#more flash fiction

[inbabylontheywept]

Want Better Things

“You thought that was a bioweapon?” 

The translator broke down for a second as the creature did a sort of broken exhale. Connotations were all that came through. Vague implications. Pity, the software flashed. Disgust. Anger.

A pause as it decided.  

Sadism. 

Valta was already backing away. The final decision didn’t change his behavior, it just made the hall feel far, far too short. 

“I didn’t order it deployed. I didn’t make it.” 

The thing was staring at him, and he couldn’t look away. The two eyes moved in such perfect tandem that he didn’t think it was conscious. It only had binocular vision because it only needed binocular vision. Always the predator, never the prey. 

And now it was moving in on him. 

“Oh, but what if you had? Then I could tell you all the things that were wrong with it.” 

One of its hands - a sprawling, five fingered  spindly thing - traced carelessly along the station's walls. 

“No incubation period. Symptoms arrive within 40 minutes of exposure. No time to spread undetected. Minimum should be one week. Embarrassingly low.” 

The pressure the thing was putting on the wall increased, the gentle glide turning into a buzzing scratch. Humans were strong, but not strong enough to cut through metal like this. The suit had to be powered and clawed. 

“Spread through contact. Limited waterborne. No airborne. Intended mechanism of infection is viral load being put on hands from scratching, and then passed into the environment. Pathetically inefficient.” 

The translator was working, but the thing was overeunounciating each word. The meaning was being passed along by a clean, helpful voice in his suit, even as the sound was being passed on through the environmental speakers. And the sound was dreadful - clicks of ceramized bone jarring against each other, wet muscles modulating air into something sharp and rasping. 

“Mechanism of death? Lysis overload. Could be dangerous if it was transmitted into the lungs, but since the initial load tends to be dermal all we wind up with-”

It took its helmet off. 

It took its helmet off. 

It took its helmet off it took its helmet off it took its helmet off in a biozone it - 

It looked a little pink, actually. A little scratchy. It lifted a delicate, taloned hand and rubbed its face against it for a moment before finishing. 

“-is a rash.”

Valta’s prey drive had glued him to the spot. It was too close. The stupid, stupid part of his brain that still thought he was grazing on Duranga hoped that if he stood still long enough, it might not notice him. 

The human paused a moment before continuing. 

“Do you know why they sent me? Alphonse Ericsen, PhD, MD, civilian doctor, here to speak with you?”

Valta’s snout twitched. The suit translated the gesture for him. 

“No.” 

“Because one of our grunts is a dumb fuck,” the human said simply. “And he spent two days fighting on your station with his helmet off. He got infected that way and brought back your stupid, itchy plague to our carrier ship, and now we’ve all spent the last 8 hours scratching ourselves raw. But the jokes on you, because when we were treating that guy you know what we found? That he was in the asymptomatic phase of a COVID infection. So if this-”

It gestured to its pink face with a snarl. 

“-is your idea of a bioweapon, then COVID is going to be your apocalypse. But if you work with me, and shut everything the fuck down for the next three or four months, I might be able to save most of you.” 

Valta unstuck at that. He’d spent weeks down here, worrying about nothing more than the next skirmish. Now he was looking at a genuine existential threat. 

“...What? Why would you help us? We wanted you to die. All of you. I wanted-”

The human cut him off with an exasperated wave of his hand. 

“You wanted something stupid. Doesn’t mean I have to join you. Best I can do to fix you is keep you alive and hope that you feel ashamed later. That, I genuinely look forward to. Now come on, you’re going to be the one explaining to all your friends what’s at stake here. My bedside manner is so bad that they limited my patients to virology slides and USMC marines. I think that’s actually one rung below the guys that just dissect cadavers.” 

Valta would’ve made an amused hum at that, but something already felt scratchy inside his throat. 

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Good Rich Earth: A Science Fiction Retelling of "The Secret Garden"

Ever since Mary had become an orphan, all adults did was tell each other about her story.

"Raised practically by robots, the poor thing. On one of those military space stations. She's never stepped foot on a planet!"

They talked over her just as if she wasn't there. Mary hated it. But then, she'd gotten used to hating things. Earth had so many things to hate.

She hated the outside air that got too hot or too cold or too humid and couldn't be changed by flipping a switch. She hated the sky with its constantly-changing light levels. She hated the gray clouds that always seemed to hang low over the big stone house where she was supposed to live with her uncle. She hated the vast, barren lands with the short scrubby plants that were all that had managed to grow since the Disasters.

But she hated the echoing darkness of that big house most of all, and so she spent most of her days in the hateful outdoors, looking for something to do. Ben let her tag along sometimes as he tended to the grounds. He called himself a gardener, so naturally Mary asked what a garden was.

"Its where we grow plants on purpose," Ben said.

"Like hydroponics?"

Ben sneered. "Hydroponics!" He lifted a handful of dirt from the ground. "In good rich earth! None of those weak, wispy water-plants with no more nutrition in them than a wet rag!"

Mary couldn't get another word out of him after that--he was too busy muttering to himself about space stations and their unholy, unnatural ways.

But she kept wondering about gardens. She liked the word, liked the idea--having seen nothing similar in any space station.

"If only you'd been here when the mistress was alive," Martha said. "You'd have seen gardens enough then. Always tending to her plants, she was. Trying to bring back flowers what was lost in the Disasters."

But when the mistress was lost, so were her gardens--locked away and left to decay by the husband who couldn't bear to see the site of his wife's death. It seemed unfair to Mary--the one interesting thing on this planet had been abandoned, and now there was nothing left for her.

Or was there? The gardens weren't destroyed--just locked. And locks always had keys.

The search for that locked door became the sole pursuit that filled Mary's days. She searched every corner of the house, looked for cellars, searched among the outbuildings for anything that looked like the wall of a garden. As she searched, she found she noticed the wind and cold less--grew even to like it, as exercise kept her warm. She even found other things that, though they were not the door, proved to be worth finding. A stubby little plant with purple flowers that opened overnight. A stream of clear water from snowmelt. And--best of all--the robin.

He became a companion on her hunt, the little bird--a cheerful voice that flitted about and checked on her progress before returning to his little labors.

It was while following him one day that Mary found the garden. The robin, in his daily fluttering, perched atop a building that she'd passed by a thousand times, sitting on the very edge of the eaves. Then the robin twittered, stepped back--and disappeared, seeming to fall straight through the solid roof.

"Hologram," Ben explained later. "A protective field. Keeps the temperature beneath a bit more stable, lets in rain and birds for water and pest control, and keeps prying eyes from seeing what's inside. Mistress used it to protect her work--plenty of folks who'd steal a cutting and give it to the corporations."

At last! The lost garden!

But still no door. Mary spent days prowling around the walls, searching for an opening, and found nothing but solid brick.

Until one sunny day, when the robin landed on the ground at the base of the wall. As he folded his wings, one of them brushed the bricks, and Mary saw the faintest shimmer of light ripple across a section of the wall.

This, Mary recognized--EtherDoors were a fact of space station life. With the right key, the wall could become permeable enough to let a person through--no need for the extra space or machinery a door required.

The robin fluttered toward a short shrub and sang a cheerful song. As Mary's eyes followed him, she saw a patch of dirt beneath the branches--and suddenly realized that the rock she had seen there a thousand times was no rock at all.

Mary lifted the shining, convex piece of black metal--a simple piece hiding complicated electronics. She pressed it to the center of where the EtherDoor stood--and her hand went through the wall. With two more steps, the rest of Mary followed.

She found herself in paradise.

She had never seen so much green. It covered the ground, climbed the walls, twisted around posts. There were trees with flowers on their branches. Bushes with tiny lacy leaves. Rubbery green stems with silky red and yellow cup-shaped blossoms on top. Thousands of plants, tangled, matted and twisted together, but all alive, drawing food from the earth and reaching up, up, up toward the sun.

For the first time, Mary was truly on Earth, as it was supposed to be.

And she saw that it was magical.

[skykid-nadir]

You are three years old. Your mother tells you a story about a child who fell from the Sky. You don't understand it yet, but that child was you.

You are six years old. Your parents agreed to take you into town, but only if you stay close to them. You ignore them, wander off and find a group of other kids. Playing with them is the most fun you've ever had. But when your parents find you later, you will never forget the scolding they give.

You are nine years old. The older kids play terrible pranks on you, stealing your mask or trying to snatch away the crystal at your heart. They don't say it to your face, but you know they think you're a freak.

You are twelve years old. The Elder arrives to take you away. He says you're special but you don't believe him. You just want to stay with your parents.

You are fifteen. The Elders argue about your future. Daleth reminds them that you're only a child. Teth counters that no one knows what you are. The others say nothing, but you know they agree with her.

You are eighteen. Your body hasn't aged in years. You hear murmurs in the crowd as you take your place on your throne. The Realm of Eden needs a new Elder, and the others finally agreed that it should be you.

You are twenty one. The pressure is too much. You never wanted this. You never wanted Eden. You feel like you'll never live up to their expectations of you. But you learned long ago to keep your mouth shut about that. You saw what happened to Daleth when he dared suggest that you choose your own path.

You are twenty four. You've finally done it. You've finally found a way to make them proud. If they knew that you could harness the power of Darkstone... Surely that will impress them, right? Maybe you'll finally be enough.

You are twenty five. You were wrong. They hated it. They feared it. You should have known. You will never be enough. How far do you have to go to make them respect you? At night you dream of your family, but you can no longer remember their faces.

Who are you? What are you? What do you have to do to prove yourself? Your inventions have done horrible things. But how can you turn back now? You're so close to changing the world. No matter the lengths, you will make them see that you are good enough.

[strangelittlestories]

“What entertainment do you bring before me today?” Squawked Augustine, the king of the birds. “Have the mockingbird players returned from their tour of the provinces? Or maybe that prattling parrot will reprise its human impressions?”

“Alas, milord.” Replied the king’s seneschal, a somewhat fussy flamingo. “You had the parrot killed for excessive repetitions and hesitations.”

“So I did!” The king spread his majestic tail feathers proudly, reliving the happy fuzz of murder. “Well, they knew the rules. Or, at least, *I* knew the rules and they probably should have inferred them.”

“One can never argue with your execution of the law.” Said the long-suffering seneschal, keenly aware that the wrong answer could result in his suffering moving from *long* to *short*. “Or with the law of your executions, for that matter…”

“Speaking of executions,” Said the king, whose mind was never truly far from state-sanctioned violence, “Do we have any on the docket for today?”

“Your majesty, I’m afraid the dungeons are quite empty.”

“What, no traitors left?”

“No, sire.”

“No criminals of any kind? No thieves or fraudsters or comedians who are overly reliant on props?”

“All thoroughly and legally murked, milord.”

“Well, I suppose send in my jester, then. I’m so dreadfully bored.”

At this command, the jester fluttered into the room, wearing a jaunty cap made out of a McDonald’s wrapper with a small lost key jangling from it in place of a bell.

The king and seneschal looked at the jester - the air was heavy with the potential for further royal atrocities. The seneschal crossed his talons.

“Coo.” Said the pigeon jester, hilariously.

A pause. A silence.

“Coo.” Said the pigeon jester again, making unblinking eye contact with the king.

The silence stretched on further. (Surely it could not keep on stretching or it would pull something…)

“Coo.” Said the pigeon jester, tragically.

And at this, the king finally burst into laughter. Uproarious, over-the-top, gut-busting laughter.

Which was just the distraction the seneschal needed. The elaborate flamingo costume was abandoned; the false wooden legs clattered to the floor and the fake neck - a painted length of hose pipe - flopped grotesquely back and forth.

From the costume burst forth a small army of truly tiny owls, which set about tying up the king while he was still prostrate from the laughter.

“What is the meaning of this?” Wailed the king.

“Coup.” Said the pigeon jester, accurately.

“Your reign of terror is at an end, vile tyrant!” Chirped an Elf Owl, puffing up its chest. “Revolution is here and your foul murderous regime will fall. In its place will rise a majestic and fair government! Vive la republic of feathers!”

“This is a conspiracy!” Cried the king.

“No,” Said the Elf Owl. “A conspiracy is ravens.”

“Owls are…” It donned a tiny pair of sunglasses. “...a Parliament.”

[copia]

THIRTY-ONE DAYS OF GHOST ⛧ DAY ONE

first song you heard — Mary On A Cross

September 1969; Papa Nihil and the beginning of the Ghost Project take to the stage at the Whiskey a Go Go club in Los Angeles, under the watchful eye of Sister Imperator. Fifty-three years later, in Tampa, Florida, Papa Emeritus the Fourth performs Mary On A Cross, unaware that he is singing the story of his parents—and that of himself.

[twstgarden]

❀ ❝ 𝗺𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 ❞ ; 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

━ lilia vanrouge x gn! reader ━ he's lived a long life and faced many experiences, but maybe this time, he'll find himself yearning to experience this long-lost feeling once more. (f/n means first name)

this work may contain spoilers for chapter 7, diasomnia’s arc.

do not steal or translate without my permission.

lilia has lived for about 700 years. 700 years is a lot as it brought him several experiences and knowledge that are all unique to him. not to mention, raising kids was one of the things he never expected to do, and yet he already had.

and having you by his side was something he never expected in his 700-year lifespan as well. at first, he thinks you're a total sweetheart, going out of your way to help him and accompany him any time so he won't feel lonely.

until those thoughts are buried deep into his mind and his feelings have developed from familial and platonic to something a little more... like a memory he has long forgotten yet remembered once more.

it has been so long since he felt butterflies or felt the drive in his heart to see you every day, and every single time he feels his heart thumping in his chest at the sight of you, he reminds himself that he shouldn't.

the last time he loved someone, he lost them, and he could not risk repeating the same act with you only to eventually lose you in the end.

but maybe this time, he'll try to take the risk.

© twstgarden 2024 || please do not steal, translate without my permission, or use this to train a.i.

[graceofagodswrath]

She tore across the fields, the deserts and the oceans. She destroyed villages, cities and empires. She jumped across planets and worlds, ravaging, killing, burning. Nothing could stop a woman with such rage in her soul.

And a mother’s wrath in her bones.

It had been peaceful. An out of the way back world planet, green and bright. An oasis form of the planet earth. And it was a secret. A secret she kept between her and her child. A little boy, sweet as can be. With swirling black curls atop his head and big honey brown eyes, he’d stare at the only home he knew with playful awe. He’d dance while she tended to the garden, sing as they walked the wood’s paths. He’d ask a million questions about a million things, and she rarely grew tired of it. He filled her days with entertainment and happiness, and she filled his with knowledge and play.

But all good things end. That is the universe’s constant cycle. She came back from a mountainous trip to find her home ravaged, and her boy gone. She tore through the ruins, a woman of green spirits no longer. Now, she was fire and brimstone. A mountain of storm.

It didn’t take long for her to find the tracks. She called back to her dark past, the one she ran from to keep her child in a net of safety. It only did so much good. So she called back that dragon fire fury of her warrior days, and hunted down those scavenging fools who’d taken her only treasure.

And caught them she did. She stormed their ship, all metal and fang, claw and bullet, sweeping through them like a hurricane. Blood and carcasses painted the bridge in eerie art.

But she did not find her boy. However, She did find her next target. And it would not be long until they’d tasted the rage of her blades.

So beware the venomous scorn of a woman.

And the hellfire of a mother’s wrath.

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

HEY SO I GOT PUBLISHED TODAY

[nicosraf]

can't believe I almost slipped into psychosis last night and wrote the whole first chapter of angels 3 and also started and finished an entirely new short story

[bonebrokebuddy]

DP X DC SPEED FORCE LINKED WITH INFINITE REALMS

Every Flash, no matter the version or earth, canonically is using the same Speed Force. The DCAU Flash uses the same Speed Force as the Earth-16 Flash, pre-crisis Flash, etc. You get the idea. That's even how speedsters can travel universes! Because the Speed Force is the same for all of them, it allows for a connection between all universes. And even better canonically Speed Force users don’t just use it or channel it. They are physical embodiments of the Speed Force. (and I’m uncertain if this is still dc canon or if this has been retconned by now but Speedsters are the outlet for the Speed Force. They cannot stop running or put down the Flash costume in some versions of their character as they do not have a choice if there is not another speedster. They must continue to run or there is no outlet for it then time gets all fucky and unstable with objects from the past appearing in the present. Think Into the Spider-Verse type glitching but with a threat of the timeline collapsing in on itself if it continues too far & isn't fixed.) 

Now let's discuss the Infinite Realms. In fanon its been held that similar logic applies. While unlike the Speed Force in that ghosts aren't the physical outlet for the energy of the Zone (but that would be a very fun concept for Ghost King AU), they can harness the energy from the Zone. Also like the Speed Force, the Infinite Realms in fanon can be used as a method of contacting or reaching other universes and that no matter the earth, version, or point in history. There is one Ghost Zone. It is infinite, it spans across all universes and times.

The link between the fact that speedsters Are The Speed Force & the tie between both the Speed Force and the Infinite Realms being a similar constant in all universes could be explored in so many ways. One of which is that the Speed Force and the Infinite Realms resonate on similar frequencies (or opposing frequencies as comic book logic would totally be on my side for that working) and Speedsters might react to the exposure or leakage of the Infinite Realms into their world depending if the Infinite Realms are similar or opposing to the Speed Force. But either way there is a fundamental connection between the two.

So, to conclude, have one of my many ideas where these two intersect: 

- Barry Allen captured and disarmed a new rogue toting an odd glowing green gun. Barry being the smart motherfucker he is, disassembles the weapon and proceeds to be utterly confused. He accidentally touched the weird glowing green substance that was leaking out of the device but when the side of his hand brushed the touched the substance it administered an oddly familiar feeling shock of electricity. But that wasn’t right. The Speed Force feels alive with a rhythm and pulse of that he could feel resonate with each beat of his heart. But whatever this was felt, for lack of better words, dead. Stagnant. Ancient. It already reached infinity and instead of continuing to expand with continuous energy, it had already stopped long ago.

A shiver went down his spine as he went to write up a report to the Watchtower, warning anyone else about these weird weapons and a request for Bats to look more into the Drs. Fenton.

- Wally accidentally vibrates at the wrong frequency when trying to go through a wall and falls into the GZ

- Alternatively: Bart Allen can at will open a portal to the GZ and that’s how he got back to the past. In addition to being the ADHD embodiment the Young Justice knows very well, he’s also just a Tad liminal. His eyes are backlit with lightning when angry. When he runs, his electricity is tinged green giving a fun red, yellow, green, white color scheme. But the YJ crew just chalk it up to Bart being from the future and having anger issues while connected to the Speed Force.

- Speedsters being able to understand ghost speak but in the same manner that while a modern English speaker can understand maybe a few words in a sentence of Old English, it’s still pretty fucking hard but like, some things they can kinda gleam what they’re saying. It just ends up making things even more confusing from misunderstandings and changes in meaning causing miscommunication to occur.

I have so many more ideas based on this but for now I’m going to leave those for other days so I can go to bed.

[saffronthreads]

Y'all ever think about your f/o's scent? Is it something subtle or something noticeable? Maybe they wear some kind of perfume/cologne, or maybe they don't. Perhaps you find yourself borrowing one of their jackets, or perhaps a shirt, just because it smells like them and that makes you happy. Or maybe they do the same thing with you clothes, whenever they find themselves missing you.

[ginneke]

let's do the time warp thing 2 (whoops accidentally a followup)

@flashfictionfridayofficial's prompt for this week is "Take My Hand" -- which gave me more than a few ideas, but this is the one I decided to go with. Because reasons.

This ficprompt follows directly on from my fill for FFF prompt #217 (Portal Fiction), in which Link finds a mysterious stone in a secret chamber at the forgotten temple... and hits it with a sword, like you do.

If I get to the point of a part three, I'll have to find a title for this and port it to ao3. whoops.

--

"–Who are you," the kid demands again, trying to sound authoritative and failing, "and what were you doing down there?"

Link can do nothing but stare. The head of his drillshaft drops to the temple floor. The Rito child looks and sounds so much like the ghost of Champion Revali, but that can't be right. It has to be impossible. Or perhaps there's a simpler explanation. He doesn't know whether Champion Revali had any descendants, but –

"Are you listening to me?"

"Listening," Link murmurs, distracted. In the secret chamber below, the stone still hums – but he doesn't know how long it will stay active. The Slate isn't showing him the right time, even though he's back on the surface again. That rules out interference from the Sheikah tech as the reason why it failed. So why has it failed? What's up with this place? It's the same temple as the one he'd been exploring. But it doesn't look right. Apart from the missing Guardians – and that, at least, isn't something he's sorry about at all – there's altogether too much rubble around, and...

At the foot of one of the giant columns, Link spots the remains of a heaping midden. A monster camp had been here, if not terribly recently. Abandoned long enough that the stink has dissipated, but the ruins are hot and dry enough that the bones remain. Mushrooms have tried to sprout from the rot. They don't look safe to eat.

There wasn't any sign of a monster camp before. The haywire Guardians would have shot down a bokoblin party just as readily they fire on Link.

Same temple. Somehow different. How? How can this place be so different to the temple he was exploring not even a few hours ago, and yet look so similar?

He hefts the drillshaft and makes as if to step out into the cavernous temple; the kid snaps at him, "Hold it!"

Ah.

"Haven't your teachers told you not to aim where you don't intend to shoot?"

The kid bristles. "Who says I don't intend to shoot?"

Bluster, rather than a threat. The kid isn't quite old enough to appreciate quite what a statement like that needs to back it up. Revali would have shot him by now, questions be damned. Link's sure of that much.

And sure enough, the kid lets the bowstring go slack, replacing the arrow in its quiver, though not without aiming a thunderous glare at Link in its place.

"You're not a spy, are you?"

Why is that the first thing this kid thinks of...? Link shakes his head. The kid eyes him mistrustfully.

"Shake on it."

...Huh?

"That's what you Hylians do, right? If you won't shake, then you really are a spy."

What kind of twisted-up logic is that? More to the point, if the kid does suspect him of being some sort of enemy, why insist on a – handshake? Bringing a potentially dangerous person even closer to you is the furthest thing from sensible.

Except the kid's already got a wing outstretched. Left wing, naturally, because the right wing's grip on the bow hasn't slackened off at all. (Probably, Link thinks, in case he does turn out to be a spy.) Almost lethally overconfident, but...

Link lifts his left hand and takes the kid's wing with solemn ceremony. Even so, he can only really wrap his hand around the first pair of fingers, given the difference in their body shapes. It's enough to satisfy honour: the kid finally puts the bow away, and even makes a little half-hopping motion in place, like all previous suspicion has melted like a thaw.

...It's cute. And also a little worrying how quickly the kid went from clumsily threatening violence to making equally clumsy overtures of friendship. Link doesn't get it at all.

He doesn't have much opportunity to think about it. Now that he's deemed trustworthy enough to be allowed out of the tunnel entrance, Link can see far more of the temple. A piece of cloth catches his  eye. It's a tarpaulin, Sheikah tan and red. Another thing different. He moves towards it. The kid follows him like a little shadow; the tallest tuft of feathers in that bright-blue crest barely reaches Link's shoulder.

Link has to put the drillshaft down to be able to navigate the ropes. He pulls the tarp away; what's underneath has him immediately reaching for a sword he isn't carrying. His heartbeat spikes. Swordless and not thinking clearly, he puts his arm in front of the kid like a futile shield --

"It's just a Guardian," the kid says, tugging Link's arm down. "Look, it's not even awake. They've been digging them up all over the place. Even here."

...Excavating Guardians. Yes, people used to do that, didn't they? But Link is used to the Guardians being dangerous. A horrible thought occurs to him and he blurts out, without thinking, "Have they dug up Vah Medoh?"

"...What's a medoh?" the kid asks, a note of confusion entering his voice, and Link has just enough time to think, 'oh', before –

– chime –

The first thing he registers is that Revali – the far too young Revali, who didn't know what Vah Medoh was – is gone.

So is the tarp, and the second thing he registers is the beeping, and the bright red target fixed on his chest.

Link grabs his shield and deflects the now-active Guardian's beam. The parried blast is enough to destroy it, though Link doesn't dare hang around to scavenge the pieces from the husk, because the noise has brought a half-dozen more eyes swivelling in search of him, bright blue cutting through the smoke and dust.

He grabs the drillshaft he'd dropped an eternity and scrambles for the Sheikah Slate, making a hasty retreat.

Later, as he makes camp half a continent away, he takes note of the drillshaft's condition: it's rusty, like it had lain abandoned in the temple for over a century.

It strikes Link that it has.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Length of Years: A Rapunzel Retelling

The woman in the tower brushed her hair. It had long ago turned white, and had grown to cover most of the floor in her little stone room. She braided it with lightning speed, her gnarled fingers confidently completing the familiar task.

Her gaze wandered through the chamber filled with the works of a lifetime. Tapestries she'd woven. Books she'd read and written. Dresses she'd designed. Plants she'd carefully tended until flowering vines framed her one window to the outside world. Evidence of arts she'd mastered, skills she'd developed--once sources of pride and joy, and now simply the remains of an empty life.

Now that her mother was dead, what did she have to live for? She'd sacrificed her life out of loyalty to the woman who'd given her everything; she'd never dreamed that someday she'd be the one left alone. This tower room had been her world; now that world seemed pathetically small. A dismal showing for so many decades.

She sang to banish the thoughts--song was her only weapon in her war against the hostile silence. The song was a light ditty from her younger years, about a bird in a cage, flying free. She'd sang that song often, once upon a time, to an awestruck audience. The only visitor this tower had ever held.

Unbidden, he appeared before her mind's eye. Young. Strong. Dark-haired. Square-jawed. With scarred hands and a dimpled chin and laughing eyes. He'd come to see her, day after day, and filled her world with a joy she'd never before known.

He'd asked her to leave with him; she'd refused, for Mother's sake, again and again, until he'd spoken so abusively against Mother that she grew offended for her sake, and told him to leave and never return. He'd obeyed her wishes, as he always had, and now she had nothing left of him but memory and regret.

She sang all the stronger as the memory turned to sorrow. She'd had her chance and thrown it away. Time had devoured any hope she'd ever had. What was the use of wishing otherwise? She was, and would be, now and forever, alone.

Even the song couldn't change that, so she stopped singing.

And in the silence, she heard a voice.

"Rapunzel! Rapunzel!"

An illusion. A hallucination. A phantom voice conjured by an abundance of memory and solitude and a lack of anything else.

The voice persisted. "Let down your hair!"

The voice was weaker than the one she remembered. Graveled. Worn. Aged.

But beneath it all, a familiar tone that brought her mind back to a time when she was fair-skinned, golden-haired, slender, willowy and oh-so-young.

She raced to the window with a speed she hadn't been capable of in years. Her joints creaked as she leaned far out the window, clinging tightly to the ledge to maintain her delicate balance as she looked down.

At a man in well-worn travel clothes marked with the royal coat of arms.

"I heard your singing," he said.

His hair was shorter than she remembered, gray and frazzled but still remarkably thick. His square jaw had grown jowls, his face had grown lines, his eyes had grown dimmer. But his smile as he gazed upon her was as bright as the one she saw in her memories each night.

With a bow that was slower but no less elegant for the passing of years, he asked, "My lady, might I ascend?"

With a joy she hadn't known she could ever possess, Rapunzel gathered up her endless white lengths of braid and let down her hair.

**

The climb took longer than Rapunzel remembered, but at last her visitor reached the window, and Philip Peregrine Bertram, prince of Whitbay, entered her chambers once more.

He bent double as he caught his breath. "Has your window always been that high?"

"It hasn't moved," Rapunzel said.

And neither have I.

Philip heard the unsaid and more valuable words. His gaze, when he stood straight and looked at her, held the compassion she'd always admired. "I heard of your mother's passing."

"It was very sudden." Mother had collapsed in the middle of a conversation, just after a climb up the tower in the rain. Rapunzel had buried her body beneath the stones of the tower's lowest level.

"My sympathies," Philip said.

He was the first to offer them, in all these weeks. Despite the hatred Rapunzel knew he had for her mother, she knew his words were genuine.

That, more than anything, brought the tears to her eyes. "Thank you."

Philip offered a handkerchief, which she took without shame. "Do you have food? Supplies?" he asked.

Rapunzel nodded, glad for the switch to more practical matters. "There are garden boxes here in the tower, and a boy comes every week with supplies."

"And you've stayed?"

She shrugged. "I had nowhere else to go."

No one else to go to.

He heard these unspoken words, too, and his face, as he sighed, seemed to age another ten years. "Rapunzel," he breathed. "I am so very sorry."

His voice held such depth of regret that she knew he apologized for far more than her mother's passing.

Despite herself, Rapunzel's words of response sounded far younger than the girl he had known. Like a child's--small, delicate, broken, plaintive. "Why did you never come back?"

"You asked me not to," Philip said. "And I had my pride. I might have returned, when my temper cooled, but then there were the wars, the diplomatic missions, the voyages, the marriage treaty, the children..." He sat wearily on her window ledge. "By the time life slowed down, I assumed you'd long ago moved on, and it would have been disloyal to seek you out. I only came to the village by chance and heard the locals speaking of the woman in the tower. Then I came to the woods and heard your song..."

He trailed off as he gestured to the room around them.

"I see," Rapunzel said, though she could barely even imagine it. An entire life full of war and travel and conflict and change happening quickly enough to obscure the passage of time, while she'd stayed here in the same set of rooms as the long, slow seconds marched lazily by.

"Did no one else ever come to the tower?" Philip asked, sounding almost desperate to hear some hint of joy from her life.

"No one," Rapunzel said simply. "Mother made certain of that."

Philip's jaw clenched, and there was a spark of the old fire in his eye, but he did not speak ill of the dead.

"I never mentioned you to her," Rapunzel said, "but she must have been suspicious--I wept so often in the weeks after our argument. She set barriers and traps in the woods after that. Spread rumors that I was mad and violent. The only outsiders who ever came were the boys who delivered supplies, and Mother always hired slow-witted lads who didn't ask questions."

"And..." Philip swallowed back some emotion. "And she was your only company?"

"She was never unkind to me," Rapunzel said, for she hadn't been, whatever her other crimes. "She made certain I never lacked anything I wanted."

"Except for freedom."

Rapunzel shook her head softly. "For a long time, I wasn't sure I wanted that. If I left, how could you find me? And by the time I believed you'd never come, I knew enough of the world to know I was safer here."

"Friendship, then."

"I did want that," Rapunzel admitted. "You don't know how much." Her fists clenched and her words quavered. "Sometimes, I thought it would break me."

Philip rose to his feet and caught her hand between his. "But it didn't," he said, with soft reassurance.

"Not yet."

"It won't," he said, with the firm compassion of age. "Not while I live." He raised her hand between their faces and looked deep into her eyes. "We've lost so many years, Rapunzel. I can't begin to atone for what you've been denied, but I can make certain that you're denied it no more. Come with me. Leave this place."

Rapunzel felt as though the tower had crumbled beneath her, leaving her no firm place to stand. It was more than she had dared to hope for, not for years and years and years. "How can I?" she whispered. "Your wife and family..."

"My wife passed nearly ten years ago. My children won't deny me the comfort of your friendship."

She gazed out the window toward a distant world glowing with a purple sunrise. "It's been too long," she said. "Too much life wasted. So little time ahead."

Philip's eyes, when she looked back at him, were as bright as those of the boy she'd once known. "Then we'd best not lose another minute."

**

Her head felt impossibly light. Her hair felt strange where it brushed against her shoulders. She secured the long, long braid to the pulley outside her window, then let down her hair one last time.

Philip secured her in the braid like a harness, and slowly lowered her to the ground. When her feet were firmly on the grass--it was so much softer than she'd imagined!--he climbed down and landed beside her.

Philip took her hand in his. "Are you ready?" he asked.

She nodded, too full of joy to speak.

"We'd best be on our way, then."

With her face toward the sunrise and her hand wrapped in his, Rapunzel strode forward and left the tower behind.

[symbiotic-slime]

born to write my venom/tma crossover fic where Eddie and Flash succumb to the horrors, forced to study for my psych exam

[strangelittlestories]

The necromancer, Bonaparte, stared at the horizon with bored black eyes. Beneath his gaze, the visitors bearing their flag of truce were ushered forwards by his skeletal honour guard.

“I will accept your surrender now.”

The commanding officer - not the original, but the surviving one - stepped towards the tyrant. She wore a Brigid’s Cross made of dirty reeds on her lapel. 

She could see the setting sun reflected in the necromancer’s obsidian gaze. Soon, the light would fade and dead would be at their strongest.

“I’m afraid I cannot offer you a surrender, Emperor of corpses. But I will beg for mercy, for you are the only soldier in your army with a heart to feel it.”

“My heart stopped beating long ago.”

“Yet I pray that enough feeling echoes in it still to grant clemency, despite your profanities.”

Then did the necromancer turn his gaze towards her. They were eyes that read fate and defied laws. She could have sworn she felt the air curdle, the ground buckle, and the light twist with its weight.

“Oh, your kings and queens are all so horrified by me and by what I do. They call it a crime against nature, a sin against god. Or *gods*.” He gestured to the cross on her uniform. “But if one has a war to fight - and if one believes in equal parts that war is *just* but also that no war *can* be just … is this not the most ethical, most correct thing? To fight the war in such a way that does not harm your subjects? Surely only a coward would let the disapproval of a few dozen gods sway them from saving a life?”

He paused as if to take a breath, but his chest did not move (he no longer needed air and considered it ill-disciplined to fall back into the habit of breathing). 

The officer paused too. His words felt heavy in her head. His dry voice scratching uncomfortably at her mental walls. But in his eyes, she still saw the last dying rays of sunlight…

“I suppose, tyrant of sunset, that were I in your shoes I *would* be tempted to keep harm and death from me and mine. But even if I could, I hope I would not do what you have done. For I would fear what other harm I was doing.”

“And what harm is that?”

“To put it simply, marshal of styx, those bodies that fight for you? They’re *not *yours*. You stole them. Dug up graveyards, cracked open tombs, emptied ossuaries.” She tutted and sunlight flared in her disapproval. “Maybe a few are honoured comrades, true believers, but most? They wouldn’t even know you to say good morning, yet alone to salute. Their spirits may be gone, but that doesn’t mean you get to make their dust dance.” 

“You defy me because you think my army is … theft?”

“That’s my line in the dirt. It may not be a good line. It may be a damned stupid line. I don’t know. But there it is - I know it, I feel it, it’s mine - like the bones that hold me upright.”

Bonaparte permitted himself a small sigh as a luxury.

“And after you die, those same bones will bow to me.”

[so-very-small]

The giant looms threateningly, a smirk playing on their lips. Before them the tiny is breathless, panicked, caught.

“P-please,” the tiny whispers, as a looming hand fills their vision.

The hand moves over them, fingertips shifting behind, and there’s a sudden tightness on their shirt as the giant’s fingers expertly pinch the fabric.

The giant lifts them slowly into the air by the back of their shirt, stopping when the tiny is level with their gaze.

“Well then, what hav-“

The tiny slips out of the shirt in a fluid movement, expertly hitting the countertop in a tuck and roll, bouncing onto their feet and entering a sprint.

“CATCH ME NOW, FUCKER,” the Topless Tiny shouts, streaking their way back to their home in the walls.