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hysterialevi · 3 years ago

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Day 7 - Battlefield

(fanfic below if you’re interested)

THE KNIGHT - An AC Valhalla oneshot

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

Wicked was the man who reaped the souls of the innocent, a priest once told Eivor. He who spilt the blood of God’s children would one day know His wrath and be barred from the gates of Heaven, for he had fallen prey to the Devil’s song.

And yet, amongst this tattered field where naught but the dead roamed, Eivor found himself surrounded by the souls of his fallen brethren, slain by a so-called child of God. Fly-ridden piles of corpses decorated the haggard landscape like mountains made of flesh, and in the sky, he could see ravens circling above the carnage, scavenging any human remains.

It was unlike anything the viking had ever seen. Although this kingdom was no stranger to war, even he had to admit that this was an uncommon sight. Birds and insects alike feasted on the new bodies now littering the blood-soaked mud, and the pungent stench of death had burrowed itself so deep in Eivor’s throat that he felt as if he would suffocate.

This had to be the place. The one place in England where even the Northmen didn’t dare traverse.

It was the source of many frightful tales that Eivor had heard from the people in his clan, and very often, cryptic rumors of a lone knight would accompany their words.

He knew not the identity of this knight, nor what they desired. All he had gathered was that they carried a raw hatred for anyone of his ilk, and would not hesitate to strike him down should they lay eyes upon him.

He would have to be on his guard here, no matter how barren this battlefield seemed. It was a death sentence for anyone bold enough to travel through these lands, but that was exactly why Eivor had to come. To put an end to this massacre.

Venturing further into the heart of the slaughter, Eivor wandered underneath a canopy of naked trees and trudged through the slick mud, searching for the knight as his horse whinnied nervously behind him. He felt as if he were being swallowed by the darkness that shrouded this forsaken arena, and with every passing minute, he could see the world outside dwindling away with the gathering fog.

An unsettling chill had befallen the mass tomb upon Eivor’s arrival, and up ahead, he spotted the faint silhouette of a kneeling man.

From where he stood, the viking couldn’t tell if the man was still alive. His body appeared to reflect the lifelessness of the environment around him, and his head hung low between his shoulders. A weathered sword stood proudly from the chest of a corpse lying before him, and at the hilt, the man’s hand rested motionlessly around the grip.

What really caught Eivor’s attention however, was the torn cape dangling from his back. By now, the blue fabric had been matted with the dirt and ash of a hundred other battles, but even then, he could still make out the ghost of a once prominent sigil. It was clearly of Saxon origin just as he suspected, and seemed to resemble the banners he often saw draping from Mercian walls.

This must have been the knight that everyone spoke of. Eivor had finally found him.

“...You there!” He called out, keeping a hand on his axe. “Can you hear me?”

At first, the man offered no response.

“Hey!” Eivor persisted, carefully approaching him. “Saxon! Are you alive?”

Stirring with a twitch, the knight perked his head up upon hearing the viking’s voice and steadily broke free from his entranced state, turning to see who had visited him in this putrid wasteland. He still had yet to reply to Eivor’s calls using any words, but acknowledged him with a mere glance.

Watching the knight’s every move, Eivor stared in fascination as his opponent threw a gaze over their shoulder, revealing a face that was more akin to a skeleton than a warrior.

The Saxon’s once youthful and handsome visage had been replaced with the mask of death itself, leaving nothing unscathed except for the eyes. They sat in his sockets like a pair of empty glass orbs, and mirrored the desolation of the landscape he beheld.

He appeared extremely frail in terms of physical strength, but carried a stern ferocity that was more than enough to hold Eivor in place. He glowered at the viking through strands of dark, tangled hair, and locked eyes with the man as if he were marking him as his next target.

It suddenly made sense to Eivor where all those tales came from. The Northmen often spoke of this particular knight in a way that painted him as a beast, and now, he couldn’t stifle the new pang of fear that was beginning to sprout in his chest.

Eivor took a few steps closer, careful not to provoke him.

“Can you understand me, Saxon? I’m looking for a Mercian warrior who is rumored to be killing Danes and Norse alike. Are you him? Is this all your doing?”

The knight squinted his eyes in a perplexed manner, undeniably surprised to see a viking in his company.

“...A Northman?” He whispered, his voice delicate yet haunting. “In this part of England? It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered any of your kind, pagan. Most of your people make an effort to avoid me.”

The knight pressed his foot against the ground and slowly rose from the mud, using his sword for support. Contrary to what Eivor expected, the Saxon proved to bear an incredibly tall stature unlike most of his people, and towered over the battlefield like a hallowed guardian.

“Begone, Northman,” the knight warned. “Return from whence you came. I have no desire to fight you.”

Eivor didn’t budge. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Even if you spare me, you’ve been slaughtering every other Northerner who dared set foot on these lands. It must come to an end.”

His words earned nothing but a somber look from the other man.

“...The Danes ravaged everything I held dear, and robbed me of my soul when there was nothing left to take. If you truly wish to put an end to this needless war, then perhaps you should confront those whom you call ‘brother.”

The Wolf-Kissed held his tongue for the moment, not wishing to cross swords just yet.

“I’m not blind to the cruelty some of my people have displayed,” Eivor conceded, “but you inflict pain on those who had no part in your suffering. It isn’t right.”

The knight simply sighed and took hold of his sword, yanking it out of the body lying at his feet.

“Your judgement is immaterial to me, pagan. If I am to be condemned for my sins, then that will be an affair between me and God. But until that day comes, I shall remain here, and await death’s impending advent.”

Eivor gazed at the other man in pity, admittedly reluctant to kill him. Even though he was aware of his crimes, there was still something stopping him from attacking the soldier outright.

“Have you no life outside of this, Saxon?” He asked. “Why not leave this place, and put this crusade to rest? Surely, you tire of this pointless battle.”

The knight peered upwards at the murky grey sky, staring into the heavens as if he could see God himself.

“...Where would I go?” He questioned, his tone gentle and forlorn. “I have no home to return to. No family left alive. The Northmen took all I had.”

“So, you’re doing this for revenge. Is that it?”

The Saxon shook his head. “No. My lust for vengeance was sated long ago. Those who wronged me have already met their fates. Now, I do this because it’s the only thing I can do.”

Eivor slid his axe out of its sheathe, steeling himself for battle. “...Well, whatever your reasons, I can’t allow you to continue.”

The knight glanced at the viking’s weapon, finally understanding why he had come. He showed no disappointment upon realizing Eivor’s intentions, but rather, a unique sense of sorrow.

“...You wish to duel me, then.”

“You speak as if I do this for sport. I’m doing this to protect my people.”

The other man chuckled weakly, though not out of amusement.

“There truly is no greater threat to man than the delusion of one’s own heroics. Your people trespass on a lion’s den, and then complain when they are bitten. Such is the nature of the Northmen, I suppose, building their homes on top of the ashes of those they have scathed. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.”

“Does that mean you view yourself as a hero, then?” Eivor wondered. “For slaying all these people?”

“No. I am well aware of the blood on my hands. Though, your slate is not exactly clean either, is it? I can see the remorse in your eyes. It’s etched into your face. Tell me, how many monasteries have suffered your wrath since you arrived in England? How many villages have you had to destroy so you could construct your own? How many men like me now reside in a similar hell because of your actions?”

The knight paused for a moment, looking down at his blade in thought. “...Ah, no matter. If this is the way it must end, then so be it. Whether it was God or Satan who led you here today, I do not know. But you are here for a reason nonetheless. And there is room yet for another corpse in this graveyard.”

Growing weary of this endless quarrel, the Saxon decided to grant Eivor with the bloodshed he sought and approached the center of the field, prowling towards him as his cape fluttered in the wind. The marred plates of his armor clanked quietly with every move he made, and soon enough, he was right there -- standing directly across from his opponent.

For a moment, he was completely still. Not a single word was uttered from his lips, and only the hollow breeze was able to fill the profound silence that ensued.

After a while of contemplation however, the Saxon suddenly thew his blade to the ground and knelt beside it, presenting his head to the enemy before him. He showed no signs of putting up any kind of resistance, and to Eivor’s surprise, it seemed like he was actually asking for defeat.

“Wait,” Eivor blurted out, confused by the gesture, “you’re not even going to fight?”

“What would be the purpose?” The knight asked with a shrug. “I have been starved of all the strength I once possessed, and my sword-arm has withered in the face of this perpetual conflict. I know I would be no match for you.”

“Still, won’t you pick up your blade? Out of honor, I cannot cut a defenseless man down.”

The man’s voice softened with reassurance. “Discard your fears, Northman. Unlike your god, mine does not demand sacrifice in death. Only faith. The path I walk once I depart from this world will depend on that alone. You dishonor no one by smiting me.”

Eivor crouched in front of the knight, speaking to him at eye-level. He felt strange offering the man any empathy considering all the things he had done, but somehow, he just couldn’t bring himself to hate him.

To the Wolf-Kissed, the knight was no monster or beast as the other Northerners had claimed. In truth, he was merely a man who had been ruined by the horrors of human cruelty, and left behind by those who promised to protect him. His heart had become rotten with decay thanks to the loss of his loved ones, and his soul had already fled for Heaven’s gates.

The only thing left for him to do... was to join it.

“What is your name, knight?” Eivor inquired.

The soldier’s striking blue eyes flicked upward at the question. “Does it matter? Soon, I will be dead, and my memories will be buried with me.”

“Indeed, which is why I ask. Our memories are a treasure, Saxon. They preserve everything we’ve experienced. If we are lucky, they will even outlive us. Do not let yours die out so willingly.”

“That is easy to say when you’ve led a good life. My memories deliver nothing but nightmares. They paint images that would make the Devil himself tremble. Had I the choice, I would give anything to forget the things I’ve seen.”

Eivor fell quiet for a second. “...Even who you are?”

The knight took his advice to heart, slouching in defeat. Even though his most recent memories were far from pleasant, it was clear that he still feared losing them entirely. He did not understand why he harbored this fear to begin with -- after all, he should’ve been glad to dispose of such horrors -- but he could not deny its presence nonetheless.

Maybe it was because he had spent so long struggling in this war. Or maybe, it was because his identity was tied to it. Regardless of whatever the case was, a small part of him secretly hoped that Eivor would remember him once he was gone, and that he wouldn’t simply become another faceless corpse to add to the pile.

It was a peculiar way to preserve his legacy, leaving it in the hands of the enemy -- but the fact that his hardships would live on in the viking’s mind offered him a strange hint of solace that he would’ve never expected from a heathen.

“...Erian.” The knight finally answered. “My name was Erian.”

Eivor placed a hand on his shoulder, preparing to grant him his final wish.

“Then go to your god, Erian, and pray that he accepts you in the next life, wherever it may take you.”

“Wait...!” Erian gripped the Wolf-Kissed’s arm, halting him for the time being.

“What is it?”

The Saxon glanced down at the ground, unsure of how to word his thoughts.

“...Why are you doing this? I’ve slain many of your warriors, and would have even killed you if I had the ability to do so. You have no reason to grant me mercy.”

“I... I don’t know, to be honest.” Eivor said sincerely. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve witnessed firsthand madness that can ensue when a man allows his hatred to run amok. Or perhaps it’s simply because I grow tired of all this suffering.”

“If that’s true, then you are already better than most. I only hope you will preach the same sentiment the next time your heart thirsts for plunder.”

Eivor nodded firmly. “I will. And I have.”

Erian loosened his grip on the other man’s wrist and shut his eyes, ready to depart at last. “Then I can go in peace, for I know my legacy remains with a compassionate soul. Goodbye, Northman, and thank you for blessing me with this final kindness.”

The viking positioned his axe above the knight’s collar, gently holding his head in place as he said one last thing.

“...Farewell, Erian.”

Yanking the blade away with a sharp tug, Eivor promptly opened the Saxon’s throat in one swift motion and cut his life short, cradling him in his arms until his body fell limp. The knight’s gaunt face was instantly wiped of all color, and soon, his expression dimmed with an ethereal fog that the Northman had seen far too many times before.

Yet, despite the morbidity of Erian’s death, the man radiated with a sense of tranquility that seemed to split the overwhelming darkness in this land. He appeared as if he were only sleeping, and resembled a child who had just been put to bed.

Normally, the sight would’ve warmed Eivor’s heart to see someone basking in such contentment, but in this case, it provided only despair.

Had the war in England truly gotten so bad that its people found more comfort in the embrace of death itself? Was this the Northmen’s doing?

Even though Eivor never intentionally caused needless tragedy to those he opposed, he couldn’t help but question if this invasion was really worth it anymore. He had already killed countless people for the sake of keeping Ravensthorpe on its feet, but with every victory he earned, he found it more and more difficult to convince himself that he was doing this for the greater good.

Though, Eivor supposed it was meaningless to doubt his motives now. The Raven Clan had achieved too much at this point to simply give up, and he knew Sigurd would never return to Fornburg after being stripped of his birthright.

The best thing he could do now was try to keep his jarl from teetering over the edge, and remember people like Erian when hatred threatened to consume him. The fallen knight may not have been able to affect the world directly any longer, but his memory would serve as a reminder to never lose one’s humanity.

It may have been dangerous to offer his foes such a high level of empathy in times of war, but to Eivor, it was still better than having none at all. No seat in Valhalla would ever be worth the mindless slaughter he had witnessed during his time in Midgard, and the last thing he wanted was to become an empty husk filled with nothing but regrets.

It was a cost that only the cruel could afford, and a dream that only the naive chased.

A dream of eternal glory.

#captober #writeober #assassin's creed valhalla #ac valhalla #eivor wolfsmal #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsson #male eivor #ac valhalla oc #ac valhalla fanfic

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justimajin · 4 years ago

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Til Death Do Us Part ♜ Pt.6

➟ Pairing: Namjoon x Reader

➟ Genre: Angst, Fluff, Eventual Smut

↳ (4.3k), Arranged Marriage AU

➟ Summary: If someone told you that you’d be marrying the Kim Namjoon, you would think you were being lied to, or worse, that you were hallucinating. However, fate seems to have it’s own ways of making the impossible possible and before you even know it, the title of Mrs. Kim is bestowed onto you. There’s just one problem: you’re not sure if Kim Namjoon is the person he says he is and the truth of your own identity is dangling by the strength of a mere thread.

➟ Warnings: 18+ rating, graphic depictions of violence and blood

gif credit.

➟ Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

➟ Next Update: Tuesday, January 26

The sound of birds chirping is the first thing you hear in the morning.

You slowly rise from the bed and rub your swollen eyes, a low yawn escaping your lips in the process. Blinking a mere couple of times, your vision slowly falls back into focus and you glance around a bit bewildered.

It’s almost like there’s a haze over your mind, contentment gracing you in the form of absolute vigor. Your shoulders feel lighter, and there’s no rapid racing of your heart, your regular pace of breathing leaving your lungs.

Your pupils suddenly twinkle and you whip around, only to be met with a bed that is half empty.

A sharp pang of disappointment instantly washes over you.

“Miss Y/N?”

Your head raises to the foreign sight of someone leaning down, staring down at you intently. You nearly stagger back, alarmed from the intrusion.

“I-I didn’t mean to startle you!” She hurriedly assures. You recall seeing her while Namjoon was talking to the company’s shareholders, remembering his inquiry about hiring a new maid.

“It’s alright.” You clear your throat, attempting to conceal your dismay. Unfortunately, it appears that you seem to be doing a terrible job at it.

“Master Kim left early this morning because of an urgent matter.” She clarifies right away, noticing the way it brings light to your eyes. Softly smiling, she continues, “He requested I stay here with you to make sure you were feeling alright.”

You slowly nod, “I understand.... But I’d like to be left alone for a while.”

Peering up to see her expression, she shakes her head right away, granting you with some privacy. The moment the door is closed on her way out, you squeeze your eyes shut.

A heavy sigh leaves your lips and you rise from the bed, moving your belongings around as you fish out for a familiar plastic box.

***

Even though your stomach churns and a bitter taste lingers in your mouth, you force your hands to keep drumming against the plastic, responding to the spurts of static it lets out. You’ve forgotten how many times you’ve fisted your hair in the process, leaks of more and more information involuntarily leaving you.

You’re near the end of your message relay, desperate for it to be over already. However, that’s when a certain line of static comes through, your eyes widening dramatically.

W-What?

A heavy knock pounds against the plastic and your pupils dart around manically, stance freezing up as you wait for the response.

The same static pattern resonates through.

“N-No…” You whisper. It has to be a mistake, it has to be.

But regardless, you need to know more. A series of frantic knocks resonate through the room, only for a chain of static to come through immediately. Before you have the chance to relay something back in exchange, it abruptly cuts off and despair spreads through your features.

You weren’t given an option.

You were given an order.

Legs quivering as your rise, a set of instructions repeat themselves over and over again in your mind like a vicious loop. Walking aimlessly like on autopilot, you scavenge through your clothes before locating a particular suitcase you had brought in prior to moving. It was one piece of luggage that you didn’t get the luxury of packing yourself, thrust into your hands instead.

Fumbling around with the handful of zippers and pockets, your hands roam around until they feel a sharp prick. Your breath instantly hitches and once you unzip the compartment, the cool metal meets your fingertips instantly.

Carefully taking it out, your eyes transfixed with horror onto the gun resting within the palm of your hand. Swallowing hard, you slowly rise to your feet and take a step back.

Stopping right at the corner of the bed, your orbs oscillate as they land right on top of the opposite side from your own.

You tear your eyes away, a harsh gasp leaving your lips. That’s when the shining and translucent object catches your line of vision and you hesitantly step forward towards the dresser, confronted with the sight of your own reflection.

Your complexion is extremely pale, small dark bags lining the bottom of your orbs and a sickly tint coating your lips. It dawns upon you how much the lack of sleep and being constantly on edge have morphed you into something you’re not accustomed to seeing, but once your gaze flickers up to your eyes, you freeze.

The mirror surprisingly reflects something there that you haven’t seen there for quite some time, something that was snatched away from you the moment you took on this grave task.

Why...why do you look so doubtful? It’s like‒

You swallow hard, hands tightening into fists.

It’s almost like you don’t want to do it.

The gun in your hand feels far too heavy, like it’s weight had tripled the moment you wrapped your fingers around it. The remorse flickering in your ears is far too obvious, drowning within the confines of your muted apathy.

Your eyes drop down, lips beginning to tremble. The bulky gun is gripped tightly within your hand and unconsciously, a lone tear slips down from your eye.

***

A tart meets your lips, softly chewing on the crumbling structure.

You're seated at the table where you first had dinner with Namjoon and his family, but this time around the new maid had relentlessly insisted you eat something and sat you down alone with a buffet in front of you.

You wonder if it’s because she can see how pale you look, or the fatigue running deep in your eyes.

Taking another bite, the maid hurriedly scurries and brings another platter, a soft smile on her lips as she places it within your reach. You don’t return the response, in fact you don’t move in the slightest as you chew down on the tart, functioning more like you were programmed on command than anything.

The only time light actually flickers within your orbs, is when the entrance door opens and you catch sight of your husband.

You instantly rise from your seat as Namjoon walks by, appearing to be lost in deep thought as he begins to head straight up the stairs, only halting when the maid stops him in his tracks. He looks confused for a moment, but after she converses with him you notice his eyes flicker over in your direction, and instantly his feet take him towards you.

“You’re having lunch?” He questions, seating himself down on the opposite end of the table.

You nod, “I was told you had something urgent to attend?”

“Ah,” Namjoon says, exhaustion evident on his features, “Some of the policemen wanted to talk about the case and I’ve been helping them with the investigation.”

Your jaw instantly tightens, but then you nod, waiting for him to continue. A brief silence dips through instead and it surprises you, looking up to see Namjoon frowning.

“What is it?”

A deep sigh leaves him, “Y/N...I‒” His features twist up as he winces, “E-Eunjoo….we’ve found evidence that she may have been killed too....”

Namjoon grimaces again, nearly whispering, “They found her corpse…”

“I-I see….” The food in front of you suddenly seems utterly stale, the appetite you convinced yourself of vanishing entirely.

The maid eventually comes over and asks Namjoon if he wants anything to eat, to which he just replies that he’s eaten prior to returning back home. You decide to take the exchange as an opportunity to excuse yourself, leaving your lunch behind as you head back to your room.

In the midst of your actions, a hand wraps around your wrist and halts you.

“Y/N.”

“Are...” Namjoon hesitates, “Are you okay?”

Fear immediately dwindles in you, “W-Why are you asking?”

“Well,” He lets go of your hand, “You and Eunjoo became close, hearing that she’s gone now….are you okay?”

His desperate eyes fall upon you and for a split second, you repress the urge to let all the tears burst out. The only matter of action you can do is simply nod, looking away from his heavy gaze.

However, your response doesn’t seem to convince Namjoon completely of its integrity. He laces his fingers with yours and suddenly rushes, heading up the stairs as he brings you along with him. His urgency baffles you, but nonetheless, you still follow closely behind.

Namjoon leads you into the bedroom, your body stilling when he tells you to face the same hanging mirror you were just scrutinizing prior to eating.

“Close your eyes.” He requests and although you find it quite strange, you oblige without hesitation.

An ice cold sensation touches your skin, right below your neck.

“You can open them now.” Namjoon whispers, his voice coming through the shell of your ear.

The moment you flutter them open, the sight before you has your eyes widening.

You stand right in front of the mirror, your reflection from waist up showcasing on the glass. Namjoon stands directly behind you, his hands coming around your shoulders to display the shining object that lies within them.

It’s an amethyst necklace, a simple purple pendant held together with a silver chain that Namjoon is carefully plucking. You cautiously touch the centre, letting your fingertips glide over the fine jewel in astonishment.

“Namjoon…” You whisper, a soft smile tugging on the corner of your mouth.

“I bought it a while ago.” He sheepishly explains, loosening his grip of the necklace and taking a step back, “I didn’t know if you would like it, but I thought it could possibly have the power to bring a smile to your lips.”

His words overwhelm you, rending you completely speechless.

Seesawing on his heels, he seems to pause for a second, his eyes flickering.

“C-Can I…?”

Namjoon looks at you as if encouraging you to decline if you wish to do so, but it manages to elicit a sad smile to line your lips. You swallow hard, nodding in response.

His eyes instantly beam and he hurriedly stands behind you once again, carefully gliding the metal against your skin until it sits right. As Namjoon attempts to connect it at the back, your line of vision lands upon the mirror, taking in the image before you.

There’s no doubt the pendant is extremely beautiful ‒ but what your eyes fixate on more is how it practically glimmers on you, managing to bring the glow back to your tired and sickly features.

Namjoon suddenly shifts, choosing to stand beside you as he quickly ensures that the chain is truly in place and will remain connected. The gesture results in your eyes swaying, moving from the pendant to him.

The way he stands almost reminds you of the day you got married, how he was before you appearing absolutely regal and dignified. At the time, you had no sense of what you were exactly getting yourself into, essentially thrust into a life that was plotted and planned for from the start.

And in the midst of it all, the man standing with you was someone you were meant to be careful of, to keep an precise eye out for his actions and to monitor them as closely as possible, all with the poise of being a wife.

But you were never prepared for any of this, prepared to find yourself admiring the warmth that easily spreads within his eyes, or the way he tenderly speaks to you, the strict premise of observing him becoming muddled with something else.

The image of a gun suddenly flashes by your eyes, making your shoulders tense.

Namjoon takes a step back and gazes at you, his mouth curving into a smile.

“You look beautiful.” He softly says, and your head snaps up, eyes connecting right away with his.

In that one single second, you truly wonder about it for the first time. You wonder if Kim Namjoon is truly as innocent as you ‒ a simplistic tool made for others to use.

***

It’s difficult for you to spend the remainder of the day without your eyes swaying over to the purple gem that sits at the base of your throat, but after a while you wonder if you’re simply doing it out of remorse.

A deep sigh leaves your lips as you squeeze your eyes shut, shaking your head slightly.

Namjoon suddenly enters the room, appearing frantic. At your concerned gaze, he simply smiles.

“There’s an urgent meeting I have to attend with the shareholders,” He quickly says, grabbing onto a bag from the corner of the living room, “I should be back soon.”

Namjoon casually throws the words into the air, as if they were nothing to be overly worried about. But he doesn’t see how your eyes are shell-shocked, jaw falling slack as blood drains from your features.

As he steps to move out the front door, your hand abruptly clasps around his wrist.

Namjoon turns around right away, amidst being puzzled with the sudden hold. However, that’s when his eyes flicker up to yours and for once, there’s no mask concealing your true expression.

“Y/N…?” Namjoon hesitantly asks, stepping forward. The moment he does, you step back, letting go of his hand swiftly with a strained chuckle.

“S-Sorry…” You instantly look away, but Namjoon doesn’t budge in the slightest. He instead chooses to hold onto your hand again, looking straight into your averted eyes.

“I’ll be back soon, Y/N...you don’t have to worry…” He whispers, and it takes every fiber of your being not to spill everything right then and there, head stagnantly nodding.

“I-I understand.” You manage to sputter out, mentally reprimanding yourself.

You can’t hesitate ‒ you’re not allowed to hesitate. You can’t feel emotions like these, emotions like you need him....

You’re a spy, Y/N.

As if instinct, the mask begins to form once again. Your eyes turn brighter, and a smile begins to line your lips swiftly, nowhere near the verge of collapsing like seconds ago.

You glance up, prepared to let go, “Namjoon, I‒”

Your breath immediately hitches and you freeze in place, eyes rapidly darting around.

Namjoon keeps his arms around your torso, hands resting on your back and his chin propped up on your shoulder. He embraces you tightly and unconsciously, a speck of tears begin to dampen your eyes.

For a moment, your lids flutter shut and you savour the gesture, entwining your arms around him.

When your eyes finally open, they can only focus on the palm of your hands ‒ flesh that has been constantly painted and coated in red with no end in sight.

Letting out a deep sigh, you part from him.

Namjoon is still gazing at you, eyes boring into your own. His hand rises up, thumb swiping away the tears that line your cheeks.

It’s at that moment you recognize their appearance and fumble to wipe the rest away, a strained smile slipping from your lips. You’re scrambling at what to say with him, no coherent words being able to surface at the tip of your tongue.

But what you fail to see in that single second, is how Namjoon’s eyes instantly perk up and how he immediately pulls you towards him.

“Y/N!”

Everything happens with a flash. At one point in time, Namjoon is caressing your face within his hands, softly smiling at you. Another split second later, he’s collapsed onto the ground, completely knocked out.

Your heart beats viciously as you quickly kneel down beside him and glance up, not picking up on the individual outside that has been particularly eyeing the two of you right as you stopped Namjoon from leaving.

A mask covers the stranger’s features, but you hear the sound of a low ‘tick’ and notice that his eyes are glued to Namjoon’s fallen form, giving you a hunch of where and in who his intention lies with.

Before you have the chance to do anything ‒ alert someone in the household or stay and figure out what the stranger would want with Namjoon, a sharp jab lands at the back of your head and you grimace, falling unconscious within seconds.

***

Droplets of water fall down from the ceiling.

Your throat burns like it’s on fire, a scorching sensation that makes seem as if you haven’t had a drink of water in days. Locks of your hair are dripping with sweat, and your vision is foggy, barely able to see through the dim lighting of the room.

Letting out a cough and then a groan, you squeeze your eyes shut before opening them fully, squinting to to focus in on your surroundings. The room is still dark, but there’s a faint light in the corner that allows you to make out the outlines of the silhouettes in front of you.

Namjoon is stationed on a chair, his hands out of sight and pushed behind him. He appears to be still unconscious, his eyelids drooping down.

You peer down, discovering that you’re in the same state as him ‒ confined to a chair with the unsettling feeling of something beginning to deeply cut through your wrists. Attempting to experiment, you give a slight tug and immediately a sharp pain shoots through your hands. It gives you a strong indication of what’s pinning you down, especially when your fingertips glide over the prickly thick material.

“You idiot! Why did you bring her too?!”

A loud and gritty voice suddenly shouts, causing you to wince, “She was with him when I knocked him out! What else was I supposed to do?!”

There’s a sound of resentment from the first individual before silence dips, and you take it upon yourself to quickly figure your way out of your confinement. You tug against the bindings roughly, ignoring the prickly sensation that stabs into your skin and brings tears into your eyes. Repeating the gesture, you can only hope that the bristly rope will begin to loosen.

But that’s when your harsh movements result in your chair shifting.

One of them snaps their head up immediately, treading in your direction. His heavy steps, coupled with his gritty voice that you heard, causes you to stiffen. Once he approaches you, you notice that his black attire conveniently seals him away from your prying eyes.

He grabs the back of your chair and immediately your breath hitches. As you glance up and your heart palpitates rapidly, you attempt to think of a way out, anything that could help you get out of this situation.

Your flickering eyes meet Namjoon’s chair, only to discover in relief at his slow stirring, blinking his eyes and attempting to squint through the poor lighting of the room.

The second individual approaches, “So what do we do? Kill them both?”

“Of course we kill them both! What other option is there?!”

Abruptly a fistful of your hair is tugged up from behind. A hiss leaves your lips, but it’s not long before a cold piece of metal is pressed against your scalp.

From your frontal view, you notice the first man walks over and does the same thing to Namjoon as he grimaces.

“Wait.”

The second man holding a gun to your head looks up, appearing confused. Your eyes frantically follow his field of vision across, noticing the first man to be smirking.

“Untie her.”

“What?”

“Just do it!”

He obliges, loosening the rope from your hands until it drops down. He tightly keeps a hold around your wrists as a form of constriction, before glancing back up for further instructions.

A gun is tossed over in his direction.

He catches it immediately, appearing even more puzzled, “What’s this for?”

The first man’s grin grows wider. “We’re going to have her kill him.”

“What? Why?”

The first man leaves Namjoon, striding over to your side. He takes the gun he’s tossed onto the ground, shoving it straight into your hands as you reluctantly accept it.

“She’s an add on,” He smiles, “and the perfect way we can cover up our tracks.”

Something gleams within his partner’s eyes, a sickening smile stretching over his lips and showcasing his pearl teeth to you. It elicits shivers to run down your spine and their next statement makes your stomach churn.

“After this, we’ll just discard her somewhere.”

Their conversation is abruptly cut off as they redirect their attention back to you, forcibly lining your gun wielding arm towards Namjoon, resulting in your eyes suddenly coming into contact with his wide ones.

They reflect your own, spelling out one message that you can read so clearly.

There’s terror in his eyes.

A soft click sounds from your left side and you look over to discover the first man keeping a gun right next to your head.

“Now, if you don’t want to die yourself.” He obscenely grins, “Shoot him.”

Colour drains from your features, your hands beginning to uncontrollably tremble.

The baneful thoughts begin to slip in too easily.

One bullet.

One bullet, and this all will be over.

Your next mission will be finally complete.

All it would take…..

Is just one bullet.

“Are you deaf?!” The man screams into your ear, “I said shoot him!”

The gun digs harder into your scalp, making you jolt and wince at the same time.

Namjoon isn’t looking at you. His gaze has drifted over to the ground, his head lowered.

Your heart viciously pounds against your ribcage and unknown to you, hot tears have begun to roll down the corner of your eyes.

“SHOOT HIM!”

“I CAN’T!”

Your chest heaves, vision blurring before your voice comes out as a soft sob, “I-I just c-can’t…”

“Y/N.”

The soft call of your name results in your head snapping, eyes immediately coming into contact with Namjoon’s. His eyes have become glossy and the sight of a sad smile lining his lips makes your chest constrict.

“Y/N...it’s okay.” He whispers, his words serving to only increase the tightening of your chest. He briefly looks down at the ground, before raising his head to meet your gaze again. You can clearly notice the water shimmering within his eyes and as he speaks, his voice cracks.

“J-Just‒….just complete your mission.”

Your breathing stops.

The longer he stares at you, the more it feels as if your knees are about to give out.

You still point a gun in his direction, but it’s accompanied with broken words, your voice barely coming out as a whisper.

“Y-You knew….”

Before you have the chance to say anything else, a hand grabs onto your wrist and snatches the gun away from you.

“Just kill them both already!”

Life suddenly enters your eyes again and with a grunt, your hand comes into direct contact with your kidnapper’s face. He stumbles back instantly, allowing you to quickly snag the gun and point it in his direction.

He freezes, glancing at his partner that holds Namjoon at gunpoint.

His partner snarls at you, “Let go of him!”

Your cold eyes don’t budge in the slightest, “Not a chance.”

Namjoon remains completely still, his eyes flickering over to you.

There’s a voice inside your head that is screaming. Telling you to turn back. Begging you to come back to your senses.

The mission will be compromised.

He will be able to kill you.

You will be destroyed.

But this time, you fight back with just as much vigor.

Then so be it.

Your hand instantly whips around, aiming for the man that is pointing his gun at Namjoon.

Your bullet punctures right into his neck.

Blood splatters onto the floor and leaks alarmingly from his mouth as he crumbles to the ground. However, he doesn’t loosen his firm hold on Namjoon’s suit and that’s when you rush over, wrenching his hand off and leaving him to submerge within a pool of his own blood.

You hurriedly bend down and undo the bindings on Namjoon’s hands, a sound of dismay leaving you when you notice his partner nowhere in sight. The moment Namjoon is free and he turns around, you immediately leap forward and hug him with a sigh of relief.

“Are you okay?”

Namjoon stares at you with a mixture of utter shock and bewilderment. Nonetheless, you still grab onto his hand, getting him to rise up from the ground.

“Come on, we have to get out of here!”

You quickly head out of the room with Namjoon trailing behind you, making sure to keep a firm hold on the gun in your hands. At one point the infrastructure and lack of light begins to confuse you on locating the exit, but Namjoon suddenly speeds up, taking the lead and guiding you instead.

The view of a thick steel door with light attempting to pool inside greets you and you exponentially increase your speed.

Suddenly your hold slips from Namjoon’s grasp and you slam against the ground harshly.

“Y/N!”

You can feel the sensation of fingers wrapping around your leg, turning around to see the man’s partner tight grip rendering you immobile. You attempt to shake him off, but his grip only tightens in retaliation.

The next couple of seconds is a complete blur to you. You can barely pick up on the way Namjoon swiftly reaches out, landing a forceful punch right against the man’s nose before grabbing and securing his hand within yours again.

He tugs you up right away, “Come on!”

Scrambling to your feet, you briefly look behind you, eyes widening in astonishment as to how the man’s partner is currently writhing on the ground, holding his nose in pain as copious amounts of blood drips down his knuckles.

Turning around, both of you make it to the exit and Namjoon roughly pushes against it with his shoulder.

You escape into the light.

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fangirl-ramblings · 4 years ago

Text

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x gn!reader

Summary: A return trip from Annesburg is about to change your life forever

Word count: 1520

Notes: CW: vague descriptions of wounds | Unsure how to tag this right now, Amensia Plot | Unbetaed [Any feedback is appreciated]

Tags for: @husbandits.

I was so excited when I saw that I was assigned to be your Secret Santa this year (even if i do still have a request I need to fulfill for you 🙈) I loved each item on your wishlist, but this one really jumped out at me.

"okay, so there was a post going around like last year i think where arthur had gotten amnesia and the reader took him in, and honestly i haven't been able to get it out of my head these past few months for some reason"

I couldn't find the original post you referred to, but a rough idea started to form in my head...The only problem is, this idea is so much bigger than the stories I usually write and I was starting to run out of time to get it posted for in time for the @rdr-secret-santa event (as you well know, I'm a slow writer) so...please accept my humble offering of the first chapter while I try chip away at the remaining parts.

The Best Kept Memories

[working title]

Chapter 1: Late 1899 [Oct/Nov]

All this commotion was frustrating to say the least; you'd arrived in Annesburg late yesterday afternoon, ready to pick up the supplies you'd needed to stock your cabin up with before the weather turned back into the harsh winter the Grizzlies were famous for. Despite arriving in town a good 30 mins before the train carrying your supplies from Saint Dennis was due in at the station, an hour later you were still standing on the platform waiting for it to suddenly come rumbling down the tracks.

"All the trains have been delayed you know" A local busybody informed you.

"Yeah, I kinda gathered," you politely replied - not really wanting to be drawn into conversation...too bad the older lady didn’t get the message.

"Talk is…" she leaned in close, as if she was sharing confidential intel that only you were to know about, "a bunch of degenerates living not too far from here, decided to rob one of the earlier trains coming up from city."

You found yourself rolling your eyes internally upon hearing this; you were aware the Murfree Brood were a sadistic bunch of murdering bastards, but from what you previously heard about them, they could barely care for and ride their horses, let alone plan to board and rob a moving train.

"Terrible affair I heard, seems they managed to make it all the way up towards Bacchus Bridge before…" she stopped mid-conversation, not because she ran out of gossip to share with you but she had noticed that the tracks began to rumble and the sound of a train's whistle could be heard approaching the station.

"Well, looks like the delay is finally over," you commented, pointing out the obvious.

"Oh do excuse me will you." You sighed with relief as you watched the woman move a little down the way, heading towards the train's engine to see if the driver had any updates of the goings on in Saint Dennis to share with her.

By the time you'd finished loading your wagon up, you were exhausted and couldn't face the thought of driving home through Roanoke Ridge in the dark, especially if the Murfree Brood were still loitering about. Looking down the main street you saw the local hotel had some vacancies and made the impulsive decision to spend the night in one of the rooms there, ready to feel refreshed in time for your morning ride home.

While it seemed like a very good idea at the time, you soon realised you'd made a huge mistake. After waking up and having a quick wash before getting dressed, you made your way back outside to find the most peculiar sight. The mining town of Annesburg, usually full of workers with dirt covered faces, wandering about in their equally filthy overalls, was now overrun by well dressed men in suits.

"They say they're Pinkertons." You overheard the gossiping woman that you encountered the previous night, telling her newly captive audience. "One of them told me personally that there was a gunfight up near Beaver Hollow."

"Well Eunice, I heard talk there was reports of those hooligans that they're after, fleeing into the night and the 'Pinkertons' had to chase them all over the Ridge well into the early hours of the morning," another lady informed her, looking super smug that she'd been able to provide some information that her friend wasn't already privy too.

"Well either way, several roads around the area have been blocked off by the men in suits." Eunice huffed before walking off, looking for a less informed person to chat too.

Shaking your head, you dismissed their talk as nothing but idle gossip and jumped up on your wagon, ready to head back home along one of the roads leading South.

"This road is closed," the well-suited man hissed as you approached the roadblock with your wagon. "I suggest you find another route."

"It wasn’t closed yesterday when I rode into town, any chance you could let me go past just this once?" you protested, not really knowing why you were bothering. His stony face told you this was not a man who had much compassion for others, but wanting to get back home before the storm brewing on the East side of the Lannahechee river rolled in, you persisted, "I can be home within the hour if you let me past, whereas the other route will take me twice as long - not to mention those treacherous mountain roads I'd be forced to travel along."

"I said, find...another...way" he growled at you, clenching his teeth as he emphasised each word.

"Fine," you sighed as you reversed your wagon and drove along the road heading north.

Even though this route would take you the better part of the day to get home, you didn't mind so much as you could take the time to enjoy the beautiful scenery of this part of the country, especially the area around the huge mountain that rudely stood directly in front of you.

Taking a left hand turn to finally head southwards; you trundled along, lost in a world of your own as you admired the red wildflowers that grew in abundance here. Making a mental note to maybe pick some up on your next visit up here, so you could liven your cabin up, you were shocked when your horse suddenly reared up, whinnying a distressed shrill.

"Hey now Ponos, what's to do with you?" you asked gently, hopping down off your wagon to assess the area around you. There was nothing obvious that you could see in the road, but out of the corner of your eye you noticed a flock of scavenger birds circling over something that must be hidden out of sight behind the giant rock to your right.

"Trust you to be scared of a half-eaten animal" you chuckled as you patted Ponos' neck in an effort to calm him down. A beautiful Chestnut coloured Belgian Draft, you'd named him after the Greek God of hard labour & toil and while you couldn’t fault his excellent work ethic and seemingly unlimited stamina, you soon realised why the stable owner had offered you such a cheap price for him all those years ago; this giant of a horse was easily spooked by the smallest of things.

After reaching up to grab your gun from underneath your seat, you started walking over to the most likely spot to investigate. If it was a fresh kill you had enough space on your wagon to throw the carcass on and take it home to make a nice meal or two out of.

Approaching the overgrowth behind the rock, the birds squawked and scattered when they realised that you were about to steal the meal they had their eyes on. Getting closer, you noticed a heaped mound laying there. Your mouth started to water as you realised whatever this was, it was certainly likely to be bigger than a rabbit and therefore would provide several tasty meals over the next few days. Using the barrel of your rifle, you cautiously moved apart the long grass, almost dropping your gun as you finally saw what was previously hidden.

Looking like death personified this was certainly no animal, but a seriously injured man. His poor face, gaunt, bloody and bruised. Judging by the shallow, laboured breaths you could see him trying to take, he was still alive - but only just.

"Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?" You asked, not really expecting a response but the almost corpse groaned and weakly nodded in response.

You glanced back at the grey clouds that had followed you on your journey from Annesburg, before looking back at this wretched soul. What was it your old pa used to tell you?

'There's never any harm in being a good Samaritan to those that need your help.'

Realising that you could never let yourself walk away and leave a healthy man to be stranded in a storm, let alone an almost dead one to succumb from his wounds, you quickly set your gun aside and placed his arms around your neck. Summoning all the strength you had, you somehow managed to pick the sandy-haired man up and manoeuvre him onto the back of your wagon.

"I live a short ride away, you’re welcome to rest there until you get your strength back up.” Unravelling a few pelts you had stored with the rest of your cargo, you tossed them over the injured man to help try to keep him warm.

"Sorry it's not very comfy but I guess it beats lying there in the cold waiting for the cruel embrace of death," you explained whilst taking out a carrot from your satchel to feed Ponos, in the hope he had gotten over his fear and was willing to continue your journey back home, “Tell me, do you have a name sir?”

Jumping back into the driver’s seat, you looked back over your shoulder, only to find your passenger had passed out.

#arthur morgan x reader #rdr2 fanfic #rdr secret santa 2020 #fangirl writes #(this techincally is still a work in progress so i may edit parts in the future

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imfallingdown-icantwakeup · 5 years ago

Text

Seven for Secret, Never to be Told

Fishmonger’s Daughter

Chapter Five

Taglist: @chipster-21, @ultracolorfulnerdcollection, @cthylla-rlyeh @a-banana-for-your-thoughts

Word count: 4287

A/n: So I was over half way done with a request and this... happened. Let me know how it is, this is my first time writing a... flavorful? chapter? Idk I tried! Thanks in advance guys!!!

Annoyance.

Annoyance was clawing its way through my stomach and settling in my chest before spilling from my mouth loudly in front of Jaskier.

“Birds? We’re following birds.”

“Technically, you’re following me,” Jaskier places his chin at my shoulder, mouth close to my ear as he talks a touch quieter than normal. I tighten the reins in my grip as his warm words pass my neck fondly, causing a flush to rise in their wake. “I’m following Geralt and Geralt is following the birds.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about technicalities.” I complain once more, grip ever tightening as his hands find purchase snugly against my middle, pressing me to the front of his chest firmly as he reaches around himself, our thighs rubbing together with every action. The sudden change in position has me visibly blushing red, the only sound I can hear in cadence with his voice was my own racing heart. I feel something placed between us before he’s suddenly pushing me away, something hard pressed into the small of my back. Was that-

No-

“That’s a great line, quite magnificent actually. Do you mind if I use that?” He asks, his voice sounding off as I hear his pages shuffle. He uses my back as a table as he scribbles into his book, the sensation making me feel dizzy for a moment before I remembered how to breathe. Space. Something outside the perverse number of hormones flowing through him and into me at his touch in various places. It was all encompassing, as if I was blinded at the sun.

A flash of silver flashes in front of me, the light reflecting off Geralt’s surprisingly neat hair in the mid-morning sun. That’s right. We are following Mister Grouchy-Pants-Witcher.

“Geralt, why are we following birds?” I ask obnoxiously as I urge Hamish faster, so we are riding along our companion. One more reason to keep the hormones in check.

“They’re scavengers. We could use the extra coin.” His voice is hard when he speaks. He keeps his eyes up as I shake my head at him, a small scoff falling from my lips. We continue for a moment, Jaskier writing and Geralt looking towards the pale morning sky. I wait for him to follow up with anything before I sigh dramatically, leaning back onto Jask, interrupting his song-making.

“How dull. I don’t see how the two can be-oh.” The smell hits before I see Geralt jump off a nervous Roach, hands making a weird figure, muttering under his breath as an otherworldly calmness eases over her. Hamish isn’t as squeamish as the mare, walking behind Geralt just fine as he moves some over hanging vegetation, taking a deep breath before leading the way through.

The scene before me is sickening and I bring a hand to my mouth in disgust. A young girl in blue lay without her face and neck, her clothes bloody and torn. The man beside her, either a lover or relative. You could see where the animals in the forest had started picking at the decaying flesh.

Geralt walks towards the man while Jaskier ends up by the woman, leaving me in my perch. I keep my eyes on the stoic man, watching how he works. He’s methodical in his steps, only touching what he must before moving on. His gaze flickers to me as he reaches down, snatching a leather pouch from the corpse.

“Are you sure that you want to continue with this adventure?” Geralt asks as he stands, going through the man’s contents as I look at him fully. He seemed unfazed, almost numb to the situation as he continued. I bristle at his small quip sent my way, a glare burning a hole in the side of his head while he surveys the entire layout before him, trying to read the papers.

“This rose, Elowyn. Is it just me or does it look familiar?” Jask asks as he comes beside me, his hand touching my calf to gain my attention. My gaze never falters from Geralt although he still hasn’t looked at me and I raise a hand to Jaskier for a moment. The fire never dies, oh no; she slowly simmers in my blood and splats from my mouth like a boiling pot bubbled over.

“Excuse me?” I press Geralt, Hamish taking a step forward as my feet dig into him. Geralt pockets the coin and a piece of paper, placing the man’s belongings back on his person before he turns towards me sighing lightly. He lifts the man’s hand while crouched, holding up the blue decaying appendage. He places it down gently before he walks over to the woman, flipping her over as I gag slightly at the swollen flesh, looking away before my insides came into the out.

“I didn’t stutter- “

“Elowyn, look.” Jaskier presses as he holds a rose up. I glance at it quickly before shooing him away, hopping off the Ham as I point a finger in Geralt’s direction. The ground sways beneath my feet as I turn to Geralt and the body. I push through the feeling as a holy fire takes rage inside me. This man had the audacity-

“If we have a problem, then you say, you know use words? You say something to m- “I’m cut off by a loud piercing shriek and it causes me to cover my ears. I feel Jaskier grab my arm from behind, pulling me closer as I instinctually move towards him.

“Quiet.” Geralt chides as if I can speak right now. I swallow my fear after a moment, gathering myself as Geralt stares off into the trees around us. His eyes were narrowed, and you could tell that even though he was five feet away from us physically, he wasn’t there with is in that moment.

The mask of a Witcher fell over his face as I glance down to where Jaskier and I are grabbing each other’s arms tightly, looking around the greenery myself. The air grows stagnant as Geralt stills, his gaze set over my shoulder as I am faced towards him. Jaskier gasps lightly before he turns his back towards whatever he was facing and grips my arm tighter, turning me towards his chest pressing my head to his chest. One hand stayed behind my head, and I could hear his heart beat hard and fast-and-

Jaskier was scared.

“Hello, there.” Geralt grumbles as he looks over our shoulder, causing me to go still. He holds his hand out to Jaskier and I, stilling us entirely. Didn’t matter if he told me to run at that point, because I wasn’t going anywhere, I could hardly breathe as the moments seemed to drag on into forever. It’s a moment before I hear a woman’s giggle from behind me before Geralt is shoving past us suddenly, his hair a streak of white as he runs. It takes me a moment to assess that something has happened before I look up at Jaskier, eyes large as I grip his shirt tighter.

“The fuck was that?” I ask as he drags me to the Ham, shoving me into the saddle before he mounts the horse behind me, grabbing the reins and running after Geralt. I could feel his heart pound through my back when he pressed into me. It was beating hard, but not as fast-no longer scared. Jaskier takes a deep breath, his nose pressed into the side of my head as he leans down to mutter quietly into my ear.

“My next song, come on. Let’s go after him, Elowyn.” Jaskier whines, his voice airy as he’s already weaving Hamish through the foliage, the Witcher’s hair a beacon of white through the green forest.

“But Roach, we can’t just leave- “

“Nu-uh. No one touches Roach; she’ll be fine. Let’s go. We’re wasting time and he’s always so damn stingy- “

“There he is you bumbling baby. He’s standing in front of a gate.” I pinch Jaskier’s arm as it stays encircled around me, Hamish coming to a stop next to Geralt. Jaskier dismounts, hand out to help me off. I take it as I slide down, coming to stand between the two men as Jaskier ties Hamish to a tree nearby, leaving Geralt and I alone for an awkward moment. I caught my breath as we stood there, shaking off the moment’s haze before moving onto the next. “Where are we, Geralt?”

“Quiet.” He shushes, stalking towards the gate before opening it slowly. I follow behind him, eyes taking in the overgrown greenery and the fallen nettles, looking at the three walls surrounding an open courtyard closing in a mansion. The living space seemed to try to blend into the forest outside the walls, the mansion taking on ivy, dirty damp patches with chipping plaster. The shutters were drawn closed, as was the door.

“What are you doing?” Geralt threw Roach’s reins over a pillar by the gate, the gravel crunching under our feet as we make our way inside. Geralt stills at my words before walking towards a path, the fountains he passed seemed to be more interesting than myself.

“Shut up. Either stay behind me or stay by the horses quietly, I don’t give a shit. But you need to shut. Up.” Geralt hisses over his shoulder, body tense. I halt at the harshness of his tone, the icy words freezing me to the spot as I gape at him.

“Okay. We’ll be quiet, won’t we Elowyn?” Jaskier assures from behind me, voice grasp on my elbow. I nod my head meekly at Geralt even though he was paying me no mind, his anger stunning me. I sigh as I walk over to the roses quietly, taking note to keep my further inquiries to myself. I look at the richcolor of the rose bush before me. Indigo faded into a deep purple, and it was hypnotizing. I find myself leaned over to smell them, a warm sense flooding me at the almost-typical rose smell, only more intense and with-

“Happy birthday. Ely!” Maddox said as he handed me a gorgeous dark blue rose. I smiled broadly at him while I grabbed it with clumsy hands, the drinks from tonight catching up with me.

“Thank you, Maddy. Smells pretty.” I tell him as I shove the rose in his face, rather violently, trying to show him how pretty she smelled.

“Geralt. Geralt, these roses. I’ve- Jaskier you’re right. I ha-ah!” I jump back with a shriek as the shutters open and close violently, making me fall on my ass. I feel Jaskier pulling me up as I look around for Geralt, my hand going to his grip on my arm as I scan the courtyard having heard a slight crunch of gravel.

I barely turn to catch a glimpse of Geralt’s right hand arching to grab his blade, his left yanking his belt causing the sword to jump into his grasp. It sings in the air as it moves in a half circle, pointed towards a raging man-beast creature that was charging towards us. Gravel sprayed everywhere around us, pelting us as he screeched to a halt some feet away from the blade, growling at the Witcher.

Geralt never flinches, glaring down his blade at the bear-like head. The creature thing was almost all man, other than the head being a beast. It was in the shape of a bear with pointed ears, a pair of wild eyes and crooked teeth with a wicked tongue all surrounded by a mane of gangly looking hair.

“Flee, mortal man!” The monster roared, flapping his paw-like hands but not moving from the spot, “I’ll devour you! Tear you to pieces!” His voice was booming around us, the shutters clacking around Jaskier and I. Geralt didn’t move, didn’t lower his sword. “Are you deaf, man? Away with you!” His voice seemed to waver under Geralt’s gaze as the creature screamed at him frantically. He made a sound that was somewhere between the squeal of a branded pig and a stag’s bellowing roar, the shutters rattling and clatter as the noise thunders around us. Plaster falls from the sills, the roof having moved from his voice. Geralt never flinches and continues to stare.

“Clear off while you’re still in one piece!” He seems less sure of himself when he resumes speaking, his voice not nearly as intimidating as it was in the beginning. “Because if you don’t, then- “

“Then what?” The Witcher questions. The creature shakes his mane at him, gasping as he tilted a head in curiosity. He started to bare his fangs as Jaskier urged me forward, and I pushed back against his chest at the sight of the creature’s mangled teeth. His bloodshot eyes dart from Jaskier and I to Geralt, assessing the situation before he turns his attention to the Witcher.

“Lower your blade, that’s ‘then what’. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but you are the trespassers here.” He holds a paw up in gesture to the overgrowth around him, a huff leaving him as he flaunts his dwelling. “Maybe holding a blade to a man on his own property is customary from where you come from, but I must say I find it offensive here.”

“I find it customary to protect myself when someone charges at me with a war cry, screaming how they are going to ‘tear me to pieces’,” Geralt mocks, still unwavering in stance. Jaskier urges me forward again and I take a tentative step forward to our Witcher.

“Pox on it! First you trespass, then you dare insult me?” The creature roars, eyes glancing our way as we start walking forwards. “And you, woman. Do you wander into everyone’s yard to desecrate their rose bushes?” His tone is harsh and somewhat mocking, shocking me out of my bewilderment. It feels as if a lightning bolt struck me as I realized he was talking to me as if I had lost my head. Jaskier bumps into my back as I stop unexpectedly, blinking at the creature for a moment too long.

“Excuse me, I was merely admiri- “

“Pox on it!” He curses again, attention resting on the sword still pointing his way. We walk up to Geralt in the tense silence as the creature and hunter glare as they asses one another stiffly.

“Geralt, lower your weapon. He’s harmless, look at him. He’s not even trying to attack.” Jaskier mutters as we get closer, nudging him slightly on his shoulder while still gripping my arm. Geralt looks his way for a moment, a sigh leaving his lips. He lowers his arm slowly as Jaskier lets me go beside Geralt, taking a tentative step forward to talk to the creature. “Excuse my friend, he’s a hired hand to guide us through this forest. We are lost travelers, myself a bard with my lovely muse. We found this wall-courtyard… thing and thought-”

“The highway is to the east, keep your left shoulder to the sunset and you should find it in two hours hike.” The creature brushes off, taking a step towards his door.

“In two hours, the sun will have fallen, and we will be at the misfortune of anyone out numbering us. Well, anyone who outnumbers my friend at least. Please, sir. For my lady,” Jaskier says, hand reaching out to me as he speaks. I look from him to Geralt, his eyes beckoning me gently as I glance Jaskier’s way again. Jas smiles gently and I find myself moving towards him, a moth drawn to the light. He grabs me by the hand as we stand before the creature, and I tuck myself into his chest when the creature chuckles lowly, bloodshot eyes causing a shiver to run my spine when he lingers his gaze on me a moment too long.

“Wouldn’t want any hungry animals to get her,” The creature considers as he eyes me suspiciously. Jaskier’s hand snakes around my back, pressing my lower back to him as I stand a bit taller. I take refuge in his strength as I roll my eyes at the beast before me, feeling brave.

“I’ve seen hungry animals; there is no equivalence between you.” I comment causing Geralt to scoff from behind us.

“Feisty. You have some spirit, a fitting muse for a bard.” The beast says before walking back to the door, summoning us along. “First, you join me for dinner then we will see where the night leaves us.” Geralt walks in front of me before Jas pulls me along. I float along side him, taking in the overgrown ivy on the statue of a dolphin as we pass it. “This? What is this?” He stops Geralt in his tracks in the doorway of his home, and I can hear the soft melody of jewelry singing through the air. Jaskier keeps me behind him as we stand a foot away from Geralt, giving the more experienced man space.

“It is the talisman of my guild.” Geralt’s words are as steady as his gaze I noticed as I stand on my tip toes behind Jaskier. The bard huffs in annoyance, moving to the side with a heavy sigh.

“Which is?”

“I am a Witcher. I hunt monsters for a price… or guard a man through the forest where I may be led to monsters.” Geralt taunts and I could hear the smirk he wears inflate the air around us, a tense silence falling over us as the beast takes a step closer to Geralt.

“Hmm. May I?”

“Of course.” I hear the chain sing through the air more than see it, Geralt’s broad shoulders cutting off any visual we had. “It is made of pure silver. Quite important for my profession.” The creature grabs the chain of the necklace, almost choking Geralt as he pulls him closer. Geralt grabbed his wrist and I felt the air vanish from my lungs, holding onto Jask’s coat tightly as I watched the scene unfold.

“Do I have need to be wary? Inviting a monster hunter to a monster’s table?” He tightens his grip, pulling Geralt closer as the hand tightens around his wrist. The creature starts to make a boarish sound as the silence dragged on, Geralt’s attention focused solely on the being before him.

“No.”

“Sir, if I may,” I interrupt, walking in front of Jaskier. As I walk by, he wraps an arm around my waist, restricting my advance on the two. “I never properly introduced myself. I am Rose, and this is Dandelion. I think it inappropriate if we weren’t introduced before sitting at your table. After all, that would be offensive,” I lie easily, Jaskier’s hand at my waist tightening as I speak with my hands.

“Hm. It would.” He releases Geralt without a second thought, a calm washing over him when he realized a lady was present. “My name is Nivellen and I am master of this home. It does whatever I want.” He takes a step closer although Geralt doesn’t move. The beast, Nivellen, holds a hand out. “Pay close attention, woman.” His hand quickly tightens to a fist and all the shutters and doors clamor open with a loud bang causing me to jump. Nivellen growls, seemingly pleased with himself as I laugh at his demonstration of chaos.

“Are you a wizard, Nivellen?” I ask quietly as he leads us inside. The beast shakes his mane as we enter the foyer, lifting a hand to light the way as we enter a lavish looking home. Along the walls lay expensive looking paper, thick in nature, the soft swirls of blue and yellow giving a distinct home feeling as you walked in.

“No, the house started listening to me one day. Doing whatever I asked of it. I wasn’t al- it’s quite complicated. Would you like to hear the whole story, Rose?” The fake name sounds rotten as it falls from his mangled lips, his claws extended towards me.

“Please.”

“This way, we will talk over dinner.” Nivellen addresses as he walks through an archway, Geralt hot on his heels. I stand as I let him pass, waiting for Jaskier who was behind him. Jas holds me back for a moment, standing close to me while he keeps his grip soft on my arm.

“Dandelion? Rose?” He asks, eyes light with humor. I scoff lightly as I relax into him, poking him lightly in the shoulder before answering. Jaskier’s hand falls to my own as we stand there, I open and shut my mouth a few times before I feel a flush rise to my cheeks.

“Well, yes. I use roses in my soap and well…” I say, eyes dropping down to where our hands meet. His fingers are wrapped around my wrist lightly, holding me there as I stand close to his chest. Close enough to smell the soap he used before they left the inn. Dandelions and lavender.

“Hmm?” He hums, pulling my gaze back up to him while I get lost in reverie. I blush harder under his gaze, flustering about like a fish out of water.

“You-you smell like dandelions, is all.” I sputter, trying to take a step back to give myself space. To breathe. Jaskier’s grip tightens around my wrist before pulling me flush to his chest, our face inches from one another. His grip stays on my wrist while his other hand wraps around my back, his fingers splayed on the bottom curve of my ribs. He was holding me tight to him as we stand by the wall, I noticed myself gasping for breath at the sudden change in position. Jaskier’s deep rumbling chuckles settle in my core, a deep warmth spreading at his playful smile.

“You noticed what I use in my soaps?” He whispers, the same smile brightening his eyes. My eyes flash down to his smile, so full of warmth and his tongue sweeps to dampen his cracked lips. I close my eyes as a wet heat envelops me, and I feel his nose dip down to skim my heated cheeks. I giggle at the sensation of his breath as it hits my face, his own chuckles reverberating through my ears, my chest-

“Well, that just sounds creepy when you put it like tha- “

“Dandelions and what? What else do I use?” Jaskier demands, hand tightening around my ribs, no space between us as we breath heated air. I smile as I open my eyes and push on his arm, trying to put distance between us and look over his shoulder, giggles escaping through the slight struggle.

“Jaskier, they’re waiting for us.” I remind him, still straining to see over him as his hold on me tightens. His laughter dances around us as he continue to get in my way, eyes sparkling with such a thirst for more. We locked eyes and I swear I drowned in their depths. As I gazed into his oceans of blue, I could see the stars that graced the night sky; I could hear the angels sing his ballads-

“Dandelions and?” He coaxes, pulling me close to him once again. I can feel his heart beat hard and fast in his chest as I lean against him. I bring my hands and place them on the inside of the green doublet he wears, next to his mother’s ring he wears bound by leather, and savor the unsteady erratic beating of his heart under my warm palm as a realization hit me. He heart was beating like this before, just like earlier.

Jaskier was afraid.

“Lavender,” I whisper, lifting my nose to skim his jaw. I inhale his scent deeply, etch it into my very lungs until they are filled to the point of bursting before exhaling slowly, eyes closed as I seat myself against his chest where he had me happily pinned. “dandelions and lavender.”

“You are the fucking devil, the unholy angel Himself. Have I told you that today?” He asked as he places his cheek to the top of my head. We stand there hugging one another for a moment, a heat coursing through us before Jaskier clears his throat. I lift my head to look at him and he’s so close. My eyes dart to his mouth once again, I can feel the warmth of his breath fan my li-

“Did you two get lost?” I faintly hear Geralt call from behind Jaskier’s back. I pry myself from his grip to his chest quickly before I rushed by with a small smile. His gaze follows me, not quite moving from that spot as I try to locate the Witcher and our gracious host.

I try to ignore the heat that is running through my veins, try calming the blush of my cheeks as I enter the dining room. I see Geralt has already taken a seat to Nivellen’s right. I sit next to our host, causing Geralt to glower slightly at me as I sit across from him, slouching in a very unladylike fashion. I kick him lightly under the table, the adrenaline and excitement of this all coming to a head, trying to conceal the smirk that comes after when he’s glaring at my erratic behavior.

Jaskier tumbles in not a moment later, chuckling as he threw himself into the seat next to me, flinging his arm around the back of my chair as he got comfortable. He seemed to be on the same high, his hand lazily pinching my shoulder before he smiles broadly, eyes sparkling mischief as he addressed our odd host of the evening.

“I believe there was something said about dinner?”

#the witcher jaskier #jaskier x reader #jaskier imagines #jaskier x oc #imagines The witcher Jaskier x reader #jaskier x you

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knoughtwright · 5 years ago

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Tatterdemalion Ch. 6: Hyacinth and Sorrel

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Though Amaranth had been born within Anpiel’s wheel, her mother Hyacinth and her father Sorrel were both immigrants. They had been priests, speakers to the dead, in a city where such heresies had been permitted. Their city, Hornblende, jealously guarded the souls of its dead, angering the angelic psychopomps which desired to take them to judgment. Hornblende warred against the angels for years but eventually succumbed. The chorus of its dead was broken, the spirits sorted and taken away to the nearest heaven or hell according to the angels’ determination, and the priesthood made to join them by the traditional method of a knife to the throat and a pyre. Hyacinth and Sorrel escaped but were forced to leave behind everything they owned and everyone they knew.

Anpiel had taken them in gladly. It did not oppose the angels of judgment but nor did it feel any camaraderie with them. It cared about its birds and only its birds. If someone could help it further its own part of the divine plan, it didn’t matter at all if they had acted in violation of some other part. The former priests, tired and hungry and on the run, were for their part more than willing to take on a new vocation.

My most vivid memories of Sorrel are as a storyteller. He would sit the children around him after our evening meal and tell us about Hornblende, about his travels before reaching our home, about the things he had seen while scavenging for Anpiel, about things he had entirely fabricated. He never equivocated, he never tried to conceal which stories were fiction and which were fact, but he told them in exactly the same way and it was a long time before I learned how to tell the difference. Sumac was more interested in the fictions and Amaranth only ever wanted to hear the truths, but I loved both the same. I loved watching the way his hands gesticulated as if sculpting the scene out of invisible clay, I loved the emotions expressed in his face and voice, I loved the vivid descriptions that made it feel like you had seen and heard and tasted everything in the story yourself.

All my early memories of Hyacinth are of her being unhappy. My mother told me that the loss of her home had broken something in Hyacinth which had never really healed. She was far from totally dysfunctional; she raised three children while surviving the dangerous conditions of working for Anpiel, which is a feat many healthy people would have struggled with. But often things I and others said would make her snap at us or start crying and I couldn’t understand why. Sometimes she’d lose her focus in the middle of a task or conversation. Amaranth told me she would frequently wake up crying and occasionally screaming. When she was out scavenging, the other adults said, she was reckless and showed little concern for her safety. She frequently came back with injuries.

I think she was as surprised as anyone else when it was Sorrel, and not her, who died on a scavenging expedition. He ran afoul of the weaver which had spared my mother and me, whose territory had crept significantly closer to Anpiel in the intervening years. His scavenging party had, like us, gotten lost in the fog of the weaver’s maze, but apparently the weaver was less inclined to show mercy to a group of three armed adults than to one tired and underequipped refugee and her three-year-old daughter. The rest of the party made it out alive; Sorrel did not.

When they returned without Sorrel, Hyacinth left to retrieve him within the hour. She went unarmed: The weaver was by far the greatest danger she would face in this task, she had no hope of actually defending herself from it if it came down to that, and not antagonizing it seemed like a much higher priority, especially given the mercy it had shown my mother and me. She took an offering: An insectile outsider which had crept in through a crack in the world, the length of her forearm, which she had killed a year previously but which hadn’t decomposed a bit since then. The thing was useless to Anpiel but could be quite useful to a weaver. The offering wasn’t a particularly effective bargaining chip, as there was nothing preventing the weaver from killing Hyacinth and taking the outsider’s corpse anyway, but at least it could serve as a show of good faith.

She returned a day and a half later, Sorrel’s spirit following behind her. Her plan had worked: She had gone into the weaver’s territory, presented it with the outsider’s corpse, and been permitted to retrieve her husband’s soul and leave unharmed. But on their return, Anpiel’s wall wouldn’t open to let them in.

Sorrel was almost certainly damned for his work as a heretical priest. If left outside, sooner or later he would be found by a psychopomp and taken to a hell, and Hyacinth was unwilling to allow her husband to meet such a fate. Anpiel, for its part, didn’t want to antagonize the angels of judgment by harboring a damned soul. The risk wasn’t really that great: It was unlikely that the angels of judgment would even become aware of Sorrel, and if they did Anpiel could fend off anything short of a small army, and they wouldn’t send an army for one soul. And even if it did come to that, Anpiel could always surrender the soul if necessary. But it was more of a risk than it wanted to take.

Hyacinth camped outside the wall for another two days. She made it clear to the angel that she wasn’t going to abandon her husband. If Sorrel was not permitted to enter, then Hyacinth would leave with him and try to find refuge elsewhere, and Anpiel would lose her as a worker. Eventually the angel caved, apparently deciding that the risk was a smaller cost than losing another pair of hands. The wall opened and the pair entered.

Sorrel was the first dead spirit I had seen. At a glance, he looked as he had in life, but closer attention made it quickly apparent that his image wasn’t consistent with a three-dimensional body taking up a specific location in space. My depth perception failed looking at him, making him appear to be a very large object very far away, even looking further away than objects which were clearly behind him. His appearance didn’t change in quite the right way when I moved to see him from a different angle. When I tried to touch him he seemed to recede away from me without moving, somehow remaining behind my hand even when my hand was right where I had been sure he was.

His interactions with me and the others became more limited. He could speak, but only things he had said before. He could carry out apparently normal social interactions, but only if they hewed closely to a script he had used in life, and the moment a conversation included anything novel, he either lost interest or his responses stopped making sense. He was utterly passive, allowing Hyacinth to lead him around everywhere.

Hyacinth explained the minds of the dead by comparison to dreams and memories. Their experience of the world was like a dreamer’s experience of their dream, in that they still felt and saw things and responded to them but all of it just... happened, without them having any kind of choice or control. They didn’t remember the past the way the living did; it would be more accurate to say that they were memories of the past. A living person could not interact with anything without being changed by it; a dead person no longer changed but was the crystallization of everything they experienced in life.

Sorrel still told us stories, but they were, word for word, the same stories he had told us before he died. There was no novelty and no variation and he couldn’t answer questions that would take him off his previously established track. After a little while Hyacinth tried to fill in for him and tell stories herself. She threw herself at the task with more passion than I’d ever seen from her, but she wasn’t very good at it. She couldn’t tell the story with much expressiveness and she didn’t know how to set a scene with her words, and her attempts always ended up feeling more like dry lists of facts than stories.

Then one night she and Sorrel sat together and she told us “Listen to what I say but how he says it.” They told us a story together, alternating sentences. Hyacinth would give an unembellished statement of what had happened, and then Sorrel would follow it up with a sentence from some other story, nonsensical on the face of it but capturing the feeling of the ongoing narrative better than Hyacinth could. At first I would try to tune out Sorrel’s words entirely, and just pay attention to his tone and gestures. But after a while I realized that his words fit the story too. Not literally, of course; they were about different events in different places. But they told you what it would feel like to be there, even if all of the details were wrong. Hyacinth and Sorrel continued telling stories this way the whole time we lived within Anpiel. Their stories had a beauty which even Sorrel’s stories in life had lacked, and even most of the adults ended up gathering around most nights to experience the new art form which the couple had created.

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in-tua-deep · 6 years ago

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you cant just bring up an au where animals survive the apocalypse and not elaborate?????

v a l i d

okay so in this au, thirteen year old Five jumps and ends up in rubble and ruin and find his siblings and realizes that he is alone in the universe at the end of day

except Vanya didn’t destroy the moon in take one of the apocalypse, instead she was so angry at humanity for betraying her in every way - hey father, her siblings, even leonard in the end - that she decided that humanity didn’t deserve to exist. Her powers were a targeted strike, and they killed every living human before tearing her apart as well

so the animals are alive, the dogs, the cats, the deer, the rats, all left alive

and five is crying and gasping and looking at the dead bodies of his siblings and he hears a bark, and he turns around and it’s dog. it hasn’t been that long since the apocalypse, it knows humans, and it’s friendly, so it approaches this sad sad boy who is crying salt tears and tries to lick them away and be helpful and five is frightened at first because he’s never been around dogs but,, it’s a good dog, a nice dog, and he ends up curling around this dog and just bawling his eyes out

and he follows the dog. he doesn’t have anything better to do. and the dog leads him back to - you guess it, more dogs

and look, they aren’t going to attack him. they aren’t hungry. it’s an unfortunate fact that there is… currently plenty of food to go around, for the meat eaters among them at least, and they don’t even have to hunt it. It’s not a source of food Five could ever touch, of course, but the people of the city are dead so it’s not like they really care anymore

the dogs of the city adopt him, and so do the cats when Five goes out exploring. He gives them good scratches and they like rubbing themselves against his legs. He likes very much when they sit on him and rumble loudly and they’re very soft.

the animals of the city quickly realize that their boy has human hands and can open things, so Five spends a lot of time following intelligent animals and prying open buckled in doors and gates and freeing trapped animals and also opening up cans and other food items that get brought to him because he has clever fingers and can open up things like that

Five talks to them a lot at first. He names them all and can recognize them, grinning and asking them how they’re doing and pretending they can respond to him in a way he understands. He talks a lot, because his is the only voice left in the apocalypse, save for barks and meows and growls

slowly he incorporates those into his vocabulary as well though, as the years pass on. A growl to tell someone to leave him alone, sharp yips when tiny teeth go too far, throwing his head back and adding to the baying howls when everyone is being noisy at night, figuring out how to make the rumble in his chest right back at the cats

he sleeps wherever he wants, surrounded by friends and feeling safe. Puppy piles and stinky breath, kittens pressed into his side with the mother cat curled up next to his neck as he sprawls out. he learns to associate sleep and safety with a dozen other bodies pressed against his own, warm and alive and noisy and beautiful

he still looks for equations, still reads in the library. Sometimes the only times he uses his words anymore is when he’s writing on the walls and explaining his equations to a dog with floppy ears and wise eyes who can help him catch any problems. a bit like rubber ducks and programmers

food isn’t as big an issue as the original timeline. Five learns to hunt, learns to wait and wait and then POUNCE and snap and then he has rat-mouse-bird whatever for dinner! the pack and the colony share what they can and Five is no different, he doesn’t keep all of his prey for himself and often scavenges what is left of people-food as well, also picking out plants and berries and other things to supplement his diet with

It’s not just cats and dogs either, Five learns to whistle-chirp at the birds in the morning and mimic their songs. He likes to sing to them when they sing back to him, it’s a little bit like having a conversation as they change up the tune and mimic one another back and forth, back and forth

Five has a hundred thousand conversations in the apocalypse, but none of them are human

well, only one of them is

He’s old and very close to a breakthrough when the Handler comes for him. He’s lived through generations of dogs-and-cats, his original companions long since passed. He’s a given fact of the pack-and-colony now, there isn’t an animal in the city who doesn’t know him and he them. She comes and she offers him a job, and Five hasn’t used his words in a long time but he knows the promise behind her smile. Knows he doesn’t have a real choice in this matter. If he says no, she will kill him to be sure that he never completes his equations. If he says yes, she will take him away from his pack, his colony, his family. It’s an impossible choice, but Five always did know that he wanted to go back, to save his siblings, he was still loyal-loyal-loyal and cared far too much

so he agreed. he spent a few more brief hours running through the city and whining his goodbyes to his family, hands reaching out and petting fur and bodies as they pressed against him. He grabbed the vanya-book he’d been keeping his equations in and passed it off as sentiment (his old family, the one he still loved so so much, he’d never found vanya’s body just her book)

He doesn’t sleep well in the commission. He would say it was the killing, but it’s not. It’s the loneliness. It’s the absence of a dozen bodies pressed against his own, warm and breathing and noisy and alive. It’s the absence of claws catching in his clothes, of wet noses pressing against his skull, of tiny heads headbutting him when he wasn’t paying enough attention for their liking. He’s so used to noise that the silence is unnerving

he gets his equation, and he seizes the opportunity with both hands. He falls-falls-falls into the courtyard and stares at the faces that he only knows from finding their bodies and he is jubilant, he howls his joy and it takes him a minute to realize that this is not-his-body

(he bets if his friends had been there to listen he would have caught whatever error he made, but the commission took all of his friends away from him)

he throws himself at his siblings with all the simple joy of family reuniting, and it feels right and good to once more be able to press himself against warm-living-breathing-loved bodies and he’s pulling out all the stops to say “i’m here! i’m home! family! i love you!” and he barely even notices that it isn’t human-verbal-words and that he’s rubbing his head against Klaus’s chest and rumbling like he would to greet a colony member after a long absence

The siblings are, obviously, very confused at this tiny-five-in-a-big-suit who is purring and howling and hasn’t spoken to them yet but is clearly so overjoyed by them being there

someone mentions food and Five’s attention is immediately caught and! Kitchen! he remembers the kitchen! his family might be hungry! and Five is a good provider and he’s still kind of caught up in the fact that his family is right there so maybe they’re confused when Five grabs a bag of marshmallows and tears it open with his teeth and then deposits a handful of marshmallows on everyone’s laps before going to town on his own portion. He missed marshmallows! A whole lot!

“Hey Five what the fuck” someone says “can we get an explanation here holy shit”

and Five remembers his mission oops he swallows his marshmallows and opens his mouth and makes human words come out and he asks them for the date. Eight days! Eight days until the apocalypse. He never did figure out what happened, all the structures had crumbled and all the humans had died but… how? He had the eye he took from his brother’s corpse, and a newspaper with the date it had happened, but he hadn’t been able to find much more

and this is a five who knows how to share, he’s spend forty some years (he doesn’t know his age, doesn’t know how long he was there, he stopped keeping track and brushes off that question when asked) basically sharing everything he had with a whole bunch of animals. What was his was theirs and what was theirs was his. So he shares with his siblings. He presses himself against Diego’s side and curls his arm around Allison’s and produces the glass eye and tells them proudly that Luther had it

everyone looks at Luther and he’s like “uhhh what? no i didn’t stop looking at me guys”

and Five frowns and is like “No not this luther, dead-Luther.”

and that does not help one bit

and with prodding Five basically reveals that he jumped to the apocalypse and found all their dead corpses (except for vanya’s! and ben’s! but he knows that ben was dead before now because of the book) and pried this gross crusty bloody glass eye out of Luther’s dead hand and everyone is horrified but Five is nodding and all like “Yes! How I recognized you! Look the same, because it happens in eight days. But we’ll stop it! No one dies!”

and he also presents Vanya’s books which is still stained with soot and ash and clearly beaten up to all hell and marked up with a whole bunch of equations that Five is clearly very proud of and you know what?? suddenly this apocalypse thing doesn’t seem too farfetched because Five is sitting here with vague proof and like, if Five didn’t go to the apocalypse then where did he get this shit and he must have gone SOMEWHERE after that dinner

(they do ask about his age and he looks very put out and is like “messed up! supposed to be older.” but when they ask how old, Five shrugs and is like “grey hair old? achey bones old.” and no one can get more of an answer out of him bc five just,, literally doesn’t know)

and you know what i’m going to say that animals are fucking amazing and that five gets to meet some old friends or that some old friends find him because of his gleeful howling/yelling in the courtyard upon arrival. if animals can see spirits and recognize people through reincarnations then i say they can be chill with time travel

so five goes outside and is tackled by a cat who immediately begins grooming his hair and five is just like !!! it’s mama cat! she was one of the first to find him in the apocalypse! she had babies! does she have babies now? and he’s purring and pressing his face against hers in greeting and his siblings are there like whhaaatttt

and it doesn’t help that he turns around and introduces them and is like “!! Mama these are my siblings! Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, and Vanya! this is mama!”

Mama cat eventually exits only to return carrying one of her jelly beans to Five’s absolute delight. He doesn’t remember them all being so small! He introduces the kittens to his siblings as well

one of them he actually named Allison in the apocalypse, and she’d been one he say frequently. They’d evolved over the years from calling her Allison to the more playful name of Allie-cat for the pun though, so that’s what he introduces that particular kitten as and they’re none the wiser

of course, he still leaves the house. But his siblings follow him. Five isn’t going for coffee though, doesn’t care about Griddy’s diner, because if Mama Cat remembers him then maybe -

he gets out of the house and down the street before he’s tackled by a big dog and his siblings shout in alarm and run towards him but they quickly realize that a) the dog is not biting him he’s very enthusiastically licking Five, and b) Five is yipping in laughter and very enthusiastically greeting this stray dog

he actually does introduce the dog as diego earning a baffled squawk from human Diego and Five realizes the issue. After a quick nonverbal consult Five is like “Brother? This is Brother.”

the siblings quietly realize that oof, Five was in the apocalypse until his hair was White (bc he hasn’t talked about the commission yet) which is presumably a long time and he showed up growling and purring and has already introduced them to several animals who seem to be familiar with him and,,, just having some realizations over there

(diego is actually v touched that Five named one of his apocalypse companions after him but he’s not going to admit to that)

and then the hit squad show up and five kills them and Brother fucks up one of them and the other hargreeves quickly square up and also wreak havoc and eventually they’re all back home +1 dog and like “what the FUCK” and five is in a sharing kind of spirit and mama cat is already depositing one of her babies in his lap so he solemnly informs the squad about the commission and that they stole him from the apocalypse and made him heel

(he didn’t talk much in the commission, but they didn’t mind. He’d growled once when the Handler got too close to him, and she’d made a joke about him being a dog and being brought to heel. He hadn’t liked it, but he’d stopped growling and tried to be on his best behavior so they wouldn’t be suspicious of his activities)

basically there’s a lot more information sharing and belief in this au

the squad is like “you know what? we’ll deal with this in the morning. no one goes off on their own until we deal with the fuckin,, time travelling assassins and i can’t believe that phrase came out of my mouth”

and so everyone goes to bed

and five wavers because everyone goes to separate beds and that’s not right, is it? (though if he does think back, he does remember the lonely nights in lonely rooms, of suction cups against his forehead and nightmares gone uncomforted)

and being a tiny bastard is like “well this won’t do right brother?? right mama cat?” and decides he’ll just have to show his siblings the PROPER way to sleep and so grabs vanya and tows her to klaus’s room where klaus drops something looking slightly guilty and five pushes vanya at the bed, brother needs no invitation and immediately hops up which klaus protests, and he’d have mama cat up here as well but she isn’t too sure about bringing her babies up on the bed yet which he understands. and it’s a tight fit because five shoves klaus into the bed as well and climbs in, ignoring any questions and protests, but it’s warm and safe and five actually feels like he can sleep for the first time in a long time

and eventually the protesting dies down when it becomes clear that nope, five isn’t going to be letting anyone leave the bed because it’s sleep time, everyone said so, and so they all settle down eventually and brother is lying half on Five’s leg, heavy and solid, and Five had hooked his free ankle around Vanya’s foot and is pressed against her and he’s got his hands fisted in Klaus’s shirt and everyone is here-safe-warm-alive

and they just go from there. they know about the apocalypse way earlier. vanya says she has to go to her apartment and five is unsure and eventually asks her if brother can go with her to keep her safe and she agrees (and brother HATES leonard the first time they meet and is very vocal about it leading to the cancellation of the lesson whoops)

hazel and cha-cha have far more difficulty finding five this time after five digs out his tracker (which horrifies all his siblings but 100% convinces them he’s telling the truth holy shit)

Five meets more animals he knows/knew though lots of them are actually pets and have humans which are alive!! he thinks that’s neat even as their humans are apologizing for their normally well behaved pets bowling down this 13yr old with enthusiasm and licks and delight

The siblings keep having to remind Five to ‘use his words’ when he huffs or growls or grumbles, and his siblings can’t read body language for SHIT which is certainly annoying. Brother and Mama Cat sympathize with his plight at least.

but yeah honestly maybe the apocalypse is averted by vanya having a dog which despises the very air leonard peabody breathes which alerts five to something hinky and, upon investigation, he finds the journal in leonard/harold’s possession and immediately presents it back to the family like “yes! see! brother isn’t being unreasonable!”

“five did you break into a man’s house because your dog didn’t like him”

i have a bad feeling that at least one animal is harmed in the making of this au and that they sacrifice themself for either five or one of the siblings oof

but yeah vanya doesn’t cause the apocalypse by virtue of everyone trying to figure out how to deal with their semi-feral little brother and his menagerie of animals and the rest of the time travel bullshit that follows along behind him

also orange idiot shows up at some point as well because i’m the maker of this random universe and i say so and five ALSO recognizes him and is absolutely delighted that apparently diego is orange’s human which makes them double family and diego is honestly in shock that orange idiot is sitting on five’s chest and purring like a steam engine because diego has never once heard that animal do anything more than hiss and growl before this day

i haven’t thought through the end as you can tell but hey maybe hazel and agnes end up adopting a nice big dog or five teaches hazel some of the birdcalls he learned in the apocalypse idk i like hazel

five rotates between his siblings for sleeping and they just learn to accept this and accept it if he selects them to dogpile in with at night. the kittens grow bigger because they live in the house now so it ends up being like, three humans, one dog, one cat, and four kittens in a bed each night where there is NOT enough room but they learn to deal because otherwise five just doesn’t sleep

also five learns to take cues from the cats to figure out where ben is and include him in conversations

mr. pennycrumb also shows up at some point idk when

that’s all i got for now but i’ll probably come back to this

inspired by my cat who won’t stop trying to trip me up and headbutt my face and step on my stomach because he loves me

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enby-hawke · 5 years ago

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Summary: Hawke loves dragons and this is his very first dragon fight. I made up some magic that doesn’t exist.

Word Count: 7815

Pairing: Lots of flirting mostly between oblivious Merrill, oblivious Hawke, and super annoyed Carver.

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Bethany was still not talking to Hawke and neither was Mother. That didn’t change the fact that rent needed to be paid and Hawke had only gathered half the coin needed for the expedition. With Carver in tow, Hawke circled through his usual contacts, trying to drum up some work. After one no turned into 8, and the morning slipped to noon, Hawke decided it was time to get a drink and ask Varric for ideas before his temper made him do something stupid.

“I have the usual escort and delivery jobs, but if you’re looking for something bigger, I’ve heard of another opportunity...but the patron is….”

Varric trailed off, and Hawke sighed into his glass, the growing headache an unwelcome guest. “What, he a templar or something?”

“Orlesian.”

Even Carver joined in the groan. “Maker, we’re desperate aren’t we?”

“When are we not?” Hawke chuckled back. “What’s the job?”

“Just to check on his mine. Apparently, none of his workers have clocked out of work since Saturday, but also none of them have reported home. He won’t say what the reward is only that it will “exponentially paid,” whatever that means. Eh, maybe count me out today.” Varric knitted his eyebrows as he pressed his pen to his tablet, but with two words written, he’d erase three. There were at least three drained mugs of spiked coffee that Edwina still hadn’t bussed, but whether they were from last night or this morning Hawke couldn’t tell.

“Why not? You always come along,” Hawke grinned. If anyone could use a break from his room, it was Varric.

Hawke continued to feed scraps of his sausage and eggs to Boof under the table. The mabari had his head on Hawke’s lap, begging for more with his big brown eyes.

Varric set down his pen, rubbing his temple as he adjusted his reading glasses. “Maybe cause “The Bone Pit” is haunted with ghost slaves and spiders and Maker knows what else. You want to get cursed? Be my guest. I’m good.” Varric grabbed a not drained glass of spiked coffee and took a swig.

“Already cursed. It’s not such a big deal,” Hawke shrugged nonchalantly, but mischief crept into his eyes. “C’mon, Varric, where’s your authorial pride? Think of it as a research trip. A haunted mine could be the perfect setting for your next book.”

“I write action thrillers with a dash of political intrigue,” Varric argued. He pushed Boof away when the dog tried to push his head in his lap.

“Y’know I’m kind of with the dwarf on this one,” Carver said, picking at his stew before pushing it aside.

“Hey eat, you’ll need your strength,” Hawke pushed the bowl back in front of Carver. His brother grunted but resigned himself to shoveling the stew into his mouth. Hawke turned back to Varric. “Besides we don’t have a car. It’ll take forever to walk,” Hawke gave his biggest puppy eyes and even left his chair to kneel on the sticky floor, both hands clasped pleading. “Pleeeeeeeeeease.”

“Maker,” Varric caved. He always did. “Fine, but only because writer’s block is kicking my ass.”

Hawke jumped up, a spring suddenly in his step. “Great! But I should drive. You’ve been drinking.”

Varric barked a laugh. “So have you, genius. We’ll put Donna on autopilot.”

They picked up Isabela since they were already at the Hanged Man and Merrill just happened to already be in her room. Isabela didn’t like the idea of traipsing through a boneyard but when Merrill wanted to go, she resigned to tagging along. It was kind of like that ever since Hawke introduced the two, and that worked out since it was fun to watch Carver attempts to talk to Merrill. Though he was rooting for them, he couldn’t help but join Isabela teasing them.

Varric introduced Hawke to Hubert Bartiere in the Hightown Market where he had a store that sold everything from high-end fabric, perfumes, and of course his featured item, polished gems and jewelry mined and crafted “locally”. The man knew Hawke was Ferelden as soon as Hawke introduced his dog. He was less than impressed. Both Carver and Hawke managed not to punch him.

“You’re a mercenary, right?” Hubert glared at the odd party of humans, a dwarf, a Dalish elf and a mabari.

“I do a bit of everything,” Hawke shrugged.

“Well you’re good at killing and that’s what I need. I sent a group from the Wicked Dawn’s to take a look and they haven’t returned. I’m starting to think they made off with my coin. You, I won’t pay until the job’s done.” He continued to primp the mannequin displays, trying to end the conversation.

Hawke wasn’t satisfied with that and tapped Hubert on the shoulder. “But what is the reward? The listing isn’t clear.”

The man looked repulsed at the fact that he had been touched and took out a handkerchief, patting himself down. “I don’t know the extent of the problem so it depends on what you find there. Rest assured you will be fairly compensated. I am a reputable and fair merchant.”

Varric snorted at that, which told Hawke what he needed to know. The mage crossed his arms, planting himself in front of the mannequin in a peacock dress. “Not taking one step out of Kirkwall unless we each get 50 silvers each and then we can discuss a potential bonus-depending on what I find.”

The man looked outraged, his temple vein popping. “Where does a dog-barbarian get off making demands like that?”

“I can vouch for him,” Varric offered. “Whatever’s going on in your mine, Hawke can solve it. He comes with the Tethras guarantee.”

Hawke grinned cockily, imagining his fist was knocking out one of the Orlesian’s teeth.

The man sniffed sharply. “If it turns out my workers are just being lazy I will want my money back.”

‘And you won’t get it,’ Hawke thought, but he nodded offering the man the peace of mind he needed.

The man reached into his pocket going for plastic coin chits, but Hawke held up his hand in refusal. “I prefer coin.”

“I will need to go to the bank to convert it over. That may take some time as I can’t leave my stall. Perhaps you should go and check on my mine while you wait.”

Hawke grabbed the chits angrily. “Taking these for collateral. You can exchange them after I come back.”

The Bone Pit was only about 15 minutes away flying on Donna. You had to pass it when you left the city to get anywhere else. “Oh don’t look so grumpy, Varric,” Hawke nudged the dwarf, Donna’s wheel automatically adjusting course. “Didn’t you say hanging out with me is always an adventure?”

“Don’t butter me up, Hawke. You’re just using me for my wings.”

When they piled out of the car, Boof galloped out, dashing wildly in a wide circle causing Merrill to giggle.

“Boof!” Hawke called out. The dog bounced off a boulder and bounded back towards Hawke, and sat at attention, his feathery tail quivering as it swayed from side to side. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the fresh air, bud, but we have a job to do. Lead us to trouble.”

Boof nodded instead of barking, his puppy demeanor shifting instantly to wardog. Then he dashed away, before dashing back, then dashed away again, impatient at the humanoids much slower stride. The mine itself was strangely abandoned, pickaxes and tools and even luggage and blood were strewn about but no people. They kept their hands on their weapons as they explored, sometimes jumping at the sound of some birds scattering as they approached. The wind whistled through the mountains carrying cries of creatures that they could not place. The air was cold, the veil felt thin. You could feel the Fade weighing down from the midst of haze that hovered overhead.

Boof led them to the foot of a cave, where they saw a miner still dressed in ratty clothes. He was lying face down, several spider punctures tore through his shirt, where the man had been drained of blood. Strangely, his back was also burned, his skin had bubbled and stinking the air with singed flesh. The corpse had been scavenged, huge chunks of his torso that had been chomped out, most of his organs missing, but all the days-old blood was dry and flaking. “Poor man,” Merrill said. “It might have been a rage demon.”

“Or a dragon,” Hawke whispered, his heart suddenly in his throat. The heat that had done this was intense, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up.

Suddenly Boof crouched, growling menacingly. They all turned to hear several high-pitched screeches. Hawke recognized the cry and dashed after his dog, casting a haste spell to keep up.

“Hawke!” he heard several voices shout behind him, but he wouldn’t slow down. The bright lantern lights danced with the shadows in the cave, echoing with the pounding of his gait. He kept running until he saw a clearing where about 20 drakes of all at varying sizes huddled. At the head of the pack stood the broodfather, fully mature at about 10 feet tall, and he breathed out a territorial fire at the sight of the intrusion in his nest.

“Aaaaaww, Boof,” he groaned. “It’s not a dragon.”

The drake screeched charging, the other younger drakes following in tow. Hawke sighed, it was still a fight and he still had to take it seriously. Deciding to save bullets, he grabbed the staff from his back, unfolding the blades with a click of a button.

The mabari was eager to charge but Hawke put his hand up. “Not yet, Boof,” he said and the dog sat down, waiting.

He channeled his magic into his staff, building up energy. When he collected enough, he waved his hand, imagining where he wanted ice to form. All beneath the charging drakes, sigils of ice mines formed exploding some smaller drakes into the air. Crystal crept and spread across the dirt and stone covering the drakes path with slippery ice. The smaller drakes began to lose traction, sliding and falling, but the largest drake dug his claws into the ground, steadying himself, digging claw after claw as it pushed its way out of the ice field.

The others were just beginning to catch up when they gazed out towards the damage already done. “Boof and I got the big one if you guys want to take the smaller ones,” Hawke grinned, causing Carver to roll his eyes. Hawke then pointed at the broodfather. “Boof! Tear out his throat!”

The mabari yipped in confirmation and bolted from his seat charging for the enormous drake. It bellowed, breathing fire but the dog bounded and bounced out of the way. Hawke aimed at Boof, and cast a haste spell, speeding up the dog’s gait so the drake could not aim properly.

Bullets and magic and Bianca’s laser bolts shot past the broodfather picking off the still slipping lesser drakes. Carver had decided to opt-out of this fight. He was now turned away, the tip of his greatsword buried in some dirt. Boof was in front of the drake now, and it swiped at the mabari with its meaty claw. Boof yipped, bouncing off its arm and then back to the ground. The dog jumped back up, raking his claws into the drake’s skin and pushed himself upwards. Boof barked triumphantly, clamping down on the drake’s throat and started to shred. Blood spurted out of the wound and the dog wriggled, tearing open it’s tough leather hide.

Hawke nervously watched his dog swinging through the air, his staff following as he aimed a barrier at him. The drake was moving erratically, turning and twisting and slipping and Hawke could not get a clean shot. The drake kept swiping at its neck, and it was only a matter of time before Boof would get hit.

“Boof, return!” he ordered and the dog released his chomp and pushed off the drake. Hawke managed to cast a barrier as he landed just in time for the drake to swipe. The claw sparked against the barrier, sending the dog flying backward towards Hawke. Boof scrambled to his feet and shook his head all the way down to his feathery tail. That was close.

The drake was dying now, all the other lesser drakes almost picked off by the others. Carver was sulking. Sure Hawke was disappointed it wasn’t dragons, too, but at least they were in the same family. “You want to finish it off, little bro?”

“Go ahead,” Carver muttered, not turning towards Hawke.

Hawke shrugged. He didn’t know what he did wrong this time, but he didn’t feel like playing into Carver’s mood. The drake was approaching now, trying to breathe fire, but it could not manage it any longer and the flames only went a few inches past its mouth. Hawke chose an ice spike, aiming carefully. He shot it, the air whistling as the large chunk of crystal shot from Hawke’s hand and into the wound Boof had opened. The spike pushed through its spine and through the back of the dragon’s neck. The drake gurgled, swayed and fell with a thud.

“Is that all of them?” Merrill asked, breaking the sudden silence.

Hawke sheathed his staff onto his back. “There may be more. We should clear out the cave just in case.”

They had found the rest of the miners and the mercenaries Hubert had sent earlier. The corpses were dragged behind a knocked-down wall only days open strewn about the nest in a shallow pile. The bloody bones were in the process of being stripped clean with gnaw marks chewed in. Armor was scattered in shallow piles with a single torso still trapped stuck into its chest plate-dented from where the drakes had tried to peel it off.

Hawke and Isabela, of course, halted the group to check to see if they could find any coin or other valuables amongst the scattered body parts. Both of them dug through pockets and bags throwing whatever didn’t interest them over their shoulder which could either be a rock, a button, a shovel, or a foot. Isabela pried off a gold ring off a mercenary’s gloved finger inspecting it closely. Hawke collectively found 126 silver and split amongst the group. Isabela, like always, kept all the coin she found and the ring, but still was still happy to receive her share.

“Nice!” Hawke grinned as he divided up the piles. “It’s even.”

“I still don’t know why Boof needs money,” Isabela eyed the pile before Boof, who was busy cleaning himself.

“Oh c’mon. Boof deserves a king’s meal after taking out that drake.” He collected Boof’s share and put it on the money pouch on his armor harness. “I’m treating him to a special dinner after this,” Hawke grinned at his pup who looked up at him with his tongue still out. “Your pick.”

Isabela groaned as Hawke suddenly started baby-talking his dog showering him with kisses over his snout as Boof’s tongue would stretch trying to reach Hawke’s face. She didn’t bring up that Hawke was always treating his dog to “special dinners.” Boof’s happy booming bark bounced against the cave wall, as he rolled onto his back, demanding belly rubs.

“Quiet, Boof, we don’t want to wake the nest.” Hawke said sternly.

Boof then boofed, his throaty bark muffled in his throat as he begged still belly-up.

After a short-ish belly rub session in which Merrill joined, they spent the next few hours exploring each nook and cranny. Hawke kept hoping for a dragon. There was a whole nest here, but he knew Mothers didn’t usually stay near the brood. She might be nearby, or anywhere in the mountains, if she was there at all. They kept going when they heard the sound of a cry. It was a man’s voice, and he was terrified.

“We’ve got a survivor,” Hawke told Boof. “Find him.”

Boof nodded, dashing forward and the party followed to find a man who had climbed on top of a rock. He was surrounded by 5 lesser drakes about as big as Boof. They clicked and growled trying to climb up the rock, but the red-haired miner kept kicking them back down with his lone spare boot, his other dirty pink foot bare.

He spotted the group and shot an arm out towards them. “Help me! Please!”

Boof corralled the drakes, herding them away from the miner. Hawke was about to shoot a fireball when he remembered he didn’t know this man and waved at an overly eager Merrill to put down her staff. Carver and Isabela understood and they charged alongside Hawke with Merrill lagging behind, her staff at the ready. Varric picked off drake after drake with throat and eye shots. There were only 2 left by the time Isabela, Carver, and Hawke arrived. Isabela grabbed one biting head and shoved her dagger in its eye. The drake squealed before keeling over. Carver chopped off the other one’s head and it rolled away, it’s tongue flopping. Hawke having nothing to do started helping the man down from the rock that he was trapped on.

“Oh thank the Maker. I thought I was gonna die.”

“Yeah you got pretty lucky,” Hawke nodded, steadying the man. “How are you? Need food? Water?”

“I’m thirstier than a son of a bitch. I’ve been trapped in these caves for days now,” the man replied causing Hawke to dig through his bag and bring out a thermos and some jerky. The man took it and greedily downed the whole thermos leaving Hawke with just the backwash and then inhaled the jerky.

“Thank Mythal you’re ok,” Merrill said, leaning against her staff. “How did you survive?”

“By hiding mostly,” he replied, coughing on the meat. “I spent most of my time in a crate, with the quarry, but my thirst got the better of me. I tried to make my way to the entrance but those dragons sniffed me out.”

“Actually, those were drakes,” Hawke corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

“Drakes are primarily male with few exceptions, have no wings, and only grow a quarter of the size of-,”

The man held up his hand. “Sorry I asked. I just really want to get out of there.”

“Oh, yeah,” Hawke felt embarrassed that he had gone into lecture mode about drakonis. “Sure, the way back should be clear.”

Hawke started to move forward but the man grabbed him by the shoulder his murky brown eyes manic with fear. “You can’t go through there. There’s a huge dragon.”

“We can handle it,” Hawke shrugged. He probably meant another drake.

“No, you don’t understand it’s much bigger than the others- with the horns and huge wings. You don’t want to go out there.”

Hawke suddenly lit up. One with wings? Could he be telling the truth? “Let’s go, Boof,” Hawke dashed off, his wagging dog yipping in agreement.

He could hear the others only barely turning the corner, their footsteps echoing against the cave walls. “Will you slow down?” Carver shouted.

“She might not be there if we wait too long,” Hawke called back over his shoulder.

Hawke’s ears were pounding with the thud of his heartbeat. His breathing was erratic and only Boof seemed to be able to keep up with his hastened gait. He dashed out of the cave and onto a rocky plateau where she lay, curled up like a cat, her head tucked into her hefty claws.

He was paralyzed, his heart galloping in his chest and for a few moments, he could only stare. “Holy fuck it’s really a dragon,” Hawke whispered just as the group caught up with him.

Hawke was visibly trembling. He thought he would disintegrate at this moment. She was young, only a few heads taller than a full-grown drake and her scales were a sandy color. She had two sets of outstretched horns that ended in sharp, bony points. Her claws were like obsidian and about half the size of his mabari and they twitched as the dragon slumbered, unaware of the intrusion. For a few moments, all he could hear was the sound of his heartbeat and he breathed alongside the beast.

“This is the best day of my life!” Hawke’s voice was not quiet and there was a chorus of shushes.

The dragon stretched and moved and Carver pulled Hawke back into the cave before his brother could go charging. The Abyssal snorted, but settled back into its dream. “Elgar’nan, she’s big,” Merrill whispered, peeking around the corner.

“Don’t worry I’ll protect you,” Carver told Merrill. Then he turned to Hawke, strapping his greatsword to his back. His voice was still low and wary. “This might get messy. Mind if I borrow Dad’s gun?”

Hawke’s eyes lit up. “The Armorwing?” He was too loud again and was shushed.

“Yeah, we never had a real chance to try it out,” Carver grinned back.

Hawke waved his hand excitedly, opening a portal, and reached into the white void. He called to his mind the image of the gun, trying to ignore the sudden ache as a soft memory of daily shooting practice bubbled into his thoughts. Suddenly, he could remember the first time he held the Armorwing and quickly squashed down the flood of memories that threatened to come crashing in. A few moments later, he felt it wrapped around his fingers and he pulled out a silverite assault cannon with a barrel about 2 inches wide. 6 different colored runes were into 3 buttons on each side.

Carver slipped the strap into place adjusting it to his size and as he fiddled with some of the settings while Hawke hovered over. The rest of the party was dumbfounded.

“Now remember we’re going to want to stick to ice settings for most of the fight. She’s fire-aspected.” Hawke pointed at the snowflake rune which made Carver snort, and he pressed it before Hawke could.

“I know how to use it. Just don’t get us killed,” Carver muttered. He clicked off the safety and stared down the sight.

“How in the Maker’s name did two broke Fereldens get their hands on an Armorwing?” Varric asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? My dad helped invent them,” Hawke shrugged.

“Oh, I guess that explains everything then,” Varric replied, his tone stating the opposite.

“Don’t worry, it's got nothing on Bianca,” Hawke grinned.

Isabela followed, exchanging her knives for her handguns. “Great we found the dragon- Let’s kill it while it’s sleeping,” she began to aim but Hawke shoved his way forward bounding like the mabari that trailed his feet- in front of Isabela’s aim.

“Oh sweet Maker,” Carver groaned.

Hawke didn’t even notice his party but was addressing his dog rather seriously, his arms crossed looking into the mabari mutt’s deep brown eyes. The mabari’s long feathered tail was wagging wildly somehow understanding. “Now this is our first real dragon fight, Boof. She’s young but it’s the real deal so keep up, okay. She looks maybe 50 summers at most, but don’t underestimate her. Her flame sac is fully mature. She will be able to create a gaseous flame that burns at about 1600 degrees Celsius. Boof! That’s hotter than lava!”

“Lucky,” Carver cleared his throat. He seemed more annoyed than horrified.

“Right, right,” Hawke nodded and then nodded to his dog. “Got that? No catch. Stay behind me if it gets rough-”

The dragon was starting to awaken because Hawke wasn’t exactly being quiet. The party fidgeted, with varying degrees of anger to fear, except for Carver who was just sighing and looking up to the sky for help.

“Uh, Hawke what the fuck are you doing?” Varric whispered not that it mattered if he was quiet any longer. The dragon slowly opened one scaly red-eye, it’s gaze fixating on the bubbly mage who was enthusiastically stretching his arms and lunging.

“Looks like it’s time.” Hawke clapped his hands in glee then placed them on the ground. Pebbles trembled and sudden spikes of boulders shot up from the ground, startling the dragon. A circle of spaced jagged rocks juts out one by one making makeshift barriers on the platform, while one boulder raised right before Hawke’s feet. The dragon crouched defensively, dodging the spikes as she took to the air with several wind-inducing wing beats.

The dragon bellowed the air grew stiff and dry and flames shot down at Hawke, who pressed himself behind the center boulder. Everyone dove undercover as the flames flooded the platform melting some of the rock. “Whoooooooooooooooo!” Hawke whooped as the flames split against the boulders shooting past him and blackening the rocks in front of him. He only had a small pocket where he and Boof huddled as the flames licked past them, the heat sweltering the air, making it thin.

The dragon finally stopped inhaling and swooping far into the air beyond the reach of bullets and laser bolts.

“Maker she’s so beautiful.” Hawke was shouting now. “Alright everyone barriers will last only about 4 seconds at best under direct fire so best stay undercover and stay light on your feet.”

Merrill chirped from where she was ducked under a rock near the mouth of the cave. Carver was guarding her with his body, the Armorwing clenched in his hands. He swore under his breath as Merrill drew her staff, her eyes wide and trembling but she just said, “Let’s try not to get cooked, everyone. It’ll smell awful.” Somehow she was just able to accept that this was happening.

“She’s magnificent,” Hawke laughed maniacally. “Aw man, does anyone want to record this?”

Isabela and Varric just glanced at each other from their cover, not sure if they should gang up to kill Hawke.

“You’re mad, you know that?” Isabela cried. She fired several shots at the dragon, as it circled around them trying to make runs in the safety of the skies, but the bullets just sparked against her underbelly. Varric shot a laser from Bianca but it only scorched the scale. Carver shot one hole in the center of it’s right wing. The dragon screeched, echoing through the mountains. It breathed flames again, and everyone dove back under cover of the boulders. But though its hide was blackened it didn’t seem to do much damage.

“Her underbelly’s harder than steel,” Hawke cried. “Aim for the fleshy part of her wings to bring her down.”

Hawke aimed an ice spike at the dragon’s eye but she tilted, veering left and the spike shot past her. Isabela shot up with her handgun, the dragon flinching each time a bullet bounced off the wing but one bullet went clean through, blood spurted from the wound. Merrill flung spells and bolts up at the dragon in support but the dragon seemed to be absorbing the magic.

The dragon gurgled, it’s mouth lighting up as it swooped down for another pass. “Cover,” Hawke called out. Boof barked and they both dove behind the boulder again everyone ducking for safety. The rocks were steaming still red with flame that slowly died into embers. Their cover would melt away if they took much longer. The dragon honed in on the dog, following it with its flame. Boof galloped towards the edge of the arena bouncing against the rocks to lift him just beyond her reach. Hawke shot at the dragon's head, another ice spike grazed her eye, scraping it and it’s turned its head, the fiery stream blasting away from the plateau.

“Boof, you alright?” Hawke called out, his voice high and panicked.

The dog barked from behind a boulder.

The dragon bellowed zoning in on Hawke, circling back around. Varric was following the dragon with Bianca, Carver with the Armorwing, Isabela with her handguns. They both took turns shooting holes in her wings whenever they had an opening. Some of Varric’s laser bolts bounced off the bone and impaled themselves into the rock with glowing red spikes. Isabela aimed for parts already bleeding, but Carver’s ice absorbed into the dragon causing it to shriek every time he managed a hit. The dragon hovered above, steadily losing traction, when a huge rock flew from what seemed like nowhere and smacked the dragon on it’s nose.

“Nice one, Kitten!” Isabela grinned in approval.

“Watch out!” Merrill shouted back.

Blood spurted from it’s nostrils as the boulder continued undeterred into the sky. The dragon tumbled down, crashing into the rocks which slid away clearing half the platform.

She shook her head, her red eyes a little glazed but quickly spotted Hawke and started slinking into range.She gurgled, her teeth glowing orange as she inhaled.

“Lucky!” Carver cried out as Hawke fleeing behind the lone center boulder still steaming from being hit from all sides. He could not get too close to the melting rock and he could feel the heat on his back.

The flames wrapped around the boulder scooping out and filling the space. The dragon continued breathing fire approaching the boulder, the flames curling around the side singing Hawke as it became a hot bowl of flames. Hawke cast a barrier absorbing most of the indirect heat but the dragon was determined to burn Hawke out of existence and kept breathing out.

His barrier was cracking, the protective glow quickly fading. The heat was getting through and his skin began to blister. He called healing magic to run through him, trying to keep up with the damage.

“Hold on Hawke!” Merrill cried. A sigil formed around Hawke and lighting him up with a soft blue glow underneath before another barrier encased his body.

The dragon held out for a few more seconds before she could breathe no more, and it took a long ragged gasp. “Carver, now!” Hawke cried, but the dragon once again began to inhale.

The dragon swiped away the melting boulder, leaving Hawke completely in the open. Carver cried out dashing from the dragon’s flank and buried his greatsword deep between two scales in the dragon’s neck where it snapped off. Blood squirted from the wound and the dragon breathed out short premature flames that Hawke was able to dodge. Carver then grabbed the Armorwing, aimed it at the wound, and shot several rapid ice bullets. The ice burst through the other side of the dragon’s neck, the bullet’s sizzling against the stone as they bounced off. The dragon bellowed, stomping all across the ground, causing an earthquake and Carver struggled to maintain his footing as he dodged the dragon’s swipes.

Boof barked, charging at the dragon his hackles raised and chomped down on the wound Carver just made. The dragon flailed, trying to shake the dog off as he shredded the wound. The ground shook, knocking Carver off his feet. Hawke dove forward while the dragon was distracted and rolled under her head where the soft underside of her mouth was exposed. He drew his staff from his back, and with mana-enhanced force he jabbed the blade upwards through the soft scales into the roof of the dragon’s mouth snapping it’s maw shut and snuffing out the flames. Hawke cried out, channeling all his energy into one large lightning bolt that amplified through Hawke’s staff and sizzled the dragon, frying its brain. The dragon’s head swerved and began to fall and Hawke rolled and kept rolling until her seventy-pound head shook the ground with a thud.

The dragon twitched, flapping its wings erratically as it tried to take flight again. She attempted to open her mouth, but the slick black staff held firmly in place. Flames shot through its teeth and nostrils as it rattled its last breath. It’s great red eye slit focused on Hawke, his reflection staring back as the life seeped out of the creature until the dust settled and all was silent.

Varric stepped out from behind his melted boulder, Bianca still raised at the creature. “Andraste’s flaming tits. You idiots did it.”

Hawke threw up his arms whooping as loudly as he could. Flames shot from Hawke’s mouth, a stream of triumphant fire blasting over the dead dragon as he mimicked her breath. Carver tackled him screaming excitedly, snuffing out the flame. Both of their cries bounced off the mountains of the Bone Pit. Soon Boof was shaking himself off and joined in howling on top of a boulder, safe from the heat of the hot stone. Hawke grappled Carver, trying to corral his head into a noogie, “Fuck yeah, little bro. First fucking dragon! Who’s kick-ass now!”

“Get off me,” Carver laughed twisting out of Hawke’s grasp quite easily since he was about a whole a head taller and twice as broad. “You idiot! You almost got us all killed.”

Merrill giggled, as the brothers wrestled for dominance. The mabari stayed barking at the brother’s, demanding one of them pay attention. The brothers twisted and squirmed, until Carver slammed Hawke into the ground, forgetting the stone still glowed with heat.

“FUCK!” Hawke’s scream echoed and he jumped to his feet, the back of his arms were singed and stinging. He had already been nursing burns and this just reopened them. Embers flaked off his leather armor and faded as they fell.

“FUCK!” Carver’s hands were sweltering where he had caught himself on the hot stone. His fingers trembled in the pain, parts of his palms bubbling.

“What kind of idiot gets more hurt after the dragon battle?” Varric chuckled. He was writing something in his travel notebook.

“The kind of idiocy that’s genetic,” Isabela rolled her eyes as the brothers nursed their wounds.

“You guys should be thanking me,” Hawke called back. “That was awesome!” He was already running his hands over Carver’s so they weren’t as much of an angry brown-red. Then he ran a spell through his whole body, the stinging easing just a bit. When he was done, he finally noticed that Boof was licking his paws, also bloody with burns. “Oh Boof, I forgot your shoes.”

“Are you all alright?” Merrill called out. Speaking of shoes, Merrill’s had no soles in spite of Hawke’s and Isabela’s insistence she get a sturdy pair of boots. Even if she did, everyone’s shoes were melting into the stone. She was still at the edge of the platform, safe, but trapped.

Hawke ran up to the boulder that Boof had taken refuge on. He was laying on his side panting, but with happy eyes. Lucky dug into his blood to fuel one more regeneration spell, his hands closing the burns on Boof’s back paws. Boof licked his dark gold snout, closing his eyes as Lucky worked.

The skin was growing, but it still looked tender.

Still need to visit Anders.

“You did great, bud,” he rubbed the dog’s floppy ear affectionately then hoisted the pup up over his shoulders so he wouldn’t have to walk on the scorched ground. The dog turned his head, licking Hawke’s cheek.

Then Hawke walked over to the dragon head and put one hand on its snout, the scales still warm. The Abyssal’s head was as half as big as Hawke’s body and he felt this great sense of peace as he gazed into the dragon’s eyes. “I’ve been dreaming of getting close enough for forever and...” he couldn’t finish his thoughts and turned to Varric, odd eyes gleaming with excitement. “You think we can bring the head with us?”

“Why in the Maker’s name would you want to?” Varric snorted.

“I don’t know. It’s cool.”

“Where in Gamlen’s hovel where would we store it?” Carver said.

“Fine, then I’m at least taking a tooth or else no one at the Hanged Man will believe me. Wait! Someone take a picture!”

“I got a selfie stick,” Isabela cried out digging through her bag.

“Um, you guys go ahead,” Merrill called out at the gathering group, still stuck at the edge of the platform. “I think I might just wait until the ground cools down.”

The group exchanged glances before Hawke nudged Carver. His brother looked annoyed that he was shoved. Boof licked Carver’s head as Hawke leaned in close. “Go be a gentleman,” he whispered, winking.

Carver blushed deeply, Isabela and Varric snickering. Carver undid the strap of the Armorwing, handing it back to Hawke to put away. “Uh…Merrill?” he started out awkwardly taking only a single step forward.

“Yes, Carver?” she called back.

“If you’d like I could…carry you?” Carver looked like he might keel over.

Her green eyes lit up in relief, but her pointy ears twitched slightly. “Oh, I wouldn’t wish to be a bother.”

“Ridiculous!” Hawke cried, shoving Carver forward with his free hand,“Carver’s great a picking up beautiful girls.” Immediately Merrill went beet red all the way to the tips of her ears. Boof barked as Hawke’s grip slipped putting the Armorwing back into the portal. Quickly, he hoisted the dog back up onto his shoulders.

“Lucky,” Carver said warningly, looking nervous as he gazed back at him.

“Go get her,” Hawke whispered.

The three of them unashamedly ogled as Carver, red-eared, walked up to Merrill his feet slightly dragging. He rubbed the back of his neck avoiding her gaze. She had a habit of staring intensely and Carver couldn’t seem to stand the scrutiny. “Would you like a piggyback or would you prefer bridal style?”

“Bridal style!” Hawke hooted, causing Carver to glare at him murderously.

“Oooh, swoop her up in those big strong arms!” Isabela teased.

“That’s my vote!” piped Varric.

“It’s not a vote!” Carver bristled, his brown freckled skin deepening all the way down to his neck.

Merrill seemed to look confused, not quite understanding what Hawke, Varric, and Isabela saw as so amusing. “Um…I don’t know what either of those mean so just…whatever makes you most comfortable.” She held out her arms straight out towards Carver, unsure what was going to happen.

Carver awkwardly leaned down since he was a head and a half taller, and placed her hands on his shoulder. “Kind of link your hands so you don’t fall-”

She removed her hands from his shoulders and clasped her hands together, waiting for her next instructions. Carver, not wanting to correct her, tried to push his head through the hole in her arms but his head was so big he just pushed her arms up, confusing Merrill.

“You’re brother’s real smooth, Hawke,” Varric chuckled.

“It’s like watching a drunk monkey pet a cat,” Isabela cringed.

“Yup,” Hawke replied. This was painful.

Finally, he thought to grab her hands, unlink them, throw them around his neck and then press them back together before he finally scooped her up by the knees causing her to yelp in surprise.

He steadied himself as she flailed squeezing onto him and then carried her back to the dragon where Isabela was fixing her phone onto the stick. “Finally, lovebirds,” she teased.

Carver glared at her in an effort to shut her up but she just waggled her eyebrows as she extended the stick and then held it up in the air. They huddled around the dragon head with Hawke sitting on top, gripping each horn. His dog still draped around his shoulders licking his lips and panting heavily. Carver was carrying Merrill to his right, Merrill smiling sweetly, but Carver’s face looked uncomfortably serious. Varric and Isabela were to Hawke’s left, both linked arm in arm and grinning. Isabela was making a peace sign.

“Say “dragon!” Hawke yelled out.

“Dragon!” only Merrill and Hawke called out as they snapped the picture.

They took several more photos since Isabela didn’t like how she looked in the first one. She held up the group for 5 minutes adjusting her hair and make-up in the camera on her phone. When they finally got a picture Isabela didn’t hate, Hawke insisted he has one with his head inside the dragon’s mouth. It took a bit to pry out his staff and he also got a lot of drool in his hair for that idea. Then Hawke picked the biggest, sharpest tooth he could find took 15 minutes of digging it out with his dagger. Boof scrambled off of Hawke’s shoulders and settled himself on the dragon’s neck, watching his packleader work. Finally, when Hawke successfully pulled out the tooth and put it in his pocket, the party turned to leave. But Hawke, instead of following, turned the dragon’s head on its side started sawing at the dragon’s throat.

“Lucky,” Carver said warningly. “We’re not taking the head with us.”

“I’m not,” Hawke grunted, tearing the dragon’s throat-wound open gingerly, his hands slick with blood.

“Uh…Hawke gets a little crazy around dragons.” Varric stared at Hawke like he was completely unhinged.

“You have no idea,” Carver muttered.

“Just a sec.” Hawke couldn’t focus on talking. He set the bloody dagger down on the dragon’s head and used his hands to peel down the top of the muscles gingerly. Then when he had a big enough opening, he dug his hands into the dragon's throat. He didn’t have to go very far to find what he was looking for, the Abyssal’s flame sac. Carefully, he felt around until he could see in his mind exactly what the gland looked like. Then pulling out his right bloody forearm, he picked up the dagger again and slid it inside, carefully shearing away the tendons that held the firm sac in place.

The party watched in horror as the blood gushed onto Hawke, who seemed to not mind it one bit. The sounds of squelching and ripping filled the air and Isabela looked queasy. “Anybody bring a bucket?” she covered her mouth.

When it was free, he tucked the blood-drenched dagger back into his sheath on his belt and pulled out a small red fleshy ball that’s center glowed orange. Its thick skin was veiny, almost see-through and it beat like a heart.

“Isn’t it amazing? It’s her flame sac.” Hawke breathed excitedly. “Look her magic lives, but it’s not as warm as I thought it would be.”

“Uh…that’s great Hawke,” Varric replied. He was eyeing his friend, who was drenched with slick, steaming dragon blood from his face all the way down to his melted boots.

Isabela whistled, “Good call. An extinct dragon gland can probably fetch at least 100 sovereigns. Maybe more in the right circles.” She dared a peek just in time for it to beat. She gagged and turned away. “Glad I didn’t have to do it.”

“We can probably fund the expedition with this!” Carver said.

“I was thinking of giving it to Merrill, actually,” Hawke replied, causing the Dalish elf’s eyes to widen in surprise in Carver’s arms. “I mean we’re not too far off from funding the expedition and Abyssal flame sacs are especially potent at cleansing magics. Perhaps it will help purify your eluvian shard?”

Merrill’s green eyes were so wide Hawke thought he might fall in. “Oh, n-no, Hawke, I couldn’t. You need it more,” her face was red as she stammered.

“We can find coin anywhere,” Hawke shrugged, “but restoring an eluvian? That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. Besides that barrier probably saved my life. I owe you,” He smiled at Merrill who was beaming back until he met Carver’s gaze. Somehow he had pissed him off.

“Um,” Hawke said awkwardly, “I’ll just put it away until we can store it properly.” He was suddenly feeling self-conscious. He waved his hand opening up an interdimensional portal and stuck the sac in the reflective portal before closing it, his brother still glaring coldly.

“Great, great,” Varric muttered. “Now can we go home. My pants are singed and I think all the rubber’s melted off my shoes.”

Hawke leaned on Varric, slicking blood onto him. “Buy me a drink, Varric. I’m a dragon-slayer now.” He waved his hand into a fist dramatically.

“It’s your turn, dragon-kook,” Varric groaned as he looked at his clothes, an impression of blood slick where Hawke had made contact.

They bantered and teased Carver all the way back to Varric’s car. At one point Isabela had to flee from one of Hawke’s blood-drenched hugs. Merrill had not noticed she was being carried the whole time until they arrived at the car which caused Isabela to hone in on Carver’s reddening face. “You didn’t realize? Really, Carver? Why don’t you just ask her out?”

“Ask me out to what? That sounds fun!” Merrill cried.

Carver looked like he would crumble under the laughter.

On the way home, Hawke had been forced to strip down to his small clothes and hose down with magic before Varric would let him into his car.

“You’re easy to get naked, Hawke. I just have to ask.”

Carver refused to look at him. Merrill was red, fidgeting with her seat belt refused to even glance at him the whole time. When Hawke tried to make conversation she would squeak and refuse to say anymore. Isabela stared in approval. “You do keep fit.”

Hawke refused to part with the dragon tooth and he refused to clean it. He wanted to remember this moment exactly as it was. Varric did made him put it in a plastic grocery bag so it wouldn’t drip and he clutched it happily. He rode home with one towel beneath him so he wouldn’t wet the seats and one towel draped over his shoulders. His curly hair was frizzing and messy. Boof’s head laid on Hawke’s lap as he sprawled across his brother and Merrill, his feathery healing paws now wrapped, and twitching in his sleep.

“You know, Hawke, I had a thought,” Merrill’s eyes were purposely averted from him, her voice high and uncomfortable.

“Yeah, Merrill,” he looked over to her and she dared a peek. His one brown eye, one blue met hers, and she gasped. Hawke’s unbridled joy was spread in the biggest grin, his brown freckled skin warm and bright, and he was of course completely nude except the tight superhero boxers that clung to his drying skin.

Her eyes went wide and stayed wide as she slowly looked away, her whole body rigid and stiff with some expression Hawke could not decipher. “Uh,” she said and gulped. “Why didn’t you just put the dragon in your portal?”

Everyone’s expressions fell dark as Hawke’s mouth fell open. For a moment he just gawked at her brilliance. “I could kiss you!” he shouted, startling the slumbering pup who barked in protest. Carver clenched his fist, ready to punch him as Merrill suddenly fell and bonked her head on the car window. Hawke obliviously shot forward, placing one hand on the dwarf’s sagging shoulders. “Varric, we need to turn back!”

#hawke #dragon age fic #lucky hawke #dragon battle #day drinking warning #hawke is an autistic nerd #and unashamed dogdad #ok now to do some art until my sister calls or 2 hours have passed #i might see my niece today #nervous and excited

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celticfeather · 5 years ago

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Akatsuki Fanfic: Campfires

On: FF Ao3 Tumblr

First. 1. Dawn

Previous: 4. Slaughter’s Court

Campfires chapter 5: Kraken Hall

-Hoshigaki Kisame-

Thukk.

Right by his ear. His awakened eyes slid right. The tag of a paper bomb waved from a kunai.

Kisame sprung away in the fraction of a second before its detonation. Adrenaline damped pain: his neck and shoulder had been torn open, he did not know how much. His priority was seizing a few seconds of distance and time.

Midleap he looked for the boy, he was gone, the white cloth that bound him a twisting ribbon snaking to the forest floor.

Flickers manifested into crouching shapes on tree branches. Their animal masks denoted the Anbu of the Hidden Leaf, though the rogues were outside the Leaf's territory. The masks' inset eyes were round and black like a shark's, but leaf ninja moved like ghostly gray leopards. The assailants were three ninja: two men, one woman, and a ninja hound.

He had to get them out of the trees, the leaf ninja the advantage there. They met him on the ground. He grasped Samehada's hilt, and from the reserves of stolen chakra, his steaming flesh began to rapidly regrow where it was damaged. He grinned at the three masked ninja.

"Tell me, am I next to Itachi in your bingo book?"

There was no answer and a lightning jutsu struck at Kisame then. Huge and white and it sucked the air from the ground. He let it strike along Samehada, most of it was absorbed and channeled along the sword's scales, with the rest of the lightning shocking off into something behind him.

He felt Samehada purr. Or perhaps it was more like a stomach growling. As the leaf ninja stared in disbelief, he smashed the sword into someone's body, the shock traveled up his arms, and the exhilaration of combat flooded him.

He quickly dispatched the other two ninja with crushing strikes from his sword. Then the dog sprung at him. Dogs were not pets in the Mist. He grabbed the beast by its forelegs and winched them apart.

One, two, three, dog, down. Done.

He stepped forward to the bodies to make sure the job was finished, but his limbs didn't obey him. He looked down, an ink black shadow had reached to his foot, and somehow he could not move. One of the crumpled men he'd thought dead had wielded a shadow like a tentacle. He tried to budge his leg,

Kisame struggled against the bind. He could move slightly. A few more seconds of fighting and he would break free. He stared inevitable death at the man, and Kisame did not smile.

At that moment a shape, small and angular, inspective and fearless as a crow beside a carcass, appeared beside the crumpled Anbu. The Anbu's head turned to regard the sudden darkness over his shoulder.

"Uchiha...Itachi..."

Well? Kisame wondered of his partner. What will you do?

Itachi's red eyes looked deeply into the mask. Kisame could not know what nightmare was shared. But what he did see was Itachi's kunai strike. The tentacle around Kisame's leg uncoiled, and the fight was over.

Kisame wondered what summoned the assailants. Like a bird Itachi was so visually focused. Last night he had allowed for no fires, no loud noises. But as fine as his sharingan was, it could never see a scent. From their skirmish hours before, the boy smelled like a bloodbath. And Kisame, feeling responsible, knew that he should have been wiser.

Itachi stepped to each of the three corpses and lifted their painted masks. He stared into their faces.

"No member of the Leaf's two ninja hound clans are among these dead," the former Leaf ninja said.

Kisame's eyes slid suspiciously to the surrounding forest. So, their main course was elsewhere.

Then Itachi placed the masks back on. To face the afterworld as they lived, he supposed. The sanctity of a human body never really mattered to Kisame. Dead meat was dead meat. He accepted none of the people in this clearing, alive or not, would ever receive a proper funeral.

Itachi parsed signs and raised a hand. Dozen of crows and ravens and hulking raptors bigger than cats arrived from somewhere. The birds were fearsome, but lightweights by nature, and Kisame wondered what a bird did with a human pelvis.

"You know what doesn't leave bones?" Kisame suggested.

Itachi's expression did not change.

"Sharks."

Icy Itachi looked at his expectant wards and then at Kisame. "Leave them the hound."

Kisame lifted the human bodies and threw them into the river, and summoned four freshwater tolerant sharks. At a scarcely perceptible twitch of Itachi's finger the obedient ravens plunged. His bull sharks needed no such instruction, and when one did not not focus closely, the splashing sounded peaceable in comparison. The ravens, social and hierarchical, argued noisily with each other over the best positions. With a businesslike demeanor, the two ninja turned their backs to the clamor of devouring.

"The Leaf will have sent a second jounin squad after us. I will reroute them," Itachi said.

Itachi intended to bait an informed jounin team alone, in his condition, and probably half his unimpressive chakra with a shadow clone.

Kisame smiled. "Still slightly suicidal, I see."

"I expect no problems."

"Are you gonna say something to me about last night? Or are you just gonna let it fester?" Kisame said.

Itachi's eyes were sharp. "Do you want me to apologize for attempting suicide? Or for abusing you?"

"I want you to acknowledge that you looked into my head, revived my dead-sister's dead-kid, impregnated her, and stabbed her through the spine. To try to get me to kill you, because you decided that you can't cope with the fact that you're a killer. Have I got that right?"

Itachi continued aloofly. "I am different from all of you. Senseless killing bothers me deeply."

"You are so elitist. You think I wasn't bothered by it? You think when I was a boy, I wanted this?" Kisame gestured at himself, huge and beastly and covered in scars.

Itachi was midstride, but he stopped at Kisame's words. Kisame continued menacingly.

"I grew up in the Blood-Mist Village. I was younger than you when I became a killer. I have no family, no purpose, and almost no friends. So what I want to know, Itachi, is why you don't accept it like the rest of us."

"I can deal with the fact that I'm a killer. What I could not accept last night, Kisame, is my continuing existence in the Akatsuki causing dozens of unnecessary deaths. But whatever. It doesn't matter- you were right anyway. Ending myself is not going to solve this problem. It must be fought directly."

"Directly?" Kisame repeated. The word insinuated rebellion. Wars were won with less manpower than that would require for a rebellion against the Akatsuki, and Kisame knew he was under orders to take Itachi out if he did so.

Wisely, Itachi did not elaborate. The dark haired young man looked somewhere and Kisame followed his gaze down. The dog was just a skeleton. The winged scavengers took the bones in their slender beaks and flew away with them.

"We must leave now," Itachi said.

Kisame stepped onto the now-still water to hide his tracks and scent. He showed the scroll between his knuckles. "I'll start Kakuzu's other mission," he said gruffly.

"Hm."

Only a few wind-trembling feathers testified what happened at the scene, and the two ninja vanished with the wind that scattered them.

—Uchiha Itachi—

Itachi broke a twig between his fingers. In this moist climate, a twig would not have snapped naturally. The Anbu would halt to discuss the stick for a few precious moments and come to the same conclusion. Animals could leave smears in the moss. But only ninja leave decoys. Even if they did not have a second dog, they would know it was him.

But these Anbu would have another dog. No Inuzuka had been among the dead. No Hatake had been among the dead...

Ninja who abandon the rules are scum. But ninja who abandon their comrades are worse than scum.

Itachi thought he had embodied the persona of cold parricide. Apparently not. His ruse of coldness had been translucent as ocean water. Strange round, silver and black eyes regarded him from his memory:

You might just be the only friend I've ever had.

He had been cruel to manipulate his partner last night. Kisame had been uncomfortable fighting him, even as easy as Itachi planned to make it. He would find Kisame and apologize properly for his manipulative attempt. Maybe he could convince him to spare some of the bandits, Kisame probably would probably kill most of them if he did not interfere. Itachi hated these Akatsuki kill missions: Kakuzu, Pain, could just try and punish him for leaving some people alive after the goal was achieved. Kisame was right. Death would not solve the problem of Itachi's existence; he would have to think his way out.

That was far enough to cost the Anbu the necessary time. He parsed signs for a shadow clone, and his double unceremoniously continued forward. Last he tested, he could be separate from his clone for two kilometers before it disappeared. The real Itachi jumped some twenty meters to the water, expecting that if he did not touch solid matter, his scent would vanish in seconds in the air.

But he was not sure. He did not see his world through scent. He threw a final glance towards the past, towards the Anbu, towards his old captain Kakashi, then ignited his sharingan and focused on the way before him. Now, to track Kisame.

—Hoshigaki Kisame—

Kisame lowered the hand-drawn map and stared at the island that filled its place on the horizon. It was a fine little place for a bandit camp.

He stepped across the ocean water to where the stolen wooden skiffs crowded the island's white sand shore. He found the cave entrance by smell. Men: those lazy brutes had taken to pissing where they ate.

He walked into the tunnel. It would be inconvenient to swing Samehada in such a small place, but he did not expect the bandits would want to stay there long. Someone saw him and asked him a question. Kisame shoved their head into the wall and kept walking deeper into the cave. The scroll's task had been to 'eliminate the bandit threat,' and he would do that in the way he decided most enjoyable and convenient.

Two bigshots argued in the common area, surrounded by lower members. The two leaders raised swords at him, but he twisted their arms around, and thrust one into the blade of the other. Then the screams started. He threw the trembling survivor to the ground and stepped on his neck. A surrounding man threw a knife, Kisame returned it.

A woman called her comrades to flee. The remaining members streamed around him, out of the cave, down the beach, and Kisame stalked after the prey unhurriedly. They untethered their rowboats and launched them into the waves, running astride their vessels, tossing oars to each other.

He wet his feet in the surf and shed his robe on the beach. A grin slit his lips. He parsed a few signs and a water dragon overturned the skiffs and spilled their human cargo into the sea. He let Samehada's spiked pommel embed in the skin of his palm. What a terrible day to be a pirate, he thought as the cool tide sloshed against his now-sandpaper hide.

He smashed a skiff with a whip of his tail. The electricity in his snout fired ablaze, they were so alive, so frantic, so afraid. This prey was small, a tenth of his weight, almost small enough to swallow whole. Their tender bones waned and crunched in his jaws. He'd bite, tear, release when the muscles flexed limp, and bite the next thing that moved. The blood was intoxicating, heavy, arousing. The meat in his mouth did not taste bad.

He pictured Itachi. The cruel face he made last night shined in his mind's eye. With his grinning teeth and the weasel look in his bloodthirsty, fight-hungry eyes. Bring out Samehada!

An impulse occurred to him. He had not done that before. But that did not mean he could not start. He was frightfully hungry. A chemical of frenzied excitement flooded his brain, no longer fully human, at the prospect.

He identified a target. He sank into the depths for a pregnant moment. Then he snapped the red-muscled braided whip of his tail, shot dart-fast towards the surface, and a second before he breached, yawned wide a razored chasm of death.

—-—

Kisame staggered human out of the waves. He descended from the fogging rausch, the tremendous high. His hands trembled from ecstasy, from shock, from disbelief.

An uncomfortable feeling plagued him. It was the first time in fifteen years that he felt it. Not quite fear, not quite cold, but it gripped him around the chest like those. It was the unfamiliar realization that, maybe, he had done something wicked.

He swung Samehada off his body and flung it viciously against a palm tree, and he leered at it with shark teeth bared.

"Look what you made me do!"

The words felt hollow when they became reality. He knew better than to decry an object. It was not Samehada's fault, it was not Itachi's fault. The deed had been his alone. He knew not which god to pray to forgiveness, or demon for sanctuary.

"Holy Buddha, Amaterasu, Susanoo, fuck it, Jashin, anybody."

He knelt on the sand.

"Why did I do that?"

Kisame's gods, as always, remained silent.

Looking at the familiarity of his own limbs made him want to retch, but he knew retching would not absolve his sin. He did not know the physics of it. If he ate something big, and then he shrank back down to normal size. But he felt gorged and sick and he could not bear the thought of eating. He could not bear the thought of meat, of flesh. Of muscles pulling under skin, of intricate ligaments gently meshed to slippery bones... He looked away from his own body and towards the ocean horizon.

He did not indulge in the sleep his exhausted body craved. He sat on the beach, feeling strangely nervous. He let the surf wash coolly over him, but it brought little relief. Something brushed by his hand on a wave. He feared what it could be. He held it in front of his face to eclipse the setting sun, but it was just a harmless abalone sea shell, and the iridescent mother-of-pearl material glittered gently like mica in his hand.

He stood up from the surf and took Samehada off the tree. The moment he did, he was blasted with the instrument's chakra sensing ability. Itachi was tracking him, and a shock of unease probed him: he did not want to see Itachi right now.

Water crested around his ankles. He rubbed the smooth abalone shard with his thumb like a netsuke. He felt the sharingan-wielder nearing and decided it would be too much effort to evade him.

"Hey." A pause. "Bandits are taken care of?"

"Yeah."

"Do we have bodies to dispose of?"

"No."

Itachi had speared two fish next to a burning, salt-blue piece of driftwood. "You want some?"

"I'm not hungry."

Itachi's vivisecting black eyes probed him. Or maybe it was just a normal look. Kisame feared what he could see with those eyes, if he could read inside his mind, and pluck his nightmares into reality, like he had with Akaei.

Itachi waved his hand. "Come sit by me."

Kisame sat by him.

"Kisame, I'm sorry I attacked you last night. I thought a world minus me was for the best."

"Itachi, the day men like you are the bad ones, is the day this world has gone to shit," he said.

"I manipulated you, and I terrorized you, and I tried to kill myself. Do you forgive me?"

"Yeah. But do it again, I'll..." bite you in half, he would have said to someone else, sometime else, but he found his usual bravado unappetizing. "Don't do it again."

"Thank you, Kisame."

Itachi ate alone, neatly and quietly. Kisame stared at the abalone shard and stroked it between his thumb and finger. It was smooth and flat and not quite triangular, like a tooth, or maybe a teardrop.

"I did something I regret today, Itachi," Kisame eventually said.

Itachi looked over the moon-streaked water. "At times it's hard to live with our crimes. But we need to understand that we are worthy of our own acceptance."

Did he know? Maybe. Maybe those eyes saw every thought Kisame had ever thought. But Itachi did not grasp the crux of the incident that troubled Kisame.

"It felt good."

Now Itachi understood the severity of the problem. The young man bridged his hands before his nose and closed his eyes, and stayed quiet. Somehow Itachi's recognition sobered Kisame.

"I understand if you want to spend a few days away from me, or want to leave altogether," Kisame said.

"If you're sorry, I'll forgive you."

Kisame raised a calm eyebrow, looking down at his sea shell. This was different from Itachi's crime. "I'm not sure this is yours to forgive."

"Then, I accept you."

He contemplated the sentiment. Unlike forgiveness, acceptance invoked no debt, no guilt, and nothing to prove. There was nothing about it he could interpret as ingenuine or undeserved. It was merely a validation of his existence. He did not ask for forgiveness, or was so forward as to say he deserved it. Acceptance… Kisame liked that.

Itachi's eyes slid to the object in Kisame's upturned palm. "What is that?"

"It's an abalone shell." He passed it to his partner.

Itachi's eyes flashed red for a second and he smiled small. "It's beautiful. It has many unique colors, ones humans cannot even see. What kind of animal lived in it?"

"An abalone is a big, ugly, sea snail the size of a rat that eats slime."

"The universe is wise, how even such a wretched creature must not stay ugly at its core, is it not?"

"You can have it if you want," Kisame said. Itachi was a small, pretty man who seemed to like small, pretty things.

Itachi handed it back. "I think you'd better keep it."

He turned the silvery rainbow shard around in his palm. Yes. He would keep it, to remind him of the stupid, ugly, scum-eating, ocean creature that Itachi decided was still beautiful. He was glad Itachi found him this night. He would be miserable alone. The two ninja sat before the glow of the salt-blue flames, and stared up at the thick belt of stars.

"If you're not a bad person, and you've hated killing in the Akatsuki the whole time, why did you decide after this mission to off yourself?" Kisame asked.

"Utilitarian ethics. I had a goal, but I realized that fewer people will die if I was dead."

"Avoiding physical trauma… it might not be the most ethical thing, you know," Kisame said.

Itachi gave him a doubting look. He was starting to not be terrible at reading Itachi's expressions.

"Have you ever thought about what makes you happy?"

"Rarely," Itachi said.

"Maybe this eye of the moon scheme can make the world a better place for people like us," Kisame said.

Kisame noted Itachi's flinch. Of course Itachi would know, he and their leader were related, after all, but it was a privilege for Kisame to know the secret of the Akatsuki's true plan, the Eye of the Moon.

The Uchiha looked at him intensely. "You know the truth."

"That our leader is Uchiha Madara? Yes. He recruited me personally," Kisame said.

"Even I… was not strong enough to kill the Uchiha clan alone. Madara helped me do it."

Itachi's lips were uncharacteristically loose, and Kisame, always a hunter, identified when to act. "History paints Madara as a fanatic for his clan. Why would he cull his own legacy?"

"Some sixty years ago, Madara thought the Uchiha betrayed him when we wanted peace alongside the Senju."

"Then maybe it makes sense for him to kill his clan. But you… I can't explain why you'd do it."

The silence hung. Itachi did not relieve it with an explanation. Kisame's luck had run out and Itachi returned taciturn.

Kisame looked around. It was well into the night. Itachi probably did not like this exposed beach for a campsite. "Where should we sleep?"

Itachi signaled their departure by standing. "I noted a possibility on my way."

Kisame looked out into the blackness. "You can see in this?"

Red eyes gleamed. "Moderately."

Kisame took a torch from the fire for himself, washed the evidence into the waves, and followed Itachi.

With the starfield and ocean on his left, Kisame followed the small swift shadow through the dark hemisphere along the rocky coast. Itachi sprang down the sharp rocks with the same limberness of the Leaf Anbu, and he realized the boy had spent his formative years among their ranks. Kisame felt somewhat clumsier, hindered by the dark and a torch. They found themselves in a tidal cave which overlooked the sea, with shallow tide pools on its sharp floor. He peered into one: an octopus wilted into the cracks at his face.

"Need we be concerned about the tide?" Itachi asked him.

Kisame noted the lack of algae on the wall and the height of the moon. "No."

Itachi leaned his back against the sharp wall and let his legs sink. Kisame doused his torch in an unoccupied tidepool. With the moonlight that reflected in flashing tortoise-shells from the ocean, he could see the silver edge of Itachi's short, angular face.

Itachi stared at him for a moment, as if deciding to say something. He said, "Good night, Kisame."

Kisame was caught off guard. But he too formed his lips around the strange words. "Good night, Itachi."

Itachi closed his eyes and Kisame leaned himself on the wall opposite him. But now Kisame was watchful, and for a while he stayed awake to the sounds of waves. Comforting, hollow sounds, that like the breaths of ghosts, reminded him of a home that no longer existed.

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading!

I am looking for a new Beta for this story. If you are 18+ and might be interested in looking over this story with me for style and plot, please write me a message. I'd love to have a partner to make this piece as strong as it can be. Thanks!

And if you like reading this, please do let me know your thoughts!

Steadfast,

Kelto

#Campfires #sorry im a few days late i had to find a new place to live #and rent an apartment in a language i dont speak legalese of #But I did it because I am unkillable!#and also im flying home for christmas which will be nice #I am also looking for a new beta for this story so please let me know if you are interested #its a lot of fun I think!#thanks for reading #naruto #fanfiction #itachi #kisame #kisaita #celticfeather #keltodier #And again this is super M rated but I guess this chapter is as bad as the story gets

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thefine9diary · 5 years ago

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Peacock and the Beast

Once upon a time, there was a young fella who just entered adulthood and is eager to finally explore the world on his own. He was entering the most fruitful time of his life, eager to taste the bittersweet flavours of romance that he had heard much about but was forbidden to experience being raised in an all-boys school. He was groomed to be honourable, to be righteous and to be a gentlemen. He dreamt of himself being the knight in shining armour, destined to meet his beautiful and kind princess by rescuing her from the darkness and riding into a bright future.

Often times in this world, the most beautiful beings are also the most deceptive. In nature, poisonous creatures such as caterpillars, snakes and jellyfish use bright colours to attract their preys. This is a proven law in this world, just look at the three prime colours, they create countless beautiful shades, but when mixed together, their true nature is revealed - black. Unfortunately the young men fell into the same trap when he met the first girl that came into his life. He has never met a girl this pretty before having grown up in a boys school and was blinded by her bright colours. He pursued her with sincerity and generosity and finally she belonged to him. Things were good at first and they planned a life happily ever after. He was a giver and built his happiness on her, he took care of her needs and showered her with care. She was appreciative at first but as time passed by, she became accustomed to the pampering and her true colour as a taker came to light.

She took advantage of his giving nature and took him for granted. She was unappreciative of him, he thought it was his problem and tried even harder to please her and found himself in a vicious cycle. Eventually he just became part of the household, like a piece of furniture, a carpet that initially received admiration for its comfort, provided warmth for the feet, but always stepped on and slowly forgotten. Until one day she decided to replace the carpet with new tiles, because warmth was boring for her and the new tiles were flashy, the cool sensations on the feet were too exhilarating to resist.

He was left with a void, his fair lady had became an evil fairy haunting him from his past, leaving him with a curse that he would never be the charming, honourable and giving knight he once was. Instead he became the Beast, one that lives in the dark and is ugly on the inside so no princess deserving of his love would ever come near him. His greatest fear is that he would die alone, knowing that the only way to avoid this is by finding the princess who would love him for who he is now so that he could return to his original form.

Despite the impossible odds against him, the Beast was not a quitter and with wills of iron, he was determined to break the curse. Fortunately for him, he did have one strength that could help him win the princess that would bring him back to his original nature, and that was - he is extremely leng jai...... Okay all jokes aside, it was because he had mastered the skills as a hunter. He was able to assess his surroundings like reflex, he could smell and see through body signals instinctively to identify vulnerable targets, he knew exactly how to make an approach without alarming the prey, he practised the art of seduction to lure his targets in, and he was fearless in going for the kill at the end. He was convinced that with these skills, he could win over a princess and not have to be alone for the rest of his life.

He started his quest to hunt down his princess in the crazy city where the fallen have gathered to party in the dark. Soon he found himself in a mix of different beasts in the hunting ground. There were scavengers who were the lowest of them all and would eat whatever is left, devouring the dead corpses that no self-respectful being would eat. There were foxes that would con and cheat the gullible young girls like rabbits into their schemes. There were fishers who would throw a bait out, often flaunting their wealth and attracting gold diggers with brain sizes comparable to a gold fish. We see a lot of fishers here, claiming to be hunters but not realising without the bait, they are nothing more than a stick. There were wolves that would hunt in packs which are admirable to outsiders because of the comradery until you realised they also share the easy girl who was weak like a sheep and they are in fact just dogs when outside of the pack. There were also monkeys who picks the low hanging fruit and brags to be a hunter, but just as fruits will never make it on the dining table, these girls are bland and will never satisfy a real beast’s appetite.

The Beast hunted alone as he had no interest in scavenging, conning, fishing nor fruit picking, he would never share his treasured princess with anyone too. He had success from the beginning, he would glance and scout the bar to find an attractive woman that interests him at first sight and move into her proximity to make his presence known. Keeping his eyes fixed on the target, he would wait for her to catch eye contact with him and reply with a smirk and her reaction would indicate her approachability. The approach is probably the most critical part of the hunt, the most ferocious predators always come prepared and approach with caution, take the cheetah for example, he would crouch and hide behind the grass, using his mesmerising spots as camouflage while getting into the optimal position and angle to charge, mount and penetrate with his sharp fangs. The Beast did exactly the same, he has practiced and overcame hundreds of objections without flaw, he has learned to hide his true intentions without lying, he has mastered the art of camouflaging with different identities and could direct interactions into exactly where he wanted. All that is left is to mount and penetrate.

He did this for years, mounting and penetrating numerous beauties but was no where closer in finding his princess. All the so called beauties were in fact takers who had no interest to know him for who he really was. They wanted what he represented - the flirtatious courting, the unknown anticipation, and the lustful ecstasy. Eventually he became numb and desensitised, becoming part of the darkness that surrounds him and began to embrace himself as a beast. Soon he was hunting not in the hopes of finding his princess, but purely for the ego and satisfaction of conquering the forest. The beauties were nothing more than supper to him now, their faces became vague and names forgotten.

Until one Friday night when the beast was once again out hunting alone. From afar he spotted a beautiful girl with the most confident radiance walking through the crowd towards him, she was of medium stature with feminine curves, she was well-covered in subtle yet eye-drawing outfit as the fabric hugs her body lightly, accentuating her perfect silhouette in the dark. Lucky for him her journey ended at the bar counter right next to him, her skin was perfect with luscious tone, her features were delicate with a perfectly straight nose, eyes that touched the soul and lips that were full and firm, all of these were arranged in the golden ratio on her oval-shaped face. He would typically have made a move at the sight of such attractive being but hesitated as there was something unique about her, she was in a socially open place with her friends yet she was comfortable in her own world, looking calmly and confidently ahead without any signs of insecurity. That signalled to him that any trespassers trying to intrude her world would not be welcomed.

He could see the animals drooling over her and one by one starting to make their way towards this precious creature and hoping to try their luck. One hungry fox got there first and tapped her shoulder from the side, she rolled her eyes to see him with her peripheral without turning her head and ignored him, he leaned towards her head and said his first words but she looked away as if he didn’t exist and had him leaving with discouragement. Then the bold eagle arrived at the sight of her drunk friend, he pecked and tried to get a reaction from them but was swooped away by her hand in his face insulting him with disrespect. The Beast knew they were doomed to fail and was trying to figure her out but realised he had to make a move soon before she gets fed up by all the other animals trying their luck.

He took a risk knowing he may well end up rejected like the rest of them. He leaned in along the counter so his face is in front of her and she could not avoid eye contact. He pointed to her drunk friend and asked jokingly “why are you sober?” She looked into his eyes with a slight pause and replied “Cause I am a peacock.” It was an unheard of expression that also made immediate sense for him, she was elegant, gorgeous and unwavering in her confidence. Knowing exactly what she meant, the Beast still asked her to clarify whether she calls herself a peacock because she was ready for mating in order to direct the conversation to where he wanted - about sex. She saw right through his intentions and answered with a simple no followed by a fierce statement that she does not want to talk unless he drinks 4 shots. The Beast knew she was out of his league and she was toying him so he left without any loss of enthusiasm in search of his next target.

They parted ways but the Beast always remembered the beautiful peacock at the back of his head. She was a creature that belonged on the bright heavenly skies, destined to fly freely with the birds, unreachable by the predators that pollutes the land. But she chose to come on the ground into the darkness, perhaps forced by a similar reason as the Beast, that she believed in the bright side but it had let her down. It was out of choice that she walks on the dark side, to revenge and instil fear on the unworthy beings with her seductive yet destructive strides.

And this, is how it all started...

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charteredlibertine · 5 years ago

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For reasons I cannot fathom, several of you indicated your interest in reading this writing sample from my 18-year-old self, so here it is -- an original, unedited excerpt from my amateur attempt at a novel, The Dragons of Cavel.

Words: 1,800~

***

Encircled with snow and wreathed in chill mists, Castle Cavel burned.

Dusk had fallen, but Vaelagr could see the dark plume of smoke coiling skyward from the stone carcass even through the faint twilight. Smaller fires swelled across the valley floor like ink blots on dry parchment, devouring trees and homesteads in the wake of the battle that Vaelagr guessed had now pushed further south, along the mountain range.

Unless it is over now, he thought, yellow eyes searching the darkness. Yes, maybe it is over, but what will that mean for us? Have we won, or…?

The alternative was unthinkable, but it was not in Vaelagr’s nature to be irrationally optimistic. He had seen the terror that the army of humans clad in ruby-and-silver cloaks had unleashed, launching unseen attacks that shredded scale and could even tear a flighted dragon out of the skies. Who would hope for a victory against that kind of unmitigated power?

There was a sudden, unnatural rustle in the trees far below, possibly scattered enemy scouts. Vaelagr turned a searching eye on the spot, but even a dragon could not see in the dark. If there were humans there, the thick odor of charcoal and brimstone masked their scent, and they were too far for Vaelagr to perceive any Aura. But there was undoubtedly magic there, so potent that the very space around him seemed to contract and throb from its intensity.

Flexing his wings restlessly, Vaelagr glanced toward the man who crouched beside him half-hidden in the darkness. He felt Telior’s shiver but could not afford the luxury of lighting a fire for warmth, lest he risk forfeiting the secrecy of his watchful roost. Instead, he offered the shelter of his great wing, and the man took it with an expression of weary gratitude, glad at least to escape the wind’s harshest bite. Telior’s lips were already tinged purple with cold, and as he vigorously rubbed life back into his skinny, pale limbs, Vaelagr saw him cock his head suddenly to the side, one ear straining to capture what little his human senses could detect beyond the refuge of the watchdome. Vaelagr knew he heard nothing and had not expected to hear anything, since Telior, like himself, was painfully aware that the call of the dragon huntresses had long since faded from their hearing. Those bugling cries, and one in particular, would have signaled to them that there was yet some hope for the battle, but the snapping and hissing of the fires in the valley and the rustling of the leaves were the only noises that reached Vaelagr through the night.

“Do you think they will attack again?�� asked Telior, drawing his tattered cloak more tightly about him. If there was any hint of fear in his voice, out of some misplaced sense of pride, he was attempting to hide it. Vaelagr knew he was in pain; the burned flesh on his shoulder and arm where he’d stepped too close to Vaelagr’s flame earlier was blistering red and purple, and his hair was caked in dried blood from his head wound.

“Yes,” Vaelagr answered simply, resuming his scrutiny of the valley floor. He didn’t know how many hours he had passed here, watching and waiting for some sign of victory, or of defeat. Telior had long since forsaken vigilance, overcome by exhaustion, but Vaelagr would hold watch. Reason told him that abandoning the watchdome now to join the fight would not save the huntresses from whatever fate had met them in the darkness. So he would wait.

Wait for what? he wondered, craning his neck to lick at an oozing gash on his forearm. If the huntresses are dead, they are dead. But the Dragon-Lord cannot be dead, not yet. Vaelagr shuddered, and his head crest flattened anxiously against his skull. If I wait for the General very much longer, I may lose my chance to get through to the Palace. Ought I wait here, or had I better go now, while the path might still be clear?

“Looks like we’ll be getting more snow,” Telior remarked absently, staring up at the sky that was choked with cinders beneath pale clouds.

Vaelagr made no reply, for Telior’s face was taut and distant, inattentive. What little minds humans had, and so full of little thoughts. But Telior was right; the sky looked and smelled of snow. A northerly breeze carried the chill scent of a coming storm down from the damp night sky, along with char and the smell of smoldering flesh. It was an acrid smell, the smell of death, and it stung Vaelagr’s nose. Before the attack, he had never known death to be a horrific thing, and it disturbed him now, this new type of death. This was what a wizardish death was like. An unnatural death.

Suddenly, he sensed something. Danger. Vaelagr stiffened, growling. Spines slick with venomous toxins emerged like needles from beneath the scales on his shoulders and between his wings, readying him for combat. Something was coming toward them on the wind -- slowly, unsteadily, but determinedly. Was the trespasser an enemy? Telior glanced toward the ledge nervously, sensing Vaelagr’s uneasiness, and reached for the cocked crossbow that stood against the wall. As the thing drew nearer, though, Vaelagr perceived its Aura, which revealed its nature to him as surely as a sharp scent caught on the wind would reveal a hare to a wolf. The newcomer was of the kilth. Vaelagr relaxed, and his spines receded.

Talons clawed at the outer stone landing as a sudden flutter of wings announced the arrival of another dragon. His scales were ebony in color, and he bore around his neck the gold chain that secured the medallion inlaid with a bright, teardrop-shaped red gemstone that was the heirloom of Cavel’s ancient military elite. There was no doubt that he was the General, though for his injuries Vaelagr might not have recognized him. Deep wounds gouged the side of his head so that one great eye was ruined and swollen, and his broad wings glistened with scarlet blood.

“Where are the huntresses?” Telior asked, abruptly on his feet. “Haven’t they returned?”

The General hissed, snapping his jaws at the human, though Telior barely flinched. The unprovoked show of aggression caused Vaelagr to bristle in return, and his head crest fanned upright. Weariness and despair had them all on edge, but anyone with sense would know that flaring tempers would do only more harm. General Kano’s injuries had no doubt made him intolerant. Or was it something else? Vaelagr read the General’s body language even before he spoke: the wilted air about him, the way he held his head, the sagging wings that trailed behind him upon the ground, the deflated head crest. The words needed not to be spoken. The battle was lost.

“Get the Dragon-Lord to safety,” said the General, fangs bared in a snarl as he lashed his tail. “I will concern myself with the huntresses.”

“What of the dens?” Vaelagr asked. “Are we to give up the defense of our own?”

“That is up to the huntresses now, what few of them live.” The General’s growl was filled with disgust. “Go now, or else doom your Lord to the fate of our Clan. The Sorcerer’s feral gryphons patrol the skies, and soon there will be no escape from Cavel. Now is your only chance. I will divert the attention of the Red Soldiers as long as I may, in the hope that it will give you enough time to flee.”

“Come, Telior,” Vaelagr ordered.

Telior was already vaulting up Vaelagr’s massive side, and his unsteady footfalls told the dragon that the trials of the day had taken their toll. Humans were a weak breed, ill-suited to endure great bodily strain, and while riding he would slow Vaelagr’s flight -- a liability for the mission entrusted him by General Kano. Better to leave Telior at the den with the other human servants, where he would be protected by the remaining huntresses.

In an instant, Vaelagr had launched himself from the rock watchdome and was plummeting in free fall down the cliff side. He barely heard Telior’s groan over the howl of the blood-freezing wind. Still they plunged, downward and downward, until a mere flame-span above the ground, Vaelagr snapped open his wings and turned sharply to soar over the now forsaken battlefield.

It was the silence, more than the stench or the gloom, that woke dread in Vaelagr’s heart as his eyes scoured the ground for any sign of life. No breath disturbed that hushed void. It was a silence capable only of the dead.

And dead they were. He sensed no trace of Aura among the lifeless forms. From this height, Vaelagr could make out very little except for the shrunken silhouettes cast up by the light of burning trees. Dragon corpses sprawled broken and limp in mires of blood, their twisted remains unidentifiable. Scattered among them were the mauled bodies of gryphons and humans, enemies no longer distinguishable from allies. His kin, his kilth, lay rotting in the mud.

How could this have happened in Cavel?

Telior was trembling -- from cold or from fear, Vaelagr was unsure. Then, Vaelagr realized he was vomiting, overpowered by the rank smell of the bodies that from their downwind position was almost enough to churn even Vaelagr’s strong stomach.

“What kind of creature kills without respect for the dead?” croaked Telior, his voice shaking with horror.

“A human,” Vaelagr hissed, the irony of Telior’s naïveté embittering him.

“Get us out of here, would you?” Telior said. “I can’t bear this smell much longer.”

The stench had attracted the attention of others, as well. Carrion birds circled in the air nearby, readying themselves for what would be a plentiful feast, for them. Vaelagr snapped at the scavengers, sending them squawking in fearful retreat from his threatening jaws.

The bones of the Cavelian kilth are not to be gnawed like those of a beast, Vaelagr snarled, and what few birds had still eyed the remains with greedy beaks agape shrieked nervously and winged off into the dark. Even they, stupid as they were, knew better than to rouse the rage that quivered in the edge of Vaelagr’s perilous voice. Vaelagr angled his wings and set them on a course toward the double-peaked mountain that stood veiled in twilit shadows to the north, and he left the silent grave of the battlefield behind. There would be a time later to do proper honor to the remains of his dear friends and brethren, but at this moment he needed to drop Telior at the den and then reach the Dragon Lord, before the Sorcerer’s gryphons reached him first.

#content warning for like...semi graphic descriptions of violence and death #i took out the double spaces after the periods but that's all i edited #the rest is Teenaged Galen totally raw and uncut #ENJOY? I GUESS??#honestly tho....this is probably better than like 98% of anything i've written recently lol....#i miss the days when i could just write like this for page after page without getting stuck in my own head #galen writes #the dragons of cavel #delete later #...maybe

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pengychan · 6 years ago

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[Coco] Nuestra Iglesia, Pt. 1

Title: Nuestra Iglesia Summary: Fake Priest AU. In the midst of the Mexican Revolution, Santa Cecilia is still a relatively safe place; all a young orphan named Miguel has to worry about is how to get novices Héctor and Imelda to switch their religious vows for wedding vows before it's too late. He's not having much success until he finds an unlikely ally in their new parish priest, who just arrived from out of town. Fine, so Padre Ernesto is a really odd priest. He's probably not even a real priest, and the army-issued pistol he carries is more than slightly worrying. But he agrees that Héctor and Imelda would be wasted on religious life, and Miguel will take all the help he can get. It's either the best idea he's ever had, or the worst. Characters: Miguel Rivera, Ernesto de la Cruz, Héctor Rivera, Imelda Rivera, Chicharrón, Óscar and Felipe Rivera, OCs. Imector. Rating: T

[Tag with all chapters up here.]

[Also on Ao3]

A/N: @senoraluna and I had this idea a while back and of course I couldn’t resist writing it. This is gonna be a lot more light-hearted than my usual stuff. Most of the time. Can’t promise regular updates, but will do my best! (This first chapter is... a bit grim. But it will be mostly humor, I promise!)

***

Mexico, March 1914

Ernesto smelled the bodies before he saw them, hanging from the highest branches of a half-dried tree, swaying just barely despite the complete lack of wind.

They probably hadn’t been there for too long, but their corpses were already swelling in the heat, and carrion birds were having a go at their faces. He would have very happily avoided approaching at all, but it was the only tree as far as eye could see, hanging men or not; both him and Dante needed shade and rest, and to eat something.

His horse was beginning to falter, and it was a bad sign: if he died on him now, he’d be screwed. He wouldn’t be able to get very far on foot, not in that heat. They’d rest, he’d have the last of his salt beef, and Dante would make do by grazing at the shrubs.

“Come on, amigo. We’re almost there,” Ernesto said, not really knowing where there even was other than ‘anywhere but here’, and led his horse towards the tree. The bodies hanging from it had belonged to army men; they wore the same uniform Ernesto had worn until a few days earlier, when his thoughts on the mess those past few years had been had condensed into one big ‘fuck it all’.

He was twenty-five, had been drafted into the army the previous year, and he’d had it with all of it. Huerta could burn in hell; he’d only ever wanted to hold a guitar, to play and sing before crowds - not to hold a rifle and fight someone else’s damn war.

So he’d shot the man he’d been sent out on patrol with in the back-- we drank together, laughed and joked called each other amigo, but killing him was so easy --before tearing the army jacket off himself and turning his horse down south, galloping away as though he had the devil at his heels. In a way, he did; as a deserter, he now had plenty of devils after him. He needed to find someplace safe to hide until that nonsense was over with.

… And speaking of nonsense, there was a third body beneath that tree - not hanging, but tied to its trunk and entirely motionless. The man’s head was tilted against the tree, skin and balding head burned by the sun, eyes shut and mouth slightly agape. He wore civilian clothing, but there was no mistaking the white collar on his neck - a priest.

Not too surprising, really. There were people in both factions who were fed up with the Catholic church, and amidst violence no bystander was safe. Ernesto wasn’t fond on priests himself, truth be told, but he sort of drew a line at tying them up to a tree and leaving them to die slowly. He hoped the poor bastard hadn’t taken too long to--

A groan caused Ernesto to recoil, and Dante to rear back. Under Ernesto’s gaze, the priest turned his head to look at him with clouded eyes. “Agua,” he rasped. “Por favor.”

Oh, Christ, he was still alive. Ernesto quickly tied Dante to a low branch and, avoiding to step beneath the corpses, quickly went to the priest. He absently noted, a little distance away, a suitcase discarded on the ground, the prints of a donkey and tracks of wheels. The revolutionaries had hung the soldiers, tied up the priest, and left with the cart he must have been riding on, discarding whatever they didn’t need to take.

“It’s all right, Padre,” Ernesto said, knowing full well nothing was all right. He could tell the man wasn’t going to survive and, either way, Dante couldn’t carry them both; he would have to leave him there. Maybe ending him there and then would be the kindest thing to do, but even so he found himself reaching for his knife to cut down the ropes first; the man slumped forward and Ernesto caught him, leaning him down across the ground in a shaded spot.

“Not you lucky day, was it?”

The priest looked up at him, saying nothing, licking blistered lips with a dry tongue. Ernesto took the water flask from his belt, lifted the man’s head with a hand, and put the flask to his lips. He’d expected him to drink greedily and had been prepared to pull back the flask - had to save water - but the man only took a few gulps before turning his head to look up at him.

“God bless you, son,” he rasped.

“Gracias. Could use a blessing,” Ernesto muttered, putting the flask away, and looked up towards the hanging corpses. “What happened here?”

“I was… I was travelling. Santa Cecilia. Their parish priest… Padre Edmundo died. I was sent to replace him, and… and I came across....” he swallowed, and his eyes turned to the bodies hanging above them. His features twisted in anguish. “I only asked to be allowed… to give them the last rites, before… everyone should have… the last rites…”

What a stupid, stupid, stupid idea. Years of fighting had made men bloodthirsty, and standing between them and enemies to hang was asking for trouble. Revolutionaries had done this, but Ernesto knew plenty of army men would have done the same. He’d seen a church being burned to the ground over the rumor that a priest aided rebels. “It was a bad call, Padre.”

“It was… my duty.”

And you’re dying for it, Ernesto thought, but didn’t say as much. “How far is Santa Cecilia?” he asked instead. “My horse cannot carry us both, but if it’s close enough to find help--”

“No, son. It is… it is south from here, a two days’ ride,” the man managed, and Ernesto nodded grimly. That meant that he wouldn’t be able to get him help before four days at the earliest, and there was no chance he could hold on that long. He could perhaps find help sooner if he rode back the way he’d come, but it was far too dangerous.

He could never go back; forward was the only way. He needed someplace to hide... and Santa Cecilia’s parish was expecting a new priest. Ernesto’s gaze turned to the open suitcase on the ground, and to the black cassock and white collar he could see hanging out of it. The cassock should be about his size; maybe just a bit too large, but it’d do.

“I don’t think I can help you, Padre,” Ernesto said slowly, causing the man to shake his head.

“You can. You have a gun.”

So, that was how it had to be. It would be an act of mercy, he supposed: a quick death as opposed to letting him die slowly in the heat, with the smell of rotting flesh in his nostrils and carrion birds circling him. He was doomed either way, so may as well take the least painful route. If there was a god anywhere, he’d understand. Ernesto nodded, and took out his gun.

“Do you have any last words, or…?” he asked, his voice not as firm as he’d have liked. He’d shot so many people, and from close range as well; he’d ended more wounded men than he wished to recall, but it didn’t mean he liked it. Plenty of men had acquired a taste for blood those years; Ernesto de la Cruz was not among them. He was just trying to live through it, to see better days when he could leave behind rifles and gunpowder for his guitar, and music.

It was all he wanted, and he’d do whatever it took to survive until then.

The priest smiled weakly. “Let me say my last prayer,” he whispered, and shut his eyes. “Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos… santificado sea tu nombre. Venga... tu reino….”

Ernesto cocked his gun, his mouth dry, trying not to think what would become of his body once he left, leaving it easy prey of carrion birds and coyotes. He had no tools to bury him, the earth was too dry and parched to dig with his hands, and he needed to save strength. He’d let himself and Dante rest until dusk, and then set off to the south.

“Tuyos son el reino... el poder y la gloria... por los siglos de los siglos,” the priest choked out, and let out a long breath, screwing his eyes shut. “Amén,” he whispered, nodding slightly, and it was the last thing he’d ever say.

A shot rang out, and that was it. The birds that had been pecking at the hanging men’s eyes flew away, but not very far; they would come back to their feast as soon as Ernesto left.

Scavengers always came back.

***

“Héctor? Do you think the new priest is going to be nice?”

“I’m sure he will be, chamaco.”

“I still think you should be our new priest.”

Héctor chuckled, leaning more comfortably against the tree and strumming his guitar softly. “I’m a novice, Miguel. Still a few months to go before I can take the vows.”

Sitting cross-legged across him, Miguel shrugged. He was holding a guitar he’d borrowed from Chicharrón, the old gravedigger. A whole lot of grumbling had ensued, but he could never refuse Miguel anything in the end… like he could never say no to Héctor when he was his age and would sneak out of the orphanage to visit, begging him to teach him how to play.

Old Cheech was grumpy, but he’d always had a soft spot for scrappy, music-loving orphans.

“But you said mass and everything!” Miguel was saying, copying the movement of Héctor’s fingers on the strings. Héctor suspected he’d taken on the role of altar boy mostly to spend time with him, and he had no complaints. He liked the kid. “And you were really good.”

“Gracias,” Héctor laughed. “But I only said mass because there was no other option. Padre Edmundo’s… our new parish priest will be here soon,” Héctor pointed out, keeping himself from using the word ‘replacement’, and trying to ignore a pang of pain in his chest.

The elderly priest’s demise had been sudden, but not unexpected; he’d been getting on with the years. Still, his loss had stung; he’d been almost a father to Héctor, a gentle and patient guide. He could only hope to be the same to Miguel, now, even if he wasn’t much older than him. He’d been only twelve when the chamaco had been found swaddled in a box on the church’s steps nine years earlier, with a note reading only his name.

“How soon?”

“One of these days, chamaco.”

“Do you think he’ll still let me be the altar boy?”

“I can’t see why not.”

“True. I’m good at it, aren’t I?”

“Sure you are.”

“And Imelda is so beautiful.”

“Of course she i-- wha-- Miguel!”

Miguel threw up his arms with a grito of triumph. “You said it! I heard you! No take-backs!”

“That is-- I didn’t--” Héctor sputtered, knowing full well his ears were probably turning crimson at that point. And his entire face, too. He could never hide embarrassment well.

“You always look at her when she sings with the choir,” Miguel pointed out, sounding far too satisfied with himself. “I’ve been watching. It’s like you’re playing the organ just for her.”

“I do not-- that was inappropriate! She’s going to take the vows next year and so am I!”

The boy grinned. “But you haven’t yet! If you change your mind--”

“Miguel,” Héctor said, warningly, but of course he was ignored like every single time he tried and failed to sound stern. To be fair, his voice cracking didn’t really help.

“No, really! And she looked at you last Sunday, too! You can always ask, right? If she says--”

“Miguel,” Héctor repeated, and this time his voice stayed firm enough to make the boy trail off and, if his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, actually look a smidge guilty. “She has a beautiful voice and I am happy when she sings in the choir, that is all. She’s about to take the veil, I am about to take my vows, and it is what we both want. End of discussion. Claro?”

“Claro,” Miguel mumbled, sounding suitably chastised, and Héctor turned his attention back to the music - doing his utmost not to think of Imelda’s voice, of the tilt of her chin and the stride of her step, and entirely missing the skeptical look Miguel was giving him.

***

“Oh, look at that. Your secret admirer. And I use the term secret loosely.”

Walking down the street with the basket of groceries at her hip, Imelda needed every ounce of her willpower not to roll her eyes. It wouldn’t be respectful, by all accounts, for a novice to roll her eyes at a full-fledged bride of Christ.

If only Sister Sofía didn’t keep making it so damn difficult.

“It is such a baseless rumor, I am surprised you give it any credit at all,” she said, pointedly avoiding to look towards the plaza where novice Héctor was talking with a group of children, and laughing with them. He was good with children; he would make a good priest, one day.

“Oh, please. You know me,” Sister Sofía quipped. “You’re not surprised at all.”

“There was never any inappropriate behaviour from either of us.”

“I am aware. Sadly.”

“Sofía.”

“There should be a ‘sister’ somewhere in there.”

Imelda sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why you even took the veil.”

“Same as you - didn’t fancy the idea of marriage and suddenly got the calling when my parents began to look around on my behalf. Funny, how timing works,” she said, and shrugged. “The choice is limited, let’s be honest. Novice Héctor, though…”

“He’s going to be a priest soon. It’s what he’s wanted since he was a boy.”

“Or just what he’s been told over and over he should do with his life by our sisters at the orphanage. You end up believing everything if it’s repeated to you often enough. For example, Sister Antonia keeps insisting that it doesn’t count if it’s with another woman.”

That got a chuckle out of Imelda, almost against her own will. She opened her mouth to retort, but before she should two voices reached her at the same time, almost identical and yet so, so easy for her to tell apart.

“Oye, Imelda!”

“Hermana!”

“Have you seen Miguel?” Her brothers, tall for their thirteen years and with identical pairs of spectacles, skidded to a halt a few steps from them, talking fast.

“We were building him a guitar all of his own!”

“A custom guitar!”

“But we need to take a few measures!”

“He’s not with Héctor, he’s not at the church…”

“They won’t let us into the orphanage or even tell us if he’s in.”

“Nuns are no fun,” Felipe huffed.

“No offense,” Óscar added, getting a roll of the eyes from Imelda and a laugh out of Sofía.

“Oh, nuns can be more fun than you can imagine,” she said with a serene smile, entirely ignoring Imelda’s elbow against her side. Sofía’s mouth would get her in trouble someday. One way or another. “He could he be at the cemetery with Chicharrón.”

That caused both boys to make a face. “Old Cheech chased us out last time,” Óscar said.

“With a stick,” Felipe echoed.

“But if we plan out the route…”

“... And if we’re fast…”

“... After all, he has a peg leg…”

“Right, let’s do this!”

“See you later, hermana!” Óscar called out, and with that they were off to the cemetery, looking for Miguel.

***

Last night’s storm had had turned the stream into a proper river, or so it seemed to Miguel.

It was sunny now, not a cloud in the sky - the storm had been sudden and quick throwing down bucketfuls of water in a short time - and the sun beat down on his head as he hopped from rock to rock across the fast-flowing water, trying to imagine he was crossing Río Bravo, or Culiacán.

One day he might, but he had to wait for the Revolution to end. Santa Cecilia had been spared the worst of it, but things got really bad in other places; Miguel knew it because from time to time a new kid would arrive at the orphanage from out of town, and a lot of them had lost their parents because of it. A few months ago soldiers had come there, too, taken some men for the leva, and left; Miguel still remembered how the nuns had hidden away all the orphans who’d be considered old enough to hold a gun and fight.

Miguel had feared for Héctor, who’d been away at the seminary at the time, and seeing him coming back shortly afterwards had been a relief. Nothing had happened there since; Santa Cecilia was as safe as it could get. A bit too safe, sometimes. Boring. Hardly anything ever--

“Hola, niño. Is this the way to Santa Cecilia?”

A voice he didn’t know rang out suddenly, snapping him from his thoughts just as he jumped from one rock to the other. He turned, startled, and he turned too quickly: his bare foot slipped off the wet rock, the world seemed to tilt, and the next instant he was underwater.

For a moment she felt nothing but surprise, then annoyance. He hadn’t slipped like that since he was a little kid; if any of his friends were here, they’d be laughing their butts off. Miguel tried to kick himself back up to the surface… only to realize that the the stream there was a lot deeper than usual, and he couldn't reach the bottom. The current was much stronger, too, making him spin, and he no longer knew which way was up and which way was down, he couldn’t tell and he needed to breathe and--

No, no, no, no, no! Help me! Héctor! Someone!

Trying to keep panic at bay, Miguel flailed with his arms and tried to grab on something - a rock, a root, anything - and met nothing but water. Struggling to keep his eyes open, he tried to kick the bottom of the torrent to push himself upward - but one of his feet barely touched a rock and immediately slipped off it, and the movement only made him sink even deeper.

Miguel opened his mouth to cry out and suddenly water was in his mouth, in his nose, down his throat. His chest seized, his vision darkened, and panic flooded him.

No this can’t be it cannot be it’s little more than a trickle I can’t be drowning here I can’t--

Something grasped the back of his shirt, and there was a pull. Next thing he knew, sunlight was back on his face and there was earth beneath his knees, someone was patting his back and water was cascading out of his mouth. Miguel coughed, drew in a convulsive breath, and coughed some more. He was cold, nose and throat burning, but he was alive.

“Rayos, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right, niño?”

Still coughing, Miguel nodded and looked up, blinking water out of his eyes. The man who had pulled him out was young, maybe his his twenties, wearing soaking wet black shirt and trousers… and a white collar. Miguel coughed again before speaking. “Sí, gracias. I... Are you… are you our new priest?” he asked, taken aback. He’d been expecting another old man, like Padre Edmundo. That guy was barely older than Héctor.

The man’s worried look melted into a smile, a flash of white in his black beard, and Miguel couldn’t help smiling back. “In the flesh,” he said with a laugh, and stood, helping him up. Miguel half-expected him to praise God for the fact he was all right, but he did not. “I’m Er-- Padre Ernesto. And you are…?”

“Miguel,” he replied, standing a bit shakily. “I’m the altar boy at the church. I, uh… I wasn’t supposed to play here all on my own,” he muttered, and gave his best smile. “Can you not tell the sisters I was here? And Héctor especially. He’s the novice at the parish. He’d get really worried. Like he didn’t sneak off here when he was my age, too.”

He half-expected a scolding - Padre Edmundo would have berated him, if mildly, telling him that lying was a sin against God and that omission does count as lying - but, instead, Padre Ernesto grinned back. “Won’t tell if you don’t,” he said, winking. “But then I think we should wait to dry up before we head to town. I don’t think telling them that a cloud rained on us and on us only would work. Believe me, I tried that once. My mamá didn’t buy it.”

All right, so he wasn’t like Padre Edmundo at all - and he wasn’t even telling him not to do it again or anything like that. Miguel already liked him, and he was sure Héctor would too.

“Oh, I’ll get dry fast,” he said, wringing a bit of his shirt in is hand and getting a small rivulet of water out of it. “It’s going to be hot today. But your clothes could take a bit longer.”

“Not a problem. I’ll tell them I rode across the stream before I met you.”

“You rode-- oh, is that your horse?” Miguel exclaimed when he spotted a movement on their left. It was a beautiful animal, its coat such a light gray it was almost white, and it was drinking from the stream in steady gulps.

“This is Dante. We’ve been through a few things together,” Padre Ernesto said, giving an affectional pat to the animal’s side.

Miguel grinned before trying to find out how far he could push his luck. “Can I ride him?”

“That sounds like something I’d need your parents’ permission for.”

“I don’t have any parents,” Miguel pointed out, and Padre Ernesto’s expression sombered for a moment before he shrugged.

“... Ah, no permission required then. Never cared to ask for it, either,” he said, and swung up on the saddle - it was such a graceful movement, nothing like Padre Edmundo climbing on his old donkey - before holding a hand out to Miguel. “Care to guide me to the parish, then?”

Miguel grinned, and held back a grito of victory as he grabbed that hand and climbed on the horse. He held tightly on the mane, but with Padre Ernesto’s arms on either side of him, he already knew he wouldn’t fall off. “It’s that way, there is a bridge just half a mile down this path,” he said. “Once you cross it, you just go straight on. It’s not far.”

“Oh, good. Dante and I could use some rest,” Padre Ernesto muttered, guiding the horse down the path. He let go of the reins with one hand, and looking up Miguel could see he was rubbing at the thick black beard that covered his cheeks. “I could use a shave, too.”

“How long have you been travelling?”

“A while, niño. A while. I met… a few problems on the way,” Padre Ernesto said, his voice sounding far away, and Miguel could guess they had something to do with the Revolution.

“You’re from Oaxaca, right? Héctor said you’d be sent from la arquidiócesis de Antequera.”

“Huh? Oh yes. Of course.”

“What is la Nuestra Señora de la Asunción like?”

“The-- oh. Right. It’s. Nice. I guess.”

“Have you ever said mass there?”

“Not personally. But tell me about Santa Cecilia,” Padre Ernesto added quickly. “I seems like a quiet place,” he added, and Miguel shrugged.

“It is. Sometimes too quiet. A bit boring,” he said, not noticing the smile on the man’s face.

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Padre Ernesto said. “I could use some boredom for a while.”

Later on, they would both think back about those words and laugh themselves into hysteria.

#pixar coco #Miguel Rivera #Ernesto de la Cruz #Hector Rivera #Imelda Rivera #coco #fake priest au

47 notes · View notes

palechasm · 6 years ago

Note

aloe.

one word drabble prompts

A L O E - B I T T E R N E S S five times hisato was bitter, and one time he wasn’t.

(alternatively titled ‘one more time, with feeling’)

i also want to apologize for how fucking long this is?? like wow you go to write six tiny little blurbs and it still ends up being five pages long. i’m so sorry

warnings for death, gore, animal death, animal cruelty, dissociation, and Bad Morals For Children.

i. bitter

Rain drips down his nose, clouds smothering the dusk sky like wads of soiled cotton, choking the dying rays sunlight. Dark skies and gentle rolls of thunder have marked each day of his life, more surely than the steady cycle of the pale, cowardly moon they hid.

He was born beneath a roiling, weeping sky, and now it seemed he would die beneath another.

The forest sings around him, a chorus of frogs loud enough to rival the storm’s lazy rumbling. So often did the rain fall that it seemed the sky itself was too bored with precipitation to make any real effort at a weatherfront.

But the frogs and the clouds’ cranky grumbling were the only signs of life around him, and his throat was too raw to yell over the noise. Not even a lone doe picked her way through the underbrush, searching for tender greens. Instead the deer dozed in their thickets, safe and dry with fawns tucked safely into their sides.

Would they object, he wondered, if he tried to join one of the peaceful families? The longer he waited, the less it felt that his parents were fervently searching for him the same way he had for them.

His throat ached and burned from calling for his mother, and as a trickle of cold water rain down his neck and between his shoulder, another sob hitched in his throat. It hurt, more than anything, to cry. But what else could he do?

The rain carried him through into the night, and as he knotted his limbs into a tight ball under the feeble arms of a bush, the verity of his situation set into his chest like a sharp, heavy stone.

Although young, he was both smart and old enough to know that sometimes, children went missing– and sometimes, they weren’t found.

He imagined little skeletons littering the fields and the brush, the rice paddies and the bottoms of wells. The lonely remains of little boys who wandered away and died alone, bones poking through the moss and mud like pale branches.

He thought about the trees that wrapped around him in an endless sea. Thought that this might be where he would die, where the creeping fingers of green weeds would wrap around his bones and hold on forever. The forest would steal him away, and shy, friendly deer would step on his ribs where he lay forgotten.

Night bled into thin, reedy wisps of dawn. The rain didn’t stop, and no one called his name.

Something angry and resigned and unfamiliar squeezed his heart.

They weren’t looking for him.

ii. bitter

Black feathers ruffle in a thick mane around the bird’s neck as he shakes water from his body, plumage rolling down his back like an inky wave. He’s smaller than Susutori, and the way he postures toward her in greeting, head dipped and wings splayed, makes it evident that he’s younger as well.

But Susutori is pleased to see him and warbles a pleasant call, her eyes soft and her chest puffed like she’s proud. The newcomer straightens and fluffs his own feathers, their greeting finished. The motherly crow ushers him closer and buries her beak into his neck, preening a spot of mussed feathers.

“You take too long to visit,” She scolds, once finished. “And Sokkou says you’ve been lazy with summons.”

“Sokkou is a worm-eater and a suck-up.” The other bird grouses.

“Watch your words in front of my nestling, or I’ll stick you with your own team of them.” Susu shakes her wings, preening irritably. “We’ll go elsewhere to talk.”

The black, curious gaze of her companion rests on him, and Hisato stares back with matched interest.

“I forgot you had a little human.” The large bird cocks his head, neck stretched to peer at him. “It even looks sorta like a chick. In an unfortunate way.”

Something tugs at Hisato’s heart. For a moment, he’d felt nothing but an easy fascination. It was rare to see any of his adoptive mother’s clan, and there was a sliver of pride in hearing her claim over him- pride, and the warm embrace of belonging. As if he really were one of them, a chick taken under Susutori’s wing.

And then it’s gone, and he was just an oddity. An it. Something strange and sad to gawk at, a boy with no family taken pity on by a crow. A misfit amongst humans and birds alike.

A large wing shoots open and clips the crow’s body, sending him flapping and stumbling with a squawk.

“He’s a human, and he looks perfectly fine.” Susutori bobs down to Hisato’s height, fixing him with a stern, parental look that broke no argument. “Hisato, I have business to attend to. Stay put. I’ll be back to bring you a meal.”

She turns, meeting her younger counterpart as he rights himself from her push.

“You have a bald spot on your tail,” Hisato mumbles, giving him a sour glare. “It looks unfortunate.”

Susutori has the sense to disappear the both of them into a puff of smoke, just as her subordinate’s beak drops open with indignation.

Then he is alone, separated from the safe and familiar like he’d been just a few years ago.

This time, crows and humans both far away, and together with their kind.

And Hisato, alone, the taste of dirt filling his mouth.

iii. bitter

“Normally we’d use our feathers, but a leaf will have to do.” The oversized crow settles into the dry, brittle summer grass. Hisato feels her gaze, making certain he was beginning the exercise correctly.

“Susu, is this what ninja do? The ones your friends help, sometimes?”

“Using chakra is a shinobi skill among humans. Useless, as always.” She mutters, picking at the feathers of a wing. “They leave so many of their own kind defenseless.

“Among crows, we teach all of our young how to protect themselves. And you must learn, too. There are many humans who won’t understand your position, and may try to harm you.”

The crow speaks carefully, skirting around words like ‘death’ and ‘murder’, but the message is delivered without question. Hisato would always be in danger from other people.

“What is my position?” He wonders aloud, cross-legged and raptly focused on the soft green patch quivering on his knuckles. What did it mean to be kept apart from the world?

“You have no village, so you are unprotected. But with the skill to defend yourself, other humans will be suspicious because you are not a civilian. With no headband or sworn allegiance, they will fear you as a bandit, or worse, a defector.

“You will be surrounded by threats, Hisato. The day your parents failed you was the day this fate was sealed.”

Her words are succinct and sharp. His focus is broken and he stares at his mentor, leaf forgotten.

“Am I… an outcast?”

The thought is foreign, strange. It isn’t something he’d before considered himself to be, but the more he looks at himself the more the word fit. It wraps around his skin like an ugly tattoo… or a manacle, perhaps, callously locked over his wrist.

“You are what you are, Hisato. Such is the only certainty in life.”

He looks down, and begins the exercise again.

iv. bitter

There is no blood on his hands, he idly thinks. Slivers of dirt ring his nails, but the pale lengths of his fingers are clear of rusty smudges. His palms are unmarred, his knuckles clean, although dry and lightly scarred.

And yet, a dead man lies a scant few yards away, head lolling and chest peeled open like an overripe fruit.

A jutsu he would rather not use again, given the others at his disposal. He wouldn’t have used it, if he’d known. Known the reality.

But he hadn’t realized, hadn’t understood….

Hadn’t thought.

Before the man’s blade had sank into his throat in a ruthless swipe, he’d pushed him back, air colliding into his enemy like a wall and when he landed, tearing up dirt and grass and moving to rush back at Hisato with rage in his eyes–

– when he landed, springing to attack again, Hisato kept pushing.

Air funneled into the man’s lungs faster than he could think to stop. And when his opponent had finally realized, he couldn’t scream.

Susutori had given him this jutsu. It was one of the first combat techniques he’d learned, being a simple but brutal attack with little possibility of a counter. He understood, now, how ruthless the crow was. How the battlefield had painted her with blood and resolve, and what it meant that she could kill so efficiently and without remorse.

Hisato touches a hand to his side, robe torn open with ragged, stained edges. It isn’t deep, or life-threatening, but it could have been. His neck would have been. The wound bleeds like a warning.

But for how closely he’d let danger touch him, or something else entirely?

Red coats his fingers and seeps under his nails as he puts pressure on the wound.

Ruddy dirt cools beneath the gaping corpse, and skyward a trio of scavenger begin to circle. The only blood he wore on his hands was his own, hot and slick from a living, pumping heart. And wasn’t that just as bad? Did it matter what spatters of blood belonged to who, when someone lay dead?

He approaches the gore, reaches with sticky, warm fingers to close the thing’s eyes. Twin smears are left behind on the pair of eyelids, and he withdraws to clasp at his side once more.

No matter whose blood it is against his skin, a man that had breathed and walked only minutes ago lays still, the broad wings of a carrion bird spreading to full as it breaks its swoop to perch on his leg.

Hisato watches as they descend, one by one, a funeral procession claiming his body for the wilds. Nature will cycle his life back into itself, an ever-flowing balance.

It shouldn’t be disturbing, watching them clean up the terrible mess he left behind. He’d seen death, animals picked apart and others thriving from the end. He’d seen what was left of humans that had met their fate, only the remnants of bleached, stained bones as their final mark of passing. The encounters had never left him feeling sick. Crows, after all, were scavengers at times, and so he’d never thought them gruesome.

He sits with his head in his hands, folded into himself and wondering if it shouldn’t be him, carried away by the birds in pieces.

v. bitter

Pillowed in his lap was a shivering dog, coaxed with gentle murmurs and a skewer of trout. Hisato ran a gentle hand across its shoulders, though the fur clinging there was thin and coarse. Strays were not uncommon in villages, no matter how large or small they happened to be. Hisato often sought out the wandering canines enjoyed their simple and easy company.

They were seemed so uncomplicated, living next to humans who might react a dozen different ways to his presence. Dogs either welcomed you or didn’t.

But the dog cradled between his knees was different from the other strays he’d befriended, kicked by the world within an inch of his life and chased away from the sunspot he’d been curling himself into. Not hurting a thing, but made to put his tail between his legs regardless.

His health was poor, fur damp and coming away in clumps on his haunches. He’d chewed his paws until they were bloody, then licked at the wounds until they were hot and sickly. His pads were cracked, his nose dry, his tail limp. There wasn’t an inch of dog that wasn’t sad and broken.

He would fix this, Hisato decided. He would fix the terrible things this place had done, because what more important thing did he have to do with his time? He would make it right. And when once healthy again, he would take the dog to a kinder, warmer place with dirty streets and plenty of strays to clean them.

Next to a warm fire, an element he usually forwent, Hisato slept with a lapful of dog that, for the first time in its life, had not been chased or beaten.

The world was not kind to strays. Many of them never knew a better life or a different place than the one they were born into, but Hisato had been lucky.

When he left his friend to the bustling streets and overflowing trash bins of a Wind village just west of River country border, he couldn’t help but wonder if he had been so lucky after all. Dogs, after all, were passed over without a thought no matter what village they wandered into. For humans, homes were a tricky thing- stay in one place too long, and someone might notice you don’t have the right papers or the right permission from the right people. Just a group of men in fancy robes, foolish enough that land could be owned like a lifeless commodity.

He would visit, Hisato told himself.

And that would have to be enough.

i. warm

“You’re a weird kid,” Said a well-muscled and ill-shaven man, cigarette dangling from his lips. “But I guess that don’t hurt nothin’.”

Hisato stared silently, head cocked curiously even as he craned his neck up to watch the gruff, scarred face. A dull, warped shuriken was cradled in his little fingers, the feeble shine of tarnished metal drawing him to the empty field. He’d pulled it front one of the few, lonely wooden posts jutting from one end of the field, scattered with forgotten weapons.

“What are you even gonna do with that? Can’t throw it anymore, th’ hells been bent outta it.”

He looked down at the weapon, feeling bashful, and thumbed a blunted edge. “It’s for my mom. She’s a crow.”

“Don’t you call your own mother a crone, boy.”

“No, she’s a crow.” He corrected, squinting up. “What’s a crone?”

The man guffawed, and Hisato wasn’t sure if he was laughing or choking. “Well my ma-in-law is a buzzard, so I’ll give you that one, twerp. I don’t know what th’ hell she’s gonna do with scrap metal like that, though.”

A grin had split through the rough face towering above him, and he smiled back, enjoying the warmth of the man’s attention. Large, thick fingers reached into a pouch at his hip, pulling out a sharp, crisp shuriken.

“You want me to teach y’how to throw one of those things or what?”

At Hisato’s awed grin, he pressed the cold metal into pale, childish fingers.

“Tell ya what, if you can hit that post I’ll let y’have this one, too.”

#harefrost #𝚔𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚒𝚝 𝚜𝚊𝚏𝚎 / 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚐𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 // 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚎 #𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 // 𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚜 #𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚞𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚊𝚢 // 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗

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vizhi0n · 7 years ago

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Sawney - Part 6

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

if u wanna be tagged or untagged lemme know, loves.

Homies:

@flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash @crzcorgi @lucifers-trash-stash @jasoncrouse @i-am-negan-trash @genevievedarcygranger @kellyn1604 @negans-network @negansbestgirl @vinylmadwoman @hannibalssweaters @heartfulloffandoms @mcnegan @mypapawinchester @my-achilles--heel @melodicdolls @lovingzombiechaos @embracetheapocalypsewithme @jeffreydeanneganstrash @darkangel66a @doyouhaveavacancy @gremlinfuck @moonypetyr @backseat-negan @superprincesspea @kijilinn @ladylorelitanyfanfiction @manawhaat @strangersangel9

Warnings: these next two chapters r gory and dark af

Desa didn’t sleep.

Go.

She had her bag packed, stuffed beneath her bed. She and Jack shared a bed, and the entire time, while he was fast asleep, she remained awake. Her eyes were glued to the ceiling fan above her, and she was trying her best to remain still.

She did. Only when Jack stirred, waking in the morning, did she move. And only when someone pounded on her door, did she get up and leave the room.

It was Amy.

“We have a problem.”

This was the first time a majority of the Estate residents had seen Negan. Men, women and children were gathered around in the courtyard, once decorated with beautiful plants and ferns. Now the ferns were dead and it was barren, save for a few spots of soil used to grow fruits and vegetables.

Negan was standing, hands cuffed, shirtless and shoeless. He was hunched over, his once proud stature had disappeared. He looked smaller, marks of abuse evident on his bare skin.

Next to him lay Mason’s battered corpse. Desa could see the streaks of blood against the cobblestone from where he’d been dragged.

The community stood in a semi circle, dead silent as Mother and Father approached. Father’s jaw was set, eyes narrowed. Mother just seemed…tranquil. Emotionless.

“What’s going on?” Jack murmured, tugging on Desa sleeve. She reached out and steadied her brother, not replying as he cowered behind her.

Father spoke and, much to Desa’s surprise, his voice was even and steady.

“Most of you haven’t met Desa’s catch, yet,” Father called. Desa ducked her head and almost forty pairs of eyes swiveled to look at her. “She struck big. This man is the leader of a community called the Sanctuary. They outnumber us by a hundred. They could kill us if they wanted to, but we won’t give them the opportunity. I won’t give them the opportunity. A good Father protects his children.”

Nods. Desa was aware that Mother was watching her, but she didn’t look.

“As the enemy, this man doesn’t share that sentiment. He murdered Mason. A good worker. A former parent,” Father feinted distress, wiping away a nonexistent tear. “Now, such behavior will not be tolerated. Something has to be done. I have to discipline this man.”

The crowd murmured in agreement. Some didn’t say anything at all. Desa could barely hold it together.

I killed him. I killed him.

It should be me.

Jack’s hand on her arm calmed her.

I’m doing this for him. I’ve done things worse than this before.

“He will be placed in the cellar, with the others.”

Approval. Father, grinning, slapped Negan’s bare shoulder and whispered something in the man’s ear. Negan stiffened, visibly disturbed. Amy and another patrol guard gripped him by the hair, yanking him back towards sewers while Mother walked off languidly, most likely to gather her equipment.

He’s not going into that cellar.

Don’t let him.

“Des? What’s wrong?” Jack said. Before Desa could take off, he stopped her. Even firmer than last time, he demanded, “Why do you look sick? What happened — you caught that guy, right? Why did he kill—”

“Jack, I don’t know, okay? Go back to the room and stay there.”

“What?”

Lowering her voice, Desa crouched down, placing her hands on Jack’s shoulders. Leaning in close, she murmured, “There’s a bag underneath the bed. If I’m not back by tomorrow, I want you to grab that bag and slip through that hole in the gate. You know, the one a dog dug out? We never filled it back in. You’re small enough to get through there.”

“You’re scaring me. This isn’t funny—”

“It’s not a joke.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

Desa sighed. He was more stubborn than her — he’d always had been.

“You’re a little shit you know that?”

Jack beamed, bursting out laughing. Desa did the same, tugging him into a hug and saying, “I mean it. I need you to trust me, kid. Okay?”

“Fine. I’ll run if anything happens.”

“Good. And you know what we talked about — if you see a biter, climb a tree. Don’t be loud. Don’t try and fight — run. You didn’t play striker in soccer for nothing, remember, speed-demon?”

“Right. I got it, I got it.”

Desa prayed that he did. She watched him go, a sad grin on her face. As the crow dispersed, she checked her knife — she had it tucked away in her belt. That was all she really needed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mother heading towards the sewer entrance. She had a bag in hand.

Desa stopped Amy as the older women began walking past, saying, “I’m going out scavenging.”

“Not going with your catch?”

“No. If he’s going into the cellar, he’s no longer my business,” Desa sighed. “Besides. You know how much I prefer scavenging. I’m just glad he’s out of my way.”

Amy smiled, lightly patting Desa shoulder. Smoothly, she said, “I’ll let Father know.”

“Thank you.”

She was let through, pushing past the gate and waltzing from the Estate. Engulfed by the woods, she took a hard right and doubled back towards the Estate, flipping on the hood of her dark sweatshirt. She was hyperaware of the knife in her belt — she felt it move each time she walked, bumping against her thigh. The more she walked the stiffer her legs became, her movements almost robotic in nature. She was telling herself not to think. She had to just…do it.

Get it done.

Desa saw him from a distance — the guard stationed by the entrance to the sewer. She recognized him — Dylan. She could spot that bright red hair for miles. He stuck out like a sore thumb, leaning against the wall, assault rifle slung over his shoulder and a cigarette clutched between his lips.

Desa adjusted her hook, making sure her knife was concealed before walking forward and into view. Dylan jumped, nearly dropping his cigarette before he realized who it was.

“Jesus, Des. Don’t sneak up on me like that. I could have shot you!”

“Eh. I would have gotten over it,” Desa shrugged, approaching the sewer grate. She peered inside, scowling.

“Your catch is in there. Are you happy that he’s going into the cellar?”

“No.”

Desa palmed the knife before gripping it, heaving it upwards and driving it through Dylan’s throat. He gasped, liquid bubbling past his lips as he squawked like a bird, arms flailing. Desa pulled the knife free and watched him fall, clutching his life-sapping wound. After several moments of thrashing, he fell still, the leaves around him soaked with crimson.

Desa then proceeded to strip Dylan of his shirt, grimacing at the bloodstains. It would have to do — she wasn’t going to find another clean shirt anywhere around here. She balled it up and stuffed it into her pocket, before retrieving the assault rifle.

Okay. Breathe steady…breathe…

She closed her eyes, counting down, finding the trigger and positioning the rifle towards the woods. She fired six short bursts, feeling the butt kick against her shoulder.

She waited.

And then they came. Shuffling through the trees. Desa tossed the gun atop Dylan’s body, sliding open the sewer gate and letting it flop against the grass. The group of biters had grown to over a dozen, all drawn by the sound of gunfire. She watched as one fell onto Dylan’s twitching body. The corpse let out a shriek, and Desa winced — he hadn’t died, after all.

Like it matters now.

She entered the sewer, aware of the grunts and moans and splashing feet behind her. She kept to the shadows, staying a good deal ahead. When she glanced over her shoulder she saw that the crowd of biters had grown.

Good so far. Good so far.

Letting out a breath, she darted to the side, sucking in her stomach and squeezing herself into a human-sized niche. The biters shifted their attention to the iron door — it opened, and Desa caught a brief glimpse of Negan inside, tied to a chair while Mother fawned over him, equipment in hand.

The two men immediately began shouting, guns raised. Desa stood still, masked by the shadows and the walking corpses. The men began firing and Desa squeezed her eyes shut, hand gripping her knife.

She saw Mother, escorted by two other men, make a run for it farther down the sewer, towards the main entrance. The biters that tried to follow were shot, and Desa took advantage of the distraction to duck and weave her way through the thinning crowd of undead.

They saw her at the last minute. Desa drove the knife, hard, into the gut of the first man. The other spun and was promptly taken down, shrieking, gun unloading into the ceiling.

Shit shit shit —

A gun went off dangerously close to Desa’s head, and she screamed. She pulled the knife free, feeling a grimy hand brush against her shoulder, and darted beneath the larger man’s spread legs, into the storage room.

He toppled forward, and immediately the biters began feasting on his flesh. Desa kicked the iron door shut, falling to the floor.

Silence. Nails scraped against the door, and Desa took a moment to lay on her back, catching her breath.

“You look like shit.”

“I look like shit because I’m here to save you. It takes work,” Desa panted. She heard Negan strain against his bonds, and she crawled, stopping on her knees next to the arm of the chair.

“Did you just one-man army that shit?” Negan gnawed on his lower lip, chest heaving with exhilaration as Desa cut past his bindings. The moment she sliced through the last bit of rope, she leaped back, ready just in case he attacked.

Negan shakily stood, rubbing his raw wrists. There was no admiring his lean physique anymore — his torso was marred with fresh wounds, body and face gaunt from the lack of food and sleep.

Desa pulled Dylan’s shirt from her pocket, tossing it at Negan. He caught it, staring before shooting her a gracious look. He tugged it over his head, sticking close as Desa gently eased open the iron door.

Bodies upon bodies lay in the sewer, the surviving biters shuffling around. She gestured for Negan to follow, opening the door fully.

“Let’s go. We have a wide path.”

They went, Negan uttering curses as he was forced to trudge through an inch of whatever the hell had accumulated in the sewer. They burst into the forest, Desa brandishing her knife and thrusting it through the skull of an approaching biter. For what seemed like an eternity they sprinted, Desa having to constantly stop and pull a wheezing, injured Negan forward.

They burst onto the main road, and Negan collapsed to his knees. Desa searched wildly but saw no biters. Just a leaf covered asphalt trail, trees on each side.

Negan coughed, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. Desa sheathed her knife and sunk to her knees next to him, reaching out to place a hand against the back of his damp neck.

When Negan lifted his head, he was squinting. Desa hadn’t realized it, but he’d only seen the sun once since his capture. His eyes were straining as they adjusted to the light.

They took a moment, before meeting each others gazes. Desa spoke first, wiping blood from her brow, both human and biter.

“You’re free. Go.”

“Come with me.”

Desa tilted her head. She unsheathed her knife, pressing the hilt into Negan’s open palm. She pointed, saying, “About half a mile down the road, there’s an old fire station. There are working cars inside — you just have to push open the garage. They’re fueled up and ready to go. Take one, and go home.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind. Come with me. Don’t go back to that fucking place—”

“My brother is there. I told you—”

“We’ll come back and get your brother. I’ll have Simon and my men raid the place and fucking kill…I’ll fucking kill all of them,” Negan ran fingers through his hair. “I’ll kill every single one of those bastards. I’ll torch the fucking place. Burn that shit to the ground—”

“Negan. Stop,” Desa reached for him, but he pulled away. “Just stop. You don’t owe me anything. This was my choice. I promised myself that I wouldn’t leave Jack behind. If I don’t come back, the first person Father will go to is him.”

Negan said nothing. He took a long pause before ducking his head, trying to hide his anger. Then he stood, wobbling on his feet. When he steadied himself, his lips were pressed into a thin line.

“If I wasn’t so fucked up right now, I’d fucking carry you back. But I fucking can’t. Listen, I know shit got off to a rough start between us. You tried. I could fucking see it and maybe that why I’m not strangling you right now. You fucking tried when no one else would. You’re still fucking human.”

Desa tried not to smile, glancing to the side to hide it. She said, “I…can you make it there? To the cars? The longer I’m out here the more believable it will be. I’m supposed to be scavenging. I’ll walk with you—”

“Terrifying to sweet in a split fucking second. I like that.”

They began to walk, Negan hobbling along, coughing every once and a while. The first question Negan asked didn’t surprise Desa.

“Where’s Lucille?”

“I have her. I…I didn’t have time to grab her for you. I had to get there before they changed you.”

“I’m done with sharp fucking things being pointed at my fucking eye. For the rest of eternity,” Negan rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit. Just…I will see you again. Next time, make sure she’s with you.”

“Why do you care so much about that bat, anyway?”

“We don’t have time for a sob story. I like you, but we’re not on that fucking level,” Negan replied. “Not yet.”

Desa saw the fire station from afar, pointing. Negan immediately perked up, increasing his pace from a wobble to a very enthusiastic, energetic hobble. Desa couldn’t help but smile once more, able to put the sounds of gunfire and what had transpired in the sewer to the side.

They stopped, and Desa took it upon herself to lift open the garage. Starting back at them were two vehicles — old sedans from before the world went to shit, scratched, dented, dirty, but functional. Desa began rummaging through the storage cabinet, finding the keys and handing them to Negan.

“Well, this is the end of our journey.”

“I fucking guess. I’m not sad about leaving that fucking hellhole. I’m still confused as hell as to why you’re with those fuckers,” Negan raised his eyebrows. “But in all seriousness…fucking thank you.”

“Don’t come back here. Don’t bring you men. Don’t send anyone to scout,” Desa said seriously. “Pretend I don’t even exist. It’ll be better for you. Better for everyone—”

“Forgetting you is going to be particularly fucking hard.”

There was no real method to Negan’s next move, Desa could tell. His lips were soft against hers, despite their dryness. His bare hand came up to hold her face, calloused palms sliding across her skin, feather-light. The gesture felt so natural, so right, that for a moment Desa thought she’d died and gone to heaven.

Then it ended. Desa was thrown back into reality.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me?”

“Not without my brother.”

“Well, you know where I fucking live,” Negan chuckled. “If you do show up at my fucking doorstep, you’ll be invited in. You’re not a fucking stranger. Not anymore.”

#vizhi0nw #negans thirst squad

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setaripendragon · 7 years ago

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Yin and Yang - Part 1

I’ve been feeling pretty crappy today, and for some reason writing about these two depressing assholes makes me feel better, so have some super self-indulgent mpreg!Itachi/Hidan. I have no idea where I’m going with this, I just have this image of Hidan listening in rapture to a baby’s midnight screaming fit, so I’m hoping to wend my way to that point, eventually.

General warnings for this whole story include: Hidan’s religious sadomasochism and Itachi’s suicidal martyr complex and depression. Also, obviously, mpreg. Please be careful and take care of yourself <3

Despite everything that had happened in his life, Itachi still disliked violence. It wasn’t the visceral disgust of his youth, but he still acknowledged that he found it unpleasant. Still, as an S-rank criminal for hire, he was forced to see a good deal of it. Thankfully, with a partner like Kisame, who not only was well suited to violence, but seemed to take a simple sort of pleasure from a fight, Itachi mostly got to stand to the side and look intimidating, instead of having to engage in the violence himself.

Most of the time.

This was not one of those times. There were really too many of them to expect Kisame to handle them all by himself, and at least three of them were lightning users. Sighing softly to himself, Itachi stepped forward, putting himself at Kisame’s side. The larger man smiled nastily. Their enemies attacked.

Itachi immediately surged forwards, sharingan spinning, caught a handful of them in a genjutsu before they’d even realised what happened, took another two in the throat with kunai, and spun under the first attack to actually reach him. Kunai in each hand, he flicked his wrists, sending the blades spinning out, and got another foolish ninja with a simple yet debilitating genjutsu.

Behind him, he heard Kisame laughing, but he paid it no heed. One of the better fighters engaged him with a flurry of spinning blows, and even though Itachi could predict every one and move out of the way with ease, he could also see that she was driving him into a knot of her allies. He let her, and then, at the last minute, when victory lit her eyes and her allies dove for him, he replaced himself with a leaf off the tree above them.

Looking down, he saw them drive their weapons and jutsu into each other, and devolve into a screaming, disoriented pile. He had been planning to throw another genjutsu at them, to further their mindless panic, but he got distracted. There was a foreign source of chakra inside him. It couldn’t be a genjutsu, or his eyes would have caught it long before now, it couldn’t be a compulsion jutsu, because he regularly fluctuated his chakra to throw them off. It didn’t seem to be affecting him at all, except, he realised as he studied it more closely, that there was a miniscule flow of his own chakra into it.

Exactly like he’d seen on his mother, less than a year before the Kyuubi attacked.

At first, incomprehension was what held Itachi immobile. Then, slowly, tendrils of panic began to creep past the fog of his usual indifference. Because the sharingan never lied. The sharingan saw through lies, dispelled genjutsu, picked out every tiny deception. The sharingan recorded the truth, and with enough practice could even be used to predict the immediate future with startling accuracy.

Itachi could not doubt the evidence of his own eyes, and his eyes were telling him that he was – inexplicably – pregnant. The impossibility of that was its own problem, but Itachi remembered the day Sasuke was born, he remembered standing at his mother’s bedside, looking at this tiny, screaming thing, and being overwhelmed by how indescribably precious this new life was.

As a child, a boy of only six, he’d been… a little jealous, that he couldn’t do that, too.

As a teenager, still just a boy of thirteen, he’d slaughtered his own mother in cold blood. He’d given up any right he’d ever had to call himself a good person, the sort of person who deserved to have a loving mother and adoring little brother. He could at least still call himself a good shinobi, but that was as far from a good person as one could get, in his opinion. He knew intimately the feel of his mother’s blood, the sound of his brother’s screams.

As a man, just barely twenty-one, he was a rotted, festered husk of a person, sick in body and soul, and far too damaged for this to possibly be… real. He had murdered his mother, destroyed his brother – oh, with a purpose, with a reason, but all violence had a reason, and all violence was still wrong – and he didn’t know if he remembered, if he’d ever known, how to be anything else with family.

Kill or be killed.

Somewhere past the ringing in his ears, he heard someone shout his name. Somewhere past the tingling in his extremities, he could feel the roughness of tree bark. Somewhere far, far beyond the memories of blood and terror in the eyes of the person he loved most in the world, he saw leaves scatter as a man with an unreasonably huge mace in his hands flung himself across the branches at Itachi.

At Itachi, and the new life that was resting inside him.

A new life that was so tiny, still so much smaller than Sasuke had been, that first time Itachi had ever laid eyes on him. Tiny and helpless and dependant; entirely, utterly, completely dependant on Itachi for the oxygen in their lungs and the blood in their veins and the beat of their heart. If Itachi did nothing, if Itachi failed, the baby would too.

In that moment, Itachi felt for the second time in his life an overwhelmingly fierce devotion to another person. Sasuke was his little brother, and this baby was his child. He had murdered his own mother to keep Sasuke safe in Konoha and out of a madman’s hands. He would do it a thousand times over if it meant protecting his child.

Black pinwheels spun to life in crimson irises. The world became orderly, predictable clockwork, and Itachi moved. The man in front of him wasn’t looking him in the eyes, unfortunately, so Itachi dispersed into crows, and reformed behind him, kicking him to the ground and following him down, letting gravity slam him into the man’s abdomen, crouching with the movement to drive his knee into his sternum and to slam his hand down onto his throat. The man gasped, eyes flying wide, and Itachi swallowed him in black flames.

Then Itachi looked up, assessed the battlefield, and marked out every potential threat. Too many. Far too many. He would change that.

With only a little blood and a few handsigns, Itachi summoned every crow that would answer to his call, and set them on his enemies. Crows, most people didn’t realise, were vicious birds, given the opportunity. They were carrion birds, scavengers, and that meant that they were not only capable of shredding corpses to get at the meat, but also sneaky, suicidally brave little shits, fully capable of stealing a meal out from under the beak of a fully grown eagle, given sufficient motivation.

These birds were bound to Itachi, they were his allies, and his protective fury was theirs, and more than enough to inspire them to murder. Itachi followed in their wake with black fire and madness in his bloodied crimson eyes.

A whirlwind of movement and screaming and death later, Itachi halted, and watched the last few amaterasu fires dwindle into nothingness. He stood very, very still, and breathed with lungs that were already more rot than lung. He let the sharingan fade away and looked with eyes that were as good as useless, with how little detail he could make out past the blurs of colour and light. He calmed the maelstrom that had swept through a mind so thoroughly overtaken by madness that he could easily slaughter an entire battlefield without a second thought.

Grass shifted under a shinobi sandal, and Itachi just barely turned his head to indicate to Kisame that he was aware the other man was there. Kisame whistled, low and impressed, and then, after a long, awkward pause, asked “You alright?”

Itachi laughed, startled into a moment of genuine, absurdist humour. He had never in his life been alright, long before this moment, long before he’d killed his family, long before he’d even so much as laid eyes on Sasuke. He was not the sort of person who could ever touch ‘alright’, wasn’t capable, wasn’t permitted. He was allowed just enough sanity to protect Sasuke, just enough lucidity to know to prepare him for when Itachi could not, just enough self-awareness to know that he deserved nothing more than death.

But he couldn’t die. Not yet. Not today or tomorrow. Not for years. Not until this new responsibility could stand on their own two feet and face down Kage if they needed to. He had been so close, so damned close, to finally meeting his end, to gifting Sasuke his own mangekyou, that ultimate power, and now… Now, despite his lungs and his eyes and his poisoned soul, he suddenly had to live.

His laughter choked off, curdled in his throat as tears spilled over his cheeks. He pressed a hand over his eyes as if that might help, but they continued to stream, regardless. His breath shook, his shoulders hitched, his throat constricted.

“Er…” Kisame began, and laid a tentative, awkward hand on Itachi’s shoulder. “I guess that’s a no.”

“I’m pregnant.” Itachi announced, although his voice came out far quieter than he meant it to, far more strained under the weight of his hysteria than he’d wanted it to. “I’m pregnant.” He repeated, in bewildered, horrified disbelief.

“I… What? Are you… sure? I mean, I was pretty sure you’re male, and-”

Itachi snorted, but delicately. He’d learnt that trick from his mother. Mikoto had been able to make just about anything look elegant, and Itachi had always been pleased by the fact that he took more after her than his father. In more ways than he’d expected, apparently. “Yes on both counts.”

There was a long silence, until Itachi felt, through the hand on his shoulder, Kisame shrug. “I suppose having a giant mouth on your chest is still weirder.” He capitulated easily. “Or having a giant flytrap around your head. Or turning yourself into a puppet.”

“Or being half-shark?” Itachi suggested, with a hint of wry humour.

“Well, that seems pretty normal to me.” Kisame retorted with a grin that showed off his jagged, pointed teeth. Deliberately.

Itachi did appreciate Kisame’s sense of humour. Truly. “This… does not seem very normal to me.” Itachi admitted, letting a hand drop to his stomach. There was… Now that he was looking for it, now that he was aware, he could feel the barest beginnings of a bump there, beneath his navel. And he had been feeling unwell for the last month or so, but he’d put that down to his deteriorating health.

“No idea this could happen, then?” Kisame checked.

“None. I-” Itachi started, then stalled. He did not talk about his clan. Only one person was privy to his thoughts and feelings about his clan, and it wasn’t Kisame. He couldn’t make the words leave his mouth, couldn’t allow the truth of it out before… before what? Before Sasuke killed him? He could hardly allow Sasuke to kill him now.

“Any records you could check?” Kisame asked, skirting around the issue with surprising grace.

Itachi hardly knew what being friends meant, but he rather thought he liked having one in Kisame. “Perhaps…” Itachi hedged. “And I think a visit to a skilled medic-nin would be in order.”

“Probably.” Kisame agreed. He looked around the small clearing. It was nothing but a green, brown, and red blur to Itachi, but he had seen the aftermath of the battle with the sharingan, and the memory was vivid and clear in his mind. “Are the killing-sprees going to be a regular thing?” He wondered, completely without judgement.

Itachi wanted to say it wouldn’t happen again, but, well… He still felt very uncertain and off-balance about this whole pregnancy thing, and if he thought too hard about it, he could feel the hysteria rising within him again. “Only if someone threatens me.” He hedged.

Kisame winced, then shrugged. “Okay. Let’s head back to the base.”

Itachi’s breath hitched, but he ignored it and the side-eye he got from Kisame, and nodded. When his partner didn’t move, Itachi turned and started walking. Kisame fell into step with him. They walked in silence for a while, and Itachi did his best not to lose his mind over the fact that somehow he’d wound up pregnant.

He wished he understood better the logistics of the thing. He had been having a fair amount of sex lately, penetrative sex, both giving and receiving. There had been plenty of exchanged bodily fluids, and even some chakra usage. But Itachi didn’t have the first clue how, when, or where the child had begun to grow. There had to be some sort of jutsu involved, surely, because Itachi was fairly certain he did not have the right organs, usually, to bear a child.

Except, he’d been thirteen the last time he’d seen a medic-nin for anything. He had no idea how his body might have changed during puberty. There were some pretty strange mutations in certain ninja clans, physical alterations that frightened or disgusted most civilians. Itachi would have thought that as the clan heir, he would have been made aware of all the pertinent details of their clan’s traits. But, of course, he’d been thirteen when he’d killed everyone who might have been able to explain, and most people, even ninja, did seem to think that was a bit young to be talking about sex. Never mind the fact that Itachi had been killing people since he was six.

Why sex was supposed to be that much more traumatising than murder, Itachi did not know.

Kisame’s sudden question knocked Itachi out of his increasingly hysterical thoughts; “Is Hidan going to try and kill me for knowing before he did?” He wondered, without seeming very bothered by the prospect.

“Why would he?” Itachi wondered.

“He is the father, isn’t he?” Kisame checked, although he didn’t sound very uncertain at all.

Which was fair. Hidan was not a subtle man. Everyone in Akatsuki had known they were sleeping together less than a week after they started. That was a full six months ago, and in that time, they had slid seamlessly from what Kakuzu had crassly termed fuck-buddies to what Deidara had called ‘disgustingly and creepily married’ with a visible shudder.

“Yes.” Itachi confirmed, even though he was fairly sure he didn’t need to.

Kisame nodded. “So, do I need to watch my back?”

“I cannot see why you would need to take any extra care.” Itachi replied. Kisame watched him for a moment, then shrugged and seemed to accept that for what it was. The rest of their journey passed in an easy, companionable silence.

#Naruto #Uchiha Itachi #Hidan #Hoshigaki Kisame #HidaIta #Hidan/Itachi #Hidachi #whatever the ship name is #I like Hidachi #Itachi has about minus three thousand chill when it comes to family #also #some shameless self advertising #if you want the story of how Hidan and Itachi went from 'fuck-buddies' to 'creepily married'#check out my story Burnt Sugar and Blood #(also it's prequel Eviscerated)#I love these two please come join me on this piece of driftwood #rare pair hell #I am in it so deep

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my-lazy-genius · 7 years ago

Text

Shelter

Fandom: Hetalia: Axis Powers

Characters: APH Spain (Antonio Fernández Carriedo), APH England (Arthur Kirkland), APH Italy (Feliciano Vargas). Mentions of: APH Germany (Ludwig Beilschmidt), APH Romano (Lovino Vargas).

Pairing: SpUk/EngSpa [Spain x England]

Summary: In which Antonio wages the cost of war over his own personal shelter.

Author’s Note: Dang, late again. This is for @engspaweek, Day 3! Historical prompt 3, Spanish Civil War! Uh, not everything is 100% accurate, I changed a few minor things for plot purposes. Trigger warnings are all tagged. This is basically me trying out new WWII characterizations tbh bc headcanons..

Two years, eight months, three days.

Spain is keeping count. Somehow, even through the pain he feels with every step he takes, he’s keeping count. His people have been tearing each other apart for two years, eight months, and three days.

He’s just so tired. He can’t keep tearing himself between his people like this. He doesn’t know what he needs to do, he just knows he needs it to stop. Grave after grave after grave, he grows weary of burying his people, his friends.

Spain doesn’t like the color red anymore. He’s seen it too much, felt it too much, hot like anger and a phantom on his skin even after he scrubs it off. He wakes, often, in a cold sweat, body aching with imaginary wounds. He doesn’t ever remember his dreams - nightmares - anymore, but he knows they’re bad.

The emotions always linger with him for long after he forgets; anger, agony, grief. He’s not sure he wants to remember.

Two years, eight months, four days.

“Look at what you’ve become, Antonio,” a familiar voice lilts, but Spain doesn’t quite recognize the words he’s using, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look so lost in their own home before. All that blood looks good on you; really brings out your eyes.”

Spain blinks slowly at him. Hazel eyes fix on him, cold. No, Spain recognizes him. He smiles, tightly, weak.

“Veneziano,” he laughs softly, lowering himself slowly to the floor and leaning heavily against the wall, “come to brag? How is Romano?”

Veneziano folds his arms over his chest, gaze sweeping over Spain. Spain knows how he looks, blood splotched and covered in ragged bandages, disheveled and dirty, eyes sunken and bloodshot, lips dry.

“Romano is still part of the rebellion. I don’t know how he’s doing,” Veneziano informs him, sharply, oddly.

This isn’t Veneziano. This is a brainwashed man, conformed to the ideas of the crook who leads his nation. This is the man whose country is aiding one side of his people, the Nationalists, alongside a Nazi Germany. Spain struggles to drag one knee up and drapes a badly bleeding arm over it.

“What happened to you, Feliciano?” He asks softly, searching for a spark of that cheerful kid he once knew.

“You’re not going to survive this war,” Veneziano tells him, avoiding the question entirely, but Spain sees the way his shoulders ripple with tension.

Spain just laughs. “If I were concerned about that, Veneziano, I’d have brought it up months ago,” he informs him, dragging himself up, slowly, to his full height, “I’m old, Veneziano. I’ve seen it all. War, death, murder… Some things never change.”

It’s only when Veneziano, frustrated, sweeps out of the room that Spain allows himself to feel the weight on his shoulders again.

Once the dust settles, Spain walks among the bodies of his people. He closes his eyes as he steps around the mangled, bloody corpses, remembering them, trying desperately to ignore the caws of the scavenger birds as they circle threateningly overhead.

“Antonio,” comes a voice, and suddenly everything is steady all at once.

Green meets green.

“Arthur,” he breathes.

His shoulders tremble, and despite the blood he’s half covered in, England practically cradles him as Spain cries for his people at last.

“I just want this senseless fighting to end,” Spain tells him, later, staring at the ceiling.

England’s fingers comb through Spain’s tangled hair, slowly, relaxing. Spain’s mind is clear for once, grounded by England’s presence. This man is his tether here, his only shelter in the turmoil of this civil war.

“I’m so tired, Arthur,” he says, voice rough, choked, “god, I’m so tired. How do you stand so many wars? I’m killing my own people… And little Veneziano, I don’t even recognize him anymore. He’s become so cruel…”

His chest feels as though it’s trying to claw itself apart from the inside and recently he’s been coughing up blood. It’s not himself he’s concerned about. He’s frightened for his people, for the widowed women and orphaned children and the young men running into a meaningless fight. He wishes it would end; he’s so desperate. He’s fighting himself and his own people, and Spain’s starting to think it’s an uphill battle.

England shakes his head. “Don’t speak, Antonio. Rest.”

Two years, eight months, one week.

In his dreams, Spain is standing over a faceless man. He doesn’t know who he is or which side he’s on, but there are people whispering behind him and a loaded gun in his hand. Phantom fingers squeeze his shoulders, pressing down, a weight on his back. His pulse is throbbing beneath his skin, a steady thump thump across his entire being. There’s blood rushing in his ears, but he can hear the whispers over his own thoughts.

Kill him, Spain, one disembodied voice tells him, kill him and end the war.

Kill him, says another, lighter, familiar, because you have no other choice.

Kill him! The third is low, wavering, chilling. Kill him because you want to.

Does he want to? For a moment, Spain doubts himself and all he knows himself to be. He looks at the gun in hands that don’t feel like his own, looks at the faceless man below him, and looks at the bodies that suddenly cover the ground as far as he can see.

Two years, says the third voice, and with a start, Spain recognizes it as his own, eight months, one week, two days.

Spain flicks the safety off. The corpses are groaning, a perforating sound in the unnerving silence.

Kill him, says the first voice, demanding.

In the distance, somebody is being executed. Spain isn’t sure who is on what side anymore. He isn’t sure who he is anymore. He’s staring at the hands that are his but not his, staring at the gun, staring at the man. Antonio lifts the gun-

Kill him!

-and points it at his own head.

Lately, Spain is glad he doesn’t remember his nightmares.

It doesn’t stop the subtle trembling in his fingers. Are these hands his own?

The next time Veneziano shows, England is with him. He’s going against the wishes of his own government - the English aren’t supposed to be aiding Spain, but England manages to slip away often, comes when Spain needs him most.

Spain keeps trying to ground himself, struggling. His heart thrums rapidly in his throat and his breath comes in quick gasps. It feels as though there’s a foot crushing his throat, pressing down harder with every struggling breath. He’s tucked up against the curve of England’s body, clinging onto the arm wrapped over his chest as though it’s his lifeline.

“I can’t breathe,” he chokes out, “Arthur, I can’t breathe.”

He feels the way the other man is tense against him, fingers combing through Spain’s hair, holding him tight, but not tight enough to make him feel more suffocated.

“Focus on me, Antonio,” he tells him, softly, “only on me. I’m here.”

Spain listens to the sound of his heartbeat. It’s picked up, and Spain can’t tell if it’s because of worry or something else. His throat and chest feel tight and he’s shaking violently, fingers dragging hard against England’s arm, no doubt bruising the skin. He’s sweating, hair clinging to his face. But god, he focuses on the sound of England’s heartbeat. It’s the only thing keeping him steady, keeping him grounded.

Gradually, it stops. His shaking ceases first, his vision clears second, and finally, slowly, he manages to breathe. He doesn’t release England’s arm, only stares blankly at the peeling wallpaper past England’s shoulder.

His chest feels hollow.

They stay like that until steady, deliberate footsteps echo in the room.

“Veneziano,” England regards him with chilling eyes.

“England,” Veneziano smiles, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Isn’t your government forcing you to stay neutral?”

England doesn’t reply. Spain’s energy is depleted. He just wants this to be done. He lifts his gaze slowly, dragging it over to the Italian. “Why are you here, Veneziano?”

“I think it’s about time you gave up,” says North Italy, “after all, look at yourself, Spain.”

“Fine,” he replies, softly, “whatever makes this stop.”

“No,” England’s voice is harsh and sudden, “you aren’t going to give in to this so easily, Antonio. And you aren’t going to make him. Leave here, Italy.”

Veneziano tips his head, and just for a second, Spain wonders if he sees a flash of that childish curiosity he knows. “Oh,” he muses, “I see. You two have a different relationship than I originally thought.”

Spain’s thinking. His mind is whirring, registering England’s words and Veneziano’s words and the civil war.

Two years, eight months, two weeks.

“Get out, Veneziano.”

The Italian starts, hazel eyes going wide. He takes a step back, hands coming up near his lower chest. Spain’s voice is hard, stronger than it’s been in a while. Delicately, he slips free from England’s grip and staggers to his feet. Briefly, fear darts over Veneziano’s soft features, then something like anger.

“You-!”

“You heard me.”

It isn’t a question. Spain advances, pulling his old halberd from its resting place on his wall. He lifts it, a familiar weapon in a hand that feels like his own again, leveling it at Veneziano’s chest. The Italian is shivering. When all's said and done, he’s still the same kid Spain knows. One day, he’ll apologize for this.

Today is not that day.

Veneziano only holds Spain’s steely gaze for a moment, before he backpedals rapidly, stumbling. “Y-You’re a fool, Antonio! Both of you! Even you can’t stop what’s to come. Germany’s going to change the world, and only one of us is going to be on the right side when he does!”

The brunet whirls and darts away. Spain waits until his running steps fade down the hall before he drops his halberd with a clatter and slumps back down to his knees. England crosses to him, crouching down to rest his forehead against Spain’s own.

“Thank you,” Spain whispers, “for everything.”

Three days later, the Spanish Civil War comes to an end. It’s not a happy ending, but Spain knows where he stands now. He knows what he’s working towards.

Two years, eight months, two weeks, three days.

Another war is on the horizon.

#spuk #aph england #aph spain #engspaweek2017 #engspa #hetalia #my writing #day 3 #tw: blood #tw: panic attack #tw: violence #tw: suicide mention #tw: dissociation #tw: war

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