#my OC can and will be cryptic at times when needed

[nightmarenova-writer]

~Story Drabble Time Pt. 6~

(P.S. this is something of a draft for my project that I briefly mentioned in my pinned comment, I kinda impulsively decided to type this down because its been driving me a bit crazy due to how much I could work with this. And since by the time March comes around, this’ll be my 2nd year of constant and detailed planning with taking stuff out and putting stuff in. And I’m hoping by next year or by December I’ll have enough to start posting my stuff. BUT there is one important detail with my project. It’s actually a large scale fan-fic that’s gonna have roughly 10-11(?) parts or “installments” so if that isn’t your thing then you don’t have to feel obligated to read these okay? If its not your cup of tea, then no hard feelings. Also just a heads up my grammar might be a bit sucky. Even as a native English speaker my grammar does go down when I don’t write for a while! But I hope you enjoy this! Without further ado, lets get to it!)

— Also while this isn’t a story, and rather a poem/riddle this is something cannon that will have relevance to the entire story. And it will also show a small part of my Oc’s personality, that when needed she can, and will be cryptic at times. Especially when it comes to certain installments.

And since this is cannon to my story, and will be used. I’m going to give it a title, or name holder just so it can give you a tiny hint of one of my installments. If any of you are able to guess it then I give you all my praise and kudos since its gonna be hella hard to guess without the context that I know. Best of luck if you want to though! :D —

~Wildcard~

What is it that I see?

From one outsider looking in,

a person on the outskirts, defining.

What is it that you see?

A heart? A spade? A diamond? A club?

One calling to another, true answers will you find.

The truth you seek so clear,

yet clouded by semblance.

Your pursuit, soon ending.

Your question, near unraveled.

Your answer, well-nigh within reach.

All you need now, is to find me.

For the power I hold, is one I do not give freely.

May you defy the odds, and your rebellious hearts lead you onto me.

[servicpop]

kinktober week 1 — shower / bath adrien ( deliquent oc ) x bttm m reader

That Saturday afternoon glow of light orange and yellows filtered through your curtains and into your room. It was a sign to turn on your light since it was getting dark. As usual, you were hunched over your desk finishing off any work you had from your classes, pen in hand and music blasting through your headphones.

Your music cuts off and out of confusion you pick it up from its position faced down on the table; its Adrien, of course. He's sent you a rather cryptic message of just emojis, no text, just "🧍‍♂️👉🏡👍💒💦💞💞💞. You don't have half the mind to decipher it but you do understand that he's most likely heading to your house. Per usual.

You don't bother sending him a reply, you seeing it is enough for Adrien to take that as a yes.

Your parents aren't home tonight, but that's never stopped Adrien from sneaking into your room through your window, even if the front door is free. You hear rattling and that's when you know Adrien has so kindly graced you with his presence. To make things easier for him, you decide to slide the window open and peer down at him.

Just like rapunzel, he's scaling your 'tower' like it's nothing. You sometimes question if Adrien is even human, and how he's acquired knowledge to safely climb your two story home. You notice that he has his gym bag slung over his shoulder and he tilts his head up to you with a grin, "Catch this!" He shouts, throwing his bag up to you and you shakily catch it, placing it down on the floor.

The next second, Adrien is hauling himself into your room and brushing off the dust from his clothes. "The front door is... open you know?" You huff, shaking your head disapprovingly. You glance over at him, and you see beads of sweat dripping down his temples and how his chest rises and falls quicker than usual.

"Are you—" "I went to training." Right, Adrien trains basically every second day of the week for a sport you never thought to ask about. Basketball? Football? Hockey? You never asked.

"Can I use your shower, prez?" The question comes off too casual; you've never really let any of your friends take a shower in your house let alone come over regularly. But since Adrien is already here, all sweaty and hot, you can't find a reason to say no. "Fine, everything you need is in there," you nod, walking back to sit at your desk.

"You're not gonna show me where it is?" Adrien places a hand on your desk, leaning his weight against his arm as he looks down at you. You just assumed he knew where it was given he's broke into your house multiple times but your assumptions were wrong. You get up and start walking, not bothering to look back to see if Adrien was following. You knew he would.

You reach your bathroom, stepping in so you could show him where everything was. Before you started speaking, you heard the faint click of the door shutting.

"Adrien—" "How am I supposed to know which knob is hot or cold?" he's so blatantly playing with you. He walks right up to you, only a hair away as he looks down at you. A stupid grin is plastered across his face and his fingers are gripping at the edge of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head. "I'm all sweaty, prez, I need help washing my back," he sighs dramatically, fanning his face.

You take a moment to just stare. He's glistening in a sheen of sweat, droplets trickling down the curves and dents of his muscles, even his hair is slightly tousled. You keep quiet, unsure of what to say. That grin on his face never seems to lessen; it only grows wider by the second.

You can't even utter out a word before Adrien is pulling off his pants, letting them fall to his ankles. Your head instinctively darts to the right, trying to shield your eyes. "What? You act like you've never seen my dick before," he snorts out, tugging at your shirt, "it's been inside you too," he adds, successfully pulling your shirt off. "Oh shut up," you groan, grimacing at the way Adrien says it.

You don't stop him from completely stripping you down before taking off his own boxers, you just have the decency not to stare. He pushed the shower door open and ushered you inside before following you in. His chest his flushed against your back and the feeling of his sweat against your skin made you shiver, "Sorry," he mutters with a small chuckle.

He does know which knob is cold or hot because he immediately turns them to a desirable temperature. It's a little bit cooler than your preference though, but you don't mind it.

Adrien wastes no time in feeling your body, his hands moving straight to your hips like a moth to a flame. "You've been eating good? Not overworking yourself, prez?" He murmurs against your skin, his lips dragging along your shoulders as he clutches your body. "Yeah," your response is quiet and short, almost breathless since Adrien is all up on you at the moment.

His fingers trace the lines of your hip bone to your front, patting the skin where your leg meets your hip, slowly dipping more into your inner thighs to rub that area. His hands are so close. You can feel him spread your flesh, and he slots his cock in the free space. "Adrien," you scold, trying to pry his hands away but Adrien just ends up pushing you against the wall, your palms flat against the glass.

"You've been treating yourself well?" He hums, and you can tell from his tone he's half-mindely asking you these questions just to keep a conversation. He moves his hips back, sliding against the underside of your dick before meeting your hole, rubbing shallowly. "I haven't seen you in a week," from gentle caresses to harsher groping, Adrien's hands are now squeezing your hips.

Adrien nips at your neck, biting gently since he knew how you felt about visible marks, "It's so hard to avoid you" He borderline growls in your ear, pushing up into you. Adrien groans quietly at the feeling of you stretching out around him. His breathing becomes more and more audible as he caresses your torso.

Your small whines are muffled by the sound of water hitting the shower floor and the feeling of the cold glass along your chest gets you squirming. Adrien lifts your hips up a tiny bit, giving your ass a small tap before pushing in fully. Your fingers twitch and clench on the glass, trying desperately to hold onto something before Adrien's own hands meet yours, slotting a finger inbetween the gaps of yours.

"Just want me to hold your hand?" You wanna bite back at him but you lose your voice the moment he pulls out and thrusts back in, forcing a yelp out your throat instead of words. He squeezes the plush flesh of your ass a few times, and his eyes are trained to your hole, watching as it sucked him back in everytime he moved his hips back.

Adrien was getting overly worked up right now and the water didn't help either. Seeing the droplets decorate your spine like clear crystals rolling down the curve of your back made his mind go blank. You really brought that side out of him. He couldn't help but imagine that was his semen painting your back instead.

"Fuck you're too cute," He grunted, squeezing your hand a little tighter. Everytime Adrien pushed his dick in further, you felt the water push into you as well like it was wetting your insides. It was a weird sensation, nothing like lube, but it served to heighten your arousal from the fact that the water made the sound ofbyour skin clapping together alot louder.

It wasn't long before Adrien had moved in a way where he could hit your prostate directly and he knew he found it the moment you let out a strangled cry. Hearing that, Adrien pushed your body more against the glass, pinning you between himself and the wall. Your neglected cock was feverishly rubbing against cold wall with each thrust, smearing your pre-cum all over the glass.

"Does it feel good? Shit, maybe I gotta experiment with temp-play later," Adrien chuckled and you just let out an agitated groan that came out more like a needy whine. "That's where you're weak, isn't it? The underside of your dick?" You hated how he knew these things by now, but he wasn't wrong. Everytime you rubbed along the cold glass your body would jolt away from it and into Adrien which would result in him pushing you back into the wall as he fucked you from behind.

"Fuck, I'm gonna cum," you heave, squirming relentlessly as your dick twitched against the wall. Adrien just let's out a strained chuckle as he grips your hips tighter, pounding into you even faster. He leans his head down to your shoulder and sinks his teeth into your skin, forgetting about the fact that you would definitely scold him for this afterwards. The feeling of Adrien's chapped lips and sharp teeth piercing through your skin made your vision go white and your ears ring.

Your previously clear shower walls are now splattered with white and your knees buck as Adrien holds you up, forcing you to stand as he orgasms into you. He laughs breathlessly as you ragdoll in his arms like a baby deer who's trying to stand up. "Right, right I'll clean you up baby just relax, and then we'll get out," he chuckles, rubbing soap inbetween his hands before cleaning you off,

"I think I'm gonna dry up like a raisin if I stay here any longer..."

[deadsetobsessions]

AU List

Hello! Welcome! This is my attempt at keeping the AU's boiuncing around in my head in order. They should be mostly in chronological order.

Some of them are getting turned into full length fics! The list (and it's open to suggestions) can be found here: Fic List

A couple of things:

Please feel free to write your own fics based on any of these! No need to ask, simply link it so I can also read it <3

If you have any specific scenarios you have an idea for and would like me to write- my asks/prompts are always open! I can't guarantee quality as I do most of my writing at like, 3 AM but I'll try my best!

Please don't send me unsolicited prompts in my inbox, as it stresses me out. Not because I don't want to do them, but because the prompts are not in the correct place (if that makes sense?) my brain is being (unironically) neurotic about it.

I don't condone racism, bigotry, homophobia, etc.. I do not welcome it here. I acknowledge that I have biases that I've yet to unlearn. If there's something that makes you feel unwelcome in the things I write, please let me know and I will fix it ASAP.

I write these mostly on little to no sleep (that’s when I get creative I guess?) so good luck.

Update: Apparently you can have too many links on one post (which was news to me) so the links are in the titles lol

Squatter!Danny Phantom Raises Tim

Tim 'self-preservation instinct of a wet paper bag' finds Danny Phantom squatting in his house as an injured vigilante and they immediately adopt each other.

Ghost King and the Justice League

Different scenarios where the Justice League (and extensions) deal with a Ghost King Danny Phantom, who generally just wants to get some sleep and avoid his paperwork like he avoids his problems- actively and indiscriminately.

Alcoholic! Danny Adopts Jason Todd (Fic)

Danny Phantom, a struggling alcoholic, finds his way into Gotham where he adopts a young Jason Todd... after accidentally making a name for himself, again.

Spider in Gotham (Fic)

Peter Parker found himself unceremoniously dumped into Gotham and merged with his younger, formerly dead, alternate self.

Gotham! Danny and His Bats

Different scenarios wherein which Danny Phantom is Gotham's city spirit and the task of wrangling Gotham's vigilante and villainous population is laid at his feet.

Danny in Gotham

Somehow, somewhen, Danny finds himself moving to Gotham. Other than the aesthetics, Danny finds it to be pretty similar to Amity Park's insanity.

Sea Cryptic!Danny Phantom

Danny Phantom cleans beaches in his off time. One day, he has to pick Batman (and his plane that was littered all over the ocean floor) out of the sea.

Danny Gets Yeeted (Yoted?) Into Gotham

Danny Phantom dented the Batmobile and got an adoption, vigilante siblings, and a gang of kids following him for his troubles/

Danielle "Dani/Ellie" Phantom

Danielle Phantom travelled to Gotham. Gotham encounters a wild Danny amidst its tall towers.

Timothy Drake-Centric

When Tim Drake is set on something, very little can stop him, With sub catergories : Reincarnated as Gamer! Timmy Drake (fem Tim)(Fic) and New Tim-line, Who Dis?

Reincarnated as Damian Wayne's Older Sister

Based on a nightmare, an OC finds themself reincarnated as Damian Wayne's older sister. She does not have a good time.

Prompts Found

A collection of prompts found and filled. Includes Triplet Tim and Reverse Trope Prompt.

Misc. ficlets and thoughts

My brain vs. whatever errant thoughts and ideas that decided to pop up when I'm trying to sleep.

[screamingcrows]

Tomorrow - Dottore x reader

Note: Dottore isn't his usual self here, I'm aware. This is meant to be with my so far unknown to everyone OC, but this scenario fits x reader format. Written in Tumblr drafts as I lay in bed. Keep this out of character ai bots or I'm sending Trypanosoma brucei after you.

Tags: comfort?, soft, gn reader, skin to skin contact happens twice that's it, they are not in a romantic relationship (yet), pining

MINORS, AGELESS, BLANK BLOGS DNI

You'd never had reason to set foot in The Second's chambers, had never imagine you would either. It made the intimacy of this moment far greater than you cared to process. He was heavy when he leaned against your smaller frame, one arm slung across your shoulders for support.

Both of you remained quiet while Dottore fumbled with his keys, your eyes flickering to his gloved hand. It still trembled. How long had he been awake by now?

It had been at least four days since the door to his laboratory had been open to anyone but his segments. Not even you had been allowed in, a sentiment that made everyone uneasy. And he despised sleeping in there.

It had always infuriated you how he failed to maintain his own body. The act should theoretically hold the same value as any other system maintenance. Theory and practise rarely aligned, a fact you knew by heart.

A gentle nudge against your shoulder set your body in motion, pushing open the door and leading your superior inside.

It had a surprisingly homely feel to it, causing your steps to falter briefly as you looked around. Most of the furniture was fashioned from dark wood, creating an almost intimate feeling. Shelves filled with books lined the walls, an occasional ornament lingering amongst the tomes.

His desk looked well worn, polish having long since matted. A smile tugged at your lips, it resembled him in many ways.

Your musings were cut short when Dottore shifted his weight, pulling away from your body with a slight groan. His hands rubbed at his lower back, a habit you'd observed despite countless claims that nothing somatic was ailing him.

"Don't"

It was a simple command, his voice a little rougher than usual. The fact that he hadn't asked you to leave threw you off.

"Is there anything you need, Doctor?"

Dottore mumbled something under his breath, making you sigh in defeat. Even now, undoubtedly at his weakest point in a long time, there was no real aid for you to provide.

Uncomfortable with merely standing around, you went to draw the curtains, leaving only a tiny crack for natural light to enter. It made the situation worse, heat pooling in your gut at the sheer familiarity of the gesture.

Dottore had sunk to his knees when you turned back around. His face was pressed into the edge of the mattress, the characteristic mask discarded on the ground.

His hair had grown to an unruly length. When had he become this unkempt? Your fingers itched to run through those locks.

"Doctor, if there's nothing I can do, I'll take my leave"

The gloves had been discarded as well. No matter how many times you saw his hands it didn't ease the sting behind your eyes. It looked painful. Burnt skin, thin scars, and crooked fingers all spoke of a past best buried. His back straightened at the sound of your voice.

"Tomorrow. It'll be finished tomorrow"

A cryptic message, but you didn't feel like prodding. Not with how he seemed to dwindle in the darkness. His hands moved to unbutton the blue shirt, letting it unceremoniously fall to the ground.

"Okay?"

Your feet carried you closer against your will. The curiosity he praised you for would forever remain a curse.

His skin looked ashen. A trick of the light no doubt, that much should be logical. It didn't help the unease feeling spreading through you.

"Come by tomorrow. The laboratory. I must show you."

With every word his shoulders slumped further. He was as muscular as you'd expected, perhaps even more so with how little sustenance you saw him consume.

Objectively, he was beautiful. Subjectively, you could hardly process the sight. Outstretched hand already reaching towards him. He tensed when your palm made contact, his skin surprisingly warm.

Scars ran across his shoulders and back, oh how you yearned to map them and hear their stories. His was a life lived.

In a moment of folly, you pressed your lips to his shoulder, feeling it rise with the sharp intake of breath.

"Tomorrow then."

You left his chambers with practised nonchalance, your gait a mirror of The Second's. You could still taste his skin on your lips. Had your faith been intact, you would have prayed tomorrow never came. Tonight would have been enough.

[mrprettywhenhecries]

run rabbit, run [g.t]

Gator Tillman ✘ Win Lewis (OC)

✝︎ w.c. 3.7k words ✝︎ a/n. I wanted to write a few spooky oneshots for kinktober, focusing on kinks I've never written before, and this is (hopefully 🤞) the first of three. ✝︎ tags/warnings. canon x oc pairing, fem!oc, predator/prey, hair pulling, spitting degradation, spanking, rough sex, unprotected p in v sex, outdoor sex, creampie, slight gunplay (if you squint) ✝︎ credit. barbed wire divider {x}

After a disappointing corn maze, Gator proposes a more thrilling game and Win is all too willing to play.

[ masterlist • win bio ]

“Oh my God, that was so lame,” Win exclaimed, though she wore a grin on her face as she and Gator stepped out of the corn maze, the sound of screams and laughter punctuating the night air behind them.

“You can’t tell me you weren’t scared,” Gator scoffed, slinging an arm around her shoulders when he noticed her shiver and pull her thin jacket closer.  “You screamed your head off and hid behind me every time someone in a mask jumped out at us,” he pointed out, scowling as some teenagers pushed past, nearly running into him.

Win jerked her chin defiantly and shot him a sharp look.  “I’m not saying I wasn’t scared,” she huffed, “but there’s a difference between a cheap scare, like a jump scare and true terror,” she insisted, leading Gator toward the exit, the scent of popcorn and sweet roasted pecans from the food carts nearby surrounding them.

“You’re the only person I know that actually likes being scared,” Gator snorted, stopping to get Win a caramel apple for the road.

“It’s not that weird,” she huffed, climbing into the passenger seat of his truck.  “As long as you’re not in any real danger, it can be pretty exciting.”

“Guess that makes sense,” Gator mused, twisting his key in the ignition.  “I’ve heard fear can be an aphrodisiac too,” he added, glancing over at her pointedly.

“Oh, you’ve heard that, have you?” Win laughed, freeing her treat from it’s plastic wrapping and giving it a taste.

Gator tilted his head, lifting a shoulder in a half shrug, though a smirk played at the corner of his mouth.  

“It’s not like I didn’t have fun though,” Win added, laying her arm across the console to thread her fingers between Gator’s, smiling softly when he gave her hand a squeeze.  “I just wished it would’ve had more… ambience.”

Gator nodded to himself as an idea took root.

“What’re we doing here?” Win asked, sitting up straighter in her seat as Gator turned onto the lane to the ranch.

“Just gotta grab a couple things from the house real quick,” Gator answered cryptically, pulling up in front of the dark farmhouse.  “Be right back,” he assured her as he threw the truck in park and jumped out, hurrying up to the porch and disappearing inside.

A minute later, the front window on the second floor lit up and Win could see Gator’s shadow moving about his room.  It only took him a few more minutes before the light switched off and he was back out the door and striding toward the truck, carrying something in his hand.  It wasn’t until he yanked the door open that Win realized what it was.

“Is that a paintball gun?” she asked, unable to keep the incredulity from her voice, noting that he’d only grabbed one.

“Yep.”  Gator answered simply, stowing the gun in the backseat and tossing Win his heavy camo hoodie.  “Put that on,” he instructed, climbing back behind the wheel and turning the truck around. "You're gunna need it."

“Gator, what are we doing?” Win huffed, though she shrugged off her jacket to pull the sweatshirt over her head.  Gator’s scent still clung to it and she took a moment to bury her nose in the soft fabric, breathing him in.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he replied, wearing a smug grin.

He didn’t drive far, their destination only a few miles from the ranch, and Gator pulled off onto a narrow dirt path nestled between a patch of woods and a corn field, parking just out of sight of the road.

“Now are you gunna tell me what we’re doing?” Win asked, peering out the window as Gator cut the engine, excitement prickling her insides.

“Well, you said you wanted to be scared,” he answered, turning to look at her, his lips curving impishly.

“I did say that,” Win mused, wetting her lips, anticipation bubbling in her stomach.

“I thought we could play a little game,” Gator continued, arching an amused brow at her from under the brim of his cap before pushing his door open and grabbing the paintball gun.

“And what sort of game would that be?” Win asked, hurrying to follow him, thankful for his hoodie as she left the warmth of the truck cab, though the trees helped to cut the wind some.

Gator checked something on his gun before answering, stepping into Win’s space to smirk down at her.  

“I’ll be the predator... and you’ll be the prey,” he drawled, watching her through hooded eyes.  “I’ll even give you a two minute head start.”

Win swallowed, her eyes darting to the gun in his hand.  “You’re not gunna actually shoot me with that, are you?”

Gator shrugged.  “Not if you’re quick enough.”

The condescension in his voice made her squirm, annoyed at how much it turned her on.

“And what exactly are you gunna do when you catch me?” she asked, stepping closer, a challenge flashing in her stormy eyes.

Gator’s lips twitched, pleased at her choice of words.

“Guess you’ll just have to find out,” he drawled, the promise in his heavy lidded gaze sending heat pooling low in Win’s stomach.

“Ready for your head start?”

“You better give me the full two minutes,” she warned, and Gator started a timer on his watch.

“You better get going,” he exclaimed, and Win took off, sprinting for the treeline, glad for the cloudless sky and the nearly full moon hanging overhead.

Even after passing under the cover of the foliage, the night was still light enough that she could easily see the path ahead, though it occurred to her that that would only make it easier for Gator to see her as well.

“Shit,” she hissed under her breath, stopping to scan her surroundings–she needed to find some place to hide, and quick.

She could feel the seconds slipping away and though she knew it was only a glorified game of hide and seek and it was only Gator hunting her, her heart fluttered like a rabbit’s, hammering against the inside of her ribcage while her pulse thundered in her ears, the adrenaline flooding her making her feel alive.

Spotting a large bush growing next to a cluster of trees a few yards away, Win hurried toward it, dropping to her knees to crawl under its branches just as she heard Gator’s voice in the distance.

“Your two minutes are up, Winnie!  I’m comin’ for ya.”

The crunch of Gator’s boots grew louder as he approached and Win shrank back further into the bushes, holding her breath and hoping the shadows were deep enough to obscure her.  Somewhere overhead an owl cried and Gator stopped mere feet from her hiding place, his head swiveling, searching, and part of Win itched to jump from the brush and take him by surprise, turning the tables just to prove she could—but then she’d lose the satisfaction of being caught.  

And for once, she wanted to be caught.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to make it easy for him.

After what felt like an eternity, Gator finally moved on, holding his gun at the ready.  Once he was out of sight, Win slipped out from her cover, hesitating long enough to crane her head the way he’d gone before sneaking off in the opposite direction, picking her way carefully through the underbrush.

Confident she’d lost him, she let out the breath she’d been holding and began moving faster, less carefully, thinking to double back toward the truck when a loud snap–almost deafening in the silence–echoed through the woods and she froze, her blood running cold as she looked down at the broken stick beneath her foot.

“Fuck,” she grimaced, straining to listen for Gator’s footsteps over the rush of blood in her ears, foolishly hoping he’d been far enough out of earshot to have heard her blunder.

Two sharp cracks ripped through the silence, exploding bright green against the tree next to her and a startled cry burst from her lungs, jolting her into motion.  Without a second thought, she took off sprinting, realizing too late that she was being forced out of the woods and toward the cornfield.  If she turned to run along the drive between the two, his next shot surely wouldn’t miss–for all of Gator’s shortcomings, marksmanship wasn't one of them.

Breaking out of the treeline, Win leapt headlong into the corn rows as she heard Gator fire off another couple rounds.  Though the dry corn was harder to move stealthily through, it was better than no cover at all.

Angling her body to maneuver through the narrow rows, the brittle corn leaves whipped against her face, forcing her to slow and it wasn’t long before Gator could be heard behind her.

“Where are ya, Winnie?” he called, whistling for her like a dog, and she could practically hear the smug smirk playing at his lips.  “It’s no use tryin’ to hide.  You know I’m gunna find you.”

Win stopped, gasping for breath, and turned to listen for the rustle of corn as Gator stalked her, trying to get an idea of how close he was, which direction he was coming from.

“C’mon Win, we both know how much you want me to catch you.  For such a feisty bitch, you sure like it when I have you helpless.  Bet it has you drippin’ just thinkin’ about it,” he drawled, using the barrel of his gun to part the stalks as he prowled the rows, searching for her.

A harsh gasp left her lips as she caught a flash of movement to her right and Win quickly clapped a hand over her mouth and dropped, crouching low, hoping Gator would be more focused on what was ahead of him rather than scanning the ground.

“When I catch you, I’m gunna fuck you like the little whore you are, right out in the middle of the woods–”

A soft groan caught in Win’s throat at the thought, desire pulsing through her, but as much as she wanted it, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.  After all, the chase, the mounting tension, only made it that much hotter.

Keeping an eye on the spot she’d seen movement, Win began to creep forward slowly, circling Gator’s position as she fought to avoid rustling the stalks too much, hoping his own movement would mask any sounds she made. 

“How long you plan on keeping this up for?” Gator called, stopping once more to scan the field, tilting his head to listen.

Win grimaced, her jaw clenching as her shoulder brushed against a stalk, the leaves rustling loudly in the sudden silence and Gator’s head snapped toward her.

“Gotcha.”

Giving up on stealth, Win scrambled in the dirt for purchase, pushing herself up to make a break for it, Gator right on her heels.

She could hear his breath loud in her ears, or was it her own?

For one brief moment the moon shone brightly overhead before she was back in the woods, the moonlight filtering down in patches amid the shadows.  Not daring to look back over her shoulder, she weaved through the trees, her heart pounding hard in her chest.  For a moment she thought she might outrun Gator, not quite as fast as he once was back before his football accident, until she tripped.

Catching a large root just right with the toe of her boot, time seemed to slow as she went sprawling, arms windmilling uselessly before landing hard on the ground with a grunt.

“Shit–” she hissed, hastily pushing herself to her feet, but it was too late.  

“Freeze.”

Something pressed into Win’s back between her shoulder blades and she froze, lifting her hands in surrender.

“Good girl,” Gator murmured behind her, his breath fanning across the back of her neck, sending a shiver racing down her spine.

Gator slowly circled her, a smirk tugging at lips.

“You ready to give up?  You put up a pretty good fight, but let’s face it, I’ve got you cornered, sweetheart,” he drawled, peering down his nose at her, radiating smug satisfaction as he trailed the muzzle of his gun between Win’s legs, his lips twitching as she squirmed.

There was a look in his eyes that thrilled her, that made her burn for him—her cunt aching for him to fill it.

“You gunna answer me?” he prompted and Win swallowed, slowly nodding.

“I give up.  You win,” she said, hanging her head so Gator couldn’t see the flash of defiance in her eyes.

As soon as he stepped closer, letting his guard down,—thinking he’d won—she struck, knocking the paintball gun from his hands and they struggled, tumbling to the ground.

Wrestling frantically, kicking at the dirt and leaves, the two rolled, grunting and panting, until Gator came out on top, his cap knocked from his head and his slicked back hair falling in his eyes as he pinned her by the wrists.

“Shit—“ he gasped, catching his breath as he held her still, hovering over her.  “Shoulda known you wouldn’t go down that easy,” he breathed, a pleased grin twisting his lips, turning pink from the cold.

“That’s my firecracker,” he chuckled, his heavy lidded eyes roaming her face.  “It’s so much hotter when you put up a fight,” he drawled, leaning in to kiss her deeply, his tongue demanding against hers and Win groaned as his cock throbbed against her hip, trapped beneath his cargo pants.

Gator echoed her moan as their tongues clashed and Win bit down hard on his lip, his moan turning to a hiss of pain.

“Ow, Jesus—“ he hissed, releasing one of her wrists to gingerly touch his lip, a trace of blood staining his fingertips, though a ghost of a smile curved his lips at her display of defiance.

“Now you’ve really done it,” he drawled, running his tongue along his bottom lip.

Win’s breath hitched as Gator sat up, his fingers fumbling at the button of her jeans, hastily working them down her hips along with her thin panties.  As soon as the chill air hit her bare skin, she gasped, but Gator only grinned, his gaze dropping to her exposed sex.

“Fuckin’ knew it,” he groaned, admiring the way her folds glistened wetly in the moonlight, dragging two fingers between them to gather her juices before lifting his hand to show her, pulling his fingers apart to watch her slick stretch between them in silvery strands.

“You’re fuckin’ drippin’, Winnie,” he drawled, pressing his fingers to her lips till she opened her mouth to suck them clean, moaning low in her throat at the taste.  “Looks like you’re enjoying this as much as I am.”

Win could only nod in response, swirling her tongue around his digits.  Gator’s head fell back with a groan as he palmed himself with his free hand – his cock beginning to strain painfully against the stiff fabric of his pants.

“Shit, you’re like a bitch in heat,” he muttered, swallowing thickly, and Win pulled his fingers from her mouth with a soft pop.

“Jesus Gator, you gunna fuck me or just talk about it?” Win huffed, her eyes flashing impishly.  “You’re supposed to be the predator, right?  Devour me,” she breathed, pushing up to her elbows as she held his lust drenched gaze.

“Fuck, I love you,” he breathed, rocking back on his heels to roll her onto her belly and hoist her onto all fours before fumbling his cock free, hissing at the cold.  Win gasped as Gator pressed between her shoulder blades, forcing her face down against the ground, ass still in the air, and her cunt throbbed at how easily he manhandled her.

“Be a good girl for me and stay still,” Gator grunted, grabbing the fat of her ass to part her cheeks, pursing his lips and spitting against her puckered hole.  Win gave a jerk, half pushing up, Gator’s name on her lips like a warning until her gave her ass a sharp swat, the palm of his hand stinging from the impact and Win gave another jolt, gasping in surprise.

“What’d I say about staying still?” he exclaimed, grabbing her hips to pull her back into position.  “I ain’t goin’ in that hole, so calm down,” he added in assurance.

“You better fuckin’ not,” Win muttered, but lowered her head obediently.

Gator grinned, caressing the red welt he’d left on her ass cheek before pausing to spit again, biting his lip as he watched his saliva roll between her folds to mix with the sticky arousal that was already practically dripping down her thighs.

Gripping his cock at the base, he guided the tip to her entrance, groaning as he pressed into her tight wet heat, watching raptly as she sucked him in, her greedy little cunt stretching around him like it was meant to take his cock.

Win echoed Gator’s moan, pressing her forehead to the ground as she arched back against him impatiently, urging him deeper, feeling every vein and ridge as she squeezed around him.

“Oh fuck– eager little rabbit, huh?” Gator panted, thrusting sharply the rest of the way, forcing a breathy gasp from Win’s lips as he bottomed out.  “C’mon, I know you can take me better than that,” he taunted, condescension dripping from his words as he thrust sharply into her again, tightening his grasp on her hips to hold her steady as he began to pound into her, his fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to bruise.

With each swift rut, Win’s body bounced forward with the impact, the lewd rhythmic slap of skin against skin filling the air, competing only with their heavy breaths and moans.

Digging her fingers into the earth, her cheek pressed to the cold ground, Win had never felt so deliciously helpless, so like an animal ensnared by its captor, unable to fight back even had she wanted to.  With each thrust, each jolt of her body, Gator’s cock dragged against that sensitive spot inside her that made her head swim, and she moaned, his name tumbling from her lips deliriously, uncaring about the noise in their seclusion.  She barely even felt the sting of the cold against her exposed flesh.  

“Fuck, Win—“ Gator groaned, almost a whine, his pleasure swiftly building, compressing the spring in his gut til he was afraid it might snap.  Tangling his hand in a fistful of her hair, he gave a sharp tug, forcing her head up as he leaned over her, his lips close to her ear.  

“Who owns this pussy?” he hissed, his breath hot against the curve of her jaw.

“You do—!“ Win gasped, the pain in her scalp mixing with the pleasure that coursed through her, hovering just out of reach.

“Damn straight,” Gator grunted, gritting his teeth, his movements growing jerky, desperate.  “You gunna be good and cum for me?” he asked, the strain in his voice evident.

Win tried to nod before remembering his grasp on her hair and she winced.  “Fuck, yes, please—“ she begged, wetting her lips, and it was all Gator needed to hear.

Desperate to push her over the edge, he released her hair to awkwardly wrap his arm around her, slipping his hand between her legs to search for her clit as he rut into her frantically, rubbing sloppy circles against her bundle of nerves.  The effect was nearly instantaneous, the added stimulation pushing her off the ledge and into the deep end, and Win came with a keening cry, her body tensing violently.  

“Shit, Win, fuckfuckfuckkkk—!” Gator echoed, falling headlong with her into the abyss, his hips stuttering as Win clenched impossibly tighter around him, milking him dry with each deep thrust until he finally stilled, cock still twitching as her walls pulsed and fluttered around him with the after shocks of her climax.

Panting heavily, he dropped his head to her shoulder with a ragged breath, his arm around her the only thing holding her up.  Despite the cold, sweat beaded on Gator’s forehead, his shirt sticking to him beneath his coat.

Win, however, trembled beneath him and he hastily pulled out of her, watching his spend seep from her spent hole for a moment before pushing it back between her folds with his fingers and pulling her panties back up.

“Can’t lose any of that, huh?” she chuckled weakly, pulling her jeans back up while Gator hastily tucked himself back into his cargo pants, still wet with their combined fluids. "Love the thought of you filled with me," he murmured. 

Once dressed, the two of them collapsed to the ground together, Win fitting against Gator’s side as if she was molded just for him, seeking any warmth she could find and he pulled her closer, pressing his lips to her forehead. 

“So, that was pretty fun,” he chuckled, looking down at her.

“Mhmm,” she hummed, glancing up at him through her eyelashes, his body heat not quite enough to chase away the chill that had seeped into her from the ground.  “Next time I wanna hunt you though,” she teased, shivering.

Gator snorted.  “Not a chance,” he replied, shaking his head, briefly wondering where his cap had fallen, the tip of his nose and ears growing numb from the cold.

“That’s not fair,” Win huffed lightly, snuggling closer, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in.

“Yeah it is,” Gator countered, frowning slightly at how she trembled in his arms.  “C’mon, let’s go back to the truck and warm up, and we can argue more about it when your teeth aren’t chattering.”

Win rolled her eyes, but nodded, letting Gator help her to her feet.  Crouching to snatch his hat and tug it back on his head, he grabbed his paintball gun from where Win had knocked it from his hands.

“Ready?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to keep her close till they got to the truck. “Ready,” she agreed, clinging to him as they walked.  “But don’t think our discussion is over,” she warned lightly. 

“You just wanna shoot me with a paintball,” Gator snorted.

“Maybe,” Win conceded with a grin.  As much as she enjoyed being his prey, she couldn’t deny how much she liked the thought of hunting him next time.

✝︎ taglist. @super-unpredictable98 @heartbreak-sandwich @sailorskunk @thecatkingsthrone @thecreelhouse

@girlwiththerubyslippers @professionalpromqueen @buckysgrace

[signfromeywa]

AUNGIA TA EYWA (A SIGNS FROM EYWA)

Chapter 03: A secret message

Description:

Anastasia Novak is a behavioural scientist tasked with socializing a captive Na'vi on behalf of the RDA. The longer she works with the Na'vi and the closer she gets to him, the more she has to rethink everything she thought she knew and redefine her morals and values. Can she just carry on like this, or will she follow her heart?

Content: Rating +18, Avatar fanfiction, human x Na'vi ship, Na'vi captured

Characters: Human OCs: Anastasia Novak, Steven Turner, Patra// Na'vi OCs: Ean'tu,

Word Count: 4944

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❗️English is not my native language! I apologize very much if it reads a bit bumpy here and there.

I'm a German author and this is the first time I've tried to translate a story I'm working on into English and upload it. I still hope you enjoy it.❗

Ana stretched at her desk. Her back was aching from working at her desk for so long and it was getting late. It wasn't as if you could tell because the room she was sitting in had no windows, but because she had looked tiredly at the clock on her laptop. She had spent the whole day preparing important documents about Sky and drawing up a plan for training him. It all had to be well thought out. Not to forget, she had sent an e-mail to the contact that Patra had given her. She had been waiting all day for a reply. After all, she needed research reports and results to make her plan more efficient.

Just as she was about to close the laptop in frustration, a now familiar notification tone sounded. She eagerly raised the display again to see the message. She quickly read over the lines and her excited expression, which had just radiated a spark of hope, darkened.

"Rejected?! Excuse me?" She slumped back in her chair in disappointment.

Mr. Turner entered the room with two cups in his hand. "What are you complaining about? Not saved? That happens to me all the time, then I can rewrite everything."

He came over to Ana and placed the coffee cup on her desk.

"No, that's not it." Ana stroked her face tiredly with both hands. "I asked to see the research documents and that was just refused." She caught sight of the cup next to her and picked it up. Coffee, she realized as she put the cup under her nose. She wasn't really much of a coffee drinker, but she would need it. "The worst thing is, when I asked if I could apply for a security clearance somewhere and if they could send me the necessary information, they just replied that it's in vain and doesn't fall within my area of expertise."

You could hear the frustration in her voice. Mr. Turner took a sip and sat with one leg slightly on the edge of the desk, facing Ana. "I'm not surprised. I told you, it's not so easy to get records from other institutions here."

Yes, he had said that, and Patra had mentioned it too. Ana had written in the email what it was about and why she really needed these documents. But they didn't seem to care. Everything was so cryptic and complicated, no one spoke up, it seemed to Ana as if everyone was talking in riddles. Grumbling, she took a sip of her coffee. It was awful.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she grumbled quietly.

"What you did before. Just carry on. Only be more careful around him." Mr. Turner looked at her.

"Yes, I have no choice. It'll delay my work, but they don't care that I'll be much busier now."

"You'll manage, you're by far the bravest person working here. The way you dared to approach Sky after everything that's happened." He grinned.

Ana looked at him now too. He seemed amused. "Of course I can do it. That's what I'm here for and failure is out of the question." Ana said confidently.

"There you go." He seemed satisfied.

A man suddenly peered into the room. "Mr. Turner, the switchgear at the airlock is causing problems, could you come here for a moment?"

"Yes, just a moment." He stood up. "Don't give up, maybe you'll get lucky if you persevere." He winked at Ana and walked out of the room with his colleague, who was waiting for him at the door.

Ana stayed behind and turned her eyes back to the laptop. What should she do now? Maybe write to her boss to see if he could intercede on her behalf so that Ana could perhaps get security clearance for the documents after all? But what if her boss didn't react well at all? What if that made him start to doubt her competence? That absolutely must not happen.

She got up and went to the surveillance room. The room was quite dark and was only illuminated by the many screens showing what the surveillance cameras were showing. She wasn't interested in the screens, instead she went to the window that allowed her to look into the enclosure. Just like on her first day, she looked down and tried to locate Sky and this time she was successful. She could see Sky crouching on the ground in front of the tree. He seemed to be doing something, but it was so small that Ana couldn't make it out from up here. So she turned to the screens and picked the right camera to zoom in.

Sky had branches in his hands and seemed to be tying and knotting the fibers of a plant around them. Ana sat down and observed this closely. It reminded her of a basket weaving technique that she knew from some cultures. How unusually skillfully Sky did it, as if he knew exactly what he was doing. That thought occurred to her again. Sky acted so humanoid, far beyond animalistic behavior. She didn't want to jump to conclusions, but more and more she couldn't push the thought away.

Another beep on her cell phone made her look up from the screen. A new e-mail had arrived, but without a sender. Extremely strange. She decided to go back to her desk and take a closer look at the email on her laptop. What she quickly realized on her laptop was that it was not her normal e-mail inbox that had received the message. She had a new program on her computer that hadn't been there before. Had Ana been hacked? Now she wasn't so sure whether she should really open the email. That even Pandora was being hacked, no matter where you went, these spam mails could follow you around the universe. Just as Ana was about to delete the strange program, she received an email from Patra.

'Good evening Novak, a confidential e-mail has found its way to you. Don't be afraid to open it. It will help you a lot,' it said. Was this a real message from Patra or just part of a really creepy hack?

Ana called Patra immediately. She answered the call surprisingly quickly. "Good evening, did you just send me an email?" Ana asked uncertainly.

"Yes, I did and I mean what I wrote. Read the email." she replied curtly.

The situation was a little strange. Something strange was going on here, but somehow she had the feeling that Patra couldn't tell her anything more. Apparently something secret was going on.

"Take another look at my email, there's something else attached at the bottom. We'll talk later when you're home." Patra smiled at Ana and then hung up.

Ana immediately opened Patra's email again and realized that the woman hadn't lied. At the bottom it said. 'Your code is: 037592649, please delete this email. Thank you.

Ana's heart began to beat excitedly. What had she got herself into here? She first saved the code in her cell phone and then deleted the email as requested. She then logged into the strange new program.

It was a simple program, it had hardly any buttons or functions, just send and receive. To get into the program, you had to enter the code. There was only one email in the mailbox. It was the same mysterious email that Ana had just received. With an excited and uneasy feeling, she clicked on the message to open it.

'Good evening Dr. Novak,

We have it on good authority that you are working with a Na'vi and have made contact to access research documents relating to Na'vis. You will have realized that the research results on Pandora are highly classified. It will be impossible for you to access this information, so that is why we are contacting you. You don't need to know who we are, but we want to help you to work with Sky. We have checked your background and know of your sincere intentions and excellent qualifications.

We will contact you again in the future, but we will give you some advice. Don't let anyone know about this contact. Don't tell anyone what you find out from us and, most importantly, don't underestimate Sky. The Na'vi are the inhabitants of Pandora, they have an enormously high emotional intelligence. They are in no way comparable to animals.

We will contact you again, until then we wish you every success with Sky.'

Ana read the words intently and almost in disbelief. Had she made contact with a secret organization and was Patra also part of it? She eagerly closed the program with the mail before anyone else entered the room and read the contents. She slowly realized that the secret contact could get her into real trouble. From now on, she had to be on her guard.

But what upset her even more than the fact that she had probably just done something forbidden was the information about the Na'vi. Extremely high emotional intelligence, they said. Something like dolphins or orca whales? Ana shook her head no. The message said that the Na'vi were in no way comparable to animals. It also said inhabitants of Pandora. That didn't sound like animals, but like a species that lived here on Pandora.

Just the thought of Sky being an intelligent sentient being, like herself, made her stomach turn. That would be a terrible realization, but it would fit with her own observations. So Sky really was trying to communicate with her, he really had been trying to tell her something. In a language she didn't understand.

That was good news, but also upsetting. But wait. Ana gathered her thoughts. It was all information from an unknown source. Who knows if it was really true. Maybe it was just a movement of alternative scientists holding on to a theory that had not yet been confirmed. So she had to verify this claim for herself. There were indications that what was said was true, and she would look into it further. If Sky had a certain intelligence that could be compared with human intelligence, she would notice it and find out. For sure.

Ana winced as the electronic door to her workplace opened. Two colleagues came in and Ana was glad that she had already closed the laptop.

"You're still here Miss Novak, are you going to put in a night shift?" It was Mr. Turner.

"Oh, no, certainly not." Ana tried not to let the secretiveness show, or the fact that she was quite frightened.

"The system at the airlock is working again, it was just a small error in the software," said the other colleague. It was the same one who had just asked Turner to help him.

"You should really call it a day now, otherwise you won't catch the last team bus." Turner smiled at her and then turned to the switchgear, which was also in this room.

"Yes, you're right," Ana put the laptop in her bag, which was leaning against the desk, and then stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow. I'm planning to go into the enclosure tomorrow."

"I'll prepare my colleagues so that you don't have to wait that long tomorrow."

"That's kind of you, then I wish you a quiet night shift. See you tomorrow." Ana waved to both men once more and then disappeared from the study on her way to the team bus that would soon be arriving to take her to her dormitory.

**

Ana started work very early the next morning. It had only just got light outside when she got off the team bus to make her way inside the base. Many of the soldiers who got off with her were still tired and didn't seem particularly motivated to relieve their colleagues on shift. Ana, on the other hand, was very motivated. She was determined to get to the bottom of the matter with Sky. What her secret contact had given her as information had to be checked out. Because if it was true, then Ana had to rethink everything she was doing here.

When she had crossed the base while thinking and now arrived in what you could call her department, a tired Mr. Turner was waiting for her.

"Good morning." Ana greeted him and placed her bag on the desk. "Shouldn't your shift be over by now? What are you still doing here?"

"Oh, good morning." The man looked up from a pile of papers, "Yes, I could be in my bed by now, but I was still making preparations with the shift relieving me, you said you wanted to go back to the enclosure today?"

Ana was surprised at how reliable and caring Mr. Turner was. Apparently he was still very worried about Ana after what had happened last time. "Yes, that's right, I'll go back to the enclosure today."

"What exactly are you planning to do? You hadn't told me that yet."

"I just want to get Sky used to my presence, so I don't have anything special planned for now. I'll probably just sit in the enclosure and watch him for a while," she explained.

He looked at her, pondering. "I don't really understand that, but all the better. Try not to get too close to him, so he doesn't attack you again. Even though we'll keep an eye on you in that regard, of course."

"I know that, but you don't need to be afraid, I don't think there will be an incident." Ana reassured Mr. Turner. How she knew that so well, she didn't exactly know herself. It was just something in her gut. After the last time Sky had been so cautious and even passive after the attack, she had a feeling they both had a chance at a good bond. Sometimes you just knew something like that and you had to rely on that instinct.

"All right, then." Mr. Turner stood up and picked up his coffee cup. The smell of coffee already filled the room. "I'll pass it on to my colleague Mr. Miles, then I can call it a day. After all, I still have a night shift waiting for me tonight."

He smiled tiredly at Ana and she smiled back. Mr. Turner always looked as if he hadn't slept for days and she slowly realized that he actually slept very little and almost always worked. In the long run, what he was doing wasn't healthy at all, but he was clearly old enough to decide that for himself.

She hadn't met Mr. Miles, on the other hand. Together, Turner and Ana walked over to the monitoring room, where a large man stood behind Gonzales to watch the screens.

"Miles, I've got our new colleague here, the one in charge of Sky," Turner announced. The tall man turned to look at them.

"Nice to meet you," he walked over to Ana and shook her hand. "You'll have your work cut out for you with Sky, and it's dangerous to say the least."

He looked at her as if he felt sorry for Ana's fate, but Ana didn't find her work terrible at all. She was apparently the only one who had no problem doing this work. In the eyes of the others, it almost seemed like a punishment.

"Don't worry, I'm well trained and qualified for this job," she replied confidently.

"Of course you are, I never doubted it." Miles raised his hands placatingly, apparently he really didn't intend it that way. "I'll support you as best I can with our colleagues, we all look out for each other here."

"Thank you, I've already noticed that. The people working here are really exceptionally reliable," Ana agreed.

"That's also essential for survival here on Pandora, especially when almost everything on Pandora is trying to kill you," he explained and then turned back to the screens where Sky could be seen. "Can you tell me what I need to look out for when you go into the enclosure today?"

Turner interrupted their conversation. "I see you're in good hands, Novak. I'll say goodbye for today then. My well-deserved beauty sleep is calling." He laughed casually and waved to both of them again as he left the department with his coffee cup in his hand.

After giving Turner a friendly wave, Ana turned her attention back to Miles. "I don't have anything special planned. I'm just going to spend some time in the enclosure watching Sky so he gets used to my presence and maybe starts to tolerate it."

Miles looked at her, apparently listening intently. "I'll fit you with a headset so we can get in touch at any time, I think a big radio would only hinder you."

"Yes, that's a good idea, it's easier for me to take notes when I have my hands free."

Miles nodded and then went to a cabinet. When he came back, he had a device in his hand that was attached to his ear. "Put this on your ear, we can hear you through it, Dr. Novak, and you can hear us. It's best if you let us transmit permanently. If you don't, you'll have to keep touching your ear to turn on the sound, which could prove difficult in a dangerous situation."

Ana took the small device from him. "This is where I activate and deactivate the microphone, right?"

Miles nodded: "Let me show you how to properly attach it to your ear." He approached her.

Ana let her colleague do this, a little uncertainly. It was a little unusual for everyone here to be so carefree and close to each other, but she understood the necessity and found the company refreshingly pleasant. She would certainly feel very lonely on Pandora without the friendly contact with her colleagues. Mr. Miles quickly fitted the device to her ear and explained how it worked. Ana had memorized it well so that she could do it on her own next time.

"Good, can you hear me?" said Gonzales, who was sitting at the screen and appeared to have a counterpart there.

Ana nodded. "Clear and distinct. Am I easy to understand?"

Gonzales gave an OK sign with his hand and turned back to the screens.

"Very good, then you can go straight to the enclosure. Sky is already awake," said Miles with satisfaction.

"Very well, I'll just get my things and then I'll make my way to the airlock. I assume they'll be keeping an eye on us?" said Ana as she made her way to the other room to get her things.

"Of course!" she heard Miles say before the automatic door closed behind her.

She took pens and paper from the bag she had placed on the desk. She would make any notes about Sky when she was in the enclosure, she would need all this for that. She found another clipboard in the drawer of the desk, the same one she had used before. She pinned the paper to it and made her way to the airlock. To get there, you had to leave her department again, go down one floor and then come back in from below. All the rooms in her department were connected by the large main corridors of the base.

Her colleagues were already waiting for her at the bottom of the airlock. Ana greeted everyone politely and opened the airlock with her worker's badge. The doors opened while she put on her mask and then she entered. The airlock closed, the pressure equalized and shortly afterwards she was able to enter the enclosure.

As soon as the airlock doors to the enclosure opened, Ana felt her excitement rising. To be honest, she was a little scared. She hadn't completely forgotten the memories of the attack. You couldn't just forget something like that, the shock was deep-seated. However, she tried to overshadow these negative, anxious thoughts with another memory. Sky had very gently taken her hand. She hadn't been afraid of him at that moment. Sky had a sweet side when he wasn't frightened or harassed.

She bravely went forward and immediately heard Mr. Miles' voice in her ear. "Test, can you hear me well?"

Ana activated her microphone by placing her finger on the device on her ear, "Yes, clearly, can you hear me?"

"Positive, take care, we have an eye on you from up here." Miles replied, then the contact ended.

Miles and her other colleagues seemed to be really worried about her. They were all of the opinion that it was far too dangerous to simply confront Sky in the enclosure. Ana couldn't blame any of them.

She walked on attentively, her eyes scanning the large enclosure for Sky. This time, too, she suspected he was by the tree. The thicket, which was probably planted everywhere for Sky's love, made it difficult to keep an overview. Ana nervously clutched the clipboard to her chest and carefully stepped forward.

Sky still hadn't spotted her. She brushed aside tall grass to approach the tree when she heard it rustle behind her. She immediately stood rooted to the spot. There was someone behind her and it could only be Sky.

"Novak behind you, should we intervene?" she heard over the radio.

She carefully reached for the device on her ear, "No, don't do anything," she said quietly and then turned around carefully.

Sky was actually standing behind her. He was upright, standing straight on his legs and looking at her. His face didn't reveal what was going on inside him, his expression was cold and rigid. Almost a little dismissive. But he hadn't attacked yet. That was a good sign.

Ana raised her hands to placate him and made a gentle gesture: "It's all right, I'm not here to hurt you," she said, even though she was aware that Sky didn't understand a word she was saying. Her point was that he could tell from her expression and voice that she was peaceful.

Sky's reddish eyes traveled up and down Ana as if he were inspecting her closely, then he looked her firmly in the eye again. Ana held his gaze, didn't make any hasty movements, but waited patiently to see what happened next. His ear twitched nervously and he also seemed to be waiting to see what Ana would do. When he came to the conclusion that nothing more would happen, he turned away and went to his tree, which was very close by.

Ana breathed a sigh of relief, it really hadn't escalated. "Impressive, Novak," she heard Miles say, and she had to admit that she herself was impressed by how peaceful it had been. She had hoped it would, but there had still been a slight fear that it might escalate.

After Sky had gone ahead, Ana also went to the tree. However, she didn't go to the trunk, where Sky seemed to be doing something, but sat down on a more distant rock. She placed her clipboard on her lap and watched Sky as he worked.

He had crouched down on the ground and seemed to be tying branches together. Fascinated, Ana looked closely. She would love to know why Sky was doing this and what exactly it was supposed to represent. Or maybe it even had a function? So many questions and yet she couldn't communicate with him. The secret message that spoke of high emotional intelligence came to her mind again. When she observed Sky like this, she could almost no longer deny the humanity she saw in him.

Her gaze traveled along his tall figure. His skin was a beautiful soft dark blue color with beautiful dark markings. His body was slender and yet you could see his defined muscles standing out slightly against his skin. Ana picked up her pen and began to draw him, capturing his extraordinary beauty that was like nothing she knew. He was very different from herself and yet she felt more and more that they were not so different. For being an alien, he had nothing in common with those little green men. Nothing like those horror aliens that tore you to pieces. He looked human, he had something... normal. Something she didn't have to get used to. His presence wasn't strange.

They both sat there peacefully, Ana painting Sky and he seemed to be tinkering with something. But then he looked up from his work and over to Ana. She noticed his gaze, but didn't stop. Ana wanted to give him time to take a closer look at her. 

She felt Sky's beautiful eyes resting on her figure and tried to keep her focus on the drawing and not let on that she had noticed Sky looking at her. Then she heard him move. He had gotten up and seemed to be cautiously walking over to her. Ana still pretended that she didn't notice, or at least that it didn't bother her. Which it didn't bother her. In fact, she wasn't afraid. The atmosphere was very peaceful at the moment and Sky just seemed curious.

Slightly crouched, he came over to her carefully, but curiously, until Ana could see Sky next to her out of the corner of her eye. He tried to see what she was drawing on the paper. Then Ana looked up and angled the clipboard so that he could see better without having to get closer. Surprised by this action, he looked up from the paper and into her face. Apparently he was trying to understand why all this was happening, trying to see if Ana was trying to trick him. But Ana just smiled welcomingly at him. She wasn't his enemy, she wanted to become friends with him.

When he was sure that Ana was no harm, he crouched down a little closer to look at the drawing. His gaze rested on the drawing, then he looked up at Ana and then back at the picture.

She waited patiently, giving him time to look at the drawing and not moving at all, as she didn't want to scare him off. Sky looked at Ana once more, then came very close to her and brushed his hand over the paper. Ana immediately noticed that he only had three fingers instead of four, not counting his thumb. She carefully handed Sky the clipboard. He took it just as carefully.

Both of them were very careful with their counterpart because they couldn't assess each other. Nevertheless, the atmosphere between them remained calm. Sky brought the drawing close to him to inspect every line carefully. Ana was sure that he recognized that Ana had painted him.

After Sky had looked at the picture for a while, Ana carefully took it back from him and showed him how she had added something to the drawing with her pen. Sky watched carefully. Then she held the pencil out to him. Would he understand what Ana wanted him to do? Would Sky also add something to the paper? Sky took the pencil uncertainly, his eyes rested on Ana, watchful, anxious to recognize immediately if she was up to something bad.

When he had the pen, Ana held out the clipboard for him to draw something on it. She was trying to see how intelligent he really was, she just had to be sure.

Sky took the pen to the paper and actually started to draw something on it. It was a symbol, he drew it right on the chest, from the drawing Ana had made. A real symbol. Ana could hardly believe her eyes at the coordination and precision with which he drew the symbol on the paper. She held her breath for a moment. Everything she thought she knew seemed to crumble before her eyes. The secret email, everything it had said. They were right! There was no going back now. Ana had to find out more and try to deepen the secret contact. How much more was there that she didn't know about?

Sky put the pen back in Ana's hand and looked at her as if he was waiting to see how she would react. But Ana didn't know herself yet. How should she proceed now that she knew she was dealing with a higher intelligent species. One that very probably had a consciousness.

Sky's calm, wide eyes reassured her again. For now she couldn't do anything different, now in this situation she could only work with what she had.

Ana pointed at herself with her finger and then said clearly. "Anastasia Novak."  

Sky looked at her warily. She returned his gaze and considered. "Ana." she then said, which would certainly be easier for the Na'vi if he really intended to speak to her.

Then she pointed at Sky and looked at him questioningly. She hoped he would understand what she wanted from him. But Sky remained silent. She pointed at herself again, said her name and then pointed at Sky again. But he didn't respond this time either. Somehow, Ana had the feeling that he had understood what she wanted from him, but wasn't yet open-minded enough to respond. Instead of answering her, he moved away from her again. Apparently Sky also needed to think about a few things that had just happened. Just like herself.

The worst thing was that Ana couldn't talk to anyone about it for now. Somehow she had the feeling that if the wrong people found out, Sky could get into trouble. She got up and took her things with her. She now felt strange continuing to call Sky Sky. It didn't feel right. He had certainly been given that name by a human and she was sure that if the Na'vi were an intelligent species, Sky surely had a real name, a name he had been given by a mother or a father.

Lost in thought, she walked back through the enclosure to the airlock. She wanted to find out more about Sky, where he came from, what had happened before all this. "I'm coming out now," she told Miles as she entered the airlock, which was opened for her. A lot had happened today that Ana needed to think

Tag List: @twisteduniverse5 @yukilaaw @mooniequeen (If you want to get added, comment it under the post)

[picklebunbun]

જ⁀➴₊⊹ 🎀 dazai x male! reader

๋࣭ ⭑

velvet ring

big thief ♥︎

⇄ ◁◁ I I ▷▷ ↻

⁰⁰ ²⁵ ━━●━━━━━━━━ ⁰² ⁰⁸

๋࣭ ⭑

⟢ male! reader, can be read as trans or cis, masculine pronouns

⟢ genre: angst, like MAJOR angst, bittersweet? ending {up to your interpenetration}, so a bit of fluff

⟢ cw: implied homophobia, verbally fighting, crying, self deprecation, dazai isn’t good at communicating, implied su1cide and maybe OOC

⟢ fandom: BSD

⟢ romantic, dazai and [name] are engaged in this

summary: major fight happened between dazai and his fiancée, about him not outwardly expressing his feelings, [name] feels like he’s walking on eggshells around him. Dazai comforts [name] while he’s bawling his eyes out, everything is okay after that

[angel’s note👼🪽: taking a break from the usual requests because I really wanted to do bsd, sorry, also, this is based off my oc with dazai (I made them have marital problems) I wanted to do very angsty stuff too]

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒

it was the dead of night, only darkness filled the room, the loud silence of the couple only made the somber attitude worse.

there were days like this were they wouldn’t talk to each other, usually it was after a fight, but not this time. What else could they talk about though? It wasn’t unknown that Dazai could read you like an open book, his intellect was truly terrifying. As for you, it’s hard to talk with your partner when they won’t communicate with you

it often made you sad though, Dazai had no problems talking about himself to his friends, or anyone. The most frustrating part is that he makes light of it whenever you try and talk about it with him. Were things just different when you’re engaged? Maybe he was just on edge because you were both men , but Dazai didn’t seem like the type to care about those things. Maybe it was just you, you did always feel a bit insecure just by being with his fiancée, Dazai was certainly known to be a “playboy”. Being engaged should mean that he ultimately chose you right? I mean, sure, they legally can’t get married but they were basically at that stage

it just made everything so frustrating all the time, how can you expect a healthy relationship without communication?! That’s like a key component of a relationship!

“..hey, [name], are you awake..?”

“….yeah.. I can’t sleep”

“me either.. c’mere for a second”

you looked at him ,confused, until Dazai lazily wrapped his arms around you and you got the idea. The {h/c}-ette hugged him as well, it was pretty easy to tell if Dazai wanted to cuddle. It just felt weird, almost as if he was cuddling with a stranger, or at least that’s what it felt like. Dazai used to say how you had this overwhelming warmth about you, you’re not quite sure if he still thought that now, it was okay I guess, it’s not like you needed the constant praising.

it was a beautiful night though, the last quarter moon illuminated the deepest of shadows in the room, although, it could never hide the amount of darkness around you and Dazai. Even while being wrapped around eachother, you know deep down that you couldn’t feel warmth in this relationship, but little moments like this were nice.

Whenever the moon was half lit, or more specifically, the 3rd quarter moon was when Dazai most liked it , when you asked “why? Why not when it’s fully lit or fully dark?”, Dazai always said the same thing “it’s like how Wednesdays are halfway through the week, the last quarter moon gives me hope for another month, just waiting for a break so I can relax”. Sometimes his messages were so cryptic, you could never really tell if he was going to do something to seriously harm himself or he just says things cause of how meaningful he thinks they are.

Dazai went rambling on about his day at work, you listened, but there was something at the back of your mind. You figured to tell him in the morning, for now, it was time to shut your eyes, there was no point in staying awake now since you could hear the soft snoring that was Dazai’s slumber.

-𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

“well, I’m off to work! Bye, my love!”

“wait, Dazai… can I ask you something?”

Dazai turned around, he knew what was about to come, whenever you two fought you set off like a firecracker, completely blinded by how you were feeling, it’s entirely justified too. Usually, Dazai would’ve thought about this in advance, but what could he really say? Expressing himself seriously was not an option, so he’d just have to deal with your red hot anger.

“hm..?”

“do.. you.. hate me?”

“w-what?! Of course not! I could never hate you, I’m engaged to you! How could you think that?”

“you just never talk to me, you talk more to your co-workers than you’re own fiancée!”

“maybe I should get married to them instead them, heh..”

he tried to make a joke, you did not like that

“are you kidding me?! You’re joking about this? Dazai! This isn’t funny! I’m tired of you not talking to me!”

“woah, okay, calm do-“

“HOW THE HELL CAN I CALM DOWN? IT’S LIKE I’M LIVING WITH SOMEONE I DON’T KNOW, YOU DON’T TELL ME ANYTHING!”

“oh, I don’t know [name]! You’re screaming in my face right now, maybe that’s why!”

“THAT’S THE ONLY WAY I CAN BE HEARD BY YOU, DON’T YOU THINK THAT’S A BIT WEIRD, I HAVE TO SCREAM AT MY FIANCÉE BECAUSE HE JUST WON’T LISTEN.”

“YOU NEVER LET ME TALK, YOU JUST TURN IT INTO A BIG ARGUMENT.”

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TALK ABOUT ANYWAYS? YOU NEVER TALK TO ME, I BARELY EVEN KNOW WHAT YOUR FAVORITE DRINK IS, I HAD TO HEAR IT FROM ATSUSHI, ARE YOU KIDDING ME.”

your eyes were getting cloudier by the second, it was frustrating talking to him. Your throat felt like there was a lump of air stuck in the middle, your eyes hurt from the stinging tears that were forming. Your voice was cracking as you felt yourself about to break down

“IS THIS IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT? THE FACT THAT I CAN’T COMMUNICATE?! YOU’VE BEEN GOING FOR MY THROAT FOR THAT?!”

“I-I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU FOR MONTHS.. you never listen.”

“well, you ju- woah woah woah, [name]..?”

you broke out into violent sobs, you couldn’t keep on fighting, it was so exhausting just screaming all the time.

“hey, hey, hey, hey, calm down.. why did you suddenly start crying?”

when he asked you, you couldn’t stop weeping even more, everything was just building up and then you just let it all out. You were holding your chest while you cried, it felt like you just got a heart attack, well, at least that’s what it felt like, really, your heart was just shattered like it meant nothing to Dazai. He loved you, your sure he does, but lately it just feels like the more distant he seems, the more distant his loving embrace feels, the more colder it feels when he says “I love you”, like he’s forced to say it.

finally, your teary screams were reduced to nothing more than quiet sniffles, an occasional whimper here and there. You seemed composed enough to form a complete sentence, so Dazai asked you, in the softest tone he has

“why were you crying..?”

“…”

you looked at him, your eyes were wet and so were your cheeks, a red gradient formed around your eyes and nose from wailing so much. You looked around, not wanting to see his face, avoiding any eye contact. The room was so hushed, you could hear the pitter -patter of a bug if you wanted too. It’s no use, he probably wouldn’t leave until you told him.

“.. sometimes I feel like you don’t care about me enough to talk about your feelings, I just wish you would talk to me instead of making jokes, it makes me feel humiliated, like my feelings don’t matter, and then you get mad and argue with me when I don’t know how you feel!”

Dazai stayed silent, not knowing what to say, or even what to think.

“is that it? You’re not going to speak to me?”

silence again

“..okay, I’m just going to get some fresh air..”

the door slammed closed, Dazai was left there to soak in his own feelings. Honestly, the arguments before seemed minuscule compared to this one. He wasn’t a sensitive man, but everything felt so overwhelming, he couldn’t help but feel teardrops staining his cheeks. Dazai always took advantage of the relationship, ignoring your previous arguments, but now if he kept this up, he would lose you, and he’d have no one again.

-𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

cricket, cricket, cricket

that’s all you hear at night. At first, Dazai would keep you up with useless conversations about philosophy, to which you lightly punch his elbow, but now it just felt so lonely. Back to back, not looking at each other, laying in bed, you could never face each other after that, you’d have to deal with it tomorrow, but right now, you’re just tired of everything

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Of Ghosts and Sparrows

A Festival of the Lost @d2artevents gift for @theavocadojam featuring their OC Kieran!

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there (Ao3 has chapters, Tumblr is all in one post.)

"Kieran," Eris Morn turned from the Lectern of Enchantment to face the approaching Hunter, staring at a point to the left of his face.  Kieran had not announced his presence nor told Eris who he was.  They were surrounded by other guardians on their way to request bounties from Eris.  Yet she moved directly to him without looking at him, as though she sensed who he was with otherworldly awareness.

"Thank you for coming so quickly," she intoned.  "I have need of your particular skills."  

She turned back to stare above the heads of the other guardians waiting for her attention.  

"Please.  Go."  She waved her hand in a cryptic motion above her Ahamkara bone.  "Return another time."  

Several of them turned away without a word.  One Titan's shoulders slumped.  They looked as though they were about to say something and then they transmatted away.

Eris stepped close and clasped Kieran Nor's arm.  The grip of her fingers through her glove felt almost like claws.   

"This is a matter requiring considerable discretion, and has the potential to involve significant risk.  I trust this is still acceptable to you?"

"For you, Eris?"  Kieran answered, warmly.  "Of course." 

Eris sighed deeply in relief.  "Come then.  Let us begin."

She muttered for a few moments and then a Hive portal appeared in the air before them both.  She held out her hand.  Kieran took it and they both stepped through.  

Kieran was not a nervous, twitchy type, but stepping through a Hive portal with no idea what was on the other side was always a bit of a nerve-wracking experience.  It was therefore quite a relief when the other side of the portal turned out to be nothing more ominous than the front of Spider's bar in the last city.  Not Kieran's favourite place, but better than a lot of the alternatives.

Eris paused at the threshold, placing her hand in a pocket at her side.  She seemed to be considering something and then she nodded, as though agreeing with someone Kieran could not see.  

"First, we will need information," she informed Kieran.  "An activity which may prove..."  Eris sighed and squared her shoulders as though steeling herself for something difficult.  "...vexing."

"Nevertheless," she continued, "it must be done.  And quickly.  I prefer your assistance here more for... emotional support than anything.  It would be... problematic... if the Spider were to not survive my inquiries, no matter how pleasurable that outcome might be for so many of us."

"...and if that doesn't convince him," they heard the Spider's voice as they approached.  "I have methods of... sweetening the deal, as you might say."  He was speaking to someone not physically present via a comms device.  "No! No! Nothing so barbaric as that, my friend.  Let's just say... it can be beneficial to be cooperative, for the future of ones hatchlings.  So much better to be contributing to their education rather than... the alternative."  The Eliksni crime boss chortled menacingly.

Eris made a low growling sound in the back of her throat as she walked closer.  Kieran let her take the lead.

The Spider's laughter cut off abruptly and he began coughing as Eris approached.  

"Eris Morn," he addressed her between coughing.  "To what do I owe the... uh... pleasure of your visit?"

Eris stared at a point to the left of the Spider's head.  "One of our... mutual associates recently ceased responding to communications with me while in the middle of a mission involving... the acquisition of... an item.  An item they previously consulted with you regarding locating.  I need to know where he went." 

"Ah, I'm afraid I have no idea what you mean." Spider leaned back, clearly amused.  

Beneath his helmet, Kieran ground his teeth.  

"All of my business dealings are registered with the Vanguard authorities." Spider said with a tone that could only be described as... slimy.  "Anything anyone might be doing for me will be recorded in their shipping logs."

Eris stepped closer.  

"Interactions with this particular individual would not be recorded in the shipping logs for your... businesses," Eris spoke calmly.  "He is a very private person.  A... law abiding citizen."  She paused briefly so the implication of her words could sink in.  "He... pays his taxes." 

"Oh!  That one!  Yes... yes of course... but I am sure you understand... as this is a private citizen, I can't go around discussing his uh... personal business.  Especially with a member of the Vanguard special forces, you see.  That would be... very uncouth of me, no?"  He chortled to himself at his own joke.

Eris stepped closer.  Spider's two personal guards stepped closer as well.  Eris glared at each one in turn.  They both took a step back.  

"I am not coming to you as a member of the Vanguard," she continued.  "I am coming to you as his friend.  He is in need of assistance.  The nature of his transactions with you need not be disclosed.  Simply his whereabouts."

The Spider coughed again.  No.  He was laughing.  "That one can take care of himself, my dear.  And if he somehow doesn't?  Ha!  We're all a lot better off."  

Eris stepped closer.  

Spider stopped laughing.

"Look," Spider said quietly, leaning down toward Eris, his voice condescending.  He held out an empty three-fingered hand toward her.  "Information isn't free, my overly fleshy three-eyed friend.  Surely there is... something you can... offer me... for my trouble."  The Spider's four eyes looked Eris up and down, his fingertips following his eyes in the air as he chortled to himself.

The temperature of the room dropped by several degrees.  Kieran felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.  

Eris leaned even closer to the Spider and placed her free hand in his.  

Kieran could not hear the exchange but the Spider tensed and he moved to lean back, away from Eris.  Her eyes flashed and the ball of Soulfire in her hand began to rotate.  

She gripped the Spider's hand tightly as he tried to pull away, drawing her hand down and forcing him to remain near enough to hear her whispers.  

The Spider's four eyes went wide as she continued muttering in his ear.  The ghost shell he was holding in another hand fell to the floor with a loud clatter.  

Eris' lips continued moving, whispering something only the Spider could hear, her hand beginning to twist his beyond the normal range of motion for an Eliksni wrist.

"He's on the Tangled Shore!" the Spider blurted out, his voice tinged with panic.  "I'll send you the coordinates I gave him!  Please!  Please just leave me alone!"

The Ahamkara bone ceased its rotation.  Eris released the Spider's trapped hand and stepped back.  "Thank you," she said tersely, finally speaking at a volume everyone else could hear, then she turned to Kieran.  "We can leave now."  

Kieran looked from Eris to the Spider, breathing heavily and shaking in his chair, visibly cringing away from the three-eyed woman as Eris muttered something in the guttural language of the Hive.  Another portal appeared.  The guards flinched and backed away from it.  

Spider said something in Eliksni as they walked through.  Kieran wasn't certain if it was a curse or an appeal to some higher power for protection.  It may have been both.

***

The other end of the portal was neither the Moon nor the Tangled Shore. Kieran wasn't sure what he's been expecting, but the Gambit ready room on the Derelict wasn't it. 

Eris walked quickly to a door that was always kept sealed during Gambit matches.  The door opened immediately upon her approach. 

"Whoa." Blinx appeared at Kieran's shoulder. "Is the Drifter  going to help us rescue this person too?" the ghost asked. 

"The answer to your question is highly dependent upon his level of consciousness and state of injury when we find him." Eris intoned. 

"Wait," Blinx asked his eye flickering, "You mean to tell us this rescue operation is *for* the Drifter?" 

Eris turned partway down the corridor and stared at the wall. "Is that a problem, little light?" 

"No, Eris," Kieran answered. "That's fine. Of course we'll help. We're just not used to the Drifter needing rescuing." 

"Nor is he, I suspect. But I am certain he will be grateful for it.  Now follow. Time is of the essence." 

Eris made her way through the ship with the ease of someone who was completely familiar with it.  Strange heaps of unidentifiable junk were piled up in odd assortments, visible through the doorways of various rooms.  They walked through a surprisingly clean and well-kept galley area and then past what had to have been a workshop, although from what Kieran could see in the brief parts of it he saw, it was a workspace which seemed to be attempting the violation of every known safety protocol simultaneously.  

Moments later they were on the Derelict's small makeshift bridge. 

Kieran eyed the kit-bashed controls and clumsily soldered circuitry, noting one panel that was occasionally spitting sparks. 

"Can you fly this ship, Eris?" he asked, somewhat concerned. 

"It would be madness to try," Eris answered with a wave of her hand.  "The Drifter's... modifications are far from standard.  However, there is one other individual who knows how to operate this ship."

She reached into her pocket and then withdrew her hand 

A strange ghost lay shuddering in her palm.  Its badly welded shell twitched as it rose and floated to the controls. 

"Is that..."  Kieran's voice trailed off as he watched it.

"Yes," Eris answered.

"I've never seen the Drifter's ghost."  Kieran told her.

"Most have not.  He prefers it that way.  However, circumstances are extenuating at the moment and I am certain he would prefer this to the alternative.  When I sent my request to you, I noted how highly I valued your competence and your discretion.  I will hold you to that."  She turned to Blinx. "Both of you."

"Of course, Eris."  Blinx said, eyeing the Drifter's ghost from Kieran's shoulder suspiciously.

"Have the Spider's coordinates arrived, little light?" Eris asked the ghost.  

It made no sound as it turned to face her, but its red eye-light blinked blue and then red again.  

Eris nodded.  "Proceed."

The Drifter's ghost hovered over the controls and expanded its shell, rotating slowly.  

From this view it was clear to Kieran that the small ghost's shell was amalgamated from the shells of several other ghosts.  Something told both Kieran and Blinx that those shells were probably not uninhabited when whatever had been done to the Drifter's ghost had occurred.

The Derelict lurched and made a low grinding noise.  Eris watched dispassionately, cradling her glowing orb.

"Is it... supposed to sound like that?"  Blinx asked. 

"I do not know," Eris intoned.

The Drifter's ghost emitted a single tone and turned to Eris.  Its light blinked blue and then red again.  It turned back to the controls.  

"Apparently, yes." Eris translated.   

Engines that sounded like they were about to die began to rev up and then, rattling, the ship began to move.  Then it moved faster.  And then it moved very fast.  

A loud banging erupted from somewhere deep within the vessel.  In front of them the Reef came rapidly into view.  Moments later they were in a stable position above the Tangled Shore.  

"What... powers this thing?" Blinx asked.  

"I have no idea," Eris replied.  "The Drifter would undoubtedly advise you that you do not wish to know.  However, you may ask him when we find him, provided he is in a condition conducive to responding."

The Drifter's misshapen ghost emitted the same tone it had before and flew to a console next to where Eris was standing.  A projection of the terrain on the surface appeared with a large red splotch covering over half of it.

"I see," she said solemnly.

"Can the Drifter's ghost lead us to him?"  Kieran asked.

"That would be ill-advised." Eris said.  "I was entrusted with him for a reason.  Both he and I suspect the Drifter is in a darkness zone which would prevent resurrection and... when I lost contact with him, he was not alone.  Based upon the partial conversation I heard, I suspect he may have run afoul of some of his... former associates."

"You were talking with him when he lost contact?"  Blinx asked.

"Yes."

"No wonder you're worried about him."  Kieran said.

"Indeed."

The Drifter's ghost flew back to Eris' open hand.  She placed it once more in her pocket.  

"Prepare yourself," she intoned.  "The transmat is... firing."

***

Kieran materialized just outside of an abandoned building on the Tangled Shore.  

"I have mapped out a route which should bring you to the coordinates Spider has provided," Eris spoke through the communicator in his ear. "That will be where he started.  It is my hope that we will be able to intuit his route once you arrive."

Kieran nodded and hopped onto his Sparrow.  

Eris' path was winding, but uneventful.  A few of the turns were quite sharp and there were several jumps, easy enough for someone as good on a Sparrow as Kieran, and very comfortable at the quick but relaxed speeds they were traveling.  

"You know," Blinx said after another long but relatively gentle jump over a gap, "With all the jumps and turns and interesting terrain, if it weren't in an active war zone, this would make a fantastic Sparrow Racing track."

Kieran nodded.

"While I appreciate your enthusiasm, little ghost," Eris answered in Kieran's ear, "Please, both of you, remember to keep your wits about you.  We do not know what tricks may await you ahead."

Kieran's bright red Sparrow slid to a stop between the wreckage of two Ketches.  The door in front of them was sideways from its original configuration and looked like it would lead them to one of the main areas of the larger ship.

"All right, Eris." Blinx said through the comms.  "We're at a locked door but I can't seem to get a read on the security protocols for it at all.  It must have some really complicated shielding.  Nothing's coming up on my scans at all.  This might take a while."

"It is open."  Eris said.  "You can proceed through."

The mechanism panel had a small red light glowing, clearly indicating access was denied.  

Kieran and Blinx looked at each other and then Kieran pushed on the door.  It swung open soundlessly.

"That's clever," Kieran said with a smile.

"The panel is... fake?"  Blinx asked, incredulous.

"The Drifter calls it... security through obscurity..." Eris intoned in his ear.  "His tricks are often very banal but... still manage to be remarkably effective at times." 

Kieran pulled the door shut as Blinx illuminated the area.  They were in a short hallway.  The other end was a crumpled mess.  

"Are you seeing this, Eris?"

"Yes.  Look slightly to the right.  Can that panel be moved?"

Kieran lifted up some debris and sure enough, they were greeted by an open air vent.  

"We sure do spend an awful lot of time crawling through air vents." Blinx said quietly as Kieran made his way through.

"A common hazard of the profession.  I did so as well when I was a guardian."  

The other end of the vent had no covering and they were able to crawl out without issue into the wreckage of the ship's bridge.  

Long dead Eliksni corpses in various states of crumbling decay lay around them.  

"What happened here?"  Kieran asked.

"Mutiny," Eris said in their ears.  "A betrayal long since past.  Move swiftly, Kieran.  You are close now.  Be wary."

There was a dim light up ahead.  As Kieran rounded a corner, he understood why.  The top (or rather the side) of the ship was completely gone.  Cool light splashed down onto the bones of the gutted Ketch cargo bay from the stars above.  Vehicles and crates were strewn around.  Some were mostly intact, others were in pieces or simply piles of twisted metal.  A hole in the other end of the Ketch opened onto a stretch of hard rock butting up against a sheer cliff face.

"Maybe he went another way?" Blinx asked hopefully.

"No."  Eris' voice was gentle but insistent.  "Look closely.  The Drifter is a creature of obfuscation and guile.  It is likely his trail has been obscured by his own hand."

Kieran scanned what was left of the large space and then tensed, his scout rifle in his hands ready to fire.  An eerie flicker in the corner of his eye.  When he turned to look, it was gone.  He shook his head.

"Did you see that?" he asked Blinx.

"See what?" 

"For a moment I thought I saw something but now it's gone."

"Marauder?"

"No, it was pale and... almost glowing?  Sort of Eliksni-shaped?  Never seen anything like it."  Kieran walked toward the spot he'd been pointing at and then gave an exasperated sigh.

"What now?"  Blinx asked.

Kieran groaned.  "If there's one thing I hate, it's improperly parked forklifts."  

Kieran pointed at the Eliksni version of a forklift.  It was oddly intact and was on a piece of wall which had buckled inward, causing the forklift to be tilted at an odd angle.  

"This whole place is trashed and we're concerned about how a forklift is parked?" Blinx asked.

Kieran walked toward it.  "Look at this. It can't have fallen that way.  Someone parked it like this after the crash.  And they parked it on an incline.  You do not park forklifts on an incline.  They can roll.  It's a massive hazard.  Whoever did this has no regard for safety."  He climbed into the driver's seat with a sigh.  

"You're not seriously repositioning it now, are you?"  Blinx asked, incredulous.

"It bothers me."  Kieran said.

"Hey, that's weird," Blinx said over his shoulder.  "Someone's already hotwired it."

Kieran took the exposed wires and tapped them together, starting the vehicle.  

A loud and insistent beeping echoed through the wreckage of the ship as Kieran began backing the forklift up.

"What are you doing?" Eris asked through the comms.  "This noise will carry far!  It will give away your position."

Kieran got out and stepped away from the forklift and examined what it had been parked on top of.

"We found where he went, Eris."  Blinx answered, illuminating a gaping hole in the floor.  

"Hmmm... Very well.  Go swiftly.  We do not know what attention you may have attracted from the surrounding area."

Kieran jumped down onto a rock ledge that was barely visible in the darkness below.

***

The hollowed out area beneath the wreckage of the Ketch contained a lot of debris.  As they continued through, Kieran asked Eris.  "Why haven't the Eliksni salvaged this yet?  There's a lot here."

"Fear." Eris answered.  "The location, and its history, is known to be cursed.  There are stories that any who enter do not leave alive."

"Eris, don't you think we should have known that before coming here?"  Blinx' light flickered.

"It is baseless superstition.  You have nothing to fear from the ghosts of a past that is not even yours, but be cautious.  You are close, now."

Kieran paused, his foot in the air.  Then he stepped back.  

"What is it?"  Blinx asked and then hovered down at knee-height to look.  "Oh wow.  That's devious.  It's a tripwire grenade but the laser has been disabled.  It's using an actual tripwire.  Pretty much invisible in this light.  

"Sounds like Drifter," Kieran said.

"Yes," Eris agreed in his ear.

Kieran stepped over it and Blinx continued to scan the environment as they went.

"Scorch marks."  Blinx said, quietly.

"That is to be expected at a crash site," Eris intoned.

"Yes but, these are recent," Kieran said, placing a hand on some blasted metal embedded in the rock.  "Still warm.  Solar energy."

"And this metal is shattered, as though it were made very cold and brittle just before something impacted it."  Blinx added.

"Stasis," Eris said in Kieran's ear.

Kieran nodded.  

Moments later they found the bodies.  Eight of them.  Seven were dressed entirely in black, most had been downed with headshots.

One lay apart from the others, dressed in green clothes with distinctive fur-covered and spiked pauldrons.  

"Found him!"  Kieran told Eris as he knelt beside the Drifter.

Then Kieran very still as the barrel of an extremely familiar hand cannon pressed up under his chin.  He raised both of his hands slowly.

One eye swollen shut, one eye half open, his face a mask of blood.  The Drifter looked up at Kieran and brushed his finger lightly on the trigger of Trust.  "Who the hell are you?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.  

"We're here to help, Drifter."  Blinx said from behind Keiran while keeping a respectful distance.  "It's Kieran and Blinx.  Do you remember us?"

They were all briefly bathed in a malachite-green glow from somewhere behind them nearby.

"Shiny... Red... Daito cape...Hung Jury... and... my gun.  Yeah.  Ok."  The Drifter's hand relaxed and he pointed the hand cannon away from Kieran.  "The hell are you doing out here?"

"I sent them," Eris intoned as she knelt next to Kieran.

"Moondust?" the Drifter's voice creaked.  "Izzat you?"  He squinted with the one eye he could see through.

"Yes," she answered.  "How badly are you hurt?"

"Uh... Pretty bad."

The Drifter's ghost appeared next to Eris and emitted its single tone.  

"That won't work here," the Drifter said to his ghost.  "Good thing too, or those assholes would'a got back up again too."  He pointed to the other bodies nearby.  

Eris sat still for a moment, muttering something unintelligible and then sighed deeply.   

"It is as I suspected.  I was able to track you externally through Kieran in order to make a portal here but it closed immediately behind me.  I cannot get a lock on the Derelict from this location to teleport us out.  We will need to make our way out on foot until we are clear from whatever is interfering."

Eris began to mutter and scratch something into the ground around them with a sharp stone.

"What are you doing?"  Kieran asked.

"Stabilizing him," Eris answered.  

"You can heal people with Hive magic?" Blinx asked, in awe.

"No,"  Eris answered. "Nothing about the Hive is healing.  But, this can help to fortify him until we get somewhere where his ghost can use its light." 

"You using Hive magic on me again, Moondust?" 

"Are you complaining?"  Eris asked.

"Nope.  Last time was fun."

"Ugh."

He grinned and then looked over to Kieran and Blinx.  "I fell off a cliff and she levitated me to keep me from breakin' my neck.  Hangin' around a three-eyed witch has its benefits."

"Tsch." Eris made the sound dismissively.

"What happened here?" Kieran asked while Eris worked.  

"So... Spider got intel on this place," the Drifter began.  "It was hidden by an anomaly and that anomaly went away.  No idea why.  Didn't ask.  Maybe should have.  Anyway, there's a thing here that means a lot to some people.  Spider sold me the details and I came out to get it.  But... I'm guessin' I wasn't the only one Spider sold that info to.  Which is something he and I will need to have a little chat about later.  Anywho, some old uh... associates of mine apparently either knew what I was after, or knew I was after it."

Eris continued muttering and scratching as the Drifter talked to Kieran.

"They came here but they didn't know where to look," he explained.  "We uh... talked a bit... came to an agreement that I'd show 'em where the good stuff was as long as I got the one thing I came for.  Then, of course, they didn't hold up their end of the bargain.  Which... is only fair since I wasn't planning on holdin' up my end neither.  Wasn't expectin' the vengeful ghosts, though."

"Vengeful ghosts?" Blinx asked, looking around, worried.

"Yeah.  I dunno where they went but they sure didn't want their stuff plundered.  They were weirdly fine with me.  But those jerks," he pointed at the bodies, "figured that since the ghosts weren't comin' after me, they must be somehow workin' for me, so they opened fire."

"When you say ghosts.  Do you mean like me?"  Blinkx asked

"Nope."

"Do you mean Scorn?"  Kieran asked.

"Nope.  Ghost-ghosts.  Dead Eliksni. Spooky shit."

Eris sighed.  "You did not see ghosts.  I have done what I can, but you are still quite badly injured and it is likely making you delusional."

"I mean yeah, sure, maybe, but this was before the firefight."

"Delusions can affect one's memory of events," Eris told him.  "Hold still a moment while I immobilize your leg.  It is broken in several places."  Stasis filled Eris' hands and she encased the Drifter's left leg in crystal from the ankle to the hip.  

"I saw ghosts, Moondust.  They were there.  I dunno why you think they weren't.  You talk to dead people all the time."

"It's quite different."

Kieran and Blinx watched them bicker with quiet amusement.

"Is it?  This is like that time you said the pumpkin heads didn't exist... when I saw 'em when I was running tactical on haunted lost sectors."

Eris sighed again.  "I said that because the Headless Ones are a myth.  They do not exist."

"We havin' this argument again?  Right now?" the Drifter asked, almost seeming to draw strength from the opportunity to irritate Eris.  "They do exist.  I saw 'em.  Glint saw 'em.  Eido saw 'em.  Lots of guardians have seen 'em.  Hell, even Immaru saw 'em."

"Immaru's endorsement does not help your case," Eris intoned.

"Kieran?" the Drifter asked, "Surely you've done Haunted Lost Sectors before.  You've seen pumpkin heads right?  Back me up here."  

Before Kieran could answer there was a loud explosion near the entrance to the area they were in under the Ketch.

"Oh hey, that's my tripwire!" the Drifter said cheerfully.

"We are not alone," Eris said ominously.  "Do your 'ghost-ghosts' also set off tripwires?"

"Nope."  

"We should go," Blinx said quietly.  

***

They heard scurrying sounds approaching them.  Kieran stood, weapons ready.  Several Screebs scuttled over the wreckage near where they'd entered.  

Kieran began shooting.  

The Screebs exploded in clusters like loud, deadly, bubble wrap, leaving behind splotches of Dark Ether.  

"Good thing you brought him," the Drifter said.  "He's a great shot."  

"I am aware," Eris answered tersely as she helped the Drifter to stand.  

Eris and the Drifter hobbled farther into the wreckage under the Ketch as Kieran walked backwards while following them, gunning down Scorn as they approached with his Hung Jury scout rifle.

"Where are they coming from?" Blinx asked.  "And why now?"

"They were likely alerted to our presence from the noise made when the forklift was moved," Eris called out over the Drifter's shoulder.

"Hey Drifter," Kieran called back while reloading.  "You have a way out of here other than where all the Scorn are piling in?"  

"Nope!"

"That's a lot of Scorn," Blinx said, his voice worried.  "I don't think we have enough ammunition to shoot our way out."

"Oh great!" Kieran said, gunning down two Raiders and a Ravager as he continued backing up.  "Any other ideas?"

"Impossible," Eris said quietly behind him.  

"I told you!" the Drifter's voice was weirdly gleeful. "Now do you believe me?"

Kieran glanced back to see what they were talking about and felt his skin crawl.  A pale apparition of an Eliksni captain shimmered before them.  It floated in the air and raised a ghostly Arc blade, using it to point at a hole in the rock which was partially obscured by a twisted metal door.   

Kieran returned his focus to what was in front of him, continuing to fire at the oncoming Scorn.  "That a way out?"

"I dunno, hero," the Drifter called back, "but it's better than here.  Let's go!"

Eris peered at the ghost while she helped the Drifter limp through the hole.  

"Ether tanks!" the Drifter called out once he was through the entrance.  "I like it!"  

Sure enough, as soon as he'd cleared enough Scorn to turn and run after them through the hole, Kieran saw a pile of Ether tanks just inside what looked like a hallway from the crashed Ketch above them.  There was also a ramp leading up to another sideways corridor.  

"You know what to do with that, right hotshot?" the Drifter called out from farther ahead.

"Hell yeah," Kieran grinned and, backing into the second doorway.  He pulled out his own copy of Trust and fired a Solar round into the Ether tanks.   

The explosion rocked the Ketch.  

Kieran peeked around the doorway as the smoke cleared.  The opening they'd come through was now effectively closed off with wreckage and rubble.  

"Why is it assisting us," Eris asked, as she helped the Drifter to follow the Eliksni ghost.  

Kieran joined them as the Drifter pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle from his back pocket.  "Probably because she knows I'm gettin' this back to where it belongs."

The cloth had a distinctive, yet unfamiliar pattern embroidered on it and it shimmered strangely.    The Drifter unfolded it with care.  Within it was a necklace, worked out of some metal Kieran could not immediately identify, containing several unknown stones.  

"What is it?" Eris asked.  

The apparition hovered nearby.

"This... is an Eliksni heirloom," the Drifter explained quietly.  "Made in Riis."  

"The Eliksni homeland." Kieran said, looking over his shoulder.

"Yup, but even more important is the cloth around it.  That's a eggcloth.  Now, I don't pretend to know the full significance of this but the reason it's so important is because of whose eggcloth it is."  

"His mother," Eris whispered.

"Yup," the Drifter said quietly, nodding at the ghost.  The ghost bowed slightly back.  The Drifter folded the necklace up in the cloth again carefully.  

"But... how does she know?" Eris asked.  "Why does she trust us?  We are human."

"I have no idea," the Drifter said.  "But she knows."

The ghost hovered closer to them and then reached out one of its four hands. One of its three fingers pointed to the Drifter's left wrist.

The Drifter leaned back against what seemed like a wall, but which was actually the floor of the sideways corridor they were standing in, and took his arm off from around Eris' neck.  He pulled off his gauntlet and then gave a short laugh, pushing up his sleeve so that Eris, Kieran and Blinx could see.  

Around his wrist were several colourful braided strings attached to a flat bead with the house of light symbol carved into it.  

"Eido's friendship bracelet?" Eris asked, confusion in her voice..

"Made one for you too, did she?" the Drifter asked her.

"Yes," Eris said, pulling off her own gauntlet and placing her wrist next to the Drifter's, showing a similar braided bracelet with a nearly identical bead in the middle.  "The children in the last city taught her how to make them and she tied it on to me herself."  

Kieran gave one more glance back toward the caved-in entrance to make sure no more Scorn were approaching before he, too, pulled off the armour from his arm to display a similar trinket wrapped around his own wrist as well.

"Me too."

Eris tilted her head.  "But... why does this matter?"

"Well, if I had to guess," the Drifter said, replacing his gauntlet.  "Our friendly ghost here is the owner of the necklace, and the eggcloth.  Which would make this fine incorporeal lady..."

"Innaks," Eris intoned as she looked upon the ghost.  "Eido's grandmother." 

"But, isn't Eido adopted?" Blinx asked.

"I don't think that matters to the Eliksni," the Drifter answered.  "Pretty sure this is a love thing and an honour thing.  And Eido is Mithrax's daughter in every way that counts."

The ghost nodded and then pointed to a doorway with one of its Arc knives.  A moment later it flickered out of sight.  

"Look, I don't know about you," the Drifter said, "but grandma's two for two at this point, and I'm inclined to believe she's leadin' us outta here."

"I concur," Eris said, lifting his arm over her shoulder so she could help him hobble once more.  "Let us proceed."  

***

The corridor was crumpled in several places, and they had to squirm through some tight spaces, but eventually they found themselves looking over the entrance that first the Drifter, and then Kieran, had come in by.  

Inaaks' ghost had not reappeared.

Kieran's bright red racing sparrow was surrounded by Scorn. As Kieran looked around, he could see that the route he'd taken to get to the wrecked Ketches was likewise occupied with a large number of the rotting reanimated Eliksni.  

"They're waiting for us." Blinx said quietly.  

"So it seems," Eris intoned.  

"Hey Three-Eyes, the Drifter whispered, "Can you portal us out yet?"

Eris shook her head.  "No.  I suspect the interference I am dealing with will correspond to the edge of the Darkness zone where I was able to transmat Kieran in."

"Right," the Drifter said.  "So uh, how many people can that sparrow hold, hero?  And can it go fast enough when it's overloaded to get us through that mess?"

"It can go fast enough," Kieran said, his voice smug.

"It'd be pretty tricky to drive through at top speed with three people through all that," the Drifter continued.  "You confident you can pull that off?"

Kieran smirked under his helmet. 

Blinx sighed.  "Yeah.  Yeah he is."

Eris' frozen Ahamkara bone ping-ponged off of the six Scorn Lurkers and the Abomination immediately surrounding the Sparrow.  The Drifter tossed a Coldsnap grenade to immobilize the rest.  Kieran fired Trust from the hip, shattering most of the hostiles as Eris and the Drifter scrambled to move as quickly as the Drifter's broken leg would let them toward Kieran's bright red Sparrow.

"Ooooh," the Drifter said as Eris helped him sit down.  "This is a nice ride."

"Appreciate later," Eris said curtly and slid behind him, placing the bulk of her weight against him rather than on the Sparrow seat so that there would be enough room for Kieran.  

Kieran squeezed in front just as the Scorn farther away started running toward them.  The Sparrow's engine revved and began to purr.  

Eris pulled out her Loud Lullaby hand cannon and took out two Screebs in their immediate path.  

Kieran's Sparrow began to pick up speed.

As they accelerated past another Scorn Abomination, a jade coin made a loud "ding" as it struck the Abomination's riveted forehead. The large Scorn exploded in a burst of Solar energy, immolating it and everything around it.  

"You weren't kiddin' about the speed, kid," the Drifter laughed as they banked hard to the left and slid half-way up a wall.  "This is great!  Woooo!"

The three of them ducked as Kieran brought them through a set of large pipes half embedded in the ground which, conveniently, gave them cover from everything shooting at them.  This ended up being a good move as even more hostiles began to swarm toward them, opening fire.

However, the one thing the Scorn seemed not to have anticipated was someone crazy enough to drive through the twisted winding path out of here at insane speeds, taking turns like a maniac, soaring over gaps with jumps that would have been challenging for one rider to land safely at those speeds, never mind someone carrying two additional people.  

"Hooo-ee!  I haven't seen driving like this since... ever! If I ever manage to get Sparrow racing shoehorned into Gambit you're gonna clean house, kid!" the Drifter shouted into Kieran's ear as they skidded sideways, drifting past yet another blockade, before making a sharp turn and skimming over a heap of wreckage.

They were almost out of the darkness zone when Eris grunted and slumped against the Drifter.  

"Moondust?"  The Drifter's voice held a tinge of panic.  It was the first time Kieran had ever heard that tone from him.  

Kieran opened up the throttle as the Drifter reached back with hands covered in Stasis to freeze Eris Morn to him so she would not fall.  

One final leap through the air and they were back where they'd started.  

Kieran's Sparrow landed gently, sliding sideways to a clean, perfect stop.  

The Drifter's ghost tumbled out of Eris' pocket and opened its twitching shell, scanning her as the Drifter turned in the seat to help Kieran to get Eris off the Sparrow and on the ground.  

"Talk to me, Three-Eyes," the Drifter muttered to her as he and Kieran tried to figure out where she had been hit.  "Say something."

Eris growled.  Then she grabbed the front of his coat tightly in her fist.  

"Insufferable," she mumbled through blood stained lips. 

The Drifter grinned at Kieran, relief apparent in the one eye that wasn't swollen shut.  He looked up at his ghost.  "You, ghost!  You able to get a signal up to the Derelict from here?"

The Drifter's ghost emitted its single tone in acknowledgement and blinked its light blue.  

"Good."  He nodded to Kieran.  "Transmat Firing!"

***

"Stop coddling me!" Eris snarled at the Drifter two days later as she leaned heavily on the modified Hive Knight femur wrapped in velvet cloth and pierced with osmium nails.  

It was a powerful magical artifact, one which she'd used to turn herself into a god.  But now, it was serving a more mundane and functional purpose.  Giving her stability as she walked with Kieran and the Drifter between the shelves of the recently constructed library of the House of Light in the Eliksni quarter.  

"Let me coddle a little, will ya?  It's my fault you got shot."

"Yes.  It is.  It is entirely your fault.  And I shall not let you forget it any time soon.  Thankfully, Kieran was there."

"Good thing too." the Drifter said, smiling at Kieran.  "I was dead-dead without you comin' in to save my sorry ass.  I'm grateful."  He turned back to Eris.  "So let me be grateful, will ya?  You're so grumpy!"

"Ugh."  Eris growled in frustration.

Kieran, Eris and the Drifter sat down around a table with Eido and Missraks, Scribe and Kell of the House of Light.  Blinx hovered near Kieran's shoulder, light occasionally flickering on and off, in eager anticipation.

The Drifter handed Kieran the cloth-wrapped package.  "You give it to them," he told Kieran.  "You're the only reason this whole caper has a happy ending."  

Kieran smiled and turned to the two Eliksni.

"Is that..." Missraks paused, his voice overcome with emotion.  

Kieran nodded.  

"Please..." the Kell looked upon Kieran with gratitude.  "Give it to my daughter."

Eido's hands trembled as she unwrapped the cloth and held both it and the necklace in her three-fingered hands.  

"Do you know," she looked up at Kieran with four wide eyes. "Do you know what this means to us?  To our house?  To me?  This is history... a piece of our past believed to be forever lost... this metal, these stones, they are pieces of a world that is gone... this... this is priceless..."

Kieran smiled as Eido hugged him enthusiastically with all four of her arms.

"Happy Festival of the Lost, Crabcakes," the Drifter said from across the table. 

"This is so exciting.  How did you find this?  You must tell me what happened!" Eido said, looking adoringly at all of them, especially Kieran.  "I want to know everything!"  

[roanofarcc]

BABYDOLL: CHAPTER TEN. AN OLIVE BRANCH

jj maybank x fem!routledge OC // read on Ao3

In which a boy with zero self preservation falls in love with a girl clawing at life.

chapter summary. regrouping after midsummers, John B. made a breakthrough in their axed gold hunt; after a meetup gone wrong, the Cameron's propose an alternative to the twins being kicked off the island.

word count. 4.2k || masterlist

previous chapter < >next chapter

After ditching Midsummers, John B. called a mandatory meeting of the Pogues to explain the cryptic “super secret spy shit” he’d been talking about. Since Kie and Pope’s parents were pissed at them, JJ’s house was almost always a no-go, and the Chateau was apparently being watched by more than just the DCS, they had to meet in a secluded little area John B., Lottie, and JJ had discovered when they were kids and claimed at their hideout. There wasn’t anything to it but a lazily built fire pit, which was just a circle of rocks surrounded by large logs to sit on. 

They started a fire with JJ’s lighter and gathered around it, eager to hear John B. explain what he’d been up for the past day and a half. 

“The gold never went down with the Royal Merchant,” he began. 

Pope groaned, hanging his head in the firelight. “Again with this?” 

“Just hear him out, all right?” JJ had already conspired with John B. after he was released from the police station, being the first one up to speed. 

John B. continued, “The gold’s been here the whole time on the island.” 

Lottie wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She didn’t want to get her hopes up too high again, but it was hard to not be convinced by the twinkle in her twin’s eye. 

“Are you serious?” Kie asked to which John B. nodded with enthusiasm. 

Pope raised his hand. “I’d like to voice my skepticism.” 

“I’m sure you would, but can I please present my evidence first, sir?” 

“Fine. Proceed.” 

John B. grabbed his backpack and pulled out a piece of paper, holding it up to show the group. “This is a letter from Denmark Tanny, a slave who survived the Royal Merchant wreck. Slaves weren’t mentioned as crew members of the ship, but dad had found the complete manifest. That was his big discovery,” he explained. “Tanny used the gold to buy his freedom and after that, he bought his farm. Where is his farm, you may ask? It’s Tannyhill plantation.” 

Lottie blinked in surprise. “Tannyhill?” she repeated, making sure he heard her brother right. 

“Yep. And after he bought his farm, he used his money to free even more slaves. He also sold a shit-ton of rice, which pissed off all of the white planters. They decided to lynch him, and on the day they came to get him, he wrote a letter to his son as a farewell. In the last line of his letter, there’s a coded message about where to find the gold.” 

With each sentence John B. spoke, excitement started to stir between the Pogues, the mystery unraveling before their ears. 

“Where did he hide the gold?” asked Kie. 

“He told his son to ‘harvest the wheat in parcel nine, near the water.’ Except, he wasn’t talking about wheat; that was code for gold. The gold’s in parcel nine, near the water.” 

Pope snatched the latter from John B.’s hands and read it over carefully. Lottie leaned halfway off her log to see it too under the glow of Pope’s flashlight. It did seem too good to be true, but at the same time, it felt more real than it had before. If what John B. was saying was true, and it seemed to be, then the gold could be within their grasp. 

“All we need is an original survey map of the property and we’ve found the gold!” They shared looks of excitement and disbelief. 

Pope handed the letter back to John B. and said, “Okay, this might have a small chance of being true.” 

Jumping up from his seat, JJ hugged John B., picking him up in the process. He stumbled, nearly knocking them both into the fire before JJ placed the taller boy down with a beaming smile. 

“I’m so proud of you right now, man,” JJ said. 

John B. laughed and patted JJ’s cheek. “That’s really sweet of you, dude.” 

“So, what’s the plan?” 

“Good question,” John B. said, clearing his throat for a moment as he avoided the eyes of the group. “Sarah Cameron is coming tonight and she’s bringing the original survey map-” Despite him speaking quickly to get everything out before being interrupted, Kie cut him off shortly after the name Sarah Cameron settled in their ears. 

Lottie winced, knowing what was coming. Only Kie and Pope were unaware that John B. had been in cahoots with the Kook princess, and Lottie didn’t know the full extent of their cahoots. All she knew was that Kie hated Sarah with a fiery passion and even gold might not be enough to break up that feeling for Kie. 

“Hold on, Sarah? Why Sarah?” 

JJ sat back down beside Lottie, leaning closer to her to whisper, “This’ll be good.” 

Scratching the back of his neck, John B. seemed to brace himself for the conversation. “Sarah, um, she got me into the archives at Chapel Hill yesterday. That’s where I got the letter.” 

Kie scoffed, betrayal seeping into her features. “You went to Chapel Hill yesterday with Sarah Cameron?” 

“Uh, yeah…” 

JJ smirked, making matters worse. He said, “He was mackin’ on her too.” 

“I wasn’t macking-” 

“You were totally mackin’!” 

John B. huffed in annoyance at his friend. “No! I wasn’t. I was using her for access to the archives.” 

As much as Lottie wasn’t a fan of Sarah because of her Kook status and because of Kie, she didn’t feel great about her brother using the girl for their treasure hunt; it felt gross. 

“Did you tell her about the treasure?” asked Kie, crossing her arms over her chest as the nighttime breeze swept through the air. They were still dressed in the Midsummers dresses with goosebumps on their arms. 

John B. sputtered for a response for a moment before he rushed out, “I was just trying to get into the archives!” 

“So, is that a yes?”

“I-I left out key details!” 

Throwing her hands up in frustration, Kie’s gaze hardened. “You let a Kook in on our secret?” 

“I told you, I was using her for information!” The more he said it, the more it sounded like he didn’t even believe that was the full truth. 

If he liked Sarah Cameron, there was very little chance that would end well. Sarah was already dating Topper, everyone knew that, and he had already tried to kill the Pogues with Rafe on more than one occasion without the knowledge that his girlfriend was sneaking around with John B. From what Kie had told Lottie about Sarah, she wasn’t a great person to be friends with, let alone date. 

If he was just using her for information, that was a bad look on his part too. That wasn’t even mentioning the whole Kook vs. Pogues bullshit that held strong between most people on the island. There wasn’t one positive thing she could think of that could come from a relationship with Sarah. 

“Why don’t I believe you?” said Kie. 

John B.’s attitude started to turn sour. “I’m trying to make us fifthly rich so we can pay off a boat or send Pope to autopsy school to study dead bodies. You guys know me. Do I look like the type of person to fall for Sarah Cameron?” 

He looked at Lottie for some kind of backup, but she shook her head and said, “You don’t want me to answer that, dude.” 

“You don’t even know her yet. I do!” Kie cried. A look of hurt flickered across her face, replacing the anger and annoyance that had just been there. She hadn’t spilled everything that happened between her and Sarah during Kie’s year at the Kook academy, just that they had once been friends until they weren’t. Whatever happened was enough to make Kie practically seethed at the sight of the sun-kissed blonde. “You can’t trust her.” 

Pope aligned himself with Kie. “Her brother did hit me in the back of the head with a golf club.” 

“And tried to beat up JJ twice,” added Lottie. 

JJ shrugged. “Yeah, but he only got away with it once.” 

“Rafe and Sarah and two different people, okay?” 

Look at Kie, JJ asked her what exactly Sarah had done to her. 

“She’s like a…like a spitting cobra! First, she blinds you, and then…” Kie stumbled over her comparison, earning a shake of the head from Pope. 

“That’s a terrible analogy.” 

With a frustrated sigh, Kie forwent a real explanation. “Just listen to me. Whatever we get, she’s gonna try to take.” 

Lottie looked between her best friend and her brother, reading that he didn’t know what else to say. They needed that map to find the gold, and if the only person who had access to it was Sarah Cameron, they didn’t have much of a choice. Lottie wasn’t a fan of the idea, but they didn’t seem to have another option. 

“We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said after a beat. “All we need her for is the map. Then we’ll cut her loose.” 

They all filed into the Twinkie and headed toward the spot where Sarah was supposed to meet them with the map. The air inside the van was tense, radiating off John B. and Kie the most. Lottie sat on the floor beside JJ with her legs kicked out in front of her, the skirt of her dress fanned out over them. She forced herself not to pick her nails and opted to toy with the silky fabric of her dress as a distraction instead. She at least wanted Kie’s nail polish job to last one night without Lottie ruining it. 

Once they arrived, everyone readied to jump out of the van but were stopped by John B. “Actually, I think I’m gonna do this one by myself,” he said, making the silence in the van fall even heavier. “I don’t wanna spook Sarah with the peanut gallery.” 

“I just don’t understand why we’re including her at all,” Kie muttered bitterly, not looking John B. in the eye. 

His want to appease Kie faded into an eye roll. “We’re not involving her. It’s just a business meeting. Like Lottie said, once we get what we need, we cut her loose. Plus, we can’t do shit without the map.” 

With a sigh, Kie glanced at him. “Promise me nothing’s happening between you two.” 

“Nothing is happening,” he said, but Lottie knew her brother like the back of her hand. He was lying, it was obvious in the shiftiness of his gaze and his tapping fingers against the center console. Maybe she should have called him out, but she couldn’t bring herself to. It seemed like he was trying to convince himself nothing was happening. 

Kie didn’t relent. “This is serious. This isn’t about you or us. This is about her. She’s gonna get inside your head. Just promise me nothing is gonna happen between you guys.” 

That time, he seemed to take her words a little more seriously, pausing for a beat as he took them in. Maybe he was considering that Sarah may not be as great as she looked, or maybe he was thinking of a way to prove Kie wrong. Either way, he said, “I promise,” and left the van. 

The rest of them slumped back in their seats, left with nothing to do but wait. Kie stared out the window, JJ worked on rolling a joint, and Pope complained about the hot car and lighting that rolled in across the sky. Another storm was settling in, illuminating the distance in bright flashes followed by quiet hums of thunder. 

One normal day would have been nice, Lottie thought. Don’t get her wrong, she had guarded excitement that they had a real plan and knowledge of where the gold was, but she hadn’t realized how much she took for granted normal days she had just a week ago. 

If they did get the gold and went full Kook, Lottie wanted to relax somewhere where no one but her friends could reach her. She wanted to swim and surf without a storm cloud lingering over her head, ready to rain down doom at any second. 

“You know, holding onto your grudge is like drinking poison and thinking Sarah will die, Kie,” Pope said, breaking the silence in Twinkie and circling back to their Sarah Cameron situation. 

Kie said nothing, continuing to sulk with her head against the window. 

Lottie answered for her, looking between the boys with a sigh. “You guys don’t get it. Girls don’t fight like guys do. We don’t beat the shit out of each other. It’s nastier, passive-aggressive, and it usually ends in life-long grudges, okay?” 

A puff of smoke left JJ’s lips, filling the already stuffy air of the van with the smell of weed. Lottie swatted the smoke away from her, not wanting her nice dress to reek. “Chicks are malicious, bro,” JJ said. 

Violence wasn’t the answer to a disagreement like most of the boys and men she knew believed, but grudges weren’t great either. She just hoped that either John B. kept his promise to Kie or Sarah turned out to be a lot different than Kie made her out to be. 

Their conversation lulled as time stretched on. The gaps of silence were filled by JJ smoking and the storm that brewed. Lottie got tired of the stuffy air and opened the back door, letting in the humid air and dangling her feet against the grass as she stared out at the darkness of the lot they were parked in. She listened to the thunder, but her ears were pricked by something else picked up by the wind. She heard it first, a voice yelling something she had trouble making out. 

“Do you guys hear that?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at her friends. They listened too for a moment, before the scream struck them louder, more frantic, calling for help. Without another word, they all scrambled out of the van and sprinted through the sand, following the voice that came from the Hawke’s Nest, a lookout post that gave a nice view of the island. 

Sarah Cameron was the source of the screaming. She was on the ground at the bottom of the lookout, holding a sprawled-out John B. to her chest. 

Lottie’s stomach dropped at the distressed sight of her brother, lying on the ground. She kneeled on the opposite side of him, peering at a tear-streaked Sarah who held onto him tightly. Through hiccupped sobs, she explained that John B. had been pushed by Topper from the very top of the Hawk’s Nest. The tall wooden structure loomed behind them, lightning illuminating a broken railing at the top. A fall from that height could have killed him. 

Tears welled up in Lottie’s eyes and a rattling sense of fear squeezed her frame. She had already lost her mom and dad, but she never even thought of the possibility of losing her brother. Her twin had been the only constant throughout her entire life; they were the only family each other had left. It had never even crossed her mind that John B. could leave her too. But as she stared at his screwed-shut eyes, the thought punctured her heart in such an awful way, nearly knocking the wind out of her. 

Everything moved in a blur. Someone had called an ambulance, and they arrived in flashing red and white lights, competing with the lightning. Lottie was shifted into someone’s arms while John B. was carried into the ambulance. Somehow, she ended up in the ambulance with him, listing off all of the medical information of his that she knew. 

Once they arrived at the hospital, Lottie was left alone in the waiting room for a while, numbly sitting on an uncomfortable chair under fluorescent lights. She pulled her knees up to her chest, burying her head in the fabric of her dirty and damp dress. 

Someone else, one of the hospital staff or police Lottie presumed, called DCS because they obviously wanted to make the night even worse than it had suddenly become. Cheryl showed up, sporting her blue button-down and a sympathetic frown. She tried to speak to Lottie; nothing came of it. Lottie was much too lost in a numbing daze and an awful, sinking feeling digging into her chest. John B. had always been her other half, quite literally. No matter what happened, he was always there with some bullshit plan, a stupid idea, and a promise that they’d always stick together. 

The paramedics said he’d be fine, and the doctors said he’d make a full recovery, but she was still shaken up. Her mind wandered back to when they first played with the idea of hunting for the gold when JJ said they had nothing to lose, the three of them, but that was even more untrue than Lottie originally thought. They had each other to lose, and what would happen if they did? What would she do?

Eventually, a nurse grabbed Lottie, allowing her to wait in John B.'s room until he woke up. The steady sound of beeping and John B.’s gentle snores were the only sounds in the room. It was still dark outside, nearly the wee hours of the morning. Taking the seat at his bedside, Lottie curled up and closed her eyes until she dozed off. 

The position she had fallen asleep in, only for a couple of hours, was horrendous. Her back ached and feet were asleep. Her hairdo was half undone, and she had lost the flowers Kie had put in it throughout the night’s events. With a yawn, she stretched her legs and arms. John B. was still fast asleep with a cast on his arm that she could see better in the morning sunlight. 

A light knock sounded on the door before it was cracked open. “Hi,” a soft voice spoke. Peering inside the room was Sarah Cameron. She too was still dressed in her Midsummers attire and looked probably as rough as Lottie did having spent the night at the hospital. However, along with Sarah’s sleep-deprived appearance, she also looked sad as her eyes fell onto John B. Her nose was red, and she sniffled as she wiped it with the back of her hand. 

Returning her gaze to Lottie a moment later, she asked, “Could I wait here with you? Just until he wakes up?” 

If Lottie had slept better or didn’t feel the lump stuck in her throat, she probably would have said no. But when she looked at Sarah, not the Kook Princess sipping beer at Keggers or prancing around the country club, but just Sarah, she remembered the way the blonde had hugged John B., crying like someone who really cared about him. At that moment, she cared less about Kie’s feud and more about how John B. would probably want Sarah there too. His promise that nothing was happening between the two had to be a lie because there was no way Sarah would have reacted like that or stayed at the hospital overnight if there was nothing there. 

Did Lottie still think it would blow up in his face at some point, more than it so clearly already had? Yes. But Sarah’s boyfriend already tried to kill John B. twice, so Lottie supposed it couldn’t get much worse than that. 

“Sure,” Lottie said, nodding at the extra seat beside her. Hesitantly, Sarah crossed the room and sat down, shivering slightly in the sterile hospital air. 

The other Pogues tried to stay with Lottie, but the hospital wouldn’t let them pass the front desk. It was well after visitor hours and them being “practically family” didn’t count in the hospital’s eyes. How Sarah managed to not get kicked out too was beyond Lottie. 

“I’m really sorry,” Sarah whispered. For a moment, Lottie wasn’t sure if she was talking to her or John B. until Sarah met her gaze. “I didn’t know Topper would show up. I tried to convince him he didn’t see me talking to anyone at the party but clearly, he did or someone told him. And I…” She sighed, dragging her hands down the length of her face. “I’m just sorry.” 

With her eyes all red and puffy, and her lips downturned in a watery frown, Sarah looked far from a “spitting cobra,” as Kie had described her. 

“It’s not your fault,” Lottie said, looking back at her brother. His injuries weren't as bad as they could have been, but he took a long fall. “I don’t think it’ll be seen as anyone’s fault. I’m sure your boyfriend will get off scot-free.” The bitterness in her voice wasn’t directed at Sarah but rather at the fact that no matter what they did, the Kooks would never get in trouble. 

“Ex,” Sarah quickly said. “Ex-boyfriend. I was telling John B. last night before Topper showed up that I was going to break up with him.” 

Lottie rubbed her tired eyes with a pang of sympathy in her chest. “I don’t think we’ll be here much longer,” she sighed. “DCS has been on our asses for weeks now. I don’t think we can hide from them anymore. We don’t have a legal guardian here and their not super stoked about letting two minors run loose, unfortunately.” 

Sarah opened her mouth to say something but stopped when a small groan sounded from John B. His fingers curled around the blanket tossed over him and he started to blink his eyes open. 

“Where am I?” he croaked out, squinting in the sunlight that bathed the room. 

“St. Olive’s,” Lottie answered, relief replacing her nonstop worry at the sight of his eyes open and him talking. “You fell from the Hawke’s Nest but the doctor said you just have a broken wrist and a concussion. I told him that was funny because I didn’t think you had a brain in that big head of yours.” 

John B. cracked a smile, his eyes falling past Lottie and onto Sarah. 

“Hi,” he said. 

Sarah smiled. “Hi.” 

It took him only a moment to realize what Lottie had shortly after they arrived at the hospital. It was a lot easier to find the kids you’ve been looking for when they’re unaccompanied minors admitted. He quickly tried to sit up, groaning in the process. 

“We gotta get out of here.” 

Lottie shook her head, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Can’t. They’re already here.” John B. squeezed his eyes shut and fell back against his pillow. There wasn’t anything they could do now. Cheryl was probably ready to haul them straight from the hospital to the ferry. 

“Actually,” Sarah piped up, looking a bit too happy. “I don’t think that’ll be an issue.” She stood up and strode toward the door, peeking her head out into the hall and ignoring the confused faces of the twins. A moment later, Sarah stepped back inside as her dad entered the room too. 

Yesterday, Ward Cameron looked as intimidating and asshole-ery as most of the rich men at Midsummers did, but standing there in the hospital room, he looked anything but. Ward didn’t look like one of the richest men on the island; he just looked like a dad. 

“Sarah told me everything,” Ward said. “About your little adventure and about you two runnin’ away from DCS.” He looked at John B. “She also told me about how you protected her in the tower.” Sarah and John B. exchanged a look, a sweet one that made Lottie both want to smile and gag. 

“John, I believe I owe you an apology. You were honest with me about a small indiscretion, and I fired you anyway. I shouldn’t have done that,” Ward said with a shake of his head like he was truly disappointed in himself. “Unfortunately, from time to time, I have a bit of a short fuse. But I’d like to make it up to you and to your sister. I spoke with Sheriff Peterkin and I’ve offered to be your legal guardian if you’ll let me.” 

Lottie nearly toppled out of her chair. “W-What?” 

“It would mean a roof over your head and no more runnin’ from DCS.” 

The twins shared a look, both beyond confused by the offer. For a long time, they’d been told the world was an unfair place and they were at the bottom of the food chain. They were taught to fend for themselves, and their dad hated handouts more than anything. That was why Lottie never got hand-me-downs from their neighbors and had to share clothes with John B. until she was bullied on the playground for it; their dad thought it was charity and turned it away. That was why the twins learned to cut their own hair and pocket candy bars from the drugstore. But Lottie was tired of running and lying to DCS. She was tired of fending for herself if she was being honest. Accepting Ward Cameron’s act of charity meant they got to stay in Kildear, which was all Lottie wanted. 

John B. sat up a little straighter on the bed as he answered, “Sure.” 

Ward looked at Lottie for her answer. “Yeah. That sounds…nice.” 

The man smiled and Sarah looked like she was biting back a squeal of excitement. “Okay then.” Ward clapped his hands together, sealing the deal. “Welcome to the family.”

[beeboos-creativecorner]

Speed, Shadows & Hijinks — part 1

Day 1, here we go ! I present to you, the beginnings of this mess. These were a series of snippets I wrote last year when I was just getting into the Sonic series (and I got bored during tutorial periods and I wanted something to write lol). Believe it or not, it was Team Sonic Racing that got me here in the first place !! And, here, for the very first time, I'm revealing my one Sonic OC, Jinx the Kea (my little NZ gremlin, shit-for-brains birb). To put it briefly, Jinx is under the tutelage of the racer with the most vehicular expertise - you guessed it, Shadow. Needless to say, it's not going smoothly. At all. I'd hate to go without mentioning, although this is the first snippet written, it is certainly not chronologically first. But I'll clear all that up once we get to it because I'm lazy <3

Fic under the cut !!

Speed, Shadows & Hijinks

Part 1 : Deflation

"Hey, Jinx, if your training with him is stressing you out — you know, you can always learn some driving tips from me. I can pull a few strings and transfer your mentorship, I'm sure they'll allow it if I try." It wasn't only Jinx that didn't understand Shadow's behaviour, evidently. Given that, they couldn't really give Sonic any real commitment to his proposition, and instead let off a bit of steam in the form of dismissal.

"Nah, it's just been a rough day, that's all. I appreciate the offer, though." Their head slumped onto the table, the steaming cup above them serving as a representation of their evaporating spirit. They downplayed the situation to the best of their ability, because it was owed. To Shadow or to themself, they weren't sure.

Not even a child could be fooled by their lies.

"How he's treating you isn't fair!" Amy pitched in. "You're doing your best, believe me, you're great on the track! You're not to blame, he is. He just needs a little more patience and he'd see how good of a racer you are!"

Since their arrival, Amy always had Jinx's six. Her surety and confidence in defending the newcomer was never unwelcome. Amy was good with people. There was an undeniable merit linked to the statement, where it was more fact than simple speculation. The words she exchanged with others were rarely misunderstood. She could pacify even the most wild of beasts — or become the thing she seeks to calm. It was either or with her, and there was some relief in knowing Jinx was on Amy's good side.

Jinx saw value in having Amy as an ally... or a friend. Her and Sonic both. Tails too. There was no animosity in their interactions with Jinx and that, they reckoned, was paving the road for potential friendships. What's obstructing your potential from becoming reality? They wondered exactly that. Shadow had cryptically asked that of them once. Different circumstances, consistent question. The answer was plain as day: spending all their time and energy on a serious mug who wanted nothing to do with them or the development of their skills.

As much as they hated it, there was validity to Shadow's criticism. He was nothing if not brutally honest.

"Thanks, Amy, but... maybe he's right. I'm slow, I hesitate; I don't trust myself to do the right thing. And every moment in that vehicle is a split second decision between life and death. Maybe I'm failing myself because my confidence dictates how I'm driving. Should I apologise to him for that?"

"No!" She was so adamant. Jinx admired that to an unfathomable degree. "He's a grump, his reactions are unkind. Just leave him. Tomorrow is a new day and he'll be over it by then, don't worry. I know Shadow, he doesn't hold a grudge unless it's important to him."

The Speed, Shadows & Hijinks Series :

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[the12thnightproject]

Chapter 16:  The Elevation Improvisation - Mitsunari and Okatsu rush to protect Hikosane, but will they be in time?

Mitsunari x OC; Nobunaga x Mai

Previous Chapter

Logline - In order to protect a political alliance, Katusko and Mitsunari must pretend an engagement. But this “all business” arrangement is threatened by a coup against Nobunaga… and by feelings.

From the Military Notes of Ishida Mitsunari…

We did not kiss. Does this mean that we were not, by definition, on a date? We did hold hands. That ought to count for something. Perhaps we were on thirty-three percent of a date. Must consult Lady Mai for further clarification, however, an urgent situation takes precedence.

I ought to be more worried about Hikosane. And yet, all I can think of now is how to devise a strategy to get Okatsu to kiss me.

I surmise that I was correct in wishing to avoid interpersonal relationships of the male-female variety. This lack of focus on everything but Okatsu is disconcerting. How will I be able to help and protect her, when all I can think of is that look in her eyes when she is passionate about a subject, the soft curl of her hair, and how much I wish to take her in my arms and hold on to her forever?

I do not like this feeling.

I do not want to this feeling to stop.

Hikosane is in danger. Protect him at all costs.

Mitsunari leaned over my shoulder to read the note. “Protect him from what?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. You’d think whoever sent it would be less cryptic.” However, given that they had gone to the trouble of getting the note to us, it would be in Hikosane’s best interest if we acted on it.

Without conferring any further, Mitsunari and I hurried back to the stables and returned to Genba Castle as fast as we could manage and dumped our horses on a surprised Mitsuhide.

“My word, the two of you look terribly flushed – I cannot believe tunneling down into a silver mine would be anywhere near this… stimulating.” Trust Mitsuhide to cram as many double entendre into a single sentence as humanly possible.

For a moment, I hesitated with an explanation, then decided Mitsuhide might be of use as a third set of eyes on this. “We received word that Hikosane may be in some sort of danger.”

My hope – which had been faint to begin with- that Mitsuhide wouldn’t further question that, was dashed instantly. “Word from whom? Yamaoka?”

“It came via a kunoichi, but we don’t know who sent it.” I saw no other option but to hand Mitsuhide the note.

He read it without expression. “I am somewhat dubious as to its source, however it would do no harm to be to new threats, especially if it turns out to additionally imperil Nobunaga as well.”

Er, thanks? I would have liked to have gotten further clarification on that – did he mean that we should try to protect Hikosane, or simply make sure that whatever was menacing the child didn’t spill into our primary duties, but just then a clatter of activity from beyond the gate alerted us to the return of the mine expedition.

“If anyone asks,” Mitsunari said to Mitsuhide. “We’ve been back since mid-afternoon, and Okatsu has a sprained ankle.” Once again, he scooped me up in his arms, and without another word to the madly grinning Mitsuhide, carried me out of the stables.

With the sounds of the mine excursion party’s return spurring our haste, Mitsunari rushed me into the castle. He didn’t need to explain it to me - it wouldn't do to be caught when I was supposed to be resting. Especially not by-

"Halt. Do not move." Hideyoshi.

Again?

Does he have radar?

Mitsunari froze with one step on the first step of the staircase, while his lord strode toward us. "Did you not leave the mine early to elevate your injury?

A look of sheer panic crossed Mitsunari's face. Obviously, he would not want to lie to Hideyoshi. I didn’t even know if he could come up with a lie on the spot. I hurried to explain before Mitsunari’s processors overloaded.

"We did, and we did. We spent the afternoon in the garden, and Mitsunari let me rest my foot in his lap." As soon as the words left my throat, I realized I'd described a situation that might not be construed as entirely innocent.

Indeed, Hideyoshi had that same look on his face that he had had when he’d discovered Mitsunari during the spider spelunking incident. 

"Yes. It was elevated." Mitsunari’s accidental double entendre made the situation worse.

"My foot. It was elevated, as Mai instructed. It was very restful." Ugh... I probably should have left that alone, but too late now.

Without another word, Hideyoshi simply plucked me out of Mitsunari's arms. "I’ll get her up the stairs." I figured he was skeptical of Mitsunari's ability to carry me up the narrow stairs without disaster, (ok the thought had also crossed my mind). But it would have been nice if he had (a) asked, and (b) not insinuated that lifting me was akin to hauling a sack of iron up a mountain. While I am not a waif like Shohime, it’s not like he should have had any problem with my weight.

Once I was uncomfortably settled in Hideyoshi’s arms, it was Mitsunari's turn to frown. He followed us up the stairs, brow furrowed. I don’t know what his problem was, but we had another situation to take care of. I mimed "Hikosane'' at Mitsunari.

In return, I got a confused look. Again, I mouthed, "Hikosane."

Another blank expression.

Carefully I indicated the note, which thankfully was still in my hand. That finally got his attention. He stopped.

So did Hideyoshi. "What is wrong?"

"I’m going to go get a book." Without giving Hideyoshi the opportunity to argue, he turned around and dashed down the steps. A thud around the bend indicated he'd missed one, but then his footsteps galloped away.

"That Mitsunari. Loves his books. Never met such a dedicated reader in my life." I was babbling, hoping a stream of inanity would distract, or at least bore Hideyoshi into not questioning the situation any further.

Hideyoshi continued to lug me up the stairs, and eventually deposited me on my futon (easy to tell mine from Mitsunari's, as his was covered with books and random papers). He then moved the pillow block to the bottom of my futon and reached for my foot.

Belatedly realizing his intent, I yelled, "No!"

He froze. "Does it hurt that much? I could send for a healer."

"Um. No, I'm... just sensitive about my feet in general. They're ugly and I hate people seeing them." Oh for the love of… could I have come up with anything lamer than that?

"Feet." He repeated it flatly. Yeah. Knew he wasn’t going to buy that.

I tried to curl my toes under themselves. "It's kind of a..." I trailed off as Hideyoshi grabbed the edge of my kimono, flipped it up a few centimeters, revealing my completely uninjured foot.

That earned me my umpteenth 'I'm disappointed in you-Hideyoshi-frown. "I would very much like an explanation for this... one that doesn't involve the words, 'it's not what it looks like.'"

"Um, what does it look like?" I wasn't simply buying for time. I really wanted to know what was going on in Hideyoshi's brain.

"It looks like you somehow conned Mitsunari into abandoning his duties to," he glanced at the package containing my fan and Mitsunari’s notebooks. "Go shopping."

Sometimes... sometimes the correct choice is to tell the truth. I hated those times. But without Mitsunari or Mai around to hear whatever other explanation I came up with, I risked them inadvertently contradicting me, and we’d be right back here, only with three people in trouble instead of just me. "I... I 'm.... terrified of small, enclosed spaces. If I had to go into a mine, I might have fainted or become obviously sick... or worse. It... would have reflected poorly on our entourage."

"I see. " With his arms folded in front at him and his lips thinning in a flat line, I wasn’t sure if he did see.

Not wanting to get Mitsunari or Mai into any further trouble, I hurried to add, "The theatrics were a miscalculation on my part- I didn’t intend for the feigned injury to get so out of hand. Please don't yell at Mitsunari for that.”

"Is there a reason why you couldn't simply have told me of your fear this morning? We would not have forced you to go." His voice had softened a bit. Maybe he was finally seeing things from my point of view. Or maybe he was simply tired.

I hadn't considered that possibility. "Aki... my employer, believes that this is a weakness that I need to get over." And I had tried. Truly I had tried. But there hadn’t been time today to put myself in the right frame of mind for that. "I did not want you to think me unable to do my job." What I didn’t mention was my fear that people would think I was crazy. Nor did I want Iekane to discover this … ok, yes, it was a weakness.

"We can make allowances and adjustments only for situations we are aware of." He got to his feet. "From now on, save the deceptions for the truly urgent situations."

"Ok. I will, Lord Hideyoshi." His idea of urgent and mine probably wouldn’t align, but I'd worry about that later.

He gruffly patted me on the head and left.

Once he was gone, I took out the note and again and puzzled over it. “Hikosane is in danger. Protect him at all costs.”

Why send the message to me and not Mozumi? Unless Hikosane was in danger from his own father? That seemed unlikely. Mozumi was not a demonstrative man, but I hadn’t observed any antipathy toward his son either. Whoever had sent this note must have decided that for whatever reason, Mitsunari and I were better equipped to take care of the boy.

Which… adequate estimation of Mozumi’s abilities, kunoichi.

But just how had the kunoichi known where to find us? Our trip to Takayama had been a spur of the moment decision. Had she been following us? I would think that I had better powers of observation and would have noticed that. Maybe she had been on her way to Genba anyway, noticed us, then taken the opportunity to give us the message. But that thought just sent me back to the top of the circle – how would she have known who we were and that we would be able to help Hikosane?

Giving up on the question of whether or not that message had been intended specifically for us, I turned toward the contents of the note itself. Maybe it was a word puzzle of some kind? I do have a weakness for puzzles…

HIID PHAAC.

.stsoc lla ta mih tcetorP .regnad ni si enasokiH

Srplhzmv rh rm wzmtvi. Kilgvxg srn zg zoo xlhgh.

gzssi lvmol qiilr ysjxg vvfej cbgmh ywwpl crb

Unfortunately after playing with all the ciphers I knew, it seemed most likely that the message was a straightforward warning.

When Mitsunari finally returned, he brought Hikosane with him. “Mitsunari believes I’m in some danger.” Hikosane’s blunt words were half a question, half an acknowledgement.

I sent Mitsunari a ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ look. Just because Hikosane sounded like a mini-adult didn’t mean it was appropriate to scare him. Hikosane caught my expression and added. “He didn’t tell me in so many words. I guessed from the manner of questions he asked.”

Apparently Mitsunari had used up his storehouse of subterfuge on the ankle story. “We don’t know.” I tried to reassure the boy. “We were given a message, but it was vague.”

Hikosane plopped down on the futon next to me. The note was still in my lap, so he grabbed it and read over it. “I see. The truth is, I am in danger, I have always been in danger – this is something that has been told to me as long as I can recall. The question is, am I suddenly in more danger? Immediate danger.” His hand went to the child sized sword at his waist, and I understood that the weapon, though small, was not merely for decoration.

His blunt words had Mitsunari thudding heavily to the futon as well. Hikosane’s unnaturally adult manner was explained in that one horrifying sentence. Imagine being aware throughout your entire life that you were in danger. “Yes. That would be the dilemma. Have you experienced any unusual accidents in recent days?” When Hikosane shook his head, Mitsunari continued, “what about illness?”

“Last month, I became sick after something I ate. It tasted odd, so I only had one bite.” Hikosane shrugged. “However, that may have been an accident.”

Hm. It was true that without modern preservatives, food spoilage was a risk here, but generally most cooks were extremely careful. Besides, meat was so difficult to come by that the concept of ‘leftovers’ (and therefore the concept of ‘that mystery container in the refrigerator that is moving under its own power’) didn’t exist. “Was anyone else sick?”

“No… but.” Tears came to his eyes. “Two of the dogs died the next day.”

Mitsunari and I looked at each other, our silent conversation concluding that someone had tried to poison him, accidentally killing the dogs in the process. I had an urge to hug Hikosane, but he beat me to it and grabbed onto me first. His childish grip had an odd familiarity, though I had never hugged this child – probably had not hugged any child, at least not since I had been one myself.

Once he let me go, I asked him. “Are there people here who you trust – people you know will not try to harm you?”

He counted the names on his fingers “You. Mitsunari. My father – though I do not see him often. My sisters.”

It was a short list.

Unaware that he was blundering into a danger area, Mitsunari suddenly smiled. “When Shohime marries Iekane, would you be able to stay with them for long periods of time?”

Hikosane hesitated. Eventually, the little boy in him broke through. “I hate him! He smiles too much.”

#100%agree

“I thought smiling was a good thing?” Mitsunari sounded as confused as ever when it came to nonverbal cues. “I like it when Okatsu smiles.”

“I do too.” Hikosane took advantage of his age to snuggle against me. “Iekane smiles when he means to frown. I don’t trust him. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“I do.” I messed up his hair a little, just so I could then fix it again. “I … don’t like being around him either, so how about this? When he is around, come over to me and we can protect each other.” I wished I could do more for him than that, but at least I could try to protect him from the possible danger that Iekane represented. Hopefully he’d grown used to anticipating the older dangers.

“Yes. This is a good plan.” Hikosane reluctantly let go of me, then stood up and bowed. “I should return to my room before someone looks for me.”

Out of caution, Mitsunari and I decided to go with him and the three of us made our way through the corridors. Hikosane temporarily abandoned his precocious manner, choosing to hold my and Mitsunari’s hands. To an outsider, we might have looked like a family, although Mitsunari and I would have had to have started very young to have a child as old as Hikosane.

Upon reaching his room, Hikosane bowed and thanked us. Then yawning widely, he thunked down on his futon.

The futon hissed.

Futons … do not make that sound on their own.

The blanket moved.

Nor do their blankets move on their own volition.

“Hiko!” Mitsunari spoke slowly and calmly, but there was firm authority in his tone. “Do not move.”

@lorei-writes @bestbryn @katriniac @lyds323 @briars7

[rogueshadeaux]

Chapter Forty - Still Here

“Why should I trust anything you say?” I asked. “Because I’m the only one willing to be honest with you.”

10.7k words | 40 min/1 hour read time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: Canon typical violence, canon typical bad trip, death mention, unreality, hallucinations, fucky wucky stuff.

⚠ AUTHOR'S NOTE: A year. This person has been so patient that they have been waiting a year for this, while everything around me sorta fell apart. And I hope I did his character justice, because @neverdewitt created such an amazing, intriguing character that I couldn't resist fitting them into my fic the moment I knew about them. Originally, Garrett was the only OC that was going to be in Erosion, long before anyone else was due to join—because of course I needed a cryptic little shit stirrer, and who better than from one of the most creative writers I know? Doot, thank you for letting me steal your baby and for waiting for so long for this moment, I don't know where I'd be without your aid throughout the last year on the bits of fic I could do. Your patience is admirable, your creativity is absolutely transcendent beyond anything I could ever hope to make, and I'm glad I finally made something I feel can actually stand in the shadow of your character and not flinch in shame.

Also, thanks @conduiitz for the picture! I gave her a 500 word sneak peak and she made this pic in like, 47 mins lol. Maybe...you should keep your eyes out too...

The world swam. Sound dilated and then became this obnoxious ringing, my vision sorta blurred until it was nothing but blue-white hot, and for three seconds I felt like I was going to explode.

My stomach lurched, and I felt like I was falling in the same way I would when I was on the verge of sleep. That weird, heart stuttering sensation of being fully on the ground and yet feeling like it would open up from under me. I stumbled with it, falling backwards, trying to catch myself and instead feeling like my hands were weighed down with lead.

My head snapped back and hit hard flooring, sending stars into my vision that I struggled to blink away. “What the hell,” I groaned, flinching; the bright, fluorescent lights overhead did nothing for the concussion I’m sure was settling into my mind, making my vision pulse. I moved to block my face and instead nearly hit myself with that leaded feeling that hadn’t faded away—and felt way too real in my hands to just be residual of...whatever happened to me. I blinked the blurriness out of my eyes to see what the hell was caught on my hands, blood running cold when I saw what it was.

Cuffs. Big, gaudy yellow cuffs, nearly the size of my head and six times as heavy. They encased my entire hand and went well past my wrists, leaving me to struggle to pull them away without being able to bend them as I stared at my hands.

My first question, of course, was why my cast was gone—and why did my arm not hurt in its absence? But that curiosity left the moment I realized I knew the symbol on the cuffs as my vision cleared: Department of Unified Protection.

“What?” I breathed. I ignored the hammering in my head to get to my knees, blinking hard to force my eyes to focus past the pulsing in my vision’s edges. For a second, all I could see was steel, and I had that fleeting hope that there was just some weird shit going on and Brent was right there—but as my vision became clearer, I could see the cracks and pores in the wall. That wasn’t metal. That was rock.

That was concrete.

I tried turning into humidity. Tried rushing away on a pulse of water and maybe, hopefully, the cuffs would fall off—but no; they stayed on tight, and I stayed normal. I couldn’t use my powers at all. No, no—this couldn’t be right! The DUP fell years ago, what the hell was I doing in a cell?

I looked around, beginning to hyperventilate. Okay, okay. This had to be something else, right? I just needed to get it together. I tried steadying my breathing as I took in my surroundings fully; four walls, all glass, tinted to the point where I saw my reflection looking around wildly instead of anything beyond them. A platform bed and a shitty sheet, a singular pillow. There was a desk, a couple papers on them with scribbles of owls and doves and…and the Archangel symbol?

I stepped closer to the desk, tentatively, like I was scared the drawing made with a golf pencil was going to jump out of the paper and choke me to death. It was different compared to the one on Augustine’s little tracker; this one was lined and curved like the Vitruvian Man, but it was, without a doubt, the Archangel symbol. Still holding that same dodecahedron, the shine in its center now reminding me far too much of the Ray Sphere.

How…how was this here? How was I here? I felt like some animal in a cage at a zoo, left out to be ogled at from the other side of a glass I couldn’t see through. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. This couldn’t be the tar again, right? Was I having another weird hallucination? Wolfe’s notes said something about the Vermaak going insane. God, that was it, wasn’t it? I was going insane—

“Augustine escaped?”

I froze, all panic leaving with the cold rush, head on a swivel as I looked around. I was…I was the only one in the cell, so where the hell was that voice coming from? “Hello?” I tried to ask, the sound coming out like a mouse squeak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Who’s there?”

“Augustine.” The voice said, more serious this time. It floated, had this sorta airiness to it that would have calmed me in literally any other situation—but here, it was just freaking me out more. “You said she injured you. Did she escape?”

I caught a flash of something I shouldn’t have—pink. There, in the reflection of the tinted glass, was a long streak of pink…something.

Oh god. Not again. “Mom?”

I stepped closer to the glass, the image—what should have been my reflection—doing so in turn. Only it wasn’t my reflection. That wasn’t me at all. It was too tall, too fair and skinny to be me. There was no orange jumpsuit, but a cream knit cardigan over a plain green silky shirt, bright and plush long pink hair pulled up into a ponytail. I squinted, trying to make out features, and it wasn’t till I stepped closer that their face came into full view.

The pink hair was different, but that face, the sharp features and those eyes, were the same. “Y-you’re—” How was this possible? It was them. Younger, actually cognitive, but them. “You’re t-that person in the bed, back in the hospital room. Garrett.”

They didn’t respond, their eyes instead looking around the cell. “Sorry for the mess,” they said. “I don’t have much….control over any of this anymore. Not since my condition has gotten worse.”

They acted like this was a living room with old pizza boxes stacked to the roof, not…this. Whatever this was. But one thing was for sure; they were doing this. “How are you doing th—”

“You never answered my question.”

I blinked. “I—she did. Or, well, someone broke her out but we’re…we don’t know who.”

A thousand emotions crossed their face; regret, fear, some sort of dejection. “What happened to her?”

I hesitated; what do you say to someone who spent who knows how long trapped by Augustine? “She’s gone.” I decided to say, reassuring them. “My d—, Delsin Rowe and Eugene Sims dealt with her, after she—.”

“Attacked Salmon Bay again.” Their eyes fell, head slightly nodding as they swallowed whatever distaste that statement left in their mouth. They…I thought letting them know she was gone would comfort them—so why did they look so sad?

“You…” I drew off, concerned. “You heard?”

“I saw it.”

I thought they meant television. Logically, how would someone see Augustine’s assault in Washington from the other side of the country? But there was a familiar sound behind me, that grand roar of rushing water, and I turned in time to see the glass of the opposite wall shift.

The reflected imagery moved, the dark tint of the glass bubbling up until it looked like an angry sea, something far beyond the glass churning. It took me far too long to realize that I was looking at the whirlpool, my whirlpool, that I made to fight Augustine from the marina in Seattle. God, was it really that big?

“She’s going to come out,” Garrett’s voice rang. I looked back to glance at them, only to see them staring at the ground, mouth shut. The room echoed with their pained gasps of a past statement. “Augustine, she’s…I saw her free. Out in the world, a whirlpool behind her.”

“When?” Another voice, lower and more scratchy, asked.

“I don’t know,”

“I knew it would happen one day. I just…I never would have thought it would be you, Regina.”

The hairs on my neck stood up on end, and I slowly turned to look at Garrett. “How do you know my name?” I didn’t use my full name when I introduced myself to them. I never do.

Garrett inhaled deeply before looking up, blinking back tears and deciding now was the perfect time to ignore my question. “She called me Dream Eater, when she placed me here,” they said, looking through the reflection and around the cell I was in with a disgusted look on their face. “This…terrarium of a cell. One always names their favorite pets, and I wasn’t exempt from that rule.”

My brow furrowed. “This was…your cell?” I asked, looking around the bleak room. A bed, a desk, and tinted glass you could barely see through. This was it?

I knew Curdun was a prison, but jeez.

"In the end." Garrett confirmed. "She couldn't bear looking at me for what she'd done, but couldn't cut me loose. We were stuck with each other with no way out."

“Do…you mean the implant?” I asked cautiously, looking back at Garrett. I hated how much that haunted stare seemed to follow anyone I met, echoes of trauma that hovered on the crows feet of their eyes.

“In part,” Garrett confirmed. “Though there’s more, much more, to the story than what you know.”

Well, good, because I didn’t know a thing. 

But they mentioned it—the implant. Dr. Hutch was able to confirm that was the cause of all these issues. “Whatever she did to you, she did to me,” I said, taking a step closer to the glass. Garrett’s form didn’t get closer in time with my steps; did it mean they were here, with me? Or was all of this an illusion? “I—I can’t heal anymore. The tar—”

“Tar?” Garrett questioned, brow furrowing.

“She was using concrete and tar,” I continued. The words meant something to them, I had to keep pushing. “We don’t know where she got the power from, she…she was working with this new group, Archangel.” I moved over to the desk, using the heavy cuffs to stab at the chest of their symbol. “These guys. The tar made me sick, and the doctor confirmed it made you sick too. There has to be something you know about them, right?”

Garrett’s eyes met mine, the lingering wet in them making their blue glisten until it reminded me of the sea. They held my gaze for a long time, seeming to weigh my begging against some sort of hesitance in their mind as they thought deeply. “You said she was collaborating with someone?”

“They’re called Archangel.” I informed them. “We know…well, nothing about them. Nothing beyond the fact that they want D—, Delsin Rowe. What’s wrong with me? It was meant for him. Augustine was sent to find him.” Garrett’s eyes fell and they sighed deeply, and I begged once more. “You’ve gotta know something. Anything.” I pleaded.

“I don’t—”

“Please.”

Garrett closed their eyes, forcing a deep breath. Something in their resolve seemed to break, and when their head raised, they seemed weighed down by everything, like their secrets were physically pulling their shoulders till they slouched. “There’s too much you don’t know,” They repeated, stressed the fact as something in them came to a resolve. “And we don’t have very long before I lose control again. You’d make a better witness than a listener.”

A better witness? What did that mean?

I didn’t get to ask them. The fluorescent lights above flickered, and in the millisecond of dark that washed over us Garrett vanished, leaving me to stare at my wide-eyed expression.

“Wh—” my heart dropped as I sputtered, looking around. Trying to catch a glimpse of them in the reflections. “Hello?”

They were nowhere.

And I was still somehow in a Curdun Cay cell.

“No,” I choked out, stepping close enough to the glass that my breath fogged it. “No, come on! You can’t just leave me here!”

Well, it seemed they could—and did,­ as they didn’t reappear despite my begging. I waited, called out their name a few times, pleaded to be released from whatever hell this was before tears bubbled up with the frustration in my chest and I raised my cuffs to bang against the glass. “Don’t leave me here!” I screeched, hitting it again. And again. And again.

With the third hit came a subtle, sharp crunch, a crack appearing where the cuffs landed. I stared at the little chip in the tint; it…it couldn’t be that easy, right? This was a cell, one that held back a lot more powerful Conduits than me.

But it was a better alternative to staying here and crying.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself, nodding slowly. I flexed my arms—I wasn’t Brent, but maybe I didn’t need super strength. Just good aim and a decent hit. Let’s hope those 12 years of gymnastics actually paid off.

I brought my cuffed hands around like an axe to a tree, hitting the crack and cringing as the glass and metal on my hands collided, screaming their protests at the impact. But that wasn’t important. What did matter was the crack deepened, chipped away glass falling to my feet as fissures spread like spider webs.

I brought my arms back and swung again, less hesitation in the hit as I watched the cracks spread further. It was working! I kept hitting the wall with resolve, putting all my strength into every swing. The fissures grew, becoming clefts, cracks, then gaps as I slammed my hands against the glass with everything I had, the wall becoming a reflective mosaic.

I put everything, everything, into my last swing and the glass exploded, giving away into a brilliant crystalline rain. My cuffs kept their momentum and I flew forward with them, losing my balance and tumbling.

There was this weird…pull in the back of my head, like those strains I’d get during migraines when I moved wrong, and suddenly my hands were flying forward to catch me—uncuffed—landing in the shattered glass of the cell wall. I winced as it dug into my palms—my exposed palms, the right still missing its cast—before remembering I should be on high alert. I just broke out of a Curdun Cay cell. I knew nothing about the DUP save for the fact that I wasn’t really interested in confronting them. So I ignored the pain, rushing to stand and faltering once I looked around.

This…this wasn’t Curdun. It definitely tried to look like it, with concrete crawling up the walls like vines and a long DUP banner over a widely spread security system made of what had to be 18 different monitors. I would have been inclined to call it Curdun if the colorful tile I was standing on wasn’t laid in a way to say Sea 6 News, the familiar banner of the news site a large testament to the area.

How did I get here?

“I think, in her own, convoluted way,” Garrett’s voice rang out, “Augustine was truly convinced everything she did was for the greater good.” The center console of the multi-television security set-up flickered, going from DUP orange to static before Garrett formed in the pixelation, looking at me from across the room. “Despite everything, she wanted safety for Conduits. To save them from being pinned as the monsters the world claimed they were.”

I had to resist rolling my eyes. Augustine? Being benevolent? “She…she tortured Eugene Sims. She tried to wipe out the Akomish, twice. She broke your power. I don’t think that’s saving anyone,” I eventually said.

“No, it isn’t.” Garrett agreed. “But that didn’t make her conviction any less sure.”

It came in like a haze, the dim light above bending and refracting on the tile. The pulsing rose, the air shifting like it would with Dr. Sims’ video powers only somehow more…ethereal. Pristine. Like magic only a god could perform. The shimmering took shape, settling into wrinkled clothing and pained expressions until they were mere feet away from me, laying on the ground and gasping like they both just had the wind knocked out of them. “Seven years, I’ve kept them safe. Me!” Augustine gasped, “I won’t let anyone undo that. Not the government—” she winced, “Not the Army. Not you.”

This was the woman I was familiar with from the history books and old articles; a long overcoat with that emblem pasted on her arm, leathery boots to match. There were a few hairs knocked loose from her immaculate bun, but not a frayed white one was in sight. She was orderly, commanding—none of what I met in Salmon Bay.

They both fought to move from their place, him being the first to rise to an elbow. Dad. Delsin Rowe. It was him in his youth, his prime, his legacy, the white hoodie stained at the cuffs with blood that definitely wasn’t his, beanie askew. His expression…god, I haven’t seen fury like that from him before. Deep bags under his eyes, face barely flinching despite the obvious pain he was in as he tried to shift. “Seven years, all you’ve done is keep them locked up.” He growled with bared teeth like a wolf, breathing hard. “You just took away their freedom.”

Augustine managed to prop herself up and began pushing back towards a slab of concrete on the ground, leaning against it. “So tell me,” she hummed, “What would you do? Just throw open the gates at Curdun Cay station? Set them all free?”

“Is this…” I drew off, voice barely above a whisper. There was no way. “Is this what happened?” This had to be an illusion. It couldn’t be anything else. “How are you doing this?”

“You bet your ass I would,” Dad hissed, moving to his knees and trying to stand, immediately losing his balance.

“Consciousness.” Garrett responded to me, like that answered my question. But then they caught my confused glance, and elaborated. “Thought, dream, memory—that’s my power. Anything that falls between the folds of your mind is mine to play with, and I’ve kept every memory I’ve gained from those who used my power. That’s what you’re seeing here.”

A memory.

“The world hasn’t changed in the past seven years,” Augustine retorted, using the concrete to pull herself up. “Inside, the Conduits are safe. They’re alive.” She gasped out in pain, rising to her feet and staggering back a step before forcing herself to stand tall. “You turn them out, they’d all be dead inside a week.”

Dad fell again, face screwed up in pain and fury as he grit his teeth so hard it looked like they’d shatter under the bite force. That pain looked real, so intense that it somehow made me flinch, the twinge crawling around my jaw and to the back of my head, forcing me to screw my eyes shut. My head throbbed with each beat of my heart and I raised my hands to press against my temples in an effort to ward off the pain—but when I moved my hand, it was laden down with…well, something. There was a small jingle that sang in my ear and I forced my eyes open, blinking in shock when I saw…a chain?

I was suddenly there, lying on the ground just a mere yard in front of Augustine, in the place Dad was years ago as Augustine glared down at him. “So tell me,” she demanded, authority leaking back into her voice. “Who’s the savior, and who’s the monster?”

She backed away slowly as I tried to stand, feeling every ounce of whatever was trying to drag Dad down originally. Was I in his body? Or simply standing where he did?

I felt like shit. My head was throbbing, my stomach threatened to flip on itself. Bile crept up my esophagus and burned the back of my throat. What was worse was the muscle weakness—every joint in my body screamed as I tried to pull myself up. Last time I felt this ill…Dad had taken my power.

Garrett’s voice rang out again, face slowly coming into view the further away Augustine moved. “At every turn, Augustine was handed impossible choices and was expected to make the most diplomatic decision as if she wasn’t toeing the line between satan and savior.”

My knees nearly gave out under me and I forced them to straighten, breathing hard like I had jogged the stairwell all the way here instead of magically appearing on the top floor of a tower that had been torn down years ago. Garrett’s television stayed strong, the only one that illuminated the back of Augustine until she disappeared into the shadows, arms wide in challenge.

“She—” I cut off, stumbling forward slightly when my ankle refused to cooperate. I fixed myself, straightening and meeting Garrett's nonplussed gaze once more. “She wanted to keep the Conduits locked up. She was mad at D-Delsin for wanting to release them all from prison.” I looked at them vehemently. “To release you from prison. I don't see how keeping everyone locked up was an impossible decision.”

Garrett kept their mild, annoyingly all-knowing gaze on me. “It was diplomacy,” Garrett said. “The only way to make sure every Conduit in the country wouldn't be hunted for sport was to hide them away. Out of sight, out of mind—and out of reach. Somewhere the world could forget about them, and she could protect them from their wrath.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the stomach flips, the fact that I was somehow standing in as Dad, or that I was plain exhausted with life up to that point—but I refused to accept that.

“She staged everything to keep Conduits under her control.” I said, shaking my head. “The breakout on Akomish land? Using my mom’s trauma to use her for her narrative and scare the country into thinking they needed her? She scared the world into thinking Conduits were monsters and she was the only one that could save them.”

“She tried her best, with what tools were provided to her,” Garrett stressed, a bit of tension in their voice. Augustine’s silhouette disappeared into the shadows, leaving a clear line of vision between Garrett and I. “After the Beast, the only tools at her disposal to protect both sides was to play into the fear of one.”

“And jail the other?” I demanded. Sorry, I know that they were trying to give me answers—but this wasn’t the sort of answer I was looking for. I wasn’t interested in hearing about how Augustine cared about others oh so much, not when my family was full of scars from her doing. I wasn’t convinced. “Torture them? Experiment on them?”

“Don’t speak on things you don’t understand—“

“Implant stuff in them to stop their powers?” I continued, stressing the point as I looked directly at Garrett. “She cared about no one! Not the public, not the Conduits—I don’t understand why you’d think she’d feel any differently o-or defend her. She didn’t care about the Conduits. Not Fetch Walker, not Delsin Rowe. Not you, or any of the others—“

“Enough.”

My words seemed to strike a nerve with Garrett as they barked out. The demand was simple, but their voice reverberated through the room loudly, a commanding tone that made me press my hands to my ears at their decibel. Ahead, on the television screen, Garrett inhaled deeply, before saying, “Augustine was always a complicated woman, and there were many times throughout my life I never understood why she did what she did. But she wasn’t a monster.”

I slowly lowered my hands, looking up at the screen as Garrett’s eyes closed and they tried to repress the pain of their thoughts. Throughout my life. “You…” I drew off, trying to do the math; if they were in their late thirties or forties now, and knew Dad, there was a chance they spent 7 years in Curdun. 7 unknown years, where I already knew could’ve been spent either experimenting on them...or training them. “You worked for her, didn’t you? That’s why you act like you know her so well.”

Garrett hesitated, eyes opening—and even then, their eyes didn’t meet mine. “I did more than work for her,” they said.

I opened my mouth to ask what they meant when the screen holding their face glitched out, the corrupted pixelation growing to the corners of the center monitor and spreading beyond, shifting the screen of each surrounding monitor until they all warped like there were magnets pressed against their screens. The corruption reached to the end of the edges of the monitor setup, the clouded colors not fully reaching the plastic of the monitors themselves and instead looking like a portal to another dimension as the hues within its window began to warp.

Outlines. Distorted sounds that slowly lost its electronic fry as the picture deepened. The crisp laughter of children, the harsh ring of carnival music. The woosh of the pendulum ride they passed as their features focused, features illuminated by the lights of the rides around them.

There was a man turned away from the screen, the ends of his slightly grayed hair scuffing against the collar of his jean jacket, and I nearly called out to him, expecting Dad. Wanting it to be Dad. But it wasn’t, not my Dad at least; the man turned, moving to grab the hand of someone else and pull them forward, a child that barely reached his chest’s height. Their auburn-brown hair bounced as the duo rushed towards a funhouse, their little legs easily keeping up with the slight catch in the man’s gait as the camera moved forward with them, watching the duo escape into the mirror maze of the funhouse before following.

The camera turned the corner to see the young child and their father playing in front of those warped mirrors that made them wrinkle in on themselves, both laughing. “How do we go back to that, Garrett?” a voice, a very familiar voice that was uncomfortably soft, asked over the low hum of the carnival and the laughter. The kid looked over at the camera and held out a hand, beckoning them closer, mirth lighting up their silvery blue eyes as a larger, older hand came to grasp theirs and allowed themselves to be pulled forward in front of the mirror. “We were closer then than we are now.”

The mother, Augustine, laughed as she looked at her distorted form before taking the child close into a hug, looking down at them. “There is no going back,” Garrett’s voice said, melancholic and yet tense. The father joined the trio, raising a handheld camera to take a picture. “That died with Dad.”

The camera flashed, light overtaking the glimpse at the memory until the white imprinted on every terminal and made them all flash before they turned dark, plunging the room into darkness save for what bleed in through the broken skylight. Realization overtook me, and I suddenly felt really unsafe.

“The world isn’t black and white. It’s a technicolor of hypocrisy, and I think you’d find our stories to be more similar than they are different.” Their voice rang from the shadows. “I am not innocent.” The televisions suddenly sputtered on, all of them, the sudden brightness from their feed blinding me. I blinked a few times, raising my hand and trying to look past the brightness to their screens, heart stopping when I did; everything, every screen, was about the flood in Seattle. The deaths, the loss, the bodies and fear. Kids being pulled out of water, thousands stranded on the open air top floor of a parking garage, floating corpses. Below the screens Augustine stood, back so illuminated I couldn’t see her front as she approached, just the outlined silhouette. “You will not be,” Garrett continued, the voice sounding…closer?

I lowered my hand, moving to a defensive stance as Augustine closed the gap; I wasn’t gonna be caught off guard. Not here, not now. But as she got closer, I realized that something was…off. She was definitely shorter than I remembered, and her gait was less ‘commandeering’ than before. Each step brought her closer to the light the hole in the skylight cast on us and once she crossed it, I saw why it didn’t seem like her. It wasn’t her.

Garrett stood across from me, Augustine’s uniform perfectly tailored to fit them, pink hair up in a tight bun. “A life is made of wrongs we inherit.”

I stood where Dad had years ago, across from the heir to the wrongs Augustine wrought. “You’re her child,” I breathed, sure they could hear my voice despite how low it was. “Augustine. You’re her kid.”

Here I was, caught in some insane memory-mind palace with the child of the woman who my father had just finished dealing with for the second time. Completely at their mercy. But they had also been at Augustine’s mercy, and she left them with scars that left them crippled back outside of their mind and within it.

“By blood.” Garrett confirmed, moving around me like they were sizing me up, now that we were meeting in person—or whatever this version of in person was. “Though not by much else. The daughter she never got, the son she never wanted. The child she didn’t need.”

They stopped somewhere behind me, and I resisted the urge to spin on my heel and keep them in my vision. Here I was at the mercy of Augustine’s hidden child, standing in the same place where my father took down their mother—and they very well could settle some scores if they wanted.

But this also didn’t feel like that. It felt less like a cat cornering a mouse and more like a bird leading another to shelter under a palm leaf during a storm. My eyes fell as I processed that, blinking hard when I noticed I was not only standing in Dad’s place, but an exact mirror of him; that jean vest, the hoodie. The blood on my hands. My fist tensed around the end of the chain it held, the press of its cool metal prompting me to ask, “Why should I trust anything you say?” I asked.

“Because I’m the only one willing to be honest with you.” Garrett stressed behind me, their voice seeming to carry off the cool rush of the A/C vents. “Unabashedly. No more half-truths. No more having to wonder what’s been kept from you.” Their steps echoed, and I turned my head to look at them the moment they appeared in my peripheral as they rounded, only pausing when they were directly ahead. Garrett’s head tilted ever so slightly, and they asked, “Aren’t you tired of being lied to?”

God, I was. I absolutely was; with everything that’s happened in the last month, I felt like I was drowning. Everything was either some new revelation that made me feel stupid for the fact that I hadn’t realized it before, or was something that was the fallout of a fact that happened years ago that I didn’t have all the facts to.

But I didn’t say anything; I kept my eyes on Garrett’s, refusing to back down. A part of me, the logical part, told me this was all some sort of trap that’d earn me more ice picks in my back, if not worse.

But then again, I was already trapped in some manipulated echo of a memory, so logic wasn’t the strongest suitor in the room, right now.

I looked at Garrett—at their uniform. The same DUP emblem on the cuffs I had on just moments ago sat proudly on their shoulder instead of shackling them like they had at some point. And yet after everything, they insisted Augustine—their mother—was trying her best to save Conduits. “Why do you vouch for her?” I finally asked. “After everything she did to Conduits, to you, why…”

Garrett shrugged simply, eyebrow cocking a bit. “I figured you’d understand, considering who you inherited your sins from. Tell me—is Delsin still running away from the truth?”

I immediately bristled. How could they even pretend that my dad and Augustine were the same? He ran away to protect Brent and I. “That’s different,” I insisted, voice cold.

“Is it?”

My mouth opened, but I struggled to find a good retort. There were definitely a lot of people that thought Dad was some sort of demon for doing what he did, releasing the Conduits. And Mom...well, her body count was higher than mine.

Garrett’s face stayed stoic, and in the stare, I saw Augustine in the contours of their shape, echoes of their mother in their features; but beyond it, I saw melancholy. Grief. They seemed to struggle to find what to say for a moment before closing their eyes, inhaling deeply. “You want to know why I thought Augustine cared about Conduits?” They finally asked, opening their eyes and meeting mine, stare unblinking. I snapped my mouth shut and nodded silently. Better not to piss off someone who could hold the secret to your rare cancer in their memory bank. “I watched her make sure the mistakes that nearly killed us all would never end up in the hands of someone who could repeat the process. She loved order, and the world the RFI left behind was lawless.”

My brow furrowed. “So you know about the RFI?” I thought Dad and Zeke said the RFI was something kept quiet so no one would try to make another Conduit Delete button.

“She destroyed anything about it after the RFI was analyzed by the DUP’s science division.” Garrett responded with assurance, “She vowed our extinction wouldn’t happen twice.”

What? Augustine…deleted info about a weapon that strong? “You say that like you’re sure,” I drew off.

Garrett’s chin came up a bit. “I am. I was there.”

The security monitors behind Garrett suddenly booted up, stark white and emitting a horrible mic callback sound that made my hands shoot to my ears to block out the terrible grating noise, unable to keep it from vibrating my skull. I cringed with the noise, eyelids pink as they screwed shut to protect me from the sudden onslaught of light and I tried to push against the way it all made my head pound. I felt like a migraine was coming on.

But then it all stopped. That screech faltered, the pink left my vision for a more muted white, and my head found relief as I tentatively opened my eyes.

There were still security screens in front of me, but that was about as far as the similarities lied; there were less of them, the feed no longer showing off corners of Seattle’s downtown but dark crevices of what almost looked like a cave, if there weren’t vents and weird heaters and more concrete. The wall they were pinned to was this sleek darkened stone, wires running from the monitors down to their supply feeds below in zipping, jagged lines that reminded me way too much of how some cheesy Hollywood villain would decorate their lair.

Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t too far off.

I backed up, trying to put every screen in my vision to puzzle piece whatever concrete maze was in front of me when my knees hit the edge of something, and I nearly fell backwards. I turned, my hands shooting out in front of me and looking for purchase to balance—

And instead I pushed myself backwards as I saw who was standing in front of me.

She looked even younger than before, uniform gone and instead replaced with army fatigues with a leaf at her shoulders, a rank higher than anything I knew from the military segment of my APUSH class. Didn’t the DUP start as an army thing before becoming its own branch? This must have been Augustine when she was Lieutenant Colonel, not Director. Augustine’s eyes fell and my blood ran cold as I thought she zeroed in on me and was going to make it my problem—but she instead reached forward, hands coming around something and bringing it up to eye level.

It was broken, the top panel of the device blown clean off and revealing the veins of wires underneath its metal welding. The center of it was glass but unclean, grime and dirt and what looked like blood dried on it and taking away its transparency. There was this branching darkness on the metal, burns singed into it like veins, the edges of every panel rusted over and smelling like the blood of the deaths it caused.

“Is that it?” Someone else in the room asked. I pushed myself up from my place on the ground, shifting to my knees and peeking over the edge of the table like some strange sort of meerkat trying not to get caught by the adder outside of its hole in an effort to see who was talking to Augustine.

They were young—looked younger than me, which was saying a lot—their hair shaggy and close cropped, a brighter auburn than it was in the hospital room back in reality. Their eyes were dim against the bright yellow shirt I’d yet to see on any Curdun prisoner before—the same uniform I realized I was wearing to match.

Garrett. Child Garrett. Were they really in Curdun before they were even an adult?

“The Ray Field Inhibitor,” Augustine confirmed, turning with the device in hand. She held it less like the nuke it was and more like a scythe. “Every life lost…every city decimated…and their best solution was to wipe us off of the face of the earth.”

She looked down at the RFI as if it were vermin, disgust and anger and hatred in her face as she stared at its broken metal top. Augustine turned, showing it to Garrett. I came around the table on my hands and knees, peeking around the leg of the desk—I wasn’t sure yet if Augustine could see me, if this was a memory, or what. And quite honestly, I was very interested in not being in the crosshairs of her vision regardless of what sort of reality I was existing in. Augustine held the device close to Garrett, allowing them to reach out and take it in their own hands.

The moment it passed to Garrett’s hands, some slinking and terrible feeling crawled its way up my spine on a thousand stabbing legs, taking hold of my throat and squeezing like it was trying to choke life out of me. That soreness that seemed to make itself at home in between my shoulder blades burned, a pain that immediately made me flinch as if I could get away from it.

Garrett and I both choked out a gasp at the same time, and they dropped the RFI on the ground like it had stung them, the device clattering to the ground and losing another small metal panel in its fall. The moment it left their hand, all that pain stopped, seeped away like muck down the drain. The RFI rolled away from Garrett and towards me, stopped only in place by a jagged spike of concrete that pierced its shell, making me jump back, falling from my knees to my ass.

“Careful!” Augustine demanded, and for a moment, I got to see the mother within her. She immediately stepped forward and let her hands cup Garrett’s cheeks, examining their face as if the RFI had slashed claws over it and she needed to assess the wounds. “What happened?”

Garrett stared down at the RFI, trying to catch their breath. “I felt it,” they eventually stammered out. “That pain.” Their vision came to rest on me, making my pant die off as I stopped trying to catch whatever breath the RFI’s hold took from me. “The same pain I felt when it tried to kill me,” they said.

When it tried to kill me.

I wasn’t sure of Garrett’s true age, but I didn’t need to be—they were alive for the Blast. The RFI’s detonation. They were one of the millions that should have died that day, and one of the thousands that somehow didn’t. I hadn’t stopped to consider that any Conduit born before 2011 felt that same searing pain—and was probably left with a thousand questions…and no answers.

But it seemed not everyone was as ignorant. 

Augustine’s eyes left Garrett’s face to look down at the RFI now, hands falling from their face as she stepped forward, waving away the concrete spear that stopped it. The slab slunk back into the floor, RFI teetering just slightly at its release before it was scooped up by Augustine.

She turned it in her hands. Inspected the mess of wires on one end and the now-gaping hole in the other. The center that seemed to catch blue in the light—at least, the parts of it that weren’t covered in muck.

“It was a miracle we were given a second chance,” Augustine said, voice low and carrying pain, more than I ever knew she was capable of having. There was something in her stare that looked far past the device in her hands as she considered it, trapped in the echoes of something in the past. That pain compounded in her eyes into indignation, anger, and then a steely resolve as she shook her head, tone asserting as she vowed, “And I am not going to let something like that ever happen again.”

It was interesting watching her use concrete; while Dad’s always hovered and swirled, hers simply appeared exactly where she wanted it to be, no directing needed. Concrete wrapped around the RFI like a bandage, encasing the item fully in Augustine’s hands before it began to hug closer and closer to the metal.

Every lurch forward came with a crunching sound as the concrete crushed the RFI, compacting it into a ball of nothingness that she threw against the wall beside me with rage, the sphere shattering into a million pieces. I flinched, covering my face as the shards of concrete flew everywhere, stabbing at my forearms and hitting my drawn-up knees until everything stilled.

When I pulled my arms away from my eyes, Garrett and Augustine were no longer in front of me; they had somehow moved across the room without making a sound, standing in front of the monitors. Augustine clicked the keyboard on the long table in front of the feed with the finality of a typed phrase I somehow missed, and every screen began to blip out, their feed of the concrete caves being replaced with a scroll of photo scanned documents. The first documents that appeared had the Armed Forces stamp in the top right, the star surrounded by a laurel; a breakdown of the RFI, an autopsy report of Cole MacGrath with the outlined body marked and lit up like a Christmas tree. Radiation readings with notes about how there was a lack of any, mission objectives coupled with inventory catalogs of what all was taken from the First Sons’ New Marais base.

But the star shifted, losing its laurel and gaining weirder symbology; an hourglass and a half-filled circle, the Roman numeral I. An eyeball blinked into the center of the star and stared forward, stare so strong it drew me from my spot on the floor and pulled me forward, close enough that I could see how Augustine glared back at it.

I’d seen that logo before, a mile under New Marais.

The First Sons.

The files that started appearing were decorated in blueprints and formulas, schematics for the first of the Ray sphere and those pods the Vermaak were held in. Augustine looked at it all in disgust, shaking her head as Garrett watched from the sidelines. “Decades of effort went into creating a world the First Sons couldn’t handle.” She growled low, voice still managing to project around the room, like the concrete was grabbing it and passing her words along. “All of this—and for what? They failed to even confront the Beast in the end, the one thing they were preparing against. The only way MacGrath was able to stop its destruction was to sacrifice us all.”

“Was it the only way to stop the Beast?” Garrett asked, eyes still glued to the monitors as they watched the schematics for the Ray Sphere’s cradle scroll past. They missed how she glanced at them with anger in her eyes, indignant at the question.

But her voice betrayed none of that emotion as she said, “It was the only solution anyone bothered looking for,” before looking back at the screens ahead. “A trade of a thousand lives to absolve a thousand sins.”

She stared at the screens for a few moments before her jaw set and she slowly shook her head. “Never again,” she decided with a voice more firm than the concrete she’d laid down in her office sometime before. There was a fire in her eyes, an indignation kindled by the pain of whatever hurt her in the past. “We won’t be punished for what we are ever again.”

She leaned forward, hunched over as her fingers flew over the keyboard with the efficiency of someone who’d become very familiar with the keys from thousands of reports as she pulled up a command prompt and began inputting commands that were well beyond the one semester of foundations of computer science class I took and nearly failed. I looked around, trying to understand what she was doing and failing until Garrett asked, “You’re deleting these things from the database?”

“This is classified information few know,” Augustine said, turning to Garrett. “And even fewer need access to. Could you imagine what could happen if the wrong person knew exactly how to get rid of us? If they had a device that was even a fraction as powerful as the Beast?” Her head only shook once, and she returned to the computer. “No. I’ll make sure those that do know about these things will know exactly what will happen to them if they were to spread rumors.” She paused her typing, looking down thoughtfully at her hands as the word echoed back to the large windows. “Rumors. That’s what we will call it. And with the Department of Unified Protection soon becoming its own branch, there will be no one else to answer to but me.”

She straightened, the resolve in her eyes as she glared at the screens strong enough to burn a hole through them. “And I will not leave room for debate.”

She moved whatever the sphere that acted as a tract pad was around, and all the files were highlighted and fiddled with for a moment before a prompt came up and she confirmed it, the command center promptly informing her of it starting a complete wipe of those files from the database.

But, considering it was Augustine, it should've been obvious that she wasn't doing this out of the good of her heart.

A new window opened, and every file she had highlighted was now also being transferred somewhere else—a USB flash drive that Augustine pulled out of the back of a monitor and held up like a prized kill for Garrett to see. “Fate will be left in our hands. This...power, this ability to wipe us off the Earth will not be given to a government that wishes to rid themselves of their latest problem. This will not happen twice.”

Velcro ripped and Augustine tucked the memory stick in her breast pocket, keeping her cards close to her chest—literally. Files of the bomb that created Conduits, and the explosion that nearly made them extinct, all on a small device only in her hands.

She wielded the power, now.

Garrett watched the flash drive disappear before turning their attention back to the terminal, watching the bar on the D E L E T I N G F I L E S popup steadily grow. “How did we do it?” They asked, looking up at their mother as she stepped closer. “How did...how did we survive when so many others died?”

Augustine's eyes traveled from Garrett's face, to the ground, to somewhere far away before she turned back to the monitors and dismissed the deletion popup in favor of a new tab, typing away and opening up a video. “When the RFI was detonated, Homeland Security's radionuclide detectors went haywire. They read the sudden depletion of multiple forms of radiation that they now attribute to RFE. But—” she played the video, where a heat map of the United States grew a vivid red-hot just above New Marais, then began to seep to cool blue as the radiation disappeared, the hue spreading from the south upwards. It climbed up the Mississippi River, around the Rockies and up the burning vein of radiation the Beast laid in its wake, towards New England and the sound Empire City once rested in.

But as it traveled west, something happened.

Purples and reds burst from the Northwest, an explosion that mixed magenta in places as it pushed against the blue trying to overtake it. The two battled for space on the rest of the world map, flicks of bright red lashing out like lashes from a whip onto the blue as that cold blue stretched into the magenta like Lichtenberg figures, veins of death against whatever was trying to fight against it.

“Something countered the strength of the RFI,” Augustine said, watching the show of auroras and lightning strikes on the monitor before it all stilled, the calm map not at all reflecting the chaos that the Ray Field Inhibitor left in its wake. “Not enough to prevent it, but just enough to allow some of us to live.”

“A Ray Sphere?” Garrett asked curiously. I had to agree with them; it seemed the most possible answer, right? Maybe the First Sons had one ready to detonate in an event like this so that Conduits would never truly die.

But Augustine shook her head. “I was shown the readings of the Ray Sphere before being deployed to Empire City,” She told Garrett. “This was different. More resilient. Where the RFI would have easily consumed any power from a Ray Sphere, this was able to survive against the leech of RFE. It was able to reach out, prevent a full genocide of our people.“

Augustine pressed a button and the video rewound, the strikes of red reaching across the states, the Pacific, lashing out from the Northwest in pulses. “Every outreach was a life saved,” Augustine said, watching more bolts of power release across the map.

I watched the red snake out, reaching Russia and somewhere in South America in turn. So those random strikes of energy on the board were Conduits saved from the RFI? Augustine seemed so sure it wasn't the First Sons that caused this.

So if it wasn't...who did?

Garrett seemed to come to the same conclusion I did, asking Augustine, ”What was it, then, if not a Ray Sphere?“

Augustine's head finally turned to regard Garrett fully. “I'm not sure,” she admitted. She glanced back at the screen, hazel eyes coming to focus so hard on those flashes of red I could see the shade reflected in her iris. ”But I intend to find out. Why those that survived did, how they did. What saved us. And until then...“

She drew off, turning around to look towards the opposite wall; where the one behind her was stone, this one was pure glass, the panes so thick I could see their layers as I approached it in pace with Augustine.

It was as if the scene outside of Augustine's office knew she was approaching and wished to look down at her masterpiece; offensively bright florescent lights flashed on overhead in sectors, revealing spires of concrete shaped into levels and pillars.

The Arena.

I heard about it the first time articles were published to COLE, interviews from Curdun Cay survivors. Large arenas were littered all throughout Curdun, where Conduits would be pit against each other gladiator style while Augustine watched from above.

This was that above.

I could see power sources littered about, small enough for a Conduit to drain but not large enough for them to gain considerable power. Smoke billowed from false chimneys, light sources lined the lips of concrete. There were small bits of steel rebar poking out in some places, and I could even see puddles just under sprinklers installed on the undersides of concrete cliffs.

This was how she trained them. Weeded out Conduits one by one until she decided the victors that would take on the Pacific Northwest in search of answers. Dr. Sims. Daughtery.

Mom.

I hadn't realized everything around me disappeared until Garrett's reflection—the older Garrett—stood beside mine, looking down at the arena with their hands resting on an ornate Cedar cane I hadn't seen before. “She was a victim in her own right,” they said. “We all were, those of us that survived.”

Garrett's reflection met my eyes. “Do you believe me now, when I say she wanted to make sure we survived?”

I wanted to say I did. Hell, a part of me could even rationalize it, if I sat on the idea long enough; separating yourself from those that wanted to kill you by any means necessary was one of the few ways you could be sure you'd live.

But I didn't see benevolence in what Augustine did, then or now. “Everything she did…” I drew off, trying to find the words. “It just made things worse.”

Garrett sighed, seemingly very tired of trying to get me to see things their way. “She did what she thought would protect us—”

“No,” I cut off the reflection, refusing to accept this stupid idea. Augustine did nothing for Conduits, nothing I could spare my empathy on. “All I saw her do was delete evidence of everything that happened so she was the only one that knew the truth, and spin it all so she’d stay in charge. The only reason Conduits are even out of Curdun is because she couldn’t let that power go—”

“Would you rather the world know of the RFI?” Garrett challenged. “She was doing what she thought was best. Even if misguided.”

“By making Conduits the enemy?” I asked, motioning off to a poster on the wall to the right of me. It was a mockup to what I knew would eventually become a reporting poster, juvenile in its display: 'See Something, Say Something - Protect the Country from BIO-TERRORISM'. “Who coined that word?” I demanded of Garrett, who tore their eyes from mine to stare at the ground, taking a deep breath as if they were trying to calm themselves. “She created a problem and made herself the answer.”

Garrett grit their teeth. “She was trying to ensure—”

“Nothing else happened?” I finished their sentence for them. “How did any of her lies help?”

“Because sometimes, lies are necessary,” Garrett bit back in retort, eyes rising and their stare becoming a glare when I scoffed. I highly doubted everything that happened was because it was necessary. “Did your father not think the same, keeping the truth from you?”

I could feel my nostrils flare in anger. “That’s not the same.” I growled. Dad was nothing like Augustine; even in his lies, he did everything to try to help Conduits, in spite of it all. “My dad never meant to hurt anyone.”

Garrett’s eyebrow arched up further still as something rumbled around me; the concrete on the wall began to crawl forward, past the window’s trim and around the terminals behind me, closing in. The glass shattered, combust in a shower that sent me sprawling back as the ground on the other side of the bare window raised. I hit concrete, air sprawling from my lungs as the earthquake shuddered around me. The concrete ground against itself, a loud and painful reverberation that made me cover my ears, trying to stop the ear-splitting onslaught.

In one of the glass pieces on the ground, I caught a glimpse of Garrett’s ice blue eye still staring at me, unconvinced. “Your father hasn’t been transparent with you since the beginning,” Garrett’s voice echoed in my head in spite of it all. The fluorescent lights above cut out as they too were swallowed by the rock.

“How can you be so sure he’s a good man?”

Everything around me stilled and I forced myself to my elbows, looking around; gone was the neat observation room, the desks and monitors that allowed Augustine to peer into the maze below that made up the arena. Instead, as emergency lights flickered on, lining the rock where wall met floor, I realized I was in it.  

And something that cracked in the shadows behind me suggested I wasn’t alone.

I whipped around, trying to peer past the bad lighting to see who was there. “Garrett?” I called out tentatively. Something crunched, shifted the glass that blew back when the windows burst under the pressure of the concrete, the scrapes echoing down the corridor I stood in.

And from deep within the shadows, two glowing yellow eyes met mine, followed by the sound of something rushing towards me.

I stumbled back before turning and running for my goddamn life, heart hammering in my chest. This is what I get for talking shit about Augustine, isn’t it? I told Garrett their mother was shit, and now I’m stuck in Augustine’s Fun House with whatever the hell that was behind me as punishment.

My feet pound against the ground, veering off left the moment I found an opening to. I could still hear it behind me, hunting me, and put more into my steps, trying to outrun the predator. I skidded into my next turn and hit the wall, the impact of sharp rock on my arm feeling very real. If that felt real, would any other pain? Would I be safe from death here, or were we working on an A Nightmare On Elm Street ideology where anything that happened in this illusion happened outside of it?

I wasn’t sure, but it definitely encouraged me to continue running from my pursuer just in case it was someone—or something—that could rip me apart.

The concrete ground under my feet, pebbles of it left behind from its shifting formations that dug into the plain white and laceless tennis shoes and nearly sent me sprawling more than once as they caught in the grooves of the soles. There was a puddle of water just ahead and my calls to drain it were useless; the only time the water moved was when I ran through it, water soaking the ends of my DUP-issued pants. I was only a good three yards away from it by the time the puddle splashed again—whatever was chasing me was close.

But up ahead, there was a reprieve; a light in the dark alcove, warm amber and natural and inviting where the maze opened up. There had to be some way out of here, and even if not, the light would make it easier to see what the hell was behind me—so I ran. I put as much power into my feet as I could and ignored the burn of my lungs as I ran.

The unstable lights lining the floor flickered once, twice, three times the closer I got to the opening, my eyes struggling to adjust to see and plunging me in total darkness just before I breached the opening, forcing me to accept its burn into my retinas and the pain behind my eyes it gave me.

But when the scenery around solidified, I realized everything changed again, skidding to a stop and falling to my ass when gravel caught under my shoes as I looked around the rooftop I materialized on.

The Space Needle was dark—no colored lights strobing. No lights at all, which wasn’t normal. In fact, the entire city seemed muted like it was trying to curl in on itself. Shops I knew were usually open 24 hours were closed, neon signs were off. The city didn’t seem dead—it looked like it was hiding.

It was so quiet that I could have heard the lullaby of the Sound’s ebbs if it wasn’t for the sudden barrage of gunfire from somewhere ahead.

They were short bursts and followed by something…familiar? I’ve heard that whooshing sound before. Where have I heard it before? I shifted to my knees and got to a crouch, staying low as possible as I moved back to the ledge and peeked over it.

There, standing on the embankment that separated them from the dark waters, a fully armored DUP soldier and a Conduit detainee were exchanging fire. Figuratively and literally. The DUP soldier let off bursts that lit up the end of his rifle, the Conduit returning in kind with the same sort of flash, a pooling brightness swirling around his hand before he shot bullets of ember and smoke. The marina was littered in smoldering piles of ash, and it wasn’t until I saw the remains of a helmet in one that I realized it wasn’t the wood of the embankment that was lit on fire, but the opposition that once stood there.

Something shifted in the air around me and my hair raised with the static, a shimmer of pixelated blue wings passing directly over me before following the arch of its climb and stopping at its peak. The blue and white pixels snapped together and Dad formed from the cloud, pulling every pixel back towards his body as he dropped from the sky, fist held ready.

He became a meteor of ice blue, ripples of tech waves trailing behind him as he aimed his fist for the DUP soldier and took him out in a pulse of a bright summoning circle. The soldier dropped like a ragdoll, still and silent and dead, while the detainee stumbled back in shock before moving to run away.

Dad drew up his hand and shot without hesitation, the pixelated sword landing right in between the detainee’s shoulder blades and sending him sprawling to the ground, dazed and winded. Dad stalked towards him like a predator on prey as the detainee fought through his pain to scoot back, yanking him up from his place and pressing him against the guard rail of the marina.

The wind and the roar of the multiple APCs stole their words away, but there was no mistaking the rage leaking from Dad; despite not using powers, the video never left him, rippling against the bends of his joints like it was itching to be used again. Dad held the man by the collar of his uniform, fists to his throat—but was too busy hissing at the man to feel the hand on his stomach until he was blasted back in a cloud of smoke, slamming to the ground.

Smoke. We were in Seattle. Was that the guy Dad got smoke powers from?

The man stumbled forward, the only thing keeping him upright Dad, apparently, collapsing onto the wood of the marina. And then…both men turned out towards the water. I followed their eyes to a small, barely-anything boat bobbing in the water, slowly floating away into the Sound.

The detainee began crawling on his hands and knees towards the guard rail, Dad scrambling to his feet and letting the chain fall from his wrists, unspooling just enough to wrap the metal links around the man’s throat. I felt something swell up in my own as I watched Delsin, my father, begin to choke out this man.

But then…he hesitated. I could see it in his shoulders, the way his elbows slacked just a bit as he looked back out to the water and the boat. He was moving with the detainee’s struggles too much. And I found myself whispering, “Let him go,” again and again.

Dad leaned down, whispering something in the man’s ear.

And my blood ran cold when he stood back up and planted a foot on the man’s lower back, pushing him into the chain and choking the life out of him.

Want more from Doot? Go read more about how he tortures Garrett in All's Well That Ends:

Follow the tumultuous life of Garrett Jorrer, a Curdun Cay enforcer, experiment victim...and child of Brooke Augustine.

Told through memories of what was and wishes of what could have been, read through the out-of-order retelling of Garrett's experiences and how life led to this moment...and how it ends. All in amazing prose that utilizes 2nd person in a brilliant and artistic way! I fucking love second person, and Doot is the person for that POV if you're looking for writing that not only will blow you away, but show you how it's properly done.

[sunnyrealist]

Chapter 63: Seen and Not Heard

The Sun, the Moon, and All Our Stars

Summary and Details…

Previous Chapter Recap/Context: Sebastian finally reunited with his old friends, Ominis and Ruby McKinnon (the Hero of Hogwarts), after nearly a decade. They decide to take turns filling each other in on their adult lives. Ruby begins. She and Poppy began dating in sixth year and are now happily married. Poppy is a magizoologist, and Ruby is employed by the Department of Mysteries, conducting research on the connection between ancient magic and magical creatures. Because Ruby's work gives her a great deal of flexibility, she and Poppy travel the world together, but they're in Scotland for the summer to be close to Poppy's gran. Sebastian's turn is next, but he is unable to reveal details about his probationary work with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement due to its top secret nature. He tells them he isn't ready to share anything about Azkaban and might never be. He does, however, explain the toll Azkaban had on his mental health and self-worth. Kate also shares a little about herself. When it is Ominis' turn, Ruby and Poppy duck out to give them space. Kate decides to do the same and apparates home.

Pairing: 25-year-old, post-Azkaban Sebastian Sallow x 24-year-old Kate Mayflower (my OC), the assistant librarian at Hogwarts

Content warnings: In general, this is rated 18+, so minors should not read or interact with this story. This chapter focuses on lost love and grief and the realization that sometimes nothing can fix a terrible situation but time.

The full chapter is available below the cut; it can also be found on AO3 (link is posted below). Please leave some feedback if possible, especially if you like what you read! 🥰

Chapter 63: Seen and Not Heard

Ominis picks up the glass from the table, carefully swirling the liquid around and smelling it. 

“I can tell it’s a fine firewhisky. Shame I have to do this,” Ominis notes, downing all of the firewhisky as though it is just a shot. Taking a moment, he then places the glass back on the table. “I need some liquid courage, though.”

Sebastian raises his eyebrows silently, studying his old friend. He suddenly remembers Ominis is blind and could not have seen his facial reaction. “For… what?”

“To tell you why your owl didn’t make it to me,” Ominis replies. “I think I know… It’s because of my last name.”

Sebastian draws a breath, recalling the cruelty of the Gaunts. “Did… something happen with your family?”

There’s a pause. “No, not exactly. It’s more to do… with me.”

Sebastian continues to look at him quizzically. “How so?”

“I don’t go by the name ‘Ominis Gaunt’ anymore,” he answers in a failed attempt to be smooth, then seems to mentally brace himself. “I’ve changed my last name.”

 Sebastian switches to firewhisky, sensing tension. “Stop being so cryptic. Just tell me.”

Ominis is quiet for a moment longer. Trying to sound as even-keeled as possible, he says, “Sebastian, we’re brothers. I… took the Sallow name… when I married Anne.”

For once, Sebastian is glad that his old friend is blind. His own eyes bulge, and a mixture of emotions plays on his face - surprise, wonder, confusion, a bit of anger with sadness. “What do you mean, you married Anne? You surely don’t mean-”

Ominis huffs. “What other type of marriage is there, Sebastian?”

An awkward, strangled kind of laugh escapes Sebastian. “Anne?” he repeats. “You actually married Anne?”

“Yes, Sebastian,” Ominis replies rather curtly. “We got married. She’s my wife.”

“But how?” Sebastian asks incredulously. “How did that happen?” He runs his hands through his hair nervously. “And you say it like she is still your wife. I saw her grave, Ominis. I saw it. She’s… she’s gone!”

Ominis winces, his face sour. “She still is my wife no matter what.”

His emotions get the better of him, and Sebastian mutters, “I need a minute.” He stands and walks straight out of the pub. 

Night has settled upon Hogsmeade. There are a few others outside, speaking in hushed voices, but the cobblestone street is mostly empty. A breeze flows by, bringing with it a slight chill. Streetlights glow against the growing darkness, and Sebastian can see a half moon surrounded by glittering stars in the sky. He gazes upon it, trying to settle his mind.

Breathe. Clear your mind, my moon, he can hear Kate whispering in his mind. Learn all you can, and we will unpack it all later.

Sebastian inhales and exhales deeply. This month - reflecting back, now that it is the final day of June - has been one of the most interesting of his life. And it is only about to get more complicated, he thinks.

He takes a few more moments to himself, then wanders back inside. He strides back to the table, settling back into his seat.

“Look, Sebastian,” Ominis begins almost immediately. “We didn’t think we would ever get a chance to tell you - you were just… gone. It was as if you had died.” He pauses. “Admittedly, I haven’t fully thought through how I might share all of this with you. Even when Ruby contacted me and told me you were out of prison, it felt… unreal. But now, here we are, sitting in the Three Broomsticks. It feels as though a lifetime has passed. I don’t even know how to catch you up.”  

“I know. I… I just want to know it all. Not knowing is the worst, Ominis,” Sebastian replies, then inquires confusedly, “I… I mean, did you always like Anne? In that way? You never told me.”

Ominis relaxes a bit and chuckles. “No, no… I didn’t. It happened later.” 

“Tell me everything. Please,” Sebastian requests. 

“You might not like everything,” Ominis counters. “I… in the last months I knew you, you were always so angry. Can you truly handle hearing it all?”

Sebastian sighs. “I know. I was a right knobhead. There’s no excuse for it, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Ominis, for all I put you through. I… I’ve had a lot of time to think. I promise I’ll never be like that again - go down that road again. You can tell me all of it, and I promise I won’t… Well, I can’t promise I won’t be angry, but I won’t… explode or anything like that.”

Ominis nods, but his face clearly betrays an internal conflict. He still isn’t convinced.

“What is it?” Sebastian asks.

Ominis takes a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you… something from way back then. I’m just not sure that tonight is the right time… I don’t know.” He shakes his head.

“I mean, we are going to see each other again… right?” Sebastian asks hopefully. 

“Of course.” Ominis smiles. “Well, you’ll see me again. I’ll never see you.” He laughs at his own joke, and Sebastian heartily joins in. 

“I’ve really missed you, Ominis,” Sebastian finally says with a grin. “I miss your sarcasm. I even miss you scolding me and telling me off.” He huffs out a laugh.

“And I, you,” his blonde friend replies. “We… Anne and I… We struggled with losing you for a long time.”

Sebastian sips his butterbeer. “Tell me about her.”

Ominis smiles wistfully. “Anne… Gods, I miss her so much. I would do anything to bring her back.” The blue pupils of his unseeing eyes focus in on one spot, as if he is staring, for a very long time, and then he sighs deeply. “Shortly after you were sent to Azkaban, Anne returned to Feldcroft. I visited a few times over the summer months, and… things were bad. She couldn’t take care of herself, Sebastian. She was in such poor spirits and so frail, so ill - and there was no one else to help. I met with Professor Black to explain the situation and ask for… a rather unusual accommodation. I requested to live outside of the Hogwarts grounds so that I could be Anne’s caregiver whilst I was still in school. To my surprise, he granted it. Two special portkeys were made so that I didn’t have to use the Floo Network all the way to or from Feldcroft. Anne was so relieved that I would be able to live with her. Obviously, I still attended classes… but anytime I didn’t, I was home with Anne. I managed her potions, brought her good, hearty meals from Hogwarts, tended to her when she went through her episodes, and went to see Healers at St. Mungo’s with her every month.”

Sebastian is enraptured, but he takes a moment to say, “Thank you, Ominis. Truly, thank you - it’s such a relief to know she wasn’t alone all those years. And to know she was well taken care of.”

“We didn’t realize it right away because Anne remained so weak and still would easily become ill, but the curse actually lifted when she turned seventeen. The Healers confirmed it after about a year,” Ominis explained.

“It just… happened?” Sebastian asks incredulously. “No one… had to do anything special to lift it?” 

His blonde friend shakes his head. “We were as surprised as you. But Ruby remembered something she had heard Victor Rookwood say at one time - that children should be seen and not heard. He said the same to Anne when he cursed her. When she came of age at seventeen, it… well, her affliction didn’t just disappear, but over time, we noticed her symptoms had become less severe and that she was no longer having long episodes. We put it all together later, and in the end, we learned that the curse had particularly affected Anne when she would experience strong emotions, speak up, or cause any kind of commotion… but only as a child. That was the curse. Children should be seen and not heard.”

Sebastian is silent, his heart pounding as he realizes that everything he had done had been all for naught. Anne’s curse had been so much more simple than he ever imagined. The hours - no, not just hours - days, weeks, months, years of studying had been pointless. Getting into Dark magic would never have solved anything… and that was what had sent him to Azkaban. Solomon was part of that, but everything with his uncle - all of the abuse - had run so much deeper beyond Anne’s curse. In the end, Solomon had been right - there really was nothing to be done. They had just needed to sit and wait - something Sebastian would never have been able to do. Victor Rookwood had ultimately, and likely unintentionally, cursed the entire Sallow family.

“Anne was still sick, so we didn’t realize the curse had lifted. The many years of illness had rendered her so weak that she truly was not able to live alone. I stayed on. I felt like I owed it to you, Sebastian… after everything… to stick by her, to take the place you would have if we hadn’t…” Ominis trails off. 

“You owed me nothing,” Sebastian commented.

“No, I owed you everything,” Ominis retorts, unwavering.

Sebastian looks at Ominis for a long time, puzzled by the comment. His brain works overtime. “Oh… because if not for me, you wouldn’t have… gotten married.”

Ominis exhales sharply in response. “I don’t know - perhaps we would have anyway.”

A moment passes between them.

“Did you actually love her?” Sebastian finally asks.

“I love Anne more than anything,” Ominis replies without hesitation. “I would give anything - anything - to see her again. I mean it with my entire soul.” 

[dujour13]

OC Mannerisms

Doing @the-raging-tempest’s OC mannerisms meme for Siavash! Thanks Dolly, great idea 💕 Template here

Art by @iwoszareba for that look

- NO. OF SPOKEN LANGUAGES >> Taldane, basic Kelish, a little Elven

- TONE OF VOICE >> average / tenor

- ACCENT >> Andoren

At first when I created him I heard a slight BBC English accent in my head, but now it tends more toward a mild, West Coast-type American accent with softer “r” sounds. In international schools where I live there’s this universal international school kid accent you could easily mistake for American – that’s the one.

(Andoren has a revolutionary war US vibe but its geography is like Provence, and Almas in particular is highly cosmopolitan, so this feels fitting.)

- DEMEANOR >> confident, friendly and approachable

- POSTURE >> relaxed

HABITS

Touchy-feely – puts a hand on your arm or leans his shoulder against yours while you talk. (He’s good at picking up signals so he won’t do that to people who are uncomfortable with it.)

Lots of eye contact. He’s searching for what’s good in your soul. And has the confidence to meet your gaze and draw you in.

COMPLEXITY (Fill in the circles as you wish)

- VOCABULARY >> ⚪️⚪️⚪️⚫️⚪️

Siavash was a C student but he has a degree in International Relations and is a trained diplomat.

- EMOTION >> ⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️⚫️

Sia is very emotive but also capable of disguising it when he wants to. Paradoxically part of his high cha score is his sincerity, and the other part is his willingness to manipulate people.

Siavash raised an eyebrow. There was that conspiratorial gleam again. “I wouldn’t call it that. I don’t manipulate people. I just get them to reconsider what’s in their best interest.” “Ha! Just like me. I don’t steal; I just encourage people to help all the poor, helpless tieflings of the world. Starting with me.”

- SENTENCE STRUCTURE >> ⚪️⚪️⚪️⚫️⚪

Again he’s educated enough to have good grammar and to employ it when making heroic speeches or writing letters, but his relaxed style of speaking is very informal.

Woljif asks him what he does with his money:

“Spend it,” Siavash said with a carefree smile. “Wine, good food, nice clothes, new guitar strings. More oranges, if I’m lucky. Don’t need much more than that and the wind at my back.”

PROFANITY

- FREQUENCY >> ⚪️⚫️⚪️⚪️⚪️

Not often but when he says it he means it.

Woljif laughed softly. “I think we’re compatible, chief.” “Compatible? We’re fucking amazing together.”

- CREATIVITY (in regards to profanity) >> ⚪️⚪️⚫️⚪️⚪️

Here’s where my own limitations are the problem. He’s my funny creative character. He works in the funny creative factory.

BOLD THAT APPLY

arse / ass / asshole / bastard / bitch / bloody / bugger / bollocks / chicken shit / crap / cunt / dick / frick / fuck / horseshit / motherfucker / piss / prick / pussy / screw / shit / shitass / son of a bitch / twat / wanker

THIS OR THAT

straightforward or cryptic?

finding the right word or using the first word that comes to mind?

masculinity, neutrality, or femininity?

formalities or with abrasiveness?

praise or equivocation? Yes

frankness or flattery? Yes

excessive or minimal hand gestures? Handsy

name-calling or magnanimity?

friendly or blunt

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

- DO PEOPLE HAVE A HARD TIME HEARING OR UNDERSTANDING YOUR CHARACTER?

Never – as a bard Siavash can modulate his voice effectively.

- DOES YOUR CHARACTER’S POINT COME ACROSS EASILY WHEN THEY SPEAK?

Frequently; he's a good communicator

- WOULD YOUR CHARACTER INITIATE CONVERSATIONS?

Almost always

- WOULD YOUR CHARACTER BE THE ONE TO END CONVERSATIONS?

Rarely

- WOULD YOUR CHARACTER USE ‘WHOM’ IN A SENTENCE?

Yes - he does have pretty good grammar and can pass it off naturally

- YOUR CHARACTER WANTS TO MAKE A COUNTERPOINT. WHAT WORD DO THEY USE?

but / though / although / however / perhaps / maybe

- HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER END CONVERSATIONS? 

He doesn’t / gets distracted by something else

- WHAT SOCIAL CLASS WOULD OTHERS ASSUME YOUR CHARACTER BELONGS TO, HEARING THEM SPEAK?

Middle

- IN WHAT WAYS DOES THE WAY YOUR CHARACTER SPEAK STAND OUT TO OTHERS?

A friendly, inviting tone; smooth with people even if he has something unpleasant to communicate; infectious laugh

ANYTHING ELSE THAT WASN’T TOUCHED ON?

Siavash is a Persian name meaning “he who rides a dark horse.” There’s a Prince Siavash in the Shahnameh.

The pronunciation is more like two syllables than three: sya-vash, not see-ah-vash. Accent on both syllables. Thus the short form Sia is one syllable: sya.

(In the real Persian pronunciation it’s see-ah-VASH but the ee-ah sounds kind of bleed together to sound like one syllable.)

Tagging no pressure @dmagedgoods, @arendaes, @undyingembers, @silversiren1101, @spyridonya

[bratshaws]

through the hourglass 313.brb x oc

a/n: another shorty but hope yall like it!(comments and reblogs are super welcome and encouraged!)

pairing: plus size!oc x rooster

warnings: none uwu

goodness gracious (pls read this one to know more what this fic is about!!)

chapter

1/

/267/268/269/270/271/272/273/274/275/276/277/278/279/280/281/282/283/284/285/286/287/288/289/290/291/292/293/294/295/296/297/298/299/300/301

/302/303/304/305/306/307/308/309/310/311

(pls let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! )

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-

She knows she should wait when he’s free,she knows it, but she couldn’t wait especially after what happened??? After Miranda? She chews her lower lip as she looks down at his contact number on her phone, gardening gloves have been tossed aside as she walks back inside.

She was surprised her fuming hadn’t woken Shells or the kids up.

After a moment of internal debate, Beatrice made a decision. She couldn't wait. She needed to hear Rooster's voice, to share the strange occurrences that had unfolded in his absence. Pulling her phone closer, she took a deep breath and pressed the call button.

The phone rang a few times before Rooster answered, his voice groggy from the late hour. "Bea? Everything okay?"

“Hey…I know it’s late out there,sorry for waking you…”

“No,hey,” he grunts and the bed creaks as he sits up, “Don’t apologize gorgeous. You know I love hearing your voice especially when I’m deployed.”

Beatrice smiled, the warmth in Rooster's voice providing a comforting embrace, even across the miles that separated them. "I just... I needed to talk to you. Something happened, and I couldn't wait."

Rooster's tone shifted to alertness. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Beatrice hesitated for a moment, contemplating how to relay the events without causing unnecessary worry. "Miranda came over today. It was... strange, Rooster. She was saying things, trying to create tension or something again. I don't know what her game is…"

“ What did she say?"

Beatrice recounted the encounter, detailing Miranda's cryptic comments with detail, and Rooster listened attentively, remaining silent so his wife could let everything out without being interrupted.

When Beatrice finished, Rooster let out a heavy sigh. "Damn. I wish I was there, Bea. I don't like the sound of this. What did she want?"

"I have no idea," Beatrice admitted, frustration creeping into her voice. "It felt like she was trying to get under my skin, questioning your abilities as a pilot. It was bizarre, Rooster."

Rooster's tone shifted, a mix of annoyance and concern. "Questioning my abilities? What does she have to do with that?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's like she's trying to stir up trouble again… I don’t know, is…well,is Mark bothering you guys too?”

A pause.

“You…could say that,gorgeous.”

"What's happening with Mark, Rooster?" Beatrice asked, her voice laced with worry.

"...I can’t say over a call baby" Rooster explained. "Too risky.”

“Are you all safe? Right now?”

"Yeah, we're safe for now. Just dealing with some internal issues. I'll fill you I can,I promise.”

Beatrice exhaled a breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Okay. Just...be careful, Rooster. I don't like the sound of all this."

"Me neither,gorgeous…we’ll be okay," Rooster reassured her “I promise. We can handle…whatever this is.”

Beatrice nodded, even though Rooster couldn't see her. "I know. But it doesn't make it any easier when you're so far away."

"I know,gorgeous…did Miranda…said anything else?”

"Nothing else."

Rooster's voice softened. "I see… Shells is there with you, right?"

"Yeah, Shells has spending some time," Beatrice acknowledged, a small smile touching her lips. "But it's just... I don't want anything jeopardizing the peace we have at home, especially with you away on a mission."

"I know baby. I wish I could do more. Just remember, we're a team, no matter the distance. If anything feels off, trust your instincts, okay?"

"I will, Rooster. Always." she sighs, “I should probably let you go back to sleep.”

Rooster's voice held a comforting note. "I'm not going back to sleep until I know you're okay. Talk to me, Bea. What else is on your mind?"

Beatrice hesitated for a moment, debating whether to share the weight that had settled on her heart. "I just miss you, Rooster. And with all this happening, it feels like the world is a bit shaky."

"I miss you too, Bea. More than you can imagine. But we need to weather this storm, and then I promise I'll come back to you."

Tears welled up in Beatrice's eyes, the longing for Rooster magnified by the distance between them. "I know, Rooster. I just... I worry. About you, about us, about everything."

Rooster's voice softened, "We'll get through this, baby. I'll make it back to you. Just keep our home fires burning, okay?"

"I will," Beatrice whispered, a sniffle escaping her. "I love you, Rooster."

"I love you too, gorgeous. Now, get some rest. We'll talk soon."

After exchanging a few more words, Beatrice reluctantly ended the call. The weight of the conversation lingered in the air, a mix of concern, love, and the underlying uncertainty of the situation. She wiped away a tear, took a deep breath, and dropped her head on top of her folded arms as she rested on the kitchen table.

Jolene whined under her, her huge head plopping on Bea’s thigh as her paw landed on the human’s knee.

Beatrice absentmindedly ran her fingers through Jolene's fur, finding solace in the comforting presence of her loyal companion. As she sat there, Beatrice's mind danced between the happenings of the day.The encounter with Miranda left a lingering unease, like when you swallow bitter medicine. She couldn't shake the feeling that something ominous lurked beneath the surface, something she couldn't quite grasp.

But why?

Why?

Why were Miranda and Mark so obsessed with them? This has been happening for so long she couldn’t even figure out a fair reason to.

"You doing okay, Bea?" Shells finally broke the quietude.

“Ah!’ Bea jumped, turning around to see Shells standing by the kitchen door, holding the twins to her chest while Nicole wobbled over to her mother. Bea sighed, picking Nicole up and standing to check on the other two, “Sorry,I…didn’t hear you.”

Shells grinned, gently rocking the twins in her arms. "No worries, Bea. You looked lost in thought. Everything okay?"

Beatrice sighed, her gaze drifting towards the window as if seeking answers in the starlit sky. "I just had a chat with Rooster. Miranda's visit today... it's been lingering on my mind. I can't shake this feeling of unease."

“...Miranda was here?”

“Oh,oh yeah you…were all asleep on the couch…you didn’t hear me by the door?”

Shells shook her head, a perplexed expression on her face. "No, I must've been out like a light. What happened with Miranda?"

Beatrice recounted the encounter with Miranda,  and Shells listened attentively, her brow furrowing as she processed the information.

"That's weird," Shells commented, her eyes narrowing in thought. "But…considering everything,I’m not surprised.”

Beatrice shrugged, her eyes reflecting the weariness that had settled into her bones. "I wish I knew what she wanted, Shells. Rooster mentioned some internal issues in the squadron, and now this with Miranda"

Shells gently rocked the twins, a thoughtful look on her face. "Maybe we should beat her up."

“Shells!”

“Beat er up!” Nicole giggled, throwing her little fists up.

“No-Shells,please don’t mention violence in front of my kids.”

Shells chuckled, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "Alright, alright. No violence in front of the kids. We'll just have to outsmart her. Maybe throw her off with kindness or confuse her with some gardening trivia."

Beatrice rolled her eyes, but a small smile played on her lips. "I appreciate the sentiment, Shells, but I just want things to settle down. Between Rooster being away, the breach, and now Miranda's mysterious antics, its a lot."

Shells nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it's a lot to handle. But if Miranda wants to play games, she'll soon find out she picked the wrong opponents."

The twins, sensing the shift in energy, began to squirm in Shells' arms. Aurora reached out towards Beatrice, her tiny fingers trying to grasp onto her mother's hair.

"Looks like they want you, Bea," Shells chuckled, carefully passing the twins back to their mother as Bea but Nicole down. "I'll make some coffee. We might need it for our plotting against Miranda."

Beatrice cradled the twins in her arms, planting a soft kiss on each of their foreheads. "Thanks, Shells. I’d like that."

"Any word from Rooster?" Shells asked, as she marched over to the coffee maker, letting Bea handle the babies for a little while.

“I called him a few minutes ago."

“Yeah?”

“What did he say?”

“That I should listen to my gut if something feels off,” Bea smiles softly as she places the twins down on their bouncers a bit before preparing herself to feed them while Nicole walked over to her high chair, waiting to be settled.

Shells looked at her from the coffee maker,smirking a bit, “Well he doesn’t have to worry about that,does he? Gut feeling is our specialty.”

“It is?”

“I mean,I had a gut feeling you and Rooster would end up together, and surprise to no one, I was right!”

"Yeah, well, your gut feeling about Rooster and me was probably the only one that worked out."

Shells returned to the living room with two steaming mugs of coffee, handing one to Beatrice before taking a seat across from her. "True, I might not be the best fortune teller, but I make a killer cup of coffee. So spill, what's the plan, Bea?"

Beatrice puts Nicole on her high chair and then tilts her head ‘Plan?”

Shells took a thoughtful sip of her coffee, her eyes locking onto Beatrice's. "You know, for dealing with Miranda. What's our strategy? Besides not beating her up, of course."

"I'm not sure, Shells. If she wants drama, let's not give it to her."

Shells leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. "Ignoring her works for so long. Then what?"

Beatrice sighed, the weight of the situation settling back onto her shoulders. "I don't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she's getting to us. Let's focus on our own circle.But for now, let's not let Miranda's games distract us."

“Hmmm…”

“I know you hate that idea.”

“You are absolutely right.” Shells says, “I hate it.“I’m just sayin’ we need to be proactive.” 

“I know…”

“Yeah..” Shells pulls out her phone, “Good thing I called Aunt Penny then! She can give us some advice,” if she noticed Bea’s wide eyed look she ignored it and kept on talking “You know she can help us out.’

“Shells.”

“And Mav.” oh God. “He can help us too!”

“Shells….”

“Yeah,we have this in the bag!” Shells laughs, “Anyway,coffee,right?”

[scullymurphy]

I’ve just finished BL/FD and they have moved to the top of my all time favorite fanfics. I am going to immediately reread them because the stories and characters were so rich and so moving. I have felt all the feels while reading these stories.

I never knew how much I needed a Hermione/Lavender BFF love story until you gave it to me! She has now become one of my favorite characters. I adore the friendship they built through these two stories. What a beautiful balance and compliment they were to each other!

The dual POV kept me on the edge of my seat and rooting for Draco and Hermione throughout. The tension and attraction and passion you were able to convey was palpable. The pain and angst of the love triangle felt so very real. I think it triggered my own memories of that time in life.

And Theo…my god, Theo! 😍🥹

I didn’t think anyone could replace Draco or Rhysand as my absolute favorite book boyfriend and then you gave me this version of Theo. This funny, beautiful, vulnerable, supportive gem of a human and now I have an obsession with Theo. I can’t get enough of him!

While I ultimately knew he would end up with Daphne and Draco would end with Hermione, and that was as it should be, I was absolutely devastated when things ended between him and Hermione. It brought me to literal tears when he left her to go and comfort Daph bc I knew it was the beginning of the end. They were just so good together. 🥹

With Lavender’s divination background and her cryptic statements about choosing a different path I kept wondering if there would be an epilogue or extra Lavender POV chapter where she has a vision of H and T choosing each other and what that path would have looked like. Does that exist somewhere and I just haven’t found it yet?

This is how consumed I’ve been with this story…I had a dream last night that there was an epilogue that flashed forward like 30 something yrs. After long and beautiful marriages, T & H have both become widowed and they find comfort and healing with one another again. Their paths finally reunite and their love story has its turn. But alas I woke up, finished the book and it was not to be.

All this to say, I would love for you to revisit this world again some day. These characters are beautifully written! I love them all! Thank you

Thank you SO MUCH for this beautiful comment. I can't tell you how much it means to me that the stories touched you in this way. You even DREAMED about them! And to class my Theo with Rhysand!!?? I die! I die! I love Rhys so much too -- it's kind of a problem because I compulsively re-read his scenes. In fact, I read the ACOTAR series right around the time I was writing BL and FD, so there may be a little of Rhys's charm in Theo! I like this theory...

And as for your questions and intuitions about the continuation of this story, I can tell you that I do have a pretty strong headcanon for what happens down the road. I even have a rough outline/zero draft of what could be a third installment someday. I'm still waiting for the time to be ripe to start writing it, although I can't definitively promise it will ever happen. Part of me thinks I should just leave it as-is and let everyone have their own ideas about how it turns out. Also, I'm currently shopping an OC novel around for representation, drafting another OC romance, and preparing to launch a detective noir Dramione multi-chap WIP tomorrow (you heard it here first!!). So my plate is pretty full, lol. But someday, maybe someday. I do miss that world so much and would love to hang out with those characters again.

Anyway, thanks again for coming all the way to Tumblr to tell me that you loved the stories. Your words really touched me. 🥰🥹 xoxo ~ Scully