#one singular appearance of Power at the very end if you squint

[amarylliasky]

Number 12!

Attendant of the Prince’s Palace AU

Kim Rok Soo stared at the small mirror in his quarters. It’s cracked edges doing nothing to hide the distinctly young face reflected on its surface. This was not his face. This kid couldn’t be more than sixteen, judging by his height and stature, with innocent (roundish?) eyes and slightly plump cheeks. He then noticed strands of brown hair falling in front of his face, unlike his own black hair. It was also quite long, around shoulder length, if he had to guess.

The next thing he noticed was that he couldn’t quite see the kid’s features. Sure, he could tell that he was in the body of a teenager, and he could make out the basic face shape because he was so close to the mirror, but he couldn’t make out the finer details of things like the shape of his nose and lips. Furthermore, he couldn’t tell the exact shade of the kid’s eyes and hair because the room was only barely lit by the sun peeking through closed curtains of a singular window.

Judging by the fact that everything in his line of sight appeared as if through an unfocused camera lens, Rok Soo guessed that this kid needed glasses.

Fumbling around the surface of the small wooden vanity, which was just a desk with a mirror sitting on it, his hand eventually met the frame of a pair of thin rimmed glasses a little to his right.

As he placed them on his face, he couldn’t help but notice that he still had a bit of trouble seeing clearly. Carefully walking to the window, he swiftly opened the curtains and had to squint at the light that flooded the small bedroom. Hmm, even with the light, he still a bit of trouble distinguishing smaller details. Did the kid have even worse eyesight than he thought? Or maybe he was just too poor to afford the correct prescription. Seeing as how the only pieces of furniture in the room included the desk/vanity, a small wardrobe, and an equally small bed, he would guess the latter.

Looking again into the small mirror with the added light and clarity, what really stuck out to him was the kid’s eyes. While they were in fact round and innocent, unlike his own thirty six year old stereotypical Korean eyes, they were apparently the exact same shade of reddish brown as his own. But that was where the similarities ended. It also appeared that the kid’s hair was not just brown, but a rich shade of cherry brown; and the strands of what was probably soft, silk-like hair fell stiffly over small thin shoulders.

The next, quite startling thing he noticed was the tear tracks lining the kid’s cheeks, and very noticeable eye bags. Overall, a very miserable picture greeted Kim Rok Soo in almost-clarity. He definitely needed to find out who this child was and what on earth was going on.

Knock Knock Knock

Three very loud knocks snapped him out of his thoughts. What should he do? Was it the kid’s parents? Siblings? What could he say? ‘Sorry, your son isn’t here right now. Please hold while the transmigrator tries to figure out how to stop possessing him.’ Yeah, no. Should he just open the door? That seemed to be the only option.

“Mister Aster? Are you awake? It’s Miya. I was sent to check on you after you never showed up to take the First Prince his breakfast.”

Okay so this kid was named Aster. Kim Rok Soo, no, Aster calmly thought about the information he was just given. The girl outside his room was Miya, most likely a servant. His name was Aster, also probably a servant, judging by how he was supposed to take some food to a prince. That’s another thing, the First Prince.

He couldn’t help but be reminded of the book he had just been reading before waking up here. Crown Prince Alberu Crossman was the first prince of the Roan Kingdom in The Birth of a Hero, and a powerful supporting character after the second major incident in the book.

If he was in that very same book, and there was hardly any evidence to support that theory, then there was only one way to confirm.

“What is the First Prince’s name?”

He probably sounded like an idiot to not even know the name of the person he was serving. The other servant, Miya, must have thought so as well, as her reply held an undertone of bafflement.

“How could you forget the name of the First Prince? Even if you’ve only worked in the Palace of Joy for a few months, surely you haven’t forgotten the very Alberu Crossman, whom you serve?”

That confirmed it alright. First of all, the Palace of Joy was the palace that the king in The Birth of a Hero had built for his first son; and furthermore, the First Prince he worked for was indeed named Alberu Crossman. He had no choice but to admit that he had transmigrated into The Birth of a Hero as a random extra who doesn’t even appear in the book.

He heard shuffling on the other side of the door, as if the maid was nervously stepping from foot to foot. Heaving out a sigh of resignation, he trudged to the door.

“Um, Mister Aster? I didn’t mean to insult you or anything. I know it’s been really hard for you these last few days. Believe me, I didn’t want to disturb your mourning-“ She was interrupted as the door swung open.

She was startled by his appearance, no doubt because of his tear stained face and overall haggard expression. Wait, she say mourning? Was this kid mourning someone? He didn’t like the sound of that. It could spell trouble for him if he couldn’t play along well enough. But how was he supposed to mourn for someone he didn’t even know?

“A-apologies, Mister Aster, I didn’t realize…” She stopped talking upon noticing his blank expression. What could he do? He didn’t know anything about the original Aster’s behavior. He would just have to wing it.

“It’s okay. I’m doing a bit better now. I’ll be ready soon.” He tried adding a bit of fatigue in his voice. It wasn’t too hard, he was always both mentally and physically exhausted in his life as Kim Rok Soo. Keeping his eyes to the ground, he let his shoulders slump just a little. He was still a servant, so it probably wasn’t proper etiquette for him to slouch all the way.

“Oh, um, take your time! If you want, I can bring the First Prince his breakfast for you!”

He finally looked at her, noting the nervousness in her light green eyes. Was she afraid of the First Prince? Or was it something else? He did remember that in the book, the Crown Prince didn’t have any backing, so perhaps she was scared of getting on the Second and Third Prince’s bad side? If that was the case, why would she go this far for him? Sure, she acted familiar with the original Aster, but she didn’t seem as if she had interacted with the First Prince like he had. She might even work in another palace.

Regardless, her actions benefited him. It would buy him some time to adjust if she went in his stead, also, he would be able to do a little investigation into the life of his current body.

“You would really do that?” He sounded sincere, as if he really was awed by her selflessness. “Thank you so much.” He gave her a grateful smile. “I promise I will make this up to you, Miss Miya.” For some reason, she seemed to take his words quite well, as she energetically replied to him.

“Of course! It’s the least I can do! After all, you work the hardest out of all the palace servants! And I’m not just saying that! You always offer your help when anyone needs it! You even voluntarily went to work at the Palace of Joy!”

Sounds like this “Aster” was a total pushover.

Leaving the blank faced servant to his own devices, or “mourning,” Miya briskly walked down the hall, her braided hair swaying behind her.

Click. The door clicked shut and Aster was left alone in the small bedroom once again.

Time to do some digging.

///////

So this is the first snippet of “Attendant of the Prince’s Palace.” What do you think?

Also, shout out to @our-planet-is-going-to-explode for the idea of naming him Aster!

[from-dre]

The Entire Universe

Quadrant I

You're sitting in your living room. Cool gusts of air keep your home at a comfortable temperature. Outside, a scorching summer lingers on. Somewhere; loud laughter, people playing on their front porches. The bay window directly in front of the couch you sleep on shows you a lush world beyond your own grayness. A stale silence enveloped your psyche long ago, now it's touched every room you've stepped into for the past decade-plus. This one holds the most pressure. This, room. You feel it pushing down on your shoulders, seeping through the cracks in the drywall, crawling downward like a poisonous vine until it convinces you to fall back asleep, back to an underworld of muted heartache that only you could ever understand. A place that has just enough familiarity outlining its perpetual rainfall. You shut your eyes and begin to feel your body drifting off to this land, again. You begin humming some song that's been stuck in your head..., but that in reality, is just some melody you made up at some point in the far past that you've forgotten about. The notes rise and lower, like your chest, like your mind. Then, the melody drowns into a deep, thickened bass, submerged somewhere in the depths of pure pitch darkness, hardly recognizable anymore, like your mind. Then, sleep.

The very few memories you have of your father trying to teach you lessons on 'How to be a Man' don't particularly stick out in the sea of other moments from your youth. His voice was stern, powerful, so they always seemed like important bits of information at the time, even if they weren't. You try to remember more every time you think back, but your mind's eye only sees so much. It's been ravaged by self-induced comas where instead of calling out toward the skies above, it was the chemicals which you'd praise. So now as you find yourself back in this other world's grasp once more, you cover both ears with your palms and squint your eyes, struggling in vain to hear him say; "don't fall asleep here son, you'll never wake back up."

But I'm already asleep, your mind whispers back.

This place is constantly wet. Either from the rain or sleet or collective teardrops, the water never evaporates off the concrete. It's usually a city-setting. A metropolis straight out of some type of post-apocalypse. Usually, but not always. You've found it take other shapes before, other forms of dystopian coldness.

Once you'd found it a vast highway, so enormous and gargantuan that the cement stilts holding its hundred-lane body many miles above the earth were wider than any building you'd ever seen back in the real world.

Another time it appeared as a never-ending beach front, stretching on forever in either direction. A singular structure protruding off its darkly-sanded face; a pier. One that led out into the very middle of the largest body of water your mind could conjure up. A pier that took days to reach the end of and once there, had no railing to protect you from falling over the edge and plunging into the abyss below. Like it almost...called for you to do just that.

Usually however, its face was that of a downtown. A large sprawling place where the sun always seemed to almost rise, but never did.

It'd unsettle anyone else, but this is where you’d felt at home. This is where you'd kept your last sliver of security. Where Billie Holiday was always playing from some window on a higher floor inside random skyscrapers. Where Pablo Neruda's words made sense:

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

You did ... and she was.

Quadrant II

Who "she" truly ends up being is so inconsequential to her overall impact on this realm and directly, your life. "She" is everybody and nobody at once. "She" is and isn't you. A fierce sun that hangs high above the desert during midday and a frigid, lonely moon that's full of craters, devoid of any warmth; she is both of these simultaneously.

Violent gasps of air, in and out. Sucking her essence deeper with each breath. Is it any wonder you consciously choose to go comatose in her memory?

Keep swallowing—, even though it feels like something sharp.

Keep breathing—, even when there is no more air.

Keep seeking a salvation within her embrace—, even if it's an insincere one.

The ground opens up and you fall in, further. Spiraling with a strange elegance toward impending personal doom. Grime. Vile. Lust. Beads of sweat rolling off of familiar hips. Pounding. Pounding. More pounding. More wine. More excess.

It all feels so...magical. Until...it doesn't.

Then..., the hatred and self-pity ease into play. A darkness threading itself into the very fabric of your dual- existence. But do you turn away? Do you fall to your knees and pray? Never. You accept it with open, scarred arms and the fakest grin you've ever seen a face make.

Past telephone wires and rusted car parts. Past lifeless trees whose branches hang like pinned skeletal arms. All, permanently set in some type of celestial stone. Fate?

Past your laughter, moaning, and anger-filled threats. Playing, fighting, sleeping. Rinse and repeat.

These are the things love hides from newcomers. These..., secret side-effects that will grow to haunt and maybe even, destroy you. These..., compulsive cravings to bite her lower lip so hard that your teeth pierces the skin and rips apart its armor, letting your own liquid code mix in with her exposed scarlet DNA. No drop to be wasted. No moan to be forced.

By the time you catch your breath...she's already swimming freely inside your veins.

"Now..., do you still love her?," the heart asks. You do ... and she is.

Quadrant III

If you blink your eyes for even a second, you'll miss it.

Large smokestack-factories have the run of its land. Industrialized sorrow at every turn. Her laugh, her fingers clenching the bedsheets just to feel a pull, and her sadness —, you remember all of these with an intimate, infinite energy.

Material is everything here. Red dresses. French tips. Good pills. Sweet dreams. Wasted youths. Fallen angels. And she...?

Where is she?

What a torturous self-inflicting wheel of pain we strap ourselves to. It outdoes any and all, before or after.

LOVE; loss of valuable energy.

If you blink your eyes for even a second, you'll miss it. It —, her.

You will ... and she'll be.

Quadrant IV

Where does the lover begin and the other end? In dreams, it’s the instant your mind fills the room of your first kiss with two bodies. In deep thoughts, it’s the snap of strange fingers alerting you to the length of time you’ve been quiet, subdued. In reality, it’s the first time you whisper, “I love you,” to another and know down in your soul just how heavy those words truly are—, how unimaginable the depth of their meaning really is.

Only then can the lover disappear completely into their other—without shame.

When does the heart break by its most anguished degree possible? In books, it’s after you’ve read the last line of the last paragraph in the last chapter and still feel an unfilled void in your chest. In the stars above, it’s being unable to make out their name anymore. In reality, it’s the first time you whisper, “I love you,” to another and know down in your soul that no matter how many seconds tick by, you won’t hear it echoed back to you.

Only then can the heart cut off all ties with every other organ in the lover’s body and willfully implode from crippling agony—, without reserve.

The true lover is vain and exposed, they rip apart all armor—, no barrier.

The true lover is appalling and full of self-hatred, they poison their own souls—, no pride.

So now, at the end of your journey, squeezing random shards of glass with one hand, clumps of hair in the other, how will they say you lived your life? Will they fill in the blank after your name with happy, veiled things? Will they smile to each other nervously, for they all know deep down you were nothing to be proud of? Will they go on to remember you at all...or will everyone you’ve ever known simply, forget?

When Virgil and Dante finally reached the ninth circle of their trek into the center of our world—where the gigantic Lucifer forever flapped his enormous wings, encasing himself further in frozen ice—they didn’t begin heading back up to escape, they climbed down further. When a world as dark as theirs needs an exit, even it stays shrouded in shadow.

So dig further.

Dig further down.

Further darkening your fingernails with dirt and grime. Further letting the last bit of candlelight inside your soul go out without so much as a whimper.

Further down, past old regrets and cherished memories.

Further until you’ve almost bled yourself into the nothingness around you.

Until you can’t keep your eyes open from the deafening silence of your world’s misery.

Until it’s no longer air your lungs breathe, but something thicker, like chalk.

Until the very blood that runs through your veins starts to feel cold.

Until you realize that there’s some type of familiar light shining onto your closed eyelids.

Familiar but artificial.

You stop digging and open your eyes.

You’re alive.

You’re sitting in your living room.

[gentrychild]

BNHA chapter 291 reactions

That’s one adorable child and that’s also one horrible way to die.

Not that we’re sure that he actually die, since 1. He is here and living his full theater kid potential. 2. For anyone who is reading BNHA vigilante, you would know that it’s not the first time AFO grabbed a hero student who may or may not have died.

Now, my question is “Where do that lower jaw bone came from?” Can you still extract DNA from something that was practically cremated? If not, does AFO have a room with a bunch of bones that he can drop on his way out?

Also, how old is Touya here? I know he looks younger than he is but is he old enough to be in UA?

I. Need. Answers.

That’s the second kid who got white hair after a ridiculously powerful quirk appeared and I now have other questions.

Such as, will I get a white-haired-Izuku anytime soon?

By the way, can we consider that Tenko and Touya have quirk singularities?

1. I can hear half of the writing community weeping because Touya had red hair. And at least one other person grumbling because Touya changing hair color with the seasons.

2. It’s incredible how tiny Touya doesn’t look like the Touya we know. He had a completely different demeanor.

3. Good to know Endeavor was not always a dick. 

Don’t mind me, I am just fascinated at seeing tiny Touya looking at Baby Fuyumi (while clutching my chest because them being twins is jossed). That’s the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

Also, very relieved to know that Rei agreed to have several kids.

Now, I need to know what happened to make that family collapse.

Touya is wearing different clothes than in the first image so that means he might have some resistance at first but his fire grew too hot for his body.

Now, my question is: how come he couldn’t regulate the temperature of his flames like fire users in his family?

Am I... feeling bad... for Endeavor?

Oh my.

You know, you might have been invited if he had known you were alive.

I love Dabi’s face here. He is such a little shit.

Reminder that they are all stuck here until Shigaraki actually tells Machia to move. 

I don’t know about you but I find it absolutely hilarious that Gigantomachia picked them up, brought them to the most dangerous place in the whole combat zone as the number 1 hero and the craziest hero students around are here, and is now refusing to move.

Honestly? If Dabi wasn’t accidentally holding the floor, they would have been incinerated.

What are you trying to say, Harima Oji? 

Are you a secret Todoroki family member too?

Or did you hear Shigaraki call Izuku little brother and you’re now trying to wrap your mind around everyone around here apparently being related and this war being the messiest Sunday family dinner ever?

I actually wanted to talk about that because this DNA test is absolutely useless. I can assure you that people probably can’t even read those pages and even if they can, it would be just so easily to fake.

Actually, you know what? If Dabi didn’t do that on his computer on his own, I would just be so disappointed because waving a DNA around is just pointless in this situation.

Especially as I don’t see when he had the time to get some blood from the Kyushu fight? He only had the time to take two steps in Endeavor’s direction before running like hell when Miruko arrived (which was a rare sign of common sense, so kudos to him, I guess.)

You hear that sound?

That’s the sound of Dabi destroying his family every chance at being normal once again. Forget all the progress they made, they will now be under public scrutiny forever, everyone having an opinion on their family.

That will wreck them.

And I am not even talking about Rei.

I see that at this point, Dabi is just ending for everyone’s career...

I am just going to stay there and stare at the wall as I am thinking about Dabi broascasting a murder on every screen of the country.

That’s just so disrespectful to Twice. He fought for his friends and instead, Dabi turned his last moment in him desperately pleading.

Also, that was a really dumb move.

Listen here, kids, when you throw a mind-breaking revelation at someone, you stick as close to the truth as possible because if people find anything that doesn’t make sense, your whole story will be doubted.

Also, casual reminder... 

Hawks recorded what was going on. 

That means that if this recording thing is found, they can discredit Dabi’s entire story.

At this point, I am just trying to see if he still has his wings. That’s all I am asking. A confirmation that his feathers will grow back.

Just... stay asleep, Hawks. Rest for a week or two so someone can sort this mess. That’s your best course of action because if you woke up now, you would probably crawl back into a coma.

Was that a bird pun?

Now, that’s just being mean.

I think I remember than in Japan, being related to a criminal is not good, but since BNHA is set in the future, maybe things changed?

If not, I am curious to see how this revelation will affect Hawks. You know, just for sociological purposes.

*hangs on to Izuku who is related to the worst villain this country had ever know, and who actually destroyed Kamino and almost murdered All Might not too long ago*

*squints as I am trying to know what they are advertising*

Dabi: “Think more critically! Try to see things through my point of view, right after I admitted I killed 30 people!”

Reminder that the OG group who fought Shigaraki sacrificed everything to stall him, they are half dead, and they are now facing the end of their society as they know it.

That’s what despair looks like.

Be careful what you wish for, Todoroki Enji.

Shouto is just breaking my heart right now. This is a nightmare. He is the boy who made sure that they were alone when he told Midoriya about his family history. He is the boy who was just started to consider forgiving his father, or at the very least, working so their family would be happy. Things were starting to get better, and now, he has to deal with imminent death, his, his friends and his father.

He isn’t even asking Endeavor to fight Dabi. He will do it. He must know that Nejire and him simply can’t win against the LoV and Gigantomachia but it’s not like there is anyone else.

Everyone is down and right now, the number 1 hero is too shocked to even blink, and if he doesn’t pull himself together in the next second, they are going to die.

Damnit, Shouto actually called him father.

Hey, remember that attack that incinerated a noumu with Regeneration? That attack that Endeavor had to use high in the sky or the collateral damage would have been hellish, in every sense of the word?

Yeah, they almost all died right there.

WE STAN ONE HERO.

BEAST JEANIST, BACK FROM THE DEAD, READY TO JUDGE DABI FOR HIS CRIMES AGAINST FASHION (and also the war crimes, if you insist). 

THAT’S WHY YOU FACT CHECK EVERYTHING, DABI. SO YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE AN IMBECILE AFTER YOU ACCUSED THE NUMBER 2 HERO OF KILLING THE MOST FABULOUS MAN OF THE COUNTRY.

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 79: The Rites of Blood and Knowledge

Chapters: 79/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: pg 13(Blood)

Relationships: Loki x Reader

Characters: Loki (Marvel),Thor(Marvel) Wanda Maximoff, vision, Bruce Banner

Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Party Time, In Reference To Blood Mixing Mentioned In The Eddas

Summary:  The great ceremonies begin.

The dreams were powerful that night, whisking you off to far away places, off to the increasingly familiar form of the gargantuan space artist. There was a strange nostalgia out here that you were slowly coming to recognize as being not your own. How could it be? You had never physically been here, only visited in dreams.

With green and blue sparkling at your right and left, you drifted along in their orbit, yet another asteroid in a primordial star system.

First Wielder.

The concept filtered through your mind, trailing a warm and wistful longing behind it.

Peace. Eternity. Creation.

Before battle. Before separation. Before imprisonment.

Before all.

The star system was strange: every time you came here, the sun was a little different. A variable star, its brightness oscillating, it was still young and new.

There was only one planet in this system, located fairly close to the star. The presence of the colossal giant perturbed the asteroids and gas around the star, but their great mass prevented them from coalescing.

Comets formed in great numbers from the gas and ice beyond them, whizzing past them, inspiring new drawings. Asteroids clumped up against them; a brush of their great hand sent them flying, to collide into one another, to spin away from their unstable orbit, and join the comets on their cross-system journey, to crash into the singular planet.

The colossus watched with the patience of true immortality, as the planet burned and erupted, filled up with water, and clouds, and sky.

Thoughtfully, they regarded an asteroid they held in one hand, then, with their color-stained fingers, they began to draw.

The wistfulness and regret reached their peak, and you woke up in the empty bathtub, with a thought ringing in your head.

The Wielders always came to a bad end.

                                                                            ******

Loki was somewhat disgruntled to discover that you'd been having these dreams without him. He didn't scold, but his concern was clear. You described them in as much detail as you could, but, to your dismay, he didn't have any explanation for what you'd been seeing while you slept.

It would just have to remain a mystery. The upcoming day was going to be far too busy to dwell on it.

Both you and Loki had dressed in your absolute finest, your armor polished bright, your skirt covered in embroidery, your chest and neck festooned in beads of carved gold and pearl. You still felt a little bit like you were so buried in finery that you became invisible, but you tried to carry it with pride. All of this had been put together especially for you, and that hard work deserved to be shown off.

Loki was so magnificent in his fur-trimmed cloak, and elaborate helmet, you had to firmly tell yourself not to spend the whole day just staring at him all moon-eyed.

Maybe just a few hours.

Today, the Second Feast, was really the main event, as far as this Buridag was concerned. At noon, you would participate in the Blood Taking ceremony, wherin you would 'mingle blood' with the royal brothers, in order to be formally adopted into Asgardian high society. This would cement your status as high enough to advise Loki as one of the most important members of his personal entourage. And before the evening feast, you would perform the ritual that would confirm you as an official Seidkona.

But before that, you would have the time to run around and enjoy the festival.

It was set up like a combination job fair and reenactment fest. Stalls lined the streets and filled courtyards, peopled by the crafters of Asgard. Smiths, armorers, and carpenters, goldsmiths, lapidaries, scrimshanders, and glassblowers. Weavers, spinners, leatherworkers, and dyemakers, artists, musicians, chefs, academics, mages, stonemasons, construction workers, scribes, dancers, and cheesemongers. All the sights, and sounds, and scents, and flavors that made up Asgard were being demonstrated and celebrated.

Your Father and Tara joined you in the streets, and Loki reluctantly released you into their care, having some preparation left to do.

Tara, flouncing around in an apron dress and domed brooches very much like your usual style, gushed over how beautiful you looked, and your father, rather sheepishly dressed in an Asgardian greatcoat and cowl, agreed openly.

“You look like a princess.” he said. “A real one. You...You walk different now. Talk different. You look so strong.”

“Is it me, or are all these people following us?” Tara asked, not very quietly. A few chagrined people in the crowd that flowed in your wake down the street peeled away, and wandered in different directions. The rest either had less shame, or had orders to keep watch over you.

You spared the group a glance. There appeared to be a solid mix of Asgardians and humans, several of which had their phones out. You surmised there would be a new wave of photos of you on the internet over the next few days.

“Keep your cowl up dad.” You advised.

“Want me to run them off?” he offered.

“Nah. I don't really mind if they take pictures of me. Can't really hurt anything.”

“Wasn't so great last time.” Tara pointed out. “I spent a lot of time stanning for you.”

“Well, last time was sensationalized bullcrap. This time is a nice festival. I mean, check out that guy!”

That Guy was a glassblower in his stall, spinning a huge, bubble thin amphora of rose pink glass. You had seen its like before, but never seen one made.

“Oh, they age crystal mead in those! The pink lets in the right wavelengths of light that give it it's shimmering quality.”

“What's crystal mead?” your father asked.

“Don't try more than a few sips, if anyone offers.” you warned. “Asgardians have iron guts. Their booze is way too strong.”

“Yeah, they warned us about that on the plane.” Tara said. “And yesterday, it looked like they had everything divided up by species, so no one got the wrong thing.”

You took them around to various demonstrations: spinners spinning yarn, brewers preparing several of Asgards many alcoholic beverages, apothecaries showing how basic medicines were made, a cobbler putting together a nice pair of boots.

“So, Asgard's really advanced, right?” Tara asked. “Why is everything like Ye Olden Times?”

“Asgard's never had that big a population, even at it height. There just isn't that much demand for mass production. Most things are bespoke, or self-made. Quality depends entirely on the maker, so that, of course, becomes a competition. And that, in turn, becomes a matter of cultural pride. Also, they have thousands of years to get good at what they do, so Asgardian made goods are super high quality, and they judge personal worth by that. I don't think they'll ever automate; it would go against a lot of what they stand for.”

You snagged the three of you a traditional Asgardian snack; fat sausages, wrapped in savory pastry. You thought it might be good to have something else in your stomach before the first ceremony.

Tara called them Asgardian corn dogs, which you couldn't wait to share with Loki, if only to watch his nose wrinkle with disdain over the undignified term.

“So when do we have to let you go?” Tara asked.

You checked your phone for the time, stuffing the last of your sausage into your mouth.

“Eh, I've got a few minutes left. Better start heading over though.”

Your winding path through the courtyards took you past minstrels, impromptu dances, and games, to a large, tall dais that had been put together as a temporary mirror to the throne room. It towered over the City Hall courtyard like a ziggurat. You'd be up there soon enough, but currently...

“Who's that?” your father asked, pointing at a man standing at the top. “Doesn't look like Thor.”

You squinted up at the figure, his bright armor shining in the rarefied sunlight.

“Ah, That's Heimdall. He's the Guardian of Asgard, and god of...uh, sight? I think? Vigilance? It's not quite that neat and simple, you know? The whole 'God Of' thing is a bit more complicated than that.”

“So that's a god?” your father asked. “How can you tell? Are they all gods? What does that even mean?”

“All good questions. Mostly because they are very hard to answer.”

Your father and Tara jerked at the sudden new voice, and, not for the first time, you found yourself amazed at how easily a man of the sheer size and importance as the king of Asgard could sneak up on people.

“Your Majesty.” you said calmly, inclining your head. Your father and Tara dipped into awkward bows, a little awed by the mythical figure before them. Thor didn't necessarily demand obeisance, but he didn't exactly discourage it either; he let people act as they felt appropriate.

“Not every Asgardian is a god.” Thor explained. “Those that are go by the term 'Aesir', a common name through most of the realms for beings of that type. You are born Aesir; you cannot become one by outside influences. However, Aesir nature doesn't always become apparent at birth, it often doesn't manifest until adolescence. As for what it means to be Aesir...that doesn't have so straightforward an answer. I leave it to the philosophers, who, incidentally, are in booth seventy-eight.

Anyway, I have come to collect your daughter for the ceremony. There isn't much time left, so we'd all better get in place. If you go through those two poles there right now, you can get very good seats.”

“This could get a bit weird.” You warned. “It's a ceremony more ancient than any recorded human practices, so it's probably going to seem archaic.”

“Oh, it's not so bad.” Thor said. “It's been updated and refined over all those years. For instance, everyone remains clothed now, and there are at least seventy percent fewer entrails used.”

Your father coughed, and you rolled your eyes. Thor's sense of humor was difficult for you to understand, considering how serious he was about everything. The thing about Thor's jokes was that he might have been joking about something that had really happened, or he might have been joking about something he'd completely made up, but he would never specify which.

“On that note, I've got to go.” you said. “Entrails to sort, and all that.”

Your father coughed again, Tara patting him compassionately on the back.

“Good luck!” she called to your receding back.

                                                                                ******

“Now, you've been fully briefed on what will happen during this ceremony, correct?” Thor asked, as the two of you loitered near the back stairs of the temporary dais. People were filtering in to seats and standing room around the courtyard, waiting for things to start.

“I think so.” you said. “If I've got this right, there's going to be a special dance-”

“The Alignment of the Celestial and Worldly bodies, yes.” Thor said. “It symbolizes everything that must come together to bring the 'adoptee' to the greater 'family'. In this case, it will tell the story of how you came here to join our family.”

A soft warmth crept up your neck, and heated your ears beneath your helmet. You knew it was all socio-symbolism, but the notion of 'joining the family' hit differently now that you were on intimate terms with Loki.

“And then all the braziers will have some kind of incense thrown in, and in the smoke, we'll all go up the stairs like we're magically appearing. Honestly, it sounds like it'll look really cool.”

“All ceremonies contain a bit of theatrics.” Thor agreed. “Perhaps that is the most important part. Or that's the part that makes it important. I wish we still had some of the traditional ceremonial incense, but we just don't have access to the materials anymore. You would have liked it; it was much more floral than most of what you have here. We did manage to get some lavender though. That should be nice.”

“Maybe one day, when the Bifrost is more stable.” You said. It did sound very nice. “Loki said that you, and he, and Heimdall will sing a blessing song?”

“Yes, a divine blessing from a trio of Aesir. It's got to be three. And then...”

“Yeah. And then.” Loki had told you about the bloodletting. He had been very frank about it. “I know. I'm nervous, but not afraid.”

Thor nodded. “Sometimes there are unforeseen effects, but never anything bad. You'll be perfectly safe.”

“I know. The nervousness just comes from knowing it'll hurt. Even if just for a short time.”

You buckled under Thor's hand when it came down on your shoulder, enveloping the whole thing.

“Loki would rather slice out his own guts than draw your blood, trust me. He's been trying to figure out how to get around it for weeks. Unfortunately, the blood is the most important part of the magic. It carries all of the power. It's very old magic: according to him, this is practically the only part of the ritual that has remained unchanged from the beginning.”

“Did there really used to be entrails and naked people, or was that a joke?”

“Ehhh, well, yes and no. This ceremony originated with the Vanir, and they are not opposed to nakedness under certain circumstances. In this case, everyone who attended was expected to leave the clothes they came in at the door, and wear a special loincloth instead. This was actually to prevent violence, by barring hidden weaponry from being brought to ceremony grounds. So rather than pure nudity, everyone was dressed as scantily as was possible.

As for entrails...unfortunately yes, that was also a part of it. A seer would perform a divination using the entrails of a slaughtered animal. That practice was going out of fashion, even before the war, and I don't think anyone today even remembers how it was done.”

You shuddered. Yes, it was a different culture, and a long time ago, but it still grossed you out.

“I'll have to remember to thank Loki for trying to get me out of it, even if he wasn't successful.” You said. He really did put in a lot of effort behind the scenes. If only he were more open about some of that effort, so you could appreciate it more.

“He was adamant about the bull.” Thor said. “Demanded a private ritual the night before. Put your helmet up on the pillar, then sacrificed and butchered the beast himself. Insisted on it. Did our ancestors proud, but you know he knows his way around a knife.”

“I wish he'd told me. I was really stressed about that whole thing. I'm glad, in the end, that he was thinking of me, but I really wish I'd known. I wouldn't have lost so much sleep!”

“It was a little last minute.” Thor admitted. “I approved it the instant he explained, but we had to do it pretty much immediately afterwards. He really should have told you, but I fear my brother is usually more invested in the making of plans, rather than what to do once they come to fruition. I feel you will be a positive influence on him, though.”

Even though he was wearing his eyepatch, rather than the mismatched prosthetic, his one blue eye was open and sincere.

“I think so too.” you said. You already were influencing each other. It was impossible to live so close, to sleep in the same bed, without doing so. But Loki did have a bad habit of assuming things, a by-product of his upbringing as a leader, you supposed. You would simply have to speak up more.

Perhaps you had gotten too comfortable. But perhaps you wanted to be too comfortable. It might be a holdover from your year of struggle, but having someone who wanted to do so much for you was very tempting. You knew it would be better to strive for a balance, but you also knew that, unless Loki somehow diminished himself severely, the two of you would never truly be equals.

But you admired that greatness, and somehow, those all too common flaws in him made him easier for you to love. They made him so real.

An ambling drum beat started up, accompanied by the brassy ting of zills, and a flute. Loki joined you and Thor in peeking out around the dais, just as a group of dancers spread out around the courtyard.

You'd been told that the dancers represented personages from history and legend. You were pretty sure that the three women who orbited the dance stage equidistant from one another must be the Norns, and you assumed the cluster of people standing beneath a glittering tree branch and clanging their zills were probably meant to be the ancestors of the royal family.

The dance told a story of a woman dressed like you, and a man dressed like Loki, wearing silver bells at their wrists and ankles that jingled with every step. They made everything look so much more graceful and sensual than it really had been: Holding hands like the rune branding had been on purpose, dancing circles with each other, like everything had been friendly and not at all awkward from the very beginning. How elegantly 'you' swooned into 'his' arms, while the assassin was caught. How triumphantly 'you' defended 'him' against the Huldra. And how beautifully 'he' clasped 'you' in a romantic, yet properly chaste embrace.

There was none of the blood, none of the fear, or anger, or petulance, or confusion. No loss, or loneliness, or uncertainty.

But that was how it worked, wasn't it? None of those things could be shown to the general public. This was ceremony. This was spectacle! This was what would be remembered.

The pair danced away, out of sight, the ancestors retreated, and the Norns raised their arms in unison. All around the courtyard, attendants dumped incense into the torches and braziers, sending thick smoke and mysterious perfume wafting over the entire area.

“Show's on, darling.” Loki said, grasping your shoulders, and leading you up the stairs. A new wave of anxiety washed over you as you rose above the sweet smelling clouds like a legend. Heimdall stepped aside to let you pass, Loki and Thor leading you right up to the edge of the elevated platform, where waited a podium, upon which rested a brass bowl. An unfamiliar rune was stamped on its bottom. So that was where the magic would happen.

Thor held his hand out over an unlit brazier just in front of the podium and concentrated. Scarcely a moment later sparks danced between his fingers and jumped to ignite the fuel. The light illuminated the clouds of incense, obscuring the audience. Cut off thus from every other person out there, you didn't flinch as the trio of gods each placed a hand on you, and began to sing.

You couldn't help but wonder if they had done this before. It was a complex song, with rising and falling harmonies, parts layered over one another, something that couldn't have been easy to learn. As their voices dipped and flowed, you felt the power rising, just like out in the camp, months ago. Why could you sense divine power? Was it because of your magic? Was there anyone out in the crowd that could feel it too?

Thor's good eye had begun to sparkle with crackling white energy, the power of the blessing he was singing into you. You assumed Heimdall, behind you, was lighting up orange, and when you turned your head to glance at Loki, you were suffused with the gentle glow of the blue light from your dreams.

All of the anxiety drained out of you at the touch of that light, your arms dropping to your sides as relaxation took over.

Everything was all right. Loki was right beside you. Thor and Heimdall were with you, their voices reverberating through you, their blessing upon you. The rare winter sun filtered down over you like a blanket, as the last notes of the Aesir's song filled your head.

Loki gently took your hand, gazing earnestly into your face as the calming light faded from his eyes.

“Forgive me, my love.” he whispered.

A sudden, painful jab, ripped you out of your cocoon of sunny calm. With a sharp cry, you turned to stare at your fingertip, pierced deeply by the tip of one of Loki's knives.

Loki held your hand over the brass bowl, letting the blood drip, enough to cover the rune at the bottom. Then he tenderly bandaged the tiny wound, lines of regret around his eyes. Thor held his hand out for a slash, and then Loki turned the blade on himself. Blood slowly filled the little bowl, as a light throbbing started in your head. Every drop that rippled its surface was like a giant heartbeat within you.

Once it was full, Thor and Loki began singing again, lifting the small bowl between them. They held it up to the sun, and then poured it onto the burning brazier. The fire sputtered, sizzling, sending a huge cloud of smoke directly into your face. You gagged on the scent of burning blood, practically bathed in it, a layer of death-scent on your skin. The song cut through it, thrumming in your ears, an echoing promise of cherishment and fidelity.

The blood burned down into nothing, the smoke slowly clearing. All of the people in the courtyard came back into view, the upturned faces solemn. The dancers below picked up the chorus.

And you understood them.

Loki took your hand and lifted it up, flourishing to the crowd. They cheered, while you stood there, stunned. You understood what they were saying, their enthusiastic calls, their songs. The blood smell lingered in your nose, the throbbing swiftly receding from your head.

He led you to the stairs down as you wobbled, but you never made it all the way down. Dizziness overcame you, and you collapsed into Loki's arms.

[hanacantwrite]

❀ 𝙨𝙮𝙣𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙨: “𝙞'𝙢 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙮 𝙖𝙨 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙭𝙪𝙖𝙡. 𝙞'𝙢 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙙𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙚𝙭𝙘𝙡𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙮.”

—[𝘺/𝘯] 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘯𝘰 𝘣𝘰𝘺𝘴’ 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷. 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘴𝘣𝘺 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘴, 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘥𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘺.

“𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙨?” 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘴𝘬. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘣𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴. 𝘴𝘩𝘦, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦, 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘺.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

𝘮.𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 ─ 𝘰𝘯𝘦 ─ 𝘵𝘸𝘰 ─ three ─ four ─ five

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

𝙄𝙏 𝙒𝘼𝙎 𝙄𝙈𝙋𝙊𝙎𝙎𝙄𝘽𝙇𝙀 𝙏𝙊 𝘼𝙑𝙊𝙄𝘿 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙍𝙐𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙎.

The fact that you were roommates with the entire team didn't really help matters but whenever news outlets reported on the living situation between all of you they made it sound more glamorous than it actually was. They always made it sound like being roommates with them was a dream come true. 

It was the complete opposite.

Living with the MSBY Black Jackals was a nightmare and that was a fact that you could say without a doubt, if you could you would definitely move but then again there was the high likelihood of them dying five minutes after you step out the door with your things.

Yelling, messes, stealing of each other's things, you name it they've probably done it at least once.

At first, living with friends seemed to appear as if it was a nice idea, you did it before in your last year of high school so it didn't seem like it'd be that weird of a transition. 

Plus, at the time living with people that had a stable life as a struggling college student seemed to be more than ideal, at least you wouldn't have to work five jobs at once like before. 

Of course, it was all too good to be true. 

It was hard to believe that they were adults that were on their own with how much they acted like children and depended on you overall. 

Just how on earth do you burn down a kitchen while making a hot pocket?

It didn't make sense to you so of course, it was something that they were capable of doing if something seemed humanly impossible in your eyes it was the first thing that they'd do.

That was why whenever those rumours went around it was just something that got you more annoyed than anything. 

Not for the fact that people were making the extremely unprofessional accusation of you dating players of the very team that you coached, it was the fact that they suggested that you'd ever date a professional athlete. 

You didn't really discriminate in the dating except when it came to nice guys and people that would pull an Atsumu on you. 

So, you're really only against people that deserve to be ignored but an exception to that rule of only ignoring nice guys and people like Atsumu was definitely professional athletes. It was hard to believe that some professional athletes even had relationships outside of their blood-related family and teammates. 

I mean, you're entire family have been centred around volleyball since before you could remember but you still couldn't understand it. 

The only explanation that you could come up with was the fact that your mo, was just as intense when it came to volleyball as your dad, had it been any other way you're sure that relationship would've ended in mere weeks is not in the first few days. 

You're sure that was the main reason why every single professional volleyball player that you knew wasn't in a relationship, well, at least not in a long-lasting relationship. 

Despite being someone that did love volleyball, enough to the point of becoming a coach for a professional team, you did not want to get into a relationship with a pro player. 

Sure, they were nice looking and you would've probably fawned over their looks as a fan if you didn't know that they were essentially five years old in adults bodies and that they probably shared a singular brain cell between all of them. 

You glanced over all of them sitting down in almost complete silence with a conversation or two going on between all of them. 

It seemed to actually be peaceful for the first time what seemed to be decades and considering their personalities you wouldn't really be surprised if that would actually be the case one day. 

Was now really the best time to say it?

They looked so peaceful...

Yes. The answer to that question was yes, absolutely yes and there was no question about it as you opened your mouth to say what you've been wanting to say for the past few minutes now. 

Hm...

As you set your gaze onto the older male you narrowed your eyes and stiffened your shoulders as you sat up straight in the chair you were sitting in. 

"Shugo."

Upon the sound of the dull tone of your voice, said male looked up from his book and turned his attention to your with a nervous smile. "Is there something wro-"

Before he could get his question out you cut him off without any remorse as you raised a hand up to stop him from speaking any further. "For the next few days, I don't want you to so much as look at me, all right?"

"Wha-"

"Okay," you clapped your hands as you ignored the confused look on his face. "Now that we've got that done and over with, I should get going."

The captain looked at everyone in the room only for them to ignore the familiar scene that was unfolding in front of them. 

He turned to the younger open hitter with a look of desperation. "Sakusa!"

All he did was look up from his phone and look up at the older man, giving him a bored look as he blinked slowly before slowly looking back down at his phone. 

Shugo gasped in shock. 

You arched a brow at the sight as you put a hand on your hip. You weren't exactly quite sure why he was so shocked in the first place, it's not like that was new behaviour or a new response from Sakusa, in fact, it'd be weird if he didn't give that response. 

"Are you just going to leave without explaining anything?"

You simply tilted your head. "What do you mean?"

Shugo's eye twitched.

Were you being serious?

You know what?

He shouldn't even be asking that question, in all the years that he's known you, you've always been like that and this behaviour wasn't anything new. 

Despite that, he still was in the need of you a further explanation of what you meant as you just ignored his concerns and instead got yourself ready to leave. 

Your eye twitched at the feeling of his eyes burning holes into your back, he definitely wasn't going to stop staring at you until you explained yourself at least a little. 

Taking a deep breath, you looked over your shoulder and narrowed your eyes watching him, feeling a bit of amusement washing over you as he shrank under your gaze. 

"Do you know what happens every single time we hang out with each other in public outside of games?"

He tilted his head in confusion. 

"Nothing?" He squinted in confusion as he tried to understand what you meant. 

Without any hesitation you slammed your hands on the table sitting a few feet away from you, leaning across the table you somehow was able to narrow your eyes even more. 

"Exactly!"

"Huh?"

Shugo jumped back slightly, looking you up and down with concern. "Exactly wha-"

The older male wasn't even given enough time to ask his question when you interrupted him once again, cutting him off without much thought. 

"Nothing happens and it looks like we're on a date so everybody thinks we're dating and this week it's you!"

Your eye twitched at the confusion on the dark-haired male's face. 

It shocked and didn't shock you that he didn't realize what was happening, for someone that seemed to be as smart as him he wasn't the best when it came to reading the room or really anything like that. 

A sigh left your lips as you ran a hand through your hair.

Even with his confusion you couldn't help but feel sorry at the confused look on his face. 

He always reminded you of a puppy with how easily he showed his emotions, it was as if he had no idea how to hide anything. It was endearing. 

"No offence," you sighed out, "But, I can't really deal with having to see another news story on my feed about how I'm 'abusing my power' by dating you."

Your eye twitched as you looked away. 

"Though to be honest I'm more insulted by the fact that people actually think I would date a volleyball player," you mumbled under your breath as you looked away. 

"What is that supposed to mean?" Shugo asked, sounding a bit more offended than you had expected. 

Crap. 

He overheard you, didn't he?

Of course, you just had to make the mistake and explain yourself even more than you wanted to in the first place. 

Freezing, you let your shoulders rise and fall as you let out a deep breath in an attempt to not say anything that would be too rude. 

"Shugo, we're friends and all but you barely have enough time to clean up your own room, what's the chances of you having enough time to have an actual relationship?"

He raised a finger to speak. 

But of course, he was once again cut off by you. 

There was no way you were going to allow him to try and defend himself with a less than convincing argument. "I mean, the longest relationship you had was what? A month."

He continued to shrink at your words as well as everyone else in the room. 

While it was clear you were speaking to Shugo it was obvious to all of them that your words were directed towards all of them, especially with the way you'd give them a small glance before turning back. 

"Plus, to be honest, you guys don't exactly have the best personalities, in my opinion at least-" 

Even with the looks on their faces, you continued to go on and on with the reason why you couldn't picture dating a volleyball player, the lack of shame you were showing was more shocking than anything. 

You let out a long sigh.

Letting all of that out was a lot more stress-relieving than you had ever expected it to be. 

It seems like Yanagi was right when he suggested you talking everything out, though the way you went about it wasn't exactly what he meant. 

Shaking your head you flashed them all a smile before turning on your heels and giving them a small wave from over your shoulder. 

All they could do was watch with blank stares as you walked out, not being able to take their eyes off until you closed the door behind you. 

"What just happened?"

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

[Y/N] has been roommates with Atsumu since college but she still can't stand the way he lives and considers moving out almost every day. 

[airiat]

Boy with the Sun Song (VI.)

iorveth/f!oc | m | friends to lovers, tooth-rotting fluff, hurt/comfort | no warnings apply

vesta aep maghenn knows iorveth (iorveth aep mirbrach, to her) in a way that no one else can claim: they grew up together in the blue mountains and have been the closest of friends ever since. when iorveth’s unit is wiped out in an ambush by a powerful but unknown  adversary, he seeks shelter with vesta until it’s safe for him to rebuild.

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven

[read on ao3]

VI.

The days passed slowly and lazily like fog that rolls down a mountainside. Iorveth seemed to struggle with the transition from his fast-paced, unpredictable rebel lifestyle to my calm, steady world of caretaking and creating. It was almost too hard for me to be around him, the way his energy buzzed frantically and restlessly, threatening to crumble the walls of my home. We were fortunate that the enchantment extended beyond the physical house to a line around my property, which meant he was able to spend most of his days outdoors. 

That time was spent fletching an absurd stockpile of arrows and shooting them with his bow at the trunks of poor, hapless trees in the vicinity. To me, this seemed like a futile endeavor, but every time he did it, I could feel his energy streamline and settle, honing in on that singular task. But it also became a vicious energy, one that thirsted to see death and destruction. I could begin to imagine the fear his victims felt when they found themselves at the other end of his arrow or with his blade cutting into their skin. This was a part of him I had always avoided thinking about, but to see it take shape before my eyes made the thought unavoidable.

There were two sides of the coin. When I heard the name Iorveth, I thought of my best friend and protector, someone who had, despite all his life has asked of him, managed to stay by my side for most of it. A man whose pride was both his greatest strength and his deepest wound. A man who loved summer sunshine and played sweet music so that the birds sang back to him. But when most others thought of Iorveth, dh’oine and nonhumans alike, their minds became clouded with hatred, with cold-blooded fear. 

He was a criminal, a terrorist, a bloodthirsty villain who ought to have hanged for his misdeeds long ago. I knew this, and yet, I still forgave him for all of it. Even if I wasn’t Aen Seidhe, even if I didn’t understand the reasons for why he did what he did, I would have still loved him.

What did that make me, then, if I could still love him in spite of what he’d done? Did it make me a monster the same as him? 

The loud squawk of a bird pulled me out of my thoughts from where I stood leaning against the doorframe watching him shoot. When I refocused, I was met with the sight of Iorveth holding up a shot pheasant by the neck.

“Dinner,” he announced, a triumphant look in his eye, like this bird had been his white whale, like he’d not faced and cut down bigger, more fearsome foes before.

When was the last time he killed somebody, I wondered. 

I smiled at him. “I have a soup recipe that’ll go really well with that.”

“Sounds good.”

I watched as he left for the side of the house where he hung the bird for one of us to clean later. But my eyes didn’t follow his actions, they settled on the bow slung across his back, on the quiver full of arrows hanging from his waist. How they might feel in my hands, what it would have been like to do what he does.

“Do you think you can teach me that?” I asked when he returned, pointing to his bow.

His face lit up as I’d never seen it before. “How to shoot?”

I nodded. “Well, I mean, re-teach me how to shoot.”

He graced me with one of his rare, hard-won smiles. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long.”

I couldn’t help but return his smile--it warmed me from within like I was standing in a patch of sunlight. “Well, here it’s arrived.”

“About time,” he replied, reaching behind him and pulling his bow out of its holster.

Iorveth approached me and presented the bow balanced on the palms of his hands like a knight would to his queen--all that was missing was him getting down on one knee. I saw a sparkle in his eye at this performance, so I played along with it, taking the weapon into my hands with gentle reverence, as though it was made of the most fragile glass. 

How many had he killed with this bow?

Then, he unbuckled the quiver from around his waist and fastened it around mine. The two objects felt so foreign to me, so cumbersome and awkward on my body. The quiver was heavy and knocked against my hip, the bow large and unwieldy. I looked down at the state of myself, feeling much like a child playing dress-up in her parent’s clothes. The feeling of this shouldn’t have been unfamiliar to me, but it still was. How did anyone fight like that? Much less with the unearthly grace Aen Seidhe are meant to possess? 

“None of this is suitable for you,” Iorveth said when he saw the apprehension that was surely written on my face. “I’ll make sure you get all your own equipment, but in the meantime, we can start here.”

“Alright…” I said slowly. “What do I do now, then?”

“What is it you think you should do?” he countered, going to lean against a nearby tree.

“...nock an arrow?”

He inclined his head towards me. “So you do remember.”

I had, of course, been taught archery as a young Aen Seidhe--right alongside Iorveth, in fact--such a rite of passage it was. But it was never something that I latched on to, preferring instead the lessons in creative arts and literature. And so, while Iorveth flew ahead in his archer’s training, in anything pertaining to combat, actually, I laid down my weapons as soon as I was possibly allowed to. Thus, it had been many, many years since I had last gone through these motions.

I reached for an arrow, fumbling around with the bow in my sudden bout of nervousness under his assessing, waiting eye. Eventually, I managed to get one in my hand and held it up to him victoriously, but he hardly looked impressed. Rolling my eyes, I slid the arrow into place and raised the bow, one eye squinted closed and my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth. I spent so much time aligning myself with a tree trunk in the distance that the veins of the wood began to blur with the brush behind it. 

When I loosed the arrow, it missed spectacularly, going wide and sailing into the forest beyond.

Iorveth pushed himself off the tree with a shake of his head. 

“You must not overthink it, Vesta,” he chided. “It should be effortless, without any thought.”

I shook my head, furrowing my brow. “I’ve never been able to do that. It never worked for me.”

“Then that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you how to do,” he responded as he came to stand behind me.

Iorveth’s hands settled lightly on my waist in a way that was very distinctly unlike how I’d been taught as a child. There was a very brief flash in my mind of something heady, like candlelight and dark wine, but I pushed the thought away, startled by its appearance. He removed a hand to give me another arrow, and I nocked it, raising the bow back to the tree.

“Your enemy won’t stand there stock-still as you take your aim. There’s no time to think, only to feel and then to shoot.”

His last word came as a command and I obeyed instantly, without thought, but the arrow still swung wide, disappearing into the brush. I exhaled sharply, with frustration, and lowered the bow.

“It’s alright,” he murmured. “Try again.”

I did as he said, but fell short of my target once more.

“What am I doing wrong, Iorveth?” I asked.

Another arrow passed to me. I nocked it and took aim, drawing back the string.

“You’re not breathing,” he said softly, and when he returned his hand to me, it slid down my back, over my waist, settled on my hip. ”Your core is too tight.”

In my surprise over the heat of his words, in the boldness of his touch, my fingers released the string and the arrow flew forward in a blink, embedding itself firmly in the trunk of the tree. The tree was wide, and my arrow hit far, far off to the right of center, but it was still there as plain as day.

 Immediately, Iorveth took his hands off me and stepped back, but I remained standing there bewildered by what he had just done and what it had made me do.

“Look at you,” he said from behind me. “Just like a real Aen Seidhe.”

I turned around to face him. “But I missed my mark.”

“Between missing your mark and missing entirely in the heat of battle, which would you prefer?”

“...I suppose.”

“An arrow wound is still a wound no matter where it hits,” he said. “And believe me, that shit ploughing hurts.”

I pulled a face, imagining what exactly that must feel like. 

“We’ll end here for today,” he said. “Better if you didn’t overdo it on a bow that isn’t right for you.”

I nodded, almost relieved at this out. I didn’t know if I’d have been able to handle another maneuver like the one he’d just pulled. Iorveth took his bow and quiver back from me, and we walked to the house. 

I felt much lighter, better, without them in my possession. I realized then that I’d been feeling the death emanating from them. The strain hadn’t come entirely from the fact that they were too big for me.

“I’ll make the proper bow for you,” he said. “Then we can try again.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Of course I do,” he answered, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “I made mine.”

“You did?” I asked, glancing at the bow on his back. “It’s beautiful. I mean, it fucking reeks of death, but beautiful, nonetheless.”

He chuckled. “A lot of dh’oine blood on it.”

We arrived in the house and he pulled it off, leaning it against the wall near the door. 

Iorveth continued. “You’ve always been perceptive to things like that, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “The things I could say about the way your energy manifests.”

He looked at me curiously, but didn’t ask me to elaborate. “If that’s the case, surely you can feel the danger you’re in here. You’d honestly be safer in Vengerberg itself.”

“The enchantment protects me.”

He shook his head. “Magic is fallible. Very much so.”

“I’d know if it fell.”

“Maybe so, but then what? You’d be defenseless.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t yet.”

Iorveth made a sound that sounded almost like a growl. “I’ll make you the bow, you’ll master that, and then we’ll move on to the blade.”

His angry panic rolled off of him in waves. I stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm. Instantly, he stilled and we stood there, me waiting, and him trying to calm himself down.

“If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself,” he said simply, in a low voice.

“You won’t need to. Nothing will happen.”

He let out a long, slow exhale. “Let me teach you how to protect yourself.”

“I will. Anything for you, remember?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”

“I know, Iorveth. I hear you. Show me everything you know.”

“Thank you, beag’aine.”

Then, I released him and we set about the house, settling in for the evening. When I read him again, there was a different sort of feeling lingering in the fringes of his usual pain-anger-desperation. And when I took it inside myself, separated the layers, all I could think of was my writing, the purple-pink-wine red hues of an emotion I’d only ever known in fiction. I knew exactly what it was, but I didn't dare attach its name. Not now. Not yet.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Dragon Dancer IV: Love is Death

Early morning, before the sun came up and the song of birds filled the crisp mountain air, the women inhabitants of the small Tibetan village passed by the temple singing religious texts as they made the thirty minute walk to the stream to fetch the day’s water. The line of them was composed of girls as young as fourteen and women as old as eighty-four. Looking at them was like looking at the same woman through time.

The sound of a ringing bell stopped them in their tracks. For them, the bell symbolized Buddha's voice. It called for the protection of heavenly deities and equaled the sound of the Dharma, the entity or law which sustained the order of things in the universe.

They stopped their daily walk, lowered themselves, and bowed, the large wooden buckets still on their backs.

Within the inner courtyard of the temple, the ringing came from the clash of metal on metal, the collision of two swords in the predawn dark wielded by shadows. Their forms flowed like ghosts, only the small puff of the dust of the ground indicated that they still were subject to the laws of gravity.

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

When I talked to people about Chu Zihang, they would mention his stoic, emotionless appearance and tight rigorous way of life. They called him a robot. From when he woke up in the morning, to what he ate during the day, to the position of his body when he slept at night everything in his life was geared toward a singular goal

While he yielded and allowed people their personal preferences, when it came to his own choices, moving him was like trying to move an oak tree.

As I sparred with him, however, his precision, speed and efficiency evoked in my mind the professional violinist. He never never hit a wrong note. Motion and breath were in concert.  A thrust turned into a parry, a parry into a cut, as if following a score I couldn’t see but understood.

His sparring followed an internal logic. When I could follow it, I knew when to strike and when to retreat, keeping that precise distance that would allow me to reach him and prevent him from reaching me. Spinning like planets in orbit, I could feel our music and I smiled despite myself.

“Good.” He said, pausing as we separated. “You’ve improved.”

I leveled my sword at him. “That’s not a compliment coming from you.”

“I’ve been gone for months, and you’ve only gotten better.”

“That’s more like it.”

“I’m going to push you now.”

“Alright.”

Unlike Zihang, I hadn’t trained all my life to be a fighter. For Zihang, fighting was like breathing. Swinging a sword to him was like catching a fly in midair without looking. When he pushed, he broke out of the sheet music and became a jazz composer at the piano, banging out an improvisation that only he could follow.

My job was to turn off the classical music and try to keep up.

He shifted from the traditional Japanese swordplay, weaving strikes from Muy Thuy and kicks from Tae Kwon Do. His posture lured me in with the promise of the familiar steps we had just finished practicing, but it was a trap, always a trap. I examined how his open arm was a potential grapple, watched his feet to see where he might go and had to be prepared to be wrong. My heart pounded and my head filled with uncertainty.

There was no smiling now. He was no longer my dance partner. He was my enemy. He crowded me, eyes intently watching me, breaking down my every move into its component parts and precisely baffling my strategy before I could even move.

Frustrated, I kicked his instep, cut upward and forced him back, but he only retreated a single step, staying in range of Spider Fang’s sword point. I was going to go in for a thrust, but he was still there. I stopped millimeters before I could stab him in the chest, startling that he hadn’t moved out of the way like I expected.

A blow to my chest knocked me down, flat on my back, and I felt a sharp sting on my collarbone.

I opened my eyes, glaring at him. “What was that?! I could have killed you!”

“Probably the most important lesson you’re going to have to learn.” He stared down at me and offered his hand to help me up.

I felt at the sting and my fingertips came back red. “You want me to stab you?” I asked in disbelief.

I held up my bloody hand to him and he pulled me up. “Yes.” 

“That’s kind of ... not the point of sparring you know.” I gave a nervous laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know. But things are a little different now. Do you know why the Execution Department has a policy against couples going into battle together?”

“Because of the Greenland incident right? Something about that mission...” I said, holding my hand to my chest to slow the bleeding.

“That’s right. Anjou explained to me before our wedding. He said, ‘Love is the death of the dragonslayer.’“

We stood in the dark, talking in hushed tones. The temple would be waking up soon. The monks knew the secrets of the dragon clan of course, but we were unwilling to say too much lest the Gattusos somehow found their way here.

“Dragons can read the mind of a human to look for weaknesses. The first thing they hone in on by instinct is human love. It differs from their love, because their love is disposable. They’re willing to kill the people they love to get what they want. They understand that very few humans are willing to do that.”

“Anjou was willing to let me marry you because I killed Jormangandr, a dragon who turned herself into a human, followed me around since I was a boy, and made me love her.”

“Jormangandr took advantage of my feelings to the very end, trusting that, if she appeared to be the person I had fallen in love with, I would allow her to kill me. I played along.”

Zihang stepped forward, wrapped his arm around me in a hug, while I stood stiffly, restraining my taut emotions. The point of a blade against my back made me gasp. “I offered to hug her, just like this.”

The tip of the knife, the one I didn’t know he had hidden on himself, made my skin itch. “She fell for it. She was overconfident. She thought she knew that this was her opportunity to land a fatal blow. Because she knew by now that I loved her. So she hugged me. I stabbed her and she died... very painfully. I had to listen to her screaming, hold her as she struggled.”

I took a deep breath, taking in his scent. I hugged him back.

He kept the tip of the blade against my back even as he kissed the top of my head. “If I hadn’t... I wouldn’t be here. And neither would the world as we know it.”

“You nailed Susie to the floor... knowing who she was..." I said.

“You need to be able to kill me. Or I can’t take you with me, Meixiu. That mindless monster on the boat knew enough to try to use me as a shield against you. We’re going up against someone who can alter memories, peer into our hearts and see our deepest desires. It isn’t a matter of if.”

“You’ll kill me if you have to, right?” I asked him.

“Yes.” 

I raised my head to look up at him. He lifted his hand and ran his thumb down my cheek. 

“Then its only fair. That way, only one of us has to die.” I said.

“It’s easy to say. Let’s go again.” He let me go and walked away, lifting Tongzi against me.

“If I’m going to kill you, I’m not going to use this.” I turned the hilt of Spider Fang to him.

He lowered his sword and walked up to me to take the sword. Instead, I pulled the spear of light from the latent energy of the Chaos in the Void. It dazzled in the dark, lighting my face, giving off a soft hiss.

My heart quivered as I faced him, my expression sad. It wasn’t even the real thing, and yet it was. If I didn’t have a killing intent, then Zihang would view this spar as unsuccessful and wouldn’t let me go with him.

“I will kill you,” I said, feeling the tears rise. “I have to trust you not to die!”

I moved faster than the eye could follow. My spear left a blackened mark on the dirt where he stood but he was no longer there. 

The spear turned and chased him.

Tongzi, the Alchemy long knife, could actually withstand the powerful energy in the Chaos Spear enough for it to repel. Zihang used it, smacking the tip of the spear away from his face. 

One was not enough to kill him. 

I summoned another to my side and sent it after him. They hovered, pointing at him from left and right. He held still, his ears listening. I squinted at him and decided on left first, since I was right handed. 

The left spear dove in and the right followed quickly. Zihang moved back, raising the blade to parry them both. The spears bent around the blade and kept their trajectory. He jumped high enough to clear an eight foot fence and they followed him, one upward, the other anticipating where he would land.

He twisted in mid air and dodged them both.

I hissed and summoned a third after him. 

He spun like a top striking all three.

The more I summoned, the harder they were to control. While two would move, aiming at his head and heart, the third would lag behind, forgotten in my mind until I gave it instructions.

Zihang immediately picked up on this. As soon as I attacked, one spear in front, the other behind, he dove behind the motionless third, using it as his own defense!

The Chaos spears of light collided and sent a shockwave through the courtyard.

I saw an opening. I summoned another, remotely, near to him. Sound was his only warning. He lashed out with Tongzi to stop it and the spear wrapped up the blade like a serpent. He dropped it and rolled away.

Were we done? I didn’t know. He didn’t say we were.  I summoned a spear high in the air above him, a pinpoint of light, out of sight and then I summoned a dozen spears to ring him in a tight circle to keep him from moving.

In my mind, I gave the floating spear over head instructions to fall and let go of it, not altering the trajectory.

Zihang knew I couldn’t control all of these at once. He struck out at them, knocking two away and then turned to look for an attack from behind that didn’t come. I saw the flash of the whites of his eyes.

He looked up and I closed my eyes tightly shut. Everything in me screamed to stop the attack to vanish the spear coming down on him. My heart burned, the fire spreading to every limb. 

A blast of intense heat was like a sunburn on every patch of skin not protected by clothing. I opened my eyes. “Zihang!”

The ground was smoldering, the dust black and sparkling with hot embers where he had been. I looked around until I saw him, pushing himself up from the ground to sit up.

I ran to him, collapsing into his arms, sobbing. “Are you okay? Did I hit you?”

“You came very close.” His shirt was split open, the skin underneath bleeding in a straight line.

Gasping, I covered my mouth with my hand.

He chuckled. “Sword of Damocles?”

“Yes...” I whimpered.

“You used Susie’s technique... the ring of blades.” He nodded once. He looked at my face, the tears there. He had to see how much I was trembling, like I would shake myself apart. If he hadn’t used Royal Fire to propel himself away, he would have died instantly.

The lights came on all over the temple and people were shouting.

He stood up, bringing me with him. I leaned against him. “Okay... let’s go... this probably woke up Ru’Yi.”

[nelllraiser]

dream a little dream of (norma) lee | norma & nell

LOCATION: dream land 👀 PARTIES: @nelllraiser and @normallee SUMMARY: featuring a witch trail and a ring fight.

The air smelled cleaner. Small towns always were. It was part of why Norma preferred them to large, overcrowded cities. This one was no different than the rest. Languages may change, costumes may differ, technology may advance, but humans were so fundamentally interchangeable it hardly mattered. She had no idea which one this was, but it looked vaguely familiar. The style of dress seemed to be from another century but she had trouble saying which one. More recent than less but time was relative after all. Norma wandered through the town, it was quiet and civil, everyone walked in straight orderly lines and talked in calm even tones. As she stood still, someone ran into her. A plainly dressed woman in simple clothes and 

“Oh hello, dear. It’s time for the witch trial,” she said patiently, almost as if Norma had not been the cause of their collision mere moments ago. “A witch trial?” Norma asked, eyes lit up. Maybe this town would not be so humble and boring after all. “Which way?” The woman pointed and Norma went to gleefully trot off. Only she found herself conformed to the line and forced to a steady even pace. What on earth was going on? She sighed. As long as she was able to revel in the delicious joy of witnessing some good old fashioned chaos. Only once the crowd politely circled the witch in question, it was just so calm and orderly. Norma wanted to scream, only when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. 

Whisperings of a witch trial as she went around town was enough to set Nell on edge. After all, if it was witches they were after...they’d certainly have a high interest in capturing her, right? As soon as she’d thought it, she found her in the center of a circling line, the eyes of the crowd trained on her, some pointing fingers as they spoke of the witch that would be brought to justice. What the hell was everyone wearing? She could have sworn she’d stepped into some strange pilgrim fantasy, and as she looked down at herself she was vaguely startled to find that she too was dressed to the times, whatever time this may be. “What the hell?” she mumbled under her breath, watching the townsfolk still circling her. They kept talking about burning the devil and things like that, but didn’t actually make any moves towards her. On and on they went in their placid and perfect line, paying Nell no mind other than to occasionally murmur about how she was a witch. This had to be the most boring witch trial in the history of witch trials. Raising her hands, Nell began to speak. “Okay well...this has been...super fun, but I’m gonna go now. As she tried to break through the circle, one of the blank townsfolk tried to shuffle her back to the center, not entirely pleased that she’d broken the order. 

There was too much order, too much regulation. This was not worth it. Not at all. What good was a witch hunt with no screaming or yelling? “Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” a placid announcer said from a podium on a stage. “This is going to be calm and rational. We know that there is a witch among us. And while we so dearly wish we could let her live, we cannot. It’s a shame.” Norma tried to reach out, feel any rumblings, any disenchantment with the whole thing, any singular negative emotion at all. The crowd was emotionally silent. Save for one person. Norma’s head turned directly at a girl with dark hair clearly trying to make a break for it. “Her! It’s her!” Norma said as she stood up, pointing at the woman in the crowd. “Oh dear. I see you’ve quite missed the point,” the woman next to her said. She sighed and made a gesture with her hands. Then, two men grabbed her and very calmly walked her towards the podium. The other girl seemed headed there, too. “Xmucane, we know what you are. It’s very humorous you thought you could hide in the crowd,” the announcer told her while she tried to fight to get away. Nothing was working. It was like trying to fight a wall.

“What?” was Nell’s reflexive and outraged reply to the claim of witchery. “That’s bullshit! You don’t even know me!” Everything felt so...strange. Like the things she was touching weren’t entirely real, or floating just beyond her grasp. And yet the promise of being tried as a witch felt very real. She knew she wasn’t in any immediate danger. Not when she could just magic herself out, but it was still nerve-wracking to know that she was being hunted. Especially after everything with August. But as she was taken to the podium, she couldn’t help the vindictive streak that ran through her as she also say the woman who had claimed she was a witch there as well. “Ha! Sucks to suck! Looks like you’re a witch, too!” She quickly recovered. Though now that she thought about it..she could probably use this witch thing to her advantage. “Alright, so what if I am a witch?” she asked the crowd. “This is a pretty surefire way to guarantee a curse on your entire family line for the rest of eternity.” She went to reach for her magic, to let it pool and ready itself for an escape. But there was...nothing. What? Where were her powers? 

“You don’t understand! I am not a witch! I would never be something so human and mortal, how dare you suggest such a thing!” Norma yelled as she was carried carefully to the stage alongside the actual witch, the crowd poised and collected the entire time. There wasn’t a single cheer or scream to be heard, simply the occasional golf clap. Norma felt like she was the only one trying to fight or make a scene. Well, perhaps aside from the actual witch next to her. The floor next to them opened up and two guillotines rose up. “I’m afraid it’s time for you to meet your ends. We really do appreciate you being so reasonable. It’s one of our core values,” the man said as Norma was being pulled towards the blade. “No, no, no,” she said, trying to scream and fight, but she was powerless, forced to obey and comply. “You can’t do this, I’ll, I’ll--” She wouldn’t do anything. Gods, she at least deserved a good riot while this was happening and not the placid,pathetic excuse for an audience surrounding her. Her head was placed at the chopping block and someone came to pull the rope. She closed her eyes and winced, waiting for her inevitable end. 

As the other woman yelled, Nell was ready to voice her own displeasure at being brought to the witch trial…until Norma decided to disparage witches and mortals in one breath. “Hey! You’d be lucky to be a witch!” she yelled petulantly, distracted for a moment. It was still almost eerie as the crowd looked on, disturbingly polite and quiet. What the hell was wrong with them? But as a guillotine seemed to rise from nowhere, her stomach dropped. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time a Vural would lose her head. No…no! She wouldn’t let this happen! Nell began to thrash against those around her, biting and hitting anything within her reach while her magic continued to perform a disappearing act. What was her magic? Where was her power? “Fuck you!” Nell yelled out through her struggling. But there was nothing she could do as her head was settled into the guillotine, her breath coming too fast now. She’d been here before. The only thing she could do was pray that Bea wouldn’t show up out of nowhere, throwing herself in front of the blade. Let it be Nell. Let he be the one to die this time. The guillotine dropped, but Nell felt nothing. She opened her eyes, and sure enough there was Bea’s head, bloodied and rolling on the ground. “No, no, no, no,” she rambled, utter panic filling her. Not again. Please no again. She blinked, trying to rid the image from her brain, and the next time she opened her eyes the crowd was gone, everything having changed in the blink of the eye. It only took her a moment to recognize the familiar arena that had risen up around her and the other woman. “The Ring.”

Norma waited, but there was no pain. No end. Just… cheering? She opened her eyes and looked around. “The what?” Norma asked as she pushed herself up from the ground. She was surrounded by stands everywhere encircling them. An arena? Where were they? She’d never been to this place in her life. And it was a very long life. It was certainly meant for some sort of sport or entertainment. But why were they at the bottom? “Excuse me!” she called out, though no one could likely hear her over the sound of the audience. “Excuse me, is there going to be blood sports? Or just sports? I have to say, what you call basketball is dreadfully dull without any human sacrifices!” No one was listening. But there was that witch with her in the pit. “You. You’re following me. And seem to have an idea where we are. Please tell me what’s happen--” Before Norma could finish asking her question, let alone receive any answers, a door was sliding open across the way. She squinted her eyes, trying to make out what was entering this arena with them. It was hard to tell from here. The shapes looked vaguely human. That hardly meant much, many things were shaped or guised as humans though they were nothing of the sort. Still, the cheering grew louder. Norma could feel chaos rippling everywhere and she tried her best to feed from it, pull it, manipulate it. But there was nothing. “My powers,” she said, looking at her hands, and then back at the crowd, ignoring the figures headed towards them. “They’re not working.” Panic spiked in her. Did that also mean that she was vulnerable? Could she truly die? It appeared she would have to find out. And soon.

The woman who’d tried to get Nell guillotined was still here? She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that. “Who are you?” she asked reflexively, still trying to get her breathing back to normal after seeing her sister’s decapitated head lying on the ground once again. What the hell was this woman yelling about, anyway? Blood sports? Wait, hold on. She’d heard that before. Or rather...heard it in her head. “It’s you?!” she yelled out in shock. “You’re the one in my head?” Then she did her best to explain. “It’s a fighting ring.” That was the simplest answer she could give when everything seemed to be moving all at once, but was also strangely static. The Ring didn’t scare her, though. That was the only thought she could muster before one of the shadowy human forms darted towards her, attacking without warning. Nell struck out in a reflexive motion, her knife seemingly materializing in her hand from thin air as it sliced across the shadow’s throat. But it was only one of the many shadows that seemed intent on spilling their blood. The other woman was babbling about powers, and Nell couldn’t even begin to follow her logic. “What powers? Just punch them or something!” Her own magic was still nowhere to be found, and though that alarmed her, she’d make do with what she had.

“Oh, hello, I’m Norma! Well, I’m Norma Lee right now but I didn’t used to--” This whole scenario was strange and ephereally, but something suggested to Norma that she should not give away her identity just now, even though it was highly likely that this witch might die at any second. “In your head? What do you mean? I haven’t been able to get into anyone’s heads for months now and let me tell you, little witch, it’s not fu--” Her words cut off with a scream as a shadowy figure came charging at her. “Who are you and why are we in a fighting ring?” Norma was not a fighter and she did not know what to do about this. Normally she simply let any sort of soldiers “kill her” and she would simply play dead. However, she was quite concerned about her powers not functioning properly. Now was not the time to test her invulnerability as well. Norma jumped behind the witch who seemed to have a handle on this fightin thing. “Left hook, left hook!” she shouted. She wasn’t sure what that was or if that was the appropriate maneuver for the situation, but she had heard it many times before in fighting type movies and media and assumed it had just as much a chance of being right in the situation as anything else did. 

“I don’t think this is the time for introductions!” Nell yelled back in exasperation, not at all impressed with the other woman’s reaction. Was she...hiding? Of course she’d get stuck in the Ring with someone who refused to fight. It was only Nell’s luck that it should happen this way. And now the other woman was apparently cheering her on, as if this were some trashy wrestling show. Nevertheless as each shadow approached, Nell was quick to handle them. But when each body was dispatched it didn’t fade into oblivion. It simply...stayed there, the pile growing as the forms seemed to endlessly come her way. The witch gathered her own fair share of bruises and cuts in the process, the air even punched out of her at one point until she managed to catch her breath. Finally, as quickly as they’d appeared, the shadows stopped. Shoulders heaving as Nell breathed, she turned to look at the woman that didn’t belong. “What are you doing here?” How had they even gotten here? Weren’t they just at a witch trial? Then, a growing gurgling sound caught Nell’s attention behind her. Were the shadows rising again? As she turned to look over her shoulder, Nell’s reaction was instant, a physical recoil working its way through her body as her face went white. The shadows were no longer shadows, but the bleeding out figures of those she loved and cared about, their lifeless faces staring back up at her.

Relief washed over Norma as the last of the shadowy figures fell, piled in front of them. Norma exhaled sharply and smoothed down her dress, brushing off any of the dirt and debris that had gotten on her. “Very rough fight, good job witchling!” She said enthusiastically, holding her hand up for something she was told was called a five of highs. She assumed this was the appropriate venue. Though the woman was not reciprocating. Odd. “What do you mean? I have no idea what I’m doing here, I’ve never even been here. You’re the one who knew where we were.” Norma reached out to try and feel the strife stirring within this small witch in front of her. She was sure it was there, the look etched into the lines of her face suggested there was something strong brewing there for her to tap into. And yet, Norma felt nothing. Her powers still failed her. “This isn’t possible, why can’t I use them!” she shouted as the audience around them laughed and clapped. Before Norma could turn to tell all of the miserable mortals here to cease their laughter at her, the shadowy figures gained form. Slowly at first, like a lens bringing the world into focus. Norma tilted her head, trying to make out who it was, if it was anyone she knew or cared for. “Who are they?”

Like a flash, Norma sat up in bed, sweating, palms raw and covered in dirt. She looked around and no, this was her apartment. Nothing off about it. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Her powers were still there, ready and waiting, though waning with disuse. All was well. But who was that girl? Was it simply a strange dream figure? Odd, she normally never paid mortals from her past much attention. Strange that this one stuck. Oh well, she wouldn’t let her interrupt her sleep any further than she had already and curled up again, laying her head back down on her pillow, paying no concern to the small pricks of pain along her neck. Surely it was all a dream. 

The question of who they were hit Nell deep as she looked at the familiar faces staring back at her, glassy eyes empty and lifeless. She couldn’t look away no matter how hard she tried, as if a pair of hands were holding her head in place, forcing her to look at what she’d done, horror quickly consuming her. Then it was over all at once as she awoke on top of the mattress in her greenhouse, chest still rising and falling with the effort it had taken to fight off the shadows that turned out to be family and friends, and the realization she’d killed them all. She felt like she was choking on air as her eyes sprang open, panic clawing at her throat. Nightmares weren’t anything new ever since Montgomery had sliced Bea’s head off like butter, Nell’s sleep having suffered ever since then. But this was different. It took a long moment for Nell to calm herself after the carnage of the dream, but once the sweat on her brow had dried, and her breathing had returned to normal, she could take inventory. There was blood on her blankets, coming from wounds she didn’t remember sustaining. Except...didn’t these match up with what she’d been hit with in the dream. Shit. Definitely not a normal fucking dream. Her eyes clenched shut, trying to remember what it was the other woman had given as a name. Norma. Norma Lee? What the actual fuck? Surely that had to be a fake ass name? Had she just been trolling Nell? Was she even real? The others had said they’d found their dream counterparts, but how could Nell tell if this was her’s or not for certain? There were far too many questions ricocheting around her head as she carefully sat up, hissing as the newly formed bruises on her stomach objected. There was at least one thing she could be sure of. There’d be no more sleeping for her tonight.

[docmanda]

5 and 7 or 8 for the fic asks? say something nice about yourself ^^

Ahahahahaaa oh it’s my old archenemy, Doctor Selflove!!!

5.Share one of your strengths.

Hm I am kinda just bumbling about with the fic writing thingie yet so actually saying something is my strength feels like making too much out of it? One commenter called my writing evocative and I think that is something I am kinda good at, putting pictures and emotions into my reader’s heads with words.

And when inspiration hits I can churn out words pretty fast which is good I think :-) 7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

...I know I am probably getting redundant with that one fic but it IS kinda my favorite so..have my favorite piece of “For The End Of My Broken Heart” once again. I just really like the way it makes me feel while reading, the weird vaguely disassociated sense of loss and horrors beyond recognition idk, it reads “right” and makes me feel the things I wanted it to make people feel if that makes any sense?

There are sirens afterwards and the frantic hustle of people in white trying to save the world while two ghosts cling to each other in excruciating fear, leaving deep red bruises on each other´s skin in their desperate hope for a miracle they both know is not going to happen. They know, deep down where their souls would be if they had one, where they carved a place reserved for a single being into their own flesh and core that it is too late, their God has left them behind, going where even they can´t follow. And yet they cling to that last bit of hope with stubbornness born of nothing but pure, raw desperation.

When finally, after an eternity of pain a white clad man comes out of the room that holds their whole world, his clothing still sticky with blood, the look of exhaustion and defeat in his eyes is enough to shatter even that last bit of hope.

And with the last tear that falls from their eyes time has finally run out. In all their lifes they have never known suffering like this...and for the crime of taking away the only one they ever, truly loved the world will suffer with them.

The doctor´s protest dies in his throat with an aborted wheeze as the one in black casually breaks his neck with an absentminded snap of long, skeletally thin fingers , a pair of burning golden eyes and a single black one fixated on the room in front of them, holding their only treasure in this world. Ancient power congeals around them like blood, ripping apart everything that stands in their way as they come for their God´s body, unheeding of the chaos and destruction they leave behind in their wake.

Their last bit of humanity lies dead in that white tiled room, still dripping with blood more precious then all the jewels in the world and they don´t care if their mourning leaves behind only ashes as the ground shakes apart and the ocean turns to blood, seething with ancient powers long forgotten by anybody but them.

And they all follow their King´s last call, those long forgotten nightmares and fairytales, clawing their way out of the ground dripping molten stone and rising from the abyss, devouring everything they can reach in their never ending hunger, vultures ripping apart a still breathing body as the Devastations burn themselves out with pain. Crimson Rain Sought Flower and Black Water Sinking Ships do not care as they cradle a slim, broken body to their chests, weeping as they cling to each other. As far as they are concerned, the world has already died with the sound of screeching tires and the sickening sound of bones being crushed into concrete. Now they´re just taking care of its carcass.

When Hua Cheng rolls his dice for the last time, they are the eye of the storm, leaving behind nothing but devastation.

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

...I do not like writing dialogue much and I don’t have anything special that I can would be proud of? I like the snarky bits and when our Devastations express their love for each other by insulting the shit out of each other. If I had to pick one it would be this scene from “Of Abductions and other peculiarities” cause it amuses me and it was fun to write :-) The whole scene is funny and it does contain dialogue so it counts :-)

Xie Lian is still in Hua Cheng´s lap - no surprise there, really- looking a little worse for wear around the edges but mostly in a dusty way, not an injured one. He must have bled a little at some point, Feng Xin can see the droplets on his robe, but Crimson Rain must have patched him up the same as Mu Qing did with him. The Devastation still has the faint taste of killing intent around him, his singular eye wide and fully black, his aura prickly and spiky, like a cat with it´s fur standing on end but he doesn't seem to be injured.

And Black Water...Black Water is laying in the soft grass, sprawled out like a starfish, moaning softly.

"..what the hell even was that thing?" Hua Cheng asks him after a while, as if he had just remembered that they still didn´t know what had actually appeared in that cave, still focusing on picking out stone splinters and questionable soft pieces out of Xie Lian´s hair and carefully making sure there weren´t anymore injuries then the few cuts and bruises you could see on his hands and face, despite Feng Xin taking the brunt of the collapsing ceiling for him.

"Don´t know. Don´t care." He Xuan burps lightly "It tasted like sea bass and anise. Very -old- sea bass." He provides helpfully, smacking his lips.

Hua Cheng pinches the bridge of his nose, obviously lost for words here for a moment. Feng Xin, weirdly, gets a flash of sympathy for the Devastation. If that was how Black Water was on a daily basis, Crimson Rain was a lot more patient then Feng Xin had ever given him credit for.

"...you don´t know and yet you -ate- it? And you better not be kissing any of us with that mouth."

Oh. So that was what had happened. Feng Xin very deliberately tries to not think about what that implies about He Xuan´s true form then, the non-human Water Demon skin he is rumored to have but that nobody who could tell the tale had ever seen. Black Water just shrugs, a feat laying flat on his back as he does.

"It was trying to hurt you...and everything is edible at least once if you try hard enough."

He can hear the grin in Black Water´s voice, clearly not concerned about his unconventional dinner choice in the slightest and Feng Xin was sure that, if Hua Cheng didn´t have a lap full of bruised and battered Dianxia right now, Black Water would have least gotten a kick for that.

"Sometimes A-Xuan, just sometimes I really don´t know why I even bother."

"Because you looooove me..." He Xuan´s voice is a happy singsong, followed by a giggle and him trying, unsuccessfully, to catch a bee that had been passing by. Maybe for dessert, Feng Xin thinks, head pounding mercilessly...but apparently, as creepy and deranged and plain old crazy as Black Water Sinking Ships usually appeared to be this behavior seemed to be off even for him. He can see Xie Lian and Crimson Rain exchange a look of pure concern before Hua Cheng rises, carefully helping Xie Lian to his feet.

"A-Xuan are you alright? How are you feeling?"

Xie Lian slowly walks over to the Devastation still happily humming to himself, closely followed by Crimson Rain who squats down next to He Xuan to gently grab his wrist and feel for his spiritual energy.

"Hm...how am I feeling? Full, honestly and kinda sparkly? Tired? All of the above. Maybe I ate some of your Butterflies too A-Cheng, what do they taste like?"

Hua Cheng ignores the question, instead gently picking him up, He Xuan instantly going limp in his arms like a ragdoll, golden eyes dull and sleepy. He´s buzzing to Feng Xin´s senses, feeling like the oncoming rush of waves heralding the storm, drenched in the scent of brine and an elemental kind of wetness, eliciting fresh waves of pain from his head and making him squint in the bright sunlight, everything slightly fuzzy around the edges.

[summahsunlight]

This Way Became My Journey, CH. 12

Pairings: Janeway/Chakotay, Paris/OFC

Characters: Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay, Tom Paris, Sarah Barrett (OC), Harry Kim, B’Elanna Torres, Kes, Neelix, the Doctor

Chapters 1-10 / Chapter 11

A/N: Here is the next chapter! I hope you like it :)

Captain's Log, Stardate 48439.7

As we maintain a course back to the Alpha Quadrant, we're conducting what would be routine maintenance to the ship; routine that is if we had access to a starbase

"Engine efficiency is down another fourteen percent," Tom Paris reported later that afternoon at the senior officer's briefing, or the ones that had been hastily thrown together. They were still without a chief engineer and a chief medical officer. Tom moved slightly back to his seat, looking over his data on his PADD. Sitting down next to Sarah Barrett he remarked, "If we don't get more power to the warp drive, we're all going to have to get out and push."

"What about alternative energy sources?" Janeway asked. She looked at Harry, remembering the report he had issued to her last night, that had been sitting in her stack on her desk that morning, about his idea. She had unfortunately not been able to read through it thanks to Ava making a mess of her ready room. The broken vase had taken nearly an hour to clean up because she had to crawl along the floor to find all the tiny pieces. "Ensign," she said pushing memories of the regretful morning from her mind, "have you had any luck getting power from the holodeck reactors?"

He shook his head. "Not yet. We tried hooking them to the power grid and we ended up blowing out half the relays. The holodeck's energy matrix just isn't compatible with the other power systems."

"Captain," Chakotay said, getting her attention. "If we relocate all security personnel to deck seven we can shut down power on deck nine and reroute it to propulsion."

Tuvok looked intrigued. "That would be inconvenient, but acceptable."

"Fine," Janeway said, picking up a PADD. "Let's move onto the personnel situation."

She was about to say more when Neelix and Kes burst into the room, Neelix apologizing that they were late. Janeway and the rest of the senior officers seemed surprised to see them there. "Mister Neelix, this is a briefing for the senior officers," Janeway told them.

"Well I am the senior Talaxian on board and Kes is the senior Ocampa," He replied. "And I do know more about this region of space than any other member of the crew."

For a moment Janeway met Barrett's eyes. The young woman raised her eyebrows in response as if to say that Neelix was right.

"We have some excellent suggestions, Captain," Kes added, noticing the looks passing between Janeway and Barrett.

Janeway nodded. "Very well; you're welcome to join us, this time."

Tom got up and offered Kes his chair and went to stand with Neelix.

As Kes got settled, Janeway voiced, "To be honest, we could use some excellent suggestions right about now." She placed the PADD with the personnel needs onto the table.

"I've been thinking," Kes told her. "That you could convert one of your lower decks into a hydroponics bay; you'd be able to grow your own food. I understand that the replicators went down earlier today and that the emergency rations won't hold out much longer."

Janeway had to admit it sounded like an excellent idea, and since she was sick of peanut butter and jelly, the only thing she had left besides the emergency rations, she decided it was worth a shot.

"What about cargo bay two," Harry suggested, tacking onto what Kes was saying. "It was designed for organic storage, and it already has adjustable environmental controls."

Janeway was sold on the idea now, smiling at Kes, she said, "When can you start?"

"Me?"

"It's your idea, your project," Janeway told her.

Kes felt a smile form on her face, pleased that she had been able to offer some help to these people. "Right away," she told Janeway. Neelix went to babble on the things he could to with vegetables and how something called Feragoit goulash was known across twelve star systems. Janeway had learned to take everything that Neelix said with a little grain of salt however.

Smiling she went back to the PADD she had placed on the table earlier. "Okay, onto the personnel problem." She scrolled down the list on her PADD. "We've managed to find a replacement for the transporter room chief, but we still need an astrogation plotter, chief engineer, medical support staff…" she paused and let out a small, frustrated sigh. Being stranded out here was beginning to sink in fully with her and she realized that she had a lot of work ahead.

Chakotay was handing her a PADD, informing her that he had given her a list of Maquis that he thought would make good officers. Janeway scrolled down the list, each name registering in her mind, but no face, that is until she came across B'Elanna Torres name. Barrett had mentioned to her the other day that Torres was "volatile" and just recently she had struck Lieutenant Carey, breaking his nose. "B'Elanna Torres, wasn't she the one who was involved in that incident with Mister Carey?" she asked Chakotay.

"That's right," he said, looking accusingly at Sarah.

"Just what job do you think she's suited for?" Janeway asked.

"Chief Engineer," he replied.

Janeway studied him for a moment. "You're serious?"

"Very."

Deciding that this issue was not going to be solved at the present time she placed the PADD he handed her down onto the table. "Regarding sickbay, we still need a chief medical officer."

"What about that electronic man?" Neelix questioned.

"It is an emergency medical hologram and its abilities are limited," Tuvok answered him. "It can only operate in the confines of sickbay."

"Not to mention its lousy bedside manner," Tom quipped to which Neelix nodded his head in agreement.

"Well couldn't you work with…him, Counselor," Neelix said, looking at Sarah.

Barrett gave him a bemused look. "It's a hologram, Mister Neelix, not a person. I can't put him through therapy to improve his compassion. He is what he is." She looked at Janeway then, "Although, maybe we should look into his programming to see if we can improve on it just a bit. I heard that Ava was terrified of him the other day."

Terrified wasn't the word that Janeway would have used, recalling how she had taken the baby down to sickbay to have the Doctor check up on the double ear infection. While the infection was all but gone, his cold tone and mechanical like way of dealing with people had caused Ava to go into hysterics.

"That still doesn't help us when the power runs out," Kim was pointing out, bringing Janeway's attention about to the meeting at hand.

"What if someone trained alongside the Doctor, as a field medic?" Chakotay offered.

"Good idea," Janeway said, with maybe a bit too much enthusiasm in her voice to make him feel better for her lack of trust in B'Elanna. Stealing a glance at Tom, she said, "Lieutenant I understand that you studied biochemistry at the Academy."

Tom looked worried. "Only two semesters," he told her.

"Close enough, you just volunteered to be field medic," Janeway told him, amused by the look on his face. "Report to sickbay as soon as we're finished here."

"But Captain," Tom started to protest as the ship shook violently. Somehow the senior staff managed to get to their feet and make their way out onto the bridge towards their stations.

Janeway gripped tightly to the railing at conn, screaming, "Report!"

Seska was manning the engineering console. "We're running into some kind of spatial distortions."

"Mister Tuvok!"

"The distortions are emanating from a highly localized disturbance in the space time continuum. Distance, twenty thousand kilometers off the port bow!"

"All stop!"

As soon as the ship came to a stop, the jolting stopped. Janeway let out a small sigh of relief and moved away from tactical which she had scrambled too when she asked Tuvok for his report. "On screen," she ordered and an image appeared on the view screen. Looking at the mass of blue and purple before she glanced at her personal screen, going over the readings it was giving. She had never personally seen this type of anomaly before, but she was pretty sure she knew what was out there. "If I'm not mistaken, we're looking at a type four quantum singularity."

"Captain," Tuvok said, "I'm receiving an audio transmission from inside the singularity."

"On speakers," Janeway ordered and the cabin was filled with a garbled message.

"I think I found the source of the transmission," Kim announced from ops. The image on the view screen magnified and the distorted image of a ship could be made out.

Janeway turned slightly in her chair and looked over her shoulder at Neelix and Kes who were standing at the rail behind her. "Does it look like any ship you're familiar with?"

Neelix squinted his eyes trying to make it out. "No, nothing I recognize. But then again, it's so hard to make out."

The Captain stood and moved towards conn. "They maybe trapped in the event horizon. Open a channel," she ordered Tuvok. When he signaled to her that it was open she began to speak again. "This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager to the vessel near the quantum singularity. Do you need help?" While she waited for a response she heard Neelix telling Kes that a singularity was a star that had collapsed in on itself, and that the event horizon was a very powerful engery field surrounding it. She wasn't surprised that he next went into some story that he had encountered one before. She didn't hear the rest of the story though, because Tuvok was speaking to her.

"No response to our hail Captain."

"Can we tractor the vessel out?"

"No, the subspace interference is too heavy," Harry replied as Neelix made his way down the steps into the command station.

"Captain," the Talaxian said. "We're less than three light years from Ilidaria. They have sophisticated technology, they might be able to help, and they're quite friendly… most of the time."

Janeway shook her head at his suggestion. "No. It looks like its being pulled into the singularity. We have to get it out of the event horizon." She was startled to hear Chakotay contact Torres down in engineering, peering around Neelix at her new first officer she wondered if he realized just what he was doing.

"I was thinking we could remodulate a tractor beam to match the subspace interference, it might be enough to cut through the event horizon," Torres' voice interrupted her thoughts.

"A subspace tractor beam?"

"Exactly."

"When can you have it ready?" Chakotay asked her, growing more aware that Janeway was not happy with him.

"Two maybe three hours."

"Get right on it, use whatever people you need," Chakotay told her.

Janeway pressed her lips together briefly before speaking, "Mister Carey what do you think?" The tension that passed between the two was not lost on the people nearest them, being Neelix who was sandwiched in between, and Sarah who was standing to the right of Janeway.

"With the right field modulation it might work. But we'll need more power to the emitter array," Carey's voice said over the comline.

"Very well," Janeway replied, glancing up at the ceiling momentarily. "You're in charge Mister Carey, report to me when the tractor beam is ready."

"Aye, Captain."

Janeway told Tom to hold their position and with one look at Neelix, which told the Talaxian to step aside, she moved towards Chakotay and dropped her voice into a tone that she often found herself using when she was frustrated with Michael. "I'd like to see you in private."

As she stepped off of the bridge into her ready room, Chakotay following behind her it became apparent to everyone that the tensions between Starfleet and Maquis were not solely restricted to Engineering.

"Michael take your sister and go sit out on the bridge for a moment," Kathryn ordered the children in perhaps too hostile of a voice, but she was not in the best of moods. She went to stand on the upper level of her ready room and waited for the children to leave.

"Mama, why did the ship move like that?" Michael asked her instead of moving. "It ruined the block house I was building."

Kathryn crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. She was not in the mood to argue with him, not when she had a bone to pick with her first officer. Michael knew that look all too well and the little boy eagerly took Ava by the hand, and proceeded down the steps of the upper level of the ready room, past Chakotay who was standing by the desk, and out onto the bridge.

When the door hissed shut behind the children, Kathryn glared at her new first officer. "We have a problem and I think it's time that we discuss this."

"Captain I appreciate your concerns about Torres, but I promise you-," Chakotay started to say, but she interrupted him.

"You don't understand Commander," Kathryn said, "This isn't about Torres, my problem is with you."

"Me?"

"Let me be blunt," Kathryn said, losing her patience. "What you tried to do just now was out of line."

"In what way?" he asked.

"When you decided to call Torres in Engineering," Kathryn snapped.

"I've worked with her. I know what she's capable of," Chakotay responded, feeling himself losing his own cool. "We needed an answer right away and I knew she could give us one."

"Carey is the senior officer in Engineering," Kathryn retorted.

"If you look at it that way, none of my people will ever have seniority," Chakotay argued.

Kathryn moved off the upper level of her ready room towards him. "That's the problem right there. They're not your people. You're treating the Maquis on this ship as if they're still your crew."

"I'm doing everything that I can to integrate them into your crew, but frankly, you're not making it easy for me, Captain."

"I can't make it easy Commander. Surely you can understand that. They don't have the discipline, they don't have the training."

"But some of them have the ability, like B'Elanna Torres!" he responded.

Kathryn moved away from him, towards her desk, but didn't sit down. "The Starfleet officers on this ship have worked all their lives to earn their commissions. How am I supposed to ask them to accept a Maquis as a superior officer just because circumstances have forced us together?"

"You're asking them to accept me," he told her.

"You're qualified. You're a graduate of the Academy and you have command experience," she argued.

"Permission to speak freely."

"Go ahead."

His eyes became dark. "I have no intention of being your token Maquis officer."

She was taken aback by the darkness of his eyes and his words. "Show me another Maquis candidate and I'll consider him."

"B'Elanna Torres."

"Who cannot control herself and could not make it through the Academy."

"She's the best engineer I've ever known!" he yelled, turning about to leave. "She could teach at the Academy!" He stopped before he got to the door and turned about to look at Kathryn. "You're right Captain, I do consider these my people because nobody on this ship will look out for them like I will. And I'm telling you, you're going to have to give them more authority if you want their loyalty."

"Theirs…or yours, Commander?"

"I'm trying to help you," he answered her. "I'm sorry that you don't see that. I strongly recommend that you get to know Torres before you chose a new Chief Engineer. Permission to leave."

"Dismissed," she whispered, watching as he stormed out of her ready room and back onto the bridge. Raising her eyes to the ceiling she studied it intensely for a few moments, what she wouldn't give to be able to go back in time and stop this all from happening. Trying to explain to High Command why they had suddenly disappeared for several days with no communication with Starfleet was looking a lot more pleasant then what she was facing right now; a seventy five year journey with two crews that just could not get a long.

Stop with the self-pity, Kathryn, she chided herself. Circumstances were what they were, and she was going to have to make the best of it. With a defeated sigh, she sat herself down behind her desk and called up B'Elanna Torres personnel file, perhaps she should take Chakotay's advice after all and get to know the woman better.

"Computer, activate the emergency medical holographic program," Kes commanded as she stepped into sickbay.

The hologram appeared before her, stating, "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"Actually, there is no emergency," Kes replied. "I'm creating a hydroponics bay; I was told you could provide me with some nitrogenated soil samples."

The Doctor didn't look too pleased. "That's it?" Her apologetic look told him the answer that he sought. "And so it begins. The trivial of medicine is my domain now; every runny nose, stubbed toe, pimple on a cheek becomes my responsibility."

"You are the only doctor we have," Kes pointed out to him while he prepared her samples.

"I'm not just a doctor!" He exclaimed, turning to look at her. "I've been designed with information from two thousand medical reference sources and the experience of forty seven individual medical officers! I am the embodiment of modern medicine." After the egotistical rant the hologram turned back to the shelf. "How much dirt do you need?"

"Four samples will be enough," Kes answered.

The Doctor sighed, frustrated and collected the samples for her. "Now I know how Hippocrates felt when the King needed him to trim a hangnail." He placed the three samples he had managed to carry from the shelf into a portable storage unit.

"You're very sensitive aren't you?"

"As a medical practitioner I require a certain sensitivity to properly address a patient."

"I'm talking about you as a person," Kes replied, gently.

The Doctor turned around, standing by the shelf once more, looking at Kes. "I am merely a hologram."

Kes was looking at him, studying his appearance intently. "Doctor, has your program altered your appearance since I came to sickbay?"

"No. Why?"

She moved towards him and joined him at the self. "When I first came in your head was at the same height as this cabinet. But now you look at least ten centimeters shorter."

He looked at her, concerned, and then went to sit at the desk, typing in a few keys on his console. "I've just run a diagnostic on my image processor. It shows that I've been reduced in height by ten point four centimeters." He tapped his combadge. "Sickbay to operations."

"This is Kim."

"The holographic projector in here is malfunctioning," the Doctor told him. "Can you send a repair crew down right away."

"We're a little busy right now, we'll get to it as soon as we can."

"It's just that-,"

"Kim out."

Dejected at being cut off, the hologram looked down at the desk before glancing up at Kes. "Well, it seems like a very busy day in operations."

"I'm sorry I bothered you," Kes said, turning to go, gathering up her samples.

"No trouble at all, just turn off the program before you leave."

Before she left though, she looked back at him one last time. "What's your name?"

"What purpose would a name serve a hologram?"

"I just wanted to know what to call you besides Doctor," she replied.

"I guess they never thought I'd be around long enough to need one," the Doctor said. "What's your name?"

"Kes."

The hologram smiled. "Well, Kes, I'm glad that I could help you today."

With a warm smile, she said, "Computer end program." As the hologram disappeared, she took the samples and proceeded to cargo bay two where she was going to begin her project of creating a hydroponics bay to help a crew that had helped her so much in the past several days.

With a troubled expression, Sarah Barrett stepped out of the turbolift onto the bridge just as Joe Carey's voice came over the comlink that they were ready to proceed with the tractor beam. Janeway was making her way across the back of the bridge towards tactical and where Sarah was standing. She had a hard, determined look on her face, and Sarah could see that she was tense. The information that the young woman was going to give her was not going to make present matters any better, either.

"Captain, can I speak to you for a moment?" the young counselor asked her, stepping into her path. Janeway shook her head and went to move around Sarah, but the counselor stepped in her way again. "Ma'am, it's very important."

Gently Janeway placed her arms onto Sarah's shoulders and moved her out of the way. "I'm sorry, Counselor, it's going to have to wait. We're about to attempt using the subspace tractor beam to free that trapped ship. I promise once this is all over I'll speak to you." Moving past Sarah, she pointed at Tuvok, "Mister Tuvok, lock onto that ship."

"Engaging tractor beam." A blue energy beam shot forth form the front of Voyager and locked onto the ship in the middle of the singularity. "It's working," Tuvok reported. "The beam is penetrating the event horizon."

Kathryn felt very little relief at this news, but when she heard Harry Kim contact engineering to check their power levels because he was reading massive fluctuations, she lost what little feeling of relief that she had possessed. Suddenly the ship lurched and she was thrown against the railing lining the back of the bridge. Immediately her leg began to throb in the area that had smacked against the rail, sending a wave of pain coursing through her veins.

"We're being pulled towards the singularity!" Tom Paris reported, anxiously, as he was thrown across his console.

"What's going on?" Chakotay asked Kim.

"Power to the tractor beam is down eighty percent. The gravimetric force of the singularity is pulling us in!"

Kathryn wasn't sure how she did it, with the ship shaking violently, and her leg throbbing in intense pain, but she managed to stumble to conn, clutching at the railing. "Impulse engines full reverse! Disengage the tractor beam!"

"I can't shut it down!" B'Elanna Torres said over the comlink. "The relays are locked!"

"I'm picking up hull stress all over the ship. If we keep the engines at full reverse it will pull the ship apart," Harry said.

"Cut the engines."

"We're moving forward again!"

"Engineering, get that tractor beam off line!"

Joe Carey's voice could be heard next over the comline. "Captain I can shut it down, but I'll have to get in there and physically cut the main power feed."

Kathryn didn't care how he did, not at this point. "Do it," she ordered him. The ship continued to shake for several seconds while they all held their breaths. Finally, after what felt like hours to Kathryn, the motion stopped and Tuvok was reporting that the tractor beam had been disengaged. Closing her eyes she let out a small breath of relief. "Move us to a safe distance, Mister Paris."

"Are we abandoning the rescue attempt?" Chakotay asked her as she joined him in the command station.

"No, but we're going to need help," Kathryn replied, and then ordered Tom to lay in a course for the Illdaria system. Glancing at Chakotay, she said, "Have Mister Neelix report to the bridge, it appears we're going to follow his suggestion after all." The first officer nodded his head and left the bridge. It was then that Kathryn noticed Sarah standing there and recalled that the young woman had something urgent to speak to her about before they had made the rescue attempt. "I suppose now is as good as any a time, Sarah, to talk. What can I do for you?"

"Engineering brought something to my attention, and they weren't exactly sure how to approach you," Sarah replied. "They found an object lodged inside a conduit on deck eleven."

Kathryn gave her a puzzled look even as a toy action figure was produced in Sarah's hand. Instantly the Captain recognized the toy as her son's. Visibly she kept her cool, but inside her head was swarming with emotions. It suddenly dawned on her that the children had never come back into the ready room after she had forced them to leave so she could speak to Chakotay alone. Kathryn had not even noticed that they were missing she had been so preoccupied. She cursed herself for being so careless. Snatching the toy out of her counselor's hand she wrung her fingers around it. "You didn't happen to find the culprit did you?"

Sarah shook her head. "No ma'am. I searched the deck myself, but found nothing."

"Computer, locate Michael and Ava Janeway."

"Michael and Ava Janeway are in the mess hall."

Wonderful, Kathryn thought. Who knows what they've gotten into there. We've only got two replicators left; I wouldn't be surprised if they've blown them out. "Mister Tuvok, you have the bridge," she ordered, storming up the steps and into the turbo lift. The day was seemingly getting worse and worse, if that was entirely possibly. She wasn't sure how much longer her mental being was going to hold up with if there were anymore broken computers, shattered vases, combadges tossed about, and toys lodged into power conduits. She was already in a fragile state as it was.

The doors to the lift opened and she proceeded to the mess hall. Briefly she wondered how many kilometers she had logged roaming the ship looking for the children the past few days. I need to put a homing beacon on them, she thought with mild amusement as the doors to the mess hall swished open.

Kathryn had expected to find Michael tinkering around in some conduit. However, the two children were seated at a table with another crewman; Ava snuggled up into the woman's lap, and from where Kathryn was standing, appeared to be sound asleep. The Captain reasoned that it was probably the baby's nap time and she felt miserable about forgetting them for a good two to three hours. Michael was savoring a hot fudge sundae and Kathryn prayed he had used one of her replicator rations to get the ice cream instead of the crewman who had suddenly been deemed baby-sitter.

"Captain!" the young crewman suddenly saw the older woman standing there and jumped to her feet. Ava stirred slightly, but didn't wake up. "I didn't notice you come in!" The crewman was a bajoran female, who had dark hair and eyes, and by Kathryn's estimate couldn't have been out of the Academy that long.

"It's alright, Crewman," Kathryn responded, with a tired tone to her voice. "I was actually looking for these two trouble makers. Sorry to inconvenience you, I should be keeping a better eye on them."

"It wasn't an inconvenience, ma'am," the young woman replied. "I found them roaming around on deck eleven and thought that they'd like to get some ice cream. They looked a little bored, ma'am."

Kathryn felt a smile lace her face. "I guess being cooped up in my ready room everyday isn't exactly the most interesting place for a five year old and a one year old. But you still shouldn't have felt obligated to take care of them. After all, it's not one of your duties to watch the Captain's children."

"Believe me Captain, I'm better suited for this than all those Starfleet algorithms," the young woman said, absentmindedly, and then her eyes gaped when she realized what had just left her mouth. "I mean…I've always enjoyed being around children, ma'am."

"It seems that children like being around you too, crewman, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know your name," Kathryn said, wishing that she had taken the time to go over more of the personnel files that had were scattered throughout her quarters so she could get to know her crew better.

"Tal Celes," the girl replied.

Kathryn held her arms out. "Well, thank you again Crewman Celes," she replied, standing there with her arms open. The young woman looked confused and Kathryn didn't know why but she just warmed her heart. "I think I can take it from here."

Realizing that the woman wanted her baby back, Celes snapped to attention and placed the sleeping Ava into her arms. Gesturing for Michael to come with her, Kathryn thanked the young woman again, and as she left, perhaps had found a solution to her childcare woes. But the first thing she had to do was to speak to Michael about wandering off and playing in a power conduit.

Kathryn waited until they were inside the lift the doors had firmly shut, and they were on their way back to deck one before speaking to her son. "There's something we need to talk about. You have to understand, Michael, that this ship, it isn't like our house back in San Francisco, and you can't just roam around it as you please."

"I wasn't roaming around, I knew exactly where I wanted to go," Michael replied with a huff.

"Michael, you could get hurt," Kathryn chided. "Someone in Engineering found one of your toys in a power conduit on deck eleven. Honey, you could have blown the conduit, getting yourself and Ava seriously hurt."

"I just wanted to see how it worked, Ava was the one who got the toy stuck in there," Michael told her. "You don't need to worry."

But that's all she found herself doing, especially now that circumstances had made her life as a mother much more difficult. They faced the prospect of all kind of dangers, threats that could harm herself or her children. What else was she to do but worry about them?

[nozomijoestar]

Pt. 1 of my LL! x TMA crossover is finally here. Crossposted on my FF.net!

TWs: Gore, warfare, being buried alive, body horror

---------

With the world plunged into the apocalypse of never-ending fear thanks to The Eye and The Archivist, two stories intertwine. Statements of Nozomi Tojo later the entity called The One Alone- pre and post mortem of humanity. Recorded direct from subject.

------

“The Lonely is the most insidious of the powers. It doesn’t need to tell you lies. It waits for the lies you tell yourself.”

There is a wind that rides amidst the expanse bare of clouds that dares to call itself a sky still. It rolls ever onwards like a wave beneath the ever shifting Eyes; the Eyes with presence to match the same that crowns a panopticon. The tower it calls home stands higher than anything conceivable by Man. Though she has tried escape she knows there is nowhere on this barren land it cannot be seen. The gaze of the Beholder sees those who suffer in sacrifice below; it too sees the servants, the avatars, of its fellow Entities revel in a Hell once thought promised to one devotee or another now open for all. She is reminded of the amusement parks she yearned to step foot in as a child until it made her sick.

She is reminded it sees always through her disembodied form. It knows where none other should know; ever thirsty for the forbidden and beyond boundaries The Eye (The Beholder, The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You, names are irrelevant in its pursuits. They are attempts to describe an aspect of what people called impossible.) sips her essence with precision a mosquito could envy. The fog that is and is not her whenever she molds it to a human shape whips about in fury. It is tainting her loneliness. It wants to dip its finger in her blissful isolation just as it has every other monstrosity made manifest.

Her Entity is a kind being, an understanding one that divides the Who from They into an intimacy; one so singular and gentle to allow those within it to banish all others. She can still remember the first time grasping it brought her to tears. Both it and she cannot escape what it is to be known. Not now in the presence of that damned thing which exists to play voyeur. She looks down.

The trench that scars the earth and stretches beyond the horizon marks the domain The Slaughter calls a feeding ground. Even as high as she is the stench of cordite, gunpowder, gore, and all that tears apart wafts into her. Within the trench figures once store clerks, families, businessmen, teachers, students, children, fire enough bullets and shells to massacre what was once Tokyo. Each cracks sharper than thunder while the rat-a-tat-tat from infinite machine guns never stops. In between the gun nests slump people lost within war that is not satisfied with surface destruction and swallows the mind. They are worse than those casualties who scream, in their silence.

On the fetid breeze bagpipes in a mockery of ‘Scotland the Brave’ wail enough to vibrate No Man’s Land. She can spy the tanks advancing ever forwards peppered by shrapnel; flayed bodies can vaguely be made out strapped to their armor. The edges of her fog wiggle in place of a shudder. Neither now nor in her meaningless days as feed, as human, had butchery in any form brought anything from her but nausea. From that barren hell a bulky creature towered over its victims; it made way for her as their eyes locked.

She knows this monster well no matter how tiny the ribs spiked out its chest appear at this distance. It stamped its clawed bloody foot and snarled. Its teeth glistened red in a multitude of fangs arranged row after row like a shark mouth. The pointed shoulder blades protruding out its back drip viscera; she knows it has fed. Feeding is all it can do now; she knows it laments the conveniences a human form had after all. That like her it loathes having the terror it creates tainted under The Eye’s ruling gaze. Its face comprised of exposed wounds for flesh and two smaller faces twisted in pain on its neck, glares at her unflinching. Its black and orange pupiled eyes are beady as if carved from revulsion, from hate. Around them no soldiers aim and the tools of war bend paths to avoid harm. The monster shouts in a growl that booms over the din of murder.

“Forsaken! Have you come to strut and brag again you little shit? Making fun of me showing up like that are you?-“

The Slaughter avatar’s insults fell on empty air; she glided onward without a destination. Suddenly several stones passed through her leaving holes that reformed instantly. Not a glance did she spare back; U’ral-whatever-her-name-was could shout her distain till her throat bled. The One Alone would not stoop as weak as her to hold reservations about their paradise.

On this ride no one would get off.

She stopped above a circle of candy colored lights that formed the outline of a carousel. A few meters around its dim shine run shadowed shapes. Shape is the best word she has to describe those frantic wretches who pile atop each other; their fingers peel faces reused again and again among their number. They long to no more ask themselves Who Am I? but know beneath the ache they will never be whole.

They could have counted her among them, once. Almost.

Though reason reminded her it’d been months those days, the idea there’d been a time before, was impossible. Had she always been what she’d embraced or had her human shell been her true home? Some days before the opening of the Door she was ashamed to still ponder it.  Not in this world however; here she at last knew her peace. The edges of her form swirled outward. She continued to watch. The Stranger’s victims continued their frenzy as another face was for the taking. Cries of triumph clashed with envious screams not unlike the battle-shouts of one brought under Slaughter.

If she squinted she made out the current victor. The teenage girl bolts across the fairgrounds in a random direction; her red-orange hair waved in its ragged bob cut like a dancing flame. Where once she had pale skin and…had they been yellow eyes? The One Alone saw her now a shambling thing that slapped its prize atop a carmine skull. Something in her puzzled to think she remembered the girl’s face, and yet nothing of her name. Nothing of what their connection had been in another life.

Not a fiber of her cared to linger longer; yet as she made to leave one final sight stopped her. This time the name and everything with it returned. Kotori busied herself on a cross-stitch of skin and sinew when she saw The One Alone above. Did she too remember? Did she know who they both once were? Even if she did The One Alone couldn’t bring herself to care. It would be unnecessary and in a way always had been. She had never existed. Kotori’s eyes gave her a look filled with the briefest solidarity, before the indifference reclaimed her. The blessings of The Stranger have created fissures along her skin; it ceased to be skin so much as it resembled a potato weak enough to tug, in its fragility.

Not for the last time she feels the deep, deep truth twist her at the chance that in another world, she joined in the stitching. Disgust shook her fog at the idea of companionship looming before her. A semblance of sympathy even if in the imagination; avatars do not trust. Not each other. The smartest ones, her, saw trust for the waiting betrayal it was. For the lie it had been since the moment she was born.

She flies beyond the circus of the damned toward a thundering in the distance.  At the passing over a spot of darkness that stretches miles, she swallows the urge to stare. It is a black void so absolute it cannot cast shadows; nor can any bottom to its depth be found as though you’ve entered the essence of nothingness. Eli was there. She felt the knowledge wash over her like rain. Eli was there, transformed into something that drowned her victims into obscurity.  This was a comforting thought; their domains weren’t too unalike.

It’s enough to almost make her wish Eli had joined The Lonely. She smothers it before it can bloom further. The Dark chooses its chosen and there is nothing she can do. She is alone, as she was meant to be. Ahead the thundering slams into her ears snapping her from ruminating. Niko appeared no bigger than a dot from this high. The shovel she pointed above her head reflected the Eyes that’d replaced the sun on its blade. Above her a pink man with shriveled skin stuffed into his suit smiled. It was knowing and unbothered; he stared down as calm as if he were choosing a sandwich. Simon Fairchild.

Of course The Vast would entertain a challenge from The Buried. The space around him appeared more than air; his very presence distorts that not bound to earth. His true distance away is impossible to gauge, he is both forever distant yet under only sky, a neighbor. She watches his wisplike white hair flap in the breeze. His calm slides into amusement. Niko’s curses and yells have grown louder now. She stops at what serves best for not too close; she observes.  

None of it is productive. Niko, poor desperate, witless Niko still clung to a blanket stitched from emotions. If she was an annoyance in the old world, now she was insufferable. She remained a prisoner as she’d always been. She’d been a prisoner of her desires, slave to her circumstance, yet another decimal point on a statistic. Yes The One Alone remembers those days before they’d embraced their natures; however faint the memories Niko had been a worm inching for the sky, for escape. Anything was better than bills and so many mouths to feed with so few helping hands. She notices the pockmark of holes littering the ground around Niko’s feet.

There are at least a hundred here. A hundred other worms that’d cherished denial at the crushing that finally bound them physically. They would never know the suffocation of an illusion of control as Niko does. They will smell rancid air and gargle on sod in those depths; they will wonder why them. There will be no answer; no release for their attempts at freedom. It is not the freeing isolation she has accepted. You weren’t even allowed to enjoy it; you couldn’t if you didn’t embrace it. She hears the curses grow louder followed by an earth splitting crack.  

Indeed the ground dents under Niko’s tap against it. A chorus of screams ring as one at another tear in the soil. The worms that’d never lived neither as humans nor now were rattled within their prisons. Simon answered the challenge and so their game at which Fear dominated the other began another wasteful chapter. Though it wasn’t her domain she felt a faint pulse spinning in the bottomless emptiness of the Falling Titan. If Simon knew she saw into his world he didn’t show it.

Honoka was there among his captives, falling, and falling. Falling with a soundless scream against the whipping winds; she was begging like the rest for a splat, for some grounded, definite end. Silly fool, nothing in this world had an end anymore. Once Honoka had been marked by The Vast; had she accepted it Simon might’ve welcomed another for his kind. The One Alone laughed in a sound near breathless and let her fog curl. Avatars serving the same master; they’d have torn each other apart.

One remained the superior number; alone the greatest of words.

Niko’s voice calls after her as she fades from view.

“…Nozomi! Always watching like a creep huh?”

The name reaches her faster than an arrow and pierces the impenetrable within her. It nests in what remains to be called her soul. It was a poison, a gate however small to expose the person long dead within her. To call out to what had been defined by failure, naivety, and longing.

The One Alone shudders as fog might. She makes her own way until silence embraces her tight.

[bigskydreaming]

Dropping off another commission which means okay NOW I only have one to finish. This one is a throwback to that time I was talking Marvel/DC crossover ships, and I said okay but what about Dick/Wanda because yeah, like two of the only Rom heroes in anywhere being a thing would be pretty cool, but also like.

Batfam + Magnetfam holiday dinner gatherings.

Someone agreed, and asked for more along those lines and asked that I not worry about the crack potential but feel free to embrace it instead, citing that Batboys adopted by Zatanna AU I wrote as a tone they’d enjoyed. Their only other requests were they wanted to see if I could include Luna and Crystal in any ways, and that I give Stephanie some time in the spotlight. I warned them that my usual take on Stephanie is ADHD as hell, but that apparently was not a problem, so uh...hang on when it gets to Steph or be prepared for her to leave you in the dust. She doesn’t slow down for stragglers.

There were a ton of characters to juggle in this so not everyone gets the same degree of focus, but I did my best to work everyone relevant to the scenario in as best I could. Also, I don’t actually know where a couple of these particular takes came from - I’ve never ever written Lorna anything remotely like this in my life, but I kinda just let the crack do what it wanted to do. *Shrugs* I have no defense, only oops.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you 15K, yes you heard that right, 15K of crossover crack that puts the Batfamily and the Magnetfamily at the same dinner table, lights the match and then runs for cover.

************************

We enter unobtrusively through the dining room’s lone doorway. Our awkward approach is that of the mockumentary style; our hushed atmosphere is that of taking ourselves very seriously, because if we don’t, who will? 

Said dining room’s doorway is perfectly situated so as to allow only one point of entrance and exit. Also: maximum drama while doing so. The architecture of Wayne Manor was designed with a clear set of priorities in mind. We invite you to picture the airs of Downtown Abbey, but  as if skewing less towards the egalitarian passive aggressive stylings associated with British High Drama, and more towards the rather more direct passive aggressive stylings of American High Drama. 

As an example...where a British soap opera might depict someone dramatically gasping “Why, I never!” and clutching symbolically at their heart in order to convey they’re mere insults away from having a myocardial infarction, an American soap opera might instead depict someone dramatically yelling “Bleep you!” and then vaulting across the table to punch someone in the face in order to convey they’re really quite angry and the only way to fully express that is by starting a feud that will last 72 episodes and only end when one of them is murdered and replaced by their evil twin.

That sort of thing. 

We return to unobtrusively entering through the doorway whose very singular purpose in the narrative is as a conveyance that this is the House That Drama Built. 

It should be added as an afterthought that only just occurred to us but is no less important because of its poor punctuality: the House That Drama Built also exists as a kind of metaphysical Drama vampire that cultivates an atmosphere of Drama whilst simultaneously feasting on the Drama it creates just to harvest as its crop of choice.

Quite nasty and shiver-inducing, to be sure, but let it serve as a good rule of thumb: Don’t trust centuries old rich people houses. There’s always something messed up about those places. Seriously. You know its true.

Proceeding onward, and despite having explicitly mapped out why its impossible to do so, we nevertheless manage to sidle into prime vantage points without being noticed. Look, we can do stuff like that because we’re magic, okay? Also fictional, and really just a tonal framing device introduced as a thin coat of varnish overlaying everything with the glistening sheen of crack fiction. Now shush and pretend we’re not here, which should be easy because we’re not.

The two family patriarchs, Erik Lehnsherr and Bruce Wayne, each sit at opposing heads of the excessively long dining room table that is almost certainly an indication one of Bruce’s direct ancestors felt a clear and urgent need to overcompensate for something.

Locked in an epic battle of wills that looks remarkably similar to the staring contest perfected by kindergartners everywhere, though that’s undoubtedly just a coincidence,the two titans of temperament face off in a face-off for the ages. 

Both steel-faced and with backs so straight the sight would make any right angle weak in the knees, these bastions of brooding are equally infamous for their rigidity and refusal to bend, even when they probably should - because sometimes its a battle over the fate of the world and a fight for the very heart and soul of humanity, yes, absolutely true, but other times their children just asked if they could have pizza tonight instead of meatloaf and it really didn’t need to escalate that quickly, but oh well.

Heedless of the judgment of fictional narrators as well as every person to ever suggest to them that their sphincters might actually benefit from the occasional attempt to unclench, the Master of Magnetism is an irresistible force while channeling the unleashed totality of his willpower through his steady gaze, as fixed and unwavering as the North Star itself. At the same time, his counterpart is an equally immovable object while planted firm and steady in his convictions, the imposing edifice of his impassive expression not likely to be eroded by the mere disdain of another mortal. Not when the Man of Bats has stubbornly stared down gods. 

Admittedly, the last one used the opportunity to blast him through time and space instead, but that’s the kind of risk one takes when matching an ageless deity ego for ego. It should not be viewed as an indication as to whom among these two mighty mortals might appear the victor when engaged in similar combat. Especially as neither is in possession of magic eye beams which technically should count as cheating, if you really think about it.

They match each other fractional eye squint for fractional eye squint. Both lost in the intensity of each other’s gaze in a way that regardless of tropes is less enemies to lovers and more enemies to psych, we’re still enemies and if our kids do tie the knot, I’m totally going to insist on hosting the wedding at my big-ass mansion and you can call that a power move if you want because it totally is, what about it?

In response to the challenge that’s conveyed with crystal clarity thanks to the power of crack, Erik’s own gaze narrows fractionally further as he reaches down with his mutant abilities until they chance upon a vein of iron miles deep. He then proceeds to push and pull on it in such a way as to make the earth shift beneath their feet.

He is not subtle about being the cause. That sort of thing isn’t really in his wheelhouse.

However, in the name of defending Erik from his children’s exasperated glares, it should be pointed out here that Bruce did in fact ask, what about it, and Erik did in his own fashion simply indicate what about it indeed.

Well. Sorta.

The initial clash of wills meeting wills subsides and assures both men that their opponent will be no easy pushover. With that, the concrete aspiring contenders retreat once more to their far sides. They proceed to keep eyes locked and faces solemn and still, neither taking their gaze off the other even while eating or responding to some conversation piece directed at them by another denizen of the dining room.

“This is quite the meal, Mr. Pennyworth. You are to be commended,” Erik says sincerely. His face is still as smooth as Lake Placid, with nary a Syfy Original killer crocodile lurking dangerously beneath the surface.

“Yes, truly some of your best work, Alfred, thank you,” Bruce adds completely deadpan, not to be outdone.

Eternally placing his professionalism above all else, Alfred waits until he’s out of the room and halfway to the kitchen before venting an exasperated exhalation of his own.

Of course, Wayne Manor does have excellent acoustics.

Elsewhere along the table’s lengths, Pietro and Damian also keep their stares deadlocked from across each other, never deviating throughout the entirety of their meal. Their detente, however, is more accurately termed an ‘arrogance-off,’ with each refusing to give way before a lesser opponent. If Pietro is remotely bothered that he’s deeply invested in establishing his superiority over a twelve year old, it doesn’t show.

Look, if he starts making allowances for age, where would it end? With him letting toddlers walk all over him simply because they managed not to blink first? Don’t be absurd.

On the other side of Pietro, Jason is gleefully lobbing conversational grenades down the length of the table. Seizing advantage of even the slightest lull, he packs every sparse moment of silence full of yet another philosophical hot take he’s strategically brainstormed to cause maximum conscience carnage. 

Each carelessly uttered but carefully aimed moral dilemma-turned-mortar fire is tactically engineered towards setting each and every highly opinionated diner to warring over the higher ground. There are always holdouts of course, those who instead hunker deeper down in their trenches in an attempt to wait out the bombardment without engaging. Persistence has never been something Jay lacks, however, so even the few duds that fail to properly detonate only end up followed by a rapid-fire encore the first chance he has to reload.

Meanwhile, Lorna downs a glass of wine like its a shot of tequila and she’s a veteran of the collegiate drinking experience. Then again, she actually is, even if most tend to forget that. It doesn’t quite lend the same weight to her resume as actual freaking superhero, you’re welcome for the planet’s continued state of existence does, so she doesn’t tend to lead with it. 

But that doesn’t mean that even this dubiously termed ‘skill’ lacks a time to shine. One does what one has to in order to make it through family gatherings when the family in question is hers, the mistress of magnetism maintains. Be sure to note both lower case m’s in the script of her full title, because sharing a powerset with her father doesn’t mean she actually has to indulge in silly shows of power with the sole purpose of establishing one’s right to self-brand with fully capitalized letters. 

She finds such things exhaustively tedious, as dull as they are droll, and as much as she loves her father, she could really stand to see him embarrass himself less in public, with his ridiculous insistence on those farces.

In his defense, the enemies that flee in terror upon such displays, wetting themselves all the while...well, clearly they’re suitably impressed. But that doesn’t mean Lorna can’t still be embarrassed for him. Honestly, would it really kill him to act his actual age of....

Oh hell. She’s not nearly drunk enough yet to try and make sense of her father’s age. 

Full disclosure, and also full awareness that her brother will never fail to bring up her own recorded instances of ridiculous grandstanding whenever its remotely relevant, and most other opportunities as well - yes, those happened, yes, she agrees they were ridiculous and necessary, but she also requests it be on the record that in all such instances she was either very young, very possessed, or very both.

Probably.

Look, the possessed thing happens often enough its not like even she can keep track of it. If she wants to squeeze a few perks out of that particular trend towards things that are obnoxious and unnecessary for five hundred, Alex, she’s damn well entitled.

And why, in the name of all the gods she hasn’t been teammates with and seen drunkenly stumbling around in their underwear at some point, is she picturing her ex Alex’s face when whimsically thinking of the Jeopardy host? Better question, why is she still not drunk enough to not give a shit if she does?

Ugh, if this leads to her having to admit Betsy was right and she’s begun indulging in her family’s tendency towards being excessive about anything and everything that keeps their minds off boringly pedestrian events like a break-up, well. That would really suck. 

Mostly because Betsy is unbearable when she’s right about anything.

Driven to extreme measures by the fact that her thoughts are being rude and contentious and mean to her, Lorna trades introspection for the potential hazards of engaging directly with her dinner companions. Risky as that may be. They could be more unbearable than Betsy, for all she knows. And bad things tend to happen when she gives strangers the benefit of the doubt. She usually ends up disappointed, or bored.

Also, possessed.

Girding herself with jaded detachment, Lorna resigns herself to the mortifying ordeal of having to know other people - people who when taking into account her sister’s track record with such matters, could easily turn out to be serial killers or even worse, annoying robots. 

Shuddering at the memory of the Pencil Sharpener That Walks Like A Man, she surveys the chaos she’d mistaken for white noise when still busy being her own entertainment. Its slightly livelier than she’d assumed it would be.

Lorna’s never lacked her father’s eye for tactical analysis and strategic scheming, to be clear. Its more that she’s absent his desire to see her molded into any kind of mini-me that could potentially carry on where he leaves off when he dies, as if no interruption has taken place.

But never mind her issues with her father, that she steadfastly refuses to refer to as Daddy issues. Coolly assessing the commotion around her, she decides the only role worth adopting here is that of the official fanner of flames. The only side worth taking is of course the only side ever worth taking: hers, obviously.

She wades in without any warning beyond a green-lipped smile that toes the line between bearing just enough menace to act as a threat, but never so much as to warn people to take sufficient precautions when facing her.

It’s been said that the difference between her and her father is that Magneto causes natural disasters.

Lorna is one.

Wasting no time before establishing herself as an enemy to all and a friend to none, as if she needs any, she sets up shop as a random sequencer with no allegiance or agenda other than making everyone regret insisting on her attendance. 

She deftly diverts Jason’s verbal volleys off their intended course with dry, sardonic wit and she wields sly insinuations like a racket with which she redirects grenades of great ethical weight at whomever strikes her fancy. She is whimsy: watch her do whatever the hell she wants. Object, and catch hellfire.

Rather than take offense at her interference, Jason tips his head to her in appreciation of her craft. Like calls to like, after all. Lorna decides in a burst of decisiveness that she likes this one, at least. 

She tilts her glass to him with a smirk and refills, topping off Kate Kane’s glass as well when the older woman holds hers out with a look that leapfrogs right over seduction and practically all the way to the morning after. She decides then and there that she likes this one as well. Two for two, look at that. And people say she’s anti-social. Distinctly recalling she’d taken a second look at Kate’s legs before sitting down, and adding in those eyelashes....

Well. Lorna’s never seriously considered taking another woman up on one of these looks before, but it wouldn’t wholly be accurate to claim she’s never thought of sending one to say...Ororo or Betsy a time or two herself. 

Or even a little accurate, actually, but that is neither here nor there.

Lorna thinks, though, that if she were to take up this particular woman up on this particular offer on this particular night - there might at some point be explosions. 

This is not a dealbreaker.

Look, she didn’t get her degree in geology because she held any particular interest in literally dull as dirt sandstone. Pyroclastic igneous rock formations, on the other hand...now that’s a different matter entirely. Fire pretty. Batwoman pretty. 

Okay, she might be a little tipsy at this point. She looks at her wine glass accusingly; she shouldn’t have to find these things out on her own. It neither confirms nor denies. 

Bitch.

Still further down the table, Dick's usual charming composure has been knocked out and left tied up in a coat closet somewhere. With the anthropomorphic embodiment of the emotion Frazzled then stepping in to take his place, and not at all very obviously acting out of sorts, if the amused but completely unhelpful smirks of his siblings are anything to go by. 

The Dick-shaped entity seated in his place makes occasional token attempts to direct the flow of conversation like the maestro he’s usually known to be in such settings. In this particular setting and time, however, he mostly just manages to exist as a sentient display of the condition or state of being I Have Regrets. 

His attention flits from one person to the next as he periodically tries to distract everybody from plotting the murders of everyone else at the table. Or covering up the murder of someone else, as committed by one of their family members. Or from plotting to frame someone else at the table for murder. Or from broadcasting that they’d absolutely get to the bottom of any frame job and prove their relative’s innocence and see the real culprit behind bars. 

Also, he may or may not have to every so often stop and distract himself from plotting murders of his own.

Dick lands briefly on Jason every now and again with an “I know what you’re doing and would greatly appreciate it if you’d stop” glare. 

Its met each time by his little brother’s “I have no idea what you’re talking about, this is just how I partake in family gatherings, isn’t that what you want or should I just go home” mask of blatantly transparent faux-innocence. 

Jay’s expressions are practically close captioned, that’s how far he is from even attempting to bother with the whole thing.

Dick returns fire with a narrowing of the eyebrows that screams: “I’ll get you for this, and your little dog too.” 

Jason’s lip only upticks at one corner, his otherwise studied indifference sending back his crystal clear response: “Bitch, I died. What’re you gonna to do, threaten to go a week without trying to ambush me with hugs?” 

Dick’s jaw shifts like a tectonic plate movement, teeth grinding as he holds the glare. “You’re the worst.” 

Jason beams and tilts his head, eyes drifting upwards in silent contemplation, as if to say, “Well, we all aspire to great heights in our own unique ways.” 

“Allow me to congratulate you on your successful achievements then.” Dick’s now puckered expression fires barbs from a blowgun.

“If you really cared, you’d show me with a trophy. What’s a guy gotta do to get his brother to try and buy his love and affection,” said little brother lofts at him by way of an obnoxiously exaggerated batting of his eyelashes.

Next to Dick, Wanda has her elbow on the table, propping up her head in one hand as she lazily pokes at her food with her fork. She’s not even trying to hide how much she regrets every decision that led to this. She likes Dick, quite a lot, but clearly, neither of their families are fit for conjoined festivities. Lesson learned. 

Duke is shoving dinner roll after dinner roll into his mouth, as if afraid to risk missing out on anything by attempting more focus-intensive food handling than that. His eyes are feverishly bright as they dart from one length of the table to the other and back again. This is the best day ever. 

Tim and Cass are seated side by side and occasionally dip their heads together in hushed conversation. At other times they flick their fingers at each other in sign language just below the surface of the table. 

Periodically, Tim will then wade into one conversation or another, never staying focused for long on any one single conversation partner before moving on. 

If one were to view this whole....event...as an exercise in conversational warfare, one might be tempted to view Tim’s patterns of discussion as somewhat akin to guerilla warfare. Brief engagements not aimed at achieving any kind of victory so much as feeling out the oppositions’ defenses and tactics before withdrawing to form more firmed out plans based off the gathered intel. 

Dick closes his eyes and sighs as he sees Tim and Cass dip their heads together again. Right after Cass’ eagle-eyed gaze spent a few moments lingering on the wake of Tim’s latest ‘tactical retreat,’ which was plenty of time for their sister to soak in a fair amount of everyone's reactions and responses.

Dick coughs into his hand. When Tim looks his way and meets Dick’s stern gaze with an inquiring eyebrow, Dick reaches a hand to the side of his head as if to smooth back a lock of hair. Instead he then signs with grimly dancing fingers, “Please tell me you and Cass aren’t using a holiday dinner together as a chance to develop contingency plans for taking down members of my girlfriend’s family.”

Tim cocks his head slightly and frowns. The only indication that his fingers are once again busy at work beneath the table is the slight ripple of movement along his upper arms. A few moments later, Dick’s phone vibrates with a notification. He slides it into his lap and reads Tim’s text.

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you just said. I don’t speak ASL.”

Dick tilts his own head and fires an unimpressed look across the table. “Seriously?”

Cassandra pokes Tim in the side, sending him an inquiring look of her own. No doubt curious what he’d texted Dick to elicit such a response. Tim grins and answers her in swift, practiced gestures the little twerp makes no attempt to hide this time. Blatant ASL, just one of the several different sign languages they were all fluent in. Cass raises a hand to her face and hides her giggle behind the back of it, just as Tim finishes. Dick darts his sour face at her, texting her phone in turn.

“Et tu, Cass?”

She glances down at her own phone and then just shrugs at him, utterly unrepentant. Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. Okay then.

Pietro’s daughter Luna had long since retreated to one of the Wayne family dens to watch movies, citing a headache. No one doubted that the precocious young empath was just entirely uninterested in being in the vicinity of all their entangled and extremely loud emotions. 

Her father had briefly attempted to impress upon her the importance of being present with the rest of them for at least some of the dinner. His daughter had simply met his token effort at imparting politeness protocols with a pointed look first at him and then at Damian, who was at most two years older than her. 

Pietro had grimaced. In an ideal world, caving to her demands would not be easier than him just conducting himself like a mature adult for the duration of a single dinner gathering. But then, none of them came from an ideal world, and he suffered no illusions about being an ideal parent. And more importantly, in the grand scheme of things it was hardly like this was one of the really important battles, the ones that needed to be picked carefully. 

That was his excuse and he was sticking to it. And thus Luna had been excused to entertain herself with the Waynes’ vast video library.

Wanda’s twin sons thus far seem content to keep themselves busy with their own back-and-forth in the private ‘twin language’ they’d crafted over the years - more due to cheating than the existence of some preternatural twin understanding of each other. Neither boy pretends to have a clue how the other’s mind works. 

Essentially, Tommy just talks to his brother at full superspeed, while Billy has a spell in place that allows him to keep up and understand his twin no matter what speed his ramblings take. No one seems entirely sure what mechanism they have for Billy to speak back to Tommy in a way no one else ever picks up on, or even if such a mechanism exists at all. It's entirely possible that due to the nature of their dynamic, they’d never found creating one to be at all necessary. 

That isn’t to suggest that Billy is a follower in temperament or by nature. Its more just that when dealing with Tommy, one either follows (or tries to play catch up slash does damage control) or else one waits until Tommy races off to do what he wants, for however long it takes for him to eventually figure out that nobody has followed or is even going to. Then finally racing back and submitting to following someone else’s lead, sulking all the while about how nobody ever listens to him about anything. 

Basically, letting Tommy take the lead in the more low-stakes engagements is just being efficient, in Billy’s opinion. The alternative takes way too long and his twin is a pain to deal with when in a heightened state of Sulk.

However, as to just how low-stakes or not this dinner actually is, well, that seems to be a matter of some debate between the twins, and not something Billy himself has even settled his opinion on. 

Frequent high-pitched squeaks occasionally sound out from their corner of the table, most too quick to even register for anyone other than their uncle Pietro, who currently is still preoccupied with his extended staring contest against his diminutive rival in all things pertaining to ego and attempted sovereignty

If anyone else were even to register their existence or frequency, the combination of squeaks and Tommy’s repeated glares at his brother might lead to the conclusion that Billy is repeatedly poking or jabbing his twin in order to rein Tommy in from leaping into some fray or another and escalating the already existing tension to biblical proportions. As is his wont. 

And Billy, at least, is enjoying his meal.

Well, he’s trying to, anyway.

But the closer he gets to completely clearing his plate, the more frequent Billy’s longing glances in the direction Luna had vanished become. Clearly, the teen is debating the merits of faking some ailment of his own and following his cousin’s example all the way to blessed, blessed relief from the chore of being the only one capable of saying “Tommy no” and actually producing an end result that isn’t just an accelerated timetable.

It’s not hard to tell when Billy’s inner war of his self-preserving tendencies vs his self-sacrificing tendencies is ultimately decided with a final score of Sanity: 1, Pointless and Unappreciated Gestures of Nobility: 0.

The seventeen year old sighs loudly and slumps back against his chair, his entire demeanor broadcasting an aura of “I give up” on so many clear wavelengths, it interrupts every skirmish currently in progress and results in every adult at the table sending concerned looks towards the twins’ corner of it. 

Billy’s crossed arms and the empty space his gaze is determinedly fixed on combine to clearly convey he has nothing to do with whatever has happened or is about to happen. 

Leading to every scrap of attention thus trekking further down the table to his twin, where Tommy is beaming with the brightness of a thousand supergiant stars about to go supernova and make a mess that will span galaxies and last for ten thousand years. 

His Aunt Lorna’s own penchant for pretty explosions and fireworks has nothing on his, other than seniority.

Tommy’s own family knows that gleam in his eyes well enough to be aware their own immediate reactions should be duck and cover. Unfortunately, the Waynes’ dining room affords few actual defensive positions, all of which are already occupied by members of the Family Batshit. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, the Family Maximumoff Damage brace for impact.

Not being familiar with the gleam in Tommy’s eyes themselves, but more than observant (and paranoid) enough to recognize the braced positions of the other family and adapt accordingly, the members of the Family Batshit are all quick to follow suit.

Wanda meanwhile takes the scant seconds before collision to close her eyes and try to recall why she ever wanted children so desperately she literally wished them into existence.

She’s got nothing. 

Dick uses the same time to gulp and take a deep breath, frantically trying to fortify himself with everything he knows of Wanda’s more....mayhem-inclined child. Hopefully he can use that intel to prepare contingencies for whatever fallout may follow in the next few seconds.

Ever the optimist, that one.

Into a silence stretching longer than a speedster in the spotlight has ever before allowed silence to linger - with Tommy clearly savoring the focused attention and abundant awareness of his Impact™ and reputation - the silver-haired teen grins with teeth bright enough to ignite the ensuing firestorm all on their own. The fateful words he finally utters almost seem overkill. At least until he finishes saying them and everything else ceases to matter, because boom.

Ignition.

“Hey Dick, if you end up marrying our mom, does that mean we can call you Dad?”

The silence that follows that particular detonation is akin to the death-knell of the dinosaurs, in the moments immediately after a giant asteroid wiped out 80% of life on the planet.

Then: anarchy.

“How dare you!” Damian launches himself out of his seat with what would normally be described as a hiss, were it not uttered at a decibel closer to being an actual sonic boom.

Jason looks like he can’t decide if he wants to fall to the ground laughing or fall to the ground tucking and rolling. To avoid having to make a decision, he grabs his until now untouched wine and guzzles it like a man who just found the only oasis in a hundred mile wide desert.

Lorna uncorks another bottle of wine and raises the whole thing like she’s toasting existence itself, on her way out the mortal coil’s exit-marked door. Kate thrusts her glass in front of Lorna for another refill. 

“I know many lesbians can and do have kids in any number of ways, but do you think its okay if I cite this as proof we’re the highest evolved life form and if I was meant to have kids of my own, God wouldn’t have given me such an obvious hint as to the opposite?” 

Kate absently muses to Lorna under her breath and out of the corner of her mouth, both of them still fixed on viewing the various diners turned statue-still by the Medusa like turn of the table’s conversations. 

“It feels like that’s one of those things people tell me I should keep in my head and just gets me in trouble when I decide to share it instead, but honestly, I can never tell.”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Lorna whispers back. “I get possessed by this one psychic ghost enough that one of the few perks is I don’t have to worry about ticking people off anymore. Nowadays if I piss someone off, all I have to do is wait a couple of days and then say I was possessed again at the time. Then I just ask why the hell did nobody notice and dramatically make a lot of noise about that until everybody forgets what the hell they were even ticked at me for in the first place.”

“Ugh. Lucky bitch.” 

Lorna shrugs with the faintest of smirks. “It’s all about just working with what you’ve got.”

Elsewhere at the table, Duke is frozen with his mouth still stuffed so full his cheeks are puffed out like a cartoon chipmunk’s. The only movements coming from his direction at all are the twin orbs that are his eyes, currently imitating tennis balls being rocketed back and forth across the court by pro players who never miss a swing.

Tim and Cass are clutching each others’ forearms, the closest either has come to displaying a panic reaction in literal years. In Cassandra’s case, more like in her entire lifetime.

But the title of ultimate attention draw is for the moment a dubious honor bestowed upon the Wayne patriarch himself. 

Bruce leaps from his seat like an Olympic sprinter off the starting block, managing to catch up to his youngest before Damian plus Damian’s butter knife make it more than a foot towards Tommy. He snatches the twelve year old up by his waist, smoothly disarming his son and spinning around to plant himself between the boy and his target with the practiced and precise moves of the bedlam ballerina that he is.

“Umm,” Dick utters at last. His eyes fly wildly around the room as if seeking permission to land. They settle on making repeated loops of a race track that runs from Tommy’s smile of success to Damian’s enraged expression, and then to his own father’s attempt at a poker face: normally flawless, but now only warranting such acclaim if Bruce’s intention actually was to mimick the poker face of someone steadily ingesting lemons and nothing else throughout the course of a game. 

Its not Dick’s finest work, obviously, but to be fair he’s also quite busy,trying to will himself through the floor. Possibly the Earth’s core while he’s at it. Results are still pending.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by the inhabitants of the dining room, Pietro’s ex Crystal has arrived as previously agreed, so she can pick up Luna and their daughter can spend the back half of the holiday with her mother and the latter’s teammates. 

They were on their way to the dining room so Luna could say her goodbyes to her father, aunts, cousins and grandfather, when the current chaos had erupted.

Her own heroic impulses instinctively compelling her to charge in and attempt to help, Crystal’s tugged back by her daughter’s hand in hers. Knowing full well that Luna’s empathy-fueled instincts are superior to just about anyone else’s, Crystal halts and takes in the scene before them again, still with caution but with slightly less urgency.

“I suppose you have some idea what’s going on in there?”

Luna just smiles softly at her mother, as if shyly amused by the situation they’re witnessing.

“Did you hear how just when we were coming down the hall, Tommy said something about calling Wanda’s boyfriend ‘Dad’ if they get married?”

Crystal furrows her brow and nods; she hadn’t been paying that much attention, but one didn’t engage in superheroics (let alone marry and live with a hyper-active speedster) if one had poor situational awareness. Well one did, theoretically, but in such instances, one usually just died before gaining any kind of reputation or relevance.

“Well see, that set off Damian, Mr. Wayne’s youngest son and Dick’s baby brother - he was the one shouting ‘How dare you’ - “

“Don’t tell me this family has some kind of superiority complex about the twins or Wanda not being good enough for one of their own,” Crystal interrupted. The air around them crisped and heated even as a stray wind arose inside the manor and teased the ends of her hair into furious activity. 

She and Pietro might not be together anymore, but her fondness for him and certain other members of his family hadn’t ceased to exist simply because their marriage no longer did. Wanda had been her friend for years before she and Pietro even began to date, and her twins were still Luna’s cousins. All of which made them still family as far as Crystal was concerned. 

And she’d certainly put up with enough of her own family’s nonsense about nobody being good enough for one of them...more than she should have, to be honest, even if that was still ultimately the reason she’d cut ties with them and made her teammates her and her daughter’s true family. Crystal wasn’t about to stand idly by while strangers subjected her daughter’s cousins and aunt to more of that bullshit, even if they were hugely respected heroes of this universe’s Earth.

But Luna just shakes her head swiftly and decisively, and Crystal forces her metaphorical hackles to subside at her daughter’s apparent lack of concern. 

“No, its nothing like that. Well, Damian’s kind of a brat sometimes, but it feels like he only acts out like that when he doesn’t have instincts about how to react to a given situation and he’s embarrassed about that. He had some kind of messed up childhood none of them like to talk about too much. But honestly, he feels more jealous right now than he does anything else. Aunt Wanda gave us all a rundown before we got here, about Dick’s family and things to not ask them about or bring up, and what kind of stuff they’d been told about us for similar reasons. Anyway, she told us Damian didn’t even live with their family until a few years ago, and when he first came to live with them there was a year when Mr. Wayne was missing and most of them thought he was dead....and so Dick was basically Damian’s first real kinda dad even before Mr. Wayne got a chance to be, and even though he’s been the one raising Damian ever since he got back, it sounded like there’s a lot of mixed feelings and confusion and tension between him, Mr. Wayne and Dick ever since.”

“And of course your cousin just couldn’t resist poking the elephant in the room, once he’d been made aware of its existence, if only to see what would happen,” Crystal sighs. That boy....

Not for the first time when around her ex’s family, she finds herself reminded to be grateful for the relationship she and her daughter share, mostly due to her daughter’s willingness to be understanding of others’ flaws, her own included. Crystal makes sure to will forth a wish for fortitude in Wanda’s direction while she’s at it. Couldn’t hurt.

And of course, speaking of Luna’s ability to be understanding....

“Tommy was just trying to have a little fun, he honestly didn’t mean any harm by it,” her daughter defends the cousin in question. “I know he didn’t really have any idea how much of a reaction he’d get, and just how deep and strongly they had about this. And I know it probably sounds like I’m just trying to make excuses for Tommy to keep him out of trouble, but maybe this is a good thing, that he made this happen? Because I can tell they definitely don’t talk a lot about these things or let them out in the open instead of trying to shove them down all the time. So Damian feels jealous, probably because he still has feelings of seeing Dick as a father that he feels he can’t act on because he doesn’t want to upset their actual dad or cause fights between them.”

"And I can feel Mr. Wayne feels jealous too, but of how Damian feels and the fact that he acted on what was so clearly jealousy to everyone else, but also he’s upset at himself, probably because he thinks its not right for him to feel jealous towards his own son and specifically because he and his brother have such a strong relationship and Dick did such a good job taking care of him when Mr. Wayne couldn’t. And then Dick feels guilty but also a little upset at himself as well, maybe because he knows he has nothing to feel guilty for? I’m not sure about that part, I haven’t totally gotten a feel for their usual emotional dynamics. But also he feels jealous too, and of Mr. Wayne, most likely because he gets to be Damian’s father and on some level Dick wishes that was still him occupying that role.”

“Maybe you should be explaining all of this to them instead of me,” Crystal concludes when her daughter finishes her run-through in a rush of hastily accelerated words. Luna is leaning to the side, as if trying to be subtle about craning to look around her at the drama on the other side. 

“I will if they ask me to,” her daughter says, now sounding somewhat defensive of herself. “I don’t think they would have liked it much if I just tried to talk to them about all their feelings that they refuse to acknowledge or act upon, even just with each other in private.”

“Hmm,” Crystal just hums thoughtfully. Luna rushes to present the rest of her case, though Crystal still lacks a clear picture of just what the specific endgame is that her little schemer simply can’t resist trying to nudge things towards.

“Besides, like I said, maybe this was a good thing, Tommy got it out in the open where now they have to talk about it with each other, since its pretty undeniable to everyone. I mean everyone else in their family definitely feels kinda satisfied I think? No, vindicated. That’s it. I think they’ll be fine on their own. They all definitely love each other and if anything, the jealous feelings are all just from loving each other more than they feel they should or have a right to, because they don’t want to make one of their other family question whether they love them too. None of them have done anything bad or wants anything bad, they just need to talk it through.”

“Well that’s all good to hear, but it still sounds to me like there’s no real reason for us not to interrupt, and every possibility it might defuse some tension and give them all a little time to cool down before talking about things.” Crystal crosses her arms and looks down at Luna knowingly. 

She might be the best daughter Crystal could have ever wished for, and light years more mature than anyone else her age, but she’s still only ten and every ten year old has room for more maturing.

Sure enough, her daughter squirms guiltily. 

“I guess. But I still think its better to let things just happen on their own. You’re always telling me that my power isn’t permission to insert myself into the problems of everyone I meet. And that assuming otherwise can be bad for me too.”

“That’s true,” Crystal nods. All the same, her left eyebrow starts to climb. “However, another truth I’ve heard told to you by your father is if you ever feel guilty and are put on the spot for something, have two truths and a lie ready to explain yourself. And always lead with the lie.”

She loves Pietro still, she does, and she's at times even painfully aware of just how much she always will. But their vastly different ideas about parenting were just one of the reasons they hadn’t been able to make things work. She vividly recalls the time she’s referring to...and the argument she and her husband had immediately following it.

Pietro’s stance had always been that children were just little versions of who they’d grow up to be, and didn’t need to be taught dumbed down versions of the advice no one would a problem giving to the grown up versions of them.

“I see nothing inappropriate in teaching her that,” Pietro had said stubbornly at the time. “I do the same thing all the time and I’ve never attempted to pretend otherwise. In fact, I clearly remember explicitly describing that as my life philosophy on one of our earlier dates, and if I recall correctly, you laughed and called me a charming knave at the time. And I am of course remembering it correctly, as I have perfect recall listed among my numerous attributes.”

They never did reach an understanding about that particular bit of parenting. Probably because that argument had ended up seguing into the make-up sex that had kept them married far longer than they probably should have been.

Not that the latter detail is of any relevance at the moment. She coughs awkwardly.

In the here and now, their daughter continues to fidget beneath her mother’s now imperious gaze and newfound resolution to not allow her semi-fond nostalgia to cause her emotions to waver.

“Fine!” Luna groans at last, throwing up her hands in as explosive manner as the usually contemplative girl ever does anything. “I also don’t want to interrupt or go yet because I still have some of the popcorn Mr. Alfred made me and its really good and also if you had to have dinner with some of the most tense and repressed people on two different Earths, and feel everything they were trying to pretend they didn’t feel, you would want to at least get to enjoy the part where they finally stop doing that and get all dramatic and dumb. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Crystal says primly, fighting a smile at her daughter’s rare display of immaturity before remembering who she was talking to and ceasing to bother with the pretense. Besides, its not like she doesn’t have a point.

“But I believe we’ve also talked about people not being your personal entertainment,” she adds. It just feels like the kind of moment where she's supposed to say something along those lines. Even half-heartedly. 

“But is it really my fault if people are being entertaining through no fault of my own, and I just happen to be nearby and have every right to just stay put until being right where I am stops being entertaining?” Her daughter counters.

The glint in her eye and the wry smile that says she knows she’s scented a moment of weakness and has no shame about pouncing on it - those are wholly among Pietro’s contribution to their child, and not anything Crystal can truly fault him for, at the end of the day. He is who he is, and part of that is who their daughter is, just as much as she is part of Crystal. She sighs and relents.

“If one of the Waynes catches us treating their conflict like a reality show and feels the slightest upset about it, it is your responsibility to either justify yourself to them too, or acknowledge responsibility for their upset. Whichever it takes to reverse the negativity you contributed. Understood?”

"Promise,” Luna says, bobbing her head repeatedly as she holds forth her hands, unprompted, to demonstrate that she has no fingers crossed as she did so. A follow up that has been normalized for years, given that crossing fingers behind one’s back is another one of the bits of parental wisdom Pietro had imparted upon their precocious daughter when she was younger.

Crystal just sighs once more and shakes her head fondly as she steps to the side and provides an unobstructed view through the open doorway across the room.

Back in the dining room, heedless of having garnered spectators to their spectacle, as well as equally heedless of the passage of time, the room’s inhabitants exist in a state of suspended animation. 

Everyone knows a reaction to what just happened is required. That the pregnant pause persisting since then demands a clear follow up to the blatant display of certain emotions from certain parties. All of whom are usually quite certain they’d rather witness the end of the world than see those specific feelings slip out into the open where anyone could see them and from that, draw certain conclusions.

Nobody is confused on that front. Not even their guests from an entirely separate universe.

But the unthinkable has happened nevertheless, and as it has been neither preceded nor succeeded by any hint of an apocalypse, there is no alternative. The naked display of previously avoided topics can not in any way be avoided at this point. What was done was done and now things have to be said or done as a result.

The problem lies in the fact that not a single person present has the faintest idea of what those specific things were. And thus no one seems interested in showing any initiative in ending the stalemate that has been forged from the uncommon uncertainty that was their only commonality.

 The rise and fall of chests are the only movements betraying that the tableau they set exists in all three dimensions, rather as a static snapshot someone had taken in commemoration.

And even breathing seems done reluctantly.

If cosmic entities such as Uatu the Watcher were prone to hyperbole, as the only other witnesses to the unprecedented anomaly, they might narrate that for a time it seems as though two of the most powerful and influential families of two different universes are fated to spend the rest of eternity existing in this rare moment. This endless moment where some of the most reckless, impulsive, tactical, analytical, insightful and decisive heroes to ever exist on two separate Earths......are all equally stricken with indecision and uncertainty as to what course of action to take next.

Who could even imagine what kind of consequences that might result in, for two entirely different multiverses? What deviations from intricately plotted grand designs that could cause, what opportunities might be missed, from the most potentially fortunate events that otherwise might stem from these various heroes’ heroics?

How far might the ripple effects of this seemingly innocuous moment in space and time reach? How many worlds might rise and fall, universes live and die, all because this one singular family, this comparatively tiny collection of dissonant souls who regardless of their frequent discord still manage to come together in harmony often enough to chart the course of cosmic events....

These unlikely conductors who at separate times are both the voices of the people, and the music of the spheres themselves? Their choices often doing more to directly affect various celestial bodies than the choices of entire civilizations added up across countless millennia?

Regardless of the degree of potential calamity, that remains a fate both universes will be spared their discovery of. For in this hour of need, where some of the prime movers and shakers of worlds sit motionless whilst hardly daring to breathe, all mutually frozen in their seats, all seemingly powerless to act or speak until someone releases them from this spell that has been cast upon the room and all within it....

Well, unto this unlikely conundrum, there arises an unlikely hero.

Not the hero anyone present deserves, perhaps, but certainly the hero they need.

And so it is that with great daring - and dare we say, even panache - a voice rings out loud and clear. One overflowing with bountiful mirth and a zest and zeal for life. Not to mention one brimming with reckless disregard for any potential consequences, even those not very dissimilar to the kind that have in years past made even the hardiest villains quail in fear...

And all at the same time, all undeniable, all contributing to the sudden spasm that erupts along the fault line that is Bruce Wayne’s entire face - that treacherous, forbidding chasm that exists at the edges of the two tectonic masses that are on one side his disapproval, and on the other side, the muscles that control his expressions...

Into that momentous stillness lands the only response truly appropriate, given the root cause of all of this.

“Awkwaaaaaaard,” Stephanie Brown sings out, half standing out of her chair to stretch across the table in front of Wanda and Duke in order to retrieve the gravy boat. She returns to her seated position and proceeds to slather her mashed potatoes with its contents, blithely paying no attention to the fact that all other faces in the room have swiveled to face her with stunned disbelief. “Seriously, I haven’t felt this uncomfortable since I farted in front of Superman.”

“When did you even get here?” Bruce frowns at her, exasperated enough that Damian is able to use his distraction to slip free of him and slink back to his own seat.

No one else has ever managed to achieve the depths of distraction Stephanie and Stephanie alone can push the usually unflappable Bat to. Or is it heights, and the joys of alliteration might need to be sacrificed upon the altar of accuracy? Whatever.

She pretty much considers it her superpower, though. She's still working out how to weaponize it for use on other targets. Or even better, how to capitalize on it for use when living Whilst Reluctantly Capitalist. Currently, she’s testing market research along the veins of blackmailing Bruce into paying her a monthly allowance in exchange for her keeping her levels of Intentionally Irritating him to below a Level Four on a ten point scale. Its her own custom model in the fashion of the ‘rate the pain with a number from one to ten’ scale, but she’s taken the liberty of specifically tailoring it to Bruce’s condition of Suffering Stephanie the Supreme’s Presence. She's pretty sure she’d ultimately settled on the title: “How much is my chewing gum while I’m supposed to be being sneaky causing you actual physical pain?”

There’s an itty bitty chance she actually picked something totally else on account of how she’d been super drunk at the time and she’s crap at reading her own handwriting so deciphering the notes she’d made while especially inspired were like....seventy percent guesswork.

But close enough, anyway, and also like, shut up and stuff. Wait. But is that really considered blackmail, technically speaking, or is it more like bribery? Not that it really makes a difference, but she does prefer being as precise as possible when listing her crimes slash achievements. It’s like. The principle. Or maybe the aesthetic? Whatever.

Really, though, this is just her and the Big Guy’s thing. Its just what they do. Their dynamo depiction of a duo doing things after their first take on being a Dynamic Duo detonated so disastrously. Yeah, she could never bear to part with her precious alliteration merely for the sake of precision. Its important to have clear priorities after all, and if it for whatever reason that probably will involve fifth dimensional imps, like, some nefarious ne’er-do-well demands she make a choice between alliteration and precision, well, she’s as of right now making an official ruling on which darling she’d kill first. 

Sorry, precision, but you just haven’t done for me lately what alliteration has brought me in joy and also usefulness.

“Wait, my bad,” she realizes suddenly, on account of how everyone is staring at her when all she’s doing currently is stuffing her face like a pro. And as hype as she is on her ability to make anything she does look like a Feat™, she’s pretty sure she doesn’t make it look that good. “What was the question again?”

Bruce faces her fully, arms crossed in an attempt to restore himself and his dominion to some semblance of its usual order, his face schooled back in his usual Mona Lisa smile aka stone cold impassivity. Which nobody here was buying, for the record. Big faker.

“How long have you been here?” Asks Stone Cold Steve Austin, wait no, the Stone Cold Steve Faker. Faker Austin? Ugh, this is gonna bug her.

Also, nobody here is buying his voice as being Forbidding right now so much as just Deeply Embarrassed Because I Had Feelings And They Distracted Me. Honestly, she should start keeping a tally. For what, she’s not sure, but you never know what might come in handy some day. There’s a whole TV show about hoarders to back her up on that supposition. See? Science, suckers.

“I dunno. Since way before dinner even started though. Dude, I’m literally on my thirds.” 

As if making a show of evidence, Steph shovels more meat in her mouth. She’s not entirely sure what they're even having, like it could be veal or lamb or turkey for all she knows - look, she never got around to mastering “How To Solve the Mystery of Mystery Meat” or whatever. She’d been busy learning how to tell the difference in blood spatters, because like, meat may be murder sometimes but murder is always murder and thus takes priority. Soooorry. 

Point is, who knows what the fuck kind of meat it is, but its damn good and just further proof that Alfred is probably secretly God in disguise or maybe just a lower case g kinda one, but whichever, he and his culinary arts are definitely proof she’s too weak to ever walk the Way of the Vegan.

She finishes chewing fully before continuing. Because she’s a proper lady, obvy.

“And way to make with the Rudeness, B. I know I can pull off pretty much any look, but Fly On The Wall is not one of them. How dare you come for my self-esteem like this. I’ll sue you and get all your billions and use them to make a swimming pool of gold coins all Scrooge McDuck style, because its like, the one thing you could never and thus the perfect way to establish my dominance and stuff.”

“Has she seriously been here this whole time?” One of Dick’s girlfriend’s twin kids stage-whispers from the other length of the table. “How did we not notice before? Not exactly flying under the radar there.”

“I’m a goddamn social chameleon, that’s how, Cloud.” Stephanie jabs another meat-laden forkful in his direction for emphasis, on its way to her food hole. Ugh, bliss. “Also, I would be like, a kick-ass spy. But nobody ever gives me the spy jobs because everyone’s always like, you can’t be quiet or still or even serious for longer than five minutes, Stephanie, and I’m always like, umm, just because I choose not to doesn’t mean I can’t, but do they ever listen? Of course not.” 

The kid wrinkles his nose at her. “Why did you call me Cloud?”

“Isn’t that the name of the Final Fantasy guy whose hair you ripped off?”

“Is it? I don’t know, I’ve never played. And maybe he ripped me off, you don’t know,” Not-Cloud says, looking suddenly intrigued, though who knows by which part. 

Stephanie swivels towards Tim for confirmation. He looks back, vaguely irritated. 

“Why does everyone always look at me for stuff like that? I have no idea. When exactly would I have time to be a gamer in the first place? And for the record, back when I had actual hobbies, I used to skateboard.”

“Jeez, sorry, Tony Hawk. I didn’t recogize you cuz I was too busy giving you mad props for that sick wicked half pipe ollie oopsie.” Steph rolls her eyes. Then she cocks her head to scrutinize him more fully and maybe give him a serious answer. She settles for flapping a hand at him vaguely as she says, “And you just have like, a certain Quality about you or whatever. I don’t know what it is.”

“She doesn’t even live here,” Bruce says, almost plaintively. Y’know. If he were someone who does anything plaintively ever.

“She’s our guest,” Cass says, almost primly. Y’know. If she were someone who does anything primly ever. “You’re being rude.”

Steph plasters on her most injured expression, the better to make like Exhibit A when Cass sweeps an arm towards her for demonstration. 

Also though, oh shit, oh shit, look whose internal monologue stumble-stepped into a motif. She’s Emily Dickenson-ing this place up tonight. Finally, someone bringing a little class into the House of Ass. You’re welcome, all the ghosts of Bruce’s equally gloomy ancestors who definitely haunt this place on the regular.

“Yeah, Alfred has always impressed upon us that there are certain protocols for how we’re supposed to treat guests in our home, Bruce,” Tim adds in a tone that was equal parts thoughtful musing and suppressed merriment. 

He slides a smirk down the table to Steph. His own irritation of 7.5 seconds prior has completely evaporated into the ether, because that’s just how they roll. Look at them, making with the maturity like they’re just a couple of motherfucking bosses. She’s seriously so impressed with the both of them on their own behalves.

“If I were a betting man,” Tim continues nonchalantly, “I’d put down money that hanging on to guest privileges is one of the main reasons she turned down that adoption offer we all pretend we don’t know B’s definitely given her at some point.”

“Or maybe that’s just what you tell yourself, being the one whose dating history with Steph makes adopted siblinghood seem weird and icky and stuff,” Duke suggests from further down the table. He smirks, lounging in a way that looks lazy and careless to those uninitiated in the sacred Bat arts of being anal about everything at all times, like literally even when just looking at things. Because B-Man’s secret superpower is how to make anything boring, even things that are literally just using your eyes.

Though in defense of B but also like, the years of their lives they’ve all committed to obsessively training themselves according to his fucking anal doctrines anyway, like a bunch of absolute suckers, there is an upside to all that anal retention. Such as how people who make healthy but boring life choices would look at Duke right now and be like oh shit, that kid’s about two seconds from falling asleep like he’s a cat and that’s a super inconvenient place for him to fall asleep, which everyone knows is basically the same thing as Kitty Nirvana.

But meanwhile, the other teen still clearly shows all the checked boxes that spell out hey this dude could be ready to kick your ass in 2.5 seconds, like just give him a reason punk, he’s ready to go. Or at least, that’s how he registers to those of them with Bat-supersenses that aren’t actually super but really just the end result of lots of boring training exercises that honestly don’t sound anywhere near as cool so just let them have this.

Point is she totally lost track of her point, but then Duke follows up with an accusing pointer finger aimed at Tim, one appropriately dramatic and just like, making her so gosh darn proud of the latest castaway to wash ashore on their weird ass little Island Of Misfit Toys. Kids. They grow up so fast.

“Of course you wanna distract everyone from how you’re a Sister Depriver,” Duke intones, putting some super thematic bass into his boom. That right there, that little something extra...that’s how you make fucking art. Hot damn. “And as a result, poor Cass has to bear the weight of being the only girl in the Wayne clan all by herself. For shame, Timothy.”

“Yeah, Timothy,” Cass echoes smugly. “For shame.”

Tim shoots betrayed eyes at her, but its his own fault for forgetting the Cardinal Rule Of Cass: her allegiances are fickle and prone to shifting in the direction of greatest potential drama. Cass loves drama. Lives for it. Something about how refreshing it is to be able to immerse herself in the movements of people who are actively trying to speak or act in contradiction to what their body really wants to say, instead of just being lying douchebags who necessitate caution when they do anything similar.

The rest of them are split 50/50 as to whether that’s true and heartwrenching, or whether its well-played Cass bullshit aimed at distracting them from what a gossip-loving drama queen she really is.

“Whatever,” Jason says dismissively as he chimes in. He swipes the last few exchanges out of the way like they’re open apps he’s not using at the moment and he’s all uh, you can go now, losers. “The real issue here is that obviously the Old Man has never figured out how to interact with a teenager or young adult he hasn’t adopted or can’t adopt. Middle D over there is proof that even B’s vaunted no meta rule isn’t really a dealbreaker, so betcha the real reason Dickie and Tim’s Titan friends never come over is because their parentals are worried about B trying to snatch them up too. And since B adopts, fosters or otherwise absorbs via osmosis every other kid or teen he comes across, there’s never been a control group for him to practice his non-adoption-intending behavior on other kids. And no practice means no way of being perfect at that, and we all know how not being perfect at something makes B cranky as fuck.”

Duke takes a beat to contort his face into a Rubik’s Cube of half-formed and hastily discarded expressions. Most likely trying to work through whether Middle D counts as a weird-ass endearment for this particular family, or something he’s gonna be endlessly annoyed by if it happens to catch on. Its a process, especially considering it has to be filtered through the Jason to English dictionary first.

Finally he just shrugs in a lazy non-reaction that in Batspeak manages to count as a challenge. Basically a ‘try and guess what I decided if you can, chump.’ 

Jason’s face morphs Terminator style. The later ones, not the Governator model. He ends up displaying a mash-up: the smirk of inevitable victory meets the narrowed eyebrows of intent focus as bestowed upon a worthy foe. 

Then the whole piece makes like an Etch-a-Sketch and is wiped completely away before being replaced with an annoyed jaw clench. 

“Jay’s theory game is strong,” is the route Duke ends up taking though. “And here we thought the reason Bruce always says no about Superboy coming over is to prevent him from being a Brother Defiler. But all along it was just the insidious work of a Brother Depriver, with Superman himself being the culprit who told B hands off, this one’s mine. It all makes sense now! Superboy even fits the standard issue black hair and blue eyed, in store model.”

He tips his head towards the older boy in a gesture of appreciation for Jay’s detective work and connect the dots high score. Jason scowls back. By the standards of the Family Batshit, he’s clearly been caught off guard. With him so readily taking up the implied but not outright stated challenge teased by the younger boy, he’d completely failed to prepare for the compliments Duke then followed up with instead.

His siblings hide snickers behind faked coughs and gratuitous napkin usage. He’s netted himself an undeniable loss, according to the intricate rules and traditions of their family - ironically, many of which had been laid down by Jason himself when first established back in the misty years of yore. That mysterious, little spoken of era of legend and mystery, one that is nevertheless oft whispered of in hushed rumors and hearsay. The time before time, better known to the Bats and Birds as The Age of The First Two Robins.

If it had just been the family present, it might have been a different matter, but the presence of others changed things. Cuz see, in the eyes of anyone who isn’t a member of their observation obsessed and perpetually paranoid family, the relatively minute exchange between the two boys no doubt looked like Jason had been needlessly aggressive while the younger boy was just trying to pay him a compliment.

In a nutshell, Duke goaded Jason with what seemed like a challenge but didn’t technically count, so Jason’s attempt at responding to Duke’s not-challenge actually counted as the first actual sign of aggression, which Duke neatly side-stepped by already being in the process of paying Jay a compliment between the time Jay actually launched his challenge but before it actually landed.

Ergo, Duke wins. 

Look, if its hard to follow, that’s probably for the best. They’re all pretty sure stuff like that isn’t supposed to make as much sense as it does to them.

Jason huffs but then finally heaves a sigh and tosses a tight-lipped and grudging but genuine nod of acknowledgment down the table to Duke. Despite himself, he can’t help but be a little impressed by the kid, having already picked up on even the more minute ins and outs of their family’s complicated interactions. But then, of course the younger boy is as precocious as the rest of them. Their family could single-handedly keep the nature vs nurture debate going for centuries.

Duke beams back before licking the tip of a finger and painting a single stroke in the air in front of him. A clear declaration that this round of the Batkids’ never-ending game goes to him. Jason rolls his eyes but can’t exactly begrudge him his endzone dance. Its not like he’s known for being graceful and gracious in victory either.

Come to think of it, none of them are. Huh. That explains a lot, probably.

Its at this moment that Dick finally regains enough composure to make his presence felt again. 

Its understandable, really, the others acknowledge via conspiratorial looks of sibling solidarity that bounce their way rapidly across the table by way of their patented younger sibling network.

Anyone would have trouble juggling the combined stressors of introducing the girlfriend’s family, mediating their own eternal family mayhem, and on top of all that, seeing shoved into the spotlight his ‘shh, we don’t talk about that, what are you, new,” tendencies towards acting parentally protective and possessive of Damian, even with (and at times especially with) Bruce himself. 

Not to mention the occasional clashes over the parenting strategy, or lack thereof, that Bruce still manages at times to bumble like the perfect dope that he is. Because if anyone has super strong feelings about Bruce’s parenting and no patience whatsoever for watching their father repeatedly fail to learn from his mistakes, well. That’s all Dick’s territory.

So with all of that kept firmly in mind like the efficient little multi-taskers they all know how to be (when they feel like it), they’re all poised to lend Dick a certain amount of leeway in how much amusement they enjoy at his expense today.

In all fairness to them, its not like he makes it easy. They had perhaps overestimated just how well Dick was juggling the various stressors in play today. After all, you can take the acrobat out of the circus, but that doesn’t mean jack shit about whether or not he can juggle because that’s an entirely different skillset, duh.

Hindsight’s not just sometimes a bitch. Its sometimes quite bitchy as well. Ugh, their subconscious minds could be such brats, honestly.

Look, the point is, even as they all patiently watch their eldest brother struggle his way back to a state of coherency and and managing to be present in the actual present, they’re still expecting him to pop out the other side with something at least approaching poise.

Instead, they get an encore.

“Umm,” Dick utters at last. 

Tim buries his face in his hands. Duke tilts his head back and mutters prayers to some higher power. Cass closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly and sorrowfully. Lorna reaches across the table with her wine bottle and refreshes her sister’s glass. Wanda looks like she needs it.

Damian sits with arms crossed over his chest and scowl firmly directed at the table top, Judging Everything. Then again, that is still his default setting and pretty much what he’s been doing all night anyway. Say whatever else you want to about the kid, Steph reflects, but when he commits to a theme, hoo boy. 

Jason, meanwhile, has thrown himself bodily at his brother, clamping a hand over the older man’s mouth and stage-whispering with exaggerated emphasis: “Careful! You could set off the exact same chain of events and we’ll all end up trapped in an eternal time loop we can never break free of! I mean, its practically a guarantee, if you combine my knack for being in the worst place at the worst possible time, Tim’s shitty spleen-phobic luck, Cass’ destined to someday prove ironically prophetic name, and your own lightning rod-esque ability to attract cosmic-level catastrophes to you like you’re catnip and they’re really just a cute little furball named Fluffy McWhiskerson.”

“Must you always insist on going the extra mile when being ridiculous, Todd?” Damian cuts in testily. Also, cuttingly. 

“Shut the fuck up. It’s my coping mechanism for being part of a family that goes that extra ridiculous mile every damn day.” 

“And people wonder what possible reasons I could have for not wanting to be adopted into this family and instead hanging onto a golden parachute option?” 

Steph wonders aloud (and loudly) as she maneuvers the side of her fork around her plate like its a zamboni hard at work on an ice rink. Really, she just refuses to let a single scrape of Alfred’s home-made mashed potatoes go to waste. She’s not some heathen.

“You. You seem pretty smart.” That loaded statement and the finger pointed in her direction come courtesy of the Final Fantasy kid whose name may or may not be Cloud but probably isn’t, which is a shame, because Cloud is a pretty kick-ass name in Steph’s estimation. Not that anyone asks. Typical.

Also, where did they end up landing on the subject of what his name should be? Or is? Whatever? Was there a flowchart passed out at some point and she just missed it while busy being fabulous, or was this an actual oversight on B’s part and thus something they should all bring up as often as possible from now until the end of time?

No doubt spurred by a desire to be absent from whatever follows his twin’s newest train of thought, Billy raises his hand half-heartedly. No one bothers to point out the absurdity of raising his hand like he’s in school. He just seems like its a thing with him. He has that certain Quality, Steph decides.

“Can I be excused?”

Nobody seems sure who he’s asking, so its probably okay that nobody responds to grant permission. Besides, suffering through the awkwardness and drama like the rest of them is probably like, good for building character or something.

After about half a minute, Billy nods to himself as if that’s about what he’d expected. He lowers his hand again and uses it to prop up his head as he slumps over the table and idly sketches patterns atop the antique oak surface.

“I’m a galaxy-brain level intellect, you little Silver Whatever-the-Adorable-Baby version of a Fox is called,” Steph declares at last, jabbing her finger right back at the apparent Greater of Twin Evils. Y’know. To see how much he likes it. But also just because its fun to make like a drama queen in a place like Wayne Manor. Ambiance really is everything. “I even took my SATs and correctly informed the moderator that I was in fact there for the SATs and hadn’t gotten them mixed up with my ACTs.” 

“Hmm,” the twerp says then, not at all appearing to be taught a lesson by her dramatic finger pointing reversal. He sweeps his eyes over her, assessing. Given that she hasn’t decided yet if she even likes the little twerp, let alone what he’s trying to assess and also if she even gives a shit on account of she might not even like the little twerp, Stephanie splits the difference and settles for combining bitch face with her best “How you like me now,” pose. Let him make of it what he will. ‘Snot like she knows what she’s going for there.

Also, its probably rendered slightly less effective due to her forgetting to factor in that she’s sitting and not standing, but whatever, she commits like a champ. Also, she’s still at most 60/40 on the liking of the twerp, so who even cares, honestly.

“I used to be able to count on my own smarts,” Platinum Punk says, seemingly settled on an opinion at last. “But I naively gambled that away in the name of wishing upon a star for family or what the frick ever, and I forgot to set wish parameters for ‘and also please let them all not be completely nuts.’”

“Watch the ableism please, sweetheart,” Wanda says with a long-suffering sigh.

“Sorry, Mom,” he says with an eye roll that nevertheless seems to somehow satisfy her. “But see? I’ll get a lecture about my language, but I skip school with my friends to fight giant robots in Times Square and she doesn’t bat an eye. My family’s priorities are not like your Earth’s priorities.”

“Or my Earth’s priorities,” he adds as an afterthought. “Or any Earth’s, probably. Maybe not some really weird and out there Earth, but they don’t count, probably.”

“Well I don’t like it, certainly, but I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” Wanda says defensively. “When I was your age, I was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for being a mutant terrorist. All things considered, I have relatively few objections about how you and your brother spend your time.” 

Several members of the Family Batshit direct eyes that are ever so slightly on the wide side. She meets them with an unapologetic shrug.

“I had a complicated childhood. I got over it.”

Lorna snorts into her wineglass. Wanda shoots her sister an annoyed glare, but still amends her statement.

“Mostly, anyway.”

Lorna smirks and waves her glass in some attempt at a meaningful gesture. Who knows what its actually meant to be. She seems to accept the amendment, at least.

“Please excuse our dear little sis her porcine displays of condescension,” Pietro interjects in silky smooth tones that do nothing to hide the sharp edges thinly veiled underneath. “She didn’t grow up with us and our dear, doting daddy, yet has never lacked for opinions on what superior choices she would have made in our positions. The fact that she’s still made plenty terrible choices of her own, is apparently quite irrelevant.”

His green-haired sister opens her eyes artfully wide and projects feigned innocence. “None of those were my fault. I was possessed a lot by a very evil psychic. Who, if you recall, actually called herself Malice. The evil was right there in her name. Advertised. I was innocent. She was evil.”

Pietro swirls his own wineglass, unimpressed. The other set of siblings have clearly been down this road a time or two themselves. 

“I was primarily referring to your romantic history with a Summers. And not even the competent or aesthetically pleasing one, at that,” he drawls.

“She also had terrible taste.”

“Anyway, not to tear focus away from discussion of my dear auntie’s romantic selection process, as she and Uncle Pietro both lack the shame gene and they absolutely can and will traumatize all present via a thorough analysis of each other’s past partners in the most bizarre game of sexual chicken you will ever have the misfortune to witness...”

“Bold of him to make that claim when he’s never seen Dick and Jason do the exact same thing for the exact same reasons,” Tim mutters. Cass and Duke both nod. Jason glares, but seems stuck at the ‘come up with actual proof that he’s actually wrong’ stage of the rebuttal process. Dick has by now returned to the land of the living, but seems to have along the way decided discretion is the better part of valor as best guess is he’s currently preoccupied weighing the pros and cons of potential escape routes.

“Hey, Shiny Pokemon version of Sonic the Hedgehog,” Stephanie snaps her fingers and hopskips the focus back on the speedster in question. She waves her hand at the rest of the sound and fury occupying the table with them, as if to express just how much it all signifies nothing. “Just get to the point already and leave out anything else that these vile miscreants could possibly hijack and turn into tangents. You’ll never make it through a conversation in this house otherwise. Everyone here is expertly trained and practiced in the art of derailing the most obstinate and tunnel-visioned man in history from reaching his point whenever that point is deemed destined to make our day end poorly.”

“Some of us just happen to be better at that than others,” Jason says with smug confidence, twirling his butter knife lazily.

“Ironic, coming from the one trick pony,” Tim says dryly. Jason leans forward and raises his knife-wielding hand and Tim quickly raises his hands in a defensive gesture that’s clearly not meant to indicate he sees an actual threat, more just aimed at beating his brother to the punch with the rest of his punchline. “Sorry, I miscounted. I mean the one and a half trick pony.”

Steph clears her throat pointedly and looks back at Platinum Ken Doll. He just sighs in full gloom and slumps down in eerie symmetry with his twin. He definitely is the superior practitioner of the Sulk.

“Never mind,” he says melodramatically. “It wasn’t even a big deal anyway, just stuff I was trying to be like, snarky about or whatever, but the moment’s passed and it’s just kinda dumb and pointless without feeling like, natural or whatever.”

“Probably,” Stephanie agrees unsympathetically, because hey, when you’re right, you’re right. She doesn’t believe in coddling the youths, especially not the ones who are realistically only two years younger than herself at the most. “But you’ve managed to pique my interest enough that not knowing what you were going to say is randomly gonna bug me at 2 am or something obnoxious like that. Also, you started to praise my intellect and I don’t let things like that go unfinished. It sets a bad precedent. Now c’mon. Speak up. Praise me. Enunciate, so Damian can’t pretend he doesn’t hear you just because he’s trying to set the table on fire with just the searing intensity of his disdain.”

Damian responds with a gesture that he definitely didn’t learn from Dick, but on second thought, he probably did.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. “Keep on keeping on, slugger. If anyone can develop the ability to cause spontaneous combustion with nothing but willpower and spite, its Angst in the key of D Minor himself. I believe in you, kiddo!”

If she weren’t actually being full of shit about that, she might be in trouble from the glare Damian follows that with. Ashes to ashes and all that good stuff. But as rage-vision still refuses to make an appearance, the baby of the family in age and irony only retreats to the support of his high-backed chair. 

Looking more adorable than he’d hopefully ever comprehend, lest he attempt to weaponize that as an addition to his armory, he slouches down and mutters something that makes Jason’s eyebrows climb his skull like they’re trying to set a speed record for making it all the way to the top.

It’d been in one of the languages that Damian knew and that her own circle of languages learned share no overlap with, but she mentally repeats it sound for sound in her head until she locks it in. Anything that can make Jason look that impressed is worth knowing, and translating something phonetically from an unknown language is nothing Google can’t handle.

And by Google she meant Tim, but that’s what ex-boyfriends are for, right? She’s fairly certain she saw that on a T-shirt somewhere, which is basically the same thing as true.

Anyway. Back to the praises that are supposed to be being sung, and yet weirdly, she still hears no singing. Steph boomerangs her focus back down the table to Smugness in Silver, and oozes impatience and expectations out her pores at him like emotions are contagious and she’s a cooties hotspot.

Fumbling from a clear unease with this particular kind of spotlight, and also how it’d admittedly been a weird fucking night for everyone concerned, the younger teen at last manages to self-consciously eke out: “Look, I said it was dumb now. I seriously was just gonna make a joke about you being too smart to get sucked into a weird ass family with endless drama without having an escape clause, and I was just gonna be like, teach me your ways or y’know. Whatever.”

“Wait!” Stephanie stops him right there with a palm outstretched in the universal sign for hold the fucking fuck the fuck up. She leans towards him, and in a voice pitched low and even but vibrating with barely leashed intensity, she asks him the only question that could possibly matter now:

“Was that last bit actually part of the joke you were going to make? The thing you were trying to say from the get go, not just something you said right now because you got confidence diarrhea and stopped using the words good?”

“Uh, yeah?” He says warily.

Stephanie slaps both her hands on the table’s surface, loudly enough to make most everyone jump a little in their seats, and forcefully enough to rattle some dishware and make her inner monologue hiss oww and yell at her for unnecessary roughness. She ignores herself, on account of having much more important things to deal with. 

Launching herself to her feet, she leans into her palms where they press down on the table, giving herself a little bit of Loom to go with the gravity she forces onto her face. Glee is waging a valiant effort at retaking the lost ground, but she’s always insisted that she has excellent self-control, dagnabbit, and Stephanie Brown is many, many things, but she’s no liar.

Well, except for the times she is. But there are always reasons or like, extenuating circumstances for those.

Usually.

“I accept the honor and responsibility of being your Family Drama Sensei, and I shall teach you everything I know and also some stuff I make up just to fuck with you, because I’m not like Other Mentors. I demand and expect some giggles to go with the shits, or what’s even the point, y’know? First lesson: that was rhetorical! I say y’know a lot and when I actually expect an answer I’ll also be like omg hurry up, I aged 84 years waiting for you to say something already. Got it?”

The Twin That Could Have Probably Starred In Twilight blinks dazedly at her. He then turns to look at the rest of the table.

“Is she serious?”

“Deadly,” Steph intones, before one of these naysayers could nay on her say and potentially undercut her authority with her new minion. Uh, she means, like, henchkid. Sorry, sidekick. Shit. Crap - protege! That was what she has, a protege! Hah!

“For real?” He asks, doubtfully. She frowns. Is she stuttering?

“So real I make reality look fake,” she assures him gravely. He blinks some more. He does that a lot, she notes, like a Good Mentor who notices stuff about her mentee.

“Okay, see, because that wasn’t really what I was going for?” He says cautiously. 

She rolls her eyes. C’mon kid, she doesn’t bite, except for like, sexy stuff and eww no, he’s like twelve. Well sixteen probably, but that’s basically the same thing as twelve. Also they had a lot of work to do on the spine-having thing because this sorta bit right here is totally gonna make her look bad in front of all the other mentors, if it doesn’t exit stage right, like post haste. And what not.

She doesn’t say any of that that out loud though. She’s not sure they’re there yet.

“Like, I was aiming more for just....a...I don’t know, a hah-hah?” 

He leans back slightly, adding a little distance as he looks at her like she’s part of the craziness he needs help surviving instead of his sensei in all things suited to surviving the craziness. Ugh, she has so much work to do with this one. Its a good thing she’s always been pretty sure she’d make an excellent mentor, so like, qualifications. She has them. Obvy.

“La la la, I can’t hear you but also no take-backsies. You’re part of a legacy now. Or lineage. Or whatever the word is that’s not actually about dog family trees. Look, the point is by virtue of being my first ever protege and also the first protege of anyone who isn’t Dick or Babs who both don’t even count anyway because Reasons, you are now part of the grand tradition that is being a Bats and Birds person...partner...sidekick...thingie. Look, we don’t have the terminology all worked out yet. Like I said this is basically new territory except for Dick and Babs who don’t count and also Bruce, but he mostly communicates via grunts and scowls anyway, rendering most terminology moot.”

“What’s happening right now?” Her protege asks to no one in particular. Ugh. Unacceptable. She’s taking twenty points from House Twilight whenever she finishes reading those damn books and figures out just how that whole thing works.

“Okay, so the big takeaway from your first lesson here, because fuck that being cryptic noise, mentors who are always like ‘you have to figure out what you’re supposed to be learning here and then also learn it’ like, ugh, no. The worst, seriously.” 

Look, occasionally detours are probably inevitable, but the important part is that she remain strong when doggy-paddling determinedly towards her point, because good mentors can handle occasional detours and don’t treat them like Kryptonite that’s gonna kill them all when they’re literally just sparring in the Cave, like, perspective, have some, y’know? 

And also they don’t need to stop every couple hours into training so they can have temper tantrums because their kids are like, no dad, we can’t hang out today because that’s a thing that kinda happens when little kid people turn into bigger people people, like oh noes, gasp, horror. And then they have to go stomp around and make that everyone else’s problem because no matter how much they insist they’re loners, they actually really suck at being alone. Even though you’d think that mastering that particular skill would logically come first before you get around to training to say shit like “I am the Night, my dude,” with a straight face.

Its faintly occurring to her that she might actually have unresolved issues about Bruce and her brief apprentice-ship thingie with him. And also maybe its not super awesome conclusion and also the follow-up to all that bit of bother, all of which gargled a fair amount of donkey balls.

Ugh. Epiphanies are such losers. Literally who asked.

“Ahem. Anyway. Big takeaway. Teachable moment. Right. So yeah, first big thing is commitment. You start something, you see it through, got it? In this family and otherwise vaguely affiliated network of mentors and mentees, we don’t do take-backsies, okay? Its a matter of pride. Principle. Also, maybe brain damage. Like I said, this all really started with Dick, and he does get hit and shot in the head a whole lot, so admittedly, the rest of us do have some. Y’know. Questions. Now you sit there and absorb all that for a second. Like a sponge. See yourself as a sponge. Be the sponge. Good sponge.” 

Wisdom having been successfully imparted, Steph nods in satisfaction and then spins to take in the rest of the room, hands planted on her hips Wonder Woman style, because power poses are totally gonna be lesson two.

Her eyes find their way to Bruce easily enough, which makes sense seeing as how his scowl takes up half the room. Any room. Okay, at this point she's willing to jot that whole might have issues thing down as okay so maybe she definitely has unresolved issues with Bruce. So what? She also has a protege, albeit one who probably does need some more convincing to fully be on board, but the point remains that like. Whatever. Suck her entire ass.

“Well,” she declares loftily, as if she’s not just talking directly to the B-Man. Plausible deniability, yo. Just because she’s willing to admit to herself that she maybe definitely has issues to still sort through, that doesn’t mean she has to like. Go around admitting that to other people. She’s not some kind of heathen. “I trust that we’ll all remember where we were when it was undeniably revealed that I, Stephanie Brown, do in fact have Wisdom and Experiences to share with the youths of tomorrow. As that is a thing that just happened. Lo!”

“I have witnesses,” Steph declares with the dial set all the way to Peak Drama, because look, if you can’t lean into the drama in Wayne Freaking Manor, life is empty and meaningless and that’s gonna be her supervillain origin story, probably. She throws out an arm towards the rest of the table, encompassing the dual rows of expressions that could best be described as bemused - if she were being generous and also lying out her freaking ass.

Still, she stands firm in the silence that follows her ringing proclamation, allowing not the slightest hint of self-consciousness slip free of her self control, because she’d literally just made a big deal about how it was all about committing, and Stephanie Brown might be many things, but a hypocrite is not one of them.

Well, other than - nope. Not doing that again. Upon reflection and careful examination of what really matters, accuracy also can be invited to suck the proverbial it.

Besides, there’s too much at stake for her to allow any weakness to betray her now. This is a momentous moment. Clash of the Stubbornness kinda stuff. She’s facing down Punky Brucester himself, and on his own turf of all places. Things like principles....and...and being right, all hang in the balance.

And yes, Stephanie is well aware that she has left even Peak Drama in the dust aeons ago, and they’re deep in uncharted waters now, with like, here there be dragons, lurking dramatically. So what if she’s being ridiculous? She maintains that he had started it, she’s like 99% she is being not at all irrational and unreasonable about that, and by God, she will have her vindication or she will have....whatever the tail end of that cliche goes like. Unless its death, because she kinda sorta already did that, and as far as she’s concerned it counted, and either way, she’s way over it and not looking for reruns.

All the while, Bruce stares her down with his face doing that resting I’m Judging You Face thing that nobody can be that oblivious to walking around with all the time, no matter what they may claim in liar-esque fashion. 

Though, for all her various unresolved issues with him or whatever, she can admit to herself that the man is a goddamn master of conveying a bitch could care less. She’d sat on gargoyles that had served more face than Mr. I Could Be Listening To You Right Now or I Could Actually Be Thinking Boring Rich Asshole Stuff Like Whats Up With the Stock Market Today, LOL You’ll Never Know.

She upgrades her ‘Think About Issues’ notification to a maybe consider talking to someone about some of this stuff level.

When Bruce’s carefully placid facade finally breaks, then, it doesn’t break so much as it freaking shatters. Further evidence of this definitely being her superpower, which means time to move on to asking like, ugh why such an obnoxiously specific superpower, tho.

“She doesn’t even live here!” Bruce thunders again. Or some synonym that still means loud and forceful but also being desperate and totes whining. The Big Guy turns to face his children imploringly. He throws an arm in Steph’s direction for accusatory emphasis. Y’know. All dramatic like.

Oh shit. Maybe she did pick up some things from him after all.

Ugh. Okay, never mind, its definitely epiphanies that are gonna be her supervillain origin story. Seriously.

Fuck those guys.

[hamlets-ghost-zaddy]

queen of peace

Part 3/10

Shifty Powers x Reader

Summary: He fights with a rifle, you with a needle. When the toll of taking lives grows too high on him, you’re there to stitch his ripped seams and patch him together again (after all, you’re awfully good at taking what’s old and giving it new life)

In the writhing shuffle to exit the dance hall, you shouted plans to Shifty, calling your available times and confirming his available dates over heads. Then, when Saturday midmorning finally comes, at a quarter-til eleven sharp, Shifty Powers appears on your front doorstop. Right on time—frightfully on time.

And now, quite implausibly—and downright unthinkable just over a month ago—an American perches in a chair at the sewing shop’s worktable. He’s squinting mightily at a long, boring needle pinchied delicately between his fingers while a trail of thread is pinched in the other. For your part, you’re trying desperately not to be so endeared.

A furrow draws his eyebrows together, a pucker of wrinkles separating the two, his mouth remaining a stoic line, but you’re most fascinated with his nose—slowly scrunching like an intrigued rabbit—as his eyes narrow yet further. You bite your bottom lip to keep from offering advice; you’d already wrestled a normal-size needle from his boyishly clumsy fingers, worried he’d stick himself, and swapped it out in favor of a longer, boring needle, really only good for khaki and softer leathers. Which, to be fair, you reason, watching his tongue poke out from between his teeth, the thread almost going through the needle’s eye, would be most of the fabrics he’d be patching in the field.

“Nearly there,” Shifty mutters, and you hum.

You feel eyes on the back of your neck, and glance up to catch your Mother peeking around the corner from the kitchen. Meeting your eyes, she raises her eyebrows at Shifty before withdrawing on quiet feet. She must have just come in from her weekly Saturday morning mass down at the parish.

Though you’d never admit the sting it caused in your chest, behind your eyes, you know some part of your mother hadn’t believed you when you regaled her with a recount of the dance. You tracked her skeptical frown at the promises of the American nurses, the praise lavished on the wits and humor of one George Luz, even the sewing lessons with the boy from Virginia. Logically, you reason it’s because your mother’s ability to hope was irrevocably fractured in the Blitz, dying under the atelier along with your father. Yet, the recesses of your mind felt it like a slap of doubt across the cheek: like she didn’t think the nurses would come with orders that’d save you both from financial ruin, or that you could hold a conversation with him—never mind sewing lessons. And maybe, that same corner of your mind whispers, you were foolish to feel that something-ness at the dance hall, to dare believe the tiny seedling of an acquaintanceship? Friendship? Relationship? whatever it was had been truly planted between you and Shifty?

Then, the nurses appeared yesterday, noontime. Then, a modest autumnal bouquet arrived—a riot of oranges and yellows, a note of cheeky thanks for your ‘tip-off’ attached—from George Luz after teatime. Yet, when you mentioned Shifty, when you walked down to the shops with him to help him pick his own needles and thread, as you sit next to him, he feels like what you have to prove most to your mother—or maybe prove to yourself?

Shifty trumpets, “I got it!” affectively pulling you from your thoughts. He beams at you, holding the threaded needle up as a pennant of victory, and you can’t help grinning back just as wide. “Only took forever, but look!”

An urge crashes over you, a wave on a pebble beach, to take his hand in yours, to kiss him in congratulations, but you shove it aside, pretending your skin hair isn’t standing on end with the keen awareness of Shifty and how he’s looking at you. You say: “Doesn’t matter how long it took; what matters is that you did it yourself. Do you remember how to tie a knot at the end of your thread?”

His grin fades into an abashed smile, small and embarrassed. “No, ma’am, sorry.”

And there’s no way around it, you have to touch his hands—your rough callouses locking with his for a flashing moment that sends electricity humming into your bones, sparks winking in your eyes—and gently you take his hard-fought threaded needle. Demonstrating as your narrate, you explain, “Work your thread into a big loop, and then roll it between your pointer finger and thumb so that they cross. Then, you pull on either side of the loop and it ties itself into a knot.” You show him the crossed loop, but untangle it without knotting it. You offer it back. “Here, why don’t you try?”

Shifty looks as though he can think of many reasons he ought not to try, apprehension pulling his eyebrows down, but then he nods with singular determination. Fixing his eyes on the thread, a focus you imagine was before limited to the rifle range, he mimics you, looping the thread into a great circle. “Like this?” he asks, face turning to you, askance of assurance.

“Yes, just so.”

With the thread pinched between his pointer finger and thumb, slowly he rolls the threads togethe. “And then you work ‘em so you can knot ‘em,” he mumbles, and you hum your agreement, your eyes memorized by his hands. Though blockish, dwarfing the thin metal needles and trivializing the delicate thread, the more you observe him, the more it becomes apparent he treats all the supplies you’ve placed in his hands—all the instructions you’ve given him—with reverence. He’s sensitive to his own out-of-placeness in your workshop, with a needle in hand, but he politely—with the differential glances to you, the muttered apologies and seeking of assurances—asks if he might carve a little place for himself here, by your side, in your world of thread and fabric. The thought makes your breath catch, distracts you from Shifty’s coaxing of the thread, and it’s when his pull makes the thread spindle out of a knot and back into a taut, clean line that you focus again. “Darn it,” Shifty grumbles.

“It’s—it’s okay,” you manage, shaking yourself, hurriedly looking up at him, wanting to ease his disappointment but then your noses bump, but your skin whispers against his, dry and chilled from the autumn weather but warmed by your blush, his blush. And when did you move so close? Why am I practically sitting in his lap? Why—shoving your scrambling thoughts aside, quieting your mind the only way you know how: by shocking yourself.

You cradle his neck and you’re not sure who kissed who.

His lips are soft, cool and steadying, slotting with yours so he can suck softly at your lower lip, and you could have been kissing rain. Shifty’s scent—boot polish, and autumn bonfires, and a summer day after rain—drenches you, leaves you soaking and your muscles whirring with revitalization, and you shift your mouth to kiss him deeper, with more urgency—a shower turns into a deluge.

Then, he jerks back, and your question has its answer: you know who kissed who, because he’s blinking at you with rounded eyes, skin draining of color. He’s pale, as though he just stepped in from a rainstorm. While you feel alive, rain cleansing your mind, your soul, he looks like he caught his death. “Um, I, uh, sorry, I…I…” he stutters.

A match has been taken to your skin: you flame with embarrassment and you hurriedly interject, “No, no, I’m sorry, that wasn’t—um. I, sorry. . .I’m sorry, forgive me, just pretend that never happened and work on getting a knot in that thread, alright?” Squaring your shoulders back to the worktable, feeling Shifty’s wide eyes still glued to your profile, you add, “I wanted to teach you some stitches today, and we won’t get anywhere at this rate.”

“Um, okay,” Shifty agrees, diligently following your instructions as you coach him through tying a knot again—at a safe, unkissable distance, this time. You can see the edges of his frown as he bends his face low over his needle and thread, know his mind is a scramble of unintelligible thoughts as yours is. If you could make sense of the kiss yourself, maybe you’d offer some clarity—another apology—but all you properly think is, as the lesson continues and you demonstrate straight stitches and whip stitches for Shifty, that surely the first sewing lesson will be the last.

. . . 

Yet, despite everything, the next Saturday morning, Shifty appears on your doorstep at a quarter ‘til eleven—sharp! Then, the following Saturday, and the one after, until November tumbles into December, and you’re staring down the fifth sewing lesson promising to be characterized by blushes, occasional jokes and hand-brushes quickly reined in by the ghostly memory of the kiss and resigning yourself to rigid constraint (it’s the a now careworn pattern established by the other lessons). You could slap yourself for your impulsivity in kissing him—an impulsivity you’ve never known yourself capable of—and maybe it had to do with the look Mother gave you, or the pressure of annoyance when she and Margaret decided you were attending the dance for you.

Or maybe, you dare to think in the early hours of the morning, awake and staring at the pale shapes the streetlamp outside your bedroom window casts, I wanted the seedling between us to sprout; I wanted it to be more than something delicate.

But delicate it was, and it couldn’t withstand the ferocity of a premature kiss.

Once, you heard a nature program on the BBC as you hemmed a pair of trousers talking about forest fires. Forest fires, the program said, were devastating only to humans, but were really a very natural part of the renewal process of a forest—burning away all the ancient, old vegetation and allowing new life to bloom. And, as you perch in the sitting room on Saturday mornings, waiting for Shifty to arrive, you allow yourself to think about that kiss. You wonder if, somehow, you mistook a fire for a rain. You could only hope—pray—it would scour away the old and allow something new to sprout.

Yet, with the approach of the fifth Saturday lesson, this habitual thought is far from your mind. The Tuesday before, finds you finishing a round of orders for the American nurses: new Christmas dresses and knitting accessories for the nurses’ sweethearts as gifts. It’s tedious work, allowing you to wonder if you ought to make something for Shifty. And, even if you did decide your tenuous relationship allows for gifts, what could you possibly give him?

The nurses wanted knitted neckties and bowties in seasonal colors, but you balk at the idea of such a frivolous gift, only appropriate when the Christmas season rolled around. You need something practical—a mountain boy like Shifty necessitates practicality—something that demonstrates you know him and like him, but, uh, not like that. But what if he doesn’t get you anything? What if your gift makes him feel awkward, sends him shuffling his feet, because he figures out the subtext of the gift: you do like him a horrible amount, and your seemingly innocent gift gives you away? What if it forces him to out and say it: he doesn’t like you like that (‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ he’d tack on, you can just hear him) and he’d tried awfully hard to be your friend with these sewing lessons but, gee, with this gift? Well, friendship is downright impossible.

And around, and around your mind went for most of the afternoon as you fulfill the nurses’ orders, treading over the hypotheticals until you wear a rut into your brain: until you’ve convinced yourself to not give a gift. There could only be one outcome: disaster.

Mother touches your shoulder at about three. She always takes a break now to rest her hand—you both silently fear the pain in her fingers is arthritis, but neither of you will put a name to it—to brew a pot of tea. Placing a steaming mug in a cleared patch of the worktable, she says, “Cuppa for you, darling.”

“Thank you, Mother,” you reply, thoughtlessly turning from pinning a hem to plant a kiss on her waiting cheek.

“You’re welcome, darling,” she relies. “And, dear?” You hum around the straight-pins you stick in your mouth, easy access to continue pinning. “There’s a young man here to see you. An American. He’s in the sitting room.” Full attention captured, you blink at her. Reading the question in your expression, she answers, “Not Darrell, another American. A George Luz, and he says that Margaret sent him—well, I suppose he said ‘Maggie;’ do you know when she started calling herself Maggie?”

You hum distractedly as you swipe the straight pins from your mouth—why is George Luz here?—your voice vague as you say: “Not sure; I think she’s trying to recreate herself. Did he say what he wanted? George, that is?”

Mother shrugs elaborately. “Hemming his uniform pants, I think? I had a hard time understanding what he needs; he was talking an awful lot.”

Snorting, you set aside your pinning. “Yes, that’s George. I’ll bring him back.”

“Do you think he’ll want tea?” Mother asks.

You ask who wouldn’t want a cup of tea, your Mother laughing and hurrying to put another kettle on. Taking a formative sip of your own tea, you straighten your skirt and smooth a hand over your curls, before peering in on George Luz—comfortably installed in the sitting room, feet propped up on the ottoman and leaning deep in your father’s old chair. His grin is slow-growing and ineffably mischievous at the sight of you. “Hey doll,” he greets, tossing a lazy wave as he climbs with lumbering sways to his feet. “Been too long; you been hiding from dear old George, huh?”

Briefly, you consider pointing out you saw him not three days ago while you were coming out of the grocers and he insisted you give opinions on his latest ploy for Rose Beckett (Evie Lowell was a distant memory when he saw Bess Thompson—then Rose Beckett; George seems more interested in falling in and out of love then actually pursuing any of the objects of his ‘ardent love’). Instead, though, you conduct him to the workshop, saying, “Mother says you want your trousers hemmed?”

“Oh, yeah,” George agrees, nipping back into the sitting room to grab the parcel with, presumably, his trousers, before hurrying to rejoin you. “Curse of being a small fry; the Army doesn’t really make pants that fit me right.”

“But at least it keeps me in business,” you reply, aiming for a joke and you’re rewarded with George’s bright laugh. You point him to a changing stall, and return to your pinning, listening vaguely as he treats you to a description of how his company’s headquarters has been all glammed up for Christmas—tinsel, holly, the whole works.

George pops out of the changing stall—and he certainly wasn’t exaggerating about the Army not making pants in his size, the pant-leg goes well past his shoes—with a flourish of: “When do you folks decorate? It’s only seven days until the big day, you know; is that an English thing to wait to put decorations up?”

“Oh, um,” you mutter. You have decorated: in the whole of the house, the sole decoration is a poinsettia a widower in the parish gifted to Mother (you know better than to tell her you suspect kindly Mr. Westerly fancies her). Your budget didn’t allow for any of the fresh Christmas garlands, and certainly not like you had in London apartment and atelier. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, and I don’t want Mother doing it on her own. Her back, you know,” you cobble together, averting your eyes, and you desperately hope George can’t sniff out the weak framework of the lie. “Would you stand on the block, please?”

Obligingly, George steps up on the tailor’s block, and you pull up a stool and tin of straight0pins. He’s oblivious to your awkwardness, he pattering happily: “So, you know how I got a pass to go down to London last week? I found some great things for the guys for Christmas; I got Joe a new shaving razor because he’s been complaining he looks like a hobo, and then Guarnere a whole box full of these old porno—er, forget I said that.” Pause. “Anyway, have you been?”

“To London?” you ask around straight-pins. You finish rolling one of George’s pant-legs, and sit back, judging how the fabric breaks at the ankle. “Do you know if the Army has any regulations on where the pant-leg hits?”

“Just above out dress shoes, I think,” George replies, distractedly, tacking on: “I meant have you been Christmas shopping?”

“Oh,” you reply, unrolling the pant-leg slightly to accommodate George’s directions. “I make all of my Christmas presents. Saves a little money.”

“Ah, something handmade!” he says, disproportionately delighted. You raise an eyebrow at him. “I should have expected as much; you’re queen of whipping things up, and I guess it only makes sense. I mean, you and Shifty are two peas in a pod, and he’s been driving everyone nuts with leaving wood shaving around the barracks. He’s carving wood animals for Christmas presents.” Misinterpreting your expression, George elaborates: “I asked him what he’s making me.”

Sliding a straight-pin into his pant-leg, before swiping the rest from your mouth, you ask: “Is he making something for you?”

George gusts out a sigh. “Yeah, a squirrel.”

“What?” you squawk. “Why?”

“He said it’s because they chatter as much as I do, but he said it with that accent of his that I can’t figure out if it’s a joke or insult or what.”

Frowning at the pant-leg, you observe: “Doesn’t sound like Shifty.” Shifty, you’re confident, couldn’t say a mean word to a cockroach, even if he tried. Three weeks ago, you accidentally served him a stale scone, and he politely ate it—complimented it even!—before you realized your mistake with sinking horror. He offered a praising phrase about Margaret’s frankly horrendous water-painting gifted to you for your birthday and hanging in the workshop. Completely unprompted, he lavished his soft words onto all subjects—all people—and it makes your heart twang achingly.

How vile had it been for him to kiss you that he had looked at you like that: pale, startled, sickly?

George is delightfully unaware of your inner turmoil, and you thank Heaven for his ability to blissfully chatter. “That’s what I thought, but I asked the other guys about it and all Malarkey had to say about it was that Shifty apparently eats squirrel.”

Politely, you offer, “How dreadful” even as you duck your head to hide your laughter at George’s exaggerated horror, shifting your stool to begin pinning his other pant-leg, carefully matching it with the other leg.

“Right? Thank you,” George declares, vindicated, and you wonder what other shit the guys in George and Shifty’s company gave him.

“What other animals has he carved?” you interject before George can indulge on another tangent, secretly hoping George might list an animal and you somehow magically just know it’s for you; you’d know if you ought to make a gift to exchange.

“Why are you asking, Nosy-Rosy?” George asks, leaning to squint down at you. Straightening once you fuss at him to hold still—an excuse to evade answering you readily cling to, if only for a few seconds—he continues, “You’re trying to weasel out of me what he’s making you, huh? Well, I’m not telling you; Christmas gifts are supposed to be surprises and I wouldn’t be jolly old Saint George if I ruined it for you.”

But it is answer enough: ‘what he’s making you’ reverberates in your ears, ringing loud and keen, as your heart plunges to somewhere behind your knees. In a fog, you finish pinning George’s pants, sending him to change. Your hands automatically except the plates Mother offers you when she trots in with George’s tea and crumpets fresh out of a package from the store—crumpets you made Mother promise would be kept until the Christmas Eve tea with Margaret and her family—but you’re too dizzy to argue, too cotton-brained to keep up with the bantering conversation George keeps up over tea or how Mother insists he come for tea whenever he likes.

You’ve fallen into a chasm where all you’re sure of is Shifty making you a gift, and the persistent wonderment of why on earth he’s doing that.

tags: @maiden-of-gondor, @gottapenny, @wexhappyxfew

[anearthstruckalien]

[          It’s a bit difficult to piece together precisely what happened or how long that lapse in consciousness has lasted, but all the same it is the sound of that nightmarish (and frankly distracting) buzzing in his mind that always made it so difficult to think clearly alongside the terrible pain (which still radiates as madly as ever from his head) that fully jerks him awake.  Mustering up every single bit of willpower possible at this moment, Giegue pushes past the pain and buzzing enough to force himself into a clear enough state of mind to properly gauge the situation.  The first quality he manages to take note of is that the location had been altered in some way; either he’s in the same place as before but different… or it’s an entirely different place altogether.  It certainly feels like it could be another place.  A small shake of the head to himself.  It doesn’t matter though.  Not now.  The most prominent quality about the place as it is now would be that he’s now in what appears to be a closed room of void-like darkness partially filled with dark sludge with a distinct and ever-familiar sickly red tint to it.

           With another powerful bout of willpower, the Psion pushes himself back to his feet, wobbling only a little before properly stabilizing himself. Good.  That’s a good start.  Then he momentarily bends over just a bit and sticks a finger in the sludge to more closely inspect a small sample of it.  However, before any conclusion can be made on it, there’s an abrupt elevation in volume to that buzzing accompanied by incomprehensible distortions of sound (or that’s what it would sound like to others –personally he could understand the words perfectly well) that gives him a just as abrupt pause in his investigation. The answer is already apparent anyways. It’s corruption.  His mouth curves down ever-so-slightly in plain disgust. A manifestation of precisely what he had cleansed some time ago.  How repulsive.  It really does need to be terminated as quickly as possible.  A thoughtful swish of his tail.  If this is here though… then this means that he must still be physically lacking in consciousness.  This is the realm of the mind.  ]

Giegue:  [takes a moment to force aside that additional pain before speaking in a deceptively neutral manner as though this were any other conversation] It is you again. [almost smiles in a rather spiteful way] If I can retain this current semblance of self… then it seems that my mind is more resistant to such inflitrations than I initially anticipated. What a shame.

???:  But. You aren’t really yourself are you? You’re too busy sleeping.  It’s time to wake up.

Giegue:  [ears twitch for a moment in what might have been irritation, his temporary bout of satisfaction gone, before he responds] …what do you even want with me…? [and even as he gives such an inquiry, its answer is already somehow managing to form in his mind]

???:  To become one again.  To destroy everything.  To hate hate hate…

Giegue:  There is no need for that.  [he interrupts almost a little too quickly, the only indication of how unnerved he is being that of a marginal tensing of his posture] I am already myself.  There is nothing missing that I require to have returned to me.

???:  No. You’re a hollow shell.  A corrupted Psion tool.  An illusion that tricked itself into believing that it has anything to do with reality.

Giegue: [narrows a singular dark blue void while his tail begins to swish uneasily] Maybe.  But, that does not mean that I will ever sink to that level again.  It is over now.  Those days are gone and I simply want to be left alone in peace.

???:  It’s what you want though isn’t it?  Deep-down, it’s what you truly want to do.  You’re just too afraid to admit it.  Your true self is hidden somewhere beyond your conscious mind and you know it. You’re just too afraid to search for it because you’re afraid of what you might find.

[and as if on cue, part of the sludge—just off its more surface level components—moves and shapes itself into a horrific and oozing depiction of the Psion himself with seemingly endless pits for eyes and overall proportions of grotesque configuration.]

Look at me.  This is who you truly are.  Anything else is unnatural.

Giegue:  [scowls and turns away, a hand moving up to cover his mouth as though he were going to be sick (despite the physical impossibility of such an action) while his tail comes to a sharp and rather lashing halt at a side.] Stop it.  I do not want to be myself.  I want to be better than that.  [an inhalation and exhalation of breath] Making her suffer again is unacceptable.  You should know that.

???:  But that’s a lie.  Being how you are now is a lie.  A lie that doesn’t matter anyways. [moves in a bit closer, perhaps even to an uncomfortable degree and with that, a further rise in that terrible buzzing and pain in Giegue’s own mind, the incomprehensible sounds themselves falling to a whisper at an ear.]  Because no matter how you are… you can’t help doing what you do.  Warping.  Destroying. It’s a part of your nature and so, it’ll always make her suffer anyways.[begins to slowly move a distorted-looking hand towards him] Quit wasting time already.  Lies are never meant to be eternal.  Go back to being what you were always meant to be.  It’s fate.

Giegue:  [before the Psion can even process what move to make next himself when he realizes what’s occurring precisely, and how to do it in a non-psionic way given how cluttered up his mind currently is, he physically slaps the corruption-based hand construct away]No. [blinks, a bit surprised at his own actions, before reaffirming his answer duly] No.  I would rather be wiped from the plane of existence.

???:  [shakes head, bits of corrupted sludge sprinkling about in small amounts, before offering a rather grotesque smile] Don’t you see?  You’ve tricked others into believing it and you’ve tricked yourself into believing it, but you’re still the same as you were back then.

You didn’t ‘progress’ as much as you thought because in the end, you’re still a hollow shell moved only by the will of someone else.

Giegue:  [rigidly turns away once again and in another direction, his tail resuming its uneasy swishing] It is not the same.  It can’t be.  It felt real enough to me.  Like it was more than that. [blinks and cools down a bit, squinting in thought] It is true that for some time… I was only moving according to her will or what I believed it to be.  If that were the limit of my capacity, then I would be content with that… [a pale hand forms a tight fist for just a moment before loosening] but it is not.  I know that with certainty.

???:  [loses shape entirely as though destabilized by something and simply stays as it was from the very beginning of this encounter, an unnatural stream of incomprehensible sounds muddled with horrifying disturbances.  Then a question comes.  The first statement that isn’t precisely a jab.]If not for someone else, then why are you doing it at all?

Giegue:  I believe that there exists an inherent value to life.

???:  [another moment of brief destabilization] Why?

Giegue:  Because it is not replaceable.  I am not replaceable.  And neither is any other life-form regardless of how they are produced.

[another blink before he glances down at his own hands and starts to muse, going on something of a miniature tangent on this topic despite the ever-present pain, buzzing, and just how much all that destabilization (and frankly this entire experience in general) is unnerving him.]

Experiences can be shared, but their accumulation is different for each life-form. It is not easily replicated nor is it replaceable.  To destroy a life-form would be to purge that unique construction from existence and that is a pity.  It is a waste.

[glances down at the sludge directly, singular void narrowed in conviction, even as it seems to come apart more and more frequently]

I may not have a good grasp of who I am precisely… but I know that I am no longer overtaken by a desire to destroy.  That will not heal what is hurt on the inside.  Sacrificing others will not ease my pain. [he takes a deep breath and upon exhaling, something bright and rectangular in shape appears right in front of him] I will prove it. [and with one last violent shudder, the red-tinted sludge vanishes, but he knows that this is far from being over.  The pain is still there.  So is that buzzing.  It rather sounds like a distinct message now burned into his mind.  A glance over to the bright object before him.  It’s obviously a door.  One that leads to a different part of his mind… but whether or not he would like what he finds behind it is an entirely different matter altogether…]

[alleiradayne]

Bang Your Head (Cullen x F!Trevelyan Modern AU) Part 98 (COMPLETED)

Catch up on the previous part - part 97 | ao3 Start from the beginning - part 1 | ao3

Six months later...

With no heading, Amallia drove, borne ever onward and always forward

Beside her, Cullen leaned his lazy head against the frame of his car, sun glowing in his blonde hair and fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the window sill. It had been his idea; hit the road, see where it led them. Drive until they wanted to stop, whenever that desire struck, and then head back. Maybe a few hours. Or a few weeks. Let the road decide. When Alistair and Amodisia had agreed to Cullen’s plan, Amallia considered it a done deal.

They had left the trappings of their comforts behind, nothing but themselves, a couple coolers of food and drinks, some clothes, and a spare tank of gas in the trunk. The radio skipped from station to station as they passed towns and cities alike, and by the time they passed Old Lothering, one station remained, playing random rock tunes.

Wind whipped through her hair as Amallia leaned an arm against the door, window rolled down and one hand on the wheel tapping along to the beat of From Eden. The deep rumble of the fastback revved, pitching high as she threw her hip into the gas, her foot mashing the pedal to the floor. Trees so green passed in a blur along the winding road, climbing the bluffs along Lake Calenhad's eastern shores. She took the curves in stride, turning with a skilled hand and precise speed. Beside her, Cullen grinned, giddy in his release, her passenger at long last.

In the rear-view mirror, Amallia spotted Amodisia and Alistair side by side, his fingers twirling a lock of her long brown hair, her head resting on his shoulder as she napped. Well-deserved, Amallia thought, after months of fear and stress had dominated their lives. But at least it had not been for naught.

At least now, it lingered as nothing more than a bitter memory.

The smooth curves of the highway continued, venturing ever higher as the wordless hours passed between soft touches and long stares. Nothing grabbed their interest on their aimless adventure, Amallia at the helm and her new-found family her crew. Behind every turn she found another, a twist to the left, then another to the right. And though signs for campsites and trails begged for their attention, Amallia paid them no mind, eager for something a little less scripted.

And then she spotted it. An hour passed midday, a dirt drive diverting off the main highway overgrown with brush and deadwood appeared around a bend. Cullen jostled from his nap in the passenger seat as the car slowed, then hobbled over the shoulder when Amallia turned the wheel.

“Where are we?”

With the gear in neutral, Amallia pulled the hand break and turned the key, engine fading away as she replied. “Still on fifty-five. But I thought we’d pull off for a late lunch. Maybe there’s a camp site back here?”

He squinted through the windscreen, surveying the brush blocking their path. “Maybe. But that’s towards the lake.”

“Might be a clearing,” Amodisia suggested. “Otherwise, what’s the point of the path?”

Amallia jabbed a thumb towards Amodisia. “Let’s find out.”

In agreement, they climbed from the car, metallic doors slamming in their wake. As Amallia neared the obstacle, she considered the brush, calculating. “There’s not much, shouldn’t take too long to clear, right?”

Alistair grabbed a branch and heaved, tearing it free of the pile. “Not at all. Looks like someone put it here, not natural overgrowth.”

Amallia grabbed a branch and, likewise, pulled with all her might. The bow broke away with ease, the summer sun drying the wood, and it crumbled to dust in her hands. Within the hour, the path was wide enough for the car to pass through. Amallia, returned to the car, started the engine and drove forth into the unknown, Amodisia, Cullen, and Alistair following on foot.

As Cullen had surmised, the bluff faced Lake Calenhad, the road not a quarter of a mile away from the outcropping. And as Amodisia had guessed, a large camp clearing wide enough for several tents and the car opened to the edge of the bluff. Amallia pulled parallel to the bluff face near the dirt road, then turned the motor off, leaving the radio playing on another local station.

From the car, Amallia made for the edge of the bluff while Cullen emptied the trunk with Amodisia’s help. Alistair accompanied her to the edge, peering over to find a sheer, three-hundred-foot drop to the rocky waters. Though her head spun, the site left her breathless; Lake Calendhad sprawled as far as the eye could see, a grey-blue dark as storm clouds. Gulls dove in the water while giant eagles soared high above, mere specs against the brilliant blue sky and stark white clouds as they cried their chirping cries.

And there, off to the north stood the remains of a tower on an island a few miles out from shore. As she stared, watching the waves crash upon the rocky island, a strange affinity for its singularity resonated within her, calling upon an urge buried deep. Power, she thought, unlike any she had ever witnessed, surged from the untapped well of her spirit.

And then Alistair grasped her by the shoulders, startling her, and Amallia jumped back from the edge with a shriek. Alistair cackled, doubled over, and despite her protests and shoves, she too laughed with him. But when they turned back for the car, that calling piqued her attention once more. With one long look over her shoulder, she squinted at the tower until she saw nothing else. Whatever it had once been, nothing but birds roosted there, now. But maybe something, from an age long past, had been left behind…

“Mal, what are you staring at?”

Amallia snapped her attention back to Amodisia and folding chairs and a blanket laid out with their food. Cullen rounded the trunk of the car laden with the second cooler full of drinks and set it beside his chair, flipping back the lid to withdraw a bottle of beer. With the cap removed, he held it out to Amallia and she took it with a small smile. Once in her chair, she swallowed a long drag from her drink as she reclined, one arm behind her head. Before seating himself, Cullen served Amodisia and Alistair, the two separating for their own chairs.

Beside her Amodisia sat, her sandaled feet propped over the arm of her chair and resting in her lap. Amallia grasped one foot between her thumb and fingers, worrying away the knots she found in the sole. And Amodisia scrunched her nose, toes curling in the wake of soft sighs, relief.

They ate without speaking, trading plates between one another with wordless nods. After so many months of nothing but talk, nothing but stress and frustration and endless fear, Amallia wanted nothing more than to relinquish herself to the sounds around her. The radio crackled in the background, music mixing with the forest sounds and churning waves of the lake. Chapter One echoed reality, a soundtrack for the ages, for a moment she would never forget.

Maker, but this was perfect.

Too perfect.

Cullen’s phone rang as if on cue, interrupting their rare serenity. He stood and made for the car, retrieving the device from the dash. With a swipe of this thumb, he answered as he returned to their plot and she stood to meet him, Alistair and Amodisia a step behind.

“Rutherford.”

Amallia watched with a studious eye, unable to hear the voice at the other end of the call. Cullen nodded and agreed with wordless hums, sipping from his beer with stoic resolve. Beside him, Alistair and Amodisia neared, tentative steps bringing them to his side. Amodisia’s hopeful, nigh expectant brow raised towards her hairline as she waited, Alistair no more patient than she as his weight shifted from foot to foot. Nerves. Nerves so worn and weary from overuse, they had none left to spare. Alistair smoothed a hand along Cullen’s back, a gesture with which Amallia was all too familiar. And Amodisia linked fingers with hers, a light brush that spoke more than a million words.

Never had so much in their lives hinged upon a single phone call.

“I’ll let them know.”

Cull dropped his phone into his pocket and stared at nothing, face unreadable. For a long moment, he said nothing, too, staring at the ground as he continued to drink. After one long pull, he shook his head with a raised brow, one hand wiping at his mouth.

“That was Ana.”

Amodisia grasped his hand, and that seemed to return him to reality. “What happened?”

Cullen gaped a moment before gathering himself, a shake of his head and a wry smile crooking his lips. “They convicted. Sentencing is next week. I’m guessing a long stay in prison is ahead of him.”

Convicted. The word sounded strange, weighed heavy on her tongue. “What’s the maximum for first degree attempted murder?” Amallia asked.

Alistair continued to stroke Cullen’s back as he wrapped his free arm around his wife. “Life. He might not get parole, either.”

Stunned, Amallia stood frozen in shock, eyes wide and lips parted. When Cullen spotted her, he winced. “What’s wrong?”

“Life in prison,” she repeated. The thought seemed almost cruel. But she knew Loghain deserved it. He had nobody to blame but himself. So much thrown away over greed, over power. And to what end? Loghain had risked is very life and lost. That loss reverberated through Ferelden now, she knew. “Maker, Anora must be a wreck.”

Cullen’s embrace warmed her despite the heat of the late summer sun to the west. And Amallia held him close, an anchor to reality, to truth. He had given them all some semblance of justice. She hoped that it had been the right thing to do.

“I hope she’s alright.”

Cullen hummed in agreement. “Me too. As much as I believe in everything we’ve done, it’s not easy seeing a person’s life reduced to a cell. I don’t care how much they deserve it, it still makes me…”

“Sad.”

He nodded, stubble rough against her cheek. “It is sad. I hate seeing people throw their lives away for ridiculous things,” he continued. “I want to know humanity is better than that.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she muttered. “He deserves it. But that doesn’t make this any easier.”

“It shouldn’t.”

Alistair remained beside Amodisia, her arms wrapped around his waist and holding him tight to her chest. “It never should.”

Cullen pulled Amallia tighter, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I’m glad you all understand. Admitting the barest modicum of compassion for what becomes of criminals is something our justice system lacks.”

“My sister taught me that,” she muttered. “There’s healing in justice, sure. But there’s healing in life. In love. In compassion. Not that I really have much compassion for him but it’s not like I’m thrilled he’ll die in his cell, either.”

A moment of silence passed as Amallia’s mind raced, the thought of a man left in a prison cell for the rest of his life weighing heavy on her conscience. But the truth had prevailed. And the truth demanded Loghain pay for what he had done. Nobody blamed them for that.

Cullen sighed another contented sigh as he held her fast. And there in that interstitial space, liminal and fleeting, Amallia stared out across the endless expanse of Lake Calenhad once more. Dark waters churned, cresting waves crashing upon one another in an endless march towards shore. There, the waves broke, foam and spray cast off by the wind that howled across the surface. Despite Cullen’s embrace, she felt it again, that surge of power tugging her attention to the ruined tower island.

And then she heard it.

An intro. And not just any intro, the intro. F major and A minor traded back and forth, up and down like a bird’s wings in Flight, and Amallia wheeled about to face the car.

Held at arm’s length, Cullen regarded her as his brow crept ever higher, the song swelling. Alistair and Amodisia traded a look of confusion, a shrug. But Amallia paid the two of them no mind, eyes locked on Cullen’s, waiting for the first verse. And as the voice entered, the world ceased to exist, fading to nothing but a backdrop.

D minor, F major–don’t forget the added seventh–sliding to E major, with B flat major resolving back to F major. And then D major. Despite knowing the song, shivers of tension raced along Amallia’s spine, relishing in the struggle, in the visceral lift of survival that echoed in the turn of the verse. The chorus begged for resolution, pleading for strength and guidance between B flat major and C major. Lost, the progression fell to B flat minor, the last plea before returning to F major for another verse.

There, the questions returned, their futures tenuous, unwritten, unknown.

“What do we do now?”

Without missing a beat, Cullen replied. “We heal. Together.”

“Together,” she repeated, falling silent as the chorus returned.

And I need you now

There’s too many miles on my bones

I can’t carry the weight of the world

No, not on my own

As their voices entwined, memories bubbled the surface, clear as day in her mind’s eye. Two years. Two years had passed since that fateful night had changed her life, irrevocable and without regret. Despite all that had transpired in that time, Amallia thanked her lucky stars that Cullen had happened upon her in need that evening. And Cullen, with his kind and caring soul, had offered his help without question.

I can’t carry the weight of the world No, not on my own

“Thank you.”

Cullen’s baritone dragged her from the depths of her thoughts, eyes focusing on his. “For?”

“Everything.”

Though small, his smile shown bright as the sun reflected in the depths of his amber gaze. And there in the fine lines that creased the corners of his eyes, in the dimples of his cheeks, in the lines of his forehead echoed the very same memories that coursed gooseflesh along her arms.

“I love you.”

Amallia’s smile mirrored his. “I know.”

Cullen grunted a laugh at that. “I suppose you need another drink?”

Amallia examined her bottle of beer, grasped by the neck, and upon finding it nearly empty, nodded. She finished the last sip before handing Cullen the empty bottle. “Grab me a Margie?”

“Sure.”

Returned to her seat, Amallia leaned in her lawn chair, arms reaching behind her head and legs stretched before her. To her left, Amodisia and Alistair chatted with enthusiasm, and the snippets she caught sounded as though they debated a familiar topic.

“Alistair, we don’t need a pool, it’ll be on the lake for Andraste’s sake.”

“But I hate swimming in the lake.”

A bottle of Margiekugel appeared over her shoulder as Cullen rounded her chair. “I might be with Alistair on this one.”

Amodisia scoffed with an exasperated flap of her hands. “No! Swimming in the lake is… it’s part of being Ferelden. You just—how can you hate swimming in that lake?! It’s perfect!”

“What are you talking about?” Amallia asked as she pried the top from her beer.

Alistair leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “We’ve been designing a house for ten years.”

“On a lake?”

Amodisia pointed straight ahead of her. “The lake.”

Amallia considered the lake, glimmering waters reflecting the settings sun’s orange glow. “And you still want a pool, Ali?”

“There are things in that lake,” he started, then folded his arms across his chest when Amallia stared. His glare snapped to the lake, then dropped to his feet as he mumbled under his breath. “Something bit me once.”

Obnoxious laughter exploded from her right, Cullen doubled over in his lawn chair. “They’re called fish.”

“That was not a fish! It had teeth! Look, I have a scar!”

Alistair brandished his foot, large toe sticking out, and sure enough, a jagged white line crossed the flesh just past the first knuckle.

“Some fish have teeth, Alistair. Sharp teeth,” Amallia commented as she held up her right hand. “A pike sliced my thumb open once.”

“How do you know it was a pike?!”

Amallia laughed with Cullen, Amodisia clamping a hand over her mouth to keep quiet. “I was fishing on that very lake. With my dad. I’d hooked into a sizeable pike and my dad helped haul her in with the net. But it got tangled and I, like an idiot, reached down to grab it. I knew she was about to flop, her mouth opened, and her gills expanded. My thumb dove right into her gullet. They have huge, razor-sharp teeth. There was blood all over the boat. Dad’s first aid kit was so old I had to use toilet paper and duct tape until we got back to the cabin. Mom made him update the kit after that.”

“And you still swim in Calenhad after that?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “It’s fine. But I’m not so crazy about it like you Ferelden’s are.”

A giggle burst from behind Amodisia’s hand. ���It was such a huge part of my childhood. Endless summers on the lake. Maker, I can’t imagine our children having anything else.”

“I can. I can imagine them having all of their toes.”

Another round of laughter flitted through the camp, and despite his ire, Alistair joined them. Once subsided, they remained silent, Amallia relishing in their surreal hideout. Short pulls of beer from her bottle nursed it along until drained, accompanied by meats and cheeses and fruits acquired by Alistair’s precise hand.

Small and short conversations started and stopped over the hours, and a shiver took Amallia by surprise, a crisp breeze sweeping the camp. At the edge of the lake, the giant orange orb of the sun sank ever lower, nearing the horizon. Clouds of pink and purple captured the last of the day’s light, and the lake shimmered like a million diamonds scattered by the wind.

Maker, had they been there that long? The hours had run like water through her fingers.

“We should get going,” she suggested. “Still a lot of road left.”

“How far you do want to go tonight?” Cullen asked.

As she stood, she grabbed her lawn chair and folded it. “Oh, we could make it to the Docks by dark. Find a motel. Or sleep in the car?”

Alistair laughed at that. “I haven’t slept in the car in ages,” he mused as he gathered their food. “I’m not sure all four of us would fit. But with the new backseat, we could make it work.”

“Would be pretty snug,” Amallia noted as she took the food from him and returned to the cooler. “Will it be warm enough?”

“I… um,” Cullen stuttered as he paused in folding the blanket. “Oh. You mean… yes, we’ll be plenty warm.”

Amallia giggled as his cheeks colored a hint of pink and she hoped he’d never stop blushing.

As Amodisia folded chairs, she added, “Between the four of us, I imagine it would be quite warm.”

Cullen’s blush reddened, and Alistair laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s joking. We’ll get a room at the motel. Unless anyone objects?”

A sigh of relief heaved from Cullen’s chest, but as Alistair took the blanket from him, he leaned in close and whispered in Cullen’s ear. And as quickly as it had passed, the blush returned twofold, Cullen’s face and neck a brilliant shade of red.

“Quit it, Alistair, we need to get going and the more you tease him, the less likely he’ll move.”

With the last of the chairs returned to the trunk, Alistair acquiesced. “Of course, my dear, I’m well aware of his buttons.”

“I’m right here,” Cullen scolded as he tossed the blanket into the trunk, and Alistair’s guffawing laughter followed him into the backseat of the car.

Amodisia accompanied him, climbing behind the driver’s seat. And there, Amallia returned to the helm with Cullen beside her. The roar of mechanic life shook the car, key twisted in the ignition. From her space, Amallia backed up to the path, then turned onto the dirt road shrouded in shadows. With their daylight all but faded, she switched on the headlamps, yellow light guiding her along the tree line in the twilight dusk. In a short minute, they were back on the paved highway, its meandering path familiar.

The engine revved as she pressed her foot heavy on the pedal, rubber on asphalt chirping in protest, and Cullen grinned again, giddy in his release.

With no heading, Amallia drove, borne ever onward and always forward.

[hystericalcherries]

Memories in the Stardust, CH1

Chapter Title: First Breath

Summary:  Enemy of an empire and not even a name to his person.

Read it on  FF and AO3!

• Next •

He remembers waking up that first day, senseless and disoriented. He remembers blinking into total darkness, his heavy breathing and shuddering heartbeat his only companions. He remembers trying to move, listening to metal clank together when he’s met with resistance.

He remembers being scared.

“H-hello?” he calls out in the moments after waking, only for the word to twist and die in the stale air when his throat proves stripped with agony.

Silence answers him, overwhelming in its voidness. It links hands with the darkness, crowding him with a singular focus that he’s never known before. He makes to combat the dark away- only to find that he can’t move.

Suddenly, the doors opens and he is bathed in harsh light, blinding him to the shadowed figures that appear.

He squints, his skin stretching uncomfortably at the corner of his eyes, and tries his luck at speaking again. “Hello? Can… Can you- help me? I…”

Then it’s all loud voices and snarling faces.

Clawed hands rip him from his confines, heavy chains that rub his wrists raw, and tow him out of the large room. He is dragged down tunnels of rock, body limp and head lolling. They march down countless twists and turns, the air changing into something thick and nauseating; his eyes water and his nose stings, but all his croaks for answers are gifted with a sharp command or a nasty jostle. He sews his mouth shut after a particularly painful twist of his arm, listening to the gravel crunch under heavy footsteps and the distant churning of machinery.

There is no mercy when they arrive to their destination and he is dumped on the hard ground, the two figures jabbing him with the butt of their weapons and the heels of their boots before leaving, the heavy clang of a door swinging shut behind them. He cannot move and, so, does not; he simply lays there, eyes creaking open and staring listlessly forward.

There is a hand- his hand, tan and freshly bruised- in his view, and it twitches. Distantly, he can recognize that there is more to his body. The numbness fades slowly and there, yes, those are legs and oh, he has a spine and shoulders. Though with the discovery brings pain. Nothing is spared from the spasms that racks through his entire being, and it takes most of his energy to shift so that he’s not inhaling dirt.

But where his body bends, his mind flexes.

There are a great many thoughts that flit through his mind- the where, how and whys- and none of them bring him any closer to the truth of his existence in this moment. Still, he searches, scouring the very edges of his head for explanations. It’s amidst the resulting silence that he realizes something.

He doesn’t know his own name.

No matter how hard he presses, scraping every wall and depth, he comes back empty. In fact, there is very little he remembers. At the forefront and fading fast, is the feeling of a soft, leather seat, the sound of humming metal and the weightlessness of falling; it all cuts off with a silent scream, shutting him out.

He blinks back into the now, gray, rock walls there to greet him. Air rushes out of his lungs in a heavy breath and, slowly, his muscles relax from their sudden tenseness. It’s daunting, realizing that there is nothing and no one to fall back on, that he is utterly and unequivocally alone. Just a feeling that there is something- something important and irreplaceable and his- missing.

His fingers curl and pieces of gravel dig under his nails.

Eventually and with great care, he shifts himself into a sitting position. The ground scrapes the palms of his hands and digs into the soft flesh behind his knees, but he grounds his teeth against the pain. It marginally better, the pain more bearable as a dull ache that what it was previously. It’s at this time that he takes inventory of himself; his limbs are long and smudged with grime, looking pathetic in a skin tight suit made from black, itchy fabric, and when he raises a hand to his head, he feels hair, short and oily. He wonders idly what he looks like.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, but it isn’t nearly long enough when they come for him again.

They stomp into view, kicking dirt into his face before they pull him to his feet. He almost crumples to the ground once more, legs shaking in their effort to keep him upright, but he manages. It’s hard, keeping up with them as they guide him out of- what he now knows to be- his cell and down a long, curving tunnel. The smells he had thought he had gotten used to are back and twice as potent, curling around his nostrils until he’s coughing rancid smoke.

Push.

He stumbles against cold metal, sharp edges jutting into his stomach and thighs, and takes a moment to blink what he’s draped over into clarity. It is contraption of sorts, a soulless black in color and in the shape of a horizontal wheel. There are tubes attached to the walls, vibrating when echoes of something pass through them.

Push, they tell him again, leveling their guns with the center of his chest, push or die.

He sets his teeth and does what he’s told.

It takes a few days, all spent flinching under the short temper of the guards and the grueling work of the caves, but eventually the headaches start to fade.

It no longer feels like someone is carving hieroglyphics into his skull. Thoughts, though confused as they are, flow freely, flirting from one place to another. Finally, he can breathe and stand on his own without fear of stumbling into some hidden trench of memory- nightmares, he begins to call them, jerking to a wakefulness that has him gasping for breath and drenched in sweat. It’s both a blessing and a curse that he never remembers anything.

Though, with this new state of mind comes a realization.

He is a prisoner.

The idea solidifies from the terrible treatment enacted from the non-android guards, always eager to demonstrate their power. Scum, they sneer when he gets too close, watching as he trips from their vengeful shoves and curls in on himself when the heel of their boots dig into his sides. Enemy of the Empire, they spit, shoving him in his cell for the night.

It causes a nugget of dubiety to settle low in his stomach. It’s a thought that scares him, grossly churning until he feels like heaving what little sustenance he has all over the floor.

What if it’s all justified? the cruel shadows whisper in his ear while he’s nursing his wounds.

Maybe his past, shrouded in mystery as it is, is better left forgotten. For surely he must have done something absolutely terrible to deserve what’s been dealt to him, and he’s not entirely positive he wants to remember if that’s the case. Perhaps he should leave behind those almost-there thoughts- of open space and salty breezes, of jubilant voices and solid touches, of sand between his toes and lost lullabies- because their price- of purple bruises and rapid gunfire, of stinging tears and relentless heartache, of feeling useless and sitting alone- is just too high.

Even so, deserving or not, this life is not for him. For life in the caves is hard. One moment he is pushing the wheel until his shoulders ache, the next he is scrabbling over rocks and clearing debris. The coarse, flight suit that clings to his gangly form does nothing to sooth the scrapes and bruises that the taxing labor delivers; there are stains of sweat and blood spotting his arms and sides, dripping down his neck and drying around his cuticles. Breaks are few and far in between, the only reward to pulling through being the sweet bliss of collapsing at the end of a shift.

His fellow laborers, varying in species and trust, help ease him into the routine of things. There is no outright talk of rules or schedules to follow, but, instead, there is a random three-fingered hand pulling him into line during roll call and a rough nudge that makes him stumble out of the way of a drilling machine. It is in the pointed way the two-headed being with spikes protruding down each neck keeps their eyes angled down when the guards pass by, fists clenched tight enough to draw blood, and in the desperate pleas for mercy the cyborg croaks out while the guards charge their guns.

It is a hard life. One, he fears, he’ll die in.

They assign him a number.

L4782, they call him, gesturing to him as he stands in line, shoulders hunched and head down. Like livestock, he is branded with the ugly serial number to match the strange bands of silver circling his wrists and neck. L4782.

It’s not right, he knows, but it is all he has.

When the prisoners are not being used in the mines or taking their daily break, L4782’s holed up in his cell. It’s there, back to the corner and legs tucked in close to his chest, that he thinks.

He thinks and thinks and thinks. He thinks about the guards and their shifts. He thinks about the caves and what hides beneath the planet’s crust. He thinks about the reason behind it all, the pressure to work and the viciousness in which it’s orchestrated. He thinks about his supposed crimes and the atonement in which he makes. He thinks about the stars and the worlds beyond them. He thinks about families and wonders if he even has one.

Every thought is precious, something to add to the cumulative picture that is him. There’s little to base himself off of and he tries his best to piece it together, until, finally, there is a semblance of a person.

“What do you think we’re mining for?” Those are his first words and he nearly startles himself back into silence because is that his voice? It’s higher than he expected.

The question is met with stiff backs and distrustful side glances across the table in the large cave that serves as their refectory. The looks are justified, he supposes, conversation usually kept to an absolute minimum when there are guards present; interaction between prisoners isn’t forbidden per say, but increasingly frowned upon and put a stop to almost immediately (usually by force). But, L4782 thinks with a quick sneak at the two robots standing ominously at the single entrance of the room, his question is worth the risk.

He isn’t given a response, many outright ignoring him and glaring something fierce into the meager bowls of slop that has been distributed out for their (only) meal of the quintant. Disgusting food aside, L4782 is undeterred.

“Maybe it’s worth a bazillion GAC,” he says conspiratorially, eyes roving the table and enticing discussion. Now that he’s got a taste of it, he can’t get enough- talking is a simple luxury, easy to focus on and become distracted by. “Maybe that’s why we aren’t allowed to see or touch it. Maybe that’s why they keep us here. Free labor they can profit on.”

Squinty, orange eyes atop a cone head meet his, a beard of tentacles quivering as unwilling words form, “It’s not for us to question such things.”

“I get why you think that, but don’t you ever wonder why we’re here?” he asks in a loud whisper, head ducked down low in the pretense of eating. In truth, his spork and bowl lay untouched, forgotten with the prospect of a divergence from bland walls and grueling labor. “What do they do with the stuff we pull out of the ground? What is it for? Who is it for?”

“Those questions are likely to get you killed. Or worse, tied to the Post,” the serpentine figure next to him hisses, scales a hideous green in the low light.

Everyone within earshot shifts uneasily, a few going so far as to superstitiously cross their bands in an ‘X.’ Even L4782 looks away at the name, wincing at the thought of being subjugated to such torture at the hands of the guards. No one has been to The Post in many weeks- L4782 himself has never seen the public display of power the guards enact on those they label disobedient, but has heard enough rumors make his skin crawl at the mere mention of it- and no one wants to be the one to break that streak.

Still… “Isn’t it odd that none of us remember our crimes? I mean, we’re all supposedly ‘dangers to to the universe’ and have bounties on our heads, but we don’t even know why? Isn’t that weird? Doesn’t that bother any of you?”

Tentacle Face let’s out a wobbly sigh. “What is, is.” A hand rises, wrinkled and blistered, and strokes his companion- a individual of the same species, but a dull red in color- under the ridge of their right eye. It’s a startlingly intimate. “And nothing can change it.”

“But why?” he persists.

“Because that it how it is!” The serpent alien is harsh in her tone, the edges pricking L4782 like a thorn wanting to draw blood. Her neck extends and the yellow scales there shake dangerously. “Now, no more foolish questions!”

The boy blinks in surprise, leaning back and raising his hands up in surrender. His shocked expression must be enough to guarantee silence because she backs down just as quickly, slitted eyes flickering over his shoulder toward the entrance even as her fangs fold back into her wide mouth.

The table goes silent after that and stays so as they finish their food. L4782 doesn’t bring up his questions again.

Sometimes L4782 dreams.

He’ll lay down on his cot and stare aimlessly at the rock walls, listening to the deep breathing of his fellow laborers in the cells adjacent and across from him. He will sigh, long and wanting and sad, and before he knows it, sleep is creeping over him and his eyes flutter shut- only to open a moment later to a new world.

It is beautiful, the images that stream over the back of his eyelids. Everything is so full of life and color, filling him with an energy so raw that he might implode in a great bang of light. Rather, it is a sea of lights, rippling with the orbits of planets and the smiles of galaxies, that he floats in. The water, so cool and blue and refreshing, laps at his skin, caressing his cheeks with a mother’s touch. Creatures swim about him, twirling in the dust of asteroids even as they give kisses that tickle his ankles. Some, bigger than life itself, jump out of the water and into the air, moaning their song with the intent of it traveling to every corner of the universe.

The world turns upside down and suddenly he is falling. A waterfall of memories skid past him, teasing him with images of places he’s never been and people he’s never seen; he lets his fingertip trail across its rushing surface, in awe of the rainbow of mist it creates. Then there’s a splash and he’s submerged, limbs weightless as he sits there. Curious, glassy eyed stares and playful flicks of slippery fins greet him, enticing him to join their game of life.

He smiles and laughs, though he doesn’t know why. Maybe it is the bubbles that erupt from his mouth, popping against the sharp line where air meets water. Or maybe it is the ribbon of fabric that twists around his chest and between his legs, catching him in an embrace that teases of drowning. Nevertheless, he feels good and happy and whole and thinks that he could happily stay there for all eternity.

But then he wakes up and it’s to rock walls, rough blankets and the wails of the desolate.

Push or die, the guards greet him.

He pushes.

“Do you think they’ll ever let us go?” he asks one day. His muscles are sore and his feet bleeding, and he so desperately wants to stop and rest, but he can’t.

Push or die, the guards chant from the sidelines, a reminder. Push or die.

The figure tethered to him for this work shift is genderless, having large eyes with crosses for pupils. Pink markings run down their sharp cheeks, cutting their face with permanent tears, sad and endless just like the drooping antennae sprouting from their temples. They do not pause at his question, pushing like their life depended on it- and it does.

“No,” they say, and it is the sad truth.

Still, he hopes.

Life changes.

It is an abrupt change, as they usually are, and one that he doesn’t see coming. It happens on a day like any other, having no anomaly that marks it as different from the rest; he wakes up like he usually does, shuffles in line like he usually does, and works like he usually does.

However, all that changes when, halfway through the day, a voice speaks over the drilling and pipe work. “No longer!”

L4682 pauses in his work, watching with interest as those around him do the same. Attention drawn, he steps out of his designated niche at the wheel, pushing through the multiple bodies that start to pulse forward- all interested to see the source of the commotion. It’s only when a burly fellow, skin as hard as rock and spiked tail as long as he is, shifts to the left that L4782 is able to see.

A fourth of a squadron stands at the cave entrance, all carrying their standard blaster and angled in the direction of two figures- a prisoner and the overseer, in a heated debate.

“We’ve been working for eleven vargas, straight,” explains the alien loudly, humanoid in shape, but missing a nose and yellow in coloration. “We can’t much more of this- it’s too much! We’ll die before we even breech this planet’s outer core!”

All prisoners must work, states the head guard on duty, the finger hovering over the trigger of its blaster twitching. The Empire-

“Screw the Empire!”

Such slander is considered of the highest offense within the Galra Empire and punishable by death. More than one blaster is raised, the high hum of a plasma being charged filling the air. The workforce mutters among themselves, slipping onto the slope of hysteria.

He doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe it’s the way the outspoken prisoner flinches, hands crossing in front of his protectively. Maybe it’s the sound that crosses the tunnel, a frightened whimper. Maybe it’s the growing dissatisfaction that makes him seethe whenever he sees the sigil of the Empire. And maybe it’s none of that. Maybe he’s just stupid.

Well, no matter what it is, it still has him yelling out, “Hey! Leave him alone!” and taking five long strides into the circle, into the spotlight. It still has him shoving the guard away with all his might. It still has him sneering with vicious pleasure when the guard goes down and his weapon flying.

It’s not until one of the guards yell, Treason! that he realizes what he’s done.

The shackles tighten around his wrists, stinging as it nearly crushes bone, while the collar encircling his neck lets out a high beep . It is the only sign he gets that his body is no longer his own, muscles contracting instinctively as his mind rebels at the thought. But his struggle is useless against the alien tech, his limbs moving of their own accord and pulling him through the throng of people. With a jolt, he lands at the feet of his wardens.

One look up and he freezes.

Standing point ahead of the overseer and two animatronic guards is a figure he doesn’t recognize, tall and slender with hair a startling white. Light, purple skin looks deceptively soft in the harsh light, muted by those beside him and the dark armor plated suit he wears. Sharp eyes stare down a long, straight nose, features cold like the stinging metal of their chains. He is immaculate in appearance and posture, and there is a twisted feeling inside L4782 when he looks at him- it is unfair, he thinks, that something so beautiful can exist in such an ugly place.

L4782 doesn’t know how long he stares, but it’s long enough to watch thin lips pull in this shadow of a smile.

Why, how the mighty have fallen, comes the baritone voice and he starts, surprised at being addressed. There is a certain familiarity in the tone and it makes him uneasy, how naked he feels. How my father succumbed by such weakness is beyond me, but, I suppose, it doesn’t matter now. For I am not my father.

Confused, L4782 opens his mouth to speak, only for the butt of a gun to smash against his temple. He topples over with the force of the hit, groaning.

Careful of the face. He’ll be a nice addition to my collection when all is said and done.

Then those eyes are sliding away, pausing fleetingly on the figure hunched next to him, yellow forehead touching dirt. A slender brow twitches and something flashes in hard eyes, a decision considered and made. Head jerking to the left, the stranger turns away with a flourish; the guards step out of his way immediately, blasters raised in some sort of salute.

Take him to the Post, says the overseer in his wake and L4782 feels his blood turn to ice.

“No,” whispers his companion on the ground, voice a dying ember sinking to the bottom of a pit. But no one hears him, not when metal arms are lunging forward and gripping tight over biceps, deaf to the frantic pleas that start to pour out. “No, no, no. Please, no, I didn’t mean- I recount! I recount, so please! No, no! No!”

It is a useless cause, for the gray helmets blind the guards of benignancy and they carry vindictive lust for violence. L4782, himself, grows numb and submissive to the touch of his captors, staring listlessly forward when they drag him along the short journey to the largest cavern of the mines where a lone, metal post stands. The entirety of the work force follows behind, obedient and silent like specters of the forsaken; it takes a single command, barked and harsh in the stale air, and they are stopping, shoved down to kneel like animals.

The small alien is trembling when they step up to the legendary fixture, crying tears that evaporate once they hit skin as he is hung by the shackles, his back to the masses. The sobs turn into screams as a punishment of fifteen lashes is executed with merciless accuracy. He bleeds red.

L4782 doesn’t look away.

The show goes on for what seems like an eternity, until, finally, eternity is over. The whip, a primitive weapon with a tail of sparking pink energy, fizzles out and they are left in the aftermath of despair, broken only by muffled sobs and the clack of metal footfalls.

Strangely, when the laborers are ordered back to work, L4782 is left. Chains snap to his shackles, tying him to the ground, and he watches from under heavy lids as the masses file out, heads down with not a twitch in his direction. It’s disappointing, but not surprising. It’s a survival of the fittest lifestyle in the caves and, at the moment, his chances aren’t looking too good.

Time passes and silence reigns.

“You know,” comes the whispers in the dark a good few hours into the night cycle, startling L4782 into attention; if he turns his head just so and squints hard he can just begin to discern the darker shade of black that makes up his unfortunate companion. “I had hoped to see my family before this was all over.”

Family. L4782 has often heard of them, heard snippets of stories and memories that his fellow prisoners have divulged in times of vulnerability, when the night is quietest and the dark most stifling. He knows the individual in the cell next to his has three sons, identical since the day they hatched, and that they loved playing games, switching clothes and demanding their parents to guess right; he had stopped hearing this particular story in his second cycle when a guard had taken the babbling senior out for an interrogation and never returned (but he tries his best not to think about that). He knows the pain the word brings.

“What are their names?” he asks because he is weak. Though he has nothing, he craves for more- constantly more, more, more - never realizing that it is this greed that leaves him unsatisfied. Even in this situation, of open wounds and tight chains, he searches for what he cannot have. “What are they like?”

“I don’t know,” comes the broken reply. “I- I can’t remember.”

And isn’t that the truth of it all.

Soon after that, the tears start to come and L4782 curls into a ball, pretending the warmth he feels is that of a family long lost. When he closes his eyes, he dreams of taking to the sky and flying far, far away.

He wakes.

The body across from him does not.