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notsogreatpotoo · 6 months ago

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my guy my girlboss my mushroom bud what ocs do you have please share them <3

hihihi i love u

this might be long as shit sorry

I will start with my son

Alder Scott is my OC for my hunger games fic (called Written In The Sand by nightjar_writing on ao3) and he is my child. I love him so much. He's a black kid from District 7 and his story starts when he is sixteen. He has a shit relationship with his parents but he absolutely adores his baby sister Ash, and he is really protective over anyone he gets attached to. He has a problem with interpreting or letting himself feel all of his emotions because he's often forced to repress emotions like anger and fear. I made a playlist for him. His only healthy coping mechanism is forcing himself to stop and take a few deep breaths every once in a while. He does embroidery. Reminders of his life and his trauma lurk around every corner. I have drawn him multiple times. Anything he does to escape leads him back down a parallel road. He's good at manipulating the Capitol but also gets manipulated pretty easily. He sucks at remembering names. He has so much trauma.

Emmet and Elliot are my time and dimension hopping self insert OCs. They're the characters I use to figure shit out; if I haven't written about a certain character, time period, fandom, AU, etc before (or in a while), I plop one of them into the world and see how their interactions go. Emmet is current me, hence the name, and tey came first as a way to cope with dysphoria. (Writing in third person about myself being gendered correctly helps bc I can't come out rn.) Elliot is child or teen me.

Dolohar currently lives in my head, but he's a trans man who became a god of irreversible change after being kidnapped and nearly sacrificed by a cult. The goddess the cult tried to summon was mistakenly called the goddess of blood, but she was actually the goddess of war, and she rescued him and gave him his godhood because she rarely has the chance to save innocents and she wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. Dolohar is brown with choppy black hair and eyes that appear orange in his more divine form. He's most commonly interpreted as a god of grief, and so he's associated with funeral flowers and mourning clothes, but he's scarred all over and some of his scars are visible no matter what he wears. A friend he had in his mortal life grows a bit too obsessive and starts a cult in his name, but Dolohar trusts his friend and doesn't realize this isn't normal god worship until after many people have been hurt.

I could make a whole post about a dormant WIP called Runaways and Soldiers, remind me to do that later bc that project has six main characters

Daisy also mostly lives in my head, but she's a trans girl in a coming of age romance story where she comes out to a guy she's been friends with basically forever and the more she starts to act more like herself around him the more he starts to fall for her. She loves blogging and playing video games.

Erch, Krit, and Seki all belong to the same story. Erch is a young human man who grew up in a militaristic organization as a recruiter in a world ravaged by radioactive aftereffects of a nuclear war. Mutations were common, but as someone born underground, Erch only has some adverse affects on his health. The underground was a mess of ongoing war and fortresses containing the super rich, but Erch was raised to believe that the organization was a safe haven that provides resources and work for all. It was only when he was a young teenager that his thoughts changed, because a girl with pointed ears and white freckles is rumored to have survived a white zone- zones that were the epicenter of nuclear impact, named for the blinding white flashes that occurred during detonation. He's sent on a suicide mission to investigate, and the girl presses a hand covered in light (aka, healing magic) to his uniform just before he leaves, which ultimately saves him from breaking down too soon. He discovers a portal in the white zone that leads him to a world in which elves, dwarves, and other mythical peoples are common, and while they are more resistant to radiation poisoning than humans, it is still affecting them to the point where all creatures living near the open portal take health potions or practice healing magic. Erch is then faced with a choice; does he risk condemning the world that he knows but one that is full of warlike, desperate, and corrupt people by closing the portal? or does he risk killing an entirely new world full of magic and people who have only shown kindness to him? It is at this time that he is taken in by Krit, a nonbinary goblin who was raised by a human witch a long time ago. Humans have become rarer and rarer ever since most of the portals between worlds closed, so Krit shields him from those who are too curious or obsessive about humans. Krit lives on the floor above their business (Taproot's Bar and Restaurant), but they're regularly harassed by dwarven customers (due to a series of wars that previously happened in the region called the Goblo-Dwarven Wars) and Erch doesn't want to add more stress to Krit's plate so he stays quiet about the portal situation and basically feels like he has to figure it all out himself until he has a breakdown one night and tells Krit, who reassures him that that's not the type of decision a child should have to make and a council made up of representatives from the surrounding regions eventually decide to close the portal after attempts to communicate with the humans on the other side end in attacks. As Erch grows up, he eventually becomes a vigilante type helper in his town after a corrupt leader is replaced by a pack of lycanthrope women. He's around thirty when he and Krit meet Seki, a young elf girl who was banished for becoming friends with a centaur (elves have hated the centaurs for centuries). Seki is chased into Taproot's after trying to pickpocket a group of dwarves (who also hate her on principle because the elves used to tax the dwarves) and she hides under a table. Krit is accused of hiding her on purpose when she comes out of the kitchen, the dwarves go to find the Guardian (aka, Erch), Erch finds Seki and returns the money to the dwarves, and Krit asks if Seki is hungry. Erch is wary of elves due to having a centaur friend who was killed by one, but once he hears Seki's story he no longer wants to turn her in and he bids them goodbye. Krit basically adopts Seki, and Erch eventually becomes a big brother figure to her and helps them sort out all the paperwork. Krit has never actually paid taxes. Erch is tired. Seki is glad to have a family.

Jasper Broadbank is a serial killer and amateur writer who swore off killing after becoming attached to his last target; he killed his fiance and now is reminded of that fact all the time because William Rexburgs's (his dead fiance's) family practically took him in after William's death (which they did not know he caused). He dies in a car accident after driving on icy roads, and the only ones who come to his funeral are the Rexburgs. He is guilt and manipulation and lying personified, and while his story needs a lot of editing since I wrote it my sophomore year of high school, it's a great example when showing how much better my writing is now.

Maxwell Anderson is a high school theater teacher by day, supervillain with a dramatic flair by night, and after finding out that his vigilante archnemesis is a child, he ends up parenting the boy from the sidelines while trying to execute his own plans and flirting with the boy's superhero mentor.

Nolan Cormier is part of an AU where the Avengers get a YouTube channel in order to control their image a little better and it butterfly effects the way for the Sokovia Accords to be thwarted before they're a big problem. Nolan is a marketing dude who works for Stark and gets caught up in their bullshit because he gets to know them through filming the videos and conducting interviews.

Ophelia Rousseau is a French woman who gets isekaied into the time right before the events of Phantom of the Opera and helps out Erik by writing an opera called cirque de l'éphémère, in which Honoré is a merchant who travels and sells his wares alongside a circus because it brings in the crowds, but falls in love with a beautiful acrobat in the show named Charlotte. Charlotte is the daughter of the strict old ringmaster, and she secretly longs to be away from the circus. When he confesses to her, she pretends to be in love with him to secure her freedom, and so they run away together and get married. Honoré notices that Charlotte has become distant and always wants to go out on trips and explore the world, and his insecurity turns him into a controlling, domineering type of husband. Charlotte, realizing that she has simply fled from one trap to another, tries to smuggle herself away in a chest he’s promised to another merchant, but she’s caught and poisoned to make a statement to her husband by the merchant, who thinks she’s been sent to trick him out of a good deal. Her body is sent back to Honoré, who is horrified to realize how he has driven her away and into more danger and slits his own throat. Basically, the opera forces Erik to confront his controlling attitude when it comes to Christine. Ophelia also is the reason why I know too much about enucleation, because her eye had to be taken out after an accident, and she wears an eye patch. She writes under the name Odin. She's a little pretentious, and a little standoffish, but mostly because she's never known how to act around other people.

thank u so much for this ask, if you ever want to hear more I will tell you, these are literally the OCs I could think of just off the top of my head bc I write a lot more fanfic than I do original fic but I have more lol

if you actually read this far you are the best :]

#ask!!!#beloved mutuals #writing #my ocs

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queen-scribbles · 2 years ago

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Who are your 3 least favorite Swtor companions and why?

heh heh hoo boy. Details behind a cut so people don't have to read me venting about potential faves in a couple cases, but tl;dr is Kaliyo, Skadge, both of whom I strongly dislike, and either Vik or Lana(not nearly as strong).

1.Absolute hands down least favorite is Kaliyo. I legit hate her. She's self-centered, vindictive, and thinks it's funny to ruin people's lives. I literally won't even talk to her any more when I play Agents. She spends the ENTIRE GAME with a little yellow triangle over her head bc I refuse to engage. I did her convos/quest with Jaaide, my first Agent, up til the Anspi'shel thing, then stopped when she wanted to sell Anspi'shel to a life of slavery or worse bc it'd be funny revenge for some not-nearly-deserving of That "transgression". Jaaide wanted to punch her in the face and never spoke another word to her the game didn't make me. I watched her romance on youtube and it did her no favors. AND THEN we get to her presence in KotFE. Making all of Zakuul suffer bc of what their leadership did? Outright terrorism? I wouldn't recruit her ever if you didn't have to. The way I always do ch 12/13 is telling Jorgan to destroy the GEMINI signal and then telling Kaliyo to stay put. Which she ignores, and gets Havoc killed. And then refuses to accept responsibility for it. ("If they're so good, why are they dead?" Hmm, maybe bc you were throwing thermal detonators in an enclosed space????? THAT MIGHT'VE DONE IT) She usually dies there, unless I'm trying to keep the toon 100% light side, and there's a few that got through there before I figured out how you get the option. *Sidenote: makes me love Jorgan even more that he disapproves if you kill her. He can't stand her, is currently furious at her bc she got his team killed, and he still thinks executing her is Too Far for punishment. Honestly, if there was a Jail option like you get for Saresh in KotET, I'd do that instead of killing her. But I'm not letting a vengeful, psychotic anarchist who knows the location of my secret base just LEAVE, and I can't let what she just did go unpunished, so death it is.

2. Skadge is... Skadge. The threatening to shoot you and steal your ship if you don't agree to let him come along? Yeah, all my Hunters were ready to shoot him and dump him in the lava for that alone. BUT I will talk to him for the xp, so he's slightly less hated than Kaliyo. Still kill him in Rusk's alliance alert though /cough

3. Okay so this is a sharp drop off from the other ones. Kaliyo and Skadge I actively dislike/hate, this one is much more.... barely wavering to the negative side of neutral. Vik annoys me and I wish we could have Fuse if he was alive instead. He's selfish, and way too willing to throw away other peoples' lives for his personal gain.

Lana I don't hate, or feel strongly about at all, it's just... between her Developers' Baby plot armor so she doesn't die(like Koth, Theron, and Senya can) or lose anyone important from her life(like Theron can *glares at WFI and JUS*) and her "Whatever you think is Best" attitude, I'm not crazy about her. I don't like Yes Man companions in general(why I like Carver better than Bethany in DA2), so anytime we get someone who's just blindly supportive of the player character they rub me the wrong way. It's more a problem I have with the archetype than her specifically. (Not to mention the numerous things she's a hypocrite about) I don't mind her as a character or roll my eyes and groan when I have to talk with her, and I'm even running her romance on a couple toons(it's AMAZING with a smuggler). She's just not my favorite.

#kaliyo critical #lana critical #just barely but i wanna spare people who love her ;)#the really ironic thing about me hating kaliyo?#one of my favorite mass effect characters is jack #and they have some strong similarities #but jack grows and kaliyo doesn't :)))#i sat on this for two days debating whether on not to keep skadge on the list bc he's such a gimme #and i have enough without him #he's mostly still there to highlight how much i dislike kaliyo rip

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oikawaplssteponme · 4 years ago

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okay I LOVE SOULMATE AU'S so imma send two requests cause why not

first one letter d. damage. with bakugou 🥺👉👈 perhaps not entirely like the list but in which the reader feels the pain as well (?) so whenever he uses his quirk the reader feels the explosions!! could be them finally meeting in U.A. (reader in class 1A or they're in general studies whichever you think it's best!) and fluff of coursee

uhhhh I guess that's it for the first one, if you want more details just say so!!! 🤩🥺 I'll send a second ask with the other one 👉👈. 🌺.anon

hi again anon!! i loved writing your requests so thank you for sending them in ☺️💕

Damage

pairing: Katsuki Bakugou x reader

warnings: some swearing, mentions of injuries

genre: fluff

a/n: because i couldn’t help myself i had Hatsume make an appearance (i just love her sm hehehe). also i sorta changed it to wear the quirk causes the damage and they can feel their soulmate’s quirk. enjoy xx

•

It started as little shocks. You felt your palms get sweaty, and start to spark. It was a strange sensation. At first, these explosions spurring out from your hands didn’t hurt too much. Then they got stronger by no fault of your own. The residue from these detonations took a toll on your hands. Your quirk had nothing to do with explosions, so why did your body seem to exert this kind of force?

Then you remembered.

Soulmates.

You feel whatever they feel. Whatever kind of damage they go through, you will too.

You assumed that your soulmate had to have some kind of explosive power, and was in constant training. They must be on the track to becoming a Pro Hero, or they had anger issues at the very least.

You were a third-year at UA High. You were in the general studies course, working alongside your best friend, Mei Hatsume, in the student workshop. You didn’t have the flashiest quirk but it was good for what you intended on doing with your life. You wanted to work with Hero’s at their agencies. You were quick with numbers and had a quirk that involved elevated intelligence. So any Hero would trust you with the logistics of Hero work.

“If I have to make that Izuku kid one more of these leg paddings I am going to lose my mind. Plus Ultra does not mean break my babies every two minutes,” Hatsume groaned. You laughed.

“Well, when we have our evaluations you can tell him that.”

“How many students do you have tomorrow?” asked Hatsume.

“I think about ten from class 3A. I finished all of their spreadsheets and costume improvements. Tomorrow I’ll just have to show them,” you explained.

Depending on quirk and commitment, certain students from outside the Hero Course were chosen to provide assistance to those in the Hero course. You were chosen to create advanced training plans, after crunching a few numbers, that will show these future Hero’s what they need to do to improve and stay on track. It was a way to show your skills to hiring agencies as well, as you can take some credit for your classmate’s success.

“I’ve got the rest of that class too for tomorrow. That's why I have to make Izuku these new pads,” she huffed. You chuckled.

“At least you know some of them by name. I barely know their names of mine and I’ve gone to school with them for three years.”

“A lot of them aren’t worth remembering,” joked Mei.

“Well, I’m gonna get some sleep before a long day tomorrow. See ya.” You packed up your things and left for the dorms.

As you were leaving, you looked over at your arm. A bruise began to form.

Great.

Then came the explosions. You would keep our arms out to avoid them from hitting your face and just let the explosions run their course.

“Can my soulmate be calm for two seconds?” You mumbled to yourself before continuing your walk to the dorms.

It was the morning of evaluations and you were running down to the training ground to meet your group. Your arms bruised and beaten from your soulmate’s own damage. They were sore as you carried the large stacks of papers. The Hero Course students awaited your arrival.

“Sorry I’m late you guys! I had to make sure I had everything. Okay, so these are your personalized spreadsheets to help with training. Um, who is Mina Ashido?”

“Me!” said the pink haired girl. You handed her the folder. You continued giving each student their specified folder.

“Uh, Katsuki Bakugou?” You called at last. A blond boy with spiked hair raised his hand. You handed him his folder, accidentally locking eyes with him. He had beautiful red eyes. He noticed you too.

Wait he’s cute.

“Oh uh sorry…” you mumbled, snapping back into reality. Bakugou nodded, taking the folder and walking away, his hand on the back of his head.

“So after you’ve looked over your training plan you can feel free to start putting things into practice out here or use the inside facility. Let me know if you have any questions,” you announced. Most of the students went inside, a few stayed and spread out among themselves.

“Hey! Y/N!” a voice called. You turned around to see the blond boy again.

“Bakugou right? What’s up?” You asked.

“Why did you cross this out?” he asked. He pointed to his self-evaluation that you asked everyone to fill out when creating their trading plans.

“Because for goals you wrote: ‘beat Deku’. I don’t know what a ‘deku’ is so I can’t really help you plan for that,” you explained. Bakugou chuckled.

“It’s a person.” You felt a wave of embarrassment.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so stupid,” you sighed.

“It’s fine. Hopefully whatever crap you wrote in here helps me beat him,” he said.

“I can add more to it if you’d like. What’s your quirk again?” you asked, taking the folder from his hands.

“Explosions.”

Your heart dropped to the ground. There’s no way it could be him, after all, lots of people have explosive quirks. What are the odds that you go to the same school as you? You looked down at his folder. There is was.

Katsuki Bakugou. Quirk: Explosions. Using his nitroglycerin sweat, he is able to create powerful explosions from the palms of his hands.

How could you have missed this? Well, you did write most of the training plans while on only one hour of sleep, so the idea of a possible soulmate must’ve slipped your mind.

“You good?” he asked. You nodded violently.

“Yup yup, all good. Do you mind standing over there?” You pointed to the middle of the field. Bakugou did as he was told.

“Okay, uh, blast me one of your explosions,” you ordered. Bakugou smirked.

“I thought you’d never ask…”

Bakugou adjusted his stance and began to fly himself up with his explosions. He blasted himself through the air before landing in front of you. You looked down at your own hands, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.

“How was that?” grinned Bakugou.

“Pretty good. I calculated better strategies for air dynamics so why don’t you try-”

*BOOM*

You had blasted yourself into the air, imitating the same pattern that Bakugou had just performed. Your hands burning with each explosion.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT- I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LAND!” you yelled. Bakugou’s eyes widened. He ran toward you as you fell back onto the ground, catching you safely.

Your face burned as you looked up at him. He smiled.

“I figured my soulmate would have handled my quirk better by now,” he joked. You sighed.

“You should be grateful that the most damage I’ve done to you is giving you a paper cut.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you to Recovery Girl to bandage you up then take you out. How that dumbass?” smiled Bakugou. You smiled back, ruffling his hair.

“Sounds good soulmate.”

•

[general taglist: @lealofsblog @iwaisa @bakugousmymassa @roesaurus @evivn1 @astrooliver @tetsoleil @bokutory @vangoghmusings @moonlightaangel @complimentaryhugsgirl ]

#willow.🌸#🌺.anon #my hero academia #bakugou x you #katsuki bakugō #katsuki x y/n #mha katsuki #bakugou katuski x reader #bnha bakugo katsuki #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x y/n #bakugou x reader #soulmate au

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ktheist · 4 years ago

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when a dragon loves a witch.

min yoongi thought he was the shit.

not because his heart-shaped face was on the prettier side of the standards of beauty that’s eating away at this old, waning world. nor is it because he has at least three people coming up to him and confessing their undying love every year. but because he thinks he’s- “the only few people in the world that can murder you and leave no forensic evidence behind.”

the way his eyes light up with confidence and excitement at the thought of dueling you - is adorable.

he thinks he can beat you. the ancient one. the beast that once soared the skies with wings made of gold and breathe fire upon a kingdom and send even the proudest of kings to their knees.

nowadays, you laze around in your apartment as a human girl. the actual humans have build warheads and nuclear weapons capable of detonating an entire mountain. you dare not find out what they’ll do if they found a growl of a beast rocking the skies.

because as powerful as you are, there is nothing more powerful than a human with a heart and persons to protect.

“us dragons turn to flower beds when we die,” you say in a matter of factly - an aging knowledge that’s about to be forgotten from this world, “technically, there won’t be any body to make my grave a crime scene.”

admittedly, min yoongi wasn’t a young magic that needed nurturing anymore. he could have been an ancestor in a few coming centuries. one that would rise up above all others. that was why he was half-serious about ending you.

if he’d proven himself by reaping the ancient one’s soul, witches all over the world would have flocked to him like crows. he’d proved himself worthy of the title. would be the youngest ancestor in the history of magic.

if he’d known you were no human girl and if you’d known the man with the darkest eyes was no ordinary person that one unfortunate night, you both would have, without a doubt, clashed against one another.

“what - what the-“ he’d stared at the noticeable protrusion of your belly with rounded eyes, a contrasting sight from when you first wakes him up to kick him out before noticing the weight that wasn’t there on your human body before, “what did you have last night?!”

he meant food but the answer was sex.

because you’ve had a fair share of human males and females in your lifetime. none of their seeds managed to stay with you long enough to become another being - another creature that is not wholly dragon nor human.

before he could react, you’d pinned him down, knees buried on either sides of his waist, talons digging into the skin of his neck. you’d felt the familiar warmth deep in your throat as you growled a voice you haven’t heard of in a long while, “what are you?”

there was flash in his eyes - possibly when he saw yours turn to slits, a sort of panic and understanding that the woman he’d just bedded was no woman at all.

so you made sure to draw blood from where your talons graze against his skin - it was red and so very human, “you have one chance. use it well.”

“okay, okay!” he held up his hands like a man guilty of a crime, “i’m a witch!”

at that, a low rumble rose from the depths of your belly. no wonder he looked human. felt human.

in your rage, you’d hissed out that the thing growing inside you was his child, “i’d been so careful not to come across another species,” all you saw was red as you’d turned to him, “i should kill you.”

the odds were against you - an ordinary witch’s seed wouldn’t have been able to impregnate you. his magic was unbridled - and as you stared at the man-like creature who’d stared back at you without so much as fear, you knew he knew that too.

as much as he was a witch closest to the level of an ancestor, min yoongi was not a killer. or he was not going to murder a child at least.

“this is no child- it’s a curse!” your talons and slits were the only things that came back. not even your magnificent scales appeared on your skin. it was happening - this- this creature was controlling your body, forming and deforming it to suit its needs as it grew inside you.

“i’m not going to stop you if you don’t wish to keep it. it’s your body... but wouldn’t you want to know what’ll happen... how it’ll be?” for once, there was no trace of maddening fascination in his eyes ever since he found out what you were and what he’d caused to grow inside you.

so you kept it- you kept the creature. mainly because you still had the end of the world to live and regret if you didn’t find out yourself.

min yoongi didn’t move in with you - he had was living with his covenant of witches that would’ve suspect something wrong if he decided to move out from what seemed to be unsuspecting apartment building on the skirts of the city. he did, however, drop through tears of reality.

he brought you ordinary human foods and potions that could help sustain you, “we don’t know what keeps it alive,” he explained while you were popping chips into your mouth, legs propped on the coffee table whilst a mediocre human show was playing on the tv.

you both later found out that it was self-sustaining, living and thriving inside you for almost a century as times change and you’re forced to change with it. you bought a new penthouse because the old one was getting rebuilt. yoongi still visited you everyday - he fucked you everyday too because this thing - this creature, it thrived upon the fleeting moment when both you and him were connected.

in your burning heart, you’d known what exactly kept it alive, “our lifespans, yoongi,” you’d said once you’d come down from your high after fucking like rabbits - such pure, defenseless creatures, “it’s draining our lifespans!”

yoongi didn’t say anything but he didn’t leave either when it was the easiest for him to escape through a tear and disappear for who knew how long. he’d stayed and made human food and kept your part in the fridge when you didn’t join him for dinner.

it was the note tacked up on the lid of the container, instructing you to pre-heat it for 3 minutes, that made you crawl into bed with him in the extra room that’d become his. with your protruding belly and all.

“i’m scared, yoongi -” and for the first time, you’d felt fear, “-i’m scared it’ll turn into a monster. i’m scared they’d come for her and i’m scared i’d love her even then.”

and as he wrapped his arm around you and kissed your forehead, you’d realized that he’d loved the creature even before you did. fascination was just the surface of his abundance of love for something he never knew. it was anticipation. excitement for a sign of life. love from a father to his child. even if it turned out to be a creature of destruction - an abomination given by the gods to the evergreens.

you sought solace in each other’s warmth but you didn’t truly love each other.

and yoongi still talks about taking you on in a fight. as he does now.

“just... any ordinary flowers?” he asks, ever the curious one - you don’t know whether it is out of the sincerity of his heart or if he’s conjuring up some wicked scheme to extract the essence of the flowers at your death.

“it depends on what we loved most in our lifetime,” somehow, you keep talking, “red roses for undying passion, alchemilla mollis for those that managed to find love, though unrequited and can never be... every kind of flower you can thinking of,” involuntarily, your hand goes to your belly, “but none of us have ever had carnations embed our graves.”

“what meaning does carnations bear?” yoongi walks over to you from the kitchen, stacks of sandwich piled on top of a plate and placed on the coffee table in front of you.

“admiration... affection... devotion... a mother’s undying love,” a smile tucks on the corners of your lips.

the hand yoongi takes is bare of its talons. you’ve sworn never to summon them in his presence. so you can never hurt him again. the print of his thumb is callous against your skin - he could have charmed them to be as soft as a baby’s but he didn’t want to erase the traces of his life’s worth of wand-wielding.

his lips are soft though, as he brings your knuckles to your skin, sealing his devotion for you and your child.

when the time comes for the unrelenting pain - akin to black arrowheads struck into your scales and digging into your flesh - comes, you remember wishing you’d turn into flowers, just so it’d end faster. you remember losing all feeling in your body but having lie there in sweat and tears as yoongi’s warm spells seep into you. it only numbs the pain by a notch. but you appreciate them anyway.

then you hear it, the first cry. pushing yourself up, you see yoongi, rocking a child in his arms, cooing to an ancient lullaby in a forgotten language than only his kind knows.

“she’s so very human,” you say some time after the cries quiet down into quiet snores.

“maybe because you were in your human form when you carried her,” yoongi suggests as he stares at the child sleeping next to you on the bed with like he’ll never want anything else in the world.

shar.

ever so lovely as the light of the first dawn. the time she was born. she bears so much resemblance to her father, jet black hair, curled to frame her face. when she smiles, she smiles a gummy smile just like her father’s. the scales that cover her skin when she’s upset is undoubtedly yours. her eyes are of no other, bearing the galaxy within them as well as ether’s flames.

perhaps it’s yoongi’s magic and your power that rests within them.

either way, you adore your little seedling very much.

a century for you is a year for her. but neither you nor yoongi mind for you have an eternity together.

that is, until you don’t.

the first sign of war erupts when you were showing her how to light up a candle with just her breath. she ends up melting too many candles and the penthouse smells of pinewood and lavender and sea waves.

yoongi steps through the reality, bloodied and bruised but alive.

“we have to go,” he says with a kind of urgency you’ve never before heard in his complacent years of living, “the dark wizards - they know - they infiltrated the covenant disguised as one of us and one managed to touch my hand - it was a mind reader.”

“dada?” shar gazes up at her father with those galaxy eyes like she’d understood every word he’d said even though she was supposed to be three according to human developments.

“shar, darling, we have to go away for awhile - remember i used to travel a lot back when i was a dragon? we’re going to travel!” you say and she claps, echoing ‘travel! travel!’ with a sort of zeal only children could have.

her first step through reality makes her scales appear. she’s crying and clinging onto you like she’s scared and in pain and confused.

“i don’t get it- she can do simple spells- tears shouldn’t hurt her,” the crease in yoongi’s forehead is an alien sight so are his wakeful eyes compared to the sleepy droop that says he could fall asleep on the floor if he wills it.

“there’s still not much we know about shar and what she can’t or can do,” you grip his hand tightly, “it’s not your fault.”

so you’re on the run and death follows not too far behind. the cerulean skies you once soared beyond and above are now marred with a kind of darkness. darker than midnight even in the daylight.

the witches of the north shiver at the sight of your child’s eyes. the moon elves claims that shar is not a creature of this world. everywhere you go, none are willing to assist.

and you find yourself within the walls of your previous dwelling. back when dragons rule the lands and skies. back when no foolish creature ever dares to venture into the darkness of a cave for fear of a slumbering creature with scales and fire as breaths.

“all i remember is that i was alive - playing hide and seek with the faes until they die of old age,” the burned patches of the rock walls still remain eons later, “i mourned them for a century before i stepped out - i was so young, the humans shot me with black arrowheads and i burned down their villages.”

the scar from where one struck you still mars your skin - human or dragon, it’s still there.

yoongi traces the slant of the scar of your shoulder as if he’d take the pain and the horrendous memories that came with it if he could.

“take care of shar, yoongi.” you finally say, looking over at the sleeping child by the fire place.

the thought of your young, forming bones having to bear nights on the hard ground pains you more than a mere strike through your scales.

“we’ll take care of her together,” he kisses the top of your head.

that night, you fall asleep, cuddled up around your child with your hands held together as if vowing to protect and cherish. and cherish you will. as well as protect.

the dark wizards find you right where you want them after you’d left the cave. it was hard not to notice the trails of fires you’d left behind as you wait for them in a cafe, abandoned with tables and chairs knocked over as if whoever came before you left in a hurry.

you tried making your first mocha latte with what ingredients they left behind - doesn’t taste as good but you don’t even have to wait long for the shadow to arrive and a man in a dark cloak takes the seat across from you.

“drakaina,” the words are slurred and dragged out but you’ve lived too many centuries not to know your own name.

“stop looking for them and i’ll serve as your aide,” it isn’t an offer. it’s an order. the cloaked figure lowers his head in submission of the power that reeks off your existence yet dare asks.

“but what can an ancient being like yourself do... your greatness,” he finishes off with a hail.

the first growl rips through the skies on an afternoon you know not what day of. nor what year. your chest lights up with flames of hell. scales line what used to be human skin as the roof caves over your growing form. the buildings collapse in with the gust of wind that your wings summon.

the wizard laughs. a manic look in his eyes.

the war does not last for longer than half a decade. none is able to withstand you. those that do lose their souls.

you’ve taken lives before without regards to its sanctity. you take them now with the sole regards to the two whom you lay your own for.

then comes the golden one. a dragon before your time - before most creatures’ times. if you’d made kings bow, she’d made the world submit to her will. that was, before she forgone it all and went into slumber. to think the golden one, fraener, would have allowed herself to be awoken by measly wars and to let a measly creature ride her- you must have caused the greatest of grief.

“child, your eyes scream anguish,” her voice rings loud and clear in your head as you zoom past her, barely missing her claws.

you do not respond.

“you’ve given birth to a life,” she sounds fascinated. delighted.

“i do not wish to fight a sister,” you project your own voice onto her conscience.

her growl thunders through the sky as she pins you down with her foot, “then you will die?”

“fool!” the cloaked wizard hisses from somewhere in the mountains, “get up! fight! or we’ll go for your child next! we know where they are.”

“i wish for a world where my child no longer needs to hide, please,” you whimper.

“your sacrifice is noble, young one,” her claws break your hard scales, you hear the howl of a dying beast.

the wizard’s incessant demands blur in your ears as the flames in your chest spreads through your body, burning your soul and eating you alive. in your last moments, you recall fraener’s ‘rest well,’ bid before petals peek through your scales. pastel pink, deep red and violet carnations fill your sight before you heart bursts.

“what meaning does carnations bear?” yoongi walks over to you from the kitchen, stacks of sandwich piled on top of a plate and placed on the coffee table in front of you.

“admiration... affection... devotion... a mother’s undying love,” a smile tucks on the corners of your lips.

min yoongi thinks he’s accomplished enough. acknowledgement of the magical community and treaties protecting beings mixed by blood.

he manages to protect his child from the hands of those who wish to take her away from him. fought an ancestor who went against him and succeeded.

he resides in the mountains, not too far from your dwelling. surrounded by fae’s and rock mountains and wallerbogs. she’s five centuries old and rather use her wings to catch the fae’s in hide-and-seeks rather than use her legs. the galaxy in her eyes never dim - not when she woke up without her mother greeting her with a kiss good morning, not when she suddenly stops giggling at the stick man yoongi made to keep her company when the first growl of a dragon tears through the sky and not when the last whimper echo throughout the skies before the golden one ended their ancient one.

the world started moving again. but his heart stopped along with yours that day.

the city you’d fought fraener in is left in ruins with wild carnations covering every crack of the earth - pluck one and two more grow.

“mama!” shar squeals and yoongi thinks he’s gone mad.

a woman is laughing and hugging his child when he’d cast a spell over the forest to make it impossible for those with hostile intentions to even pass through. let alone come all the way into its heart.

you look beautiful, laughing and lifting your child up in the air. trickles of melodic sounds falling off your lips.

yoongi doesn’t even want to know how - he gathers you in his arms, feels you against him, breathes in the familiar sweet scent of your existence.

only after he’s kissed you all over your face as you giggle, does he asks, “how?”

you show him the traces of scales that are still red and fresh on your skin - “i don’t know, the last thing i remember was fighting the golden one and then i woke up as a whelp somewhere in northern russia in a cave- i came as soon as i could transform into a human.”

it took awhile - a few decades to find your way back. but where your heart and soul lies, that is where you’ll always return to. no matter where you are, not matter what you are.

you’ll always find way back to your witch and little seedling.

note. this a request for the drabble game i’m holding. this is a stand alone, complementary piece to my long fic called wartime child! (jjk).

anyways, hope yall enjoyed!

#bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts x reader #yoongi x reader #yoongi fanfiction #yoongi fic #bts smut #yoongi smut #yoongi scenarios #yoongi imagines #bts imagination #bts au #yoongi #au #bts imagines #bts scenario #excerpt from a fic i’ll never write #drabble game 1

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imaginesupply · 4 years ago

Text

Homecoming - Chapter Four

(Gif's not my own.)

Summary: The day has arrived, Captain Syverson is going home. For good, this time. He is going home to a civilian life he can hardly remember and a wife he barely knows, with memories of the war still fresh on his mind. Love might not be able to heal everything on its own, but it’s a good start.

Genres: Romance, drama.

Story warnings: Smut (always fully consensual), mentions of PTSD and nightmares and mental health, angst, hurt and comfort, fluff, mentions of war (minor), mentions of cheating (minor), mentions of pregnancy (very minor), police appearance (very minor), violence (very minor).

Notes:

-It’s my first time writing for one of Henry’s characters and I’m unsure I did Sy’s character any justice.

-This is a Capt. Syverson x OFC (Ada) story, written in 3rd person POV but OFC’s physical description is very limited so it could also be read as Capt. Syverson x Reader, I think.

-English is not my first language, so there might be some mistakes. Proofread, but not beta’ed. We die like men and all that.

-Timeline is a little wacky: The movie takes place in 2003 and the U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, but I never set a precise date because I don’t think it’s essential for this story. However, some elements might not be realistic because if we set this story in 2003: Phone cameras quality was not as good as it’s now, but for the purpose of the chapters, I will need you to imagine you could film great videos with your flip phone haha. Plus, it says Sy is coming back after being deployed for more than three years which makes no sense unless we set this in 2006 or later. I am asking you disregard any time inconsistencies.

-Also: I am not American. I only lived in the US for six months and it was in the Midwest, not Texas so please bear with me if I write something stupid.

-Finally: This will be a Christmas fic and I intend to post the last chapter (there will be seven in total) on or before Christmas. However, religion is never mentioned in this story and the Christmas-sy elements of this story are limited to family gathering, gift giving and tree decorating.

Chapter Four starts after the cut. (Chapter Three can be found here.) Let me know if you wish to be tagged in future chapters or if you wish to be removed from the tag list.

Chapter Four

Chapter warnings: PTSD, angst (or as much angst as I’ll ever write), couple’s fight, outdated expectations of marriage (is that even a warning?), mentions of masturbation.

This chapter is a little different from the previous ones and it’s stitched together weirdly. Also, there’s no smut (which is unusual for me!), but Chapter 5 will be more humorous and lighthearted.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

“When’s your next leave?” Harper asked from behind the wheel, knowing better than to take his eyes off the sand road. He had been transferred to the Special Forces after the whole water pumping station incident, with Sy’s approval.

They were at the very back of the convoy, like always. It was the only way Sy was able to keep all the Humvees in sight and look out for everyone.

“Not sure I’m gonna be seeing home before July.” Sy replied, blue eyes scrunched up as he tried making something, anything out in the darkness surrounding them. Doing this scouting mission at night hadn’t been his idea, but the order had come from higher up and it was when the guards were at their lowest.

Harper smiled, a short huff escaping his chest. “Ah yes! What are you going do once you’re home for good?” The soldier asked, the tiniest hint of teasing in his voice. “Give your wife a small army of Texan babies?”

Sy scoffed, his chest shaking beneath the heavy protective vest. “Eyes on the road, soldier.”

“Yes, captain.” Harper chuckled even as he obeyed the command.

The rest of the drive went by in silence. The whole point of doing it at night was to be unseen and unheard. Confirm it was an armory so that an airstrike could later destroy it. Quick and easy.

Sy absentmindedly rubbed his finger through the thick glove, trying to feel the wedding band beneath. He never took the thing off, but it still somehow eased his mind to make sure it was there – make sure she was there across the ocean. They had talked on the phone the night before and he could still hear her shriek as she stubbed her toe on the doorframe whilst pacing around the house as she spoke to him. She wanted to order new tires for his pickup truck because she was afraid the current ones would be expired once he got back. He told her not to worry about any of that, but she insisted and then asked about Aika, changing subjects. No matter what they talked about, he always slept better after hearing her voice.

The landscape changed ever so slightly. They were there, right outside the deserted town’s walls. Sy gave everyone the order to pull up and get ready. It was only when he stepped out of the Humvee, his feet landing swiftly on the soft sand and the cold night’s air hitting his face, that he realized that Sy had been there already. He was dreaming again.

He had been there hundreds of times, taken the same steps, given the same orders and run away from the same explosion. After having the same nightmare night after night, the shock and the surprise element had lessened, but the dread remained unchanged. Sy was cursed to relive the same scene again and again, for moments even wondering if he lacked imagination so much that his mind was unable to come up with anything else.

Still, every night, he'd try changing the outcome, attempt to take control of his past self and make different decisions: refuse the mission, take a different team, catch Lieutenant Wilkins before he had a chance to run into the trap. It never worked. The result was always the same with him shouting for everyone to retreat and grabbing on to the back of Wilkins' uniform, trying to drag him out of the building, unsuccessfully. Then the telltale detonation followed, the building shook and they were thrown backwards with the explosion. When Sy landed on the concrete, there was a corpse - or what remained of it - on top of him. It was what had shielded him from the worst.

He once tried to warn Wilkins about the child's voice asking for help, to tell him it was a trap and that they needed to ignore it, but he was unable to speak. They were there, on the exact spot, a large room right down the stairs with no windows or lights, only three parted doors. Unlike the first time, the real time, he knew what was about to happen, through what door the grenade would be thrown out of before rolling on the dusty ground. And he went through it all over again.

It was the noise that alerted him the first time, the impact as it hit ground and then the rolling sound on the uneven surface.

"Retreat!" Sy heard his own voice shout loud enough for the rest of the team behind them to hear, then an echo of hurried, heavy footsteps followed.

He knew what happened then. Sy waited for the faint, unidentifiable cry for help and for Wilkins to blindly bolt towards the voice, the grenade. He knew he'd unable to stop him this time just like all the others. What was the point of making him relive the same failure over and over again?

"Help!"

Sy froze on the spot, unlike all the other previous nights. This time it was not a random infantile voice. It was Ada's. She was crying out for help, for him.

This time it was him who dashed after the voice, the grenade exploding before he could reach her.

°°°

Ada thought that they had dodged the bullet, that they had somehow managed to avoid all the stuff she had crammed her head with when she had found out Sy was retiring from active combat sooner than expected. The notes she had taken, the websites she had visited, the therapists she had researched and ranked according to online reviews; she had started to think none of these would come in handy. Apart from that small incident when grocery shopping and the whole thing with Tom, Sy was okay, they were okay. Or so she thought.

It only took maybe eight days of Sy being back home to find out that wasn't true. It was almost like when you took a plane and fly halfway across the globe. The first days you’d eat dinner at 3am and go to bed three hours later and nothing felt real. Then it settled in. But this wasn't a spontaneous holiday or a mid-life crisis, this was an honorable discharge. Sy wasn't leaving behind an unsatisfying career, he was leaving the war.

He came home. They reunited, caught up with each other, basked in other's presence. Ada had to keep reminding herself that she could fall asleep at night without the anxiety of feeling like she was wasting away his leave with something as frivolous as sleep.

Only sleep wasn't frivolous, Ada soon came to realize. Sy slept well the first few nights back home. The exhaustion helped, so did sex. Sy would kiss her, roll over, pull her into his arms and fall right asleep after it.

That changed quickly. On the eight night, she woke up to pee hours before dawn only to find his side of the bed empty. She found him downstairs playing on his new console. It was the jetlag that made him unable to sleep, he said. Ada knew better, even as she acquiesced.

The following night, after making love and taking care of her, Sy didn't even bother pretending he was going to bed. "I won't be able to sleep anyways and I don't want to keep you up," he claimed, putting on a t-shirt and some sweatpants before going out for a run. It was past midnight.

After going two days with barely shutting his eyes, Sy did finally fall asleep in bed with her. Ninety minutes later, he was awake again.

"You okay?" Ada groaned softly, forcing her eyes open but it was too dark to see anything. She had woken up with his tossing and turning.

"Yeah, just go back to sleep," Sy replied dismissively, turning on his side and facing the window away from her.

Ada was about to do just that, believing his words in her incoherent sleepiness, when her hand touched his clammy back. He had managed to sweat through his t-shirt, but his skin remained icy.

"You're not okay," she whispered to herself before switching on her small bedside lamp and sitting up.

"I told you to go back to sleep, Ada," Sy protested, still facing away from her.

She shook her head softly and tried to pull him into her arms, but he was too heavy, and she couldn't move him without his help. "If something's wrong, you can tell me, you know."

She waited in silence for him to answer, to say something, anything at all. She had planned on watching podcasts, meeting with veterans and whatever she could do to help, but Sy had come home several months earlier than planned and she didn't know what to do, what was expected of her as a wife, as his partner, as his support person.

"Alright, you don't have to talk if you don't want to," she attempted quietly, sliding back into bed and moving in behind him, doing her best to be the big spoon for once. "We can just cuddle until you fall asleep."

Apparently, that turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Sy jumped out of bed as if her touch had burnt him. "I'm not a fucking child, Ada. I don't need your cuddles."

She flinched at his tone, taking a deep breath but her voice still came out strangled. "I was not implying you were a child, Sy. I just thought - no - I just hoped that you would find some comfort with me," she admitted but he was already getting dressed, sweaty skin and all. "Clearly I was wrong."

His face was red behind his full beard. He was pissed, she could almost feel him buzzing as he tried to restrain his anger and not - she didn't know what he was keeping himself from doing. Whatever it was, Ada was sure his next words hurt just as much as whatever he was initially going to do.

"I don't need you to fucking comfort me, woman!" He spat out, putting on a pair of boots. "I don't need anyone's help and certainly not my wife's!"

With that, he marched to the bedroom door, forcefully throwing it open. "I'm going out for air. Don't wait up for me."

They barely saw each other the next day. Sy texted that he was going to spend some time with his mom. Still hurt and offended, even though she knew this was not about her, Ada left for the day without telling him her whereabouts.

She took her car and drove to the animal shelter to help out. No one was expecting her there, but they gave her some work to do and it did help her feel better for a couple hours at least. But it was barely noon when she was done and she refused to go home, meeting up with friends instead. None of them asked why she wasn't at home practically glued to Sy. They were used to their friend pretty much vanishing off the face of the Earth whenever Sy came home for two or three weeks, but they were wise enough not to question it.

His words had stung. Ada was aware he had been mad, and that people always said dumb stuff when they were mad, but she did find some truth in his words. Why would he need her comfort? Her help? Or even a wife at all?

Sy had lived thirty-three years without knowing her and then three more married to her but living continents' apart. He could command soldiers, lead missions, plan attacks and whatever it was that he also did back in Iraq. The house was his, his mom would be overjoyed to cook for him and do his laundry again if he didn’t want to do it himself and Ada didn't kid herself - if he wanted sex, all he had to do was walk into a bar.

So, technically speaking, she knew Sy didn't need her. He was a grown ass man who could survive on his own better than ninety-nine percent of the population. What had hurt her was that he didn't want her, nor her help or her comfort. And if he didn't want her to try and make his life a lil' bit better, what was even the point. Ada didn't know and all the cocktails she consumed didn't provide an answer either, but they did end up forcing her to eat almost her own weight in food to soak up all the alcohol before driving back home at ten.

She was still fishing out her keys to open the front door, when Sy pulled it open with so much force, it almost flew off its hinges.

"Where the fuck have you been?!" Sy shouted as soon as she set a foot inside.

"I was out with friends.” Ada took off her shoes by the door. "How's your mom?" She looked up only long enough to find him staring down at her with his thick arms crossed in front of his chest.

"I sent you a dozen texts and called you just as many times, but you never picked up." Oh, his tone had switched to that unsettling calm before the storm.

"I apologize, my phone was on silent," Ada replied. It was true, though she had still noticed his calls and texts. "Look I am tired, and I am going to take a shower." She said before walking upstairs to their bedroom.

To her surprise, Sy followed her up, stopping only at their room’s threshold as if he weren’t allowed inside without her forgiveness. "I am sorry for yesterday," he sighed, leaning against the doorframe.

“It’s okay.” Ada shook her head, undressing rapidly and balling up her dirty clothes to throw them in the hamper. She smelt like a whole bar and she was desperate for a shower.

“I didn’t mean it, what I said,” he added, finally walking inside the room but still keeping his distances.

“It’s okay, don’t worry.” She reassured him, disappearing inside the en-suite. This was just a fight. Couples had them all the time. Sy had even apologized. “I am sorry too. For today.”

His voice startled her, Sy was closer than she had expected. “Do you have need for me?” He asked, making her still as she bent down to fetch some fresh towels from the drawer. Did she have need for him? Ada frowned even though he couldn’t see her face. She heard him sigh again behind her.

"I felt useful back in Baqubah. I ran that city, commanded soldiers, gave my country something and then an explosion happens, two of my men die. And you know what they do? They send me home. Not to punish me for fucking up; they send me home because they thought I had witnessed enough shit and deserved an honorable discharge. Whatever the reason, my services weren't needed there anymore."

"Then I come home to my wife, to you, Ada. And you know what?” He asked before providing the answer himself. “The doors don't screech, the mirror has been replaced and my wife doesn’t even need me to take her out on dates or to the movies because she already has someone for that. So really, what's my goddamn purpose here? The house doesn't need me. You don't need me. Even my mother doesn't need me what with her new boyfriend. So why the fuck did I come back?"

He paused and Ada took it as a chance to stand up and face him. She didn’t know what this was. His voice wasn’t loud, he wasn’t shouting, and his posture didn’t appear hostile. They weren’t arguing, this was something different. “That’s not-” Sy cut her off.

"Then, last night, I realize that while you don't need me, I sure as hell need you, Ada. And that's not how I imagined my marriage would be. I should be the provider. I should be taking care of you, not the other way around."

"This is not the 1950s, Sy," Ada chuckled faintly despite herself.

"That don’t matter. It's how I was raised: preside, provide and protect. I don't care about the presiding part; I knew from day one that I'd never be able to boss you around and I didn't want to. But I still very much believe in providing for and protecting what's mine, and instead, you're the one doing that. So, not only did I fail my men back in Iraq, but now I’ve failed you too."

“No. Stop right there.” Ada interrupted him, more forcefully than intended. "Okay, first, you never failed me. Don’t you ever say that.” Sy huffed from his spot by the door, clearly unconvinced but she was determined to get this out. “Second, I... I think you need to stop settling for being needed and instead accept that you are loved, at least by me."

Sy stiffened against the doorframe, his face taking over an unreadable expression beneath his beard. Shit. Did she mess up again? "Did I say something wrong?"

He didn’t reply right away. Ada took a few steps to him when his words took her by surprise. "You said you loved me."

She stopped in her tracks, opening her mouth and closing it again a few times, stammering. Confusion was evident on her face. "Well, yeah."

"You've never said it before," Sy explained, the hint of a smile on his lips.

Ada frowned, a little unsteady on her feet as she thought back. "Are you certain? I'm pretty sure that is what I ended all our phone calls with."

He shook his head. "I meant in person.”

"Oh, I never realized.”

The cold bathroom tile floor was not the place either of them would have picked out under different circumstances, but it was where Sy finally allowed himself to be cuddled into the warmth of her embrace for the first time, his head resting against her naked breast with her slow heartbeat lulling him into a different kind of peace. “I do love you, Sy.”

Ada was no fool, this wouldn’t soothe all his troubles, but for now, it was a start. And that was all she could ask for.

°°°

Sy sat down on the chair in their study. Most walls were covered with Ada’s textbooks from floor to ceiling. He huffed at the sight. If you’d told him five years ago that he’d end up with an academic wife, he’d have laughed in your face. Now, he tested touched the shelves, watching them wobble slightly and decided he ought to build her something sturdier.

First, he had to take care of some administrative bullshit for the new job he'd be starting at Camp Marbry in January. He had always hated bureaucracy but there was no escaping it. He had learned it the hard way as a private. Maybe it was also time he started going through their utilities folders. Ada had taken over all of it when they got married, managing their bank accounts and paying the bills. Sy hadn't taken of that shit in years but he probably should relieve her of some of those chores.

His eyes wandered over to the neatly organized shelves under the office desk, trying to find the correct binder when his attention landed on what appeared to be a fancy silver notebook. Was that the one Tom had mentioned?

Sy knew he shouldn't go through her stuff, but he was curious and it was not like she had hidden it or anything. Ending his hesitation with a shrug, he picked up the notebook only for stray bits of paper to immediately fly out and land on the carpeted floor. "Shit!"

He bent down and gathered them all up quickly in his hand, lest Ada find out he was snooping and chide him like a soldier. He sat back on the chair and started reading through some of the bits and slips of paper he had caught: "shaving gel not cream!", "dog treats (the fancy ones)", "boxer briefs in L"... They were all dated too. Sy figured they were just old shopping lists until he opened the notebook.

The first part appeared to be a logbook of sorts with notes about each and every one of their calls for the past year. Sy went over some of them, grinning despite himself. He never imagined Ada took notes during their weekly phone calls.

"Sy says it's really cold at night in the desert."

"He seems a little down..."

"Aika has a sweet tooth." Damn, he missed that dog!

“Explosion. Two men dead.”

He skipped over the next few pages, remembering it all too well. After the logbook part, came a set of lists, all dated. "The monthly care packages," Sy realized, reading through them and concluding that this was where the bits of paper had fallen from.

All the care package lists were cross-referenced with the calls logbook. Sy had never understood how she always managed to send him exactly what he needed. He wasn't even aware that he had mentioned most of these small things to her. Most of the time, he didn't even understand how she managed to fit so much stuff into those small USPS boxes. Whenever he tried putting everything back in the cardboard box for safekeeping, half of it didn't fit back inside.

He flipped through a few more care packages before landing on a particularly long list. The date was highlighted, it was the package he had received on the month of his birthday. Ada had made him promise not to open it before the 18th. “You can open the box, but I will know if you open the present before your birthday, Sy,” she had warned him on the phone, trying to sound very stern. “And if you do, I’ll come to Iraq just to whoop your ass.” He had laughed so loudly, Harper had knocked on his door to make sure he was alright.

Sy laughed again as he went over the list, remembering how the private from the deliveries and postal department kept on complaining because packages this big were 'not usually authorized' and that he was getting 'favor treatment' because he was captain and that Ada shouldn't even have been allowed to ship a box exceeding the maximum dimensions. Sy had taken the package from the soldier and asked if he fancied a trip to the infirmary. That had shut him up quickly.

There had been candy (no chocolate because it had melted through its packaging once when she had tried sending him some), gum, the two first James Bond novels, dog treats, a new photo of his niece and nephew, underwear that was way too fancy for him and a handwritten letter from Ada.

What had immediately caught his attention was the very neatly wrapped gift box with a big red bow and a small card that reminded him once more not to open it until his birthday and only when he was alone.

Sy laughed, remembering how giddy he was to open that damn box. They'd gone on a recon mission on his birthday and when they got back, everyone was exhausted and dirty. He had hurried to the showers, cutting off some soldiers and then rushed to his private room to open the gift.

In all his adult life, Sy could only remember blushing three times, two of them the same day. First was when Ada said 'I do’ and he tried sliding the ring on her finger, but nervous and tipsy like he had been, the damn tiny thing slipped off his hand and fell on the carpet. Second was when the limo supposed to bring them back to their hotel was caught up in traffic, and the two of them decided to get it on in the chapel's storage room while another couple was getting married. Not only did they promptly – and accidentally, might he add – knock over all the props, he literally ended up fucking her through the cheap and unstable dry wall. The look on the couple’s face had been priceless!

The third time was on his birthday. Inside the box, he had found a handful of professionally made photos of Ada in lingerie and sometimes not even that much. If that didn't have his mind spinning and his dick throbbing after so many months away, he certainly couldn't believe his eyes when he found a small tube of lube and a transparent fleshlight.

It was not the gift as such that made him blush. The photos had him beyond excited and he was all too eager to try out the fleshlight. No, the embarrassment only settled in afterwards. More specifically when Sy remembered that despite having a private room as a captain, the washrooms where shared and he found himself cleaning the fleshlight in the sink with the little water they had, hoping no one would see him.

"Oh shit!"

Sy jumped in his chair at her voice, he hadn't heard her get home, let alone upstairs.

"Fuck. You weren’t meant to see that, Sy.” Ada babbled, quickly walking up to him with a sheepish look on her face.

Sy smiled, interrupting her as he seized her hips and pulled her down to sit on his lap. "It’s okay, darlin'."

Ada's eyes widened incredulously. "Really? You’re not even mad at me for meeting with a therapist to get advice?"

Sy closed his eyes, nostrils flaring for a moment. Right. Admittedly, he had not yet made it to that part but while he wasn't exactly keen on discussing his private life with strangers, he felt no anger at finding out that Ada had tried to look after him. Her words from last night had somehow made it through his thick skull.

"No, I'm not angry, not even for that. I know you were just trying to-"

Sy opened his eyes again at her silence only to find his wife grinning like the Cheshire cat as she looked at the open page on the notebook.

"You didn't even make it that far, huh?" She chuckled, pointing at the list. "Nope, you were still stuck with that ridiculous birthday gift I gave you!" While her tone was accusatory, Sy could see that she was trying not to burst out laughing.

Rolling his eyes, he pried the notebook from her hands and set it down on the desk. "It was not a ridiculous gift. I kept it all," Sy reassured her, pressing her body closer to his. "Well, not the lube. That was gone in weeks. And the photos are definitely a little used now but-"

Ada kissed him out of the blue, shutting him up. "Sy, I really love you but you're giving me secondhand embarrassment right now."

The bear of a man laughed, holding ever impossibly tighter before kissing her forehead. "I love you too, wife." Then, another thought crossed his mind. “Do you think it’s possible to send a care package to a dog?”

@colourmeinblue @hail-horror-queen @youthought-iwasa-nicegirl @kmuir1 @madbaddic7ed @coffeebreathy @purplelove75 @summersong69 @helenaellie

#henry cavill smut #syverson smut #henry cavill x reader #syverson x reader #henry cavill x ofc #syverson x ofc

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stellocchia · 3 years ago

Note

So a hot take (that might not be a hot take idk) is..

So until Tubbo is de-canonized to have seen Phil as a dad

^^ (because it is canon that Phil only had Wilbur but it is also canon that Phil sort of was Tubbo's dad figure AND is michael's grandp?)

Then I will say his parenting is kinda crap. I mean he babied Wilbur (which Wil did do Fundy), he killed Wil, but adding Tubbo and their kinda dubious father(ish)-son relationship then he really doesnt look like a good dad.

Also I would have just complained about his treatment of Wilbur and Ghostbur but many people say that Wil is a adult SO adding Tubbo who last I heard wasnt decanonized is a minor who I can complain about his parenting.

I really dont think Phil (or Wilbur) are the worst dads. They have their issues some worse then others (cough killing your kid cough)

====

Other Hot Take.Sally should stay a fish and not be a shapeshifter /j.

But no my actual hot take (that again may not be one) is as much as I love Techno and Tommy and I want them to become friends again. Their relationship feels volatile? Idk ut feels the relationship goes up and down.

(Thanks for reading this. I dont think I phrased my toughts correctly but I tried :/ anyways have a good day)

1) I kinda agree with that one, but also Phil assisting Wilbur in committing suicide is often either exagerated to make it so Wilbur is the aggressor or the other way around to make Phil seem like a cold unfeeling d*ck and I generally don't like that.

Because, yes, Phil went through with it. But he really wasn't thinking clearly in that situation. He couldn't have known that Wilbur was on his last life, Wilbur just detonated a bomb that could have killed somebody and was yelling at Phil to be killed. It wasn't a situation were ANYONE could have thought clearly. I don't want to hear people say they would act differently in that situation because, quite frankly, they don't know.

That said, he is an utter asshole for keeping up his whole "there was no other choice after what Wilbur had done" even AFTER Doomsday. Where Phil did worse. Why didn't he deserve death after that if Wilbur did after doing less?

2) Yeah, their relationship is definitely volatile. There was always a power imbalance there simply in virtue of how much stronger Techno is and Techno being incapable of self-reflection definitely doesn't help.

I honestly don't even want them to mend things. Like, maybe apologize to each other and move on with their lives, that would be enough.

#anon ask #dream smp #long post

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teamhappyme · 4 years ago

Text

a series of promising events (3/5)

aaron hotchner x female!reader

word count: 6.4k

a/n: part 3! thank you so much for all the love and support on the first 2 parts! hope you guys enjoy this part, because these are 2 of my favorite criminal minds episode. some themes, cases, dialogue taken directly from the show (S04 EP03, & S07 EP24).

also, if you’ve interacted with previous parts, first of all, thank you thank you. second, i have added you to the tag list. if you want to be removed, just let me know! :)

alright friends, let’s go!

here are the links to part 1 & part 2

****

June 2011

You were stupid. It always amazed you how you made it this far in your life with the amount of stupid situations you put yourself in. You kept pressure on the six inch gash running up your calf, lucky enough to tie off some of the wound by tearing off part of your pant leg. But you were still stuck in this goddamn compound, ready for the place to blow any second.

It was supposed to be a simple undercover interview and investigation. You and Spencer were among victims in an underground cult accused of child abuse. You’d been there all of two hours before the local SWAT team attempted to raid the compound, and an additional two before they found out the FBI was there.

Reid played dumb at first, trying to deny the accusations the best he could. But when they held two guns to his head, you were quick to offer up a confession.

“Get up.”

Cyrus led you to the storage room and kicked the shit out of you. You consider yourself a strong woman, you’d endured a lot of emotional trauma in your childhood, and in your time with the BAU, some scars on your body. But nothing to the extent of a narcissistic self proclaimed prophet who felt the power slipping through his fingers.

You’d counted the kicks to your abdomen; there were three. Two punches to the face, and one shove to the concrete wall resulting in a broken mirror. It was safe to say you’d earned your stripes today.

After your brief meeting with the congregation, and quickly assuring Spencer you were okay, you were locked back up in your room. Luckily, you were still mic'd up.

Your hands were bound behind your back, so you kicked up the shade with the heel of your boot.

“If you can hear me, I know you're coming. I can try to get the women and children to the tunnel, but I need to know when you’re coming.”

You repeated this like a mantra for fifteen minutes, praying that they could still hear you. “I need to know when you’re coming.”

With one more flick of the shade, the red laser from a sniper shown on your bedroom wall. “Okay, okay I see you. I need to know what time.” The light blinks three times, and you can feel your heartbeat rising. “Three a.m.?” Up and down, like nodding their head. “Understood. Reid is somewhere on the first floor with Cyrus, please find him.”

Before closing your eyes from the excruciating pain your ribs were in from talking, the laser moved again. It took you a few seconds to decipher what they were trying to tell you, but after the third trace, you could barely let out a laugh. It was a check mark.

“Thanks Hotch. A point for you.” You heard the sound of scurried footsteps running up the stairs, and you quickly put your foot down on the bed. “Someone's coming.”

It was Jane, coming in to check on your injuries again. She helped you sit up, guiding the glass of water she brought in to your mouth.

“Cyrus is planning a mass suicide.” Her eyes widened as she pulled the glass away from you. “You made that 911 call.”

“This is all my fault. None of this would be happening if I hadn't made that call.”

“You were trying to protect your daughter.”

She shook her head. “There were other girls before Jessie. He married them. And then when she came running to me for my consent, all I wanted was to take her and run. But I knew she wouldn’t leave without him.”

“This isn’t your fault.” You held one of her hands, needing her to understand this more than anything. “The FBI is coming at three a.m. I need you to gather Jessica, the kids, the other women, and get them into the basement just before three a.m.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

You sighed. Because I’ve been in your position before, you thought. You’ve been the scared follower in the corner of the room, praying for someone to save you while doing nothing. Until you finally took action, and attempted to save yourself and the people you cared about.

“Because I have faith that you are a strong enough woman to do the right thing for Jessica.” She stood up, not being able to look at you before she exited the room.

Rationally, you knew there was a low chance you were getting out of here unscathed from the blast. There was no way you’d leave until everyone was out of the building, and you had found Spencer. But having your hands tied up locked in a secret room was not the easiest place to escape.

You tried not to think of the fatal end of the day. You tried not to think of the fact that you were thirty years old, three months from turning thirty one, and had yet to travel on a plane for fun. You tried not to focus on all of your shortcomings, because there were many. Instead, you focused on the fact that your team was half a mile up the hill, waiting to safely bring you out.

What felt like only ten minutes later, Jane had come back to the room, quickly motioning for you to stand up.

“You were right. They’re setting the place to blow up. I told Jessie Cyrus wanted her to gather the women and children in the basement.” She untied your hands, and you rolled your wrists a few times to get the mobility back.

“Where is the man I came in with?”

“He’s in the chapel with Cyrus. It’s two forty-five though, we gotta hurry.” She led you out of the room and down to the basement. There was an immense pounding in your head with every step you took, but you tried to push it away as you ushered the women down.

You could hear the tac team approaching, and made sure you were the first one in the basement to make sure it was safe. When you saw Derek’s face, you let out the breath you’d been holding.

“Y/n, you okay?” He grabbed a hold of your elbow, helping you down the steps.

“They’ve wired explosives.”

“Where’s Reid?”

“He’s in the chapel with Cyrus.” You placed a hand over your forehead, the pounding settling in over your right eye.

Derek rested a hand on your back, trying to lead you out of the compound. “We’ve gotta get you out of here.”

“No, not without Reid!”

A scream directed your’s and Derek’s attention to Jane, trying to stop Jessica from leaving the basement. “No!”

“Ma’am, we’ll get her for you.” I held onto her shoulders, making sure she focused on me.

“I’ll get her for you Jane. Derek, take her out.”

“L/n,” He warned, not ready to have two agents back in the line of fire.

“Take her out of this building so I can get her daughter and Reid!” You exclaimed, pushing Jane to follow Derek out. He relented, knowing he couldn’t talk you out of this.

The SWAT team led you through the basement this time, following the sound of Jessica’s footsteps. The team took out two of Cyrus’s goonies, as you yelled for them to take a left to the chapel. You were closing in, and you could hear their voices.

Cyrus had Spencer pinned against the wall, rifle to his chest, as Jessie and her daughter walked into the chapel. She got Cyrus’s attention as he kneed Reid in the gut twice with the butt of the rifle.

But before he could reach his family, your team took him and his second hand out. You raced over to the girls, trying to pull them away from the site of Cyrus’s dead body. But Jessica stayed in place, eyes trained on it.

“We gotta go, sweetheart. Cmon.”

Her eyes shifted to yours for a second before looking at her feet, the yellow detonator lying next to her shoes. She grabbed it before you had a chance to reach forward, her shaky hands trying to hold on.

“Get out of here!” You yelled out to the team, turning to make sure Spencer followed your order too. Jessie looked down at the button again as you reached for her two year old daughter, making sure she wouldn’t get hurt. “Please, don’t do this. You don’t need to follow him anymore.”

A single tear fell down her cheek, and you knew this was only going to end one way. You backed up towards the exit as she looked at you one more time.

“He’s my husband.”

After those words, you picked up the toddler and ran out of the chapel, making it halfway down the walkway before it exploded. It threw you to the ground, but you made sure it was you who collided with the pavement, grasping onto her head to make sure she didn’t crack it.

The moments after were quiet, surprisingly enough. Everyone is always stunned to silence for a few seconds after witnessing such an event. But you barely had time to sit up and let out a proper cough before you heard Hotch and Prentiss calling your name.

“I’m okay. I have the baby, we’re okay.” They knelt down next to you as you felt the cut on your forehead open up again.

“Y/n,”

“Take the baby!” I handed her over to Hotch, not wanting to look at anyone besides Spencer.

“L/n,”

“Where is Reid? Did he make it out?” You tried to look around Emily to find him, but she held your shoulders in place.

“He’s fine Y/n. He’s getting checked out by a paramedic. C’mon, you need to go to the hospital.”

“No, I need-”

“You need to listen to me.” She offered you her hand, and as the adrenaline started to wear off and the pulsing in your leg came back, you took it. “Okay.”

Emily rode with you to the hospital just in case anything happened. But you were quick to shoo her out of your exam room once you got to the hospital. You needed a minute to yourself, and you were exhausted.

The doctor’s had cleared you to travel back to Virginia on the jet tonight, which was now early morning, but wanted you to get a few more hours of rest before heading out. They stitched up the cut on your leg, and diagnosed you with a minor concussion and a few bruised ribs. Lucky, to say the least.

Even though they gave you some pain meds to help you sleep, you were barely unconscious when you heard one of the hospital chairs scratch against the tile floor. Your eyes shot open, and you tried to sit up, forgetting about your bruised ribs.

“Hey, take it easy,” You looked over to find Hotch sitting in one of the chairs, the cause of the scratching. “Are you alright?”

“Where’s Spencer?” You needed to find him and apologize for leaving him alone at the compound. “He’s in the waiting room, he’s a little bruised but he’s okay.”

You were successful in sitting up the second time, trying to get the blankets off your body. “I need to talk to him.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You have a concussion, and you're highly medicated, so sit down.”

Hotch placed a hand on your arm in an attempt to get you to lie back down, but you fought against it, pushing him and the sheets away.

He continued talking to you, trying to get you in a comfortable position and not cause any more pain to your pretty damaged body. But as he draped the sheet back over you, you began to feel suffocated by the room.

“Hotch, I need to tell him I’m sorry,” The sheets were scratching your legs, and the increased beeping on your heart monitor increased the anxiety in your already restricted chest. Wait, how was the baby? Did you get her to safety? “The baby, Jessie’s baby,” You closed your eyes, not able to finish your sentence as the pounding returned over your left eye.

“Y/n,”

“I can’t breathe Hotch. My lungs,” Your eyes started to water, your mind trying to think of a physical explanation to what was really going on. You were having a panic attack. “Fuck, I can’t-” You were hyperventilating now, your hands resting on your chest, trying to calm your breathing down.

“Look at me,” Hotch asked. But you closed your eyes to focus on something else, anything else, and you refused to open them back up. “I can’t.”

All you could see was Spencer’s face as Cyrus took you away from him. His wide eyes, full of terror for you and for him. You saw the smile on Cyrus’s face as he threw you to the floor. You saw Jessica take her daughter’s hand, ready to kill themselves just to fulfill Cyrus’s prophecy. And you saw the look in Jane’s face as they told her it was Jessica who didn’t survive. After you told her you would get her daughter out.

“I can’t,” You felt the tears escape your eyes before you registered what was happening, your shoulders starting to shake in unison.

But you felt two arms snake around your body, pulling you into a tight embrace. You tensed for a moment, acknowledging the blue and white dress shirt under your fingers as Hotch’s. Instead of saying anything, you tucked your chin on top of his shoulder, trying to find some purchase to rest your head. You focused on his breathing as he chose to stay silent, letting you settle the thoughts in your head.

And after a couple minutes, it worked. You know that the baby was taken to an ambulance to get checked out before you. You saw Spencer walk out of the chapel thirty seconds before you. And you could feel yourself breathing in this hospital bed, having successfully matched your breathing to Hotch’s.

Hotch.

At the acknowledgement of his arms secured around your middle, your heart picked up a little.

In the six years you’d spent with him as your unit chief, you’d never embraced him like this before. At Haley’s funeral you gave him a quick, respectful hug. In close calls involving the team, you’d give each other a comforting pat on the shoulder. But nothing to this extent. There wasn’t an inch of space between the two of you. You could smell his cologne without even trying, and you could feel the muscles in his shoulders soften underneath his dress shirt. You were so close to him.

Too close.

“Hotch,” You muttered out, your voice a little hoarse from the crying. His grip loosened on your waist, like he forgot what was happening and where you were.

“Don’t call me Hotch while you’re lying in a hospital bed. It’s Aaron.”

You could feel a slight tug at the corner of your lips as you pulled away from him. You’d never called him by his first name, at least never to his face. It felt intimate in a way you’d never been with him before. The name was a key to his past, opening the gate to his life outside of the BAU. Into his life as Aaron Hotchner, father, brother, soccer coach, Jack’s best friend. A life you loved to catch snippets of.

“Are you okay?” He asked again, once you were settled back against your pillows. He’d only asked you a million times since you woke up. “Why do you need to apologize to Reid?”

You let out a sigh. “Because I left him alone in that compound. I split us up, I put fifty innocent lives in danger and a child died because of it.”

“If you didn’t fess up to Cyrus, you would both be dead right now. Reid got into his good graces and helped save those fifty innocent people. As for Jessica,” He sighed. “She made up her mind. And there was nothing you could’ve said that would’ve changed it.”

You nodded before closing your eyes, trying to let the truth seep into your bones.

“You’re so much stronger than you think, y/n. You took a beating like that and still managed to assure us that you could take it. I was ready to move in once I heard him throw you to the ground.” He was picking at his fingernails and you looked over at him. “You don’t give yourself enough credit for all the shit you accomplish.”

“Thank you, Aaron.” He’d become deaf to the tenderness ever present in his voice, but he wouldn’t forget the sound of his name rolling off your tongue for as long as he lived. He didn’t know how he survived six years without hearing you say it. But it wasn’t the time or place to delve into how it made him feel. So, he settled for a smile. One that made his dimples shine.

“Y/n?” You looked over to the door, your gauky doctor standing in the doorway. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” You motioned for him to come into the room, and he slowly made his way over to your side. You made space for him on the bed, but he didn’t move to sit next to you. “Spence, it’s okay. Take a seat.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice was so quiet, and you knew he felt as much guilt for letting you go as you did for leaving him. “I shouldn’t have let you go. I should’ve stopped him.”

You heard Hotch stand up from his seat, but you were only focused on Spencer. You pulled his hands down, begging him to sit down next to you. He got the hint, trying to hide the miniscule amount of tears forming in his eyes.

But you placed your arms around him instead, not wanting him to apologize over and over until you accepted. Because this wasn’t his fault. “I’m sorry for leaving you. But I didn’t want you to get hurt. This wasn’t your fault. I need you to know this wasn’t your fault.” You felt him nod his head against your shoulder, and let out a breath that sounded too similar to a laugh. It only got one out of Spencer in return.

You met Hotch’s eye over Spencer’s shoulder, giving you a nod before letting the two of you have your moment.

You pulled away, both your faces dry despite the wavering voices. One small victory.

“Next time, let me take the beating.” You smiled as you tried to stand up out of the bed, having a clear head making all the difference this time around.

“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time. Now c'mon,” You pointed to your go bag and walked toward the bathroom. “Hand me that so we can get the hell out of this place.”

****

May 2012

The last thirty-six hours had been a whirlwind. You were exhausted, and the last thing you wanted to be doing was putting makeup and high heels on to go to a party. Your bed was calling you, ready for you to take refuge under the fluffy covers. But one of your best friends was getting married, and nothing was going to stop you from being there for JJ.

When she walked down the aisle in her mother’s wedding gown, she looked ethereal. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think weddings were made with the image of Jennifer Jareau looking like an angel in mind. With Spencer’s help, Henry gave his parents their wedding bands, a smile on his face as they shared their first kiss as husband and wife. And no matter how hard you and Garcia tried, you couldn’t keep the tears from flowing down your face. Weddings, like most everything, got you to cry.

Now an hour later, you were taking a rest at the round table Rossi had set up for the small occasion. His backyard was transformed with white canopies and flower petals, the small dance floor in full swing. You sat down once you reached your chair, letting out a sigh of relief. Dancing with Jack Hotchner had worn out your heel clad feet, making you regret the decision not to wear flats.

Despite the events of the last few days, everyone seemed to be happy and enjoying a night free of anxiety. It was one of the few times you’d seen Erin Strauss crack a smile around your BAU team members, and you hoped it would last a little longer once you were back in the office. It was nice to see Anderson and Kevin outside of the bullpen, getting to talk about something other than serial killers and last known whereabouts. It felt like a normal family, celebrating two people that they all loved.

Weddings always made you believe in the bigger picture. Despite all the evil in the world, the amount of love two people shared with one another would always conquer it all. And weddings like these, between two people who put their lives on the line everyday, made you believe that you could find this source of happiness, this lifetime commitment despite everything you’ve gone through. It had to give you hope.

But as you rested your sweater over your shoulders and looked out at the couples sharing a dance, you couldn’t help but notice the empty feeling in your heart.

“Hey party pooper, you tired already?” Spencer took the seat to your left, a toothy grin resting on his face. He looked incredibly handsome tonight in his black suit and bowtie, a break from his sweaters and khakis. He had blushed red as a tomato when you and Penelope complemented his look, trying to boost his confidence. And maybe embarrass him a bit. “You’re the youngest one here minus the toddlers and you’re the first one to tap out. I had my money on Rossi.”

You laughed while skimming your feet against the tips of the grass. “I’m resting up for my turn with Derek. He told me I’m not leaving this place until he sees me, and I quote, ‘cut up a rug’ with him.”

Morgan and Garcia were currently the life of the dance floor, moving in sync with one another as best friends do. Your smile always grew when you witnessed the two of them together.

“You did a good job with your groomsmen duty. Didn’t lose the rings, made sure Henry knew his job. Maybe you’ll be number one on JJ’s babysitting speed dial.”

“And surpass you? That'll be the day that animals speak.” You nodded, a small smile gracing your lips. “Glad you know your place.”

The two of you looked up to see Rossi and Strauss dancing together, and you raised your brows toward Spencer. He informed you what him and Penelope witnessed a few mornings ago, and the three of you were determined to find out what the relationship was between the wise father figure and section chief. But as long as he was happy, you really couldn’t care less.

“Has Emily found you yet?” You asked, afraid to be the first to approach the subject. After her last disappearance, it took Spencer a while to forgive her and JJ. The grieving process was hard for him, it was hard for all of you. He spent weeks at JJ’s house, guilt consuming him for not putting together the link between Lauren Reynolds and Prentiss. He blamed himself just as much as Derek did. And he missed the one person who could see through him, and crush him at poker.

“Yeah, she did.”

“And are you okay?”

“I will be.” He looked over at me, a sad smile on his face. “At least we can call her this time.”

You were happy that Spencer could look back on Emily’s ‘death’ and laugh about it with you. There was a silver lining to every situation, every experience we go through. At least, that’s what you told yourself to help you get through the hard days.

“What about you?” You looked over at him, a wrinkle between your brows.

“Hmm?”

He sighed and nudged his head to the dance floor. “You really expect me to believe you didn’t come over here to sit and sulk while watching Hotch and Beth dance the night away?”

Your eyes found their way to the couple, swaying back and forth with smiles that couldn’t help but be contagious. A smile that only you used to be able to get from Hotch. And that little reminder was all it took for your smile to fall.

Hotch had introduced you all to Beth three months ago at the triathlon. They’d been training together for a few months until Hotch got the nerve to ask her out the week before the big day, with a little push from Dave nonetheless. She was the first woman he’d seen after Haley, a little over two years since her death. You were proud of him for moving on, and you were happy that he’s enjoying his life guilt free.

Beth was a beautiful woman, both inside and out. She was an art curator who ran triathlons and went to cute coffee shops in her free time. Anyone would be crazy not to be enamored by her. She kept Aaron on his toes, pushing him when he needed to go out of his comfort zone, an easy balance between the two of them. She was amazing with Jack, camping out and making forts with the two boys in the apartment. The little boy was more than okay with the new woman in his father's life.

But with the addition of Beth in Hotch’s life, your presence wasn’t as frequent as it used to be. Friday game nights had disappeared along with Saturday dinners, replaced by date night and movies with Jack. The worried phone calls about a cold, or the rush for a babysitter were now directed to Beth. The pictures of Jack playing with legos or running in the park now came from JJ when there was a scheduled playdate with Henry. You had been placed back into your spot as coworker, SSA y/n l/n of the BAU.

“I’m happy for him.” You settled on the vague truth, because you weren’t going to make tonight about you and your bruised feelings. “She’s a wonderful woman and he deserves to be happy.”

“So do you.” Yeah, you thought, I do.

“You know when I was a little girl, I used to dream about my future. It was the only thing that kept me going when I moved from home to home.” You admitted with a shallow laugh. “When you’re little, you have no perception of time, or any obstacles life throws in your way. And I think I wanted to believe more than anything, that life outside of the system was going to be magical. No matter what advantages or disadvantages I faced, I was going to make it magical.

“When I was fifteen, I thought I would be married and have popped out a baby by the time I was thirty. I told myself I would find my husband in college, a nice boy with big ambitions that loved me right. I would have a desk job, maybe be a secretary, something that gave me some interaction with people. We’d buy a house in the suburbs somewhere with window boxes and a big backyard. We’d have three or four kids by the time I was thirty five, and they would fill the house with their giggles and tiny footsteps. My job would be flexible enough so that they wouldn’t have to spend the whole day in daycare. I was going to be the perfect mother.

“I had it all planned out,” Your voice fell off as you looked back at Spencer. “But here I am at thirty one years old. Single, childless, pining over a man I can’t have, while trying not to get blown up by psychotic serial killers everyday.”

You couldn’t help yourself, stealing another look at Hotch. It nearly broke your heart in two to see his dimple from across the lawn.

“And fifteen years later, I’m still putting other people’s happiness before my own.” You stood up, placing your sweater back on your chair. Spencer had scolded you time and time again that you were going to be destroyed if you kept up this caring charade. Hotch had even tried to warn you about your efforts early on, but you were a stubborn girl. Looking back at Spencer, you hated seeing the pity he held for you in his eyes. You never wanted to be this girl. “But I’m happy for him.”

So you put on your most convincing smile, and motioned for him to follow you to the dance floor. He was hesitant, but he knew better than to continue his interrogation after your round about explanation. This wasn’t the place to delve into your mind. And the two of you knew that.

As soon as you stepped onto the dance floor, you were calling out for Derek Morgan to show you his moves. You needed a distraction, and you needed to have some fun. He wrapped his arms around you lightly, implying that you would not be slowly swaying like the boring people surrounding you.

He led you into what felt like a quickstep, bringing you up and down your side of the floor, leading you like a professional. You couldn’t stop the laughs from spilling out of your mouth as he spun you around and twirled you right back into his chest. Skipping around the dance floor with Derek was the last thing you expected to be doing at JJ’s wedding, but you were more than happy with the outcome.

After a few songs with the next Fred Astaire, Emily dragged you over to JJ, attempting a trio sway. Garcia joined you after a moment, giggles being shared across the square of dancing women. These three ladies were the sisters you prayed for as a kid, and you were about to be one man down for the first time in six years. For real, this time.

You leaned to your left and pressed a kiss to Emily’s cheek, and she smiled. “Are you making a move on me?”

Penelope let out a laugh as you shook your head. “I’m just grateful to have had you in my life for this long.” The smirk on her face fell, and you swear there were tears in her eyes.

“Nope! I was promised there would be no crying tonight,” Garcia stopped the moment from turning into a goodbye, and you laughed. “Sorry, you’re right. It was a move.”

JJ shook her head as Emily held your eyes for another second, mouthing a ‘thank you’ to you. You gave her a nod as JJ spun you under her arm.

“Alright, even though you're hitched, you can still come to ladies night with us, right?” Penelope asking the important questions here.

You smiled as JJ nodded. “You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

After a few more chords, there was a tap on your shoulder. You looked over your shoulder, finding Hotch’s warm brown eyes already looking at you. Your feet stopped as a shy smile rested across his lips.

“Hey,”

“Hey. Sorry to break up this party, but,” He extended his hand to you. “Would you like to dance?”

You looked down to his hand, one that you held so tight after Haley’s death, and took it in your own. Yours was swallowed in his, but you didn’t mind one bit.

“Of course.” He backed up, leading the two of you away from the laughing girls.

Once you’d found your own space, he wrapped his free hand around your waist, bringing yours to rest on his shoulder. Always the gentleman, his hand made sure it was barely grazing your lower back as your heart ached for him to hold you closer.

“Dave did an amazing job with the place.” Hotch commented, trying to break the tension between you. It had never felt this awkward between the two of you, and it hurt to know how much had changed.

“I think you mean Rossi found a great party planner to transform the place.”

A light chuckle from Hotch, and you felt butterflies in your stomach as his dimples showed up. You wanted to trace a check mark on his shoulder, but stopped when you realized he had someone else that was in first place now. The same person who was dancing with his son across the floor.

“He really likes her.” You commented, nodding towards the pair. Beth twirled Jack under her arm once, twice, three times, before he broke into a fit of giggles.

“He does. He claims she’s the best Uno player alive.”

You forced a smile out, not wanting to give the wrong impression. “High praise coming from the reigning champion.” He laughed and nodded along, knowing Jack did not accept defeat so easily. She must be really special.

Being this close to Aaron felt like a dream, one that you never thought you would get to experience while you were awake. The only other time you got to enjoy his warmth was a year ago, when you’d evaded another explosion. You remembered the feeling of his arms looped around your waist, their grip holding you to his chest. Once you realized what was happening, you never wanted to leave his embrace.

But right now you weren’t close enough. And selfishly, you needed to be closer, you needed to be held like that one more time. You took a step closer to him in between your swaying, your right foot in between his. Without missing a beat, he took another step closer to bridge the gap between you, pulling your joined hands to his opposite shoulder.

“I didn’t know you knew ballroom dancing,” His voice was deeper than you ever heard, due to the miniscule distance between you. If you tilted your head to the left a few centimeters, you’d be leaning against his temple. Just the thought had your heart racing; this man was not yours.

“I don’t. But Derek Morgan is a good teacher.”

You continued to sway back and forth to the music, a ballad playing in the background as you caught Beth dancing with Rossi now. She was a walking reminder that Aaron Hotchner was in a happy, committed relationship. And no matter how close you danced with him, how perfectly his arm curled tighter and tighter around your waist, this was not yours.

All you wanted was to share your life with someone. You wanted someone to look at you the same way Will looked at JJ. You wanted someone to make you laugh so hard that you couldn’t breathe. Someone who cared for you, just as much as you cared for everyone else. You wanted, more than anything in your life, for Aaron to look at you the way you looked at him.

“Are you okay?” He must have felt your grip tighten around his shoulder, and you quickly relented.

Tears had started to form in your eyes, and you gently shook your head to keep them from falling. “Yeah, sorry.”

He pulled back the slightest bit, trying to look into your diverting eyes. You locked them on the canopied walkway, hoping they’d dry before he came into view. It wasn’t his responsibility to ease your worries.

“Y/n,” You bit the inside of your lip, moving to crack your index finger when he slowed the two of you down a little. He knew your tells better than anyone else. “You can tell me anything.”

You didn’t hesitate to meet his eyes, smiling when you saw the concern etched inside them. You knew how much he cared for you. How much he trusted you with his son, and with his own worries when he had no one to turn to. You knew that he would do anything to take away the pain you’re feeling right now. So that’s why you let your smile grow, to assure him that you were going to be okay. That he couldn’t know why you were falling apart.

So you repeated the words you made yourself believe, leaving his gaze only to find Spencer’s a few feet away.

“I’m just really happy for you, Aaron.”

It was an ambidextrous statement, one that made your head spin with the different ways to approach the situation. But before he could respond, Spencer had made his way over to the two of you, perfectly reading the stare you threw his way. You needed an out.

“I think it’s my turn with the dancing queen.”

You let go of Hotch without a second thought, never meeting his gaze again. Spencer took your hand without a fight, and led you to the far corner of the floor, away from everyone’s eyes. You felt your chest tightening as he wrapped his arms around you, knowing the tears you tried so hard to suppress would fall soon.

The two of you started swaying, and you were quick to rest your head on his shoulder in an attempt to hide the first few tears that fell. You focused on the sound of heels meeting the floor, the silverware chiming against the plates, and the occasional laugh that escaped JJ’s mouth. You tried to ground yourself to the present, not to your thoughts.

“The life that you have may not be the one you dreamed of as a kid, but it’s pretty damn special. You don’t need kids or a husband to complete you. Because the y/n l/n right here,” he poked your waist, eliciting a small smile from you, “Is the best version of any day dream.”

You lifted your head from his shoulder so that you could meet his eyes. His smile never failed to reach his eyes, causing more tears to fall as you registered the sincerity in his voice.

“I’m going to be okay, right?” Your voice was small, afraid that you would never get used to this feeling.

“I don’t know,” He said before stepping back, just enough to spin you under his arm, and pull you back just like Derek had, before gently dipping you down. You couldn’t believe the laugh that escaped your lips, the salty tears ending their path down your face for good he hoped. He brought you back up carefully, a beautiful Spencer Reid smile adorning his face. “But I’ll be with you until you are.”

****

tags: @simplyprentiss @michaelahah @ssahotchner99 @svrgicalhands @hotchtopic @unionjackpillow @philcoolson @tommhollandzxhaz @kathleenjasmine @canimarrypizzaornah @reaperwalking @inlovewithaaronhotchner @shelbymm11 @mrshotchner23 @tropicalwrites @averyhotchner @dreamy-moments @softhxtch @crazymar15 @theinsanespaceship15 @wecouldbreakthedistance @jeor @funnycuteandannoying @andherestograce @thisisntjuliana @captwilson @kennedyblair @lovelysunflowerxoxo @rcompton @iifaequeenii @iwaizumiee @mrsaaronh0tchner @abbeyannsmith-blog @becausehello @rinacriedpower

#aaron hotchner x female! reader #aaron hotchner x female!reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner imagine #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #jules writes shit ??

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writingithink · 3 years ago

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Improbable Multiversal Transcending Temporal Spacetime Event Pairing: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Rated: T Word Count: 7,101 Summary: The best way to show someone you care is to blow up their job ... right? Notes: I'm back! And it's not a Tangled Timelines update (sorry!) But it is something? I've had this in my WIPs for awHILE now, and when I was cleaning my studio the other night I found a planning page for it in a random tote bag and was like ... oh yeah. And the ending just came to me and I love it when that happens. Hopefully there will be another chapter up for Tangled Timelines soon, though!

As always, infinite thanks to my wonderful beta, @hey-there-juliet who is fine with me randomly sending her fics at all hours and with no warning XP

All mistakes are mine, as always.

<<READ IT ON AO3>>

If the other him in the other universe had taken the time to imagine their human life together in a parallel universe, the Doctor doubted he would have pictured this. His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was always quite whimsical. Happiness had made him impractical, really. Because despite all of the drawbacks, all of the reasons he currently loathed himself, the Doctor knew every single reason why the other truly felt like this was the best possible option.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Sometimes, despite it not occurring too often, he was wrong.

They had spent five and a half hours on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay.

(I create myself.)

She had been so upset; said that after everything they’d went through, everything she did to get back, the other him owed her a proper goodbye. She had stopped speaking to him when he told her that, actually, he would never give her a proper goodbye.

And she didn’t let him explain why. Now that he finally could.

Now it had been 57 days since she’d last spoken to him. Since he’d gotten more than a brief glimpse of her with his own eyes. That he’d spent piecing together a picture of what her life had been like here, without him. Such a short time, really, now that it was over (almost over), but yet also some of the worst moments of his entire existence.

It seemed fair that the multiverse would demand just that extra sequence of pain, considering everything he could potentially get in return. What another version of himself could only hope for, bitterly gambling eternities, following their timeline through all of it’s complicated swirls and turns, names weaving around each other, stamping themselves on the structure of creation.

Forever isn’t something that ends.

(How long are you going to stay with me?)

Quite the opposite, actually. And he knew, eventually, she would remember that. Knew it, but didn’t feel it.

The Doctor finally understood what all of the human writers meant about falling in love. Not just the terrifying sensation of the unstoppable freefall, but also the immense pain of crashing into the immovable object at the end of the journey.

They had sat on opposite ends of a Zeppelin. He had gone back to the Tyler Manor with Jackie, and Rose had gone back to her flat. Hoping to see her, talk to her, he had immediately joined Torchwood (once they agreed to his very detailed, highly specific, entirely ironclad contract). Their paths rarely crossed, and when they did it was just tiny, insubstantial moments.

A flash of her at the far end of a hall. Her name in a report (a lot of reports). Snatches of her voice, there one moment and gone the next.

It all made everything hurt so much more, somehow, having her so close but yet further than he could have possibly imagined.

But yet …

His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was still quite whimsical. So when he tried to think of the bigger picture, waxing poetic, alone on his office couch, the Doctor tried to look at the last few years as the impact, and this as the aftershock. Still, philosophical jaunts weren’t exactly a solution to his problem. A temporary solution was moving his office even further away, so that’s what he did.

Plus, he found it kind of fitting, commandeering the inside of Big Ben. UNIT may have it in the prime universe, but in this universe he had the fancy landmark office. Well, office-slash-home (without Rose Tyler, a proper house with doors and things was absolutely unthinkable). Not that it was just about having a private laugh. The gears soothed him, the sound of ticking helped the gnawing emptiness that had filled his mind ever since the TARDIS dematerialized without him in it. The Doctor had thought it was kind of fitting - the closest he could possibly be right now to time.

Not that he wasn’t spending every possible spare moment working on the baby TARDIS, just a tiny piece of coral still, currently sitting in the extended electro-percussive environment chamber. He wondered if, in three years (his best-possible projected timetable), when the new TARDIS would be ready for flight, she would still not be speaking to him.

Incidentally, the emergence of that thought and the start of his supposed ‘self-isolation’ coincided to an alarming degree for how coincidental the two really were. The fact of the matter was, he was busy. Tons of experiments to run, alien equipment to identify, classify (and more often than not remove from Torchwood entirely), a baby TARDIS to tend to, and a backlog of Rose’s mission reports to hack into made spending slightly over three weeks in his tower easy.

The problem was the fact that during that time the Doctor avoided sleeping, barely remembered to eat, and existed on overly sugared tea alone. Not sleeping didn’t put the demons at bay, but at least when he was awake he wasn’t forced to confront the man he never wanted to remember being.

It had been 57 days since Rose Tyler had last spoken to him, and the Doctor detonated a bomb in the abandoned annex Torchwood had scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt.

Then the counter reset to zero.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled, barging into the top floor lab where he had been checking the readings on the EEPEC.

Everything that he wanted to say to her, and the Doctor was struck mute.

“Whatever plans you think you have, however good of an idea it is, for the good of the planet or, or the galaxy or what, you don’t just go blowing up buildings without a word to anyone! Do you know that everyone else was too scared to come up here and have a word with you, because that highly confidential ridiculous contract you drew up made its way through the gossips and isn’t so classified anymore. Now no one wants to go toe to toe with the man who ‘speaks for the planet’,” Rose growled through the air quotes. “So tell me, Doctor, what genius reason you’ve got for blowing up the Records Annex?”

A slow smile spread across his face.

“It worked.”

“What?”

“Remember ‘run’?” he asked, bouncing away from the baby TARDIS and circling her, picking up his new sonic screwdriver as he did and deadlock sealing the only door off the floor.

“Run?” she frowned as he circled back.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear as he passed, running up a small set of stairs to flip a giant switch that activated the clock-lights outside of their automated timer. Likely no one noticed outside with the sun still out, but it lit up the lab. “Henrik’s basement, Nestene Consciousness, shop window dummies, you and me. How did that night end?” he asked, with a manic grin as he skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Oh, that ‘run’,” Rose breathed, trying to fight back a smile. “You blew up my job.”

“I blew up your job.”

She huffed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and crossed her arms. His shoulders fell, exhaustion pressing down onto each and every bone of his new, much more fragile body.

“I just want to talk,” he told her, only a moment away from begging.

“Alright then. Talk.”

Everything he wanted to say to her, and all of it felt disjointed in his overtired mind. Yet she was here now, and if she left he didn’t have a new idea for getting her back again. So he talked.

“I’m sorry. That I made this choice for you, even if it was technically a different me who did it. I’m sorry that this is the best option, the safest option. I’m sorry I never got the chance to explain everything to you before. But I am never going to say goodbye to you, Rose. Never. And I know that the power of words doesn’t translate as well for you, the science of psycho-kinetic-telepathic influence on the elements of creation. But there are some things I can never risk saying aloud. There are some beings that exist, at least in our original universe, that could easily- … still, no matter what universe we’re in, I’m never going to say it. Forever, Rose Tyler. It’s longer than you can comprehend. An eternal silence stretching infinitely ahead, timelines swirling in every direction. This one is ours, if you’ll- if you could just- if you could see in twenty-odd dimensions and focused on individual temporal waveforms, the quantum reality of specific-”

“Doctor!” she shouted when his legs gave out, immediately grabbing hold of him, joining him on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but when he moved to get back up she easily held him down. Rose gently manipulated his face, giving him a basic medical check. He couldn’t help but smile a little at how much she had learned while they were away, only to then frown at how hard he imagined it all must have been for her. Floundering, he tried to make a joke. “So, I’m still the Doctor?”

Which went ignored.

“You look like a wreck,” she told him, and it wasn’t new information. The Doctor now made much more frequent trips to the restroom and was well aware of how pale he was, of the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He had at least been making a disjointed effort to shave, which was another activity that had increased with his meta crisis, and admittedly it had slipped his mind for a couple days.

“It’s not easy, doing this without you,” he admitted. “But if you need more time, I want you to take it. I really am alright. There’s just so much I need to tell you, now that I can.”

“What do you mean, ‘now that you can’?”

“Different universe, firm walls in between. I don’t have to worry about using the wrong words at the wrong time and having cosmic consequences … for a lot of things, not all things. With our timeline in a different dimension and reality back as it should be, at least for the moment, I can tell you all sorts of things. Though the most important one, the one I’m never going to miss an opportunity to say, is that I love you, Rose Tyler. Forever.”

“I love you, too,” she sighed, caressing his cheek for a moment before helping him up. “But I’m still mad at you. Now you need sleep.”

“But I’m not done talking,” the Doctor complained, dragging his feet as she led him over to the sofa in the corner.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve gotten some rest, okay? I promise.”

“Thank you,” he sighed, more horizontal than he remembered being just a moment ago. Something soft and warm ensconced his body. He hadn’t realized how cold he had been until just then.

Another breath and black oblivion overtook him. Peaceful until it suddenly very much wasn’t.

A shockwave. A rift in time and space. A breached void. A crack in reality. A big red button. No more. Howling, howling, howling.

“Wake up!”

His eyes snapped open.

He didn’t know where he was. Nothing felt right; not the air, not time, not even his own body. The Doctor tried to do a quick systems check, and the results were all wrong. His hand flew to his chest, where only one heart was beating.

A choking scream echoed through the space, which seemed to be tick tick ticking, and he didn’t realize that it was him who shouted until soothing hands were brushing through his hair. Vision focusing, he saw Rose Tyler kneeling next to him, or at least it was something that looked like Rose Tyler. She felt too cool. Or maybe he was too warm.

“Are you real?” he asked, hoping that she wouldn’t lie to him.

Just one heart working, and it was beating too fast, refusing to slow down. The air was too thick, he couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah.” A sad smile. “I’m real.”

The Doctor didn’t know if he believed her, closing his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see the moment she inevitably vanished. “I’m dying,” he told the being-who-might-be-Rose as he shuddered and collapsed back onto some sort of sofa.

“You’re fine,” she lied, but it was a lie she seemed to believe.

“Only got one heart beating,” he admitted, trying to get his breathing under control as his malfunctioning body began to sweat. The room ticked away, and he wondered if all of this was about to explode, if he should be running, if he even could run. His legs felt like lead. So did his arms. The air was too thick, dragging him down.

“That’s-”

The Doctor shut his eyes tighter, tears escaping that he hadn’t even realized were there. She must have vanished, just like he knew she would. And if she was never real to begin with, why did it have to hurt so much for her to go?

A weight rested on top of him, and he would never forget the feel of her. He vaguely wondered what it meant for him, to be having tactile hallucinations. Olfactory hallucinations. Even the buzz of time that had never left her skin after she took in the vortex was present.

“You’ve still got two beating,” Rose whispered as his arms wrapped around her in a tight hold that didn’t feel nearly strong enough to keep her. He wasn’t strong enough to keep her.

Her heart beat steadily over where his right heart had failed.

“I’m scared,” the Doctor admitted, eyes still closed though it was oddly easier to breathe.

“I’ve got you.”

“Please be real,” he whimpered, even as his mind grew foggier.

She said something, but he didn’t know what. Everything was fading away, darkness becoming darker, becoming void.

Nothing.

The Doctor awoke alone on the couch in his office. According to his time sense, he had slept for eighteen hours and twenty-one minutes. He felt better than he had in weeks, but also so much worse. He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it.

“What’s wrong now?”

The pillow dropped from his hands and his eyes locked with Rose’s as she raced up the slight stair onto the platform that separated his primary workspace from the rest of the top floor.

“What?” His voice cracked.

Rose Tyler sat next to him on the couch, hand immediately resting on his forehead, primitively gauging his temperature. The Doctor cleared his throat before trying again.

“Rose, what are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad, I’m so very, very glad you’ve come.” Her hand dropped away and he was able to get a good look at her, dressed in a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts (Jackie had bought him a ridiculous amount of clothes before he left the manor, all of which he sent out to be cleaned). He swallowed audibly. “W-why are you wearing my clothes?”

“‘M locked in here. Door’s deadlock sealed.”

Flashes of memories began to speed through him. Attaching a re-calibrated Tziklian implosion grenade to a newly-repaired retroreflective Clishtahrr drone. Obsessively trying to circumvent his vision in order to peer at his own timeline, making himself sick. A contained rift event in the lower levels of the tower that made him feel like he had looked into the untempered schism again.

(Run, run, run!)

“I’m sorry. I don’t … I’ll just …”

He pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, found his sonic screwdriver and unsealed the door. And he wished he hadn’t trapped her with him, even if he was starting to remember why (inky black terror crawling up his spine, wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe).

“Do you remember what happened yesterday?” she asked, following him as he went to check the TARDIS on autopilot, looking as if she was worried he would collapse (again).

“It’s coming back to me,” the Doctor admitted. Still had a good four hours to go before the shatterfry process would be complete. He straightened his shoulders, trying to stand tall as he turned to face her. “Things got a little, uhm, unpleasant. I’ll do better.”

“Unpleasant,” Rose scoffed. “I’m pretty sure you had a bleedin’ breakdown!”

“It’s been a difficult regeneration,” he deflected, turning away, leaving the platform and making a beeline to the tiny kitchenette tucked off to the side. Tea. He just needed more tea.

“So, this how it’s gonna be, then? All that stuff about wanting to talk, but now you’re just done?”

He nearly spilled the kettle with the speed of his turn, brows furrowed and mouth falling open. “What? Of course I want to talk!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Just, er, what did I say? Before?”

Memory was still a bit of a blur. Successful energy funnel for the TARDIS’ growth tank. Vodka tasting different in a universe without potatoes. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. No contact.

“You don’t remember?”

“I said it was coming back to me, it’s just not coming in the right order.” he sighed, refocusing on the tea.

“Well, what’s the last thing that you vividly remember?” Rose asked, moving around him, easily finding mugs and sugar and milk.

“Thirteen days ago, creating a temporal disruption chrono-field manipulator. Needed to siphon rift energy for our TARDIS. She needs a very specific growth environment.”

“Thirteen days?! Wait, siphoning the-” She leaned against the tiny countertop and covered her face with her hands. The only sound for a few moments was of the electric kettle quickly boiling the water. “Our TARDIS?”

“If you want,” the Doctor muttered, lifting a hand, wanting to touch her, but then thinking better of it. He clenched his fist as it dropped to his side.

Rose groaned as she turned back to him. “Of course I want that, you daft alien git! But you don’t exactly make things easy, do ya? I spent years getting back to you, and then suddenly there’s two of you and one of you abandons me just like I was always afraid of, but one of you stays and I’m expected to be able to process any of it? And then for weeks it’s an effort just to give myself space, knowing that wherever I go you’re so close, part of me wondering why I’m even trying to stay away when all I wanted for ages was to be back with you. Then suddenly you’re gone! I still know where you are, but there isn’t a chance that I’d actually run into you. And I still don’t know what to feel, but coming here yesterday, seeing you … I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so broken.” There were tears in her eyes. His nails dug into his palms with the effort it took not to wrap his arms around her, to wipe them away. “I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.”

“It’s not. It’s my own fault. You haven’t done a single thing wrong,” he assured her.

“That’s not true and you know it,” she tried to laugh, but it came out watery. “I’ve been an absolute cow. And I still haven’t answered your question. You’d said some things about words being a type of science, and that you could say things here that you couldn’t in the other universe. Like you were paranoid, under surveillance or something? I think you tried to describe how your time sense stuff works, but you almost fainted.”

“Fifty-seven days without you and that’s what I was talking about?” The Doctor grimaced.

The kettle clicked off.

“If it makes you feel better, it was kinda romantic. The stuff about not saying goodbye and forever and blowing up my job.”

“Blowing up your what?!”

“That’s why I had to come here. You blew up the old Records Annex.”

“Riiiiight. That explains the drone bomb. It’s not like they weren’t going to blow it up anyway. Didn’t I help?”

Rose rolled her eyes before moving to fix both their teas. “We’ll get into that later. Right now I don’t even want to talk about us. I wanna know about you, what you’ve been doing these past two months. Because I didn’t even stop to think what this all must be like for you.”

Cuppa in hand, the Doctor led her back to the couch as he tried to think of how best to explain something that he barely understood himself.

“I was created in a two-way human-Time Lord instant biological meta crisis. Hundreds of years as one being, then suddenly two. Exact same mind, almost the exact same body, but different enough that I can barely comprehend existing in it. If you remember, the first forty-eight hours of the regeneration cycle are complicated and dangerous. Barely a few hours into mine I was dropped outside of the prime universe that all Gallifreyans are meant to exist in, cut off from all telepathic contact as the walls of reality continued to sway, slowly falling back into place. It’s been … an adjustment. Sometimes things don’t feel real, even when they are. Sometimes things feel incredibly real, even when they aren’t.”

“You had a nightmare,” Rose told him, placing a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing soothing circles through his layers. “I woke you up, tried to help. You didn’t think I was real. You thought you were dying, because you only had one heart.”

He tried to smile, and the action felt painful. “Sounds about right.”

“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so selfish-”

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for. I want you to put yourself first.”

“But I can’t stand seeing you in pain like this. What can I do to help?” she asked, a desperation in her eyes that he couldn’t bear.

“You’re already helping,” the Doctor sighed, finally giving in and leaning into her touch, lying his head on her shoulder. It was the closest he’d felt to time since they’d been left on that bloody beach.

Memories were still racing through his head. Energy coils radiating artron energy into a centrifuge. The smell of burnt flesh against the remains of a Bverni navigational system. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. No contact.

“The other Doctor said that you needed me.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yes, because he needs you. He also said that I was dangerous. I am. He is. We are. But you already knew that. It’s easy, you know, to yell at yourself. Not often that there’s actually a separate you there to yell at. I destroyed the Daleks, but we’d already done that before we met. In fact, so did you. The other me was lashing out, knowing what he would have to do but not wanting to do it.”

“That’s another thing,” Rose said, moving to face him, dislodging his head, “you said that us being here, in this universe, was the best, safest option. What was that about?”

“Something’s coming. Has come. Ended and began. There’s a massive paradox surrounding me in the other universe. Incredibly dangerous, potentially catastrophic. All I know is that it has something to do with a woman named River Song who claims to be my wife.”

“Your wife?!”

“I said claims. And she did seem to be telling the truth, besides the fact that what she was saying was entirely preposterous. My soul is entirely bound to yours.” The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it. “So I think I have an idea of the kind of man I’ll have to become in order to keep the universe intact.”

“What’s that?”

“A liar. If she is going to believe that I could possibly join myself to someone else, someone who isn’t you, I’m going to have to lie. I’m going to have to forget. I’m going to have to lie so well and for so long that even I believe the fiction I’ve created for myself.”

He wondered what the other him in the other universe would think, then, whenever he caught a rare glimpse at their timeline surrounded in gold, bound with Rose’s for all eternity. What kind of explanation he would craft. The Doctor shuddered.

“But that sounds horrible!” she cried.

“It’s the sacrifice he’s making for the sake of the universe. My timeline is dangerous and someone, something is tampering with it. You and I made one tiny little paradox and it almost destroyed everything. This one is circular, might be able to be maintained, but the scale of it, Rose. And who knows if it will even work. River seems great and all, at least I hope so, but I don’t think she has much of a handle on time travel. That, or she’s a manipulative psychopath. Suppose that’s a surprise for the other me to find out.”

Rose sniffled and he pulled her into a hug.

“He’s going to be all alone.” The words were muffled into his shoulder, his shirt growing damp with her tears. He cringed and tried to think rationally, that of course she would feel this way, that it had nothing to do with how she felt about him him. But then again, maybe it did.

“He won’t be alone. He’ll find someone. I always do, eventually.”

“B-but I-”

“We’ll figure it out. How to get you back there, once it’s safe,” he whispered into the top of her head. Maybe that would be it- what she needed this him for. And if so, it would be enough. It would have to be enough.

“Really?”

The Doctor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“So it’s not- you really weren’t abandoning me here?” Rose lifted her head, eyes brimming with a hope that had been missing before.

“Never.” The word felt as if it was torn out of his very being.

She cupped his cheek, stubble beginning to smooth out into the beginnings of a beard. He really needed to shave.

“I thought you said to never say never ever?”

“That was before.”

It occurred to him that he had tea, so he took a sip - it had gone cold.

“Oh, right, all the, uhm, psychic-kinetic-telepathy science stuff.”

He opened his mouth to correct her - she was very close, though - but was interrupted by the ringing of the giant clock. It was heavily muffled by the sound proofing adjustments he had made while setting up the office, but still audible enough.

“It’s eight now, yeah?” Rose asked, even as she moved away.

“Yes.”

She walked over to his desk, where the Doctor now noticed a pile of her folded clothes sat. He frowned when she brought them over to him.

“Do you think you could sonic these clean for me? I’m gonna quick hop into your decontamination shower.”

“Th- there’s a proper shower, it’s two floors down. First left, third right, door marked ‘Security Level Alpha’.”

“What, really?”

“Didn’t want random lab techs using it. Has a retina scan. It’ll let you in.”

Rose laughed, ruffled his hair, and gave him a kiss on the cheek before disappearing to get ready for work. The whole thing left him confused. He went through his list again, checking and double checking to make sure that this all was real . It was, just as it had been all morning.

More memories. Recalibrating the tower’s new sub-basement weapon’s vault. Burnt toast and no more jam left. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. Contact made.

It wasn’t fair that she had spent almost an entire day with him yet he had missed most of it. Still, he sonicked her clothes, as well as his tea. Finished his cuppa, and then had a second before Rose came back from her shower.

“Why’s there no one around?”

“Dangerous radiation leak,” the Doctor shrugged. “I fixed it almost as soon as it happened, but apparently there’s ‘procedures’. How’d you get in?”

She bit her lip, fighting a smile. “Mighta shot a few of your doors,” Rose admitted, picking up an electro-pulse blaster off of a nearby cart. Non-lethal on organic matter. Very effective on fancy doors. “Nobody told me anything about a radiation leak, though.”

“Classified radiation leak.”

“And why’s that?” she scowled, hands on her hips.

“Everything to do with time travel is classified to this office. Bethany is not being very cooperative about putting you down as a liaison-whatever. Please believe me, I wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret.”

“Oh.” Rose glanced over at the EEPEC, absently biting her thumbnail.

The Doctor didn’t know what she was thinking, didn’t know if he should ask. After a moment she disappeared into the loo to change, promising to be back in a tick.

It was a funny multiverse, really, that his reunion with Rose Tyler would be such a stilted thing. That it would be about him and her, but not this him. Acknowledged with a few questions after his health, sure, but that was just polite. She’d always been compassionate, caring for others. Rose didn’t see him as the Doctor. Not the proper one. Sure, she used his name, but it would be easier for her to do that this time around.

He looked just like him.

He was him.

But he wasn’t.

Memories were still coming. Adjustments to Torchwood’s alien tech retrieval protocols. Nutrition shots. Reports reading: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. Contact made.

He went through the list again. Still real.

Unless it wasn’t.

Unless he wasn’t.

What would have stopped the other Doctor from knocking him out and uploading him into a matrix? Giving him a half-life with a programmed Rose Tyler?

The air here felt wrong.

(Wrong universe. Wrong universe. Wrong universe.)

“Doctor!”

(Daleks exploding. “What have you done?!”)

Pressure against his hands. Why was it so dark?

The Doctor opened his eyes to see Rose in front of him, pulling his fingers away from his palms. Oh. He was bleeding. Hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry, sorry.” He spun away from her in order to grab the first aid kit from his desk.

“What happened?” she asked, vibrating with barely contained panic.

“Nothing, nothing. Things just got jumbled for a second,” he assured her, efficiently cleaning his palms and wrapping them in gauze in a practiced motion.

“How often do you-”

“Hard to say. I’ve been graphing them. Seems to be stress contingent, but generally decreasing. My senses are gradually acclimating to this universe, so I have to hope that once they do, I’ll be fine. Perfect. Molto bene. No inconvenient lapses.��

“Stress? What h- oh.”

He didn’t like the sound of that ‘oh’. The Doctor clenched his jaw before facing her.

“We still haven’t talked about us,” Rose pointed out, approaching him slowly. Like he was a wild animal. Like he would hurt her. “And you … you don’t really remember yesterday still, do you?”

“Not really.”

His hands hurt. His body ached. One heart, and it was beating so quickly that he was sure it would give out.

Rose wrapped her arms around him and he automatically returned the embrace.

“Maybe I should just call in,” she suggested as she pulled away. “We can just take the day?”

“Or don’t and stay anyway,” the Doctor couldn’t help pointing out. “Some bits have come back, and didn’t they send you here?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my god, they did!”

And it was beyond words, how great it was to hear her laughing again. To see her smiling.

But …

That was wrong.

Rose was upset with him.

Time didn’t feel right.

The air tasted off.

Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe.

The Doctor staggered backwards.

His respiratory bypass was malfunctioning. It was like it wasn’t even there. He couldn’t get air into his lungs.

Everything went black.

There was a shot of gold, and then a different kind of black.

“Doctor,” said a whisper in the dark. “The timer went off for the TARDIS. ‘M I supposed to take her out of that thing?”

A TARDIS timer?

TARDIS … timer …

The timer for the extended electro-percussive environment chamber!!!

The Doctor shot up from where he had apparently been lying on the couch and ran over to the EEPEC, swiftly shut it off, removed the tank housing their baby TARDIS, and then poured in the pre-prepared aqueous nutrient solution before inserting the tank into the quasi-dimensional artron chamber (currently set to it’s highest opacity setting).

“Hah!” he exclaimed, punching his fist in the air and itching to switch the chamber’s outside view settings to transparent. He turned to Rose, opened his mouth to ask her, and then paused.

It all came back to him, all of it, not just the jumbled recollections he had been getting earlier. Apparently he had fallen into a healing coma, and it seems to have been just what he needed … but it all truly hadn’t been fair to Rose. Though, to be fair, she was currently smiling like it was Christmas, so-

Christmas. Healing comas.

Huh.

“Shall we switch it to transparent?” the Doctor asked, unable to reign himself in any longer. “It was clear when Benny - quite the coincidence, right? - helped me set it up. This is a quasi-dimensional artron chamber. It’s funnelling in rift energy and centrifuging artron particles, and the end result in that chamber is the specific environment needed to properly grow a TARDIS. Well, along with the chrono-nutritio aqueous habitat. Benny describes looking into it as being similar to taking DMT, which, by the way, is completely inaccurate. It’s exactly like looking into an Eye of Harmony. If it’s malfunctioning, it’s like looking into the untempered schism, which I don’t recommend. But everything’s stable now, we could-”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to look into the vortex?” Rose interrupted, and …

“Right … erm, well ,” he hedged, scratching the back of his neck, “I mean, it isn’t actually the vortex, but you’re probably not completely wrong. Best not risk it.”

Excitement abating, the Doctor slumped against the chamber and at that moment realized that he had been changed into jim jams.

Jim jams. Healing comas.

Huh.

At least these were his own pajamas, and not some ‘friend’ of Jackie’s, though how strange was it that he owned his own pajamas in the first place?

“C’mere,” Rose said, beckoning him back toward the couch, which she was sitting next to, but not on. Not your typical decision, but he had likely taken up all of the space earlier. “I made you some tea.”

It really wasn’t worth it, cataloguing the similarities between this and when he had first regenerated into this body … even though the list did seem to be growing.

“Perfect! Just what I need!” the Doctor smiled as he walked over, taking a seat next to Rose on the floor.

Silence fell as he sipped his tea, and he found himself unsure of what to do or say next. There was too much to say, and he’d certainly done a piss poor job of organizing his thoughts earlier.

“Feeling better?” she asked, after another moment.

Small talk. He could definitely do small talk.

“Mmm yes, very much so.”

“Better enough to talk?”

The Doctor coughed, having swallowed his tea incorrectly (bloody hybrid body, still acting up), before nodding. Rose moved onto the couch and he scrambled to join her.

“So,” she began and paused, face scrunching up in concentration (it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who found this whole business incredibly awkward), “I guess … what is it that you actually want? Aside from a working TARDIS, that is.”

His brows furrowed.

Sure, there were plenty of ways he could answer that question and have all of them be true, but he had a feeling that she was looking for a specific type of ‘want’.

Problem was, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure what that was .

“What?” he asked, in lieu of any better things to say (as the runner up response was to ask for some jam, or maybe a banana, or some of the takeaway from the shop down the corner and blimey, he was hungry).

“This whole time, all of it, since you c- since you were- since you stopped just bein’ a hand- ” the Doctor had a list of complaints and corrections that he barely held in “- nobody’s asked what you wanted. The D- the other Doctor chose for both of us, really, and I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. An’ I wanna know. What do you want?”

Removed from the actual experience itself (and therefore not feeling incredibly, deathly ill), visions of the slight peek he’d gotten four days ago of his own timeline played in his head.

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand, weaving their fingers together.

“I want this.”

She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Care to elaborate?” she asked with a slight laugh.

“Nope,” he replied, popping the ‘p’. “Because as long as you’re happy, everything else is just- just semantics. I mean, obviously it’s going to be a bit dull until the TARDIS has grown enough for proper travel, but I think we can make do?” At least, he really hoped so. It hadn’t been going swimmingly so far, but the Doctor sincerely hoped that he could chalk all that up to the initial side effects of the meta crisis, compounded by all of the, er … technical difficulties he had run into while constructing the TARDIS’ growth tank. Also, his new hybrid body needed much more maintenance than he was used to, including sleep. Really was rubbish without regular sleep. Such a waste of time.

“So, if I were to suggest you moving into the flat?”

He opened his mouth, intending to immediately agree, but then frowned. The TARDIS was here, after all. And he absolutely could not move her. Not at this stage. Not until she could connect to other dimensions on her own. The Doctor looked over at the quasi-dimensional artron chamber, once again wishing that he could switch it to transparent and watch the process unfold.

“How moved in is moved in?” he asked once he forced himself to turn back toward Rose.

“You’d sleep there, shower there, eat some of your meals. Most of your clothes an’ stuff would be there. Y’know. It’d be where you live. With me. If you want.”

“And that’s what you want?” he double checked, trying not to telegraph his surprise - he must have missed a lot while in a coma, as last he knew they were teetering on the edge of a row.

Rose rolled her eyes, and that was much more in line with where he thought they were at, er, relationship-wise.

“Well, I don’t fancy living in a clocktower office. When I’m done working, I’d like to not still be at work, ta.”

She did make some excellent points … but still, it all implied that they would be staying together. And that was what he wanted, of course it was, but the Doctor still couldn’t help but feel he had missed something crucial despite the fact that he could now remember everything clearly.

“You blew up my job. ”

“I love you, too. But I’m still mad at you.”

“You’ve still got two beating.”

Maybe there wasn’t something to have missed. Human emotions were relatively complex, after all, and there was no rule requiring them to happen in isolation.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked, realizing as he did that to Rose it was coming from seemingly out of nowhere.

This was confirmed as she blinked, brows furrowing.

“I don’t know. Maybe a little, but …”

“But?” the Doctor repeated, unable to stand the suspense.

“It’s hardly the first time we’ve had a fight, yeah?”

He nodded, unsure of where she was planning on going with this and hoping that he wouldn’t need to begin apologizing for every insensitive thing he’d said or done since they first met. It would take ages.

“Well, we always end up workin’ it out. And we did live together, travelin’ on the TARDIS, whether we had a row or not, so …” Rose shrugged, now examining her fingernails.

Speaking of the TARDIS, though …

“First things first,” the Doctor began, rubbing the back of his neck as he stood up and began pacing, “I want it on record that I would absolutely love to live in a flat with you, with carpets and doors and things. Assuming we’d spend much of our time traveling about, that is.” He turned back toward her, having paced his way back over to the TARDIS’ QDA chamber. “The thing is, it’s … I don’t want you to think that- the TARDIS. She needs me here. This is a critical development period. For the next three to six months, the TARDIS will be growing in the chamber, learning how to connect to and create dimensions. Until she can manage it, I can’t move her and she requires near-constant monitoring. Every hour or two.”

“She’s like a newborn baby,” Rose commented, getting up and joining him at the chamber, where she stroked the side.

“Exactly.”

“Well, I suppose this’ll have to do then,” she reluctantly … agreed? “As long as we’re living in the flat as soon as she’s moveable, mind. The bathroom here is two floors away.”

“It’s a clocktower, Rose! There’s only so much space.” The Doctor scrunched up his face as he said the word.

“Then why’d you pick this place? I know because of the Rift, but doesn’t it stretch further than just the tower?”

“Nope,” he shrugged.

It’s not as though he hadn’t checked.

“Really?”

“Small rift.”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed, “a small rift right under Big Ben.”

The Doctor laughed with her, amazed that he finally could.

Then he frowned.

It was all a little too good to be true.

Was this real?

“Hey.”

He refocused. Rose was right in front of him, their eyes locked.

“You were getting that look in your eyes,” she informed him.

“Look? What look?” the Doctor asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew. Some sort of dazed tell, some sort of glaringly obvious indicator that his grasp on reality was failing him.

“This look you get when you start thinkin’ you’re in the wrong universe.”

Wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe.

“Well, I am in the wrong universe,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Yeah, I know. Me too. But y’know what?”

Rose wrapped her arms around him, and it was almost as if she were his tether, grounding him to this new reality they’d found themselves in.

“It’s better with two.”

#TenToo x Rose #doctor x rose #pairing: rose x doctor #timepetals #fic: improbable multiversal transcending spacetime event #fandom: doctor who #my fic

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consumedkings-archive · 4 years ago

Note

"I loved you, you know?" for misolde (you seeing me blasting akon at 2am is a close enough doxx ashlyn) xoxo

you nerd you sent the other prompt to my main blog asdhjshd SIKE. HERE’S THE REAL POST

i see you sent these prompts after waking up and choosing violence, dove.

iii. stained glass ✤ michael hughes x isolde khan

words: 1.6k

prompt: "i feel so fucking stupid” + "i loved you, you know?" taken from this list!

rating: mature

warnings: references and depictions of stalking/domestic abuse, isolde self-detonating for nearly 2,000 words, naughty language. in case you’re wondering, no i did not proofread<3

“Talk to me, Soli.”

There’s nothing that’s going to make this okay. Isolde shoves whatever clothes she can into the one suitcase she is taking back with her to Turkey; the rest of the house has been boxed up, plastic thrown over the furniture to be shuffled off to a storage unit later, but every personal trace of her in the house is scrubbed clean. Raw. Just like the sting of her skin in the shower less than an hour ago, swaddled in the thick, heavy fabric of her sweater now, pulsing painfully with how hard she scrubbed.

"Soli,” Michael says, his voice rising in a strange fever pitch now, “you have to talk to me—”

There’s nothing that’s going to make this okay, and she thinks she might rather die than have to have this conversation, but there’s nothing that sets that tiny little hairpin trigger off more than the words you have to talk to me—they’re innocuous, only a plea coming out of Michael’s mouth, but from anyone else they are a demand and it makes her head swim.

Despite this knowledge, her hackles lift and she whirls to look at him. “I don’t have to do fucking anything,” is what she spits out; not an explanation—a true one—and not any softness, but venom. It’s always been in her, all along. She has always been poisoned, and it’s better—

Better this way, better for him, better better better, goes the mantra, driving a rut into her brain, sparking like wildfire against the kindling of her nerves. Better this way, poison, poison, that’s all we are all we’ll ever be all we can be—

“What’s to talk about? What don’t you get?” Isolde snaps, because Michael’s expression is crumpling at her viciousness, confused and wounded. “I’m moving back home.”

“But why?” he demands. His voice wobbles, eyes searching her face. “Why wouldn’t you say anything to me? Were you just gonna fuckin’ go without saying goodbye? Without telling me how to reach you, or—”

“Reach me?” She turns back to her suitcase, zipping it shut with more force than necessary. It’s a good thing, to have her back to him, because her lip trembles and her mouth twists before she bites the words out, “For what?”

Now he’s quiet—like he’s not expecting this answer, and why would he be? She’s never given him any other reason to think she’s felt he’s disposable; because she doesn’t. She doesn’t think he’s disposable, he’s precious—so precious, to her, and in every way, and that makes it all the more critical and crucial that she makes sure he never suffers for her sake.

It’s easier to let him hate her. It’s easier to give him a cause, a tragedy to propel him forward and away from her. She’s always been the kind of woman that inspires that in men.

Do you see what you made me do? This is all your fucking fault, Isolde.

Isolde grips the edge of the suitcase tight enough that her knuckles go white.

You made me do this to you. I’m not a monster.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Michael says, his voice hitching. “Something’s wrong. If something’s—you can tell me—”

I don’t want to hurt the people you love.

“Just tell me what’s wrong, talk to me, I can help—”

But I will, baby.

“—whatever it is, I can—”

I’ll do whatever it takes to make you understand you’ll never be able to hide from me.

She’s going to be sick. She’s going to be sick, right there; she’s already thrown up, tossing the unwelcome flowers that had been left on her porch and their cloying sweetness and scrubbing it down, scrubbing her sink, scrubbing her hands and arms that might have touched them until the skin bleeds because anything Alec touches is poison, poison, I’m poison, I’m nothing but—

Isolde grinds out between her teeth, “There’s no reason to make this harder than it needs to be, Michael. It’s been fun, but it’s time for me to go back to the real world, and my real job, and get my life going again.”

“It is going!” Michael snaps at her. “It—it was, I thought, or—with me, I mean. If you would just—just stay, for a minute, okay? Stop all this packing, please, and—this isn’t like you. Soli—”

He reaches for her arm, or maybe for the suitcase, and it plunges her into some icy kind of frenzy; it feels like her skin is vibrating, a feeding frenzy, a slaughter going on just beneath her skin, and when he reaches for her and his fingers brush the fabric of her sweater sleeve, she jerks her arm out of his reach and glares at him over her shoulder.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she spits, “if you want to keep that fucking hand intact. And maybe, Michael, maybe you don’t fucking know me at all, hm? Did you consider that?”

Michael, sliding his arms around her and pulling her close, burying his face into her neck; so pretty, he says, you’re so fuckin’ pretty, my gorgeous girl.

“Did you consider that maybe you’re so desperate to be loved that you fabricated some kind of relationship beyond fucking?”

The way his fingers card through her hair when the cicadas hum and the heat of the late-night drive is still on her skin, her cheek brushing the sheets when she says, do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen to you?

“It’s not my fault,” and the words are bittersour, so tight and sharp that her molars ache, “that you can’t tell the difference between being a fuck buddy and being in love.”

Michael’s jaw flexes as he grinds his teeth. She can see it happening; the shut-down, the real collapse, the way he wipes his face of any of the softness or concern. But the problem is that he isn’t giving up; he’s watching her, scrutinizing her, his eyes narrowing and his hand lifting to rake through his hair.

“You’re fuckin’ lying,” is what he says, and she throws her hands up in panicked exasperation. If he won’t listen, if he won’t believe her, what can she do? Alec will hurt him; kill him; pull out his teeth or crush his kneecaps or—

“Tell me what to say to you,” Isolde demands. “Tell me whatever magical words are going to get it through your thick fucking head that it’s over.”

“How about the truth?” Michael snaps. “How about you start with the truth, Isolde?”

“The truth,” Isolde replies through her teeth, “is that I was using you for sex, Michael.” And then, because she knows it will hurt the most: “And we both know this isn’t the first time someone’s used you for something, so I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to grasp.”

It lands the way she wants. It stings; the hurt of it crawls across his expression, and then it happens all at once—the gate slams.

“Fuck. You,” he grinds out.

The words are cloyingly sweet when she says, “Baby’s finally getting it.”

Watching him drag a hand across his face, Isolde thinks about how she didn’t want to have this conversation at all—she had wanted to just get out of town, leave Hope County and Alec and unfortunately, by extension, Michael behind; it was safer this way, anyway, but now having him standing in her house not only makes every minute excruciating, it’s also making it harder and harder to keep up the ruse.

She doesn’t like to be mean just for mean’s sake. It’s always with a purpose, that reptilian quality John likes to go on and on about more functional than it is hedonistic. And though being mean like this, in this moment, does have a purpose—keeping Michael safe from the skeletons in her closet—it doesn’t hurt any less knowing it’s better this way.

“Unreal,” is what he says after a moment, the venom welling in his voice. “You are fucking—unreal, Isolde, you—you fucking—”

“You what?” Soli’s eyes narrow. She should be shuffling him out, getting him out—but now she’s got her jaw locked around it and she just wantswantswants, always a creature of hedonistic want as Joseph would say, wants him to stay and fight with her so she can put off the inevitable. “You know I can’t stand it when a bloke won’t just come out and say it. ‘You fucking bitch’, is a fine place to start, if you’d like, though I think it’s a bit rudimentary and we could probably escalate to—”

“I loved you, you know,” he cuts in over her, glaring at her now, his jaw pulled tight and the words minced out between his teeth. He starts pacing, like he hasn’t just cut her to the quick, like he hasn’t just doused all of the fire in her with those words. “I cannot believe—the fucking audacity—I loved you.”

The overwhelming urge to throw up is sitting just there, right there in the hollow of her throat. Isolde stands there with her hands limp at her side, all of the anger in her simmering just below the coals in her belly now. She can’t stand the sweetness, even when the words are so bitter coming out of his mouth; she doesn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve his love. “Michael—”

“Shut up,” he grinds out, his voice breaking, “stop—holy shit. I feel so fuckin’ stupid.”

I loved you.

Past-tense. It means her job is done. It means she did the thing she set out to do: sever the tie, rip the bandaid off.

“I think you should go,” she says, her voice going hoarse with the threat of tears. Michael sucks his teeth.

“Yeah,” he replies tightly, “that’s the one sensible thing you’ve said all night.”

I loved you, he’d said. She listens to the sound of his footsteps out through the house, the slam of the front door in the doorframe. Loved, past-tense, a sweetness she had known of only in cursory experiences before him.

Because she loves Michael, present-tense, and that does not make it any easier.

Love so rarely does.

#my writing #ch: isolde khan #oc: michael s hughes #otp: our cathedral is the badlands #*chuckles* i'm in danger #dove im literally still floored u sent half the prompts to my main blog #like an idiot i posted it there first #shdjshdjs #writing prompts #ask games

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

Text

The Mandalorian season 2 ep 1 AGAIN! it’s the rewatch folks

- The entire last season reminder/intro scene is kind of clunky and we’re-hitting-you-over-the-head-with-this, but I think it’s important to note that it’s probably meant for the vast majority of people who watched this stuff once a wholeass year ago, and not for me, the crazy person who watched each episode at least five times lol

I like the way mando & bb walk from darkness into brief light and back into darkness here... the directors keep finding such cool ways of using the armour cinematically, there must be some lighting considerations to be made when your main character is essentially a walking disco ball. I enjoy the mood of this planet too -- the distant lights, the way the sky isn’t quite dark like there’s a city providing some light pollution nearby (it’s a bit clearer as he walks further into the... town? that it’s not just sunset, the sky is lit up weirdly)

also when din moves towards the camera and out of sight in this first appearance, the signet is the very last thing that leaves the frame! I just thought that was sweet, a clan of two :’)

- shotout to these two lads and their boldly absolutely inexplicable hat choices (I love gratuitous star wars crowd scenes you guys)

those tacky gold sequins on her sleeves... immaculate, beautiful, someone sat through like full body makeup application to be on screen a literal split second, that good good sw nonsense

- oh I didn’t notice before but I think those gladiator dudes are using vibroaxes! I guess they have the technology to portray it in live action now after the vibroblades in the first season

- the way bb glances up at din like ‘hey dad. dad what the fuck???’ as one gomorrean nearly chops the arm off the other fjaslfds

- when you look for it it’s comically obvious that those guys are working for the dude mando’s meeting, they’ve all got more or less the same dark uniform and don’t look much at the fight haha. they might as well have ‘hired thugs’ stamped upon their foreheads

- I like how pared down and spare the music is in this fight scene, it’s just the faint whine of the electric guitars under the thuds of meat hitting metal

also still love how din fights, the fact that he doesn’t even try to not get hit a lot of the time, he’s just tanking through it waiting for someone to fling themselves at him in a way he can exploit to take them out

the bouncer seems to be holding something like sci-fi handcuffs when he grabs din and lifts him off his feet, so he probably meant to restrain him quickly. bonus: I didn’t notice it the first time around, but din really went straaaaaiiight for this dude’s gentleman area once he dropped him back on his feet lol (you can even see him taking a split second to orient himself and take aim first fhsdkfhas). good job space cowboy dad, sometimes fighting smart means fighting dirty

- leaving this awful dude hanging upside down to get eaten after employing some very deliberate phrasing so he’s not even breaking his word is the ruthless HEIGHT of mando’s hilarious petty streak and it makes me cackle, gives me life, waters my crops

- oh, the palpable loneliness and longing in din’s voice when he says ‘if I can track down another of my kind’ ;_______; I’m sorry buddy

- may we speak for a moment about the fact that din carries his son around in what seems very much to be a saddle bag sdafjkhsa

- the way din checks in with peli (to see if she’s fucking with him? he’s very confused anyway haha) over the map before saying “I don’t see anything” is so precious. he already seems much more socially tuned in and responsive compared to the beginning of season 1, you love to see it, coming out of that freeze response baBEY

- I can’t get over how much the baby loves speed, this is coming back to bite you so hard if you’re ever going to have to teach this kid how to drive one day mando

- awwww the little patented mando finger curl as he enters the bar <3<3<3 that’s sort of his tell for being preoccupied/anxious; I think finding other mandos, someone to trust and to get help from, means A Lot to him

once he sees the marshall in the armour his shoulders drop down and he stands up straighter :’) hope is a powerful thing (I guess all of this might add even more to how angry he is too)

the DEAD STOP when cobb takes the helmet off sdkfhkajsldhfsdk

- yodito putting his lil mouth on the lip of this jar thing is such a well observed little quirk of baby behaviour, I’m crying

(there is liquid of some sort in this thing; I’ve seen some people theorize it’s a spittoon but for my own peace of mind I’m going to forcefully declare that it is not thank you)

- so much stuff packed into that “He’s seen worse”!! dismissal, self-deprecation, sorrow, resignation, warning.

- the contrast in this standoff of vanth’s eastwood eye twitch and the complete deadpan impassiveness of din’s helmet and general demeanor... wonderful

- upon rewatching I’m actually wondering if some of these scenes with the baby on his own were filmed independently of the actors and that it might add to that slight distracting feeling of disconnect/distance you get through the episode. (it’s sort of odd to me that mando doesn’t even glance down at him as the whole place starts to shake, for example) there must be a lot of stuff that comes down to technical considerations with the baby; I suspect it takes a lot of time and resources to have him walking around too much, which is why The Waddle is kind of a rare treat

what I’m saying is that they may be saving up dad & baby interaction resources for episodes where it’s more relevant or important

- so is this a one bantha town or is it just for convenient film language reasons it was all alone in frame like that lol

also cobb’s ‘mondays amirite’ look fdsakjfhsjk

- since I think it every time I get to this part: this is a very neat hairstyle this person is rocking, suits them!

- ah the stern pointer finger of emphasis. din TALKS, no, COMMUNICATES so much in this episode you guys!!!!!

- rip this tusken, the bravest person who ever lived

- the delivery of “...they might be open to some fresh ideas” is the funniest moment of this entire episode don’t @ me

- oh the kotor-ness of it all lol

- jill (the girl who hands cobb the detonator) is so cute with her hat and everything ;____;

- I suppose these tuskens are really the bravest people to ever live considering they saw what happened to the last guy (or gal I suppose I don’t know how sand people gender works)

- baby needs some goggles to protect his giant eyes from wind and sand Y___Y

- they’ve nailed how to make the jetpacks work in live action, it looks really cool and I suspect it easily could have uh. not

- this poor sacrificial bantha... it even tried to get away

- ooooh the heart eyes -- cobb 100% has a crush on this man jfsdflhsad. (with it being sort of unrequited/’oh man I’m behind about 150 layers of dissociation too many to even really consider that one way or the other bud’ from mando’s side #personal headcanon disclaimer)

- my take on why din doesn’t get dissolved in acid in there is that that stuff is released from a specific gland or something that the dragon can unleash at will and that the spit itself doesn’t have that quality on its own (or at least it’s a lot less potent)

- seems pretty well confirmed by now that yodito is a carnivore huh hahaha

- I find it obscurely satisfying that cobb seems to be wearing exactly his old outfit under the armour -- he did just strap it on on top of what he already was. (there’s something there -- he’s a whole thing still without the armour, and at this time at least din would not be I don’t think) just some good narrative foil stuff going on here under the surface

also once again props to the costume design; without the armour he looks so vulnerable again, they have dressed him to emphasise his height and slenderness (especially compared to mando, who actually seems to have bulked up a bit? fatherhood suits him I guess)

plus, the way the baby looks questioningly up at din while he watches cobb walk away? yeah, din is lonely, let this poor man have a friend who stays around soon T______________T

- heeey boba, nice threads! my guess is that he’s not going to be there for the armour if he does track din down, since he hasn’t seemed to be in any haste to get it back before (which is interesting!). he might also have been unable to go looking for it before because he was still recovering from being half digested, of course, they could play it a lot of different ways

I wonder if we’ll get more of him in the next ep or if they’ll let the tension ramp up through the season

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian meta #the mandalorian spoilers #just to be safe hey

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incorrect-mha-bnha · 5 years ago

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Headcannon/Au Drabble

Kirishima is standing too close to a villain when Bakugou detonates a viscous blast, not taking into consideration that he couldn’t harden everything immediately without fair warning. Kirishima ends up going deaf because of the close proximity.

Nitroglycerin is addtictive, therefore? Midoriya has been around Bakugou the longest (excluding his parents which would have been warned by a doctor awhile ago) and is probably addicted to it despite Bakugou’s many attempts to keep their distance. Midoriya is just a crackhead.

Shigaraki was never able to play patty cake as a kid and that’s depressing in itself.

Ship hc: Person A plays video games with friends and wears a headset. Person B doesn’t play but likes wearing a pair and sitting in their S/O’s lap while talking with everyone.

The Joker/Harley Q trope for a couple dynamic is really valid in many BNHA ships. Person A and B are very capable heroes/people that know how to defend themselves but like to call their S/O in times of trouble. Person A is stopped by a bad guy and calls out for Person B with pure enjoyment for what is about to go down. All the villain hears is loud banging as B gets closer.

Bakugou is actually really amazing at doing makeup and hairstyles, along with doing nails. I’m going to say he learned most of that from self taught occasions, his mom, maybe some aunts and Best Jeanist. ANYWAY, all the class girls love to ask Bakugou for some pampering whenever they can. They always win him over after the fifth or sixth time they beg or give some sort of puppy eyes but Bakugou would never admit to actually liking doing those things.

Kirishima is the type of guy friend to carry pads/tampons in his bag at all times just incase any of the girls may need emergency supplies. He may go as far as bringing Tylenol or even an extra hoodie.

Bakugou owns a lot of house plants, and for many reasons. He’s the best and pretty smart which means he’s eco friendly. What does eco friendly entail? Going green! I hc that he probably refused to show his room because it’s completely jungled out (or full of cute plants and fancy pots). Based on his personality and my own projection, he’d like a plant that isn’t too demanding on care but I doubt he’d mind a challenge. Maybe a handful of succulents and a good amount of cacti- throwing in some Devil’s Ivy and a cute palm tree. Bakugou could spend hours tending to them, watering and building a nice ledge to rest them on just before his window. Indulging in new pots and fancy equipment for the sake of being extra. It’s all about the principle really. Plants produce oxygen, not to mention that some are really good for health as well.

BAKUGOU IS TRANS (but I would never press that on anyone)

Deaf Bakugou?? At a young age when Bakugou was first starting to learn about his quirk, he unleashed a very large, uncontrolled explosion way too close to his ears. That resulted in him becoming completely deaf in one ear and partially in the other.

Shouto is partially blind/visually impaired/completely blind in his right (left??) eye thanks to the BOILING HOT WATER being poured on his EYE. You can’t tell me homeboy didn’t get some sort of damage done from that besides some gnarly burns.

Kaminari has ADHD

Kirishima is extremely roudy and wild, also gay. Very gay.

Kirishima is trans (there are many things that point to this conclusion). Such as: If a transmasc got top surgery, he wouldn’t wear a fucking shirt again either. Talking manly and wanting to be manly is like the basis of what trans guy are working on. And the whole thing about him being gay? Is he really attracted to them or does he want to be them????

They aren’t allowed to have animals in the dorms despite a lot of begging done by all. However, Bakugou decided to say fuck you to the rule and has a bunch of animals in his room. Now. He gets away with it for a few reasons. 1) He isn’t loud about it, doesn’t go around showing them off or boasting like usual. Won’t bring them out of the dorm or let anyone see when he brings supplies back. 2) No one would suspect Bakugou to be such an animal lover or one to break that rule. Sad to say, he does. Many times over the course of high school, in fact. What animals could he possibly have? HMmMm let’s think, shall we? No doubt a hamster, a real grumpy one though. It has to have personality. A Bearded Dragon, Ball Python, a few Corn snakes. Maybe a gecko. But you have to believe he has a cat too. There is no way he wouldn’t. A furry brat that keeps him company while he studies and works out? Jumping on his back as he does yoga and sleeps on his face at night. There is no way. The best part is that the cat is deaf, which is why he adopted it. He went in looking for another lizard and came out with a sassy feline with no hearing. So what? He went soft.

Midoriya would be the first to go to jail between him and Bakugou. Hands down. Think about it... He broke numerous laws just to get a friend back and had no guilt for it. He was just all ‘Ehh, what you gonna do about it?’ when the fuzz pulled up to press charges. Bakugou is just crass and volatile, he threatens to kill people... but has he ever been seen killing someone? In conclusion, Midoriya is a delinquent covered up by his positive cinnamon bun nature.

Alright, personal projection time!! Kirishima bites and chews ice cream. Denki eats soup with a straw. Shouto eats cereal with a fork, “What? I don’t like too much milk. It strains out this way.”. Bakugou is just as bad, he’s a teenager and will do shit just because. Aka, he will go down to the kitchen in the middle of the night for some milk n cookies. When he realizes there is no more milk, he will throw a silent fit because he wanted those damn cookies. Begrudgingly though, he will pour a glass of water and dunk his Oreos in then eat em like that. I don’t make the rules, it’s just what happens.

Bakugou needs constant love and constant positive reinforcement along with help on his anxiety. Give that boy a service dog. A big fluffy golden service dog. A really large, extremely fluffy service down he can hug and hide his face in whenever something is bothering him. A real big puppy that makes him feel secure and makes him laugh. Damn it! Give him a dog now!

Kirishima is rowdy and wild. Baby boy is a teenager. Not to mention is invisible and hyped up on manly shit. THERE IS NO BOUNDS FOR WHAT HE WOULD DO. Think about it. He’d literally card Todoroki into setting him on fire just to see how long he can hold his hardening for. He would have Inasa drop him from the FUCKING SKY just for the hell of it. Hello? Is this thing even on? Kirishima is wild.

Dabi is afraid of spiders. Don’t ask me to elaborate. He just seems like a man with that primal fear.

BAKUGOU IS A FUCKING FASHION ICON OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL. SO FUCKING HELP ME I WILL SCREAM THIS LOUD N PROUD—

Bakugou and Midoriya don’t know how to tie a tie. Midoriya learned that weird funky napkin trick shit from just giving the fuck up and saying “Oh, hey! That looks sorts similar!” And went with it. Bakugou just can’t. He can’t. The only reason his ID shows him with a tie is because Mitsuki tied it for him before hand, and he never let it happen since. They are hopeless. That is all.

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meggie-stardust · 4 years ago

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GUNDAM WING - REWATCH - 25 - 26

25. Quatre vs Heero

The music during this fight is A+. They are telling us this isn’t a cool battle. We should be sad they are fighting each other. It’s amazing.

Hey Heero, maybe don’t have Quatre aim at you, with the colony right behind you, yeah?

What?? We can’t communicate with the lunar base? How odd??

Duo’s oxygen deprived thoughts: maybe I’ll just kiss Wufei and see if he wakes up

Quatre: TROWA what are doing??? Why are you trying to save Heero and the colony??? Trowa you are supposed to side with meeeeeeee

Trowa is the only one who can break through the zero system, and talk directory to Quatre, apparently.

Trowa: I hope something calms you down, like my death

Trowa seems very relaxed as he embarks on his aimless float through space

The Romefeller foundation seems very… white.

Treize picks his moments to wax philosophical

These are some weird flashbacks cut into Treize’s speech

Duke Dermail: What the fuck are you saying Treize?

Dermail puts the Supernatural Colt down and this is where Gundam Wing cuts to the 10 Duel Commandments (the crossover feature no one asked for)

Treize fell in love with people and with people’s death

Une: I’m going to release the Gundam Pilots. It’s exactly the type of chaos Mr Treize and I want

Tuberov thinks Une was too lenient??? Was Colonel Une too lenient??

Deathsythe Hell is so badass. Double scythe, bat wings. BRILLAINT

Shenlong with double dragon arms??? AMAZING

26. The Eternal Flame of the Shooting Stars

That Treize faction guy has the same improbably too deep voice that skinny Steve Rogers has

“The outer space has a bad habit of sending menacing objects to earth” what a badass line.

Flash back to Treize just posing on a mobile suit. Fucking A+

The Treize factions burned their Oz uniform to wear a blue version instead?? Or did Oz burn their uniforms to have a different one? This is confusing later in the episode.

These OZ guys testing Wing Zero were awfully quick to give themselves up to the Treize Faction

Absolutely NO ONE listens to Tuberov.

The Treize Faction just knows where the scientists are, even tho OZ says they are missing somewhere in the base? Sure, Jan.

Doctor J: Physically you pilots are A+, mentally you are babies

Once they hook Heero up to the zero system, this is just Ender’s Game right?

And then that’s some Eva shit when Wing Zero decides to activate

Quatre, I’m pretty sure you’re paraphrasing Trowa, saying “run amuck in a mobile suit”

Um, actually Quatre, Trowa had the self destruct button on the Vayeate so great bluff

Oh, just incase the audience forgot about Relena, let’s add her in in a really weird way

This isn’t an Eva Quatre, you don’t feel the pain in your own arm when your mobile suit is hit.

Wait, did Vayeate not have Mercurius’ self destruct button? How did Quatre detonate Mercurius?? Was Trowa bluffing when he said that to Une?? I have questions?

The Scientists: We survived, and so did Wing Zero. I WILL SURIVE HEY HEY

Thoughts:

This is such a great end to the space/Wing Zero arc. I had forgotten so much. I didn’t remember Une saved the pilots and the scientists. I forgot that Quatre finished building Wing Zero (I guess I thought they upgraded Wing??) I remembered the Treize Faction, but I was confusing it with the Specials from earlier... And I love that they had bascially all the pilots together for like a second, and then they are off again.

What I think I remember for the next episode(s):

Somehow @mpanighetti and I have set ourselves up to having to do the two flashback/clips how episodes back to back. Unfortunately, this will lead to us going kinda insane, and the review will be very, very niche. BUT keep following along for the madness. I’ll give you a clue: there will be excessive references to the best clip show episode of all time.

#gundam wing rewatch 2020 #gundam wing #gw #gundam memes #quatre vs heero #The Eternal Flame of the Shooting Stars

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of-tatooine · 4 years ago

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mercy. | chapter 12 - coffee

remnants from your past could change your future.

"You know there is no turning back from this."

Those gray blues you had grown to care for over the years of surviving together rose their stare from the splayed out, tattered map, to focus their gaze on you.

“I know.”

The beads of metal in your palms grew colder and colder by the second, the chain slipping gently around your fingers, as if feeding on all the icy tension in the air of the old office. Your gaze kept shifting from the man that stood behind the large wooden desk towards the map he was pointing at, a big red cross marked over the Denver quarantine zone, notorious for ruthless guards and government rules, whatever was left of them, at least.

It was supposed to be a routine task for him. Being a self-made mercenary, a good one at that, had put him in the frontlines - he had planned these sort of operations way too many times before, knew the best ways to cause commotion and attract attention, even if it meant destroying whatever was left of the military and their equipment, if he was lucky. Went in and out of quarantine zones, undetected and uncompromised, brought all his men back to base safely. From what you had observed over the couple of years that you had gotten to know the Texan, if there was one thing you could say about him - he always seemed to know just what he was doing.

The slight treble in his voice only hinted that then, he did not.

What he was asking out of you, if you had been completely honest with yourself, scared you. The mere prospect of leading a team into their potential demise, only to detonate a couple of bombs to mess up the military tanks and maybe take out a couple of uniforms along the way - gave you this tangible unease so palpable that you could feel the knots in your stomach.

Marlene may have turned him into a valuable asset in combat, strategic enough to cause stirring in the remaining military forces and make the Fireflies even more notorious than you all were perceived to be - yet, you were no pertubrator. Over the first decade of the damned apocalypse, you had done enough killing to get to the spot you had with the organization, to finally get a chance to do what you were born to do - try to help and cure people. Tend to their wounds. Be there when they are bleeding and hold their hands as they struggle through the pain. Only taking lives when you were forced to do so, when you were left with no other choice.

While you were more than ready to try your best to help him out as he made his departure from the Fireflies, you could not help but let unease engulf your body - your jaw clenching and your stare growing solemn. Mind wandering to all of the ways it could all go wrong.

Deep in thought, you knew from the back of your mind that there was no other way around this ordeal. If you both wanted out, there was only one way to go about it in this damned world.

And that always came with a certain price to pay, you would think as you nodded softly.

“I’m in.”

The uneasy thudding of soles over linoleum tiles turned into the crunching sound of colorful fall leaves, horseshoes cackling against the stone as you advanced through the gated campus.

University of Eastern Colorado - never did you think you would end up in here again. After years of holding on, treating friend and foe, cutting through flesh and organs, performing experiments just to find the sliver of a hope for a cure - like nothing else mattered. The interior hallways on the other side of the brick walls were filled with years worth of selfless moments of exertion and memories - some haunted while some comforted you. The feel of belonging to something greater which soothed you, up until the moment you had to fire another bullet into the skull of an infiltrator.

But then, as you made your way to your science building with the horse right beside you, the alien eerie atmosphere sent chills down your spine.

Something was wrong.

Maybe it was the silence of the falling leaves and autumn, wind blowing against the worn-out brick. Maybe your memory of years ago had faded, letting you believe that the place was more lively than it actually had been. Maybe your mind had been playing tricks on you.

Maybe it was the fear of leading the ones walking beside you into a road of unknowns.

“How do you know Tommy?”

The gruff yet genuinely curious voice originating from the man walking right beside you was enough to make you turn your head a bit, looking up at him due to his superior height over you. You should have seen the question was coming sooner rather than later, yet to your surprise, his demeanor was not a hostile one as the words slipped from his mouth. With Ellie collecting leaves in the courtyard a couple steps ahead of you both, you reckoned he waited for just the right moment to ask you, unsure if Ellie should be hearing this conversation. With a little reminiscent nod as you took your eyes away from him and stared into a far corner of your vision, you would readjust your jacket over your shoulders, walking in the chilly fall air. “We go way back. Used to work together in this very base.”

To measure his reaction, you would then shoot another brief glance at the man - those green amber eyes of his thoughtful and curious as he nodded slowly, himself staring onto the excited figure of Ellie with such an unknown yet lovely spark in those orbs. You found yourself doubting if what Tommy said was true - you trusted his word with your life then and now, but the soft emotions in Joel’s eyes every time he would look at her were certainly hard to miss. Beneath the survivor, in those little glimpses of light in his eyes that he managed to hide most of the time, all you saw was a man who was willing to go to the ends of the earth to protect someone - someone he cared about.

All those months of trailing beside the pair, though some of it against your liking, it was a long-forgotten feeling of ease that started to develop whenever you were around them - it was all in moments like these, when a certain softness of humanity would emerge. It made you want to trust the man and the little girl, just like the way you trusted his brother. The survivor in you still knew you could not give too much information away about you even if you wanted to, some things were only meant to be buried deep within your chest for no one else to know - yet that feeling of warm ease was pushing you to open up, even just a bit.

“He is a good man. I used to trust him with my life - still do,” you would trail off in a soft voice, one hand gently petting the horse as the other held onto the reins. To that, Joel’s hardened face was adorned with a slightly arched eyebrow, hearing you speak with a certain gentleness in your voice. The woman beside him had been a big dilemma since day one, yet with every new journey you trailed along for, he seemed to be uncovering bits and pieces of information about you - the mere fact that his baby brother evidently trusted you so much even after all those years put some ease into his usually rampant and doubting mind.

The worst part was, with every little thing he discovered about you, something inside him yearned to just find out more.

“Why did you leave?” came yet another question, in a lower voice this time, considerate of Ellie’s close proximity as you neared the gate of entrance to the science building - which gave you weird palpitations just by looking at the familiar giant mirror of a construction.

“It was all getting outta control. I, uh - ” you would pause and take in a breath, your gaze focusing into his eyes again. “ - helped him get the hell out of here. Think you know the rest of it,” you finished with a ghost of a sad smile across your lips, a far away look in your eyes.

Had it been any other survivor or stranger, he would have trouble believing what you were saying was actually the reflection of truth. Yet, from what he had seen with you - even though you hid things just like any sensible person who had managed to survive that long, he knew you did not lie and your word was genuine. At least towards them. He had seen you murder two of your own just to get you lot across the state border. Seen you shoot down stragglers that infiltrated Tommy’s without an ounce of doubt in you - when they needed help, you had been there.

And deep down, he was grateful. It was that hardened man engulfing the soft fire in him that made him not show it too much, too often - and the best he could give you then was an understanding nod thrown your way.

“C’mon Ellie, it’s right this way,” you would direct the pair into the science building - the beautiful fall weather and the breeze fading away just like a switch was flipped as you left the horses outside and walked into the now darkened compound.

From the very first step you had taken onto campus, you knew in the depths of your very being that something had gone wrong here, not too long ago, and the icy cold atmosphere inside accompanied with the remnants of broken glass and empty halls further added to your anxiety. Jaw clenched and heartbeat quickening with each move, you would shoot a worried look at Joel, who had an equally confused look in his eyes.

They had been gone.

“What the hell happened here?” the little girl spoke up, her young voice echoing off of the concrete walls as you all climbed up the stairs leading into one of the main labs. You had been pondering the question yourself - Marlene had put so much faith and hope into making this place the way it was. Now the cabinets were ransacked, operating tables turned upside down, marks of the infected blood and guts coating some walls. The place that you had escaped from, helped Tommy escape from, had been unrecognizable - it was cold, daunting and rummaged to every single corner and crevice. Joel’s hand was stroking through his salt and peppered beard as he slowly took the lead of the small group while you trailed a bit behind.

The curiosity within got the best of you as you entered a certain room with a wooden door, hand on your holster just in case, as the familiar creek even after all those years filled your ears. The moldy and stale air hit you, far from sterile, yet the room looked clean from the infected you had to encounter previously as you first entered the campus through the dorms.

There it was. That damned mahogany desk you previously sat with Tommy, scratched and damaged yet still there. The map that used to be sprawled out on it still visible in your vivid memories - before the inevitable happened, before the fire and before the escape. A sharp pain reminiscent of the past ran down your body as you took steps towards it, a finger trailing along the edge of the wood. According to the dust on your finger, it had been quite a damn long time.

Biting down your lip in curiosity, you would tug onto the drawer on the side of it, which opened up in a thudding and creaking sound of rusty metal only to reveal the one personal item you had stashed down in the office you used to frequent - a very old bag of ground coffee.

It had no doubt gone stale and possibly tasted absolutely horrible, yet you could not help but smile sadly as you held onto the pack - which had been untouched, to your surprise. Finding the one item that managed to light a spark of joy inside in the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, you would push the drawer close and head out of the room to find the pair, bag in hand as you would toss a parting look at the one office where you slept, woke up, and planned so many operations back in the old days.

These were different times now - it would only prove to be more difficult as you stepped into the main laboratoy you used to help run experiments in, only to find the pair situated around the counters, with Joel advancing towards the table near the windows.

Ellie, who sat on a little stool, upon spotting the little bag in your hand would shoot you a slightly meaningful look and then turn her gaze to Joel knowingly - the meaning of which you could not comprehend so you would just shrug it off as you shot a small smile at the little girl in return, your fingers working to place the newfound treasure into your backpack.

That was before you had a chance to look over the room you had been so habituated to - broken vials of glass coated the floors as chairs were all over the place, flyers and old books torn apart on the ground. The sad atmosphere was only made worse as you spotted a damn corpse near the windows - wearing your old uniforms, the metal pendant entangled in whatever was left of his fingers, with Joel approaching it as he muttered audible curses beneath his beard. You let out an inevitable one of your own as your ally grabbed onto a voice recorder, the ones Marlene made all of you carry around as a safety measure in case something happened to a member, and pressed play - a deep, crackling voice resonated through the emptiness.

“If you’re looking for the Fireflies, they’ve all left.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Ellie spat, browsing through an old journal as you took steps closer to Joel in an attempt to hear the recording better and see if you recognized the voice. Kneeling slightly to check the name on the pendant, you would realize that he had been one of the less-experienced doctors you had seen walk around the compound - straight out of medical school when this entire outbreak started.

“Fuck,” you would mutter under your breath as you got up and rested your hands on your hips, watching Joel’s expression sour away with each word echoing out of the old recording, realization that this entire journey on horseback had been futile all along. Your old kin had left, leaving nothing behind, maybe dispersed into the woods or something for all you cared. The reason you had agreed to Tommy’s plan in the first place had been resurfacing again, reflected off of the words of your old ally in corpse form - it all led to nothing. There was no immunity for this hell-sent fungal infection. No matter how many you cut through and extraced tumors out of, it only led to more destruction, blood and carnage. A part of you was relieved that the Fireflies had closed down the one facility that was adequate enough to make some sort of medical progress, if there ever was any, and another part of you kept on wondering - was it that easy? Would Marlene let everything go in a moment of realization that this was not working anymore? Would she let go of the men and women and children she helped survive all along?

“… if you’re looking for others, they have all returned to St. Mary’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.”

As those words cackled from the static of the voice, your head shot up - and the three of you stood there, bodies rigid with anxiety of the unknown, simply exchanging worried and confused glances with each other but you could swear to the heavens above that you saw the little glimmer of hope in Ellie’s eyes - compared to Joel’s hardened, stoic ones.

Why Marlene had moved whatever was left of the team to a hospital in the middle of an abandoned quarantine zone all the way in Utah did not make any sort of sense to you. It felt like avoidance, like denying the inevitable, fighting a battle the Fireflies knew they would lose. It baffled you that you have not thought of their relocation before - recalling people around the base mention the hospital’s name here and there. Maybe you would have found them, returned back and just maybe you would have a clearer idea as to why the fuck they had been looking for you in the first place.

Then again, you still could.

“Is it far?” came the unavoidable question, causing the man to shake his head in thought before speaking in a voice hoarser than ever. “It ain’t close. I mean, on horseback…” he would trail off just as your peripheral vision would catch a quick flash of sharp lights that did not belong in an abandoned science building.

“Get down!” you hurriedly reached towards the girl and pulled her down in a groan, your heart racing as bullets started raining over you in their sickening, richocheting sounds.

Just who the fuck where these bandits, you could not help but think as your body was pressed close to Joel’s, breaths mixing in between the three of you as you huddled close to the table for cover. Revolver in hand, you would take on the mission of shielding Ellie just like you had been all this time along - a quick, hurried nod and look at Joel confirmed this as he slowly made his way out of the dead end of the room, to take on the battle head first.

It took a good amount of fighting and yelling Ellie to take cover as you smashed the butt of the gun against one’s skull and send a bullet flying inside the other, until the hallway you were stationed in had been cleared out. Chest heaving and your fingers working nimbly to reload the gun, your trained eyes kept on scanning for any enemy activity, all the while extending a hand out to guard Ellie as you advanced towards the grand indoor hall, only to be greeted with agonizing screams and groans that could only belong to one person you knew.

Heart instantly dropping, you and Ellie would run to the source of the sounds, only to find one of the most gruesome sights you had ever seen in your entire life - Joel, bloodied and bruised, impaled onto a metal rod. In that moment alone, you seemed to have forgot all those years of medical training, aiding in surgeries and saving patients - it was a sight of pure agony. Pure hopelessness. As you ran towards him in a sprint, you could tell Ellie was going through the exact same emotions, seeing his face distort in pain like that.

“Ellie,” you tried to say as calmly yet as firmly as you could, not wanting the girl to worry more than she had to, trying to push the negative thoughts away though they seemed to be staring you right in the face. “I need you to cover us, okay?”

Teary-eyed, she nodded before tossing a look at Joel, who was mumbling and groaning. You could see the utter panic in his eyes mixed in with the pain, no doubt worrying about the girl even during his lowest of moments. “I’m gonna need you to pull,” came the low, low groan from the man, his hand extended out as it trembled. Immediately you nodded, grabbing onto his hand with your both, using whatever strength you have left.

“I got you, c’mon,” you encouraged yet your face spoke of the horrors as you groaned, pulling him up with all the strength your body could muster to be done with it in one go, that way he could ease the pain. A painful howl filled the vast space as you gritted your teeth, muttering curses, watching the metal leave his abdomen in a sickening noise. You could only hope the rod did not touch major arteries, yet that was a question for later - if you managed to get the hell out of there alive.

“Hold onto me,” you almost ordered, the weakened man ready to collapse onto the ground, his blood leaking everywhere and coating your garments. “Put your arm around me, c’mon Joel,” came the dominant voice you sported during operations and with another growl of pain, his arm was around your shoulders and you did your best to carry his weight - with Ellie clearing the path for you, her green eyes with such a fear in them tossing glances at you that spoke volumes as you neared the exit amongst gunshots and smoke.

His breath in your ear and almost limp body slumped over your much smaller frame, you felt your mind go numb and your body exerted itself to the limits. At that moment, the one conscious thought you had was you praying from the depths of your heart and soul that this man right here would live to see another day.

And that maybe, you would be right there with him.

#oh lord #my heart breaks every time #joel miller #tlou #the last of us #the last of us joel #joel x reader #joel x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #mercy

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