#return him to me at once rusty quill i want more

[navree]

"I am surprised to find how little remorse I feel" well i for one am not surprised that jonah magnus feels no remorse in manipulating an employee to get themselves grievously harmed/killed just so that he can learn more about stuff, that is the most unsurprising thing of all time

[heckinconfusedparade]

I want to see nines reaction to dark sonic

CW: DEATH, AND SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

It’s the final battle between the resistance and the Chaos Council. Tensions are high, and the numbers are dropping fast.

Nine has managed to get Rusty Rose on their side once more, and this time made the firewall much more difficult to break through. Rusty is absolutely killing it, tearing apart every robot in sight.

Until she’s not. Dr. Deep has managed to snatch her in a locked arm. He cackles, getting the attention of Sonic, making Nine look in the same direction.

“Put her down!” Sonic demands. Mr. Dr. Eggman rests his cheek on his hand “why should we do that~ she ours and belongs to US.”

Sonic sneers “she belongs to nobody!

“Oh-ho yeah? Then why do you need to reprogram her for her to be on YOUR side?”

“Put. Her. Down.”

Dr. Deep grins. He slowly starts to squeeze Rusty in his mechanical arm. Rusty let’s out a pained scream, feeling her insides crack and close in on itself. Sonic stands horrified “HEY! LEAVE HER ALONE!”

“If you say so!” Rusty is dropped. Sonic rushes and catches her before she hits the ground. He holds her. Her body is twitching, emitting sparks. Her yellow eye is flickering. “Rusty?! Oh my chaos- Rusty speak to me!” Sonic yells through cloudy eyes. Rusty looks at him, struggling to function before her eyes flicker off, and her body goes limp.

It’s like things go quiet for a moment. Sonic drops to his knees clutching poor Rusty Rose. Nine slowly approaches Sonic. Seeing Rusty, he gasps. Even as a robot, it’s a pretty grizzly sight, even for him.

Sonic slowly puts her down and stands up. “You killed her.” He doesn’t even look up.

The council laughs. “Oh and what will you do now without your precious temporary ally?” Dr. Doom inquires.

“You. Killed her.” Sonics pupils disappear, his eyes beginning to glow a bright white.

Rebel and Knucks run to the scene. They back away seeing Rusty’s body on the floor. Knucks tears his eyes away and shuts his eyes tight. Rebel clutches his hand in hers.

Nine looks up at Sonic and squints. Is.. is he getting darker? “Uh? Sonic?” He asks, bringing the attention back on him from the other two and the rest of the resistance.

Sonics fur turns a darker blue, a dark aura surrounding him, making the hairs on the necks of the council stand up. His quills raise upwards.

Sonic chuckles “you want a fight? THEN COME GET IT!” He flickers away, then suddenly the mechs of the council are torn to shreds by Sonic engulfed with anger and grief.

Nine stares on with a shocked expression. What.. is going on? He’s barely able to process the speed of it. Sonic was no longer the happy optimistic person he knew- he was now a being fuelled with anger and insane power. He’s amazed.. but at the same time afraid. His best friend has transformed into something darker.

The council lays on the ground groaning in pain. Sonic also carry’s on to destroy all remaining robots plus the HQ tower in a flash. The tower collapses, but he also makes sure to get every innocent away.

He flashes in front of the council who looks up at him. They scramble backwards and realize they have nothing left. Sonic has a sinister smile “leave. Leave and never return. Or else I will not hesitate to put you in the same condition as your sorry robots.” The council gets up and scurries away, never to return.

Sonic takes some breaths and calms down, his quills returning to their downwards place, and his fur and eyes going back to normal. Everyone cheers him on.

Nine, Rebel, and Knucks rush over to him. Nine stutters out “S-Sonic?? What WAS that?”

“Not sure. It’s never happened before… I guess that’s a reason I shouldn’t get too angry.” Sonic turns to face his friends. They all have solemn expressions. Sonic sighs and looks down at his feet.

Everything is cleaned up. Nine takes Rusty to his lab and gets to work. He’s not sure how successful he will be, but he has to try. If there’s one thing he’s learned from Sonic, it’s that everyone deserves a chance.

Nine develops a new battery and new parts for Rusty, as well as getting rid of all the rust on her. It was a nearly a loss, but Rose is complete, and Birdie is now free and concerned for her owner.

Rose wakes up and looks around and down at her hands. She feels reborn. She remembers what had happened to her and the monster she was before.

“Rose?” Nine waves to get her attention. Rose looks down at him “I’m Rusty Rose.. I think.”

“You’re not Rusty anymore!” Nine wishes he could restore her organic body, but he’s not willing to go through any more trauma today.

He brings her out to where Sonic is talking with the members of the resistance, planning on reforming the city. Everyone’s thanking him, but at the cost of poor Rusty, he feels he didn’t win.

“Sonic!” Nine calls out to Sonic with an unusually chipper tone. Sonic turns to look at him and gasps. Rose stands behind Nine. Sonic runs to her. He makes a big smile and hugs her. “I was gifted freedom today.” Rose says, with some newfound hope. “Nine told me of your sacrifice. I am forever grateful.” She extends her arms to experiment hugging back. “New emotion detected.”

“What kind of emotion?” Sonic asks.

Rose smiles “happiness.”

Sonic just HAS to hug her again.

Then he goes and scoops up Nine in the biggest bear hug and swings him around, thanking him over and over. Nine accepts this. This feels nice. Doing nice things feels nice.

Everyone forever notes to never piss off the hedgehog!

[adam-banks2024]

Bliss

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary: Adam steals you during a long study session to go play some hockey like the good old days.

The scent of parchment paper filled the Great Hall, along with that of fresh ink. You could see it shine on the paper if you were seated directly in front of a tall window. The most light comes through during sunrise and sunset, but at the time I’m studying, I wasn’t there during those hours. 

It was almost noon on a Saturday, but here I am, studying. These tables were a place I usually enjoyed, mostly because of the large quantities of food, but it soon had become the place that gave me migraines and a strong urge to doze off every now and then. 

Ever since I started my sixth year, the advanced potions class had turned into a monstrosity that I wasn’t sure I could handle. At first, it started with a few trips to the hall every month. Then it turned into weeks...and now I’m studying during most of my free time. 

I can’t understand why I’m struggling with this class in particular. In all of my other classes, I’m performing above average. Apparently, I just can’t get the hang of “the art that is potion-making.” God, if I hear one more uninspiring word from Snape I might jump from the Ravenclaw tower.

At this point I had been studying for at least four hours now, and I hadn’t even eaten anything that would resemble breakfast. Unless two stale crackers count. The best part about the whole situation is that I had only managed to memorize the ingredients of one potion in my whole time studying. One. So, still, I must persist. Because I do not want to spend a study hall with Snape. I let my grade fall once and suddenly I found out how awkward and unsettling an hour with the professor was. It’s not like he would even help me. He just told me to read from the book and stared at me the whole time. As much as I hate to admit it, having no time to relax was better than spending any extra time with Snape than I had to

As I reached across the table for more ink, a separate hand was already there. 

“Hey.”

 A long, dark robe hung from his shoulders, and a green and grey scarf was loosely wrapped around his neck. His cheeks and nose had a blush, while the rest of his face appeared icy. He carried a bag with him that had unorganized papers going every which way. 

“Oh hey, Adam. How’ve you been?”

Adam passed the vial to me and I dipped my quill. He put his belongings on the table and sat on the bench. 

“Pretty good. You?” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm the mess. 

“Eh. I’ve been better.” My voice was laced with tiredness and a pang of hunger. Nothing that would have been noticed, though. 

He paused for a moment and then spoke again. “What’s wrong, Snape got you down because he couldn’t meet for a study session?” 

I snorted. Me missing Snape? Yeah, sure, in his dreams. It took me a few seconds to compose myself before I responded. “No. Quite the opposite actually.” Adam hummed in response and gave a small laugh. 

Once the noise subsided there was an awkward pause. I was waiting for him to respond, and I honestly didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t had a decent conversation with the kid since the beginning of fifth year. Now we’re almost done with our sixth. I decided that maybe if I returned to my studies, he’d take that as an opportunity to drop the conversation. 

I hadn’t even gotten the chance to open my book before he cleared his throat. “Gosh, I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” He leaned his arm against the table and rested his head in his palm, fingers twiddling with the feather of my quill. 

I sighed, slouching in the process. “Yeah. Social interaction has been foreign to me.” 

Adam moved his other arm to the table, resting his head in both hands now. “Well I’m glad that you were just studying and not being torn apart by the whomping willow.” 

“Haha, yeah. I think I would prefer the willow.” We both laughed, knowing that potions class was hell. Well, I assumed that he thought it was hell. 

“Ahh, don’t say that.” It looked as though he was trying to think of what words to say. Mouth opening and closing, eyes darting everywhere. He must have pieced together what he wanted to say.  “You should join me and the guys for some skating.” I shrugged my shoulders, not answering. I knew that if I entertained the idea at all then I wouldn’t be productive the rest of the day, so I decided to read over my notes to get my mind off the subject. Still, Adam persisted. “Maybe take away some of your stress?” I paused. A break sounded really nice, but could I really afford one right now, or even have enough energy? 

“I don’t know, Adam. I have an exam on Tuesday.” 

Adam stood up and walked around the table with a childlike bounce in his step. “C’mon, y/n, it’ll be fun. Just like old times.” Now he was sitting right beside me, his lip now forming a pout.

 “Well...I guess skating for an hour or two couldn’t hurt. What time were you thinking?” He pulled me up. “Right now!”

All of my belongings were still in the hall, but I don’t think Adam had any regard for that. He seemed extremely excited that I had agreed to go skating with him. Well, and other people. Obviously. It’s not like it was just an invitation with him. They probably just needed an extra player so the teams were even. Whatever the case, I was glad to leave my studies for a few hours. 

We earned glares from the portraits as we ran through the west wing haphazardly, bumping each other as we went. Giggling filled the air and it was just like it was a year ago. There was no awkwardness, no distance. It was like we had stayed in touch the whole time we were apart. I’ll have to make a mental note to not let that distance between Adam and I grow again. 

“So, this is where I leave you.” I smiled at him as I turned to enter the Hufflepuff common room. “Well, for a moment. I don’t really want to get yelled at for being in  another house.” Adam shifted his feet.

“Oh. lighten up, cake eater.” He didn’t say anything, just stared at me. “Okay fine. If you’re that much of a stickler to the rules, you can stay out here.” He gave a sheepish grin.

As I walked up the stairs to my dorm, I wondered how that kid was even in Slytherin. He follows the rules, he’s super kind, and he brightens the room. Then again, you find tons of kids who break their house’s stereotypes. 

I ended the thought as I reached to grab a coat, scarf, and my skates. It had been at least half a year since I used them, so there was no doubt that I would be a little rusty when I got back on the ice. Once I was all bundled up, I made my way back to the hall where I found an Adam Banks standing in the same position that I had left him.

He gave a small smirk as I exited. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He hooked his arm through my arm and started to tow me to the frozen lake that was above the Slytherin common room. A blush drew to my cheeks, but I wrote it off as the scarf I adorned. Thankfully he didn’t notice. He was so focused on getting to the makeshift rink that I don’t think anything could have phased him. Not even Dumbledore in a bright, pink dress. 

The trek was long, but there wasn’t a lot of snow, so that made the trip more enjoyable. As we neared the lake, I could see the other guys in the distance. I could only make out Connie and Guy because they were holding hands, but there were four other people that I couldn’t see out on the rink. 

“Who’s all gonna be there today?” I looked up at Adam. The blush on his nose was even darker now because of the cold.

“Umm, Charlie. He had the idea in the first place. Averman wanted to come too. I think Connie and Guy. And then we asked Julie and Goldberg so we had goalies.” He smiled as he spoke, his love for hockey apparent.

Adam and I had played together when we were first years, but we hadn’t really known each other then. That’s where I first learned how to even skate. While I was still getting the bearings, Adam was already an extremely skilled player. When we were closer he used to tease me about it all the time, but he eventually stopped, and then just stopped talking to me all together. Maybe that’s why I’m so excited to go skating with him. After all, there’s no better feeling than reconnecting with an old friend.

The lake was pretty bare aside from two makeshift goals on the ice, and a few benches on either side. There weren’t any blue or red lines that we would have for actual games. Just plain ice. 

“And you’re sure the lake is frozen enough?” Images of me falling through into the chilly water invaded my mind. 

Adam shrugged his bag from his shoulder, “I’m a hundred percent sure. And if I’m not, I personally allow you to punch me.”

I rolled my eyes as I started to sit on one of the benches, putting a skate on. “Wow. how convincing.” He didn’t respond, so I just laced up my skates. Looking at the other people skating around, I wasn’t so sure how good I was gonna be. It had been at least three years since I’d really played a game of hockey, and you could clearly tell that these people practiced consistently. 

I stood up once I laced my other skate, and started to make my way to the ice. Much to my surprise, my balance wasn’t awful. I could successfully skate and stop without much effort. There were still times where I would wobble or need to regain my balance, but I should be able to hold my own. 

Adam brought me a stick and nudged my shoulder. I almost tripped, but I caught myself before anything else could happen. 

“You’re real funny, Banks.” I spoke through gritted teeth, still struggling to stay afoot. He offered both of his hands out to help me gain my bearings again. To my surprise, he started skating backwards, pulling me forward. I laughed, “where are we going?”

I could see Adam’s breath as he laughed with me. “To play, silly goose.” An amused expression was painted on his face while speaking, and he gave a big smile after. I started to skate with him instead of just letting him drag me along. After a moment, he just stopped. Because physics exists, I kept sliding and bumped into him. I almost fell but Adam grabbed me by the elbows before I could drop to the ice.

When he pulled me up, our faces were only an inch or two apart. The world around me seemed to fade until it was just Adam. Neither of us had said a word, we just stood there. Staring at each other. It was in that moment when I realized the blades of my skates were slipping on the ice. I didn’t really know why, because the lake was definitely frozen over, like Adam had said. It might have been because my knees had locked

Then I noticed the slight tug on my arms. I realised I was being pulled, not slipping. I was being moved at such a tiny rate that it was almost unnoticeable. Almost. As I neared Adam’s chest, I simply stopped breathing. My heartbeat sped, and I slowly started to lose my hearing. This feeling that I was only now feeling, had it been there the whole day? At the table, running through the hall, walking to the lake. Was it there the whole time? I was just to blind to have seen it. All of the time Adam and I had spent before we lost touch, was the feeling there too? 

Once there was no more room between him and I, Adam started to part his lips. My stomach was instantly in knots, and my mind preparing myself for the moments that were to come. Nothing else was said, and Adam closed his eyes. With no hesitation, he closed the gap between us, and pressed his lips against mine. 

There were no fireworks. No sparks, no pits in my stomach. Just pure bliss, as I kissed the boy that I met in fifth year.

[katherinewilliams221b]

For A Greater Good 17/18

Gif not mine just the text. Reunions

Summary: Kate Williams, young healer and member of the Order,  joins Durmstrang’s staff at Dumbledore’s request. Her mission? Find a     Death Eater and survive long enough to tell the story. Set in 1996.

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x ofc/mc

Masterlist

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

[Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10]

[Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14]

[Part 15] [Part 16]

Warnings:  mentions of sex (if you blink you miss it)

--

Sounds of voices drew Kate back to consciousness.

“She’s been asleep for far too long…”

“She needs rest to wear the poison out.”

Kate tried to open her eyes, but they were too heavy, it was going to hurt opening them.

“I think she moved. Did you see that?”

“Tonks, she didn’t move. Let’s go…”

“Bill, are you going to let her wake up alone in a dark room?”

She proved her fingers and tapped them, feeling something soft, a bed, then forced her eyes open and immediately regretted it. They stung like she’d just been stabbed with a quill.

The blurry image in front of her cleared in a matter of seconds, revealing a blue-haired Tonks staring intently at her.

“Oh, thank Merlin! That greasy snake of Snape gave you a sleeping draught and disappeared without a word. The bastard... next time I swear I will…”

“Tonks, let her breathe. Go and wake up Charles, he’d want to see her.”

Bill approached the bed and sat down next to her. Kate grimaced and looked around; she recognised the gloomy walls of Grimmauld Place. Noticing the nightstand, she pointed at the glass of water, and Bill urged giving it to her. After a few complicated sips, she leaned back and stared at the ceiling.

“You gave us quite a scare, sis.” 

“Why am I here?” She whispered.

“You… you came here. Yesterday. You’ve been sleeping for a day. It’s one in the morning.”

Her eyes travelled downwards and searched his. The door burst open, revealing Tonks and Charlie, who was by her side before she acknowledged him.

“How are you feeling? Are you hungry?” Tonks practically shouted, holding her hand and missing Charlie’s disapproving look. Kate hissed at the touch but grasped her hand, anyway.

“No, I’m... thirsty.” Charlie helped her sit against the headboard while Bill handed her the glass again.

Kate took some complicated sips and gave Charlie a weak smile. Instead of returning it, he gently grabbed her arm and lifted her sleeve, revealing a big scar that went from her elbow to the inner centre of her forearm.

 “This looks much better.” Kate’s eyes widened at the sight.

“What in the bloody hell happened to me?”

Bill stood up and walked to the window, staring out of it, and Tonks sat in his place. Kate hissed at the cold contact of the cream that Charlie was rubbing on her forearm.

“You were poisoned, we don’t know exactly how. You had scratches, nothing else.” Kate pointed at her arm and raised her eyebrows.

“And this?” Tonks flinched, remembering the scene; seeing her unconscious friend with blood all over her body was a sight she would not forget.

“I don’t know what happened, I think you panicked and apparated here, or someone brought you, you just appeared on the street. You splinched,” she pointed at her arm. 

“You cast vermillious at the windows and Mum and Snape ran to you.” Said Bill. “You were mumbling something about a parchment and trying to cure your arm without your wand. I don’t think you were aware of what you were doing.” He made a pause when their eyes met, and he turned his head to the window. “You made it here in one jump, I’m surprised that’s the only thing that happened.”

“Bill!” Tonks admonished and started to protest, but the redhead stopped her, waving his hand. “I’m only saying she was lucky. Northern Europe to here? In one jump and poisoned? She could be dead.”

When Charlie slid her sleeve back down again, she touched her forehead and leaned back, registering all the information she just learnt. A parchment… a parchment of what?

“Where’s everybody?”

“Mom’s asleep and Dad went to Durmstrang to get your trunk. Sirius is downstairs with Mundungus, I don’t think you’ve met him yet, just don’t mention your family is wealthy.” Charlie answered.

A minute, perhaps two, was the amount of time Kate sat on the bed in silence, staring at the void and registering her situation.

Bill turned around from the window at the lack of words and threw a questioning glance at Tonks and his brother, who just shrugged almost imperceptibly.

Too many questions were dancing back and forth in her head. None of them had any answer, just another branch of unsolved mysteries.

“Now you need rest...”

“The list.” Kate scanned the room, searching for the coat she had been using. “The list!” She fumbled with the covers and the two pair of arms that were trying to hold her back.

“What are you talking about?”

Kate stumbled to a chair and frantically rummaged through her cloak before throwing it to the floor in disappointment.

“That parchment I was talking about. I found a room; a room with books, papers, artefacts and horrible devices. In that room there was a one parchment in particular with... something important… and I… I can’t remember” She knocked the lowest part of her palm to her temple and closed her eyes.

Bill frowned before walking towards her. “What are you saying…?” Kate tilted her head and bit her lower lip.

“I just don’t remember reading it… but I know it was important. But I can’t visualise it. It’s like it was… blank somehow.”

“Invisible ink?” Interrupted Charlie, but Kate shook her head.

“Someone was writing that. I could hear a quill against the paper. But no one was there with me. That woman, Mer Yankelevich, saw it too. She wasn’t a Death Eater, at least not yet. But I’m sure she would have...” Realisation hit her, and she gasped. “What happened to her?”

Charlie stood up and grabbed a robe that was lying on the end of the bed before putting it over her shoulders when he noticed her shiver. After taking her uniform off, she had been left with only an undershirt and her underwear.

“Moody sent an owl this morning saying it was taken care of.”

“We need to find that pa…” She was left mid-sentence when a new thought occurred to her. “You said I’ve been here for a day.”

“Y… yes but what…?”

“I had it with me before apparating. In fact, that’s why I did it. I remember being with Yankelevich, taking the roll, and leaving without a second thought. If it’s not here now…”

“Someone stole it.” Finished Bill.

“But that’s impossible! There’s been at least one person with you all the time.” Said Tonks. “Bill, Charles, myself, Mr or Mrs Weasley, no one else.”

“Kreacher.” The three friends looked at Bill. “Kreacher came in here once. I surprised him stealing one of the portraits. I’m going to tell Sirius to have a word with him and then I’ll go home.” He kissed the very top of her head and hugged his brother goodbye before squeezing Tonks’ shoulder and leaving the room.

“I think I’m going to take a shower.” Kate said after a moment of silence, trying to sound more confident than she actually felt. Tonks’ hair changed to a pastel purple and yanked Kate to her. They squeezed each other before letting go.

“Are you alright?” Kate asked, and Tonks scoffed before nodding.

“I forgot to bring you clothes, you’ll have to use the things I keep here.” She heard Charlie say. Kate smirked and turned her head to look at him. She had understood the real meaning behind the unnecessary comment; I’m here too.

“It wouldn’t be the first time…” He reciprocated the smile and opened his arms allowing her to run to them. He held her against his chest and closed his eyes, squeezing her perhaps a little too tight. It was right, it felt right being able to hold him again. Almost six months had passed, and Kate had forgotten the feeling of his strong hands against her back, his smell, his soft curls caressing her nose. The shirt that she had brought with her could only do so much. She exhaled against his neck, finding a long-lost comfort she furiously craved in her stay in Durmstrang.

Lost in the sensation, they barely acknowledged Tonks slipping out of the room.

“Do you want me to help you in there?” A smile formed on his lips, but she didn’t miss the hint of sadness accompanying it. She pursed her lips, clearly amused, and detangled herself from his arms, a chuckle escaping her lips as she shook her head. “I don’t want to find you lying on the bathtub because you passed out or…”

Kate grabbed his head with both hands, burying her fingers in his hair, and pulled him to her again, this time pressing her lips firmly against his. His arms circled her instantly, knowing they belonged on her lower back. They didn’t deepen the kiss, Kate kept it long but chaste, reassuring him she was alright.

“I’ll be quick.” She murmured, millimetres away from his mouth. Charlie nodded without taking her eyes away from her mouth, brow furrowed. With a light kiss on her cheek, he let her go.

“Go. I’ll get you the clothes.”

 Kate observed herself in the old and rusty mirror of the bathroom. With a towel wrapped around her chest and another one covering her wet hair, her arms and neck were now exposed. She traced the redness of her collarbone. On one side, claw marks adorned the base of her neck.

She shivered, a mix of fear and cold from being out of the shower created an icy line down her spine. She then noticed the promised clothes on a stool beside the toilet, and the side of her mouth curled up slightly. The little sneak. A genuine chuckle escaped her when she averted the black boxers neatly folded on top of the jeans.

With the plaid shirt tucked inside the trousers, she secured them with her own belt around the waist, the excess of fabric pooling out of it. After rolling up the sleeves and the ends of the jeans, she tied her ankle boots and ventured outside.

Suddenly hungry, Kate followed the voices coming from the kitchen and found some members of the Order gathered around the table. She approached Charlie, who was deep in thought while cutting some slices of bread.

He didn’t look at her, something that shouldn’t have worried her since he was handling a knife. However, when she sought his gaze, he just tilted his head to the other side and pointed at the chair behind him.

“Sit, I’m making you a sandwich.” Kate kissed his shoulder and deliberately caressed her way down from his neck to his lower back before going to the table. Is a talk in order, love?

Bill and Sirius sat in front of a man, engaged in a passionate argument about the candlesticks of the house. Mundungus Fletcher, Charlie’s voice echoed inside her head.

“...and I saw the one in the music room just yesterday, so I don’t know what are you… oh, hello. Mundungus Fletcher, a pleasure, I don’t think we’ve met.” he leaned forward and stretched an ostentatiously ring-adorned hand at her. Kate just stared at it and then held his gaze with a hard look that made him stumble backwards in his seat.

“No. We’ve never met. But I know your name. You are the man that failed Harry Potter. You let dementors attack him.” 

Mundungus stuttered an answer, but Sirius intervened. “Fletcher! Don’t talk to her. Talk to me. Where are those candlesticks?”

“I told you! I don’t have them!”

Kate searched in his mind, a slippery one, for sure, but she managed to find truth in his words and indicated so with a brief nod to Sirius.

“It’s your lucky day, Mundungus. If I catch you…”

“I know, I know!” He raised his arms, declaring innocence, and grabbed his filthy hat from the table before apparating out of the house. 

“Kreacher probably hid them somewhere,” commented Bill. Sirius merely nodded and drank from his goblet.

“How are you feeling?” He asked as Charlie set a plate down in front of her and a glass of water. He squeezed her shoulder and sat in front of her. Someone is really tense, she thought.

“I’m feeling better, thank you.” Probably one of the best lies she had ever told, but or Bill didn’t notice or was considerate enough not to press her further.

She then looked around and for the first time noticed the fatigue in their faces; Bill was toying with a ring; Sirius couldn’t take his eyes off the goblet and Charlie leaned on his elbow. His chin rested on his palm, covering his mouth.

They stayed with her while she ate, an unnecessary but kind gesture that confused her.

“Where’s Tonks?” She grimaced at her own words, the sound piercing in her ears.

“Asleep. She collapsed when you were in the shower.” Said Bill in a hushed voice.

Charlie scratched the subtle stubble it had formed on his jaw and grabbed her empty plate. She hadn’t noticed it before and couldn’t help but stare.

“And we should, too.” Sirius emptied his goblet and stood up, throwing it in the sink. When he walked behind her, he rested a hand on her shoulder, murmuring a dull “Good night”.

 Charlie and Kate blew off all the candles and went to the room she’d woke up in. Closing the door behind him, he let out a deep breath and sat on the side of the bed to take his boots off.

“I left the letters your dad sent me on the desk. ”

Kate approached the table and picked up one to read it. The envelope had her name on in, but when she opened it, she discovered she had underestimated her father.

 Dear Mr Weasley,

We’ve only met once, but I’ve decided to trust you with my daughter’s safety. It has reached my ears that Katherine’s whereabouts have changed since I last saw her and I felt the need to express my disappointment in both of you, since I’m aware that you’re the only person who will know about any secret she might have.

However, I’m not writing to reprimand this behaviour, but to require updates about her situation. In exchange, I have decided to provide a financial support for both of you, knowing your income won’t be sufficient to sustain you in these complicated times.

A second letter will arrive, notice this time from Sydney, since I must attend to some business regarding drug regulations in Australia.

I expect your enthusiastic collaboration,

Joseph H. Williams

  “It’s always surprising how he can appear helpful and insult you at the same time. Tomorrow I’ll...” Kate turned then, and the despair on his face frightened her more than facing a blood-thirsty Death eater. His eyes were glossy and rested his elbow on his knee, imitating the earlier pose, covering his mouth with his hand turned.

“Charlie, hey. Hey…” she strutted and stood right in front of him, his head rested against her stomach. She grabbed the sides of his head and forced him to look up at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong, she says.” He choked a sarcastic laugh to no one. “Kate, you were gone for six months!”

“We’ve been apart for longer than that.” She whispered, begging that he would do the same.

“But this time was different... this time... this time you were surrounded by potential murderers. When I received a letter, I didn’t feel excited to read it, I just felt relieved because you were alive. And I…” he tried to calm himself down, but he just managed a shaky breath. “I didn’t know where you were, so if something happened to you, I couldn’t go there and help you. And then…”

A tear had escaped from the corner of his eye and she caught it with her thumb, never releasing his face.

“And then I receive a letter from Bill saying they found you laying on the street covered in blood and shaking and, Godric help me, I was so scared… so scared…”

He was crying now, and the only thing that Kate thought she could do was press his head against her stomach and tangle her fingers in his hair.

They stayed like that, Charlie hugging her waist and Kate holding his shaking body against hers until his sobs quieted down.

She could feel the pain, the desperation, the distress in his mind and looking at the ceiling was useless because she finally let her own tears fall.

He moved after a while and brought a hand to his cheeks to dry them before sniffling.

“What kind of Gryffindor this makes me?”

She sighed and palmed his forehead, brushing back the curls that had fallen in front of his face.

“Something that I admire about you is that you are not afraid to admit you are scared. I could learn from that myself.” He stared into her eyes but said nothing.

Kate hooked a finger on the elastic band holding the short hairs that managed to stay together and pulled, hopefully releasing some tension. 

“So, you found them?” When she waved the band in front of him, he let out a watery laugh, making her smile. “I have to do a better job next time…”

He pulled her hips towards him, and she straddled his thighs, rapidly gaining balance with her knees.

Stop hiding my hair ties, she heard him think.

With their foreheads touching, she kissed the side of his nose.

“I’m here, Charles. I’m alive.” He nodded and buried his face in her neck, breathing her in. Kate just held him a little tighter.

 “I know, I know…” He pressed a kiss on the base of her neck, putting enough pressure as not to tickle her, and her eyes automatically closed. She massaged his scalp and felt him relax.

Charlie’s hands were suddenly alive, and caressed her back, up and down, while placing more kisses along her neck. Keeping her breathing normal while trying to follow his hands and mouth’s movements was proving to be very, very difficult.

“Kate, I don’t want to think about what happened anymore.” She nodded and felt him tug at the shirt out of her jeans. He snuck his hands under it and repeated his caresses again, now feeling her skin.

Kate opened her eyes to start an exploration of her own, but she caught the mark on her arm and halted. Charlie stopped as well and looked at her, starting to apologise.

When she shook her head, he followed her gaze to find the scar that now adorned her skin.

“With the cream that mom gave me it will go away. And if it doesn’t…” He paused and leaned back just so he could take his own shirt off.

“...we’ll match.”

She chose to ignore the sparks that formed in her stomach because of his exposed chest and focused on his arm. An old big scar from a nasty burn covered his shoulder, and she leaned down to kiss it, like many times before.

“Maybe I should do like you do. Maybe if I kiss it enough, it will disappear.” He followed the mark on her arm with feather lips, putting more pressure here and there but keeping his touch light all the way to her shoulder.

With a surprised gasp, she let herself fall over him when he pulled them down on the mattress. Balancing on her forearms, she was now nose to nose with him.

“You just wanted an excuse to show off…” she murmured, lightening the mood.

“It works every time…” She opened her mouth to feign offense, but it backfired the moment Charlie trapped her lips with his own at the opportunity.

“How dare y... hmph”

She let him control the situation, partly because she was dizzy thanks to his touches, and partly because it seemed like he needed it.

They kissed long and deep, and Kate noticed the desperation in it. She paused again, suddenly worried about him.

With one arm she kept her balance, and with the other she touched his jaw, his cheek, his lips, tracing them with her thumb. His eyes were pooled with emotion again, and she tsked.

“I have to go back to the reserve tomorrow. If... if you don’t want to do this, at least sleep here with me. Please, don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” She moved her hand behind her, and the door locked. On its way back, the candles consumed except the ones on the bedside table.

“When all of this is over, I’ll take you on a date, a proper date.” She scrunched her face and sat up, straddling him again, and let her hands roam on his chest, feeling his toned muscles and the soft copper curls on it.

“Your idea of a date doesn’t normally include a romantic setting... are you planning on dragging me to the forest again to examine unicorn excrements or whatever…?”

“You once brought me to a cemetery.” He deadpanned.

“There was a Mimbulus mimbletonia growing out of a stone wall! Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that.”

“Oh, yes... very romantic.” He rested his hands on her thighs and squeezed his way up, reaching her hips and then her waist, where he pulled again to resume their previous position.

 A hand cradled her neck and moved her hair to the other side, leaving it exposed and available for consumption. He feasted there until her breath became heavy, that same hand going for the buttons of her shirt. He stopped the movement, and she nodded, searching his lips again.

She would find the parchment and deal with her father the next day. At the moment, she wanted to focus on her beloved partner, and try to forget that she didn’t know when they were going to see each other again.

--

[Part 18]

--

Tag list: @eldritchscreech

@meteora-fc​

@cazreadsstuff 

@the-navistar-carol​

@am-i-space​

[commander-diomika]

Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming Pairing: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde Rating: Gen Word Count: ~2000 Additional Tags: Slow Burn, 18-Month Time Gap (Rusty Quill Gaming), Rating Will Change to Explicit in Later Parts, Opposites Attract, just two people trying to figure out how to keep the peace with each other and very occasionally succeeding

Summary: Part 2 is here, set several months after Part 1 in a Damascus safehouse. (here's Part One)

"There was another Sending from Curie’s people.” From a side-table awash with documents, Zolf fetched a piece of paper. “New workin’ theory on London, some kind of disease, rather than mind control."

Wilde frowned. “Oh, that’s much worse. Mind control magic at least implies some kind of central power system, a culprit to be fought. If it’s an illness… it might just be chaotic, undirected spread.” Wilde's eyes were shrewd. This was the Wilde that Zolf actually liked working with.

“The message doesn’t sound certain. Just a theory.” Zolf pointed out. He settled back. The couch was a threadbare number but it was comfortable enough, and this wasn’t the first evening they’d spent sitting here discussing plans and directions.

The two of them couldn’t have gotten the hell out of Cairo at a better time. Two weeks after Zolf and Wilde made their quiet exit from the Meritocrats, Aphophis disappeared, taking with him the last few loyal agents. In the ensuing chaos, Wilde pulled some strings and… appropriated significant funding for the next phase. Enough to rent a modest base of operation in Damascus, where they had been for the past few months.

Zolf wasn’t quite sure how Wilde made it all happen so smoothly. At the time he’d just thought Wilde got lucky. Though having worked together for just a few months, he was tempted to say Wilde got lucky a lot… Or perhaps he was just very good at making it seem that way.

“Ho, Wilde,” Zolf called from the kitchen, as he heard Wilde enter the townhouse.

His companion entered the adjoining sitting room, dressed almost-sensibly for the heat in a cream linen suit, a satchel slung over his shoulder.

“What you got there?” Zolf called. He had been chopping vegetables for the evening meal but seeing that Wilde looked flush with success, Zolf put the knife down and wiped off his hands as he went to join him.

His step faltered as he realised that Wilde, once again, was not alone. With him was the man Zolf couldn’t help but think of as “the interloper”.

Alfred Douglas stood just a few inches shorter than Wilde, similarly dark haired and dashing, as he followed Wilde into the sitting room and greeted Zolf with a winning smile. “Hello, Mr Smith.” Wilde had once said that he chose his friends for their good looks, and to look at Alfred, Zolf would begrudgingly agree.

Zolf had met this newcomer just a few days ago. Returning from a fruitless trip to Turkey, he was shocked to find another person at the safehouse; an old friend, Wilde said. When pressed for details, Wilde had first deflected, demurred, and then dug his heels in. It had gotten ugly.

Not wanting to repeat the fight, Zolf just nodded tightly. “Douglas.”

“Oh please, I’ve been telling you, you can call me Bosie.” Zolf, basically immune to affected charm, ignored him and repeated his question to Wilde. “What’s in the bag, Wilde?”

“Books!” Wilde replied, pointedly ignoring the pair’s less-than-warm interaction.

One by one he produced several tomes from the leather satchel with a flourish, revealing each as if waiting for applause before placing them on the low wooden table. A History of Dwarven Achievements; Svalbard, a Japanese travel guide, and one more sizeable volume. Zolf couldn’t immediately understand the title, but he could see that it was written in Dwarvish. That last one gave a small puff of dust as Wilde gently ran his fingers through the pages before adding it to the pile.

“Bosie was such a help, weren’t you dear, I would never have found that last little merchant alone. I swear we went down so many side alleys it was like a maze!” Wilde’s voice was honeyed and light again. It made Zolf feel itchy and irritable. In the months they’d been in Damascus, he’d almost gotten Wilde to just act like a normal bloody person when it was just the two of them, instead of some conversational artiste looking to make a spectacle of every interaction. Two days in the interloper’s company and he was back to the same smarmy, dunkable cad Zolf had met in London.

“The Svalbard one wasn’t exactly easy to get our hands on, either. It’s not like anyone is doing transfers from The London Library anymore.” Wilde reported as he speedily shed jacket, hat and shoes, then plopped down on the settee. Still looking overly pleased with himself, he patted the seat next to him, inviting Bosie to sit. He did so.

“How did you go with your leads?” Wilde asked, still slightly breathless from the performance he made of unveiling the books.

Zolf’s lips pursed, and he considered not answering. Even though Wilde was probably telling him everything in the long hours they spent sequestered in Wilde’s room, it still felt wrong to discuss business with Douglas here. Since he’d arrived on the scene he’d been nothing but disarming smiles and quiet interest but…

Maybe I’m just bein’ paranoid, Zolf said to himself. It was immediately followed with another thought, unbidden and unwelcome. More like bein’ jealous.

That couldn’t possibly be the case, so Zolf opened his mouth and started speaking. “I went askin’ after our initial contact with the Hephaestus lot. You know, the one that sent me on that bloody wild goose chase?” Zolf’s recent trip to Ankara had been based on that lead. He’d been looking for Garten, with no success.

“Turns out she’s not keen on explaining to me why her lead was a blumin’ fake, and the rest of ‘em have closed up ranks.” Finding something to do that didn’t involve looking at either of them, Zolf picked up Wilde’s hat off the table and hung it on the hook by the door. “Also, it looks like the whole Cult is gettin’ ready to move, if I’m honest. A lot less folks workin’ and a lot more packin’ up than I saw last I wer’ there.” He picked up Wilde’s shoes and put them by the door.

“Yes, actually, I noticed something similar at the Artemisian temples the other day,” Douglas said thoughtfully.

Zolf glared at him. Who did he think he was?

As far as Zolf was concerned, the man’s only saving grace was that his sudden reappearance in Wilde’s life made him happy. Pleasant or positive things had been in short supply, and Zolf wasn’t a monster. But Douglas had been tottering about on thin ice since the moment he arrived, and his comments were only salting the surface.

Wilde’s eyes tracked between the two of them, and with a melodramatic sigh he said, “Perhaps you ought to head off, my dear.” He threw Zolf a glance that said there, are you happy now?

“Yeh, I’ve got some things to discuss with Wilde. In private.” Zolf added, eyebrows brewing up a thunderstorm.

Bosie tilted his head, an expression of mock-hurt on his face. It was an expression Wilde made often and Zolf did his best not to explode. These two were as bad as each other and getting worse.

Wilde made an apologetic shooing motion with his hands, and Douglas did as he was bid. He gathered his hat with a reproachful look at Zolf, and gave Wilde a peck on the cheek before leaving. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Oscar.”

Wilde walked Douglas out and returned to the settee, sitting with an exasperated sigh.

It had been getting better between them, heroes with their backs against the wall that they were. It had been. For all that Wilde was insufferable when he got on his airs about “need-to-know information” and couldn’t cook and was constantly preening as though any of that even mattered… But for all the myriad of ways he got up Zolf’s nose, he was also talented. Adept at making and keeping contacts. Able to talk his way into places Zolf couldn’t even get a foot into. An incredible mind for language, information, and planning. He was useful to have around, and for that Zolf was trying his best to extend a bit of graciousness.

And for all Wilde was frustrating company, at least he was someone. Wilde had been dead right, back in Cairo. It was nice to not be alone.

A mulish expression settled on Wilde’s face. It was obvious he was getting ready to jump straight back into the argument about Douglas, but Zolf wasn’t in the mood to rehash the same angry words.

you need to trust me, Zolf

you ain’t supposed to hide things from me anymore

we’re supposed to be partners

it’s none of your business

I thought you were more careful than this

With all the tact of a glaive to the face, Zolf changed the subject.

“There was another Sending from Curie’s people.” From a side-table awash with documents, Zolf fetched a piece of paper. “New workin’ theory on London, some kind of disease, rather than mind control. But it is affectin’ paladins, so it’s not any kind of disease we’ve dealt with before.”

Wilde frowned. “Oh, that’s much worse. Mind control magic at least implies some kind of central power system, a culprit to be fought. If it’s an illness… it might just be chaotic, undirected spread.” As though a spell had been lifted, as soon as Douglas left the room, Wilde turned into a different person, sharp and incisive.

Zolf nodded in grim approval of Wilde’s assessment, moving to sit down next to him.

“She also reckons we start treatin’ it like something communicable. Isolatin’ when we’ve not been able to keep an eye on each other, so on.”

“Well, that’s not very practical for us, now is it. We don’t have the kind of operation Curie does, with the people and resources to run proper quarantine.” Wilde said, eyes shrewd. This was the Wilde that Zolf actually liked working with. “We split up all the time.”

“The message doesn’t sound certain. Just a theory.” Zolf pointed out. He settled back. The couch was a threadbare number but it was comfortable enough, and this wasn’t the first evening they’d spent sitting here discussing plans and directions.

“Still, a theory from one of the sharpest minds left on the planet. Worth giving credence to. Maybe we need to look at bringing a few more people on board.” Wilde paused, thoughtful. “How would you feel about working with James Barnes?”

Zolf cocked his head, unable to place the name for a moment. “Commander James Barnes?”

“The very same.”

Zolf’s jaw worked as he started several different sentences then abandoned them. “I mean, he’s in the Navy, ain’t he? Last I checked, that’s still under Meritocratic order.”

“Perhaps he won’t be with them for much longer.” Wilde said mysteriously. Zolf nearly called him on it. Fighting about the sudden inclusion of Douglas in their affairs, Zolf had pushed Wilde hard on his habit of half-truths and leading statements. He hadn’t gotten anywhere with it. He was starting to think Wilde might be just an incorrigible equivocator, and there was nothing to be done about it.

So Zolf simply grunted.

“So that’s a solid maybe on Barnes,” Wilde grinned. “Besides, we’ll be fine for the moment. I won’t go running off and recruiting anyone new, because now we’ve got Bosie.”

Zolf took a slow breath at this topic change. He gentled the first angry words that came to mind, and spoke. “Wilde… I know you trust him. I know you two have a long history. But in light of this-” Zolf tapped the transcribed Sending. “-I don’t know how I feel about you bringing him in on… everything.” It lay on the table next to the satchel.

“Oh, that reminds me!” Wilde said smoothly, grabbing the bag and reaching inside. “I managed to pick up one more thing.”

From the satchel he produced a much smaller item, a banged-up paperback with a bright cover.

“Ohhh it’s the second Hearts of Fire!” Zolf exclaimed. He knew a misdirect when he saw one but couldn’t contain himself. “Those are so hard to get!” He took the book-shaped olive branch from Wilde quickly, already opening to page one.

“I knew I shouldn’t have given it to you until you’d at least had a look at the Svalbard books,” Wilde teased.

Zolf considered Wilde over the top of the book for a long moment. Wilde wasn’t off the hook. Neither of them were. They would have to come back to this jagged mess of a conversation at some point, but for now, Zolf chose peace. Of a sort.

“Look, the quicker I’m done with it, the quicker you can have it. Don’t pretend like you haven’t read my Campbells. I’m not the one dog-earin’ the pages. I thought you were sposed to be a man of culture.”

“Oh, stop hounding me about it, Zolf,” Wilde said, picking up Dwarven Achievements and relaxing gratefully back into the couch. Zolf was already so engrossed he didn’t even groan.

[bisexualkramer]

Magnus Archives Fic Recs

Time to dive into my AO3 bookmarks for y’all - enjoy!

Gen

holding pattern (2.0k) by screechfox

Jon and Tim are the only two to survive the Unknowing. Explores their dynamic in a really interesting way. The tension is REAL, y’all; I love that Tim can’t decide whether he hates Jon or not, and it creates a really cool problem for the two of them.

Jon/Martin

Flowery Tombs (8.6k) by  RavenXavier

This is my absolute favorite jonmartin fic. Buried!Martin and his relationship with Jon. Love it, love it, love it.

Catharsis (2.6k) by AuralQueer

I’m super surprised this isn’t more popular. Jon saves Martin from the lonely, for the prompt “I know you’re in there somewhere.” It’s exactly as angsty as you think it is, and it’s awesome.

In Dreams; or, The Wanderer (35k) by  hoc_voluerunt

Alternate season 4 where Martin and Jon begin emailing after Jon’s harassment complaint. Explores Martin’s descent into the Lonely versus the very real danger of the Extinction. Beautifully written, totally heartbreaking, includes a nice bit of hurt/comfort. Highly recommend.

rituals (8.4k) by Askance

Jon sacrifices himself to save Martin and transforms fully into The Archivist. Very sweet and sad with a nice hopeful ending.

the veil of the usual (10k) by marquis

Bright Sessions AU. Includes lots of yearning and a daring rescue. Lots of fun, and a really cool take on this AU.

faintly I remember the sun (3.9k) by quantumducky

Jon gets kidnapped during the apocalypse. Very angsty with some very good hurt/comfort towards the end. Hurts my heart every time.

This Must Be The Place (6.0k) by cuttooth

Post-159 fic. So sweet and gentle and soft and gah!!! I can’t do it!!! I had to stop rereading this fic because it was making me too crazy!!!!!

the silence in between what I thought and what I said (4.1k, incomplete) by grasslandgirl

Jon leaves Martin voicemails during season 4. I have to admit I beta’d this, so I know how it ends, and trust me when I say it’s SO GOOD. The angst, the yearning, the love... Fuck, man, it really gets me.

secure in your hands (2.3k) by ivelostmyspectacles

Martin wears lingerie for Jon. It’s just so cute, and Martin is so nervous, and Jon is so kind, and it absolutely makes me want to cry, it’s so good.

house (9.0k) by tomatoes

Ok so this one is brand new, and it’s SO GOOD y’all, I swear. I read this while I was at my grandma’s Christmas party and I had to go sit in the bathroom to finish it so no one would bother me. A wonderful Martin character study that ruined my whole day and completely shifted a bunch of my headcanons for him. It will change your life. Definitely one of my favorite MAG fics of all time.

lip-sync the comforting scene (1.3k) by decadencethief

Totally sweet post-159 fic that was written for me as part of a rusty quill secret santa event. Jon comforts Martin after they leave the Lonely. It breaks my heart, y’all. So cute, and I’m so grateful for it :)

Promises of Sanctuary (11k) by Ostentenacity

Martin learns to accept love and care from Jon. I absolutely adore this one; it’s such a good study of Martin’s tendency to care for others and to refuse care from them in return. Some great hurt/comfort here.

hallowed be thy name (1.9k) by Marianne_Dashwood

Jon was raised Catholic. An amazing rumination on how that affects his relationship to his sexuality and his love for Martin. A wonderful little character study that hit wayyy too close to home.

Daisy/Basira

out in the drowning deep (5.6k) by Wildehack (tyleet)

THIS IS MY FAVORITE DAISIRA FIC OF ALL TIME. Post-apocalypse, Basira takes command of all the archive crew left in London. Lots of memories and yearning, and also Martin shows up halfway through with a baby, which is fun. I don’t think it’s explicitly a sequel to the next one on this list, but I’d recommend reading that one first and then reading this one. It’s just so incredible. I love it with all my heart.

our natural state is drowning (1.3k) by Wildehack (tyleet)

Basira and Daisy, post-coffin. Basira has to come to terms with the ways in which Daisy has changed and struggles with it. Absolutely heartwrenching.

Ever Lead You Back (3.6k) by cuttooth

Another post-coffin fic, this time from Daisy’s POV. Daisy decides how she’s going to live her life once she’s out of the Buried. Really well-written, and I love the way she interacts with Basira. Definitely recommend!

recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers (7.4k) by thingswithteeth

Post-159, Basira deals with Daisy’s absence. Yet another amazing Basira POV - it really captures her personality, especially the way she blocks out her own emotions so that she can help others. Angst with a hopeful ending, and it’s absolutely lovely.

[markleesthighs]

Mea Bella | Chapter 2

Pairings: Reader x Jaehyun, Reader x ??? Genre: NCT royalty!au, angst, fluff, subtle flirting Warnings: flashbacks, forbidden love, smutty Words: 2.5k

Chapter 2 - One More Day

You were hanging laundry up to dry on clothespins when you saw Jaehyun and his advisors and planners with him in the garden, picking out what flowers to use for the decorations. When they caught your eye, you curtsied and allowed them to continue. However, you felt Jaehyun's eyes lingering upon you, gazing at your features and beauty. Jaehyun was so distracted that he almost fell into the fountain.

"Prince Jaehyun, please look where you are going," said his royal advisor, Taeyong.

"R-right, thank you."

You smiled as you walked back into the castle to finish cleaning before helping the needs of Jaehyun. You cleaned and organized his room, closet, and office and eventually met up with Jaehyun around noon. You went to serve them lunch, and they were discussing the guest list.

"The Lees, Suhs, Moons, Kims, Wongs, and Parks have RSVPed so far."

"Fantastic. Hopefully, everyone else will as well."

"Prince, I am required by law to invite princess-"

"Yes, I know, and I am fully aware that she and her family have RSVPed."

"Now that everything is in order, you still have a tasting of the food and outfit fittings left for the Prince Jaehyun."

"Thank you for your kindest services, now let's eat."

When you walked away, you wanted to know who the lucky princess is. You hoped some of the other maids in the kitchen had heard anything. From what you heard, they said that she was a flirt and slept with wealthy men to reach the top, which is how she became a prospect for Jaehyun. You felt sick by this and hoped that Jaehyun wouldn't fall for her, but he might have to marry her.

Jaehyun finished his lunch but still had to taste the food for the midnight ball. You walked out to see him sitting by himself, awaiting food with a list and quill in his hand. He notices you walking in and smiled at your presence. You walked over to him, and he immediately gave you a quick peck on the lips.

"Is this the first course I'm tasting?"

You laughed while blushing.

"Because this tastes REALLY sweet."

He pulled you in for another kiss that was longer than the first one, but you pulled away in fear that someone would see.

"I'll go get your actual course."

"Come back quick before I perish from loneliness."

"Don't be so dramatic."

You brought out some hors d 'oeuvres such as deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, and pate. Jaehyun ate and checked off or crossed out the foods he wanted for the ball. But he had been talking about 10-15 minutes with each hors d'oeuvre, and you still had more food for him to taste.

"y/n, tell me what you think of this"

"b-but Jaehyun, it's caviar, you should be tasting these things."

"Yeah, but I need another outside opinion, you know?"

"I don't know…"

"Do it for me?"

"Fine…"

Jaehyun put some caviar on a cracker and fed it to you. You swear it was the best thing you have ever tasted in your life, and you wanted more of it.

"Jaehyun…This is really good, and it's creamy and salty. I like it."

"Do you know what's also creamy and salty?"

"Oh, shut up."

"Here, try the smoked salmon with cream cheese."

Jaehyun fed it to you again, and you smiled back as you tasted the smokey fish and cream cheese touch your tastebuds. It was a perfect combination of food.

"Hey you got a little cream cheese on your face, let me get it for you."

Jaehyun licked his thumb and rubbed it against the spot on your cheek where the cream cheese was, and you felt your face turning red.

"I-is it gone?"

"Nope. I missed a spot."

"Whe-"

Jaehyun pecked your lips, which made you throw your head into his lap out of embarrassment. Jaehyun caressed your hair and attempted to calm you down while smiling at your shy figure.

"Ahem."

You and Jaehyun turned to see his mother staring at you and Jaehyun intently to intimidate you.

"I understand that both of you are close friends, but you must not act this way at the ball, we have guests and a reputation to uphold. Jaehyun, your father would not be too pleased to see you like this infant of your potential wives. If you both continue to fool around, then you won't be matching this year, understand?"

"Yes, mother, I understand, I'll continue tasting now."

"y/n?"

"Yes?"

"Can you please go to the fitting room, to kill two birds with one stone so that Jaehyun can focus and that you can get fitted for your dress."

"Of course, enjoy the rest of your afternoon."

You bowed to both of them and walked up to the seamstress' room where they took your measurements and fitted you for the dress. They also took notes on what hair and makeup you'll be doing to accommodate the dress as well. You noticed a suit that looked similar to the fabric the seamstress was working on.

"Is that Jaehyun's suit?"

"Yes ma'am, would you like to peak?"

"If I may?"

"Of course."

She pulled to mannequin out from behind the divider, and you saw a beautiful royal blue suit with black detailing, symbolizing the colors of the kingdom, meaning confidence, wisdom, intelligence, and strength. You felt the soft fabric and saw on Jaehyun's suit a sash with all of his badges from the military and inherited ones from his ancestors. Each badge was perfectly polished and shined brightly in the light. You admired Jaehyun, and he had accomplished so much for an (almost) 18-year old. However, one badge caught your eye; it was an amber gemstone in the center of what appeared to be a flower or a daisy. That badge was a badge you gave to Jaehyun for helping him pick flowers with you, it was a cute badge at the time, but now you look back and realize it was a badge Jaehyun never took off. The seamstress noticed you were staring at the badge for a long time and decided to give some input.

"Ever since Jaehyun was young, he refused to take off that badge. It was very special to him. I also heard that he never took it off in battle too, whenever it was becoming rusty or old he constantly wanted it polished and fixed right away, it was very sweet. When I asked him about it, he said someone very special gave it to him, and it motivates him that he can do anything as long as he has his heart set on it."

You smiled and have never felt warm and fuzzy about something in your life. But it only made it bittersweet when you realized that Jaehyun was going to be courting people wearing your badge. You said your goodbyes and thanks to the seamstress and continued your daily routine. Preparing bread and food for dinner, cleaning and dusting several parts of the castle, and having to assist Jaehyun when he needed it. You were helping Jaehyun with selecting flowers, and he asked for your opinion.

"y/n, roses or lilies?"

"roses, they look more elegant and fitting for the ball."

"hm, good choice."

Later that night, it was dinner time, and you were helping serve dinner as usual, due to this, you were always exposed to the daily conversations at the dinner table.

"Did you see if your suit fits?"

"It does mother."

"How about the food is everything suitable, presented perfectly, and tastes lavish?"

"Of course."

"Have you looked at the list of princesses attending tomorrow evening?"

"…no.."

"Jung Jaehyun! I told you look at that weeks ago! You must have done some research in the library!"

"My darling, leave him alone, I didn't even research you because there was no need once I spoke with you."

"Can you stop being so irrational right now! I just want what's best for our son!"

"He will choose what is best, I've taught him to have a good heart."

"Have you heard of the rumors of some of these princesses? If my son marries, please excuse my language, but a whore, I won't be able to breathe."

"Mother, will you please relax, there's nothing to worry about."

While Jaehyun's mother looked in distress, she saw you fill her glass with more water, and she turned to you and began to speak.

"Ah, y/n, since you are attending, can you please make sure that Jaehyun stays clear of the troublesome princesses? I trust you because you know as women, we know how vicious we can be."

"Of course, my queen, I will try my best."

Great, picking Jaehyun's future wife while you are secretly dating, doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. You turned to Jaehyun, giving him a small smile before returning to bring out dessert, raspberry tarts.

After dinner, you helped clean up when you saw Jaehyun waiting so you could help him with his nighttime routine of bathing, getting dressed, and going to bed. You walked up to his room to see him sitting against his window, still looking out into the starts.

"I'm not ready, y/n."

"I don't think anyone is ever ready."

"It's a big moment in my life. I don't think I'll be able to do it, especially when you are going to be there."

"Don't worry about me. I'll be okay."

"But it's not okay!"

"…"

"I- I love you, y/n! to have you watch me go off with another girl is just wrong! I-I don't want to hurt you!"

"Jae, it's fine, we both knew this day would come eventually….trust me, I'll be okay."

"Are you sure, my daisy?"

"Of course, I will always love you, no matter how many times you could break my heart."

"I promise I will find some way for us to be together, and I promise I will have a dance with you at the ball."

Jaehyun kissed your hand as you bitterly smiled, and you went to go prepare his bath filled with rose petals and lavender. The aromatics in his bathroom were warm and florescent. Jaehyun noticed how monotone your face was while filling his bath, so he came behind you, only in a robe hugging you from behind.

"Join me."

"W-wh-"

"Please, it might the last time we have this chance together."

"B-but Jae I'm just a maid I'm not supposed to- let alone see you naked."

Jaehyun looked at you with puppy-like eyes begging you to take a bath with him, and you couldn't resist.

"Fine, but you are getting in first."

Jaehyun smiled as you turned around because you were too shy to see Jaehyun naked, your mind would go lewd places. Jaehyun laughed as you heard him, slowly dip into the bath. You started to strip your clothes and tie up your hair with a black ribbon so your hair would not get wet. You hesitated to turn around once you removed all of your clothes, but Jaehyun encouraged you to turn around. You turned around slowly looking at the floor, but you could sense the smile forming on Jaehyun's face. He reached out a hand for you to join him, but you were still looking at the floor when you walked to the edge of the bathtub. You looked at Jaehyun's loving gaze as you slowly dipped into the bath, now only looking at the candles around you trying to avoid looking at Jaehyun and his body. Your back met Jaehyun's chest, and you felt Jaehyun pull his head down into your neck. His hands started to rub your arms and legs lightly, massaging them. You felt your cheeks blush, and your whole body feeling hot.

"J-Jae-"

"Shh, let me love you, my daisy."

Jaehyun started to kiss your neck softly, and his hands moved all over your body, making you become breathless under his touch. You turned your head to meet his eyes, kissing him delicately while the bright candles and warm water hug both of you. It was as if time stopped, and you turned your whole body to straddle Jaehyun deepening every kiss. Jaehyun wrapped his arms around you hugging your waist tight, wanting you to be closer to his body.

"God, you are so beautiful," Jaehyun moaned.

You felt his member get harder against your thigh begging to enter inside you, and you felt hungrier for Jaehyun. You looked at Jaehyun's eyes filled with lust, pleading for you. Jaehyun whispered in your ear.

"I'm going to put it in, okay? Relax, you'll be okay love,"

With that, he entered inside you, kissing you every second of the way and whispering words of encouragement to keep you relaxed. You felt the pain and pleasure scratching Jaehyun's shoulders, moaning loudly like music to his ears. Tears streamed from your eyes from the pain, and Jaehyun lifted your head from his neck and wiped them away, kissing your neck.

"Is it okay for me to move?"

"M-maybe one more- ah- second- mmh-"

"Of course, take all the time you need."

You took about 2 minutes before you told him that it was okay for him to move, and he began moving at a slow pace, for you and him. Jaehyun eventually picked up the pace while kissing you and caressing your entire body, splashing water, petals, and moans scattering all over the bathroom. It eventually led to Jaehyun, making you both reach your climaxes at the same time. You both panted, taking deep breaths to relax your breathing. You straddled off of Jaehyun, sitting in between his legs, and you laid against his chest, fiddling with his fingers.

"Are you alright, my little Daisy?"

"Yes, Jae, I love you so much."

"I love you too, y/n."

Jaehyun got up from the bath and carried you out, knowing that your body would be a little sore, and you would not be able to walk. He wrapped you in a towel and laid you down on his bed, letting you dry off and relax.

"Wait, Jae, I'll clean- the bathroom- ah-"

"No, no, no, you've cleaned up after me several times, let me."

"But-"

"Please rest, for once, let me take care of you now."

So, you laid on the plush bed as Jaehyun started to clean up the bath, throwing the petals out the window and draining the tub and cleaning the floor with a cloth. Once he finished, he kissed your forehead to wake you up from your small nap. You smiled, looking at Jaehyun, who smiled back and left to get your nightwear from your room. He removed the towel and helped you get dressed. He also prepared clean clothes for you the next day when you woke up. You could barely walk, so you stayed with Jaehyun for the night. Jaehyun changed out of his robe and into his pajamas, cuddling up next to you, kissing your neck.

"Goodnight, my daisy."

Follow me for updates and to follow the series! also, dm me your thoughts I would love to know 🥺

~ n ✧*:･ﾟ

[love-dreams]

pairing: woozi/reader | fluff, a little thriller

content: mentions of a plauge (NOT THE BEST TIME TO BE WRITING THIS NOW I KNOW ASJSKJAK), wizard!woozi, mentions of blood, inspired by @ / lovekeigo

quillstarters halloween challenge day 5: “of course i can help,” the witch/wizard replied, stepping out from behind a cabinet of neatly arranged translucent bottles. “the question is: how much are you willing to pay?”

wc: 1050

the plague had been relentless to your small town. it was thorough in cleansing the town of healthy people, leaving no one untouched. 

it was inevitable that the plague would seep into the cracks of your family’s house. but when it did, you didn’t expect yourself not to be infected with the deathly plague. while your siblings grew skinnier and cried out for water, and your parents became too weak to work, you had no symptoms. 

so you went begging to the town’s doctor, pleading for medicine for your family. it was no use, you were shut out and thrown back out onto the grimy streets filling up with the dead bodies of your neighbors. you vowed to come back with medicine, selling almost all of your belongings and fasting for a week, all in the hopes to buy some medicine. 

it wasn’t enough.

“if ya can’t pay, don’ come begging for anythin’!” the fat, old man sneered, slamming the door behind you. 

you had sobbed apologies to the dying forms of your family.

filled with rage and determination, you had to resort to the final, last option.

there was a small rickety house at the edge of town, deep within the pine forests. the townspeople weaved all sorts of lore and tales surrounding the greenish fog that rose from its chimney and flooded the forest, but they all had one thing in common.

whatever family that lived in that house was not human.

you shivered as you dragged your frail, weak body through the thick bushes of thorns. small pinpricks of blood welled up at the surface of your skin, and scratches and bruises were discoloring your legs and arms. it was a relatively long walk to the edge of the forest from town, and with your weakened state, it felt even longer.

finally, you saw the house. 

it sat encompassed by dark, tall pine trees. the grass was slightly yellowed with blankets of dried pine needles decorating the yard. there were no windows to look inside, and the wooden planks were starting to lose their varnish. just like the tales described, a green smoke was rising from the chimney of the house. 

you stumbled closer, gingerly pushing the rusty metal gate open. the dead needles cushioned your bare feet as you shuffled forward. 

your arm raised itself weakly, rapping on the door softly. “hello?” you called.

silence.

you started to tremble out of desperation. “please, please open the door! my family is dying and i need to get them medicine. the doctor won’t help me, and i just need anyone.” you pounded at the door, “please open up.” 

the door creaked at your force and your eyes widened. the door slowly rasped open, revealing the inside of the small house.

glass bottles with corks and cauldrons were present every where, books were sprawled out on the ground flipped open. paper and quills littered the table tops with crumbs of food dirtying the floor. in awe, you let yourself be moved forward, dropping down to let your fingers skim the gold-encrusted pages of the ancient book. it looked like it was worth more than your entire life.

“huh. how’d you get in?”

your head whipped around, eyes wide with terror and shock. there was a person towering over your squatted frame, his eyes hidden beneath a pair of round, gold-rimmed glasses. his hands were tucked into the pockets of his trousers, and a robe was hanging off of his frame.

“i- i’m so sorry,” you stammered, scrambling to stand up straight. “are you perhaps-”

“the magic freak family? woozi the wizard? the owner of the house your rudely barged into?” one of his eyebrows raised at your shocked face. “all of the above and more.” he reached past you and you squeaked in surprise at his sudden close proximity. he softly closed the book you were fiddling with, picking it up to slide it into an empty space on the bookshelf behind you.

you watched in shocked silence as he went around the room, picking up the fallen books in his arms.

“so,” he started. woozi started. “what’re you doing here anyway? come to kill me?”

you gaped at him, “of course not! why would you-”

“tch,” he scoffed, “as if a weak girl like you could even.” then he muttered, “trust me, little girl, you don’t want to mess with a wizard. only stupid people do.”

your face burned in embarrassment. “first off, i’m not a ‘weak girl.’” you sputtered defiantly. “my name’s y/n. second off, i’m not here to kill you. if you really are a wizard, you should be able to cure my family of the plague that’s been in the town.”

woozi stood up for a moment, his murky eyes flashing toward you. you shivered. maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come here, into the lair of a wizard.

then, his face broke into a laugh. “oh?” he chuckled meanly. “alright y/n, fine. you want my help, is it? then tell me,” woozi stalked toward you, his eyes glowering down at you. “why should i help you?”

at once your body returned to motion. “i- i have money,” you fingers scrabbled to find the pouch of coins. 

the wizard huffed a raspy laugh, disappearing behind a bookshelf crammed with all sorts of papers. you heard the sounds of liquid moving within a container and the bubbling of something. “i don’t want your human trinkets. i’m asking how you’ll possibly pay me,” he called out.

you were taken aback. “i don’t know. what can i give you? i need to help my family-”

“okay,” he cut you off. “to be honest, i don’t want to waste any of my magic on someone like you, so here’s the deal.” 

your breath hitched in your throat as your hands started to shake. 

“be my apprentice. my slave, whatever. you’ll stay here and help me make my potions and spells in return for your family’s lives.” 

“so- so that means that you can help them?” you asked desperately.

woozi barked out a laugh, “of course i can help them!” he reappeared from behind the bookshelf. in his fingers he held a transparent glass bottle of brownish, cloudy liquid. “the question is, what are you willing to pay?”

[that-is-where-they-wait]

That is Where They Wait Ch 14: The Letter

previous / next all chapters AO3 FFN

[so funny story I actually posted this on FFN and ao3 forever ago but not here. oops. but posting here is a hassle, in my defense. hope everyone is doing okay? also check the notes for some Haha Funny Jokes because I don't want to add them to the. actual post.]

Perhaps the way to answer the present is with the past.

The metal of the hinge was cool under his finger, intricate design branching onto the actual door. It should've been smooth, but instead it was rough and red.

Rust.

Kai frowned. Rusty metal was usually brittle — but the door hadn't come down, even when he and Karlof rammed into it repeatedly. That plan of ripping at its hinges and hoping it came down was starting to look flimsy.

Ech. Well, they had to keep trying and hope for the best. It wasn't like they could stay in the small, dark room much longer. Kai had cobbled together a makeshift flame with pieces of rope and cloth from his gi, but it would definitely not last much longer.

Plus, he was getting really antsy, and it'd be just plain stupid to be so isolated when they weren't safe. When he'd asked about Lloyd and found out he was, in fact, both inside the mansion and unaccounted for, he had been about ready to knock Karlof's helmet off of his head.

… In hindsight, maybe he'd been a little forceful.

But hey, in return, he'd informed Karlof about everything they knew on the mansion and the spirit so far. So he didn't feel too bad about it.

"Psst." He went over to where he'd left Karlof and poked. "We gotta go."

No response.

Ohhhh, perfect. The guy had to go and fall asleep on him. They'd already spent so much time staying put! He was itching to get moving again, and Lloyd and Skylor were still out there, who knew where! Not to mention, if the others woke up and noticed him missing … (It occurred to him, a little belatedly, that they might blame Jay for that. Another twinge of guilt. But he could apologize for that when they went back.)

But it had been an exhausting trek just to get here. Karlof had endured that, and no sleep to recharge afterwards …

Kai sighed, seating himself next to him. Yeah, they weren't going anywhere until Karlof finished his beauty sleep. But then there came the issue of having nothing to distract himself with. Already he could just feel himself tiredly debating whether to indulge the pessimistic trains of thought forming in his head in all their bleak glory.

Abruptly, something slammed against him. Okay, so it didn't slam into him, but it definitely felt that way, because oof! It was heavy. Kai squirmed briefly, but a moment later, he realized he shouldn't even bother. Instead, he hissed an irritated puff of air through his teeth and tried to pull an overly-cuddly Karlof off of him. Why in the name of the First Spinjitzu Master was he—

An exposed part of his bandaged arm made contact with Karlof's for a second, before Kai drew it away and grimaced at how cold it was.

… Oh.

The way Karlof's arm was draped on him, Kai couldn't reach his face with his hand. He settled for a drawn-out groan instead. Just because he was the human toaster … and now he couldn't move!

Oh well. If nothing else, he could totally hold it over Karlof's head later. Blackmail material or something. But what was he supposed to do now?

A bleary yawn escaped his mouth.

There was one idea.

Nope, he thought to himself immediately. No way, José, someone had to stay awake, and he'd already bailed out on that once. But the door was locked, and the whole day and the effects of staying up so long were finally catching up to him …

Kai tried to debate the point a little longer, but as it turned out, he was pretty tired. Too tired to properly argue with himself, and before he could, he'd already fallen asleep.

The tiny flame winked out and left the room engulfed in black.

Lloyd wrapped up a summary of the search he'd just gotten back from.

Considering that depressingly little had changed since the last time they'd looked, it didn't take very long. The ever-encroaching cocktail of panic and despair clawed at his guts and his chest, made his throat tight, and he could feel it radiating off of Jay and Cole near him, optimistic as they tried to remain. At least Skylor had gotten some work in on fixing her bow while they'd been gone, although she hopefully wouldn't be needing it anytime soon.

The light trickling from the windows had become thin, silvery moonlight and long, fragmented shadows streaking across the floor and cutting into each other. Cole glanced at everyone in the room and declared that it was probably about time they slept; both searches had taken quite a while, even with how much of the mansion was still closed off to them. It didn't seem likely that much more would happen that day.

Zane took in everything they said solemnly, then pulled something out from beside him.

"It's disheartening to know that the two of them are still missing. But perhaps I can offer something else to think about before we rest for tonight?"

On closer inspection, it appeared to be a faded eggplant-colored satchel.

"I found this on the mantle while you were investigating in the tunnels. I didn't want to look through it without you …"

"Can I?" Lloyd reached out, opening the bag and peering into it for a moment. Then, as the rest of them watched, he stuck his hand in and, one by one, set its contents onto the floor for better examination.

On the carpet, there currently sat a small black inkwell, a quill stand, a bound book, a faded set of folded purple clothes, an assortment of large and small weapons, and a few loose pieces of parchment with writing on them. Maybe it all belonged to the person that owned the place, ages ago?

Evidently, they were all wondering a similar thing.

Lloyd set aside the empty bag and stared at the various items he'd placed down. "Hm. They were carrying weapons …"

"Whose stuff is all this?" Skylor finally voiced the question.

"It likely dates back to the Serpentine war," Zane said. "The antiquity of all the items would fit."

"Well, then, we should find out, shouldn't we?" Jay grabbed the book, slowly teasing open the binding and riffling through the pages. Lloyd caught a glimpse of inky letters over paper lightly yellowed with time; all things considered, it was pretty well-preserved.

"Careful, Jay, that looks heavy. Wouldn't wanna pull a muscle lifting that thing." Cole's mouth twitched up in a smirk, Jay briefly peering over the book with narrow eyes.

"… I mishandle an empty packing crate one time."

"Yeah, well," Lloyd huffed. "You nearly dropped it right on my foot. I still get splinters from that crate when I'm not watching my step."

"Thanks, Lloyd!" Jay looked supremely offended. "I didn't ask!" Still a little sullen from the disappointing results of the day, Lloyd didn't bother sassing him back. He scoffed when he noticed Jay looking helplessly at Zane — they all knew full well that never worked, so when the nindroid minutely shook his head there was hardly any surprise.

"Silly zaptrap," Cole shook his head and tsked. "Once is all it takes on this team. You of all people should know better."

Jay hmphed and nearly went back to skimming the book he'd picked up, but his head popped up curiously when Skylor spoke.

"Isn't it kind of late? If we're going to look at anything, maybe we should read one of the loose sheets instead. I feel like trying to get into something that long when we need to sleep isn't the best idea. I want to stay in-the-know, but I'm not sure how much longer I can pay attention to anything right now …" She shrugged, looking a little self-conscious. "Sorry."

Oh, right. It was usually Lloyd's job to be one of the voices of reason.

Looking around, he was certain that last sentence didn't pertain to just Skylor, though. The banter was being tossed rather lazily and there was a sluggishness to everyone's movements, even Zane's. As for himself, the temptation to just plonk onto the next piece of bedding he picked up while cleaning up the aftermath of the pillow-and-assorted-accessories fight and sleep on it right there had been overwhelming.

"It's quite alright," Zane reassured her. "You have a point, at that. Perhaps something like this would suffice for tonight?" He held up a messily rolled piece of paper, and pulled it open. Lloyd eyed it and nodded; seemed interesting enough. Most likely, they could learn a thing or two, discuss, and then go to bed without too much further ado.

"Looks good to me," Cole said. "Let's see about this person, then."

Zane's eyes fell to the paper for a few seconds before freezing, glowing ever so faintly brighter, and doing a funny skip between Lloyd and the paper before settling back on the paper. Lloyd frowned, unsure he liked the new furrow in Zane's brow.

"What is it, buddy?"

Zane coughed awkwardly. Amazing how even nindroids did that when they were nervous.

"This appears to be a letter addressed to Garmadon."

Lloyd's eyes widened, breath hitching. Abruptly his heart felt less like it was beating and more like it was trying to break itself out of his chest.

Dad.

It had been, safe to say, a little while since he'd thought about his father. The same father he'd gone through hell and back to finally have by his side, only to banish and then drown for good.

He'd kept himself good and busy, helping the team move base to the abandoned Temple of Airjitzu. Warded off the lingering pain from remembering, during the Day of the Departed, pretty well with dusting and heavy lifting and organizing what needed to be packed.

Lloyd had always done his best to draw strength from his father's memory. Like he'd told his mother during Day of the Departed: "Sometimes it feels like he's still with me."

It sure didn't feel like he was with Lloyd now.

"Lloyd?"

He blinked.

"Lloyd, you good?"

He looked over. Cole and the others were all watching him with concern, trying to gauge his reaction.

Quietly, he took a deep breath. He was supposed to have gotten past this. It wasn't supposed to still sting so much when he'd moved onto something healthier, more bittersweet than the more raw, consuming pain he'd known for a while.

Maybe the mansion's atmosphere was digging deeper than he'd thought, ripping open old wounds on top of slashing new ones.

"Yeah." Then, to ensure they couldn't press him about it, "Are you sure, Zane? Lemme see." Zane obliged, handing him the letter. Lloyd took it and held it up to the firelight, careful not to wrinkle the aged parchment, and skimmed it silently, feeling everyone's eyes still on him.

Having caught his reaction to Garmadon's name, they were probably a little surprised when he chuckled.

"What is it?" Skylor tilted her head. "What did they say?"

"It's just the first paragraph. Listen to this!" Clearing his throat, all too glad to focus on the letter, he read it, the ninja going from attentive listening to confused snickering as he did.

"My dearest friend, Garmadon, it seems fitting to start with the most important subject here—thanks a lot for letting me blunder into that whole mess, you absolute withered honeysuckle. I was delayed two whole days trying to firstly explain how I accidentally deposed a chieftess, and then restore some semblance of normalcy to the village. I don't," Lloyd had to catch his breath, barely managing to stop snickering long enough to finish the sentence, "I don't even know why we're still friends." "What in the world is this talking about?" Cole wheezed.

"Absolute withered honeysuckle," Jay mimicked, cracking up himself.

"Well. They were friends, we've learned that much," Skylor stated, desperately trying to regain a straight face.

"Absolute chums, from the sound of it. Just the best of buddies. Like you and me, huh, Cole?"

"If this whole 'accidentally deposed a chieftess' stuff is anything to go by," Cole said, still laughing, "they were even better."

"I wonder what they got up to if this was forty years ago." Zane set about tidying up the remaining letters and the bound book earlier held by Jay, probably figuring he might as well get it over with while they were all distracted. "Or who this was, to be so evidently close to Garmadon."

"Uh, am I the only one wondering what a honeysuckle is?"

Metaphorical crickets, much to Jay's chagrin.

"Just me? Okay."

A sigh. "They're flowers, Jay."

As the room got quiet enough to hear the crackling fireplace again, Lloyd went back to skimming the letter. The little smile that had lingered on his face fell flat again as he took in the words.

"What's the holdup?" Jay complained after a moment.

"Honestly, with the way this is written, if I read it verbatim you'd probably fall asleep," Lloyd muttered over the page. "Shut up and let me summarize."

"I … okay."

Lloyd squinted at the words. "This is an awful lot to take in. What's a … Shhh … Shuuuuravansha?"

"A what?" A confused chorus met his ears; evidently the rest of the room only knew about as much as he did.

"Maybe the word comes from the local language," Cole suggested. "I did hear a lot of the villagers speaking something I didn't recognize."

"Probably. Zane, you wouldn't happen to have that language in your databases or anything, would you?" Jay asked.

"I'm afraid not," Zane said apologetically. "What is the rest of the sentence, Lloyd? Perhaps the proper context will make it easier to guess."

"'I spoke with the Shuravansha and revised the contingency plans based on the information I got from them, as well as reports from you and our spies on the Serpentine's movement.' How do you even say that?"

"I guess the jury stays out on that one," Cole replied. "But I don't think that's a person. It says 'the Shuravansha'. I don't call Jay 'the Jay'; it'd be weird."

"So a group of some sort?" Jay suggested. "The word 'the' implies more than one."

"But it could be a title," Skylor pointed out. "Like 'the chief' or 'the sensei'."

"Either way, it reveals little about the nature of this Shuravansha," Zane said. "All that sentence gave us is that they had information about the Serpentine relevant to the author of this letter."

"Whatever it is, it's probably important," Lloyd muttered, rubbing his eyes and going back to the letter. "But maybe we'll find more clues about them later."

"Then we should remember it," Skylor muttered. "How do you spell that?"

He spelled it out and kept reading. The room went back to quiet anticipation, until Lloyd sputtered, squinted at something on the page, then looked up at them.

"What the heck, Cole?"

"Huh?" All eyes were now on a flabbergasted Cole. "Wh-what'd I do?!"

"I, it's not you, it's just — since when was the last master of earth a traitor?"

"Whoa whoa whoa, what?" Jay piped up. "That's kinda a heavy accusation to just bandy around!"

"What is this coming from, Lloyd?" Zane asked.

"It literally says right there, 'Earth went traitor on us'! There's only one way to read that!"

Skylor was scribbling like mad.

"Wha—well, don't look at me!" Cole said. "I don't know anything about this!"

"Maybe that's not all there is to it." It was difficult to see Skylor's eyes behind the shades. "My father turned the Anacondrai and the other tribes against humans to start the whole war in the first place. Then he turned the elemental masters against themselves."

"Maybe that was the case here too. Is there anything else about the master of earth, Lloyd?" Zane spoke up.

"Full sentence is 'The Constrictai among them can burrow, and ever since Earth, the weasel, went traitor on us, we lost our best protection against that tactic.' So they're really still talking about the Serpentine."

"Hmm."

"Mmmaybe we should go back to the rest of the letter?" Jay said tentatively.

"I dunno. I kinda wanna hear about this." Cole curiously poked his head closer, wanting to get a look at the letter. Lloyd drew back and immediately felt bad when Cole regarded him a moment before scooting back, hiding a yawn behind his hand.

Right. It was late.

"I mean, there isn't anything else in the letter about them … just the one sentence."

"Fine. What's the rest of it say, then? We really don't have the rest of the night here."

He had a point. Lloyd was pretty ready to be done with the letter and get some rest, by now.

"Wait a sec," Jay said. "'Went traitor on us.' Who's 'us'?"

"Oh." Cole's eyes widened. "Oh my god, you actually have a point. Yeah, that sounds an awful lot like … they called him 'Earth', not his name."

"How do you know that's not his name? Maybe his mom had a weird taste in names."

"... I'm pretty sure that wasn't his name, Jay."

"The word 'us' does seem to suggest camaraderie," Zane mused. "Given that and their knowledge of elemental power, perhaps they were acquainted with the elemental masters, or worked alongside them in some manner."

"That makes sense," Lloyd agreed, not looking up from the paper he held. "Or maybe they even were a master!"

"There's nothing to confirm it yet …" Skylor pointed out. "I'll just write down that they probably knew about the elemental masters. I think that's a safe conclusion."

"Fair enough," Zane said. "I think we should hear the rest of the letter now, before it gets much later. Lloyd?"

"Okay, so. Basically, my dad sent this person, whoever they are, info about Serpentine movement in the area. There were more loose gangs causing trouble than anything, they were just harder to predict because they weren't associated with the Anacondrai commanders. But according to them, the Southern Woodlands were in too strategic a location to risk—"

"Southern Woodlands?" Jay interrupted.

"That's probably what this forest is called. The villagers called it that on our way here."

"Yeah, I think I remember hearing that from someone," Cole said.

"Anyway. Like I was saying." Lloyd coughed pointedly and continued. "The Woodlands were too risky to leave unprotected because the thick plant life would give the Serpentine a naturally-sheltered base to recover and hide in. And they didn't have a lot of time left because … wait." The loopy handwriting in thick black ink cut off abruptly near the middle of the page, the last sentence never to be finished. "It just cuts off mid-sentence."

"Why did I ever think I'd have an easy time of this." Skylor sounded disappointed. "There wouldn't happen to be a name or anything at the bottom, would there?"

Lloyd shook his head. Of course there wasn't; that'd be too easy for them, now, wouldn't it?

"So why didn't they have time, exactly?" Jay said.

"An abrupt end of that nature would suggest some kind of interruption, would it not?" Zane said. "They never had the chance to finish writing this letter."

"If this is from the same era as everything else we've been seeing, then there was a war on. I imagine that'd do it," Cole said.

"Okay, but there's no signs of a fight in this room," Jay pointed out.

"... Ah. That is. Also true."

If he were a little less tired, Lloyd would've chuckled at Cole being caught off-guard without even a witty defense.

"I wonder what they were expecting not to have a lot of time for …" Lloyd wondered. "There's no signs of a fight here, but it's super messy everywhere else, especially downstairs. Maybe something happened there."

"And maybe it's related to the spirit." Cole ran a hand through his thick, messy hair, eyes dark. "There's no way something like that came out of nowhere."

"Given what we know, it is still impossible to gauge exactly what took place in this mansion," Zane said. "It does seem likely that the Serpentine activity this person mentioned had something to do with it, though. The only way to know for sure would be to find more information"

"So we don't know that, either," Jay muttered. "Write that down as a solid 'maybe', I guess."

Skylor nodded. "Anything else I should put down?"

Lloyd shook his head, and Skylor gratefully flipped the notepad closed and set it aside. Her words had actually begun to slur together with tiredness, so even if there were, he wasn't about to put her through writing it.

"Well, if that's all, then." Cole yawned, again. "Let's call it a day. How long's it been?"

"My internal clock is completely frozen," Zane sighed. "And PIXAL says she can't start it up without any connection to the outside world. But according to my timer, it's been approximately 15 hours since Jay woke me and Cole up to inform us Kai was missing."

Yep. Definitely time to wind down.

The mood dipped briefly at the mention of Kai, but Cole determinedly moved on to the topic of keeping watch, and whether they should do it tonight.

Eventually they decided that it definitely needed to stay, but split it up into two equal shifts. Two of them weren't even options to be considered. Lloyd offered to take shift, but given that he'd gotten out of a tough scrape with the spirit earlier and gone on both search expeditions, everyone else refused to let him, arguing he needed the rest. That left just Cole and Jay, but Cole, having gone through the mansion both times, was tired too. Jay would have to keep watch first.

Then came sleeping arrangements, which also worked themselves out quickly enough. Zane, for whatever reason, stayed in a corner to recharge, Skylor was on one bed, and whoever wasn't on shift would be sharing a bed with Lloyd.

"Alright, Jay, don't do anything stupid this time," Cole ribbed Jay, who was shifting around burnt kindling and trying to keep the little bit of fire left alive.

Jay stuck his tongue out.

"You have sooo much faith in me. Come on, I've learned my lesson here."

"Your timer's working, right? Make sure to wake me in … four hours?"

"Four and a half," Jay corrected him. "And yeah, I will."

"Cool. Night." And with that, Cole left him to his current task: striking a match onto a pile of kindling and hoping for a fire big enough to last.

Soon enough, everyone had bid each other goodnight and settled down.

Lloyd pulled his blanket a little closer to himself, still feeling a residual chill seep into his bones. With nothing to keep preoccupied with, ugly thoughts about the mansion, the horrors of its obscure history, their current conditions, his own utter incompetence, the way he'd just let Karlof get lost, Kai came creeping in far too readily. He tried to push them away.

Not now. Couldn't think about all of those things now or he'd never rest. Even tired, falling asleep was a challenge with sore limbs and unceasing nerves scratching away at him and a bitter resentment towards it all beginning to sink into his bones.

Lloyd closed his eyes regardless, trying to empty his mind. He could faintly hear Jay's breathing under the familiar crackle of the flames that were only too reminiscent of their missing piece.

Shadows twisted and danced on the walls.

Exhaustion won out eventually.

[kellanswritingblog]

Chapters: 1/5 Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan/Zolf Smith Characters: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan, Zolf Smith Additional Tags: Lighthouse Keeper AU, Alternate Universe, Mutual Pining

Summary: An AU where Zolf is a grumpy lighthouse keeper and Hamid is lost in the middle of a storm, accidentally ending up at Zolf's doorstep. Despite his curmudgeonly attitude, Zolf nurses Hamid back to health until the loneliness of Zolf's lighthouse and the condemnation of Hamid's family seem to fade away.

Click the link above to read on AO3, or read the first chapter below!

The sea was angry.  The waves crashed hard against the rocks and the rain fell in heavy droplets that hurt when they collided with skin.  Lightning dotted the dark, night sky.

Zolf stood atop the lighthouse, fighting with the lamp yet again.  It would be his luck that he’d find the one lighthouse with the broken light.  Despite his best efforts over the years, the crack in the side continued to grow and leak out the oil that provided such desperate illumination, particularly on nights like these.

He patched the leak as best he could, then stood and stared out at the ocean.  Rain pelted him, but he relished the feeling of cool, salty wind against his face.  There was nothing but the sound of the waves and the solitude that became him.

Until… what daft idiot would be heading to the lighthouse at this hour, in this weather?

Zolf marched down the stairs, sighing with every step, to check on the intruder whose shadow he noticed at his doorstep.  He swung open the door to reveal a young halfling, drenched and shivering with cold.

“What are you doing!?”  Zolf cried above the howl of the wind.

“I’m…”

“Get inside!”

Before the halfling could protest, Zolf swooped behind them and pushed them inside.

“Are you from the Church?”  Zolf said angrily as he wheeled around on the halfling once the door was closed and the elements shut outside.  “Because if you are, you can head right back out there this instant.  I told them I need time, and you lot constantly pestering me isn’t about to help me make a decision in your favor.”

The halfling’s lip quivered and he spoke quietly but concisely.  “No, I’m not from any Church.  I just… I got lost in the storm, and this was the first shelter I could find.”

“Yeah, you definitely got lost.  The port’s not exactly close by.”

“I know.  It wasn’t my wisest decision.”

With a grunt, Zolf trotted off to get some towels and blankets for his visitor.  He didn’t enjoy the intrusion, but he wasn’t heartless; it’s not as if he could leave them out in the storm on their own, assuming they were telling the truth about not being with the Poseidon lot.  And the way their tears mixed with the rainy rivulets still racing down their entirety, Zolf was inclined to believe that.

But when he turned back, the halfling was miraculously dry.

“Well… I guess you don’t need these then.”  Zolf flung the towels on a nearby table.  “Get in here.  I’ll get you something warm to drink.”

“You don’t have to do that.  I should head out of here, I’m sorry to impose.”

Zolf grabbed a blanket, wrapped it around the halfling’s shoulders, and bodily led them to the couch to sit them down.  He then headed into the kitchen to make some tea.

“Thank you,” they said graciously as they accepted the piping hot mug.

“So… I’m Zolf.  What can I call you?”

“Oh!  Hamid.  Hamid Saleh… Hamid will do.”

“Fair enough.  Now, I have a question.”

Hamid took a deep breath and seemed to steel himself.  “I’m sure.  What can I tell you?”

“You were soaking wet when you came in here, I turn around, and then you’re dry!  How did you manage that?”

“Magic, of course!”  He released a breath and visibly relaxed, shoulders slumping from their tensed state at Zolf’s question.  “It’s quite a simple spell, really.”

“Ah, you’re a magicky type then.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Zolf snapped his fingers and a nearby candle lit itself.  He smirked.  “Not at all.”  After a minute, he asked, “I have another question, one you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Hamid immediately tensed up again and he took a long sip of tea.

“Why were you out in the storm?  These cliffs aren’t exactly safe in the best of weather anyway.”

“I was… at the port to catch a ship.”

“How did you end up all the way up here, then?”

“I couldn’t decide what ship to take.  I thought about going home, but it’s not as if I would be welcome, and I thought about heading as far away as possible, but I didn’t know what might await me there, so… I decided to just start walking.  It seemed a good alternative to the two, despite knowing it wouldn’t end well.”

Zolf let out a long exhale.  “I understand.  I’m sorry to pry, it’s just rare to see people out in a squall like this.”  He gestured around to the storm outside.  “But don’t worry.  We all have things we’re running from.”

After a long pause, Zolf stood and held out a hand for Hamid’s mug.  “Let me get you some more tea.”

When he returned and sat back down, Hamid wiped the last set of tears from his face and pulled the blanket a little tighter around himself.

“Thank you for letting me in, but I’ll be out of your hair soon, I promise.”

“You’re in no fit shape to be going anywhere,” Zolf reprimanded.  “Whatever magic got you dry didn’t stop you getting sick first.”

“I’m not sick!”  Hamid insisted weakly, followed by a cough and a more potent shiver.

“Right.  Could’ve fooled me.  Listen, despite my sarcasm, you certainly can’t head back outside tonight, and it doesn’t sound like you have a place nearby to stay with someone to look after you.  So, you’re welcome to stay here until you’re better.”

“I wouldn’t think of imposing on you…”

“You’re not.  Now, drink your tea, and I’ll get the extra room set up.”

[musingmycelium]

sweet song

satinalia exchange gift for a good friend ;) im so glad i got to write this for you!! ❤❤❤

Krem's lucky he has good balance. With the way the chair wobbles under him as he tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to peer around the stairs to watch Maryden sing he needs to have it. And he can’t help but look. The firelight almost causes her skin to glow rosy gold, catches in her dark hair and the way her eyes shine as she sings, it's enough to-

Wood creaks under him as Krem all but topples backward off the top of the chair. Catching himself with a hand in the last moment, wrist aching as his hand connects with the wall at an awkward angle, and he can hear Bull’s laugh across the room. Bastard.

It isn’t like Bull hasn’t made a fool of himself in front of people before. Although Krem guesses those are more on purpose than not. He sighs, rights the chair and sits back down in it, properly this time. He can’t see her anymore, but if he’s telling the truth he doesn’t really need to. The sight of her before the fire is, distracting and definitely something he thinks about often. Not that Krem has done anything about the way her voice filling the tavern makes his chest feel too tight and too light, or said anything about how her smiles can cause a blush to cover his whole body.

Not yet, anyway. Krem has a plan, and he means to follow through with it. He just… Has to figure out how. Time’s running quite short, tonight there’s going to be a small Satinalia party at the Herald’s Rest and Krem still doesn’t know what he should get Maryden, or even if she’d accept anything from him.

At first, he thought it would be easy. She’s a minstrel, get her a journal or a new set of strings for her lute. But those sounded empty and Krem wants to be thoughtful damn it. He wants to see Maryden blush, he wants to make her smile, he wants to see the softness in her eyes generally reserved for those times she’s singing to be directed just at him.

So he sighs. And he walks over to where Bull is sitting at a table with what has to be the Rest’s largest tankard sitting in front of him. And as Krem rounds the corner he finds Dorian is sitting there as well, great. “Krem-puff! Finally decided to find a decent chair did you?”

“My chair is already decent, I’ve got a question.” There’s a nervousness gnawing in the pit of his stomach and Krem doesn’t care for it one bit. But he takes Bull’s raised eyebrow for a go ahead and strangles the butterflies in his gut. “Uh, so. The Satinalia party, tonight.” His tongue is twisting around itself and Krem thinks maybe he should just go outside and pretend he never heard of this party instead of asking Bull for romance advice. “I, uh, wanted to -you know- get a present, a thoughtful present but... I, uh, don’t actually know what to get… Her…”

Raising his own, much smaller glass Dorian gives Krem a verifiable look. One elegant eyebrow raised ever so slightly, glass tipped in Krem's direction, red wine nearly spilling but not quite. “Thoughtful presents generally require more than an afternoon’s work.”

“I didn’t ask you Altus.” Krem gives him a look back.

Bull just nods, as if he was almost expecting this of them and Krem narrows his eyes at him too. “Listen Chief I didn’t come over here for bullshit I w-”

He’s cut off with a laugh, Bull shaking his head slightly. “Nah no bullshit, this is important.” At least he looks like he’s going to be serious, with the way his face scrunches up. “Well, Krem-sickle, the first thing about getting someone a gift is you gotta know what they want. Don’t look at me like that- so you know she likes writing and singing since you watch her do that every day. Do you know, anything else about her?”

Krem opens his mouth to say ‘of course he does’ and then shuts it after he can’t think of a single other thing he knows she enjoys. His brows bunch together and he crinkles his nose. Bull watches him think in silence, a smirk forming on his face. “I know she likes writing and singing, it’s not like there’s much else to do here is there. I thought, maybe she’d like a new journal?” Saying it out loud makes him cringe. It’s so insincere, careless almost. “That sounds stupid, doesn’t it. But I don’t know what else to do.”

Bull keeps nodding and Krem’s stomach is in knots. “She’d appreciate it, new journal new quill, something to use.”

Before he can keep going Dorian interrupts with a snort. “Get her something no one else can.” A delicate sip of his wine, eyes looking over the rim at Krem. “Woo her, you’re a sharp young man surely you can think of something. Read her poetry, pick her flowers, write her something. Creative types drink it up.”

If his knee-jerk reaction is anything to go by this is a horrible idea. Everything from his hair to his toes is going numb at the thought of it. Him? Writing poetry? Picking flowers? Krem almost tells Dorian he’d rather run himself through with a rusty training sword but then he stops to think about it. It was what he wanted to do, wasn’t it? Put thought into a gift Maryden would remember and hopefully enjoy.

And if he makes a fool of himself maybe he could recover from that.

Or maybe he could also fake his death and make a new start in Antiva.

“That’s. Not bad Altus, not bad.” Never let it be said Krem was too proud to give credit where it’s due. Even if it does curdle the words in his mouth. He has a couple of hours, it wouldn’t take him too long to do something like that, would it? Better get started now just in case, Krem leaves the table with a nod in the direction of the other two still sitting there.

The party starts at sundown, Krem heads to his room and hunts down some paper and a quill. If he’s quick he might even be able to get there before the others and give it to her without anyone else seeing. And he’ll be quick, even with his stomach trying to turn itself inside out, Krem can do this!

He absolutely could not do this. Crumpled paper is scattered about his room, in various states of tatter, and a near-empty bottle of ink rests near his elbow. This is hopeless, Maryden does this for a living she wouldn’t want whatever half-assed shitty poem he could cobble together like a child. What an idiot he is, sitting here with ink stains on his hands, he’s a mercenary what in Andraste’s name is he doing trying to write poetry ?

Krem groans, wads up the paper he was currently using and throws it backward behind him, not wanting to look at the ugly chicken scratches and horribly clunky phrasing any longer. Drops his head onto the desk, hard wood against his skin. All he wanted was a simple present! How did he manage to muck it up so badly?

There’s a cool breeze coming from the direction of the door and Krem turns sharply towards it, not wanting anyone to see the mess he’s made. But there isn’t anyone there. Krem huffs, relieved and embarrassed and definitely probably almost late for the party. He stands, stretches, maybe he just shouldn’t get Maryden anything after all. She could do better than him anyway.

A ghost of a thought across his mind, ‘but she wants you’ . Krem rolls his eyes, he’s been daydreaming too much lately. Been thinking about the firelight in Maryden’s hair and on her skin too much. Thinking how the way her eyes sometimes catch his and a smile grows on her lips. He sighs again, he really is in too deep.

Distracted by her enough it takes Krem an embarrassingly long time to notice there is a freshly picked amaryllis, blood red and shining. Narrowing his eyes at the flower he gingerly walks over and picks it up by the stem. He definitely did not pick it, but he can’t think of who would, or why. But he thinks of Maryden in the tavern, of the way she would be readying her lute in front of the fire, and of the party about to start. And he thinks of the smile she would give, just for him, if he gave her a winter-blooming flower.

Leaves with it held in front of him, butterflies returning to his stomach in full force. Walks down to the Herald’s Rest anyways, enters to the sound of laughter and flutes. Not Maryden’s music, too fast and too untrained, Krem looks around to see if he can find her, amaryllis moving behind his back.

Finds her standing just off next to the fire, lute in hand, where she’s in just enough shadow to be overlooked for now. Perfect. Quietly, Krem makes his way across the tavern and with his chest about to burst he tries to clear his throat softly. “Maryden?”

She looks up, eyes wide and dark in the flickering firelight. “Krem? Are you here to make a request, I’m not playing ye-”

“Oh! No, I, um, I’m here to- I mean I came over-” Tripping over himself, making an absolute fool of himself. “I just, sorry let me start over.” Krem takes a deep breath, pulls the amaryllis out from behind him held delicately by ink-stained fingers. “I want to give you this, I had- Um, I tried to write you a poem but, turns out I’m not as good at it as you are.”

Maryden smiles and its better than anything Krem has ever been able to imagine. All at once each of the butterflies in his stomach take flight, leaving him breathless and light. Heart hammering in his chest, a slight blush rising in Maryden’s cheeks. “How sweet of you.”

Her fingers brush against his as she takes the flower from his slack grip. Holds it up to her nose and takes a deep breath, her eyes falling shut only to open a moment later and connect with Krem’s. The warmth in them, brown turned honey-gold by the fire, causes his heart to flip in his chest.

“You know, in Ferelden we have our own Satinalia flowers.” A smile with a hint of teeth, “And if you look up, we happen to be standing under one of my favorites.”

Of course Krem looks up. Spots the sprig of green leaves and white berries tied together with a red bow, one of many hanging from the rafters.

“Mistletoe.” Maryden’s soft fingers against his chest starling and new, Krem jerking his gaze back down to face her. “Do you know what happens when people stand under mistletoe Krem?”

Her fingers against his neck now, curling around the back to pull his head down. Krem gulps, hard. Heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, heat across his whole face. “They kiss.”

Maryden smiles and tilts her head so her lips are ghosting over Krem’s. “That’s right, they kiss.”

Soft lips tasting of cider, of warm firelight and music. Krem gasps, air leaving his lungs in a heady rush. Time freezing, halting around them as Maryden presses her lips against his under the mistletoe with a flower stained with ink held in her hands between them. Heart bursting in his chest, butterflies fleeing to his veins and the whole of him feels like he could fly.

Moments passing too quickly when Maryden pulls back slightly, “Happy Satinalia Krem,” Murmured against kissed lips, half-lidded eyes and a smile brighter than any hearth.

“Happy Satinalia Maryden.”

"When the party is over you absolutely have to read me your poems."

What fool Krem is indeed.

[littlepurinsesu]

A Happy Ending

Title: A Happy Ending Fandom: Princess Tutu Characters: Fakir, Ahiru Relationship: Fakir/Ahiru Rating: General Warnings: None

*Read on AO3*

Summary: ‘But what do you want? What is the story that you wish for? Stop thinking only about granting happy endings to others and start thinking about yourself for once. Spin your own story. Create your own world. Write your happy ending.’

Author’s Notes: My re-entry into the world of fanfiction after many, many years. And I'm only posting it now.

I'd stopped writing for pleasure during the final years of high school and somehow never came back to it again... until I finished watching Princess Tutu. This anime inspired me to pick up my pen again (more like place my fingers on the keyboard again) after so many years of neglecting one of my biggest hobbies. I wouldn't say I'm entirely happy with how this story turned out, but it's an important one to me as it marks my first piece of creative writing for myself after being drowned in academic writing for so long. Would I have written some parts differently or done things another way if I approached this now? Probably. But I have no intention of changing anything, and will just let this little piece rest here with my collection of new fanfics. As a record of how my writing was when I rediscovered my long-lost passion, if you may.

I'd thought this fic would never see the light of day, but here it is, in all its rusty glory. A reminder to myself that I came to read, but I stayed to write.

Once upon a time, there was a man who began writing a story.

The man granted happy ending upon happy ending, crafting a world in which all characters could live life as they desired. And when he immersed himself in his bouts of creative labour, she never strayed from his line of vision. The single feather standing upright atop her head and the tiny flutter of her wings were constants in his life that reminded him of why he wrote.

He wrote because of her. She was his muse.

The man had moved on from his inability to spin stories that were not about her, but he held dearly to the loving hope that had emitted from her tiny body the day he had written Drosselmeyer’s story out of its predestined tragic ending. Since that day, he had tucked the feeling of that warm light safely within the depths of his heart, and turned to it for guidance during those dark times when his quill would hover above his parchment, lost and doubtful. The man would have been content to write story after story about the gentle affection he felt whenever she smiled, or the burning desire in his chest whenever he looked into her eyes, but he had a duty to lead the townspeople to the happy endings they yearned for.

He never forgot the decision he made when he tore apart Drosselmeyer’s mechanism, the very device that gave birth to the tragedy that the twisted man so loved. Reducing the godly contraption to nothing but a cluttered pile of gears and wiring, he had vowed to take it upon himself to write the rest of the story by his own hand and give people the wings they needed to live as freely as they pleased.

But when he tried to write of prosperous villages and harmonious townsfolk, his hand would sometimes stray. And before he realised, the ink spilling from the tip of his quill would begin to engrave words evoking the images that would seep into his mind when he allowed it to wander. The playful flick of her hair, the subtle upward curve of her lips, and the bright sparkle that illuminated her eyes. The way her voice would crack a little when she became visibly excited, and the way she landed in a pile of jumbled limbs whenever she tried to move faster than her petite body could carry her. The soothing warmth of her chest pressed against his, the very first time he had written a story about her, called out her name, and caught her in his arms. And the tiny vibrations her body would make whenever she groomed her silky feathers, nestled comfortably in his lap, her tiny frame fitting so easily as if the place were made for her and her only.

These musings had no plot—there was no beginning, no middle, and no end. Only a stream of disconnected memories that he kept locked away in the deepest crevices of his mind. And when the fear of exposure dawned upon him, the man would tear the page out and shred it to pieces.

He was the writer, the spinner of stories, and the incoherent digressions of his heart were only a hindrance—no, a shame—to his duty.

Autor had often complained begrudgingly over the basket of stale bread and bottled milk he brought during his visits. The bespectacled Drosselmeyer enthusiast kept the man from forgetting to eat and sleep, perhaps taking this chance to indirectly exercise some authority over the gift he had missed out on. It was probably more out of a futile attempt at feigning importance in the grand scheme of things (‘Seriously, how would the world go on if I wasn’t here to keep you from starving yourself?’), but the man didn’t mind. Autor was not without his wisdom, and sometimes, he would share this with him in his usual condescending tone.

‘You’ve created a hopeful new world with your powers. You’ve created happy endings for countless people. You’ve created life, but life itself is draining out of your very own soul.’

The man hadn’t bothered to protest; Autor meant well, and was probably right. The prince he had sworn to protect had returned to his story with Rue, Princess Tutu’s mission had ended and she had ceased to appear again in this world. A knight who had long since cast away his sword in favour of his quill now pledged his service to the people of the town. There was no longer an epic crisis which required his hand to bring about salvation, so his duty now was to make sure that the people continued to freely live the happy endings they desired and deserved. And if writing happy endings could give people what they wished for, then the man was willing to devote himself to write for as long as he could.

‘But what do you want?’ Autor had blurted out in exasperation during one of his last visits. ‘What is the story that you wish for?’

‘A story… that I wish for?’

‘Yes. Stop thinking only about granting happy endings to others and start thinking about yourself for once. Spin your own story. Create your own world. Write your happy ending.’

He thought of a tiny bundle of velvety yellow feathers, warm under his touch and quivering with life. Of a clumsy figure bursting with vigour as she bounded from one place to the next, her candid laughter echoing in her wake. Of an elegant dancer, whose every movement spoke of grace, and whose every leap seemed to bring her closer to the glory of the heavens above.

Of her.

And so the man began to write. There would be a beginning when she would resume the guise of a human girl, a middle when they would find each other again, and an ending when…

His quill stopped mid-sentence, ink pooling and seeping into the extra pages beneath.

He tore the piece of parchment from the pile. It had nothing but a vague and disoriented sequence of events and empty descriptions of a world he could not have—futile attempts at allowing himself a happy ending, and they brought him embarrassment at his own selfishness. After all, what kind of closure could he possibly craft for the two of them, when he had thrown away that dream on the day he decided to forbid himself from writing the happy ending he secretly craved?

Perhaps Drosselmeyer’s ghost had heard his thoughts, or maybe some other godly figure of authority with a more skillful set of hands than he, as a gust of wind promptly snatched the page from his hand before he could destroy it. The man grabbed blindly at the air, feet tangling and eyes fixed ahead of him as he watched the parchment land on the surface of the tranquil lake. Water seeped through the parchment, the blurred contours of his senseless imagination mocking him. Air and then water met the soles of his shoe as he unwittingly stepped straight through the surface of the glassy mirror in his blind fumbling, landing with an unceremonious splash. He thought he caught a quick glimpse of blurred yellow and two orbs of crystalline blue turning in his direction before his vision was completely clouded.

The water was frigid, chilling him to the bone as he sank deeper into its shadowy depths. Funny, the lake had seemed almost shimmery and translucent from the safety of his little wooden platform, yet now all he could see were foggy distortions of light and shade. It was pointless to try and retrieve that piece of parchment now. The water had already claimed the ink as its own, and he was left with nothing but the fond visions and memories of her, flapping, changing, swimming…

He searched the haze above for two webbed feet, those that paddled beside him when he wrote by the lake, their soft swishing sound the most comforting music a writer could ask for. But there was mostly just grey, quite a bit of black, an occasional patch of blue where the sunlight could still reach, and there was… white. Somewhere in the distance above him, a glimmering smear of white. Its light was bright enough to make him close his eyes, but it was welcoming, almost beckoning him to reach out and wrap his fingers around it. He extended his hand blindly and caught it in his palm.

The light was as warm as he imagined, yet somehow more firm than he was expecting. There was a gentle tug, followed by a more sturdy pull, and the man opened his eyes to meet a pure white tutu and strawberry blond hair, and eyes as blue as the frosty water around him, but warm enough to tingle in his soul and enliven his senses.

He would have gasped, or even pulled back. But then again, this had to be a dream—a hallucination of his, right? Her pendant—the last heart shard—had been given back to Mytho, who had returned to the world of his own story. She had no necklace now, and the enchanted ballerina looked almost strange without her usual accessory resting against the skin of her chest.

Come to think of it, why wasn’t he thrashing about and struggling for air? It must have been an illusion after all, the final moments when a person’s life flashed before his eyes. The man was staring his death in the face, and his death was absolutely breathtaking. If this was but a mere fantasy, he would be content to die if that meant he could relive these final moments as the happy ending he had once only dared to dream of.

‘Please, won’t you dance with me?’

She never opened her mouth, but her eyes spoke her signature words with the way they softened at the edges, just like the way they did each time she would charm a shard of the prince’s heart into a pas de deux of love and hope.

Right, they had danced together like this before, submerged in the depths of water. It had been in the Lake of Despair, he remembered now, when Drosselmeyer had made his forceful attempt at thrusting his ideal tragedy upon them through the man’s unwilling hands. That time, he had lifted her, spun her round and round, cradled her in his arms, and dipped her into a split. He had looked intently into her eyes and held her gaze tenderly as he assured her that he would stay by her side forever. He had been prepared for the end, and this here was yet another end. Their end. No, his end.

Were their dances always destined to take place when the end was in sight?

But this time was different, wasn’t it? How could he possibly be drowning in despair when he was feeling such warmth rising in his chest, when the figure holding his hand was smiling so lovingly at him? Could he truly say that he was falling into darkness when his heart soared with joy at each movement, each step of the pas de deux they were engaged in now?

Light began to seep into his vision, brightening his surroundings. If dying meant that his ascension to Heaven would be guided by the presence at his side, he would happily welcome death. Maybe he could finally allow himself to be just a little bit selfish, as Autor had indignantly advised, and drown himself in his world. The world he wished for. Yes, this was his happy ending, he decided, as the ballerina lifted his arm and brought him into the blinding light.

He wanted to call out to her, to ask where she would go, to ask if he could ever see her again after this dance ended. But when he opened his mouth, he could only let out a cough, then a splutter, and then he was gasping for oxygen, his back pressed against the warm wood and his head almost touching the leg of the chair he had been sitting on… some time ago. Time had seemed to flow in slow motion, and he had lost all track of it during the timeless moment in which he had encountered the world he wished for, danced with his dream, and held his happy ending in his arms.

‘Fakir!’

When he finally lifted himself onto his elbows and took in the sight of her—wet hair plastered down the side of her face, droplets trickling down her naked body, eyes shining with love and hope—he knew that this was not his happy ending after all. She leapt, arms extended and face split into a wide and toothy grin. And as she landed in his embrace, he understood.

This was only the beginning, and they had an entire future ahead of them to live out as many happy endings as they wished.

[wolfjustdraws]

“Bad Idea” - Lucy x George

“Bad Idea” - Lucy x George

Lockwood and Co. Series

Summary: Friends are always there for each other.

Warning: NSFW. This is the first time I write something like this, so it may be a little awkward. READ ON YOUR OWN CONSCIENCE.

Au: Friends with Benefits

———————

Ok, I didn’t plan this. I never thought about it, I never considered things would end up this way. But they did.

It all started after the Fittes building burned down. Some people saw it as some terrible tragedy, but for us it was an enormous relief. It came with many shocks for all of us; Lockwood finding out what he wanted to do after ghosts finally stopped appearing (he found himself to be deeply intrigued by a detective’s work), and dragging us along him of course, and Holly and Quill starting to date, but the biggest surprise to me was George. Well, him and Flo, actually: they started dating too.

That wasn’t even the surprise factor, though; it was how well their relationship worked. But I didn’t dwell on their private life, I had better things to do, like focusing on my own boyfriend (no, Lockwood was not my boyfriend). Things were going incredibly fine for us; we were doing amazingly as private detectives, besides Holly and Quill were getting married!

It was a beautiful celebration; Holly asked me to be her bridesmaid along her old roommate, I went with my boyfriend, Florian (who was a terrific dancer by the way), Lockwood invited his girlfriend, a nice girl named Evelyn who once worked at Grimble, and George and Flo went together and actually danced a slow song! And let me say it, they did not danced so badly, and I had seen some pretty terrible dancers in my life (some of my sisters for example).

But the thing is, like a lot of other things, soon it came crashing down; Flo and George broke up after a two-years long relationship. A very nasty ending to be honest, even though I never got to know the entire deal of details. I never knew if it affected Flo, after all she was the one who decided they needed to break up, but for George, it was like the world came shattering on top of him. He locked himself on his room. He didn’t want to come out or talk with anyone.

Lockwood and I thought it would be best to leave him alone for a while, but when a while became a week, we both knew it had to end. George hadn’t abandoned his room at all! If he ate anything that week, we never knew. At first we both tried to convince him the nice way of coming out, some bribing with donuts, trips to the library, and other things we knew he liked to get him out, but George didn’t budged.

So, I got tired of waiting. I went to his room and kicked open the door. I’m glad I did, for what I found there wouldn’t have remained alive for many days if it remained there; George was thinner than I ever saw him, unbathed, smelly and there were some suspicious-looking things in his room I knew were not sanitary at all.

And, God, I am still grateful that Lockwood was out of the house with Evelyn that day. What happened next was the worse confrontation I ever had with George, in so many levels. I’m not sure how it even started, all I knew was that he couldn’t go on like this: he had to move on, but the asshole was so mulish about how he could never go on without Flo. We yelled at each other so much and about so many things, but I can’t remember a single one of them, except that I told George he had to look for someone else.

Then it happened. Before we knew it, before we thought it, before we understood what was going on with us, it happened.

George kissed me.

Once upon another, any other time I would have pushed him away. I had a boyfriend, after all. But I didn’t. He kissed me with such passion. With such fervor. Such fury. Such warmth, I just couldn’t pull away from him. In that kiss I tasted everything; his anger, his frustration, his excitement, his agony. It was like if he had opened himself as a book to me in the form of a kiss. Suddenly, somehow, some why, I understood. I understood him and his pain.

So I kissed him back. Again. And again and again and once more I kissed him and he kissed me. And, oh, how he touched me, and, heavens, how I felt him. And he embraced me, held me, took me. And I let him. Oh, did I let him.

And dear God in heaven, will I ever regret what we did, because I still don’t regret it; I haven’t regretted it a single day since it happened and I don’t know if I ever will. We had sex.

Angry, venting but amazing sex. The way he made me feel, the look in his eyes when he had me. The long hours spent in his room. The things that came out of our mouths. Everything was kept between him and me.

After that, George went back to his bitchy, sarcastic self, helping on investigations and solving murders with Lockwood and I. He seemed totally forgotten about what happened with Flo, and that was great for us.

However, he wasn’t forgotten about me. Oh, no he wasn’t.

——————

“Lucy”

I closed the door with my keys and looked at the blond man that stood on the parlor’s door archway. His glasses shone with the sunlight that came from the windows, making it difficult to see his blue eyes. You could tell he was a little overweight by his clothes and pudgy appearance, but it had been a long time since I’ve given that a single thought.

“You’re finally back” He uttered cooly. I left my purse and coat on the rack beside the door, then slowly, ever so slowly walked up to him.

“Yes, I arrived last night” My voice was a hoarse whisper, even though my throat wasn’t hurting, but that was the way he affected me. He was taller than me, by a little less than a head, actually. His blond hair fell tousled around his head, on his forehead and close to his eyes. His steely-blue gaze ruthlessly held mine, like if I was in ghost-lock. I smiled gently and lifted the pie I had been holding in my hands “I brought you something”

His hand was on my hair faster than I could notice, pulling my head back with just enough force to make me tingle. His other arm coming to my waist and pulling me close to him, my hands moving to keep the dessert safe.

“Enough foreplay” He said, his voice a deep, guttural whisper and his face coming close to my ear, his lips brushing on my skin “This days have been…so long. Now that you’re back Luce, we can catch up”

“I was just gone a week, George” I whispered, pushing the pie to a nearby shelf and softly caressing his shoulders “I would think you’d know how to control yourself”

“You know I don’t. God, how I’ve missed you” He kissed me feverishly, the frustration he was carrying coming off. I kissed him back eagerly, feeling his hands sneak down my back. I gasped excitedly.

“I’ve missed you too”

——

“And here I was thinking you’d have gotten rusty”

“With how much you and I do this? No way” George and I lay down on the bed, wrapped around blankets and each other’s arms, covered in sweat and other things. We were both panting blissfully and regaining our breath “You aren’t tired are you?”

“Tired?” George scoffed, arms coming to my ass and pulling me on top of him, a mischievous look on his eyes “We’ve got a week to make up for, I hope your pussy’s prepared for what it has coming, ‘cause I’ve been planning this weekend since you left and I’m not stopping for some petty excuse as ‘tiredness’”

“Oh, you bet its ready; I’ve been needing this since before I left” I placed a kiss on his cheek, then another one and another one, down his neck and chest “You know how much I need you” I panted as his hands roamed my back in a ghosting manner, making my muscles tingle pleasurably-

“Hey, George, are you- WHAT IN THE-” I jumped from where I sat on top George to the bed, his hand immediately pulling on the bed’s covers, holding them up so that it’d cover my body. After hastily making sure the mattress covered me, we both looked at the person that stood at the door; Lockwood.

“Lockwood, what are you doing here?” The blond man asked carefully after a few minutes of silence. Lockwood looked at us with bewilderment from where he stood, his hands on the door and the frame in a manner that suggested he wouldn’t be able to hold himself much longer. His eyes raced back and forward on the room, taking in the disorder; clothes everywhere, shoes, other things.

“I sent you a text” The taller, dark haired man finally said. He lifted his phone from his pocket “About an hour ago; I told you I’d be coming over to your place” George grinned at me and I felt my blood rushing to my face.

“Well that explains why I didn’t saw it, I was busy with stuff”

“OH MY- GOD!” Lockwood turned around and covered his face with his hands, his feet moving to walk away.

“Lockwood, wait!” I ran out of the bed, taking one of George’s discarded shirts and putting it on, trying my best to do the buttons correctly “Let us explain, please”

A few minutes later, I was sitting on the kitchen’s table with the two men, one on my side and the other in front of me. I was still only wearing the shirt I took form the floor and George had taken an undershirt and his trousers from where I had thrown them aside an hour ago in our little rush. We sat in silence for some time, hot cups of tea sitting on the table, trying to think of what to say, with Lockwood still covering his face with his hands. So, I decided to get it over with.

“Lockwood” I started “What you saw-”

“I don’t even know if what I saw were your boobs or George’s chest, Lucy!” Lockwood exclaimed, his hands finally leaving his face. The blush returned to my face at the thought of Lockwood seeing me, however George just scoffed into the cup.

“Well, it is hard to tell apart” He muttered. I elbowed him on the ribs in attempt to get some of his sense of decorum back, though I know that was less than likely. He was actually greatly enjoying this.

“Just tell me” The dark haired man said carefully, placing both hands on the table as if to steady himself, his face a practiced mask of patience. He looked at both of us again, his eyes deep, obviously looking into us for the truth “How long have you been doing this?”

“Well, I’m not sure how to say this-”

“Since Flo and I broke up”

“-that’s definitely not how I would have said it”

“What?!” Lockwood looked at us like if we were mad “Its been years since that!” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He fell back on the chair and his hands came to his face once again but swiftly returned to the table “So you’re telling me, that-”

“Lucy and I have been fucking each other for almost four years? Yeah” George said still looking careless over about or present predicament.

“Lockwood, listen-”

“For what exactly do we have a ‘no secrets about our present’ rule if you guys are not going to follow it?!” Lockwood yelled exasperated “This is the kind of thing that we shouldn’t keep from each other! Besides,” He looked at me accusingly “Lucy, you’re married to Kurt! You have a daughter, for God’s sake, Lucy! You’ve been cheating on your husband!”

“Lockwood, how I manage my relationship is not your business” I replied, my voice raising a little as well as my temper “Besides, if you were the one married to him, you’d understand my situation; the man can’t last longer than ten minutes, I swear!”

“I’m- I'm sorry Lucy, its just...” Lockwood was at loss of words, which was a hard to accomplish, his eyes coming back and ford between me and George “Why are you doing this? If you and George like each other, why didn’t you guys marry each other?” To this we both scoffed.

“We don’t like each other romantically, Lockwood” George chuckled.

“Yeah, we’re just friends with benefits” At this, Lockwood remained silent for a few minutes, and so did we, allowing him to take it all in and to process it. After a few minutes his mouth opened as if to say something else, but he closed it once more, a reflective look on his features. Again, he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, seemingly insecure about what he wanted to say, but finally, in a soft, secretive manner, he asked:

“…are you certain that…Rosie is Kurt’s daughter…?”

“Well, Lockwood, of course I bloody am!” I shouted out, my temper getting the best of me, my cheeks red in anger at what my friend was now implying “You think George and I just go about carelessly doing as we please? We take precautions, we plan ahead, we don’t leave everything at random!”

“Besides” George said, now with a serious look on his face “A DNA test was taken just in case; she is Kurt’s daughter all right” Again, Lockwood looked at both of us, a troubled look on his face, like a mother accepting her child is not what she wished they were: not necessarily in a good or bad manner, just begrudgingly understanding.

“Ok” He finally said “Ok, so you guys do this, I don’t think its the best thing you could do, but, you guys are adults, and I trust you guys to be responsible. I guess you don’t want me to tell anyone?”

“If you please” I smiled.

“Now, Lockwood” George said “In case you don’t have any other questions, I think you should go”

“What?” The other man questioned.

“We were kind of in the middle of something here!” George exclaimed “Unless you want us to continue our session in front of you!”

“Good Lord, no!” With that, Lockwood stood from his chair, quickly said goodbye and walked out and way from George’s house. George and I still sat in the kitchen, silently listening to the sound of a car’s engine turn on and then vanish in the distance, still in our makeshift clothing, our disarrayed hair and our dry-sweat covered bodies.

“This is a bad idea” I finally said.

“What?”

“Me and you; its a very bad idea, you know. Always has been” I looked at George. At his steely eyes, blond hair and disheveled appearance I loved so much “A very risky, dangerous, bad idea we should have gotten rid of many years ago” He only scoffed amusedly, however.

“Why, because of what Lockwood said? Because of your husband? Because of our job?” We stood from our seats and he inched closer to me, his face so close his glasses could have poked my eye (if we hadn’t years of practice at how to avoid that), his hot breath on my cheek “Because we are not married in the eyes of society?” His teeth grazed my skin and I felt him bite at my ear, pulling softly on it in that suggestive manner of his “So what?” He spat those words in my ear.

“Its a very good bad idea” I muttered breathily, my eyes rolling to the back of my head. I heard George chuckle deeply in his throat beside me.

“Shall we continue where we left?”

“How about we start all over again?”

“Well, if you’re that desperate for me to eat you out, Luce, you can just tell me”

[hamelin-born]

For @elenothar​, who requested ‘Graves and a [redacted for story purposes]’. Which, to be perfectly honest, stewed in my brain for a few days as I tried to link the two together - only to be inspired when I accidentally stumbled into the ‘His Dark Materials’ section of AO3.

Author’s Notes: Officially Not Mine. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is Not Mine. His Dark Materials is Not Mine. This is also a fusion between His Dark Materials and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them - namely, the concept of dæmons. Might be a bit OOC, but - well, it was written in something of a hurry, rather late at night.

Accretion

They found Percival Graves in the cellar.

Seraphina is quite sure that Grindelwald’s choice of the aforementioned location was no accident. The man was meticulous to the extreme - look. He was saying - not to her, but to the man he had captured. Captured and held in his own home, what should have been Percival’s seat of power - it was insult piled on insult, deliberately designed to further denigrate his victim.

Not that he had needed to, by the end.

Seraphina was there when they broke down the cellar door. She knows full well that by the end - by the end, Percival would have been unable to appreciate the subtleties of the insult.

She will remember Percival as he was. That is her promise to herself. She will remember her friend - who laughed with her over arithmancy equations and stood by her at her wedding, who kept her stocked with chocolate and firewhisky through her divorce. She will not allow herself to equate what - what they found in a cellar that stank of piss and shit and rotted flesh with her friend. He’s more then what a sociopathic madman did to him. 

Percival Graves is her friend. 

Seraphina shivers, fingers running down the slick glide of Oraculum’s scales as the brightly colored viper curls around her wrist.

Dindrane was Oraculum’s friend. Once.

She doesn’t know if her friend’s soul wants anything to do with her.

**

Tina’s heard the rumors. She doesn’t need to.

She was there when they carried Director Graves from the cellar, shouting, screaming for a healer, any healer, now! She was there when the mediwitches and mediwizards descended in a rushing horde.

She was there, when they opened the door, and for a long, long moment her brain simply could not comprehend the sight before her eyes.

That can’t be a person. Bones don’t bend like that. That was her response, in the split second before she realized what was in front of her. When she realized she could see bone.

She could see bone. She could see dried blood, and rotting flesh and swollen limbs and burns cuts lashes spellfire maggots no -

Percival Graves is expected to make a full recovery. Physically, at any rate. Mentally, no one knows. Especially with his dæmon’s - condition.

He wouldn’t let go of her. Tina knows that much to be true - Dindrane had been clutched to the Director’s chest with a strength that would have killed a flesh-and-blood entity; the healers had had to do everything short of literally breaking his bones in an attempt to make him loosen his hold. A dead man’s hold - no one had said that, but they’d all thought it.

As bad as Director Graves’ condition had been, Tina knows that it is his dæmon who will haunt her nightmares.

Lupercus nuzzles comfortingly at her side. Tina shivers, resting a hand on the wolfhound’s head.

Lupercus and Dindrane had never been particularly close, but even Tina had admired the eagle that could have been a mirror replica of it’s counterpart in the Great Seal of the United States of America. Dindrane - recruits whispered that the bald eagle could see everything. Especially the clumsy habits of new hires; there were rumors that Dindrane’s unblinking gaze was a particularly effective assist in interrogations.

She had been powerful and beautiful, a badge of honor, and she -

Percival Graves had been found clutching what might have been an eagle. The most that could be said about it was that it was bird-like. Feathers plucked, broken wings so much char, beak shattered, talons ripped from her feet -

And for all the qualities Grindelwald’s nameless wolf-dæmon possessed, opposable fingers were not among them. That amount of damage - that kind of damage - would have had to have been delivered by human hands.

Tina wanted to vomit. Wanted to cry and scream and shout at the taboo of it - there was a word that no one dared share, one that hovered, unsaid, in the air between them. There was a word for those that forced themselves upon others.

And there had been one last thing.

Dindrane‘s proportions hadn’t been anything near to those of an eagle. Not anymore.

**

Re-Settling after a traumatic event wasn’t entirely unknown.

Newt had even seen it before - in the War, and during the aftermath. Strange, what people discovered themselves to be on the battlefield, when they found themselves doing things and being things they’d never thought themselves capable of. Newt had seen monkeys turn to butterflies, and leopards shift to wolves - not often, but he’d seen.

Axolotl huffed behind him, a laugh that held nothing of humor; Newt ignored her as he bent over the prone body of the other man.

Right. The point was that a settled dæmon re-settling into an entirely new form was - not common, but not unheard of. The problem, however, appeared to be that no one could figure out just what had happened to Director Graves’ soul. Or, more precisely, just what shape his dæmon had taken for her own. Harder still to tell when the small crushed form was swathed in bandages and smeared with salves.

Until someone, apparently, had remembered that Newt was, in fact, a licensed magizoologist. With extreme familiarity with - quite a vast array of animals, in various conditions ranging from healthy to - not healthy. The latter far more often then he’d prefer, personally, but - well.

“She’s not an eagle.” Newt murmured softly, eyes tracing the arch of one wing. “The wings are all wrong - “ He frowned slightly. “Too small as well. Too small by far.” There was a shiver to one side as Tina clasped her hands together; Newt shot her a quick, apologetic wince before returning his eyes to the devastatingly still form.

The frown deepened as Newt mentally ran through a list of the more common avians - raven, crow, sparrow, falcon, eagle, bluejay, chicken, pheasant - no, no, no, and no. The size was wrong, proportions didn’t match, the angles were off -

“I’ve seen this kind of bird before.” He had. He had, he knew he had. But - where? Axolotl was a firm, steadying presence at his side, and - his own dæmon. Something tickled the edge of his mind. Axolotl was to him as Percival’s unnamed dæmon (really, no one had bothered to introduce her) was to him. Yes, there was the obvious, but there was something more. Something about the specifics of his and Axolotl’s interrelationship was mirrored in Graves’ own connection to his soul, and -

Oh.

Oh.

Newt stared at the body sleeping in the hospital bed in outright wonder. “Oh.” The words were tiny, seeming to come from a long, long way away.

“Newt?” Tina was at his side. “Do you - what is she, Newt? What - “ and he could hear her swallow. “What’s happened?”

“I - “ Newt plunged a hand in his pocket, searching frantically for paper, for a quill, for - he had to write this down. He had to make notes he had to take so many observations. “It’s incredible.” Axolotl was shimmering forward, her own wings half-raised - Tina shrank back instinctively as his dæmon shoved past her to stare greedily at the prone patient. “I must take notes, I didn’t think this was possible, I -” Newt’s head snapped up, hand stretching out in a futile gesture of warding. “Axolotl, don’t - “

A horned head sank; Newt watched, his mouth dropping, as the Common Welsh Green’s snout brushed, with utmost delicacy, against a small form wreathed in bandages.

Fire exploded into being; the heat hit them like an eruption as the sudden light scalded their eyes - they might as well have tried looking into the sun. Newt was dimly aware of an alarm ringing in the background, the frantic rush of feet and the cries of startled magicians - “Tina, don’t!”

Newt grabbed Tina, jerking her away and curtailing her instinctive lunge towards the hospital bed. “You can’t!”

“Newt, let me go he’s burning let me go!”

“No! You can’t interrupt!”

The flame billowed higher, and for one split-second his own dæmon was outlined in incandescence - dragons had an extremely high heat tolerance, Newt reminded himself. He wasn’t worried. 

He wasn’t - all of his attention was fixed on the shape moving in the heart of the fire. On the song rising through the air - rusty and unfamiliar, but growing in strength and surety with every moment until the melody was a scream of joyous triumph.

The phoenix settled into place, plumage shining the red and gold and glory of a living flame. 

**

Dindrane chirped, head tilting to the side as she stared curiously at the strange dragon.

Percival Graves opened his eyes. 

**

“For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth.” - Zoe Skylar.

Newt’s choice of daemon was inspired by prettybirdy979's "What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye".

[commander-diomika]

Wild What the Heart Wants

Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming Pairing: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde Rating: Explicit Word Count: ~4000 Additional Tags: Somnophilia, Drugged Sex, Rope Bondage, Japanese Rope Bondage, Frottage, Dubious Consent, Magic Made Them Do It, (sort of), pining Summary: "It was hour three, or thirty three, when Zolf heard clunking sounds.

Turning to look, he saw Wilde, his scruffy hair and shoulders of his furred jacket, emerging from the hatch a few feet behind the helm.

“Wilde?” Zolf asked, peering over his shoulder.

Wilde didn’t respond and continued to rise from the hatch with a very unnatural movement. It took careful consideration for Zolf to make sense of it, glancing repeatedly back over his shoulder. Wilde wasn’t climbing out of the hatch; he was wrapped in a thick length of rope, unconscious, and was being dragged up out of the hold.

The ship had been quietly tacking itself for some time now, but this was new."

Read on Ao3

OR

Zolf had lost track of time.

The shifting phases and ribbons of the borealis were hypnotic. It was like a heat haze inside his mind, contrasting with the chill air on his cheeks. The ship seemed to respond eagerly to his every touch, anticipating and giving Zolf exactly what he wanted. He didn’t know if he should be fighting it, or simply accepting his good fortune.

He shook his head as if to clear it, for the hundredth time that hour, for the tenth time in as many minutes, for some fractions of moments of time. He could hear nothing but the gentle chimes for what seemed like an eternity, or a brief moment. He could still see the inky black sky and stars above if he strained.

It was hour three, or thirty three, when he heard some clunking sounds.

Turning to look, he saw Wilde, his scruffy hair and shoulders of his big, furred jacket, emerging from the hatch a few feet behind the helm.

“Wilde?” Zolf asked, peering over his shoulder, not taking his hands off the wheel. “Everythin’ alright?” He couldn’t quite process what he was seeing through the haze.

Wilde didn’t respond and continued to rise from the hatch with a very unnatural movement. It took careful consideration for Zolf to make sense of it, glancing repeatedly back over his shoulder. Wilde wasn’t climbing out of the hatch; he was wrapped in a thick length of rope, unconscious, and was being dragged up.

The ship had been quietly tacking itself for some time now, but this was new.

“Wilde?” Zolf asked again, pitched a little higher than last time. The bundled form that was Wilde fully emerged, and was carefully deposited on the deck, flat on his back, for all appearances looking like he was being moved by a giant, gentle hand.

Zolf looked back at his instruments grimly. “Maybe it just thought I'd like some company.”

He took a scant moment to assess the situation. As much as Zolf had been apprehensive of what the borealis had to throw at them, so far it had been not much of anything except extremely unsettling… and exhausting. He locked the wheel and spun to check on Wilde.

The man was unconscious, bundled from hips to shoulders in rope, arms pinned, in a way that looked to Zolf’s eye quite comfortable. Zolf knelt and checked him over; there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with him, aside from the fact that he was fast asleep.

Sleeping in a way that kept on, even as he was being dragged up out of the hold. Zolf thought, lips pursed. If being hauled about hadn’t woken him, Zolf doubted anything he could do might change the situation, but he tried anyway.

“Wilde,” Zolf said again, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him, taking care not to knock his head against the deck. Nothing. No response.

“Oi!” Zolf shouted down into the hold. “Anyone alive down there? Cel? Azu!”

No sound of movement. No sounds at all except for the bright ringing in his ears.

He took a quick glace up at the bow, as a particularly lurid ribbon of colour wafted past his eyes. Nothing needed his immediate attention, but Zolf’s instincts were rattling. This could be a trap. A distraction. Why else would the magic have brought him Wilde? Of all the people it could have hauled up here, why Oscar bloody Wilde?

He repeated Wilde’s name, leaning down to speak almost conspiratorially into an ear. “Wilde, I hate your hair.” Still nothing.

Steeling himself, and wondering why this felt so wrong, when once upon a time he’d dreamed of doing just this, he moved to crack a hard slap across Wilde’s face. Zolf felt like his hand moved through water, sluggish and thick, but the impact went as planned, as if there was no resistance in the air at all. Wilde’s head jolted to the side, overly long hair flopping into his face, but no response. Zolf was stuck there in that moment, watching as the impact slowly brought up a red outline on Wilde’s cheek.

He was much more attractive when he wasn’t talking.

Zolf knelt up on his haunches, nonplussed and shaking off the fugue for the umpteenth time. No kind of magical sleep he was familiar with would hold up after that, which was deeply worrying, but not surprising. With another quick glance over the supine man, Zolf decided this wasn’t an immediate problem. Hell, maybe it was better that Wilde was unconscious, because at least he didn’t have to listen to the man talk.

He did need to keep an eye on him, however. Lacing his hands into the rope at Wilde’s collarbone and waist, he easily hefted the sleeping body up and forward on the deck, toward the nook at the prow where the crew had taken to socialising of an evening. Again, taking care not to knock Wilde’s head about, he wedged Wilde in a spot where he would hopefully be secure. The ropes were now still, but when Zolf went looking for an tail end or a knot, they slithered eerily, keeping any point of ingress away from Zolf’s searching hands. There was something teasing in the movement, as though the ropes were laughing at his attempts.

“Ok, you want him, you can keep him.” Zolf shrugged bemusedly and returned to the helm.

The travelling was smooth. Smoother than it was outside the borealis. The glide of the Vengeance through the air was unnervingly even, with none of the wafts of turbulence that normally shook the vessel. Even the chimes were soothing. The ship barely needed him anymore, rolling itself through the sky with a will of its own, a will that so far, perfectly matched Zolf’s. He lost himself in it, keeping his gaze steady on where he guessed the horizon might be through all the colours.

He was brought back by sounds of shuffling movement. He glanced over to Wilde and noted the rope had unspooled itself. For a heartbeat Zolf thought that maybe this dreamscape was coming to an end. Then the ropes started tendrilling their way into Wilde’s clothes. They travelled a slalom through the line of buttons down his coat. Zolf watched, still feeling dreamy and distant.

He snapped back to himself when the wiggling rope started to work the buttons open.

“Hey!” He yelled. He gave the instruments a rushed glance, snapped a look out to the imagined horizon. In the time it took for that quick check, the rope had completely opened the jacket and was working on the line of buttons of Wilde’s ivory undershirt, bizarrely fast in comparison to the dreamy quality of evening air.

“Oi! It’s cold out here!” was the first thing that popped out of mouth. He had no idea why that was his first thought. He couldn’t think about the deeply surreal situation he was in. He was yelling at a rope which was undressing his, friend, on an airship flying through the most peaceful of storms, and every other living creature on the ship had slipped into an impossible sleep. He didn’t know what he was doing and this was beyond the pale. The rope had finished its work on the soft undershirt and was moving toward the clasp of Wilde’s trousers, and Zolf’s cheekbones felt high and hot against the gentle touch of the passing wind.

He let go of the wheel and rushed over.

In the process of the rope unspooling from around Wilde’s torso, he’d gradually been laid flat on the deck, in the lee of some crates. Both layers on his upper body had been efficiently unbuttoned, baring a line of skin from clavicle to stomach. Zolf’s eyes drew unthinkingly to the soft line of dark hair that ran from Wilde’s navel to the top button of his trousers, which a rope was just starting to experimentally pluck at.

Zolf dropped to his knees next to the sleeping Wilde, reaching for the moving rope. It seemed to predict his movements, slipping and sliding away from his hands. Zolf’s fingertips brushed over the skin of Wilde’s stomach and he yanked the hand back as if burned. One rope-end wound out of the busy mess and waggled, like a scolding finger saying no no, none of that, just let us do this for you.

With stunning dexterity, the rope dodged Zolf’s grasp again, and popped the first button on Wilde’s slacks.

Zolf frantically ran through his mental list of spells and tools. He cast Dispel Magic with a wave, and for the briefest of moments the searching ropes stilled. He had time for one relieved exhale before they twitched back to life. Of course. The whole bloody ship was marinating in the borealis, there was no way he was going to win this fight going toe-to-toe magically.

“Arrgh! Stop it!” he cried, once again trying to get a hold of the ropes and failing. “What d’you think you’re doin’?”

He knew it was bonkers, completely unhinged, to feel like the ropes were replying to him, but somehow the waggling end reappeared and with a little shrug-like wave, he knew it was saying we’re helping.

“You’re not- do you- do you think you’re doing me a favour?!” The ropes had briefly lost their hold on Wilde’s fly and instead now were working on shimmying his arms free of his shirt and jacket. The effect was nauseating to watch.

The ropes didn’t deign to respond to his comment, and Zolf, utterly poleaxed, sat back on his haunches again. It was a good thing that the ship was taking care of itself, because Zolf Smith was not currently in any position to help.

Wilde, still peaceful despite this flurry of activity around his body, gave a small sigh. A contented, pleasured sound, and Zolf realised with dawning horror that even though Wilde was out for the count, his body was still responding. Ropes, now weaved and wiggling through the trouser buttons, shifted slightly from the pressure of Wilde’s erection.

“Oh no no, shit,” he moaned, and ran his hands through his hair.

Pop pop pop, the last three button’s on Wilde’s fly gave and Zolf made a sudden decision. This right here? Was just not something he had to deal with. He also decided that he wasn’t curious, that he wasn’t thinking about the soft press of his lips against Wilde’s cheek, and that he had more important things to be doing than watching this perverse unwrapping.

On the few steps back to the helm, a thought coalesced. It was the thought that this whole situation was responding to something that he had asked for, had yearned for. Then the thought wafted away like one of the incandescent and ephemeral light streamers passing through his body.

He stared, dead ahead across the wheel, glancing at the instruments but not taking anything in.

The chimes seemed softer now, as thought he was hearing them in his mind and not with his ears, and the whispered noises of cloth and rope on skin pressed in on him. He ignored the insistent part of his mind, begging him to dip his eyes slightly left and see… whatever the animate ropes were up to now. He tried to slip back into that dreamy, relaxed state that had typified the journey through the aurora before Wilde had been dragged up here.

“I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for this,” he said to himself, to the magic around him and passing through him, his eyes locked on the prow slicing silently through the night.

The passage of time slipped through his grasp like water. The chimes seemed to draw nearer in waves then form eddies that he swore he could feel tickling his sensitive ears.

He had no memory of the rustling of clothes ceasing. He didn’t remember leaving the wheel to stand over Wilde’s sleeping body.

The ropes had finished their task of stripping him naked. He lay bare atop the cushioning of his furs, and the ropes had wrapped themselves artfully, carefully, over the body. A row of expert knots walked a line over his smattering of chest hair, from the hollow of his throat to his navel, lines of rope radiating out to loop around his ribs, back, twine together and spiral around his arms, holding them to his side. The radiating diamond shapes continued down his legs to the anti-magic cuffs in impressively complex patterns.

Now, Zolf was good with knots, and he’d seen Wilde naked, but he’d never seen anything like this before.

His legs felt heavy as he dropped to his knees with a metallic clank. He noted a detail that had been missed with the first sweep of his eyes; low on Wilde’s stomach, just above his half-hard cock, the ropes came together to make an absurd bow.

Like a present.

Zolf slapped himself in the face, ground his teeth together, and stood. He half turned with the intention of getting a blanket, because aside from the hot embarrassment churning in his stomach, the deck of an airship flying through the Northern Wastes was no place to be naked. As he turned, however, he noticed that he wasn't actually cold. The closer he came to this small lee on the bow, the warmer he felt, and not just from the heat in his face and ears. If he squinted, he could even see that the wafts of the visible spectrum of the wild magic seemed to have taken on a warmer hue.

“Ok,” he muttered. “I get it. At least you’re not tryin’ to kill him.”

The trailing ends of the bow undulated, as if to say We know! Didn’t we do a good job?

Zolf sighed, and slumped down next to Wilde. He’d lost it. He’d completely lost the plot somewhere in this borealis and this was all a nightmare of the most ghoulish and punishing kind. He’d been expecting strange, even dangerous. He hadn’t been expecting targeted.

Defeated, he looked at Wilde’s sleeping face. The man looked… peaceful in a way that Zolf rarely saw these days. No frown adorned his forehead, no smirk on his lips. Even the scar dragging at his mouth seemed less tight, less painful in sleep.

Instinctively, Zolf leant down and pressed a closed kiss to Wilde’s lips. They were soft, much plusher than Zolf’s ever had been. The sleeping man didn’t kiss back of course, but Zolf was overwhelmed by the vision of what that might feel like, to have Wilde part his lips into the kiss, to have him wind his long-fingered, delicate human hands into Zolf’s hair.

He sat back up quickly. It wasn’t like that, of course. Or if it was like that, he couldn’t hope to have that desire reciprocated. It was laughable that someone like Oscar Wilde, practically a professional libertine, would ever… anyway.

Zolf cast heavy eyes over the ship. He’d given up trying to give the ship orders. If he tried to work against his own instincts for the sailing, the ship simply read his mind and continued on the optimal path anyway. If the Vengeance decided to sail itself into the side of a mountain, there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. And he was so tired.

The now-familiar sound of rope moving on skin started up again, breaking Zolf out of a moment of reverie. The ropes around Wilde’s legs were shifting again, pulling and sliding over themselves in a complicated series of hitches, and Wilde’s knees bent and started to lift away from the deck.

Zolf stared, tired and numb for a moment, before he guessed where his new hempen friends were going with this.

“Oh gods, no!” Zolf said, and quicker and nimbler than he generally was, surged up from seated to straddle Wilde’s thighs, flattening them back to the deck. The ropes, however, were insistent that Wilde’s legs continue to bend, wanting him to bring his knees up into his chest.

The ropes were strong, strong enough to drag someone wholesale from below deck. As they fought to enact their vision, against the pressure of the dwarf straddling Wilde’s thighs, they started to restrict, pressing hard into the pale skin of Wilde’s legs, digging into his hips

“Stop it!” Zolf yelled. The fact that he was now just unabashedly arguing with a rope was a piece of lunacy he’d stopped questioning. “You’re hurting him!”

That… didn’t exactly seem to be true. It was clear that Wilde didn’t mind the sensations of the rope constricting his flesh, dragging on his skin. There was now a flush high in his cheeks, and his breath was catching into small, pleasurable whimpers. Glancing down before he could stop himself, Zolf noted Wilde was as hard as he could be, cock flushed and pulled tight against the plane of his lower stomach.

Zolf swallowed.

In a last-ditch effort, the ropes yanked, and Zolf’s arse slid forward, his upper body pitching, hands flung wide to catch himself before he faceplanted into Wilde’s sternum. He breathed out, hard.

Zolf had no memory of his own erection swelling. Had it been the kiss? Had it been the feel of Wilde’s thighs, trembling beneath his? The sound of rope sliding on skin? Had he been hard, throbbing, since the ropes started to shamelessly pluck open Wilde’s slacks?

He hadn’t been aware of it, but he was aware of it now, the laces of his trousers tight, pressed flush to the base of Wilde’s prick. Foggy, blurry, he lent weight into his hands and ground down, eliciting another whimper from Wilde. Arousal and shame were heavy in Zolf’s stomach, sick pleasure shooting up his spine from the contact. He sat up, the movement pushing their crotches together again.

“Don’t,” he whispered. To himself? To the borealis? To Wilde, as though he had somehow asked for this, the way that something inside Zolf had? To whomever he spoke made no difference, as Zolf unlaced his trousers. Wilde’s cock was unbearably warm as Zolf slid his fingers under it. He pressed the underside of Wilde’s shaft to his own, breath hitching, mind blank, and wrapped both hands around the two of them.

Wilde was achingly, pathetically hard, wetness caught in the hair on his stomach where the head of his cock had rested, and when Zolf firmed his hands, a moan escaped Wilde’s sleeping lips. Zolf pumped his hands, slowly, breath ragged. He closed his eyes, let his head fall back and just felt the heat of them together.

Wilde was whimpering, breathy, and Zolf opened his eyes to look again.

Wilde looked utterly fucking gorgeous. Zolf paused a moment, ignoring the sick swoop of shame in his stomach, and gave a practised, long wet lick of one hand. He returned them to let his saliva mingle with the slick of pre-come, and increased the pace, now unable to tear his eyes from Wilde’s face. The dreamlike quality of the borealis intensified, as though satisfied, and everything seemed to narrow down to wet slide of their cocks, and the sleepy whimpers escaping Wilde’s soft mouth.

When Zolf had imagined what it might be like, and he had, on late nights on the border between wakefulness and sleep, Wilde hadn’t been like this. In those nascent fantasies he was always perfectly in control, smirking, calculated. Never in his wildest imaginings had he thought of Oscar like this, helpless and desperate and softly whining under his hands.

Wilde’s eyelids fluttered. Zolf’s heart swooped in panic at the sight, but he quickly realised what was happening, as Wilde’s stomach tensed, and he came with a relieved-sounding sigh. Adrenaline mixed with desperate arousal smashed into Zolf as he felt Wilde’s cock pulse against his, a line of slick running onto his hands. Zolfs orgasm tore through him, and he let out a frayed moan.

He jumped up as though electrified. Hands shaking as he laced his trousers, he noticed the borealis abating. Almost as though it had been waiting for them to finish.

Zolf stared down Wilde, naked and splashed with their combined spend. A perverse thought flitted through his mind, that even if he didn’t have time to clean this up, it probably wouldn’t be the first time Wilde had awoken in such a state.

“… Fuck.” He whispered. Before he could panic or whirl back to the helm, a bucket and wash cloth scraped its way into his line of sight. As Zolf cleaned up, he noticed Wilde’s clothes themselves starting to move, something sheepish in their demeanor as they started to wind their way back onto their owner’s body. Ropes unknotted themselves and started to help and to tidy. A loose end gave a jaunty gesture that could only be interpreted as a thumbs up.

A slightly hysterical laugh broke from Zolf’s mouth. At least this particular problem was handling itself. Zolf shook off his laughter and dashed back to the helm. If the magic was abating, the ship was going to come to rights, that was, to lose the sentience that it had displayed during their time in the borealis.

Blessedly, Wilde was fully dressed by the time he came to. If he had questions about why he was on the deck when he’d started this adventure in the anti-magic chamber, he didn’t have time to ask them in the ensuing chaos, as the crew woke and discovered their bodies were no longer their own.

--

It was very easy to avoid being alone with someone on a ship the size of the Vengeance with a crew of eighteen. Especially if you are the first mate. Always things to do. Hell, you could even avoid talking to someone at all if you were as busy and important as Zolf made sure he was.

So it wasn’t until days later, as the crew drank and made merry on the night of the Grande Opening of the Bow Bar, that Wilde managed to ruin Zolf’s streak by catching a quiet moment and sitting down next to him.

“I feel like I had the strangest dream through the borealis,” Wilde began, looking sidelong at Zolf with an uncharacteristically impassive gaze.

Zolf’s stomach dropped. He went to speak, found his throat locked, and took a swig of his stout. He was hoping that Wilde would continue, but it seemed he was content to let Zolf stew. “You… you remember much of it?” Zolf rasped.

“Bits and pieces,” Wilde replied. “Combined with where and how I awoke, it certainly paints an… interesting picture.”

Zolf stared down into his drink, unable to meet Wilde’s eyes. “Listen. You know I gotta see this through but, after… after Svalbard and whatever happens next, I’ll leave. You’ll never have to speak to me again.” Zolf’s stomach hurt. That it would end like this… it was unbearable. “I- I’m sorry.”

Wilde sighed, deep and world-weary. Zolf glanced up and to his confusion, there was a familiar, indulgent smirk on Wilde’s lips. Zolf was expecting disgust, disdain, and yet.

“Zolf… The ship was flying itself, and from what I can tell, it was leading us to where we all wanted to go. You can be so… wilfully blind. Stubborn, too.”

Zolf’s jaw hung open, as Wilde stood and clasped his shoulder with a warmth that Zolf didn’t deserve. Dropping his voice a touch to prevent the other merry-makers overhearing, Wilde continued. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll be awake next time. The rope probably not so much, but I’ve seen how good you are with knots.”

Wilde smiled winningly, let go of Zolf’s shoulder, and returned to the party.

[creativitytoexplore]

In the Land of the Rain Gnomes by Harrison Kim https://ift.tt/2Zs6XQa A retired social worker takes his lady friend for an adventure in a creepy ghost town accessible only by boat; by Harrison Kim. 

Decaying isn't that bad. It's a unification with your beginnings, a melding into the earth, a relaxing absorption where you do nothing but rot. The ego humbles itself before this ultimate dissolution, this disintegration of body and mind, this unthreading and wasting towards lightness. I live in the ghost town of Nitnat Falls. I pace its abandoned, crumbling streets under drizzling skies, bed down on tree boughs at night, cool and damp in my lean-to under huge cedars. I've cut myself off completely from my old life. This wasn't quite what I had planned for my retirement, but it's stress-free. I've never felt such calm, such a letting go. I trace the lichen patterns growing from my navel, and wet my face in the mist. Two months before I arrived in Nitnat Falls I'd retired from thirty years as a social worker at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital. I was ready for a lift from the bondage of routine, a permanent vacation from listening to people's delusions, being exposed to their madness day after day. I looked towards a life of travel and good times with my new friend Amanda, a thin, elegant lady semi-retired from the real estate business. This first trip of our relationship involved taking a boat up the remote west coast. The cargo boat stopped at fishing camps and Indian villages to deliver mail and supplies. Its halfway destination was Nitnat Falls, an abandoned pulp mill town located under towering mountains, with only a score of diehard inhabitants left living in a few moldy, crumbling buildings set against a view of dark clouds. I wanted to re-experience my adventurous youth, explore remote places. I'd always been fascinated by local history, and the story of Nitnat Falls intrigued me, how it began as a planned village built for the mill workers, laid down eighty years ago in one huge period of construction. The industry thrived until the company went bankrupt in the Seventies. More rain fell here than any other place in North America, no way in but by boat. The ruins of a hotel and indoor swimming pool molded away. Residential streets slowly lost their neat rows of houses to storms, floods, and decay.

As our boat pulled into Nitnat Falls, Amanda and I viewed the pulp plant's abandoned, skeletal hulk, its mossy, collapsed roof and smashed in windows open against the drizzling sky. The vessel anchored to deliver mail and other supplies for the diehard twenty-five inhabitants, and to give adventurous tourists a chance to walk the town while the ship's workers took their lunch break. "Get back by four," Earl, the tattooed, snuff-chewing captain told us. "We leave on the dot, whether you're back or not. If not, we'll pick you up in two days on the return trip." He spat out a wad of brown goo. "This is not a warning, this is a promise." We stepped off the ferry and into the drizzle. I wore my giant backpack, stuffed with food and a sleeping bag in case of emergencies. A short, grey-bearded man pushing a homemade cart full of scrap metal stood at the end of the rotting pier. He said, "Hello Mr. Frattura. What are you doing up here?" I almost tripped into a hole. "Ron Cardinal?" I exclaimed. I couldn't believe it. After all the trouble I'd gone to escape thirty years of job stress and burnout, the first person I encountered in this wilderness was an ex-client. "You bet!" he confirmed. Moisture dripped from his filthy baseball cap. "I thought... I thought..." "Yeah, that I jumped off a bridge. That was a ruse, man. I needed some time to disappear, find a new life away from what you call civilization." He regarded Amanda and I with one hand over his forehead. "You came to check up on me?" "I'm retired," I said. "We're here on an adventure tour." "Pleased to meet you, Ron," Amanda said, presenting her most congenial smile. "We won't tell anyone you're here," I assured him. I glanced towards the town. I could just make out high mountains closing in on either side, like granite pincers. "Does it ever get completely light?" I asked Ron. He grinned. "No, Mr. Frattura. The rain gives us back our own shadows." He paused. "That's where I like to see my darkness, on the outside." Ron appeared far more gnomish than I'd remembered. His ears stuck way out from his unkempt curls, his smile widened huge and wet, revealing a few missing teeth. "There's no drugs up here. I'm clean," he said. "Congratulations, Ron. We're going to take a walk to the old dam. The boat's leaving in a couple of hours." "Don't go too far," said Ron. "Time has a way of getting away on you in these parts." Amanda laughed uneasily. "We have two hours here," she said. "You must be very strong to pack that wagon around." We hiked the main street running uphill from the harbour; Ron stared after us, tightly holding onto his cart so it wouldn't roll down into the sea.

"That dam once provided power for the town and mill," I told Amanda. "Apparently, it's a work of engineering genius." I didn't tell her, but the coolness of the mist ahead attracted me more than viewing the dam. Greyness enveloped us as we walked hand in hand past the shell of the old grocery store. Beside its fallen and shattered sign, a rusted-out logging truck lay on its side. I felt lighter and lighter, all the locked-up thoughts and images of thirty years working with the mentally ill lifting as we climbed higher up the main street. "Jackson, this place kind of scares me," Amanda said. "Don't you think the mountains are closer now than when we arrived?" She paused. "And what about bears?" "We're more likely to see porcupines," I said. I told her that the squat, quilled creatures roamed Nitnat Falls at night, chewing on plywood and rubber to keep their teeth worn down. "Otherwise their incisors will grow right up through their jaws." "Sounds creepy." Amanda gave a nervous laugh. She stayed skinny and fit, gregarious and hyper, in contrast to what I considered my laid-back calm. Our relationship was a case of "opposites attract." She began to talk about how much Nitnat Falls properties would be worth on the real estate market if a European investor seized an opportunity. I felt an urge to move in silence. Her talking pierced and interrupted my enjoyment of the ghost town ambiance. We hiked by the old hotel where a few lumber-jacketed men sat around a camp stove lit on a table in the doorless lobby. Amanda waved at them. "Would you like some porcupine stew?" said a skinny rail of a man with a huge stubbly jaw, stirring the contents of his cooking pot with a pair of deer antlers. I moved closer, could see black mold along what remained of the plaster walls beside him. I glimpsed the bubbling mass in the pot. "Thanks, but we're here for hiking," I replied. "Smells good." "Suit yourself, you're welcome anytime," the man nodded. "Thanks for the offer," Amanda called. "That food stinks," she said to me as we left. "Like rot."

We climbed up past the remains of the outdoor swimming pool. Big cracks fanned out from its cement bottom. The tallest black toadstools I'd ever seen grew from these fissures. As we moved past a crumbling brick fire station, the mountaintops disappeared in the mist. Skeletal remains of houses gaped through from time to time, and a few rusty, bent street signs announced each corner. "We must be almost up at the dam by now," Amanda said. "To me, it feels like we just left the boat," I replied. "Time's moving so fast." She let her hand free from mine, then clasped it again. "Do you hear a drumming?" she asked. "Like something trapped in the earth?" I stopped and listened. "There is a weird sound," I agreed. "Could be my heartbeat." Amanda grinned slightly. "That would be a good sound," she said. "This feels like a dead place, Jackson. It'd take quite some initiative to get tourism to invest here." "It's a ghost town," I told her. "It's supposed to be dead." The further we moved into the mist, the calmer I felt. My old world had been so cluttered and frantic. Over the years I'd absorbed all the information and stories that psychiatric patients told me. I'd been on the scene during dozens of critical incidents, and witnessed the aftermath of scores of suicides and assaults. This constant exposure to troubled, often shattered lives affected me deeply at first, then after a while it all became normal. "You have to detach," my boss once said. "Or you'll end up like them." I tried to follow the boss's advice. After work, I'd hike for hours in the mountains. Then I'd drive home, turn on the TV, and watch history and adventure shows. Below that routine there remained a constant anxiety. Keeping the memories in closed-mind compartments caused difficulties. I awakened often in the night, sweating and yelling out of nightmares set in the psychiatric hospital. Within these bad dreams I often couldn't tell if I was the patient or the staff, if I was the one out of control, or the one controlling. Here, though, the mist penetrated through me. cooling the fever of the years. "Shouldn't we be getting back?" asked Amanda. "The dam's just up this way," I continued. I could hear the spillway roaring. We rounded a corner to view the cascading, violent water, and above it a white-capped grey lake curving around under granite cliffs. I could indeed hear a pounding here, coming from inside the dam. "Maybe that's the drumming you heard," I said to Amanda. "The old turbines still work." "It's quite a savage land," she replied. She tried to laugh. "Now I know why it's not a great real estate market." "In its heyday, it was like anywhere else," I stated. "When we go back, we should check out the old bowling alley." "You're really stuck on this place," Amanda said. "You've got the whole map of it in your head."

I took off my backpack, pulled out my camera and snapped some photos of the dam. Amanda checked her phone. "We've got to return now," she said. "It's twenty minutes until the ferry leaves." "Alright," I nodded. "We can jog down the hill." However, I couldn't exactly remember the route, even though Amanda just told me I knew the town well. "I'm sure it's this way," said Amanda. "No, we go down here!" I shouted, louder than necessary. I very much wanted to see that old bowling alley. We walked along some side streets, I couldn't resist taking photos of the old crumbling porches, roofs thick with moss, mushrooms poking out through gaps in the rot. A sweet odour wafted through the trees, like chocolate or patchouli, then disappeared. "What a stink," Amanda coughed. "I wonder where that's coming from." "They closed the pulp mill forty years ago" I told her. "So it's not from there. I did smell chocolate, but it's gone now." "Come on, Jackson," Amanda insisted. She held her nose. "Let's go. That captain meant what he said." We heard the cargo ferry whistle, and were stepping quickly past the old hotel when the mist lifted for a moment and we glimpsed the boat moving out into the inlet. "I told you we were late!" Amanda leaned against an old railing, it fell back and I grabbed her. She sat against a tree, breathing hard. "It's ok," I said. "We can stay here a day or two. I brought the tent." I indicated my backpack. "There's an extra-large sleeping bag in here." "I don't like this place," Amanda said. She took out her cell phone and pushed some buttons. "Just as I thought. No service." She began to run down the street, waving at the boat as the mist closed in again, shrieking, "Stop! Stop!" "Let's not panic," I yelled. I'd already scoped out a place good for a tent on the way up. My pack contained candles, food, survivor blankets. "We're prepared for a night or two," I shouted at Amanda, who was still running for the wharf, though our boat had already rounded the corner of the inlet. At the waterside, Ron Cardinal sat on a broken sewer pipe, gutting a fish. "You guys missed the boat!" he exclaimed. "I told you the hours can get away on you." He wiped his hands on a filthy towel. "Especially if you're committed to the shadowlands." "Is there any other way out of here?" Amanda pleaded. "Do you know where there's a washroom?" Ron nodded. "Yeah, I've got a pit toilet and a CB radio up at my cabin. You could call a helicopter or a float plane. It'll be expensive, even if they can get through." "Let's do it, Jackson," Amanda said. "It's only a couple of days," I told her. "We can live here free from noise, in perfect silence, away from all distraction. It'll be a Zen thing." "There's a terrible stink in the air," she said. "I can't detect a thing," I said. "Apart from a slight perfume." "Neither can I," Ron agreed. "Lots of off-the-boaters say they smell the surfer stink from the old pulp mill, but if you stay here a while it goes away." "There hasn't been a functional mill here for forty years," I said. "It stinks more like rot," Amanda told me. "Like dead bodies." She lifted her head and listened. "Can you hear that pounding?" "Native legends say these mountains have beating hearts," Ron said. "It's a calming place to be if you hallucinate," He laughed, tilted his head in Amanda's direction, and winked at me. "They say the pounding drowns out all the evil spirits." "I don't hallucinate," said Amanda. "I know what's real and what's not." I felt light headed, almost high. I stood up and breathed deep in the misty air. "So fresh here," I said. "What's wrong with you?" Amanda ran up onto the wharf and scanned the horizon. "Do any hunters come in on float planes? We could get a ride with them." "She's always looking for the easy way out," I whispered to Ron. "In the end, there isn't any." He seemed so friendly and open, squatting there with his wet fish knife, successful and happy with his catch of the day. I felt I could ask him anything. "Do you still hear voices in your head?" I said. He shook his head "No. Everything's clear for me now. I'm completely normal in this ghost town." He grinned, showing his black edged, yellow teeth. "I caught three fish today," he said. "All you do here is relax and fish, and then eat the fish." Amanda ran back from the wharf. "I need to use your CB radio, Ron," she stated. She turned to me. "We have to call a helicopter. I'll pay for it." "It's no problem," Ron said. "Come with me, tourist folks." He picked up his fish and threw them in his cart, then began pushing the cart up the hill. Amanda followed closely, I dawdled behind, admiring the skeletal walls of the old pulp mill. "They're still pretty solid after all this time," I thought.

Ron led us up towards the lobby of the moldy hotel, where the three skinny, long-haired fellows we'd met before sat on cracked white plastic lounge chairs eating their stewed porcupine. I stopped; Amanda strode on, her expression set in frown mode. "Do you guys hear any drums?" I remarked. "Yeah, man," said a short, big-eared guy, holding a tiny steel fork. "It's something to do with the dam, how the water bangs those old turbines." I ran to catch up with Ron and Amanda. "Those guys told me something very interesting," I exclaimed. "What would be interesting is getting out of here," Amanda coughed. Ron led us into a small refurbished cabin, with a roof and sides of many colours. I felt the cool, slightly slimy walls. "You've got a bit of mold in here," I told him. "I've taken pieces from the other houses, built myself a hovel," he grinned. "But yes, the spores get everywhere." "What about electricity?" I asked. "I have a gas generator, I fill up the can when the cargo boat comes in." I looked into Ron's misty, red-veined eyes. We smiled at each other. He was so much improved from his days back at the hospital. As a psychiatric patient, he could barely string two coherent sentences together. He remained unshaven and ragged, sure, but who needed to shave or wash up here? "Where's the CB radio?" Amanda asked. Ron came out to the front porch carrying it and laughing to himself. "I'll call, but choppers can't come in here," he giggled. "They won't fly in mist. And it's always misty." "How the hell do we get out of here then?" Amanda said. "Why did you say you could call a helicopter?" Ron hesitated. "You were the one who wanted to call," he told her. Amanda sat on the ground, her hands over her face. "This is crazy," she said. "You tell us one thing, then you tell us the opposite." "Would you like some fish?" Ron asked. I felt sorry for Amanda, though she was a bit too hard on Ron. She couldn't appreciate the joys of the wilderness. The place made her sick, she perceived it so much differently than I. Ron stood behind her laughing, holding a greasy frying pan. "Sure, I'll have some fish," I told him. "Thanks for inviting us."

I put the tent up under some giant cedars, and let Amanda use my sleeping bag. I didn't have much use for sleep in such a mysterious, intriguing place. I spent the night walking among the waddling porcupines, following them through the darkness. I sat with my back against a disintegrating backhoe scoop, watching the mist swirl as morning light tried to penetrate the inlet. I witnessed a couple of bears lumbering around the hotel lobby, sniffing where the men cooked their meat. I chuckled at their huge, ursine shadows dominating what used to be luxury accommodation. When I strolled down the street to be closer, they snorted and kept moving along the waterfront. "You seem very friendly," I called out to them. "Don't go away."

Amanda spent most of the next day in the tent, trying to get her phone to work. "I can't stand that stink," she said. "You could be hallucinating," I told her. "I hope you don't have a fever." I liked the damp closeness, it kept my thoughts and anxiety contained. I relaxed deeply as the foggy ambiance surrounded and held me. Amanda developed a persistent cough, then a cold, and a serious wheeze. I'd never felt healthier, striding the hills of the town with a gnarled old stick Ron said came from a cedar root that penetrated his cabin's crawl space. On leaving day, I slowly packed up the tent. "I'm exhausted," Amanda whispered. "How could you do this to me?" She had barely talked during the two days, and wouldn't eat the freeze-dried food I provided. She did drink a lot of Ron's hot tea, which I never told her was made from tree moss. "You fit in here, Mr. Frattura," said Ron, as I said goodbye. "I like the place," I said. "There are long term side effects," Ron continued. He put a finger to his lips, "Sssh," and we stepped out to the sagging porch. "See this?" He lifted up his shirt. I observed what looked like wet lichens patterned in wavy lines flowing out of his belly button. "What are those?" I asked. "They seem to be moving slightly." "It's the Wasting Away." Ron traced his little finger over the grey patterns, then lifted his finger to his lips and spoke in a whisper. "It's all inside me now, just starting to come out. Happens to everyone here." He grinned. "But the more it happens, the better you feel." "So you're turning into some kind of plant creature?" I asked. "I'm shedding all my stress and anxiety," he continued. "I'm becoming part of this place, and it's becoming part of me."

Amanda and I stepped up the ramp to the boat. Earl the skipper grabbed both her arms and she leaned on him, coughing. He lowered her to the deck. "Thank you for saving me, sir," she said to him. "Now I need an actual coffee!" She shuffled towards the passenger area without another word, my sleeping bag wrapped around her bowed, stooped shoulders. "She looked so tall and elegant, getting off the boat," said the Skipper. "But now..." He gestured, "Come on, get on board." "I dunno," I said. "Do you have a few cans of soup and a camp stove I could buy?" "You need to order by computer," he grinned. He pointed to the shore. "Or you can buy stuff off that guy." A short, stocky long jawed man from the hotel lobby leaned against a hand-made wagon, piled high with assorted objects. I waved. He gave a big toothless smile and saluted by lifting a bent piece of pipe over his head. "Do you really want to stay in Nitnat Falls?" Earl asked. He chewed hard on his snuff wad. "It'll suck you in. Lots of folks have just plain disappeared into the moss." "I don't think I belong out there," I said. "There's too much light." I paused. "Do you at least have a spare couple of blankets?" "Too much light!" The Skipper laughed, and spat his snuff into the harbour. "You're gonna leave your lady behind?" "She's pretty sick," I told him. "Yeah, she coughed like she had bronchitis," the Skipper agreed. "Do you detect something rank in the air?" I asked. "Like sulphur?" "Yeah, I can smell it," the Skipper nodded. "Anyone who doesn't live here can. People say it's the ghost of the old pulp plant," he guffawed. "If you can't smell that, then you've been at Nitnat Falls too long." "When I sniffed," I told him, "the air was perfume." "I'll tell your lady friend you're staying," the Skipper said. "I can throw you a tarp."

I shouldered my belongings and headed down the wharf, stepping carefully to avoid the rotted holes. I never looked back. Amanda was an extrovert, always reaching for brightness. She was outwardly healthy, undamaged that way. She never saw the world like me, through the eyes of others' delusions. I liked her confidence in objective reality, in the value of real estate and money and success, but in the end, I chose the shadows. There was no pretence there. "You were a good social worker," Ron told me as we sat on his cabin porch, listening to the rain and eating mushrooms with seaweed fried in porcupine grease. "Mr. Frattura! You crossed over to our side." "Please, call me Jackson." I lifted up my stained shirt. Below my belly button, I thought I could see a tiny bit of grey lichen poking out. I pulled my shirt back down, released the image from my mind. I would live within the moment, and accept this reality. I stepped from Ron's porch into the Nitnat Falls rain, let the cool ghost town mist wet and wash me through and through. Then I continued walking, clean and free. Up the road, between two towering mountain peaks, the remaining dam turbines shuddered, drumming a steady beat against the river.

I thrive in this mountain darkness, even as I disappear into its ground.