#probably mangled beyond recognition though

[technicallywrite]

I am terrified delighted to share the first chapter of my first fic in 20+ years. There will be more, and yes that's a threat.

[blternative]

The Captain isn't exactly free of blame either, I feel like that gets lost a bit as you play and get sucked into Jimmy's mental breakdown at the end. He was aware that Anya was pregnant by Jimmy through means that weren't consensual, knew that she wanted to use the gun to protect herself from him but resorted to hiding it after finding that she couldn't use it because she didn't have the proper authority to get the code to unlock it but realized Jimmy would be able to.

Granted, Curly was in a bad position for the issue from the beginning, he's the only source of authority on the ship and the ship as a whole would've suffered from being down one member but he doesn't do anything to protect Anya, his solution is to talk things out with Jimmy then think of a further solution together, not pull rank and put him in whatever their version of jail would've been on the ship (probably just stuffing them in a cryo pod until they reach their destination). Loyalty to his friend blinded him to the safety of his entire crew and he wanted to keep tensions as low as possible, even when that friend was threatening to take him down with him if he wasn't protected or staging a murder-suicide so no one would know what happened.

Even with Jimmy dangling the threat of Curly's career being in ruins once the news is reported, Curly doesn't stop him, he only slows him down at best and even that doesn't work, Jimmy proceeds to then crash the ship in an effort to completely get away with his crime(s) at the expense of a few lives. Curly gets mangled beyond recognition, unable to do the most basic of actions on his own, and is forced to spend several months in utter agony while watching his crew break down and die or get seriously injured in front of him. He sees everyone die, or the process of their death, except Jimmy, who gets to kill himself out of Curly's view as the stasis activates and Curly freezes. But Jimmy fixes it! He saves Curly and is a hero!

Except, why would a defunct company bother wasting what little funds they have left searching for a ship that was only carrying mouth wash? If no one finds the wreckage in twenty years, Curly gets reawoken and suffocates (I'm pretty sure one of the characters said something about running out of oxygen before food); if he gets found then he gets the finger pointed at him for presumably intentionally veering the ship into a collision *while* spending the rest of his life in continued agony. It doesn't matter what they believe for how the crew died, Curly takes all the blame as he's not only the only survivor but the captain, not only did they all die in horrific ways but they burned through most of the cargo!

In the end, Curly did it to himself really, every problem that happens, every death a reminder that none of it would've happened if he had did the right thing. Every time Jimmy exercises his anger on him by forcing the pills down his throat and ignores his choked cries and tears, it was Curly taking responsibility for his actions, or rather lack of, that got them to that moment. Even if he didn't want to take responsibility, he still did, he had no choice.

It's why Curly was the captain and Jimmy wasn't, why he could've called himself captain all he wanted and no one (except Daisuke but, he's Daisuke) believed it, not even himself.

He never took responsibility for anything he did, he laid the blame for the crash on Curly and even for delaying the news of the company's bankruptcy even though Curly technically broke protocol and told them early; everyone died believing Curly was the one piloting even though by the time he got into the cockpit it was too late. He never took responsibility for assaulting Anya and subsequently getting her pregnant, instead choosing to hide the truth and secretly hounding her into "fixing it" to the point of her committing suicide so it truly was "fixed." He didn't take responsibility for getting Daisuke killed by having him crawl into the broken air vent and getting seriously injured, instead the truth of the events that lead up to it coming out as the kid lay on his bed dying, profusely apologizing for what in his eyes was a fuck up on his behalf.

Everyone else takes responsibility for the consequences of actions done by Jimmy. Anya takes responsibility for him getting her pregnant and "takes care of it" like he wanted her to, presumably before the crash even happened he was telling her this. Daisuke takes responsibility for knocking out Swansea and going into the vent, even though he was going off of Jimmy's commands. Swansea takes responsibility for not only trying to protect Anya (why he constantly carried the axe) but for falling back into alcoholism by coping with their fate, even though Jimmy was the one who opened the cargo hold.

Even when Anya is dead, and Curly is forced to lay by her corpse, Jimmy doesn't take responsibility for him being the reason she took that course of action, completely blotting the scene out of his mind until he's forced to look at it when picking up Curly, even then he only focuses on Curly.

At his end, he never feels regrets for his actions unless they're in the context of it affecting Curly, and even then its only because he didn't know how stressful the position actually was. He doesn't have remorse for assaulting Anya and pushing her into suicide, for getting Daisuke mercy killed by Swansea (he doesn't have anything to say about it beyond berating Swansea for being hasty) or pushing the old man into coming at him with an axe after he had his own mental break. He only feels remorse for being jealous of Curly and not realizing how stressful the role of captain really was until he was in the position himself, he only thinks Curly as a prestigious prick who cares about his own image and career and no one else's.

He gets to kill himself, consequence free, even being able to think of himself as the hero at the end, when everything that transpired over the course of the game was his fault.

I don't think Curly is as bad a person as Jimmy is, but hes still bad, he's too much of an optimist and wanted to keep trying to see the good in people even when it came to the detriment of his crew.

In short, fuck Jimmy but fuck Curly too.

[supercorpkid]

Future History

Supergirl. Kara Danvers x Reader.

Word Count: 3735.

Notes: Literally no one asked for this but I was in dire need to write angst or I'd die. So here, have the saddest story I could come up with.

A soft tap on your window is barely registered by your clogged up ears (and nose). There's nothing that could pull you from your bed now; You think you might just physically can't. It doesn't matter—you're on the fifth floor, and if someone managed to knock on your window, it could only mean one thing: it's her.

The tears falling from your eyes and into your pillow don't stop for a second, even when the window creaks open and she glides in, her presence heavy with sorrow; you can't bring yourself to stop crying.

"Baby," Her tone is agonizing, sad, inconsolable. Exactly as you feel right now. 

"Leave." It's the sole thing you can say. One word you've reserved for her, though your every thought is a painful echo of her name.

You can't see yourself or almost anything at all, with your eyes all blurred from the tears, but you can imagine what Kara is seeing right now. Your body curled up around itself, jagged and weak. Your pillow soaked, hair and clothes damp from hours of crying. You're not sure how there are any tears left in you.

She does leave, but only for a second. Soon she returns, a bottle of water in her hand, a futile gesture of care. You snatch it from her and fling it across the room with all the force your broken heart can muster.

"Goddamn it, leave!" You demand, voice raw and furious. 

Kara flinches, her face contorted in pain, and you notice she is not wearing the Supergirl coat of arm's anymore. She looks young, weak, normal. She looks exactly like a Danvers. Like the person who lied to you, who broke you. The one you trusted, loved—no, still love, though the thought makes you want to vomit. 

She looks like your Kara. Not-yours, never-really-completely-yours. She looks young and weak and stupid and you hate her face, her voice, her heart. You hate Kara Danvers even more than you hate Supergirl right now. You hate everything about her, and you hate that your heart refuses to let her go.

She drops to her knees beside your bed, her hand trembling as she wipes away one of the many tears sliding down your face. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and her voice is so raw, so fragile, that it cuts deeper than any blade. You’ve seen her cry before, but never like this. Never with a pain that matches your own. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says again, and the words are like salt in a wound that will probably never heal.

“No.” Your voice is barely a whisper, but it’s all you have left. You slap her hand away, your body recoiling from her touch as though it burns. “You’re not forgiven.” You couldn’t forgive her even if you wanted to. Your heart is a twisted, broken thing, mangled beyond recognition. 

"I'm sorry, I know it was the most awful timing—"

"Are you really gonna talk about timing in a time like this?" God, really! The timing is awful, is that what she really wants to talk about? 

Not about how you were there, on one knee, ring on your hand, your heart laid bare, and the suffocating silence that followed. The way your question hung in the air, unanswered, as you knelt there, dying a thousand deaths. Not about the fact you've never heard a silence quite so loud. Not a word from her or any of your so-called friends.

"No, you're right. I'm sorry —" She says again and it means nothing. All of her apologies mean nothing at all to you and you wish she would just shut up and leave.

"Oh my God, stop apologizing!" You sit up in bed and get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror behind the door. You flinch at the image of yourself reflected there. Sure, you feel dreadful and rough, yet you had no idea your face could embody your feelings so perfectly. 

Your cheeks burn, your eyes are swollen, and you know she sees it all. The evidence of how long you’ve been crying, of how deeply she’s wounded you. Since the time she left you there, replaying the question on your mind over and over. Did you say it right? Kara, will you marry me? Kara? Why is everyone looking so damn sorry for you? Why are you frozen on your knees?

“Okay, okay. I’m s—” She catches herself, silencing the apology that’s on her lips. She knows it’s useless. “Tell me what you need. Tell me what I can do, baby. Tell me how to make this right.”

“You lied,” you say, and your voice is so small, so weak, that it makes you feel like a frightened child. Kara’s face crumples, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of your words. “For so long. I—God, Kara, I proposed!” The anger surges back, bitter and overwhelming, choking you. “Do you understand that? I thought we were on the same page! I thought we had it all.”

“We did,” she insists, her voice a broken plea. “We do.”

"How could you do that to me? How could you look into my face every single day and lie about who you are? How could you ask all of our friends to do the same?"

"Y/N, I was going to tell you."

"When? At our wedding? After I said yes and signed the damn papers? WHEN WERE YOU GOING TO TELL ME YOU ARE SUPERGIRL, KARA DANVERS?"

You expect to be met with the same silence you did after you proposed, you're sure she won't have a response to your angry shouted words at her, but oh boy, she does now. Oh, but she now knows exactly what to say when a few hours ago she forgot the word 'yes' existed in her vocabulary.

"I did it to protect you," You scoff. "You have no idea, do you? How dangerous is it just knowing who I am? Alex," You scowl at her sister's name, but she continues. "Alex was kidnapped, trapped inside a tank and almost drowned so people would know my name. Lena was used by her own family. Brainy was drugged and had his mind erased —"

"And so what? You thought I would cave? You thought I wouldn't be able to keep your secret?"

"What? No! I — I didn't wanna see you get hurt."

“Because I would've, you know,” Your voice cracks, the truth of it shattering you all over again. "died for you. I would have."

"I know. I know, and I couldn't let that happen. I love you more than anything. More than anyone I have ever loved, I couldn't let anything bad happen to you because of me."

"So you did it yourself." You clean your face aggressively, knowing damn well you're just making space for more tears to wet it. "You couldn't let anyone hurt me, so you hurt me yourself."

"Baby—"

“No. No more ‘baby,’ no more excuses, no more lies.” Your voice is a deadly whisper, a divisiveness that crushes her. "You know what, I can't do this. Get the fuck out of my face." She winces when you curse, and the word feels right in your mouth like it never felt before. 

Kara stumbles out of the bedroom— Your bedroom that somehow doesn't feel like yours anymore. It feels empty because the only person that ever made it feel like home is now being kicked out of it. 

You hate this, you hate it all.

You hate every feeling coursing through you, tearing you apart. You hate the anger, the heartbreak, the taste of your own tears. You hate the slow, agonizing thud of your heart as it struggles to keep beating when all you want is for it to stop already.

But most of all, you hate how heavy the ring feels in your pocket. 

You've never had a full-on couch. Just a loveseat that has served you just fine for when you were alone or with a partner. It shocks you to find Kara curled up in that tiny, inadequate space when you walk into your living room first thing in the morning.

The sight of her sends a ping of anger through you, tightening your chest. You march over and poke her arm, your voice harsh as you snap, "What the hell are you doing?"

"There was nowhere else for me to stay." Kara’s voice is soft, almost meek, as if she truly believes that’s what you meant. You raise an eyebrow, not bothering to hide your disbelief. "But I stayed anyway."

"No shit, genius." You turn on your heels, heading straight for the coffee pot, the anger simmering just below the surface. "Why the hell did you stay? I’m pretty sure I told you to fuck off last night."

You don’t look back, but you don’t need to. You can practically feel the way she winces at your words. That’s how well you know her—or at least, how well you thought you did.

"Well, you—you told me to get out of your face." There’s a hesitation in her voice, and when you finally turn around, you can’t believe what you see. How can the mightiest superhero on the planet look like this? Like a fragile, delicate thing that needs your protection, your love.

"Pretty sure you’re still here, all over my face."

Kara takes a deep breath, her voice trembling as she tries to explain. "I couldn’t leave you like that, Y/N. You looked so, so broken."

You blink at her because the only reason you looked like that was her. She was the one that let her damage damage you. She was the one that came into your life, broke all your barriers, made you open up and love her dearly and deeply, and lied, and lied, and lied. Kara was the one that made you her future history from day one when she decided to deceit you repeatedly. 

"Was any of it true?" It's what comes out of your mouth. You're not even done with the question and she is already opening her mouth to answer, but you cut her short. "Don't lie again. Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth, Kara Danvers. All of those moments, all that you gave me, all that staring at me starry-eyed, was it all true?"

"Y/N," Kara takes a tentative step closer, her pink lips parted, her eyes brimming with tears that mirror your own. "All of it was the most real I’ve ever been in my life." She collapses into a chair halfway between you, like the weight of her own words is too much to bear. "Some people know Supergirl. Some people know Kara Danvers. And very few  know both."

You swallow hard, trying to choke back your tears. You, apparently, know none.

"You know me. Kara. Not Kara Danvers, not Kara Zor-El. The Kara that no one ever got to see. The one that laughs at dirty jokes, and dances in her underwear to no songs. The one that eats cold pizza in the morning, and can't sleep without my feet touching yours. You know how I like my coffee, my favorite songs, you know the words I hate, how many freckles I have and how ugly I look when I cry."

"You look… alright." You shrug, your voice flat, detached.

Her eyes soften at your words. "You know about my nightmares, and how to touch me so I feel safe. Actually, you know how to touch me in any way I need. You saw so much more than journalist Kara Danvers and Alex's young sister. You knew me better than anyone who's seen Supergirl in action—"

You recoil at the mention of her alias and your anger returns. More lies, even more lies to draw you in. When is that going to stop?

"Sorry," she murmurs, the apology falling flat.

The coffee machine beeps, signaling that it’s done. You move mechanically, pouring the coffee into two mugs, adding cream and a disgusting amount of sugar to hers the way you always do. But instead of handing it to her, you place it on the counter, a silent gesture that screams the distance between you.

Kara stands and approaches you cautiously, as if approaching a wounded animal. "Tell me what you’re thinking," she whispers, her voice barely audible, filled with fear.

You swallow the bitter words clawing at your throat, because the way she’s speaking—so submissive, so frightened—makes you hesitate.

Finally, in a voice so quiet it’s almost drowned by the silence, you say, "I wish I could unrecall how we almost had it all."

Kara’s eyes are filled with tears that she’s desperately trying to hold back. She’s always been the strong one, the one who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, but now, she looks so fragile, so utterly human. It’s a sight that tugs at something deep within you, a part of you that still aches for her despite everything.

“I was tired,” she finally whispers, her voice trembling. “tired of pretending, of lying, of hiding who I am. But I was a lot more terrified of losing you.”

You feel a pang of sympathy, but it’s quickly followed by the anger that has been bubbling inside you. “You should have thought of that before you lied to me for years,” you snap, your voice harsher than you intended.

Kara winces as if your words have physically struck her. She looks down at her hands, clenching and unclenching them nervously. “I know,” she says softly. “I know I messed up. I know I hurt you in a way that might be unforgivable. But baby, I need you to understand… I didn’t lie because I wanted to. I lied because I was scared. Scared of what it would mean if you knew. Scared that you’d look at me the way you’re looking at me now—like I’m a stranger.”

You sigh, running a hand through your hair in frustration. “How else am I supposed to look at you? You kept such a huge part of yourself from me, Kara. How am I supposed to trust anything you say?”

She steps a bit closer, cautiously. “Please, just… just let me explain,” she pleads, her eyes searching yours for any sign of willingness to listen. “I know I should have told you. I know that. But every time I thought about it, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being in danger because of who I am. Of you being a target just because you’re with me. And it also terrified me to think of you not loving all of me.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make,” your voice waver when you realize exactly what you are mad about. You're not mad about the fact that she is Supergirl. Supergirl is a nice person. A hero. A heavenly sent goddess that helps people. It's nice that your amazing, loving girlfriend is also all of that. The problem is that your amazing-loving-girlfriend never once thought about the rest of your lives together. “We were supposed to be a team. We were supposed to face things together. But you decided for both of us, and you didn’t even give me a choice.”

"I know." Kara’s face falls, but she takes another step closer anyway. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, and I know I’ve hurt you more than anyone ever has." She is too close now, you're sure, as her heat irradiates through her skin and you feel it on your own body. She is tentatively and scared, and still somehow brave, when she reaches for your face and cleans the single tear under your eye, even though she knows there's a fat chance you're just going to tell her to fuck off again.

"I can't let you lie to me again," You feel weak just trying to get your point across while she touches your face like this. Because your skin wants it, needs her touch, craves for even more. Longs for soothing, and begs for love. Her love. Her mouth and her hands and her only.

"I won't. No more secrets, no more lies, no more hiding." Her hand snakes from your face to your neck and she slowly pulls you into her chest. "No more hurting you. Ever again." She lets out a shaky breath. "I can't see you hurting like this ever again."

"God, Kara." 

Your face on her chest feels like it belongs there. As if all the pieces fit when you are right there. The warmth of her arms around you feels like coming home and how can you fight this?

"I love you. I love you so much." She is crying more now, you're sure. And so your arms finally embrace her too. "Please let me make it up to you. I'll spend every single day for the rest of our lives proving myself worthy of you."

By now you're clinging to Kara as if clinging for your life. Feeling the steady beat of her heart against your ear. The sound is grounding, reminding you that despite everything, she’s here—she’s real, and she’s yours, in all her flawed, messy humanity. 

“I don’t know how to move past this,” you admit quietly, your voice muffled against her chest. “I want to, I want to so badly but everything hurts. Being without you is so painful, but remembering all the lies…"

Kara holds you stronger, as if she’s afraid to let go, as if releasing you would mean losing you forever. “You don’t have to forgive me right away,” she whispers. “I know I’ve shattered your trust, and it’s going to take time to rebuild it. But I’m not going anywhere, Y/N. I’m here, and I’m not giving up on us.”

There’s a long pause, both of you clinging to each other as if holding onto both sides of a wrecked lifeboat is better than letting go. You know she did it to protect you, you know she was scared of losing you. Hell, you were scared of losing her too! The whole relationship had been nothing but perfect. No one has ever cared and loved you the way Kara does and you know that. You want to believe that this love you share is strong enough to weather this storm, but the doubt gnaws at you, a relentless ache in your chest.

You search her face, looking for any sign of the woman you fell in love with, the woman who made you laugh, who held you when you cried, who made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. She’s still there, beneath the layers of hurt and betrayal. She’s still the woman who caught your heart, even if she also broke it.

“I need time,” you tell her, your voice trembling with the weight of everything you’ve been holding in. “I need time to figure out how to move on from here and if we can get back to where we were.”

Kara nods, her expression a mix of relief and sorrow. “Take all the time you need. I’ll be waiting for you. No matter how long it takes.” She places a gentle kiss on the top of your head. "I'll do anything for you, Y/N. Anything at all."

You step back, needing some space to breathe, to think. Kara lets you go, her arms falling to her sides, but she doesn’t move away. She stands there, watching you with a mixture of hope and fear, her vulnerability laid bare.

“I don’t want to lose you,” you confess, your voice barely above a whisper. “But I don’t want to feel like this either. I don’t want to be constantly wondering if you’re keeping something else from me.”

“I understand,” Kara says softly. “and I promise, no more secrets. No more lies. I’ll be completely honest with you from now on, about everything. Even if it makes me look bad, or sound horrible. I'll tell you everything.”

"Did you clog up my parents' toilet last time we were there?" She tries not to laugh, but fails. You presented it as a very serious question and she can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

"Yeah." Her cheeks burn red. "But not like you're imagining." You raise an eyebrow at her. "Come on, baby, the chicken was soooo bland even I couldn't eat it. So I flushed down the toilet."

A small smile appears on your lips because God, she is such a doofus.

"That fish your dad and I said we fished ourselves?" You nod at her, remembering perfectly, "Store bought. He's been doing it for years and your mom hasn't noticed."

"I can't believe it! Why does he stay in the river for hours then?"

"He calls it 'peace of mind', but it's just so he can have some time off from her."

"Hm," You think about it for a second. "Do you do the same? That time I wanted to see you and you told me you were going on a trip with Alex…"

"I was unconscious for three days so Alex had to make something up." Your mouth drops, you never realize how much of that you were unaware about. "Maybe I can tell you everything?" She points to the couch. "Would that help?"

"It can't hurt." You shrug, making your way there with your coffee mug. You pass her on the way, and she reaches for your free hand, like she always does. You let her take it, her fingers intertwining with yours in a gesture that feels both familiar and foreign.

“Maybe we can start small.” you suggest, your voice tentative, while looking at your hands together.

Kara nods, “Small,” she agrees with an equal small voice. “I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give, Y/N. I just want to be with you, however that looks.”

You sit on the couch and nod at her, "alright, start from the beginning."

"My name is Kara Zor-El, 24 years ago my planet, Krypton, was in serious peril. My cousin, Kal-El was sent to a planet called Earth for his own safety and protection. You may know his story, the story you don't know is that I was sent to protect him…"

[ghost-proofbaby]

Across the bottom of the page, in bold lettering, with excessive underlining for emphasis it seemed, is a simple reminder.  P.S. DO NOT FORGET – SAVE ASTARION. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, ABOVE ALL ELSE, SAVE ASTARION.

summary: when aruna awakes on a beach, she has no memory of herself. only a small pouch full of seemingly useless items, a pair of daggers with interesting engravings, and a ruined letter.

wc: 1.6k+

warnings: memory loss, descriptions of canon violence/gore.

a/n: this is it. the infamous astarion fic i've been whispering about for way too long. please enjoy. probably full of mistakes due to lazy editing. also, no, this oc/tav is not dark urge.

masterlist | next chapter

The beach is unbearably warm. Scorching, even, as her body digs deeper into the sand and her eyes squint against the bright sun glaring down on her. She feels as though every inch of her skin is on fire as the pebbles scratch at her arms and she puts off any movement for as long as possible – she’s terrified that if she moves, she’ll come to find that she’s dead. She’ll stand, and she’ll look down, and all that will remain is her mangled body. Her brains will be splattered across the tawny landscape, her limbs will be crooked, her blood will pant the taupe sand red. And she’ll be nothing but a ghost; a ghost who can’t remember anything. Not even her own name. 

She can’t remember a damn thing. 

Even flashes of events that just happened, the fight on the Nautiloid ship and the crash that has followed, are blurry images to her that get swept away just as quickly as they appear to her. 

Eventually, she’s brave. She stands up. She looks down. She’s alive. No stomach-churning crime scene, at least. Not a drop of blood stains the shallow crater she’s left behind in the sand. 

But her head screams out in pain as if she might as well be dead. Darkness flashes the edges of her vision, a sharp stabbing in her temples nearly drops her to her knees. It’s nauseating, it’s startling, it’s terrifying. No memories, no name, but the myriad of colors that flash like memories that paint her vision certainly make up for it with each throb of her head. She waits for them to dull – waits for the headache to taper off long enough for her to put one foot in front of the other. 

It doesn’t. 

The storm never passes, and so she suffers. Mouth hanging wide open to take deep breaths that do nothing, palms pressing against the sides of her head as if she can squeeze the ache away. At some point, it’s not that the pain has subsided, but that she simply… gets used to it. Adjusts. Swallows hard and decides to fool herself that it doesn’t hurt that bad (but it does. It does hurt that bad).

She has to take in her surroundings, first and foremost. She doesn’t know much, but she knows that. Her eyes wander over the shards of metal, the bursts of flames, the mangled bodies- Oh, Gods. The bodies. She can spot three instantly, looking exactly as she had expected herself to appear. Unrecognizable. Gone beyond repair. Broken as a result of falling thousands of feet through the sky. 

Something churns in her stomach.

She tears away her gaze from the bodies with reluctance, nostrils flaring and lips pressed tightly together in effort to not dry heave. 

She needs to remember. Remember what fully happened on the ship. Remember her name. Remember her memories – remember who exactly she is. 

The satchel on her hip doesn’t help much. She absentmindedly opens it, hoping for clues, but the only thing inside is a small pouch made of a brilliant, deep purple fabric. Soft to the touch, embroidered with care. When she tugs on the gold-threaded rope tying it shut, all she can see inside is a smooth and nearly translucent stone, and a tarnished gold ring. Both could easily fit in her palm, side by side, if she were to dump them out of the beautiful pouch. 

And neither spark any memories. Neither reignite recognition, or bring a name to mind. Neither tell her who she is. 

They stay in the pouch, and the pouch returns to the satchel. 

She glances around the beach again for any further clues. Maybe she dropped something during her fall, maybe she had been wearing a goddamn name tag that had simply fallen off during her plummet from a giant spaceship wrecking through the sky-

There’s a glint in the sand. 

It could just be another shard of metal from the crash. Another broken piece of a nautiloid ship that is one of the only things that she can recognize right now. Any other person in their right mind would ignore it and continue on their search for clues somewhere more useful – but she isn’t in her right mind, and something about that glimmer of silver buried beneath sand has her feet moving to their own accord. 

Daggers. Plural.

As she drops to her knees, she’s careful to dig into the surrounding sand, exposing the pair of knives. They’re obviously a matching set – although, whether they’re a matching set belonging to her is a bit less obvious. There’s no major identifiable attributes; they’re simply plain daggers, sharpened metal blades with black leather wrapped methodically around the handles. Her eyes trail over them, trying to ignore how familiar and how right they feel in her hands, when she comes to the butt of the handle, and-

There. Something unique. Something identifiable. 

Carved messily into the metal of the ball at the end of the dagger in her left hand, is the shape of a moon. It wasn’t done professionally, but whoever had done it certainly had the gift of precision. She almost reaches out a finger to trace over the crescent shape lightly, when she remembers the dagger in her right hand. She wastes no time checking the exact same spot in that second dagger, holding her breath until she sees it. 

A star. Far messier than the moon, done by a far less skillful hand, but a star nonetheless. 

A star and a moon. She doesn’t know if these daggers belong to her, but it sure does feel like they do. 

And they fit perfectly in her belt, sliding into her conveniently empty sheaths with ease. As if they were finally at home as they hang loosely, bumping her hip as she takes a few steps forward.

Yes. That feels right. 

She breathes out a sigh of relief and goes to take another step forward when she spots another detail that would probably go ignored by any other poor soul that had landed here on this beach. Mere feet away from where she had found the daggers, there’s a small puddle of water. Which in itself isn’t very interesting. It’s a beach. If her eyes continued to trail a few feet more, she’d find even more water. But it isn’t the water itself that catches her eye – it’s what is sinking into it that does. 

A piece of paper. 

It calls to her with the same importance the daggers had, and she’s quick to snatch it off of the ground. The center of the letter is absolutely ruined, soaked thoroughly as each word that had previously been carefully written out bleeds out past the point of return. She can’t make a single word out in the body of the message. Only swirls of black that feather out blue, a mess of words that she’s somehow convinced was for her. 

Only the top of the letter, and the very bottom, remain untouched by the water.

On the top, there is a single phrase: My dearest Aruna. And- no, not just a phrase, but a greeting. A gentle, caressing, brimming-with-adoration greeting. But even more than that, it includes a godsdamned name. 

Aruna. Aruna, Aruna, Aruna.

She rolls the name around in her mind over and over, nearly screams it at the top of her lungs, because it feels right. Something clicks in her mind as she reads those five letters off the page, and she knows that her name is Aruna. The daggers belong to her, she has some lavish pouch containing a pretty stone and a ring that has seen better days, and her name is Aruna. 

It takes her a while to move past the excitement of that. A while for the smile to leave her face, only faltering as her cheeks begin to ache and her eyes finally start to scan the rest of the letter. A letter written to her. 

Except she still can’t decipher a single word in the body of it. She scans each line carefully, desperate to be able to make out just one syllable, even, but it’s all still a blended mess. She can see the leftover curves of whoever’s handwriting it is, and it’s pretty, but it is unreadable. 

Until the bottom of the page, where the water hadn’t quite reached the letter. 

Two lines are readable to her. One written carefully on the very bottom of the page, where absolutely no water has reached the penmanship, and one at the tail end of the main letter, where water had in fact seeped into the parchment, and the ink is quickly bleeding out. The words are being erased right before her eyes, and so she reads the damp words first: I’m sorry for what I’ve become.

The words make no sense. She can’t twist a single drop of understanding from them, only an ache that rings out in her chest. As if something inside of her might know what they mean, but that piece of her has been locked away deep down, unable to spell it out plainly for her.

So she decides to read the words untouched by moisture.

But the words that are dry as bone on the very bottom of the page, perfectly written out save for a small smudge of ink across the first letter as though someone’s hand had dragged across it before it had properly dried, confuse her addled brain even further. These words make even less sense. 

They weigh heavily on Aruna, whether she understands them or not. They’re important – Gods, she knows they’re important. Possibly the most important words she’ll read in all her days.

Across the bottom of the page, in bold lettering, with excessive underlining for emphasis it seemed, is a simple reminder. 

P.S. DO NOT FORGET – SAVE ASTARION. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, ABOVE ALL ELSE, SAVE ASTARION. 

[altocat]

I just remembered how Ifalna apparently had to take painkillers after some of Hojo’s experiments on her and it made me think of the “Endure the pain” flashback Sephiroth had…do you think Hojo was subjecting Ifalna to the same things? Perhaps he was trying to push her to her “threshold” as well?

I am also thinking about how apparently Hojo only started treating Ifalna like that when he realized Aerith could be a back-up test subject. If so, why did he go all in with Sephiroth? Who had no back-up? Did he think Sephiroth could take it because of his strength maybe?

I just hope poor Aerith never was treated like that or I will cry 😓

I personally believe he was likely way rougher with Sephiroth physically because Sephiroth was specifically trained to serve as Shinra's weapon. Sephiroth was likely put into many simulated combat scenarios and needed to have pain endurance trials in order to test the limits of his power in combat. Furthermore, there was the matter of Sephiroth being Hojo's son, which probably also added an extra layer of sadism. Sephiroth was a weapon made from the ground up. He had to be taught to be loyal to Shinra and behave how they wanted him to behave going forward. They had to form someone who could act as both a tool and a perfect propaganda piece. I think Hojo tortured Sephiroth beyond recognition in order to secure his compliance and preparation for battle, while also effectively "breaking" Sephiroth's free will. Sephiroth was nearly indestructible due to the Jenova cells. So Hojo could pretty much do whatever he wanted to him.

Now this isn't to say that Hojo wasn't a huge sadist towards Ifalna as well. Her trauma at the hands of Hojo is JUST as valid as Sephiroth's. They were probably looking to break down her will as well. But I think Hojo probably wasn't aiming to mangle and control her the same way he likely was doing with Seph. She's a more fragile subject. He might have falsely viewed Seph as a Cetra hybrid at the time, but Ifalna was confirmed as the real deal and probably merited limits to his "treatment". She would not be deployed into battle after all. She was likely given over to more covert and "delicate" methods of torture. Less of a reason to test her pain threshold when Hojo was likely more interested in exploring her abilities as a Cetra. She likely endured terrible pain, but not more than she could handle all at once. At least, not enough that was designed to physically take her apart. Not yet, at least.

As for Aerith, I don't think Hojo lay a hand on her. Not while he still had her mother to experiment on. Aerith was probably only ever emotionally or psychologically toyed with, though there's a good chance Hojo might have begun "working" on her once she got older. He'd expressed interest in breeding her with Sephiroth after all. She's very lucky she escaped when she did. But even if Hojo hadn't gotten his hooks in, she's still a victim like the others.

[pearl484-blog]

Overall, I think Keyseeker is right, but for the sake of argument, I'd be willing to try it.

Alright. So Gabriel dies and is brought back. It probably wouldn't change anything with Gabriel. "Oh my God, I almost died" is the same to the mind as "Oh my God, I died and came back". It might even be less of an effect on him if he ends up on the ground since he wouldn't remember. BUT this could be seen by someone else.

Everyone else missed how Gabriel almost died the first time. But it's a lot harder to miss it falling to the ground where people can see, especially if someone is filming it.

Now from here, we have a few choices. We can focus on the impact of an outsider seeing the death and reserrection, or we could focus on Adrien and Nathalie's reaction to the death. After all, Adrien is there as Chat Noir, and if someone has a video of Gabriel falling to his death, it'd Nathalie.

The Outsider

First, let's explore the outsider. We could do the normal route of a stranger witnessing the horror of seeing someone brainwashed willing jump to their deaths, convinced they'll fly and believing it all the way until they hit the ground. They never scream. They're never afraid. They don't ever realize that they're about to die.

Then they hit the ground. It's horrible and messy and the body's mangled almost (or perhaps totally) beyond recognition. Then the Miraculous Ladybug. Ladybug just fixed it, and there's not a scratch on the guy. He doesn't even remember. The outsider quietly realizes the implications and is disturbed.

Which is okay, fine. Good for a short fic or MAYBE one episode, but we're looking for a change. A big one.

So, the outsider is now Alya. She's the one who sees this, and she's the one who's horrified. She realizes that things are not like the way things are in the comics, and she's shaken to the core.

Alya withdraws and stops taking as many risks. Marinette, Nino, and all of her family members start to worry. Yes, she's not trapaizing through the streets, practically daring any akumas to threaten her, but she's also scared. She thought the heroes were invincible, but what if they're not? And those feelings, that introspection is seeping into the Ladyblog, for good and for ill.

Marinette is a fixer though. So Ladybug would come and talk to Alya and give her a pep talk. It'd cheer Alya up, reassure her, but she'll never be the same brash, fearless teenager she was. She'll be just a bit more thoughtful, a bit more cautious, and a bit more hesitant.

I can see a time-line where this Alya thinks a bit more into the future and doesn't charge in QUITE as much. This could lead to some good things, like Alya being more insightful and understanding of the heroes, but it would also potentially deprive us of the Alya who would stand up to an akuma in her PJs, loudly giving it a tongue lashing for daring to interfere in HER bestie's love life and illuminating the error of it's ways.

Adrien

Focusimg on Adrien, unfortunately, would not change the plot very much. He already wants to spend time with his father, but can't, and he already knows that he's not completely invincible a la Emilie.

Anything focusing on this would have to be very introspective and focus on the little things. Maybe he focuses a bit more of civilian rescues, or he freezes whenever something happens that reminds him of the issue, or he talks to Ladybug about it. The last one would be difficult and unlikely because -while Adrien is a feelings person- he is very hesitant to discuss his OWN feelings -especially with Ladybug. Those more depressing and complex feelings seem to be something that he struggles with talking about more than other feelings.

Sorry, Adrien. I love writing you, and I could get some feels outta this, but nothing plot shattering.

Nathalie

Nathalie is usually pretty unshakable, but she has a soft spot for Adrien and Season 5 shows she's vulnerable to the "don't make Adrien an orphan" deal. Neither she nor Hawkmoth have hardened their resolve in Season 1, so she may try to get Gabriel to quit.

He almost died after all. There's too many risks, and making the family whole again is useless if Adrien becomes an orphan. Gabriel might dismiss her. He took a big risk, but it's fine. He's okay. If it makes her feel better he won't take any big risks like that again.

This removes Gorizilla and Style Queen from this time-line, since those are major risks. Gorizilla because Gabriel is INTENTIONALLY sending an akuma after Adrien (even if it is his bodyguard who loves him, akumas still try to kill their loved ones if they're upset). Style Queen because Gabriel deliberately antagonizes someone to make a powerful akuma that hates HIM (and will also be near Adrien, but Gabriel never seems to think 'huh, I'm turning someone into a psychotic, reality-bending, nigh-invincible monster with anger issues. This might be a risk to my non-superpowered, squishy son'). We'll get back to these in a second.

This would also cause a fight about the Collector. After all, akumatizing yourself is a risk, and Gabriel promised not to do that sort of thing anymore, but Gabriel’s had that planned as a contingency for awhile now, and thought it was a risk not to. Nathalie might shoot off that Gabriel could've trusted her to be the Butterfly, but Gabriel didn't think of that. He wouldn't have seen himself as needing her like that, because he had a brilliant idea, and why would he need to discuss that with her?

Nathalie would also be increasingly opposed to akumas near Adrien. After all, she's VERY aware of their mortality now, and these akumas have a tendency to target nearby innocent victims, and who is squishy, innocent, and goes to the nearest high school full of hormone addled teenagers and their dramatics?

This would cause more tension after Despair Bear, where she realizes that Gabriel deliberately targeted Chloe’s party, knowing Adrien would be there. Gabriel might argue that it was just a mind control akuma, and he had it under control, but now Nathalie's on high alert.

Riposte is an akuma that DELIBERATELY targeted Adrien, so that would tick off Nathalie something awful. Gabriel might say that he had it under control. Adrien was nowhere near that akuma, and he distracted her, but even the most bare-boned investigation by Nathalie would reveal that is most certainly not the case, and Adrien was nearly shredded.

At this point, we have a few choices. We can have Nathalie make plans to leave Gabriel and possibly kidnap Adrien. However, Nathalie's smart enough to realize that might not work, so she'd probably stay or betray him in the middle of the night while he's asleep. Either way, good character drama for all 3 options. Season 5 makes me lean towards she would choose to stay, but Season 5 Nathalie isn't afraid for Adrien's life so it's something you can argue.

Now, if she stays, we still need to deal with Gorizilla and Style Queen, the two biggest risks (in Gabriel’s eyes) in Season 2. Now, Gorizilla starts because Gabriel suspects Adrien of being Chat Noir. Since he can't take risks anymore, why not just steal it? Now, he can't pay someone to steal it, or he'd risk the person fleeing as soon as they realize what they have, so he'd need to do it himself, get Nathalie to do it, or get an akuma to do it.

If he gets an akuma or Nathalie to do it, he risks upsetting Nathalie and possibly losing what little loyalty he has left, unless he's very convincing. Afterall, he's trying to steal from his own son, and if he uses an akuma, once again, Adrien is soft and squishy. Good for a high stakes argument to show both points of view and Nathalie's view on how things would change if Adrien is Chat Noir.

If Gabriel tries on his own, maybe foreseeing Nathalie's objection, he might wake Adrien up in the act, spook him and cause fallout from that. Perhaps Adrien would run. Perhaps he'd seek help from Ladybug or Nino. Maybe he'd give up the ring to protect Plagg.

Or, if you ascribe to the senti-monster theory, he could just order Adrien to hand it over or reveal himself.

If Gabriel succeeds in getting the ring, he can now justify to himself that he's so close, but that might not fly with Nathalie. Maybe this is the last straw. Maybe she can't watch this madness.

If he's controlling Adrien, she might balk, make plans to take Adrien and run. This was all for Adrien and the family. And now, he's the one hurting Adrien, making him into a puppet (oh the hypocrisy). This time though, there's a chance that Adrien wouldn't just be resistant. He might actually fight her, and he might not even have a choice to do so.

Or with Style Queen not happening, Chloe never becomes the Bee. Marinette never makes her a hero, and she never attempts to live up to a hero's reputation. Miracle Queen wouldn't happen either. Gabriel’s plan would be vastly different. He'd have to target Kagami, whose weaknesses aren't as exploitable as Chloe's, and even then, I must wonder, would he go after family to get Ladybug to repeat her pattern of recruiting family members of akumas or no?

AU where Gabriel died during Simon Says and was resurrected by Ladybug's powers.

I doubt that would change anything honestly.

[chatonnoir]

hi i wanted to let you know i have been into miraculous literally since PV days but have strayed from the fandom since around season 2-3 when "salt" stuff started getting really popular. i was tired of seeing my favorites being mangled beyond recognition to fit some weird revenge fantasy, so i just stopped. recently though i missed the blorbos. its people like you who genuinely love the show and the characters that have made my more recent experiences incredibly lovely and fulfilling. thank u :]

Aw thank you honey :’) truly as someone who got a little in to ML in 2016 and enjoyed the cute fan content and saw how much fans praised it but didn't keep up with it, only to come back to it a couple of seasons later and see how insane the fandom had become over those few years .... it is truly exhausting and baffling to see what people do to the show now. Ig this is the danger of too much self-projection and a lack of critical thinking. Even people who claimed to be done with the show in season 4 continue to run blogs obsessed with """criticizing""" the show for the stupidest and most petty things possible on a daily basis, instead of just ... walking away from it if it doesn’t appeal to them anymore. It can really give you a headache.

But it all makes me think of that one quote from the end of Ratatouille (the movie which is indisputably Pixar Animation Studios' magnum opus): "the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." ML as a show means so much to so many people of all age groups and backgrounds across the world. ML is far more meaningful and loved and contributes far more to the world than any random schmuck's salt post/fic/comic/video essay about it on the internet. ML is a sweet show! It's a cute and fun show! It's a kind show about emotions and relationships (platonic and romantic) and the power of love but isn’t designated as a Girls Show(TM), as shows with these themes often are, so boys are watching it too! And it shows us a male superhero being soft and sensitive and a hopeless romantic and in touch with his emotions without shame and a female superhero who loves him for it! Which is so important!

Similar kids cartoons when I was growing up, things like Danny Phantom, always had the romance as not an A or B or even a C plot but basically a Z plot. Literally on the back burner. An afterthought. Not something that was created out of passion and a belief that the characters would love each other and rather just thrown in because a main heterosexual relationship for the protagonist Has to be there, for some reason. Romantic moments would be limited to The Romance Episode(TM), wherein the "romantic development" is just like ... the characters accidentally held hands or kissed or something, and would often boil down to "this boy and girl are friends so OBVIOUSLY they have to like each other," without ever really showing me why they actually love each other. And don't get me started on allll the pieces of media with a forced heterosexual romance that is little more than "this male and female character have romantic and sexual tension because they're a male and female character." Or all the pieces of animated kids media where the main male character immediately likes the main female character because she's The Pretty One (As much as I love ATLA and k/ataang, even ATLA did this in the first episode). This all always felt so lacking to me as someone who was so enamored by love even as a kid.

Then comes along ML. Chat Noir didn't fall for Ladybug because he saw her and was taken with how she was Pretty. We know he thinks she's beautiful but he was completely unaffected by this fact when he first met her!!! It wasn't until he saw her stand up to evil that he fell for her! A male character falling for a female character not because Wow She Pretty but because of her bravery and cleverness and determination to stand up to evil and do good? That shouldn't be groundbreaking but it is!!! And it's beautiful!!! And Marinette didn't fall for Adrien because he was The Hot Guy or The Cool Hero or just because he's the male character and she's the female character so she just Has To. She fell for him when she saw his vulnerability and kindness!!! I would've LOVED to have grown up with a show like ML.

God the romance? I’ve never seen so much delicious Yearning in any other western kid’s cartoon. The door scene? Hoowee.... The way each of them so desperately wants the other to see both sides of them. The ending scene of Glaciator, when Ladybug is supposed to be “rejecting” Chat Noir and Chat Noir is supposed to be giving her a platonic cheek kiss, and yet it’s one of the sweetest and most utterly romantic scenes in the show. The sad undertone of Ladynoir, of being best friends but not being able to know a single thing about each other’s lives. The pure romance of the umbrella scene. The coup de foudre.

And it doesn't matter if the episode is romance-centric or not because ML has given us a male and female hero duo with so much genuine love and affection for each other that it's palpable in every episode from the very first season (especially if you’re watching in French lmao). Just... the sweet way they talk to each other, where you can hear their fondness for each other in their voices. The way they tease and roast each other. The petnames. The way they support and protect and take care of each other in and out of battles (specific moments like Ladybug looking after and reassuring Scaredy-cat Chat Noir in Reverser and Chat Noir putting Ladybug’s yo-yo over her mouth for her so she could breathe underwater in Truth make me so insane). The whole concept of “them against the world.” The way that even while loving Ladybug, Chat Noir has no problem telling her when he disagrees with her. The way they will have disagreements/conflicts that are completely in line with their established character traits and weaknesses, but aren’t able to stay mad at each other for more than a minute because of their softness for each other, and always come back from it because above all else they care about and love each other. It’s so unmatched. That’s love bitch

Speaking of how their conflicts are completely in line with their established character traits and weaknesses - the characters are incredibly deep and human and consistently written with motivations and personalities and flaws that all make so much sense! And they’ve developed so much since the start of the show! And the two protagonists mean so much to and resonate with so many people, kids and adults alike. Plenty of people have gone in to the depth of Adrien’s character and why he’s meaningful to people for paragraphs on end so I won’t repeat that, but I rarely see people talking about the beauty of Marinette’s character so I just have to point out like... A female superhero who is not a Strong Flawless Girlboss Who Needs No Man but one who is basically a female Peter Parker? A female superhero who is awkward around her crush and kind of Ridiculous and a hopeless romantic who makes stupid lovestruck faces at pictures of said crush and likes girly things and the color pink and wants to hold her boy’s hand and barely has her shit together and sometimes makes bad choices but is ultimately trying her best to balance her Great Power and Great Responsibility with her civilian life and relationships? Like, I’m not in to comics so sorry if this is inaccurate because I’m only pulling from Spider-Verse, but even Marvel’s attempt at making a girl Spider-Man through Spider-Gwen made her this cool badass with an undercut. I don’t want another Black Widow or Captain Marvel or whatever!!!! I love that ML basically gave us a female Spider-Man who is just as much of a complete disaster as Peter Parker was (talking specifically about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions). I love the way both Peter and Marinette fuck up and make mistakes and bad choices and struggle to balance their two lives and accidentally end up hurting or pushing away the people who are close to them while they’re trying so hard to do what they think is right and protect the people they love with no real guidance. The loneliness of keeping their identities a secret through all that knowing that one slip up could put everyone they love in grave danger. Not to mention Marinette’s very blatant neurodivergent coding that is so clear in everything she does? Seeing her ADHD brain basically become her strength when she’s Ladybug through the bizarre connections she can make with random objects in a split second, just like how someone with ADHD would go on seemingly bizarre and random tangents mid-conversation because their brain latched on to something and quickly made a whole bunch of connections in a short amount of time while the other person was talking? Chef’s fucking kiss baby.

And I love the episodic adventures format!!!! Lots of people do!!!! The rewatch value of every episode is so good!!! Not everything has to be a 10-ep-per-season HBO drama where each 1 hour long episode is solely focused on moving the plot? People who ask for which episodes are important and which ones are “filler” that they can skip when starting ML are so weird. The fun of ML is watching all of Ladybug and Chat Noir’s fun adventures together in every episode? I love watching them just Being Ladybug and Chat Noir while they fight bad guys and have their banter. Episodes can just be Fun!!! Episodes can just exist to BE fun and silly or to explore a specific friendship or relationship rather than being focused on the main villain plot and that’s not a flaw!!!!

tl;dr: ML is a fun and cute show with very relatable, human characters and shows a beautiful, deep, powerful loving relationship between its male and female superhero leads that a lot of similar cartoons and even movies aimed at adults can’t pull off and a lot of people genuinely love this show because of it.

[aliksims]

...Though I haven’t done a plain recolor of the Stewart Mourning Cafe Curtains, I have done A recolor as part of my K8′s Princess Bedroom recolors (1), so for now I will finish up my curtain recolors with these Cornerstone Victoriana Velvet Drapes and move on to recoloring things in the other sections of the base game catalog. ;;>.>

I have done all 111 colors of the AKS Object Rainbow 3b (2), and these recolors are for both the DRAPES and the METAL (as seen in the picture above). I own exactly none of them. To see what exactly all these colors are, where they are from, and who exactly were the talented artists that created them, please go here (3). (The color files are individually labeled with their original creator, palette, and name, but like usual I’ve probably mangled them beyond recognition by abbreviating everything.)

If you would like all 111 recolors individually packaged, you can download them here: http://simfil.es/3122033/

If you would like all 111 recolors in 1 package, you can download them here: http://simfil.es/3122034/

The preview picture, swatches, and color info are included with both downloads. I own nothing so you can’t sell it. :)

(1): https://aliksims.tumblr.com/post/676203409257447424/

(2): http://aliksims.tumblr.com/post/189370841371/

(3): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dZBByQl0wWnq0KzoBNurRROeWshYBZ18ZZ5-t_Sx_4A/edit?usp=sharing/

[chadillacboseman]

So, it's spooky season. I decided to make our OCs suffer a little. This is part one of a one-shot, non-story tied in series about a little haunting at the Black Dragon Compound. Featuring Kate (@kmofficial), and will later feature Echo (@roofgeese) and Alex (myself). Art by Thomas Griffith

Enjoy.

--

One crisp October night not too long ago, a monster came to the Black Dragon compound.

While outside, the wind howled and batted at the walls, inside the monster crept, slunk, prowled through the halls. It was neither human nor animal- not some werewolf conjured up from the forest or a zombie risen from the grave. It wasn't corporeal, not in the true sense of the word.

No, it was simply a monster.

But a monster must have purpose, yes? Must have reason for slinking through the dark hallways and along the rotted old pipes that Kano refused to fix.

Oh, it did have a purpose. And once, it had had a form too, a name, even. Things that were stolen from it along with the artifact that held its freedom.

An artifact proudly displayed on Kano's mahogany desk- a vial of bright red liquid that emitted an ominous glow.

"Nicked that from some shithole overseas," he would boast, "Locals never shut the fuck up about it- said it was cursed," a booming laugh, a hidden, wary glance, "Just a fuckin' trinket."

But it was not just a trinket, not just some pretty little piece of decor for an asshole's desk.

No, it certainly was not.

Katelynn Murdock awoke on that night to a series of thuds from across the room, something toppled over in the darkness of her closet and jutted the door open with a shrill creak of rusted hinges.

How many times had she begged maintenance to make that door sit right on the frame?

Groggily, she snapped her fingers and a soft glow illuminated her room, stopping just short of the closet. The open door yawned wide like the maw of some great beast ready to swallow its prey. She squinted into the darkness for a moment, taking in the vague shapes of boxes and clothes that had fallen to the floor.

"Probably some giant rat," she muttered to no one in particular before rolling back over.

It was a split second, barely a glimpse of something in the closet. Kate sat bolt upright in her bed and stared, unblinking, into the maw.

She had imagined it, surely-

But then a scream halted itself in her throat as two bright, white eyes swam out of the darkness. She was frozen there, in a sort of terrified fascination, eyes wild like a cornered animal as the thing's features came into focus.

The eyes were set in a mangled face, something burned and broken almost beyond recognition. Blonde hair, singed and shredded, hung loosely to either side, and it moved in stilted jolts, though it never left the darkness of the closet.

"Hello Kate," its jaw was slack as it spoke, dislocated from the rest of its head; its white teeth were shining, bare against the charred skin.

Something about it was so hauntingly familiar-

"Do you remember me, Kate?"

Mocking voices. Awful names. Someone throws something at her head- a milk carton, maybe. A blonde girl, perfectly-coiffed hair falling in rivulets down to her shoulders, throwing her head back in maniacal laughter.

A headache like she's never felt before. White-hot light. Screams.

Darkness.

"No-" Kate clutched at the comforter, her knuckles white as the thing pulled its mangled face into a horrific mockery of a grin, "You died. You all died-"

"In the explosion you caused, Kate," its voice was a low rumble, a beast's growl made into words, "You killed all those people."

"It was an accident!" Kate choked back a sob as the thing jerked on its broken bones, head cocked as if in amusement, "I didn't mean to!"

"You're a cold blooded murderer," part of the monster's face came into the light and Kate felt a shriek threaten to bubble over and out of her mouth, "I think I'll come back here to remind you of that. Every night. And each night, that little light of yours," the thing jerked its mangled head toward her glowing fingertips, "Will get a little weaker, until we can hurt you the way you hurt us."

We?

Kate's light flickered for a moment and her chest seized once again with terror. Behind the thing, more shapes were moving in the darkness, an eye here, a glimpse of white bone there.

"I was just a kid," Kate sobbed, hot tears rolling down her cheeks as the monster grinned, its greenish-gray tongue lolling out over the top of its dislocated jaw.

"So were we, Kate," the thing took another shambling step forward, its bony foot finally crossing the closet's threshold.

Her light faltered again.

"Kabal!" it was all she could think to scream, hoping that wherever the mercenary was, he'd hear her, "KABAL!"

The entry door erupted in a shower of splinters and a flash of purple light.

"Kate?" Kabal found her in the bedroom, curled into a ball on her bed, staring, unblinking into the dark maw of the closet, "Kate, what's going on?"

"They came back," she whispered; her eyes were like two dinner plates, shining and brimming with tears, "They came back."

"Who came back?" Kabal waved a hand in front of her gaze then looked at the closet. Inside, several boxes had toppled to the floor and he could just make out the shape of a coat hanging from the bar.

"Kate, what are you talking about?" The mercenary shook her gently and she turned her unblinking gaze to him instead. He felt unnerved, wanted to look away from her, but he didn't.

"There's nothing in there," Kabal jerked his head toward the closet, "Nobody but us is in this room," he paused to turn on her bedside lamp, revealing her closet in its entirety.

"See?"

Empty, save for the boxes and the coat.

But Kate knew they'd be back.

[faetarou]

𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧

pairing. kuroo tetsurou x f!reader

warnings // disclaimers. swearing, vomit, monsters, blood, gore, very graphic, heavy angst, major character death [it's a halloween fic tf did you expect?]

wc. 6.4k I WENT OVERBOARD IM SORRY

notes. written for @melsun 's halloween collab !! thank you for letting me join, i hope you like it <33 also trying a new post format !!

KUROO TETSUROU COULDN'T STOP HIMSELF from letting loose a strangled yell as he tripped over something that forced him to stop running.

To his revulsion, it was a mangled human arm, dripping with blood and peeking out of a pile of rubble on the sidewalk he'd been sprinting down for an indeterminable number of minutes.

Tetsurou fought to stop himself from making a disgusted face as he forced himself to remember that the arm was part of a once-breathing, most likely innocent person, not just a gory, dismembered limb. He muttered a quick whisper of respect and apology before running onward again, trying to ignore the fact that the streets of Tokyo he was travelling down were practically steeped in blood and stained with destruction.

To be honest, he still didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. He'd just been studying in his room, home alone, when he'd heard them.

The screams.

Naturally, Tetsurou had left his home to investigate the source of the rapidly growing chorus of pain. There was nothing in the world that could've prepared him for what he found - bodies littering the streets of his beloved city, mauled beyond recognition with claw marks, missing large chunks of flesh or even bone, all but drained of their own blood pooling around them. Tetsurou had bent over and vomited all over the sidewalk of the graphic site, purging the contents of his stomach over and over as he thought, my friends, my family, they ... who ...

He'd had no time for further panic, for as he untied his tartan shirt from around his waist to wipe his mouth and promptly thrown it away, he had glimpsed a shadow out of the corner of his eye. Vaguely humanoid, if not a little taller, permeating the very air around it with fear as it raised a smokey hand to reveal bone-white claws splattered with red.

Tetsurou hadn't stopped running since.

Now, he ducked into an alley, bending over to catch his gasping breaths. He was naturally athletic at the best of times, with incredible stamina from captaincy of his volleyball team, but this was ridiculous. With his body drained by fear, nausea, and lack of nutrition, Tetsurou was nearing his limit.

Think. Think. Think. He pressed his hands to his head, running them through his sweat-soaked black hair as he pushed himself to calm down.

Though he'd seen an awful massacre almost just outside his house, there hadn't been as many bodies in such high concentrations further out, so he couldn't be the only person alive in the whole city of Tokyo - that was just plain stupid.

His second consideration was the erratic scattering of the poor victims. Tetsurou hadn't seen any, say, hanging out of windows, and often he could see trails of them lining side streets and suddenly vanishing from the main road he was moving along, before inevitably returning with more piles of slaughtered people. The destruction of the buildings was centred around the bodies, which meant ...

Whoever those killers ... shadows ... are, they're looking for something. Or someone.

Pleased with himself for thinking so quickly, Tetsurou's self-validation faded rather rapidly when he realised he had no way of avoiding coming to the same fate of the hundreds of people he'd seen. He had no idea what the monsters (That was a suitable name, he thought to himself. Monsters.) were after, or who they were targeting, and therefore would probably end up succumbing to death at their claws.

An idea suddenly struck him, and he wanted to fling himself against the alley's opposite wall for thinking the way he had.

I could just follow the bodies, Tetsurou had realised. That would eventually lead to whatever the monsters were after, and then I could avoid it.

"Are you crazy?" he hissed to himself, well aware that conversing to the air probably proved his question affirmative. "You're going to just get yourself killed whilst 'trying to survive'? No way in hell, that's a last resort."

Five minutes later, Tetsurou was picking through a particularly large pile of spectacularly mauled bodies.

"You're a genius," he growled to himself, wrinkling his nose at the rusty blood now staining his fingers. "Real intelligent."

After another moment's consideration, he'd ended up caving and following the bodies, and boy was he regretting it. Tetsurou wasn't sure what scared him more - the endless deaths or the force behind them - but he was terrified either way.

This is the apocalypse, he realised. A literal fucking apocalypse. I'm in high school, how is this happening?

Attempting to stop his thoughts from spiralling the way they were threatening to, Tetsurou barely paid attention as he stepped around what looked like a sole, bloody spine torn from its body, turning into another side street. Barely paid attention, that was, until a scream tore through his ears.

It was definitively feminine, but he was more focused on the pure terror in the agonised noised. It had to be a girl in danger, and, for whatever reason, Tetsurou found himself sprinting towards its source.

Wow, I am a genius.

Near as he could tell, the scream was coming from a gas station at the end of the street, and his concern became even deeper as he took in the state of the building. A couple of cars were crashed into the fuel pumps, shattering glass and metal everywhere, and the convenience store adjoining the station was absolutely wrecked. The ceiling partially caved in, packets of chips and day-old bread sprawling out of what used to be the entrance but was now just a mess of rubble, splattered with the occasional fresh drop of blood.

The scream set off again - much, much closer. Deducing its source to be around the back of the building, Tetsurou ran around the destruction to the small carpark out back, thankful for the sneakers he'd slipped on seemingly eons ago when he'd first left his house.

"Hey, are you okay?" he called loudly, staggering into the parking lot to find-

Oh, shit. Fuck, this is not good.

His deduction had been correct - a teenage girl, most likely his age, was cowering against the last intact wall of the gas station, several bleeding scratches and gashes scattered on her body accentuating the panic in her face. She let out a third cry (definitely the same voice, Tetsurou confirmed), and for good reason.

Approaching her were two monsters, nearly identical to the one he'd seen earlier. Just scraping past seven feet tall with sexless, humanoid forms, the shadowy creatures turned what passed as their heads to the side to look at Tetsurou, and he nearly screamed himself.

They both had the same red-stained claws as the last monster he'd encountered, but this time he could make out their facial features. Without a mouth to speak of, or anything other than two soulless, completely white eyes, they were horrifically ... monstrous.

"Help me!" the girl facing them yelled, redirecting Tetsurou's attention to her.

She wore a tattered shirt ripped with claw marks that had evidently scraped her arm as well, leaking red onto the white fabric, and a shirt with a split that was definitely not manufactured, judging by its rugged nature. Though the girl's face was tight with fear, her eyes flashed with determination, and her lips were set in a fierce line.

She's innocent.

It was a weird, almost stupid thought, but it suddenly burst into Tetsurou's mind anyway, though he couldn't comprehend why. One of the monsters leaned in, making an awful noise like the muffled clash of swords as it raised its claws, forcing Tetsurou to act on instinct.

He lunged for a piece of the rubble near him, fingers finding some kind of metal support pole and wrapping around it. Before he could second guess himself, he threw it, his mind blanking with shock as it actually hit the head of the monster.

To his surprise, it wailed, the noise one of pain as its smokey body vanished into thin air, leaving behind its partner. Before it could attack her as well, the girl found the strength to leap up, desperately grasping the pole that had landed at her feet and swinging. The second monster, too, dissipated completely, leaving the girl to collapse back to the tarmac.

Tetsurou ran forwards to kneel before her, scanning her body frantically for signs of serious energy, relieved to find there were none. "Are you okay?"

She met his eyes, hers still wide and panicked. "I- you-"

"Take a breath," he suggested good-naturedly, raising a hand to clasp her should as a way to ground her before she panicked, ducking his head to meet her eyes properly. "They're gone, they can't hurt us."

The girl managed to calm herself, squeezing her eyes shut and fisting her hands. "That- that was so awful. They'd been chasing me for so long, with others that got ... sidetracked with other people. Fuck - tell me it was a dream, or something. Tell me this isn't real."

Tetsurou looked at her pityingly, her whole figure shaking like a leaf in the wind. However, his sympathy for what she'd been in was overwhelmed by a cyclone of other emotions. Judging from what she'd said, she was the object of the monsters' desire, what they were hunting for.

But, as he continued to sweep her with his eyes, guilt stung him. He couldn't, in good conscience, leave this girl behind to save himself as he'd planned. As had popped into his head earlier, she was innocent, and, seemingly, completely unaware that the monsters were solely chasing her, and anything that got between them.

"Oh, I'm being rude, sorry," she laughed shakily, drawing him from his thoughts. "My name's Y/N. Thank you so much for saving me."

"Kuroo Tetsurou," he returned, dropping his hand from her shoulder and making his best attempt at a smile. "And don't worry about it ... Y/N."

Strangely, her name already felt familiar on his tongue, almost comforting. She smiled back, tilting her head just slightly to the side with the action. Tetsurou could've scoffed at the situation - two teenagers, casually exchanging names and conversing, in what appeared to be an apocalypse.

"Well, I'll have to owe you one," Y/N said, her voice returning to a steadier tone. "Can't have my saviour dying on me, can I?"

He chuckled at that. "I'm hardly a saviour, but I wouldn't mind cashing in that favour."

"Oh? Go on."

Tetsurou chewed his lip between his teeth, careful not to pierce the skin. "Do you mind telling me more about what happened with the- the monsters?"

Y/N's face fell immediately, though she tried valiantly to play it off. "You're calling them monsters? Better than 'those fuckers', I guess."

"We can have that conversation over food, if that's any consolation," he suggested, tilting his head towards the convenience store's interior. "I don't think anyone will mind if we have a free meal."

She nodded quickly, the sound of food being quite appealing to both their hungry selves. Standing first, Tetsurou extended a hand to help her up, trying not to smile at the difference he could feel in the sizes of their palms as he hauled her to her feet.

He silently offered to go in first, ducking through a rather large hole in the wall and glancing around the building, only nodding to Y/N once he was sure it was empty.

She crept in after him, a slight happiness returning to her features. "Wow. There's .... so much food."

Her statement wasn't wrong - hundreds of packets and bars littered the ground, blown from their organised shelves to make a sea of overpriced snacks.

"We should get some for the next few days," Tetsurou thought aloud. "We might have to move from here, so it would be good to have water and food. I bet they should sell some kinds of bags behind the counter."

Y/N disappeared from his side, darting over to the counter and re-emerging moments later clutching two decent sized backpacks. "Shit, Tetsu, you some kind of genius?"

A flush rose in his cheeks and ears at both the compliment and nickname, forcing him to look away as he muttered a, "no, not really," and mentally screamed at himself to get it together.

"I think you are," she shrugged, handing him one of the bags. "You just give off that kind of energy."

He laughed that time, moving to the only still-working fridge and pulling plastic water bottles off its shelves. "Thanks."

Together, they packed as much water as they could fit, along with a few boxes of fascinating sandwiches ("I've never heard of chicken and balsamic vinegar in a sandwich with poppyseeds, but get it, I guess," Y/N noted), protein bars, and other assorted confectionery. They chattered idly as they did so - meaningless discussions about school subjects and bad teachers. It made Tetsurou all the more concerned for his friends, but he didn't bring down the mood.

"Come on," he suggested instead, once they'd packed enough sustenance for several days. "I saw a ladder near the counter, probably for the air conditioning on the roof - want to eat dinner up there if it's stable enough?"

"If by dinner you mean these," Y/N replied, smirking from behind a loaded armful chip packets and chocolate bars. "Then, absolutely."

"It's nice up here," Tetsurou commented, watching the sun sink as he reached for another chip. "Surprisingly serene."

Y/N snorted, passing the packet from her lap to his. "Don't think anything right now can be described as 'serene', but this might be close enough."

It was an admittedly beautiful sight - the deep purples and blushing pinks of the sun's weary glow were almost enchanting enough to make one forget that an apocalypse was occurring beneath it. Tetsurou leaned back on his hands, swinging his legs over the roof just a little and staring mindlessly at the horizon.

"Snickers for your thoughts?"

He glanced at Y/N confusedly, chuckling when he saw the chocolate bar she was extending to him and accepting it with a sigh. "It just feels like it can't be real, you know? Yesterday I was at volleyball practice, telling my best friend to get off his Switch, and this is today. It's just ...."

"It's insane," she supplemented, biting into a chocolate of her own. "This is the kind of thing I would joke about - I never thought it would happen to the world whilst I was alive, you know? Most of us are innocent."

Tetsurou's stomach churned with guilt. It didn't seem like she would figure out that she was the only one the monsters were after, her very existence the unintentional reason for this living hell.

And he still couldn't muster the fucking courage to tell her. At this rate, it would put them both in danger, or worse.

"Yeah," he finally agreed, somewhat lamely. "We're innocent."

A moment of silence passed, before Y/N turned back to him, hand over her mouth that was still occupied with food. "Oh - I agreed to tell you about the monsters, didn't I? Ah, sorry!"

"Don't worry about it," Tetsurou laughed. "Swallow first, maybe."

She did as he suggested with a grin of mirth, wiggling back from the roof's ledge to cross her legs as decently as she could in her skirt.

I'll find new clothes for her tomorrow. She looks uncomfortable.

Tetsurou shook his head. More of those thoughts. Y/N was becoming of more and more importance to him, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that. They'd only just met, after all.

"I think they were chasing me for a few hours," she began, clearly thinking deeply about it. "I saw one of them outside my house when I was coming home from a day out, and it kinda leaped at me with those scary claws. So of course I ran, and more of them just suddenly appeared out of nowhere in ... flashes of shadow. I only ran out of energy around here, and luckily, you found me."

"Lucky is right," he repeated, lost in thoughts already.

The monsters, apparently, just manifested out of thin air, though they had to have some kind of source. They also appeared around Y/N, but the fact that none had suddenly turned up since the defeat of two of their number in the carpark meant there was either a limited number of them, they could only appear when she was alone, or both.

"Oh, yeah, and," Y/N continued. "I forgot - I tried throwing bricks and rubble at one of them, but it went straight through them. Same with a chip packet and my jacket, except they tore that to shreds. Nothing worked until that pole thing you picked up."

"Metal," Tetsurou mused aloud. "They must have some sort of weakness around it. We should find some metal things to defend ourselves with as soon as we can."

"Say no more," the girl by his side grinned, quickly standing and carefully moving towards a collapsed section of the roof. She squatted to the ground, shoving a pile of rubble to the sude and feeling along the brick of the ceiling before making an 'aha!' noise and straightening back up. "Roof supports!"

She let out a squeak as a section of the area barely a hair's breadth from her foot caved in, Tetsurou by her side in a second to loop an arm around her waist and tug her back. He fell gracelessly straight onto his ass, Y/N landing on top of him as the rood where she'd been standing collapsed as well.

They both lay still for a moment, before she rolled off his chest with a shaky apology. "I didn't think. Shit, Tetsu, I'm sorry. Thanks,"

"It's fine," he said somewhat bemusedly, finding the words to actually be true. "I mean, you were thinking about something. Just not the structural integrity of the rood, is all."

Y/N giggled at that, sitting on her heels and looking back at the setting sun again, which was almost completely sunken beneath the horizon. "We should probably get some rest soon. We can take shifts?"

"Sure, I'll go first," Tetsurou offered, standing and making his way back to their little camp (read: their backpacks and some confectionary packets). "You get some sleep."

She thanked him quietly, lying on her side and wrapping her arms around herself, her head laying on her backpack. Seconds later, her eyes were closed and her breathing slightly snuffly, having dropped off to sleep almost instantly.

Tetsurou huffed a laugh, fiddling with one of her support poles on his lap, eyes scanning the area around them for any shadows. He wished he could say that he spent the hours of his shift coming up with a stunningly intelligent plan to save the world, but he was only human. Exhaustion was blurring his thoughts, and he nearly fell asleep between blinks. Instead, Tetsurou's thoughts turned to the sleeping girl at his side.

What the hell are we going to do?

He shook his head, trying to push the negativity from his mind. In nearly no time at all, he was shaking Y/N awake with a regretful smile and lying down himself. Similarly, he found himself driftiing to sleep between one breath and the next.

We'll figure something out. I will.

"Tetsurou!" Y/N yelled exasperatedly as the dark-haired boy jogged back to her side. "For fuck's sake, did you have t-"

"But I got us a snack and everything, babe!" he protested jokingly, handing her a packet of biscuits and a tin of peaches with a knife. "This corner shop really had everything."

He unfolded the newspaper that had been their primary objective, oblivious to the Y/N's flustered state at his recurring nickname for her as she jabbed at the can's lid. His eyes flicked to the top corner first.

30 October, 2012. The day after everything had begun, exactly a month earlier. Tetsurou and Y/N had been avoiding death for four weeks, disintegrating more monsters than either of them could count with practiced swings of their metal poles and searching desperately for information about the origins of this apocalypse.

That was increasingly becoming the right word, because the two of them hadn't seen a single other living soul in Tokyo, apart from one middle-aged man three weeks earlier. Everyone else appeared to be dead or missing, and he had yelled at them to flee, as 'everyone else already did', providing the two teenagers with some hope for their friends and families.

"What's it say?" Y/N asked, fiddling more with their can's lid until it opened, prompting her to grin with satisfaction.

"I'm getting to that," Tetsurou assured her, eyes travelling down the page and absorbing information as quickly as he could.

The primary heading was something to do with an economic crisis and stock market crash, the one under it directing to a page on increasing mental health concerns in teenagers, and the next referring to a destructive political protest. Not a single heading on shadowy monsters that slashed the life out of anyone they ran into.

"Knew it," Y/N groaned over his shoulder, fishing a peach out of the can and popping it in her mouth with a disgruntled noise. "No one has jackshit on them - they just show up, kill who they want, and then mysteriously vanish. That's all there is to it."

Tetsurou frowned. It was the most recent newspaper they could find, so there was no way that there wasn't a single hint about the origins of the monsters. Unless ...

He looked over the page again, letting Y/N offer him a peach without a second thought, though his face still had the instinct to flush when her fingers brushed over his lips as she slipped the slice into his mouth. Something wasn't adding up - a whole lot of depressing headlines and angry people, nothing out of the or-

Tetsurou dropped the newspaper, letting out a startled laugh as he carded his hands through his hair. "Holy fuck, it's so obvious! How did we not think of it before?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna need you to elaborate there," Y/N said, her face slightly shadowed in confusion.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her and almost knocking their snack out of her hands as he ducked his head to properly look her in the eyes, pride shining in his own. "Don't you get it? These monsters - they're manifestations of people's negative emotions! See, look at these headings - anger, fear, anxiety, all sorts of heavy stuff. That's why they don't have corporeal forms, and why they're so destructive."

"That actually makes a lot of sense," Y/N admitted, though her excitement at their breakthrough was slightly dampened by reality. "But won't that mean there's too many to beat?"

"Maybe," Tetsurou acknowledged, chewing his lip just slightly, probably unaware of how attractive the motion was (wait, what? Y/N thought). "Still, that definitely means that they're finite. I don't thinkl we've seen any actually manifest in ages, right? They've shown up, but not, like, appeared."

She nodded in agreement, though she was still distracted by his thinking habits. Damnit, Y/N, now is not the time.

It's the apocalypse, another part of her argued. When else is gonna be the time?

"You're right," she said, forcing her mind onto a different topic. "Last time was, like, three weeks ago, right?"

The day that you, Kuroo Tetsurou, held my hand when you didn't have to for thee first time, as we were running for it. And my heart skipped the tiniest beat.

"Right," Tetsurou agreed, picking up the newspaper from the sidewalk and setting it on a table belonging too the deserted caf they stood outside of.

Y/N sincerely hoped non of her thoughts were showing on her face as she looked away awkwardly. At the worst possible time, she was catching feelings, noticing little things and smiling so damn much, over the boy who had saved her. It was inopportune at best, and the fact that the chances of him returning her affection were quite low weren't helping things.

Honestly, she'd probably been developing a crush on him since thee day they'd met, and he'd asked if she was okay with such concern she'd almost cried. He did care - she just wasn't sure in what way.

"Hey, Earth to Y/N." Tetsurou gave her head a gentle pat. "What're you thinking about?"

Still lost in her thoughts, she was unable to stop herself from blurting out, "You."

He blinked. "Sorry?"

"No, wait, that's not what I-" Y/N groaned, trying and failing to act as though she wasn't as flushed as the sun. "Ignore that, I wasn't thinking."

"Okay then," he said teasingly, giving her a heart attack as he brushed some of her hair out of her face, his hand trailing down her cheekbone for an impossibly long moment before dropping away. "You keep not thinking about me, babe."

She opened her mouth to try and dig herself out of the hole she was just about ready to bury her own coffin in, when a familiar screeching noise interrupted her.

"Monsters," Tetsurou said grimly, immediately returning to serious. "We should get back to the gas station."

Y/N couldn't do much more than just nod, following him numbly. You, miss, are the dumbest person in the apocalypse.

She took first watch that night, sitting with her legs tucked up to her chest by the battery-powered lantern Tetsurou had found for them some time in their first week.

Tetsurou. His name rolled off her tongue so easily, so familiarly, as though she'd known him her whole life. It symbolised hope to her, and other indescribable emotions so warm she felt she was glowing.

Y/N looked over to him, taking in the sleeping peace of his face and giggling slightly at the messy state of his black hair falling in his eyes and fanning around his head. He looked cute like that, free of worries and the awful nature of the apocalypse.

She frowned, her happy thoughts ruined, as always, by the reminder of what they were enduring. It was as though the world was caving in, destroying itself with its flawed creations, and Y/N had just fatefully happened to be by Tetsurou's side as their future ended.

Sighing, she attempted to turn her mind away from more of those depressingly poetic thoughts, distracting herself by fishing a biscuit from the packet that Tetsurou had grabbed earlier. She noticed, belatedly, that they were her favourite type, a fact she vaguely recalled telling him a month earlier.

Y/N almost choked. There was no way that could be a coincidence - could he have seriously remembered for all that time? Even the vague possibility that someone could care so much for her moved to her to almost tears, though she settled for gazing at the sleeping Tetsurou with a fond smile.

In his dreams, he smiled back, and that tilt of his lips made something stir in the depths of her chest.

Ah ... shit. I'm kinda whipped. Whoops.

Y/N passed the rest of her shift thinking about everything and nothing at once, idly running her fingers up and down the same metal support pole she's acquired on that very roof. Soon, she was sitting back next to Tetsurou, giving a couple of gentle taps to his shoulder.

"Wake up, Tetsu," she whispered.

He shifted, rolling a little with a small whimper, but his eyes still remaining closed. Y/N frowned, leaning closer so her lips were almost directly over his ear.

"Hey, Tetsu, wake up."

This time, he flailed from his dreams, almost hitting her as he somehow lurched into a sitting position. The last thing he could recall was dreaming, though the last dregs of that vision were fading - he could only remember that it had something to do with Y/N, and that smile of hers. Then, Tetsurou had heard her voice, and now, he was positive his ears and cheeks were as bright as his bright as his school's volleyball uniform.

"Sweet dreams?" Y/N asked innocently, folding her legs to sit more comfortable than the crouch she'd been previously assuming. She picked at the knees of her jeans (stolen from a department store in their first week), smiling just a little in a way that made Tetsurou unconsciously mimic the action.

"Yeah," he managed to answer, running a hand through his hair in a rather pathetic attempt at styling it. "About ... uh ... friends. And family."

She peeked up at his words. "Oh! You're reminding me - it's been a month. We found out the origins of the monsters, we've waited for people to return to Tokyo, we've done all we can. Do you think we can maybe go looking for our friends and family?"

Tetsurou winced, not sure how to respond to that question without saying "No, because you attract monsters, and your friends would end up dead". "That'll probably ... end up being really dangerous for us. We don't know what most of Tokyo looks like, let alone the rest of the country. We're not abandoning them, but we don't even know where to start. We'll end up dead, and that's something I don't for you. Or me."

Tears actually filled Y/N's eyes, spilling down her cheeks. This is the first time I've actually seen her cry.

Oh, Y/N, I'm so sorry.

"I-" she sniffled, wiping her eyes, though it did nothing to stem the flow of her tears. "I miss my friends, so much. I w-want my parents- I just want to- to go home!"

The last word was a mere wail, and Tetsurou's heart was crushed. Her loved ones evidently meant a great deal to her, and her emotions of the past month were all getting let out with that affection.

"Please don't cry, babe," he said gently, hoping the nickname could at least bring a smile to her face like it normally did. "We'll work something out, I promise you."

He felt like absolute shit as Y/N nodded shakily, pressing her palms to her eyes as her crying slowed and stopped, but it was at least somewhat worth it when she lay down and fell asleep.

Tetsurou let out a long sigh as soon as he was sure she was actually sleeping, burying his head in his hands and gritting his teeth. For all his intelligence, he had no idea what to do. He cared about Y/N, he didn't want her to- to-

He cast a look at her, resisting the urge to cup her cute face in his hands and press a reassuring kiss to her temple, to show her he cared, and, damn it all, he wanted to fix all this.

A shadow moved out of the corner of his eye, and Tetsurou froze. His fingers immediately found his metal weapon, grasping it and the lantern as he stood, all senses to attention. His ears picked up a low moan, and he almost groaned himself.

A monster.

Tetsurou could pinpoint the sound as coming from beneath the building, but that wasn't all he picked up. His heart sunk as he heard four, seven, fifteen more noises join the first, in an ear-piercing chorus growing by the second, promising death.

There was no way out of this.

He almost let a tear slip as he turned to look at Y/N, still asleep beside the packet of biscuits he'd gotten specially for her, just to make her happy. A cold certainty descended over him, one that he didn't want to face, no matter how true it was.

We're going to-

Tetsurou couldn't even finish the thought, biting back a curse as his other thoughts races, trying and failing to think of way out of this situation. Eventually, he settled for throwing the lantern over the side of the root so they could at least see their enemies - and there were a lot more than Tetsurou had anticipated, upwards of twenty - and going back to Y/N's side.

He kneeled beside her, one of his shaking hands brushing heer hair out of her eyes so he could look at her clearly. He let his hand linger to cup her cheek, taking in the soft curve of her lips and the every tiny detail of her face that made it, her, so beautiful to him.

This time, Tetsurou couldn't stop himself, a tear winding down his cheek and splashing onto Y/N's own as he let out a ragged breath. His thoughts moved to his friends and family as he squeezed his eyes closed, willing himself to pull it together.

I loved you guys. I'm sorry.

"Y/N," he whispered, wincing at the audibly shattered way his voice scraped over the words. "You have to wake up."

She stirred in a second, those captivating eyes of hers he always fell into wide with confusion. "It's the dead of the night, Tetsu, wha-"

Y/N cut herself off at the look on his face, sitting up slowly and cupping his face with one of her hands.

"You're crying," she noted softly, wiping away the ghost of those tears with a brush of her thumb, though more were threatening to flow. "What's wrong?"

A sob slipped past Tetsurou's lips, even as he gritted his teeth, even as he hated himself for crying. "I'm sorry."

The monsters made themselves known again, this time with those awful screeching noises that had haunted them for weeks. Y/N was quick to hear what Tetsurou had, something inside her cracking, a brokenness visible on her face.

"Oh," she whispered. "Oh."

He couldn't even bring himself to look at her.

"Why?!" Y/N cried, her voice suddenly loud and bursting with emotion, as she raised her head to the distant stars. "Why us? Why did everything- why-"

The monsters were growing closer, the scraping of their claws signifying their gradual, determined ascent up the building.

Tetsurou's heart shattered, because after it all, she still didn't know. And, even if the worst happened, he was going to fucking keep it that way. In his mind, in all he knew, Y/N sure as hell didn't deserve to suffer for the cruel nature of the world.

Calm descended over him, an emotionlessness so automated it was as though there was a gaping cavity in his chest, absorbing all his feelings, as he grasped his metal pole again and stood.

Y/N raised her head, face tear-streaked as she quickly made it to her feet as well. "What are you doing?"

Seeing her gaze fixed on him with such concern, like she was looking at the world itself, Tetsurou couldn't help it. And maybe it was selfish of him, but he had always hated being alone.

Raising his left hand and replacing its emptiness with warm feeling of Y/N's cheek that he now cupped, Tetsurou leaned in, giving both of them only a breath's pause before he closed the distance and pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss was oh so brief, agonisingly so, stolen from him by time's merciless continuity, and Tetsurou was forced to pull back with another monster's wail, leaving Y/N to raise her fingers to brush over her lips, statuesquely unmoving with shock.

"I love you, babe," he said, feeling the world cave in as he said the words he should've said so long ago.

And, as the world continued to crumble, he stepped back, locking his hazel eyes with Y/N's a last time, giving her a heartbroken smile, before he turned and ran across the rooftop.

A strangled yell left her mouth as he attacked the monsters that had made it onto the roof, slamming his weapon left and right with a deadly destruction.

But fate had never intended for anything to work out, not since it had ordained the apocalypse.

The monsters overwhelmed him in their number like an ocean wave crashing over a helpless crab, and Y/N screamed with such pain she could feel it physically rip her apart as some of those death-white claws raked across his chest.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Red. Deep.

Too deep.

All of a sudden, more of those shadows joined their brethren and pounced upon their shared prey, in a spray of awful, telltale blood.

Kuroo Tetsurou gave a final, pained scream, before he was abruptly cut off by the wet squelch of human flesh being absolutely decimated. Y/N staggered where she stood, a tiny gasp leaving her lungs as a cold tear edged down her face.

He-

He was gone.

Tetsurou was dead.

She fell to her knees, her breath coming in sharp, painful stabs of oxygen, her thoughts on a never-ending loop of no, no, no ...

He died to save me.

No.

He told me he loved me.

No.

I didn't get to say I loved him back.

"No!" Y/N cried, staggering to her feet.

She couldn't-

The monster raised those soulless eyes to her, dozens of them, all trained on the one girl with a hypnotised gaze.

And then, she understood.

"It's me you want," Y/N said, her tone so hushed she could barely hear herself. "It's always been me."

Sh wasn't crying now. All that was left in her was pain, the kind of unending fire of loss burning through her every vein that made her want to yell, just let me die already, it hurts so much, please, just let me die.

Y/N closed her eyes, dropping her metal pole with what seemed like an impossibly loud clang in a void of silence.

"Take me. But leave everyone else."

A heartbeat, the world invisible.

A breath, of anticipation, of resignation.

A silent apology, to the family and friends she knew were still out there.

And then pain, like Y/N had never known and couldn't imagine even as she experienced it, her own blood running in slick, burning rivers down her body as she fell just as he had.

But pain that cause a smile.

It's okay.

It's over now.

It's over.

It's finally over.

taglist. @kenmaslov3r , @jojowantstocry , @gyuuss , @imarriedachef​ , @koukisses​ , @liv-laugh-die​ , @priestt , @tifhen​ , @peppermint-fruit​ , @hortensiyas , @crouchjranddekuswife , @tsukkisukkii , @sugusshi , @encrypta , @fxckingshame . send an ask/DM/use the form to join it !!

࿐ 𝐟𝐚𝐞'𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐛𝐞𝐭, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐬𝐨𝐨𝐧 !!

[dodo-begone]

See's Dodo and anons reaction to last ask.

Me: externally blushing like crazy. Internally AAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHA *squealing noise s*

Well you know what they say the show must go on.

Wilbur was the first of the royals to really notice, after all most of his time with you was spent inside in the library since he had convinced his father to allow him to teach you instead of hiring teachers, but you never had less than two layers of clothing on even when indoors you had a large shirt and coat on. Even if it was winter now you were first brought to the castle in summer but you attire remained the same a shirt two sizes too big and a coat also large on you it was a small wonder you didn't suffer form heat stroke, maybe it was a case of those being the only clothes you owned well that wouldn't do it would be a poor showing if visiting diplomats thought they treated their (new sibling) guests with such little care and honesty buying you a new wardrobe didn't even make a dent in his personal finances. Still it was strange that both you and Tommy insisted on your new clothes being a size or two too big and also made of lighter cloth not the wool that was so common for winter attire but at the very least your and Tommy's insistence meant that he got to choose the colours of the outfits in return. Of course the main colours were white and a navy blue you were a member of the Royal (family) Court now it was only right you wore their colours, still the insistence on lighter materials for your clothes did worry him a little the winters were harsh he didn't want his (sibling) little brothers friend getting sick maybe he should bring this up with the others maybe they would know why you never took off that coat.

Techno hadn't noticed the whole coat issue until his twin pointed it out but now that Wilbur had he couldn't stop noticing it. Even when you spared with him you didn't take off the coat heck you never wore armour saying that armour only slowed you down, you had even balked, gone pale when he offered you enchanted iron armour turning down the gift and walking swiftly away. At first he and chat had felt rather rejected (sibling rejection arc, pog, e, e, Technosad) after all you had even if reluctantly accepted Wilbur gift of a new wardrobe but you were rejecting his gift, he had wanted to give you armour so he could teach you his style of fighting but you didn't want that apparently. Though now he thought about it your and theseus's apparent insistence on lighter fabrics and the rejection of the iron armour might not be as coinsidental as he might have thought, after all he had seen you shivering a few times when you thought he wasn't looking but you had refused the much warmer wool for cloth so it wasn't just you being stubborn did, did you have some sort of skin problem or other ailment that caused you pain or irritation if you wore heavy clothes or armour. Oh of course you would go pale at the idea of wearing iron armour if that was the case plus it would explain the constantly wearing a coat since you probably didn't want them to know out of misguided fear of their reaction after all he had seen how superstitious some peasants could be about such conditions from his time training new soldiers. Theseus would know you did have such a condition after all you were practically joined at the hip, but it was getting very late, tomorrow he would find Theseus and ask if he knew the reason why now he needed to find his father.

Tommy most certainly did know the reason why you never wore armour and always had a coat on. He was currently sat on your bed, both of your backs to the door, preening the reasons why you letting out quiet chirps as he helped straighten and re-aligh your feathers, after all your wings didn't exactly appreciate being covered by your coat the whole day he couldn't even imagine how much worse your wings would have been if Wilbur hadn't listened and just gotten a heavy wool coat. He remembered when your wings first came through a few years ago when your friendship was still new, you had been complaining about a rash that had suddenly appeared on your back a few days prior only to fall to the ground in pain mid sentence, he was honestly grateful that his family didn't keep track of their potion supply considering how many regen potion you needed when your wings came out leaving rather large exit wounds on your back, if he wasn't able to get those potions he didn't even want to think about what could have happened to you. Now you were here though and he couldn't let anyone know about your wings if even a servant or stable boy saw it would trickle back to his brother and his dad if Philza found out he would never let you leave, you would become as trapped as him maybe even more so due to his dad's instincts. Unfortunately since both of your backs were to the door neither of you spotted the winged watcher peering through the cracked open door.

Philza was on his way to his newest (child) guests chambers after his eldest two had come to him with worrying news about their newest ( family member) permanent. Wilbur told tales of light clothing even in winter while Techno quiet shared his own worries of them being ill and hiding it from them but to him those weren't the signs of illness no they were signs that you were like... no he should get excited it was probably an illness after all his investigations had shown that it wasn't just bandits that ravaged his nation but hybrid hunters a particularly disgusting breed of bandit that targeted hybrids to sell as pets or in the case of winged hybrids to harvest their wings as decorations. That infuriated him after all he had founded this nation to be a safe haven for hybrids but due to his own negligence they were hunted down, if you were like... him it would be a small miracle that you hadn't been taken by those hunters. Reaching the room in question open a crack he went to knock when he heard a soft chirping pausing he looked through the crack to see his youngest preening his (baby bird) guest's wings, rushing back to his own chambers he could just hear chat cawing ( baby bird, dadza, dadza, protect, keep, baby bird) he couldn't keep the massive grin off of his face as it all came together. Of course you didn't wear heavy clothing you had been hiding your wings it would mangle your feathers if you wore heavier clothing over them, the iron armour was rejected because you couldn't wear it full stop even with your wings out your bones wouldn't be able to take the weight since they were partly hollow, oh he had a little bird to teach flying and how to properly preen. His emotional high crashed though as he realised that you ran your farm alone, were you alone when your wings came through, its was the worst pain on could feel wings slowly ripping their way out of your back plus you could easily bleed out or get an infection if the open wounds weren't taken care of properly, oh you poor dear no wonder you were so attached to Tommy he was the only flock member you had. No longer though he would look after you he knew his sons had grown to care for you as much as they had Tommy, his more bird like instincts rejoiced at the thought of a fledgling joining his little flock.

Ender-anon

This is quite a bit longer than I thought it would be also first time writing hybrid reader.

sorry i took so long to answer this!! This just rlly intimidated me and anxiety went brrrr- but anyways lemmie get into this ask!!!

YOU FUCKING DESERVE THE RECOGNITION MAN UR STUFF IS SO FUCKING POG

god i rlly love royalty aus, did i ever mention that??? i just lOVE- ANYWAYS

So Wilbur's curiosity about your clothing choice only lead him to believing that what you wore was all you could afford in your previous life. He wasn't exactly wrong. And even with the new clothes you got when you moved into the castle, you refused to wear them. It was rather peculiar. Wouldn't you want to get out of those nasty and worn rags you called clothes? But you were new to the castle. He went with the presumption that the shock from the change was frightening. You must've kept your previous clothes as a safety blanket of sorts. Though after a few nasty looks sent your way over your apparel and your very obvious discomfort about it, he decided to take the executive decision to give you clothes that fit your taste and the taste of the court. Your choice to have oversized clothing confused him, but Tommy's insistence just made him presume you were self conscious of your body. To be fair, he wasn't half wrong but he was.

At the rejection of his gift, his and chat's disappointment were more than evident. Was his twin better or something? Like you accepted his gift, although reluctantly. But you still accepted it. And yet you didn't accept him. Looking back on your fear of the armor, he thought more into it. Yes the skin issues was definitely something to consider, but maybe trauma? No, trauma of armor would be strange, right? Maybe you had a family member who wore armor yet died in front of you despite their armor being worn to protect them. Or some other fear. Yea, the skin issue would be much more reasonable, actually. He'll just bring it up with father, let him know of the possible issues with their new family member.

One of the activities you two did on the daily was straighten out your feathers at the end of the day or when they were bothering you. Though the latter only happened when you two were in private. Nobody could know your secret, after all. It was for your protection and to preserve your freedom. At first, when your wings were coming in, he was absolutely terrified for you. What the fuck was going on? This isn't normal! Oh god oh fuck what is he suppose to do?! With an oversupply of potions thanks to the paranoia of attacks on the family and accidents during training, it was beyond easy to take what he needed for you. If anyone was questioned about it, he could easily say that some trainees took some.

OMG ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FUCKING CRY WITH THIS PHILZA PART?! BEACUSE I WILL CRY THIS IS SO MF CUTE- I JUST CAN'T I LOVE SO MUCH- I CAN'T ADD ANYTHING TO THAT PERFECT- I COULDN'T RLLY ADD ANYTHING TO WHAT YOU SENT ME AND I APOLOGIZE. I JUST LOVE AAAALLL OF THIS

[robininthelabyrinth]

- [x] Post canon Jiang Cheng accidentally died and went back in time to his Gusu Days, de-aged. Plot twist, the him in this dimension died, like 3 months ago, in Caiyi Town. Everyone thinks he is a fierce corpse because everyone attended his funeral and all the ceremonies that followed. The Nie sabers dont want to hurt him though?! The talismans in calming vengeful and restless spirits dont work?! Chaos, utter chaos happens.Give Jiang Cheng some love AncientChina-20forever. I’m one of the 8 sibs

Nie Mingjue trusted Baxia more than he trusted himself, which was probably a stupid decision – according to sect lore, it was definitely a stupid decision – but when he raised his saber to strike down the fierce corpse that had risen up from the Jiang sect heir’s untimely grave, Baxia said Hey cool we get to kill people now? 

So he stopped.

(He said he trusted her, not that he listened to her. He wasn’t that stupid.)

Jiang Cheng was panting for breath, shaking in terror but too exhausted to continue running. Now that Nie Mingjue had a moment of calm to study him, he observed that his pupils were blown wide from the effort of escaping, but they were still there; his eyes were neither full white nor full black, and thus unlike those of most resentful spirits. His fingers were red and raw and the nails all broken, as if he’d had to dig himself out of his tomb or something, but they were a human length, not elongated.

“Are you alive?” Nie Mingjue asked him.

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said. “Like I’ve been trying to tell everyone, but no one believes me –”

“Your death was witnessed by many people,” Nie Mingjue told him. “No less than the two Jades of Lan testified regarding your heroism in preventing the Wen sect from using the Waterborne Abyss they unleashed as a pretext for conquering the Cloud Recesses.”

“The Wen sect?” Jiang Cheng said. “The Waterborne Abyss – what?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, I do remember, that’s just not how it happened. The Wen sect didn’t come to burn the Cloud Recesses for another two years after the incident with the Waterborne Abyss –”

Nie Mingjue could feel his eyebrows going up – we’re back to not killing humans again aren’t we, Baxia grumbled, figuring out that she wasn’t getting blood today, stupid rules, do you know how many evil humans there are – and he frowned, considering the possibilities provoked by that sentence. “Did you get a glimpse of the future when you died?” he asked. “Or – something else?”

“I have no idea,” Jiang Cheng confessed, looking over his shoulder at where there were still shouts of anger from the ones who had been hunting him. “I can tell you, only – the others –”

They were still trying to kill him, he meant, and were being most unreasonable about it.

“Of course,” Nie Mingjue said, and drew Baxia again. “Hold her.”

“What?”

“Stop complaining, they’re almost here.”

Jiang Cheng took Baxia by the hilt – she growled at him lest he think too much of himself, and he twitched like a startled rabbit – and stood still as a statute. Nie Mingjue draped a spare set of robes over his shoulders to hide the glaring purple that screamed Jiang sect and turned towards the door, hands behind his back.

“Sect Leader Nie, Sect Leader Nie –” the pursuers chanted as they ran towards him, clutching calming talismans and other spiritual weapons in their hands, seeking his aid in pursuing the abomination that perverted the honorable Jiang Cheng’s body.

Not one of them looked in the direction of Baxia for more than a split second.

She had that effect on people, Nie Mingjue had found. 

After a while, Nie Mingjue chased them off, giving them incorrect directions in the hope they’d wear themselves out on their wild goose hunt, and maybe in the process find something useful to hunt on the mountain.

“I’ll take you to the Lotus Pier,” he told a still-frozen Jiang Cheng, and removed Baxia from his hands. “Do you require rest first?”

“Your sword is the scariest thing I have ever met,” Jiang Cheng said, voice dazed.

“Saber,” Nie Mingjue corrected. “My saber is the scariest thing you’ve ever met.”

“…right.”

“Your family will be happy to see you,” Nie Mingjue said. “They have not taken your death well.”

Jiang Cheng scrubbed his face. “I hadn’t even thought about that. Mother must be furious, and jiejie’s probably crying…who even knows how Wei Wuxian is taking it. Probably figuring out a way to blow things up to vent his feelings or something, what a disaster.”

Wei Wuxian had in fact lapsed into something not unlike a comatose state, capable of little more than eating and sleeping and responding to direct commands; he stirred only when Jiang Cheng’s name was mentioned, and even then the only change was that tears dripped down his face – he had been there when Jiang Cheng had sacrificed his life for him, for the Lan sect, for the world, and Nie Mingjue had been unsure if he would recover from the blow.

Madame Yu had been little better, though Jiang Cheng had correctly identified her primary emotional response as rage – Nie Mingjue thought that she didn’t know of any other ways to communicate, a situation he sympathized with – and Jiang Yanli was, in fact, inconsolable.

“Your father is upset as well,” Nie Mingjue said, because Jiang Cheng hadn’t mentioned him, and the surprise on Jiang Cheng’s face was – unexpected, hitting him like a jab to the gut that knocked out all his breath. “Did you not think he would be? You’re his son.”

“If I’m gone, Wei Wuxian can inherit the sect,” Jiang Cheng said as if a sentence like that made any sense at all. “He understands the motto better, Father likes him better –”

“Your father is a fool,” Nie Mingjue said. “He’s the one who has mangled your sect motto beyond all recognition, not you – he allows his heart to guide him anywhere he wishes to go, without any burden, and that is not how righteous men live. If he thought you did not understand, it was his duty as a father to teach you; if he did not naturally love you, it was his duty as your kin to value you regardless. That he has failed in those duties is his failing, not yours.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth opened and closed, shocked by Nie Mingjue’s rudeness.

“He is a fool,” Nie Mingjue said again. “But even fools can be taught, even if only in the harshest of circumstances. Your father has declared war against the Wen sect, regardless of the recklessness of his actions, and says he will not rest until your memorial tablet is drenched with the blood of your killers; they say he aged twenty years in a day, that he visits your room and your grave every day, that he can barely look at the water around the Lotus Pier without flinching in memory of you –”

“None of that happened,” Jiang Cheng said desperately. “None of that –”

“My brother will be happy to see you as well,” Nie Mingjue continued. “He was rather distraught, to say the least. You should speak with him on the way to the Lotus Pier; he can help you come up with a coherent cover story.”

That this wasn’t the Jiang Cheng that had died, he already knew, but Nie Mingjue trusted Baxia when she said that this was a human, and anyway it seemed fairly clear that it was a Jiang Cheng, who loved his family, and that was good enough for him.

The Jiang sect’s declaration of war was messy, liable to lead to their destruction rather than anything else; the Wen sect would focus in on them and everyone else would stay out of it, thinking it some private affair. He was of course willing to help, but two Great Sects weren’t enough - they needed more than that. If they were to survive what happened next, if the entire cultivation world were to survive, they would need all their wits about them.

They were going to need Jiang Cheng.

[inb4belphienaps]

warnings: demon hunter au, monsterification (?), blood, gore, fighting (physical), death word count: 2028

Through the sounds of one man’s grunting and the clash of metal meeting hardened flesh, the ground of the forest shakes. Whatever birds had remained in the wake of the battlefield signal to one another (warning not just their own, but also the other inhabitants) that the current fight taking place could have devastating repercussions. More devastating than the smell of iron continuing to linger in the area.

As the earth shifts, flashes of bright light mingle with green smoke, creating a pool of fog that, were it privy to the eyes of outsiders, would hint at sorcery being afoot.

Magic holds its weight here in these lands. Depending on where your loyalties lie, you are either the hunter or the hunted. The former is normally trained in combat and taught to wield their powers as well as their swords. The latter, on the other hand, is feared, for the reasons that they are hunted are rooted deep in their very nature.

They go by many names – creatures of the dark, harbingers of evil, infernal bearers of sin. The list continues. And the stories grow. Generation after generation, children are taught to fear them. They are…demons. Children too in fact, of the King of Hell.

A royalty shrouded in mystery. The legend says that those who look upon his face never again see the light of day. And, since, no one has been able to confirm nor deny the numerous depictions of him, littering the books of those whose teeth chatter at the very mention of his title and covering the walls of the temples erected in honor of those who fight against him, he is better thought of as the very embodiment of your worst fears.

The soldiers are easier to motivate that way, more willing to be shaped into obedience. Whether that is seen as the mangled bodies of their loved ones or heard as the cries of the innocent, they are to never show mercy to the beings that do his bidding.

However, there are those who (baring the markings of a heretic), believe that these monsters were once human. That they sold their souls and gave into the darkness. That they were swayed by sweet words of promises unkept and in the end only saw suffering.

There are also those who, in the same manner, believe that these monsters take on the forms of humans. Either the humans they’ve converted or humans that they are to ravage, soon-to-be victims of a plague that cannot be cured or forgotten.

Dangerous thoughts like these are what make the difference between a good soldier and an immovable hunter. If there is doubt or a shadow of sympathy when facing these beasts, you may very well find your head removed from your body, and then, shortly after, consumed in its entirety.

(Yes...they feed on humans.)

Blood mars the surrounding trees and smothers the leaves, painting them an ugly copper. Where the dirt turns black, Simeon knows a struggle took place. How valiantly his brothers and sisters must have fought, he thinks. And how unsavory a death they must have met.

With this in mind, he steels his resolve and focuses all his energy into the magic materializing in his hands, imbuing it into his sword. He’d perfected his techniques. Trained until they’d become an extension of him and his will.

“Why”, the creature says, “they didn’t tell me they were saving the best ‘til last.”

Simeon neither flinches at nor acknowledges its voice. A voice that would otherwise send humans fleeing, pushes him to carry on, to increase his speed and thrust forwards with accuracy.

“But I suppose I should’ve known. The ones before you were far too weak to stand against me.”

He lunges, twisting half-way when he’s met with a swipe of a giant arm and a lash of a bright-green tail. Green. The color of evil. Green. The color of sin.

“They never had a chance.”

“Quit your blithering, monster. I have no intentions of hearing you speak.”

The creature smiles. Though its features are ghastly and covered with remains, Simeon can make out the ends of its mouth and how they curl upwards.

“You’ll have to cut out my tongue then, hunter.”

With each instance that their magics meet, the world around them becomes all the more obsolete. The serene landscape is instead transformed into an arena, of which only the strongest contender will leave from unscathed.

Simeon has hunted many of these puppets in his time. Cutting their strings and burning their shells, he’d gotten used to the smell of them. Except their appearance is another matter entirely. This creature that stands before him is a testament to that.

Its scales shine in the sunlight, like jewels beneath clear waters. Its limbs are strong and impressive. Its horns, like the antlers of a magnificent stag, demand his attention. Disregarding the loathing he feels; the creature is almost beautiful.

Almost.

He creates some distance between them, reconfiguring his stance and propelling himself off the scarped face of a mound of rocks piled atop one another just so.

The creature is quick to respond and close in on him, running on all fours at him head-first, like a raging bull. Its strides are far and wide, causing Simeon to abandon future attempts at discouraging close combat.

There is a menacing, contained kind of anger that permeates from the creature. He senses it every time its magic brushes against him be it the patches of exposed skin or his armor.  There’s a heat to it too. A hot measure of lethality that reminds him to be careful.

Demons are after all, tricky beings with a history of dabbling in the dark arts (necromancy was nothing to them). These are experienced fighters, unhinged and free to do as they please without their need for self-preservation or the need to maintain their dignity getting in the way.

The sheer force of their clash resounds, akin to a clap of thunder and the sparks that fly as its talons scrape against Simeon’s metal gives ode to the lightning that would normally accompany it.

When they part, following a further exchange of blows, Simeon is panting, and the creature seems excited by the notion.

“You are a creature of the dark. You take solace in the shadows, so you may attempt to flee from your sins but make no mistake, beast”, he hisses, jutting his chin out defiantly with a type of pride that the creature knew all too well, “I will have your head.”

The creature laughs and bares its fangs. Only…the hunter in front of him pictures how they’d glint on his neck, to serve both as a reminder and as a medal for his efforts.

Taking this monster down and fashioning his remains into something wearable? It was the least he could do for his companions who had sacrificed themselves and died fighting. Hell itself would have to freeze over before he’d admit defeat in any sense of the word so that their deaths would not have been in vain.

Suddenly, something splits in the air, the fractures dissipating in a myriad of pieces that could pass for shattered glass and Simeon is temporarily rendered immobile. His eyes widen, and he feels the creature within him. It was invading his mind.

Sentiments of nights spent practicing on his own and memories of harsh winters spent in front of crackling fires cause his shoulders to shake. There, amidst the confusion and horror, his friend’s cheerful visage startles him back into reality.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you?”, the creature chides. “It’s dangerous to go looking for the dead.”

So, the creature knew his intentions. To find his friend and give him a proper burial. His friend, who was probably now disfigured beyond recognition, was waiting for Simeon to find him. He could feel it. His friend, the one who had been there to see him through the hardest times of his life, was calling to him.

“Silence”, Simeon spits, venom coating his demand as he hurtles daggers and magic alike at the looming silhouette shrouded in mist. Each one ricochets off of its hide, and he clenches his jaw. He wasn’t focusing hard enough.

“I’ll give you two seconds to prepare yourself”, it says.

The creature then comes to a standstill and Simeon feels the first inklings of dread. A sentence like that meant that he was either going to be met with a resistance he had no hopes of fathoming or it had a trump card up its sleeve – another nasty trick it could use to its advantage.

“One.”

Wind rustles the foliage above and carries his scent towards it. He tightens his grip on his trusty weapon and tilts his head to the side to crack his neck.

“Two.”

With inhuman speed, it leaps, first into the thickets, disappearing from view, then to his side, grabbing him by the scruff as he’s rendered helpless.

Simeon squirms, his sword doing little to better the situation, and he kicks at the creature’s torso. The dull sounds of his foot colliding with its build send a rush of panic through him. And then-

And then he is falling. And the creature is smiling, eyes narrowing in satisfaction as he looks down at the devastation tainting his features. The creature stands at the edge of the cliff, watching him descend into the abyss.

“What a shame”, it says. “You put up such a good fight, little hunter.”

As the creature turns his back, its ears twitch and it swivels around in disbelief. Was there a humming noise? A buzzing? A ringing in its ears?

It doesn’t have the chance to come to a conclusion. Simeon surges upwards from within the depths, colliding with its giant frame, and crushes it to the ground, with the same foot he’d used to kick it just moments before firmly planted on its chest.

“You…you have wings”, the creature whispers.

Simeon resists the urge to shiver. He hadn’t known he’d had them. He hadn’t known he was even capable of conjuring such things.

In its moment of weakness, he plunges his sword into its chest, watching the expression in its eyes change from bewilderment to indifference. Perhaps this was its way of dealing with death. Upon realizing that it too, like him, is capable of it, perhaps it resigned itself to its inevitable fate.

“What is your name, hunter?”, the creature rasps.

He hesitates. It is said that once a demon utters your name, you are forever cursed. And yet, with the outcome of the battle decided, he’s willing to take his chances.

“My name is Simeon.”

The creature nods once and sighs, as if vaguely fatigued.

“And what do they call you? Do your kind even have names?”

It snickers, and Simeon removes his sword, the severe movement causing it to stiffen and clutch at the fresh wound, talons covered in its own sanguineous substance. He feels no remorse or contrition at the pitiful sight, and he digs his sword in once more, eliciting a grunt. The creature assesses his hands – vigorous and seemly, and baring a ring too.

“Satan. That is my name.”

.

.

.

As the sun sets on the horizon and bathes the scenery in twilight, a shadow emerges from the edge of the forest close to the border. His clothes are ripped, and his blonde hair is covered in mud.

He stands, taking a deep breath in, and closes his eyes. When next he opens them, they glow a vibrant chartreuse – its yellow and green hues mixing together to create an uncanny image. The dust has settled and so has the blood running through his veins.

A body lies beneath his feet. Its uniform indicates that the man was once a solider. And as he turns him over, a familiar-looking ring falls out of the soldier’s pocket. He stoops down to pick it up and admires it in the low light.

Yes, those seemly hands and those crystalline irises that’d shown unwavering tenacity.

He will return. If only to cradle that hunter’s pretty little head in his hands.

[a-model-of-propriety]

Omg please...10 and 11 for all three of the OCs you tagged in the ask game post!! (Tomb-less trio sounds awesome btw)

aww thank you!! i may’ve been a bit unclear with my tags dkskdndn sorry! tomb-less trio is actually a separate group from my sailor bois. i’m more than happy to answer for all six of them though!

10. What is the most important thing to them?

Nikolai: probably their mother’s locket. It was the only thing that he took with him when he ran away, and it’s the only memento they have of their parents.

Enok: easy, it’s his gloves! Else (his little sister) knitted him a pair of gloves before he left home. They are garishly pink and mangled beyond recognition, but Enok loves them so much and refuses to use any other.

Andrey: his dark green coat! Not only is it really comfortable, he got it from a fellow sailor on his very first crew without his father, so it also is a sort of symbol of the fact that he can be a successful sailor.

Nova: idk if it counts as a “thing” but her familiar Ash is definitely very important to her. Ash is an African Wood Owl and is the only person/thing that Nova’s had since the very beginning.

Ambrose: how can she possibly pick?? If she had to pick one thing, it would probably be her hair clip. She has had it ever since before she became a vampire, and it helps her keep a connection to her old life, even if it’s long gone.

Victor: his journal! it was a gift from his father, and it was the first thing that his father gave him that actually felt sincere. Victor never got along well with his dad, so it felt… special that his dad actually gave him a meaningful gift at least once. It also holds all the poems he’s ever written, which makes it all the more special.

11. Who is the most important person to them?

Nikolai: Nik’s answer to this changes with the wind. Pretty consistently it’s one of the other younger crew members on the Vulture (feel free to look into the au if you want! all the stuff i’ve rb’d of it is under “from the ship logbooks” and it would take waaay too long to explain here). Sometimes it’s Jack, and it’s usually Ernest whenever he’s willing to show Nik his sword collection. Nik doesn’t tend to think too deeply about this and pick one person. They have too many friends to pick just one “most important person.”

Enok: ummm his father? Enok was really close to his dad and misses him fiercely. Also up there is Else, they were always close as kids.

Andrey: already answered!

All the trio would answer with each other. When everyone around you ages and dies, it helps to have each other. Nova especially has a hard time getting close to people since she’s far older than either of the others. Ambrose does try and make friends, but she still has to hold herself back some so it doesn’t hurt as much when they’re gone. And Victor is too shy to really become close to anyone besides Nova and Ambrose. But yeah, all three are very close to each other.

thanks for the ask, and sorry for the huge block of text!!

[edmund-valks]

Interlude - The Maw

A blacksmith would have taken different steps.  Forge the blade, give it a handle, wrap the handle.  Something like that, at least.  Thankfully she was able to skip most of that by designing a mold and taking extraordinary care in its production.  A perk of being smart, as she figured it.

The metal was nearly ready.  It wasn’t the colour of anything she’d seen back on Azeroth, instead shedding four different glows at once.  They overlapped and intertwined because nothing here was ever simple.  Ilandreline wasn’t one for metaphors, but even she could recognize this one: four ores, wildly distinct, that could only be properly alloyed through the use of a fifth.  Naturally the alloy was stronger than any of them independently.  Also it was a bastard to work with.

She fed the ingots into the crucible, watching as the forge’s heat quickly liquefied the elethium.  A pull of the lever and it drained into the waiting mixture, which one more movement injected into the waiting mold.  That had been the real work, creating the exact negative space needed inside a block of solid stone.  Not just any stone, of course, but the kind that wouldn’t melt in a furnace designed to bind souls to metal.  Getting pieces of the Black Empire was hard enough even before one crossed into the realms of the dead.

Once the mixture had filled the block, Ila grasped it with the tongs she’d liberated from the soulforger whose workspace she now used.  Steadiness was required to keep the metal from sloshing out or the whole thing from upending.  Her movements were slow and deliberate, never jerking.  A device was only as good as its craftsmanship; she intended this one to be her masterpiece.

Typically one would quench using a specific liquid.  Fresh water, salt water, olive oil, certain beverages made by the dwarves… what one used depended on the desired outcome and the materials involved.  For this it was something a bit more unusual.  The Maw had recently become the destination for a great deal of anima drawn from the spirits being repented in Revendreth.  This made for a sharp, hungry quench, which was precisely what she needed.  She lowered the discomfiting block of slick stone into the roiling crimson, listening to the violent hissing as the alloy took shape.

Once the soul-steam had cleared and the little barrel was minutes removed from its moment of boiling, she fished the mold out with her borrowed tongs.  "This better have worked," she muttered, mostly to externalize the worry.  Better out than in, that sort of thing.  "Only one way to find out."

Placing the black brick on the anvil nearby, she inspected every side for cracks or gaps.  The only one she could find was the little hole where she'd added the molten metal, so… maybe it had happened?  Picking up the hammer she'd made for just this purpose, Ilandreline closed her eyes and sought the resonance.  It was so much easier now than that first time.  That was how she'd survived the darkest path into the Shadowlands, and ever since she'd found herself increasingly aware.  Now it was almost as easy as making saltpeter; not necessarily fast, but a simple task for the experienced.  She felt for her core, dove into it, releasing her perceptions through the nightpurple veins bordering reality.

The Black Empire remnant was anything but dark now.  Even the Maw's dolorous half-light caused a reaction, oil-slick scintilla flaring across the infinitesimal pockmark surface.  In a way, it sang.  Not like a voice, but a tuning fork, a frequency of sensation manifesting multitudinous waves into singular tone.  Where her family's faith resided she felt the echo of kinship.  Reaching through herself, she grasped the thread of the stone's structure and pulled.

In a sweater, such an act would have been the destruction of order that caused its unraveling.  The bedrock of those who dwelt between the stars was made differently, however.  What she had done manifested as an ordering matrix, leaching the inherent structural chaos out, snapping the minerals into some kind of grid.  Gripping tightly through the depths of her soul, Ilandreline raised the hammer high and swung.

The hardened shadowghast strikeface tolled as it impacted the ruthlessly ordered block.  The sound was brutal in its discordance, an archetypal resonance of shattered chains.  What was held tightest become most undone; the black stone crumbled to dust, its forced structure inverted until it could no longer hold together.

Ilandreline felt her entire self ringing as she set the hammer aside.  The reverberations rattled through her bones, trying to unmake her as thoroughly as she had the old gods' relic.  But she was a Glimmerbow, born of those dark blessings, the ancient primordial unmakers' essence suffusing the deepest fibers of her being.  The resonance traveled through her, unable to find an outlet to erode, equally unable to escape until she opened her mouth.

She didn't scream; this wasn't pain.  Instead she had become an accidental echo chamber, an acoustic amplifier not unlike the elegant curves of a bell.  From inside her structure rang the peal of uncreation.  Open-mouthed she exhaled it into the stygian plains, unable to cease until the note was spent.  Unable to hear, she could still feel the rigid structure of forge beside her eroding beneath the reciprocal action to what she had done.

As suddenly as it began, the moment ended, buckling her knees.  Reflex alone allowed the elf to catch herself, weak-legged and bent over the anvil, eyelids only now able to pry themselves apart.  Unsteady, Ila exerted her focus once more, willing herself to stay standing.  As she did so, refusing to acknowledge the possibility she might collapse, she examined her work.

Atop a fine pile of utterdark sand lay a blade.  It was a single piece, cast-forged, with a tapering, triangular blade emerging from one edge of a metal-wrought vertebra.  Opposite the blade extended the cylindrical smoothness of bone, flaring into a double-knobbed pommel.  It was far more beautiful than she'd expected, or perhaps that was the wrong word.  Elegant?  Fitting.  This was a blade made with purpose, for someone very specific, and such certainty was apparent in its aesthetics.

"Almost done."  Her voice was hoarse though she didn't realize it.  She hardly knew she'd spoken, what with the ongoing ringing in her ears, and the way structures sounds such as speech fell apart in the fading wake of the hammer blow.

Ilandreline forced her legs to stillness, stood straight atop them once more.  Grasping the weapon's handle -- she would wrap it with aged linen later, to give it the feel of something found in an ancient mausoleum -- she turned its stiletto point toward herself.  Her other hand moved to expose an expanse of pale flesh, against which she set the blade.

"Freely given," she murmured, the spoken fraction of a larger recitation mostly contained within her mind.  "A gift for another, made with intent.  A part of me to carry with you."  It was almost embarrassing to say it.  Hearing herself speak so openly brought heat to her cheeks, but it wasn't so bad to shake her from her plan.  Not after coming so far.  

Shutting her eyes, Ilandreline exhaled slowly.  Her free hand rested along the cold curves of the pommel.  Freely given.  Lungs fully empty, she braced herself and pushed.

The blade slid in more easily than she'd expected, quickly piercing through skin and fat and muscle.  Farther and farther she guided it until the change in resistance signified she'd reached her goal.  Just the barest movement more, pricking the exterior of her still-beating heart.  Now the hard part.

Pulling the blade back out was the most excruciating experience of her life.  It was a tool of purpose, to pierce through barriers and bring an end.  To remove it without having killed was to deny it that fulfillment, and so the blade fought her every fraction of the distance.  Blood -- her blood -- flowed over its pyramidal smoothness, slicking everything, trying to undo her efforts and allow the blade to feast on her life.  Gritting her teeth, she looped a finger through the hole in the center of the guard, using the extra leverage to force the dagger out of her flesh entirely.

Slamming the bloodied weapon back on the anvil, Ila scrambled to the forge.  There she snatched up the last of the prepared tools, a length of featureless iron, brilliantly glowing from the infernal heat.  "Fuck, this was a stupid idea."  Laughing at herself, she pressed the white-hot implement against the triangular piercing in her breast, allowing her rasping scream to drown out the sound of flesh cauterizing.

She didn't know how much time elapsed between keeping herself from bleeding to death and when she was able to stand again.  It didn't matter, not really.  The important thing was Loira's gift was finished.  Complete, even.  Totally worth it… but if she loses it I'm gonna kill her.

Chuckling at that, Ilandreline scraped herself together.  Time to get out of here before the Covenants' assault wavered and the Jailer's forces had time to look for things like wayward elves with bad ideas.  She took another quick look at her handiwork as she vacated the premises.  There was no trace of her blood any longer, though she didn't remember wiping it clean, and every now and then the faint ghost light would reflect off a fleck of gleaming darkness.  Sand in the blade?  No, not sand; the dust of the Black Empire.  Absorbed somehow following the sanguine consecration.  Curious, but probably not a big deal.  She hadn't felt anything strange, and her instincts were usually good about that sort of thing.

"Thanks for the help!" she told the forge's previous user, stepping over its hollow corpse.  The spiked helmet that had been something like a head was mangled beyond recognition, as if repeatedly bashed by some kind of heavy blunt object.  Ilandreline hefted her oversized wrench, rested it on her shoulder, and set off.  Hopefully the blood loss wouldn't slow her down too much.  It would be a shame to die before she could actually give Miss Winford her present.

(( Tagging for mentions of @ms-winford ))

[nokomiss]

How about: "I won't forget this." *Rolling their eyes* "Thats's the idea y'know." With Jaysteph?

The tragedy happened -- poetically, really -- in Crime Alley.  

Two mid-class goons currently serving Two-Face were barreling down the middle of the street in a stolen armored truck, sideswiping anyone who didn’t swerve out of the way quick enough.  Steph didn’t even know what the special occasion was -- it was both an odd month and an odd day, so maybe it was just Two-Face causing what chaos he could -- and Steph was the closest on patrol. She swung in, regretting her choice to leave the Compact behind, and tried her best to catch up with the armored truck.

“Any help?” she called over the comms. “O, can you do something about the traffic, maybe? These guys are not following the rules of the road.”

“Already there,” Babs said.  “Red Hood is incoming.”

Steph managed to hook a line onto the truck just as Red Hood appeared on a really nice bike. Nice enough she noticed even when flying through the air aiming her body at a speeding truck.  

She landed on top of the truck with more grace than she’d been hoping for, given her iffy relationship with gravity in general, and began to make her way towards the cab of the truck. “Hood, can you distract them?”

“On it,” Jason replied, and a second later the armored truck swerved wildly as a chain wrapped around one of its wheels.  Steph kept her grip, and made her way unnoticed to the roof above the driver. She knew the glass was bulletproof, but that didn’t so much matter if the driver couldn’t see through it. She anchored herself to the top of the truck, then splattered two gooperangs on the windshield.

Instant chaos. The driver, just correcting from Jason’s attack on his wheels, lost total control of the truck as his vision was completely obscured. Steph gripped tightly to the magnetic gripper she’d anchored down. Her cape whipped around her as she tried to figure out where Jason and his bike were -- she definitely needed to bail soon, as the truck was aimed right for the concrete pillars supporting an overpass.  

“Behind you,” Jason said through the comm, clearly seeing her dilemma, and Steph let go of her anchor as she felt the truck lurch over a curb.  

She managed to somersault off the back of the truck like she did it every day, and caught onto Jason’s handlebars in a move she couldn’t replicate if she tried, but was so grateful that she pulled off. A half-turn and a twist and she was landing roughly in Jason’s arms like she’d planned it all out, and a second later the armored truck smashed into the pillar, front end crumpling like an accordion.

Jason pulled the bike to a stop, and Steph hopped out of his arms before offering him a high five. He grinned at the destruction they’d caused and high fived her back before they went to check on the goons, who were both groggy and easy to subdue. There were two dollar bills floating comically around them, like it was a cartoon, and Steph understood why Two Face had staged this particular robbery.

“Huh,” Jason said, catching one of the bills mid-air. “Who knew there were this many in circulation?”

“And in a city known for Two-Face’s crimes, even,” Steph said. “Like. What was the take, a couple hundred bucks?”

Jason pocketed the bill he’d caught, and Steph rolled her eyes at him. “What?” he said. “Batman takes trophies all the time.”

Steph could hardly argue that point, having spent more than her fair share of time climbing the giant dinosaur.  “Thanks for the assist, this went way smoother than--”

She was interrupted mid-sentence by an ominous creaking noise overhead.  She looked up, saw the cracks in the concrete, and grabbed onto Jason’s sleeve. “Run!”

They sprinted across the road, and watched in mutual horror as a broken slab of concrete, loosened by the crash, fell directly onto Jason’s motorcycle.

“Oh no,” Steph said quietly.

“Oh shit,” Jason said, and it was not the horror-struck tone of someone who had lost a prized possession. It was the horror-struck tone of someone who had fucked up majorly.

Steph looked at him.  Jason pointed at the crushed metal that had formerly been a red motorcycle with a shaking hand. “Please tell me I’m hallucinating.”

“Gotham’s infrastructure really never recovered from No Man’s Land,” Steph said, patting him on the arm. “I mean, that was a really nice bike, but at least we caught the bad guys?”

“It was a really nice bike,” Jason said. “It also wasn’t my bike.”

“Yikes,” Steph said. She cautiously moved closer, but there were no more creaking sounds overhead. The bike was thoroughly crushed, though. She poked at a bent wheel with the toe of her boot. “Bruce’s?”

Jason nodded. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“I mean, it’s not like he can’t afford another one?” Steph offered. 

“There aren’t any more,” Jason said. “And he fucking loves that bike.”

“How can there not be any more? It’s not like donut holes at the bakery,” Steph said. “It’s a motorcycle.” A Ducati, granted, and a definite loss, but… Jason was not taking this well. She wondered if he needed a hug.

“There were less than eight in the world. Seven now, I guess,” Jason said. He began picking pieces of concrete off the bike’s remains. “Come on, you have to help me hide the body.”

“Hide the -- you’re shitting me,” Steph said. “You love breaking Bruce’s stuff. Last month you took a picture of yourself next to the Batmobile you wrecked and made it the Batcomputer wallpaper.”

“Well, this is different,” Jason said. “Come on. I saved your ass, now you get to save mine.”

Steph couldn’t really argue with that, given that Jason had kindly kept her from splattering on the pavement. She began to move concrete chunks, and the more of the bike they unearthed, the worse it looked.  Oil and gasoline smeared the pavement like blood, and the bike itself was mangled beyond recognition. The bright red paint was coated with concrete dust, turning it dull brown.  

There was absolutely no way they were wheeling it away from the scene, and Steph could hear police sirens echoing down the street. They cleared off the rest of the concrete as Steph remotely called the Compact.  She glanced over her shoulder and noticed Jason doing the same. “We can drag it over behind that pillar?” she suggested, pointing to one that didn’t have an armored truck smashed into it.

It was less than fifteen feet away, but it took all their combined effort to get the bike’s remains behind the pillar before the cops came.  Steph hurried out, grabbing a broken tail light off the pavement and standing casually in front of her captured goons as the police cars careened around the corner.  

The scene looked suspicious as hell, but the actual presence of a Bat at the crime scene -- even if it was Batgirl -- had the officers off-balanced enough that no one actually questioned the pile of rubble.  Steph told them all the intel she had on Two-Face’s crime (not much, but she added enough details that it took a few minutes) while watching the Compact arrive out of the corner of her eye, and Jason managing to strap the Ducati’s remains to it without any officers actually noticing.  

It was actually pretty hilarious, watching him struggle to shove mangled motorcycle parts into a net intended for a cartoonish capture of criminals on top of the Compact while trying to blend in with the night.  He mostly failed, but luckily for him, Steph was a pretty great distraction.

“And in conclusion, what the heck, Gotham National Bank, what were you thinking? Gotta run!” she announced as soon as she saw Jason finish with the Ducati and climb into the Compact, and made a big show of firing her grappling gun and swooping off into the night like a proper vigilante.

If it hadn’t been for the one notable casualty, Steph would be having an absolutely stellar night.

She met up with him a few blocks over and climbed in the Compact, letting him continue to drive, as she had no earthly idea where one disposed of the body of a motorcycle.

Though, as he pulled up to an abandoned part of the harbor, she probably should have guessed.

They climbed out of the Compact and stood there, breeze ruffling their hair and the moonlight shining on the water. It should be a peaceful moment, but the smell of motor oil dripping from the Ducati ruined it.  

“Tell me why this bike’s different?” Steph was so incredibly curious.  Jason was not one to hide something to spare Bruce’s feelings.

Jason had his hands shoved in his pockets. They were both fully in uniform, though Jason was down to a domino mask.  For some reason, Steph thought it was easier to share personal things while in uniform; it somehow seemed divorced from real life.  Though for Jason the uniform seemed to be real life.  He stared out at the water for a few more minutes, then finally said, “I had a picture of that bike on my wall when I was a kid. Like, before things really went to shit, I ripped a picture out of a magazine at the fuckin’ library, and snuck it home in my backpack. I didn’t know it was some rare thing, I just liked the color.”

“You do like your reds,” Steph said, for lack of anything better.  

His mouth quirked up. “You sure you wanna go there, Purple Rain?” 

She bumped her shoulder up against his-- well, against his arm, but the thought was there.  “So you had a picture of a motorcycle on your wall. Very weird. Almost unseemly, for a boy to have an illicit picture of a motorcycle--”

“Wow, you just don’t stop ever, do you,” Jason said. His mouth quirked up, and then he glanced back at the bike. “Anyway. After Bruce took me in, I kept pestering him about getting me one, even though they were stupid expensive and impossible to find, because of there being only a handful in existence.” 

“And obviously he got it for you,” Steph said, rolling her eyes, because Bruce could be called a lot of things, but stingy wasn’t one of them.

Jason shook his head. “Nope. I mean -- I guess, but not as a present. I guess he bought it symbolically for my sweet sixteen. Probably drove it to my grave, the melodramatic bastard.”

Steph opened her mouth and shut it again a few times, and then turned to stare again at the wreckage of the bike.  “I mean-- wow. So he didn’t think to give it to you once, you know, you rejoined the world of the living?”

“I don’t know if you remember but things weren’t awesome between us then,” Jason said, a little testily.

“I mean, if you want to play that game, I don’t, actually, given that I was having my own post-death world travels at that time,” Steph replied in exactly the same tone. 

Jason’s mouth tightened, then he let out a sharp bark of laughter. “I kind of forgot about that.”

“Well, I don’t bring it up in every conversation I have, so….” Steph nobly managed to not stick her tongue out at him.

“You’re a saint. And no, he did not give it to me once I came back,” Jason said, bringing the conversation back to the salient point.  “I found it in the garage covered in a freaking tarp, and sometimes I borrow it.”

“Without permission, I assume.”

Jason nodded. “He’s never shown any indication that he noticed. Which, you know, for Bruce…”

“Is a miracle in and of itself.” Steph nodded back at him. “So basically -- Bruce bought you your dream bike when you were dead and you’re cranky because he didn’t actually give it to you, so you keep stealing it hoping he’ll notice.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds stupid,” Jason said.

Steph stared at him, hoping he’d get the point.

“It isn’t stupid,” he insisted.

“You’re all stupid,” Steph said. “So now you want to throw it in the harbor instead of just… letting Bruce know that you have been taking it? Nevermind that obviously he knows you’ve been taking it. I mean. Do you fill it up with gas every time? I bet not, and I bet it’s always full when you pick it back up.”

She absolutely was not speaking from experience with her own personal favorites of Bruce’s ridiculously awesome car collection.

“I--” Jason began, but then shrugged. “Shit.”

Steph surveyed the harbor again, then looked back at the wreckage. “You know, this is one way to deal with this, but… what if there’s a better way.”

Jason drummed his fingers on his thigh, clearly weighing her earlier words, then said, “I’m listening.”

*

Four hours later, they stood side by side again, this time in the Cave.

“Okay,” Jason said slowly. “Okay, I’ll say it. You are an evil genius and I adore you.”

Steph fluffled her hair cheerfully. “Glad to hear it.”

“This is-- I mean, I thought I was the best at getting under Bruce’s skin, but this is going to make him go ballistic.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “The point is not to make Bruce go ballistic. That’s just a happy little bonus.”

They were standing in front of Jason’s memorial case, which until very recently had held only his Robin uniform.

Steph had to say, the a good soldier plaque now felt far less serious, given that it was now describing the mangled remains of a motorcycle that had died in the line of duty.  She even found a sharpie and added to the plaque, in the most cutesy handwriting she could manage so that it now read JASON TODD’s dream bike.

“It’s perfect,” Jason breathed.  Steph had been unsure about what to do with the uniform that had been inside, but Jason had lovingly pulled it over the handlebars until the Ducati had become, in death, an honorary Robin. “I won’t forget this.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “That’s the whole idea, y’know. It’s a memorial. For memory-keeping.”

But then she reached over and took Jason’s hand in hers, tangling their fingers together and squeezing. “Sorry your bike died while you were helping me.”

Logically, Gotham’s poor infrastructure wasn’t her fault, but if she hadn’t needed an assist, Jason would still have his beloved bike. Well. Kind of. Would still be regularly stealing his beloved bike from his emotionally inept father, because they were both stubborn idiots.

Jason kept holding her hand, leaning in until their sides were touching. “At least it went in a blaze of glory.”

“And now it’s gonna live on forever in our hearts,” Steph said. She pulled up their joined hands and pressed a kiss onto Jason’s knuckle, ignoring the way he startled at the soft touch and focusing on the little smile he gave her.  “Wanna hide in the dinosaur and watch Bruce’s reaction when he notices?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”