into that house, afraid of the memories it would bring back.

Dean called up Josh Carver on a whim to see if he could help figure out the situation that was going on. Josh thought along with everyone else that you were dead. However when Dean told him he saw someone exactly like you walking around and didn’t recognize him or Sam, Josh didn’t sound all that surprised. He gave the older Winchester a bit of information that helped shine some light on what might be really going on here. The night you were turned human you and Josh went to a local bar to let off some steam from the falling out you had with Cas. You admitted over a few drinks that you “wanted to be someone else for a change.”

“What I would do just to start over. Just for a little while. No knowledge of angels or demons...I want parents, I want to know what it feels like to be married. Hell, I want a mortgage.”

Dean had spent two grueling long years trying to come to terms with the fact that you were dead for good, but he could never lose hope, always trying to find some sort of way to bring you back. And then there was the constant guilt for thinking that all of this was his fault, if he had done something different maybe things would have changed the outcome. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t. There was only so much he could do. Dean hoped that this woman he had been watching all afternoon was the real Y/N. He wondered what he would have to do in order to get you to remember him.

What if that wasn’t a possibility? What if Cas had wiped your memory completely like he did to Lisa and Ben? Talk about opening up an old wound from the thought. Dean chose to make the Braden family forget about himself and the supernatural for their own protection. Now he wondered out of fear the angel, who wasn’t in his right mind at the time, had taken the liberty to do the same with you as well? Maybe the body that the boys and Bobby watched burned was the one your demon side had been using. And the real you was still out there, thinking she was someone else. And there was no way to change what Cas did.

It was sort of frustrating not having his two best friends here to help him with the situation. Dean felt another wave of guilt when he remembered Cas was still in Purgatory, and here he was getting angry about the fact that he wanted to see the angel and ask him a question about what he did two years to you. It was the Winchesters’ problem and they were going to have to deal with it, along with Kevin, who remained in the back of Dean’s mind. What the older Winchester was focused on right now was Y/F/N and figuring out who she was.

Dean focused his attention back to the woman and watched as she pulled into a fancy looking house and stepped out of the car. She was about ready to unload the thing she picked up and head inside, only he noticed someone come up from behind her, taking Y/F/N by surprise when the stranger wrapped his arms around her waist. Dean leaned forward in his seat slightly in caution, only it turned out to be some sort of “cute” thing couples do when he saw her quickly turn around to see a man that made her break out into a grin. You used to smile at Dean like that. And now you were doing it to someone else. Dean swallowed slightly, trying his hardest to stop himself from doing something he would ultimately regret.

The older Winchester watched as you wrapped your arms around a man he’d seen before in your social media pictures and others you had saved on your phone. Facebook said that you were married to this douche looking guy, Dean remembered his name was James. It hurt as he watched you lean forward and give a kiss to the man that wasn’t him. He wondered if this was how you felt around Lisa when you came back from the dead. This constant urge screaming in your head to jump up to your feet and tell Dean that Lisa was all wrong for him, it was you that knew him better than he knew himself. You were the only one for him. But you couldn’t. So you had to fight back your feelings. He didn’t know how you did it for that year.

Dean’s attention to the couple he was stalking was turned away for a moment when he heard his own phone going off. He answered the phone when he saw it was his brother, but his attention never left Y/F/N or that guy, his lips turning into a frown when he saw his grubby hands touching her body. She smiled when he said something and headed into the house with the belongings and disappeared from Dean's sight.

“So I did some digging and found some interesting stuff. Turns out there is in fact a real Y/F/N Thompson. Found her birth certificate, social security and driver’s license.” Sam said. “She’s been married to a James Thompson for the past six years. Only child of Louise and John Daily. Straight A student from middle school until high school, played soccer for most of her life and went to college at University of Michigan. She’s also a professor at the same college Channing goes to, which explains why we bumped into her there.”

Dean felt his stomach sink when he realized that you might be living a very real life and didn't have a clue about who you were anymore. "Great. You think Cas did a little too good of a job on erasing Y/N's brain and changed her completely?”

“You didn't let me finish. Here comes the weird part.” Sam said. His brother could almost picture the smile on his face from what his hacking abilities could dig up. “Y/F/N Thompson was in a car accident three months before Y/N died. She was hit on by a drunk driver. Unfortunately she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, ending up going straight through the windshield and slipped into a coma. Doctors doubted she was ever going to wake up. But, low and behold, three months later, she wakes up with no memory of the accident or injuries. Louise, her mother, claimed ‘it was a miracle from God.’”

“Let me guess, family is a church going and God fearing family.” Dean muttered. Sam scoffed, giving his brother his answer. He looked over to the window when he saw a figure pass the window before vanishing from his sight again. “When did this Y/F/N wake up?”

“3:15 A.M.”

“Wait, isn’t that when—“

“Y/N was pronounced dead? Yeah. And here comes the

weird part. All of Y/F/N’s social media was created after she woke up from the coma. The only pictures I can find on the internet look like Y/N. But I hacked into the DMV and police database to see crime scene photos of the real Y/F/N. I’ll send you a few.”

Dean took his phone away from his ear and pulled up the photos his brother had send them to give them a quick look over. He saw a woman with a barely recognizable face lying on a hospital gurney with nurses and doctors surrounding her. But he could tell straight away this wasn’t you. It was the complete opposite of you in fact—from the skin color, hair, body shape. He felt a little bit more relieved as he continued the conversation with the younger Winchester.

"Okay, so let's say Y/N's really been alive this whole time pretending to be this Y/F/N. It's an interesting theory, but we've got no way of knowing if she remembers herself." Dean said. He felt a little bit of relief when he realized that you were really alive and well after all of this time. Life always had a funny way of working. But an obstacle was in the boys' way. "I mean, we can't just knock on her front door and ask if she remembers us."

"Yeah. But I found something that might work that could get us closer to her. I’m thinking if we do this, maybe we’ll jog her memory.” Sam said. “It’s a long shot, I know, but we don’t have a lot of options left here.”  

+ + +

The next morning you were up earlier than you anticipated, and alone again. You stopped being surprised at the odd hours your husband worked from his new promotion he got a few months ago. Bad guys don’t put themselves away, and they sure don’t stop when you were trying to at least have one decent date night. You had enough things to do today from stopping back at your office to meet a student to discuss their failing grade and finish up the lecture you had planned for Tuesday’s class. And you couldn’t forget your lunch date with Melody, along with swinging by your parents house quickly to discuss your father’s surprise sixth birthday party. On top of it you still needed to find your freaking phone.

You got to work on getting ready for the day and heading to your office before ten so you had enough time to swing by your local coffee shop to get a drink to wake you up. Your student was probably going to be late as per usual. They missed three of your classes already this month and they barely handed one assignment in that didn't seem like a twelve year old wrote it. You got to your office a little after you planned and settled yourself down, not the least bit surprised to see you were alone.

You went to your desk and spent the first twenty minutes answering emails from coworkers and a few of your students. You reached for your coffee as you read through an email from a student of yours, not noticing there were two strangers lingering in the doorway. It took a soft knock on the door for you to break your concentration away from your laptop screen to see a set of two men dressed in suits, their focus on you. You gave them a small smile as you pushed yourself up to your feet, wondering if they might be lost.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” You asked them.

“Are you Y/F/N Thompson?” The shorter one of the two men spoke up first, bringing your gaze over to him. You nodded your head to answer his question. You watched as they pulled out what appeared to be badges from the inside pocket of their suit jackets, making you realize they were from the FBI. "I'm Agent Dean Rorak. And this is my partner, Agent Sam Freedman. We’re investigating the disappearance of Edna White. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“Of course. Have a seat, agents. I was supposed to be meeting a student of mine, but I doubt he's going to be showing up." You gave the both of them a smile as you peered out the door slightly to see there was nobody there. You ushered the men to sit as you took your seat back to your desk, shutting your laptop and moved around some papers so it appeared that you had things somewhat together. “This is a little weird, I have to admit. I'm a little bit surprised the FBI is interested in something like this. My husband—he’s a detective—said she would come back eventually.”

"Well, we take the matters of missing people very important." Agent Rorak said. You gave him a smile as you looked in his direction when he spoke, relief crossing your expression. His partner seemed the remark was a bit out of line, he cleared his throat and gave the man a bit of a dirty look, which went unnoticed by the both of you.

"So, you're Edna White's next door neighbor, is that correct?" Agent Freedman spoke up, bringing your attention over to him. You nodded your head to answer the man’s question. “And you were the one who filed her missing?”

“She's only been gone for a few days, but I don't know where she would have left without telling anyone. Her husband died a few months after my husband and I moved into the neighborhood. She has no kids. She's seventy years old with a heart condition." You said, your voice dropping into a serious tone to show your concern. "I’m just worried about her.”

“Did she seem out of character leading up to her disappearance?" Agent Freedman asked. You gave him a bit of a confused look, wondering what he meant by that. "Was she acting more hostile or violent? Like she wanted to hurt someone?"

"No. Nothing like that. But...she was acting a bit paranoid the very last time I saw her. She was acting like someone was following her.” You said, trying to remember the best of your ability. "My husband and I are quite fond of her, she’s practically family. We went to check up on her to see if she was okay, but when we did…she freaked out when she saw my husband. And on top of it she wouldn’t believe how long it had been since we saw her last.”

“Wait,” Agent Rorak stopped you, finding a piece of your story a bit interesting. “What do you mean about her being afraid of your husband?”

“Edna’s getting older. She forgets things, and I can’t tell you how many times she locked herself out of her house. Sometimes she even thinks James is her dead husband. But it wasn’t like that.” You explained the situation a bit better for them to understand. You were about to continue on to the part of the story about what happened that got you nervous, but when you thought back to the memory, your lips stretched into a faint smile from how ridiculous it sounded. “You’re gonna laugh at what I’m going to say. It’s sort of...weird.”

“Trust us,” Agent Rorak reassured you with a slight smile as he leaned forward in his seat. “We know weird.”

“Well, uh...she claimed my husband was taken over by a ‘cloud of black smoke.’ She said she saw it the day she went missing—the day she thought it still was when we checked up on her. She was shaking.” You told them the story, waiting for one of them to crack up laughing like how James and his coworkers did. However the agents sat there with a serious expression, they seemed even a little bit disturbed by what you saw. “She kept saying that he needed to get away from her, that I needed to run. He was a ‘monster with horrendous black eyes.’ Weird, right?”

“Had Edna expressed these kind of claims before she disappeared?” Agent Freedman asked you. You thought about it for a second before shaking your head. “Has she complained about the smell of rotten eggs? Flickering lights?” “She didn’t complain, but her placed did reek of it when I went to go check up on her the day I filed the report. I thought maybe it was a gas leak and she...you know, didn’t make it out. But she wasn’t there. And all of her appliances were working just fine.” You answered the man’s questions honestly, however you felt a little silly, unsure of how this could help. “And as for as the lights go, it’s been happening for the past week or so. The entire neighborhood has been going weird. We think it’s an electric problem. They’re building a new development not far from where we live.” You noticed that the two agents seemed a little uneasy from the information that you gave them, leading you to believe they must have thought you were crazy as Edna. Agent Freedman gave you a smile as he pushed himself up to his feet, you and his partner followed. “All right. I believe that should be all. You’ve been a big help, Y/F/N. I believe that should be all.” Agent Rorak pulled out something from his pocket, you noticed it was a business card with his number printed on the front. He handed it over, “If you happen to see or hear anything—even remember anything, don’t hesitate to contact us.”

“Of course.” You agreed, examining the card for a moment before looking back up at him to give the man a reassuring smile. “Have a good day, agents. And thanks again for this. It really means a lot you’re taking this seriously.” The two men returned the gesture before they showed themselves out to the hallway so you could get back to work. Dean was just outside when he saw someone come straight out from the corner of his eye, heading straight for your office. He stepped back in time when he noticed the student you were supposed to have met fifteen minutes ago came sprinting into the room, apologizing left and right about being late. You let out a sigh and showed your discontent with his tardiness. Never less, you gestured a hand for him to sit down where Dean was just a moment ago, the both of you getting back to your business of why you were here this morning.   “Sounds like demon possession to me.” Sam said, making sure to keep his voice no higher than a whisper as he discussed the matters with his brother. “You think Crowley found out Y/N’s alive somehow? Decided to have one of his goons jump the husband just to make sure?” “Old lady sees him get possessed, freaks out and doesn’t show her face for a while. Y/N, being the good samaritan she is, checks up on her to see if she’s all right. But when she opens her mouth, demon gets afraid Y/N might start remembering so he kills Edna to keep her quiet.” Dean tried guessing what was going on here from the story you told him and the younger Winchester. He peered inside the office to see you were deep in conversation with your student, having no clue what was going on. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

+ + +

It was the late afternoon when you finally got home from your somewhat successful meeting with your student and lunch with your friend that turned into a shopping trip to spend money of things you really didn't need. You made your way into the house and dropped the bags by the front door, deciding you would take care of them in a little while. You headed into the kitchen to grab yourself something to drink. As you made your way into the next room, you smiled when you saw a familiar face sitting at the island, drinking what smelled to be coffee.

“Hi, honey.” You greeted the man you thought you knew so well and loved, the smile across your lips grew wider as you reminisced about the night you spent with him what was hours ago. You leaned down to give him a quick peck on the lips before you went to the countertop where you smelled the freshly brewed coffee calling your name. “How was your day?” “It was just terrific.” James said. You looked over your shoulder as you gave him another smile from his answer. The man brought the coffee cup to his lips to take another drink as he watched you turn your back to him, missing the smug smirk that began to spread across his lips. You asked him what put him in such a good mood. "It's work related. You see, my boss has been bugging everyone nonstop about this...well, let’s call her a criminal who has friends in a lot of high places who tried to hide her. Real nasty bitch. And I finally found you.” You found yourself stopping midway through pouring yourself a cup of coffee when you heard a series of words coming out of your husband’s mouth that sounded awfully unlike him. You slowly looked over your shoulder to see your husband was standing on his feet now with that smug smirk on his lips that seemed permanently frozen on his face. When you looked into his eyes, you felt the grip around the coffee pot slowly slip out, the glass crashed to the countertop, breaking into tiny pieces when you saw those...eyes. The ones Edna had warned you about.

In the house next to yours, the Winchesters made true to their promise of not straying too far from where you went, however they decided to check out Edna White's house while they were, curious to see if what Dean suspected what was going on was true. The boys wandered through the home, searching for some sort of clue that you might have missed while you searched. While the house didn't show any signs of a break in or a struggle, not even a drop of blood, it didn't mean that one took place. Demons might be bastards, but they knew how to be tricky.

Dean searched in a few closets and peered down to the basement to see if he might be able to find anything. He headed into the kitchen and poked his nose around while his brother took the living room. When the older Winchester noticed a shut door he hadn't seen before, he cautiously stepped forward to open up the door, and when he did, the very thing that he had been looking for appeared, dropping at his feet. Dean let out a quiet sigh when he saw the face of one Edna White, throat slashed from ear to ear, a fine yellow powder scattered across the pantry floor.

"Sam," Dean called out his brother's name. "I found her.”

The younger Winchester stepped back into the kitchen to see the sight that he had been silently dreading to see, an old woman who had been viciously killed, probably for a while from the awful decomposing smell coming off from her body. Seeing her dead body meant one thing, what she had tried to warn you about might have been true. Sam took his gaze away from the dead body for a moment when he heard something echo in the air, it sounded like a scream. He furrowed his brow as he looked out the kitchen window. Sam noticed right away he had a perfect view of the house next door, which was yours. “James, don’t scare me like that!” You screamed on the top of your lungs, your petrified expression changed quickly into anger when you felt your skin starting to burn from the coffee you accidentally spilled on yourself at what you saw. The liquid wasn’t scolding hot, but it was still hot enough to make your skin burn, quickly making you rush to turn on the faucet sink. “God, I think I burnt myself. You’re just an ass, sometimes. You know that?” You were about to put your burnt hand underneath the cold water, but before you could, you felt someone roughly grab a hold of the tender skin, squeezing it while they turned you around. James yanked you so you were looking at him, you noticed right away that his eyes were back to normal. "Do you know how long we all thought you were dead, Y/N?” “James, let go of me.” You ordered at your husband, unsure of what was going on with him. It was like a switch in him changed. You’ve never seen him like this before. Sometimes he pulled pranks to scare you for fun, but nothing like this. All you knew was that your hand was throbbing now in pain from how hard he was holding you. You tried to get yourself free, but he only squeezed the flesh harder. “You’re hurting me.” "This hurts?" James asked you in a mockingly sympathetic tone. He roughly squeezed the burned flesh, making you let out a noise that made his smile grow wider. “Oh, baby. This is foreplay compared to what Crowley has got in store for you after what you did, Y/N.”

“Who the hell is Y/N?” You questioned the man in a shaky voice. “James, seriously. “What has gotten into you?”

"Wow. Castiel really did a good job of scrambling up your brain, didn't he? You don't recognize my kind, baby?" James wasn't making any sense here. You furrowed your brow in confusion as the throbbing pain in your wrist started to slowly weaken. When you saw your husband blink, you found yourself letting out a terrified gasp, somehow his eyes transformed into the same pair of inky black eyes that made a shiver run down your spine. "I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Hey, you ugly ass son of a bitch.” A male voice came from behind you, taking the both of you by surprise. Suddenly you felt the grip around your arm disappear, only to be replaced when James grabbed a knife from the sink, the sharpest one you owned, and pressed the blade against the hollow point of your throat.  You felt James’ arm wrap around your body, pinning your arms to your side so you wouldn’t fight back. You were too afraid to breathe from how close the knife was. Your eyes wandered over to a familiar face you saw just earlier this morning standing in your kitchen, a loaded gun pointing at your husband. It was Agent Rorak. At least, that’s who you thought it was.

“Dean Winchester. Well, what a surprise!” James greeted the hunter with a smile as he blinked, showing off the set of malevolent eyes the man knew that belonged to only a demon. “How the hell are you, man?” “Pissed off.” Dean replied. “If you know what’s good for you, I’d suggest you let her go.” The demon pretended to think about the request for a moment before he responded, “Nah. Crowley has been looking for her for a while. If I let you and Y/N run off into the sunset, my ass is on the line. And you don’t want to be on his bad side.” "Do I look like I give a rat’s ass what your piss poor king wants? I just spent a year slaughtering my way through monsters. Do you really want to me on my bad side? I'll say it again." Dean narrowed his eyes on the demon as he repeated his order one more time for him to understand. “Let her go, you son of a bitch.”

“You know, you got yourself a fine girl, Dean. Too bad she doesn’t remember you. Hell, she doesn’t remember anything. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” The man you thought to be your husband suddenly felt like a stranger. You winched when you felt him lean his head down so his lips were hovering over your ear, making you want to do just about anything to get away from him. Dean could feel his grip around the gun tighten in anger. “Took us a while to find her. But I must say, the hunt was worth the wait. I could have dragged her to Crowley the moment I jumped this meat suit, but then I thought, 'Nah. Let's stick around. See how good she's in the sack.’“ “Wow.” Dean pretended not to be fazed by what the demon said. “Do you kiss your mother with that filthy mouth of yours?” “No. But I’d gladly kiss your mother’s with it.” The demon replied back with a smik. “Speak of family, where’s that brother of yours? I know if there’s one Winchester, there’s always another.”

The demon should have been careful about what he asked for. You felt the blade press closer against your neck from what unfolded next, but it barely grazed the skin before it disappeared, along with James’ hold around your body. You stumbled forwards when you suddenly heard the sound of something heavy hit the ground. Looking down to your feet, you noticed it was your husband, standing over his body was the agent you had seen earlier as well. You noticed that he was holding a knife, too. But it looked like any other one that you had ever seen before.

You felt frozen in your spot for a moment as your brain tried to comprehend what the hell just happened. Your wrist was throbbing in pain from the burn that was neglected as you realized your husband flipped a switch. He kept calling you, Y/N...he tried to kill you. You inhaled a deep breath as you slowly lifted your good hand to your throat where James had pressed a knife against. One second his eyes were black, and then they were normal. And then there was talk of demons. You furrowed you brow as you continued to stare at the dead body bleeding out on your kitchen floor. But you slowly looked away when you heard someone speak up.

"It's gonna be okay." You looked up to see that it was Dean who was speaking words of comfort as he lowered his gun. But you couldn't hear what he was saying. The only thing you could hear was your heartbeat pounding loudly in your ears. "We're not here to hurt you..."

You weren't sure who the two men were standing in your kitchen, you didn't know what the hell was going on anymore. All you knew that you suddenly felt yourself growing lightheaded. You moved one foot forward to try and take a seat somewhere before you could pass out. The logical side of you was trying to tell you to run, but another part of you felt safe. You only managed to move a single step before you felt your knees give out. You felt your vision grow black before you fell into the arms of Dean, not realizing what other mess you were about to wake up to.

[Next Part]

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[lifesizehysteria]

United We Stand | An AdamsFoster Fic

Prompt: (Day 30) “If you insist”

A/N: For day three of the #elitewritingchallenge. I decided to do the prompts in the order they inspire me rather than in numerical order since I’m not staying on schedule anyway. 

A/N: This is the haunted house story that precedes the flashback in The Night Before Christmas. It was cut from that fic because it didn’t feel necessary but I’d written it and wanted to share it. So I held onto it until I was able to tweak it into a full, standalone one-shot. This prompt seemed like the perfect opportunity to share it.

“Look, look!” Brandon pulled at Stef’s hand and pointed through the rows of white tents and food carts, toward a haunted house on the other side of Fall Fest. “Can we go? Please, please, please?” Brandon danced before his moms, his hands folded under his chin as he begged.

“Maybe not today, B,” Lena said.

Brandon’s face was already forming a pout. “Why not?”

Lena looked down at the two children who stood between her and her partner. She couldn’t see how this could possibly be a good idea. They’d only been fostering the twins for a few months but the alarm bells sounding in her head made her very wary about how either of them would handle a haunted house. A shared glance over their heads told Lena that she and Stef were on the same page.

Stef turned to Brandon. “I think maybe it’s a little too scary, bub.”

“I’m not scared!” their son declared and puffed out his chest.

“You’re not the only one here,” Stef reminded him. Brandon was still adjusting to having siblings and he wasn’t always good about considering their feelings.

“Well, if they’re scared, can’t you just take me by myself?” he complained with a scowl.

“Brandon,” Stef warned.

“I wanna go too! I’m not scared!” Jesús piped up, breaking from beside his sister to join Brandon.

Lena looked at Stef again, trying desperately to communicate through near imperceptible facial expressions and telepathy.

Finally, Stef shrugged. “I guess, if you both really want to go, I can take the two of you through the haunted house.” Lena cleared her throat and looked to the ground to stifle her shock. Clearly the telepathy had not worked. “Mariana and Mama can meet us at the end.” When Stef looked to Lena for agreement on the compromise, there was a No on the tip of her tongue but Mariana broke in first.

“If they’re going, I’m going, too,” her little voice chirped.

Lena touched the girl’s shoulder. “You don’t have to go, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

When Mariana looked up at her, determination flashed in her eyes. “I want to. I’m not scared.” With her chin jutting in the air, she marched over to take up rank next to Jesús.

The three stood in a line of protest — defiant and unmoving, demanding their right to be scared out of their minds.

Stef threw her arms out to the side in surrender. “Okay. If you insist.”

The boys whooped with delight while Mariana’s face paled.

“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Brandon slugged Jesús on the arm to give himself a head start as the boys took off in the direction of the attraction.

“Hey, wait for me!” Mariana called and ran after them, her fear forgotten at the threat of being the rotten egg.

Stef looked helplessly at Lena.

“I guess we’re all going,” she said with far more amusement than Lena felt. When they looked back in the direction of the kids, they were already alarmingly far ahead. “Hey, hey! Slow down! No running!” Stef called out a warning as she followed them in a brisk jog, leaving Lena standing alone.

“I guess we are,” Lena said to herself before trudging in the direction of her family who were all barreling toward this terrible, terrible idea.

By the time Lena caught up to her brood, Stef had managed to wrangle the boys as much as one can contain a whirlwind. At least they were no more than a few feet in front with Mariana lagging behind them and Stef bringing up the rear. The boys were trying to one-up each other with the possible horrors that awaited them in the haunted house. They had quite the imaginations and as each new suggestion was more gory and detailed than the last, the distance between them and Mariana continued to grow.

“I can’t believe you agreed to this,” Lena hissed as she came up beside her partner. She walked with her arms crossed tight over her stomach.

“I’m sorry, love,” Stef whispered back. “How was I supposed to know she’d want to go?”

“She doesn’t want to go,” Lena scoffed, shaking her head, wondering how Stef couldn’t see that. “She just doesn’t want to be left out. And even if she did, I don’t think a haunted house is a good idea.”

“Okay, sure, maybe it’s not ideal but I don’t think it’ll be that bad. We went with Brandon last year.”

“Yeah, Stef, and he ended up sleeping in our bed for a week.”

“Sure but look at him now.” She gestured toward him as he pretended to projectile vomit while Jesús was doubled over in a full belly laugh. “It obviously didn’t traumatize him or he wouldn’t be dying to go this year.”

“Brandon has had a very different life than Mariana and Jesús have,” Lena stated, her tone bordering on condescension. They may not have been fostering the twins for very long but Lena already knew that Mariana, though courageous in the truest sense of the word, was a highly sensitive soul. She was such a clever girl with a keen imagination and some very deep-seated insecurities that her short yet troubled life had given her. That coupled with an environment meant to elicit fear was a recipe for disaster. And Lena wasn’t too eager for Jesús to go through, either.

“I am aware of that, Lena,” Stef replied, her words terse in defense.

Lena softened. “I just don’t want to put them through anything that’s…” She paused, searching for the right words. “They’ve finally started to feel safe with us and I don’t want to undo that.”

“Neither do I. But sweetheart, as much as we want to, we can’t protect them from the whole world and trying to is just going to end up hurting them more in the end. We have choose when to protect them and when to give them the space and the agency to make mistakes. If that means we deal with a week of nightmares, then we’ll deal with it.”

Lena exhaled and let her arms fall to her sides. She knew that if their roles had been reversed, she would have told Stef exactly the same thing.

“So you do listen to me sometimes,” she teased, moving closer to slide her hand into Stef’s, their fingers lacing together.

Stef gave a nonchalant shrug, a smug glint in her eye. “Sometimes.”

Lena shook her head, her face alight with laughter. “Do I sound that pretentious when I say things like that?”

“I plead the fifth.” Stef winked and nudged Lena with her shoulder.

The two women closed the distance between themselves and the kids as they approached the line for the attraction. The boys were still going with the graphic predictions as they queued up to wait their turn.

“Boys.” The single word was a stern warning from Stef.

Jesús dropped the conversation without question, hanging his head a little, but Brandon looked at her, affronted. “What, Mom?”

“That’s enough.” Noting her seriousness, he huffed but relented as he turned away.

“There are lots of other kids around and we don’t want to scare them,” Lena clarified. After the explanation, Jesús’ head perked up. He had a real tendency to lay blame on himself for any and all minor behavioral corrections. Since noticing, Lena had been making a conscious effort to offer more explanations along with corrections and so far she had noticed quite an improvement.

The line moved at a steady pace. Groups were being let in about three minutes apart. The three children were involved in a game of I Spy, which kept them occupied as they waited. Lena and Stef stood behind them, touching at the shoulders and sharing snippets of conversation between lengths of easy silence. As they neared the front of the line, the sounds from inside the house began to reach them. Squeals and shrieks drifted out of the makeshift building and with each one, Mariana looked more apprehensive. By the time the family before them entered, the little girl’s back was rigid and her hands were balled in tight fists by her sides.

Lena nudged Stef with her elbow, nodding her head in the direction of their foster daughter.

“You alright, sweet pea?” Stef asked. Mariana jumped at the question but turned her head over her shoulder and nodded, her black ponytail rippling down her back.

In the presence of Mariana’s trepidation, the family grew quiet during the rest of their wait. Lena chewed the inside of her lip. She wanted so badly to yank her out of the line for her own sake. As if she could read Lena’s mind, Stef’s hand slipped into hers, affording her strength with a gentle squeeze. If only that telepathy had been working earlier; they wouldn’t be here now.

“Okay, folks. You’re up.” The gentleman working the attraction beckoned them forward. He rattled off his script like a seasoned flight attendant. “Remember, keep your hands to yourselves; no touching, no running, and certainly no hitting. You’re here for thrills, they’re here for bills; the monsters are people, too. Have fun and happy screams.” He waved them toward the entrance and the two women held their breath, waiting for Mariana to move. She didn’t.

“C’mon, Mariana,” Brandon urged. He was inching closer to the entrance, impatient after waiting in line so long.

Mariana’s feet had taken root in the grass.

When the host looked expectantly from her to the two women, Lena offered an apologetic wave. “Sorry. Just give us a minute.”

“Can I let the next group go?”

“Of course. Thank you,” she said as she knelt down on one knee beside Mariana. “It’s okay if you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.” Her quiet voice trembled, giving herself away.

“You know, I get scared too, sometimes. Especially when I don’t know what to expect.”

The girl’s brown eyes were bright with worry and curiosity as she looked at Lena. “You do?”

“Yeah. All the time.”

Mariana fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “Are you scared now?”

Lena nodded. “A little bit.” Of course, it wasn’t the haunted house itself that scared her but she kept that detail to herself. “Are you?”

The girl’s eyes dropped to the ground and she hesitated before nodding her head.

Jesús took his sister’s hand before Lena had a chance to speak again.

“If you’re scared, we don’t have to go.” His disappointment was obvious when he looked with longing at the dark entrance in front of them but his jaw was set with certainty. Lena felt a tightness around her heart at the touching gesture. He was alway so willing to sacrifice for his sister.

“Yeah, it’s okay if you don’t wanna go.” Brandon stepped in front of them, facing Mariana with his hands on his hips. “It’s just a lame haunted house. It’s probably not even good.” Pride swelled in Lena’s chest at her son’s sudden change of heart and she shared a quick look with Stef who seemed just as surprised as Lena. Maybe he really was getting a hang of this big brother thing.

Mariana looked between Brandon and her brother, her mouth pursing as she considered his offer. Finally, she shook her head.

“I wanna go. I won’t be scared if you guys are with me,” she said and reached for Brandon’s hand. United, the three turned toward the haunted house, their hands linked while they waited for their turn. Lena shared a look of love and pride with Stef as she returned to her side. She took her hand and squeezed it gently, grateful despite herself that Stef had agreed to this terrible, wonderful idea.