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the-scandalorian · 4 years ago

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Tempered Glass: Chapter 6

Pairing: Din Djarin x Female Reader Rating: M (will become explicit) Word Count: 4k Warnings: slow burn, sad feels/angst, canon-typical violence, cursing, sexy thoughts, pining Summary: When Fennec Shand reveals your true identity to the Mandalorian, you do your best to pick up the pieces. Notes: I’m sorry this took me so long!! I rewrote it like six times because I couldn’t get it to feel right. Next chapter should be much faster. Taglist: @bbdoyouloveme @beskarhearts @dincrypt @dunderr @honey-hi @just-me-and-my-obsessions00 @mbpokemonrulez @oloreaa @red-leaders @speakerforthedead0 @spideysimpossiblegirl @theflightytemptressadventure @ubri812 @zoemariefit

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Image from The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Fuck. Panic coursed through your veins and paralyzed you. Your brain moved infuriatingly slowly as you tried to think of a way to stop the disaster that was unfolding before your eyes.

And yet...despite your fear and despite the fact that this terrifying, high-level bounty hunter had once tracked you, hearing Fennec call you sweetheart made your stomach drop—in a pleasant way, not at all like when Toro had done the same. She was beautiful, strong, mysterious, intimidating. What little you saw of her fighting style confirmed that she was lithe and exacting—catlike in her grace and prowess. A sexy armored bounty hunter.

I have a type.

You shunted that wildly unhelpful train of thought out of your head to refocus on the crisis at hand.

You looked at Mando. “I—”

“What’s she talking about?” he prompted. You couldn’t tell if you were projecting because you felt guilty or if he really did sound a little hurt.

You opened your mouth again to respond, but Fennec beat you to it.

“Oh, you don’t know?” Even in the dark, you could see Fennec’s eyes sparkle in delight as she addressed Mando. “I don’t know how this one stayed off your radar,” she explained. “She was wanted by the Empire for years. Huge bounty... She looks a little different now—check her chest for a scar to make sure, but I’d bet her bounty it’s there.”

Mando had already seen the scar. He knew Fennec was right.

You caught the hungry look on Toro’s face as he drank in everything Fennec was saying. His eyes trailed down your face and landed shamelessly on your chest. You could practically hear the wheels turning in his head as he tried to think up a way to confirm your identity and claim the reward for both you and Fennec. This little fucker.

Fennec looked at you, and you took a step back involuntarily. “You’ve gotten sloppy, baby. There’s been chatter for weeks that you resurfaced on Nevarro. If I hadn’t been pinned down here, I’d have come for you myself.”

Her words felt like ice sliding down your throat and settling in your stomach. You’d figured that news of your sighting would probably get out, but you had hoped against hope that the blue-haired bounty hunter had been taken out before she’d been able to spread the word.

Mando was silent, fists clenched tightly at his sides, visor glued on Fennec. Pulling yourself together, you grabbed his arm and dragged him a safe distance away.

“I was going to tell you. I’m sorry,” you blurted, once you were out of earshot.

“It’s fine,” he replied stiffly, his gaze trained decidedly to your right.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you registered that even though it was just the two of you, his voice retained its icy, detached quality, all the tender familiarity gone.

“No, it’s not. I should have told you sooner. I-I wanted to—believe me—but I didn’t know if I could trust you. You were—you’ve been worried that I might turn you or the kid in, haven’t you? I was worried that you’d do the same to me if you found out. The longer I spent with you, the more I felt like you wouldn’t, but I had to be completely, totally sure. I couldn’t take the risk. You can understand that, right?”

He said nothing.

“Look—I really want to be able to trust you. I want you to be able to trust me. I just didn’t know where to start. It’s not easy for people like us to trust blindly, you know?” You hated that your voice sounded almost pleading.

Still, he said nothing, a blank beskar wall. The comfortable warmth that had developed—slowly, painstakingly—between you two over the past weeks had dissolved in an instant.

“Mando. Talk to me, please.” You reached out for his arm, but he stepped back. He still wouldn’t meet your gaze.

“Not now. Not here.”

“But—”

Your heart sank when he turned abruptly and walked back to the others.

You watched as he grabbed Fennec’s arm roughly, hauling her to her feet, and you trailed behind as he lead your party back down to the foot of the cliff. When you reached the bottom, Mando threw Fennec to the ground.

“Uh oh, looks like two of us have to walk,” Fennec taunted, eyeing the lone bike.

Mando jerked his head, motioning you and Toro to follow him.

“Alright, so what is the plan?” Toro asked Mando.

Reluctantly, you refrained from asking him if he could contribute for once instead of letting Mando do literally all the work; instead, you turned to Mando and supplied, “That dewback isn’t far.”

Mando didn’t look at you. To Toro, he said, “I need you to go find it.”

“And leave you here with my bounty and my ride?” Toro asked incredulously. “Yeah, I don’t think so, Mando. I’ll only go if she comes with me, so I have a guarantee that you won’t leave.” Toro gestured toward you.

You and Mando spoke at the same time: “No.”

“Either she comes, or I don’t go.” Toro was obviously pleased with himself for thinking of this plan, a smirk painted on his face.

You shot him a scathing look before turning to Mando to offer, “I’ll go get it alone.”

You’d love to put some distance between you and Toro, between you and Fennec, and honestly even between you and Mando at the moment.

“Suit yourself,” shrugged Toro. “Less work for me.”

You ignored Toro. “I remember vaguely where it was.” You pointed.

Mando pressed a button on the side of his helmet and scanned the horizon, stopping vaguely where you’d pointed. Finally, he trained his visor on you. He looked from you to Toro to where Fennec was seated and to you again, deliberating. You could tell he didn’t want you to go alone, but he also didn’t want to leave you here with Toro and Fennec. “We’ll go together.”

You nodded, knowing you were in no position to complain. Now that your secret was out, it was evident that both Toro and Fennec would capitalize on your value at the first chance. And, even now, when your dishonesty had been revealed to him, Mando still felt compelled to protect you, his generous heart winning out over whatever malice he felt toward you.

A small part of you resented him for that; it didn’t rub you the right way that he didn’t think you could take care of yourself. A larger part of you knew it was exactly why you liked him so much.

It would be convenient if he were a selfish ass. You could convince yourself you didn’t owe him anything, that you’d done nothing wrong. But no.

This is why it’s easier to be alone.

You felt both angry and guilty, an awful combination that manifested in the urge to hit something—a deep yearning to break Toro’s nose flashed through your mind when you caught the smug expression on his face as he looked from you to Mando. He was enjoying the palpable tension that had materialized between you a little too much.

“Watch her,” Mando reminded Toro, gesturing to Fennec. “And don’t let her get near the bike. She’s no good to us dead.”

Without a look or a word to you, he turned and started toward the dewback.

***

You walked in awkward silence, knowing you’d have to be the one to break it, but you delayed the inevitable, admiring the array of stars spread out above you. Mando stomped up and down the swells of sand, staying several paces ahead.

You meandered your way through a storm conflicting emotions: anger at yourself for getting into this situation (rightful), anger at Mando for being infuriatingly honorable (misplaced), guilt that you’d hurt Mando (well-founded), fear about your safety (appropriate), fear that Mando was about to break your heart a little bit (honest), irritation that you were trekking through a damn desert and there was an aggressive amount of sand in your boots (fair but trivial)... and a myriad of others that were too nuanced to unpack.

After deliberating for a long time, you decided to take an offensive position and offer to leave preemptively to save Mando the trouble (and to save yourself from having to hear that from him). You steeled yourself with a deep breath and interrupted the oppressive quietude of the night, jogging for a moment to catch up with him.

“We can go our separate ways when we get back to Mos Eisley. I know I’m too much of a liability to keep around, especially with the kid.”

He turned his head to look at you, the night sky reflected in his visor.

“I have enough credits to get off world some other way.”

“If that’s what you want.”

It killed you a little just how much it wasn’t what you wanted. You were supposed to be totally independent—you’d chosen this life when you joined the Rebel Alliance, knowing that if by some miracle you managed to survive, you’d be hunted for years. The call for your blood wouldn’t—and didn’t—end with the Battle of Endor, especially when Imperial remnants remained strong. And years ago, condemning yourself to this life for a just cause had seemed brave and romantic. Now, here you were, desperate to build a connection with someone else, despite the risk. And you were starting to think that truly being brave would mean accepting that risk.

At what point is it worth giving up ease for happiness, for something more?

You gathered up what nerve you could muster and took a leap.

“It’s not what I want, but I know you feel betrayed. I really am sorry I didn’t tell you—I was planning to, but I was scared. Scared that you’d take advantage of that... scared that you’d take back your offer to stick together. And the longer I waited, the harder it got to come clean.”

“I understand.”

The frostiness of his voice had given way to something a shade softer, but it still hadn’t returned to its former warmth.

You nodded.

As it became clear that he wasn’t going to say anything else, the disappointment started to settle in, trickling into the hollow of your chest. He understood, but it evidently didn’t change the fact that the fragile trust that had evolved between you was shattered.

Well, fuck.

You suppressed the wave of emotions that threatened to overtake you, focusing instead on making a new plan for yourself. There would be time to work through the feelings later, alone. Your thoughts wandered to where you might go next, running through a mental list of options. Nothing sounded appealing.

None of the places that came to mind would be stocked with a shiny, withholding Mandalorian and an ancient green toddler.

You walked for another twenty minutes before Mando spoke again.

“I want to trust you too.”

You stopped. “What?”

He halted too, turning to face you. The dark sky painted his beskar deep shades of liquid indigo, speckled with pinpricks of starlight, that moved as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “I wish you... uh... had felt safe enough to tell me that, but I understand why you didn’t.”

You knitted your eyebrows together. “Wait. You’re not mad?”

“I haven’t given you any reason to be open with me. And I guessed you were running from something.”

“Oh.”

“The Empire part caught me off guard—but I knew there was something.”

Of course he’d figured it out...that seemed so obvious now. He’d be able to spot that from a mile away. Plus, he knew you. You spent the last month or so learning his tells and quirks, but you hadn’t stopped to think that he was doing the same with you.

He continued: “But the kid and I are also wanted by the Empire. We’d have the same problem even if you weren’t here.”

“True...” You were struggling to recover from the whiplash.

“What are you wanted for?”

“I was an Intelligence Officer in the Alliance.” It had been years since you’d shared this information with anyone, but the words fell from your lips as naturally as if you said them every day, like you’d been ready to tell him all along and your mouth had finally caught up with your heart.

“Yeah, that makes more sense,” he said. “Explains a lot of your skills.”

You scoffed. “Fair.”

Mando cleared his throat and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “But... it’s...uh, nice to not always be alone.” He punctuated the end of his sentence with a shrug, a little embarrassed.

Relief washed over you.

You smiled. “For me too.”

“Good,” he agreed, nodding decisively.

“Shit, you really let me think you were furious,” you laughed, feeling infinitely lighter but still trying to wrap your mind around this abrupt turn.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “I was... trying to figure some things out.”

You shook your head in exasperation and started walking again, but you froze when he said your real name. You’d known your name would sound good in his voice—everything did—but the way it rumbled and rasped through the modulator was borderline sinful, agonizingly personal.

File that away for later.

You looked back at him, and he cocked his head: “So you’ll stay?”

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” you agreed, a broad grin on your face.

You both started walking again, and suddenly, trudging through the sandy desert in the middle of the night didn’t seem so bad. The dewback came back into view as you crested another sand dune.

Mando looked over at you. “Din,” he offered. “My name is Din.”

You glanced up at him, surprised. “Din,” you repeated back to him, feeling it out.

Despite the contradictory definition of the word, it suited him. He was the opposite of a cacophony, a man of few words—though to be fair, he did often cause a commotion. But as a name... Din was short, to the point. It evoked a lot of feeling for just three letters, and that felt right.

“I know your real name now. I thought it was only fair that you know mine too, but only use it when it’s just me and you and the kid,” he explained.

Your throat was unexpectedly tight.

You reached over to squeeze his arm at the elbow, where there was a gap in the beskar. He didn’t pull away.

“Thanks,” you answered, looking up into his visor.

You hoped he understood that you were thanking him for more than just his name—for his understanding, for his trust, for his protection, for his vulnerability. You couldn’t say that all out loud at the moment, but you hoped he knew.

He dipped his helmet in acknowledgement, and you dropped your hand.

When you finally reached the dewback, Din approached slowly, speaking to it in a calm, lilting voice. It warmed to him slowly, and he grabbed the reins.

He hauled himself up onto its back and then extended a hand down to you. You took it, and he pulled you up easily to sit behind him. You wrapped your arms around his middle.

“Is this okay?” You weren’t really sure why you asked this time. Things had shifted between the two of you, so you were compelled to check that the casual contact was still welcome.

He cleared his throat: “Yeah, fine,” he confirmed.

It had been a long time since you’d been physically affectionate with anyone, besides the occasional casual, short-lived tryst. It was nice to wrap your arms around someone familiar and comfortable, someone who knew you.

The dewback started forward. Din directed it back toward the cliffs with the reins in his fist. It wasn’t a huge distance, but the dewback was a slow means of transportation.

You had little idea what all this meant for your daily reality with Din. You had both shared that you wanted companionship, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was interested in anything more than that. However, for you at least, this was undeniably no longer a superficial interest that you harbored; you had real affection for him. And it seemed like he maybe was starting to feel same way about you? Or maybe he was just getting comfortable with having companionship? The man was starved for human interaction, so it was hard to know if he was warming up to you or warming up to companionship in general.

One step at a time.

Time slipped by as the dewback lumbered on. You rested your cheek against the scratchy fabric of his cape and closed your eyes. The rhythmic movement, the darkness, and comfort of the position lulled you into a light sleep.

You weren’t sure how long you’d been asleep when Din woke you, squeezing your now limp arm that was resting on his thigh above his beskar plate.

“Alive back there?” he asked in a low voice.

Leaned against him, still groggy with sleep, you felt the question rumble through his chest.

You sat up straight, pulling your arms back to your sides. “Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

He chuckled. “It’s fine. We’re close.”

The two suns had risen, bathing the landscape in the golden glow of early morning. You looked around and saw that you were a short distance from where you’d left Toro and Fennec. You couldn’t see them yet, but you figured they were hidden behind one of the many large boulders strewn across the landscape.

As you drew nearer, though, you could tell something was wrong. Only one figure came into view—and it was crumpled on the ground. Din registered this as well: his shoulders stiffened, and he pulled the reins tight to halt the dewback’s slow advance.

It was Fennec’s body on the ground. Toro was nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck,” you breathed.

“You were right about him,” said Din. “Stay here.”

Din dismounted and approached Fennec’s body. She looked dead, but he crouched to check. He tried to find a pulse, and after a moment, he stood back up and shook his head.

As Din walked back toward you, the realization dawned on you both at the same time.

“He didn’t—”

“The kid—”

“She must have—”

“We have to—”

Din hurried back onto the dewback and directed it toward Mos Eisley, doing his best to make the lumbering creature pick up its pace. It didn’t help much.

The ride back was interminable. You definitely didn’t fall asleep this time, adrenaline keeping you on edge as the hours passed. Both you and Din were incredibly tense, speaking very little, thinking only of the child.

***

Night had fallen again by the time you reached Mos Eisley. The speeder bike that Toro had been riding was parked outside Peli’s. Fury and fear spidered through your veins at the thought of him with the kid.

Din jumped off the side of the dewback and looked up at you expectantly, his arms outstretched. You maneuvered your leg over the side and slid down a bit until his hands gripped your hips, and he lowered you until your feet hit the sand. You could have easily jumped down on your own. He knew that. You knew that. You’d let him help you anyways.

You paused outside the bay to draw your blasters.

“Here,” Din offered you the flash charge.

You slipped it into your jacket sleeve, where it stayed tight against your wrist. Together, you crept through the door and down the stairway that opened up to where the Razor Crest was parked. It was eerily quiet.

You scanned the space, jumping slightly when one of Peli’s pit droids scurried past.

“Took you guys long enough.”

Toro walked slowly down the open ramp of the Crest, the barrel of the blaster in his hand pressed to Peli’s back. The child was held in his other arm.

“Looks like I’m calling the shots now. Huh?” he sneered.

The urge to hit him flared up so acutely that you clenched your fists. You hissed at him: “Don’t you da—”

“Drop your blasters and raise ‘em,” he ordered, cutting you off.

You and Din exchanged a look before throwing your blasters to the ground. In a subtle movement, you shifted the charge from your sleeve to your fist as you placed your hands behind your head.

“Cuff ‘em,” commanded Toro, nudging Peli forward and throwing two sets of cuffs to the ground.

She moved toward Din.

“No, start with her,” Toro drawled, jutting his chin toward you. “To think I almost cut Mando out of this deal,” he laughed. “I would have gotten you and Fennec, but this is so much better. I get to collect the bounty on you and this target here that Mando helped escape,” he pointed his gun at the baby and all your muscles tensed in protective rage, “...and I get to turn in the legendary Mandalorian himself—a Guild traitor.”

Peli walked behind you. You grasped the charge in your fist so that she would be able to see the top of it. You heard her quiet, sharp intake of breath.

“Fennec was right,” Toro continued smugly. “Bringing you three in won’t just make me a member of the Guild—it’ll make me legendary. Three high-value targets on my first try. Wow, I should really thank you guys.”

Peli was fumbling with the cuffs behind you, taking longer than necessary on purpose.

You hoped she was ready to duck because you’d heard enough of Toro’s self-congratulatory monologue. You released the charge.

In the split second of blinding light, you, Din, and Peli sprinted in opposite directions, taking cover. Toro groaned and attempted to cover his eyes, shooting blindly at the empty space where you had been standing.

Din took Toro out in one shot.

You were closest to where he fell, so you charged forward with your blaster trained on his body. The baby wiggled out of Toro’s arms and ran toward you. His big eyes were watery and his arms stretched toward you, his fingers making little grabby motions. He chittered nervously as you scooped him up with your free arm, and he buried his head in your shoulder.

You kicked Toro’s blaster away from his body as Din approached to make sure he was dead. After he checked his pulse, Din tugged the pouch of credits from Toro’s belt and tossed it to Peli. “Here,” he said.

With a gasp, she caught it and emptied the pouch in her hands. Credits tumbled out, a few falling to the ground.

“That cover us?” Din asked.

Peli looked shocked, scrambling to pick them all up. “Yeah... uh, yes. This is gonna cover you.” It was clearly far more than she was expecting.

You passed the child over to Din, and he looked down at the baby, tilting his helmet in...what? Affection? Relief? This was a head tilt you hadn’t defined yet.

Peli approached him and looked down at the child. “You take care of him, you hear?”

Din nodded.

“Thank you for watching him,” you said to Peli, genuinely grateful that she had turned out to be trustworthy.

“Besides getting held at gunpoint... I guess it wasn’t too bad,” she replied, smiling down at the baby. She’d clearly grown fond of him, and you couldn’t blame her. After a moment, Peli mumbled a goodbye and walked away, eagerly counting the credits in her hands, her pit droids skittering after her.

You stood there, finger caught between three tiny green ones, as the kid babbled and cooed up at you. When you looked up, Din’s helmet was trained on your face.

He tipped his head toward the open ramp of the Crest in a wordless invitation.

You smiled at him, a comforting warmth settling in your chest, and he followed you into the hull.

***

Chapter 7

#tempered glass #the mandalorian fanfiction #din djarin fanfiction #my writing #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x female reader #the mandalorian x female reader #din djarin x f!reader #the mandalorian x f!reader #reader insert #mandalorian reader insert #din djarin reader insert

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akumaalert · 3 years ago

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Medical Log Sixty-nine

Karl Heisenberg x AFAB Reader (Uses She/Her); Explicit Content, 18+ ONLY

CW: Medicplay, medical kink, medical examination, voice kink, roleplay, consensual voyeurism

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31802593

"Medical log...this is my...sixty-ninth attempt."

You rolled your eyes. Of course he would go for a sex joke the second the recording snapped on.

Staying still was a difficult task. The steel table was chilling your back and your muscles screamed at you to purse away from the cold.

The warmth between your legs, however, demanded that you stayed.

Heisenberg began exactly as he said he would - listing off your name and age with that ever lilting voice that made your cunt clench in delight.

"Body is in...fuck...the most gorgeous condition..."

Playing dead was so hard when he was out of view. Heisenberg was so expressive and you were missing all the nuances you so adored. You could only picture him studying you - licking those delectably thick lips that you loved to nip. The fact that he was fully clothed and hovering over your naked body was as thrilling as it was nerve wracking.

Part of you willed stillness on the sheer fear that if you moved, the spell would be broken and Heisenberg’s role of doctor would be traded for actual work. Convincing him of doing this had not been the simplest task. The first time he caught you listening to one of his medical logs, he had raised a quizzical eyebrow and chuckled lightly at your blush. When you laid in his arms after making love one morning, you had shyly admitted the desires that had been ignited simply by listening to his voice.

"I think they umm...I think it's technically called medical play..."

The swiftness with which he cut you off still made you feel shame. "I'm not experimenting on you."

It took all the strength you could muster to look at him despite your cheeks absolutely burning. You placed a hand on his own cheek to rub the pad of your finger over one of his scars. "No. No...that's not what I meant. It's pretend. For fun. Roleplaying basically..."

You loved when his glasses were missing from his face. Green eyes flickered - studying you intently - before his lips stretched into an attractive smirk. "Would that turn you on, buttercup?"

And so the two of you had planned. It was convenient that the toys you needed were inconspicuous medical equipment. Most you already had and the others were obtained from the Duke without suspicion. At least you hoped. He was always a jovial fellow and at least didn't question the use for the pinwheel. Where the rest came from, you did not question. It wouldn't do to dwell on the purpose or origin when living in the shadow of Miranda's clutches.

When Heisenberg's hand ghosted near your head in the present, you repressed the want to moan.

"Proceeding with inspection..."

One leather clad hand cupped a cheek while a bare, calloused fingertip lined your lips. You could not entirely make him out like this, but you could see his green undershirt in delightful detail if you rolled your eyes high enough. His trench coat and his outer shirt had been discarded and the thought made your skin prickle. The spirals of his chest hair peeking from his shirt made your fingers tent with a want to touch him.

But cadavers couldn't move. So you swallowed and resisted the temptation to dart your tongue to meet his caress.

"Subject has the softest lips...prettiest damn thing I've ever studied."

Heat and the ever lingering static that was Heisenberg radiated just a breath behind you. If you had any courage to move just so, you imagined that his crotch sat just above your line of sight.

Would he already be hard? Heisenberg had held his typical swagger when you had mapped out your wants and respected his limitations. But you could tell that hesitancy still sat not so lightly on his shoulders. Perhaps he would need to drag things out - let his pleasure build as yours boiled in every limb.

Eyes half lidded, you nearly missed the scalpel floating gingerly through the air. As Heisenberg had insisted, only the handle touched your skin. Beginning at the curve of your jaw, it traced ever so slowly down your throat like a breath. Despite the lack of danger, the sensitive skin pimpled and your throat constricted.

"It's as if I built her myself...everything I could ever fucking want. Absolute damn perfection," he muttered. Feeling drunk off his words, you struggled to keep up with them all. After all, you were not sure how sensitive the recording would be. Heisenberg was a loud man - a grand man - and so rarely whispered as he did now. "A lovely neck...if only I had found her sooner...might have given her a necklace of teeth marks to wear."

When the scalpel slipped to your chest, your gasp could not be stifled. But instead of stopping, Heisenberg simply removed his fingers from your face to set both hands in a frame on either side of your head. He was adjusting and leaning and soon his eyes met with yours. Though you could not see anything below the rugged slope of his nose, you imagined his mouth as slightly parted.

His eyes were normally flecked with golds and browns, but the darkness there now was not an uncommon sight. You saw it when he was angry - returning from family meetings or trips to the Dimitrescu castle. Whenever his facade had been tested for too long with his "mother" and the walls came crashing down the moment the doors to the factory were closed.

You also saw it when he was lost to lust - when he used arms as steady as steel to hold you to him until you were both limp messes on the floor or the desk or the shower or the bed.

It was a color you so treasured - especially when the hints of softness clouded them as they did now.

Heisenberg's voice careened and curled just like the scalpel's handle around your breast. So light but so heavy.

"I don't need any damn notes for these tits...have them fucking memorized. Fuck what I wouldn't give to put my mouth on them. What a damn waste. Body is so cold and those nipples are perked up so nicely. Inspecting..." He audibly swallowed, clearing his throat. "Inspecting chest in detail now."

While the scalpel handle swirled against one of your nipples, Heisenberg's gloved hand went to your ignored breast in a firm squeeze. You were already so worked up by the mere prospect of your play. To have it as a reality with Heisenberg towering over you and switching his attention from your breasts to your eyes to your lips and back again was absolute torture. The leather on his fingers did nothing to help you. The gloves were old and worn into a fibrous texture that made every hair on your neck stand on end.

Your lover was a cruel man, but not a patient one. With his pointer finger and thumb, he twisted your nipple. Eyes clapping shut, you shook when you realized a tremble in the scalpel. A telltale sign of his passions rising and his powers thrumming along with them.

"Color?" he asked in a voice of gravel.

It took you a moment to understand his inquiry. Your stoplight system. That Heisenberg was already checking in with you filled you with a whole new type of warmth. Nodding with flushed cheeks, you ran your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

"Green," you muttered.

So he continued.

"Nipples are extremely responsive." The scalpel and his hand pulled away but for a moment before the sides were switched. But with them came the feeling of his bare hand on your equally bare chest. "I could stand here all day just admiring the view. Not a damn thing to say to do it justice."

He flitted between a tender touch and a rolling, twinging pinch. The scalpel rolled along with it all, though there were intervals when it remained still against your skin. As if his mind could not keep up with it all. It would start back again with a lurch and small grunts of frustration from its master.

"Moving to the lower torso..."

Your body arched when he moved and broke contact with your skin. The scalpel's trail became steadier as it looped around your breast to slide so terribly slow down the middle of your chest. Down it slipped and once again your fingers were fidgety. The skin of your stomach felt particularly sensitive, especially when the scalpel began to dance in patterns too quick and too slow for your mind to process.

"These hips of hers...the legs...hard not to get too ahead of myself..."

Though you could not see him at all now with your head locked in its position, it made the situation all the more welcome to your growing need. In your mind he studied you - watched your body with all the appreciation he was so fond of giving it. He might pay attention to your stomach - to the invisible designs he was tracing there. But his eyes would inevitably flicker to look between your legs. There was no gown or sheet to protect you from his hungry gaze. There was nothing at all preventing him from doing the myriad of things that you longed for him to do.

By the sound of his breathing, you knew Heisenberg was not left unaffected.

"Subject...is gonna fucking pay for making part of my work part of her play," he growled. "Do you have any idea how distracted I'm going to be every time I go in for an actual log? But you don't care, do you? It's all about you."

Tension hung in the air and one of your legs stretched upward, suddenly aching.

Heisenberg's hand came down fast to push it back into place.

"Didn't say I wasn't gonna indulge you," he said, playfulness in his voice. He gripped your knee still held in his hand with a soft touch. "Just that you'll pay for this later."

Lightly nodding, you felt his hand leave you. Your entire body tensed when the scalpel - ever streaming down your skin - began a descent that told you just how impatient Heisenberg had become.

It didn't help that a series of items - familiar and agreed upon in advance - floated over you on a glinting silver tray. You could not tell if they moved slowly due to his powers flitting with his emotions or if he simply was intent on you seeing them.

A bottle of lube. A bullet vibrator and its controller. The Wartenberg pinwheel. Another scalpel for the hell of it.

If the scalpel on your skin ran near your aching cunt, you never felt it. The next thing you knew, it was landing on your thigh and stalling.

As if he could not help himself, his hands were on you again. This time instead of pushing a leg onto the table, he pried both of your legs open with a prodding touch.

Though it broke your play, you took a large inhale of air. You could not recall ever being so wet or so ready.

Heisenberg let out a low whistle.

"You're soaked, buttercup." A pause. The telltale sound of buckles being clicked and dropped to the floor.

You could not take it and spoke with a whine.

"Not fair...I can't see you."

The chuckle he gave was dark. "A shame. It's like someone asked for this. Ironic. You're such a whore that your little game is preventing you from watching me. And I know how you love to watch."

The asshole took his time to slowly unzip his pants. The heat in your body was palpable and painful. A small gratified groan told you all you needed to know about where his hands had gone.

"Pretty, pretty girl..." he cooed. "Show isn't over yet. You had some requests and what kind of a lord would I be if I was to ignore one of my subject's pleas?"

The knowledge that he was stroking himself - languid even as your longing screamed through your very soul - made the pit of your stomach pulse with delayed pleasure.

Trying to even your breathing, you focused on the ceiling laid brown and bare above you. Or at least you tried. Heisenberg chose the absolute worst moment to bring both the second scalpel's handle and the brand new pinwheel onto the scene.

Huffing heatedly, you scrunched your face into a grimace. What a sight you must be - a scalpel on each thigh and a pinwheel hanging dangerously close to your cunt. You pushed the thought aside, unable to bear the image in your head.

"To the main event," he announced, voice returned to a rumbling purr. "Planting the 'control device.' Inserting now."

When he had added lube to the bullet, you did not know. Probably somewhere between your embarrassment and the blood pounding in your ears. Small and sleek, it entered your folds gently but awkwardly. Heisenberg's powers going on the fritz would never cease to endear you. He was so strong - so normally loud and wearing whatever mask that a situation called for. But in these moments with you, he was raw and his powers were unhinged in the most intimate of ways. It made you feel powerful - the ability to bring this lord of metal to timid movements when he could likely destroy the whole village with enough metal and mental will.

Rounding its way deeper and deeper inside of you, the bullet suddenly stilled. The sensations of the scalpels skating up and down your legs combined with the threat of the pinwheel overwhelmed you. If you had wanted to speak in that moment, it would have been quite out of your ability to remember how.

"Insertion complete."

Babbling during sex was another staple of Heisenberg's. But he was eerily quiet and controlled in the seconds that followed right up to the click of the controller.

The jolt to your core was immediate and you gasped in hurried breaths against the most exquisite pleasure you had ever felt. The fight to keep your fingers extended was lost as all ten fisted. You were so wet that the lube had been a moot point. The bullet buzzed inside of you and your hips shook with the herculean effort of staying still.

Heisenberg exhaled, voice faraway and dreamy.

"Ausgezeichnet...excellent. Progressing faster than expected."

You choked on air. Beyond your control, your body flinched against the hum of the bullet.

"Fuck," bit out Heisenberg. "Have a proposition for you...since you're going to be punished for making me work, I'm going to go back to the recording-"

"Oh God!"

"I'm going to go back to the recording," he repeated gruffly, ever incensed at being spoken over. "And I'm going to count the seconds that it takes for you to come. And however many seconds that is...that's how many spanks you'll be getting. Right on that luscious fucking ass of yours."

Another click of the bullet's controller made your eyes roll to the back of your head. Fingernails bit into your palm with the want to hold onto something - anything. How could you be so stimulated yet so far from release at the same time?

"I can see everything from where I'm standing," he continued. "Can you feel that wetness of yours? Dripping into your ass...pussy such a pretty pink shade. It'll go so nice with a red ass. One, two, three...you're building up to quite the spanking. Might want to hurry it along."

He was indeed a cruel man.

But not a patient one.

The pinwheel's weight was noticeable, but not deep. It pinched and rolled its way directly down and over your clit and the sensitive flesh splayed and shaking from sensation.

How you hated the gargle that you let out. It was ugly and incoherent.

"Too much!" you cried.

"Scheisse!" The pinwheel flew to the floor as the scalpels stopped. Even the bullet seemed to rumble ever lighter. "Color?"

It took you several breaths to gather the ability to nod. When Heisenberg remained quiet, you grunted. "Green...green...fucking green. Floor it."

Heisenberg laughed - all throat and no breath. "Floor it. Gotcha."

Making a strange sound - somewhere between a groan and a grunt - Heisenberg returned his hands to your body.

The hand free from leather stroked your thigh. The leather, however, fondled your mound and found your clit with practiced speed.

Barely able to keep up with the bullet and the scalpels and the trembles and the sound of Heisenberg's guttural encouragements, you closed your eyes and focused on the circles he made against that sensitive bundle of nerves.

You could not open your eyes or close your mouth. You could not do anything but chase a high approaching as sure as any sunrise.

Apparently taking pity on the mess you had become, Heisenberg only took one swift last round on your clit before speaking.

"Now to pass a current...through the body...using six volts..."

The words had no time to settle in before the action was done with his gentle hand on your quivering thigh.

Screaming, too, was beyond your control.

"Come on," he said through the return to your clit and the massage in your cunt and the swirls of scalpel handles on your legs. "Come on, come on, come on."

"KAR...k...kah..."

Your orgasm knocked the very air from your lungs. Pins of light erupted as your eyes squeezed with every furious flutter of pleasure. Your cunt was actually twitching and the glove on Heisenberg's hand felt so exquisite as it barely pressed down on your clit.

"Yes! Yes!" Egging you on with a happy laugh, Heisenberg uttered praises that registered in a haze. "At last...wonderful...what a good girl."

As the absolutely mind-numbing orgasm faded into your very bones, you lay there exhausted and beyond satisfied. Breathing became a chore that your throat seemed unused to performing.

Heisenberg moved as efficiently as ever to complete his work. The bullet was removed with care by his own fingers. When it had turned off, you had no recollection. The scalpels clattered to the table with a metallic hiss.

Sweat built on your brow and dragging down your temple, you swallowed and swallowed again. The sound of rushing water perked your tired body. You were slow to rise, testing fingers and a palm burning with indents of your nails. Soon, however, you had sat up. A swirl of satisfaction still sat low in your belly.

As satiated as you were, you could not help but enjoy the sight of Heisenberg standing before you. In one hand was a glass of water begging to be brought to your parched lips. In the other he held the recorder. You watched with hooded eyes as he clutched at the recorder before dropping his hand to adjust his pants.

Pants that hung low on his hips with the zipper pulled wide. The adorable swell of his lower belly was visible underneath his shirt. His cock was curved at such a beautiful angle above silver hair. It was blushed a dark pink with veins reaching up to a head that was nearly purple with need.

Bringing the recorder back to his mouth, Heisenberg eyed you before huffing.

"...ending recording."

#karl heisenberg x reader #karl heisenberg x you #karl heisenberg #resident evil #re village #ao3 #smut #kinks with karl #x reader

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

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The Mandalorian Chapter 15 rewatch thoughts

- mayfeld does hear when the droid talks to him the first time, you can see him pretending not to like he hopes he’ll just go away haha. I also guess he’s had a lot of time to think, picking apart pieces of the large fascist machine he used to be a part of and going over everything he clearly regrets

- hahaha fennec and boba are in the back intensely keeping watch the entire time they��re on the prison planet. I suppose a good two thirds of this crew is uuuuh extremely wanted by the new republic lol

- the thing din’s voice does at the end when he says “but you still know your imperial clearances and protocols. don’t you.” is beyond fucking words, it sends a chill right through me

1) din fiddling with that panel; I think he’s phenomenally nervous behind the helmet here, that’s the sort of keeping his hands busy he does when he’s anxious and 2) why the hell does boba have this many chairs instead of like space for cargo haha does he throw bounty hunter parties in here or what

- ngl boba correctly guessing at a glance what sort of ore they’re mining and informing everyone in his sardonic deadpan voice is Big Sexy

I love how he and fennec are standing together when they’re both present in these opening scenes too, first at the very back when they’re keeping a lookout:

and then in the foreground while they discuss the scan

it’s a nice subtle way to get across that they already have a dynamic, they’re somewhat used to working together as a unit at this point. (she’s also looking over at him when she asks what they might be mining in there, like she’s mostly asking his opinion instead of opening it to the floor. they’re talking the mission out between them before din enters the conversation)

- the inside of slave 1 when the ship’s moving makes me a little bit motion sick, I really love seeing it but I hope we don’t stay in here too often haha

- aaaw the small weary sigh din gives upon realizing none of his bros can go with mayfeld. I’m sorry about basically your entire life buddy

the awkward way din adjusts the helmet like he’s trying to get used to the way it feels ;______;

- ah the distinct implication that mayfeld is needling din about this because he’s actually feeling super uncomfortable being back in empire gear and he needs to transfer that discomfort over onto someone else so he won’t have to feel through it... very psychologically understandable and such a fucking piece of shit asshole character trait to give in to haha

- din’s level of side eye is so epic you can see it straight through the helmet fhaskjfhd

- neat detail: din’s head turns slightly toward mayfeld when he calls mandalorians a ‘race’. (it’s sort of cool that we as the audience know why that bothers him, but mayfeld probably didn’t even pick up on it). also shows that mayfeld doesn’t actually quite understand what he’s talking about, even when he makes decent points he’s caught up in his own myopic nihilistic point of view. ‘we’re all the same’ ------> ‘everyone’s secretly as shitty as me deep down’. (which also betrays a lot of self loathing, since we see later he does have the capacity to NOT be that shitty when he chooses to. rick famuyiwa manages to get a LOT of really interesting nuanced stuff into this character in two short episodes, that’s super impressive)

the bright sunny look on mayfeld’s face when din finally gives in and takes the bait tho fsajdkfhasj he’s awful but that’s very funny

- rip all these excellent dudes who really only wanted to accomplish the noble goal of ruining the empire’s entire day and didn’t know they were also trying to blow up My Dad Who Does Not Deserve Any Of This, it’s honestly just really sad that there’s no moment to talk that out

well at least they blew up the entire refinery on their way out, I’m sure that’s the way they would have wanted their memories honored lol

- the comedy beat of din running out of ammo for the first time ever and the music briefly cutting out for it is so so good for me

hahahaha din seems to actually take a moment to be a little aghast at that dude who ends up crushed under the treads of the tank thing, he’s just sort of staring for a few seconds too long and that’s how pirate nr 2 takes him by surprise and shatters his shoulder armour

- I feel a bit bad -- two of the ‘pirates’ try to hold on to each other for balance and then din punches them apart and off the tank :( I mean it’s not like he could just let them murderate him either but like. ouch I’m guessing this one might haunt him for a while for several reasons huh

(the sequence is actually this guy, let’s call him pirate 3, swings the spear at din and misses, instead hitting his buddy who’s trying to get to his feet, then looks horrified and grabs for him to make sure he doesn’t fall off, and then... mando’s forehead happens to them haha)

- poor fennec and cara just running up that hill while everything’s on fire, they must be wondering what the FUCK is going on (at least cara knows that things blowing up is a sure sign din djarin is in the middle there somewhere)

- everything about carano in real life aside for one second -- I do like that we get this contrast in build between our main female characters of the episode and the way their costume designs enhance it

- awwww the little gesture din does with his hand after he removes it from mayfeld’s chest after stopping him from leaving, it’s just so... sweet. it’s a little bit appeal, a little bit reassurance, it just lightens/softens the tone of what he says a bit (he has quite a lot of like... not conciliatory mannerisms exactly, but small touches here and there that are there to communicate that he’s not angry/aggressive or trying to be a dick about it even when he’s emphatic. I keep wondering how much that is just him being him and how much is him being practiced at settling other people’s hot tempers)

- this shot is just... genius

it’s din seen entirely from the outside, with nothing of what we’ve learned to recognize as him for almost two seasons now in view -- not even his face, which we have at least a tenuous fledgling attachment to from before. it’s like we get introduced to him almost as if anew again and again in this episode, just like he’s getting introduced to new aspects of himself and what he’s willing to do and having to struggle to find ways to have that fit with who he is. his discomfort and stress is our discomfort and stress. it’s so interesting

- I can’t stop cackling at this moment even in all the tension -- you only get a sliver of din’s profile but you can feel the sheer MURDER radiating off him sdhfasjk

- aaaaaaaagh the way you get a whole different view of din’s habitual impassiveness when you can actually see his face... the way he keeps appealing to mayfeld ‘just don’t make more trouble, just shut up’, the way he goes completely silent and watchful and frozen..... those are all really obvious trauma responses, and it leads you to wonder how often he touches into that even when he’s in his element, when he’s got the full armour on. hmngh my heart

- ‘the believer’ is such a galaxy brain title for this episode, because it could be referring to either of the three men around this table or all of them at once. (and crucially the only person whose beliefs aren’t in a living, breathing state of adapting to the world around them is the empire officer, with his horrific inhuman ideology. mayfeld thinks he believes in nothing, and proves himself explosively wrong by the end of the episode, and it’s redeeming for him in some capacity. din is facing a more internal dilemma of different parts of his (and his culture’s) beliefs/values clashing and having to decide which one’s more important, to his identity and to how to exist in the world as a person (and love for the baby wins out supremely in the end. of course it does Y_____Y). the empire dude only sees the same sterile fascist world at the end of his shit rainbow that he’s clearly always done, even when faced with proof that it’s untenable. (I mean he wouldn’t give a fuck that it’s immoral because he’s y’know evil, but he’s not even fazed by the fact that the empire provably FAILED, and failed so quickly) his belief is a dead and deadening thing to contrast the others. man when this show goes off with the themes it goes OFF haha)

- love the triumphant heroic mando music kicking in as we’re finally getting to pick off imps, love that for us

- din’s protective instincts at work again, he helps mayfeld to his feet and makes sure he’s safely on board before going further in himself ;_______;

- fennec’s professional approval at mayfeld’s shot hahaha. well I guess he was supposed to be a sharpshooter back in the day huh

I do Not think she likes mayfeld even after all that, though, the withering look she sends him on her way past... should have killed him stone dead on the spot

- seeing din back in the armour is like a physical relief, I can breathe again haha

- tfw you catch yourself thinking ‘at least when all this is over we can go back to the razor crest and everything will be normal again’ and then you rEMEMBER 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta #honestly I could add a lot more of my boba thirst in this lol (idk din is always Dad not Daddy to me but boba's Doing something for me haha)

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kazxraval · 1 year ago

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Time had been kind to the woman. A past warmth shared also softened the view too. Kaz couldn't say many people helped him during a very bumpy start in life, but she had. This woman with two names, two faces.

A sentence changed everything. My colleagues have rifles aimed at you. A sharp stab of betrayal from Nadia, a knife shoved in the back as she stood in front of him. Urmilla’s hand on the handle to twist it in deeper.

Despite the warning, he peered at each window. Counted every dark and dusty pane of glass. Orders were given that only a dead man would follow, which caused him to fume even more. The better gamble being to make a run for it. At least a moving target stood more of a chance over a confined one at close range.

But he tracked her down for a fucking reason, not to run off. The rage of the moment poured down his throat like kerosene. His tone a matchstrike on the words. "Wow," he scoffed and shook his head. The flames filled the gaze he locked on Urmilla. "You of all people. Doing this to me." She wanted to play tough? Hope to hell she was prepared. Mentally a shuffle began to weaponize as much from Seattle as possible, and all that Emre had shared.

Kaz tossed the knife into the sand several feet away. "There you go," he drawled painfully slow with a fleeting, smarmy smile. A few steps back and then a pivot to the right. Urmilla rounded up behind. "Yeah. Pretend they're dead. It's easier on you, hm?"

Bright light to sudden darkness temporarily blinded Kaz, long enough to be harshly restrained. Tendons pulled against an old shoulder injury as he fought to escape. With his phone wrenched away, he threw himself backwards into his attacker. While it didn’t free Kaz, it was hard enough to slam whoever held him into a wall, knocking the wind from his opponents lungs with a loud and angry jolt.

The scuffle between Kaz and Urmilla’s dog lasted several long seconds and ended once she called the man off. They still postured and walked an arc to intimidate.

Kaz pulled out a chair with the legs in a long and ear-splitting scrape on the floor. Urmilla kept directing him into the worst possible spots. He sat, but on the edge of the seat. Eyes on her muscle who kept watch with arms like boulders ready to knock Kaz's teeth in.

There were parts of the story he couldn't explain to her. Not there. His personal way to maneuver through the post-apocalypse meant avoiding too many explanations about the island. Reasons that were obvious to him.

How did he get there? "There are pathways around the world. Don't you want to know why I'm here? That's the interesting part." His eyes narrowed on her. "Theo tracked me down, Urmilla. But he's found you here too. Or, are you working with him again?" Dark eyes turned up to scan around the room. "That why you're here?" What either had to gain in this new world by running in their old circles, Kaz hadn't a clue.

His gaze settled on Urmilla again. "The sons you abandoned. Funny you say they're dead. Emre thought you were dead this whole time. Until we realized that I knew you in Seattle, where you weren't supposed to be."

"He told me everything. How you and Omar disappeared. Supposed to be on a trip to the States. You never came back. Dadi died, did you know that? Emre had to take care of Iyaz on his own. Know what it does to a teenager when they've got to become an adult really fast?"

An elbow rested on the table and Kaz swept his hair back. He examined Urmilla now. A table in between them, out of the sun and wind but in a deceptively quiet room. "Emre loves you. I don't know how he does it. Even after I showed him photos of you in Seattle, when you should've been with him and Iyaz in London. Looking out for them. He still talks about you all the time."

She's a good person, a confident and unshakable statement long ago. To which Kaz silently shook his head in response: no.

Nuance later entered the picture. But now, Urmilla had only one way to go here. Kaz held out his hand. "I have photos I can show you." Erm, he needed to find those himself. "Pull up the contacts on my phone, you'll see his name." Uhm, yeah she really shouldn't look at his text messages. "You can hear his voice and hang up if you want. But I'm not fucking lying about this. It's all true."

Urmilla was fascinated by Kaz's face. She'd rather chalk it up to her poor memory, than concede to any of the stranger, more fantastical rumours about 'ageless' people.

She'd only ever embraced Kaz once; like hugging an upright ironing board, this one. She kept her distance now. He was certainly more solemn, more stoic. A youthful face with far too grown-up eyes - that was always Kaz, though. Perhaps pissed; perpetually pissed, if he knew how to carry a grudge for 13 years. But he'd found her, and it had only taken him till the end of the world.

"Kaz, I - " Urmilla started, but then Kaz shocked her into silence. Indignant when he spoke her real name. And then - oh god. The other two names made her head swim for a moment; and sadly the first thing she thought was: lies. This is a set-up. Someone's gotten to him, told him everything. He's changed, he's working for them. This was a mistake.

"This used to be a police station, before. My colleagues have rifles aimed at you," she spoke, quiet and calm. "You can't see them, so please don't try to look. Now give me your knife and any other weapons you have. Then turn right, and walk into the green office building. Please don't waste my time arguing with me, Kaz..."

She motioned for him to walk. Urmilla would follow behind. "And don't talk to me about things you don't actually know." Only when Kaz wasn't looking at her, Urmilla stated: "Urmilla's boys are dead."

Once inside, the sudden switch from sunlight to darkness allowed someone to grab Kaz from behind, pin his arms back. Urmilla reached forward and took Kaz's phone from him.

"Let him go, it's alright," Urmilla said, peering at the device but not poking through it yet. A huge man circled, staring suspicious daggers at Kaz, looking like he hoped Kaz would strike back.

"Please sit down, Kaz. You're doing so well," Urmilla said. There was a desk and two chairs, in the otherwise stripped bare office. "You can explain 'everything', to me here - starting with how you even arrived in Alexandria. Then you'll give me that flash drive."

#c: emre

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definegodliness · 3 years ago

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Intermezzo

Cloud nine exists no more. It has been forcefully swept from under my feet, and now, surrounded by anxiously jiving debris, I plummet; deliver my shredded consciousness to all gods, both new and old, into the vacuous eye of delivery's storm and hear naught but silence, as if the raging matter surrounding my flightless corporeality is but a mindless, soulless distraction; destructive, therein. The clean-swept dust bath closes in, and I can see nothing but the red of dire Earth; aridness in a canister of compacted losses, circling nauseatingly if I were to track and follow one speck of its respective alloy until witnessing its total assimilation within the whole.

I mourn every smidgen of incandescence turned tin, fixed into place to keep agreed upon reality in, till it sickens me and I toss the weight of my temporal vessel around mid-flight to ethereally recumbent behold the distant star of life as last a beacon of hope; bright enough to blind me from the shames and pities of the human lament.

I fall. I see.

The star of life shines its mutating radiance boldly, mocking all conscious beings, more temporal, for their quests in keeping the status quo of this exact existence.

"Deliver me from evil!", I beg the star of life.

Solar flares rip and tear at my mortal husk, till exposed is all that which matters at this point in time, and being.

I plummet, still.

“What am I now but the eternally bright light of my undying soul, claiming its birthright of resonance within time's ever rippling, as if a shooting star, or comet, illumining the clearest midnight blue of empty nightly skies; the void, far beyond the edges of space which one might call 'emptiness', and the girth and length of my magnum dong, now drastically elastically flopping within the tension between gravity and air resistance?”

Confusion. Yes, confusion and bedazzlement take a hold of me. Perhaps I should not have opted to deliver my shredded consciousness to ‘all’ gods, new and old, ‘cause what bullshit deity would have the totality of my humanity be a sparkling and pulsating orb of brilliant luster, only to then attach the fleshly variant of two semen packed avocados and a forearm sized zucchini? It is an outrage! Thus, by lack of arms, I shake my wiener upward, brandishing it like an angered fist toward whatever divine creator thought it funny, or agreeable, to reduce a human to a mere materialization of procreation.

“Who does that?”, I ask, “... why?”

There is no answer.

Only giggles in the wind.

I fall. I fall, still.

And, well... still. As a matter of fact, it is taking so long I get bored and entertain current existential contemplations: the duality of man; flesh versus soul; instinct versus cognizance; lust versus love, lustful love, and loving lust, and all imaginable shades of nuanced reality that thrive in between; all the while watching that star of life, fading into the distance, until the sheer weight of my ever engorging avocados by universal law of gravity cause me to topple back into an ethereally procumbent position.

Purple lightning rages against the pink German World War II helmet, which feels nice, I gotta say, and I realize I am part of some blitzkrieg beyond my understanding. My rock solid prophet’s staff splits the sea and all the turmoil of pantha rhei skips a beat to unveil the Big Bang’s Birthplace, starfish spread-eagled; so blatantly lascivious its design can only 'be' to mock my innate yearning spiritual transcendence. Ghastly, yet still, I plummet further. Through the entirety of Earth. Further, deeper. Helpless in this what can only be the inescapability of divine purpose. After all, whereto can I otherwise go without letting my deplorable rendition of palpability break the laws of time and space? So much for self-determination.

I crash down.

Down the center of the Milky Way.

Ever accelerating, caught in the gravitational field of Sagittarius A*. I am. And as I am, I am evidently designed to fill, or plug, this manifestation of lamentable ever expanding emptiness and darkness. As such I make amends with the insignificance of this carnal existence. Hushing my conscience with the fact that I actually have no spine at this given moment, therefore being spineless is more than justifiable, it is logical.

I give in.

Then, a bright flash of light, as the embodiment of godly origin flicks her fingers last milliseconds before impact and sends the remnants of my drab corporeality down the drain of existential settlement where all past's hapless human chances at godliness tragically consist. She does it casually, to then ask me if this is where I want to shoot for the future, before I can even think to try and push forth in an attempt to reach dead end's greatest depths for the sole sake of hedonism to begin with. I realize, what she offers is a lifetime's gratifying 'all'--, and yet simultaneously that this gratification is relativizable to the point of non-existence as there is no way to puncture the veil of finiteness into the never ending.

Despite the ecstasy of vortex-fall; the vehemence of plummet, my god given pride in heated surging sanguine engorged masculinity falls to dwindle limp in a sad shriveling retreat outside the Virgin Miley's rhythmically pulsating, monkey-fist-grabbing-dick contracting dirty dawn star.

"This is not what life is"; my genuflection.

She smiles, "it isn't."

Then, as if in a dream, the Virgin Miley vaporizes into a million shimmers of sparkling stardust, and I am grounded; crashed through the harsh permafrost, until splicing the rock of another dimension’s version of earth. I examine the shape of the crater left by my plummet, wondering where I am. I ask the aether, addressing the chaste one, yet she gives no answer.

Only giggles in the wind...

All too familiar.

I understand, now. Yet I cannot dwell on my understanding. Suddenly, circling all around me, a mob of enraged Swiss men and women; complaining the Matterhorn has been decimated by my plummet from death’s plane of ‘settling’. I try to explain to them spiritual evolution is about peaks of existence, as so considered by any remotely achievable esoteric consensus, being utterly shattered; pulverized into fertile grounds of brand new inspiration and realizations, yet they have none of it. They shout and seethe I am an idiot, who should have simply traversed the depths of tightly constricting predestination and be done with it.

Then, in a last ditch effort to talk some sense into them, I wrap the fleshly part of my current reality like a pink veiny tentacle around the holy triangle, the Toblerone, holding it out to them, letting my spirit’s echoing voice resound:

"He who is without caramel bits, cast the first chocolate."

Alas, they have none of it. Instead, the angry Swiss mob closes in, among them I now see some carry steam wafting bronzen kettles. I am entrapped. No way to wriggle myself out of this, and wriggling is all I can. As punishment, they slather the brightly pulsating core of my eternal spiritual purity (and my throbbing, wildly flopping curd spewing boa constrictor) with the molten golden of drooping fondue cheese. Agonizingly. Thus, the orb of light, my sorry soul, is by time and negligence; ignorance, and society’s cruel demands, yet again encased. Dimmed. Damned to once more partake in this loop of ever reoccurrence. When they leave, I am once again, but man. Another lifetime beckons.

The whole endeavor has left me ravenous.

I start eating myself.

--- 7-9-2021, M.A. Tempels ©

#absurdism #creative writing #prose #writers #writing #alt lit #writers on tumblr #chronicles of miley #weird #i don't know how to tag these things

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askfallenroyalty · 4 years ago

Note

(1/2) I don't care that the story isn't done. The reset itself isn't the point. You had FRISK tell Chara, point blank, to give up on their suicidal family member after like ten minutes. No matter what, that is FUCKED. Honostly, the ending to this story is irrelevant to why I'm upset. I'm sure you'll wrap all this up in a nice little bow at the end of this.

with the heavy subject matter and with my lengthy response, i’m putting this under a read-more.

sigh. ok. i see you’re angry and you have every right to be upset, this topic is very personal to me too. i want to stress that i see that and its fine to react this way, that at the end of the day despite my author intention, you as the reader came away with this. and i’m sorry. i hope with the full picture you will see how this story is intended to be empowering and helpful to those who suffer from depression and sucidal thoughts. this is a story of unity and love. this plot beat doesn’t reflect that theme, and is supposed to be the darkest point of the full story and the wrong they must make right. however! as an uncomplete story, yes! yes its fucked and not cool, its never been intended to be ok. frisk made a mistake.

i feel i have to give context to frisk’s actions but even when i do that, i want to say sorry for how i’ve hurt you and that going forward with the story, i want to make it explically clear what frisk said was wrong. i want to thank you for this critisim, and i take it fully to heart. i hope you’re ok.

alright so in context, this is what happened. undertale the game happens. a year passes, chara true resets. they continue to reset until AFR happens and they lose the power. Chara clings to resets and the past because as a ghost, they had nothing. while frisk loves chara, they can’t really get past their broken trust they have with their sibling for taking a year off of their life. thats fine tho, because chara doesn’t have the power and they’re happy with their new life.

but then chara does get the power back and explains they intend to reset so they can relive the past and have no one ever die again. frisk is mad at this, but chara in the darkworld arc promises not to use the power anymore. things are fine again... but imminently when they leave, chara changes their mind. they ambiguously say goodbye with the intent to use the save power somehow.

when asriel dies, frisk isn’t looking at it as “oh shit, asriel is dead” frisk is looking at this as “since midnight i’ve been told this timeline is a goner so whatever happens is not real, chara betrayed me twice and has fully broken my trust.” they’re furious at this betrayal AND for chara reloading without talking to them. they were partners in the journey underground and great friends! chara betrayed them!

and most importantly frisk is 15. (14 in-universe because of the original true reset, forgot i didn’t make them 13. i’m bad with numbers, not really relevant) they believe chara will true reset (which they ended up doing) and 5 years of their life would be gone as well as, in a sense, killing their siblings! to frisk, they’re seeing this as a trolley problem scenario, not “save asriel” scenario.

they’re a kid who’s had their life ripped from them and betrayed by their best friend, they’re a kid scared for their siblings and family’s lives and that context is important to how they reacted. yes!!! its messed up! but they’re not reacting in the sense of “give up on asriel” but “are we going to be stuck in a magic loop and are you going to erase the future completely” and once chara explained they were fine with not resetting and only intended to reload, frisk backed off!!! frisk was fine!! with that!

they accepted chara felt the solution was a magic one -but as i mentioned, this isn’t the right answer nor is it the final answer. as far as i’m concerned, this is their 4th attempt to saving asriel and there CAN be more. when i say its not over- i frickin mean it! the story deals with magic and the whole scenario is built on magic. the outcome will be grounded in reality and how to better handle the situation but ultimately the context isn’t as black and white as you painted it.

frisk and chara are scared and in way over their heads with this. chara and frisk have been crying, having damn breakdowns and worried as hell for their families and as a kid, frisk is more worried about their immediate family than the basically-stranger who’s always been chara’s brother first. is it still wrong? yes. should i have made this more clear in the text and hopefully avoided this? yes! i’m not sure what exactly i could of done better but I fully intend to make this more clear.

i’m just... kinda at a loss right now of what to say. i fundamently believe the full story that i have in my head tackles this topic with nuance and showing both characters are at fault (chara for the lack of communication and hot-headed-ness.) and i hope with time it’ll fix this issue. but for now, it doesn’t change this story is upsetting as an unfinished piece. i’m fine with discussing this further with you anon but i also fully understand if you’re angry and don’t wish to engage further. regardless, i wish you the best.

#ooc #tbd #not art #suicide #ask to tag #negative #Anonymous

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kumeko · 3 years ago

Text

A/N: For @giyushinozine! I wanted to tangle with Shinobu’s growing feelings, the complicated mess of her not knowing how she feels only that their relationship isn’t the same as it was before.

…

It was raining. Standing on the threshold of an abandoned house, Shinobu breathed in the earthy air as she watched the steady downpour. Not even the birds and insects wanted to be caught in this weather, and Shinobu missed their usual song. Instead, she was serenaded by the soft plip as rain hit the hole-filled roof, the pitter-patter of droplets as they struck the earth.

This wasn’t the first storm that had caught her unawares. It probably wouldn’t be the last. If anything, a dilapidated building was better than the caves she’d hidden in before. There was no point in risking a cold by heading to the town proper and searching for an inn.

Well, there was one point. Shinobu grimaced as she looked over her shoulder. Barely visible in the gloom was Giyu. Suddenly she found herself longing for a damp cave. Maybe she could even just keep heading home; what was a feverish week in exchange for a couple of hours worth of peace? Getting trapped with Giyu was the worst luck. It had been off-putting running into him while returning from a mission, but spending the night with him?

The rain was looking more and more tempting. Shinobu stared at the dark clouds one last time before stepping back with a sigh. If she got sick and a demon attacked—she shook her head, refusing to entertain the idea any further. She could put up with Giyu until the rain stopped, at least.

Steeling herself, she turned around. The house was a small one with a simple layout. The biggest room was this first room, featuring a sunken hearth and space around for its occupants to huddle. Water leaked into the house from several sizeable holes in the ceiling, but luckily none were near the firepit. Unfortunately, while Giyu was sitting next to the hearth, he hadn’t actually started a fire. Hand on her hip, Shinobu tried to keep her irritation out of her voice as she asked, “Where’s the fire?”

He looked at her, a sleepy expression on his face, and shrugged. “It isn’t there.”

“I can see that.” Shinobu bit her cheek. This was just minute one. She had to at least make it to an hour before giving up. “Whyisn’t there a fire?”

“I didn’t start it,” he answered simply.

Maybe Kanao would visit her in jail. Shinobu gritted her teeth and quickly strode toward the center of the room. “This is why no one likes you. It’s common sense to start a fire when it’s cold.” Ignoring his surprised flinch—and honestly, why did that surprise him? He should know how everyone felt by now—, she knelt by the hearth and inspected the coal there. Oddly shaped and crumbly, they were at least dry and would hopefully kindle. “Otherwise we’ll get sick and the last thing I am doing is carrying you back.”

Giyu didn’t say anything, just watched as she pulled out her tinder. His eyes were barely visible in the half-light. At night, it would be impossible to see him at all. While that was preferable, she didn’t want to break her neck walking around this place in the dark. Luckily, it didn’t take long for the fire to take. The flames flickered to life, a thin curl of smoke rising to the roof. Immediately, the warmth hit her skin and she sat a little further back, letting the heat remove the chill from her bones. She sighed, “That’s better.”

He kept quiet. Soon, the crackling flames were the only sound in the room as they greedily gobbled up the remaining coal. Idly, Shinobu glanced at her companion. She could count the number of times she’d been alone with him with a single hand, maybe two. It was odd. They’d worked together for so long, but she’d never really thought of him before now. Maybe it was his lack of presence or the way he isolated himself. Even now, with no one around but the two of them, he kept to himself, his eyes trained on the fire.

Shinobu had never considered herself someone who needed conversation. She liked silence almost as much as she liked chatter, liked how doing nothing could sometimes be utterly comfortable. This was neither of those things. Feeling awkward and slightly unnerved, she wondered how she should break the silence. The shadows danced across his face in strange patterns. She kept adjusting her posture, her legs falling asleep as they waited, yet he hadn’t moved an inch.

In the end, she didn’t have to. Her stomach gurgled hungrily, and Shinobu immediately wrapped an arm around her waist as a mortified blush burned her neck. She snapped her attention to Giyu. Their eyes met and any hopes she had that he hadn’t noticed vanished. “I…” she mumbled, her brain running in circles as she tried to find an explanation that kept her dignity.

“Hungry?” Giyu asked.

“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. Somehow, an hour had passed since they’d taken refuge. Even now, the rain didn’t let up, the droplets drumming on the roof as the night took over. Shinobu prided herself on her preparation, but she had planned on arriving home hours ago.

Something crinkled and she watched as Giyu pulled out a leaf-wrapped bundle. Holding it out, he offered, “You can have some.”

“I don’t need—” Her indignant response was immediately cut off as her stomach grumbled yet again. The hot blush on her neck crawled up her cheeks and there was no escaping this now. Flustered, she quickly got up and moved next to Giyu. As she sat down, her hand out to take the food, she growled, “You tell anyone about this and you’re dead.”

Confused, he cocked his head. “Why?”

She wasn’t sure if that was ‘Why would I tell anyone’ or ‘Why would I die’. She also didn’t care. How could she ever look anyone in the eye if they knew that Giyu of all people was more prepared than she was? Shaking her hand insistently, she snapped, “Does it matter?”

Giyu gave her a long, blank stare before slowly unwrapping his bundle, revealing three large onigiri. “No.”

Somehow, even when she got what she wanted, Giyu still frustrated her. What did he think of it all? Did he care? He had thawed since their last, but changes with him were as subtle as erosion on a rock. It didn’t help that he was as dense as one. Fighting down her irritation, she plucked one of the rice balls from his hand. The very round rice balls—Giyu took the ‘ball’ part literally it seemed. Still, maybe it tasted good.

A single bite dashed her hopes: the food was as tasteless as he was. Resisting the urge to gag at its blandness, she asked, “Do you know what salt is?”

“Yes.” Of course his expression remained utterly placid as he ate. Bite after bite, his face was as still as a lifeless pond. Maybe his taste buds had died long ago. Noticing her stare, he held out the last ball. “You want another?”

She couldn’t stop the grimace. “I can barely handle this one.” There was no point in nuance or tip-toeing around a matter with him. If Shinobu didn’t bluntly state it, he wouldn’t get it. “Did you make this? It’s terrible.”

“Terrible?” Shocked, he looked at the ball, then back at her. It was like kicking an ugly puppy.

“Yes, terrible. You can’t serve this to anyone.” Shinobu rolled her eyes. “How did you mess up something so simple? Even I can do this.”

“Oh.” Looking utterly devastated, he stared at the rice ball. It was impressive how broken he looked, even though his expression didn’t change much.

“Just add salt next time,” Shinobu relented, already tired of insulting him. Like this, he reminded her too much of Kanao when she’d first started learning things. Kanao. Her mind wandered to the Butterfly Estate, to the five girls waiting there. Well, perhaps four now that Kanao had her own duties. Aoi would be worried. She always worried too much. “She won’t like this,” she muttered, half to herself.

Still chewing on his riceball like a hamster, Giyu shot her an inquisitive look. “Who?”

She hadn’t intended to say that aloud. Another clumsy mistake in front of him. Maybe she should just bury him under the wisteria trees; they needed the nourishment. Reticently, she mumbled, “Aoi.”

He only looked at her, perplexed. Shinobu longed for the good old days when she didn’t care about anything. Louder now, she repeated, “Aoi. I’m late from the mission, she must be worried.”

“She isn’t,” Giyu replied immediately.

It took her a full minute to process his response. Gritting her teeth, she asked politely, “Why not?”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he stated flatly with the absolute assurance that only a complete moron had.

Last Shinobu had heard, there was another water pillar in training. They wouldn’t miss Giyu’s absence for long. Curling her hand into a fist, Shinobu glared at him. “This might be a foreign concept to you, but some people actually care about others.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what about him made her so angry. It couldn’t just be his rudeness—Sanemi was twice as rude and she didn’t want to murder him at every encounter. No, it had to be something deeper than that, but she didn’t want to waste her thoughts on it, on him. Focusing instead on her nails digging into her skin, she forced herself to calm down.

Now that her appetite was appeased, however badly, she listened to their surroundings once more. The rain tapped unevenly on the roof, the storm abating slightly. Unfortunately, it was still rain. She was still trapped here with him. Resigning herself to her fate, she shifted to get more comfortable one. “Even in this weather, a demon might come. We’ll have to take shifts,” she announced, rubbing the back of her neck.

Giyu nodded his agreement.

When he didn’t say anything else, Shinobu added irately, “I’ll take first watch.”

Once more, he merely nodded. Rude, lacking manners, utterly unreadable—Shinobu didn’t know how it was possible to find only new disappointments with a single person. The only thing he had going for him was his slightly above-average looks, and even that was ruined the second he did something. Fine, whatever, she thought. It wasn’t like she could sleep comfortably, knowing the only thing between her and death was him.

Leaning forward, she stoked the coals once more, embers flying as she gathered the broken rocks together. “Make sure this doesn’t disappear when it’s your turn.” Satisfied, Shinobu sat back and stretched her arms above her. Maybe she should take a walk after this and smooth out the crinks in her back. “I’ll wake you up in four hours.”

“Okay.” Crossing his arms, Giyu buried his hands in his sleeves. His eyes remained open.

“You know you can sleep, right?” she asked, just in case he didn’t understand what a ‘watch’ meant. The other pillars didn’t like him, after all. Maybe he’d never gone on a mission this long with someone other than her.

“Yes,” he nodded, his eyes still wide open. There was nothing about his stiff posture that looked like a man about to sleep.

It wasn’t worth pursuing it any further. She refused to go bald from the stress of dealing with him. And if he didn’t trust her abilities enough to rest, well, he was the one who wanted to pull an all-nighter.

Making herself comfortable, Shinobu rested her cheek on her hand as she watched the coals. It was going to be a long, uneventful night. Even demons didn’t like coming out on nights like these. In the distance, she heard an owl hoot, the rustling of leaves, the chirping of crickets. The rain almost washed it all out, a steady static noise. It had been too long since she’d had an uneventful night like this.

An hour passed. Then another. Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, she observed Giyu’s profile. He was just as hard to grasp from his side as he had been from the front. Maybe he’d be a mystery to her for her entire life. Tired as she was, that didn’t sound entirely bad.

“You’re strong,” he said, breaking the silence. She wasn’t sure if she was still in her watch or part way through his now.

Drowsy, she retorted, “Of course I am.”

“You’re strong,” he repeated, as though she hadn’t said anything. “So no one has to worry about you. The strong…” he paused. She could feel the weight of it. “The strong come back.”

She didn’t have to ask if that was personal experience. There was only one reason anyone joined the corps, after all. Still, Shinobu wished she was sitting across the fire, still able to see his expression. Or even just was more awake than she was now. His voice had a flavour to it. She could only imagine what he looked like.

Her eyes closed. Opened. Closed again. The next time Shinobu was aware of her surroundings, there was a warmth behind her head and a strong arm around her shoulders. Giyu’s, her fuzzy mind provided helpfully. She should be disgusted, but it was warm and comfortable, so she’d allow it just this once. His breathing was even, as always, and she fell asleep once more to the sound of his heartbeat.

When Shinobu woke up the next morning, she was alone. Curled up on the ground and a jacket covering her shoulders, but utterly alone. Rubbing her eyes, she slowly sat up and glanced around. Sunlight filtered through the holes in the roof, illuminating the place. There wasn’t hide nor hair of Giyu anywhere. It felt almost like a dream, though if it had him in it, it had to be a nightmare.

The only proof that any of it happened was his jacket on her shoulders, keeping her warm. It fell to her lap in a crumpled heap as she straightened up. Gingerly, she picked it up between two fingers, eyeing the fabric distastefully.

What, exactly, was she supposed to do with this? Returning it felt like a loss. Shinobu glanced at the hearth in front of her. She could still burn it in there; even if the coals were gone, there was plenty of dry wood in this house.

She bit her lip, studying the jacket once more. Part of her could still feel the warmth of his shoulder, hear his quiet voice. Shinobu couldn’t return it, couldn’t destroy it. Couldn’t figure out exactly what riled her up about this man. It’d be easier if she didn’t care or was truly as disgusted by him as she acted.

Sighing, she folded the damned fabric. If she couldn’t figure out what to do with it now, she’d just have to keep it until she did.

#giyushino #tomioka giyuu #shinobu kochō #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kny #fanfic

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valberryy · 4 years ago

Text

efficacy. — zhongli

hi!! this started out as an oc fic, but i thought i'd convert it to a reader insert!! i tried to change some of the more "explicit" oc info, so hopefully it's fine now!

pairing: zhongli x gn!reader

content warnings: mentions of blood/injury/death, contemplations of/vaguely attempted murder, slight swearing. if these topics are sensitive to you, i'd recommend clicking away.

[Name]'s life would be nothing without order. They found a certain comfort in routines—working at the bookshop with Jifang in the afternoons, working for their less-than-legal clients once night fell. There was an odd kind of safety they found in it, in completed contracts and crossed-out bounties on a board: as they wiped the blood off their blade at sunrise, they found themself glad they no longer lived at the whims of ice, and snow, and migrating deer.

Tonight was odd, though.

A dagger twirled deftly between their fingers, and [Name] raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the informant sitting before them. A mask and hood alike obscured his face, and he seemed almost to hesitate slightly beneath their burning gaze—a newbie, then, or a fool.

"So?" they asked, their voice like a whip-crack in the silence. "Don't waste my time."

"Apologies," he said, and [Name] had to resist the urge to scoff. At another raised eyebrow the informant dug through his things and passed them an envelope.

Gingerly, they tore it open. "...Wangsheng?" they muttered to themself, before glancing back up. "I trust you have the right compensation?"

A stiff, "Of course," was their only response.

The knife between [Name]'s fingers stilled, before it became embedded in the cheap wood next to their now-client's head.

They stood, gave an almost-mocking flourish of a bow, and walked off without another word.

ii.

[Name] did not glance up from the shelf they were restocking when the footsteps of another customer coming up the stairs came into earshot, only saying a gruff, "Welcome," as they grew closer.

Their only response was a content hum, and they resisted the urge to sigh in relief that this particular patron wasn't a chatterbox.

The minutes trickled by in comfortable silence, as the man—for he was a man, [Name] learned, as soon as they looked up and towards his direction—browsed through their selection. The only sounds to be heard were the blowing of the breeze and the idle chatter of people walking past.

"What a fine collection you have," he said, and turned to face the counter they were seated behind. At the sight of his face they were thrust back into two nights ago—an unpleasant evening in a dingy old house, an envelope in one hand and a cheap knife in the other.

Not now, they thought to themself. Not now, when the blood can seep into the floorboards. The smell will hang for days.

"Thank you," they elected to say in reply. "...Will you be buying?"

He nodded, a thoughtful hand on his chin. "Indeed. The entire stock, actually."

[Name] faltered. "The entire…?" They coughed into a fist, regaining their composure and leaning forward on the counter. "That's going to cost you, sir."

They could almost see the excited sparkles around him as he opened his mouth to speak again, and whatever thoughts they had on how elegant and refined he seemed were thrown out to sea.

"Yes, of course," he began, "there truly is no treasure greater than knowledge, after all—there is a subtle nuance to the art to capturing a moment in time so vividly using just words alone…"

As he continued to ramble, [Name] rested their chin on their palm. The daggers concealed beneath their clothes were cool and heavy on their skin—a constant reminder, a subtle threat.

When his voice trailed off they gave a small, polite smile, standing upright again. "If you have the Mora, there should be nothing stopping you, sir."

The faraway, almost dreamy look in his eyes grew lucid at the mention of Mora. "Ah, of course. Mora," he said, and started patting his pockets searching for his wallet.

When neither of them heard the telltale clinking of coins, they glanced at each other almost exasperatedly.

"My deepest apologies—"

"...No, it's okay—"

The knife still burned against their skin, but they brushed it aside for a moment to grab an unwrapped copy of a book under the desk. They held it out to him, their face blank but the faintest, faintest hints of amusement dancing in their eyes.

He was…interesting. Dead men can rarely boast as much.

"Take it," they said, simply.

His eyes seemed to widen in pleasant surprise. "Are you certain?" he asked, and at [Name]'s casual shrug in the affirmative he gingerly took it from their hands.

"Thank you kindly," he said, raising the package in the air and inspecting it. "I'll have to repay you, for this."

They looked at him again, and thought of the envelope from the other night, thought of how they could almost feel his pulse as their fingers brushed just seconds prior.

"I'll hold you to it, then, sir," they elected to say.

Not now, not now, not now.

iii.

On his lips played a gentle smile that [Name] couldn't help but to distrust.

"There's a restaurant I believe you'd like," he had said. "Allow me to treat you for lunch, as thanks."

Their head had thus begun to swim with backup plans and what-ifs. Did he know? Was this some elaborate ruse to poison them? Surely not, right? They had been so careful up until now, too…

They blinked away their initial surprise and canted their head to the side. "Where?"

At that he went off onto another tangent, just as long as the ramble he had gone on a few days prior. [Name] found themself zoning out, glancing at where they knew his jugular was beneath his collar—or perhaps poison during their impromptu outing would fare better?

No, they scolded themself, there would be witnesses at a restaurant.

"...Don't worry, of course, I'll be sure to bring the Mora this time around," he said with a velvety laugh, and [Name] suddenly found themself back in the present.

They leaned forward on the bookstore counter, an eyebrow raised. "I don't even know your name, Mister Philanthropist."

Another smile graced his features, then—apologetic this time, and he outstretched a hand for them to shake. "My apologies," he said. "I am Zhongli, consultant for Wangsheng Funeral Parlor."

Gingerly, they took his hand in turn. They could feel the rhythmic beat-beat-beat of his pulse under their fingers.

Soon, they thought.

"Call me [Name]," they said, and forced themself to smile.

A few days later, it just so happened that both of their schedules were free.

"Would you still be willing to indulge me?" Zhongli asked—he had been visiting more often lately, and it just so happened that many of his visits happened to be on the days [Name] was there, as well. Jifang seemed curious, and honestly they were as well—did he enjoy their company? Was there something about their short, curt responses that didn't turn him away?

Or maybe he was planning something, too?

Nevertheless, despite their raging paranoia, it wasn't like they were in much of a position to complain. Jifang seemed content at their new, distinguished guest, and [Name] took it as an opportunity to learn more about him for the time being.

"...If you so wish," they said, plucking the book he was holding out of his hands to wrap it for him.

"Only if you do, my friend." Damn him and his deflection. "But it is my firm belief that the generous receive what is due to them, in time."

They hummed idly as they thumbed through the book he had chosen—something or other about the natural beauty of Inazuma—and then glanced back up at him.

And that was how they found themself here, they supposed.

Their table was relatively silent compared to some others, but it was by no means uncomfortable or awkward. With the idle chatter of other people and the clear sky above as a backdrop, the two dined in comforting silence—only the clinking of ceramic against each other to be heard, and to [Name]'s surprise, no traces of poison to be found whatsoever.

As the sun began to dip down the horizon, and all their food had been finished and the bill paid, the two found themselves taking a stroll down by the docks. Zhongli's gaze was trained ahead, while [Name]'s flitted about cautiously.

"Forgive me if I'm prying, however…" he began, "...But you're not a native, are you, my friend?"

A jolt, then, a bolt of white-hot fear running through their limbs. Did he know? Did they give themself away?

"I'm not," they said. "I was born abroad."

A satisfied hum was their response, and when they turned to glance at him, they found the smallest of smiles on his face.

"It's getting late," Zhongli said. "Thank you for today. I'd like to do this again, with you."

[Name] took pause at that. They thought once again of the envelope hidden under their drawers, and the knives hidden under their clothes.

They thought about the way Zhongli rambled on about whatever tale it was the storyteller across the street had spun—how "that indeed is one interpretation of it, but in the original text, the author actually meant to imply that…"

There was a pang of what almost felt like guilt in their chest, at that.

"...And I, you," they said, finally, "...my friend."

iv.

Perhaps stumbling into your supposed assassination target's home half-bloody with an arrow sticking out of your side was not the brightest idea, but in [Name]'s defense were two things: first of all, they had no fucking clue it was Zhongli's in the first place, and secondly, they couldn't exactly keep running from their angry former client with an arrow sticking out of their side.

And thus whatever levels of discretion they normally would have had were thrown out the window as they climbed into Zhongli's in the dead of night, and probably knocked something over in the process (if the new bruises were anything to go by).

(To be fair, they had been calling each other friends for a while now. Is this what friends did? [Name] couldn't be sure—their shady friends weren't exactly the best examples, after all.)

They had just sat up and groaned in pain when Zhongli came in, alarmed first at the noise and then at their sorry state.

"...Sorry," they muttered through gritted teeth. "Thought the place was empty—ow, shit! I can—I can do it mysel—"

"Nonsense," he said, his voice and hands firmer than they had noticed before. "...I still haven't repaid you for your favour to me, after all."

They stopped for a moment, at that. "...I thought the lunch was repayment?"

Somehow, Zhongli found it in himself to laugh, albeit tensely. From where they were sitting, they could see his face a lot more clearly than they had before—the tenseness in his brow, the flecks of gold in his amber irises, the way his nose crinkled at the density of the smell of blood.

"No," he replied, "that was a thank you."

They hummed, before hissing in pain again. "Pull the other way; the arrowhead went in at an angle—"

"Ah, yes, my mistake…"

[Name] continued, "I suppose this is your repayment, then?"

They only barely hid their surprise when he shook his head again.

"I'm doing this because I want to, [Name]."

(Somehow, they liked their name better when hearing it from him. Was it the timbre of his voice? Was it the appeal of hearing your name from a man who was supposed to be long-dead?)

"...I see."

As he sealed the last of the bandages and allowed them to adjust their clothes, he helped them over to what they assumed was a guest room, of sorts. He helped them to take a seat on shaky legs, and placed a firm, almost comforting hand on their shoulder.

"Promise me you'll be more careful, my friend."

They glanced away, their face oddly warm. Wasn't blood loss supposed to do the opposite? "I can't guarantee that, Zhongli."

He followed their gaze over to the floor, and then glanced back at them. "If not that, then I'd at least ask you to…rely on me more," he said, and something about the sincerity in his voice struck them as odd.

They almost wanted to burn that envelope in their drawers when they went home.

[Name] glanced back up at him, forcing themself to face his questioning gaze.

"...I'll try."

But only for you.

+1.

In [Name]'s life, there exists a line they do not dare themself to cross. On one side stands sweet Jifang from the bookshop, the tenacious Traveller and their friends, and the ghosts of their loved ones from Inazuma; and on the other stands themself and their other shadowy benefactors.

The first to tread the line between the two was Zhongli—who, despite the bounty on his head, still managed to maneuvre his way into them somehow being able to call him their friend.

Honestly. The Seven damn him and his stupid charisma, and his stupid voice, and his stupid encyclopedic knowledge of silk flowers.

When [Name] woke up, they were not in their home.

Through their shock they failed to register the bandages wound around their torso, and bit back a yelp of pain as the wound threatened to reopen. In the dark they could see their overwear folded neatly on the bed next to them, and Zhongli asleep, slumped over in a chair.

Suddenly, they were acutely aware of the old bone knife under their clothes—their only souvenir from home, unstained by blood for years, and years, and years.

Would Zhongli be its first, then?

Quietly they stood and dug through their folded clothes until they felt it—the uneven blade, the worn-down grooves near the hilt. They skulked their way over to where he slept, and tried to ignore how painfully peaceful his slow, even breaths were.

His eyes fluttered open just as they pressed the blade to his throat. He seemed too calm, though, not even a twitch of his hands or a hitch in his breath to give away any surprise at all. All he did was place a loose grip on their wrist—a stark contrast to their white-knuckled, shaking hand—and ask,

"What are you doing, [Name]?"

They grit their teeth. "...I'm sorry," they said, "but I have a contract to complete."

Something in Zhongli's eyes softened at that. This was his domain, they realised—contracts, and contingencies, and wordplay.

His grip on their wrist tightened, ever so slightly, and he traced his free hand over their clenched jaw. "But so do we," he replied. "I've still never paid you back, after all."

There was a pause, then—a long, pregnant silence.

"May I kiss you?" Zhongli asked, his voice like a whip-crack in the space between them. [Name] said nothing, but the crease between their brows deepened further.

The dagger embedding itself into the floor and the soft, firm press of their lips against his was enough of an answer.

#genshin impact #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact oneshot #genshin impact zhongli #zhongli x reader #too many thoughts!!!!! not enough braincells #i ammm just . barking #hoo #bee writes

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

Text

prompt: Bodyswap of Nie Mingjue and Baxia?

link to ao3 because this is long

There were a lot of rules about the saber spirits, but the most important one was always: You control the saber, do not let it control you.

The line between being a hero and being a monster was a very thin one, easy to overstep: with the horrible temper that was as much an ancestral inheritance as their cultivation style, it was all too easy for members of their family to become corrupted. Cultivating the saber spirit gave them power, but it also inspired rage – it would be all too easy to start making excuses for your conduct, to become corrupted by your own desires, to say “Oh, it’s his fault, he made me angry” or “He shouldn’t have gotten in my way” when what you meant was “I decided he didn’t matter.”

That was unacceptable.

If people didn’t matter, then nothing mattered, and all the sacrifices that had ever been made in the name of upholding justice and righteousness, using violence for good, were for nothing.

Control and principle – those were the foundations of Nie cultivation.

The saber spirits heightened the tension of it: the balance between power and responsibility, between blind rage and principled justice. Each saber spirit belonged to a single master, reflecting the quirks of their personality, but at the most base level they were all the same, simple and straightforward: they wanted to destroy evil.

All evil.

Without exception. Without mercy or nuance or – anything.

That’s why it was the job of the saber’s master to keep them in check. A saber spirit would make no distinction between a lost ghost draining a little yang energy to preserve its own life or a fierce corpse murdering people left in right, between a yao that took in the energy of the sun and moon and a yao that fed on corpses, between a small child stealing bread to feed their family or a criminal stealing in through the window to commit a rape – only a human could make those sorts of decisions.

Or so Nie Mingjue had always been taught.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, late at night, Baxia lying on the bed next to him instead of properly in her case where she belonged. “I think you could probably learn to tell the difference, if you wanted.”

Baxia purred in his mind, temporarily calm and sated – he’d gone night hunting the day before, accompanying his father, and he’d been the one to take down the creature: a maddened yao that had once been a boar, and which had recently taken to ripping people to pieces with its tusks.

His father had been very proud. He’d ruffled Nie Mingjue’s hair as if he were still a child – he wasn’t, he was a big brother now, his little brother born just last month – and called him his prodigy, ignoring the way the other Nie cultivators on the night hunt frowned.

They always frowned.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t supposed to get his saber until he was twelve. Before that, it was all practice sabers: heavy wood, to help strengthen the arms and shoulders, and eventually dead steel, to learn to finesse and how to not cut your own head off, and only once you’d shown sufficient skill in those could you finally get a spiritual weapon of your very own.

Nie Mingjue picked up Baxia for the first time when he was six.

There’d been fighting, an incursion into the Unclean Realm by assassins – some small sect, probably egged on by Wen Ruohan in a way that could never be traced to him, but anyway they were all dead now – and when he’d heard the screaming, it hadn’t even occurred to him not to help.

Suppress evil, no matter where it lives; uphold justice, no matter what it takes.

He’d been only a child, but there had been children screaming, children his own age confronting fully grown cultivators, and that hadn’t been fair at all.

Nie Mingjue had sprinted to the armory, hoping to find something – anything he could use, even just one of his practice sabers, and that was the first time he’d seen her.

Baxia – though she hadn’t been Baxia back then – had only been half-forged then, enough spiritual weapon to channel his qi but not enough to really respond to his commands. That was fine: he didn’t know the techniques to wield her properly back then, anyway.

The basics were good enough against cultivators who never expected that the young child heir of the Nie family would be able to lift a sword longer than he was tall, much less wield it.

He’d aimed low at first, going for tender ankles and vulnerable knees, and then when they’d tried to leap up against him he brought his saber up against them, aiming for their bodies.

There was a lot of blood.

Nie Mingjue was descended from a butcher: his father had been taking him to see animals get hacked up for their kitchens since before he’d started walking, a way to inure him to blood and guts and gore, to animal screams that weren’t so different from the screams of the battlefield.

It was still strange, seeing blood on the flood, blood on his blade, to see the light fade out of a man’s eyes and know that he made that happen – that his soul would be irrevocably marked with the stain of having taken a life.

As a reward, Nie Mingjue’s father had ordered that Nie Mingjue could take up his saber early.

A lot of people in the sect didn’t agree with that decision. Even now, two years later, they still frowned whenever Nie Mingjue did something, muttering warnings about how children couldn’t be trusted to control themselves, how the saber spirits were unpredictable, how a cultivator’s life might already be cut short and how there was no need to cut a childhood short as well.

Nie Mingjue’s father ignored them. Nie Mingjue ignored them, too.

He liked Baxia.

And he thought, maybe, that she liked him, too.

No one had ever told him that he shouldn’t have been able to tell.

The first time they switch, it’s to save his life.

It wasn’t the first time they’d gotten closer than they should: Nie Mingjue had figured out if he channeled not only qi energy but vital energy into Baxia, circulating it through her as if she were an extension of his meridians, they would fight better – she would be light in his hand, anticipating his movements, putting her force behind his blows alongside his own. He’d even noticed that he could almost ‘see’ things differently – flickers of pulsing qi in cultivators, ghostly flame in corpses – and he thought it might be that he was seeing things the way she saw things, if a saber spirit could be said to see.

He’d done it more and more, only for one of his teachers to notice and scold him fiercely. Allowing something into his vital qi was opening himself up to possession; it might help his cultivation in the short term, an emergency measure, but in the end, the saber spirit would turn on him, devour him – after all, who was truly free from evil?

At first, Nie MIngjue tried to be good, to stop, but Baxia all but sulked at him – his swings dragging a little more than could be blamed on air resistance, a feeling of dissatisfaction and unhappiness even when he killed some fierce corpses for her, randomly waking him up in the middle of the night with fake alarms because his saber figured out long ago that he hated that – and eventually he just gave it up.

Every Nie saber was different, after all; like all spiritual weapons, they reflected their master. Maybe he and Baxia were just – different?

(And if it made it just a little easier to keep an eye on little Nie Huaisang, who’d just learned what crawling was and that he liked utilizing it to get to the most dangerous places possible, well, that was just an additional perk – how people ever took care of children without having a second pair of eyes, Nie Mingjue had no idea.)

And then they were at a night hunt, fighting something especially big and bad and vicious to the extreme, and all of a sudden Nie Mingjue felt something that reminded him of Sect Leader Wen, of the slick nauseating feel of his cultivation, and his father’s saber shattered.

Everyone panicked, shouting, and the beast roared, seeing its chance, and it jumped forward, goring Nie MIngjue’s father – still stunned – in the belly and knocking him down, and then rushing towards Nie Mingjue himself who was frozen in horror.

The next thing he knew, he wasn’t – he wasn’t knowing, anymore, or at least not the way he had before.

Everything around him was qi, and qi was in everything: different colors-textures-flavors (flavors?!) that showed him the difference between a living person and the dead, between plants and animals and the dirt beneath them, and even the subtle gradations inside the three souls and seven spirits, the way the qi-flame varied in color, the lightness of the soul slowly corrupted with rot – with evil.

It was vile.

He watched as his body leaped to the side, avoiding the beast’s charge – the movements were a little jerky, he thought, and Baxia sent some frustration back that he thought might roughly translate to listen it’s a new body and I’m trying here if she were capable of speech – and then spinning around, leaping up, and then bringing him down on her.

There was an encouraging sort of feeling from Baxia – go on, do the thing, you can do it – and somewhere along the way down, aided by the force of muscle and gravity, Nie Mingjue figured out that he was supposed to bite down, the sharp end of him all a single tooth, sharp and vicious, and he grabs onto the beast’s qi with all his might, tearing at it furiously, venting his rage.

A few more swipes with the blade and the beast died, Nie Mingjue drinking in its vital energy as if it were water as the creature’s souls and spirits scattered – he even purified the ones he could reach, making sure that nothing would remain behind, rotting and infecting the world with its madness and evil.

It felt good. To see that evil disintegrate into the wind, to know it would never hurt anyone again – good.

He wanted more.

There was a tug on his mind, Baxia calling him back as if he risked going too far, and habit kicked in: he turned in response to her call, trying to come to her side or have her come to his, and suddenly the world went off-kilter again and he was standing up on two legs (he had legs?) and the beast was dead in front of him, stinking of blood and bile –

He was human again.

Nie Mingjue dropped his saber, staggered to the side of a tree, and vomited.

Baxia returned to her place on his back, a quiet vibration that conveyed no feeling, only a reminder of her presence. He didn’t know what to say to her, what to think, what – anything.

You’ll leave yourself open to possession indeed.

Luckily, no one in the clan had noticed the lapse: the other Nie cultivators who had been on the hunt with them, both young and old, applauded Nie Mingjue for the steadiness of his nerves (a lie) and one of the elders even commented that it seemed as though his cultivation had increased substantially.

It had, too, but what was Nie Mingjue supposed to say? That he’d literally eaten another creature’s cultivation, drinking its blood and gnawing on its bones, until his spirit has become swollen with power?

That he’d enjoyed it?

He had three days to wonder and worry about it, trying to think about how to handle it, and then his father opened his eyes for the first time after the coma from the wound inflicted from the beast, eyes full of madness and fury aimed at every living being around him, and then he had other things to worry about.

After he became Sect Leader, Nie Mingjue spent a great deal of time telling his saber that he couldn’t just stab Wen Ruohan across the table of a discussion conference.

In his head, of course – Nie cultivators were known to be close to their sabers, even closer than most cultivators of other sects were with their beloved swords, but it would still be seen as strange to actually talk to your sword as if it could respond.

Baxia couldn’t talk back, of course – she was still a sword, in the end, incapable of human speech – but that never kept her from talking back, albeit in her own way.

She liked to highlight parts of Wen Ruohan’s body that would make for good cutting – Nie Mingjue’s eyesight had never quite returned to normal since that first switch, and he could always see a very faint ghostly overlay of qi on all living creatures around him, especially cultivators – and send encouraging feelings to him, like a mother cat nudging her kitten towards its first mouse, and Nie Mingjue would press his lips together and not smile because that would be weird.

It was one of the only things that made the discussion conferences – sitting across the table from his father’s murderer – bearable.

Nie Mingjue was perfectly aware that if anyone, even those in his own sect, ever found out about his unusual relationship with his saber, they would condemn him as unorthodox, possibly even crossing the line into demonic cultivation, even though he never touched resentful energy for his own use, never summoned ghosts or demons, nothing of that sort.

But he couldn’t stop.

Even if he wanted to – and he didn’t really want to – there was going to be a war soon, and his sect depending on him. His brother needed him.

And he needed Baxia.

After the first time, it had gotten easier than ever to slip sideways into her – to let her be the man, and him the sword. Nie Mingjue was, if he did say so himself, a very good saber, Baxia laughing in agreement at the thought, and it was so freeing to be nothing but a weapon, to have no concerns but wanting to kill and kill and kill.

Naturally, that was why he couldn’t permit himself to do it too often.

Connecting with Baxia was no longer something he had to try to do, as it had been when he was younger, but rather the opposite: he would have to try very hard to try to seal the connection between them, something he did only when he was extremely upset about something, and even then he wasn’t sure the link ever closed down all the way.

She was an extension of his body, a part of him; his vital qi poured into her, unreserved, and when he cultivated, her cultivation increased apace as well, her saber spirit strengthening to new heights of power – what helped him, helped her, and what helped her helped him.

It could almost, embarrassingly, be considered a form of dual cultivation.

It never felt wrong.

Nie Mingjue prided himself on his adherence to principle, to ethics; he knew people said he was too strict, too harsh, even unmerciful, but there was forged steel in his soul now, unyielding, and every year that passed he found his tolerance for evil grew less and less.

Evil in the world – and evil in mankind.

He knew there was evil in himself as well. He never deceived himself on that front: if Baxia were free to do as she pleased, to massacre all evil as she wanted, he would be one of her targets, no matter how she grumbled whenever he thought that. Virtue could be as corrupting as vice; he wasn’t any better than the people he condemned.

The only thing he could say for himself is that he always tried to do the right thing. He tried never to take action solely for his own benefit, to lift his saber only in the defense of a just cause, to do what he must and go no further.

Excepting only, perhaps, for Baxia – but as long as he controlled it, as long as he turned her only against evil, then surely, it was still within the boundaries of the limits his ancestors had laid out, that strange cultivation style of the saber spirits.

Well. Mostly against evil.

If perhaps during an especially boring discussion conference where his only job was to look fierce and disapproving, he let himself drift a little, and someone else (equally good at fierce and disapproving, if not actively better than him) take his place – if sometimes when he slept he let her go for a walk to stretch out legs she didn’t have and play around with the feeling of having thumbs – if occasionally she would coax him into letting her be the one to sharpen him, rather than the other way around, so that he could feel exactly how it ought to be done –

That didn’t seem too wrong.

The ability to detect evil in the souls of men did not actually mean that Baxia was good at people.

On the contrary, in fact – in many ways, she was very much a typical saber, wanting only to destroy, and it had taken years of explanations before she reluctantly applied some human standards to her perceptions of what constituted evil.

Sometimes, Nie Mingjue agreed with her – Jin Guangshan was a pathetic waste of a man, a worthless good-for-nothing no matter how decent his cultivation was – and sometimes he couldn’t even begin to understand her perspective – Jiang Fengmian was lukewarm about everything, which was irritating beyond belief, but Baxia wanted his head on a pike yesterday and sulked when he told her that absent a very good reason she was not going to get what she wanted.

She babied Nie Huaisang the same way he did, and bullied his saber into being obedient to him – very much not how that was supposed to go, but Nie Mingjue had always been weak where his baby brother was concerned – but she viewed most of the world with intense suspicion and not a little bit of rage.

She didn’t like Meng Yao.

It was a bit like Jiang Fengmian, actually. There was no reason that Nie Mingjue could think of, and even shifting into a spirit to study the other man didn’t reveal anything other than the usual evil one would expect to see in any person, and it wasn’t as though Baxia could tell him – she just hated what she hated, and no matter how much Nie Mingjue pointed to Meng Yao’s good acts, his defense of the common folk, his merits on the battlefield, she never gave in.

Still, good help was hard to find, and Meng Yao had never done anything that didn’t fit in well with Nie Mingjue’s standards – even if there was something wrong with him, deep down, did it really matter, as long as it never showed its face?

Nie Mingjue tried to keep his distance, emotionally, but it was hard. Meng Yao seemed on the surface to be a good man, efficient and capable; he was intelligent and well-spoken, creative and stubborn, talented to the point of brilliance.

Nie Mingjue didn’t have many friends, and Meng Yao was – there. Even Lan Xichen, who he trusted (and Baxia agreed, even if she thought Shuoyue was a bit of a priss), liked him; the conversation between the three of them flowed easily, pleasantly, and Nie Mingjue almost felt as though he were something other than the leader of a sect at war, as though he were a regular cultivator chatting with his generational cohort about all manner of things.

Baxia howled in the back of his head, wanting to rend Meng Yao limb from limb.

He ignored her.

In the end, she was right, and he was wrong.

The evil buried deep in Meng Yao’s soul could not be denied.

His betrayal at Langya, premeditated murder and then a personal attack; his decision to change his colors and join the Wen sect, his murder of helpless Nie sect cultivators; the cool manner by which he traded his war glory to the Jin sect for a place and a name that only shone gold to the outside world –

It was a disappointment.

Nie Mingjue should have trusted Baxia.

(He agreed to swear brotherhood with the man because Lan Xichen wanted it, because he still hoped against hope that he could purify the evil in Meng Yao’s heart the way he did the evil of ghosts, could bring back the friend he’d once thought he’d had – but it was still a disappointment.)

Maybe that was what gave him pause, during the competition at Phoenix Mountain – he’d only met Wei Wuxian in passing before, never spent much time with him, and even less once he’d become the fearsome Yiling Patriarch that wielded demonic cultivation as a scythe against their mutual enemies.

He’d expected to have to talk Baxia down from trying to kill him at once. After all, according to the stories, he stank of resentful energy, having pulled it inside of himself until it tainted every inch of him; it followed him like a cloak of power and cruelty.

The reality was – different.

Him? Nie Mingjue thought at Baxia, mildly appalled. You like him? Really?

Baxia purred, pleased.

This I have to see.

He usually tried not to let Baxia take over in front of his fellow sect leaders, who were by now all very well trained at spotting abnormalities of even the slightest sort, but the curiosity was killing him.

In the eyes of a saber, Wei Wuxian was – a man.

Just that, nothing more. He had some virtues and some faults, good and evil mixed together in no greater or lesser proportion than Meng Yao, and while he was surrounded by resentful energy, was shot through with it, it did not infect his souls or spirits with rot any more than anyone else. It passed through him like any other type of qi energy did, the ghostly flame sliding through his meridians as though he were on the verge of becoming a demon himself and yet not absorbed within, not kept – he used only what he pulled at any given time, letting the power run through his fingers like water, and never stored it inside –

He lacked a golden core.

No wonder he couldn’t store any power; even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, the taint injuring him as it flowed through his system without purification – it was as if he were drinking alcohol while lacking a liver – but at the same time he lacked the ability to build it up inside of him.

Nie Mingjue wondered what had happened.

He waited until later – after a number of embarrassing incidents, mostly involving Jin Zixuan’s confession of affection to Jiang Yanli, a love affair which Nie Mingjue had absolutely no interest in but which made Nie Huaisang roll around on his bed, clutching his fan to his chest and sighing dreamily – and then he went to where the Jiang sect was housed and asked to speak with Wei Wuxian.

“You know it’s quite late, Sect Leader Nie,” Wei Wuxian drawled, his arms crossed in front of him defensively. “And I’m not any more inclined to give up the Stygian Tiger Seal because of the hour.”

“What?” Nie Mingjue asked, bewildered, and then – “Oh, that. It’s a vile thing and ought to be destroyed, but that’s on your conscience. If you misuse it, I’ll turn my blade against you; if you lose it to someone else, I’ll drink at your funeral; other than that, it’s no business of mine.”

“…oh,” Wei Wuxian said, his arms loosening. “Sorry, I assumed. You came to speak with me and not Jiang Cheng…”

“I’ve been speaking with Sect Leader Jiang all day,” Nie Mingjue said, impatient. “About everything from matters of principle to fishing rights in small rivers that only three people even know exist – and we’re scheduled to do it again tomorrow. Why would I bother him after hours?”

Wei Wuxian laughed, then looked surprised at himself and coughed to cover it up; he stepped out of the doorway to let Nie Mingjue inside. “All very good points. So it is me you want to talk to…what about? If it’s not the Stygian Tiger Seal…my cultivation, perhaps?”

“In a way,” Nie Mingjue said. “I should warn you in advance that you may find my questions rude.”

Wei Wuxian waved that away and turned to fetch them some jars of wine. “I don’t care about rudeness. As long as your question isn’t ‘why do you still do it’.”

“Why would I ask that? It’s always better to be a cultivator, however unorthodox, than not at all.”

Wei Wuxian stopped moving after having picked up only one jar, his hand still outstretched towards the second one.

“Now that’s an odd way to phrase it,” he said, and his voice was low and sounded dangerous, but Baxia didn’t so much as quiver, so Nie Mingjue knew there was no real threat of a fight. “Second Young Master Lan spends a great deal of his time imploring me to resume orthodox cultivation; I would have thought you’d be of the same opinion.”

“But orthodox cultivation is impossible without a golden core,” Nie Mingjue said, puzzled as to why Wei Wuxian would care about what Lan Wangji thought enough to mention him, or for that matter why Lan Wangji apparently spent all his time pestering Wei Wuxian in an effort to make him mend his ways.

Wei Wuxian dropped the jar in his hand with a deafening crash.

Wei Wuxian sent Nie Mingjue a letter after he’d settled down in Yiling.

In it, he very politely (the man knew what politeness was?) apologized for the disturbance he had caused, explained that the Wen sect remnants were composed entirely of old men and women, a child, and only two young people, one of which was now the Ghost General, that had helped him before, on the occasion which they had once had the opportunity to discuss, and so there was a life debt between them. He stated that if Nie Mingjue wished to visit and review the situation himself, he would gladly open his gates to one who did not seem prejudiced against him, who might judge the situation fairly; he requested, very humbly, that if Nie Mingjue wouldn’t mind considering lending his voice to the Jiang sect, which was even now negotiating a marriage with the Jin sect, and which had undoubtedly been put in a very bad position as a result of his apparently inexplicable actions.

Nie Mingjue snorted at the mix of earnestness, presented as slickly as any diplomat – Wei Wuxian had clearly been trained by the Jiang sect to be their ambassador, and sometimes the training even managed to overcome his extremely irritating personality – and took Nie Huaisang with him when he went.

A gesture of good faith.

It turned out to be necessary, since Baxia took one look at Wen Ning and all but begged to chase him around, promising not to hurt him but please oh please –

Nie Huaisang smacked Nie Mingjue in the face with his fan, which had never happened before, and Nie Mingjue snapped out of the daze he was in and recalled Baxia to his hand at once, his face coloring in embarrassment.

“Forgive me,” he said to Wei Wuxian, voice stiff; he couldn’t believe he’d just done that. “I meant no offense to either you or to Wen Qionglin.”

Wei Wuxian’s extremely angry expression abruptly vanished off his face, leaving behind only confusion. “You – know his courtesy name?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “I wasn’t aware that my reputation indicated an inability to utilize common courtesy.”

“…most people just call him the Ghost General, nowadays.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t know what to say to that apparent non-sequitur (who cared what other people did?), and looked to Nie Huaisang to see if he had a better response.

Nie Huaisang shrugged. “I thought you said he was conscious, Wei-xiong? If he is, then he’s a person, and if he’s a person, he has a name. It’d be as rude as me calling Baxia ‘that old stick’.”

That was, in fact, something Nie Huaisang had done once, when he’d been a teenager and angry about having to go to the Wen sect’s camp – in fairness, Nie Mingjue hadn’t been exactly pleased about that either – and Baxia had chased him up and down the hallway, smacking his ass to make him jump every time she caught him, until he was out of breath and apologizing and also laughing more than a little.

Nie Mingjue put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “He doesn’t have that much of a death wish.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. “I keep forgetting you have a sense of humor under there. Would you like to come inside? I don’t have much here, but we can talk about whatever you need to give yourself comfort that the Wen sect remnants aren’t going to hurt anyone.”

“It’s not necessarily a matter of future harm,” Nie Mingjue said. “There is also the past.”

“They’re non-combatants –”

“Wen Qing ran a Supervisory Office.”

Wei Wuxian winced.

“It’s something we can talk over,” Nie Huaisang said. “She might need to submit to a trial or something, but I don’t think death is necessarily the only outcome. Maybe something in which she uses her abilities in service to the community..?”

“She’d be happy to, if anyone would allow it,” Wei Wuxian said wryly. “Oddly enough, not too many cultivators are willing to allow someone surnamed Wen to examine them.”

“We can set a good example,” Nie Huaisang chirped. “My brother and I – why not? Maybe she can explain why he acted so uncharacteristically earlier.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. If there was one lesson he’d never managed to get into Nie Huaisang’s head – there were many, actually – it was that family laundry shouldn’t be spread out in front of others. He couldn’t have waited until after they’d left?

Wei Wuxian blinked at them both. “You’ll have to forgive me, Nie-xiong; I’m not that familiar with your brother. What was uncharacteristic?”

“He let Baxia do as she liked instead of stopping her,” Nie Huaisang said promptly. “It was impulsive, and he normally would never.”

“And you think it’s a medical issue?” Nie Mingjue asked, doubtful. More likely all those years of jointly possessing his own body with Baxia was starting to need paying for. “Huaisang…”

“It’s worth checking!”

Wen Qing didn’t find anything other than some disturbed qi, which could be the result of just about anything, and Nie Mingjue told Nie Huaisang to drop the issue in a tone that brooked no dispute.

Still, since it was clearly worrying his brother, there wouldn’t be any harm in asking Meng Yao – no, Jin Guangyao, he was Jin Guangyao now – to come over to play Clarity for him a little more often.

They could talk a little about Jin Guangshan’s frankly unseemly attempts to weasel the Stygian Tiger Seal out of Wei Wuxian at the same time. Based on everything he’d heard from Wei Wuxian, including the man’s willingness to destroy at least a half of it as a gesture of good faith, there was really no basis to claim that it ought to be confiscated from him. And with the Nie sect standing alongside the Jiang sect, the Jin sect would have no chance to use this as an opportunity to rally the cultivation world against Wei Wuxian and use the excuse to extract the seal for their own unknown purposes.

The whole situation would probably irritate Jin Guangshan immensely, even if only as proof that he was not in fact the obvious successor to the Wens in terms of dominating the cultivation world.

Chief Cultivator – hah!

If one had to be selected, and Nie Mingjue was against the whole idea, then it wouldn’t be Jin Guangshan. It wouldn’t be anyone from the Jin sect; every time he visited Lanling, Baxia shook on his shoulder and he agreed with her anger – the entire place was shot through with corruption, festering in evil, ambition and greed the only virtues they recognized. Allowing them to sit, fat and comfortable, at the top of the cultivation world for no other reason than their ambition and their wealth, the fact that they’d hung back and let others do the majority of the fighting and so didn’t need to waste money in rebuilding…it was unacceptable.

He’d have to make that clear to Jin Guangyao, somehow.

He hoped his sworn brother wouldn’t be too disappointed.

Severe qi deviations were said to be horrifically painful, with every vein in your body bursting, every meridian cracking, your blood boiling, your bones breaking as your qi reversed course and began destroying you from the inside –

Whoever said that was right.

Nie Mingjue felt his mouth fill with blood, his eyes dripping with them, and he saw Jin Guangyao everywhere around him, laughing at him, Meng Yao mocking his weakness in trusting him over his own instincts, over Baxia; he tried to lash out against him, only for him to disappear in front of his eyes, reappearing elsewhere, and he wanted nothing more than to kill – to kill – to stop him before he hurt anyone else – before he laid a finger on Nie Huaisang, before he deceived Lan Xichen, before – he had to kill him – he had to –

There was so much pain.

Pain and rage, fear and fury; it was like a tide that rose up, inexorable, to swallow him.

He screamed – and everything stopped.

There was no pain.

Steel did not feel pain.

Nie Mingjue was a saber once more, his qi still sick and pounding inside of him, going the wrong way, his rage still overwhelming him, but for a saber that was all right, it was all right not to know anything but rage and fury and the desire to kill: you control the saber, it doesn’t control you.

As long as his master held him back, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone he shouldn’t.

He himself would not be hurt.

Steel did not feel pain.

Baxia complained about scratches in her surface, sulked about them, but that was just vanity, which he’d inadvertently taught her; she didn’t actually suffer, as long as she never broke –

Baxia.

If Nie Mingjue was the saber, then she was the human: she was the one in the body that was self-destructing, she was the one who was bleeding out of every aperture, she was the one who was screaming.

Baxia!

She shook him off, pushing him firmly back towards the blade and away from the flesh; steel felt no pain, and she was steel all the way through her soul – a little pain was not going to stop her.

She straightened his spine, stood up tall, and bared his teeth at Jin Guangyao, who was even now backing away, his arms around a frantic Nie Huaisang, who did not understand. She pointed Nie MIngjue at their enemy, their mutual enemy, and he wanted so badly to fly forward, sharp end first, wanted to pierce that traitorous dog through the heart and make sure he would never harm anyone again.

He wanted to rend him to pieces with his teeth, like a wild dog himself; he wanted to drink his vital energies and purify his innermost soul, to send him to his next reincarnation before his soul could even think of lingering – let him be reborn as a dog, as a snake, as a worm! Let him pay for the wrongs he has committed!

No. No, on second thought, he shouldn’t die. He should live – live and face the penalty for his actions. Let him be cast off from his comfortable life, let him live forever in seclusion with no friends and no succuor, let him know that all of his ambition has come to nothing.

Nie Mingjue roared in silent fury, and Baxia opened his mouth and roared as well: the sound that emerged from his throat was inhuman, the scream of steel scraping steel, a sound no human should ever be able to make.

“Er-ge!” Jin Guangyao shouted, his eyes white all around the irises; he clearly hadn’t anticipated Nie Mingjue surviving the qi deviation to this point. “Er-ge, come here – da-ge has gone into qi deviation, and he’s trying to kill me!”

“He’s not trying to kill you!” Nie Huaisang shrieked. “She is –”

And then, as if realizing what he’d just said, he turned shocked eyes on Jin Guangyao, abrupt realization filling his face.

“She’s trying to kill you,” he repeated dully. “Kill you – she only wants to kill evil, to punish wrongdoing. What have you done?!”

In the end it turned out that Wen Qing’s expertise was useful after all.

She came to Lanling and went to work immediately, but it still took nearly two weeks for her to set all of Nie Mingjue’s meridians and spiritual veins back into place, working on each one at a time; the entire process would have been agonizing enough to kill any man just from the pain alone.

It was a good thing that the one undergoing the process was not a man.

“So, this is weird, right?” Wei Wuxian asked Nie Huaisang, who’d refused to leave his brother’s side; he ate and slept on the floor next to the bed where Wen Qing operated, and his fingers were clenched around the saber’s hilt in silent supplication. “You Nie – you’re not all half-swords, are you?”

“Sabers,” Nie Huaisang corrected, rubbing his eyes. “And no. It’s just my brother. He and Baxia have always been very close.”

“Close,” Wei Wuxian echoed. “Close. Yes, I suppose that’s – a way to put it. He’s literally letting himself be possessed by his own apparently sentient saber spirit right now; I suppose you would need to be close, for that.”

“At least Baxia serves only one master,” Nie Huaisang said sharply. “Can your Tiger Seal say the same? Or is that honor reserved for your Suibian, which even now is gathering dust on your shelf, and which you will never use again?”

Wei Wuxian stopped and grimaced. “I’m being obnoxious. Forgive me.”

Nie Huaisang waved a hand, dismissing it. “And I’m tired; think nothing of it. As long as – as long as this works. As long as we can get him back.”

Wei Wuxian only ever took the briefest glances at the table where Wen Qing operated; he did so now and immediately turned away, shuddering in memory – it was even more gruesome than what he’d endured. “Is he…in there? Being suppressed by her?”

“No, thankfully not,” Nie Huaisang said, and tapped the blade of the saber. “He’s in here.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. “He’s – in the saber?”

“He is the saber. They’re – sort of joined, I think? If they were once separate entities, they’re not anymore; the saber and the person are both part of a single body – no, two bodies, two bodies with two consciousnesses. Most of the time, da-ge possesses the human body and Baxia the saber, but sometimes they switch and she takes the body and he the saber; that’s what’s happening now.”

“How did that even happen?” Wei Wuxian wanted to know. “It makes my unorthodoxy look almost boring – a heresy, sure, but one that flowed naturally out of how things are typically done, the sequel to a book, written in the same style. What he’s doing…it isn’t even from the same library!”

“It is for us,” Nie Huaisang said with a shrug. “We cultivate saber spirits, like I’ve explained. This is – different, yes. But on the other hand, he might be the first Nie cultivator in a thousand years to survive the qi deviation that comes from cultivating the saber spirit.”

“Probably would have been better to test that theory a few decades later, though, huh?”

Nie Huaisang grimaced. “Yes. When I think about what Jin Guangyao nearly did…! And I liked him, Wei-xiong; I really liked him. Da-ge liked him, and da-ge doesn’t get close to people, not easily. It always hurt him, what Meng Yao did to him, but he still swore brotherhood with him so that he could try to teach him good from evil…”

He shook his head.

“I can’t believe you’re even considering not executing him,” Wei Wuxian said, shaking his head as well. “Is permanent seclusion really going to be enough?”

“Well, there’s going to be a trial,” Nie Huaisang said. “Though it’ll be fairly short, given that da-ge survived and Wen Qing already indicated that there appears to be the effects of spiritual poison – I would never have thought he’d be using that stupid song to do it. The one er-ge taught him so that he and da-ge could make up…! You’re not wrong, Wei-xiong; seclusion might be too good for the likes of him. But er-ge is insisting we give him a chance to explain.”

“He’s good at manipulating emotions,” Wei Wuxian said. “Aren’t you concerned he’ll play on whoever you have as judge?”

“Not if they’re appropriately objective.” Nie Huaisang looked at Wei Wuxian sidelong. “What do you think?”

“Me?”

“Well, you and Jiang Cheng. The Jiang sect is the only one of the Great Four sects not implicated by all this – though I suppose your sister is engaged to Jin Zixuan. Do you think that would be enough to disqualify you?”

“No, we’ve never gotten along; I wouldn’t be biased. Which I mean…I guess that means I could do it?”

The saber in Nie Huaisang’s hands trembled, moving forward a little as if straining to fly up and go somewhere.

Nie Huaisang looked down at it, and nodded. “Da-ge’s right – there’s something else I should mention. Something we just found out, in the basement of Koi Tower…”

“In the basement? What did you find?”

“A boy by the name of Xue Yang,” Nie Huaisang said. “And he has a very interesting story to tell.”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #baxia #jin guangyao #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #yes this is the one that ate my soul #close

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