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scarlettriot · 3 years ago

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Mina Ashido Headcanons!

@jewel116 requested some headcanons of our Alien Queen and I am here to deliver!

Some of these also could be considered BakuSquad HCs, hope that's alright.

I also went ahead and included some Adult Mina and 18+ Mina Headcanons too. Both are below the cut and clearly stated. Warnings are posted at each header mark.

If anyone has any other requests, lemme know!

Basic Mina Headcanons

Warnings: It's as fluffy as her dang hair! (Swearing)

. Most definitely has ADHD! In class, she is constantly tapping her foot on bouncing her leg as a means of trying her best to keep focused.

. Has a collection of shirts that she has designated for sleep and loungewear because she's burned acid holes in them by accident. Sometimes she'll wear them to concerts and shows if the design is cool enough.

. Loves piggyback rides! Frequently will run and jump on the backs of the guys in the BakuSquad. Even Katsuki himself puts up with it after a while.

. While Katsuki is the 'mom' of the squad, Mina is the one everyone goes to when they need comfort. Denki will curl up in her lap after a long day, Eijiro frequently goes to her when his insecurities creep back in, Hanta shows up late at night and they talk in her room about nothing just because he doesn't want to be alone, and Katsuki, well, he shows up to her room, slams the door and complains for a solid half-hour after reading a particularly heartbreaking scene in a manga while she listens to every word and validates his feelings.

. Mina worries far more than people believe she does. Her bubbly, loud, personality usually masks it but she knows when people are lying to her about what's going on in their heads.

. Sitting properly in a chair physically bothers her. She'd much rather be hanging upside down off it.

. She lowkey likes that the boys get protective over her.

. Mina is the type of person who gets A LOT of random thoughts that pop up in her head and one of the few people who actually will engage with the sheer randomness of the ideas is Shoto. Not only does he engage, he comes up with his own! The two can talk for hours.

. Loves hosting 'spa parties' in the common area of the dorms, everyone is welcome to join.

. When road trips happen, she's making the playlists (technically, she and Kyoka switch off).

. Tries teaching Tenya, Izuku, and Shoto how to flirt. After a very embarrassing first hour, Shoto didn't learn a single thing, Izuku was only good at it when paired with Shoto and Tenya... Tenya had her SHOOK! Man has game and she made sure everyone knew!

. Has weekly meetings with Yuga where they drink tea and spill the tea.

. She is so damn ticklish. Hanta was teasing her one day, she warned him to stop, he received an elbow to the face for not listening.

. Tried to grow her hair out once but it didn't grow down... it grew OUT. Mina thought she rocked it, and she totally did but ended up having it cut back down so poor Tsyu could see in class.

. Wakes up early three days a week to practice her hand-to-hand combat with Eijiro. Mina wants to improve her technique and Eijiro needed to work on his mobility, it benefits them both.

. Just Dance is her favorite game, she dominates.

. Easily forms new interests.

. Won't admit it but she gets jealous super easily.

. Will be the first to attempt to throw hands for a friend! I HC she was picked on as a child for looking so different but it never really phased her too badly, she likes looking different but understands that not everyone thinks like she does. So, if someone were to say something about Mezo's facemask, she's stepping in to defend the guy without hesitation.

. Knows every TikTok dance EVER. If a new one comes out, she's mastered it by end of the day and her account is always up to date.

. (Popular idea but important to reinforce) Mina and Eijiro co-founded a club, Horn Buddies, specifically to make Eri feel more welcome. They take her on trips and group outings. The only horned person who's not allowed to join is Pony because she was rude as heck to Mezo.

. Mina gets extra competitive over board games.

. She can ice skate and roller skate like a champ.

. Mina is resilient, dedicated, and passionate. She has goals and the girl will achieve them.

Pro Hero - Adult Mina Headcanons

Warnings - Mentions of alcohol use and swearing

. Gets several tattoos and piercings.

. Starts a roller derby club with most of the girls from 1A.

. Loves going out to the hottest dance clubs just as much as she enjoys staying in and munching on take-out food with friends.

. The Horn Buddies club she formed with Eijiro has now expanded into regular society and both young heroes couldn't be more proud. Together they've formed a foundation that strives to help those with non-flashy, unconventional, or misunderstood quirks feel welcomed and loved.

. Does her best to shop small whenever she can. Mina wants to help her community in as many different ways as possible.

. Becomes a fashion icon for many small, just starting out, alternative clothing lines. They love her look and the standard she sets.

. Goes to fashion and runway shows with Momo on the regular. While Momo prefers buying right off the rack, Mina goes to thrift stores and buys items that are coming back into style.

. Does her best to stay in touch with her classmates. She really cherished the friendships she made and goes the extra mile to make sure everyone stays connected.

. Has told off Shoto's father. Sent the man an anonymous bag of flaming dog shit as well for making his son so damn stressed. Sorry, not sorry.

. As long as she isn't in the middle of a fight, Mina will always stop to take a photo with a fan or sign an autograph. In or out of costume, she doesn't care.

. In high school, Mina's room was always decked out for the holidays. She goes decoration crazy and it is always done well. But, now that she's an adult with that pro hero money and her own place, she's the best house on the block decorated for each and every holiday! Inside and out! Also throws holiday-themed parties.

. Got absolutely trashed with the BakuSquad one night and taught them all how to twerk. By the end of the lesson, she deemed Katsuki was the best of her students.

. Loves to drink. Is a lightweight. Katsuki and Eijiro have carried her home more times than they can count.

NSFW 18+ Mina HC Below - Minors DNI

Warnings: Drinking, rough sex, mentions of orgies, handcuffs, impact play, and praise kinks. Subtle sexual relations with BakuSquad, Jiro, Todoroki, and Ochaco.

. The Queen of stripteases and lap dances.

. If any of her friends are at a party or some event and they need a fake date, Mina is their go-to person. She's handsy. She's flirty. And has no problem with platonic make-outs.

. Always encourages kissing-themed games at parties. Seven Minutes in Heaven, Spin the Bottle, those sorts of games. Mina also loves to play cupid and has rigged a game or two to get people together.

. Has made out with every member of the BakuSquad at least once as well as Kyoka, Shoto, and Ochaco simply because she was curious.

. Has attempted to start an orgy with the BakuSquad before when intoxicated. Still mentions it in passing just in case they change their minds.

. Has gone further with Katsuki and Eijiro though. Maybe both at the same time once or twice or several times...

. Wonderfully filthy dirty talk. Can even make Katsuki blush.

. (A personal favorite of mine that was in a previous post) When they were first years, Eijiro asked innocently enough, to touch her horns. He was gentle but that didn't matter. Our poor girl was so damn flustered! Her face turned red bright, she felt hot, and she had to go take a very cold shower!

. Ei felt terrible about it. It took them both maturing for her to explain exactly why she reacted that way... and then asked him to do it again.

. Is likely to send NSFW texts and photos while people are indeed at work. She is a Pro Hero though so only certain people are allowed to have those photos. A scandal is the last thing she wants.

. Very good at communication and is not afraid to speak her mind about what she wants and needs out of a relationship and her sex life.

. Loud, very loud, very needy.

. Fuzzy handcuffs in every color she can think of and adores impact play.

. Let her know she's doing a good job, Mina responds well to praise.

. Big cuddler after sex. Wants to snuggle into you and more than likely take a nap.

#mha headcanons #bnha headcanons #mha #mina ashido #mina ashido headcanons #mina ashido fluff #bakusquad #bakusquad headcanons #mina ashido smut #katsuki bakugo smut #eijiro kirishima smut #kirishima #bakugo #denki kaminari #hanta sero #shoto todoroki #bakukirimina

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tfwlawyers · 3 years ago

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Not me singlehandedly going through your entire parent trap au I’m so invested even though like half of the posts are from 2015 💀

THESE THINGS HAPPEN I get such a kick out of knowing this au is still making its rounds though 😭😭

and yk what just because I know I’m never going to do anything else with this, have a 3.5k attempted scramble of fic for this au I tried writing back also in 2015. i was even less of a writer back then than I am now so it’s absolutely terrible but have at thee

“Oh, wait...” Trucy winced and tapped her earring. Apollo’s eyes widened in realization. “Looks like we have one more thing to do tonight - it’ll be super quick, I promise.”

“Oh no,” Apollo said, visibly paling, “there’s no way you’re doing that to me-”

“Then cutting my hair was a total waste,” Trucy huffed, tugging at a newly shorn lock, “because there’s no way I can go to camp with pierced ears and come home without. Come on, Polly, where’s your sense of adventure? It’s just one little pinch!”

“Just one?” he asked hesitantly, eyes now trained on the sharp needle laying on the table.

Trucy paused. “Well... I guess it’s technically two. I really only wear the one earring, but both my ears are pierced.”

Apollo sighed. “Great.”

“Nah, I got this,” Trucy said, grinning toothily. “I went with Aunt Maya when she wanted to get hers pierced, even though she chickened out at the last second.” She picked up the needle and a book of matches from the table, eyes glinting. “I had to get mine repierced because of infection the first time too. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

“Put that apple slice back,” Apollo said, narrowing his eyes at the piece of fruit in Trucy’s hands. “They’re acidic, I don’t need that anywhere near me and oh God you’re really going to shove a piece of metal into my ear, aren’t you-”

“You sure I look okay?” he asked, patting down the skirt. He squinted down at the stark white boots he’d thankfully fit into. “I’m terrified to walk in these, they look like death traps -”

“Which is why we’re practicing,” Trucy said primly, wiping her hands on a gel-stained rag. She still didn’t quite have a grasp on the correct ratio of product to actual hair, but she was much better than when they had started five weeks ago. “Now, walk towards me.”

“One last thing, I guess,” Apollo said, removing his bracelet and handing it to Trucy, watching as she carefully slid it on. He rubbed his now bare wrist absentmindedly, feeling strangely naked without it.

“So... this is really it. We’re really doing this.”

“We’re really doing this,” Trucy confirmed, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. For all her apparent enthusiasm, she looked as nervous as he felt. The studs in her ears reflected the morning light.

“Give papa a hug for me,” he said, smiling weakly.

“Give daddy one for me too,” she said.

They hesitated a moment more before Trucy threw her arms around her brother’s shoulders. Apollo’s arms immediately snaked around her waist, drawing her in tight. They clung to each other, silently willing and praying this was somehow going to all work out - that they wouldn’t just to get to meet their other parent, that they wouldn’t only get a few short weeks with the other father they hadn’t even known had existed, but that they could find some way to reconcile the two, that they wouldn’t have to lose anyone across the wide expanse of the Atlantic ever again.

“You’ve had your ears pierced,” he said almost absently, cradling her head between his hands and gently turning her neck back and forth to better view the studs. He clicked his tongue. Trucy felt her heart sink.

“Do you... hate them?” she asked tentatively.

Edgeworth’s eyes snapped to hers. They were the same soft gray color as the paint Daddy always kept too much of around the house. “On the contrary - I find they suit you incredibly well. Please tell me you didn’t get an infection.”

Her face split into a wide smile.

Apollo thumbed through a stack of canvases that had been shoved into a corner. There was a thin layer of dust of them; if he had to guess, he’d say they hadn’t been disturbed for at least three months - not a particularly long stretch of time, all things considered. They were clearly less polished works, lacking the technical skill and attention to detail that made Phoenix Wright a name to be reckoned with in the art community, but they were still beautiful in their own way. Paintings of vineyards and what looked like London, towering skyscrapers and calm seas and -

His father.

Apollo blinked.

The portrait of Miles Edgeworth drawn in rich oils did not blink back. Nor did the three that followed.

“There were a lot of paintings of the same person in daddy’s works. Some guy with grey hair,” Apollo said, struggling for nonchalance.

Maya’s grip on the mixing bowl faltered. “Is that so,” she said carefully.

“Was he one of daddy’s favorite models or something he just never told me about?”

Maya pursed her lips and continued stirring with a newfound vigor. “You could say that.”

“You’re not Apollo?” he asked, voice thick. “You’re Trucy?”

She smiled weakly. “That would be correct.” One strand of hair fell lank across her forehead - how did I not notice, Apollo hasn’t used nearly that much gel in years - and he absentmindedly tucked it behind her ear. He felt her press into the warmth of his hand, as if she were afraid he might suddenly vanish across the Atlantic again.

“I hope you don’t - I hope you don’t hate me,” she said, voice beginning to waver, “it’s just that Polly and I met at the camp and the whole thing sort of just spilled out. I’ve wanted to see you for so long, and Polly felt exactly the same way about Daddy, so we sort of just - just switched lives and hoped it wouldn’t take you so soon to notice. I really hope you don’t hate me, because I’ve wanted to meet you basically my whole life and I hope that maybe one day you can love me for me and not Polly and -” (this is ALL from movie tho so mix this up)

Edgeworth’s left hand came to cradle the rest of Trucy’s face, cutting her off mid-sentence. “Oh, my dear,” he said, cautiously tugging her forward. She came willingly, all but sprawling across his chest, tucking her head underneath his chin and wrapping her arms around his middle. “I’ve loved you since the day you came to me,” he whispered into her hair, blinking away the beginnings of tears he felt gathering at the corner of his eyes. He felt her tighten her hold and he did the same.

He poured himself a thumbnail of scotch, perfectly content to pretend he didn’t have tickets to a plane back to a state he had vowed never to set foot in again departing in less than four hours. “He was rather handsome,” he found himself admitting, absentmindedly swirling the glass and taking a sip. He paused, staring at nothing and mumbling to himself, “...had the most crooked smile. Always made me weak at the knees.”

“What was that, sir?”

Edgeworth snapped his attention back to the other man; he’d nearly forgotten Gumshoe was even in the room. “Nothing, nothing, never mind, have you seen the tickets?”

Gumshoe shrugged. That was Trucy’s cue.

“Almost ready, papa?” she asked, stepping smoothly into the room from her hiding place behind the thick wooden door. Edgeworth looked just as wild-eyed as she’d been hoping.

“Yes, of course, I’m almost finished packing -”

She didn’t even have to look at his still mostly bare suitcase to know he was lying.

“ -and you did tell your father we were coming, didn’t you?” he finished, placing his drink on a nearby dresser and running his fingers shakily through his hair.

“Absolutely,” Trucy promised.

“Ah,” Edgeworth said, fiddling with his waistcoat buttons. They looked like they’d been polished recently.

“Liar,” Gumshoe leaned down to whisper. She shushed him.

“Might I suggest we continue this little gathering inside,” Maya said, already beginning to shepherd the twins - the twins, she was going to need another vacation just to process the fact that they were together again - into the room. She twisted back around to look at Edgeworth, still shoving Apollo (that was Apollo, right?) forward. “Hi,” she began again, offering a free hand, “you probably don’t remember me -”

“Maya!” he interrupted, smiling warmly and bending to kiss her chastely on the cheek. His breath was sour with vodka and his glasses clunked awkwardly against her face. As he turned and stepped fully into the room, Maya’s cheeks(rp) began to hurt from smiling so fiercely.

“I knew I always liked him,” she said to no one as she closed the door.

This was ridiculous. This resort was full of entirely too many people who favored the same sort of eccentric clothing that man had even fourteen years ago, a disproportionate amount of them with the same slate grey hair. He almost would have written that (awkward*) expression seen from across Dahlia’s shoulder/a hotel lobby as a figment of his overtaxed imagination had it not been so much realer than the stacks of canvases in his studio. Which meant Miles was here, but he’d swept the first level of the hotel twice already after begging Dahlia to take to her room for a bit, the pool area was as depressingly empty as the inside was, and -

There he was.

Across the pool, descending the steps carefully from the inside lounge area and walking on the balls of his feet like he always did when he’d had a bit too much to drink (and why did he still remember that) was, without a doubt, Miles Edgeworth.

Phoenix suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

Edgeworth was halfway down the opposite path before Phoenix realized he should probably do something.

“Excuse me,” he said, shouldering his way through the crowd. It would be rude and more than a little intrusive to just call out his ex-husband’s name in the middle of a resort, right? Perhaps not as rude as nearly shoving the poor bellboy into the shrubbery, but, well, desperate times called for desperate measures.

He didn’t immediately notice the odd assortment of friends and family and a lumbering man in striped green swimming trunks perched on pool chairs as he stepped past, but they certainly noticed him.

“Daddy, are you okay?” Trucy asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said vaguely, refusing to take his eyes off Edgeworth. He was abruptly terrified he might vanish again if he did.

“Nick, watch out -”

“Hey, pal -”

“Daddy -”

With that, Phoenix collided into a passing service boy, arms pinwheeling wildly as he fell directly into the pool behind him.

“Hello Miles,” he said, smiling sheepishly and wringing out his tie. He fought the urge to rub the back of his neck and settled for clenching his hands into tight fists instead. “Or do you people call you Edgeworth now?”

“Miles is - Miles is fine,” Edgeworth said weakly, trying to look anywhere but Phoenix, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation they should be having for the first time after fifteen years. “My father still calls me Miles.”

Something warm coiled in his chest. It felt infinitely more dangerous than it had fifteen years ago.

“You always had a smart mouth,” he murmured, rubbing a swathe of cleaning ointment along the cut on Phoenix’s forehead. Phoenix hissed.

“So glad you remembered,” he bit through gritted teeth.

“Hush.”

Phoenix hmmed but stayed silent for a few more seconds, staring at Edgeworth as he dug back into the first aid kit. Edgeworth tried not to flush under the scrutiny.

Phoenix held his wrist in a loose grip. He should have felt clammy from the pool and the rapidly descending night, but he blazed oddly hot against Edgeworth’s skin.

“Miles, I-”

“Feenie? Who is this?”

“Dollie!” Phoenix said, shooting upright and wincing at the sudden dizziness.

Edgeworth’s burgundy coat was hung carefully over his arm, too thick for the warm California night. The buttons on his waistcoat glinted from a nearby streetlamp’s glow.

Phoenix swallowed.

“Do you have any idea where they’re taking us?” Edgeworth asked, leaning in slightly. Phoenix’s (nose twitched? something about scent memory?) and he refused to let himself acknowledge that Miles’s choice of aftershave hadn’t changed since the day they’d met. He abruptly remembered the taste of cheap wine and overly sweet cake on his tongue, felt the ghost weight of a ring fifteen years gone.

He hastily turned away.

“No idea.”

“Grandfather chipped in a bit -”

“Apollo,” Edgeworth warned.

“Alright, so Grandfather chipped in a lot, whatever, we’re poor teenagers, the point is,” he said, emphasizing the final word by pulling the ship’s impressive doors open with a firm tug, “it’s ours for the night.”

Phoenix whistled shrilly in appreciation, instinctively reaching out to ruffle Apollo’s hair. It was a testament to how important the night was that Apollo merely batted Phoenix’s hand away. “Seriously, dad,” he mumbled. His scowl was clearly forced, however; he felt oddly warm that he was able to finally use that word at all.

“Subtle,” Phoenix remarked.

“Mm,” Edgeworth agreed. “I don’t suppose we should let their efforts, however misguided they may be, go to waste, should we?”

“You just want to know who else they roped into this ridiculous scheme of theirs.”

“Oh, because you don’t.”

“I,” Phoenix said, moving to the chilled champagne propped by the windowsill and popping its cork, “have a perfectly healthy level of curiosity. It does not involve wondering what’s going on in my kid’s head. Trucy is a teenager. That’s terrifying.” He carefully poured the sparkling drink into two glasses and offered one to Edgeworth.

“I find that somewhat difficult to believe,” Edgeworth said, striding forward and taking the proffered glass. He made certain their fingers did not brush. “Thank you.”

They waited until she had hastily bowed out of the room before turning their focus back to each other. “Miles, that’s why we came up with this arrangement in the first place,” Phoenix continued, nonplussed.

“Really?” Edgeworth carefully picked up his glass flute, trying to ignore the tremor he felt running through his hands. “I thought it was because we’d agreed to never see each other again.”

Phoenix’s heart clenched. “Not ‘we’, Miles,” he said slowly, spreading his hands on the tablecloth and feeling like if he missed a step here, he would risk something he couldn’t afford to lose again.

Edgeworth took a shaky draw of wine. “You know,” he said slowly, seemingly forcing himself to meet Phoenix’s eyes, “that part is unclear to me as well.”

“Oh, you don’t remember the day you packed?” Phoenix asked.

“No, I remember that day perfectly. Did I hurt you when I threw that - oh God, what was it -”

“It was Kamisar’s Modern Criminal Procedure. It left a dent in the wall from where it rebounded off my head.”

“Oh,” Edgeworth said, at least having the grace to look properly abashed. “Right. Sorry.”

Phoenix shrugged. “It’s not like I was making it that easy on you.

And....” Edgeworth trailed off, twisting a napkin between his fingers. “You didn’t chase after me.”

Phoenix felt (something) shift. “I didn’t know that you wanted me to.”

“A toast to -”

“Our children,” Edgeworth cut in. He ignored the tightening in his chest at the our.

“Our children,” Phoenix repeated slowly, as if the words didn’t quite match with what his mouth had wanted to say.

“We both got where we actually wanted to go.”

Phoenix’s eyes never wavered from his. “We did,” he said, voice strange.

They toasted again and finished their meal in silence.

“Apollo, what are you doing in those clothes? We’ve got a plane to catch.”

“We’re getting totally ripped off,” maybe-Trucy said. “Daddy said we’d get our camping trip and we want to go.”

“Wait, hang on,” Phoenix interrupted, “what camping trip?”

“The one Aunt Maya and I make you take us on every year before school starts,” almost-definitely-Trucy said. Phoenix began to lift his finger in triumph, sure he’d found his kid -

“ -the one behind the house that runs all the way up to Gourd Lake, remember when you fell in that one year,” I’m-not-too-sure-if-this-one-is-still-in-fact-Apollo finished.

Phoenix’s arm fell listlessly to his side. Edgeworth snorted.

Phoenix shot Edgeworth a look. Thanks for helping, one of these is yours. “This is entirely unfunny, you’re going to make your father miss his flight,” he said, shifting his attention back to the twins. Honestly, he was an Ivy University graduate and Miles was a world renowned defense attorney, how were they being duped by their own kids -

“Apollo -” Edgeworth began.

“Yes?” they both said in unison.

Edgeworth groaned. “They get this from you, I’m sure,” he said.

“It’s not my fault you’ve apparently been raising a devilishly deceptive teenager,” Phoenix quipped back, never taking his eyes off the twins. He could feel the beginnings of a migraine pound at the base of his neck. “He’s probably rubbed off on Trucy.”

The twins grinned.

Phoenix rubbed a hand over his eyes before stooping to their height once again. He stared hard at each of them, looking back and forth between their faces. “This one’s Trucy,” he said slowly, pointing a finger to the sibling in orange. “I’m positive.”

“You know, I hope you’re right, Daddy. You wouldn’t want to send the wrong kid all the way back to Germany - ”

“ - would you?”

How was any of this fair?

“Here’s our proposition. We go back to Daddy’s house, pack our stuff, and the four of us leave on the camping trip.”

“The four of us?” Edgeworth interjected. They ignored him.

“And when you bring us back,” maybe-Trucy-maybe-Apollo continued, “we’ll tell you who’s Trucy and who’s Apollo.”

“Or,” Edgeworth said, carefully stepping around and in front of Phoenix and crossing his arms firmly across his chest, tapping his finger rhythmically against his arm, “new plan. I take one of you back to Germany with me whether you like it or not.”

Two identical sets of eyes twinkled back at him.

(He felt a migraine beginning to pound in his left temple.)

“You can cook now?” Edgeworth asked.

“Oh yeah,” Phoenix said. “I can make pasta. And pasta. Probably more pasta, if you ask really nicely.”

“Hm,” Edgeworth said, eyebrows scrunched in mock thought, “pasta sounds good.”

Phoenix grinned, bumping Edgeworth’s shoulder. He was warm through the cotton. “Pasta it is.”

Edgeworth looked across the seat at Apollo. His glassy eyes reflected the flickering street lamps as the taxi sped down the empty street.

“Apollo, I -” he began, deflating as Apollo turned further away. It’s entirely justified, he thought despondently. I’d hate myself as well.

“Grandfather?” Apollo called, shrugging out of his heavy jacket and hanging it on the coat rack. The house was silent.

“I’ll check the study,” Edgeworth said, tugging his jabot loose. Apollo nodded and headed towards the direction of the kitchen, toeing off his shoes on the way. Pushing open the wide doors that led to the study, Edgeworth saw someone reading a paper at the desk. He cocked his hip against the door and crossed his arms. “Hello, father. We’re back.”

The newspaper lowered. It wasn’t Gregory.

“Hiya, papa,” Trucy said. The corners of her mouth were quirked despite her obvious attempts to reign in her expression. “Did you know the Concord gets you here in half the time?”

Edgeworth slipped against the doorframe. He felt the knob dig into his hip. “I - yes, I’ve heard that.”

(Edgeworth was acutely aware of the doorknob digging into his hip from when he pressed against it. “I - yes, I’ve heard that.”)

Apollo walked into the room, drawn to the sound of voices. When he saw Trucy his face split into a blinding grin. “What are you doing here?”

Trucy neatly folded the newspaper on the desk and clasped her hands in front of her. “It took us about thirty seconds after you left that we decided we didn’t want to lose you two again,” she said, eyes crinkling.

Edgeworth swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “We?” he said, voice cracking.

“We,” a new voice agreed.

From the corner of his eye, Edgeworth noted Trucy moving to stand by the far wall of the study, giving the vaguest attempt of privacy. It didn’t matter. His eyes were trained on Phoenix, tracking his movement as he crossed the room.

Phoenix peppered his face in light kisses, smiling into the curve of his throat and pressing his lips to the thrumming heartbeat beneath his skin.

They eventually pulled back, desperate for air. Phoenix’s eyes crinkled - crow’s feet, Edgeworth thought wildly through his haze, he’s got crow’s feet now, I haven’t seen him this close up since - and he rested his forehead against Edgeworth’s.

“God, I’m never letting you go again,” he whispered, hands snaking around the other man’s back to pull him even closer.

“You want to toast with this? I’d have thought you might want to upgrade to something with a little more class.”

Phoenix smiled sloppily, pressing a chaste kiss to his temple. “You’re the only one I said I’d drink it with, remember?”

Edgeworth smiled back. He took the proffered bottle warmed by the weather and tugged his husband into a proper kiss, matching rings glinting in the dying sunlight.

#bluefaewren #replies #parent trap au #attempting to write tag

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yhwhsdaughter · 4 years ago

Text

HQ!! Manager being protective when people insult their player

(ft. oikawa, hinata, tanaka, yachi, osamu, kuroo)

Warnings: threats, physical altercations, bullying, public humiliation

I usually don’t condone the usage of violence, but I woke up mad today lmao

OIKAWA

the pretty setter was getting ready to serve, his fangirls screaming in support while the rest of the team took a break.

to the side were a couple of guys staring in jealousy, “heh, his weak ass gets a big ego just because—”

they continued their insults and while they didn’t reach oikawa, his team members certainly heard it all

teasing oikawa was different when it came from them because they genuinely cared about him,, but for someone else to continuously bully the setter without reason?? it was infuriating

before any of them could kick their asses, their manager approached them.

(name) was perhaps the most polite individual they’d met; always patient and kind despite their antics

“ah, i can see the misunderstanding that oikawa is a weakling. he’s got a broken knee and constantly pushes himself despite the excruciating pain.”

the aura surrounding them suddenly turned dark and cold as (name) clutched the shoulder of the main bully with an iron grip

“what about you? shall i break your knee so we can find out if you’re stronger than him?”

at that moment, their gentle mannered manager had the eyes of a beast, unyielding as the guy tried to escape their grip

when they left, the players approached (name) who still glared in that direction. “woah we didn’t know you could be so scary (name)”

now calmer, they replied, “you’re my team, i would kill anyone that tries harm you.”

it was such a matter-of-fact that the males couldn’t help but laugh “haha you’re funny too”

“am i laughing?”

that day they learned their precious manager would deadass commit murder for them

extra: when oikawa found you defended him, he ran with open arms, “(name)-channnnn marry me!” squeezing the life out of you

HINATA

competition hadn’t even started and people were already shit talking karasuno

“flightless crows” blah blah blah

as their third manager, you would be in the benches with yachi, supporting the team

however, hinata had gone to the bathroom and he wasn’t back. daichi had sent you to get him since the game was about to start

you found the team’s sunshine nearly corned by a tall player “aah you’re so short and you’re a middle blocker?? i’ll be looking down on you little shrimp!”

he didn’t get to say more because your leg swiftly hit the back of his knees, falling to the ground harshly.

no one and i mean no one messes with hinata without you getting a few hits in, regardless height

“oh look. you’re below him now”

mans was lucky y’all were in a competition, otherwise he wouldn’t have left unscathed

with that, you steered your baby hinata away from that asshole, throwing him a dirty look in case he wanted to try anything

if he did, you would not hold back. literally on sight

fyi hinata was totally not blushing the entire way back. everytime you approach him now he gets all flustered

everyone else is like ???

TANAKA

the ladies man, tanaka had encountered a group of attractive girls at the arcade so he decided to shoot his shot

when they declined, tanaka was prepared to leave them alone, respectful of a woman’s boundaries, but they decided to verbally attack him

“who’d wanna go out with you?” “yeah you’re so ugly, stupid baldie”

wrong move

unfortunately for them, you were also at the arcade, having heard how the entire conversation went down

you knew tanaka would never use violence against a girl, even if they were rude, but you would.

equal rights equal fights bitch

those girls never saw it coming, you grabbing the leader’s hair roughly and yanking it back, “you’re right, longer hair is much better”

you went feral; simultaneously slapping the others away when they tried to pull you off, your tight grip never faltering.

only when tanaka placed a gentle hand on your arm that you released her

“insult him again and you’ll be the baldie next time”

in short, tanaka now sees you as his personal deity. boy will adore you

YACHI

the third years were gone now

kiyoko had left the team in your and yachi’s hands, with you mainly taking charge as the now-third year manager

the team all sat together for lunch (yes, tsukki too), they were waiting for you since you’d been talking with a teacher

a girl in front of you side-eyed yachi, watching with envy as the blonde sweetheart spoke with the handsome volleyball players

plan brewing in that toxic mind of hers, the girl pretended to trip, spilling her lunch all over yachi. the team didn’t have time to react, watching in shock as food splatted on her lap

sis even had the audacity to say “oh sorry didn’t see you there” as if she didn’t just purposefully throw her food on someone else

worry not, because you returned the favor.

as soon as she gave her faux apology, your food was already making its way down her head to her shoes

there wasn’t a part of her left uncovered

“my bad, i thought you were the trash” you did not look sorry at all

half of the cafeteria watched this unfold—tsukki even making some snide remarks. you grabbed yachi’s hand, guiding her to the restroom to help her clean off

from that moment on, people got the message to never mess with the volleyball team lest they face the wrath of their manager

OSAMU

osamu was your best friend, the reason why you joined inarizaki as their manager

currently, you were in home ed, making the assigned dish but it wasn’t difficult so your movements were lax so much that you couldn’t help but overhear the conversation going on in front of your table

at the mention of osamu, your ears perked up

“he was SUCH a jerk. i kept asking hoping he would grow tired and say yes, but nooooo. apparently osamu thinks he’s better than me”

some of her friends looks uneasy at her inability to take ‘no’ for an answer but the girl continued on her rant

the teacher stepped out for a moment. “HAHAHAHHAHA” the class turned to look at you, laughing like a maniac while you chopped vegetables with scary precision and inhuman strength

“you sure got some nerve, harassing someone like that.. especially my best friend”

that was the moment the grew knew she’d fucked up. she couldn’t even answer back because the teacher was back.

you made a point to ask the teacher if you could be partners with that girl for the next lesson, making her gulp in fear as you ran a finger across your throat

to say the least, she stopped talking for the remainder of the class

KUROO

chemistry?? you and kuroo?? friends?? together in class???

a fucking chaos

just kidding. the two of you were actually really good students. the best, if you had to brag

despite being the teacher’s favorite, you were lowkey about it while kuroo liked to insert as many chem jokes as he could in presentations

it was kinda embarrassing and you subtly teased him, but never with malicious intent

during a lab, you got partnered with a bully. you tried to ignore him and continue working, but it kept getting worse.

the breaking point was dragging in kuroo to all of this. you’d rejected his offers of going on a date and when kuroo made a motion to ask if you were ok, the dude took it as a sign to talk shit

“seriously? him? he’s a fucking nerd. his jokes are lame and has shitty hair—”

your eye twitched. “oi you better stop if you don’t want me to burn your face off”

clueless in class, he didn’t know how to handle the material so you were doing all the work. he didn’t believe you

bringing in the acidic substance near his face is when he finally backed away, at which point you had already called the teacher and told them that he was playing around with dangerous chemicals

although it was the other way around, who do you think the teacher believed, their star student or the school bully??

lmao, bitch could ask his detention buddies out on a date now

kuroo: ??

#haikyuu x you #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #hq x you #hq x reader #kuroo testuro #hinata shouyou #osamu miya #tanaka ryuunosuke #haikyuu yachi #oikawa torū #kuroo x reader #hinata x reader #osamu x reader #tanaka x reader #oikawa x reader #yachi x reader

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90spumkin · 4 years ago

Text

Invisible

Request: hi can you please do a spencer reid x bau fem reader and can it based on the song invisible by 5sos where the reader feels like she is invisible because everybody talks over her and trips her and nobody does anything.also they hate her besides spencer, rossi, penelope and hotch and they hate her because of jj because she is jealous of how the reader and spencer are close together so one day the reader gets kidnapped and is forced to read her song journal or her journal.so spencer gets mad at the team when they try to confront him

A/N: I really hope this is what you were looking for when you made the request. I hope it’s not absolute trash. Thank you for the request anon! The song that was apart of the request is Invisible by 5 Seconds of Summer

Pairing: Spencer Reid x BAU! Reader

Warnings: slight swearing, angst I think, description of torture

Word Count: 1875

It was a nice sunny day in Virginia, one of its less humid days. That should be a sign it was going to be a good day, right? Wrong, y/n had a bad gut feeling it was going to be a very bad day. Worse than normal.

Y/n was sitting in the BAU parking garage watching a few people from her team walk in the building. Emily, JJ, and Morgan were genuinely nice people…except to y/n. They hadn’t always been rude or distant towards her that just started up recently, and y/n knew why. She took a deep breath and exited her car, making her way inside the same way the others had.

She knew her gut feeling was right as soon as she walked through the double glass doors. She tried to make a beeline for her desk, keeping her head low to avoid eye contact. Things didn’t go as planned.

Y/n tripped over a box of files bumping into Morgan who bumped into Emily who spilled coffee all down the front of her white blouse. Y/n instantly started to panic, “Oh my God, Emily I am so sorry! I’ll get some towels!”

Emily gritted her teeth and just said, “Don’t!”, she stormed off grabbing her go bag to change out of her now ruined blouse. Morgan just huffed and made his way to his desk.

Y/n made it to her desk finally with no other accidents. She sat down and put her head in her hands trying to choke back a sob. She felt a presence next to her but didn’t look up till she felt a hand on her shoulder, “Y/n are you okay?”

She looked up to see Spencer Reid standing before her with a worried look on his face. She gave him a small smile. He didn’t seem convinced due to the worry line between his eyebrows deepening. They stared at each other a little longer than what was probably necessary. JJ got their attention by walking by waving files and announcing, “We’ve got a case.”

Y/n saw JJ pause and look at Spencer’s hand on her shoulder and gave y/n a quick glare before continuing her way to the round table room. Spencer moved his hand and started to trail behind JJ while having a conversation with Morgan. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure she was following and when he went to wait for her, she shook her hand urging him on without her.

Why was it so hard to push him away? She knew the others no longer liked her because of how close the two of them had gotten. They felt as if she was stealing Spencer from them when all she wanted was to be friends with them all. She let out the second sigh of the day and made her way to the briefing, falling in step with Hotch and Rossi who both gave her a warm smile.

The briefing went by in a flash. It was a whirlwind of information and thoughts being bounced back and forth, and like always y/n’s insight was overlooked. The flight went by just as fast. After going over the files and new information from the bubbly Garcia, y/n had gone to sit at the back of the plane. The entire time ignoring Spencer’s worried glances.

Once they arrived at their destination, the team split off to do their assignments given by Hotch. Y/n was with Spencer putting together the victimology. The whole time she felt his eyes on her, but she never said a word hoping some how she would become invisible to him like she was to the others.

She didn’t realize how much time had passed when they got a call from Hotch telling them they were closer to the warehouse Garcia had said belong to one of the suspects. They grabbed their vest and took off as fast as humanly possible.

The warehouse was a dark and looming building and y/n felt the hairs on her neck stand up. Spencer walked around the SUV and said, “There’s no time to wait for the others we’re going to have to split up. Meet me in the back, okay?” She nodded and went to scope out the left side of the build, but Spencer grabbed her hand and search her eyes for a moment before giving her hand a quick squeeze and letting go.

She crept around the building, gun aimed and eyes looking for any sign of movement. She thought she heard something behind her, but when she turned, she was met with absolutely nothing. She turned to continue her way towards the back of the building, and that’s when everything went black.

Y/n woke with an ache on the left side of her head and she was pretty sure there was blood running down her face. She was tied to a chair in a big empty room with a light fixture hanging above her. Once her eyes fully focused, she realized there was a camera aimed towards her and man standing behind it.

“Ah you’re awake. Time to have some fun.”, his voice was raspy like he smoked 50 packs of cigarettes a day. Y/n knew the unsub liked to toy with his victims, she saw all the videos in the time before the call from Hotch. He was going to torture her darkest thoughts and deepest secrets from her. Y/n’s lips tingled, and her stomach twisted into knots.

“I know you know what’s about to happen, but I found something that’s going to make this a little more interesting.”, the unsub walked around the camera showing it the journal he held in his hand.

----

Spencer was absolutely frantic, there was no other way to describe it. He felt so stupid for splitting up from y/n. It was his fault she was kidnapped, and it was his fault they were seeing her on the screen. The others were rushing around and he could hear them talking to Garcia trying to figure out where he was keeping her.

On the screen the unsub was waving around a book and Spencer could see the pleading in y/n’s eyes. At the sound of the smack that went across y/n’s face everyone stopped.

“You’re going to read this so your little team watching this really knows what you think of them.”, the unsub was gripping y/n’s jaw tightly. She shook her head viciously which landed another smack across her already bruised cheek.

Tears stung Spencer’s eyes and he said, “We need to find her now!”. JJ put her hand on his arm trying to calm him, but he shrugged it off, “Don’t touch me.”

He turned back towards the screen at the sound of y/n’s broken voice, “Um the first part is part of a song. No one sees me I fade away, lost inside a memory of someone's life It wasn't mine Just me and my shadow and all of my regrets Who am I? Who am I when I don't know myself? Who am I? Who am I? Invisible Wasted days, dreaming of the times I know I can't get back.”. She stopped reading which earned her a cut down the side of her neck, she let out an ear shattering scream. Spencer turned away and looked at Hotch begging him for something. Hotch just shook his head, they don’t have a clue where he was keeping her.

Y/n continued reading but Spencer could no longer watch so he listened, “I never meant to upset anyone. I wanted to belong; I want to be everyone’s friend. I guess I became friends with the wrong person first. JJ was the first to become my friend, but when I told her- when I told her I was crushing on a certain young doctor, that’s when she decided to make my life a living hell. I’m invisible now. My thoughts don’t matter, I don’t matter. I no longer know why I try.”

Y/n stopped and started to beg not to read anymore. Spencer couldn’t move, he could only glare at the woman who claimed to be his best friend. She knew he had feeling for y/n and yet she chose to be cruel to her and keep them apart.

He was brought out of his thoughts by Garcia’s voice through the speakers of the tablet laying on the table telling them she has an address of the unsub’s parent’s lake house. Just like that the team stormed out of the police station in a blur of grim faces and vests.

----

With every word she read, y/n felt as if acid was being poured down her throat. She had paused once again and this time the unsub slammed the journal shut in anger and aggravation.

“That’s it I’m bored.”, and before she knew it there was a rope around her throat and her lugs were burning as she gasped for breath. Her vision began to blur, and darkness was surrounding her mind. Before she passed out, she heard a shout ring out and saw a flash of blonde hair.

When y/n woke up she winced in pain and at the fluorescent lights above her. She let out a groan as she tried to sit up. There was a hand on her shoulder as someone said, “Hey woah take it easy.”

Y/n realized it was JJ and it took everything in her not to flinch away, “What are you doing here?”. There was sadness in the petite blonde woman’s eyes. She glanced down at the floor than back up at y/n as she said, “I’m so sorry for everything that I put you through, what I influenced the others to put you through. I don’t have a good excuse or reason to why I did it, but hearing you saying all those things it broke something in me. Can you ever forgive me?” Tears began to stream down her face as she asked for forgiveness.

Y/n finally saw a glimpse of the woman she had met on her first day at the BAU. She gave her a real smile and nod. Both women let out little chuckles which made the buddle of limbs in the chair in the corner of the room stir. Y/n hadn’t realized Spencer was there asleep. JJ stood to leave saying, “I’ll give you guys some space to talk.”

As soon as Spencer realized y/n was awake he raced to her side mumbling and repeating himself, “I am so so sorry, y/n. I should never have left you.” Y/n grabbed his hands that were clinging to her, “Spencer it’s okay. I’m okay. Nothing that has happened is your fault.”

Spencer turned his head away from her, she brought her hand to his cheek turning him back towards her, “Hey it’s okay I promise.”

“It’s not just that, I didn’t realize how much you were struggling with the others. I want you to know they aren’t going to hurt you anymore, no one will ever hurt you again. I love you, y/n.” He kissed the palm of her hand that was resting on his cheek.

She smiled down at him and she finally felt peace as she said, “I know. I love you too.”

#spencer reid #dr. spencer reid #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #anon request #request finished

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ickle-ronniekins · 4 years ago

Text

meet you there

PLEASE DO NOT REPOST MY WORK WITHOUT MY CONSENT. likes/reblogs/comments are perfectly fine!

prompt: this actually wasn’t a request but it was a fic title prompt from my 4k sleepover that @accioxreparo sent my way -- the title she came up with was ‘meet you there’ and i’ve picked freddie. you can view the original idea here, if you please. general reminder that my requests are currently CLOSED

pairing: fred x ravenclaw!reader

word count: 2.6k

warning(s): character death

A/N: i’m real sorry

tag list: @mintlibri @seppys-return-to-madness @how-do-life-does @fopdoodledane @fredd-weasley @iprobablyshipit91 @semmelsemi @cottageoflove @laneygthememequeen @snakesonaplane-7 @lupinsx @keoghans @helloallthethingsilove @waschbiber @acciotwinz @the-hufflepuff-of-221b @62442-am @wtfweasleyy @thoseofgreatambition @harrysweasleys @sleep-i-ness @shadowsinger11 @shadychaoticcollection @haphazardhufflepuff @afriendlyneighborhoodhufflepuff @kageyama-i-want-tobiors @letsfightsomeorcs @theweasleysredhair @purpleskiesstorm @hxfflxpxffs @wand3ringr0s3 @finecole @angelinathebook @highly-acidic @purplefragile @90shermione @zreads @susceptible-but-siriusexual @hollands-weasley @andromedaa-tonks @bbstrawberry0421 @princessof-theuniverse @cappsikle @mytreec @imseeinggred @idont-knowrn @flyingserpxnt @auroraboringalis57 @godricsswords @jejegu @annasofiaearlobe @starlightweasley @alwaysasadaesthetic @thisismysketchbook @izzytheninja @imboredandneedalife @hemmoporro @valwritesx @heavenlymidnight @hannolannno @msmimimerton @oh-for-merlins-sake | message me to be added or removed! [lots of tags not working for me today idk i’m sorry!]

Ages 8 and 7

“Freddie! Did you see? Did you see what I did?”

Eight year old Fred squealed with delight as you did a tiny little backflip on your broom in the air outside the Burrow. The pinks and purples of the sky were melting together, and he knew that night was growing nearer. “I did, Y/N! Can’t wait ‘til we both get to Hogwarts and can play Quidditch together. You’re going to make a fantastic Seeker. That was bloody brilliant!”

“Frederick Weasley!”

Molly’s voice was shrill, but she peered out through the window of her kitchen and shook her head, as if she were trying to guess how many times she’d scolded Fred already today. She sighed, choosing to fight a different battle than that of his language. “It’s supper time, Freddie.”

The both of you flew gently to the ground and landed. You tossed Fred the extra broomstick and wiped the sweat from your forehead. “See you tomorrow then?”

“Nah, later,” Fred replied. He nodded toward the other end of the large field in front of his house. “After dinner, let’s go up the hill and look at the stars for a bit. My dad says there are supposed to be wicked constellations tonight!”

You giggled before pulling your hair back off of your shoulders and turning to head back toward your own house just around the bend. “Don’t let you mum see you!”

“Don’t worry,” Fred told you with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “I won’t. Meet you there!”

Ages 11 and 10

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. How come Fred would get to start at Hogwarts without you? Your mum told you it was because he was already eleven. You still had a few months until your birthday. But it still wasn’t fair!

You slumped on the couch next to the empty fireplace as Fred attempted to bring his huge trunk down the steps. They both hit the floor with a loud thump!

“Bloody help me, won’t you?”

“Not when you talk to me like that,” you frowned. It didn’t take long before the two of you were erupting into giggles, though.

Fred placed himself beside you and gently elbowed you in the ribs. “Hey, don’t be so sad. You’ll be at Hogwarts in just a year’s time. And besides, aren’t you excited that I’ll know my way around the castle, and I’ll be able to tell you all the places to avoid and the best times to sneak out of the common rooms?”

You huffed and kicked his foot before beginning to tug at the hem of your shirt. “You wouldn’t! You’ll get me into all sorts of shenanigans, and.. and.. probably detention.. and probably turn my hair bright green or something!”

“Only if you’re placed into Slytherin,” Fred grinned. The sunlight flooding the windows highlighted the dimple on the right side of his face. “So it’d better be Gryffindor.”

You rolled your eyes. “And how are you so sure you’re going to be placed in Gryffindor, mister?”

Fred pointed at himself, as if to say, isn’t it obvious? “The whole lot of my family has been in Gryffindor for years! George and I aren’t going to break that streak. What kind of Weasley d’you think I am?”

“The annoying kind?”

“That’s plain rude,” Fred replied before thwacking you with a throw pillow. The two of you began hitting one another incessantly before Mr. Weasley’s calls came from outside. It was time to go. You were embarrassed at how quickly the tears welled up in your eyes, and you turned toward the fireplace so Fred wouldn’t see.

“Hey, it’ll be alright,” his voice was softer than before. “When you get to Hogwarts next year, I’ll show you all the secret passageways and let you know what the best sweets are, and I promise to not turn your hair bright green. Even if you are placed in Slytherin.”

A gentle smile tugged at your mouth, but it didn’t stop the tears from coming still. Fred continued when you didn’t, “I’ll miss you, you know.”

You sniffled and bit down on your wobbling lip. “I’ll miss you, too. Have fun playing Quidditch.”

Fred’s eyes went bright as the two of you wandered outside to meet the rest of the Weasleys. “That reminds me! Be sure to keep practicing here, yeah? With Ron and Ginny. I reckon mum’ll let them play a little bit with you. Promise?”

“Promise.”

Fred tugged his trunk and placed it into the back of Mr. Weasley’s Ford Anglia before pulling you into a bone crushing hug. Mr. Weasley was calling his name again. Fred gently elbowed you in the ribs once more before bopping your nose with his finger. His grin was brighter than the sun. “Meet you there!”

Ages 15 and 14

You stared in the mirror at your very obnoxious coloured blue hair. It resembled that of your Ravenclaw tie. You so wanted to be angry at him. You wanted to be angry, but you had to admit -- he was kind of brilliant.

As promised, he hadn’t turned your hair bright green when you’d arrived at Hogwarts a year after him, especially after you’d been placed in Ravenclaw, and not in Slytherin. He forgave you for not being placed in Gryffindor, though. He’d said he was excited to pummel Ravenclaw to the ground in Quidditch, anyway.

You knew the counter spell, but you kind of wanted to show off this new look of yours. Plus, wouldn’t he be absolutely floored if you waltzed into the Great Hall, not batting an eyelash at anyone who was brave enough to give you a look?

You plopped yourself down at the Gryffindor table during breakfast after making a few heads turn -- including three sixty head turns from the house ghosts. George spat out his tea and was not-so-subtle when it came to trying to hide his laughter. Fred raked his bottom lip through his teeth and smiled brightly.

“Ah, good morning,” he said before turning back to his porridge, “and how are we?”

“We are brilliant,” you picked a piece of his toast off of his plate and bit into it. When he threaded his eyebrows together and tried to get it back from you, you just stretched your arm back. “Oh, I’m sorry, is this yours? I figured, you know, since my hair now matches the colour of my robes, I was allowed to take your breakfast since you’ve been a foul little git.”

At first, his eyes widened in horror. But when he saw the faint smile on your lips as you continued to scarf down his breakfast, his shoulders relaxed. He raised his eyebrows, “Was worried you might be mad at me for a second there.”

“Mad? Never.” you replied. “Now if it had been green, well, that’d be a different story. But I’ve got to say, Weasley, I reckon blue suits me just fine.” You flipped your hair over your shoulder and started to laugh.

Fred yanked the half eaten slice of toast out of your hands and shoved the rest of it into his mouth. Your jaw dropped dramatically as he licked his lips and took a long slug of his tea. “Couldn’t agree more, Y/N,” he began and you rolled your eyes. Always the jokester, he was. But when he looked at you with a new type of admiration and serenity in his eyes, you froze. “You could have blue hair and purple eyebrows and I’d still think you were the most beautiful girl on this earth.”

It was just a small moment, one shared between the two of you, when he grinned so earnestly you swore he might spill out all his heart’s desires to you. But as quickly as it appeared, it had vanished, and he went back to wiggling his eyebrows at you teasingly and eating his porridge. “Hey, wanna run some Quidditch drills after this?”

“Sure,” you replied a little too quickly, trying to catch your breath. You stood up from the table to get some breakfast of your own. “Meet you there. Oh, but first, Freddie?”

“Yeah?”

You smirked. “Before anything else happens today, it’s my turn to dye your hair.”

He thought on this for a moment before reaching out for a high five. He loved how you’d come to negotiate with him over the years. He guessed it was from being on the receiving end of tons of his pranks. He swallowed down his nerves and replied, “Deal.”

Ages 17 and 16

“Fred! Bloody hell, what’s gotten into you?”

“Just have to get you alone, don’t I?” he smirked.

The two of you were stumbling giddily, alone in a back corner of the desolate girls’ dormitory in the Ravenclaw common room. Most everyone were either in lessons or out on the grounds on this gorgeous day, but the two of you chose to be locked inside, for you didn’t exactly know how much time you’d be able to spend alone before he left. Especially with Toad Face breathing down your necks every chance she got.

His lips were locked with yours for what seemed like hours. It was slow and easy and comforting before he reluctantly pulled away and started tracing circles onto your hands, trying as he might to lot let you see the glassiness in his eyes.

“Promise me something,”

“What?”

He sighed. “Next year, bring home the cup. You were robbed this year, love. Bloody Umbridge banning us from matches, and now the entire schedule is all wonky. Bring it home. But I swear if you tell any Gryffindors I said that, I’ll deny it.”

You raked your bottom lip through your teeth before poking him in the stomach. “You? A Gryffindor, hoping a Ravenclaw wins the cup? What would the other students think?”

“I reckon they’d think I’m out of my mind.”

You snorted. “Well, yeah, you are.”

The laughter faded away after a few moments, and Fred peered lovingly into your eyes. You could tell how much his nerves were eating at him -- leaving this all behind, not finishing school. The wrath of his mother. The unknown of how the shop will do. You traced the freckles on his cheeks and nose.

“You’ll be okay, you know. Actually, more than okay. It’ll be bloody brilliant, alright?”

Fred swallowed thickly before squeezing your hips. “You promise?”

“I promise. Do you promise to wait for me once you get there? I’ve got some exams to finish up.” You winked.

Fred laughed lightly and pulled you into his chest before placing light kisses onto your head. He took a long, deep breath and continued to caress your hair as you both tried not to think about the upcoming weeks. You squeezed your eyes shut and tried with all of your might to focus on the sound of his heartbeat, but each thump of his pulse was just another reminder that you were one second closer to him leaving.

“I promise,” he echoed you. “I’ll meet you there, won’t I?”

Ages 20 and 19

“Of course we’ll win! We’re bloody brilliant, aren’t we? Reckon Voldy won’t even be able to stand a chance, ruddy pumpkin head, he is.”

“Fred, please, just -- can’t you be serious for one moment?”

“Haven’t got a serious bone in my body, I’m afraid.”

“Freddie.”

His sigh had sounded different. It had a strange sense of urgency to it. He turned over in bed, took your head in his hands and pressed his lips together. He began to gently caress his thumb over your jawline. He’d never looked so serious in all his life. “I promise that everything will be alright. But you’ve got to try and get some sleep, darling.”

“But I can’t --”

“You’ve got to try. I’m right here.”

You swallowed down your tears and nuzzled your face into his chest. You breathed in the all too familiar smell of Molly’s washing detergent, and squeezed his fingers in yours. The two of you lay wide away in the darkness of the night, your breathing finally in sync with one another.

“When this is all over, we’ll be a proper family, alright? You and me. I promise.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead before laughing again. “You didn’t really expect one of us to leave without getting married first, did you?”

He groaned a bit when you teasingly punched him square in the stomach.

That was just last evening.

How had everything changed so drastically in less than twenty four hours? Why had those few precious hours in bed gone by so quickly?

Why hadn’t Fred been able to keep his promise?

You and George both had your arms wrapped tightly around one another, probably to help one another stay upright. You didn’t quite know how you were able to still walk, not when your body felt like all of the blood and oxygen had been drained from it. The two of you fell to the floor beside him; Fred’s body was still warm, his skin so soft, as though he were simply asleep.

You wanted to go back in time. Any amount of time, just to get more of it with him. Just to hear him say he loved you, to tell you he couldn’t wait until you both would get married, just to hear him say your name.

He’d managed to fight without gaining but a scratch. His hair was still perfectly messy, just like it always was, his hands folded neatly across his chest. It was miraculous, really, that there were so many others here, in this room, alive, who looked far worse than he did. And yet it was him who was dead.

It was him who’d had his life stolen out from underneath him, like a cruel joke.

You turned to George, blurry through your vision, and choked out the only few words you were brave enough to speak. “He didn’t keep his promise.”

George dropped his head and let his hoarse cries rattle through the Great Hall. He squeezed your hand and lay across his brother, begging him to wake up, just wake up. You tried to pull George back to his feet, but his body felt much heavier than it had just a few hours ago. Percy pulled him into a hug and let George cry, very similarly to the time when you were all very young and he’d fallen off of his broom and broken his ankle. And who had made him feel better? Fred, of course.

Fred looked so tranquil, it was almost terrifying to look at him. And yet, you couldn’t look away. You tried, through your blurry vision, to memorize everything about him -- the arch of his eyebrows, the way his eyelashes brushed gently against his cheeks, the spattering of freckles across his nose, the way his one ear was slightly crooked from the other. You wanted to remember the way his fingers felt interwoven with yours, like they’d been crafted that way because they were meant to be there, the way his lips always felt so soft. You ran a hand through his hair to try and push down that one stubborn part, but it sprang back up, just like always, and you managed a small chuckle. You couldn’t forget. You just couldn’t. You didn’t want to forget a single thing about him, and you were afraid that as soon as they took his body away, that you would.

You traced a gentle line over his freckles again. It must’ve been hours that you’d been lying there, because he felt cold now. Your body froze at the contact and you had to use every single ounce of strength you somehow had left to not crumble to pieces. But you managed to place one last, gentle kiss to his forehead as the sunlight of a new day flooded the Great Hall.

“I’ll meet you there one day, Freddie.”

#fred weasley #george weasley #fred and george weasley #weasley twins #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x you #fred weasley reader insert #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley fanfic #fred weasley fanfiction #weasley twins imagine #weasley twins fanfic #weasley twins fanfiction #fred weasley angst #hp imagine #hp fanfiction

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 4 years ago

Text

Soulmarks, Part 17

First part

~~~

She swung her gavel idly as she jumped from gargoyle to gargoyle.

Even if she didn’t have a grin stuck to her face, she’d be smiling so widely that Joker would be jealous.

What a productive night she had been having! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much go well for herself!

Lila would never hurt anyone again! Alya would be more cautious! Adrien and Tim would understand what it was like to have no one believe them! Joker and Harley were likely on their way! She was even on track to give Master Fu and Hawkmoth their just deserts!

And all she’d had to do was get a bit of a powerup and lose her morality!

Her eyes traveled down to the streets, where a crowd was slowly forming. A few of them were pointing up at her hostage.

She watched Bruce sway slightly in the wind. He was being careful not to move in the ropes. She didn’t know why. She’d secured him pretty well, the only way he’d fall was if someone broke the rope above him. Even then, they’d given Kaalki some bread. Tim would save him if he fell. And, if he missed, the bats were all waiting on lower towers to catch him.

Good. They couldn’t try to stop her if they weren’t closeby. Sure, it had taken holding Bruce off a ledge precariously to get them to do it, but at least she’d gotten all the bats distracted...

Well, that wasn’t completely true.

She found her soulmate, who was standing beside the stairwell with a frown on his face.

She giggled, leaning on her gavel.

“Cheer up! They’re about to get what they deserve!”

He sighed and closed his eyes.

He really didn’t know what to do.

Using a text-to-speech app to talk was difficult. Explaining everything that had happened to the bats had been hard enough, but even the idea of trying to have this kind of conversation with an app was enough to get him frustrated preemptively.

He had to try, though…

But how do you convince someone without morals that what they’re doing isn’t okay?

He pulled out his phone and took a seat on the ledge beside her. He was careful to stay out of view of the people below as he typed.

“Nette --.”

“Inamovibi-Lady.”

“-- they don’t deserve whatever ironic justice you’re about to give them. They deserve to spend their lives in jail like everyone else.”

The akuma shook her head slowly. “I wish it were that easy, Cheval, but they’re never going to face consequences. They keep getting out of going to jail by getting marked as insane and going to Arkham, then getting out of Arkham by letting psychiatrists find them sane. It’s happened a million times before, it’ll happen again.”

He sighed lightly. “You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?”

“Please, I know you’re doing this for me, but I don’t want this.”

She stepped off her gargoyle and strode over to him, leaning down until she was at eye-level. “You’re not the only reason why I have to do this. I have to think about the civilians, too. He’s a serial killer. He needs to be punished.”

Fine. Time to try the Disney approach. He didn’t know what else he could do.

He was glad he had to type to speak, now. It was difficult to look her in the eyes. But he had to. There was no way to put any inflection in his voice when he wasn’t speaking, so he needed to look completely earnest to get his point across.

“Nette, I know you’re in there. You need to fight back. What you’re doing isn’t right. You have to know that. Please, let’s just deakumatize you and go home.”

She shook her head slightly and carefully brought a hand up to cup his cheek.

“She’s in here alright, but that doesn’t mean she’s against doing this.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Are you sure about that?”

And then she pushed him.

She felt a twinge of… something other than anger or satisfaction as he fell. Even as she watched Barbara catch him, she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling.

It had been necessary. The moment he realized exactly what her punishment was going to be, he’d try and stop her. She couldn’t have him close enough to do so in time.

But still…

She tightened her grip on her gavel and turned away from the ledge.

Someone was in the elevator. She watched the number beside the doors slowly increase, climbing higher and higher…

Ding!

Joker and Harley stepped out.

She pointed her gavel at Harley’s hammer. “Hey, lookie! We match!”

The woman didn’t seem as amused, hefting her weapon onto her shoulder. “Aren’t you the bat’s newest kid?”

Inamovibi-Lady shrugged calmly and morphed it back into her yoyo. She’d just wanted to mess with Harley by pointing out an easy similarity, now she should at least prepare for the fight that was sure to come.

“No, that’s my friend. If he adopted me it’d be pretty problematic.”

“What do you --?” Began Joker, and then stopped and started laughing like he’d just heard the funniest joke. “I know who you are! You’re Robin’s soulmate!”

Harley’s eyes travelled to her yoyo and she joined in on the laughter. “So, that’s what this is about. Here for revenge, are you?”

“I prefer ‘justice’, but yes.” She gave a tiny, sarcastic bow. “Cliche soulmate, at your service.”

“Don’t you know that revenge is against the bat’s code? Just ask Jason Todd.”

Inamovibi-Lady didn’t know who that was, or how they were relevant, but she found she didn’t care at that exact moment. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not trying to join Batman’s little crew, don’t you think?”

“Okay. You really are new, aren’t you?” He sighed and pulled a gun from a pocket of his suit. “Since you are new, I’m only going to say this once: I’m the only one that gets to kill Batsy over there.”

She giggled and started toying with her yoyo. “Called dibs, have you?”

“They have a special bond,” said Harley with just a hint of annoyance.

Inamovibi-Lady raised her eyebrows slightly. “Sounds cute, but if you want rights to kill the bat, you’re going to have to fight me for it.”

Joker made a gesture with his hands, a ‘well, what can you do?’, and then raised his gun.

Tw: murder

She spun her yoyo in front of her idly and watched the bullets ricochet away.

Joker emptied his gun before he seemed to realize that none of his shots were hitting. Then he stared at it with confusion. “How is that possible?”

She giggled. “Who knows. Love it, though!”

He seemed to consider this for a second, then he grabbed Harley and practically threw her at Inamovibi-Lady. “Get her, poo!”

“Wow, great boyfriend you have,” the akuma joked. “Really seems like he loves you.”

Harley hefted her hammer and ran at her.

Oh, a sore spot?

She dodged a swing of the hammer and her eyes widened slightly as the ground around it exploded. Hm. That was a bigger problem than she’d thought it’d be…

Whatever.

“Honestly, though? You’re a smart lady, got a degree and everything, so… why the Joker?”

Harley swung again and Marinette had to do a back handspring to avoid having her head popped clean off. “We love each other.”

“Cute way of showing it, he has. He tossed you in chemicals.”

The hammer and yoyo connected, sending them both back a few steps.

“I mean, you’re a psychologist. The man’s got so many red flags he might as well be speaking in semaphore.”

“Shut up!” She yelled, slamming the ground in front of the akuma.

She went flying, skidding across the rooftop until she hit her head on the edge.

Harley walked towards her, mallet raised over her head for a finishing blow.

Inamovibi-Lady looked around wildly and her eyes locked on Bruce. This was meant to be something she did later, to distract the bats when she was killing Joker, but…

She hooked her yoyo around the rope holding up Bruce and pulled tight.

“NO!”

Bruce dropped.

Harley paused in front of Inamovibi-Lady, her mouth open wide in shock as she stared at where Bruce had been.

The akuma grabbed the hammer. “I’ll be taking this, thanks,” she chirped, before throwing Harley over the side. She watched her fall for a few seconds and sighed in relief when none of the bats went to save her, too distracted with getting their father to safety.

Harley splattered on the pavement.

She strapped the hammer to her back and turned on her heel.

She advanced on Joker slowly.

She knew his major weapons. He didn’t seem eager to try using another gun after the first attempt, so those were out of the question. Besides that, she could only see his acid flower. No cane, no cards…

He’d come wholly unprepared.

“Wow. You really didn’t think I was a threat at all, huh? Rude,” she said, twirling her yoyo idly.

“You killed him! You fucking killed Batman!”

Inamovibi-Lady rolled her eyes. “Please. The bat kids saved him.”

Joker looked slightly relieved, but it didn’t last long as she looped her lasso around him and pulled tight enough to start digging into his skin and clothes.

“Now, I wanted this to be long and painful, but I’m on a time crunch here, so… any last words?”

The man stared at her for a few seconds before breaking into laughter.

She would have frowned if she could. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting a bat to be looking at her disapprovingly, but there was no one, so…

“What’s funny?”

“You. I was going for snapping your little boyfriend, but I got you instead! That’s hilarious!”

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. He got her? Snapped her? Was her translator working right? She was perfectly fine. He’d lost.

But he was still laughing. And she couldn’t stand it. His stupid, high-pitched laugh and that wide, ever-present grin and he shouldn’t be looking like that! He was finally getting what he deserved, this was payback for all those people he’d killed and tortured! Why was he amused? That wasn’t right!

She pulled tighter and tighter, but he wouldn’t stop. His acid flower malfunctioned and spilled acid over him, his bones were cracking, his blood was slowly leaking from his wounds… but he wouldn’t stop laughing. She pulled tighter. He had to stop at some point. She’d make sure of it.

And then her yoyo sliced clean through him.

He’d stopped.

Finally.

Tw over

By the time they’d gotten there, she was sitting in front of one of the craters Harley’s hammer had made. She thought it was pretty cool. Maybe she could start using it...

“Nette?” Said Dick hesitantly.

She looked up and waved. “Hi! Inamovibi-Lady. But hi!”

Barbara looked like she was going to be sick as she stared at what was left of Joker. All the bats looked a little green, actually, now that she was paying attention. Whatever, they’d thank her later, when the amount of deaths the city had per year went down.

She caught Adrien’s eyes and flashed a thumbs up.

To her surprise, he looked horrified. She’d thought that, even if the bats would have disapproved, he at least would have understood. It was for the greater good. They always worked towards the greater good. She’d done well…

Right?

She felt something drop on her and jumped slightly, only to realize it was just a coat.

She gave Tim a slight smile and mumbled her thanks. He only nodded and took a careful step back.

Inamovibi-Lady drew it tighter around herself. Had she always been shaking like this? Why was she even shaking? She should be happy. They’d gotten their justice.

Her gaze found their way to the yoyo in her lap. To the blood slowly dripping from the string...

She felt a weird pressure in her chest and brought a hand up to rest over her heart.

She’d killed people before, but that was different. They were always soldiers of akumas, she’d always be able to fix it at the end. But now everything she was doing was permanent, and she had murdered two actually sentient people. Terrible people who would have done the same to her if they were in her shoes, had even tried to do so, but people all the same.

God, what had she done?

Those people are gone.

Because of her.

She was only fourteen.

Why was this her responsibility in the first place?

Her grip tightened on her yoyo and she found Tim again.

“Master Fu’s house, please.”

~~~

Next part

Taglist

@pawsitivelymiraculous @golden-promises @salty-fang @kitsunebell @sassakitty @octobitch @glastwime859 @miyla-lokidottir @onlyabatfan @ira-sairain @2confused-2doanything @ultimatetornshipper @ladybug-182 @laurcad123 @we-want-mini-mini @roguishredaxion @just-reblogs-by-h @futursworld @magic-miraculous @nathleigh @smolplantmum @vroomtaka @emimar7 @toodaloo-kangaroo @charme-de-malchan @spicybelladonna @fusser90 @indecisive-mess-named-me @rosesgonerogue @celestialsiren @bluesimani @loysydark @trippingovermyfeet @goblinwhoships

#timinette #timari #marinette dupain cheng #tim drake #ladybug #red robin #soulmarks #maribat #adribat

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dorki-c · 4 years ago

Text

You’ve got to be kidding me...

Relationship: Twice/Jin Bubaigawara X Fem.Reader

Author note: DOES ANYBODY KNOW HOW TO ADD A READ MORE ON TUMBLR APP XD

Sizzle...

Pop!

Sizzle...

Those were the only sounds that occupied your ears as your hands worked tiredly away at chopping up the rest of the spring onions that you had stacked up on the side of the wooden chopping board. Needless to say, you were busy. Ever since Jin had gone through multiple missions with his new crew, he has missed countless things that you considered important- like your 3rd year anniversary or (ironically enough) his own birthday- today however was a day where your going to treat yourself and not worry about him, like you have been doing for the last two and a half weeks.

Although the last few nights have been rough; the side of your bed that was once warmed up through the late nights and late afternoons, was now cold. No amount of blankets or layers of clothing could fulfil your clinginess for something to be warmed by your lover. At least you haven't resorted to using self-heating blankets...yet.

When taking a second to glance towards the door, your eyes scanned the entry way with an unknown attention before your hand was sliding closely to the stove's switch in order to take the frying spring onions with various of different vegetables off of the hob they were currently cooking on. Adding some paprika, basil, and oregano to the vegetables, you glanced towards the boiling pot of chicken as colorless bubbles burst and then form another bubble once more.

As (y/n) left her chicken to boil further, she resorted to changing her clothes into something more soft, more comfortable to her liking. As her feet padded against the cold summer floor, she paused. Opening her bathroom door, she turned on the light to see nobody in the clean and bleached room. Releasing a sigh of relief, she switched the light off and made forward for the bedroom. There's nothing to be afraid of, its probably your imagination.

Into the room of desolate dreams, (y/n) had changed out of her own clothes and into her lover's clothes, which is when you usually bunched up some of his sweaters and shirts and then slap your feet across the hardwood floor with the excess fabric of the sweatpants that keep sliding down your legs each time you fold them upwards.

When entering the living room to access the kitchen, there was a window opened with bloodstains coating the floor in a frenzied mess. Oh no. What if somebody broke into the house? Bubbly fear crackled in the midst of your stomach as you whipped your head around to spy if anybody is coming behind you with your fists readying to knock a bitch out. "Who's there?" Growled (y/n) as she side stepped to the side of wall in order to switch the living room light on.

Though what she saw...was unspeakable. Unspeakable, yes, but not surprising.

A black and grey color schemed outfit stood to attention whilst leaning on the old couch. To say you were disappointed was a freaking understatement. Fury coated your form when you saw a red liquid spilling down and very visible gashes scattered through his villain costume. "H-Hi baby! Oh no, she's angry." How very right the second voice was...

Breathing into your nose and out of your mouth, you pointed to the bathroom for Jin to haul his ass to. "I'll meet you there in a minute. Got it?" As his head fearfully nodded, he scampered past you like a child running from a terrible beast in the closet. You were normally very nice, but in rare coincidences, you can instantly instil fear into the deadliest of villains.

Like take for example, Jin's colleagues: At first, you remember your fiancé bringing over some of his 'friends' a little while ago, they were two people that he worked with; A little girl with adorable blonde buns and a tall patchwork guy. You don't particularly remember people's names, so you couldn't name them from the top of your head, however, you do remember that when you asked him to bring the laundry from the bathroom, one of his fairly rude voices shouted at you.

On that particular day, your asshole of a boss decided to schedule an overtime shift for two hours on a Friday- a Friday out of all days- since the piece of shit decided to give extra work out to you.

So to top it all off, with the added stress that came with cooking chicken, you snapped at him quite easily resulting in the lights flickering 'a little bit' before exploding to make your point clear to the guests and Jin, that they shouldn't fuck with you.

Cracking the wooden bathroom door open, your eyes moved across the scene travelling slowly in front of you. A masked individual sat dejected as he mumbled under his breath about something you couldn't make out. "I need you to take off the suit, Jin." Bending over to grab the bandages from underneath the sink, the sound of a zipper echoed through the small room as you placed the bandages onto the pink stained tiles before grabbing out the rubbing alcohol.

When you glanced upwards, he was still wearing his mask. Noting the slashes circled around his waist area to his arms, he may have been training with the short blonde girl or he ran into one of those heroes.

From next to the toilet seat he was sitting on, you grabbed the large bag of cotton balls to soak the rubbing alcohol in. Once you've placed a cotton ball atop the opening of the acidic solution, you tip the bottle over and then turned it onto the bottom of the bottle so it doesn't spill everywhere. Once applying the cotton ball to his skin, you managed to clean him up; the crisp brownish-red blood was instantly cleared as you inched closer and closer to his open wounds. After the third or so cotton balls were used, the fourth or so cotton ball started to clear through the sweat and mucus starting to surround the wound.

Once diving deeper into the gash, multiple hisses were heard through the mask. Once the pain was over with, your hands make quick work with unravelling the cloth that was slowly wrapping around his waist. "Are you still angry with me? La, la, la..." Your hold on the sterile dressings tightened as a shaky breath slipped through your lips. "Yes." Although your voice was still showing signs of frustration, maybe annoyance, the female couldn't hold herself to simply be 'angry'. Through all the hardships that she's faced in her life, Jin is one of the few people she can trust to understand how she feels in times like this.

(Y/n) isn't simply angry, she's simply feeling a lot of emotions. The reoccurring emotions that is choking her in her own salvia is the overwhelming regret of being a bad fiancée. It's always haunting her when each and every day that Jin steps foot into the outside world or when you fear that he's not coming back. The trepidation of unknowingness always slithers into her throat and blocks the security of JIn's arms wrapping around your waist and smothering each and every spot on your body whenever he wants.

For a small pocket of time, he paused. "Sorry I wasn't here for my present. I'm not-" Jin manages to cut off the run-along second comment. Awaiting a response, he flashes his eyes down to see you finishing the wrappings around his waist. You were tearing up. "Do you know how worried I was?" The waterworks had begun their journey by laying waste to the apples of her cheeks by scorching the way for them to make track quickly down the race course. The villain didn't bother to answer as it would probably upset you more when you were trying so hard to stop the stormy weather streaking across the plain hills of your skin.

"I thought you abandoned me..." Such simple words knew how to simply cut deep into a man's heart along the soft hiccups of your damaged soul that unknowingly peered at him from a traumatic childhood. Fuck, he didn't know what to do but hold you close to him as the wounds on his arms pricked at his nerves like a swarm of bee's stinging him. "I never intend to abandon you, okay (y/n)?" He's so grateful that nasty second voice, of his, didn't come to bite his ass.

As his large hands skimmed along your shoulders, up your neck; where the raw, but somehow smooth surface of veins and bone markings laid bare for the tips of his calloused fingers to trace religiously over, before meeting the upturned cliff your jawline; he never intended to leave the sensitive hiding surface of behind your ears alone when travelling through the straight road of your jaw that narrowed down to materialise your chin, that lead to Jin grasping the jutted out bone below your beautiful lips.

In the correct manner of duty, he shut his eyes and removed the mask covering his face. Jin set his forehead and locked his own lips against yours like the many times before. "Let's go eat, baby girl. Then you can give me a present." Murmured Jin when sneaking another sweet, small kiss. That sneaky bugger, really wanted to kiss your ego at the end of the day.

You might as well let him.

—————————

ANY FORM OF PLAGIARISM IS NOT TOLERATED!

Credits: Dorki-C

#jin bubaigawara #jin bubaigawaraxreader #Twice X reader #MHA #mha x y/n #bnha x reader #Twice mha #villain x reader

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mimiplaysgames · 4 years ago

Text

Terra Week Day 5 (Time/Hobbies)

Summary: The day sucks when you fight with your best friend. It's true and it's a lie when they say time heals everything, but at least Terra ends the day knowing it's worth the effort. | Word Count: 5,814

Read on AO3

A/N: For Terra Week 2021! You can find that account on Twitter!

~*~*~*~*~

The Tenets of a Master, Ch. 5

Let not your fears unrope, Time does not wait for hope

A sliver of light leaks out through the cracked-open doorway; the lanterns in this hall are being replaced, making that one room into a halo. Naminé confirms they’re inside, but before Terra gets close, she grabs his elbow, a tiny hand barely able to wrap halfway.

“You’re going to tell them the truth?” she whispers.

“Only them,” Terra says, putting on the sweetest, most encouraging octave he has in his arsenal. “I can’t lie.”

She takes a moment, and nods to herself. “That’s okay.”

Smiling, Terra pets her, careful not to mess with her hair. “Thank you. Thank you a thousand times and more.”

But she frowns for what is probably the thousandth time in her short life, amidst more to come. “If it gets difficult for you, please let me know. Please don’t wait.”

Approaching the door, Terra hears voices pitter and scoff:

“What else do you want me to do?” asks Aqua, just a mile short of fed up.

“I don’t like this,” Ven says, lacking confidence. “Any of it. This is weird.”

“I don’t like it either,” Aqua says, now several inches, “but we need these clues.”

“Would you listen to yourself?”

“I’m not being unreasonable.”

Terra opens the door, his unspoken announcement a hush over what looks like an office. Aqua has layers of journals stacked on the desk, one of them open with Ven’s hand splayed across both pages, like he’s trying to shield her eyes from the content. That wasn’t what Terra had in mind when he asked Ven to stall, but whatever.

They shift as if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Terra sees why standing tall behind them: a huge painting of himself (except not), with waxy, white, shoulder length hair (ugh), and a grim expression that couldn’t have come from him (because it doesn’t) but it’s his face anyway (but is it?). A mannequin captured in time via portrait, serious and bored and looking away, looking towards a manufactured future, looking towards anything else except the one person carefully and admirably crafting the brush strokes.

At the very least, it’s less unsettling than seeing Xemnas speak and move.

“That’s creepy,” Terra says, trying to melt the ice but it makes them jump. Aqua in particular looks miserable, giving the painting a cold shoulder.

“This whole castle is creepy,” Ven says, letting go of the book. “I can’t wait to go home.”

“If you let me read,” Aqua snaps, crossing her arms, “we can leave sooner.”

Ven eyes a conversation with Terra. She’s crazy, what do expect me to do?

“We don’t have to do anything,” Terra says gently, closing the journal with delicacy so it doesn’t set her off.

“You, too?”

“I know where Rainfell is.”

Ven runs a hand through his hair, and Aqua stares.

“You—?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

She’s hopeful, which is a good start but Terra is suddenly nauseous again, one step away from tumbling down a cliffside. Ven whimpers, taking a chair nearby.

“I…” There isn’t an artful way to say it, so he’s going to rip the bandage right out. He starts by pulling it out slowly, and all the hair underneath. “I was with Naminé. Just now.”

Her eyes widen.

He swallows. “And she helped me see.”

Aqua’s lips tremble. She walks to the door, shoes tapping loudly on the carpet, the only sound in this room, and closes the door to give them privacy—though she’s never been the type to yell. She comes close to Terra as if to whisper to him, pinching two fingers together to fish out exactly what words she wants to use. Ven holds his breath.

“Who asked you to do that?” she says, icy.

Terra keeps it low and soft with her. “I just wanted to protect you.”

Again, she crosses her arms. “I need protection?”

Terra scoffs, wincing. “Not like that. I know that. You know me.”

“And you know me.” She exhales, inching closer, getting quieter. “I didn’t walk through darkness for all those years just to lose you again.”

“But I’m here.” He purses his lips.

With a clawed hand, she taps his chest. “Something could have happened to you.”

“Aqua, come on,” Ven whines, “he was trying to help. He’d never intend to hurt himself.”

She steps back as if reeling from a slap to the face. Aqua’s not the kind who likes to cry, either, holding her chin so high she’s looking at the ceiling, like balancing a bowl of water so that tears don’t spill.

“That’s not fair to say to her,” Terra says, but she tenses up.

“And why couldn’t I be there?” she asks, both to Terra and Ven. “Is it because you were afraid of what I would say?”

Terra chooses not to answer that. “I really didn’t want you to worry.”

“Is it because you need to prove yourself?” She simmers down. “You don’t have to with me.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“I needed to do something,” Terra says, gently. “After everything, I… I couldn’t stand to see you do”—he gestures towards the journals—“this. I couldn’t stand the thought of you carrying those images, or thinking about whatever he wrote in there.”

She holds her breath, collecting everything she’s laxed back. “Tell me the truth. Are you punishing yourself?”

“No...”

“I trust you, Terra. I hope you know that.”

Terra closes his eyes, muscles gripping on his neck. He nods. A flash of hurt pierces her eyes and he wants to stop that. It’s not her fault for worrying. She’d tell him it’s not his fault for running away either, despite the blame he deserves.

“What kept me going all those years was us.” With a finger, she connects a line between him, her, and Ven. “It’s supposed to be the three of us, as one. We could have been there with you. You could have trusted me.”

“I agree with her on that one,” Ven says, picking his cuticles.

Now, Terra is the only one dancing in the room, Aqua tired of the rhythm and Ven stuck in an unwilling game. Xemnas was accurate in mocking him for it. Stars.

“I’m sorry,” Terra says, flexing his shoulders. “You’re right, I should have said something.”

Ven makes a noise that says he’s rolling his eyes.

“And Ven was right in sending Riku after me,” Terra continues, ruffling fingers through Ven’s hair and frizzing out the spikes. “Thanks.”

Ven swats his hand away, frantically brushing through his hair. “I’ll forgive you for ruining it this one time.”

Aqua sighs. “Was it dangerous?”

Terra considers the question and draws a long smile. “I’ll tell you all about it if you promise not to stop me before I finish.”

And she considers him in return. For all the years they’ve grown together, they know when it’s time to take their words to heart. He knows her and she knows him. “As long as you’re okay, then I guess I’m fine.”

Terra chuckles. “To be honest, I would have felt more guilty if I didn’t go through with it.”

She shakes her head, a worried grimace pulling at her lips. “Please don’t do this again.”

“I won’t.” Terra traces an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”

She snorts. “That’s so morbid.”

“It’s to the point.” He grins. The painting, on the other hand, is apathetic to the home they make together in this room. So ugly. “How could you stand to be in here with that?”

“They treat it like a treasure,” Ven says, sticking his tongue out.

A knock on the door interrupts them, jolting Aqua. “He’s here,” she says. Terra asks her a muted question with a raise of his shoulder, but she commands proper behavior with a wave of her hand (she’s so much like the Master sometimes).

A tall, older man with a beard greets her from the other side of the door. She responds with a joy to her hello, like they’re old friends.

Ven leans forward with his neck to see. Terra nearly chokes.

Ansem the Wise. Terra doesn’t know this man, he doesn’t know this man, so there shouldn’t be a reason why being near him is like inhaling fumes.

“As promised,” Ansem says, his voice so deep it melts rock, “tea.” He has with him a steaming pot and four mugs on a wheeled cart.

Aqua holds her hand to her chest. “That’s right, I told you.”

“Raspberry tea if you were to ever see the light of day again.” He steps inside. “With a touch of vanilla and a generous serving of honey. I made sure to keep it all proportionate.”

Bile builds up in Terra’s throat.

“I know your face,” Ansem says to Terra.

It’s acidic when he swallows back down. Terra crosses his arms and locks them there. He can barely bring himself to look at this man in the eyes.

“Welcome to my castle,” Ansem says, filling all four cups. Aqua takes hers and Ven stands up for his share.

“Thank you,” Terra says to the rug.

“This is your first time here.”

“Not in the city.”

“Ah.”

Footsteps circle around Terra. Ansem takes the largest chair behind the desk while Ven moves the other two across, one of which Aqua accepts. He leaves the other empty for Terra, as though sitting down is the closest thing to a peace offering he can give.

But why a peace offering? It shouldn’t be necessary. Terra doesn’t know this man.

“I’m sorry,” Terra chokes, taking his seat. “I’m being rude.”

“There isn’t a need for apologies,” Ansem says. His intense eyes are slow to warm up, and his smile is a squeaky wheel needing some maintenance. He’s like the Master in that way, very professional. But the Master’s smile came more often and more naturally—it just hid behind the mustache, confusing anyone who didn’t know him into thinking he was more intimidating than he was. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Master Terra.”

“I’m not a Master.”

Aqua grips the cup on her lap tighter. Ven stands by her, one hand on the backrest and the other balled into a fist.

“Oh, I apologize.”

“No need to.”

Ansem clears his throat, sipping his tea with more noise than necessary. This man raised others. He had built a loyal team and forgave them for their betrayal, playing no role in what Xehanort did. Now he’s working on improving the lives of others.

But he committed harm. Terra doesn’t know what or why.

Aqua doesn’t seem to hold that opinion as she compliments the flavor. Two people from two different worlds who crossed paths in their torture and punishment. Terra has to be grateful she wasn’t alone for some of that.

“I want to extend my gratitude,” Ansem says, and Terra shifts in his chair. Too often it feels like his mind is being read. “For coming. It brings me joy to see you here.”

Terra still has arms woven together, and he hugs himself tighter. It’s like a distant father welcoming a child he hasn’t seen grow up. But Terra already had his own Master, his own father figure. Silver linings, I guess. My face brings somebody joy today.

“I do hope,” Ansem continues when Terra doesn’t say anything, “the painting does not offend?”

“It does,” Terra says and regrets it. He shakes his head. “You can keep it, though.”

“Terra,” Ven warns, little and quiet but Terra is sure Ansem has heard.

Another knock on the door prevents Terra from saying more, but thank the stars there’s someone there to distract them.

“That would be Even,” Ansem quips, groaning as he stands.

Terra hears a small snicker—Aqua is hiding a smirk behind her hair. “He’s a character,” she whispers, wrinkling her nose to shake out the contortions of her amusement and present herself as respectful.

Even. No, there’s not a face to that one either, but Terra doesn’t have to wait to see.

A character he is, a skeptical perma-scowl as though he’s spent years giving a mountain of complaints and his face froze that way. Clean, oily hair and a chin that would be difficult to shave. He talks animatedly when Ansem opens the door, sputtering about science experiments with words Terra’s never heard before. One of his eyes bulges out every time he has a shock.

“I must insist,” Even says to whatever they’re mumbling about, his voice a natural shrill. He approaches the desk with broad strides as his lab coat floats behind him. Tucked under his arm is a thick clipboard and a thicker binder of paper, his posture as straight as a pin.

Opening his binder, Even flips through the top of the stack, calculating which ones to pull out and dropping them at the surface of the desk. They’re streaked with highlighted areas where signatures are needed. No quips about Terra’s face or stares. If anything, he treats Terra and the others like strangers.

Terra appreciates that.

“It’s good to see you again,” Aqua says after clearing her throat.

It takes a beat for Even to register. “A pleasant surprise in return,” he says, his tone well-mannered but the words are slow as if he’s unpracticed with them—a far cry from the expert who walked in.

“This is Ven and”—she nods over—“Terra.”

Even takes several moments to nod at Ven before looking at Terra for several seconds longer. Terra expects him to say something about the likeness of the painting behind them, but all Even says is, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Ven blocks a snort. It turns into a constricted cough that he tries to hide behind his hand.

And with that, the conversation seemingly stops as Ansem sits back down and Even starts a lecture about subjects and the physiology of an older woman in a neighboring district, the adjustment of carbon and whether data can be downloaded via oxygen transfer.

“I promise we will cover these topics,” Ansem says with a palm up that stops Even before he can really get into the nitty-gritty. “But first, I insist we speak about my request.”

Even inhales (for a long time) before crossing his hands over his binder. He shifts his posture as though to address Terra, but he says nothing.

“May I ask for a small favor?” Ansem asks Terra.

Taken aback, Terra blinks. A muscle deep in his chest wants to yank away and strike back, sharp and poisonous. “Sure.”

Ansem pulls one of Xehanort’s journals and flips through, reverently stopping at a page and letting it float on top of the other. “I had never once suspected anything amiss.” With your body is what he isn’t pointing out. “If I had known...” Ansem nods to himself. Who knows what he could have done if he did. “I ask for peace of mind.”

With that, Even smiles to himself. Surprisingly, it’s soft.

“Okay?”

“If you please.” Ansem turns the journal to Terra. This page is mostly equations and diagrams, with one sentence written on the top. “May I ask you to transcribe this?” He also hands Terra a pen.

The sentence in question reads:

The soul is but breath, the face its language, the heart its warmth.

The handwriting is carefully crafted, the loops in the E’s and A’s artfully asymmetrical with equal amounts of ink spared for every letter. This will be easy to prove it isn’t Terra’s.

“Yeah,” Terra says, smiling. At least the content isn’t horrible. If anything, it sounds like something he would have learned in class years ago.

He takes the pen and writes right under it, noticing the date at the top right-hand corner—this was written eleven years and eight months ago, four months after Terra lost his body. But supposedly, this was done with Terra’s clumsy hand and thick fingers anyway. Time is not friendly.

Terra scratches the surface of the paper as he strikes the page, his A’s never fully formed and looking like U’s, and his E’s all different sizes, coming together in a sentence as choppy as waves with ink jabbed in some punctuation.

When he hands the journal back, Ansem studies it with fingers to his lips before looking up at Even for reassurance.

“This proves what I have suspected,” Even says softly, the subject clearly sensitive to Ansem the Wise. “You positively could not have noticed. The calligraphy is entirely disparate.” He points to make comparisons.

“You study calligraphy?” Terra asks, and there’s a tick in Even’s shoulders as if he’s already forgotten they were in the same room.

Even inhales. That must be his coping mechanism, but when he starts, there’s a subtle travel to the distance he builds. He’s excited to talk about it. “The study of penmanship as a device for human psychology makes remarkable and accurate descriptions of different personalities. It’s fascinating.”

“That’s interesting.”

“And what hobbies do you enjoy in your spare time?” Ansem asks, placing the journal down, more at ease.

Put on the spot, Terra’s mind goes blank. It takes Ven nudging him the shoulder to respond. “Whittling wood, I guess.”

One of Even’s eyes bulges out and Ansem chuckles. Terra gets it. It’s not something any of them can imagine Xehanort doing. Instead, he’d (play chess). Just like the Master. Terra sees an image of (Vexen) in a long, black cloak, cross-legged on a white lounge chair, resting his chin on his hand and staring hard at pieces before him. Not that Terra knows a Vexen, but it comes to him as brim as a memory, as though they’ve only played together last year. As pleasant as it seems, it makes Terra nauseous just to know. Maybe tea would have helped, but his cup sits on the wheeled cart, having lost its steam.

“On to why you are here,” Ansem says, closing the journal and pressing against the cover, shutting the door to one life. “I assume you would need assistance in finding Master Aqua’s lost Keyblade. I can surely confirm one was with Xehanort when we found him.”

Aqua, who’s been swirling her mug of tea, sits up at the sound of her name.

“I don’t need much help, actually,” Terra says. “I know where it is.”

Even leans forward, bending over the desk to study Terra’s eyes. All he would really need is a magnifying glass. “Peculiar. You carry with you a record of those memories?”

Terra won’t mention Naminé’s involvement. That girl deserves time to herself. “Yep.”

Ansem leans back onto his chair, his brows furrowing. “Where did he keep it?”

Terra doesn’t know. But he does. “Downstairs.”

Aqua and Ven glance over at him. Even straightens himself. Ansem huffs. Downstairs. It’s such a weighted word.

“Even is the only one willing to venture down there,” Ansem says.

“I may be of assistance,” Even says, bringing his binder to his chest. “Master Ansem—”

“I know what this means.” Ansem grunts when he stands up, folding his hands behind him and turning his back on whatever will come next. He takes Even’s papers with his abrupt leave. “I thank you again for the visit,” he says to Terra and Aqua.

Something about his shame unnerves Terra, reminding him of his own many years ago when he started a whole, brutal journey for himself and his friends (if only he stayed behind and congratulated her on her Mark of Mastery). In his desire to make everyone comfortable, he sees something else: by a window to a sunset and a flower garden down below, another chessboard competes with an open book and a hot mug of tea for space on the table. Terra stands up.

“Thanks for having me,” he says, and it sounds as stupid as the waver in his voice. All that needs to be said will remain unspoken, he realizes, the glacier in this room needing months to melt. “We can play a round the next time I come? Chess? My Master taught to be good at it.” It may be invasive to ask, but when he sees Ansem relax, he can take comfort in the small solace of whatever good they shared twelve years ago.

Aqua smiles up at Terra, her tea finished.

“I would like that very much,” Ansem says, nodding off to Ventus. “This one minds his manners.” He shuts the door behind him.

“As opposed to who?” Ven asks the room, but no one replies.

“It will be this way,” Even says. He takes the painting down as if it’s weightless, as if it doesn’t have any relevance to anybody here. Aqua stands up like rubber plucked, her hands folded into each other. The anticipation kills Terra, too. Finally, they’ll be done with this exhausting day.

He doesn’t see what Even’s doing to the wall, but it vanishes, opening up to a hallway. Where it begins. They follow him to a personal computer room, which sits in an alcove overlooking an enormous factory stacked with huge glass pods, like vials but big enough to fit an adult.

Neither of them ask what those are about, not even nosy Ven, who’s been too quiet lately. Terra can almost feel why, like whispers of ghosts. It’s for the best they don’t speak about this factory. Spoken words confirming what lived in those prisons would be the straw to give them all nightmares.

“How old is this castle?” Ven asks Even.

“Radiant Garden is the flagbearer of light,” Even says, operating keys on a giant computer as big as the wall itself. This they already know. It has been for decades, a golden chalice that all Keybearers of the past have visited. “The castle was built millennia ago, reformed by remnants several years after the Collapse of Fairytales.”

Ven should know this already, but he winces as though he’s been lied to. “Are you sure?”

“Ven,” Aqua hisses. “This is his home, and that is rude.”

But Ven isn’t convinced. “It just feels weird around here,” he mumbles. “And the basement?”

Even doesn’t answer the specific question, but says, “We’ve made arrangements to seal it off completely.” He pulls out a disc from his binder. The sight of it—it’s so familiar and so ugly. Slipping it into the computer, Even types a password (ANOTHER), which prompts him to enter several more, all hidden behind what look like stars.

Names of apprentices, starting with Xehanort. There’s Even, Dilan, Ienzo, Aeleus, and… Braig.

Braig. Terra knows that face for sure. Word has gotten out he disappeared after the Keyblade War, quite possibly done for. Good riddance.

There’s a whir and a bang somewhere close by but far away, the twist of a lock unlatching.

“Shall I accompany you downstairs?” Even asks. He says ‘downstairs’ like it’s a typical basement. It must take strength to face your crimes head on. He’s got guts.

“No, thank you,” Terra says at Ven’s expense, who’s fidgeting more with every second. “I think I can lead the rest of the way.”

Even eyes his binder resting on the terminal, removing the disc as it’s spit out. “I suppose that is practical. You won’t necessitate my presence if the doors open for you… in actuality, one of those doors is meant only for Xemnas. If it opens, please inform me.” He picks up after himself, pausing twice before continuing. “If that is the case… I would ask that you allow me to study your body afterward. We can schedule appointments—”

“What does that mean?” Aqua asks, stepping by Terra as if bracing to shield him. “What kind of studies? Will they cause him harm?”

Even gasps before chuckling. The whole scary-scientist mask is a facade; he just doesn’t bother with painted smiles or with attempts at making other people comfortable. A take-him-as-he-is kind of person. “Not at all. Merely some blood tests. Perhaps a scan of his heart at the most invasive. If the doors open, then that would suggest some unusual attributes which would be helpful in our restorative work.”

Aqua opens her mouth to say something, but she stops when she notices Terra smiling gently at her. They pass a silent conversation, one where she knows to let him go despite her worries, and one when he hears her and lets her know it’s okay. She nods and steps away to give Ven comfort.

“It’s part of her charm,” Terra says to Even when she’s far enough. “But sure, I’m game.”

“Perhaps we can play a round, as well,” Even says.

“Of chess? That will be fun.”

“Most indubitably.”

Even gives them limited instructions in accessing the basement—the rest, he says, is intuitive and simple. It starts at the base of the empty factory, where a trap door reveals a winding spiral ramp down that disappears into a black pit. It’s going to take a while.

“This looks like a tacky scene from a crime novel I’ve read,” Aqua says, her arms crossed for comfort with her head held high and a sharp sniff through her nose.

“This is weird,” Ven mumbles, sounding more sick than usual. Terra checks his temperature with a palm to the forehead, but Ven seems fine and unaware of what Terra is doing, totally transfixed with how dark it is down there.

It’s a long descent, some passed in quiet, and if not, with small talk about the architecture, the humidity getting thicker the more they take steps. Light travels far down here, but it’s unnatural, an artificial lamp used to show the trespasser the way and keep them from tripping and breaking necks, like an undetectable odor.

The more they descend, the heavier Terra feels, like tar soaking his hair too much and the weight of it pulling on his scalp. Like cement filling his stomach and it takes more strength to drag his feet. Like lead shackled to his ankles and he just wants to hoist himself over the railing and fall all the way down. Let’s get this over with.

Then the memories hurt.

He doesn’t get a say in which one comes to him: one of a man he does not recognize sitting on a red couch, fingers crossed and fumbling, lips mumbling, eyes trembling, confessions of a secret he carries deep in his heart and Terra doesn’t know what the secret is but he knows it’s guilty. Will you help me get rid of it? this man asks. And Terra replies with, Yes.

Another of Braig (of all people), setting up machinery and needles.

Another of Ansem the Wise (again and again), erasing sentences on a chalkboard, sipping tea late in the night. Work and work, chemical smells and bubbling tonics and hearts placed in jars.

It’s not fair. After all he went through, he deserves one of the Master. He wills himself to think about Eraqus. What comes is the feeling of sand in his mouth and there’s a beach far away that looks like Destiny Islands but Eraqus isn’t there. Eraqus isn’t in any of these. Time is a picture, a flash of light and then an image printed on love and worry, cycling in one direction. It’s like death in that way. It’s not kind. Even in the desire to replay memories over and over, time is apathy. It’s never re-lived. Never reversed.

“Are you doing okay?”

Aqua has stopped, Ven far in the lead like he’s magnetized. They may be halfway down, but it’s hard to tell.

“Sure,” Terra says, unable to say more. His muscles are stiffening as if he’s cold, his knees tightening as if he’s aging. He doesn’t know, he knows. He doesn’t see but he feels. Down there is a realm of darkness handcrafted by scientists. A modern kind of darkness, expelled and sanctified and sterilized.

Aqua rests her hand on his shoulder blades. “I want to say you don’t have to do this—”

“But I have to.”

She doesn’t soften. “We’re almost there,” she says, like when Ven got sick and they had to hunt for a specific herb in the forest, the Master staying behind to brew the right potion. Like when they were taught in class that duty comes first and Terra had asked Aqua if she’d ever fight him in the name of it. When Terra looks down, like she’s a real light guiding his way, he sees a door at the bottom when it once was nothing. They’re almost there. A set of double doors in a single circular room and nothing else, a secret tucked deep in what felt like a canyon to hike down.

Ven runs ahead. Instinctively, Terra wants to cry out, watching that head of blond hair rushing up to the door, a miner’s canary at the mouth of the cave just before it stops breathing.

“I can’t open it,” Ven says when he tries to pry them open with his fingers.

“You can’t because you’re not supposed to be here,” Terra says, sluggishly walking forward. Aqua keeps a firm hand on him, as if to catch him if he falls. The door seems designed to sense him—when he comes near, it opens. Just like Even suspected. A wave of heat passes over him, giving him a long, white hallway with a military of doors and chains on both sides.

Ven lurches backward as if inhaling in a horrid stench, his eyes seeing something that isn’t there. “No.”

“What’s wrong?” Aqua asks.

“You don’t feel that?” Ven is waving his arms as if shooing something away. “It’s awful. This whole castle is awful and… old. So old.”

That doesn’t make any sense. There’s an odd feeling to the hall, yes—a toxic atmosphere from too many chemical experiments, too much darkness dampening the ceiling and sweating down the walls. “This level was only built a decade ago, Ven.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he whines. “What are they not telling us? What else is this castle hiding? What happened here?”

Aqua leads Ven away, shushing his pleads (Please, don’t go in there). It’s like he’s hallucinating, forgetting where he is or what time has settled this fate on them. She bends to her knees to calm him down, Terra stupefied.

“You still okay?” she asks Terra after sitting Ven down at the bottommost step.

No, he isn’t. “It kind of smells bad here. You?”

“It’s cold.”

To him, it’s hot.

“We’re going in, Ven,” she says, who has his arms wrapped around his knees.

“It’s just at the end of this corridor,” Terra says softly, not out of fear but out of exhaustion, his heart about to give in at any second with the swell of information christening his brain like a thick cement. He should have taken Naminé’s advice.

The doors in this hallway are barred, just to give the tiniest of merciful crumbs to the prisoners inside by giving them each other. What did they talk about? Nothing comes to Terra’s mind when he wonders. White on white, like the Castle Oblivion Aqua described, pristine and clean and filthy. The rooms are dark inside, but Terra doesn’t dare to look, and Aqua won’t either.

Terra smells acid—formaldehyde maybe, a faint trace of it that gives him a sense of déja vu, despite that he’s never smelled it before and he doesn’t even know what formaldehyde even is.

A scream bounces through the walls. Terra holds his head.

You, but not you.

A soft sob from the room to his left, and he’s nauseous, bile coming up so quick that he holds his mouth.

You, but not you.

A face, a little girl with long black hair, and Terra leans onto his knees to keep himself upright.

You, but not you.

He feels a hand on his shoulder. That is real.

“You okay?”

If he answers, he’ll vomit. He shakes his head.

“Should I go ahead?” Aqua asks softly.

He shakes his head again and moans. It’s just a few more steps. He’ll not think about the memories, not think about the someone asking for water or the hearts stuffed in jars or the recliners with wrist straps. Not think about the monitors and the faces, so many faces, so many little girls in particular and grandmothers who left children behind and the scratching of pen on paper.

There’s a whisper and Terra shuts his eyes so he doesn’t hear what it has to say.

“What’s going on?” Ven calls out. He’s at the edge where the doorway meets the staircase, peeking his head inside, never placing a foot.

“We’re fine,” Terra answers.

Aqua wraps his arm around her shoulders, hoisting him up. Nothing truly stops her.

“Talk to me about anything,” Terra says.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says, surprisingly calm, gazing around the room for the familiar and unfriendly. “It doesn’t feel the same as the Dark Realm, which… I guess you could say commands respect. It’s as old as life. It feels so much like yourself sometimes.”

“We all have Darkness in our hearts,” Terra mumbles, head foggy.

“Yes.” She holds him closer when he sways. “Sadness or anger, Darkness is your mirror. But this place…” Her tone is flaccid and exhausted, as if this place has drained her happiness with a syringe. “This place is sick.”

“I’m sick,” he grumbles. “You can say you told me so.”

“I never said anything.”

“That’s the thing, you never have to say anything, Aqua. You always know the right thing to do.”

Aqua stares holes into the floor, waiting for him to step before she does. “It wasn’t right to push you away.”

And he waits for her to catch up before stepping another. “I wasn’t right at all.”

She squeezes the wrist over her shoulder, a silent acknowledgement without correcting or denying him. “Thank you for doing this for me,” she whispers.

At the end, there stands that door. This one probably answers only to (his) behest, to the touch of (his) palm on the monitor. Yes, that’s right, no one else can enter.

“You would have needed me here anyway,” he says to Aqua, his mouth dry.

It opens to a small round room. Chains link the doorway and the ceiling and around, connecting to a single throne in the middle.

“Why does it look like—?” Aqua hisses. “I don’t understand. What was this room used for?”

“Sitting,” he mutters.

Terra looks up when she stirs, trembling under his arm. Waiting alongside the throne is a color of blue, dull and dusty. Her cracked armor and the quiet patience of Rainfell sitting together, as if Darkness held one star in its hands that needed a little shine, waiting for the right sunrise to give it life.

When Aqua cries, a triumphant peace settles in Terra’s bones. It’s worth it. This is the very best he could ever give.

#kh terra #terra #kingdom hearts fanfiction #kh fanfic #ansem the wise #even #aqua #ahhhh i really liked this chapter #i hope you like too #my fic

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mimosaeyes · 5 years ago

Text

It’s the fear, not the miles, that wears them down.

Jon and Martin take a break from trekking through the apocalypse. Nebulously set post-164. Quick fluff, 1.5k

Beta-ed by @distortion-noodles (main blog: @nifeandaccurateprophefies) and @sequoiawintersnight. *Tim voice* Double beta?! Indeed. You both spoil me.

“Right,” Martin says, on what he thinks is their third day walking without a break. He’s probably underestimating, too. “I don’t care if the natural laws of the universe have been re-written. It can’t be good to keep going like this.”

It takes Jon a moment to surface out of his reverie. “Hm? Oh. We could stop for... I was going to say ‘the night,’ but, well.”

They come to a halt anyway, after struggling out of a field of tall grass that seems oddly reluctant to let them go. Which is a little sinister, even in a world where the sky looks back at you. For good measure, they climb a nearby hillock, all the while brushing bits of vegetation off their clothes.

Martin stands at the top and squints at what used to be the horizon. He doesn’t do that a lot. Now, when he tries to find the points where the sun used to rise and set, his eyes tend to be drawn to the Panopticon instead.

Also, one time he’d seen something in the distance that looked alarmingly like livestock falling out of a glowing cloud. He’s not eager to witness any other such phenomena.

Jon’s elbow brushes his arm as he comes to stand next to Martin. “Do you feel tired?” he asks, also staring out across the landscape.

I feel like I should be. Even as Martin thinks this, his mind snags on the tentative, almost brittle note in Jon’s voice, and the way he placed a faint emphasis on you. Jon always sounds cautious when he asks Martin a question, from the effort of trying not to compel him, but this is different. “Oh, don’t do that,” Martin says, turning to look at Jon disapprovingly.

Jon blinks. “I’d say I have good reason to enquire after your wellbeing in the middle of a dystopian hellscape.”

“You always use more polysyllabic words when you’re uncomfortable, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about you fussing.” Martin flicks Jon gently on the forehead. “I was talking about you spending the last hundred eldritch-kilometres moping about being a monster.”

“Actually, even though London is a little over four hundred miles from the Scottish Highlands, we’ve walked about five hundred miles so far,” Jon says helpfully. “You know, insofar as distance has any meaning anymore. We’re like that song by The Proclaimers.”

“Stop trying to distract me with pop culture references, you... post-apocalyptic pedometer.”

They stare at each other for a long second, then burst out laughing. It slightly eases the tension that’s been building up in Martin’s chest.

As Jon’s laughter peters out, he sighs and looks at Martin, still smiling. “Alright, yes. I admit, I may have spent the last while thinking about how, unlike you, I’m no longer human enough to get tired. Or apparently, take a shortcut through a Distortion corridor. I wouldn’t call it moping—”

“Yet he supposedly knows everything.”

“—but,” Jon pauses to give Martin a flat look, “I can’t imagine how you got all that from four words.”

“What can I say? I’m well-versed in Jonathan Sims-ese.”

Martin’s small smile falters before he even realises he’s going to continue. “And, well. Worrying about you gives me something else to do, besides feel terrified and angry all the time. That’s what I’m really sick of, I think; not the walking.”

“Angry?” Jon repeats quietly.

Martin just shrugs. “Magnus used you. Of course I’m angry.”

His hand has clenched into a fist unconsciously. He only notices when Jon reaches out to take it. “I think I can help with the other thing,” Jon muses. It’s not quite an offer.

“How?” Martin stares at where Jon is slowly unfurling his fingers.

“By showing you something. If you’ll let me. I — I know you didn’t have the best experience of this, with... Elias, as we knew him at the time.”

Your mother simply hates you. You want to know what she sees when she looks at you?

Martin shudders despite himself.

Then he whispers, “Okay.”

Because it’s Jon, whose scarred skin is so familiar against his. Because some part of him knows that all the pain in the world couldn’t make Jon’s touch ungentle.

“This is what I see,” Jon tells him, “when I look at you.”

Distantly, he hears the static that accompanies Jon using his Beholding powers. It drowns out the noises of the apocalypse — the unnatural wind, the cries, the wet slip of flesh. The distant bagpipes and gunfire and buzzing of flies that Martin still hasn’t left behind, not really.

He’s no longer standing under an acid-trip sky. He does a double-take before he figures out what he’s looking at: himself, or at least the top of his head, pillowed on Jon’s belly. He recognises their bedroom in the cottage, even if he doesn’t remember this moment. They’re dozing, insouciant, even breathing in tandem. Light spills from the window and pools over them, golden and heavy.

“I promise, this is the only time I watched you sleep,” Jon says, but not the Jon whose eyes he is seeing through. “Before the world ended, at least. While slumber was still peaceful.”

Martin has the absurd, intuitive impression that his voice arrives directly in his mind, bypassing his ears. This doesn’t freak him out as much as he thinks it should.

“It’s not like you haven’t done creepier things around me,” he points out, instinctively speaking in hushed tones.

Dream-Martin huffs and snuggles even closer to Jon. Martin frowns. “Hang on — isn’t that where you’re missing a rib? Aren’t I hurting you?”

“I thought it was sort of poetic,” Jon says ruefully. “You, in the place of something vital that protected me.”

They both watch as Dream-Jon lifts a hand from the duvet and cards his fingers ever so lightly through Martin’s hair.

“Armour and anchor,” Jon muses, almost to himself.

It doesn’t escape Martin’s notice that he hasn’t actually said no to his question. The sentiment still makes his breath catch in his throat.

With a slight effort of will, and little idea beyond that of how exactly he does it, Martin separates his perspective from Dream-Jon’s. Instead of gazing down at himself, he finds himself standing off to one side, feeling even more of a voyeur to his own past happiness. He’s suddenly very conscious of the grime that has accumulated on his trousers and boots, from wading through various bogs filled with nasty surprises.

Martin turns to his right, knowing before he sees him that he’ll find Jon standing there. This Jon looks wary and travel-worn, his hair hanging raggedly around his sharp, angular face. He offers Martin a faint smile.

“Maybe you should try writing some sappy poetry,” Martin says at last, but too softly for it to come across as teasing.

Jon seems to hear what he means underneath the words. “I thought this might help,” he murmurs, pleased.

Martin steps closer, close enough to tuck the grey locks behind Jon’s ears. “You know,” he says slowly, “you said this is a world where we can’t trust comfort.” Jon’s face begins to harden with old guilt. Martin quickly continues, “But I trust you. So... so maybe think about that, the next time you need to stop being all mopey.”

Jon’s shoulders sag. “Oh,” he says. “Alright.”

A dreadful thought occurs to Martin. “This — this is real, though. Right? Where we are, this is a real memory.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re... in your mind, somehow?”

“You wouldn’t want to be in my mind right now,” Jon says, his tone matter-of-fact. His eyes flick briefly to the bedroom door. His expression darkens, perhaps at the thought of what lies beyond it. “This is where I come for some quiet from — from everything, when it feels like I know too much. You might say it’s the... eye of the storm.”

A beat. “Can I smack you metaphysically for that joke?”

“Rude.” Jon manages to make the word sound impossibly fond. He grips Martin’s arm, and eases them out of the memory with another wave of static. Or perhaps he lets it fade away from them. In any case, Martin blinks, and they are back in the end of the world.

It’s still pretty dire. But the tension, the feeling of being perpetually braced for worse — that’s mostly subsided. At least for now.

“Better?” Jon asks. He scuffs his shoe against the ground, almost shy.

Martin smiles fully for what feels like the first time in ages, cups Jon’s cheek, and kisses him. Thank you, he thinks, and I love you, and You could never be a monster in my eyes.

Jon hums as they pull apart, then presses their foreheads together for a moment. His breaths break warm and soft on Martin’s skin. Martin kisses his forehead, too, before holding out his hand for Jon’s.

Once more, they look out at the long way they have left to go. Then, holding tight to each other, they start walking again.

[also available here on AO3]

[my TMA fics on AO3]

#the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #mimofic

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managingmymuse · 3 years ago

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Plotting

for writer's month

day 24: fake dating

(original fiction | ???)

I read and reread the King's declarations more times than I could count. Soon the words grew blurred from my fingertips, and the paper threatened to peel apart at the folds. Still, I kept pulling it out, picking at it like one picks a scab.

I forced myself to wait a week before sending a reply. Before I made any answer to the message at all. I needed that time to compose myself, to ensure that I could write without a shaking hand or tears dripped onto the page. It was terribly rude, of course, but at the moment, I was quite over politeness. If Timothe had an issue with it, he could consult my father, seeing as everything I'd told Timothe so far had been ignored.

The betrayal hung on the back of my tongue like acid. It made me short with my mother when she came to discuss gowns, and shorter still with Marcel Imons who was still pestering Abigail Lyon. When he approached her near the lake by the girls' dormitory one afternoon, I dispensed with my usual diplomacy and used a burst of magic to fling him in it.

Abigail's roommates laughed themselves sick.

By the end of the week, I'd calmed down enough to write with a clear hand. My missive was short, and to the point.

What possessed you to do this without asking me?

The reply came quickly. Mail between Yarrow and Imena didn't often take long.

My dearest Desdemona,

I must beg your forgiveness. When I returned from Imena, I was in deep pain at the loss of your company. My suffering was so great that my magic diminished as well. When my father discovered this lack, he dispatched his orders immediately, and without consulting me.

I regret that I have not had the opportunity to ask you properly. I promise, upon my next visit, I will make it up to you in full.

Ever yours,

Timothe

I'd frowned at the letter. And then, in a fit of pique, I'd burned it, using my rage to fuel the flames.

It was only later that the mistrust began to settle over me. When we'd been together, Timothe had always seemed self-possessed. Confident. Unlikely to wallow in supposed heartbreak. And when we'd parted, he'd seemed resigned to our future relationship as companions, if not outright friends. But by the time he got to Yarrow, he was disturbed to the point of magic disruption? After a mere day's drive?

Something did not tally. Not at all.

Timothe's triumphant return, presumably with a real proposal and a ring, was scheduled for the next school break, only a week away. Many of our classmates were returning to Yarrow for the solstice, but I would stay here with my family. And Timothee, apparently, would be visiting us.

My mother went into a flurry of preparations. She just about cleaned out every larder in the county searching for chocolate jellies and lemon drops. The staff was given a verbal thrashing every time she saw a button loose or a shoe unpolished. Every room on the main floors was laden with pine boughs until the whole house smelled-- and looked-- like it would belonged in a forest.

While my mother obsessed, I made my own preparations. I borrowed a particular spell from Lady Rathburn's extensive library.

She grasped my arm when I turned to leave her. "Think very carefully before you use this," she said, grey eyes bright. "The truth is not always kind."

I knew that already. Perhaps better than I should. "Don't worry about me," I said. "I shall be the very soul of discretion."

And I was. Rather than send servants for my supplies, I shopped for them myself, trailing along Spill Street like a lady at leisure rather than on a mission. I purchased the ingredients I needed in three separate shops, mixed in with a dozen more items that I never intended to use. Anyone who recovered my shopping list wouldn't know what I was shopping for.

I brewed the potion and let it steep two nights beneath the moon's rays. When it was done, I had a thin vial of a brownish liquid that would make any man, woman, or child, spill their secrets they'd much rather take to the grave.

Arranging a meeting in private was a much more difficult task to manage. My mother wanted to lavish the precious prince with hospitality, and even my father thought it would be impolite not to greet him upon arrival in our city. In the end, I had to do my very best impression of a lovesick girl to get them to consent to allow me to have tea with him in private so that he might propose properly.

It worked, I'm ashamed to say. Very ashamed indeed.

Timothe's carriage rolled up one wintery morning. I watched from the window as he strode up the stairs of our home and knocked precisely once before our butler greeted him. I rang for tea while the butler helped Timothe off with his coat and gloves and settled myself in a rather demure position on the sofa a mere moment before the door swung open.

"His Highness Prince Timothe," the butler said.

I nodded and stood to offer a curtsy. Timothe strode into the room in grand spirits, crossing the distance between us in a matter of seconds. "Darling," he said. He seized both of my hands in his, bringing them up between us to press a kiss to each.

The back of my neck prickled with unease. "Pet names now?"

"You're unhappy with me," Timothe said. "I understand."

"Do you?" I glanced at the butler. "You may go."

With a swift nod, he withdrew.

A heavy silence fell about the room. Embers crackled and burned in the fireplace.

I motioned toward the high-backed chair in the center of the room and allowed Timothe to be seated before I resumed my own position. A knock sounded on the rear door to the room, and a maid entered, bearing the tea service I'd summoned just moments before.

"I've had tea prepared," I said, motioning the maid to set it on the table nearest us. "It's just the thing to warm you after such a cold journey."

"My dear, the only thing I need to warm me is your kind regard."

Ugh. I nodded to the maid, indicating that she could leave before reaching forward to pour the tea.

Timothe's gaze was a hot brand on my neck as I carefully added liquid to his cup and dropped in a single sugar cube. "You're angry with me."

"I'm furious," I said. I offered him the cup and saucer, and he took it. "We discussed this the last time you were here. I said I don't wish to marry."

"Yes, and I tried to respect your wishes," he said. "But once I got home, I realized how much I missed you. My magic suffered. I'm ashamed to say I moped."

"You might have written me before you told your father we were to be married."

"Would it have changed your position?" he asked. "Knowing of my heartbreak?"

My lips firmed into a thin line as I poured my own tea. "You ask too much."

"On the contrary. I think I ask just enough."

He took a cautious sip of his tea, and a bolt of triumph flared through me, lighting me from within.

"Think of how happy we'll be," he said. "How powerful. Between the two of us we'll have the political capital and brute strength to rule this bloody empire, my brothers be damned."

I just stared at him. I watched the color drain from his face. I watched dawning horror pull at his lips.

"Why-- why did I say that? Did I--" His gaze dropped to his tea, and his lip curled. "How did you get this recipe?"

"I am a witch," I said. "You seem to forget it."

"On the contrary. It's the only reason I'm interested in you at all."

I expected that, but it still stung. I took a delicate sip of my own tea before I set the cup down.

A range of emotions was flashing across Timothe's face. Rage and confusion and fear. "Sweetroot tea is illegal."

I lifted a shoulder. "Then have me arrested."

His lip curled. "You know I won't do that."

"Because you love me?"

He outright snarled. "You know I don't love you. Or you wouldn't have fed me this this brew."

That one didn't sting nearly as much. Not with the victory of tricking him dancing in my veins. "If you don't love me, why force me to marry you?"

"Why does anyone marry?" he said.

"That's not an answer."

I have to give him credit, he fought it. But the recipe I'd used for the Sweetroot potion had an extra kicker of joja berries mixed with acanthus oil. In precisely the right quantities, it was formulated to make the reluctant more forthcoming.

"You saved my life," he said. "I need you to do it again."

"Are you in some sort of danger?"

"My brothers. They're trying to kill me."

He stood up at that. His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and the cold shadow of fear passed over me.

"How-- that is, I-- how dare you," he said.

I affected nonchalance and drank some more tea. "If beating me into a pulp will make you feel better, then by all means, try it. But I warn you-- I fight back."

He snarled at me. Outright snarled. And for some reason, it filled me with more pleasure than I can even describe.

"Leave if you want," I said. "Storm down the streets in a rage if that would make you feel better. But I think it would be more productive if you would just tell me the truth."

"The truth." He sneered. "Why would I tell you anything?"

"You're trying to force me into a marriage with you," I said. "A marriage that I don't want or even particularly need."

"Honesty is not necessary for a marriage."

"It's a rather good start, though."

He scowled again. From the expressions on his face, I could tell he was fighting the sweetroot once again.

Finally, he dropped into his chair. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the air in front of him. "Fine. You want the truth? I'll give you the truth. My father has designated no heir. All three of us are eligible to assume his throne. My brothers have been trying to kill me for years. Last summer, one of them nearly succeeded."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You're the one who saved me from his curse."

I sat back in my chair, startled. "That was only a falling branch."

"It was an ill luck spell," Timothe said. "I'm a magnet for danger. Literally wherever I go. I've been thrown from three horses, nearly run over by multiple carriages, and been injured by my sparring partner twice already."

I took a delicate sip of my tea. "I'm surprised you haven't been poisoned."

Timothe leaned forward, an odd glint in his eyes. "You have the distinction of being the first to attempt it, my love."

"Don't call me that."

"I don't see why I shouldn't."

"Because I'm not your love. I'm not your anything."

"But you will be."

The strength of that conviction, under the influence of sweetroot, was horrifying. Nevertheless, I forced myself to set my cup down gently on its saucer. "I'm not marrying you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't wish to marry," I said. "You in particular."

"Charming."

"I figured I might as well trade your honesty for some of my own."

I gave him a demure smile, and Timothe bared his teeth at me in a shark's grin.

"I don't need your agreement to force you into a marriage," he said. "I can have the papers filed with or without your consent."

"That's true enough," I said. "Heaven knows I can't stop you from filing paperwork with the courts."

"So you see that resisting this is idiotic."

"On the contrary," I said. "Resisting this is the only option I have left."

He stood up at at that, rolling his eyes. I half expected him to storm out, but instead he began to pace. He moved up and down the length of the room, cracking his knuckles as he muttered to himself.

I could see the wheels turning in his head. My calmness, such as it was, was getting to him. Good. It was bloody hard to hold onto my cool head.

It was time to push him over the edge. "What's to stop me from just letting you die?"

He turned to me. "What?"

"You heard me," I said. "If your plan is to have a bodyguard in the form of a wife-- well. An unwilling wife is irritating. An unwilling bodyguard is a legitimate problem."

"You would let me die?" he said. "Your own husband?"

I lifted a shoulder. "Quite a few women adore widowhood. It's not what I imagined for myself, naturally, but it's not the worst state one can find one's self in."

I thought he'd scowl at me. Rage and threaten, stomp and storm. But instead, a sort of calm passed over his face. He strode back to his chair, seating himself upright with the kind of courtly bearing that made me want to throw him across the room. "What do you want?"

"For you to leave me alone."

"That's not what I meant," he said. The glint was back in his eyes, and it sent a shiver rolling down my spine. "What do you want to act as my bodyguard?"

"You would hire me as a bodyguard?"

He laughed, and it sounded as if it rippled up from the core of his cold, dark heart. "I can't have a bodyguard. Not in truth. That would be a display of weakness."

"And moping and pretending to lose your magic isn't?"

"Sentimentality is not weakness," he said. "Was our country not founded by warrior-poets?"

"Our country was founded by pompous windbags."

"Those are my ancestors."

"They are, aren't they?"

Timothe's smile was broader this time. There was still an edge to it, but it seemed-- genuine?

"This is going to be fun," he said.

"It's going to be your death sentence."

"You asked me to hire you, which means that your services can be bought," he said. "How much?"

I scowled at him. "I don't need money."

"Everyone needs something."

I kept the scowl firmly in place. "There's nothing I need that would make marrying you worth it."

Timothe chuckled. The sound was deep and resonant, and it sent alarm bells pealing in my head. "Am I really so bad?" he asked.

"Not everything is about you."

He smiled at that before standing again. He paced to the window, looking down into the street. The snow-bright light from outside washed onto his face, making him look like a figure from one of my sister's fairytales.

Not a handsome prince, I thought darkly. Or, well, not just one, anyway.

"I'm willing to compromise," he said. "I'd like to maintain the fiction of an engagement between us for the time being. But in exchange for you ensuring that I don't die an untimely death, I'll break it off long before we ever near the altar."

"That's not much of a compromise," I said. "What's in it for me?"

"Is it not enough to assist your sovereign in his time of need?"

"You're not my sovereign," I said. "And at this rate, you'll never be."

"But you can change that," Timothe said. "Help me reach the throne, and I will grant you anything your heart desires. One royal favor. How about that, my sweet?"

A favor. With a favor from the king I-- well, I could do anything. Possibilities spun in my head. A school in the north. A girls school where they were allowed to study more than dance and flower arranging.

"Never call me that again," I said, "and you have yourself a deal."

He swung around then. The grin on his face was almost impish. "I knew I could get through to you."

"Don't look so happy," I said.

He practically bounced across the room. "Why wouldn't I look happy? I've just secured a wonderful new fiancee."

"Spare me."

Instead of returning to his chair, this time he settled himself on the sofa next to me. It was a flagrant breach of propriety, and I suspected that he did it just to make me uncomfortable.

My suspicions were concerned when he took my hand in his and slowly brought it to his lips. "Come now. When we're in public, you'll have to pretend to be madly in love with me. You might as well start now."

"If this is your attempt at charm, it's failing," I said. I extracted my hand and reached for the bell to summon the butler. "It's been enlightening as always, your majesty."

He only smiled. "It has, hasn't it? It really has."

***

@saltnpepapig You asked to be tagged if there was more. This got out of hand, so let me know if you changed your mind.

#writersmonth2021 #writersmonth #writing #my writing #fantasy #long post

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resonatingfern · 4 years ago

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Happy birthday (or almost birthday? I’m not exactly sure when you’ll see this!) @commander-triangle! I hope it’s a lovely one filled with cake. Here’s this little thing I wrote for you as birthdays I think require a bit of fluff.

Alec’s skin was smooth under Vasche’s touch, except the patchwork of scars and scratches the God had left behind. The wound was healed, as were most of the injuries Alec sustained, but whether physical or not, they left a mark.

Vasche avoided them with his fingertips, tracing instead their perimeter. They reminded him of failure — his failure to protect Alec — and of the threat of loss. It was an uncomfortable sensation wedged deep in his chest. Loss had never felt so threatening before, instead of something he could wave away and feel no pain from.

“There’s something bothering you.” Alec’s voice, whisper soft in the growing night, pulled Vasche from this thoughts. He looked from where his gaze had settled on Alec’s chest, up to his eyes. Vasche had never seen their like before, and knew for however long he lived on there would never be another pair like them.

“There is,” he confirmed. His fingers continued to brush along Alec’s chest, nails dragging with care not to break the skin.

“What is it?”

“I’m thinking about Orr,” Vasche answered, his thoughts turning inward and back in time. He envisioned his tower room from long ago, open air blowing in and decadence sprawled across the floor. It felt distinctly unfamiliar now; a relic from a time long since passed. In his memory a figure stood with a scowl, one he had adopted readily to match.

“Something my sister told me once.”

Alec’s brows raised and he shifted slightly on the bed, pushing himself to lean on his elbow. “You have a sister?”

“Had. It doesn’t matter.” Vasche waved away Alec’s curiosity. In time maybe he’d talk more directly about his past, but for now it could remain shadowed in the long, lost years. Instead he pushed on, his eyes falling to Alec’s skin again, unwilling to keep his stare. “She told me I was incapable of love. That my heart was too poisoned to know such a thing.”

Alec’s answer was a slight narrowing of his eyes, a sure sign he was in disagreement. Vasche had long since learned to read the man’s more subtle cues. It helped in battle, but even more it helped here: alone and testing waters and feelings, searching for the right combination that both would understand.

Leaning in, Vasche pressed his lips to the scar running across Alec’s body. It was warm, reminiscent of the fire that caused it. It burned his lips, though Vasche thought maybe that was all in his mind.

When he pulled away he was grinning.

“Clearly she was wrong,” he said. “I just wish she were alive so I could rub it in her face.”

“That’s rude, but expected.” Alec’s light laughter was short lived. A shadow came over his face, and his expression fell somber. His next words were hesitant, but ones Vasche expected to hear. If not now, then sometime down the road.

“Do you think it’s just the bond?”

“No.” Vasche was prepared to answer the question, and had been for some time. “At first, maybe. But you could tear that bond from me and I would not leave you.”

To make clear his words, Vasche held Alec’s chin in his hand, lifting his face to keep their eyes locked this time. The burning on his lips felt stronger, lingering from his previous kiss. All of him felt like fire, rising from his chest and spreading. It was far different from the slow seep of poison and acid he had felt for much of his life, and it brought strength and conviction to the words that spilled from his heart.

“I have waited a thousand years for you, Alec,” he said. “Not some mystical bullshit of a tether. You.”

As he spoke it Vasche knew it to be truth. Not once in his long life had anyone captured him so completely as Alec. Their bond was forged on a foundation of magic and destiny, but from there they let it grow as it would. If for some reason the magic was ripped away, Vasche was certain his feelings would remain.

He was certain Alec’s would, too. It was evident in the way he smiled at Vasche’s firm declaration, and the way his lips found their way to his.

#i hope you like it!!#oc: vasche #my writing

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what-ever-happened-to-chip · 3 years ago

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The Adventures of Squall

Squall's observations. Hmm. I don't know what Rinoa wants me to do. I guess I'll ask Eli for his notes and just give them to her. *knock knock* "Cheerio good boy, may I help you with anything?" "Do you have notes on that thing Christian was talking about?" "Ahh you've came to the right residence, just let me....hold on just a moment..." He began digging through piles of loose paper, flipping through notebooks, all whilst mumbling to himself. "Alas! Here is one of my more rudimentary charts, but it shall accomplish what you're intial questions preface." It was hard to concentrate, he was talking very fast and using a lot of words that I didn't know. Akio says because of my ASD I sometimes get what he calls "verbal dyslexia" and it's hard for me to comprehend what other people are saying, especially if they talk different from me. I'll have to concentrate very hard if I don't want Rinoa mad at me again. "But see this is where it gets confusing, we have many great forces here, coincidence? Doubtfully so, but these overlapping characteristics I believe have come here for a reason. Many of our members, including myself, have had interactions with Christos, Christian you call him, and I can't imagine why he would let so many familar faces corner him in the same scenario, unless of course he had a plan for each individual. See, I believe..." He pulled out a chair for me that I sat in. I took out my notebook so I could remember what to tell Rinoa. "If you look here on this chart.." he pulled out a large beige canvas with several pictures pinned to it, threads of twine connecting different ones. "First you see here that Christos comes to my noble world and plants himself as Cyrus, the destroyer of worlds. He taints Noah and I am his right hand man. He tells me a great many things, we can go into later. Do realize this isn't in chronilogical order, I have no way of telling yet the timeline of all our respective worlds. "Next he plants himself as an alien, "Jenova" he calls it on Gaia and and infects the whole planet. The only one to save it was Aerith who possesses extrodainary spiritual powers. She was the last chance tho and aside from her sacrifice Geostigma went on beyond her time..." "His next target, alas, Thomas. A young, troubled boy whom Christian fictionalized a companion for. An alter ego of sorts and made thomas believe it was himself. I believe he might have been weak and needed a human body to recover on. At some point Christian went to Aiden and found him by the Sanguis River, which is the border between our world and ubi requiescit dolor or "where sorrow rests. I haven't been able to spot where he showed up in Harry's world, but I do know he was there at some point. He likely was only a death eater of no great importance. Same with Roxas, Christian probably took the form of a nobody, which of course begs the question...." It was really hard for me to take notes as fast as he talked. I was really tryign to spell words better to get in the habit of it. Reading was easy for me, but writing made me nervous. I'll just get the names and maybe i'll remember. "can one become a nobody without having a form first? Perhaps that's it. He was a formed human on one planet and when he was almost destroyed at some theroetical part, he latched onto Thomas but only came back as a nobody which of course is an allusion. Details, details, but where were we? Oh yes, next on his infamous walk through time was of course Aangs world where he brought the powers of darkness to a seemingly balanced world, probably dating back to around...." I needed to yawn, but it seemed rude. I wonder how he knew all of this. He seemed confused himself. Maybe I should talk to some other people. Rinoa will be mad if I only talk to him. I should have gotten more information earlier.

“And of course Akio’s unfortunate fate with him, presenting himself as illusions to drive the man mad I’m sure. I do believe he could do that, his evil seems endless.” He paused and looked around at all his charts and papers. this will be a good time to excuse myself. "I have to use the restroom, excuse me" He didn't seem to notice me leave, he kept talking and looking at his papers. While I was walking I saw Harry with a plastic cup pressed up to a door. As I walked closer to him he dropped the cup and ran. I went to the kitchen. "Hey Zack" He was drinking really fast out of a big water bottle. Some of it was spilling on his black shirt. "Heya buddy, I broke 20 in 80, my new personal best. Gotta love the summer time." "What?" "Oh 20 miles in an hour and 20, a 4 minute average." "...." "So do you know anything about why we had to go to Camp A and Camp B?" "Ulquiorra seemed pretty on edge, everyone getting riled up like that. Maybe it's time for the old man to retire!" "What about the dark world place?" "I don't know much about that, but I tell you I sure don't know want to get to know it better if you know what I mean. Anyways bud, lactic acid builds on stiff muscles, gotta do my cool down." He then clapped me a little hard on the back, it was sort of uncomfortable, then left the room. I continued walking around looking for someone else to talk to. Rikku is on the couch watching a cartoon called the Powerpuff Girls. She is flossing on the couch? Why isn't she in the bathroom. I'll wait until she's done. I'll wait around the corner so she doesn't know I saw her doing it. After about 70 second she dropped the floss on the ground. There was a garbage can right on the table, but I guess she didn't see it.

"Hey" "Uhhh hey..." Her eyes never left the screen. "Do you know anything about the dark spirit place Christian was talking about?" "Hmmm, there was this one story Buddy used to tell us to scare us, it seems like the same thing and i don't know with all this world collide bs i wouldn't surprised if it's the same. "Do you know the story?" "I don't know ask Buddy, i'm busy." "..." Okay I wonder where Buddy is. I heard a basketball hit the basket outside. Sometimes we play basketball together. "Yo, yo, yo man 3 on 3, pussy slayers vs bitch playas." "AW SHIT" "wooof woof woof" "Which ones which?" asked Aang. "My brutha you knows yous a slaya!" on that they bumped their fists together. "I guess that means i'm with you guys" Tifa said and smiled. That means I'm on Adam's and Riku's team. I played basketball up to 21 points. My team lost. I'm good at making baskets, but not as much at passing and working with my team. "Aight, aight, how bout a smoke break and then maybe we'll give ya'll a rematch." As they all began to disperse, I walked up to Buddy. "Rikku said you could tell me a story about the dark place." "Rikku tol you that?" "Yes. The one you use to tell her." He looked both ways and then straight at me. "I don know nuthin about no story." "Okay, sorry." I guess I better ask someone else. I was getting tired. I should have done this earlier, but I see Rinoa tomorrow. I think it would be a good idea to ask Thomas. I'll see if he's in his room. *knock knock* He opened the door slow, but wide and stared at me. "Can you tell me anything about the dark place." He looked surprised and happy. Akio tells me sometimes people's facial expressions don't always show what they mean, but it's a good indicator if I'm confused. I think he wants me to come in. He was sitting in his computer chair and he had clothes folded on his bed so I don't want to sit there and get them dirty. "I find it rather odd you're the one asking me this question. Eli wasn't surprising one bit, but it's not like he'd listen if I did tell him anything." "So you don't know anything?" "Don't know anything? Yeah right. I know everything that I need to. And ultimately however this goes, there's nothing left for me to lose." "...." "I must admit it does get rather boring having to hold back such genius in my mind. Feigning ignorance on all matters that go on here just to be able to thrive. This truly is the best case scenario for me and I know i'm not alone." He was frowning now. I didn't say anything so I know he probably isn't mad at me. I've learned that most people just keep talking if you say nothing. It helps a lot because I usually have nothing to say. "Are you looking for the nitty gritty, the gory details, or simple how're you're involved?" "Rinoa wanted to me to ask people about it. She thinks we're being lied to." "HAH. Just now she thinks she's been lied to?? Foolish girl." "Rinoa is smart." "Perhaps she is, all the same it's all clouded by her ego." "....." "So rinoa wants to know about the dark world they've after all this time brought up. You have to know though, Simon wouldn't have brought it up if there wasn't some gain to him, some strategic reason for his timing. He's a puppet master, he probably knew you would be here talking to me. It's all going just to his plan.....or perhaps he thought I would kick you out and that would keep him advantageous. But he knew that i'd knew that he was planning that." I was getting pretty confused. "Who's Simon?"

He frowned at me. "He's Christian." "Okay." "That's right "Christian" has had many names, many forms. He's wormed his way into many of lives and took everything they had with them. A leech. Of course a leech needs to eat too." I had been in his room almost 15 minutes. It was probably time to talk to someone else. "The dark world, purgatory, the eternal space, the fog, every world has a different name for it. Some are ignorant, but most know that not everyone gets the "good death". It's origin is beyond me, but I know what it is now. And I know he wants to go there. He's looking for something. Or maybe he's helping someone else." "I have to go now." "Then go, i'm not keeping you if that's what you thought" Thomas sneered at me. "..." *door shuts* As I left Thomas's room, Zidane came in really quickly from the front door. He looked really skinny these days. He pulled off his knapsack and begin looking for something deep within it. I don't know why he still uses his old knapsack, a good messenger bag would look a lot nicer and be a lot less stressful on his shoulders. "OKAY DADDY'S HOME, who wants to party???" As people began pouring into the dining room, they gathered around as he poured a large bag of cocaine out onto the clean glass table top. I remembered when I went fishing the other day how when I dropped bread crumbs in little fish would swarm to all try and get the food at once. It reminded me of that. I used to do cocaine sometimes with Irvine and his friends, but Akio says that it might make my OCD and ASD worse. I didn't want to mess with it, I had already had a stressful day. That's good enough for now. I'll just go to bed and maybe in the morning someone will talk about it and I won't have to ask. I did my bedtime rituals in the normal order, brush teeth, clean face, comb hair, change out of all clothes into two pairs of fresh underwear, socks, and pajamas. It was nice tonight I could turn off the air conditioner. I rested my head on the pillow. The cocaine was making everyone rowdy and I could hear it. Great I could hear Aiden yelling from his room that was right next to mine, on the side my bed was pushed against. I've asked Garnet multiple times if he could switch rooms, but she says no one wants his room cause it smells like blood and has a bunch of holes in the walls. And I was definitely not going to switch my room, everyone was right in it, it didn't need to change. I don't want to spy on people, but last time I said I wouldn't do what Rinoa wanted she threatened to not talk to me for a month. Instead, she talked, or more so bitched, the entire month at me, never letting me have some peace and quiet. I don't want that again.

I took out my nightly form to see how I’’m doing and filled it out.

Anxiety: 8/10

Mood: 6/10

Insomnia: 2/10

OCD: 7/10

Triggers: Talking to people, missing lunch because no one would leave the kitchen, having to ask questions, shoe lace breaking and not having a replacement.

Medication issues: None

Overall: 6/10

He kept yelling, but I could hear another voice too. He often talked to himself so at least when someone else was there, it was only half yelling. I really didn’t want to do it, but I felt Rinoa demanding me why I didn’t. I didn’t like lying to her.

I remembered Harry earlier. I poured my water cup out and pressed my ear against the bottom of it. "Denny if that's the case, what do you have to lose?" "EVERYTHING. DON'T YOU GET IT!!! I've been waiting too long for you to FUCK things up." "Well I do admire your dilligence Denny, you truly never give up." "I will never give up, I will never stop until things are right." "Being when you have Jenn back?" "NO SHIT. All you are is a pawn. There is no other reason you're here." "The life of a king or the life of a pawn, really only is affected by perspective. I take my place with pride and am grateful for whatever else life I get to cherish." "I've waited long enough, i'll wait forever, but I sure as fuck don't want to." "Aside from your said goals, I am curious, did J really return from there?" "Fuck if I know. It has nothing to do with me." "There feels as if there is things you aren't telling me Denny." "WELL HOW THE FUCK DID IT GO LAST TIME I DID." "Please.....I want to help." "As long as Christian holds up his end of the deal, I won't need to use you. And he has the same goal." "I get the feeling you two are not alone in your quest. Are there others?" "Yeah but they're not important really. Just gotta an eye on them." "Even more useless than I?" "No one could be more useless than you." "Ahh how appropriate I and Lana are spending our time in this waiting room together, both readily discardable part of the larger schemes of the world. I've never felt quite so zen before." "haha maybe they should bring Liza around and see how well you two get along." "I believe they would get along splendidly. they like the same music, both androgenous yet stunningly feminine, thrill seeking." "Ur forgetting one thing, cock makes bitches crazy, look at Jenn and Yuna. They'd be the best friends in the world if Yuna hadn't sucked my dick." "And by Jenn, you mean that girl masaqurading as your girlfriend?" "Watch it fucker." "I'm only stating your sentiment seems strangely misplaced seeing Yuna is in real danger whereas "Jenn" is only what you make her to be" "I don't think anything has to happen to her, but if it does she knew what she was getting into." "Yes, but that was a long time ago. A long time before now I would have sacrificed myself for your well being, do you think things are the same now?" ".......what do you mean..? but you....just said...WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN??????!!!!!!!" "I was only teasing Denny, of course I'm here at your service, seeing of course you are the sole reason I am here. I don't think it's wise to betray our gods." "Heh yeah right, I'm your fucking god." "Indeed I am in religious awe." "heh yeah sure. So fucker whatchu got in the briefcase." "Zidane went and filled my reservoirs, I'm back in business" "Hook it up bitch." "I wouldn't have it any other way." After that they started talking quieter in a way that didn't bother me, Finally I can go to sleep.

#cheeseskittles #squall

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beerecordings · 5 years ago

Text

Poison - Chapter 4

(Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3)

This is the chapter that made me think “yeah, I would have to rate this mature on ao3.” PLEASE be careful with trigger warnings for death, gun violence, blood, convulsions, vomit mention, and major abuse.

Should be a couple more chapters after this one. Hope you enjoy :)

It's been months since Marvin saw Chase.

He remembers an absent-minded goodbye, his hand drifting across Chase's shoulder as he moved towards the kitchen for an early morning cup of coffee. Chase was too eager to wait around for further farewells. He hadn't slept all last night in his excitement to see Izzy and Hunter again, and his face was flushed red with joy, his fingers gripping at the black backpack straps around his shoulders and hugging the stuffed presents he bought them to his chest.

Marvin's fairly sure he was the only one who had a chance to say goodbye to him before he was gone. It wasn't til the next day that they realized he never made it to Stacy's.

And then, without a trace, he was gone.

Until today. Until now.

“Chase?” he whispers. “Is it you?”

The body Anti wears is skeletal, worn down to bones and slate-colored skin, so thin his fingers look almost fleshless. Blue and brown eyes sit, mismatched, in a face steadily hollowing out, somewhere between snow white and smoke grey. Chase's mouth is calm and thin, his tired gaze nevertheless watchful, a gun clutched stiffly, painfully, in his hand.

He meets Marvin's eyes for just a moment, and then, with steady, ferocious, murderer's hands, Cottonmouth takes her shot at the monster coming down the stairs.

Her aim is perfect. She does not shake. She does not hesitate.

The bullet never hits.

Anti vanishes and reappears in a flicker of an eighth-second, closer to her now, and she takes a couple steps back, shocked, stunned, but not as shocked as Marvin.

He is in the break between his convulsions, but now it is the sight of him that freezes him to aching, petrified stone. It takes him a long time to open that bloodied mouth, to breathe through his swollen throat, and to choke out, like the prayer of a dying man, the only two words left in the world that matters in the slightest.

“Chase! Chase! Chase, amata!”

“What the fuck are you?” shrieks Cottonmouth, aiming the gun again. She shoots and Chase's body is gone again, vanishing in a spasm of red and green and blue and yellow light, exploding back into existence on the other side of the room, with colors falling off him like stray coding.

“I am a great many things,” says his mouth. He turns an empty gaze to Marvin.

“Chase?” whispers his aching, struggling throat. “Carissima?”

“Oh, Carissima,” repeats his savior flatly. “Look, listen, he still loves me.”

A giggle echoes around Marvin's head and he shivers, staring at the man, who does not move, does not smile, only stares, the gun held loose in his hands.

“Silly cat,” Chase continues, tilting his head at him. His face has all the emotion of a beach full of clean sand, like the water has withdrawn, and the rocks were carried away, and nothing hides beneath its surface.

“Is it really you?” chokes Marvin. Hot tears spill down his face. “Or is it Anti?”

His black baseball cap is tugged down low, mussing the exhausted yellow fringe at the end of his stiff curls. His eyes are empty – no color, no pupil, like cataracts have swallowed his irises whole. Heavy white strings dangle from the sleeves of his filthy winter coat, tight enough that his fingers are faintly blue, and struggle to clutch the gun properly.

“I'm not anyone,” he replies, in a voice like a wind dying down. “I'm not anything anymore.”

He wipes a little of Killian's blood off his over-sized camo-green jacket and moves forward, staring Cottonmouth's gun in the face.

“Who the hell are you?” she snarls. “You're nothing like fucking Blue Mask.”

“'Who the hell are you?'” repeats Chase's mouth, taunting, his voice high-pitched and erratic. Marvin whimpers, recoiling from a sound distinctly Antiseptic. “Look, a little girl with a coke addiction and no baby daddy to kiss her good night. You think cat's blood is going to make you feel any better, child?”

“Shut the fuck up!” she screams, and the blast of her gun explodes through the prison room once again, only for Anti to disappear and re-appear, the bandages wrapped around his throat beginning to soak red, a wide smile on Chase's face.

“How did you know that? How are you doing that? I'll fucking kill you!”

“Oh, Marianne! I know everything about you! You think you just get to scoop my big brother off the streets and feed him goddamn rodent killer without having to worry about me? No, no, no, little girl. Blue Mask should never have scared you. No one you've ever bought snow off of or hired as a thug or paid to hide your enemies' bodies should have ever scared you. Not compared to me.”

“Twink-ass bitch boys with power complexes don't scare me.”

Her voice is the hiss of a snake on the defense, but still she makes herself laugh, finding her smile again, her eyes wildly lit, her long hair disarrayed in sweaty curls around her face.

“Okay,” says Anti flatly. “Now that was just rude.”

She aims that gun again – futile, desperate, snarling, laughing. “I'm going to bite the meat off your fingers and cook the bones into acid.”

“All talk, child. All fucking talk.”

“Fine, then,” answers Cottonmouth, drawing from her inside coat pocket a long silver machete, fat and gleaming. Her eyes meet Anti's in the glow of a shared and entirely insane light. “No more chatting.”

She cuts forward knife swinging.

Anti shrieks with joy and vanishes, appearing beside her and yanking a blade out of thin air, meeting her blow as she turns. He brings the gun up and it is Cottonmouth's turn to disappear, leaping aside before the bullet can tear her apart and striking like a viper at his head. Anti ducks the blow and lashes out at her legs, knocking her backwards and leaping up to pounce on her, only to catch a heavy slash on his arm. He lets out a short cry, so much like Chase's voice that it makes Marvin gasp, and stumbles back a little, laughing as blood soaks through his split jacket. Cottonmouth leaps back to her feet and then –

A gunshot.

She screams, a short burst of agony from her lip-sticked mouth. Marvin stares in horror at her shattered knee, the bone destroyed by Chase's perfect aim and Anti's perfect hatred. She crumples, Anti surges forward, he has her by the hair, shoving away the machete and the gun, and then –

“Anti, don't kill her, don't kill her!”

Anti points the gun at her head.

“Little girls shouldn't play with things that belong to me.”

To her credit, the Cottonmouth never screams, never cries out, barely even trembles. Looking her death in the face, she turns her eyes up to Marvin.

Faintly, on her mouth, a smile.

Hatred in wild eyes.

Marvin's ears ring from the closeness of the gunshot and Marianne's body crumples at his feet.

For a long time, he just lies limp in his chains, eyes closed, tears slipping down his face.

And Anti waits.

Anti waits for him to look up again.

Marvin seizes once, twice. There is, by now, perhaps a minute between each convulsion. He had never known that exhaustion can hurt this badly.

“This,” he whispers finally, with a mouth that drips blood. “Is horrible.”

“Yeah,” sighs Anti, swiping blood from his cheeks and stepping forward, that white-ocean blankness burning like static hell in his eyes. “Really not your best day, old friend.”

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

“No, no,” mumbles Jackie. “This isn't right.”

His eyes roam the walls for hints to tell him he's dreaming or dead. The cold slatted wood of the apartment stares back at him without feeling. It has nothing to hide, and nothing to tell.

“This isn't right,” he repeats.

Soft, stained carpet presses up against his boots. Toothpaste mint smell and a faint fume of blood wafts through his nose. Computers buzz softly beside the wounded old mattress puffing out fatly with cotton and wire.

“This can't be where Anti's been keeping him. It's too...”

“Jackie.”

Max's hand comes to sit on his shoulder. Jackie reaches up to clutch it, not sure why he can't seem to focus all of a sudden. Not sure why there are tears in his eyes.

“It's too normal,” he croaks. “Max, your intel must be wrong. This isn't where Anti and Chase have been living.”

“My best guys tracked him back here. Saw where he was in that picture, guessed at a couple places he might have come from, called in at a couple residencies asking after him. Owner here recognized the description, gave us a room number, and then we checked the security footage. This is where Chase was this morning, Jackie, and he's the only one the apartment owner is aware of who lives here. He's been here for months. Anti's just hidden him well.”

Jackie breathes hot, hissing air through his teeth and stalks forward to begin tearing up the apartment again, drawing a low sigh from a worried Max. Yanking open blank cabinets of the cramped, empty brown kitchen area and scrabbling at the corners of shitty carpet flooring, Jackie searches for any sign of the things he expected – Chase's hair, maybe, bloodied clumps of it in the bathroom, confirming that he has been thrown around and forced through whatever torments might take Anti's interest at the time, but there is nothing but quiet beard trimmings scattered around the sink.

Or chains, maybe! Why are there no chains? No rope to bind his little brother up like a dog, trapping him in this single-room apartment, leaving him to dangle by his wrists or be shoved into the closet all day, cramped and aching? Where are the muzzles, the ropes, the torture weapons and car batteries? Why is there nothing but a couple old bracelets Jackie knows Chase was wearing the day he lost him, set gently down on the windowsill?

Or there should be – oh, Jackie doesn't know – powerful sedatives or opioids to keep Chase docile and weak, maybe, scattered around the drawers to be used when his poor little brother resisted too much or too long, but there is nothing Jackie recognizes except a box of cheap band-aids and a finished bottle of Chase's Cymbalta still sitting sadly on the counter.

Jackie picks up the bottle in his hand. It feels like a tiny little doll or something pressed between his palm like this. He got him this prescription with some forged documents and a couple pushes to see him off to a therapist, and he remembers Chase telling him he liked the symbolism of it more than anything else – putting the tiny pill on his tongue every morning like a promise: “Another day and I'm still trying. Another day and I still refuse to let this kill me. Another day and I'll keep taking my medicine, and this will never beat me.”

A promise. A promise. His little brother, a fighter.

“Why wouldn't Anti throw this away?” Jackie whispers, rotating the bottle in his hand. “Why does Anti still have so many of his things? Why is there no sign of the struggle? I know he must be struggling. I know. Max, something's wrong.”

That warm, sturdy hand returns to his shoulder. “Jackie,” he says. “Look at these, shoved beneath the mattress.”

In Max's hand, there is a tiny lime-green journal and two stained, squished, sorrowful little stuffed animals.

“Oh, oh,” cries Jackie, taking them from him and holding them in his hands. “Presents for Hunt and Izzy. He was going to see them.”

A once perfectly rotund, chunky seal plushie has been flattened into a weary little pancake. The little purple dragon is no better off, its long neck askew and its pink ribbon of a tongue flopping out of its smiling mouth.

“Maybe Anti used them to upset Chase,” suggests Max.

Jackie tears open the journal, desperate for an explanation, stepping in circles around the room as he devours snippets of page after page, flickering through as fast as he can.

“Jack's name is all over, too,” Max points out, scanning the ceiling and the walls of the room. “Just in marker, sometimes, but sometimes scratched in. I think you were right, he's been looking for him all along. But he never found him.”

Jackie can't even hear him over the rushing of his blood pumping rapid through his head.

“Max,” he chokes. “Max.”

“Yeah?”

Jackie's shaking hands can barely hold the journal.

I didn't know it would fucking hurt! Stupid fucking boy! I can't extricate myself anymore! I think this is a fucking curse, I think the Cat must have warded this body, or maybe I rushed in too fast, but I can feel myself changing and I don't know what to do! What is happening to me? What is happening? I can't hear Chase resisting anymore, I just feel repulsed by my own presence, and I can't stop thinking about the things that Chase loved.

He tears to another section.

My mind is being devoured. I was Anti yesterday and Chase before that but I can't remember who I am today. I think they used to want different things but now I can't think at all and I don't know my name. I can't tell why the body is suffering but I can see my skin getting so white. I want to eat but the last time I tried I expelled everything within the hour and the vomit burned at me and the body fainted and brought my mind down too. Being unconscious confuses me for reasons I can't understand and I do not sleep. I think that is why the body grows so heavy. So heavy. So heavy. I want to be torn apart.

Max is trying to take it from him, calling his name, but Jackie can't be pulled away.

Where are my brothers? Where's Jack? I don't know why I want them. I killed a girl today and it made the body start to cry and laugh at the same time. I started to hurt, like the brain was insisting there was a wound or a sickness, but I cleaned my flesh for hours and couldn't find an injury. I think I'm dying and I'm afraid. I woke up crying for the doctor today but nobody came and I think if he had been there I would have slit his fucking throat open stupid doctor boy stupid body let me go I can't get free anymore I don't know who I am or what's happening I think I am going to die and I am afraid –

Jackie's ringtone explodes into the air, finally yanking him from his reverie, and he drops the book, gasping.

“Jackie! Are you okay?”

Setting a hand on Max's shoulder to reassure him – despite an internal panic as wide as the Nile – Jackie yanks his phone out of his pocket and tries not to be afraid by the contact name “ZE GOOD DOCTAH” lighting up his screen.

“Schneep! What's wrong? Is Marvin still – ”

“Jackie,” croaks Henrik, and Jackie stiffens hard, digging his nails into Max's shoulder.

“Okay. Okay. Whatever's wrong, it's going to be okay.”

“Jackie – Jackie – ”

“I know, bud, I know, just tell me.”

“Come home,” Henrik demands, a gasp in his voice. “Come home now. Bring a car.”

This tone of voice does not take further questions. Jackie closes his phone and sprints from the apartment where Anti has kept his brother prisoner within his own flesh for months now, skipping the elevator and charging down the stairs.

“Follow me in the car,” he shouts to Max, and then he is racing onto the pavement and slinging his body onto Chase's old bike, pulling on his helmet and shoving the keys into the ignition.

Traffic laws and the police car following behind him be damned, he's getting home faster than anybody has ever raced down these streets.

And the only thought in his head for the whole seven minutes and forty-three second drive?

Henrik just saw Marvin die. Henrik must have just seen Marvin die. Henrik was watching. Henrik, his sentry. Henrik just saw Marvin die.

But nothing is as he expected it when he reaches home.

He lets the motorcycle tumble onto the pavement, racing into the house.

“Jackie?” calls Henrik, and Jackie is darting down the hall towards his voice, tearing open Marvin's door and coming to stand at the end of the bed, his footsteps slowing, slowing, freezing as he stares.

Star-silver light makes halos in Jameson's eyes.

“Schneep,” whispers Jackie. “What's – ?”

“He woke some sort of power up,” Henrik replies, in a hush like a twilight.

That much Jackie can see. He remembers the first night he saw his first little brother wake him up with eyes glowing like lanterns, crying about a power he didn't know how to control. Yes, he has known the blue light in Marvin's eyes a hundred times over, and felt power make stiff and heavy the air around them, just as it does now. Jackie steps closer, standing before JJ, keeping him safe in his shadow.

“He says he can see where Marvin is. Can see the path he took last night and the possibilities that are before him now. We need to go where he tells us.”

A soft and shuddering breath passes between Jameson's teeth, his eyes fluttering shut. Henrik is holding him up, his arms hugging his shoulders, his hand squeezed in JJ's so tightly it will soon be blue.

Jackie crouches down beside the bed and takes Jameson's other hand, reaching up to touch his face, coaxing the light in his eyes to turn back towards him. James looks down at him, trying to straighten up at the sight of Jackie, pressing his fingers into the strong bones of his brother's white hands.

“Doing okay, Jay?” murmurs Jackie.

Jameson nods.

“Does it hurt, buddy?”

“No,” he shakes his head, pressing on Jackie's hands as he tries to rise. Henrik helps him get up, but the hand crushing his own has begun to be as much for his own comfort as it is for JJ's.

“Jameson,” says Jackie. “Can you take me to Marv?”

Jameson finds his footing and straightens up with Jackie, tilting up his chin. His eyes glow. He's always shone like a star to Jackie anyway.

“Yes, Jackie,” he says. “I promise.”

He cuts through the overwhelming world and Jackie's tired face rises into a smile. He knocks his head against JJ's and gives a strand of his hair a teasing yank, pushing him towards the door.

“Go get your shoes on! Max will take us in the car. Schneep, let me get a look at the livestream so I know what we're dealing with and then let's get the hell out of here! We got thirty minutes and a brother to find!”

He whirls eagerly on Henrik, but his brother is unmoving, staring down at the carpet.

“Schneep?”

Henrik bobs his head in a nod.

“What's wrong? Can I... did we lose the livestream?”

“Um.” Henrik wipes at his glasses, sniffing. “It was... cut off.”

“What? Why would she do that?”

“It wasn't her.”

“What do you mean?”

Henrik continues cleaning his glasses, never looking up.

“Schneep. Henrik. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Someone found him first, Jackie.”

“What? Who?”

“Who do you fucking think?”

Suddenly Henrik is shouting and Jackie flinches, reaching forward to grab his hands before he can crush his glasses.

“Who do you fucking think? Who’s always fucking haunting us? Stalking my family from a shadow that never dies away with the sun, hunting us like foxes!“

His voice breaks. Jackie takes his glasses from him and grabs his chin, forcing him to look up.

And if Jameson's eyes shine with power, well, Henrik's bubble up with deep blue grief, a bitterness twisted on his mouth and terror shaking earthquakes into his steady doctor's hands.

“He’s wearing Chase,” Henrik sobs. “Jackie, Jackie, you have to make him stop, he’s wearing Chase. If you had seen him - if you had seen him - oh, Jackie, he is like a dead man already.”

Jackie barely hears him. He is already stepping from the room, unable to breathe, his mind fixed on his tortured, stolen, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned little brothers, waiting on him to save them.

He doesn’t intend to fail.

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

“Anti?” asks Marvin. “Are you going to kill me?”

His rescuer stares back at him. Dazed, exhausted, hurting, Marvin does his best to look back.

“Anti,” he says, again, louder now. “Are you going to kill me? What, you don’t have an answer? Anti, what have you done to yourself?”

Anti has none of his usual wild glee, none of his intensity. He stands before Marvin with his body slack and his eyes slightly glazed, those strung up fingers twitching, that grey face hollow as a lightning-struck tree.

“Anti,” repeats his rescuer distantly. “Anti?”

“Yes,” snaps Marvin, baring his teeth. “That's your fucking name, isn't it? Or what, you really are some fucked-up, puppet version of my little brother? Huh? My little heart? Tell me honest this time, you horrible little virus – Chase or Anti?”

At this, a flicker of confusion betrays his apathy, and he purses his lips, reaching up to play absent-mindedly with a string of Marvin's hair, curling it around his finger. Marvin recoils, wheezing.

“Chase or Anti?” he repeats, cocking his head at him. “Chase or Anti? I think maybe there was a difference once.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” chokes Marvin, trying to breathe through his fear. Tears are running down his face so fast he'd be blinded even if he could make his stiff eyes move. “What have you done to my little brother?”

Anti – Marvin has to think of him as Anti, he cannot believe it is Chase – hums distantly and drums his fingers along the barrel of the gun, considering. “Don't worry for us,” he says, in a voice felt-soft. “It was frightening at first, but now there's just us. Now there's just us, and you.”

Marvin spits at his feet, feeling the convulsions beginning again, and fear comes pounding through his head. “You've worn his body so long you've forgotten you're not him,” he shrieks, as his shoulders begin to tug him up, and his jaw begins to chew, and his arms, like sticks, refuse to support him. “You're just a fucking parasite, puppeting his body because you don't have your own – ”

Anti slaps him so hard he bites his tongue clean through, and then he is seizing. He chokes desperately, trying to scream, his eyes suspended motionless in his skull, his face turning blue, and Anti resumes his patient speech while Marvin writhes.

“Try not to be so rude,” he snips, shoving greasy hair which has lost all of its curl out of his mismatched eyes. “I have feelings, you know! Anyway, I was just stalking you.”

He leans down to push Cottonmouth's body away from Marvin's feet, the better to watch him spasm. “I was bored. I've been hearing about people looking for you and the other... um...”

He pauses, confused. Blood courses down Marvin's chin.

“Jackie,” he remembers, clapping his hands together, a moment of distress flickering over his face. “Lately I think so much at once it's like I can't think at all... you and Jackie, anyway, people have been looking for you. Something about revenge and murder and true crime, I guess, it was all pretty cool. Some people started watching you, I started watching them – and then, what do you know! I wake up one morning and pick up on this magnificent broadcast.”

Marvin can't breathe. Marvin is dying. He can't take any more of this.

“Ch-ay-ay-ase,” he sobs, as the relaxation finally fucking comes back. “Chase, help me, h-help me...”

Anti's eyes flicker.

He stills, watching him, his mouth slightly parted.

“Chase, Chase,” moans Marvin, well past caring what Anti thinks. “Amata, adiuva me, it hurts, it hurts! S-stella amata, little brother...”

“Marvin,” mumbles Anti – no, Chase, Marvin has to think of him as Chase, Marvin cannot think of him as Anti, not when he says his name so gently, not when his eyes are ringed so deeply in exhausted grey, and the soft pads of his bloodied fingers come up, slow, to touch Marvin's shattered cheek –

“It's going to be okay,” he soothes, and Marvin dissolves into tears, spasming in his chains, choking through his swollen throat. “Aren't you so grateful little brother saved you?”

“Let me down, let me down,” begs Marvin. “Please, I can't take any more of this, just let me down to die.”

“Now where would the fun be in that?” answers Chase, his voice suddenly cold, his eyes very dark.

“Why is this happening, what has he done to you...”

“You're really dying, aren't you? This is so strange, I feel... shaky... I thought this one was excitement, but maybe it is distress... it's so difficult for me to sort them...”

Marvin stares at him, unable to move his stiff eyes away and trying hard to keep his gaze focused on him, on something, on anything. “You're... you're crying.”

He is. He stands quiet before Marvin, his hands shoved in his hoodie pockets, his calm mouth slightly parted, one eye brown, one eye blue, both glittering with tears.

“We cry often,” he says softly. “I used to try and make us stop... then I began to cry too. It was so scary. I had never cried before. Now we cry often, because I... I can't... I... Marvin...”

His eyes drift away with his words. Tears drizzle down his face, turning red as they meet Cottonmouth's blood, sprayed across his chin and mouth.

“I think I'm losing great parts of myself,” he mumbles thickly. “I think I am killing great parts of myself. I can't remember who I was before this. I just wanted... a body? Or was it to go see my children? My babies...”

“Stop, stop,” Marvin chokes, quivering in his chains, his mouth full of hatred and bile and love all together. “Stop pretending to be him! Fuck you. Let me die, Anti!”

Anti – Chase – he closes his eyes and breathes in deep, shaking his head slightly. “I lose focus so easily. We were talking. I was here to see you die. Did she tell you three hours? Nah, you've got more than that, dude. Look, this strychnine concentration is so low I'm surprised it turns the gophers into corpses. Besides, if you were really dying, you wouldn't be chatting, now would you?”

Marvin is beginning to miss the silent and staring version of Anti.

“You're being such a baby. Depending how hard you fight, you could make it another forty, fifty minutes? I mean, probably your little organs in your tummy are pretty fucked up, but you're still a little while away from dropping absolutely dead. Right? I think I read that. I'm doing my research right now and the internet's shitty down here in the basement. But the others are on their way, so we shouldn't wait.”

“The others?” gasps Marvin.

“Well, I think,” answers his little brother, glancing around the room, his eyes settling on the green bottle of gopher poison, standing up beside Cottonmouth's drink on the table. “Don't know for certain, but knowing our brothers, yeah, dude, they'll be here soon enough.”

He reaches out for the gopher poison – and then pauses, and takes the tea instead. Marvin watches through confused, blurry eyes as his tongue darts out to taste the droplets on the opening of the lid. He gives a small chirp of satisfaction and then throws the whole cup back, his throat working eagerly to quench its thirst. Turning to the almonds and tearing open the bag with long-nailed fingers and lighted eyes, Marvin is reminded of some sort of feverish raccoon tearing through the alleyway trash at two in the morning. He shoves a couple in his mouth and hums as he licks salt off his hands, pushing the bag into his backpack and then zipping it up tight again.

“I've remembered what I came for,” he announces, clapping his hands together. “Or I think so anyway! I want – okay, firstly – an answer to the deal I offered the big red one.”

“You're losing your fucking mind,” chokes Marvin. “What deal?”

“Well, I gave it to Red, or I think it was me, anyway. I offered a deal. I said I would give him back this body in exchange for one thing – Jack's location.”

For all that his mind is scrambled, split somewhere between Anti and Chase, that name has never disappeared. That obsession has never disappeared. Jack's location. Jack's coma. Jack, Chase's friend, Jack, Anti's creator, the one that damned him from the start.

Marvin didn't know that Anti offered Jackie anything in exchange for Chase. But it doesn't for a second matter to him. He trusts Jackie. He's always trusted Jackie. With his life, with Chase's, with Jack's. And he knows, immediately, the answer that Jackie would give.

“The reason you never got a reply is because he would never dignify that sort of bullshit with a response.”

Marvin's head is spinning. If this is the last of his strength, he's proud to use it defending his friend.

“You will never find Jack. You will never use Chase as currency for anything. You are falling apart, Anti, splicing yourself into Chase's brain just for one desperate moment of feeling like a body belongs to you. You've forgotten who you are. But don't worry, little brother. Some day Jackie's going to remind you of exactly what you are – a sick, twisted, hateful little murderer who chose to live in agony a long fucking time ago.”

Anti screams and strikes Marvin again, and, oh, yes, no more games, Marvin knows that it is Anti's fury that drives a blow like that, no matter how much he looks like Chase, no matter how deeply he has seeped into his little brother's head. Marvin knows what poison feels like.

“I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!” Anti is shrieking, tears flooding down his face, red, now, with hatred and despair, but it no longer matters to Marvin. He can barely feel the blows. Everything has dissipated into this far away agony, buzzing at the tips of his fingers, and he's afraid, but only because he's thinking of Jackie, and Henrik, and JJ, and his tortured, tortured Chase. Oh, but they'll have to grieve for him. They'll have to find him like this. They'll have to bury his body.

He never meant to leave them with this burden. He never meant to leave them at all.

Goodbye, my brothers, I hope you know I loved you, better than anything, better than I knew it was possible to love anything or anyone. I hope to see you again one day, in a place where the sun always shines and we are all of us safe... I hope I get the chance to hold you then, one more time and then a thousand more. I love you, I love you. Goodbye.

Something slams into Anti, halfway tackling him away from Marvin, a furious, airy little snarl accompanying Anti's shout of surprise. Marvin no longer has the strength to look up. His delirium is so hot now that he can't seem to put a coherent sentence together even in his head – apologies and final words and cries of pain whirl through his brain like somebody broke a washing machine and can't get it to stop spinning.

Faintly, he makes out a fight close at hand – Jameson pressing Anti to the ground, the gun kicked meters away and the machete pinned down to the cold concrete floor. Jameson hisses and shoves his long silver knife to the bandages at Anti's throat, drawing a stain of blood from his Adam's apple. His body spasms impossibly as he tries to glitch, but Jamie just whistles a shrill warning and presses the knife in tighter, making Anti choke and still. If he weren't wearing Chase, he would be dead already. Jameson's teeth are bared in a wild snarl and his eyes shine like stars.

To Marvin, all he is is a blur of silver light. He can taste his little brother's power in the air, but his brain doesn't connect it to JJ himself, and he shivers and turns his face away, afraid to be burned by the light.

“Marvin, Marvin, here I am, here I am. Oh, my brother. It's done, Marvin, it's done. I'm right here. I got you, I got you. Jackie, help me get him down.”

“I'm coming. Jay, keep him pinned,” calls a stronger voice yet. “Max, is there an ambulance coming?”

“I can't get any signal down here. I'll go radio for them upstairs.”

“Okay, okay. Here, bud, I got you, I got you.”

Arms wrap around Marvin's body, and he lets out a short, frightened cry – but then his chained hands are lifted up and oh, mercy of mercies, he is taken down from the hook that holds his straining body up.

Warm arms encircle him and carry him to the ground, cradling his head. He can almost breathe deep again! He can almost move! Maybe if he weren't so tired. All he can do is draw shallow, weary breaths through lips blood-stained and dry. He feels horribly swollen, like he is already a dead thing, and the stiffness is so painful he can no longer describe it in a meaningful way – he is wooden now, trapped within his own bones, aching to be free, motionless, it feels, for days and days and days.

And then – his cards!

A small cry of joy rises from his aching lips and someone gives a shaky, relieved little laugh as he clutches at the pack of cards pressed against his chest. Energy rushes through him – oh, almost painful, too much all at once. He sits back and tries to breathe through it, his fingers searching for the warm, healing magic of his hearts. Now that the cards have freed his magic, he hopes for a little relief before he dies after all. Maybe even some purification. He doesn't want his body to be so tortured for his brothers to find.

A cool, needle-less plastic syringe touches his lips, but he does his best to push it away with trembling fingers, trying to smile an apology at his captors. He can't drink with his throat so swollen. He's scared to choke. Don't make him. Let him go, please. He's ready for this to be over. A deep sigh falls from his aching mouth and he sinks back in the arms of the person holding him.

“Marvin, you have to take it.”

The syringe is back on his mouth. He groans, shifting wearily.

“Marvin. Marvin, hey! I need you to focus, please, you have to work with me. Jackie, pass me my – yes, thank you.”

A cold circle of metal touches Marvin's breast and he grumbles, hurting, trying to press back against the hands that hold it down to listen to his heartbeat.

“Is he going to be okay, Schneep?”

There's no answer. The cold metal moves down his chest. Someone's breathing has picked up above him.

“Schneep?”

“I – I don't know, I – ”

“What do you mean you don't know? We found him before three hours were up. That's enough! That has to be enough! Cottonmouth said he had three hours, it's only been two hours, forty-four minutes and – ”

“Give him the relaxant. Just – give him the relaxant.”

The syringe returns to his mouth. Marvin hisses, anguish mixing up with his pain. Leave him alone to die! Please! Why are they so insistent on him drinking it, anyway?

He cracks his eyes open and sees that it is not water that is being offered him. Dark and ichorous, it swirls before his mouth.

Someone shoves the syringe deep into the back of his throat and begins to push the liquid in.

“No!” he shrieks, trying to shove it out of his mouth. “No, no, no more poison!”

“It's not poison! Marv, stop!”

He is pinned to the ground by an earthquake's worth of pressure, making his spasming muscles burn with pain. Everything is bright, everything is loud, everything is painful, and he is not taking any more fucking poison. He's not fucking drinking that. They'll have to kill him before he takes any more of this shit. His hands tighten around the cards laid on his chest, something waking up inside him. Power warm as getting back into bed crashes through his stomach like a purifier, but it won't matter if his magic is trying to save him if someone is just shoving more fucking poison in his mouth! No!

He drops the Jack of Hearts and clutches at a Club. He doesn't need to look at it – he can feel the harsh burn of angrier magic. His eyes flicker open and his teeth snap around the syringe.

Henrik barely has time to register the bright blue glow in his brother's eyes before something explodes in his face.

Jackie lets out a scream in his stead as Henrik recoils from Marvin's side so hard he goes crashing to the ground, gripping at his face, unable to stop a ragged gasp falling from his mouth as hot, hot, hot iron magic burns into his cheek. Jackie is grabbing at him, trying to get a look at the burn, but Henrik can only clutch at his face, shocked tears coursing down his cheeks as the Six of Clubs burns, burns, burns deeper and deeper into his flesh.

“Max!” Jackie is shouting, looking up the stairs. “Where's the fucking ambulance? Marvin, stop!”

But Marvin is not listening.

He can feel nothing now but poison.

Throughout him. Filling up his blood. Without him. Spilled across the floor. Around him. He can feel a darkness. He can even feel somebody else's poison.

Underneath Jameson's hands, a being of pure poison.

Chase's heart beats weakly beneath his starving ribs, his face hollowed out with hunger and stress, his skin slicked in somebody else's blood and his face contorted in hatred.

“Amata,” croaks Marvin. “Chase...”

His whole body is shadowed by a heavy black poison.

And he cannot escape it alone.

How can he die knowing his little brother is in that much pain!

“P-purity,” he mumbles, pulling the King of Hearts from his deck with shaking fingers. A blue glow ignites in Marvin's eyes, to match the fervent silver of his little brother's across the room. “A spell for... a spell for purity...”

“No, no!” someone cries. “You don't have the strength! Please, no spells! You will die!”

Arms wrap around him, holding him tight despite the heat burning against his flesh, and he hears someone breathing close to him – crying close to him. Oh, Henrik's familiar hands, clutching at his shoulders, Henrik's head pressed against his own, his little brother hiding against his shoulder, whimpering for him to stop...

“Please, please.”

He's so tired. He's so tired of being scared all the time. He needs to have a happy ending for once.

The glow cools in magnificent eyes. Marvin pants, clutching at Henrik's hands, dazed. Hurting, hurting, hurting.

“Henrik,” he tries to say, but he cannot get his mouth to move. His swollen throat wheezes desperately. His heart races like a horse. “Henrik, this hurts.”

“Sh, sh, don't try to talk. I've got you, I know. I know. Let me make it better. Please, let me do it, Marvin, Marvin. Don't let me lose my big brother. Just trust me. Just put the card down.”

Marvin is sinking down against him, the energy draining out of him.

“Let me handle it, let me take care of you, it's me... the good doctor... or I'm trying to be... don't you trust me, Marvin? Don't you still believe in me?”

Ah, his Henrik. His brother.

Marvin drops his cards. One remains hovering in the air, the King of Hearts glowing with the power he summoned, but he stops trying to use it. He will let Henrik do the purifying for him – his little brother is right that he does not have the strength to be casting spells for his own healing or for Chase's. He has to trust his little scientist.

Henrik lets out a low, croaking cry of relief, holding onto Marvin's shoulders. Jackie crashes into the two of them, wrapping them both in his arms again. For a second, Marvin manages to turn his head towards them, smiling faintly, his eyes fogged over.

“Sh, sh, there you go. I’m not going to let you die, Marvin. I’m not going to let you die.”

Marvin lies still against his body as Henrik presses the syringe back into his mouth. He massages the relaxant down Marvin's aching throat, whispering assurances as Marvin sinks into silent tears against his shoulder, his face drifting as he slips towards sleep. Henrik spoons a mouthful of black medicine into his mouth. Jackie strokes his hair.

He's so filthy and so ugly and in so much pain, but they still hold onto him.

He wants to talk to them so badly. He doesn't even have the strength to move – no, no, wait! If he really focuses – if he really, really focuses – he can squeeze Jackie's hand.

He can push his head, just a little, against Henrik's.

He can look over at Chase and Jameson. See their faces again.

He was scared to die without seeing them again, but now he thinks he'd be ready to go. Yeah, he’d be ready. Doesn't know how his body would survive this much pain, anyway. Doesn’t know his heart could ever take this much hurt. He just needed to see them one more time.

“Love.” His mouth is trying so hard. His throat is fighting a war. His lips part like the waters of the Red Sea, but the word is a mangled mess on his mouth. “Love.”

And Jackie, Jackie, Jackie who has always understood him, from the day that he was born, back when he did not even understand himself – Jackie whispers, “Love you too.”

Marvin drifts beneath the warmth of unconsciousness.

#marvin the magnificent #chase brody #antisepticeye #writersofjack #jackieboyman #death tw #violence tw #blood tw #gun tw #bee writes #poison

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angrylizardjacket · 5 years ago

Text

Run to Paradise {Nikki Sixx} Part 25

25. you can rely on me (i will always let you down)

Summary: Razzle and Lola talk about Lola’s past. Lola gets drugged and not in the fun way. Nikki and Lola have a heart to heart.

Warnings: drugging (ketamine), swearing, homophobic slur (d)

ragtag bunch of misfits: @starlalove @toofasttofallinlove @xrosegoldwolfx @obsessivesky @trpwthme @lovehelpmewrite @angelicjoonie23 @marvelismylifffe @lilytalebi @glitterdreamsz @freddiessmallnipples @crazysaladchopshop @inthebackofmycarlaytheirbodies @dramatique-moi @missqueeniewrites @calspixie @aryssav @catsoo12 @sweetshutter @silvertonguedserpent @shamelessobsessions @lavenderbones22 @keepcalm-and-beyou @scarecrowmax @nicholeh7 @unknownoblivion @sighsophiia

{masterlist}

Lola's never bothered much with Hanoi Rocks, despite the fact that they'd been opening for Motley this past tour; she liked them well enough, though she was almost certain she could probably snap Razzle in half if she wanted to. She was also half-convinced he'd enjoy it.

But the point is, she doesn't fuck with Hanoi Rocks, or fuck Hanoi Rocks. Much. A little bit. Not enough to be noteworthy; Lola fucks everyone, it's not like one band, or a few members of one band, were anything to write home about.

And maybe she doesn't fuck with them because Vince is the one who spends a the most time with them, and Vince has Sharise now, and Tommy's been sort of clingy since everything happened with Roxie, not that Lola was complaining. She'd never complain; she's exactly where she wants to be, because when she's not wrapped up in Tommy, she's got Nikki with her. Nikki himself is not used to her having another favourite so openly, so honestly, he's not used to feeling like second best. They're all unhealthy, quietly obsessed with each other, and almost toxically insular.

Razzle's learned not to ask, he just enjoys Lola's company when he gets it; she pretends not to play favourites with her boys, but is under no such illusion regarding other bands. Despite this, he thinks she's rather funny, surprisingly hard working, and charming when she wants to be. It's easy to see how she'd endeared herself to all of them.

"How'd you get your start with them?" Razzle asks, smile bright and genuinely curious, sitting on the edge of the stage, watching Lola set up with the rest of the roadies. She's on her stomach, reaching under the drum risers for a lead that's almost out of reach, and pauses, turning to face the Drummer. Expression amused, she rested her chin on the stage and hummed for a moment.

"Forgot people don't know that anymore," she mused.

"Anymore?"

She pauses before turning her head back to the drum risers. Swiftly, she pulls the cord through and connects it to the one in her other hand before shoving back under. Razzle still watches, fascinated a little by her diligence; his first impressions of her had been so off base.

"So before I was 'Motley Crue's sort-of-manager-and-girlfriend'" she stood, making her way over to him, and he tried out some excuse, tried to play it off like that wasn't his immediate reaction to her, to the gossip that had been surrounding her. Instead of being irritated or angry, she smiled; "I had made quite a name for myself in LA - both for reputable reasons and... not so reputable reasons." Sitting beside him, she leaned back on her hands, looking at him. "You know The Skyhooks, right?"

"Of course, love, whadd'ya take me for?" He snorted, and Lola's smile turned a little proud.

"You know Bondage on the Boulevarde?" She asked. Razzle nodded, and Lola just pointed to herself. After a beat, Razzle almost launched himself off the front of the stage he was laughing so hard.

"You're joking, you're bloody well joking!" Amusement sparkled in his eyes, and Lola shook her head, mirroring his smile with one of her own.

"Nope; they make a note of me looking for rope because I refused to be tied up with a microphone cord." She explained, half laughing, and Razzle raised his eyebrows at her. "I was a roadie before I was anything else."

"You roadied for the Skyhooks back in -?" and he tried to calculate, but Lola beat him to it.

"Well actually, I followed them after their gig at the Starwood back in 'seventy-seven, I think? I had actually been working for another band that night," she shifted a little, gaze drifting up as she tried to recall the memory, "I was fully intending to rob them blind - band stuff was expensive and it was easier for me to get that shit, uh, "for cheap" than it was Nikki," she explained, but shrugged, "but I got caught and they were fucked up and they thought I was just another friskey groupie; what was I gonna do, correct them?"

"A roadie and a thief, Miss Gone -"

"Hey!" Lola protests, faux offended, before breaking out into a cheeky smile, "Roadie, thief, and whore; I'm a triple threat, Mister Dingley." She pokes at his chest, before smiling out at the empty audience, sitting on her hands.

"Threat's definitely the word for it," Razzle snickered, giving her bicep a quick squeeze, though there was nothing malicious in his tone. After a moment, he pets the inked on hair of her mermaid tattoo in a fond gesture that he's not sure she'd even noticed. "So you've known them a while? Roadied for them all this time?"

"Only started helping manage them because they wouldn't let Doc fire me."

"Loyal lads, though that almost goes without saying; how long have you all known each other?"

And he's watching her as she thinks, turns the question over in her mind, broken only by Nikki's shout -

"Lo!"

"Niks, how long have we known each other?" She counters with, laying back on the stage, looking over at him. Nikki thinks for a moment.

"How old were you when we met?"

"I don't have to answer that."

"And how old are you now?"

"Rude," Lola plays at being offended, sticking her nose up and pouting, raising her voice an octave to play up the ridiculousness of the situation; "didn't your mother ever teach you to never ask a lady-"

"She didn't, and you're barely a lady, Lo." Nikki snorts, but he's approaching them with a fond familiarity that Razzle doesn't seem him with around anyone else. He's already in costume, in his full platform boots, but his hair and face is untouched; it's probably why he'd been looking for her. There's a bottle of booze in his hand.

As he approaches, Lola seems to relax, grinning and almost giggling.

"Gimme some," she points at the bottle, and Nikki raises his eyebrows at her. Standing over her, he opens the bottle without breaking eye contact, and takes a mouthful. Razzle is frowning with confusion. "Do not spit it into my mouth like I'm a baby bird." Lola tells the bassist flatly, and Nikki raises his eyebrows at her, before he shrugs, opens his mouth, and lets the alcohol spill on Lola despite her protests; she doesn't sit up fast enough, and is covered with it, spluttering and wet and smelling like bourbon.

"Help me with my hair," Nikki tells her flatly after deliberately spitting the last little bit at her, wearing a grin that's all teeth, hearing Razzle's raucous laughter, and seeing Lola clamber to her feet.

"I'm gonna kill you so much, you rotten fucking cockroach bastard!" She hollers, chasing Nikki off the stage, though her hair's soaked up most of the bourbon. Nikki looks smug when he leaves his dressing room for the final sound check later on, and from what Razzle can see, Lola's strung out, laughing and stumbling as she's being pulled by Doc out of Nikki's room.

She may be a wildcard, but there's no-one else who can pull the band in line like she can.

From observations, it seems like; on his own, Tommy is the hardest to reign in, with Nikki being a close second, and when they're together, well The Terror Twins work hard for their nickname, and Doc alone stands no chance in Hell, and sometimes trying to get them to cooperate gets physical. Vince is more docile, but only in comparison, and Mick will do anything Doc or Lola tells him, as long as it gives him the moral high ground, any sense of superiority, or a nap.

Lola's the wild card in this situation; if she's being egged on by Nikki or Tommy, she'd walk barefoot through coals and then kick Doc for fun, if she's being egged on by both Nikki and Tommy, it inevitably ends up devious and sexual. If she's trying to get them to be responsible, well Tommy practically melts under her touch, he's not hard won, and Nikki won't admit it, but he's willing to concede on certain matters of business. Ahem. "Business".

But the point is, in the right mood, Lola says jump, Motley Crue asks how high?

And isn't that a sight to behold.

The only thing Lola loves even half as much as her boys is drugs, which she confined in Razzle while rolling up a hundred dollar bill, a mirror with lines of coke already cut, balancing on her knees. He's got an arm thrown over the back of the sofa, with Vince flirting loudly with a groupie on his other side. The others had left the dingy house party about half an hour in, but Vince had caught Lola's hand, asked her to stay in a soft, almost pleading voice, and she caved almost immediately.

As much as Lola was able to manipulate the band, it went both ways.

"Huh?" Razzle asked, pleasantly drunk and a little high, Lola looks up, eyes wide, pupils dilated.

"Nothing burns the bad shit away like coke," she says, surprisingly serious, and Razzle raises his eyebrows at her, watches her blink, "or acid, molly, I'm not a fan of weed, uh," she pauses, leaning forward, and inhaling two lines of coke in rapid succession. Watching with quiet amusement, when she lift her head, Razzle gently takes the mirror from her grip, and snorts the remaining line.

And she says she's fine. He looks at her smile and he can believe it. But when a woman she doesn't know offers her 'something better' for burning the bad shit away, she takes his hand, a hungry look in her eyes, and Razzle can't even begin to imagine what terrible shit she'd still be able to remember after all her years of partying.

Lola's led to the bathroom, asked to take off her jacket and sit on the edge of the tub, and she's more than willing to comply, watching but not quite comprehending as the woman fills a syringe with something from a little, medical bottle.

"You're not sticking shit in me," the words tumble from her lips, and part of her fights not to laugh, because that might be the first time she's ever said those words to anyone, "I don't inject shit-"

"I promise, I promise," she's slurring her words, swaying a little, which did not inspire confidence, "baby girl, you're gonna love it; burnin' shit away? K has got you covered." She assured, tapping the syringe and squirting out the bubble.

"I don't inject-"

"It's not as scary as it look, just makes you feel like you're floating," the woman smiles, gaze unfocused, her red lipstick smeared, and Lola can feel the coke hitting her while her awareness is trying to sharpen. "What's got you so worried -?"

"Shooting up is a slippery fucking slope," Lola's jaw is set in a tight line, her mind flashing to bleary memory of Nikki and Tommy freaking out, finding Vince on the bathroom floor with a needle in his arm.

"Oh yeah," the girl snorted, stepping into Lola's space, "Ketamine's a slippery slope alright." She rolled her eyes, tone nothing but sarcastic as she reached out with shaking hands to wipe white, powdery residue off her nose. "Listen, if you don't want any, tell me right now, just say 'I don't want any'," her fingers moves from Lola's cheek to gently graze down her arm, pausing to press against the soft skin of her inner arm, near her elbow. Goosebumps began to rise on Lola's arm.

"Why are you just offering me this shit?" Lola asked, voice surprisingly hesitant and raspy.

"Because you walked into my house with Vince fucking Neil," the girl answered with a smile, "that alone made me think you were someone I could actually party with."

Swallowing hard, Lola averted her gaze, taking the needle from the woman.

"Your hands are shaking," Lola tells her, and the woman laughs.

"So are yours?"

"All of me is always shaking; my vibrations match up," Lola mused, looking at her inner arm while the girl hummed in amusement, "all of it?"

"If you're up for it."

Lola hesitates, arm out, pulse beating quickly in her ears. The needle hesitates over her skin before she steels her resolve and breaks her skin. She can feel the cool liquid as it enters her bloodstream, which is disconcerting enough, but when she's finished injecting, she takes out the needle, hands it back, and closes her eyes tightly, the heel of her hand applying pressure to the injection site as she breathes deeply.

"Aw, baby's first shot." The woman coos, and okay, it comes across a little mean, but Lola's kind of into it. It kind of reminds her of Nikki, who would flip his fucking lid if he knew what she was doing. He had been the one to figure out that Vince was injecting coke, and the one who'd reacted strongest to the proof.

"Shut up," Lola growled, looking up to see the woman smirking at her. Lola stands abruptly, steps into the woman's space, and kisses her hard.

And the woman slaps her.

It's not that Lola's never been slapped before, it's just that the past thirty seconds have been somewhat of a rollercoaster, and the last thing she'd expected from the woman who'd pressured her into Ketamine and given her gentle touches, was a look of disgust.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" The woman hisses.

"So you weren't flirting with me -?" Lola asks, but her heart's beating fast enough that the drugs are already flooding her system; having already come into this being pretty drunk and high, she's in no shape to fight. The dose the woman had given her was definitely more than a first time user should have taken.

"I was trying to get you fucked up on K so I could fuck Vince Neil and that English dude without you getting in the way!" The girl spits, and Lola's body doesn't know how to respond. This is a new situation to her, completely foreign.

"He's got a -" Lola's voice is weak, the world is turning blurry at the edges of her vision, "he's got a fiance." Lola tries. "Baby." She adds.

"So? She's not here, is she?" The woman sneers, arms crossed. "Now get the fuck out of my house." And she calls Lola a word that has Lola's blood boiling; she might not be at peak fighting condition, but she still doesn't pull her punches. The woman's face hits the mirror, which shatters, and Lola quick to stumble from the room.

"We gotta, we gotta go," Lola trips over the corner of the sofa, falling into Razzle, "please, Raz, we gotta, Vince, please -"

"Lo, are you okay?" Vince asks, and Lola's shaking, feels sick to her stomach. She scrambles from Razzle's lap into Vince's, taking his face in her hands.

"Vinny please, Lover Boy, please, anywhere but here, anywhere but here."

"What are you on, baby?" Vince asks, gentle, much more gentle than Razzle had expected.

"Shot up some K, and then- fuck- knocked out the host -"

"You knocked out the host?" Vince laughed quietly, though he was helping Lola to her feet already. After a beat, however, his expression turned concerned, "you- you're joking, right Lo? You didn't - fuck, you know how the band got when they -"

"When they found you shooting up coke, I know," Lola was panicking, genuinely panicking, which Vince was pretty sure he'd never seen before, "Nikki's gonna be so fucking disappointed in me, fuck." And in that moment, it all made sense.

Vince and Razzle accompany Lola back to the hotel they'd been staying at, before the two of them headed back out to find Nikki and Tommy; the night was still young after all.

When Nikki comes back, Lola's showered and is tucked up in bed, shivering and looking rather sickly, a glass of water on her bedside table. It's a surprisingly sweet sight, and her eyes shine in the light of the hall, letting him know she's still awake. Nikki's humming something, but doesn't say anything; Vince hadn't outed her completely, just said she'd had a bad trip. When he crawls into bed after stripping off his leathers, smelling like booze and sweat, Lola buries little further into the duvet.

"I don't think I'm gonna fuck groupies anymore." She says, barely loud enough for him to hear, but he does anyway, and grins up at the ceiling, his eyes closed.

"All mine," he says easily, though if he was any more sober, Lola's pretty sure he wouldn't have dared to say it out loud.

"And Tommy's." Lola corrects, and if Nikki were any more sober, she wouldn't have said it either.

"And Tommy's." Nikki nods, sagely, though he doesn't even sound a little jealous. The silence that hangs in the air is almost stifling Lola, nervous energy pooling in her stomach, tears welling in her eyes. She feels like she's going to be sick. Again.

"Nikki, I fucked up."

"'d you fuck Razz?" Nikki asks with a half laugh, and Lola cleared her throat. "You know that's not - I don't care who you fuck, Lols, I'm over that -"

"I shot up ketamine and then knocked out the girl who gave it to me 'cos she called me a bulldyke." Lola blurted, choking on her fears in the silence.

"What was it like?" Nikki asked, finally. Lola swallowed hard. "K, what was it like?"

"I was already fucked up, it just made me all slow and sick and blurry."

"You alright now?"

"No."

He's never seen her scared of being high before.

"It's like you always fuckin' said, alright, injecting shit is a slippery slope." There's a tremble in Lola's voice, and Nikki moves on instinct, shuffling over, throwing the blankets off of them and wrapping her up in his arms. Lola hugs him back, shivering and sniffling. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck, man, don't apologise to me," Nikki huffs, rubbing her back, his lips pressing a kiss to the top of her forehead. "You're an adult, you don't need to apologise to anyone."

"I just feel so fucking stupid, I'd do just about anything for a decent lay, God, I really just think with my cunt, don't I?" Lola grumbled, burying her face against Nikki's chest. Nikki just holds her a little tighter. "Niks, she drugged me, gave me a huge dose so she could sleep with Vince and I wouldn't get in the way." Lola admits, voice barely a whisper. "She used me."

"She could have killed you." Nikki's voice is suddenly rough, angry.

"I got them out of there, got Vince and Razz out before it hit too hard, but-"

"Lo, she could have killed you, you should have gone to fucking hospital."

Lola is silent at that, heart in her throat and tears in her eyes. Nikki's fingers map the familiar geography of her back, of the scarring there that never seems to get any better, despite all the years he's known her.

"I love you."

"I know, Nikki, I lo-"

"Lo, I can't let you fucking die without having you hear this; I don't care if you're in love with Tommy or whatever, if there's anyone I'm be happy to share you with, it's T-Bone, but I need you to know I've loved you since I met you, alright? Since you were sixteen and you trusted me enough to go out on the town with me, fuck, I can't believe you trusted me - I can't believe you still trust me," he paused, "but I'm so fucking glad you do. After all the shit we've been through, the fact that you still love me in any capacity, that's a damn miracle, you know?"

Lola's crying now, quietly, where she's curled up against Nikki, still feeling nauseous and blurry and shakey, and everything that's happened in the past seven years manages to blow through her mind, overwhelming her in an instant.

"I ran away to LA with you, fucking hell, Nikki, of course I love you, of course I trust you, how can you not see that you've been my entire fucking world for years?" She asks, and she can't look up, can't look him in the eyes, her hands flat on his back, her nails digging into his skin ever so slightly. "I'd follow you to Hell."

Nikki's gentle when he brings Lola's face up to look at him, and there's tear track on her cheeks, while her eyes are red and a little glassy.

"The world still a little blurry?" He asks with a half smile, and a Lola swallows hard.

"The only thing that's making sense is you." And it's cheesy, but it makes Nikki's heart beat just a little faster. He kisses Lola hard, pulling her flush against him, his hands in her hair and on her hip.

They don't fuck, Lola's still fragile from almost overdosing, but Nikki doesn't let her go. They fall asleep like that, wrapped up in one another, coming down from their respective highs, and when Nikki wakes with Lola in his arms, and realises that it hadn't been a dream, something in his chest eases.

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