#she moves without a sound and is great observer and it's fucking canon

[elrxiel]

each time a G/wynriel says "Elriels wants Elain to be Gwyn so bad!" I lose another braincell trying to understand how someone can be so delusional and absolutely blind to canon sequences repeated over and over by multiple characters, yet so passionate in looking for clues between the lines (which in most cases, are simply not there, dare I say) and twisting the most obvious scenes to fit their narrative

we're all entitled to our own opinions and preferences but I simply cannot take them seriously when all I see are those opinions absolutely misreading canon text and giving characters qualities they do not possess - or trying to take away the ones they do - because they do not suit some wild theories which have no reasonable grounds to back them up

if you fail to understand Elain's character, qualities and background even if it's stated blankly in the books, that's on you I guess, but don't embarrass yourself saying anyone would like Elain to be Gwyn - I can assure you that while most of Elriels like or even adore Gwyn's character and the others are neutral towards her, all of us here writing about Elain are here for her exactly how she is being portrayed throughout the whole series

we love her exactly how she is and frankly, none of us has to take away anything from other characters

maybe before stating something so profoundly stupid, take a look in the mirror and look up the word "hypocrisy" first

[avengerscompound]

Small Gods: Patience - 1

Patience:  A Black Widow Fanfic

Patience Masterlist | More Small Gods

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count:  1611

Warnings: Language, guns, (smut, angst, and canon typical violence on series)

Synopsis: Every day Natasha prays for more patience to deal with a litany of things from waiting for her target to make a move - to not yelling at Clint for putting empty milk containers back in the fridge.

When her prayers are answered, Natasha finds that having patience is easy, holding on to it is a little harder.

A/N: Reader is a minor god.

IF YOU WISH TO BE TAGGED IN THE REMAINDER OF THIS SERIES, EITHER ADD YOURSELF TO THE TAGLIST OR SEND ME A MESSAGE

Chapter 1

Natasha stood on the edge of the building watching the chaos break out below her.  The team was supposed to be infiltrating a new underground crime group to figure out where a drop-off was happening.  They’d had men on a street corner no one had managed to clock, and it had just happened to be the one Steve was observing, and they’d spotted him.  That had made the whole crew antsy and then they’d wanted to change locations for the meet.  That had meant a sudden scramble to relocate everyone, so they could keep monitoring the situation.  Tony had nearly been spotted as they did and ended up having to leave the area completely so it looked like another normal New York City Iron Man sighting.  To top that off, Sharon’s comms had just stopped working completely and so no one had any idea what the group was actually saying.  It had been a series of fuck-ups and she knew she would have to get down into the mess soon the way things were going, but she was waiting to see if Clint could salvage it as he bumbled along the street acting stupid so that he could ‘accidentally bumped into his old friends Sharon’ and get some ears back on the scene.

“God, grant me patience,” she sighed.  It was a prayer that had become commonplace for her.  She’d use it when she was on an undercover mission where she had to pretend to be much less intelligent than she was.  She used it when she helped patch up Clint’s cuts after he’d spent a whole day being incredibly agile and dexterous, only to trip over his doormat and land face-first into a cactus he didn’t even know he owned.  She used it when Tony went on one of his rambling stories that she already knew.  She used it when she had to watch Steve jump off yet another stupidly high point for no reason other than he had to be their first.

“I’m not sure, Natalia,” a voice coming from way too closer said.  “I’m not sure that’s what you actually want.”

She spun around, quickly assuming a defensive position.  You stood at the corner of the building, completely relaxed.  You had dark sunglasses on and what looked like a faux leather jacket and large black boots.  You were leaning against the wall slightly and twirling a lollipop in your mouth, and despite the fact that on just about anyone else she’d think they were trying too hard, you seemed effortlessly cool.

“Who are you?”  Natasha snarled.

“Patience,” you said simply.

“Don’t tell me to be patient when you’ve just snuck up on me in the middle of a mission.  Tell me what you want, or I’ll send that piece of candy through the back of your throat.”

You laughed and held up your hands. “Okay, killer,” you teased.  “Relax.  I wasn’t telling you what to do.  I was saying that’s who I am.”

Natasha quirked her eyebrow at you.  “So your name is Patience, and you sit around waiting for people to pray for patience and you pop out thinking it’s a funny joke?  You know how close to death you just came right now?  I’m in the middle of something.  Go away before you get someone hurt.”

Natasha spun back to look down at Sharon who was now talking to Clint.  She saw the quick sleight of hand as they exchanged mic packs.

“Patience isn’t my name,” you laughed.

Natasha rolled her eyes, hoping to cling on to the last remaining patience she had rather than breaking your neck. That would just lead to a lot of paperwork.  “You said it was.”

“No,” you said, straightening up and reaching into your inner jacket pocket.

Natasha pulled her gun and pointed at you.  “Don’t even think about it.”

You pulled your hand out with a business card pinched between your thumb and index finger.  You raised your hands and flicked the card up so it was held between your index and middle finger.  “I said I was patience,” you said, taking a few steps toward her.  Natasha’s fingers twitched on the trigger finger as she tried to read your intention.  “You’ve been praying to me a lot lately.  I thought I’d show up.  But - you’re obviously not ready yet.”  You offered the card to Natasha and she took it without taking her eyes off you.  “Now… count to two hundred, and then go down the fire escape.  Agent Carter will be fine until then, and that will get you there exactly when you need to be.”

“What?”  Natasha asked, now completely confused.

“Just a suggestion,” you answered and casually strode off to the stairwell, leaving Natasha alone on the roof, completely perplexed over what had just happened.  She looked down at the business card.  Embossed in gold on the glossy black card were your name, address, and phone number.  There was no mention of a job or business or even the word patience that you had kept bringing up.

Natasha furrowed her brow and tucked the card into her pocket.  She wasn’t a trusting person by nature, but she had enough experience with magic to know not to completely ignore what you said.  She counted to two hundred as she paid close attention to what was happening in the street.  As she carefully made her way down to the fire escape, there was a commotion and Sharon drew her gun.  People scattered as a large van pulled up and armed men spilled out.

Natasha cursed under her breath as the street broke out in utter chaos.

“How did you even get there so fast?”  Sharon asked.

Thanks to your warning, Natasha had gotten there at the perfect time to take out most of the gunmen before they’d even shouldered their weapons.  In the end, while the plan hadn’t exactly gone how everyone had wanted it, and they still needed to actually find where they were operating from, they had made a lot of arrests, and thanks to Natasha, lots of innocent lives had been saved from being caught in the crossfire.

“There was this woman…”  Natasha started, not quite sure how to explain your strange appearance and departure from the rooftop.

“Oohhh…” Clint teased.  “Nat got the hots for some hot Chiquita.”

“Gross, Clint,” Natasha snarked.  “Don’t be a letch.”  Clint held up his hands in surrender and Natasha let out a long breath.  “It was weird though.”

“How was it weird?”  Steve said, sitting forward in his chair.  “Anything we need to worry about?”

Natasha shrugged.  “I don’t know - maybe,” she said.  “She said she was patience.”

Clint snorted.  “You definitely need to find her then,” he teased. Natasha swatted him on the back of the head.  “See,” he complained, rubbing his head.

“So her name was Patience?”  Steve said, opening up a drop-down screen above the coffee table.  “FRIDAY, do we have any record of a Patience as a member of any known criminal organizations.”

“Her name wasn’t Patience,” Natasha said, pulling the card out of her pocket and handing it to Steve.  “She said she was patience.”

“What does that mean?”  Steve asked, typing the details into the computer.

Natasha shrugged.  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Tony chuckled.  “I like the idea of anthropomorphic adjectives walking around.”

“Patience is a noun, Tony,” Bruce scolded.  “And so is Tony.”

“You know what I mean,” Tony said, waving his hands around.  “You can feel patient, you can’t feel Tony.”  He paused for a moment.  “Not unless you asked nicely.”

“Maybe she’s some kind of god,” Clint said.  Everyone turned to him and Natasha raised her eyebrow.  Sometimes Clint would say things that were so simple and so profoundly intelligent that she wasn’t sure if he just blindly stumbled into the answer or he was an actual genius.

“Is that a thing?”  Sam asked.  “Just random gods of emotions?”

Natasha shrugged.  “I have no idea.  It’s a pity Thor isn’t here, we could ask him.  But she did say I’d been praying to her.”

Clint snorted.  “Sounds about right.”

“But Thor’s not a real god, is he?”  Steve said.  “Wasn’t the theory that he’s just an alien that lives a long time and humans just decided he was a god?”

“The dude makes lightning, Cap,” Sam teased.  “Maybe he’s not the only place it comes from, but he can definitely create it and control it.  Why can’t there be the equivalent for something like patience.”

Clint snatched the card from Steve and shoved it into Natasha’s hands.  “I say you call her.”

“You just want Nat to stop smacking you on the back of the head,” Bucky snorted.

“No, I want to see my best friend get laid,” Clint said, folding his arms across his broad chest.  “I bet someone who can command patience would be great at sex.”

“And…?”  Bucky pressed.

“And I don’t want to get clocked on the back of the head anymore,” Clint muttered.

Everyone laughed and Natasha looked down at the card, spinning it around in her hand.

“You look like you’re considering it, Red,” Tony mused.  “What was she like?”

“Cryptic,” Natasha replied.  “Cool.”

“Was she hot?”  Clint asked.

“I think so,” Natasha said.

“So call her,” Sharon shrugged.  “She helped me out.  She can’t be all that bad.”

Natasha nodded.  “At the very least I might get some answers.”

“And who knows, Nat,” Clint said.  “Maybe she’ll be able to teach you a trick or two.”

Natasha bit the inside of her cheek trying not to laugh, and wishing she had a little bit of that patience right now.

// NEXT

[imagineanythings]

Whiskey Warmth Chapter 1 (Daryl Dixon x Reader)

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Female Reader

Word Count: 5.6k

Chapter 1/2

Before long, he could barely hear the gentle, even wisps of her breathing over the truck’s engine and there was that burning feeling again, whiskey in his throat. It went down smooth and pooled in a ball of warmth in his stomach. He didn’t hate it. Daryl has always been quiet, stoic, and a realist. On the road he meets someone with a completely different outlook on life. She's a rare ray of sunshine a world that loves to block out all light, but can she keep that light alive?

Follows the plot of the show from post CDC up until Alexandria

Warnings: Canon-typical violence

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

She was all sunshine and light. Daryl had never really met anyone he’d consider an unrelenting optimist until she came along, covered in walker guts with a smile on her face that could make the world stop. They had picked her up on the road, as they drove aimlessly trying to decide what to do after the CDC. Daryl had been the one to spot her. She was walking along the side of the road, covered in remnants of the dead, looking like she hadn’t slept or had a bite to eat in days. But as soon as their little caravan showed signs of slowing, she broke out into a broad, toothy smile and suddenly Daryl was sucking wind like he had been struck in the gut. She stepped up to the window of his truck and stuck her thumb out like a hitchhiker and before falling into a small cascade of laughter at her own gesture.

“Sorry, that was really lame.” She said, still giggling. Her voice and laugh rolled like gravel, it had clearly been a while since she had spoken, but there was a brightness to her lilting tone that had Daryl leaning in to hear more, as if a few more words from her might just set the world right again. “Where’re ya headed?” Daryl finally managed to ask, once he had collected himself. “Anywhere” she said, no hesitation in her voice. She was peering into the cab of the truck, looking around, getting a read on the situation. She seemed satisfied. “I got room,” Daryl offered and there was that smile again. He ducked his head and focused on his hands in his lap. No gaze like that, no smile like that could ever really be meant for him. He squirmed uncomfortably under that kind of focus. She quickly slid into the cab of the truck and placed her pack down at her feet. With a contented sigh she settled in and he chanced a glance at her again but found her eyes still on him. Her smile had dimmed but the corners of her mouth were still distinctly upturned as she watched him eyes still alight. She wasn’t just glancing at him either, the way most people did before they move on to whatever’s really important. She was actually seeing him, observing, like she actually wanted to know more about him. He could practically feel her eyes combing over every inch of him, searching for all the answers he wasn’t willing to give up out loud. He cleared his throat and turned his attention to the road as quickly as he could, getting the truck moving again.

“Thank you,” She said quietly. It was genuine and possibly even a little desperate. He didn’t want to think about how long she had been alone out there, what had led to her being out there like that, all alone. “-‘S nothing” He said, shaking his head a bit, still refusing to meet her gaze. He could almost feel the heat of that smile singe the hair off of the back of his neck. “Y/N L/N” She said, and held her hand out to him. His eyes slid over to her quickly as he shook her hand before focusing again on the road. He tried not to notice the way the contact seemed to burn the same way her smile did. “Daryl Dixon.” He responded and he swore he didn’t even have to look, he could just feel that goddamn lazer beam of a smile lighting up the cab again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her nod to herself a bit, satisfied with the interaction, before leaning back in her seat and pulling the baseball cap she had on down over her eyes. “Thanks again, Dixon,” She said with a soft exhale before settling in comfortably. Before long, he could barely hear gentle, even wisps of her breathing over the truck’s engine and there was that burning feeling again, whiskey in his throat. It went down smooth and pooled in a ball of warmth in his stomach. He didn’t hate it.

The group took to her instantly. She was always there with a smile and a solution, a bright side, another option when things looked grim. She was also a bit of a jack of all trades it seemed. She knew her way around a knife, could tell you what every single plant in the forest was and whether you could eat it or not, had a little sewing kit that she used to make small repairs to everyone’s clothes, could start a fire with just about nothing, the list went on and on. While she wouldn’t give up what she did before the end, she did reveal that she was a girl scout as a kid and had picked up a lot from that. She was great with Carl and Sophia and seemed to be the positive energy that was sorely needed to balance out their perpetually moody and brooding group. It wasn’t like the group was entirely falling apart before, but as soon as she showed up it felt like everyone was much closer, like there was just maybe something other than unfortunate shared circumstances keeping everyone together.

Then Sophia went missing, and Carl was shot, and suddenly everything was falling apart again. At least the farm felt like a safe place to exist for the moment while everything else went to shit. And then Daryl had to go and be an idiot and fall on his own damn arrow and that idiot Andrea fucking shot him, and his sorry ass was stuck in bed instead of out there looking for Sophia.

He woke up in a bed in the farmhouse to someone’s gentle touch on his face. She came into focus slowly with the rest of the world, a bit blurry and so soft around the edges. It was all her. All he could feel were her fingertips brushing against his skin, her breath the sole sound in his ear, that soft sort of floral scent that followed her around seemed to swaddle him. When his eyes finally came into focus, there was only her frame hovering over him, changing the bandages on his head wound. As she saw his eyes open her face lit up and he winced.

“Oh god I’m so sorry! I’m just making sure your dressings are clean, I didn’t mean to hurt you!” She said quickly, her bright smile replaced with a deep look of concern and Daryl felt something like shame twist up in his stomach. The smooth burn in his throat from her touch and her gaze had already slid downwards and turned into a knot. “Yain’t hurtin’ me woman,” He said, wincing again involuntarily at how harsh the words had come out. He felt her touch lighten despite his words. She sighed and continued to work in silence. The air felt empty without her usual positive chatter, her gentle but firm affirmations, or her kind reassurance. Daryl was never one for conversation but he’d be lying if he said he’d have objected to the sound of her voice at that moment. Instead, when she was done, she simply placed a gentle hand on his arm, planted a quick kiss on his cheek, and whispered a quiet “you get some rest now, Dixon” far too close to his ear before flashing him another heart-stopping smile and leaving him to wonder if he had maybe just up and died when Andrea shot him. She had been in and out constantly, bringing him food, changing his bandages, just checking up on him in general. She would sit in the room with him for long chunks of time, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting in silence next to his bed while she patched up peoples’ clothes.

He had just woken up after a hazy, fitful sleep to find her sitting by his bed once again, eyes focused on her sewing. She was humming gently. It was quiet, but he could hear that familiar sweetness in the tune, the brightness that always radiated through a room in her crystal clear laugh, now present in her low and soft humming. If he had focused a bit harder, he was fairly certain he would have been able to make out the song she was humming. It was something he knew from before, but she stopped before he could manage to recall what it was.

“You’re awake!” She said excitedly, “I hope I didn’t wake you, I swear I didn’t even realize I was doing it,” she looked genuinely nervous and apologetic as the words seemed to just spill out of her mouth. Daryl had never been one for speaking up, but the reassurance was slipping from his lips before he had any chance to stop it.

“Naw, weren’t sleepin’ much anyway...” He paused for a moment and was surprised to find that he didn’t want to settle into silence like he usually did. Instead he kept going, “... ‘s nice tho... yer voice” She blushed at that, and if he had thought her smiles packed heat, he was worried he might downright melt from the feeling of making her blush like that.

“It’s nothing,” She spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. She stayed quiet for a moment before shaking her head a bit and focusing back on Daryl. “How are you feeling?” She asked like she genuinely wanted to hear the answer. And not just as a nurse either, not for her medical opinion but because she really cared about how he was feeling. He wanted to pull his head under the covers like a little kid and hide from that kind of attention. But her eyes were wide on him and he couldn’t bear to let her down.

“-’M alright,” He said with a sigh, “wish ya’d just let me outta this bed,” he was being childish and he knew it, but he was too cooped up (and now even more skittish under her gaze) to care. She simply quirked an eyebrow at him and let out a stifled but still achingly melodious giggle.

“You are a handful, you know that Dixon?” She said with a shake of her head. Her sewing had been abandoned on her lap and she reached over to check the dressing on his head. He cleared his throat as she gingerly pulled the bandages off and looked at his wound.

“What were ya singin’?...when I woke up... sounded familiar,” he asked, anything to distract from her caring and gentle touch burning holes in his skin, or her face so close to his as she carefully looked at his wound.

“Oh” she paused for a moment, thinking. She had been in the middle of wrapping his head back up and she had frozen with her hands resting on either side of his face. He didn’t know how he had somehow managed to make this situation even more painful, but he was stuck practically holding his breath, eyes fixed on a little silver pendant swinging back and forth from a chain on her neck so he didn’t have to make eye contact. Finally, after a small infinity, she blessedly began to move again.

“It was Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls,” She said with a fond smile. “One of my favorite songs back in college,” He nodded to himself as the song came back to him, but he didn’t say anything else. She was still so close to his face, like she was trying to see past whatever walls he had built up. Before he could pull away or try to squirm under her gaze she was already leaning back, picking up her sewing again. He didn’t know what she had managed to see, but he was sure it hadn’t been something good.

“Wound looks pretty clean if you ask me. Other one was looking good earlier too, shouldn’t be long now before you’ll be back on your feet.” She said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. He grunted something affirmative and appreciative and she couldn’t stifle the laugh that slipped past her lips.

“What’re ya laughing at, woman?” He tried to be at least a bit intimidating, but she just looked at him with that real, genuine smile that he never quite could fathom being directed at him and a fondness in her eyes that was missing mere moments ago.

“I know you don’t like talking much, and that’s ok. I can do plenty of talking for the two of us. One of these days though Dixon, mark my words, I’ll get some full and complete sentences outta you,” Her tone was slightly mischievous, like she was taking on a great ambition, and hell, maybe she was. Especially after that proclamation, Daryl was determined not to make it easy for her. The slight smile he felt himself showing surprised even himself. He gave another purposeful, but this time definitely skeptical grunt and there was that laugh again. He was glad he couldn’t see himself because he was fairly certain that he was beet red from head to toe.

“Well now you’re in for it Dixon, I’ve decided to make it my personal mission. One of these days you’re gonna look around you won’t know how or when it happened, but all of a sudden you’ll realize that I’ve become your best friend.” He was slightly shocked at this proclamation, but tried his best to keep his expression steady and unconcerned.

“Ain’t really worthy of that title,” he said, he couldn’t stop from dropping his eyes down to his hands. “And that is exactly why you need a best friend like me,” She said. He didn’t have to look up to see her smile.

The farm fell. Shit hit the fan, which was something Daryl was well accustomed to even before the world ended. They made it out alive. They survived on the road for months. Everyone wasted away but they made it through. They had cleared out a prison. Things were finally looking up.

Daryl sat in one of the guard towers on watch. He would probably sleep up there too. He couldn’t get used to sleeping in a cell, even if the doors were taken off, made him feel trapped, like a caged animal. He was scanning the tree line when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Y/N poked her head in with a smile and he nodded to her as a hello.

“Hey Dixon, Rick told me you came right up here after your run?” She said cautiously. He nodded accompanied by a vague grunt. “He also told me that you had a nasty looking gash on your arm that you refused to let anyone check on?” She asked and he sighed, holding his arm out for her to see. “Got caught on some glass gettin’ out through a broken window. Was careless and stupid,” He said nonchalantly. She sighed and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. He tried not to flinch at the unexpected contact but he could tell by her shaky exhale that she noticed. She gave him a gentle nudge downwards and he got what she was asking. He sat down beside her on the edge of the platform, legs dangling below them. She took his forearm in her hands and examined the gash, which began a little below his elbow and extended an inch or two down his arm. It wasn’t too long, but it ran deep.

“It’s not too bad. You’ll only need a few stitches,” She said, turning away. He was about to grumble something about not bothering the old man when she turned back to him, first aid supplies in hand. “Ya don’t-” He started, but she raised a hand and cut him off. “I got you, Dixon, let me get you fixed up” She sounded stern, yet somehow still gentle and he had to force himself to shut his mouth which had, against his own wishes, just sat there, hanging open at her statement. “This is gonna sting a bit, I’m sorry,” She said, dabbing some antiseptic on the gash. She began stichting and he hissed through his teeth. She seemed to wince at his expression of pain and he immediately felt bad for worrying her. Getting the actual damn gash had hurt far more than this. She was quick and gentle and it was over within a few minutes. She let out a shaky breath when she snipped the thread and he looked down at her hands which definitely had not been shaking that much when she put the sutures in him.

“Ya did good,” he said quietly, wanting to reassure but not quite sure how. She looked up at him with a soft smile. “Sorry, I hope they didn’t hurt too bad. Haven’t done them much on real people, I got nervous.” She admitted. He shook his head. “Weren’t nothin’” He reassured and she let out another long breath. “Good.” She said, and he had a feeling that was more for herself than for him.

They sat in silence for a while, legs hanging over the edge of the platform, staring off at the treeline. The quiet felt more safe and comfortable than anything Daryl had experienced in a long time. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her turn to look over at him, so he kept his eyes focused on the treeline, afraid of what awaited in her gaze. She sighed and very slowly leaned down to rest her head on his shoulder. His entire body went stiff for a moment, almost entirely reflexively, before he could manually force himself to relax a bit. He took a deep breath and tried to let some of the tension leave his body, but it was hard when the weight of her head was right there on his shoulder and he could feel her hair brush up against his neck. He thought he was going to go crazy trying to fixate on all of it when she finally spoke.

“Daryl...” She started. She sighed quietly and he could almost hear her brain whirring, searching for what exactly she wanted to say. He could tell by her second, slightly more defeated sigh that she hadn’t quite found it. “Do you think this could really be home?” She finally asked. He let out a sigh of his own, grateful for something to focus on besides the contact but unsure of how to answer.

“Don’t know,” He said after a brief moment of contemplation. “Neither do I,” she said the words so quietly he wasn’t sure if he’d heard them correctly. He didn’t really know how to respond. She was usually the one who was so sure. She was always there with a smile and reassurance that this was the moment where everything would go right, that it would all be ok in the end. He didn’t realize that he didn’t really know how to have that kind of hope if she wasn’t the voice in his ear reassuring him.

They sat in silence for a few more moments before she sat up. He looked over at her sudden movement and she had a scrunched up, determined look on her face. Her eyes were dead set on the horizon. “It will be. It will be because you’re here and Rick’s here and we’re going to make it home.” She seemed to be reassuring herself much more than Daryl, but he didn’t mind hearing it. She looked over at him when she was done speaking and flashed him an appreciative smile. When he turned back towards the horizon and away from her gaze she leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. As she stood up to head back down she called over her shoulder, “See ya later best friend! Take it easy on those stitches! And get some sleep! I’ll send someone to take over for you in a couple of hours!” She turned and headed down the stairs when she was done and Daryl let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in since she had taken his injured arm so gently in her hands.

She got into a habit of checking in on Daryl whenever he was on watch. She would sit with him and talk to him about whatever was on her mind, or whatever was happening with the rest of the group. He would talk too occasionally. He mostly gave quick responses to whatever she was saying but every now and then she reached in with nimble fingers and pulled something more real out of him, either a story about Merle, or some thoughts on the rest of the group, even a promise to give her a proper lesson in tracking and using a crossbow. She had been fascinated with his bow since the first time she’d seen him shoulder it and was constantly harassing him for lessons. He figured now that they were in the walls not on the run, worrying about staying alive from one moment to the next and they actually had the time and energy it couldn’t hurt to see what she could do. Before he knew it, that little offhand promise had transformed into a routine, they’d work with the bow or go out and track and hunt in the early morning and she’d always come up to see him in the guard tower as the sun began to fall over the horizon. Sometimes she’d bring dinner for him, or her sewing, or just herself. If he was being completely honest, he didn’t mind any of those options.

“Daryl Dixon, I swear to god, you better start being more careful out there,” her words were chiding but there was no harshness in her tone. If that weren’t enough, her exasperated smile definitely gave her away. “Told ya, I always do my best. Shit happens tho” He said, trying to swat her hand away as she tried to move his hair out of the way to get a look at the gash on his forehead.

“Hey!” her laughter filled the air as she grabbed his wrist to keep him from swatting. “You know that I’m not leaving until I make sure you’re all good, so you might as well make it easy on yourself and let me do my thing. Don’t make me get Rick up here to hold you down.” She had put on a scowl, and he could tell she was trying to be menacing, but it was an ill-fitting mask on her. As soon as he held his hands up in surrender it was thrown away in favor of her usual smile. She moved in closer to him, moving up on to her knees to get a better look. As she gently began to clean and inspect the wound he found himself face to face again with that pendant he had noticed at the farm, and while on the run, and if he was being completely honest most days in the prison. He had always wondered what it was, but had never seen it up close since that first time in bed at the farm. It was a symbol made up of two hands holding a heart with a crown on top. The silver pendant seemed as much part of her body as her eyes, or her hands. He never saw her without it.

“Seems like it wasn’t too deep, you don’t need stitches but I do want to put a butterfly bandage on there just to be safe.” She spoke while she looked through the first aid kit, and lapsed back into silence as she found what she needed and went back to work. Before he could really think about what he was doing, Daryl reached out and gingerly took her pendant between his fingers. Her eyes snapped downwards, confusion written across her features.

“Sorry,” Daryl said, letting go quickly, mentally kicking himself for grabbing it in the first place. “-’s just a nice necklace,” he said, eyes dropping to his hands, which lay folded in his lap. She smoothed the bandage once more before sitting back down next to him. “Thank you. My dad gave it to me when I was a kid,” She said, her face a picture of fond heartache. “What’s the symbol for?” Daryl asked quietly. “It’s called a claddagh, it’s Irish. The hands represent friendship, the heart, love, and the crown, loyalty. My dad ran a marathon in Dublin when I was young. I think it was sort of a bucket list thing. He brought back this necklace for me. I used to wear it everywhere as a kid, I mean I really loved it. Then in high school I thought I was too cool and it got shoved in a drawer for a while until I found it again in college. I’ve worn it ever since.” She brushed away a tear that was poised to fall and sighed. “Especially when shit went down, I don’t know where my parents are, if they’re alive at all...” she paused, chest heaving, words thick. He could see her denying tears. “Still feels like they’re with me,” she finished with a soft smile. How she could manage to smile after that, he had no idea.

“Sorry to bring it up,” he sighed. “Didn’t mean to make ya sad,” He dropped his eyes once again. “Stop doing that.” She sounded genuinely annoyed. He looked up, confused. “Doin’ what?” He couldn’t fight the scowl that made its way onto his face. “Gettin’ all down on yourself! Whenever you’re beating yourself up you always look down like that! Like you’re ashamed, and I’m sick of it! Dixon, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of!” She was almost yelling now, and he had to fight the urge to lower his gaze again. He settled for scowling at the horizon. He stayed quiet, unsure of how to respond. She placed a gentle hand on his cheek and turned his head so he was forced to meet her eyes.

“Daryl, you’re the best of us. I mean it. It kills me that you don’t see it. Please, just...” She trailed off, searching his eyes as he practically held his breath. Maybe if he didn’t breathe, didn’t let anything in or out, she wouldn’t be able to see through him, whatever ridiculous and righteous illusion she had created in her mind would remain untouched, unharmed. “For me Daryl, please, try not to be so hard on yourself.” “I don’t-” he started, trying to look down again but she immediately cut him off. “No. I’m not done.” She held his gaze with a look that said Look away Dixon, I dare you. “I don’t pick just anyone to be my best friend, Dixon. Believe it or not I don’t just go around gettin’ chummy with every redneck who picks me up from the side of the road.” He couldn’t help the surprised, sort of strangled laugh that escaped him. His reaction drew a gentle, warm smile across her lips and even after a year of knowing her he still couldn’t fight the heat that ran beneath his skin whenever she directed that small slice of sunlight towards him.

She leaned in and planted a quick kiss on his cheek, something she had incorporated into their little routine (not that it made his heart slow or his face flush any less when she did it the first time or the 50th time), and sighed. “I’m sorry for flipping out on you. I just care about you and I hate seeing you doubt yourself like that.” “-‘S ok.” He said, forcing himself to hold her gaze and not lower his head like he wanted so badly to do. She narrowed her eyes a bit as she studied his face, and he could practically hear her mind moving, analyzing him. It scared him, he wasn’t used to feeling so seen. She seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to say any more and pulled him into a hug. He stiffened immediately, and she pulled back slightly before he forced himself to relax. She let out a small laugh that was more awkward than genuine, no humor behind it.

“I feel like I’ve done enough damage for one day,” Voice apologetic as she moved to stand but instinctively Daryl reached out and grabbed her wrist. He was careful to keep his grip light, not forcing her to stay but asking. “Ya haven’t. Ya could stay... if ya want” He said, voice barely above a whisper. She broke out into a full grin and lowered herself back down to sit beside him. She leaned her head on his shoulder and he felt some of the tension in his body melt away. “You really are the best of us.” She said with a small sigh, and he responded with a small grunt that drew a burst of giggles out of her, which slowly dissolved into comfortable silence as the sun began to disappear over the horizon.

For a while this life at the prison almost felt too good to be true. Of course it was. Reality always came crashing down, weighing heavily on his shoulders in the end.

The governor came crashing through the gates with a goddamn tank and everything went to shit again. Except this time he didn’t have her there to reassure him that it would all turn out alright. He had Beth, which was a close second in terms of optimism, but then suddenly he didn’t even have her and everything felt like it was falling apart around him. He was completely alone, his family all likely dead, and he had fallen in with a group that made him feel more like his daddy than he had ever wanted to feel. He stuck it out with those assholes for no reason other than that tiny glimmer of hope that Beth was still out there somewhere. If nothing else, he owed it to that girl to get her out of whatever mess he landed her in in the first place. And then he found Rick, Carl, and Michonne and suddenly his reasons to live had multiplied by three. Terminus was a flash of hope. It didn’t bring him any closer to finding Beth, but Rick pointed out that if anyone from the group survived and found the signs, they would likely be heading there as well.

The train tracks had been easy enough to follow. As the compound came into view, for just a brief moment Daryl allowed himself to hope. But once inside that hope began to very quickly whittle away. It was too quiet, and there was something off about that Gareth guy. And suddenly they were spotting Hershel’s pocket watch, and the riot gear, and Maggie’s poncho and a silver necklace with a claddagh charm and then Daryl felt himself begin to drown. Everything that had kept him going, the small spark of hope that he had allowed to live inside him had been drenched. Now all he felt was steam rising, his insides boiling, but before he could do anything about it the gunfire began and then they were herded towards a boxcar.

Daryl wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but his whole family corralled into one place had definitely not been it. They were all there except Carol and baby Judith, two losses which weighed heavily on the entire group. But everyone else was there and safe and alive. He scanned the room, giving hugs and looking people up and down, making sure everyone looked ok. He moved slowly through the car, through each of his family members, before he came to a stop in front of a figure balled up in the corner. Her face was hidden but her frame was unmistakable.

“Y/N?” he asked, and her name on his lips again felt like coming back to a place you’ve once called home. She slowly picked your head up, and he immediately noticed the dark circles under her eyes, and the way her cheeks looked gaunt and hollow. But when she saw that it was really him, that Daryl Dixon was really standing in front of her, her eyes widened. She leapt to her feet with surprising speed and threw her arms around him. His arms wrapped around her body and when he lifted her off of her feet for a moment he could have sworn that the weight of the world wasn’t all that much to hold. She pulled away and placed her hands on either side of his face.

“I can’t believe it’s really you” Tears began to pool in her eyes and she pulled him back in for another hug, face buried in his shoulder. He could feel her shoulders shake and a patch of wetness grow on his shirt. “Thought you were gone.” She whispered. He shook his head and brought a hand up to stroke her hair. “Naw, ain’t gettin’ rida me that easy now, womanl” He said quietly. After a few more moments she pulled away and just stared at him with those wide, shocked eyes. “Promise I ain’t goin’ anywhere, I’ll still be here if ya blink” She nodded and let out a shaky exhale. “I missed you,” she whispered just as Rick and Carl made their way over to give her a hug. “Missed ya too” he said.

He took a few steps back, and only when he stepped away did he notice the cold emptiness nipping at him, like something was missing. He watched her hug Rick and Carl, he watched the most important people in the world to him all come back together in a single moment, and yet he felt cold. She was crying. She was hugging people. She was telling everyone how much she missed them.

She wasn’t smiling.

[bookwyrminspiration]

is it still council-hating hours? even if not, this is something that's been bothering me for....so long. and i am going to explode if i don't say it right now. (In fact i actually have a doc titled "council incompetence rant" that is. getting a little long.)

One of the things that annoys me the most in Keeper is how utterly incompetent the Council is. They are shit at their jobs! They don't make sense! And that would be fine if that was something that was explored and talked about in the story, but it's not?

Like, sure, it's brushed on a little, but Keeper never goes in-depth in order to explain just how flawed and corrupt the system is! We have no idea how far the rot goes because we haven't been given a chance to see how far it goes, and despite the earlier books being really great setup for all kinds of plots and discussions surrounding the Council, it feels like Messenger is completely dropping that in favor of..."Neverseen Bad, Council + Black Swan Good". Which I call fucking bullshit on, by the way, because this series has gone to pretty decent lengths before to show that it's not the case! So WHY are we getting to that now?

Well, I think all of this is the symptom of a bigger problem.

Note: I don't want to be mean, and please tell me if I'm being too critical here, but this series has some serious problems actually delivering on what it's saying.

Like, it's trying to tell us that Sophie shouldn't be doing all this because she's a kid, but then it treats her very own existence as a project as background information when that should absolutely be at the forefront (like it was in earlier books)!

It's trying to tell us that discrimination against the Talentless is bad, but then every single member of it's cast has an ability, has a strong ability, and regularly uses their ability! Even Dex, who could have easily been talentless and good with tech, gets to be a Super Good Gadget Person thanks to his ability as opposed to his own creativity and ingenuity.

It's trying to tell us that maybe banishing children is bad, but also tells us that Exillium is now """fixed""" because Oralie gave them...better tents? Food? And never touches on the fact that children are still. getting. banished. It doesn't explore Tam's anger in detail, Linh is only there to be the token asian girl, it does nothing to fully dispel any thought of the Council being alright.

And it's trying to tell us that the Council fucks up, it's showing us that Councillors have no problem being incredibly selfish and violent and so many other terrible things, but that never changes. Nothing in Keeper is changing. It is only maintaining the status quo!

I'm confused as to what Messenger is trying to tell her readers! Are the Council good or bad? Is working with the Council good or bad? Are the Black Swan and Neverseen actually morally grey? Should I be angry at what's happening in these books? Am I meant to look at all the rot and shrug because "that's just how it is"?

And like...I wouldn't be mad if Keeper was just...bad! I mean, I would, but I wouldn't be as distraught! What really grinds my gears is that Keeper has the chance to be good. It has the chance to do great things - and at times it absolutely does! - but it keeps reinforcing belief in a deeply flawed and broken system that is regularly hurting people. And those examples were just off the top of my head!

And again, if this was explored within the series, that would be amazing, but the problem is that it's...not. And that's just...a real fuckin' shame, honestly.

- pyro

(sorry if this was like...too angry? i started and then kinda just...couldn't stop. i should probably get a hobby that's not tearing a middle grade series apart. oops.)

it may have been over a week since you sent this (thank you for being patient with me!!), but fuck yes it is still council hating hours. it is always council hating hours in this household that is not actually a house. (also that incompetence rant sounds intriguing)

yes! you are right! they are so bad at what they're supposed to be doing it's like they're just figures for people to look to and say "yea they'll take care of it" to keep everyone else from acting out! but it's really interesting to see a government so awful and incompetent be such an integral and influential part of the story...without acknowledging that they're actually really bad? I know in Unlocked there's a line where Shannon says something like "Sophie had to figure out who the bad guys were: the black swan? the council? someone else entirely?" but then it's never touched on again that I can remember. Thinking through the series, I honestly can't think of a situation that the council, of their own volition, saw was an issue and corrected in a way that was beneficial to those who needed it. Like yea, Oralie gave money to Exillium, but that was after Sophie chewed her out about it. I think i've said it before but in case not: it feels like they've taken the "for the good of the many over the good of the few" ideology too far in a society that doesn't work for. If someone threatens the majority (and often that's just in appearance only) they get rid of them to preserve the image of the rest. It doesn't care about their people, it cares about the majority of people feeling undisturbed.

considering Sophie is part of a huge organization created literally because their society, led by that system, isn't working for a lot of people, they (the Black Swan) sure do go along with the council a whole lot. I think one of the linked posts in one of my masterposts is specifically about how making the Black Swan work so closely with the council screwed them over and completely undermined everything they were working towards. I'm going to make a very vague comparison here, but the Black Swan feel like "we need to fix the system" while the Neverseen are "the system is broken lets start over" (except the Neverseen added a lot more violence into the mix). It's absolutely infuriating to have them working side by side: one, because the Black Swan aren't accomplishing any of their goals and should cut their losses and go back to being mysterious underground groups with more freedom to move (in my opinion), but two, because it makes the council seem like it's trying to fix things when really it feels like a publicity thing to make the public think they're addressing the rebel issue while they're really just showing up in places and causing problems. And!! that's another thing! it feels like their collaboration with the Black Swan is to address the problem of having rebels, not the problems these rebels have identified and are trying to fix. Unfortunately, it seems the council is getting their way more than the Black Swan, getting them to act more legally and work closer with less room for working outside the system. if that makes sense.

considering it's literally stated in unlocked that there is no "good" and "bad," there does seem to be a lot of focus on associating the Black Swan with being Right, and the Neverseen with being Wrong. I can hope that it's the outward reactions to the Black Swan realizing they've done some fucked up stuff (Sophie) and are now overcompensating and trying to make sure their every move is the correct one. But I do think it will be interesting to see if Sophie makes the connection in canon (as she's already started to) that there isn't always a right option, there's just the best you can do with a situation and the Black Swan's insistence that she was "in the wrong" (a summary) helps her realize her own values and think through their decisions with her own perspective instead of just trusting them

response to your note: you're fine! you bring up a good point that this book sounds like it wanted to be a unique perspective (by having the "good guys" also be questionable and give the "bad guys" reasonable motives) but the execution misses the mark for a lot of us. so you're qualms and observations are entirely valid and I don't think you're being mean at all! I think you're expressing a frustration you have with something, which I support and encourage.

at times it feels like Shannon bit off more than she could chew in terms of all the complicated things she could get into when it comes to this series. not saying she's doing a bad job or a horrible author or anything, just that there are some things she introduced that kind of get left behind or unexplored because there's so much else going on. I think we can see that in the whole being experiment part of Sophie life. we saw sophie was uncomfortable with it in the first few books and would sometimes bring it up, but I personally would've been more satisfied if she'd either taken the time to process it (opposed to her think about that later strategy) or come to the realization that no, she isn't okay with it and she deserves to have her thoughts on the matter heard. she was literally created to serve someone elses purpose, and brought into the fight too early at that. and yet it's treated like an "oopsie, guess we just gotta go with it" thing, like this minor part of her story when I bet her thinking about it for more than a minute at a time would absolutely wreck her. but I'm getting caught up in this, so moving on!

I think we can see it in the talentless too, as it's treated like a "that doesn't affect me" thing for Sophie. because she doesn't have any friends that are talentless right now--the closest she's got is Marella, who I think is still legally considered talentless with her pyrokinesis. it's been acknowledged that she doesn't think the way talentless are treated is right, but it doesn't impact her right now so she's not really doing anything about it. maybe if this was brought back later with someone like Jensi, then that would be a satisfying conclusion to this issue (not a conclusion, but it wouldn't be left hanging, if that makes sense). And I can understand the benefit of leaving things open to go back and explore later from a writers perspective, but at a certain point it becomes more of a hindrance to the story than anything else.

and exillium! I have so many thoughts on Exillium that I actually started talking about it earlier in this post. They're not doing anything unless prompted and what they do is the bare minimum. With the tents and the food, they aren't fixing Exillium, they're making it into what it should've been at the very least were they going to actually go down that route. So I can't praise them for it when it's just basic decency to provide literal children with food and shelter when you force them to be somewhere they don't want to. But all this doesn't fix Exillium, because the problem is that it exists in the first place. The problem is that the council saw children who were struggling, and decided the best thing to do with them was to just get them out of the way for everyone else. Three coaches total for leadership? yeah, there's no way that place was ever supposed to be "alternate learning" or however Oralie phrased it, that was just so you could say you hadn't completely abandoned them in the middle of nowhere.

you're so right about the council fucks up bit--I think the most obvious example of this is with Sophie's ability restrictor. Yea, she's not wearing it anymore, but that's not because the council changed their minds. It's because she broke the law and the didn't punish her for it. this is a great example of how things keep trying to move forward, but the council isn't doing anything to stay up with it. "they are selfish and violent[...] but that never changes." yes!! this!! you put it so well! the council is still the same old council that we saw in book one, concerned with their own interests and their own views, just trying to mitigate the damage Sophie and her friends are capable of doing to their system. Note: the fact that a handful of teenagers who haven't even graduated can do this much damage might be telling of the structural integrity of their system. Bronte and Terik did a little flip, and Alina replaced the Now Crispy Kenric, but aside from that nothing has changed.

I will say, I personally don't want it to be clear who the good guys and bad guys are. (not saying that's what you're asking for! just piggybacking off your comment on the confusion). I'm glad that the characters make me think and I'm grateful there isn't just the "we're good and they're bad" element you see in other stories. not that that's bad, i just think realistically they'd be more complex and their simplicity grows repetitive after a while. But like I said, at times it feels like there's too much going on for there to be a clear message, which in and of itself could be the message. i could be seeing something where there's nothing, though. I think part of it might be Shannon trying to take on all these complex narratives and perspectives with a limited perspective (as in she only has Sophie to tell the story through), while also needing to make it enjoyable and palletable to a young audience.

and I agree with you! I think it's a lot of the potential we see not being used that makes us so infuriated (or me at least). Because there are some stories yo uread where you're like "ah. it's just one of those stories. cool." and you move past it. Because you know it's going to have a set perspective and you know it's going to accomplish what it wants, but Keeper seems to have so many possibilities and Shannon's getting stuck in this rut of good and bad after so long. maybe we'll get out of it in the next book with sophie thinking the Black Swan was in the wrong, but I also wouldn't be surprised if that Didn't Happen.

it's just like what i was saying about Ro! There's all these opportunities for these characters and this world to be really explored and fleshed out and complex, but we've gotten stuck in this romance drama and loosing fights again and again with little progress. All their actions are undoing the Neverseen's actions and counting it a victory because no one is dead. I just think there could be so much more that we're not getting because the story tried to go too broad when it wasn't ready for it.

this response got very long but in essence: I agree with your assessment of the story. is frustrating to see so many of the details and paths we'd like to see explored that often aren't in fiction just pass us by.

there is a special place for keeper in my heart and I will always appreciate it for that, but I also mourn what it could've been.

(also: you are not too angry! you have genuine thoughts about this series and they deserve to be heard! we are allowed to have complaints, even about the things we like. we don't have to appreciate every single aspect and we're allowed to be mad at the things we don't like.)

[curiousscientistkae]

oh yeah since I have new peeps here is a rundown of myshe ra kiddos +finally adding some i never talked about. Ages are just to show gaps between kids, they are not "canon". Under the cut stuff. I uh....ramble

Glimmadora:

Harper-20, eldest daughter/child. Born Feb 1st. She/Her, Demi-Bi. Heir to Brightmoon, gets called 'AJ' (Adora Jr) a lot by Glimmer since she looks and acts a lot like Adora. Has shoulder length two toned blonde hair (top half light like She-ra, bottom darker like Adora) with sparkles at the edns, sparkling purple eyes shaped like Adora's, tan skin like Glimmer, glasses, sometimes wears a hearing aid in her right ear. Has cream/purple wing markings on her back that later will turn into feathery cream wings with purple tips.

Sound based powers (cause my brain was like light and sound) but still can create light stuff they just make sounds also. Also can turn invisible. Being unable to control the powers as a toddler, she lost her hearing in her right ear. Everyone in the family knows sign language.

Smart af, witty, as the eldest of all the kids can be protective to a fault, anxious, wants to not fuck up and be a great queen. Will overwork herself and is a perfectionist, though can be forgetful. Is a great shoulder to lean on/be listened to.

Grows to 6' (she got them angella genes (who is alive in this au, not micah) and athletic build like Adora. Named to match the 'er' at Glimmer's name, her sound powers, and the Lyra constellation. Glimmer was the one to have her.

Mira-13, youngest daughter eldest twin. Born July 9th. She/Her, Lesbian, about 5 mins older than Micah. Powerless Princess. Got her great aunt and grandpa's hair color, pale skin (same as Adora), ice blue eyes shaped like Adora's, freckles on face. Usually has hair in ponytail held up by that butterfly pin from princess prom. Also almost always has a red cloak around her. Called 'Mimi'

Born with no magic and not connected to the moonstone (long story short in my au, First Ones cannot use magic without help or it will kill them. Mira got the most FO genes thus she cannot use magic. Whole ass idea i need to explore). Tries to make up for it with fighting skills. While she doesn't show it a lot, she hates the fact she is powerless and will not grow wings either.

Clever, rebellious, loves to explore. Can have a temper to her, wears her heart on her sleeve. Natural born leader. Butts heads with her mothers the most and has run away a few times (once for a very very long time heh). At the end of the day, she doesn't want to be in the shadow of anyone/wants to make her own mark.

Grows to 5'6", chubby build like Glimmer. Named to match the 'ra' in Adora's name and the 'Mi' in Micah's name. OG she was going to have healing powers before I got rid of that so it was also sort for Miracles. 'Mira' is a star, one that is an actual shooting star. Adora was the one to have her

Micah-13, youngest child only son. Born July 9th. He/Him and They/Them. Demi-Boy. Bi, about 5 mins younger than Mira. Has spell powers. Messy, chin length dark purple hair (the same shade as the bottom half of Glimmer's hair), sky blue eyes with sparkles and shaped like Glimmer's, freckles on face. Light tan skin (between his sisters). Has purple wing markings on back and later will get purple feathered wings. Called MJ (Micah Jr) or Mickey

Like his grandfather, great aunt, and Ma before him, he can use spells. Struggles with it but eventually learns he is best at defensive ones. They look up to many of the guards in the castle and wants to be one when he grows up.

Quiet, soft spoken, nervous boy. Def keeps his twin sister from doing something totally stupid. Trusting, sometimes too much, can hold grudges if wronged badly. Tries to see the best in others. Named to honor his grandfather, they want to live up to them and be a great sorcerer

Grows to 5'11, more avg/a bit stocky build. Named to match the 'Mi' with Mira and as Micah is dead in this still (i made them a long time ago) after him. Adora was the one to have them.

Scorpia's Kid

Onca-13, only child of Scorpia. Born May 4th. They/Them. Non-binary Pan. Magicat/Scorpion. OG a scorptra kid but Catra no longer with Scorpia. Has medium length snow white hair, usually in a small pony tail, light brown skin, amber eyes (only iris has the color not the whole eye). Cat fangs and white cat tail. Has those scorpion shouler pads and venom their fangs (not as strong as their mother's) and blue blood. No fur. Called 'Onc' or by Scorpia her 'Lil' Kitling'

Has electrical powers like Scorpia. Venom will only make the part they bite numb, does not fully knock anyone out. Is quick on their feet.

Laid back, quick to adapt, resting bitch face, can be a little lazy, sometimes acts without thinking, and easily distracted. Before growth spurt, they were small and grew a hatred of being seen as always needing help. Just a gentle giant really.

Grows to 6'3, strong build like Scorpia. Named after the latin species name of the Jaguar.

(i so need to work and the following kids more rip)

Bowfuma

Robin-18, eldest son/child of Bow and Perfuma. Born March 20th, He/Him. Gay. Dark brown skin, dark brown, short hair, dark brown eyes. Wears glasses. Has plant powers. Called Robby. Heir to Plumeria.

Plant powers are a WIP kind of, might be like Perfuma or a little dif but is connected to the Runestone. Knows some archery but prefers a crossbow.

Self assured, he knows who he is and what he wants to do, fair-takes both sides of an argument into account. Is the least likely to cause shit. Can be messy and hates when his things are moved. Procrastinator.

Grows to 6', lean build. Named after both Robin Hood, the archer, and the bird

Eliza-16, only daughter. Born Sept 15th, She/Her, Aro/Ace. Dark brown skin, dark brown hair in two braids, dark brown eyes, freckles. Needs glasses but wears contacts. Powers allows her to talk to animals. Called 'Liza'.

Also connected to the runestone, Eliza and talk to animals. She actually started to talk to them before speaking to her parents. When she talks to them, to others it sounds like she is making the animal sounds.

Passionate and loves animals. While her cousin Mira puts her energy into trouble, she puts it into being outside and building things or helping her mom and dad. Hates being stuck inside. Can be whimsical. Loves to be challenged and doesn't back down from stuff, even when maybe she should. Can be a bit dense.

Grows to 5'8", lean build. Named after Eliza Thornberry.

Ash-15, youngest of their siblings. Born Nov 23rd. He/She/They genderfluid. No real label-uses queer. Medium brown skin, medium length, wavy blonde hair, dark brown eyes. Freckles. Has no powers but does not mind it at all.

Unlike his younger cousin, Mira, Ash does not care they do not have powers or are not next in line for the thorn. They are happy to just learn from their father or others. Kind of a jack of all trades.

Has a big heart and a love for all life. Once she is set on something, she sees it through to the end. Very observant of the world and what goes on in it. Can be impatient and doesn’t always take things seriously. Jokes way to often. Free-spirit

Grows to 5'10", thin build like his mom. Named after the type of tree which you could use to make a bow.

Seamista

Newt-18, oldest and only son of Sea Hawk and Mermista. Born Dec 11th, Trans Man He/Him, Pan ace. Dark brown skin, dark brown eyes, short blue hair. Has no runestone powers but can still turn into a merman when in the water.

Newt was next in line for the throne but stepped down, not liking the idea of being a king. He likes to spend time at the beach, swimming, and enjoying being in the sun. Usually keeps his sisters from killing each other.

Hard worker, does not usually slack off, does hate being in the spotlight. Humble. Good at reading emotions. Can lose track of time easily. Has his mother's dry sense of humor. Will faint at the sight of blood

Grows to 5'7", build like Sea Hawk. Named for the salamander that is associate with fire. And with it being an amphibian and transitioning from one stage to another, kind of works there also.

Sandra-15, oldest daughter. Born Mar 7th, She/Her, Pan. Medium brown skin, brown eyes, dark long brown curly hair. Has water based powers (still a WIP whoops). Can turn into a mermaid when in the water.

After her brother stepped down, she is now the heir to her kingdom. Still working a bit on her powers but is connected to the runestone. FIGHTS with her sister all the time.

Very much a girly girl, loves pink, skirts, sparkles, all that jazz. Takes her role as princess seriously. Dutiful and punctual. Hates messes, likes things to be neat. Does not like things randomly being dropped on her.

Grows to 5'8", Mermista's body build. Nickname is Sandy and is called that the most. Named cause yeah....sandy.

Yamuna-12, youngest child/daughter. Born Apr 13th, She/Her, Greyromo/sexual Lesbian. Long blue hair though will dye it many colors, usually orange, light brown skin, brown eyes. Water powers. Cannot fully turn into a mermaid when in the water, just gets webbing and gills.

She can control the temperature of the water around her, freezing it or boiling it at will. Is a great sailor

Pure Sea Hawk child, pretty much his clone. Wild, hyper, will set shit on fire. Takes pride in everything she does. Will blurt out things without thinking and can be pushy. Doesn't like to be told to do things. Zero filter.

Grows to 5'2", small body build. Named after one of the largest rivers in India.

(these guys are VERY WIP so not much to them)

Ada-Entrapta child, on the younger end. Adopted, trans woman, het. Does love robots and what not, helps their mom out a lot. Probably can run on little sleep and still be fine. Name was given to me by my good friend Dorku named after Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and first computer programmer. Very close with Onca

Luka and Felix-Catra's sons, adopted. Both magicats. Catra moves away from everyone and wouldnt really come into focus until much much later when Mira runs off. Luka and Felix idk ages yet but are only a year apart in age. Luka means light (he is one of Catra's lights now) and Felix is a cartoon cat. Would become close friends with Mira later on

(im too lazy to proof lmao and free to ask questions or change stuff up lmao god)

[thiswasinevitableid]

Hii uhhh this is for mermay, but it's not one of the fills so please feel free to ignore this if it doesn't catch your interest!!

Idea;; within a mostly-canon setting, Duck is turned into a merperson (probably while they're trying to deal with one of the abominations, but that part's flexible) and has to deal with it while still trying to like,, function. He gets a magic disguise, but hijinks ensue.

Here you go! I attached this to "Summer rain" and another mermay prompt. It's SFW

The last time he went flying through the air and into the water while fighting an abomination, he almost died. So he’s none too pleased when he surfaces from being chucked in Lake Brahe.

“What the fuck Indrid?!”

“I’m so sorry” Mothman flaps above him, both sets of hands tapping together anxiously, “I promise this is for the best but I’ll admit the exact process might have been overkill.”

“You fuckin’ think??” Duck kicks towards shore, grabbing his hat as it tries to float away, “the others are still back there with that thing. And I fuckin hate bein’ chucked into things without warnin.”

“I don’t think there are people who do enjoy such things.” Indrid alights on the shore Duck is swimming towards.

“Well then don’t fuckin do them.”

“It is for your own good, Duck Newton.”

“Yeah, heard that one before.” He hits shallow water, wades to shore trying to shake his hat dry, “now c’mon, fly me back so we can-”

His legs crumple, sending him face first into the lake. Crawling is no good, his whole body contorting and shaking, his throat and lungs burning. He claws at the pebbles and sand, coming away with fistfuls, grabbing for something, anything, to pull him from the water, as if reaching shore will free him from the pain wracking his body.

The world is coming in photo negative now, flashes of color that don’t make sense, the crack of his bones filling his ears. He might he crying, the pain is too deep to tell what else he’s feeling or doing.

“Help” he rasps into the night air.

Human hands cup his face, guide his aching head down across bony legs, “It will not last much longer.”

“Am” he gasps, feels the Sylph turn their bodies for some unknown purpose, breathing easier after he does, “am I gonna die.”

“No. And before you ask, your powers would not have done much for you if you still had them.”

“Fuck” he whimpers.

“Agreed.” Indrid strokes his hair, “five more seconds. Four, three, two, one.”

Duck passes out before Indrid can say anything else. He’s roused by the footfalls of combat boots and wingtips down the beach.

“Duck, Indrid-OH HOLY SHIT!”

“He’s not-”

“No, Ned, he is very much alive. Had I not moved him when I did, he would have suffocated before you could get him to any water.”

“Thank god.” Ned must be by his head.

“Aubrey, can, can you, it hurts-”

“Ummmmm” His friend sounds like she’s trying to come up with a comforting explanation, “which part of your tail hurts?”

Duck sits bolt upright, then falls back into Indrid’s arms, staring at the deep green and silver tail where his legs should be.

“Well….fuck.”

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

“How are you doing?” Indrid, red glasses glinting and pink and yellow sweater hanging off his tall frame, perches on a rock.

“Great. I’m a regular, breakable dipshit who turned into a fuckin merman without warnin, I had to have Barclay call work and tell ‘em I got a flu so they won’t fire me for disppearin, anything my friends bring me to eat gets soggy, and I ain’t seen my cat in three days.”

“So...not good then?”

Duck raises an eyebrow. Indrid smiles, not his usual confident, casual one. He looks unsure, which is in and of itself kind of unnerving.

“No, Indrid. Not good at all.”

“Ah. Apologies, I sometimes have trouble parsing certain tones.”

Duck swims closer, “Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright. You have every reason to be angry and upset. Even with me.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t curse me.”

“No. But had I moved faster, gotten to you all sooner, you would not have been in it’s path at all.”

It’s so matter of fact. The same way Indrid talks about anything troubling.

“Certainly my most newsworthy failure”

“Had you not arrived at the cottonwood, it would have been rather bad for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the eye. It hurt, but I have felt far worse.”

“And I have yet more bad news; while I can make a charm that will allow you to be in your human form for up to six hours at a time, the properties of that abomination mean eventually you’ll have to return to water.”

There’s a flicker in the smile, so swift Duck wonders if it’s only because his eyes are no longer human, slit pupiled instead of round, that he sees it at all. Or if it’s because this is the first time they haven’t been surrounded by heat, noise, or danger.

“Indrid, you know I don’t blame you, right?”

“Of course, Duck. I was merely being thorough in my apology.” Now it’s his normal, wide smile, but too tight across his teeth.

“He was before my time.” Vincent grins as he sets the DVDs on a well-dusted shelf, “though if Woodbridge is anything like he is now, I doubt they got along. The other ministers say he was...determined when he left. Like he could conquer any challenge earth presented during his quest."

Indrid’s glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them up before Duck gets even a glance at his eyes, “Now, where did I put that pin…” He pats his pockets, freezes when Duck manages to set a hand on his shin.

“Indrid, I mean it. Didn’t blame you then, don’t blame you now. Hell, from the sound of it you saved my ass, big time. So, uh, what I’m tryin to say is thanks. For lookin out for me.”

He squeezes in what he hopes is a friendly fashion. Indrid chirps, once, face losing all trace of eeriness. Then he schools it back to normal.

“You’re welcome. Punching aside, I’m quite fond of you. I’m going to use this for your charm, if that’s alright.” A souvenir pin from the Monongahela's tenth anniversary sits between slender fingers.

“Holy shit, I been lookin for that for ages. I, uh, I try to-”

“Collect them, yes. I saw that in a conversation between you and Juno. I was going to give this to you anyway, goodness knows it took awhile to find it in the trailer, but now it can serve a greater purpose.” With that, he pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Duck’s image unfolds before them, Indrid smoothing it out and setting it on the rock as he begins working. Duck watches with interest, notices the process is much slower than it was when Indrid disguised Billy.

“Am I harder to get right than Ryan Gosling?”

“Yes. Well, not technically, no, but with Billy I just needed him to look human. I need you to look like, well, you. Such a fine specimen requires the utmost care.”

Duck’s about to toss back his usual line he gives to guys who compliment him, then realizes flirting with the Mothman might be weird, or that Indrid may not have meant it as anything more than some clinical, Sylph observation of humans. He tries to distract himself by swimming, but his tail still won’t do what he wants much of the time.

“You’ll have greater success on your back.” Indrid says without looking up.

He’s right, and Duck manages to swim without difficulty, tail shimmering in the sunset. The one time he glances at his friend, Indrid is staring at swaying and rippling in the water.

When the Sylph finally calls that he’s done, Duck speeds to the rock, let’s Indrid pin the charm to the collar of his undershirt that he keeps wearing because he’s still a human, dammit, just one with an inconvenient tail and he’s not gonna start skinny-dipping in a national forest. Again.

Duck flails when legs replace his tail, Indrid’s hand grabbing his a moment before he needs it to and helping him onto dry land.

“Satisfactory?”

“It’s fuckin perfect!”

“Wonderful!” Indrid claps his hands together, “what would you like to do? I may need to escort you for the first day, to be certain there’s no flaw in the charm.”

Duck studies the pink light tracing the angles of Indrid’s face, “Wanna meet my cat? She looks like a bobcat that lost a bar fight, but she’s sweet as can be.”

Indrid’s grin turns genuine for the first time all day, “I would like nothing better.”

The mothman becomes a staple of his life after that. With the charm, he’s able to help the Pine Guard track and slay the abomination, go to work, look after his house, and generally convince anyone not in the know that he’s totally fine. But he has to return to the lake every day, spends his mornings and nights there, even his lunch breaks when he knows he needs to give the charm a break then. It’s far enough away that he’s in no danger of being seen by civilians, but at least once Indrid had to fly him to it before they ran out of time (and Aubrey had to teleport them there, which made him nauseous).

Indrid keeps him company, sometimes with the others and sometimes on his own. He finds waterproof cards and games, listens to Duck talk about work and tells him about his travels. At first he worries Indrid is only doing it out of guilt, but as the weeks go by he comes to see that Indrid likes him. He laughs at his jokes, gives him as close to his full attention as he can, even scratches his scales with his mothed-out claws when they start driving Duck crazy with itchiness.

His friend always goes home to sleep, which is why, as Duck is drifting on his back, half snoozing and half star-gazing, the red eyes high in a tree come as a surprise. He’s on the other end of the lake, doesn’t seem to see Duck as he spreads his wings and flaps into the air. Then he nosedives, pulling up before he hits the water and then skimming across it in broad strokes. He shoots upward, spins, and then repeats the routine.

Duck’s seen him fly during fights and to escape the Cottonwood. Never like this, never so free and graceful. It’s such a joyful sight, makes Duck wish he had wings of his own so he could join him, dance across the stars and their reflections.

He swims towards Indrid, begins mirroring him on a whim, twisting, diving, and leaping as best he can in time with the cryptids flight. Pushes his tail to carry him faster, farther, all for the sake of keeping pace with the beautiful monster in the sky.

Surfacing after a particularly giant splash, a voice lilts down from the sky.

“Race you to the other side.”

Duck loses, but only just, cackles when Indrid buzzes him so closely he can feel the tickle of his feathers. When the mothman finally lands Duck swims to him, scooting up on land so he can watch Indrid fluff and clean his feathers.

“I come to this lake to practice flying without fear of being seen. I assumed you were asleep but, ah” his antenna twitch, “I’m glad you weren’t.”

Duck stretches, moans happily when Indrid gently glides his claws up his tail, “Me too.”

“Same time tomorrow night?” Soft hope flutters between them.

“Yeah.” He grins up at the cryptid, “bring your A-game, I’m gonna carb load tomorrow mornin so I can kick your butt.”

“I look forward to it.”

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

It’s been a month and a half since he transformed, which puts them smack in summer thunderstorm season. Duck’s used to it, though he’s more than a little nervous about what will happen if lightning hits the lake. Luckily, tonight it’s just soft summer rain instead of electricity and drops the size of robin eggs.

Indrid isn’t faring as well. The rain droops his antenna, compresses his fluff until Duck can see he’s still a twig under all those feathers. He shivers, chirrs in discomfort and shakes off his wings, but stays put on his favorite rock.

“There a reason you ain’t just turnin human? Could put on a raincoat that way.”

“I” Indrid sneezes, “I want you to feel comfortable. It can be so unpleasant, feeling like the only non-human in a place.”

Duck swims to the rock, flicking his tail up and down as he float, “You’re always changin form to make me comfortable.”

“Yes. Because I want you to not be unnerved by me.”

“But what about what you want?”

A feathery shrug, “That doesn’t matter.”

“Drid-”

Red eyes glare at him, “I am well aware of how I look, Duck. What people think of me. Would you have spent even a fraction of the time you have with me if your transformation had not forced it?”

“Y-fu-uh-I mean not no?” He sinks into the water as resignation becomes visible on Indrid’s inhuman features.

“I’m glad for our friendship, Duck. And I don’t doubt that you’re fond of me now. But please don’t pretend I was your first choice for company.”

“I mean...you weren’t. But that’s because we barely knew each other, hell, you only got back to town three months ago.” Duck takes the hand nearest him, “if this happened to me now? You might be the first person I’d want lookin out for me.”

Indrid chirrs, dips his head down to rub his cheek against Duck’s hand. Suddenly he wants nothing as badly as he wants to get Indrid warm and dry so he can run his fingers through every inch of those feathers.

“May I turn human?’

“Of course. Means you can come swimmin with me.”

Indrid, now in a tank top and yoga pants, cocks his head, “Why?”

“It’ll be fun?”

“My kind are not the strongest of swimmers.”

“Good thing I got a tail and gills, then. Besides, you’ll stop feelin as sticky from the humidity if you’re in the water.”

Indrid pulls off his shirt and pants, revealing duck-patterned boxers, and cautiously wades into the lake.

“Ooohhhh, that is so much better” his sighs, too blissed-out to notice the sudden drop, and only just manages to grab his glasses before going under. Duck zips forward, hoisting him easily into an embrace as he splutters.

“Blechhh, I despise the taste of lake water.” He clings to Duck, skinny legs teasingly tense around his tail.

Duck rubs his tail up and down his inner legs soothingly, “you, uh, want somethin to get rid of the taste?”

“Please.” Indrid smirks, clearly expecting a goof. When Duck tips his glasses up his forehead, he goes stone still.

“Can I kiss you?”

“This was not in any of the timelines.”

“Just came to me now. And that ain’t an answer.”

Indrid nods, tips his face forward to bring their lips together. Duck sighs, floats lazily backwards as Indrid slips his tongue between his lips. When they part, there are more stars in his eyes than in the whole milky way.

“Do you want some good news?” Indrid nuzzles his neck with an adorable trill.

“Lay it on me.”

“The futures just shifted; Aubrey and Janelle will have a cure for your condition tomorrow.”

“Hell yeah.” Duck flips them upright, Indrid “eeping” and holding tighter, “can’t wait to stop worryin’ about whether I’m gonna start suffocatin on land. And, uh” he nips Indrid’s lower lip, forgetting about his sharpened teeth until the Sylph lets out a little moan, “if you ain’t busy tomorrow night, like to take you on a date.”

Indrid beams, “I’d like that so very much. Though I will admit, I’m going to miss how this looks on you.” He squeezes his thighs around Duck’s tail.

“You can always whip me up one if we wanna, uh, relive the fun parts of this experience.”

“True. And with that in mind, my sweet; how do you feel about wings?”

[once-upon-a-pirate-ship]

it would kill me (if you didn't know)

I know. Trust me, I know. But I've been working on my novel, and when this fic slapped me in the face last night, I just went with it. And so should you.

Neverland AU - canon divergence for somewhere in 3a

(Blatant disregard of canon to follow--don't make me rewatch the show, please)

They saved Henry but all got separated in the process, and when they finally made it back to the ship, Emma realized that they were down a man. She's just gonna have to save him.

This features some pretty awesome Emma/David bonding, too.

This is a classic 'Killian's been taken while saving them and now he's being tortured and Emma isn't gonna stand for it' fic. I've read them all, and I just needed more. POV switches 3rd person between Killian and the others.

Thanks in advance for accepting the sidestepping of canon that I love to do.

Rated M for language and violence

length: 5k+

Read it on ao3

In retrospect, it wasn’t the greatest plan he’d ever had. But it also wasn’t the worst. Well, it could hardly even be called a plan, really, given that the consideration for it occurred in approximately three seconds, but he was hardly going to worry about it now. There were other things to worry about.

The thing that Killian Jones, pirate captain of the Jolly Roger and unofficial Neverland guide to Swan (and the others), needed to be worried about was the little demon child Peter fucking Pan who stood over him with that stupid evil smirk on his lips.

“Seems like you’ve finally lost, pirate,” Pan spat, but the amusement in his tone only sharpened the anger in his eyes.

Killian’s gaze flickered from the child to the grove in the distance, and when he saw not a trace of the others, he returned his attention to Pan. “Aye, I suppose so,” he said, his voice rough though calm and certain.

Pan’s brow furrowed. “Really? No witty remark? No promise to skin me alive?” he taunted. “You’ve changed your tune, Hook.”

He resisted rolling his eyes, instead gripping his wounded shoulder a little tighter. The arrow wasn’t poisoned—he’d have felt it working by now—but it wasn’t helping his predicament at all. Neither was the sizeable gash on his abdomen that Felix had been kind enough to gift him when he’d been distracted.

“Have I?” Killian asked. “I wonder what you’ll do with me now,” he added dryly. He knew. Oh, he knew.

Pan’s eyes flashed, and in an instant he was crouching towards Killian, his hand grasping the protruding arrow. “Now, I get to have my fun,” he declared with a cruel twist of his lips and an even crueler twist of the arrow.

But Killian Jones was no stranger to pain. They were intimately acquainted. That’s how he grit his teeth and buried it until nothing but a tiny grunt sounded from deep within his throat. Pan wouldn’t consider his torture much fun if he didn’t scream in agony, so he would keep playing until Killian could fight it no longer. And he’d let him. Because egging him on would make him lash out, and ensuring him of Swan’s victory would put her and the lad in danger. Pan had spent his time since their arrival playing games with them, distracting them from the important things they’d come there to do. It was only fair that Killian would return the favor.

So the demon could pull out all his toys, could whip him and carve into his flesh, could burn him until his skin was blackened ash, but nothing would stop Killian Jones from protecting his loved ones. And gods above, he loved Emma Swan.

--

All she wanted to know was how the fuck this happened. Their plan had been so perfect that even she couldn’t doubt it, but somehow the winds had shifted or their luck had run out or her luck had run out, and when they returned to the Jolly Rodger and the groups had reunited, they’d been down a man. Down a captain.

Neal, for all his talk of fighting for her, didn’t seem to mind not fighting for something that she actually cared about. He was running for president of the Let’s Leave the Pirate Here Club, and that wasn’t exactly a great way to get into her good graces, though that would’ve been hard enough as it was.

Regina, predictably, prioritized Henry to a fault—Emma was always for prioritizing her son, but not when it came to sacrificing her values or her morals or whatever, fine, she just didn’t want to sacrifice him. Henry was okay, he was safe, and they could take precautions to ensure that he would stay that way, but Regina just didn’t care or didn’t think it was worth it. A good option for Neal’s vice president.

In all her silent canvassing of the group’s feelings regarding Operation Save Hook (Henry was asleep, okay? He could come up with a better name when he woke up), Emma blatantly ignored Gold. For obvious reasons.

Tink was mostly for saving him, but not confident enough in any plan she could offer to make it stick. She’d tried to sway Regina, but that had been less than successful.

Then it was her parents. And, for once, they weren’t in total agreement.

Mary Margaret was sympathetic, to be sure, but not enough. She wasn’t in the Let’s Leave the Pirate Here Club, but she was Queen of Save My Kid and Her Kid Kingdom, so that was that.

But David—that’s what had caught her attention.

When they’d first discovered Hook’s absence and began discussing their options, Emma had held back and held her breath, unwilling to reveal her hand without knowing where the others stood. She’d gone into full Observant Mode, and that’s when she saw David, her father, and his reaction.

His face stiffened, an automatic move to hide his feelings, but Emma saw through it, even when Mary Margaret didn’t (or didn’t want to see it). It was a set jaw, a twitching lip that was almost a frown, tensed shoulders that eventually gave way to firmly crossed arms because apparently, Emma had gotten her Observant Mode from her father, and that’s what he was doing.

A few minutes into the conversation had nothing decided, but Emma shifted her stance, and her father looked her way. Their eyes locked, and while the others continued their pathetic excuse for a rescue discussion, father and daughter exchanged practically imperceptible nods, and then they were allies.

It’s what gave her the strength to step forward at last and disregard whatever half-assed ‘it’s too late’ speech Neal had been giving with a pointed clearing of her throat.

“David and I will go back for him while you guys get the ship ready,” Emma announced. Regina did that haughty half-step back that meant something between ‘I don’t care’ and ‘do whatever you want,’ and Mary Margaret’s only response was to look questioningly at her husband. Tinker Bell gave an enthusiastic nod of approval before busying herself with some bit of the rigging she may or may not have actually understood how to work.

Neal, however, was predictably Neal. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ems,” he said, that stupid nickname that he had no fucking right to use.

Emma’s head turned slowly to her ex, regarding him with the coldest gaze she’d ever offered anyone. Regina had some competition as head of the Looks That Could Kill Committee. “Hm, okay. Well, you don’t have to think it’s a good idea, because you’re staying here.”

“Emma—”

“There’s no discussion, Neal. No discussion from anyone, but especially from you. You have no right to talk, or interfere, and you especially have no right to argue against saving the man who is the reason your own son is alive and safe now.”

Mary Margaret was staring at her when she turned away from him, her eyes wide and openly confused, but she said nothing. David, however, had his eyes cutting into Neal, narrowed and calculating and damn, he was putting pieces together and he wasn’t liking the picture.

“Ready?” Emma asked her father.

He forced himself to look away. “Just have to grab one thing,” he told her, shaking his head at something Mary Margaret had said before he disappeared below.

Neal had huffed away after Emma’s little scolding, and he pouted at the exact opposite end from where his father pouted. Regina looked disinterested and mildly irritated, but when Emma glanced at her, she nodded towards Gold with a raised eyebrow.

Emma’s lips curled in something like a grateful smile, and she passed her bewildered mother on her way to the Dark One.

“You have something,” Emma said as soon as she stood in front of him. “Something to get Pan.”

“I do, Miss Swan,” he replied, that stupid tone that told her he had tricks up those stupid sleeves of his.

She hummed. “No, there’s no deal this time. No price. I’m done with games. So you can either give it to me, or I can take it from you.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Take it from me?” he asked, entirely amused by the concept.

“I’m done with your shit, Crocodile. You can play Dark One with me all you want, but we both know it’s just easier to just hand it over.”

He glared at her for a long moment, but eventually he cracked, and he glanced at his son who looked out at the water and away from them both. “Fine. But only because I’ve no use for it anyway.”

She took the box he offered, resisting the urge to mutter, ‘yes, that’s why,’ as he explained how it worked. When he’d finished, she offered him a simple but genuine “thank you,” before joining her father once more.

“Here,” David said, passing her another cutlass, one she hadn’t seen before. “You need a new weapon,” he added.

“And I’m borrowing…”

“Hook’s. An extra,” he said. “Figured he wouldn’t mind.”

“Right,” she mumbled, taking it with a frown and securing it quickly. “Well then, let’s go.”

--

For all his talk of being intimately acquainted with pain, Killian Jones was doing a piss-poor job of hiding it. The cracks in his resolve were starting to widen, and when hums and grunts became groans and low growls, he knew it was only a matter of time before Pan started to truly have his fun.

He’d been more clever this time around, to be sure. It had to have been at least a century since Killian had gotten cozy with the demon’s knife (or arrowhead, or branding iron, or whatever particular weapon he’d chosen to use that time), but Pan had certainly honed his skills quite a bit since then.

But Killian was sure that Swan had taken her lad and the others far away by now, and the knowledge that he’d helped her, that he’d kept his word, allowed him the strength he needed to keep the screams from coming.

For a while.

Pan, though, had used a trick on him he’d never experienced, and the shock alone was enough to get it working for a little while.

That trick came in the form of her, of Emma Swan, and the name had fallen from his lips like a prayer, hope that he’d never felt before rising like a rushing tide in his chest, and she’d smiled at him, a radiant, lovely thing that he’d never imagined could’ve been gifted solely for him, useless pirate that he was.

But then she’d started talking, and he knew it was a trick (tides always come back, because when there’s a rise, there’s also a fall). Not at first, he’d give Pan that, because it was easy enough to believe that the smile hadn’t been for him, that she resented him, that she hadn’t meant to save him, that they were better off without him. It wasn’t what she said that tipped him off, it was how she said it. Because Killian Jones had studied her since the moment she uncovered his pathetic hide in that pile of bodies, and he knew her—more than she knew herself, to her dismay—and he could read her. She was an open book, after all.

When her eyes didn’t burn like he knew they should’ve when she spoke of anger and hatred, he knew. When her lips didn’t quirk in that one specific way when she mentioned abandoning him, he knew. And then she spoke about her parents and Baelfire, and it was all wrong, because Emma Swan had walls, and even Neverland wasn’t enough to break them down so quickly.

Wherever she was, Emma Swan wasn’t about to run into her parents’ arms and live happily ever after with them and her True Love, because she wasn’t there yet. He knew her. He knew how hard it was for her to open up to him, someone who understood her from such shared experiences, and that wasn’t something she could just overlook as soon as she returned home. They’d hurt her—here, in Neverland, with assumptions and confessions and automatic behaviors, but also before. And if she did wish to ride off into the sunset with Baelfire, Neal, it wasn’t going to happen right away, because Killian had watched her while she shifted away from Neal when he’d moved towards her. He’d seen the way she recoiled at his touch, how she’d narrowed those jade eyes at his words, how she didn’t trust him, not anymore.

No, the Emma Swan that stood before his beaten and bruised body was a copy, and a bad one. When she hadn’t achieved her goal, she disappeared, and Pan took her place, and though he knew the demon was mocking him and prodding him with insults and hoping they’d smash the last of his resolve, he wasn’t ready to give in just yet.

Killian Jones was waiting for something. He just couldn’t figure out what it was.

--

“What’d he do?”

Emma faltered, the blade missing the piece of jungle shit in her path she’d been trying to cut down. “What? Who?”

“Neal,” her father said, clearing the vines for her before they continued on.

“Oh,” she sounded, pulling her lips together as she considered what to say. He’d noticed it before, and she knew that. He wasn’t stupid, nor was he as hope-prone and naive as Mary Margaret could often be. And they had another few miles to go, at least. “He left,” she said.

David stopped, a hand on her arm that was more than just an attempt to stop her from walking, too. “He left you?” he asked, his eyes somehow tight with rage and tender with something she wanted to dub dad-ness, because no one had ever looked at her like that before.

Emma huffed, because now was definitely not the time for Feelings, now was the time to rescue a goddamn pirate from whatever the hell Peter fucking Pan was doing to him. “He set me up to take the fall for his crime and let me go to prison instead. I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was already in jail.”

David blinked once, twice, and then his expression was consumed by dad-anger (because it was just a different brand of anger that she’d also never seen before). “Emma—”

“It was a long time ago, dad.” They both started at the name, dad, because she’d never really used it before. A few times she’d said it, but it was something she’d had to force, a correction or a pointed joke, sometimes a near-death thing, but this was different. Authentic. Slightly heartbreaking.

“We don’t have time for this,” she muttered as she turned away, but neither was surprised, and even her dad wasn’t hurt, because Emma had her walls, and that was okay, because she’d needed them to survive this long. And if he had to put in a little time and effort to help take them down, that didn’t bother him one bit.

“I was kinda surprised that you wanted to come,” she said after a while, unable to bear the tense atmosphere any longer.

David gave her a half-smile, slicing another thicket (because they’d grown over since they’d returned to the ship. Fuck Neverland, honestly). “He did save my life, you know. And he was saving Henry when an arrow hit him—before your mother and I got separated from the group. I wasn’t about to leave him for dead after he took an arrow for my grandson.”

Emma froze, nearly dropping the cutlass that wasn’t hers. “He saved Henry?”

Her father’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you knew that,” he said. “So why are you so eager to help him? If you didn’t know.”

Her lips parted only to press together firmly, and when she spoke, they both knew it wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth. “Because I don’t leave people behind. And even without the arrow, he still saved Henry. He brought us here.”

David studied her for a moment, and these pieces were coming together faster now, and quite suddenly, the picture made a lot of sense. “He came back.”

“For Henry. And Neal,” she replied.

“And you.”

She couldn’t deny it, and he knew that. But it surprised him that he didn’t mind it as much as he had before. Emma’s walls, no matter how much he wished he could change it, were in part because of him and Snow. They saved her, yes, but they abandoned her when they did it. And Neal had likely been the cause of the other fortress that surrounded her, because he’d abandoned her, too.

So if the pirate had gained her trust and her respect because he hadn’t abandoned her, then that was good. David had seen plenty of love and devotion in his life, but he’d never seen loyalty like the kind that burned in Captain Hook. Centuries in search of revenge for the one he’d loved and lost. That wasn’t the man who would turn around and abandon her the second the opportunity arose.

No, without him or the pirate realizing it, he’d pretty much gained his blessing. Because David knew damn well that if the roles were reversed, not even if Emma herself were in danger, but if Hook were here in his place and someone she loved was being tortured, there’s no one he would trust more than Captain Hook to help her. Neal had barely batted an eye. But he was apparently quite skilled at leaving people to rot.

David was just beginning to contemplate how to handle that particular situation when the screams started.

He took his daughter’s hand, meeting her huge and watery eyes, and they ran.

--

He’d held on so long, but it was worth it. It was worth it. No, she was worth it. Emma Swan was worth it.

Emma. Emma. Emma.

Her name became a mantra, a song in his head to fill the space between screams.

Killian Jones had loved Milah. He never doubted that, and his love for another didn’t negate it, either. He wasn’t sure what made his love for Emma Swan sharper, deeper, but it was just different. His working theory was that they’d both loved before, both been hurt before, both lingered in something that was slightly less than pure. Whatever had happened with Baelfire couldn’t have been perfect, because it hurt her. And she’d been so young when she’d had Henry. Milah wasn’t faultless, either. Ironically enough, that point was proven by Baelfire.

Killian had spoken to her about it for hours. She’d spun tales of rescuing the lad, taking him from his pathetic father and bringing him aboard, but it never happened. It wasn’t until Henry was taken from Swan that he realized the downfall of his Milah. He’d known it, truly, but nothing would have stopped Swan from getting back her son, and it should’ve been the same with Milah.

For a moment, the pain of his guilt overwhelmed the pain of Pan’s lash that sliced into his back.

But that was what made his love for Emma Swan different.

Try something new, darling. It’s called trust.

Be a part of something.

Too bad he’d never have the chance to explain it all to her.

--

Emma had seen so much in her life. So much pain, so much ugliness—it had made her start to believe that there was really nothing else. But then Henry showed up at her door, and things changed.

Now, standing in her hiding place with her father, she was forced to watch as the demon child inflicted brutal and unrelenting torture to Captain Hook—no, no, he wasn’t Hook anymore. Not after this. He was Killian Jones, and she was going to save him.

She just couldn’t jump in and do it. Not without a plan.

Once they’d decided who was the distraction and who was taking the box, they were ready, but she wasn’t. Each scream pierced her heart, and by this point, the tears were just a permanent fixture that neither of them acknowledged. You couldn’t listen to that kind of pain and not feel it down to your goddamn soul. And she knew that as much as it hurt to hear it, Killian was hurting a thousand times worse while he endured it.

It had only been hours, maybe, but she’d never seen a person look so broken and not be actually dead, and it felt like her fault. Because maybe if she’d been strong and reasonable enough to let go of Henry’s hand for even a second, she would’ve realized that he wasn’t at her side like he was supposed to be. Sure, they’d all been separated into groups that slowly returned to the ship, but she should’ve known. She should’ve been there. He shouldn’t have been here.

None of that mattered now. It was time to save him, and then she could worry about everything else.

Her father kissed her forehead, brushing her tears with his thumbs and offering her a reassuring nod that said we’ve got this, and then he disappeared to play his part. When she stepped into the clearing, she was much more confident than she had any right to be.

“Pan.”

The kid snapped to attention, whirling around to look at her. “Really? You’ve come to rescue the pirate?”

His words, his face, his stupid grin pissed her the fuck off, but what really sold it, the thing that solidified everything for her was the sight of Killian’s hook tucked into Peter Pan’s pocket like it was a fucking souvenir.

“Well, you know what they say about us hero types,” Emma stalled, keeping herself from glancing at Killian where he lay in the dirt. “We don’t leave anyone behind. We come back for everyone. It’s just in our nature.” She had no idea what she was actually saying, she was just talking, just waiting until her father got into place.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you take the pirate, Emma. He’s mine, you see,” Pan told her, and she thought that he’d never looked less than a child with the straight-up evil in his eyes and the weapon in his hand.

She folded her arms across her chest, pulling on strength she didn’t have. “Hm, no, I don’t think he is,” she said, letting some of her anger seep into her voice. “He’s a pirate, sure, but you and I both know that he’s pretty determined about that good form nonsense, and he made me a promise, you know,” Emma continued. “He told me he’d see to it that Henry gets home safely. He can’t do that if he’s here.”

Pan’s shoulders shifted as his chest puffed out, and he wanted something. “How about this,” he said, “the pirate in exchange for your son.”

Emma scoffed. “As I told the Dark One earlier, I’m done playing games. No deals. I’m leaving this island with my son and my pirate and everyone else, and that’s it. You lose, kid.”

Peter Pan grinned, and if she hadn’t just seen David out of the corner of her eye, she would’ve been terrified. “How’s that? I’m not going to let you leave with Henry or the pirate, no matter how much you’re convinced I’m going to,” he said, almost petulant.

“Sorry, I should’ve been clearer,” Emma smiled, “I should’ve mentioned the part about you being captured. Whoops. Too late.”

Emma surged forward, snatching the hook just before Pan was sucked into Pandora’s box from David’s outstretched hand. Neither he nor Emma hesitated for a second before they rushed to Killian where he was no more than a pile of cuts and bruises on the ground, stripped of his coat and his vest and his bravado.

David rolled him onto his side carefully, shooting her a concerned look when he didn’t even flinch.

The hook fell from her grasp and onto the ground beside them. “Killian?” Emma said softly, her hand reaching out to ghost across his sweaty forehead. If she didn’t see the rise and fall of his chest in time with the shuddering breaths he took, she would’ve been certain he was dead, because anyone else would’ve been dead.

“Emma, I have no idea how we’re going to move him when he’s like this,” her father told her, and if he were someone else, that would’ve meant that they’d run out of options, but hope was the family motto.

Emma pushed out a breath, bringing her hands back to her face, running them over her hair and locking a few fingers around her necklace. “Alright, okay, lemme think,” she said, but of course that was when her brain turned to absolute mush.

Time, nonexistent here though it was, was marked with Killian’s shaky breaths, and several minutes passed before David spoke. “Emma…” he began, and when she looked at him, that family motto was shining in his eyes. “Emma, you have magic. You can heal him.”

“I—” I can’t, she wanted to say. But it didn’t matter that she’d never done it, that she had no idea how to, because she’d do it. She’d do anything to save this stupid, ridiculous, insufferable, amazing pirate. He promised that he’d win her heart, and she wasn’t about to lose him right when she finally had a chance to let him.

“How?” she asked, hoping—yes, Emma Swan did things like hope now—he’d know something helpful.

David hesitated, as if he were gathering everything he’d ever learned about magic. “Okay, your magic is about emotion, right?” At her nod, he continued, “Well, that’s good, because you’re feeling a lot of things right now. You want to help him, to heal him, so maybe think about why?”

Emma chuckled, and it was a watery thing, but she wiped the dampness from her cheeks. “I don’t think I’ve cried this much since…I have no idea when,” she confessed.

David met her gaze, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Use it.”

She took a breath, her eyes slamming shut so she could focus, but her hand didn’t leave her father’s.

Why was she crying now, this much, after everything? She wasn’t a crier (you couldn’t be in the system that long and still be a crier), so what had changed? All at once, she knew.

Captain Hook is what changed. Killian Jones had towered her walls, and now she was crying over him. Because she felt things. Things with a capital ‘t,’ and it was the first time in her life that she was finally, truly letting herself feel Things, the first time she honestly wanted to. There hadn’t really been a choice with Neal. He was just there, and that’s why she’d loved him. She was young, and he offered her this tiny piece of security and she’d latched onto it, and that was it. It wasn’t even about him, not really, not when she broke it down like that. Everything she felt for Killian Jones was about him.

Right from the start, he’d terrified her, because he could see right through her walls like they were made of glass. He read her because he already spoke the fucking language, but she hadn’t let herself understand that piece until later. But how many times had she been standing beside her family (she had that now), knowing that things were off or just not feeling right because they didn’t quite get it—but then she’d looked over and he’d been watching her because he got it. He knew. And he came back.

Killian Jones had never abandoned her. Well, there was that one time he locked her in a cell, but that was only because she’d just chained him up on the top of a beanstalk and it was honestly only fair, so that was different. Every moment when she waited for him to race off while in Neverland, when leaving her to her fate would’ve been the smart and easy thing to do, he’d proven her wrong (but she wasn’t really wrong, because she didn’t really believe it. She’d trusted him right from the start, and each time he didn’t leave her was somehow both totally surprising and totally predictable).

But it wasn’t just that. It was everything she saw in him when he thought no one was looking. The shadows that crossed his face when they ran into something familiar, the hesitance when offered assistance by anyone, the mysteriously filled waterskins that appeared by her bedroll after his watch. Everything he did for her and her family was a promise that he was no longer a villain—that maybe he’d never actually been one—and she could doubt everyone else (except for Henry), but she couldn’t doubt Killian Jones.

She was falling for him. Hard. She probably already would’ve fallen if she’d let herself, especially if she’d gone with her gut at the top of that beanstalk and trusted him, so she wasn’t about to let him die.

Emma raised her free hand, feeling all of her Feelings and thinking all of the Things, and she healed him, because she needed to. She felt the warmth that radiated from her palm, and when her eyes flickered open, there was a brilliant light that washed over his face and followed the path of her hand as she hovered along his body. The cuts shrank, sealing themselves while the blood seeped back into his skin, and when his breaths were no longer labored, she knew he was healed.

Her father gave her a proud smile (it was watery, too), but their attention was quickly brought back to the groaning pirate.

Killian’s eyes took several fluttering blinks before they focused correctly, and when he spoke, it was no more than a disoriented grunt. “Swan?”

“We’re here,” she said, releasing David’s hand to take Killian’s. “We trapped Pan, Henry’s safe on the Jolly Roger, and now all we need is for you to take us home.”

His eyes were stormy when he looked up at her, and his rough palm lined up with her soft one, and for a single, fleeting moment, it was as if he’d never felt pain in his life. The warmth, the ease, the life he felt holding Emma Swan’s hand made him briefly forget the hours of torture from Pan, and for what may have honestly been the first time in his life, Killian Jones felt safe.

There were many questions that he needed to ask, ones he hadn’t had the chance to think of with his present exhaustion, but he pushed them aside, because she was smiling that smile, the one he’d never imagined could be directed and him, and it lacked the tightness that Pan’s version had. Where Pan’s version had pranced around words, the real Swan was straight to the point and not flowery about anything. But what was most comforting about this Swan was that even though her smile was warm and lovely and nothing like he’d ever seen on her lips, he could see her walls hidden in her gaze, that lingering hesitance, and he knew. She’d come back for him.

“Think you can walk?” David asked him, and it almost made the pirate jump (centuries of always being on his guard, always prepared and aware of his surroundings, and Emma Swan gave him one smile and held his only hand and that was enough to block out the rest of the realm).

Killian nodded, and with some careful maneuvering by Swan and her father, he was upright. He wavered slightly—blood loss, he reasoned, because Emma had definitely healed him with her magic, but there was only so much magic could do—but they secured both of his arms without delay.

“Oh,” Emma paused, bending down to grab his hook. “Thought you’d want this back,” she added with a smile that was almost sheepish.

It was the way she held it that made him lightheaded (not at all related to the blood loss). Her hand was wrapped around the metal like it was nothing but also everything. She didn’t fear it, didn’t scrunch her nose at it—the way she held it was like the way she held his hand: a part of him, something she couldn’t quite bring herself to let go of.

“Thank you, Emma,” he murmured, and all three of them knew it wasn’t just for returning the hook. He gestured for her to attach it, and after a glance of confirmation, she did. And he couldn’t help but feel whole.

[bi-naesala]

A way to relax

Fandom: Yakuza Rating: T Warnings: / Relationships: Han Joon-gi/Zhao Tianyou Characters: Han Joon-gi, Zhao Tianyou, Kim Yeonsu Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Intimacy, Hair Washing Summary:

Zhao's stressed, and not just a little. Luckily for him, Han knows exactly what to do to help.

(Also on AO3)

From the moment that he’s stepped back into the apartment, Han could tell immediately that there’s something wrong with Zhao, even when the other’s still keeping his usual façade.

At first he decides to let him alone for a while, let him work through his bad mood on his own, but as dinner time approaches it’s obvious that, whatever got Zhao like this, it’s not going to disappear just by waiting for time to pass.

He has to do something.

He finds Zhao in the small living room, plopped down on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest, and a deep frown on his face. It seems that he hasn’t moved at all since the last time Han has seen him.

In another occasion, he would’ve joked about the fact that he looks like a statue, but he has the feeling that he would just worsen the situation if he does, so he keeps quiet.

What he does, instead, is sitting beside Zhao. Usually, as soon as he’d do that, Zhao would be all over him, and not necessarily for something… spicy, but even just to lean on him. This time, though, he remains still, almost like he hadn’t seen him…

Not knowing what he should say, Han decides to make a great show of clearing his throat. He has the confirmation that Zhao mustn’t have noticed him because he gets startled.

“Who the-- Ah! Fucking hell dude, you scared me,” he says in fact, finally looking at Han.

“I apologize, but you seemed to be lost in your thoughts…” Han observes, making Zhao scoff.

“So? You could’ve patted my shoulder or whatever.”

 This is going nowhere, Han thinks, but before he can say or do anything about it, Zhao sighs.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be mad at you…” he mutters. An opening.

“It’s alright, though I am curious as to what has gotten you in such a bad mood,” Han replies.

At those words, Zhao slumps into the couch even more than he already was. “Seong-hui didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About the problems with my boys… Well, former boys I guess…”

Han shakes his head, which brings forth the umpteenth sigh from Zhao.

“Figures…” he mutters, more to himself than to Han however. “Maybe she thinks if I get involved instead of you, they’ll listen…”

It’s then that he realizes that this was a two-way conversation, and finally deigns Han of an explanation. “Some former Liumang aren’t too happy about the merge. They keep making impossible demands to Seong-hui, and then get mad when she refuses.”

“Do you think they’re preparing a rebellion?” Han asks, frowning. This could be bad.

Zhao shakes his head. “Nah. I mean, they’ll probably try something, but they’re too stupid not to get detected, or to actually get it done in the first place,” he says.

 There’s a moment of silence in which Han ponders about Zhao’s words.

A Liumang rebellion? Well, it was obvious that not everyone was going to accept the merge of Liumang and Geomijul, but to try anything while both their numbers are at their lowest feels like too much…

Should Han have to get involved directly? Crack open a few skulls and show these people that you don’t fuck with them?

 Before he can reach a conclusion, however, he hears Zhao chuckle, but it’s a bitter laugh.

“It’s not like they even want me back. I know these are the motherfuckers who are regretting not skipping town with Mabuchi,” he says.

“What makes you say that with such certainty?”

Zhao looks at him, and Han can hear him even though he’s not uttering a word. He’s asking him if he’s fucking dumb.

“C’mon, Han-chan, you don’t have to sugarcoat it. I was a bad leader, of course they wouldn’t want me.”

Han wants to reply that it’s not true, that just because he didn’t want to do it it didn’t mean that he did a bad job, but he knows that his words would fall into deaf ears. Besides, from the way Zhao’s sulking, it’s obvious that he wants to drop the subject and not talk about it possibly ever again - but they’ll have to, eventually - so he decides not to add anything, since he doesn’t want to have a fight.

 Still, he feels he has to do something, anything that could help him relax… Yes, that’s it! Zhao needs something relaxing that will help him forget this bad mood of his.

Han would offer to make dinner so that Zhao doesn’t have to - he’s always the one cooking - if only he wasn’t so bad in the kitchen. Truly, he’s only good at cutting vegetables.

A massage sounds good, or… Well, there is something else that Zhao loves indulging in from time to time.

 Han gets up, having decided what he’s going to do: he’s going to prepare him a bath.

  As he walks to the bathroom, he can’t help but to smile at the thought that, finally, neither of them have to stick to a certain schedule when it comes to stay clean, like they had to do when they were living at Survive Bar. Another advantage of sharing a flat with just the two of them.

Being alone still feels like a novelty, since it hasn’t been long since they’ve acquired this flat, shared primarily because rent is cheaper if it’s divided, and definitely not because of their need for privacy. Lots of love to everybody in their motley crew of misfits, but sometimes they’re a bit too… suffocating.

 Besides, it’s easier to let their guard down when it’s just the two of them, which is still quite hard, but they’re getting better at it. Some things just simply require a lot of work put into them.

  The bathtub is small, barely enough for one person, and definitely too small for two - they know it, they’ve tried it, and almost got stuck in the process.

It’s good enough: after all, this is for Zhao, not for him, except that it’s hard to shake what is practically a lifetime of serving people off so easily. Han wants to be good to Zhao, wants to please him, and in turn he’ll be pleased as well.

So maybe he would’ve liked to partake in what he’s preparing for Zhao… but for now it’ll do like this. Maybe once they get enough money to buy a bigger tub…

 He’ll think about that when - and if - the time comes. He shouldn’t get distracted.

He opens the waterflow and, as the bathtub begins to get filled, he rummages through the cabinets to find what he’s looking for… ah, there they are, the bath salts Zhao has bought last week!

Luckily, there’s still something left for this bath. Usually Zhao uses them for long relaxing baths, during which he also happens to smoke some weed - he says it enhances the feeling, though Han, not having tried it, can’t confirm nor deny the truth of this statement.

There are some instructions on the salts’ box about how much should be poured per gallon of water, but Han knows for a fact that Zhao doesn’t follow them, so he won’t either and pours the entirety of the box’s content inside the bathtub, since there was little enough for it not to be excessive. He hopes that Zhao won’t get mad at him for finishing the salts, but if he does he’ll offer to go buy them as soon as they’re done.

Soon a delicate smell of lavender begins spreading through the air. Han can see why Zhao’s so inclined towards these particular salts: even just the smell is relaxing.

Will it be enough though? Only one way to find out…

 Once the tub’s filled to an acceptable degree, Han turns off the tap and goes to find Zhao who, as he expected, is still on the couch, but at least this time he’s more present, because as Han approaches him, he looks up at him, sending him an interrogative gaze.

“I prepared you a bath,” Han says, without the need of mincing words.

Zhao clicks his tongue. “Didn’t figure you were my fucking servant, Han-chan”.

Despite wanting to roll his eyes at those words, Han doesn’t give Zhao the satisfaction of a reaction; if he wants an excuse to fight, he’ll have to look elsewhere.

What he does instead is grabbing Zhao by the hands and dragging him - or more like guiding him, since after the first few steps Zhao doesn’t oppose any more resistance - to the bathroom.

“You’ll love it,” he says then, trying encourage him to go along with this.

“Promises promises…” Zhao mutters in reply, and there’s a faint shadow of a smile on his lips that makes Han hopeful that yes, he will indeed love it.

 As soon as they step inside the bathroom, Zhao immediately catches the lavender smell, then he raises an eyebrow at Han.

“You got my salts?” he asks, and now the previous shadow of a smile has become more evident on his face.

“I might have, yes,” Han replies, curling his lips up as well, before gently taking Zhao’s glasses off and setting them over the sink. “Come on, now, strip.”

“So forceful, Han-chan~ What are you gonna do to me?” Zhao teases him, but he does as he said. Han could pretend not to be eating him with his eyes as he does it, but he doesn’t feel like lying at the moment. Still, he looks away as soon as Zhao turns his attention back to him, even though he’s pretty sure Zhao knows that, for a moment, he was having his undivided attention.

“Can I go in now? Or do you need to order me around some more?” Zhao jokes. The fact that he’s letting himself go to such levity is already a good sign.

“By all means,” Han replies, keeping his response in line with what Zhao’s said.

 Once he gets in, he gets quiet, sinking until his face is barely below the water as he closes his eyes, enjoying the sensation.

He’s always like this every time Han tires to do something romantic for him: at first he acts like he doesn’t want it, but once it happens, he greatly enjoys it. When he acts like this, it reminds Han of a cat.

“Oh yeah, that’s the stuff,” he groans, rising a bit from where he was sinking. “Really needed that.”

“I figured,” Han replies, matter-of-factly, as he gets behind Zhao, sitting on the tub’s edge. It isn’t very comfortable, but it’s the best Han can get at the moment; it’s fine, he’s had worse.

He silently gathers some water in his hands and uses it to get Zhao’s hair wet, making it quite obvious to the other what he wants to do.

“You don’t have to,” he tries to protest then, but it’s a weak attempt at best and they both know it.

“Let me do this for you,” Han insists, and this time Zhao doesn’t do anything at all, giving in entirely.

 Zhao’s hair routine isn’t that different from Han’s, though Han’s more than willing to go the extra steps needed to make his hair truly perfect, while Zhao’s more laid back about this kind of stuff - sure, appearance is important, but it’s also such a bother!

He gets Zhao’s shampoo - minty fresh - and pours some on his hands, then he begins to massage Zhao’s scalp, even going as far as to use some light scratches in places where he knows it’ll make Zhao melt - again, the image of a cat comes back to Han’s mind.

The more he keeps going, the more Zhao relaxes under his ministrations, sinking further and further inside the bathtub, to the point that Han has to softly ask him not to lower himself so much.

“Sorry,” Zhao mutters, barely able to stifle a yawn while he does so. He sounds tired - Han knows he must be - but at least he also sounds less stressed than he was before, so Han considers his mission as complete.

 Time passes. Neither of them try to feel the void of the silence that is stretching out second by second.

They never thought they’d get to have this, and even less having someone to share this with, this kind of domesticity that people like them - people who belong to the underworld of society - shouldn’t get to live through, but here they are.

One could ask themselves if they deserve this, or if it should be this good since they’re supposed to be hardened criminals, but neither Zhao nor Han are very passionate about philosophy, so they just take this small moment of intimacy that they’ve gotten to share with each other, they accept the occasion that has been given them.

 “You know… These salts really do smell good.”

Han has never been one for small talk, but during moments like this, it comes natural in a way that, if he thinks about it too hard, scares him.

Zhao’s chuckle, thankfully, is enough to distract him. “They do, don’t they? You should try it.”

“Perhaps next time…” Han concedes. He’s not one for this kind of stuff, but he’d lie if he said that the idea of trying it at least once doesn’t appeal to him…

“I’ll also give you the best massage you’ve ever had.”

… And if Zhao’s there too, then it’s even better.

 Even after he’s done washing Zhao’s hair, Han still keeps massaging his scalp, letting his fingers through the soft locks - they’re always oh so soft - and even untying some knots that had formed in the meantime.

“You’d be a great hairdresser,” Zhao says at some point.

“You think?” Han asks, amused. He never really thinks about what he would’ve been hadn’t he gotten involved with the criminal world, but Zhao’s endearing enough that he’s willing to hear him out.

“Of course. Aren’t your hair always so great? And when you do mine, it always feels nicer and softer than it ever was,” Zhao continues, before chuckling. “You might even be able to fix Kasuga-kun’s hair…”

“I don’t know if I’m that good…” Han replies, serious at first, like he’s truly considering the idea, but soon both he and Zhao share a laugh, sure that Ichiban won’t mind if they make fun of him; it’s all in good spirit after all, and you don’t need a great haircut to be a great man.

“Since we’re talking jobs, I assume you’d choose cook?” Han asks then, going back to their previous subject.

“Think so,” Zhao replies. “Streamer would be fine, but I like cooking too much not to go with that.”

“Thank god for that,” Han says, making Zhao turn towards him, accusatory.

“Why? You think I’d be a shitty streamer? Wouldn’t I be entertaining enough?”

“It’s not that. I just really enjoy your cooking and I wouldn’t want to let it go.”

Zhao glares at Han for a moment, studying his face, but soon he turns back around. “Flatterer,” he mutters, but it’s obvious that he’s happy to hear that.

 “Anyway…” he says then. “Water’s starting to get cold. I should get out.”

Han nods, and finally he can get up, even though almost the entirety of his lower body is numb. He still manages to get Zhao his bathrobe, and to take the towel he left previously on the sink, which he uses to dry Zhao’s hair, while he puts the bathrobe on, trying to move as gently as possible.

This time, Zhao doesn’t even try to protest, which Han is grateful for, also because he hasn’t stopped before and he wasn’t going to do it now.

 Even though he needs to raise himself on his tiptoes in order to do it - just a bit though - he leans to give a kiss to Zhao’s forehead.

“Better?” he asks, then, still drying Zhao’s hair.

Zhao nods, sincerely, then he leans forwards, pressing his lips against Han’s in a chaste kiss.

“Thank you, and sorry for being an ass earlier,” he mutters.

Han smiles and shakes his head. “As long as you’re fine now…”

 They kiss again, and when they pull away it’s Zhao’s time to grab Han by the hands and take him somewhere, specifically to the kitchen, uncaring about his state of dressing, or lack of thereof.

“C’mon let me treat you to something special!”

“Something special? And what could that be?” Han asks. As if everything Zhao makes isn’t special already.

“It’s a surprise~” the other chuckles, and Han can’t help but to smile, seeing him like this.

This has to be his favorite version of Zhao, he finds himself thinking: as long as he’s happy, he’s happy as well.

[thatfanficstuff]

Impossible - 8

Pairing: Eric Northman x Reader

Warnings: Canon typical violence, etc.

A/N: Finally back to writing a bit. Hope you like this chapter as much as I do and you find it worth the wait.

***

You tossed your things in your truck before spinning and shoving Eric away from you. “Your mate, Eric? Really?”

He brushed his chest as if wiping away your touch. Ass. “Yes. I fail to see the problem.”

That stopped you. “Wait. You’re actually claiming me?”

His brow furrowed. “Of course. You didn’t honestly think I would make such a proclamation without meaning it?”

“You literally proclaim things on a daily basis that you don’t mean.”

His hands settled on your waist and he pulled you toward him. His gaze ran over your face as he studied you. “I wouldn’t be flippant about anything so serious, Y/N. You must know that.”

You swallowed past the lump in your throat. “Don’t you think it was something we maybe should have discussed before you announced it to a bar full of random assholes?”

“Perhaps.” He gave a little shrug and kissed your forehead before pushing you toward your truck. “Let’s head home. We can discuss it on the way.”

You turned out of the parking lot and headed toward Shreveport, quickly getting lost in your own thoughts. Mates were serious business amongst the vampires. There was a time it was strictly an otherworldly belief in soulmates. Fate bringing two people together that were created for one another. It morphed over the centuries into a choice. A declaration that you belonged to one another. It went far deeper than any marriage. 

Allowances and lea ways were given for mates that would otherwise never be permitted. In fact, mates were treated as one entity. They received punishment and reward in equal measure regardless of which party was actually responsible. Your dad was going to freak the fuck out. It was that thought that stopped you. The realization that the question if you felt that way for Eric never once crossed your mind. You knew from the moment you met him that he was it for you and always would be.

Your concerns were purely disbelief that Eric could feel that deeply for you and what your father would think. The real question was, did you care?

“You’re awfully quiet for someone that had so much to say,” Eric said as you neared Fangtasia.

You didn’t look at him as you parked near the back door and the two of you sat in silence for a long time. Finally, you spoke, but you still didn’t look at him. “You’ve lived for a thousand years and never once tied yourself to someone. Not like this.”

“Mates tend to be a once in a lifetime thing, even for the oldest amongst us.” His voice was soft and you knew he was letting you talk your thoughts out. This was important. He wouldn’t try to talk you into anything. He was better than that.

You shook your head. “That’s not what I meant, Eric. You’re not exactly the relationship type. We’ve had this discussion.”

He hummed in agreement. “We have. If I recall correctly, I stated that was me before you.”

You turned to face him. “Are you sure about this?”

“I do not question my feelings for you, Y/N, but if this is not what you want—”

You grabbed his hand and used it to pull yourself closer to him. “That’s not what this is about. At all. It’s just…me? I mean, are you really sure?”

In a flash, he shifted the two of you so you straddled his lap. One hand cradled the back of your neck and the other rested on your lower back. His gaze locked on yours. “There is no one else—there never has been, nor will there ever be—that I would consider making this claim with. I will live and die for you. I swear it.”

Moisture flooded your eyes and you kissed him in an effort to keep it from overflowing. His hands shifted so he cradled your head as he deepened the kiss. Finally, you pulled away to breathe and rested your forehead against his. “Can I take this as an agreement to my claim?”

“Yeah, Eric, I’ll be your mate.”

He kissed you again. This time it was tender and sweet, filled with promises. Gods, you loved this man. When you separated this time, he rested his hand on the side of your face. His eyes searched yours. “You will agree to the bonding ceremony. If you are to be my mate, I want it all.”

You hesitated only a moment before nodding and earning yourself another round of kissing. The ceremony involved witches and spells and unbreakable bonds. But like your mate said, if you were going to do this, you might as well go all the way.

A knock sounded on the window and you jerked in surprise.

“I’m busy,” Eric growled then resumed kissing you.

“I’m happy for you. Now get unbusy.” Of course, it was Pam. No one else would have dared interrupt him.

You giggled and rested your head on his shoulder.

He sighed and unlocked the door. Pam promptly jerked it open. “Y/N, how lovely to see you again,” she said with a smile which dropped completely when she turned her full attention to Eric. “We have a problem.”

“And what might that be?” His hand ran in a lazy line over your spine forcing you to bite back a purr of contentment.

Her gaze darted to you.

“Y/N is my mate.”

As usual her arched brow was the only outward sign of her surprise. “The accountant called. There’s a discrepancy.”

Eric’s hand stilled. “How big?”

“Does it matter?” Pam answered.

She had a point. It didn’t matter if it was $5 or $5,000, they would have to deal with it. Vampires weren’t exactly the let it slide type. Not handling the matter would only show weakness. And if there was one thing vampires had perfected, it was taking advantage of another’s weakness.

***

As it turned out the discrepancy was $60,000 big. Eric was determined to blame the accountant that brought it to their attention which you didn’t understand at all. After all, how stupid would you have to be to not only steal the money but then point it out?

But everyone else that had access to the money was a vampire and vampires never betrayed each other. Yeah, right. You snorted a laugh at the thought as you swung open the door to Merlotte’s. You were still pissed at Sam, but needed to talk to Sookie without Bill around and this was the best place to do it.

You grasped Sookie’s arm as you stepped past her and pulled her along. “Sam, Sookie and I are going to have a conversation in your office. Deal with it.”

You ignored his words of protest as you closed the door behind you and flipped the lock.

“What is goin’ on with you?” Sookie asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I need a favor.”

Sookie looked more intrigued than ever and leaned against Sam’s desk, watching you with wide eyes. You weren’t the kind to ask others for anything. “I’m all ears.”

“Someone stole a lot of money from Fangtasia. We need help figuring out who.”

She grimaced. “That sounds like Eric needs a favor, not you.”

The corner of your mouth twitched. “Same thing these days. Eric’s glamoured everyone and has gotten nowhere. I’m afraid if this keeps up he’ll just kill all the humans and start from scratch.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“No, I’m not. That’s why I’m here.” You ran a hand down your face. “Look, if you don’t want to do this, it’s fine. I get it. I just had to give it a shot.”

The silence stretched for a beat as she looked you over. “Bill says I should stay away from Eric. At all costs.”

“Eric is a vampire through and through. And he’s not pretending to be anything else. Bill doesn’t like being reminded that he’s vampire. If you’re worried about him knowing what you can do, he already does. I didn’t tell him, but someone did. I heard him talking to Pam about it. I can pay you if that helps.”

“If I help them find whoever did this, what happens to them?”

You sighed and crossed your arms over your chest. “Honestly? They’ll probably find out what happened to their money then kill them.”

Sookie stood straight as she stared at you with wide eyes. “Then why would I agree to help you?”

“Because you keep them from killing a bunch of people that didn’t do it. I’ll make you a deal. You help us out and if you find out a human took the money, we’ll turn them over to the police. But, Sookie, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think it’s a human.”

“So, I’m just supposed to let them kill some vampire on my say so and be okay with that?”

“Vampires have their own laws. Let the vampires deal with the vampires. You just help me save the humans.”

“I do owe you.”

You shook your head. “No, you don’t. But do this and I’ll owe you.”

“The great and mighty Y/N will owe me? How could I resist?” she teased and you rolled your eyes. “Bill won’t like it.”

You bit your lip to keep from telling her where Bill could shove his opinion. “Probably not. Bring him with you.”

“Will Eric be okay with that?”

“Who gives a shit?  But yeah, he’ll be fine with it. In fact, he’ll be happier if Bill is there to witness everything.”

Sookie pursed her lips then nodded once. “Okay, then. But I’m doing this for you, not Eric.”

“Duly noted. See you tonight.”

***

Eric was not amused that you had decided to involve a human in your business. Though he admitted he probably would have already gotten Sookie involved had she not been your friend. And knowing him, he would have ordered Bill to bring her by or something and that would have just pissed everyone off.

After greeting your friend and Bill, you took a seat next to Sookie, but let Eric handle things. You were strictly there for moral support. Eric started with the accountant whom he was positive was somehow involved in the theft. You leaned back in your seat with your arms crossed over your chest and just observed.

“He’s telling the truth,” Sookie announced and released her grip on Bruce.

“You trust the skinny human to clear the fat one?” Longshadow said from his spot behind the bar.

You clenched your teeth and looked at Eric. You hated the bartender, as your mate was well aware.  

Eric moved his gaze from you to the other vampire as he said, “Bring the next one in.” It was as much of a dismissal as he could give Longshadow without saying something directly.

And so the cycle continued from human to human until finally Pam brought out Ginger. “She’s the last human.”

You rolled your eyes. The girl’s brain was swiss cheese. You were more than a little surprised when Sookie announced that Ginger knew who took the money.

“There’s a blank space. I can’t see it,” Sookie said, looking confused.

Your eyes found Eric’s as Pam said, “She’s been glamoured.”

“It was vampire.” Sookie stood from her chair in surprise.

Before you could thank her for stating the obvious, Longshadow leapt over the bar and wrapped his hands around your friend’s neck. You were on your feet in a second. An upward blow to just the right place on his sternum and he released Sookie reflexively. You grabbed her and shoved her behind you, ignoring her shout of pain as she bounced off some piece of furniture or another. At least she was alive.

Longshadow moved forward again. Surprisingly he ignored you and launched himself toward Sookie as if he killed her, the rest of you would just forget he was the thief. Idiot. You shifted sideways to put yourself in front of your friend. Another blow to the chest, harder this time, had him reeling backward but not giving up. Fucker.

You picked up a chair and threw it at the vampire which didn’t hurt him in the least, but the chair broke which was your intention all along. Sweeping up a piece of the wood, you braced yourself as he charged again. This time it was your makeshift weapon that hit his chest and pierced his heart.

Ginger screamed as Longshadow dissolved into goo. When she vomited, Eric made a sound of disgust. “Humans. I don’t understand what you see in them, Bill.”

You glanced at him with an arched brow. “Really, Eric?”

He grinned. “You are far from human, sweetheart.”  

[cocos-cocoapuffsarenotforsale]

Hazards of Lying

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Potter!Reader

Summary: Draco and the Reader have been in a secret relationship for a while. But what happens when she gets injured during a Quidditch match and their relationship is outed?

Tags: Swearing, Fluff, Potter!Reader, Gryffindor!Reader, Protective!Draco, She/Her Pronouns, Female!Reader, Slight AU, Canon Divergence, Godfather!Sirius Black, Sirius raised Harry and Reader, Harry’s Twin!Reader, Canon Typical Violence, Sick!Reader, Injured!Reader, Secret Relationship, Happy Ending, Quidditch (Idk if that’s a warning)

———————————————————————

“Ready to get your butt whooped Malfoy?” You tease your boyfriend of two years, Draco Malfoy, as you pull him into an empty classroom.

“I think you really ought to be asking yourself that Potter.” He responds cheekily, giving you a quick peck on your pouting lips.

“Watch it Malfoy,” you warn, before a cough rakes through your body.

“Love, are you alright?” He asks with concern lacing his features.

“Yeah, I’m fine it’s just a little cold,” you lie. You didn’t want to tell Draco the truth about just how shitty you were feeling. He would find a way to make you sit out the match. Not for nefarious reasons, of course, he just wanted to make sure you were ok. But you couldn’t let your team down, especially your twin brother Harry. It was Harry’s first year as Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team and you wanted to do all you could to make sure it was a successful one.

“You sure you’re good to play today?” He presses, eyeing your rundown form suspiciously.

“Scared you’re gonna lose Malfoy?” You quip trying to get his mind off of your health.

“Not in the least Potter. I’m merely concerned about my girlfriend’s well-being.” He tries to make the reply come off as playful, but you can hear the edge in his voice.

“I’m fine, Draco. I’m great actually seeing as how I’m about to kick your sorry arse in Quidditch.” You taunt, with a playful smile spreading over your face. 

“In your dreams Potter.”

“You always are.” You reply with a wink before giving him another quick kiss. 

“I gotta go meet Harry and the others for breakfast. I’ll see you down on the pitch. Wanna meet up after the match?” You ask as you walk back to the door.

“Sure, Room of Requirement? 8 o’clock?” 

“Sounds good. Love you Malfoy.”

“Love you too Potter,” he replies with a wink. You exit the classroom and head towards the Great Hall to meet up with your twin brother and your friends.

———————————————————————

GREAT HALL

“Ready for the match today, Y/n/n?” Harry asks as you sit down beside Hermione, across from Harry and Ron (who was already piling food onto his plate).

“Born ready brother.” You reply, grabbing a small muffin. You were hoping that picking at the muffin would prevent your brother and friends from noticing your lack of appetite.

“You feeling ok Y/n/n?” Hermione asks after a while of you just picking at the muffin. Damn Hermione and her astute observation skills.

“Yeah, I’m just not very hungry. Pre-game nerves.” You lie. Harry’s eyes narrow and he eyes you closely.

“You’ve never been nervous before. You’ve been playing since second year.” He points out, watching your reactions carefully. 

“Well it’s the first game of the season and it’s the first time without Wood. It’s just different this year.” You can tell Harry and Hermione don’t believe you. And Ron was too busy with his food to pay attention. Thankfully Harry and Hermione let it go for now.

———————————————————————

QUIDDITCH LOCKER ROOM

By the time you had made your way down to the pitch, you were feeling ten times worse than you had when you first woke up. Your head was pounding, your stomach was churning, and you felt like you were going to pass out any second. But you couldn’t let your team down, so you forced yourself to push through.

“You ok Girl Potter?” George Weasley asks you when you walk into the locker room.

“Yeah, you’re not looking so hot,” Fred concurs when he takes in your haggard appearance.

“I’m fine guys. Let’s just go out there and kick some Slytherin ass.” You reply.

“Must be ok, she’s still so feisty.” Fred teases with a wink before Harry walks in.

“Alright team, it’s the first match of the season. I know there have been a few changes this year and we haven’t played a real Quidditch match in over a year, but I believe in us. This is our year to win the Quidditch Cup! So let’s go out there and crush Slytherin!” Harry encourages and the team cheers excitedly. You feel yourself sway a little when you join in but push it aside. You were not going to let your team down, let Harry down.

“Let’s head out then team!” Harry instructs and you all follow him onto the pitch. 

Once everyone is in position Madam Hooch gives her usual speech about keeping it clean and then she blows her whistle and throws up the Quaffle. Katie wins the face-off and passes you the Quaffle. You speed off towards the goalposts and fake out the Keeper before passing the Quaffle back to Katie, who scores right after. Your head was pounding even harder and you felt incredibly woozy. But you tried to shake it off, you were not going to let the team down.

“You good?” George mouths as he comes up next to you. You sure as hell weren’t good but there was no way you were going to admit it so you merely nod in response. 

By the time Gryffindor had scored a total of 90 points, you were ready to fall asleep right then and there. You were so worn out but you weren’t ready to give yet. You just hoped Harry would find the goddamn snitch soon. You were so out of it you didn’t even notice the Bludger that almost knocked you out of the air. Luckily Fred had his head in the game and whacked the Bludger away before it could hit you. Fred shot you a worried glance but you just shook your head and soared off towards the Slytherin goalposts to help Katie and Angelina score. 

But on your way towards the goalposts, you start seeing black spots. You try to ignore it again but suddenly your vision goes black and that’s the last thing you remember.

———————————————————————

DRACO’S POV

I kept a close eye on Y/n after our little rendezvous before breakfast. She seemed off earlier and it had me worried. I knew how stubborn she was and there was no way she would willingly sit out a Quidditch match, even if it was in her own best interests. Through breakfast, I noticed she didn’t eat anything. All she did was pick at that stupid muffin. But it wasn’t like I could say anything to her now. We had agreed when we started dating to keep our relationship on the down-low. After all, could you imagine the rumor mill at Hogwarts if they found out the Slytherin Prince was dating the Boy-Who-Lived’s sister?

By the time we started the match, Y/n looked awful. How the fuck could Potter let her play like this? It was so obvious that she was unwell, her face was ashen and she looked as though a light breeze could knock her over.

After Gryffindor had scored nine goals and we were trailing behind with a total of 30 points, I noticed Y/n swaying. Why the bloody hell did Potter let her play today? She could fall and get seriously hurt, not to mention she looked like she was about to vomit any minute.

I gotta get that bloody snitch, I need to end this game before Y/n passes out.

I see the snitch and Potter soar past me and I go to move for it when I see a streak of black darts past me. I manage to avoid it but then I see it take off towards Y/n. She’s so out of it that she doesn’t even notice the Bludger that’s coming right at her. I feel my chest seize and I start to fly towards her when I see one of the Weaselbee Twins whack the Bludger away. 

I need to end this game, is all I can think after and I see the familiar gleam of the snitch out of the corner of my eye. Potter apparently saw it too and is already after it. I let out a low growl before I take off after him and the snitch. 

Just as I see Potter’s fingers close around the snitch I hear yelling. I turn and see Y/n falling, my heart stops and all I can do is try to catch her in time. I quickly start muttering the spell to cushion her fall when I realize there’s no way I’ll make it in time. 

Fortunately, my spell seems to have worked because while she still hits the ground with a soft thud it was definitely not as bad as it could have been. I’m by her side moments later, I was the first one to reach her and I feel my heart splinter when I see her motionless form.

“Y/n, Y/n, please, love, please, wake up,” I plead as the traitorous tears run down my cheeks.

“Y/n!” I hear Potter yell and he runs towards us. 

“What the hell are you doing Malfoy?” He spits shoving me away from her and I let out a deep growl making him back away in shock.

“I’m trying to take care of her Potter. Since you apparently are incapable of looking after your own bloody sister.” I hiss, furious. 

“Enough! We need to get her to Madam Pomfrey at once.” A deep voice commands, I look over to see the Headmaster and other teachers gathered around us, along with a horrified looking Sirius Black.

“I’ll take her,” I grumble as I carefully scoop her up into my arms, trying to be as gentle as possible. Potter and Black look like they’re about to argue but once they take in the state Y/n’s in they think better of it and simply follow my lead, as do Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape.

After we finally arrive at the Hospital Wing I lay Y/n down on the bed that Madam Pomfrey had motioned me over to.

“Is she going to be ok?” I ask in a quiet voice after Madam Pomfrey finishes her preliminary exam.

“What do you care, Malfoy?” Potter snarls.

“Enough of this, we should be focusing on Y/n,” Sirius commands, concern covering his face as he looks at his goddaughter’s unconscious form.

“Agreed Mr. Black, your goddaughter should be fine in a few hours. It seems she had a small flu bug and that was probably what caused her to pass out. She has a concussion, a couple of broken ribs, and a fractured wrist. I should be able to fix her right up but I do want her to remain overnight so I can keep an eye on her.” Madam Pomfrey explains.

“Daughter,” I hear Sirius correct and Madam Pomfrey nods with a small smile.

“Daughter,” Madam Pomfrey amends. 

“When will she wake up?” I ask in a croaky voice. 

“Well, it could be in a few hours or in a few minutes. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go fetch the healing potions.” She replies shuffling off towards her office.

“Sirius, you are welcome to spend the night with her if you wish.” Dumbledore offers kindly.

“Yes, I would like that. Thank you, Albus.” Black responds as he pulls up a seat next to her bedside and grasps her hand in his.

“Well, we had best get going,” Dumbledore suggests and he, McGonagall and Snape leave the wing promptly.

“Draco, why don’t you have a seat,” Black encourages softly. I nod and pull up a chair on the opposite of the bed and take her free hand in mine. Potter glares but says nothing and instead takes a seat beside his guardian

———————————————————————

READER’S POV

When you come to you are greeted with three very worried looking men. You look around slowly so as not to jostle your pounding head and realize you were in the Hospital Wing.

“What happened?” You ask softly, all three sets of eyes whip towards you.

“Thank Merlin!” You hear your godfather exclaim.

“What happened? I feel like I-” Harry cuts you off.

“Like you fell 100 feet?” Harry teases making you glare at him.

“Yes actually.” You reply sticking out your tongue at your obnoxious twin.

“That’s because you did, Princess,” Sirius responds, solemnly.

“The match,” you say, finally remembering.

“Yeah, you fell off your broom. You’ve been out for about an hour.” Sirius explains softly.

“Why?” Draco asks in a hushed voice.

“Why what?” You question, bewildered.

“Why did you lie to me? Why did you play when you were unwell?” He practically growled back.

“I knew you would try to make me not play. And I really wasn’t feeling that bad then. I couldn’t let Gryffindor down. Especially this year.” You explain. Sirius shoots you a quizzical look.

“What do you mean especially this year?” Your godfather inquires.

“Well, Harry’s captain this year. I couldn’t let him down.” You mutter not meeting your brother’s guilty eyes.

“You wouldn’t have let me down Y/n/n,” Harry reassures you and he pulls you into a tight hug.

“You need to take care of yourself first. You could’ve really been hurt Y/n, or even…” Draco trails off but you can see the fear in his eyes and fill in the blanks.

“I know, you’re right Draco. I’m sorry, I was stupid. So I guess our secret’s out of the bag, huh?” You ask cheekily, trying to lighten the mood.

“You could say that,” Sirius teases with a chuckle. “Why did you keep it from us, Princess?”

“I didn’t want to make you guys mad. I know how you both feel about him.” You play with the hem of your dirty Quidditch uniform to avoid looking at anyone.

“That doesn’t mean you have to hide things from us. I just want you two to be happy. If he makes you happy and treats you right, that’s all I can ask for.” Sirius replies, gently gripping your chin to make you look at him.

“Really?” You whisper in shock.

“Really Princess.” He assures you. 

“Me too.” Harry murmurs awkwardly. 

“For real?” You question, not quite believing him.

“For real sis.” He promises.

“Thank you, guys.” You say, unable to stop the excited smile from covering your face. 

“Why don’t we give you two a minute, I need to take a walk anyway,” Sirius suggests and he stands up and wraps his arm around Harry’s shoulder. Harry reluctantly nods and the two of them exit the Hospital Wing.

“Promise me something?” Draco asks, sitting on the end of your bed and taking your hands in his.

“What?”

“Swear to me you will never do something like that again.” His voice was eerily quiet and you could tell by the look in his eyes there was no use arguing this one.

“I promise Draco.” 

“Good,” he replies looking around before he gently, but firmly presses his lips to yours in a possessive kiss.

“Merlin, you scared the hell out of me,” he mutters when the two of you finally pull apart.

“I really am sorry.” You apologize again, feeling guilty for all the worry you caused everyone.

“I know, love. Just never do that again. And no more lying, deal?”

“Deal.” You reply, pulling him down for another kiss.

“I love you, Potter,” he confesses after you release him.

“I love you too, Malfoy.”

[rantaire]

i’ve watched approximately 4 episodes of supernatural but when you live on tumblr for years you are always spn-adjacent. we have no choice but to absorb it by osmosis because it’s just that massive. i feel like i know a lot about the show from fandom, and many of my fandom friends were in it at some point. i also work in entertainment media so i’ve been tracking all the updates in its final year. and i have to say that even after years of disappointments from movies and tv, this one seems particularly egregious? 

here’s the thing. there’s so often a divide between the fever-dream of shipping and what we actually get in canon. and we know this. we’re not stupid, or gullible. people in fandom engage with the narrative on a level most critics could never dream.

even though many of us recognize that our beloved ships from giant properties won’t go canon because they are embedded in giant global blockbusters created by megacorporations, in recent years there seems to also be a trend of bad endings that not only work to crush these ships but make for awful storytelling and act dismissive of their own canon. and I’m tired of it.

maybe steve/bucky would never happen, but steve abandoning his traumatized best friend that he’d fought actual wars for in order to go back in time for a woman who moved on with her life without him? crap. star wars not even attempting finnpoe despite the actors’ encouragement, and giving poe a random half-assed love interest because, oh look, a girl? we can be angry about these things, and we can and should demand better and broader representation. if nothing else, at least tell a better story.

why spn’s finale feels so unsettling to me as a non-fan is that even i came to believe the tide might be turning, just a little bit. fandom is more mainstream and recognized than ever. our ships and our transformative works are discussed in big media outlets. actors and creatives acknowledge fic and retweet fanart. actors and creatives acknowledge how vital it is for people to see themselves reflected and represented in media. and it seemed to me, as a sideline observer, that supernatural appreciated its fanbase and understood how important dean and castiel’s relationship was, and how beloved castiel was as a character on his own. to have him not appear in the last episode at all is unconscionable to me, and i have never seen him in an episode! this is how much impact the character had that’s filtered down.

i watched the reactions a few weeks ago of mixed euphoria and dismay after castiel’s love confession and subsequent disappearance into “super hell.” that didn’t seem great, message-wise, but it was a step that felt significant, it meant a lot to many people, and it probably would not have happened without fandom and their tireless cheerleading and enthusiasm. it seemed like maybe they were really building to something.

and so even though i knew in my dead withered critic’s heart of hearts that we wouldn’t be getting a destiel kiss, i thought that spn might be brave enough to give their fans a final gift—a thanks for everything. have dean and cas drive off in that damned car whose name i know because i live on tumblr. end with them smiling at each other. something. i know the pandemic came into play, but other actors appeared, and even castiel’s voice could have been literally phoned in.

instead, from the anger and pain and incredulous memes i’m seeing from people across social media, it appears that what the show delivered was an ending so unfitting it was like a parody of an end. they threw the baby out with the bathwater. it’s incredibly disappointing, and it feels cowardly to me. you don’t have to make a ship canon just to appease fandom. but your fans deserve a better story for their characters after fifteen years. 

spn was uniquely positioned because it’s old as balls. most of the people still watching have seen it all and would have been up for anything good. the creatives could have done pretty much whatever they wanted. this isn’t a case of disney or international censors breathing down their neck. instead, they appear to have taken the easy way out of a lackluster finale written by folks who probably high-fived themselves for poignancy and half-assed twists and got paid more money than any of us will ever see for it. that’s boring, and it’s passé, and it didn’t have to be this way.

sometimes a property like she-ra can swoop in and save the day by delivering what fans want most. but she-ra was also made by people who came out of and understood fandom culture and just how much representation means to people. how much emotional investment and time and energy we’ve put into characters and their lives. why they matter. and it should stand as an example of what to do next.

if there’s a takeaway for all of this, it’s that we can’t and shouldn’t trust “mainstream” productions to do anything that we want in terms of representation. even if they’re uniquely positioned. even if they tease. even if they say they understand. even if they say they’ll do better next time. they’ll keep throwing pieces of bones, but they will almost always keep disappointing us. and they’re not even creating good art along the way. i know a dozen spn fic writers who could’ve written a vastly better ending to the show and i’m sure there are thousands. 

we need to create the stories we want to see. in fic and fanart and transformative works, yes, but also (and i say this to myself as well), write that book. write that script. draw your graphic novel. film a movie in your backyard tomorrow because it sounds like anything we produce right now will be more inspired and more important to each other than the scraps we get from distant studios who are only vaguely aware that we’re alive and buying their merchandise. and i want to buy your books, watch your scripts, frame your art. i want to be able to invest in the stories we want to see told.

i love what we make for each other, and we should keep doing that, more furiously than ever. and if you want to, if you dream of it, you should push to create on a broader scale. you already know that you’re a better creative than a lot of people who are generating the “hits.” i can’t wait to see what you make. and fuck supernatural’s finale.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Fictober '21 Prompt No. 3 — "I’ve waited for this."

Category: Original WIP: Thriving series Rating: T Timeline: M33 arc CW: A lil flirty, a lil steamy, but there are alternate universes in which this got a lot heavier lmao Word Count: 1,469 haha nice Additional Notes: Canon whomst??? Sorry, she’s not here today.

***

“Your Majesty.”

Standing with his feet apart in the center of the sparring room, Thrive acknowledged Warren with a glance over his shoulder and idly spun a staff of moderate length in one hand. “Well. The prince consort as I live and breathe.”

Warren winced, stretching his arms and back as he lingered some feet away. “Yeah, I thought we agreed that wasn’t it. ‘Consort’ sounds like ‘escort,’ and while I have no issues with escorts as a whole—”

“Why are you here, Warren?” Thrive watched himself in the enormous mirrors wrapped around every wall of the room and spun the staff faster. “Not that I’m necessarily unhappy to see you.”

Grinning, Warren leaned down to rest his hands on his knees. “You kiddin’? I’ve waited for this. We haven’t sparred together in ages.” His demeanor did an instant one-eighty. “Necessarily unhappy? What the hell did I do now?”

Before he could get the question out, a volumetric projector in the ceiling exploded with activity—various colorful projectiles fired directly at Thrive, who knocked each one out of the way with unwavering precision using the staff. He propelled it into a blur that bounced from hand to hand, knocked projectiles out of the air, twirled into the ceiling as he swept large red and yellow polyhedrons away from Warren. He caught the staff and pounded one end into the floor hard enough to send vibrations into the mirrors.

The projector powered down.

“It’s not a matter of something you’ve done,” Thrive said, straightening his posture and turning to Warren. “Though perhaps it is, in part. I’m expressing frustration over a situation for which I have no answers.”

“Okay,” Warren said, planting himself in front of him. “Get it out, then.”

“I’d rather not spar with someone while I’m emotionally compromised. Especially someone who couldn’t handle me.”

Warren grinned. “I dunno, I think I can handle you pretty good.”

“I'm aware that you’ve trained to handle rougher situations over the years, but if I were to lose control and cause bodily harm...”

“We still talkin’ about sparring?”

Despite himself, a corner of Thrive’s mouth quirked upward. “It’s unwise.”

“We don’t have to go full-tilt, then. Just hand-to-hand, start small. You said you have no answers...maybe I have one. If I’m causing part of this, I’d like to at least try to help.”

Thrive eyed him for a moment, supporting himself with the staff.

Warren waggled his eyebrows. “Safe word’s ‘carousel’.”

Rolling his eyes dramatically, Thrive tossed the staff away and moved closer. “You’re teasing, but I would feel more comfortable if we did use the safe word for this.”

“Right.” Warren braced himself, a little hesitant. “You’re...more upset than you let on.”

“Possibly,” Thrive muttered before swinging a fist at Warren.

He blocked it, stepping aside. “Best to come at this directly, then. What have I done to upset you?”

Thrive took a few more swings, obviously dialing back his full strength, and each one was blocked. He dodged one of Warren’s and caught him in the shoulder. “After a particularly long and overdue sleep, I awoke and it was as if a weight had crushed the inside of my chest. I ruminated over it for hours until I realized the feeling doubled whenever I thought of you having taken the two-year job on Morre.”

Warren had successfully blocked a few more hits. “You thought you were okay with me going back to work for an emergency after I’d suggested I take leave, and it turns out you weren’t?”

“That’s not it.” Thrive sidestepped a kick. “I was feeling something I’d never felt so strongly before in my life, and it alarmed me.”

“Angry?” Warren acted like he was going to strike with his right fist and instead jabbed with his left—a move that, for whatever reason, always threw Thrive off his game early on in a sparring session. 

Thrive caught Warren’s fist in his hand inches away from his face. “Possessive.”

Warren’s blood iced over and he observed Thrive’s expression, the sudden accuracy of his sharp stare, the darkness behind his eyes. A chill ran through his spinal cord and bolted up into the pit of his stomach. “...This is about the arrangement,” he said, voice low and definitely steadier than he imagined it’d be.

“I proposed the idea to you, yes,” Thrive said firmly, moving forward so Warren had to take a few steps back, “because I wasn’t about to forbid you from soothing an ache I couldn’t be there to soothe.”

“But you’re about to,” Warren breathed. “Aren’t you?”

Thrive knocked his arm away and got two hits in through his dodging. “It seems that I’ve become very territorial about certain things.”

Warren ducked a swing and his fist knocked the side of Thrive’s waist. “And what does the great and powerful Orthrive’poliea have to feel territorial about?”

Thrive knocked his legs out from under him and he went down with a hard smack. Warren yelped as his back connected with the forgiving floor, inhaling sharply when Thrive dropped and straddled his hips, pinning his wrists by his head.

“Oh holy shit,” Warren gasped.

Thrive glanced at the mirror. “This.”

Warren turned his head to look—the sight of Thrive holding him down and still looking a bit pissed about it sent all kinds of signals to everywhere vulnerable. He shuddered. “If you wanna call off the arrangement, just say so.”

Thrive peered down at him.

Swallowing the heat crawling up his throat, Warren flexed his wrists under Thrive’s hold. “I think you may have misplaced, somewhere in that meaty brain of yours, the reason why we even made it to begin with.”

“It’s never left my mind.”

“So then you understand that I never really wanted it, and while it scratched a fraction of the appropriate itches, it was never you and therefore not as good nor the same.”

“...Yes.”

“And you understand that my feelings for you cannot ever be replaced or duplicated, and if you’re still having trouble realizing that after all this time, then you’re hopeless and there’s no saving you.”

“Warren...”

“Just say you want it to end.” Warren nodded. “It stops right now.”

Hesitating, Thrive finally released Warren’s wrists. “I'd like—”

Warren grabbed the staff laying nearby and knocked it across Thrive’s chest, sending him sprawling backward. When he turned over to push himself up, Warren leaped at him, sitting on his backside and wrenching his arm behind his back.

Thrive let out a harsh swear in Solnai.

“Yeah, baby,” Warren laughed victoriously. He knew he could be displaced with hardly any effort, but he appreciated the very generous win nonetheless. He slapped the side of Thrive’s ass. “I fucking got you, didn’t I? Maybe I should be king instead.”

Thrive rolled his eyes again, using his other, definitely free hand to push his hair off of his forehead.

“So, uh...what were you saying?”

“I was going to say that I’d like to end the arrangement, since you offered.”

“Mhm.” Warren nodded, taking a bit of a vain mental snapshot of their position from how it appeared in the mirror. “You know what that would mean, then, don’t you?”

“If you’re going to propose that I abdicate, I have to remind you that the Consortium wouldn’t—”

“I’m gonna retire.”

Thrive closed his mouth. Pushed himself up so he could look at Warren, who smiled at him. “As much as—Skies, Warren, get off of me already. As much as I’d like to argue the point, I...can’t.”

They helped each other to their feet, and Warren placed his hands on his hips, still a bit out of breath. “It’s been decades in the making. I can keep up the dance classes since I get more joy out of that, anyway. Plus, I’m not in the headspace to let down a bunch of kids.”

“Having you with me without fear of extended separations or injury or worse does sound...”

“Kind of amazing?” Warren’s smile widened.

Thrive crossed his arms. “I wish I’d broached the subject with you sooner.”

“That brings up a point...” Warren stepped closer until he was in Thrive’s space. “Next time you have a problem with me,” he said loudly, “fucking talk to me about it, idiot. It’s this wonderful and innovative thing called communication.”

Thrive fixed him with a dark look. “Punish me about it.”

For at least five seconds, Warren absorbed that look and the question. He paced away to take a fighting stance. “Okay. That set the tone for the rest of the day.”

“My harness is somewhere around the capital house. The safe word is ‘carousel’.”

Warren halted to narrow his eyes at him. “Like you have ever needed the safe word. For anything.”

Thrive winked at him before they took up sparring again, this time charged quite differently.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday

Stretching fingers from the mermaid au for a moment, worked on the older idea, forgot how past tenses work. It has some sexy *cough* times in it.

Warnings: Eldritch stuff; Eldritch std; Eldritch Pregnancy; TENTACLES (some, not a lot) - Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane category; gore, violence, blood; dark humor; Major Character Death (Myabe, maybe not, quite esoteric in its essence); Underage (contextual allusion, but I'd decided to err on the side of caution); Lots of unsubtle manipulation; SOMEHOW LIKE PRETTY MUCH CANON-COMPLIANT AND I'M LIKE WHAT?

*

*

Jack Morrison had been dead for the better part of three decades.

After locking the door behind himself with the personal override that cut off all the outside communication, Gabriel turned to face the thing wearing Jack Morrison's skin sitting behind the Strike Commander's desk. He watched the pretense of any human emotion bleed out of Jack's face, to be replaced with impersonal curiosity.

"If this is about the discourteous United Nations representative, in my defense, I was hungry, and he irritated me."

Great. Time for breathing exercises. And Gabriel wondered, somehow, where his developing drinking problem was coming from. He crossed the distance to the desk and leaned on it with both his hands gripping the edge.

"You can't eat people only because..." Hell, who was he kidding, they had this particular argument rehearsed past the point of déjà vu. "Is there anything left I have to worry about?"

"It's not one of your operations," Jack smiled, teeth showing, and without the usual mimicry, the expression could – and did – look downright terrifying, "or one of your inconvenient detainees. I'm always careful."

"Yeah, about that..." The real Jack Morrison had been dead for the better part of three decades, a victim of a hit and run left to die in a ditch whom something else found and crawled into – if Gabriel were to trust anything this Jack Morrison told him. “You gave me some kind of eldritch std.”

"I did?" Jack craned his head to the side, the reaction almost impossible to gauge. Gabriel let go of the desk, slowly, and pulled up his jacket together with the shirt underneath. The skin on his side still pulsated with immaterial liquid blackness coming apart. "So I did."

"That's all you have to say for yourself?"

"This situation is far from an exact science, Gabe. To this time, you're the only human that has survived in full health." Jack brushed his fingers against the undulating mass trying to cling to his fingertips like water in zero gravity.

"You have no idea, then."

"No. But I think I know who might prove helpful, you will only have to put on your charm after I'm done with her." Jack brought up a profile on the screen. "Just say the word."

Gabriel did not need to read it, he had prepared the dossier himself and advised caution, preferably termination.

"Do it."

Two months later, Moira O'Deorain was inducted into Blackwatch.

*

Blackwatch's best-kept secret was the fact some occupants of the holding cells sometimes disappeared without a trace, only leaving behind the unusually bloody mess splattered even on the ceilings. Awful stuff no-one wanted to be stuck cleaning up, so everybody kept their mouths rightfully shut.

Gabriel flicked the ash off the cigarette he'd been barely smoking in front of one of such cells.

"Are you done in there? You have a party in an hour, and if I can't get out of it..."

The door opened with a high-pitched whine of one of the hinges – he should have someone look at it later – and Jack, looking pristine compared to the gory mayhem inside, stepped out, slowly licking the tips of his fingers, the tongue flitting in and out of his lips.

"...then neither can I?"

"Then neither can you." The wet sounds of the blood dripping from the ceiling still held their unnerving quality. "Did you learn anything useful?"

"Only a bunch of religious nonsense. Tell me," Jack turned to face him inside the hidden elevator going straight to his quarters. "Why do you all find a merciful god when faced with me?"

Because there has to be something to balance out the existence of whatever you are, Gabriel answered him the first time the question had been asked. A rehash of an old argument, Jack being facetious and playful, always leaving him wondering how many of those interactions were purely for his benefit, and what he was exactly to Jack: a pet, a project, an interesting specimen?

'One that didn't run' was an exponentially poor explanation to Gabriel's liking, and the only one he ever got. After all, running was of no use, and that night he had snuck out to smoke on the roof of their compound, Gabriel decided he might as well finish his cigarette before he got devoured like Mason, or be driven insane by the sight of the thing that wore Jack Morrison's skin.

Funny how spontaneous explosion due to unexplainable internal buildup of unknown gases got on the list of some more baffling SEP side effects.

"My turn?" Gabriel had asked when Jack turned to him, face slack and expressionless like one on a corpse, but put on something living, a travesty against the natural order. He raised his half-burned cigarette up for Jack to see. "Give me a minute or two."

With Jack slowly circling him, far too close for it to be of any comfort, he got to finish his smoke.

"I like you. You might do."

It took him two more cigarettes in the company of the splatter of organs, bone, and blood Mason had become to realize he was alone, and around half an hour before he called the whole mess in, avoiding any mention of what had actually occurred. An elaborate hallucination, Gabriel had assumed. God, was he wrong then, and on the next placement rotation, Jack made sure there were no doubts to be had about the authenticity of the roof incident.

The ding of the elevator arriving was enough to bring Gabriel back to the present.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Mason."

"Always the romantic." Jack moved deeper into the suite, ordering Athena to open the windows but lower the blinds, getting the ‘security’ expert in Gabriel to wince before he eventually remembered he had no idea if Jack could even be killed. He had seen the body pull itself back together more than once, the pulverized muscle and bone popping into its proper place with visceral slurps and cracks, the sinews tying the single strands back into a whole – an atavism, as he came to learn. The perfect image in one's mind's eye to be undressed to.

Not that Gabriel minded, particularly. Not at all.

But seeing Jack feed always brought something out of him – and being satiated always made Jack prone to indulge in more pedestrian matters, like having Gabriel spread painfully over his lap and speared on his cock, tendrils of void keeping him bound and upright, and immobile. Dissecting him with clinical precision and then putting him back together, all while observing Gabriel with the professional disinterest one might wear during a specimen’s autopsy. Honestly, the thought itself made his dick strain against his thigh, nothing at all like bending Jack over Strike Commander's desk for a quick fuck, or having him on his knees with his scary pretty mouth on Gabriel's cock, sometimes even playing along in a fashion making him appear almost human, and so much more horrifying for making Gabriel doubt who – or rather what – was sucking his dick.

He was jostled out of his unconscious train of thought by something pressed hard against his side, sinking into the flesh turned black. With his neck craned, Gabriel observed in morbid fascination the tentacle as it moved deeper in, soon joined by another one following the suit.

"...what?" Gabriel gasped out before slick mass forced itself between his lips and surged down his throat, choking him with its girth, and for a moment took his mind off the sensation of becoming increasingly – inconceivably – bloated, for all the wrong reasons. To his rising panic, the intrusion blocking off his air remained still and rigid, making it impossible to breathe around it until it eventually moved and contracted, slipping slowly further along. The first few breaths Gabriel took produced embarrassingly wet wheezing gurgles becoming frantic again with the growing awareness of something stuck in his gut, poking and prodding where nothing should, the feeling of things inside squirming alien and impossible to ignore.

He strained futilely against the bonds keeping him in place.

This was it, finally, the moment Jack would devour him because he had become bored with him, or Gabriel had lost his usefulness to him – the moment Gabriel would become a pitiful smear of flesh and blood painting the walls and the ceiling – and maybe even Jack himself. The thought should scare him. Instead, Gabriel felt his dick twitch in excitement as his balls tightened and heat pooled between his legs, leaving him trying to fuck the air in the vain hope of creating any friction while still held in the vice of unyielding tentacles.

Pleading with his eyes, not for his life, but to be let to come.

Jack pressed his palm to his chest, lips on his scary pretty face curled up in either amusement or sneer, or something entirely else, and the sensation of something popping inside reverberated behind Gabriel's ribs. Peritoneal rupture, the still-functioning analytical part of his mind supplied. Internal bleeding, infection, immediate medical intervention needed. But Jack was only smiling up at him while something contracted his lungs, leaving his chest fluttering desperately.

"She has outdone herself, his time," Jack mused, breaking away the eye contact as his lips closed around Gabriel's nipple – teeth scraping over it – biting into it – just one of the myriad of sensations breaking through the descending fog of lightheadedness. His body fighting for its life, Gabriel focused on just, or as much as, staying conscious while the animal inside clawed and whined, maddened with the primal fear of death until something was squeezed from the inside – almost an explosion – and, screaming, he tasted the bitter ichor.

Slowly coming to, and laid out on the bed, Gabriel was simply amazed to be alive – still. Sore, hurting, spent, but neither in pain nor dying. His hand, held to his side, rested on solid unbroken skin while his befuddled mind tried to come up with any explanation at all. Fucked within an inch of his life, definitely. Confused as hell why – somehow and inexplicably – he was still breathing and existing? That too.

Something brushed the back of his hand, and the tendril receded back to Jack, folding back into his form with unhurried neatness.

"Being fashionably late is back in fashion, I hear," Jack, in his dress attire, laughed before walking out and leaving Gabriel to his own devices. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall and swore.

He made it to the party an hour late, already hating everybody there.

And with any function like this one, nothing more was expected of him but to be an intimidating wallflower, allowed to be almost as rude and uncouth as he truly wanted to be when telling people to fuck off while he nursed his undiluted vodka, eyes on Jack flitting around the room. All smiles and sparkles, and sweet words of social conventions and contracts he had no care for save for keeping up the appearances. The performance was nauseating by itself.

As for Gabriel, he was more than happy with their silent arrangement, the small talk exhausting and pointless – and what was he supposed to even say?

'Dear ma'am, I murder people, and when I don't, I find people for your precious devil-sent Strike Commander to eat, and by the way, ma'am, you look simply enchanting tonight!'

Gabriel set the empty glass on a windowsill and grabbed another one from a passing waiter.

'Sir, so nice to meet you, I'm Gabriel Reyes, this is my partner who is an unholy abomination straight from some hell – if hell exists, but I’m willing to err on the side of caution in those circumstances – and our kid literally popped out of me on the battlefield, yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out' also never seemed like it would do well as a conversation starter.

Gabriel knocked back the drink, gin and tonic this time, and left the glass standing next to the previous one. He walked out to the balcony, hand already reaching for the pack in his pocket, fingers itching to feel the weight of a lighted cigarette between them. Turning around, he came face to face with Jack bringing up an already burning lighter for him, his back to the crowd in the room. Gabriel leaned against the balustrade and lighted his cigarette, drew in the smoke slowly into his lungs – savoring it – observing and waiting. Jack pocketed the lighter, and then tampered with Gabriel's tie, his fingers sliding lower after, splayed, with a smile of something that had never learned what a smile was really about.

The ride or die kind of smile, all teeth and malice, the last thing for anyone else but Gabriel to see.

"It's coming along all nice," Jack mused.

"You put another one in me?"

"Maybe." Coy and teasing, the answer sent shivers down Gabriel's spine.

"When."

"Not today. Would you have said no to me?"

The choice he didn't have aside, Gabriel knew he wouldn't have refused.

Curiosity was the first step on the stairs leading all the way straight down to hell, and he had gladly taken a tumble down, his sanity forfeited with the knowledge he had never wanted but couldn't get enough of. They say curiosity killed the cat, but the satisfaction brought it back.

And the satisfaction had tasted of iron in his mouth, smelled of burning circuitry, felt like a projectile ripping through his armor – Jack huddled over him, speaking nonsense words of encouragement not to him but to the thing gnawing at Gabriel from the inside. It finally burst out, and Jack took it into himself before calling in the medvac, hitting all the right notes in his voice on the call: trembling and interrupted, pitched higher than usual.

"When it's coming?"

"When it's ready."

Gabriel blew the smoke in his face, slowly.

Later that night, long into the morning hours, fucking into the body going through its paces below him – back arched and mouth open, fluttering fingers clenched on the sheets – Gabriel asked again about the why.

"Do you really want to know?" Jack whispered into his ear. "That night, on that roof, you held no faith. And I thought, I'll make you believe in me."

The answer horrified Gabriel more than anything else Jack had ever told him, not because it rang false but because it rang true – and the truth of himself was worse than all the lies Jack could spin.

*

Following months – almost a year – passed in an unfettered deluge of things going wrong and compromised operations. Jack didn't give a fuck, starting with Rialto.

"I want you to kill him."

Gabriel stared at him, waiting for a follow-up that didn't come.

"It runs contrary to..."

"Either way, you will find your hand forced. Isn't it better to act out of one's own volition?"

What had sounded not unlike a veiled threat turned out to be an even more veiled warning. 'You still need her,' was Jack's answer to Gabriel's ire, delivered with a note of amusement. The worst of it, he was right, disgustingly and irredeemably right. Gabriel hated it; Moira remained on retainer.

But today, another name was on Gabriel's mind – swamped with fear, anger, and desperation – as he broke into a run towards the landing bay.

Ana.

Jack had killed Ana.

Gabriel pushed past the agents and the medical personnel, ignoring the surprised sounds of indignation, Jesse behind him taking over the explanations, his voice relaxed and unhurried.

"Better clear out, the commanders are gonna have, ah, whatcha call it, a private word."

Jack, still in the carrier, sitting with his head bowed, pensive, Ziegler standing in front of him, didn't acknowledge his presence, not until Gabriel sneered at the medic to get the fuck out. The perfect image of the caring commander in how he slowly nodded to her.

"Now!" Passing Gabriel, Ziegler flinched with her entire body. He waited for her to clear at least some distance from the carrier before he was looking into amused blue eyes while he had Jack pressed by his neck against the far wall of the craft's inside. "The fuck have you...?"

"What do you think I've done?"

He didn't remember much of it – startled out of his fury by the sound of laughter, of all things – sitting on Jack's chest with knees braced on either side of Jack’s ribs – fist raised, hurting – skin on his knuckles cracked and covered in blood, his and Jack's.

"You killed her. You killed Ana. You..."

But Jack didn't stop laughing – meat and bone fixing itself back into shape, torn lip regaining its arch – a proof of Gabriel's impotence, his momentum cut short when it met with the simple inability to cause harm to the wretched thing under him.

"I’ve never ever touched her."

"You're lying!"

"Why would I? You see," Gabriel started at the touch curling around the nape of his neck, pulling him to lean down with the strength that suffered no objection until their foreheads met, "your dear Ana, she left you."

"She wouldn't..."

"She did. She saw an out, and she took it, so clever."

Arms wrapped around his back and Gabriel slumped against Jack's frame, adrenaline and tension bleeding out of his body – leaving behind surging feelings of betrayal and hopelessness – and still, some doubt that dispersed with fingers combing through his hair, lips brushing against his cheek in a light kiss, and a hissing whisper.

"I could hunt her down for you."

"No."

Gabriel didn't question Jack's ability to find Ana, he feared what Jack would do when he found her.

"Poor Gabriel, left all alone. Alone, with me," Jack chuckled. His fingertips massaged Gabriel’s scalp in a soothing pattern. "She's always understood, and she still abandoned you to me."

Gabriel had no strength left in him to protest that she couldn't know.

"Such keen eyes, to call me ifrit of the jinn. Such a narrow vision to call me that. So much more than I came to expect from your kind," Jack continued, words dripping with twisted amusement, and Gabriel closed his eyes. "A vengeful curse of the dead. I do like the sound of it. Don’t you?"

*

The noose slipped around his neck and the ground gave way, everything falling apart to rubble and leaving an empty husk behind. Gabriel didn't want to fight anymore. The blue coat rested thrown over the back of the chair Jack sat in with his chin propped up on his palm.

"I don't know what else can be done. This situation is... Are you even going to do anything?"

"No." Jack tapped his fingers against his cheek, slow and idle, a smile stretching on his face at Gabriel's resignation.

"I don't know why I even care anymore."

And he didn't. He could try to bullshit himself with the tired phrases of duty, of having poured his heart and soul into Overwatch, of doing good and fighting the good fight, but ultimately, they would all turn out to be poor excuses.

'I will make you believe in me.'

"You shouldn't care." Jack stood up and walked around the desk, stopping in front of Gabriel. He put his hands on Gabriel's face; some part of Gabriel hated the fact he didn't flinch. He never did. "This system's complexity outgrew the possibility of governance a decade ago."

It had been for nothing. And now, as Jack leaned in with the grimace of a baleful smile stretched across his face – touching his forehead to Gabriel's – with the defeat came relief: in the greater scheme of things, whatever were his actions, they were meaningless after all.

Gabriel looked – truly looked – at Jack for the first time in ages, and he saw the details he had always noticed but never considered as a whole: the receding and thinning hairline, the white at the temples, the crow's feet, the spiderweb-like labyrinth of small purplish veins under the skin. Superficial signs of aging appearing subtly over the years, the question of either performance, or the body pushing its own narrative over the thing inhabiting it, but, according to Jack, death didn't exist, and what existed in its stead was change.

"What do you intend to do now?"

"A real quandary, isn't it, what will I do next? What should I do? What do you think, Gabe?" Jack mused, his eyes leisurely half-closed, Gabriel's hands finding their resting place at his hips. He answered the question by himself, the one Gabriel was on the cusp of asking but too afraid to voice. "We could find Ana, air our grievances with her, we do have some, don't we? Or play around and hunt down some dirty scurrying rats. With nothing holding you back anymore, just imagine it, all the bloodshed, and all the violence you might ever wish for."

"Tempting." And it was. Gabriel sighed, reassured at being included.

"I knew you'd see it my way." Corners of Jack's eyes crinkled in amusement. Of course, Gabriel would, Jack made sure of it: seeped under his skin and into his thoughts, slithered all over his nerves and took root in his mind, bound Gabriel to himself with Gabriel's own permission. In hindsight, he wouldn't change a thing, as long as he was still wanted, for the lack of a better word.

Jack stirred, eyes flicking to the side for a moment, lips pursed and attention focused on something beyond the room.

"I see. This is how it's going to be."

Jack pulled him with his hands in for a kiss – crushing and ravenous – devouring Gabriel as the ground gave way under their feet among the roar of the blood rushing in his ears and the wail of the backdraft before the suffocating darkness overtook everything.

After he had pulled all the parts of himself together among the smoking rubble, deafened by the cacophony of gunfire and screams, Gabriel fled. Jack would survive on his own.

Sombra slipped out of his flesh with little fanfare days later, a small shadow through which alien stars shone like glittering eyes. But he called her that only when she began to fill in her form, soon a young woman consuming knowledge with the voracity of a newborn.

The hearings came and went. Ziegler made a show out of herself. Gabriel had scoffed at her testimony then. In retrospection, he could see how she had reached her conclusion.

Months passed and Gabriel, struggling to keep whole at the seams, had finally understood Jack was not coming back. He handed Sombra to Jesse, who could teach her so much more than Gabriel ever could, and sought help from the only person who could offer it.

Years down the line, looking at the frail – small – mangled body – its fingers twitching in a growing pool of blood, and pinkish bubbles breaking on the lips, eyelids on an uneven level, one eye bloodshot – the thing inhabiting it gone with a soundless pop of ripped reality, Gabriel realized Jack had never specified if the kid was dead when he had found him.

It was a split-second decision that he made.

"O'Deorain, get your ass down to the lab stat, the body is still alive."

*

With the kid below him – back arched and mouth open, fluttering fingers clenched on the sheets – Gabriel was, once again, found doubting.

[writing-without-time]

if you can't handle a heart like mine

don't waste your time with me.

read it on ao3

this is peak canon divergence me complaining about minor in game things but make it fluff while i did it

More often than not, Bonnie found herself at the heart of Slumbering Weald.

A beautiful area that was so quiet, so serene, so perfect to just sort out your thoughts. A lot of the time, Bonnie had ran into Hop sitting by the water, contemplating random problems. But today she was alone, as she sat on top of the tombstone belonging to heros. She had come here to think. Not really to solve a problem, no, there's no solving her issue, just to think about it. Calm down, maybe. She breathed deep as she clung her cape close briefly, before letting it drop on the ground behind her. Hopefully Zacian wouldn't mind.

Bonnie was stuck thinking about her adventure. What lead her to now. Not just the adventure itself, and for once, not about Hop, and the shared nights, and camping together under the wild area night sky, and battling together and against each other... She shook the thought from her head. Not the problem right now. She figured she'd have a fucking relationship crisis, 'oh no, i like my childhood best friend!' bullshit later. What bothered her was a common occurrence that also stood out beyond everything. It was this habit her friends way older than her had.

It happened alot. She could recall a few select times: Outside of Spikemuth, when the dynamaxing started happening, when Hop and her had found Lee and Chairman Rose at the top of Rose Tower, and a few other instances that passed through her mind. She was told the same thing, every single time: "Don't worry, let the adults handle this."

She hated it.

She didn't like to admit it, but Bonnie grew up young. She had to. And so it got under her skin, and in a more "adult" term, pissed her the fuck off, every time. She knew there was no hard feelings behind the statement, she and Hop were only sixteen. She supposed some people would still consider that young. She pondered though, how much bullshit would we have avoided if we just let Bonnie and Hop help out for like, 10 fucking seconds? Probably a lot.

When she had left Rose Tower, she had knew, oh she was aware that Chairman Rose would entirely fuck up her match with Lee, but she hadn't told anyone. But look who was right? It was her. She always knew something was wrong, and that Leon and Sonia and all the others couldn't handle it without Hop and her- as conceited as it sounds- but she would be dismissed because she was a kid.

She supposed, in theory, it was nothing to seethe in rage over. One, it was all over now, and two, she had long proved she is more than just a kid. Hell, she's the fucking champion! But it still got under her skin, bothered her. It made the depths of her soul question: Was she ever good enough? Did she still have to prove herself? Is she still just a silly little kid? She sighed, frustrated as ever as she looked to the setting sun and began to hum. Humming and singing helped clear her mind, as she began to sing a song where she couldn't remember where it came from, hands running through her hair as she tried to relax herself.

"..and cut a rug with orphaned girls, now memories are blurred, and their faces are blurred, but I still know the words to this song-" She sings softly, sounding awfully louder than she was in the quiet area.

"I haven't heard you sing in a long time." Hop laughs, causing Bonnie to literally shriek as she falls backwards off the tomb she sat on, only to be caught as she falls back into Hop's chest. "Woah! It's just me." He laughs, shit eating grin on his face as Bonnie looks up at him.

"You're an asshole.." Bonnie mutters, ignoring the small smile that graced her own face while she stood up.

"What a role reversal." Hop laughs, ignoring the comment as he looks at Bonnie with his hands folded behind his head. "Aren't you usually the one running into me?"

Bonnie rolls her eyes. "Not my fault you're late to your scheduled therapy appointment." She snickers, which causes Hop to laugh as well.

"Well, what has you out here?" Hop asks, picking up Bonnie's cape and throwing it around his own shoulders, something he jokingly did often. Bonnie liked it. He sits down where the cape once sat and invites her to join him.

"Just.. frustrated about stupid things." Bonnie sighs. "You?"

He shrugs. "Stressed, a bit." He laughs nervously. "Being a professor is hard. But I'm not giving up!" Hop smiles confidently.

"That's the spirit." Bonnie smiles, messing with his dark purple hair, causing him to swat her hand away, and she laughs as he fixes his hair.

"What's got you frustrated?" Hop asks as their laughter dies down, turning to Bonnie with a more serious tone.

Bonnie sighs. "Something about our..adventure, I guess."

"It's not something I did, is it?" Hop looks worried.

"No, no no, not at all!" Bonnie rushes to clarify. "Quite the opposite, actually.. I just.." Bonnie runs a hand through her hair, effectively messing it up and making it look like shit. "Do you remember, how every time we tried to help Lee and Sonia with things, we were told to 'let the adults handle it'?"

"What do you mean?" Hop asks, tilting his head slightly in an adorable way.

Bonnie thinks of the most easy to remember instance. "Back in the Rose Tower, when we found Lee talking to Chairman Rose." She lists, careful to not bring up their shared kiss, Arceus forbid she decides to have a crisis about that. "When we left with Lee, he just told us not to worry about what we heard. And...well, that went great." She rolls her eyes.

"I.. suppose you're right.."Hop says, seeming to recall the moment Rose had made a bitter remark- 'there are times when adults just cant seem to have an honest discussion with each other. sometimes our pride gets in the way.'

"It just- it's been bothering me. So much shit could've been avoided if someone just listened to us. It felt like we had to run 20 miles and more just to prove we're not just little kids." Bonnie sighs, letting her head roll back and hit the concrete behind her.

"Yeah, I suppose." Hop says, turning to Bonnie. "But that's part of the glory of it. We went from just random kids from a farmer town, and look at us now! Heck, you're the champion!" Hop cheers, only bringing a small smile to Bonnie's face.

"And what about you?" She asks. She had a solid answer to that one. He was her entire world. But she wanted to see his answer.

Hop hesitates. "I-I'm.." He breathes in. "I'm gonna be the best damn professor in all of Galar." He grins confidently.

"Hell yeah." Bon smiles, letting her head rest on Hop's shoulder as she observes the sun has already gone all the way down, and they were now greeted by the stars.

"You're the best champion in all of Galar, Bre." Hop says, quietly. Bon halts. Bre was her real name. She didn't use it much anymore. Not after she moved out of Kalos. Hop was the only one who knew her real name, and he didn't use it a lot. She didn't trust a lot of people to know her real name, cause what was the point? It didn't mean anything good to her. But it meant something good, that through everything, even when her name poured out of his lips, she wouldn't flinch, just for once, and it wouldn't be a reminder of her horrible story.

"..Thank you, Hop.." She sighs, letting her head rest again. Hop lets his own head rest on top of hers, and they're warm and quiet as they watch the sky turn. It's a comfortable silence until Hop breaks it.

"Bon." He calls.

"Yes, Hop?" She asks, quietly.

He hesitates for a couple beats, his face turning as red as it can. "Do you.. you.. I-" He struggles.

"Take your time." Bon laughs softly. He rolls his eyes as he and Bon both pick up their heads to look at each other.

He waits a few more seconds, and she nearly see the gears turning in his head. "You.. Do you know I.. I love you..?" He asks, almost afraid of the answer.

Bon hesitates before nodding her head. Hop holds his breath, waiting for another response. "You should know I love you too, you dense playboy." She grins cheekily, sticking her tongue out briefly. Hop lets go of his breath, if only to laugh before pouting at the nickname. The laughter dies down as their eyes meet and stay there, Hop slowly letting one of his hands cup Bon's cheek. She leans into the touch, seemingly holding her breath as she does, and the two inch closer. And it's a painful amount of time before their lips finally meet, a soft and sweet kiss, leaving the taste of each other on the other's tongue. They pull away slowly, wishing they could stay like that for an eternity, before they let go of each other, and continuing to huddle close against the stone, watching the sky as Bonnie drifted off, and Hop didn't seem to mind.

"Hey, Bon?" Hop asks, again.

"Mh?" She hums, too tired to even open her eyes anymore.

"I like your singing.. you should do it more.." He blushes as he trails off, getting even quieter. She nods, and it's a few beats of silence before she starts humming. Bonnie hadn't sang to hop in a long time, not since they were camping together in the wild area. She had sang to him because as childish as it sounded, he had a nightmare about hurting someone he loved, and it freaked him out, and her singing helped him fall back asleep.

As they both drift off holding each other close, they found comfort in the other, and knew that this was where they would feel okay, and where they could always go for comfort. Into each other's arms.

[onestowatch]

Boy Willows Drops Dreamy Music Video for "Fila" [Q&A]

Boy Willows, aka Landon Fleischman, makes music that offers a deep amalgamation of incandescent alt-pop, jubilant jazz, and psychedelic-tinged folk. Impeccably paired with sensory lyricism and passionate vocals, he delivers a hypnotic and singular resonance.

The LA-via-Maryland artist recently shared his new single "Fila" with Dylan Minnette of Wallows. On "Fila," Boy Willows stretches out to embrace relatable themes of vulnerability and healing both inwardly and outwardly without feeling overbearingly serious. "Fila" serves as a therapy session between two friends as they cope with being alone in different ways. Nestled in a warm and gentle soundscape, the sonic components are woven with nostalgia, charm, and a bit of whimsy. We caught up with Willows for a quick Q&A about the track and the equally nostalgic and whimsical music video directed by Boy Willows, shot by Seannie Bryan (Madeline Kenney, Skullcrusher) and edited by Jordan Pories.

Ones to Watch: This song, although short and sweet, seems to have a lot of complexity to it. It sounds like throughout the single, the main characters are grappling with feelings of loneliness and figuring out how to cope. What is this song about to you, and how did this song come to be?

Boy Willows: I think both verses deal with the thoughts that bubble up when you feel useless, small, or alone, but what I love about the song is there's a twinge of hope. My goal with Fila was to spur myself into believing that I could create my own reality of acceptance and momentum. I had been feeling isolated a while before the pandemic hit - on the perimeter looking in on other people's social circles or relationships or success. My hope was that by acknowledging these truths in a song, I could start to take up my own space, make my own club of acceptance per se.

What was the creative process like for the single? What made you want to go for this very ethereal sound, and were you inspired by anything in particular?

I worked on this super grand, minute-long glitchy harmony thing and pitched it down an octave (oooo). It was so soothing and slow and big, I started producing around it, and I felt like I was in a dream where I could say anything I wanted, no matter how heavy or light.

What are your thoughts on girls that wear Fila?

Haha, in short, they're cool. This song is truly a peek into all the thoughts that were swirling around my brain, making me feel alone - and one of those thoughts was about aging. I wish this wasn't the truth, but I was feeling fear about getting older. I wrote that line about Filas and didn't think much of it or even really understand why I wrote it until a couple nights ago. It's definitely a light-hearted observation about youth culture, but I think I wanted to poke fun at it cuz I felt like I wasn't a part of it for the first time - and that frightened me. It's insane that even that line was born out of the fear of being left out, but I'm pretty sure that's the true true.

I loved not only the sonic atmosphere you created, but also the story of you told through the lyrics. Do you have a favorite verse from this track or one that speaks to you? What is your approach when it comes to songwriting?

I just love how much the endings of each verse stick out - "I just feel like I don't deserve this life." It's a line you could interpret so many different ways, and each way would be true. When I'm working on a song, it starts with the music. I picture where it takes me, how fast I'm moving, if I feel cool or angry or defeated, and if I'm lucky, a phrase will fall out of my mouth that feels true, even if it doesn't make sense at first.

I think the music video does a great job of visualizing the lightheartedness of "Fila." What was the creative process like, and what was it like working with your team on the video?

There's this fucking incredible animated video called Satiemania from 1978 made by this Croatian animator, Zdenko Gašparović. In it, there's a delectable section where it's just different shoes walking in an impossibly groovy way. I wanted that tone of animation mixed with the camaraderie and fuckit-energy of The Pharcyde's "Drop" music video. I brought those ideas to my genius creative friend/ shaman, Jordan Pories, and we got to work, exploring the world of the song, trying to amplify and showcase everything in a dreamy, slow way. Seannie Bryan is a recent friend of mine and a killer DP. She captured the dreamy light perfectly. We rolled up to the spot at 6am. It was 90 degrees, and we knocked it out in an hour and a half, only stopping once because I was going to throw up from spinning.

Dylan Minette's voice perfectly compliments the laid back yet introspective vibe of the song, and it looked like y'all had a lot of fun doing the music video. What was working with him like, and how did he get involved with this single?

He and I go way back. We used to be in rival boy scout gangs. No, I do lighting for Wallows, and we met through that. One day on the tour bus, I was showing him some new tunes, one of which was "Fila." It was 35 seconds, and he said it needed to be longer, so I said, "hop on in." He added his verse, and we were OFF TO THE RACES. He's got a really strong creative compass and just knows what he likes. We finished the song in a couple days - fucking painless, dare I say, very enjoyable bordering on a lot of fun.

Tell me about Desert Mike. I feel like although rattlesnakes do deserve some love and I agree that the war between them and human beings is senseless, I'm not exactly in a rush to give them a pat on the head...Ok, but for real, tell me about this clip at the end. Is it an easter egg for a future single? In your last single, "i love it when you talk," you intercut the clips of you with film footage from the 80s and 90s. Is Desert Mike a Boy Willows creation or a relic from the past?

SHEESH, am I paying you?? because if not, then I SHOULD. The Boy Willows canon is a long, meandering labyrinth of characters that doesn't conform to traditional standards of "time" or "being funny" or "good. Desert Mike exists in all Boy Willows worlds, though, this much I can say. In the ILIWYT video, Desert Mike easily could have made a feature, and now I want to know who you've been talking to...your ability to connect the dots is...suspicious.

Has the pandemic effected you or inspired you as an artist? If so, how?

Really hot take comin at ya, I think the pandemic is not good. Bad even! I lost my job, so financially, I've been very inspired to survive haha. This isn't the sexiest answer, but the truth for me is, I put everything into my music but am also looking for a job - sometimes balancing those two things is really fucking hard. Instead of feeling inspired to write about my difficulties, I just want to solve them. So I'm really looking forward to landing a part-time gig as a call representative for Spirit Airlines, so I can get back to making my music.

Once the world comes to a state of a new normal, what's the first thing you want to do?

I'd love to travel somewhere new with my friends. A friend of mine is living in New Zealand working on an alpaca farm. You bet your ass I'm flying there at the first chance.

Alternate fun idea: Get a table at a restaurant, deep in the back, as far inside as possible. Order one appetizer every 30 minutes and stay there for a minimum of nine hours, just being so loungey and just snacking hard, mozzarella sticks flying every which way, napping in marinara sauce.

When shows and concerts are back, who do you want to see, and who do you want to tour or play with?

When touring comes back, I would LOVE to tour with Jadu Heart, Far Caspian, Sure Sure, to name a few. I just want to crowd surf for a month straight honestly. Give a ton of sweaty hugs. I want to see Toro y Moi, Thumpasaurus, Squirrel Flower.

Who have you been listening to throughout the pandemic? Are there any Ones To Watch?

A lot of Tribe Called Quest for long drives. I'll put "Check The Rhime" on repeat. I just discovered this dude named Shuttle his song "Boy" is fucking groooovy. I'm an OG KT Tunstall stan too - I've been bumping her 2013 album "Invisible Empire" like a mad man. Kevin Morby for the campy vibes, Rufus for the stank, Lomelda for the love, Van Morrison because if I get married, my first dance will be to "Crazy Love," and I like to daydream about that when I drive. Last but most important, The Prince of Egypt soundtrack.

Oh also, I've been listening to a lot of Anna Burch, Far Caspian, Bea1991, a compilation of geese wearing hats, Mei, Shuttle and this new artist you HAVE to listen to - he's a little out there but give him a try, Drake.

[softeddiek]

for axg week 2019

day 3: reunion

read on ao3

book canon only, with spoilers for all books + the ‘Mercy’ sample chapter from TWOW; arya is aged up for reasons 

i will not ask you where you came from 

It’s Harwin that recognizes her first. It seems rather fitting that it would be him. He had known her as a child; served her father in his life and was now serving her mother in her death. It had been him that had known her to be Arya Stark when the Brotherhood had found them. Gendry had only known she’d been highborn because she’d told him.

They had been making their way back to the inn with some of their brothers. Gendry stayed there most of the time, smithing and keeping watch over the lot of orphans that had collected over the years, but whenever a wayward Lannister or Frey came across their path, he took part in the short trip to Lady Stoneheart. He didn’t used to make the entire trip, choosing to turn back at the river so as not to leave the orphans alone too along. (But really it wasn’t just about the orphans. Deep down, beneath his simmering anger, some part of him, a very small part, would remember why he had joined the Brotherhood in the first place. Truthfully, it was that part of him that made his feet turn back around.)

That had changed once they had gotten news of the wedding. After that, he made it a point to go to as many hangings as he could. See the deaths of as many Freys and Lannisters and traitorous Northmen as he could. The news hadn’t affected Lady Stoneheart the same way. She’d believed her daughters to have been dead all along, refusing to believe that the Bolton bastard had married Arya. Gendry had never found it in himself to face her—that horrible, milky face, shredded to ribbons—and tell her that her daughter hadn’t died; that it was Gendry that had lost her. It seemed Harwin and Lem and all the others had never gotten around to it neither.

The lady had been extra swift with her justice since they had lost the Kingslayer and the ugly woman knight right out from under them. It’s after one of the more brutal trials that they’ve found themselves creeping up slowly through the trees upon a small figure with their cloak up huddled in front of a fire. The cold had been creeping into the Riverlands for years; snow was a daily occurrence. But even still, what fool would chance a fire in the middle of the day? The Riverlands had not been safe for as long as Gendry had been there, and they had been able to see the smoke from a league away.

“Just looks like a small boy to me,” he whispers to his right.

“Boys can be lions or wolves. Pretty smelling roses even. Same as some of us was,” someone bites back at him.

He glances over at his brothers, sees their hands slowly moving to hilts and quivers, sneers on their faces. He is suddenly transported back to when he was a young boy, coming out behind a wall with Hot Pie, only to be met with some of these very men. Friendlier faces. They wear no friendly looks now, even knowing this one small boy would stand no chance against them. Sometimes he thinks there is little point in even calling them a brotherhood anymore. They are not brothers. The only things that bind them all together now are hate and anger.

He shakes his head, clearing it of thoughts of the past that do him little good anymore. He notices that he has missed the signal, his brothers already advancing silently without him. He takes a quick step forward, onto the freshly fallen layer of snow, when he hears a crack. Grimacing as he looks down, he sees the end of a twig he has stepped on, half buried beneath the snow.

He can sense everyone has stopped moving at the noise and looks up to see the back of the boy’s head is tilted at an angle, like an animal might. The boy makes no further movements, though it’s obvious he knows someone is there.

“Alright,” Harwin says, his jovial tone holding a bit of an edge. He steps out to where the boy would see him if they turn around. “I don’t want no trouble. Turn around nice and slow lad, hands out where I can see them.”

They hesitate a moment, head still cocked. “And your friends? Do all five of them ‘want no trouble’?”

Gendry feels his eyebrows shoot up, both in surprise at them knowing just how many of them there are, and at their voice being distinctly feminine.

The girl does not wait for an answer, and Harwin doesn’t seem like to think of one quick enough. She stands up like he told her to, slowly, but hasn’t yet turned around. The rest of them give up the pretense and come forward, forming a half circle around her.

She brings her hands up and slowly lifts the cloak off her head, revealing short cropped brown hair. Harwin has a look on his face that seems more thoughtful than the situation warrants. She takes small shuffling steps to turn around, showing off her face to each of them one by one. It’s when it is fully exposed to Harwin that Gendry hears the man suck in a sharp breath. Gendry looks over to him as he says, “Milady. We’d not thought to see you again.”

He can feel confusion ripple among his brothers. It is then that he looks away, letting his eyes roam over the girl.

She would be small for a boy, but for a girl she looks rather healthy, well-fed. If he had to guess, he would put her at no older than five and ten. Her jerkin and breeches look clean but foreign, and the cloak she has on is only a little faded. It is when he gets to her face, to those eyes, that the breath is knocked from him. He hasn’t seen those eyes in years. Her hair is similar in length to when he had last seen her, only this time the locks are more even. Like they’d been cut in a purposeful way, and not sheared off to make her look like a boy. She is no longer the scrawny, malnourished girl she had been in their youth, but she is undoubtedly Arya Stark.

“Neither had I,” she replies. Her voice knocks him out of his observations and all he can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief. Relief that she isn’t dead. That she hadn’t met her end at Saltpans. And no sooner had he thought that then was the relief snuffed out, replaced by guilt. Because if she hadn’t died then that meant that the rumors were true, and she had been wedded. Wedded and bedded by the Bolton bastard. The guilt he’s been carrying for years in his heart and in the constant scowl he wears hits hard as he thinks on what horrors her husband is said to have inflicted upon her.

“We looked for you, milady. All around the Riverlands we followed Clegane’s trail.”

“Did you, Harwin?” she asks, eyes narrowed as if looking to catch him in a lie.

She does not wait for his answer, instead looking around at the faces of his brothers, taking them all in carefully, perhaps trying to see if she recognizes any. Her face is carefully blank until her eyes reach him. It is only then that she allows for the shadow of a smile.

“Gendry.”

He realizes then he has not thought to say a word up to this point. He clears his throat, feeling as though there is something lodged in it. “Arya,” he manages to get out.

She faces Harwin again, the shadow gone. “I’m heading North,” she starts, turning back toward her fire to put it out. All of his brothers but Harwin have their weapons at the ready, prepared to stop her from leaving. “And this time, you won’t stop me,” she finishes, unwavering at the sound of steel that has been drawn.

“Put your bloody weapons down,” Harwin barks.

“And why should we? The fuck’s this?” pipes up Luke, not recognizing this older version of Arya.

Harwin ignores him. “North, milady? Is that not where you have just come from?”

Her brow furrows. “Why would I have come from the North?”

“We had heard it that…” Harwin looks lost. “Well news had been that you were Lady Bolton now,” he says gently. In fact, the Harwin before him looks downright paternal compared to the Harwin that had been present the last few years. More like the one who had gently prodded Arya along when she had been the Brotherhood’s captive, and less like the hardened outlaw that hung the noose around the necks of their enemies as often as any other fervent supporter of Lady Stoneheart.

“Oh that.” She seems unperturbed. “No, I’ve not been North. It seems some other girl was unfortunate enough to marry a Bolton in my stead.” And just like that, Gendry’s emotions swing right back around. She hadn’t been married. Whatever Arya had been through, wherever she had been, it was likely a great deal better than being butchered at Saltpans or trapped in her family’s castle with a monster in her bed. He can’t help but let his shoulders sag a bit from the relief.

“Then where have you been, milady?”

All that meets his question is silence.

“If I had to guess,” one of his brothers pipes up when it becomes clear that she will not answer. His eyes begin to roam up and down Arya’s body. Gendry can feel his fists clenching at that. It’s the Tyroshi. He has been with the Brotherhood for a while now, joined right before Lady Stoneheart had taken over, though Gendry has never spoken to him. But it’s hard to miss him with his dyed hair and thick accent. “I would say this girl has spent time across the Narrow Sea.”

He sees Arya’s jaw tick for a fraction of a second before it stills, her face a calm mask. “Valar morghulis,” the Tyroshi adds, with what he must imagine is a charming smile thrown her way, speaking in that odd tongue Gendry had heard Greenbeard use before he had gone and left them. Arya just sends a hard look the man’s way, eyes steely.

“I really ought to be going now,” she says, directing her words toward Harwin and Gendry while eyeing the Tyroshi. “I have a long trip and it’s not getting any warmer.”

“Wait, milady,” Harwin says none too quietly, hands coming out as if placating a spooked horse. “We can’t be letting you go just yet.”

Her left eyebrow shoots up and all eyes are drawn to the hand that she’s inching toward her waist, slipping between the fold of her cloak where she undoubtedly has a weapon. “I don’t think you’ll be getting much gold out of me Harwin. There’s no one left to ransom me to I’m afraid. Don’t worry, I’m sure Beric won’t be too upset with you.”

At the mention of their former leader, over half of their faces turn weary. She falters at that, clearly expecting to get more of a fight out of these men. She looks over at Gendry, a question in her gaze.

Seeing no one else is ready to break the news, he manages to find his voice. “Arya, things have…changed since you left.” He takes a gulp, knowing where this will go. Knowing what they will have to reveal to her. Knowing she will likely hate them for what they have turned her mother into. Hate him for what he let them turn her mother into. His eyes flicker toward Harwin. His jaw is clenched but otherwise he gives Gendry no indication as to what he should say. He feels her eyes still on him, looks back to see those grey pools urging him on. The concern she wears is the most emotions she has shown since he has set eyes on her.

Taking a breath, he steels himself, sends a small prayer in his head to R’hllor and all of the other gods he has never been sure he believes in. A prayer that this won’t send her running, the horror that her mother has become. Not when he has just gotten her back.

“Beric’s dead.”

--

Gendry hears nothing. It’s all silence. He knows he should be hearing the chirping of crickets, the hooting of owls. And, distantly, maybe even the howling of wolves. Some sounds of life. He knows he should hear Harwin, cursing as he tries to break chinks into the frozen streambed, and he certainly should have heard his own loud, crashing footsteps as he hurried from the tent. But he hears nothing.

Suddenly, Harwin is in his face, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. Then he hears it. A ragged gasping sound. Looking for the source, his eyes finally land on Arya, kneeling in the snow by the stream, scrubbing furiously at her hands. He jumps at that and heads toward her, bending down beside her. Her motions are jerky and quick, but she stops and looks over at him, a wild look in her eyes.

“Lady Stoneheart…your mother” Harwin begins behind them.

“Don’t call her that,” she snaps back.

He bows his head a bit, in shame. “Lady Catelyn—"

“Don’t call her that either. That thing was not my mother.” He can feel her crackling with rage beside him, a sense of clarity having returned to her.

“It was done with good intentions, milady. Beric himself is the one that did it.”

“I don’t care about Beric’s intentions. Or yours, or your stupid fucking brotherhood’s.” She pauses. “My mother should have been allowed to rest. She should have been allowed to return to my father.” Her eyes grow glassy, and he thinks she is about to let out a sob, but instead she turns back to the stream to try and wash the remaining blood off her hands.  

Harwin sighs, a large furrow to his brow. Gendry can tell he is torn. All he has ever known is the Starks. His father was Lord Stark’s man and then he himself was. He had seen the Stark children grow up and it was Lord Stark that had sent him out with Beric to catch The Mountain. And now a Stark has killed the Stark he was serving. But Gendry will be damned if he lets Harwin tell the Brotherhood about what happened in that tent.

After Beric’s death, they had stopped giving fair trials. Hanging any enemy of Lady Stoneheart’s, helping her take her revenge. Anyone left with them now eagerly supported her, had the same thirst for revenge as she did. Gendry included. He knows that no argument about Arya being Stoneheart’s daughter will stop them from decrying her for a murderer. It won’t stop them from trying to hang her too.

“You’re going to let us go, Harwin,” he says with purpose, leaving little room for the man to argue. “You’re going to tell them we left in the middle of the night, choosing to head back to the inn. Then maybe we were set upon by Freys or some other River lords. We were never in that tent.”

He looks over at Arya, still crouched beside him in the snow. Her hands are now pink and shriveled and she is levelling a cool gaze at Harwin.

“Aye.” The man nods his head. “You were never in that tent.” Gendry lets out an inaudible sigh, grateful that Harwin’s loyalty had extended to Arya this time, rather than the Brotherhood.

“You’ll need to go, quick. You know what paths the Brotherhood takes boy, what towns they stop in. Be careful.” He takes one last look at Arya before turning to make his way back up the sloped incline.

“Harwin,” Arya calls out.

“Milady?”

“What do you know of funeral rites in the Riverlands?”

“Very little, milady.”

“You’ll ask?” Her tone says that he must.

“Yes.” His back turns to them one last time as he walks off into the night.

Sensing she needs a minute longer, Gendry reluctantly settles down beside her in the snow, letting it soak through his breeches. Silence hangs between them, but his head is full of questions. Where has she been all of this time, if not in the north? Had she really been in Essos? How did she survive on her own? Had she been alone?

Instead he blurts out, “Everyone thought you were dead.”

She turns to look at him, a strange look passing over her face. “Arya Stark was dead,” is all she ends up saying, before looking down at her hands. He had known something was off when he had seen her again. That restless energy she’d had before she had disappeared seemed to be gone, replaced by something calmer. Her words had a different inflection to them.

“We need to leave before dawn. The Brotherhood’s not the only group of outlaws out here. If we head—”

“We don’t need to do anything, Gendry. I’m going North. And you should stay here.” She begins wiping snow off her breeches, preparing to get up.

He stares at her, dumbfounded. “Course I’m coming with you.”

“Don’t be stupid Gendry.”

He can feel his jaw clench and his nostrils flare. “No, Arya, you don’t be stupid.” She looks at him upon hearing her name, her movements stopping. “I thought you had died. I couldn’t stop you from running and for years I thought it had been my fault. And then we heard about your wedding—”

“It wasn’t my wedding,” she snaps. There’s anger in her voice now too, a hint of the old Arya returning.

“Yeah, well I know that now, don’t I? I was finally hearing you’re alive, only to be told it might’ve been better if you actually had died. But now, here you are, strolling through the woods, easy as you please, and I find you. I actually find you, safe and alive. Not dead, and not married to some bastard.” Her eyes have become downcast at that, and he sees her teeth are worrying her bottom lip, just as she used to do.

“Arya,” he hesitates, “I didn’t spend the last few years taking care of orphans and serving your mother for no reason.” He stops there, figuring it best to let a few things be left unsaid for now. “So, yeah, I’m not letting you leave without me. Not this time.”

She nods, the moon casting her pink, cold bitten cheeks into light. He clears his throat. “Alright. Like I said, we should leave soon. But why north?”

Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“The Riverlands aren’t safe Arya, but the North’s not much better. And if we get there, and someone recognizes you and realizes that the real Arya Stark isn’t holed up in some castle…”

“Gendry,” she starts, “all of my family is dead.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “I’ve just seen to that.” He winces. “Jon…well I’ve heard things about Jon, and I need to see for myself. I need to go north.”

“And your sister?”

“Sansa? What about her?”

“Not long ago we heard some news about her. Some say she’s been in the Vale with some lord from King’s Landing.”

She shakes her head. “No. No, I went to the Vale. Sansa’s long dead, I know it. The imp probably killed her,” she says with disgust.

He is taken aback by how much Arya’s reminds him of her mother in this moment. Or the version of her mother he had known. “Stoneheart was sure it wasn’t her neither. You really want to go north then? The winds are rising Arya, and I may have never been further than the Riverlands, but even I know it’ll be a hard journey.”

She leans forward into him, placing her left hand on his right. He looks down at where they’re joined. He knows her hands are freezing from drying in the cold night air, but all he feels there is heat. Her hands are still as small and soft as he remembers, though he can feel the slight dig of callouses along them. Shaking his head to clear it, he looks back up at her, their eyes meeting.

“I’ve heard horrible things about Jon, Gendry, all the way in—” she stops. “I need to see for myself. I need to find out what has happened to my brother.”

He’s noticed her incomplete sentence, but, seeing the distraught look in her eyes, drops it, finding himself wanting to reassure her. “We don’t get much news from the north Arya. I have no idea what’s waiting for us up there, but we will. We’ll find out about your brother.”

She shakes her head up and down quickly, eyes glistening. She looks tired, and Gendry doesn’t blame her. Who knows how much sleep she had been able to get traveling out here all on her own? After what she had been through today though, he doubted she would be having a peaceful sleep in a while.

He looks up at the sky, sees that they have been sitting there much longer than he had planned to. He is finally starting to feel the snow that has soaked through into his clothes and his ass is freezing. He looks back down at her, prepared to tell her they really need to leave this time, when he catches a peculiar look on her face. She is staring intently at his own, only her eyes aren’t focused on his, they seem to be focused on…oh.

His face starts to heat up despite the cold as she continues staring at his lips unabashedly. Her eyes flicker up to his quickly, the hand that had still been resting on his own now reaching up and landing firmly on his chest. He feels frozen as he sees her face moving slowly toward his. He is intensely aware right now of just how different this Arya is from the one he had  all those years ago. For one, that Arya had been a child, hounded by hunger and constantly on the run. This Arya is near a woman grown, her body having filled out from age and consistent meals. That Arya had been wild, prone to outbursts and impatience. This Arya is calmer, with a calculating, almost predatory look in her eyes. As she closes more distance between the two of them, her cold breath mingling with his own, he realizes just how attracted he is to her.

He gulps nervously, knowing he should pull away. That he should insist they leave, right now. But he cannot seem to look away from her eyes, sensing a hint of vulnerability beneath the predatory gleam. He breathes out softly, nearly whispering, “Arya, what are you—” She cuts him off with her mouth. Her lips are cold and firm against his. They move against his for just a second before she breaks away.

He is staring at her, dumbfounded and confused. He can see the heat coloring his cheeks mirrored on her own. “Just wanted to know what it would be like as Arya Stark,” she says. His forehead scrunches up in thought. He figures there must be some truth to what the Tyroshi said about where she had been, given the odd way she has been prone to speak every few sentences. He had never heard anyone in Westeros refer to themselves by their own name like that.  

He can barely form the words to ask about it when she says, “We should head out now. Dawn will come soon, and we’ve been here too long.” She stands, a hand offered out to him to pull him up. He grabs onto it, bringing himself to his feet. “We’ll need to steal some horses now that the Brotherhood has mine.”

She begins walking away from him, opposite the direction Harwin had gone. He can’t help shaking his head a bit at the confidence with which she is guiding them, despite not knowing her way around. He is glad to have seen glimpses of the old Arya within this new woman that has returned to him. He will not ask where she has come from just yet, who she has been with, or what she has been through. They will have plenty of time to speak on their way north, and he does not expect her to be willing to yield that information just yet.

As he begins following her, it feels as though a weight has been lifted from his chest. He is not proud of things he has done over the years in her mother’s name. In her name. As much as he had taken care of those orphans at the inn to try to atone for what had happened, it did not erase all of the blood that the Brotherhood had spilled and the death that they had brought that he had turned a blind eye to. Assisted in, even. Perhaps, over time, Gendry will be able to speak about that too.

He has caught up with her when she suddenly stops, glancing over her shoulder at him to say, “You still walk too loudly.” A small smile graces both of their lips as she faces forward again and continues on. Yes, they will have time.

As they continue on their way, moonlight the only thing to guide them, Gendry thinks he hears the sound of wolves in the distance, louder than they have been in months.