#sidestep is dead and she killed her on purpose

[trebuchet151]

I've gotten close enough to a canon-ish route to feel comfortable doing a stat sheet for Chase!

For fun art style comparisons sake, some art of her from 2015 under the cut (almost a decade ago....i feel old suddenly....)

im determined to keep those claws in her villain suit design somehow

[sengardet]

Lyn's Fury

A thin veil of smoke clung to what was left of the village, curling through the charred skeletons of cottages and the scorched frames of wagons.

Amid this devastation stood Lyn, a witch trained in healing magic. She looked as though a single breath of wind might carry her away—her figure was slight, her steps soft. Soot, blood, and grime smeared her skin and her once-delicate hands. Yet there was a serenity about her, a curious calm.

She had been a healer once. She knew how to ease pain and mend injuries, speak soothingly, and calm frantic minds. But these raiders—these tall, ruthless women draped in scant metal armor—had taken everything from her: her mother, her sister, her stable, warm life.

Lyn’s eyes drifted across the rubble, searching for movement as if she had no sense of fear for her life. There—emerging from behind the blackened husk of a barn—she saw a tall and sinewy figure clad in minimal scraps of armor that glinted in the firelight.

Lyn felt a thrill course through her veins. She nibbled briefly at her bottom lip, her heart fluttering with predatory glee. She had thought the raid was over. But it seemed a few stragglers still stalked these smoldering ruins, unaware that a new predator lurked among the dead.

Lyn called upon healing magic, but her purpose was anything but—a snare this time. As she whispered her incantation, the ground beneath the Raider’s feet shifted, causing the warrior to stumble. Lyn offered a soft laugh. “Hello there,” she said, her voice bright with an unsettling playfulness. Are you lost, my dear?”

The Raider turned, showing her anger. She brandished a jagged spear. “You… you’re just a villager,” she spat. “I’ll end you slowly.”

Lyn grinned. “thanks for the advice!”

The Raider lunged, thrusting her spear forward, but Lyn was too quick. She sidestepped, brushing her fingers across the woman’s shoulder. A soft, almost affectionate touch—and with it, a pulse of green magic. The Raider felt her muscles clench, a surge of force snapping through her limbs. Her next breath caught in her throat as her heart thundered. She gasped, staggering backward, the spear clattering to the ground.

“Your little spell’s just giving me a second wind,” the armored woman insisted.

“How delightful, then,” Lyn said, drifting closer.

She pinned the Raider to the nearest broken wall using magical shackles that emerged from portals on its surface. They snapped around wrists and ankles, forcing the warrior to arch forward in a helpless sprawl. Lyn leaned in, inhaling the scent of blood and sweat.

“Mmm,” she murmured. “You smell like fear. And it’s making your heart flutter, isn’t it? Poor thing.” She gently laid a hand over the Raider’s chest, pressing her palm just below the collarbone. “Oh my, that heartbeat is racing. You must be feeling a bit… tense.”

The Raider’s eyes were huge and wild. She fought against the magical bindings, cursing Lyn in a voice made ragged by panic.

“Shh,” Lyn whispered, drawing close enough that her breath brushed the woman’s ear. “Struggling only makes it worse for you. Let me show you.”

She cast another spell. The Raider’s heart pounded with an unnatural strength. Lyn leaned forward as if about to place a loving kiss on the warrior’s sternum. Still, instead, she pressed her ear there, listening intently.

“Those poor valves are working so hard, every rushing flow of blood. Your mighty heart’s beat is like a lullaby,” Lyn said, brimming with delight as she closed her eyes. “But I wonder—what happens if I push it just a bit harder?”

She fluttered her fingernails over the Raider’s pale, sweat-slick chest, feeling the ripple of muscles tensing beneath her hand trying to escape and kill her.

A thin, gasping whimper escaped the Raider’s lips. Lyn smiled. “Be still, darling. I’m trying to listen.”

With magic, which she learned from her mother, she could sense every aspect of it. She could see the tormented heart inside this heathen’s body.

Lyn’s magic allowed her an intimate, almost voyeuristic connection to the tortured beauty inside, sensing its desperate, straining effort. Still, it only made her want to go further, to touch it.

Lyn’s hand softened the ribs and phased through the Raider’s back, her fingers delicately brushing against the heart’s surface. She could feel the organ’s every desperate contraction. The coronary arteries are tight and swollen to the point of near-bursting around the tense, rippling meat.

“Can you feel my touch, darling?” Lyn whispered, getting no response. “Your heart is beating in my hand. It’s working so hard for me!”

With a spell meant to be a selfless gift to someone losing blood, Lyn infused some of her own blood into the Raider’s body. The heart swelled with the added volume, becoming rigid and distended even in diastole. It was beautiful and made her smile at the misery this must cause - straining, overripe, each feature felt ready to burst at any moment.

Lyn’s fingers traced the swollen contours of the woman’s heart as it struggled against itself. She squeezed and giggled, feeling its angry little quiver.

Then came the faintest pop within the Raider’s ventricles— the left blew out the septum. The woman felt weak and dizzy.

“What… what are you doing?” she gasped, her voice trembling.

“Nothing, sweetie,” Lyn cooed. She pressed her fingers more firmly, tracing the quivering shape of the Raider’s heart. “Your poor heart blew out. Now, all that lovely, bright-red blood is mixing with the darker stuff. You see, when your heart muscle is overstimulated like this, it sometimes… breaks.”

“Why… why are you…” the tall blonde rasped, her gaze growing unfocused. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Lyn took her hand out of the woman’s chest and eased her weak, trembling body down, cradling her head in both hands. “Because,” she whispered, her tone still playful and almost adoring, “I only wanted to scare you to death… I’m making your heart pump faster, pushing venous blood into your precious little brain.” Even as the Raider’s mind fogged, she saw the cruelty in Lyn’s shining eyes.

Another gurgling choke rattled from the Raider’s mouth. Veins bulged at her neck as she gasped uselessly. Lyn kept her ear to the dying woman’s chest, a dreamy smile on her face, soaking in each desperate spasm until the heartbeat slowed, then stuttered out into silence.

Not satisfied with the lack of suffering she endured, Lyn gently cradled the woman in her arms and cast her spell as intended, mending the burst barrier between ventricles. She jerked the woman’s heart with a hard stomp before leaving her to rest, whether or not life would come of it.

Lyn walked through her village to find more. Near the center of the devastation, a single, crooked fence remained upright, and beneath it, a circle of scorched earth glowed faintly from dying embers.

It was here that Lyn finally cornered the Raider she despised above all others—the tall woman with braided blonde hair, whose merciless blade had sliced down Lyn’s mother without remorse. Lyn didn’t entertain a fight; she bound the woman. The Raider was trapped by shimmering magical shackles. Her arms were stretched overhead, locked against a tree, her legs pinned by forceful bonds. 

Lyn approached slowly, staff in hand. Her voice was disturbingly gentle, as though greeting an old friend. “You’ve fought well,” she said in a soothing tone. “But it ends here, doesn’t it?”

The Raider bared her teeth, breathing hard, sweat trickling down her temples. “Go on, then,” she spat, chin lifting in defiance. “Kill me.”

A soft laugh drifted from Lyn’s lips—light and musical, tinged with an adoring undertone at odds with the darkness that filled her eyes.

The Raider strained, muscles bulging against the magical restraints, but she couldn’t move. Lyn slid her staff aside, knelt slightly, and placed a delicate palm on the woman’s bare midriff, just where her metal-covered bra ended to reveal taut skin.

One whispered incantation, and the warrior’s abdominal wall thinned beneath Lyn’s hand as though the muscle and sinew were liquefying under her touch. The Raider let out a whimper of alarm, eyes wide with terror. She tried again to recoil, but the magical bonds kept her still. Lyn’s dainty fingers slid inside, passing beneath the ribs.

Warmth wrapped around Lyn’s forearm. Blood slicked her skin as she pressed deeper. The Raider’s breaths came in billowing gasps, her lungs fluttering just behind Lyn’s hand like strange, fleshy wings. Lyn’s eyes brimmed with delight...

“Do you feel that?” she whispered, her voice reverent. “Your lungs push against my hand every time you gasp.” She brushed the delicate lung tissue, marveling at how it expanded and deflated. “How adorable.”

A choked whimper slipped from the Raider’s throat. Her chest heaved, each shallow breath causing Lyn’s intrusion to press more firmly against her insides.

At last, Lyn’s fingertips found what she sought: an impressively large and strong muscle mass pumping aggressively. The woman’s heart hammered away, hot and slick in Lyn’s palm. Even for someone as tall as her, it was a mighty thing. For an instant, Lyn closed her eyes, savoring the exotic thrill of touching her enemy’s life.

“Oh, you’re beating so frantically,” she cooed as though praising a frightened animal. “Your heart’s practically leaping into my hand.” The way she stared in the nameless warrior’s eyes when she spoke let the woman know it was not a separate thing; it was her heart - her entire existence in Lyn’s grasp.

She eased her fingers around the organ, careful not to squeeze too hard. A gentle press let her feel the pushback of the muscle, the way it contracted fiercely as if protesting her presence. Each heartbeat sent minute jolts through Lyn’s arm, full of adrenaline.

“Such strength,” Lyn murmured, her tone brimming with affectionate excitement. “The little arteries are swelling—trying to feed this desperate little thing.” She stroked the heart’s upper base with her thumb, registering the branching vessels that pulsed under the strain of terror-induced tachycardia. “You can’t move much… guess You must be so scared, hmm?”

A cry of pain escaped the Raider’s lips, her eyes tight with shock. She could feel every inch of Lyn’s intrusive arm, from the elbow resting against her belly to the fingertips curled around her heart. The Raider twisted in the shackles, shoulders, and hips straining, but she couldn’t pull free.

Smiling sweetly, Lyn shifted her grip. She pressed the heel of her palm against the apex of the organ, testing its resistance. The heart jerked under her touch, pushing back with every contraction. Lyn’s face lit up in awe as the woman squirmed in discomfort .

“You’re fighting me so hard,” Lyn observed aloud, her voice laced with playful adoration as she looked into the Raider’s eyes. “Poor thing, you don’t realize how helpless you are in my hands, do you?”

She slowed her breathing, closing her eyes to focus on that living, quivering weight slapping into her. Each throb was a testament to the body’s desperate will to live.

The witch ran her fingers along the arteries and veins, feeding into and out of the heart. Her gentle exploration shifted the already angrily pounding organ side-to-side, eliciting ragged moans of agony from the Raider. But Lyn’s gaze shone with exhilaration.

“Here’s the aorta,” she explained to the panting, squirming warrior, tapping a thick, pulsating vessel at the top of the heart. She felt it jump against her fingertip, a steady river of high-pressure blood. “And over here…” She inched her palm lower, finding a slightly smaller trunk throbbing powerfully. “This is the pulmonary trunk—sending blood to your lungs for oxygen.”

A thin layer of sweat glistened on Lyn’s brow. She was flushed, breath coming faster now from excitement. The Raider’s entire body glistened in sweat and shook in excruciating dread. Every fiber in the warrior’s being wanted to yank Lyn’s arm out, to crumble to the ground, anything to escape this intimate horror.

Without warning, Lyn gripped both major vessels—the aorta and the pulmonary trunk—between her thumb and fingers. The heart swelled, growing fat, bloated, and engorged with every frantic contraction. The Raider whined pitifully, and her body became rigid as if she could will herself to be free.

“And that’s what happens when I squeeze them!”

The arteries went taut, straining under the sudden internal pressure. It was as though the woman’s heart had transformed into a rigid, overfilled pouch of blood trying to force its contents into two impenetrable gates of delicate and eager fingers.

“Awww,” she cooed, leaning in as if sharing a secret. “Your heart’s pounding so hard, but it has nowhere to send all that precious blood. It’s just… stuck.”

She pressed her palm over it more firmly, savoring how the slick, meaty mass bucked angrily against her, each contraction a fruitless effort to break free of her grip.

After several agonizing seconds, Lyn released the aorta but kept a firm pinch on the pulmonary trunk. Blood surged wildly through the unblocked aorta, causing the heart’s left ventricle to hammer in uncoordinated confusion. At the same time, the right remained tense and full. The Raider’s chest convulsed, a strangled gasp tearing from her darkening lips as insufficient blood reached her lungs.

“There, there,” Lyn teased, half-laughing as the woman’s heart jerked against her. “Now you can push blood to the rest of your body, but not so well to your lungs. I wonder how that feels, hmm?”

She giggled at the Raider’s anguished expression, then switched her grip—clamping down on the aorta and freeing the pulmonary trunk. This time, oxygenated blood struggled to reach the Raider’s body, causing dizzying weakness to wash over her while her left ventricle writhed under pressure.

The Raider’s head lolled back in tortured delirium, her entire world collapsing into the unbearable pulsing in her chest. Desperation lent the bound warrior a last spark of pride. She spat at Lyn, saliva and blood striking Lyn’s cheek.

Lyn’s eyes flared with rage for the briefest moment, and her playful smile twisted. She was tempted—so fiercely tempted—to crush the heart outright, to feel that final shudder of life slip between her fingers.

The Raider, gasping, saw the shift in Lyn’s gaze and perhaps thought she had guaranteed her own doom. But Lyn merely wiped the spit from her cheek and gave a pouty little sigh.

“You naughty thing,” Lyn murmured, voice laced with dangerous sweetness. “You almost made me want to break you. But no… I’m not going to be that kind.”

She tightened her hold around the organ—not to destroy it, but to manipulate it against its natural rhythm. Warm blood gushed into the chamber as she released, then forcibly ejecting with each squeeze.

“Feel that?” Lyn asked, voice sparkling with innocent excitement. “I’m pumping your heart for you. I think you should thank me.” She giggled.

She bore down with each makeshift pump. The Raider’s eyes rolled, her back arched, and veins bulged in her neck. The woman’s entire circulatory system seemed to protest Lyn’s intrusion, her battered heart thrashing wildly to fight back, yet ultimately yielding to the relentless external force.

“Aww, do you not like this rhythm?” Lyn chimed

“Please! MERCY!” The Raider groaned, every muscle taut. 

She tried to speak further, perhaps to beg for death, but all that escaped was a ragged moan. Lyn observed, bright-eyed, as the once-proud warrior dangled in agony.

What truly caught Lyn’s eye, though, were the warrior’s veins. They stood out in stark relief beneath her pale skin���blue-green lines etched in living, frantic detail, swollen by the chaotic flush of adrenaline. They crept along the woman’s abdomen, across her collarbones, and around her neck, stretching down her arms and even tracing the cords of her thighs. It was as if every significant vessel had risen to the surface, accentuating the sinewy shapes beneath the Raider’s taut, sweat-laced muscles.

“How cute!” Lyn whispered, momentarily enthralled. “Your body is trying hard to handle the mess I’m causing. But look—” She trailed her gaze over those vein networks, spread out like the delicate petals of a white flower’s veins upon translucent petals. “They’re so pretty, like tendrils of a blossom that just sprang up in the moonlight.”

She giggled at the thought, even as she felt the heart kick against her palm again. “Oh, hush,” she purred to the barely conscious woman, giving it another punishing pump and making her worn-out body writhe.

Finally, with a satisfied hum, Lyn relinquished the strain on the heart. She loosened her fingers, allowing the muscle to resume its faltering beat. Lyn cradled the organ, gingerly supporting it in her palm. “Shh, it’s alright, you murderous bitch” she whispered. “I’m done punishing you… for the moment.”

The warrior had no breath left to speak. Still, Lyn felt the woman’s heart kick against her, contracting powerfully, speaking in a language without lies. The arteries around it stood out thick and dilated, dark with pent-up pressure, the heart engorging on the newly liberated blood flow. Each beat thumped with desperate vigor.

Lyn laughed softly, enchanted by the sensation. “You’re gulping that blood down so greedily—aren’t you, my sweet little thing?” she said, looking into the Raider’s eyes, reminding the woman that it was - her - her entire being… that quivers defenselessly in Lyn’s grasp.

Lyn grew addicted to every spasm, every needy little surge of defiance. The recovering muscle felt hot; each contraction was a slight jolt reverberating through her arm. Blood beaded around the edges of the open cavity in the Raider’s abdomen, dribbling down Lyn’s wrist and elbow.

The Raider was barely there for her part—her eyes half-lidded, breath rasping in shallow hiccups. She tugged weakly against the bonds, too broken and mortified to consciously function.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Total $hit$how: Roses for the Knuckles

in which Hunter doesn't always listen

cw: referenced violence, adult language, implied abuse

previous /// masterlist /// next

×~×~×

“You'll each get one hour. Nowhere near enough time for anything real, but it should serve its purpose.”

Everyone was in the room with the mats, where they should've been running through their morning training. Obstacle courses or fighting or some shit, but instead of doing what they were supposed to, Sahota was following muscle girl's dumb idea.

Hunter knew what its 'purpose' was. Proving them all wrong, demonstrating that he was better than them for the hundredth time. Why was he even gonna bother? Why not just tell them no and be done with it? Why not just do what Vic wanted?

He didn't know what the big deal was anyway. Muscle girl had been in the army or some shit, so hadn't she already killed people? And fucking Manak didn't seem like he gave a shit about anyone else, so why did he care? Hunter didn't care. It wasn't like he knew Finley anyway, and he could just forget about the whole matter after she was dead and they had what they wanted.

If he would’ve told Vic about this last night during their training session, maybe he could’ve put a stop to this bullshit, but the ancient law of snitches get stitches kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t that big a deal anyway. Just a waste of time.

Hunter slouched as Sahota droned on and on about the rules, body and face rigid as he addressed the group. Like a fucking statue.

“I want each of you to come up with some arbitrary information that you want from me, and then I want you to try to extract it. You are permitted to do anything, so long as I can recover from it by tomorrow.”

Whatever that meant. It had been two days since he'd got his face beat in, and he already seemed just fine.

Muscle girl raised her hand. “What's the point?”

“I’ve been in the business for a while,” Sahota replied. “I know a good technique when I see one. If you manage to impress me, you win. I'll let you do it your way.” He thumbed at the scabbed-over cut running through his lip. “But don’t count on it.”

Some of the rest threw in their own questions, but Hunter tuned them out, pinching the skin of a knuckle between two fingernails until flowers started blooming there. No one would want to hear his side of the argument, his ‘we should listen to Vic, not Sahota’. If they didn't hate him already, he'd bet they definitely hated him after the video, after he was the only one who didn't want to go save their asshole trainer. But he'd been right, Vic had been right. Sahota got back just fine, not the slightest shift in his stupid slate-gray color unless you counted the bruises on his face.

He was right, but it seemed like no one wanted to look at him anymore. Not that they had in the first place, but it seemed more on-purpose now. Manak had been just as icy as ever when they'd worked together on the list, a task mostly completed in bitter silence. Hunter hadn't helped much, just kinda leaned back in his chair and looked for new patterns, distracting himself from the red ribbon of irritation that started coiling around the other man as soon as Sahota told them to work together.

And whatever, he didn't care. He didn't need Manak to like him, or Sahota, or muscle girl, or even… even the big guy. No, he didn't need them, not when he had Vic on his side, not when Vic wanted him to stay.

“Cavan, why don't you start us off?” Sahota said, and muscle girl straightened, her neutral blue brightening.

Cavan. Cavan, Cavan, Cavan, he’d try to remember it, but sometimes names were hard.

“I want the rest of you training. Spar for the first hour, then branch off into individual skills.” He gave Cavan a curt nod, and she followed him out, leaving a fading trail of blue behind. Hunter couldn’t tell if she was excited or nervous, and didn’t really care.

Beside him, the big guy let out a heavy sigh. “So… sparring?”

“Dibs on Jericho,” makeup guy said quickly, sidestepping towards the big guy and slipping an arm through the crook of his elbow.

Jericho, Jericho.

That left him with Manak. Whatever. Smug little richboy wasn’t that great with his fists, and Hunter wouldn’t mind breaking his stupid snobby nose. The big guy—Jericho—seemed to catch a whiff of Hunter’s plan though, a brighter flash that was probably alarm arcing through his purple.

“Actually, I think I’ll fight Harbor,” he said, shaking himself free of makeup guy, who put on a pouty expression. Hunter scowled up at him, squaring his shoulders.

“Yeah? What if I don’t wanna fight you?” he challenged, scanning the big guy’s—Jericho, it’s Jericho, fucking dumbass—silhouette for a shift in his color. The purple didn’t change.

“Do you not want to?” A little smile crossed his face. “You’re pretty good. I just want to see what you’ve got.”

Hunter scrunched his nose. He was good, but he knew what was really happening. Just the b–Jericho trying to save Manak’s ass. Whatever. Whatever, a fight was a fight. Training was training and he didn't need to be liked. He didn't need to be chosen for him, not by them.

“Fine.” He lifted his fists. Roses for the knuckles. “Fight me.”

~~~

The first hour went fast. Sparring always went fast, at least for Hunter. Maybe ‘cause it was something he was actually good at. Muscle girl (Cavan) came strolling back in near the end of the matches, and makeup guy (Benny?) took her place. From the dull in her blue, Hunter guessed she hadn't been successful. He coulda told her that.

Jericho spent the next hour looking over the folder with her and Manak, so Hunter spent his time wandering and practicing with patterns.

Find a pen, find a tool, find one of those screws that has an X on top, until makeup guy came back and Manak replaced him and his head was pounding.

He ignored the oncoming migraine.

I want you to come back after.

The next hour passed, the headache dug blunt teeth into his skull, and then it was Hunter's turn.

~~~

Sahota was sitting comfy when he entered, bound in place by ropes that wound around his wrists and the arms of the chair he was planted in. No sign of any blooming colors in his slate-gray, no hint of an expression on his bruise-mottled face.

Like an oil slick, he thought. Guess it's your turn to wear it.

The three who'd gone before him hadn't done shit by the looks of it. If anything, Sahota looked bored. Hunter could change that.

“So what,” he said, lingering in the doorway with his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. “Do I just start?”

“What information are you pretending to be after?” Sahota asked, hardly shifting in his seat. Hunter wished he'd slouch, or sneeze, or yawn, or do something a normal human would do. 

“I dunno,” he said, eyes darting away from the stiff slate shape of him, looking for anything shinier. “Your birthday or whatever.”

“Creative bunch.”

Hunter scowled, pulling his hands from his pockets and pinching a fresh cut that cracked through the back of his hand like a line in a broken plate. A little shower of rose petals started pouring from it in reply. “Can I hit you?”

“Do it.” Sahota rolled his neck, shrugging his shoulders like he was prepping himself for the first blow. “Is that your plan for Finley?”

“I don't have a plan for Finley,” Hunter said. “I didn’t ask to do this. You can just kill her for all I care.” That's what Vic had said to do. Why was Sahota of all people trying something different? He was in the spy shit too, shouldn’t he know better? Didn't he want to follow Vic?

The trainer’s gray sat plain and stony as Hunter talked, not the slightest flash of surprise, or approval, or even just being pissed off that he didn’t want to play along popping up.

“Are you going to participate?” he asked in a flat voice. “Or should I have you send for Davis?”

He'd like that, wouldn't he? Hunter leaving, giving up, going away. What would he think, if he knew that Vic wanted him here, if he knew that maybe, maybe Vic liked him better?

“I’ll play the stupid game,” Hunter said, rubbing his knuckles. “Just wanted you to know that it’s stupid.” A pattern had begun to swirl around them, starting out small and starry and distorting into silvery splatters. They might’ve been a warning, but Hunter didn’t know for what. That Sahota would get pissed and try to beat him up? That he’d try and kick him off the team? Fat chance, not when Vic was here to say otherwise.

“What’s your birthday?” he muttered. Sahota replied with a silent stare, his stupid gray color unchanging, his stupid expression stony and blank. Fuckin' statue.

Hunter hit him. Not hard, or anything. A little backhanded stroke across the face that didn't draw the slightest ripple through Sahota's gray. The back of his hand stung with the blow. Roses.

Sahota planted the even stare on him again, like he was challenging him, saying, ‘is that all you got?’

Hunter’s upper lip pulled back into a snarl. “When’s your birthday?” he said again, practically spitting the words out. The splattering silver whirled around him like a tornado. He tried not to look at it. He didn’t need his headache getting any worse.

Sahota still didn’t answer, so Hunter popped him across the other cheek.

“Do you really think this will get you anywhere?”

“You think I’d fucking know that?” Hunter snapped. “I’m not a psycho like you. I never tortured anyone.”

That seemed to have an effect, the gray getting a few shades darker in the middle of Sahota’s chest. Hunter’s mouth tipped up in a grin.

“S’wrong?” he said, circling the chair in an unhurried stride. “Don't like being called out on it?”

But just as fast, the gray was gone, and Sahota was quiet again. Of fucking course.

“When's your birthday?” Hunter said, this time leaning over the trainer's shoulder to hiss it into his ear.

“You’re sloppy,” Sahota replied, not seeming to care when Hunter popped him in the jaw. Barely even a grimace.

Sloppy. Just like he'd said when they fought the first time. Well who was the one getting hit? Sahota was sloppy, for letting the rest of the team have their way when an easier solution was right in front of them.

“When's your birthday?”

“Is that all you have to say? Does your entire plan revolve around asking the same question on repeat?”

“I told you, I don't have a fucking plan,” Hunter snapped, hitting him a little harder than he'd meant to. Closed fist tangling with the bruises on his cheek, reopening the cut that cracked his knuckles, rose petals.

That got a little gasp from Sahota. A blinking wince that made Hunter hesitate, his fist dropping to swing at his side.

I'm sorry. He wasn't. Sahota asked to do this, Sahota said he could hit him. He could take punches, they could both take punches, it was no big deal.

“I want to listen to Vic,” he said in a small voice. “I want to just… just kill her. If that's the easy way.”

Sahota's eyes narrowed. “You've never killed anyone.”

“Don't pretend you know me,” Hunter said, his voice rising again. “You don't know shit.”

He had, probably. He'd never actually watched them die, but he'd been in enough gunfights and brawls and shit that he'd probably killed someone. “I don't care, anyway,” he said, taking a half step backwards. The silver-spatter pattern swirled faster now, dizzy and bright. “Vic knows best, so if he says that's what we should do…”

“Vic doesn't always know best,” Sahota said. “Not for you.”

There it was. Hunter scowled, scanning the trainer's shape, seeing no sign of the jealous black cracks that had come crawling out of his throat before. Not like that meant shit. Maybe they weren't jealousy. He didn't know fuckall about what they could be because he didn't know fuckall about Sahota.

“What do you know about what's best?” he grumbled. Maybe he should've gone to Vic about this bright idea after all. Maybe this had all been a ploy to trick Hunter into going against Vic’s idea, to highlight him as a problem, to make him another outsider.

“I know this isn't the life you want," Sahota replied. "Finish this job and get out, or you'll end up wishing you had.”

Had Vic told him about the plan? About letting him stay? Was he just spouting this bullshit because he couldn't stand the thought of Hunter sticking around?

“You don't know what I want,” Hunter spat. “There’s nothing else for me. There's nothing else to want.”

Sahota grimaced. His gray was starting to darken at the center again, spreading like black clouds. “Harbor—”

“You want me to get out?” Hunter cut him off. “Fucking fine, I'll get out. Already said this was stupid.”

The green, the burning of chlorine in his nose hit him before he could turn around. Vic.

“Done already?” the handler asked in a voice that was danger-quiet. Like if Hunter answered wrong there'd be trouble. He'd heard it before. With teachers at school, with his dad at home, with Rex and the syndicate. 

He froze. Sometimes the best answer was silence.

“I heard you're running them through an impromptu training exercise, Sahota,” Vic said, and Hunter realized the tone wasn't for him. He felt the tension seep away from his shoulders; vines unwinding and hanging there like deadweight limbs.

“Quite an interesting lesson plan today.”

“It's a demonstration, sir.” Sahota’s eyes dropped. “Proof that interrogation doesn't work the way they think.”

“Oh? Do you not think my word is proof enough for them?”

“I didn't mean that.”

Vic clicked his tongue. “I was under the impression that today's training was meant to be a little more standardized. Was that a lie?”

“No, I… it seemed like something too small to bother you with. Once they failed, we'd move on. Nothing would change.”

“So you'd rather keep it from me.”

“No, sir.”

Vic let out a little hm, letting silence sit prickly in the room for what was probably a full minute before he spoke again. “I do apologize for interrupting.”

Sahota didn't lift his gaze. Or even say anything.

“It's fine,” Hunter put in. “This is a waste of time anyway. Right? We should just—”

“No no, it's not my place to swoop in and change the curriculum for the day,” Vic said, letting out a small sigh. “I'm sure it's exactly as beneficial as you say, Sahota.”

Hunter didn't know why the change in his tone wasn't letting him relax, why the splatters in the air were turning razored at the edges, why some anxious color was starting to squeeze him again.

“In fact, why don't I watch the rest of the lesson? It's interrogation, right? You're letting them ask you questions?”

“Yes, sir,” Sahota said in a flat voice. 

“Wonderful. Hunter?”

“Yeah?”

“Carry on.”

Hunter shook his hands loose, nervous energy bundling up in his fingers, tiny vines tangling between them like thread. Sticky and annoying. Vic wanted to watch? But what if he fucked it up? What if he wasn't good enough? 

“When's your birthday?” he asked, his tone emptier than it had been before. Sahota didn't answer, just like before. Hunter hit him, not like before. This time he was careful to aim for even, unbruised color, to pull back on the blow.

He turned back to face Vic, feet shuffling him away from the man in the chair. “That's what I've been doing, Vi—sir. Pretty much just that.” Nothing to see here, no reason to watch, to find faults.

Vic chuckled. “And this is your idea of an interrogation?”

Hunter shrugged, letting out a quiet, “guess so.” Vic couldn't blame him for being bad at it, right? He'd never done this before, so it wasn't his fault, right? All he had to go off of was movies and the bloodied remains of Rex’s discarded rivals, and at the time he was too busy hoping it would never be him dead on the cement to memorize the fucking injuries.

“Here.” His handler stood, laying a hand on his shoulder, gently guiding him so he was standing in front of Sahota again.

Silent, stony, Sahota.

“Let me help you out.” Vic pressed something into his hand. Cold metal, warmed by fingerprints. He didn't want to glance down, but it was from Vic, so he made himself look, eyes confirming the shape that he held. Brass knuckles.

A thought sped through his mind as he looked at them, wondering whether Vic just always had the weapon with him, or if he'd packed it for the occasion, if he knew this would be the outcome before he'd even stepped into the room.

“Try them on.”

Metal slipped past his fingertips to circle his knuckles, the shiny brown quickly choked out by dull green vines. Vic patted him on the shoulder.

“Looks good on you.”

Something pleasant zipped through Hunter at the words, but it felt wrong, out of place

“Go on, Hunter. Hit him again. And this time, don't hold back.” Vic squeezed his shoulder. “Let's show you what a real interrogation can look like.”

Hunter clenched his fist around the metal that enclosed them, letting it pinch the skin on the inside of his fingers. Hit him again, hit him with a weapon, hurt him, why did Vic want him to hurt him? Weren't he and Sahota partners?

“Vic…”

“What are you waiting for?” The handler leaned in, hands on his shoulders, lips on his ear. “Show me you can handle this much. Show me you belong here.”

Hunter tried to steady himself with an inhale, but the chlorine smell was choking him and the room was all dizzy from the spinning silver. He kept upright, locking his gaze on the man in the chair who sat stiff-backed. Unflinching.

He didn't want to hit him, he didn't want to hit him again, he hadn't even wanted to watch him get hit on the video two days ago but it was what Vic wanted.

The black cracks were back, branching out from the pit of Sahota's throat as they met eyes, and Hunter knew then that it wasn't hatred. It wasn't annoyance, or even jealousy.

It was fear.

~~~

@theonewithallthefixations , @violets-whumperflies , @whump-me , @pirefyrelight , @soheavyaburden , @snakebites-and-ink , @whumpsday , @kixngiggles , @echo-goes-aaa

[the-stove-is-divorced]

Yes, exactly! They live far away from me as well, but love ‘em so dearly. Very fun to pretend there’s lost at sea… I can still hear their voice (I called the other day lol).

Nolan as a serial arsonist risk is so fucking funny. Does Debbie keep a fire extinguisher in the trunk and make him put it out? Like, he could easily do it with powers but no, fire extinguisher. At what point does she see a fire/smoke and not even think danger, but Nolan and a mild inconvenience LOL? Like, this mf better put it out. Debbie have 0 fear to even basic emergencies like a fire makes me cackle. Danger is an inconvenience to her at MOST. Also the image of him naturally moving so fucking fast his sleeve catches on fire, and has to get, like, so many clothes from Art.

I wonder if Art gets a call at like 5am and knows it’s Nolan because there’s a chance he slapped something off him and now he’s non-Art shirt his burned and he’ll need an Art-certified replacement. Curious how much Art makes in, like, both hero and villain suits as well as ordinary clothing modified for like lava monsters, or flaming skeletons, or someone cursed to be eternally freezing or have wings. Or even half off on clothes that are built to be easy to change out of for suit underneath. How many suits need to be able to withstand being pulled/ripped open but not torn by people with amplified strength?

All the Viltrum Empire’s tech being stolen makes too much sense honestly. They are the Colonizers: space edition ofc, but also what motivations do they have to craft anything when they can just sidestep typical obstacles? Fire? Slap a twig. Vibrate. But then again what’s even the need? If poisons don’t work, I doubt raw food is gonna kill them, like, what is the development of this society??? What is it even like?? Function??? I’m sure someone slapped an animal and cooked it, but like how long were they vibing with raw foods?

And yeah, if organs can just spill out and NOT kill you, do you just shove them back in and wait to heal or??? Cause like you point out, clearly infection isn’t an issue here, casually managing guts that should be zipped up inside the body isn’t an issue, like is pain seriously the only inconvenience? Also so curious about the speeds of healing. I understand why we slip forwards when Mark is injured, and hospitalization does seem to provide support, but like… do they need fucking lasers to even cut them open for surgeries? Nolan ate up a BOMB/LASER. They already expressed difficulty for the super dead soldiers, so, like, do they see Nolan or Mark as an incoming patient and start groaning. Is it terrifying because they’re slightly different bone structure or organs? Do they just not touch areas? What’s the experience of even seeing a body that’s barely human looking, but have the assumed general structure? The heart looks “misshapen”, but no it’s supposed to look like that, or fuck it, they have two, don’t touch that organ, they need it, don’t even try cutting anything stomach related or else the acids will melt through the very table. The minute Oliver walks up, somebody quits.

They really are living armor, clothing truly has to be for personal comfort only tbh. They don’t NEED it. Maybe for discomfort? And I suppose yeah, if you gotta wait for the Can’t Be Killed Easily genes to kick in, gotta protect the young. Which makes me so curious about like any ideas of childhood existing within the empire, if at all. I assume no by Nolan’s bafflement of the very purpose of a baseball game, but that could also be Nolan being Nolan, endearingly freaked out by Power of Love and Caring about Things. Which is a solid fifty fifty I think.

If there’s a section dedicated to soldiers, which you apply for, I assume, what do regular people do? What do kids do? What’s schooling like? Is there traditions for making your kids clothes while they’re still vulnerable? Some kind of cultural significance? Like I can assume they all were white, I think that’s shown before, but also do kids were colors to mark they don’t have their powers yet? Are there celebrations for getting your powers? Is it purely white and greys (which I think is canon with flashbacks but shh), or are do we have some SU style color coding based on jobs, excepts it’s in pastels lol. Light green? Works in slapping food to cook it. Light blue? Making maps across the universe or something idk. Like do they go shopping for Mark as a literal baby and Nolan gets very fucking weird about it? I think we saw it's pretty much white and grey as far as the eye can see, and yeah, I could see it being a society that's also restrictive on general uniform, but also pastels. Have we considered pastels. I think it's amusing.

And yeah, Nolan freaked the fuck out in the finale so badly, like yes, my guy, you made this, it’s real and tangible and loves you, it will not last forever and you could break it, deal with the newfound concept and he just lost his entire shit. Something something about screaming his replaceable Mark could be screams how much he’s scared of caring this deeply, which he does, but WHY WOULD YOU PROVE THAT POINT BY HAVING ANOTHER FAMILY?????? I know talked that into ground, beat the horse dead, back to life and dead again lol, but it never stops being so insane. Incredible terrible decision, folks, and has not apologized since! Did not forget he grabbed Mark by the neck as he got very loudly upset by the idea of caring AGAIN, very fun for Mark POV, where your dad tricked you, trying to use you, replaced you, and got more emotional about something he’s known for a month(s) than YEARS in earth. I know Nolan’s deathly allergic to caring normally, but like GODDAMN!!! Makes me want my guilt magnet upgraded to outright denial AND guilty.

Yeah, with Mark dead, I can see Nolan just kinda laying there. Frozen. Disbelief, then slow agonizing acceptance, but he just doesn’t move still, and ofc Debbie collects the body, because everyone gets extra issues today! But the denial would be so long lasting. Are there empire funeral customs? I know of you die it’s basically you’re on fault, so do you guys just bodies around or do something with them? But DEBBIE. Like, not enough to see your son die from Your husband’s hand, dying for a world he believed in, but you gotta collect the body yourself. And Nolan’s still there. Staring down. Waiting for something..? Oliver dying would be so interesting as well, like yeah dude, you cannot keep doing whatever the fuck you think you’re attempting!!! How Many times gotta learn this lesson old man!!!

The slow realization Mark won’t come back from space in s2 are so diabolical omg. Agonizing kind of horror and grief. There lingering hope showing being crushed over time. Delicious. Plus the lack of closure, because I assume at some point Nolan will come back, MAYBE, but maybe he doesn’t, maybe that’s the straw that makes him accept execution. And that’s it. No closure. Didn’t even realize that was gonna be there last time. Ughhhhh diabolical!!!!! I love it!!!!

And yes exactly! There’s gotta be a hyper specific niche for it, but there’s still no real story and they suck by proxy LOL. The critics about his own character, does he read reviews and get miffed? Is there a world where Nolan gets so pressed about his self insert protagonist he actually considers unpacking empire bs? But it being the equivalent of being “botany report on plant hybridization meant to be read by other people in the field” MADE ME CACKLE OMGGGGG. He’s got the narrative potential of a research paper.

IM CRYING, it’s Damp Son and Boil Husband. There’s always a towel in the back and front seats respectively, plus some in the trunk. Let’s hope he’s not a stress sweater either, though very amusing to me if Mark shakes to shake OFF sweat, or flies to cool off/find cooler air higher up, while Nolan is a walker boiling when he Aggressively Vibrates, to the point of arsonist. Fire extinguishers and towels LOL.

Nolan dismissing/not rushing the evacuation just so they can like chill inside an active volcano, peak. The image of this triggering Mark to sweat so much makes me cackle. Though, can Nolan lessen the heat himself? Like how quick is it? I know heat rushes to cooler sources, no? Less cold air coming in and heat escaping out, and he should be actively cooler than anything hot, but who knows? He’s only got so much surface area I assume, but the specifics of heat mechanics allude me without a research dive, lol. I assume whatever speed Nolan's got it, Mark is slower? Or, very funny if it is instant. But Nolan and Mark-specific bonding like that makes me fucking snort, like does Mark mention this casually to the TT, like yeah, me and Dad chilled in lava the other day--no, I'm not joking?

TT having to, agonizingly slowly, explain the concept of 'great power great responsibility' or a general run of the mill kinda heroic morality, to a mf without a real sense of danger, whose entire world is cardboard, and whose morals are unflinchingly self interested, are incredible. Like, he can understand pain, but nothing else sticks. They have so much work ahead of them LOL. Imagine they try talking to “what the fuck is danger” Debbie, who regularly works with villains, or Nolan, whose sense of heroism lies in the fact it was a job he can do, and really, he could be doing way worse rn. I think there’s just a dawning understanding here, lol. I love Mark being strange, yearnful sigh.

At some point I imagine it's kinda like The Good Place, and it's just TT taking turns trying to teach Mark about it that way. Kinda in a similar way I'd imagine Oliver being taught morality or philosophy (ex. with ethical dilemmas) at the GDA, which Doesn't Work Necessarily. 'Cause ask au!Mark or canon!Oliver about the Trolley Problem, whole and they'll just say they stop the trolley. They're not dumb, but it'd just be, like, why are they even on a trolley, they can fly. Wydm they're not fast enough? Then they'd try? It's a headache. No, they don't get why they'd be stumped. Just stop the trolley. They could punch it????

And as TT try to talk to him about things like morality, and how their jobs aren’t just jobs, like you rightly point out, he’ll immediately battles it away because their lives depend on working, and they’re so much more fragile than him, so what power do they have really? And as unintentionally baffling or even insufferable Mark can be, he’s also too useful to NOT be on the team either? How many potential sacrificial moves as TT members made only for Mark to just solve the issue. Wonder if how he treats civilian causalities, now, is he never at risk for quitting over a crisis? Or, is he somewhat upset by it, but accepts it’s just a risk for other people, happens whatever. Shame the fragile people died, but Nolan’s explained the concept to him ages ago. But YEAH, now I’m thinking about much force does Mark/Nolan need for like an actually decent message?

AND VERY TRUE! S3 felt like it needed to really stew in what they wanted to do, or stories in generally within. I assume the whole blackening heart is Mark’s heart, and not Oliver, but it’d be so funny it was Oliver’s. Like, love Mark (s3 characterization notwithstanding) but I cannot take his little pro-kill speech seriously, you have 1/3 kills actually STICK. Who’s to say you won’t ignore the next problem that comes by like in episode 7? But OMG YES, BOOTLEG IPS! I want so many so bad, there’s so fun. I love War Woman especially, like omgggggg, she’s bootleg Wonder Woman? I’m screaming in joy.

While I'm not too familiar with the DCU- your batfam meta posts are intiguing- so in transfering some of the broader strokes from them- I think you tackling a 'Mark isn't Nolan's biological son' fic would be fascinating. Sort of a step to the side of the 'what if Mark never got his powers' fic that sometimes pop up in the fandom

OOOOOO chewing on this currently, hm, the much a distinct flavor of exactly what you’re talking about, but the potential for more family drama depending on WHO knows. Does Mark know?? Is he waiting every day only to be crushed? Does he confused non-Debbie features with Nolan’s? I suppose I’m not the most enthusiastic about non-power AUs, but I think there’s something very fun to explore about Mark having to settle with, if he knows all his life, he will never have powers? I think the trajectory of his dreams will obviously shift, I can see him still having that distinct fatherly idolization, but perhaps embraces being useful to the GDA? Cecil’s number one intern—only intern—curtesy of nepotism, ha! There is something tickling me about Mark taking the Robin Route/Role for the Teen Team in terms of having no powers, just insane skills, BUT there’s something way more delicious about intern Mark when s1e01 happens and Mark tries snooping around to find out the truth about what happened to his Dad.

I wonder if, with Mark having a whole another father, if they’re more or less distant relationship, depending on WHEN Nolan entered Mark’s life? Like if Debbie met Nolan later for this, or just for fun, they dated once, separated (Mark being born during then), then they happened to stumble into each others lives again and Mark’s already been born, anywhere from tween to teenager so there’s a gap in how close they are. I feel like one important aspect of the whole Family Drama is how close they’re supposed to be, a functional, loving family turned upside down? So I wonder what more distance does. I wonder how Nolan copes when his family is entirely human and he can’t project onto Mark.

I love thinking about these, omg.

[amchara]

Road to Hell (Wait for Me, I'm Coming) Pt 1 - Kit / Ty fanfic

An expanded version of this Orpheus and Eurydice post

Part one tonight, fingers crossed part two tomorrow!

--

The silence in the Faerie wood was deafening.

Ty stared at the spot in the clearing where Kit had just been standing. His last words echoed in Ty’s mind, as he lifted up his chin and said. “Take me instead.” He had spared a glance at Ty, clear blue eyes burning with purpose and another message that Ty was still trying to decipher before he had vanished.

Dru and Anush came rushing over and Ty allowed Dru to help him up. Ty could feel his muscles aching from where he had been thrown but he barely paid attention.

“What just happened?” Dru asked, her freckles standing out her pale face. “Where’s Kit gone?”

A giggle erupted from a pocket of thick bushes nearby. Ty didn’t even stop to think, he plunged in, a knife appearing by instinct in his hand as he hauled out the short, wiggling goblin and shoved him up against the nearest tree.

“Where did that Faerie take him?” he spat out, his mind spinning as he suddenly struggled to deal with the fact that Kit. Was gone.

The goblin stopped giggling; its voice sing-song in its malice as it said: “To Hades. You’ll never see him again, Nephilim.”

The world narrowed to a pinprick, on its horrible face and mocking smile. Ty could see the splash of red on the goblin’s throat growing, as his knife started carving in, before Anush’s hand wrenched it out of his hand, as he pulled Ty away.

The goblin snarled, its shark teeth flashing in the fading sunlight as it scurried away.

“What the hell, Ty?” Anush was shaking from the effort, and Ty stopped fighting him, allowing his knife to fall on the ground.

His mind latched on what Anush had just said. “Hell… I know where he’s gone.”

He whirled around and started walking out of the clearing, already starting to connect the dots of the plan, his fingers tapping out a pattern on his weapons belt as he thought.

*

The audience with the Unseelie King was held in a smaller, private room, rather than the grey throne room, strewn with boulders. Kieran looked grave. “I have no authority over Hades and his realm… it is an ancient part of Faerie that has never ceded to either Seelie or Unseelie rule. There are tales that it is a remnant of the original demon realm from the demon who helped sire the Fae.”

He paused, as he took in Ty, and his voice softened. “Hades is one of his eldest children, it is said. I have never heard of anyone who has returned from his realm-- it is said they are as good as… dead.”

Ty could feel Mark’s gaze on him, from where he was standing beside Kieran and he surged forward, as if to touch Ty on the shoulder or give him a hug.

Ty neatly sidestepped him and Mark stopped short. “Ty- we can keep looking but…” and in his voice Ty could hear the truth - and Mark would not sugarcoat it for him. He thought Kit was gone.

“I see,” Ty said, and for the second time that day, he started walking away. Distantly, he knew that he should be more polite and continue the conversation but he couldn’t. Not while Kit was in the literal underworld and he was out here. Not when he had failed before with Livvy. That wasn’t about to happen again.

Ty searched out the Herondale necklace that he wore below Livvy’s locket, stroking it as he thought. This time… this time would be different.

*

The Underworld was… not what Kit had expected. But maybe that was on him, as despite not being religious, he still pictured hell as a fiery pit filled with demons, torturing the souls of wicked people.

This was not that - but it was still hot, Kit admitted. The weak fluorescent lights showed grey and brown walls rising up twenty feet or more, the roof barely visible with no light shining in from the dirty windows, while machinery and sparks flew around and workers with dull, lifeless faces walked past.

The Faerie guard pushed him down another corridor and Kit felt trepidation as they neared a heavy-looking wooden door, with a sign spelling out the word: BOSS in stark black lettering.

“Good to know I’m important enough to be taken to the person in charge,” Kit said, but he felt his heart sinking. He knew it had been a stupid plan but he had panicked - he knew currently he had one ace - that he was the heir of the First Descendent - but that was as likely to get him killed as get him out of a sticky situation.

The Faerie guard smirked, as he shoved Kit through the door. “The Boss sees all new workers.”

And then he closed the door, leaving Kit to stand face to face with Hades.

Kit wasn’t that up on his mythology but Hades wasn’t what he had expected - no Disney villain with grey skin and burning flames for hair or a toga-ed bronzed man with the abs of a literal Greek God, but make no mistake- this version was still impressive.

He looked at Kit from where he was sitting behind a rich mahogany desk, a burly man in his sixties, in a sharply-cut black suit and a full head and beard of snow white hair.

“Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve caught a pretty angel bird in my trap,” he said, his deep voice almost crooning, as he laid down a fountain pen and folded his hands in front of him.

Kit cleared his throat. “Yeah- well, I came of my own free will- to protect my friends,” he said.

Hades took in Kit, from his torn and dirty gear to the unhealed cuts on his face when Kit had still attempted to escape when they first arrived at the underworld’s gates. “Is that so?” he said, his amused chuckle almost a rumble.

He pulled out some sheaves of paper from a drawer and pushed them across his desk in front of Kit. He held out his pen. “In that case, I’m sure you’re happy to sign the contract.”

Contract… something in Kit’s memory screamed out a warning but he found himself mesmerized by Hades’ eyes - there were the flames, he thought - burning like a fire’s dying embers. He walked towards the desk and he felt his hand pick up the pen, almost of its own volition and moving towards the papers.

Behind him, the door opened and a woman’s musical voice rang out, cutting through the spell. “Hades? Are you almost finished with your work?”

Kit jerked back and he dropped the pen, the ink spilling out on the page.

The woman came around to stand beside Hades, her full figure brushing past Kit as she walked past, and her green eyes burned brightly in her dark face as she examined him.

Hades stood and he placed a possessive arm around the woman, whose small wince was so fleeting that Kit wasn’t sure he had seen it.

“Almost, my darling,” Hades said. His voice was sharp as he barked at Kit, who was surreptitiously trying to find an escape or at least, a weapon. “Stop.”

His compulsion was strong but Kit tried fighting back anyway. He summoned the brief training he had had with Tessa on his fae powers. It might have worked too, if the woman hadn’t looked at him, a slow smile emerging on her face. “Oh, he is a pretty one…” She reached out and grabbed Kit’s hand. “You must stay here.”

“Sign the contract,” Hades commanded.

Kit signed.

(Part Two)

@dontmindmyshadowhunting @sandersgrey @thechangeling @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @foxglove-airmid @jesse-is-spiraling

(let me know if you don't want to be tagged! Or if anyone else wants to be tagged - no worries either way)

[delimeful]

taking the fall (1)

BTHB: Framed

decided to return to my borrower roots for this BTHB prompt! it was fun to work in a 'verse like this again.

warnings: snakes, injury, captivity, janus being a little bit of a prick, using 'it' for a person

-

Virgil should have known something was up from the moment Roman wasn’t there to greet him at their normal rendezvous point.

It was a little alcove between the roots of a sapling on the border between the oversized apartment building and the small forest Virgil called home. The perfect compromise for soft insiders that were terrified of local wildlife and outies like him that wouldn’t be caught dead in a human building.

He’d waited there for about two marks after their normal arranged meeting time, and when someone had finally arrived, he’d been on the brink of irritability. It hadn’t lasted long, not in the face of the other borrower’s clear panic and weariness.

“What’s going on?” he’d asked, and was then treated to a rambling, half-incoherent explanation about how Roman was desperately sick and hurt, and they couldn’t find any human medicine but they knew he had to have something up his sleeve, right?

He’d tried to ask for symptoms, make it clear that he would have to figure out exactly how sick Roman was before finding the necessary herbs to treat it, but the other borrower-- what was her name? Elli? Ari?-- was persistent and desperate, and hurried him into the apartment despite his protests. He’d even had to leave his spear behind to fit in the walls properly.

Despite his complaints, he wouldn’t leave a friend in need just because they were stuck in a bean’s walls. So he went, and he was so intent on mentally taking stock of his current medicine supply that he only barely noticed when the insider-- Mari? That sounded closer.-- led him to a crack in the wallpaper that led directly into one of the human’s homes.

He’d dug in his heels there, but only for as long as it took her to weave a story about Roman being stuck under a television stand and too weak to be towed back to the nearest exit. Like an idiot, he’d believed it, too consumed with worry to question her further. If Roman, master of putting up a facade of bravado, had admitted he didn’t think he could make it to an exit, things were worse than he thought.

He’d swallowed down his nerves about being so out of his comfort zone in the name of helping Roman and maybe even doing something that would make the insiders stop looking at him like something scraped off a human’s shoe. Relatively speaking, he’d felt pretty good about it even.

Then, as they sidestepped past the faucet in the kitchen, a pair of hands firmly shoved against his back, hard enough that he didn’t have a chance to recover.

And now he was here, in the bottom of a human’s shiny, slick-sided sink, leg throbbing, looking up at the insider who’d put him there.

“Sorry,” she had the gall to say, “but I don’t have any other choice.”

Virgil may have been gritting his teeth against the pain, but he always had time to snark. “Really? You hate me so much that you had to do all this?” Insiders. Couldn’t even get their own hands dirty.

“What? No.” The borrower’s expression was hard to make out from all the way up on the counter, but her tone was incredulous. “No, I just needed-- I was seen. You get it?”

“I get that you’re out of your mind,” he bit back. “Don’t you people have a rule for that? I thought you were supposed to move out, not push someone into a sink!”

“It’s hardly even spring, and we don’t have enough supplies to make it!” the backstabber protested. “We’re not outies, and if this human doesn’t get what he wants, he could call pest control on all of us, not just me. He threatened it, even.”

“So that makes it okay to offer me up like some sacrificial lamb?” Virgil rolled onto hands and knees, and then bit back a whimper as he hurriedly kept all pressure off his left leg. Standing was out of the question.  

“It’s for the good of all of us. And if you ever cared about Roman even a little bit, you’ll follow our rules for once and keep your mouth shut when he finds you.”

Virgil went still. “Was he in on this? Roman?”

Mari’s voice turned sorrowful. “Roman’s already gone. He was the first one to vanish, probably to this very human and his wretched snakes.”

“Snakes?” Virgil asked, his voice pitching embarrassingly high. And then, as his heart dropped, “Roman’s gone?”

Mari continued on, half to herself. “If he were still here, though, he’d be on my side. I don't know what he was thinking, cavorting around with you, but he knows that I’m just doing what’s best for the colony. We have children to look after.”

She took a step forward as she spoke, and then another, and Virgil felt his heart jump into his throat. “Don’t leave!”

He bristled helplessly at the pity-filled look she gave him, not halting her slow progression back across the counter ledge. “Like I said, it’s for the best. You’re not getting out of this, and me staying here would just give you false hope. I’m sure the human will be home soon, so just… try and come to terms with things.”

“Come to terms with things?!” Virgil howled as she finally vanished from sight. “You’re literally leaving me here to certain death for your own selfish ends! I could… I could help you move. I know how to travel safely, find food, for thunder’s sake don’t just leave me here!”

There was no response to his pleas, not even the sound of her footsteps across the counter. Roman wore soft cloth coverings to muffle his footsteps, Virgil remembered somewhat hysterically. He couldn't remember how far the exit was. How reassuring that even if he managed to get out of the sink, he wouldn’t know the first thing about surviving in a human house.

He was so fucked.

---

Janus sighed as he shoved his apartment door up slightly, twisting the knob and pushing it open so that the hinges didn’t make a sound. His footsteps were immediately muffled by the rug he’d placed at the door.

Just a few of the… security measures he’d come up with.

Really, if the little thieves living in the walls had any brains at all, they should’ve long ago memorized his schedule. Seeing as they avoided his traps so effectively, he didn’t have much hope of randomly catching one unawares.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t try. If he was lucky, he would at least unsettle them with how stealthy he could be.

Four steps into the living room, he heard it. A tiny clink, just barely audible past the fan lazily rotating overhead. It was coming from the kitchen.

He set his bag down, a disbelieving smile flitting over his face. Were they really that stupid, to steal food from his apartment when there were safer targets in practically any of the other units?

All the better for him, he supposed.

Carefully, slowly, he approached the other room, pausing to listen in the doorway. He didn’t see any movement on the counters, but…

Miracle of miracles, the noise came again. Janus recognized it this time— the sound of glass on metal. It was a dish being moved in the sink. He wondered for a moment if maybe it was just a small animal that had snuck in. Why would one of them be in the sink, after all?

He crept closer, and peered over the edge of the counter. Despite his doubts, it was a tiny person, slowly pushing one of the crumb-covered dishes towards the other side of the sink, where a small tower of dishware was building up. Janus couldn’t see a hook. The little creature didn’t seem to have any supplies at all, actually.

“Stuck, are we?” he asked, finally breaking his silence.

The tiny person jumped like a startled cat, and in the next moment, they were already trying to scramble up the makeshift stairs to freedom. Janus reached out and grabbed one of the glasses in the sink, plonking it over the little creature. “Not so fast.”

He took a moment to lean against the counter and observe them closer as they backed up to the far edge of the cup. Clearly handmade clothing, dark hair and sun-tanned skin, a badly-hidden limp from some injury in their left leg.

“You're not the one from before,” he mused out loud. “I don’t think they’d be dumb enough to trap themselves like this.”

That tiny expression darkened for a moment, but still not a word. Janus sighed, and decided that this was going to require more preparation than a glass, unless he wanted to suffocate the tiny stranger. He straightened up and walked out of the kitchen without a word.

One closet-scouring later, he’d found his prize and set it up in his bedroom, with only a little extra decoration for mockery purposes.

When he returned, the tiny person was pretending not to have moved, though the glass had clearly been shifted perilously close to the edge of the plate. Janus wasted no time in picking up the plate, glass, and passenger.

The tiny stranger dropped to hands and knees to brace themself, and Janus did try to make sure his steps were smooth so as to not agitate their wound. He wasn’t a complete monster.

Once he reached his room, it was simple enough to transfer them from the glass to the old terrarium he’d prepared. They made a lunge for his sleeves, as though to latch on, but between their injured state and Janus’s experience with snakes, he was quick enough to avoid them.

He clicked his tongue, but the moment he’d removed himself from the terrarium, the tiny person had ceased to focus on him completely. They immediately hobbled to press their back against the glass, staring at the fake plastic plants inside as though… Hm.

Janus tapped the glass, eliciting a flinch-glare combination. “There’s nothing alive in there but you. Relax a little.”

If looks could kill, Janus would have been dead twice over. He ignored the glare. “I know you can talk, so let’s skip the part where you pretend to be mute, shall we? You’re a new face, but I’m assuming you know who I am.”

Still no response. Janus rolled his eyes. “I suppose I don’t need you to be talkative if I’m going to be using you as a hostage.”

—-

Virgil couldn’t help the harsh laugh that bubbled out of him, shaking his head sharply like that would reverse the sound. What a joke.

“Care to share?” That oil-slick voice again.

The human looming over him waited patiently for an explanation, and Virgil scowled. He couldn’t imagine that Roman had done well under such pressure. The guy loved the sound of his own voice.

The thought felt harsher, now that he knew Roman was… dead. He’d never hear him again.

He shuddered, glancing back over his shoulder at the fake greenery around him. If this wasn’t where the snakes were kept, then where were they?

It occurred to him that he could ask. What was stopping him? Loyalty to rules that had already been broken? To someone who had already been killed by this very human?  

“The snakes,” he said, voice barely there. He tried again. “Where are the snakes?”

“Oh? You know about them,” the human seemed pleased, sickeningly enough. “How about this, you answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

Virgil hesitated, but it wasn’t like the answer was giving all that much away. “You found me in a sink. No gear. Injured. You think the ones who put me there are going to give you anything? I’m not some valuable hostage. Just let me go.”

"I see." The human’s face had shifted somewhat, but it only assessed him for a moment longer before turning to the large, glass boxes nearby. It reached into one.

“They outgrew that old terrarium years ago, now I’ve got a much fancier set for them over here.”

The sentence seemed like nonsense, until the human returned with a snake wrapped around its wrist. Virgil froze, staring at the vibrant green coils as they shifted.

“This is Jekyll,” the human said, as though Virgil cared to be introduced to those beady yellow eyes. Though, it didn’t look large enough to eat an entire borrower. Virgil had faced larger garden snakes. “He’s the timid sort, no claim to the doctor title unfortunately.”

He watched the human rummage around in the other terrarium, and come back out with a much larger snake. He felt the blood drain from his face as the pale, patterned snake was brought closer.

“And this,” the human said, carefully running a finger along it's spine, “is Hyde. She’s a little moodier, as boas tend to be.”  

Virgil slowly shifted back, knowing logically that there was glass between him and the creature, but also that the human could change that at any time. Had changed it, in Roman’s case. It was only a matter of when.

The human tracked his motion, head tilted in an uncanny parody of his snakes.

“I don’t let them wander loose in the household,” it said, finally. “They won't hurt you, despite what your friends may have told you.”

I only had one friend, Virgil thought, not stopping until he’d found the back corner of the cage, and that’s exactly why I don’t believe you.

He drew his limbs up around himself, silent, and waited until the human finally left him alone to start tending his wounds.

The more advantages he had for his escape, the better.

[sooibian]

The Spy Who Loved Me

gif credits @byunvoyage​

Pairing: Spy!Baekhyun x Assassin!Reader ft. Chen, Chanyeol

Description: It’s an obsessive cat and mouse chase

Themes: Dark comedy, angst, heavily inspired by season one of Killing Eve

Warnings: Violence, strong language

Word Count: ~2.8k

A/N: This one-shot comes during a very busy season for me so if you can make time for feedback, I’d be very grateful. Thanks :)

———————————————————————–

It’s the way light escapes their eyes.

Fear. Despair. Hope. Then…nothing.

They hope to be spared. I have a family…what about my children…please…why are you doing this to me…. The utterly foolish ones even offer you money. This imbecility makes the corners of your mouth curl upwards - especially when they’re out of breath from running or begging or whatever it is that gets their heart rate up. Eh. Factor in some cardio before dissolving into a permanent state of slumber, maybe? Poor things always mistake the twitch of your lips for impending clemency…what they don’t know is that it’s always been the breathy ones that peak your excitement.

There’s not a single hit you’ve regretted.

Mostly because you don’t bother with the futility of why. They give you a name and you jet off. To you, it’s really a fun job involving travel, costumes, languages, a hefty allowance, sticking pointy objects in the right places and theatrics. You’re not one to just do your job and slip away quietly. No arterial air embolisms, no unidentifiable fumes or poisons. No boring and discreet.  Where’s the fun in that? Flamboyant is your middle name. Every assassination is a heroi-comical poem for you - killing an asthamatic nez with a fatal concoction of perfume or a feeble-hearted fetishist with clamps that turned out to be a wee bit too intense for him.

You’re good at this. No, infact, you’re the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever  will be.

“The NIS has deployed a team of four to hunt you down because of the mess you left in Beijing. So you’ll be working with a team now. No more flying solo.” Your handler Chen says nonchalantly. 

Shit.

Beijing. “Make it look like a suicide”, had been the directive. The assignment Kasia had been put under witness protection after you’d murdered her mafia boyfriend. She was in a hospital - injured and deranged from the shock of it all, watched over by armed men. Things obviously didn’t go as planned and the security detail bloodbath was, well, collateral damage.

You saunter towards Chen with an intentional swing in your hips, a pout on your lips. You sit a little too close to the astute man, almost purring with seduction, “NIS, you say. Give me a name." 

“Byun Baekhyun.” His lips curl into a cat-like smile as he stealthily adds a foot long distance between the both of you.

“Never heard of him”, you say neutrally, gliding closer to his stoic form.

“He was a security officer before this. A nobody. In fact, he was fired right after the Kasia debacle in Beijing. She was his responsibility.” Letting out an exasperated sigh, he gets up on the pretext of fetching a glass of water.

“Why the sudden promotion, then?”

“A change of jobs. He’s heading a team…Operation Jinseong, they call themselves. Apparently, he’s the only one who believed that the murders have all been executed by a woman. If they can get to you, they can get to them. The organization. This conjecture has seemed to have impressed a higher up. After firing him, they swept his computer and found hoards of theories and all the intelligence he could gather about the faceless demon that’s actually…you. An insider thinks he’s fascinated. And a little cuckoo.” Chen’s laughter is throaty and taunting. 

He takes a sip of water and places the glass carefully on the counter, eyeing you the entire time. Chen. It’s a nom de plume. He’s a ghost - a shadow of a shadow, if you will. You know nothing about Chen but you know better than to snoop around. He’s always been affable yet distant, but he has this maddening habit of scrutinizing people. The changes in the expression, the dilation of the pupils. The man doesn’t miss a beat. And he stares unapologetically. You wonder what he thinks when he looks at you. You wonder how he feels. Disgusted? Lustful? Terrified?

He wants to know everything that’s behind those vacant eyes. With him, you feel disrobed.

“You’re only as good as your last”, he says finally, in his threateningly soft voice, thrusting a thumb drive into your hand. But you don’t feel threatened. The truth is, you feel nothing at all.

He’s at the door when you exclaim, “You never have sex with me!” Feigning annoyance.

He laughs and states matter -of-factly, “I’m married”, before closing the door behind him.

Like that’s ever stopped a man before.

***

Byun Baekhyun.

You search the thumb drive and a fresh faced man with luminous eyes smiles at you from the screen. His arm is wrapped around a slender, honey-skinned woman with big hair and big teeth. They look like an advertisement for home buyers.

A wave of recognition floods your mind.

He was there. 

He was there at the Beijing scene. The beautiful man who helped you with the coffee maker in the hospital. The very same coffee you doused barista Kasia with. 

There’s an inexplicable swell in your chest.

.

.

.

You’re no team player.

The undertaking with your ex and her boyfriend didn’t go as planned. Chen should’ve known. 

After a disagreement, you instigated her to off him, your shin getting injured in the scuffle. Then you ran her over with the jeep - once, twice. The third time was just to be sure. This commotion affected the escape of the NIS Agent you were after.

The mole that ratted out Baekhyun’s Operation Jinseong. 

The murders of your “colleagues” you could manage to explain - you’d tailored them to look like accidents. However, the assignment’s escape was sure to reflect poorly on you.

You’re only as good as your last.

The Agent scurries across a field of dead grass towards the feeder road, putting considerable distance between him and an injured you, where someone sat waiting anxiously in the driver’s seat.

Oh, Baekhyun…

It’s the first time you look into each other’s eyes, the moment stretching between you. It is like standing on the ledge of a skyscraper. With the wind in your hair, the world at your feet but in this space exists trepidation. A fear of falling.

Your gun wielding arm suddenly feels too heavy and your legs threaten to give up on you. Your heart rate escalates as the hot embers of his gaze gloss over the stretch of your skin. 

The mole slips into the backseat of Baekhyun’s compact Kia Morning as you continue to take aimless shots at his vitals - eyes still intertwined with Baekhyun’s. 

What good was a mole to the NIS?, you wanted to ask. Especially one that looked like a sewer rat.

You were only doing them a favour.

Aiming the gun at Baekhyun, you fire, only to realize he isn’t fearful or panicky. On the contrary, there is a sense of purpose in his eyes as well as something you could only identify as a glimmer. A spark. 

Even from a twenty foot distance you can tell Byun Baekhyun is in awe of you.

This…thing…this electricity surges through your veins and you sprint towards your jeep - as fast as your good leg could carry you. 

Oops. You didn’t mean to run over her for the fourth time.

***

Reverse. Acceleration. A few well thought out turns and your jeep is hardly a hundred meters behind Baekhyun’s car. You continue to fire and he continues to dart, swerve, sidestep. A good driver.

Suddenly, his car comes to a screeching halt.

He steps out of his vehicle amidst shrill cries of protest from the mole in the backseat and you follow suit.

Weaponless, crouched, he inches towards the gun pointed at him. 

“I mean no harm”, despite his scared posture, his voice is confrontational. “Leave the man alone. He has a little girl.”

Oh, Baekhyun…

You smile at him. He smiles back.

A genuine smile. Like the one your father used to give you when he saw you relishing ice-cream as…a little girl.

In a flash, you aim the nozzle at your temple and Baekhyun cries out a loud, pained, “NO!”

Laughing, you lower the gun and fire at his feet. He ducks. 

You vanish.

.

.

.

It was exhilarating to use the alias ``Mrs. Byun ” for your next job especially since the man and his giant partner have been on your tail for three months now. 

But, maybe, you shouldn’t’ve stolen Baekhyun’s luggage as soon as he landed in Tokyo to investigate the mysterious death of a Chinese colonel. He and his team knew perfectly well whodunnit. But one can’t bring faceless demons to book now, can they?

Who knows how this easily distracted giant of a man is supposed to protect Baekhyun if it should ever come to it. He couldn’t even watch his luggage for a measly five minutes.

***

You watch Baekhyun and the giant from your apartment overlooking the crime scene. He looks frazzled and the giant slightly apologetic. ‘You’ll have your bag back soon, baby’, you whisper, sucking on a bubblegum flavoured lollipop.

Thirty minutes roll by and the investigation seems to be heading nowhere. Bored out of your wits, you slump into your bed and toy with the contents of Baekhyun’s bag - shirts, slacks, underwear, toiletries.

Dull, tedious, and soul-destroyingly unimaginative. 

Save for one green scarf. 

In a sea of monotones, the scarf stands out. Demanding attention. Fluttering your eyes shut, you slowly bury your face in it - your senses entirely enveloped in his heady scent. 

***

“Excuse me, if you don’t mind me asking, where did you get that scarf from?”

Day two in Tokyo. You’ve been following Baekhyun (and, by extension, Chanyeol). Studying him. It was like adopting Chen’s personality. Apart from the occasional loud laughter, his demeanour, you learn, is self-effacing, gracious, and polite. He’s a picky eater who only eats to live and not the other way round. He’s also very observant and intuitive. But not enough to know that he’s being watched. 

Also, he’s thinking. Constantly. He’s thinking about you. 

“Excuse me?”

Chanyeol asks again - large, deep brown eyes focused on your neck trying to stop you from getting onto the same train as Baekhyun. 

Very subtle.

“It’s from my mother’s store. I could give you the address if you like”, smiling, you crane your neck to look into his disturbed eyes as you both pretend not to know each other amidst a swarm of dog-tired people on the platform at six in the evening.

You slip into the crowd but the oaf chooses to follow.

What does he think he’s doing following an assassin through a strange city! Unarmed.

Forty minutes elapse and he continues to chase you through the streets of Tokyo, keeping up with your brisk pace. With your easy charm, you breeze into the club called Camelot and wave Chanyeol goodbye as he’s stopped by the bouncer and sent to the back of the line. His eyes are dark with a murderous rage.

The club is loud, dark…stuffy - the air thick with over-the-counter happiness. Definitely not to your taste but you stay to give Chanyeol a head start. He’s pissed you off and he’ll pay for it later. Not today. 

You really didn’t want to upset a tired Baekhyun. At least not until you feel a beefy hand weigh down your shoulder.

“I didn’t want to do this”, you rise on your tippy toes and whisper into his ear before sticking a short blade into the side of his stomach. He’s heaving as you stare into his round, childlike, startled eyes while supporting his stumbling weight and stabbing him repeatedly until he finally collapses.

You leave him to bleed out on the dance floor and on your way out, you grab the arm of a medium-built man, your blood-dipped, glistening lips stretched into a lascivious smile.

“Let’s put you in a costume first”, you say to the unassuming moron, excitably thinking of Baekhyun’s dull shirts.

.

.

.

Grief draws people closer, your grandmother used to say, every time someone died of sickness in that impoverished little village of yours.

Baekhyun’s grieving the oaf who was slowing him down. He’s looking for company. So..he’s snooping. 

He’s in your apartment.

The “trusting old lady” - your next door neighbour, who actually works for the same organization as you handed him the key exactly as instructed. You’d been expecting him, this meeting was long overdue. But you wait in the cute little French cafe just around the corner - watching him scout out your apartment through your phone, while devouring a Charlotte Russe cake - dressed pretty in a flouncy pink dress.

He’s careful not to make a squeak. Walking on tippy toes, running his beautifully slender fingers along the drapes, the furniture, the walls as he goes. Your skin tingles all over. Oh, how you wish to be a piece of furniture in the moment. Only Baekhyun could make you want to be something muted and inanimate. Furniture, mattress, drapes.

He saunters slowly to your blackwood Georgian cupboard. The one you use for your wigs, costumes, weapons, and his own green scarf. He wears the scarf around his neck, ruffles the costumes but he’s gentle with the wigs. Stroking and caressing. 

From the drawer he picks out a .38 and shoves it in his waistband. Right behind his hip bone.

Oh, Baekhyun…

Pretty boys and their dangerous toys.

He finds himself in the kitchen. The revolver seems to have straightened his spine and suffused his step with a very welcome spring. Mi casa es su casa. 

In the fridge he finds exactly what he’s supposed to. No food. Only a dozen bottles of celebratory champagne of the best kind. What comes next from him is a scornful snicker which fills your mouth with a bitter taste. The Charlotte Russe doesn’t look very appetizing anymore. He draws a bottle out of the fridge, studies it and smashes it onto the floor. Then another, then another until all the bottles are reduced to shattered glass dripping in gold strewn across your kitchen floor.

Playtime is over, Baekhyun.

You make a run for your apartment.

***

He’s exhausted. 

Breathless, air tousled, shirt crumpled, eyes droopy, beads of sweat lined across his forehead and upper lip - standing clueless, smack-dab in the middle of the mess he’s made - clothes torn off their hangers, furniture overturned. You can’t recognize your upscale Seoul apartment anymore. Careful around the glass, you make your way towards his still frame, withdraw the weapon from his light, jaded grasp. 

You take his hand in yours and lead him to your bedroom - which is entirely ransacked just like the rest of your house. Save for the bed.

He lies down on his back and his first words are, “God, I’m tired.”

“Me too”, you say, as you lie facing him, “Are you wearing the cologne I gave you?”

You’d sent him a bottle of cologne along with the bag you had nicked in Tokyo, as a token of appreciation. It was handcrafted to smell like power.

He hums, turning to the side to face you, nestling into the depths of your irises.

“Are you going to kill me?” He asks, eyeing the revolver in your hand.

Your heart falls to pieces at the ache in his voice.

“No”, you say simply, tossing it to the side.

“Really?”

“I promise.”

Relief ripples across his soft, boyish features smoothing the lines of worry as it goes.

“You’re all I think about”, he says, studying your face. And you’re left wondering yet again, about his thoughts. His feelings.

“So you trash my apartment?” You sound as gentle as you can. But if you’re honest, you don’t even have to try that hard.

“I lost my job, my partner, my wife left me, and I even lost my sanity because of you.”

With his dulcet touch, he traces along the edge of your lips.

“Fair enough. I think about you too. I mean, I to you masturbate a lot.” You say as your thumb rubs his cheek lightly.

He lets out a loud, embarrassed giggle that makes him look a decade younger.

“Too much?” You ask, apprehensively.

“No, I just wasn’t expecting that.”

And with that you’re both inching closer to each other, like magnets.

Baekhyun’s soft gaze darkens and simultaneously you feel something sharp poking at your stomach.

“You can’t do it”, you wrap your hand around the blade, almost mocking him. He’s too nice for something this abominable.

“I can”, he whispers, his eyes still nestled in yours, as he plunges the blade deeper, tearing you apart. 

He places a chaste, soft kiss on your forehead.

Fear. Despair. Hope.

“Sorry, baby.” 

Continuation - My Lovable Curse

[captainpikeachu]

Booker: a study of The Old Guard avoiding tired tropes

Now come on, we all know what tropes I’m talking about. The Crusading Widower. The Dead Wife. Those have been staples of tragic white man backstory for centuries across pretty much every genre of entertainment. And you would think Booker with his tragic backstory would somehow fall right into tropes. After all, he’s got a dead wife, and a dead family too. He’s perfect for the tropes.

Yet The Old Guard, in both the comics and the film, makes some very distinct choices in Booker’s backstory that allows his character to be tragic still, yet very different from your usual cookie-cutter tragic white male character.

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

IMMORTALITY

When it comes the Crusading Widower and Dead Wife tropes, it’s always families or wives fridged for manpain. They are often killed in some horrible way, causing the white male character to have motivation for their stories.

But Booker’s family isn’t killed or fridged by some evil enemy he has to defeat. His family dies simply because no one can escape time, no one can stop their time from running out. And it is Booker’s immortality that leaves him behind in pain, not because some mysterious bad guy comes in to kill everyone he loves. 

The tragedy and loss are inherently built in with his immortality, and it puts his story different from some tragic hero going off to defeat a villain because you can’t defeat time, you can’t fight against the reality of life.

His wife and his family aren’t dead because the story needs him to have the usual motivating manpain, but simply because that’s a trauma that every one of the Old Guard character has to deal with at some point in their existence.

----------

FATHERHOOD

Your usual tragic white male hero’s entire backstory would be about the Dead Wife, that ever so ethereal figure that’s so flawless and perfect in her death that drives our hero’s motivation, but she herself is stagnant because this story isn’t hers no matter how many times her name is being invoked. 

The Old Guard does give Booker a dead wife by default of him having a family, yet Booker’s motivation is not framed around her at all. She’s not appearing in his dreams or flashbacks looking all demure and smiling. 

No. Booker’s story is in fact about fatherhood. The only flashback we see of his previous life is that of his youngest son dying of cancer. His trauma is framed around his children and how seeing them die and having at least one hate him caused him to look at immortality with disdain, that it’s a curse.

Now one could argue that this narrative erases his wife since she’s not named nor mentioned in the story at all and is only assumed to exist through inference of him having kids. But Booker’s children are also unnamed except for one. And if anything, the focus on his three sons indicates in the narrative that Booker has perhaps worked through the loss of his wife as something that he could accept. Because after all, we in life could expect to lose a significant other and outlive them, it’s something that life prepares us for, but outliving your children is something else entirely.

And here is where Booker’s story is distinct from the usual trope. He lost his children yes, and that alone could have been enough to cause trauma, but the narrative folds that loss into its exploration of what it means to be immortal. How do you deal with not only outliving your children but unable to do anything else except staying young while they grow old and get sick and die? How do you reconcile with your duties as a parent to protect your children while possessing a power that could have saved them?

Booker does not have the usual motivations of revenge and justice. There are no monsters to defeat. In fact, his motivations are about making up to his children and seeking an end to his own pain. If the research had been able to figure out how his immortality works, not only would he be able to die and be with his family, but he would have also made up to his children, especially his youngest, by giving the world an antidote to disease and pain. He would have finally been able to do something for the world that he couldn’t do for his kids, be the parent they thought he was.

————

NOT HIS STORY

It can be argued that even with both of what I discussed above that Booker could have still been a trope, yet The Old Guard sidesteps that by making this story not about him. It’s about Andy and Nile.

Yes Booker is a part of this story and his actions play an important role, but his story serves as both a mirror for Nile and Andy, and a cautionary tale. In fact, his backstory is really there so that Nile understands the gravity of their immortality and what it could mean about her wanting to return to her family. Everything in Booker’s story ultimately serves the purpose of a larger narrative that is not centered around his pain.

————

CONCLUSIONS

It would have been so very easy for Booker to be a trope, all the ingredients are there. But because of its premise on immortality, a refreshing focus on Booker’s role as a parent, a thankful lack of smiling dead wife montage, and him not being the central figure of the narrative, The Old Guard dodges the pitfalls that so many other films/stories continuously fall into. And all the while creating an actually intriguing and nuanced tragic white male protagonist that you actually can care about not because the narrative told you that you had to but because his struggles actually felt human and relatable.

[moonlitdesertdreams]

Judgement Call (Din Djarin x OC)- Chapter XV

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CHAPTER XV: MISTAKE

Zakia was unsurprised when getting into the prison turned out to be the easiest part of their mission.

As she was aware from years in the field, it was not difficult to get yourself unwillingly thrown in prison. One wrong word in a cantina, a little pick-pocketing gone bad, skipping bail, stealing Daddy’s money and running… her list could drag on all the way to the extremes. Even so, Zakia had never considered the possibility she would go in on her own accord.

It would be a lie to say she had not considered closing the hatch behind Malk’s crew and flying the Razor Crest away from the prison. Close the door, shoot the droid, leave. How hard could it be? Contradictorily, her mind continued to revolve around the Child. If they failed the job, they received no money. And no money generally meant no sustenance and no fuel.

In the end, desperation for money was the reason Zakia found herself facing off with four heavily armed droids in the prison vessel’s hallway. The robots' appearance had the whole group scattering, while Din and Zakia took the opportunity to find a hallway that lead around so they could engage the droids from behind. Mayfield was shouting in the distance, no doubt claiming her and Mando weren’t worth their time. It wasn’t until his repetitive shout of “I knew it!” That the duo stepped out behind the droids.

“Left.” Zakia claimed, sneaking a glance at Mando.

They both attacked at the same time, a silent ambush upon the mechanical enemies. Armed with vibroknives that were more than capable of severing the droid’s joints, Zakia leapt up while Mando went for the ground. It was a tactical move they had almost perfected. She was short, and it made it easy for falling enemies to intercept her when he went for their legs. If Zakia instead leapt upwards to a second enemy’s shoulders, the attack was easily evaded.

Zakia scaled the droid’s back, swiping her knife downwards from above the elbow joint. The forearm clanked to the floor, but the other one wrapped around the back of her neck and pulled her over its shoulders. It no longer had a weapon to brandish, and Zakia used the lack of defense to her advantage. Tipping her weight forward, she brought the machine to the ground and sliced the knife through the wires in its neck. The lights across its body flickered out, and she scrambled to her feet.

The remaining two droids were already on them, and the Mandalorian staggered back when one fired into his cuirass. Zakia pulled her blaster on the other, rolling out of the way of its shots and firing her own into its chest. She aimed, but a resounding ‘ PING’ echoed through the hall and her target fell. A knife protruded from the seam of its chestplate, and Zakia pouted as she yanked the weapon free.

“That was mine, Man- ah!” Zakia leapt for cover as a blaster bolt zinged by her ear.  

Another set of droids approached, marching forward in sync. She briefly wondered why Mayfield and the team hadn’t stepped in to help, but only sent a sideways glance towards where they hid.

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” She muttered, pivoting out from her hiding spot and firing back on the droids. She aimed for their necks this time, the bolts landing true and causing both to fall to the ground in a heap of metal. The Mandalorian leapt over said pile as more droids marched in, using the flamethrowers in his gauntlets to melt them down. One managed to heave back up, only for Din to snatch its blaster away and fire the weapon back into the droid’s head.

Zakia straightened and holstered her guns once the hallway quieted. Mando’s helm was fixed on the team’s hiding spot, and he threw the droid’s blaster to the ground. It clattered against the smooth floor, the sound sending a clear message to the team who had ducked for cover at the first sign of trouble. Zakia ignored the trio as she skipped over piles of smoking metal, bringing herself to Mando’s side so they stood as a unit.

“Make sure you clean up your mess.” Mayfield’s parting words as the group strode past like nothing happened were more disconcerting than usual.

Xi’an leered into Zakia’s space with her strange giggle, and the blonde raised a single brow at the Twi’lek before she carried on. Burg jogged past, a purposeful shoulder ramming into Mando’s pauldron.

“Great.” Zakia shook her head, and Din set his hand back in its new favorite place on her back. He nudged her forward gently, following after the group. “I can’t wait until this is over.”

The Mandalorian’s viewfinder pointed towards her. “You and I both.”

“It seems your presence has been detected. Redirecting security alert away from your position.”

Zakia heard Zero’s tinny voice through the speaker in her ear as they turned a corner to what looked to be the control room.

“Open the door, Z!” Mayfield called through the link, making Zakia wince at the voice in her ear.

“But I am detecting an organic signature.”

“Yeah, alright, just open the door!”

Zakia tapped the controls on her wrist to switch to her and Mando’s link. “Organic?”

She spoke softly enough to avoid the other’s detection, and Mando’s voice floated into her ear.

“There’s a human on board.”

The door slid open before any protest could be made, revealing a stout man in a New Republic uniform. He had been seated at the security desk, but shot to his feet at the sight of intruders. The soldier brandished a blaster.

“Stop!”

Mando drew his weapon as well, sidestepping so Zakia was behind him and unprovoked to draw on an innocent man.

“Just stop right there.” The guard was shaking, and Zakia was fairly sure she was too, but didn’t comment on it.  “You put down your blasters right now.”

His anxiety took an unfortunate precedence, and the soldier didn’t fire when Mayfield let himself into the room.

“Nice shoes.” He commented, walking the perimeter slowly and ignoring a second command to put their weapons down. “Matches his belt.”

Zakia stayed in step with Mando, keeping her blaster holstered but her hand ready to pull.

“There were only supposed to be droids on this ship.” Din said, head tipped in Mayfield’s direction.

“Hang on, hang on. Let’s see here…” The triggerman was surveying the controls, scrolling through a list of inmates. “Cell 2-2-1.”

Zakia kept her eyes on the Republic soldier, trying to convey sympathy through her gaze. There was no reason he should have been caught up in the outrageous plan.

“Alright, now for our well-dressed friend.”

At Mayfield’s ominous words, the man pulled a tracking beacon from his belt and held it like a second weapon. The frontman tensed, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. Zakia knew they wouldn’t have a chance if he activated it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, easy, Egghead. Put that down. Come on.”

“Easy.” Mando dropped his voice, speaking in a soothing tone to the man.

Going with the nature of the mission though, Mayfield ruined it. “Put it down, now!”

“Shut it, Mayfield!” Zakia snapped at the same time Mando spoke, “Easy. Nobody has to get hurt here. Just calm down.”

“What is that thing?” Burg demanded, voice booming against the walls of the control room.

“It’s a tracking beacon.” Din said calmly.

“He presses that thing, we’re all done. A New Republic attack team will hone in on that signal and blow us all to hell. Put it down!”

Xi’an took that moment to lean forward from the chair she had occupied. “Are you serious?”

Zakia’s eyes snapped to her. “What did you think it was for, his remote control toy?”

The Twi’lek hissed. “Then why didn’t you tell us that, blondie?”

“Stop! I didn’t think we’d get to this point!” Mayfield's inability to operate under pressure was becoming incredibly apparent.

“And here we are.” Zakia didn’t understand how Xi’an was dumb enough to underestimate the gravity of their situation.

“Are you questioning my managerial style, Xi’an?” Mayfield demanded, striding towards her.

“What is even happening?” Zakia’s eyes darted back and forth between the conflicting two thirds of Ran’s team and Mando.

“Hey. Listen to me. Okay? Look.” Din caught the guard’s attention and holstered his blaster. “Hey put it down.”

The second command was directed at Mayfield, who stared blankly. “Are you crazy?”

Zakia pointed at the ‘manager’. “Put it down.”

He seemed to see something in her eyes that made him listen, and all the blasters except the guards slowly lowered.

“Alright. What’s your name?” Din asked, keeping one hand out in front of him.

The man swallowed, nervous eyes finding purchase on Zakia’s partially-hidden face. “It’s Davan.”

Zakia gave the smallest of nods, encouraging him to relax without words.

“Davan. We’re not here for you, we’re here for a prisoner.” Din reassured, “If you let us go about our job, you can walk away with your life.”

“No he won’t.” Mayfield lifted his blaster, leveling it back at Davan’s head.

It was that which made Zakia draw her blaster. She pointed it at Mayfield, and the room froze. “You’re gonna bring hell raining down on here, moron.”

“You think I care about that?” Mayfield returned.

Zakia gaped at him. “Well, it means you’re gonna be dead, so I sure as shit hope so!”  

Mando held up a hand. “We’re not killing anybody. Understand?”

“Get that blaster out of my face, lady.” Mayfield looked to the Mandalorian. “Get a leash on her.”

“I can’t do that.”

Zakia wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the leash or her dropping the weapon, but she was unmoved on both subjects.

“Get the blaster outta my face!”

At Mayfield’s strangled yelling, Burg lifted his own blaster and pressed the muzzle to Zakia’s head. Mando moved at light speed, pushing her back to level his blaster at Mayfield and flamethrower at  Burg.

“Don’t.” He warned, helmet on a swivel between the two. Zakia was halfway behind him, out of Burg’s firing line but still able to keep Mayfield locked in her sights.

“You need-”

A flash of blue energy crackled across the room, and Zakia jumped into Mando’s back when Davan collapsed at her feet. Xi’an stood from her chair, eyes rolling.

“Would the three of you just shut up?” She sauntered across the room, pushing by Zakia and Mando to kneel by Davan’s corpse. She drew one tiny dagger from his heart, twirling it between her purple fingers.

“Crazy Twi.” Mayfield commented. He readjusted his shoulder straps, watching Xi’an bend down. “I had it under control.”

“Yeah. Looked like it.”

Zakia wasn’t paying attention to Xi’an though. It was the tiny plastic square on the ground which caught her attention It flashed with three red lights, and beeped at an increasing speed. Her eyes darted to Mando, who was looking in the same place.

“Was that thing blinking before?” Mayfield asked, “Was it?”

She only shook her head, taking a small step back. The com in Zakia’s ear crackled, though Din remained perfectly still.

“You’re ready if this goes bad?” He rasped, voice a whisper beneath his helmet.

Zakia bit her lip, turning back toward the hallway as if she were thinking. “It already has.” She breathed.

Mando must have spliced their coms back into the groups when Zero’s voice cut sharply into her ear. “I’ve detected a New Republic distress signal honing in on your location. You have approximately twenty minutes.”

Much to Zakia’s annoyance, Xi’an spoke again. “We only need five.”

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Move!” Mayfield urged them all out of the room.

Din grabbed Zakia’s arm. “Something’s up.”

“Kriff, Din, you don’t say? Something’s been up this whole time!” Zakia argued, shoving her blaster back into its holster when she noticed it still dangling between her fingers.

A sigh slipped out from under his helmet, crackling through the modulator. “Watch your back.”

They followed after the group, boots whispering against the floor. Din and Zakia caught up after a few corners, but jerked to a sudden stop when a cylindrical droid hovered through a cross section of hallways. Much to the hunters' surprise, Burg tackled the droid right out of the air. The massive Davaronian smashed it into the floor, roaring angrily and using it as a weapon when a similar droid floated around the next corner.

Continuing on, Mando kept an eye on the back of the group. Zakia ran with her blaster in hand, pointed down but ready for any incoming threats. It seemed like an eternity, but the rag-tag bunch eventually came upon cell number two-two-one. Mayfield withdrew a key- he must have snatched it from Davan’s body- and inserted it into the lock. Zakia watched the mechanism spin and click into place.

“Z, open it up.”

“You have fifteen minutes remaining.” Another entirely unhelpful response from the droid.

“Z, open it up!”

At the second command, the lock spun once more and all of the door lights flashed green. It lifted at once, and Zakia stared. She didn’t recognize the Twi’lek sitting on the bench, but his presence seemed to bother Din.

“Qin.” The Mandalorian said, taking a step towards the cell. Zakia watched curiously, hands still wrapped around her blaster. She assumed Qin was a part of Ran’s crew that Mando had worked with before Zakia came along.

Qin stood, jarring gait bringing him further into the light. His lekku were short but wide, as was his frame. He had deep scar-like lesions running down either side of his face, and Zakia was not at all fond of the look on his face. “Funny. The man who left me behind is now my savior.”

“Get to the ship.”

Zakia tensed at Din's voice, and everything around her dropped into slow motioned.

Burg launched a fist that landed on Mando's chestplate, thrusting him into the cell. It burned Zakia, but she took off as fast as she could back towards the Razor Crest. She could hear the group yelling to pursue her, but pushed hard. Her short legs had a natural disadvantage, but she kept moving until the sounds of the group faded.

“Damn it!” She was lost.

“Zak? Zak, are you okay?”

Zakia huffed as she kept moving, looking for any sign of their carnage or a clue as to the direction they’d come from. “I’m fine, but I think I’m lost.”

“Keep trying to find the ship. I’m- hold on.”

She moved at a jog, her thoughts nagging her. Zero could track her bio-signature, and give her location to the group. She had to find a way to conceal herself.

“Zakia, where are you?” Din’s voice was strained, and it sounded like he was breathing heavy.

“I don’t know, I can’t tell. I made a right and then three lefts. And another right. I was running.” Zakia replied. “Are you okay?”

“I caught one of the guard droids- they have keys. I’m trying to find you.”

A breath of relief left her heaving chest, but the feeling was quickly squashed by footsteps. She flattened herself into the wall, hiding behind the support rings that built the foundation. She heard the group pass by in the crossing hallway, and prayed they hadn’t noticed.

“Which way did she go?”

“How am I supposed to know? This whole place looks the same.”

Zakia closed her eyes as their voices passed, and her heart thudded into her ribcage. She stepped out, only to run smack into a figure rounding the corner. The collision knocked her off her feet, and Zakia pulled the vibroknife from her boot. She pointed it up, expecting to cut through the joints of another droid. Instead, the blade came into contact with an unbreakable metal, sending tiny pinpricks down her wrist and finger bones.

“Zakia?”

The strangled sound that escaped her was not at all in character, and she allowed the Mandalorian to haul her back onto her feet. She would have loved a moment to breathe, despite the fact is was not remotely close to being considered an option.

“How’d you find me?” Zakia could barely hear herself over the blood roaring in her ears, and she followed as Mando continued to make his way down the hall.

“Followed your directions. You made one wrong turn. Now-” He motioned for her to follow as he turned left. “-we’re back to the control room.”

Zakia was grateful Mando had a sense of the prison. Some of it could undoubtedly be contributed to the tech within his helmet, but they were practically one and the same at that point. He herded her into the room, surveying the monitors.

Zakia trailed her fingers over the keys, stepping over the body on the floor as if it wasn’t there. There was a set of buttons labeled ‘Lockdown’ which immediately appealed to her.

“Where are they?”

Mando took a gander at the monitor they were on. “Section K3-4.”

Zakia typed in the section, and pressed the ‘engage’ button on the console. The entire ship was plunged into a temporary darkness, and Zakia’s hand shot out to grip Din’s bicep. “Did I mess it up?”

Her answer came in the form of the emergency lights, illuminating the halls in an ominous, sickly red tone. They watched the group move on the screens, and Mando hovered a hand over the controls, occasionally closing a firewall to drive the group as he wished. Zakia took note of his actions, smile tugging at her lips. “I see.”

With a very specific jab, he managed to slide a door shut in the middle of the team. Mayfield and Qin were on one side, while Xi’an and Burg were stuck on the other. Zakia tapped her nails against the counter, keeping the doorway in her peripheral

“Where is it?” Mando hummed, walking across the room. Zakia furrowed her brow.

“What?’

“The jammer.”

Zakia traced a finger over the console, pausing at a switch with a static symbol above it. She flipped it up, and tapped at the com unit in her ear. “Hear that?”

Mando shook his head.

“Then we’re set.”

Din watched the screens for another second, trying to make a decision on who would find the controls first. Once he saw the Devaronian coming in their direction, he kicked into gear. “We need to hide.”

Zakia’s eyes darted around the room, but eventually settled on the ceiling. “Din. Look.”

She pointed up, and he noticed a sideways grate in the metal ceiling. “Let’s go.”

After debating about who should climb up first, they decided it would be Din. Wearing armor usually brought about that situation, and Zakia wasn’t keen on going up first anyway. He used the tip of his knife to maneuver the grate enough to where he could fit. After it was moved, Din crouched down and launched his body upwards. His hands latched onto the edge, and he scrambled to get his elbows on. Once that was done, it was simple to haul the rest of his body up. He reached his arms down to Zakia, and she grasped onto him with all her strength. It didn’t take much to pull her slight frame into the ceiling, and he replaced the grate when she was on stable metal.  

The habitable part of the attic-area more than large enough for both of them, but Zakia’s back stayed firmly against Din’s body. Despite their predicament, the sexual tension plaguing their relationship was painfully clear. Being on the run was hard enough, and having a toddler on board even moreso. Zakia didn’t argue when his arm wrapped around her middle, keeping her tight against his body. She tilted her head towards him, cheek brushing his helmet.

“Is it bad that you have been turning me on all day?” She said.

“Funny.” Mando husked in her ear, “I’d been thinking the same about you.”

Zakia’s fingers dug into his wrists as he spoke, chewing on her lip.

“It’s a shame we’re locked in a prison and not alone.”

The way he said ‘alone’ sent shivers running down her spine, even though Zakia was drenched in sweat. Din’s warm body pressed against her own wasn’t helping, and the words he spoke made her blood run hot. His fingers drummed against her side, sneaking beneath the hem of her shirt. Footsteps pounded towards them below, and Zakia batted his hand away.

“Stop trying to get in my pants when there’s a Devaronian coming to kill us.” She murmured.

“We’ve done worse.”

Zakia didn’t have the opportunity to respond, as a dreadfully familiar red form  appeared through the grates below them. She felt the need to hold her breath for silence, watching the beast search for them.

“Where are you, little mouse?”

Din pulled his arm from around Zakia, pressing his closed fist into the floor and aiming carefully. Zakia pushed away as he fired his grappling hook down and tightened it around the Devaronian’s neck. Din staggered back to his feet, struggling against Burg’s incredible strength. Much to Zakia’s chagrin, the grate gave in.

With a mighty heave, the horned man had them both falling to the floor. Zakia gasped as pain shot through her leg where Mando fell on it. They were a tangle of limbs, struggling to their feet as Burg attacked. Din grabbed the Devarorian’s wrist, and a series of tiny rockets jetted from his vambrace. Zakia yelped, ducking down and rolling away when one came too close. Burg focused on Din, tossing the Mandalorian into the console and dragging his helmet across the controls. Zakia skittered backwards, drawing her blaster and firing off two failed shots as both men tussled with each other. Burg ended up in the sliding doorway, and Mando shot the control panel. The door dropped, and Zakia sighed in relief.

Though, it seemed she was not allowed to have any sort of happiness that day. Burg was still moving, pushing the door upwards. She grit her teeth and raised her blaster, firing before Din or Burg could react. The Devaronian fell, and the door chased him down. A sick squelching noise followed, and Zakia wrinkled her nose.

“Here I thought he was gross when he was alive.”

They departed from the control center, next target being Xi’an. Din synced the whole floor plan to his helmet, and led them to her last position while the blonde limped along beside him. Her leg was throbbing from their fall, the only thing aiding her being the adrenaline rushing through her veins. Zakia clenched and unclenched her fists when they stepped into the hall behind their Twi target. She didn’t doubt that Xi’an sensed their presence, and the Twi spun around with knives in hand.

Zakia waved sweetly, answered by Xi’an’s snarl.  Daggers were thrown in their direction, and Mando took the brunt of it with his armor. Zakia hid between the wall supports again, blaster in front of her  and primed to fire. She heard Mando grunt in pain, and stepped out with both blasters pointed at Xi’an. She had managed to spear him with one of the stilettos, its glowing blue tip sticking out from just under his pauldron. It was barely a flesh wound considers how small the knives were, and Mando had managed to wrangle the Twi’lek into a headlock as a testament to his strength. His vibroknife was at Xi’an’s throat, and Zakia smirked.

“Drop the knives or I’ll drop you.”

It was simple work, rounding up the rest of the crew.

Zakia took pleasure in locking up Mayfield and Xi’an; furthermore when Mando forced Qin up the ladder and into the Crest. They had found Zero peering into the baby’s bunk with a blaster drawn, and Zakia made quick work out of destroying and disposing of the droid. Qin watched everything with interest from the beginning to the end of their journey, up to the point where Ran paid them due to the ‘no questions’ policy.

After they’d left Ran’s station, Zakia held the Child against her chest, nose brushing his fuzzy head. “I missed you.”

The Child giggled, swatting playfully at her hair and tugging on the strangs. Zakia stood to move into the kitchen, stumbling to the side when the ship lurched. It was a hyperspace jump, and she furrowed her brows. Zakia shuffled over to the ladder, favoring her aching leg and looking up.

“Why so soon with the hyperspace?”

Din’s head appeared in her sightline, and it soon turned into his whole body as he shimmied down the ladder. He held his right arm tenderly after Xi’an’s blade had pierced it, but it was nothing more than sore.

“Ran was sending a fighter after us. But they have their own surprise coming.”

Zakia patted the Child’s back as he voiced his protest about leaving the kitchen. “What’s that?”

“They might be getting an early inspection from the Republic.”

Her jaw dropped. “You took the beacon.”

Mando nodded. “Yes.”

Laughter filled the cabin after a stunned silence, the sound echoing from both the Mandalorian and Zakia. The baby laughed at their sudden outburst, big eyes bouncing back and forth between the pair. It was a rare event to hear Din truly laugh, and Zakia reveled in the sound.

“That job was terrible.”

“I’d have to agree.” Din took the Child from her, bouncing him gently against his pauldron.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s about bedtime for everyone aboard. So he’s getting a snack and then going down.” Zakia opened and closed cupboards, searching for a special treat for the Child. She eventually came across a ration bar with an absurd amount of sweetener in it, and broke the dessert into pieces.

“Here you go, buddy.” Zakia held up a fragment, and the kid snatched it straight from her fingers with his teeth. “Hey! Easy, you piranha.”

Din nodded towards the cockpit. “I’m gonna clean up.”

Zakia understood the silent request, standing up shakily and heading for the ladder. She scaled it with relative ease, and ducked back down to take the kid from Mando.

“Put bacta on your shoulder.” Zakia ordered, lifting the Child onto the cockpit floor.

“Yes, mother. Thank you.”

The doors slid shut, and Zakia sighed. She sat cross-legged with the kid, setting the snack out on the floor and allowing him to choose which piece he wanted first. It took a few minutes for her body to relax from the day and realize it was safe. The Child was babbling happily, and returned to his normal routine of tossing the acceleration lever’s topper across the room. Zakia dozed off at the familiar cacophony, eyes fluttering shut as she rested against the wall.

Almost a full hour passed before Din climbed up into the cockpit. After bandaging his shoulder and rinsing the blood from his body, he took the time to shave and breather without a helmet covering his face. He emerged in a soft black and gray tunic, with black pants and his helmet fixed into place. His beskar had been cleaned and set out, littering the cabin floor.

There was a soft scraping noise coming from above, indicative of the Child’s playing, but no voices. He hauled himself up the ladder, opening the cockpit door and letting himself in. The kid yelped excitedly at his presence, and Din smirked beneath the helm.

Zakia’s legs were outstretched in front of him, and his eyes followed the limbs up to her body. She had leaned back into the wall, eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell slowly, and Din smiled. He scooped up the kid and stepped back down the ladder. The Child fussed about being deposited in his bunk, only relaxing when Din left the door open to avoid closing him off.

Returning to the cockpit, he set out to double check their course and set the autopilot to his desired setting. Din cracked his neck, watching hyperspace swirl by for a moment before turning back to his partner. She was still fast asleep, mouth slightly agape and eyelashes tickling her cheeks. He smiled, switching all of the lights off and reaching to his jawline to pull away the helmet. The fresh air was a relief against his face, and he held the beskar gingerly with a few fingers as he lifted Zakia from under the shoulders. She unconsciously curled into him, arms wrapping around his neck and face burying itself in the crook of his shoulder. Zakia’s legs wrapped around his waist, and Din used one hand to steady her against him as he dropped to the cabin below. The whole ship was dark, but he knew his way around well enough to make it to their quarters without incident.

Din set his helmet beside the bed, and softly laid Zakia in the pile of blankets. He brushed a hand over her cheek, and felt her eyelashes flutter against his finger.

“Hmm… Din?”

“Present.”  

Zakia’s hand flopped about lazily in a clear signal for him to join her. He did just that, pulling the tunic from his chest and dropping it on the floor. Her fingers wound around his arms, and Din reveled in the warmth of her body under the blankets. As was their normal routine, Din shuffled about to pull her onto his chest. Zakia resisted, staying firmly planted on her back.

“No…” She wound her had into his hair, tugging down. “You always take care of me.”

Her sleepy words helped relax his strung-out nerves, and he lowered himself without resistance. Her fingers entwined with his hair, scraping against his scalp. Din allowed his body to rest just to her side, head propped on her chest. His nose brushed her chin, and Zakia ducked her head to kiss it gently.

“How’s your shoulder?”

Din wiggled the joint about. “Not bad. The bacta took care of it.”

“Good.” Zakia’s fingers traveled down his neck, massaging his nape and tugging at the hair there. “You know… You were pretty quiet today. Touchy.”

“You said earlier that it turned you on.” He shot back, readjusting so his face was hovering over hers in the darkness. One elbow propped him up on his side, and the other arm reached across her body. “Change your mind?”

“Stars, no.” Zakia set a hand on his bare shoulder, tracing it all the way up to his lips. “I just thought you’d want to know that you’re it.”

“It?”

“For me. You’re it. No one else could drag me away if they tried.”

Din’s heart skipped, and he didn’t have to speak to reply. He leaned down to join their lips, relishing in the warmth that spread through his veins. The only thing that could make it better was if he could turn the lights on. To let her see the sincerity in his eyes and the determination to stay together through whatever remained.

But until his Creed was broken, they would remain forever in the dark.

[pigeontheoneandonly]

Lemongrass

So this was nominally supposed to be about a cooking lesson (loosely prompted by a post from @dr-ladybird), but it came out much more bittersweet and melancholy.

Thanks to @pushingsian for the beta!

NB: In my version of Mass Effect, Nathaly Shepard is vegetarian, and Kaidan Alenko's mother is Thai.

Lemongrass

The haunting quiet of a Canadian night along the Sunshine Coast still kept Shepard awake, even after two months.  She missed the endless creaking of the ship, the muffled voices coming through the hatches and decks, the hum of the drive core lulling her to sleep.  Everyone thought space was silent. She snorted and wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered on the porch, drawing a blanket close like a shawl.  This was silence, this… lonely wilderness.

Footsteps fell soft on the cabin’s wooden floor.  She glanced over her shoulder, and saw Kaidan padding barefoot to the door, still rubbing his eyes.  Her face broke into a smile despite herself, quiet, tired.  “Hey.”

 “It’s cold out here tonight.”  He rubbed his arms.  “Can’t sleep again?”

“You don’t need to get up,” she replied, sidestepping the question. 

He glanced out over the property, towards the coastline a half-acre away.  “It wasn’t this quiet when I bought it.”

This was where he’d sunk his L2 reparations, into this piece of earth, though the house came after the war.  His neighbors weren’t ever sitting in his lap, exactly, but a fair number either hadn’t survived or hadn’t returned.  But the lack of people wasn’t the problem.  “It’s a planet.  It’s never going to be—”

Shepard stopped herself just in time.  But her startled guilty glance, at the near slip, said it all anyway.  His shoulders sank.  “Come inside.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

He put his arm around her and gave her a tug.  “Come inside.”

The door swung shut.  The main room was cozy in a hand-made sort of way.  Kaidan’s mother had sent a seemingly endless stream of crocheted blankets, which now hung off every chair back and piled across the couch.  Shepard made the metal-framed furniture herself in their own backyard.  Kaidan spent his free hours scouring local extranet ads for books, and a coffee maker, lamps, cushions, anything anyone was selling or trading in the mostly cashless post-war economy.  Earth could barely manufacture essentials, much less everyday comforts.

Now he walked over to the small corner defining their kitchen and lit the stove.  She hiked one of those blankets higher on her shoulders.  “What are you doing?”

“You’ll sleep better with something warm in you.”

She joined him, putting her hand on his hip, leaning towards his ear.  “I can think of something warm you could put in me.”

That got her a quick snort of a laugh, as she hoped.  “That just wakes you up more.”

But his brown eyes sparkled in the dim light of the slumbering house. 

She heaved a sigh, but pushed a lock of red hair behind her ear, and switched gears.  “Need a hand?”

Flirtatious interest turned to surprise.  “You want to help me cook.”

“Come on.  I haven’t boiled a pot dry in weeks.”  A touch defensive, but hell, she had been trying.  It wasn’t her fault she never had reason or opportunity to learn to cook.  At this point, her molecular composition verged on 100% military-issue freeze pack meals and MREs.

“That’s true.”  He jerked his head at the cabinet.  “Find me the coconut milk, and the stock.”

Kaidan’s kitchen staples came as something of a surprise.  Beer and bacon she expected.  His mother’s influence, not so much.  Not that she knew a whole lot about Thai food to start with.  “Where do you get this stuff?”

“My mom is friendly with every southeast Asian family in Vancouver.”

“Sure.  But… citrus?”

“You’d be surprised how many people keep a tree in their condo.  I’m negotiating for one, but nobody wants to give it up.”

“It’s just as well.”  She pulled out a box.  “I’ve killed every houseplant I’ve ever had.”

“You’re doing all right with the herb garden.”  Kaidan said it with a straight face, despite them both knowing he did most of the work, especially after he caught her burying leftovers in the dirt to fertilize it.  Gently, he explained about compost, but it still seemed like a load of middle-man work to her.  He also explained about raccoons, which she had to admit had the weight of evidence behind it, in the holes and broken plants they left behind.  But Shepard had learned to water and prune, even fuss over the plants, here and there.  They seemed to enjoy the attention.

What was the other thing?  Stock.  Right.  She opened the fridge and pulled out a plastic jug, the remains of a giant batch Kaidan made last week from all their vegetable scraps.  It had been an experiment, but somehow, all of Kaidan’s kitchen experiments seemed to work out. 

“Put that in the pot,” he said, pointing. 

She complied, with one raised eyebrow.  “Don’t you think this burner is up a little high?”

“It needs to reduce.”  He gave the pot an expert swirl and set it back down.  “We still have mushrooms?”

“I think so.”  They’d stored up too much in the lower drawer.  She sorted through the items.  “What’re we making?”

“Soup.”  He declined to elaborate, and began to slice the mushrooms.  “We’ll also need lemongrass, cilantro, and some of those tiny peppers from outside.”

“You’ll send me out in this cold?” she griped, but she was already reaching for the scissors. 

He put down the knife.  “It’s summer, Nathaly. It’s almost ten degrees outside.  And the garden’s right beside the back door.”

“Anything south of twenty is fucking frigid.”  Pulling the blanket tighter, she headed out.

The moonlight gilded the leaves in silver as Shepard sorted through the huddled plants, trying not to drop the blanket.  Cilantro reminded her of home, the first home she ever had.  Her grandmother grew bales of it in window boxes.  Bending to cut some, she might have been six again, and smiled to herself in spite of the cold.  Or maybe because of it— the Arizona desert took on its own chill at night.

Lemongrass was more foreign.  Its pungency stabbed through the air as she cut it near the dirt, gathering several stalks.  A side of Kaidan she hadn’t known, like the cooking, until recently.  Sure he fixed a few meals in the apartment, back when the apartment was habitable.  Seeing him now, it was clear he’d grown up watching his mother, and absorbed everything she had to teach.  That added new depth to her understanding of the damage BAaT did to his family.  It was easy to sense, lurking there even today, in every interaction between mother and son, but harder to interpret.

When she was done, she returned to the kitchen, and found he’d added tofu, galangal (not ginger, she reminded herself, firmly), the aforementioned limes plus some kaffir lime leaves he’d obtained god-knew-how, and fish sauce to the waiting ingredients.  He smiled as he heard the door shut. 

“Here you are.”  She dumped her handful of fresh produce beside his pile. 

“These look great.  Take this.”  He handed her the spoon.

Shepard held it like a dead mouse.  “Wait a minute—”

He took the lemongrass to the sink.  “Nope. This time, you cook, and I help.  Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it.”

Everything about this read imminent disaster.  Kaidan noticed her frown, and pushed her arm towards the pot.  “Add the coconut milk.”

It trickled in, aided by her tentative stirring.  She put the spoon down.  “Kaidan, look, cooking… My biggest accomplishment is getting a microwave burrito thawed the whole way through without drying it out.  I know you want to do this whole domestic thing—”

He picked it up and put it back in her hand.  “I have never known you to admit defeat on anything.  What’s going on?  Talk to me.”

She stared into the pot, expressionless face flickering in the burner’s flame. 

Kaidan tried another tact.  “You’re not sleeping.  You barely eat.”

“I…”  She let the spoon go, and slumped over the stove, tiredly.  “I didn’t expect winning to feel like this.”

His face softened.  “That’s because we didn’t win.  We just beat the reapers.”

She brushed some of the hair out of her eyes.  He rubbed her shoulders, left a kiss on her neck.  “Let’s just make soup, ok?  Lemongrass is next.  Smash it first.”

The damp stalks left small puddles on the board as she ran the knife through them, and then upended it and brought the butt of the handle down on each piece, thump thump.  Then the same to the peppers.  The motion was almost comforting; Kaidan made this soup a lot.

Kaidan slid sliced galangal into the pot.  “Your turn.”

Picking up the lemongrass with the blade, Shepard watched it disappear into the white broth, only to bob back up again, filmed with coconut milk.  Already leeching all its intensity and leaving the herb softer, milder, spent; having sprouted and fought through the dirt to the sun, grown tall and proud, only to give up all it made to this.  Because she declared that this was its purpose and its end.

A fistful of bright leaves fluttered down over the lemongrass pieces.  Shepard started.  Kaidan’s brow furrowed, and he touched her arm.  “You sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah,” she said, distantly.  “I’m just tired.”

He watched her a few moments too long for comfort.  “Even the squirrels know that.”

It caught her off guard and she laughed, as he clearly hoped she would.  Just one chuckle.  But it helped. 

“Tofu and mushrooms next,” he prompted.  Shepard gathered them up and dumped them in.

She just about remembered to stir it every so often as they juiced limes and chopped cilantro.  To her endless gratitude, Kaidan took it back to finish it when it came off the burner; she never could get the amount of fish sauce just right.  Somehow, he’d gotten the rice cooker going while she messed with the soup, too.  She liked dumping it all into her bowl with the soup, a practice that never failed to earn her a look of mock-disappointment that was half the reason she kept doing it.

They settled on the couch.  For a few minutes, they ate in the quiet dark of the cabin, lined in moonlight, wrapped in blankets.  Shepard had spent all her life in motion.  Now she was trying to learn how to live with stillness.

The soup-soaked rice felt good in her mouth, something she could bite down on.  Something solid and warm in her stomach.  She hadn’t realized exactly how cold she’d gotten, or how hungry; each spoonful brought a little more color into the room. 

Kaidan sipped at his own bowl, smaller than hers, with a slight smile.  “Feel better?”

She looked down into her nearly-empty bowl, and back up at him.  “How did you know?”

“You skipped dinner.  And lunch.”  His tone just a little too light.  “This isn’t easy for me either, but regularly crashing your blood sugar isn’t helping.”

There was nothing to say to that.  “I don’t know what to do with myself up here.”

“Yeah.” He set his food aside and inched closer to her, settling his arm around her waist.  “You’ve got a stack of requests piling up.”

“Busy work,” she scoffed.

“There’s never going to be another reaper war, and that’s a good thing.”  He gave her a squeeze.  “You’ll just have to subsist without the adrenaline and cortisol, high blood pressure, constant small injuries, and all those other things.”

“Tomorrow.”  It was too complicated to unpack right now.  She set the empty bowl aside.

“Tomorrow,” Kaidan agreed, and pulled her to her feet.  “Now, let’s sleep.”

[hewwo-fwends]

you gonna be okay? - pjs + zcl (NCT)

hello. I wrote this to help myself out of a mental funk kinda ting, which is really depressing in itself, but it did help. I thought it would be a waste if no one saw it, ya know? it's a bit controversial. fun fact: I made a whole new account to post this so no one I know can find me here.

so um for context, both jisung and chenle are quite a bit older than me, and I'm over a year legal in my country. anyway. here we go yeehaw.

warnings: angst (⚠️⚠️TRIGGER WARNING⚠️⚠️ MENTIONS OF SH AND PANIC/ANXIETY ATTACKS), kinda smut (like a little bit of grinding and marking and tongue salsa), jisung has anxiety or smth idk, chenle misses jisung, ends with fluff and stuff it's kinda kyoot

word count: 4.4k

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

the recurrence of these emotions should have been the first warning sign. how he had felt this way so often over the past 3 years. maybe the first time he marked up his own body should have been the second warning sign. the numbness within him fading to a euphoric stinging sensation within seconds, then to guilt and anxiety. no one could know. then maybe the third warning sign would have been his growing dependency on things that kill you from the inside. drinking and smoking to feel anything but numb or anxious or like he wanted to be crushed under a car. but none of the above felt like warning signs to him, because between the worst lows and the happy period right after, he would forget anything happened. he would ignore it. he would tell himself it wasnt a big deal, and that no one should know. so no one did.

jisung was seen as the funny, nice friend in this way. he would listen to others' problems and help them as much as he could. he would give people his things to make them happy, not expecting to get anything back himself. he wouldn't try to make others laugh, but would feel proud when he did. people liked him in a casual way. he was a good guy, a kind guy. jisung thought that too sometimes, before he stopped himself. "don't get too into your own head." he would think. "show these people how nice you are. be the happy person that people like. that will make you happy all the time." clearly, that didn't always work. but, to fulfill his purpose, he ignored and forgot the times when he didn't live up to his happy persona. it didn't happen. he was happy. always happy. nothing but happy. and he prayed to any and all gods that he would never get caught out.

°•°•°•°•°•°•

"Jisung. Talk to me for a sec." Coach spoke from across the gym. Whilst still laughing about a joke with his friends, he jogged over to the coach, smiling brightly. "What's up with you today? You get enough sleep? You were all over the place. I swear I saw you trip over your own feet a couple times." Jisung's smile almost faltered, but he caught himself before it could.

"Ah, coach. You know me. I may have spent a little bit longer on Overwatch last night than usual but it's only because of this one guy that kept busting my nu- killstreak, man! I had to get him back or I wouldn't have slept at all!" Coach laughed at the teen's obvious rage thinking back to this other player and his tone softened.

"Yeah, yeah. I do get it. But don't let it happen again, alright? You're my star player and I'm counting on you for regionals. You won't let me down, right?"

"Sir, no, sir!" Jisung projected.

"You cheeky brat. Go on. Get outta here." the coach laughed as Jisung jogged back over to where his friends were joking and packing their bags.

"Hey, Sung. What was that about?" questioned Jeno, whilst spraying himself with deodorant and suffocating the rest of the group.

"Watch it, fuckface!" exclaimed Renjun, coughing up his organs.

"Oh, nothing. Just talking about regionals." Jisung replied after clearing his throat of Lynx Africa.

"Ahh, star player Jisung! But you were a bit slow today, huh? I might just steal your spot up the coach's ass, you get me?" Jaemin nudged Jisung, making the group laugh at the boy's teasing remark.

"Never in a million years, Na." Jisung shoved the boy before grabbing his bag and sidestepping away to avoid reprisal. The other boys followed this action and started walking towards the door, talking between each other.

"So, do y'all wanna get some food or something?" Haechan asked the group, hinting that he definitely did want to get some food. The group all murmured in agreement, apart from Jisung, who replied "Ah, I would love to but my mum wants me back for dinner with the family tonight."

"Aww momma's boy Jisungie. How cute." Jaemin teased before reaching to squeeze the youngest's cheeks. Jisung backed away, making sounds of fear whilst smiling at his friend's show of affection. Jaemin eventually backed off and Jisung rubbed his now red cheeks. He drifted to the back of the group walking through the school's empty corridors. A few seconds later, Chenle found his way next to him.

"Hey, are you gonna make it on the PlayStation tonight?" he asked excitedly.

"Ah, I don't know, man. Depends if my mum lets me." Jisung replied whilst rubbing the nape of his neck.

"What? But she didn't let you play last night! That's child cruelty, I swear!" his shrill voice rang through Jisung's ears, making him flinch to the side.

"Yeah. I know it sucks. But you guys are great without me, too! You'll be fine, man."Jisung reassured the loud boy. They continued to talk about the game that Jisung had missed the night before until the group reached a crossroads. They waved goodbye and Jisung split off from the group who were heading to a diner around the corner. As he walked down the pavement towards his house, he realised how dark it had gotten in only 10 minutes. It made sense as it was December, and he sighed as he looked at the expansive sky with greys and whites mixing with dark blue. As he approached his house, he noticed that the Christmas lights had been put up, white and orange fairy lights strung across the bushes outside and over the front door. He smiled to himself. As he stepped into the house, his fingers tingled from the contrast of the freezing winter air outside and the cozy central heating inside. "Mum?" Jisung shouted down the corridor whilst taking off his shoes and putting his bag on the floor.

"Hey, Sungie! How was school?" her voice appeared from the living room and Jisung walked towards it.

"Ah, same old, same old, you know?" he shrugged.

"Are you not hanging out with your friends today?" she asked as she paused her TV programme. She had been watching Rick and Morty and Jisung couldn't help but think how much she would fit in with his age group. The thought made him cringe.

"No. They were all tired and had to go home." He said whilst looking at the paused TV screen.

"Oh, well. I hope you don't mind but me and dad are going out tonight with some friends so do you mind making your own dinner? Your sister's staying at her friend's house so don't worry about her and your brother's in his room with his friend and they're doing their own thing." Jisung's mum explained. Jisung's face almost dropped but, once again, he caught himself and smiled.

"Of course, that's fine. I'll make myself some ramen. Have fun tonight!" he said as he walked out of the room and grabbed his bag.

"You too!" his mum spoke before the sound of the TV started playing again. Jisung jogged upstairs and down the corridor to his room before walking in and locking the door behind him, as was his routine. He sighed and dropped his bag on the floor, standing still by the door. Next in his routine was the sudden wave of cold that rushed over him, so much colder than the rest of the house. Then his lip would start quivering and he may have let out a whimper or two, before dropping onto his bed and sobbing with no tears, just the feeling of hopelessness running through his veins. His body curled in on itself and his hands clawed at his bedsheets as his face dug into his pillow. He would then rock back and forth for the next half an hour, chanting such phrases as "I wish I was dead" or "I'm horrible" or maybe "I hate this". What it was that he hated? He couldn't tell you. He just knew he didn't want to be there anymore. Or anywhere really. He would contemplate carving into himself like a Halloween pumpkin again but would always chicken out just before, remembering how tiring it was to hide it the first times. He didn't want to add anymore stuff to his plate. Also, his physical appearance needed to match his social appearance. No one could know what he was like on his own. It was his own little secret. However, he needed to feel something. So he would curl up on his floor, his head against his carpet, and scratch all down his arms, as hard as he could. The sensation made him feel something, and feeling something felt euphoric. After maybe managing to shed a few tears and falling asleep, he would wake up feeling drained and somewhat annoyed for not being able to see the scratches on his arms. But of course, he would then think of himself as an attention-whore, and make himself forget anything had happened. His day then continues from then with him being the happy social butterfly he was known to be. And the cycle would repeat.

°•°•°•°•°•°•

"Hey, you better come hang with us tonight. I feel like I hardly see you anymore!" Chenle spoke to Jisung in what he would call his "quiet voice". Luckily, they were in the canteen and there was hardly anyone around.

"You know I would love to, but I've got a lot of homework to do! Mr Suh is being a real bitch lately, you know?" Jisung spoke back as he played with the rice on his plate. School food really did nothing for his constant nausea.

"But you've been working so much lately! You've had to do homework almost every day after school for the past month! And before that, your mum needed you to come home for dinner every night! I miss you, Sungie." Chenle's typically loud and screeching voice fell at the last bit, and Jisung looked up at the boy through his fringe. What did he mean by "I miss you" when he was right there in front of him? He hadn't gone anywhere.

"What do you mean "you miss me"? I'm right here, Lele." Jisung almost reached his hand out for Chenle's on the other side of the table, but ended up deciding against it and just leaning forwards slightly.

"But you're not though. I only see you in school now. And you hardly talk to me anymore. You used to tell me about stuff that's going on in your life. Now I have to talk to you first to get you to notice to me." Jisung's eyes began to get hot as he looked down at the table. He could feel his heartbeat in his stomach and his muscles begin to twitch. This wasn't good. "Do you even like me anymore? I thought you were my best friend, Jisung. What's happened to you?" Chenle's voice held an apprehensive and somewhat emotional tone. Jisung couldn't breathe. He needed to get out of there.

"I've gotta go." he rushed out his words in a hushed tone to stop his tears from falling, whilst pushing up from his seat and speeding out of the canteen as fast as possible without running. His eyes stayed trained on the ground and the tears welling up made him feel like he was about to throw up. He pushed open the door to a toilet block he knew no one would be in before rushing into a cubicle and locking the door behind him. He broke.

His sobs rang against the walls of the cubicle, no matter how much he tried to repress them. He slapped his hand over his mouth in attempt to quieten himself, and his tears fell like torrential rain, down his face, his hands and to the floor. His back slid down the wall of the cubicle until he was curled up on the floor in a puddle of his own trembling limbs and tears. He stayed in that state for 5 more minutes, neither his tears nor his emotions subsiding. Then, he heard the door of the toilet block crash open, promptly followed by a shout of "Jisung?". Chenle.

Jisung's eyes clenched shut so tightly that he was seeing stars, his nails now digging into his cheeks with how tightly he was covering his mouth. The tears didn't stop but at least they didn't make any noise. "Jisung. I know you're there. I won't break down the door. Just let me in." Chenle's voice turned softer, but now with an added hint of concern. Jisung dreaded to think that Chenle was concerned about him. He tried to stop the tears so he could face his friend, but they wouldn't stop, and he couldn't even move. He felt trapped where he was. His body had given up. "I'm not going anywhere, Jisung. I promise."  Chenle's voice sounded close, like his head was against the other side of the door. Hearing him say that somehow made Jisung break even further. He didn't know that was possible. His sobs could suddenly be heard again even through his hands tight grasp on his face. "Jisung?" Chenle's voice sounded panicked now. He didn't want to do that to him. He needed to let him know he was there, even like this.

"Chenle-" he rasped out between sobs. His voice clearly sounded tired and weak, with a hint of desperation.

"Please, open the door, Sungie." Jisung sobbed harder, feeling incapable of moving whatsoever, but his best friend's distress gave him an ounce of motivation, but not without added guilt and shame. He hid his head in his arm against his knees and blindly reached for the lock on the door. He felt it unlock and immediately curled his other hand around himself, hoping to not be seen. Of course, that didn't happen. He heard a gasp from above and then felt the brush of air against his arm as his friend dropped down next to him. His sobs had still not stopped and he felt the smallest he had ever felt in his life right at this moment, curled up on the toilet floor next to his best friend. He didn't know what he had expected to happen, but it certainly wasn't the warm feeling of his friends arms wrapping around him, and the warmth of his breath against his neck. They didn't usually do that with each other. This only spurred on more tears, but slightly fuzzier ones. With some sensation back in his body, he twisted his hand upwards to hold onto his friend's arm, a small message to the other boy in an attempt to translate how grateful he is to him and that he's the best friend anyone could ever wish for. It may have not translated that whole message, but he hoped that it got pretty close.

"You're gonna be okay, Sungie." Chenle spoke into the crying boy's neck. The warmth tickled him and caused a hot shiver to run across his spine. Wait. Was he blushing? In shock about having just blushed at the actions of his best friend, he managed to lift his head up and open his eyes. His sight was blurred but he could see the wavy outline of his small friend through his unrelenting tears. He could feel hands upon his cheeks as they turned his face towards him to wipe at the tears under his eyes with the soft pads of his thumbs. He hoped so much that his face was red enough from crying to cover up the ever-growing blush that adorned his cheeks. He bit his lip and looked down in embarrassment, but Chenle didn't allow it. With his hands still resting on his cheeks, he lifted his head back up and pressed his forehead against the others. Out of surprise, Jisung's right hand shot up to hold onto the other's elbow, before sliding up to his hand against his cheek instead. He rested his hand on top of Chenle's and leant into it slightly, enjoying the feeling way too much than he should have felt okay with. His eyes fell shut again as he released a sigh that fluttered against Chenle's cheeks. They sat there, sharing each other's space, for what felt like years. Jisung wished the feeling would never stop. But as long as Chenle was with him, he felt like it never would.

After his tears had slowed and his breathing had evened out, Jisung felt Chenle's hand slide away from his face. He felt himself almost starting to cry yet again, before Chenle's fingers slid between his own and his thumb started rubbing his hand. Chenle's head pulled away from Jisung's and tilted against the wall they were both leaning against instead. "Is this okay?" Chenle asked in a genuinely hushed and soothing voice, one that Jisung didn't know he was capable of. He couldn't tell what Chenle was referring to until he squeezed Jisung's hand ever so slightly and Jisung blushed yet again.

"Yeah. It's fine." the corners of his mouth tilted ever so slightly before he realised and stopped himself. But Chenle didn't even try to stop himself. He had already noticed Jisung's mistake and smiled back widely himself. This only made Jisung feel shy and bashfully smile at the floor.

"Your smile is so pretty." Chenle stated, as if it was the most obvious fact in the galaxy. Jisung's eyes shot up to the other boy's face, who was now giggling at Jisung's reaction. Jisung quickly looked back down to the floor as he felt the flustered feeling spread all over his head.

As Chenle's giggles quietened down, Jisung tilted his head against the wall, before realising just how close their faces were. He could feel Chenle's breath against his lips. He felt an involuntary sound creeping up his throat, but swallowed hard to keep it down. "Are you feeling any better?" Chenle spoke in a deep voice, quiet and gentle on Jisung's currently sensitive ears.

"I do feel better right now." Jisung responded, his voice still weak and raspy.

"Right now?" Chenle's eyebrows curled in confusion. "Why right now?"

Jisung couldn't stop the words from coming out. "Because you're here." His eyes widened the second after he let it slip from his lips, having shocked himself with the obvious "line". He didn't know how to repair that. So he just stayed silent, red in the face and frozen. He only barely noticed Chenle's small smile before he registered that they were somehow even closer to one another. He felt their noses brush together and this time, he didn't think fast enough to stop the involuntary sound falling off his lips. A hushed whimper spilled into the shared breathing space between them. Chenle's head was back where it was before, pressed against Jisung's, and Jisung couldn't stop himself from glancing down at his best friend's lips. His best friend, he thought. This was not normal, and he knew it. But he didn't care. It felt so much better than anything he had ever done before. So much more natural. He wanted this. So bad.

His mouth was slightly open, trying to maximise his air intake as the air around him suddenly got so hot.

"Can I?" He felt Chenle's breath against his tongue, and his nose brushed against Jisung's once more.

"Please." It came out much more whiny than he had expected, but he wasn't even ashamed anymore as his best friend's lips melted into his own, their synchronisation making Jisung feel like he had been missing this his whole life. Chenle. Just Chenle. They seemed to fall into a trance as the taste and feeling of one another became addictive. Jisung only realised what was happening when he felt a hand sliding up his arm and towards his neck, the thumb rubbing against his jugular. Another hand had slid up his leg and was squeezing his thigh. Jisung couldn't help but grab onto the front of Chenle's shirt and pull his body even closer as he released yet another whimpering noise. That was a cue for Chenle to lick at Jisung's bottom lip, subtly asking for permission to take this further. It wasn't even a question for Jisung. He let his mouth fall open and Chenle was immediately there, lapping at the other's tongue with his own. The feeling made Chenle groan slightly, and Jisung's fist clenched tighter on his shirt in response, another whimper falling from his occupied lips. He felt breathless in the best way, so didn't even attempt to pull away to breathe. He didn't want to stop and could tell that neither did Chenle.

A few minutes later, Chenle had explored Jisung's entire mouth and wanted to find out some more about the boy, so his hands fell to his hips and pulled slightly, inviting Jisung to come closer. Jisung took this offer with delight, climbing onto the other's lap and leaning back onto the other's knees as Chenle slid his back further up the wall for a more comfortable position. They both quickly found each other's lips again and got right back into the flow of the situation. Chenle's hands had drifted from Jisung's tiny waist to his hips, just above his ass that was sat in a place that he didn't want to dwell too much on, though he found that to be extremely difficult with how fidgety Jisung could be. Jisung's hands found purchase against Chenle's chest again, occasionally grasping at his shirt when he felt to overwhelmed, so the entire time really.

After a few more minutes, Chenle leaned his head back against the wall, looking up at Jisung with so much adoration. Jisung felt hot under his stare and missed the feeling of his lips.

"You're so hot, baby." Chenle spoke in his low voice, like he was talking to himself. Jisung whined and leaned in, hoping to find Chenle's lips again, only to be stopped by the feeling of a hand around the base of his neck, not holding him, just applying light pressure, enough to stop him in his tracks and make him roll his hips. The feeling made his head fall back and he accidentally released a moan. He felt embarrassed, but also really, really hot. He heard a growl from below him but before he could look back down, he felt Chenle's hot mouth against his neck, right next to his jugular. His teeth bit into the skin and his mouth sucked around the mark, making Jisung involuntarily move his hips faster against Chenle's torso, looking for any friction whatsoever. Like Chenle was reading his mind, he ground his hips upwards into Jisung's own, right as he bit into the other side of his neck. "Fuck!" Jisung exclaimed, the breath being knocked out of his lungs at the sensation.

"Close already?" Chenle teased. Jisung suddenly realised how weird it was to hear that from his best friend. The best friend he would play games with as a child. the best friend he would talk about girls with in his early teen years. The best friend he would vent to when he was stressed, and who would do the same back. The best friend he had talked about getting a house with in the future, somewhere in a big city. The best friend that was now making him feel so fucking good on the floor of the school toilets when they're both supposed to be in lessons. The best friend he wants to scream the name of for the rest of his life, disturbing the neighbours and almost getting kicked out of several apartments. He's not even mad.

°•°•°•°•°•°•

Them walking out of that toilet block must have been the most comedic moment in either of their lives. To set the scene, they both styled matching red faces and disheveled hair, with Chenle rocking a creased shirt and Jisung showing off his abundance of blossoming purple and red bite marks, trailing all over his jaw and neck and deep down into his collar line and, to top it all off, their non-chalant "we did not just fuck I swear" facial expressions. Glancing up and down the corridor to avoid any other unsuspecting students, they made a bee-line for Chenle's locker where he knew he kept a hoodie to hide Jisung's Vincent Van Gogh "Starry Night"-lookin' neck. The only problem was that it was on the other side of the school.

Why Jisung decided to come instead of waiting, Chenle didn't know. He just thought he was too cute and didn't really want to leave him alone either. But luckily, it was still lesson time, so there was hardly anyone in the halls. So there they were, running through the halls Breakfast Club-style, dodging teachers and the odd student, until they reached Chenle's locker. He made quick work of opening it and grabbing the hoodie, buried underneath about 5 textbooks, 3 folders and a bag of snacks. "You're a mess." Jisung joked.

"Look, do you want the hoodie or not?" Chenle reiterated, his eyes wide as if he were scolding a child.

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry!" Jisung giggled, taking the hoodie from Chenle's hands. Chenle jabbed quickly at Jisung's stomach, making him bend over and jump backwards dramatically. He pulled the hoodie over himself, surprised that it was kind of big on him.

"Not as big as you thought you were, huh?" Chenle quirked his eyebrow and Jisung blushed, once again, at his remark. He pulled up the hood and tugged the strings tight around his head, making Chenle coo at him. "You baby." And Jisung swore he could somehow hear the star emojis and "uwu" emoticon in his voice. Chenle walked closer to him, holding his sweater paws and then looking around to make sure no one was there. He then leaned in to quickly steal another kiss, lingering too long for it to be classed as a peck. "What lesson have you got now?" Chenle asked, still holding Jisung's sweater paws, now leaning against the lockers.

"I think Chemistry?" Jisung puffed out his cheeks in thought. Chenle was enamored.

"You okay to go? I can stay with you if you want me to." Chenle reasoned. Jisung's eyes dropped to the ground as he smiled.

"I'm definitely feeling better right now. I might even learn something in Chem." Jisung chuckled.

"Wouldn't that be a miracle." Chenle smiled. The other then pushed his shoulder lightly, making him giggle.

"I'm gonna miss you." Jisung mumbled towards his feet. Chenle leaned in further, smiling.

"That's cheesy and disgusting but you're cute so I'm gonna miss you too." He punctuated his statement with a kiss on the other's lips. Followed by another one. Then another. And another. They were both really lost in each other. And they didn't want to be anything else.

[askjenetiakrole]

Visions of an Empty Room

All his life, Konrad Curze has been plagued by visions of the future. They have been both grimly literal and darkly symbolic, but they have never before been empty.

[Visions of an Empty Room on AO3] [My Works on AO3]

“I SEE NOTHING,” Curze whispered. Long fingernails clicked arrhythmically on the table. Thin lips pulled back from teeth filed to points, unkempt hair swaying in the ragged breath that hissed between them. Eyes as black and fathomless as the void stared unblinking at the crystal sphere before him.   “The visions cannot be forced, my lord. Even the Crimson King’s orb-”   “You’re not listening, Fel.” Curze threw the orb at his Chief Librarian’s head. Fel Zharost sidestepped, letting it disappear into the darker shadows at the edge of the librarium. There was a resounding crack as it struck something a considerable distance away. “It’s not that I can’t sssssee. I see. Nothing.” The primarch’s fingers curled in the air before him, as if seeking to grasp the meaning of the empty visions that had plagued him for weeks. “Abandoned streets. Battlefields populated only by the dead. Hollow vaults darker than death. Empty halls and silent corridors.”   The orb rolled back out of the darkness. Fel made to stop it with his boot.   “No!” cried Curze, arm outstretched. A psychokinetic pulse sent Fel stumbling back a step. Curze dropped to all fours, scrambling alongside the rolling ball like a beast. He tilted his head this way and that, craning his neck to see all possible angles. When it came to a standstill, he rose, corners of his mouth pulling upwards in a manic grin.   “What have you seen, lord?”   “Just another empty room. But I knooooow this one,” he cooed. Alive with purpose, Curze began to make his way to the doorway. “I am going to Terra.”   “What about the war?” Fel called out after him.   Curze looked over his shoulder and blinked for the first time in over an hour. He looked left, then right, seeming to have forgotten that he was in charge of a fleet that was currently prosecuting a full-scale planetary invasion. He shrugged. “Tell Sevatar he’s in charge.”

It was hard to see in the Forbidden Fortress. Its black-walled halls were dimly lit, but that did not trouble Nostraman eyes. The whole place shone with another light. A blazing psychic radiance. The light of the Astronomican. Konrad Curze hated that light. He had been there once before, when the Emperor had shown him the edifice on which the Imperium was built. More than the Imperial Truth or the might of His inexhaustible armies, the Astronomican was what made the Imperium possible. It burned through his eyes and into his soul. Curze had meant never to return, but the future rarely respected his wishes.   His eyes were closed, which helped only a little. The light was so close, suspended just a few hundred metres above the walkway from which he hung. Footsteps approached, eerily muffled despite the cavernous proportions of the chamber. Two sets. One armoured. The unarmoured one was small, probably a child. Curze swung himself onto the walkway, a giant in midnight plate coalescing from the shadows between bolts of psychic energy. The footsteps stopped. He opened his eyes.   The girl cast an unusual shadow. It fell against the light of the Astronomican, pushing it back. The light flowed around her, like a boulder in a stream. A pariah. The aquila stamped on her forehead marked her as an aspirant of the Silent Sisterhood. Of the owner of the armoured steps, there was no sign.   The Night Haunter loomed over the girl, close to three times her height, stormbolts crackling across his armour. “Hello.”   The girl looked to her left, then back at him. She did not appear at all fazed. “You’re not supposed to be here.”   “So they keep telling me.” There was blood on his clawed gauntlets.   The girl looked to her left again. “You should listen.”   One eye twitched, pulling his mouth into a snarl. That was when he saw the other shadow. It was of a different magnitude entirely, flooding the entire chamber with an oppressive darkness without diminishing the light. He strained to catch a glimpse of the source, the outline of the woman at the heart of it.   “I didn’t see you there, Jenetia. That answers one question... and poses so many more.”   She made a Thoughtmark gesture that was both rude and dismissive. It had no easy translation, but he had certainly killed people for far less. Curze did not wait for the girl to sanitise it.   “I have seen you - well, the absence of you - in my dreams. Impossible, I thought. Yet here you are, just as I have foreseen. What do you suppose that means?”   Krole scowled. Curze wondered if perhaps she was as concerned at the prospect as he was. Not everything has meaning. Some things simply are.

//Who remembers the TV show Heroes? This was inspired by some scenes in season 1 where Isaac, who can paint the future, is looking for Peter but keeps painting empty scenes because Peter’s invisible.

[mintdrop]

[Immortals] | [1,443 words] | [vampire/hunter spearmint AU] | [chapter 2] | [prev chapter]

Given that a vampire had much stronger, fast ability to heal than humans, it didn’t take long for Estinien to recover - at least physically. Mentally, he was a mess. That woman; no matter what he did, she wouldn’t leave his mind. Hell, she had even appeared in his dreams at some point, embarrassing as it was to admit. That asshole that had chased him, he said she would regret something. Was she okay? Would she be punished for saving him? But it wasn’t only that -- why did she save him? Wasn’t she a hunter? Wasn’t her entire purpose to kill things like him? It didn’t make sense. His thoughts were absolutely plagued with her, and it was driving him mad.

“You know, you could just go see her.” A voice pulled him from his personal prison, and his clouded eyes focused back to the scene before him. To his left, a man with a near-angelic face sat there with tea in hand, smiling to himself as he watched Estinien awkwardly shuffle in his seat. Black hair framed ethereal blue eyes, and when he spoke, a brief flash of fangs could be seen, betraying a voice that seemed like it would belong to a deity. “Though it was through your own sheer misfortune, you do know where she resides.”

“The other hunters know my face, Aymeric. It would be stupid of me to go back.” His gaze shifted away from his sire, and he adjusted himself so that his elbows were propped up on his knees, mouth buried within the palm of one hand. “Besides, she’s… she would only suffer for it. I’m sure they think I’m dead, with how she treated her own. What would come of it if they found out?”

Aymeric smiled, and took a sip of his tea before placing the cup and saucer down on the table that separated them. “Then shall we go together? I’m curious to see what kind of woman has your mind so tangled.” He stood up from his chair, not giving Estinien any time to voice his objection to the idea. “As it so happens, I have an appointment with Hilda today. Perhaps we could linger about the guild and see if we catch a glimpse of your savior.”

The late fall and winter months were a gift for vampires; though the sun didn’t harm them as much as fairy tales led children to believe, it did make them somewhat uncomfortable compared to humans. But at the end of November, the sun was gone by time the clock struck five, giving the two men a much easier time to blend in with the bustle of the town. Normally, the southern streets would be emptier than those of the north, where all the shops sat. But today, there seemed to be a commotion. Estinien trailed behind Aymeric, who felt much more confident amongst the townspeople than he did; perhaps it was his face, or simply how he presented himself, but he’d never been suspected of being anything other than a normal human by those he interacted with. Today was no different.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” He called out to a passing woman, who stopped dead in her tracks when she noticed the eye candy that had beckoned to her. “I’ve been out of town lately -- could you tell me why it seems to be so active this evening?” 

“Oh, well, y’know those people who work out of that big building a little ways away? The “Hunter’s Guild,” they call themselves. Anyway, there seems to be some kind of argument going on there.” The woman gestures down the road, where a congregation of people seems to be forming. “Somethin’ about a betrayal or the like.”

Aymeric thanks the woman and turns to Estinien, although he is greeted by what could basically be described as an after image of the man. Pulling up the hood of his outerwear, Estinien rushes down the street, brushing past the people forming the crowd until he has a clear view of the center. To the left stands the hunter who had chased him before - his upper leg is bandaged, and he holds onto a single crutch for support. To the right stands Peppermint, arms crossed against her chest. In the center stands another woman, this one unknown to Estinien. Her hair is short, gray tufts ending just beneath her chin. Her eyes are of a similar hue, and if he’d been focused on anything other than wondering what was unfolding before him, he would have been curious to know if she could still see.

“I’m tellin’ you, this bitch here let that vampire go!” The hunter aggressively points towards Peppermint, a select few of his word slurring together; was he drunk? Maybe not, but he was definitely on his way there. “She’s betrayin’ the whole guild, Y’shtola! She needs ta’ be expelled! Locked up!”

Estinien swallowed, his eyes locked on the smaller woman in the center of this mess. Aymeric, who had finally managed to push his way into the group, watched along. Despite his belligerent yells, Y’shtola sighed. 

“You’ve claimed this for the past three days, Arthur, but you’ve shown no proof. The only thing you have to show is that wound through your leg.” She looks down at the bandaged limb, but her eyes show no sympathy. “Which you only sustained because you decided to trespass on her grounds.” The man’s face seemed to change color in an instant, red rising from his neck at a rapid pace.

“So she gets t’shoot me with no consequences?! And even then, she hasn’t shown any proof of her kill!” He points again, nearly spitting in rage. The smaller woman sighs, her shoulders shrugging. Digging into the pocket of her coat, she pulls out a tuft of white hair, tied at the end where it had been ripped from Estinien’s skull, and tossed it to the ground in front of Arthur.

“I hope you didn’t expect me to parade the corpse around like a trophy. Unlike a few of the hunters here,” her eyes narrowed, coldly glaring at the man across from her. “some of us don’t feel the need to glorify what we do just to get women warming our beds for a night.” While her tone was unchanging, Peppermint’s words were filled with venom -- enough to push the other hunter over the edge. 

Pushing his crutch over, he began to sprout profanities towards her, charging towards her with nothing but adrenaline keeping him steady. Estinien pushed to make his way in, only for his arm to be gripped with extreme force, nearly being yanked out of its socket as he was pulled back. He turned his head to see Aymeric, whose “wait” was drowned out by the gasps of the crowd around them. He turned his gaze back to the altercation, watching as Peppermint sidestepped from Arthur’s aimless flailing. She kicked her leg out in front of her, tripping the man and causing him to tumble face-first into the cobblestone. When he got his bearings, nose threatening to show the beginning signs of an injury, he tried to grab at her calf, although she was able to quickly step out of the way. She walked beside Y’shtola, who shook her head.

“You’re a disgrace to the guild, Arthur. You’re suspended as of today. An official hearing will be in order soon.” Walking forward, she picked up the tuft of hair that Peppermint had provided as proof, gesturing to the shorter woman before turning on her heel and retreating back into the guild hall. From the crowd emerged Arthur’s hunting partner, who quickly scrambled to get the man to his feet. Arthur, in return, simply stared at Peppermint with murder in his eyes before being carted away -- most likely to the nearest tavern to drink away his embarrassment. The crowd, sufficiently pleased with how the argument had turned out, began to disperse.

Estinien simply sat there in silence, unsure of what to do now. Does he approach her? Does he even make it known that he’s there? No, he decides; the faster he leaves, the better for both of them. But fate is a cruel mistress, and rather than escape undetected, their eyes meet. Peppermint’s eyes widen, and for a moment, she’s stunned - until Aymeric walks up to her.

“Good evening, miss.” He bows, smiling at her as he meets her gaze. “I believe a friend of mine has been looking for you. Would you like to take a stroll on this lovely winter night?”

[tarithenurse]

Stolen - 10

Pairing: Loki Laufeyson &/x fem!gifted!reader Content: Angst. Feels. Plot. Regerts. Fluffy inclinations. Mentions of torture. References to past MCU events. A/N: *radiates love to everyone* *begins singing Tina Turner’s “You’re simply the best”* Ask or reblog if you want a tag.

10. Leave a Scar

…   Reader  …

Two days later and you’re still praying that Loki has no idea what you’ve heard even if the chances seem remote. He’s grown quiet. Brooding. Most of the time he’s off somewhere without you but when he returns he finds a secluded corner and a carafe of wine to wash down his gloominess with.

He’s plotting how to kill me. It makes sense – haven’t you done what he wanted you to? The talk about keeping you safe must have been nothing but a ruse to eventually break your spirit completely before delivering the final blow. On the other hand, it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to if he was just going to waste the effort by being emo. Plotting to kill someone else? Now, that would make sense considering his track record.

On and on your thoughts run in circles and not even the beautiful view from the balcony can provide enough of a distraction today.

“Tell me, mortal.” His voice startles you, coming from right behind you. “What’s plaguing your mind, hmm?”

There’s nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide from those piercing, green eyes boring into the back of your skull. Pulling at the sleeves of the purple dress (kindly lend to you by the Älfir), you consider how to out-lie a liar.

“What...what is going to happen now?” you manage to ask, forcing your voice past a lump in your throat.

The sigh that fans your shoulder is chilling. “It seems I have to change my plans.”

Unsure of anything, this isn’t what you had expected. Turning towards him, the somberness clings to his face and cuts his already sharp features from ice. Only now do you realize that there had been a spring in his step and a softness to his gaze a short week ago but since then something has extinguished the light.

Your hand twitches as you restrain yourself from reaching out to stroke his cheek. “What’s happened?” Did he see that?

If he did, nothing in his demeanour divulges anything as Loki steps as close as he can without the mossy greens of his clothing brushing against purple. A thousand worlds could come and go that second and you would never have noticed because the Asgardian’s presence is all-encompassing, sucking you into his personal vortex of pride and pain, stubbornness and deference.

“Why would you care what has happened?” His words are cold like blades of ice, but this time you see through it and wait him out. He resigns. “The Älfir’s magic is not strong enough. They cannot restore Jotunheim.” Deflated.

“If they could’ve then they would’ve healed the Priestess too.” Biting your tongue off suddenly feels like a really good idea.

The silence is oppressing, drawing out the seconds as the man looks you over as if you just dropped from the moon. Like he’s seeing me for the first time. The sensation is far from comforting, something that’s enhanced as the thin lips begin to curve into a crooked smile revealing white teeth.

“You did that.” Man, you hate the way he practically purrs.

“Barely.” You step backwards, bumping into a pillar.

Even now, you can’t help but notice how smoothly he moves as he follows in your footsteps. “But you did.”

Somehow managing to sidestep the god, you make it two steps into the shade of the room before his hands have gotten hold and you’re twirled, forced against the cold wall.

“Don’t -”

“Shush.” He places a cold finger on your lips, making you comply automatically. “We all have sacrifices to make.”

A smidgen of logic in the back of your skull is screaming at you to shut up, to let him have this victory while you figure out a way to get out of the situation. Of course you don’t listen to it, deciding instead to pull yourself up to your full height (as unimpressive as it may be compared to Loki) and glare at him. There’s even a moment there where you impress yourself by how calm your voice is when you answer.

“No. I won’t be your puppet anymore.” Black eyebrows shoot upwards at your words. “And if you kill me, at least I know you’ll still be crying every night.”

That’s the instant the sense of heroic pride dies.

The emerald eyes you secretly admire change into a sea of blood while a flood of blue, broken by ridges and lines cover what skin you can see and causes you to gasp, drawing in air so cold you can feel the lungs crackle in complaint. If at least Loki would snarl or growl, then it would somehow make sense, but he just smiles, the white teeth suddenly similar to the fangs of a predator. A wolf...and I’m the lamb.

“Mortal. Pet.” A claw traces along your cheekbone before scraping down your throat. “I thought we were coming to an understanding? You would obey my every wish in return for the life of those you love?” Nodding is the only option. “Tsk tsk. Perhaps I have underestimated you, wench, thinking you had a soul, a heart. Hoping you would recognize real evil when held up against the light of truth.”

Well...I’m already doomed. “You told a story -!”

“A story?!” This time he does snarl. “I’ll show you story!”

The cold of his hands burn the skin on your forehead, wrist, and palm as he slams your hand against his brow and mirrors the movement.

...  Loki   ...

The first glimpses are simple until the events fully unfold. Falling – he will hate the sensation forever. Falling through nothingness for half an eternity until he lands more dead than alive...except this time he’s watching it from the outside. We’re watching it. Though the Jotun can’t see it, he knows that [Y/N] is there with him, a spectator without the option to look away when the actor is found and brought to the Titan.

What were months or maybe years at the mercy of Thanos and his Children flash by in a few minutes, perhaps. Torture, mind games, hatred twisted and turned until it points back to the outcast prince and penetrates his soul, leaving it to fester before he finally succumbs to the touch of a sceptre. From there the events unfold in a blur only occasionally brought into focus when a part of the fallen god tries to rebel against the shackles.

It’s only when the Loki they watch is lying at the feet of the Avengers that clarity is fully restored, though one kind of shackles is replaced by another. Then: a speck of blue grants an opportunity impossible to dismiss.

A vision. A memory. A nightmare.

Loki’s hands fall to his sides. It’s over. The wall in the Älfir temple looks less real than what [Y/N] and the Jotun have just witnessed, but the wide eyes staring up at him brings reality back like a kick in the balls. She knows. Everyone knows when they witness the recollections of someone else – no amount of so called rational thinking can convince them they have hallucinated because they feel it as if they lived it themselves.

“[Y/N]...”

Tears are welling in her eyes, lips quivering as she tries to root herself in the present. “He...y-you...” What I wouldn’t do to take away your pain. “That was -” A sniffle interrupts her.

He hates it. Hates the despair she’s drowning in at his hands. Truly, he has proven to be the monster he claimed not to be. Losing control and forcing [Y/N] through this nightmare serves no purpose at all.

“I will...I will ensure your safety and then you will never hear from me again,” he promises shamefully, “now...get some rest.”

...

Flat on his back and with the hands behind his head, Loki’s gaze is fixed on a point far beyond the ceiling above. Dawn is nearing yet sleep has evaded him, chased away by memories and guilt. It served no purpose. Priding himself of his logic, the turmoil raging inside his heart is has pushed the Jotun to act rashly and he hates it because he wishes to be more than a beast that simply lashes out when cornered. He doesn’t want to be the monster he behaved like. No, the man in him has to find a way to -

“Loki?” The whisper is hesitant, almost too quiet to hear. “Are you...are you awake?”

He sits up, bare feet on the stone floor as if to ground himself. The covers slides from his chest, revealing the pale skin in the darkness but [Y/N] probably can’t see it with her human eyes as she stands in the doorway.

Draped in the soft-flowing silk from a borrowed shift, she could almost pass for one of the ghosts from the fanciful tales children enjoy to fear. Loki can see her better than that. He can see her face straining as she tries to find him in the dark, and her arms wrapped tightly around the ribs below her bosom perhaps to find some comfort.

“Yeah...I’m awake,” the god rasps softly in return. Is that regret or relief in your sigh?

Sitting there, waiting for the unknown, a tension begins to permeate the air and send tendrils to every nerve ending of Loki’s body. A coil tightens in his chest and it becomes nearly unbearable when [Y/N] tentatively walks towards him, her feet careful as they seek out the right path. A few steps before the goal, her hands reach out to locate the Jotun and he has taken them before thinking to stop himself.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, the mortal braves the silence. “This doesn’t mean we’re okay, but...I believe you now.”

“[Y/N] -”

“Shut up.” He does. “I’m trying to say that...that I get it a-and I trust you.”

Loki has no answer. Gaping slightly at her, he tries to come to terms with the woman’s foolishness. Once or twice a sentence nearly forms in his mind only to dissolve before it can be uttered and the task increases in difficulty as she shyly shifts her weight from one leg to the other, toes intertwining as best they can while she bites her lip.

He obviously startles her as he stands. Yet you don’t run, my dear? A shiver rolls through her the moment he embraces the lithe form.

“Oh! Oh, we’re...hugging? Okay, we can hug,” she babbles, unknowingly making the god smile into her hair.

It’s impossible to say how long they stand like this or when [Y/N]’s warm fingertips start a slow dance across his naked back. Then again, time hardly matters as the Jotun pulls back enough to study her face, smelling her hectic breath that fans against his skin.

“Thank you,” he says, but means I think I love you, “you should rest.”

Her hands retreat, and right away Loki misses the scalding touch and the heat of her body as she navigates the darkness to find her own bed.

[ofdragonsdeep]

15: Thunderous

The loudest sound to a mind used to song is silence.

(spoilers up to 5.4, and for coils raids)

The whirr of the airship’s fans powering down greeted Ar’telan’s return to Azys Lla. Beyond the dock, half-crazed robots running on broken programs tottered about the rock-and-metal structures of the Alpha Quadrant, heading to do the Twelve only knew what. Ardashir’s workstation was still set up near Helix, though Gerolt had long since departed the area, machines humming and shelves piled high with notes as he continued his research on the concept of anima. He waved at Ar’telan as he passed, Ar’telan nodding back a cheerful greeting as he carefully sidestepped a spinner-rook hurtling past at a dangerous angle.

He had been back to Azys Lla more times than he might have expected, the first time he had come here. The memories of the chase Thordan and his Knights had set them on were still fresh, despite the many moons that had passed since. The buildings and ships still hummed with empty purpose, the dock where the Gration had touched down was empty, but the spaces where the garleans had spilled out of it still bore their mark. So many had died here, and not only for the Allagan’s sake.

He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The noise was a pathetic one, given his damaged throat and lack of voice, but it was enough to call his chocobo from the airship hangar and to his side. The aether currents were strong in Azys Lla, the artificial confluence at the Flagship forcing them to be so, and it was easy to navigate them between the floating islands, over the heads of the monstrosities and broken machines, sailing across the void to his destination.

The Delta Quadrant was an odd place. He had studied the maps of Azys Lla that G’raha had pulled from the terminals as part of his search of the archives, and the place seemed as though it was named in Dragonspeak, but something seemed off. In times past, he would have asked for Midgardsormr’s opinion, but the events with Omega left him able to do little more than pilot his tiny vessel on automatic, his great mind slumbering in the aether to recharge. Tiamat still waited in her self-imposed exile, her songless children - cloned, not born - wandering the isle in desperate sadness.

Ar’telan was here to pay a special visit.

When he and Alisaie had fought their way through the ruins of Dalamud, a mad dash to put a stop to Bahamut’s reconstitution, they had encountered any number of threats. More allagan robots, these ones still functional but with no order but ‘kill’. Biological monstrosities that were gibberingly insane. Tempered creatures - Nael’s face contorted into a wicked snarl, the hot flames of the phoenix. But more than anything, what had hurt were the dragons.

They had gone back for them, after Bahamut had been fully discorporated. One by one they had released the locks on the stasis chambers, and what had tumbled out was ooze and the stench of death. Most of the dragons were alive only by the strictest definition, and perished shortly after being freed. Some of them stabilised, then turned around in madness, Tempered and broken. Some of these they had subdued, horrified at what they had done, and returned them to the stasis chambers, disconnected now from Dalamud and its prayer-siphoning. All but one.

The wyvern that they had taken to calling Twintania was an unusual creature. Leashed by allagan technology, though it had been badly damaged in the fight, she was filled with a burning, single-minded hatred for those who had enslaved her - mortals which looked, to her, like the people who were trying to save her. Cid had jimmied together a repair mechanism after examining Tiamat’s chains, and they had made the heartbreaking decision to leash the wyvern in the Delta Quadrant, in one of the ruined buildings near the Pappus Tree.

Ar’telan walked, feet crunching through the overgrown grass, listening to the babble of water on its wending way through the quadrant. The roiling aether of the sky cast a sickly light over the area as he gave his chocobo strict instructions to wait outside, and ducked into their makeshift prison.

Twintania bellowed in anger as he approached where she was penned, though the bindings let her do little else. She watched him with the single-minded hatred of the Tempered in her eyes as he set down his supplies - a tiny magitek battery charged with aether, a key to unlock her chains - and summoned forth the anchor that Alisaie had conjured for him before he left.

He had never done this on his own before. He had watched it done more than once, by now, but he was still a little nervous. The dragons were different to the races native to Hydaelyn - who could say it would work? Would he do it right? Would it make any difference to Twintania, freed but knowing full well what he and his had done?

Still, he had come this far, so he was not going to turn back now. He channeled aether into the focus, a combination of his own and a little from Alisaie and Alphinaud, stored in the battery. G’raha had offered, but Ar’telan had been wary of taking the aether of someone connected to Allag, even by proxy, so this was all he had. The porxie snorted happily, flapping its ears to indicate that it was fully charged, and the two of them set to work.

The flash of aether was blinding to behold, the bright white of the life-energy he had poured into the casting meeting the angry blue-gold hiss of Bahamut’s Tempering. There was a crackle, a flash, and Ar’telan staggered with the wave of lethargy that washed over him as the spell finally hit home, draining him of his energy in one swift burst. He fell backwards to the floor, hands flying out to steady himself, and blinked back in the bright light show that played across his eyes, flickering afterimages of light.

There was a moment of silence.

“...The screaming doth stop, and I am alone in a Songless current. What brings thee to this place, child of man? What compels thee to save the lost?”

It had worked.

“Because you deserve the chance,” he replied, getting to his feet. He took the tomestone in his his hand and poked at it until it released the restraints - perhaps it was a feint, but he would weather the consequences of being too trusting if that were so. The wyvern watched as they fell to the floor at her feet, unholy amalgamation of magitek and allagan cruelty, and did not move to strike.

“My sire is dead, his Song forever silenced. My siblings lost in a quiet void. I am alone.” Her head swiveled to look at the sickened sky, filtering through the gaps in the ruined masonry. Beyond it, Tiamat sat in her silent vigil, and the wyvern would almost certainly know. “The world has turned as I stayed lost in my madness. Tell me why.” Ar’telan followed her gaze, wondering what he could even say, why he had thought this might even work - why she might have wanted it at all. Was it fair? Was it right?

The choice should have been hers, not one made through Tempered necessity.

“You are not alone,” he said. “Some of your brethren yet live, sealed within the stasis prisons the Allagans locked them in. We have the means to save them now, from the madness the Ascians gifted your brood with, if you wish it.” He shook his head slowly. “I know it is a cruel and empty world that your eyes are opened to, but if you would choose to look away from it, you can do so with eyes unclouded.”

The wyvern was quiet for a long time, settling down into the sitting position that Ar’telan had seen in Vedrfolnir a handful of times before. She was smaller than him, just, but still large enough that Ar’telan thought she had been close in clutch to her Brood’s sire. She was larger than any of the other dragons they had found within Dalamud’s core, for certain.

“Once before did we make a decision drowned in sadness and despair. We shall not do so a second time,” she decided. “Though it hurts, the discordant notes of our primal Sire were no true Song. This I see now. No magic shall ever return him to us, nor those lost to the madness that followed.” She stretched out wings that had gone long unused, muscles tensing and releasing as she tested their mettle. “No longer shall we blindly trust the children of man, but nor shall I turn away from thy kindness. If but a handful of our kin live, we shall persist. In honour of our Sire, we shall carry his Song through the ages. Can thee and thine do this for us, mortal child?” Ar’telan nodded.

“It will take us time - the energy needed to charge the magic that cleanses the effect comes from our own life’s aether, and we are few who can do it. But we shall, if that is what you wish of us.” He took a cautious step towards her, and was not immediately repelled. “Allag’s sins are not ours, but the Empire is broken and lost. If we can make amends for the sins of the dead, in whatever small way we can, then we shall.” Twintania rumbled in agreement, acquiescing to his request by stepping forwards and touching her chin to the top of his head.

“Take me to thy compatriots, and to my brood-mates. I shall see what is left in the silence.”

---

Returning to the airship with a wyvern in tow raised a not-inconsiderable alarm among the Ishgardians who piloted it, but a space on the deck was cleared for her after a small amount of hemming and hawing by the pilots. She flapped her wings irritably as they flew, clearly wishing that she could fly herself rather than rely upon the contraptions of man, but she raised no verbal complaint.

Ar’telan, for his part, activated his Linkpearl and communicated through series of half-formed noises to Alisaie that he needed her help. She was already in Ishgard, waiting in case things went badly, so it was simple enough to arrange to meet her at the airship landing.

---

“It worked!” Alisaie exclaimed as Ar’telan and Twintania dismounted from the airship. “Oh, I’m so glad. Not that I doubted you for a minute, of course.”

“I am told that my kin are under thy protection,” Twintania said, having no time for pleasantries. Alisaie grimaced, but nodded in agreement.

“I suppose you could call it that. It’s not pleasant, though,” she confirmed. “We can take you there, if you’d like, but it will be a long time before we manage to cure them all.” She paused then, sighing softly, and shook her head. “We stopped releasing the locks on the stasis chambers once it became clear we couldn’t do anything for those who were still… alive. I can’t guarantee that even half of them will be saveable.” Twintania inclined her head in acknowledgement.

“I understand. The extent of the corruption hath been revealed to me by thy companion,” she assured Alisaie. “I would stand guard over their resting place. I have lived many of thy lifetimes, and will live many more yet. When the last of my brood-mates is free, whatever form that doth take, then we shall decide what we must do as one.” Alisaie looked to Ar’telan, and he inclined his head in agreement.

“...Well, alright,” she said. “I’ll need to make sure everyone we need is there, and see if we can’t find someone to assign in a more permanent capacity to trying to cure the Tempering. It’s still an inexact science, even in mortals like us. Never mind dragons.” She turned away, one hand on her ear to active her Linkpearl, and began contacting people in earnest. Twintania looked at her surroundings properly, taking in the cold stone of Ishgard and the people walking nervously past the gathering at the airship landing.

“Ishgard has a troubled history with dragons,” Ar’telan said, regret colouring his every movement. Twintania simply inclined her head.

“Thy kind and mine are too different to avoid such troubles, it seems.”

---

Ar’telan went with Twintania on their trek across Eorzea. The majority of the stasis pods that they had found initially had been in the shard of Dalamud embedded in the Broken Wall, in Thanalan, and they had repurposed the area for their desperate attempts to sustain the dying. From Ishgard, the walk took them across the Black Shroud, a journey of several days on its own. Ar’telan deflected the more human of their problems - concerned Wood Wailers, poachers who were not aware of how much they had attempted to bite, and a few Ixal angry at the encroachment on ‘their’ territory. Twintania spent her time idly snapping at the forest creatures which tried to impede their crossing, the elementals thankfully allowing them passage. She had spent many moons in her bindings, and though her reflexes were dulled, she was more than capable of snapping up an errant squirrel or a diremite or two.

The Shroud broke on a part of Thanalan close to their destination, for a mercy. The few scattered Amalj’aa that still made a scouting camp in the area were easily chased off by the sight of a dragon in the flesh, and the phurbles and snurbles - Ar’telan still could not tell the difference - were easy prey for Twintania’s jaws. Ar’telan was glad that the allagan monstrosities that had once joined them on the path had died down to near-invisibility since the primal had been quelled, for the reminder would likely not be a pleasant one.

“These places are cold and cruel,” Twintania said as they approached the door, flapping her wings in disdain for it. Ar’telan nodded in agreement, breaking the seal on the the entryway.

“They are. It was the only place we could safely keep them where they would not be prey for bandits, but I wish there were other options,” he said.

---

They walked down the smooth walkways, allagan lights glowing at their passage. Deep within the engine of the Ragnarok, the engine that had borne Dalamud to space and then served to keep it there, the cluster of the remaining stasis pods sat. Alisaie was already there, assembled with her crew of ‘people who could teleport’, a space remaining for, presumably, Ironworks engineers who had been too busy to arrive immediately.

“Glad you’ve arrived in one piece,” she said by way of greeting. “We’re going over the diagnostics at the moment. The short version is that there’s thirty-some pods which are likely to hold dragons we can save, and too many others which likely… don’t. I’ve taught the cure for Tempering to these two here.” She gestured behind her to a hyur and an elezen that Ar’telan didn’t recognise, who waved sheepishly at the greeting. “We can get one or two out each moon, maybe. But you probably don’t want to push it.” Twintania rumbled in acknowledgement.

“Greetings, children of man,” she said, inclining her head. “Time is of no issue. My vigil shall last as long as it must, and I have much to learn of this world still as I wait.” Alisaie cleared her throat, clearly still a little nervous.

“Right. And we’ve got some people from the Ironworks coming in - they’re the people who can get your brood-mates out of the pods to begin with. They might change a little bit for the first few weeks, but eventually we’d like to have a small, permanent team here until everyone’s out. Is that alright?” Twintania nodded her head again.

“It shall serve. You have my thanks, child. It is good to see that menfolk of the sort that my Sire once aided still walk the earth, despite what the Allagans desired.”

“We will do everything in our power to ensure that none like them ever rise again,” Ar’telan said. “There is never any way to guarantee such things, but we will try.” Twintania made a noise that sounded almost like a laugh.

“Our memory is eternal, child of Light. We shall not forget the betrayal, nor the love. And we shall never let rest the memory of the Ascians and their lies. We shall not be fooled a second time.” Ar’telan smiled.

“I hope so,” he said. “I will come and make sure all is well whenever I can. Good luck.” The ancient wyvern inclined her head, respect in her calm eyes.

“To you as well, child of Light.”

[lake-arrius-caverns]

Nerevarine Rising

Chapter 8: Life Lessons

summary En route to Vivec City, the twins experience a couple of strange encounters. Ribyna hits Fahjoth with some cold, hard facts.

content warnings uh very minor character death ig

tag list @boulderfall-cave , @padomaicocean (lmk if you’d like to be added!)

read under the cut or on AO3, cheers 👍

:: First :: || << Previous << || >> Next >> || :: Masterpost ::

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If Fahjoth had been hoping for a calm, relaxing stroll to Vivec City, he was to be sorely let down. Granted, it did help to take his mind off of his unsettling encounter with the Dunmer, who Fahjoth had come to realise was one of the sleeper agents that Cosades had discussed with him not an hour prior. Fahjoth tried to remind himself that he was lucky to have escaped unscathed, but he would surely need to discuss it with Cosades once he and Ribyna returned to Balmora. 

The first of the day’s unsettling events started just after the twins passed by Seyda Neen, when the quiet of the lazy afternoon was pierced by a horrendous scream. After jolting to a stop they both began to search for the source, without success until Fahjoth happened to look to the sky. 

“Holy shit—!” he gasped, grabbing Ribyna by the arm and yanking her along as he stumbled back to a safe distance. The shrieking continued, growing louder and louder until it was abruptly cut off by the body of a Bosmer striking the dusty road at tremendous velocity. Fahjoth couldn’t tear his eyes away as the skull collided with the ground and split open on impact with a sickening crack. 

The Bosmer bounced and rolled after landing, carried along by the momentum from the fall before finally coming to a stop where the twins had been standing mere seconds before. Within seconds, a stark red stain had begun to pool out around his head, and that coupled with the expression of agonised terror frozen on the now very dead Bosmer’s face made Fahjoth feel severely ill. 

“Fucking— gods alive…” Fahjoth breathed, drawing his hands up to cover his mouth in horror. Silence fell over the scene for a few seconds during which nobody moved, with both twins instead staring at the broken body lying prone and twisted on the path in front of them. Then, as Ribyna took a hesitant step forward and crouched down beside the body, Fahjoth shook his head in dismay. 

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, Beebs—” he started, before his voice died in his throat as he realised exactly what Ribyna was doing. He had been under the assumption that she was attempting to help, to see if there was anything that could be done for the unfortunate fellow, but then he came to realise that he had been sorely mistaken once he noticed Ribyna going through his pockets. 

“Ooh, this looks fancy, don’t it?” Ribyna remarked, holding up an oddly elongated yellow hat with a fur-lined brim. Fahjoth was speechless, but as she began to rummage through the Bosmer’s belongings once more, he finally found his voice. 

“Ribyna, what the fuck?!”

Ribyna whipped around, a picture of wide-eyed innocence, looking surprised to see Fahjoth so angry. He wasn’t sure whether that made him feel more or less incensed. “What?”

“What d’you mean, ‘what’?! You can’t just—” He gestured vaguely to the body, almost too outraged to splutter his words out. “You can’t just... take shit from someone who’s just died! I bet the body’s still fucking warm, for gods’ sakes!”

With a thoughtful expression, Ribyna reached out again and pressed her fingers against the Bosmer’s crumpled chest. With a petulant look on her face, she turned back to face Fahjoth again. “Okay, it is, but that’s besides the point,” Ribyna said stubbornly. “Look, it’s all about the hustle, bro. If he’s got valuables, we can sell them! That’s how this shit works!” 

“Well, it shouldn’t be!” Fahjoth spat. “It’s disgusting! It’s wrong!”

Ribyna didn’t rise to Fahjoth’s chastising, but she did narrow her eyes and stare at him coolly, even after he’d finished. “Look, you need to get used to this kind of shit,” she warned, pointing a finger up at Fahjoth accusingly. “This is what we have to do to get by sometimes. In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t have too many friends here. So you might as well get off your high horse ‘cause it won’t do you any fucking good here.” She turned back to the corpse, continuing to loot the Bosmer of everything valuable that he carried, so that Fahjoth finally had to look away out of revulsion. “And that goes for people, too. If anyone fucks with you, you need to fuck with them back. You’re too bloody... soft-hearted for your own good, you.” 

With a heavy scowl, Fahjoth shook his head. He knew exactly what she was referring to; his catastrophic trip to Arkngthand, which was the last thing he needed to be reminded of. The indignation burned in his chest, and he spared Ribyna one more glance before walking around the corpse and skulking along down the road again, hands in pockets and shoulders tense. “Whatever. Catch up to me when you’re done, I’m not hanging around to watch this.”

“Fine. Will do,” Ribyna replied as Fahjoth stormed off. Even from a distance, he could pick up on the vexation lacing her tone. 

Once he was alone with his thoughts, Fahjoth slowed his pace and began to reflect on the argument. Guilt started to gnaw at his gut over snapping at his twin and leaving her on her own, but more than that, he was hit by a wave of doubt. Her harsh words had been hurtful, but perhaps they were truthful, too. 

Maybe she’s right, he thought sullenly, kicking a stone in his path and watching it ricochet along the road. Maybe he did need to toughen up…

The stone finally rolled to a stop, and Fahjoth was surprised to see it land in someone’s long shadow. A Dunmer, donning a Bonemold cuirass and boots, stood in the middle of the road, his rich auburn hair gleaming in the low sunlight. He faced Fahjoth directly, red eyes fixed on him with the ghost of a smile on his angular features. 

Fahjoth offered a smile in return as he changed direction to walk around him; but the stranger stood to the side simultaneously, blocking the road and causing Fahjoth to abruptly stop. Perhaps that had been an accident, he reasoned. So Fahjoth gave an awkwardly apologetic laugh and tried again, only to have the Dunmer once again sidestep and stand in his way. 

That couldn’t have been an accident. It was clear now that he was blocking Fahjoth’s path on purpose. 

“Could you move, please, mate?” Fahjoth asked, keeping his tone polite despite the mild annoyance he felt. “You’re sort of in my way.” 

“Afraid not, friend,” the Dunmer responded, his voice unusually melodic and chipper. “Allow me to introduce myself! It is I, Nels Llendo.” 

“Right...” Fahjoth was baffled. “Can I help you, then? I’ve kind of got somewhere to be.” 

The Dunmer, Nels Llendo, simply folded his arms and continued to smile that charming yet unsettling smile. “Ah... I see you have not heard of me,” he said softly. “A shame. Well, no need to tremble in fear. Nels Llendo is a reasonable man, hardly the cutthroat some would make me out to be. To cut to the chase, I offer you a fair and healthy proposition.”

A cutthroat? Fahjoth frowned, staring at Nels in disbelief while he stood motionless, rooted to the spot. Was this a robbery? He wasn’t feeling very threatened by Nels’ friendly disposition, but then his eyes fell on the gleam of a sword’s hilt hanging at his waist. With trepidation, he dared to ask, “What proposition?”

“A very simple proposition, actually,” Nels replied. “You will give me fifty septims, and in return, you will be allowed to continue safely on your journey. Nels Llendo gives you his word as a gentleman that, once our transaction has taken place, you have nothing to fear from me. What say you?”

And there it was. Trying not to let his apprehension show in his body language or voice, Fahjoth stood his ground. “No way. I’m not just gonna hand over my gold to you, mate.” 

Nels shook his head, tutting in a very exaggerated show of disappointment. “I fear you are making an unwise decision, my friend. But, so be it... though I do hate to soil my clothes with your blood. No matter. Such is the life of Nels Llendo.” Before Fahjoth could respond, Nels had whipped his sword out from its sheath and held it aloft, the enchanted blade gleaming with a flaming red sheen. “You have made the wrong choice, outlander.”

As Fahjoth took a hasty step backwards and reached for his own blade, very conscious of Nels already advancing on him, the sound of approaching footsteps and a voice gave both Mer pause. 

“Oi!”

Once he caught sight of Ribyna marching towards them — her backpack a lot fatter than it had been when they left Balmora — Nels instantly sheathed his sword and, to Fahjoth’s surprise, sank into a low, elegant bow. 

“Hello, my dear. Nels Llendo at your service.”

“Nels Llend—?” Ribyna rolled her eyes, tilting her head back and rubbing her brow. “Oh, gods...”

“Oh? My name is familiar to you?” he questioned, perhaps mistaking her irritation for apprehension. “Fear not, my dear. Nels Llendo is far from the heartless villain some have made me out to be. From one as charming and gracious as you, I would ask for but a single kiss.” 

Fahjoth had to do a double-take, turning back to Nels in bewilderment. “You what?” Then his mouth fell open in outrage. “You were just about to kill me over fifty septims!”

Nels, however, paid Fahjoth no heed, his attention focused solely on Ribyna. “It would be the most precious prize I have ever solicited from a... client.”

Fahjoth was silent, looking between the two with unease. Though he would have liked nothing more than to jump in, to tell Nels in no uncertain terms to piss off and leave them alone, he did not want to risk drawing Ribyna’s ire by speaking for her. Instead he waited, and when Ribyna spoke up, it was the last thing he had been expecting to hear. 

“And if I do, me and my brother can pass? You won’t touch either of us?”

Nels held up a hand, placing the other sincerely over his chest. “I give you my word.”

After a second or two of hesitation, Ribyna took a step forward. Fahjoth, with great discomfort, spoke up at last. 

“Ribyna, you don’t—”

“Shut up, Fahjoth.”

Fahjoth's jaw hung open, aghast but rendered totally speechless once again as Ribyna began to approach Nels, closing the gap between them. Once she reached him, she placed her hands deliberately on each of his shoulders, the look on her face one of sheer determination. 

Overcome with intense awkwardness, Fahjoth dropped his gaze — but before he could turn away completely, a sudden blur of movement caught his eye and his head snapped back up just in time to witness Ribyna thrusting her knee into Nels’ crotch, and hard. 

The once cocky and self-assured bandit crumpled to the ground in an instant, a wheezing yelp of pain hissing from between gritted teeth as he was reduced to a quivering ball of pain. Fahjoth was motionless, struck dumb with astonishment. 

Apparently, Ribyna wasn’t finished yet. Taking the opportunity while he was downed, Ribyna knelt beside Nels and began to go through his pockets, quickly fishing out a sizable coin purse and shoving it in her own. “Oh, and I’ll be taking this,” she announced, patting Nels roughly on the cheek. “Y’know, for compensation.” She then stood up, dusted herself off and began to head off, muttering a scathing insult under her breath as she did so. “Prick...”

Fahjoth cast one last glance at Nels, still curled up on the ground with tears streaming down his cheeks, before he turned away and trotted along in Ribyna’s wake as she strode onwards without a care in the world. He ambled along mutely beside Ribyna, occasionally throwing his twin an incredulous glance, still barely able to comprehend what had just happened. As grateful as he was for the lengths to which she would go to defend him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ribyna had handled the situation rather poorly. Eventually, he tentatively voiced what was on his mind.

“D’you think you might’ve gone a bit too far?”

“What?”

“I mean…” Fahjoth waved his hands vaguely and grimaced. “Knocking his bollocks in? Couldn’t we have just tried talking to him? Looked to me like he might’ve listened to you.”

Ribyna stopped in her tracks and rounded on Fahjoth with a scowl. “He was blackmailing us, Fahjoth, in case you hadn’t noticed! I didn’t want to try and reason with him, he was about five seconds from shoving his sword down your throat!... That wasn’t a euphemism, stop smirking! Anyway, he might’ve just got nasty again if I’d turned him down.” 

Fahjoth quickly arranged his features back into an expression of solemn concern, though he still quietly fought to keep a straight face. “Okay, fair enough... But stealing from him as well? What if he goes to the guards?”

Ribyna scoffed. “What, him? A highwayman? If he’s as infamous as everyone reckons he is, then good luck to him is all I can say. We’ll see how seriously the guards take him from inside a prison cell.”

“Good point...”

In the quiet that followed as the pair meandered on down the southern path, Fahjoth found his thoughts wandering back onto something that he wanted to get off his chest. “By the way, I’m... I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. I was just... shocked, I suppose. But you’re right. I probably do need to wise up.”

“Yeah...” Ribyna offered Fahjoth something between a smile and a grimace. “I’m sorry as well. I didn’t mean to rag on you so hard. I only say it cause I care about you. You do know that, don’t you?” 

His spirits lifted, Fahjoth turned to face Ribyna, beaming with delight. “Aww, and you call me soft-hearted?” he remarked. Ribyna faltered, flushing with embarrassment over her unintentional sentimentality. 

“Don’t even start,” she growled, quickening her gait to avoid looking at Fahjoth in a futile attempt at saving face. “Shut up, or else you’ll go the same way as our good friend Mr Llendo.” 

Fahjoth laughed as Ribyna rushed on past, jogging on ahead a short distance until she stopped at a signpost on the side of the road a few yards down the path. But as she squinted to peer at the weather-worn wood, Fahjoth slowed his pace and came to a stop a few metres behind.

“Come on, I think we’re nearly there—“ Noting Fahjoth’s distance, Ribyna stopped mid-sentence and turned to look at him quizzically. Fahjoth struggled to hide a grin as he instead wore a deliberately thoughtful expression. 

“What?”

“Well, it’s just... I thought he was quite handsome, personally. I’d’ve kissed him!”

Ribyna groaned in exasperation, rolling her eyes and trying to hold back a smile. “You would!” she scoffed, turning away and continuing on her way down the road, to where Vivec City awaited them through the evening mist. “Shame he didn’t ask, then. Maybe I should’ve tried to set you two up instead of kneeing him in the nuts.” 

“At least you’ll know for next time!” Fahjoth laughed. As he hastened to catch up with Ribyna, he raised a hand to shield his eyes against the peachy glare of the sun low on the horizon, its vibrant fire in the sky signalling that the moons and stars would soon take its place.