#my brother is the same age as him and he’d let me twist my ankle and perish

[charlotte-of-wales]

Princess Elisabeth, King Philippe, Queen Mathilde, Prince Emmanuel and Princess Eleonore arrive for the graduation ceremony of the university of Oxford, where Princess Elisabeth received her diploma after completed her three-year undergraduate degree in History and Politics at Lincoln College | July 23, 2024

[asweetprologue]

me lámh le do lámh - Part VIII

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They left the next day just after the sunrise broke watery through the clouds still lingering overhead, not wanting to overstay their welcome. The walk back to the nearby village was an easy one, the air still cool from the recent rain. The innkeeper hadn’t given their pre-paid room away to other guests despite the fact that they hadn’t used it for anything more than storage, which was a surprise. It was noon by the time they made it back, and they were easily able to secure the room for another evening so early in the day. Jaskier agreed to play at dinner, so they even managed to get a slightly reduced rate.

When they made it up to the room, Jaskier flopped immediately down on the bed, throwing an arm over his face. “Melitele, I could sleep for a week,” he groaned, slightly muffled. “I haven’t been this sore in years.”

“Good for you to finally get some exercise,” Geralt smirked as he checked on their belongings. Everything was where they’d left it, luckily. Geralt let out a breath of relief to see his potions all secure in their bag, the oathstone nestled amongst them.

Jaskier lifted his arm enough to glare at him. “As if walking day in and day out at your side isn’t work enough.”

“You’ve ridden Roach more than I have over the last week,” Geralt pointed out.

Jaskier put his arm down, head tilted to the side to look in Geralt’s direction. His hair spilled messily across the pale sheets. “I suppose I have,” he said, a small furrow appearing in his brow. The easy energy he’d had since they’d woken this morning was gone; now he seemed tense. His eyes lost their focus, his mind clearly going elsewhere.

Geralt didn’t know what to make of it. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m going to go and see if they have any contracts for me. We won’t be stopping much over the next few weeks.”

At this Jaskier refocused, curious. “Where are we going next? We have all the pieces for the ritual, right?”

Geralt nodded. “The last piece is a location. We’re going back to Posada.”

*

The journey from the Brokilon to the Blue Mountains was one of weeks, rather than days. At this time of year the River Sodden and her many roads were wide open, and they were able to easily pass south under the Mohakams. This far south, spring was already giving way to summer, the warm vestiges of the Nilfgaardian desert winds finding their way to the pockets and hills of Angren and Rivia.

It should have been a pleasant journey. It was one they’d taken many times before, once Nilfgaard was no longer an issue, and they were both well familiar with the area. They kept the river to their south and traveled during the cooler parts of the day, stopping often. The wide river offered a constant source of beauty and convenience, and they were able to wash and fish regularly. Rivia, though not Geralt’s home by any stretch of the imagination, was friendly and offered plenty of places for them to stop and rest at the halfway point.

It should have been downright delightful, but instead it was… tense. Jaskier was quiet and contemplative much of the time, reserved in a way Geralt had rarely known him to be. He barely touched his lute, to the point where Geralt asked after it, only receiving a vague and unconvincing answer about saving the strings from the humidity. He spent the evening hours scribbling away in his journal, or simply lying and staring up at the stars. Sometimes, disconcertingly, he watched Geralt, especially when he seemed to think Geralt wasn’t paying attention. The furrow between his brow had grown to be near constant, and his shoulders had lost their easy swoop. When they spoke, something about Jaskier’s words felt needling, as if he was testing the waters for something. What, Geralt couldn’t even begin to guess.

He wanted to ask about it, but he found himself unable to find the words to do so. Jaskier didn’t seem mad at him—he knew what that looked like well enough, and this wasn’t it. He wanted to ask, but if he did it seemed possible, probably even likely, that Jaskier would admit that he’d figured out that Geralt was hiding something from him. He might even have realized the extent of Geralt’s feelings, or what the ritual really meant. Maybe Silvandrel had said too much, or Geralt had been too expressive, or too generous. Whatever it was, Jaskier was smart, maybe the smartest man Geralt had ever known; it wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together. As he found Jaskier’s eyes lingering on him more and more frequently, it seemed also more and more likely that Jaskier was just trying to find a way to let him down easily.

Still, it wasn’t unbearable. Traveling with Jaskier in a mood was still better than traveling alone, and as always Geralt relished the chance to spend such uninterrupted time together. It was the best in the evenings, when their camp was already set up and the heat of the day had dispersed, and they had nothing better to do than sit and talk before both of them grew too tired to stay awake.

“What’s it like?” Jaskier asked one evening, lying on his bedroll with his ankle propped up on one raised knee. His lute was in his hands, a rare thing nowadays, but he wasn’t really playing it, just plucking a tune here or there. Testing the waters, it seemed.

Geralt was sitting with his back propped against a ragged tree stump, charred at the top where lightning had once struck. He looked up from where he was examining Roach’s tack, taking too long to reply as he was caught up in the image of Jaskier in the firelight. “What?”

Jaskier swiveled his head to look over at him, looking uncharacteristically pensive. “Being immortal. Or—not mortal. What do you even call a witcher, anyways. Semi-mortal? How long do you usually live? I’ve never gotten a straight answer about it.”

Geralt shrugged, the bridle dangling between his knees as he set his elbows to rest on them. “No one really knows,” he admitted. “Vesemir is… three hundred? We’re not sure, that’s based on references he makes, but Lambert swears sometimes he says things just to throw us off. Witchers don’t really… die of old age.”

“Surely some of you must retire,” Jaskier insisted. “Maybe not lately, but in years past…”

Geralt shook his head. “If they did, I haven’t heard of them. The Path is our life; we meet our end while on it. I know we can live for several human lifetimes, at least. I was older than you are now when we met.”

Jaskier’s mouth twisted in a smile that ached with bitter nostalgia. “I must have looked like a child to you.”

“You were a child,” Geralt laughed.

Jaskier threw something at him, and it bounced harmlessly off his knee. An acorn; the entire area was thick with oak trees. Clearing the ground beneath their bedrolls had been a pain. “Ass,” Jaskier chidded, but he was chuckling too. “I suppose we must all seem rather young to people like you though. Yennefer is the worst, she shouldn’t be allowed to poke fun at my very dignified salt and pepper and then turn around and call me an infant the next moment.”

Young man, Silvandrel had said, with that odd patronization that came only to those who would outlive most people they met. “It’s… not exactly like that,” Geralt allowed, studying Jaskier’s profile painted in orange and gold and dark dusky blue shadows. “Age isn’t the same as experience. There are eighty year olds who have done less in their lives than you had at twenty-three.” Jaskier looked over at him again, with a distinct expression of surprise and awe that Geralt was beginning to recognize as his reaction to Geralt giving him a compliment. He pushed on, turning his own gaze back to the tack in his hands. “I just mean, you don’t seem young, or inexperienced—at least not anymore,” he added, unable to resist throwing Jaskier a quick smirk.

“So Yennefer just calls me a toddler for her own enjoyment,” Jaskier said, squinting at him.

“Well, yes,” Geralt snorted. “But, it’s—you’ll understand. After. It’s not that you all seem young, necessarily, it’s just that you all seem sort of… I don’t know.” He shrugged. It was difficult to articulate the strange sense of fragility and youth that he associated with all humans, no matter their age.

“Temporary?” Jaskier offered, and Geralt grunted an affirmation. Of course Jaskier would be able to identify the feeling without ever experiencing it himself. Jaskier hummed in acknowledgement, and was quiet for a few moments, as if mulling that over. His fingers played over his lute strings, picking out a melancholy tune. After a while, he said, “It sounds a bit lonely. Knowing that almost everyone you meet will die a hundred years before you do. That they’ll never understand the way you view the world.” His eyebrows were knotted together as he contemplated the night sky.

Geralt bit his lip. “It… can be. Even amongst ourselves, we never know who’ll make it back after a year on the Path.”

Jaskier’s foot tapped the empty air where it hung over his knee. “Everyone I know, went to school with, taught with in Oxenfurt. They’ll all be gone before I will, if this works.”

Geralt felt dread unfurl within him, but this wasn’t something that he could deny Jaskier. This was the reality of Geralt’s offer, of what he was asking Jaskier to do. “Yes,” he said. But you’ll have me, he didn’t say, even though it burned at the tip of his tongue. You’ll have my brothers, and Ciri, and even Yennefer, and you’ll have me, always. That’s the point.

Jaskier looked over at him, eyes bright. He looked like he could hear Geralt’s thoughts, like maybe he was thinking the same thing. And then he grinned brightly and said, “I’ll outlast Valdo Marx by a century.”

Geralt couldn’t help the startled bark of laughter that left his throat. Jaskier launched into an excited diatribe against Valdo Marx, something about destroying his legacy after death, and Geralt allowed the babble to wash over him as he went back to fixing Roach’s tack.

After a while the conversation turned to other things, and they spent the rest of the evening in relative quiet. Eventually it was time to bed down for the night, and they banked the fire and crawled into their respective bedrolls. Just as Geralt was on the edge of sleep, Jaskier’s voice slipped through the quiet darkness around them.

“I don’t think I’m going to be.”

Geralt shook himself, turning to squint at Jaskier’s grey form, two aching feet away from him. His entire body itched to roll closer, but he focused instead on Jaskier’s words. “Hmm? You won’t be what?”

Jaskier let out a deep breath into the night air, soft like a secret. “Lonely.”

*

Posada was much the same.

Geralt didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been back. He knew he had been here post-Filavandrel incident, and he suspected Jaskier had as well, but they’d not returned together to the little valley at the edge of the world since the beginning. It had to have been at least ten years since he’d last been here on his own, but the small town was relatively familiar looking still. It had grown a bit since the war, likely as refugees from the south settled in the area, and there were new houses clustered around the outskirts. Still, the bones of it remained unchanged, and the inn was right where they’d left it.

They said nothing as they made their way into the town and headed in that direction. There was, so far as Geralt knew, no other place to find rooms for the night, so they didn’t have much of a choice. Stepping inside the small downstairs tavern should have been just like stepping into any other of the thousands like it that he’d been in, but it wasn’t. Things had been rearranged, of course; the furniture had been shuffled, and now a long table sat on the far side of the room before the fire. The small, cleared out space that Jaskier had stood in to sing was gone, filled with a cluster of tables and chairs. But the lone table in the back corner was, somehow, unmoved.

Geralt turned to Jaskier and found him staring at the spot as if entranced. He brushed his fingers against Jaskier’s forearm, and the bard blinked at him, startled back into the moment. “We should get a room,” Geralt said by way of explanation, and Jaskier nodded.

The man who arranged for their stay was not the one who had done so the first time, or the time after that, but his features were similar, so perhaps this was a son. He was amiable enough, and though Jaskier didn’t make any commitment to playing he offered them a fair rate.

Jaskier did end up playing, after they’d sat and eaten a quiet meal, avoiding the table in the corner in silent agreement. His fingers had worried at the edge of his lute case for a long moment, his eyes unfocused, and then something determined had steeled over his face and he’d stood.

There was a decent crowd this time around, bigger than the last time—the first time—that Jaskier had played here. Geralt remembered the stumbling notes, the ridiculous stories that spilled from the bard’s lips, unrefined. The way that the patrons of the bar had heckled him until he dipped sheepishly off the stage. He could understand why Jaskier might be nervous about playing here; even if no one remembered him, this had obviously been one of Jaskier’s first real performances for an honest audience.

It was like night and day. Jaskier had the entire room eating out of the palm of his hand in moments, as he always did, and his voice was clear and strong. Geralt recognized most of the songs, and almost all of them were about him, though he didn’t think any of the patrons put two and two together. Whereas Jaskier normally poked and prodded at Geralt throughout a performance to let everyone know that his muse was present, tonight he was subdued, letting Geralt watch quietly from a side table without dragging him into the proceedings. He might have thought that Jaskier had forgotten his presence entirely, if not for the occasional glance he caught Jaskier throwing his way, stealing his breath each time.

When he was finally done with his set and bowed his way out to the cheers of the audience, he made his way back to Geralt with his lute tucked under his arm. Jaskier leaned against the table in the space next to him, their knees just barely touching where Geralt’s was thrust out away from the chair. Jaskier looked down at him with almost a sheepish expression, giving him a quirked smile. “So. Three words or less?”

There were so many things he could say to that. So many things he wanted to say. You’re so beautiful, he thought, his eyes catching on the way Jaskier’s fingers wrapped around the neck of the lute, how his eyes shone in the low light of the inn. I loved it. Don’t leave me. I love you.

Instead, he said, a bit hoarsely, “Definitely more accurate.”

Jaskier laughed, some of that tension he’d been carrying for weeks breaking, and Geralt felt sweet relief at the sound. “Well I’d certainly hope so, after nearly thirty years of tailing you. At the very least I know my drowners from my nekkers.”

“At least there’s that,” Geralt chuckled, passing Jaskier a tankard of ale as he sat. “Glad to see you got something out of it.”

Jaskier took a sip of his drink, leaning his cheek on his fist. His eyes were bright when he looked at Geralt, and his expression was one Geralt recognized—he was bothered about something, but trying to keep his demeanor jovial. On anyone else, Geralt expected it would be an immaculate deception, but Geralt knew him. He wasn’t fooled by Jaskier’s court masks.

“Was it worth it?” Jaskier asked, taking another sip of his ale. His eyes left Geralt’s, flitting around the room.

Geralt frowned at him. “Was what worth it?”

Jaskier looked back at him, expression unreadable. “Letting an ambitious and no doubt obnoxious bard leave this tavern with you all those years ago.”

Geralt couldn’t help it; before he could think to stop himself, he had reached out to set his hand over Jaskier’s where it still held the handle of his cup. Jaskier jerked a bit at the touch, a drop of ale sliding down over their layered hands. “Of course it was,” Geralt said vehemently, not bothering to keep the earnestness out of his tone. Jaskier had to know. Even if he already suspected that something was afoot, even if this was some sort of test, Geralt couldn’t risk letting Jaskier think that he regretted a single moment of it. “You’re… Jask, you’re one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Geralt could hear the sharp intake of breath at that, could see the way Jaskier looked down at their overlapped fingers and blinked rapidly. A small smile stole across his face, though there was a twist to it that seemed almost sad. “I’m glad, Geralt. Truly.”

Geralt wanted to ask, And for you? Was it worth it? But the tavern goers were quickly heading out now that Jaskier’s set was finished, and it was obvious that they would soon be the last ones remaining. And he found himself afraid, as he so often was nowadays, of the possibility that Jaskier would say no, that he should have spent the last thirty years playing in noble houses and courting beautiful women, rather than trekking endlessly after a surly witcher. He knew that it would make sense for Jaskier to have regrets, but he found that he didn’t think he was strong enough to hear them spoken aloud.

So instead he transferred his touch to Jaskier’s wrist, giving it a light tug. “We should head up,” he said, and Jaskier nodded. They pulled apart, and Jaskier finished his drink, and collected his lute. As they both turned to walk up the stairs, Geralt found his eyes catching once again on the little table in the corner. It had sat empty the entire night, as if waiting for something—or someone—to fill its seats once again.

~

Almost done folks! Just two more parts, and tomorrow’s includes the last piece of art for this story! 

tags: @whereismymonsterlover 

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Pity in Short Supply (baon)

Summary:    In the aftermath of the kidnapping, Red has a few thoughts. There's a reason he's always called 'em liabilities.

Tags:  Kustard, Domestic, Established Relationship, Sans/Underfell Sans, Aftermath of a kidnapping, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, Underfell Papyrus/Underswap Papyrus, Background Spicyhoney, A Touch of Lemon Goodness

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

By the time the sun was thinking about hopping over the horizon and getting started on its daily workout, the warehouse parking lot was starting to clear out. All the ambulances were long since gone, the only one of ‘em with a person in the back was the guy who was still stuck in that weird foam shit.

Red didn’t believe in karma; he’d spent much too long eating shit himself for that, but if there was any lingering threads of justice still clinging stubbornly in the air, it’d take a long, painful time to get that fucker loose.

Most of the Embassy Security teams were heading back with all the evidence stacked in their backseats and Red was standing in a shadowed corner away from the streetlights watching them pack it in. Some of ‘em would start working on interviewing the kidnappers who didn’t need a few hours to cut them loose from a little chemical warfare, along with the agents the FBI shipped their way. Some were gonna work on getting shit together for the inevitable interviews with the kidnappees sometime this afternoon. Red had some pull and plenty of strings to yank, but even he wasn’t gonna be able to hold back the tide of questions much longer than that.

There was probably gonna be a fit pitched somewhere along the line that he’d sent his trouble twins home to sleep before getting much info, but Red would have to hula that hoop when it rolled in. Wasn’t only about Stretch, it was about his bro; there was only so much the boss could take before he slammed face-first into his breaking point and he’d been skating a little too fucking close tonight for Red’s taste. Better to let him take his pretty little liability home, clean him up, spend a li’l time rubbing his scent all over him again like a dog in heat and wasn’t it a damn good thing none of ‘em could piss.

The last thing any of ‘em needed was his bro snapping and hauling his honey away like a shorter, skinnier, bald version fucking King Kong.

(and was the memory of his brother's bleak face as he sat there waiting for answers while Red lied out promises about getting his liability back in one piece gonna haunt his nightmares, fuck yes, 'course it was, gotta balance those books somehow, there was always a price, he'd learned that lesson fast while he was still carrying his baby bro on the streets. always a price, fucking always)

Red wasn’t too worried about losing any info, anyway. Wasn’t much chance of Stretch forgetting much, not with that eidetic memory of his. Not being able to forget was half of his fucking problems to begin with.

Out in the mostly deserted parking lot, the last couple agents were finished packing up their car, not even seeming to give him a second glance as they climbed in. ‘Seeming’ was the real shit there, to anyone who wasn’t used to watching. The driver, a deceptively slender deer Monster, their antlers cut stylishly down, paused just long enough for their eyes to flick his way. The subtlest of looks, but that was it. They didn’t make a show of asking if Red wanted a ride, didn’t play any ego trips over spotting him, just hopped into the car and sped off.

Good instincts. Red made a mental note to keep an eye on that one. Good, not great, ‘cause they didn’t notice the one standing further back behind him, the guy who took up the best shadows before Red even showed up.

He stepped up now, hands stuffed into his pockets as he shuffled his way to stand next to Red, untied shoelaces dragging on the damp asphalt. They stood there together while the first unbearable rim of sunlight crested and took the shadows with it, bathing them in painful, golden light.

Red pulled out a cigar and bit off the end, spitting it to the ground. He lit a match with a flick of his thumb and held the tip in the wavering flame. When the end was smoldering, he flicked the match into the puddle, the faint hiss of it extinguishing unheard as he asked in a cloud of exhaled smoke, “how’s it going, sansy?”

Red was looking at the empty parking lot, the puddles dotting it like a scattering of miniature lakes across a land of broken asphalt, so he didn’t see Sans shrug, but he could feel it, a ripple in the still air around them. “went like clockwork. we planned for this sort of shit, you know, planned it out for years. worked out possible sceneries with fuzzybuns, toriel, all the diplomats.” Sans’s ever-present smile widened humorousness, “even had a few for edge and stretch, guess we shoulda brainstormed on those ones a little more. don’t know if we coulda come up with that one, though. drugging him was always a contingency, but no one guessed they’d strip his ass down and lose every damn tracker on him.” Another tight shrug, one quick. cramped motion, “we’ll know better next time.”

The plume of smoke rising from Red’s cigar curled in the air, drifting like a mist in the dawn light. Red watched it and nothing else, letting his sockets fall half-closed as he followed the wispy path with his eye lights. “ain’t asking about the fucking ops. how’s it going, sansy.”

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the rough scrape of gravel shifting under Sans’s feet as he rocked on his heels. “you know, i took up with the security department for paps,” Sans said conversationally. “wanted to keep a close eye on him when he went traipsing around the big bad world to spread the good word. back underground, that whole sentry schtick was an excuse for a paycheck, i wasn’t guarding anything but my own g and a nap.”

“yeah?” Red stuck his cigar between his teeth and bit down, tasting the scatter of soggy, bitter tobacco on his tongue as the jagged tips tore through the fragile wrapper. “that so, sweetheart?”

“yeah, that’s so, dollface,” Sans chuckled mirthlessly. “little ironic, ain’t it, that it turns out i’m good at this shit. who would’ve thought.”

“yeah, never woulda guessed a judge might not be bad at the whole diggin’ up covert info,” Red shook his head sadly, “a shock, really, that ya could put that empty skull of yers to some good use.”

“sweet talker. gonna end up sleeping downstairs with the cat you keep that shit up.”

“fuck, don’t do that,” Red shuddered. “already worried if i don’t get up fast enough to feed that bitch, she’d gnaw off my pinky toe before i wake up.”

“that picky little shit wouldn’t eat you if you rolled yourself up like sushi and slathered on caviar.” Sans hesitated, then asked, softer, “how’s stretch doing?”

“like shit.” Red didn’t bother to cushion it; his pity came sparingly and Sans could take it. “he’s got his judge all cranked up to eleven. caught a helluva glimpse of me when i got here, thought he was gonna puke on my shoes.”

Sans let out a long, ragged exhale. “that’s my fault,” he said bleakly, “i got him to hit his on switch to look for that lost kid, should’ve known he’d have a hard time shutting it down again.”

“maybe.” Red wasn’t too concerned about it. If Stretch wanted to retire and shove all that down into the dark, wasn’t any dust off his ass, but the only way he’d lose it entirely would be if someone ripped it out of him by way of a dustpan. “if those fuckers hadn’t tried to pull a limburger baby on the kid, then it woulda died back down on its own.”

This time Sans chuckle was more real, a little honest humor creeping in. “don’t let stretch hear you call him kid, he’s already got his panties twisted halfway up his spine.”

Red scoffed, tapping away the ash gathering at the tip of his cigar. “honey bun might be the same age as us, but he ain’t as old as we are. don’t matter how the universe tried to age him up.”

The sound Sans made might’ve been a hum of agreement or the juicy, hawking prelude to spitting. The sun hadn’t had a chance to chase away the evening chill and Sans’s jacket was zipped up against it. Over the tab of his zipper, nearly concealed by neckline of his hood, Red could see the glossy rim of well-oiled dark leather, the slightest glint of metal. He let himself look at it for a long moment, take a sip of dark satisfaction at seeing his collar right where it was supposed to be. Then he looked away, back across the empty, crumbling parking lot.

Sans didn’t try to touch him, only shifted his stance until their fingers brushed in a way that could pretend to be accidental, bone lightly scraping bone.

“we should get going,” Red said. The sun was climbing higher, the stars giving way to gauzy, useless clouds. At least stars were interesting, a reminder there was another Aboveground than this one, another path upward that might someday be reached. “we got a lot of shit to do downtown.”

“we do,” Sans agreed. He tipped his head in Red’s direction, slanting him a glance out of the corner of his socket. His eye lights were tinted golden by the sunrise, sly and knowing in a way that had nothing to do with magic. “want me to blow you in the stairwell before we take off?”

Red didn’t wait for him to finish, tossing his half-burned cigar into a puddle, dousing it and sending a splash of ripples through the still water. “fuck, yes.”

He followed Sans into the warehouse and in moments he was braced against the rusty handrail with his shorts around his ankles in the dust, shuddering at the feel of that hot, wet mouth around him, worshiping his cock with lovingly sinful familiarity. Every inch of his focus was taken up by that and there wasn’t room to think about a single other thing. Not even the phantom sensation of metaphorically getting flayed alive by a wild orange gaze, the unexpected, needle-sharp feel of every one of his sins digging in their spidery claws as they crawled up his spine.

He didn’t think about it at all.

-fin

[hurting-fictional-people]

Cry for me

CW: restraints, vomit mention, electrocution, implied noncon, knife cut (?)

Before  |   After

“Do you know what day is today, precious?”

Kiara glared at Blake, willing all her hatred to show through her eyes since she wouldn’t dare to voice it. She knew if she did, it would only buy her more pain. 

They both knew the answer to the question. She had been asking him what day it was for the past… she didn’t know. The days started to blur together soon after she was kidnapped. And ever since they did, Kiara had been tormented by the helplessness of losing everything she ever had, even something as simple as knowing which day it was. Blake had taken so much from her already – her freedom, her house, her life. But it all only truly hit her when time was taken from her too.

Blake had watched her collapse to the floor and curl into herself as Kiara realized she was so completely in his mercy, she depended on him to know something as simple as the days. And he, always the bastard, rejoiced in her despair. Refused to tell her. 

If she had to, Kiara would guess she was with him for a month now. Maybe two. Or something in between.

Blake patiently waited for her to answer, never looking away from her blazing gaze. Kiara sighed and hissed through gritted teeth “No, Blake, I don’t.”

“Better yet. Do you know what day is tomorrow?”

Kiara seethed. Oh, how did she want to spit in his face and tell him to fuck off. How did she want to scream and punch him senseless. If the threat of being pinned down and tortured mercilessly wasn’t constantly hovering over her head, she would’ve seriously considered it.

“Come on, don’t be like this, I’m only teasing you.” Blake crooned, brushing a finger under her chin and lifting it slightly. “Tomorrow is your birthday, sunshine.”

With only one sentence, a few well-chosen words, he knocked out all the air from her lungs. Tears welled up in her eyes, but Kiara made sure to squeeze them shut before Blake could see them.

Kiara would be 25 years old when midnight came. She had planned to throw a big party to celebrate it. Had been talking about it since she turned 24. Now, she would spend it with the man who was breaking her piece by piece, probably lost in a daze of hurt and despair. What a birthday.

“Don’t make this face,” he pouted, “you’re turning 25, it’s a beautiful age.”

“How do you know my age?” she asked, turning her face to the side, hoping he would let go of her chin. Thankfully, it worked.

“I know everything about you,” he grinned. A chill ran down her spine, even though she already knew that. She would’ve probably told him whatever he wanted to know either way – when he decided to take something from her, there was no holding it in. “What do you think about a birthday gift?”

She peered suspiciously at him. “A gift is only a gift if there are no strings attached to it. You never give me anything without expecting something in return.”

“You wound me like that, Kiara” Blake breathed, placing a mocking hand over his heart. “Now, seriously, I mean it this time. You’ve been good to me and I think you deserve a treat. So, what do you want?”

“For you to let me go.” His smirk vanished instantly at the response, and something dark replaced it, making her heart skip a beat. She was quick to correct the mistake. “I want a book.”

Tilting his head to the side, Blake narrowed his eyes and unclenched his fists. “Which book?”

“Any book. You can choose.”

She only started breathing again when Blake sighed and smiled, the immediate danger leaving his eyes as she gave him a wobbly smile of her own. He muttered an all right then before taking a handcuff from the nightstand and closing it around Kiara’s wrists. She shuddered, but let herself go limp under him and tried to think about which book he’d choose as he pulled her into the already well-known world of pain and fear. 

-

The book was covered in ugly orange and blue wrapping paper. Blake sat across from her in the living room as she opened it, watching her intently. As soon as she set her eyes on the book, Kiara had to bite her lip to hold back the tears. 

Heartless, from Marissa Meyer. The same book her brother had given her the Christmas before, and she had never read.

“Do you like it?” Blake asked, drinking in each emotion that passed through her eyes. “You had a lot of fantasy at your place, and the girl at the bookstore recommended it. It’s an imagined backstory to the Queen of Hearts.”

She didn’t know what was worse, for him to actually know which books she’d like, or that she actually felt a hint of gratitude sparking in her chest. It was twisted and painful, but he had given her a piece of her brother, even if he didn’t know it. A piece of the life she used to have, the person she used to be. Kiara nodded and thanked him, sincerely for once.

“I have a job to do, so I’ll leave you to it,” he said, seeming vaguely disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm. Little did he how fast her heart was pounding, or how hard it was to draw breath through the tightness in her throat. 

-

Kiara missed a lot of things. Everything. But having a distraction, losing herself in a good story, was what she wished for the most after she’d accepted she wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon. Alone in the penthouse – aside from Blake’s employees, who never came too close to her –, she dived into the book until the story took her away from all the hurt, fear, and sadness. 

The hours ticked by, but she only stopped reading to go to the bathroom once before returning to the book. As it was, she would be happy to be lost in just about any story, well written or not, but that was one of the good ones.

Pages flew by until she came to the end with tears streaming down her cheeks. It had been good, but so, so sad. Kiara sniffed as she closed it, a familiar peace enveloping her. That wonderful feeling of finishing a great book.

It didn’t last long, though. As soon as she looked up, green eyes pierced into her soul with a seriousness that made her quiver. 

“You’re crying,” Blake stated. 

“It was a good book,” she said, slowly. “Really good, but also really sad.”

“You never cry because of me.” 

Kiara held the book to her heart as if it could protect her from the danger dancing inside of Blake’s eyes, around the edges of his words.

“You scream, and beg and comply, and yet you never once cried,” he said, taking a step closer. “But I leave you alone with a book for a day, and find you crying over a piece of paper.”

His voice was low, but there was something in the way he said it, the way his eyes swept over her, that had Kiara ready to go down on her knees and plead him for mercy.

“It suits you, the tears. It’s cute. But I want you to cry for me.”

Her stomach churned as Kiara brought her knees to her chest, uselessly hoping that if she made herself small enough, he might forget she was there. She knew it was an empty hope even before she did it. It always was, when he was staring at her like that, taking slow steps in her direction, just to watch the fear blossoming in her eyes.

He was right. He had done a lot to her, hurt her in more ways she could ever dream existed, more than she could remember by now, and yet she hadn’t cried once. Refused to. It was the last thing she had control over. The only thing.

“Cry for me, Kiara,” Blake ordered, crouching in front of her. “Cry for me and I won’t hurt you.”

The part of her that had learned to bend and obey shuddered, ready to do it. It wouldn’t be hard. She was always on the verge of tears nowadays. But even though part of her begged her to comply, Kiara gritted her teeth, raised her chin, and stared straight into his eyes.

“The fun way it is, then,” Blake crooned.

Before she could do as much as take a breath, he yanked her out of the couch, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her away, yelling and clawing at his back.

She knew it would only make things worse if she fought, but she also knew she would only cry if he did his worse anyway, so why not throw everything to shit? Her nails found skin under his shirt, and then blood. She was thrown on a table before any real damage could be done, though. Pity.

Kiara thrashed and cursed as Blake closed restraint after restraint around her until she could no longer move. Ankles, wrists, stomach, chest. She could only pant when he finished and towered over her defenseless figure.

“It really is a shame that you decided to behave like this on your birthday, of all days,” he sighed, holding up a knife where she could see it. Kiara’s entire body went rigid as its sharp point touched her temple. “This is for scratching me,” Blake whispered as he pressed the knife until it broke the skin in a shallow cut. And then dragged it down, all the way from her temple to her chin.

Kiara yelped, too stunned to even scream. It burned. Blood soaked her hair, slipped down her neck, warm on her already sweaty skin.

“I hate you,” she choked out, “you can say what you want to, but scaring me not to tell you how much I despise you doesn’t make it go away. I’ll always despise you. I’ll never be yours, no matter how many times you force me to repeat it.”

Blake snickered. 

“We’ll see about that, sunshine.”

She continued to spit each hateful, panicked thought her mind could conjure. In the end, she knew all those words would render her was more pain, but at the moment the anger was something to hold on to other than fear. It almost muffled the hurt, too, so she grabbed the rage desperately and used it to try and shield her heart.

Something was stuck to her arms, her legs, her collarbones, but she didn’t give herself time to fear or wonder and just kept jerking against the harsh restraints and shouting her hatred. 

Blake worked in silence, watching her resistance with a furrow in his brows.

“You are a fucking psycho, and you never–“ she grunted, cut off by a thick cloth being shoved into her mouth, making her gag. Kiara glared at Blake with wide, furious eyes, hoping he would read her contempt there. He only licked his lips, as if he could already taste her pain.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the entire world shattered around her and was replaced by pure agony. 

Electricity coursed through her body, making her muscles constrict, her breath hitch, and a high-pitched screech fill the room. She was beyond any form of rational thought or normal sensation. The pain swallowed her whole until Kiara was nothing more than anguish and despair. 

It stopped as suddenly as it started. In a moment she was enveloped in pain, and in the other she was trying and failing to curl into herself, begging muffled pleas. 

When the last bolts of pain started to subside and her muscles slowly tried to relax from the painfully constricted position they were in, Kiara found Blake staring at her, looking amused. “The pain suites you, precious. The blood does too. At least you look pretty for your birthday.”

A sob tore through her throat and she closed her eyes fiercely to stop the tears from falling. As soon as she closed them, a pain unbelievably bigger took her away from any rational thought once more. 

Pain was too small of a word to describe the unbearable shock that stole away anything she ever was, felt or thought, and left in her place a puddle of hurt.

It lasted forever. A life. Eternity.

When it ended, she felt bile in the back of her mouth, but couldn’t even vomit with the cloth pressed against her teeth. She sagged on the metal table, sleek with sweat, and choked on the gag and the dread. 

Her throat felt raw from screams she didn’t remember screaming and her entire body shook and ached. The electricity might have stopped, but the pain didn’t, not in the slightest.

A chuckle filled her ears, accompanied by a gentle hand caressing her cheek. “If I take the gag out, will you be rude to me again?”

She didn’t have the energy to do anything. Not to nod or spit or even open her eyes, really. So Kiara kept them closed and tried to breathe through her nose as Blake pulled the cloth out of her mouth.

“I’m so very pleased with you, Kiara” Blake crooned, slowly unbuckling each restraint. She just laid there on a puddle of her own blood, too drained to move or think or talk. “It’s over now, my precious. You can rest.”

He sounded utterly amused. It was only when he opened the last restraint that her heart stopped for a moment.

Blake was pleased. But she hadn’t…

With shaky fingers, Kiara reached toward her eyes. She felt the wetness there, knew what it meant, but didn’t believe it until her fingertips stood right in front of her eyes, gleaming with tears. 

“You didn’t even realize you cried, did you?” Blake murmured, running his fingers through her bloody hair. “Do you realize you’re crying right now?”

This time, when the sob came, there was nothing she could do to stop it. As well as the tears she suddenly felt as burning paths on her skin.

He had truly done it. He had taken everything from her. Every last thing.

Kiara sobbed as Blake picked her up and carried her to the room. She wept throughout the bath he gave her. As he tucked her in and shackled her hands to the bed, there was a steady stream of tears trailing down her cheek, even when the whimpers and sobs stopped. 

She thought the tears were stopping when sleep made her eyelids heavy. She would be dehydrated if it went on for much longer. 

But then, when Blake leaned in to kiss her cheek and murmured “happy birthday, sunshine,” the sobs started all over again. 

[mysterytickingegos]

At Least We Have Us

Pairing(s): Darkiplier x Platonic!reader

Genre: Angsty with a fluffy end.

Word Count: 1,771

Summary: Strange things happened to those who didn’t leave that dreadful manor in time, and you were one of those people. Becoming something not quite human took some time to get used to, but at least you weren’t alone.

Anonymous Request: Platonic Dark with a soft Y/N that's basically very motherly of him despite being much younger? She cares a lot about him and looks up to him. Maybe she's his assistant and also experienced the events of WKM and Dark basically adopted her after that? Post-WKM please! I need Dark being a wise and over protective big brother rn Thank youuuu

Authors Note: I loved working on this one! It was a fun concept, thank you so much for the request!

Want to read more?

[Image Description: A gif of Mark from a vlog video giving a thumbs up to the camera, it has been edited to be gray with Darkipliers afterimages and colors, red and blue.]

Dark...That was such a strange name to call him, at first.

Damien had been a family friend. He was your neighbor, and your best friend’s uncle. When you were a teenager he was a respected member of the local government, a man who hid away in a study and worked far too hard. Eventually with enough pushing from Ophelia, he was your boss, having given you an internship in city hall that Elli really didn’t want. You considered him a friend. Maybe not a close friend, but he was someone you trusted and respected and he would say the same about you.

You jogged up the stairs to the office, dodging past people while muttering quick apologies to anyone who had something to say about it. When you got there, you heard the laughter of your friend through the door and cracked it open. Ophelia was desperately trying to catch her breath between giggles, of course because Damien was telling another story about your completely sophisticated soon-to-be DA. He was surprisingly relaxed, leaning back on his desk and talking with his hands quite a bit.

“But of course, that doesn’t stop them, they run down the street- Oh, Y/n please come in. You’ll want to hear this.” He gestured to the empty chair beside Elli, but when you didn’t move from the doorway, both their faces fell. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” You tilted your head at them, not realizing how you looked, pale and out of breath. “Damien, they’re done counting. You won.”

He was in shock for a few moments, only standing up a bit straighter as he processed your words. “I won? I’m...?”

“You’re going to be the Mayor.” Ophelia finished for him, just before all three of you started laughing and cheering and jumping around.

In many conversations there were moments where you would catch a glimpse of the person you used to know, and in the beginning you would get a heavy heart. You weren’t ready to let him go, to accept that he was somebody else now. Perhaps that’s because it would mean accepting you were somebody else, too.

None of the guests from that damned party left the manor the same.

You heard it so clearly, a stranger’s voice coaxing you up the stairs, quietly whispering your name over and over as you slipped away from the rowdy party. You were practically hypnotized, not thinking about who it could possibly be or their intentions as they lead you to a room that sent chills down your spine the moment you opened the door. It was a room filled with trinkets of the occult, books with terrifying symbols, and scribbles of a mad man on papers scattered all over.

“You’re not supposed to be in here.” You heard a growl from a new voice, just behind you. The person shoved you inside the room and slammed the door as you hit the ground. “In fact, I could’ve sworn this was going to be hidden from all of you.”

You stood up as quickly as you could, turning to see the host of the party scowling at you. “I wasn’t...I was just looking for Elli.” You said quickly, brushing off your clothes.

“The same Elli that told you she was going to lay down for the night a couple of hours ago?” He stepped closer, slowly, ominously.

You thought back to that conversation, spoken quietly, just the two of you on the staircase while everyone else was still playing poker. “How could you even know about that?”

Mark grinned at you, sinister and cold. He gestured around the room, to the books and trinkets. “Things aren’t as they seem here, Y/n. Ever since Celine...left me here, the things in this house had opened my mind to things I never could’ve imagined.” A short laugh bubbled out of him. “I can do anything.”

“You’ve gone mad.” You whispered, backing away. You’d heard bits and pieces of the Iplier drama from Damien, having vented his concerns to you over cups of coffee during work since the day you got your invitations. But you knew now that he had no idea.

“Perhaps they were trying to do the same for you, but I’ve come too far for some kid to screw it all up now.” He turned on his feet and left the room, shutting the door behind him. You rushed over to it, trying to twist the knob before he got a chance to lock it. But it was far too late. You banged on the door and screamed for help until your voice went hoarse, but the room had in fact been hidden away. You were surrounded by taunting spirits in a room that nobody existed, for what felt like weeks. You could feel them gnawing away at bits and pieces of you after that, an itchy feeling under your heart, changing you. Truly, time had been warped, and only one day had passed before you were found by someone who was now immune to the houses secrets and cloaks. And he didn’t say anything, but clearly something had happened to you too.

Funny thing about living forever? (Or at least as long as you have,) It’s not that great, in fact it’s actually very lonely. The world changes around you, and you don’t change that much at all. You often have to leave, not wanting the attention of being the same age after living or working somewhere for 20 or 30 years. Or you get too attached to somebody and you know you will lose them, now or later.

But you weren’t alone. Despite his anger towards Mark, how badly he wanted revenge, Dark kept very close to you. Especially after he learned what happened to his niece, he was going to keep you safe above all else. Mark learned that the hard way when he tried to silence you too, only to find an empty house and a rather cheeky note.

“Catch me if you can.”

Another funny thing, you didn’t even know the power that you had when you first wrote that. As far as you knew you were a normal girl waiting out the storm. But eventually waiting got pretty tiresome.

“How could you be so foolish?” Dark called after you as you both stormed back into the house.

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that big a deal.” You huffed, tossing your jacket away.

His image faltered and glitched at what you said. “Not a big deal? You have the gift of longevity, you are NOT impervious to bullets!”

You flopped down into the armchair, crossing your arms. “We don’t know that yet.”

“You sprained your ankle tripping on air last month, I think it’s safe to say.” For a moment you could’ve sworn he smiled. If it wasn’t at your expense, you might’ve been happy. “You wonder why I hover,”

“Someone had to step in and do something.”

“Why did it have to be you?!”

“Because!” You twisted around in the chair to face him, fighting back tears. “I’m bored! I’m sick of living like a hermit! I’m tired of these stupid towns in the middle of nowhere and never having any friends...it’s been almost a century Dark, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

He pierced his lips, having to look away from you before he got emotional himself. “So this is your plan? Play hero until you run out of luck?”

“Or we can stop hiding. We can try and live our lives, instead of just surviving. I mean, what's the point if we’re completely miserable?”

“And what about him?”

“To hell with Mark, what about you?” Your voice was softer now. “I can work, and shop and be neighborly. But you...you’ve been stuck in the shadows, holding onto your hate all this time. Maybe you don’t believe it after everything that’s happened, but you deserve better.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “What then? Where do you want to go?”

“How about we go home?”

‘Home’ was California, LA specifically. Sure, you could’ve gone back to your hometown but you were both part of a rather famous local mystery and you agreed it was for the best to stay away.

The sun had set a little bit ago and the streets were only illuminated by signs and street lights, that was the only way he’d agree to go out into the city with you, in the dark. Fair enough, he didn’t want to attract attention to himself. Luckily, you’d made some good friends in the last few months, friends like Mike.

“Ah, bonjour!” Mike greeted cheerfully as you and Dark approached the window, before ducking into his shop to get you both a bowl of ice cream. “I was wondering if you were going to show up.”

You nudged Dark over to one of the tables and leaned in the window. “I didn’t mean for it to take so long, thanks for keeping the shop open late for us.”

“Don’t mention it. I actually have a cousin with really bad anxiety, so I get it.” He passed you two bowls with a smile.

Dark squinted at you when you came back to the table. ‘Anxiety?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t have anxiety.”

“You’re right, I should’ve told him the truth. You and your sister possessed your best friend in the 1920′s to escape a place called the upside down, but sometimes you drag bits and pieces of it into the real world and that would probably scare the locals in broad daylight.” You didn’t miss a beat in your little rant, scooping some ice cream into your mouth as soon as you were done.

He chuckled and shook his head at you. “I’m supposed to be the one lecturing you on being subtle.”

“Hey, I’m the one who’s been covering for us the past 91 years. It’s your turn to follow my lead.” You said matter-of-factly, pointing your spoon at him, before you dove back into your bowl. You missed the ‘fair-enough’ nod he gave you and the pride written all over his face, another glimpse of someone you used to know. “You know, maybe you should bring you-know-who here someday.”

His eyes went wide and he shook your words off just a little too quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So you don’t have a thing for his new friend that you’re watching out for?”

“Stop it. Stop it right now.”

“Fine,” You put your hands up in mock surrender, “But you know I’m right.”

[jengajives]

Couple of OCs in this one to make it work, but I really wanted to do something with second/third age Maglor gettin too close with Ulmo and the Oath sneaking up bite him

“So... you’ve seen it?”

Maglor didn’t look up when he spoke. Just went on dragging his fingertips through the sand, drawing swirling patterns on the beach around him. Ulmo sat cross-legged on a rock watching him, letting the wind blow warm and gentle raindrops through both their hair. A beautiful evening for a talk in the rain.

“Seen what?” he asked absently. There wasn’t anything familiar enough in the way Maglor stiffened at that to be alarming.

“It,” the minstrel said again, softer but more insistent. “You know. The...” He trailed off. The fingers on his right hand, twisted with scars, gave a feeble twitch.

The burn marks reminded Ulmo what they were probably talking about and so he nodded.

“Oh, yes. I’ve seen it. I keep it safe, you know. You needn’t worry yourself.”

A long silence. Maglor pressed his hand into the cool damp of the sand.

“Yes,” he mumbled distantly. “No need to worry...”

Silver armor and royal blue banners. Swords that gleamed under the light of the stars.

A figure atop a mountain peak, cloaked and hooded, and the blood-red torchlight lighting his brothers’ faces in the high court of Tirion.

Constantly the words of the Oath boomed now in Maglor’s head, where it had slept for many hundreds of years. Constantly the weight of his father’s spirit pressed his mind.

He would have left the coastline and forsaken sight of the sea, but the glimmer of silver and gold he often saw now beneath the distant waves kept him fixed upon the shore. To turn his back would be to give up the Oath and suffer the ultimate pain of retribution.

He could not. He could not. He could do nothing but cower on the edge of the water, too afraid to act.

“No one will withhold a Silmaril from the house of Fëanor,” said his father within the deeps of memory, “be it Elf, Man, or Vala.”

Ulmo.

His burned fingers trembled and twitched.

Ulmo, his friend. Sheltering the Silmaril at the bottom of the sea.

He buried his eyes beneath quivering hands and tried not to let the connection form.

The Oath waited ever so patiently.

The water was still and glassy black, reflecting a sky of stars that reminded Maglor of the ages before the sun and moon. His days in Valinor, before any curse or oath had torn his family and soul asunder.

He liked the pool. It was always cool and tranquil like a vast sheet of glass within stone’s throw of the sea, and when the world was younger he used to come here to remind himself that he was a lord of the Noldor no longer; look at his reflection and see nothing but a wanderer without people or honor to plague him.

Tonight, though, he saw frost-white armor glinting ghostly beneath his coat, and the light of Aman burning fierce in his face, and in his eyes the soul of the two trees mingled and tamed within depths of stone.

Maglor cast a stone across the pool to shatter the image, unable to stop the quivering that spread up from the root of his spine.

“Is it far?” he asked softly.

Ulmo didn’t stand there in the gangly form he was so fond of, but Maglor still knew he was listening.

The water lapped at the shore like gentle laughter.

“Far enough, but well within my reach.”

When Maglor turned to look at the sea the entire horizon was turned to streams of molten gold and silver chasing each other endlessly within the ocean’s cold jewel.

“Where are we going?” Riston asked eagerly as he trotted behind.

Maglor had forgotten he was there. His mind was busy with other things.

“Going?” he repeated. “When are we ever going anywhere?” But the words were numb and he could not stay the path his feet now took of their own accord.

“I just thought,” huffed Riston, scurrying over the sea-hewn boulders to try and keep pace, “that we would be avoiding places like that.” He pointed upwards.

On the nearby clifftop, a tower fortress blazed with torchlight red and fell.

Maglor let his eyes wander down the cliff face to the dark gap at its foot.

“Yes,” he said dimly. “We should.”

And he hurried along, desperate now to come quickly to the cave and dispense with this mania.

If he could just see what he was seeking, the need for it would pass.

It would pass.

The cavern was cold and dripped with seawater, and in all the ages of the world it had not changed. From the tower above, the stone seemed to vibrate with raucous shouts and music, but the dark stone, crusted with barnacles and grasping things of the sea, was fast and familiar under Maglor’s feet. He moved eagerly now, driven forward by the desperate need to prove himself wrong, forgetting entirely the fact that Riston trailed behind him in wonder.

In the darkest back of the cave, a pale green light shone just enough to illuminate a small stone chamber, wide and high-roofed, and the shelf carved carefully into its back wall.

He knew the place, because he had labored there cutting stone to forget the world, because he had poured Maglor Fëanor’s son into this rock to forget him.

On the shelf rested gleaming white armor, and above it on the wall was set a pale sword with a green gem set into its hilt.

They looked polished and new, as if he had left them yesterday and not thousands of years hence.

It felt as though everything warm left Maglor in a single rush and he was nothing but cold stone himself, staring blank at those arms and wishing he could forget them.

If all was fair, Glírlang’s curved blade should still drip with blood for every life it had taken. The blood of his kin and his friends who had done nothing but stand between him and his father’s prize.

Maglor fell to his knees.

Yes. Yes, it was over now. There was no Oath that could hold him to kill again. No promise he had made would drive him any longer. He was not his father. He was not the elf prince who had sailed from Valinor long ago. Yes, he was no one. No one.

“Maglor-!”

Slowly he turned.

Riston was still here, but oddly enough he was not the only one.

When Maglor saw eyes gleaming cold with greed and malice he thought at first of goblins, and of his brothers, but these were only Men with stout swords who crept in on thick boots that cracked the clinging shells beneath them. They spoke Westron, roughly, though it took him long seconds to understand it.

“Trespassin’,” one said. His blade flashed in the green light of the gem. “Little vagabonds trespassin’ on our lands.”

“Oi,” said another. He pointed to the shelf with the tip of his sword. “Puttin’ some shiny armor down here so’s you and your friends can come back and kill us with it later?”

“That don’t make no sense.”

“Shut up! They’re trespassin’, and you know trespassers gotta die!” The first man’s pale lip curled into a grin. “Besides. I want me that nice silvery sword, and they’re in the way of me takin’ it.”

They moved closer, and Riston stumbled back with a squeak. His Westron wasn’t good enough to understand what was going on.

“Maglor!”

They would both die. What would Maglor do? He could do nothing. Well enough for him to die on the point of a sword, but Riston was barely more than a child.

Well enough for him. Well enough to die here.

“Look at ‘im squirm!” roared the one man, and with fluid ease he cast Riston to the floor and planted a boot on his chest to keep him there. “You say I gut ‘im, boys, or take ‘im up to the tower and let the others have a go?”

Laughter echoed off the walls of the chamber. Maglor’s back hit cold stone but all he could hear was Riston screaming his name.

“Maglor!” cried Elros as the orcs swarmed around him, arm thrown protectively in front of his brother, both little ones wide-eyed and trembling with fear. “Uncle Maglor, please!”

The sun glinting through cloud near the sea. Orcs guffawing to find the little lords of the Noldor unguarded.

So many ages ago and Glírlang dripped with blood.

Fire rushed across the surface of the pool with a deafening roar.

Glírlang pushed in through the back until the tip of the blade came right out the other side.

Blood gurgling through punctured lungs.

Maglor pushed and the Man fell, toppled over, the sword slipping easily from the hole it had put in him, resting with such familiarity in Maglor’s hand.

His Glírlang. So familiar.

He turned to the other Men, standing right over Elros, blade glinting and body slipping automatically into a defensive stance.

No, no, it wasn’t him. Elros wasn’t here, he was long dead now.

It was Riston. Little Riston.

Yes. Riston.

The sword in his grip brought him back through centuries of honey-slow time.

“Step back,” he said steadily. Many years had passed since last he used Quenya, but it flowed now easily past his tongue and filled the whole of the cavern with a crackling power. “You will not touch him.”

The Men scrambled away, faces frozen in awe and terror, for it seemed to them that they had just watched a wandering beggar transform before their eyes into a fell warrior of old, shining with the light of countless centuries and the power of ancient kings, and his sword was alight with green flame.

His enemies fled before him like the cowardly goblins had in ages past.

Torchlight. Blood-red torchlight in the night without end. The courtyard of Tirion stained crimson.

“Let no creature stand between my house and a Silmaril,” Maglor said softly, speaking the same words to the cavern that had sealed his fate those ages ago. “Be it Elf, Man, or Vala.”

He heard the dull roar of the ocean outside, and left Riston behind to cry gently in the earth’s cold embrace.

The waves slammed the shore with fury, but to Maglor, all seemed silent. The stillness of the night utterly complete.

Nothing to shatter his fevered thoughts as he screamed a challenge on the wind to the Lord of the Sea.

“No one will withhold a Silmaril.”

No one.

Vala.

“Maglor.”

He looked up and Ulmo was there, standing in the ankle-deep water in the tall, gangly form he’d once kissed. The sky had grown cloudy but he couldn’t remember when, and the distant line of the sea was alight with fire.

Maglor raised a trembling hand and put the tip of his sword to Ulmo’s chest.

“You... will... give it to me...”

“This is mad,” Ulmo said, very calmly. “Maglor, you don’t have to do this.”

Sea spray brushed against his cheek in some semblance of a fond touch, but he was not swayed.

“Give it to me,” he hissed, his own voice like the touch of hot metal to water. “Or I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t do this,” Ulmo said again. When he stepped back Maglor took a swipe at him, but it was easily blocked by a forearm coated in rough blue carapace like a crab’s. Rusted chains clinked against each other with every movement Ulmo made.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

“You would keep what’s rightfully mine!”

The hissing flame and shadow of Balrogs. His father’s eyes burning brighter than the sun with his last words.

“Thief!” Maglor screamed, batting Ulmo’s shield arm aside to press Glírlang to his breast again. “That Silmaril is mine!”

Ulmo straightened to a new height. His brow, crusted with salt and living stone, grew hard and fell. His simple clothes hardened to plates of chiton armor.

“Do not make me hurt you,” he said again, but now his voice boomed like thunder on the plains and waterfalls and waves breaking against unyielding stone. Behind him the sea rang with the blowing of horns in the deep, shaking the ground, sending rushes of icy water up to swirl against the solid cliffs. Lightning split the sky. Rain began to fall in cold sheets.

“Deliver me what is mine!” Maglor roared against the wind. “Or I will take it!”

Glírlang flashed white light back at the sky. Maglor felt the might of his brothers behind him. The strength and glory of Valinor rushing through him as if he had just newly set foot on Middle-Earth. His blade moved in a blur of green and white, and when he returned again to ready stance, Ulmo stood before him with a gash across his face slowly beginning to seep seawater.

When he touched the tear in his skin, the water turned blood red.

“So be it,” Ulmo said at last, and with the rush of the sea, the tall glorious form was gone, and in its place was a tower of water adorned with sharp yellow teeth stained scarlet, and lengths of rusted silver chain caught in the swell, and a million blue-green eyes that saw everywhere water touched the world, that saw into Maglor’s very soul.

The roar of a tidal wave filled his ears and the flood took him.

Direction became utterly meaningless because he was spinning too fast to recognize any way at all. There was no color but the black of fathomless depths, and Glírlang was torn from his fingers, and teeth tore his flesh, and he spun alone suspended in the might of the sea.

Well enough, to end this way. Conquered at last.

Maglor screamed and water rushed in to fill his lungs. All around him and within him Ulmo spoke.

“If it is the Silmaril thee desire, then take it.”

Before his eyes, the brilliance of the Two Trees locked in a jewel without equal.

“Take it and see where it leaves thee. Let it drive thee mad. Let thee fall as thy brothers have fallen.”

Maglor stretched out his fingers. It was there. It was there, he could feel it, he could almost taste it...

“Take the heirloom of thy house,” Ulmo rumbled, “and let it destroy thee.”

Maglor screamed and the water played the sound he couldn’t make as Being began to fade.

Everything went still and silent.

When air rushed again into his lungs, all he could do was sob.

“Why didn’t you do it?!”

On his knees. Water dripping slowly from his hair, his fingers in the sand.

“Why do you keep me here?!”

The blinding light of the Silmaril resting in a pool in the sand. Glírlang at its side. Maglor took up the blade and threw it with all his strength into the sea, then fell again with his eyes turned from the jewel, his whole body shaking with sobs.

“I don’t want it! I don’t want it! Please!“

Still he was here. Still he lingered.

“Just let me go,” he breathed to the motionless air. “Just take me! I don’t want it! I failed! Just let me go!”

Ulmo did not answer. No one answered.

The waters were still and the Silmaril lay there watching.

Maglor screamed at Ulmo to take it away, but the Lord of the Sea would not answer.

And his mind crackled and folded like the flesh of his hand.

[kgraces]

Tire Iron

Read it on Ao3 here

Jason crouched next to the Batmobile, working on freeing the final tire, and he was so focused on the car, he didn’t notice he had company until a soft voice spoke from behind him.

“Um, you do know that’s Batman’s car...right?”

Jason whirled, tire iron in hand. Unfortunately, the speaker was just about the same height as Jason’s arm as it came swinging around. The tire iron knocked him in the temple, and he crumpled to the ground. Jason really hadn’t meant to do that. He found himself looking at a kid, just a little slip of a thing, really. He’d been spooked, though, and accidentally knocked the boy unconscious. Jason knelt next to him and poked his cheek a few times, trying to rouse him. The kid groaned and sat up, rubbing his head.

It was just his luck that Batman chose to return to the Batmobile at that exact moment. A looming shadow fell over both boys, and Jason glanced back to assess the potential threat. He only relaxed minutely when he saw who it was, but at least he didn’t think Batman would hurt a couple of kids. He kept a wary eye on the Bat as he turned his attention back to the dazed kid.

“You alright?” He asked. The kid blinked up at him, wide, pale eyes bright, even in the shadows of the alley. He nodded, looking nervous and a bit star-struck. Batman moved to crouch next to Jason, studying the gash at the boy’s temple.

“Back off,” Jason growled. “The kid doesn’t have anything to do with your missing tires.” Batman leveled a flat look at the tire iron still in Jason’s grip, and Jason rolled his eyes. “You do realize we’re in Crime Alley, right? Gimme a break. At least the kid was trying to stop me.” Batman turned his attention to the pale boy sitting on the filthy concrete.

“Can you tell me your name and age?” Batman asked, his voice a low rumble.

“I’m Tim, and I’m ten.”

“Timothy Drake?” Batman asks. He frowned as Tim nodded. “You shouldn’t be so far from home so late at night.”

“And you should tell Nightwing his quadruple flip is more recognizable than he thinks,” Tim countered, crossing his arms. He pouted at Batman, who looked dumbstruck.

“Are you...blackmailing me?” Batman asked after a moment’s pause. Jason snickered, and Tim folded his arms, looking petulant.

“I think you’re my new best friend,” Jason said, still laughing. Tim looked at him with poorly concealed surprise, mixed with an innocent sort of glee. Batman sighed and gave Jason a stern look. Jason grinned at him, crookedly.

“So,” Batman grumbled. “I’ve got a thief and a blackmailer on my hands. And...they’re both children.” He pinched the bridge of his nose over the cowl and shook his head. “Alright, why don’t you tell me your name?” He asked Jason. “Then you’re going to put my tires back onto my car, and afterwards, we’ll get you boys home. I’m sure your parents are very worried.”

Jason figured that last sentence was meant for Tim, but it doesn’t stop him from cracking up, anyways. To his surprise, Tim snorted out a little laugh, too. The two boys made eye contact and burst into more giggles. Tim shook his head and winced with the movement. Jason gave him a pat on the shoulder, feeling guilty, and Tim rolled his eyes, giving Jason’s shoulder a light shove. Jason stuck his tongue out, ready to make a snarky comment, when Batman cleared his throat. Jason blinked once. Twice.

“I’m Jason,” he said. “And I hate to break it to you, but I’m already home.” He gestured to the alley around them. “Cozy, huh?”

“You could come back with me!” Tim immediately piped up. “My house has plenty of rooms—enough to play hide and seek in! Well, it’s a little bit boring with only one player, so it’d be nice to have someone else around for once.”

“What.” Batman frowned, looking between the two boys with a subtle sense of befuddlement.

“Oh,” Tim said, blushing furiously. “My parents are in Argentina for the next three months, and then I think they’re going to spend a month or two in Mexico, after that.”

“Are you telling me that you,” he looked at Jason, “are homeless, and you,” he turned to Tim, “are left alone for months at a time?” Both boys nodded, and Batman sighed again, heavier this time. “Get to work on those tires, okay Jason? And Tim, let me make sure you didn’t hurt your head, alright?” He received another round of nods, and he hoisted Tim onto the hood of the Batmobile as Jason wandered off to fetch the tires he’d stolen.

“He didn’t mean to hit me,” Tim said softly, as Batman checked his head. “It was an accident.” He paused for a moment, fiddling with his fingers. “Are you mad at us?”

“Of course not,” Batman replied immediately. He offered Tim a small smile. “Am I correct in assuming you know who I am?”

“Sorry, Mr. Wayne,” Tim said, a shy tone creeping into his voice. “I figured it out last year, but I promise I haven’t told anyone!”

“I believe you,” Batman said. Tim relaxed a little and started to swing his legs back and forth. He leaned over to watch as Jason ambled over and started to put one of the tires back onto the wheel. Batman reached for his comm, smiling as the two boys started to chatter at each other, like two little birds. “Agent A? Do you think you could make three mugs of hot cocoa? And a snack?”

“Am I correct in assuming you’re about to do something monumentally foolish?” Alfred’s prim voice replied.

“Oh, absolutely.” He turned to the small child sitting on the hood of his car. “How do you feel about taking a ride in the Batmobile?” Tim’s eyes lit up, and his face broke into the biggest, brightest smile he’d ever seen. Tim made a little squeaking sound, so excited he couldn’t speak.

“And Jason, too?” He finally asked, voice wobbly. He looked down at the other boy, who’d glanced up at the sound of his name.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed gruffly. He sent a sharp look toward Batman, before turning his attention back to the final tire he needed to fix. “Gotta make sure you get back home safe, Timbit.” Tim’s expression twisted to one of confusion at the nickname, but then he smiled again, pleased.

“New best friends, right?” He asked. Jason reached up and swatted at Tim’s ankle without looking up. Tim looked over at Batman, still grinning. “You’re pretty weird,” he said.

“Weird,” Batman parroted back. This child was bewildering in every way.

“Jason stole your tires. I know, and you’re letting us ride in the Batmobile and giving us hot chocolate and snacks?” He shrugged his little shoulders. “Weird.”

Jason stood up and grinned, finished with the tires. Tim hopped down, practically buzzing with excitement as Batman opened the door for them to crawl into the backseat.

“This is the coolest moment of my entire life,” Tim said. “I can die happy, now.” Jason raised a brow.

“Nope, not gonna happen.” He ruffled Tim’s messy hair, careful to avoid the cut at his temple. “Hot cocoa first, right? Then hide and seek?”

“Yes!” Tim said brightly.

“I’m thinking it’ll be a little late for hide and seek after you boys eat your snacks,” Batman said. His voice lifted a little, more Bruce than Bat. “But I bet the manor has more hiding spots than your house, Tim. You two can stay the night, if you’d like.” He eyed Jason, knowing the boy wouldn’t be inclined to trust him, but Jason surprised him by deferring to Tim.

“Whatcha think?” He asked, slinging an arm around Tim. “Creepy or cool?”

“Cool!” Tim practically shouted. “So, so cool. Would it really be okay to spend the night? I mean, if it’s too much trouble, we can totally just stay at my house,” he added sheepishly.

“I’d rather not let you two troublemakers stay there all by yourselves,” Batman admitted. “And I’m sure Agent A will agree.”

“Oh, okay then,” Tim said. The Batmobile roared into the Cave, and Tim had to stop himself from leaping out of the car before it parked. “I was wrong earlier. This is the coolest moment of my entire life.”

“Secret lair,” Jason mused, glancing around the Cave with a critical eye. “Cool or creepy?” Tim turned and gaped at him, looking scandalized.

“My new best friend is the worst,” he complained, leaning against Jason’s side dramatically. He turned to Batman, who was watching their antics with a small, genuine smile. “Can we explore?”

“Tomorrow,” Batman replied. “For now, why don’t you two go upstairs? Alfred will be waiting for you in the kitchen. Down the stairs, second door to the right.”

“Okay Mr. Wayne,” Tim said, grabbing Jason’s hand and tugging him toward the stairs. “See you in a little bit!”

“Wait a sec,” Jason said, stunned. “Wayne?”

Tim’s cackle bounced around the Cave, lingering even after the boys had gone upstairs. Batman went through his usual routine, slowly putting away the vigilante to become Bruce again. He made his way up to his study, sparing a moment to email his legal team about two new potential custody cases, and went to join the others in the kitchen. Alfred passed him a mug of hot cocoa, smiling at him knowingly. Tim and Jason were still chattering happily, if a bit sleepily, and the plate of snacks had been reduced to a handful of crumbs. Once the mugs were empty and the laughter had petered out into yawns, Alfred ushered Jason and Tim upstairs to get some sleep. When he returned, the look he gave Bruce was both chastising and brimming with approval.

“So, shall we tell Master Dick he’s soon to have two little brothers, or shall we let him come home to a surprise?”

[ziracona]

Friendship headcanons between Anna and Quentin’s dad? Maybe Nacy too.

For sure! Love their weird awkward relationship.

So, it’s weird for Alan. Like, really weird. Like, can you imagine being him and your poor kid comes home traumatized as fuck after 9 years and he’s got a feral Russian bear woman who is his surrogate mom now in tow?

Obviously, Alan is very stressed about the potential of anything happening to Quentin again, so even knowing the situation, Anna is kind of a source of stress at first. It’s important to Quentin though, so he goes with it and tries to be supportive. It isn’t until about a month after Anna is released from the rehabilitation facility that he is truly at peace about it though. But it happens. There’s a night where Quentin falls asleep on the couch watching a movie, and they don’t notice until it ends. Alan decides to let him sleep there in peace for a bit before waking him up to go sleep in his bed, and is putting up dishes from supper, when he sees Anna carefully putting a blanket over Quentin and stroking his head twice before smiling and leaving him to sleep too, warm now, and he just kind of forgets what he was doing becuase he never quite really truly believed Anna was just selflessly and genuinely invested in his kid’s happiness, but there’s no one there to see, no consciousness for Quentin to appreciate the gesture, and he smiles, because it’s such a relief, and it’s sweet, and he wished Quentin’s mom had lived longer, wished he’d found someone else to be a mom for the kid growing up, and he’s deeply happy he’s got one now.

Anna doesn’t really know what to do with Alan at first either. Like, she gets that ‘Dad’ is the man counterpart to ‘Mama,’ but since hers was dead before she was old enough to remember, she doesn’t really know what that looks like, and never thought about it before. At first is kind of tentatively curious if this means they’re rivals, and she should be jealous of him. Alan never once seems to view their relationships to Quentin that way though, so thank god it never turns into a competition. She’s not sure what it is though, when she realizes it’s not that. So mostly she just tries to give him space and not cause confrontation between them out of respect for Quentin. She notices how good he is to Quentin though, and a few weeks before Alan really gets the same read on her, and kind of softens a little and decides he’s okay. Then suddenly a month in, Alan is more open towards her and starts interacting with her intentionally, even when no Quentin is there at present as an ice breaker. It is super awkward for them both, and they haven’t got a clue how to act towards each other, but they’re both slightly interested in trying, and it works. Alan asks her the morning after he realizes she’s okay if she wants to learn how to make muffins, since she’s sitting at the table watching him cook with a look like a cat has when it sees a new small rodent for the first time, and Anna really does. She is fascinated by all the tricks to tastes there are, and the wild variety of foods she had no idea could exist. At first she’s like “Me?” And very confused by this change in attitude, but he’s nice to her and it’s fun and the food is good, so she enjoys it, and accepts without reservation when he offers another lesson at lunch. This is how their relationship begins: Alan asking her if she wants to learn how to cook various things. Sometimes Nancy and or Quentin joins in, or anyone else in the house. And it’s fun. Anna never looked at food prep as anything but a survival necessity, but there’s a day two months in where she’s covered in flour making shortbread cookies with Alan and Nancy and Quentin, listening to music and people laughing and singing along, and she realizes lots of humans make all kinds of mundane acts into fun activities. And she really likes that. : )

Anna tries to reciprocate Alan’s gestures of goodwill by offering to teach him to hunt, which Alan refuses politiely because he has no idea what he’d do with hatchet throwing and animal tracking skills, but he immediately sees how hurt and insulted and wounded to her core that makes Anna and covers it with a “I mean—I would love to, but I’m just not sure I could have the skills at my age. I’m so old I might be hopeless to teach.” And Anna goes from :’-( to : D instantly and is like “No, no! Not too late—I show you. Many skills very easy to learn basics of. I am good teacher. Can teach even you, I am sure.” And is exceedingly enthusiastic teaching him basic tracking skills the next morning. It’s uh. It’s an awkward walk through a nearby park for Alan at 6AM, with Anna kneeling like fkn Aragorn to listen to the ground or touch dog tracks and sniff things while pointing out valuable intel, but he is duly attentive and awed by her skills, and takes his lesson like a champ, and it’s actually pretty fascinating stuff once you get past the “Wtf is happening” looks you’re getting from every early morning dog walker and jogger going past.

Alan picks up pretty fast that since Anna has almost no social experience, she tends to take social cues from those around her (like trading skills to make friends, or trading gifts with Min & Quentin), and is more careful how he approaches stuff. That also makes him like Anna a lot more, because it’s so sincere and she’s so truly giving all of this her best. He starts a tradition of going back and forth on who picks an activity that interests them to try to give her a chance to branch out and see more of the modern world. Greatly enjoys seeing how much she is excited and fascinated by like, everything. Anna is so mind blown the first time Nancy suggests they hit an Aquarium that it takes 4 times as long as normal to get through, becuase she can’t stop getting lost in the sight of every exhibit. Anna meanwhile notices pretty quick how watchful Alan is and how protective whenever he’s out with Quentin, although he tries to keep Quentin from noticing it too much, and she is very happy about this. Important for parents to be good protectors, especially with Quentin’s luck.

It takes Anna a while to quite get Nancy and Quentin’s relationship, but she decides after much deliberation that she approves and it’s cute. She likes how attentive Nancy is, and how quiet she can be. Thinks she would make a good hunter with skills like that. Is also very aware how much happier Quentin is around her. Decides this makes her a daughter too, and happily welcomes her into the fold. After Nancy realizes this, it kind of breaks her for a while, because she still misses her own mom so, so much. The first time Anna gives her a hug to comfort her about something so much more mundane—just a twisted ankle on a hike, she has a breakdown and can’t stop silently crying into her chest, becuase she still has an open wound in her heart where her mom is concerned. Anna isn’t a replacement, but she is a balm, and it helps. It really does, to have a big self-determined second mom hug you even when she doesn’t understand until you’ve cried all the tears you had, and still be waiting there with patience to hold you through more, and whispered comforts and strong arms around your back. Nancy gets her stuff for the next Mother’s Day, and it almost breaks her heart to have someone to shop for again, but she’s happier too, because it’s a comfort to know another one could love her too, and by choice. She’s had so much guilt over her mom’s death, sometimes she’s wondered if she never deserved to have one love her at all, no matter how much she knows her mom would never want her to think like that. It weirdly helps her talk more about her own mom again, especially to Quentin, who, while he barely remembers his mom, has some small idea how it all feels. She’s able to dig out a lot of the memories of Gwen Holbrook she couldn’t bear to look at for a long time, and forgive herself a little more. And able to make some new memories with Anna and Quentin and Alan she thinks her mom will be happy to hear about someday.

It wasn’t like that at first, though. Nancy is one of the few people who weren’t in the realm who has almost no issue adjusting to Anna, but she had some right at the start. She’s super wary the like, first couple days, because she has mountains worth of PTSD specifically centered around pseudo parental figures and people killing Quentin, but she’s observant as hell, and after watching Anna bodyslam Michael Myers through a wall on first meeting becuase she misconstrued his asshole big brother lifestyle choice of picking Quentin up by his collar for no reason other than easy and fun to push him around as an act of war, she realizes she truly has nothing to worry about, and Anna is an ally in arms when it comes to keeping the guy she loves alive.

Anna is extremely impressed with both Alan and Nancy for their roles in killing Freddy, and this is a massive affinity boost. She thinks Nancy is a little wolf of a girl in the best possible way, and approves of her level of dangerous greatly.

While Alan has no romantic feelings for Anna, it’s really nice to have a woman in the house again—it’s kind of nostalgic, jus to hear her singing sometimes and such. He offers to take her shopping for clothes and accessories becuase he remembers some of the places his wife especially loved, and it makes him sad and happy to be able to put that old treasured remnant of someone beloved to him to good use again. Anna really loves a couple of the same spots, especially a tiny handmade jewelry from gemstones shop, and it hurts but in a good way to have a reason to go there again.

Anna is exceedingly jealous of the photo of Quentin’s mom over the fireplace for like, a year and a half after she realizes who she is. It’s kind of funny. I mean, she’s dead. There is no threat. But Anna despises it and it takes all the willpower she has not to go hide it in a drawer somewhere.

That is until almost two years in when she wakes up early to weird noise and comes down to see Alan has the photo with him at the table, and a little setup with flowers and candles and objects she doesn’t recognize, and he’s crying. It isn’t until that night when she asks Quentin that she finds out it’s the anniversary of his mom’s death that day, but as soon as she sees Alan and the setup, she feels bad, and the anger and jealousy goes away, becuase she remembers feeling exactly that way for years and years at the sight of the portrait of her mother, and still now at the thought of it. The jealousy does not come back.

Alan, Nancy, Quentin, and Anna hang out a lot, and with Feng, Nea, and Ace, or Philip and Claudette a lot too. At a point, Alan starts reaching a “Okay you stay here with the kids and I’ll go grab tickets” kind of tag-team responsibility with Anna, and Anna thinks this is fun, and is immensely pleased with this new role of responsibility partnership. She begins doing the same with him, and likes being partner protectors of the group. She’s wanted to find a family again her whole life, and finally found it now after all these years, but she’s found more than that too; she’s found community, and she never had that before, so she didn’t know to miss it or seek it out or even that it was a thing to want, but now that she has it, she’s so much more happy and content and proud than she’s ever been.

[such-a-random-rambler]

High - Part 9

This may be done, I’m not sure, there may be one more chapter but I haven’t decided yet.

and @janetm74 do you remember ages ago when you asked

9. Which idea came to you first 

it was this bit!

John was wrung out. The last thirty hours had been, not to put too fine a point on it, a waking hell.

Virgil had sorted the nausea, which was just as well as unrelenting thirst hit soon afterwards and it would have been torture to be unable to drink for fear of throwing it back up. Those few hours had almost earned him another bag of fluids anyway. Then came the muscle cramps, crunching through his arms, legs, hands and feet, leaving him writhing and trying not to scream.

He did scream at the hallucinations – The Hood lunged out at him from the shadows, sucking all the air from the room, leaving him clutching at his throat. An earthquake hit, the room collapsing around him, sea rushing in to drown them all in salty torrents. Half formed tentacley things crept up from the floor and wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles, holding him still for the needles to stab him, and the leering monstrous shapes to yell at and taunt him.  

When they faded his blood turned to ice, body temperature dropping no matter how many blankets were stacked around him eventually shivering himself into an exhausted sleep.

Now he was awake, eating, drinking and with the energy to sit up Virgil said he was on the mend, but John felt more out of sorts than he ever had.

John’s life was all about control; procedures and protocol.  He wasn’t an emotionless robot, as much as Gordon liked to joke about it, but there was a time and a place for them. John wrapped self-discipline around himself like a safety blanket because it was a safety blanket – he lived on a knife edge where an uncontrolled outburst could cause disaster and  death.

Sitting in the medbay – the rest of the family sleeping or eating, giving him some much needed privacy – John wrestled with the flood of emotions that assailed him. He flickered between fear, anger, desperation, hate, apathy.

The moment he got a handle on one of them, something else rose up to engulf him, tossing him between tears and paranoia and shaking with rage within minutes. He was unused to such extremes of feeling, and unused to not being able to reign them in when he needed to.

His mind felt fractured, his sense of self washed away and that oh so important self-control practically non existent. He couldn’t dispatch like this! They relied upon him to be calm when they called. He was no use to anyone if he couldn't get a grip, and there wouldn’t be a place for him anymore if he wasn’t useful and he wouldn’t have a home and he’d lose everything and...

His thoughts were spiraling into despair. He couldn’t take it any more.

“Gordon Tracy, John may need assistance and you are closest. Please report the medbay.” The ever-calm and even tones of EOS chimed in his ear.

“What’s the problem?” Gordon hurried his steps along the corridor, flooded with urgency.

“He appears to be in distress.”

“Medically?”

“His heart rate and blood pressure are raised but not dangerously so.”

Unsure of what he was walking into Gordon opened the door to the med room slowly, just in time to see something go slamming into wall beside his head, shards tinkling to the ground.

“Heeey, what’s this.” He said, taking in the floor covered with the remains of several other glasses.  

John picked up another tumbler and it followed the last, splintering into crackling shards.

“I think we’re going to want those.” Was all he could think of to say, and not sure that John had noticed him come in, his eyes were so unfocused.

A third, and they were all gone. Except John’s rage wasn’t and with nothing else to throw balled up a fist to swing at the wall. Some of these walls were plasterboard, some were dry wall. Some were the solid rock that the hangers had been carved out of and would definitely break a hand. It was impossible to tell which that particular section of wall was, and it wasn’t worth taking any risks.

Gordon moved fast, stepping in front of John’s fist, pulling it down between them both. The momentum of it allowed him to twist John round and secure his hand behind his back, in a move  perfected by hours of training with Kayo.

“No need for that. You don’t need a broken hand on top of everything else.”

“Let me go Gordon.” John twitched, grumbling low, but at least aware enough to know who was in the room with him.

“Not likely.”

“Gordon, please. I....”

“I am not letting you go until you calm down.” John wasn’t a weakling by any stretch of the imagination but this last week had really taken it’s toll and Gordon had no problem holding on.

“Gordon I need... I need....”

“What do you need?”

The strength seemed to leach out of John, and he sunk to the kneel on the floor. Gordon followed him down: ending up curled up over John’s back. He could feel John trembling, heart thundering.  

“Talk to me, please.” Gordon whispered.  

“There’s fire in my brain” John practically sobbed, and Gordon’s heart broke for him.  “And ants crawling under my skin.”

“It’s going to be ok.”

“How do you know?”

A long time ago Gordon was in a bad place, hadn’t been feeling himself for a long time. He’d thought the whole world had changed and would never be the same. But it had only been temporary. He had healed and grown and those nightmares were in the distant past.  John was going through something very different, but maybe Gordon could still help.  

“This is just another side effect. You’ve had all the physical ones and now you have this. It will pass.”

The remaining fight went out of John and Gordon released his wrist. With a little bit of shuffling Gordon got in front of him, and settled so that John’s head was resting over his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around his big brother in a firm hug and felt John do the same, hands fisting into Gordon’s shirt.

“Did you know that a hug can actually lower your blood pressure? Scientifically proven, that.” Gordon said, squeezing tight.

“Hmmmm.”  

“You’ve been stuck in this room for far too long, you need a change of scenery.” Gordon said, thinking about the weeks he had spent looking at the same four walls and how it had bored him to tears, the sameness of it all. John lived in the ever-changing vastness of space, being confined to this room must be doing the same.

“I... I don’t know. I can’t think...”

“Then leave the thinking to me. I’m better at it anyway.”

John snorted.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s move.”

Gordon had to drag John up, but once there he could stand on his own. Sort of. Gordon needed to give him the occasional poke for balance, and pull for direction, but John did most of the work himself. Scott put down the book he was reading as they passed through the living room on the way outside, but didn’t say anything, just watched. Gordon loved it when Scott trusted him.

They made their way slowly down to the chairs by the pool, to the one that was right by the forest line and always in shade. Gordon pushed John down, and lifted his legs onto the lounger. John looked calm again, but a blank, empty, exhausted kind of calm.  

“Just lay back and concentrate on the wind on the trees. That also helps with high blood pressure.”

“It still hurts.” John sighed with a slow blink.

“I know. I’m going to get you a drink of water.”

When Gordon got back with the water – and a blanket and a snack bar, just in case – John was fast asleep.  

[tsarisfanfiction]

Long Way From Home: Chapter 2

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Friendship Characters: Scott, Tracy Family

Well, the first chapter certainly got some reactions, so I’m back again to either answer the questions from last chapter or make things more confusing.  Or both, because why not?  I’m planning weekly updates, but we’ll see what actually happens.  Thanks, uni.

<<<Chapter 1

Logic screamed that he was actually facing the Hood, the twisted man adopting his own appearance for some scheme or other that Scott really didn’t want to know about.  His gut told logic to go take a hike – there was no way the Hood would be standing there, barely two feet from his uniform, and not raiding any and all technology he could get his grubby little paws on. Nor would the Hood leave him unrestrained when he’d had plenty of opportunity to secure him during the gap in his memory.

Besides, the Hood was a perfectionist.  His disguises were flawless, a product of technology Brains rolled his eyes at but acknowledged was an engineering masterpiece, if sadly in the wrong hands. This Scott in front of him was not a carbon copy.

For starters, much to Scott’s chagrin, the man’s hair was a healthy brown all over.  No grey traitors wormed their way along his roots, signs of stress he desperately tried to ignore even as his brothers taunted him for their existence and pulled stunts that felt designed to increase their number. The brown was also slightly lighter than his own, although that could just have been a product of more washes and less gel.  Despite the lack of grey hairs, he also got the impression that this man was actually older than him, if only by a year or so.

“How did you get here?” His voice was different, too.  The pitch wasn’t the same, nor was the tone quite right.  Virgil could give a better summary of the nuances, he was sure.

The words, though. Those were all Scott, right down to the sharp delivery and clear expectation of a prompt answer.  Skipping pleasantries, and heading straight for the heart of the matter because they didn’t have time to dance around the issue.

“I might have a better idea if I knew where ‘here’ was,” he challenged.  “What is this place?  Where am I?” Where were his brothers?

The Other-Scott (Fake Scott? Hood-Masquerading-As-Scott?) locked gazes with him.  What he was looking for, Scott didn’t know, but he refused to cower away from his doppelgänger and met his steely, searching look with one of his own. Logic still insisted that the Hood, or at least the Hood’s technology, had to be responsible, but he’d learnt to trust his gut long before he’d even heard of his father’s dream of International Rescue and that was adamant that Kayo’s miserable excuse for a family member had nothing to do with the man in front of him.

What it couldn’t tell him was who the man was, aside from an imperfect clone of himself.  The unusual technology surrounding them – alien, Alan might call it for lack of a more rational explanation – was another piece to the puzzle that wasn’t slotting together.

Puzzles were more of John’s thing, not his.  There were many times his ginger brother had rescued the poor pieces from his hands as he tried to force them into the wrong places.

Why had John not made contact yet?

“Who are you?” he demanded when it became clear that the other man wasn’t intending on answering his other questions.  “Why am I here?  Where are my brothers?”

“Brothers?” Other-Scott repeated, frowning deeply.  “We found you alone.”

“Found me?” Scott spat.  “Where? Last place I remember was the securest part of my own home!  There’s no way you got near me without passing my brothers!”  His brothers, sleeping soundly in the belief that they were safe in their own home.  Even John had gone to sleep, secure on Five, but if they’d reached Thunderbird One’s hangar they’d have reached the space elevator docking system.  “So where.  Are. My.  Brothers?”

“You were in our home,” Other-Scott bit back, hands briefly balling into fists before being forced to relax again.  “Alone. Wherever your brothers are, it’s not here.”  Scott didn’t like the emphasis on brothers.

“Don’t lie to me!” he roared, temper fraying.  His brothers had to be with him, otherwise John would have made contact asking where he’d gone.  Otherwise this man – and others beside him – had invaded their home and taken him whilst leaving his brothers but that made no sense.  Why take only one member of International Rescue when you could have all five?  Why take only one Tracy – even if it was the eldest, the one with the most access to all their assets – when you could take more for additional insurance?

They hadn’t tied him down, and the wires hooking him up to the bizarre machines had long since lost their hold on him from his earlier movement.  A rookie mistake.  With years of Air Force training behind him, Scott launched himself at the other man.

Blue eyes widened just before a fist made contact with his cheek, and Other-Scott staggered backwards before catching his balance, his hand tenderly brushing over the injured area. The movement had put him to one side, no longer between Scott and the door, and Scott took full advantage of that. If this man wasn’t going to admit where his brothers were, he’d find them himself.

It was his turn to receive a punch as he jumped towards the door, putting him off-course and allowing Other-Scott to block his way again.  This time, his curiously wary look had changed to an angry one, and as they met in a flurry of blows Scott couldn’t tell which of them moved first.

“Let. Me. At. My. Brothers,” he spat between blows, gasping as an elbow caught him in the solar plexus just as Other-Scott doubled over from a fist to the gut.

“They’re not, argh, here!” Other-Scott insisted, hooking their ankles together and bringing them tumbling to the floor, where they pushed and shoved at each other, trying to get the upper hand.  Something fell off a table as Scott’s back slammed into it, shattering into many glass fragments and dousing him with a cool liquid.  Another bottle hit Other-Scott’s shoulder on the way down, before smashing on the floor and adding to the mess.

They were equally matched, neither able to get the upper hand as they rolled around on the floor, fists flying, heads clashing, and elbows jabbing whatever fleshy body parts they could reach in all the chaos.  Broken glass dug mercilessly into bare skin wherever it was visible, the liquid contents of the former bottles oozing through their clothes. Other-Scott’s head slammed against the bed, but he barely paused before Scott found his own head colliding with a metal table, darkening his vision for a split second.

“What’s going on here?” an unfamiliar voice demanded.  Scott ignored it, and Other-Scott met his latest attacks with equal fervour. “Scott, stop!”

Scott had no intention of stopping.  He didn’t recognise the voice, but Other-Scott had flinched so he did, which meant they were working together.

Strong arms grabbed him, hauling him away from Other-Scott with a grunt, and he kicked out at the warm body restraining him.  Other-Scott had been captured too, a shorter brown-haired man built like a tank firmly hooking him under the shoulders and frowning furiously as he fought to keep hold of Scott’s doppelgänger, who was as determined to get free as Scott himself.

“BOYS!” the voice thundered right in his ear, no doubt belonging to the owner of the arms restraining him.  “What is this nonsense all a- oof?”  Scott threw his head back, clashing with what felt like a nose, from the way it gave.

“Where are my brothers?” His demand came out almost as a scream, all his frustration at the situation pouring out of him as at least two more hostiles made themselves apparent.  Other-Scott was stopping short of causing any damage to his own captor in his bids for freedom, suggesting that while the man was breaking up the fight, he was still on Other-Scott’s side.

“I told you!” Other-Scott shouted back at him.  “They’re not here!  We only found you!”

“They must be here!” Scott insisted.  “Don’t lie to me!”

“E-nuff!” the man behind him joined in, the imperious tone ruined by the clear sounds of a broken nose. “Shedate im!”

Scott fought harder as a ginger man entered the room, looking at him with wide brown eyes before surveying the mess in front of him with trepidation.  He picked his way across glass-strewn floor carefully, but Scott was more interested in Other-Scott, whose attempts to get free had reduced to a token effort as his attention was briefly stolen by the ginger man. He recognised that look of concern too well, far too used to seeing it in the mirror.

“Oh my!” a frail woman’s voice sounded from the doorway.  “Oh, what a mess.  Jefferson, what are you doing to that poor young man?”

Jefferson.  The name was so familiar it hurt, but at least he had a name for Other-Scott – or so he thought until the man holding him responded.

“He’s quith ou o conthrol, muffer.”

Unable to help himself, Scott tore his gaze away from Other-Scott, who had now stopped resisting capture entirely in favour of looking in the direction of the doorway almost sheepishly, to catch a glimpse of the man holding him.  Silver-grey hair and a receding hairline weren’t immediately familiar, however, and the hold he was in preventing him from seeing much more. He could, however, see the elderly lady who had interrupted the fight.  Rosy cheeks, a slightly bent back and a quiver in her hands all pointed towards a particularly advanced age.

“Where are my brothers?” he asked again, reigning his voice in to an almost-level, if still intense, level.

“I told you-” Other-Scott started forwards again, only to be brought up short by the man still holding him tightly.

“Your brothers, dearie?” the old woman interrupted.  “Oh, I’m afraid I don’t know.  Jefferson, why don’t you help the young man find his brothers?”

“They’re not here, Grandma,” Other-Scott said, and Scott flared up again.

“Well then, dearie, it seems to me that instead of all this fighting, you should be looking to find out where they are,” Other-Scott’s grandmother pointed out.  “I’m sure their absence is terribly distressing him.  I know you’d be terribly distressed if your brothers were missing.”  She pottered towards him, the ginger-haired man sweeping back to her side and nudging broken glass out of the way with a foot before she could tread on any. “Jefferson, let him go.  Are you hungry, dearie?  I’ve got an apple pie that’s just finished baking.”

“Muffer!” the man holding him protested, but the woman was no longer paying her son any attention, bespectacled eyes homing in on Scott.  He looked around the room; Other-Scott was still held by the brown-haired man, and the ginger was hovering awkwardly by the elderly lady but shooting him assessing looks.  The grip on his arms was slackening, and it became clear that no-one wanted to fight with her in the midst, Scott himself included.

“Well, dearie?” the woman prompted, and he slid out of the other man’s grasp.  The instant he did so, a hand, just as frail and delicate as the rest of her, came to rest on his forearm.  “If apple pie doesn’t meet your fancy, I have an orange tart, or some banana bread.  Oh, if none of those tickle you, I’m sure I can find something,” she wittered as he found himself being coaxed from the room.

“Uh, apple pie would be… fine,” he said haltingly.  Behind him, he heard a noise of protest.  “Thank you, er, Mrs..?”

“Oh dear, I didn’t introduce myself.”  She sounded mortified at the omission.  “I’m so sorry, dear.  It’s Mrs Tracy.”

It shouldn’t have bothered him.  Tracy wasn’t an uncommon name, for all that there was only one family famous for it. The elderly lady looked nothing like his grandmother – either of them, even if his recollections of his mother’s mother were faded – but her grandson still looked like him, to the point he still didn’t trust the other man, or indeed anyone in the house.  In light of that, having his own surname thrown around startled him.

“Is there something wrong?” Mrs Tracy asked him.  “Oh, you don’t look well at all, dear.  Let’s sit you down.”  He found himself ushered into a seat as they reached what was clearly the kitchen.  A young woman was already there, pulling the promised apple pie out of a bizarre contraption that vaguely resembled an old oven. “Tin-Tin, would you be a dear and fetch your father?” the elderly lady asked her.  “This young man doesn’t seem very well.”

“But of course, Mrs Tracy.” Tin-Tin had a slight lilting accent to her voice, somewhere south-east Asian if Scott had to guess.  “I’ll find him now.”  She placed the apple pie, which smelled absolutely heavenly to Scott, compared to his own grandmother’s regular offerings, on the table and left the room.

“Eat up, dearie,” Mrs Tracy insisted, placing a plate in front of him.  “Help yourself to as much as you want.”

The apple pie smelled good, and despite his misgivings at the entire situation, a homemade apple pie was far too tempting and he found himself tucking in to a healthy slice.

“What would you like to drink, dear?” she asked.  “Tea, coffee? Oh, I have some juice somewhere, now where did I put it..?”

“Water is fine,” he answered between mouthfuls.

“Oh, are you sure?” she queried.  “It’s no trouble at all.”

“Perfectly,” he replied, only to blink as a steaming cup of tea appeared in front of him.

“You called, Mrs Tracy?” An older man had entered the kitchen while he wasn’t looking, an impressive and concerning feat considering Scott was still on edge about the entire situation.  His accent was the same as Tin-Tin’s, implying that this was her father.

“Oh, Kyrano,” the woman greeted.  “This young man, oh, silly me, I never asked for your name, dearie…  Dearie?”

Scott barely heard her, the cup of tea he’d started to lift falling from startled fingers to smash onto the table, spilling the liquid everywhere.

Kyrano. Another familiar name, if not a familiar face.  First, Other-Scott, who could have been his identical twin.  Then, Mrs Tracy, a name he knew all too well even if she didn’t look like his own grandmother.  Now, Kyrano, another name albeit one whose owner he hadn’t seen in too long, with a different face but the same intensity about him.

“Dearie?” Mrs Tracy asked again.  “Oh, what a mess.  He’s as white as a sheet, Kyrano.”

Something reminiscent of smelling salts wafted under his nose and he spluttered.

“You’re bleeding, sir,” the man said matter-of-factly.  “Allow me.”

Scott had forgotten about the broken bottles he’d been wrestling amongst with Other-Scott, but now the man had mentioned it, he could feel the sting of glass embedded in his arms. No permission was sought before a gentle yet firm hand wrapped around a glass-free section of his arm, holding it in place as a pair of tweezers were produced.  He was no stranger to medical attention, and while he didn’t know the man – Other-Kyrano, apparently, for all that he clearly wasn’t English, and probably couldn’t trump Scott in a fight – he did at least know the procedure for removing foreign bodies from open wounds and watched like a hawk as the man more or less followed the methods he would have expected.

“Please, drink your tea,” Other-Kyrano asked once a nasty, stinging liquid – disinfectant was horrible stuff and Scott would never like it – had been applied and bandages carefully wrapped around the worst of the wounds.  “You might find it helpful.”  A second cup of tea replaced the smashed remains of the old one, as Other-Kyrano efficiently cleaned up the mess.

How was tea supposed to help?  Lady Penelope might insist as such sometimes, but Scott would much rather a strong coffee chock full of caffeine.  Still, Mrs Tracy was looking at him with a worried look on his face, and Grandma would murder him for defying or otherwise offending an elderly lady who had done him no harm.  He cautiously pulled the cup closer to him, and was startled to discover it wasn’t an ‘Assam Blend’, or whatever other fancy teas Lady Penelope liked to serve up. It was herbal, and surprisingly delicious, he discovered after his first tentative sip.

“Kyrano serves wonderful tea,” Mrs Tracy told him, sitting down across the table from him.  She had her own cup of steaming liquid in front of her, and sipped at it delicately.  “Now, dear, I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name?”  Scott paused, taking another tentative sip of the tea to buy himself another moment to think.  Should he give them his name?  He didn’t know what they already knew.  Was it worth a lie?  No, he’d never be able to keep it up.

“Scott,” he admitted.

“Oh my,” Mrs Tracy said. “What a coincidence.  That’s the name of my eldest grandson.”  Scott’s gut churned unpleasantly, and he put the cup down before he dropped that one, too.  “Oh, you even look the same.  Isn’t that strange?”

Strange was one word to describe what was going on.  Suspicious was another.

“You’re the fella that punched Scott?”  A young man barged into the room.  He had pale blond hair and light blue eyes that should have made him attractive, except he seemed to have a permanent frown etched into his face.  “What gave you the right?”  Scott matched his glare with one of his own as the young man – barely an adult at all, if he had to guess an age – stormed up to him.

“Alan!”  Tin-Tin was there, resting a hand on his arm.  “Please, calm yourself.”

Another familiar name, and now that he’d heard it Scott found himself instantly drawing parallels between the man and his youngest brother.  There must have been at least five years between them, but Scott could see Alan looking like that man in a few years, although hopefully without the frown.

“But, Tin-Tin!” Other-Alan protested.  “Scott’s face is bruised.  I can’t just let that go!”  He even had the same personality, a rigid sense of right and wrong with little ability to see the other person’s side, and a reluctance to acknowledge that black and white was joined by a large span of grey.

“Your brother can fight his own battles, Alan,” Tin-Tin soothed.  “I’m sure it was all just a misunderstanding.”

“What about Dad’s nose?” Other-Alan demanded.  “You can’t expect me to…”

Scott tuned out the argument at that.  Dad. He tried not to be a petty person, but there were times when he couldn’t quite prevent envy bubbling up when he heard other people taking about their Dads, taking them for granted as though they’d always be there.  Over the years he’d got better at smothering it, but this was a man named Alan, with a brother named Scott, and a grandmother called Mrs Tracy, and they had their Dad.

He’d broken their Dad’s nose when he’d tried to stop him attacking one of his sons.  If that had happened to his Dad – if Dad was still around to break up fights on their behalf, no matter how unwelcome the gesture would have been in the moment – he’d be fuming, too.  He wasn’t going to apologise though.  Not now, when he didn’t know where he was, who he was with, or where his brothers were.  He didn’t even know what these people planned to do with him, regardless of whether or not his presence in their home was intentional on their behalf.

“Leave it, Alan.”  The blond man’s tirade was cut off by none other than Other-Scott – now confirmed to actually be a Scott himself – as he walked into the room.  “Is there any apple pie left, Grandma?”

“Oh, yes, dear,” Mrs Tracy assured him.  “Take a seat and I’ll bring some over.”

“Thanks,” Other-Scott said, pulling up a chair a couple away from Scott.  His face was bruised, as Other-Alan had said, a beautiful darkening along his cheekbone and narrowly missing his eye.  Other-Kyrano set a cup of tea in front of him, which he accepted gratefully and drank without hesitation.

“But, Scott!” Other-Alan complained, and his brother sighed.

“That’s enough, Alan,” he said, tearing into the plate of apple pie his grandmother placed in front of him.  “Leave it.”

Other-Alan caved, albeit with obvious bad grace, and stalked out from the room.  Scott watched him go.  Part of him was glad that the younger man was being openly hostile – at least he knew where, exactly, he stood with him.  Other-Scott was less clear, patched up from their scuffle and now sat at the same table, devouring his grandmother’s apple pie.  Suspicious glances remained, but there was no open hostility.

The door opened again, and Other-Alan re-entered followed by the two young men from the infirmary, and-

A second teacup smashed onto the table.

“Oh dear!” Mrs Tracy cried, hurrying over to him.  Other-Kyrano quickly swept up the remains as she took hold of his hand.  “Scott, dear, are you alright?”

“Scott?” one of the men asked.  He thought it might have been Other-Scott.

“Oh, Jeff, are you sure there’s nothing wrong with him?” Mrs Tracy was asking.  “This is the second turn he’s had in as many minutes!  Oh, look at him, he’s gone as white as a sheet again, Kyrano.”

Scott barely heard them. The man who had just entered the room had the obvious signs of a broken nose, identifying him as Other-Alan’s Dad. He also had salt and pepper hair, more salt than pepper, and a receding hairline.  Steel eyes fixed on him sharply, hard and unforgiving, and a five o’clock shadow did nothing to hide the dimples in his cheeks.  This was the same man that had restrained him, and while a glimpse in his periphery hadn’t been enough to cause recognition, now that Scott could see him properly he looked like Dad – an older version of Dad, but then he hadn’t seen Dad since he was nineteen.  No doubt, if Dad was still with them, he’d look very similar to the man in front of him.

This had gone beyond simple words like weird and suspicious.  Impossible sounded more like it.

“His medical results all came back clear, Grandma,” the brown-haired man from the infirmary assured her, squatting down in front of him and shining a penlight into his eyes.  He recoiled from the bright light, tearing his gaze away from Not-Dad – it couldn’t be Dad, Dad was gone – to frown at him.

“Did you call him Scott?” the ginger man asked, walking over to the table and slotting himself in a chair between him and Other-Scott.

“That is my name,” he said before anyone else could speak up.  A hush fell over the room, broken by Other-Kyrano setting a third cup of tea in front of him.

“Drink,” the man said. “It will help.”

“Your name is Scott?” Other-Alan demanded.  “But-”

“That’s enough, Alan,” Not-Dad interrupted.  The blond frowned, but obeyed.  “Scott, is it?”

“That’s what I said,” Scott retorted, taking a sip of the fresh drink.  As Other-Kyrano said, it did help.  Somehow.

“Scott..?”  Not-Dad trailed off expectantly.  Surrounded by too many familiar names, Scott decided against answering.  He took a longer drink, ignoring the patriarch of the family in favour of assessing the rest of the room.  Other-Alan and Other-Scott he already had some measure of, the former more so than the latter.  Mrs Tracy was a kind enough lady, and Tin-Tin seemed of a similar temperament. Other-Kyrano was difficult to read, but his focus was the two men whose names he had yet to hear.

The ginger noticed his scrutiny, returning it in kind.  There was something familiar about him, but Scott batted away the notion.  He was simply off-balance at the number of familiar names and faces already – that was no reason to start looking for more connections where there were none.  No matter now much the warm brown eyes of the two as-yet unnamed men reminded him of two of his brothers.

Not-Dad bristled when it became apparent that he wouldn’t give his name.

“I’d like to know, who, exactly, is trespassing in my home,” he said.  Clearly the man was used to being obeyed.

“I’d like to know how, exactly, I got here, and where my family are,” he retorted.

“You don’t know how you got here?” the brown-haired man asked, surprised.

“Virgil,” Not-Dad warned. The third teacup was spared the fate of the previous two purely by being on the table when Scott’s grip slacked.

“No,” he said firmly, powering through the unpleasant sensation dousing him again before Mrs Tracy commented on another ‘turn’.  “I don’t. I don’t know where ‘here’ is, either.”

“But how could you get here without knowing?” the newly dubbed Other-Virgil asked.  “None of us brought you here.”

Scott didn’t bother responding, draining the cup of tea before any more unpleasant surprises could befall it and standing up.

“Thanks for the tea,” he said to Other-Kyrano, “and the apple pie,” he continued to Mrs Tracy, ignoring Not-Dad as he pushed the chair under the table.

“Dear, are you sure you’re alright?” Mrs Tracy fussed.  He wasn’t, but he didn’t tell her that.  Instead he gave a short nod before choosing a door at random and walking through it, ignoring a protest from Not-Dad.

A corridor greeted him, with a neat row of doors on one side and a branch off to the left leading to who knew what.

“Now look here.”  A hand clapped down on his shoulder, and he was halfway to removing it forcibly before placing the voice.  Having already broken Not-Dad’s nose, thereby earning the wrath of at least one member of the family, it was probably not a good idea to injure the man further.  It didn’t stop him shrugging him off, however.  “I don’t want you walking around our home unsupervised, young man.”

“Then supervise me,” he retorted.

“I intend to.”  A hand returned to his shoulder – lightly, this time, Not-Dad clearly learning his lesson – and steered him towards what now looked a lot like an elevator from those old, vintage films Grandma occasionally put on even though they were from before her time, or so she claimed. Neither he nor any of his brothers were brave enough to dispute it.  “Gordon, I want everyone in the lounge.  Let’s start from the beginning.”

“Yes, Father,” the ginger man said – Scott hadn’t even noticed him behind Not-Dad – and tried very hard not to react to the name, even though the situation had flown past anything anyone could classify as a coincidence at this point.  Scott, Virgil, Gordon, Alan… all they were missing was a John.

Not-Dad gestured for him to enter the elevator, ignoring what seemed to be a perfectly serviceable flight of stairs, and he did so with trepidation, watching metal shutters slide across sharply before a jerk beneath their feet had them rising.

“Jeff Tracy,” Not-Dad said suddenly.  Scott glanced at him as the elevator stopped moving and the metal shutters opened with a clatter.  “Call me Mr Tracy.”  His cool, unpersonable approach was nothing like how Scott remembered Dad, and that helped, a little.  He didn’t intend on calling him anything, though.  Not until he knew why there was a clone of his father, and of himself, in this strange house.

Chapter 3>>>

[aces-to-apples]

Written for Day 5: Fluff of Codywan Week 2020 @codywanweek

Here on AO3

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Category: Multi Relationship: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: CC-2224 | Cody, CT-7567 | Rex, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker Additional Tags: Background Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Implied/Referenced Future Rexsoka, GFY

For best results please look at this Rex and this Cody before reading.

“tribute”

Another one of the local little chompers marched towards the dais with all the solemnity and determination of a verd’ika plucking their first set of whites off the assembly line. Cody met Rex’s eye and they both very carefully avoided grinning at the sight. Not only could it be bad for their relationship with said locals, it wouldn’t do to let their Jedi think they were, in fact, having a good time up there.

When the kid came to a halt a ‘respectful’ distance away, Cody nodded for them to approach and bent his head to receive the kid’s blessing and subsequent gift. He watched Rex do the same.

The celebration had been going for hours, by that point, and they’d amassed a pile of shiny little wearable trinkets to give any sovereign of Naboo a run for their credits and enough blessings to make them holier than most deities. It’d been a relief, at the start of the night, to hear that—aside from the ceremonial outfits they’d been bullied into wearing—he and Rex were free to redistribute the gifts as they saw fit. Something about sharing luck, or good vibes, or what have you.

Said ceremonial outfits, on the other hand, they were obliged to keep and maintain with honor.

Obi-Wan had smoothed over any offense they’d given with their lacklustre reaction to the news but Rex’s general had been less than subtle in his delight at their new possessions. Tano, at least, had just told them they looked nice and kept her own mocking to a bare minimum.

And it wasn’t that they were grateful, Cody had reflected at the start of the celebration, when he and Rex had stepped out under the light of the moons to deafening cheers, but. It wasn’t quite their style, no matter how well the two of them pulled off the intricate, and admittedly beautiful, get-ups.

Rex, by dint of his Torrent paintjob, had been immediately deemed the locals’ Goddess of War come again and draped accordingly in layers of blue fabric. Some of it was dark and blaster-resistant and some of it pale and so sheer as to be almost nonexistent. Bands of silver, often studded with precious blue stones, were wrapped around his wrists, forearms, biceps, and throat, and a silver cap affixed with yet more jewels and a pale blue veil had been placed on his head with much reverence.

After a great deal of muttered debate, they determined that Cody must be their war deity’s twin, the Goddess of Beauty. Not an insult by any means…

The traditional garb he’d been presented with, by contrast, was deep red with a long flowing cape and headdress of heavy twisted fabric. It came with its own set of jewelry, as well, shining gold and polished red stones, bulky and eye-catching around his wrists and throat and slim and delicate around his forearms and biceps. Something about the placement was culturally significant, but hells if Cody was going to ask what.

They’d already lost the battle against: 1) staying for several days to rest and recuperate, 2) accepting the titles of living incarnations of their local deities and all the celebration that entailed, and 3) keeping both the get-ups and the gifts for themselves.

No way was Cody going to invite more conversation about their cultural practices. He could win against droids and bounty-hunters and half-baked Sith, but apparently, he couldn’t convince a bunch of over-awed, Mid Rim locals that he and Rex weren’t tools of War and Beauty.

Tools of the Republic, sure, but nothing divine.

The leader of the city they’d liberated had just smiled gently and reassured them that belief on their part was not necessary, only acceptance of their gratitude. Which came with lots of shiny metal, sparkly rocks, and a pair of gowns that they had to either accept or throw into a sacrificial fire and publicly reject.

Obi-Wan had stepped in at that point.

He’d assured everyone that they had no interest in disrespecting their culture and asked for a debrief about the ceremony.

Wear the outfits, sit on the thrones, and let people fawn over them at least a little bit, had basically been the long and short of it. But, hey, they were comfortably cushioned, well-fed, and kept hydrated throughout the whole thing, so it could have been worse. Sharp-toothed little ankle-biters shyly kissing their foreheads and handing them shiny bits and bobs before scampering off weren’t much of a hardship.

“How’re you fellas doing?” Skywalker asked, strolling up to the dais with a grin that had yet to falter all night. “Getting into the spirit of the thing? Really feeling the divinity flow through you?”

Plenty vode had wandered over to check on them over the course of the night, mostly to heckle, but the Jedi had visited just as frequently. And for similar reasons, too.

The way Rex’s general had been eyeing him all night, Cody was almost worried for Rex’s safety. He’d heard plenty of complaints from Obi-Wan about Skywalker’s willingness to eat damn near anything; who was to say that he hadn’t acquired a taste for Mandalorian-adjacent flesh and wouldn’t gobble poor Rex up in just a few bites.

He was pretty sure Commander Tano was having some kind of intermittent crisis over at their table as well.

It was his responsibility, as both Marshal Commander and ori’vod, to bring his concerns to his superior officer and then ruthlessly mock all three of them. After Skywalker eventually got tired of making Rex blush and wandered away whistling a jaunty tune to a very raunchy cantina song, that was.

“So does that ‘angel’ of his know the two of you have started sharing blankets since your last stop-over on Coruscant or should I start planning your funeral now?” Cody said archly, watching his vod’ika visibly consider punching him. “I’ll be sure to wear this and lie about how smart and good-looking you are, like a proper vod.”

Rex pressed a hand over his eyes and groaned. “Angel knows,” he admitted, darting an unsubtle glance at his general’s shebs. “What I am afraid of, though, is that next time we stop over on Coruscant she’s gonna have a whole new wardrobe just like this one and it will just happen to be in my size.”

“Well, hey, get a full-coverage veil and you’re probably good to step out with them,” Cody said with false sympathy, gleefully imagining the uproar that would cause. “Just make sure they’re made out of that fabric that’s designed to ruin holos. Pakod.”

The ol’ boy made a sound like a malfunctioning mouse-droid.

“Is it too much to believe that I’d like to spend whatever leave I get wearing as few clothes as possible?” he wailed, quietly, with a desperation that made Cody think this was an argument he and the senator had gotten into before. With this revelation in mind, he snapped a few holos of his own while Rex was distracted and vowed to get them to the senator if Skywalker’s brain cell was too lonely to manage it. “Isn’t it enough that I have this already?”

“Oh, dear me,” a low voice said from behind Cody’s left ear, “I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to have two attractive, attentive lovers who wish to shower you with tokens of their affection. Truly, Captain, your misery must be exquisite.”

Cody turned his head to press a sloppy kiss to Obi-Wan’s cheek in gratitude for the pitiful sound his words had drawn out of his favorite brother.

“General,” Rex whined pathetically, “they keep getting me plants. Alive ones, dead ones, prickly ones, poisonous ones. My quarters are being taken over by non-sentient invaders.”

Obi-Wan made a little noise of patently fake sympathy. “My old master’s quarters were like that as well,” he commiserated, pressing a kiss to the sensitive skin behind Cody’s ear. The noise of the locals around them changed in pitch, but Cody’d had enough to drink over the course of the evening to not feel worried by the change. If he was lucky, Obi-Wan would be shoved into a pretty outfit like this next. “It drove me mad that he never formally answered, let alone turned down, any of the suits. Just let the poor, smitten beings keep sending him gifts. So uncivilized.”

“Speaking of uncivilized,” Cody said, wondering if he could get away with pulling Obi-Wan down onto his lap.

Rex rolled his eyes. “If I don’t get to canoodle in public with my Jedi then you don’t get to with yours,” he huffed, leaning over to push Obi-Wan a few inches away. “Leave room for the Force, sirs.”

“‘Leave room for the Force’?” Obi-Wan repeated, nonplussed, while Cody found himself hung up on, “Canoodle?”

No longer quite so flustered, Rex shrugged. “Skywalker talks like a scandalized opera singer, sometimes, and Ahsoka says that when she catches the lads giving each other a tune-up. How’s the kid doing, by the way?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan said ruefully, “she’s seventeen and in the middle of a war and puberty. Thus far, I believe she’s coped by placing you all in the ‘dear friends and family whom deserve her utmost respect’ category of her mind, rather than allowing herself to see you as attractive young men. Tonight seems to be causing some kind of breakdown in that line of thinking.”

Cody turned to give Rex his full attention and clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheers, vod’ika, keep it up and you might have a full set soon!”

In response, Rex covered his face with both hands and groaned again.

“Remind me to send the good captain some appropriate literature about age of consent laws, would you, dear?” Obi-Wan murmured into his ear. He most assuredly was not leaving room for the Force between them. “Until then, I believe you mentioned being uncivilized?”

Cody made a mental note to remind him as requested before standing up, bowing at the local assembly, and following Obi-Wan wherever he led.

[magpiemorality]

“Have you ever heard of something called "The Wild Hunt?” + anxceitmus? - loveceit

This is long. Very long. And very prosey, bear with me! @loveceit

AO3

***

“Storytime, Tommy. Have you ever heard of something called ‘The Wild Hunt?’” Grandpa croaked. Little Thomas shook his head, and found himself pulled off the carpet and into the old man’s lap for the tale.

“It’s a magical, terrible thing, Tommy, like of which you’ll only ever see once in your life, if you’re lucky. Lucky enough to get away, that is.” Grandpa smacked his lips thoughtfully, and Little Thomas wondered how long he’d have to wait until he could go back to playing with his toy car on the floor instead. “I saw it once, when I was young see. Heard all the tales from my Maw. We live on ancient land here, Tommy, you know that don’t you? You heard about the pictsies and the will-o’-the-wisps you’re meant to stay away from, haven’t you?” Little Thomas nodded. He liked those stories, even if they were scary sometimes. Maybe this was another one of the same. 

“S’it a scary story, grandpa?” He asked, getting comfortable and sticking his thumb in his mouth, eyes wide and rapt. 

Grandpa sighed. “A little bit, Tommy. It was scary back then, even if it can’t hurt now. Nought but words, today. They’re long gone, the ones in it, never to return again.

“See when I was a boy there was a dare all the boys in school liked to cycle round. Who could stay out in the elm grove all night without moving or being took. It was tradition, when you turned eleven. What an age to be, eleven. Magical, it was, going up to big school and leaving all the kiddie stuff behind. Or so we thought, until we turned older and realised how silly that was.”

“The story, grandpa?” Little Thomas urged impatiently. Grandpa snorted, bopping him on the nose. 

“I’ll get there, little sapling, don’t you rush me now. It takes some remembering. 

I think there were three of us that went that night, though one ran off before we reached the grove in the end. Smart lad. Then it was just me and the other boy, don’t ask because I don’t remember his name, and we sat together on the very edge of the grove. 

I’ll take you there one day maybe, Tommy, because it is a special place. Needs to be seen to be believed. Until you’re inside the trees seem normal as you like but inside they stretch up two, three times taller than any tree you ever saw, and at the top they twist in together, like the top of a church spire made of branches. It’s always warm, even in winter. That’s the sign of the Summer Court, y’see. You remember your courts, don’t you lad? No? Well Seelie, that’s the Summers, see. The bright, beautiful ones with all the good intentions in the world. And we know what they say about good intentions. Well, that’s the Fair Folk alright. Now the Unseelie are the Court of Winter. They don’t hold much sway around here; they tend to take the northern land instead, which is a blessed relief let me tell you. Never heard so many children go missing as near a Winter grove.”

Little Thomas squirmed anxiously and Grandpa hugged him tighter. “It’s a good story, Tommy, if you can get through it. Do you want to try?” The boy nodded quickly and the old man smiled proudly. “There’s a brave lad. 

The night fell quickly, on account of all the trees and branches keeping out the sun, and yet somehow we both thought we could see the stars. Different stars to what you and I usually see, but there nonetheless. And between the stars, or in front of them; flickering shadows of darkness across the false sky, rippling like they were reflections and we were looking into a pool. 

Now what I never told you, nor your father for that matter, is I once had a brother. A few years older than me and wild as the land itself, and he’d gone to the grove once before too. He never came back though, and I was secretly wondering if I’d see him tonight. It was only a child’s wonder really, but I swore all at once I could hear him laughing, but he sounded like a man now, grown the same way I’d grown since he’d vanished. 

The other boy I stopped even thinking about, and I stood up to move forwards. He tried to stop me, said there was the sound of horns on the wind and hoofbeats coming, but I didn’t listen. He knew what that meant, and he ran away then too. The Hunt was coming.” Little Thomas gasped and Grandpa nodded seriously. “Yes Tommy, the Hunt. The Wild Hunt. They ride when the white stag comes into his antlers, whenever that may be. On horses finer than any you’ll see on regular ground, with shining gold armour and flags made of the richest materials your eyes could imagine. And that night they came. 

I never saw the stag, so he must’ve passed before we showed, or else he was somewhere unseen and they were just coming through the grove on the way there. But I only just moved out of the way before the train came. The knights went first, then the Lords and Ladies and then their King and Queen. I hid, but I never set a foot outside the grove so I didn’t. And when they were nearly all gone I stepped forwards again to watch them vanish among the trees, laughing and talking and playing the sweetest music. 

And I heard my brother again. He was suddenly there beside me on a horse, his hair long and wild and his face just as I’d known it, but somewhat older. I wasn’t even surprised to see him; somehow I knew that’s where he would be, had been all along. 

Two other Fae stopped with him, all of them more beautiful and strange than any mortal could be. One had rich, dark hair and purple eyes, he was quiet, behind my brother all the while even as he got off the horse to come to me. The third was all smiles, his golden braids shining like pure gold. And in Remus’s hair there was silver now, trailing down in front of his face and his bright, laughing eyes. 

He hugged me tight, said how I’d grown, and asked if I was there to join them. The dark one made a face but the golden one came closer, and it felt like sunshine itself on my face when he touched my cheek. The kind of sunshine that burned, mind, and I managed to tell them a firm no. 

The golden one looked annoyed but my brother made him move away, and gave me a kiss on the forehead before mounting his horse again. He warned me not to come again if I was to refuse, and rode off. The last I saw of the Hunt was the three of them, an after image that stayed even when I closed my eyes, turned towards each other, bright and wild. I think Remus had chosen well.”

Little Thomas blinked heavily, thumb stuck securely in his mouth. Grandpa pursed his lips. “I think he chose very well. I saw them once again, when I was at my worst. Just shy of an adult and trying to run away, I was. Near the grove I fell, caught my ankle on a fallen log and couldn’t walk. I lay there for a while until night came, and then those same stars showed up again. I never knew whether he came because he knew I needed help or if he was just passing through, but Remus was there again. He bent next to me, and his loves- that was what he called him, his loves- helped poultice my ankle and fetch me water and a little hardtack to fill my stomach. They helped me to the edge of the forest, and that golden one was desperate to keep me again but Remus distracted him, and the dark one held his hands out and pulled them away. I think he was scared of me, in some way. And I was certainly scared of him. 

That was the last I saw of any of the Fair Folk with my own two eyes. I escaped once, and survived a second time, and that’s more’n most people get in several lifetimes, so don’t you go expecting nothing now, you hear me? Tommy?” 

Little Thomas’s eyes were shut and his breathing slow, thumb slipping out of his mouth as he slept. The old man smiled, stroking his cheek tenderly and leaning back in the chair. He glanced out of the window, noting the sun setting on the hills. A flicker of a shadow and the faintest hint of laughter were the only hints that anyone else may have been listening. 

Roman smiled, lifting a hand to wave, knowing full well that it would be seen. Just because he had never seen the Fair Folk again did not mean they weren’t there, after all. 

[miss-choco-chips]

Janet Drake...

...and the time her son went to a Gala for her. But because it’s Gotham, of course all went to shit.

Or, Tim always begged for a little brother. Then he got Damian, and now he’s sorry he even asked.

(Shoutout to my girl @the-quiet-carrotcake who asked for Tim at an event trying to defuse a situation. Ye ask and I shall deliver)

---.---

All things concerned, the night wasn’t going so bad. Granted, he was taking cover behind a turned table to avoid getting shot, desperately clutching Damian’s hand because the kid seemed ready to jump over it and take a swing at the enemy, but… well. He could think of worse scenarios.

For one, Batman could be in town. Sure, it’d be better, in this circumstances, to have the Dark Knight crashing through the crystal roof to put and end to -a quick glance over the table- Two Face’s scheme of the night, but hey, bright side, he didn’t need to worry about Damian and his father meeting yet.

Also, Dick and Jason could be here, caught in the crossfire with all the other party attendants. As it was, Tim was fairly sure they’d be showing up soon, in a completely different suit, and since the whole ball room was now decorated with bullet holes, the party would have to be cut short. Score.  

Also, mom would freak out once she heard Tim had been caught in the middle of a shooting on the one party she asked him to go to in her place, and thus would never ask him to endure this torture again. 

On the flip side… Damian was no longer holding his hand. 

He jumped over the table without a second thought, cursing the kid under his breath, totally exposed to projectiles but desperately needing to make eye contact with the brat, even if just to murder him with his glare before dying.

As expected, Damian was sneakily making his way closer to Two Face’s goons, who were speaking about some new law the mayor was planning to make, and how half the attendants were possible votants on it passing or not… or some bullshit like that. Tim couldn't focus on them now, okay, he had a very dangerous, very stupid pre teen to capture and drag back to safety, assassin trained or not.

Of course, that was the moment another Rouge choose to make her appearance. What the hell was Poison Ivy doing here? 

A little to his left, he watched a businessman, Mr Withyork shrinking into himself, trying to look as small and unnoticeable as possible. Wasn’t this the dude planning to build a mall on a wasteland a little south to Diamond District? Since wildlife had flourished there, it was no wonder Ivy had some opinions on the matter. Also, if Tim remembered right, this particular man was one of the confirmed votants that would reject the law passing, which went along with Two Face’s preferences.

For a full minute, the goons and the plant lady just looked at each other, completely stumped. It wasn’t often that one Rouge’s scheme clashed with another: the same man they had to protect, she intended to kill.

Looking at the half cooked goons, and then at the majestic plant goddess, Tim had a hunch on who’d win if they ended up crossing blades. 

And Damian was still inching closer to the criminals.

Fuck it all to hell.

-Emm, Doctor Isley! 

The entire room went dead silent. Damian, directly behind one of the goons, dropped the knife he had managed to smuggle in despite Tim’s careful check before leaving the manor. He was staring at Tim like one would a bunny who jumped directly between wolves fighting for territory, offering itself as a snack for the ravaging beasts. 

It… wasn’t so far away from reality. But it was all his fault for making Tim take action to keep him safe, and he told him so with a glare before returning it to Poison Ivy, the obvious prime predator in the room.

Well, he already started…

-If you’d allow me, Doctor, I might speed this thing for you, no need for you to dirty your… -he looked at the vines, slowly and steadily making their way to Mr Withyork- babies.

Ivy raised an eyebrow, casually swinging her hips as she made her way to where he was standing, on the middle of the empty dance room, holding himself tight to avoid the disgrace of shaking. Men and women watched from behind their covers, some gasping at the inevitable slaughter they were about to see, but not moving a finger to help him. The only one looking kinda relieved was Mr Withyork, since Ivy’s vines left their path towards him to tangle around Tim’s ankles. It didn’t hurt, but it was a clear warning: don’t run.

He did his best to keep his eyes on her, despite the fear icing his veins. Looking somewhere between her mouth and eyes, not daring to let his gaze rest on either for long, and absolutely refusing to allow them  to wander even lower; that was a death sentence waiting to be signed.

She hummed appreciatively, stopping just in front of him. Tim could barely make out Damian’s silhouette in the background, stealthily taking the weapons on the goons slacked hands. Everyone’s gazes seemed to be on Tim and the ruthless criminal he was currently trying to persuade. 

-So polite -she noticed, tilting her head and twisting her body slightly, the new posture making her chest area more prominent. Tim kept his gaze firmly above the chin. She smiled, and if he were a smaller (dumber) kid, he’d think her charmed-, and a gentleman, too. What are you, eleven? Ten?

He swallowed, hard.

-Thirteen, Doctor. I’m small for my age, I’m told.

She made the little humming sound again, eyes scanning him up and down.

-Well then, I’m waiting. You said there was a way for this to end peacefully. I don’t mind the other way, but for a little thing like you to speak up… You deserve to be heard, at least.

Tim stood straighter, breathing deeply. His head wasn’t already rolling, so it was a good sign, right? She seemed amused by him, at least.

-Drake… Drake Industries is looking into real estate, to build a green area. To… to help against pollution. It’s, ah, a charity I talked my mother into creating… Mr Withyork’s wasteland would be perfect for this endeavour. Would that be okay with you? I can assure you, on my life, that we’ll make sure to protect any and all wildlife within those bounds, and…

He started to stammer when Ivy’s face came closer to his, examining him silently. 

-I could just kill anyone who tries to build something there -she purred-, no need for you to worry your pretty little head over it, child. 

He swallowed again.

-But… but then your plants… they’d be stained with blood and body parts… -he tried, nervously looking behind her. Damian was slowly inching closer to him, apparently done with taking the unsuspecting thug’s firearms.

-Good fertilizer -she shrugged, unbothered, but still too damn close. She seemed to find amusing Tim’s desperate attempts at looking anywhere but her chest, which she had purposely put directly on his field of vision.

-But… Damian! -he shouted abruptly, noticing how said brat was now just behind Ivy and brandishing a dagger. Quick as a whip, he reached past her, took Damian’s arm in his and dragged him behind his own back, using all the training he received from Nicole’s friend, Shiva, to smoothly disarm Damian and hide his weapon on his own coat, without Ivy noticing it. Good thing she was so close, then, since her own vision field was thus reduced.

At Ivy’s arched eyebrow, he quickly changed tracks. Turning and hugging Damian’s head tightly against his chest (to keep him from speaking), he raised his eyes to the criminal with his best cow eyes, the ones that more often than not got his mother to surrender.

-Damian, my cousin… he’s… he’s so young, Doctor Isley. Please, I just… I want to keep him from seeing something like that for as long as I can.

Said innocent lamb started to furiously fight against Tim’s hold, undoubtedly with something to say to that. Tim bent his head closer to him, whispering into his ear.

-Stay still and keep quiet, or I swear to whatever God you answer to that I’ll leave you to fend for yourself against my mom once this is all over with.

Damian froze. Tim looked at Ivy again, one hand carefully stroking Damian’s hair, eyes widened with surrow.

The woman clinically analyzing them seemed to rethink her opinion on Tim, head tilted in confusion. A spark of warmth lightened her eyes like a poisonous flower.

-You are a brave little seed, speaking up like that for him -Ivy mused, eyes twirling. She gave him a smile-. Fine. I’ll allow that scum to live today, as long as he sells the property to you, and you give it the promised use. If I find out you are lying…

-I’m not -he blurted out, letting Damian go but taking his hand hostage, making sure to keep his grip irontight. The little shit better not run away again; Tim doesn’t think he can face off against another criminal today-. Thank you so much, Doctor Isley. 

Ivy grinned, a little charmed despite herself, and looked over her shoulder to Two Face’s thugs.

-I’m done here. Tell your waste of space boss to not meddle in my business again, or else.

‘They never did’, Tim refrained to say. The moment she stepped into the room, they had put a halt to their actions, and even before that, it’s not like they were there to specifically target her. But still, mom didn’t raise no dummy, so he kept his mouth shut, head bowed to the Rouge.

He startled, taken by surprise when he felt her hand reaching behind his ear. Damian made an aborted motion to shove her away, and Tim was quick to hid it by twisting his body in front of his, acting as if he were looking at his reflection on the window by their right. He could hear Damian growling at his back, but better pissed than dead.

There was a flower, on his hair. Pretty big, blue with some grey splashes, and a touch of golden pollen. The contrast against his dark hair was startling, but it did look good with his eyes. Briefly, he wondered if it was poisonous, and just how pathetic it’d be to die because of a flower.

-There, little seedling. If you ever want to venture into my domains, that should assure none of my babies eat you before you can reach me -and with that she stepped away, letting her plants take her through the broken window she had entered by.

He had survived. Miracles of miracles. And judging by the shadows he could see about to break through the crystal roof, Nightwing and Robin were here already, so the thugs (disarmed by Damian, not that they were aware of the fact yet) were mostly done for.

This was as good a moment as any to faint, he guessed.

Everything went black, the last thing he heard being Damian’s scared shout. Even unconscious, he never let go of the little shit’s hand.

[ikkaku-of-heart]

Twisted Black Heart Ficlet

Ikkaku knew they were in the dungeon of Dressrosa castle - she’d sauntered down those stone steps a hundred times before, the smell of blood and change in the temperature clear giveaways despite her eyes being covered by a silk blindfold. Thankfully, her considerate Corazon had taken the liberty of leading her there, even if she had no idea why he’d insisted on taking away her sight.

At least he hadn’t removed her eyeballs to do so.

“I hope you like your surprise,” Law chuckled in her ear, his smoky breath tickling her cheek as he carefully guided her down the hall, one hand gripping her waist, the other on her shoulder. “Took me ages to find, but the smile on your face’ll be worth it.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” she replied, head turning in the direction of his voice. Ruby lips turned downwards in a pout. “I just wish you’d taken me with you; you were away for so long.”

“Ikkaku, babe, I know you missed me, but this was important. I left for you; show a little gratitude for all the trouble I went through,” he said, tone laced with annoyance.

Before she could beg for his forgiveness or apologize for having caused him any unintentional inconvenience, he came to a halt, his firm grip forcing her to do the same. There was no sound except for heavy, pained breathing before her, followed by a light rustling as Law untied the blindfold. While the dungeon was dimly lit, it still took a moment for Ikkaku’s eyes to adjust, and when she saw the mangled, bloodied Marine bound and gagged in a dirty cell, she gave a gasp.

“Ushi...”

“I remember you sayin’ he was stationed in the West Blue. Had to ask Vergo to actually find out where, but once I did, it was child’s play to slaughter his subordinates and subdue him.” Grabbing Ikkaku’s hips, he pulled her close so he could press a kiss to his engineer’s temple. “What do ya think? It was so hard not to kill him myself for what he did to you - son of a bitch never should have touched what’s mine.”

All Ikkaku could do was stare down at the man who had tried to kill her as a child. The man who had relished in tormenting her, and now claimed to serve as a force of Justice. He’d haunted her nightmares as often as the cultists who’d killed Gramps did, but right now, with his broken ankles and bloody mouth and shuddering breaths, he didn’t look so scary anymore.

“I...I don’t know what to say.”

“‘Thank you’ would be a good start.” His hold shifted so his arms wrapped fully around her waist, the leather of her jumpsuit creaking as he growled, “But if you don’t like it, you’d better apologize to me for wasting my time. I had to fuckin’ ask Vergo for a favor - that bastard’ll fuckin’ dangle this over my head for years.”

Before he could get too angry or accuse her of any disrespect, Ikkaku shifted in his grip and pressed a grateful kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Law. This is...this is the most wonderful gift anyone has ever given me,” she said, an adoring smile on her lips. Oh, her Corazon was too good to her. She truly didn’t deserve his generosity. He’d gone all the way to the West Blue for her.

After such a gesture, Ikkaku knew she would never doubt that Law truly did love her.

His hold and tone softened at her words. “Good. Now that we’ve got that settled, I have a job for my lovely little engineer.”

“Which is?”

An arm released its hold to reach into one of her pockets, pulling out her latest invention - an electrically-charged dagger. Gold eyes gleamed with excitement as he pressed it into her palm. “Plunge that into his heart. I want a demonstration of your new toy.”

Her eyes widened and then narrowed. “No.”

His expression remained calm, but she could see the cold fury within him from the way his jaw tightened. “Are you defying me, Ikkaku? You do remember what happened the last time you did something stupid like that,” he stated, finger trailing along the scar that ran across her collarbone.

She shuddered. Oh, she vividly remembered it. It had been the first and last time she’d dared talk back to him. It had been agony, but she deserved it, and she knew it was just his way of showing he cared - if he hadn’t, he would have simply killed her, right? “I’m sorry, Law - I don’t mean to defy you! But...for what Ushi did to me, for the inconvenience you went through to get him, this,” she indicated the dagger, “would be too quick! I want him to hurt, Law! I want to break him! I want him to fucking suffer and scream and beg me for mercy!” Her voice was a hateful snarl, dark eyes wide and full of madness, her body practically vibrating with the need to make her oldest brother pay. “I want him to know fear like nothing else, want him to finally fear me, and maybe then, after I’ve run out of ways to torture him-”

Her tirade was cut off when a tattooed hand buried itself in her thick curls, yanking just hard enough convince her to snap her mouth shut. To her relief, however, Law was no longer angry - he was smiling.

“That’s my girl. You passed the test - I was never gonna let you give him an easy death like that. Wouldn’t be satisfyin’.” His hand released her hair to cradle her cheek and he dropped a kiss to her forehead. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Other people might have gone soft - woulda taken the easy way out because he’s family or some bullshit. But I taught you better, didn’t I?”

“You did, Law,” she sighed, leaning into his touch. “Everything I am, I owe to you.”

“Damn right. And for this little present, I think you owe me a show.”

Releasing her, Law sauntered over to a table and tore off the sheet covering it with a flourish. Laid out were various instruments of torture, including a few the engineer had designed herself. Smirking, he took a seat in a nearby chair. “Do whatever you like to him - you take him apart, and I’ll put ‘im back together as many times as you want. When you’ve finally had your fill of vengeance, then you can show me your new toy. After that, we’ll go upstairs and have some champagne to celebrate my return and your victory over your brother.”

Heart fluttering with gratitude and anticipation, Ikkaku put her dagger away and instead grabbed Law’s hand, dropping a reverent kiss to his knuckles. Practically giddy with excitement, she perused her options on the table before selecting a sharp, gleaming scalpel. It seemed fitting to honor her Corazon with the first cut, after all.

Face twisting with dark delight, she at last turned to Ushi. “I guess we’re more alike than you thought, big brother,” she said, crouching down and pressing the blade to his cheek, the edge cutting into the flesh like butter. The fear in his eyes was a beautiful sight. “Because I’ve also gotten very good at making problems disappear.”

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 54: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs

It was home away from home to Sirius. All the mischief they'd managed in this place. The first time they'd been in here was when Remus dragged them out of bed to tell his darkest secret, then they'd spent the following years performing their illegal animagus practice in these dusty walls when it wasn't being occupied by said werewolf until they could finally join him. They'd drawn up their map, concocted their pranks, and now it was tarnished forever as he looked upon one of his best friends as an accused traitor by none other than himself.

The upholstery was uglier than her great Aunt Delilah's. It did have the same stain across the back, as if Petunia had accidentally splashed this one with juice as well and blamed her. Instead of smelling of cigars from her father though, it held a faint tint of metal, and the arm of one was torn right off, age-old stuffing long having fallen free.

In fact, amidst the dust clotting her nose she could swear the whole place smelled faintly of blood. A scream of surprise lodged in her throat as she scrambled to her feet and spun on the spot, the muted chaos growing the longer she looked for it.

She was in a very old living room that upon first glance just seemed unlived in but fully furnished. The other bits of furniture were all almost cleanly snapped in half, as if something very large had flown right through them without care. A table leg and been snapped right off and lay on the opposite side of the room, and that was the largest bit of splinters. There was no door visible, but a used patch of earth in the floor gave her the wild guess she'd find yet another secret entrance back to where they'd just been in if she cared to look. A rickety staircase trailed above to parts she had no wish to explore. "What do you think's happening up there?" She asked quietly. She'd never wanted to draw the Marauders attention before, but now for a whole other reason.

"I'd say we've seen them worse lately," Alice tried to say optimistically, "hopefully their hashing out this as well, and ah-" Her words were cut off by a great slamming noise above, and she winced and fell silent.

Regulus wasn't going to wait around any more. He'd been left out of enough of his brother's life, and even if he had to barge into this private moment he wasn't going to miss anything else. Despite his determination, his hand stilled on the door though as he realized he couldn't hear any shouting as he would have expected. The silence scared him far more. Ignoring the shrieking of the wind around them and the old house creaking in tune, he furrowed his brow in concentration to try and hear if he should in fact back off.

Then the book continued in Sirius' voice, which didn't necessarily mean that a resolution had been found without somebody's death. Still, he hesitated right outside the door, just in case.

It went against Sirius' better nature not to be doing something more than reading a bloody book, but the more reasonable half of his mind (that sounded oddly like Remus before he'd even spoken it) said to hear every last word of explanation before doing anything rash. After all, he'd spent ages now being accused of a crime none of his friends had believed possible, he'd never dream of doing the same to one of his best mates.

In the heavy silence that had followed this mutual, unstated decision, he'd summoned the book to him. It seemed to sail up from behind the mangled mattress along with a new cloud of dust that didn't even have a chance to settle back down before the termite-ridden fourposter crashed around it. The place wasn't exactly well cared for in their time, but it must have gotten even worse once the Marauders vacated it after school. They certainly wouldn't let Moony sleep his full moon's off in here, let alone Madam Pomfrey.

Memories they were all clinging too even before Sirius started with the chapter title, small but genuine smiles for their nicknames being shared, just the four of them once more.

In a fit of desperation to keep this story private, knowing even those in here could hear it, he began aiming every spell he could think of to the book to reveal past this part.

"Sirius," Remus tried to tell him otherwise, but he wouldn't quite look at him as he snapped, "I already know your life story! I did my waiting, twelve years of it, in Azkaban!"

"Sirius, you haven't been to Azkaban yet-"

"Shut up!"

Remus gave in with an amused shake of his head, finally letting Padfoot run out of steam and admit defeat before finally going in an almost casual sort of way. He hoped it would last and whatever was keeping the others down there would last, he didn't want an audience for whatever happened next.

Harry at least got right to the point of the major problem Sirius had just accused, wasn't Peter dead in this future?

Sirius was not doing a very good job of explaining himself, and James fought back the urge to put his best mate in a headlock for trying to brush past the valid question by just killing a pet rat!

Remus recoiled in shocked disgust at himself for clearly having truly believed Sirius had done all this in the future, something he hadn't wanted to think on before now. It just couldn't be true, he'd never believe it of Padfoot anymore than Wormtail... He listened in strained hoped as he tried to remain the voice of reason and insist Harry hear all the facts first, but what would be at the end of that story?

Peter listened in strained silence as the books choice of words reverberated around the room. His heart felt like it was being twisted beyond recognition at the way none of them could quite look him in the eye, at how far apart they were suddenly all standing from each other as the new accusation settled around them. He didn't want to believe it, he would never! Not to his friends, not to James!

The Marauders were hardly distracted by Moony starting the story, from the very beginning. There was a single moment of worry between the four, but they all knew it had already been confirmed down in the tunnel. They'd been so in each other's business they'd barely taken the time to even assess what the others thought of it, but then they all agreed, they didn't care.

This is what mattered to them right now, how their lives had affected their future, not their past. If, even if the worst was true, James tried to shudder away from the thought but braved in in the filled silence, the worst had happened and one of them had betrayed he still held firmly to the adamant promise he'd made to Sirius this was not their future! Was it inevitable though?

Remus was starting to wish they had taken this downstairs to where everyone else was. Sirius' voice had eased out somewhat while talking of Remus' past, it was after all something he knew all too well. The Wolfsbane potion was news to him, alleviated some of their previous worries just what he and Snape were doing, but now that made some sort of sense at least.

He would have liked to see how the others were taking to it though, how people that weren't his best friends would look at him with a cure in sight. Would Evans' suspicions about him alleviate any? Would Longbottom still back away in horror?

They, in fact, were not missing the Marauder's company at all. The three had taken careful seats upon the cushions, hoping moths were the only thing biting their surroundings lately. Alice was sitting between them, crossing and uncrossing her ankles with every unsavory groan the couch made. They'd all remained quiet for the most part as Lupin recounted his life. She wasn't sure what they were waiting to happen, or even what would.

Potter's three best friends were all up there, all apparently having been living a lie the past twelve years and it was all coming out now. She pitied them, though she kept trying to think of some kinder way to tell them this awful news and was coming up blank. Probably best then, that they stay out of it as long as possible.

Frank still looked like he was going to be sick, he hadn't so much as sat down, but squatted over his perch, rubbing his palms together with a wild look in his eyes. Lily simply had a gobsmacked look on her face and was sunk so deep into the upholstery it would take another leap through the space-time to get her out. She decided to focus on Frank first, that didn't look comfortable.

"Frank, love, won't you tell me what's really bothering you?"

"Isn't being in the den of a werewolf enough?" He yelped, eyeing her as if she were the one trapped in a spot of madness. He rubbed his hands together even harder, muttering about werewolf saliva sinking in straight through his skin. "I got nicked last week in Transfiguration, remember? I didn't go to Madam Pomfrey to get it fixed because it was just a scratch, but-"

"I'm sorry I called your mom a paranoid git," Alice kindly interrupted, "but honestly love, you can't believe every horrible rumor you've heard without proof-"

"Sev was right."

Alice turned curiously to her to see what she meant, but her eyes were vacant. She was speaking as if to a ghost.

"He was right about everything, they have been sneaking off, his, his theories I always scoffed at-"

"Lily?" Alice placed a kind hand on her shoulder, shaking her a bit to get her attention.

"Those- Potter and his friends-"

Alice could see a fire starting to burn in her, build in her, but then the book reverberated her friends into this future, as Severus Snape interrupted the proceedings.

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ @sasuhinabigflash2020​​ || Day Eleven: Total Silence ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Hyūga Hiashi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Divine Light ] [ AO3 Link ]

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Noise, noise, there’s always only noise.

No matter how many times she tells her father she hates these social gatherings and publicity preening parties, he still strong-arms her into coming. You’d think as an adult herself now she’d finally find the guts to tell him no, but...well, a childhood and teenage years of a controlling parent that forced obedience through a constant threat of removing what you hold dear birthed a fear of that power still lingering after maturity.

...or so she tells herself.

Hinata Hyūga knows she’s mostly just a pushover no matter who it is she’s dealing with. Whether it’s her father, or her cousin, or even her little sister. Making waves and starting arguments just...isn’t in her skillset.

Hence why, more often than not, she ends up at her father’s obnoxious gatherings. His business in the medical technology industry means rubbing all the right elbows. And while Hinata’s choice to pursue journalism isn’t exactly in line with his expectations or standards, he still portrays her in the best light he can...in order to make himself look better.

And through all of that, his company...and its stocks.

For most of her time at these get-togethers, Hinata sticks to the walls, socializing only when necessary and otherwise trying to be as unnoticeable as possible, and evade such interactions in the first place.

But for some reason...tonight is just more than she can handle.

Not only is there music pulsing through speakers, but conversations, laughter, and even some shouting fill the air to a staggering degree. Ugh, she can feel a headache coming on...maybe she’ll just -

“Hinata.”

...wonderful.

Turning to her father, Hinata forces a smile. “Yes?”

“I’ve been talking to a young up-and-comer who would like to speak to you about a possible piece you could write about his company.”

She blinks. “...a piece?”

“Yes, a degree of publicity to help him get things off the ground. Say a few nice words, interview him...that sort of thing.”

Immediately, something in Hinata’s stomach churns. This sounds a lot like a piece of bribery, and that’s the last thing she wants to get herself into. “I...could look into it.”

“He’d like to speak to you now.”

Oh no...no, not now. Not with her head spinning and senses overloading. “I...I’m sorry, I’ve been fighting a headache, and -”

“It will only take a few minutes, Hinata.”

“Could -? Could you give him my email, and I’ll just -”

“No, now.”

The brazen order actually makes her catch herself in a lurch. Her vision is swimming, her skin feels clammy - she has to get out of here, now.

So, without a word, she holds up a hand and just...stumbles forward toward the door.

“Hinata…? Where do you think you’re -?”

For once in her life...she ignores him. With a push, she urges the door open and steps out into the cool air of the city evening. It washes over her like a relieving tide.

But it’s not enough. If she doesn’t move, he’ll just drag her back inside.

So she flees.

Turning to the right, she keeps on down the sidewalk, heels clicking. Thankfully she’s so used to them, even an unsteady gait born of dizziness doesn’t twist her ankles. A few curious passersby give her strange looks, but none make to stop her.

Good.

It’s late enough most other doors are locked and lights out, but by some grace she finds a place alight and open. An old brass handle turns in her hand, letting her into...wherever. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Anywhere is better than there.

Once in, she pushes the portal closed, leaning against it and heaving a weary sigh.

...and then notices something odd.

It’s completely and utterly silent. Such a change from her prior surroundings, her ears begin to ring.

Lifting her head, she takes in the building properly. At first glance, it appears to be nothing more than a second hand or antique shop. The building itself is also old, with crown moulding and rich wooden floors, worn but shining. The smell of old paper permeates the air.

Feeling almost like she’s stepped into another world, Hinata then realizes the door has a glass panel, through which she can be seen. Hefting upright, she moves between rows of shelves to better hide herself from view. And, with nothing else to do, she starts looking through the merchandise.

In truth, it...doesn’t look like much. Random knick knacks, decor, old-fashioned tools and kitchenware. It’s like someone went through every grandmother’s house and looted them, putting whatever they can find into the bins and rows.

It’s...bizarre, and not at all what she expected to find on the same street as the fancy hotel her father almost always rents for his parties. But at least that means it should be one of the last places Hiashi or his goons think to look for her. She walks slowly down the aisle, wondering if something might catch her eye while she’s here.

“...what are you doing?”

Jolting with a gasp, Hinata turns to see she’s no longer alone. At the head of the aisle where she came from, a man about her age eyes her almost suspiciously.

What an odd way to treat a customer, but...well, on second thought, she’s a little overdressed to be shopping for...whatever this stuff is.

“I, um…” How to explain…? “Someone was...following me, so I stepped in. Are...are you open?”

“...yes,” he replies after a pause, clearly weighing her story. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes - I’m fine. I’m sure they won’t think to look for me in -” She catches herself, not wanting to be rude. “...here.”

That earns a hint of a snort. “Well...I’m open another half hour, so...stay as long as you like until then.”

“Thank you…” She watches him turn back and vanish from view.

A nagging in the back of her mind sees her follow.

“May I...ask what your store is called? I, um...I m-missed the sign on the way in…”

“Curiosities.”

“...is -? Is that the whole name?”

“Did you expect something more?” he counters, stepping behind a register at the rear of the room.

“I...guess I didn’t know what to expect.”

He leans on his arms, looking her over. “...I find things that are unwanted, and try to find the person who’s meant to want them,” is his cryptic explanation.

“People look for -?” Again she cuts off, realizing she’s...about to be very rude. “...I’m sorry. I’ve, um...I’ve never been to an antique shop before…”

“That’s not exactly what this is, but...a close enough guess.”

Something about his refusal furrows her brow. Is he...hiding something? “How do you find these...curiosities?”

“Most are happenstance. Some I look for specifically. Though those sorts of wares are kept in the back.”

“Because they’re...valuable?”

“To the right people, yes.”

Another pause at his odd reply. “...I should introduce myself,” Hinata then backpedals. “I’m Hinata. Hinata Hyūga.”

“Sasuke Uchiha. And what do you do for a living that’s clearly above the par of a humble shopkeeper?”

His jab makes her go pink. “...I’m, um...I’m a journalist.”

“Hm...you have the air about you. Maybe that’s why you ended up here.”

“...I beg your pardon?”

“It’s Curiosities,” he replies, a grin curling one corner of his mouth. “Only people who are looking for something tend to find their way to my little shop. And journalists are always looking for something. A new story, a new point of intrigue.”

“Well, this...place is rather intriguing,” she agrees, glancing around again.

“One way to put it, yes.”

“As is the man behind the counter.”

His smirk seems to grow, and for a flicker of a moment, as his head tilts, Hinata swears there’s a ruby-red shine to his otherwise dark eyes. “I’d argue that my wares are the true point of interest, but...I can’t deny another’s observations.”

Suddenly, Hinata feels her inner writer coming out. “So...is this a family shop?” she asks casually.

“You could say that. It’s been in the line for quite some time.”

“Anyone else help run it?”

At that, Sasuke seems to hang up for a moment, and an unreadable look passes over his face. “...no, just me.”

“...was that a bad question?”

“No. I...had an elder brother, but...he passed some time ago.”

Shocked sympathy wilts her features. “...I’m so sorry.”

“It’s in the past. Feels like it was centuries ago now, but...well, even old scars can ache.”

She mutes for a long moment. “...seems awfully quiet.”

“Yes, my clientele tends to be...sporadic. Or by appointment.”

“Appointment?”

“People call looking for something in particular, and I...acquire it. We then arrange to meet.”

In spite of herself, Hinata gives a soft laugh. “Sounds suspicious.”

“Any business dealing is, in the right light. But I can assure you, it’s all perfectly legal.” His smile begins to return.

Opening her mouth to speak again, Hinata hesitates as a buzz sounds in the little handbag she’s miraculously kept ahold of. “Oh, sorry...my phone…”

“No apology needed.”

Bringing up her mobile, Hinata grimaces at her father’s name.

“...unwanted conversation?”

“Unwanted lecture,” she sighs, muting it. Guilt and apprehension grow, but...she’ll find some excuse. Her headache is gone, but...well, Hiashi won’t have to know that. “Still, I...should probably be going. It’s getting late, and...I’m doing l-little more than pester you.”

“Pester away. As you said, it’s quiet...a bit of conversation is nice now and again. Perhaps you can do a proper piece about the place another time, since you seem to find it so curious.”

His quip earns a laugh, then a pause. Right...there’s that other piece her father wants her to write.

...she’ll think about that in the morning.

“It was nice to meet you, Sasuke. Um...thanks for letting me hide out in here,” Hinata then offers sheepishly.

“Of course. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting a gown-clad maiden in tonight, but...you’d be surprised what other sorts of characters I end up with in here.”

“You’ve already sold me on the place, you know,” she replies with a smile. “No need to keep whetting my appetite. I’ll be back.”

“Just being thorough,” he replies, giving a wave as she peers out the door, and then trots back the way she came. “...hm…”

With a trill, a feathery figure alights upon a stand that rests atop the counter.

“Yes, yes...she’s gone. Thank you for behaving yourself.”

A bird of gold and auburn plumage blinks vermillion eyes at him, a small comb of fire flickering along her regal head. But as Sasuke gives it fond strokes, it doesn’t burn him.

“Yet...I wonder…” Looking back to the door, he seems to sink into thought. “It’s very rare we get anyone el’tahl in here. Maybe she has some ven buried in her bloodline, hm?”

In response, the phoenix gives another melodic flow of notes.

“You liked her, did you? Well, that’s all the convincing I need. We’ll have to see how deep she manages to dig when she comes back. But for now, time to call it a night.”

With a snap, the lights extinguish, lock bolting shut at the front. In his hand, an orb of revolving fire lights his way through the back door. Here, objects clearly not meant for unenlightened human eyes glow, spin, float, and hum.

“...how deep, indeed.”

     So this is very late because wow my toothache is...unreal. I’m so sorry, guys. It’s also not what I first envisioned but sometimes characters just veer you off course! I was going to have this be vampire-themed but instead we got...this!      Which is...technically another crossover with a work of my own. DL is mostly a medieval-fantasy sort of world, BUT I do have one story in it so far that’s modern. And Sasuke is being directly crossed with one of the characters, but uh...it’d take a lot to explain and possibly spoil things so we’ll just leave the mystery intact xD      Anyway, I’m...totally exhausted and technically still in pain. Might be going to a dentist tomorrow, no idea, so...I dunno when I’ll get more done since I’m still behind. Thank you for your patience - I WILL finish this event one way or another, it just might be delayed because life things, woo. Buuut on that note, I’ll be heading off. Thanks for reading!