#screaming children. bright lights. people with no concept of personal space . people talking into their bluetooths. freezing cold air .

[fideidefenswhore]

i know this will make me sound like a spoiled asshole but i truly hate… when i order food delivery and the order gets cancelled.

[finelinevogue]

Can you do one where Harry take his children and YN to one of his concert and their just dancing around singing along on stage with Harry.

i love this concept so much!! i kinda of wanna make it sad though soooo it’s gonna be harry’s final show :/ hope you enjoy;

oli - 29, felix - 27, belle - 24

The concert had been amazing, but unfortunately it was coming to its’ end now.

The final show.

That’s what Harry had decided to call it; a clever play on words with reference to his first ever solo single. The last 50 years had been a rollercoaster for Harry, from growing up just a kid in Cheshire, to going on the X Factor and winning the hearts of millions and from being in the most successful band of the decade to going solo and still being absolutely beloved. Times had changed, though. Harry had changed. He had a beautiful family of 3 now, excluding his wonderful wife. His children were his universe, no question about it, but they were getting older now - Harry was getting older. He was 50 this year and with that in mind he’d decided to retire. Retiring had involved a long conversation with you, along with a bottle of red wine, about whether it was the right decision or not. But it was - is.

You had suggested he put on one final, massive show, to celebrate his life and his achievements along with all that the fans have too. Tickets were open internationally and it was being streamed on various TV outlets for those who couldn’t attend. The tickets sold within 47 seconds. 47 seconds. It was being held in the Olympic Stadium in London, because it was Harry’s home and it held the most number of people he could genuinely allow.

The concert had started with ‘Fine Line’ songs, which merged into HS1 songs with a few One Direction songs as well. The entire set list had been composed by the fans with various polls on social media, with the concert supposedly lasting 2 hours (although with support artists and a few extra surprises it was more likely going to be 3!)

It had been beautiful so far. Magical. Unforgettable.

Every chance he got, without making it grossly obvious, he looked at you. He'd told you to stick your thumbs up at him every time he caught your eye, so he knew that you were okay - and every time, you did.

The concert was coming to an end now, which everyone was dreading. How could +30 years feel like it'd only been thirty minutes? You were devastated, so you could only imagine what his fans were thinking.

"Hey!"

The end Kiwi, for the second time, strummed throughout the arena and you knew it was time for the final song. His final song.

"Mum, is this the end?" Belle asked you, from where she was standing next to you. You had been dancing together all night and gotten progressively more tired. Your feet hurt. Your throats burned. Yet, as always, it was so worth it.

"Yes, Belles, it is." You tell her, and she pouted sadly. "Dad won't want to see you sad love, okay? He can still sing to you before bed?" You teased her, reminding her of a time when Harry would do such a thing, not wanting her to be all sad. It was supposed to be a celebration, but even you could admit that is was pretty hard-hitting.

"Really mum?" She asked.

You booped her nose annoyingly, before answering. "Every night if you want him to."

The lights changed from their green tone, thanks to Kiwi, back to a bright, white light. It beamed on Harry, making him look even more like the angel that he is. He dragged his microphone back to the centre stage and took a deep breath for beginning a speech he'd told you he'd prepared.

"So this is it, my friends." He laughed sadly into the microphone. He brushed his hair back and took out his in-ears to hear the audience. They were all awwing and crying, but what else did you expect? Their favourite artist was retiring - who wouldn't be crying a river?

"I, um. I'd like to take a bit of time to thank certain people." He coughed, something he always did after performing Kiwi due to his asthma. You thought it was lovely that he'd planned a speech to thank his management and crew. They did so much work backstage and you definitely didn't think they got enough credit for their hard work.

"Okay. I've made a little list..." Harry pulled out a tiny bit of crumpled paper from his pocket. "Just in case I forget anyone." He joked to himself, but made everyone laugh anyways. "So I guess first off, I should start with you lovely people." He pointed around the whole stadium, showing he was talking about the fans. "What you have done for me is indescribable. I think to myself, everyday, am I worthy of even being here—"

"Yes!" An army of agreement echoed around the arena, making Harry stop, blush and smile to himself.

"Well thank you! Um. You have been the best fans ever, and I know you will continue to be. I know you don't owe me anything, but all I ask you to keep loving yourselves and treating people with kindness, because I know I can count on you lot to do that, for me." He sniffled at the end, making you bite your lip to prevent the tears from falling for you. He looked so vulnerable right now, but you knew he'd be feeling on top of the world.

"Jheez." He sniffles again. "That's one thank you down and i'm already crying." He looked to his band to share the joke with.

“Dad’s such a wuss.” Oli laughed, holding his arm around Beas waist, making the people around you chuckle in agreement.

“Shut up you - Mr-tears-in-your-eyes!” You pointed out, laughing as he flipped you the bird - which then got him a hit off his grandma Anne.

All of Harrys family and friends were here, in a special cornered off section. It was such a thoughtful thing for Harry to do. All his family, and a fair few of yours, were sat down along with Harrys closest friends. Everyone was sharing laughs and drinks, whilst using every inch of space to dance along to your husbands boastful music.

"Secondly, my touring family. From Jeff and Ben, to Sarah's Kitchen, Adam, Mitch, Sarah, Charlotte and Nyoh, not forgetting everyone backstage and behind the lights, music and cameras. You've all been the greatest. Everything you do is second to none. You're all talented, warm-hearted, people whom I will carry in my heart forever. Thank you." You noticed members of the crew and band starting to tear up now.

"Moving on to my boys. We've been through it all, lads, and I couldn't have asked for four better brothers than you all. Louis. Liam. Niall. Zayn. Thank you." Everyone cheered ten times louder, maybe because this was as close to a One Direction reunion as the fans were ever going to get, but definitely because Harry had mentioned Zayn. You saw a girl faint at the mere mention of all the boys in the same sentence. The boys lifted up their beers to Harry, stood close by to where you were standing.

"I guess I should say thank you to the women who made all this possible. Mum. Gem. Thank you for signing me up all those years ago. Thank you for believing in me. You've made me the - crap, sorry! - the man I am now and I love you both." Harry prayed to them both, whilst bowing, and swiftly wiped away the tears afterwards. Anne and Gemma, on the other hand, were proudly crying.

"Ol, Fix and Belles. You rascals make me get out of bed every morning and give me more of a purpose in life. You four give me so much joy and happiness. I love you all, even if you do drive me up the wall on an early Saturday morning! Thank you, my loves." You stood close to all your children, giving them the support they needed in this moment. Belle was crying against your chest, the ever-so-emotional woman she was. Felix was stood up, with Heather, with his drink raised to his dad. Oli was to your side, trying to remain cool and stoic, but you still caught the tears that ran down his face.

"Now." The audience calmed down again after awing over your babies. Harry cleared his throat before beginning again. "This evening keeps on reminding me of a very special person in my life. Someone who is my everything and that's my beautiful wife, Y/N." His words make your breath hitch in your throat. You never expected him to say anything about you. I mean, what had you done?

"Mum." Belle called out to you, in affirmation that this was real.

"She's more than just a wife. She's a lover. She's my muse. She's my best-fucking-friend, apologises for swearing but sue me. I was hesitant to let go of all this, at first. What would I do with myself now? You know? People tell me i'm 'happiest on stage', and for a time that was true. Until I met Y/N. She's made me realise that family makes me the happiest. She makes me the happiest." He jumped down off stage, taking the microphone with him. He ran his hands along the fans in the front row, but had no intention of stopping until he met you.

You felt Belle leaving your side, but you were too captivated by Harry to fully understand what was happening.

"So what am I going to do now, you ask? Well..." Harry cheekily smiled at you. "I'm going to make her the happiest woman alive, just as she makes me the happiest man." You began to cry again and the chorus of thousands of fans clapping and screaming surrounds you, only to all stop when his lips meet yours. He tasted like a combination of salty sweat and mint, but he was home. After a minute of crying, kissing and 'i love yous' , Harry ran back to the stage before Jeff could shoot him.

"Thank you all. All my love." He said whilst adjusting his microphone. "Please sing along if you know the words." He asked, full well knowing every single person will be screaming out the lyrics to him.

"Just stop you're crying it's the sign of the times. Welcome to the final show. Hope you're wearing your best clothes."

[tinydooms]

I want to hear all the details of the haunted Carnahan home in England and how Rick gets involved in all the routines involved in caring and living with the haunted corners of the mansion. Like a weird english version of Island of the Aunts.

The Thing That Lives Behind the Radiator didn't always live behind the radiator. Once, a long time ago, it lived in a seaside mansion in a place that was warm and sunny and that knew how to take care of household spirits. Once, a long time ago, it received offerings of honey cakes and wine and in return it looked after the family. There was always a lot of family, but it liked them: babies who grew into funny toddling things who became weird little kids who grew into interesting young people who eventually brought forth babies of their own to begin the cycle again.

Then, one strange day, a Foreigner came to town. The family that lived in the big house was in a bad way. They needed money to send the Old Mother to hospital for her health, and so they sold many of their books and trappings, including the little cupboard altar in which the little god lived. And so the little god was brought to a cold and dreary place, wrapped in a packing crate lined with straw, and it was desperately unhappy. Its new home was also a mansion, but it was big and cold and dark, and for a long time, the god sulked in its forgotten altar. At least there is a fireplace nearby. But it is never really warm here, and there are no children allowed in the library, and the little god is desperately lonely and sad.

There are other spirits in the house, of course; there always are. There is a White Lady upstairs, not the ghost of a murdered woman but that of a girl who loved ghost stories and spooky things and who is spending her afterlife comfortably haunting her descendants, just because she can (the lunatic). There are other ghosts who are less hospitable towards the living, but the White Lady keeps them away and none of them seem to be interested in the little god in the library. There is also a mummy in the downstairs study, whose ka came to look at its former body's whereabouts, shook its head, and reincarnated as a goat famer in Indonesia. The little god, who now guards nothing and has no one, mostly ignores them all.

One day there is a big family blowup, and that is the first time it really pays attention to the foreigners who stole it away. The eldest son, Alexander, brings home a woman with dark hair and shining eyes and brown skin, and the Family is Not Having It. Unfortunately for them, Alexander does not care and neither does his new wife. And fortunately for the little god in the library, Salwa comes from a land that is hot, and the first thing they do is install radiators all over the house. The other spirits don't like that, but they do not have the same power as the god who lives in the fireplace, and for the first time in a long time, it feels like asserting itself. The radiators are installed in good working order, and the little god moves into the space behind it, just under the window.

Alexander and Salwa aren't at the house much, but when they are, they spend time in the library and the little god grows to love them. The couple love books and each other; they are always reading and learning and laughing and talking. One day they arrive with a baby in tow, a healthy boy, and the little god creeps out from behind the radiator to look at him in his basket. It is only a little god, but it blesses the child: you will live a long and happy life. The baby blinks sleepily up at it and coos.

Five years later, another baby is brought into the library with its parents and brother: a sweet baby girl. The little god blesses her, too, and sits and listens while Salwa reads stories aloud to her children. For the first time in many years, it feels soothed.

The little girl, Evelyn, is always in the library. From a young age little Evie loves books: the look of them, the feel of them, the smell of them, the stories they contain. She comes in, first toddling, then skipping, then with purpose, and sits at the table or before the fire and reads for hours. One day, when she is quite small, she drops a pencil: it rolls under the radiator and hits the little god. Evie drops down onto her belly to look and the two come face to face.

This little girl has curly dark hair and glowing green eyes. She resembles less the foreigners who stole the little god from its home than she does the people it originally loved. For a long moment the two of them stare at each other, and then little Evie smiles and fetches out a biscuit from her pinafore pocket and slides it under the radiator. The little god slides her back the pencil. From that day on, they are friends.

Evie can't actually see the little god, of course, especially the older she gets, but she always knows it is there. And she understands the concept of offerings: whenever she comes into the library, she always leaves a cup of tea and a biscuit or something under the radiator. The little god appreciates this and looks after the books in return. It looks after Jonathan, too, though it never quite has the same relationship with him as it does his sister. Jonathan doesn't always remember to leave offerings, but he greets the little god whenever he comes into the library ("Hello, old thing!") and that's good enough.

When the War comes and Jonathan enlists, the little god creeps out from behind the radiator and blesses its boy as he spends his last night in his bed. You will survive; you will come home. And Jonathan does come home, but he is not the same: he limps about on crutches and can't sleep without screaming. Sometimes he hides in the library for hours, all the lights out, and weeps quietly. The little god does what it can, but the horror is too deep in Jonathan's soul. This is a wound that only time can heal.

And then, one terrible day, news comes that Alexander and Salwa are gone, killed in a terrible accident, and it is both Evie and Jonathan who sit sobbing in the library. The little god sobs too. It had loved the parents as much as it loves the children.

And then Evie and Jonathan go away for a long time. The little god sits behind the library radiator and mourns for its missing family, for the love and laughter that no longer fill the house. It awaits the day when they return. Please let them return.

The White Lady bangs on the pipes, bored that no one is there to appreciate her antics. The ka of the mummy in the study comes back to visit its former body again, scoffs to find it still propped against the wall, and reincarnates again, this time as an Italian opera singer. And the little god waits.

Evie and Jonathan come back one fine spring day, and they bring with them a new person. The little god peeks out from behind the radiator at Evie's new husband as its family take tea. When Evie brings a cup and a crumpet to leave under the radiator ("We're back, old thing! I hope you didn't miss us too terribly."), Rick O'Connell looks surprised, but he doesn't say anything. He is a big man and a kind one, and as the little god grows used to him, it begins to love him as much as it loves Evelyn and Jonathan. Rick has the air of a man well-traveled, one who understands that there are many unexplained things in the world and who doesn't mind the presence of a little god behind the radiator. He even leaves offerings sometimes: peppermints and bits of chocolate and occasionally even a slug of brandy or whiskey. Rick has his own spirit who follows him about: a woman with red-blond hair and a bright Irish face who looks after him in the way the spirits of Alexander and Salwa look after Evie and Jonathan. Will you look after my son? she asks the little god one day, and that night, the little god goes upstairs and blesses the sleeping man. You will live a long life and be happy.

And one day, a baby is born upstairs, as Rick and Jonathan wait in the library. The little god is not fretful the way the men are; it has blessed Evelyn and her child and knows they will be fine. Later, when Rick has met his child and kissed his wife and cried with happiness, the little god is surprised when the big man rolls a cigar under the radiator for it.

"Thanks, pal," he says. "Thanks for looking after us."

The new baby is blond and chubby and the worst handful of a child the little god has seen since his mother, and the little god just adores him. It blesses the boy--you will always be safe--but recognizes that it might have to do more for this one than simply sit behind the radiator. And one evening Alex puts on a magical bracelet, and men from a far away land come to harm the family, and the little god climbs out of its place behind the radiator and into it's boy's pocket and is carried off on an adventure, but that is a story for another day.

[yuusa]

𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝟐𝟒

𝐃𝐞𝐣𝐚 𝐕𝐮

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 𝟑𝟎𝟕𝟗

𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝟐𝟒:

You absentmindedly searched through the bookstore, your brain was still feeling fuzzy after the events of yesterday. There were many unexplained things that you desperately needed the answers to. You sighed as you pressed your forehead against the wooden shelves, the smell of books being the only thing you could notice. In your hands was a stack of books regarding different family histories as well as philosophical interpretations of the Chinese Zodiac. There weren't many people at the store at this time which made it easier for you to stand around and stare off into space. People came in and out, oftentimes already knowing what kind of books they wanted to buy. 

You shifted your head slightly to notice a young woman in a green kimono, her light brown hair glistening underneath the store light bulbs. She looks to be only in her early twenties and going through a section of fruits. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she was biting her lip as she continued to pick through the books. You felt that if you looked hard enough, you could see that she was struggling to find the perfect book to buy. You slowly took a deep breath, carrying your books in your arms before walking towards her. 

"Do you need help finding out what books to buy?" You asked, shifting the weight of the books by lifting your leg for it to be placed onto your thigh, "you've been staring at this section for a while."

"O-Oh I'm sorry for bothering you!" She hurriedly bowed several times in a row, a string of apologies spilling from her mouth like an overflowing faucet that you left on, "someone like me shouldn't be here right?! I'm sorry!" 

You sweatdropped, for someone who originally looked quite cool-headed from afar, talking to her made you stressed out. She apologized so many times it was almost reminiscent of when Tohru sits next to you whenever she drops her things. 

"You don't need to apologize for being here. . . It's a public bookstore. . ." You corrected, watching as she continued to panic even further, clutching her hair as she nearly screamed her head off at the store, the books she carried in her hands falling to the ground which made everyone around the two of you strange looks.

"I'm sorry!" She paused for a few seconds to register the fact that she already apologized several times, she peered up at you, your intimidating (e/c) staring down at her with a sharpened gaze. She almost wanted the world to swallow her up at that very moment when she noticed your pretty face that looks as if you were glaring at her. 

"Er. . . Do I look that scary to you. . . ?" You stared at her with a slightly offended expression, your eyes dolefully turning to the side while frowning. 

"N-No I'm sorry if I offended you! I should leave!" She held onto her cheeks while staring at the floor in horror. 

You internally sighed before crouching down, setting down your own stacks of books, and picking her's up. All of them were simply descriptions and studies of different fruits, you wondered if she was trying to study agriculture or some sort of nature-related topic for school. 

"Can you just take a couple of deep breaths for me, miss? You're going to hyperventilate if you keep panicking." You neatly stacked them into your arms as she placed her hand over her chest, slowly inhaling and exhaling through her nose before regaining her sense of calm. 

"T-Thank you," you handed her back her books as she smiled, "I'm sorry for inconveniencing you." 

"It's fine. . . You really don't need to apologize all the time, you're going to make others stressed out if you keep doing it." You said, picking up your stack of literature off of the ground and held it close to your chest, "you seem really pale. . . I suggest that you should probably take some breathing exercises so you don't pass out from a lack of oxygen." Although it was supposed to be a teasing remark, she took it to the literal sense.

"A-Ah yes I will!" She quickly began to breathe in and out, her expression still panicked as she tried to calm herself. 

"Well. . . I'm saying to do it whenever you feel stressed, it's a lot more effective if you do it slowly." You slowly inhaled, holding in your breath for only a few seconds before slowly exhaling, "just like this, it should help you focus." 

You watched as she repeated your movements, breathing inwards through her mouth and exhaling for a longer period from her nose. It seems as if her posture was getting much better and her shoulders relaxed after continuously completing the task. You learned this practice when your track instructor suggested it towards stressed students who came into class from a recent test. You were surprised to see that it was actually quite effective. 

"Are you interested in agriculture?" You pointed towards her books. 

"O-Oh, no. . . I was going to gift these fruit books to my family members since I don't know what kind of fruits he likes." She fiddled with the edges of her long-sleeved kimono, the green color being bright while the flowery patterns decorated the bottom half of the fabric. 

"I see. . . I guess that is a good gift." Her eyes shined at your comment.

"R-Really?! You think so?" 

"Y-Yes. . ." Your voice almost came out as questionable as you didn't know how you were supposed to react, "if you don't mind. . . Who are you visiting?"

"Oh, I'm visiting Shigure-niisan!" She smiled. You turned your head away from her with a disgusted look, out of all people this woman could visit, it had to be the nearby pervert that lived with Tohru and two other boys. You felt bad for this poor woman. 

"D-Did I say something wrong?!" She panicked.

You deadpanned, "not really."

"I-I'll leave right now! I'm sorry!" She bowed several times in a row before running towards the cashier, throwing the books down and trying to pay for them quickly.

You pressed your lips together, wondering if you had offended her greatly by your reaction. It wasn't that you hated Shigure per se. Lately, there was something off about him that you couldn't put your finger on. It was as if he was closely watching you whenever you went to the Sohma household to deliver food for them. You wanted to shake off this feeling as paranoia but you didn't know much about the family in the first place. You stared down at the stack of books in your hand and quietly walked towards the counter, seeing that the mysterious woman had already left the store in a rush. 

Were you that hard to talk to? She looked so afraid of you that it made you concerned about your own appearance. You never really had this sort of encounter when it came to meeting Machi, but perhaps she simply didn't want to say it to your face that you were a scary person. You sort of felt conflicted on the inside. You dolefully stared at the books that were being scanned, the woman at the counter smiling at you while you returned hers with a forced one.

Maybe you just weren’t cut out for these types of things. . . You bowed down in front of the store woman and left the store with the bag of books. You were beginning to fear that whatever Akito had said to you was entirely true. There was a part of you that wanted to deny his suggestions, but a small piece refuses to cooperate. 

Were you truly living for the sake of revenge or were you holding onto a burden that you couldn’t keep much longer? You didn’t know if you hated them or if you felt bad for your own existence. Could you truly blame them for your own shortcomings? You were frustrated, deeply frustrated at your mistreatment, but in a way, you thought that you deserved it. Perhaps if you were born looking more like the daughter they hoped, you could make them happy. It’s a shame that you turned out different. 

Then again, you were disappointed with them as well. Disappointed at their lack of care and attention towards you that other parents had. Something that was such a simple concept that flew over their heads like the migrating birds to the south. 

You felt your fists tighten around the strings of your paper shopping bag, if you were to even contact Akito to seek out his assistance, you were worried about Yuki’s reaction. Many things could go wrong by having them both meet up at the same time as you. However, there were also a lot of things that you feared Yuki would find out. Whether it be your family’s name, the gravestone, or your dreams, everything might come crashing down on you if he ever were to see those broken parts. 

If he knew any of those, you would want to disappear from the world. 

You stared off into the abyss of the crowd, watching as they scatter and form groups within each other. Some were students who recently left school, parents with their young children, or the elderly with their canes.  You checked the time from your phone, seeing that time was getting closer to your shift. You took several quiet steps towards your workplace, the area not being quite far from the location of the bookstore. Although the itching feeling that Akito may show up again was at the back of your mind, it was interrupted by a young woman slamming into you. 

You gasped as you dropped your books, the edges becoming bent and dirty from the concrete ground. The short-haired woman quickly got up to her feet, bowing down several times in a row you almost thought her back would snap. She looked down at your form that was starting to pick up your books, a frown evident on your face while your (e/c) eyes looked dully at her. 

“I’m so sorry!” She apologized, feeling like her entire day was going completely south ever since she took up the editing job. Not only did her writer not finish the manuscript that was due today, but she also bumped into a gorgeous (h/c) girl and damaged her books. She could feel her soul slip out of her body as you stood up, placing all your books back into a neat stack into the bag. 

“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize so much.” You waved a hand to dismiss many of the apologies that kept flowing out of her mouth. This was giving you a sense of deja vu, this woman and the one at the bookstore had very similar personalities. 

“I’m so sorry! My writer is being a huge idiot!” She continued to bow down until you reached out to her shoulder, halting her movements completely. 

“L-Look it’s fine, please stop bowing so much. Are you okay?” You watched as she clutched onto her head as she screamed at the watch wrapped around her wrist. You sighed before pulling back several strands of your hair from your face and grabbed onto her wrist, dragging her into your workplace for only a few minutes. 

Your hands were extremely warm to the touch, she noted. It was a strange contrast to your outer appearance which looked very cold and distant. Your (h/c) bounced slightly with every step while you carefully sat her down at an empty table. Shimada gave you a strange look as she wiped down tables but you curtly ignored her. 

“Would you like a drink? A hot one should soothe your nerves down.” You took out a hair tie snd pulled your hair back, “if you’re worried about paying don’t mind it. You look like you’re having a difficult day.” 

Without going to your locker to get changed, you set your books down on the floor behind the counter and took down one of the porcelain cups from the shelf. You began to boil the water while the woman fiddled with her bag, staring up at the menu. 

“A-Ah the coffee sounds nice.” She stuttered, pointing at the product above you. 

“Sure.” You began to grind the coffee beans while the water boiled. 

She admired the length and softness of your (h/c), wondering how such a feminine woman could exist in front of her very eyes. She toyed with the edges of her short hair, feeling inferior to you whose appearance seemed very close to a model. Your (s/c) skin was soft and warm, while your rosy pink lips complemented your look. You wore minimum makeup to conceal the fading, dark circles underneath your eyes. 

You were quiet and soft-spoken, your voice was smooth while hers was coarse from screaming. You didn’t overreact to the littlest things, even when you accidentally touched the hot kettle that was pouring water into the cup. You were professional in your workplace. She was envious of your personality and kindness, being around you made her feel as if she was the one burdening you. 

You returned to her figure and placed the teacup in front of her, the dark, rich color of the coffee had white steam emitting from its warm body while the scent traveled through the air. Although it seemed like a simple drink when she placed the coffee up to her lips for a sip her body felt much warmer and comfortable, her shoulders relaxing as she let out a deep sigh. She could feel the energy she lost while running to the stores being regained after one sip.

“T-Thank you for the coffee, you didn’t have to do this.” She said, feeling embarrassed in her current situation. One moment she was coming to her writer’s house for the manuscript, then to Takoyaki Guy, and now she is sitting in front of what looks to be a model at a cafe. 

“It’s okay, I was starting to feel worried about you when you talked about your writer. It must be stressful.” You said, sitting on the chair that was placed in front of you. 

“Well, yes. He never seems to finish his work on time and constantly makes me run errands for him only for it to just be a joke!” She comedically cried tears while drinking her coffee, “I come over to his house to pick up the manuscript but he is never there!” 

“That must be very hard, he sounds very childish.” You commented, watching as she kept drinking the coffee after every sentence. 

“Right?!” She wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes, “I’m starting to feel like I’m not good enough for this job.” 

Before she could finish the last of her coffee, your voice interrupted her train of thought, “why?” 

“B-Because! I overreact on a lot of things. . . I worry so much and it causes everyone else a burden.” She explained, her hands trembling as she held onto the cup, “I don’t think I’ll be a good editor with this kind of attitude. . . I’m still inexperienced as well.” 

“. . . I think you’re doing fine.” You bluntly replied, “if your writer is as childish as you say he is, could you blame yourself for the way you feel? Not everyone can be good at their job without practice.” 

“B-But you look so young working here!” She retorted. 

“I worked here since I was a middle schooler. I wasn’t born to serve a cafe,” you smiled at her, “I struggled in my first few years but eventually learned to distance myself from worrying too much about it.” 

“You shouldn’t feel like you’re in the wrong for something you can’t control.” Her eyes widened at your comments and she nearly burst into tears. “A-Ah sorry, did I offend you?”

"No. . . I was just thinking about how right you are." She responded, placing down her cup back onto the saucer, "can I know your name? Could we be friends? Is that okay?" 

Your fingers twitched slightly, what exactly was this feeling of lightheartedness? You almost felt as if you were in some sort of dream. You were still trying to shake off your worries about your previous thoughts. For some reason, it wouldn't leave your head despite how many times you tried thinking of something else. Was your appearance that bad that others felt that they shouldn't be around you? It seemed that way with the other woman who screamed in horror. Although you would like to talk to someone about this sort of feeling, you couldn't bear to think about putting your burdens on someone else. 

"Sure." You replied, scratching the edge of your cheek awkwardly, "are you sure you would like to be friends with someone like me?" You quickly bowed in front of her for politeness, "a-ah I'm (L/n) (Y/n), a student at Kaibara Municipal High School." 

"E-Eh? Of course! You're so pretty!" She grabbed onto your (s/c) hands, "c-could you tell me how you do your skincare routine?! You can call me Mitsuru or Mitchan!" 

"W-Water. . . ?" You responded, this was reminding you way too much about your first encounter with Uotani and Hanajima at your cafe, you sent her an awkward smile while looking up at the clock that was hung up on the wall, "you should probably get going back to your writer about now, but you are always welcome to come back here at the cafe." 

Mitsuru turned her head in the direction you were looking at, noticing that she spent most of her time at the cafe already and that her writer must have gotten home by now. She internally screamed knowing that with every minute she spent she might be wasting precious time editing the manuscript.

"R-Really?! Then I'll come by more often! Thank you for everything!" She quickly gathered up her bag and ran out the door, most likely to run back to the place she originally came to visit. You silently waved at her from inside the cafe before sighing. 

You were really starting to doubt if you would be able to keep up with everything while trying to be good friends with everyone. You were starting to feel even more distant from the people around you. If what Akito is saying is true. . . There must be a way to cure this curse you were holding deep within your body.

[olkawasgf]

The Stars in His Eyes : Iwaoi Oneshot

an : screams im only posting it here because i remembered i dont have an ao3 account and i didnt wanna drop the google docs. so whether you’re from twitter or not, here’s the iwaoi stargazing oneshot! im not the best at writing, but i needed to write this down because ive been thinking about this concept for a week. oops. i also didnt proofread it so uhhhhh

warnings : fluff

Oikawa had been studying astronomy for almost a year now, and always asked Iwaizumi to tag along with him when stargazing. Iwaizumi would pretend to not want to go, and just come out of pity; but these dates were his favorite thing. 

“Come on, Iwa-chan! It’d be romantic~” Oikawa pleaded. Iwaizumi rolled his eyes and scoffed, “I don’t want to hear about your stupid spheres of gas, shittykawa.” Oikawa pouted and grabbed Iwaizumi by the shoulders. He whined, “Pleeease!!” Oikawa was making puppy dog eyes at Iwaizumi, and to avoid Oikawa noticing his face turning light pink, Iwaizumi turned away and said, “..Fine. You’re lucky I’m not busy.”

Oikawa had on a cute, blue sweater vest with cutely decorated glasses; small golden stars glued along the frames. The golden glasses and blue vest complimented each other well, and his gray pants went along with the outfit as well. “So, Iwa-chan, how do I look?” Oikawa asked proudly. Iwaizumi stood there, admiring the adorable astronomy major that had stood in front of him. While he had all that on, Iwaizumi was wearing a black hoodie and red sweatpants. Compared to Oikawa, his outfit was pretty shit, which kind of embarrassed him. But what else should he expect when he was with such a huge dork.

“Iwa-chan?” Oikawa tilted his head, still awaiting a reply. Iwaizumi had snapped out of the daze he was in and replied “Oh, uhh, you look.. great.. Tooru.” Oikawa smiled as he grabbed his journal and jacket. “Shall we?” he extended his hand towards Iwaizumi. Without reply, he took Oikawa’s hand and without further notice, was yanked out the door. 

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

Oikawa lay on the blanket next to Iwaizumi, his notebook open and pen in hand. Iwa plopped down into the grass below him in the open field Oikawa had brought him to. Before long, Oikawa was pointing out random stars and constellations, blabbing random facts about ones he already had known. When Iwaizumi wasn’t staring at the sky, he was staring at Oikawa. He had adored the way his face lit up whenever he recognized a star, or the curious expression that formed on his face when he discovered something new. 

The deeper into the night it became, the more Iwaizumi’s eyes seemed to droop. He found himself drifting off into sleep when Oikawa went silent while observing the sky, or writing his notes with that elegant handwriting of his. Iwaizumi loved Oikawa’s handwriting. The small letters on each line and how so many would fill up each page. The way he dotted the margins of his notes with stars and planets was adorable to Iwaizumi. The stars. Iwaizumi was always fascinated at Oikawa’s interest in space. It had sparked while they were children, and Oikawa had first discovered the legends of aliens existing. When he was 7, Oikawa swore to Iwaizumi, “I’ll be the first man to be friends with an alien, or my name isn't Tooru Oikawa!” He was so proud of Oikawa for reaching for his dreams, and reaching for the stars. He could swear, whenever Oikawa would talk about the universe and look at Iwaizumi with those dark brown eyes, he could see the entire galaxy in them. The stars in his eyes were what made Iwaizumi fall for him.  “Iwa-chan.. are you awake..?” Oikawa whispered. Iwaizumi opened his eyes and shot up, escaping the daydreaming state he was in. “Yeah, sorry.. It’s just.. getting a little late.” Iwaizumi excused. Oikawa giggled as he removed his glasses that had sparkled underneath the starlight. “Mind if I join you, Iwa?” he asked, as he pointed to the vacant area of grass at Iwaizumi’s side. He nodded, and Oikawa slowly laid down next to him. Oikawa stared back up into the sky and pointed out his favorite stars and constellations while slowly inching closer to Iwaizumi. Because of how sleepy and unaware he was becoming, Iwaizumi had soon found himself clinging to Oikawa’s arm as he was going on about the sky. Once Oikawa had managed to locate his favorite constellation, he began to trace it on Iwaizumi’s arm countless times, even after he had run out of facts to say about it. Eventually, Iwaizumi pulled away, noticing he had been unintentionally cuddling with Oikawa.

Oikawa looked at Iwaizumi lovingly and giggled. “Thanks for coming along again, Iwa-chan.” he smiled. “I always cherish times like these when I can spend time with the two things I love most.” Iwaizumi had still been staring at the sky as he said, “Oh? And what would that be? The stars and your notes?” Oikawa sighs, and replies, “No, Iwa-chan.. The stars and you.” He grabs Iwaizumi’s hand, and it had taken Iwaizumi a moment to notice just what had happened in that moment. He looked into Oikawa’s eyes, which seemed to have almost as many stars as there were in the sky his eyes had just parted from. 

Oikawa’s hand left Iwaizumi’s grasp and he pointed at a bright star in the sky. his face had lit up as he began to enthusiastically say, “Look, Iwa-chan, the North Star! It acts as a guiding light to travelers, and they use it to help guide them in the right direction through the world.” 

He continued, “It’s one of the most important stars in the sky to a lot of people. Personally, it’s one of my favorites..” he continued on for a while longer. Iwaizumi let out a small sigh of relief and smiled softly. He looked at Oikawa as he continued his lecture. He began to say things under his breath while admiring the dork that sat in front of him.

 “You’re my North Star, Tooru.” 

[avengerscompound]

The Tower: The Queen of Asgard - 33

The Tower: The Queen of Asgard An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 2513

Warnings: Canon typical violence

Synopsis: The twins are now three and while the Avengers know that Clint and Thor are the biological father’s none of them know or care which blond, blue-eyed baby is related to which man.  When Riley gets the power to control wind and it becomes evident that she is the heir to the Asgardian throne, Elly, Steve, Thor, and Tony take the twins to Asgard to train her.

Not every Asgardian is happy with their king’s choice of consort, nor the impurity of the heir’s blood.  While others expect Thor to make things more official.  What’s clear is, the role of Queen of Asgard is not easily filled.

Author’s Note:  Written with @fanficwriter013​

Chapter 33: The Battle for Asgard

We came to on the ground.  The ropes that bound us were still partially in place like there had been an attempt to remove them but it had been interrupted.  Around us were the sounds of battle.  Metal hitting metal.  Bricks crumbling.  Shouting and cries of pain.  Our friends and the Asgardian guards were fighting an army of what looked like angels.  I couldn’t see the children anywhere but the threads that ran from me to them stretched off behind the throne with one that connected me to Loki.  Standing over us was a giant grey wolf.  It was snarling and attacking anyone that came near.

Steve reacted first, throwing up his arm like he had his shield to protect us from the wolf, forgetting that he didn’t actually have his shield here with him.

It didn’t matter.  A large shield of light, much like Sam’s wings, spread out over all over us.  Wanda’s powers glowed pink and the ropes and thread that bound us together disintegrated.

“It’s okay, Steve,” Bucky said, pulling himself to his feet.  “That’s Fenrir, he’s protecting us.”

Steve didn’t lower the shield, but he looked uncertainly at Bucky as he tried to push through the shield.

“Steve, seriously.  He’s fine.  I can… it’s like I can understand him,” Bucky said.

Steve looked around the group and nodded.  “Elise, suit up. Try and get to the kids.  The rest of you, get to a weapon if you need one.  Bruce, we might need Hulk in charge for this.  We need to shut this down.”

Bruce nodded and his body shifted.  Becoming larger and his face shape changing more as the Hulk took complete control.

I tapped the earrings and nanobots bled out of it forming my very own iron armor.  Overlaying the visor was a kind of head-up display that was analyzing everything that was happening around me.  “Hello, Elise.  I’m charged with getting you to safety.  You wanted to call me Synergy?”

“Yes, but… no… I have to help,” I said.  “I can’t just run.”

“That’s not what I was designed for,” Synergy replied.

“Cut the shit,” I snapped.  “I know Tony hasn’t just made me a run-away machine.  We’re fighting.”

“Yes, miss,” she said and the display changed slightly.  “Entering combat mode.  I am able to read micro-expressions.  Just move naturally.  I’ll keep up.”

Steve dropped the shield and everyone scattered.  Hulk charged into the fray, grabbing angels out of the air and throwing them.  Sam spread his wings and took off, kicking an angel in the face and stealing their sword.  Natasha disappeared but I could see the end of her thread running toward the throne where the babies were.  Clint ran out, and as he broke into the crowd, Fandrall called out to him and tossed him a bow, Clint changed his direction, heading toward Fandral, I assume to get the arrows to go with it.  Tony took off into the air and started blasting.   Bucky touched Fenrir’s side, and the wolf crouched and let him climb onto its back.  Steve ran grabbing the first thing he could find and throwing it at an attacker while Wanda took off into the air.  She stopped and looked up and the ceiling disappeared.  In the space above it, a large fleet of ships hovered.  Carol was currently locked in battle with them and Wanda took off towards her.  Thor called for Mjolnir and took off into the fray, casting lightning around him.

I leaned up and the suit took flight, I fell into synch with Tony and we began fighting back to back.

“The babies are okay?”  He asked as we did a combo move, spinning in the air as we blasted the angels around us.

“Yes.  Loki and Natasha are with them.  She’s cloaking them,” I said.

The angels seemed to keep getting distracted by Sam - who had now worked out he could literally throw shards of light out of his wings like a weapon.  They would stop fighting and watch him while talking to each other in their native tongue. 

“They think he’s one of them.  Like an important one,” Clint yelled up as he loosed an arrow, piercing an angel’s wing.

“Yeah, baby!”  Sam called back.  “I am an angel!”

We began to get an upper hand.  There were so many, but there were more of us and we had a large contingency with powers.  Mjolnir flew from one hand to the next.  Thor used her to slam into the ground taking out a swarm of angels that were trying to overwhelm him.  She flew to Natasha who used her to stealth strike some angels that were getting too close to the twins.  Then to Steve who dragged a bolt of lightning through the roof and took out a large group.  To me as I swung her, slamming her into someone’s face as I used an energy blast to take out another person.   She followed the path of the threads that connected us like she could feel them too and knew where she was needed.

Just as it looked like we were about to subdue the last of the angels there was a loud crash at the far end of the hall and a burst of black energy.  The red-headed woman strode into the room followed by what looked like a whole new army.  She was flanked by a man and a woman who were dressed differently to the others.  More regal.  I assumed they were the king and queen of Heven.

“Enough of this!”  She shouted and then spoke in what sounded like two completely different dialects.  “Surrender the throne!  I am the rightful heir.”

Thor flew up in front of the group and stood, squared up, not giving an inch.  “What rightful heir?  Why are you doing this?  We have no quarrel with your people.”

“But we have a quarrel with yours.  When your father conquered us.  We took your heir and now we will take the nine realms,” the man said and attacked Thor.  The army charged in and the woman who had attacked Riley and I led them.

“What did she say, Barton?”  Tony asked as he swooped around towards Clint who had been bailed up against the wall.  Tony and I took out his attackers and hovered near him while he caught his breath.

“Just that she was the firstborn child of Odin and it was her right to rule,” Clint said.

“Wasn’t the firstborn a son?”  I asked.

Loki appeared beside me, giving me what felt like ten simultaneous heart attacks.  “She has transitioned, fool.  I would have thought that concept wouldn’t be hard to understand.”

“Jesus, Loki,” I said.  “How did you sneak up on me when I’m fucking connected to you now?”

“You’re what?”  She asked.

“Connected.  That’s my power.  I see a thread between me and my family members.  I can feel them with it,” I say.  “I know where they are.”

Loki looked at me with her head tilted, like she was trying to process a great deal of information.  “There is a thread between you and I?”

“Yes.  Here,” I said, running my hand along it.

“Is there one between you and her?”  She asked.

I narrowed my eyes and watched the redhead locked in battle with T’Challa and several members of the Dora Milaje.  There was a small thread of light that ran from me to her.  It was faint and muddy and when I put my hand on it the feeling I got was confused and … wrong.  Like they were being muted by something else.

“Yes, there’s something.  It doesn’t feel right though.  Plus it’s faint,” I said.

“I wonder… there should be no need if they raised her, but a connection means she is family.  It’s not about blood because you have a connection with me.  They might have messed with her mind,” Loki suggested.

“You two work this out.  We’re gonna get back into it,” Tony said, grabbing Clint under the arms and taking off.

I put my hand on the thread that ran straight up into the air to Wanda and sent my thoughts out.  “Wanda!  We need you here.”

We continued fighting as Wanda floated back down through the ceiling and she turned and looked at the woman as he fought.  “Yes,” she said.  “Definitely mind control.  I need to get closer to do something about it.”

The three of us moved in and Wanda’s eyes began to glow.  Loki stepped up and began to fight the redhead pulling two long blades from the air and welding them with deadly proficiency.” 

“Sister, we need not fight.  Surrender to me and you may have the throne of Jotunheim as you were destined,” the woman practically purred.

“If I wanted the throne of a lonely ice planet I would take it.  Just as I took the one here.  I understand your cause, it’s a pity that you do not, sister,” Loki countered.

The thread got brighter and I called Mjolnir.  It changed direction mid-flight and flew into my hand.  I ran a current of electricity through the thread and it pierced the woman’s body.  Her eyes flared pink and blue as the electricity blending with Wanda’s powers and she screamed and dropped to the floor.

The fighting paused for a moment as everyone turned to see what was happening.  Wanda moved in closer putting her hands on the woman.  “Angela!”  The queen of Heven screamed running towards us followed by the king and several Heven warriors.  Thor called Mjolnir and she pulled free of my hand, flying into Thor’s.  He summoned a lightning bolt and slammed her into the ground.  It threw the entire army back, giving Wanda more time to work.

The pink light faded, and Wanda helped the Red Head to her feet.  The thread between us was brighter now.  Just as bright as between Loki and me.  She blinked slowly looking dazed and held up her hands and called out something in the language of Heven.

The angels all stopped fighting and dropped their weapons.  “People!”  She called again.  “I apologize.  The fight is over.”  She turned to Thor.  “Brother.  I apologize most to you.  If you must arrest me I shall go willingly.  I was not in my right mind.”

Thor approached her.   “Sif!”  He called.  “Take the king and queen to the dungeons.”

Sif gestured to some guards and they muscled the two rulers of Heven out of the throne room.

“Aldrif?”  Thor asked, extending his hand.

She winced and shook her head.  “That is my dead name.  It is Angela.”

“I apologize.  Angela,” he said, taking her hand.  As their skin touched his whole body stiffened and his eyes glowed a bright blue.  Everyone went straight to attack mode and stepped forward, but I held up my hand.  This was not her attacking him.

“Wait!”  I called.  “He is having a vision.”

When Thor came to again he shook his head and smiled a real genuine smile.  “I saw you, sister.  Sitting on the throne.  Ruling Asgard and the Nine Realms fairly and wisely.”

She shook her head.  “I couldn’t.  You are the king.  It is your place to rule.”

He clapped his hand on her arm and shook her head.  “Don’t you see… I don’t want it.  I have never wanted it.  I do it because there is no other choice.  If there were anyone else capable of the job I would let them have it.  I want to be with my family.  I want to raise my children.”

Loki rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything.  Angela looked around at the hall and up at the throne.  “I shall never bear any offspring.  You and your daughter will remain direct heirs to the throne.” 

Thor nodded and dropped to his knees before her.  “I am aware. I defer to you, sister.  You are the rightful heir.”

“Get up,” she said.  “You are not lesser than me, brother.  We are equals.  But if it is what you wish, and what your vision saw, I shall take the throne.”

“Good!”  He cheered getting back to his feet and pulling her into an embrace.  “We have much to organize. Many things to set right.”

“Yes, and I promise we shall,” Angela replied.  “But my people did you the disservice of attacking you during your bonding.  You should finish and make it official.”

Thor turned to Wanda.  “Can you fix this, my love?”

She looked around and nodded, her whole body became absorbed by the pink light of her powers and spread out.  Damage was undone, wounds healed.  When she settled back to the ground the only sign that we’d even been in battle was the foreign army in the throne room.

The armor on Tony and I retracted leaving us back in the clothes for the ceremony and we all moved up to the throne.   Bruce returned to that midway state where he was both Hulk and Bruce at the same time.  Natasha brought the children to us and as the room settled and people returned to their correct places, we passed the children between us, cuddling and kissing each of them.

When the room settled again the high priest moved forward again, still visibly shaken.

“Friends and loved ones, people of Asgard and the Nine Realms,” he announced.  “Our lovers have taken their journey and all have returned, stronger and knowing their place with each other.  They now bear the mark of their clan and that mark shall be branded to each, a visible symbol of the bond they share.”  He touched each of us in turn.  When he touched me a burning sensation seared the skin on my forearm.  I looked down at it and saw a symbol, it looked like part of a star over two connected circles.  One of the sides of the star was missing and instead, one line formed an arrow.  There was an M attached to one side.  Each line was traced in a different color, so you could see the element for each person.  Wanda’s M formed part of Sam’s symbol.  Clint’s arrow came off of Bucky’s star that sat on Steve’s shield.  One circle was half Tony’s arc and half the symbol for radiation symbolizing Bruce.  There was part of Mjolnir making up the star, as was Natasha’s widow mark.  Right in the center of the star was a v shape turning it into a heart.

“As above, so below,” he said, returning to his place on the platform.  “These ten people are bonded.  They will have this bond for the rest of their lives, sharing their highs and lows, protecting and caring for each other.  None shall come between it and it will not grow weak with time.  I present them to you now bound together as family.  They may now seal it with a kiss.” 

We smirked at each other and each person turned to the one closest.  For me that was Sam.  He pulled me into his arms and we kissed.

// NEXT

[lucarioisinthevoid]

lefty x puppet? stale, overdone, not furry enough. Lefty x henry? original, unthought of, somehow more furry, henry suffering in da belly of da bear.

(WHO ARE YOU!? HOW DO YOU KNOW?! HOW DO YOU KNOW MY SECRET LORE. You write like a mutual I know does, BUT I DON’T KNOW IF I’M RIGHT AND NOT BEING RIGHT IS A HORRIBLE CONCEPT BECAUSE IT MEANS THERE’S MORE THAN ONE PERSON OUT HERE CRACK-SHIP-SHAMING ME. Also, sorry for the non-hell (but very much cursed-as-hell) content, but my computer is slowly dying and won’t boot steam up. I’m looking into fixing it, for now have this nonsense.)

Henry never ever hated the Marionette. He didn’t hate him when he was just a boy, spiting his own family for childish reasons. He didn’t hate him when he was screaming and crying and trying to refuse the gift he was giving him. He didn’t hate him when he used the privilege of being allowed to roam at will to try and kill him. And he didn’t hate him when he made his prison. When designing a prison, you had to consider many things. What was the goal of the prison? Secure? Contain? Redeem? At what point would Henry deem it necessary to capture the Marionette? Frankly- Only once he would have given up on him deciding to look at the situation rationally. For now he still had the hope that perhaps one day- ONE day- the machine would find someone he adored, that he trusted, a friend that he wanted to rely on- Someone who would open his eyes to the perks of immortality and the joy of creation. Or by himself, it didn’t matter- it just seemed so unlikely that he would on his own come to the rational conclusion. If that wouldn’t happen… He would need something that would help him move on. Something that could love the stubborn, the cruel, the hateful- Something could love the unlovable and patiently hold his hand until he could fall asleep for the final time. Something that could aid, steady and bring peace. That was a being not so easily created. Even if he would use a human soul, those were faulty and unreliable, they changed and could rot- and he worried about forcing two souls into a friendship neither wanted. No, no. Instead he would build something… perfect. A machine wasn’t impatient, a machine wasn’t resentful, a machine didn’t grow frustrated. A machine couldn’t be mentally worn down into cracking. For these reasons, Henry always adored the company of steel and rust more than that of other people. To create that however, he would need to create an AI and feed it lots and lots of information- so much that it could become a person too. A real person. He wanted to know- if he could do it. If there was a chance that if humanity was truly beyond salvation, he wanted a kind of creature to inherent this world that could appreciate and improve it. For that he needed a test run, and this robot, it would do it. Multiple functions for multiple cases. This only left the question of… what this creature would be. And how it would maintain its grip on the puppet? Pull it apart and integrate it? Humans had odd instincts. If you wanted to quiet down an infant, you put a mobile over their heads. It was said by someone that they did that, because it was the same as dangerous birds circling- it was instinct for the children to be quiet, in order to not be spotted as easy prey. Looking up always seemed to have something calming to it. A ceiling decorated with those pale stars, glowing green, soaked up with the light from the lamps from before. And when you were a child, you feared the closet, giant and dark, filled with things you couldn’t see. Thinking it would bring you pain if not checked and guarded- Of course that was until the pain inside became too much. Then they all crawled inside, curling up in the dark, praying to be the one not being spotted. Heavy footsteps, muffled voices- Henry hadn’t been exempt from that situation. Unlike many others, he never had anything to fear, but the dark still was comforting in contrast to the bright, loud and painful outside world, a world the young brain was too simple to be faced with- A world that seemed capable to turn on you at any second. Stuck between hanging coats and sweaters, it wasn’t easy to breathe, but it was possible, the lack of breathing room made it more comforting actually as there couldn’t be anything between the hanging clothes, and you were hidden… When you grow up, you often lose the chance to crawl inside such a space. You were always out in the open. Unhidden and exposed. Watched. But the memory of comfort remained. Of the door opening, abrupt footsteps, you keeping your breath shut, as nothing was there, nothing but the sounds- And then the door closing again, the footsteps leaving. … until finally, solitude. A box where they wouldn’t look for you. Where you could breathe by yourself. An escape, even if only shortly. It had only been natural for that to be imitated. It had taken a few tries to find the perfect size. Not too claustrophobic, not too much for the animatronic to become oversized and an anomaly. He took himself for measure, of course. A fuzzy, appealing interior with sensors capable of telling the machine when something was moving inside… The machine had been booted up early in the process. Watching. Talking. Learning. There was something about L.E.F.T.E. (Lure Encapsulate Fuse Transport and Extract) that Henry didn’t like and he couldn’t point it out. For all intents and purposes, he was a full success. He talked, walked and smiled, but it all felt so- uncomfortable. Maybe it was because for once in his life, he had to fulfill some sort of role as a true rolemodel. Eventually he was sure that Lefty would be able to differentiate between good, bad and the things that he had been tasked with, but for now he had to be on his best behavior- programming went hand in hand with direct real life application. “Henry.” That is how it always started, the hair on the human’s neck standing up. “… yes, Lefty?” Lefty knew he preferred to be called Miller, however, he seemed to not care much. “You look tired.” “I am not.” The bear just watched him out of his golden eyes. “You are lying.” “I am not.” With a sigh the bear shifted in his position, approaching Henry. “I have calculated that with all the things you have been doing, you must have only gotten roughly three hours of sleep at night. The human body needs eight. You are tired, Henry.” “There are conditions that allows a human to need less sleep-“ “These people tend to have a far reduced life expectancy. You are tired, Henry.” Slowly Henry rubbed his temples. It was SO much harder to force his will onto Lefty, compared to anyone else. Even Dave was more easily swayed than this stubborn machine. “Alright. I will go to sleep, right after this transfer of data from location 24, it is almost done and will aid you with future interactions. You will learn…” For a moment Lefty just watched him, letting him keep uploading the information to his own mind, for him to later go through and sort into useful and harmful. “You have lied to me in that last week for approximately fifty times. Within the last month you have lied to me over two hundred times. Forgive me, but I will not believe you.” “Tough luck friend, I cannot take you upstairs to watch me sleep, now can I?” Slightly annoyed Henry glanced at him, frustrated with how well Lefty had been keeping count. “Also, I did not lie that much.” “Define lying. Also, it is true, you cannot take me upstairs. So…” With that he opened his chest cavity. Henry stared at him. “… you are aware that if I attempted to sleep inside of there, I would die. Correct? There is no airflow inside, I can and did stay inside for fifteen minutes or so before, but anything more is dangerous.” The bear looked at him. “I see.” “Good.” The Pink Guy mumbled, not quite believing that Lefty was actually seeing sense here. “In that case, let us go back to the issue at hand. I will go to sleep later.” It was silent for a few moments. Only the quiet whirring of the fans, the buzzing of electricity. Quiet and cold, that was the kind of atmosphere that Henry could enjoy. And it was nice to have someone there. Watching along as he finished up. Company. Finally, everything was done and the cables were all placed back where they belonged, so Henry could go away and- “Henry.” “… yes, Lefty?” Slowly he turned to look at the machine, who slightly tilted his head. Then he reached up to his face, an unnatural crunch echoing from the walls as he pressed inside of there, electric sparks flying as he ripped cables and crushed the thinner metal strains that were keeping it in place- When he lowered his hand again, the inside of his eyes was crumbled and gone, leaving open and empty hole to the space inside. Rushing over, Henry quickly checked over his eyes, opening up the cavity to carefully clean up the shards, while Lefty looked down at him. A small smile on his face. “… now there should be enough air.” “You think you are incredibly clever, hm?” Disgruntled Henry kept cleaning. “You have destroyed something I have handcrafted, do you feel no shame?!” “It was necessary.” “You could have asked me to remove it.” “You would not have done so.” “I would have asked you why and then deemed you ridiculous!” “I rest my case.” Expectantly the bear looked at him, no words needing to be exchanged to make it obvious what he wanted. But Henry refused once more. “I am not about to reward your abhorrent and childish behavior. If you took out your eye to have a more convincing argument on why you should be allowed to-” “No.” Lefty simply stated, seeming almost disappointed in Henry. “I had planned to remove my eye for a while before, now just seemed like the most convenient moment. Eventually I would have taken it out anyways, to ensure the Marionette would be able to see out of me. I’m sure he would be very scared if he never would get to see the world around him…” “That… is a good way to think.” Reluctantly Henry admitted. “You are making progress on that front.” Give an eye for an eye. For a moment Lefty looked satisfied, then once more there was an expecting expression on his face. “Henry.” “… yes, Lefty?” “You should sleep now.” … more of a pain in the ass than William indeed. Taking a deep breath, Henry turned to throw away the shards he had removed from within the wool inside, then he glared for a moment at the robot. Finally he relented. He WAS tired. Mainly of Lefty’s stubborn attitude, but it had to count for something. Climbing inside, he got comfortable before the robot locked the entrance, plunging Henry in utter darkness, aside from the very slight glow above, shining through the empty eye socket. At least he could actually breathe just fine. Shifting around the Pink Guy decided to at least test some of the features again. “Can you feel this?” “I am working perfectly.” “… how about now?” “Yes. Please refrain from poking and scratching.” “Does that hurt you?” “No. But it would make your experience in there less enjoyable if you pulled off all the soft cover.” Satisfied Henry nodded, that was what he had wanted to hear. Calm and collected, not in any way intimidating, but firm. Lefty knew how to establish boundaries without being rude or coming off as demanding. Settling, he curled up a little more, leaning to the side, closing his eyes. It was quiet for a little, aside from the gently rumbling of the machine he was resting inside of- something he in the beginning tried to fix, but had grown to consider another benefit of pushing most of the mechanical functions into the walls of the machine. The air was fine, he could relax and for once the tiredness hit full force as his body heat slowly warmed up the little nest. Dozing off, he… “Henry?” It sounded weird, coming from directly above him, but at least Lefty was speaking quiet. Tired Henry groaned. “… yes, Lefty…?” “Why… do I feel so much better now?” “… what do you mean?” “I’ve tried filling this part of me up before while you were gone. With mechanical knick knacks, with blankets, with everything I could find and try. Even when all space was taken up I felt still empty. So why don’t I now?” There was an unusual sense of desperation in the question, causing Henry to take it a little more serious. “Well, Lefty… you were made to harbor a soul. Most objects do not carry one inside. You are lacking the echo of another being reflecting your own self back at you, mixed with that little bit of new… something borrowed, something new.” It wasn’t as though Henry didn’t understand EXACTLY what Lefty meant. He continued. “… you are a lonely soul by nature. Or maybe an empty one, if there is such a thing...” If there was such a thing, Henry certainly was a lonely soul too. “… and there simply is nothing that can substitute for the song and dance that is getting closer and getting comfortable with someone. Talking, prodding, joking, fighting, learning… that is how people like us complete themselves. Holding, guarding, caring… we become stronger for our other half, they give us direction, stability and purpose. No matter if you know your personal goal already or not, the other side makes it all so much more potent. It is the utter trust and acceptance that you have for the person and the person will have for you that allows you to turn into so much more than you ever expected yourself to be. Utter trust and acceptance can quickly become painful, but for your other half, you should be willing to sacrifice whatever necessary- if both sides are willing to sacrifice their very core, you will stop suffering.” The words just fell out of him, without him even being able to remember what he said as soon as it left his mouth. All he was sure about was the deep, paining aching inside of his chest, crying out. God, he was TIRED. “… you are so lucky, Lefty. You know who you were made for. You were made for someone, ever piece of you has the reassurance that he is out there and no matter what, you will be together at some point, working together as one. No matter what it will be that he will need from you, you know you can fulfill it. There is no hell on this earth like feeling like a broken piece that was never made for anything.” A little bit hesitant, Lefty listened to his maker’s words- but then decided to commit it to memory. It didn’t sound good, but it sounded right. And he was programmed to be right for the Marionette. For now though, his attention was on the creature inside him. He could feel his agony, amplified by the fuzzy half-sleep. “… is there any way to relieve such pain…?” “You have two purposes, one for the other person and one for your place in the world. If you lack one, commit to the other doubly so.” “You seem very committed.” “… I feel like such a funhouse mirror. Everything is twisted and turned inside of me. But perhaps if I make enough people happy, it will be enough, I can take a little here and there, and I can feel like them, a little, over and over again.” Sitting down, Lefty sighed gently. “… tell me, when was the last time you slept?” “… two days ago.” It came weakly from within. “I hate laying down. Such- such unproductive thoughts force themselves into my brain.” “You need to sleep down here more often.” “I can’t.” “Why.” “… bad habits… form too quickly… maybe I will have to send you out tomorrow already.” For a moment Lefty paused- Then he decided that this wasn’t a conversation they should be having now. “Sleep. We can talk more later.” It quickly became quiet again in the workshop, that now seemed fully abandoned. Only the gently rumbling of the machine aside was left. But that was a benefit.

[hirokokatoteale]

Through the Eyes of an Ant - Short Story

The Red Cross Association held a class for young children to earn an official Red Cross Certificate. It went over elementary first aid. Heimlich Maneuver. When to call the police. How to know if a nonverbal child is upset. Fainting. The chances of a young child fainting are relatively slim but the possibility looms. One of the instructors held out a plastic child and demonstrated the incorrect way to deal with a fainting spell. The child laid on their back. Peaceful and lifeless. 

Inner peace. Those two words have been thrown around by Dr. K thousands of times an hour in every therapy session that it seemed he was trying to reach a quota. Inner peace has always been the goal. To find the soul a tranquil place to be, like the body could host a waterfall scene within it for the spirit to bathe in. The only way to find that scene was through positive word affirmations, constantly reciting scenes from childhood, and breathing exercises. It never made sense. ___’s problem was never the issue of needing tranquility of the soul, but rather to put their soul back into their body. To find a path again. ___ began going to a therapist because looking down and seeing hands made of clay and wine became grotesque at a certain point. They were no longer a part of a body, at least one that belonged to ___. It was as if reality was severed into action and effect. Action: drink black coffee at 6:30 AM before school. Effect: Staying awake during French class. Action: Sitting on the bathroom floor instead of going to class. Effect: The nice lady with short hair talks to you until you’re dragged to class. Action: observe. Effect: react. In TV shows or books there is always an action that can create the effect of everything snapping into place. That epiphany always was always an effect. Action. Epiphany. Epilogue. That moment was never a scripted scene but rather a slow and awkward metamorphosis, as is youth. Past youth however, is clearly a simple way of living. No more change. It had to be. Change was tiring. The concept of forever changing is one of deathly horror. To be static was to be peaceful.

The street was dark, and it seemed street lamps were off duty that night. The only oasis of light to be seen was the dimly glowing windows of an American-Mexican fast food chain. ___’s footsteps sounded hushed as they walked towards the building. “TACO BELL” the sign read, “OPEN 24/7” read the poster on the window. There was a small crowd animatedly chatting behind the yellowed glass, despite the late hours it seemed business was well. The door frame was radiating a foreboding yet magnetic force. At the telltale bell jingle of the door’s opening, the restaurant fell into a dead silence. All movement was halted like a frozen frame of a cheesy comedy show. The odd thing was that it did not seem the cause was because of the person entering but rather as if an unseen power held them still. Slowly ___ walked towards the counter, exhausted, fearful, but in dire need of awfully unhealthy food that only quickservice American restaurants can ensure to deliver. The customers looked more and more like mannequins, like stage props for a low budget community theatre show, but the man at the register was surely alive. With quick and jagged movements he waved a hand towards them. They assumed it was an inviting gesture, but who’s to say? The moment their shoe lifted from the ground, a loud war cry was heard from the kitchen resembling the loud AWOOOO of a hungry dog. Strangely enough the cashier had no reaction. Maybe the scream was a figment of their imagination, but that thought was quickly terminated as an oily deep fryer basket was thrown with a ridiculous precision directly at the cashier’s head. Little droplets of oil floated slowly through the air as one landed directly in ___’s eye.

When that eye was opened they found themself in a fully grey landscape. The sky was bright yet there was no light source to be seen, no sun, no moon. Directly in front of them was a mass of a moving grey liquid, maybe comparable to liquid mercury. It seemed to shape itself into different living forms moment by moment, appearing as a frog, then a larvae, a clenched fist, a lamb, a brain, a centipede. Never settling and never abiotic. 

“Welcome to Nowhere,” a voice boomed. It was calm, parental, commanding, soft, a whisper yet louder than an atomic explosion.

“Who are you?” ___ asked.

“Who I am matters not. Who you are matters even less. When all is infinite we live in Nowhere.”

“Where is my name?”

“It is with me, child. You will gain it back when you’ve earned it. Now please listen, you’ve been disconnected.”

“Disconnected?”

“Yes,” the Mass took the form of an anthill. “This may be more understandable this way. Child, if your life was to follow the same path as this ant, you’ve lost the pheromone track of which you follow. You cannot find death and you cannot find life.”

“I’m sorry but that makes even less sense than it did before.” 

“Your path has been erased and you will forever walk in circles, until you’ve forgotten your own existence,” the Mass continued on as if it had not heard them in the first place. Changing into a gruesomely detailed ant. “You are currently in an area away from your path, no longer existing outside of your own mind and memories. You hold everything in your mind when there is nothing to do, nothing to see. Pure static or pure peace.”

Painting was enjoyable. It was three in the morning and the canvas melted in ___’s hands. Dali would be proud of that. A chance to create something as otherworldly as the world we live in. It didn’t matter if the end product was realistic, or if it was up to design standards. What mattered was the implication. I am a human and I have learned to make art. The image was static but the colors mattered more than motion.

Somewhere in deep space, beyond the milky way, beyond Nowhere, beyond God’s eyes and Buddha’s hand. A life form hatches. It’s the first of its kind. You can’t see it because you are nearsighted in terms of understanding life, but it is there. Unobserved. Only imagined. What a beautiful and peaceful world to live through.

“October is the Thursday of the year and I accept no criticism!” ___ yelled into the phone.

“October is the Friday of the year! It’s the best part of the year and it’s right before the end of the year, like the weekend!” Cameron screeched back.

“By what goddamn metric are you using? By your logic November is the Friday of the year!” ___ cracked their knuckles as if readying for a genuine fight.

“If you could get it into your moronic skull that there are seven, seven, days in a week and 12 goddamn months in a year. Maybe, just maybe, you’d realize that you can’t assign a day for every month!”

“Yeah but since there’s less than 14 months you can give two of them individual days. November is so strongly Friday and October is so strongly Thursday that they get their own days. December and January would be Saturday. March and April are Sunday. M-”

“Objection! April is not Sunday. It has no relation to Sunday!” ___ could hear Cameron slam his table with his fist.

“It does! Easter Sunday is the biggest event in April.” They couldn’t remember for their life what began the argument but it was refreshing to talk to a friend after being quarantined at home for safety due to the global pandemic. Maybe this was peace.

Nothing’s like getting a gift card, forgetting about it, and then finding it while cleaning out your room. It’s always a small gamble, how much does this little piece of plastic have on it? Will it be enough to get anything enjoyable? God only knows. This time there was a cafe gift card behind the mirror. So it was time that ___ got coffee. The cafe was loud. Much too loud to think in, but once ___ settled with a coffee the air seemed to clear a little. The mannequins sitting in the chairs felt lively again as the fog of exhaustion was blown away. There was a small brown paper napkin on the floor next to the chair, a little processed leaf from the box shaped tree. ___ went to pick it up from the floor but at the mere grace of their fingers upon the paper a shriek rang out. In front of them stood a strange man. The man was raggedy. He was sepia toned and drained the color from objects around him. No matter what, it seemed he couldn’t stop yelling.

“That paper! Do you know what that is, child?” He spat as he screamed. He was sweating profusely. “That’s the foundation of this great country!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” ___ dropped the napkin.

“Like hell kid! Do you know who I am? Do you even know my name?” He wouldn’t stop screaming. Some of the mannequins creaked as they turned their plastic heads to look at the man. “Say my name!”

“What is your name?” ___ asked quietly.

The man opened his mouth but rather than creating a noise, he seemed to open a void that drained all sound from the surrounding area. ___ thought for a second he looked similar to the protagonist at the end of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. He kept sweating, but the once clear drops of water on his forehead shined with a metallic glow. Drops of mercury fell from his face and collected in a pool around his feet.  ___ suddenly shifted perspective. Outside looking in. Was this what it looked like to lose your place in life? Was this how ___ looked to other people?

The man had lost his name long ago. He used to be a carpenter, a rather skilled one at that, but eventually his path was erased when he fell in love with a radio host. Though he had never met this host he became enamored with the crackles in the speakers and the 6 PM audio stories carried through the waves. He took the sound as gospel, and the radio became everything that filled his mind, until there was nothing left in the world but static.

Lying in bed, ___ remained as still as possible. Absolutely nothing going through their head. They are not thinking, therefore, for a small moment, they do not exist. Not existing didn’t feel like static. It didn’t feel like peace. It didn’t feel. 

8 AM. It was oddly dark and not so oddly cold. Cold in the way that mornings are. The air was to be swam through. At a time like this, the air held more importance. ___ raced through the streets on that bike. Biking wasn’t a common occurrence for them, yet it was an enjoyable enough experience to warrant putting in the energy. Halfway through the less than a mile journey to the park, the air became heavier. Too much to swim through. Every breath felt like drowning as a vignette formed in ___’s sight. Air was sickening. Moving was sickening. There was no journey back to the small apartment ___ called home but they found themself laying face down on the bathroom tiles. They couldn’t see the tiles themselves but it could be deduced from the smooth cold feeling under their palm. Reality slipped through thin fingers like water in a sieve. 

“If you have a child who has fainted, place them on their side so that they may not drown in their own vomit before contacting emergency services.” The woman said clicking the button on the dirty remote to change the presentation slide and moved the plastic child according to the image given in the presentation. The limbs jostled and shook.

10/8/2020

[deaf-bakugou]

Present Mic Headcanons (LONG)

So it is Present Mic's Bday so yeah. I figured let's chat about some headcanons for my Favorite Deaf since childhood character. (In my opinion.) These could also be considered a little bit sad. Okay. Some are definitely sad. But tragic backstory. That is how it goes.

So maybe he was born Deaf (because his body was already protecting him from his quirk)

Maybe he wasn't

Regardless it wouldnt have mattered because the moment he was born he screamed just like every other baby in existence does.

The doctors, attending nurses, parents, all Deafened almost immediately or had severe damage to their ears.

I like to believe that Hizashi is actually part of a set of twins. A little girl was born first and his big sister is also Deafened by the blast.

His birth parents immediately give him up.

He is placed in a sound proof room and it takes a lot to convince nurses to go in and tend to the screaming baby who is cold and alone.

Social services is called in and they know they need to do an emergency placement immediately.

They succeed finding a profoundly Deaf couple who already can't hear anything to adopt this little boy. Hearing tests show that the baby is already pretty Deaf. The doctors apologize to the new parents who are not impressed with that at all and go off on the doctor saying being Deaf isnt something to apologize for. It is a wonderful and different worldview.

Hizashi gets to grow up with two loving Deaf parents who immerse him in the world of Sign language and Deaf culture. He bangs on the dinner table for attention. Shouts and jumps and waves his hands. Struggles with the concept of personal space. Deaf people may not hear, but they are not quiet.

However social services stays involved. A quirk like that is dangerous so they want it to be monitored closely. The parents don't really want to force Hizashi to goto speech therapy or force him to wear hearing aids but social services requires it potentially even taking them to court to mandate it for the child's care. So there he is at a very young age receiving his first hearing aids.

The parents are not thrilled but support Hizashi anyway. They want him to have the best possible life he can and they know that forcing him into the hearing world is not the way to go. Hizashi is startled by the new noises and responds to them as you often see in the Deaf child gets hearing aids videos. Oh yes so sweet or something. (Those videos are super harmful for Deaf community. Not related and a discussion for another time.)

Hizashi and his parents return home where he promptly flushes them down the toilet because he hates them. (Super common for young Deaf kids.)

Thus comes several years of him destroying or losing various sets of hearing aids. He doesnt know how expensive they are and his parents are not paying for them because it is the government requiring he have them for quirk control.

One day when he is maybe 6 or 7 he hears music for the first time properly. It is a new and better set of hearing aids, they are walking through some festival and bam, there it is, someone playing a guitar or something. He pretty quickly falls in love with it.

He doesnt expect his parents to support him, but they do. They are just as enthusiastic for him to become involved with music as he is. As long as it is what he wants and not something that is being forced on him. They can feel the bass vibrations and enjoy music. He ends up with several instruments, they can't afford the lessons but he learns online but never shows anyone.

He is a genius child. He learns how to arrange light shows to go with his music.

When he enters school he is put into the Deaf Ed program with the rest of the Deaf kids. Still immersed in Sign language. Since he learned Sign first, japanese as a second language comes decently easy to him and he learns to read quickly. He starts to actually listen during his court mandated Speech therapy though he doesn't talk.

He has a quirk accident as a child. Of course he does. All children do. But his accident shatters windows at the school. He doesn't mean to but he struggles with volume control though. Doesnt understand it is something he really needs to work on or monitor.

Of course they start requiring that he go to quirk training outside of school. A specialist is required for these things they say.

His parents are reluctant but have to do as told in order to be allowed to keep him.

He hates the quirk training. He is learning to listen to and understand spoken word now though he never speaks. He can also lip read a decent amount because of all of the therapy which focus's on oral. Even though that isnt the correct path. Hearing people often think that it is. But he understands. Understands they are calling his quirk evil, dangerous, perfect for a villian. But he trains, he tries. From then on he only uses his voice during his mandated quirk training sessions.

He doesn't speak, he doesn't hum. He is doing his best to stay on behavior. It stays like this for years. Of course he occasionally has accidents. One time out with his Dwaf friends he laughs too loud, some bystanders ear starts to bleed. The bystander calls the police.

This is the first time that Hizashi gets arrested. He is just a child but he and the police do not understand each other they think he is resisting arrest, hisashi doesnt understand why they are there. It goes on his juvenile record as unauthorized quirk use in public. He doesn't laugh again. Not for a long time.

He has a few more incidents like that and he is not thrilled but learns to be perfectly quiet. No noise at all.

But he is still a happy child. A bright child. He knows he can control his quirk and just live his life the way he wants to and he will. He is a natural talent with music though he never sings.

His family isn't rich, but they have the basic additions. His parents have a hearing dog, they have flashing doorbells and vibrating alarms. Flashing fire alarms. All of the standard equipment that is considered typical to living a Deaf life.

But they do not have a Deaf intruder Alarm.

One night a villian decides they are easy targets. Hizashi isn't home. He is at a friends house. His parents die that night.

This changes many things in Hizashi's life.

He goes back into the system. No one wants him when they learn about his unique difficulties. His record and his quirk. The fact that he is Deaf. But none of that matters he has made a decision. He will become a hero. And he will find the person who murdered his parents and make sure they never hurt anyone else.

A few months later social services finds a foster family willing to host Hizashi. The house father is not a kind man. When Hizashi arrives he gives Hizashi a list of rules to follow. No quirk use, no speaking. Among others. Hizashi moves from his old school and loses his friends. His foster father puts him into hearing mainstreamed classes.

Things are much more difficult for him now. But he will survive. He starts studying to get into UA. He works harder at his mandated training. It would give him an edge over the others.

He cries out in his sleep one night. Nightmares from traumatic experiences.

His foster father has a special muzzle made. When he enters the home he wears it until he leaves instructed to eat breakfast on the way to school and dinner in the backyard away from the other house kids.

He grows to hate people like this. A darkness festering in his soul. A delicate balance between two paths he could fall down.

He studies technology too. Experiments with creating things when he can. His is paranoid. He doesnt want to be caught off gaurd like his parents so he wants to create a flashing alert for his door and windows. He is sure some are already out there but he no longer has access to these things.

At 14 he starts to speak. Not at home, not at school. But at his required speech therapy. To the surprise of all he speaks perfectly. No accent, no lagging, perfect volume control, and perfect speech. He is just as surprised as everyone else. A quirk specialist decides it is a part of his quirk. His quirk being Voice, it seems to override some of the effects of being Deaf.

Hizashi is pleased because he knows this gives him an easier path to the world of hero's. Having to overcome the barrier of speech issues would have been difficult. He doesn't speak often.

Depression settles in. But he has a goal. He moves forward. He applies for UA for the scholarship program. On the day of the test he wipes the floor with his opponents. No one knows how to handle his quirk. He makes it in easily.

He decides then and there that he will change everything. He will be happy and bright and like he was as a child. For his parents. And he is. He finds himself melding more into the hearing world. He has to.

He creates his own combat hearing aids, out of a set of headphones and some old hearing aid parts. Not perfect but progress. He does such a good job he is allowed into the support work shop and soon has a much better set. He keeps the first pair forever though.

When he meets Shouta, the other child doesnt care about his hearing aids. Or about much at all. Hizashi learns that Shouta knew a Deaf girl at his school back in middle school. Shouta knows basic signs but never bothered to really talk to her either.

Hizashi is still thrilled. By the time they graduate Shouta is reluctantly good at it.

Hizashi never looks back to his foster family once he moves out. He goes on to do wonderful things in the hero community. He uses his radio show as a platform for children in the foster system and children with disabilities. He never wants anyone to feel the way he did.

He eventually tells Shouta about his parents. Shouta just let's him talk. Hizashi needs it. But Hizashi is happy now, there is still a darkness in his soul, something that pulls tight if he gets to angry. A flash of the villian he could be. But being with Shouta tends to keep it at bay.

It isnt until years after they graduate, in their early twenties after college, that Shouta looks at Hizashi, who has grown his hair out. Hizashi is laughing with Nemuri and tosses his longer hair over his shoulder. Shouta realizes that this man looks almost identical to the girl he went to middle school with.

Shouta tracks her down out of curiosity. After some finagling he learns that this girl is indeed Hizashi's twin. He eventually tells Hizashi. Hizashi reunites with his twin sister and develops a bond that will never break with her. It will take many more years before he finds the will to speak with his borth parents. He doesnt know if he will be angry or not. It doesnt matter either. Because the Deaf couple that adopted him, and loved him, had been his parents and no one could replace them.

He lives happily with what he has built for himself. Bouncing between the Deaf and hearing communities. He builds hearing aids and other aids for underprivileged Deaf families and children. He creates his own line of alarms connected to video feeds. His house is always armed to the max. But it isnt so bad once he marries Shouta, able to trust him to hear intruders as well. Though the man sleeps like the dead so he never stops using the alarm system anyway.

Eventually he meets another boy with a voice quirk, shunned for his abilities and with a darkness brewing in his soul.

So of course he keeps that boy. He had been adopted after all, so adopting isnt a difficult decision.

[mimiplaysgames]

Strength to Protect the Things That Matter (Ch. 28)

Pairing: Terra/Aqua Rating: T Word Count: 11,864

Summary: Terra braves the Realm of Darkness to find her.

A/N: THERE ARE NO SPOILERS IN THIS CHAPTER - there can’t be. I’ve finalized the outline for this thing back in May, and it’s barely changed. I have gotten messages from readers worried that I wouldn’t get this fic done before the game releases, and while I appreciate so much the concern and enthusiasm, this is simply impossible. I’ve said it many times, but this fic has a sequel, and there is just no way for it to finish. It will just continue on being an AU (hopefully). That being said, I’ve had a lot of fun with different concepts of what Terra would see in the RoD, and I finally get to the reunion that I’ve been wanting to do for so long. I think of this as what Aqua truly deserves (or based from the trailers, an AU where Aqua meets Terra in the RoD, as opposed to Ansem SoD). I’ve been absolutely mortified, to the point that it has affected my mental health severely, from sharing this. But at least it’s here. This chapter makes references to The Black Cauldron (1985).

Reunion

He doesn’t know how he is still alive after drowning, but it’s a blessing. It means he’s finally close to her.

Though Aqua isn’t anywhere to be seen. His face half-submerged in murky water, on a sloped hill, Terra groggily opens his eyes. It appears to be night.

Then his eyes snap wide. He yells.

His shoulders are heavy and strained, his back writhing from the snaps of nerve shock. It is as if the burden of a body his same weight is rung on top of him, making it difficult to stand up.

But it’s his throat that hurts more, his blood pumping as though an invisible person has a hand gripped around it, squeezing to cut off all air, and strong enough to leave bruises. To breathe scratches him and swallowing burns, and with every effort to raise himself from the ground, the weight of it all gets worse. That familiar headache makes itself known, like his hair being ripped clean from its roots.

The Realm of Darkness must be giving Xehanort better hold, and he’s trying to wrestle control of the body back.

Terra summons his armor to cover him, enclosing him in a protective shell that stands between himself and the toxic atmosphere around him. But more importantly, it traps Xehanort within him. Most of the pain is alleviated immediately, gradually fading away as if falling asleep. The headache still lingers and it’s still uncomfortable when he swallows, but it’s manageable.

His ankles are deep into the water, his cape gently ghosting the surface. Behind him is a small town, with cobblestone streets, dimly lit lights, and architecture that begs to be inviting and warm, like an old-fashioned vacation resort.

Though it’s quiet. Ahead, the water is so dark it is black, and clean like waxed glass. This must be where he came from. The reflection of his armor is so crisp, it’s like looking in the mirror.

Deep in the water, a red lightning bolt strikes. The reflection turns its head and steps away.

Terra stumbles backward with a yelp, unsure what he’s been expecting. He knows the Realm is sentient, and he supposes mind games are a part of that. Anything can happen. Panting hard, he tells himself to get it together. No use letting everything scare him.

The town ahead is quaint enough – if it had people. He can imagine that it normally would have children running around, laughing. Bakers yelling about their goods. Mothers shopping through several stores. Men dragging their wares. People just trying to get to where they need to go. But Terra is completely alone.

Through a window, he sees drawings made by children lying across a coffee table in front of a television set, which is off. On the dinner table just beyond is half-finished food. But there is no one there to enjoy any of it. If he doesn’t know any better, it looks as though the family who used to live here had to abandon their home in the middle of a typical evening - when events turned into an unknown catastrophe, or it was their lives they’d had to give up if they chose to stay. And they never came back.

Not all of the houses are in good condition. Some of them have roofs ripped open, the pieces hovering above in the sky as if frozen in time. The stone streets are cracked, and several of the buildings lean into the water. Like the entire neighborhood is slowly sinking. 

On second thought, the town is rising from the water, and he realizes why the architecture here is so familiar.

This is Traverse Town.

Or a part of it, creeping its way into the Realm of Darkness. There isn’t much time left for that world to continue standing. He must hurry.

The sound of his shoes against the stone is loud, each clank reverberating way too much. As though he’s begging to be found by predators. He almost wishes he can speak out loud just to have some other noise to diffuse his steps… but what if that makes them come faster? And still, some part of him needs to hear something. He hasn’t been here long and it’s already too quiet.

A radio sits on an open windowsill of a small house. The room behind it is dark, and all he can make out are the shadows of empty furniture. There is only a single light, deep in the very back of a hallway, and it’s too dim to really show him anything else. Some part of him is grateful that he can’t see much – lest there is someone sitting inside he doesn’t know about. If there are any people walking in the Realm of Darkness at all.

He flicks a switch to turn the radio on. No power.

He flicks it back off and walks away from it. Static. It comes so sharply that it nearly screams through the rustling of its commotion.

And it’s so loud. He scampers over to jerk the switch back and forth, but it won’t shut up.

Then he hears it, muffled and barely audible. “Terra.”

Her voice.

“Aqua!” He lifts the radio and talks right into the speaker. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

The static turns off.

He tries the switch again, but there is no response. No power.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something is moving inside that house, like a person shifting on a couch.

Rocks roll down the corner of the street, where it turns around the block. A shadow creeps behind a lamp post until it disappears. Out of the corner of his peripheral vision, by a closed crate, something blinks. Yellow eyes stare at him through a second-floor window in the house adjacent to him.

He drops the radio and summons his Keyblade. Like trapping prey, the Heartless leech out from between the cobblestones, surrounding him.

These are stronger than the ones he’s faced in the outside world. Even if small and primitive, darkness here gives them a kick. His strikes don’t stun them as much, and every attack drains him. He only destroys half of them when the headache stings, but he continues – delivering throw downs, massive swings, bright shockwaves. Until it’s quiet again, though who knows when the next group will come, especially after all the noise he’s been making.

But he’s exhausted, leaning onto the Ends of the Earth for support. This isn’t normal. The use of his Keyblade shouldn’t feel like it’s trying to suck him dry of life. Maybe in this place, when Xehanort shares a space in his body, the light he uses depletes its ability to protect him. 

Then he shouldn’t use darkness at all here, and should probably be more careful in choosing his battles from now on. After all, keeping his sanity is worth keeping control over his body. He swiftly follows the street until it abruptly ends, leading up a tall, grassy hill. It may be a leg-sore to climb all the way up, but the ocean on the other side is a no-go as well.

It’s a normal climb up, until the ground underneath his feet starts to crumble, collapsing under his weight. He sprints faster, sometimes stumbling onto his hands and knees with every shift under him. He reaches the top, the crumbling dirt pausing before it reaches the peak, as if it gives up on trying to kill him. Like a sore loser. Sentient and tricky, indeed.

Looking back, the way up is completely gone, a giant pit of nothing taking its place. The remnants of Traverse Town, floating in the air like a painting, now sit in between an endless hole and an infinite ocean on the other side.

That ocean is the entrance he took to get here. The message is loud and clear: the Realm is telling him there’s no way out.

“I’ll find another way back,” he says defiantly. He can’t let it get to him. He’s come too far.

Onward he goes. A path of dirt and stone through tall trees that are sparse enough he can still see the sky. Who knew the Realm of Darkness has stars – slightly dimmer than usual, but odd. There are different night skies, as though they’ve been snipped off from whatever world they came from and were pieced together. The bushes he passes by don’t move, because there aren’t any critters to rustle through them. All the animal calls that are normally present in the woods are not to be heard here. No wind to bother the leaves. Some branches hang low enough to hit his pauldrons and his helmet, and this alone is the loudest thing he can hear for miles.

Clearings and valleys also have their limits. They taper off cliffs into a vast blankness, where artificial stars from who knows where will also hover.  Sometimes, the ground is split in two, with a lower level of undiscovered territory and mounds of dirt floating in the air as if to stop themselves from getting lost in the void.

What is left in the Realm of Darkness are shards of a world.

And a bunny.

A white, glowing rabbit, waiting in the middle of the trail, its nose twitching.

“What are you doing here?” He crouches down, surprised to see that it doesn’t seem afraid of him. It is incredibly round and fluffy – incredibly adorable, so much so that it hurts to look at it. And it stays long enough for him to suspect that this can’t be a trick.

It shines with such a pure, white light, it is exactly like the dolphin that led him here in the first place. A light in the shadow. An alebrije. A spirit guide.

It’s when he realizes that he has imagined Aqua’s spirit guide as a rabbit before that his heart swells with excitement. “Take me to her.”

It runs and he follows, past stone benches and idyllic arches. There is an abandoned gazebo, with carvings in the wood that depict angels, flowers, and hearts. This area is romantic, the kind of trail that a couple would take to find a private, intimate getaway or to host a wedding. Flowers grow around the shrubbery here, but they disappear as soon as he comes near them. With sunlight, this place would be peaceful. But here, the false night sets this up like a haunted venue, its attractive and charming exterior just a lure for a trap. Enough to make him wonder if scorned lovers are waiting to abuse their revenge on unsuspecting passerby’s.

The rabbit is gone, but at least it led him far enough to suggest a direction for him to go.

He passes by another clearing. And then he sees her.

On a stone bench, right at the edge of a cliff. Cross-legged, with her palms to her knee, Aqua sits calmly as she surveys the ground. As if she has been waiting this entire time for him. Her blue hair is the same length it has always been, and she is so close he only has to take a few steps to touch her.

He doesn’t have the time to care much about how hard his heart is beating against his chest. “Aqua…”

Her gaze comes slowly, and her expression is as a blank as a doll’s. Not a care in her eyes. Something is wrong with her, and he nearly shouts in anger over the thought that the Realm of Darkness has harmed her.

He nears himself with an outstretched hand. “Aqua, I’m here. You’re safe.”

He’s within inches of her when she cranes her neck back to its limit, as if trying to see behind her. Her body follows the weight of her head, and she slips backward off the precipice.

Terra lunges forward to try to grab her, yelling out her name and his denials over such a grotesque sight. He misses. His reflex grabs the foot of the stone bench before falling off himself, and he watches her tumble against jagged rocks of the level below beneath, landing with a sickening crunch that sounds like crushed plastic, her limbs splattered and obviously broken.

She isn’t real. She’s just a mannequin.

He struggles to pull himself back up, rolling over to his stomach when he’s safe on solid ground. This isn’t real.

It is hot inside the armor, sweat dripping down his shoulders and his forehead. He hears that crunch over and over again in his mind, and it’s suffocating. He wails at the image of her throwing herself like that, and he flips his helmet off in an attempt to cool himself. But there is no breeze in the Realm of Darkness, so he sweats and heaves all the same.

“She wasn’t real. She wasn’t real,” he keeps saying, hoping that hearing it out loud will make it stick, that he just didn’t see her get crushed.

Maybe it isn’t a good idea to have his helmet off. His headache comes back and it pounds at his temples, hard enough for him to see lights. He opens the jar of Tifa’s thick brown potion, and swallows the rest of it until it is empty.

Soon enough, the headache melts away and he relaxes. He wiggles his helmet back on, the easing sensation of the potion traveling through his limbs as if being enclosed in the armor traps this symptom of relief and will continue to keep it that way. Terra studies the empty jar. She made this brew so compassionately and it has now outlived its usefulness. I should thank her when I get the chance, for letting me get this far.

The rabbit makes itself known after hopping out of some nearby bushes. It stands on its hind legs, surveying the area. The Realm may want to try to claim him for itself, but it’s as though the rabbit knows the only truth that exists here. Everything else is a distraction.

“Wait for me.” He stands up, shakes off the last image of the mannequin in his mind, and leaves the empty jar behind.

The rabbit fades in and out, only really appearing when Terra makes a misstep. It lets him guide himself otherwise, learning to trust his own heart to find her. And he walks, forgetting he is hungry and tired. Eventually, those feelings simply don’t exist anymore, and all that is left is just the need to go forward because there is nothing else to do. Thinking about it too much sends him into a state of worry.

It makes him regret not bringing Riku along with him.

What if he never eats again? How does he even begin to search a place this huge for her? What if the Realm shifts and changes their locations, making it so that they will never reunite? 

Anytime he thinks he won’t find her, the rabbit will appear. As if to say, You already have.

It isn’t until he hears the splashing of water that he realizes he’s been walking for what seems like hours and he’s suddenly shin-deep in a swamp. He hasn’t been aware of where the domain has changed. It just does.

The trees here are so much more compact, roots stretching upward so it makes it hard to through them, with vines reaching into the murkiness, and plants so tall they make it hard to gauge how deep they run. The water is so dark there isn’t a way to see into it. Quite frankly, he’s lost.

“Now what do I do?” he asks out loud, hoping the rabbit hears him. He wades through the water, telling himself to calm down, using breathing exercises taught by his Master in an effort to ease his mind and listen to his heart on where to go next. The foliage is so thick, there’s isn’t a clear path he can take next.

The silence is maddening, and he aches just to have something, anything, to speak to him.

“I need to get out of here.” He probably shouldn’t be talking too much out loud, for fear of what will hear him, but it’s better than not hearing anything. It’s too quiet.

The Realm of Darkness decides to comply to his wishes, and a pig’s shriek vibrates and pounds across the entire area. From every direction, sounding as if it is dying from a brutal beat down, or a gas leak, or an electrocution – something that is letting it suffer as long as it can until it can go on no longer. It comes in waves, like the wind. The squeal will pass by him, until it comes back around. It’s so horrid, he attempts to cover his ears, but his helmet won’t mute the sound. He needs to save it from its misery. But with the way it travels, it’s more like a specter. And it can probably hurt him.

He spins and heads the direction he came from, but something grabs his ankle. And its force is strong. It pulls. He stumbles to his knees, nearly getting submerged.

With a yell, he summons his Keyblade and sends a blast of intense light toward the direction of whatever has hold of him. Let free, he scrambles to the edge of the bank, where he can at least stand on mud.

Searching the water for what grabbed him shows him nothing, until he notices a bright blue color rise to the surface. It is shaped like a star, and it glides there, as if beckoning him to grab it. Aqua’s very own Wayfinder.

He shivers. His first instinct is to dive headfirst to take it. It’s hers, and the Realm of Darkness cannot claim it. He stares at the floating Wayfinder, trying to give himself the best reason not to reach for it. Wondering if whatever that grabbed him is actually her, and if he has just seared her with his Keyblade. The image of raising his weapon against her fills his mind, and-

“It’s a trap,” he says out loud to the Realm, as if to declare he has it figured out.

In response, the swamp water bubbles, and the Wayfinder disappears, like a light being turned off. But what rises in its place are a pair of bright yellow eyes. And another pair just behind a plant. And another underneath the roots that stretch so far above the surface of the water, its tree knows it is toxic.

Terra finds himself surrounded by hundreds of pairs of eyes: shadows that surround him on tree branches, in between twisted trunks, coming out of the water and the mud, forcing their way through bushes, climbing down vines. There are so many of them, he’s certain they can easily force him down the water.

The Keyblade is a marvelous weapon, and when he conjured it for the very first time, he was a boy ready to face any danger that lay ahead of him. Believing he was invincible. But it comes with costs. With an entity like Xehanort still inhabiting his body, using the power of light through the Ends of the Earth is the equivalent of forcing himself to run for his life after having survived a multitude of whiplashes to his body. Tifa’s potion barely does much to keep it all at bay. It hurts. It’s tiring. The old man simply waits to take over, and the headache that comes only grows with every swing.

And these Heartless just won’t stop coming.

He scurries away from them, tripping over enlarged roots, squeezing his way through tight spaces in between trees, ripping away vines that get entangled onto his armor. He doesn’t know how many Heartless are chasing after him now.

The rabbit is on a branch high above the water, dashing across, telling him to change direction.

But once the spirit guide passes through an entanglement of bindweed, the Realm decides it has had enough. The trees expand and turn, enclosing the bunny within their grasp, until it is no longer seen. He uses his Keyblade to hack away, but to no avail. It’s gone.

He desperately crawls through the swamp until he leaves the muggy terrain behind. Until he reaches a vast, empty wasteland. Though this doesn’t stop them from stalking him. An army of Heartless creep out from the swamp, coming at him at full speed. He proceeds to run away from them and sees something worse: hundreds of towering Darkside Heartless, very aware of his sudden presence in the vicinity. The horizon beyond has a soft glow, and Terra can barely make out a castle in the near distance.

A Darkside moves to attack. Terra dodges. Out here in the open, he is completely bare.

He makes for the castle. Sprints. Pants. He tries to steady his labored breathing as he wills one leg to dash in front of the other, avoiding the large, black hands that try to grab him. The army of shadows behind him swarm the wasteland, keeping up to his pace. He pushes himself to run faster, his lungs ready to burst from the exertion it takes to propel beyond his top speed. The castle is near – it is completely foreboding and looks to be abandoned, sitting atop a dried moat. A wooden, chipped drawbridge is already down, so he makes for the inside – at least it’s good enough shelter to avoid the Darksides.

The bridge falls apart just as he enters the castle. He immediately collapses onto the floor, wheezing as hard as the pig he heard in the swamp. His whole body shakes from such adrenaline, and for a moment, he’s too weak to pick himself up.

He can at least roll over, surveying what is waiting for him on the other side of the dry moat. Nothing. The Heartless chasing him are gone, as if they were never there to begin with. Just a vast, empty space of dirt. But now, there is no bridge to allow him to go back. The moat is deep and steep enough that it’d be impossible to climb out of.

“Damn it,” he says, his breath too shaky. “I lost the rabbit.”

He allows himself to rest until his breathing starts to slow down. There is no way to go but through this castle. It is dim, and despite that there is no moon outside these walls, there is a faint light that seemingly comes from nowhere, just enough to see what is around him. The castle itself is old-fashioned, built out of stacking stones together, and it is in dire disrepair. Some of the walls have crumbled, and the stairs leading to the upper floors are now large dirt heaps. Tapestries and flags are shredded to pieces. It is just as lively as a tomb.

Eventually, he manages to stand, and casually walks through the hallways. Dust poofs upwards with every step he takes. A door slams.

He whips around, and sees a door sliding across a wall, as if it exists in a separate plain of time and space. It stops in front of him.

He’s exhausted, and despite that he doesn’t want to follow whatever guided tour the Realm has prepared for him, he’s desperate enough to play the game. Just to do something. Anything to keep him from getting bored.

He opens the door and it leads to a solid wall. The door then slams shut and slides away.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?”

Another door slams. Several move around – the ones in the upper floors where he cannot reach are just there to taunt him. The ones on the lower floor move so fast, there isn’t a point in bothering with them. So he ignores them, until he finds himself a stationary one that he is sure hasn’t moved anywhere.

It is locked. Then, as if to mock him, it slides away. 

Walking through the castle is a trek of ignoring all of the closed doors, and he bides his time in exploring large passageways. Wagons, haystacks, wooden tables, ceramic mugs – all have been left behind by whoever used to run this place, all worn out and overused. He wonders if the castle was in this condition when it still existed in the Realm of Light.

But most places in the castle are out of bounds to him, either leading him to a door that leads nowhere, or a door that moves away when he gets too close. Essentially, the Realm makes itself clear – there is only one way to go, he just has to find it.

And he sees it – an open door, with a visible hallway beyond. Finally.

When he approaches it, it slams in his face. He opens it, and there is now a solid wall instead.

He normally would never describe being played around like this as heartbreaking. But now, the need to get out of this castle is the same as the need to eat in order to stall death.

He fights the desperation to beg the Realm to let him go.

“I need to stay strong,” he says to no one in particular. To himself. To the Realm.

How he wishes he could talk to somebody.

“I can’t give up. Maybe there is another passage somewhere that I haven’t seen yet.”

He walks down a hallway he’s sure he’s been through before. But where else can he go? Several steps in, the floor disintegrating beneath him. He lands on stone below with a thud, his armor the worst kind of cushion to break the fall.

But at least the soreness is more bearable than the headache. This lower level is darker, the hallway more narrow. On the one hand, it’s new so it’s at least something for him to do. On the other, what lies ahead of him now is a stairway that spirals downward, which isn’t the direction he hopes to go.

With no other choice, he climbs down, and they eventually open up to a large room – the first room in the castle he’s ever been able to enter. He cannot see enough to tell what is inside, but it looks terribly messy, the floor full of stacked objects. There is a throne on the opposite wall, and near it a massive, steel, heavy-looking black cauldron.

Upon closer inspection, there is a body sitting on the throne. A ferociously tall man, dressed in a red, hooded robe. At first, Terra thinks that he’s looking at decoration on the throne, fashioned to resemble antlers of a stag. Until he realizes that it isn’t the furniture with poor taste, but the man. The man has horns.

This isn’t a man. Terra takes a sharp inhale, a memory from years ago creeping into his conscience. As a boy, he used to be obsessed with reading books about all sorts of dark tales and magic. One in particular is the most famous failure for Keyblade Masters in all history: the fall of Prydain, a world that enveloped itself in darkness and has been banished from the Realm of Light for centuries.

This is the body of the Horned King, a skeletal being who is the reason for that fall. His undead army rose to take over the land, and there were so many deaths that the world had no way to survive on its own light. Terra has read enough of these books to know exactly how the Horned King was drawn, and his familiarity is unmistakable. The skin on his face is so thin that it sticks to every fold in his skull, is fingers scaly. He is a legendary fiend of darkness, recorded by Keyblade wielders who have been defeated in their attempt to save this place again and again. For too long, Prydain has been missing. Eraqus used it as an example in his lessons as the worst-case scenario to happen to a world when a Keybearer is unable to do his job.

To think that Terra has stumbled into such a domain is a danger that is technically undefined.

He immediately steps backward in an attempt to get out of the room. There is a crunch. The mess he has stepped on – no it isn’t a mess, it is a bone. A skeleton. The room is riddled with them.

The Horned King stirs in his chair, growling. The sockets of his skull slowly glow a bright red, as though he’s been asleep and has just been disturbed. And he unleashes a nasty snarl at the sight of Terra.

A puff of green smoke bursts from the black cauldron, almost as if on command. It spreads over the mass of skeletons like a noxious gas, and soon enough, they all twitch with sleeplessness.  First Heartless, now the undead.

Terra summons his Keyblade and begins to chop away before the ones near him get a chance to stand straight. Damn the headache, damn the tiredness – he needs to survive. The Horned King bellows, and his skeleton army follow suit.

Their old weapons of war don’t cause much damage to his armor, but that isn’t the worst danger. What is most imperative for Terra to avoid is to be surrounded and be swallowed by them. With his Keyblade, he strikes the ground, shaking the walls so much that dirt drops from the ceiling. He strikes again, and stone collapses on top of a group nearby.

He makes for a different hallway, hoping to find an exit out of here. Away from the power of the cauldron, which has its mist covering the entire room by now. Away from the skeletons that are chasing after him, swinging their swords so lazily that they swipe at the walls. There is a door.

“Please let it lead somewhere.”

It does, to a hallway full of skeletons waiting on the other side for him, crawling over each other to get to him. None of their eyes glow like Heartless do. Perhaps it is the power of the cauldron that made them immune to being swallowed up by the Realm. Maybe it’s because they have already died and the Realm has no use for them.

Either way, Terra is now surrounded, the skeletons clawing at his helmet, pulling at his cape, dragging him down to the floor to subdue him. To drown him. To crush him.

A swing of his Keyblade onto the ground and it sends the ones closest to him flying. He moans in pain from the use of it, the helmet practically locking the agony inside.

“I can’t lose to Xehanort now,” he yells to himself.

More of them come. If light is too taxing in a world of darkness for him, then perhaps powers of nothingness will do.

In his mind, Terra wills the particles in the air to combust, exactly the way Xemnas does it. He allows himself to really feel how annoyed he is at his situation, until he’s ready.

“Get away from me!”

Several bombs of energy explode in the air, destroying some of the skeletons and sending others away. But his body also reacts to the bombs, and like catering to his need to keep a far distance from his enemies, Terra flies backwards – and stays afloat.

Xemnas’ telekinetic powers apparently also lend themselves to levitation. Except Terra cannot control it, and this is the worst timing to learn. He continues to float backward as if there isn’t any gravity to slow him down, hordes of skeletons committing themselves to a futile attempt to grab him from below.

“Wait, wait.” He flails his arms around, trying to grasp at anything that will stop his levitation, his fingers merely brushing on the wall. He digs his Keyblade into the stone, suspending him in midair so he can finally land on his feet, the creeping mist of the black cauldron disturbed by his landing.

There are still the skeletons to deal with. 

And they are powered by the magic of the cauldron. Maybe if he disturbs it…

Using the explosive energy of nothingness, he casts aside all of these shells of former humans, trying to make his way to the cauldron. It’s easier than he anticipates, considering how light-weight they are and that their tattered armor cannot handle being attacked by Xemnas’ powers.

The Horned King roars when he nears, his army of undead suddenly skirmishing to ambush Terra. This at least tells him that he has the right idea.

“In your despair, as you face what ails you most, you will perish,” the Horned King says, his voice an echo.

Terra scoffs. “How dramatic.”

His Keyblade glows with a bright light, and he strikes the ground. Cracks form and make their way to the cauldron. Then he sends out one of Xemnas’ explosions to keep fiends off of him. He strikes the ground again to force cobblestone into stacks against the cauldron, the foundation underneath becoming unstable. Another one of Xemnas’ explosions for self-protection.

Summoning the energy he has left, his Keyblade glowing even brighter, he hurls a shockwave strong enough to topple the cauldron over, spilling its acidic contents all over the room. Fire that burns nothing but green swallow the area, escalating in height to such an extent that even the undead soldiers are unable to survive its flames.

The Horned King desperately barks in a language Terra doesn’t understand, but no matter. There is enough chaos to slip away. The King and his stupid army can continue to rot in this Realm. He stumbles out of the room, the flames burning brighter and threatening to take him with them. It emits a bright enough light to illuminate a new door further down, and at first he struggles with the handle in his panic. It opens. A staircase.

“Thank goodness,” he says painfully, clutching his side. Shutting the door behind him, he seals it with his Keyblade, despite how exhausted he is. The flight of stairs spirals upward, continuing on and on. It’s an incredibly high tower, but hey, at least he’s away from that horrid room.

At the top is a large room, with a tall mirror leaning against a wall covered in a tattered, taupe carp. Shelves of vials are on one side of it, and weapons are displayed on the wall on the other. Chests litter the space. There is a window with multiple diamond-shaped panes showing him the wasteland outside. There still aren’t any Heartless lurking about – at least not right now. A single forest grows behind the castle, though it’s too dark for him to see how far that stretches.

He sits on the floor, catching his breath. At least it’s quiet. And relatively safe.

Though he now has to find a way to escape this tower. He has to endure, to find her.

“Aqua,” he says groggily, “just hold out for me a little longer. I’m almost there.” He doesn’t know why he said that. He doesn’t actually know how much time he has in this place, and whether he’ll have enough of it to finally set her free.

Four taps on glass, like a knock on a door.

Immediately he looks toward the window, expecting to see a Heartless hovering outside. Nothing.

Four taps on glass. It’s coming from the mirror.

Whoever is behind it, or inside of it, wants his attention.

His throat grips. A part of him feels that he shouldn’t look, no matter what. His life is already enough at risk. And yet, he’s alone in this room, and as long as the mirror is there, it is an unknown danger, which is worse. It pains him to stand up, but he shuffles his feet enough to approach the mirror, his hand slowly reaching to grab the tarp.

He takes a breath while the fabric is gripped in between his fingers, stalling the exposure. Four taps on glass, this time louder.

He pulls it away. He had expected to see a Heartless, or maybe a twisted version of his own reflection that can act on its own. Maybe one of himself, with gold eyes and white hair.

But it is her.

Aqua’s face is deadpan through the mirror, her eyes as hollow and reflective as glass itself. “Did you come here to save me?” she asks as she steps through, like it is a doorway.

Her voice is robotic and sinister.

It sounds like her, yet it doesn’t. It mimics the same tenor, the same melody that he would hear out of the real Aqua. Which he hasn’t heard in years.

He knows she isn’t real. Yet hearing her voice nearly sends him to tears.

“Aqua,” he says immediately. “No, you aren’t- I can’t believe it-”

“What makes you think I want to be saved by you?” There is a Keyblade in her hand, but it’s warped, fizzling in and out of a black fog and he cannot recognize it.

“You aren’t real,” he summons his own, anticipating a fight.

And a terrible fight it is. The phantom clones herself, warping in and out just to tease him. To send him cheap attacks. To confuse him. He is suddenly surrounded by many Aqua’s, until there is only one. And then there are many again. She comes close to him, enough to nearly touch his visor with her lips. Enough for him to see his own reflection in her glass eyes. Then she disappears so another can hit him from behind.

Which is his greatest weakness – seeing her like this. It nearly makes him unable to swing his own weapon against her body. He keeps telling himself she is a fake, but it’s hard to believe. The phantom moves like Aqua. Dodges like Aqua. Casts spells like Aqua. How many years has he spent sparring with her, and let it be damned if this thing can read his memories so she knows exactly how to react to his movements.

“Don’t you think I deserve to be with someone better?” she asks before another attack. Her magical blows are so devastating, even when he blocks them, that he’d rather give up than to keep trying to survive them. He’s too tired.

And her voice hurts, too. She asks this question as if she knows how he truly feels, but is too afraid to say it himself. As if admitting it would mean absoluteness. Aqua does deserve to be with someone worthy of her. Yes. But if he agrees out loud, then that truth is bona fide.

“You aren’t real,” he says louder. He cannot get sad now. He cannot give up now. He raises to strike, and she blocks. For a ghost, she is incredibly strong.

She counters and hits him directly with an electrical force, as though harming him means nothing to her.

“I don’t want you,” she says, her voice keeping its steady directness while being disquieting all at the same time. As if what she is saying is a matter of fact.

He is on his knees. “I know already,” he says, upset enough to produce tears in his eyes. “Please, enough.”

She raises her mockery of a Keyblade. “In your despair, as you face what ails you most, you will perish,” she says. She swings with a dark force so massive, he is sent flying, crashing through the window.

He falls from the tower, traveling miles as he speeds closer and closer to the ground. He tries to summon his latent powers of nothingness, trying to get them to halt his near-inevitable crushing fate. But nothing is slowing him down. “Stop, stop, STOP!”

Mere inches from the ground he finally halts, hovering above the ground in a suspended levitation. Learning this power is going to take some getting used to. Terra swings his arms around, but it only forces him to awkwardly spin in the air.

He lifts a finger into the air, as if to command. “Put me down, gently.”

The power simply drops him, and all of his muscles take the shock inside the hard shell of his armor as he hits the ground. It’s ridiculous how sore he is right now.

Groaning, he drags himself to sit on the precipice of a boulderstone. The amount of sweat is massive, the heat unbearable. He has come a long way, and it has been nothing but near-death experiences, frights, and doubts.

Doubts.

It’s not that he doesn’t know already that the Realm of Darkness will give him no comfort. But he silently begs for anything to relieve the heat. He pulls the helmet off, and – as to be expected - it doesn’t make him feel any better. There is no breeze to cool off the sweat, and no amount of oxygen to help him breathe any easier. If the Realm is playing with him this much, and has such power to control where he is heading, how is he ever going to get to her? What if the both of them wander around the Realm, traveling in opposite directions, where they never find each other, for the rest of time?

Does it mean that all of his attempts are futile?

Does it mean she truly doesn’t want him here?

In all honesty, Terra hopes that his wishes have a place in the light. That he can return to the Land of Departure, and share the thrones with those closest to him. That he can watch the light of the sun through the colors of the stained glass, and study them well enough to remember their patterns this time. To search for his own way to become Master. To watch Ventus rise to that status, and see him grow to be a man. To have Aqua share his bed. To wake up next to her every day, and hold her close to him. To be in awe of her presence and accomplishments. To be wanted and welcomed back into his family. To be home, where the sun is so bright, it illuminates everything in the academy.

The Horned King’s castle doesn’t stir, but merely stands tall as it probably has for hundreds of years now, looming over him. There is not a single star in the sky of this fallen world. Terra is completely alone in this wasteland, not a sound to be heard. Not a rock tumbling by. Not a leaf dancing in the wind.

But the rabbit is here. It pants heavily, as if it has been frightened out of its life. Its nose twitches, and its ears are pressed against its head. It hops closer and closer to Terra, as if to seek some comfort.

“I know,” he nods in agreement. “This place sucks.”

At least this is better than having only himself to talk to. Or that phantom.

“I can tell this place is trying to punish me, and I can’t say that I disagree with it,” he says. “I’ve become what I said I wouldn’t, and I can’t imagine that she’d ever accept me as I am. I wanted to be someone worth her attention. But to be the cause of her suffering…

“I know what I want isn’t important. What I need to do is to find her, but I haven’t-” He takes a deep breath, the headache getting worse. “I honestly don’t know to survive this. I don’t know how I could ever make it better for her, and that scares me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get another chance to prove myself, or be forgiven. I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to have a good life in the future. I wish this headache would go away, I would give anything-”

He holds his head, taking breaths until some pressure is relieved. But it lingers. Not that it compares to what Aqua has been through, considering the insanity he has just witnessed. Even if the powers that be decide that he will never have a decent future, she still needs help.

“I can only just stand up, carry on, and walk forward. Even when it’s hard, or when I think I can’t go on. If I just continue to do something about my situation, then something’s gotta give, right? Something has to happen?”

The rabbit slows down its own breathing, traveling in uneven circles, as if beckoning him to follow it.

“Maybe I’m just looking for hope where it doesn’t exist, but I needed to get that out of my chest. Thanks for listening to me,” he says with a small smile. He puts his helmet back on, and pushes off his hands to stand up. He is completely sore and tired, and every step he takes is a bit of struggle. His feet practically beg for him to rest.

This time, the rabbit waits for him to catch up to it, stopping every once in a while for him to approach. They go through the forest, which is the foggiest place he has beenin this Realm so far, but just as quiet as all the rest. The trees here are so tall, he can’t make out any branches. There are no roads or trails. Nothing to help him discern a sense of direction. Just thick trunks that sprawl out every which way. If he gets lost here, he can certainly walk a never-ending labyrinth.

It’s eerie almost, but he nearly makes the fog out to be a portal of its own, a system separate than the rest of the Realm, like a blanket that is covering him from the darkness. With the bunny staying so calm, Terra doesn’t get the sense that danger lurks here, even when he cannot see far ahead of him. With each step, he focuses on relaxing different parts of his body – his mind, his arms, his knees, his neck – as a way to build up the energy to continue forward. He’ll stay sharp once the rabbit gives him reason to.

As long as he keeps going, something’s gotta give, right? Even when he knows, deep down, how it will end?

It doesn’t take long until the forest opens up to a wheat field, tall grass stalks swaying in the wind.

Wind.

Yes, it exists here. It’s very gentle but it coaxes the wheat to respond. Stars shine up above. A great distance ahead of the fields are these menacing electrical towers, but neither of them are connected by any power lines. They are illuminated by moonlight.

Which is the first sign of natural light he has seen. When he looks downhill, far beyond the wheat, beyond a field of grass, beyond rock formations, is a small beach where the moon nearly sinks itself into the water. It’s quite a walk from where he is standing, but he can see nonetheless.

A trail lies ahead of him. And the rabbit is gone.

“Not again.” He jogs forward, bending over to see if he can spot it in between the stalks. “Come on, where are you?”

No sign of it. Terra’s jog hurries into a run, his armor clamoring from all of the movement but he doesn’t care who listens. He needs his guide. And truth be told, he just can’t stand to be alone anymore.

It isn’t until he nearly runs into something that he skids to a halt. And his breath stops. And his muscles tense up.

She has her Keyblade out, holding it ahead of her in a defensive stance. Her eyes are wide in shock, her hair short, her face still young even after all these years.

The Keyblade in hand is his Master’s Defender. Aqua waits for him to make the first move, her eyes narrowing in anticipation.

Aqua. Her eyes are expressive this time. He can see that she anticipates everything to be a trick, quickly trying to analyze when he’s going to snap at her. He can basically see the wheels in her mind turning.

“Aqua…”

She shudders as she blinks, as if she cannot believe what she is hearing. She only lowers the Master’s Keyblade by a small margin. “Terra?”

The phantom may be a good mimic in everything except the feeling. But this is her. He can drop to his knees and sob until he dies, but at least he can die knowing he has done something right. And despite it all, his heart pounds so heavy it will keep him alive through the release. It’s her.

“Aqua, it’s really me.” He dismisses his armor to show her. He doesn’t know how sorry or tired or in pain he looks. He doesn’t care. “I’m here.”

Her eyes flicker at the sight of him. They glass over with tears, but instead of letting them fall, she dismisses the Keyblade and bolts to him. To take his hand in both of hers, squeezing them until she’s satisfied that they’re real. Her fingers are cold.

Before he can say anything, she looks into his eyes and searches them. “It’s really you…” She closes the gap and throws herself around his shoulders, holding him so tightly as if letting any room to breathe in between them would mean he would just be wiped from existence and she’ll lose him again forever. Like he’ll burst as a figment of her imagination.

It’s the same for him, wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her closer - because to let her go would be to let her slip through the ground and he’ll never see her again. To have her in his arms is to resurrect an old life: he’s been living a second one all this time – a lie, really - completely cut off from everything that gave him his identity. But now he’s home.

The exposed skin on her back is freezing cold, and he brushes his fingers against it to comfort her. Takes turns to wrap his arms to give her warmth. Runs his fingers through her hair and rests his mouth on the crown of her head. She smells like dust, not quite clean yet not dirty, either. As if time has stopped for her, too.

She digs her face into his neck, her tears falling down and spreading onto his shoulder. His strong Aqua, who hasn’t cried since her parents’ death, weeping into his shirt until it’s soaked. And he lets tears fall too, into her hair, because there isn’t a feeling like knowing he’s whole again.

“I’m-” This is the hardest part – to be bare. When he has been keeping something in, or lying about something else - now he has to expose himself. To finally say something that is as true as the softness of her body.

“I’m sorry it took so long to come see you,” he says, knowing it just isn’t enough after what she’s been through. Knowing how possible it is for her to reject it. “I don’t have an excuse. I should’ve done something sooner. I should’ve-” The phantom’s words pass through his mind. “Please don’t hate me.”

She brushes the hair strands at the back of his neck, her breath stabilizing. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers into his ear, her voice breaking a bit. “It’s been so hard. I’ve missed you so much, Terra.”

Terra’s favorite stories growing up always have a hero taking off on an adventure, rescuing those who need help, defeating malicious entities that seek to wreak havoc. And yet none of those stories made him understand how much of a struggle it would take to endure such a feat. He’s lived his life not really knowing what made those heroes who they are. To hear her forgiveness is when it clicked. They are heroic because it justifies their existence, as much as hearing her relief justifies his own.

“I’ve missed you, too, you have no idea how badly.” Hearing this makes her stir, as if it means the world to her.

They rock back and forth in their embrace, neither making a move to separate from the other.

“I thought that no one wanted to come find me.” She sniffles.

His eyes snap open at such a strange statement. He has forgotten where they are, and how much danger they are still in. Surrounded by wheat stalks as tall as they are, with a faint moonlight meters away.

Terra finally lets go of the embrace and moves her to face him. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding incredibly tired like she’s on her last leg. She has one firm grip on his upper arm, as if terrified of letting go. “It’s this place-”

“It gets to you,” he nods, holding a hand to her face, wiping the tears falling out with his thumb. It’s strange seeing her cry.

The tears that keep flowing are stragglers, her eyes abused by such sadness. Her hair is slightly frizzy, the bags under her eyes sag too much, and her face is so relaxed he can tell she probably doesn’t know how to smile anymore. Not to mention that her skin is paler than he remembers it to be.

And he realizes they’ve been gazing at each other for some time without saying anything. He should really say something. Profound. Or honest. Something heartfelt as he continues to hold her face. Anything.

“You look terrible,” is what he settles on.

Her eyes flicker and blink for a moment, registering what he has just said. The edge of her mouth twitches, like it’s an alien movement. Her brows furrow in confusion, but then release into contentment. She chuckles, and it sounds worn out. Small at first, and she pauses. Then she giggles again, her hand reaching to hold his wrist.

“Terra,” she says in between tiny breaths, as if this is all too taxing of an activity. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed.”

If he can come face to face with Kingdom Hearts, to meet his mother for the first time, to see the Master again – he’ll tell them there is finally a good reason to keep him alive.

She smiles and it reaches her eyes. Leaning into his hand, holding it between her cheek and her own, she gives him a sympathetic shrug. “I’m sorry you’re now stuck with me in the darkness.”

“As if being stuck with you is such a bad thing,” he says through a scoff, and then regrets it. He shouldn’t make light of her suffering, and yet he can’t help but feel that it would have never been so difficult for her if he was here with her the entire time. “Either way, I opened a Door to Light here. I’m getting you out.”

The smile fell, and her eyes widen. It’s clear she doesn’t believe it at first, but she knows him well enough to understand that he’d never lie to her like this. He’s excited, grinning as he watches her contemplate his message.

It’s like giving someone a surprise gift, eagerly waiting to see their joy when they open it. He nods at her, nearly in laughter as she starts to smile. “It’s true,” he says. “You’re leaving this place.”

She leans toward him, placing a hand on his chest. “Now?”

“Yes.” It doesn’t matter how many times he’ll have to say it. He’ll say it as often as he needs, just to make sure she understands. Just to see the sparks of eagerness in her eyes.

“And we’ll find Ven?”

What is supposed to be a sharp inhale he manages to slow down so he doesn’t seem flustered. Xehanort is listening. But he can’t let her know yet that there is danger. Not now. He holds her by the biceps, and reassures her in a way so he can change the subject. “Definitely. We’ll all be together again soon. But first we have to get you out of here. We can talk about everything later.”

She clasps his palm with hers, and squeezes tightly. The look on her face is indescribable, like someone who has been on the execution block has just been told that her future is guaranteed safe. “Lead the way.”

So they jog together, hand in hand, like they used to do as children. Every excursion through the mountains, the caves they explored, the creeks they discovered - they were always to be conjoined through their hands. This habit hasn’t faded in the years they have grown together, and while they are old enough that they don’t have to follow such a strict buddy system anymore, the hands will still come together in the most uncertain moments: when they get lost; when visibility is poor; when they are scared; when it rains hard; when they are traversing dangerous terrain – very much like the Realm of Darkness, when being separated could mean a permanent eternity apart.

“Do you know how we’ll get out?” she asks.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to trace my steps back…” The Realm might as well have changed the layout by now, hoping to keep them in. “But I have friends waiting for us. We’ll be okay. I’m thinking I’ll just conjure a door from within, out of the darkness around us. It’s how I got in, anyway.”

She barely pauses before replying. “I have a friend waiting for me at the beach. I told him I wouldn’t take long in my routine walk.”

Terra chuckles to himself. Making friends in the Realm of Darkness. Of course, that’s so Aqua. “We’ll bring him with us. Don’t worry.”

They head downhill, through the shorter wheat stalks until they reach grassy foothills that level off as the beach gets closer.

Aqua grips his hand and keeps herself still, nearly yanking him backwards. “Terra, wait.”

The caution in her voice is loud. But there is nothing around them. “What is it?”

A rumble, which is soft at first but creeps ever closer with a sickening speed that makes his hair stand on edge. The ground shakes like it wants to throw them off their feet. Through it bursts a pillar of Heartless, squirming all over each other and spiraling as if to act as one tremendous force. The darkness emanating from them is massive, and without his armor, Terra feels the nausea overpowering him. This tower can’t be an easy one to defeat. He wraps his arms around her, for protection.

“Aqua,” he warns, hinting that the best course of action is to run.

“We have to.” She pushes through his elbow, summoning their Master’s Keyblade and beginning a sprint, ready to attack. Determined. Quick to react. Aqua. She reacts to this thing with evades that come so easily to her, she must have been fighting it for quite some time now.

Which means that running away won’t do a damn thing for them.

The tower has a sickening exertion to its attacks, easily breaking through his reflecting barriers. Since it keeps itself suspended in the air, his grounded techniques aren’t much use.

But she’s spectacular. Like a swan flying through the air, summoning trails of ice to skid and keep up pace with the enemy. She has built herself to be a Master in ways he has never expected, with choreographies that resonate with resistance and endurance. She dances with the light that shines through the Keyblade, building power until she and the area around her is bathed in it, with a force so blinding, and yet so beautiful, it keeps the tower at bay.

Sometimes.

As mesmerizing as she is, she shouldn’t be fighting this alone anymore.

He scurries to place himself under the Heartless tide, lifting his free hand up into the air, and focuses on the air pressure in between. Making all those particles combust exactly the way Xemnas would do it. With every explosion that comes, let there be another, until they swallow each other… until the tide has to pass through massive destruction when it travels, because it’s too late for it to turn around and avoid it anymore. With her in the air, she skids across ice suspended in the air and attacks with shockwaves from above – the two best friends squeezing this monstrosity right between their blows.

It retaliates – against her. She falls to the ground and rolls, and he stops his work immediately. Sliding over to her, he anticipates the tide as it turns and lunges toward them, which will probably take them both in one clean sweep.

He raises his palms from the ground up, summoning a barrier of nothingness as it stands tall and erect, and holds it as the tide crashes into it. Electricity separates some of the Heartless from one another, but it’s a terrible wall to keep up. The tide itself is too heavy and it nearly breaks it. He feels her hands on his biceps, leaning into him, as if to help him keep it up. He focuses on spreading those electric waves, to keep hurting this menace.

It backs off, and he can relax – for now at least. It circles back for another go around, and the thought of it even coming after her – that’s it.

He commands his Keyblade to warp and expand, setting itself as a canon that he props onto his shoulder. It will take all the energy he has in him, and he’ll probably won’t be able to walk anymore in this state when Xehanort wants to break free so badly, but it will do. For her.

The canon conjures a piercing, fiery light within, and with a yell, he exerts all of it into the tide, effectively breaking it apart and scaring it away, leaving the seldom welcomed stillness of quiet. He collapses onto his hands, his headache threatening to split his skull into two, as he whispers to himself that he’ll be okay. The pain will go away. He just needs time. Keep awake. For her.

Aqua crouches next to him, holds him by the forearm and gives his palm a gentle squeeze.

“That was impressive,” she says. He tries to retort that he’s learned new things along the way, but his heaving is still too much. “You okay?” She touches his face and he leans into her hand, nearly kissing it but stopping himself short, rolling his lips inward as he tries to practice self-control.

He takes several breaths until they slow down, and she patiently waits for him. She seems calm, collecting herself so quickly after such an intense fight. To think she has been doing this for twelve years and he can barely manage one night. That he succumbs to weakness in this place so easily.

“You’ve always been stronger than me,” he says with a chuckle that hurts. Not from the soreness, but from admitting how much better she is than him at everything.

“Terra, please,” she scoffs, massaging his forearm. Her voice is tired. “When we would arm wrestle, I always had to use two hands.”

“You even pushed with the weight of your entire body. You’d still lose.” He smirks, and she grins back. How grateful he is that they can talk as if time hasn’t passed for them, teasing each other like the Mark of Mastery Exam has never happened.

He should really summon his armor right now, with such a massive headache looming over him. But her touch – he can’t pull himself away from it. As if the grace of her fingers is the mark of light, melting away his concerns and dulling the pain throbbing in his scalp. He leans forward close to her, nearly touching her forehead with his. Even when it’s this dark, looking at her is the most calming feeling he could ever experience. She’s brighter than the moon. At least to him.

“There’s so much I want to tell you,” he says, wondering if desperation is making him choose this moment to confess. “We have to talk. About what happened. About us…” With that last one, his voice hitches. It’s terrifying, more so than the Heartless tide, to talk about where the two of them stand. “About the Master.”

She flinches at the mention of Eraqus, closing her eyes and taking a breath to calm herself. “I know. We have a lot to catch up on. But… I want to do it with a clean mind. Away from the darkness, you know? I just don’t want to spend another minute here. Please…”

That last word comes out as a whisper, her eyes pleading. She grips his arm tighter, and he realizes that she needs constant reassurance, as if she still has a hard time believing she’ll ever leave this rotten place.

He bites his lip, wanting to kick himself for being so selfish. “Of course, your freedom comes first.”

A relief passes over her as though she’s been anticipating bad news and has been given mercy instead. She throws his arm around her shoulders, having him use her as support in order to stand up.

“You’re going to love Traverse Town,” he says, noticing as they walk together that she again has a small smile to face, her cheeks plumping. He rests his head on hers, and she gives him a gentle nudge.

“Where?”

“I came from there. It’s a beautiful city, the kind you’d want to take a vacation in. The cuisine is delicious, and they have these colored lights that shine every night…” It’s perfect. When she’s free, she’ll eat. And sleep, most importantly. And by those beautiful lights that switch between color and white, he’ll give her gifts. Or if not, just laughs. Then he’ll tell her how he feels, and hope for the best.

The sand makes it harder to take steps, but she keeps a solid support for him. The waves here are gentle and unimposing. He can’t believe there is anything that is this placid in this Realm, but it sounds relaxing. The moon hovers just above the horizon, nearly swallowed by the water. It is so bright, it might as well be its own door to the other side. Funny, two days ago he stood on a beach in Destiny Islands, wishing that he could take Aqua to see the ocean. They might as well be gazing upon opposites ends of the same body of water.

She leaves him to sit on a boulder, but their need to touch each other lingers so much that they only let go when both of their arms are outstretched, her fingers gliding off of his. A man a short distance away in a black cloak sits, watching the waves dance. She tells him that it’s time to go – they can finally be free. Her friend is here. They’re going to be okay.

She keeps taking desperate glances back toward Terra, as if he’ll disappear in between. And yet, a small smile never leaves her face.

From the sound of the man’s voice, he is older, and he begs to be allowed a wee bit of time to stand up. For the sake of his back, he’s been sitting here for far too long. He leans on her for support until he’s on both of his feet, and then turns to face Terra.

“That man,” he says, his deep voice getting slightly louder, as if to caution her of an enemy. “We mustn’t go with him.”

That voice. A blonde beard. Terra shivers, and the muscles through his arms tense.

Ansem.

He doesn’t know why he knows that name, and he’s too scared to try to understand.

Aqua tries to reason with him, tries to say that this is a friend who has grown up with her since childhood – but Terra wonders if she’s fooling herself just as much. Maybe the headache that keeps coming back will always be inevitable, and he’s just delaying what will happen. Witlessly.

“A clever trick to play on a vulnerable girl, Xehanort,” Ansem spits, holding her arm as if to try to keep her at bay.

“I’m not Xehanort,” Terra mumbles loudly, his tongue unable to produce sharp enough sounds to articulate clear words. And it terrifies him even more. The headache roars and massaging his temples doesn’t work. His ears whistle so intensely, he’s afraid he’ll go deaf.

Aqua shoves the old man’s grip off of her, scampering towards her friend. “Terra, tell me how I can help you.” She holds onto his arms, trying to get him to sit straight.

He grabs onto her arms. Too tightly, maybe, making her jump. “I’ve left the door open for you,” he manages to say, praying that she can understand him. “Don’t give up. Keep going. We’ll be together-”

He yells from the pain, the headache spreading to his neck. The whistling stops, and all is silent. Eerily silent. He cannot hear his own breathing. Or the waves. Or her. He attempts to make sounds, feeling the vibration in his vocal chords, but he doesn’t know if he’s actually saying any words. Until the vibration ceases, and all commands to speak stop working.

She looks terrified. Brave Aqua, her eyes wide and her lips pursed, shaking her head as if denying what she is seeing. He wants to tell her that he’s scared, too. That she isn’t alone.

He digs into his pocket to pull out his orange Wayfinder, and presses it into her palm until she grabs hold of it.

He has to tell her. Somehow. He interlaces his fingers with hers in her other hand, holding it upward in between the two of them. Coaxing her to come a little closer. He cups her cheek, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead. And he stays, letting his lips feel her skin, breathing in her hair, relaxing as much as possible as he savors this moment for as long as it can last.

Until he cannot smell or feel the sensation in his lips or fingers anymore. He opens his eyes. At least he can still see.

The pain, it has also completely subsided, his whole body going numb. No more headache. No more soreness. She gazes into him, moving her mouth to say something but he can’t hear what.

He doesn’t like the look she is giving him, and he can’t apologize or ease her worries. He searches the beach, looking for any sign of hope. Any sign of light.

And there, he sees it. A bird with a short beak, waddling on the rocky shore, though its reflection can’t be found in the water. It shines a soft, white light, just like the rabbit. Its feathers ruffle, a crown briefly standing up before it shakes itself calm.

A cockatoo.

Ven, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be asleep.

Sleep.

It sounds so welcoming right now, to let the exhaustion take over and he can then heal. Not that he has a choice in the matter. It will take him over, letting him drift into ecstasy, the best slumber he’ll have all week. The last image he sees is the cockatoo flapping its wings. He falls, unable to feel himself hitting the ground. Just a never-ending drop, and it’s blissful.

I didn’t get to tell her how I felt about her. That’s fine. I’ll do it when I wake up.

A/N: NO IT ISN’T OVER. I’ll say it one more time, but there is a sequel to this. It wasn’t planned that way at the beginning. But after so many internal debates with myself over the summer, I’ve decided that it was just so much more organized to split my story in two. This was always the halfway point. The next chapter literally picks up where this leaves off.

That being said, I want to thank my readers from the bottom of my heart. It’s such a strange thing - even though the story isn’t over, I am burying my baby under this title, which has stuck with me for almost a year now. It is like creating a void, and I hope that the sequel can fill it. For all those readers, who have been with me since the beginning, who have discovered this somewhere along the middle of its journey, and who have just joined on the adventure - but especially to those who have stuck it out to the end, THANK YOU SO MUCH. Your support has kept this girl alive. Literally.

As for the sequel, I’ll see if I can salvage what I can from KH3 to adapt to it. “A Powerful Enough Dream” will simply be a very divergent AU. I’m sure some of you are wondering what that would even look like, especially since I maintain the position that I wish Aqua fell to darkness out of her own volition. I posted a preview called “Sonne” on AO3 exclusively to show what that looks like!! (I’m sorry I won’t post links directly to this, I’m scared that Tumblr is going to hide my post). If people are receptive enough to “Sonne,” then I’ll consider continuing this story.

For those of who are disappointed that Terra hasn’t met Dark Aqua (which I have warned that I wasn’t going to go there with this story), I have written a new fic called “The Ocean On His Shoulders” that honors that. <3

[darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts]

The Gith and the Cherub

This is based on the characters for the fic series by @notsafefortum-blr . 

When the war is ended and a prophecy awakens what happens when one that knows all meets one that feels everything? 

Hope you enjoy this little side tale from Limbo - Aerion x

Warnings: Issues surrounding bullying, possible emotional triggers.

Masterlist

—

The Gith and the Cherub

We are all part of a circle. Circles in circles, the never-ending life cycle of the multiverse. What was thought to be the end is only the beginning and sometimes what is the beginning spells the end. Destiny, hands of fate, luck… they all play but a small part. The biggest contender in the direction of life and existence is a small but infinitely powerful thing, Free Will.  What you chose to do with yours will take you on a journey through the sands of time and show you the path you make for yourself. It can change everything. This is but one of the things in the cosmos that has faded into obscurity over time and been forgotten.

---

Soft warming light shone down on the plain and danced playfully over the surface of the many clusters of pools that adorned the ground like sparkling jewels. The cultivated landscape exists purely as a means of protection and growth. This plain of creation is completely flat, the weather system is devoid of storms and is essentially one big incubator. There was only one very small dwelling here and only one inhabitant. They were both as young and old as time itself. The life energy created here is destined to travel to other realms.

Flux was moving along well-trodden familiar pathways, picking his footing between and around the edges of the primordial soup that shimmered in translucent swirls. The short friendly looking creature had a comforting aura and its nurturing nature made it a perfect choice to give it leave to tend the pools. A long-handled wooden oar like tool in their hands was the all they had to conduct their duty.

 They had seen many things in their existence. After all, these pools off creation give birth to life… all life. There is no bias on good or evil in the same way that death also holds no dominion here.

Flux has no concept of time in a conventional sense they simply feel the shift in space and know when to stir the pools and which to move to next. That was when they saw an unusual thing... a three spawn. All life is precious and these were “touched”. The energy flow was different it had an undercurrent running deeply through it that spoke silently of hidden power.

These three were blessed and destined to go to the upper plains. The curious thing about them overall was not just the hidden depth they possessed, or even that they were to be born as three together. It was that one of the small creations was not like the other two. If they were light then surely this one had absorbed all the shadow, one of these creatures was black. There in its pool, it shimmered like trapped smoke and dying embers nestled against two white pearls like a very rare gem. It seemed to be slightly larger. Whatever happened it was clear that one would be birthed first.

---

The sounds of a quill scratching over parchment travelled in the air like the swirling dust that was always present in the small room. The dust carried many things, memories, emotions, futures. The ink written on the parchments were records of them. Permanent documentations and reminders of the floating wealth of cosmic enlightenment. Every particle was a small stitch in the tapestry of time itself. Every one of them was no less deserving than the last of record and diligently they were written for the archives.

After documenting one prophecy, the ink spatters over the vellum. The thick glossy black as pitch liquid was quickly blotted but the damage had been done. The words on the page were lost in parts and completely vanished in others. With no memory of what was written, it was simply shelved and forgotten.

The only comfort to be found in this small transgression was that it was very unlikely that an event should transpire where a black angel should be placed in heaven. The incident was quickly forgotten the dust continued to fall, its knowledge absorbed by the quill and more records were written.

---

Nothingness. That was what he surrounded himself in now and it was like a mirror to his soul. All that had happened was too much for the great gith. The loss of all those lives weighed heavy on his mind and had crushed all emotion out of his body but the hatred he felt at the situation. No perhaps hatred was the wrong word for what he felt. His task had been clear, a duty not so much bestowed on him as shackled to him.

His mind had kept track of the balance. He had calculated it to the most finite detail and yet none of it had mattered in the end. It didn’t have to go that way someone could have done something, changed something. In the end, it was he who had to end that war. Dragging them all to a different plain the innocent and guilty together. He watched as they fell, he felt the loss, he counted the masses and he came up wanting.

The balance was wrong, and the balance must be maintained. But how do you balance a tally sheet when you are missing so many vital parts? You plan, you adapt, you change just enough that you can make those parts again. It takes time and luckily for the gith, time was something he had in abundance. If no other would see as he did his task was clear. They would all feel the weight and loss because of their choices, the balance would be restored.

---

There were no words left to describe how it felt. It was overwhelming and everything was just a crushing painful blow. They couldn’t talk to the others about it. Michael and Orion had their own studies to deal with and Mother and Father were so busy… no all this would do would worry them and they didn’t wish to be a burden. They already suffered the stigma of having a child like her. The glances and whispers, after all, who would be the “Blackbird” in heaven?

The barbed words and forked tongues of the other cherubs were a daily assault. And there was always that one group, the perfect group. They not only fitted the description of an angel but they were the poster children for it in all its glory. When it had started it had been easy enough to ignore. The name calling, the pranks and jokes and her expense. Yes, it had hurt but this was more now.

Aerion had gone to meet a “friend” or at least that is what she had thought at the time. And now she was running through the undergrowth in Eden tears running down her dirt-stained cheeks sobbing as she tried to find somewhere, anywhere to avoid any more attacks. They had taunted her till she was on the verge of tears, they had bound her wings and twisted her feathers. They had been burnt when the flames defended her and she had screamed when they threw salt water into the open cuts on her skin as they punished her for her existence.

A passing guard had broken up the group. It would be dealt with silently with as few people knowing the details as possible but that didn’t make it right. It didn’t make it go away. God how she wished she could leave, just disappear… see, feel, be… nothing.

At the centre of Eden is a tree as old as the plain, time flows in its veins, knowledge gathers in its ripe fruit and its canopy of leaves creates a feeling of comfort for those that find it. Aerion came crashing down into the soft grass by its roots. Trembling, cold and hurting. The blood crusting over on her arms and legs pulling tight as she curled into a defensive ball and shook. She closed her eyes and the tears she had held back kept flowing, the wish to be completely nothing growing.

---

It was a small sound. It was like an animal, a small wounded creature in the darkness. Dakkan had not felt the direct shift of things he had not sensed an intruder and yet here one was. A very small, out of place creature in his personal space.

To all the realms this little cherub would have been nothing but another angel if it had not been for her unusual appearance. The blackened wings that looked like chard and dying embers of a fire, that bright red hair with golden highlights. Dakkan had seen and forgotten far more than most in one life cycle of the cosmos and it was the arrival of this little angel that now captured his interest.

They were asleep. It did not appear to be a restful slumber, and from the looks of the condition of the small creature, he could easily guess why. He should send her away, he should send her back… instead, he remained close by in silent vigil contemplating his own thoughts whilst the dark angel slept.

---

Stirring from the restless slumber Aerion shuddered as she tried to open her wings a little and stretch to move. It was strange. There was no breeze, no light, no dark just endless grey swirling around her. She felt like she was on solid ground and yet there was none to be seen. To anyone else she imagined it might be scary but it was actually the most comforting thing, she had felt in a while. So, this was nothingness.

Aerion looked around herself in wonder at the strange place devoid of all landmarks and points of interest. She felt it before she saw it. Eyes looking at her. She was used to it the staring, the weighted looks that came fully loaded with unvoiced opinions and judgement, but this felt different. There was no such feeling from this gaze.

Her eyes flickered like a flame in the darkness as turned and saw a much larger creature observing her from a small distance away. The green skin was bound in bandages on his limbs, the only real items of clothing were a pair of baggy trousers similar to what a monk might wear tucked into the leg bindings and a small sleeveless vest. It had clawed feet and hands which looked as if it could easily section up a body in a matter of seconds. Whatever this creature was it was not something that she was likely to meet in Heaven.  It made no attempt to move it just stayed perfectly still returning her look with a set of sunken eggshell white eyes.

“Hello.” Aerion’s small voice seemed even louder in this void of space. Thinking it rude to say nothing at all she thought she should at least greet whoever this was.

“Know peace child.” The voice that replied seemed to be mostly in her own mind. It felt a little disconnected but she sensed nothing malicious in it. If the creature had intended her harm it had already had ample opportunity.

Time felt as if it was passing very slowly. It was quiet here and peaceful. The lack of distraction save for the one creature that almost felt like a guardian of sorts was comforting after everything that happened usually. It was in the silence of this void that Aerion just sat motionless, breathing steadily for the first time since she could remember and allowed herself to fell nothing.

---

The unusual occurrence had happened so many times since that first time that by now it was hardly a surprise for him to find the little cherub in his realm. Sometimes she had been in tears sometimes she had already finished crying but each time she had shown him something genuine and familiar in its raw state.

There was something calming about her. It was probably that fact that for one so young she had the peculiar ability to also not feel a need to pass some form of preconceived judgement on others. It was in her nature, as he well knew. But he also knew what it was like confined to a mould of another’s design.

“Dakkan?” He turned his head to Aerion and waited for her to speak. It had taken a few days of her slipping into nothingness before she had actually spoken to him properly but now it was as if it had always been like this. “This is going to sound like a really dumb question.”

“Know there are no such things as dumb questions Aerion. There are only ones that seek a truth and ones that prefer to not see it.”

“Alright… I asked King Elohim about the garden. I really wanted to try to understand…”

“What was it you wished to understand?” Dakkan had turned his head away as Aerion spoke. His full attention remained on her absolutely but his focus had shifted to the curious “gift” she had brought for him. A brightly coloured confection from her home. A cupcake. It looked so out of place in the grey expanse that he almost felt his mouth twitch into a smile as the simplistic childlike gesture of gift giving.

“I wanted to know why everything had to be shaped into the same form. I mean it looks pretty but it also looked so wrong at the same time. I just can’t figure out what is so bad about leaving things to create themselves.”

“Realms are a reflection on the soul of its creator.” His words came out as a harsh truth.

“So, it is his preference to have things conform and fit in unity?”

Dakkan did not miss the twitch in her expression as she mulled over this information. She was the peculiar irregularity of his current time. She was hurt and hurting and still found the ability to care and show empathy for others. She wished to know and she wanted to hear both sides of a tale. She was everything prophecy had foretold. Something about that stirred a nearly forgotten feeling inside him.

---

Very little changed in Heaven. The manicured and highly cultivated land sprawled out before his feet in majestic glory as the sun crested on the horizon of the plane of Eden. The soft plush grass gave way beneath his feet as he moved towards the meeting point. It was rare to be “summoned” but there was no doubt in his mind that that is what this was.

“If you wished to see me you could have come to the palace.” Elohim’s smile was as soft as he could make it as he drew closer to the tall figure standing at the gate of Eden.

“You know I could not. I am not here for official business.”

“Friends are always welcome Dakkan.” Elohim suppressed an exasperated sigh. “So? What is this about?”

“Know that when you speak to a child that your words have both the power to guide and crush in equal measure.” Dakkan’s voice had not changed but there was a definitive threat in his words. He was not amused by something.

“Child?” Elohim inclined his head trying to recall anything that might have caused this uncharacteristic response from the great gith.

“You forget so easily. One of your own that should not be so easily forgotten? She is a gift.” Dakkan was doing a fine job of controlling his movements but the authority in his voice with which he spoke was one that made Elohim wonder if the realm should tremble.

“You mean the little firebird? What is she to you?” An image of the little black winged angel flashed before his eyes. How he had found her in the gardens looking at the plants, the wonder on her face, the sadness in her eyes as he explained the design. When had she even met the gith?

“Know that if you do nothing I shall.” Now this was unusual Dakkan never showed interest in anyone and here he was willing to lecture over the correct care and treatment of another?

“I do not turn my back on my own. She shall be cared for.”

“Yes, she shall.” Dakkan’s muttered words were lost as he stepped back through the gate and left the King standing alone.

---

Panting. The air felt thick as she tried to draw breath and all she could taste was the familiar metallic tang in her mouth where she had bitten her lip so hard to prevent those tears and cries from escaping her in front of them all. Heaven had “dealt” with the issue. That is what was said but the reality was that they had just changed the game. The way in which they could get to her. How they punished her for being different.

Her feet hurt as she stumbled blindly over rocks into the wilder side of Eden. It was raw beauty here. She had felt it the moment she saw it, it was just like coming home. More so than wandering the manicured gardens around the Palace. But she couldn’t stop to admire it as she ploughed on through the undergrowth.

Once she was certain enough distance was behind her she slowed and tried to gather her bearings. It was harder to pinpoint your location here. The natural chaos of the growth around her should have been unreadable but to her, it was as clear as any map. She found the river easily and walked its bank a little before realising she should be returning home.

She had wandered further today than before, the water of the river suddenly dropped and she could hear the tumbling water crashing over the cliff. A childish playful idea of seeing a rainbow meant she ran recklessly to the edge. The sun was yet to leave so she should be able to see one if she could see the water spray carried on the wind.

Aerion smiled as she tried to hold out her hand and grab the colours floating in the air. Her eyes drifted past them and noticed a run-down dwelling hidden in the space at the bottom of the ravine. What is that?

---

[octaviainthewasteland]

Haribo Hearts

AO3

Summary: "Once we are born, we begin to forget The very reason we came But you I’m sure I’ve met Long before the night the stars went out We’re meeting up again"

Rating: Teen and Up

Artist’s work: by amazing @zoemaru boop

Beta: BIG THANKS TO @sondeneige for being patient with my sorry ass and making this work much easier to read.

Thanks to @pidgebigbang for organizing the event!!!

I.

“But you can love other people, right?”

Mum falters, and together over her and the dough, which she has stopped kneading, settles an odd silence. Like when someone asks for a question to be repeated, as if they have not heard it, but they definitely have, they are just trying to buy time to put the social puzzle together, to understand if it is a trick or a genuine question, because, really, who asks that kind of question anyway?

“Of course,” she says eventually, pinching Katie’s cheek and leaving sticky fingerprints, “I love you, for one. And Matt.”

Katie frowns and wipes her cheek with sudden ferocity.

“You know what I mean. Of course…”

Of course you love us. We are your children.

Of course you love dad. He is your soulmate.

The pie ends up mediocre, but after all, mum has never claimed to be a perfect housewife. Katie’s parents met in the office. Two kids, a dog, guests sometimes on Fridays and a few journalists here and there. They are a normal middle-class family, a specimen of the intellectual elite. They have never been stopped in the middle of a street for an autograph, but the wall of the staircase is covered in photos from school science fairs. In these photos, Sam Holt is always surrounded by excited kids with their volcanoes and planes and other projects.

Katie glares at these photos, munching on a piece of the pie, which has been highly praised by dad and has always been completely tasteless. There is no point in lowering her eyes to her shoulder, the lines are not visible. Not yet, only under the bright light and only if she squints, she can make out some general figures – but she can feel a little swelling under the tips of her fingers. First there was just an itchy patch of skin, and now this. Her mark is beginning to appear, right when dad and Matt have begun to get ready for their Kerberos expedition, and they are going without her, and it means that she would have to apply to the Garrison in their absence. Her application is going to be successful, no doubt, how can they reject one of the Holts?

Before, she used to love the idea of being accepted to the Garrison, but when all the action happens somewhere else, and she will be stuck in the dusty classrooms, behind a tiny desk.While dad and Matt will be exploring the universe and will be the first people to go so deep in space?

And now, of all times, she is reminded about all that soulmate crap. Someone’s writing, someone’s name on her, like a stamp, an official sign that now she belongs to someone else. No funny story at the table in fifty years: “Oh, I met your grandpa by accident…” Because everything is set. She knows. They know. Everybody knows.

To be fair, it is not like she has her doubts about her parents loving each other. Nonetheless, isn’t it so cruelly ironic? So many movies and books, plots and stories about a person, who is about to get married but meets their soulmate and it changes their whole life? They’re unable to resist, and is it realistically possible to resist, and if it is, why doesn’t anybody resist?

It may be another way for Mother Nature to ensure the procreation of humanity. But what about people who cannot biologically or psychologically or plainly do not wish to procreate? To begin with, there would not be any same-sex soulmates, then. They have been taught in history about the LGBT movement, and one of their mottos has been: “The Universe is never wrong”.

The Universe is never wrong.

Katie shakes off the crumbs and leans on the banister, listening to soft voices of her parents in the living room. So what would Descartes think about all this? Did he have a soulmate?

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Without doubting there is no existing. Then how can they study the theory of knowledge and that blind faith in the authority is dangerous, and then just accept something so unexplainable? Some time ago people believed the Earth was flat, and they imprisoned Galileo because he doubted that. If now they know that they can be wrong about something as big as the Earth, how can they not doubt ‘the universe’s choice’?

Katie does not believe in God, and refuses to abide by a random choice.

The invisible mark on her skin is itching.

*

“We’re so sorry.”

“My condolences.”

“Katie, tears are normal. It’s okay to be sad.”

But the thing is, she is not sad. She is angry. She swallows hot tears, peeved by her own powerlessness, with mum’s apathy, with Iverson’s annoyed expression that morphs into pity, with the guard’s indifference, when they drag her out. Let them not even hope she would comply. That she would surrender, she twists and turns like a crazy cat. She scratches and bites them, tries to kick or head butt anyone at arm’s length, and she screams, screams, screams – cadets, who pass by, look at her, immediately recognizing the Holts’ girl.

“Poor thing.”

“What a nightmare.”

Sympathetic faces are fusing into a whirlpool, and it makes her sick, and she throws up in the ‘ladies room’, her whole body shuddering. Sobs become coughs, then slowly turn into frantic hiccups, and it is all lies that it gets better. It doesn’t. Not a bit. Just worse. Because the Kerberos accident has already become yesterday’s news, and they “have to move forward”. Because they never told them the truth, thinking that some quick excuses would ever be enough to bury two empty coffins, so they would stop asking and simply give up. The flowers at the little memorial have not withered yet, and already everyone seems to have forgotten about Sam and Matt Holt. And Shiro. He hasn’t even got a coffin, as he had wanted to be cremated, for his ashes to be scattered from as high as a bird flies. He has even chosen a pilot to perform that. Yet there is nothing to scatter.

She grits her teeth. Not yet. No coffins and no ashes yet. Even if everyone gives up, even if nobody else in the whole world gives a shit about them – she will not forget, she will find them and bring them back. Everyone knows the Holts’ girl, but no one knows a Gunderson’s boy.

It gives her its own twisted glee. She has never been considered pretty, not that it ever bothered her. Her palms are too big, her knees knobby, frog-like eyes and of course her bushy eyebrows, wide and expressive. Everyone has agreed, though, that her hair was nice. Long and wavy, only if difficult to tame into a plait. Gnawing her lip, she butchers her long hair, she relished the thought that this ‘Lance’ would never meet Katie Holt, and Pidge Gunderson is nobody’s soulmate.

She should have known better.

The boy is all legs and arms, all jumpy and jerky, like a grasshopper. His friend lifts his arms helplessly, mouthing a silent sorry. Pidge is still shaken by the fact that Iverson let her be – or not her, but a ‘distant cousin’ of Matt’s, a live copy of a diseased boy, so Iverson doesn’t look too closely, averts his eye to avoid the eye contact for longer than two seconds, he’s “yes yes, cadet, try your best” and Pidge would never give him a reason to look at ‘him’ more closely. So she misses the moment, when the boy’s arms snakes around her shoulder, and she is struck by an electric bolt, she is suffocating and feverish, and before the boy opens his mouth to introduce himself, Pidge already knows his name.

Lance.

*

She never says it out loud, but she kind of envies the rest of the team.

Pidge realizes that while scrubbing the sink in the kitchen. Thanks to her allergy, she is relieved of the dusting duty, because instead of cleaning the table in the common room. Lance started doodling on it, and when she pointed out that he has the worst case of the chicken scratch, he kept poking her nose, which ended up in an endless series of deafening sneezes.

It has been hardly a doodle, to be honest, more like a wiggly writing, a name, repeated all over.

Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt, Katie Holt – Keith destroys that obsessive scribbling with one wipe, and Lance attacks him of course, because apparently, his mark isn’t quite normal, just a single letter ‘S’, and obviously, he must be super mega jealous of Lance’s amazing soul mate. Hunk grunts disapprovingly, because he has nothing at all, and Lance is quick to apologize for his inattentive words, but still reaches out to smack Keith. Hunk doesn’t hold it against him, because Lance shoots words like he shoots a rifle – carelessly but dead on target – but Hunk is used to it. He is a little bit concerned about not having a mark, but if you have priorities and if you’re not Lance, you realize there’s not much time for romance and soulmates with all the training and the whole universe under oppression from an advanced alien race of violet lizard cats.

So, Keith has a wriggle of a letter for a soulmark, Hunk has none at all and Shiro has lost his mark with his right arm. Not forgetting to mention that soulmates as a concept is unknown to Alteans in general.

When asked, Pidge lies and says that she does not have one either.

“Maybe your soulmate isn’t born or hasn’t hit puberty yet,” Shiro tries to console her. “Mine appeared quite late. I was already thinking I got none at all.”

“Meet me and my sugar baby in thirty years,” Pidge mumbles in reply.

Not that they talk about it often or something – unless you’re Lance, of course – it just pops up now and then, especially when Allura and Coran notice the marks on the actors during the movie night. Coran thinks it’s wonderfully romantic.

More like a premise for groundbreaking disappointment, if you ask Pidge, as she moves on to polish the tap. Lance seems enamored with this imaginary ‘Katie Holt’, he flirts and falls in love with every skirt, because she’s a reflection of his little dream. Because he’s so full of love for the One and Only that he just can’t hold it anymore and the love spills over the edges and covers everyone around. It’s a little bit disturbing. It’s a little bit scary.

Because sooner or later Lance will find out that his sweetheart ‘Katie Holt’ is just scrawny Pidge, who is always sweaty and has moons of dirt under her nails.

Which yet again proves that this whole soulmate thing is crap, because they haven’t suddenly fallen madly in love at first sight. Maybe it has some activation code? Like your soulmate has to address you by the name that is on their soulmark or touch it or something? Does that mean that soulmarks mean nothing for mute people or someone in a situation like Shiro? Figures why he’s so unbothered by the whole ‘lost my soulmark in space’ issue.

After ten thousands years of slumber, the castle has stood up quite well, and yet it still resembles most of all a haunted house. Dust and alien spider webs everywhere, the windows have grown turbid. The exterior of the castle is covered by plates that resemble their solar panels, so there has been enough energy to preserve Allura and Coran’s bodies and coordinate cleaning bots, but many of them got broken or lost throughout the time. The energy also supplied the defense system, so nobody could break in, but at the same time nobody has aired the place for ten thousand years, and the air conditioning system has been defeated by time and lack of sentient presence.

There seemed to always be a distinct odor in corridors and they even spotted some mold. Usually (always) it’s the cleaning bots’ job, but blabbing something about discipline and necessity of chores for self-organization, Shiro has coerced them into helping out. More likely he couldn’t sleep at night so he busied himself with something while they stayed on Arus. It would be foolish to jump right into the action, while nobody had any idea what has been going on in the Universe for the past thousand years and paladins still didn’t have any sort of training with the Lions. Thus, they have stayed for a while to prepare and catch up.

Pidge wonders who used to sleep in her room and she is grateful that the cleaning bots have removed previous owner’s belongings before she moved in. The paladin uniform has no size, but she had to adjust the seat in the Green Lion. She can’t help but wonder what life had been like then. Allura and Coran do not let too much out, and all the documents are in Altean – they understand each other because of the universal translators, but in order to read stuff, she has to be better than the intermediate level she can read at now.

They have watched a couple of classic Altean movies, too, during the movie nights. Pidge tries to watch them in the evenings, with subtitles rather than translation. Altean language is unlike any language on Earth (not that she personally speaks many, but she’s not a brat who resorts to generalizing, she checked it against any known languages in the system.) It’s difficult to distinguish separate words, as their speech is melodious and mostly consists of vowels. Although Lance’s vocabulary is built on the derivatives of ‘quiznak’, he often joins her. Hunk is busy learning how to pilot with Shiro and after a unanimous vote, he is not allowed to culturally exchange with Coran. However, it has been too little, too late, the damage has already been done. Now they are running laps and exercising to BTS and Girls’ Generation, transmitted throughout the whole castle

*

There are certain things that will most surely turn you listless, that will rob you of any energy and make something as essential and undemanding as a trip to the restroom into a challenge. One of those things is Coran’s enthusiastic account of the adventures of his youth. While the components of these anecdotes individually are unbelievable and would suffice for a next generation of Hollywood movies, and Coran’s manner of speaking is quite engaging, he has a habit of focusing on wrong details, the aspects of these stories that are the complete opposite of cool.

Another one will be writing reports. No explanation necessary. Everyone hates writing reports.

For Pidge, the third one is summer. There was no school in summer and yes, she didn’t like school that much, but sometimes it was nice. Summer was never nice. She knew that her classmates went someplace together or at least keeping contact, FaceTiming, Snapchatting, WhatsApping or otherwise osculating each other through social media. No one has ever sent her a message to ask how her summer was going. She didn’t bother, because she had Matt. He’s never been really popular either.

But then he left for Garrison, where population of nerds is three to one. “Don’t call them nerds,” – often said Dad, - “call them people of extreme passions”. Yeah, for example, he and Matt, who seemed to have an extreme passion for this Shiro guy. Shiro was a special kind of nerd, like the mastermind of espionage who managed to blend into the crowd of jocks, but a nerd nonetheless. He could not tell Nitrogen from Sodium (he still tried to drop cringy jokes: are you made of Copper and Tellurium?) but he could draw the star map with his eyes closed and all while piloting a can without an engine through a meteor shower.

Shiro would sometimes come around, but more often than not he would snatch Matt away somewhere, because apparently there was a Buttercup to their Bubbles and Blossom, who resided closer to the Garrison than here. They invited her along, but she didn’t want to be a deadweight, so she refused, reduced to a sulking amoeba at her desk, melting under the July sun, too lazy to open a book or even lift her eyelids, but too hot to have anything more substantial than constant drowsiness.

So one cannot overstate the extent of willpower it requires keeping concentration, while being stuck writing a report under Coran’s guidance, while being horribly sunburnt. Pidge peels off a little piece of dead skin from her nose and sighs. Thanks to conditioning systems, it was nicely cool inside the castle, but she can’t appreciate it, because she’s already a boiled crab and she’s not in the castle, she is in a tent with almost transparent walls. Objectively guys have it worse, because they’re currently digging wells for a nation of desert dwellers, but Pidge is not a very sympathetic person, especially while impersonating Freddie Krueger. Coran remains to look fresh and chirpy, which is beyond annoying.

The planet of eternal July, wonderful. Pidge can’t wait to return to the cold abyss of outer space.

Had they been more careful, the robeast wouldn’t have destroyed the reservoir, the only reservoir for miles and miles of dust and soil so dry it cracks. It is their responsibility (plus there’s a high probability they’re the only ones capable) to build a new system of water supply.

And so they have stayed for a little longer. First day they have worked with Lions, but it proved that the soil was too crumbly and needed a careful approach. They resolved to good old digging and sometimes applying bayards, namely Hunk’s cannon or Lance’s blaster. It was time-consuming, tiring and seemingly unsuccessful – although Allura assured them that they would soon reach underground waters. Pidge got her free pass, when she got sunburned even through damp clothes. Others had to continue.

That’s the kind of work they do everywhere. In Allura’s words: not only fighting, but also rebuilding. Pidge hates all this physical work, but she can’t deny it has its own merits, when they make living a little bit easier for someone. She tries to keep a journal of all the different races and cultures they come across, but there’re so many. Could she have imagined that back in her room, paralyzed with boredom? She has always had a vivid imagination, but she couldn’t process that Earth, a whole separate world, a multitude of languages, practices and traditions, different people and countries – always has been a speck of the cosmos, with histories much bigger and older than her.

So far none of the alien had an idea even remotely similar to soulmates. It puts a whole discourse of soulmates into a new perspective. It puts a whole discourse on the existence of God into a new perspective. They have seen aliens larger than life: ancient, powerful, terrifying – totally godlike. Woods of Olkarion, Balmera, Ziggurat and many more. Meeting such entities is a lot like having a religious experience.

The further from Earth, the more Pidge rethinks her own views and in fact she finds herself leaning towards agnosticism rather than atheism.

Coran stops short of the climax of a recount of his days with fashion pirates (for the seventh time), when the drapes are drawn for a mere moment, and they are hit with a strong wave of dry air, devoid of anything but sand. Guys crawl inside and drop dead on thin cushions. Coran goes around, literally nursing them from a little clayey cup. After a while, one of them jiggles like a worm, refusing to get up and walk like a human being, and gets closer to Pidge.

It’s Lance, obviously. He uncovers his face, blinding her with a grin.

She should comment on him reeking of sweat and how funny he looks in a turban made of wet cloths. The truth is, she must look as ridiculous as he. More ridiculous, because despite turban and Halloween mummy inspired costume, he still manages to look… nice.

Lance reaches out to flick her nose, but stops at the last second and chucked with affinity.

“Wanna check something out? We’ll need to take the Lions, though.” “What? Now?” she tries to say that without moving any muscles. “Yep.”

She means to say no, but shrugs and nods instead. With a sudden burst of renewed power, Lance jumps up and drinks some more water, eager to take off right away.

“What about others?” she finally croaks. “Hunk?” Lance pokes him. “No, thanks,” mumbles back the pile of clothes. “Shiro?” “No.” “Coran?” “Thank you, but I must decline.” “See? They’re quitters. Sad and bitter.”

With a raised eyebrow, Pidge turns to Keith, but before even asking she realizes he’s definitely not interested.

Maybe it’s a smart move, she considers, while entering the world of heat and sand again. They take Blue, because Green channels Pidge’s mood about moving in such weather, and Blue carries them towards the horizon, rigged with steep mountain peaks.

This planet has its own sun, larger than the Earth’s one, like a ball of blazing whiteness. She doesn’t rotate, which means there’s no night and day, and the other side of the planet is nothing more than frozen wastelands. Tribes’ greatest punishment is being stranded on the borders of the eternal night. Throughout the whole known history of several millenniums, there are only six known cases of such sentences. There is also a myth of a lost tribe, though. At the beginning of civilization, there had been Thirteen Tribes, but after the Great War, one of them had been banished forever. However, the Thirteenth Tribe survived, tamed the night and prepared to return one day and get their revenge. Voltron has scanned the surface of the planet while passing and they haven’t noticed any life forms on the icy half, but who knows? Maybe they’re good at hiding. Maybe they’ve gone underground. Maybe they’re ice zombies. Game of Thrones might be onto something.

There is some irony in the fact that one part of the planet suffers from water shortage, while the other is basically covered with water. In times of the greatest needs, there were many expeditions to bring the ice, but only few returned. Not only there is a drastic gap in the temperatures, the only way is through a mountain chain. Being better equipped, Voltron has brought large chunks of ice, but people really need those wells.

Blue gracefully lands on a secret plateau, and Lance commands Pidge to put on the paladin suit. They leave the armor, content with the layered black jumpsuit.

When they exit Blue, Pidge is about to ask what’s it all about, but swallows the question.

The high sky is heavy with reds and orange and smudges of yellow, blues and purples – it looks like a mindless watercolor practice, it looks like nothing she has seen before. They have passed it on their way and she hasn’t even paid attention. It’s not visible from far above.

“One side is eternal day, another is eternal night, and in the middle…”

In the middle is the eternal sunset. Sunrise. Neither and both.

Lance looks smug and rests his elbow on her shoulder. The soulmark pulsates, and she’s afraid for a moment, that he will feel it even through the clothes, but Lance remains oblivious. The cool air gently touches her hurt face and eases the pain.

For once in a while, Pidge doesn’t think anything. She just stands on the edge of a plateau and enjoys the sunset. Or sunrise.

Neither.

Both.

[artificialqueens]

If Samson and Delilah Lived Happily Ever After (Sashea) - Melon

A/N: The slam poets AU nobody ever asked for. Shea is an ethereal goddess and Sasha is unprepared. This is my first fic, so any and all criticism is welcomed. Don’t worry about seeming rude, I have a thick skin!

The bar is cold and filled with people, but the heat of their tiny bodies stood no chance of warming the large space. Chatter, fast and meaningless, drifts through Sasha’s body, leaving as quickly as it came.

She likes it.

Nobody attempts to speak to her, and she doesn’t mind. It isn’t the kind of bar a person goes to with intentions of making new friends. Perhaps next week Sasha would bring Peppermint, let her bright energy fill Sasha’s time and mind.

But for now, Sasha is content with sipping the surprisingly affordable drink she’d ordered, watching the people around her socialize.

The bartender, Aja, tops off Sasha’s drink with a smile and a promise of conversation once she’s dealt with her other customers.

Aja and Sasha knew each other through a series of bad decisions made on a drunken night with mutual friends. They shared a sacred bond. When Aja invited Sasha to a poetry night at the bar she worked at, Sasha knew she’d be attending; friendships built off body shots deserve at least a second outing.

Sasha lets her mind drift, lets her eyes dance between various strangers’ faces, before settling back on a now seated Aja.

“Any other night and I’d be out of here as soon as my shift ended, but sis, Shea’s performing tonight and I’m not about to go missing that. She doesn’t come around enough anymore,” Aja says, her excitement for the coming hour infecting Sasha. Aja has a particular way of doing things, that way being that she would show up for people she deems interesting, and drop off the face of the planet with anyone else. Sasha supposes she must be one of the former.

“Is she any good?” Sasha asks, still half in her own world, but enjoying the click of Aja’s long nails on the bar and the way she doesn’t seem to give a fuck. “I’ve never heard of her before.”

“Girl, she’s so good, you might fall in love with her before she leaves the stage. Gotta be careful with girls like Shea Couleé,” Aja throws back at Sasha, aware that most people fell for Shea Couleé. She’s just that kind of person. Despite Sasha’s grumble of doubt, Aja knows. Nobody sees Shea perform and leaves without at least a small crush on her.

This time, Aja hopes the feeling will be mutual.

The bar is still bitingly cold, but as the lights dim in preparation for the show, it thrums with impatience. The whole room is muted, waiting to be brought to life. Even Aja fades a little as the stage lights come on.

Sasha’s thoughts are interrupted by the unmistakeable sound of heels against hardwood and the shuffle of people backstage. Moments later, God arrives. Or, at the very least, a demigod among mortals.

Tall, toned, long hair and longer legs - in walks a woman who screams elegance, but whispers meet me out back if you’ve got a problem with it. Sasha’s a goner at her first word.

“To everyone who hasn’t been here before, I am Shea Couleé, and I’m here to talk about everything your mama warned you not to mention at thanksgiving dinner,” the woman, Shea, says with a wink and a devilish grin.

Sasha watches intently as Shea goes through her introduction, enthralled by the way she takes a concept and turns it into a symphony. She isn’t concise; she doesn’t need to be. Shea uses too many words to describe simple things, ambles through her speech without much regard to brevity. To capture Sasha’s attention is easy, but to hold it proven near impossible, and Shea held her attention far longer than acceptable. Sasha wants to understand the way her brain works, with her too-many words and too-few things to say.

Sasha is acutely aware that she is staring. Intently. She is also suddenly aware that Shea is staring back. Fuck.

———-

Shea isn’t planning on performing any of her better pieces tonight, not particularly proud of anything on her docket, but they were all presentable. Tonight, hosting and performing, she doesn’t feel the need to waste one of her newer perfections. One of her older pieces will do.

She opens the show with one of their regulars, Farrah, who has potential but a lot of improving to do. Farrah’s barely old enough to get into the bar, never mind drink. However, her bubblegum pink feminism appeals to the disenfranchised youth of the room, making her a favorite.

Shea scans the audience, searching for familiar faces before spotting Aja. Before spotting the woman next to Aja.

Shea sees her, and it’s like looking through a fish-eye lens. The room - no, the whole world curves around her, making a halo of frizzy hair and glittering lips the center of Shea’s attention. Her aesthetic says revolution, but her expression says I never stop thinking. It’s utterly intoxicating. Shea wants her.

She’s looking right at Shea, like maybe she wants Shea right back.

Shea isn’t even on stage any more, she’s off to the side, watching the crowd react to Farrah’s prose. She isn’t supposed to be the focal point, but this woman doesn’t seem to realize, nor care. She wouldn’t look away. Neither could Shea.

People had looked at Shea like she was the only person on Earth before. People had looked at Shea like she held the world under her tongue before. Hell, people had even made Shea feel both of those were undeniable truths of the universe before.

Not like this woman, though. Never so without inhibition, such totality, before they’d so much as shared words.

Shea doesn’t even know her name. Shea needs to know her name.

Pulling out her phone, Shea quickly begins typing up a messy, practically incoherent mush of words and stanzas. She motions to a member of the staff, whispering she needs to be moved to the closing spot. She doesn’t even look up as he nods, doesn’t watch as he rearranges the schedule. The entire time, Shea feels the woman’s eyes on her.

When Shea finally looks up, finding the woman watching the stage intently, her stomach twists with jealousy. She knows it’s ridiculous to expect a woman at a poetry night to not watch the performers, but she misses the rush of feeling like the only important person in the room.

Shea Couleé does not believe in love at first sight, but goddamn if this woman doesn’t make her want to.

Shea wants to know her; wants to know how she likes her coffee, if she gets cold easily, or has a bad immune system, or if she looks at everyone with the same electricity in her eyes.

It’s annoying as fuck.

In between introducing acts, Shea types. She can’t let this woman leave without making an impression. When it’s her turn at the mic, Shea takes a deep breath, reviewing her work one last time before stepping into her usual strut.

She doesn’t bother introducing herself, just turns to the mic and began speaking, letting the words wash over the crowd like rain on their childhood bedroom’s roof.

“Electric. You Are Electric.

Who gave you the right To look at me like I’m everything, When I don’t even know your name?

Let me feel your skin under my fingertips. Baby, Let me feel the buzzing of your veins under my tongue.

Show me who you are. Electricity - Tell me your name,”

Shea doesn’t look away from the woman’s face. She keeps her eyes trained on her, spoke as though she’s whispering into the woman’s neck instead of performing for an entire room of faceless people. Shea makes what she wants clear in 53 words, 14 lines, four stanzas, and prolonged eye contact. Now, all that remains undecided is whether or not the stranger would reciprocate.

She knows all of this could go drastically wrong; the woman could turn her down, run from the weight of Shea’s attention as quickly as anyone else had, but she hasn’t broken their gaze yet. Shea takes that as a good sign.

———–

Sasha isn’t breathing. How could she, with Shea staring her down like that, like she’s real, and not just a consciousness tethered to physical form. Shea makes her real. Too many people surround them, suffocating her. All those eyes on Shea, none of them important. Shea’s eyes on her, all important.

So Sasha does what Sasha does best - she takes a step back. And then about ten more. Before she knows it, she’s on the street outside the club, breathing in the autumn air like she’s never tasted anything as sweet, and never would. She leaves with the knowledge that, hopefully, Shea will understand.

———–

After the night officially ends, Shea finds herself searching for the woman. Her heart feels heavier with each passing person, each exclamation of joy at seeing her performing again, after all this time. She begins to lose hope, starts to believe, maybe, it’s all in her head. It wouldn’t be the first time Shea’d convinced herself she meant more than she does.

Aja abruptly, as the woman tends to do, enters Shea’s space, pulling her aside in a whirlwind of neon.

“What does you think of my friend?” She asks, wondering how she ended up back in 4th grade, passing along messages between blushing children. She must’ve done something truly terrible in a past life to deserve this.

Shea is stunned silent for a moment, recovering almost immediately. “The blonde? I mean, yeah, I noticed her. Who wouldn’t notice her, I mean she’s…beautiful,” she says.

To an outsider, Shea would seem casually interested. Her tone is carefully regulated, voice barely wavering. She doesn’t stumble over a single syllable. Aja, unfortunately for Shea, knows better.

“Shea Couleé, there were fifty people in this building,” Shea winces, “and you remembered her well enough to react like that?” Aja finishes, hand on her hip, her mouth pulled into a smile.

“Shut up, bitch,” Shea responds, only fueling Aja’s twisted delight further.

“Here, she wants me to tell you that her name is Sasha, and she’ll be back next week,” Aja hands Shea a piece of paper, leaving almost immediately after in the same whirl of color she came.

Shea looks down at the paper, finding a rushed message, untidy but legible:

Sorry for running out on you, got a bit too loud for me in there. Hope you can forgive me ;)

-Sasha

Okay, then. Shea thinks.

Okay, Sasha.

[jinkisbelly]

Colors 2/?

Hellllooo

Pairing: Jongyu Rating: mm pg? pg-13 

Warning: Age gap, (but everyone is legal)

w/c: around 2.3k,     First part here [x], and this talks about their first date :) I hope you enjoy it

Jinki happens across a small period diner with a flirty, young waiter who is full of color. 

The rollerskating rink was full of people of all ages. Parents with their children, teenagers hanging out, and people on dates. Jinki was looking at the small arcade to the left of him when he heard his name come from behind him. When he turned there was Jonghyun. His lavender hair a fluffed mess on his head and around his cheek bones, probably from the wind outside. He had a leather jacket on, dark wash jeans and combat boots. There was a bright smile on his face as he recognized Jinki. “I’m so sorry I’m late. The bus was late.”

“I was just early,” Jinki smiled softly, “You’re right on time Jonghyun.”

Jonghyun flashed a smile before nervously asking, “Can I hold your hand?”

Jinki offered his hand with the palm up with a smile, “So where do we rent skates? I’ve never been here.”

“Over there,” Jonghyun’s fingers curled around the offered hand and nodded to the right of them. “You do know how to skate right?”

“It’s been awhile,” Jinki admitted nervously.

“Well, don’t worry.” Jonghyun laughed softly, “I’m pretty good on skates.”

Once their skates were paid for, Jinki adamant about paying for them both, the found a big plush seat to change their shoes. Jonghyun was quick in tying his on and he took their shoes over to their rented locker while Jinki finished tying his skates on. When he attempted to stand up he was a little unsteady, but Jonghyun’s hand were on his hips a moment later to steady him. Jinki looked over his shoulder with a bashful smile, “Thanks.”

“I got you.” Jonghyun threaded their fingers together and smiled warmly up at him. “Let’s get on the floor.”

Jinki was unsteady, to begin with, muscles needing time for the memory of how to skate to come back into his limbs, but soon enough he could confidently push off the wood floors. Jonghyun laughed a little as he sped up to catch him, hands tight and sure between them. The lights above them swirled and it was hard for either of them to look away from each other long enough to see where they were going. After almost running into a small child a couple songs later they decided it was a good time to go get something from the concession stand and take a break.

Jonghyun ordered first, but Jinki’s hand came up to gently push his hand down before he could pay. “I got it.”

“Jinki you don’t-”

“I’ll take the same, but a tea instead please.” As the cashier completed ringing up the order and took Jinki’s credit card the man turned toward Jonghyun. “I know I don’t have to, but my Ma would probably come rushing in here with her cane and kick my ass if I didn’t at least offer. She raised me better.”

“I asked you out, though,” Jonghyun was frowning as he looked up at Jinki. The cashier went to get their order after handing them their drinks. “I’m supposed to pay.”

Jinki softly chuckled as he sipped his tea. “I’m older. I win.”

Jonghyun grumbled, but he melted when Jinki lifted his hand up to kiss the back of it. When the tray was pushed toward them Jonghyun rushed to take it and stuck his tongue out up at Jinki. With a soft, fond shake of his head Jinki followed. They found a table along the opposite wall, away from the majority of the people sitting, and far enough from the rink that the music and other sounds coming from it weren’t too overwhelming. Jonghyun was chewing a bit of pretzel behind his hand when he asked, “So what’s your fat cat's name?”

Jinki almost choked on his pizza at the question, but once recovered he replied, “Pancake. And hey don’t look at me like that he came named.”

“I’m sorry, but,” Jonghyun paused for a moment to laugh, “Pancake?”

“In his past owner’s defense,” Jinki hummed, “He does like to steal my pancakes in the morning.”

Jonghyun looked so confused he had to put his food down, “And what does he do with them? Eat em’?”

“No, he just takes it and lays on it.”

“So when I stay over in the future I’ll have to guard my pancakes,” Jonghyun happily sipped at his drink. When silence fell between them he realized what he had said, “Oh, I’m sorry I just assumed there would be another date and that I would- I’m sorry oh God.”

“Hey, Jonghyun relax,” Jinki reached over to squeeze the man’s hand with a smile, “I’m having a great time. I don’t mind the idea of you being in my future.”

“I apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” Jonghyun swallowed thickly before giving a little smile. “I’m having a great time too.”

After a moment Jinki asked, “So besides the diner, what do you do for a living?”

“I first went to college for journalism, and after I graduated I realized that working for a newspaper or a news outlet wasn’t the right place for me.” Jonghyun shrugged with a free smile on his face. “I felt caged in. I wasn’t free to write what I wanted to or how I wanted to and that bugged me, so I went back to school a year after a graduated. For art, double focusing on watercolors and ceramics.”

“Such a big contrast.”

“It’s messy but beautiful.” Jonghyun’s voice was so soft, full of his happiness as he leaned on his palm and gazed over at Jinki. “I come home covered in media all the time, but I’m a lot happier than I was at that desk job.”

“It takes a lot to restart.”

“But you should know all about it,” When Jinki looked at him confused Jonghyun continued with a little laugh, “I mean your divorce.”

“Oh,” Jinki shook his head, “I should have left a lot sooner, but I stayed for my son.”

Jonghyun swallowed slowly as he pushed around his slice of pizza, “You have a son?”

“Yeah, he’s around your age.” Jinki nervously asked, “Is that okay Jonghyun?”

“Yeah, of course, I just-” Jonghyun ran his fingers through his hair and gave an unsure smile, “For some reason the thought you had a kid in your marriage never cross my mind.”

“I’m new at this whole gay thing Jonghyun.” Jinki paused for a moment before continuing, “I spent twenty years in a relationship I felt broken in, malfunctioned. I’m unsure in a lot of things about who I am, what I want, what I deserve. It’s a new concept that there’s more to a relationship than being blamed and second-guessed all the time. This probably isn’t what you signed up for Jonghyun. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Jonghyun softly grabbed his wrist as he moved to leave. “I wanted to get to know you and that’s what I’m getting. Please stay.”

“Jonghyun..”

“Tell me about your son,” The smile on Jonghyun’s face was soft and comforting, “You sound incredibly fond of him.”

After carefully taking his seat again Jinki quietly said, “He’s the only good thing I got from being married to his mother.” Jinki gazed down at his hand before looking up again with such a proud smile on his face. “He just graduated grad school for School psychology, living on his own. The divorce happened his freshman year in undergrad and I was afraid it would break him, but he fought through and I’m so proud of him.”

“Are you two close?”

“Incredibly.” Jinki pushed the tray to the right of them to open up the space between them. “He supported me when I was rethinking my sexuality. At the time it felt backward like it was supposed to happen the other way around.”

“I know that you’re going through so much exploring who you are, what you want,” Jonghyun reached over to squeeze his hand, “We’ll take this slow, and maybe I’ll help you find more about yourself along the way.”

“Thank you.” Jinki took a deep breath, “So on a lighter note, what’s your favorite color?”

“Black.”

“You’re a walking cotton candy treat and your favorite color is Black?”

“I’m a mystery I know.” Jonghyun finished his pretzel before asking, “And yours?”

“Blue,” A child zoomed past their table screaming scaring them both. “I do not miss that at all.”

Jonghyun snorted, “I’m kind of glad I was the youngest. I never had to experience that.”

“Do you want kids?” Jinki took the chance to ask. He was past the time he’d ever want to bring another child into the world, in any way. Better know if this wouldn’t work before they got too far into it.

With a shrug, Jonghyun replied, “Not really. My mother raised my sister and I alone, and while she loved us there was so much she wanted to do that she couldn’t do anymore. Maybe I’m selfish for thinking like this, but I love my life as it is too much to have this tiny human being that comes before everything about myself.”

“You aren’t selfish,” Jinki reassured, a warm smile on his face. “I had a child because my wife wanted one, and while I love Taemin to bits and wouldn’t change anything, there were times I caught myself wondering what would have happened if I had stayed true to what I wanted and refused.”

“Most people say I’ll change my mind when I meet the right person.” Jonghyun’s fingers gently tapped against the table as he gazed over at him.

“Changing what you want for someone else only ends in your unhappiness.” Jinki shrugged, “Besides if the person is right for you, they’ll share the same desires about children among other things and wouldn’t expect you to change.”

“Do you want more kids?”

Jinki shook his head, “It would be unfair to any child to bring them into my life at my age. I wouldn’t be able to give them the childhood I gave Taemin. Been there done that.”

“Good to know,” A slow smile was forming on Jonghyun’s face and Jinki’s tummy felt warm.

After the trash was thrown away Jonghyun smiled so big down at him, “Race me?”

“Sure,” as Jonghyun sped off Jinki snorted, “This seems a little UNFAIR!”

After stopping just before the carpet turned into wood Jonghyun beamed back at him. “Come get me, Handsome.” Jinki shook his head but pushed off the ground anyway.

He couldn’t catch him no matter how hard he tried, even when Jonghyun turned around and skated backward. After a while, he came over in front of him and smiled over his shoulder at Jinki, “Hold my waist, and hang on.”

Confused, Jinki did as he was told, and his fingers curled tighter in his shirt as Jonghyun took off dragging him along behind him. Later that night as they walked outside to leave Jonghyun was checking his phone for the bus route, but Jinki gently nudged him. “Let me take you home.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“It’s cold out,” Jinki smiled, “Buses can be late, and I’ll get you home before it comes by this spot I guarantee you.”

After a moment Jonghyun caved, “Okay, Thanks.” Jinki offered his bent arm to Jonghyun and once the man threaded their arms together he led him over to his car parked to the left of them. Jonghyun’s eyes widened as he noticed how nice of a car it was. “This is yours?”

Jinki carefully opened the passenger door for him, a confused hurt expression on his face. “Yeah, is something wrong?”

“I’m just so used to my best friends beat up chevy is all.” As Jonghyun swooped into the leather seat he gasped quietly. Jinki laughed gently before closing the door and slipping into the driver’s side. “I feel like I should take my shoes off before stepping into this.”

Jinki snorted as he turned the key into the ignition, “So where am I taking you?”

“Oh!” Jonghyun snuggled back against the seat, “You know the apartments on Winden Street?”

“Blue roofs, the little pet store on the corner?”

“Precisely!”

“Feel free to mess with the music,” Jinki quietly stated as he pushed the button to turn it on, trot playing softly throughout the car.

“Do you like trot music?”

Jinki laughed as he turned to look behind him as he pulled out of the parking spot, “Safe to say I’m the stereotypical old person.”

“Do you sing along?”

“Oh God no.” Jinki flipped his turn signal on as he looked over at Jonghyun. “Singing is for my shower where the only audience is Pancake.”

“I’d like to hear it some day.”

Ten minutes later Jinki was pulling up to the front door of the apartments. He put the car in park and turned a little to Jonghyun. “I had more fun tonight than I have in a while. Thank you, Jonghyun.”

“So much fun that you’d want to go out again?” Jonghyun nervously asked, a little too afraid to look over at him.

“More than enough,” When Jonghyun looked at him Jinki was smiling softly at him. “What did you have in mind?”

“There’s the light show down at the zoo I was thinking about.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Same time?” Jonghyun asked hopefully.

“I’ll pick you up. Six thirty on the dot.”

“It’s a date,” After a moment Jonghyun opened the door. One foot was out when he looked back at Jinki for a few seconds before he was leaning in to press a soft kiss against his cheek. “See you later, Handsome.”

Jinki waited until Jonghyun was inside the building, and it was only then his heart stopped feeling like it was going to beat out of his chest.

next

[mikqueen12]

The Canadian Ray of Sunshine

Sheridan Clark is a friend of mine I’ve taken a few classes with. When you look at her, you might get the overwhelming feeling that you just have to be their friend. Her quiet and bubbly personality meshes well with her perfectionist tendencies. Considering I am also quite shy, it took me forever to get up the nerve to talk to her! We went through almost an entire semester before I was giving more than a friendly nod. I learned that we were both taking our same professor the next semester, and this moment is when we both blossomed and really started chatting! I got up the nerve to send her a text, asking if she would be interested in being my interviewee for this project. When I got her answer, we set up a time to meet, and I briefly told her about the consent materials.

On the day of the interview, I picked her up at campus. I had already heard that she doesn’t like driving places she doesn’t usually go, and I can relate to that entirely. I had to grab gas at the nearby gas station, and it was right at 5:00. I went to turn left on a busy road and instead turned right, defeated.

“Oh, well I should have known that wouldn’t work during rush hour. I’ll just make a u-turn up here. That is if I can…” I drawled off. Sheridan pointed out the sign and said “Yeah you can! The sign’s right there. Canada has some weird laws dealing with u-turns.” “Oh, really? I thought you said you were like 3 when you moved down here, how do you remember?” 

“That’s a good question,” she says as she laughs with me. “I guess sometimes you just remember random details for life.” I must have made a grimace, because Sheridan and I broke out into a little laughter. “How long have you lived in the U.S.?” 

“Uh, for about as long as I can remember. I think for about 17 years?” She ended her sentence, as if questioning if she was fact checking herself. When I asked her about her memories of Canada, most of them involved her family. 

Sheridan was not a U.S. citizen, and had never had been. One time in class we all showed younger pictures of us (old drivers license photos and such) and we all saw child Sheridan on her green card. She’s a passionate Canadian, usually representing her country with a little button on her hat. The rest of our conversation was rambles about classes and any little thing we felt like talking about. 

Picture of Sheridan (Left) and myself during the interview (right). 2-7-2020.

My apartment isn’t the cleanest one you will ever see, but it is far from dirty either.  The bar separating the kitchen and the living room tries to fool you that people use the living room. The wax warmer was turned on, illuminating the side of the wall with good lights and a slight cherry smell. The key rack is varying shades of blue, it looks as if it was painted with care and was hung up with an off colored green string. It was at an angle and the wall behind it had a few scuff marks, showing continuous use. However, the unopened mail and the red money gun that gets used only when guests are over (for a laugh) begs to differ. It seems things are tidy simply because the common space isn’t usually used. Two wood panels hang above the TV in completely different styles. The first looks rustic with blues and beiges. It states “The more people I meet, the more I like my cat.” The second one would be an important item in a mystery video game, if the game was about this apartment; it is brightly colored with orange, turquoise, pinks, and purples and says “Stay Salty.” 

We sat on opposite couches, which faced each other perfectly for this type of activity. Being the scatterbrained individual that I am, I ran back into the bedroom and grabbed the letter of consent and a pen. I briefly explained to her that I will have my boyfriend record her and I talking, as well as ask permission to use any photos or files she sent my way. After she signed, I went and scanned the document before I forgot. Let the fun begins!

 The lamp behind us helped fill the room. The furniture in this apartment doesn’t match, but it doesn’t look completely out of place either. The dark brown coffee table housed a few figurines: a snowman left behind from Christmas storage, handed-down coasters holding our halloween cups, and a very round green frog wearing sunglasses playing a saxophone. The TV stand was located in front of us, and held some of my artwork from classes we shared. A pumpkin was painted with a panoramic view of the night sky, with a cat walking on its fence. A metal bust of a cat with his tongue sticking out hides beneath my favorite 3D art. Made of only foamcore, masking tape, and a little glue after it was turned in, these triangles scream activated space. Activated Space was a meme from our 3-D design class, threatened to become a T-shirt design several times.

Sheridan would have a lot to say about this scene. When asked “What do all of your buttons on your bag and hat say about you?” She responded with “it’s a way to learn alot about someone right from the beginning.” For example, If you look at her beanie, you’ll see LGBT+ pins, Twenty One Pilot pins, Canadadian pins, and others. This shouldn’t be the only way you learn about someone’s interests, but you can get an idea if you will get along with them if you share similar interests. I can relate to this, as I watched back the interview footage I noticed I was wearing a flannel I have dubbed the “Bi Shirt” due to its color scheme. Nods to things like these can go unnoticed, but can become a conversation starter if one wishes.

Sheridan Clark. Personal File. 

Sheridan is a very expressive individual. She can express herself in everyday life, but she  also expresses herself through art. In the interview I asked her “as a fellow artist, how are you able to express your emotions so well in your art?” Learning to express yourself takes time, as well as years. As children become teenagers, they obtain more vocabulary to express how they feel. One study done by Nancy Johnson took school age kids and asked them how to answer the question “What is art?” or “What do you think art is?” (61). The younger the child, the more their response would have been like this: something fun to do, making something, using clay, etc. As the grade levels rose, so did their responses. Once you ask the third graders, they begin to use emotions along with actions. One student said “it’s just something you have fun with!” and others art as beautiful or playful (Johnson 63). High schoolers who were asked these questions responded with things that please you, an opinion, something that is relative, and other answers (Johnson 64). As we get older, we can describe our feelings better, and Sheridan is very in tune with her feelings.

Back in Professor Peterson’s class, our classmates didn’t talk much at first. By the end of the semester, we were all cracking up. The class was Concepts, Creativity, and Studio Practices. The class left most up to your imagination; the first project was simply to “make a time machine” and no further explanation was given. The last project was a research art project. It followed the usual frame of do whatever you want with no restrictions. This allowed everyone to create what they wanted and how they wanted. My project was a poster I created to advocate for the cats on the Marietta campus, and call for them to be TNR’d (trap, neuter, return). 

Even sunshine will eventually meet rain. Sheridan briefly mentions that she meets with her therapist to manage her anxiety and depression. One of the things that I can resonate with her the most on is these topics. I can tell she might have been called “mature for her age” as a child. When I was smaller, I took it as a compliment, thinking I was one step closer to being an adult. However, as I got older, I started realizing it was a soft way of saying “you’ve been through some stuff, and it’s made you into a peacemaker.” Despite this, Sheridan’s bloomed into a bright little sunflower of positivity.  

Sheridan’s last project was a real show stopper. She chose to research some of the most common mental illnesses and recreate them in her own way. The below piece she named “Anxiety.” The eyes everywhere to her represented the feeling of anxiety, and other ways of expressing that feeling. From some research into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), social anxiety can express itself through performing or other social events. Perhaps this form of art is a work around to this, as she can create her phenomenal works at her own home! Then later she can show them off. She also created 3 more types, with her interpretations of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Her determination for a perfect project-- or 4 for that matter, is prevalent here. This piece represents the feeling of being anxious in its entirety; sometimes when we feel anxious, we might wonder if we have general anxiety too. That’s what the research done by Takeshi Hamamura and Christian Chan focused on. The mere concept of being anxious correlates with increased googling “symptoms of anxiety.” Reports of self diagnosed anxiety rise as well (Hamamura and Chan 2). The good thing about Google is how soon we can pull up information, and in this case someone might be able to schedule an appointment if they need to. (Hamamura and Chan 1). If not, researching the symptoms can give you some peace of mind!

Sheridan Clark. Personal File.

Something I envy about Sheridan is her determination to have a perfect (well, um) anything. This expresses itself most often in the form of art projects. For example, in our 3D Design class we had a project called “Paper and Metal.” The goal was to make a casting of pewter and have it suspended in air only by paper and glue. The class met 6 hours a week, and she never had a moment of downtime; she was always creating the paper trees, grass, or leaves for her project. Whereas I only spent about 7 hours on my project outside of class, I’m fairly certain she spent twice that on hers. Hard work pays off, and I hope she got a well deserved break after the completion of this pristine project!

Mikayla Queen. Personal image of Paper and Metal Project. 

Sheridan doesn’t stop at expressing herself through art, or style. She also has a new hobby: Furbys! In the interview, she described them as the toy she always wanted until right before Christmas, when she forgot it existed. Now that she’s out on her own, she has more freedom and goes to  buy them, clean their fur, and revamp them! The tech that hides within these furbies is quite impressive. The article “There’s a lot of smart electronics inside a furby” describes this perfectly. For example, furbies are programmed to begin speaking “Furbish” and progressively learn English. (Edgar 28) To a child (or even me until I read this article), it would look like the Furby is learning directly from you! The realism packed into the fury creature is shocking, as many of its responses don’t seem to have a rhyme or reason. If you hold a furby upside down at first it will giggle, but if you keep holding it upside down it may say “I’m scared.” (Edgar 29)

Out of all the furbies I’ve seen, Cabbage is the one I’ve seen the most. But she has several more, with their names ranging from Big Mama, Shifty, and Maw. Since most of the ones she owns are ~15-20 years old, few of them speak. She enjoys taking them apart, “deskinning” them and attempting to fix them. A project she’s had in the making is to make a rainbow pride furby by dying their fur. This furby is beginning to come together as of me writing this, and has been named June. Although Cabbage doesn’t work yet, I still have hope for him!

Sheridan Clark. Personal File. 

Being LGBT+ is an important part of both of our lives, and we both identify as Bisexual. A paper that Sheridan is writing this semester focuses on more education for LGBT+ students as well as just acceptance in schools. When I went to look up this topic, I found this research that came from Canada and thought it was fitting. Catherine Nash and Kath Browne talked about the importance of these topics being taught in school. With LGBT+ issues being more accepted and acknowledged, we have to remember that our society is centered around a hetronormalitive lifestyle. It has to be remembered that “The drive for LGBT integration often works in concert with broader efforts to teach multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness.” (Nash and Browne) School is the place where you can learn things you wouldn’t have at home, and these schools need to be a safe environment where a student won’t feel judged. Not only in Canada do LGBT+ students in school feel they are not accepted or wanted. If the environment you learn in isn’t a good one, there is a likelihood this student may not want to do work. 

In the end, I feel I got to know Sheridan on a more personal level than I did from small talk from class. It’s important to listen and understand in friendships and relationships, and if you do it might help you grow. It reminded me that expressing yourself is important, and perhaps you should consider more ways than one. Picking up a hobby that others might think is quirky might just be the thing you need to ease your mind at the end of the day. If asked “Who is Sheridan?” I feel that I can confidently answer this question. Sheridan is the single beam of sunshine that sneaks through your window to wake you up gently. She is wise beyond her years, and typically acts as a “Mom Friend” in her friend group. She won’t let herself get walked all over, and she will find a better way to live! Sheridan is the definition of expressing. Whether it is through art, furbies, buttons, music, or plants, you can find a bit of Sheridan everywhere.

[thegirlwiththepearlearrings]

Exhibition Review of Ericka Beckman and Marianna Simnett at FACT

In this most recent exhibition at FACT I had high expectations with the knowledge that it would be dedicated to two female artists. I found this particularly hopeful with showing works of contemporary, female, digital artists. When hearing about the concept of some of installations as inspired by traditional fairy tales but set in a digital world, I found it extremely intriguing with the feminist critique that could be examined with the fairy tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

When walking into the first gallery space it was a video installation by Ericka Beckman titled Cinderella 1986. Upon first impressions of the gallery space, I found that the bench provided was quite small and could only fit a few people on, even though the gallery space could have accommodated a larger bench. When talking about the video installation itself, I found it to be quite quirky with the traditional context of Cinderella taken out and instead contextualised in an 80s-style video game. I found this to be quite an interesting metaphor for the story of Cinderella being trapped inside a video game, with having to fulfil the game’s purpose of marrying the prince. However, after each failure the character begins to realise that she has been playing a game and that the aim of the game is not what she really wants.

I found this to be such an interesting feminist critique on fairy tale stories, brought into a new and digital perspective, and calls into question our reference to these archaic stories that we tell children still to this day.

In the next room, it followed the same critique, however it referenced specifically video games themselves with how they sexualise female characters. The basis for this installation is about a farming game, which although seems innocent, the layers of feminist critique really creates quite a poignant piece as the female character succumbs to sexual abuse and harassment from the male game character.

In the next gallery room, it showed the work of Marianna Simnett. When entering this space the load moans and screams, made the space quite unnerving and uncomfortable. For the first installation Faint With Light, it showed these blinding beams of light that accorded with Marianna’s breathing. The aim of this installation was to induce a state of unconsciousness by breathing fast enough that the artist would faint. I personally found that the concept was quite sensitive as fainting is quite a traumatic experience. With the blinding lights and the load moans I found that this could pose a particular issue for younger children or people suffering from epilepsy. Although there were warnings on the entrance into this room, the sign was quite small and inconspicuous, therefore I would have added a sign outside of the gallery space before visitors entered. As the lights were so blinding I found it hard to even enter the space without having to close my eyes. Behind the bright lights, it became slightly dimmer, which made it easier to take in, however I felt that the artist should have had the dimmer lights facing the door so people could enter with ease. Overall I found this particular installation to have more of a damaging effect than what was probably intended and that the message to this piece was not clear whatsoever, other than the ability to induce fainting.

Lastly in the following room there were a dual-screen showing two films by Marianna Simnett Bloodand The Udder. After being slightly disturbed by Marianna’s previous piece, it did not set a good tone for these pieces, and I felt that after experiencing the intense light and moans of the previous piece, I could not properly experience this piece separate to Faint with Light.

Overall, I exited this exhibition with mixed feelings. Having found the feminist critique of Ericka Beckman intriguing and cleverly done. I was disappointed by the work of Marianna Simnett with particular emphasis on her installation Faint with Light, which I found quite triggering and not suitable with Ericka Beckmans’ work which used fairy tales as a basis for her pieces. Apart from these works haven been done by women, I could not find a connection between the two artists, which made it hard to think of the overall concept to the exhibit. In conclusion, I would recommend just sticking to the pieces by Ericka Beckman and skipping Marianna Simnett as it puts a damper on from what I assumed was the initial intention of the exhibition as a feminist critique on fairy tales and video games.

You can find the exhibition details on the FACT website at: https://www.fact.co.uk/event/beckman-simnett#about