#my version of what they’d look like if they came out of their shells

[gregorys-defender-for-life]

the fitzgerald family

[ricardian-werewolf]

5. God save the queen/The fascist regime!

THAT SOUND FUN!

The walls of the Tower of London were made of stone. 8 centuries old, they had gone through several iterations. But Jane cared not. She dug her burning wrists into the silvered bonds and thrashed wildly, growling like a caged animal to be let out. Let free. 

Behind the bars of her prison, Lord Melbourne conferred quietly with Victoria, who smirked, and mimed something. In her hands was a canister of something, and her hands were gloved. Jane watched through slitted eyelids, feeling the throbbing ache of double black eyes, a bruised jaw and broken collarbone. She’d fought capture as much as a girl familiar with the feeling of being bent over by a man and brought to her knees could be - like some sort of canine beast who didn’t want to die at the end of the hunter’s gun.

I’m going to rip that woman’s neck open, and stick her head on a fucking pike. See how she likes getting her eyes pecked out by crows. Or maybe I should let her live, cast her into the Wastes and give her a hoe, so she can dig her own grave when the cataracts eat through her eyes, and her lungs corrode under the fluid leaching from her cracked lips.

Jane decided that the second option was much more deliciously awful, and settled back into her seat to keep watching her captors discuss something.

“... the gas should - kill her. At least from what I read…”

Jane swallowed, tried to not think about the ventilation in the walls.

“... if it doesn’t, we’ll do what we did with that bastard boy who’s Gloucester’s. Put her in Room 101.”

Jane’s fingers became clawed and she worked to saw through her bonds, but found them to be cutting her own nails. That plan thus abandoned, twisting her head from left to right, she noted the double-strength glass observation wall to her left, the silver bars behind it, and to her right, in front, and behind, the ventilated walls. 

They’d put her in here to die. 

You’ll die, you’ll die, you’ll die. All Nikolai will have to marry is a fucking corpse! Imagine that. You’ll meet your end, Jane. Just like how that fucked up, deformed thing you called your baby looked. As bloodied and ugly as it. Oh, he won’t make you into a bride. With luck, there won’t even be anything left to bury!

Not if I get out.

Since when have you ever got out of anything, Jane? Certainly not much, hmmm?

Shut up, Ruth. SHUT UP!

It’s a shame, you know. You never would’ve made a good mother, anyways. Always too pre-occupied with surviving, and protecting that freak, Augusta. I should’ve left her in that shell hole. And YOU! I should’ve taken my mother’s advice and aborted you while I still could.

Tears poured down Jane’s cheeks as she thrashed in her bonds once more. Hysterics in times of panic were seemingly an inheritable trait of the Becketts. Jane growled, imagining her mother as something very small, fragile, and easy to crush with the sole of her boot. A mouse.

She would kill her mother as soon as she got out of her bonds. Take her in the middle of the night with Nikolai’s knife to her throat, a line of red underlining her name. Dead, and burned in some corpse-pile on the Wastes’s edge. Or perhaps in their heart. Burned and buried in the town that had been the epicenter of an attack that’d made them all this way. Ruth didn’t even deserve a funeral, or much else. How could a woman who’d claimed to love her own daughter side with her rapist when push came to shove, had turned her back on Jane when she’d birthed her monster - her own minotaur who was dead from the moment it came into the world?

But you’ll die here. And good riddance too.

You underestimate me, Ruth.

No, I don’t. You play the fox, but you’ll always be the rabbit, tucked low to the ground, afraid. Any and all conflict has you running for the hills. It’s a miracle you lasted this long, anyways. If we’d ever ended up in that god-forsaken Nazi version of england who nuked us, I’d have turned you over and had them deal with you. Consider this penance for your sins.

Sins you straddled me with, by not helping me! 

Sins you deserve! Now, quiet, I hear a hissing noise.

Jane’s face drained of all color, and she frantically whipped her head from side to side, trying desperately to plug her nostrils, keep her mouth closed. The gas stung her eyes, making black spots dance in the edges of her vision. Screaming would do nothing - her lungs would fill with gas, kill her, and she’d die here, face frozen in some grotesque scream. So she fought vainly to live.

What she didn’t hear over the hissing of this nest of vipers was the sounds of screams,and swords clashing through the Tower’s halls. The ancient stone structure was being laid siege to by none other than some of Richard’s best soldiers. Amongst them was Cecily-Anne, burns and all, desperate to drag Jane out from under Melbourne’s grasp. 

None knew what awaited them underground. 

Jane’s vision began to swim alarmingly, as the black spots blossomed and she lolled back. Her lips parted, and a small gasp escaped her. Then, all faded out. ****

When she came too, Jane blinked twice. She expected to see the wooden beams and stone ceiling of the cell she’d become so intimately knowledgeable of. What faced her now was some sort of gauzy fabric made of cyan and edged in gold leaf and stars. A double-headed eagle glared down at her, flanked by a fox and a stout, and at their feet were White Roses and thorned fire-flowers.

Aware of a resounding pressure on her hand, Jane weakly turned her head to her side and found Nikolai’s eyes watching her, puffy with tears shed and smeared with blood. His knuckles were busted and broken. His fingernails were long, shadowed. He must’ve transformed.

For what?

“You,” he coughed, and Jane blinked again, then spoke, shuddering:

“Me?”

Nikolai nodded, and shushed her as she tried to speak again. “Your lungs are damaged, from the gas. You were nearly-” he bit his lip, and fumbled weakly for a handkerchief as tears splashed down his cheeks. Finding none, he wiped his eyes on his ripped and worn tunic sleeve. “Dead. If I’d been but a minute later…”

Who found me? She signed, coughing.

“Cecily. She has the instincts of a mother fox seeking its cubs when she’s in the right kind of mood. And what we found-” Nikolai choked, and reached with shaking hands for his canteen of water. Taking a sip, he gently helped Jane’s head up and let her drink her fill. 

“You’d destroyed the entire complex. From top to bottom. They’d gotten the gasses mixed up. It wasn’t Zyklon B - just Mustard gas. The Zykon was supposed to have silver flakes in it. The fabrikators are examining it now for disposal-” Nikolai rambled, but stopped at Jane’s widened eyes.

I destroyed it? How?

Nikolai peered at her, and noted her flinch when he reached to touch her fevered cheek. Withdrawing his hand, he gently kissed her knuckles, watching her reaction all the while. This was one of their safe touches. Kissing her hands, knuckles, palm, all were good. Anything else required more time, and for her especially to be in a better mental space. She doubted he’d ever bed her, or that she could ever stand to have a man’s hands on her like that, skirts hiked up.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears still came. Through her blurred vision, she caught Nikolai’s eyes watching her, and fell into his arms with a horrific, almost animalistic noise of fear and surrender. Her fragility felt wrong, felt alien.

Look at you. Going to a man like him. He’ll hurt you. They all do.

Jane’s eyes popped open as she stared past Nikolai’s shoulder, to the stone walls of the Tower’s inner keep. Ruth was wrong - she’d always been wrong. Nothing she’d ever said had been anything but a lie.

I’m done with you. Get out of my head. 

It’ll take more than that, Janie.

Jane closed her eyes again, rested her temple on Nikolai’s shoulder, and felt his fingers trailing over her jail-style chop. It’d grown ratty, needed a barber. She missed her braids something awful. She longed to grow her hair long again, for the intricate dos she’d wanted to do for ages and ages. She missed Cecily’s fingers in her hair, twisting her strands into intricate coils when all they had were bits of twine and ratty ribbons to make her into a princess.

Now, she’d be a queen.

Saints willing.

Where’s Cecily? Jane signed, using the sign for Cecily that was intimate to her - the sign for wolf. Nikolai’s grin returned, and Jane relaxed a smidgen. It was good to see him smile. She’d longed to see it, to see him. Ever since they’d bumped shoulders on accident in the York streets near the Minster, she as Cecily’s lady in waiting, and he as Richard’s son’s bodyguard, there was an almost nuclear level spark between them.

She’d been - days? Weeks? - out of a long tenure in London with Anne Neville, ferried north on the riverways and put into only a mere few inns. She was tired, anxious over Melbourne’s machinations to take Cecily back after she’d escaped Ives’s bloodied teeth and the cold of Fort Spencer. What she hadn’t needed then was a distraction in the form of A “First Army,” infantryman who’d risen through the ranks because he “cared,” for his people and was really a prince and a privateer. 

Now, she stared, hating, at the walls of the White Tower. The Princes weren’t dead - either somewhere between Shene and the border with Scotland, Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel had taken their Gyptian upbringing, and weaponized it. East Anglia was set to recover soon enough. Provided Richard went good on his promises to go into debt with the Americans. Richard had considered writing to the pope, then promptly decided that the papal state would be very interested in why England’s king was so suddenly the afore-named Prince killer, and refuse to recognize england as none other than a heretical state given over to loping monster-dogs and blood-sucking fops. 

Canada and the rest of the empire were off limits. Ravka was well recovered enough to give them loans priced amicably enough that the interest wouldn’t cause the stewards and Richard’s council to have aneurysms en-masse. That would be messy. And bloodsoaked. 

Jane would be the bride-price, a union between House Lantsov and House Beckett. Plantagenet. Jane corrected herself. She raised her head to look Nikolai in the eye and grinned again, showing her crooked and chipped teeth. He ran his hand through her hair and grimaced.

“She’s under our feet. It seems there’s a network of tunnels and cells and torture rooms, and-”

A missile silo, stocked with enough warheads to level America. She signed, watching Nikolai’s face like a hawk.

He swallowed nervously, and stilled his hand. “Prisoners?”

Dead, or some are alive. I know there was a scientist I was airmarking for Richard. Hopefully he wasn’t killed. Had a limp, you see. Sickly. Something in his lungs. He’s very good with something called Hextech.

“No idea what that means, though it sounds like what Fabrikators do.” Nikolai straightened, stretching his legs out to rest on an ottoman, and reached for a glass of tea. “Do you want anything? Tea? Kvas? Brandy?”

What I’d like is a nap. Jane thought, and rubbed at her head. There were bandages encircling her temples like a medical diadem, and she winced as her vision went spotty. Guess I was pretty banged up?

“You were nearly dead,” Nikolai replied, sipping his crystal-cut glass of tea. His eyes studied hers intimately, then cut away to stare at the soldier standing in the entrance to the tent, gripping his cap and wringing it between his hands.

[paperburrows]

Unhinged

Couples strolled on the sidewalk hand in hand. Girls with shopping bags on their arms flitted from entrance to entrance, chatter and laughter in their wake. Espresso roasted in the air, warm and tantalizing.

The hero adjusted their sniper rifle and sighted along the rooftop.

Soon to land on the villain, standing next to a grizzled man with a crossword puzzle in his grasp, spectacles never quite seeming to sit right on the bridge of his nose. Glasses or no glasses, the hero would recognize that nose anywhere.

It was risky. High-profile. A media zoo waiting to happen. But the hero’s heart swelled with something—certainly not love—whenever they were in sight of the villain’s boss, the very epitome of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and it didn’t take long for him to be in the crosshairs of their rifle.

One shot. Just one. That’s all it took to put an end to this miserable shell for a human being.

The only obstacle at play: it was a crowded shopping district, perhaps so that the villain and their boss would blend right into the surging crowd around them. The stars ought to align—the right timing, the right placement, one of his organs—for evil to be purged without a price to pay. To top it all off, the villain wasn’t too far, and the hero’s chest seized whenever they entered the field of their scope. They would have to be careful. Take their chance with nothing less than a skilled marksman’s intuition.

Luckily, a skilled marksman they were.

More adjustments. More waiting. More curling and uncurling their gloved hands. Then a moment came where rush hour wasn’t such a rush, and where a lone finger of the hero’s began pressing, slowly, precisely, down on the trigger.

Until the villain stepped directly in front of their old boss.

And looked straight at the building upon which they’d perched.

Don’t, said their eyes.

But the hero had to. They had to and they were nothing short of frustrated as they eased back, jaw locked, watching through a red haze the villain bidding the man farewell.

The hero’s one chance to get closure disappeared with the boss’ receding form.

—

“I just want to know one thing,” the villain said.

It had been a full ten minutes since the hero and the villain had regrouped at one of the city’s coffee shops. Now the villain was gripping a cup with such force the hero was surprised it hadn’t shattered, and the hero was idly perusing the menu for something to put in their growling stomach.

“What were you thinking?” The villain let go of the cup. “Following me, spying on me.” And then rubbed their forehead, as though that would do away with an intensifying headache. “Putting him at gunpoint. Again. I thought we talked about this.”

“We disagreed as to how to proceed.”

“And I told you the matter was non-negotiable,” the villain shot back. “We’re not killing him, [Hero]. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father.”

The hero snorted. “More like a pimp. Doesn’t he want you back in the game?”

The villain glared at them.

“And he’s been sending his minions after you. Having them watch your every move, try to indirectly pressure you into working for him again. Do you want to get back into crime?”

“No!”

That turned a few heads. The villain slumped down into the seat, breathed out through their nose. The hero flipped the menu to the next page.

“I’ve changed,” the villain said, after a time. “And you know what’s funny? For you. For us. I told you I’m leaving crime for good—leaving everything I’ve ever known behind—and yet you can’t even give me the courtesy of tying loose ends myself.”

“Because I’m worried they’ll suck you right back in!”

The villain didn’t respond. The hero’s fingers clutched the edge of the table, and still the villain wasn’t responding.

At long last the villain looked them square in the eye. The hero started to wish they wouldn’t respond altogether.

“This whole time, trying to keep my behavior in check, wanting so badly to be my best version for you.” Chair scraped floor as the villain rose to their feet. “It almost made me forget that you’re just a little unhinged yourself. I didn’t go through all the trouble to let you dress up your bullshit vendetta against him as some sort of sacrifice on my behalf.”

“I’m not trying dress up anyth—”

Before the hero could finish, the villain had grasped their chin in an unforgiving hand, and yanked them up to their full height. The stormy look on their face like something the hero had seen during one of their more heated fights, back when they were still sworn enemies.

“You’re not killing him. Don’t make me say it again.”

The villain abruptly released the hero and exited the coffee shop, leaving the hero with reddening skin and curious eyes drilling into their back.

[midnightcreator12]

The chapter from my current tmnt fic thats making my comment section ugly cry

It’s also my fav chapter so far so I’mma just drop it by itself over here.

Just view this as another ‘they didn’t get Leo back’ au fic

It should have been a victorious moment.

They’d been going non-stop for almost twenty-four hours, fighting the impossible odds against the Krang invasion.

There were moments where it seemed like they wouldn’t win. Like this was their final battle.

But the portal was shut, the Krang ship destroyed, they’d saved the world!

And Michelangelo's big brother was on the wrong side of the portal.

No, no, no, nonononono-

The word repeated over and over in Mikey’s head. 

Because this wasn’t supposed to happen. 

They got Raph back, they got their powers back, they had been winning and then-

And then he and Donnie had fallen and Raph had to save them and they left Leo all alone up there and-

Mikey reached out for where his brother had been, trying to focus his mind.

Casey had said his future self made a portal, one that sent Casey to them.

Maybe that trick could bring Leo back.

He could bring Leo back.

If he just focused hard enough he could bring Leo back!

“Mikey…” Raph’s voice cracked, thick with tears. “It’s over”

Mikey’s jaw tightened as more tears poured down his face, “He never…gave up on us!” His voice hitched on a sob. “I can’t give up on him!”

He could feel his powers buzzing under his skin, see it sparking at his fingertips. He could do this, he could get Leo back! He just had to focus!

He could do this!

He could-

Raph’s hand carefully landed on Mikey’s shoulder.

And the box turtle crumbled.

He screamed, long and loud and raw because he couldn’t, he couldn’t bring his brother back. 

Raph pulled him into a hug and Mikey clung to his older brother as his body shook with cries.

He could still feel his power buzzing under his skin, feel how much mystic energy coursed through him.

But it wasn’t enough. 

Leo was gone and Mikey couldn’t save him.

He curled closer to Raph and screamed.

~|~

Raphael had only been slightly surprised when Dad made Leo their leader.

He’d already known Leo would be a better leader then he was, he’d just been shocked at how Dad had chosen to tell them.

It probably hadn’t been a great idea to spring it on Leo, because he’d then taken all his skill as a leader and chucked it out the window.

Raph knew he was playing up the antics, since Raph had refused when Leo tried to give back the leadership spot. He knew Leo was trying to get him riled up enough that he’d retake the leader role on the team.

Raph had stood firm, refusing the play into Leo’s game, even when it got frustrating.

Losing the key had been close to Raph’s breaking point, so he’d tried to make Leo see that he had to step up, take his role seriously.

Be a hero.

Raph’s mind flashed back to every time he’d told Leo to be a hero as the Technodome exploded. Every time he’d told Leo to step up, stop messing around, take his role seriously-

Nausea rolled in his gut as his own words came back to him.

He’d tried to push Leo to be better, to be his best version of himself.

And he’d pushed Leo onto the wrong side of that portal.

Raph dropped to his hand and knees, sobbing softly.

He wanted Leo to step up but this…

He didn’t want this.

Raph curled in on himself and quietly wished he could just pull into his shell and hide from everything.

Mikey’s sobbing made his head snap up.

His baby bro was standing, arms raised, orange mystic energy sparking along his arms.

Leo was gone, they were a team without a leader.

They needed a leader.

“Mikey,” Raph cursed the way his voice broke. “It’s over.”

Mikey looked at Raph, tears running in rivers down his face, “He didn’t…give up on us! I’m not giving up on him!”

And Raph didn’t know what Mikey was trying to do but something in his chest broke all over again as Mikey strained, marking glowing as he reached out towards the sky, like he could just grab Leo and pull him back.

He couldn’t. Leo was gone.

Slowly, the snapper stood and moved to Mikey’s side, putting his hand on the smaller turtle’s shoulder, “Mikey…”

And that was all it seemed to take.

Mikey dropped with a heart wrenching scream that Raph felt in his soul.

He gathered his brother in his arms, holding him tightly as Mikey screamed and sobbed.

He wanted to do the same. Wanted to just sit down a scream at how unfair the universe was to take Leo from them.

But he couldn’t now.

He needed to be there for his brothers, they needed a rock right now.

Both his brothers.

Raph looked up and spotted Donnie, curled up on the pavement with his arms over his head, shaking with nearly silent sobs.

“Donnie?”

Donatello didn’t respond, didn’t even react to Raph’s voice.

Raph frowned and moved to crouch next to his brother, “Donnie?”

This time, Donnie looked up between his arms.

He opened his mouth as if to reply but all that came out was a tiny, sad chirp.

If Raph’s heart hadn’t shattered already that would have done it.

Donnie reached out one hand, fingers grasping at the air but Raph got the message. He wrapped his free arm around Donnie, tucked both his little brothers close to his chest and squeezed.

He felt like he should reassure them, try and soothe some of the pain.

But he couldn’t quite muster up any ‘you’re okay’s or ‘we won’s or even an ‘we’re safe now’.

Because they weren’t okay, because they lost their brother. And even if they technically won against the Krang they still lost their brother.

So Raph curled himself protectively over his remaining siblings, murmuring softly to the two of them, “I got ya, I got ya.”

He’d always have them, he could at least give them that.

~|~

Since they were old enough to grasp the concept, Leonardo had insisted he and Donatello were twins.

Donnie had always denied it, at some points even hated it when Leo said they were twins. His rebuttals only got harsher as they got older but Leo always laughed and kept crowing about his status as a twin.

Donnie used to wish he never had to hear Leo’s insistence that they were twins.

Or his stupid puns and corny one-lines.

As the Technodrome exploded over Metro Tower, Donnie got his wish.

He’d have loved to hear that twenty-four hours ago.

But as he watched the pink flashing lights of the portal fade away, he felt cold. 

His brain couldn’t seem to quite grasp what his eyes were seeing. Couldn’t fully comprehend that Leo had been up there when the portal closed. Had been on the wrong side when it shut.

But last minute saves were Leo’s thing. He’d be there soon. Another portal would open right next to them and Leo would come striding out, complaining about having to go to Staten Island.

It was just taking him a minute.

It was Leo, he always bounced back.

He almost didn’t notice the tears falling down his face, was actually surprised in a detached kind of way when he did notice them. He shouldn’t be crying, Leo was just waiting to make a dramatic entrance.

He’d be back. Any second he’d be there.

He could hear his brothers. Mikey was crying loudly, basically screaming, and he could hear Raph’s soft timber under the wails. But the words were lost to him, muffled under a ringing in his ears.

Like Leo was lost.

Donnie’s legs folded under him.

Because Leo was gone.

He curled up, bringing his arms over his head.

His brother was gone.

Raph was still talking. Somewhere on Donnie left.

His twin was de-

“Donnie?”

The word managed to break through the ringing in his ears.

He peeked up between his arms.

Raphael was crouched next to him, one arm curled around a sobbing Michelangelo, the other hovering over Donnie’s shoulder, “Donnie?”

He should answer. Raph was waiting for permission to touch him, waiting to see if he was okay.

Don opened his mouth.

Not a word came out of his mouth.

They were there, stuck somewhere in his throat, but Donnie couldn’t make any of them come out.

All he could manage was a soft, desperate chirp.

Because this wasn’t what was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be all of them. Together. They always stayed together. They always prevailed together, as a team, as a family.

Leo was supposed to slip out at the last second, come strutting out of a portal of his own, all smiles and bravado. That was Leo’s thing.

But there was no bright, blue portal to deliver their brother to them. No bad jokes or loud boasting of victory.

Donnie whimpered and reached out with one hand.

Raph scooped the softshell up, pressing him close to his chest, “I got ya, I got ya.”

Donnie hiccuped, curled up in Raph’s embrace as tears continued to stream down his cheeks.

They were all supposed to make it.

Mikey reached over and grabbed Donnie’s arm and Donnie reached back.

The three brothers held onto each other, weeping because there wasn’t supposed to be only three of them.

Donnie wasn’t keeping track of the time, it was taking everything he had to not start hyperventilating, so he didn’t know how long they all sat there mourning. 

But he felt it when Raph suddenly shifted, felt his brother's arm tighten around him and the low growl in his chest. Both Donnie and Mikey tensed and looked up to see what had spooked Raph.

A van was swerving towards them, going far too fast and moving much too erratically yet somehow the driver didn’t crash it.

Donnie knew that driving.

“Dad-”

It was the first word he’d managed to get out and it came in such a soft whisper he wondered if his brothers heard him.

If the way both relaxed immediately was an indication, they had.

The van screeched and slid across the road until it was only a few feet away. It started to slow with a loud screech of rubber on the pavement. But before it had fully stopped the back door was flung open and April came barreling out, “Guys!”

She all but tackled them, arms not quite reaching around all the way but doing their damn best. Donnie could see dried tear tracks on April’s cheeks and her eyes were red.

The comm had been open.

There was no way they didn’t know.

Donnie looked behind April as Dad stumbled out of the driver seat of the van and came towards them. He was still crying, not even trying to hide his grief as he rushed to hold onto his remaining boys.

The only one who didn’t rush out of the van was Future Casey.

Donatello could see him, lurking next to the van, stealing glances at the family.

And a part of Donnie knew that what happened wasn’t Casey’s fault. 

A very small, quiet part that was drowned out by the roaring in his ears.

Because this entire mess started when Casey had shown up.

And he was the one who closed the portal before Leo could get out.

He took my twin.

Casey’s eyes found Donnie’s and the kids entire body flinched.

Good.

Donnie growled low in his chest, too low for anyone to hear over all the crying.

They’d probably scold him for blaming Casey but Donnie couldn’t find it in himself to care much.

Because logic could tell him that it wasn’t Casey’s fault all day long.

But Donnie, for once, didn’t care about logic.

He just wanted his brother back.

[glowingbadger]

The Sylvain and Dimitri arranged marriage stuff made me think of a claude version of it. Maybe an AU where Claude never came to fodlan and reader has to marry the prince/king of Almyra to improve countries relationships. Anyway seriously love your stuff thank you so much for the content!!

Oh hoo Anon, this is a wonderful take on the concept. Let's see what I can whip up for us~

((side note I feel like we never learn whether Almyra speaks a different language from Fodlan?? But being multi-lingual is sexy so idgaf))

((And also I used Bengali for Almyran because I have Bengali family and the language is so beautiful even though the english alphabet phonetic spellings are weird af))

Claude x Reader - Arranged Marriage

NSFW 18+ (like only towards the end tho idk)

Overall, you do what you can to stay out of the way. You'd been sent to Almyra as a symbol- a token, more than anything else. Now that you were in King Khalid's possession, very few throughout the castle paid you any particular mind. You were provided for, of course. Anything you cared to ask for was given. But you didn't speak a word of the Almyran language, and those who bothered to use what they knew of Fodlan's to communicate with you seemed to view you as a pet to be kept safe and healthy, and little else.

By week's end, there was to be a lavish banquet in honor of your union with the King- though of course, your input on the proceedings is entirely unwanted. In some ways, Almyra is quite similar to Fodlan. Court life is much the same. As you wander through the royal gardens, wondering at a range of colorful and exotic flowers you'd never heard of, let alone seen, a voice speaks smoothly behind you.

"Did you know you can actually eat the petals of this particular flower? They're very sweet."

You whirl around and nearly bump into King Khalid. You're about to stammer out an apology, but he reaches out and plucks a single white petal and holds it before your lips.

"Go on, I think you'll like it."

Whatever possesses you to eat a flower petal from this man's hand is something you'd rather leave unexamined for the time being- but he is right about the flavor. It's sweet, but not overly so, and quite pleasant.

"Hm! Yeah, it's nice," you say, then glance up at him as another thought occurs to you that you'd considered once or twice before, "You speak the language of Fodlan very well, my Lord."

"I'm flattered," he says with a disarmingly handsome smile, "and please, just Khalid. I don't think I could bear to have my own wife stand on such formality with me."

He says it so naturally, as if you'd been planning this union for years. Though, once again, he's right. This is only perhaps the dozenth time you've exchanged words, but you are wed, and you ought to get used to addressing him as your husband.

"Khalid..." you say tentatively, "Did- did you need something from me? I hope I wasn't too much trouble to find."

"Not when you find such pleasant places to hide," he replies, still wearing that easy smile, "but to be honest, I was actually hoping you'd accompany me for the day. I can finally afford to take a bit of time away from the castle, and I think you and I both would appreciate some space to breathe. What do you say?"

Correct once again. You nod, and take the arm he offers you. As he leads you out from the gardens, he points out a few more plants native to your new homeland. They're incredibly varied, each more strange and vibrant than the last. All the while, he's somehow made you feel as though you're chatting with an old friend. You leave the gardens and wander towards the area you vaguely recall to be designated for horse stables and wyvern stalls.

From there, a few things happen in sequence. Khalid asks if you're afraid of flying. He asks if you trust him to hold on to you. He helps you up onto the saddle that seems impossibly high up on its own right, and then, you're propelled into the air with a force your body has never felt before. You tense and shrink back against his chest, clinging to whatever part of the saddle you can find purchase on for dear life. Up here, it's difficult to pick up, but you feel your husband laugh behind you, then his strong arm wrap around your waist.

"Relax, I won't let anything happen to you," he says against your ear, his voice sure and steady, "I've got you."

And it takes a few miles of flying and a lot of Khalid distracting you by pointing out different buildings and shops along the streets below, but eventually, you do manage to relax- at least a little.

The castle town is positively buzzing with activity. Even from your distance in the sky above, you can see clusters of people moving around each other like fish up stream, and even hear the faint echoes of a merchant advertising goods.

"It doesn't seem at all like the Almyra we're taught about in Fodlan."

"Oh, it is," Khalid assures you with a bemused chuckle, "But it's also much more. I imagine it's the same for your people. There's a lot we can learn from one another, I think."

By the time the sun is high in the sky, you've passed the most densely settled part of town and are gliding over farmland and the occasional pocket of forest and rivers that split and cross through the earth like veins. Though, the warmer climate of Almyra will still take some getting used to, and it seems your husband considers this.

"Let's land for a bit and find some shade,"

You nod, and he directs his wyvern to begin a slow descent.

The King had thought of everything for this little day-trip, it seemed. Having evidently packed everything you'd need in the saddlebags on his steed, you now recline beside him on a plush blanket in a clearing amidst the trees. A small brook bubbles down from stone to stone in small waterfalls beside you, and the air feels positively alive with birdsong and rustling leaves, all foreign to you and all part of your new home. And so is he, you think as you glance over at the handsome figure of your husband beside you.

You'd been sitting in a comfortable quiet, munching on a couple of very dense pastries which Khalid had told you incorporated an extract of the flower you'd sampled earlier. He gives a satisfied sigh as he finishes his first and lies back on the blanket, taking in and savoring a deep breath. As you finish the last bites of your own treat, you reflect on the day thus far. You'd learned much about the locals and their daily lives by observation and Khalid's description in such a short time, and he'd even taught you a hand full of basic words and phrases in Almyran.

"Uhm, Khalid?"

He opens one eye and gives you a sideways glance.

"It was... dhonnobad, right? Thank you?"

His smile his open and warm, his eyes practically shimmering in the reflected sunlight from the nearby brook.

"Well, we'll have to work on your pronunciation, but I'm impressed you remembered," he beckons you down onto the blanket beside him, and you follow, lying on your side as he turns towards you. You're closer than you'd anticipated, even given the limited realestate of the blanket, and you internally scold yourself for being shy about something so silly- like some naive adolescent.

"Let's try a couple more words, since you've been such a diligent student."

"Okay," you say with a smile, "try me, I'll do my best."

"Hmm..." he looks around your private clearing, then gestures towards the brook and says, "Jala"

"Jala," you repeat slowly. He nods,

"Right- that's 'water'. And, uhm..." he points toward a patch of wildflowers at the edge of the brook, "Phula. That's 'flower'."

Again, you repeat as best you can, and though you know your pronunciation must be off, he's encouraging nonetheless. Then, he leans in towards you, and brings his free hand to your cheek, his fingertips brushing your skin lightly.

"Now try sundara."

"... Sundara?" you make an attempt, and you're sure you got something about that 's' sound mixed up, but Khalid just gives you a slanted smile. He doesn't clarify at first, so you ask, "What does that one mean?"

His fingers slowly weave back into your hair, and his voice is low and soothing as he replies,

"That means 'beautiful'."

Your face warms immediately, but you hardly have a moment to feel bashful about it before he presses his lips to yours, kissing you slow and deep. His movements are effortlessly sensual, pulling you towards him and sending your pulse pounding through your veins. You part your lips to him almost instinctively, and the way he uses his tongue is sparing, but oh-so effective. When he finally pulls away, your head is spinning and it's all you can do to meet his gaze.

"So... that's how they kiss in Almyra." you say, barely above a whisper. Khalid smirks and turns you onto your back, sliding an arm around your waist.

"Oh, no- there's no tradition in this, only skill."

Goddess- if they'd warned you of the King's supernatural charms, you wouldn't have believed them. But now his lips are on yours once again, and he's holding your body to his, and you can't think of anything else. Your arms drape across his shoulders, and faster than you can track, your bodies have met in a tangled, impassioned embrace. It was hard to imagine that mere kissing could feel so erotic, but something about his pace, about how his lips and hands move in tandem, about how thorough he is in exploring you, makes you feel like it would be only natural to give yourself over to him completely.

His kiss travels along your jawline up to the shell of your ear, where he nips briefly, then murmurs,

"I was hoping to apologize for how little time we've had to get to know each other before today," you bite at your bottom lip as his hand slides down to the curve of your hip, "if that would be pleasing to you, my dearest wife."

"Ye- yes..." you sigh into the open air as his lips reach your neck. The single word is all either of you need. He never stops pressing lavish kisses to your lips and neck as he pulls your clothing out of his way. By the time he's satisfied, your clothes are draped off your arms and pooling around you on the blanket- and he doesn't seem to care to remove them entirely. He has a goal in mind.

Slowly, painstakingly, he makes his way down your body. You feel him everywhere- hands tracing and memorizing your frame, breath hot across your skin as his lips spoil you with adoring kisses. Soon enough, he's kissed his way to your lower stomach, and he urges your thighs apart beneath him. You suppress the instinctive wave of embarrassment at being exposed to him for the first time- he is your husband and your King, afterall- but then, his head dips down towards your plump lower lips, and your mind goes white.

"Khalid-!" you gasp out as his tongue trails coyly up the crease of your folds. He hums contentedly, and places a disarmingly chaste kiss to the soft skin. Then, his thumbs gently spread you open for him, and your entire body burns while he takes a moment to merely admire you- your pretty little hole already wet, your clit already hard and flushed dark. When his head lowers once more, his green eyes meet yours steadily, as though to promise without words to be good to you.

And in a moment, his mouth begins to gently tease your clit, and your head tilts back on the blanket. Your hips jerk just a bit with each pass of his tongue across the sensitive bundle, and occasionally you can't hold in a gasp or whimper of pleasure. This only encourages him, of course. The more you moan and sigh, the more dedicated he becomes to your body. He presses himself more firmly to you, his lips surrounding your clit and the surrounding tender flesh, and he suckles on you, licks you, kisses you. You don't know when it happened, but your hands are at the back of his head, fists tangled in thick brown hair as he diligently works.

The unbearable tension is winding tight and anxious in your lower body- you know he'll drive you to climax before long, and the mere thought feels like falling in love. And then Khalid moves lower, and his tongue dips inside of your entrance. You gasp and unwittingly tug on his hair- but he certainly doesn't seem to mind. With a lustful groan, he presses more firmly to you, truly buried against your body as his dexterous tongue curls upward, stroking the vulnerable spot behind the nerves of your clit.

"Khalid!" this time it's nearly a scream, and you're grateful that your voice is lost in the surrounding foliage. Your thighs begin to shake, and your hands release him to instead clutch the blanket behind you. And at last, with a whimper in a voice you hardly recognize, your lower body floods with soaked warmth as your orgasm sweeps through you. Panting, twitching, you moan out for your husband over and over, until finally, the wave begins to subside, and Khalid pulls away to position himself above you on all fours.

"That's a nice expression..." he says with a grin, directing you to look at him with a hand at your chin, "I hope I'll get to see it often."

When your eyes finally refocus, you look up at him somewhat apologetically,

"I should... attend to you."

He laughs and kisses your forehead,

"There will be time for that tonight, don't you think? Once we're a bit more... put together," he says with a glance at your bare form, "we should head back to our ride. I'll bring you back to the castle, and we'll get the cooks to prepare something very 'Almyran' for you."

You nod- it probably wouldn't do for the first time with your Lord Husband to be mid-day in the woods. Though he'd certainly failed to make it seem unappealing.

"And then," he goes on, bringing a finger to trace the curve of your bottom lip, "Well, maybe we'll excuse ourselves to our bedchamber a bit early this evening, and we can continue this little... cultural exchange."

[lord-explosion-baku]

Disconnect

Yandere!Shinsou x reader

Warnings: yandere, adult themes, bordering Stockholm syndrome, hints of dubious consent

A/N: here’s another fic I posted and deleted a bit ago, but I edited it and revamped it a bit. I was in a weird place when I wrote this, but it’s content! Gonna stop impulsively deleting shit😂

“Are you in love with me?”

What a pathetic question. You know it is, but it’s been on your mind all damn day. That, amongst other things. Insecurities have been bombarding your brain and consuming your thoughts. They’re the kind that you’ve managed to repress for years, but today, while bored of all the nothing you had to do while Shinsou was away, they came at you full force, as if they were paying you back for forgetting about them.

Before Shinsou took you, happiness had been perpetually evasive. Some days you could pretend like it had been there, but that had just been a trick of the mind—a phantom emotion that muzzled how you’d actually been feeling.

The truth is, your friends—your family—everyone you know has always simply tolerated you. You could go to them when you were feeling down, but they never really wanted to hear your qualms. They’d always tell you anything you needed to hear to get you to stop whining. There’d been an art to ignoring how they grimaced at your attempted humor and hope for you to stop trying. They never wanted to hear about your interests or aspirations, either—most of them were too big for you anyways—but they would smile and wait for you to finish prattling on, then exhale with relief when it was over.

So, it hadn’t been like you could tell them how you felt, lest you wanted to risk being a ceaseless nuisance.

Some days you’d wondered if they wouldn’t mind if you just disappeared. Now you find yourself wondering what they think now that you have.

It’s fine. Rather, it had been fine when you were around them. However, the more time you’re forced to spend with Shinsou, the more you realize how unhappy you used to be.

You can’t say you’re happy now, either. With the reality of your situation, you’d actually have to be insane to say that you’re happy. A caged bird could never thrive if he couldn't fly. But Shinsou has been the first person that wanted to hear you talk about anything and everything. He wants to know you—to be there for you. He actually asks about your likes and dislikes, how you’re feeling, what he can do to make things better, while you’ve always been reluctant to answer him.

Still, you want to know. You want to be sure. You can assume that he does love you. Afterall, he’s taking care of you right now.

Earlier, he sensed that you were stressed and offered to give you a massage. Normally you would slink away from his touch, but you were feeling weak, so you said yes. You have to admit that having him touch you is... nice.

A deep groan escapes your chest when he presses on a particularly tense spot in your back, so he rubs the area more, making sure to massage all of your anxieties away. He leans down low to press his lips against the shell of your ear. You can feel the curl of his mouth when he says, “that’s a stupid question.”

I know. You want to tell him that, but you won’t. You won’t open up to him. You know he’d like that too much. It’s ironic, really. The one person who wants you to open up to them and it’s the last person on earth you’d want to tell anything too personal to.

“I wouldn’t have asked it if I didn’t need to hear the answer.”

“You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t in love with you,” he counters.

Touché, asshole.

“So the moment you fall out of love with me, you’re going to let me go.”

You very nearly say ‘you’re going to kick me out,’ but it’s not like you’re simply visiting with him. You’re there against your will. He's your captor, you’re his prisoner.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“But if it does-“

“It won’t.” Shinsou begins kissing down your spine. “Getting you here was a drag, but I won’t be letting you go under any circumstances.”

“Why?”

Darks skepticism envelopes his timbre when he asks, “why, what?”

You can't blame him. There’s been plenty of one-sided conversation where you’ve practically begged to be released, only to have Shinsou give you the cold shoulder. This won’t be another one of those discussions. You couldn’t bear it.

“Why do you like me?”

“Why do I like you, or why am I in love with you?”

You think about it for a second and decide to hell with it. You threw your dignity out the window the second you asked your first question. You hide your face in the pillow and mutter, “both.”

Shinsou hums against your back, pretending to consider the question while he squeezes your hips, pressing his thumbs into either side of your tailbone.

“Oh, god,” you sigh, pushing your ass up so he presses deeper on you, “that feels so good.”

“Reason one as to why I like you-“ Shinsou moves his hands down to your ass. He kneads your muscles, partly because he knows you want it, but mostly because he loves handling your ass- “you sound like that when you moan.”

“Be serious!” You bark back half-heartedly, because he seriously knows how to give a good massage, and you can’t stay annoyed when he’s touching you like that.

“I’m being plenty serious. It’s hot.” He squeezes your bottom, adding just the right amount of pressure to get you to moan again. He chuckles and thumbs the side of your underwear, letting it snap back to your skin pap! “So hot.”

“So, you like me because I’m hot?” You exhale when he squeezes more lotion onto your back, the cool sensation making goosebumps rise on your skin.

“Well-“ there’s a shrug in his voice when he makes his way back up to your spine-“it’s one of the reasons.”

Shinsou begins listing things he likes about you: the curl of your hair, the dip in your hips, the curve of your ass, the way your nose scrunches up when you smell something you think is going to be nice, but is actually unappealing, and that “cute little mole in that one place,” he suggests, “you know, the one I like to kiss…”

It’s all almost nice to hear, except they all have one thing in common: they’re all physical. You won’t always look like what you do now. You don’t think that Shinsou is so superficial that he only judges you on your appearance, but you can’t stop the swelling in your chest.

“And I especially like your neck,” he whispers at the column of your throat, right before licking a stripe up to your earlobe. You shudder when he smiles against you. “So sensitive…”

“So that’s it?”

You’re being negative, demanding even, and you shouldn’t feel bad about it because it’s with Shinsou, but you do. You need to hear more. You need to feel like you matter.

“There’s loads more, but this is what I’m focusing on right now. My partner’s half naked in front of me and I’m only human.”

You turn to face him, maneuvering the pillow your head was on to the front of you, hiding Shinsou’s eyes both from your chest, and from the tears you’ve left behind.

“What about when I change?” You ask, squeezing your fluffy shield against your stomach.

“What do you mean?”

“Like-“ you bow your head, fiddling with the fringes on the pillow- “I don’t know. If I’m gonna be stuck here forever, then obviously I’m gonna age.”

Shinsou frowns. “So?”

“So...I won’t always be-“ you make a flippant gesture at him-“your version of hot!”

He snorts. “My version of hot? What’s that?”

“You tell me!”

He shakes his head, laughing as he brings his hand to the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “You’re my version of hot...it won’t matter if your hair turns silver, your skin wrinkles, you get all saggy and crinkly-“ he chuckles- “same thing’s gonna happen to me, only with my job, I might end up losing an arm or—heaven forbid—I get a scar over an eye.”

You dismiss that. “Scars can be hot.”

“Duly noted.” He smirks. “I might have to be extra reckless on my next mission. See how you react to my battle wounds.”

“Please don’t,” you say immediately. You gaze up at him to see that his usual sleep-ridden eyes have softened. Geez, he’s acting as if you said something nice to him.

“What’s going on with you?” Shinsou asks as his hand falls over your pillow shield. He tugs on it to move, but you keep it clawed to your chest. “C’mon...let me in.”

It’s hard because you want to. You want to let him in, and you’re stupid for it. At least you have the mind to shake your head at him.

“Alright then,” he says, “what do you like about me? Or should I say, do you like me?”

“No.” That part is easy enough to say. Even if it's a lie, which you aren’t sure if it is or not, you know it’s what you should say every time. Regardless of what he makes you feel, what he does for you, how he takes care of you, you’re still there against your will.

You don’t get a moment to feel guilty about saying it either, because as soon as the answer rolls off of your tongue, you freeze, unable to move or speak. Immediately you want to rebuke, tell him off, scream at him, but your body disobeys every single one of your furious demands. Shinsou hasn’t used his mind control on you too much lately, and you let yourself forget that he has it. You’re absolutely seething.

Bastard.

“I’m sorry, darlin’. I’m a slave to my own whims.” Shinsou takes the pillow away from your body. His eyes scan over your torso appreciatively before finding the dark dots stained from your tears on the fabric of your pillow. He flexes his jaw, then places the pillow back behind you.

“Lay back,” he commands, and you’re helpless to oblige.

For a moment, the two of you are still. Shinsou’s staring at you, but not in a way that’s weird...er than normal. He’s seen you naked plenty of times, so he’s not being entirely a pervert. It’s only when he rolls down to level his face with yours, you see that there’s mist in his eyes.

“You’re intelligent,” he says, placing a hand over your navel, “and not in a way that’s annoying. You can hold stimulating conversations, and you think...differently, but you’re also interested in listening to divergent viewpoints.”

Shinsou starts moving his hand in circles, using his fingertips to draw intricate designs across your skin.

“You don’t know how to make a proper playlist, so when you listen to music, the weirdest shit comes on, and you sing along to all of it. And you’re so bad at singing, but you belt that shit out like you don’t even care.”

You kinda wanna hit him. You kinda wanna laugh. You kinda don’t wanna accept that you've gotten comfortable enough around Shinsou to actually sing around him, even if it’s in the goofy voice that you use.

“You’re kind to animals, you laugh in your sleep, you yell at inanimate objects, and you always read the last page of a novel once you’re halfway through it, which is infuriating, but it’s because you get so excited that you can’t stand not knowing what’s going to happen.”

Shinsou brings his hand up to cup your face. “You piss me off. You challenge me. You’re stubborn and defiant and abrasive and I-“ he pauses, sighing- “and I love it. I love every part of you—vexing vices and valorous virtues.”

He leans down so that his lips are a hair away from yours. His voice is tight, raspy from something he’s holding back, but still, he speaks. “I know I’m fucked up for this. I know you hate it here, but there’s no way in hell I’d ever let anyone else have you. You’re so fucking weird, and beautiful, and angry. You’re precious to me, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll always be in love with you. And that means damning you to me. I would say that I’m sorry, but I’m not. At least, not for keeping you. You’re the only thing I've ever wanted—the only sin I don’t regret.”

Your brain is ocean fog when his lips meet yours. He kisses you softly, because he doesn’t want to bring you out of your stupor just yet. His fingers travel down your sides, resting at the waistband of your panties. He pulls back and eyes you deviously.

“And if you don’t like me yet, I guess I’ll have to deal, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna keep gunning for your affection.” He smirks, hooking his thumbs around the sides of your briefs. Your entire body flushes in direct reaction to him, anticipating what comes next. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

With a devilish glint in his indigo eyes, he smirks up at you and says, “at least I know some things you love about me”

[gryffindors-weasley]

Always

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader

Summary: When Draco finds himself on thin ice with his father, he still can’t seem to keep from you.

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: angst, secret relationship, poor parental relationship, stress/anxiety about the future, fluff, kissing

A/N: Flash back is in italics. This is an alternate version of my fic here !

The divination classroom. It has always been amongst your favorites. It was far more contrasting to the others, consisting simply of stone walls and arched ceilings, wooden desks and frosted windows. The room of divination was full of mismatched tapestries draping in ruffles from the walls in bursting colors, equally so in the various sizes cushions and chairs with rugs to match. A handful of intricately patterned ceiling fixtures hung down, tassels dangling from them. It was warm and it was welcoming in comparison to the cold and darker rooms.

“Why is it that we’re coming here?” Draco asks with a sigh, trailing behind you as you ascend the last few steps of the winding spiral staircase.

You turn to him with a grin and a raised brow, a look he soon returned as he grasped your hand in his own. “I think we could do with a change of scenery after all. I’m growing rather tired of the astronomy tower, love.”

“What’s wrong with the astronomy tower?” He scoffs in faux offense, his brows furrowing as you tugged him along with you into the vacant room as he looks over his shoulder once more.

“It’s far too cold and cloudy to go up there tonight. Besides, this is one of my favorite rooms in the whole castle if you must know. You will survive just this once, Draco,” you jest lightheartedly, releasing his hand to skip ahead of him as he groaned at your sudden absence and he had no choice but to follow you. Though he felt he’d follow you anywhere, really.

“And if I don’t?” He calls after you just to be difficult, pinching a piece of red velvet fabric between his fingers before his eyes roam back to you.

You turn on your heel and purse your lips at him, narrowing your gaze as you fight your smile. You shake your head as he holds your stare just the same, his head tilting and eyes squinting as he challenged you and you readily gave up on suppressing your grin for a moment longer.

“You didn’t have to join me if this is not to your taste, you know,” you say, and he rolls his eyes as he tugs you close to him by a gentle grip on your hand. “You’re more than welcome to leave, but I have a feeling you’d miss me too much if you did.”

He silenced your very logical words with a kiss, your laughter dwindling as you relaxed against him. His kiss was soft and tender as he hummed against your lips, his hand coming to brush your hair behind your ear as his lips moved from your own to sweep across your cheek. They linger just under your jaw before pressing chastely under your ear, his nose brushing over your skin.

“Must you always pick on me, darling?” He murmurs, his breath tickling against the shell of your ear.

Your soft laughter starts up again at his words, pulling his attention back to your gaze as he pulls back to look at you. You rest your hands on his chest, your fingers splaying across the black fabric of his button up and smoothing over his matching tie. “Yes, I think I must.”

With that, you turned away from him and left his loose embrace much to his dismay, twirling once in the center of the room with open arms. He watched as you smiled contently, your eyes falling closed as you tip your head back and bask in the peace that came with nightfall. In the enchantment of the room. For it was the time where you could love one another as freely as you’d like, for as many hours as the moon remained in the deep navy sky. He wanted desperately to love you in the light of day, without fear of prying eyes and listening ears. But you knew why things were the way they were.

He watched the way the moonlight danced across your skin, glowing against your effortless beauty as it shines in your hair. It left him wondering how someone so perfect could love someone so flawed. He found himself to be an anchor tied to you at times, his mistakes and current standing in the wizarding world something he felt kept you from thriving the way he knew you would, the way you deserved. You already were, far more than he could say for himself.

You radiate warmth and kindness, something he so desperately craved and found he could not keep himself from. To him, you were the embodiment of sunshine and he felt he was quite the opposite, rather bringing storms and rain. Yet still, you chose to love him in spite of it. He felt guilty, really. For having a father who made you feel like your relationship was in jeopardy without ever having the displeasure of meeting the man. For not being able to love you as fully and openly as he so desired.

“Are you going to join me or are you going to stare all night?” You quip, breaking him from his pestering thoughts.

His gaze flickered from the vacant spot you once stood in to where you sat on purple velvet cushioned stool. You smiled as the crystal sphere flowed before you and a grin of his own tugged at the corner of his mouth. He took a seat on the small crimson stool right next to you, finding himself a bit too tall for such a small seating arrangement but he decided against complaining.

The sphere before you contained a fog-like haze that swirled around much like the clouds just beyond the windows.

“Just what are we doing?” He asks, an amused smirk on his lips as he raised a brow.

“You’ve claimed yourself to be the best at telling the future what was it, four years ago? Surely you must be an expert on such a thing now, Dray,” you say, laughing at his scrunched nose and the way he gripped your stool and tugged you closer with one swift pull. “Tell me, what will our future be in five years’ time?”

He chuckles, shaking his head fondly as he looked from the crystal to you. “That’s quite simple, I don’t need some silly crystal to tell me that.”

You raise your brow in amused curiosity. “Tell you what?”

He looks at you attentively, his smirk softening to an adoring smile. “That I’ll love you as long as you’ll have me, and even more.”

You nearly rolled your eyes at his sappy words, but you found them too sentimental and the look on his face far too endearing to do so. That and you couldn’t ignore the heat in your cheeks from such a declaration. But you also didn’t have it in you to miss an opportunity to tease him.

“I love you, very much I do. But I have a sneaking suspicion you don’t know how to use that thing, Love,” You jest, and he rolls his eyes as he fights his smile.

“I’m convinced you love to torment me,” he frowns, unable to sustain it with the way you’re giggling at him.

Despite the lighthearted moment, he finds he can’t enjoy it fully with the worry weighing heavy on his mind. Your question was merely playful, but it had been one that frequented his thoughts far more than he cared to ever admit, more than he ever will admit. In a perfect world, he would have felt confident with the idea of loving you for the rest of his life. Would have felt rather excited for your future together because he loved you entirely too much for his own good. But it was hard to indulge in thinking of such dreams when there were things in particular pressing down on his shoulders.

That one night in particular, to be specific, he would never forget that.

Draco stood at the end of the vacant corridor, palms pressed flat to the cold surface of the window sill as he peered through the latticed glass. The commotion from the ball had been more than enough with just the thirty minutes he’d spent in the large ballroom housed at the opposite end of the long hallway. Even with the distance from the boisterous event it was still just as nauseating—his ears ringing with the clinking of glass and goblets, with the shrill laughter seeping into the space he wished would alleviate his tension. But alas, it did not.

The dusty air in the Manor had not done him any bit of good, not even a shred. His mind was far busier than any overly lavish event his parents could throw, racing from one thought to the next in an endless loop. He grew rather tired of pretending to be interested in any of the meaningless conversations he was subjected to, tired of standing along the same gray wall in the shadows in hopes they’d leave him alone. He could do that perfectly well now that the only company was himself.

The moonlight had trickled in through the windows in broken beams, illuminating every fleck of dust that had been floating around him, casting him in a small pool of light. He knew staying in there a moment longer simply wouldn’t be feasible, he’d go mad. Besides, he was far too distracted with more important matters, so much so he hadn’t wanted it to draw attention to himself. He had been far too distracted by you.

As he looked out over the garden it was inevitable that that had been where his mind would shift to. To each and every night you spent hand in hand within it, or the more than numerous kisses you shared tucked away behind decades old oak trees and crumbling statues. It reminds him of the way your hair glimmers in that very moonlight and just how your eyes sparkle. It reminds him how just how much he wanted to be with you in that very moment; he always found he’d rather be with you.

Fancy ballroom events had never held his interest very much, and the more they occurred the less that interest remained. Especially with the way thing seemed to be spiraling as his seventh year continues to break apart. The attendees only ever wanted to talk to him because he was the Malfoy heir, not because they cared to converse with him and how he was doing, but because they wanted to talk about he who he refuses to give the satisfaction of naming. He didn’t want to talk about things most undesirable, there was more to him than slytherin title, than to be a Malfoy. There was more to him than what he could use his social standing for. He knew that, you knew that.

He wanted so desperately to leave the bleak and endless maze of that manor. To part from that grand window and to be somewhere else, anywhere, with you. He wanted to—

“Draco,” a voice sounded behind him. A voice he’d rather not hear. His father. He squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for conversation. “Have you grown bored?”

The tone he held was not one of curiosity, he genuinely did not care less about whether or not he had been bored. He did not care about very much when it came to his son, his only child. For no reasons other than selfish ones, anyway.

Draco laughed bitterly to himself, his back still turned to his father. “Yeah, you could say that.”

It was quiet, save for the lingering notes of the piano and endless chatter that filtered out into the corridor. The silence from his father was near painful, and he’d be lying if he said his heart hadn’t begun to pound more vigorously against his chest. The absence in conversation was starting to make him nervous with each passing second, and he was beginning to think he’d left altogether. No, it would not be that easy.

“You seem rather distracted, Draco,” he states after a few agonizing moments, and his heart squeezes in his chest at the familiar sense of knowing woven around each word. He swallows thickly as he fixes his stare down on the windowsill. “Is something on your mind? Or someone, perhaps.”

He wants desperately to take a deep breath as panic settles thickly within him, but that would be far too obvious an indication that his assumptions were, in fact, correct. His mind races a mile a minute, however, and he finds himself scrambling to think of an answer.

“No, there is not, father. I’m just not in the mood for discussing luxuries with any of your friends,” he responds, tone sharp and defensive.

He hears a humorless chuckle sound closer behind him, a sound accompanied by the click of his walking stick. Lucius had his suspicions of you, ever since he’d noticed his son’s newfound distraction, newfound stubbornness to follow his rules. It had only further been confirmed by the smile his son seemed to be caught wearing when he thinks no one is watching. He knew it and he hated it.

Draco felt paralyzed in his spot, unable to form an excuse to leave this very situation. He was tense and increasingly bothered by the threatening presence behind him. He was unsure if there would be repercussions of his displeased counter at his question, hadn’t known just what to expect. Hadn’t known until he felt the hand of his father grab firmly to the back of his neck, cold and calloused fingers pressing to his skin just inches from his shoulders. He flinched at the sudden and startling action, breath hitching in his throat as he brows furrow in a wince.

“Listen closely, my dear son,” he muttered venomously in his ear. “I don’t know what it is you’re up to, but that girl of yours, the one distracting you from your orders—I will not tolerate it.”

He gulped at his father’s words, and he was quite sure he could hear the rhythmic and incessant pounding of his heart in the close proximity. His hands had begun to shake as they gripped tighter on the ledge of the windowsill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The grip on his neck tightens a fraction. “You reek of her perfume, do not tell me you do not know what I’m talking about,” he says through gritted teeth. “You have me mistaken for a fool, Draco. Deal with it, or I will.”

His threatening words are accompanied by a brief shake to emphasize them, jolting him slightly before his harsh grip is released and his footsteps diminish. He was left to stand there alone once more, angry and afraid as his nostrils flare with his sharp inhale and his jaw tensed, eyes lining with tears. His lip quivered under the pressure to suppress it, knuckles turning white under his tightening fists. He knew of you.

“Draco?” The mere softness of your tone pulls him from his distracted trance, that and the way your hand settled on his cheek. “Are you alright?”

His hand comes to rest over your own as he looks at you and leans into your touch without second thought, his blue gaze flickering between your own. He simply nods, his thumb brushing gingerly over your skin as he smiles softly, assuringly. “I’m fine, darling.”

Your returning smile makes his heart flutter within his chest, though he knows that you knew him far better to believe that. But you don’t push it.

When you start speaking he doesn’t entirely know what you were saying in that very moment, for he was much more focused on the way your lips moved with every word, every syllable. On the way your lashes splay against the tops of your flushed cheeks each and every time you look down at that wondrous crystal ball. Or the way your hand pulled from his cheek to rest over his own, playing absentmindedly with the silver slytherin ring worn on his finger. He didn’t particularly like that piece of jewelry, but he only wore it for that habit of yours.

You were so enamoring in everything you had done and he’s sure that will remain true, so utterly spellbinding he feels as though he never stood a chance. You were far more enchanting than the very magic the two of you had known your whole lives, and he knew that to be factual.

“Remember when you—”

His lips had pressed on yours before you could finish your sentence, his hand slipping from under yours to rest warmly upon your cheek. The soft bout of laughter puffed against his lips was enough to let loose a flurry of butterflies within him, a feeling only you have ever caused even with just a mere glance in his direction. The tension in his body dissipated the more he kissed you, the worry dissolving from his mind in that very moment.

When he parted from you he’d thought better of it as he kissed you once, twice, three more times. His lips were pink and kiss swollen, chunks of messy platinum dipping down in his eyes as he gazed at you adoringly. You kissed him again, fleeting and sweet, and it left him smiling softly as his fingertips brushed over his lips. The action made your cheeks stain a deeper scarlet as you looked away momentarily, but you couldn’t help but to return your gaze to him.

“What was that all about?” You ask in playful amusement, still breathless and blissfully awestruck from the burst of affection.

He laughs at that, because you too were delightful and dizzying, and he can’t seem to hide that fact. He dips down and does so again, this time a mere featherlight kiss, his eyes fluttering closed as he relishes in the soft intimacy passing him by. One he does not want to end.

“Just because,” he whispers.

You reach up and smooth the worry creasing between dark brows, your fingers brushing under the hair falling over his forehead and tracing down his cheek. You smiled at the seemingly silverness of his hair in the moonlit glow, the pale blue of his eyes something else entirely.

You rest your forehead on his, noses bumping and laughter mingling before fading into soft smiles. “I love you, always.”

His smile widens a fraction at your words, sincere and true. It makes his heart pound in his chest and his cheeks stain the softest shade of pink as his lips ghost over yours, brushing together with every word. “I love you, always.”

He might not have paid too much mind to that crystal ball for fear of the outcome he felt couldn’t possibly be what he’d dreamt of. He might not have allowed himself to ponder too long on what awaits him for the future for himself, for himself with you. For if he had, he just might’ve seen that life hadn’t intended to be quite as cruel to him as he’d been thinking. Maybe if he gave it a chance he’d see his fate hadn’t been so terrible in the end. But for now, for right now he was content with setting those thoughts aside in favor of kissing you in the moonlight behind vibrant and mismatched curtains. He was content with disregarding his father’s absurd wishes, they did not matter.

He loved you now and he loved you always.

—

Tags: @amourtentiaa @hahee154hq @dracosathenaeum @snitches-at-dawn @harrysweasleys @awritingtree @anchoeritic @writeroutoftime @lunalovecroft

[k-s-morgan]

What He Grows to Be: Snippet 5

Thank you to everyone who expressed their preference over what they’d prefer to see in the snippet! Tom watching Harry’s memories about the Chamber of Secrets got the most votes, so here is the draft version of it. Though since it’s almost 4K long, maybe calling it a snippet isn’t appropriate :D 

------------------------------------------------------------

Talking through a diary was an interesting idea. Tom wasn’t sure what kind of magic this was, but now that he’d seen it, he could figure it out. He and Harry would be able to have immediate conversations instead of relying on letters or Patronuses.

Then again, considering what this diary had led to, perhaps this wasn’t a good idea. The last thing Tom wanted was to add himself into Harry’s collection of negative associations in one more way.

He didn’t see how Harry had managed to get into the Chamber of Secrets. One moment, he was staring at the bloody inscription on the wall; the next one, he was standing in an entirely new vast space. Tom still had no idea where it was located or how to access it.

His heart sank in disappointment, but when the full implications hit him, it stopped entirely.

Harry had excluded this memory on purpose. He didn’t trust Tom with the knowledge of where the Chamber was. He showed him the core events but not the details because his trust and his faith were already gone by that point.

And the ritual made it even worse.  

An uncomfortable itchy heat began to radiate from Tom’s chest. The sensation was entirely unfamiliar, so he pressed his palm against it, confused and hoping to squash it down.

He couldn’t name it, but it felt a little like shame. He’d never experienced it to this extent before, and it was never mixed with this kind of almost desperate hurt.

He’d been trying. For years, he’d been trying to be someone Harry would approve of. The craving, the longing for his acceptance stayed his hand so many times that now Tom couldn’t count them all — he even allowed that scum Morfin to blackmail him, no matter how maddeningly outrageous the whole situation was, simply because he refused to risk Harry finding out.

He’d made mistakes, but they were minimal in comparison to what he would have done if he hadn’t been trying. And yet Harry still didn’t trust him.

The shame began to curl away, giving way to dejection. Loneliness suddenly felt sharp and uncompromising, and Tom wrapped his hands around himself, watching how Harry’s head snapped up.      

“She won’t wake,” a voice said. It was soft but cold, so it took a moment for Tom to recognise it. His eyes quickly moved towards one of the pillars, and something in him shuddered from what he saw.

It was like watching his reflection in someone else’s dream. Something was wrong with the boy he was looking at, and it wasn’t just about the fact that his physical contours were blurred, as if he was being held together by magic alone.

No, he was simply different. He didn’t have the splendour Tom prided himself on. He was thinner and hollow-cheeked; his clothes, while neat, came from some cheap store Tom would have never stepped into. He was but a shadow with empty vicious eyes and greed that swarmed around him in a cloud — greed Tom wasn’t sure he could relate to.

He longed for things. He longed for Harry. But even from here, he could read the shallowness and the arrogance written all over his twin’s face, and he didn’t like it one bit.

This wasn’t him. This was Tom Riddle. Someone he could have been.

“Are you a ghost?” Harry asked. He was staring at Riddle with such earnestness, like he trusted him entirely and couldn’t see what a hollow shell he was. This was the first time Tom would disappoint him — the first in a long line of failures and betrayals.

“No,” Tom murmured to himself, shaking his head briefly. He couldn’t keep blurring himself and Riddle — that way madness lied. Despite some superficial similarities, they were completely different people. He might have let Harry down, too, but their story was different. This abomination was dead and could never touch it.

“A memory,” Riddle replied. His voice was quiet, but its sinister and bitter undertones were as loud as shouting. “Preserved in a diary for fifty years.”

Tom’s brows furrowed. What? A memory? That must have been some ritual. Why would he condemn himself to this kind of existence? To give Voldemort more power? Maybe Voldemort had managed to subdue his will and make him into a brainless soldier somehow. This was more plausible than any version of him feeling such loyalty to some monster that he would follow him blindly and sacrifice his life force for him.

How did one become a memory in the first place? Even Tom with his knowledge about all possible forms of dark arts couldn’t figure it out.

Riddle burst into an animated, mostly one-sided conversation, and several minutes later, Tom had to admit that listening to his own voice was surprisingly challenging. Riddle’s arrogance was distorting his words; his excitement over successfully breaking an 11-year-old girl was embarrassing — Tom had felt less enthusiastic when he killed Charlus, and that happened back when he was a child himself. His first impression had been accurate: Riddle was worlds away from him. He was stupid, and Tom would have never believed it if he wasn’t witnessing it with his own eyes.  

“I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here,” Riddle said pleasantly. His eyes were fixed on Harry in an intense, hungry way — and well, they did have something in common, after all. “I knew you’d come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.”

“Like what?” Harry spat angrily. He didn’t look intimidated in the slightest — his anger and righteousness made him appear taller, and his blazing eyes were furious enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

“How is it that you, a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent, managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time?” Riddle wondered. The pleasant notes were disappearing again under the piles of bitterness and odd envy. “How did you escape with nothing but a scar while Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed?”

By the end of it, a red gleam entered his eyes. It looked unnatural enough for Tom to make an instinctive step towards Harry.

This was unnerving. Magic was one thing, but what would turn his eyes — Riddle’s eyes — red? Humans couldn’t do that, it went against all laws of nature. Unless… Unless Riddle wasn’t human.

If so, what was he?

“Why do you care how I escaped?” Harry asked slowly. His own gaze was narrowed in a dawning realisation that Tom couldn’t decipher. Did Harry have a theory? How could he — he was only twelve. “Voldemort was after your time.”

Riddle smirked at him, looking almost giddy, and Tom had to amend his opinion. This impostor wasn’t simply stupid, he was crazy. He grew excited over irrelevant things and reacted inappropriately to every logical question Harry asked.

“Voldemort,” he uttered, “is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter.”

Pulling a wand out of his pocket, he slashed the air with it, writing three rapid words.

Tom Marvolo Riddle

Tom studied them, his stare lingering on “Marvolo.” Something about it stood out. Something was strangely familiar.

Before he could follow the clues, Riddle waved the wand again, rearranging the letters. The syllables shifted and clung to each other briefly before assuming their designated places.

I Am Lord Voldemort

His mind went utterly blank. Time stopped. The existence of the world lost its meaning. Tom stared at these words, re-reading them again, and again, and again.

I Am Lord Voldemort.

Tom Riddle. Voldemort.

He was Voldemort.

He was Voldemort. All this time, he was watching himself, and he didn’t even realise this.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Tom recoiled from the damning words so violently that he lost his balance and collapsed onto the wet floor. His body didn’t feel the impact — it couldn’t, he didn’t even have it here, but it still burned, it still groaned and shuddered, as if the weight of his mind and his feelings was too much for it to bear.

“It can’t be,” he tried to speak. No words reached his ears, so he did it again. “It’s not possible. I’m not him.”

Still nothing.

Acid burned at the back of his throat. His stomach contorted in pained shock, and then the terrible screaming something filled his ears, crawling in them until it was the only sound they could perceive. It was violent and shredding — it echoed in his very bones.

He was Voldemort. All along, he was Voldemort. He’d killed Harry’s parents. He tried to kill Harry. He made so many Horcruxes that he had gone insane, losing his mind along with his powers, losing the respect of his followers, leaving only fear in its place.

He wasn’t the right hand of Harry’s nemesis. He was his nemesis. Harry had spent his entire first life hating and fearing him — he had single-handedly ruined Harry’s existence so thoroughly that Harry was forced to escape into the past. To accept guardianship over someone who tortured and destroyed him.

An icy fist closed around his lungs, clawing and squeezing the remains of air out of them. Tom gasped, his body jerking in odd abrupt movements that he had no control over. The next second, the contours of the Chamber of Secrets faded, melting back into Harry’s bedroom. The phantoms of the past were gone — they stayed trapped in the Pensieve, but their terrible echoes remained with Tom. They latched onto his mind with hungry vengeance, throwing an image after an image of the pictures he had seen when he was first watching Harry’s memories.  

It didn’t matter then. Those pictures were just that — the images of a monster he didn’t know and had no direct relationship with. But recalling them now and putting his own face onto them…

His mind rebelled. Tom pressed his hands to his ears, trying to silence the screaming, but it kept getting louder. It hurled accusations and mockeries, painted every crime he committed, every time he hurt Harry and raised his wand against him.

There was no silencing something like this. The only thing Tom could do was outcry it, so he screamed, too.

He found that he couldn’t stop.

***

That night, he added just one sentence to his letter.

Why would you love me?

*** 

The sleep didn’t come. The desire to tear into his skin and shred it until physical pain remained the only sensation was strong, but every time Tom raised his wand or his hands, he stopped.

He wanted to hurt himself. He didn’t want to hurt Harry.

It was easier before. In Harry’s absence, for a long time, he’d been putting his own hurt above everything, even above Harry himself; he’d marred his skin without care, wanting, needing acknowledgement.

But he couldn’t do it now. The thought of leaving even a small scratch on Harry made him sick.

That cursed ritual.

Tom managed to stay physically intact throughout the night, yet he spent it curled into a tight ball, shaking under the pressure of ache and grief and emotions he couldn’t identify. There were so many of them — they were crowding his chest, interfering with his heart, making him feel like he was about to explode with them.

When the morning came and nothing changed, Tom made himself get up. He cooked breakfast, then stared at it silently, knowing that he could never eat it without vomiting it back.

He needed… something. Something comforting. Harry wouldn’t return; Harry’s blanket and things no longer produced the same soothing effect, so it had to be something new.  

If he could capture Harry’s Patronus into some vial… if he could consume the letters Harry had written him…

The letters. He still had the letters. They were the last thing he’d gotten from Harry — they had his personality, his handwriting; they had a whole part of him because Tom could easily trace the story of their creation. From the pressure Harry had applied to a quill in different instances, it was evident where he hesitated, where he took a break, where he got anxious or passionate. It was the closest thing to him Tom had in his possession now.

Without thinking further, he returned to the bedroom and grabbed the last letter. His eyes immediately zeroed in on three specific half-lines.

…I’m going to keep explaining until you do.

…I’ve promised you’ll always be my priority.

…I might consider returning.

A promise of future communication.

The use of future tense.

Future possibility.

This was evidence. Whatever Tom was, Harry didn’t give up on him. Harry still loved him. He might still return.

Tom closed his eyes, nuzzling into the letter, and finally, for the first time in hours, the ache lessened. The sick feeling grew dimmer, too, and he felt solid and grounded again. When he pulled back, his gaze dropped to another passage.

Watch those memories. Don’t contact me until you do.

Tom pressed his lips to these lines, trying to breathe them in, feeling how their rough surface scratched his mouth.

Permission to contact Harry. He still had it. He was simply supposed to meet Harry’s condition.

That meant that he had to return to the Pensieve. The sooner he was done, the closer to Harry he could feel again.

Carefully, Tom folded the letter and put it in his pocket. If things got bad again, he could always touch it and remind himself of the future.

The memories weren’t a punishment. They were a chance to improve things.

Tom couldn’t really be certain, but he preferred to cling to this notion.

This made things easier at least to a small degree.

*** 

He chose to return to the start of the memory. Silently, he watched his shadow speak with Harry, lingered on how it hissed the words of self-admiration and hung onto its useless pride.

“I fashioned myself a new name,” Riddle boasted breathlessly, “a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!”

“You are not,” Harry said quietly. Despite his age, his resolution was steely, and if Tom had to choose whom he admired more at this moment... it wouldn’t even be a competition.

“Not what?” Riddle snapped. Insecurity and rage were twisting his ghostly face — it was a pitiful display. If the words of a 12-year-old boy had the power to affect him, then he had not only failed at greatness, he was also a failure of a sorcerer.  

“Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore,” Harry said hotly. “Everyone says so!”

The reasoning was… like that of a child. Even though his stomach was clenched into a tight knot, Tom smiled a little, suddenly overcome with a rush of gentleness and fondness for this particular version of Harry.

He was trusting. He was pure in a way that even his Harry wasn’t — he didn’t see death and destruction yet; he was not betrayed by Dumbledore.

He was not betrayed by Tom.                              

The smile disappeared, leaving Tom hollow.

When Dumbledore’s phoenix burst into the Chamber, carrying the Sorting Hat, Riddle laughed, and Tom laughed with him — only his laughter was hysterical because all pieces in his head suddenly clicked into one clear picture.

Dumbledore. Of course. Of course it was Dumbledore’s plan all along, how did he not see this from the start?

Harry hadn’t sneaked into the Chamber secretly — Dumbledore allowed him to. Dumbledore was likely watching him even now, invisible, waiting for the outcome.

Harry was a Horcrux, and Horcruxes could be destroyed with basilisk’s venom.

This was a test. Dumbledore wanted to see if he could get rid of the Horcrux inside Harry without necessarily killing him. The Hat was here to give Harry the Sword — with his mindless bravery, it was not a surprise that he could pull it out. The phoenix was here to decrease the chances of Harry dying and to heal him after he was stabbed.

Clever. And enraging. Because for Dumbledore, Harry was a game piece. For Tom, he was the world.

He would have let Voldemort live for a thousand of years. He would have allowed him to destroy this universe until nothing was left if it meant he could keep Harry safe. Dumbledore would never prioritise one over a billion, and for that, Tom hated him.

“Kill him,” Riddle hissed. The words sent a jolt of automatic panic through him, and Tom moved between Harry and the basilisk before he could think rationally about it.

The snake was magnificent, there was no denying it. Even the first time, when he’d been distracted to the point of ignorance, he stopped to watch it because it was breath-taking in every way.  

There was only one drawback. It wanted to kill Harry, and it meant that Tom would see it destroyed.

Harry broke into a run with his eyes shut. He managed to half-cross the room when he tripped and crashed down, his chin colliding with the cold stone. The sound of it launched Tom into immediate action again before he could stop his stupid feet.

Feeling this protective for such an extended period of time was exhausting. His heart kept hammering relentlessly and his hands were itching with magic, needing to pour it somewhere to protect Harry and to make sure he never got hurt again. How could anyone live in such a state?

The basilisk roared from pain when Dumbledore’s phoenix attacked it. Its tail whipped across the floor, approaching Harry with deadly speed, and Tom’s heart stopped. It stumbled forwards again only when Harry ducked, crouching, dirty and bloodied but with determination still burning brightly on his face. He was beautiful and desperate, and Tom would have cradled him in his arms if he could touch him.

A gust of wind sent the Hat right in Harry’s face. He grabbed it, put it onto his head, and threw himself to the side when the basilisk’s tail snapped forward again, almost crushing him into nothingness.

This was all strategic. It wasn’t a coincidence that the phoenix appeared immediately after Harry pledged his loyalty to Dumbledore. This was training — training in blind devotion, in recklessness, in self-sacrifice. And Harry had no idea.

At least this Harry didn’t. The adult version knew everything yet he still seemed to hold deep respect for Dumbledore.

Perhaps some training was too ingrained to ever fade from one’s core. This explained… almost everything about Harry. If Tom got another chance to make things right, he would dedicate himself entirely to removing these suicidal ideas from his head once and for all.

Harry pulled out the Sword from the Hat. He spent only a second on contemplating it — the next one, he was already standing and pointing it at the basilisk.  

Nothing about this picture was palatable. The sword was too heavy for a child his size: Harry was struggling with it, and the basilisk kept thrashing, hitting everything in sight. How he survived was a matter of miracle. If he had died… If he’d died, this would be it. Tom would never be the person he was now. He would be limited to a memory in his own diary, to a ruin incapable of human thought. He would never get his second chance, and the life as he knew it would never exist.

Terror that rolled through him could only be rivalled by the sheer horror of witnessing the basilisk’s fang separate itself from its mouth and plunge into Harry’s arm. Static electricity burned somewhere above his elbow in a phantom sensation of pain Harry had to be experiencing. It wasn’t real, but Tom’s breathing still quickened, and his fingers wrapped around his arm convulsively.

He couldn’t tell if the fang fell out because Harry had aimed his Sword there or if it was Dumbledore again. Either way, Harry was dying, and even though Tom knew he’d survive, watching this was no less excruciating.

“Fawkes,” Harry murmured hoarsely. His eyes were fluttering shut in an image that came straight from Tom’s worst nightmares. “You were fantastic, Fawkes.”

Giving praise to an impervious bird when life was bleeding out of him. Harry was insane. He was the Harry — his Harry. It was no wonder that an overwhelming longing for him had been and was going to be Tom’s undoing in every life he lived.

“You’re dead, Harry Potter,” Riddle crowed, and Tom turned to face him with a snarl.

He hated this version of himself. Hated him. It was just a shard of him, dull and shallow, and if this underwhelming thing was ever his future, he would have preferred death.  

Riddle wasn’t a powerful wizard. Even now, when faced with a dying wandless boy, he was too wary of making his own move. He let the basilisk be his weapon; he was watching Harry die and not intervening because he was intimidated.

Though perhaps it made sense. Maybe even Riddle could see Harry’s brilliance despite his narrow-mindedness — maybe, beneath the hatred and the fear, he was fascinated. Tom knew he would be.

Harry might not have much power, and he certainly didn’t at the age of twelve, but he still managed something no other wizard had tried. He’d defeated a giant basilisk with a sword; his agility was almost otherworldly as he twisted, crouched, and ducked from the heavy blows.

This was worthy of admiration. Even Riddle couldn’t be that blind so as to miss it.

When the phoenix healed Harry, Riddle didn’t cry out in alarm or anger like Tom might have expected him to. Instead, his face shifted between different conflicting expressions, and his eyes regained the hungry glint Tom found intimately familiar.

“It makes no difference,” Riddle spoke confidently, with only the tiniest twitch of uncertainty underneath. “In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter... you and me.”

The surprising jealousy raised its ugly head, making Tom tense. He didn’t know in what way his shadow meant these words — he didn’t like to think about it either. It didn’t matter any way because there would never be such thing as Riddle and Harry, not until Harry came back to the past and gave the real Tom a chance at rebirth.

Without answering, Harry stabbed the diary with the fang, his eyes glistening with fevered hatred. Even Riddle’s piercing scream didn’t shake Tom the way this look had. He barely heard a sound through the sudden roaring in his ears, the sudden realisation that this was Harry’s first and last meeting with an actual Tom Riddle. Voldemort was a monstrosity with a face Tom refused to claim, but physically, Riddle was him.

How did Harry feel, watching him grow up? Had he ever looked at him and seen Riddle from the Chamber of Secrets? How could the feeling of love prevail over the feeling of hatred the 12-year-old Harry was currently wearing?

Tom turned away, unable to keep looking. His throat was dry, and as his knees started to shake, threatening to buckle right under him, he thrust his hand into his pocket, gripping the letter there.

In some other world, this moment had been Riddle’s end. But it wouldn’t be his.

He could do better. He would do better.

He’d finish watching these memories, he’d complete his letter to Harry, and then he’d start working. Harry would never look at him like he had at Riddle. In years, the memories of the Chamber of Secrets would fade; Riddle would become a shadow of a shadow, and Tom’s image would outshine him. It would take precedence in Harry’s mind.

This determination washed away the worms of doubts and self-hatred. When the new wave of memories swept him along, Tom felt prepared to face them.  

[adhdeancas]

Hey I'm being mentally ill on main again but like I just really want some kind of reunion scene between Claire and Jimmy but Claire never knew Jimmy was trans and Claire was just starting to socially transition to being a girl when Cas took Jimmy the first time so they have like. These things that change each other's perception of the other but it only makes them closer.

oh your mind your mind, how i love you

Claire visits her dad in heaven

“Dad?” The word slips out of Claire’s mouth before she can think about it, the emotion of the moment overriding her common sense. It has to be Cas. She knows what Jack said, promised, but… it can’t be. Not really.

Jimmy turns around. “Claire-bear!”

He smiles wide and opens his arms, and Claire remembers this day. The waning afternoon sun, the barbeque seasoning covering his hands up to his wrists, the pork chops laying forgotten on the counter beside him in favor of greeting her. She takes halting steps to him, not trusting it completely. His grin is unwavering; he swipes a finger across her forehead and paints it orange with spice. 

She had giggled, she remembers. That day, she had giggled and wrapped her arms around his middle and told him about her time at Sadie’s house. This time, she stands still and looks. 

“Claire?” 

Jimmy’s smile drops, just for a moment. “Hi, Dad.” She can see him realizing like he’s coming out of a dream, realizing that the girl standing in front of her is not his 8 year old. “Yeah, I’m… I’m not in your head.”

He looks around the kitchen, eyebrows furrowed. Claire looks around too, at the family home that seems like it’s from a lifetime ago, at the decorative plates that she sold on Ebay after her mom left, the favorite one she’d smashed to bits on a bad night. The pictures of the life that got ripped away from her. “Your mom’s making mac n cheese… with the pork chops,” he says quietly. “Sound good?”

Claire bites her lip. Jimmy keeps staring out the kitchen window. “Dad, look at me.” She reaches out and grabs his hand hard, crushing his knuckles under her grip. He looks at her.

“Claire, you’re-” He frowns, eyes flitting over her. She looks down self-consciously. Her ripped jeans and beaten up tank wouldn’t exactly have flown in her childhood home, let alone the tattoos climbing their way up her arm. Protective sigils and Kaia’s doodles, stick-and-pokes from Alex. And she does look a little… different from when he last saw her. Boobs, for one thing. A decade and HRT will do that for you.

“Yeah, I know. I grew up.” It comes out a little harsher than she’d intended. Jimmy flinches back out of her grasp, tearing up.

“You must hate me.”

She crosses her arms and swallows. “Yeah, I do.” She sighs. “You left me. When I was just a kid. When I had just told you-” that I was a girl. She clears her throat. “You walked out and demons waltzed right into our life. And mom- mom was just a shell. Her perfect husband? Gone. My perfect dad?” she wiped the seasoning off her forehead with a fist. “Gone. And I had to raise myself. I had to figure out how to survive… alone.” Jimmy hangs his head, tears slipping down his face. Claire steps closer and waits until he looks back up at her. “But you know what? I learned a lot. About me, about you…” She shakes her head. Cas had shown her the miniscule scars on his chest, barely visible after years of healing. Only visible because Cas let them be. “So yeah, I hate you. And I love you. And... I get it. I would’ve gone too far, too, to do the right thing.” She had a few times. “I would’ve sacrificed myself to save the people I love.” She had tried to, for months after Kaia… 

Jimmy looks down at his feet. 

“I forgive you. I forgive you for all of it. Everything.” 

Her dad blinks. He looks at her. “Claire,” he pulls her close and hugs her and this time, she lets him. She lets herself sink into her dad’s arms and feel safe, because this time it isn’t a dream. This time his eyes won’t blink black and he won’t cough up blood and she won’t feel the burn of Castiel’s grace inside her. This time it’s actually her dad, even if she’s only visiting his slice of heaven, and he actually sees her. “My beautiful daughter. Claire, I’m so sorry.”

Claire pulls away sniffing. “Let’s skip over the mushy stuff while I’m here, ‘kay?” Jimmy nods gratefully. “Wanna play Uno?”

Jack had slipped her a pack of cards before she’d gone in, and she pulls them out now. Surprisingly, they’d been a good idea. Jimmy grins. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Cool. Then you can tell me why you never told your trans daughter that you were the one who gave birth to me.”

Jimmy’s laugh comes out tinged with tears, but they’re the giddy kind, the kind that can’t believe this is happening. They sit at the table and Claire deals. “Your mom didn’t want-”

Claire waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Amelia.” she snorts and looks up, and Jimmy’s wearing the same bittersweet expression. “You start.”

Jimmy takes a moment to look at his cards, but Claire knows he’s thinking of what to say. “You look good.” he finally decides. He lays a card down. “I never got to tell you after- when I came back…” Claire presses her lips together and stares at her own hand. “The long hair suits you.”

Claire runs a hand through her hair, swearing to herself she isn’t blushing. “Yeah, my girlfriend thinks so too.” she ventures, laying down a +4 card like a challenge. “Green.”

Jimmy’s expression is an indescribable mix of happy and proud. Claire has only seen it on his face a few times, ironically mostly with Cas’s subdued version. He takes four cards like it’s nothing. “Well, she has good taste.”

Claire’s mouth twists into a grin. “Yeah. I’m lucky to have her. Lucky to have everybody I’ve got.”

“I’m… I’m so glad, Claire.”

His voice has turned strained. She squints at him. “That includes you, dumba-” He raises an eyebrow and she stops. “Dad.” 

Jimmy reaches across and grabs her hand. “Claire-”

“I’ve kinda got an in with God now, so, you’re probably gonna be playing Uno a lot more,” she says casually, taking her hand away so she can keep playing. She doesn’t look up at him.

“I like Uno.”

“Good.” She lays down another +4. “Yellow.”

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

the last of my thoughts on the homecoming au, the au where maedhros and maglor are taken back to tirion at the end of the war of wrath and proceed to be relentlessly abused by elves more interested in them being ‘normal’ than happy. it’s pretty much exactly as dark as you’d expect from that description, lots of medical/caretaker abuse towards the mentally ill, just a horrible situation in general. one last time, @sunflowersupremes wrote the original au this is an extrapolation from, and @outofangband listened to me blather on about this for ages and contributed lots of ideas of their own. part 1 is here, part 2 is here. this the last part, it isn’t quite as intense as part 2, but it’s a lot more hopeless. also there’s some off-screen torture

on the first post i made about this au, i got some comments to the effect of ‘oh this will only last until person x bails them out’

there were several suggestions - fingon, nerdanel, any of the ainur. it seems like there are a lot of people who’d want to get maedhros and maglor out of this nightmare

seems. these aren’t necessarily my usual interpretations of their characters, but for the purposes of this au i can easily imagine a finrod who already bore a grudge over the whole letting-their-younger-brothers-steal-his-kingdom incident and subsequently heard the version of the nirnaeth where the fëanorians left everyone else to die. he is the only other person in the palace who knew beleriand, and he loathes them so viciously he can barely stand to look at them. they’re lucky he doesn’t do worse

i can easily imagine a nerdanel who was already having trouble processing what her husband and sons did at alqualondë when eärendil and elwing told her every awful thing they’d done since in the span of half an hour. she smashed all their statues, burned all their gifts, and curled up sobbing in a ruined house, wondering why she was such a terrible mother her children grew into demons

and this isn’t long after that, that wound is still fresh. whatever vain hopes she held that the boys she loved were somewhere in there are shattered when she sees them, and they’re talking and laughing just like they did when they were young

like nothing had happened. like nothing had changed. like the monsters had always been waiting patiently for their chance to strike

(they just didn’t want her to see the things they’d become)

i can easily imagine a fingon who is blazingly furious with maedhros over the later kinslayings. he spends most of their only meeting railing at maedhros, and the apologia his caretakers offer up only makes him angrier

so does the fact that maedhros won’t defend himself, won’t even raise his voice. does none of this matter to him? did it ever?

(it does. but maedhros knows what will happen if he yells at his cousin, and he is just so exhausted)

fingon is eventually asked to leave. maedhros’ minders tell him that if he can’t keep his temper around their patient, they’re going to have to cut off contact until maedhros is in a better mental state. fingon snaps that that’s just fine by him, and storms off into the city, trying to hold back his tears

the ainur, now, the ainur would definitely drag them out of the palace and haul them up to the máhanaxar. finarfin’s managed to get as much out of eönwë

what would happen to them after that, eönwë refuses to say. finarfin suspects he doesn’t know, and none of the valar will until they’ve had a chance to actually, like, hold a trial

even so, it becomes pretty obvious to finarfin fairly early on that the noldor simply can’t give the brothers the help they need. it’s plain to see that they’re very unhappy and they’re recovering slowly if at all. whatever the valar decide to do with them, odds are good they’d end up in some permutation of elf afterlife therapy, with well-practiced carers and the family they’ve lost. for their sake, and the sake of the people around them, handing them over to the valar would clearly be the best option

except finarfin doesn’t. he keeps his nephews in his palace, where they break things and make messes and generally give their caretakers constant headaches. when asked why, he always talks about the soul-deep terror on maglor’s face when he asked him not to give them to the valar

he’s not lying about that. but he does have other motives

there’s lots of suppositions in finarfin’s reasoning. there’s every chance the valar would throw them into the deepest depths of mandos until the second music. there’s every chance maedhros would choose to disappear into the woods and never trouble court again

but if the valar do decide to send them to lórien with no limits on their movement, and if maedhros does still harbour nelyafinwë’s political ambitions...

the closest finarfin has gotten to admitting it, even to himself, is saying that the noldor have enough problems right now, they don’t need a succession crisis on top of everything else. sometimes he’ll joke about not wanting maedhros to set up another functionally autonomous military government out in the wilderness

but it’s hard to deny that a maedhros, free to act, with his head screwed on straight, could potentially be the single biggest threat to finarfin’s crown

not that he doesn’t want his nephews to get better! it’s heartrending to see the pain they’re in, he sincerely wants to see them happy

he’d just prefer them to be happy in a way that's... convenient

maedhros and maglor’s contact with the outside world is kept to a strict minimum and heavily monitored when it does happen. they’re only allowed to visit the public parts of the palace when their caretakers know exactly who’s going to be there and if they can be trusted to not make a fuss about the brothers’ presence

it’s all in the interest of keeping the peace, you understand. maedhros’ followers are difficult to handle at the best of times, if they somehow got it into their heads that the last of their lords were being held captive in the palace...

well, finarfin says over tea. maitimo can see the wisdom in not provoking a civil war, can he not?

(he will not bring death to the blessed realm again. not even if his last baby brother is rotting away to a shell, not even if he’s being smothered to death from the inside out. he will not, he must not)

(if he did, there would truly be nothing left but the monster)

and then, one day, maglor gets the chance to escape

his minders aren’t paying much attention to him, he’s been a lot quieter since they put the gag on him. he’s small and fast and good at sneaking around, by the time they notice he’s missing he’s already found a way out of the palace

he jumps out of a third-floor window, bites down the pain, and runs. he clears the grounds and disappears into the city

he makes for - he doesn’t know where. subconsciously, he navigates towards the craft guild districts, where his family’s staunchest supporters always were

except the city’s changed a lot since he was last loose in it, and before he knows it, he’s completely lost. he wanders the streets half in a daze, his raw nerves unused to the bustle and noise of it all. wherever he goes, people stop and start and turn away

finally someone calls him over. ‘hey, you want that collar off your neck?’

it’s a smith of some sort, he can tell that much. they’re smiling, welcomingly and without pity. he’s rushing over to them, nodding his head, before he can even think about

the trouble is, maglor doesn’t remember the faces of most of the people he saw in beleriand, but they all remember him

the trouble is, this smith was at sirion

back in the palace, who gets access to the brothers is very strictly controlled. which isn’t to say that nobody tries to hurt them; finrod tends to put the worst spin on things when he’s asked for advice, there’s all kinds of minor acts of sabotage, and they come across innocuous-seeming harmful objects more often than mere chance would seem to allow

but even their caretakers can tell that letting desperate revenge-seekers get near the brothers wouldn’t be particularly conducive to whatever recovery they’re hoping for. anyone who might randomly come across maedhros or maglor in a hallway is intensely vetted for ulterior motives, and while this process isn’t airtight it does filter out the most obviously malicious

and outside of that bubble, none of that applies. the smith does take maglor’s gag off, purely to hear him scream

soon enough, the palace guard tracks him down. they take him back to the palace, where he’s bandaged up and comforted and then, as a special treat, allowed to see his brother

(they’re kept apart more often than not these days. being around maglor makes maedhros agitated, being around maedhros makes maglor sullen. they’re just more cooperative when they’re alone)

maglor does the same thing he’s done every time he’s seen his brother for the past year, which is immediately bury his face in maedhros’ chest and shudder. it takes him a moment to remember he can speak now

‘we’re trapped’ he whispers. ‘we’re trapped’

because he was screaming for what felt like hours, and nobody came to help. as he was being carried back to the palace, he saw the scorn and the disgust in the passers-by’s eyes

there’s nobody who will shelter them outside the palace. there’s nowhere on this continent they can go

and that - that’s the end, in a way. maedhros remains stubborn and ill-tempered, never quite letting them forget he doesn’t want to be here and doesn’t like what they’re doing, but the fight goes out of him. he does what they tell him just as biddably as he did before they took his brother’s voice

maglor, surprisingly, takes a turn for the better. he starts acting cheerful again, doing everything that’s asked of him with a smile and a wink. he’s making excellent progress, his minders tell finarfin

(they don’t tell him what maglor looks like when the mask starts to crack)

finarfin is very pleased to hear that one of his nephews is finally starting to recover! it’s been a long, painful journey, but it looks like it’s all at long last working out

to celebrate, he decides to give maglor a gift he’s been holding onto for a while

he calls maglor into his office. the tension in his posture is a bit worrying, but his expression is all makalaurë, a casual, mildly disrespectful grin. he swans into the room, flounces into a chair, and asks what his uncle wants

finarfin praises him for all the progress he’s been making, and hands him a letter

it’s from elros

the first line is ‘how are you doing, you old bastard?’ it calls him a kinslayer six different ways in the first three paragraphs. it asks him how many people he’s stabbed since he got back. it closes off by wishing him some fun loud arguments with maedhros

finarfin was a little concerned maglor still not might be in the right emotional state for it, but the tightness bleeds out of his nephew’s frame as he reads. a couple of times he even bursts into snickering that sounds more genuine than any sound he makes in court

he finishes reading with a truly relaxed smile on his face. then he freezes, and looks up at finarfin

in a tiny, quiet voice, so unlike the way he talks nowadays, he asks, ‘may i write a reply?’

finarfin hates to take the wind out of his sails, but maglor deserves to know. ‘that letter is centuries old. i’ve been holding onto it until you were ready to read it.’ he shuts his eyes. ‘i’m afraid elros passed some time ago’

maglor’s head drops. the letter in his hands begins to shake. little whimpers escape his trembling body. finarfin walks over, places a hand on his shoulder. ‘i’m sorry, we -’

that’s not whimpering, finarfin realises. those are growls. his nephew’s head snaps up, face twisted with rage

maglor tries to tear finarfin’s face off -

and that’s all i have. these headcanons have been exhausting to write, i’ll clean them up and put them on ao3 in a bit, but not now, if for no other reason than it’s 3am. again. i hope these weren’t too incoherent. going to try to unbanjax my sleep schedule now

[59writes]

SEVENTEEN - WITCH OF THE WOODS

welcome to my first little “choose your own adventure” series!! lol

I will (obviously) not do these all at once, so stay tuned!!!

If you want a particular scenario or member (etc.) to be done first or added, feel free to drop a request in my asks!!

enjoy!!

Living out in the woods has its perks.

First off, nobody visits. Those who do have to be directed to your home, meaning you know them well. No salesmen, no solicitors, no Girl Scouts.

Second of all, nobody’s there to ask questions about the plumes of purple smoke that occasionally come out of your chimney or the screeching noises that bounce through the woods as you coax baby phoenixes out of their shells (they’re nasty when they’re young).

Third: you didn’t have to ever interact with a single human again if you didn’t want to. Not one little old lady digging her nose into where it didn’t belong, or calling the cops because your damn birds decided to have a screech-fest again. None. Zero.

Okay. Maybe they’re all the same reason. But still.

Peace, quiet, and privacy.

You have a few visitors, every so often. There’s Hongjoong, who visits once a month or so to get away from the rest of his pack (werewolves are so clingy sometimes and Wooyoung bites too much, apparently). He stays for a little food and some gifts for the others before slipping off into his wolf form to run back into the woods.

Felix visits often as well, his adventures requiring his plants be taken care of while he’s away. You’ve known the forest spirit since you were tiny, with his sun-dappled cheeks and healing smile- so he knows he can trust you with his precious babies while he goes to rescue some grove from humans with chainsaws. He sends Jeongin with the plants, sometimes, the siren swimming up the nearby stream to deliver them with a tiny wave, accepting a cookie or potion with a teeny “thank you” before swimming off again.

Chuu visits once in a blue moon, the faerie only stopping to trade potions and stories before hurriedly vanishing into the woods, sending a shimmering wave back as she eagerly continues her explorations to help the citizens of the forest.

And of course, your other witch friends, who often very exuberantly busted through your door at the most inconvenient times (looking at you, Mark and Jaemin). They’d pet your birds and help clean up your work station if it’s deemed too cluttered before leaving as quickly as they came, only stopping by on their way to the city (you never did really understand why they liked interacting with humans). They’d brought one to meet you once, a tall man named Johnny, who was (admittedly) very polite and handsome. He’d known witches before, so it was kind of cheating- he wasn’t a normal human free of any magical contact. Mark even admitted that they’d let Johnny help with spells (they’re insane).

But truly, it had been a long time since you’d met a real human. You’d heard stories, sure, but you preferred to keep to yourself in the woods. Witches weren’t much different than humans on a surface level, and often interacted with witches just fine without either party having a problem, but somehow being near humans made your skin prickle. Jaemin always joked that it was a soul connection, proving your most powerful magic was with interacting with humans, but you always shot him a glare before returning to your spells.

You prayed he wasn’t right. Finding your soul connection was a grueling process, and you enjoyed your mixed magics enough to ignore whatever instinctive calls you felt in your chest, wanting more time to enjoy and try all the options, see what magic sources you could tap into.

And that was the way things were, for a long time. You tended to your creatures, made potions and herb blends that multihued birds picked up to take back to their owners, and slept peacefully as the frogs croaked outside, your own version of a bustling city.

That is, until he arrived.

🌿 !! MAKE YOUR CHOICE !! 🌿

• seungcheol • jeonghan • joshua • junhui • soonyoung • wonwoo • jihoon • seokmin • mingyu • minghao • seungkwan • vernon • chan •

[cloudstarcats]

Icarus (And in the End)

There is a cliff Roman visits when he needs stillness. It is a cliff where he goes to try and grow. Where he tried to achieve more. where he changes where he decides, "Does Thomas still need me?"

Fandom: Sanders sides Ao3 link

Warnings: Roman angst, negative self talk, things get sad

(Inspired heavily by the song "Icarus" by Bastille. I recommend you listen to it before reading)

In the Imagination, there is a cliff. The cliff stands above an ocean, and from it, you can see the entire imagination.

Roman’s castle, his small towns, the hut and cave of the Dragon-Witch, the cove of shells made when Thomas watched Ariel- where an underwater kingdom would come up to talk and trade and live with a seaside village, a city of bird people, an elf outcropping.

You could see Remus’s tower, his kingdom of orcs and people whose eyes glowed red, blue, rainbow, whose sky was changing constantly, the cities of plague, the train station and industrial district of Hades town, the salon filled with men and women Roman swore were succubuses, his grotto of poison plants and sunlight, the Naga cave for Janus, the graveyard for halloween, and days on.

You could see the borderlands, the large castle in the center that housed two flags- a green flag that looked torn apart by war and a red flag that always looked pristine, almost metallic. The city that spanned below it, the crest on the gates that faced the Cliff- a shield with a sword facing point to the ground behind it, a castle of three turrets and a large tower in the shield’s design, a crown holding the shield and sword and all of it together.

Roman loved the cliff. Loved the fresh air, loved watching the world from here- because it didn’t feel like he was watching it from the eyes of a god, a creator, as one would assume from the height advantage. He felt… small. Small and real and distanced in the land he and his brother made. He loved watching the merfolk in the coves, the Kraken playing with the smaller mers, the pirate ships that docked and invaded and traded, the bustle so quiet and muted. He loved the sun shining against him, loved the rain when it poured or drizzled, the sunsets, the sunrises, the twilights and magic hours and golden hours and everything in between.

The cliff is the place he went for stillness, for quiet, for when he couldn’t name the feelings in his chest, for when he didn’t know what to do. It was the place he went to grow, the place he went to achieve more, the place he changed at. It was the place he went when he and Remus had split. It was the place he went after Thomas was heartbroken, before Patton came to comfort him.

So after the newest episode, after he had apologised to Janus and left before receiving a reply, after he had walked for what felt like hours and nothing at the same time, he stood at the cliff.

When he and Remus were young, they gave themselves many different things. Additions, traits, dyed hair and colored eyes, in the Imagination anything was possible. Remus had liked the red eyes he already had, and so he let them shine the color of blood, much to Roman’s amusement when they started to actually bleed- which his twin fixed right away.  Roman had green eyes and he kept them, but he made them more vibrant- to match Remus’ new costume.

“What next?” Remus asked, hanging from their wardrobe by his knees, in the bedroom that once held a large bed and now held two bunk beds. He tilted his head and Roman shrugged, huffing out a breath.

“I don’t know! Ughhhh this is so annoying~!” Roman whined, flopping down into a pile of plushies they’d both added to, groaning. Remus watched him and giggled, then his eyes brightened and he squeaked.

He dropped off the wardrobe and jumped on Roman, making him let out a muffled “oof-”. “I know! Wings! And tentacles and hands and everything we could put on our backs!” The older creativity grinned, eyes shining.

Roman pushed Remus off him and rolled over to look at him. “Tentacles?” he asked, and Remus nodded, eyes sparkling as he nodded up and down. “Yeah! Like a Kraken! Can we make a Kraken?”

Roman shrugged. “I guess, I mean the lake is empty..” he mumbled. He glanced at the glass door that led to a balcony. “You could make it an ocean- it would fit better,” he suggested.

Remus nodded and waved his hand.  “Yeah yeah, I can do that later-” he waved, standing up and walking to the large mirror on the wall, twirling around and eyeing his back- wearing a black shirt with puffy sleeves and silver accents and a green sash tied into a bow at the back- a mirror image of Roman’s version in white, gold, and red- only Roman’s sash wasn’t tied in a bow and he didn't have puffy sleeves like Remus.

“Right now- I wanna have tentacles!” he grinned and snapped his fingers. Eight green tentacles appeared on his back, shiny and an emerald green- flecked with gold, matching Roman’s eyes.

Roman gazed at them, eyes wide. “Woah… bro they look perfect!” he grinned, popping up to poke them. “Woah! They’re squishy! But not slimy..?”

“Should they be?” Remus asked, and Roman shrugged. “In that case- I think I’ll make them slimy later, it’s your turn now!” he smiled at Roman and spun around to look at his brother.

Roman blinked and shrugged, looking down. “Oh uh… I don’t think tentacles would look so good on me,” he sighed. Remus tilted his head as Roman thought a bit, and looked outside at the lake- soon to be ocean- and saw a flock of birds.

“Do wings!” he exclaimed, and Roman looked back up, Remus smiling widely at him. “Bird wings! You’ll look like an angel!”

“But I don’t want white wings!” Roman whined, pouting. “They're not… enough. I want them to be eye catching and shiny and cool like your tentacles!” he explained, and Remus hummed, plopping down to sit on the floor.

“What if they were… gold?” Remus asked, tilting his head to the side. Roman paused and thought a moment before nodding.

“You're smart, Re-Re,” he hummed, looking at him with a smile, and he snapped his fingers. A pair of golden wings appeared on his back, feathers soft to the touch, but still sleek and shiny metallic.

“Woah! They're so shiny!” Remus breathed, eyes sparkling as he got up to touch the feathers, running a hand through the feathers with a rather gentle touch. He grinned wider and Roman giggled at the contact.

“Ah! They’re ticklish, Re!” he whined, and his brother’s grin morphed into one of delight.

“They are?” he asked, and Roman backed away, laughing as Remus crept towards his twin, eyes sparkling as his hands and tentacles raised. “So if I-”

“Remus~!” Roman screamed and laughed, running away to avoid his twin as they two ran around the room- Remus trying to catch and tickle his brother while Roman laughed and stumbled around with his wings, attempting escape. The two didn’t stop laughing for hours, and Roman was caught. By sundown, both had fallen asleep in Remus’ top bunk, a pile of limbs and tentacles, two golden wings draped over them both like blankets as they slept.

Roman gazed at the ocean, the view beyond, thinking of that day. He shifted his wings, the same gold of years passed. Pristine, shiny, regal like a statue- a prince.

“You’re my Hero.”

He ignored the tears gathering in his eyes.

“Thank god you don’t have a mustache Roman, otherwise, I wouldn’t know who the evil twin was!”

The princely figure swallowed, he could hear the others calling at him, yelling for him to come down, but he steeled himself and looked past and up to the sky, at the sun. A breeze rustled his feathers, missing his hair. As it left he exhaled slowly, eyes closing for a moment as a tear tracked down his face, dropping to the ground quietly.

He would do this. For Thomas. Always for Thomas.

On the ground, the group watched Roman spread his wings, the gold of his feathers reflecting the sunlight around him, making him look like a shining statue, too incredible to be real.

“Roman! Stop-!” Virgil screamed, eyes widening as he saw what was to happen before the others, and he started to run, as if that could stop the inevitable.

It did not stop a single thing. Roman jumped off, ignoring the screams, the only noise was the wind in his ears, his wings beating as he flew. The sun shone on his face and he reached out, wings gliding across the air, the wind rushing in his hair and through every feather, and for a moment it was good. For a single, perfect moment where Virgil’s lungs couldn’t dare let out a scream, where Patton’s eyes gazed upon Roman’s face, heart stopping, where Logan could see the yearning shining in Roman’s eyes, even from a distance, it was good. In the mindscape Janus could feel a stillness, and he paused, turning his head, a tug in his chest, and Remus paused what he was doing in the living room.

“Remus..?” Janus asked, seeing the other side pause, the crazed look dying in his eyes like a fire burning out.

“...something is wrong,” he said softly, in a tone that scared Janus- because it was soft, scared, wounded, dead. He looked up and his morning star fell to the floor- a soft thump, no explosion, no nothing- and he swallowed. “I.. I can feel it. In my chest,” he whispered, hand rising to grip at his top- and he looked away. “Roman.”

Janus felt his heart stop. “Roman…?” The ego. The thing Janus meant to protect. He could feel it curl in his chest, like vines growing around his lung, not invading them, but a presence- a weight where there was none before.

The two sank out and went to the imagination quickly, leaving an empty living room with a morningstar lying on the carpet, an unnatural stillness filling the air.

~~~

It was a small stutter. An inability to go on. An insecurity.

As he drew closer to the sky- to the shining sun- his wings failed. Stuttering to a stop, frozen in time like something had hit them, he was struck from the sky. His lips parted and he stared up at the sun as he fell towards the ocean under him, feeling his tears leave his eyes. He closed his eyes, smiling weakly at the sky before he plunged into the sea back first- Virgil's strangled scream following.

“No! Roman-!” He screamed, pushed to a sprinting pace as he raced to the cliff’s edge, tugging his jacket off before he dove into the sea below.

“Virgil-!” Patton screamed- following the other and reaching out for him, but Logan pulled him back  and into his chest, feeling Patton breakdown against him, his shaking sobs rough against his chest. Logan only stared, rubbing Patton’s back, the cold tears trailing down his face unfelt- he was numb.

In the water, Virgil swam down, trying to catch up to Roman’s rapidly sinking form. When he first dived in he was scared he’d miss the prince’s form, that Roman would sink to the bottom and Virgil would fail. He realised, as he swam down, this would not be the case.

Roman was too bright, too magical, to ignore as he sank down. The sunlight filtering through the darkening abyss below them caught on his wings, reflecting golden sunlight that swam across his face and made the water glow around him- as if he radiated pure gold and sunlight. His wings cupped him, his hair framing his face and floating across his skin, nearly covering his closed eyes. His lips were parted, and Virgil could see the last bubbles of the air that followed him as he fell down slip away- just as a bubble of air left Roman’s lips.

Virgil’s heart raced and he kicked harder, hand reaching out for Roman’s form like Roman’s had reached for the sun only moments ago, unable to entertain the idea, the mere thought, of Roman dying here. Not now, not ever, he couldn't allow this, he couldn't allow Roman’s grave to be here, his death, his early death- he couldn't.

Virgil reached, desperate, tears disappearing in the water surrounding them. He wouldn’t allow it.

In Roman’s mind, he remembered when Remus left him. He remembered when he didn’t speak to him, when he ignored him and glared. Remembered how he said he hated Roman, how he shoved him away when he got closer, when he tried to talk to him. How he was crying but he left anyway. How he left Roman alone in their childhood room, a room meant for the two of them, his gold wings dull and eyes filling with tears as he gripped a paper in his clenched fist. Remembered looking at the drawing he’d made for Remus, and later going to the side of the mind Remus claimed, scared and alone, and slipping the drawing carefully under the door of a tower that loomed above him like a warning to stay away.

Roman remembered leaving this morning, remembered the odd looks at him in nothing but his usual attire, no sword, when he told them how he was going on an adventure. Remembered Patton’s worry over his lack of equipment- but he didn't need it where he was going. Even when he said that, Patton’s face did not relax, and Logan’s brows knit together as he attempted to understand where Roman meant to go. Remembered leaving the room and sighing softly, pulling out a letter he then slipped under the door. Remembered waiting, why did he wait, till someone took it and he heard the paper be unfolded before he left, turning his back, wings fading into existence.

Logan led Patton to the shoreline, the beach, for stability. Logically- the only way he could think, his emotions overwhelmed and not yet processing; logically he knew when Virgil came up, he had to, he had to, that he would swim to the beach.

In the water, a hand grasped Romans shirt. On land, eyes watched the water, and two minds let themselves hope.

Quiet filled the world for a moment, only the sounds of the shore and the stillness of the air and Patton’s soft cries could be heard. That was before Virgil burst out of the water, a loud crash and a gasp, dragging up with him a familiar head of brown hair and two limp, golden wings, trailing behind and filling the water with sunlight that didn’t belong.

~~~

Virgil swam towards shore, dragging Roman’s limp form with him. The prince’s lips were tinted blue and his skin was pale, a faint bluish purple tone to his fingers. Virgil kicked harder, gasping for air with the effort of dragging them both to shore from the cold waters. His legs burned, like his lungs, holding his breath so long had hurt more than he expected.

As he got closer to shore, Remus and Janus appeared from the woods nearby. Remus ran into the water, meeting Virgil halfway as he helped the other drag Roman’s unconscious form to shore. They pulled him up enough that the water only just touched his feet on the bigger waves, spreading him out so his wings had room; they dripped water and the gold was dull, no longer reflecting the sunlight as brightly as it did below the waves.

Patton and Logan stumbled over with help from Janus, whose face was ashen and eyes just a bit wider than normal. Patton kneeled besides Roman, holding his hand, Logan next to him, eyes still wide and almost unseeing, a hand on Patton’s shoulder as the moral side cried softly.

Remus moved to hold Roman’s head in his lap, eyes wide as he stared at the other- his unnatural silence disturbing and heartbreaking. He didn’t tear his eyes away, tears beginning to form in his eyes. Remus never cried, they would realise later. Then again… Roman had never looked so dead before.

Virgil looked at Roman’s limp form, face screwing up in anger and sadness. Hot, angry tears filled his eyes and he took a shaky breath. He gripped the fabric of his shirt, swallowing thickly.

Janus looked to him and bit his lips, eyes troubled and brows furrowed. “Virgil..” he said quietly, but the other cut him off.

“No,” he hissed. Virgil took a shaky breath. “Wake up, you idiot!” he snapped at Roman, glaring at the prince’s form. “Wake up you dumb, stupid, annoyingly sing-y idiot-” with every word he moved to hit Roman’s chest with the side of his first, but the actions were desprate and not meant to hurt like an attack, “-Wake up!” he sobbed, anger fading to show sorrow.

Janus reached out to touch Virgil’s shoulder as the anxious side cried, but Virgil slapped his hand away, eyes wide and red, his eyeshadow trailing down with his tears. Janus drew back and watched Virgil stand up and walk to a tree, shaking. The anxious side screamed and punched the tree, making Patton and Janus  flinch in sync at the loud thuds that followed.

Remus gazed down at Roman and bit his lips. “...Wake up,” he whispered, voice fragile, unheard by the rest of their small family. “...I can’t… I can’t lose you..” he said quietly, tears starting to roll down his cheeks as he bowed his head more, closing his eyes as sobs began to build in his chest.

Then Roman moved. His chest convulsed and he coughed, and Remus’s eyes shot open to see his brother struggling to expel the water filling his lungs. Remus quickly helped Roman to roll over, and Patton let go of Roman’s hands as he turned. The prince coughed out the water, left panting as Remus carefully rolled him back to his original position, eyes wide. Virgil had heard the coughing and rushed over, kneeling besides Roman again with wide eyes.

Remus bit his lips. “Ro-Ro?” he asked softly, and Roman looked up to his twin, vision swimming and fading at the edges.

“..Re…?” he mumbled, voice raspy.

Remus smiled a little and nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly. He sniffled a bit and drew Roman up, hugging him tightly. “Don’t do that again, you idiot,” He whispered, closing his eyes.

Roman nodded a little, and slowly managed to wrap his arms around Remus, wings curling around the other weakly. Patton moved closer and gently hugged the two twins, and Roman looked up, brows furrowing.

“Pat..” he whispered, and the moral side smiled sadly, nodding.

“I’m here kiddo,” he whispered. “We all are,” he murmured with a gentle smile, reaching out and petting Roman’s hair, watching with a gentle smile as he melted, nuzzling into the hold.

Logan came up and hugged Roman as well, Virgil and Janus following, till Roman was wrapped in the warmth of everyone’s arms. The Prince sniffled softly, and he closed his eyes, relaxing. Feeling safe, Roman let himself fall into unconsciousness, secure in the thought that he was safe with his family.

~~~

When the group did return home to the mindscape, it was quiet. Remus took care to hold his twin, whose wings were wrapped around the other carefully, and Remus didn't complain despite the wetness of his twin. Patton held Virgil’s jacket, walking with the anxious side as he took care to check on his hands, which were bleeding. Janus and Logan walked together, both quiet, keeping an eye on the group. Janus would glance at Logan, and his eyes never lost their worried look despite the fact Roman was no longer sinking and instead in the arms of his brother.

Patton and Remus helped to get Roman cleaned off and into warm clothes. The prince didn’t wake up as they worked, and Remus carried him to bed, curling up with his twin. Patton got a few blankets, and watched Remus start to card his finger’s through Roman’s feathers, grooming the golden wings.

As the two took care of Roman, Logan went to make them all some food, soup, while Janus helped to bandage Virgil’s hands. Virgil was quiet and didn’t speak at all, and the mood was morse. When the food was done, the three joined Patton and Remus in Roman’s room to eat.

As they ate, they talked. Remus told them about what happened when he and Roman stopped being close. Patton confided that he felt horrible for the split. Virgil murmured about his suspicions of Roman’s struggle. Janus talked about what might have caused their issues. Logan worked through a list of what they could do. At the end, they decided to set up a schedule to watch the Prince and make sure he recovered, and none of them felt comfortable not watching over Roman. The prince was weak, and at best they could all assume that whatever had happened had exhausted him, and he’d be sleeping for a while. So they started their daily rotations.

Every few hours and every night it was someone new. When Logan sat with Roman, he would read poetry to him in a quiet voice, calm. Other times, he would sit there quietly and hold his hand, tears slowly working their way down his face. Whoever switched with him wouldn’t bring it up, but when he returned to the common room, Virgil would hold out an arm and let Logan curl up next to him, and put on a documentary about the coral reef. Usually, Patton was next to check on Roman, and would spend his time reading books, talking about cooking, baking, telling dad jokes to a quiet room. Sometimes he would trail off and crawl next to Roman, petting his wings and holding his hand. Sometimes he fell asleep like that. When it was his turn to switch, he’d be woken up and would go back to the kitchen, quiet. Logan usually helped him bake, and Remus would help make Patton smile again.

Virgil usually went next, and he’d mostly spend his time sitting on the bed or the desk, listening to music. Even if he looked relaxed, his posture was just a bit tense. He never closed his eyes too long, and every so often he’d check Roman was breathing. When it was his time to switch, he’d leave the room and go to the couch to put the documentary back on. Janus followed next, and he was quiet as he sat with Roman, for ten minutes at least. Then he would talk, talk about the sky, tell small stories of dumb lies, talk about how sorry he was for what he said, how sorry he was to mislead Roman, how sorry he was he failed- for not doing his job and protecting Roman. Sometimes he wouldn’t even sit by him, he’d curl up next to him into his side and warmth, falling asleep.

Remus was last, and he always spent the night. He would curl up next to him and let his tentacles curl around Roman, he would groom his feathers and mess with his hair. He would talk about the day, talk about the ideas that came to mind, talk and talk till he fell asleep curled around his brother.

Recovery was… slow. It took a couple of days, days filled with worry and a house that was just too quiet, too still. The morning that Remus woke up to see Roman’s green eyes staring back at his was the day things began to get better.

That was the day Roman was basically attached to Remu’s side, wings curled around the other as he was carried around from his room to the commons for some food and cuddles. That was the day Roman and Janus apologised, and Janus promised that when he nodded, he was confirming that yes, Roman was Thomas’s hero, no matter what. That was the day Roman let the others pet his wings as he cuddled Remus, who was warm like a furnace in comparison to Roman’s slight natural chill, and melted at the contact he’d avoided for ages. That was the day that Roman was reminded he was loved.

The day after was the day Remus and Roman moved back to sharing a room, the day Remus teased Roman and they ended up running around to the others amusement, laughing and hiding and ending up on the top bunk, Roman laughing as Remus tickled him till they both fell asleep for a midday nap. That was the day Patton and Roman made dinner later that night, and they all curled up on the couch for a documentary, and Roman went to bed feeling loved.

The day after, Roman and Janus talked wing and scale care, and Roman felt loved. The day after, Logan and Roman discussed Roman’s wings as well, and Logan asked if he could fly high enough to see the stars, so they did, and Roman felt loved. The day after, Virgil, Roman, Remus, and Janus spent a day doing face masks and their nails and telling spooky stories before they fell asleep in a pile of pillow, blankets, and golden wings; and Roman felt loved. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the days that followed- Roman felt loved.

And yes, they argued, they fought, they had bad days. There were days Roman and Remus couldn’t stand each other, days Janus pushed a button, days Logan and Roman got in furious debates and screamed till their throats hurt, days Virgil would glare and hiss and Patton wouldn’t know an answer and they would all fight, days everything felt awful and bad and Roman wondered if they still loved him.

But even on those days Remus would slide into Roman’s bottom bunk and they’d cuddle all night, Janus an Roman would talk and have self-care spa days, Logan and Roman would spend hours writing poetry and finalizing stories, Virgil and Roman would talk about Disney movies and criticize the classics in their onesies, Patton would make cookies and talk to Roman and they would sit and cuddle. Despite everything, they would always remind Roman they loved him, and in turn he would as well.

And in the end, recovery took a while. Roman would have bad days, they all would, but Remus was never shy to remind him that he loved him, Janus would offhandedly drop a time for secret meeting (aka, their spa time), Logan would ramble about his wings, Patton would give him an extra hug, and Virgil would offer a small smile, quiet and solitary but it carried the meaning. “You good?”  And Roman would smile back. “Yeah. I’m good.” In the end, they were there for him, they were his family.

And in the end, Roman was loved.

[arrivisting]

I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

-

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

-

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

-

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

-

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

-

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

[gunterfan1992]

Interview with Half Shy (the songwriter of “Monster”)

For the last few months, I’ve been collecting information for a second edition of Exploring the Land of Ooo that will also cover the production of Distant Lands. This means that I’ve started to look into the new songs that we have been graced with this year, and this of course includes “Monster,” the beautiful track from the masterpiece that is “Obsidian”. And so I reached out to the song’s writer, Half Shy, who was kind enough to chat with me via email about the songwriting process!

(Photo courtesy of Half Shy)

In many ways, Half Shy is living the creative Adventure Time fan’s dream: She got asked by Adam Muto himself to write a song for “Obsidian” after he heard her music through Bandcamp! (I’ve dabbled in fan music before, and the fact that someone from the show might listen to it just blows my mind.) What an opportunity; I am so excited for her!

Since a second edition of my book won’t be coming out until after all the Distant Lands episodes air, I thought it would be best to share my Half Shy interview now. Read on for the fascinating behind the scenes story of how Half Shy and “Monster” came to be..

GunterFan: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in music, and how did the Half Shy project come to be?

Half Shy: I’ve been making music pretty quietly since I was in high school with a keyboard and guitar. I played one or two shows a year after college when I could find a friend or my brother to get up on stage with me, but I don’t really have that performer gene in me naturally. I get too much in my head and forget what the lyrics are to the song I wrote, or what the next chord is. Total brain freeze. So that whole experience is a bit of a mental drain. It’s something I think I’d like to dig into and figure out, but right now I’m really enjoying the time writing.

Even playing a song for my friends I still get pretty nervous. That’s where the name Half Shy comes from. I’ve always been interested in making things that by their nature draw a bit of a spotlight, but at the same time, I am just really quite nervous about the attention.

I recorded my first songs under my old name Hey V Kay in my bedroom and started putting them up online one at a time. When I got enough I thought about packaging it up into an album, but then got really distracted by learning how to fix up motorcycles and going to automotive tech school. When I eventually got back around to it I named the album Gut Wrenching.

After a few years I realized that I didn’t want the day-in-day-out life of a mechanic, I just wanted to know how to fix cars for myself and to have that knowledge in my back pocket. I got back into making music but grew frustrated at the process of writing and recording songs. I felt like I wasn’t able to capture the ideas I had in my head. Like trying to draw on your computer with a mouse. Doable, but it’s not going to come out like you’d hoped.

So these last couple of years I’ve focused more on learning the technical aspect of it, from the initial ideas and lyrics, to the recording and mixing. During that process I put out Bedroom Visionaries, and while writing I happened upon the name Half Shy in an old Thesaurus which felt instantly right. Learning all of that has been fun, I even went as far as to create my own book to solidify a daily writing routine (lyricworkbook.com). All that has been a bit of a tangent from actually making much music though. I should be getting my books in December from the press so I’m really looking forward to getting back into making more music instead of dealing with printing presses, setting up websites, and sourcing ribbon suppliers.

GF: What is the story behind "Monster"? How did the show get in contact with you?

HS: I keep a log of “Song Starters” with neat things I’ve heard in the world, and I would look through it every now and then and notice just how many came from Adventure Time. Eventually I thought well, I have to make a song about this show that just keeps breaking my heart. It was around the time I was nearly done with the first [Adventure Time-inspired] song “In My Element” that I got an email from Bandcamp saying “someone bought your album (Bedroom Visionaries).”

I get maybe one or two of these a month at most so I love to go in and say hi to the person and say thanks, be curious about who they are, [and] what they’re all about. Turns out it was Adam Muto, the executive producer of the show. (I asked and he has no idea how he happened upon my stuff. He guessed that I must have tagged something #adventuretime and he just happened to see it.) So I sent him an email saying, “Hey wow thanks for checking out my tunes. Also... holy crap you’ve made the best show I have ever seen in my life.” [I] played it real cool like. After finishing up writing my second [Adventure Time-inspired] song “Betty” I couldn’t help but fangirl real hard [and I sent him another message saying], “I’m sorry this is probably awkward, but I really love your show and I wrote these songs about it.” He was incredibly kind and shared them with his Twitter Universe, and a while after that I got a random email from him saying basically, “Hey, I’m working on this thing I can’t talk about, would you be interested?” I was like… well you know I’m pretty busy working at a sign shop so I’m gonna have to pass on this once in a lifetime opportunity (J/K. Obviously I fan-girl squealed and said yes immediately).

We chatted a bit about what the project was going to be and the direction. He mentioned there [would be] two Marceline songs in the special, [and he asked if I] would I be interested in giving the love song a try? Trying real hard to suppress my instant imposter syndrome I was like, “Yea, totally I’d be into giving that a shot!” So I read through the story and loved the idea of the dragon mirrored in Marceline, thinking through how they’ve both built up a protective shell, how she grew tough for a reason, but now she can open up and be vulnerable with PB.

From there I wrote the initial demo with the first two verses mostly intact and we went back and forth a few times editing it down into the final version. I recorded the final parts for the show in my little home studio in Seattle.

GS: When you were writing the song, what emotions, thoughts, or ideas were you channeling? Was there any sort of memory of event that you were trying to artistically "catch" or "recreate" with the lyrics or music?

HS: As far as channeling an emotion, generally I’d say just the experience of existing as a human. It can be so hard to open up and be vulnerable. I can remember that feeling even as a young kid—getting really excited about something and having someone completely trash it or look at you like, “Why are you so interested in that? It’s dumb.” [It causes us to grow] a little more weary to share ourselves because we know that hurt and embarrassment. The pain of being misunderstood is something I think a lot of us can relate to. Then having to decide whether to keep sharing those vulnerable parts of yourself or think, “They’re just not going to get it, I’m going to get hurt, so why bother?” and then stop putting yourself out there. You lose a lot with that thick armor though. You might feel protected, but you’re not feeling a whole lot of anything else other than the weight and chafing of it (I had a whole lot of armor-related metaphors that I didn't end up using.).

I struggle with this in songwriting too. I’m not the bolt-of-lightning type. There are pages and pages of cliches, total garbage, bad jokes, and cheesy lines that I have to get through in order to get to something that I am excited to put out there into the world: “Here I did this thing, I know it’s a little (this or that), but I made it... What do you think?” It’s hard to open yourself up to hearing the other end of that question.

I filled about 5 little pocket notebooks just thinking through the story, ideas, and trying to get this song right. I wanted it to feel familiar and honor the past songs of the show ([e.g.,] using the ukulele and referencing a few of the familiar chords from “I’m Just Your Problem”) but also be pretty open and vulnerable and different for [Marceline]. [I wanted to] show that she’s going through some tough emotions but also figuring herself out and growing.

GF: I feel like “Monster” is, at its core, an ode to the “Bubbline” ship. How do you feel about your song being intimately connected to one of the most famous LGBTQ+ relationships in animation? Do you have any general thoughts on Marcy and PB, Bubbline, etc.?

HS: Oh, I’m a total fan girl of Bubbline. The whole story of how Rebecca Sugar and Muto slowly morphed it into this deeper relationship is just great. As a part of the LGBTQ community myself it really means so much to see the representation of characters like yourself portrayed in an intelligent way. Growing up I was too young to fully understand what was going on but I saw Ellen getting cancelled, and [I] heard people around me saying they’d never watch her show again after she came out. That stuff sinks in as a kid and so to have these characters who are not only intelligent, but funny, complex, and unapologetically strong who also happen to be queer is really great. I love that the story here isn’t about their orientation, but that they’re people struggling with how to be open and vulnerable in a relationship.

It feels like something sci-fi and animated shows do so well—to show that ridiculousness of limiting who a person should and shouldn’t love. Marceline is a 1000+ year old half-demon/vampire and PB was born from the Mothergum of an apocalyptic radioactive world, but you’re going to get hung up on them loving each other? It sort of brings it into perspective in a really interesting way.

GF: Do you have any other thoughts about the experience that you'd like to share?

HS: Just how lucky, thankful, and honored I feel to be a part of my favorite show, writing a song for one of my favorite characters. It’s also incredibly cool how the people on the show are so willing to connect and collaborate with their fandom. Everyone [on the production crew] was very open and a real joy to work with.

I’d like to give a huge “Thank you!” to Half Shy for agreeing to participate in this interview; she really was quite amiable! If you’d like to hear more of her music, check out her website and her Bandcamp. You can also follow her on Instragram here and on Twitter here. And of course, here is Half Shy’s awesome video of “Monster”.

[thewordworrier]

The World Is Ugly

Word Count:  5,274 words. So, 5k and change. Category: Light Hurt/Comfort/Fluff? (I say ‘light’ because, while bullying really sucks, it’s not like my previous H/C fic. It’s not as heavy. I don’t think. Rating: Teen and up. Warnings: A little swearing. A little bullying I guess? But not too much so. Female OC. Notes: ~ Title is from “The World Is Ugly” by My Chemical Romance. SIGH. Why do I do these things to myself? My heart hurts. (Also, I told myself this would be a short little thing. I obviously lied.) Also also - le sigh. I write this kinda thing a lot.

Side note: There mayyyyyyy be a follow up part to this. At some point. I’ll let you know.

Part Two / the follow up here!

[Setting: Age 17/18 - Late schooling? Idk how America works XD bastardised version. Pre-established friendship.] - - - - - - - - - - A Friday Afternoon.

“So, did you dump that art nerd then?”

Down the other end of the changing rooms, Shelly froze in the middle of stripping out of her cheerleading uniform.

There was a snort. “Oh yeah, of course. It was never really serious anyway. Never planned on it being serious either. I mean, have you seen him?”

One of the others laughed. “I’m surprised that he had the balls to ask you in the first place. Why did you say yes anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” there was a sigh. “I was bored I guess?”

“Did he cry?”

Shelly’s heart clenched and she quickly tugged on a top, shoving her cheerleading shirt in her bag and deciding to skip changing out of the rest.

“Surprisingly, no. He looked incredibly crushed though.”

“Oh, that’s just as good then, I guess.”

The other two girls were laughing as the blonde hurried past them, slamming the doors behind her. She didn’t see it, but that definitely made them jump.

She was angry. Absolutely furious. She knew full well, exactly what and who they were talking about. She’d spent at least a fortnight gently encouraging and coaxing her best friend to make a move, building him up and helping him out. He hadn’t told her who he had been eyeing up, but she didn’t mind. He was still a little shy in some aspects after all. And, he said that if everything went well, he’d tell her. Which he admittedly hadn’t done, but it had only been a week, and they hadn’t had much time to see each other. They’d texted sure, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that he would want to tell her via text. At least now she knew why he’d gone home half way through the day. He’d told her that he was sick, but that clearly wasn’t true. She understood why he hadn’t told her the truth; he would’ve been incredibly embarrassed and he would’ve been very upset. And it was this last thought that hurt and angered her the most. She hated the idea of him being upset. She especially hated it when someone hurt him on purpose. And then to laugh about it? To say you did it because you were bored?! Absolutely un-fucking-forgivable. It was probably this anger and rage that fuelled her as she (almost) stomped her way around the grocery store, huffing a little every so often. She dropped the attitude when she got to the registers though - she wasn’t a bitch and it wasn’t the poor, overworked cashier’s fault that the girls on the team were the worst kind of human beings. Thanking the cashier with a smile, she took the bag and left the store, stopping outside to put everything in her backpack before hoisting that on her shoulders and making her way to her best friend’s house. When she got there, she hopped up the steps and went to knock on the front door just as it opened. She nearly knocked on Mikey’s face. “Oh, oops,” she bit her lip but smiled at the younger boy. “Sorry Mikes. Your brother home?” His eyes lit up a bit when he realised who was at the door. “Shell! Hi. Yes, he is. Maybe you can cheer him up? He’s been really, really down since he came home. Does he know you’re coming by?” She shook her head. “No, not formally.” “He said he was sick, but I’m not so sure…” “I’ll look after him, you know I will,” she shifted on the doorstep. “Oh, god yeah, sorry, go on in. You know where he is. I’ve got practice,” he gestured to his bag. “So I’ll see you later, if you’re around when I get back?” “Sure,” she stepped inside the home and Mikey closed the door behind her. She heard him lock it before she made her way down to the basement. She crept down the stairs and stopped outside the door at the bottom. Carefully, she shifted closer to it so she could listen. The fact that she hadn’t been able to hear music from half way down the stairs was a bit of a warning flag for her. Especially considering the fact that Gerard’s parents weren’t home; normally he had music playing quite loudly when they weren’t around and he could get away with it more. So to hear… Nothing, the other side of his bedroom door really worried her. Shelly chewed her bottom lip for a moment before swallowing and knocking gently on the door. She waited a minute before she heard him speak from somewhere in the room. “Mikes, I’m fine, really. You’re gonna be late for practice.” She nudged the door open and stepped over the threshold. “You don’t sound okay.” Gerard looked up sharply to see his pretty, blonde friend standing in his bedroom doorway. His eyes met hers and her entire expression softened even more than it already was. She was worried - it was written all over her face. “H- hi Shell.” She watched him shrink further into the ball he’d been curled up in and her whole body hurt. “Hi sweetie,” she said softly. “Can I come over?” Gerard nodded. “Y- yeah, okay.” “Thank you sugar,” she stepped into his room enough to push the door closed behind her. She shed her shoes and her jacket, depositing them in the spaces she normally left them whenever she was over. Once she’d done that, she padded closer to his bed and put her bag on the floor before going to adjust the curtain hiding the window. “A little more light,” she murmured before opening the window a bit. “A little more air and,” she trotted over to fiddle with one of the fans Gerard had in his room, switching it onto a low setting. Once she’d finished with that, she returned to the boy, sitting on his bed next to him and lightly running her hand over his hair. Gerard sighed sadly and shifted closer to her, moving just enough so that his legs were touching her body in some way; so he had another point of contact other than her fingers in his hair. “How’re you feeling, sugar?” She asked softly, not wanting to push him yet. “I’ve been thinking about you today.” “I’ve been better,” he mumbled. “I’ve been worse too but, it kinda sucks right now.” “I know honey,” Shelly soothed. “Can I do anything to help?” He uncurled a little and looked up at her. His eyes were rimmed with pink and he just looked so sad - Shelly thought her heart might break. “Anything,” she reiterated softly, still gently running her fingers over and through his hair. “I mean that.” He frowned a little at her, mostly out of confusion. “I- I stopped by a grocery store before I came here,” she continued, still in that soft and gentle tone of voice. “I picked up some of your favourites. Figured we could maybe watch a movie if you felt up to it?” Gerard hummed a little bit and slowly started to sit up. Shelly noticed that he hadn’t changed out of his button up shirt, which set up another warning flag for her. He had changed out of his trousers though; she’d very nearly tripped over them before she’d opened the curtain to let a little more light into the room. “Does that sound like a good idea, sugar?” She watched him maneuver himself to the edge of his bed. “Or… I can leave, if you want me to.” “No!” He squeaked. “No, please. Please don’t go.” “Alright, alright. I won’t go,” Shelly leant forward and squeezed his shoulder. “I am gonna get up and go and look at your movies though, okay? I’m not leaving. Just moving.” Before he spoke, he placed his hand over hers on his shoulder and squeezed her hand. “Okay.” Shelly shifted and he felt the mattress move before he heard her moving across his room to look at one of his shelves. He rubbed his face with the sleeve of his shirt before turning to look at her properly. It was only then that he noticed that she was wearing half of her cheerleading uniform. He frowned in confusion again and watched as she pulled a few movies off of the shelves. “You got any suggestions honey?” She asked, not looking up from reading the back of a box. “Or do you wanna watch Star Wars again?” “I…” Gerard swallowed to get his voice working again. “We don’t have to watch Star Wars. I know it’s not your favourite.” She looked up at him then. “But it is yours. If you wanna watch it, we’ll watch it. It’s not that bad.” “We really don’t have to,” he repeated, slowly making his way over to stand next to her. He noticed her look at him before she shifted her body weight to lean on the opposite side - the side he was at. “What would you like to watch then?” She put the boxes back on the shelves. “I… I don’t know,” he leant his head against her shoulder for a moment. “Alright. How about we start with Clue? We both like that one. Then we can decide after that?” He nodded against her shoulder. “Okay, that sounds like a good idea.” “You want to go and sit down?” Shelly found the right film with ease - they’d spent an afternoon alphabetising his movie collection once after all. “I can deal with this bit.” Gerard nodded and padded back over to his bed, sitting on the edge and watching her as she trotted over to his tv and knelt down to put the film in the player. Out of habit, she hit the eject button first, just because she knew sometimes he fell asleep to films. She blinked rapidly as the machine spat out whatever he’d been watching last and she carefully took it out of the player, reading the title. “I didn’t know you owned this,” she shifted her body sideways so she could see him. He looked up from fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt and his eyes focused on the disc in her fingertips. It took him almost a full minute to remember what he’d been watching last and he blushed. “I, um… I got a copy, to keep here… I know it’s one of your favourites, and didn’t want you to have to bring yours over all the time. Um… I hope that’s not -” “Gee, that’s really sweet of you,” she carefully put the disc back in the case. “You didn’t have to do that at all. Did you watch it without me here to distract you from it?” A distraction? God, he’d never consider her to be that. Watching one of her favourite films with her was an utter delight - she’d mouth along to her favourite lines, or she’d get all… Emotional over other scenes, even if she’d seen the film six thousand times. Honestly, he spent most of the time watching her instead of the film. It took him a beat to remember that she’d asked him a question. “Um… I did watch it without you, yeah. But not because of that.” Shelly put Clue in the player and checked around for the remote, looking up to ask Gerard where it was, only to find him holding it up. She smiled and trotted over to sit on the bed with him. “Then why?” She asked, curiously before shifting to lean back against his headboard. “I, um…” He joined her after she patted the bed beside her, settling by her side. “Honestly?” “Honestly. You can always be honest with me. You know that I’m not going to judge you. Now c’mon, sit properly.” Gerard glanced up at her before letting out a soft sigh and moving his legs over her lap so he could rest his head against her shoulder and collarbone area. Once he’d moved, he felt her wrap an arm around his waist and she nuzzled into his hair. They’d sit like this a lot, although they’d switch positions. She would normally lean against him like this instead. “Isn’t that better?” Her voice was softer and he could feel her breath against his scalp. “Mm.” “You were saying?” She prompted carefully. “I... Oh. You won’t judge?” “You should know me by now Gee,” she gently took the remote from him and fiddled with the movie settings. “Yeah, yeah, I know…” He sighed. “I was just feeling really terrible. It always seems to cheer you up and I was hoping it would help,” he settled against her a little more comfortably and the volume of his voice dropped. “And you weren’t here, and I missed you.” Shelly tilted her head, hearing the last bit even though she thought she probably wasn’t supposed to. “Oh, sweetie. You should’ve texted me. I would’ve skipped practice for you. I should’ve skipped practice for you.” “No, no you don’t have to do that. You worked so hard to get onto the team - ” “Believe me honey, I really should’ve skipped practice today. I’d skip practice whenever you needed me to, if you needed me to. Don’t be afraid to ask in the future,” she pressed a kiss to the top of his head before tapping at the remote. “You ready?” He just nodded against her. “I am if you are.” “You want me to grab anything from my bag first?” She felt him shake his head. “Okay honey.” She hit play on the remote and they settled together to watch the movie for a bit. He could feel her stroking his hair with one hand as the other held his hand in their laps. Every so often she’d nuzzle into the hair on the top of his head before pressing a kiss there. She was so generous with her affection when they were alone, and he really liked it. She wasn’t quite so touchy-feely when they were out in public, but that’s because he had asked her not to be. He’d originally said that it was because it made him a little nervous, because he was a little shy, but really? He was terrified that someone might think that he was her boyfriend. He didn’t want that for her. Shelly glanced down at him when she felt him try to shuffle closer to her - like that was even possible. (What she didn’t know was that he was trying to smell her perfume a bit better; he still wasn’t sure what she wore but he really liked it. It smelt good on her.) He still looked sad and that still hurt her. There had to be a little more to it than what she’d heard and pieced together, and she wasn’t really sure if he was going to talk to her about it, on his own without any kind of encouragement. She didn’t want to push him, really, but she just hated seeing him so unhappy. “Gerard?” He blinked up at her, about half an hour into the film. “Mm hm?” Shelly let his hand go, groped for the remote and hit the pause button. But she immediately sought his hand out again afterwards. “Do you wanna tell me why you really skipped out on classes this afternoon?” Her tone wasn’t threatening or angry, or anything like that; if anything it was gentle and full of concern. But he still found himself burying his face against her neck. He felt her sigh; because of the way her body moved and because he felt her breath cascade over his head and his ear. “Truthfully honey, I know why. I heard a few of the girls talking about it in the locker rooms after practice,” she tilted her head as he whined against her neck. “They made me very, very angry; it’s why I didn’t finish changing - I kinda stormed out of there in a huff. I think I slammed the door behind me rather forcefully.” He found himself chuckling against her skin. She could indeed be a very angry little thing; he’d witnessed it before when she stuck up for him once, albeit verbally. It had most certainly worked because those guys had left him alone since then. “But,” she continued softly, carefully moving him away from her so she could look at him. “I don’t know exactly what she said to you to make you this unhappy. Can’t say that she was exactly forthcoming with exact details. Either that or I didn’t stay around long enough to hear them.” Gerard gulped quietly. “What… What did she say?” Shelly chewed her bottom lip. He had the right to know, really, but… She didn’t want to hurt him anymore than he’d already been hurt today. “I… I don’t know if it’s really that important,” she managed eventually. He looked up at her, through his eyelashes and his hair. “Please Shell. It can’t be any worse than what she said to my face.” Her chest tightened and she swallowed. “I… I don’t…” “Please.” She closed her eyes and relayed the conversation she’d overheard, swallowing again when she finished and opening her eyes to see him with his eyes cast down to where he was messing with the cuffs of his shirt sleeves again. She bit the inside of her bottom lip and was about to speak when he beat her to it. “Well,” he sounded so small and sad, but also like he was trying to force positivity into his voice. It sounded wrong and she hated it. “I was right. It wasn’t worse than what she said to my face.” “What did she say Gee?” Gerard smiled a little to himself, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His voice contained that forced jolliness again. “Oh, you know, just the usual.” Shelly could already feel her blood starting to warm up too fast though she kept her voice as gentle as she could. “I need to know exactly, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He started listing off on his fingers. “I’m a loser, I’m disgusting, I’m a fat loser, I’m a freak, I’m a nerd, I’m never going to get a real girlfriend, I’m going to die alone, I’m sad and pathetic, I never stood a chance in hell -” “Stop,” she whispered, unable to listen to his voice as it started to strain and struggle with pretending to be okay. “That’s enough.” He hummed and looked at her. She had her eyes closed and was pinching the bridge of her nose. He reached out and took both of her hands in his, squeezing them gently. “I’m okay. Really. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised really, I just…” He let out the deepest, saddest sigh she’d ever heard. “I guess that I was hoping that it would be different this time.” Shelly squeezed his hands back, gently, before letting them go and pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, letting out a growl of frustration before huffing quietly. When she removed her hands from her face, Gerard was looking at her, concerned. She blinked rapidly for a few seconds before looking him over. “I know you’ve heard a lot of those things from a lot of people,” she started quietly. “And I know I’m just one person -” “But you’re not just any one person,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “You’re my best friend.” She smiled. “Does that mean my word is worth at least ten of anyone else's?” Gerard nodded. “Or more.” “Or more,” she repeated with a nod of her own. “Okay. I wanna say something, and I want you to listen. Okay?” He hummed and nodded. Shelly looked at him, watching him run his thumbpad over her nails, which she really needed to paint again, actually. “You know that it’s all bullshit, right?” Gerard looked up quickly at her choice of words. “What?” “Everything she said.” “I don’t… I don’t know…” He dropped her hand and hugged himself loosely. “Maybe some of -” “Bullshit,” the blonde repeated. “All of it. You are absolutely none of those things. You are a kind, talented and funny guy who just so happens to be a bit shy and a bit nervous. You’re not a nerd, you’re just passionate about your interests. She wouldn’t know what passion is even if it paraded around naked in front of her.” He snorted a little as he laughed, but his cheeks went a little pink. “You are not a freak. What the hell does that even mean anyway?” Shelly huffed crossly. “You’re not pathetic, you’re not sad, in the definition she means, you’re… ” She felt him let go of her hand and she looked up to see him playing with his fingers, twisting them in the hem of his shirt. With a hum, she shifted onto her knees on the mattress in front of him before cupping his face in both hands and making him look up at her. When she continued her voice was so much softer and gentler it felt like it was wrapping him in a hug. “You are not fat. Okay? And you are not going to die alone. Absolutely not.” He didn’t know why, but he believed her. Maybe she was just that magic. “You got all of that?” She said softly, her thumbs stroking his cheeks gently. “Y- Yeah, I think so,” he blinked rapidly at her as he nodded into her hands. He needed to stop looking at her lips. Shelly hummed and nodded once, trying to focus on his eyes. “Good.” “Okay,” he whispered. “While we’re at it,” she continued after a moment. “Like I said. You’re talented and you’re passionate; you’re kind and you’re funny. You’re so incredibly sweet, and who the hell cares if you’re a bit shy? I'd rather hang out with a guy like you who actually respects me instead of one of the footballers who keeps trying to get under my skirt.” Gerard blushed and she felt the heat in the palm of her hands. “That’s just rude though,” he mumbled. “I was raised better than that…” “Damn right you were. Remind me to tell your mother next time I see her.”  The blonde giggled at the look on his face and let her hands slide to his shoulders before she sighed. “Gee…” “Mhm?” He seemed determined to maybe rip a hole in the hemline of his shirt, because he was awfully focused on it. Shelly crooked her finger and used it to lift his chin again, cupping his cheek with her other hand. “I’m not finished.” “Oh. O- Okay.” “You’re not disgusting,” she continued, her voice practically a whisper. “You’re beautiful.” He tried to shake his head and started to open his mouth in protest but she hushed him. “No, don’t you dare disagree with me. My voice is worth at least ten others’ remember?” “I… I did say that,” he met her gaze for a moment before having to look away. “So that means you have to listen to me, right? And take my word as fact? In theory.” She watched him nod before getting him to look at her again. “Good. Then I want you to try to forget all the things that utter bitch said to you and focus only on what I said. Okay?” Gerard nodded, actually quite willing to do whatever she said at that moment. “I’ll try.” Her eyes lit up as she smiled. “That’s all I ever ask for - for someone to at least try.” “And I will.” “If you ever need a reminder, let me know,” she cupped both of his cheeks and squeezed them gently. “Because I am more than happy to remind you how wonderful you are, whenever you need me to.” Gerard hummed and went red when she pressed her lips against his forehead. He watched her shift from her knees to settle back against his headboard, but it wasn’t until she held her arms out for him that he moved to settle against her again. Once they were both comfortable, she picked up the remote again. “Are you feeling any better?” Shelly asked, after the film had been playing for a little longer. “Yeah,” he mumbled before speaking up just a little. “Loads better. I wish I’d told you who it was though. Maybe you could have warned me away from her.” Shelly sighed. “I could’ve poked around and asked a few questions at any rate. But I don’t think I would’ve warned you away immediately.” “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” he whispered. “For like, the whole time. I was just so surprised, and then I started feeling a bit guilty.” “Guilty?” The blonde glanced down at him to find him tracing patterns on the fabric covering her stomach. “What on earth have you got to feel guilty about?” “I just felt bad about not telling you. And she’s one of your teammates! You’re my best friend, we tell each other everything. I should’ve told you.” Shelly stayed quiet for a minute, thinking and stroking his hair with him snuggled against her neck. “You know,” she said finally. “If she’s going to be like that, if they’re all going to be like that, I don’t think I want to be part of the team anymore. I don’t want to be associated with people who are going to treat you like that.” Gerard lifted his head off of her shoulder and looked at her. “But you -” “I don’t care,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “I don’t care how hard I worked.” He huffed. “But I know you’re not like them.” “Gerard. You are my favourite person.” He blinked at her. “I…” “You are my favourite person in the whole damn world,” she continued. “And I absolutely hate that they talk to you like that. I absolutely hate that they’re gonna say those things about you behind your back too. I don’t want to be around those kinds of people.” “I… Oh…” Shelly mumbled something that he didn’t catch before leaning over the side of his bed to look through her bag. His eyes dropped to his lap. Or at least, they would’ve done had they not been distracted by the way her cheerleading skirt had worked its way up her thighs a little. Not an obscene amount - he couldn’t see her underwear or anything, but he could see a lot more skin than normal. When she straightened up, she was holding two bags - sweet popcorn and savoury mini pretzels. “You wanna mix these together or shall we just eat them out of the packets?” “Packets?” He suggested before pulling a face. “I don’t know if I want to get up and get a bowl.” The blonde giggled. “That’s a fair argument. Packets it is.” They settled comfortably again and snacked on the food Shelly had provided. He didn’t put his head back near her collarbones, but instead settled by her side and leant against her shoulder. He did notice though, that she kept her arm around his waist, which kept him anchored against her. Not that he was going to complain about this in the slightest. “Why her anyway?” Her question was so quiet, he almost missed it. “Hmn?” Shelly cleared her throat. “I said, why her anyway? What is it about her that you like?” Gerard blinked at her, noticing that she was now overly invested in her nail polish. He briefly wondered if she wanted him to paint her nails again at some point. They did that sometimes; he enjoyed it and she said he was good at it. “Um… I don’t know. Now I think about it. I don’t know. I think that was another reason why I felt guilty. I don’t really know why I asked her. Maybe I realised, after I did it, that maybe I only did it to see if I could?” She looked at him after he’d finished talking and he couldn’t quite read the expression on her face. “Maybe that was a dick move,” he admitted, avoiding her eyes, suddenly incredibly worried that she was going to judge him. “Although I honestly never ever expected her to say yes.” “Doesn’t mean she had the right to say those things to you though honey. That was a dick move.” The softness in her voice and the use of the term of endearment made him meet her eyes again. She didn’t look mad, upset or disappointed. Thank god. “Do you think it was a dick move?” Gerard asked her quietly. “I mean, it’s not like we exactly spent any time together. We didn’t actually go on the date I asked her on or anything…” She thought about this for a minute, the credits to the movie rolling in the background. Gerard waited, trying not to stare at her while she was thinking, knowing that if he did that, he’d get caught. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’m biased though. Besides, who knows? Maybe if she had actually given you a chance, you both might’ve gotten on well and had many dates,” she shrugged one shoulder. “Or something. You know?” “Mm hm. Maybe,” Gerard reached for the remote on her opposite side, switching the player off and turning the tv back into regular mode. “I don’t think I’d get on with anyone else as well as I get on with you though.” She’d watched him as he leant over her and her eyes had lingered on him for maybe a little too long. For her own liking, not that he noticed. With a hum, she turned her attention back to the tv to find him flicking through channels. He was nibbling his bottom lip, which meant he was thinking about something, and she doubted that he was giving that much thought to whatever the hell was on tv. Eventually he found some kind of terrible game show and put the remote down, his hands clasping together in his lap afterwards, a long sigh escaping from him. Shelly snorted, just a little, before nudging him with her shoulder. He looked up at her and she smiled brightly at him before pulling a face. It worked - he laughed before nudging her back. “I mean it, you know,” she said quietly after another minute, her thumb rubbing at her nail polish, even though she knew she couldn’t make it flake off that way. He just blinked at her. “Mean what?” “Everything, Gerard,” she frowned a little at her fingers before looking up and meeting his eyes. ”Everything I said about you.” “I… Everything?” “All the qualities I listed? Yeah, all of those. And I especially meant it when I said that you’re my favourite person in the whole world. Because you are, and nothing is going to change that.” Gerard looked at her with bright, round eyes and he just looked so… Happy, she thought that she might burst. She smiled at him and he went the lightest shade of pink. “No one's ever gonna change how I feel about you, or change how I see you,” she continued quietly, shifting so she could start running her fingers through his hair. “Especially not some… Some bloody tart who judged you without giving you a chance.” He laughed; properly laughed before hiding his face against her shoulder again. He was trying to stop before it could start sounding like… Some kind of honking goose. She knew he hated that, but she thought it was adorable. Shelly giggled softly and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight and feeling him nuzzle closer, his arms snaking around her waist. She buried her nose in his hair and hummed happily before mumbling against his head. “You’re just my favourite everything.”

[marjansmarwani]

time can heal, but this won’t

1.7k || ao3

This could have been easily avoided. It never should have happened. But it had and now TK was possibly dying from a gunshot wound and Carlos couldn't shake the feeling that it was his fault.  --- Carlos Reyes Week Day 5:  “Just, hold on.” + hurt/comfort

This idea actually came from this post by @trkstrnd and became this but none of my other stuff for Carlos week was really angsty so I guess I was due

Beta’d by my favorite partner in crime @officereyes 

------------

Carlos could recite police protocols verbatim. They had been drilled into his head since the academy and every day since he had lived by them. As a patrol officer, making the right choice and following the proper procedure could be the difference between life and death. The rules were there for a reason; they existed to keep people safe.

This incident — this catastrophe, really — was the kind of example they’d be using to scare the new recruits for years to come: make sure you follow procedure, or a firefighter could get shot by a 7-year-old. 

Carlos still wasn’t sure what had happened: there had been so many moving parts. There had been the mistaken burglar, the worried wife, the heart attack victim, the chaos of the scene. There had been other officers on scene who were not responsible for two civilians; someone should have secured the weapon. 

But it slipped through the cracks, as things sometimes did in the face of chaos. Carlos would normally be one of the first to say that it was something to learn from, that now that it had happened they would know to never let it happen again. But this time was different. 

This time it was TK’s life on the line, and no amount of reasoning could make that okay. 

He didn’t even find out about it until they were gone. He had just turned the corner when the alert about a gunshot came over the radio. His heart caught in his throat as he thought of all the awful possibilities: it could be a fellow officer, someone he was friends with. It could be one of the firefighters - he may not know them well but he would never wish harm on any of them. It could be Paul, it could Michelle, or TK. Those last few possibilities were too awful for him to dwell on so he pushed them aside focusing instead on the road in front of him and the job before him. 

It’s not until the Ackermans are safely returned home with a promise to follow up with any updates from the other homeowners (though Carlos doubts they’ll have any desire to press charges, given everything) that he checks his phone. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees a text from Michelle, and another when he sees one from Paul. 

It’s only after he unlocks his phone to read the messages, nearly identical in content, that he starts to feel the world ever so slowly begin to fall apart around him. It’s the confirmation he’s been dreading: TK’s been shot. TK’s in surgery and from what he can extrapolate between the lines...it doesn’t look good. 

He shuts his eyes and takes a moment, leaning against the driver’s side door of the cruiser, to let the fear and dread wash over him. He and TK, well, Carlos isn’t all that sure what they are, to be perfectly honest; but he does know what they could be. He thinks they’re on the way there too. He thinks they could have something wonderful, but that’s not possible if TK is dead. 

Even thinking the word, even considering the possibility brings tears to his eyes but he pushes them back down. He opens his eyes to check on his partner, who is still on the front porch speaking to Mrs. Ackerman. He still has a few moments of solitude before he’ll have to answer any questions. He sags against the car as he lets the weight of this fear crash over him. It feels almost intrusive, to care so much when he has no claim on the other man; when they have no label for this thing they are building. But they were building it, and Carlos doesn’t want to be left with only the memory of the process. 

As much as he doesn’t want that, he’s afraid that might be exactly what he gets and he hates it. 

He straightens up and shoots off quick replies — thanking them both for the information and asking them to keep him posted. Then he glances at the time and takes a deep breath — there are two hours left in his shift. He can last two hours. He doesn’t know how to explain this to anyone else, doesn’t know how he could possibly explain to his boss that he needs to leave early because this guy he might be kind of dating might die. He doesn’t know how to explain it to anyone, so when his partner returns to the car he gives her a tight smile and starts the car so they can head back to the precinct and their paperwork. 

He doesn’t want to dwell on his thoughts of TK hurt, of TK in surgery, of TK possibly dying so instead he focuses on the how. Namely, how was a gun — that they knew about — not secured; how had this happened with a large police presence? 

Why hadn’t he noticed before it was too late?

He tells himself he wasn’t there when the shots were fired, he reminds himself that there were other officers there, that he wasn’t responsible for this fuck up. But no matter many times he repeats it to himself, he doesn’t believe it. He was there, he knew how things should have gone and he hadn’t made sure they were done. And now TK was paying the price. This was his fault. 

He carefully avoids the subject with his partner and upon their return to the station, he buries himself in paperwork, the words in front of him a blur as he checks his phone every other minute and counts down the seconds to the end of his shift. He keeps to himself, carefully avoiding the talk and conjecture of what had happened at the last call. He pretends to not hear those asking for a recount of the events, he only speaks to his Captain when asked to give his version. He tells her the truth: this could have been avoided; it should have never happened. She nods and thanks him, and he returns to his private waiting game. 

Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, his shift is over and he is finally able to go to where his head and his heart have been the whole night. Arriving at the hospital is easy, it’s the going in that’s hard. As much as he wants to know there is a part of his brain that reminds him that these last few moments of not knowing might be the last moments he has in a reality where TK Strand still exists. Walking through those doors could change that, and it’s almost enough to keep him in his car. 

In the end, the need to know wins out. Carlos has never been one to run from things and he is determined to keep it that way. Even if what he is running to is his own heartbreak, he is determined to face it head-on. And so he opens his car door and climbs out, heading towards the door and the possibility of a new reality. 

He finds the correct waiting room quickly; the large group is pretty noticeable, especially at the late hour. He gets curious gazes from most and a sympathetic look from Paul. He nods at them all before his eyes zero in on the room at the center of it all, the door to which their eyes keep gravitating. He takes a deep breath and strides across the room, slowing as he reaches the doorway and the scene within reveals itself. 

It is TK in the bed and, according to the monitors, he is alive, but after having known TK for several months now Carlos scarcely believes it. TK is always moving; a study in perpetual motion. Even when they sit, on the rare nights they settle in for a movie, he is never still. He shifts, he fiddles with his necklace. TK Strand does not hold still and to see him so stationary and lifeless is wrong on levels Carlos doesn’t even want to contemplate. 

He steps inside quietly, not wanting to startle the Captain who is speaking softly, who only has eyes for his son. Owen still turns, despite his efforts, and when their eyes meet Carlos can tell that he isn’t fooling the other man for one moment. Seeing TK like this, in such a foreign state has breached the barriers he has so carefully maintained all night and he can feel the moisture in his eyes. The Captain’s expression filters through several emotions within a moment and he settles on understanding. He knows what they are to each other; or at least what TK is to Carlos. He stands and offers Carlos some time and Carlos means it when he says he doesn’t want to impose. He doesn’t want to pull TK’s father away from his son, he doesn’t want to put anyone else out when this was all his fault anyway. 

But the Captain insists and soon Carlos is left alone with the shell of the man he just might love. He falls into the chair beside the bed and runs a hand through TK’s hair before reaching out and wrapping a hand tenderly around his arm. He knows that in a movie this would be the big romantic speech, the moment the character proclaims his love for the person in the bed. But as much as he does want that, as much as it may be true, proclamations of love are not his highest priority right now. Right now he just needs TK to live. Anything that comes after that, he can handle. Instead, as he leans in, he offers something else. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says thickly, voice low and heavy with tears, “this shouldn’t have happened I...I’m so sorry Ty. Just…” he trailed off, using his free hand to angrily wipe away the tears sliding down his face, “just, hold on. You can’t leave us yet. We need you — I need you.”

He let the silence of the ambient noises fill the room as he stared at the man before him. Soon he is joined by the rest of the crew but not even the firm and comforting hand on his shoulder from Paul can make this any better. 

If TK didn’t make it through this, he didn’t know how he would be able to live with himself.