#lost in the void forever. gone. swallowed up by a black hole. HOW.

[autumnapricot]

No pressure, just to manage my expectations - is there a possible early update this week or Monday? Either way is totally fine! Can’t wait to see these boys home together 😍

hi anon!

how sweet, thank you! :)

omg i will try my absolute best but i definitely can‘t promise an earlier update :(

i want to upload the epilogue (which will be chapter 17 that i haven‘t marked on ao3 yet because i don‘t want to lead readers on to believe that it‘ll be an actual chapter) like a day or two after chapter 16….but guess who accidentally deleted the epilogue without a trace of getting it back? yeah this bitch right here 👹 so i‘m trying to rewrite it from memory and edit chapter 16 as soon as i can!

🩵🩵🫶🏼

[damnaation]

Light in the Deep

A little lost mer ends up face to face with a deep water leviathan.

Soft, safe, unwilling-to-willing vore, mer pred and prey.

She was lost. Not that she knew where she was supposed to be, actually, but surely it wasn't here, in the middle of the open ocean? Some part of her brain was setting off alarm bells at that, but trying to remember why was like trying to catch bubbles with her fingers.

Well, they weren't going to figure it out just floating there. Maybe there was someone nearby they could ask for help? Though they couldn't see any signs of anyone else, just a steep slope riddled with holes—a dead volcano, some part of their brain noted. Full of lava tubes.

“Hello?” She chirped, ear fins perked to listen for any response, though after a few seconds she deflated slightly. Nothing.

Hanging around out in the open wouldn't help anything, though. With a sharp flick of her tail she darted towards one of the holes, peering in curiously—it seemed empty, without even any signs of passage. The next several entrances were the same, dark and empty voids leading into the mountain.

The further down they got, the darker it became, growing dim like a storm was rolling in. They paused, glancing up—they'd gone deeper than they'd expected, and still no sign of anyone.

The next opening in the mountainside was much larger, a gaping black chasm many times her own length. It sent a shiver down her spine, though she couldn't say why—it looked almost like a mouth, yawning wide and ready to swallow her up.

A sudden shift in the water made them tense, fins flared in a subconscious attempt to make them look bigger, but otherwise unmoving for the moment.

“Hello there, little minnow.” A low voice rumbled from behind them, chuckling slightly. The light had changed, an odd greenish glow emanating from something they couldn't see quite yet.

Turning with a flick of her tail, her eyes widened as she came face to face with a much, much larger mer, speckled with bioluminescent markings.

Leviathan.

He grinned at her, revealing long, needle-sharp teeth that made her blood run cold. A disturbance in the water alerted her to some movement, and that was the final straw.

They bolted, darting away with a sharp flick of their tail. It would be impossible to outswim him, but if they could get out of reach-

Diving into one of the lava tubes, they followed it to a dead end—the path forward blocked by an old collapse, but at least there was a bend blocking them from view. And the tunnel was surely too small for him to be able to grab them.

The sound of rock crumbling under pressure made her yelp, pressing against the rubble and trying to make herself as small as possible. She was too brightly colored to blend in, pink scales and orange fins a distinct beacon in the dim grey tunnel, but there wasn't anywhere else for her to go.

“Oh, come now, little minnow. That's not any way to greet a stranger.” The leviathan hummed, though his pleasant tone was undercut by yet more cracking and shuffling of stone.

Leviathans were dangerous. They remembered that much, or at least they could figure it out. Whatever he had in mind for them would no doubt end badly.

A frightened noise escaped them as they cowered, fins trembling and pressed close to their body. The cacophony from whatever he'd been doing had stopped, at least, but there was no way he'd left. Not that quickly.

She shuddered, pulling her tail close and wrapping her arms around it nervously. How long could she wait? Not forever, surely—eventually she would need to eat, after all. But who knows how long he would wait, lurking outside for her to come out so he could… do whatever leviathans did with shallow dwellers. Certainly nothing good, that's for sure.

Maybe they could shift the rocks blocking their path enough to escape? But they could also trigger a bigger collapse—best not to risk it. With a soft, anxious click they settled in to wait, nervous and trembling.

She wasn't sure how long it'd been by the time she saw the light, bright and comforting like the sun. Uncurling from her spot, she approached cautiously with a flick of her tail, but the light stayed out of reach. Still bright, with a slight greenish tint, but she couldn't tell what it was. It hovered near the entrance to her little hideaway, gleaming just barely out of reach.

They hesitated, feeling a brief flash of concern at the thought of leaving their refuge… but surely it would be alright? Leviathans didn't like bright light, after all. They were deep-dwellers, living in the constant night of the darkest ocean depths. Surely he was gone.

With a little chirp they slowly made their way out of the lava tube, catching a glimpse of claw marks gouged into the rocks as they swam past. A brief shudder ran through them, but they focused on the light again. It seemed a little closer, like they could just reach out and touch it-

The light pulled back, dancing out of her reach as she tried to grab it. Letting out a frustrated noise, she darted forward, reaching out with her hand to touch the light. Her fingers just barely brushed against it when it suddenly jerked back and went out.

A low chuckle surrounded them as they blinked, eyes unadjusted to the dim surroundings after staring at the bright light. They tensed at the feeling of water being disturbed, but couldn't see where it was coming from just yet.

“Well, well, well. Aren't you a cute little thing with a head all full of seaweed.”

She froze, hardly even daring to breathe at the sound of the leviathan’s low call. Stupid—of course he hadn't been gone. And she'd all but swum right into his jaws. Her eyes finally adjusted enough to see his face, looming over her ominously with a threatening smirk and-

And a lure. Poking out of his head of dark curls, pulsing a soft greenish light like the rest of his bioluminescent spots.

“It's awfully dangerous for little minnows like you out in the open. You're lucky I showed up—you could've ended up as a snack for someone far crueller than I.” He murmured, hands curling loosely around them and pulling them closer to his face. They let out a distressed click, pressing back against his palms but unable to escape—he could catch them easily no matter how they tried to flee. Shaking, fins pressed flat in fear, they stared up at him with wide eyes. “Oh, don't be like that, little one. I'll keep you perfectly safe, don't you worry your pretty little head about it.”

“Y-you don't have to- I'll b-be fine-” She stammered, voice high pitched and shaky from fear. The leviathan chuckled, shifting his hands and extending a clawed finger to trace along one of her fins—despite the distressed trill and flinch away his action prompted from her.

“But you're such a cute little thing. Really, I could just eat you up.” He chuckled, running his finger along their body until he tipped their chin up, the point of his claw just barely touching their skin. They shuddered, gills flaring anxiously—eat them? Surely it was just an exaggeration-

But after a moment he grinned, revealing needle-like teeth that made their blood run cold. “In fact…”

She yelped as his hand suddenly closed around her, holding her up closer to his face as she squirmed. Damn it- she should have stayed put, not gotten distracted by that damn light. “No- I- let me go!”

His hold was tight enough she couldn't wiggle free, arms pinned by his fingers and tail fin just barely poking out, but not tight enough to hurt though. Even as he lifted her to his face despite her protests.

With a low hum he opened his mouth wide, sharp teeth parting to give them a far too close view of the inside of his maw. There were a few spots of bioluminescence inside, pulsing softly as if beckoning them in. His grip on them loosened slightly, and for a brief moment they hoped to escape, but he simply shifted his hold on them before shoving them unceremoniously into his jaws.

Teeth snapped shut behind her with a definitive clack, and for a moment she sat there stunned before his tongue moved beneath her, abruptly pinning her to the roof of his mouth. The water surrounding her started to drain, and she gasped as she was abruptly forced to switch to air breathing. The sound of him swallowing made her shudder, shoving her hair out of her face and trembling in terror.

He wouldn't be able to hear their calls if they weren't in water—it didn't travel as well above the surface, and they had no way of knowing if he knew human speech. He'd effectively silenced them with hardly any effort, and all they could do was wait—their claws weren't sharp enough to do any damage, and they didn't have any other spines or defenses-

He licked her, jarring her from her thoughts and making her flail and sputter. For a brief moment she'd wondered if he was just planning to hold her in his mouth, but the sudden activity dashed that faint hope. A low, pleased rumble surrounded her as she squirmed and shoved at his tongue, making her shudder at the implication—he was tasting her, and apparently liked it.

After a few moments he pressed them to the roof of his mouth again, head angled towards his throat—which they could unfortunately see quite well, with the spots of bioluminescence in his mouth. “No!” They shouted, writhing desperately but unable to move much before he opened his mouth again and swallowed them with a torrent of water.

His throat was hot and tight, pinning her arms to her sides and forcing her deeper into his body despite her squirming. It felt like an eternity, powerful muscles squeezing and shoving her past the thumping of his heart and the dull rush of water through his gills before she was finally dropped into an open space, once again lit with bioluminescent flecks. Splashing into a pool of water, she yelped, bubbles trailing from her mouth and gills as she re-adjusted to breathing water. An amused chuckle surrounded her as she flailed, trying to reorient herself.

At least there was enough water for them to call. “Let me out!” They cried, shoving and clawing at the fleshy walls surrounding them. Their claws weren't very sharp, but they doubted it felt very good—a suspicion confirmed as they were suddenly squeezed in place and prevented from moving by the muscles tensing around them.

“You're not as fast as I am, little minnow. I'd rather not be waiting around for you to catch up.” The leviathan rumbled, making her pause her attempts at struggling.

“... What?”

“Would you rather I let you exhaust yourself swimming after me? Or risk getting snatched up as someone's snack? Not all deep dwellers are welcoming to your kind, minnow.”

That made even less sense. “Oh, ‘protect’ me from ending up as food by eating me yourself. Sure.” She snapped, wriggling enough to get her arm out of the uncomfortable position it had been stuck in. He let out a short series of exasperated clicks before she was suddenly released from the tight squeeze, letting out a startled yelp as she practically fell back to the bottom of his stomach.

“Your head really is full of seaweed, isn't it?” He hummed, a brief area of pressure resting on them for a moment. “You're just in storage, minnow.”

… What?

They paused, flicking their tail in confusion. The water didn't look or taste strange, and the only opening was above them… was he telling the truth? They couldn't feel anything, and when they reached out to touch the walls they just felt slimy, no tingling or burning on their skin.

“You couldn't have told me that before- before making me think I was gonna die?” She responded, sounding a little shaky. The leviathan rumbled softly, as something pressed against her again—his hand, maybe?

“I could have. But you wouldn't have squirmed as much, and it felt so nice.” She swatted the side of his storage-stomach with her tail, letting out an indignant noise. “But you're safe, minnow. You're lucky you ended up in my territory, I'm not one to make a meal of something that can talk back. Unlike some other leviathans…” An odd shiver went through her surroundings, as if he'd shuddered at the thought.

“Oh.” They twisted to curl up on themself, wrapping their arms around their tail nervously.

“Do you have a name, little minnow?” He asked, the bioluminescent flecks surrounding them brightening slightly. For a moment they paused, unsure if they could answer—they couldn't remember much, after all, certainly not why they were in the open ocean on their own—before something came to them.

“Phoenix.” It sounded like a name, and she liked it. “You?”

“Phoenix.” He hummed, repeating it slowly as if savoring it much like he had the rest of her. “Interesting. My name is Juniper. What were you doing out here all on your own?”

Of course he would ask that. She curled in tighter on herself, fins drooping slightly in distress.

“Little minnow?”

“... I don't know. I'm lost, I think, but I don't know where I'm supposed to be.” She finally responded, sounding rather morose. Juniper went silent for a few moments, clicking softly before speaking up.

“Well, I wouldn't mind a bit of company. Especially not from such a cute little thing as you.” Their fins perked up slightly at his offer and they uncurled some, looking up towards his call.

“I... Thank you.” He might not have made the best introduction, but he hadn't hurt them, and at least hanging around a leviathan would minimize the chances of something happening to them.

“Of course. Now, make yourself comfortable, I'm going hunting.”

[the-last-cuddlebender]

19, and you know I'm gonna ask for Kataang lol.......

Oh gawd I was dreading 19

Hurt/comfort prompt: (Kataang + #19: “Don’t touch me!”)

Even the Trees Remember (AO3)

Words: 1,990

Rating: T

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“He said it would make me forget!” Aang flung his arm, and another wave of reckless airbending cut through what remained of the tree. The winded blade gulped the air out of Katara’s ears in a strange way that made them pop. “He lied! Why did he lie to me?!”

Katara chased after him. It was hard to track Aang’s silhouette with only half a moon to light her way. Orange and yellow robes were her burning waypoint; churned earth and splintered tree corpses lined the warpath in Aang’s wake.

“Aang!”

Aang didn’t look at her. Katara wasn’t sure if he could even hear her. Crimson colored his face with furious sorrow; his every breath tore a howling cry from the wounded beast hiding in the cage of his soul.

“Sokka said it would make me forget, but it doesn’t! He lied! It doesn’t help anything!”

Aang staggered against a tree. He cut it down with a careless saber of wind that Katara had to duck for fear of losing her head. The tree groaned once, like it was bemoaning the Avatar’s betrayal of nature, before its severed half toppled through a dozen other canopies to the ground.

“Aang, you need to calm down! Please! You need to stop before you get hurt!”

Aang finally looked at her. His eyes, wide and wet and searching for something that wasn’t there, cut her open so deeply that Katara almost clutched her chest to stem the bleeding. Grief like she hadn’t seen since they visited the Southern Air Temple weighed Aang down in heavy chains. A mountain of self-loathing sat on his shoulders, and his broken heart poured rivers down his cheeks.

There was a pause in his destruction—Katara wasn’t going to pass up the chance. She approached him like he was a wild catdeer, and she tried to ignore the way he trembled and flinched from her every footstep like he really was one.

Aang’s voice was the squeak of a machine about to break. “Sokka...He said it would m-make me forget...” He curled into himself. “Sokka said...H-He said it would…He…so f-forget and…a-and...”

Katara hushed and cooed him, and she tried so very hard to suppress the bloodlust burning under her skin when she smelled the alcohol on his breath.

She was going to have words with her brother.

“Aang, it’s okay. You’re okay. Sokka is a moron and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. C’mere,” she offered her hand to him, “let’s go home, okay?”

“Can’t...Can’t go home…”

“Why not?”

“Can’t remember...Can’t remember home...Gyatso...I can’t remember…” Aang hugged himself, and it took every ounce of Katara’s restraint not to pull him into her arms. “I can’t forget, but I can’t remember, either. I can’t take it anymore. I want it to go away. I...I-I just—W-Were those good times even real? Is this even real?” He looked at her, begging her for something she couldn’t give him. His voice broke and shattered Katara’s heart. “Are you even real?”

Katara swallowed. “Oh, Aang…”

Aang dropped to his knees and cradled his head like a bomb was about to drop. “I wanna forget...I wanna forget so bad—I-I just can’t remember anymore…” He pressed his brow to the grass. “I’m trying...I-I’m trying…”

“Aang—”

“Don’t touch me!” He didn’t want to know the answer to whether or not she was real. He couldn’t take it if she wasn’t.

Katara swallowed the burning in her throat and steeled her shaky resolve into iron.

“Lemme—Lemme go!” Aang squirmed like a newborn and whined and flailed just as loudly, but Katara didn’t let up her grip under his arms. She dragged him to one of the trees he cut down and sat them like its fresh stump was a dining table.

“Look,” Katara said. Aang tried to get up, but Katara wouldn’t let go of his hand. “Look, Aang.”

“Look at what?” His voice was something worse than desperate. He slumped, the life and fight flushing out of him. “There’s nothin’ to see—I can’t remember—”

“You do remember.” Katara spoke as gently as she held his hand. Aang sniffled and made himself smaller than he was. Katara kissed his knuckles and massaged the tender belly of his palm—the most precious part of a bender—until his breathing slowed.

He didn’t stop crying. The burning knot in Katara’s throat didn’t stop growing, either.

“Oh, Aang…” She leaned over the stump so that her elbows rested on it. She held his hand in hers and peppered it with more kisses until he dragged his eyes up to hers.

His eyes were empty and endless like a dry well that stretched on forever.

He looked so alone.

So incredibly alone.

Like he had spent those hundred years in the ice awake and without even Appa to keep him company.

“I—I-I can’t remember, K’tara...I can’t...I can’t, but I can’t forget, either…”

Katara soothed him with gentle coos and hushes. “I know, sweetie. I know.” She held his hand tighter. “It hurts. I know it must hurt you so much it feels unbearable.” She cradled his face with her free hand. She tried to ignore the dagger in her heart that made every part of her ache when he first flinched, taking a second to recognize her touch before pressing so desperately into her that it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that he hadn’t felt a loving touch in years. “But you do remember. You haven’t forgotten anything.”

Aang cocked his head like a hound to a high pitch. It would have been cute if it didn’t make Katara fight the urge to cry with him. “I...I haven’t?”

“No, you haven’t. Not really.” Katara tapped the rings lining the inner belly of the once large tree. “See this ring? And how narrow it is?”

“...m’yeah.”

“These rings are thin and remember a long drought. These rings are further apart and remember a bad flood.”

Katara moved Aang’s hand over the stump’s memories. He flinched when the pads of his fingers brushed the grainy, black knobs curling crooked lightning through the wood.

“This is a scar from a fire that burned through this forest a century ago. The scar is near the center—when the tree was very young—but the tree grew around it and made its scars a part of itself. From the outside, you could never tell that it happened, like maybe the tree forgot. But it remembers both all the good and all the bad. The bad didn’t stop it from growing.”

Aang wiped his eyes, and something more lost than thoughtful pinched his face in a scowl.

The night air hummed its silence, void of the many patterings of small animals and other creatures scared away from the Avatar’s grieving. Aang’s hand was cold in Katara’s. That wasn’t right at all. Aang was never cold, out or in.

Katara kissed his knuckles, reveled in the shadow of a smile she pulled from him, rubbed some warmth back into his fingers, and looked at him even though it made some part of her howl and claw her insides in its desperation to pull him closer.

Katara laid his hand flat on the stump of tree-rings and forest memories. She held his palm up and traced her finger down a dozen calluses and twice as many scars.

“See this?” Katara spoke softly and traced his palm even softer. Her voice was hushed and cloudy, her words warm and wrapping around him like a hug. “This is your love line. You see how deep it is, especially in the beginning?”

“...Yeah.”

“This over here is your life line. It’s just as deep in the beginning. They’re both broken in a few places, though. One a bit more than the other. But that’s okay. Look at the top, here. The lines double back over to compensate for the breaks, and they double and triple at the ends.” She tapped the tree’s rings. “See? Even the trees remember. And you do, too.”

“So...So I’m a tree?” Aang looked so incredibly lost, even though they were in his own home.

Katara laughed, the sound hollow and dying like a candle in a harsh breeze. “No, you dork, you’re not a tree. But you remember, just like they do.” She smiled, and the gesture called his out to play even though he didn’t understand why. “Nothing is ever forgotten or gone for good. I know you remember why, Aang.”

Now Aang looked truly lost and more desperate, but hopeful, than ever. “I...I do?”

Katara’s smile stretched a little wider as she curled his hand shut.

Aang blinked at her dumbly. He opened his fist like it was buried treasure he had stumbled upon. He nearly dropped the smooth little acorn resting between a callous and his life line.

Aang smiled. He sagged like a deflating war balloon, like his insides were more slush than bone. His heart tugged its seams back together, just a bit, and his mourning joy leaked over his cheeks.

Aang laughed. The bubbles of giggles were lost, knowing not where they came from or why, but they grew in volume just as he opened his posture like he was going to hug her.

But Katara was already at his side, brushing them together. He was still cold, so Katara scooted closer and warmed him with tender touches and even more tender words. Aang couldn’t hear them, but they dug into the deepest parts of him and soothed the wounded beast limping out of the cage of his soul. Katara nuzzled her face to his, and his widening smile and even louder laughs pulled out the coal searing a hole in her throat. Her broken heart danced when he returned her affections, and the corner of her soul that he had claimed for himself cuddled, like her, into the arm wrapped around her shoulders.

Katara laced her fingers with Aang’s and was gentle with him as though he were burned and bleeding. With her other hand, she guided him into a kiss, and her love line cradled the curve of his jaw.

Aang smiled like a supernova and had Katara tugged into the space between his legs and pulled flush against his chest in the next second. She laughed along with him. Or maybe he was laughing with her? It didn’t matter. Aang paraded his joy in small kisses on whatever his lips could reach.

Aang mumbled into her hair and held her tight like he might lose her. “Thank you, Katara.” His voice was quiet, like it was a thought he was sharing with her. “For everything.”

Katara wormed her way out of her Aang-cocoon just enough to kiss his cheek. “For you, my Forever Boy? Always.”

Aang pressed his smile to her temple, and his laugh shook into her from where they were pressed together. His glee was genuine and warmed Katara from head to toe like she was sitting in front of a fire during a blizzard.

Katara pulled his arms even tighter around herself, but, somehow, she made it feel like she was hugging and holding him, instead.

The night hummed its peace in a gentle buzz, holding an undercurrent of shy animals creeping back to their homes. Aang cuddled closer to his home, too, and Katara molded into him like she was a foundation that could protect him through any storm.

“I love you, you dork,” she said in a voice so quiet it reached Aang like a thought. “And I’m not going anywhere.” The pressure in the air grew lighter. Aang sagged like the brace forcing him to bend into something that he wasn’t was suddenly ripped away.

And then he smiled like being happy was what his face was built for.

And Katara’s kiss was a promise and a bandage all in one.

“I love you...And I’ll make sure you never forget it.”

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(っ′∀`)っ(◞‸◟；) —> (ɔˆ ³(´∀｀c)

(okay I know this blows away my word cap, but I was on the brink of turning this into its own fic because screw a 1,000 word cap on this kind of prompt that dialogue line should be illegal...oof)

[desarcalize]

Dusk 15: Walker

After five months, Cross said that he will go to a mission in London. Sarah asked to follow him.

“No” Cross said “You will stay here and help Meriam to read and write”

Meriam was an orphan girl, which they found her sleeping in the courtyard of the monastery. From that night, they made her part of the church, teaching and training her to become an exorcist.

“Alright” Sarah said accompanied Cross until the entrance. Timcanpy flew and sat at his owner’s shoulder. The man turned and leaved the monastery.

 During a snowy night, Sarah and Meriam were sitting on the table of the monastery’s kitchen. The little girl was reading the bible and Sarah was observing her as she was writing a part, which she learned by heart, in a paper.  

They heard someone knocking the door and Mother Rebecca opened it, seeing Cross standing in the entrance, holding a boy in his arms.

“Cross?! You came back! Who is that child?!” they heard from the kitchen, Sarah turned to Meriam “Stay here, I will be back” the girl knobbed and Sarah walked to the main corridor, seeing Cross holding a sleeping boy with white hair and swollen face.

“Who is that?” she asked “He was Mana’s adopted son” “Was?” “Mana died, three weeks ago” Sarah lowered her head “Who both know that this is not truth” she whispered “Right?” “I don’t know what he is planning to do” Cross said and approached his bedroom leaving the boy on his bed “But for now, I have to save him. The scratch on his face became infected and he has high fever” Sarah touched the boy’s forehead  

“You are right. He is burning” she said “Sister Sarah” they heard a girlish voice. They turned and saw Meriam standing some meters away from the bed “Who is he?” “Just a son of an old friend” “Can I help?” “Bring me the botany book” the girl ran to the Sarah’s bedroom, where she had the books and took a green one. She ran back to Cross’s room and gave it to the nun. The woman opened it and showed a page to the girl “Do you see this plant? It’s called aloe, it’s for the swollen by wounds’ infections. I want you to go to the herb shop and take some” the girl knobbed and ran out of the bedroom “She is learning quick” Cross said “Yeah, she will be a great exorcist” she turned to the boy who had wet fabrics on his face, by Mother “What is his name?” “Allen” “So, Allen D. Campbell?” “No. Mana changed his last name, after Nea’s death. He was going with Walker”

Sarah remembered the young man with the milky skin and the brown hair in a ponytail, turning to her smiling “I will not stop. I will keep walking” “How ironic” she whispered smiling.

After some minutes, Meriam was back with the aloe leaves. She gave them to Mother Rebecca, who broke them above a plate, taking out it’s jelly content. With a spoon she spread the content on the young boy’s left side of the face and wrapped it with gazes.

Meriam looked his face. Even if it was swallowed, it was still angelic like. His expression was calm and she would say that he was cute. She turned to Sarah

“Is he going to die?” “No. Cross found him soon enough” Sarah said “The infection is only around his wound. So, he will be fine. Really, how did this infection happen?” “Millennium Earl turned Mana into an Akuma and he scratched his face” “That’s awful” the girl whispered “What is an Akuma?”   “I will explain to you when you will be ready to know” Sarah said smiling “Alright” Sarah approached her and bend over, patting her head “Now, go and read the next chapter of Marcus’ Evangelion and when I will be done we will read the next together” “Ok!” she shouted smiling and left the room, heading to the kitchen.

 Sarah was in Cross’s room, taking care of Allen, checking his temperature and changing the gazes on his face. She heard him groaning from the high fever and whispering Mana’s name in his sleep. She caressing his hair and started muttering the music of Nea’s song. She saw that Allen’s expression became calmer and he fell asleep.

She got out of Cross’s room and approached the kitchen, where Mother and Cross were drinking. She stood next to the table and looked at them,

“His fever has fall” “Good” Cross said and took a sip “Tell me the truth, Cross!” she shouted hitting her palms to the table “Don’t be so loud” he said “You will wake all up” “Alright” she whispered “At least tell me what is going on with this child” “This boy will be the Fourteenth’s host” “Impossible!” “Why is it impossible? We both know that if Millennium Earl don’t die, the Noah family members will be reincarnated again and again. Nea was a member too” “And why this boy?” “This didn’t make sense to me too. But then I thought about it again” “And? Did you find anything?” “Some days before Allen left, he was reading the Bible backward” Sarah opened her eyes wide and stepped back “You remember what are the results of this, don’t you? We read about it in a book of Black Order’s library” “You turn back in time. You can change the past or your appearance with the past” she thought about it and then she turned to Cross again “This doesn’t make sense! Allen was blondie. This boy has white hair and before that he has… What was the color of his hair, again?” “Red” “Exactly, red” “Maybe he is a reincarnation, I don’t know” Cross said and rested his head on his hand “Every time I am trying to find something, I find a wall” “Why are you so sure about Allen? About our old friend?” “Because, before Nea and Mana left, Allen asked from Nea to use his own body for the reincarnation” Sarah was shocked. She took a chair and sat down, trying to understand all the information that Cross said to her “Why?” she swallowed “Why you didn’t say anything? Why did you hide this information from me for twenty-one years?” “Because I never thought that Fourteenth’s host would be a ten years old boy” “What happened, happened” Mother said “We cannot change the past, but we can make our future. This child is our future”

“One more thing” Sarah said “How are you so sure that this child is Nea’s host?” “Because Mana was always with him. He was protecting him, like it was the most precious thing in the world” “Well, it makes sense” Mother said and took one more sip of her wine. Cross and Sarah stopped talking. They lowered their heads and looked their eyes.

 The next day, Allen woke up, but this was not what they were expected. The boy was in shock. Cross was holding his hands as he was screaming, like he was possessed. Sarah took Meriam and went out of the monastery, so the little girl will not see the shocked boy.

When they returned, Allen had called down, but he was sitting at the corner of the bed, without talking or eating. He was just looking to the void with empty thought. Cross tried in vain to feed him. One noun, Sarah was washing the dishes and Cross was drinking his wine, as Mother, Barba and Meriam went to sleep.

“He hasn’t eaten anything, has he?” Sarah asked “It’s because of his lament for Mana. He reminds me someone else, who wasn’t eating, because of him”

Sarah stopped washing the dishes and turned to him

“It’s not the same” she said “He is crying because he lost him, forever. I lost him because he betrayed me. Allen was an orphan, who found a home, a family. I was a nun, who had to leave with the word of God. I didn’t know what love meant, not like the way that Mana showed it to me. He loved me and I talked bad to him. He betrayed me, to protect me. Sometimes” she said and tears started appear on her cheeks “Sometimes, I still mutter the lyrics of his song, I feel like I still hear the music of the piano. I think that if I open the door and get inside the white room, they will be there, playing the piano and singing” her voice was cracked by the sobs “When I saw him again, after nineteen years, telling me that he remembered my last words to him, I realized how much I loved him. I should never fell in love, I am a nun, I asked for forgiveness from God, but it wasn’t enough…” she stopped crying, because the sobs had closed her throat “I sorry” she said and put her hands on her face “O promised to myself that I would never cry for him again, but when I learned that he died, I can’t…” her sobs became louder, she was thinking that she couldn’t breathe, that she wanted to scream

“Cry” Cross said “Put it out. This is what you need. Cry, weep, you need it”

Sarah raised her head and closed her eyes, she tried to control her breath, by taking deep breaths and crying in the same time. She finally felt that the weight, that she had on her chest, was gone.

 During the night, Cross was sitting across his bed, reading his book and looked Allen. He inhaled, let the book next to him and turned to the white-haired boy.

“You know, there was a phrase which Mana used to say. I will never stop…” “…I will keep walking” Allen said in the same time with him

He looked the boy, who raised his head and looked at him. His right eye wasn’t swollen from crying anymore.

“He is gone, isn’t he?” he whispered. Cross lowered his head and Allen turned and looked the void “I… I don’t want to stop… Not now”

Cross approached the kitchen, where the rest members of the church were sitting on the table.

“Allen talked” “Really?!” Sarah shouted “Thank God!” Mother said looking up “But… But he doesn’t sound so much like Nea, but more like Mana” “I see” Sarah said and lowered her head “That means that I can go and talk to him, right?” Meriam asked “Maybe we can be friends!” Sarah turned and rubbed the girl’s hand, smiling “We will go tomorrow and talk to him, alright?” “Yes!” the girl shouted.

 The next day, Sarah sat next to Allen on Cross’s bed. Meriam was standing next to the bed, looking them. The little girl was the one who spoke first.

“Your hand! It reminds me of Sister Sarah’s wings!” “Meriam!” Sarah shouted. She didn’t want to make Allen feel bad

“Wings?” the boy asked

“Yeah” Sarah said and smiled

She stood up and turned her back to the boy. Her uniform changed. She didn’t have to open a zip and put out her whole back, but there were two special holes on the back of it.

“Innocent, activate” Allen looked her wings full of surprised. He approached his hand, but he pulled it back. Sarah smiled with his reaction “It’s fine, you can touch them, if you want” At first, he hesitated, but then he touched the blue edge

“They are so soft!” he whispered “You are like an angel!”

Sarah blushed, because this is how Nea used to call her. Maybe there a Fourteenth’s part in this boy. She smiled to Allen.

“They are called “The Wings of Gabriel”. I can help you activate and control your arm too” “Yes, please!” Allen shouted, blushing.

 Sarah and Allen were standing at the courtyard of the monastery. She opened her wings and was waiting for Allen to activate his too. The boy was looking his hand, but he wasn’t talking.

“What happened, Allen?” “It’s just” the boy said “The first and last time I activated was when Mana turned to this monster and my own arm killed him. I was afraid to activate it again, I don’t want to hurt anyone else” “Don’t worry, Allen, you aren’t going to hurt me. Just try it”

Allen looked his hand, he thought the words that Sarah saying when she was activating hers “Activate” His red hand became gray and bigger. It went out of control and approached Sarah. The woman moved her wings and Allen saw her flying one meter above the ground.

“You can fly too?!” “Yes. I had similar problems too. My Innocence was never listening to me. When I was trying to fly, it drove me on the walls and the ground” “How did you master it?” “It is like a living creature. It has its own will, but it would never let its user die. So, I did one of the most dangerous ways to make it obey me” “What did you do?” Allen asked with his eyes opened, excited to hear her story “I felt from the belfry!” she said smiling and Allen was shocked “From… The belfry?” he looked the tower of the monastery “This belfry?” “Yep” “I… I don’t believe it… Neither expected it” “Of course I am not asking you to commit suicide just to make your arm obey you. I was desperate back then. I wanted to follow General Cross to the Black Order” “The Black Order?” “Cross didn’t tell you about the Black Order?” Allen moved his head negative and Sarah facepalmed “So, I will have to start everything from the zero”

For the next weeks, Sarah was training Allen during the days and they were reading books about the exorcists during the night. Cross was always looking at them, either from the window or from the corridor.

[aquaquadrant]

Chill

Rating/Warnings: K+ (sickness, minor injury, disturbing imagery) Timeline: FalsePrince!Varian AU (by Lunarcrown), after “Queen For a Day” Summary: Varian’s quest for answers to free his dad leads him down a dark and wondrous path.

A/N: OK SO I know I said I wasn’t gonna link my TTS Tangledtober one-shots here much but I REALLY loved how this one came out, plus I figured I oughta credit @lunarcrown for letting me play with her False Prince Varian AU and cook up a little origin story for it! Hope you enjoy, reblogs/comments are appreciated!

Click here to read on A03! - Aqua

~*~

Varian sets the beaker down with trembling hands.

His shakiness is now impossible to ignore, and he fears he’ll drop something and cause an even bigger accident than the one that encased Dad in the amber. He wipes his forehead with the back of his glove and comes away with sweat. But at the same time, he’s shivering. His head aches, and dark spots dance across his vision every time he moves.

Varian can no longer deny it; he’s sick.

And that’s a very bad thing, because it’s not just a little cold or flu kind of sickness. That would be fine, he’s worked through those before. This, he knows, is something more serious.

Days ago, he’d hit a wall in his attempt to create a compound that can dissolve the amber. He’d gone searching the area for clues, something new he could learn about the black rocks and their nature that might help. Of course, there was nothing in the village, but he’d found a small path of black rocks leading into the forest.

With nothing to lose, he’d followed the path. After winding around the forest for so long he was beginning to think there was no point, he’d stumbled across a barrow of some kind. A hidden stone door in a thicket, that lead to a huge underground cavern full of old ruins and a strange chill in the air.

And, of course, a lot of black rocks. But something about these ones had seemed different. They were almost in a kind of formation- not any particular shape, but enough repeating forms that he could tell it wasn’t random.

But in his investigating, he’d accidentally gotten too close and cut himself on one of the rocks. Not a deep cut, more of a scratch, really, across his chest. He’d mourned the hole in his shirt more than the small injury, and hadn’t thought it was anything to worry about. After finding nothing else of interest, he’d returned home, more frustrated and at a loss than ever. The cut had been ignored.

Now, it seems it’s gotten infected. The skin around the cut is red and hot to the touch, and the slightest prod makes pain shoot through his muscles. And this is bad because Varian’s alone- he has been since everyone else abandoned Old Corona to be chewed up by black rocks- and he has no idea how to treat an infected wound, he doesn’t know that kind of science.

Varian braces his hands against the work bench, hanging his head down as he takes slow, deep breaths. There’s no one left in town to help him, and he’s hours away from any other settlement. Even if he made it to one, he might not be welcome because of those rumors about him attacking Rapunzel. He’s well and truly alone here, and he needs to figure out a plan.

Just… once he rests, for a moment.

Varian’s eyes flutter shut.

The world tips around him as he feels himself falling. He never hits the ground, instead falling endlessly through inky blackness until the sensation is all he knows. Just as its about to consume him, he surfaces. His head breaks through a layer of snow, spilling powder down his shoulders in a crumbling mess.

He blinks the frost from his lashes. All around him is snow. It stretches out before him in every direction, an endless white void. Flat, dull, colorless. Empty. And cold- it seeps through his threadbare clothes and crawls lazily through his veins, like icy snakes swimming in his blood.

Above him, the sky is black. It’s a void of another name, stretching beyond the horizon and swallowing the world in darkness. But it’s not empty, not in the slightest. A dazzling array of stars glitters above him, packed denser than he thought stars could be. They’re scattered in clusters of beautiful disorder, like a bunch of dandelion fluff got carried away by the wind and caught in the space above.

There are planets too, planets he never even dreamed of seeing beyond the tiny pinpricks viewable from a telescope. Planets of different colors and patterns, closer than should be possible. And threading through all these celestial bodies are swaths of color he can’t even begin to identify. Like the aurora borealis he’s read about, bright yellows and pinks and purples and blues and it makes him dizzy just to process it all.

It’s breathtaking, and he wonders for a moment if this is what space truly looks like, once freed from the veil of the earth’s atmosphere. Deep, lively, vibrant. Eternal. Standing alone in the snow, he feels immeasurably small in the face of the radiance above.

The sound of his own teeth chattering together brings him back to earth. He’s freezing. A sharp gasp rips itself from his lungs, and he sees his breath fog in the air. Panic sets his heart racing, and he clumsily scrambles to his feet, kicking up flurries of snow. If he doesn’t find shelter somewhere, he’ll die. He knows this with certainty.

But the snow is deceptively deep. It seems to cling to him, making each step heavier than the last. His shoes are soaked through and he can’t feel his feet. Bitter winds rip at his hair, and he’s reminded of another storm, not so long ago. Trudging alone for miles and miles, with only the thought of getting back to Dad keeping him from giving up and letting the white haze consume him. But this time, his determination alone isn’t enough.

Varian struggles to make ground, but it’s to no end. There’s nothing in sight, no escape from this cold. Panting for breath, he looks up at the brilliant sky with all its color and majesty.

“Help!” Varian screams. “Anyone!”

The words don’t even get a chance to echo around him before they’re swept away in the storm, and despair crashes over Varian. But just before he drops to the ground to let the snow consume him, he catches movement.

Against the backdrop of inky sky, two yellow eyes blink open. The pupils are bright pink, and they regard Varian with enough intensity to melt ice. It’s an evaluating look, like they’re staring right through Varian’s skin into his soul, and it sends a chill down his spine. They get closer, and the rest of the figure comes into form, almost materializing out of space itself.

It’s a boy- like Varian. Almost exactly like Varian, in fact, in terms of the shape of his dark blue hair and the point of his nose. But much of his face is lost to the color of his skin; a deep indigo, smooth as the surface of unbroken water. Lighter pink freckles dust his face in the same places Varian’s do, glittering like constellations, and they match the pink streak in his hair, where Varian’s is blue.

A shining golden crown sits on the boy’s head, adorned with tiny pink stars that almost could have been captured right out of the sky. Rich furs of pink and purple line the cloak he’s wearing, adding to the regal appearance. Still though, he wears gloves, and the sight is bizarrely comforting to Varian, for whatever reason.

The boy has yet to land, his feet still floating above the snow by a good distance, forcing Varian to crane his head up to see. The cloak billows around him, but in slow ripples, as if he were underwater instead of hovering in a blizzard. He tilts his head at Varian, and it’s only now that Varian realizes the boy has no mouth.

Poor boy, the figure coos. Varian knows instantly it’s the boy’s voice, even though there’s no mouth to hold it. Alone again. It’s not fair, is it? You did nothing to deserve such a fate.

Varian manages to find his voice. “Wha- what fate?” he calls hoarsely, straining to be heard above the wind. “What do you mean?”

You’re dying. The boy’s yellow eyes curl up at the corners, like he’s smiling. Can’t you tell? That wound you sustained is a deceptive thing. It looks so harmless, doesn’t it? But looks can be deceiving, as you’ve since found out.

Varian’s heart misses a beat. “What?! I’m dying?” His breathing speeds up, hands raking through his hair. “No, no, no, n- no I can’t, my dad- I’m the only one that can save him! I’m the only one who will! If I die, then he’s lost forever and I can’t- I can’t let that happen!”

Why not? the boy asks simply.

Varian balks. “I’m the reason he got trapped in the first place! I have to fix it, I- I have to prove myself!” he insists desperately. “I have to, please.”

Hmm. The boy’s gaze seems considering. Perhaps there’s another way.

Varian inhales sharply. By this point, the cold has traveled to his hands. “What is it?”

Let me help you. I can lend you my strength, and save your dying body. Together, we’ll find the answers you seek. We can be friends.

The boy extends a hand, tilting forward in the air.

I promise.

Ice is forming in Varian’s eyes. He blinks it away and takes the boy’s hand.

The boy’s yellow eyes slant into their half-moon smile again, and suddenly he’s pulling Varian into the air. The abrupt weightlessness makes Varian cry out in surprise, the white world below them getting smaller and smaller as they ascend. And then it’s gone, and there’s nothing around Varian but space and stars and color.

The wind’s gone, and it’s deadly quiet. But it’s still just as cold.

Too late Varian realizes, as the ice starts creeping up his body once more. It’s fast and crushing, swallowing him up, dulling his nerves into noncompliance as he tries to move. He can’t even scream as the frost crawls up his throat, freezing his face in horror.

The last thing he sees are those blazing yellow eyes, watching in triumph, before everything goes black.

Varian’s eyes snap open.

He gives a violent start, gasping for breath. It takes him a few moments to gather his bearings. There’s no snow, no space, no shadowy figure with glowing yellow eyes. He’s on the floor of his lab, everything exactly as he left it, dark and quiet and alone.

No. Not alone.

The voice is less of a sound and more of a feeling, rattling through his bones. Varian cries out in surprise at the sensation, looking around wildly.

“Who’s there?” he demands.

Silence. And then.

A friend, the voice replies. I promised, didn’t I?

Varian’s breath catches as he realizes. That dream- if he can even call it that- the voice sounds like… but no, that’s impossible, isn’t it? It was just a dream, or some kind of hallucination. He’s not well, he’s seeing things, and hearing things-

Something seems to take hold of his heart and squeeze. He can’t even cry out, it’s so intense. When it finally lets up, he’s left struggling to regain his breath once again. Curiously, though, there’s no lingering pain anywhere in his body. He can’t even feel the sting of his wound…

That gives him pause. Something itches at the back of his mind, prompting him, look. Warily, he tugs down the collar of his shirt.

The wound is healed. There’s no sign of it but a faint pink scar- pink not in the way that irritated skin is, but a true bright pink, as if by a dye. Varian stares in mixed horror and fascination. It’s impossible. It’s unnatural. And yet…

Gingerly, he pulls a glove off and brushes his fingers over the scar. There’s no ache, but his skin is cold to the touch.

All the pain is gone. But the chill remains.

Now, let’s start again.

~*~

[myshipshipsitself]

Title: Let Me Break You Characters: Castiel/Dean, Sam, Jack Rated: G Word count: 2372 Warning(s): SPOILERS 15x19 (Also just wouldn’t make sense without seeing 15x19, cause some of the stuff that happens is implied to be the same as on the show) Summary: YES I wrote another fix-it. Except I made it worse before I fixed it. Basically I read a theory that Dean took forever to respond to Cas cause he was trying to think of what he could say that would make it so Cas stayed. And then this happened. Read below or read on ao3 here. 

Break him.

The thought comes unbidden and painful. All Dean knows, as he listens to Cas speak, as he turns to see the Empty forming behind him, is the deal that Cas made. The words he’s saying, the smile on his lips—why does he look so happy. He can’t be.

In a moment of true happiness. The Empty would take him.

“Are you insane?” Dean snapped. He swallowed the tears, forced a glare at Cas, curled his lips into a scowl.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

“Me? Loving me? That’s your true happiness? Are you out of your frickin mind?”

Please let this work. You can’t die. Not with me saying this. Not ever.

Cas’s smile was frozen in place, plastic and pained as Dean spoke.

“You know what? You were right to know you can’t be happy if that includes me—as what? A boyfriend? Lover? What the hell is wrong with you?”

I’m lying. Please believe me. Don’t smile. Don’t be happy. Break. Let me break you. I’m sorry.

“Dean,” Cas’s voice was weak, quiet. The smile finally fell from his lips. The Empty reached out, two tendrils shooting past Dean. One engulfed Billie. The other reached for Cas. Dean’s hand shot out at the same time Cas reached to shove him out of the way.

No no no, please. You can’t die believing that. You can’t die.

Dean’s back hit the wall, but his eyes never left Cas. The dark, inky blackness stretched over Cas’s shoulder, hesitated.

Please, please. He’s not happy. You can’t take him. Don’t take him.

The black ooze fell away from him, drawing back into the void, Cas still standing. Cas, his moment of happiness gone, snuffed out. But safe.

Dean never knew that silence could be painful. Sound, sound could be painful. It had been in Hell, before Cas pulled him out. The thought of it squeezed something painful and raw in his chest. But silence—silence wasn’t supposed to be painful. But this was. What was he supposed to say?

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said, his words no less painful to hear than the silence. “I didn’t mean to make you angry or—“

“Save it,” Dean snapped. He stood from the floor, forcing himself not to look at Cas as he walked past him. “How the hell could you make a deal like that without telling me and Sam?” He asked, turning in the doorway o look back at Cas.

The angel gave him a sad kind of smile. “I knew the Empty would never cash in on it. She would never be able to.”

Dean shouldn’t have asked.

—————

The call from Sam was a welcome distraction, and by the time Dean and Cas met them in town, it was clear they had bigger issues.

Dean explained getting rid of Billie, mostly.

“I thought the Empty couldn’t come to earth unless it was summoned,” Jack said, looking curiously at Dean. His eyes shifted to Cas.

“Cas summoned it,” Dean answered. “So it took Billie, end of story.” Not end of the story, but close enough.

“Okay, so that’s one problem. Now we just have to deal with Chuck, and get the rest of the planet back. Easy,” Sam said, his usual hopeful smile falling with every word.

“About that,” Dean said. He shot a sideways glance at Cas, who had refused to meet his eye since the Empty took Billie. “We’re down one problem, but got another one to add in its place. Cas made a deal.”

Cas’s head shot up, eyes burning a hole in the side of Dean’s head. “The deal is unimportant,” he said. “The terms of the deal will never be met, so it will never be an issue.” Dean didn’t dare look at Cas. He didn’t want Cas to see anything in his eyes. To have hope. To know—Dean had to keep far away from there, at least until the deal was broken.

“Wait, what deal?” Sam asked.

“The deal he made with the Empty to save me,” Jack answered. He was still watching Cas, eyes curious and uncertain. He knew the terms of the deal, Dean could see it in his eyes. He was trying to figure out how Cas had summoned the Empty without being taken along with Billie.

“Yeah, so our feathery friend here is destined to be miserable for the rest of his life, or be taken by the Empty,” Dean summarized.

“What?” Sam asked.

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Cas said. Dean could hear the annoyance in his tone, and couldn’t blame him for it. But honestly he didn’t care. Cas could be as annoyed as he wanted. Dean was going to find a way to get him out of the deal. “The Empty said it would come and take me when I experience a moment of true happiness. I’m perfectly content to live in the range between miserable and true happiness. It’s not one extreme or the other, as Dean implied.”

Sam looked more confused than ever. “Wait, this has been a deal since Jack came back? You haven’t been happy at all since then?”

Cas sighed heavily. “Happiness and true happiness are not always the same thing. As I said, there’s entire range between misery and true happiness. Can we please focus on the real threat here? Chuck destroyed the entire world except for us. We need to do something.”

Sam didn’t look convinced, but he agreed, and Dean didn’t push the issue. He knew they had a bigger problem in Chuck, but he wasn’t about to let this deal get swept under the rug either. And if Dean knew anything about his brother, it was that he wouldn’t let it go. That was all Dean had been counting on.

—————

“Okay, but how does this plan break Cas’s deal with the Empty?” Dean asked, for what must’ve been the fourth time. Jack stood off to the side, staring at his hands, looking deep enough in thought that Dean wasn’t sure he was still paying attention. Cas was with Michael in the kitchen, and Sam was tapping his fingers impatiently on one of the blank pages of the book.

“I don’t know, Dean. We just have to figure out one thing at a time,” Sam said.

“That’s not good enough,” Dean snapped at him. He groaned, dropping back into the chair, head in his hands.

It was silent for a long moment before Sam spoke. “Dean, how exactly did Cas summon the Empty?”

Dean took a shaky breath, blinking back tears as he looked up at Sam. “He uh. He said that—that happiness wasn’t in having. Just in being—in saying. Sam, he,” Dean paused, taking a breath and closing his eyes before he continued. “He said he loved me. He said he loved me, and that—loving me, saying it, that was enough, I guess. His moment of true happiness, for the Empty to come to take him.”

Sam didn’t look surprised. He looked…scared? “What did you, uh. The Empty, it didn’t take him. What did you do or say to keep it from taking him?” Sam’s voice sounded pained, as if he dreaded the answer even as he asked the question.

“A lot of shit that I shouldn’t have,” Dean answered, eyes dropping to the floor, picking out a loose thread in the rug to stare at. “I couldn’t let him be happy. If he was happy, the Empty would take him. I said— Damnit, Sam. We have to break this deal. We have to get him out of this—“

“I know, I know, we will,” Sam cut him off quickly. He crossed the distance between them, leaning down to put his hands on Dean’s shoulders and look him in the eyes. “I know. We’ll figure it out.”

“I love him,” Dean choked out.

“I know,” Sam said again. It took Dean a moment to process what Sam had said.

“You—what?” Dean had only just pieced together what all of this meant. How the hell did Sam know? “How?”

Sam frowned, letting go of Dean’s shoulders to drag his chair closer, sitting in front of Dean instead of across the table from him.

“Remember when Chuck showed me the future? Our future, if we trapped him?” Sam asked. Dean only raised his eyebrows, silently telling Sam to continue because that small explanation made no sense. “Well, in it, we lost Cas. He took the Mark and it—You had to lock him in the Malach box.” He fell silent, and Dean was grateful for the moment to process what he was saying. He was fucking glad they didn’t trap Chuck, if that would’ve been the result. He had been scared about Cas taking the Mark, but—he’d thought Cas would be able to handle it. He was an angel. Surely he could’ve handled it better than Dean could.

Or it would’ve affected him worse because he was an angel. Either way, locking Cas in the Malach box—that would be worse than what they were dealing with now. At least now he still had Cas in his life, by his side. Even if he couldn’t be honest with Cas, he was there.

“Things got worse, everything snowballed,” Sam continued. “We both got turned into vamps. You killed Jody, Bobby killed me. It was—But it started then. From what I could gather, it all started when you had to lock Cas in the Malach box. Nothing was the same after that. You weren’t the same.” He paused, but Dean didn’t know what to say. “So yeah, Dean. I know.”

“I think I can do it,” Jack finally spoke, and Dean was grateful he didn’t have to., he sat up straighter, clearing his throat and wiping away tears that had fallen before tearing his eyes away from his brother and looking towards Jack.

“Yeah? What d’you got, kid?” Dean asked. He tried to make his tone sound unaffected, but was pretty sure he failed. Jack’s smile didn’t give anything away, though.

“If this plan works the way it should, I think I can make a deal with the Empty.”

“A deal?” Sam asked before Dean could.

Jack held his hands up in front of him. “Not for my soul, or yours or Cas. Not a deal any of us will have to pay. I think I can get us all out of this, and Cas free.”

—————

“This had better work,” Dean muttered under his breath.

“This is a stupid and unnecessary risk,” Cas said, his voice holding the same cold tone that had been more frequent as of late. Dean tore his eyes away from Cas when Sam held a beer out to him. “The Empty can’t collect on the deal, so what does it matter if it ever gets broken?”

“It just does!” Dean snapped at him. He stormed out of the room at the risk of saying any more. Jack had only just left with Chuck, powerless and weak, to go to the empty and try to swing a deal. Dean hoed beyond any kind of rational hope that a powered down former God was enough of a show of good faith for her to release Cas from their deal.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice called out behind him.

“I’m fine,” Dean said automatically.

“Yeah well I hope this works too. I’m tired of watching this,” Sam said. “You know you don’t have to yell at him, right? He didn’t have his moment of true happiness or whatever when we were all hanging out, or having movie nights, or playing stupid board games. You don’t have to be a dick just to keep him from disappearing.”

“I know,” Dean groaned. He rubbed a hand down his face, rubbing angrily at his neck before turning back to look at Sam. Before he could say anything, Jack reappeared over Sam’s shoulder, and Dean’s eyes widened at the bright smile on Jack’s face. “Well?”

“It’s done,” Jack answered.

“It’s over. No more deal?” Dean asked. He needed clarification. He needed to be sure. He heard footsteps, and glanced past Jack to see Cas, confusion laced with annoyance across his features.

“No more deal.” Dean could barely hear Jack’s words over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. His determined stare never left Cas as he walked past Sam and Jack. The angel didn’t look happy about the news, or in any way like he cared at all.

He had believed Dean. After everything, after Purgatory, after years of relying on each other, of Dean needing him there. And Cas had believed the cold words he had spat out in a desperate attempt to keep the Empty from taking him.

That hurt worse than Dean would admit, but he pushed past it now. His hands fisted int he front of Cas’s coat, pulling him forward and pressing their lips together. He felt Cas freeze, and he didn’t move, didn’t pull back, only relaxing into the kiss when he felt tentative hands brushing his arms, one moving to lie against his chest. And in blissful perfection, the angel’s lips moved against his, pressing back, soft and uncertain.

Dean finally broke the kiss, knowing that more than needing this moment, he needed to say something. “I’m sorry, Cas. Everything I said before, when the Empty was going to take you—I didn’t mean any of it, I swear. I couldn’t let it take you. I love you. Of course I love you. I’m sorry, I couldn’t—“

“Dean,” Cas cut him off, and Dean finally took a breath, eyes registering the soft, hopeful smile stretching across Cas’s lips. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dean muttered, eyes dropping. He distantly heard Sam’s whispered tone and two pairs of retreating footsteps. “What I said—I’m so sorry, Cas.”

“It’s okay,” Cas said again. “You kept me here, with you. And we’re free—really, truly free now.” Then Cas’s lips were on his again, and maybe Cas was right. They were free, and more than that, they were free to be happy. That wasn’t a freedom Dean was every certain he’d be able to afford, but with Cas pressed against him, a strong and constant presence, he entertained the thought for the first time that maybe he could.

[padfootagain]

Fifteen Steps

Well, I asked you to choose, and you unanimously voted for Sirius, so here we go!! I hope you like this! Tell me what you think of it!

It's a mix of angst and fluff, because, that's the best mix you can have, right :) Nothing too dramatic, though, don't worry.

Gif not mine, as usual (I love this gif, I use it too much for angsty fics **devilish laugh**)

Word Count: 2936

Time is a strange thing. People tend to see it as a straight line going on forever, but it is not. It bends under the weight of stars and planets, it's stretched and compressed in black holes. It twists and folds up and changes shape, and it doesn't pass at the same rhythm everywhere in the universe. At some points it passes faster than others where it slows down forever until it's almost still. There are places out of time. And then, there is our own way of dealing with time. Our own way of feeling it passing through us, an unstoppable stream carrying us through life until we reach the deadly waterfall at the end of the river.

But if time passes the same way everywhere on earth it is not, on such a tiny scale that our planet is, in any way stretched by a nearby star or compressed by the weight of a nebula floating through the void next to us, it is because our own mind has a tendency to distort it. When we're bored it seems that time passes more slowly. When we're in a hurry, it flows faster. It is merely a trick of our minds, but it's pretty spot on and fools us all every time.

And Sirius knows it, but he won't escape the trick now either. Time slides around him in slow motion. And it's entirely your fault.

He struggles to swallow as he spots you in the crowd. He hasn't seen you in months. Not since he accepted this mission on the other side of the country. It was dangerous to say the least, one could have even said suicidal. That's why he broke up with you first.

He didn't want you to mourn him. He didn't need that. If he were to die in these mountains, he wanted you to go on with your life, find someone else, build a life of your own.

The thing is, when he left, he didn't think he would survive the mission. He didn't think he would come back.

So what is he going to do now?

Now that he is back in London. Now that the war is over. Now that Voldemort is gone. Now that the Death Eaters have fled. Now that he is free to have the life he wants. Now, what is going to happen to him?

He can hear Remus, Peter and James, all three of them on their way from tipsy to fully drunk, laughing behind him. He knows Marlene and Lily are close by. He expects to hear from Alice and Frank soon too. He drinks up the rest of his shot of firewhiskey, his grey eyes still fixed upon you.

You're laughing with Dorcas. You're smiling, you're laughing, you're happy.

You're happy without him.

He thinks about all these times he was hiding in the cold, all these nights he spent awake because he was too afraid to sleep. You were the only thought that got him through it all. You were what brought him home.

He travelled further down his memory lane, back to Hogwarts. Back to the shy girl that you were back then. Back to the long nights spent talking and eating cookies. Back to the afternoon walks across the grounds. Back to the secret conversations bathed in moonlight. Back to your arms wrapped around him as you soothed the pain holidays had brought onto him.

You have been guiding his steps through long nights for so long. He realizes then that it doesn't matter if he can't have you. You'll always be with him. It will always be you.

When he falls asleep, it is your face that will be drawn on his tired eyelids. When he wakes up in sweat after a nightmare, it is your voice he will hear to sooth his demons. When he wakes up, it is your eyes he will see first through dawn.

It is you.

It has always been you.

It will always be you.

He wants to go there, cross the room, and reach you. Through the euphoric crowd celebrating the victory against the Dark Lord, he counts the number of steps that separate the two of you.

About 15, he'd say.

15. 15 steps, what a ridiculously immense distance. It's only 15 steps, he could cross the distance in mere seconds, just a few strides, and yet it seems unreachable. Things could be back to normal, back to how they should be, and he could wrap his arms around you and forget about the rest of the universe and kiss you��� Merlin, how he wants to kiss you… He closes his eyes and remembers how it feels. Your soft lips against his, moving with his like a dance you've mastered to perfection. He remembers how you taste. Mostly of joy, candlelight, parchments and rainy afternoons. Sometimes, you taste like stars too.

And how you smell, Sirius can remember your fragrance it now as he takes in a long breath. Chocolate, candles, parchments, soft sheets, blue skies, wintery wind.

He opens his eyes again, and they find your frame with ease, they have kept the habit of finding you in any crowd.

And you're smiling. And laughing. And you look happy.

It's the end of the war, the Wizarding World is free.

Perhaps he should free you for good too.

At first, he wanted to cross that ridiculous distance of 15 steps. But now, that he stares at you, he finds himself uncapable of doing so. After all, he did break up with you.

When he came back, he asked Lily about you, and she didn't mention any new boyfriend who would have taken his place. But then, how could he be sure?

He isn't sure it's the right thing to do now.

So he turns around, adds three more steps to these 15 that separate the two of you, and puts his glass down on the bar.

"I'm heading home, I'm knackered," Sirius informs his friends.

As expected, James and Remus argue that it's still early. They have won the war and are all still alive to celebrate it, they should get gloriously drunk. But Sirius shakes his head. And as his friends spot you in the crowd over his shoulder, they understand.

"You should talk to her. You could get back together," James advises, but Sirius sends him a glare that makes his friends fall silent.

"I'm very tired, I just got home yesterday. I need some sleep. I'll see you all tomorrow at Godric's Hollow, right?"

"Of course."

He can't walk out without hugging his friends, his brothers. So many times, he thought he would never see any of them again. And now, here they are, all alive and well and out of the war. He can have them in his life still.

But he can't have you. Not now. Not ever again.

He strides out of the bar in Diagon Alley. The street still bears the scars of the fights that raged here, the many shops that had to close either because their owners were scared, or killed, or mysteriously disappeared. It was empty during the last months of the war, but it's buzzing with people again. The main passage, at least. Families coming to celebrate the victory, many wizards and witches gathered to try and believe that it's all real. It happened. They're all free now.

But Sirius doesn't want to be surrounded with people, right now. So he walks down the road, as he knows that it will be much quieter there, and readies himself to Apparate.

Above his head, the stars shine a bright light, whitish against the inky sky for most of them. Stars too are a strange thing. Burning balls of gas lightyears away, and yet visible from here. It takes so long for light to travel these distances though, some of them are already dead when their light reaches the Earth. Sirius wonders how many have gone out already, lost in the cosmos, dying on their own, sending their light through space in one last spasm that won't be seen before several millennia. He thinks it's quite sad. They die on their one, with no one to see them disappear. And he knows how much it hurts to be alone, how terrifying it is to face death on his own. Maybe he does deserve that name of his after all, maybe, just like the stars, he was meant to fade away with no one by his side.

He's almost out of the crowd, he will Apparate in just a few seconds, when the voice that calls after him has the young man frozen on the spot.

"Sirius!"

It's you. Of course, he knows it's you. He would recognize your voice in a thousand shouts. He dreams of it every night.

He turns around slowly. He can't fake to not hear you. You're not stupid. There's no point in denying that you're here. It won't stop you from telling him whatever it is you have to say.

Are you going to shout? To cry? To slap him? He reckons he would deserve your rage.

You're motionless in the street as he turns to you, the lampposts shedding a yellowish light onto your shape, getting caught as glimmering droplets in your hair.

"Hey," is all he manages to say.

What else could he tell you? That he's sorry for what happened, but he had to protect you? That he thought he would never have to face this situation because he never thought he would come back alive? That he loves you so much it hurts and burns every cell of his body and consume his heart and soul?

What is the point?

But instead of being met by your anger, instead of the burning sting of a slap across his cheek, or terrible words screamed and spitted to his face, you smile.

You smile the brightest grin there is. One that lights up the dark so much more than any of these burning, old stars above your heads. One that blinds him so much he has to blink.

Sometimes, looking at you feels like staring at the sun.

Before he can move, you run to him, a proper, desperate run to throw yourself into his arms.

And then your arms are wrapped around his neck, and you're pressed against him and it's almost too much.

He has dreamt of this for months, and now… but… it isn't right, is it?

He can't manage to properly think now, not when your breath tickles the skin of his neck, when your fingers are running through his hair, when your warmth flows from your chest to his, when he can feel your heartbeat against his own.

So he just wraps his arms around you, and holds you close.

Maybe it's the last hug he will have from you. He expects then that when you break the embrace, you'll beam up at him and tell him about this new life you've built with someone else. He just hopes he doesn't know the man who owns your heart now. He was so proud and lucky when it was him who held it in his own chest. He never felt like he deserved it though, perhaps this new man is better than him.

He reckoned it isn't a hard goal to reach.

He can't refrain a smile. If you could read through his mind now, you would glare at him for thinking like this of himself. You've always insisted on him thinking more highly of himself. But seeds planted in one's childhood are hard to shush and destroy.

He pushes the thought away. None of this matters now. He holds you, for what he guesses is the last time. And he can't allow anything else to exist in his world, not for now.

You finally break the embrace and hold his face in your shaking hands, your eyes filled with relieved tears. And there it is again, that blinding grin of yours.

"Oh Merlin, Sirius… I thought you were dead! Why didn't you tell me you were back? How… Why didn't you tell me anything for five months?! Do you have any idea how scared I was?!"

"I couldn't. I was undercover. I couldn't put you in danger by writing to you. And they would have killed me if they had found out the truth. And I only came back yesterday."

"You really are a moron, you know that? You scared me so much!"

You burrow your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in him. Firewhiskey, leather, fire, danger and a bit of twilight. It's him. It really is him. No one can have this scent but him.

But he gently holds your upper-arms, slowly pushing you away to break the embrace, and you stare at him.

"Y/N… We can't…"

He sighs and changes his mind.

"Are you okay?"

"Now that you're here, yes."

"Don't say things like that."

"What do you mean?"

But he looks at you with a frown.

"We broke up, Y/N. You can't act like nothing happened, giving me hope like that…"

You break out into laughter, and he merely quirks an eyebrow. What the hell is going on?

"What, you mean… that fake excuse for a break-up you came up with? I'm not stupid, Sirius. You were just trying to push me away because you were leaving for this mission, that's all there was to that."

"How can you know?"

"You were crying on your motorbike. I know. I saw you by the window. Besides, it's rather convenient to break up with me out of the blue five hours before leaving for a suicide mission."

He could deny it, but what would be the point? You're right. About everything. He sheepishly looks down at his shoes.

"Are you mad?" he asks in a shaky whisper. "I just thought… it had to be done, but I didn't think anyone could come back from that mission. At least, if I broke up with you, you would… have not mourned me so much and you would have found someone else and… Have you found someone else?"

There are tears rolling down your cheeks now, but Sirius doesn't want you to cry. He's never wanted you to cry. He would do anything to bring a smile back to your lips, anything at all…

"You bloody idiot!" you shake your head. "Of course there's no one else. What do you think? That making a tantrum is going to make me stop loving you? Do you really think I wouldn't have been shattered if you had died simply because you broke my heart? I love you! It's not a question of being together or not, it's not a question of time passing by, or water running under a bridge. I love you. I love you so much. I'll never stop loving you. Nothing and no one can change that."

It's his turn to let a tear escape his grey eyes.

"So… no one else then?"

You shake your head.

"No one. Just you."

"I don't deserve you…"

"Yeah, you do. You're an idiot sometimes, but you're such a good man, and I love you so damn much."

By now, you're both a crying mess. There are strangers passing by around you, but you ignore them and they pretend like they can't see you. Only a little girl in a red coat asks her mother why you and Sirius are crying.

Because they're in love and they can be together now. That's all her mother answers. And it's quite right too.

"I love you too, you know?" Sirius whispers, running a hand through your hair. "I've missed you so much. But I thought… I saw you there in the bar and I… I thought maybe you… you were laughing and perhaps you were better off without me after all."

"Don't ever say something like that. I knew you were back. Lily told me yesterday. Trust me, I haven't laughed for all these months you were gone. I need you, okay? I don't want anyone else."

"I'm not perfect."

"I know. I just happen to love your flaws too. That's what they call real love, I reckon."

Finally, he wraps his arms around you again, burying his face in your hair, breathing you in, holding you so tightly it's hard for you to breathe but your hold on him is just as desperate.

"I do love your flaws too, Merlin help me with that," Sirius moans in your ear, making you laugh.

And it's a very strange thing indeed, time. It passes, an unstoppable flow that carries moments after moments in its wake. But sometimes, it stops. As if it understood that some moments deserve a bit more time than others. And two people loving each other is quite one of these moments.

So time stops. Oh, it will resume its flowing soon enough and make both of you move again, and soon dawn will break the stars above and replace them with a vivid blue sky. Strangers in the street will go home, and lie down, and repeat to themselves that the war is over, they can sleep without fear from now on.

But right now, time stops, just so you and Sirius can hold tightly on each other for just a little longer. The number of steps between the two of you is down to zero, just the way it should be, and Sirius intends to keep it that way for as long as he can.

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

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[ourladyoftheironmasque]

A Cross-Time Caper

When Hawk Moth's machinations inadvertently lead to the akumatization of Ladybug, it will take a bunny, a butterfly, a monkey, two ladybugs and three cats to set the world to rights again.

Chapter One of Three 3,564 words

*

It was all still very theatrical, of course. He bowed low, head nearly even with his hips, one arm bent across his stomach, the other extended up and out. The broad grin permanently etched on his face these days was the perfect compliment to his exaggerated manners. “A pleasure as always, Ladybug, but I’m afraid I must be going.” Another paw pad on his ring vanished, leaving him with two. Chat Noir straightened, and drew his baton.

Two weeks ago, this would have gone down differently.

Probably, he would have bowed over her hand. His performance against the day’s akuma victim always informed his flirting. When he was pleased with himself, he was the old world gentleman. He thought it charming to bow over her hand, kiss her knuckles and call her m’lady. Ever hopeful good work would earn him romance, he’d resist leaving her until his ring demanded it. (Or until she teased him so much that he lost his nerve.)

If he had embarrassed himself during the fight, then he’d be defensive. All sass and unearned bravado, the sort that a girl with self-respect just couldn’t let stand in a boy who couldn’t back up his trash talk. He’d call her Bugaboo just to hear her yell at him. That was his other favorite persona—the little boy on the playground who didn’t know how to tell a girl he liked her, so he antagonized her instead. Sometimes she answered his absurdity with cleverness, but more often than not she’d cross her arms and feign annoyance. Chat Noir always wanted attention, but when he was disappointed in himself, he usually tried to goad her into being upset with him, too. A good job meant looking for rewards he wouldn’t find and his easy acceptance of their absence; when he performed poorly, he’d force a scolding out of her if he had to. With hindsight, she’d let him have his way too much. When Chat Noir went fishing for a set down, his partner should have been the one propping him up.

Now she was Ladybug, always.

And she wasn’t the clever one anymore.

Giving up on Adrien and watching him ride off into the sunset with Kagami should have ended with Marinette climbing atop Luka’s white horse. He was sweet, and she liked him. Maybe he was a little too punk rock and anarchy for a beautiful house and three children at the end of their story, but it’d still be a good story. They would be happy together. The disparity of their feelings had left their friendship unbalanced, but if they were together, then Marinette could reciprocate. She could appreciate and support and respect him like he always had her.

But.

Life never wants to follow the path it should.

Her heart, Marinette learned, was interested in hopeless pining exclusively. As for her stomach, well, that started doing flip-flops for Chat Noir. And although her tongue was just as adept at barking out a plan to defeat the an akuma as ever, once that was finished so was her ability to string together a coherent sentence.

Ladybug wished she could say it was because Chat Noir had matured a lot recently. Because he had! Chat Noir stepped up during the battle against Miracle Queen and it turned out quick thinking and strategy agreed with him. There had been more equal division of labor in the past two weeks than the entire preceding year combined. Just in time, too. Without Master Fu to guide them, they were on their own. Ladybug could not have shouldered the burden of the Miracle Box and come up with all the plans and always be ready to wind her yo-yo around Chat Noir’s ankles to yank him out of the line of fire. Saving Paris had never been a game to him, exactly, but he’d enjoyed it in a way Ladybug couldn’t. To don a mask and smack a monster with a stick was how Chat Noir blew off steam. It was his escape from stress. Now even he could not deny the magnitude of the job before them.

The identities of their entire team had been compromised.

The loss of Master Fu’s memory was bad enough, but it also meant they lost their access to Guardian lore and the Grimoire.

The only council they had left was their kwamis, and transformation cut them off from Tikki and Plagg. Ladybug and Chat Noir had always been fond of using the two of us against the world as a rallying cry, but now it was true. And Chat Noir was pulling his weight.

Ladybug wished she could say she fell in love with him because of that. It would have been poetic, somehow. It would have been worthy of him.

But no.

Marinette had a good cry over Adrien—a dozen of them, really—binged ice cream and terrible rom coms with Alya, heard some variation of if he doesn’t see how special you are then he doesn’t deserve you from literally everyone she’d ever met—most in good faith, though the Chloe version was excruciating in it’s backhanded compliments and the Lila version was pretty obviously designed to make her feel worse—and bought a new diary. New pages for a new era. In general, Marinette did her absolute best to put her feelings for Adrien behind her.

If Adrien and Kagami made each other happy, then that was all that mattered, right? Right.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Marinette did her absolute best to put her feelings for Adrien behind her and they went absolutely nowhere because feelings don’t go away when you ask them nicely. But the loyalty to Adrien that had once made the idea of dating someone else feel so relentlessly wrong? That did leave. It turned out the world was filled with people as cute and smart and funny and kind and gentle and charming and vulnerable and brave and good as Adrien. Her heart scamped right up to Chat Noir and went, Well! How about this one? Isn’t he exactly who you’ve always wanted?

And when she tilted her head and squinted, he kinda was.

Only...she didn’t have to squint, actually.

Or tilt anything.

Looking back, Ladybug had probably been half in love with Chat Noir all along. Her dislike of the cute nicknames and attempts to steal kisses had simply been part of the mask. Another means of distancing Ladybug, Ultra-Competent Hero of Paris from Ladybug, Regular Teenager Making Up How to Save the World As She Went. For a while, she even fooled herself! Before Felix, she might have said Chat Noir pushed her boundaries and ignored her comfort zones. But after? The contrast between her playful partner’s irrepressible flirting and the actions of someone who pressed onwards without caring about her feelings could not be sharper.

Looking back, Ladybug had definitely been completely in love with Chat Noir all along. When viewed through the lens of having loved him, their year fighting side by side made so much more sense. It was her own love that she called upon to conquer Dark Cupid’s spell. When Chat Noir wondered if he would have had a shot in a world without Adrien, Ladybug couldn’t imagine one—but Oblivio soon stripped her of her memories, and photographic proof suggested that in a world where she was at least ignorant of Adrien, she would have fallen into Chat Noir’s arms immediately. And then there was Chat Blanc’s timeline. Ladybug could never know what really happened in that twisted world. Chat Blanc had babbled a lot about them being in love, but in the moment, Ladybug had thought nothing of it. It was simply his one track mind run off the rails. But from the safety of distance and a repaired timeline, she started to wonder if Chat Blanc had been more lucid than he let on. Maybe something had happened between them…

And ended with the boy she loved akumatized, Paris a half-submerged hellscape and herself dead.

Rationally, she knew Ladybug and Chat Noir could go get an ice cream at Andre’s together without triggering the end of the world. There must be a step in between their love and the destruction of the city they were charged with protecting. It was a moot point. He had a girlfriend now.

(Sometimes, she was confident she could steal him away if she tried. He’d wanted Ladybug for so long. Surely if she just apologized and told him how she felt, he’d forget all about other girls. But doing that would make her a bad person, wouldn’t it?)

(Other times, it wasn’t right and wrong that stopped her, but the fear that he didn’t care anymore. That Chat Noir would say no, and Ladybug would have to face that she’d lost her chance with him forever.)

“Pleasure’s yours, I mean, nine. Mine. I mean… See you next time, Chat Noir.”

At least the precarious nature of their transformations meant Ladybug was never trapped in a long, awkward conversation with Chat Noir. When she made a fool of herself in front of Adrien, that was agony for hours. Chat Noir only had two pad paws left, and her earrings were not faring any better. He was leaving, and she wouldn’t see him again until they were in the thick of a fight.

He was kind enough to never question her sudden tendency to get tongue-tied. Ladybug knew he noticed. His banter came slower, like he had to make a mental adjustment when her confidence disappeared.  

It was in that beat of silence—the one that used to not be there, but hung over her like the blade of a guillotine while Chat Noir cautiously decided how to respond—a brand new opportunity for chaos that two weeks ago would not have existed, but did today—when she wished a black hole would open up and swallow her whole

that one did.

Sort of.

“Minibug! Kitten Noir!”

It wasn’t a black hole, but the white-blue void of the Burrow. Bunnyx hung half out, arms making sweeping gestures to urge them closer. “It’s go time!”

As far as holes to swallow you up so that you don’t have to confront your own embarrassment went, the Burrow was kind of a lousy one if Chat Noir was invited. “We’re about to transform back!”

“I came prepared, Minibug. I’m sure you both did, too, with snacks for your kwamis.”

Chat Noir tossed Ladybug an uneasy smile. “Bunnyx wouldn’t be here just for chit-chat. We’d better go.”

(He had lately developed an irritating tendency to take his job seriously.)

(The love and support of his girlfriend was so freaking good for him that it was a little grating.)

Bunnyx’s security measures were, unsurprisingly, a pair of bowls slapped over their heads before she ushered them blindly into the Burrow. Well. Ladybug more or less knew to expect that. Chat Noir yelped. It was good to hear his facade drop, even if just for a second. He had come into his own recently, but underneath it all, he was the same pratfalling goofball he’d always been.

“Spots off.”

“Claws in.”

Familiarity with her purse made any awkward groping unnecessary. Producing a macaron for Tikki was as natural as breathing. For her part, Tikki seemed to be in awe of what she could see. Marinette heard a tiny “Wow” pass Tikki’s lips and from further away, de-transformed Chat Noir trying to placate Plagg. There was a job to be done. No rest for lazy cats, and no time to explore for Tikki.

“Tikki, Spots on!”

“Plagg, Claws out!”

The Burrow was full of secrets. Bunnyx monitored untold timelines, ushering their lives along the best possible path. Although she had heard Chat Noir transform and knew their identities were safe for another day, Ladybug did not dare remove the bowl. Bunnyx would tell her when it was safe to look.

“That—”

“Don’t!”

“—is the mini-est Minibug I’ve ever seen.”

Ladybug tilted the rim of the bowl back. Bunnyx was glaring daggers at a thoroughly unconcerned Chat Noir. A taller Chat Noir. His shoulders were deliciously broad, and his mop of blond hair was not a smidge neater. What should have been absurd—a grown man in a skin tight cat costume, bell and all—simply wasn’t. He stood with the complete assurance that he belonged in that outfit, and so it looked natural. Right.  

Ladybug eyes darted to the boy Bunnyx had brought with them. He’d also tipped his bowl back, and was staring dumbfounded at his future self.

“I mean it,” Chat Plus Sombre said, looking thoughtfully at Ladybug, “What are you? Thirteen?”

Ladybug bristled. So he was a grown-up, so what? That didn’t mean she was useless. “Almost fifteen.”

“She may be a newbie,” Bunnyx interjected, “but she’s good.”

Chat Plus Sombre held his hands up in surrender. “No need to remind me how fast Ladybug picked up the ins and outs of being a superhero. I’ve been playing catch-up since the day we met. I’m just surprised you went this young, Bunnyx. Isn’t the goal to pick her up five minutes before she quit?”

Quit.

Quit.

The casual way the word rolled off his tongue, as if Ladybug quitting could ever be normal, made her blood run cold. It was one thing if she wasn’t needed anymore. She’d happily hang up her yo-yo if Paris was safe. But it sounded like she’d left Chat Plus Sombre high and dry, reduced to plucking partners out of the timestream in order to keep on fighting.

She was going to quit.

Bunnyx treated the revelation like it was normal, too. “For you. They’re gonna take a quick detour. I found something else in the timestream that needs fixing. We’ll get back on track once Minibug and Kitten Noir have accomplished their mission.”

Chat Plus Sombre frowned at Chat Noir. “I don’t remember being tagged for one of these.”

“One of what?” Chat Noir cried. “And where’s future Ladybug?”

“We can’t tell you,” Bunnyx answered. “It’s bad enough you saw him as it is.”

Chat Plus Sombre shrugged. “Nah, it’s fine. I don’t remember this at all. He’s definitely gonna get mindwiped.”

“And her?”

Crossing his arms, Chat Plus Sombre acceded the point to Bunnyx. “Okay, since I don’t know my little lady is also gonna get mindwiped, I’ll be infuriatingly obtuse. That suit you better?” It didn’t appear to placate Bunnyx, but Chat Plus Sombre had evidently compromised as far as he was willing. “My Ladybug—by which I mean the Ladybug of my time, attach no further significance—is fine. She’s taken a temporary leave of absence. We—she planned it in advance. No Guardian mindwipe activated. She’s coming back. But since Paris still needs a Ladybug, we take one from the timestream as needed. There’s a gap of about three years between when she made the plan and when she needed it that we usually swipe a Minibug from.”

That felt...reckless. Tentatively, Ladybug said, “I thought time is delicate.”

“It is,” Bunnyx answered. There was a slight air of scolding.

“But,” Chat Plus Sombre interjected, “you’re not replaceable, and the earrings are too powerful to sub out even if just anyone could do the job.”

Ladybug looked away, embarrassingly flattered.

“We’ve wasted enough time,” Bunnyx declared. “Better get back on track.”

“She says that,” Chat Plus Sombre added merrily, “but it really doesn’t matter. It’s time travel. She’s gonna drop you in the same nanosecond no matter how much time we spend in here.”

“You can only say that because you haven’t faded from existence.”

Chat Plus Sombre flailed. “Don’t you dare listen to her, Minibug and Mini Me! I’ve stopped existing loads of times! I’m an expert at it! You just—whoosh!” He snapped his fingers. “Stop.”

So the new and improved Serious Chat Noir was not a step away from pointless self-sacrifice. His adult self sounded like it was half-badge of honor, half-hilarious to disappear. “It isn’t funny,” Ladybug said, feeling vaguely faint.

Cat Plus Sombre softened. “You liar, you’re not almost fifteen. That was pure fourteen-and-a-half.”

Ladybug crossed her arms. “Like you can tell. You thought I was thirteen a minute ago.”

“You had a bowl on your head! It’s not fair to judge my level of knowing you-ness by what I thought when you had a bowl on your head. I demand a re-do. Get me another Minibug, Bunnyx.”

“No. Stop.” Bunnyx inhaled. “Here is what is going to happen: they are going to do their mission. We are going to wait here. If they fail, we dip back into time and try again. We’ll do it as many times as it takes for them to get the win. Then, we’re going to go back to our time for the mission we were supposed to be doing. I will not be taking questions.”

Chat Plus Sombre held up a finger. “Not a question. Comment: We broke Mini Me.”

Bunnyx fisted her hands in her hair. “You said you don’t remember this!”

“I don’t. He’s just not having any fun with this, so I have concerns.”

It was a good point. Chat Noir had been awfully quiet. “Can you give us a minute?” Ladybug asked.

Chat Plus Sombre gestured to the Burrow. Yes, it was surprisingly large, but there was no privacy to be found. “Not really.”

“Pretend.” Ladybug shooed Bunnyx and Chat Plus Sombre to the far side of the ...what even was this? Plane of existence? Pocket dimension? Chat Noir sank to the floor, knees up and put the bowl back on his head.

“Kitty, what’s wrong?”

“Him. Me.”

Well, that was just crazy. “You realize you grow up to be Doctor Who, right? Pulling companions from time and space. You should be excited!”

“I’m trying so hard to not be that guy anymore. Looks like it doesn’t even matter.”

“What’s wrong with that guy?” Ladybug happened to like that guy a lot. So much so that seeing him curled in on himself like this was a complete crisis, disastrous enough to forestall all stuttering.

“Were you even paying attention to the way he talks about you?”

“I don’t like how me quitting seems normal to him, but I guess I just don’t understand why we’re both going to think it makes sense someday.”

Chat Noir’s shoulders hunched. “Thought so. He keeps calling you his and you don’t even notice. I stopped doing that.”

“I noticed you.”

“I know the nicknames didn’t mean anything to you, but they mattered to me.”

She should tell him that she missed the nicknames. She wanted to be his lady, his Bugaboo, his everything. But that wasn’t fair to him. He had a girlfriend now.

“Are you really fourteen and a half?”

That it was even a question to Chat Noir struck Ladybug with unexpected force. That level of specificity into their ages was so far into Secret Identity territory that they’d never gone there. Chat Noir didn’t know how old she was. But his adult self could pin it down within a span of months. Chat Plus Sombre knew her better than Ladybug had ever thought she and Chat Noir could realistically know each other.

Ladybug didn’t answer, but they both knew she didn’t need to.

“You quit, and he goes through time looking for different yous instead of just getting a new partner.”

“That’s not his fault,” Ladybug protested. “If I don’t give up the earrings, what else can he do?”

“It isn’t fair. I’m trying, Ladybug. I really am.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I know you are. You’ve matured so much. I’ve been really impressed these past couple of weeks. You’ve been awesome, and you shouldn’t look at him and feel like you’re not. Because he’s awesome. You’re still a superhero when you grow up, and a really good one. I’m jealous. I don’t grow up to be Doctor Who.”

Chat Noir eased the bowl back. “Let’s just do the mission and go home.”

Probably, Bunnyx and Chat Plus Sombre couldn’t avoid overhearing the conversation, but the polite thing to do would have been feign ignorance. Yet the moment Chat Noir announced he wanted to get it done and go home (and probably get an ego boost from his girlfriend), the illusion of privacy was shattered.

“That sounded like ready to roll to me!”

“Cross-Time Caper is go!” Chat Plus Sombre cocked one hidden eyebrow. “When are they going?”

Ladybug pulled Chat Noir to his feet and tossed his bowl aside. They followed Bunnyx to the window she beckoned them towards. It was Paris, of course, the beloved skyline marred by a whirling, writhing mass of red hovering in the air near Notre Dame. Bunnyx zoomed in.

The red was…ladybugs? Ladybug bit her lip. Those were her Miraculous Ladybugs of creation, but they weren’t repairing magical damage and disappearing. They were hard at work, diligently crafting something in the sky.

Bunnyx scrolled down, and on the street stood Chat Noir, (a third Chat Noir) staring up at the ladybugs, his face streaked with tears.

“Oh,” Chat Plus Sombre breathed. “This I remember.”

She had a feeling she knew the answer, but Ladybug asked anyway. “What’s going on?”

Grim, he said exactly what she suspected he would: “You’ve been akumatized, m’lady.”

[artsninspo]

PULSE : PART IV - INTRAVENOUS

Authors Note:

This being part four IV and getting into Elles core conflict made its title fitting. Think of the state you need to be in to require an IV, think of what an IV does for a person.

There’s more but we can chat once you’ve read the chapter about your thoughts :)

Thanks for all the support and enjoy!

_________________________________

PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV

PART IV - INTRAVENOUS

Where to go from  here?

Anytime Black thought about his mother it took him out for a couple of days, not to mention he’d gone out of his way to be there for Elle. Women often mistook kindness for interest - especially coming from him. What was the alternative? She seemed like a decent enough person to him - definitely undeserving of getting taken advantaged of. Aside from that he could tell whatever it was it was deep and hurt her a lot.

Elle’s lifestyle had blessed her with the superpower of evading hangovers. She’d become practically liquor intolerant from all of her partying. But thats what alcohol had always been used for - to heighten the highs. She’d outdone herself last night. A whole bottle of tequila if her recollection served her right - and a whole lot of embarrassing. She’d managed to keep the tears away using her happy liquor but that didn’t negate the fact that it was clearly obvious she was in crisis. She never wanted to be a. victim, she never allowed herself to be. The realist side of her and the human side of her were at war and the realest needed to take over. The verdict had been read aloud and there was nothing that could change it, as nice as justice would feel it could never fully right the wrong or fill the void it caused.

It wouldn’t change the fact that her relationship with her mother was now estranged. She’d been civil during the trial but now even a simple hello seemed too much. If she never saw her stepfather Alan again it would be too soon. They’d failed her. All of the values and ideals instilled gone for the promise of prestige, money and advancement. People seldom want to be like their parents and Elle was joining that majority.

Fuck them forever.

Unfortunately that means full independence, no contact and no support. It wouldn’t be hard at all had Jesse still been here but he’s gone.

Elle swallows knocking on Tre’s door with a gift card for gas, a detailing voucher and wet wipes neatly put into a male travelling bag. It’s how she was raised to apologize. She’d been a first class nuisance and he’d pitied her enough to deal with it and be caring.

“Hey” he looks her over.

“Sorry about last night” she comments passing him the bag and he looks her over eyes stopping at her bandaged foot in a pair of slides - that didn’t seem like her style.

“You said a lot of fucked up stuff” Tre comments making her cringe.

“Just because I’m a spoiled little rich girl doesn’t mean I like talking about my feelings. Whoa is me.” Elles starts shocks him as she leans in the doorway showing no more signs of weakness.

”You asked me to kill you” Tre continues and she nods in embarrassment.

“I’m not suicidal, just mean. If I died maybe things wouldn’t be so blasé” Elle sighed shaking her head. “At least thats how I think”

“If you died instead of who?”

“My best friend” Elle sighs not being specific enough. Jesse had been her whole world. Her best friend in every sense of the word, thicker than thieves and close enough that they could finish each others sentences. “Anyway, I just wanted to say sorry and thanks for looking out” Elle offered a smile. Like Rico said in paid in full ‘people die everyday B’. Jesse kept life real, he’d been a designer - he was her best friend and she was his muse. When Alan and her mother threatened to cut her off for not going to college, Jesse spent his inheritance on a warehouse. They lived there throwing parties to cover the rent while Jesse made clothes and shoes for the theatres productions. When the money started rolling in Elle staged the place and they had a modern-day speakeasy they named Prohibition. It was their bread and butter but now, Elle couldn’t bring herself to step foot in the club.

She’d cried for a month straight after Jesse was found. dead, the nightmare was reality which triggered insomnia and then eventually mania and depression. Everything made worse by Alan taking the case to defend Jesse’s murderer - even knowing how it affected Elle; who he claimed to be is own flesh and blood.

“I don’t need gas money” Tre said looking at the card.

“Tre you don’t always have to be in need to get things” She commented getting a look. “Black” she corrects with a smile. He checked his phone as it buzzes looking down the stairs at the front door. Another girl in his rotation.

“I’m headed out, I can let her up” Elle adds.

“Cool” he agreed uneasily. He’d been open with her, he’d cared for her, they’d been spending time together. Usually a recipe for disaster. She’d been a mess the past two days but now she was okay and not jealous as far as he could tell - that was new.

…

Kizzy didn’t know what to make of Elle as they shopped around like her life wasn’t completely upside down. Elle had never really been a complainer but under the current circumstances she felt like it was justified. Jesse and Elle had lived in their own world - literally. The Prohibition had been their own little microcosm; Elle was the Queen and Jesse was like her most trusted advisor. Elle had become the party, or so Kizzy had heard - they had grown into different people. She’d only been to the prohibition once a three day party and she’d been treated like royalty. They didn’t stop laughing. Elle had been a more quiet kid, always tenacious but reserved and always watching. Jesse’s Elle was practically a show girl. The kind of person that lights up a room.

The family had it all wrong - no one believed Elle and Jesses relationship was platonic. With their partying lifestyle Em, Elles mom thought it was some sort of open relationship - or that Jesse loved Elle as more than friends but her daughter didn’t reciprocate.

But now Jesse was dead, killed, rather murdered by the husband of his girlfriend. As far as Kizzy could tell the man that did it had killed a part of Elle too.

Yet, here she was filling up her cart with make up after they’d visited the car dealership.

“Elle are you sure you don’t want to talk about what happened?” She asks worried.

“I’m not the only person who’s lost someone”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t grieve. If you don’t want to talk about Jesse fine but what about your mom? That can’t be easy”

How could Elle for get her moms position in all this? Standing beside her husband.

She tolerated Jesse but she never liked him and now she was on the side of justifying his murder as a crime of passion when the facts to support that were concocted.

“What mom?”

“Elle, your mom and you were always close its a double loss” Kizz reasons.

“Kizz I’m tired of crying, nothing can fill the Jesse sized hole. I’m not violent but I’d fight mom and Alan in a second for what they’ve done. I don’t think revenge is what you had in mind for my rehabilitation Kizz” Elle smiles.

“So you’re just going to stay here and do what?” Kizz asks.

“I got dressed up last night, one of the costumes Jesse made me, some shoes that he hadn’t finished and a faux fur. It felt good. Minus the foot damage.” Elle says taking her for out of the ugg boots she’s opted to walk around in despite it being summer.

“Elle?!” Kizzy sheiks.

“It’s alright” Elle smiles.

“What did the doctor that bandaged it say?”

“It wasn’t a doctor it was Mr. Asshole”

“What?”

“Yeah, he took pity on me and I was out of it”

“Elle, please call me when shit hits the fan, thats what family is for. If you don’t want to talk that fine but you don’t know how things work here. And, it’d hurt me if something happened to you” Kizz says honestly worries and letting it show.

“Alright, Kizzy” Elle smiles kissing her cheek and giving her a hug.

“Live a full life for me Ellara” had been Jesses last words and she would find a way to honour that.

__________________

@bugngiz @lifelover4u @l-auteuse @notsomellowmushroom @princessasaani @heavensangelxo @bakarilennox @chaneajoyyy @thehomierobbstark

[slothgiirl]

forever isn’t for everyone part 9

Even Alex looks more hungover than usual as we all pile into the bus after the concert, taking our very late night dinners on the go. We’ve got a extra day but there’s press to do there so we leave around three in the morning, on the road again.

Ben and I go over some last minute detail, Lucy having passed on food for sleep an hour ago. My eyesight blurs as I try to keep awake for a few more minutes and Ben rubs at his face. “Being thirty five sucks,” he groans, “can’t drink for bloody shite.”

“You could always cut back,” I tell him.

“And look like an old man? I don’t know how much longer I can do this job. It’s great but rough."

I roll my eyes, going to my bunk and ready for the sweet release of sleep, "get over yourself then. They’re not asking you to party hard with them every night."

I had only gotten up because I’m starving.

Lucy still looks like shit. And so does Ben. But the rest of the crew are already hooked up, watching the telly or some video on their phones. God bless wifi. There’s nothing but desert as far as the eye can tell and I’m struck again by how vast the states are compared to back home.

"Saved you some brekkie Ellie,” Tom says, passing a bag of Mcdonald’s gone cold. I don’t bother to microwave it. Washing it down with soda and not feeling the least bit guilty about it. I’d had a late night.

I change into jean shorts in an attempt to feel more like a living breathing person.

And Lucy shakes her head, face void of any makeup for once, “I’m leaning into feeling like a zombie.”

“Europe’s better,” Ben offers, “travels only a few hours instead of a whole day.”

“I think we’re all just feeling it today,” another techie observes, “but it’ll pass.”

“Burnout,” I utter, knowing it well from uni, “we’re burnt the fuck out.”

“I think this calls for margaritas,” Lucy grins, clearly ascribing to the idea of keeping it going.

I roll my eyes, propping open my laptop and going over the schedule for the thousandth time. There were always last minute additions. Emails I had to go through for time changes and the list of questions that would be asked. Then I had to go cross reference it with the list the boys had drawn up.

Someone draws down the shades, making the noon time sun almost bareable as we leave the city behind. Soon we'll be surrounded by nothing but greenery. Like something straight out of a painting; the colors more lush and vivid under the strong sun then in England.

I scroll through pages of emails. Some are just meaningless platitudes sent by companies, filling time. Others were actual confirmations. I jot down any changes in the calendar, trying to find time to explore Los Angeles. Then it's off to the next country before the festivals kick off.

I didn't even see the statue of liberty.

"Why are they stopping," Lucy asks outload, already pullin out her phone and calling Ben. It was straight a straight drive down to California. No room for stopping if we wanted to get any rest once we arrived.

"Dunno," the driver shrugs, flicking the arrow so that we can pull over as well. "Didn't say anything to me."

Lucy starts on Ben as soon as he picks up. I close my labtop, already factoring in this little stop. It'll put us and hour or two behind schedule depending on why they're stopping. We should still get there by tomorrow morning. And there was a three hour cushion before the first interview.

The boys would have to head straight there.

It was up to Miles and Nick, Lucy wanting to help develope each of the member as individual people and not justin have Miles be the face of all. A hard task when only Miles would answer questions half the time. And they were always taking the piss out of interviewers.

"Somethings wring with the bus," Lucy sighs, "can you call the company?"

"I really fucking hope it's just a quick fix," I grumble, we were only two hours out of salt lake. Enough to make it suck it we have to turn back to get the bus fixed.

"We have an extra day," Lucy notes, as she plops down next to me. "And phone interviews can work. Might even get a few words out of Nick."

"I think it'll only make it worse." I find the number and call.

The sun is setting by the time we make it back to Salt Lake City. A whole afternoon wasted. Some cable or sensor had fried on us.

"I just don't understand," I repeat for the hundredth bloody time, "why you can't just give us another tour bus! It doesn't have to be perfect but we're hours behind schedule."

The pencil pusher, hair long gone grey at the temples, doesn't even look up before replying, "for insurance purposes only this bus is covered. If you'd like to amend the policy you'll have to fill out form H-17 and attach the previous policy statement." Which sounded a lot like horse shit to get more money out of us. The whole point of insurance was to not worry about things like this.

I roll my eyes, backing off the counter. "Thank you," I smile, feeling my eye twitch.

"Any luck," Jaime asks, Ben trailing like a dog behind me.

"None." I run a hand through my hair. The crew, like ants, had finished moving the most vital equipment onto the working bus. Jamie and Nick had run to get everyone food. "I think our best bet is to just let them fix it. They'll have it done my the day after tomorrow and have them met us in LA before we head down to San Diego."

Ben nods. "Fuck it then. We've lost enough time as it is."

"Who goes and who stays," Lucy says, eyes flickering between all the people assembled. We were hardly a large group. Seventeen in total, including the band.

"Us , the band, and the stage tech," Ben answers, leaving no room for arguement. "Sound checks going to be a bitch for you," he tells Nick and Jamie.

"Not if they get to LA early," Jamie retorts.

Ben and I go back in to sign the paperwork.

By the time we're done and back out, Miles and Alex have finally deigned to grace us with their presence. Miles in black skinny jeans and an adidas jumper, glitter still clinging to his hair after the last concert. Alex right next to him, cigarette in hand, as he laughs at something Miles just said, in an old strokes shirt and jeans even as the cold of the desert settles in for the night.

I swallow, my heart lurching at the sight of him.  

There goes any pretense that I might be getting over him. I bite the inside of my cheek, following Ben onto the bus as Lucy tells Miles what's going on. Unlike all of us, Miles and Alex had remained holed up on the broken bus, content to smoke week and sleep until we figured things out.

Miles had only come out for some fries and more cigarettes.

Thankfully, I didn't have to move anything. Just have to share a bus with my ex. No biggie.

Lucy glances at me, eyes wide, while smiling thinly.

We pile into the bus, waving the rest of the crew goodbye, but happy to not be the ones that had to sit around and wait.

Taking a seat once more on the couch, I open up my lab-top and start sending emails to try and squeeze in all the interviews in an afternoon instead of over two-ish days. Anything to keep me from having to deal with the Alex situation. Alex who, I couldn't but notice, as I glanced over the rim of my computer, had dark shadows under his eyes despite having slept the majority of the day away.

Miles, like a shark smelling blood in the water, takes a seat next to me, smiling shamelessly. "Not surprised you couldn't bully them into giving us a new bus Ellie."

I raise a brow, "oh what? Was I supposed to fight the man?"

"Might've done the trick," Miles nods, "but they probably looked at you and decided they could get their way."

"Oh fuck you," I scowl, heart not really in it. Writing professional sounding emails was mind numbing work. "Not like crying would've softened up their cold dead hearts."

Miles smiles bitterly, "very true there."

"So we're not stoping until California," Jamie asks.

"No my lad," Miles calls back, "you mum'll have to do without the nice mug from Vegas."

"Amateur," Ben shakes his head.

"Should've just gotten it when we were there," Lucy joins in.

Nick grins. "Cut him some slack lads," he says as he claps Jamie on the back, "Cookie was too busy downing shots to worry about dear old mummy."

I laugh along with them, allowing myself to forget all the complicated feelings I have at the moment. Miles' easy way of worming his way into things, making people feel included as much as he was able to turn around and sink into his own private circle of him and Alex. It was no wonder Miles had brought Alex along.

If not for the fact that I'd spent countless nights watching Miles snog one girl only to go home with another, I'd have wondered. Alex, my gaze flickers to his sleepy eyes, most likely form the weed. Alex I wasn't so sure.

Though I'd spent hours with him, I now felt as though I hadn't known him at all. He'd been so warm and open in the beginning. Though, as I try to recall anything at all about him, I realize anything he'd shared had been surface level. I didn't know anything about his parents, or childhood, or even what his favorite food was. Only that his appetite for music was rivaled by his ability to devour books in a single sitting. That his wardrobe extended into random cupboards.

His dark romantic eyes catch mine. Catch me staring at him like a pathetic lovestruck girl.

I lose myself in all the work that has now piled up.

[fairyshuuu]

black silk pt5.

.summary. They are not your family. Family shouldn’t hurt, family shouldn’t prick like the thorns of a rose, dragging you down to the ground. It’s only when it all feels lost, that you realize this, though. .word count.  5.5k .pairing. baekhyun x reader .genre. werewolf au  fluff/angst (will contain smut in future chapters) .other members.

.warnings. talk of human trafficking, swearing

part 1.  part 2.  part 3.  part 4.  part 5.

Baekhyun is aware he must look like a mess right now, hair disheveled and sticking up in several directions. His shirt is a light gray instead of the normal white because of the smoke of last night that stuck to his clothes like a lifeline. He’s exhausted, but still manages to send the receptionist a thankful smile.

“Is your friend feeling any better, Mr. Byun?” The blonde asks, smiling over her shoulder at him as she presses the lift button for him. Baekhyun hums, though he can’t help the worried tone that slips in, and gets into the elevator.

“I sure hope so! If not, I brought her a meal larger than her own body for nothing.” He smiles back at the woman when she giggles, letting the doors close on her. She looks like she wants to say more but Baekhyun is too stressed out to give a damn. All he wants is to see you. He doesn’t have the state of mind for pleasantries right now. As soon as the elevator doors close, Baekhyun needs to lean into the wall, doing his very best to keep stable. Yesterday had been a mess, and frankly, his brain is still trying to make sense of all that happened.

Chanyeol and Jongdae suggested bringing you home, but Bumble disagreed strongly. She wanted to bring you to the hospital, and Jongin again broke in to explain how impossible that would be. You were lying near the factory, and would be the prime suspect for the arson charge. Everyone came to the conclusion that it would be best to bring you to a hotel, so that’s what he did. He carried you carefully up the stairs, feeling your soft breath against his shirt. It had taken all of his energy not to break out into a bawling fest from his side, that’s how overwhelmed he had been. When he finally got you in bed, it was 5 am already.

Baekhyun also didn’t want to stay in the same room, in case you woke up and him being there would scare you again, or something of the sort. He’s been going back and forward between keeping Maggie updated on your temperature and reporting to Bumble and Junmyeon. He’s only really coming to terms with the fact that you’re actually real, and that he has to talk to you now, a good 4 hours after. The elevator stops on the fifth floor. He gets out with a shaky sigh, carefully balancing the bag of food and the cup of coffee in his one hand as he looks around for the room key with the other.

He’s been breaking his skull the entire walk back trying to figure out what to say to you, but he keeps falling short. After all, what do you say to the person you’ve been looking for, every day for months without them having any idea. Everything he wants to say seems too sudden, and so he decides not to say anything until it’s needed, or asked for. That he won’t mess up.

He fishes the key card out of his pocket, and gently opens the door. A soft golden light falls over the room through the big window, making the messed up blankets and pillows look especially soft. It’s quiet though, a tense voidness that makes Baekhyun swallow. He kicks off his shoes and sets down the food on the table, sauntering to the bathroom as his heart sinks.

The bathroom is empty, the room is empty, and your stuff is gone. Even his note is gone, only the glass of water left behind, untouched. The quiet is thick and suffocating.

It’s in that single second that his hope is once again ripped from his fingers before he can blink, and suddenly he sinks down against the wall. Before he can stop it, a muffled sob makes it’s way out. Baekhyun lets his head fall to the wall, and tugs his knees towards his body, thick tracks making their way down his cheeks. His soft whimpers go unheard by the rest of the world, that steadily keeps spinning. He presses his hands to his eyes, trying to hide the wetness from himself, as if covering up his feelings would just make them go away.

He’s alone again. Again, and he can’t help but feel like it’s always going to be this way. He pulls up his nose, slumping completely into the cold wallpaper. It’s not like him to wallow in self pity. But everything in this room so clearly screams that you don’t want him. You don’t want to wait for him, you don’t want to see him or hear him or meet him. It’s this that makes him swallow, trying to keep the sound down his throat. He can’t find it in his heart to be mad at you though he wishes he could. As he shifts, he rests his cheek on his knee, letting the tears run freely down his face and neck.

You already have a mate. You’ve found your forever, and Baekhyun is not it. You’re not his to keep, and this makes Baekhyun so undeniably sad, that his heart feels like it’s chewing holes in his chest.

You take out your phone and glance at it, letting your slight worry fade. It’s 10:13. You have about a million missed calls from Dongyoung, but that at least means that he got back fine. And despite everything, you feel fine too. Yuri hasn’t caught you yet, and you’re willing to see this as a big victory. You don’t want to know what he’d do if he would have found you, so obviously guilty. You just sigh, not willing to find out.

As you walk, you can’t help but look back every few steps. Maybe it’s paranoia, but you have a strange sensation in your stomach, as if something is wrong. No matter how many times you look back though, nothing is there. You must be exhausted, or delusional. That’s the only explanation for this weird feeling you’re having.

Your steps bounce back between the houses, empty street longer than you expected it to be. This little neighborhood is nice, though it is a tad bit confusing because all the houses look the same. The long street is lined with gardens, separated by small hedges. The typical family neighborhood. Not a place where a werewolf would normally spend her days, and this is why it’s a good place to hide out. For now. You swallow, and glance at your phone once more to confirm the address.

34...36...38. This must be it. You hold your steps, and take in the place with wide eyes. The big house is a tan sort of color with black tiles, and two big windows in front. The triangle shape of the house gives it a modern sort of look, and though not your personal taste, you guess it looks pretty classy. The curtains are closed. You drum your fingers on your thigh nervously, before stepping into the garden. The soft grass tickles your bare feet. You’re lucky you didn’t meet anyone on the way here, because people would probably have called the police.

The path looks inviting, but still an uncomfortable squeeze settles in your stomach. Taeyong’s outhouse. Yuri doesn’t know of this place, you know this. There’s no way that he could be here, but the thought alone makes goosebumps appear on your shoulders. You slowly walk through the green garden, and arrive at the dark wooden door. With another glance behind you, you slide the backpack off your shoulder and stuff your hand in, easily pulling out the small key.

It slides into the lock smoothly, and the door slowly swings open before you can stop it. It’s the wind, but still it scares you. You peek inside carefully. The house is completely silent. You hurry inside and lock the door behind you, before tossing off the backpack and leaning against the wall. The coldness of the wall calms your tingling nerves. Only when it stays completely quiet does a sense of safety wash over you. You run your fingers through your short hair and pull it a little, swallowing. You’re not dreaming. You actually escaped. You’re out. Free.

The idea sends shivers down your spine and wetness to your eyes, though you don’t let it fall. You won’t cry right now, not when you’re so happy you might jump out of your skin. You pick out your phone and send Dongyoung a message, looking around. It’s been so long since you’ve felt this way, so long since you ran around without any chains around your feet, and you’re not sure how to feel. You want to jump, and dance, and run until you’re so exhausted that you crash in the soft, green grass.

This is impossible, at least until Yuri leaves town, but you don’t let that bring you down. As you lay down to relax into the couch and stare up at the ceiling, words leave your mouth. As if they’ve been locked up and crushed under Yuri’s claws for so long that you forgot about them, but are now spilling out without any holding back. “I’m sorry, Julie. I’m sorry, Angel. I’m so sorry about what happened. I’m sorry about everything I did, and everything I let happen. Please know I’m so, so sorry. I’ll make everything okay now, I promise that.”

Though a single tear makes it’s way down your temple, your heart fills with relief. Because after years, you’re finally you again.

Lily gently knocks on the wood, peering around the hall. An elderly couple pass her with a nod, which she returns. When they are gone, she presses her ear to the door, and sighs. Supernatural hearing would really be handy in a moment like this. She juts out her bottom lip in debate, before slowly pushing against the door. It’s not pushed into lock, so it opens with a little nudge. “Baekhyun?”

The room is clean, no sign of a person anywhere. The bed is still made, even though it does seem to have been slept on, but there’s no soul to be seen. Lily looks around in confusion. She could have sworn Maggie said that he was still here, but it’s been almost an hour without a word from him and so she thought she’d come check on him.

She quickly peeks around the corner, to walk into the bathroom. When she opens the second door, she almost jumps out of her tiny body. “Baekhyun!” The man is stood in front of the mirror, his eyes puffy and red as a cherry. Lily quickly rushes over to inspect him, though he protests. “What the hell are you doing in here, you egg?! You had us worried sick. We thought something might have happened to you.” When she puts her hand on his cheek and turns him to face her, she quiets down. His face is wet, cheeks littered with tear tracks that disappear into his shirt.

Baekhyun seems to pull himself together a little when he catches her eyes, but the wetness spilling out is indication enough. His hand are tight on the sink, almost white because of the pressure he’s putting on them. “She’s gone, Lil. She’s left. I’ve really lost her this time, I think. I don’t know if I can do it anymore.” He looks around the bright bathroom like it might hold an answer, before settling back on his friend’s smaller shape. “I don’t know.”

“Baekhyun.”

“She has someone else, she doesn’t want me!”

“Baekhyun.”

“Why should I keep running after her if she wants me to leave her alone? That’s harassment and you guys are not helping! You’re not helping! This is all your fault, of all of you!”

“Baekhyun!” she yelps, grabbing him by his wide shoulders harshly. “Listen to me! It’s going to be okay. It’s not your fault. It’s going to be okay. I promise, Baek. It’s really not your fault.” Baekhyun swallows, pausing his wild movements. He regards her for a split second, before pulling her close and into a tight hug, while Lily gently pats his head. He’s been through a lot. “It’s okay. Shh, shh, it’s gonna be okay.”

“I don’t know what to do, Lily. I feel like I’ve tried everything,” he blubbers into her shoulder, desperately holding onto her. Lily doesn’t want to imagine the pain he must be feeling being away from his mate like this again. Kyungsoo explained it when the entire situation was settling in, that being away from your mate over and over again can physically start hurting. She doesn’t know if Baekhyun is at that point yet, but he can’t be far off.

“We’ll find her again, Baekkie. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that you two find each other, in the right way this time. It’s all going to be okay, I just know it. You’re mates for a reason.”

Baekhyun swallows the hardness in his throat, and pulls back, moving to sit on the toilet. He really looks exhausted. Lily’s never seen him like this. She’s seen him with sweat drenching his clothes from fevers and his eyes tired and heavy from days of job hunting, but never once like this. Tired out, not only physically, but mentally. Baekhyun pulls up his nose and grabs some toilet paper to clean off his face, while letting out a deep breath. “I know where she is.”

Lily turns right back around from where she was heading to the bedroom, he brown hair whipping around her face. “You what?” Her eyes are comically big, tiny form tensed. This is definitely a development she was not expecting. “You know where she is? How?”

Baekhyun gives her an almost guilty look, tossing the paper into the trash can. “I had a feeling she’d run again, so I placed a tracker on her backpack.” His eyes flit from the sink to the floor to the towels, but never his friend’s face. Probably because of the judgment he well knows will sit there, rightfully so. “I was never going to actually use it! It just made my anxiety calm down, knowing that I had a backup. I wasn’t actually going to use it.”

He points at his jacket that lays on the floor next to the door, and peeks out his tongue to wet his lips. “It’s connected to my phone, but I haven’t looked at it yet. I won’t look at it, I’m not that kind of person. You’re right, I know that. I know that I need to have patience but-”

“Bless your little soul, we both know you’ve never had any. This must really be driving you mad,” she giggles, coming over to him to clean his face properly with another paper wipe.

Baekhyun smiles a little. “You have no idea.” When Lily tosses the second paper into the trash beside his, he takes her hand, and looks at her closely. “Thank you, Lil. I know you’re all doing your best for me but I really, really appreciate it.”

“Don’t thank me. It was the maknaes who sent me here in the first place. We’re all doing it because we love you. Just be a little kinder on yourself, please.” Baekhyun’s never been one to follow advice, but this time, he’ll do his very best to try.

You swallow as you lean back in the couch, stuffing a croissant in your face. Your coffee is hot in your hand, and your gaze is on the moving shot of the television. The factory is on the news, which somehow sends little tingles of pride down your belly. Not because of the illegal activity, but at the fact that you really fucked Yuri over. It feels good to return the favor, for once. As you lean back even more, letting your shape sink into the fabric, a creak to your side makes you look over.

Dongyoung is look straight at the tv, his coffee clamped in his hand like it’ll slip out any moment if he doesn’t pay attention. His black hair is messy, but still looks good on him. You sigh, swallowing your food. “Are you really not going to speak to me?” you mumble, pointing vaguely in his direction. “After all I’ve been through, you think it’s okay to treat me like this? I was almost dead, you know.”

His jaw ticks just slightly, but he ignores you still, seemingly too focused on the news rapport. You look away, and pout. The curtains are still closed, but now the bright sun of outside reaches in enough to lift your spirit. “You’re really going to be mad at me all day now? Or have you decided to be mad at me for the rest of my life?”

Dongyoung groans, before he turns to you, putting his cup down too hard. Some of the coffee spills onto the table. “You know I’m going to be mad until you apologize.”

“Fine,” you mumble, defiantly lifting your eyebrow at your friend. “I’m sorry. Now will you please spill why the hell you’ve been sat here like there’s a stick up your ass?”

Dongyoung turns back to face the screen, lifting his hand to indicate you to be quiet for a second as the woman on the news talks about the fire. Her soft voice makes you look up. ‘The incident that started at around 3 am on wednesday seems to point in the direction of an accident. There’s not been a suspect identified, neither has there been a question of foul play. The experts say that the packing factory most likely suffered from faulty or old wiring. Luckily, no one was injured because of the fire.’

Dongyoung sighs deeply, but seems glad that the police didn’t find any evidence, and nods. You’re glad too. You’d rather not be in jail right now. “I’ve been sat here with a stick up my ass,” Dongyoung turns to you, his hands back on his coffee, “because you could have died, for one. You’re a stubborn asshole sometimes, and I don’t understand why you put yourself in situations like this.” You want to respond but he cuts you off before you can. “Second, I’m mad because your mate saw your face. You said you weren’t going to do about it, but he is, Aurie. Every time you see him, the bond strengthens and now you can’t just hide in plain sight.”

“So I’ll have to move,” you shrug, though it does send a little bit of pain through your heart, “whatever. I would have moved some time in the near future anyway because of business. The only difference is that now, I have someone else that I have to avoid. I don’t care, I’m just happy I’m out.” You down the last of your coffee and stand up from the couch, looking around the cabin-style house. Your friend follows your movements with his eyes. “This place is nice, how did he get it?”

Dongyoung nods. “Taeyong is renting it for now. He says he feels comfortable between all these people, surrounded by families. I don’t know if that means he sees them as snacks or not, but I’ve learned not to care.”

“Yeah,” you mumble, “that makes two.” Your hand brush over the oak drawers when you walk past.

“You do care though.”

Your hand hovers in mid-air for a second before continuing it’s path to the next piece of furniture. “I feel bad. That’s different. I stopped caring after the second one, because I knew Yuri wasn’t going to stop. But knowing that they were going to people to suck dry, didn’t really settle my stomach, no. They trusted me and I just let them go. I’ve…” a chuckle escapes your lips though there’s not humor in the situation, ”I’ve done some shit things.”

“That makes two.” He gets up from the soft pillows to walk over to you and take your hand, leading you back to the couch. “Stop running away from your problems and sit down with me.” You huff, wanting to dispute his words, but stop midway. Maybe you do have a tendency to run away from your problems, instead of facing them head on. It’s been like that as long as you remember though, so it feels natural now. Dongyoung sighs deeply, and pats your shoulder gently. “How did it start, anyway? I wasn’t here when you all started, I was still off trying to get my shit together. It was only Taeyong at first, right?”

You slowly bob your head up and down, staring at the seams of the couch. “It wasn’t too long after… after everything. We both had our ways of coping with the pain. When ignoring it didn’t work, Yuri tried something else,” your hands shake a little, so you fist them into the clean fabric of your sweater. Or, Dongyoung’s sweater. “He tried blaming me, he tried kicking and screaming until we both lost our voices. Nothing seemed to work, so he kept trying.

“He tried someone else for a while, but they also couldn’t fix what had broken in him, and so he tried another.” You know that there must still be pain lingering in your voice. If it was anyone else, you’d hide it deep down, but Dongyoung knows you. He knows all your secrets, and knows how you work, so it’s no use. “They never worked, so eventually he started hitting us to feel in control. Them first, never me. No, I was supposed to sit on the sidelines and watch, his precious Angel.”

In some ways, it felt relieving, talking about it with him without getting a response back. It made you feel like you were writing it down, more than just tossing it out there. “It’s only when I acted up that he’d hit me. It was like that became his excuse to kiss me afterwards, smoothing away the bruises. And then he had these two girls, that he didn’t want anymore, that would do everything for his affection. So he went to Taeyong, and sold them to him. I guess Taeyong smelled the chance of money, so they made a deal.”

“And you let him.” Dongyoung nods.

“I had no choice. It was them or me.”

“I call bullshit. He wouldn’t get rid of you, we both know that.” Dongyoung is right, and you know it. It feels so much harder though, admitting that you just did something shitty on purpose. Or, without caring about the consequences.

You swallow and look away, voice soft. “I’m not a bad person.”

Your friend’s red eyes focus in on you for a minute, before he slowly takes your hand. “I know that. You’ve just been through a lot of bad situations. More than people should have to go through.” He takes you in for a hug that you only half-return, brushing his hand over your head like you’re a small child, and maybe in some ways you still are. “I still have the letters in that closet over there, if you…”

“I don’t want to see them.” You mumble, pulling away. You brush your hands under your eyes just to be sure, and straighten out your clothes a bit. “I’m going to go set up my room. You should probably do that too.”

It’s only the next morning that trouble comes. You expected it to come, but maybe the same day. Now, at the dining table just after the sun rises not so much. Two harsh knocks come to the door, that send you and Dongyoung out of your chairs subsequently. You glance over at the black haired man, who motions you to go hide. You quickly clean the evidence of your breakfast, and run over to hide in the other room while the door is opened in the main room.

One set of feet walks through the door, your nerves spiking up high at the sound. It couldn’t be him, it shouldn’t be him. Your fingers dig into your thighs while you listen. If it really is Yuri, you would run. No matter the consequences, you’d run until your legs gave out and your hands stop punching. To your slight surprise though, a much softer voice sounds out. Taeyong.

“What did you do?” he sounds, voice tense. “Dongyoung, what did you do?”

Your friend just stays silent for a bit, before clearing his voice. “I didn’t do anything. I just woke up.”

Taeyong chuckles in disbelief as he walks around the other room. You carefully hide a little deeper into the closet you pressed yourself in. “Then why do I have about a million calls from that asshole?” You can hear Taeyong walk back around to where Dongyoung is standing, and grabbing him by the arm. “Move, come on. Yuri is not leaving until he sees your face. I don’t really care about what you did, but I don’t want any part of it.”

You want to come out to help, but if Taeyong saw you here, everything would be over for you. You and him might have known each other for long, but he wouldn’t be the person to get you out of a shit situation. You just hope Dongyoung can understand. They leave the house in silence, leaving you alone once again. You slowly sneak out of the closet and look around. This time though, the silence doesn’t feel comforting as it did yesterday. It feels like a clear indication that once more, Yuri has your life in his grasp. He knows your friends, knows where you go and knows how you function, maybe more than you do yourself.

Even after hours, Dongyoung doesn’t come back. You wish you could say you don’t care, but that’d be a lie. You want your friend safe, but the knowledge that you can’t do anything is driving you mad. You can’t go to see what’s up, you can’t call him, you can’t even ask for any kind of sign. You have to be non-existent. It’s madly frustrating. You’ve walked back and forth through the house multiple times now. Realistically, there’s nothing you can do, not if you don’t want to be found. Your belly keeps flipping though, and despite not knowing what it means, it doesn’t feel comfortable.

You stare out of the slight slit between the two curtains again, and sigh deeply. You just want to know if he’s okay, and if he’s coming back. So that if someone enters the house now, you know what to expect. You tap your nails nervously on the windowsill, before walking over to the door. Your hand feels cold on the handle, clenching around it. With another deep breath, you push the handle down and let the door reveal the outside world. You’d just look for a trail. For anything to indicate where they might have gone, and then you’ll go back inside.

You leave the door wide open, and walk out into the garden, on your socks this time. The beams of the sun on your nose feel so nice, that you let yourself linger in place for just another second. The neighbors here don’t know you anyway, and most of them would be at work on a friday afternoon. Nothing to worry about, you tell yourself. You know deep down that this is a bad idea, but maybe you’re too happy to be free to let that fear settle in.

You open your eyes again and walk to the sidewalk, bending over to stare at the floor. There’s no tracks, but you can smell the gasoline of the car they most likely left in. Would Yuri really go through all that trouble to get Dongyoung to answer him? You know that your friend wouldn’t spill anything about you, but Yuri has never trusted him. Maybe it makes sense to go to him as a first lead. You straighten up and let your hand run over the hedge in thought, the leaves brushing your palm. It tickles.

You take another deep breath, and turn to go back into the house. Only, you stop halfway like a deer caught in headlights. A young man, copper hair falling loosely over his big eyes, is staring straight at you. He’s frozen mid-step, guitar on his back and hands in his pockets as his eyes meet yours. When you open your lips to breathe in, a little sound falls out. Recognition slaps you across the face. The stranger from across the lake. He has the same pretty silver eyes.

You two stand frozen in place for at least seconds, before you can break out of your trance to rush over to the door. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Dongyoung was right, you are a stubborn idiot. You should have never come here, never have opened the door and now he’s seen you, again, and everything might as well come crashing down around you. A desperate voice stops you in place moments before you pull the door closed behind you.

“Wait!” he yelps, stepping a bit closer towards the yard, as if his feet are attached to the sidewalk with magnets. “Please, stop running from me. I’m really losing my mind. I don’t know what you’re running from, but let me help you. Please.” His begging sounds so pure, so sincere that you consider it. For that split second, you consider what it would be like to sit in his embrace and feel his comforting words wash over you like a shield that can block out the big, bad world. Another split second, and you feel annoyed. Annoyed at your mind for allowing you to indulge in something so stupid, annoyed at him for seeing right through you and annoyed at Dongyoung for pointing out so obviously that you always run.

You’re not a fucking coward, you don’t run from your problems. As this anger makes it’s way through your body, you turn around, staring him down across the sea of green grass and flowers that separate you two. You lift your brow. “I don’t need your help.” You even dare to take a step in his direction, feeling the sun tickle your cheeks and the wind ruffle your short hair. “I’m perfectly fine taking care of myself.”

Your answer seems to amuse him greatly, because a huge smile breaks out on his lips. It’s beautiful, and if you weren’t so damn stubborn you would probably break in his arms. He seems to think for a moment, before he answers. His lithe voice filling the silence of the neighborhood. “If you don’t need help, than why are you clinging to that door so desperately?” You blink, and frown at him a little. You don’t want to look back, but sure enough, your hand has yet to leave the door knob. Your ears get hot when he smiles even wider.

“What do you want?” you just respond, crossing your hands across your chest.

The man shakes his head a little, but keeps smiling. He’s enjoying this too much for his own good. “I just told you. I want to help you.”

“And I just told you I don’t need your help,” you snap, pressing your lips together. See, you think to yourself, I don’t run from my problems.

The man’s eyes widen a little, before he holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he chuckles, the sound bright and soft, “how about this? I need yours.” Your frown slips off before you can help it, as he stares at you. His bright hair sways back and forth as the wind plays between you two, drifting away the tension like it was never there to begin with. When he speaks again, his voice is back to that earnest plead of the start. “Please, just let me talk to you.”

Your first instinct is to run behind the door and throw it into lock, so that nothing else can touch you. But you want to fight it this time, and keep your feet in place. It’s scary, terrifying really and still you’re standing here, and a flower of pride seems to grow in your heart. Maybe that’s why you slowly cock your head to beckon him closer, to cross the distance that keeps you apart. Or maybe you’ve lost your mind. One of the two. “One minute,” you point out, voice steady, “you get one minute to convince me why I should help you. Don’t get it wrong. I’m helping you, not the other way around.”

The man’s mouth corners twitch just slightly, before he nods. “Okay. I’m Baekhyun.”

You just uncross your hands from your chest, opening the door a little wider. “That’s three of your seconds wasted already, Baekhyun.”

Woooohhh, I hope you liked this chapter! It’s pretty fast paced but I’m really happy with it. I hope that things are starting to make a little more sense in this chapter and the next, because Aurie still has a lot of secrets in her little body. And finally, finally these two actually meet. Consciously.

If you enjoyed it, please send me a message! I really love hearing your thoughts about it or any questions you have so please don’t hesitate to send me any~~ Thank you for reading!

If you want to be (un)tagged from this series or any others, just shoot me a message. @sehunnies-hunnie96 @unicornsandpinguins @ninibears-erigom @very-important-army @caticorn61 @rissa-is-a-nerd @xius-exos @byunfirstlady @sehunsthetics

[charismastaticarchive]

@destructiveglitch [ MANUELA & CADILLAC ( phantom of the opera au ) ]  "Your prayers will never go unheard, your cries will never go unnoticed." The masked god dressed in black towers over her like a shadow of the void. His hands cup her cheeks gently, as he tilts her head up to lock their eyes. "Tonight, I vow to keep your soul from harm's way. All I need in return is for you to sing for me in the dead of night, a lullaby to ease the hurting solitude in my heart. That's all I ask of you, Manuela."

The ocean is blue, and Manuela’s never seen it, but that’s what she hears---and that’s what she sees, in paintings, and poems, and crude children’s drawings, made of sky blue stage make-up, glitter that sparkles beneath crude, swirling, smiling white-faced suns.

They say there’s a difference between the beautiful and the sublime. Manuela listened intently, as the Head of House whispered about his trip into the depths of the mountains, at least five thousand feet up, up, up into the air where the air is thin as a ribbon around your neck and could take a pretty girl’s head just as easy. She pretended to attend to her training, the straightening of her ankles and toes as she rose and fall and pliéed, and secretly she thought to herself that the Head of House could never have been so brave----but he spoke softly as one does in a chapel or with their hands clasped by their bedside, knees bent, in prayer---and manically, a man crazed with the existence of miracles; Anything could be beautiful, but the sublime, the curve of the Alps and the edge of that five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten thousand feet drop----the sublime threatened your life, made you aware of your own humanity and mortality----and you thanked it for it.

The ocean is blue in pictures, and the ocean is pretty, like Manuela’s face is pretty, like Manuela’s voice is pretty, but Manuela has heard other tales from the depths of the Ensemble, the primma donna that almost lost her life on the journey out at sea. The waves, they danced, extended, straightened, curved, flinging, crashing, balling, singing, SCREAMING, drowning. The primma donna could hear nothing but her own gut as her exquisite, expensive dinner swam in circles and threatened to escape. She clung to her exquisite, expensive purebred pup and prayed to God in the caverns of the ship’s hull----but Manuela wondered to herself, if the Primma Donna had been forced to stay on the deck with the sailors, would she have met God there, at its peak, surrounded by water and the threat of her large mouth, ever open wider, stuffed with frothing salt water, angry as a rabid beast? Moreover, was it the sublime that kept the sailors back to sea---away from their wives and lovers, more than the coin it offered them? The threat of death, the mania of miracles---touching God, through danger, if it meant you might be swallowed whole…. That thought thrilled Manuela more than the primma donna’s story, and she kept it close to her chest as she prayed for miracles of her own that never came to be, as if God only watched you in the throes of a hurricane, and not through the storm of your heart.

Cadillac is blue, and it is not the blue of an ocean, nature’s earthborn touch. This is a different kind of God with the same predisposition towards candlelight and dramatic tomes and creaking, cracking drones, but with an all-too otherworldly glow that doesn’t need them to be both holy and obscene. An authority drips from him that feels almost ironic, a contrast of seriousness to the point of silliness and silliness to the point of seriousness, the ballet girls playing ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ giggling to each other as ghosts guided their hands and yet, lifting each other up by strength unbound all the same.

He is so handsome, she can barely take it. Is this how a moth feels? Drawn to light? His fluorescent glow, like a halo, like an angel? Skin soft, and smooth, she aches to touch him, to draw off the mask that seems to hide nothing at all but his intentions.

The sewers should smell, they should reek with waste. But Manuela smells nothing---as if she has been locked in a vacuum, a black hole, with only Cadillac’s glow to guide her home.

It occurs to her, over and over, that that might not be his intention. That he might keep her here forever, beneath the opera, that she might never return to her dancing, the silly girls she grew up with, the matron that yelled and passive aggressed at every opportunity. He might keep her here---or he might kill her flat out and dry, the ribbon tightening around her neck just as it has seemed to start to unspool, and finally---her prayers would be answered. Finally, she would be loved and divine and gone from this awful world, into his holy arms.

He asks her a question, and she registers it, blankly, as she continues to question her sanity, her humanity, her mortality---and if she wants to be mortal at all, and she comes to realize, the depths of the sublime. Beauty is passive, beauty is seen, and enjoyed, and it lays there, naked and bare and pretty. The sublime, instead, perceives the viewer, it takes what it wants, and what it gives back, as it has to, to be sublime, to be sublime is to be merciful----is made holy and changed, so much more than beautiful.

Understanding the mania, finally, of the Head of House that threw himself to the tip of the Matterhorn, to the primma donna who clung to life, the sailors who said goodbye to their loved ones and hello to a life of blue, perfect bliss, Manuela clings to Cadillac’s gloved hand and finally answers his question.

“Anything,” she says. “Anything.” Desperation is evident, but this is Manuela, and even as her breath and heart skips, her lips quirk into a maddened smile. “As long as I can pick the last song.”

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

Sunshine On My Shoulders

bc-melody said: Hey! I was wondering if I could request and angsty Roger x Reader where she gets in to a car accident or something and freaks out? Thanks so much 😘

(a/n: this picture was all i could get to upload on my parent’s shitty wifi geez no wonder i’m always at my apartment. anyways ENJOY THE ANGST)

He had always promised to protect you. It was one of the first things he’d ever promised you, and one of the few promises that he repeated throughout your relationship.  Roger wanted you to feel safe, to be safe. He didn’t want you in the limelight more than necessary, and he certainly didn’t want you constantly feeling threatened by the pressure of his fame and the big shoes you had to fill as a rockstar’s girlfriend.

‘Sunshine’ was his nickname for you. You loved it – it was because you’d told him your favorite music artist was John Denver. On your one-year anniversary, he bought you a copy of Denver’s Poems, Prayers & Promises, and left a note on it reading ‘for Y/N, my life, my love, my Sunshine. –R.T.       P.S. happy one year’

You played that record until it was practically melted.

It was fitting, though, because you really were his sunshine. You were the center of Roger’s universe, his primary focus. His world revolved around you.

And right now, he was out of orbit, hurtling into the dark abyss of the unknown without you. All it took was one phone call.

It was early in the morning when he got the call. He’d managed to drag himself out of bed and over to the phone, which he picked up right before the last ring. Roger’s hair was a mess, tangled on the side he’d slept on, and his eyes were tired as he stared blearily at the dim light filtering in around the curtains and cleared his throat. “Hello?”

“Is this a Mr. Taylor? First name Roger?” an unfamiliar voice asked, several other muted voices speaking in the background and intermittent beeping playing out.

“Yes, speaking,” he’d mumbled, rubbing his eyes as he went to open the curtains, the cord on the phone stretching to its limits. It was dreary out, a bleak Friday morning, and he’d tried in vain to keep you in bed that morning when you’d woke up to get ready for work. It was foggy, and you had quite a commute just to get to your place of employment. “Who is this?”

“Mr. Taylor, my name is Elizabeth, I’m calling from St George’s, you’re listed as an emergency contact for a Ms. Y/N-“

“Y/N?” he’d asked quickly, interrupting whoever this woman was as all of his muscles tensed up and stars danced across his vision, blurring his sight. If the hospital was calling him, he could only assume the worst. “What…. What’s wrong, what’s going on with Y/N? I just saw her an hour ago when she left for work!”

“Ms. Y/L/N was brought in about half an hour ago, she was involved in a two-car accident near Southcroft and Rectory.”

It was like a punch in the gut for Roger, and he barely heard the next words as he zoned out. Everything in his world was crashing down around him. His Sunshine, in the hospital. The ray of light he’d watched leave the apartment earlier without a kiss goodbye. He’d been too tired to get up and send you off, so all he’d given you was a wave and a grunt that resembled “Bye.”

“God, I’m fucking stupid,” he muttered to himself as he swallowed hard, a lump stubbornly forming in his throat. “Did you say St. George’s?” he asked to clarify, his only goal at the moment being to make it to your side as soon as possible.

“Yes, sir, we can tell you the room number when you get here.” He nodded, even though she obviously couldn’t see him, and hung up without another word.

“My god,” he breathed out, wasting no time in grabbing his coat and keys. It didn’t matter to him that he was in his pajamas, or that he looked like he just caught his death – you were alone, and maybe scared, and that was scary in itself. It really terrified him more than anything, so he went a bit faster than he should have on the way to the hospital, considering the situation.

You were asleep when he got there, and you would have looked peaceful if it hadn’t looked like you’d been through the ringer. Roger’s jaw dropped open in horror as he approached your bed, his hand reaching out. But he retracted it, suddenly scared to hurt you and wake you.

Instead, he scanned your face with his eyes only, tears blurring his vision as he looked over the distorted skin on your face. Bruises and bandaged gashes corrupted your features, making you look almost disturbed as you slept, and you clutched at your thin, cheap blanket with your left hand. Your right hand was in a makeshift cast, elevated on a pillow at your side. Your ankle was also wrapped up and elevated, and you appeared to have bandaging peeking up over the collar of the flimsy hospital gown you currently wore.

Words tried to form themselves on his tongue, but found no traction and died in his mouth. So he just stared, openmouthed, for what seemed like an eternity. Nurses came in and out of the room, but he did not acknowledge them. He just sat next to your bed, watching you listlessly.

The woman laying on the bed was unfamiliar, a feeble copy of the wonderful woman he called his girlfriend. The shell of a human he saw laying there was a far cry from the character he’d seen when he first met you.

It was like the first time seeing a rainbow when he’d met you. Everything was so dull, discolored, and then suddenly you were there. Your smile brightened the room, made it technicolor, made it spring again. He was blown away. Roger had never met anyone who was so outgoing, yet so easy to stay in with. You were the balance of everything – sweet, yet salty, calm, yet excitable. No matter what it was, you seemed to be perfectly in the middle of it, in the middle of the universe as Roger flew into orbit around you. Once Freddie had introduced you two at an afterparty, Roger already knew you’d be something special in his life. But he never expected how central you would become to his existence. Even the brief thought of you being gone when he’d answered that call – it was like a black hole had sucked him up, reorganized all of his matter, and he had become nothing without you. Like Roger Taylor was just another void, lost to the masses, to the endless universe that no longer had Y/N in it. But what was it worth anyways, without you?

He supposed he would have stared forever, his knuckles white and arms veiny as his fingers clutched at the armrests of his chair – but you slowly arose from your slumber, your eyelids fluttering slowly and then your face contorting in mild pain as you kept your eyes shut. You appeared to be unaware that Roger was now there, so he gently reached out and rested his hand on top of your own left hand, which startled you a tiny bit. You opened your eyes and turned your head to find your boyfriend watching you with red-rimmed eyes, a shaky breath escaping his lips when he met your gaze.

“Oh, Rog,” you whispered when you realized it was his hand encircling yours, and your eyes flooded with several emotions all at once – love, guilt, sadness, happiness, the works. There was no way to know what to feel at the moment, so you just sat there and squeezed his hand firmly, offering him a small smile. “I’m glad you’re here, baby.”

Roger broke down at that. Tears started rolling out of his eyes at a rapid rate, and he pulled your hand to his lips, pressing kisses repeatedly against the back of it. The warmth of his hand encircled your own cold, frail hand, and you felt your own hot, salty tears rolling down your cheeks as you continued to smile at him. “I’m sorry, Y/N, I’m so sorry,” Roger croaked out, his voice almost hoarse as he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get a handle on his emotions. “I should have drove you to work, or made you stay home. It was so foggy, it’s my fault-“

“No, no, no, babe,” you murmured, cutting him off as he babbled incessantly about how this was his doing. “I love you, please don’t blame yourself for this.” His mouth snapped closed, then opened for a second before closing again. Slowly opening his eyes, he sniffed and grabbed a tissue, cleaning himself up a bit as he sighed.

“I’m sorry, sunshine,” he apologized again, his nose red at the tip and making him look like he’d just braved a freezing winter wind. His eyes were still bloodshot as he watched you lovingly, a small smile peeking out from the corner of his dainty pink lips. “How are you feeling? Do you need me to get a nurse for anything?”

“Oh, I’ll be alright. How are you, Roger? I hope they didn’t wake you.” Roger laughed, sniffling and rubbing the side of his face. Even after a car wreck, you were still concerned about him.

He squeezed your hand gently, kissing your knuckles again. “Don’t worry about me, sunshine. I love you, I’m so glad you’re okay. I was worried sick about you, it was my job to protect you and I royally fucked that job up.”

A light tinkle of a laugh escaping your lips, and you winced a little at the pain it caused, but you still smiled at Roger. “Roger, you can’t save me from everything, don’t worry so much.”

A grimace formed on his lips at that, and he chewed on his lip a bit. “I could have kept you home. This shouldn’t have happened.”

“How could you have known?” you replied softly, running your thumb over his knuckles repeatedly. “You can’t be everywhere, Roger, it’s not your fault that this happened. Life happens, you know? I don’t blame you for this, and neither should you. You make me happy, and I don’t want you to be upset because of me.

He nodded, bowing his head a bit as he nuzzled your hand, refusing to let go of it as a nurse came in to check on you. No matter what the nurse did, his hand remained around yours, a comforting presence for you as you listened to what the nurse had to say, following instructions.

But it was more for Roger. Your hand was his lifeline – it was the only thing bringing him back into orbit. His sun was back in the universe and the balance was restored. As he observed you responding to the nurse with nods and smiles, a little tune began to play in the back of his mind, a slow, plucky guitar backed by a fluid, beautiful orchestra, and he began to hum softly as the nurse left. Your eyes met his dazzling blues again, and a knowing smile spread across your face as you easily recognized the tune, the words dancing around in Roger’s brain before he began to sing them softly.

sunshine almost always makes me high if I had a tale that I could tell you i’d tell a tale sure to make you smile if I had a wish that I could wish for you i’d make a wish for sunshine for all the while

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[darkshreaders]

a random stupid story “super mario 64″ how original of a name anyways enjoy this cringey story

I always liked Super Mario 64 when I was a kid. I remember playing it at my aunt's house all the time. Well, one day a pop-up appeared out of nowhere as I was watching gameplay footage on YouTube. I was a little startled, and was about to close the window, until I realized that it was a website showing of a mint condition copy of Super Mario 64 for sale. There was a picture and everything. I usually don't trust these things, but the feeling of nostalgia overpowered me, and I wanted to buy it.

The whole business was peculiar, seeing as how the owner of the game wanted the buyer to send an envelope containing $10 to and address on the site, instead of using something like PayPal. What made things even more strange was that when I tried to gain access to the website (I wrote down the URL) after encountering... problems with the game, the page was nowhere to be found.

A few days after the $10 was mailed, I got a package containing the new copy of the game. The first thing I noticed when I opened the small box was that the "official sticker" with Mario flying in the air was apparently peeled off or something. In its place was a piece of duct tape with "Mario" crudely written on it in permanent marker. I felt a little ripped-off, but as long as the game worked, I didn't care.

I got out my Nintendo 64 and put the cartridge in. The screen turned on with the familiar Mario face that you could stretch and twist aimlessly. I remembered laughing all the time at the results as a kid and decided to mess around for old times sake. I moved the cursor over to Mario's ear and pulled it to elven proportions. I was going to do the same to the other ear, when the TV suddenly produced loud static. Mario's whole head started deforming and twisting in ways that I didn't even know were possible for the model. Random sound effects from the game started playing along with the static. As all this was occurring, I could hear a faint voice whispering in Japanese. The voice was stammering and whimpering.

I immediately shut off the game and tried again. I didn't bother with the Mario head this time. Just selected a new file and started playing.

When I selected the file, the game skipped the opening monologue by Peach and the courtyard outside. Mario was just placed right inside the castle. Creepier still, Bowser didn't say anything either. I tried to ignore it and played anyway. However I also noticed that there was no music. Just dead silence. There weren't even any Toads around to talk to. The only door I could enter was the Bob-omb Battlefield. The other doors wouldn't even respond to my button commands.

The portrait to Bob-omb Battlefield wasn't the usual picture. It was just a stark white canvas. I was still trying to convince myself that these were just minor glitches, and that they wouldn't effect the gameplay at all. Once I entered the portrait, the image suddenly went from a blank canvas to the Lethal Lava Land painting. You know, that slightly unsettling image of the flame with the evil smile? Yeah, that's when I started getting really suspicious.

The mission select menu came up, and yet another weird detail was present. Instead of "Big Bob-omb on the Summit", the mission was called "TURN BACK". I have no idea what drove me to press A, but I did.

The level seemed normal. Everything was how I remembered it. I thought I could finally enjoy my favorite childhood game. But then I saw him. Luigi. I was absolutely shocked. He was never in this game. His model wasn't even a Mario palette swap. He looked like a completely original model. Luigi just stood there until I tried to approach him. He started running at unexpected speeds. I followed suit and went through the level. Strange things happened as I pursued him. Each time I picked up a coin, the enemies and music would get slower, and the scenery would look darker in color and more morbid. It kept gradually getting worse until I collected a 5th coin. Then, the music just stopped. The enemies laid down on the ground like they were dead. I was seriously freaked out, but I kept chasing Luigi.

I went up the hill. No cannon balls rolled down trying to knock me over. I really wasn't surprised at this point. Luigi was always just out of my sight as I ran. Once I reached the summit, I saw yet another object out of place. A small cottage was all that was seen on the top of the hill. Luigi was nowhere to be found. The cottage was certainly odd-looking for a Mario game. It was old, plain, and broken down. Regardless of my fears at that moment, I had Mario enter the cottage.

As soon as the door closed. A disturbing picture of a hanged Luigi immediately popped up along with a very frightening scare chord. It sounded like a violin screech accompanied by loud piano banging. Mario fell to his knees and sobbed for roughly 5 minutes, then the screen irised-out.

I returned to the castle. Mario just slumped out of the painting. The image switched from the Lethal Lava Land portrait to the image of Luigi hanging himself. The room was different this time. It was now a small hallway. Toads with blank expressions and white robes lined the sides of the hallway. There was another painting at the opposite end that just completely and utterly scared me. It was a picture of my family It wasn't even a photo from the time Super Mario 64 was released. It was a very, very recent photo. I remembered posing for it last weekend.

I reached for the on/off switch on the N64. There was no way I was going to play this anymore. However, when I flipped the switch, the game was still on. I flipped it back and forth, but to no avail. I tried unplugging the whole system, but it never left the screen. I was even still able to control Mario. I couldn't just leave it on forever... so I kept playing. I went to the photo of my family, and jumped in. Only one mission was available, of course. This one was called "Run, Don't Walk". I selected the mission. 'Let's-a-go'...

The level started in a flooded hallway with platforms floating on the water. Mario landed on one of these, and the camera turned to show what was behind. A silent black void was slowly approaching Mario. It didn't look like anything. It didn't even look like finished graphics. Just a giant, blocky, black blob. I started jumping from platform to platform. With no goal in sight, I kept running, the darkness slowly but surely gaining speed. This kept going on for what felt like hours. I was really doubting there would ever be an end. Mario was just going in circles. Finally, the black blob/void/thing caught up with Mario, and enveloped him in darkness. He didn't scream or resist at all. It just consumed him.

Mario fell out of the painting and back into the castle. I lost one of my 3 lives. The room was different now. Some of the Toads were gone, and the painting looked different. My family and I were in the same positions, but our bodies were partially decomposed. It looked too real to be Photo-shopped. It looked more like someone just took our dead bodies and posed them.

Regardless, I jumped into the painting again. Mario was in a small room. There was still only one mission available. It was called "I'm right here." spelled just like that. I selected the mission and prepared for the worst. Mario landed in a small, dark room. There no visible way out. The room was empty except for a piano in the corner. I knew what that meant. I was stuck in there with the Mad Piano. I approached it and it started chasing me as always. There was no way to damage it, so I had no choice but to let Mario take damage.

When he lost all his health, the usual death animation didn't happen. Mario just got mauled by the piano. He fell as his blood and guts spilled on the floor, and the camera panned to a top down view of his corpse. A distorted version of the merry-go-round music from Big Boo's Haunt played as the screen slowly transitioned from the in-game shot to a photo-realistic sketch of Mario's dead body in the same view as the shot. It was very unsettling. I was crying softly as I gazed upon the image. I lost another life.

The photo of my family was shown again. We were even more rotten then before. The view zoomed into the painting, like I was warping again. I was greeted with a shot of Peach's castle from the outside. The castle was crumbling in ruin. The fields were on fire. The sky was pitch black. Bowser's laugh played on a loop in the background as children mockingly chanted, "You couldn't save her!" This went on for a long time, until, a close-up of Peach's face accompanied by an extremely loud screech interrupted the loop without notice. Peach's mouth was wide open as if she was screaming, and her eyes were empty, black holes.

Suddenly, I was back in the hallway as Mario was once again ejected out of the painting. Now all of the Toads were gone, and me and my family looked positively repulsive. Maggots were wriggling around in holes in our flesh. Guts were spilling out of our bodies. My dad's eyeball was hanging loose from its socket. It was too much to bear, but something still urged me to trudge on. I jumped into the painting, with only one life remaining.

This time, there was no name for the mission. Just a blank space where the title would be. I selected the mission, and Mario landed on a very small island in the middle of the ocean. There was a solitary sign. It only read "DIVE." I did just as it said and entered the water.

The ocean was dark and empty. There were no fish. I wasn't even able to see anything in the water besides Mario. I swam downwards. I kept going for quite some time, yet Mario never ran out of breath. I counted roughly 10 minutes of swimming until I decided to go back up. Just as I turned Mario around, it came. A huge, and I mean huge Unagi the Eel came out of nowhere and swallowed Mario whole. I was dumbfounded. It went by so fast I wasn't even sure what I saw. The Game Over screen didn't show up. All that happened was a fade-out.

The photo of my family and I was shown again. We were plain skeletons now. Once again, it looked very real. I couldn't move the camera at all. It just stayed focused on the picture. I shut off the game and turned it on again. I chose my file, but it just went to the skeleton photo of my family. I tried this about three more times before giving up. I desperately wanted to stop, but some force kept me from walking away. I decided to select the only other saved file. The camera once again focused on the skeleton picture, but this time they were in a different position. As if they were a different family.

[jacobstone]

I sat on a bus in traffic today for three hours, so I ended up writing another 1200 words for the Librarians Angel AU on my phone. It's coming along, but { { p a i n f u l l y } } . I'm so bad at writing short things. A prompt for you: Ezekiel and whoever, “It hurts, the hungry it hurts.” ;) Have fun!

Okay so I’m not even going to pretend this didn’t take forever to post but I hope it satisfies! I may have gone waaaaay off topic but it’s still the same fandom;) Anywho, I’m so happy my prompt has run away with you! I hope to read it one day! So here’s to you, my friend!

And the Hunger

“It hurts,” Ezekiel moaned from the back of the group. The thief was holding his stomach and slowly walking as he complained to his companions. “I’m so hungry!” The complaint echoed in the thickly wooded area. And of course they would be stuck in a large forest with no way to contact Jenkins or Eve or Flynn. They were on their own and without supplies. Cassandra groaned and Jacob threw his hands in the air from the front of the group. “We know, Jones! Just shut up!” Jacob burst out, his frustration at their current predicament coming through. His own stomach growled in protest and he pointedly ignored it. “Jacob,” Cassandra grabbed his arm and halted their progress. “We can’t go on much longer. We need to rest. Ezekiel is on the verge of collapsing.” She tilted her head in the direction of the weak thief. “But stopping makes us lose daylight and–” Cassandra glared at him. “Fine. We rest for a minute.” Ezekiel was already sitting on a nearby log, having flopped on it as soon as they stopped walking. Cassandra went over and sat next to him and Jacob got a good look at them. Ezekiel did look exhausted, a frown on his face as he wrapped his arms around his rumbling stomach. Cassandra wasn’t too different, though she looked more tired than hungry. Jacob could imagine he looked similar to them. But they were Librarians; they could handle miles of woods, right? No matter the hunger that they were experiencing, they could handle it. From what little he knew of his friends, he knew they would get through it. Ezekiel was a thief so he likely was used to the feeling of hunger. Jacob tried not to think too hard about what that implied. He knew that Ezekiel would rather throw himself off a cliff than be pitied.Now Cassandra on the other hand likely never had much of an appetite anyways, so he assumed she would be okay. Jacob knew for himself he would make it out fine, experience with long workdays and no breaks back home making him prepared. That and it wasn’t their stomachs he was worried about. “Why aren’t we thirsty?” Jacob suddenly asked, the danger signals flashing in his mind. He motioned all around him. “We’ve been walking for what? Four hours?”Cassandra’s eyebrows furrowed in thought. She seemed to be doing math, but it was hard to tell.Ezekiel just scoffed. “We should be thankful that we’re not.” Jacob thought he just sounded like he was sulking now.“Four hours and thirty-nine minutes.”Cassandra answered in a tired voice. Jacob slowly turned in a circle, scanning the woods around them. Something wasn’t right. At a constant pace, walking for four hours in the terrain of the woods should’ve had them wanting at least a small cup of water. “Something’s not right.” Stone voiced his thoughts out loud.“I know. I’m starving!” Ezekiel complained in a slightly pained voice.Cassandra looked between her two friends, concern and puzzlement on her face. She tried comforting the groaning Ezekiel.Jacob ignored the soft assurances of Cassandra as he watched the sunset, the feeling of unease only growing in his chest. The shadows of the trees expanded and elongated eerily, making Stone move closer to his friends. He took notice of how quickly the light of the day was snuffing by the dark hand of the night. “We need a fire.” Stone turned back to the thief and synesthete. He couldn’t help but notice how vulnerable they looked huddled up together on that log. Starting a fire became priority number one as he saw a slight tremble in their bodies now that they stopped moving and the sun was going down. That and it would help for protection. Problem was: Jacob couldn’t see any useable firewood in the area. Which meant…He would have to leave them alone to find any. Stone swallowed thickly. Cassandra and Ezekiel were tough people. They weren’t chosen as Librarians for nothing, he knew. But with Eve gone and the uneasy feeling he had stabbing his chest with each breath, Jacob had a hard time battling the decision to leave them. He knew that it wasn’t his responsibility to take care of them, but he couldn’t help himself. Ezekiel and Cassandra have saved him countless times, so he knew that he wasn’t alone in that sentiment. “I’m gonna get firewood. You stay here, together, and rest.” There, that sounded casual and not like a pleading demand to be safe or a worried mother.Stone internally groaned. He was becoming Eve.Cassandra stared at him with that knowing look of concern that he’d last seen when he left a control room in a facility overrun with werewolves. Ezekiel was too exhausted to protest his leaving.Jacob took the gift of their silence and quickly jogged away from them, searching the ground for viable wood. The first trip was to acquire enough firewood to just start a fire. Jacob was glad that it took minimal effort to get the fire going. It was during his last trip to get enough wood to last them through the night that his heart stopped in a shocked terror. Screams.Stone was running before the firewood he’d dropped even touched the ground. Heart pounding, he ran back towards his friends, but tripped when something grabbed his ankle and pulled. He landed hard on a tree stump and it felt like the air in his lungs was compressed for a moment. His chest finally came back to life with a painful inhale. Rolling off of it and on his back with a startled groan, he blinked a few times to adjust his eyes. He couldn’t.Everything was dark.Jacob’s heart pounded. A sharp pain stabbed his abdomen. Another scream.He pushed himself up and continued on as fast as he could in the darkness.Jacob skidded to a halt when the light abruptly returned and he saw what was happening. A dark shadow in the vague form of a large and unnatural human, practically loomed over the unconscious body of Ezekiel as Cassandra cried out from her hunched position beside him. The fire was quickly dying, and as it waned, the shadow grew.Jacob lunged for a stick in the fire, his right hand burning from getting too close, and he used the small torch to slash at the shadow. The shadow was at least partially corporeal as it started to burn when the fire came near it. The black form sizzled in the places where the fire touched it, creating holes in the unknown creature. A screech tore through the air and the vague shape fell to its knees as it burned away completely. Stone didn’t waste any time. He quickly grabbed some more wood from one of the dwindling piles he got earlier and put it on the fire. It was lucky that his only defense turned out to be the creatures weakness. Jacob built the fire large enough with most of the wood he had planned to save for later. It was only when he felt it was safe enough to leave alone for now that he immediately knelt next to his friends.Ezekiel was still unconscious but he was covered in sweat and trembling. Cassandra wasn’t too different but she was aware and awake, if only barely. Her arms were tightly wrapped around her middle.She whimpered. “Cassie.” Jacob slowly put his left hand on her face and brought her unblinking gaze to meet his concerned one. “Cass,” he tried again.“Jacob?” Her tentative voice finally exposed recognition and he could’ve jumped for joy if the circumstances were different. And if he were the kind of person to jump for joy.But he wasn’t, so he simply gave her a small smile.“Thought I’d lost ya there for a minute. Are you okay?” She bit her lip.Ezekiel moaned. “It hurts.”Jacob tried not to sound too relieved at the sound of the thief’s voice as he turned to Cassandra. “Cass I need you to do something for me. Can you–”Cassandra’s eyes widened. “Jacob behind you!”Stone turned just in time to see the shadows peel themselves away from the general black void of the encompassing darkness. There were two this time around and Jacob quickly grabbed the makeshift torch he’d used earlier, wincing at his aggravated burn on his right hand. With no time to switch hands, he swung at the first one that got close enough, and he heard the familiar sizzling. “Cassandra! Grab a torch and defend Ezekiel!” Jacob spared a glance back at the redhead and was relieved to see she was already doing what he asked.But she was weak and the shadows were closing in.Cassandra fell once more to her knees, feebly using the last of her strength to defend against the looming shadow creature.Jacob swung viciously at the creature he was fighting and turned away before the sizzle reached his ears. “Cass!” He shouted.Anger boiled inside him, much fiercer than whatever these creatures were doing to attack them, and lunged in front of Cassandra and Ezekiel to take on the shadow. “Stone!”Instinctively turning, he saw the darkness quiver as three more shadows emerged, and they headed straight for Cassandra and Ezekiel. Jacob felt a sharp pain in his abdomen once more, forgetting about the shadow he was battling, and he turned back to find it gone. A shiver ran down his spine.Something wasn’t right.Ezekiel screamed.Stone spun around just in time to see a shadow creature touch the thief and be absorbed into his body. His blood ran cold.Cassandra cried out as a shadow touched her and disappeared.Stone was frozen and felt another pain from inside him.But he knew what it meant now.Ignoring the shadows behind him, he stumbled towards his friends. The shadows were closing in on them. He felt another touch his shoulder from behind and the stabbing pain in his abdomen accompanied right after.Jacob fell to his knees in front of Ezekiel and Cassandra. His friends were practically catatonic. He was failing them. His arm burned.Stone grabbed the edge of a burning stick and hurled it at a shadow closing in on Cassandra. Picking up a torch, he swung it wildly to keep away the darkness. The flame was the only light.Light in the darkness.His arm was ablaze. He rolled up his sleeve to see the tattoo glowing like a fresh brand. Jacob inhaled abruptly as his veins felt like they contained liquid lighting. The pit of his stomach was a ball of fire and he would’ve screamed if he could. His vision started to fade and he desperately hoped Cassandra and Ezekiel would make it.The last thing he saw was white light.Then darkness.“Stone?”Jacob opened his eyes to see Eve hovering above him, tapping his cheek. “Baird.” His voice was practically gravel. “What happened?” Jacob squinted and saw daylight and trees past Eve. The forest.Jacob bolted up quickly, groaning when his stomach clenched and his body protested harshly at the movement. Eve seemed to translate his question properly.“Hey, take it easy. Cassandra and Ezekiel are fine. They are right there-” Eve pointed to the two half dazed looking Librarians.“-and in one piece.”Jacob sighed and rubbed his temples. “That’s good.”“Yes well it won’t be if we don’t get them back to the Library soon.” Jenkins came in sight with a bottle in his hands. “I’ve been able to hold them off with a warding potion, but we need to get them out of you two as soon as possible.”“Them? The creatures?” Cassandra’s weak voice asked as she hesitantly got to her feet.“Two? Not three?” Eve caught the detail.“Wraiths, I’m afraid. They feed off of hunger and desire and need.” Jenkins held out a supporting arm for the redhead. “And yes, Colonel Baird, you heard me correctly. Mr. Stone does not need my help.”“What? Why?” Jacob’s puzzlement was expressed in drawn brows. “Your soul burned them out of you, a self preservation measure I’m sure from the linking soul magic on your arm.” Jenkins pointed to the ink symbols exposed on Jacob’s forearm, red around the edges like a brand. “Why did they target us?” Ezekiel changed the subject suddenly as he still sat on the ground, looking pale and almost sickly.Jenkins sent him a level gaze. “The only life for many miles…don’t be mistaken that you are exempt from basic human emotions, Mr. Jones. Anyone is susceptible to attack.”Ezekiel lowered his eyes.“You heard him, let’s get moving,” Eve said as she held a hand out to Jacob. Ezekiel got up unsteadily, turning green and promptly bending over and losing the contents of his stomach. Jacob scrunched his face in disgust. “I got it. Help him.” He motioned over to the pale thief but Baird was already halfway there. Jacob shook his head and moved to stand, but let out a hiss as his right hand pressed on the ground and his chest spasmed in pain. Glancing up to see if anyone noticed his moment of pain, he was relieved to see everyone occupied.Stone stood with what he hoped was minimal looking effort. Staying on his feet was harder.“Ezekiel?” Eve rubbed the thief’s back. “Why is he worse than Cassandra?” She wondered aloud.“Maybe because he feels more need than Ms. Cillian, therefore the Wraiths targeted him first.”“But he will be fine?” Cassandra sounded like she was trying to make the question a statement.“Yes, if we get him cleansed, as with you,” he told Cassandra.Jacob felt his gut clench with a different sensation.Worry.“How far away is a door?” Stone asked and Jenkins glanced up from his gaze over Cassandra and Ezekiel. “It is a five minute walk.”“Then we better hurry.” Eve supported a barely conscious Ezekiel.Jacob stumbled forward, seeing the look Eve sent his way.“I’m fine,” he mumbled and stood straighter in defiance, even if his body screamed at him for it.Jenkins nodded and led the way, supporting Cassandra as she became weaker. Eve was behind them, practically carrying Ezekiel at this point. Jacob brought up the rear with the argument that they needed someone to watch their back just in case something happened.They made it to the Annex with time to spare.It wasn’t until Cassandra and Ezekiel were safely de-Wraithed and laid on their own cots, that Jacob breathed normally again. He watched them sleep as he leaned against the center table, reassuring himself that they were okay.“You saved them, you know.” Eve came to stand next to him, her shoulder softly bumping his. “Even if your light didn’t kill the rest of the Wraiths, which it did, we still would never have found you if not for the large magical signature of bright energy that came from you.” She poked his chest. “Your soul saved them. So take the win. Oh and get some sleep.”

[robininthelabyrinth]

I wish you'd write a fic where, to save Len, Mick must find his soul/heart/presence in the void the Oculus left (somewhere in the wreckage of all the shattered timelines) and bring it back. AKA a coldwave Orpheus and Eurydice AU

sooooo this got away from me a bit

Fic: Sailor’s Sorrow (AO3 Link)Fandom: Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Literary Allusions GalorePairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: Sailors tell the same tales everywhere you go.

Sometimes, they tell you how to bring someone home.

(an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling - and a bit more besides)

———————————————————————————

Sailors tell the same tales everywhere you go.

Different languages, different cultures, different people, but in the end it always comes down to them and the sea: stories of danger, stories of wonder, stories of strange things you can’t even begin to imagine.

Mick Rory was born on land, as far away from a coast as you could go in his continent.

Kronos was born to the sea.

The Time Masters belittle it when they call her the Time-Stream, their pathetic and futile attempts to make it less than it is, to make it something they can understand, something they can master.

She is no mere stream: she is Oceanus and Tethys, Varuna and Varuni, Anahita and Aegir and Ryūjin and Idliragijenget, all of them together, the great Tiamet who blankets the world entire. She is the Many-Named, the Inexorable, the Endless, Time in all its forms: all oceans come from her, and she is both the greatest of them all, and yet beyond them. She is the slow, rolling wave, the quiet calm, the swiftly rushing current that carries the many-mirrored universe ever forward in her hands, gentle and rough in turn, and she had no beginning but is in herself the whole of creation entire.

And, like all seas, there are those who sail her, and their stories.

It’s on a mission for the Waverider when he first hears of it.

It’s just another boring day in, day out, honestly. Travelling to different time periods rather loses its shine when all you ever see are people being people the same the world over, different architecture, different languages, different clothing, but the same nevertheless—the Tower of Babel was a lie: it did nothing, nothing at all, because in the end people are people no matter when and where and nothing can make that untrue—and not a single soul on the Waverider had Len’s passionate creativity, his bold recklessness, his sense of humor that could turn even the dullest outing into a thrilling adventure.

He’d rather be going to a grocery store to get a loaf of bread with Len than breaking into the Winter Palace with the Waverider.

For this mission, he was sulking around a pirate’s bar in his Kronos gear, faithfully recreated to his specifications by Gideon. The others on the ship had not believed him at first when he had said that his reputation preceded him and would still be valid, accepted by all, but he had proven them wrong, and now they used his dual persona in the same clumsy way they wielded all their weapons.

He opted not to mention that he was not the first Kronos, and that as he travelled through Time he had met others, time remnants, who saw him and looked upon the shape of their future. He had the feeling it would disturb them to know it, this crew that sails the sea of Time but never loves and fears her like a sailor ought.

Len would have laughed in devilish glee.

He misses Len like a stab wound that never heals.

Time is meant to cure all things, they say, but those that said that never rode Time’s currents and mastered its complex navigation, never found their bearings in a place that knows neither set time nor place, never flung themselves forward upon the currents of always and forever, never turned sail to the winds of Fate and spat in the face of destiny.

There are no lighthouses to guide the way through Time, no signs to show you the hidden shoals and reefs that could wreck the finest sailor’s ship, no; this sea so bright that no light could shine through but that of the human soul.

Len was a light so bright that he sometimes thought it should have been seen for miles, for years, for centuries.

His chosen rival, the Flash, shines bright and blazing as well. They should have had that, that glorious clash that echoes through the ages, brightness enough to light the path home for a thousand lost sailors’ souls.

But Len is gone: the light has gone dark, and he sails onwards blind and without a friend.

And then one day he hears it.

“They say it’s a black hole,” the old man croaks from the corner of the bar, his eyes bright and black and shining like beetles. He clutches his pitcher in his hand, but does not drink; he sits by the fire, old and wiry and just as mad as the rest of them, time-sailors all. “Brand new, where it oughtn’t be. Someone ripped that hole into Time herself, they say. The hole – the Endless Pit, the Time-Stop, the End of All Things. It is a pathway to the land of the dead.”

“By which you mean that anyone who follows that path ends up dead,” another younger man scoffs.

But the old man shakes his head. “It’s happened before,” he says. “It will happen again. A pit, a pathway: the brave may go forth through and seek their dead, and if they are brave and strong and true, they may call them forth once more. Time itself will yield up her prey to he who braves the deepest of the still waters.”

“It’s a myth,” a third man scoffs, drinking deep. “It’s nothing more than death-trap.”

“It’s true,” the old man insists. “I lost my love, who I thought I loved more than life itself, and I walked Charybdis to find her.”

“Did you bring her back?” someone asks.

He is somehow unsurprised to find out a few seconds later that it was him.

“I was not true,” the old man says bitterly. “I had a sister, a family, an audience, all waiting for me back home, and I loved them the more, though I would not admit it; I brought my love almost all the way out, but failed my tests, and she disappeared again into the deep.”

Hidden by his Kronos helmet, he swallows, staring at the old man, half-remembering a story Len once told him, a silly snippet of nothing, an amalgamation of tales that Len found in books, in movies, in libraries – nothing at all, and yet he remembers –

He strides forward abruptly, and grabs the old man’s hands, pulling them loose of the tankard and turning his fingers up.

The old man’s fingers are callused deep and hard, each one formed from years of savage beatings in the name of passion, and the weapon a string of gut in a harp of bone.

He looks at the man.

“Yes,” the old man hisses, voice low and silky, his beetle-black eyes shining with all the colors of an oil spill. “I am he of whom they speak, for I mourn my loss until the end of Time herself, and speak of it to all.”

“Heard they ripped you apart till only your head was left,” he replies. “In a fit of madness.”

“They did,” the old man says. “But they could not bear to lose me, or my gifts, and so they stitched me back together after. I can only tell you where the path is, and how to follow it; the trials are different for each man.”

“But you will tell me,” he says, knowing it to be true.

The old man looks upon him and there is pity in his eyes. “How could I not?” he asks. “You have lost everything – even your name.”

And he knows that the old man is correct.

Kronos is too tight a fit, a slave-name given to him by his masters to make others fear him; Mick Rory is too loose, for that name had become a half name, meant to cover one-of-two, Len-and-Mick, and not one alone. Heatwave is a name he held but briefly, a gift from a lover, an apology, never truly claimed as his own and yet it is all that he has left: the name, the gun, and the ring.

Len also left him a mission.

If he were better – if he were true – he would stay with them, he would do his job, he would return to the gray walls and the endless days of the Waverider, to mockery and to use, and suffer them gladly as fit punishment for having not been a better friend. But he is not better: he is true only to Len and not to Len’s wishes. He cannot go forth much longer without Len by his side.

He has already started to seek oblivion to return to Len’s side, and Len wouldn’t have ever wished for that.

“What can you tell me, then?” he asks, forsaking the last of that which he was given. He will not be returning to the Waverider today, not without Len; one way or the other, he will find Len once more.

The old man dips his head into a nod, a recognition, and the others in the bar forget them as if they had not been there, neither of them: these others do not have a black hole in their hearts to echo the one in reality, the sort that is needed to hear these words, this story; this story is not for them. Not yet, and if they are lucky, not ever.

The old man may be an omen of doom, a trap in glittering tempting form, as the sailors say, or he might be the guide to salvation.

At this point, he-the-nameless, he who was once Mick Rory and at last has hope that he may yet be that again, does not care.

“Tell me,” he says a third time, and there is some use to Len’s half-learned religion – to ask three times turns the key and opens the gate, and shows those who are truly willing from those whose will shall fade in time. “Tell me where to go.”

“You know where it is,” the old man says.

“The Vanishing Point,” he replies, finding that he does know, after all. He’s always known.

It is the path he must yet learn.

“You must follow the albatross to find your way,” the man says. “She will lead you to where you need to go. But be careful – if you err upon your path, the albatross will take from you until you have no more to give, and take yet more than that.”

Another memory drifts up, fragile and precious, Len younger and happy, letting him lay his head in his lap, and Len read to him aloud –

“Water, water everywhere,” he says, echoing words he had not known that he recalled. “And not a drop to drink.”

“There is a greater hell than death,” the old man says, and his voice is weary, his eyes distant. “And it is to be lost in in the sea of memory forever.”

He can imagine it well – every touch a memory, every sight and sound and smell summoning recollection, and yet never able to go forth into reality once more – and he does not need to imagine it at all.

It is his life every day, even now.

“There are those whom Time cannot heal,” the old man tells him, and he knows that it is true. They are the damned of Time, who have no succor but desperation. “I wish you luck.”

He nods, and goes.

Finding the ship is easy enough – the time pirates fear him and honor him and worship him, or at least the suit that he wears, and one is more than happy to convey him back to the ship which he molded to his own use long ago and left behind only for Len, a finer prize by far – and he takes it as no more than his due, stepping back upon her, master and commander once more.

He takes her sailing.

No rough-formed AI for him this time, no; no Barry Allen working wonders with code and the Speed Force, bringing the future forward in time in a backwards threading that only speedsters can do. He guides the ship himself, and its ghost is silent in honor of his task, and he rides the crest of the wave to his destination.

The Waverider’s crew sees only the utility of the current, not the beauty. Even Rip turned deaf ears to the tempest outside, Time Master to the depths of his soul even once he spurned the organization; he covered his eyes with maps and his ears with his ghostly navigator, and he turned his back upon it so as better to focus on his plots and his hopes and his dreams, which in the end were not so dear to him as he thought they were. And the crew Rip gathered, the crew Rip left behind – the crew knows nothing. They see a uniform green, a blank highway, where he sees swirls and knots, bends and currents and flows, roaring storms larger than Jupiter’s and little break-tides so gentle and sweet it could bring tears to your eyes.

They know nothing of it. He knows it all.

Some part of him was born to it.

He was - and here he smiles - always capable of handling extremes.

He contains multitudes.

He tacks and turns, steering expertly through the shoals and back into regular space far enough away that he can see that which is his goal, and oh, the sight of it is enough to shake a man’s soul.

Charybdis, the Boundless Whirlpool, the Storm of Storms, the Great Eater, Ship-Crusher, Life-Ender, the Hole In the Universe, the End of All Hope - the sailors give them many names.

Science calls them black holes.

Gravity roils its bindings here, pulled so close and tight as to squeeze out all else, physics free at last of the chains of rules. Life herself yields up her domain, energy over matter at last. The swirling mass churns around the outside, swirling as through in a drain, atoms tearing apart in the fury of the storm, colors beyond colors ever yet imagined by living being, and in the center – ah, in the center, there is nothing but a dark so deep that the eye cannot understand it. It is beyond black, it is nothing, and to contemplate it is to contemplate madness.

Nietzsche’s abyss: entropy itself, king of death, enthroned in all its glory in the land of the dead where even the universe itself cannot reach but can only pour itself into, draining itself of all that makes it what it is, stars and planets and even space itself, consumed into the nothingness.

Abandon all hope, ye who would enter here.

The sailors of Time fear this danger above all others.

When the Time Masters took him, they put him in a machine built along the models of this, the great monster of the deep, the fears that haunt the dreams of all living creatures. Their machine tore apart his soul into its component atoms to mix it back into Kronos, but the machine failed, where it never failed before, because all of him, every last part, down the atoms, was marked by Len. Len’s life, Len’s light, Len’s spirit, Len’s mind: they tore him apart, but they could not take that memory away from him. He might have forgotten it, for a time, but the raw star-stuff of his body always remembered.

The first time Kronos beheld a Great Eater, he did not think of the stories shared furtively in the nighttime dark of barracks of the Time Master’s captive hunters. He did not think of gravity, or of science, or even of myth and fairytales and children’s dark delight, nor even of the nightmares that can only be recalled in part when you awaken because to remember all is to lose that which keeps you together.

He thought instead of Len, smiling in delight, holding out in his hands a tape of such ancient vintage that all Kronos knew would sneer at it, and of Len’s hands, cool and long and perfect, fingers clenching against Mick’s as a horse got stuck in the mud and fell prey to sadness, of the stone giant that was eaten by the world-consuming Nothing.

That’s what he sees, when he looks upon the Storm of Storms.

Nothing.

Len.

It was that thought of Len that brought him from himself, that reordered what the Time Masters had mixed up, that gave him a mind of his own instead of a mere body to be puppeted at the Time Masters’ will. It was that thought – Len – that gave him hope.

If he is to find hope once more, he must find Len, and to find Len, he must offer up his soul to the Great Eater and hope against hope itself that the king of the damned will find his sacrifice worthy.

And if it doesn’t work, well –

He can’t imagine a better place to die than here, where Len burst open the dam of Time and let it run wild through the many worlds. Worlds of echoes, worlds of paths untrod, the roads more and less travelled, worlds so different in tone that life scarcely can recognize itself in the faces of its kin, worlds so similar that a single flap of a butterfly’s wings is all that changed.

The great sea of Time contains them all.

He waits, patient, his hand on the helm, guiding his ship’s prow to stillness, his mind on the waves, his ship beating back against the sirens of death, gravity herself singing temptation and pulling gently for him to come nearer, to come close, to come to them and never return. Up and down, bottom and top, strange and charm – those are the sirens that sit at the foot of Charybdis and smash the sailors who fall into their arms.

He will not fall.

The old man said he would be guided by the albatross.

He watches, sentinel and silent witness, as a nebulae barely born gives in to the lure of Fate and belches forth her many colors, streaming towards the hole but never touching it, watches as the Eater drinks down her fiery heart. No more stars will be born here; this is their graveyard.

This is where he lost his North Star, his guiding light, and it is here, he hopes, that he will find him once more.

He holds on hope, his hope, his Len, who may be there, in the land of the dead, waiting for him.

And then he sees her.

A white dwarf, soaring through space, arrowing straight towards the very center of the Pit, a glorious elongated streak of white with the wisps of the colorful nebulae drifting in her wake, draped along her shoulders like a gossamer-thin shawl, an angel descending into the deep as though to light the way by her very presence: Beatrice, she was called by one man; by another, Eärendil.

To the eyes of a third, she was an albatross.

His fingers clench upon the helm.

Len.

Where there is hope, there is life.

And oh, he hopes, he hopes, how he hopes.

His hands move on instinct, a sailor’s knowledge sunk deep in his bones, and he follows her trail, his ship flying into the cloud that she leaves behind her like a lighted path which he hopes will lead him to salvation. His ship floats between the gas and the debris, the shining rock and the glittering ice, and he follows her on her sure path into the deep.

He hopes.

He keeps as closely on her tail as he can, until his ship groans beneath him in protest at his nearness to that incandescent heat, next to which even Lucifer in his original glory would be shamed, and his hand is steady, his gaze firm, and he does not stray from his path no matter how the gravity breaks upon his ship, no matter how Time itself begins to fray around him.

He hopes.

It could be seconds, it could be a million years, but he does not care. He follows his albatross, his hope, and he follows her into the dark.

He hopes.

His ship screams beneath him.

He might scream himself, he’s not sure.

And still he follows.

He follows, he follows, he follows, his whole attention fixed upon nothing more than that white point ahead, that glowing ember, and then -

It’s dark.

He might be dead.

He finds himself rather unsure about the whole matter.

His fingers cannot feel, his eyes cannot see, his ears cannot hear, and yet there is something of him alive: he has no mouth, and yet must scream.

why do you come here

There is no voice in this place, if this is a place and not hell.

For hell is empty, Len told him once, and all the devils are here.

why do you come here

Len.

you come for one of the dead

Yes.

Little by little, he feels himself come together. Atom by atom, electrons intertwining, neutrons locking together and forming strands, elements being built from dust, dust to dust, like all living things, the materials of a dying star regrouped in just the right order to make a man.

He is a man.

He is alive.

His ship is - he knows not where. He thanks her in his mind for her service, and spares a moment to wish that her death not be in vain, for a sailor loves his ship, loves her passionately, but not as much as he loves the sea.

Not as much as he loves Len.

He has lost Kronos’ armor. He finds himself clad instead in stardust, in his favorite set of heavy pants with many pockets, his shirt a few buttons loose, his heavy fireman’s jacket to protect him from the element he loves most.

you come here, nameless one, to collect your dead

He turns, his body his own once more, and regards the Throne.

There are no words that can describe it, the King of the Void in Darkness. He is formless; he is all forms; he is anti-matter and matter cannot comprehend him, the one true unknowable beyond the reach of all science. Death is his handmaiden, not his definer, and Might herself cowers before him. He inspires neither wonder nor horror: there is no room for anything but awe. Gods are born and die in the blink of his eyes, Olympian and chthonic both.

This is He who all life has sought in desperation to name, and yet He is Nameless.

Honestly, he’s not entirely sure He is a He at all, or if He is, it is only one of his many faces.

what will you give for your dead

He would laugh, if he could; what would he give? He is no Orpheus, here to win love with a song that brings forth sadness in all who behold him; he is no scholar, no poet, no hell-raiser.

He has nothing to offer but his hope.

and that hope is beautiful

it shines a light no matter where it goes

even here where there is no light

If there were room in his skull, he would feel something, he’s sure: relief, perhaps. But there is nothing, nothing but awe, and hope, and the voice.

His hope is enough.

the way will not be easy

there are tests

He will do what he must, what he can, and if he fails, so be it.

yes

go forth now

be wary, nameless traveler, for you have many miles to go before you may rest

There is a path beneath his feet, leading away from the throne.

Len laughs in his mind, another memory springing forth to just behind his lips and eyes, and the path solidifies into golden brick.

He takes one step, on to the road. He takes another.

Turning his back on the throne is the hardest task of his life to date, and he knows that it is nothing compared to what lies before him.

But if he succeeds - if he’s true -

It will be worth it.

The path is long, and he must walk every mile.

He walks.

And then there it is.

The first test.

The oldest story had three heads to tame before he could proceed; the nearest named four times fifty living men that cursed the sailor with their eye -

He groans when he sees what obstacle he must pass.

No Cerberus for him, oh no, nor allies lost.

His first test is to confront his murdered dead.

He has killed -

There are so many.

But he has his path, and he has his test, and he has his hope.

And so he goes.

He walks along the path, and the path leads him forward, and then he is wading into the sea of spirits that stand between him and his goal.

His hope, his Len, for whom he would do anything.

He is anticipating that his dead hate him, he expects hands upon hands to rip him apart.

He is wrong.

“I do not care about you,” drawl the ghosts of the men in the mine. “I never even knew I died.”

“I have my own ghosts,” say the soldiers from the past, Capone’s and Germany’s and others still. “I have no room to fight you, too.”

“I wronged you,” say his rivals, his opponents, criminals like him, shrugging it off: honor among thieves, even in the end. A match fairly played between unfair men: the possibility of loss accepted. “And I know it.”

And once those melt away, then and only then, there they are. His hateful dead. The ones he killed, the ones he hurt, the sins of his life there to stop him in his tracks the way he once stopped them in theirs.

“You killed me,” they hiss. “You hurt me. I had more I wished to do. Your fault, your fault!”

Their fingers grow into claws, their eyes glow with fire, and their heads are haloed by spitting snakes, and they reach for him, and he flinches - his eyes shutting in anticipation of terrible pain, for there is no vengeance like that of the angry dead -

“I love you.”

What?

He opens his eyes.

“I love you,” says the ghost that stands between him and the Furies that lust for his blood, and he cries out in pain.

It is his mother.

“I love you,” she says a third time. “I forgive you. It was an accident.”

“I love you,” the shade of his father says, stepping forward to stand beside her.

“I love you,” the children whisper, gathering around him.

His brothers.

His sisters.

They gather around him as he walks, tears slipping down his face, and though the Furies around him rage, they guard him.

And around them -

���You gave me food when I had none,” a small child says. She had come by the restaurant where he had once worked, thin and starving, and his fingers were light enough to vanish the food he left out deliberately into her pockets. He never saw her again.

“You defended me from pain,” a boy scarcely past adolescence says. He had been in prison for the first time, a friendship badly chosen and a dare gone wrong; the others had looked upon him as prey. He had defended him for the few weeks he was inside; they had never spoken.

“You taught me a trade,” a man says. He had been bumbling and foolish; he had strength and size, and they were to be used, but he had no skill. They had met in the gym, and he had taught the man what he knew, and the man did not die the first time he went into battle under the Family’s command. The next time they met, they did not recognize each other.

“You saved me,” an old woman says, and he remembers her, remembers how she had been dying, her heart giving out, and he had ruined one of Len’s carefully timed plans to get her to the hospital. Len had never held it against him. He never found out what became of her.

He did not help these people for love, nor satisfaction. He just – helped. Because there wasn’t any reason not to.

There are bad deeds he has done in his life - the darkest, the meat of the Furies – but there are also good deeds, good will he spread through the world for no reason and no cause and no demand for payment, and he has enough, just enough, to get him through the sea of dead and to climb the path upon the other side.

She is waiting for him there.

Her lips were red, her looks were free; her locks were yellow as gold; her skin was white as leprosy -

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.

“Lisa,” he says, the name a sigh of breath, barely spoken.

She turns to him and smiles. Her teeth shine in the dark. And she reaches forward and takes his hand in hers.

His blood runs thick with cold.

“Come,” Life-in-Death says. Dante imagined her as Virgil, statue and teacher stepped down and come to life, his companion to lead him down and down; the oldest songs called her Despair, she of the crooked hook that she slides into the hearts of men to drag them low.

He can only see her as Lisa, much-beloved and much-wronged. He told her of her brother’s death and watched as she grew colder than ever before, her brother’s ice climbing around her heart.

They have been companions for some time now, Life-in-Death and he.

“Come,” she says.

The path is long, the path is hard.

“Come,” she says, and guides him onwards.

There is a swamp beyond the sea.

The trees are old and withered and bent; their roots curl down and their branches droop. The golden bricks are barely visible beneath the muck and grime. It sticks to his boots, it sticks to his pants. It makes him heavy. It makes him slow.

He is a lumbering beast, trudging through the mud.

Mindless. Stupid. Dumb.

Why does he keep trying? There’s no point. It’s obvious he won’t succeed. There was never any chance of succeeding: he was doomed from the start. Everything he touches dies. Was not the sea of dead enough to show him that?

He used up all his good deeds in getting this far.

He’s just a criminal, in the end. Just an arsonist. A sick man, who can’t stand by himself, useful to nobody and no-one.

Even the Legends knew he was worthless and they were heroes.

He trudges through the swamp.

It’s harder and harder to lift his feet.

God, why is he doing this? If he just stops, if he just dies, he’ll be dead, and that’ll get him to the same result, won’t it? He’ll be by Len’s side again. If he keeps trying, he’ll just mess everything up. He’ll make it all burn down. He’ll turn it all to ash.

Everything he tries turns to ash.

Every endeavor he begins.

Every plan he joins -

Len’s plans.

He ruined those, too, every one of them; he dragged Len down with him, he -

Len laughs in his mind, gleeful and manic; the memory sharp as ever. He reaches out his hand to him, a shared joke, a shared adventure, a shared life, and –

“We dawdle a bit,” Len sings on the way to a job, the memory faint and distant but growing stronger. “And then - we loiter a while, and dawdle again. We gather our strength - to start anew - on all of the loafing and lounging we still have left to do –”

He frowns, and something stirs in the base of his mind.

Something about a swamp.

“Why did we become criminals?” Len had asked him.

“Because we hate working and love money,” he had told him.

There was something –

About a swamp.

“Don’t,” he rasps, and his voice is dry and it hurts to speak. It’s so much effort - and what a waste! It won’t help. Won’t help at all. Just a waste of time, like everything else; a waste of energy, a waste of a life –

Len sang this to him once.

“Don’t,” he says again. “Don’t say –”

It’s pointless.

He’ll never remember it.

“Don’t say there’s - there’s - there’s nothing –”

Nothing, nothing, nothing, that’s all he is.

Nothing.

Nothing.

He remembers.

“Don’t say there’s nothing to do in the doldrums,” he forces out through numb lips. This was Len’s favorite movie, and the one he raised Lisa on, and even if he pretended later that it was something slightly more respectable, Star Wars or Lord or the Rings or something, it was never true. This was it; this was the one old tape he wrapped his childhood around. “It’s just – not – true.”

It’s not true.

None of it.

This is not true.

A child’s movie: the swamp of despair, of apathy, of thoughtlessness, which can be conquered only by thought and will and want. The Doldrums that would just as soon eat you alive, make you stop thinking, make you stop-stop-stop – and the only way out is to march straight through regardless.

He bares his teeth and speeds up.

Maybe he is a failure, maybe he is dumb, maybe all of that is true.

But he has his hope, his hope that it will get better once again, and he will not fail.

Life-in-Death snarls, robbed of her prey.

Her hook is still lodged in his heart, her sadness and her despair and her apathy still lodged in his brain, but he will not yield. Not now. Not when there’s Len to think of, and god, Len is all he thinks of.

Len is what pulls him through and makes him forget not to care.

The swamp ends.

His boots are clear, his pants are dry; the mud of the Doldrums cannot hold him now.

Life-in-Death has challenged him, and he has overcome, and so she turns and leads him onwards.

But there is more yet to come.

He follows the path.

Given the color of the bricks beneath his feet, he’s almost unsurprised when he comes upon the gates of Dis, glittering and green.

No jeweled city for him, though, no.

It’s a prison.

A prison made of glass and metal and twinkling stone, a hundred memories of confinement. The towers of Iron Heights, the depths of the gulag, the twisting turns of Chicago, the glaring weight of the Tombs in New York, and more and more and more -

And inside the prison there is a chair.

He moans.

He knows what test he must face here.

It is a test he has faced before.

This is the prison of the Self.

He walks forward, and he meets himself, reflected in a thousand mirrored planes.

Face twisted in greed, face twisted in hate, in rage, in fury, and worst of all, in the calmness of premeditation. He wore this face many times before – but the last one, the calm of death-inside, he only wore once.

He walks, and he sees:

Kronos sits upon the chair, with rusted chains looped around his arms and legs, and regards him with disdain.

“How low I have fallen,” Kronos says to him.

“How high I have risen,” he retorts. ��To be you is to be a slave: I have cast off your name.”

“I was the most feared of the Hunters,” Kronos responds. “None heard of me but that despaired; My hunt was inexorable; I never tired nor weakened, and my prey never escaped me.”

“You were a dog,” he says. “You barked at the order of your masters.”

“I was strong, and nothing could hurt me.”

“You were alone,” he says, and that is the end of it.

Kronos bows his head. The chains about him crack and break, the rust eating away at them at the last, and they burst forth –

And then Kronos is gone.

There is only what he carries with him.

That was the easy part.

He turns next to regard what he once called himself.

“You left them behind,” Mick Rory, forty-three years old, Legend and sometimes even a hero, accuses him. “Len trusted you, and you betrayed him, and you left him behind, too, and he hated you in the end.”

“I love him,” he says. It is not a defense. It is a fact.

“You threw away the gift he gave you,” Mick Rory, Heatwave, enemy of the Flash and supervillain of fire, tells him. “He wanted you to join him, and you left him to the mercy of his father.”

“I love him,” he says. It is not a defense.

“You destroyed him,” Mick Rory, criminal and husband, burning with the flame of a cursed warehouse, says. “You drove him away; you made him abandon you, and you tore out his heart.”

“I love him,” he says.

“Why do you persist?” Mick Rory, younger than the rest, a groom, wearing a ring and promise, says. “Your crimes are not merely against the world; they are against him. Why would he want you still?”

“I love –”

“Why did you hurt him?” Mick Rory, youngest yet, fifteen and foolish and not even knowing that the heat that licked his heart was love. Tears stream down his face. “Why?”

“I love him,” he says, weary beyond weariness, sad beyond sadness. There is no defense but this: “I will not judge myself for him.”

They stand aside, the hollow men, the old skins which he has worn and was and has since cast off behind him, the soul of him carrying forth to be the person that includes all of them but is not bound by them, and they let him pass.

There is a garden outside, silent and dead, and beyond the garden there is a door.

The gate is locked shut, but the path continues.

On the door it is written: He who was living is now dead – and those of us still living are dying, with patience.

After the agony in stony places, the shouting and the crying, prison and place and reverberation –

He knows what he must do now.

He takes a breath in, pulls it all inside himself, everything he was, a tight ball of feelings and thoughts and memories, and he breathes it out, letting it go.

The gateway opens.

He walks on, and leaves himself behind, and goes forth truly nameless.

The pathway leads him down to a valley.

The stories tell of a test of trust: do not look back, traveler, and she will follow upon your feet.

The stories do not tell that there is first another test.

Recognition.

He’s found Len.

He’s found all the Lens.

Len at thirty, as Mick remembers him best, young enough for irrepressible energy but old enough to be grumpy about it.

Len at fourteen, as Mick first met him, a skinny bundle of bones with greedy eyes and light fingers.

Len at twenty two, bright and eager and enthusiastic, circles under his eyes from raising Lisa.

Len at forty, clad in supervillain parka and practicing his speeches on Mick, apology and forgiveness all at once.

And there’s the Len that Mick never knew: Len at four, chubby cheeked and happy; Len at eight, a beaten dog that doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong; Len at sixty, old and tetchy but still as clever as ever.

Len at eighty, curled up comfortably, old and smiling and content with a life long-lived.

Len at thirty-eight, weeping over his partner’s burned, comatose body.

That last one is a stab - he’d never known that Len had done that, that Len had screamed at the nurse trying to separate them that they were married and he had a right to be there, that he had slept for three days in a crappy plastic chair until the doctors had confirmed that everything would be okay.

Just like Len, not to mention that.

“What do I do?” he asks Life-in-Despair, who still lingers.

“Find him,” she answers.

And he nods. Len is in them, all of them, but only one of them contains eternity, a human soul that lights the sky.

He doesn’t bother examining them: they are all Len, and all are him, and he could spend eternity here learning about each of them.

Instead, he closes his eyes and blanks his mind.

Len is his hope, his guiding star, his true north.

Len’s gotten him this far.

Please.

At first there’s nothing.

But then -

A memory curls in at the corner of his mind, slowly shading in the lines and colors.

It’s nothing special. A day in fall, not too hot, not too cold; raining a little. They’re in their thirties; Lisa, adult enough now to be on her own, has come to visit. They have watched movies all day. Mick cooked. There was a popcorn war, and then they made s’mores on the stoves and stuffed their faces with delight.

Lisa’s asleep on the armchair.

Len is curled up into Mick’s arms on the couch, his fear of intimacy fading just enough to permit him this. There are no open warrants, for once, and they pulled off a heist a few weeks before, a big one that went perfectly. They’re rich, they’re free, they’re together.

It’s quiet but for the rain.

It’s perfect.

“I could live a hundred years in this moment,” Len said.

“And then you’d be old,” Mick had teased, breaking the feeling of it.

He opens his eyes. He’s not that man anymore - he would never break that moment now, but let it go on and on as long as he could, would luxuriate in it, wouldn’t fear feeling every damn second of it - but he remembers.

He doesn’t need a guide.

He knows Len.

He opens his eyes.

Life-in-Death waits before him. Her eyes are avid, her fingers keen, her mouth bright and red. He sees that there is more of her, too - Lisa young and innocent, Lisa older and freer still, but only two more.

Three in total.

Hecate Three-in-one, they call her; the Morrigan, the Moirai. Child-Mother-Crone, they say of her, and they worship her, but here in the dark she is not guide but guardian.

She of the three heads snarled and bit and barked and slept when clever Orpheus came; she wove visions over the graves of the heretics for starry-eyed Dante; she told lies made of nothing but the truth to doomed Macbeth.

He knows her, too.

“Well?” she asks, and her eyes shine with the glee of victory close at hand. “Where is he?”

He smiles.

“In the ice.”

Her smile freezes.

The Sphinx at Thebes looked just so, when Oedipus answered her riddle.

Oh, he would love to see Len in that moment, that remembered moment, that perfect peace, forever and always warm and safe in the arms of his lover, eyes on his sister, safe and happy, the rain keeping the world away. It would be heaven for Len.

But the Len he knows has never loved himself so.

No.

If that was heaven, then Len has cast himself to hell.

And for Len, there is only one hell for which he deems himself fit, and he knew of it long before Len told the whole world.

“The lake of ice,” he tells Cerberus, who has grown large and monstrous. “Where they put the traitors to kin.”

No Sheol for Len, full of the screams of lost souls, ever-wandering, no. For him is the freezing wasteland, for the father he could never please and later killed, for the sister he felt he failed, for the partner who he loved but left behind.

Cold enough to freeze all the tears of regret that Len has never shed.

Now that he looks at the Lens, he sees the truth: the only thing they have in common is the blank look in their eyes, the stillness behind them, for there are no eyes here, in this valley of dead stars, this hollow valley, this trap.

He turns and finds the one Len whose eyes still shine: trapped forever in that terrible moment when he turned the cold gun, whose capacities he knew better than any other, upon himself, the moment the ice froze the blood and muscle and nerves and bone. The moment where he gave up his livelihood, gave up his life, for a chance – only even a chance – of saving his partner.

How could he do any less, to save Len?

He reaches out and touches that one, and abruptly the valley is empty, his choice is made.

“Am I right?” he asks Cerberus mildly, because he never met a monster he didn’t want to fight.

She disappears, the three-in-one, and that is all the confirmation he requires.

The path is still beneath his feet.

“Walk, then,” she hisses in his ear. “Walk forth, nameless traveler. Your journey is not yet done – you have found the soul, but not yet the body.”

He walks.

He thinks, perhaps, that Len is behind him, now; he has reached the pit and now must climb the mountain of Purgatory to make it home.

Going up is always harder than going down, and going down was hard enough.

He sees the albatross far away before him, a single point of light in the darkness, and he remembers hope.

He walks.

He does not look behind him.

Just in case.

He wonders where he will find a living body here, in the land of the dead.

The path winds upwards, slow and sure, and he gains heart from it. He is a nameless traveler, but he has faced three tests: the reproach of the dead, the swamp of grinding sloth where the suicides curl up as trees, and the prison of self-hatred. He has bearded Cerberus in its lair and has walked alongside Life-in-Death without fear.

And best of all, he feels a gaze itching between his shoulder blades.

It might be his imagination.

But perhaps not.

His steps are sure, his spine straight, and he imagines he can see the albatross guiding him up.

And then the path turns abruptly left, and when he turns with it, his mouth drops open and the air in his lungs leaves him in a single huff, as though he’d been punched in the gut.

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair.

They should not have asked this of him.

Before him lies a river of fire.

It delights his soul, the siren sound of it, the crackle and the snap, the heat that beats on his face even from here, cracking his lips and baking his skin, and it is beauty beyond the concept of beauty to him. It is the balm to the anxiety that pricks the center of his soul, the restlessness that dogged him for as long as he can remember.

He finds that he has gone several steps towards the river, all unknowing.

The river feeds into the boiling sea and upon the river there stands a ferryman.

There is a ferryman in every such story. The only question is what shall be needed to pay his price.

He draws near, then nearer, and then he is there, standing upon the dock.

The ferryman, who has no eyes and a face made of shadows, smiles and says, “Welcome.”

It is the voice that sings in his sleep, dreams and nightmare both; it is his greatest love, it is his most hated foe, it is his holiest of holies. The agony and the ecstasy -

The flame itself speaks to him.

He stands mute before the ferryman, unable to speak, and yet he must. He must, he must, but it is so hard to remember what it is that he must demand. Here his sorrows are lifted, here his dreams are fulfilled. Here there is no pain but that which he invites into himself; here is the fuel that drives his spirit; here is the meat and drink of his soul.

He raises his eyes to the open flame of the river.

At the very top, between the barest tips of the tongues of fire as they beat their fury into the air, whipped by inexorable passion, he sees a glimmer of light that comes from beyond the flames.

A white light, the merest pinprick, and rimming around her, like the iris to a pupil, is a cloak of many colors.

The albatross.

He’d been following her - he’d perjured his faith, he’d ignored the call of the flame, and for what? For -

Hope.

Eyes of many colors, blue and hazel and brown and gold.

He’s never won this battle before.

He has to win it now.

Len’s counting on him more than ever.

“What do you want?” the ferryman asks, that voice of voices ringing in his ears.

He opens his mouth to ask for safe passageway, but what comes out is “I want Len.”

His voice is weak and ragged, pained and small and miserable like it hasn’t been since he was a child. He sounds like a child, begging for his favorite toy that daddy took away.

The ferryman smiles - grotesque and glorious, a skull-grin that stretches too wide - and offers him a cup.

“You have given much, and so you may take,” the ferryman says.

He takes the cup and stares at it. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with it - it’s empty, a round plain ceramic container with no handles or differentiation, and the only thing around is the river of fire, but surely that can’t be..?

“Why?” he asks plaintively.

“This river finds its beginning in the heart of a star,” the ferryman says. “This is its end.”

Understanding is slow in dawning, but dawn it does.

He has the soul. What he needs is the body.

And what are our bodies if not the ashes of burnt-out star-stuff?

His gaze drops down to the river, which flickers red and yellow and orange and white and blue and a thousand other colors. It looks real, it sounds real, it smells real.

This is going to hurt.

He takes the cup in one hand and clenches his fingers around its unbroken edge as hard as he can manage, and he kneels by the churning shores of the river of heat, and he dips his hand into where he last saw white and blue, despite knowing it will be even hotter than the yellow, because Len would like it better that way.

It does hurt.

It hurts more than he could have ever imagined.

He thought he knew pain, that he had been burnt before, but that was nothing - every part of him screams, even his mouth, and his fingers feel as though they are melting, the flesh sloughing off like so much ash, the smell of blood and burnt and -

He pulls his hand out.

The pain stops.

His hand is unblemished.

The cup is filled with fire.

“Well done,” the ferryman says.

He nods, too shell-shocked even to wipe the tears from his face.

He looks up at the ferryman, not rising from his knees. “Will you let me pass?” he asks.

The ferryman regards him for a long moment. “I will take you to the other side,” he says finally. “To where your path continues. But only you can decide if you may pass.”

He understands all too well what the ferryman means.

Even with the memory of pain lingering, he finds his eyes straying, his head turning, the flames singing out his name, and he knows if he lets them take him, he could be here forever amongst the crashing atoms of the death of a thousand million stars.

But it’s still nothing but a graveyard.

He has the hope of more than that.

He climbs into the boat, and the ferryman takes him onward.

He clings to his cup and he wraps his lips around Len’s name and prays to the only thing that could ever draw him away from his flames.

The journey takes forever and a day, and he feels as though he has endured every minute of it.

But at the other side his companion Life-in-Death, the Three-faced Hag, Lisa - glorious, wonderful, simple, beloved Lisa - waits for him.

He fixes his gaze upon her and does not let himself look at anything else, not the flames, not the dock, not the ferryman, not even the path beneath his feet, not until he is by her side.

“I have crossed,” he tells her.

“You have,” she agrees. She sounds approving, for once. It was a hard test to pass. “Give me the cup, and I will give you a man.”

He hesitates.

“I swear upon the start,” she adds, amused. “The weft and hue, the loom and the thread - and the twist.”

He gives it to her, recognizing that she has changed again: not Moirai at all right now, no, not the cruel weavers of fate and destiny. He’s looking at her truest form, singular and unlike any other.

Tyche: Lady Luck, Mistress Chance, Mazel and Shimazel both; the spin of the wheel and the adventurer’s byword, the flip of a coin that determines everything.

Len’s patron goddess, if he ever had one.

She takes the cup and it disappears in her hands, and then she reaches out and grabs his shoulders, staring at him right in the eye.

“I have reformed him,” she says. “And your journey, which has been long, is almost done: there is but one last test.”

He nods.

“Then I tell you only these words of caution, one you know and one you don’t: don’t look back, and -”

Her eyes shine black as the pit of entropy in which they now stand.

“- run.”

He runs.

He runs as he has never run before. He was never built for speed; he is powerful, not fast. He withstood the tide, he did not outrun it. But now he runs, and he doesn’t look back, and behind him there is a scream like he has never heard before:

A Great Eater at risk of losing one of its prey.

He runs.

The scream rises and rises like the wind in a hurricane until -

“Mick!”

It’s Len’s voice.

It’s Len.

“Mick, hold up a damn second!”

He runs.

“Damnit, Mick! Wait! I’m falling behind!”

He runs.

“Mick! It’s catching up with me! Just fucking wait! Just - listen to me, for once in your life!”

He runs.

Tears stream down his face, but he runs.

“Mick! Mick!”

He claws at his face, a habit he thought he’d grown out of years ago, turning his nails on himself when his anxiety grew too great and there was no way to make fire, and his nails gouge long tracks in his cheeks.

He runs.

“Mick! No! Mick, don’t leave me here!”

He runs.

“Mick!”

And then a scream.

He runs.

Don’t look back.

And then, worst of all, there aren’t any more words. No more words, no more sounds, no more scream, no more presence, just the absolute certainty that there is nothing behind him, that Len has fallen, that he is far behind him.

The feeling scratches at his eyeballs and tears at his throat, demanding - insisting - just one quick check -

Don’t look back.

This is a test of trust and a test of faith.

He forces himself to look ahead, nails digging into his temples as he forces himself to keep his face from turning, hands on both sides of his head to fight against his own instincts, and in the distance he sees her.

The albatross, large and glorious and beautiful, white and shining, and beneath her is a ship. Not his own, for that was torn apart, but another - older than his, of strange make, but a ship nonetheless, and it will carry him upon the waves of time if only he can make it.

He is abruptly certain, certain as the pit, that if he reaches that ship he will be safe - but he, and he alone, and what use is all this if he is still alone at the end?

But she told him not to look back, and she told him to run, and she is as close to Len as he can get in this pit of horrors, this land of the dead, and he will trust in her, in Len, when every fiber of his being cries out that she has lied.

He trusts in his hope.

He has to.

Faith is the substance of things unseen.

And all the things unseen, the nightmares that you wake up after panting and terrified but know not of what you dreamt, are chasing after Mick now, and they’re getting closer.

He runs.

His lungs are burning, his eyes are aflame, his head pounds, but he runs.

His muscles scream, his joints lock up, his feet drive iron nails up his heel and toes with every step he takes, but he runs.

He runs -

And then he’s there, the ship is there, the path leads there, and he throws himself forward into the ship and suddenly he’s tumbling-tumbling-tumbling for forever and eternity and -

Silence.

He opens his eyes.

He’s on the bridge of a ship. It is not one he has ever piloted before, but some principles of design are universal. In the window of the bridge he sees that they are falling further and further away from that rarest of sights in the theorized universe: a white hole.

A knot of spacetime with no start and no origin, which nothing may enter but through which you may leave.

His albatross.

They are back in normal space.

And so he turns, barely daring to hope, barely able to make himself twist enough to see, to check, at last to know -

Len is lying there beside him, just as he remembers him, blinking awake even as he stares at him.

“Len,” he whispers. “Len. Len…”

He cannot say anything else.

Len’s beautiful eyes widen and dart around, before fixing on his face, and then he smiles. “You got me out,” he says, as if he knew it all along, as if there was never any doubt, as if his faith in him was as great as his in Len.

“I gave up my name for you,” he says helplessly, when he means to say ‘Of course’ and ‘I was always coming for you.’ He doesn’t know why. It’s not important, a name, not when he could have this.

Len smiles, and reaches out, and he trembles at the touch of Len’s hands, human-warm and Len-cool, as Len cups his face in his palms.

“That’s okay,” Len says. “You’re my Mick; that’s who you are.”

And so he is, and was, and will forever be.

Len’s Mick.