#she has seen mortality and all of its wonders. but now all fades like the morning dew

[boiledegghole]

is it really a session of slugdnd without a melancholy reflection on the self and how things change

(the winner and l2tm (or, rather, lttm) have a chat as the last two left awake during a sleepover)

[pyjamatranslation]

The Agony & The Ecstasy Part 1

Part 2 is here

Plot: A woman is sentence to death for murdering her husband. In the cells of the Colosseum, she meets Lucius. 900 words.

Warning: Mentions of a shitty husband, loss of child, blood, murder, suicide.

A/N: This is my first time writing fanfiction. After some light research, ancient Rome was not a nice place to be a woman.

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Lucius lay on his cot, near sleep despite the chaos of sounds beyond his cell.  Injured men groaned in agony as they tried to survive the night.  The animals of his homeland grunted and snorted at whim.  Footsteps now scuffled along the sand walkway with the distinct sound of something being dragged.  A cell was opened then locked, the footsteps receding. He tried to quiet his curiosity and nearly succeeded until a woman screamed.  Jolting up in bed at the sound of it, he thought of his wife.  The scream hadn’t been one of fear or injury, but of rage and strength.  His wife made that sound on the battlefield many a time.  Standing now, he pressed himself against his cell door to see more.  

In the cell diagonal to his, a woman paced back and forth.  He would have thought the dark red stains on her stola were wine if not for the pattern he knew came from blood spraying out of a mortal wound.  He had seen her before, in the stands of the Colosseum sitting next to the senators. 

“My lady,” he called.  She whipped her head towards his voice, the way the tigers did when you walked too close to their cages.  Her eyes were wild and glistened with unshed tears that reflected the flames of the torches lining the tunnel.  “Whose blood is that?”  She looked down at herself as if unaware of the stain upon her clothes and hands.  

“My husband’s.  A beloved senator of Rome.”  Disappointment escaped him as a sigh, a pity it wasn’t the General’s or one of the emperor’s. 

“Not beloved by all.”  She looked at him briefly then moved to rattle the door of her cell, her frustration making it a valiant effort.  “What did he do to you?”  He wondered.  She kept her hands wrapped around the bars but knelt gently as her adrenaline faded and gave way to exhaustion.

“I gave birth today.”  Lucius thought she was ignoring his question until she continued, “My husband refused the baby.”  The tears that threatened to fall earlier fell now, a mark down each cheek, the wet lines a tragic war paint.  “It’s the second time he’s done it.”  Lucius moved from standing at the bars to sit and lean against them.  He thought of the Roman custom tollere liberos of laying the newborn on the ground for the father to see.  Picking it up and raising it into the air was a father’s way of accepting to raise the child.  If the father didn’t, the child was abandoned, left outside to the elements and the animals. “I created life, I carried the child.  Yet he has the power to decide its fate.  Why?  What has he done to earn that right?”  She looked to Lucius like he might have the answer.  He didn’t.  “I created life.  I took his away.  I earned that right.�� My body, my child, my hand on the knife.”  Lucius watched as she leaned her head again the metal bars.  Tomorrow they’d hand her a wooden sword and she’d fight for her life in the Colosseum, punishment for killing a man, but in truth, it was punishment for daring to fight against a system that gave her no control over her life.

* * * * * * *

Lucius knelt in the arena, his hands sifting through the sand and remembering everyone he’d lost.  It was over now, there would be no more bloodshed.  No more pain.  The grief would be his lifelong companion but there would be comfort in that familiar pain.  He tensed at the sound of movement, swivelling his head to find the source of it.  The lady had survived the day, but barely.  She half crawled, half hobbled towards the downed body of a royal guard, one arm wrapped around herself.  Lucius breathed in relief and wondered how long before the idea of peace settled in and he no longer needed to fight and watch for threats.  He stood to go to her, watching as she reached for the guard’s sword.  Swaying to a standing position, she held the sword up and Lucius could see the colourful clouds reflected in the blade as he approached her.  He watched in horror as she turned the sword around so it pointed at herself.  His relaxed footfalls turned to hurried steps as he ran towards her.

“No!” he called out.  Jarred by his voice, she stumbled as she turned to see who was there.  Almost within reach of her now, he slowed as she pointed the sword at him.  

“Leave me be,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I will not let another drop of blood fall in this sand.”  She moved her hand away from her waist to show him the blood pooling into the fabric of her dress there.

“Let me go,” she pleaded.  He stepped closer to try to help stop the bleeding but she swung the sword at him.  He dodged it and caught her wrist, twisting it with enough pressure to have her yelp and drop the sword.  He regretted the first but was relieved by the second.  His other hand came around her to press against the wound at her side.  She hissed at the pain. 

“We need to get you to a doctor.”  She fought his embrace,

“I cannot bear to be a childless mother.  Release me of that agony, please, have mercy on me.”  There was a time when he did not care if he lived or died.  Having seen the light beyond that darkness, he couldn’t leave her lost in hers.  

“I will find your child,” he promised.  She stopped fighting him, tilting her head to look at him.  Her hand wrapped around his wrist but it was her expression of wonder and gratitude that grabbed a hold of him.  This moment touched him more deeply than the accolades and applause of the amphitheatre were ever meant to.   

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Thanks for reading!

Part 2 is now available

[crguang]

ocean eyes

You’ve never seen the ocean. Kafka introduces you to it.

fluffy as fawk, recycled the idea from that fic but it’d be like a prequel technically, 2.3k words

A/N: couldn’t stop thinking about kafka loving the sea she’s made for me atp. title only makes sense because of the other fic lol

The sea breeze washes over your being, it caresses each strand of hair and softly touches your skin like gentle hands cupping your cheeks. You feel it in your ears, a sound you’re hearing for the first time; its warmth seems to enter your lungs and clear it of past impurities with every inhale, and you wish to take a deep breath to keep it inside your chest forever.

The sensation leaves you immobile. In front of you, the ocean. A myth come true, its beauty rivaling Idrila’s. It’s vast, bigger than your mind can comprehend even after so many years spent traveling the cosmos, and a deeper blue than the sky it’s reflecting. Water has never been so alive, with waves crashing on the shore and currents on the horizon, you are facing an entity larger than life. Its depths create and harbor life that you won’t ever get to see. Your mortal eyes can only perceive a fraction of it, so small and significant. You didn’t think it was possible for water to kiss the sky, having the proof before you fills you with wonderment. Among it, some strange feeling nestles in your throat. You stand as it curls around your vocal cords and leaves you mute. Words are useless in front of something so grand, you realize, they fade away as if they've never existed at all. You lose yourself in cold blues and the occasional whites of flying seagulls, in salty air that quickly becomes your favorite scent, and you can’t speak for a long moment.

Lithe fingers, laced with your calloused ones, tighten their hold on your hand. It takes a couple blinks to tear your eyes away from the boundless sea, and you turn to Kafka’s fond smile. She’s watching you, drinking you in like you’re the precious sight and not the limitless expanse of water on the coast. A thumb swipes over the crease of your eye, lingering at the corner for a second too long, and you realize she’s wiping a tear away.

“Oh,” you exhale softly, bringing your free hand to your face. Your cheeks are wet with silent tears and you sniffle as you wipe them from your skin. “I didn’t even notice.”

“What were you thinking about so intently just now?”

You look back at the sea, an ache in your throat. The sun hides behind thin clouds and paints the world in soft colors.

“I was wondering if my planet was ever this pretty. I wish my mother could have seen it.”

Your home world fell victim to a Stellaron, like plenty throughout the galaxy. It dried most of your rivers and evaporated many of your lakes, transforming seas into lands full of sand. Water was a limited resource and a tedious thing to acquire. You remember stumbling on a picture book with various shades of blue filling some of the pages and asking your mother about it. That evening, she explained the ocean to you; never-ending, deeper than mortals can comprehend and filled with creatures your childish mind could merely compare to alien life. You thought she was making stuff up, maybe embellishing a mundane truth, but she spoke of the sea with the same tenderness she used to tuck you into bed. As you grew, you understood that it was longing in her words, a deep desire for something she would never experience in this lifetime. To you, it felt pointless to yearn for something she didn’t know; your mother was born long after the Stellaron infected your planet and spread its cancer to the roots of your world. You didn’t understand how this desire was born, where it came from. Yet, in her eyes resided a wistfulness that was only extinguished the day she died. She left the waking world longing for the sea, and memories of her constrict your chest as you stand at the edge of it.

Kafka hums, pivoting to face the water. A gentle silence settles between you as you watch the waves rise and fall on the shore. Her bare palm is warm against yours, it grounds you to the sand beneath your feet. Seagulls make a grating sound, you discover, but even their squawking can’t ruin the view before you. You feel a sudden restlessness to touch the water, to have it envelop you entirely until you feel yourself disappear in it as if absorbed.

“Can we go in the water?”

Kafka smiles. “Sure.”

Your hand slips from hers and you step out of your slides, sinking your toes into the hot sand of the beach. Sand is something you’re familiar with, it reminds you of your mom and your broken world. Comfort fills you with every step towards the waves. Kafka follows beside you, used to the sights and the sensations. She comes here every summer, but this is the first time she’s brought you along. You understand why she’d want a place like this all to herself, it brings forth a sense of serenity best enjoyed in solitude. Or, at least it did, before. Before experience brought you closer.

You hesitate somewhat once you reach the water. Your feet are submerged in it and suddenly its vastness becomes a little terrifying. Kafka walks in further until she’s standing waist deep in the water, circling hands creating ripples around her. She turns to face you with a silent question on her stretched lips.

“…I don’t know how to swim,” you confess uselessly, prompting a chuckle out of her. She knows that, obviously, since you’re unfamiliar with large bodies of water.

“We can stay on the shallow end. Don’t want you drowning on my watch, I’d get in a lot of trouble with the others.”

Kafka holds out her hand. You take it with some reticence. She brings you close enough for wet fingers to squeeze your waist affectionately. Her easy expression makes you at ease, she seems different on this planet, more carefree. She’s not wearing her contacts and her ponytail is lower than usual, its tie looser around her long locks of hair. You’re privy to a side of her you had no idea existed and you’re honored by the trust she puts in you.

“Nice, right?”

“It’s cold,” you reply, looking down at your wobbly reflections.

“Mm, I like it.”

You dip your hands beneath the water and turn your palms to the sky. Algae brushes against your calves as you move around. Kafka lets you explore, head tilting back to face the sun. You venture a bit further until your neck is the only thing sticking out of the water. Impulsively, you squeeze your eyes shut, pinch your nose with two fingers and sink into the water. Every sound is muffled in your ears, and in the darkness everything is pointless. This is different from a shower or being caught in the pouring rain, you feel light. weightless, insignificant. You wonder if that’s what your mother longed for, this freedom to be anything and anyone, drifting through the boundless sea. You emerge with a little gasp, rubbing the water out of your eyes before blinking them open.

You’re careful not to stray too far from where Kafka is drinking in the faint sunlight. Her eyes are closed when you glance back at her, chin tilted to the heavens. Her shoulders have turned a rosier color from the sun and her dark, backless bathing suit contrasts beautifully with the clear ocean blue. You walk towards her, flicking your wrist to send water flying her way. Her brows twist for a second before she looks at you with a small smile. Kafka always smiles a lot, more often than not to unsettle her opponent or prey, but there’s a softer edge to the ones she’s had since you arrived on this planet.

“What do you usually do here?” You ask, moving closer to her.

“Float. Wanna try?” Kafka holds onto your waist when you’re close enough to reach, pulling you towards her. “I can show you.”

“I don’t want to drown.”

“You’re not going to drown.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Kafka playfully rolls her eyes and takes hold of your chin with a few fingers. Her gaze follows the movement of her thumb across your jaw, then flicks up to meet yours.

“I wouldn’t let you,” she says, leaning in to press her lips on yours in a soft kiss. Your eyes flutter shut as her mouth slowly moves against yours. She pulls away after a moment and looks at you. “Do you trust me?”

“At times.”

“Well, trust me now.”

One of her hands is placed on the small of your back to support you, the other gently guides you onto your back by applying pressure on your chest.

“What if I float away,” you say, a tinge of panic enveloping you, and you grab her wrist to stay upright.

Kafka can’t help the amusement on her face. “To where?”

“Far, I don’t know.”

“Would you miss me?”

You pout. “It’s a valid fear to have.”

“It’s really not.”

“What if I float to the deep end, then it’s too late to come back and I drown because I can’t swim?”

Kafka looks at you for a moment, eyelids lowering and an amused smile on her lips. She doesn’t say anything, just stares at you like she’s thinking of something funny.

“What?” You ask, eyes narrowing.

“You killed three flying beasts twice your size at once, last week. You're scared of a little water?”

“Fuck you,” you try pushing her away, but she only presses you further into her with her arms around your waist, a laugh escaping her. “There’s nothing little about the fucking ocean.”

“Relax,” she drawls, “it won’t work if you’re tense.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

Kafka curls a hand around the back of your neck and suddenly brings you closer to capture your lips with hers. Her head tilts to kiss you better, and you can’t focus on anything but the sweet kisses she presses against your mouth. Your wet hand trails up her spine, causing droplets of water to slide down her back. Your lips part to deepen the kiss when her tongue swipes over your bottom lip. You forget the argument, your muscles relax as her chest touches yours, and by the time she pulls away with a soft exhale through her nose, you almost forget your surroundings. You chase her lips as she leans back, planting a few more chaste kisses on her mouth. She indulges you for a minute, the fingers on your nape tightening their grip for an instant. You’re breathing heavier when she separates from you for good and smiles.

“Now, let’s try it again, mmh?”

Kafka teaches you how to float in the water with firm hands and occasional teasing jabs to which you would respond if she wasn’t the one standing between you and drowning. In the end, you spend most of the day at sea, learning how to keep water from going up your nose without using your fingers and the basics of swimming. Your fingertips are pruned hours later as you emerge from the water. Kafka’s still under— you bet on who could hold their breath the longest— so you dive back beneath the surface as quietly as you can. She calls you a cheater afterwards, but you distract her with wet, slippery kisses.

You’re drying yourselves on the beach as the sun sets below the horizon. You sit on your towel next to Kafka, who’s reclined on her elbows. Her eyes are closed, not a crease between her brows, and her head is tilted upwards. Before, you thought she was sunbathing, but now the temperature is slightly lower than this afternoon and the sun is no longer visible in the sky. You think perhaps she’s simply enjoying the sound of the waves and the salty air like you did earlier. It’s funny, she hasn’t told you what this place means to her; it clearly holds some sort of significance if she returns to it annually. Her way of revealing herself is unconventional at best and a little clumsy, like a fawn taking its first steps. She presents you the sea, this part of her she keeps hidden from everyone, and says nothing else. You watch the lines of her nose, the curves of her lips and their pretty pink color. Her face is bare from any makeup, her hair loose and her expression so relaxed she might’ve been asleep. She’s beautiful. You’re no longer gazing at the ocean, though you feel a familiar sense of wonder as you observe her. Your heart is light in your chest and you suddenly understand how your mother could yearn for something she’s never experienced before.

Kafka’s eyes slowly blink open. She tilts her head to meet your stare with a smile, and you long to love her like your mother longed for the sea.

“Let’s stay a little longer.”

You nod. Your limbs move before you can stop yourself; you straddle her waist, sitting on her lap and snaking your arms around her back. Kafka lets you bury your nose in the crook of her neck, using a hand in the sand to support the both of you.

“What’s that for?” There’s a teasing lilt to her voice as you breathe in the smell of the sea on her skin.

“Nothing,” you lie, pressing a kiss to her skin.

Your mouth trails up her neck to her jaw, tasting salt, and Kafka hums when you kiss her lips. It feels different to kiss her after getting acquainted with the ocean because you finally have something to compare the weightlessness that overwhelms you with each of her fervish kisses. A hand tangles itself in your hair, pulling you closer until she reclines on the ground and your body follows without missing a beat, lips locked.

You pull away to breathe in, only slightly, reveling in the sensation of her hand up your back.

“You’ll get sand in my hair,” Kafka mutters into your mouth.

“I’ll wash it for you.”

On a deserted beach and with the sea as your witness, you kiss her until the moon ascends in the sky and the waves grow stronger behind you.

[lanafofana]

Snippet Sunday Funday

✨💖Thankies for the tag @roguishcat 💖✨

If you're here for BG3 content I'm afraid I've dipped my toes into Dragon Age Inquisition. Read on for some Solavellan Hell Mongering.

No warnings (other than DAI spoilers)

Context is that Inky has time travelled, dated the eggman and now Solas has dragged her ass to Crustywood.

Enjoy 😘

“Then what I must tell you…the truth–”

There. She can see it now, the tell she missed in her first life. The flicker in his gaze. The sudden realization and despair in the same breath. The weighty mantle of grim acceptance settling around him like a funeral shroud. She can see it all like a beacon of pain shining out from his eyes, the dip at the corner of his mouth, the furrow of his brow.

The gentle press of her fingers against his lips has startled him into temporary muteness. Stemmed the tide of this ill-fated evening but she knows it won't hold for long.

“The truth is,” she says quietly, staring at where her fingertips brush against the soft dry skin of his mouth to avoid his piercing gaze. “I know a liar when I see one.”

Solas’ lips part when he sucks in a breath.

“Even one who lies only by omission.”

The breath he releases is slow, controlled and steady, and hot against her skin. She sees him swallow hard, his lashes fluttering as his lids slide shut.

What could he possibly be thinking, she wonders with a thrill of fear.

Reconsidering what Leliana’s network of spies might have discovered and insinuated? Perhaps how to control any potential fallout with misdirection and a clever lie so mired in truth it tastes just the same when she swallows it.

Or, she thinks darkly, maybe he is judging the weight of the Inquisition's value against its potential liability. Dreading what she could possibly be leading up to.

She wishes she knew. Her stomach swoops like she's in freefall.

Wrapped in the safety of mortal flesh and bone, her heartbeat hammers to break free and scream.

“A mage with a mysterious past,” she begins.

Miraculously, her voice is steady, betraying none of the tremulous anxiety ricocheting around her gut, striking against her ribs like shrapnel.

“One with rare, intimate knowledge of the Fade; experience with warfare enough to find kinship with a battlehardend warrior.”

Still and stern he reminds her chillingly of the stone statues he once left in his wake. Is he even breathing? Is she?

“Canny enough to play mental strategy against the best Hissrad the Qunari could offer. And win.”

When she chances a glance at his face his eyes are still closed, his usually placid expression is tense. A wolf backed into a corner.

“An apostate that appeared at the right time, in the right place.”

Moving her hand from its delicate perch on his lips, Ellana cups his clenched jaw, tracing the laugh line at the corner of his mouth with her thumb. His eyes crack open slowly, pools of liquid silver in the moonlight. Mercurial and soaked in secrets. The Dread Wolf carries his own Wells of Sorrow on his face, as obvious as any vallaslin, borne in tandem with his terrible yoke of duty. The weight of them could crush her.

“Did you think I walked into your love blind, Vhenan?”

Solas’ eyes trace the planes of her face like it’s a map he’s never seen before. As quickly as he turns new information around in his mind he’s also memorizing every line and freckle, committing each fresh detail of her that's been revealed in this new light to his eternal memory.

“I have never pressed you to reveal your secrets or why you keep them. I do not intend to do so now.”

At this he can hold his silence no longer. “Vhenan–”

With terrible certainty she knows this is where he is trying to draw his line in the sand. The clean break to spare them both a worse fallout in the future. A desperate, foolish, stupid attempt to protect her that could only have been born from his deep tragic love for her. Idiot.

She can see his regret as clearly as she can hear it. It makes her want to tear it from his face with her nails and teeth. To rip it from him like a mask. Like she did in Tevinter, a lifetime ago.

A lifetime that ended in ashes.

When she’d thought she’d finally gained the upper hand for once and slid her fingers beneath carved porcelain. So naively certain of her victory. Only to reveal the face of a trusted confident staring back at her, also painted with regret.

Ellana hates regret. What good was regret when his hand was already buried to the wrist between her ribs, iron fingers around her heart.

No, the Inquisitor has no need for regret. And neither does Ellana.

Her voice, when she finds it, is a hoarse whisper. “Do not presume to make my decisions for me, Solas.”

He stares at her in surprise. Opening his mouth he hesitates and closes it again, rethinking what he wants to say. Completely incongruous with the heavy hearted seriousness of the moment she feels an entirely inappropriate burst of glee at catching him off guard.

The line of his shoulders softens and the expression on his face turns rueful. “Even in this, you surprise me.”

And then they have filthy depraved grotto sex.

TBC 😘

Tags: @feedthepheasants

[woodsfae]

B5 s03e08 Messages From Earth table of contents • previous episode

We open on some morning military grousing, and a secret note and delivery from a chef! And it's real bacon and eggs from Marcus, because she helped him get an id card. And she said "Surprise me!" That's cute. What a rascal, casually able to arrange for highly perishable foods to be shipped out to B5 before they spoil. I wonder if he just liberated some senator or ambassador's expensive export shipment. Faked it spoiling or something.

And switch to Marcus, who is involved with shenanigans! Er, an actual fight through some narrow rooms and corridors! Hope he doesn't suddenly have a corpse on his hands. Disposing of a body on a space station isn't the easiest thing in the world.

Maybe we'll get G'Kar and Delenn back this episode? I would also like to see Na'Toth, if she hasn't died and I missed it, like I missed Ko'Dath's!

Last episode a Ranger or some sort of intelligence contact told Marcus things were up on earth and any Rangers in the area should move away from Earth for awhile, and now in this episode, there's speculation about President Clark having been involved with the deceased president's assassination.

Love seeing G'Kar! Boo prison. And good for Garibaldi for visiting him. I hope Garibaldi has been actually learning Narn. And he says he's trying although he wishes there was a translation! G'Kar says the Book of G'Quan cannot be translated and must be read in its mother tongue. Good for Garibaldi. He's been earning a lot of Conditional Brownie Points lately for good behavior. I appreciate the check-in with G'Kar. Hopefully he's making lots of progress in his telepathy while he's in the slammer.

G'Kar is using his prison sentence to meditate and write a book. Very productive! I bet the book will be a banger. Or perhaps is actually secret intelligence he's gathering with his new telepathy! Also, what a drama llama, fading back into the shadows when Garibaldi asks to read it. "When it is done…" *fades into shadow* I don't think it was meant to indicate a leaning towards The Shadows, though.

Garibaldi got a message about a package. The same one Marcus was expecting "in a week" last episode, perchance?

The package is, as I suspected, a person. Dr Mary Kirkish. She's on several hit lists. And I think Sinclair sent her? What a funny pan down the table at really awkward angles for every single one of their faces. The assembly of senior Rangers (?) plus Dr Kirkish the archaeologist.

Her team discovered an artifact at least a thousand years old buried on Mars. A Shadows' ship, in fact! And Earthdome says they've never seen ships like the one Sheridan released hyperspace footage of. Dr Kirkish says they must be lying, because she personally discovered one. Almost everyone who knew about the ship on Mars is dead or missing! The Shadows must have been building strength all over the galaxy for a long time. Someone touched the ship and he died instantly. Earthdome came and went, then a Shadows ship came and dug up the buried one. More confirmation that being in the physical presence of the Shadows feels wrongbad on an instinctual level, and triggers fear and loathing whether seen, heard, or in close physical proximity. It seems like even recordings of the shadows has that effect to some extent. I wonder how they shield their allies from it. Morden didn't seem to be badly effected by a fear/loathing aura when there were some in his holding cell with him.

Delenn is taking Dr Kirkish under her protection, it seems. Lennier swoops her away to safety. The Minbari probably do have better security than the humans can manage. So far it seems like they're probably less likely to work with the Shadows than humankind, too. Since they have historical and religious teachings of mortal enmity about the Shadows.

Zack Allen gets even more opportunities to be a collaborating bootlicker on screen! Joy.

Delenn going to John Sheridan quietly, alone, in the dark, asking if he's sure he wants to go through with something. With…?? I kinda wonder if they'll randomly get married like this, with very little on-screen buildup.

I must have missed some information earlier, because I didn't know Earthdome had any access to the crashed, 1,000 year old Shadow ship. But Sheridan and Delenn want to go through Earth's defense grid, go to the Shadow ship while evading all of Earth's defenses, and destroy the Shadow ship before President Clark can get his corrupt and fascist hands on it.

Dang, what an escalation! Acting directly against Earth, while trying to hide it! Dr Franklin will fake Sheridan, Delenn, and Lennier's deaths if they fail! Or they also might die! Damn. High stakes. I love how this show has huge leaps of plot when I'm least expecting it.

Delenn and John are being cute on the bridge of the White Star, as they should be.

Some Earthforce fascist is telling the Night Watch that Earth Dome is going to start making arrests of disloyal people within two months. He's demanding the Night's Watch start higher and more invasive levels of investigations into and volume of reporting people. Here's Zack Allen's latest moral checkpoint to fail! And they want to know if any of their informants know where the captain is! So they've already sussed him being perhaps away? Or they dislike that he frequently keeps his whereabouts confidential?

It's pretty cute that Sheridan is an argumentative person, until faced with Lennier's gentle logic. Lennier is right, Sheridan should get some rest. But I also don't know how the Minbari sleep SO vertically. There's comfortable slant, and then there's a whole forty-five degree angle!!

Cute little bedtime confidences being shared here! On smaller than twin-sized 45 degree angled meditation tables. Sheridan's adorable story of his dad standing outside in the wee hours of the morning spraying the hose on the roof so John could get some rest the night before a big test still seems more comfortable and sleepier than these Minbari beds.

Hah! He's so blown away by the idea that you can ask a smart speaker to play rain sounds. But also, what an intimate little hand hold across the void between their uncomfortable tables. Delenn is gonna love human beds once she adapts to the cultural difference. Or at least I hope she does! Get a comfy night's sleep, girl.

John has been sharing personal tidbits with Delenn, but she tends to share about herself but describing what Minbari in general do. I have my fingers crossed for her opening up about her past to some degree. She is open, and does share what she currently feels with those she trusts, but she really does not talk about her past at all. iirc, at this point we've only seen her past in flashbacks, and not through her own words at all.

This is a highly productive fight Susan and Marcus are having. Let's honestly say our feelings at each other at a relatively high volume, but not really shout!

Dang, that Shadows ship is not fucking around. It absorbed an EarthDome person, went insane, and started destroying everything around it. Is there another isolated jump gate they can destroy it with?

The bootleg videos of this are gonna spark so many conspiracy theories, lol.

Lennier's getting sassy in the face of near-certain death by Jupiter-crumpling! But Sheridan has a stressful MO of only winning unwinnable fights by barely surviving an overwhelmingly destructive force.

They're being accosted by Sheridan's old ship, the Agamemnon! Is the White Star large enough to carry its own jumpgate? Lol, I'm perfectly in time with the plot being revealed. They're gonna try to escape with only a little explosion caused by them activating the jump engine. Is the Agamemnon going to follow them through somehow? Seems…not?

I like that Delenn and John are both suggesting batshit insane and unhingedly dangerous plans now. And that they support each other in this highly risky behavior! I wanna see what they goad each other to do. They really seem to bring out "limits? What the fuck is that?" sort of attitudes in each other.

Zack Allen's wobbly moral backbone continues to be bendy as fuck. And the Night's Watch leaders really want to know why Sheridan's quarters haven't been accessed in four days. He and Delenn should just claim he was at her place if it ever comes up.

Zack Allen just kinda sorta took a moral stand! He refused to snoop on Sheridan, and got quite a scolding for it. It's so pathetic I can't even say well done Mr Allen. It's the most he's done, and it's so piddling. You gotta start somewhere, though. Choose to be better, then keep choosing. I'll applaud him if he keeps choosing to be better instead of diving headfirst down the fascism slide.

Of course Earth is using the Shadows ship getting away from them and the White Star's incursion as an excuse for more fascism. They would use absolutely anything that happened as an excuse. I really hope there's a ton of videos of the EarthDome and Shadows events and the destruction afterwards floating around on the 24th century thepiratebay equivalent.

Dang! A lot happened this episode! It was really a huge escalation for them to take the White Star up against Earth Dome directly. So far they've had huge successes when going out in the White Star to do stuff, and I wonder if that means they're going to start taking some losses and failing at some of their missions. Things have been going a little too well for them lately. And that concerns me!

next!

[who-is-shades]

raz dnd 28

zen goes to try and calm senna and confuzes her with hot tea from the token. like wtf. "zen why do you keep making soup? none of us can cook." back to the group cause senna is just confused. SP is poking everyone with a stick lol. android yeets the stick away. SP yells fetch and goes to get it. oh no. wheatley runs over and hugs senna nice. senna is just so confused lol.

SP has the stick and is returning to android. android pretends to throw the stick and SP gets sad unable to find it. android tosses it away meanie. parsley found the stick nice. senna has to stop more fetch its time to go.

were gonna pass someplace important to robotgod i guess? under reconstruction for when zorbolt is gone. where everything started. the start of robots! way before even android. after 2 hours we encounter faint remaints of buildings, barely anything here. wheatley runs toward it and vanishes?! its a barrier its invisible in we go!

lots of robots building and fixing the ruins nice. wheatley is just saying hi to everyone but their too busy building to say anything. big old temple in the center. zen says this is where his god became god basically. senna asks why it fell into ruin. it came under attack by the noble embers, rude of them. then he came upon novis and made it his new home. "it mustve been hard to leave his home a second time." wheatley says god looks like a weird guy with a beard lol.

robotgod was a mortal man once. very specific criteria need to be in place to become a god. 'wonder if thats what zorbolt wanted to do.' 'maybe he got closer than we feared.' senna asks if god was pursuing godhood but zen says it was just something that happaned, the world chose him. some gods are concepts. like sennas goddess of hope! teya asks when it stops being a cult and turns into a religion. is it a cult of the god is real? teya says its a numbers game isnt it? if a god runs out of followers they fade away.

senna asks if he would just return to being mortal. wheatley hates that lol. zen has no idea but he knows no one can beat his god lol but he would probably fall into a coma. many many coma gods now. wheatley wants to wake them and thats what god is doing. wheatley says it seems lonely. teya asks if thats why we got those books. god wants to save as much religions as possible.

the land was once prosperous and the gods were in harmony. (then everything changed when the fire nation attacked?) teya summons nova and just sends them out to scout. senna just looks over the temple. wheatley asks what this town was called. Bastille. gods first workshop is around here probably. even android hasnt seen it so field trip! senna goes with them.

nova sees armored robots patrolling and keeping the area safe. she sees some of the bots go on alert and go in a specific direction. she follows.

ANYWAYS to the workshop. a circular mostly broken down ruins. some bot remaints on the ground. lots of decayed tools. some of the first bots. android says its underwhelming lol. wheatley wants to call god lol. gods just staring at the ruins. been a while. he tried to keep it maintained when he became a god. wheatley is so excited to see him lol. he says he mostly tinkered and made gadgets for the town then he got ambitious and eventually made a construct. very basic but got built up. wheatley became more than what he was designed to be. when he made a very advanced bot he became filled with power and he ascended.

MEANWHILE nova is still going. she has to stop and sees the bots gathering at the edge of town. parsley sees a bot with a sword running and he follows. nova sees the bots leave the barrier so its going back to teya to be normal then goes after. parsley sees the bots have formed a line at the barrier, making a wall. he sees a bot get thrown through the barrier all wrecked so he flies through to see. he avoids a crossbow bolt! theres a mob of people with a banner! a heavily armored one yells to wait for them to gather and then use a scroll.

teya sees parsley almost get shot. she messages senna and says shit is happening. senna relays and asks teya whats happening. parsley sticks his head back out to check lol. great they see hes not a robot. great their using the scroll. antimagic field?! 100 feet?! the bots just collapse. parsley feels like shit F. zen uses his token to find them but their offline. oh no. senna runs back toward the temple.

welp the mob is going toward parsley and teya. she picks up parsley and runs into town. she avoids a bolt. senna sees some bots have stopped moving. teya avoids another bolt. senna follows the trail of off bots. SP suddenly turns off oh no! android falls over! senna remembers and drags android away from the field. he wakes up thankfully. its up to her and wheatley!

its a big radias. we see teya running away! she dodges another bolt! wtf why is it the noble embers. senna is going to slow them while they get the fuck out. parsley yells at the mob to suck his nuts or something. senna nods at wheatley and they stand their ground. some still follow teya. roll initiative! teya avoids a bolt but it shoots parsley in the wing wtf.

also teya forgot she has counterspell dammit

senna and wheatley keep being stabbed lol. we kill 1 guy!

cutting back to teya. they see android and zen! android pulls out his rifle and snipes one in the head. they get out of the circle! she puts parsley on the ground and stands in front of him and begins casting! roll initiative!

they keep going back n forth in the antimagic field the cowards. androids got a gun so like hes fine. teyas dumping out skeletons. parsley is just trying to stand lol. zen is flipping people behind him. the skeletons kill one nice.

back to group 1! killed one nice but we keep being stabbed.

back to group 2! more stabbings for teya! android kills another dude nice.

group 1! wheatleys gun is our savior i swear.

group 2! teya stop getting stabbed, androids running the shooting range. the last guy runs to parsley and takes him hostage! parsley just taunts him so he slices his wing the dick! teya apologizes to parsley for what shes about to do, what? she casts firebolt on parsley?! the cultist freaks out and androids snipes him in the head. teya is trying to put the fire out and sobbing lol. used his greator potions. his wings are still fucked. zen says god is sending something to fix this and some bots teleport in with machines and it shoots a beam and reduces the antimagic field! some of the bots that got shut off get up.

group 1! wheatley stop being stabbed. we got magic back yay! senna instantly deals 42 necrotic magic by grabbing a guy lol. wheatley uh missed oh well. great senna gets charmed wtf. shes walking away. wheatley lunges at who charmed senna and shocks his head. but some asshole uses counterspell.

group 2! senna fucking walks past them. she stops, starts swearing and starts rushing back. teya and android follow. wheatley is getting his shit kicked in. and now hes frightened wtf and runs away. we see him run past us. teya yeets circle of death at the fleeing cultists. they got away tho fuckers. one tries to circle of death us in return. fuck.

time to go get wheatley. he turns around and starts blasting lol he didnt realize it was us lol. senna searches the dead guy for info and just gets the dagger. time to get back. wheatley is very serious about getting a counter charm.

we get back to parsley and senna and wheatley are fucking horrified and go to heal him. healing didnt work. also unable to heal teya. fuck. she clenches her fists and starts looting the other dead cultists for info. zen is going to try and patch parsleys wing to keep it attached. parsley says fuck off dont touch. he says they cant fix it. senna messages teya and asks if spingledorf can fix it. now theres an argument. wheatley is fretting over him.

parsley tries to stand and each movement moves the broken wings and it hurts like hell. senna goes over and suggests someone in the feywilds that might help. he refuses to make eye contact. senna keeps pressuring him. he really doesnt wanna go back there. senna asks if he would rather be a clipped bird the rest of his life?

senna turns to zen and asks if his god could find a feywild portal for us. it might take a while. senna asks if sunnie might know. there was one near their old home but she doesnt know if he will. senna kneels down and asks parsley to let her stabilize his wings. he fucking stays quiet. senna turns to zen and asks for a medical box shes gonna try and stabilize his wing. she stabilizes it good glad he let her.

yep theres a portal there. zen asks how far off the path it is and wheatley snaps that parsley cant fight like this. teya says if god wont teleport us were asking spingledorf. god suddenly levels us up wtf. god allows it and teleports us! cliffhanger!

[mogwaei]

I would like the director's cut of Yin's funky little sidetrip in the Fade during HTLA. Please and thank? 💕

Oooo an olde chapter!! "Chapter 60: Oath to Order" That's a weird one. Okay I shall break it down below a cut! 💚

Let's seeee....well, as you well know, the Nightmare's realm/lair was meant to expose everyone's fears. Yin has a lot of fears lol

So kind of a recap: the poor boyo comes to in the very same dungeon as he woke up at the beginning of Inquisition. But there's someone with him - deep of voice and speaking Antivan, though it becomes clear to Yin that it is not the stranger's native tongue. This is intentionally meant to confuse you - who is speaking? Nightmare...or the other entity from the beginning? Regardless of its identity, there is a very meticulous exchange between the Inquisitor and the Presence. It's trying to get something from Yin, but as it goes with spirits and mortals, both parties must be consenting. For an ancient entity deceiving mortals, this should be no issue.

And it isn't. It gets what it wants almost right away, throwing a red herring later in the conversation. It's so stupid and so simple,

"Allow me to pay you a small kindness. May I help you?"

I liked the idea of it latching onto Yin like this, a seemingly harmless gesture to literally help him sit up. The rest of what follows is just...this entity playing with him because it has already gotten its in.

“I could help you.” < now it's just mocking Yin. Lol gotcha silly elf.

❗[[SPOILERS(?)]]❗: Very quickly it begins to exert its influence on Yin's spirit, searching for seeds of weakness within where it can begin nurturing them. This would be Yin's anger, his fear, and other strong emotions. It's not the strongest influence, it's subtle because this creature is clever and ancient, and it's enough to set Yin on the deteriorating path seen thereafter.

You might wonder why this thing acts like it wants to help him but then proceeds to torment him. Stay tuned 😂

I won't spoil too much more yet, because we're actually going to dissect an aspect of Yin's nightmare in a future chapter (I stg it's mostly all connected, I just take forever to post stuff).

Anyway, whatever this thing is, Nightmare or other, I hope it's becoming a little clearer that this thing is/was searching for something.

But back to Yin's "nightmare":

This scene was a patchwork of timelines, so it's a bit all over the place. Yin slips into thinking that it has already been many years since the defeat of Corypheus. Since he has no reason to suspect a certain ancient rebel to appear, Fen'Harel's return is lacking in this vision. In this world, things got better briefly in the world....and then I tried to imply that Yin got power hungry and fell into a deep delusion that everything he did was for the betterment of the world. A classic tyrant take, really. Yin became the monster, failed everyone he loved, etc. The most important part was really just the beginning of this chapter with Yin vs the Presence :3

Useless sidenotes:

Originally, this scene had nothing to do with a dungeon or Yin being tried as a corrupt leader. In the first scene (draft?) I wrote, it starts out from Yin's pov. He is riding a hart toward a lush forest beside Dorian who is dressed in beautiful robes that are a fusion of Tevinter and Dalish. Yin is nervous, but happier than he's ever been. It changes shortly to Maordrid's pov as she and Solas pursue to save him.

In the next scene, they are walking through a forest, slowly forgetting their present and gaining memories of a much brighter world. They were just coming off of an expedition (can't remember what they were doing) but Solas carries a filthy bottle. Filthy, but it turns out it's actually a rare and expensive wine. He offhandedly laments that this is a paltry gift for their dear friend while Maordrid said something about having lost the other gifts in a cave-in or...robbed? and that Yin will simply be happy they made it for once.

Anyway, turns out they're going to celebrate Yin and Dorian's wedding with the Lavellan clan! 🌸🌼🏵 The illusion over Maordrid's mind is only disturbed when Solas expresses affection (this is prior to the romance) and she's like...wait. And goes through this whole conflict of realising feelings, fighting them, etc. Solas is just so pretty when he's happy. But lol this is the Nightmare realm! I can't remember all the details, except that the clan comes under attack and it's a horrendous bloodbath. There would have been a pov switch back to Yin during this where he still encounters the Presence in the woods (during the slaughter) and probably a Green Knight type of exchange between the two. D:

The reason this didn't stick is because I was writing in Scrivener at the time and the bitche crashed on me, corrupted the file, and I lost the whole thing. What was initially a very long (I think 10k) chapter about a wedding with some t e n s i o n between Mao and Solas was then cut down to the 2,500 words that it is now because I lost the motivation 💀

Thank you so much for asking me about this my dear! Sorry you happened to pick a long-winded one 😂 I figured since you'll probably be one of the only (if the only) people to ask, I'd give you a big director's cut lol💚🍄🌻

[promptsinpanem]

From the Ashes We Rise

Summary: (AU) In a world where powerful deities reside in the heavens of Panem above, a young demigoddess named Katniss, possessing the gift of fire, struggles to find her way. As daughter of the benevolent nature god, Katniss accepts her rightful place in the heavens; however, she’s inexplicably drawn to the mortal world, especially to a golden-haired baker’s boy. When everything is turned upside down and brother turns on brother, Katniss must make an important choice and fight for what she believes in. Will she be able to protect her precious boy with the bread in the process?

Rating: T 

Prompt: R2D4: Everlark through the Ages (Ancient Greece)/R6D1: Peeta’s Paintbox (Red)  

Author’s Note: I’ve been wanting to write this fic for a very long time. Thanks, promptsinpanem, for giving me the opportunity! I’m so thrilled to be participating in PiP for the very first time! Thanks to daydreamsandcaffeine for her help with the title! 

***** Katniss 

My eyes flutter open as I wake, feeling far less rested than normal. My immortal body doesn’t require much, neither food (only the special nectar of the gods) nor sleep to sustain itself; however, nights like last night always leave me feeling ill at ease, as if I’m crawling out of my skin.  

I had that dream again. I dreamed of the boy, and the fire…  

I wonder about him sometimes‒Is he safe? Is he eating enough?‒although, I refuse to look in on him. He could be dead for all I know (I hope not), but I paid the price for my foolishness years ago and have vowed never to see him again. 

At least, not during the waking hours.  

Briefly, I ponder asking Morpheus for a potent sleep syrup that’ll send me into the deepest, dreamless state of sleep. Perhaps he would do a trade. 

I decide to keep it in mind. 

With a yawn, I raise my arms above my head and emerge from my fluffy cocoon of pillows and blankets. The large bed is to my liking as is my new place in Victor’s Village. Most of the young gods and goddesses live here, and the dwellings are more than adequate, if not as magnificent and specially customized as the palaces of the major deities. I could have remained with my father, of course, who despite being the present ruler of the gods, has a modest, charming abode rather than a grandiose palace, but I felt it was time to strike out on my own. 

I get out of bed and pad over to my gilded full-length mirror. I stand there, naked, looking at myself. I sleep in the nude sometimes; it’s relaxing and freeing, and I like to imagine I’m floating in a secluded stream. It’s been so long since I’ve been in the mortal world and seen a real stream. Staring at my reflection, I give myself a once-over, then turn to the side and crane my neck to get a better look at the jagged mark between my shoulder blades. Where the beam fell on me, right between where my wings protrude. It still hasn’t faded. I couldn’t believe it even left a mark, though my powers were weakened then, and I was young. 

I’m older now, and much stronger. Nothing like that will ever happen again. I won’t let it. 

As I’m observing myself, I hear a throaty giggle/cackle, and in a burst of black and red dust, she appears behind me.  

“Hey!” I exclaim, hastening to cover myself with a sheet. I hate how she just pops into my chambers unannounced. She doesn’t have an ounce of respect for anyone’s privacy. “Do you mind?” I twirl my finger, and the sheet whips around my body, wrapping tightly and knotting at the top.  

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” the Goddess of Love titters. Well, of course. She prances around naked all the time. But I’m far more modest than her, even if I do enjoy sleeping naked sometimes. 

I turn my head slightly. Although she does regularly flaunt her nakedness, especially when she can get a reaction from someone, she’s dressed today, in her typical all-white attire, and her white-blonde hair is in its usual pixie cut. She’s gone to my bed and is floating just barely above the edge of it. She crosses one leg over the other and cocks her head to the side. “You’ve developed,” she remarks, and I roll my eyes at her in the mirror. “You’re a full-fledged adult now, aren’t you?”

“Jo,” I huff, not bothering to thank her for the rare compliment‒or what I assume was one; maybe she was only mocking me. Coldly, I stare at her reflection in the mirror. “What do you want?” 

“My, how rude,” she snarks. “And you address the Goddess of Love so casually?”  

“How would you have me greet you?” I challenge. 

“Ohh, how about Oh Glorious One or Most Majestic Supreme Being…” She tosses out several more overblown honorifics, and I barely refrain from gagging. 

“Is your ego really so big, Johanna?” I say. 

She smirks at me.  

“Fine.” I give, only in order to get her to go away. “You are looking well today… Oh Beauteous Goddess.” I somehow manage to say it with a straight face and without choking on any of the words. 

Johanna approaches me then. She pats my head like a dog and tells me, “Good little demigoddess.” 

I jerk my head away and scowl. 

I’d often wondered how a goddess like Johanna ever came to earn the title of Goddess of Love, and she explained it to me before. She’d said that there are many different types of love, which she understands well but is also able to remain detached from. And then she’d complained about being beaten out for the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare. 

“Jo, was there something you needed?” I ask impatiently. 

“Why the rush? You’re not even dressed yet.” 

I am in a rush, actually. 

“I have errands,” I say. For one, I’m eager to visit the forge for a repair to my bow and new arrows, and I’m about three seconds away from popping out on her, no matter how angry it might make her. 

“Ah, then you’d better put something on, hadn’t you?” she says. “I was only popping in to say hello, anyway.”   

Jo is in an exceptionally good mood today, and I don’t even want to imagine why. Most likely, she did something particularly wicked, or naughty.  

As I’m pushing the thought from my mind, she waves a hand. In an instant, my sheet vanishes and is replaced by a flame red dress with a sheer black underlay, giving the appearance of coals in a fire. With a snap of her finger the dress appears to ignite, sizzling and crackling against my skin. I feel nothing, of course. 

“What do you think?” She places her hands upon her slender hips, and I look down to observe the dress. 

“It’s…nice,” I say, taking a closer look in the mirror. The dress gives the illusion that I’m on fire‒kind of unnecessary, of course, considering I command the substance and can easily ignite myself for real at any time, but it is a pretty dress. She bids me to twirl, but I ignore her. 

I remind her that I need to be off, and this time, she doesn’t fight me. I thank her for the dress and disappear. 

***** I get to the forge, and fortunately, Thresh has no other pressing business, so he's able to quickly repair my weapon and whip up a fresh batch of arrows for me. Not that I mind watching him work; he's so methodical, and he doesn't chitchat much. Usually, he only gives me a hello and goodbye greeting, but today, he mentions that my Uncle Snow was just here. 

That's odd.  ***** Once my weapon is done I go to my private woodland retreat to shoot. It’s not a real woods but a hologram, one generated by godly magic, my father's, to be precise. It's lovely, but I wish I could go to Earth to hunt for real. 

After, I decide pay my uncle a visit. I'm curious about why he was at the forge. I know where to search for him, and naturally, he’s in the first place I look–the Arena. 

Uncle Snow greatly enjoys the Arena, which is a large coliseum where the gods, typically the ‘lesser’ gods, challenge one another for sport and accolades, and of course, for the entertainment of the greater gods. It’s one of his favorite pastimes to watch the other gods fight and to place his bets. Sometimes ferocious beasts are conjured as well‒lions, tigers, or occasionally, specially modified creations. And then there are the chariot races, too. 

“Ah, Katniss,” my uncle greets me the moment I materialize in the seat next to him. His snakelike eyes scan me. “You look lovely in red, my dear.” 

My eyes flicker down to my new dress; I can hear the flames crackling against my skin. It is beautiful, but a bit loud, literally. 

“Jo made me wear it,” I say.   

My uncle nods. “Well, it suits you. Although,” he smirks, “you really shouldn’t let the Goddess of Love push you around, my dear.” 

“I don’t!” I protest. “She just…sort of does what she wants.” 

“That she does,” my uncle agrees. 

We watch a battle together, which ends in a stalemate. That happens a lot. 

"Not much sport in it, is there?" Uncle Snow comments. I refrain from asking if it's so boring, then why does he come so often. “Gods fighting other gods..." 

"What would you suggest, Uncle?" 

Uncle Snow thinks on this a moment, but he doesn't answer me. 

“There are the wagers," I offer. "And I hear that when Cato won his fight he made Marvel be his servant for the day. That's kind of...interesting." 

My uncle sneers. “Yes, of course, the accolades and such are all well and good; however, there’s no sense of urgency when death is not on the line. Not like when the mortals battle." He pauses. "Wouldn’t that be something..." 

I almost laugh. 

"Mortals, Uncle?" He wants to bring mortals to the Arena to fight? It'd be a bloodbath. “That’s ridiculous. Not only would a mortal never stand a chance against a god, but it’s impossible to bring a mortal to the mountain." 

“Oh, I assure you, nothing is impossible, my darling.” 

I consider this. 

"Uncle Snow," I begin. "If I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?" 

"Why, of course, my dear. In fact, let’s make a pact right now, shall we?” Hesitantly, I nod. “Let’s agree never to lie to each other.” 

This seems foolish‒What reason do my uncle or I have to lie to one another, anyway?‒but I agree. 

“We’ll do as the mortals do.” He looks at me expectantly, and I’m confused. “Shake on it,” he says, extending his hand. I stare down at it. 

“Now, you put your hand in mine,” he explains patiently, and I slide my palm against his and feel him squeeze my hand. 

“So, then, now that we have our pact, tell me,” Uncle Snow takes a sip from his cup, “what do you really think of Cato?” 

“I think he’s vile,” I answer without pause, and my uncle chuckles. “He brought up my scar,” I say. 

“How rude of him,” my uncle remarks, then sighs. “However, it is your own fault your lovely skin was marred forever, niece. Not even Gloss was able to remove the mark.” 

“I know,” I grumble. “But…he would have died.” 

“Such is mortality, Katniss,” he says without a shred of compassion. “Mortals are not long for this world. It isn’t their world, after all; it’s ours. We’re merely allowing them to live in it. Death will come for the boy eventually.” 

Not on my watch, I think. And I don’t know where that came from. Since when am I the boy’s protector? And besides, my uncle is right; eventually, old age will catch up with him, and it’s not like I can chase him into the Underworld…

I digress, and I'm going to question my uncle about the forge, but another fight is about to begin. This one causes Uncle Snow to shift in his seat. 

“Oh, you’re in for a real treat, my darling," he says. "This is a special event. The God of the Sea versus the God of War.”

[bokettochild]

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

Angst! My Beloved!

Not a lot of whump here, but I put Wild through the wringer!!! Lots of BotW2 ideas and concepts here, but nothing really cannon.

Also, disclaimer: I think Flora is a wonderful person, a bit harsh and sometimes unkind, but I feel for her a lot. The prompt submitted to me however asked for her as an ass, so that's what's here, for angst reasons. THIS IS NOT HOW I PLAN ON WRITING HER NORMALLY!!!

When Wild left the Chain behind in the woods, it was with a soft smile and a hesitant wave of his right hand. It was with a gentle ‘See y’all later’ that made Warriors shake his head with a sigh while Twilight offered a wobbly grin.

He would join them again, he knew that. After all, Hylia wouldn’t have chosen him to go with them in the first place if he was only supposed to leave before they’d even really started to know what it was that they were meant to be doing.

He’d see them again, and he’d fall back into a routine with all of them, sparring with Warriors and teaching Hyrule to cook and shield surfing with Wind and learning to carve from Sky. He’d go back to sewing with Legend, to exploring with Hyrule, to learning the Ocarina with Time and teasing Twilight about his terrible singing. He could work with Four on the Sheikah Slate and experimenting with different plants he’d gathered. He would see them again, and he’d go back to being busy and smiling nearly every day.

For the time being however, he had to square his shoulders and harden his jaw as he stepped through the swirl of black that had repulsed all the others every time they tried to enter. He had to tame his mind and wild spirit and come to stand before the Princess of Hyrule in all of her stern glory and receive the scolding he was due for wandering off without permission.

He never had time to question what she meant by being gone for ‘two whole weeks’ before she was marching off towards the labs and explaining that there was a new task for them to complete.

Such a task was one that left in his mind no time for thoughts of his brothers save on the lonely nights in the sky when the islands above the clouds were silent save for the birds about him that reminded him of Sky, or when he ran across the forests and was reminded of the wolf that once ran at his side. And, alright, the tiny people in the grass and the fountains reminded him of Four and Hyrule. When the wind sang strong in his ears as he dove towards the earth from the highest places in the sky, he couldn’t help but envision a small hero whose laughter danced like the sea and who’s fingers mastered the currents of wind and sea both.

It was a lonely quest, just like his last before it, but somehow it was more painfully so, now that he knew what it was to have brothers at his side to catch a monster’s blade when he was too slow or to help him patch himself up afterwards. It was quiet when the Princess and he sat around the fires as night, she studying him as he sat still and stonelike as she worked.

The hand that had waved goodbye to his brothers now flickered green and ethereal in the night shades, iron bands clinging to the wisping appendage and acting as a bond to hold its form together. It was nothing like what he’d known or studied in the Sheikah technology, or even what he’d seen from the many worlds he’d traveled with the other, and it earned many a stare and twist of the lips from those he met and traded with during his journey.

The arm was only the first of many changes, it’s power seeping through his body and altering him before he even knew what was happening. He’d hated it at first, disliking how it changed him, made his eyes glow and his hair touch with the same ethereal shades, red bleeding through at the roots and earning him even more wary looks.

Ganon, in all his terrifying power, had been a surprising comfort during the quest, an aid to discovering his new abilities and training them to bend to his own will. The Princess had been wary of their relationship, but had accepted it when she saw what he learned to do, and every evening she would require a report of his newfound skills, as well as the occasional demonstration or examination.

It all came to an end both too soon and not soon enough.

Ganon was gone, as if he’d never been there at all, and the Princess was as cold as ever even after their second adventure at each other's sides. And now there was no use for the abilities that had fused to his soul like the arm had to his flesh. He’d asked Purah if there was something that could be done to restore his body to its normal Hylian state, without the glowing limb that earned his only stares and insults from the village people, but the Princess had overheard it and declared that such a thing should not even be attempted.

“You don’t understand, Link. Don’t be foolish! We have here a scientific marvel ready for our investigation and exploration and you want to get rid of it just because it looks odd?”

He’s shuffled his feet slowly, resisting the impulse to rub at his chest where the Hylian part of him ended and the eldritch horror began. “I can’t live like  Hylian anymore.”

“Because you aren’t one!” Her Highness rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Sir Knight, after everything I certainly doubt that Hylian even applies to you anymore! Hylians do not possess the qualities that you now do, and they most certainly do not travel through stone or time or any other such thing at will. Think would you! You’re something else entirely, and I intend to find out what that is!”

Purah had frowned at that, eyes full of sorrow as they met his own with an apologetic sigh. But there was nothing the de-aged scientist could really say against the royal Sovreign of Hyrule, not as a Sheikah sworn to the service of the royal family. The woman/girl had offered him a sympathetic pat on the head later after climbing up to reach high enough to do so, as well as a few dumplings that Paya had sent on her grandmother’s behalf the day before. It was a welcome gesture, but amounted to so little on the grand scale of life. Not when so many others he had once called his friends had so blatantly rejected the mere sight of him.

Bolson and the other carpenters shied away from him with harsh whispers as they spat insults across the distance.

‘Half-blood’.

‘Gerudo Bastard’.

‘Freak’.

‘Demon’.

There were favorite insults spread from stable to stable and up and coming village to up and coming town and slowly all of Hyrule knew of the monster that had once been the hero. Gossip abounded, and he couldn’t even turn to shield his face with his hood without drawing attention to his arm.

It was only the koroks that welcomed him, themselves all too accustomed to the strange and ethereal. Them and the blupees.

Maybe it was the knowledge of how it felt to be shot at for his oddness that allowed him to ease into the graces of the flighty animals. And maybe it was his lonely heart crying for comfort, but when nestled in their midst, it almost reminded him of how it felt to be hugged by the salty veteran, on the rare occasional that the pink-haired hero had let down his guard.

The fairy’s tangled themselves in his hair and the blupees gathered at his feet, koroks dancing around him and flying to his side as if he was some sort of forest god, but the strange rise of his spirits in their presence shattered the instant a traveler caught sight of him.

Arrows and fire, once his favorite of weapons, were turned against him as words in every language of the New Hyrule had burst from the mouths of its people, and like his namesake, he ran before them, darting through the forest and fading in amidst the trees, hiding, incorporeal and translucent within the halls of the forest as those he’d once seen as allies pushed him away.

He’d begged the new Queen for aid, for relief or even just a word to the people that he wasn’t the evil they had come to think he was, but she only waved him aside with a purse of her lips. “You are not meant to be here without first asking.” The Child of Hylia declared, eyes as cold as the Shrine’s waters themself. “And why should I make a declaration on behalf of a man who refuses to even speak to me properly? You come groveling like a worm, yet for years it was I who you ignored. See how it feels, Sir Hero, to be the one left helpless at the hands of the country. Know what it is to be scorned by those who you thought would love you.”

He’d barely made it out of the window before the trainee guards of the newly repaired Hyrule Castle had caught him and Queen Zelda Diana Hyrule had stared after him with eyes colder than Hebra’s tallest peaks.

It was the Father Tree -the Deku Tree as the Queen had called it, but the koroks laughed at him for using the name, so he’d adjusted in kind- who suggested that he hide the changes, and he’d begun to wander Hyrule as much as possible to find the materials he would have needed.

The Queen still required his presence regularly so she could inspect him; her love of science no ways tainted as to stop her from ordering him to appear regularly, as there was now no need or safety in his acting as her guard. The Queen sought her people’s respect, and to employ such a being as himself, not Hylian and not quite mortal, would be to spark fear in the people. Indeed, when he skirted villages, he would wince at word of ‘the queen’s monster’ as gossip was traded. Those who didn’t see him themselves knew him as a beast of feral nature who lived amid the lost woods and destroyed any who came close.

“A specter that glows with the light of the shrines.” They would tell each other over campfires. “It has eyes like a ghost, empty and lost, with no care for humanity or Hylia’s chosen. They say it was once the Hero of this world, but he died ages ago.”

“I heard it’s the body, possessed by a being beyond this realm, a monster escaped from the edges of reality that tried to hide in our midst but corrupted it’s host so that it only scares away others, leaving it roam the earth in a shattered body. If you get too close to it though, it’ll take your instead.”

He’d stayed away from towns after that.

The blupees and koroks had been happy to help him to find what he needed to hide among the Hylians should he wish though, and two in particular guided him; the korok swinging little twigs like they were batons and humming swinging little shanties as it hopped along the path, the blupee snorting softly and nipping at his heels when he wandered too far, unnatural purple eyes staring up at him with something that was fondness and a reprimand all at once, and in their care he’d made his way across the land of Hyrule to find what would be needed to return to his once life.

The fairies and their Great cousins had been welcome help, and in time, he’d been able to walk amid the populace of Hyrule like any other, as long as he kept a long cloak about him and his hair pulled back to hide where the roots would begin showing again in gold and ethereal blue.

Once Hyrule had talked about needing to hide in his world, about the curse that followed him and made the Hylian people afraid. He’d thought it bizarre and ridiculous of the people at the time, but now he understood what it was to live it.

When the portal opened beneath his feet the day that the Queen had reprimanded him for concealing and potentially damaging the strange limb, startling the Skeikah scientists and Queen both, he’d nearly cried tears of relief.

He was going away, somewhere where he wasn’t a science project and where, unless they traveled to his world’s future, no one would know how much he had changed. His copy of the slate had enough hair dye to last him a few months, and he was certain he could make more over time, and as long as he continued wearing the tunics and gloves the fairies had helped him to adjust to hide the glow the others would probably never catch on. Or well, he could extend it anyway.

His brothers greeted him with open arms and teary eyes, and in a strange parallel to his adventure, he found himself thinking of blupees when Legend had curled against him, stiff and cold on the outside, but with fingers that clutched his tunic just a bit too tight to really be reluctant. And Four, Hyrule and Wind’s exuberant hugs and chatter brought to mind tiny forest people and koroks with twigs for batons.

It was good to be home.

It was good to cook for other people again, and they were glad to have him cook for them, even if his fondness for both Gerudo spiced dishes and fae like sweet things had increased exponentially during his newest adventure. It was good to fight at their sides, even if it was strange to once again have to take others into account before he could select a weapon. It was good to sit around a fire and talk with the others too, but that was perhaps the hardest one; it had been ages since he’d had a proper two-way conversation with anything other than a tree or a korok, and neither of those was good at either staying awake or staying focused for very long.

There were some harder things to adjust to though. Fire, for one. Unlike before when he’d have been happy to burn an enemy camp to the ground, now he was wary of using faming weapons or spreading heat further than necessary. The same went for hunting; he couldn’t bring himself to shoot an animal unless it attacked first or they needed the meat it would provide, and even then, he felt a bit bad for doing so. Is this what Twilight had felt like? Is this why the rancher never liked hunting? Because he too knew what it was like to be on the other end of the bow?

But the hardest thing by far to readjust to was his name.

‘Wild’ they had called him again, and after months of ‘the wild one’, ‘wild beast’, ‘monster’ and every other insult, slur or title that had been used on him, it made him flinch ever so slightly at the words. And unlike the other things where his brothers dismissed it as a change caused by his adventure or an increase of maturity, it was something that the others seemed to either not notice or to excuse as situational.

He had adapted though, learned to keep a smile on his face where blankness had once been required in his knightly duties, and the more he wore the mask the easier it was to put on again.

He’d reveled in traveling across time again, in dancing through battles and exploring the world without the Queen reprimanding him in her cold tones to stop wandering off. He’d pushed himself to learn more music in the last adventure, and even if his experience was more with what few instruments Ganon had had time to help him learn, he’d enjoyed sitting down with the others and borrowing one or another instrument to play a tune and sometimes he even got to sing.

He fell to comfortably into his role though, even with the changes, and he hadn’t even noticed when they’d come back to his world. To be fair, it was different in the daytime, and Hyrule had changed so much in the absence of her hero as he hid himself away from the eyes of civilization. Towns and roads had sprung up where there had only been fields before, and the Guardians that had littered the land had all been dug up and hauled to the castle to be either restored or destroyed by the Sheikah, depending on what Queen Zelda decided after she looked at them herself. The world was so different to him, so unlike that which he knew, that he’d failed to keep as alert as he ought to have been when he wandered about an open market with the others, laughing and chattering away with the other younger ones as Time and Legend herded them towards the needed stalls.

It was a traveler that was his downfall, a man who’d seen the Monster Hero and had been among the first to discover the disguise he wore.

No questions were asked when the word spread, and Wild hadn’t caught on to the whispers until a stone had struck his cheek and he was stumbling forwards on the path.

“Wild!” Twilight was at his side in a minute, Time right after him as Legend launched a barrage of insults at the guilty party who’d thrown the thing.

“’m fine.” He was careful to wipe the blood away with his cloak, holding the fabric to the wound to prevent bluish blood seeping down his face and exposing him to his brothers. He wanted to keep them as long as possible and proving himself to be a monster, not even Hylian, would surely have them turning their backs on him.

“Get away from him!” A woman scolded, grabbing ahold of two of the younger heroes while several other shoppers had like ways grabbed Legend and Sky. “Are you dears alright? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Freaking what?” Legend shrieked. “Who’s the injured party here?”

“I’d avoid that thing, son.” A man huffed through a frankly walrus like mustache, eyes hard as they trailed to where Wild stood, cloak still pressed to his cheek as he attempted to wave off a fussing Twilight and Time. “It’s not natural. Sure, it looks like a normal Hylian, but that’s just an effective ruse.”

Another villager nodded. “It’s one of the Calamity’s puppets, a Gerudo-Bastard set on destroying the kingdom!”

“He’s the freaking hero!” Legend shrieked, barely being held back by a steely eyed Sky. “He saved all your freaking asses and all you can do is insult his flipping guts? Who’s the-”

“Enough.” There were few times that Sky’s voice reached levels worse than Twilight’s growls, but the stern command, regal and firm, froze all present as the man stiffened with a cold nod towards the villagers. “I see we are unwelcome here, and with that being the case it would be wise to spend our rupees elsewhere. Legend,” A tug to the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s join the others and be out of their hair. If they cannot be welcoming and kind to our brother than they will not receive our patronage.” And like a swan gathering it’s cygnets, Sky swept down the street, cape fluttering as he ushered the rest of them out of the town and back to the safety of the wilds. The village stared after them with wide eyes, as if they’d just been judged by a breathing god.

The stiffness in Sky’s shoulders faded as they neared the edge of the forest, and instantly the Chosen Hero been tutting over Wild, gently but firmly prying his hand away from his face with a kind smile that almost set Wild at ease. Almost.

“It’s fine, it’s just a scrape.”

“Still.” Sky crooned softly. “I’d rather we clean it up now and make sure it’s nothing worse than let it sit and get infected later.”

And though he’d tried to fight, his single Hylian hand was no match for the firm grip of the Skyloftian, and within minutes his face was exposed to the shocked faces and flickering eyes of his brothers.

“It’s blue...” Wind breathed as Hyrule darted forwards, hands already glowing softly only for them to stutter to a stop over Wild’s skin.

“It’s... Wild, why is your blood- why is-” The healer’s eyes had flickered golden for a moment, wide as they stared up at him. “What happened to you-”

“What the freak!” Legend had startled, blinking in surprise as he stared. “Your eyes are glowing!”

Shit! The healing properties of the arm had already taken affect and it was making everything act up all weird! He shot a glance down at his arm, one hand raising to tangle in the long hair he couldn’t even see at the moment, praying silently beneath his breath that nothing was showing through. It wasn’t, but that didn’t change how Hyrule had come to fixate on his right arm, or how the healer's fingers hovered over it sparking and eyes twinkling as he whispered softly under his breath.

“Wild.” Time had sighed. “I think this one is going to need an explanation.”

All the breath left his lung in instants.

He’d panicked to say the least and Time had eventually shooed the others away to make camp as the eldest hero had sat at his side, waiting silently for him to regulate his breathing. Touch was too much right now, and any attempts from the others to ease him down or help him level out his breathes had only made him panic more. But when at last his blue eyes blinked back to clarity it was to see Time sitting at his side, a gentle tune wafting from the Ocarina at his lips.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, trying his hardest not to startle Time or otherwise make the situation worse. “I should have said something, I know. I just- missed being Wild and I wanted to come back and be normal and I didn’t want to-”

“It’s alright.” Time’s voice rumbled softly, a single blue eye turning to him with a pained look, even as the man offered him a hint of a smile. “None of us talk about our adventures either.”

“Yes, but you’re people.” He sighed, rubbing the fingers of his glove together. “You’re allowed to choose things.”

There was pain in Time’s voice when their leader answered. “And you’re not?”

“I’m not Hylia anymore.” He whispered. “I don’t count.”

“You count to us.”

“That’s because you don’t know.”

Time shifted, turning to face him fully as the ocarina was set firmly in the grass. “That’s because you’re family and we care. Wild, I don’t care if Demise himself named you the king of the dead, you’re still my kid and Nayru knows I’m not going to let you go without a fight. If that means fighting you, alright, but you’d best better believe that no amount of physical or mental changes will break the bonds we all have with you.”

Something, something damaged and crushed and stitched up and torn open again clenched inside of him, tears pricking at his eyes as he stared up at Time’s royal blue gaze. “W-what?”

“You could be granted godhood, made a monster, I don’t care. You’re ours and you’ll have to deal with that.” Time smiled, warm even with the pain in his eyes as he looked down at him. “So how about you start again, maybe with the facts rather than the insults. Or,” Time softened, brows furrowing lightly. “If you want, we can just sit here and you can choose to talk about this later. We do need to know, so we can help you and keep you safe, but you don’t have to tell us right now. You can take some time to figure out what you want to say if you need.”

And, well, shoot him, but Time’s arms had always been a safe place and there was one thing he’d wanted more than anything since he had come back. Wild threw himself into his grand-mentor's arms with a soft sob, clutching tightly to the other, ignoring the armor and its sharp points and awkward shapes as he tried to hold back all the emotions swirling in his chest.

Time’s arms folding around him broke the floodgates though, and when the man’s hand had stroked through his shortened hair, he’d had to bury his face in Tim’s neck to muffle his sobs.

“There, there,” Time hummed softly, rocking slowly as he held the broken wild hero. “Let it out, little one. I have you, I’ve got you and I’m not letting anyone hurt you.”

[narutogwriting]

Naruto Characters + Nikita Gill Quotes

Kakashi: “Destruction was not what I intended for you. But this is what happens to all who follow in my wake.”

Naruto: “Show me the most damaged parts of your soul, and I will show you how it still shines like gold.”

Sasuke: “She found him, clutching his head, unable to stand the carnage within him, teeth clenched, close to screaming. She asked him why, why he couldn’t stop. And he lifted his head, eyes red, and said, ‘No one taught me how to stop the bloodshed, the clash of metals, the battle cries, and all the tragedy and the screaming.”

Sakura: “‘Aphrodite,’ I pleaded to the moon drenched night sky. “Tell me; if love is meant to heal, then why does it destroy those who choose it?’ From somewhere beyond the clouds, I heard the Goddess laugh. And I knew.”

Shikamaru: “Some of us prefer the lonely to the glittering, the shaded hoods of trees to the constant glare of burning ochre.”

Ino: “I wonder what I could have done with all of the time I wasted wondering if I was good enough, pretty enough to exist.”

Neji: “The universe created you for a reason, now go out there and find out what it is.”

Guy: “How to be strong: There are no rules. You are already strong. Even when you are crying. Even when you are at your lowest point. Even when you are falling apart. Your strength is in your survival. Your strength is within you always. And besides, didn’t anyone ever tell you that strength looks so different on us all?”

Lee: “You smell like such joy and warmth that a glimpse of you has the sun turning green with jealousy.”

Gaara: “How do you kill a monster? You look for the frightened child it once used to be. Then you find a way to set that child free.”

Temari: “The most dangerous girl is one that knows her own mind well, she carries too much deadly in her bones to be a distressed damsel, this is a girl who distresses demons instead.”

Tsunade: “She learned her alphabet from ghosts and heard bedtime stories from the decaying throats of the dead, and we all know what this kind of nurture does to a girl.”

Jiraiya: “Pain does kill you. It kills a version of you that you do not need anymore, to birth a more powerful you from its terrible flames.”

Iruka: “People can be so quiet about their pain, that you forget they are hurting. That is why it is so important to always be kind.”

Pein: “Why be afraid of the dark when you can simply become it.”

Itachi: “There is a wounding here. A winding, a weathering, my story has been twisted into something it has not. A litany of half-truths follow me wherever I go.”

Hidan: “When my faith came back to me, like the forgiving water of a river to the pebbles that it smooths by constant weather and wear, I asked myself, what happens to the Gods when their people forget how to know them? What happens to their fearsome might when the fervent belief fades? Do you think they are still powerful when they become less than a memory? Or do you think without the power of prayer everything that makes them immortal is nothing but a facade?”

Obito: “Does the night ever tire of the darkness? Does the sea ever tire of her own depths? Do the trees ever tire of their roots? Do mortals ever tire of looking for other mortals to call home?”

Madara: “Why is it that some people are bothered by so little and some are unshaken by the most terrible things?” “It is because some of us are lucky and have never seen monsters. And the rest of us have had to survive the monsters we have seen.”

[brocflowers]

Sang so loud, sang so clear.

Weak and tired, his sister’s slowly fading life in his hands, Adrian makes a choice.

word count: 4797.

Tags: blood magic, liberties taken with spirit healer lore, everybody lives/nobody dies, (this is not necessarily a kindness), familial dysfunction, warnings obviously for blood, self-injury, and what I'm going to call "mild gore" just to be very, very safe.

Title from Bird Song by Florence + the Machine.

[AO3]

-

“Wait.”

“Seeker, if you keep stopping me while I’m talking we’re going to be here all day-”

“What does Bethany’s recovery have to do with the fact that Hawke was arguing with his mother?” she asks, ignoring him.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes you did,” Maker, she wants to hurt him, “you said “of course, Leandra was still uneasy with him after what happened with Bethany back in Ferelden”. Why would Hawke saving his sister’s life make his mother uneasy?”

Varric’s jaw flexes. It’s subtle, barely perceptible, she almost misses it.

It was a slip of the tongue, that much is obvious. But it was not something untrue, spoken in error, it was something honest that he had not meant to say. And it clearly is not an issue of protecting Hawke’s privacy. Between the book and what he’s already told her, it’s clear that the man’s personal business is not something Varric is particularly shy about revealing.

No, he’s hiding something, actively. And it’s something much more than the details of a simple interpersonal squabble between a mother and her son. Cassandra fully intends to find out exactly what that something is.

Varric taps his fingers against the tabletop once, twice. He’s watching her closely, weighing his options. After a moment, he sighs, and Cassandra thinks she sees hesitance in his eyes for a moment before he slips back into his usual expression, a calculated smile, easy and roguish, unreadable. The transition is unnervingly smooth.

“You want to know? Because I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”

“I told you, I want to know everything.”

“Well then,” he says, reaching up to scratch at the stubble on his jaw, “we’re going to have to go back a little, all the way to Lothering.”

“I’m listening.”

She must sound too interested, because suddenly Varric looks too confident. He’s made a decision of some sort, one that Cassandra doesn’t believe she’ll be able to understand until she hears what he has to tell her.

“Alright,” he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table between them, “so Bethany is with her mother, and the ogre is coming-”

“And she rushed out,” Cassandra says, remembering this part of the retelling very clearly, “to protect Leandra.”

“Right. She rushed out to meet it, and it grabbed her right around the middle, lifted her high above its head before-”

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

Bethany’s body crunches when it hits the ground, and the sound is so loud, so sick and awful that it takes everything in Adrian not to just lean over and vomit when he hears it. The ogre releases her, leaving her limp on the ground, bloodied. The sight of it makes everything slow down, his hands go numb and he feels dizzy, as if he might faint.

Adrian has seen some horrible injuries in his life. Mortal wounds, festering flesh. He’s even seen violence, the broken bones and bruised, torn, bloody skin that it leaves behind. None of it has ever made him feel like this. Distantly, he wonders if this actually is the worst thing he’s ever seen, or if it just feels different because it’s his sister he’s watching it happen to.

Your sister, he thinks, charging towards the ogre with Carver and Aveline more on instinct than anything else. Your sister, Adrian. Your baby sister. What are you going to do now? You promised. You promised your dad you wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Adrian that’s your sister that’s Bethany your baby sister Bethany your-

His body is choosing how to move with no direction from his mind, taking cues from the other bodies around it while his thoughts remain static, locked in on one subject, a simple repeating refrain. He thinks that he might not have moved towards the ogre at all had he not seen the two warriors do so first. Might have just stood there utterly still, staring.

Fire and lightning leave his hands at intervals. He doesn’t feel them. He can’t. When he sees the magic collide with the ogre’s body, it doesn’t mean anything.

The thing falls quickly. Or at least it feels that way to him, simultaneously a few seconds and a lifetime. Carver has barely managed to pull his sword from its body when Adrian’s head starts working again, the fog finally clearing and letting him think well enough to choose how to move, and rushes immediately to Bethany’s side. Hopes that he isn’t too late.

Their mother is there already, but Adrian can barely see her, can’t comprehend her presence. He kneels at Bethany’s opposite side, sharp stones digging into his knees as he fumbles around for a pulse. He doesn’t feel one. He tells himself that it’s because he’s tired, because his hands are shaking. He tries again, fingers pressing to a different spot on her neck. The feeling of her limp muscles and unmoving body under his hands makes him feel sick all over again, but he pushes it down.

Nothing, still nothing. He tells himself that that can’t be right, that it’s there, that she has a pulse. That she must, that she has to. He’s just having a hard time finding it over the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, the sound of the horde in the distance, his mother shouting at him.

“This is your fault,” she says, tears streaming down her face, and he flinches. He can’t help it. “How could you let her run off like that? You were supposed to be protecting her, how could you-”

“Shut up.” He says, giving up on finding Bethany’s pulse point and shifting around so he can press his ear against her chest, try to find a heartbeat that way, “shut up, I can’t hear.”

It’s harsher than he meant to be, but he can’t really find it in himself to care. His mother ignores the request, continues to sob and shout at him. He really wishes she wouldn’t. Nothing she’s saying is false, but none of it is useful. It is his fault, he did fail her, but he doesn’t need his mother to tell him that. He’s said it to himself enough times already.

Adrian closes his eyes, tunes her out as best he can so that he can listen. He wonders if he should pray. You’re supposed to pray when you want something very badly and know it’s not likely at all that you’ll get it, right? And he wants his sister to be alive so very very badly.

He swallows, tries not to think about how unlikely it is. About the fact that he heard her bones break inside of her, saw her body hit the ground like wet blankets, no tension in any of her muscles. He just needs something, anything. A faint murmur that will let him justify using the last of his mana on trying to revive her. Anything, anything, anything at a-

There.

“What?” Leandra asks, her litany of accusations stopping dead at exactly the moment his eyes fly open, “What is it? Did you-”

“Move,” he says, scrambling back up onto his knees, pulling mana out of his center and into his hands, “you can’t help, I need you to leave.”

“Adrian if you don’t tell me what’s happening-”

Patience thin, he ignores her entirely and instead turns to Aveline, hovering uncertainly nearby.

“Get her out of here.”

Aveline responds to the order immediately, hurrying over to help Leandra up and guide her away. It’s far more gentle than he would’ve been, and much more understanding. As unhappy as he is that Aveline and Ser Wesley are here at all, he is thankful that there’s someone here that isn’t family. Someone that doesn’t have to feel the weight of all their history coming together with the tragedy before them and help in a way only outsiders can, give his mother patience when all he can feel is anger and frustration.

“And get Carver,” he calls after them, casting magic deep into Bethany’s body. Not to heal, not quite yet, but just to get a look around. See where the damage is worst so that he can focus his untrained, low mana healing spells starting where they’re most necessary.

His heart sinks once he gets a feel for what’s inside of her, bile threatening at his throat again. It’s so much worse than he imagined, and he can’t believe she’s still breathing, even as faint as those breaths are. It reminds him of the Smith’s old, rotted barn after the storm hit it. Nothing to salvage but the strongest of the supports, and even those battered and weak. It makes him feel frantic, and pushing that emotion down in order to stay calm enough to start healing her is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

He starts with the bleeding inside first, because he knows that’s what kills you the fastest. She’s bleeding outside as well though, and it worries him. He really isn’t sure how much he can actually get done before his energy runs out, he doesn’t think he has enough to put everything back together and muster up the pulse necessary to get her heart going again if it stops. And he definitely doesn’t have enough mana to numb the pain while he does all that. Adrian swallows. He might use up all his mana and it might not be enough. Worse, it might hurt the whole time he fails to save her. His sister’s final moments might be agony and it will all be his fault.

You won’t be able to live with yourself if you don’t try, he tells himself. It feels like such a weak argument, hollow as it echoes around in his head.

Carver kneels in the space Leandra vacated, sword sheathed. His front is covered in purple-black darkspawn viscera, he looks tired and tense, ragged.

“How can I help?”

Adrian sighs in relief. He at least sounds even and collected, far more put together than Adrian feels. He’s thankful for it.

“She’s bleeding.”

It’s not really instructions. It’s half a thought, poorly communicated, but he can’t manage anything else over his forced sense of calm and the focus he has to put on the damage before him. Damage that’s far beyond his skill level of repair.

Carver seems to understand what he means though. There’s a bone-deep fear in his eyes when he looks down at their sister’s body, but it doesn’t affect the way he acts, the way he moves. He presses his hands to the wound in Bethany’s side and he does it without flinching, without hesitation.

Adrian is so, so proud.

“How bad is it?” Carver asks, voice quiet in a way that Adrian has never heard it before.

He doesn’t reply.

Flesh knits back together with his coaxing, internal wounds sealing up, a miracle not possible without magic, but as he feared, it isn’t going to be enough. There’s precious little mana left in his body, and still so much left to fix. He still hasn’t stopped her external bleeding, hasn’t mended any of her bones and, oh Maker, her heart is slowing. He’ll need to restart it, but after that he’ll be out of mana entirely, he’ll have to start tapping into his own life force to keep going. It’s a dangerous thing to do. It’ll definitely hurt him. It possibly might even kill him.

Adrian feels like he could cry. He wishes they hadn’t already used the two small bottles of lyrium their father left behind when he died. He wishes Bethany was awake so that she could at least try to help him help her, or at least so that he could apologize. He wishes Malcolm hadn’t given up on teaching him how to heal, how to summon. A spirit healer could do all that was needed and more but he isn’t- he was never- Father never could teach him how to-

“You need to stop,” Carver says, and he sounds so worried that Adrian knows that his exhaustion is visible, that it’s clear how much he’s pushing himself, “Adrian you’re- you’re going to hurt yourself, don’t-”

“It’s just a little more,” he says, “If I can just get her conscious then-”

“Adrian.”

Adrian meets his eyes. He feels frantic and desperate, and he almost certainly looks it, but Carver looks oddly calm, his gaze sharp and serious. At the end of the week he’ll be nineteen years and six months old exactly, but looking at him right now you’d never guess it. He looks aged, tired and resigned in the way that only old men get, and it makes Adrian’s chest hurt. He didn’t look that way before Ostagar, he was still a kid.

“I can’t carry you both,” he says, so matter of fact and so breathtakingly sad that he can barely stomach it.

Adrian understands what he means, and unfortunately, he knows that he’s right. He’s weak, right on the verge of tapping into something deeper than mana to keep going. If he continues like this the best-case scenario still involves him nearly killing himself, and their little group can’t handle two half-dead mages and getting away from the horde alive all at once. And that’s if he even makes it. More likely is he’ll pour so much into healing her that he dies in the process. Which would be worth it if she lives, he thinks, but there’s no guarantee of that. He might just leave them both dead.

But if he stops… if he stops she'll die for sure. He'll be letting her die, making the choice that does it. It will always feel like he chose his life over hers. Like he killed her.

The whole thing just makes him want to scream. He has to choose. He doesn’t want to choose. It’s not fair, none of it’s fair. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Bethany to die and he doesn’t want to choose. He wouldn’t even have to choose if he was just a little stronger, if he just had a little more energy, a little more-

(A familiar tickling in the back of his skull. A creeping little almost-voice that says, you could have more. I could give you more.)

(His father always told him he shouldn’t listen, that he should ignore the voices that come to him when he’s dreaming, that he should send them away, fight them off if he needed to. But Adrian was young and rebellious and never good at doing what he was told. He figured that as long as he never actually did it, it wouldn’t really matter if he let the voices teach him how.)

Weak and tired, his sister’s slowly fading life in his hands, Adrian makes a choice.

“Give me her knife.”

“Why?”

“Carver.”

His brother frowns, pulls the knife out of her belt, passes it to him handle-first. There’s a grimness in his eyes as Adrian takes it with his free hand, the other remaining pressed palm-first in the center of Bethany’s chest. He’s pretty sure he knows what Carver thinks he’s about to do, and wonders if when he sees what’s actually about to happen he’ll be relieved or horrified.

Adrian doesn’t give himself any more time to think. He flips his grip on the knife and digs it into his other arm, opening a wide diagonal wound underneath his elbow.

“Adrian, what-”

Horrified it is then, he thinks, tossing the knife aside. He supposes it also could have been that his brother was just startled, but Adrian doesn’t really have it in him to interpret that generously, at the moment. If his brother is horrified, Adrian doesn’t blame him.

He stacks his free hand over the one against her chest, straightens his shoulders. Blood pours in streams down his arm, pools in between his interlaced fingers, seeps into Bethany’s already stained shirt. He closes his eyes. Malcolm tried to teach him spirit healing when he was younger, and gave up when it became clear that Adrian would never be able to summon easily on his own, that despite the vividness of his dreams he just wasn’t built for it. But before that he would practice with weaker spirits that his father would call for him, and he still remembers all the steps.

Adrian exhales, imagines himself hollow and empty, a place behind his sternum that he silently gives permission to be filled. The spirit has to enter you to help. You have to let it. As much as the Chantry and the Circles would like to deny it, it is a form of possession. Albeit an incomplete and very temporary one.

(Maker, he hopes what’s about to happen is temporary. He isn’t Harrowed, he has no way of knowing.)

The wound on his arm pulses sickeningly, and the rivulets of blood trailing down his arm start to feel both hot and cool at once, like lyrium when it goes down your throat. There’s an iron smell in the air suddenly, like wet rust, like monthly blood.

Something slips in, fills his chest and arms, all the way down to his fingers. Adrian shivers. It feels nothing like any of his father’s spirits. It’s foreign to him, terrifying and strange.

He can feel that his natural mana is still exhausted, but now there’s this new well of energy for him to tap into, and even just lightly poking at it he can tell that it is deep. It feels like something pulled straight from the Fade, like having one foot in the waking world and one in a dream. What the spirit, the demon, is providing for him is far beyond anything he’s ever experienced before, the magic potential of it stronger than anything he ever thought he’d have access to, and the excitement he feels at that realization scares him.

(He understands the temptation now. Feels the pull, a tugging in his stomach like looking over the edge of a cliff. The doors this opens, the things he could do with magic like this… it’s seductive. And he understands, better than ever, why his father was so scared of it, the paranoia that led him to instruct his children against asking questions, against even thinking about it. Against even saying its name.)

The demon tells him what to do. Whispers instructions to him in something that isn’t really a voice, it’s impressions and colors, knowledge without form. If you asked him to, he probably couldn’t translate it into words. He simply Knows what it is he has to do next, and he knows that that knowledge isn’t coming from his own head.

Adrian breaks the old healing spell, casts a new one. It’s strong, and he directs the magic out of himself and through Bethany with ease, bypassing her natural resistance entirely, like it’s not even there. He’s never been able to do that before, usually his magic “catches” in the body’s defenses, and he has to delay healing while he works around them, convinces the flesh to let his magic in. But this flows easily, like water over rocks. It’s a spell his father would have been proud of him for, in another context.

Her external wounds start to close, and he can feel the flesh inside of her start to knit as well. There’s enough energy running through him that he can heal her everywhere at once, instead of focusing on one injury at a time, and pretty soon he feels her broken bones start to shift and move underneath her flesh. Slowly at first, and then-

All of her misaligned bones snap into place at once with a sound like a tree right before it falls, the jagged edges then clicking and grinding against each other as they settle into position before beginning to mend. Bethany’s eyes snap open, and with a sick feeling settling in his stomach Adrian realizes that in his desperation, there’s something he forgot to do.

Her back arches. She screams.

“Shit,” he says, quickly trying to readjust his dislodged hands, “Beth, I’m-” she writhes, knocking his hands off of her again, “-shit, fuck, Carver-”

He’s already moving, leaning in to hold her down by her shoulders. He looks overwhelmed and desperate, hands straining as he tries to keep her still.

“Beth- Bethany it’s okay, it’s okay-” She kicks out with her legs, and Carver throws one of his out over them in an attempt at further restricting her movement, “easy, easy. Be- calm down. Adrian has you, it’s going to be okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

It’s awkward to get his hands repositioned properly with Carver most of the way over her, but he manages it. Casts a numbing spell as quickly as he’s capable of.

He was always good at numbing spells, despite otherwise lacking in related magics, and the effect is immediate. Her face goes from tight to soft within seconds, movements easing until she is finally still, her breathing regular, even, conscious.

Carver releases her slowly, then turns to him.

“She is, isn’t she? She’s going to be okay?”

His voice still sounds oddly small, scared and relieved in equal measure. Adrian sends another curl of magic out of his fingers to check her internal injuries, then nods. Tentatively.

She’s going to be okay.

He hears his mother say something, and Carver answers her, but he isn’t paying enough attention to make out any individual words. He closes the wound on his arm, but it doesn’t heal all the way. A thick pink band of new scarring remains, jagged from the haste with which he made the cut, the awkward angle at which he held the blade.

He breaks the spell he’s using on Bethany, aware of her eyes on him the whole time, and as the last tendrils of magic dissipate the demon leaves him. He doesn’t notice at first, doesn’t feel it as it leaves, just feels very empty all of the sudden. Light, as if someone reached inside of him and removed a big lump of lead that was wedged in with his organs. He can’t believe it was that easy. That it just left, didn’t fight to stay, didn’t linger. That’s not how demons are supposed to act at all, and it makes him worry that there’s some other consequence coming, something he couldn’t have predicted.

(Deeper down, he worries that there will be no consequences at all. That maybe everything he’s been told is a lie. That maybe there really isn’t anything to stop him from doing it again.)

(He won’t do it again, he tells himself. He won’t, he won’t.)

He leans back, starts to pull away when Bethany’s hand shoots up, wraps around his bicep in a death grip. He starts, then looks down at her. Their eyes meet, and hers are very serious, very scared.

“What did you do?” she asks, voice rough and raw. She squeezes his arm tighter, and it almost hurts, “Adrian, what did you do?”

It’s not actually a question. She knows what he did, she just doesn’t want it to be true. She wants him to tell her that it’s not true, that she’s mistaken. He can’t.

The seriousness of what’s happened hits him suddenly, sinks to the bottom of his stomach like a rock. He cut himself, summoned a demon, cast spells with its help. Even worse, he did it somewhere he could be seen. He looks up at Carver and swallows, throat clicking and dry.

“Did the templar see?”

Carver’s eyes flick up over Adrian’s shoulder, then back to him. He shakes his head.

“What about the wife?”

“I don’t think so,” Carver says, quietly. Not whispering, whispering draws attention, just his normal voice, low and even, “she’s with mother, your back is blocking their view.”

He looks scared, they both do, and Adrian can’t fully tell whether they’re more scared of him, or for him. He can’t blame them for either.

“I didn’t see anything either,” Carver says, surprising him, “Beth, did you see something?”

Bethany turns her head, face tightening like she’s sore, and shares a look with Carver. It’s always been a joke in their family, the “twin thing”, their ability to talk without speaking, make decisions the rest of them aren’t allowed to know about. It feels nostalgic for a moment, like the three of them are kids again, and Adrian broke something and they’re all agreeing not to tell mother and father about it. That it’s going to be a secret, a sworn oath of silence kept between the three of them, something they’ll all laugh about being so serious over, once they’re all big.

Bethany nods, and Adrian is relieved, even though he can tell that this isn’t the end of it. They’ll want an explanation, there will be a talk, once they’re all safe.

“Can you stand?”

“Probably,” she shifts, grimaces, “maybe not on my own.”

“I’ll help her,” Carver says.

Adrian pushes himself up, a sudden dizzy spell hitting him once he’s on his feet, vision going briefly black at the edges. Maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s the blood loss, probably it’s a combination of the two. It’s not pleasant.

Bethany bites back a lot of pained noises as they help her to her feet, and Adrian thinks about all the kinds of injuries he doesn’t know enough about to heal properly. Delicate nerves, crush injuries, how soft tissue can hurt for years after the initial trauma, how easy it is to misalign bones when you’re in a hurry. The blood magic just gave him more raw energy to tap into, the demon a little bit of a guiding hand, he’s still held back by his own lack of skill and training. She’ll need to see a real healer, eventually. Hopefully they can find one in Gwaren.

If they make it that far, he thinks, hearing the darkspawn roar and realizing that the sound isn’t as distant as he hoped.

Once they have Bethany settled, one arm around Carver’s neck and his hooked under her armpits, taking most of her weight, Adrian turns to survey their surroundings.

Aveline and Ser Wesley are not immediately visible, which he can’t help but find mildly concerning. Mother stands a few feet away, hands covering her mouth as she watches Bethany. He can tell that she’s holding herself back from running over and fussing over her, pulling Bethany into her arms. Her expression is full of shock and relief, love for her daughter who was three-quarters dead just a few moments ago. Who is pale and weak now, but nonetheless alive.

Then her gaze lands on Adrian, and everything changes.

She knows. Leandra’s hands drop from her face a little, and Adrian’s stomach drops with them. He doesn’t understand how she could know. There’s no way she saw him cut himself. Bethany was bleeding, so it’s not unusual that he has blood on him, But nonetheless she knows. He can see it on her face, can feel the air go cold between them as they look at each other.

“Adrian-”

She doesn’t finish. Aveline swears loudly, and all heads turn immediately towards the sound.

They stayed still for too long. The darkspawn have found them, and Adrian swears too as he watches their mangled forms come over the ridge towards them. It’s more than they can handle. Even if everyone was in top shape, he can only imagine them winning against this group by a slim margin. And they are far from being in top shape.

The ground shakes beneath them, and Adrian has just started to prepare himself for another ogre when-

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

“-when the dragon swoops low overhead, its roar splitting their ears and the skies alike. Etcetera, etcetera,” Varric says, making a circular gesture with his hand, “darkspawn defeated, the dragon transforms into a witch, you remember this part.”

Cassandra looks at him blankly. The way he tells it is so casual, nonchalant. As if this is a story about Hawke getting lost on the way to the market, and not revealing to her the moment that the Champion of Kirkwall became a maleficar.

(And to save his sister’s life, risking death or possession to fulfill a promise made to his father for her safety… if she was asked, she would admit that it’s the closest thing she’s ever heard to a good enough reason. If it weren’t unforgivable, she’d be tempted to even call it noble.)

They watch each other silently for a moment, waiting to see who speaks first. She thinks she sees doubt in Varric’s eyes for a moment, maybe even regret. Why tell me then, she wonders, why tell me, why not just lie a second time?

“That all you needed to hear, seeker?”

Cassandra doesn’t know what to say.

[a-edgar-allan-hoe]

The Last Chthonian

Part 17

Bucky x Reader, Sam x Reader, Zemo x Reader

A/N: It is here! So sorry for the late update lovelies! I’ve been having really bad writers block lately and my job keeps switching my hours up so now my sleep schedule is all fucked up. And after writing this part I want to go stargazing so bad but the light pollution kind of sucks where I live. 🥲 Also this is my first time writing a steamy scene so I’m sorry if it’s awkward. Feedback is much appreciated and let me know if you want to be added to the tag list. 😊

Summary: Imagine being Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, the night and the moon, doorways and crossroads, creatures of the night, and ghosts and necromancy. You stumbled upon Earth many centuries ago and since then have resided on the foreign planet. During the recent years you created an alias for yourself to hide your true identity, and after the war against Thanos you chose to live out your days in the Scottish countryside, until a certain trio appears at your doorstep one day.

Warnings: language, angst, some foreplay and making out

You had still been wrapped in Zemo’s arms, the two of you indulging in each other’s presence in a silence, which combined with the faint beating of his heart, you only found to be comforting. The meteors still swept by the earth’s atmosphere above you in flashes that lit up the sky, leaving behind trails of white that resembled the strokes of a brush, as if your mother Asteria had painted the celestial bodies using diamonds onto a canvas that was the night sky. You could only make out the few stars and constellations that were scarcely scattered across the vastness above you, caused by the light pollution that unfortunately managed to mantle the wonders and beauty that settled just beyond, separating humanity from the marvels of the universe. The stars flickered like the diminishing of the flame of a candle, a farewell to the billions of years lived by the remnants of those enormous spheres of hot plasma, thus leaving behind the birth of other stars to fulfill their legacy. However, there was a certain star that did not flicker like the ones around it, a certain spectacle distant in time and space that still managed to burn bright despite the innumerable amount of light-years that separated Earth from it. The remaining light of your planet Olympus. You stared at that particular star, your brows knit together and your face etched with this certain melancholy that one could not explain. How could one thing be so near, within the reach of your fingertips, and yet be entirely outside the capacity of reach.

“Draga.” You heard Zemo softly speak, his chest slightly wavering beneath your cheek from his words.

“Hm?”

“Something troubles you.”

“What makes you say that?” You stared off, your eyes still fixated to the fading existence of your world.

“Your eyes draga.” Zemo looked down at you, his eyes scanning over the troubled creases that masked your features. “I have seen this shadow in your eyes that has seemed to occupy them as of recently. What troubles you?”

“…………You see that star there, right between those two constellations?” You pointed above you.

“Mhm.” Zemo nodded as he followed the line of your finger, his eyes now focused on the same exact star yours have not yet left.

“That’s my planet………Olympus.”

“You’re welcome to tell me about it if you’d like.”

“Well, when I was little, I used to live with my mother in this quaint cottage by the sea, similar to the one I live in now with my daughter. She used to bring me out most nights for stargazing. She had built this outdoor platform with bedding and blankets and we would have a small fire going to keep us warm as we watched the stars and constellations while she told me different tales and epic poetries. As silly as it sounds, she would make shooting stars appear in the sky for me knowing how much I loved them. Gods, I wish you could’ve seen my home back in its days, back when everything still remained. Everything was so…..beautiful, and the skies, gods the skies, you could see the different planets and galaxies as if they were only miles away. To this day, I have yet to see anything in my travels that compares.”

“I would have loved to seen it Schatzi. Your mother sounded like a wonderful person.”

“She was the kindest soul I knew.” You turned your body so that you could look up at him, resting your chin on your hand.

“You miss her.”

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss my family and planet.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to them Schatzi. I wish you never went through what you did.”

“If only I could bring them back. I’d do anything to be able to just see them again.”

Zemo was silent, believing that no amount of words could have provided you comfort, no matter how deep the meaning or how significant. He could not imagine what you went through. He had lost his country and his family, and you had lost your family as well, but you lost your world, your entire race, leaving you to be the last remaining entity of your people, the last Olympian and the last Chthonian. Words could not bring your family back, just as they could not with his. So he only did what he was able, making a silent unspoken promise within the abyss of his damaged heart to be there for you as he held you closer to him and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

A sudden feeling of guilt crawled up your spine like a venomous scorpion ready to sink its stinger in your skin with means to cause nothing but pain and suffering. You felt guilty for being here, lying next to Zemo wrapped in his arms like a pair of star-crossed lovers from the pages of a novel. A part of you felt selfish for what you did, undeserving of the affection that was bestowed upon you from a man who had suffered enough from the loss of his family. How much longer did you think you could give in to your mindless emotions without a single thought of the consequences it might bring about. Did you really think you could go on as if nothing is happening? As if you can conceal your true form from him forever. No. You could not. You did not have the heart to keep such knowledge from him. If you wanted to pursue what you had with him, you would have to tell him the truth when the time came.

“We should probably get back before Sam and Bucky notice.” You mumbled, blinking back the tears, your heart aching to go back to the way things used to be, wishing you could leave all of this and just be able to go back home. You didn’t belong here on earth, an immortal amongst mortals. At least on Olympus, if your titaness form had been revealed, many would not have bat an eye. They had already seen the likes of Titans before and the locals had become accustomed to you. But here on earth, you were nothing but a stranger, a drifter.

The two of you walked back to his place in silence, the only sounds being the whistling of the wind, the chirping of crickets, the voices of the few pedestrians and the humming of the cars that drove by. Your hands brushed against each other, craving to intertwine your fingers with his as you walked down the stone paved streets lit by the lamps that lined it, the two of you still withdrawn despite what occurred between you both. You felt it would have been silly, holding his hand like a couple of teenagers, though a century ago, you wouldn’t have gave it a second thought.

You arrived at his place, standing at the bottom of the steps in front of the double doors with Zemo opposite you, illuminated by the street lamp that stood just behind. Feelings of conflict washed over you, drowning you in waves of despair. As much as you wanted to be with him, a small part in the back of your mind kept telling you that it was wrong. Neither of you wanted to go through those doors just yet, wishing you could have spent the night under the stars. But life seems to have a way of working against your favor. The Wakandans would be here to collect him possibly tomorrow, and you would have to bid him farewell, separated from each other for what could be forever. As much as you did not look forward to that moment in having to turn him in and never see him again, you wouldn’t stop the Wakandans from what they were promised. And though you hadn’t said a word, Zemo had already knew what your decisions were regarding it, and he could not blame you for it. You were a woman of justice and you followed a code, and he respected that.

“Zemo.” A frown appeared on your face.

“Please,” Zemo whispered to you as he pushed a strand of your hair behind your ear, “Call me Helmut.”

You looked at Zemo once more, a look of longing hidden behind your eyes as you unconsciously swiped your tongue across your mouth, watching how his eyes followed the movement before lingering on the wetness of your lips that resembled the petals of a rose after the pouring of cold rain in the midst of spring. Oh how he wished to be the drops of rain that were gifted the pleasure of grazing upon the velvety petals that belonged to such beauty of a flower, a symbol of union between the two domains in which the heavens came down to declare its love for the earth. A pulling sensation filled within your core, drawing yourself to Zemo as if he were the sweet berries of deadly nightshade that have lured many unfortunate souls. Banishing the thoughts of doubt that clouded your mind, you grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to you, crashing your lips against his in a heated kiss. Zemo was initially shocked by your bold gesture and stiffened from the way your mouth moved against his, surprised you would pull something like this when just a wall away Sam and Bucky were awaiting your arrival, before loosing himself into your embrace.

Your fingers clenched the collar of his sweater and your fingers grazed across the exposed skin of his neck while his hands went to your waist in a desperate attempt, fumbling to grab at anything and bunching up the bottom fabric of your sweater as he pulled you against him. The tips of his fingers brushed against the skin of your waist that was exposed below the hem of your sweater, leaving behind goosebumps in its trail. You smiled into the kiss from the way he completely melted under your touch, a part of you amused from the affect you held over him as you managed to elicit a moan from deep within his throat. Zemo’s brows were furrowed in the passionate moment, something you have noticed when you first kissed him, a small crease in the muscles of his face that showed just how lost he was when encased in this moment with you, and it absolutely melted you. He was addicted from the warm numbness, the ecstasy he felt from kissing you. Your lips were like heroin to him, leaving him yearning for more, and it didn’t ameliorate the fact that his years spent in a German prison had left him somewhat inexperienced and filled with a chasmic longing for touch and intimacy from the lack thereof. Deep within him, masked by his ideas and objectives, Zemo wanted to be able to love someone again, a chance at a new life and a family, and perhaps, he saw that possibility with you. But, behind the passion of the kiss you shared with him, there was something else, a poison that laced your lips with feelings of despair and forbidding that consumed you as if you had tasted those sweet berries of nightshade, slowly loosing yourself to its malice. His lips which were at first warm to the touch, now felt cold like ice and sent shivers of dread through your veins, as if this would be the last kiss you shared with him.

You pulled away from the kiss to catch your breath, your teeth softly grazing against his bottom lip as you did so. Both of you were left breathless as you rested your foreheads against each other, panting as your breaths fanned each other’s face as if you had just been trapped in the depths of the ocean before breaking through the surface to allow oxygen to fill your lungs.

“If you keep doing that Draga.” Zemo rasped between breaths, “I won’t be able to compose myself.”

“Good. Maybe I don’t want you too.” You smirked before placing a playful kiss on the tip of his nose. “But I really should go back inside, and you should do the same. Just make sure you go unnoticed.” You slipped his coat off your shoulders, his cologne that lingered on his fur collar leaving your senses with discontent as you returned his coat to him before going over to the doors, stopping to turn back to him with a smile before stepping inside and closing the door behind you. Gods, what the hell did you do that for???? You felt your cheeks heat up in embarrassment as you wanted to slap yourself for pulling a move like that.

“Gods I’m stupid.” You muttered to yourself.

“Hey.” Bucky smiled once he spotted you, his voice soft as if he were afraid you would shatter at any moment from the discussion that took place earlier. “How was your walk?”

“It was nice, relaxing. I went to the park to stargaze.”

“That’s good. As long as you feel better.”

“I do, actually. Thanks Bucky.”

“You look flushed. You okay?” Sam noted as he stepped over to you.

“Huh?” You stopped short. “Oh yeah, I’m fine. I just had to kind of uh power walk back here so you guys wouldn’t get worried. But I’m fine, yeah. Anyways, I’m going to hit the sack since I’m feeling a bit tired. Goodnight you guys.” You waved them off before going to your assigned room, making Sam and Bucky give each other questioning looks before they both shrugged it off.

You shut the door behind you, letting out a breath of relief that they had not caught on to anything and praying that Zemo had managed to sneak in. You had just gotten off the phone with Maze and your daughter, catching up on their activities after cleaning yourself up and changing into your nightgown. You had pulled up a chair next to the window that was in your room, your feet tucked underneath you and a warm cup of rose and blackberry tea in your hands. Your robe hung loosely off your shoulders as your index finger twirled above the small silver spoon that swirled in your cup, mists of violet wrapping around the handle of the spoon as you used your powers to stir the contents of the tea. You stared out the window onto the old streets of Latvia before glancing down at the teacup that was nestled in your hands, the glow of your eyes reflected off the window pane along with the tiny stars that swirled through the small globe of your necklace your mother gave you. You hadn’t stopped thinking about the moments that passed and the ones that have yet to come.

There was a knock on your door, interrupting you from the thoughts that had resided in your mind. “Come in.” You spoke as you looked through the reflection of the window and saw a figure step in. “Zemo?” You stopped using your powers, the clinking of the spoon scraping against the sides of the porcelain cup coming to a stop. “You know, you gotta stop sneaking into my room.” You teased before frowning, seeing the expression that sat on his face. “What’s wrong?” You got up from the chair, setting your cup down on the table before walking over to him.

“The Wakandans will…….be here for me tomorrow.” His eyes were lowered to the floor, the browns of his irises which reminded you of the dunes of the Sahara desert were whirling in thought, resembling the dunes caught in the midst of the fury of a sandstorm, as if searching for an answer to his troubles.

“Ze-Helmut, I………” You sighed, your tongue and mind lacking the ability to compose any words that might have provided some solace. “I’m sorry………..I don’t know what to say.”

“Y/n, schatzi” Zemo grabbed your hand, tracing his thumb over the bumps of your knuckles. “You don’t have to say a word. My actions………must be accounted for.”

You were silent, your brows knit together and your lips sealed as if your voice was ripped from your throat. Your heart wanted to tear itself from your chest, begging to be released from its cage so that it could be free to lament, so that it may be able to express the words that held it captive. But your tongue was tied, held back between the prison that was your teeth as you clenched your jaw. Zemo’s hand still held yours, stroking the soft skin on the back of your hand which were a contrast to the small rough patches on your palm, before you heard him speak again. “Can I kiss you?”

You blinked at him, lips parted in surprise that he would even ask such a question when you were honestly willing to kiss him any time of the day. The Zemo you had come to know was far different than the one you had heard about, his cold demeanor seemed to completely fade when he was around you, like a fog that dissipated with the coming of daylight. A part of you pondered whether this was how he used to be, before the events that happened. Though he hadn’t had a chance to share such affection with anyone and lost practice, you still found him to be great kisser and it always managed to leave you breathless. “Yes, please.” You whispered, your voice barely audible before you felt his lips brush against yours. What was sweet at first became more feverish and filled with hunger as an unfamiliar spirit seemed to possess your body, darkening the amethysts and golds of your eyes that resembled the galaxies, into the blackness of the abyss that swallowed the outer edges of space where not even the slightest bit of light could reach, almost as if you were sinking your claws into your prey.

A heat pooled in the pit of your stomach, filling your body with an electrifying warmth as his mouth moved against yours more confidently this time, catching you utterly by surprise and leaving your knees weak, a feeling similar to the stillness in the air a mere second before lightning strikes the ground beneath your feet. His hands slipped down to grab the flesh of your waist, dehydrated, and filled with an intense thirst that could only be quenched by your body that was the ocean, your skin separated by the silk fabric of your nightgown. Your hands went up to grip his shoulders as a gasp escaped your lips upon feeling him move down to your jaw and neck. Gods, since when was the last time you were touched like that?

“Helmut.” You rasped, struggling to hold back a moan as his lips sucked on the skin where your collarbone met your neck, making you lean your head back to allow him better access. Your robe had fell to the floor, leaving your arms completely bare while Zemo’s hands caressed the skin that lined them before resting on the dorsal part of your upper arms, the combination of the frigid air and his fingertips that felt like the touch of fire sending shivers through your body. “What if they hear?”

“Let them.”

“No……….I’m…….serious.”

“Well if you’re that worried Draga.” Zemo stopped to look at you. “The walls are thick enough.”

Gods that completely sent you over the edge. It felt as if you were on a high, your mind was not even within this dimension as Zemo met your lips again. You had to throw your arms around his neck to keep yourself from collapsing as the two of you shifted in the room, Zemo guiding your body before the back of your knees came in contact with the side of your bed. You let yourself fall back into the soft mattress, bringing Zemo down with you. You both were a mess, your hair disarray, the thin straps of your nightgown fallen past your shoulders had almost left your breasts exposed, and the skirt of your nightgown had ridden up to your thighs as you wrapped your legs around his waist. Zemo squeezed at the soft flesh of your thigh before attacking your neck again. He didn’t know how to describe it but you tasted absolutely divine. Perhaps being a goddess made you taste of ambrosia; the golden, honey-flavored fruit that grew on the trees of Olympus. You were in absolute bliss and thanked the gods he wouldn’t be able to leave a mark, at least you hoped not.

“Helmut.” You moaned, your nails digging into his biceps as his warm lips made a trail down your collarbone and lower to where the lace trim of your nightgown met just above the curve of your breasts, lingering on the space between, filling your mind with thoughts of a certain region you desired those lips to be. “Fuck.” You hissed from the contact, your hand moving its way to his head as you ran your fingers through his soft hair, your nails raking across the back of his scalp as the heat between your thighs only grew. You unconsciously pressed your heel to the lower part of his back, beckoning him closer to that heat between your thighs as you bucked your hips up. Zemo growled at the movement, slightly nipping at the skin where your breast had started to form, causing you to gasp and your eyes to fly open from the sensation.

“Apologies draga.” You heard him mutter before tenderly kissing the spot where his teeth had been.

Seeing Zemo in a close proximity above you in such a position had you dazed, wanting him to take you right then and there and not caring if the others heard you or not. And as your eyes wandered lazily over the sight of him, they widened in horror once they glimpsed at the image of your hands. Your nails became sharp, claw-like, and that deathly color had returned once again, slowly making its way up your arm like the tendrils of a shadow belonging to a demonic spirit.

“Helmut.” You whispered, your voice becoming panicked as you loosened your grip on his arms, being careful not to pierce his skin. “Helmut wait.”

Zemo stopped, pushing himself up to meet your eyes as his concern grew from seeing the frightened look that filled them. “Schatzi, what’s wrong?” He brought his hand up to your face, brushing away the strands of your hair. “If you’re uncomfortable let me know.”

“No, gods no. If anything I don’t want you to stop.” You breathed out, trying to catch your breath. “It’s just that………….”

“What is it schatzi?” His voice was soft as his fingers caressed your cheek, afraid that he might have offended you in some way, afraid that he might have been too forward.

“I’m sorry Helmut. I want to, I really do, but not like this.” You shook your head as you got up, shifting over to where the dark shadows of the room fell on the bed to hide your arms, afraid to meet his eyes as if you had made a fool of yourself. “Not like this.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me y/n.” Zemo smiled at you. “If you’re not ready, than I’m not ready.”

“Thank you Helmut.” You smiled back before giving him a delicate kiss. “I’d………uh like to think some things through.” You prayed that he didn’t see your hands, hoping that the darkness of the room managed to disguise it.

“Of course draga.” Zemo placed a lingering kiss on your forehead before leaving your room, stopping at the door to give you a comforting smile as he carefully shut it behind him.

Your eyes still lingered on the door, waiting to make sure he didn’t come back before turning on the bedside lamp and staring down at your hands. You had managed to stop the color from spreading up your arm, yet it strangely still remained, stopping halfway up your forearm. This wasn’t good.

“What the hell?” You scrunched your nose, trying to use your powers once again to remove it but to no avail. Fear coursed through your veins as you attempted to remove the color, spell after spell, hoping those vine like tendrils would crawl back down your hands and disappear. You cursed under your breath as each attempt proved to be as futile as the one before. What the hell was going on? Why were your spells not working? It vanished before from your magic, why wasn’t it doing so now? You were struck with a sudden realization that perhaps this change would become permanent, that maybe suppressing your true form for all those years had caused it to spiral out of control and in turn try to overpower you as if it had a mind of its own. You growled through gritted teeth, the furniture around you shaking as your fists were clenched in frustration, the violet mists of your powers encompassing your hands and sparking with small bolts that corresponded with the vexation that overwhelmed you.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, the mist around your hands disappearing and the shaking of the furniture coming to a stop. You had to work something out. You were left no choice but to keep your hands covered from now on until you found a solution. If any of them questioned it, you had to have a damn good lie. Getting up from the bed, you walked over to the double doors that led to the small balcony and opened them, your hands gripping the cold iron rail as you stared out at the view of the Latvian streets and buildings before you. Oh how you wished your sister Athena were here. She knew everything.

“Oh Athena.” You stifled a sob as you stared up at the stars, focusing on the light of your planet as if she could have heard you, a tear cascading down your cheek and dropping to the streets below. “Gods I wish you were here. I really need your help.”

Despite your pleas, you knew she wasn’t there, her existence only an artifact of the past. You were praying to nothing but a memory. It was extremely urgent that you got information on this matter of your form and the words of the prophecy that still threatened and echoed within the depths of your mind. And since you couldn’t obtain such knowledge from another Olympian, you would have to gather it from the old texts. Muttering a few words in Ancient Greek, you waited, searching, until a small white moth came into view, fluttering in your direction. You held out your finger, letting the tiny creature come to rest upon it.

“Hello little one.” You smiled at the moth as you gently stroked it in greeting, bringing it closer to your face so that you could speak to it in your language. “Please send word to my familiar and tell him to gather as much information he can on Titans and the prophecy. And tell him to come find me when he is done. Thank you.” The moth looked at you with understanding behind his tiny black eyes, it’s antennaes twitching before fluttering away into the moon. You sighed, watching it disappear into the night before giving your distant planet one last glance before shutting the doors and going back over to the bed. You laid down under the covers, your hands rested on your stomach as you stared up at the ceiling, dreading the day to come. How could you face Zemo? And however were you going to keep your hands a secret? Surely the three are bound to find out sooner or later? You just prayed that the message you sent would be returned in a short time. You needed to fix this before it would be considered too late. And the sooner you found Karli the better. Your mind was racing with thoughts, but you closed your eyes, desperate to get some rest and forcing those thoughts away. Gods help you from this moment on.

Tag List: @girl-obsessed-with-things @aerynchromie @sunshinepower17 @viviace @kakimakiloh @thehornyles @awhorewithissues @gambitsqueen @spookycereal-s @lulu-yuming @mochminnie @Gabitanaka47 @s00nhi @vanteguccir @tomhollandsslilslut @dracoxxyoflam @suchababie @uhhhcrypticbastard @on-my-way-to-erebor @thewinterrbucky @mylifeispainandiloveit @fillechatoyante @padmoonyfeorge @montypythonsholysnail @pollynx @aziraslowlylosestheirshit @roundbrownlover @awesomeowlbook @bookloverfilmoholic @hargreevesd @death-is-beautiful @ilovespideyyy @peakyrogers

[redrobin-detective]

Starlit Vigil

Dannymay Day 4: Stars _____________________________

Everything has a story to it, a tale interwoven into it’s very being from it’s birth to it’s death. Sometimes the mystery of the story is as much a story in and of itself. 

Scientists and researchers can’t say when the constellation first appeared in the night sky. It could be seen above Antarctica, near where the edge of the continent meets the Indian Ocean. It confounded a great many people as stars simply didn’t appear out of nowhere. But these did, slowly over the course of several decades sometimes years apart but two appeared within hours of each other. Each new star, eight in total, had a glistening, almost unnatural twinkle to them. The constellation was named Mnemosyne after the Grecian goddess of memory and the stars eight of her nine daughters, better known as the Muses. 

You’ve always had your eyes turned towards the stars and Mnemosyne in particular had always captured your attention. You can’t really explain what it is about those stars that speak to you. Maybe it’s sheer impossibility of their existence. Perhaps it’s the particular beauty of these stars, sometimes appearing to shift in shape and change colors. Or it could be the story behind the stars, the mystery that couldn’t be solved and so imagination filled in the holes left behind.

They say there was a great king, hundreds of years ago. A king who was powerful and kind and helped create the world as we know it. The land of the dead exists and certain people can interact with those beyond it. Technology and understanding have advanced dramatically and, while no life would ever be perfect, there was a general sense of peace that could felt in this world and the next. This king loved our world so much it’s said he plucked the greatest jewels he could find and placed them in the stars where he could watch over and cherish them forever. It’s a sentiment you can understand. 

You study astronomy in school and when you’re given a chance to travel to the Antarctic Circle to study Mnemosyne, you can’t say yes fast enough. The bitter cold and isolation is a small price to pay to see your favorite constellation up close. Maybe when you see it with your own eyes, you can unravel some of the questions people have been asking over the years. Why the goddess of Memory? Why are the stars named after the Muses but missing the muse of astronomy, Urania? What is the true story behind the supernaturally bright stars that appeared out of nowhere?

It’s hard to sleep during the day, partially because it goes against your normal circadian rhythm but you’re also too excited for night to come. For the stars to come out. You bundle up in the warmest clothes, pack your cameras and notebooks and throw the highest quality telescope you can carry over your shoulder. Arriving at the best site for star gazing, you are so delighted by the clear skies and sparkling stars that it takes you an extra moment to realize that you’re not alone.

At first, you think it’s one of the many researchers conducting studies at the pole but it’s soon apparent that this is someone new. Their hair is stark white, almost appearing one with the blustering wind as it’s blown around. You can’t see what they’re wearing because a thick white cape covers them entirely; it has the consistency of freshly fallen snow. Atop their head floats a crown made of pure, crystalline ice. Your eyes widen behind your protective goggles. The existence of ghosts was common knowledge by now but it’s another thing to see one up close. You turn to leave, before the spirit notices you.

“Don’t leave,” he says quietly but despite the roaring of the wind, you can hear him perfectly clear. “You came to watch the stars too, I don’t mind. Mnemosyne is my favorite.”

“Mine too,” you say back without even thinking. “I would love to know their stories.” The ghost turns to smile at you and his eyes are a bright, glowing green without any pupils or sclera. 

“Come, I’ll tell you about them.” You know you shouldn’t. While most spirits aren’t malicious, this one exudes a power you can’t even imagine. But you find yourself stepping closer anyway. You want to hear the stories of the stars and his smile is the warmest thing you’ll find for miles. Somehow you know this ghost won’t harm you. He points up at Mnemosyne and your twin gazes stare up in wonder. 

“They say souls and stars are made of the same ingredients. When I was a boy, I loved this thought. There was something comforting in knowing that, no matter where I went, that I could carry the stars within me,” the ghost explains, looking at you joyfully. 

“But unlike stars, souls are mortal, impermanent,” he says, his smile turning sad. “So I thought, why not put a soul into a star? Then it could last for eons.” He turns back to the stars with a melancholic expression. “Danielle was the first, my little sister. She was always fragile and after only a decade of life, one day she just broke. Her core was too damaged to become a full ghost so I offered her another way to live on. I took the brightness of her smile and made it into a star, into Euterpe. She was the muse of lyrics and poetry, they say she was the ‘bringer of delight’. It suited Danielle.”

“My enemy died next,” the ghost continues. “He hurt me and, moreover, hurt the ones I loved. But he was the only one who truly understood me. His existence comforted me no matter how much bad blood existed between us. His life was full of misfortune, most of it self-inflicted but his fear of death pulled on my heart. My last move in our battle was to make him a star as well, Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. I put him far away from Danielle, I think he’d hurt her.”

“My parents passed a few decades later,” the ghost whispers. “Mom went first, in her sleep. Dad always followed her example so it wasn’t a surprise when Dad followed her in death before the day was done. They were scientists, I think but they loved me very much. Things were tense, I remember being afraid for some reason but their deaths pained me. They were too fulfilled to become ghosts. I grabbed bits of their essence before it dissipated and made the stars Polyhymnia and Terpsichore, the muses of hymns and dance respectively. They were a perfect couple, partners in everything. A song and a dance, always in time with each other.”

The wind rustles the ghost’s cape, he clutches it as if he is cold. You cannot tear your eyes from the the soft grief on his face. 

“Valerie went next, some sort of illness; I can’t remember the details,” the ghost frowned. “She had no desire to become a ghost, no matter how much I asked her to stay. I am King of All Ghosts and yet I got on my knees and begged for some part of her to keep with me. In the end, I stole a bit of her fading spirit and crafted Calliope, the assertive muse, the author of epic poetry. She shines so brightly up there like she had in life.”

“Jasmine died peacefully in her sleep like our mother. She was always protecting me, even in death. Her devotion to knowledge and my wellbeing kept her by my side for many years but it wasn’t enough to last forever. When her spirit was nothing more than wisps, I took her core and placed Clio with the rest of our family. The muse of history, the proclaimer of great deeds fit my older sister well.”

“Tucker and Sam stayed with me the longest. Tucker went first, a quick death from an aged body followed by years as the playful spirit I always knew him as. Sam, my life and my love, passed the same and was my queen in death as she’d been in life. But love can delay death but not deny it and their spirits needed to move on. I kissed them both, my soulmates and made them into stars. Thalia, the muse of comedy and idyllic poems for the light Tucker brought to me. Erato for Sam, muse of love and its poetry for all that she inspired and gave me.”

You see glowing tears running down his face, he holds his hands out to the night sky. His fingers are curved as if wanting to reach and tenderly brush the faces of people long gone. Only they’re not gone completely. You look at the stars with a newfound appreciation. They are no longer pinpricks of long dead light but people who lived and died and yet still lived on in such beauty. If you look closely, you can almost see them. Brushes of red hair, dark rugged skin, the glint of glasses, a flash of amethyst eyes. 

“There’s no Urania,” you say quietly, the wind tossing them. 

“Not yet,” he says longingly, “but soon. The Zone and the Earth are at peace, they won’t need my protection for much longer. When that happens, my spirit will leave this world and join my loved ones in the stars as Urania.” This ghost has been dead for longer than you’ve been alive, longer than many of your most recent ancestors. But his love can still be felt, still burns high above in the sky for everyone to see. What better eternity is there?

“May I tell their story?” You ask and he only nods in response, not taking his eyes off Mnemosyne. You get the feeling he has forgotten about you, caught up in the light of his loved ones shining down on him, waiting. All at once, you realize how late it is, how cold. You leave to return to the research shelter, to write the history of the miracle constellation. 

The stars made out of souls, crafted by love.

Twelve years later, you are not surprised when you look up and see a ninth star in the constellation of Mnemosyne. It glows brightly, twinkling with the other muses as if in conversation. You can only smile through your tears, so profoundly happy that Urania’s lonely vigil is finally over and they have assumed their rightful place among the stars. 

[aikrus]

What It Means To Be Dead (Tokoyami x Reader)

Fandom: Bnha Warnings: Mentions of Dying, depression, bullying, abuse, and strong language Words: 2k259 Requested By: Anon <3 Request:  Hi I love your writing! Can I request one where Tokoyami )or anyone you'd like really,) finds a collection of old-ish diaries and letters while cleaning? The person's handwriting is very distinct and pretty (Think 1700's love letter find) but they never mention their name. As they read more of it they find newer entries where Aizawa is mentioned so they ask him about it only to find out the person who wrote them died almost 100 years ago and 'haunts' the school. (Sorry for long request) A/N: I deviated a little from the request, but I hope you like it!

            The night had already came and claimed the land of UA for itself. Shadows overtook the courtyards, and darkness fell across the classrooms, but not everyone had retreated to the safety of their comforters which shielded them from the secrets which the black abyss held so dear. 

After a draining day of learning and training, Tokoyami wanted nothing more than to go to sleep- sadly, it was his turn to clean the classroom. It was annoying and boring and he’d give anything to be able to go to sleep, but fair is fair and he wasn’t the tyrannical type.

And so, he washed the windows and wiped down the desks. He swept the floors and organized the textbooks, and he turned to put the broom back into the small closet in the corner of the classroom. With a heavy sigh, Fumikage realized he should probably tidy up the dirty, dust-filled, death trap that was called a broom closet. 

Narrowing his eyes at the cobwebs, he started to knock them down with the end of the broomstick (Seriously praying to whatever god there is that no spider fell onto his feathers). The room was in worse condition on closer inspection, it looked like not a soul had thought to clean it since the school was built. 

After taking the time to sweep the floors, wipe down the door and the counters, and organize the books, Tokoyami was beyond tired and ready to fall asleep in the still-somehow-dirty closet. No matter how many times he swung at the cobwebs, how many times he picked up the coats and books and papers on the floor, despite the effort he put into tidying up the smallish space, it still seemed to have a weird layer of age coating itself entirely.

The closet felt preserved in time, like the oldness it felt was not just in the items littered about, but in the very walls itself. The things it’s seen, the memories it held, something about the space simply felt... wrong. 

He turned to a corner he hadn’t worked on, inwardly groaning at the amount of work he still had to do despite the time of night. With a huff, he began to organize the textbooks and pages of work sprawled around the space. 

His hands fell upon and old leather book- very different in both appearance and age when compared to the marble notebooks that surrounded it. Leaning over, he saw ten to fifteen more of there journal like collections shoved deep into the corner of the room. 

Tentatively, he peeled open the first book. Looking at the pages, it looked to be the diary of a girl- the beautiful handwriting looked like it belonged to someone who saw the beauty that exists within the written language, someone who stops to smell the flowers, a person who looks at sunsets and bakes goods to say they love you. 

The ink that bled onto the early pages spoke of a student, a girl who wanted to be so much more, someone who wanted to save the world. He became enthralled by the speech patterns, the phrases and swirls of the letters drew him closer, enchanting his eyes to never leave the pages.

------ 

Soon the pages became all he could think about, even after he had to abandon the closet to race to bed. During class all he could think of was the feeling of the crisp paper under his touch. The voices of his friends seemed ugly, seemed to be missing the douse of honesty and beauty he had been exposed to, even when he was practicing all he could focus on was the experiences of the girl who wrote down all her inner thoughts. 

It was like she haunted him, appearing everywhere he went. Like she poisoned him, infecting his thoughts and feelings. She became everything to him so soon, every word had him on edge, every sentence a beautiful stream of imagery that he would give nothing but to experiencing along side her, what he wouldn’t give to see the world through her eyes of love.

As the day ended, he had quiet easily convinced Sero that he should take over his night of cleaning. Sure the actual work was quiet annoying, but he would be rewarded with her sweet words, he had left the book in the corner in his rush to get back to his dorm; he regretted his oversight the moment he laid down.

“Tokoyami, wasn’t your cleaning duty last night?” Aizawa asked, his eyes lazy looking up from the papers he was grading to make contact with Fumikage’s red ones. 

“Yes sir, it was. I volunteered to take over tonight as well,” 

“Mhm, and is there a reason for this?” He raised his eyebrow, dragging his briefcase off the table with him. 

“Cleaning helps me think,” this wasn’t a total lie, reading the journal will calm his raging thoughts of the mystery girl. 

“Just don’t make a habit of it,” his teacher echoed, not having enough energy to further investigate a seemingly innocent interaction.

Tokoyami was much faster with cleaning that day, and he was even faster to sprint inside the broom closet. He grabbed the leather books and raced back to his room, already feeling the warmth her voice provided. 

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

The passages started off innocent enough, complaints about school, fantasizing about a better life, just a teen writing down their emotions. It then morphed into the beauty in everything, words that didn’t release Fumikage’s eyes until they were tearing up from dryness. 

Then, things took a darker turn. Dark thoughts disguised in poems, things others have said to her, representation of her pain in drawings scattered throughout the book. The beautiful world- though still majestic in its own way- turned dark and twisted.

It was painful to read, and yet he couldn’t look away. It was like the book became a part of him- no. It was like he became a part of the book, nothing more than the cracked parchment and spilled ink. It was dehumanizing, but he wouldn’t change his position for anything in the world.

His bed was taken over by the old pages, dating back over two hundred years ago. The writer was in the post-quirk awakening. The world had just discovered the glowing child right before she was born. She was one of the first quirk holders in the world- one of the first one hundred Japanese citizens to have a quirk.

The journals started when she was ten- though that book was the fifth one he read. After that discovery, he categorized them in chronological order to read along with the flow of time. She wrote of the manifestation of her quirk- her parents had been struck with terror when their daughter walked through the wall of their living room to get into her bedroom. 

That was the first moment she realized how different she is. Her life never seemed to go back to the way it was before, not even after the initial shock of what she could do faded from her parents; because, there would always be a new shock, a new ability, and no one was prepared to help her.

He realized, reading more about how the quirkless treated her, that her life would have been much different is she had lived in his time. Hearing the slurs and bullying they  put her through, he wishes she could see how much the world has changed- would she be happy or sad that her bully's became the minority and were mocked in their normal-ness or if she would be ashamed of the people like her.

He was very satisfied that the people who made her life so awful were getting a taste of their own medicine, but he did wonder if that made him a bad person. Tokoyami figures that it really didn’t matter, she was gone so her opinion would never be known. 

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

“Death didn’t feel like I thought it would. Surprisingly, it was reminiscent of when I use my quirk to posses things or people. My body was there, on the floor, but I was floating above it. Much like I am when I leave my body before finding my target. The cold was instantly recognizable- like an abyss with no end.

The only difference I’ve noticed so far is the lack of body to return to, though I can enter it, it acts as an object. While I cannot move it, I can see out of it. It’s therapeutic in a way. Really, this must have been the best case scenario- I could see how everyone reacts, see who really cares about me.

It was hard at first, seeing all theses people, who I believed were simply pretending to care, braking down behind closed doors. It was only my sister- whom held no quirk- that cared. She did everything she could to make my funeral how I wanted it, and she preserved my bedroom the way I liked it. That was a nice gesture, it truly was. 

Now my life has come to an end- my body buried under ground, never to be seen again- I can’t help but wonder what comes next. How long will I be held in this mortal world? Will others be like me, or will I be forced to live alone in the agonizing realization that comes with immortality? I guess I’ll simply have to wait and see,”

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

He had fallen asleep after reading the last passage in the ninth book- where she described how she stayed a student at UA even after death. The names she referenced had been lost in time- Pro-heroes that have long been dead and are now another name on the Hero Memorial wall. 

She had possessed her home room teacher and walked to the headmaster- there she said what had happened. Her headmaster agreed to keep her on as a student, but only under the condition that she wouldn’t unnecessarily possess an unknowing student. It was fair- annoying but fair. They gave her her old desk and she worked along side everyone. When he woke up, the book had moved on its own. 

There was a page opened- an elegant scipt sprawllled at the top but had been smuged since it was written- the only elligable part following what could be assumed to be a name: Phatom-- The Ghost Hero. The script was familiar, but it wasn’t the handwriting the rest of the journal was written in. Beneath it was a drawing of a girl- a girl more beautiful than anyone Fumikage had ever seen. It was a realistic depiction and it looked modern- it was only with that realization which led Tokoyomi to realize this journal wasn’t one he had seen before. Flipping through it, he hadn’t even noticed its sudden appearance. It was the newest one of them all- spanning for the last decade.  He leaned back in his bed and began,

So I guess it’s been a while huh? Here are some general updates: Shouta from class 2-A is an idiot but I guess he’s kinda cute. We picked out hero names today, I wanted to just keep my name but he dubbed me Phantom.. I called him Eraserhead in return. I hope it sticks. 

I’ve graduated from UA more than six times now- but I kinda like it. I do some professional hero work- especially info recall- but I’m worried about how the public will react to a ghost. It would definitely fuck with some peoples religious views. 

It’s better this way. I’ve also decided to distance myself from Shinso- she and I got along great, but her twin brother has been acting weirdly around me for a while. His quirk is amazing, but I’ve seen plenty of unstable students pass through these halls and I know enough to keep my distance. Shouta doesn’t seem to agree- neither does Hizashi. I guess only time will tell.

As for manifesting my physical form- it’s a lot harder than I had hoped. I can become visual for three active minutes or ten minutes with no moving. I’m still not touchable, but I hope that will change with time. That’s all for now- I’ll try to check in soon.

He shook his head- surely those names must be common, but she was in UA and only so many coincidences can happen at one time. He wonders how she was now. Mostly, he wonders if she’s still at UA. They hadn’t announced her as a student, so was she a pro hero now? 

Was it weird to still be in the body of a sixteen year old? There were so many issues with immortality- he wondered how she coped with it. These questions abused him throughout the morning. He thought of how lonely she must be, how it must be so awful to be all by herself.

He wondered why he cared so much- why had he developed such a strong scene of attachement to this girl? The fuzzy feeling in his chest when he saw the drawing of the girl had taken up his entire mind- he needed to know more.

As soon as he entered his familiar class room he marched straight up to his teachers desk with passion in his eyes- “Professor, can we talk after class? I have some questions I’d like to ask you,”

Aizawa glarred at the corner of the room, an annoyed frown tugging at his lips. This was gonna be a long day.

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A/N 

Sorry for dropping off the planet everyone! This has been in the drafts for a  long time and finally gets to see the light of day. I’ve had some mental health issues (not related to this story don’t worry) and am working on myself. I fully intend to finish the Christmas countdown I committed to and this account is still active, but this will remain on the back burner until I am well on my way to recovery. Requests will remain open for the time being and I will continue to make progress. Thank you for the lovely anon’s in my inbox with constant support and requests, I appreciate all of you. Thank you all and I hope you enjoyed this work <3

[mishasminion360]

You Are My Destino

Marcus Pike x gn!reader

Warnings: I got nothin’. It’s just a bunch of fluffy fluff.

Summary: You’ve only recently become aware that Marcus Pike has yet to see one of the most stunning visual masterpieces of the modern age. It’s date night and you’ve got a special activity in mind for your art admiring boyfriend.

A/N: Salvador Dalí is my favorite artist. As a Disney fanatic how could I not fall in love with the Dalí illustrated short film “Destino”? I first saw this incredible piece of film, a long lost masterpiece, at the Dalí museum when I was in high school. It changed me forever. I hadn’t been able to watch it again for years, but thanks to platforms like YouTube and Disney+ I can relive that magic day after day.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this before,” you say for the hundredth time, queuing up Disney+ as Marcus plops gingerly on the couch and rests a bowl of popcorn between the two of you.

“I’ve never really been big on Dalí’s work.”

“What kind of art connoisseur doesn’t like surrealism?”

He shrugs. “This one.”

You begin scrolling through your list of favorites, scanning for the particular short film as you flip a piece of popcorn into your mouth.

“Well, I appreciate you giving this flick a chance. Especially on date night,” you grin.

“Anything for you,” Marcus responds, stealing a kiss and a handful of popcorn as you press play.

A record crackles to life followed by the first strains of a somber refrain and a brief introduction:

In 1946, two legendary artists began collaboration on a short film. More than half a century later, their creation has finally been completed.

A phantom pen scrawls the names Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney elegantly across the screen and the tale begins in earnest.

You feel Marcus’s hand curl around your own as Dora Luz’s haunting voice fills the space of the living room, beginning her melancholy ballad.

“Now I can smile and say….

Destino,

My heart was sad and lonely,

In knowing that you only,

Could bring my love to me.

Destino,

This heart of mine is thrilled now,

My empty arms are filled now,

As they were meant to be.”

You’re three minutes into the nearly seven minute short and you haven’t been watching since you’d felt Marcus’s fingers intermingle with yours, opting to watch him instead. His eyes are glued to the screen, darting to and fro with Dahlia’s dance as she flits across the desert landscape, artfully weaving her way around obstacles that stand between her and her beloved Chronos. You hear his sharp intake of breath as he realizes that, alas, their love is not meant to be; that the life of a mortal is too fleeting to be saved by the love of a god. A frown tugs at Marcus’s lips as he watches Dahlia fade into the obscure, leaving Chronos with nothing but a memory of what never was.

His arm finds its way around your shoulders, his eyes never drifting from the screen as the film ends. It’s an unconscious gesture; an inherent, subliminal search for intimacy, and one that you sink into willingly. Your own gaze returns to the screen just as Dora ends the ill-fated love story with a message of hope.

“I know now

That you are my destino.

We’ll be as one, for we know

Our destiny of love.”

The credits roll and you toggle back to the main menu while Marcus remains silent. Appraising, critiquing, you assume.

“Well, mister ‘I don’t do surrealism’, what did you think of that?”

His head snaps to you and it’s almost as if he’d forgotten you were even there at all.

“That was….wow,” he breathes. “I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.”

“So, does that mean you liked it or…?”

“Honey, it was beautiful.” His smile is full of wonder. “I mean it was tragic, and there was still a lot of symbolism I didn’t quite grasp, but I’m seriously impressed.”

You chuckle as you run a hand playfully through his hair. “Does that mean I’ve successfully defected you to team Dalí?”

“I’m at least straddling the line,” he admits. “I will say this, though: seeing all of the weird imagery that Dalí could conjure up just hanging suspended in time on a wall doesn’t exactly do his vision justice. It just looks like someone’s nightmares or fever dreams plastered onto a canvas. But watching those same images come to life, watching them move and interact the way he saw them doing so inside his head? It’s….breathtaking.”

You love listening to this man talk art. He’s as passionate when discussing art as any artist is while creating it. The way his smile grows; the way his eyes sparkle. He becomes a work of art.

“I just wasn’t expecting it to be so sad,” he admits, his smile drooping ever so slightly. “Who likes a love story without a happy ending?”

Marcus’s whole life seemed to be a love story without a happy ending. You hope to be the one to change that.

“Sometimes the greatest love stories don’t end happily,” you shrug. “But they still inspire others to seek their own happiness. That’s what makes them great.”

Marcus mulls that over for a moment before taking your hand and resting a gentle kiss atop your knuckles.

“I think my days of seeking are over,” he grins warmly. “You are my destino.”

You playfully flick a piece of popcorn at his face that he skillfully manages to capture with his mouth.

“Sweet talker,” you smirk.

“So, spill it,” he says, scooching in and getting cozy. “What turned you on to Dalí’s work?”

A good question. One you never really expected ever having to answer. You’d been introduced to the surrealist’s pieces in the same way you assume that most people had been: watching the clocks melt off the pages of your textbook in your freshman art history course. Much like the title of that well known work suggested, the memory had persisted. You’d taken it upon yourself to study more of Dalí’s masterpieces, diving straight into the mind of the mad man. Once you discovered “Destino” you were officially hooked. But that’s not what Marcus had asked. How did you even put the answer into the right words?

“Dalí created images that people wouldn’t typically see as art and turned them into masterpieces. Weird things. Sometimes disturbing things. He found the beauty in the strange, and that made me feel something,” you answer honestly. “I’ve always been an oddball myself, so he gave me hope that maybe, someday, someone could see beauty in me.”

He stares at you for a moment (either awestruck or weirded out, you can’t really tell) before surging forward and locking his lips with your own. Marcus is a master of conveying his love with his mouth; whether with words or silently.

“I see it, honey,” Marcus whispers against your lips. “I see it every single day.”

@just-another-dumb-artist @grimeylady @rav3n-pascal22 @mamacitapascal @insomniamama1 @pedrosbisch @emmaispunk @mandolydian @lv7867 @reonlouw @hawaiianmelodies @pascalsky @pascalpanic @heythere-mel @healingstardust @pastel-0-princess @pedropascal207 @delorena @dindjarinsfingerlessgloves @pedropasxal @caesaryoulater @just-fics-i-read @randomcollection-o-stuff @girlbestie @phoenixpascal @dickspittoon @pasca1 @carstwirs @pancakeisreading @kiizhikehn-cedar @hellovanessax @fangirling-alert @pedrocentric @fromthedeskoftheraven @liviiii98 @feralhotmess @axshadows @mandapascal @dragon-scales88 @spaceppastel @anaaaispunk @pedropascal2532 @spideysimpossiblegirl @pbeatriz @hauntedmama @mswarriorbabe80

[the-chick-of-the-air]

Ink On My Skin

Written for Jurdannet Roulette. Thank you to @jurdannet​ and @jurdannetrevels​ for hosting. Written in league with my revel/romantics anonymous group @acciomanorian @the-chick-of-the-air​ @ironicallyanemic

We used the prompts Soulmates, "I know you", and our own take on empath to come up with our own franken-prompt. It's a soulmate AU where whatever character A writes on their skin will appear on character B's skin and vice versa.

Beautiful Edit by @ironicallyanemic

Series: Part 1 of Ink On My Skin

Chapter 3

Cardan. Here?

I itch to grab a pen nub, a quill. Anything I can write with and start drawing on my skin, only to watch it vanish.

I think it might be foolish that it has become a sort of habit.

Rather, I grab the tray out of the servant’s hands and storm my way into the study. Cardan may be here, he may be in part a ruler of these lands but this is my house. I have the power- however little- to get him tossed out.

I barge into the study only to stop short.

A Greenbriar, but not Cardan.

Dain.

I have made a mistake.

He remarks on my actions, how I must be in a rush. Fear is pricking at my senses and I have to hold back from grabbing the quill off the desk.

Foolish, foolish habit.

I sink into a low bow, hoping he finds me clumsy only. My thoughts race. Could his being here be Cardan’s doing?

My skin burns. I want it covered in ink.

I swallow my fear and stumble through an introduction, offering him the wine I’d taken from the servant. We exchange a few words. Conversation. He wants conversation. I want to scribble on my skin, watch it fade away like my body absorbs it. I can’t wonder about where it goes right now.

I rub at the missing tip of my finger instead.

When I tell Dain that, no, none of his brothers are causing me trouble, he finds me fascinating. Mortals can lie. He says. He’s never seen it up close, he says. He wants me to be his little liar. He doesn’t say.

But it’s what he wants.

When I ask him why he’s made an appearance, what he wants here, he answers my question with a question.

What do I want? Something I have always wanted, never dared speak.

I want to say “make me immortal” before I feel myself cringing. I don’t want to want that.

It occurs to me I could ask that whenever I write on my skin, it stays on my skin. For my words to finally be mine and mine alone. But then that would lead him to question who receives the runaway ink. I’m not stupid. Oriana told us what it was like to have a soulmate. I just don’t know who lurks on the other side.

I try to keep from recoiling when I ponder the fact that they might be dead. I’ve never received anything from them.

It might be worse if they’ve been ignoring me all this time.

Before I can let my thoughts spiral, before I lose control and throw myself at that quill, I say, “I want to be able to resist enchantment.”

It feels like it shouldn’t be this easy. A Prince has waltzed into my home and offered me my greatest desires and for what?

Ah. He wants a spy. My heart can sink through the floorboards but I won't let it show. He explains there will be room for growth, for freedom, for power once he is crowned High King.

Foolish habits. I clench my fists to keep from tracing letters on my skin.

I accept. What more could I want at the moment? At least now I’ll be going somewhere.

He grants me a Geas, awesome. With the catch that he can still enscroll me. Less awesome.

Dinner is a quiet and proper affair without Vivi there and by the time I am done arguing with Taryn on our way up to bed, I am ready to pour my feelings out onto my skin.

I remember the first time it happened. How I thought it was the potion in the bottle that made the marks disappear. I know better now. The day I revealed what the “magic ink” could do… I think that’s the closest I’ve ever seen Oriana come to happiness for me.

I throw myself down into the chair at my vanity. I pick up a quill and dip it in ink.

I doubt anyone is actually getting these notes, these messages. That is why I am so comfortable with bleeding my feelings out onto my skin as though I am a living diary to be filled. It makes me feel better, writing out my thoughts. And maybe the thought that there might be someone out there, sharing in my troubles, well…

I shake my head and put ink to skin.

~.~

I am now a spy for Prince Dain.

Knighthood was my dream, my future, my solidified place in this forsaken land. Losing it would have broken a lesser mind, and I could hardly stand the thought of having no clear path before me, but this…this power. This station within the court is the next best thing.

I cannot say what will come of this, and I cannot imagine what my first task will be, but it is a start to something.

I have sworn to be the greatest. So even in the shadows, I will outshine them all.

I can barely transcribe the letters fast enough. They are excited, nervous maybe, whoever they are.

“I have sworn to be the greatest” I know exactly who that sounds like but I dare not let myself even consider the possibility. It’s already too much. My every thought, action, dream and nightmare. They are already filled with her.

It’s nearly enough to make even me sick. I pride myself- secretly- on the fact that I am no infidel. Not when I have committed myself to someone.

When I was with Nicasia, I was hers alone, even though some part of me knew I… that there was…is someone on the other side of this soulmate bond.

Being with Nicasia had been a prize I had won. Somehow she had seen me and seen something in me she wanted for herself.

Her infidelity came as such a strong blow, I almost wondered if there was in fact a method to this soulmate madness. If Nicasia wasn’t mine to keep, if whoever was on the other side of these inked messages was the one I was supposed to be with…

I suppose, in a sense, I did feel like I was cheating someone, somehow, even if I was sure for the longest time that whoever had written that first message was long gone. Dead, most likely. But then the constant scribbling upon my arms and sometimes thighs would only serve as a striking reminder that whatever I’d had with the fish princess was never going to last.

I don’t know how I ended up deciding to make a habit of recording everything they wrote, but I can hardly stop now. It’s a daily routine, an addiction. Not unlike my taste for faerie wine and a certain pair of angry auburn eyes.

I want to rub the stress out of my eyes but then I might miss something being written. It’s the same everyday now. Whoever is on the other side ends their day with writing about it.

One would think I’d have enough information at this point to figure out who it is that’s writing all this, all so suddenly. But they have never given their name, their place, nothing.

Or perhaps they have and whatever cruel magic that drives these bonds has decided it would be funny to withhold such information from me.

They have stopped writing for the night. The ink fades away as quickly as it appeared and I am left with the copy I have made, drying in a thick parchment heavy book that I have used to record every sentence, every word for weeks now. I sigh as I shove it back into its place on my bookshelf next to my copy of Alice in Wonderland. I try not to think of the piece of parchment I have hidden in there, of what name is scratched out over and over again on it.

Madness. All of it.

Perhaps one day I will find who it is that lurks on the other side of our bond. Perhaps I might even come to like them. For now, I climb into bed and try not to grieve the fact that they are nothing more than ink on my skin.