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amiedala · 3 years ago

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SOMETHING DEEPER

CHAPTER 4: An Open Wound

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content, canon-compliant violence, graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of past abuse/trauma

SUMMARY: “I don’t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hello my loves and happy Something Deeper Saturday! this chapter is truly a whirlwind, it's hard and sweet and intense and simple all at once. there are very graphic descriptions of violence and death in the one (in the form of Force visions, no one's actually dying, I PROMISE!!!), so please be aware that there is potentially triggering material in what you're about to read. it mentions past abuse and dives pretty deep into current violence, so please just read with caution! i hope you enjoy this journey—i certainly did writing it! more notes at the end!!! <3

Mandalore isn’t a ghost town.

Not how Nova originally thought, anyway. The throne room is filled with wary, armored people. Some are the guards that usually stand watch outside, through the giant palace doors. Nova recognizes Koska Reeves and Axe Woves from the brief, charged encounters she’s had with each of them. Bo-Katan is there, of course, regal and pristine, her shoulders pushed back, her red hair impeccable. There are a handful of villagers that Nova’s seen in passing, but besides the few faces she recognizes, most of the people gathered in the throne room have been hidden somewhere on Mandalore, away from this strange Capitol, away from the everyday. Half of them are without armor, without impressive beskar helmets to hide their wary expressions. Bo-Katan’s icy, measured gaze is clearly a popular currency on Mandalore, because every single person in this room looks skeptical at best and enraged at worst. Nova keeps her eyes on Din, who’s decided to stand at the helm of the dais instead of taking a seat on the beskar throne, watching his every movement to ensure he’s safe up there, and that he stays unharmed.

“I want...to be your leader,” Din says, his voice quiet but earnest. He sounds like he’s incredulous at his own words, like he’s reading off a script he’s never seen before. But there’s power hidden underneath whatever’s scaring him, an undercurrent that Nova knows is unfettered, genuine passion. “I wasn’t raised in the way of Mandalore. Not in the ways that you were—”

“Clearly,” Koska whispers, and the Mnadalorians standing closest to her proximity offer uncharacteristic smiles and snorts. Nova steps forward, but Bo-Katan raises her sharp hand at her side, and they immediately fall silent.

Din looks back at Nova, and for the first time, she can see the fear in his eyes. She nods, encouragingly, even though she has absolutely no clue what point he’s trying to make. Every time she closes her eyes, even if it’s only for a heartbeat, she sees the strange, young hologram of her face, with the word MURDER, MURDER, MURDER flashing back at her, a ceaseless and terrible pattern. Nervously, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, realizing that she’s the only person in this room who isn’t outfitted in Mandalorian regalia. Her black shirt has remnants of dust on the sleeves from the amphitheater. Her pants saw their best days weeks ago. Her shawl, the only proof that she wears any sort of allegiance to the throne, Mandalorian blue and regal, is thrown haphazardly over her rounded shoulders. The boots on her feet are older than her relationship with Din, picked up planets and planets ago, somewhere sunny and warm and an entire lifetime away. When Din’s panicked brown eyes find hers again, Nova smiles, taking a half-step forward, trying to portray anything other than her own frenzied state, the hammering heartbeat that could likely be heard outside of the palace.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Din finally continues, turning back to the crowd. Even from this angle, with most of his face obscured, Nova knows how hard it is for him to stand here, in front of dozens of people, without his helmet, how many rules he thinks he’s breaking, how this must feel like agony. He reaches for the Darksaber hanging on his belt, and when it ignites, every single face in the room is on Din, on that horrific, captivating blade of electricity and death. “I won this in battle. Twice. Both were accidents,” He inhales heavily, studying the flickering, wicked blade. “But they still happened. I wasn’t born on Mandalore. I wasn’t raised here, either. I’ve given some of you this speech before, when I first took the throne.” He exhales through his nose, and Nova wets her dry lips. Her throat feels like the middle of the day on Tatooine, parched and treacherous. “I...I am not a Mandalorian in the way that you’re Mandalorians.” Nova chances another half-step forward, letting the captive, tensioned room blur in her vision as she just focuses on Din. There’s a tremor in his voice, something alive and unsteady, something she only notices because she’s spent over a year studying every inch of him, memorizing Din right down to his bloodstream. “I follow a Creed that you don’t. I’ve spent most of my life trying...trying to be a good soldier, a true Mandalorian. I know I’m not the leader you wanted. I’m not even sure if I’m the leader I wanted. But I’m the one we’ve got, at least for right now. And—” Din exhales sharply, his breath strained, and Nova knows he’s suppressing a sigh, “I swear, I will try my best to do right by this planet. But—but I’m not only the reigning Mand’alor. I’m—”

“Right,” Axe interjects, but there's no malice in his tone. Nova stiffens, crossing her arms over her chest, staring over at him. But he doesn’t look threatening. His smile seems genuine, like he;s just attempting to get Din to lighten up. “And a bounty hunter. A damn good one, at that. He’s caught me twice.”

“Three times,” Nova corrects, and her eyes go wide when she realizes that everyone’s attention is now on her. “But,” she continues, rather nervously, trying to square back her shoulders in a shoddy imitation of Bo-Katan to not display that nervousness, “Din hasn’t been just a bounty hunter in a long time.”

Din sheathes the Darksaber, and instead turns his outstretched hand to Nova. Heart pounding, she slides her hand into his large, gloved one, trying not to show the massive tremble in her fingers. Quietly, he reaches for the Skywaker lightsaber hanging from her belt, and when Nova hesitates, he lets her hand close over the grip instead. Bo-Katan moves forward, so quickly Nova doesn’t even notice, and when she ignites the crisp, illuminated blue blade, half of the people gathered in the throne room draw a weapon. Nova’s expecting Bo-Katan to do the same, but she raises one impeccable eyebrow and turns back towards the room.

“Stop,” she says, and immediately, the majority of the room lowers whatever weapon of choice they’re gripping. Nova manages a tiny, stuttered breath. “She’s not going to hurt us.”

“She,” a voice says from the back of the room, “is wanted by multiple parties. Contacts all over the galaxy will pay a pretty price for Andromeda Maluev, you know. I accepted the cult member as Mand’alor. I accepted you standing down from the throne, Bo-Katan. I will not accept harboring a criminal,” he continues, voice as icy as Hoth, “and a Jedi, at that.”

Din moves forward, all tension, all rage, but Bo-Katan holds up that same, steady hand, and the man making his way across the foreground halts in the same beat that Din does. Nova pulls her own lightsaber back, pocketing it, pulling the shawl higher over her shoulders, trying to unclench her jaw before all of her teeth break off in her mouth. She’s tired. So tired. Exhausted, slogging through this conversation, her heartbeat accelerating, stars shooting out behind her eyes. And still, this time, when she closes them, all she sees is MURDER, MURDER, MURDER.

“Her name,” Bo-Katan returns, measured and cool, “is Novalise Djarin. And yes, she is wanted by both the scum that still survived after the Empire’s demise, and a middleman somewhere in between which we cannot identify yet. Yes, she is a Jedi, or at least is certainly heading in that way. Yes, I stood down from the title. But that wasn’t because I was weak, or because I wanted them on the throne.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Nova,” Bo-Katan interjects, “I’ve got this.” She steps off the lowest stair on the dias, posture perfect, right arm curled around her distinctive helmet. Everything in her screams royalty, regality. Behind her eyes is a fire so much stronger than the ice in her voice. “I didn’t want this. Neither did you. But Din won the Darksaber, fair and square. And Mandalore isn’t what it used to be. None of us are, either. We’re good at surviving, but we’re even better at fighting. And I believe,” she says, pointedly, glancing over at Din, who’s still coiled in an attack position, “that was the point our Mand’alor was getting to. So let him finish. With your mouths closed.”

The man who spoke, wizened but grizzled, exhales angrily through his nose, but his mouth stays clamped shut. Bo-Katan stands at attention, nodding back at Din.

“War is coming,” Din continues stiffly, and half of the people crowded around the room roll their eyes or mutter under their breath.

“War is always coming,” another woman enunciates, “it’s what the galaxy knows best.”

“War is coming,” Din repeats, and Nova has to force herself to unfurl her palms. Before she can even try to jump to his aid, though, he walks down the steps and presses his flat palm against the holotable. Reflected in the glittering dome above them is thousands of pixels of blue light. Nova’s juvenile mugshot is up there for the entire room to see, but so are statistics from every mission they’ve engaged in, anything even remotely related to the Order. Hundreds of faces swarm the screen, all with interwoven lines connecting them to other profiles and rotating planets. There, at the center of the screen, is the First Order’s name in menacing, large letters. Underneath are the silhouettes of Luke, Nova, and Grogu. When Din opens his mouth this time, his words are vivid and clear. “I know that Mandalore has been razed and sieged. I know that in your eyes, I’m not one of you. I know that none of you signed up for another battle. But I also know that fighting,” Din says, his voice weary, but his dark eyebrow raised, “is what’s in our blood. All of us.”

“I won’t follow a ruler who isn’t a true Mandalorian,” the same man finally continues. He steps towards them, and his face is angry and ghastly in the flickering blue light. His rage is barely concealed, and Nova’s hand flies unconsciously to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. “And I certainly won’t protect a Jedi who doesn’t belong here.”

“Well, then,” Nova says, and she’s so bone-dead tired that she doesn’t realize she’s the one who’s speaking until the second word is out of her mouth, “good thing I can protect myself.” She chances a glance at Din, who could very easily be aggravated at her stoking the fire. The only thing written across his face, though, is pride. Nova’s eyes flicker over to Bo-Katan, who is somehow, unbelievably, wearing the same exact expression.

Din slams his fist down on the holotable, sending all of the blue light back into the atmosphere it came from. The low light of the war room is returned to its usual state, but no one speaks. “I don’t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

Still, no one moves.

“Mand’alor,” Bo-Katan snaps, icily, all of her usual vigor and venom back in her voice, and it’s like she’s given an order no one can deny. Half of the Mandalorians nod in wary agreement, and the other half keep their low mumbles close to their chests, all of them shuffling out of the throne room, presumably to disperse outside. When the heavy door closes shut, with only the three of them remaining, Bo-Katan turns back to Nova. Din is already climbing the steps back up the dais where the menacing beskar throne sits to retrieve his fallen helmet. When he pulls it back over his handsome face, it’s like closing an open wound.

Nova looks at Bo-Katan, who doesn’t look nearly as threatening in this low light. Her hair is slightly ruffled, and the hard set of her jaw is tense, electric. “Bo-Katan,” Nova whispers, and her gaze snaps impeccably back to Nova’s. “Thank you,” Nova continues, earnest, “for defending me. Defending us. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did,” Bo-Katan counters, but there’s the ghost of a small smile on her beautiful, cold face. “They were wrong, and they needed to hear that. See? I’m not always a total bitch.”

The word—so commonplace, so foreign—sounds absolutely ludicrous coming out of her mouth that it makes Nova laugh out loud. The sound is both musical and jarring, and the tension held in Bo-Katan’s shoulders evaporates, even if it’s only momentarily.

“Noted,” Nova says, smiling. Maker and all the stars above, she’s exhausted. Bo-Katan glances back at Din, armored and impenetrable, and then back at Nova.

“You need sleep,” Bo-Katan allows, pulling her own helmet back over her head. “Both of you. I’ll stay down here and monitor any incoming correspondence. I’m too wired to go to bed anytime soon.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” Bo-Katan interrupts, and her usual edge is back in her tone. “And I will. Go.” She raises that commanding arm again, and Nova’s too exhausted to resist. She wants to take a shower and wash the last few days off of her, and then sleep for three more. Her scar hurts. Her shoulders ache. Her head feels impossibly heavy. Silently, she lets Din lead her over to the heavy double doors, her ears buzzing with fatigue, but before they step into the hall, Nova hears her name chase her across the war room. In tandem, she and Din turn, watching Bo-Katan ignite the blue holotable. There’s something unreadable about her, even under the helmet. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Bo-Katan says, finally, and the heaviness of her words is louder than the doors when they close on her impenetrable face.

Steam from the shower fills the entire fresher. It’s wet and hot, the humidity seeping deep into Nova’s skin, burrowing under the residual ache from the last few days, nestling between her cold bones from the chill back on Ahch-To, the frigidity back on Hoth. Din joins her once he wrestles off the rest of the armor, and before Nova can explain she wants him, but it’s impossible right now with how exhausted she is, how she can barely keep her eyes open, Din wordlessly lathers up his hands with her favorite, clean-smelling soap, gently raking the suds through her hair.

Nova sighs in the silence, letting her shoulders hunch over, her body weight alleviated by sagging against the warm shower walls and by the soft grip Din has on her arms, making sure she stays upward. For what feels like years, they stand together under the warm running water, reveling in the steam, the heat, without either of them needing to say anything. Din wraps Nova’s long hair up in the freshly washed towel, while she dries off the residual runoff down her arms, her thighs.

The room is cool and dark in the blue twilight, that same fog and haze sinking over the horizon. Wherever the rest of the Mandalorians went, they’ve all but disappeared off the face of the planet. Everything is an eerie kind of quiet, no bugs, no animals, no clamor, nothing that signifies any kind of sentient life outside of the castle. Most nights, that kind of awful silence makes Nova wired, like it permeates even into her dreams, but not here, not now. She has what feels like years’ worth of sleep to catch up on, and the second that Din pulls back the fluffy, silk comforter on their giant bed, Nova steps out of the towel and into the soft cocoon. Din’s barely even settled up behind her before she drifts off somewhere peaceful, somewhere that’s not here.

She sleeps. For hours, maybe days, Nova sleeps. It’s dreamless and empty, warm and safe. Usually, nightmares flicker and flash through her mind, her legs sprinting away from whatever menace or threat is chasing her, but not tonight. Nothing wakes Nova up, not the strange quiet, not Din tossing next to her, not the immeasurable weight of saving the galaxy on her shoulders. She sleeps, uninterrupted and powerfully, swaddled up under the light blue blankets that are somehow keeping all the bad things away.

In the end, it’s not a nightmare that startles her away, nor is it Din’s unshaven face pressing into the crook of her neck. It’s the sleepy, quiet beeping of her commlink, which has somehow been removed from its usual place on her wrist and is buried under the extra pillows that stand sentinel over their bed when neither Nova or Din is there.

Din, at this very moment, is also nowhere to be found, and Nova rakes a hand through her hair, tries and fails to suppress a yawn, and digs through the array of pillows on the floor until she can see the bright, red light. “Hello?” she asks, her voice still off somewhere in dreamland, and she rubs sleep from her eyes as she collapses down on the bed, body still stuck in sleep.

“Hey,” Nova hears, and it’s halfway through another yawn before she realizes it’s Cara calling. “Listen, I’d love to actually catch up, but—”

“You have news?” Nova asks, suddenly wide awake. She smooths the comforter out under her hand, crossing one of her legs underneath the other. Outside, the sky is dark.

“I have news,” Cara confirms, grimly. “I know Wedge called you to Hoth a week or so ago because there was a prison break somewhere outside of my jurisdiction.”

Nova nods before she remembers Cara can’t see her. “Yeah,” she adds, belatedly. “Yeah, but no one seemed suspicious or in league with the Order, and it was a holding cell full of minor offenders, so it was kind of a dead end.”

“Well, it was,” Cara sighs, “until it wasn’t. We were right, kind of, because no one who escaped was linked to the First Order. But the night after that prison break happened, your photo with your old name and manufactured crimes popped up as a hit from the Guild.”

Nova’s heart sinks. Something suffocating is blocking her airway, and she tries to swallow past the feeling before she can exhale. “What does that mean?” she manages, barely, hand fluttering around her necklace, pressing into the embossed star.

“Someone’s setting you up,” Cara continues, and her voice is gentler than Nova’s ever heard it. “Someone who likely knows you or Din, knows how to get under your skin. The reason why this is so dangerous is because whoever did it knows exactly what they’re doing. I’ve tried, and Karga has tried, but we can’t even identify where the hit originated from, let alone who put it out. We’re not going to stop looking, but it’s going to be hard to figure out who did it. And because the warrant is for you alive or dead…” Cara trails off, the silence buzzing and dangerous.

Nova closes her eyes before she fills in the blanks. “I’m going to be in danger anywhere I go.”

“Listen,” Cara tries, but it’s too late. Nova’s still exhausted, she’s in pain, she has no idea where Din went, and all she wants to do is to bury her face in Grogu’s head and smell his sweet, reassuring baby smell. Her heart aches. “Novalise, I’m not going to let them get to you. You have some of the strongest forces in the galaxy who’ve got your back.”

“Yeah,” Nova whispers, “and I appreciate that, Cara, I do, so much, but—but Mandalore isn’t exactly a safe haven, either. The planet knows I can use the Force, and besides that, most of the people Din’s supposed to be ruling hate our guts. I’m not scared of being left to defend myself, because it’s kind of what I’ve learned to be best at. But with what you’re telling me, there’s not a single safe place left in the galaxy for me right now.”

Cara’s silence is deafening. Nova’s heart sinks just a little bit deeper, swimming around somewhere in her stomach. “It’s not forever,” she says, but her voice is a little too glum to be anywhere near reassuring.

“I’m so tired,” Nova admits, feeling tears bubbling up at the corners of her eyes. “And I can’t rest, because that’s when someone can get me. I mean—what would you do, if you were me, Cara?”

Nova can hear Cara moving, a soft rustle underneath the comm. When she speaks again, her voice is low and clear, like she’s telling a secret that only Nova can hear. “I would do what we both know you’re going to do. You’re the rebel girl, remember?” She pauses. “So rebel.”

Nova watches as the comm clicks off, everything in her body electric, a live wire. Before she can bolt to Kicker, or try to find where Din’s hidden in the chambers of the palace, or call Wedge and tell him she’s coming back to Hoth, the door opens, and Din walks in.

“Hi,” Nova breathes, suddenly very aware she’s not wearing any clothes, which is completely ridiculous, because Din has seen, ravaged, and worshipped every inch of it. “Where were you?”

She watches as Din crosses over the floor, the low light of the day catching on his armor. He sighs, moving closer to Nova until he’s standing in between her open legs. Halfheartedly, he hooks his fingers under the rim of the helmet, but gives up completely the second Nova’s hands reach to pull it off instead. Underneath, his mustache isn’t manicured, his hair has been weighed down by the metal, and he looks about as exhausted as she feels.

“Ruling,” Din says, tiredly, and there’s a flint to it Nova hardly hears. He lets out a small scoff in the silence, and she reaches out the smooth palm of her right hand for his cheek to nestle against. “Trying to get the people of this planet to recognize I’m not here to destroy it, or that you—we’re not the enemy.” He catches his slip almost as quickly as it comes out of his mouth, but still, Nova’s heart sinks deep down in her chest again. “I didn’t—look, Nova, I’m not blaming you—”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, even though they both know it’s not. For a second, Din just stares at her, and then he presses his forehead against hers. The warmth his skin gives off is almost enough to make her forget about where they are, about the people that refuse to see her as an ally, about having to save the galaxy from forces that want her dead or for their own malicious intent. “They’ll come around,” she offers, her voice barely there, and Din shakes his head, his hair rustling against Nova’s forehead.

“What if they don’t?” Din asks, and by the weight in his voice, it’s clear he’s not just talking about Mandalore accepting her as the Mand’alor’s riduur, as an ally, as on their side, but about the infiltrated Guild that’s out to kill her, and the First Order that’s out for worse.

Nova’s quiet for a long time, just listening to him breathe, trying to map both of their heartbeats, yearning for the constellations hiding above the hazy Mandalore sky. “What if we can’t do it?” she whispers, her mouth hollow, her head aching. “Any of this? What if we can’t pull this off, Din?” She doesn’t point out the specifics, the weight of planets hanging over both of their heads. They both know what she means. The silence is horrible, but Nova keeps her eyes closed, just like she used to, predicting every move Din will make in the dark.

“Then we don’t,” Din breathes back, and Nova’s about to resist, tears springing back to life in her eyes, and then Din’s mouth is on hers and nothing else matters. She lets him sprawl her back on the bed, the smooth satin coaxing and cool under her skin. Stars are burning out behind her eyes, the same celestial imprints that flood through hyperspace, something more, something deeper, something beyond this planet, this moment, this darkness. When Din’s mouth leaves Nova’s, her eyes stay shut, and his lips trail down to her ear. “I’d give everything else up but you.”

They both know he’s lying—Din’s heart is too big, Nova’s purpose is too bright—but neither of them say it out loud. Nova keeps his words in the hollow of her mouth, something shiny and devastating, a supernova or a pearl.

Din kisses Nova like he’s never had her before, low and desperate. It’s an echo of what happened in the amphitheater just hours ago, but it’s sustained, huge, warm. His mouth is made to devour, and if he’s whispering anything to feel the silence, Nova can’t hear it. She’s focused on where his kisses are trailing, desperate and hot and everything she didn’t know she needed. It’s freezing in here, but he’s so warm, his body heat louder than the cold.

“Kiss me,” Din whispers, his voice rough, a plea. One of his hands comes up and braces against Nova’s chin, not an order, but a question. She reaches towards his neck, trying to pull him down, to anchor their bodies together. It’s dark in their room. Without the stars shining above, it’s even darker.

She’s so tired. Still, even after all that rest, it’s like the exhaustion has permeated Nova straight down to her bones. She shudders and sighs as Din moves down her naked body, his lips planting kisses that she doesn’t know she needs until he’s already there. It’s easy and devastating and wonderful and crushing all at once. When Nova tries to return the favor, Din gently pushes her down, mumbling something about taking care of her.

It’s sweet. So sweet, even, that she’s on the verge of tears. Nova would do anything to stay here forever, to feel her husband’s lips on her bare skin, washing away all of the horror, the trauma, the darkness. She doesn’t open her eyes, even though she wants to. Din’s spent so much time without his helmet to appear like one of the people that call themselves Mandalorians, and she wants to give him back every single second of the time that prying eyes stole away.

Before long, Nova’s already close—her orgasm bubbling up quietly, without fanfare, without dramatics, just because Din knows exactly how to make her body sing—and when she taps at his arm to let him know, his mouth unlatches from the small hickies he’s leaving on the terrain of her bare stomach, and moves in between her thighs.

Effortlessly, he hold her legs up, hooking both of them around his shoulders so that his tongue can stay anchored in place. Nova moans, a quiet, radiant thing, and Din’s tongue finds exactly where she needs it to go. It pulses there, on the sweetest of spots, over and over again until she’s finished.

Breathless, she claws at his pants again, but Din shakes his head, his mouth dropping to her forehead as he pulls her into bed. “Rest, Nova,” he whispers, his voice faraway, a deep rumble. He pulls her in against his body, warm and soothing, and both of them are out before their heads hit their pillow.

Din’s asleep next to her, his slow, even breaths barely anything even in all the silence. Nova wants to fall back to sleep, but she knows she can’t. Her heartbeat is running itself rampant, and she’s a tangle of wants and needs, everything pulled in opposite directions. As quietly as she can, she slides herself out from the protective warmth of Din’s arms and the comforter, gently placing her feet on the floor. Even in the cool darkness of the night, her wardrobe, sleek but huge, has nothing but clothes in the same shades of Mandalorian blue, of beskar silver, but right now, Novalise doesn’t want to be a Mandalorian. She doesn’t want to be royalty, doesn’t want to be a figurehead. She doesn’t exactly want to be a Rebel either, because both titles mean the ultimate fate of the Outer Rim and beyond in her hands, so she settles for somewhere in between.

When she’s all dressed—black monochrome right down to her scuffed boots, in a weak imitation of the Luke Skywalker style—she braids the top half of her hair back, sleek and functional, and chooses a shawl buried at the back of her closet, underneath all of the Mandalorian haze of clothing. It’s a stormy grey that shimmers with the silver her husband wears when the fabric catches the light. If you pay close enough attention to the shawl, small, intentional stitches of rust and orange are woven into the fabric, hidden, furious, tiny flames.

Not exactly Mandalorian, but not entirely Rebel, either. And when Nova looks at herself in the mirror, studying the way her eyes flash with all that fire she was so certain was gone a few minutes ago, she sees herself right down to the quick, the high wire in between—she looks something like a Jedi.

So she pulls the Skywalker family lightsaber out of the hook on her door and pulls it to her belt loop, watching as the metal sways and dances in the low light. The weapon seems ancient, like something from another world. Something holy, even though she knows Luke Skywalker is a man and not a myth.

When she closes the bedroom door behind her, Din doesn’t even move. Usually, Nova’s the loud and clumsy one, worlds more obnoxious than Din’s practiced quiet, but she’s grown into her stealth over the last few weeks, especially living here, in a palace that has more rooms than the planet does people. It’s strange and eerie here at night, down the sprawling marble stairs, and she takes the first corridor she can find, just trying to walk off some of the pressure, to put her head back on her shoulders.

It’s lit only by candlelight, an archaic, flickering warmth, so in contrast to the rest of the steel and metal that Mandalore is made up of. It’s like she’s stepped into something that’s been around for years, even though she knows that it’s not possible. Mandalore was sieged, usurped, sieged again, razed and brought to the ground, destroyed. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly ash and haze, all that leftover war from years ago. But this part of the palace looks older, like a tomb that somehow survived.

It’s too creepy, Nova decides, even though the curious part of her is itching to explore it. She wants to pore through every aspect of it, try to find remnants of lost Mandalore, like her father used to unearth texts, like her mother used to excavate history. Before the war, before the Alliance was necessary, before all this death and darkness. When Nova comes out the other end of the corridor, she’s right next to the intimidating double doors of the war room, the holiest place Mandalore has. She pulls her shawl a little closer to her body, trying to retain the warmth she left back upstairs, trying to hold onto a memory more than anything tangible.

Nova isn’t intending to slip into the war room, let alone walk towards the sprawling dais that holds the beskar throne, but she does. It’s still quiet, so quiet, and the dark is coaxing her closer, pulling her up the steps, something beyond a simple want or need. She has the sneaking suspicion that she’s not supposed to be in here, not this late, not without Din, not when she has no legal or physical right to this place, but when she sits down on the throne, something deeper echoes out from within her chest.

It feels like a hymn and a battle cry. Before she has a second to adjust, to rationalize anything, everything becomes starry and disconnected. It’s been so long since she had a Force vision this immediate, this intense, and it hurls her through the proverbial hyperspace, everything dropping away.

It takes three steps forward in this strange, terrifying liminal space before Nova can even identify what’s scaring her. It’s the same kind of evil she felt way back on Takodana, before she was married to the ruler of a planet, before she even knew it was her destiny to be both Rebel and Jedi. There’s a mask she doesn’t recognize, twisted and devious. Behind its menacing, blank expression is something horrifying. Looking into the visor, it’s like her own soul is being fractured into pieces.

It’s humanoid until it’s not. The figure wearing the mask of destruction is tall, easily a foot taller than she is, horrible and menacing. But when the lightsaber they’re using ignites, it’s scarier than the vision of the person at all. It’s awful. It looks like it was forged out of lava, menacing red, the blade flickering and hissing in a way that’s somehow even more terrifying than the stark contrast of the Darksaber’s blade. Nova gasps, the light too bright, too sudden, and she can feel the residual thud on the floor, even in the vision. She knows when she comes out of it, she’ll be hurt, but the blade is getting closer. It looks like a giant rapier, a sword made only for evil things. At the hilt, spraying out in both directions, the blade extends. When the figure in the mask swings, it’s without remorse, so quick, so terrible.

But Nova’s not the target. She rolls away, out of the strike zone, and then she hears Luke Skywalker’s voice cutting through the darkness. She turns, and suddenly she’s not in the horror of the vision, anymore. She doesn’t know where she is. The ground looks icy, like Hoth, but there’s red powder spit everywhere, vomited across giant salt deposits. It’s so bright that her hand comes up in front of her eyes, and when she lowers it, Luke is gone. She’s gone, too. She turns around, hair whipping in the furious wind, trying to find where her name is being cried, and she trips over a mound on the salty ground, and when she falls to her knees, it’s a person, newly slain. The blood is so red, redder than the powder, redder than the evil lightsaber. It drowns through the lines on her hands, slips through her long fingers. She screams, trying to back up from the body, and then she realizes it’s Bo-Katan, gurgling through the slit in her throat, and when Nova tries desperately, in vain, to buffer the blood spilled, Luke Skywalker calls her name again.

But it’s not Luke. It is him—for a second, for the tiniest fraction of a moment—but then it’s not. His lightsaber floods with red, cancelling out the green light. The hallway flickers, once, twice, and then Darth Vader is charging towards her, and all Nova can hear is her blood pounding frantically in her ears and his heavy breathing through his mask, the sound that used to fill all of her nightmares. She’s slamming on the door at the other end of the hallway, and when it opens, the only person standing there isn’t a person at all, but a small alien baby all of two feet tall, green and adorable, and Nova drops her body around her son, protective and sobbing, curling every single inch of her around his tiny little frame, trying to shield him from Vader’s wrath, but when she cries, the vision changes again.

She can feel the motion sickness bubbling up in her stomach, horrible and nauseating. When Nova lands, she doesn’t open her eyes. She’s seen more than enough. Even right now, in the middle of her Force vision, all she wants to do is go back to sleep. She can feel the ache she slept away burrowing right back into her bones. Her scar is pulsing, enraged and angry. The headache she spent the last two and a half weeks fighting off is back, radiating straight down to behind her left eye. It’s all too much, and she can’t look. She doesn’t want to see anything else.

“Novalise,” she hears again, and the only reason she opens her eyes this time is because it’s her mother speaking. Her mother, who only ever called her Andromeda. Her mother, who spent half her life in the stars. Her mother, long dead. Her mother, who never got to know this version of her daughter, this Jedi-in-training, royal Rebel Girl that just desperately needs a hug from her mom.

“Mom,” she cries, and it’s so white. Everything here is antiseptic and deafening. It doesn’t even look like a planet, or even a room, or anything at all. She’s not even sure if there’s a floor, but Nova starts running like she’s never ran before in her life. Her breath is ragged and coming out in bursts. The jiggle in her chest and thighs burn under her speed, but she doesn’t care. She’s racing towards her mother, towards open arms, towards everything she’s been cheated out of for the last ten years.

It lasts for a second. Just a second. The figure is Piper Maluev, her skin dark and radiant, her hair down to her waist. Her lips are wide open and welcoming, her eyes crinkled at the seams. She’s tall and radiant and strong, and she’s everything Nova’s missed for nearly half her life.

And then it isn’t Piper. It’s not Luke, either, or Darth Vader, or whoever the dark, terrible, masked figure was. It’s not her usual nightmare transformation of Jacterr Calican. It’s not Bo-Katan, convulsing and dying. It’s Din. Just for a moment, a tiny fraction of relief, and then it’s not Din, either.

It’s a woman Nova’s never seen before, and her hand is clamped firmly around Nova’s windpipe. Like it’s nothing, she pulls her right off the disappearing floor and choking the life out of her. Her eyes are light but so terrifyingly menacing, her hair is a mess of a dark blonde. She’s pale and awful and her face is gleeful as she pulls the life out of Nova, a sucking, open wound.

She can’t talk. She doesn’t even want to plead for her life. If she’s this close to death anyway, and she just saw her mother, Nova figures there’s a pretty damn good chance that both of her parents are just over the other side. The woman is so happy to be killing Nova off, she doesn’t want to fight it. When her grip recedes, just for a half a second, Nova chokes out a confession that makes everything else grind to a halt.

It’s four words. Barely anything. Tears are streaming down her cheeks when her lips finally open. “I want my mom.”

Then she’s being dropped onto the floor, which very much exists now, and the light room filled with nothingness curls away, receding like it’s being burned. It’s dark in here, the tiled floor slippery and treacherous. In the background, there’s a makeshift trophy made from what looks like bones. Nova’s gasping for air, fighting back with a newfound vigor, kicking her legs helplessly to try and get some leverage on this woman who wants her dead, when, suddenly, she’s at eye level with her.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she seethes, a terrifying smile still spread across her horrible, beautiful face. “When I find you, you’re going to be begging for your life instead of your death.”

“Who—who are you?” Nova manages, through agony. Her shoulders hurt. Her headache feels like it’s trying to split her jaw in half. Her scar feels like it’s being reopened. Everything is torture, and she can’t even breathe.

“You’ll see,” the woman whispers, and her voice is so deadly that Nova internally corrects every time she’s ever called Bo-Katan venomous. Bo-Katan Kryze is a flower. One of the iridescent, gorgeous ones, that lined all the brush on Yavin, the ones Nova’s spent years pressing into the pages of every journal she’s ever owned. She’s kind and lovely and Nova’s very best friend, and when she gets out of this alive, Nova’s going to tell Bo-Katan that. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, Andromeda.”

Nova heaves one giant breath into her lungs, trying to muster up anything that she can, even if it’s just more air. “I—” she starts, and the woman smiles again, loaded and dangerous. “I—I already did that, you miserable bitch,” Nova manages, and when she’s slammed into the awful floor, it’s worth it. There’s some kind of desperation behind the woman’s eyes, now and when her hand finds Nova’s throat again, she spits in her face.

And then she’s out of it. Hurtled out of it, actually, like a dying starfighter in the middle of space. She gasps and heaves on the floor, and as her sight comes back, her breathing does, too. Her head is still killing her. Her shoulders feel like they’re trying to carry the entire weight of Mandalore. Her scar is awful, white-hot and painful to the touch. Somewhere, distantly, her knees hurt like she’s fallen to them, and when she gains back her sense of sight and the feeling of her life being choked out of her body subsides, Nova realizes she has fallen to them. She’s fallen a lot, actually, down multiple steps leading to the floor from the raised platform where she was once sitting in the beskar throne. Nova shudders, inhaling through a terrible wheeze, curling her legs up close to her chest, trying to shake off the absolute shitshow that just hurtled her through the most traumatic Force vision she’s ever had.

“You,” comes a booming, rueful voice, and when Nova’s eyes flutter open, she’s expecting it to be the malicious, purple-haired woman from her vision. Her eyes take a second to adjust, her left one throbbing from the horrid ache pulsing behind it, and when she finally locates the source, it’s the miserable man from the gathering earlier.

“Can I help you?” Nova asks, her voice shooting up at the end, on the verge of tears.

“You aren’t supposed to be up there,” he spits, and Nova squints up at the throne she’d just fallen from.

“I know,” she whispers, dully. She presses a shaking hand to the ache behind her eye, trying to shut out this conversation like she wishes she’d ignored the vision. She tries to stand up, but her knees are too bruised to sustain pulling her to her feet, so she just slumps back against the step she’s on, trying to muster all the strength she has in her exhausted body to not break down. “I’m sorry,” Nova tacks on, the words barely there. “I—I wasn’t intending to sit here, or even come in the room, it just—”

“Happened,” he finishes, oddly calm. His voice sounds closer. Much closer. Nova opens her right eye, and he’s only at the bottom of the staircase. There’s something so wretched and dangerous about the energy he’s giving off, and she wants to run, but she’s in no position to even stand, let alone fight him off, so she just sits there, curling her knees into her chest, pulling her shawl as tight as she can against her upper body. “You’re an abomination.”

A laugh, the traitorous thing, bubbles up inside Nova’s throat. It’s not funny. It’s not. It’s pathetic, and likely racially motivated, but she can’t help herself. Her ribs ache, like they got banged up in her distant fall down these sharp, steep marble steps. “That, surprisingly, is not the first time I’ve been called an abomination in my life.”

“Do you know what the Jedi did to our people, little girl?” He’s angry. Nova can hear it in his voice. And normally, it would scare her, trigger her fight or flight reflex, keep her moving, but after her paranormal face-off with two of the scariest figures she’s ever seen, this one isn’t really that high up on our list. “I do. You were eradicated for good reason. You scorched our planet down to nothing, and now you and your cult leader husband come back here and try to take over? Not on my watch.”

Nova can feel him getting closer. He’s so much bigger than she is, up close, tall and buff, menacing and taut. She weakly pulls her hand away from her eye, trying to at the very least give him her full attention, but she’s so fucking tired. It’s in her bones, at this point. She doesn’t want to be royalty. She doesn’t want to be a Rebel. And, in contrast to what the man in front of her is screaming, she doesn’t want to be a Jedi.

She wants to be the Novalise she was on Naator, with nothing but domesticity and yellow leaves and pink skies. She wants to be the protector she was out there in hyperspace. And, for the first time in ten years, she wants to be Andromeda Maluev, fifteen and gleeful, running around Yavin knowing the stars were her destiny and that evil could always be defeated.

“I don’t even want to be here,” Nova whispers, finally, and it’s like something inside her breaks.

“Good,” the man spits, “then we’re in agreement.” And then his hands are yanking away the hood of her shawl and tangling in her braided hair. Nova’s scream gets cut off as she’s thrown down the rest of the stairs, like her body’s giving up. She chokes out something horrible, fighting to get to her bruised, banged up knees, sore from the fall, aching from the blissful time riding Din’s face less than an hour ago, but she can’t summon the strength. Somewhere, she knows Luke Skywalker is yelling at her to use the Force, but Nova’s had enough force today to last a lifetime. When she’s kicked in the stomach, brutal and awful, she just curls in on herself, hoping her death isn’t a slow one. He startles towards her again, ripping her shawl off of her body, clawing at the meat of her upper arm, and something snaps inside of her. If she’s going to die, really die, it’s not because she succumbed to the injuries this rabid Mandalorian is giving her to try and put the blame on her shoulders. She survived Moff Gideon. She survived Din and Grogu leaving her. She survived her parents dying. And she survived the abuse of Jacterr Calican’s awful hands. Novalise can survive this.

When her lightsaber roars to life in her hands, it’s not only Nova swinging. She can feel the weight of what it being the Skywalker family lightsaber, of Luke and Leia before her, of his father before him, of all the generations yet to come to wield this weapon, this holy sword, this impossible thing. It takes all of her energy, a brilliant beam of blue light, and then she falls to the floor, knowing that even if this is where it ends, that she fought back.

Everything next comes in flashes. It’s in these tiny fractals like what happened when the Crest had died right over Dagobah and crashed to the surface. She sees a blade ignite, and in between the rhythm of her fading in and out of consciousness, Nova thinks she’s just watching herself fight the man back. Suddenly, he drops to the floor, his body nothing but dead weight, and she wants to scream, but she’s back out. It’s horrible and deafening. She’s being scooped up, she can feel that. She’s crying. She’s definitely crying. There are voices, loud ones. When she has enough strength to open her eyes again, Din is slamming his gloved fist against the airlock on Kicker, his voice frantic. She can’t make out what he’s saying, though, and another face appears above her. Din gently transfers Nova’s limp body into someone else’s arms, and when Nova looks up, it’s Bo-Katan, her face so panicked it’s almost impossible to recognize who it is.

“Nova, you gotta stay awake,” Bo-Katan whispers, her palm slapping softly at Nova’s cheek. “C’mon, I mean it. If you die here on this planet you hate, I will haunt you in the afterlife. I swear, you have to stay awake.”

“I don’t—” Nova starts, and Bo-Katan shakes her head.

“You literally should not be talking,” Bo-Katan says, her eyesight dipping to Nova’s neck. Her eyes widen for a second and then her smooth fingers ghost over the outline. Nova coughs at her light touch, and she realizes that the marks from the vision she had of being choked within an inch of her life are here, that they followed her back out of the vision and into this moment. “Nova, no, shut up, I’m serious—”

“I don’t—don’t hate Mandalore,” she manages, her voice sounding like shards of glass, and Bo-Katan offers her a hasty, worried smile.

“You do,” Bo-Katan argues, but her voice is so gentle. “But don’t worry, princess, we’re getting you the hell off of it. No complaints now that you’re off Mandalore, you got it? The second you got here, I knew both of you wanted to leave.”

Din’s at her side again, and Bo-Katan kneels down, gently placing Nova in her familiar tangle of blankets and pillows. Nova’s eyes close again, and when they slide back open, Bo-Katan is standing, trading worried glances and hushed tones with Din.

Nova’s head hurts. So bad. It’s splitting down the middle of her skull, actually, but all she can do is press a hand over her eye and try to block out the familiar low light of the ship that smells more like home than this entire planet ever had.

“Listen, about what I told you back on Hoth—”

“It’s fine,” Din cuts her off, and his next few words are warbled. “I get it. Your allegiance is to Mandalore, not to us.”

Nova can’t hear Bo-Katan’s answer. In fact, she’s not even sure if there’s even words being spoken, because the next time she looks up, Bo-Katan is just staring down at her, incredibly concerned, such an obvious change from her usually stoic expression. Nova’s whole body feels like it’s on fire. She’s exhausted. Bo-Katan kneels down again, just for a split second, to pull the loose end of Nova’s shawl over the rest of her folded body. Nova wants to cry.

“Flower,” she garbles, nonsensically. She’s trying to tell Bo-Katan that she’s sorry for all the animosity, that she trusts her, and more than that, she likes her. It doesn't make a single lick of sense to anyone outside of Nova’s head, but Bo-Katan offers a tiny smile anyway.

“Here,” Din says, stiffly, holding out the sheathed blade of the Darksaber to Bo-Katan. Nova’s eyes flutter closed, just for a beat, and when they open back up, Bo-Katan is pushing the weapon back into Din’s grip.

“It’s not mine,” she insists. “Besides, you’re not getting out of it that easy. You’ll be back.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Take care of her,” Bo-Katan interrupts. Nova blacks out again until they’re up in hyperspace. Din’s body is shielding her from the cold, his limbs draped all over the places that hurt the least. When she opens her eyes, they’re floating through the cosmos, and all her eyes can see is sweet, sweet stardust.

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chokemeoutiguess · 4 years ago

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"Would you kill me, my love?"

It was rhetorical, really. You liked being alive but what about being a captive is living? Unfortunately for you, your words had an audience, and the wrong one at that.

Code Geass Edition (pt 1/2): Lelouch, Suzaku

CW: suicidal ideation but doesn’t go past the title. kidnapping, manipulation, references to violence, threats of violence, very unhealthy relationships. This is not what a relationship should look like.

Lelouch Vi Britannia

"Kill you?" He looked so amused. Amused but irked. With delicate brows raised and stood tall in his white regalia, he looked like a tyrant who was so humoured by the court jester, that me may just spare their life.

But, you could tell that he was surprised by your question. He clawed through his dark hair, his gaze not leaving you once. He looks down at you, purple eyes holding an uncomfortably off gleam to them.

"Never." You expected as much.

He reaches towards you, running his knuckles down your trembling cheek, and his gentle gaze holding yours. "Never you."

You stiffen, your ankles feeling tighter in their jewelled holds, your legs feeling much more jittery against the fine silk of your bedsheets.

"...then who?" Your voice is weak, after not having used it for so long.

He laughs this time, so light, so full. You wouldn't think he was laughing at someone else's death.

"Anyone. If that's what it would take to remind you-" a smooth hand curls around your neck, "that you are mine."

You don't fight him and he relishes in his hold over you, your submission. You've long since learned that he will never apply too much pressure if you stay still, instead becoming accustomed to the warmth his palm spreads around your neck.

"Now, my love. Who put those ideas in your head?" His face holds a perfect smile, but you know better than that. "That dying is better than being here, with me?"

He gestures to your opulent room, gold gilded the frames of every piece of furniture, you had a stocked kitchenette, an en suite, even a TV and laptop with access to the outside world. You had everything you needed to survive. But you didn't have freedom.

The doors only opened for Lelouch, your activity monitored and limited by Lelouch, every piece of clothing lovingly selected by Lelouch. Even now you could walk the perimeter of your small home, but the jingle of the chain around your ankle never let you forget that your life was lost long ago, even if you still breathe.

But you didn't say a word, simply looking at him. When he had first 'relocated' you, for your safety of course, you believed every lie. Followed every rule. And yet, he only got worse.

It was a shame really. You had loved him once, when you were children. You had hoped that the glowing boy of his youth was in there, somewhere, when he returned to the capital to usurp the throne. The frail genius became an emperor.

You were one of the few nobles who didn't fight his rule. You revelled in it even, tired of watching the world suffer at the hands of your brethren, angry at how they treated their own. He worked to tear down the work of his forefathers, which hurt your inner Britannian but your heart sang, knowing that those tyrants would lose their life’s work to flames set by their own blood.

He was on a roll, so it was surprising when he had proposed that you help him secure his rule by becoming the imperial consort. You were sure that that role would fall to his beautiful green haired companion. But he claimed that he needed you for this, that you were the key to peace. You hesitated, naturally, none of it made sense. But when you spent more time with him, joined him for strolls, dinners, meetings, you understood.

“You are perfect. Let no one question that.” He said. You felt warm, and you almost listened.

When he slipped the ring on your hand late one banquet, leaving a longing kiss on its place in your finger he whispered “Let no one question the future queen.”

And this time you believed him.

Now here you are, suffering the consequences of your naivete.

You looked up at the frustratingly handsome face of the current emperor, the man who trapped you so sweetly, the one you cannot help but to care for.

He seemed to have expected your silence. He continued to speak with a curl on his lips as you felt the heat from his hands slide from your neck to both your cheeks to hold your stare to his. All you could see was him.

"No matter. I know a way to ensure I am your only choice. Though I'd preferred for you to love me on your own."

Again, no response. Just a despaired look passing from your eyes to his.

"I, Lelouch vi Britannia, command you, to love only me." His voice is strangely soft as his eyes begin to glow a light pink and suddenly you feel something you've long tried to supress.

"...Lelouch." You sighed out his name, liking how it sounded.

"Yes, dearest?" He smiled, genuinely this time.

Your hands cup around his face, moving closer to him. "Lelouch, I-"

You stopped, flinching. Even he looked suprised. No, this isn't-

"Dearest?" His voice was so warm and gentle on your ears. A part of you giddy that it was towards you. You feel what little grasp you have slip-

-That's right, this is perfect. What was I thinking? He's my love.

Warmth flooded you. Of course, how could you forget?

With no hesitation this time, you pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"I love you."

Lelouch beamed.

Suzaku Kururugi

It was a line you’d heard somewhere, corny but it stuck with you. You wanted to taste how it sounded, nothing serious. Though, it would’ve been better if Suzaku hadn’t just stumbled through the doorway.

He returns to his home in the 11's district, ready to start dinner, only to hear you ask him to kill you? You’d be stupid to think he wouldn’t overreact.

The door slammed shut behind him with a thud, his face draining of colour so quickly.

"What? What makes you think I'd ever do that? That's the last thing I-"

He panics, dropping the bags of food on the floor. He rushes to you, sat up against the bed, a bandage wrapped around your head. He looks you over, thinking you'd tried to hurt yourself. But his fear is replaced with something much more sombre when he sees you're free of injury.

"Is that what you think of me? That I'd kill you because we have a- a hiccup?"

He calls kidnap a hiccup?

He clenches his fists, he seems to struggle to look at you.

"Is this about what happened with Euphie? You think that dying is the only way to get my attention?"

God, not this inane bullshit again. He was convinced that you were jealous of a dead girl. Once upon a time you were worried that he'd never let her go, that you would always be second to a ghost. And now, you wished that that was the case.

"Because you dont need to, damn it. You just need to ask, I'd give you everything if you asked!"

"So you'd kill-"

He slaps his hand over your mouth, infuriated that you'd ask again. It almost stung as much as the wound on your head that you got trying to fight him off when he took you.

"No. I couldn't, that's the only thing I could never give you. I'm sorry." He wasn't sorry, and it was starting to piss you off.

"Just stop." You almost growl beneath his palm, so tired of putting up with him. "Suzaku, I can’t live like this, not here, not with you-"

"YOU DON'T MEAN THAT!"

His shout surprises you, banging your head against the headboard that you're pressed against.

His fist punches into the wall behind your head and for the first time, you're sacred that he might deliberately hurt you.

"...you don't mean that."

His voice his weaker this time and you seem to have completely lost yours.

"You don't. I know it." He said to himself under his breath, seemingly trying to convince himself.

"We're all we have left, from the beginning its always been us. I was an idiot but I'm fixing it. And then I'll bring our home back."

"Suzaku-"

"I know I'm not good enough for you, I know that. But I will be. Once I become viceroy, I'll fix it all."

"Suzaku, I know you're trying but you didn't need to do this. " You say, gesturing to the now highly secure apartment. "I dont want to be trapped-"

"You're not! We'll leave eventually but not right now. It's not safe, you know that.” He has a stern look in his green eyes, one that reminds you of his father. “ It’s not safe, let me protect you.”

The dull ache in your head reminded you not to trust him, no matter how much he pleaded. You had loved him, yes. But you couldn’t forgive this.

He looks up at you with a tired, longing look before he sighs. Resting his head on your shoulder he wraps an arm around your waist to hold you close.

“Please.” He begged, and your heart ached. “I can’t do it without you.”

Oh Suzaku. You reach up to stroke his back. You couldn’t forgive him, but that didn’t stop you from feeling hurt, seeing him like this.

“I know you love me.”

He pulls back, his eyes a little more dull than before and this raises alarms.

“I know you love me, so don’t lie like that ever again.” He spat. He leans his forehead against yours, staring deep into your eyes.

“Don’t make me do something I’ll really regret, okay?” The grip he had on your waist tightened and the increased pressure of his head against your injured one reminded you-

Suzaku hurt you to take you home. What else would he do to keep you there?

#code geass #lelouch vi britannia #lelouch lamperouge #suzaku kururugi #imagine #yandere #and yes #the quote is a black panther ref #Little angsty oops #code geass yandere #code geass imagine

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yanderefairyangel · 1 year ago

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Honestly, the main problem with Sylvain lies within the reason WHY he is flirting with girl.

Like, the idea of someone as traumatized as he is using this as a way of coping and then it is treated as a joke ... is bad. Really. And this coupled with his flirting ends up damaging his character because he has a character outside of flirting : his complicated relationship with the Crest system and his brother, he is a pretty clever guy and is actually interesting ... when he is not trying to woo you or when the plot finally stop making fun of him, which I repeat, results from trauma, for that.

The difference between him and Inigo is that Inigo isn't doing it because of his trauma, but because he is shy and it's the only way he can talk with people without becoming all flustered and the only reason why he is shy is because of Shy DNA comming from Olivia rather the a side effect of having grown up in the literal apocalypse. He has a character outside of flirting too and in Awakening, he doesn't flirt much with the ladies of the cast, just Kjelle, Severa and Female Robin... and a bit with Female Morgan. Now granted, he still have supports that are talking about his flirting habits to make him sound like an idiot and make fun of him and the Awakening localization sort added to this so stuff like him being contanstly robbed off and tricked by female thieves aren't funny, but are showing his behaviour is actually putting other at risk. Because the Awakening localization did added some difference to his support : like the awful Nah one, when he though he was dying, he wasn't talking about women, he was saying he though he finally reunited with his parents or the one with Noire where rather then him flirting with literal paper, Noire was making a remark he only flirt with women he doesn't consider to be friend.....but other then that he has a character. His support with Olivia or his B-A support with his father show that, there is his dialogue with Owain in Harvest Scramble and with Robin in Spring Scramble : one evokes when he had to kill a human for the first time and was not feeling ok at all. The other is about how he thinks he can't stay with Olivia because "well, she isn't my actual mother, I ain't her actual son so I can't steal that from my past self because I ain't him" and Robin giving him actual confidence on Olivia's love for him, or his contribution in the Future Past 2 DLC; or his own dialogue in Infinte Regalia or Death's Embrace. And then, when he reappareas but as Laslow, I think pretty much anyone agrees that he has the best support in the Entire cast. It does a much better job at showing he has a character outside of "I-I flirt because I am shuy uwu" like even the one where he does flirt such was with Corrin, he actually gives her real advice compared to the support with Robin where we have to wait till support A for her to be like "oh, ok he isn't just a flirting idiot, he actually cares for his friends", no he actuall he gets to speaks about how he has to deal with separating with people. He is literaly one of the only character that helps Peri deals with her issue. He helps Felicia who is shy and clumsy. His supports with Azura are a genuine gem. He also gives some tips to Mozu, ..; heck his only BAD support is with Hanna. The only one.

There is also the drama CD where he is shown to be a responsible guy and when Gerome refused to leave the future, he insisted that he would stay with him just so that Gerome and Minerva don't remain alone. And the fact that in Birthright, he is the ONLY one of the Trio to canonically die even if you don't kill him in the map shows his devotion towards Xander.

While his flirting can easliy get old past, at least it isn't damaging his character compared to Sylvain, who is much better post timeskip and also better in Hopes since he cuts it out faster.

So yeah, those two too have a character and some depth other then "haha flirty guy idiot laugh funny"

late night realization that the reason I don't like the flirty guys in modern fe is that it's basically their entire personality. "but inigo/sylvain/etc are actually traumatized, there's a reason they act like that!" yeah, they are, and it's bad character writing to have a Big Dramatic Reveal hold up a substandard personality, especially when "haha wacky womanizing antics" is that personality. I say this as someone who actually likes inigo and sylvain. it's frustrating because it's one-facet character writing.

"but the contrast between the wacky antics and the dramatic reveal is what makes those characters any good!" there have been funny flirty guys where the dramatic reveal is that... they actually have a character outside of just flirting

like, Saul is actually a high-ranking member of the church who's trusted enough to be on a mission looking for the Fire Emblem. Igrene doesn't believe in God, but respects his belief that God wants people to overcome their hardships by themselves. he calls Oro a disgrace to the church. he does all this while remaining funny haha man

Sain from Blazing Blade also has his moments. tells Kent to talk to Lyn about his feelings. apparently an excellent subcommander of the knights and was beloved by the common people. he's incredibly loyal to the point it botches his Priscilla ending because he won't go to Etruria with her. memes on Lundgren because he's besties with Kent. he gets main story dialogue where he calls Darin despicable when he hears that he left his son behind to die. he also does this while remaining funny haha man

in conclusion: characters being deep is good, them not being that is bad, also play blazing blade it's fun

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem awakening #fe 7 #fe6

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zmwrites · 3 years ago

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Tag: Word Find CCCXXXVIII

I was tagged by @the-writing-reader (over on my main blog, @lieutenantdarvell) and given the words rise, below, alone, soft, and together. Thank you!!

From Just Jane:

RISE

“So then this is the cellar entrance.” She pointed to a gap on the outside wall of the maze that was a quarter circle away from the smudge.

“Exactly,” [Kell] replied, looking at her curiously.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Jane said with a grin. “Stupid thieves don’t stay out of jail.”

BELOW

“I’ll be right back,” she said, then took a running start at the wall next to the portcullis. One, two, three steps up the wall, then she grabbed the horizontal gap of an arrow slit and used it as her first grip to scale the wall. She was incredibly exposed, her body hugging the bricks, and she could only hope that none of the soldiers approaching were archers or she would be an easy target.

A brick crumbled under her foot and rained down on Nic and Mr. Dyer below. She tensed, pressing flush against the wall, but her other holds remained strong. She forced herself to exhale, then take two deep breaths—panicking led to mistakes, and mistakes led to dying. The top was just a few more metres. She found another foothold, then launched herself at the next arrow slit.

ALONE

“Gods save the Duchess! Saints keep the Duchess!” the crowd chanted. Jane’s head swivelled, searching for whatever sign she had missed that it was time to shout. “Long may she reign! All hail Duchess Anwen!”

Even with her shoulders back, her head raised, and solemn determination on her face, the new Duchess looked incredibly young standing on the dais in front of so many. She’d been petite as she walked in the procession, but in the heavy regalia she looked impossibly small, like a child playing dress-up.

She looked so alone.

SOFT

“The room right across the hall has anything you could possibly need for personal hygiene courtesy of Pavia’s love of scented soaps and such. You’ll have to ask her to explain all of the different products.”

“You mean you don’t use fancy hair solutions?” she teased, eying his black hair with its soft wave and healthy shine.

[Nic] grinned. “This is all me.”

She laughed.

TOGETHER

“Thank you, Mrs. Lister. Would you like to join us for breakfast?” Percy asked once everything was in the proper spot.

“That would be inappropriate, Lord Greystone,” Mrs. Lister replied, her tone even in a way that suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d been invited.

“There’s nothing inappropriate about five people dining together.”

“Five people of disparate social strata,” she said. “According to convention, we should all be taking our meals separately.”

“I’ve never been much for convention,” Percy replied with a charming smile.

She rolled her eyes and pushed the cart out of the room.

Tried to add names so the scenes make a bit more sense. Also a reminder that the Nic in this WIP and the Nic in Open Seas are, in fact, different people. (Oops.)

I tag @drabbleitout, @diphthongsfordays, @drowsy-quill, and anyone else who wants to play! Your words are smudge, step, small, soap, and shine. As always, no pressure!

#tag games #just jane #jj excerpt

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promptis-imagines · 4 years ago

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Prompto’s Sacrifice (the other side)

collection of all those asks in one convenient place

okay first we got this ask

GHOSTOFBEACONHILL

I'm in the mood to crush my heart, so I got to thinking about promptis! Specifically, promptis during the 10 year separation. How Prompto is the last one that finds out that, even if Noctis comes back, he needs to die to bring back the light. How Gladio and Ignis are so hesitant to tell him because he's one of the few things that help them keep going on in their current hell world. And how Prompto swings between denial of what is about to happen and heartbreak.

Oh…oh man…definite heart-crushing material right there. The idea that Noct might return really is the one thing keeping Prom going, but…the other two aren’t sure about telling him. Ultimately, they decide that it won’t be fair for Noct to be the one to break the news when he returns–that would put too much more on him, and they don’t want to.So they decide to tell Prompto a few years before the ten. Prom is grief-stricken. If he gets his best friend back, his love, he’s going to lose him for good the next day? That’s just not fair. He’s also probably a little hurt that they didn’t tell him for so long. That causes a spat between them, but Prom isn’t thinking in his right mind at the moment.Now I’m torn between this super depressing acceptance and Prom going on a journey to figure out how to keep Noct alive. He’d make a damning deal with the Astrals if that was the only option.

And then:

GHOSTOFBEACONHILL

To continue with the heartbreak scenario and taking what you said, what if Prompto goes searching for ways to prevent Noctis having to sacrifice himself just so that everyone else can survive? What if, while searching, he loses complete track of time and isn't in Hammerhead when Noctis arrives? What if he is so invested in trying to save Noctis that he misses ... everything?

Oh I see you aren’t done hurting me. I see.

That would devastate Noct. He wants to see Prom so badly, but he’s not there when he arrives at Hammerhead. Of course, he’s really happy to see Gladio and Ignis, but they’ve got this look on their faces. And…well, when Noct looks over their shoulders for that spike of blond hair, Gladio tells him that it’s just the two of them. They aren’t sure where Prom is, haven’t kept tabs on him since he up and left without a trace.

Noct needs all three of them for support before what he’s about to face. He doesn’t know that Prom is off trying to save his life; all that’s apparent to him is that Prom isn’t there. Maybe he didn’t want to handle seeing this moment. Which Noct can understand, but doesn’t he deserve a bit of selfishness in his final hour? Doesn’t he deserve to have a proper goodbye?

Aight you’re the master of this so tell me: does Prom find the answer? And if so, what does it cost?

Then it branched off! This is the “Everyone Else Forgets timeline” under the cut

GHOSTOFBEACONHILL

Alright then. *cracks knuckles* So, Prompto is visiting every place he knows that have significance to either the Royal family or the Astrals and is investigating every nook and cranny, trying to see if maybe they missed something. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But Prompto is nothing if not stubborn and determined, so he keeps searching. On his stop to the Greyshire Glacial Grotto, he runs into Gentiana who asks him why he is not with the King of Kings (1/?)

And Prompto tells her about his journey, about how he wants to save Noctis’ life while still saving everything else. Gentiana warns that Bahamut, the Sword Keeper, will not allow it; that the line of Lucis Caelum will end with the saving of the world. Prompto screams and shouts at that, saying that what was the point of watching him, protecting him … loving him if he was set to die anyway?! He blurts out everything about Noct he loves and cherishes and Gentiana (2/?)

is moved. This human, this special human, loved the King of Kings just like she had loved the Oracle, even if in different ways. She reveals herself as Shiva and she informs him that there is a way. She tells him of the location of the Dawn Mother, Eos, and where he could find her. But warns that there is a price. Prompto, the idiot in love that he is, states that he would pay any price for Noctis. Any price at all.

(I then diverged the convo to the other timeline, but back to this one!)

ANONYMOUS:

I really like the idea of Prompto being forgotten because then you can have all the people who he’s connected to feel like they’re missing something even though they don’t have the memories telling they are. And just because they are missing memories doesn’t mean that photographic evidence of prompto doesn’t exist. So imagine if Noct just finds a picture of Prompto kissing him on his phone. In fact i bet there is a whole folder dedicated to pictures of prompto or things he sent him

Y’all have much better ideas than me lol who wants to run my blog- (this point still stands y’all are great)

Now, let’s take the reverse of [the Prompto Forgets] scenario. Where Prompto is completely removed from people’s memories. The sad thing is that Prompto’s removal … wouldn’t actually affect … anything in the game’s timeline at all. But his removal is harmful, not that Prompto on the outside would notice. Because Prompto kept Noctis human. Our blonde boy was what kept Noct going for so long and to remove that? You have a king that is fully in his depression with no one able to get him out of it.

You’re right…but gods, the depression that Noct would fall into. His light isn’t there, even in his memory. He feels like something is just missing, and he’s helplessly reaching for nothing. Poor thing, nobody has ever really been able to cheer him up like Prompto has…and now Noct doesn’t even know that it’s a person he should be searching for.

ANONYMOUS:

Ok ok so, I’m not the og anon, but I’ve been keeping up with the asks so I hope it’s ok to add on! I love the idea of Noct trying to peace together who this mystery man is, so like he goes on a scavenger hunt of what’s left of the world and insomnia, like going to all the places that he sees in the pictures on his phone but no one knows who this kid is. And maybe prom’s like decided to just live a secluded existence in the mountains or something and accept his fate idk so Noct has a hell of a time finding him but he doesn’t give up because he just FEELS somethingn he knows there has to be something to it all, because it’s super wierd honeslty for this person to just apparently not exist? But there’s photographic evidence? And he can’t shake the feeling of forgetting something important and he knows it must have something to do with this dude. Maybe Noct starts to have dreams about Prom, because like you can never really forget someone, ya know? And it just ads to the confusion of it all. Idk if they ever find each other again or what happens then but I feel like Noct wouldn’t give up

Hello new anon and welcome to the madness. It’s always definitely okay to add on!!

It is now time for Who’s That Guy? The show where the King of Lucis goes on a hunt for a random blond he keeps seeing in his phone!

No but really, it probably takes him a little while to notice. Phones aren’t of much use at first, when they’re starting to rebuild, so he doesn’t have it on hand enough to consider going through the photos he has until a random day when he decides to sit down and charge the thing. Then it hits him like a sack of bricks that he’s been feeling something nagging at him for a while. Like there’s a piece that hasn’t been fitting quite right. Maybe…this guy has that missing piece? Thing is, nobody he shows it to has a clue who the guy might be. The photo looked to be from when he was 20, so ten years is a long time for someone to think back on (especially with the circumstances of the starscourge).

Well, this can only mean one thing. Start looking.

ghostofbeaconhill:

In Everyone Else Forgets (EEF), Gladio and Ignis try EVERYTHING they can think of to help get Noct out of his depression. Something inside them, some instinct, knows that it's possible, but nothing they try works. They knew that their king dying was going to happen, and now that it isn't in the cards, they are doing everything they can to keep him here in the waking world. But how? How?!

It’s a mess! There’s so much to do, and they’re all in this weird slump that they can’t quite place. They keep glancing around them for another person before remembering it was just the three of them. There’s a vague sense of someone else that rode in the Regalia with them. Something stirs in their minds when they see a chocobo. Everything is confusing, and again, there’s so much to do in this broken world. Their broken king is number 1 on that list.

anonymous:

Howdy it’s og (can you really call it og when I just added to it) anon of the split timeline where Noct forgets and I like hurting myself apparently because the only thought that I had about their reunion is Prom and Noct freezing and then Prom immediately running away. Noct is trying to follow but is still not in the best shape because the throne room stabbing still happened, he just didn’t die from it. Not only that he just doesn’t have the magic to gain the advantage.

lmao this man who has the aches of being stabbed so many times over trying to compete with an actual runner? Good luck Noct give up while you can.

Prom, poor thing, cannot believe that Noct found him. Like, what are the odds? He’s tried so hard to keep his distance, thinking that it would be best if Noct didn’t go through the stress of trying to befriend him again. But then he just shows up?? Are you kidding?? My mans bolts away.

anonymous:

Prom is either secluded because he doesn’t feel he has a place in the world anymore or is a nomad who rides a chocobo that helps people along the way because he just can’t not do that.

Also I just personally love this

#okay there we go #promptis #headcanon compilation #everyone else forgets timeline

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firewoodfigs · 4 years ago

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no matter the hearts you burn, in mine you shall always remain

read on ao3

[I highly recommend reading on ao3 instead because of the long notes. also because I have no idea how to centralise things on Tumblr 🤣]

for @moms-made-fullmetal-2020, day 7: farewells and new beginnings. thank you once again @waddiwasiwitch for organising such a lovely event!

Summary: The label ‘bastard’ bears multiple meanings for Roy Mustang, who is the result of a dangerous, illicit affair between two childhood lovers. The story begins in an Imperial Court, deep in the heart of Xing.

Translations:

要选 (yào xuǎn) means "want to choose", but Yao Xuan’s name would probably be written as 姚璇 (yáo xuán) in Xingese. The first character is a common Chinese surname and what I’m guessing is the Xingese equivalent for the Yao clan, and the second character means “jade”. Hence why Yao Xuan mentions that her name is a wordplay on “choice” later on.

亲爱的 (qīn ài de) - dear; a term of affection.

再见 (zài jiàn) - farewell, goodbye.

心肝 (xīn gān) - darling; a term of endearment. However, translated literally, it means “heart and liver”.

A/N: I know Ling’s name in FMA is structured as Ling Yao, but for the purposes of this fic I rearranged the name such that the clan name comes first - hence Yao Xuan instead of Xuan Yao (in part because the latter has a different meaning). It’s also common for surnames to come first for Chinese names.

Songs: Chrysanthemum Terrace, Endless Love

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

The Imperial Court is a terribly lonely place.

Underneath every smile plastered on perfect porcelain is a heart that mourns and yearns for a life outside the palace. Engraved on walls of gold and jade are recurring motifs of phoenixes and dragons, a reminder to all the concubines sequestered within to remember who they serve. Who their heart rightfully belongs to for the rest of their lives.

The Supreme Eminence, the Sovereign Emperor.

Her fate is inescapable from the day she was born. You are the oldest daughter of the Yao clan, Yao Xuan. It is your duty to produce an heir for the Emperor, for us. She doesn’t have a say in the matter, doesn’t have a choice, because her destiny has been plotted out like a graph from birth.

It’s only been months since she entered the Imperial Court as a concubine, but Yao Xuan finds herself already suffocated by the politics and overwhelming expectations of perfection that line every crevice, every footstep. Mornings are a particularly tiresome affair - she awakes even before the sun rises, to begin dressing up for a man that she’s frankly not even interested in.

But he owns your life now.

The entire thing is ritualistic, but doesn’t offer a sliver of comfort like a religious ritual might have. She sinks gracefully into the warm bathtub filled with red petals for her at six in the morning, before letting the ladies under her dry and tug at her raven tresses methodically. It hurts - the teeth of the jade comb stabs at her scalp mercilessly, and is an added weight to the already heavy burden on her shoulders. Her face is powdered alabaster with lead, eyebrows darkened with charcoal and lips painted a bright crimson, before she’s swathed tightly in gold satin and scarlet silk.

Though red represents prosperity in Xing, she finds there is nothing prosperous about dressing up everyday for a man who only spares her a momentary glance as he scans the throng of women lined up orderly at the paulownia pavilion for him.

Who shall it be today, Your Majesty?

Secretly, Yao Xuan begs for the Emperor to not pick her for the night, in spite of the pleasant, seductive smile that tugs at her lips mechanically whenever he saunters past her. His eyes scan her like she’s nothing more than a slab of meat at the market, and she finds her heart shattering every time she remembers a man who looked at her like she was the world to him.

Christopher Mustang. He’s nothing more than a forbidden fruit now, but it’s the fact that he’s dangled in front of her that exacerbates the cruelty. Once he was her childhood lover, but now he’s a soldier - General Mustang - in the Imperial Court who’s sworn fealty to the same sovereign entity.

She wishes this was not their destiny, but fate is cruel and ineluctable and they can only share forlorn, fleeting glances whenever she strolls past him after another day of rejection to return to the royal chambers with the other ladies to dabble in senseless politicking disguised by equally mindless embroidery.

Sewing has never been one of Yao Xuan’s talents, but there’s really nothing else to do in the stifling confines of the palace. Her fingers ache as she pricks herself with the needle, but it pales in comparison to the pain that shreds through her as she laments for a love and desire buried deep within by the immeasurable weights of duty and destiny.

~x~

Years pass, and spring comes in full bloom.

Yao Xuan is a wonderful sight to behold in the warmth of spring. Her cheeks are suffused in pink, mirroring the petals falling delicately above her, a lilac robe embracing her magnificent figure. But in spite of her beauty the Emperor waltzes past her in his full regalia without even passing a glance, and with every step she finds her self-worth getting trampled on.

The other members of the Yao clan have expressed their displeasure many, many times at the very apparent lack of an heir, but there’s nothing she can do. It’s all a matter of chance, and there’s nothing she can do to improve her luck: concubines are not allowed into the Emperor’s room unless they’re chosen.

(It’s strangely paradoxical, because her name’s a wordplay on choice, but she’s neither chosen nor given a choice.)

The routine repeats itself: she returns to her chambers after receiving a severe scolding from the other members of the Yao clan for being utterly, utterly useless. The only thing that stings is the needle - she refuses to let tears sting her eyes in front of them. Instead, she bows her head subserviently and promises to do better the next time, but her feet wander when night falls.

Yao Xuan finds herself at the paulownia pavilion again, admiring the lotuses that float gracefully atop shallow waters and decorate them in flecks of white and pink.

Purity and enlightenment.

There’s nothing enlightening about her entire predicament - she doesn’t know what else can be done to make herself more attractive to the Emperor, but every dismissal comes with disapproval and disappointment, and it’s a painful pill to swallow. It sits uncomfortably in her gut as she drums her fingers against the chrysanthemum-coloured balustrades to distract herself from the nauseating feeling bubbling in her throat.

“Lady Yao? What are you doing out here so late at night?” The familiar voice of her childhood lover abates the nausea a little.

“Just thinking, General Mustang.” She turns to look at him, but her resolve crumples along with her face when she witnesses his kind, strong stature under the moonlight. There’s nothing more I want than to be with you, qīn ài de.

“Are you alright?” General Mustang stands with a respectable distance between them, but she sees love and sincerity pooling in his eyes, and her own desire that she’s tried to suppress since her entrance to the Imperial Court makes a fiery resurgence.

“... I’m not,” and she begins to cry. Instinctively, he wants to embrace her, whisper sweet nothings into her crown of black tresses, but he can’t.

General Mustang grips the hilt of his blade in an attempt to resist temptation, but she inches forward daintily to reach for his hand, and his resolve likewise falters. He automatically responds in kind when she rests her palm on his, and he’s quick to intertwine his fingers around hers, tracing circles on the back of her palm while murmuring soothing platitudes.

In the end, years of suppressed desire inundates them, and despite the alarm bells ringing in their heads their feet move involuntarily, as if possessed by some kind of uncontrollable automatism, towards Yao Xuan’s chambers. She disrobes, he disarms, and their bare bodies finally become one in the darkness.

There’s nothing pure about their union, only immoral, but it’s the first time they’ve felt happiness after an eternity of loneliness and despair.

~x~

sentenced to death

even before you were born curse the stars, cruel fate — they have damned you! but i knew, even then you were born to be loved in my womb, in my heart i carry you with all my love.

~x~

She’s not sure if the nausea is due to the tempestuous storm of emotions writhing in her gut after enduring incessant reprimands and lashings from the other members of the Yao clan, or the symptoms of something a lot more petrifying.

But it persists for weeks, and she’s late.

Late.

A terrifying consequence after an illicit affair. It goes without saying that they’ll both be executed upon discovery, for it is impossible that this is the Emperor’s scion. After all, he’s never even laid a hand on her, and the only logical conclusion is that the child growing inside her belongs to her lover.

The inevitable fate that awaits them is only death and dishonor. They would face opprobrium in its most unadulterated form, no doubt, and she would be exiled from the Yao clan for the shame she’s brought to her family’s name.

Yao Xuan could bear dying alone, being humiliated and scorned by her clan, but the thought of her lover and her unborn child being murdered alongside her kills her.

An unborn, innocent child who has done nothing wrong except exist.

Despite the wrongness of the whole situation, there’s a part of her that’s secretly elated - excited, even. For this was the fruit of their love, and her heart was already beginning to bloom with adoration for her son. Or daughter, but her maternal instincts convince her that it will be a son.

Fortunately, she’s not selected by the Emperor that day. Yao Xuan endures the rest of the day with as much normalcy as she can before making her way to a secluded veranda at night that’s a safe spot away from prying eyes.

She spots General Mustang, who has received her note earlier in the day to meet her here at midnight, and walks to his side.

“What’s the matter, Lady Yao?”

Yao Xuan doesn’t speak. Instead, she bends over gracefully to pick up three abandoned petals on the ground and lifts it up to his eyes, her other hand resting on the barely discernible swell of her stomach.

General Mustang’s eyes widen. They’ve known each other for years, and it’s easy for him to understand her message immediately.

Pregnant. With our child.

He closes the remaining distance between them and splays an open palm on her stomach.

“I plan to run away with this child, General.” Alone. The implication is clear - she doesn’t want him to be involved, doesn’t want him to be stripped of his title and suffer a dishonorable discharge and be executed.

But there’s nothing more dishonorable than leaving the woman I love to go through this alone. “Not by yourself, Yao Xuan.”

She pushes his palm away gently from her stomach, and meets his gaze with a stern one, trying not to let his use of her full name unwind her. “Yes, General. I will not do this to you - not after you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are now.”

“You’re more important than all of that,” he murmurs, but there’s an edge to his voice that makes it crystal clear that he’s made up his mind, and there’s nothing she can do that will deter him from acting upon it. He clasps a firm hand around her wrist. “Let’s go.”

Yao Xuan casts a final glance at the overbearing silhouette of the palace grounds before whispering a quiet apology to her sister - they’re ten years apart in terms of age, but it will be her turn to bear the unbearable burden of being a concubine this time - as she elopes with her lover and a stomach that’s beginning to swell with life.

Together, they traverse through the desert with nothing to their name, but full of love for their unborn child.

~x~

the stars stare down at you as we traverse through the desert. the night is cold but here you will stay warm, within me. you are a blessing, God’s gift to me. a journey thus sublime — you must live, new life.

~x~

Her son’s birth had been a difficult one, and life afterwards with her husband as fugitives in the harsh desert wasn’t easy. But she’s surprisingly content. Happy, even, with the simple domesticity that they’ve been blessed with, and whenever Yao Xuan looks at the innocent bundle of joy in her arms she smiles with the knowing conviction that they’d made the right choice.

She can’t help but think that their beloved son - Roy Mustang - is perfection in a swath of linen the first time she sees him, and she loves him with such a fierce tenderness that it engulfs her completely - even more than her love for her husband. Chris shares the same sentiments, and they both share an unspoken consensus that they would die for him instantaneously should the need arise, without second thought.

And like a fulfilled prophecy, the need does arise.

Roy Mustang is a little toddler of four, brimming with innocuous delight whenever his mother reads to him about the basics of science, before reciting tales of knights in shining armour slaying evil dragons that breathe fire afterwards.

(His father has a nice voice, too, and Roy is equally delighted whenever he reads to him, but he finds himself preferring his mother’s voice to his bright tenor.)

Yao Xuan rests a hand endearingly on his arm, and Roy thinks there’s nothing like the warmth of her bosom as he snuggles in adorably. The gentle lull of her voice has an almost soporific effect, and he finds himself slowly dozing off.

Until his father barges in. He speaks with a pitch higher than Roy is accustomed to, and the panic radiating off his body, his every movement, causes him to stir slightly. “We need to go now, Yao Xuan. They’ve found us.”

The book she’d been reading earlier falls to the ground unceremoniously with a loud thud, jolting Roy awake. “What’s wrong, mama? Papa?” He blinks, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes blearily. At the sight of the fallen book, he picks up the book immediately and brushes off any imaginary specks of dust, grabbing it firmly with his tiny hands.

“We need to run, son,” she picks him up deftly, allowing Roy to rest on her shoulder while stroking his tuft of raven hair with trembling hands.

Together they begin to run through the desert, Roy’s eyes wide as he takes in the stars gleaming brightly overhead and the cold wind slapping his face, but the wind and stars are not their only companion. His parents hear footsteps inching towards them, metal clanging against armor and know that they’re close to getting ambushed.

Is this it? The punishment for our sins?

“Stop right there, the both of you.”

General Mustang stiffens. That voice…

“General Lan Yan?” he calls. It’s difficult to make out the man’s identity, especially when he’s decked in black from head to toe and has a mask on, but he would recognise that voice anywhere.

The masked man removes his visor to confirm General Mustang’s thoughts, as the other soldiers draw their swords, inching closer to form an inescapable circle around the two traitors.

“We’re trapped, aren’t we?” Yao Xuan whispers to her husband. She holds her son closer to her as he starts sobbing into her shoulder, his young mind confused and scared by the dangerous-looking strangers swarming around them.

(The only people Roy knew who wielded swords were the knights from fairytales, and the men around him looked nothing like heroes.)

“We’re under orders from the Emperor to execute the both of you,” General Lan Yan announces, eyes steeled in resolve but with a tremulous edge in his voice. He winces at the thought of being ordered to kill a former comrade, a friend.

A friend who he had once admired, trained with and fought against. Years ago, they’d started out with relatively bad impressions of each other. Lan Yan had thought he was an arrogant bastard, even though everyone called him the golden boy because of his impressive swordsmanship and mastery of alkahestry. On the other hand, Christopher Mustang was inclined to think of him as a rival, an annoying panderer, given that he was constantly trying to one-up him.

But they’d eventually grown to become close friends, for they were more alike than they thought. Not only did they have similar tastes in food and literature, but they’d shared the same ideals and hopes for the future of Xing as well.

How terrible that we have to be reunited like this, my friend. The words, though unspoken, lingered on the tip of their tongues.

“I only ask that you spare my son, General Lan Yan,” And my wife, but I know that’s asking for too much.

“... Very well, General Mustang. I’ll give you and Lady Yao five minutes,” he states. Beside him, a masked man begins to prepare lethal poison in two silver cups.

“Thank you, General Lan Yan.” An indescribable gratitude fills General Mustang’s voice, as his wife’s cries begin to mirror his son’s sobs.

Sorrow, sympathy and guilt tugs at General Lan Yan’s heartstrings as he looks at the terrified child in Lady Yao’s arms. His mind races, cogs working in overdrive, scrambling for a final favour he could do for General Mustang. He couldn’t save him or his wife, but perhaps he could save his son - after all, the Emperor had made no mention about executing the product of their affair.

The least I can do for my best friend would be to bring his child to safety.

“... To my sister. Across the desert, in Amestris, there’s a tavern in Central called The Blue Porcelain. Please bring him there for me.”

“I will do that, General Mustang. On my honor - you have my word.”

Four minutes left. “Listen, Roy, we’re going to have to say goodbye here,” Yao Xuan whispers softly, but she can’t restrain her voice from cracking at the thought of having to bid her precious son farewell.

“Why, mama?” Roy sobs, tightening his hold around her neck while still clutching onto the book with a vice-like grip.

“... Your father and I did some wrong things in the past. But listen carefully, xin gan.” A term of endearment, but Yao Xuan feels like her heart and liver are being ripped apart from her at the moment as she loosens his arms to look him in the eye. “We’re going to send you to live with your aunt, but I want you to be good for her, okay? I know she will love you as much as I do, if not more.”

She runs a thumb across his soft, wet cheeks, savouring the feeling and ingraining it in her memory. “Make sure you eat well everyday, shower twice a day. Study hard, and do your best in school. Don’t skive off. Be kind to those around you, and… and I hope you grow up to be a wonderful man like your father.” Yao Xuan weeps, tears mixing with her son’s. “There will be bright days, rainy days, but I know that you will come to find people who care about you as deeply as I do. And no matter what you do… know that we will always love you, Roy.”

“I love you too, mama, but don’t go, please,” Roy begs. He’s not quite sure what’s going on around him - they were the heroes and heroines in the books they read to him, and they were supposed to protect him, not abandon him.

What does that mean? Will I see them again?

General Mustang rubs at his eyes impatiently. “We have to, Roy. I love you, and I know that you will grow up to be a fine man. I know you’ll surpass me.” He flashes Roy a watery smile as he places a warm hand on his forehead, but it’s full of faith and certitude.

This is our son, after all.

“I love you too, papa. I need you,” Roy pleads with all the desperation of a child who wanted nothing more than to be with his parents every day.

Their hearts shatter when General Lan Yan signals that their time is almost up. Ten seconds.

“Be strong, son. We’re so sorry,” Yao Xuan mourns as Roy is pried from her arms and lifted onto a horse by General Lan Yan. “Zai jian, xin gan,” she bids farewell solemnly as she watches his small, struggling frame disappear in the dark, unforgiving night, deserting them to face their death. The wind carries his desperate wails, and for the first time since her pregnancy the nausea is back with a wrathful vengeance.

But it won’t be here to stay this time.

She crosses an arm with her husband as they receive the cups of poison with unwilling hands, pulses beating violently as they repeat their vows of undying love to each other for the last time.

Farewell, my son.

~x~

your first breath, first taste of this wretched world: a cry of triumph, a fist of victory, a defiance of death. my soul sings into satin and linen: affection for perfection.

~x~

It doesn’t take long for Roy to cry himself to sleep. His petite body shuts down quickly from the sheer exhaustion of doing so, and he’s out like a light soon enough as he traverses across the desert with General Lan Yan. When he’s awoken by the onslaught of a particularly harsh wind and what sounds like an oncoming sandstorm, he’s pulled back into sleep by a gentle force on his pressure point.

Suddenly, he’s roused from his slumber by someone shaking him, and as he cracks an eyelid open to peer out the window he realises that - wait, this is not the desert. The scene around him is a stark contrast to the vast expanse of sand and ochre that he’s used to. The alleys that they pass by are narrow, and they reek of something unfamiliar. It’s unpleasant. Roy doesn’t like it.

Then the memory of what happened hits him like a truck, and he begins to bawl again even as he’s brought out into the sunlight, towards a strange-looking establishment. It’s nothing like Roy has ever seen in his life, and though it’s significantly cooler he finds himself already longing for the desert heat beating on his back.

The Blue Por… He tries to read the sign on the door, but it’s a word too big for his age.

General Lan Yan raps on the door while keeping a steady hand on the boy’s sobbing frame. “Miss Mustang?”

The door opens to reveal a gruff-looking woman. “What?” Roy finds himself intimidated by the woman’s brusque and domineering persona. She’s decked in a plum-coloured dress with lips to match, with mother-of-pearls and gold branched around her neck like a collar. Her hair and eyes are jet black, like Roy’s and his parent’s, but he finds that she looks nothing like his mother, who’s kind and sweet and -

- he bursts into tears again.

“What’s going on?” The Madame asks, bewildered by the sight of a crying child and a man who, from his ostentatious armor and features is obviously from Xing. There’s a sense of guilt lingering within her when she looks upon the distressed child, so she stretches out to rest an awkward hand on his unruly black hair (which reminds her a little of her brother’s, who’s never been known to make acquaintance with a comb).

“Your brother…” General Lan Yan straightens, chiding himself mentally for letting his tongue slip. “General Mustang said to bring your nephew here, miss.”

My nephew. Nephew.

God, she wasn’t even aware that her brother had a son. How did he even find the time to raise a child while serving in the Xingese military?

“That’s Madame Christmas to you, and where’s my brother?”

“I hate to inform you of this, Madame Christmas. He is dead.” There’s a certain fluidity in his response that disguises his remorse, his reluctance, but his eyes prickle marginally at the thought of his deceased friend and his wife.

Christmas feels like he’s just thrown her under a moving train. “Don’t joke around.”

“I… I am afraid not. I’m here to carry out his last wish,” General Lan Yan replies somberly. Beside him, the child fidgets, gripping onto the book he’d brought along with him so hard that the edges begin to leave marks on his palms.

“How?”

“... It is not my place to say, Madame. We’ve been silenced by a royal decree,” and it’s true. She wants to go after the man with a quick fist, but there’s nothing that belies the brutal veracity of his statement on his expression.

Christmas swallows the painful lump in her throat before choking out her next words. “And what… what was his last wish?” I definitely need a drink after this.

“He only said to bring the child to you. I assume he intended for you to raise him as well.”

“... Where’s his mother?” It’s more rhetorical than anything, but Christmas wanted to believe that there could be a different answer by some stroke of luck.

“Dead, as well,” he whispers, and Roy’s cries amplify tenfold as he flinches away from the General’s hand - his hand reminded him of the villains in the stories his mother would read aloud to him - and huddles into itself.

“... I see.” She pauses for a moment to take in his frail frame. “Well, I’ll be taking him, then,” she motions for Roy to come over before gesturing for the General to leave.

(As much as she wanted to flip a finger, she realised that she would have to rethink some habits now that she had a child under her wing.)

“Thank you, Madame Christmas. I entrust the boy into your care,” he bows before turning to leave, glancing at the boy’s shuddering figure for one last time before returning back to the carriage.

Here’s to a new beginning for your son, General Mustang, Lady Yao. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for the both of you.

~x~

It takes time for the child to adjust to the novelty of his new home, his new beginning. But eventually, he does.

Aunt Chris and his mother are two worlds apart. For starters, they looked nothing alike. And where his mother was delicate and soft, Aunt Chris was loud and rough.

Nevertheless, they are alike in some ways, he learns. Roy’s the only boy in the bar, as he later learns it’s called, and despite her initial crabbiness Aunt Chris is surprisingly tactile and nice. It doesn’t take long for her to grow fond of the boy, the same way the girls in the bar fawn over him from the moment he steps in. He’s rather petulant and sullen initially, but this doesn’t come as a shock for someone who lost his parents at such a tender age.

When Roy first arrived at The Blue Porcelain he’d holed himself up in the room assigned to him, reading the only book he’d brought from home over and over again (Roy also discovered that his mother had left a poem, a letter of sorts within, and he never went anywhere without it - he treated it like a talisman).

But Aunt Chris doesn’t let him sulk for long.

No matter how grouchy he was, she would always drag him out forcibly for dinner, and made a conscious effort to talk to him daily even though he clearly wasn’t the biggest conversationalist around. She’d tried reading bedtime stories to him, even, and indulged him when he whined about wanting to hear about princesses and knights.

Where his mother’s voice was like silk, hers was a lot more like gravel. Nevertheless, Roy eventually comes to appreciate it, and would even look forward to their nightly sessions where he could tell her all about what he’d learnt at school that day.

Aunt Chris also nags at him the same way his own mother did - she’s always yammering at him to finish his food, hold his chopsticks properly or do his homework, and while it gets on his nerves occasionally he comes to understand that it’s their way of showing affection.

It’s therefore a no-brainer for him to draw both his aunt and his mother when he’s assigned with the task of producing an artwork of his mother for school, but when he shows it to Aunt Chris she begins to tear up.

He’s puzzled. Am I really that bad at art?

“What’s wrong, Aunt Chris?”

“Nothing, boy. It’s lovely,” she says sincerely.

Roy grins. “My teacher said so, too. I’ve been doing well in all my other subjects in school too, you know. Top of the class,” he chirps happily, puffing out his chest a little in pride.

“That’s wonderful, Roy-boy. I’m sure you’ll grow up to be a great man one day, like your father.”

“... Really?” There’s a certain melancholy that laces his voice, as if he was unsure of himself.

His aunt, on the other hand, is unequivocal that he would. She was no fortune teller, but there was a fire that illuminated his eyes. The mark of a warrior, a leader. “Absolutely. You’re destined for greatness, my boy.”

(Roy didn’t know this yet, but he would one day negotiate treaties on behalf of his country with a future distant relative and ascend to a rank higher than his father’s so that he could marry the woman he loved without any ramifications.)

~x~

(look, a bastard child!) no, you will embark towards glorious greatness. life doomed you once, but in your hands it shall soon rest. hear me now. heart and hearth: keep them ablaze, alight. no matter the ones you burn, in mine you shall always remain.

~x~

The war-torn desert reminds Major Mustang of a childhood memory that he’s tried to suppress for a long, long time. With every howl of the wind, the ache in his heart only grew stronger. Hotter. Like an inferno threatening to consume his innards.

He’d always been acutely aware of the pain of having your parents ripped apart from you in front of your very eyes. It was the kind of anguish that abated only slightly with time, but then and now grief would come back with a vengeance. Always, in the most unexpected of moments.

And yet here he was, doing the exact same thing years later.

Spare no one, the decree says. In response, The Flame Alchemist obeys.

Destined for greatness, my ass.

He would have liked to seek out a certain childhood friend for comfort, but he couldn’t bear to touch her. Not like this. Not when he’d stained his hands scarlet, not when he’d been a contributing factor to her involvement in the war. In any case, he highly doubted that she wanted to be even associated with him at this point, which suited him fine. He didn’t deserve her.

Not in the least, you monster.

The whiskey does nothing to assuage the emotional storm brewing within him. A distasteful mix of sorrow, compunction, longing. Alcohol, he realised, could not bring him absolution or erase his sins. It only offered a brief respite, a numbing agent.

Major Mustang sinks onto the floor of the weather-beaten tent as he digs inside his pockets for an old poem that had offered him comfort since he was five, even before his vocabulary was wide enough to comprehend its intended message.

He hadn’t cried, not since the war happened, but his mother’s predictions had been eerily accurate. Prophetic, even. For indeed life rested in his hands - with a snap, he could destroy an entire population; he’d burnt so many hearts, so many hearths, that his were now darkened with despair and remorse.

I really am a bastard of the most reprehensible kind, aren’t I?

Lost in a pool of words and grief, he misses the presence of a blonde girl who was only slightly shorter, younger than he was. Riza Hawkeye comes in through the tent flap and stares at him wordlessly. She sees him grasping tightly onto a familiar piece of crumpled parchment, as if it was the last shred of hope in their wretched lives.

Overcome with sympathy, Riza decides to push aside the conflicting feelings raging within her - for now, at least - and sits beside him.

He’d shown her the letter once, when they were children - the only memento his late mother had left behind. Riza had never seen him go anywhere without it. It was obviously of great import to him, and his mother had clearly loved him dearly.

“No matter the ones you burn, in mine you shall always remain,” Riza whispers. And it’s true: despite the atrocities they’d committed outside, the crimes against humanity they’d perpetrated, there was a part of her that still loved him, as his own mother would have.

For the first time since The Ishvalan Extermination, Roy allows himself to mourn in her arms as he clutches desperately onto a yellowing letter.

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

special thanks to @hirayaart and @x-rainflame-x - thank you so much for helping me read through this, and for your invaluable feedback 💖

you can read the full poem here if you’re interested ^_^

#moms-made-fullmetal-2020 #fma fanfic #xingese!roy #Royai fic #implied royai #roy's parents #madame christmas #fma #royai fanfic #xingese imperial court

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cx-shhhh · 5 years ago

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ExR Royalty AU expanded:

The original post: here. So @yayee-prsp helped me bring this to LIFE, and I’m still a little in shock that I get to message her(!!!)

(Warning: this will be a long post, so buckle up.)

Ages: E = 2 and R = 0

Prince Grantaire is a newborn, and Enjolras is from a noble family, so he has the privilege of seeing him early on

R just happens to open his eyes for the first time when Enjolras is staring at him

E gazes into those big blue eyes and decides right then and there that he would protect R forever

E will never let tears appear in those precious eyes if he can help it

R’s very first memory is cooing happily at a pretty boy with shiny golden hair and piercing blue eyes

Ages: E = 8 and R = 6

E and R are super hard to separate, so E spends most of his time in the castle

Whatever E learns early on, he’ll always teach it to R, and they become so much closer

R has lots of nervous energy, so he makes flower crowns, especially for E

E thinks crowns are stupid, but he’ll always wear a flower crown made for him by R

R gets scared of loud storms, so he sneaks into E’s rooms in the middle of the night

E cannot possibly resist the vulnerable expression on R’s face when he opens the door

R gets tugged under the covers of E’s bed and finds himself wrapped up in E’s arms and violently cuddled

Ages: E = 14 and R = 12

E gets sent away for schooling and training for his career as a knight

R becomes infatuated with E, declaring to his parents that he’s going to marry him

R gets told that he cannot marry a knight, so R sulks for the rest of the time E is away, throwing himself into his princely duties and lessons

R learns how to dance with a multitude of people, but he’d rather spend all his time with E

E comes back one day, and R drops all his books to run up to him for a hug

There’s obviously something wrong because E doesn’t even crack a smile

Alone in his bedroom, R cries himself to sleep, and in the middle of the night, it’s E’s turn to sneak in to drop a kiss into his hairline and hesitate before regretfully leaving the room

Inside, E’s just as in love with R, but his parents warned him to distance himself emotionally so nobody gets hurt if an accident happens to him

E thinks he isn’t allowed to marry the prince, so he acts all stoic on the outside while he smiles fondly internally at R’s silly antics

Ages: E = 20 and R = 18

At this point, these two are completely in love with each other but too oblivious to notice

E looks absolutely handsome in his full knight regalia, and R has to double take every single time, dying a little inside

After E was told to suppress his feelings as a teenager, he’s finally out of his parents’ control

E is probably the best swordsman to ever exist, with R as a close second, so he’s not terribly concerned about getting wounded

E still has the first flower crown he’s ever received from R, and it’s all wrinkly and dry

E finds R sitting on his bed one day, holding the crown, and stammers out an excuse before R shyly places a fresh one on his head and flees the room

R sneaks E into an empty ballroom sometimes to teach him how to dance in preparation for balls and big social gatherings

They used to spin each other around as little kids, but R gets flustered every time E holds his hand out and asks for a dance

They go out on rides sometimes, with E helping R onto his horse just to be safe, and when E grips him solidly around the waist, they both panic a little

They get into pointless arguments about the kingdom’s politics all the time and bicker constantly

Finally, R gets so fed up with E’s crap and the fighting that he storms out

E backtracks and mentally slaps himself before blurting out that he loves him

R screeches to a halt and turns vulnerable eyes onto him, not quite believing what he just heard

R asks for E to repeat what he just said, and E hesitates uncharacteristically before coming close enough that he can whisper it into R’s ear

R raises trembling fingers to brush them against E’s cheek while E is frozen in place, not wanting to scare R away

R turns his head slightly and sees the determination in those eyes that he’s loved for so long before surging forward to kiss E

Wow, so that was kind of an entire fanfiction right there. I hope you all like it! Obviously, my headcanons include Enjolras being two years older and taller than Grantaire. I just think they’re adorable and cute.

Here’s what fueled this AU:

(Art by the incredible and talented @yayee-prsp via prompt request on Instagram)

#les mis #les miserables #enjolras #grantaire #enjoltaire #les amis #exr #les amis de l'abc #knight!Enjolras #prince!Grantaire #medieval au

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fic-for-fic-sake · 5 years ago

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Somewhere New

A/N: I’ve been in this self quarantine since Friday, Spain declared a state of emergency on Saturday, I am feeling depressed now. This is my solution. Also the garden is based off of the Keukenhof.

Warnings: none

Pairing: Loki x reader

They were calling it ‘social distancing’ but what it really felt like was absolute hell. You honestly couldn’t remember the last time you had physical contact with another human being. Living on your own sounded great at first; nobody to leave dirty dishes in the sink or have loud annoying sex so you couldn’t sleep, and nobody to eat your food. When you moved into your new apartment in a new country in September, it was perfect. Only because you didn’t know what was to come.

When you heard about the quarantine you were shocked to say the least. It seemed like everything was fine and then all of a sudden if you walked around outside without a specific destination in mind you were facing hefty fines. You called your parents and friends as much as you could but everyone you loved was an ocean away. You had never felt so isolated in your life. Soon, the apartment you cherished became your very own solitary confinement. You hated how your voice echoed through the hallway and how the only dishes in the kitchen sink were your own.

You contemplated calling your boyfriend, Loki but it would be no use. He was away on a diplomatic mission in Asgard and you doubted he would have cell service where he was. You doubted he even knew the situation here on Earth. So instead, you threw on a new pair of sweats and took a nap, allowing yourself this one day to be depressed and give in to your emotions before you would do anything about it tomorrow.

Your room was dark so you couldn’t say for certain what time it was but you felt a presence in the room with you and a calm hand resting on your shoulder, beseeching you to wake up.

“Darling wake up, it’s me.” Loki whispered into the darkness of your bedroom. You turned around under the blankets to see the ethereal form of your beloved. He was still in his ceremonial regalia, black and green leathers and his gold armor glinting in the moonlight that slithered in through your curtains. You almost cried with how excited you were to see another person. You took him by surprise as you pulled him down onto your small bed with you, taking time to breath in his scent, winter pine. Perfect.

“Not that I’m complaining but what has gotten into you pet?” Loki breathed into your hair, placing kisses there.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” You question, voice muffled by his hair.

“What news?”

“Most of the world is in quarantine right now.” You responded, as he rolled off on top of you to lay beside you, propping himself up on his elbow.

“What do you mean quarantine? What’s happened?” He pondered, his emerald eyes seeking out yours, looking every bit as worried as you had felt when you first heard the news.

“There’s a new virus that’s been spreading for a few months now. A lot of people are getting sick and we don’t have a cure and we don’t have enough medical supplies to help everyone at once so the governments have advised their people to stay inside to give us a fighting chance.” You explained, as a tear rolled down your cheek, but Loki was quick to swipe it with the pad of his thumb.

“And how are you feeling my darling?” He questioned softly, voice only above a whisper as you lay beside one another in the darkness of your room. At his innocent question you broke down crying and Loki quickly scooped you up into his arms, rocking you gently as he pressed soothing kisses into your hair. “Shhh my pet, let it out, tell me everything.” He cooed.

“I just feel so helpless.” You choked out between sobs, “I I-haven’t been outside in f-four days.”

“That’s unacceptable.” Loki replied, suddenly crawling out of your bed and rising to his full height.

“Where are you going?” You asked weakly, rubbing tears from your eyes with the back of your hand.

Loki leafed around through your closet before handing you a spring dress, “Put this on dove, I’m taking you somewhere.”

You knew better than to ask further questions even though you were dying to know where he would take you. Surely nowhere on Earth because of the virus. Your heart bubbled with happiness as you threw the dress on over your body, fixed your hair, and threw on a pair of sandals before you signaled to Loki that you were ready. He extended his arm for you which you happily accepted as you circled your arms around his waist and his arm draped protectively over your shoulders.

“You look exquisite my love.” He murmured as he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. Before you knew it a brilliant beam of light sucked you up in a kaleidoscope of colors and you clung tighter to Loki, afraid of what would happen should you let go. You shut your eyes as the sensations became too much for your body to bear but then you felt your feet rest against solid ground once again and Loki gently whispered for you to open your eyes.

You complied and were immediately at a loss for words. You found yourself in the middle of a beautiful flower garden. Beautiful tulips of varying color and size stretched as far as the eye could see. Bands of red, yellow, orange, and pink flowers extended for miles as far as you could tell. You walked among the flowers, feeling their soft petals under your fingertips and smelling their floral perfume as you bent down. A pot of stunning hyacinths caught your eye, the deep purple hue enchanted you. You walked further as Loki followed behind you with a bemused expression on his face. You almost sobbed at the smattering of tulips of various colors all clustered together in perfect disharmony and you turned to Loki with tears streaming down your face as you asked him a question.

“Loki, how-how is this possible? I’ve only ever seen a garden like this once in my life before.” You whispered as he pulled you closer to his body in a hug.

“Do you like it?” He asked, pressing a light kiss to your lips.

“I love it, but how?” You repeated, curious to know how a garden you’ve only ever visited once was before your very eyes.

“This is mother’s garden but it’s fitted with a type of magic. It changes depending on who’s standing in it, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.” He quoted and you were dumbstruck but one thing stuck in your mind.

“Your mother’s garden, as in Frigga...meaning.”

“I took you to Asgard my love. We can stay here as long as you like until your planet is okay again.” He said as he pulled your chin up with his forefinger and planted a tender kiss on your lips.

You answered his proposition with a languid kiss of your own, slowly looping your arms around the back of his neck and playing with his ebony locks.

“Thank you Loki.” You whispered against his lips, breaking apart for a moment.

“Anything for you pet.” He replied, taking your hand in his and leading you towards the gilded palace of Asgard where you would be safe.

#loki x reader #loki x you #loki laufeyson #loki fanfic #loki odinson #quarantine fanfic #lmao #mcu fanfic

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a-world-in-grey · 5 years ago

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Take My Breath au - Roadtrip (Duscae)

Some bad, some good, some cute - and some of Sola terrifying the shit out of Ravus. @secret-engima because hey, we get to see Ardyn and Sola exchange words!

-Sola has to admit that helping Uncle Cor take out the Norduscaen blockade was cathartic (though the exasperated why me look he gave her after she walked in the front gate with the rest of the Retinue, glaive across her shoulders and she cheerfully announced that being the distraction was fun was completely unnecessary) and she’s in a much better mood as they wander through Duscae looking for more royal tombs.

-They pick up a couple hunts - including a damn behemoth so Prompto can ride Chocobos, but in the face of Prompto’s delighted expression no one can begrudge the blonde - and Sola heals a few people from what looks like poison. Black crawling through their veins that feels like a smothering, choking fog as Sola pulls it into herself. She frowns as her magic fights off the poison, but sluggishly, taking hours, even days where normally she’d be fine in a manner of minutes.

-It’s odd, but her magic beats it off as it does everything else, so Sola simply keeps her gloves on and jacket sleeves down to hide the black creeping up her hands and wrists. The others would only worry, and she’s fine.

-Until she’s not.

-Until the poison in her veins are creeping up her forearms, up her arms, and she’s vomiting up black goo almost every night. Fortunately, she has her own tent - as big as Gladio’s is, there’s no way to cram four people inside when three of them are six feet tall, and Gladio is... Gladio - and a decade of having hanahaki has taught her how to hide the fact that she’s getting sicker every day.

-In Lestallum, Sola crashes hard when they reach the Leville. She sleeps in later than Noctis even, and wakes up after Noctis has left with Iris to tour Lestallum. Ignis returns first, and it turns out that Pelna and Axis are in Lestallum and Sola takes the chance for an update.

-She even waves off the Chocobros when they go to find the next Tomb, instead going out to get takeout and finding a discreet place to have lunch and talk about glaive operations.

-Then lunch gets interrupted by that same silky tone Sola is coming to hate. She’s not the only one to react violently, weapons whirling through the air. Ardyn casually sidesteps them all. His casual remark that Sola’s finally found herself a Shield is met with a snarl from Axis, but Sola waves both Pelna and Axis down. They cannot afford to start a fight here - too many civilians, too many refugees that cannot afford Imperial attention turning to the city - no matter how much Ardyn deserves a knife to the kidney.

-Then Ardyn grabs Sola’s hand, pushing her sleeve up and revealing the black poison stark against pale skin before Sola can wrench her arm away. But Ardyn knows what this is, mentions that it is the Scourge her little brother is fated to defeat, even if at this rate Ardyn doubts Sola will live to see it. Pelna and Axis still dangerously, and Adryn leaves with a vague comment of wondering how Sola will go.

-Sola, Pelna, and Axis return to the Leville, where Sola pulls Jared aside and asks him to look into the Starscourge - and what happens to those who are infected with it. It means revealing her infection to Jared and making the man promise not to tell the others, because Sola can feel it now. She’s dying, and unless they miraculously find a cure, Sola won’t survive.

-Pelna and Axis are not happy. They argue with Sola when Sola refuses to divert Kingsglaive forces to researching the Scourge. She tells them that they don’t know if there is a cure, and it’s more important that they continue to fight the Empire. Pelna is named Second, and if when Sola dies, he will be Chief.

-Unfortunately, Iris overhears enough and bursts into the room to confront Sola about it. Sola sighs and lets Iris look at her arms with trembling fingers. She has Iris promise not to tell the others, because they need to focus on protecting Noctis, not her. Iris nods, and Sola kneels down to wipe away Iris’ tears. Especially because Iris sniffles that she’s going to leave her Shield all alone. The glaives blink down at Iris, and Iris sniffs again, this time in part offense and says that she’s not blind. Axis is Sola’s Shield, and... Iris hesitates before she quietly adds that he’s family too, isn’t he?

-Axis is still as a statue, and Iris babbles that he looks a bit like her grandmother, and he acts a lot like Gladdy and her father around Noctis and the king. Iris shuffles when Axis still doesn’t react, and she asks why he never said anything. Axis, faced with a crying kid, immediately switches over into dad mode, and he gently tells Iris that he’s a bastard. It would’ve brought too much scandal for both Lord Amicitia and Axis’ family if Axis came forward. Iris pouts, but she grew up in Insomnia and while she wasn’t involved in court, she was still trained, and so she doesn’t try to argue against what she knows is true.

-But Iris is also whip smart for being only 15, and Iris asks if they were worried about the Council forcing Axis to be Sola’s Shield. Axis blinks, but Sola smiles at Iris and confirms it. It’s why Sola helps Axis hide his ties to the Amicitia, because both Axis and Sola wanted it to be their choice. Iris nods, hugs Axis tight, before scampering off to help Jared and Talcott with their new research project. Because she doesn’t want either of her older brothers to lose their King/Queen.

-Sola is out with Pelna and Axis, finishing up reports and orders and plans (and telling them to send some of the Ornata over to Galdin Quay to find one Dino Ghiranze) when she gets a text from Ignis that they’ve returned from the tomb and are going to check out the Disk of Cauthess. Sola texts back and tells them to be careful of the Imperial presence in the area. Sola doesn’t worry when they aren’t back by nightfall - Ignis texted her to tell her that they’d rented a caravan for the night.

-Axis and Pelna, being absolute shits, stick Talcott on Sola babysitting duty before they leave. A duty little Talcott takes to with enthusiasm. Sola sighs, flips her two glaives the middle finger where Talcott can’t see, and proceeds to bow to Talcott’s every whim. Because she’s always been a sucker for kids. (Iris, the traitor, hides giggles behind her hands and cheerfully waves as Talcott drags Sola to wander around Lestallum. Sola won’t admit it, but the sunshine hurts on her skin, hurts her eyes and she makes sure to buy sunglasses. Sola refuses to give up sunlight, even if it hurts.)

-Sola abruptly worries a lot more about her little brother when Titan wakes up and throws a fit. Lestallum isn’t too damaged in the resulting earthquake, but the sight of the giant Astral is... an eye catching sight to be sure.

-Then the Chocobros return to Lestallum by Imperial airship, and Sola learns that they’ve been interacting with Ardyn. Sola snarls, because herself is one thing, but he is not allowed to meddle with her little brother!

-Without the Regalia, the group is forced to rent Chocobos to get around. Fortunately, the birds can cover more terrain than the car, and it allows them to avoid the sudden Imperial blockades that have cropped up. Sola splits off from the group in order to organize and lead glaive operations in blowing up the blockades and bases.

-And, well, Sola’s seen the way Ignis keeps glancing at her, and she’s worried that he’s starting to suspect that she isn’t as well as she pretends.

-Sola gets a call from Cindy pointing her towards Archeole base, where the Regalia has been impounded and waiting for shipment to Niflheim. Sola leaves Pelna in charge of wider operations, and takes Axis and two other glaives with her to meet up with the Chocobros just outside the base.

-Sola does not step into the Haven. She tried that a couple days back and it was not fun, Sola does not recommend. It means she’s now running mostly night shifts so she can sleep during the day, but she’s managing.

-Instead, Sola leaves the two glaives to coordinate with Ignis and the others while she and Axis sneak around to scout out the base.

-Night falls, and Sola and Noctis’ group infiltrate at separate points. They proceed to sneak around and murder their way through the base. Sola’s group focuses on taking out as many MTs and imperial forces as possible, while Noctis’ group heads for the main generator and the Regalia.

-At several points, Sola calls forth bursts of sunlight to disorient the mech sensors. It sears through her veins like nothing has before, but it’s the best option she has so Sola forces herself to continue through the pain.

-Frankly, Sola thinks Noctis calling down Ramuh to smite the generator is overkill, but the glaives are an Awe.

-Ravus has just pushed Gladio back against the Regalia when about two dozen weapons materialize around him. And Sola slinks out of the shadows, all predatory grace and lethal smile. “Hello, darling.”

-Ravus doesn’t dare move. Not with the blades pressed against his throat, against eight different spots that will kill him instantly if Sola wills it. With the two blades pointed at his eyes and the gun against the back of his head.

-He’s seen the power of a Lucis Caelum armiger. It’s not something he ever anticipated being on the other end of it.

-Sola’s almost a foot shorter than him. That doesn’t stop her from using the tip of her wickedly sharp blade to lift his chin. “Tell me, darling,” And Ravus has never heard an endearment sound so threatening, “why I shouldn’t cut you down where you stand?”

-He says nothing. There is nothing to say, no convincing reason he can give for Sola to spare his life. And Sola knows it. Her smile widens until it’s less a smile and more a snarl of bared teeth.

-“I’m afraid I will have to protest, dear Princess.” Sola twitches as Ardyn materializes behind them, but her glaive doesn’t move as she turns to glare at the High Chancellor. Thank the Six, that blade is uncomfortably close to his throat. “Lady Lunafreya will be most put out if her brother dies.”

-Out of the corner of his eye, Ravus sees Noctis wince. Sola however, is unmoved. “This is war.” Sola drawls, “Lady Lunafreya will understand.”

-“Let him go, and all of you will be allowed to walk free with your Regalia.” Ardyn promises.

-“Please, I’m not that stupid.” Sola scoffs. “I let him go, you’ll kill all of us.”

-“You have my word, you will not be harmed.” The Lucians give Ardyn dubious looks, and Ravus honestly agrees with them. After Insomnia, what Lucian would trust anyone from the Empire?

-“Your word means nothing.” Sola counters with a vicious smile, “Try again.”

-Ardyn tilts his head thoughtfully. “Oh? It almost seems like you want a reason to spare him, dear Princess.”

-Sola laughs. It’s the most chilling thing Ravus has ever heard.

-“Hardly.” Sola says. “But your attempts amuse me.”

-“Sola,” Noctis intervenes, voice quiet but firm. “Withdraw. We’re leaving.”

-A breathless moment where Sola is utterly still, before her weapons shatter into shards of golden magic. Her hand forms a shape, and Ravus suddenly spots the three figures waiting in the shadows when they move, forming a formation and waiting for Sola to join them.

-“As my king commands.” Sola intones. She fades back into the shadows with inhuman ease, sparing a moment to send Ravus a smile that sends shivers down his spine. “Until next time, darling.”

-Those words are going to haunt his nightmares. And Ravus prays to the Six that there won’t be a next time. He’s not certain he’ll survive it.

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