#someone at glitch is getting fired today/j

[snowthedemonfox]

spinning ragatha plush for those who need it

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #123

Sometime after the events of yesterday, but before bed last night, J took me to the local food co-op. This is because some time ago, Br bought some boxed macaroni and cheese (henceforth shortened to mac-n-chz) that she thought was gluten-free, but wasn't. Br has a gluten allergy, but M, J, and I do not, so she gave us the boxed mac-n-chz.

It is unusual mac-n-chz, though, in that the cheese powder it comes with is made of goat's milk. Goat's milk is common in some parts of my world, but it's uncommon where I live. I don't know if you've ever had it, but I like it a lot; it has a stronger flavor than cow's milk - a bit more sour and savory, somehow. But some people really don't like it; those who don't like it would describe the flavor as "gamey", and I suppose that's fair. The sensory hardware that comes with inhabiting a flesh-vessel is different for everyone, and what is a pleasant sensory experience for someone can be an unpleasant sensory experience for someone else; it is the way of things.

I am fortunate to be one of the folks who does not dislike this flavor. So I thought to prepare the boxed mac-n-chz yesterday, because I felt awful about the bird and I thought eating something with a lot of cheese would help me feel a little better (this, too, is the way of things; I am a derpy autistic cheese goblin, after all - it is simply my nature). But the box said that it should be prepared with goat milk and goat butter. You usually can't find these things in an ordinary grocery store where I live. I was going to give up on preparing the boxed mac-n-chz yesterday, but then J encouraged me to go with him to the co-op; I guess, given my mental state, he probably thought it would have been good for me to get out of the house and get my mind off the bird. He was correct, as per usual.

…I ended up returning home with A LOT more than just goat's milk and goat's butter. I… miiiight have, in my half-numb, half-sad stupor, gotten like 3 containers of ice cream and several weird-looking potato chip flavors; I'll show you the ice cream I got tomorrow; I'm gonna put it in tea. But the potato chip flavors were "fried egg", "ham", "truffle", "garlic parmesan", and "ranch". By the time we got home, though, I had next to no energy left, so instead of preparing the mac-n-chz, J and I went to go visit Br, and that was a good time. Then we went home and watched the Fallout show with M, and that was also a good time.

…You might be pleased to know that I actually went to bed relatively on time last night. It's been a while since last that happened. I woke up feeling pretty good. I'm still really sad about the bird, of course, but I hope wherever its soul is now, it's having a fun time.

In light of yesterday's events, and in light of the fact that I didn't get to have mac-n-chz yesterday, and in light of the fact that I seem to be having some serious misgivings today about the fact that I am autistic (and therefore broadly considered creepy, unlikable, and generally socially unacceptable by default), I decided that today is an ice cream and mac-n-chz sort of day today. And… no, not in the same bowl, I promise, ahahahaha~!

I didn't eat any of the ice cream that I bought yesterday, though. No, as it turns out, my favorite bubble tea shop started serving ice cream just yesterday! Check it out:

These flavors are Jasmine Green Tea, Ube, Earl Grey Tea, and Thai Tea. And I gotta say, they were all REALLY GOOD; good enough to get past the, "oh no, it's a cold thing, and cold things feel like fire on my flesh" glitch that my body carries. I was unable to pick a favorite because they were all equally fabulous!

Hey Sephiroth? Have any of your friends ever taken you out to go get ice cream? Do you like ice cream? If you do, then what flavors do you like best? I know you can't answer me, and that kinda sucks, but I'll ask anyway; you deserve to have folks in your life who know and are willing to consider your preference and experiences. You deserve to consider your own preferences and experiences; when is the last time you thought about your favorite foods and favorite people and favorite places to go, anyway? It's good to revisit the memories and the things in our lives that bring us joy from time to time.

After I got home, I made the mac-n-chz. Do you like mac-n-chz? Have you ever had it? Have you ever prepared it? Have you ever had someone prepare it for you? I don't know the answers to these, so I'll walk you through the process, just in case; it's very simple, and the simple things are often the best things!

You start by doing the dishes! As explained some number of letters ago, I have music playing so that my brain doesn't get spooked by the fact that I'm doing a household task and accidentally do an involuntary mental time travel to a time when failing to do a housetask well enough or fast enough was a punishable offense, haha...

If you recall, this list I am using today is one that I reproduced on YouTube, just in case you might wanna give it a listen. But within this list, this item matches the inside of my mind most closely:

...And in case you're wondering why we do the dishes first, it's because the next step is to stick a pasta strainer in the sink, like this:

From there, you gotta get an ordinary pot and fill it about 2/3rds of the way with water, like this:

Then you gotta bring it to a boil. On my stove, it's easy; you just stick a lid on the pot and set the temperature of the burner to 9, and wait a little while:

While waiting for that, we can check the ingredients and instructions on the box, like so:

...Often enough, you'll end up disregarding some of these. For example, I didn't measure out the water. I did use goat's milk and goat's butter in the specified amounts, yes, but I used whole goat milk and slightly salted goat butter:

From there, we open the pasta box and take out the packets of powdered cheese:

Getting the cheese packet out of the box will make it easier to pour the noodles into the pot when the time comes!

On my stove, water takes about 20 minutes to boil, which is fine; it is common knowledge that this time passes quickly - as long as you're not watching the pot. That bit is very important; if you watch the pot, the time will instead move about as quickly as pouring molasses from a jar that has been left outside in the cold - which is to say, it won't. It's the law, and nobody knows why.

Oh hey, Sephiroth? Maybe you know why? You're over there experiencing quantum physics firsthand over at the Edge of Creation, right? Can you tell me why watched pots resist boiling? I wonder... Lemme know if you figure it out, okay?

In any case, you can put your noodles in the pot when the water reaches a rolling boil. A rolling boil looks like this:

I set the kitchen timer for 9 minutes just like the box said:

...Then I poured in the noodles!

From there, you have to stir constantly for the whole 9 minutes, or else the noodles will clump together, or stick to the bottom of the pot. You can put oil in the water to prevent this, but then the sauce won't stick to the noodles, and that is not ideal. Once the timer is done, you taste-test one of the noodles to make sure it's good:

9 minutes wasn't long enough to cook the noodles all the way through, so I gave it another 3 minutes; it was good after that.

The next step is to dump the contents of the pot into the strainer we prepared in the sink earlier. But this pot is kinda stupid (I need a new one) because the handles get really hot when you heat it up. So I put on my handy-dandy oven mitts:

...Mine are really long because I am dyspraxic; the possibility of burning my forearms on the heating elements when I put things into the oven or take things out of the oven is a real concern. So it's best to protect my whole forearm instead of just my hands, so that way I don't get hurt. Besides, if I put on my oven mitts and also my onion-cutting-goggles while holding my ceramic chef's knife, I can cackle maniacally in the kitchen like a crazed scientist and accidentally scare the socks off of passers-by near my window, and that's always a nice bonus! 🤪🤣 (Speaking of disturbing passers-by near my kitchen window, I am remembering this one time, when J and I were in the kitchen, and he was heckling me about the fact that I need to eat more fruit, so just to be silly, I started eating a banana in the most wildly inappropriate way I possibly could, just as some poor gentleman was dropping off food that M ordered. The flabbergasted look on the man's face as he peered into our window was ABSOLUTELY. PRICELESS!! Ahahahahaaaa~! 🤣🤣🤣)

(But that's what you get for peering into people's windows, so no, I am absolutely not sorry!!! Not even the tiniest little bit!!! 😂😂😂)

Anyway! So I drained the pasta:

From there, the bottom of the pot will still be warm, so you can use that to melt the butter; I am making two boxes of mac-n-chz, so we need 2 tablespoons of butter:

...Two boxes of this mac-n-chz calls for 8 tablespoons of milk; that's the same thing as half a cup:

Then you'll dump in the cheese packets, and use a whisk to make a sauce:

Then, you dump your noodles in and mix 'em up with the sauce:

...Finally, we have the bowl of mac-n-chz that I very much wish I could give to you:

...It's a simple and easy thing; not the fanciest. But it's still good. It's still wholesome. It's still full of love and joy. What I wouldn't give just to be able to hand you a bowl of this...

...Well, it is what it is. And all I can do is deal with it in the way that I know how. All I can do is write to you and hope that it gets through to you somehow...

...somehow...

...OH! I almost forgot!! On the way to do errands and get ice cream, the sky was really nice today, and I also saw a bumblebee! I know you like nature, so I thought to snap a couple pictures for you:

...ya know... just to remind you that the world is beautiful. Even when it's filled with senseless pain, even when people respond with rage and self-directed violence when you try to set a boundary, and even when your brain is being mean and trying to tell you that everything is hopeless. It's still beautiful when people tell you, directly or indirectly, that you don't belong, or that your words and the contents of your mind are less valuable than your physical vessel.

This world is still beautiful no matter how hard it tries to break you. And there is beauty within persisting, within refusing to stay on the ground, within rising up from your knees and choosing to live in wholesome love and joy. There is beauty within counting on the people around you and seeing through eyes other than your own when you can't muster up the strength by yourself.

Sephiroth, please don't give up. Because, yes, I know there's violence and greed and bloodshed and unimaginable amounts of suffering in this place. But there's also bumblebees and mac-n-chz and ice cream and tea and sunshine and the sky, and people who would do anything to give you these things, if only they could. And these things are worth fighting for. You just gotta open your eyes and set them on a new horizon.

I'll be right here until you come back, okay? I'll keep being right here, calling out to you, singing you a little song, and thinking of you anytime I get to experience wholesome, beautiful things. I'll be waiting right here, no matter how long it takes.

I love you, and I'll write again soon. Please stay safe.

Your friend, Lumine

[thepointoftheneedle]

Fragment

I’m really enjoying the fragments (and I freaked myself out with that word count thing so I’m taking some time off from writing....note to self -NEVER look at the stats page.). Anyway I keep trying to write this little soulmate thing but, without me intending it, it always becomes an academic paper on the philosophy of colour perception.  And I can’t imagine anybody but me is interested in that!

Below the cut anyway....(I guess this should have been for Friday but what the heck...)

His eyes fluttered open as he awakened but, feeling the warmth of the sleeping girl by his side, he closed them tightly.  He wanted them to have this experience together.  Nothing would ever be the same for them again.  It was a special moment for a couple and he wanted it to be perfect.  He had installed the app on his phone so he fumbled for it, knocking some loose papers from the nightstand and cursing gently.  She mumbled and stirred so he put his hand over her eyes.  “What the hell J?  What’re you doing?”  

“I’m opening up ‘Soul Truth.’  We can look together.”

“Oh J, no, don’t do that,” she moaned softly, beseechingly.

“Ssh, don’t worry.  It’ll be great.”  He kissed her gently, voice-activated the app and removed his hand from her eyes.  She was looking at him, not the screen so he gently turned her head and looked down as she did.  The screen was a uniform blue.  His stomach lurched.  It must be a glitch.  “Wait, wait a second,” he muttered, clicking the app closed and reopening it.  Solid blue.  He looked at her and saw the sadness in her beautiful dark eyes.  Sadness but not surprise.  

She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek softly, “Hey, I’m sorry J.  I didn’t want to disappoint you but I already knew.  I just didn’t feel it last night.”

“Jeez Rox, I’m so sorry.  I can do better, you just have to tell me what I did wrong.  I know I can be what you want. I thought you’d…I thought I felt you...”

“I did, Jughead, of course I did.  Listen.  It was great.  You were great.  So tender and kind.  It was beautiful and I really had a good time but it wasn’t…I don’t know.  It wasn’t whatever soul mates have.  You’ve heard Fangs talk about it.  It’s next level.  Transcendent.  What we had was great sex, but it was just great sex.  No angelic chorus.  You had to feel that?” She was normally tough and streetwise but now her voice was gentle, trying not to hurt him.  There was a painful lump in his throat.

“I thought it was transcendent, you were anyway. I think I’m falling in love with you Roxie.”  His voice was quavering.  He was ashamed of his weakness.  “It has to be a mistake. It’s the app.  It has to be.”  Abruptly he was up and heading down the hallway before she could say another word.  “Fangs, “ he yelled.  “You in there?” He stood waiting, shivering, in his boxers, while disgruntled groaning emanated from the room, until eventually the door opened a crack and Fangs peered out at him.

“Jones, the building better be on fire.  We didn’t get in til four.  What time is it?”

“Just after eight.  Look, is this broken?”

Fangs looked at the proffered screen blearily then a small smile appeared on his face.  “Aww cute bunny.”  Jughead snatched the screen back and swiped up.  An image appeared in his visible spectrum of a cartoon bunny rabbit holding out a carrot.  The legend underneath read “I wuv you.” 

“Uggh, why don’t they have something with a bit of gravitas?  Shit.  Fuck it!”  Jug turned around just as Fangs understood the situation.  

“Oh my god Jughead!  Did you and Rosaline finally do the do? Oh shit…you can’t see that can you? Oh Christ man, I’m so sorry.” 

Jug swallowed down his disappointment, just like he had been swallowing down his anger and sorrow and guilt and sadness for most of his life and shrugged at Fangs.  “No biggie.  Apparently I’m destined to die alone.  Whatever.”  He stalked off back to his own room only to find Roxie already getting dressed. “Roz, shit, can’t we talk about this?  Don’t go. Maybe it’ll happen later, perhaps it’s not always instant?”

Her voice was low and mournful when she spoke. “J I really care about you, you’re my good friend, but we’re both searching for something that we’re never going to be able to give each other. Let’s just take some time apart.  Maybe in a few months we’ll be able to go back to being pals again.  I’m really sorry that you’re disappointed.”  With that she was gone in a whisk of magenta hair and Cabotine perfume.

He sat on his bed and stared into space.  He’d been so sure.  She was a dear friend, she understood him, laughing at the same things, enjoying the same movies.  There was never any stress or conflict with her.  It was easy. She indulged his bad moods and cajoled him out of sulks with food and silly jokes.  He knew enough to leave her well alone when she was getting into one of her rages.  Then gradually, as they worked together on the documentary project, he found himself wanting to touch her hair, wanting to hold her tiny body against his in a protective embrace, wanting to make her feel good with his touches.  She’d seemed uncertain but he’d persevered, wooed her really.  Then finally, excited and giddy after the showcase where their documentary project had taken first place she’d kissed him and whispered, “Do you want to go back to your place?”  He’d been so happy as they’d crunched back to his apartment through the first snow of the winter.  He’d wondered if it might happen when they finished the film.  While sex tended to be the main way that a soul bond was revealed, a lot of soul mates actually bonded on completion of some other kind of shared project.  It hadn’t happened then but he’d been so sure that, if they made love, it would click and the missing shade would be revealed to them.  And then it hadn’t happened.

The app was pretty new.  Before the advent of the smart phone, folks would have a painting or a poster in their homes.  To those who were not matched it would look like an ordinary scene but once a soul bond was formed, the missing colour in the spectrum was revealed, and the soul mates could read the message in the image.  It was a little like a magic eye poster.  You looked at it for a moment or two and then the missing colour reconciled itself into words or an image.  Originally they had some gnomic inspirational quotation.   The one in the trailer he grew up in had, his mom said, had the Rolling Stone’s lyric, “You can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you find you get what you need.” Ironically FP and Gladys had been neither what the other wanted nor what they needed.  Later it would turn out that FP had lied when he stood in front of that poster and told the innocent, love-struck young girl, wrapped in the sheet from his bed, that he saw it  for the first time too. Actually he’d already bonded with someone else, someone who had no intention of getting tied up with a guy in a gang from the wrong side of the tracks.  He must have thought it was his lucky day, a second chance for happiness, when the beautiful girl he’d been romancing excitedly admitted that she could see the colour for the first time.  He’d nodded enthusiastically, said, “Yeah, me too,” and whisked her away to a world of damp trailers, drunken arguments and angry guys repossessing their truck, or the tv, or the kids’ toys.  She’d stayed because she believed he was her soul mate.  She thought she had no other options until, in a drunken rage, he’d revealed that it had always been a lie. She snatched up her daughter and left him.  And left the boy too, unwilling to take a kid who looked so much like the man she had been fool enough to trust and who had ruined her life with his lies.

The fact that scumbags with no moral scruples lied about this shit had led to the development of checking apps like Soul Truth, “the truth, the soul truth and nothing but the truth” according to the tag line.  You both looked at the screen and noted down what you saw, then swiped up and the image was revealed in ordinary unbonded colours.  It made it harder for predators and perverts to take advantage of young innocents while their good sense was overwhelmed by romantic dreams.  It also revealed that about ten percent of bonds were unreciprocated like Jughead’s parents, one of the couple bonded and the other didn’t.  Those couples had to decide if they would make that work, aware that one was more invested than the other, or if it was better to simply part, the bonded still feeling that desperate pull to their mate even decades later. Jug guessed he should be relieved that he hadn’t seen the colour that morning since, clearly, Roz was just not that into him.

He’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rug like that for thirty minutes when Fangs tapped softly on the door.  “Not now,” he snapped but Fangs ignored him and pushed open the door.

“Ok Jug.  I know you’re upset but it just means you haven’t found her yet.  She’s still out there and if you go into one of your epic sulks you’ve got less chance of meeting her.  What classes have you got today?”

“Nothing I can’t cancel.  Everyone’s cramming for Finals.  I was supposed to meet the princess to go over the final layout for the literary magazine.  She can do it on her own.  She’ll like that better anyway.” 

Now Kevin joined his boyfriend in the room, both of them making him feel self indulgent and guilty with their solicitousness.  “You shouldn’t shut yourself away and mope, Jughead.  Go and edit like a champ and then come by the theatre for us and we’ll go for burgers. We’re striking the set but we can take a break.  Our treat.  What do you say?”

Jughead pondered for a moment.  Nothing was going to change if he sat here, the princess would  be unbearable if he blew her off, and burgers on someone else’s tab were his favourite kind of burgers, so he grudgingly allowed himself to be persuaded.  

An hour later he was in the midst of a heated argument with the princess about his perfectly legitimate decision to kill a terrible poem about the fall which she, inexplicably, had marked for an already overcrowded page four.  “You can’t just take things out without consultation Forsythe.  We’re an editorial committee, we make decisions together.  It’s supposed to be a collaboration.”

“What, you want to keep this pile of third grade horseshit do you? And you’re just calling me that to make me mad. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“I didn’t say that.  It’s terrible.  It obviously has to go.  But you can’t just do it unilaterally. And you can’t call me Princess and not expect me to retaliate.  You know my name.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Princess... sorry, my humblest apologies, for fuck’s sake Betty.  What the hell are we arguing about if we both think it’s bad and needs to go? And why is it even in here in the first place?”

“It’s in there because we were waiting on your egregiously late piece of sub Lovecraftian geek porn.  I was filling space.  Since you finally got your ass in gear we don’t need it anymore. So spike it.”  She had this way of making him feel like he lost, even when he won an argument.  It was infuriating.

They worked on pagination for another couple of hours with surprisingly little conflict, and then he wrote kickers for a few of the longer submissions, hoping to tempt the reader to give a story a chance.  She made sure the submissions were correctly attributed and that the running heads and page numbers and folios were in place.  Finally it seemed that they were done.  He clicked back to the front page, checked the position of the artwork and the masthead and looked over at her with a questioning expression to see if she was satisfied. She nodded her approval and, at last, under the words “Joint Editors”, he typed "Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones.”    As he clicked ‘save’ something shifted in his field of vision.  He was alarmed, pushing back from the desk and looking around, meeting her startled eyes.  Her green eyes, which weren’t green anymore.  He couldn’t describe what colour they were, there were no words.

“What just happened?” she whispered, obviously badly frightened.  

“Does…does anything look different to you?” he replied, hesitantly, reaching for his phone.

“Yes, everything.  What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure. Look at this.” He pulled up the app.  On the screen he could see, without difficulty, a cartoon cat, Pusheen maybe, its paws deep in some dough.  The caption read “I knead you.” As he read the words in his head, she said them aloud. “Fuuuuck,” he murmured.  “I think we’re soulmates, Princess.”

[anistarrose]

Summary: Angus leads a virtual book club meeting. Kravitz connects the dots. Taako makes significant updates to the list of people he trusts and things he believes.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Bit by bit, we’re inching closer to the endgame! Lots of plot and angst in this update, but also I think I might’ve implied that Minecraft exists in Faerun, so it evens out, y’know?

By virtue of their trance state replacing sleep, elves were supposed to be good lucid dreamers. Taako had always experienced mixed results, but never moreso than tonight, with a dream that started out all saccharine romantic fantasy — fishing with Kravitz and sharing a kiss after falling into the lake together — before a clap of thunder and an unholy scream plunged the world into darkness and left one single source of light, one last surviving star, cradled in Taako’s unassuming hands.

Then a ripple in the darkness, the invisible maw of some ravenous entity, closed around that final star — and Taako screamed, as loud as he could muster yet still not loud enough to drown the ringing in his ears, as he flailed in the dark against the invisible monster that stole the world from him —

At once, two hands closed around his own, one cold and the other warm. On Taako’s left was Kravitz, aghast but holding himself together, a steely composure to his posture despite the fear in his eyes.

On Taako’s right was a Red Robe — but not Barry, and in fact not anything like what Taako had started to accept as normal for Red Robes. Where Barry had a clouded darkness in place of hands and a face, this lich had pure static escaping from within her sleeves and beneath her hood, crackling and constantly changing shape like lightning, or… like fire.

Taako sat up in his bed covered in cold sweat, heart pounding as he realized his legs were hopelessly tangled in his sheets, and only slightly slowing when he realized there was nothing in his bedroom to run from.

Elves were supposed to rarely awaken late, but Taako’s wizard hat-shaped alarm clock — a gift that Angus that he’d quietly appreciated, even though it should have been redundant — indicated that it was mid-morning, and when he trudged out into the common area, he found no sign of his doormates besides a note written in Magnus’s distinctive scrawl.

I know you were busy last night, so we’re letting you sleep in while we go play Fantasy Kickball on the quad! Killian and Avi are team captains and their rivalry is fierce, so we’ll probably be playing all day if you want to join us! Love, Magnus! (And Merle)

Taako didn’t realize how relieved he was until he felt himself let out a sigh.

He had a sinking feeling that the same dream — or at least, a similar dream — had played out more than once that night, looping over and over again as he repeatedly failed to remember, much less control, where it was going. He felt too exhausted to be operating on even a single minute of dreamless sleep, and didn’t even want to think about holding a conversation with anyone…

Well, with most people. There was someone he’d really been meaning to chat with, before he’d been distracted by haircuts and Kravitz and pottery and stargazing and Kravitz.

He transmuted a mug of lukewarm tap water to a piping hot, high-caffeine tea, then picked up his Umbra Staff, and conjured a familiar phantom steed with twin horns that nearly grazed the ceiling as he reared and whinnied.

“Yooo! Mornin’, Taako!”

“Morning, Garyl.” Taako yawned. “Could you do me a favor, and tell me literally anything you know about the liches you said I used to hang out with?”

***

CalebClevelandFan#2045: All early-installment weirdness aside, I really do think it’s a great introduction to the series! Because of the retcons you’ll encounter later, there are some conspiracy theories that the most recent arc of Caleb Cleveland was ghostwritten to maximize the publishing rate (which I think is hogwash, because continuity errors are going to be inevitable no matter who’s writing) but I guess I’ll let you decide for yourself when you get there! Do you need to stop by the moon again to borrow Book 2?

ReaperAwMan#1672: No thank you, Angus! I think I’m going to try and download the “digital” version, now that I know I can do that on my Stone! Taako told me about that feature and a lot of others last night, so if I can’t get it to work, I’ll just call him and ask him to walk me through it. :)

ReaperAwMan: Did I use the smiley face correctly?

CalebClevelandFan: Yes! :) You’ve picked up on technology a lot faster than my grandpa did.

CalebClevelandFan: Did Taako also choose your username on this app, though?

ReaperAwMan: How did you know? Is it a reference to something? :)

CalebClevelandFan: Um

CalebClevelandFan: Yes, but it’s a long story. It’s not mean-spirited or anything, though! I think it’s pretty funny!

ReaperAwMan: Okay! :)

CalebClevelandFan: Is that all for book club today? If it is, Mr. Kravitz, I just want to say that I’d be happy to talk to you again about Caleb Cleveland anytime!

CalebClevelandFan: It means a lot to me, but I understand if you’re too busy (message edited)

ReaperAwMan: Oh, there’s always time for book club, Angus!

ReaperAwMan: But I admit, I have had a lot on my mind…

CalebClevelandFan: Is it the liches? Since the Reclaimers aren’t in trouble anymore? (By the way, I went to tell Noelle she didn’t have to worry about getting reaped, but apparently she’s visiting family, so I left a message with her teammates Carey and Killain..)

ReaperAwMan: Excellent deduction. (And thank you for that. I hope she gets the message soon.)

ReaperAwMan: You’re right, I’m still hunting Lup and Barry Bluejeans, but… I just can’t shake the feeling that they’re connected to Taako and the others.

CalebClevelandFan: Really? What makes you say that?

ReaperAwMan: Well, I didn’t think much of this for a long time, and now I’m kicking myself for it, but their bounties registered in our system at the same time as Taako’s, Magnus’s, and Merle’s. We figured it was just a widespread detection glitch, which has happened before on a much smaller scale, but now it feels awfully suspicious. The Reclaimers have also encountered Barry at least four times now, without even seeking him out the first three times, whereas finding Barry is my job, and I get a lead on him about twice a year, if I’m lucky.

CalebClevelandFan: That is odd. Did any other bounties show up at that same time? Do you know if they have any kind of connections to Barry?

ReaperAwMan: Only two others, for a couple of people named Lucretia and Davenport. They must be living like hermits, because it’s been 12 years and I know as little about them as I do about Lup. Not a lot of leads there, I’m afraid.

(CalebClevelandFan is typing…)

(CalebClevelandFan is typing…)

CalebClevelandFan: Hmm. Huh! I wish I could say those names meant something to me, but I’ve never heard them before in my life! Truly unfortunate, that. But, I do suspect that Barry appearing to the Reclaimers is because the Red Robes made the Grand Relics, and it’s the Reclaimers’ job to track those seven relics down!

ReaperAwMan: You mean to tell me that Barold J. Bluejeans made a Grand Relic, and the Reclaimers all knew that information, but didn’t think it would be important to tell me?! This is simultaneously the most and least surprised I’ve been at any point in my afterlife.

CalebClevelandFan: Well, I guess there’s a reason I’m the moon’s resident boy detective and they aren’t, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Wait. Angus.

CalebClevelandFan: Yes?

ReaperAwMan: Seven relics. Seven bounties.

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, sir, I’m not following. What’s the connection?

ReaperAwMan: I know this is going to sound impossible, but…

ReaperAwMan: Taako is a transmutation wizard. The Philosopher’s Stone can transmute any material into anything else. Merle is a nature cleric, and the Gaia Sash offers control over natural disasters and the wilderness. Then of course, Barry is a lich like no other, and the Animus Bell is the most dangerous necromantic artifact I’ve ever been tasked with monitoring. I don’t know exactly how Magnus fitz into this, or how the other three bounties have managed to hide from me, but…

ReaperAwMan: I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

ReaperAwMan: Angus? Are you still there?

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, I just rebooted my Stone, but I still can’t read your second-to-last message! It just looks like static, but I was inoculated, so that shouldn’t be possible!

ReaperAwMan: I’m not sure what you mean by “inoculated,” but if the app is glitching, then do you want me to call you?

CalebClevelandFan: It may not be the app, sir. And if it isn’t, I fear a phone call won’t make any difference… but I just got an idea! I’m going to go check if Noelle is back yet — she should be able to help with this. Please bear with me for a few minutes, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Okay, then… good luck!

Head in his hand, Kravitz scrolled back up to the offending message, reading it over once more.

I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

It made sense, but it shouldn’t have. Despite all the questions it answered, it raised more in their place — and Kravitz had been ready to accept that he was wrong, ready for brilliant little Angus to chime in with a piece of evidence that refuted it all...

Except that message, and that message alone, hadn’t made it to Angus in the first place — and wasn’t that the most damning, of all the so-called coincidences aligning before Kravitz’s eyes?

The Reclaimers made Grand Relics and consorted with liches. The Reclaimers can’t remember making Grand Relics or consorting with liches.

Someone is hiding the truth from the Reclaimers, and from Angus. Someone is hiding the truth from the entire Bureau of Balance.

Is it Barry? Does he have that much power? Is he working with someone? With Lup?

Kravitz summoned his scythe with the full intention of warping straight to the moonbase, and bringing his four friends from the Bureau directly back to the Astral Plane — not to take them prisoner, but simply to get them somewhere safe, somewhere to talk without Queen-knows-what outside forces eavesdropping or interfering. Yet before he could open a rift, Kravitz’s vision flashed blue, and a faint yet familiar tug directed his focus towards a much different region of the Material Plane.

A voice echoed in his head, too distorted to identify the speaker, but the words themselves were clear enough:

Kravitz, help!

Kravitz’s Stone of Farspeech clattered onto his desk as he raised his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, honing in on the location of the summoning arrow. It was surrounded by undead presences of several shapes and forms, but one aura outshone all the others — one unmistakable red aura, crackling with power, and… desperation.

There was a very short list of people on the Material Plane with access to this kind of summoning beacon — and no matter what dark secrets their pasts held, Kravitz couldn’t bear the thought of any of them being left alone with an incredibly powerful, secret-keeping, Relic-crafting lich who had finally, finally snapped.

With a frantic swing of his scythe, he ripped open a jagged portal to the arrow’s location, and leapt through without even pausing to retrieve his Stone.

Hang on, boys! I’m coming!

***

“If you wanna hear anything about liches,” Garyl declared, “that information comes with a price. Which you know is gonna be oats, ‘cause what would I even do with gold? I’m just a funky little 80’s horse remix, so you gotta hand over those spectral oats, dude.”

Taako sighed. “Garyl. I know you’re not gonna like this question. But before you whine, please consider the fact that I’m not in the fucking mood. Now: does it have to be oats?”

“A pound of spectral oats is worth two spectral carrots or one spectral sugar cube! That’s the conversion rate. If you offer a spectral salt lick, I may be willing to negotiate.”

Taako conjured two floating, semi-tangible carrots with a wave of his umbrella, and levitated them over to Garyl, who took a bite out of both at once.

“That’s the stuff!” he whinnied. “Okay, so. Liches. Whatcha wanna know about ‘em?”

“You said, like — like two days ago now — that you used to get spectral oats from liches that I hung out with. Garyl, I need to know: was that true, or were you just guilting me for not spoiling you with enough treats?”

Garyl’s response was rendered completely indecipherable by the fresh bite of carrot in his mouth, part of which splattered across the floor and narrowly missed Taako.

“This is serious, Garyl! I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while, but it keeps getting more serious.” Taako groaned. “I… I didn’t even realize it, until I was talking to Kravitz last night, but… it’s just… okay, look. He remembers his whole life crystal clear, right down to how many stars you could see from this planet eight hundred and twenty years ago, but…”

He lowered his voice, glancing towards the door. “My past has always just been… fuzzy to me. I never really worried about it, but… I’m just now realizing that this might not be normal. And that if it isn’t, then I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Garyl swallowed the last of the carrots. “Yo, your past isn’t fuzzy to me. You really don’t remember your lich buddies — your lich family? Your literal sister and brother-in-law?”

“No, Garold, I don’t remember the sound of getting electrocuted in a fantasy garbage disposal!” Taako rubbed his forehead with increasing vigor, futilely attempting to massage away the sensation of an approaching migraine. “I don’t know how you made that noise with your nasty horse mouth, but it sounded just as bad as the static Lich Barry was speaking when —”

He gasped — and in the ensuing silence, the static kept ringing in his ears, but not as an audible echo. It was coming from within his own head, like a misdirected electric current leaping from neuron to neuron, generated as his mind repeatedly tried and failed to process what he’d just heard… and Taako knew exactly where he’d felt that sensation before.

“Oh, fuck.”

He bolted for the door, locked it, then frantically emptied his pockets until he found his Stone of Farspeech, which he powered down and then magically silenced for extra insurance. “Shit. Shit. Fuck.”

“Yo, what’s the rush?” Garyl asked. “Didja just remember you owe the unicorn mafia a whole bushel of oatsss?”

“What the hell? No!” Taako cradled Garyl’s snout in his hands, standing on his tiptoes to stare at Garyl in the eyes. “Promise me, promise me right now, Garyl, that you’re not gonna fucking snitch.”

Garyl’s expression turned as serious as a binicorn’s expression could turn, given two horns, technicolor eyes, and glittering lashes to work with. “Taako, you gave me life. I’ve always got your back, man.”

“There’s a second voidfish,” Taako blurted out. “And you’re more ghost than horse, I guess, so you’re immune to it, but I’m not. And I — I think I lost something big to it.”

“Huh.” Garyl snorted. “Damn. Geez, yeah. That would explain some things about, man, musta been…” He closed his eyes, nostrils twitching. “The last twelve years? That sound right?”

“Please, Garyl. You — you might know me better than I know me, at this point, so I need you to tell me — who can I trust?”

“I can’t decide that for you, Taako.” Garyl arched his majestic equine neck, as a single tear rolled down his face, and his mullet billowed in a wind that simply shouldn’t have been possible indoors. “Look at what you know to be true in your heart, and begin the journey towards your truth by trusting yourself.”

“I’m not here to listen to your poetry, Garyl — I need names!” Taako pleaded. “Like, I — I can at least trust Kravitz, right?”

“Look, man, I’m sorry! I could tell you who you used to trust, but if someone took a Voidfish-brand eraser to your chalkboard of a brain, that means someone had to betray you, and I dunno who it was! Kravitz is probably chill, because he seems on the level and you haven’t known him long enough for him to be the culprit — but I’m still juggling like six suspects, and I’ve only got four hooves, man! I’m trying my best to —”

Abruptly, Garyl’s voice died out, and he lowered his eyes. “Well, okay, it would be… five suspects. ‘Cause… Lup definitely went missing before any memories got…”

Taako clapped his hands over his ears. “Can you try not to do that? I’m already on the edge of a migraine without —”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and the next thing he knew, he was brandishing his Umbra Staff — never mind the fact that he’d locked that door just a minute ago, and it had since remained closed.

“Taako?” Lucretia called from the hallway. “Are you alright in there?”

After what must’ve been a suspiciously long pause, “Fine!” was the only word Taako could force out.

“Just dandy!” Garyl added in a terrible Taako impression, and Taako elbowed him in the equine shoulder.

“You’re sure?” The quizzical tilt to Lucretia’s head was downright audible. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

Taako bit back a reply of golly, I wonder if that’s because I don’t who I am or how much of myself I’m missing! but managed something more civil, clamping a hand over Garyl’s mouth as he spoke.

“Just had a late night last night! Took some… personal hours. May or may not be nursing a mild hangover now.”

“Oh, we’ve all been there. Merle did mention you were sleeping in.” Lucretia sounded like her suspicion had been sated — unless, of course, she just wanted Taako to think that — because in a much more casual voice that carried far less gravitas, the next thing she asked was: “Do you mind if I come in? I feel like we haven’t talked since Candlenights.”

“No problem!” Taako replied, probably much too quickly. He uttered the word ‘unlock’ under his breath in Elvish, to magically undo his little paranoia-induced security measure before swinging the door open, and hoping Lucretia wouldn’t notice the door had been locked or go on to question why. “Mi casa es tu casa — ‘cause, y’know, mi casa is technically part of your moonbase.”

If Lucretia did notice the unlocking door, she only questioned it silently, because her attention seemed understandably drawn to the binicorn trotting in place in the middle of the dorm.

“Oh, Garyl! Good to see you too.”

“Haha, yeah!” Garyl chuckled nervously. “Imagine meeting you, here, in a place like this! What are the odds?”

Lucretia lowered herself onto the sofa, glanced at Magnus’s rugged hand-crafted coffee table, and pointed to her feet. “Do you mind?”

Taako shrugged. “Uh… knock yourself out, Luce?”

She kicked off her heeled boots and slung her feet onto the table, laying her staff down in her lap. “Let’s get to the point. I did come here for a particular reason —”

“Oh?” Taako forced a smile. “Do tell.”

“Well, Merle and Leon got into a bit of an argument over — actually, let me start from the beginning. At some point in today’s second game, the kickball went over the edge of the moon, and has probably hit the planet Earth at terminal velocity by now.” Lucretia grimaced. “I hope no one was standing beneath it. Yikes.”

“Home run, baby!” Garyl cheered. Taako simply attempted to nod along.

“Actually, by our rules, it’s a foul with a sizeable penalty. Leon was pitching and Merle was kicking, so naturally they got into a fight over whose fault it was, and Merle threatened — let me see if I remember this all correctly — to ask you, Taako, to ask your ‘new friend the Grim Reaper’ to come up here and ‘reap Leon’s ass’ like said Grim Reaper purportedly once threatened to reap Merle’s own ass. So I was just hoping to get to you first, and stage an intervention to make sure the Bureau’s only artificer doesn’t take a one way trip to the heavens above — not to mention, maybe, ask if you had any idea what the hell Merle was talking about?”

“Well, bold statement saying Leon would go to heaven, first of all. Pretty sure he’d head the way of the plummeting kickball and smash through the planet’s crust. Second of all, um, I guess you could say I know the Grim Reaper? Look, we haven’t been seeing each other for very long, but I think we both feel a connection —”

“Oh! Well, good for you! Don’t get me wrong, that’s fucking wild if you mean it seriously rather than as a goof, but I’m still happy for you!”

“Not a goof. That is the whole story there, though. I’m dating the Grim Reaper, what more is there to say?” Taako grinned from ear to ear, and it felt slightly more sincere than every other smile he’d put on in this disaster of a conversation. “But as a… as an aside… uh, Garyl, do you remember those… six, no, five people you mentioned to me, just before Lucretia showed up?”

Garyl blinked at him with a downright hostility, as if to say You’re circling back to this topic NOW?

“Your, um, suspect list?” Taako clarified. “Of… people on the moon most likely to give you oats? I guess it was more like a power ranking, actually, let’s definitely call it a power ranking instead of a suspect list — but my point is, um, was the ‘Director’ here on it?”

“Yee-esssss,” Garyl replied slowly, still giving Taako the evil eye. “You know what I always say about Lucretia: she… she totes got the oats!”

“Okay!” Taako replied, knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle of the Umbra Staff. “Thanks! For letting me know! About those oat facts!”

“Um,” said Lucretia, which was probably the best reaction that Taako could’ve reasonably hoped for. “I… think I misplaced my oats today. Also, maybe my supply of oats for this entire year?” She reached for her boots. “Is this a hint that I should go back to refereeing kickball?”

“Yes!” Taako blurted out. “Oh, I mean, no, it’s not — I mean, you can leave! But you don’t have to. We don’t mind you being here!”

“We don’t not want you to leave but we also don’t not not not want you to leave,” Garyl added, as if it were a verbal Fantasy Rosetta Stone that would clarify and explain all of Taako’s anxious floundering. “Because we trust and cherish you. And oats! Mostly oats.”

Lucretia slipped her boots back on, then rose from her seat in a regal manner that probably wasn’t intended to intimidate the living daylights out of Taako. “No, you have a point. I should go make sure our secret society doesn’t fracture into warring kickball factions — but I’ll be back to chat more, don’t worry. Hopefully on a day you’re feeling better, Taako.”

She winked at Garyl as she turned to leave. “And I’ll try and remember to bring oats. Gotta move up in those power rankings.”

“It was actually more like a tier list!” Garyl called as she closed the door. When Taako magically locked it behind her, Garyl began pacing around the dorm, his tail swishing with enough force to knock several paintings and decorative vases onto the floor.

“Taako! She never has oats and she knows it! She’s onto us!”

“Yeah, you think?” Taako sunk into the couch Lucretia had vacated, burying his head in his hands. “I need backup who can hear through the static, before she puts it together and comes back to throw me in the brig. I’m calling Kravitz.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that. I’ll keep working on the tier list.” As Taako began to reboot his Stone, Garyl accelerated his nervous pacing to a nervous trot.

“Garyl, if this turns into a canter, I swear to gods —” Taako muttered, tapping the Stone’s unresponsive screen with a shaky thumb.

“Sorry.” Garyl slowed to a halt. “Hmm. You trust Davenport more, less, or the same as Lucretia?”

“What, you think he just pretends he can only say his own name to disguise his role as the evil mastermind?” Taako’s stomach churned. “Shit. You might be onto something. Put him below Lucretia on the tier list. Or above? I dunno how —”

“Wait, I’m not following you, man. Since when can Dav can only say his own name?”

Taako groaned. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say since twelve fucking years ago — alright, finally! Here we go!” His Stone of Farspeech flickered to life, and he navigated to Kravitz’s contact page as quickly as his trembling fingers allowed.

When he hit Call, an eerie silence filled the dorm as he and Garyl listened to one, two, three, four short rings — then, a beep, and a horrendous pre-recorded Cockney accent.

Hullo, greetings, and top o’ the morning! You’ve successfully reached the desk of Kravitz, Emissary of Her Majesty the Raven Queen, but I’m away right now, so if you have a zombie outbreak to report, press 1. If you wish to subscribe to our mailing list of anti-necromancy resources, press 2. If you’re dead and in need of an escort to the Astral Plane, press 3. If you just wanted to have a friendly chat, please leave a message after the caw, and I’ll get back to you once I’m able.

A raven cawed, and Taako started talking:

“Hey, babe, it’s me! Your boy. Um, don’t let me take you away from saving the world from necromancers or anything important like that… but if you’re not busy, I could really use your help, so if you could swing by the moonbase, and — and maybe not tell anyone you’re coming here or that you’re coming to see me — then that would be just swell! Everything’s cool, nothing’s wrong — well, no, you’re a perceptive guy, you can definitely tell something’s wrong — but I’m sure you and me, and Garyl, and maybe Angus will be able to figure it out, no problem! Except, now that I think about it, maybe not Angus, because I’ve put him in enough danger to solve my own problems already — but uh, thanks in advance, love you, see you soon, bye!”

Then he dropped his Stone, grabbed the nearest couch pillow, and screamed into it.

“Hey, hey, relaaax,” Garyl told him. “You heard him — he’ll get back to you soon.”

“Yeah. I know.” Taako took a deep breath, letting the pillow fall to the ground. “He’s just a busy guy, with an important job. He’ll be here as soon as he can…”

Garyl nodded sagely. “And you’d do the same, for him, because that’s love. Unless…”

Taako’s heart skipped a beat. “Unless?”

“Unless someone on the lower end of the trust tier list knows about his connection to you, and to keep hiding the truth, they capture him before he can get here!” Garyl sniffed. “Just like the unicorn mafia captured my dear ol’ uncle…”

Taako pressed the Call button again, and when he was once again directed to voicemail, he picked the pillow back up and resumed screaming.

“Hey, take it easyyy, man. It’s not like they can kill him,” Garyl soothed. “And b’sides, haven’t you got that… that whatsit-called, that magic arrow? You can still check in on him that way, even if the bad guys stole his Stone!”

“Right!” Taako sprung up from the couch, and bolted towards the quiver of arrows that Magnus had casually slung onto the doorknob of his room. “I mean, I’m sure his phone didn’t even get taken from him — he’s eight and a half centuries old, for crying out loud! He probably just misplaced it, or accidentally put it on silent, or… gee, we really don’t have a lot of traditional surfaces to jab arrows into here, do we?”

He glanced around the dorm, gaze finally landing on Magnus’s homemade coffee table. “I’ll just… wedge it in one of the seams in the wood, so it definitely won’t be noticeable, right?”

“You asking me? I’m apparently an amnesia-immune ghost horse, man — what makes ya think I’d ever want or attempt to understand woodworking?”

“Guess you’ve never attempted to understand a rhetorical question, either,” Taako muttered as he crouched on the ground. Clasping the arrow between two hands, he took a deep breath, then plunged it into the coffee table. “Kravitz? I could really use your help, I won’t lie, but — but mostly, I’m worried and just checking in to make sure you’re okay —”

For a sliver of a second, everything seemed to proceed as it should, with an electric blue glow flickering to life inside the arrowhead — and then, it exploded, spitting out fragments of crystal and tongues of vicious astral fire. Taako reflexively turned his head and dropped to the floor, but still felt something sharp and burning prick into his biceps like a red-hot needle, and he held his breath until the sound of shattering crystal halted and the sound of burning wood faded to a faint sizzling.

“So, uh…” Garyl slowly backed away from Magnus’s poor table, which was already more ‘smoldering pile of ash and sapphire dust’ than it was furniture. “This ever happen before?”

“No,” Taako whispered. He raised a hand to touch the stinging point on his arm, and pulled away with a droplet of blood and a tiny pointed crystal both resting atop his index fingertip. “Never —”

“Okay, cool, that narrows down the possibilities,” Garyl concluded. “Either he’s really busy, or we’re really fucked.”

This time, Taako didn’t even bother to grab a pillow before he started screaming.

***

End Notes:

thanks for reading, comments welcomed as always!

next chapter: Ghost Fight (or in other words, we get to see what Kravitz has been up to in the meantime)

[xxx-cat-xxx]

Sleeping At Last

or: 5 times Tony couldn´t sleep (and the one time he could)

My first 5+1! It´s based on an ask from lovely @trashofdoom, featuring a severely sleep-deprived Tony and various people (and AIs) looking after him. A million thanks to my amazing beta Bethany (@whumphoarder).

TW for vomiting, alcohol-overuse and somewhat unhealthy coping mechanisms. Enjoy!

Tony rubs his eyes exhaustedly. They’re dry and stinging, irritated from countless hours spent staring at a Starkpad and fiddling with code. He spots another error in the programme and corrects it with a sigh. The numbers, usually easier to understand for him than any human behaviour, just won’t come together today.

There’s a soft knock at the door. It is honestly beyond Tony why people still knock in an era where there are retinal scanners at each entry to keep out unwanted visitors and open doors for the wanted ones, but at least it reduces the number of possible intruders down to two, one of whom  - Captain Spangles - is ruled out because of his ridiculously regular sleep pattern.

“Hey Brucie,” Tony calls even before the other man has entered. “What brings you here at - “ God, how has it become 4:30 this quickly?

“I should ask you the same. This is the, what, fourth night in a row?”

“Just getting these updates done.” Tony rolls his chair back and gestures to a row of devices lined up on the table across from him.

“And that can’t wait until tomorrow?” Bruce asks critically.

“The glitch with the comms not adjusting frequencies automatically was a serious issue last time... Nat wouldn’t have gotten hit if we had been able to warn her. She barely made it through—you know that.”

Bruce looks at him, then sees through him. “It wasn’t your fault, Tony.”

“I know it wasn’t my fault,” he says, a little too quickly. “But it’s my responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I just can’t figure out what caused it...” He rubs his forehead with furrowed brows. “It’s like my brain is filled with fog.”

Bruce frowns at that admission.

“Anyway,” Tony goes on, “now that you’re here, I’ve got something I wanna show you...”

He gets up from the chair, making for the 3D-hologram area at the other end of the room. But only a few steps in, his head rushes without warning.

“Woah,” he breathes, grabbing a table for support as darkness clouds his field of vision. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was your blood pressure screaming at you to finally get some rest,” Bruce assesses, stepping over to steady Tony as the man sinks dizzily to the floor. “And I agree with it.” Gently, he pushes Tony's head between his knees.

“That’s unfair,” the other man grumbles. “Back in college, I used to pull five all nighters in a row, and that involved a lot more partying.“

“You’re an old man now,” Bruce teases, but his voice is tinged with concern.

The engineer mumbles something into his knees that sounds a lot like “'Should see yourself.”

"Better?" Bruce asks after a minute, resting a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

“Hmm.” Tony nods without looking up.

“Stay put. I’ll make you some tea.”

“I don’t drink strange herbs dissolved in water,” Tony says with a shudder. “You know I'm a full-blooded coffee addict.”

“Trust me with this one—it's not the normal kind. Just stay there until I'm back.”

Tony, of course, doesn't listen. When Bruce returns a few minutes later, he’s made it back to his desk on wobbly legs and is squinting at the tablet. Bruce wriggles it out of his fingers with an exasperated sigh and presses a cup of something hot and steaming into his hand.

“This... doesn't smell like tea,” Tony says warily.

“It's Chai. The real one, not the nonsense they sell at Starbucks.” He watches as Tony takes a tentative sip, then another, and a bit of colour returns to his cheeks.

“Where’d you learn that?” Tony nods at the cup.

“In Kolkata,” Bruce replies. His gaze goes a bit distant as he adds, “I miss it sometimes, you know? It's the weirdest kind of place, but it took me in.”

“Why did you come down here, actually?” Tony asks, now looking up at him intensely.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Bruce shrugs. “Guess I wasn't the only one.”

“Yeah.” Tony gives him an exhausted smile. “Tell me about it...”

Joining a mission after four straight days of staying awake was definitely not the best idea, but Tony isn't exactly known for making sensible choices.

Luckily, the battle finishes quickly, leaving him sitting on the edge of a curb, knowing full well that his slumped-over posture is looking anything but heroic to the camera crews filtering in from all sides. On the other hand, it would certainly be worse publicity if he took a swan dive in front of the assembled press, which, unfortunately, is a very likely scenario considering the way the world is currently wobbling around the edges.

He’s just trying to gather the strength to make it upright and join Nat in talking to the reporters when he spots a blurred figure approaching quickly from behind a corner, raised gun aimed right at the assassin.

Tony fires without thinking. He might have forgotten that the repulsors were still set to full power, because the next thing that follows is an ear-splitting bang and a cloud of smoke rising up from what used to be a bus stop.

“What the fuck, Stark?!”

He blinks when a very upset Nat is suddenly standing over him, and seriously, that's one of the moments when he understands why people are sometimes afraid of her.

“You can't complete a single mission without destroying New York?” she demands. “What was that for? Trying out your new tech? Impressing the tabloids?”

“Calm down,” Tony hisses, more than a little annoyed. “We didn't get all of them, there was someone sneaking up on us. I just saved your ass.”

“What?” Nat's angry expression morphs into confusion as she turns around and surveys the area. “There's nobody here, Tony.”

“No, no, that's not right.“ He gets to his feet shakily, steadying himself against a streetlamp until the familiar blackness fades from his vision. He uses the suit's sensors to zoom in at the heap of rubble, but true to Nat's word, there is no sign of an attacker.

“I thought I... never mind,” he mumbles.

“You know your little stunt was caught on camera, right?” Nat asks, still annoyed, but with a bit of concern now mixed into her tone. “And that I've got to report it to SHIELD if my team members have health issues that can negatively influence their ability to - “

“That's not  - I'm not having flashbacks, okay?” he interrupts her, anger flaring up. “I just - I thought I saw something. Someone. Won't happen again.”

“I wasn't  talking about PTSD, Stark. You are aware that sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations?”

“I'm  - gosh.” Tony rubs his eyes wearily. He really, really doesn't have the energy for this argument right now. “That's none of your business.”

“It becomes my business as soon as it compromises the mission.” Nat gives him a glare, but her eyes have gone soft. “Go home, Tony. I'll handle SHIELD and the press. Do us all a favour and get some sleep.”

“If only it were that easy,” he mutters under his breath. But he fires up his thrusters all the same and takes off into the sky, decidedly not looking back at the disaster he’s caused.

Tony wakes up drenched in cold sweat, his breaths coming in short, painful gasps. The sheets next to him are empty.

“Jarvis?” he croaks.

“It is 3:52 a.m., Sir. You are in your quarters at Stark Tower. It is currently drizzling, with a high probability of heavy rains for the coming day. You have been asleep for one hour and 37 minutes. You started to exhibit signs of distress sixteen minutes ago.” The AI hesitates a moment. “You were also talking in your sleep. If I may, Sir, would you like to know the current status of Miss Potts?”

“Yeah,” Tony breathes.

“I can access a video feed of the security cameras in the Hong Kong hotel she is currently residing at, if you'd like to see it.”

Tony nods weakly into the darkness, trusting Jarvis' ultrasharp sensors to pick it up.

The screen above the bed lights up, displaying a slightly pixelated image of Pepper in business attire, taking notes on a Starkpad while nodding politely at an equally formally dressed man seated across from her.

A small field with name and designation appears next to the man's head, revealing his position as the head of one of Stark Asia's subsidiaries.

“Thanks, J,” Tony says hoarsely after a few minutes. “You can close it now.”

The AI doesn't reply, but the room illuminates with a warm light that leaves no shadows in the corners. Bless Jarvis for knowing what he needs when Tony himself doesn't.

He sits up slowly, his fingers gliding over the soft fabric of the blankets, then feeling for the bathrobe that's draped over a nearby chair. He lets his fingertips run over the slightly uneven wall while he makes his way to the bathroom. Then he rests his hand on the doorknob, feeling its solidness.

Real, he reminds himself, because sometimes the present is elusive, sometimes it’s so much harder than it should be to figure out what's there and what isn't.

He sits on the bathroom tiles for a while, enjoying the chill seeping into his bones, anchoring him. He thinks of Pepper somewhere in Hong Kong, far, far away. Safe.

He knows that sleep is not going to come to him now.

When he finally steps into the shower, Jarvis has already adjusted the temperature and his morning playlist is issuing softly from the speakers.

“Honestly, I don't get the sense of ‘brunching’,” Tony states while tossing down his third cup of coffee that morning. “Maria's a grown-up girl, she should host a party like normal adults do. Get drunk, let loose, bully Fury into singing Karaoke - you know what I mean.”

“Not everyone's like you, Tony,” Steve replies good-naturedly, but still with this slightly lecturing note in his voice that sometimes drives Tony crazy. “Some people like to celebrate their birthday without it ending in fistfights and drunken guests throwing up everywhere.”

“Hey, that was one time!” Tony retorts, “And it's not a fistfight if armour is involved.” He reaches over the extensive buffet to grab the coffee pot and refill his cup.

“Haven't you had enough of that already?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Can't you let a guy have his small vices?” Tony deflects. He tries to scoop sugar from a delicate porcelain bowl into his cup, but his hands are jittering so much that half of it ends up on the tablecloth.

With a small sigh, Steve takes the spoon from his hands, adding sugar and stirring calmly. “You sure you're alright?” he adds, handing the cup back to Tony.

“Yes, Spangles. Stop mother-henning me,” Tony replies. He suppresses a belch when the first sip of coffee doesn't quite settle well.

They stand in silence while he sips the beverage, until Steve spots Sam on the other side of the room and goes over to talk to him, and Tony is left squirming uncomfortably. He’s full of nervous energy just waiting to be transformed into new inventions in his workshop, but he still has to wait through another few hours of polite conversation and boring toasts before he will be able to disappear.

Ironically, today is the first morning in a while that he actually feels like he might be able to sleep if he tried hard enough. But the prospect of everyone's irritation if he misses Hill's birthday celebration kept him away from bed.

He's thus settled on caffeine to fight the tiredness and reduce the headache throbbing behind his temples. The coffee has so far accomplished its job of keeping him upright without getting dizzy, but it also makes his stomach burn and causes a vague feeling of nausea that only increases as time goes on.

“You haven't tried the cake,” a kind voice says from behind him, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Here, have a piece,” Laura Barton offers, holding it out. Then she seems to think better of it and sets it on the counter in front of Tony. “I made it, not Clint, so you don't have to worry about getting poisoned.”

Tony tries to come up with a way of politely declining, his stomach somersaulting at the thought of food, but Laura has an aura about her that makes it almost impossible to say no. It reminds him faintly of Pepper. He has no illusions about who calls the shots in the Barton household.

“Thanks,“ he says, taking a tentative bite. He has to swallow twice to get the piece down, and then he can feel it sitting heavily at the end of his throat. He stifles another belch that brings with it the sour taste of acid.

“It's great,” he lies while taking a deep breath, attempting to will the nausea away.

It doesn't work. Instead, he can feel bile creeping up his throat. The urge to gag is suddenly overwhelming.

“Are you okay?” Laura asks.

Tony just presses the plate back into her hand. “Sorry,” he chokes out before making a break for the bathroom.

He only makes it to the sink before hot and bitter liquid is forcing its way upwards and splashing into the basin. It still carries the smell of coffee, making him even more nauseous. He barely manages to catch a breath before he heaves again, bringing up another gush of vomit.

The throbbing behind his forehead intensifies and he closes his eyes against the pain. He’s  coughing and sputtering, steadying himself on the basin, when he hears the door to the bathroom open.

“Occupied,” he croaks. But there's already a hand on his back, patting him hesitantly.

“Tony, what's going on?” a voice asks, and yep, out of all people that could have come to pee at this very moment, it has to be Captain Fucking Righteous.

“Nothing,” Tony pants, “Go away - ugh.”

He retches again and brings up a mouthful of bile.

“Are you sick?” Steve's hand now moves towards his neck to feel his temperature, and no, this is not happening.

“It’s nothing.” Tony bats his hand away. “Just overdid it with the coffee today. You were right, be happy.”

“I wasn't - that's not what I'm thinking,” Steve says defensively.

“But you were also wrong,” Tony continues, spitting into the basin. “Apparently, brunching doesn't reduce the risk of people ending up barfing.”

Steve ignores his banter. “Can I get you anything?”

A bed, a new head, and truckload of aspirin are all high on his list, but Tony settles for the easiest.

“Glass of water and some mint would be marvellous,” he says, and Steve is gone within a second. The guy is so helpful that it's a plague.

To the best of his ability, he avoids looking at the brownish mess he’s made. His stomach is still more than queasy as he starts the water.

By the time Steve returns, the evidence is cleared and Tony's game face is reestablished.

The anniversary of his parents' death has always been a night without the remotest hope of catching sleep. It is also the one night a year during which Pepper doesn't say anything when Tony drinks himself senseless.

In earlier years, Rhodey used to always be around on that date—ever since the very first time in college when he'd found Tony passed out in a puddle of his own sick with a BAC of 0.3. Then Pepper moved in, and Tony would be moody and irritable all night, demanding her to leave him alone, secretly praying she'd stay. She always did.

But this time, Pepper is still in Hong Kong - the negotiations taking longer than expected - and after the first few glasses of scotch, he finds himself turning his phone over in his hands, contemplating calling a few of his old business contacts and inviting himself to one of those parties that have more recreational substances floating around than actual food.

But he doesn't. Instead, he pulls up the second number on his speed dial. It takes less than a full ring before Rhodey picks up.

“Hey man,” Tony greets jovially, “What're you up to?”

Then, after a second, he quietly adds, “It's bad tonight.”

The can you come over goes unsaid. It's only a few minutes before the War Machine armour makes a soft landing on the balcony. Rhodey steps out of the suit and into the warmth of the living room.

“Here.” Tony turns around from the bar, a bit unsteady on his feet, and presses a glass into Rhodey's hand. “To all those sweepers that keep the roads free of ice.”

Rhodey clinks his glass against Tony's, his eyes wide and sad. Tony doesn't pass out that night, but Rhodey almost wishes he did.

The annual Maria Stark Foundation Gala takes place a few days after the anniversary, all of which Tony spends on a single workshop binge, running on coffee, AC/DC, and the deliberate aversion of any thoughts not related to R&D.

Pepper, who finally returns after a successful conclusion of “the greatest bargaining endeavor in history” (in the words of her PA), hauls him out of the lab a few hours before the Gala, threatening to fly right back to Hong Kong if he doesn't shower and dress up.

Tony's head his swimming when he bends over the sink to wash his face. He feels weak, almost feverish. When he starts to shave, his hands are trembling so hard that his usually perfect goatee comes out looking more like a modern art caricature of symmetry than anything else.

Pepper eyes his crooked beard, his haggard face, and the black circles beneath his eyes with a frown when she hands him the cue cards for his speech. She’s ushered into the changing room by an assistant before she can comment.

Tony manages a speech that leaves the audience laughing themselves to tears, without actually comprehending a single word of what he says. All the time, he clings to the lectern, painfully aware only of the weakness in his limbs and his own heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears.

He staggers down from the stage just to see Pepper emerging from the changing room in a breathtaking sleeveless gown. He might have been swaying a bit, because her eyes go wide upon seeing him and she hurries in his direction.

“You look fantastic,” he manages to say before the static in his ears grows deafening and the ground rushes up to meet him.

He comes to with his head in Pepper's lap and a group of assistants encircling him, heatedly debating the best course of action.

“Hey,” she says, her expression serious. “You back with us?”

“Hmm,” he grunts, trying to focus on his surroundings through the dizziness and pulsing headache.

“Can you get up?” she asks.

“Yeah, of course,” he mumbles. But his legs are jelly when he tries to get them under him. “Or maybe I'll just stay here for a while. The view is great,” he says weakly.

Pepper doesn't even give an answer. Instead, she pushes an arm behind his back to sit him up. With the help of Happy, they get Tony to his feet and manage to get him to the couch in the backstage room.

Tony sinks heavily onto the cushions. Pepper sits down next to him, waving at Happy to close the door and wait outside.

“So. What's going on?” she asks calmly, but Tony knows her too well not to hear the panic barely contained in her voice. “And don't dare tell me that you're fine, because I’m not an idiot.”

“I'm okay, Pepper - quit giving me that look,” he starts.

“By what definition was that ‘okay’?” she interrupts in an icy tone.

“Okay, as in, I swear there’s nothing majorly wrong with me. Just had a bit of trouble sleeping over the past few weeks,” he concedes. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Except for you passing out in the middle of a public Gala.”

“Where would be the fun in life without the little surprises?” he jokes in a weak voice. He can feel fatigue washing over him in waves, making his body numb and heavy.

“Sleep deprivation, that's all it is?” Pepper probes. “ Can I trust you on this? I won't regret it if I don't haul you to a hospital right now?”

“You can trust me on everything, you know that.” A moment of pain washes over her face, so brief that he nearly misses it.

“Hey. That was two years ago. Look at me, Pep.” It takes a lot of energy to lift his arm and reach out to touch her face. He looks her straight into the eyes. “I'm not dying. I promise.”

“Okay,” she says after a moment. She doesn't look completely convinced, but it seems she decides to let it go for now. “You can't go back in like this. And we can't leave the Gala early without the press going wild.”

“Trust me, I don't wanna move,” Tony says. The world is turning fuzzy before his eyes now, greyness creeping in from the edges. “Nothing wrong with backstage couches - I'm speaking from experience. Let's just stay here for a bit.”

Pepper bites her lip to suppress a smile.

He lets his head fall down below her shoulder, nestling his face into the soft spot between her neck and collarbone. He is vaguely aware of her hands in his hair, a warm and steady presence holding him. And then, in an uncharacteristically nonchalant fashion, Tony Stark falls asleep.

[imagine-loki]

Monsters and Magic

TITLE: Monsters and Magic CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 14/? AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine you’re a vampire who helps the Avengers defeat an evil seethe of other vampires, and Loki befriends you after you end up in their custody RATING: T (so far) NOTES/WARNINGS:  Also on AO3 click here

      “Soldier, get the weapon back to the jet and knock it out,” Schneider ordered, breaking through your haze of horror and grief.

    Footsteps approached and hands were on your arms, hauling you to your feet. “On your feet, Natal’ka,” Bucky told you firmly, gruffly. He risked the different nickname, reminding you to be strong like Nat. Hydra would just think his brain had glitched again, though he gave you the message. You managed to stand and keep your feet under you. “Push it down, Natal’ka,” Bucky hissed when you stiffened at walking past the carnage you had created. “Lock the emotions away. You can rage and cry and deal with them later. We have to get out of here right now,”

    “It still needs some work, but you can see for yourselves how effective the weapon is,” Schneider was telling the other Hydra agents. They were all throwing themselves at him to try to bid for your use. It made you want to puke again.

    You tried to think past the pain and grief, past the despair over what you’d been forced to do and walk with Bucky. You had to get out of here. He was right on that point. You looked past the agents to a nearby car that somehow wasn’t on fire, though everything else in the village seemed to be burning. There were two ravens perched on it, shimmering with magic as they watched the scenes.

    You knew at once from the Norse Mythology book Loki had given you to read when he first met you, from the words they had used to trigger whatever the hell you did here today.

    Odin’s ravens.

    To speak the name is to summon the man, or birds in this case. Hydra was so afraid to even speak Loki’s name, for fear of summoning him. They must not realize that the ravens were magic too, or real. Morons. The ravens were Odin’s spies, you knew, and had probably been curious why someone on Midgard was using their names.

    But would Odin help?

    Not directly.

    He wouldn’t interfere directly on Midgard.

    But…

    You couldn’t get closer to the ravens, but they took off to fly past you, to fly out of the village, to uselessly fly away. You hoped they were as good of spies as the stories said. “Odin. Allfather. Please. If you have any love for your sons, please help them. They’re both looking for me and trying to save me. Please, Allfather. Please help your sons.” Your words were a whisper, your face turned to the agents couldn’t see your lips move. The ravens cawed and continued on their way. You had no idea if they even heard you, much less if Odin would care, or deign to help.

    “What are you talking about?” Bucky hissed, scared you were risking blowing his cover. You were his only hope for escape too. Plus he actually liked you. You shook your head. It was too dangerous to discuss out here. He nodded, understanding, and while he might not know all the mythology, almost everyone knew at least of Odin and Thor.

    He got you back on the jet and in your seat as fast as he could. He didn’t trust your mental health after what you’d been forced to do. Wise man. You were barely holding it together. He ignored all of the blood you were covered in, which was very polite of him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them. I had no idea they were going to do this. I’m sorry about this too,” you had a moment to look up at him before he continued “Tinkerbell”

    *

    Loki was watching to footage of you causing the carnage in horror when your unconscious mind latched onto his. You’d been so covered in blood, and probably had consumed quite a lot of it, that your powers were boosted enough to reach him. He turned his attention away from the screen when he felt your presence in his mind.

    “They had to have forced her somehow. You all know her. She wouldn’t have done this,” Stark was saying, desperately trying to defend you somehow, despite the evidence in front of their eyes. “Plus, Hydra sent us this footage to antagonize us. Jarvis, get rid of every trace of this footage besides what we have here,” he ordered quickly. No one wanted the news to have any evidence of this. 

    “Y/N!” Loki exclaimed, drawing everyone’s attention away from arguing over your actions. He was so obviously relieved to be hearing from you. The room shut up in an instant. “What did they do to you?” he asked, glancing at the screen currently showing you standing in the middle of the pile of bodies.

    /Can you hear?/ you didn’t know how strong the connection was this time.

    “I can,” he replied. Everyone watched him talking to himself confused, and a little concerned, though they knew he was talking to you. It was still disturbing to those not used to magic. Thor didn’t seem concerned.

    /Trigger words. They used trigger words. I don’t remember a damn thing after they said the first one, until they said the reversal. I don’t remember doing any of that. I wasn’t in control/ your voice was a heartbroken wail, begging him to believe that this wasn’t your fault, so he could convince you.

    “What are trigger words, love? I don’t understand,” Loki’s voice was pained, heartbroken, tortured that he couldn’t help, that he didn’t understand what you were trying to tell him. That he didn’t know how to help your grief.

    “It’s mind control. We’ll explain it later, I know she can’t hold the connection long,” Nat explained quickly. Her voice sounded relieved. You could see the relief in the rest of the team as well. The explanation of trigger words reassured everyone that you were in no way responsible for your actions. Well, everyone but you. Nat caught on to things extremely quickly and you were grateful for it now when she caught on to how magic worked. “Ask her what the words are that they used. We need to be prepared for when we rescue her,”

    /The names of your father’s ravens/ you replied quickly. You could hear Nat’s question, though she couldn’t hear your answer.

    “Father’s ravens?” Loki’s attention went back to the screen, thinking over something. He was obviously distracted when he automatically referred to Odin as ‘father’, even if you had done it first. You had done it since you didn’t know what other words they may have used, what other orders they got into your mind.

    “Hugi-” Thor started. 

    Nat’s hand clapped over his mouth and she glared at Thor. “Don’t say them!” she hissed, nearly frantic while the rest of the team looked on confused. “We don’t want Loki going into a rampage like that,” she gestured at the screen, “because her mind is connected to his right now. You know damn well he’s been getting bleedthrough of the shit they’re doing to her because of her telepathic connection to him. We do not want to find out that they can make him go ballistic when she’s in his mind like this,”

    “How do you know that much about magic?” Cap asked her incredulously. She was a spy. She shouldn’t know anything about magic.

    Nat shrugged. “I know things, it’s what I do,” she reminded him as she removed her hand from Thor’s mouth.

    Loki’s attention was still on the screen, his mind working too quickly for you to follow to try to figure something out. “There,” he announced, pointing at the screen. “Stark, tell your Jarvis thing to make that bigger,” Loki jabbed urgently at the screen again.

    “J-” Tony started, but the image was already zooming in. Loki’s mind was racing when he saw the ravens on the screen. Loki was a tactician and a damn brilliant one that that. You felt his mind racing as he worked on a plan. “Are those-?”

    “Father’s,” Thor confirmed, staring at the birds on the screen. He looked over at Loki. “I know that look. What are you planning?” Thor asked, excited that Loki had a plan, that they would finally be making progress.

    “Give me a second,” Loki growled impatiently while he concentrated on his plan. “To speak the name is to summon the god. They are too afraid to speak my name, right, love?”

    /Right, it’s forbidden to be said in the compound. They’re terrified of you/

    “As well they should be,” he replied somewhat distractedly. He was still working through his plan, working through the implications of what he knew. “And everyone talks about Hammer-brain here all the time. Also I’ve seen rocks with more magical ability…”

    “Hey!”

    “I have,” Loki replied with a shrug. Thor huffed and grumbled. “But no one on Midgard speaks of or usually remembers the ravens. They’ll go spy if someone speaks of them, especially here. Spying is what they do,” Loki lit up as his plan solidified. He turned to Thor. “Brother, contact Father. Make him let us borrow the ravens. Whatever you have to do to convince him,” Thor nodded, but waited for the rest of the plan. “This is what we are going to do. Darling, pay attention, you’re have a part to play in this as well…”

    *

You came to slowly, your brain didn’t want to focus on reality. You wanted to hide. You wanted to die. You never ever wanted to think of all the people your hands had killed ever again, and yet, it was all you could think about.

    Your attention focused on the water. Why were you sitting in water? You were sitting in the bathtub in Bucky’s bathroom. Naked, as one usually is when one is in the bathtub. Bucky was scrubbing one of your arms roughly. You shrieked and scrambled to cover yourself with your hands.

    He sighed. “You couldn’t wake up before I had to put you in the bath, or after I got you out and to bed, now could you?” he grumbled, teasing, joking, trying to reassure that everything was ok. You were still freaking out and trying uselessly to cover yourself. “Calm down, Striga. I am perfectly well aware what a female body looks like. I have absolutely no interest in yours, except that it is currently covered in quite a lot of blood which I’d appreciate not having all over my blanket,” he grumbled at you.

    “You don’t- Nothing-” shit, you couldn’t find words.

    “Nothing happened. Steve can strike me down if that boyfriend of yours says I’m lying. If boyfriend doesn’t do it himself,” he couldn’t say Loki’s name either. It was forbidden, but he knew who Loki was. “You were still unconscious when we got off the jet. I was told to bring you here. I wasn’t putting you in the clean bed when you’re dripping blood. So, bath. But since you’re awake, you can damn well clean yourself,” he set the washcloth and bar of soap where you could reach them.

    “Bucky… I… Those people…” there were tears in your eyes already. He touched the top of your head, ruffled your hair, trying for comfort in his somewhat awkward way.

    “I know, Striga. Believe me, I know,” he would understand. They’d made him do at least equally bad things. “Get cleaned up. I left something on the counter for you to wear. You can talk about it when you’re dressed,” he told you and left before he had to stay in the room with a naked girl he wasn’t interested in and didn’t want to offend, you, Steve, Nat, or Loki with his presence while you were naked.

    You scrubbed hard at the blood on your skin, in your hair, on nearly every inch of you. Having a task kept your mind focused on things other than what you had done, on the scene of the bodies around you that had been burned into your brain.

    When you were finally clean, you stepped out of the bath, managed to pull the drain, and dressed in the simple sweats Bucky had left for you. You stepped into the other room and Bucky got up from where he was sitting on the bed. He was still awkward and shy, but he wrapped his big strong arms around you and let you weep into his chest as he held you.

    “I-I killed them,” you wailed, the image of the carnage reappearing in your mind.

    “No, Doll. You didn’t. Hydra did. Hydra has made us both do awful things. It’s not either of our faults for it.” He held you while you sobbed, tried to reassure you that it wasn’t your fault. That you weren’t a monster because of what you were made to do when you had no control over your actions. You sagged against him, emotionally and physically exhausted when your tears ran out. He settled you both in the bed. You managed to stay awake long enough to tell him about Loki and the team, about the upcoming plans and his part in them. “Doll, do me a favor? Keep that boyfriend of yours from killing me for seeing you naked and sleeping with you on the same day?”

    “He won’t kill you for taking care of me in his stead,” you told him exhaustedly, laying your head on his warm chest.

    “Sure he won’t…” Bucky said dryly, obviously not beliving you. He then began to distract you by telling you about Cap before the serum, old stories from when they were kids and Cap kept picking fights with bullies and getting his ass handed to him.

    *

    “Come on Striga, we only have an hour,” Bucky told you firmly, but his voice wasn’t gruff. It was kind, and worried as you both trudged through the snow. You’d left the Hydra agents behind and had an hour to complete your spy mission and return to them. You were already shivering less than ten minutes from where you’d left your babysitters behind. It was so cold you could barely move. All you wanted to do was lie down in the snow and go to sleep.

    “It’s so cold,” you told him through chattering teeth, your arms wrapped around yourself to try to keep warm. Bucky looked at you, saw how slowly you were moving, like a reptile in the cold. You were sluggish, barely able to keep trudging after him.

    He cursed and rushed back to you, stripping off his coat as he did and bundling it over you, overtop of the leather jacket over your stupid red dress. “You can’t regulate your own body temperature,” he said, remembering. You nodded and your teeth chattered. Your eyes were starting to close. “No, you can’t go to sleep. You can’t sit down. We have to keep moving,” he told you firmly. You looked up at him confused.

    “Can’t,” you told him and started to sit down. You just needed to rest for a minute.

    He cursed again. “We don’t have time. I’m sorry, Striga,” he told you and somehow swung you up onto his back so he was carrying you piggyback. Your arms around his neck. “Good thing you’re so little,” he teased, but you already felt better, pressed against his warm back. Whatever they did to make him strong like Cap made him warm like Thor too. He started moving while you laid your head on his shoulder, recharging with his warmth.

    He set you down awhile later at the location where you were supposed to be spying. “Stay here, make a fire to keep warm,” you hissed at that and he glared at you. “Make the damn fire. I’ll go do the mission and then we’ll call boyfriend’s birds here,” he told you. You nodded and gathered some wood from the nearby forest. It didn’t matter that the stuff was wet and covered in snow. You were lighting it with magic anyway. You sat dangerously close to the fire, trying to keep warm, keep functional. This was the first time you and Bucky were being sent on a mission without handlers, mostly because they didn’t want to trek through the snow and they trusted him, and more importantly the obedience disk in your neck to keep you in line.

    Loki and the team had a plan. You just had to wait a little longer.

    It wasn’t long before Bucky came back. He actually smiled when he saw you sitting by the fire. “I’m going to have to carry you all the way back,” he teased.

    “Good thing I’m so little,” you teased right back.

    “Ready?” he asked. You hesitated, but had to trust in Loki’s plan, and finally nodded. “Hugin, Munin,” Bucky said quickly before you could chicken out, before you could let fear of hurting him get the best of you. His words nearly ran together, but it was enough. You felt the trigger, though you’d been placing shields around that section of your mind at Loki’s instruction, been doing everything you could to keep the word from affecting you. Since the words were said so quickly, nothing bad happened.

    You heard the flapping of wings a short time later and looked up as the raven flew down and landed next to you. It cawed once and hopped up on your shoulder. “Hello, love,” it said with Loki’s voice, though it wasn’t a shapeshifted Loki. It was one of the ravens, though you didn’t know which one. It didn’t much matter. You’d told Bucky of the plan, so he wasn’t surprised by the talking raven, besides the usual mortal surprise that magic was in fact real. It always took a minute for non magic users to remember that magic was real and a thing.

    “Loki~” your voice was a loving sigh of relief, of such hope at finally being even this close. It was almost real, almost over. Just a little longer.

    “Soon, sweetheart. We’ll be there soon,” Loki’s voice promised from the raven’s beak.

    “Striga, we have to get going,” Bucky told you, his voice worried and urgent. “They’re expecting us back anytime now,”

    “We have to go back to the compound. Bucky can’t break his orders and they’ll hurt both of us if we don’t make it back in time. Will you be able to stay with us, or find us again?” you asked the raven, worried the plan was going to fall apart. You’d planned on having more time alone so the team could swoop in and rescue you without having to face down Hydra to do it.

    “No one will see the raven, not with my magic around it. It will come with you. Do what you must to stay safe. We’ll find you at the compound,” Loki reassured you through the raven. You sighed in relief and stood.

    “C’mon, Doll, let’s go,” Bucky told you. You threw snow over the fire and followed him, the raven still perched on your shoulder. You were shivering in minutes of the walk back to the agents. Bucky was wisely not carrying you without Loki seeing that it was actually necessary. He didn’t want to die.

    “Darling, make a little ball flame to keep you warm,” Loki told you.

    “I’m a vampire. I can’t play with that much fire,” you reminded him sourly.

    “You’re a pyrokinetic mage. You can control the flame. You just need a small ball of it. Put it in a shield if you’re concerned,” he reminded you patiently. He was such a patient teacher when it came to magic. You did as he suggested and cuddled the little shielded flame to your chest. The whole shield ball was warm because of the flame inside.

    “I love you,” you told Loki through the raven on your shoulder.

    “I love you as well, sweetheart. Just a little longer and we’ll have you home,”

    Home

    With your Loki

    You wanted nothing more in the whole world.