#steel pile foundation

[shayyjustin]

Discover unmatched stability with Tella Firma Foundations, redefining excellence in concrete steel pile foundation design. The innovative solutions ensure durability, strength, and precision, offering a resilient base for your structures. Visit the website today to learn more.

[sugurusfavemonkey]

say you'll be my darlin' - kento nanami (2/2)

*image: soshiu_pasu*

valentine's day special summary: kento just made you not only his valentine but also his girlfriend (this is where the pure and unadulterated smut comes in - minors do not interact) part 1/2

Kento's plan had only encompassed providing you with a memorable Valentine's day and, perhaps, building a foundation for a relationship with you in the near future. Yet, somehow, he had gone and gotten himself a girlfriend.

The term felt so juvenile, yet he couldn't care less because he felt young. The knowledge that you were just as enraptured created a bubble of blissful elation Nanami had no intention of bursting.

He had piled up the plates and was in the process of standing up, having just pushed his chair from underneath the table when you sprung up from your seat, startling the poor man.

"The restroom is-" he tried to direct you as you made your way around the table, assuming you wanted to use the toilette, but you hushed Nanami by wedging yourself between him and the table. "Sweetheart?" the way he looked up at you in question nearly had you losing your nerve.

You steeled yourself though, swallowing hard and placing your hands on his shoulders. Kento, for all his puzzlement, opened up his knees to make space for you in between his legs but remained otherwise neutral. The way his jaw clenched and hands flexed on his thighs wasn't lost on you, bless his heart.

"I want to show my appreciation to you. May I?" you spoke quietly into the otherwise silent room.

He wetted his dry lips with his tongue and your eyes immediately dropped to follow the brief gesture before mirroring it while he searched your face with a weighted gaze, "we haven't even had dessert yet."

"I have the dessert I want right here, Kento." You slapped yourself in the back for the quick comeback and the hitch it elicited in Kento's breath.

"I don't want to be disrespectful-"

"You've been a perfect gentleman all night. Hell! All your life, I'd bet," you stopped him before he took the blame for your forwardness. "Tell me I'm moving too fast and I'll stop."

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?" Kento smiled gently up at you. The position you put yourself in rendered both of you vulnerable in different ways and you cherished how he so easily entrusted you with seeing this side of him.

"Hmm…" you shook your head, "consent goes both ways."

"I adore how thoughtful you are, my love."

You're unsure if it's the pet name or the intensity behind his gaze, but a shiver ran down your spine.

"I don't want you to feel pressured into anything. This dinner, the flowers… they don't require any retribution," Kento assured you once more, insistent, but you knew he was merely making sure to give you an out in case that's what you wanted.

"I know that. But I want to," you assured him, hopefully conveying just how much you meant the words with your eyes as well. "Consider it my gift to you. I am your Valentine too after all, am I not?"

You didn't give him a chance to answer before you sat on his lap, each of your legs wrapping around his waist. At first, Kento hesitated, his hands hovering awkwardly until they found your hips and slowly glided up to settle on your waist.

You leaned closer until your breaths mingled together and your head spun dangerously with his aromatic fragrance taking over your senses. Nanami is the one who closed the space between you, eyes falling shut as your lips connected.

It's nothing more than a peck, full of unspoken feelings and repressed longing. The air feels charged with tension, your heart pulsing loudly in your ears, temperature running hot at the sheer brush of his warm lips to yours.

He nudged your nose with his before giving you another peck. And another. And then pressing for a bit longer, more intensely, tilting his head so his lips fit better with yours. You let your hands follow the natural curve of his shoulder, one sliding down his back and the other finding its way into the buzzed hair on the back of his head.

With the first brush of his tongue, you were ruined. You opened up to him like a blooming flower. Your entire body tingled pleasantly as he let himself consume you and you let yourself be consumed. Warm muscle exploring and mapping out your mouth sensually.

Nanami felt as if a dam was breaking as he poured the yearning from every moment he had spent craving you into the kiss, his hands tightening on your waist until you were sure he had left fingerprints on your skin. You pressed yourself even closer, moaning into the kiss when that did nothing to relieve the ache you felt, your teeth briskly clashing together in your haste.

You only separated when the need for air became too much to bear, a string of spit still connecting your lips.

"You have no idea what you do to me." Kento gasped.

"I think I do." You chirped teasingly as you ground yourself down on his lap, feeling a distinct hardness pressing into your covered center.

"Fuck." That night was full of firsts because you're absolutely certain you had never heard Kento cuss before. "Don't do that," he warned you, eyes glinting dangerously.

"Or what?" You challenged with a giggle as you did the exact opposite, pressing yourself down on him once more. Whimpering at the silver of pleasure it gave you, a teaser of what was to come.

Kento almost growled your name, his breath labored, red blossoming from his exposed upper chest and neck. He gave you no indication before he pushed the dirty dishes further up the table and picked you up with ease, laying you on the table in front of him and leaning over your sprawled form, his body slotted between your spread thighs ad he kissed you again with even more fervor.

Or that, you guessed.

His lips drifted down to your jaw and then to your neck, kissing and biting at the skin, all while rutting into you rhythmically. His ministration had you gasping for air, your head lolling back to the table. You whined pitifully when he abruptly detached himself from you.

"Sit up for me, love" He commanded. And you obeyed… How could you not when you had Kento Nanami in between your legs? His fingers held onto the hem of your top, giving it a few impish tugs, "may I?"

You nodded, wordlessly lifting your arms to aid him in removing the offending cloth. His eyes fell to your cleavage and his mouth fell open, pupils taking over until you could barely see his iris. You used his distraction to remove your bra, throwing it aside the same he had done to your top. Kento let out a guttural sound, something feral from deep within as his hands softly caressed your breasts.

"You're so beautiful," he huffed before he leaned down, pushing you back on the table surface with another kiss. You heard the crashing sound of some dish falling to the ground but neither of you paid it any mind, too absorbed in each other. His lips drifted down to your jaw and then to your neck, kissing and biting at the skin, all while rutting into you rhythmically. Kento's ministration had you gasping for air, your head lolling back to the table.

"K-Kento!"

"Yes, love?" you felt his chest vibrating with his low croon against your skin.

"Please," your fingers searched for purchase on the cotton of his shirt fruitlessly, you feared your nails could have even ripped the material in your desperate pursuit.

"What do you need? Tell me." Nanami had his hands on your chest, massaging the skin nimbly.

"Touch me," you were very close to just begging for it.

"Hmm, but I am touching you."

You rolled your eyes in both pleasure in exasperation, unsurprised his matter-of-fact manners came out even then.

"For f-fuck's sake. Don't- ah," he pinched one of your nipples. "Don't make me spell it out, Ken."

"Right here?" He questioned as he squeezed your tit. "Or maybe here?" The palm of one hand pressed to your covered mound as his middle and ring fingers found your clit even through your clothes and pressed down hard. You moaned.

"Yes! Yes, right there! Please!"

"How could I ever deny you when you beg so sweetly?"

His finger moved to your pants, teasing the button as he searched your face for permission. You huffed a breathy "yes", nodding wildly.

With your consent, Kento unbuttoned and unzipped your pants, pulling them down as he let himself fall to his knees in front of you. Right where he belonged, he thought to himself. He removed both of your shoes, hands stopping to massage your heels before your pants were off. Kento held your leg by your ankle, dropping a few kisses to your calf before setting it down and making space between your legs by pushing your thighs apart.

You lifted yourself on your elbows to peer down at him through heavy-lidded eyes.

"I thought I was the one showing my appreciation?"

"What if I want to show my appreciation as well?"

"You already," Kento kissed up the supple skin of your thighs making your voice tremble. "Hmm, you already did. It's my turn."

"Then let me have this. Worshipping you is the greatest pleasure you could bestow me, love."

"Kento! I-" He bit down on your inner thigh, so close to where you needed him the most, "Ah! Fuck! That's n-not fair."

He nuzzled at your pussy through the soaked lace of your flimsy panties, fingers wrapping around each of your legs to keep them open when the sudden touch had you trying to squeeze them together, "did you wear these for me?"

"Just for you, Kento. All for you," you sighed.

"Look at you. So pretty. So wet too," he murmured contently, his eyes locked on the wet patch on your underwear, his lips brushing against your sensitive skin with each word.

Your hand found its way into his hair, nails brushing his scalp when he finally dared to lick a stripe over the thong, a pointer finger sliding it to the side before doing it again.

Kento outwardly moaned when he tasted your slickness on his tongue, "you taste divine, my love. So much better than I imagined."

You wanted to tease him, question how many times he pictured that scenario, just how often he touched himself to the thought of you, but you could only cry out as he slid his tongue through your folds, the tip of his tongue flicking over your clit and your finger tangle in the strands of his hair.

You whimpered at the wet heat of his mouth on you. It felt like he was trying to devour you, pussy first. His tongue alternated between flicking over your clit playfully and running along your folds. It made you moan as you ground your hips upward. His tongue finally relented its attack on your clit., thrusting deeper into your heat. Nanami groaned, loving the feeling as you tugged on his hair to push his face deeper into your cunt. His cock twitched in his pants, precum probably staining through his briefs and pants.

"Fuck, Ken. Feels so good," you panted.

Nanami glanced up to meet your lidded eyes. The sight of your flushed cheeks had him moaning into your pussy, his hips thrusting helplessly in the air at the same time you jerked your hips. He stopped momentarily and snaked an arm up, pointer and middle fingers breaching through your parted lips and pressing down on your tongue, "wet them for me, love."

You clamped your lips around his fingers promptly, sucking in your cheeks as your tongue twirled around them until there was drool spilling from the corner of your mouth.

Kento pecked your lower lips without breaking the eye contact, "such a good girl."

His praise went straight to your cunt, creating even more slick. You could feel a puddle forming on the table underneath you with how wet you were.

His hand slid from your mouth, down your jaw and followed the curve of your neck only to pause briefly to grope your tit and give your nipple a firm tug before continuing on his trajectory down your body, the heel of his palm pressing firmly to your lower stomach just as his lips attached themselves to your cunt again. You kept making small sounds through it all, breath hitching with each of the breaks he took in the path.

Nanami used his wet fingers to rub small circles on your clit, eating you out like a man starved, craving to have your release on his tongue. You started babbling incoherently, throwing your head back and shutting your eyes when the feeling became too much.

For a second you thought you felt him spelling his name on your clit with his digits, but that could also have been something your fuzzy brain came up with.

"I'm s-so close! Ah!" You moan loudly, "gonna cum-"

And then the coil snap, black spots taking over your vision as pleasure explodes inside your veins, thighs shaking and squeezing his head, Kento only groans as he eagerly lapped up your slick. He worked you through your high until you were pushing his head away.

You're a panting mess, laying there on his dinner table as you try to recover and all Kento could think as he stood up was that you looked like a dream.

"Are you alright?" Kento rubbed the outside of your thighs up and down, still slotted in between them.

"Yup. Just- Help me up?"

"Of course!"

He quickly stepped back holding both of your hands firmly so you could anchor yourself as you sat up and then slid to the ground on unsteady legs. You took a deep breath and mumbled a hoarse "thank you". Once you were certain your legs wouldn't fail you, you squeezed his hands, signaling it would be fine to let you go.

Your eyes drifted to the wet patch and the very clear tent on his pants. You couldn't help but feel a new wave of desire watching over you. You licked your lips and stepped until you were flush against him, fisting the lapels of his shirt and pulling him down. You didn't care that he tasted like you or that his lips were still stained with your juices as you eagerly kissed him. Kento hummed into the kiss, arms circling your waist.

He let you take the reins, felt your clumsy fingers struggle to open each of the buttons of his shirt, and helped when you pushed the open garment down his shoulders and arms. Nanami only stopped you when you tried to unbuckle his belt, his large hands circling your wrists and pulling them up. You whined into the kiss, biting his lower lip and pulling away.

"Let me return the favor. Please."

"Fuck. Tasting you got on the very edge of the precipice I wouldn't last if you went down on me, beautiful."

"That's fine, I-"

"It's not fine," he cut you off, placing a tender kiss on the tip of your nose. "It's not fine because right now I need to fuck you. Will you let me?"

You shivered, lips parting in wonder. The tension on his shoulders and blown pupils did little to hide his hunger and you weren't faring much better, "yes, please."

You were embarrassed by the shriek you let out as he easily picked you up, wrapping your legs around his waist, and walked around as if you weighed less than a feather, "I promise I'll give you a tour of the apartment tomorrow morning," (which he does so after bringing you a lovely arranged tray with breakfast in bed and spoon feed you yogurt with chopped fruit before you finally have enough and push him down on the bed to suck him dry).

His strength became even more pronounced when he held you up with only one arm to open the door to his bedroom and before you knew it, he had you laid down and spread over the comforter on his mattress. You admired his shifting muscles as he toed off his shoes, unbuckled his belt, and removed his pants until he was standing before you in only his briefs. Nanami was truly a sight for sore eyes, with his mussed-up hair (probably your fault), heaving chest, and deep v-line that gave way and pointed down to a badly concealed dick. 'Happy trail' never felt like a more fitting moniker, the meticulously trimmed blonde hair a path to paradise.

"You're beautiful," you had been so engrossed in gawking at him that you failed to notice he had been doing the exact same to you, soft hazel eyes then meeting yours. You knew that small compliment had you blushing, you started to sit up, legs going to fall close, but Kento stopped the movement by kneeling between them, "don't. Let me see you."

"Fine. But you gotta let me see you too," you bargained with a tip of your chin to his cock. You knew for a fact he was positively packing since the shape of it was so clearly apparent too.

"That can be easily arranged."

You watched in bated breath as he slid his briefs down, revealing his thick, veiny… perfect cock. The tip is red and angry, precum dripping down its sides. You caught yourself wondering if he would even fit.

Kento kneeled back on the bed and jerked you forward on the bed so your head rested on a pillow and climbed after you. He reached above you for his wallet on the bedside table and picked through it until he found a condom and dropped both back on the bed, his attention shifting back to you.

"We don't have to use it. I'm on the pill. And I trust."

He wasn't sure if his cock twitched over the prospect of feeling you whole, with no barriers or if it was your trust that turned him on so much.

"My last annual check-up came up clean, but I will do nothing you don't want to, love."

"I want to feel you, Kento. Every inch of you," you were trying to go for seducing, but you were pretty sure you just sounded desperate.

He pressed a finger to your entrance, thumb catching your clit in mean circles to test the waters, and then a second finger, thrusting them lightly. It's when he starts scissoring them to prepare you for what was to come that you let yourself melt.

"Ken, I'm ready, please," you cried wantonly, fingers digging into the comforter as your entire body quivered.

"Are you, love?"

"Hmhmm. So ready." You nodded maniacally, desperate for more. Famished for him.

He slotted his thighs to yours, opening you up for him, and coated himself in your slick as he rubbed his cockhead head up and down your folds, his lips falling apart, gaze locked on the tantalizing motion. When it caught on your entrance you whined, arms reaching to pull him in closer and ankles locking behind his back, miserably trying to pull him in. Kento smirked and finally pushed the first inch inside. Your mouth fell open and your head lolled back at the stretch, nails digging into his back.

He hissed, shifting to his forearms and he ducked his head down to kiss you, pushing further in, feeling your tightness envelop him until he's bottomed out. You gasped into the kiss. It felt like he was so far inside of you he reached your guts.

It was perfection. Pure, unadulterated perfection. Kento was certain he had just made it into heaven.

"Fuuuuuck," you whined pathetically, "you fill me up so good."

He held to your waist as if he was scared you were only a figment of his imagination as he gradually started to move his hips.

You were putty under his ministrations, holding on for dear life and he fucked you nice and slow.

"Kento," you panted, tilting your head back as he kissed down your throat. He ground deep into your cunt, grunting as you tightened around him.

"You're doing so good for me, my love."

The room was hot and sticky, your bodies moving in tandem. Your little sobs with each new thrust like music to his ears. More than heaven, Kento felt home and, given the chance, he would spend the rest of his life worshipping you. He was so fucking close, but he needed you to cum alongside him.

You cried when he adjusted the angle, "fuck, keep going. Right there!" You supplicated.

Nanami complied, hitting that same spot with hard thrusts and a precision that upheld his title as the 7:3 sorcerer. His hand found your clit again and your breath hitched. He sped up then, hitting your sweet spot again and again and again until you're nothing but a drooly mess.

"It's like you were made for me," he whispered reverently and the praise was all you needed as his next thrust shoved you over the edge. You clamped down around his cock crying out.

When you came, Kento groaned into your skin, working you through it until he felt you go lax. He slid He slides his hands under your ass, lifting you as he shuffled onto his haunches, and he sunk impossibly deeper into your pussy.

"Ah. you're so fucking deep," you panted, completely at his mercy as he began to rock you on top of his cock.

"You're talking me so well,” He promised, watching his cock disappear inside your dripping cunt, lost in the pleasure of being inside of you.

His eyes flickered to yours, an angel spread on his bed for him and moaned. Not even his sweetest dreams could've conjured such image… such feeling.

"I-I think I'm close again. Ken, I'm- Oh, fuck! Yes! Please, please, don't stop!"

Kento clenched his jaw and tightened his grip, bouncing you on his dick with such force you could do nothing but holding on for the ride. He groaned, pistoling his hips up, barely holding onto his own release.

"Think you can come again for me?"

You nodded feverishily.

"Then rub at your sweet little nub for me," he commanded in between grunts and shaky breaths. You did as you were told, rubbing at your clit using your mixed juices until you see stars.

Nanami thrusted a few more times before he couldn't take it anymore. He pulled you down hard, hitting your cervix and that was enough for you to come, mouth agape in a silent cry as your head fell back, body convulsing and walls fluttering around his cock. With a low groan of your name echoing in the room, Kento felt his cock pulsing, painting your walls with his hot cum. He rocked into you a few more time until you stopped shaking and let the both of you fall back to the bed, mindful not to crush you under his weight.

You sighed, caressing his back as he leaned forward to rest his forehead on your heaving chest, both of you basking in the luxurious bliss of an orgasm.

You didn't know it then, but at that moment Kento decided you would be the woman he would marry, no matter how long it took for you to see it as well.

taglist: @madamechrissy @elliehenry24 @vivivillian

a/n: idc, consent is hot.

©sugurusfavemonkey 2025┃all rights reserved. do not copy, repost, translate or otherwise modify this work

[dieseldame]

𝗗𝗿𝗮𝘄𝗻 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀

Sevika x Fortune Teller! Reader

𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 2,1K

𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: Intrigued by Sevika’s use of a tarot deck, Reader joins her for a game that takes an unexpected turn.

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀: Slow burn, fortune-telling, tarot, romantic tension, domestic fluff, Zaun setting.

𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿'𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀: I’ve recently gotten my hands on my very first tarot deck, and it’s been such a fascinating journey learning the meanings behind the cards and their symbolism. That curiosity sparked the idea for this story—combining Sevika’s no-nonsense attitude with the mystical allure of tarot readings. I wanted to capture the tension, the mystery, and the inevitability of fate in this piece. Enjoy!

The Last Drop was alive with the raucous energy of a late Zaunite evening. The air thrummed with music, laughter, and the click of glasses colliding in toasts. Smoke curled lazily from various corners, and the smell of spilled liquor clung to the damp floorboards. It was a place for the desperate and the bold, where fortunes were gambled and lives sometimes exchanged for coin or glory.

And at the heart of it all sat Sevika.

She leaned back in her chair with the air of someone who owned not just her table but the entire room. A small smirk tugged at her lips as she toyed with a glass of amber liquid in one hand and shuffled her deck with the other. The cards moved between her fingers like extensions of herself, each flip and ripple precise, hypnotic. Around her, a circle of admirers and challengers alike watched with bated breath. Another winning streak. Another pile of coin gathered at her elbow.

For Sevika, it wasn’t about the money—it was about control. She reveled in the predictable chaos of it all: the sweat beading on her opponents' brows, the way their bravado faltered under her calculating stare. She was the gravitational force pulling them all in. And she liked it that way.

But tonight, she felt it before she saw it. A shift in the air.

You had been watching her from the edge of the room, drawn like a moth to a flame. Something about her presence—the easy confidence, the intensity in her gaze—snared you and wouldn’t let go. It wasn’t just her skill at the table or the low rasp of her voice as she called her plays. It was something deeper, something unspoken, like the hum of an engine beneath layers of steel.

Before you knew it, you were moving. Through the crowd, past the jeers and cheers of the patrons. Closer to her.

She noticed you immediately, of course. Her eyes flicked up, sharp and assessing.

— Another challenger? — she drawled, her voice cutting through the din like a blade.

— Not quite, — you replied, your voice steady, though your heart raced. You gestured to the seat across from her. — But I’d like a hand.

Sevika arched an eyebrow, clearly intrigued. She nodded toward the chair. — Your funeral.

The deck moved between her hands again, shuffling with practiced ease. As you sat, you noticed the intricate designs on the cards—less a standard playing deck and more… something else. Tarot cards.

— Interesting choice. — you said, gesturing to the deck.

Sevika’s smirk deepened. — Keeps things interesting. You’d be surprised how much the cards know.

She dealt three cards in a smooth, deliberate motion. One. Two. Three. Face down.

You hesitated before flipping them over. Something about this felt… significant.

The first card revealed itself: The Tower, reversed.

The air seemed to thicken. You swallowed hard, your fingers brushing the edge of the card. — Your past. — you murmured.

Sevika chuckled, low and rough. — Go on, fortune teller. Enlighten me.

You didn’t know what compelled you to continue—whether it was her challenge or the magnetic pull she had on you. But as you spoke, the words came unbidden.

— The Tower reversed represents… chaos avoided. A disaster that didn’t destroy you but left its mark. You’ve rebuilt yourself, piece by piece, but the foundation still trembles. — You glanced up, meeting her gaze. — You’ve survived, but survival came at a cost.

For a moment, something flickered in Sevika’s eyes. Recognition? Pain? It was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by her usual mask of indifference.

— Lucky guess. — she said, though her tone lacked conviction.

The second card. The Eight of Swords, upright.

— Your present, — you continued, your voice quieter now. — You’re trapped. Not physically, but… mentally. You feel confined by something. Your choices, your loyalty, your circumstances. You’re strong, but even the strongest can feel caged.

This time, Sevika didn’t speak. Her jaw tightened, and her hand curled into a fist on the table. You could feel the tension radiating from her, a storm barely contained.

Finally, the third card. The Lovers, upright.

You froze. The card seemed to hum with its own energy, the vibrant imagery drawing your eye.

— Your future, — you said softly. — A union. Love. A choice that will change everything.

Sevika scoffed, breaking the spell. — Love? Please. I don’t need anyone.

You couldn’t help but smile, leaning forward slightly. — The cards don’t lie.

Her gaze locked with yours, a challenge in her eyes. — We’ll see about that.

The moment stretched, taut and electric. You could feel the weight of her attention, the way it pinned you in place. Finally, you stood, letting the tension break.

As you turned to leave, you glanced over your shoulder, offering her a teasing smile. — I’ll be seeing you, Sevika.

She didn’t reply, but her eyes followed you, dark and unreadable.

Months Later

Sevika’s apartment was quiet, save for the soft clink of pots and pans from the kitchen. The first rays of dawn filtered through the grimy window, casting long shadows across the room.

She stepped inside, kicking the door shut behind her. The weight of the day’s winnings—gold and coin stuffed into various bags—pulled at her arms, but she barely noticed. Her gaze was fixed on the figure in the kitchen.

You stood at the stove, humming softly to yourself as you stirred a pot. The warm, familiar scent of spices filled the air. You looked over your shoulder as she entered, your lips curling into a smile.

— Late night? — you teased, your tone light but knowing.

Sevika grunted, dropping the bags near the door before making her way toward you. She leaned against the doorframe, watching you with a mix of amusement and something softer, something she wouldn’t dare name.

— You’re cooking again. — she said.

— Someone has to keep you alive, — you shot back, turning to face her fully. — And I’d rather it not be through Zaun’s questionable street food.

Her lips twitched, almost a smile. Almost.

You tilted your head, your eyes sparkling with mischief. — Come here, Sevika.

She didn’t need to be told twice. Crossing the small space in a few strides, she slipped her arms around your waist, pulling you close. Her body was warm, solid, grounding. You leaned into her, resting your head briefly against her chest.

— Miss me? — you asked, your voice teasing.

— Don’t push it, — she muttered, but the way her hands lingered on your hips betrayed her.

You tilted your head up, catching her gaze. — You know, — you said softly, — I told you the cards don’t lie.

Sevika rolled her eyes, but before she could retort, you leaned up and kissed her. It was soft, almost chaste, but it lingered just enough to make her breath hitch.

When you pulled back, she gave you a look that was equal parts exasperation and affection. —You’re insufferable.

— And yet, — you replied, your grin widening.

Without warning, she scooped you up, setting you down on the kitchen island with ease. Her hands framed your face as she kissed you again, this time with more heat, more intent. The world seemed to fall away, leaving only the two of you.

When you finally broke apart, your breathing uneven, your gaze drifted to the counter beside you. There, lying face up, was a single card: The Lovers.

You couldn’t help but laugh, the sound light and joyous. — See? I told you.

Sevika smirked, brushing her thumb over your cheek. — Maybe the cards know a thing or two.

And with that, the night gave way to something new, something bright, something undeniably yours.

ㅤㅤㅤ

[skylinesnsunshines]

pac: the person you are becoming in a year (TIMELESS) -`♡´-

hi everyone! im back again for a 2nd pac for you all <3 the response from my 1st pac was so amazing so thank you all for supporting me. i no longer feel motivated to do readings for celebrities but i won't be entirely opposed to doing them, i'll just be more selective on who i'm reading and what i'm reading about. any requests for pac topics will be much appreciated! thank you everyone :3

disclaimer: all for entertainment purposes only, free will exists and energies are subject to change. if it doesn't resonate then it might not be the pile or reading for you. remember that this is a general reading, so i'm channelling the energy of the majority, not a specific individual.

(italicised is the card on the bottom of the tarot deck which is meant to represent the subconscious/blind spot of the situation + rx means reversed)

photo cr: pinterest | dividers | personal readings | tips

PILE 1 -> PILE 2

PILE 3 -> PILE 4

pile 1 ~ 4 of cups, 3 of swords, 9 of wands rx, the moon

okay so i want to reiterate that you have free will and i am just the messenger, so you don't have to claim this if this doesn't resonate. i feel a sense of rigidity with your energy cause i keep seeing an image of someone trying to bend steel and clearly failing. you may be running away or avoiding a certain situation due to it not aligning with your life plan. some of you might have virgo placements as well, cause i keep hearing that you "have an image to upkeep" and deviating from your plan will cause you a lot of anxiety. you may struggle with being okay with the unknown, which leads you to constantly seek reassurance from others or tangible things (e.g achievements). The main message I'm getting from this is to surrender, which is easier said than done but once you let go of certain expectations you will be reborn and no longer feel the dread of past situations that haunt you. you might be unhappy with your progress over the year, but remember that consistency matters most and you can't keep moving forward on a foundation that is easily shaken. i keep hearing longevity, which makes sense why you might feel frustrated about not moving at the pace you hope for because whatever skill or resource you are building will follow you throughout your life. i also get reminded of chappell roan, as many people are referring to her journey with the phrase "sometimes it takes 10 years to become an overnight success". i do think that this next year, you will be focusing on your healing and learning to let go of anxieties regarding your self-perception. now, the moon on the bottom of the spread tells me that the person you are becoming in a year is still hidden, mainly due to the choice that you have when it comes to your growth. there will be a lot of truths regarding yourself and the people around you that will help you elevate into the best version of yourselves. spirit's encouraging you to embrace the unknown, and be aware of the power that you hold within yourself. you have autonomy and are the deciding factor on the outcome of your future, the universe is here to encourage and support you into the person you want to become.

i know the tarot was a bit gloomy, but the oracles actually show lots of success and strength that you will find within yourself. the valley card depicts a situation where whatever the universe throws at you, your resilience perseveres as you have more resilience than you give yourself credit for. i love the panther card, as it encourages you to explore the unknown and to not limit yourself on the preconceived outcomes that you may envision for yourself. this card is encouraging you to embrace fluidity and limit the need to control on how it will unfold. a situation that you may perceive to be a failure today could be what leads you to unfathomable success in the future. the unicorn card also encourages you to embrace the unknown, you are destined for great things and it's important to learn to trust the universe. believe that things are unravelling for you behind the scenes and that you don't always need tangible things to measure your growth/success. it's important to remember that your path should not be compared to anyone else's and placing certain beliefs limits the outcomes of the person you want to be.

oracle cards ~ valley: deep personal strength and peace that assure success. 22 panther: no expectations. unicorn.

channelled song ~ one step at a time by jordin sparks

pile 2 ~ 8 of swords, 9 of swords, page of pentacles rx, judgement rx

this spread tells me that this year will teach you how to stand on your own, and uproot beliefs that no longer serve you. you might be someone who experiences a lot of racing thoughts, and you might struggle to manage them. i feel that within a year, you will learn to manage those thoughts and learn to trust your intuition more than your anxieties. you will learn to separate those two patterns for you to have a guide on what/who to trust. i'm sensing you might be someone who often sees past the surface and your innate gift is the gift of knowing, but it often frustrates you when you don't see movement in your physical reality or when it doesn't align with your vision. spirit's reminding you that you are so powerful, but you need to learn to let go of those feelings of always needing to know, we as humans living in this reality aren't meant to know everything as life is meant to be experienced and lived rather than entirely orchestrated. i'm hearing that in a year you will learn to embrace the unknown and make decisions based on how you feel rather than what you think. i think you could be extremely sensitive to energies (twin!) and you're being taught to really practice trusting yourself and your gut even if you see it isn't logical. you have so much inner knowing or guidance but oftentimes need someone else or physical evidence to validate your intuition, and the universe is saying it doesn't always work like that. the universe is asking you to look within and build a stronger connection with your inner guidance system and believe that you truly know best. the universe is reminding you to operate from a place of gratitude and trusting even in things that you don't believe other people will understand. this is a never-ending journey and within a year it'll be only the beginning of you living your most authentic life.

the boat card details the possibility of receiving a gift or monetary help through your environment. you could be enrolling in a competition in which you succeeded at or experiencing your luck through help from another individual. the eagle describes someone who is meant to be the light-bringer in the darkness of life. while it's important to say that this is not your sole identity, it aims to help you acknowledge your unique vision and honour your inner knowing to help embrace its unique energy. you might have been struggling to "fit in", but the spirit's saying that that's not your path and you are meant to stand out to inspire others. while everyone brings a unique trait to the table, your trait is to understand your light and not dim it for anyone's sake. honour your gift by embracing beliefs that resonate with your authentic self and bringing them to the world to show that not everything needs to be full of doom and gloom. crow energy is incredibly potent, and it is often a symbol of the occult as crows often embody a meaning when it shows up in people's lives. while this meaning is often deemed as negative, people misunderstand the crow as crow energy can only be understood with a clear mind. this reiterates the point of trusting your inner guidance, and also listening to your body when it comes to different experiences (eating a new food, making a new friend, etc.). crows are often misunderstood, but the universe is reminding you to have faith in your vision and that you are your greatest ally.

oracle cards ~ boat: money or property through an inheritance, winning or windfall. 30 eagle: you are more. crow.

channelled song ~ talk to me nicely by blxst

pile 3 ~ the fool, the hierophant, strength rx, 8 of cups

a new version of yourself will emerge in a year, representing stability and authority. you will have a new beginning, whether in your career, love life, or personal life. spirit wants to remind you to embrace your wisdom and share your gift of communication, as i feel that in a year people will feel called to ask for your guidance more. i also noticed that your spread has the colours orange, red and yellow so they might be important colours. since this will be a new experience, you might feel uncomfortable/unsure of your capabilities, but spirit's encouraging you to find a silver lining as this will test your resilience and self-assurance. by next year you will release a lot of the restrictions that you have placed on yourself, and feel that you will find a newfound level of strength when it comes to your resilience/willpower. i do think that initially, it will feel difficult for you to accept that you've grown cause i see resistance, but you'll eventually shed those feelings of tension and wholeheartedly accept the new change coming in. this spread could also indicate that if you are in a relationship, in a year the relationship may be elevated commitment-wise. within a year you will be someone who will be looked at with a lot of wisdom, and how people will look at you with amazement as you feel like you are trudging your own path. i feel that there will be a new sense of yourself that will emerge that puts you in a position of influence, wether that'd be in your personal or professional life. i see you as a really humble individual, and that you are sometimes even unaware of the strength that you possess. while humility is one of your greatest traits, it's also encouraging you to be more comfortable with being acknowledged and given your flowers. learning how to be confident authentically in yourself and your abilities is something that you could be experiencing. spirit's also hoping to bring your attention to a "lack" mindset that you might operate on. i don't see this as a bad thing though, as this lack seems to stem from the hunger and desire to always do better and be the best. your determination is what makes you special, but it's also encouraging you to sometimes stop and smell the flowers as you can sometimes feel that once you achieve something it's time to set your sights on achieving the next. spirit's encouraging you to pat yourself on the back and practice gratitude, as oftentimes your feelings of lack can sometimes disrupt your ability to be present in reality. overall, the experiences you will have within a year will shape you greatly with 3 major arcanas coming out, and spirit's saying that you are so deserving but to also remember to celebrate yourself and your achievements.

again the tulip card touches on the romantic aspect as it signifies great passion. so within a year, you might feel a new sense of passion reignited with another person, if that doesn't resonate, it could be a new passion for your creations or hobbies or even work. the antelope is encouraging you to be more mindful of your intention through movement to release any pent-up emotions you might have. on days when you feel it's difficult, it's encouraging you to move by not letting your circumstances fully dictate your worth. you are smarter than you give credit for, and you inherently know how to bounce back from difficulties. it's reminding you to move and trust yourself/your body to help you get through difficult periods. the first thing i notice from the eagle card is how eagles fly alone and at high altitudes, and that in a year you will embody the bravery of the eagle by learning and accepting your true self and trusting the path that you're on. you might lose some people along the way, but you've learned to be good on your own. i see for those of you who are manifesting a relationship as well, this frequency will help you attract a stable/secure relationship.

oracle cards ~ tulip: great passion. 27 antelope: shake, release, heal, move on. eagle.

channelled song ~ priorities by tyla

pile 4 ~ 10 of wands, temperance rx, 6 of pentacles, queen of swords rx

my pile 4's, you seem to be the provider group. you might have many burdens due to your self-perception/upbringing/environment. people look to you to provide whether that'd be financially, emotionally, with your time, etc. (this could also be cause you're financing yourself). i see that you might be the type of person to keep to yourself when going through hardship, that could be because your environment is difficult and it's encouraged you to develop a mentality of "trudging it out". i'm seeing someone who has a wound on their back/the back of their head and is unaware of how big the wound is because you need to keep the show going. everyone around you is asking you "are you ok?" and your response is always "i'm fine, keep going" and while your resilience is admirable, it's worrying to them given that they're able to see how clear the wound is. spirit's encouraging you to not keep to yourself and share the burden, as i can see that there is a lack of vulnerability you share with others. one of my favourite sayings i learned recently is that "shared sorrow is half a sorrow, and shared joy is a double joy", and i feel that this saying could be relevant to what you're currently going through. i'm hearing that in a year, you will learn to shed those beliefs of thinking that you're a burden and that you will learn to incorporate more balance in your life. these experiences will help you cultivate the skill of expressing your feelings and emotions coherently, also improving your mind/body connection. i feel that you have a lot to give to others, whether that'd be time, wisdom, or even loyalty but you might feel that since it's not tangible or physical you don't have much to contribute. for that i say, those around you who get to experience the most vulnerable parts of you see you as an even stronger person, because you also inspire them to undergo the same transformation.

you could meet a person within a year that helps you undergo this transformation, or be the catalyst of that change. it could come out of the blue and take you by surprise, but their energy seems so delightful that i feel like over time your friendship or relationship with them will flourish. the phoenix card tells the story of a transformation and reminds you that your current reality does not define what you will experience ahead. i see you shedding beliefs that ultimately don't serve you, and truly help you become the person you see as your best. i'm feeling a need for control with this group, so the buffalo also reminds that setbacks are an opportunity for upliftment. although it is natural to want to grieve and feel your emotions, it's reminding you to not sit in that energy for too long because of your resilience. you have gone through your hardest days and will continue to do so as you will experience days filled with happiness and fulfilment that reflect on the work you put in yourself.

oracle cards ~ handshake: a meeting with a stranger could be important. 42 phoenix: transformation. buffalo.

channelled song ~ the fighter - gym class heroes ft ryan tedder

so that’s it for the reading! let me know if it resonated and if you have any feedback, questions or requests! my ask box is always open for a chat as well <3 sending you love and light always :) hope you enjoyed it!

[lsunstreakerl]

Aged stone, quiet groves.

Search History Verse, future fic, 830 words, Charles POV.

Charles rolls the bottle between his palms, watching the slosh of the deep red in the glass. The car is parked, but he rests his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, eyes squeezed shut. He'll need to visit the Foundation while he's here, check in on operations and upkeep, make the rounds with the kids-

But this comes first.

He swallows, steeling himself as he steps out of the car, neck of the wine bottle grasped between his fingers.

People had offered to come with him- they always do, lately. Pierre, Daniel, Mick, the boys, Gianpiero, Lorenzo and Victoria...

Maybe one day Charles will take them up on their offers.

That day isn't today.

The grove is private, tucked away and secluded. It had become one of Max's favorite spots after he'd started spending more time in the Netherlands again, and Charles has had countless lunches with Max between the trees here.

Now he walks alone down the path, winding further into trees on a trail he knows by heart.

The first time Max had shown him- he'd been giggling, fingers laced with Charles', pulling him through the trees while Charles panicked about dirt on his white sneakers.

"It is of course just dirt, Charlie, it will wipe off."

"These are designer, Max- how did you even find this place, how far back are we going?"

"I had to chase one of the dogs back here a few weeks ago. You'll love it, I promise."

It had felt like they were teenagers again, sneaking away somewhere they shouldn't have, tripping over their feet.

Charles is wearing that same pair of sneakers now. They're beyond saving, not that he's ever tried. The dirt is important to him now- he'd dirty every pair of shoes he owns if it meant getting to hear Max laugh at him again.

The path ends here. It's a circular gap in the trees, a large smooth rock that's perfect for sitting, or using as a table. There's a memorial stone in the middle- it's surrounded by small trinkets and mementos, left behind by the various children of the Foundation who come through here.

Charles digs into his own pocket, pulls out a small cat charm. It's silver, and it had randomly caught his eye a few weeks ago when he was out shopping with Arthur.

He'd known immediately where it needed to go.

It settles nicely between the other gifts, resting against the memorial stone.

"It is from a local vendor, in Italy. I thought you would like it- I was out with Arthur."

Charles settles down onto the dirt next to the stone, back resting against the large rock behind him as his legs stretch out in front of him.

His joints are aching, and they'll be screaming at him whenever he tries to get up, but.

It's part of growing old.

"They are starting a clothing brand, I think. I told them not to make it ugly, but I have to be honest Max, I think I'm starting to lose touch with the trends."

He laughs softly, staring at the wine bottle between his hands.

"Ah, I am getting old. I got lunch with Gianpiero the other day, he is thinking of moving to Switzerland. He and Alice would like to be closer to their grandkids."

Charles worries about them both, living alone back in Bedford, so he'd been supportive of the idea.

"And I am visiting the Foundation tomorrow. Checking in on your kids, just like I said I would. One of your first ones is back, by the way. He is a lawyer, Max. He came back to work for the Foundation after it saved him, and I think-"

Charles cuts himself off, chest tight.

"I think you would have liked that, chéri. I told him that you would've been proud. I know you are."

He reaches out his fingers, brushing against the stone lightly. It's well maintained, by visiting family and friends, Foundation kids and workers alike.

He carefully sets the wine bottle down at the edge of the pile. It's fair game- someone else visiting can take it if they'd like. It's less of an offering or memento, and more of a personal need for Charles.

It's not about the wine, it's about bringing it.

"I don't drink anymore. The last time I saw someone with a gin and tonic at a party I had to leave."

It hadn't been Mason's fault. He couldn't have known, hadn't been thinking about it.

It had still made Charles feel like he was being stabbed in the heart anyways- taken the air out of his lungs, the grief slamming into him like an inescapable tidal wave.

It's starting to get dark, the sun dipping below the horizon, and Charles leans down, presses his lips over Max's name.

He used to stay out even when he could see the stars, but he's getting too old for that now, and it makes the boys worry. He'd promised Arthur he'd call when he got back to the flat.

"I miss you, Max."

There's no response. There hasn't been one for years.

"I love you."

[gullemec]

Growth and Decay

Bitten - Part V

Bitten Masterlist ao3

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: For the first time since your attack, you and Joel venture into civilization. But instead of salvation, you find your nightmares reflected back on you.

Warnings: canon-typical violence (but it gets pretty graphic/descriptive in this chapter), gun use, angst as always!, reader is experiencing some pretty significant PTSD, description of injuries and treating injuries

Please let me know if I missed any TWs <3

WC: 7.4k

A/N: I am sooo very sorry about the delay in getting this out. School has been bonkers for me and then I decided to start playing RDR2 and you can imagine how that's going. On the upside—I already have some Arthur fic ideas percolating. Stay tuned!

Laurel, Montana is a ghost town gripped in the verdant fist of nature.

What was once a thriving stretch of streets and businesses now sits empty and seemingly untouched by the claws of winter that found you up in the mountains. You think this must be a testament to the fragility of human creation, the determination of Earth reclaiming what was always hers.

You and Joel move cautiously through the outskirts, weaving between thickets of tall grass that stretch past your knees and weeds that break through the cracked remains of sidewalks. Past the crumbling brick facades that once held stores, their faded signs obscured beneath layers of debris and dirt. Convenience, one reads, the word barely visible through the ivy crawling up its face.

Your eyes sweep across the barren street, muscles taut, senses straining for anything amiss. Movement, sound, the telltale signs of recent activity, human or otherwise. But there’s nothing, only silence and decay, that familiar yet eerie absence of life. Your fingers tighten around your pistol, the familiar weight grounding you. It’s not your weapon of choice, you're much handier with a blade, but Joel insisted.

The world feels paused here, frozen in the moment it all ended, save for the steady advance of green swallowing grey.

Grass and wildflowers spill from wide cracks in the pavement, the shoots vibrant and defiant against the grey of the asphalt. Lush vines twist their way up the fractured brickwork, some reaching all the way to the roofs of buildings that sag under the weight of years gone by. Thick carpets of moss coat piles of rubble, softening thor jagged edges.

Just ahead, an overturned car sits on what used to be the main road. The windows are rimmed with shards of broken glass, yawning open to the sky. The tires hang in tattered strips of rubber, the steel belts exposed and rusted. A bird’s nest, now long abandoned, is tucked inside a wheel well. Your lip curls at the small reminder that even destruction can become a home for something.

The sound of your boots crunching against gravel and weeds feels too loud, intrusive against the quiet. Joel moves a few steps ahead, his gaze sharp and sweeping, his rifle held low but ready. He pauses at the intersection of two streets, glancing back at you.

“Keep your eyes open,” he says, his voice low but firm.

You nod, stepping closer, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end despite the stillness around you. There’s a strange feeling to this place, like walking through a graveyard where the world has mourned and moved on, leaving a veil of green to cover the scars.

The remnants of the town tell a story, just like the house did, pieced together in fragments. A little red bicycle, resting against a lamp post, its training wheels still clinging on. A storefront window shattered, the jagged shards framing a display of dusty mannequins dressed in tattered clothes. A faded Help Wanted sign still clings to the wall behind them.

And yet, it isn’t just the destruction that strikes you.

It’s the life threading its way through decay. It’s the way the trees grow through where buildings once stood, their roots breaking through foundations and upending what little remains of the structures. It’s the shadows of the birds as they flit between empty shells of buildings, their singsong too bright and cheery.

Joel rounds on the overturned car, crouching low and tucking himself behind it. His movements are practiced and purposeful, every inch the survivor you’ve come to know over the past year. He doesn’t spare you a glance, just nods toward the car, a silent command for you to follow. You obey, your body moving instinctively even as your mind churns with a thousand thoughts.

The tension between you feels suffocating, thicker than the silence that settled over you both in those early days after the bite. Back then, the weight of what had happened hung heavy in the air, too vast and terrible to put into words. Now, it feels like something else entirely, a chasm carved between you, widened by every unanswered question, every conversation Joel refuses to have. It’s almost worse than the silence of those days because now you know what’s been lost.

This morning had been no different. You ate in silence, sharing a can of beans you’d found tucked in the very back of a cupboard in that old house. Joel had barely looked at you as he ate, his focus fixed on somewhere far away before you’d even left, his words clipped and brief. He’s always been like that, focused on the task ahead, too practical for sentimentality, but it wasn’t always this cold. There used to be warmth in the silences, a kind of understanding. Now there’s only a void, and it’s swallowing you whole.

As you crouch behind the car, you let your fingers drift over the cool metal, its surface rough and mottled with rust. It’s a strange thing to fixate on, but you can’t help it. The car, like the town, like you, is a proof of what time and destruction can do. 

What was once something whole, something purposeful, now just a shell, picked to pieces by the world, its life spark long gone.

Maybe the bite hadn’t killed you, but it changed you in ways you still don’t fully understand. Joel can say he doesn’t see it, but you feel it in your bones, in your blood. Some part of you died that day, and what’s left is something you don’t recognize.

Joel shifts forward, peering out from behind the car, his eyes scanning the street for movement. His face is a mask of focus, but you can see the strain in his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. He’s always on edge now, always waiting for the next threat. You wonder if it’s because of you. If he’s waiting for the day you prove him right, prove that you’re not the same, that you’re something else entirely.

The thought eats at you, gnawing at the edges of your already rapidly dissolving calm. 

In those quiet moments before sleep takes you, you try to tell yourself that you’re still you, try to convince your brain that what happened doesn't define you now. But it’s hard to believe it when Joel, the man who’s saved you more times than you can count, who’s seen more devastation than you could ever try to understand, won’t meet your eyes. It’s hard not to feel like a burden, like a mistake he doesn’t have the strength to correct.

You toss a glance around you, at the town that looks like it’s being swallowed by nature. It should be beautiful, this reclamation of life, but all you see is decay. All you see is what’s been lost. The town, for all its creeping green and vibrant wildflowers, is still dead at its core. It’s a lie nature tells, dressing up ruins in the trappings of new life.

You think it disturbs you because it’s what you see in your reflection. 

A lie. 

Something that looks human on the outside but isn’t, not really. You’re not sure what you are anymore. Not alive, not dead. Just… something in between. 

Something that doesn’t belong.

Joel’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “C’mon,” he says, low and gruff. “Clear ahead.”

You nod, even though your body feels heavy, like it might refuse to move. You push yourself to your feet and follow him, keeping your distance, letting him take the lead. He doesn’t look back, and you don’t expect him to. 

You glance down at your hands, at the fingers that feel colder than they used to, as though the blood running through them isn’t yours anymore. You wonder if this is what it feels like to decay from the inside out. To look alive but feel like something rotting beneath the surface.

Joel stops suddenly, turning back to you with that permanent furrow in his brow. “You good?”

It’s the first time he’s asked you that all day, and the sound of it landslike a blow. You want to tell him the truth, to spill everything that’s been building inside you. But the words catch in your throat, swallowed by the fear that he’ll shut you out again. That he’ll look at you the way he did when he first saw the bite, that mixture of fear and regret that you can’t bear to see again.

“Yeah,” you say finally, your voice flat and unconvincing. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t press you. He just nods and keeps moving, his boots crunching against the broken pavement. You follow, your eyes on the ground, your thoughts heavier than ever.

Twenty feet ahead, Joel spots an old supermarket, its awnings drooping in jagged tatters that flutter in the breeze. The building looks like it’s been frozen mid-collapse, its cinder block walls cracked but still standing. Vines climb the walls, their green fingers threading through the broken mortar and curling around the faded, flaking letters of the store’s name. The small parking lot out front is a graveyard of rusted shopping carts, their frames twisted and mangled, pushed into a haphazard pile near the entrance, like they were once used as a barricade.

Yet compared to the surrounding ruins, skeletons of buildings swallowed by nature and time, the supermarket looks remarkably intact. Its boarded windows and sagging door give the illusion of quiet sanctuary, but you’ve been out here long enough to know better. 

Joel pauses at the edge of the lot, his sharp gaze sweeping over the building and the rusted debris around it. He tightens his grip on his rifle, his expression hardening into that look he gets when he’s bracing for trouble.

“Over there,” he says, his tone low, all authority. That voice, the one that warms against argument, pulls you into focus, instinct taking over. “We’ll clear it and take whatever we can find. I’ll lead. You watch our six. You got it?”

You nod without hesitation, the weight of your pistol heavy in your hand as you fall in step behind him. This is something you know how to do, a ritual you’ve repeated so many times it can only come naturally. A chance to prove to Joel you’re still useful, still his teammate.

The air inside is thick, suffocating, heavy with the smell of damp rot and decay. Broken glass crunches under your boots as you follow Joel inside, the sound uncomfortably loud in the damning quiet. Dust hangs in the air like a cloud, swirling dreamily in the dim light filtering through the boarded windows.

The shelves, once overstuffed with a bounty of foods you haven’t tasted in years, now stand empty, their dusty metal frames bent and bare. Here and there, a forgotten can or crushed box clings stubbornly to the past, but even these remnants are battered, their labels faded or peeling away.

Oh, the things you’d do to have a bowl of Lucky Charms again.

Joel moves ahead of you, his footsteps measured and deliberate, his rifle sweeping the aisles like a predator sniffing for prey. His broad shoulders are tense, his movements precise, as if each step could be his last. You’ve seen him like this before, his body language screaming that something is off even if he hasn’t said it aloud yet.

“It’s too quiet,” you mutter under your breath, almost to yourself, but Joel catches it. He doesn’t reply, just gives the smallest tilt of his head, his sharp eyes scanning the shadows.

The silence here feels wrong in here, unnatural, like something is holding its breath. Every sound you make, every crunch of glass or shuffle of debris, feels like a shout into the void. Your pulse jumps, and you force yourself to stay focused, to match Joel’s movements.

“You see anything?” you whisper, keeping your voice low.

“No. That’s what’s botherin’ me.” His eyes dart toward the far end of the store, where the light fades into deeper darkness.

You both continue down the aisles, your hand darting out occasionally to grab whatever looks salvageable. A dented can of beans, a half-empty bag of rice, a plastic water bottle caked in grime. You tuck it all away in your pack. But your unease grows with each step. The place feels too untouched, too convenient. Like bait left out in the open.

Then you see it.

Near the far end of the store, where the light fades into deeper shadows, a cluster of empty cans sits in an otherwise barren aisle. The sight stops you cold. Unlike the thick layer of dust that coats everything else in this place, the cans are clean, gleaming unnaturally in the dim light. Too clean.

“Joel,” you whisper sharply, reaching out to grab his shoulder.

But before you can say more, you hear it.

A sound. Whisper quiet at first, just the barest scrape of movement, but unmistakable. Footsteps.

Then voices.

Low, murmured words drift through the aisles, growing closer. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Joel freezes, his posture shifting immediately, instinctively, into one of readiness. His rifle comes up, his head tilting to his good side to locate the sound.

“Get down,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible but firm, cutting through the sudden tension like a blade.

You duck behind a nearby shelf, the metal frame cold and sharp against your back. Your heart pounds in your ears as the voices draw nearer, their words indistinct but heavy with intent. 

Your fingers tighten around your pistol, your breath shallow as you glance at Joel. His jaw is set, his eyes sharp and calculating as he motions for you to stay put. And then the voices stop.

The silence that follows is louder than any gunshot, pressing in on you from all sides.

And you realize that they know you’re here.

The first gunshot shatters the silence.

It’s loud, too loud, and it jolts through you like a live wire. Before you can even register what’s happening, Joel is already moving, the crack of his rifle filling the air as he ducks behind an overturned shelf and fires.

The raiders pour out of the shadows like wolves circling their prey. There aren’t many—four, maybe five—but desperation radiates off of them in waves. Their clothes hang loose from thin frames, their skin sallow and smudged with dirt. You make eye contact with one, his eyes burning with a frenzied, unhinged light.

These aren’t trained killers. They’re wild animals backed into a corner. You’re not sure which is worse.

Joel takes two down in seconds, all ruthless precision. 

He yells something. Your name, maybe? An order? But the words are lost in the roar of gunfire and the pounding of your heartbeat in your ears.

You try to move. You want to move. But your legs feel rooted to the floor, the soles of your boots glued to the linoleum.

The world narrows to a pinprick, every sound muffled by a deafening roar of white noise. Your breathing is shallow, frantic, but it doesn’t feel like you’re getting any air. Your hands shake uncontrollably, your fingers clumsy as they fumble for the pistol in your grip.

Why can’t you move?

You’ve done this before. So many times. Joel always said you had a knack for it, that you were quick, reliable, a hell of a shot when it counted. So why now, in this moment, do you feel like you’re crumbling from the inside out?

A shout cuts through the haze. Joel’s voice.

“Move! Goddamn it, move!”

You force your head to turn, your eyes locking onto him for half a second. He’s crouched behind a shelf, his rifle raised, taking aim at a man trying to flank him. His face is a mask of controlled fury, but even from here, you can see the flicker of disbelief in his eyes when he looks at you.

Joel’s never seen you freeze before. Not like this.

“Do something!” he yells, his voice strained with the effort of splitting his focus between you and the attackers.

But you can’t. Your legs refuse to listen, your arms too weak to lift the pistol with any sense of control. Your vision tunnels as you stare at the scene unfolding in front of you, the raiders scrambling for cover, Joel firing round after round, the way the bullet casings ricochet through the smoke-filled air.

Your breath catches as a third man crumples to the ground, taken out by Joel’s unrelenting fire. But then Joel disappears from view, ducking behind another aisle to reload, out of your sight.

And that’s when it happens.

Strong arms wrap around you from behind, locking you in place, your arms pinned to your sides like a vise. Your breath catches in your throat, your body stiffening as your mind scrambles to react. Your hand tightens instinctively around your pistol, but it’s useless, frozen in your trembling grip.

For a second, it feels like time slows. The heat of the man’s breath on your neck is overwhelming, rancid, the sound of his low grunt echoing in your ears as he adjusts his grip to pull you tighter. Your vision blurs, and the supermarket—the shelves, the dust, the smoky light filtering through broken windows—all of it begins to dissolve.

And then you’re not in the supermarket at all anymore.

You’re at the river.

The roar of the swollen water drowns out everything else, pounding in your ears like a war drum. Your back hits the cold, slick ground with a heavy thud, knocking the air from your lungs. And it’s there, on top of you.

That thing. That fucking thing.

Its mottled, decaying face hanging inches from yours, teeth gnashing as it screeches, a sound that cuts straight through you like a blade. Its hands claw at you, filthy nails raking against your skin as it pins you down. Its weight is crushing, its stench unbearable, overwhelming rot and blood and evil.

You’re screaming. You’re begging. You’re thrashing against it, every ounce of your strength pouring into this desperate, animalistic fight for your life.

Your arms slip free from its grip, adrenaline burning through your veins like fire. You twist, throwing your weight into the motion, and suddenly you’re on top of it, straddling its chest. The slick, wet ground beneath you fades into nothingness. There’s only this thing and your need to destroy it.

Your pistol is gone, vanished into the ether, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the overwhelming urge to end it.

You pull your arm back, your fist trembling with fury and desperation, and then you bring it down with all your strength.

The impact sends a shockwave up your arm. You feel a wet crack beneath your knuckles, the way its face collapses slightly under the force of the blow. Blood spatters across your hand, warm and slick, but you don’t stop. You can’t stop.

You pull your arm back again and slam your fist down, harder this time. Another crunch, another sickening wet sound. Its head jerks to the side, but you grab a fistful of its shirt to keep it in place, your breaths coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

Again.

The edges of your vision blur and darken, narrowing until there’s nothing but the thing beneath you and the pounding of your own heartbeat.

Again.

Your knuckles split, skin tearing against bone and cartilage, but the pain doesn’t register. All you feel is rage, fear, and the desperate, consuming need to destroy.

Again.

The thing’s face is unrecognizable now, a mess of blood and shattered bone, but it doesn’t matter. Somewhere, deep in the back of your mind, a voice whispers that it’s already dead, that you’ve already won, but you can’t hear it over the rush of blood in your ears.

Again. 

Again. 

Again.

A voice cuts through the fog, sharp and desperate.

“Stop!”

You don’t stop. You can’t.

“Goddamn it, stop!”

A pair of hands grab your shoulders, jerking you backward. The sudden force pulls you out of your frenzy, the world around you snapping back into focus like a rubber band.

You blink, gasping for air as the sound of the river fades, replaced by the quiet of the supermarket, the ringing in your ears. The thing that was beneath you is no longer the creature that attacked you. It’s the raider, his face a bloody, mangled mess, his body limp and motionless.

Joel is crouched beside you, his hands gripping your shoulders tightly, his eyes wide and brimming with shock and concern.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low but firm. “You’re all right. It’s over. Look at me—it’s over.”

But it’s not over. Not for you. The river, the creature, the blood, it all lingers in the back of your mind, travelling through your bloodstream, settling in your bones. Your chest heaves, and your hands are trembling, still curled into fists stained with blood that isn’t yours.

Joel’s voice anchors you, pulling you back piece by piece.

“Breathe,” he commands, his tone softening just enough to cut through the haze. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

You try to obey. You really do. But the air feels thin, your lungs refusing to expand. You blink at him, trying to focus on the lines of his face, the familiar weight of his presence, anything to steady yourself. But it’s like the world around you has lost its clarity, dissolving into a smear of color and sound that won’t settle.

And then there’s the blood.

It’s everywhere. Thick, congealing streaks of crimson cling to your hands, your sleeves, the cracked linoleum beneath you. Your knuckles are raw, split wide open, the skin peeling back to expose pale flashes of bone. 

You should be in agony, but there’s nothing. Just a buzzing numbness that makes everything feel unreal.

Your breath hitches as your stomach churns, bile rising to the back of your throat. Joel’s voice fades to background noise, his steady presence eclipsed by the smell, the coppery tang of fresh blood mingled with the sharp, sour stench of fear and sweat.

Your gaze darts frantically, searching for something to hold on to. That’s when you see it.

An overturned sunglass display lies a few feet away, one of its mirrored panels catching a slant of dim light. The reflection is murky at first, fractured by scratches and smudges. But you can make out your form, crouched on the ground, shaking, your arms slick with gore.

You crawl toward it, drawn by some morbid compulsion, even as every cell in your body screams for you to look away.

And then you see your face.

Only, it isn’t your face.

The features are wrong, distorted. The hollow eyes that stare back at you gleam with a feral light. The streaks of blood across your cheeks look like war paint, and your mouth is twisted into something unrecognizable, a grotesque snarl frozen in time.

The creature staring back at you is the one from your nightmares. The one that wore your face. 

You scramble back, nearly slipping on the blood pooling beneath you. Your breath comes in short, ragged bursts now, and your head aches with the effort of trying to make sense of what you’re seeing.

“No,” you whisper, your voice barely audible, a tremor in the silence. “No, no, no.”

You claw at your own face, desperate to wipe away the blood, to erase the reflection burned into your vision. But when you look back at the mirror, it’s still there. The monster, the thing, staring back at you with the same horrified recognition.

Joel watches you, the way your breathing has turned erratic, your hands trembling even more violently than before.

“Hey.” His voice is sharper now, insistent. He moves closer, placing a firm hand on your shoulder, trying to anchor you again. “What’s goin’ on? Talk to me.”

But you can’t.

Because how do you explain it to him? How do you tell Joel that the thing you saw wasn’t just in your head? That you’ve become something else, something wrong?

“I’m…” Your voice falters, barely more than a croak. You can’t bring yourself to finish the sentence.

Joel kneels in front of you now, his dark eyes searching yours, his expression hard to read, somewhere between frustration and worry. “You’re what?” he presses.

Your fingers clench into fists, nails digging into the raw flesh of your palms, but you don’t feel that either.

“I’m not—” The words catch in your throat, a strangled sob threatening to break free. “I’m not me anymore.”

Joel’s brows furrow, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. You can tell he’s trying to figure out what to say, trying to piece together the puzzle of your unraveling.

But you don’t need his reassurance. You don’t deserve it.

The image from the mirror is seared into your brain, a truth too visceral to push away. 

You’re not human anymore. Whatever you were before the bite, before the changes, before all this…

She’s gone. 

What’s left is decay wrapped in skin, rot hiding behind bloodshot eyes.

And maybe Joel knows it, too. Maybe that’s why he looks at you the way he does. Not with hatred, not with anger, but with that guarded distance that tells you he doesn’t quite know what to make of you anymore.

You’re not a person anymore. Not really.

You’re just another broken thing he’s lugging along, too stubborn to leave behind.

…

“Alright, how’s that feel?”

Joel’s voice is gruff, clipped, like he’s trying to keep something in check. He pulls the gauze taut around your hand, gently tugging the ends into a knot. His hands are steady, sure, but yours are trembling.

The pain has set in now that the adrenaline’s burned away, sharp and relentless, digging into the broken skin of your knuckles and radiating up your arm. You barely register it. Pain feels distant, muted, like it belongs to someone else.

You hadn’t made a sound while he cleaned the wounds. Hadn’t winced, hadn’t cried out. Not even when the antiseptic burned like fire. All you’d done was sit there, staring at the wall, silent tears streaking your face as he worked.

Joel had noticed, of course. You’re certain he had. But he hadn’t said anything about it. Maybe it was mercy. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was something else entirely, something you didn’t want to name.

You pull your hand back when he finishes, flexing your fingers experimentally. Blood is already seeping through the gauze, fresh spots of red blooming against the stark white. The movement sends a bolt of pain shooting up your arm, but you don’t flinch.

You’re perched on the edge of the bathtub in the dilapidated house you found last night. The room reeks of mildew and old rot, the tiles cracked and stained. Joel’s First Aid kit lies open on the floor beside him, its contents scattered. You glance at it and take stock.

The antiseptic bottle is nearly empty. The gauze roll is down to its last few feet. The last pack of sterile wipes lies crumpled near the sink. Joel leans over, grabbing the bottle of antibiotics, the pills rattling as he shoves it into your hands.

“Take a couple now and—”

“No,” you interrupt, shaking your head. “No, that’s fine.” You hold the bottle out to him, refusing to meet his eyes.

“The hell do you mean?” His brow furrows, his voice hardening.

“I—I’ve used up enough of this already.” You gesture vaguely to the dwindling supplies. “I’ll be fine.”

Joel huffs out a short, disbelieving laugh, leaning back on his heels as he stares at you. The weight of his gaze feels unbearable, like it’s peeling back every layer of you, exposing every raw nerve.

“You tryin’ to get an infection?” His voice cuts through the air, low and sharp.

“I’ll just… wash them in the river,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper. “It’ll be fine.”

Joel exhales hard through his nose, his frustration palpable. If this were any other day, you might have smiled, might have teased him for how easily you could get under his skin. His sighs, his grumbles, his sharp comments, they’d become so familiar, almost comforting in their constancy.

But this isn’t any other day, and you aren’t that person anymore. 

Joel doesn’t take the bottle back. He stays crouched there in front of you, his broad shoulders tense, his jaw working as he stares at you with those dark, unreadable eyes. You can feel his frustration radiating off him like heat, but there’s something else beneath it, something quieter and heavier.

"Take the damn pills," he says, his voice low and deliberate.

You shake your head, your hand curling painfully into the edge of the bathtub as if you need the anchor. "You’ve already wasted too much on me. I’ll be fine."

“Fine?” His voice sharpens, and he exhales harshly through his nose. “You call this fine?” He gestures at your bloodied hands, the bruises blooming across your skin, the half-empty first-aid kit scattered around you both.

You turn your head, still refusing to meet his gaze. Your eyes fall on the blood streaked floor, your own blood mixing with the dried, years-old stains of the previous occupants. 

“You wanna talk about what happened back there?” He asks.

That gets your attention. Your head snaps up, quick as a slap, eyes searching his face.

“Ain’t nothin’ to talk about,” you say, mimicking his words to you last night. “Isn’t that right, Joel?”

Joel’s jaw clenches at your words, the muscle in his cheek twitching. He leans back slightly, his hands braced on his knees, as if trying to steady himself. His eyes flick over your face, searching, but for what, you don’t know.

"You think you’re funny?" he mutters, his tone edged with frustration. "You think throwin’ my words back at me means somethin’?"

You shrug, forcing yourself to look at him now, though your chest feels tight and pinched. "It means you don’t get to ask questions you don’t want answered."

Joel’s brow furrows, his eyes narrowing. “This ain’t about me, kid. You froze back there. You could’ve gotten yourself killed—could’ve gotten me killed. You don’t wanna talk about that? Fine. But don’t sit here actin’ like you’re fine, ’cause we both know that’s a goddamn lie.”

The air between you feels suffocating, heavy with the weight of everything unsaid. You don’t have the words to explain what happened back in the supermarket, the way your mind had turned against you, dragging you back to that moment by the river. The way the raider’s hands on you had felt like the infected all over again, the cold terror flooding your veins until you couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

“I froze,” you admit, the words brittle and sharp, like broken glass. “I know that. I know I could’ve gotten us both killed. You don’t have to remind me.”

Joel’s expression softens, but only slightly. He sits back on his heels, his posture shifting as if he’s trying to rein himself in. "I’m not remindin’ you to make you feel bad. I’m remindin’ you ’cause we can’t afford for it to happen again. You hear me?"

You nod mutely, biting down on the inside of your cheek to keep from saying something you’ll regret. The truth is, you don’t trust yourself anymore. You’ve been through countless fights before, stared down dangers that should’ve broken you, and yet this—this had stopped you cold.

Joel watches you for a long moment, his gaze heavy. Finally, he exhales, running a hand through his hair. “Look,” he says, his voice quieter now, “I don’t know what’s goin’ on in your head. But whatever it is, you don’t gotta carry it alone. You don’t gotta sit there and pretend like you’re some lost cause, either. You ain’t.”

The words hit you square in the chest, lungs constricting painfully. You don’t deserve them, not after what you’ve cost him, not after the way you froze.

“I don’t get why you’re doing this,” you say softly, your voice barely audible. “Why you’re wasting all this on me.”

Joel frowns, leaning forward slightly. “Wastin’ it? What makes you think this is a waste?”

You don’t respond, can’t respond, because what is there to say? Of course it’s a waste. After what just happened, after the mess you’ve made of everything, what else could it be, if not a waste?

“Why do you even care, Joel?”

The question hangs in the air, heavy and suffocating. Joel’s jaw tightens, and he shifts his weight, sitting back on his heels as he stares at you.

“Why do I care?” he repeats, his voice low and dangerous. “You think I patch people up for fun? Think I’d travel with someone across the goddamn country ‘cause I don’t care?”

You flinch at the edge in his tone, guilt twisting in your gut. “You shouldn’t have to,” you murmur. “Not for me.”

Joel freezes, his eyes narrowing. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

You don’t answer. You can’t. Instead, you lower your gaze to your lap, where your bandaged hands rest, trembling slightly.

“Look at me,” he says, his voice softer now but no less commanding.

You don’t move.

“Look at me,” he repeats, and this time, there’s something raw in his tone that makes you lift your head despite yourself.

His eyes lock onto yours, and for a moment, you think he might see right through you, see the plan already forming in your mind, the way you’ve been counting down the hours until dawn.

“You’re not doin’ this,” he says firmly. “You’re not givin’ up, not on my watch.”

“I’m not giving up,” you lie, forcing a weak smile. “I just… I’m not worth all this, Joel. The supplies, the effort—you could’ve used them on yourself. You should’ve.”

His expression darkens, his jaw clenching hard enough that you can see the muscle twitch in his cheek. “You don’t get to decide that,” he says, his voice rough but steady. “If I don’t get to make decisions for you, then you sure as hell don’t get to make ‘em for me. You think I’d be doin’ all this if I didn’t think you were worth it?”

You blink, startled by the intensity in his voice.

“You deserve better,” you whisper, barely audible.

Joel’s expression shifts, his frustration giving way to something softer, something that almost looks like hurt. “Better than what? Someone who’s still here, still fightin’, even after everything?”

You shake your head, tears threatening to spill over. “You don’t understand—”

“You’re right,” he cuts you off, his tone sharper now. “I don’t. I don’t understand why you’re sittin’ here actin’ like you don’t matter, like you’re some kinda burden. You think that’s your call to make? It’s not. Not to me.”

The conviction in his voice sends a crack through the wall you’ve been building around yourself. You open your mouth to respond, but the words won’t come. Instead, you just sit there, staring at him, the weight of his care pressing down on you in a way that feels unbearable.

“Get some rest,” Joel says finally, standing and gathering the scattered supplies. His voice is quieter now, the edge softened. “I don’t know when we’ll have a place like this to rest our heads again.”

You nod silently, but your decision is already made.

As he leaves the room, you let out a shaky breath, your hands gripping the edge of the bathtub. There’s an ache in your gut, a strangled cry desperate to break free. But you push it down, deep into that darkness inside of you that swallows things whole.

…

You and Joel settle into your sleeping bags in the master bedroom, the rain beginning as a soft pattering against the cracked window pane.

The light drizzle quickens into a steady downpour, and somewhere above, water begins to drip through a crack in the ceiling, the rhythm regular and almost hypnotic. Joel is already asleep, his breathing deep and even, broken only by soft, rumbling snores.

You shift slightly, glancing at him. Snoring was a sound you hardly ever heard from Joel. He wasn’t one to sleep deeply, wasn’t one to sleep much at all. In all the time you’d been traveling together, Joel had always taken the lion’s share of the watch, insisting on staying awake while you slept.

No matter how many times you argued about it, told him he needed to rest, Joel would just shrug it off like it was nothing. Like he could keep pushing himself forever. You’d wake to sunlight creeping through the heavy tree cover, rested and groggy, only to find him perched under the same tree he was sitting under when you fell asleep, shotgun resting in his lap like a newborn, his dark eyes scanning the horizon like a hawk.

“Don’t know how you expect me to pull my weight if you don’t let me take a shift,” you’d grumble at him, stretching out stiff muscles.

He’d just grunt in response, the corners of his mouth tugging downward, as if the very idea of letting someone else carry part of the burden was offensive. But that was Joel. Ever the protector, ever the watchdog.

Ever the giver.

It wasn’t that you took advantage of him. God, no. Joel wasn’t a man you could manipulate, not even if you tried. He wasn’t stupid. He had this uncanny ability to sniff out selfishness in people, to see through whatever mask someone wore. You pulled your weight. You scavenged, fought, and bled for the both of you, and Joel knew that. He trusted you to do your part.

But Joel… he just couldn’t help himself. He gave, over and over, like it was written into the fabric of who he was. Like he didn’t know how to be any other way. He had to protect, had to provide. It was as much a part of him as the scars on his hands or the weight in his eyes.

When you met him, he’d been gruff, reluctant to involve you on smuggling runs, keeping you at arm’s length like you still carried some unspoken threat. But somewhere along the way, his walls cracked. You didn’t know when it had happened exactly, but you could see it in the small things. The extra food he’d quietly save for you, the way he’d give you his coat on cold nights even when he was freezing himself, the way his shoulders would relax ever so slightly when he caught you smiling.

Once Joel decided you were worth saving, it was over. He was in it for the long haul, no matter how much it cost him.

And for a while, you had been the luckiest person in what was left of the world to be on the receiving end of that.

You lie there, listening to the rain hammering against the roof, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Joel’s face, even in sleep, carries the weight of the world, the lines carved deep into his brow and around his mouth. You wonder how many years he’s shaved off his life just by taking so much of the load onto himself. You wonder how much more he’ll let himself give before he has nothing left.

And then there’s you.

Was it any wonder you fell for the man? How could you not? Joel Miller could be infuriating, stubborn, and guarded to the point of madness, but beneath all of that was something so rare, so utterly good, that it made you feel things you didn’t think you had the capacity for anymore.

He’d never see himself that way, of course. Joel didn’t do anything for thanks or recognition. He didn’t even seem to realize how much of himself he gave away to the people he let in.

And that’s what made it harder, what made it unbearable to stay.

Because while Joel gave and gave, you took. Not intentionally, not maliciously, but you’d taken all the same. And in the quiet moments like this, lying awake while he slept for once, you can’t shake the feeling that one day, he’ll realize you weren’t worth what he’d given.

That’s why you have to leave. Before he wakes, before you can see the hurt in his eyes. Because if Joel knew what you were planning, he’d never let you go. And you’re not sure you’d have the strength to leave if he asked you to stay.

The first peals of thunder rumble low in the distance, rolling closer, shaking the house’s already unstable foundation. The storm has settled in for the night now, and the rain pounds against the windows, dripping steadily through the crack in the ceiling. Lightning flashes, illuminating the room in bursts of pale light.

Your gaze flickers to Joel, stretched out on his sleeping bag, his head tilted slightly to the side. He stirs slightly as the thunder rolls again, a quiet grumble slipping from his lips before he settles back into a deep sleep.

For a moment, you falter. Your resolve weakens under the weight of it all. How many times has he protected you? Stood between you and danger, taken hits meant for you? How many times has he let you into the parts of himself he keeps hidden from the world? And now you’re about to repay all of that by leaving him in the middle of the night, slipping away like a thief.

You force the thoughts away, swallowing the lump in your throat. You have to do this.

Moving as quietly as you can, you rise from your sleeping bag, the damp chill of the house settling into your bones. You wince as your knees crack, freezing in place as Joel shifts again. His breathing evens out a second later, and you exhale shakily.

You gently place the flannel he gave you that day at the river by his feet, carefully folded. A gesture of goodwill, a thanks for all the help he gave you in your time together. A compensation for all that you took.

The mattress against the door is your next hurdle. Joel had shoved it there earlier, pressing it tight against the warped wood to keep the two of you safe. Now, as you grip the edge and begin to slide it away, you realize just how heavy it is. You move it inch by inch, pausing every few seconds to glance back at Joel, your heart pounding every time the mattress lets out a low scrape against the floor.

Finally, you’ve cleared enough space to open the door. You reach for the knob, turning it carefully, slowly, until it gives. The hinges groan as the door swings open just enough for you to slip through.

Before you leave, you glance back one last time. Joel is still asleep, his face lit briefly by another flash of lightning. He looks peaceful now. It’s a rare sight, one you’ve only seen a handful of times, and you try to commit it to memory. This has to be enough, you tell yourself. It has to be enough to know that he’ll be okay without you. Better off, really.

You pull the door closed behind you, muffling the sound as best you can. Deliberately, you step over the creaky floorboards in the hall, each step measured and cautious. The house feels colder now, emptier somehow. The storm outside is deafening in comparison to the muted quiet inside.

When you reach the front door, the chill of the night air seeps through the cracks. You pause for a moment, your hand on the handle, as the rain lashes against the windows. You hesitate, something pulling at you, urging you to turn back.

But you don’t. Or can’t, or won’t, you don’t quite know.

You step out into the rain-soaked, unforgiving world, letting the door close softly behind you. The cold rain hits you instantly, soaking through your clothes, clinging to your skin. You pull your jacket tighter around you and press forward into the darkness.

Every step feels heavier than the last, but you don’t stop. You can’t stop. Because if you do, you’ll lose what little strength you have left.

Behind you, the house grows smaller and smaller, until it disappears completely into the shadows of the storm. And with it, you leave behind the only safety you’ve known in a long, long time.

Taglist:

@eviispunk

@javierpenaispunk

[searchingforserendipity25]

garak fades into obscurity. a shed and a garden that feeds half the neighborhood.

door open, always, less in welcome than to stop the walls from closing in - but people come inside, too.

-

the hungry, generally. other gardeners, come to pick up shovels and seeds. some of them can't stand to look him in the eye, some of them stagger blind to the world, caught in memory and half-blind to the world.

orphans, widows. old victims with old grievances, sometimes. we are the new cardassia, growing from the dust, glimmer the propaganda-screens in the squares. united we build. some people even believe it.

there is nothing else to believe in. they eat together, the neighbors of tain's old district, and share old stories: poetry and theater, cruel orders, disappearances.

people come to the slantwise shadow of the small room, with its rich smells, the piles of good soil and samples of tubers bred to grow on the radioactive soil. they come to find good work, they come to find answers.

my brother, they say. my daughter, my lover, what did you do to them? the last parmak, asking for their cousin kelas. the last - oh, cardassia is full of them, made up of them, their last-names, long generations turned to a remnant. he is only to blame for some of it; but to be a culprit in any part of cardassia's diminished is worse than any other sin.

he gives them red bush tea, coordinates for secret labor camps and torture chambers, answers. true answers all, especially the lies. no one murders him, not even in the dark of a dust storm. united we build, join together for the future. they take the food from his garden and go.

when, three years after the end of the war, the notice comes for a public trial, he packs a bag with old tailor's scissors and makes ready.

because this is the new cardassia, there is no execution. because this is cardassia, punishment is precise, measured, and symmetrical. beautiful, for a mind inclined to find such things beautiful.

we are the new cardassia, growing from the dust, and we seek to build from the ground up on good foundations, castellan ghemor says.

'but of course,' elim garak says. he does not look like a torturer, in his gardener's apron and working braid, dust and soil beneath the nails of his expressive hands; but then, torturers rarely do. 'there is no place for old rot, i tell my apprentices so every time. i am gratified to be exiled, if the court allows it to be a benefit to cardassia.'

this is the new cardassia: most trials are not recorded and projected on town squares, but some are. why not give a last decent show?

people need examples to follow, the guilty most of all; even professor lang had agreed, when he first proposed the idea, though she hadn't much liked it at first. tain's son regretful in shackles is a fine fiction, the better still for being true

he leaves the shed door open, instructions on how to continue cultivating the hardiest crops, and a small pot on her desk. small tight buds nearly ready for flowering, the first edosian orchids of new cardassia.

and then? and then to the stars again, a handful of sickly soil sewn into a secret pocket, scissors in another.

there is a small hole in a floating husk of steel waiting, a shop no one ever leased again, the front windows drawn closed by curtains like a theater house waiting for the new season's farces to start.

if that is peculiar bad luck for the bustling promenade, it might just be that the head of the infirmary across the hall didn't much like the notion of new neighbors changing his usual sights.

sentiment, rank sentiment. on new cardassia, amidst the wreckage, some have started to sing poems to it, to sing it without fear.

half-blind with memory, it is difficult to return, a blinding strangeness that dilates time for the first weeks. there is food on the table and company with it, there is someone in the landing bay, there are patterns to cut and lines to wind and unwind, match together.

kira's voice is distinctive and so is the ringing of her steps, bashir leans his cheek against his fist when he's tired and at ease, quark pours drinks with the same habitual flair.

in uncertain times, it is good that some things remain, cleave together, persist. one day he looks across the lunch table, and is even fairly certain of when to place himself. his secret pocket weighting him down, bad soil but enough to feed on.

-

bolts of fabric gathering dust, a bother to wash and terribly out of fashion - but fashion does tend to come around, cyclical as the desert winds.

he will find a use for those old scraps, garak of garak's clothiers. men like him always do.

[heartfullofleeches]

*slowly opens your closet door and hands you the rest of the chips I was eating in there*

What if. Reader kissed King's scars or traced over them n asked if shed tell them how she got em? I think scars are neat and I dunno about you but personally I'd love to know how she got em. Hope your day is well!

Not a scratch on her.

You distinctly remember the claws of your attacker digging into the exposed meat of the knight's bicep her armor failed to shield yet here there is no mark to prove it. The two of you sat in King's dressing room following the incident, and all the time it took you begging to pull her off them. You thought you'd be fine on your own for a little while without her - clearly word hasn't gotten around the casino that you belong to her just yet. After she checked you over and made sure you weren't hurt it was only fair of you to do the same, but once you scrubbed all that blood off her there really wasn't much else for you to take care of.

"Hm......"

King lifts her head from the pile of pillows you both lay on, dismayed by absence of your hands on her. "Everything okay over there? Seems like you got something on your mind."

"Just thinking.... You've got so many scars, but that other demon didn't even put a scratch on you ... Kinda curious why.."

"Oh, that? That was nothing.-" King sits up, pounding a fist against her chest as she rises. "Takes a lot more than a coward like that to put a dent on this body. Hell, my skin's thicker than the steel I throw on. The stories behind every single one of 'em could the tale of centuries."

"Really?.... Then do you think you could tell me how you got your scars? I actually think they're pretty neat, but I didn't know the right time to ask you about them."

The mountain of pillows crumbles under the heavy swish of King's tail. "Yea....course... we'd be here all week if I told you how I got them all, but I can start off with some of my favorites for now."

King removes her chestplate - gesturing for you to climb in her lap as she regroups the pillows beneath her. She leans back down as she takes your smaller hands in hers, placing them on her abdomen. It was almost impossible to tell where her skin began and the old wounds ended. She guides your fingers to a crescent shaped hole just below her left pec - right over her ribs.

"Feel that? Got that one during the first tournament I feared I might lose. Underestimated the little bastard due to their size - barely came up to my knee in this form, the fucker. Unfortunately for them, they got a little too confident and all it took for me to wipe the floor with that small fry was catching them once.

"Amazing...." Your trace your fingers over the scar, dipping your head until in range to place a soft kiss on her hardened skin. King flinches - tail threatening to foundation of the pillows again as it shoots up with her.

"Wha- Huh?!- The fuck was that?"

"Sorry... Was that not okay? I guess I should've asked before I did that."

King's used to people asking about her scars. She may have been asked to be been kissed once or twice, but that was often by drunken fans - not the little treasure she picked out for herself. You are aware she could snap you in half at any second? You most definitely did, and that she'd never put you in serious danger. Still, you being so careless around a beast like her has got feeling a rush that's incomparable to the surge she feels in battle.

"Nah...." King shifts her tail benath her legs to hide the excitement it gave away. "A warning might've been nice - but your boldness makes it kinda hot. I knew I picked the perfect person to call mine.... Let's move on."

King nudges your fingers further north over her heart to anotger oddly shaped scar over her heart. With three points it almost look like a crudely embroidered crown. "This one. Welcoming gift from the boss themselves. Should'a known not to underestimate that other demon after dealing with them, but they're such an airhead it's easy to forget they can take care of themselves just fine."

Again - you kiss the blemish, the dragon's heart hammering loudly in her chest you can feel its rumble from your lips. There's other's she'd like to show you, but it you're so willing to kiss all her marks....

"Hey, got another one I think you might like."

King lifts her helmet over her jaw - shadows pealing away to unveil the wide, branching scar starting from her lower lip to benath her chin. She grins to show off the extent of the injury, the skin of her lips splitting to reveal more of her gums the further her smile creeps up the side of her face.

"This one? First and only time an angel tried to mess with our staff. Something about some demon winning the soul of someone they were watching over in a gang of cards. Made a huge fuss, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. Scar I'm most proudest of."

You ghost your fingers along her jaw, smiling as she slides her large hand down your back. "Uh-huh.... Something tells me there's another reason you wanted to show me this one in particular..."

"Don't get too full of yourself... Heh, who am I kidding." Tossing her mask aside, King pulls you for a kiss - a loud, yet oddly polite banging on the door interrupting the happy moment.

"Ms.King? We are all very glad you have found someone you are willing to protect at any cause, but some guests have raised concerns about your displays of victory. Please stop stringing your prey up over the pool. This is the third time we've had to close it this month."

[macla539ac]

I once heard from a mouth with no face that all the world entire is a collapsing building.

It said no more and so I thought about the words. I thought about the words and the letters comprising the words both now and in the past and what the future might bring for them. I thought about the two words together and to what larger notion or idea or psychosis the two of them might belong. I thought for many years until I had almost forgotten the mouth that had said these words. and then the mouth reappeared.

I heard from its lips, now green with moss and slavering something brown and stinking of rot, that all the human race entire lives in a collapsing building. It said no more and so I again thought about the words. more words this time. more letters. more pasts and futures. more spheres which these words might inhabit. surely, I thought, this mouth must be here to tell me something, something important. I thought. even longer about these words and what their assemblage. might mean and what the mouth's very saying of them might entail or imply. I thought for many more years until again, the memory of the mouth and its words began to fade into the gently aching mists of forgetting. and then the mouth came again, for the last time.

I heard from its lips, now black and broken, cracked and oozing something shining strangely, blacker than black, that the building had collapsed and no one had noticed because no one notices anything except what they will notice in the first place. and no one noticed the building or its decay and failing walls and beams and foundation. they don't know anything of the building or its collapse, that it fell straight down as in a controlled demolition and that all of them now lay strewn about the remnants of a building which was the world and now is a pile of broken cement and twisted steel and pieces of people. and that no one has noticed because there is no noticing for them to have or to be had. there is no noticing, it said, and was gone forever.

[whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk]

Begged & Borrowed Time (xxxiv, ao3)

Chapter thirty-four: Feyre returns from the Spring Court with a friend.

(Prologue // previous chapter // next chapter)

He’d always known it was coming.

The anger. The fury.

Cassian had known from the start that it was there, as sharp as the blade he held in his hand, as brutal as the weapons lining the walls. Always lurking, just beneath her skin. He’d been waiting for it— for the day when Nesta Archeron erupted and let the entire world feel it.

It hadn’t ever scared him.

Not even now, as the early dawn light streamed like liquid gold through the single window set high into the stone wall of the House of Wind armoury; a place little more than a collection of shelves and a coalition of weapons deposited over the centuries. No, he hadn’t ever been afraid of that unleashing, not even as a shudder racked through him at the memory of it, an aftershock hours too late. 

Was it any wonder she had broken so thoroughly, right there on that rooftop yesterday?

Any wonder she had completely and utterly… shattered?

Oh, he’d been expecting it. And when Nesta had stumbled into his arms like he was the only safe harbour for a hundred miles, her body racked with tremors as sobs cleaved her apart from the inside out, it was all he could do to hold onto her and weather the storm right alongside her. Nesta— his Nesta, letting down that final wall she’d constructed between them, letting out twenty-five years of grief and pain and rage as her hands curled against his skin, her nails biting into his flesh until it hurt.

Not that he’d minded.

Cassian would have let her carve the heart from his chest if that had been what she needed. 

And maybe that should have terrified him. Maybe it should have triggered some basic instinct for self-preservation, at the very least. But even as his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword now - an edge shy of painful - all he could remember was how much he’d felt himself cleaving to her in that moment, like part of his soul had already attached itself irrevocably to hers. 

He couldn’t find it in him to be scared of that, either. 

He shook his head; shook off the shiver that flowed down his spine.

In the silence, he dragged his finger along the flat of the blade, searching for imperfection. There was none. None, either, in the pile of weapons that lay beside him, freshly-polished and discarded on the long wooden bench. Still, Cassian let his fingertip glide along the cold steel, testing the edge and feeling the bite of it, pulling away before it could draw blood. 

When was the last time he’d sharpened it?

Before Hybern?

Another shudder roiled across his shoulder blades, echoed through the membrane of his wings. Too long— it had been too long since he’d been here, in this room, with only silence and blades for company. 

When Rhys had been Under the Mountain, and every damned day had been an assault of guilt and worry and blame that sat like a collar around his neck, the hours spent in that armoury, sharpening his mind with every pass of the blade over the whetstone, were the only times Cassian had been able to just…think.

To busy his hands and let his mind wander. 

And it did wander, now. As his body fell into a natural rhythm, bracing the sword against the whetstone, each rasp and hiss filtering through the quiet like a well-timed metronome, his thoughts turned once again to her, the natural conclusion at the end of his every thought. 

Mother above, that kiss.

He hadn’t thought of much else in the hours since. Hadn’t ever thought the world could be so altered by something as innocent as a kiss either, but then he’d met Nesta, and ever since, every time their lips had touched, his entire foundation shifted. And on that roof, when her cheeks had been damp from tears and his every breath had been an uneven rasp… it was like the first time, all over again. 

It had gone no further. No more than the handful of kisses he’d stolen, but still he’d been left feeling, at the end of it all, like the cavity in his chest wasn’t quite as jagged as it had been before. Like something inside him had calmed, the moment he’d had a hand on her waist and fingers in her hair. 

Just a kiss— and yet his blood still heated at the memory, and when he held up his blade to inspect it, he caught sight of his reflection in the oil-slicked surface and swore he could still see the echo of her lips at the corner of his mouth; swore he could still feel her there, impressed upon his skin.

Mother’s tits. 

Emerie had called him lovesick once. What would she make of him now, he wondered, if she could see him losing all semblance of control over a single gods-damned kiss? What would she make of him, if she could see the way he so longed to say those three little words Nesta still refused to hear? If she could see the way they burned a hole right through the centre of him, the longer they went unsaid?

I love you.

With deft hands he set down his sword and plucked up a dagger; dragged it along the whetstone with a drawn-out hiss.

 I love you.

His fingers tightened on the hilt, mind drifting to the woman still sleeping upstairs, curled against her blankets as the sun drifted through the gap in the curtains, turning her hair to spun gold.

I fucking love you.

Lovesick, indeed.

Cassian cleared his throat, shifting his shoulders as he flipped the dagger in hand and set to work on the other side. He was admiring the way the steel shone like molten silver when—

Without warning, a surge of power barrelled against his mental shields.

The force of it was enough to steal Cassian’s breath, and he almost stumbled at the onslaught as the unmistakable press of cold, dark magic crashed against the walls of his mind, insistent and urgent; a violent, relentless hammering.

A tidal wave, trying to force entry.

What in the ever-loving fuck, Rhys?

Cassian dropped his shields with a snarl as familiar claws scraped along the borders of his mind, but even though Rhys was on the continent - on another of those scouting missions he’d been using to take his mind off Feyre’s absence - he was met immediately with an echo of panic so strong it was enough to buckle his knees. 

And Rhys was screaming.

Feyre, his brother keened, like all he could manage was her name, terror gripping him too tightly to allow anything else. Feyre— it’s Feyre. 

Cassian dropped the dagger with a clatter against the wooden workbench. It glinted weakly as he straightened, every one of his senses heightened as the siphon on the back of his hand began to pulse. 

Rhys, he said firmly. Calm down.

But his brother’s voice was harried, frantic, as if he hadn’t heard Cassian at all. 

The bond— it’s quiet, Cass, so quiet, like she’s…gone, and she’s not in Spring, and I can’t trace her and all I know is that she’s in trouble— I can feel it, but I can’t get to her—

Rhys, Cassian interrupted sharply, already plucking up weapons to fill the empty sheaths at his wrists and thighs. His brother continued to speak, tripping over his words, like fear had him in such a chokehold he couldn’t even pause to breathe. Rhys, Cassian said again, imbuing his voice with all of the authority that was his to command; a General, already running strategy in his mind, figuring out which pieces he needed to move on this particular chess board.  

You need to calm the fuck down.

A glimmer of shock filtered through the channel connecting Rhys’ overwrought mind to his. 

Calm down?

His voice was incredulous, but he’d taken a breath, at least. 

Cassian slid another dagger into his boot.

Tell me what happened, he said, keeping his voice steady as Rhys relayed it all again, slower this time. His voice broke only once, when he was forced to recount how the bond had gone so completely quiet, it was as though Feyre had vanished altogether. 

Cassian swore.

Without any idea where Feyre was, they would have to scour all seven fucking courts to track her down. 

Like they had the time. 

He swore again, low and filthy, but before his fingers could close around another blade, a shadow filled the doorway, rippling with the same kind of restless energy that had Cassian slipping another dagger into the sheath at his hip. With cobalt siphons gleaming and leather armour covering every inch of his frame, Azriel was armed to the teeth. Whether Rhys had stormed into his mind in a panic too, or if he’d picked up on the High Lord’s distress another way, Cassian couldn’t say. Either way a look passed between them, a grim nod exchanged as Cassian slid the Illyrian longsword into the sheath that ran parallel to his spine. 

Only Az’s shadows were absent, each one deployed already.

We’ll find her, Cassian said, turning resolutely away from the whetstone. Let us know the second you feel anything.

There was nothing but silence from Rhys’ end— silence, and a terrified shudder that had Cassian’s stomach turning. Wordless, Az turned and headed down the hallway, his boots thudding on stone as he climbed the stairs that would take him to the roof. 

Rhys, Cassian said as he followed in the shadowsinger’s wake. We’ll bring her home safe, I promise.

His brother exhaled. You fucking better. 

Cassian let absolute conviction echo down the bond until he felt his brother take another stuttering breath. He didn’t need to say anything else; all the High Lord could do now was trust his General and his Spymaster to bring his Lady home. 

And this would not be like Hybern.

Cassian would make sure of it.

He took the stairs two at a time, racing up to the roof where only yesterday, he’d had his mate in his arms, the world somehow seeming a little bit brighter for it. There was no time to spare, but as the sunlight graced his face…

He wasted all of five precious seconds to glance behind. 

Nesta was still sleeping.

He knew, because if he listened, he could hear the beat of her heart, steady. He refused to wake her and tell her where they were going— refused to hand her anything more to worry about when she had so much already. Instead, he looked at the walls of the House and said, quietly,

“Look after her for me.”

The only response was the gentle twitch of a curtain pulled across the nearest window, as if to say,

What do you think I’ve been doing all along?

***

The cold hit him first.

By the time Mor had winnowed them to the Middle - the best place, Cassian figured, to work out their next move given its central position - Rhys had picked up on a single, solitary flicker along the mating bond; a guttering flame that served as a beacon, and with the panic in his voice only slightly lessened by the assurance that Feyre was, at least, alive, the High Lord pushed a single word down the channel that connected him to his General:

Winter.

The High Lady of the Night Court was in Winter. 

Within seconds, they had been airborne, and cold air bit at his cheeks now, knifing the membrane of his wings as he flew through heavy cloud that threatened snowfall. But he’d grown up in Illyria— had been taught to survive in conditions worse than this; been taught to fight in Windhaven, where it wasn’t just the cold that could kill you, but the wind that could throw you off the mountainside and the rain that could freeze the blood inside your veins. 

He could survive Winter.

They had long since passed the border, eyes fixed on the landscape below as both he and Azriel scanned the ground from the skies. Cassian could see nothing but a frozen wasteland, everything covered in snow and ice, so homogenous he could hardly tell where the sky ended and the earth began. His breath clouded before his face, a single huff of frustration leaving him as the cold continued to needle the sensitive skin of his wings. 

Not a moment too soon, sapphire light flickered as, wordlessly, Azriel sent a bolt of power streaming through the siphon on his chest— a signal, flaring bright for less than a moment as the Shadowsinger’s gaze roved the ice below. From a distance Cassian watched as Azriel raised a hand, dark gloves stark against the grey sky. His hands were already moving to Truth-teller’s sheath, his head nodding below, to the right. Cassian looked down, glimpsed a frozen lake, seemingly endless, no shore in sight— and a familiar silhouette, racing across the ice. 

Feyre.

Sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her, with a flame-haired individual beside her.

And behind them—

Cassian snarled.

Even from a distance he recognised the posture of the Autumn Court heir, the arrogance in his gait even as he, too, ran determined across the ice.

From above he watched as Eris Vanserra and his cabal of brothers hurled fire across that frozen lake, missing Feyre only by inches as a ball of flame went wide and hit the ice a hundred yards from where she was running. The ice cracked; fissures spiderwebbing across the lake. It splintered; a sickening lurch.

Another ball of molten fire missed his High Lady, but the ice beneath her was no longer as solid as it had been before. A slick of melted water coated the surface, and as her foot slipped, Cassian’s heart leaped into his throat. 

This would not be like Hybern. 

Another thirty seconds, twenty, and they would be on the ice.

He palmed his blade.

Feyre ran in uneven lines; Cassian could hear her laboured breathing now. Beron’s sons were hardly faring much better. Their skin was paler than usual, the flames they sent Feyre’s way hardly seeming to burn as bright or as hot as they had a moment ago, and Cassian was forced to wonder if the Autumn princes had any real resilience to the cold at all— if their magic could thrive in a climate such as this.

He wondered how long they would last.

And as Cassian slammed down on the ice at last, feeling it shudder beneath the impact, he looked up, right into Eris’ eyes, felt the promise of violence simmering beneath his skin, and knew it wouldn’t be long.

***

“I missed you, Cursebreaker.”

Cassian kicked aside a discarded Autumn dagger, sending it skittering. One of Beron’s sons had hurled it at his back in a last attempt at causing some damage, but his aim had been so shocking Cassian had almost laughed. He didn’t even think what had just gone down on that frozen lake could be called a fight so much as an altercation, where both he and Az had been forced to pull punches to avoid the all-out war that would follow if they happened to kill one of Beron’s sons.

Inconvenient, really.

Cassian had gotten in a few hits on the Autumn princes - their blood was on his hands, coating his leathers in more than a few places - but he’d done no real damage, and they’d all fled with their lives intact.

Inconvenient.

A handful of meters away, Azriel was standing, silent and stoic, as he scanned the lake for any sign of further danger. The other Autumn prince lingered there too, looking towards the shore where his brothers had disappeared, and as Cassian sent a scowl in his direction, he couldn’t say for certain that all of Beron’s sons would make it to the end of the day so entirely unharmed. 

Feyre drew near to his side, a smile on her face. “Missed you too, Cassian.”

The bright, cold, winter sun alighted on the edges of that smile— so similar to her sister’s, Cassian had to remind himself to breathe. 

He recovered fast; winked. “Don’t tell Rhys that.”

Her smile warmed, eyes dancing, but before she could say whatever it was that had her lips pulling upwards, Azriel was sliding Truth-teller back into its sheath with an audible snick, striding across the ice with his shadows once more draped around his shoulders. 

“We should move,” he said flatly. “Get back behind our own borders.”

“What about him?” Cassian asked, jerking a thumb towards the Autumn prince - Lucien, he recalled - still standing a distance apart, with his long hair tangled about his shoulders and his expression betraying nothing of what he felt.

The last time Cassian had set eyes on him, it had been in that fucking throne room. 

His hand throbbed; his knuckles begging to get a little bit more bloody, like they had just a bruise or two more to bestow before he could move on. 

Az shrugged. “Not our problem.”

Feyre frowned. “He’s coming with us.”

“Feyre—“

“I’m not leaving him behind,” she hissed.

Az shot her a wary look before his eyes darted to Cassian in search of corroboration. Cassian only scowled. Truthfully, it didn’t matter if Feyre had forgiven her old friend for what had happened that night. Cassian hadn’t. He couldn’t forget that Lucien had been standing on the wrong side of that throne room, and he couldn’t have cared less what happened to the Autumn princeling now. If Feyre wanted to leave him in the wilds of winter, or take him home and have Rhys chain him up in the Court of Nightmares, he didn’t much care either way. 

He just wanted to go home.

Cassian shrugged. The Shadowsinger let out a huff - the barest sign of acquiescence - before he extended his wings with a snap that made Lucien turn his head, a furrow between his brows. He looked to Feyre, some silent conversation exchanged in nothing but glances as Cassian sighed so heavily the Cursebreaker inclined her head.

When she looked back to Lucien, he nodded.

Alright then, Cassian thought grimly. 

Az grimaced, backing away as his shadows writhed. Cassian snorted and took a step towards Feyre instead, arms extended as his freshly-healed wings stretched to catch the direction of the wind. There was no way he was going to be the one carrying Lucien like a bride until they made it to Mor and could winnow back to Velaris. He’d be too tempted to drop him. 

Feyre rolled her eyes as Azriel swore under his breath, but patted Cassian’s shoulder lightly as she stepped into his space anyway. He didn’t miss the way her eyes travelled over his wings, snagging on the ends that had been so brutally wounded the last time he’d seen her. A look of abject wonder crossed her face, lighting up her eyes. 

“Your wings,” she breathed. 

Cassian grinned as he hauled her into his arms, lifting his chin towards the sky. “All better.”

“It’s…” 

She trailed off, shaking her head, fingers digging into the leather at his shoulders as he wrapped an arm firmly around her and pushed off from the ice, letting those powerful wings catch the current and propel them skyward. Once they’d levelled out and Cassian turned his head, he spotted Azriel, glowering, with Lucien in his arms not far behind, and smothered a dry laugh. But Feyre was still looking at his wings, watching them shift and extend, like each small movement was nothing short of a miracle. 

“There isn’t even a scar,” she whispered. “Like it never happened.”

Yeah, he thought. Like it never happened.

Except he still felt the blood beneath his fingers, still heard the shatter of glass as every window in that throne room broke. Still heard Nesta’s scream, his strength failing as he pushed and pushed against that stone floor, trying so desperately to reach for her with an outstretched hand and fingers he could barely even stand to lift.

He shook his head.

Feyre swallowed, like she recognised too late that the ground she’d stepped on was too treacherous to tread. Her eyes darted to the skyline beneath them before she squeezed Cassian’s shoulder and changed the subject. As her eyes drifted back to Cassian’s face she said, quietly, 

“How is he?”

Her voice seemed to ache, and Cassian wasn’t fool enough to ask who she meant. He shrugged.

“Coping,” he said blithely, eyes trained on the horizon. “He was on the Continent when he felt the bond go dark. He… panicked.” That was putting it lightly.“He’s probably winnowing in fits and spurts as we speak, desperately racing to get home before you.”

He inclined his head to offer the Cursebreaker a small, comforting, smile. 

“To hide the evidence of all the wild parties he’s been having in your absence, obviously.”

Feyre chuckled, and Cassian couldn’t help but think of how wondrous the sound was— how incredible that she could stand to laugh at all, after all she’d been through.

“Obviously,” she echoed dryly.

Silence settled between them for a beat, the kind that held a thousand unspoken questions. He wondered who would break it first; which of them would find the strength to wrestle everything they needed to say into something that resembled words.

“My sisters,” Feyre began at last, words slow and measured. Cautious. “How are they?”

Only with effort did Cassian keep his face blank; only with effort did he fight the downward curve of his lip and the urge to close his eyes.

Where did he even begin?

Even when Elain was lucid - which wasn’t often - she didn’t seem capable of stringing more than two legible words together. And Nesta… 

The kiss on the rooftop came screaming back to him, making his wings stutter as his entire body seemed to skip a beat, like he was climbing a staircase and missed a step or three. He let the wind carry him higher, let himself coast for moment, just to get back on track.

Fucking hell, that kiss.

Soft and sweet and yet edged with the sharpness of fresh grief and a rage so absolute Nesta could level mountains if she wished. And then there was the matter of that power, that strange, cold fire of hers that none of them could understand…

Suddenly, he thought of how Nesta had grabbed his hand, terrified she had hurt him. It had grown so cold, the air around them plummeting, but Cassian had learned by now to recognise the signs of her power stirring, had figured out when it was most likely to rear its head. At first he’d thought it was just the silver fire he’d seen swirling in her eyes sometimes, but sometimes, when she looked at him…

Sometimes it felt like something far more fundamental than just silver flames.

And Mother help him, it did something to him, the way her power always seemed to stir whenever she thought he was hurt.

Rhys had mentioned a few days ago that he thought her power felt like death, but…

No. That didn’t feel quite right.

When Nesta had looked at him, demanding to see his hand, Cassian hadn’t felt death. Had felt something quite the opposite when her hands skimmed over his knuckles— something like pure power, in its rawest form.

Even now it threatened to bring him to his knees.

Feyre’s cold fingers pressed against his cheek, mistaking his silence for something else as she jerked him out of his own head, something like pity in her face.

“We’ll get through this, Cassian,” she said, with that distinctly Archeron determination that Cassian had come to associate with silver-blue eyes and a particularly ferocious scowl. “All of us.”

Still, he said nothing, casting his eyes away.

Unease writhed through him, and he kept his eyes on the horizon ahead, where Azriel had overtaken him and was flying as fast as he could, Autumn prince in his arms, like he couldn’t wait to reach Mor and get this over with. Cassian might have found it funny, had he not looked at that auburn hair and golden eye and saw nothing but Nesta on that stone floor, soaked to the skin and trembling. Even from such a distance, all he could see was her eyes, empty and cold and dead after emerging from that Cauldron. Even across all that distance, he could hear her scream.

And if her reaction to Lucien and Elain’s mating bond had been anything to go by…

Cassian gritted his teeth.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked Feyre, nodding to Lucien up ahead as a frown made itself at home between his brows. “There’s no going back once he knows about Velaris.”

Feyre looked torn, but, ultimately, she nodded. “Yes.”

Cassian clenched his jaw. “And Elain…”

“I trust him. He won’t… do anything.”

This time, Cassian didn’t bother to hide the grimace on his face. There was no telling with mated males, and he’d be lying if he said he trusted Lucien at all after the shit he and Tamlin had pulled in Hybern. He remembered, too, how Nesta had been so resolutely furiously when Cassian had broached the subject of Lucien that day, the day he’d woken up properly and saw her for the first time since he’d blacked out from blood loss. Another grimace twisted his features.

“I hope you’re right, Cursebreaker,” he muttered. 

And I hope you’re ready for Nesta’s wrath. 

***

From the moment the warm panelled walls of the town house came into view, Cassian could practically taste the tension.

The sunlight streamed across the polished tiles and the air was thick with the scent of fresh flowers, but despite the familiarity and comfort that came with coming home, something lingered that made the atmosphere tight and uneasy, like a shadow lurking in the corner. Cassian tapped his foot— felt something uncomfortable twist in his chest.

Because Lucien Vanserra stood in Rhys’ entrance hall, and Cassian hadn’t decided yet if he was friend or foe. 

It wasn’t right. 

None of it.

Yet he couldn’t leave, not when Mor angled herself in front of Feyre, leaving Az and Cassian to stand on either side of her like sentries. Gods knew Cassian wanted nothing more than to fly back up to the House and finish sharpening his blades before going in search of his mate, but duty demanded he stay and protect his High Lady.

Still, the longer he looked at Lucien standing alone in the centre of that wide entrance hall, the closer he came to saying fuck duty altogether. 

The Autumn prince turned slowly on the spot, casting his eyes across every surface like he was stunned it existed at all. The sun alighted on his tanned skin - a curiously darker shade than any his brothers possessed - and Cassian leaned casually against the bannister, folding his arms across his chest and kicking one ankle over the other in a pose so relaxed it might have been considered friendly, were it not for the way he cracked his knuckles before tucking them behind his elbows. 

Lucien didn’t react. He was too busy looking towards the door that led to the street, listening to the sounds of the city beyond. His jaw slackened. 

Shock— it was shock written all over the prince’s face now. 

Cassian didn’t take his eyes off of him, not even when Amren stalked out of the front room and wordlessly placed herself directly between Lucien and Feyre, sizing him up like she would like nothing more than to peel the skin from his bones. Lucien stilled, but didn’t move so much as a single muscle as Amren circled him.

It was almost impressive, the way he refused to flinch. 

And the entire time, Cassian was fighting the urge to dart out of that door and race right up to the House of Wind. 

“Welcome to Velaris,” Feyre said at last, breaking the silence in a voice that seemed far steadier than it had before, like being back on Night Court soil strengthened her the way little else could.

“You really are High Lady of the Night Court,” Lucien said in a whisper, turning his head to Feyre. She swallowed, lifting her chin as she nodded, but…

It wasn’t Feyre who spoke next.

“Indeed she is.”

The voice was a thick, dark purr that slunk through the entrance hall like syrup. When Cassian turned, he found his brother standing against the opposite wall like he’d been there all along, and not as if it was the only damned thing keeping him upright. Rhys was in his habitual black, not a whisper of wings to be seen, nor any hint at all that not even an hour ago, he’d been tearing across the continent in a blind panic, racing home, fearing for his mate’s life.

Nothing, except the fading-fast look in his eyes; the hollow echo that said he’d endured hell for the past few hours. 

Feyre made a small sound in the back of her throat— a sob caught halfway between a whimper and a delirious laugh. When she lunged for her mate, Cassian could do nothing but watch as his brother fell to his knees. 

Nothing but watch as Feyre sank to the floor before him too, her knees pressed against his and her head bowed as Rhys enfolded her in his arms, like the rest of the world had ceased to matter. Cassian swallowed, a familiar ache pulling at the strings of his heart, but he didn’t leave. Not yet. Instead he lingered, his eyes darting once to Lucien as Rhys pressed a kiss to Feyre’s temple, his hands running down the sides of her arms as he desperately checked her over for injury. Their words were in whispers, clashing, like there was too much they had to say to one another and not enough time to say it. When Feyre pressed her face into the space between Rhys’ neck and shoulder, the High Lord’s fingers cradled the back of her head, tangling in her hair. He managed to lift his eyes for a single moment - just one - to look at Cassian and Azriel both. 

Thank you, he said silently.

His violet eyes were rimmed with unshed tears, and Cassian could manage only a single nod in response before he needed to look away.

Yearning tightened his throat, made it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t borne of jealousy, not exactly, but… Rhys’ desperation was an uncomfortable echo of Cassian’s own, like the shadow of a wound he was still healing from. And Rhys might have been reunited with his mate, finding peace in her arms, but even that kiss on the roof hadn’t been enough to make Cassian forget the agony it had been to watch as Nesta was thrown into that Cauldron. The sound of her voice, unharmed now, still not enough to make him forget the nightmare of her screams.

And still there was a distance between them that he couldn’t help but curse— one that hadn’t been there before Hybern, that had Nesta keeping him at arms length, like she was terrified, now, of it all being snatched away again.

Cassian swallowed again, glancing to the window and looking across the city. To the House, the windows reflecting the sunlight, shining like shards of silver embedded in the stone.

Would he ever shake it, he wondered?

That feeling of being only half alive, half himself, in her absence?

No.

Some intrinsic, fundamental part of him suspected the answer was a resounding no.

He almost snorted; almost turned heel and left his High Lord and High Lady right there, tangled on the damned floor like they’d forgotten the rest of them existed. Rhys certainly didn’t seem able to tear his eyes away from his mate for a single second, not even when Feyre pulled away just enough to glance over her shoulder towards Lucien. Rhys didn’t even blink as he brushed a strand of hair back from her face before gently turning her head back towards him with his fingers curled beneath her chin.

And with Feyre’s eyes once more attached to Rhys’, the High Lord cleared his throat and said, to the room at large,

“Why don’t you all go find somewhere else to be for a while?”

***

Keep him occupied, Rhys had said. 

Before he winnowed away, before he lost himself all over again in his mate— keep him occupied, after his midnight claws had tapped gently on the barriers of Cassian’s mind. Before Cassian could even respond, Rhys had severed the connection. 

Bastard. 

He huffed. Mor had already winnowed away; Amren, already stalking home after shooting a hiss in Lucien’s direction. Cassian wanted nothing more than to tell Az to deal with the Lucien problem - wanted to tell Rhys to get fucked for leaving the Autumn prince like this in the first place, little more than discarded luggage. He’d spent the past few hours counting down the minutes until he could return to Nesta, but… what sort of piss-poor general would he be if he left Tamlin’s closest friend unsupervised in the heart of their territory?

He glanced up at the House in the distance.

Maybe it made him the worst general alive, but still he had to remind himself of all the reasons he needed to stay. 

So given all that, he was pleased, really, that he managed to make it out of the door, down the garden path, and all the way to the street before he stopped the Autumn prince by bringing a hand down firmly on his shoulder— a full thirty paces from the front door.

Thirty.

Let nobody say he didn’t know how to control his temper. 

It was only respect for Feyre that had Cassian smothering his snarl.

“Let me make one thing clear before we go anywhere,” Cassian said lowly, his voice little more than a growl as he stopped Lucien in his tracks. A pace ahead, Az halted. “I don’t care how ignorant you were of Hybern’s plans. The next time I see Tamlin—“

“Is this the part where you dole out your threats?” Lucien interrupted, tugging himself free of Cassian’s grip with a sharp twist of his shoulder. “I’m surprised it took so long.”

At that, Cassian did snarl. “I don’t trust you, princeling. Not for a fucking minute.”

Lucien snorted. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”

“Feyre might,” Cassian pushed, his voice dropping to a low, frenetic thrum, “but has she bothered to ask you the most important question yet?” His lip curled, his face twisting into a sneer as he looked into that golden eye and tried to find something there— some indication of which way Lucien might fall. His every word was clipped, his tone nothing short of hostile. “Has anybody bothered to ask you what you would do, if it came down to it, and you were forced to choose? Where would those loyalties of yours lie?”

A beat hung between them— an uncomfortable breath of silence, steeped in tension and weighed with animosity. Cassian growled, low in his throat.

“Would you side with the mate you don’t know? Or the Lord - the friend - you’ve served for decades?”

Lucien stilled, his entire body taut. He didn’t back away, didn’t shift his gaze. Instead, he only looked up into Cassian’s face and quietly, but not at all softy said, “You already know the answer to that.”

“Do I, now?”

“Yes,” Lucien said, voice dropping to a hard, pointed whisper. A knowing glint crept into his russet eye as he tilted his head. “After all, who would you choose if you were forced to pick between Rhys and Feyre’s sister?”

It took a moment for the words to register. A moment where Cassian’s jaw slackened and a flicker of surprise danced across his face before his mind caught up and his eyes narrowed in a glare not just reminiscent of Nesta, but an exact mirror of her. 

Had Feyre told Lucien about the bond? Or had it been that magic eye of his, seeing far too much?

It didn’t matter, he supposed.

Lucien was right. He did know the answer.

No matter how uncomfortably it sat in his chest, or how much it burned like a hot coal carried in bare hands. If it came down to it… there was nobody who mattered more to him, now. And for that, was he any better than Lucien at all? 

Was he any better than Tamlin?

“If you need assurances on my loyalty, General, then you need only ask yourself what you would do in my situation. Is that enough for you?”

Cassian snorted.

No— it wasn’t enough. But there was something sobering in Lucien’s face, and Cassian didn’t need a magic eye to see the sincerity. Suddenly, he felt hollow. The spectre of that Illyrian village loomed in his memory, blood stained snow and broken glass, the manifestation of every regret Cassian had ever harboured. And if the situations were reversed, and he had met Nesta for the first time in that throne room…

He took a breath. 

It wasn’t forgiveness; not even a semblance of it. But as Cassian held Lucien’s hard stare and waited for the prince to blink, he thought he might somehow find a way to respect the man who had just walked into unknown territory, outnumbered and unarmed, in the name of protecting his friend and finding his mate. Begrudgingly, Cassian had to admit there was something admirable about it, especially when he gave Lucien a long look, studying his face for the slightest hint of deception, and found nothing. 

A step away, Azriel’s shadows curled around his shoulders, reaching up to whisper in his ear, and as Cassian flicked his gaze to his brother, he fixed his attention to the siphons on his hands— watched them remain steady, not a single flicker in the stone to indicate a rising temper. Indeed, after a long moment where Az looked Lucien over with methodical precision, the spy master nodded.

He’d found nothing, either. 

But when he pulled his eyes away from Lucien and that curious golden eye of his, Azriel let out a soft, quiet sigh. Another shadow skittered up over his arm and wrapped itself around his neck, bold in the bright light that streamed from the cloudless sky. Az’s face was blank as he cleared his throat, aiming an almost apologetic glance in his brother’s direction. 

“You know I can’t stay,” he said, his words clipped. “There’s too much I need to take care of.”

Under his breath, Cassian swore. He’d known it was coming, of course. After all, the political balance of all seven courts had just been upended in a single fucking morning— Night’s altercation with Autumn on Winter soil - ice? - after Feyre’s escape from Spring meant the delicate political balancing act was about to get a hell of a lot more fucking precarious, and as spymaster, Az needed a solid foothold in all of the courts involved. 

It didn’t stop him from curling his hands into fists inside his pockets. 

“Can I trust you not to throw Beron’s son in the Sidra?” Az asked with a raised brow.

Lucien scowled, but whether it was a result of the threat of being thrown in the river, or merely the reduction of him to Beron’s son, Cassian couldn’t tell. In any case, he only snorted as the Autumn prince folded his arms over his chest, and he didn’t bother to answer before Azriel gave another long-suffering sigh, an exasperated look, and winnowed into nothing. 

***

With the sun on his face, Lucien looked every inch the embodiment of Autumn.

Standing on that same bridge across the Sidra where Feyre and Cassian had paused the night Hybern had arrived, his auburn hair was set aflame by the golden light, his skin as burnished as autumn leaves. But the prince didn’t look at the gouges in the stone, or the scars left by Hybern’s blades. Didn’t seem to notice the way the railings were slightly bent a little further down, from the weight of a queen’s body after it had been spiked upon the iron.

Lucien didn’t know to notice.

Cassian did. 

The blood might have been cleared away, and the rubble too, but when Cassian cast his eyes out over the Rainbow, there were still too many boarded-up windows to count. 

“I knew of you, once,” Lucien mused quietly, resting his wrists on the wrought-iron; each filigreed twist having been so carefully cleaned of the ash that had rained from the sky that night. “Tamlin spoke of you— and Eris, too. And yet those years Under the Mountain… I had no recollection of you at all.”

Cassian stiffened, coming to stand beside Lucien and sliding his hands into his pockets. He forced himself to shrug. “Those years were kind to none of us.”

He certainly hadn’t forgiven Rhys yet for leaving him behind. Forcing him to the sidelines whilst the world around him burned. Lucien let out a strangled laugh, a bitter sound that got caught in his throat as his eyes scanned the city again, as if still waiting for the glamour to be ripped away. Hybern hung unspoken in the air between them— the events of that night, curdling like milk. Cassian sighed as he tipped his head back, wondering what he’d done in a past life that warranted this. 

“You should know,” he began, “that there are people in this city who won’t be pleased to see you.”

Lucien cleared his throat. “Elain.”

Cassian inclined his head. “She’s certainly one of them.”

If she wakes up long enough to see you, that is.

“I’ll only ever want what’s best for her,” Lucien said, his voice slow, contemplative. But there was a hint of pain there, too; agony borne of regret and grief.  His brow furrowed, the scar cutting through it pulled taut. Gods, Amarantha had done that with her bare hands. “But I don’t know her. She’s a stranger to me.”

Cassian cast him a sideways glance. “Do you want to know her?”

An incredulous lift of one brow was Lucien’s only response, like it was the most ludicrous question in the world. He didn’t bother to dignify it with an answer, only cast his eyes back out over the river, as if he could see all the way to the Continent itself.  

“You know how it feels,” Lucien said slowly, not tearing his away from the horizon, where the blue of the Sidra met the sea. 

“No,” Cassian argued stiffly. “I don’t.”

“Nesta is—“

“Not a stranger. She’s not a stranger to me.”

He thought of all the times he’d had his mouth on hers, her name whispered in the space between them like it was a fucking prayer and he a penitent on his knees. Thought of that kiss on the roof and the way, even now, his body screamed for more.

“Then you were given a chance I wish I could have had,” Lucien admitted quietly.

And there it was— the heart of it all. It was only through a quirk of fate that Cassian wasn’t feeling what Lucien was now. Only a chance meeting in a dining room below the wall, and the handful of letters that had kept giving him a reason to go back. So easily, so nearly, could it have been Cassian been in Lucien’s shoes.

Sighing, he clapped the Autumn prince on the shoulder. Not forgiven— he was not forgiven. But Cassian could respect it. Could respect a man with a scar like that, earned in defence of his friend, whose first act upon realising Elain was his mate was to drape his jacket around her shoulders, like the thought of her being cold was abhorrent. And after all, how many times had Cassian shuddered to think of Nesta being cold?

Fuck— he’d been apart from her too long already.

“She doesn’t know,” he said firmly, his voice holding a quiet, soft menace. “Nesta. She doesn’t know about the bond.”

Despite the uneasy truce they’d stumbled into, he didn’t bother to conceal the warning. The threat, that if Lucien decided to reveal what he knew, he’d have a black eye alongside his golden one. 

A mere tilt of the head was the only indication that Lucien didn’t fully understand why Cassian hadn’t told her yet, but eventually he nodded, and Cassian smothered the unease as, without warning, he was suddenly forced to wonder how much time he had before the truth of it was out in the open anyway. There were too many threads to keep track of now— too many people that knew the truth. Sooner or later, one was bound to slip from his grasp.

And he needed to prepare himself for the very real, very tangible possibility that Nesta simply would not want it.

Cassian turned to lean his forearms on the railings, overlooking the river. He watched the current writhe; wondered if that’s what he looked like inside— a restless current, twisting and turning. Lucien joined him, a strange, unlooked-for understanding settling between them as he dipped his chin. Then there was silence, like there was nothing more to say.

When Rhys’ claws tapped once more at the barrier of his mind, Cassian welcomed it. 

Cass, his brother said. Already his voice had lost the edge it had sported since Hybern. Bring Lucien to the town house.

***

“Nice jewellery,” Cassian murmured once he’d escorted Lucien back and stood once more in that panelled entrance hall thick with the scent of flowers. Feyre had looked at Lucien’s travel-stained clothes and winced, like she’d forgotten to offer him the chance to bathe before Rhys had spirited her away, and as her eyes trailed across her friend’s tangled hair, Cassian’s gaze dipped to her hand.

To the ring she was wearing on her finger— and the matching one on Rhys’.

His brother gave him a lopsided smile as he hummed in response, violet eyes skipping down to his hand. Like he had yet to convince himself the ring was real.

Good, Cassian thought as his chest warmed. Good for them both.

Because who would have thought, just a year ago, that they’d be standing here right now? That Rhys would have that ring on his finger? 

His throat suddenly felt tight.

Feyre ushered Lucien into the sitting room, but Rhys hovered by the doorway. He tilted his head, as if to say, are you coming or going?

Cassian’s eyes dipped back to that ring on Rhys’ finger, and there it was again— the echo of that same feeling he’d felt before, when he’d watched Feyre collapse into Rhys’ arms. Not jealousy— never jealousy. But a yearning so painful it threatened to stop the heart in his chest anyway. 

“I’m…” Cassian trailed off. Cleared his throat. “Somebody should to go and tell the House to get a room ready.”

Rhys raised a single sable brow.

Was it obvious, Cassian wondered, that the fact he so desperately needed to get out of there had nothing at all to do with Lucien and everything to do with that ring on Rhys’ finger? And the fact that where Feyre had gained a ring, Nesta had lost one? Cassian hadn’t stopped thinking about that empty space on her finger since the first time he’d saw it, and fucking hell, if he didn’t want - need - to be the one that filled that space next.

“Besides,” he quipped when he recognised that look in Rhys’ eyes— the one that said he wasn’t buying it for a second. Cassian plastered on his best grin, his most convincing smirk as he drawled, “No one wants to share a house with you two right now.”

His brother rolled his eyes, mollified a little as his hand darted out to smack Cassian upside the head. That smile still lingered at the corner of his mouth, like having Feyre back had given him a way to breathe again, and he wasn’t about to argue, no matter how much bullshit he suspected.

“Fuck off then,” Rhys said lightly. And then his tone turned softer, his eyes drifting back to the ring on his finger before darting back up, holding Cassian’s gaze as his hand alighted on his shoulder, silver ring glinting in the sun like it contained within its band an entire lifetime filled with promise. “And tell Nesta I send my regards.”

Taglist: @asnowfern @podemechamardek @c-e-d-dreamer @lady-winter-sunrise @starryblueskies7 @melphss @sv0430 @that-little-red-head @misswonderflower @fwiggle @tanishab, @xstarlightsupremex @burningsnowleopard @hiimheresworld @wannawriteyouabook @hereforthenessian @valkyriesupremacy @kale-theteaqueen @moodymelanist @talkfantasytome @pyxxie @jmoonjones @unlikelypersonalknight1 @pham-tastical

[sephirthoughts]

Vincent's New Kid Just Dropped CH 11: Present Day With Short Deepground Flashback

NOTE: It's not a time skip in the Deepground section, it's just to frame Nero's physical trauma more. All that story is still going to be told!

Rating: Mature

WARNINGS: torture, captivity, phantom pain, PTSD

NOW WITH @siringadev's beautiful father-son art!

⚰️🕷️

father and son trying to out-edgelord each other but who is winning

it's vincent

After the Restrictor came, and they implanted those chips in everyone, they sedated Nero and carried him to a dark, cavernous place, in the lowest sub-level of Deepground. Industrial power tools whirred and shrieked. He awoke feeling the vibrations in his skull. 

Men were locking heavy shackles onto his wings, at six points. The shackles, they attached to the type of chains that are used for boat anchors; made of iron and as thick as a man’s arm. The chains were hung through huge, steel rings, bolted to a massive support pillar, and hooked up to a construction winch, on the other side. 

The Restrictor turned the winch and drew the chains tighter and tighter, laughing while the teenaged boy screamed in agony, pulling Nero’s wings higher and spreading them wider apart, till his shoulder blades felt like they were about to be dislocated, and his feet couldn’t properly rest on the ground. 

That was the position he was locked in. Splayed against the gigantic support pillar, like a butterfly pinned to a display board. Muzzled and bound in a straitjacket. Chained by his wings, to the literal foundation of Deepground. 

The only way to relieve the pain of bearing his weight on his wings, was to push himself up on tip-toe. He could only do that for so long, before his legs began to tremble with fatigue. Try as he might, his strength would eventually fail, and his legs give out. Then his wings would catch his full weight, and he would scream in agony again. 

The Restrictor often lingered nearby, watching him go through this process, drinking in the boy’s tormented groans and cries of distress, with lascivious glee. But he also observed the boy growing stronger and stronger…and more dangerous.

Nero curled up, as the lightning bolts of pain racked his body again, mouth hanging open, a clear stream drool running out onto the floor. Where was his muzzle? Where was his straitjacket? He’d had some kind of cotton jersey shirt on his top half, but he had clawed and torn it to shreds, and it now lay in a purple pile on the floor.

He heard a noise behind him, but he didn’t have time to work out what it was, before he felt the darkness react to something, like a dog jumping in excitement, when its master walks in the door. Weiss! It must be Weiss! he thought, deliriously. Tears of joy leaked from the sides of his eyes, even as they were squeezed shut against the pain. 

“W—Weiss…” he rasped, as the darkness reached out toward his beloved. His only one.

He was hauled up to a sitting position, and strong arms wrapped around him from behind, like bands of iron, compressing his crossed arms on his chest, in that familiar position. He was pressed tight against a stone-hard body and lifted to his feet, but…something was wrong. The darkness was curling happily around the person, but making no connection. Not Weiss! his mind screamed.

Enraged, Nero gave his lithe torso a sudden twist, like a snake, trying to wrench himself free, but the arms held him fast. “What the fuck!”

“Calm down,” a smooth, deep voice said, right in his ear. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you! Let me go!” he snarled, thrashing harder, still to no observable effect.

Vincent sighed. “Nero, I know you’re in pain. Let me help—”

“I don’t need your help you bastard!” he roared, kicking his legs, trying to throw this human monolith off balance. He may as well have struggled against the planet itself, for all the man moved. Panting and shaking with fatigue, from even that brief effort, he gave up and hung limply in Vincent’s arms. “I h—I hate you. Fucking die.”

“I can’t.”  

As Vincent said this, the room exploded into a whirling, crimson blur, and suddenly, they were atop the roof of the house. Nero’s bare feet stood on the sandy grit of the roof tiles, and blowing wind brought the scent of rain, from the rolling, grey storm clouds, that were obscuring the moon. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, in real bewilderment. 

“I think I can help, with your pain,” a rasping, resonant, entirely demonic voice answered. “But I can’t try it inside the house. My wings are too big.”

Chaos. The demon’s familiar aura sent shivers of elation up Nero’s spine and made him sick to his stomach, at the same time. He felt bloodthirsty, resentful, filled with rage and grief and underneath it all, a deep, hollow ache. A longing as fathomless as the abyss.

“How do you know I’m in pain?” 

“Sephiroth explained, after you went upstairs.”

“Can he ever mind his own business?” Nero grumbled, under his breath.

Acting entirely without his input, Nero’s darkness tendrils suddenly burst out of the black markings all over his body and plunged directly into Chaos, connecting them, like it was plugging him into a power source. 

Horrified, Nero tried to make them come back, but his knees buckled and his vision went blank, just then, his brain shorted out by the sudden exposure to unfiltered Chaos energy. 

When his vision returned, the demon was still holding him, the same way—Nero’s arms restrained in straitjacket position, and his bare back pressed to its midsection—steadying him on his feet, so he didn’t fall off the roof. 

He was trying work out what the hell Chaos was playing at, when he felt it. A dizzying rush of relief, pouring in through the wing brackets on his shoulder blades and coursing through his body. Lack of pain so potent, it was ten times more intoxicating than the headiest pleasure. 

Involuntarily, Nero’s head dropped back onto Chaos’ chest and he gave a shuddering moan, as he began to unfurl the demon’s huge, membranous wings, slowly and stiffly, spreading them as wide as they could go. 

Tears poured unchecked down his ashen face, weeping openly, as he stretched and folded the wings on the demon’s back, savoring every movement, feeling the contorted phantom segments straightening out, the excruciating knots loosening, the throbbing tautness unwinding. 

Nero’s body now felt relaxed and comfortable, being held tightly in Chaos’ arms. Actually, he hadn’t felt this good since…well, in a long time. Now that they believed everything was back as it was supposed to be, the formerly tormented nerves were humming with vitality. Suddenly, the urge to use the wings he’d missed so sorely, was so strong he could taste it.

Nero’s own wings had nothing to do with his ability to defy gravity, so it was something of a shock to him, when he gave Chaos’ wings an exploratory flap, and the two rocketed into the air. 

He jolted and cried out in alarm, as the ground fell away and the rooftop shrank below them at a dizzying speed. Chaos, however, appeared patently unconcerned, only taking control to give his wings a few beats (to stop them plummeting directly back out of the sky, and to gain some height for safety reasons), then returning control to Nero. 

Nero wasn’t afraid of heights in the least, but he didn’t particularly want to smack into the earth like a meteor, so he scrambled to flap the massive wings. With an effort, he got them under good enough control to keep aloft, then gingerly began to try changing direction. 

He was uncoordinated, and kept going awkwardly off kilter. They tumbled and veered multiple times, before he actually began to get the hang of it. But by the time half an hour had passed, Nero was able to fly in relatively steady circles, above the Valentine-Highwind property.  

All this time, not a single word passed between himself and the ancient demon, whose body he was essentially sharing, at the moment, but at times he could feel its wordless intent, guiding him. Spread. Glide. Tuck. Bank left. More thrust on the right. 

It occurred to him, with a series of complicated emotions, that his father was teaching him to fly. Just like a real father teaching his real son to ride a bicycle. Patiently and calmly, ready to catch him, if he fell. He felt something deep inside him, begin to crack. 

Nero, being Nero, bridled and balked. Furious with himself, for being so soft and stupid, and letting himself be taken in so easily, he sullenly withdrew his control from the wings and let them fall, till Chaos lazily caught them and swooped back upward, with effortless elegance, as if it were no more difficult than breathing. 

That drew Nero right back out of his morose ruminations. He had thought he’d been doing well, but he clearly had no idea what flying even was. Chaos used far fewer wing beats to achieve the same height and speed, and seemed to be exerting ten times less effort. What the hell? How was it that much different to what he’d been doing?

Spinning like a corkscrew, the demon rapidly ascended, higher and higher, till they emerged from the storm cover in the clear, black sky, where the air became thin and icy-cold, and the the moon shone pure and bright over the sea of clouds. 

Nero was staring in undisguised awe at the tens of thousands of glittering stars, when Chaos tucked his wings tightly against his body and dropped abruptly into a freefall. Nero’s stomach flipped and he had to choke down a cry. They fell faster and faster, the wind beating furiously at his face, making his eyes tear up, as they plunged back into the grey clouds, plummeting earthward at terminal velocity.

Just above the treeline, Chaos extended his wings partway and used the downward momentum to shoot forward like a bullet, speeding over the blurred tops of the trees. 

As if on cue, thunder rolled and lighting crackled, as the heavy clouds burst, at last. The cold water droplets lashed Nero’s face and his bare torso, as they flew at that logic-defying speed, but he was actually rather thrilled by it. He wasn’t bothered by cold, and he’d never felt rain before. 

Apparently sensing that the weather didn’t trouble his passenger, Chaos kept going, soaring nonchalantly through blinding sheets of rain, doing spectacular loops and dizzying barrel rolls, throwing off spirals of water as they went. 

Nero had to force down the swell of mirth, that bubbled up in his chest, at the idea of this apocalyptic demon playing around in the rain, to amuse itself. Chaos was having fun, and it showed. If he could have admitted it, without gagging to death, so was Nero.

More than two hours evaporated, and soon they were circling back around toward home—er…toward the Valentine-Highwind house. When they got in close, rather than landing, Chaos did that teleportation thing with the whirling crimson, and they were simply standing in Nero’s room. 

Nero hadn’t got his sea legs yet, and turned around unsteadily to blink up at Chaos, who was Vincent again, in his slashed up black jeans and crimson henley, with that stupid headband, as usual. He was also perfectly dry, as opposed to Nero, who was soaking wet, from head to toe, black hair pasted to his white forehead, and quickly creating a puddle, on the wood floor. 

Conveniently, Sephiroth (because the world had gone thoroughly insane, and the hero of Wutai was now some kind of super-housewife) had left folded bath towels on the dresser, and put the fresh linens on the bed, while they were out.

Before Nero could say anything, Vincent picked up an oversized bath towel and spread it open, holding it up between them, like a privacy screen. Not quite understanding the prudishness of the gesture, Nero peeled off his soaking wet jeans and underwear, then let Vincent wrap the plushy towel around him. 

He still had no idea how to process what happened, tonight. No idea what it meant, or how to react. So he just stood there, dazed, while his father carefully rubbed his long hair, with the other towel. 

Fatigue settled on him, with the warmth and the weight of the gentle touch. Now that the pain was alleviated, he was exhausted, down to his bones. Without realizing it, his eyes drooped shut, and his head began to tip forward, by degrees, till it was resting against Vincent’s chest. 

Darkness tendrils slithered out of the black markings, all over his naked body, and coiled themselves around Vincent’s arms and waist and neck, like affectionate boa constrictors. If they could purr, they would have, fucking embarrassing things.

“Nero.”

“Mm?”

“The next time you’re in pain, don’t wait for it to become unbearable. Come to me, and I’ll help you.”

…

“Mn.”

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY:

nero the wet cat: *HISSSS GRRR HISSSSS* cat dad vincent: *pats dry with towel* nero the dry cat: …. *purr*

LINK TO NEXT CHAPTER:

[tc-doherty]

Book One | Chapter One

Index | Next Chapter

Tag List: @bloodlessheirbyjacques @magefaery @did-i-do-this-write @marrowwife @rainbow-snow-writes @muddshadow @outpost51 @full-on-sam @bluberimufim @unclear-contributions @talesfromtheunknowable @guessillcallitart @flowerprose

(Ask to be added or removed)

Knights all looked the same.

It had been years beyond counting since the last knight had dared Dragon's Keep, but from her place in the castle's tallest remaining tower she could tell that this one was no different from the others who had tried and failed over the years.

Her eyesight was better than a human's. Even from this height she could see that the steel armor encasing his arms and legs, well shined by some probably overworked squire, was scratched and dented. His surcoat was plain, with no heraldry in sight. The sword at his hip was gaudy, but the hilt was only gold leaf and glass gems, the latter cracked and the former beginning to flake. His destrier was red roan under its bulky iron barding, rather than the preferred white or black of older days.

He was a knight, but not a wealthy one. That was certainly why he was here.

Scattered bits of gold and silver lay around her feet. The hoard itself was behind her, the coins and gems, jewelry and weapons, crowns and idols and assorted other treasures that her mother had collected formed an untidy pile against the far wall. Coins clinked and chimed under her feet as she moved closer to the window. Slender brown fingers curled around the edge of the granite windowsill as she leaned forward and peered down at the knight below.

He had come to a stop. The horse shuddered and stamped one large hoof onto the dirt. The knight patted it idly on the neck to quiet it and lifted his visor – just enough to show pale skin, blue eyes, and a shock of golden hair.

From his point of view, the place must look abandoned. He had already passed the outer wall with its ivy-covered stones and the broken wrought iron gate hanging at an angle from busted hinges. The scene inside the walls was not any more welcoming.

She could picture what he was seeing, having played on these grounds her whole life. No carts had been by in so long that it took a dragon's eye to see the rutted dirt roads under encroaching grass and wildflowers. The bushes here and there stood large and untrimmed. Huge weathered chunks of stone lay scattered around the base of the tower where bits of wall had crumbled and gone unrepaired. The rest of the castle beyond the tower was in worse shape still. Most of the walls had toppled centuries ago and only the foundations remained.

All that only accounted for natural decay. There were also unmistakable signs of dragons. The air smelled slightly of smoke, copper, and the dry, cool scent of scales. Claw marks as deep as a man's hand adorned the trees and remaining walls. The ground at the tower's base was scorched black and had been artistically decorated with the bones of other foolish knights.

She smiled. That had been her touch, and she had sent many knights running with those bones alone.

Her work did not go unnoticed. The destrier saw the bones, smelled the air, and fidgeted. The knight, intentionally or otherwise, ignored the signs. He urged his mount forward. The horse moved with visible reluctance. It shook its head, nostrils flaring, ears flicking back and forth at the smallest noise. She couldn't see its eyes, but she knew they would be ringed with white. Its hooves pawed at the blackened ground.

Her mother descended right on time.

The dragon plummeted towards the earth with a roar that shook the tower and caused even more items to slide off the hoard and roll around the room. The girl in the tower ignored this interruption, keen as ever to watch her mother fight.

Her mother's obsidian scales glinted in a riot of ghostly colors as she fell through the sunlight. It might look careless, but her dive was as carefully controlled as any falcon's. Just as it seemed she would surely crash into the ground and save the knight the trouble of fighting her, black wings opened with a snap and she landed lightly on all fours. The girl thought, not for the first time, that dragons truly were the most graceful of creatures.

The warhorse screamed and reared but did not run. The dragon was three times its size, but it bellowed its defiance and stood firm. Perhaps it was not such a cheap horse as she had assumed, it had clearly had some actual training. But she knew it would make no difference in the end. She had seen this exact farce a hundred times.

The black dragon reared too, swinging back like a snake about to bite – except she produced fire rather than venom.

With a tug at the reins and a tap of his heels, the knight directed his horse aside just in time to avoid the jet of golden flame. He was not so lucky with the whiplike tail that followed after. It slammed into the horse's armor-covered side with a noise like a bell ringing. The force of the blow toppled the horse and sent it and its rider down in a tangled heap of armor and thrashing legs.

Before he had even regained his feet, the knight managed to unhook a painted steel shield from his saddle just in time to block her mother's second burst of fire. The horse screamed as sparks made contact, but the shield held back most of the flames and both were able to stand to challenge her mother once again.

High above the fight, she frowned. In the past her mother had been able to melt through shields in an instant. In the past, the knight would never have been able to stand again. But dragon's fire cooled over the years until it flickered out altogether, and her mother was no longer young. But age did not affect her cunning, nor her will to fight.

The dragon reared again. This time rather than fire she lashed out with her front feet. One foot hit the knight and sent him flying into a cluster of bushes. The other smacked down on the destrier's rump. Her claws slipped off the polished iron barding.

The horse's ears were flat back and his limbs trembled with fear but he did as he had been trained. He kicked out with both strong back legs and was rewarded by the sharp sound of bones cracking.

The girl frowned again. That was foolish. Like any other flying creature, dragons' bones were hollow, and broke easily. In the past her mother would have been fast enough to avoid that, but here too her age was showing.

Down below her mother hissed in pain and pulled back her injured foot. She directed a short spurt of fire at the offending horse, who still refused to bolt. It turned and cantered over to where the knight was chopping his way out of the bush into which he had fallen.

The dragon followed, ready to continue.

She reared up again as she neared the bush, certainly preparing for the final blow.

The knight stood up in a shower of cut branches, tossed aside his shield, and lunged.

The black dragon screamed, a cross between the call of a hunting hawk and a wolf's howl.

She wrenched herself free from the knight and his blade, which had already begun to melt. The dragon sprang for the sky. Her tail caught the knight across the chest and knocked him back into the smoldering remains of the foliage.

The effort of flying only widened the ugly gash in her belly. No longer predator, but wounded prey, she half crawled and half flew up the side of the tower. She let herself fall through a dragon sized hole in the roof and collapsed in a heap at her daughter's feet.

"Mother!" The girl cried. In the language of dragons, even that distressed cry was full of fang and fire. She waded through the trickles of blood and melting gold to put her hands against the gash and try to push the sundered flesh together again.

The dragon shuddered, and with a peculiar shrugging motion, began to shrink.

"Mother, you can't shapeshift right now!" said the girl. "You'll heal faster in your true form."

Even in this condition, her mother managed to laugh. She stopped transforming and pressed her snout to her daughter's forehead, speaking with gentle practicality. "It's time for my fire to go out, dear one. And truly, I could not wish for a better exit. Would you have me stay here and perish of boredom and old age?"

"Mother!"

"All things change around us, that is the knowledge of dragons as you are well aware. But I would gift you my cloak of scales so that it might protect you, even though I no longer can."

When the dragon began transforming again, the girl did not try to stop her, even as the shifting skin and muscle ripped the gash wider and spilled her mother's lifeblood onto the stone floor. Tears rolled down her face, far hotter than any dragon's blood or breath could be. She wished they were hot enough to burn her, so that she would not have to leave. All things might change, but that did not mean that she wanted them to. Unfortunately dragons were never harmed by fire, least of all their own.

She held onto her mother's body, so much smaller and sadder than she remembered. The brown skin was wrinkled, the once brilliant amber eyes no longer sparkled, the hair that had once fallen like a spill of shining night was matted with blood and sweat. Only a small smile which consistently hovered around her mother's lips was the same. She wrapped her mother’s scaled cloak around her own shoulders, wept over the frail, lifeless body, and waited for the knight to arrive.

He strutted into the room proud and shining, like he thought of himself as a ray of sun touching a land long shrouded by clouds. His step faltered slightly as he took in the incongruities of the scene. Despite what the stories said, this was no lady's chamber, and she was no delicate, doe-eyed princess in need of rescuing. She clung to her mother's body like a lifeline, wearing nothing but dragon's blood and a cloak of shimmering black scales. It was a testament to his personality that these facts did not stop him for long. He spoke, and she understood his strange, soft words, for all dragons have the gift of tongues.

"You're safe now, my lady," he told her as he picked his way around the worst of the still hot pools of blood and melted gold. "I've come to take you to court where you belong." He grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her to her feet.

Anger replaced grief in her heart, turning her blood to fire. She screamed at him, no word in any language, just a cry of frustration and loss and rage. She thrashed in his grip and pried at the steel gauntlets, trying to get free. Where skin touched armor the metal bubbled and melted. The knight winced as drops of hot steel began to burn their way through his gambeson into vulnerable flesh, but he held on.

She hissed and spat at him, and cursed him in the language of dragons, and wished it could be smoke and fire pouring from her lips instead of words.

The heat was enough to melt his armor, but not enough to shake his heart, for he was a knight, as foolhardy as he was brave. The strength he had gained through training well matched the strength she had been born with, and he held on.

He picked her up and held her until her fire fizzled out under the weight of grief and she collapsed into a dead weight, cool to the touch again. Only then did he set her gently on the ground.

She did not move.

She sat mute as he retrieved the saddlebags he had dropped outside the door and began filling them with treasure – the gold and gems that had not been damaged in her mother's death. He was robbing the dead, robbing her, and she couldn't make herself care. He spoke more words in his strange, soft tongue, and she refused to hear them.

Her mother, constant, proud, undefeatable; was dead. That was all that mattered. As for her future, she could not guess. She knew much of knights but little of human customs. She had never wanted to know. She didn't want to know now. So she sat and tried not to think, tried not to feel, as her life fell apart around her.

The knight took no notice. He filled his bags with stolen goods, and slipped the sword of another, less lucky, knight into the empty scabbard at his left hip. He slung the saddlebags over one shoulder, picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all, and left the tower.

For three weeks she did not eat, drink, or speak.

Except on her mother's back, she had never been far from the estate of Dragon's Keep. She had never traveled at length through the wild, creature infested lands outside, nor had she ever seen the dilapidated wall that separated their land from the lands of humans.

She did not see it now.

She noticed nothing of the journey back to the court this knight called home. She slept often, and tried to dream even while awake. To the knight she was a statue, neither resisting him nor responding to him.

She did not fight him when he dressed her in...well, some sort of human fashion, she assumed.

She closed her ears to the words he spoke, first bragging, then angry, then pleading, until he ceased to speak to her altogether and the rest of their journey passed in silence.

But there was no ignoring the court, not really. It was loud, full of people who talked about anything and everything. They talked about her too, making plans for her life without even asking her – not that she cared what they thought, not that she had any intention of responding.

She had never had any interest in humans, and she still didn't.

That did not stop them from being interested in her.

If she had listened to those conversations, she might have understood their actions. But she did not want to listen and she did not want to understand.

For reasons which made sense to them, they gave her back the gold and silver the knight had stolen. They called her lady, and gave her a room in the palace, a trunk full of donated clothing, and sent along three young women who flocked around her, twittering ceaselessly like little birds. Their presence irritated her as they pulled her this way and that way, trying to dress her up like one of them. They succeeded in removing the clothing the knight had given her and replacing it with a single garment before she ran them off with claw and fang and cast the rest of the clothing aside.

She slammed the door behind them.

She just wanted to be left alone, but here she was never alone. The sturdy stone walls pressed in on her, nothing like the decrepit castle she was used to. The sounds of wind, birdsong, and animal life had been replaced with a seemingly never-ending wave of sounds. She drowned in them, the talk and laughter, the thud of boots and the soft switch of fabric as humans moved, the rustle of brooms against rough stone, all of them. She had never been in a place so loud. She had never been exposed to her gift of tongues, which told her the basic meaning of everything said, whether or not she wanted to know.

A particularly abrasive laugh – the laugh of that knight – grated on her ears. During the journey back to court he had been subdued, but here, surrounded by people, he had regained his courage. He was coming to see her, she was certain of it, coming to see what his princess looked like now that she was civilized. But she didn't want to see him. Not him, not the young women, not any of the people here. With a cry like that of a wounded animal she pushed herself out of her seated position, grabbed her mother's cloak, fled through the nearest door, and found herself outside.

She stood for a moment, surprised. The noise of a door opening brought her back to herself. She gathered her wits and ran.

It was not wilderness, this place she found herself in, but it was not stone walls either. She followed stone paths laid neatly on the ground, the clothing she had been pushed into tangling around her legs. There was nowhere to stop, nothing but stone paths and stone fountains with the occasional bush or row of flowers. Even here there were people, people who scattered out of her way and stared after her as she passed. She paid them scant attention.

Dragons were predators by nature, and she had never wondered what a deer might feel while being pursued by her mother. Now though, she did not have to wonder. She thought she had a pretty good idea.

In some ways this fake wilderness was even worse than being inside.

She ran and ran and did not stop until she felt grass under her feet and then she stopped all at once, collapsing onto the ground in a heap. She fought back the sobs that wanted to come out although a few tears escaped to scorch the ground beneath her. She didn't want to be here, but she wasn't about to let these humans see her grieve.

She knew that her mother would not be pleased with this. Dragons were not so emotional. The world changed around them and they adapted to it. They were calm and practical, rational. She never had been good at that. Still, she tried.

Only when she got herself back under control did she look around to see where she had landed.

It was a small grove surrounded by cypress trees. From here, the castle was not even visible. Nor were any people. She breathed, letting the familiar openness chase out the lingering claustrophobia of too much stone and too much metal and too much noise. The muttered conversation from the grounds behind her faded, masked by the sound of branches moving in the wind. Eventually, a few of the braver birds even began to chirp and the area around her sprang to life again, her wild interruption forgotten.

It could almost be one of the courtyards she was used to, save for the fact that someone clearly maintained the area. The grass was too short, too free of wildflowers and fallen branches and leaves. The trees too were too neat. It was still better than where she had been.

She curled in on herself, and began to dream.

She did not return to the room which had been forced upon her. The cypress grove, quiet and solemn, became her retreat. She did not leave it for several days, except to hide deeper in the fake woods when others came looking for her.

The rest of the time she dreamed of the past. Any moment, she thought, her mother could fly overhead – strong as ever, with her black scales glittering like gems in the sun. She would dance in the sky as she always had done. She would shower her beloved daughter with gold she had stolen, scoop her up to go flying, or drop a kill at her feet for them to share.

Nothing would've changed, they would still be together as they should be. Her mother would never have left her on her own to travel to someplace she could not follow. She would, as she had always done, tell her daughter wildly exaggerated stories of the hunt while they ate.

These visions were so strong to her that she did not realize at first that the smell of blood was real. She came back to herself with a start.

A platter of freshly killed venison hovered half a foot from her face. She frowned.

Dragons did not have much of a sense of smell, but the smell of blood was sharp and distinctive. She should have noticed it, or the sound of someone approaching. She would have, if she had not been so determined not to.

Because the meat, naturally, had not made its way there on its own. It was held lightly in the hands of a woman who held herself with the confidence of a knight. Until that moment, she had not known that women could be knights. It certainly had seemed from her mother’s stories that humans were only divided into knights and ladies. But she had seen enough knights in her life to recognize one, even without the armor and sword.

"Don't turn away," the knight said before she even had a chance to do so. "Even dragons have a need to eat eventually." She set the ceramic platter down on the grass and backed off a few paces before dropping into an easy sit.

Three weeks was a long time, even for a dragon. With the smell of fresh meat in front of her, she could no longer pretend not to be hungry. She grabbed a piece from the top and ripped into it, heedless of the mess she caused.

The knight continued to talk, undeterred. "Here I am, on a short visit to my family, and I miss it all," she said. "The whole court is abuzz about Leroy and his Lady Dragon. Tell me, why not just transform and fly away?"

The knight gave her ample time to respond, which she did not do.

"Nothing, hm?" The knight shrugged. "Well, you are a dragon. You of all people ought to know that mourning has to end eventually. I'm surprised you were distraught enough to let it go on this long."

She paused again, and still received no response. "Such a show can only mean you are named after an emotion. Which one is it?"

The bit of meat she was holding slipped her numb fingers to the grass below.

"How-" the dragon hardly even realized she had spoken until after the word was out. This human language was unfamiliar in her mouth and she snapped her fangs shut around the rest of the sentence. It did not matter. One word was enough.

The knight smiled. "Dragons are not unfamiliar to my home country. It pays to know about them. So, your name?"

"It does not translate easily," the dragon said, and felt anger at herself for giving in. She had not wanted to speak to these humans at all, and had even entertained the thought of living in silence until her own flame ran out. But the will to live and thrive runs as strongly in dragons as in humans, and she could no more keep herself from speaking than from eating the meal in front of her.

"I don't mind."

For the first time, the dragon heard the flavor of foreign speech in the words the knight spoke, and recognized them as being different from the things she had half heard over the last few days. This knight, then, was a stranger here too. Still the dragon hesitated, groping for words in a language she understood but had not yet spoken.

"It is the sense of belonging between two or more people who consider themselves family," she finally said, hating how she stumbled over the words. Dragon names came in two flavors: concepts or feelings. Concept names were strong and feeling names were graceful. In the language of dragons her name was beautiful. As sharp as new grown scales and as delicate as a butterfly's wings. In this human language it was long and clumsy, without sense or rhyme.

The knight nodded. "It is a bit long. A sense of belonging between people, hm? In my language we call this 'patrisjie'. As a name here, it would probably be Patrice. And in my home, we would call you Patya."

The dragon growled. "I do not want these human words or this human name," she said.

The knight nodded again. Her hair, brilliant red and cut to be even with her jaw, bobbed in time with the motion. "Soon they will become tired of calling you 'dragon girl' and someone is going to name you. Better it be something close to what you’re used to."

“And it is so easy to lose your true name!" The dragon said. She heard the snap of fangs and crackle of flame in her words, but the knight did not lose her relaxed posture as a wiser person would have done. Then again, that seemed to be the way with knights. She merely plucked a violet out of the grass and turned the flower round and round in her fingers.

"You aren't alone. My name is Felisjyta, but no one here can say it. They just all call me Felicity."

"And why should I care what they call you?" asked the dragon. Suddenly the rest of her meal was no longer appealing. She pushed the tray away, across the grass. "I do not want that name either. I am no friend to knights." She stood and began to walk away.

The knight made no move to follow her, but did speak again. "You know, Felisjyta is just like a dragon name. You would probably say 'the happiness of someone who has experienced recent good fortune'."

It was a very dragon like name, and she knew exactly how they would say such a thing. In the language of dragons, that name was warm and comforting, like curling up next to her mother on a chilly evening. It didn't suit her current mood at all. She shook her head. "Why should I need this feeling of yours? I have not experienced good fortune in a long time."

She left the garden and the meddling knight behind.

Index | Next Chapter

[shannaraisles]

Let It Snow - for @tangerineloves

For the charming @tangerineloves, who requested some Alistair/Warden OC lovin' for the season. Thank you so much for commissioning me, darling - hope your festive is good to you!

Let It Snow

Snow fell.

It fell soft and silent over the ruins of Denerim City, at first just to melt away on contact with charred wood and scorched stone, then to begin to lay and pile up, covering the worst signs of the damage inflicted upon the city by the last battle of the Blight. Overnight, the city went from a blackened memory of foundations and walls, to a romantic ruin blanketed in white.

The timing could not have been more perfect. Satinalia had arrived, and despite the wreckage that still littered the city from a battle won barely two months before, this was a night in which everyone had been told to forget their cares. They had a lot to celebrate, from the mere fact of their survival after a year of terror to the Grey Wardens’ announcement that the Fifth Blight was officially over, to the raising of their new young king to his throne - not only a king, but a hero in his own right, the man who had struck the final blow that killed the archdemon right here in Denerim itself. 

That young king had already made it very clear that his plan for Ferelden would be different from the plans enacted by his brother and father, and tonight was where that would begin - elves and dwarves were not only invited to the royal celebration held in the ruined market square, but were given places of honour; commoners were expected to mingle with nobles, just as they did on this night in cities like Treviso. Everyone would be masked and incognito. Tonight was a night to celebrate just being yourself. 

A night in which the young man dancing with you, drinking with you, sharing stories with you, might just be that young king you so admired and wished well. A young king who needed to know that he was not despised by his people just for being the forgotten son of a popular ruler long lost to mystery. 

Alistair couldn’t help smiling a little behind his mask, reveling in the novelty of being just another face among the crowd for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. So much had happened since his last Satinalia ... so many lost, so much found and gained, so much pain and joy experienced. He felt much older than his twenty years, and yet, right now, he thought he could glimpse the carefree boy he had been when Duncan had first inducted him into the Wardens. 

“... strange, to be celebrating in a ruin, don’t you think?”

The words caught his ear, his head tilting just a little as he focused in on the conversation taking place not too far away between what he could only assume was a pair of dwarves. 

“Can’t think of a better place to do it,” was the robust reply from behind an intricate mask crafted of delicate steel. “We survived another year and look at what we survived! Seems pretty good to me.”

“It’s cold,” his companion complained from the depths of a similarly beautiful black iron mask.

“Go get a drink and stop complaining, then.”

Biting down on a laugh, Alistair moved away from the dwarves, brushing snow from the shoulders of his black velvet coat absently as he pivoted to avoid a gaggle of giggling girls, at least two of which were definitely not as noble as their companions thought them to be. 

“- we going?”

“The king is here somewhere! We should find him and kiss him!”

Thank the Maker for the mask. Suddenly his face felt hot enough to cook dinner for six, a strangled cough escaping his throat as his pivot almost spun him entirely around in the hope of escaping to the keep. No such luck for him, though - a hand caught his, pulling him back from his hopeful lurch and into the thick of the dancers, giving him no choice but to fall into step or disrupt the dance entirely.

“I’m terribly sorry, I -”

His apology was stopped by the sudden press of lips to his own. He froze, shock and disgust at the fact that he was allowing a stranger to steal a kiss from him coursing through his limbs ... and then he realised this was no stranger. He knew these lips, the soft, lithe form pressed to his own, the scent of her hair, the tingle of magic that lingered on her skin at all times. Forgetting his shock, the risk of being caught and recognised, his hands reached to pull her closer, lips parting to steal yet more kisses, sharing his grin with her even as he felt her lips curve in an answering grin of her own. 

It was only when he noticed the small throng around them raising a jeering, cheering cackle of encouragement that he broke that kiss and opened his eyes once more, gazing down at a gorgeous mask of blue and silver ... into the lovely eyes of his lover and fellow hero, Mira Surana, the elven mage who had truly saved Ferelden not so very long ago. She offered him a cheeky little smirk in response. 

“Leliana owes me two gold,” was her friendly greeting, her laugh punctuating the drop of his jaw as he stared at her. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know what she’s like.”

“But ... what if someone ... what if Eamon saw ...?”

He didn’t need to see her entire face to know the expression aimed squarely at him beneath the mask now speckled with the melted droplets of snow falling from above them. 

“It’s Satinalia,” she reminded him, still pressed close amid the dancing throng about them. “When else can we be openly as we truly are to each other, than tonight?”

He felt the pang of guilt and pain all over again at her words. He would dearly have loved to have married her, to have her sat on the throne at his side, but in this, Eamon was absolutely right - the people of Ferelden would not accept an elven mage on the throne. Yet Alistair had not been ready to let go of her, his Mira, his first and only love, and despite the pain of knowing that one day a noble woman would rightfully share his bed in the eyes of the Maker and the world, she had agreed to stay with him in the only way they knew how - as a secret known only to a privileged few. 

“But -”

She stopped his protest with another kiss, and again, he melted into her, only too ready to forget his crown and responsibilities in her arms. And she was right. Tonight, of all nights, who cared who saw what and thought what? So what if someone recognised the king in the arms of a beautiful woman? For most of them, it would be nothing more than titillating gossip; for some, the concern it might raise would be dealt with.

It was Satinalia. His people were safe and fed and sheltered, celebrating their survival and the coming year at his side in the midst of the ruins of the year that had passed. And the woman he loved was in his arms, warm and loving and determined to keep him from thinking any sad or troubling thoughts for the rest of the night. They had earned this.

He had his Mira in his arms, and their lives ahead of them. 

Let it snow.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #6: The Form of Magic

Prompt: ring || Master Post || On AO3

--

Synnove sets stick to ground, and begins to walk.

The stick would be better called a rod: two-thirds her height, just thin enough to close her hand so that thumb touches middle finger, made of ironwood. A simple, unassuming tool, save for the simple fact it is over two hundred years old and has only ever been used to map out arrays.

Synnove herself is a mathematical genius with a memory like a steel trap: show her an arcanima array, and she will know it for life, how to tweak it, how to scale it, how to draw it, how to hold it in her mind in two dimensions and in three. She is able to draw a perfect circle freehand, a fact which drove more than one of her teachers in her early days at the Guild into fits of hysteria (and Mhaslona into fits of chortling, smug glee at poaching her from the mathematics department). She is, thus, the perfect arcanist to create the draft for a new permanent array for the Guild’s use on the Range.

The circle is the most basic shape of magic, the foundation for nearly all of the most important spells within an arcanist’s grimoire. Even thaumaturgy and black magic must needs bow to its use, stabilizing their spells else the power they attempt to channel consume them whole. Conjury, too, though less obviously, for the cycle of life and death and the elements was just another kind of circle writ large across creation.

Synnove walks smooth and sure, adjusting her grip on the array rod minutely as needed to ensure the circle growing behind her is as perfect as her steps. Tyr shadows her, ensuring the furrow left by the rod are smooth and flawless, using his equally precise aether control to flick away pebbles and rocks. Across her shoulders, Galette sprawls, though they are working today so rather than napping, she keeps the winds on the work site that blow off the Indigo Deep calm and friendly, and her nose twitches as she takes in the ambient aether, ensuring no sudden changes occur that will affect the efficacy of the array.

Dawn is only just breaking on the eastern horizon.

Ten minutes later, Synnove finishes the circle and a satisfying snap crackles through the air as she closes it, the protective magicks this array will emit already thrumming to life with the intent that Synnove used in the shaping. Tyr packs down the small pile of dirt with a paw, and Synnove side steps carefully inward until she is precisely six feet from the edge. The end of the rod hits the dirt with a soft thud, and once more, she begins to walk.

This time, behind her, other arcanists move in to begin carving out the shapes and equations that will fill the outermost circle. Topaz carbuncles join Tyr in removing the detritus, either pitching it beyond the edge of the array or packing it down into the earth.

Once a permanent array has begun its crafting, they cannot stop. If it takes all day to finish, so be it. If they work into the night and the next dawn, to ensure its perfection, so be it.

When the second circle is complete, Synnove moves further inward, ever and on, creating each and every circle this array requires with surety. Once the last closes, she moves to assist with the secondary lines and equations and shapes, one arcanist among many working as a smoothly oiled magitek engine.

They break at noon for food and water, and as Synnove drinks from her canteen and eats a roll stuffed with cheese and thinly sliced beef and roasted peppers, she walks the array, Tyr at her side. With a critical eye, she tracks every curve, every straight line, every number and letter scored into the earth, ensuring total perfection. Anything less, and the array won’t work.

Or it’ll explode.

Fifty-fifty chance, depending.

After lunch, work resumes, slow and methodical. Someone starts a shanty that helps the afternoon roll by a little faster, though quiet still dominates: concentration is key. But as the shadows lengthen, the carving finishes, and Synnove and the other senior arcanists walk the array once more, stepping carefully into any free spot, examining and double-checking and studying. Her fellows use copies of the array written in plain ink on plain parchment as reference; Synnove needs only her memory.

Then, finally, once they deem the array perfect, it’s the turn of the metallurgists to work.

Ivar and the few other ruby carbuncles the Guild has have been minding the crucibles, ensuring the metal within remains fiery hot, especially now as the metallurgists carefully carry the crucibles out in pairs to the array from the makeshift smithy. And, even more carefully, they begin to pour, melting flowing down the circle’s edge and diverting into the channels made by the other array elements as the metallurgists now walk the same path that Synnove did.

The ruby carbuncles now work to ensure the metal—a mithril alloy the Guild favors for shielding arrays, a proprietary mix they jealously guard—stays just as molten in the earthen furrows as it does in the crucibles. When the metallurgists are finished, every part of the array that touches itself will be a single piece of metal. For now, the molten material glows white with its heat, setting the growing night alight.

By necessity, this step is slow: the metallurgists must tip the crucibles carefully and pour even more so, to ensure no metal splashes and mars the array. And the crucibles must be refilled. It is nearing midnight when every single element glows under the night sky.

Most of the arcanists returned home bells before, but Synnove and a few others remain. They walk the array one last time with the topaz and ruby carbuncles—Tyr is on her right, Ivar her left, sniffing suspiciously at anything that looks remotely like a bubble that could lead to a void in the metal. The radiating heat is pleasant against the chill of the night, and Galette draped around her neck—now asleep, no longer on duty—makes for an excellent scarf.

Finally, they are satisfied.

Force cooling metal so quickly could lead to brittleness and breaks if not performed with care, but with carbuncles aspected to earth and to fire working together, such work is complete in nearly an eyeblink. The final product glitters in the light from the torches surrounding the worksite, perfectly flush with the ground.

The ambient aether thrums with the change. Reality has been warped, if subtly.

Synnove strides out to the very middle of the array and points up. A roiling ball of Ruin rushes forth into the sky, up and up and up and—

—reality twists more obviously, and the spell smacks into a domed shield that glimmers into life, forcibly dissipating the spell into harmless aether. The shield itself is wide: the dome isn’t limited to the array itself, but arches out into the waters beyond the Range. It seals the entire island.

Synnove grins as she walks out to meet her colleagues. “Interior shell seems to hold well on initial application,” she says, softly scritching Tyr’s head where it leans into her hip. “We’ll do a more thorough test with the exterior defenses tomorrow.”

Houxine from mathematics rubs at her eyes as they trudge out the edge of the permanent array. “So glad to have this project nearly finished,” the elezen grumbles.

Murmurs of assent and yawns answer her. Synnove takes one last look out over the array, now lost to shadow, and leans down to rub her fingers over the perfectly smooth outer edge of the circle. The metal is still warm, and the magic in it hums contently to match the song of the aether in the air and soil around her.

A job well done, and Synnove nods her satisfaction, and follows after her colleagues.

PREVIOUS || NEXT

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I'm having trouble trying to calculate the costs of how much a city could save purely on lighting alone by building taller buildings above ground rather than deep into the ground. There are so many factors to lighting costs that seem impossible to compare something above ground to something very similar underground and then I get all the costs that don't even matter i.e. street lights. In my world costs to build underground would be cheaper than building up due to extreme (almost magical) advances in tunnelling technology. So really, the only big issue is lighting. Above ground saves on lighting because you can turn them off during the day which you basically can't at all underground. How should I go about this?

Addy: You can have dimmable lights, where you turn lights down real low at night. And you can still turn off lights inside of buildings that aren't being used. That doesn't change at all. Sure, you might have really dim hallway lights (like nightlights), but you don't need lights on full blast 24/7.

If you wanna look at lighting cost savings, I'd say to look at the cost differences in lighting in modern standard buildings vs buildings with adaptive lighting (lights near windows dimmer when it's bright outside).

Or just look at the cost of lighting inside large office buildings - modern office buildings don't make much use of windows, as the buildings are much larger and deeper. Older office buildings made more use of natural light, which has also made them easier to turn into apartments and the like.

Tunneling tech can make it easier and cheaper to build underground, but the main thing about building underground is the sideways pressure from the ground itself. Soil wants to make piles, and building underground means that you have straight walls (aboveground equivalent is a retaining wall), which soil doesn't really like. Still totally doable, though! But you might want to add some kind of soil anchoring mechanism to your tunneling tech.

I'd say that you might want to add in some very high wind speeds at high elevations (say >300' aboveground), which would make building up more than 30 stories difficult to manage. You'd get a lot of lateral shear acting on the building (which is annoying to deal with), plus you'd get a lot of swaying. There are code requirements about the maximum amount a building can sway in the wind – too much movement, and people get vertigo. Or nauseous. You can make a building stiffer to reduce the amount of sway, but it's a hassle and it costs more to do. Steel is especially flexible (concrete is very stiff), so if you've got poor concrete formulations (either weaker concrete or more expensive concrete), or if steel is especially cheap, then building up can become more expensive and just more of a hassle.

Also, if you have soft soil near the surface and good rock further down, that'll also limit your aboveground building height. Heavy buildings put a lot of pressure on the ground. If the ground is rock, that's easy to manage. If it's something soft, then you need to build a larger foundation to spread out the weight into a lower pressure. If you have an area where the top is soft but you've got good bedrock a bit of a ways down, you're going to want to build piles down that far anyways, might as well make a basement. If you've got a basement, well, you've got a building.

On the other hand, it's also a pain to dig through bedrock (especially hard rock), so that's going to add cost once you get further down. Also, in places like Denmark or Florida (places with lots and lots of sand and no bedrock for miles), that brings issues of its own - nothing solid to build anything heavy on. Clay soils are also a pain to deal with, since they swell and shrink based on water content. Imagine if you were trying to build a tower on top of a waterbed…. Except your walls moved just as much. Walls don't like being squished or pulled, and that's what clay soils do.

So if you want extensive underground development, you're probably going to want a place with high winds, soil that'll cooperate (sand, silt, and dry clay (in an area without many trees, say a savanna) could all be suitable), and a rock layer that isn't too close to the surface. That'll help reduce construction costs.

Also, as long as it's plausible, you don't need to know the costs down to the dollar (or similar). Something rough is more than enough.

Feral: Okay so lighting design happens to be the niche within built environment design where my career resides. So… you’re about to get a lot of information you probably don’t need. Sorry. 

To calculate costs, you need to need to know the number of lamps (light sources), the initial cost of each lamp, the wattage of each lamp, the number of hours per day* the lamp is on at what percentage of full output,** the cost of energy per kilowatt hour, and the estimated useful life in hours of each lamp. 

*When I’m doing these calculations for real, we typically assume 8 hours a day for a kitchen, which is a) used a lot and b) requires artificial lighting for task lighting even when ambient lighting can be provided naturally, but we assume 3 hours a day for a bathroom because even though it may not have natural light, depending on local codes at the time it was built, it’s not used that much.

**If you’re using an electroluminescent source, like an LED, the percentage of total watts used will be the same(-ish) as the percentage of full light output. An electric incandescent source, like a tungsten filament bulb, will not have this one to one relationship; they are more inefficient as they are dimmed. 

We’ve talked before about underground living, but it’s really important to recognize that the sun is a lot more important than just “it’s a free light source.”

Now, if you want to get into photometry, it’s a lot. Godspeed. But basically, the thing about lighting a space that a lot of people don’t get is that humans don’t perceive light output. We perceive relative brightness, or contrast. In other words, we are sensitive to the context of the light and the difference between lighting levels rather than the luminance itself. 

So what does all this have to do with your world-building question. Frankly, I don’t know. I’m not actually sure what your question has to do with your worldbuilding. 

However, visual comfort is a very important aspect of how we perceive an environment. So, if you are trying to build a setting that you can then describe in these terms, you might want to know more about it. So, further reading:

How to Measure Visual Comfort in Buildings (by window manufacturer SageGlass)

How to Design for Visual Comfort Using Natural Light (by ArchDaily)

Guidelines for Optimum Visual Comfort, derived by key performance factors (by The Energy and Resource Institute)

How to Design Buildings for Visual and Acoustical Comfort (by DesignHub1610)  

Optimization of Visual Comfort: Building Openings (originally published in the Journal of Building Engineering)

Daylight in Buildings and Visual Comfort Evaluation: the Advantages and Limitations (published in the Journal of Daylighting)

Conditions Required for Visual Comfort (by the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety)

Provide Comfortable Environments (by the Whole Building Design Guide)

You’ll notice that daylight is an assumption in pretty much all of the above. So, for your world-building, consider what is lost when daylight is removed. Note: it’s more than just energy savings.

[casteliacityramen]

Munday Side Stories - Subject 150 Mewtwo

Disclaimer: Gatekeeper idea made by Weapons Grade Waifus, formatting heavily inspired by SCP Foundation. ~3k Words

Subject 150 Mewtwo is an artificial pokemon created by criminal syndicate Team Rocket. Subject is a replication and/or amalgamation of genetic studies based on Mew (PKMN DEX # 151). Subject Mewtwo has been noted to be of extremely high intelligence and terrifying power, surpassing any known psychic entity in current and past history. Its His psychic abilities break the current known laws of telepathy and telekinesis. It’s He’s able to bypass solid material, such as steel and concrete, unless such material is treated with specific “dark” type coatings.

History: 

Subject 150 Mewtwo was created born on ██/██/██████ by criminal syndicate Team Rocket. When released to the rest of the world, Subject 150 Mewtwo fled to Cerulean Cave and stayed until the Subject he was pacified by Pokemon League Champion “Red”. Subject 150 Mewtwo has chosen to live in Cerulean Cave as of 2/18/1999 of his free will and continues to do so as of 5/22/2023 as its main inhabitant and protector.

Security Procedures:

Subject 150 Mewtwo is not to leave the area unless specific permission is granted by the current Secretary of Defense, or Ex-League Champion "Red." A team of high-performance military personnel will surround the inner and outer perimeter in constant combat readiness. Security personnel designation: Gatekeepers.

Gatekeepers will pass psychological evaluation and be re-evaluated every three months. Any abnormalities or severe changes in mental faculties will result in a release of duty from the Gatekeeper profession with full pay until the next fiscal year.

Interceptor Operator Teams with approved psy resistant gear will be on stand-by at all times. Inner ring perimeters will consist of four land-based phalanx weapon systems pointed at each cardinal direction. All stations are to be equipped with seismic recording devices for any underground movement. Pile-driven high-yield explosive charges are to be installed at ████████████, ██████, and ██████████ at minimum depths of 100 meters. All equipment will be inspected daily for wear.

Gatekeepers are to neutralize the Subject in the event of an inner perimeter breach.  Immediately inform the Secretary of Defense in the event of an inner or outer perimeter breach.

Gatekeepers are to provide any reasonable accommodations requested by Mewtwo by any means necessary.

[SEE BELOW FOR ADDENDUMS 150.1 - 150.6 - MESSAGES BETWEEN SUBJECT 150 MEWTWO AND GATEKEEPER STAFF]

Addendum 150.1: Gatekeeper Briefing

[Date: 3/15/1999]

To whomever it may concern, 

You have been assigned as a Gatekeeper. Your mission is dual purpose.  One: You are the first and last defense against anything and everything that comes from this cave.  Two: You are to defend the inhabitant of this cave with your life.  This job may seem like the menial day-to-day service required of many others in various military branches, but know that the subject of your occupation is the single most dangerous living being currently occupying the world.  You shall be rewarded handsomely for your efforts. Make your country proud. Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister of Kanto: Haruka Nagumo

Addendum 150.2: Email Logs between General Takashi Shino and Commander-in-Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 4/12/2001]

Commander,  It has been brought to my attention that Subject 150 has not breached containment for the past three years. It’s always been aware of the surveillance equipment, but this might be the first time it’s acknowledged it. The subject seems to be interested in communication between the surveillance team. It's making motions towards its mouth and towards the cameras. What should be our next course of action? Respectfully, General Takashi Shino

[Date: 4/13/2001]

General, After deliberating with Cinnabar’s Gym Leader Blaine, Professor Samuel Oak, and members of the ICSR ethics committee, Subject 150 is to be treated as a sapient with rights. We will be sending specialized communication equipment and appropriate protection equipment for leaving it outside the cave. When Subject 150 makes contact, I want rifle barrels pointed at the heads of the surveillance team. We have no gauge on the capabilities of Subject 150. That includes whether or not the surveillance team can be put under telepathic suggestion via digital communication. You are to report to me every single detail of communication regarding Subject 150. Commander In Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 4/14/2001]

Commander,  We have successfully made contact with Subject 150. No casualties or suggestion of psy tampered personnel or equipment. Its first words with the surveillance team, and I quote, are the following: “I’m bored.” This doesn’t seem said out of defiance or malice, the Subject looks… well... bored out of its mind. I request that we send forms of entertainment via books, magazines, etc. if the science and ethics teams allow it. As always, the surveillance tapes are to follow in a separate file.  Respectfully, General Takashi Shino

[Date: 4/14/2001]

General,  You are to give Subject 150 whatever it wants from the list provided, below. - Television with approved pre-programmed channels  - Kantonese Encyclopedia Set and Dictionary  - MP3 Player with non radio functions and pre-installed music  - Children’s coloring book with 64-Crayon set.  - A set of tennis balls - A chess board with all pieces - Silph Co. Technological Magazine Given the history of Subject 150’s mistreatment from humanity, let’s pray to Mother Mew that it decides to spare us if it takes the MP3 player. If it has to listen to the Dugtrio Duds’ latest song, we might all be dead the next day.  Keep me posted, Commander In Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 4/14/2001]

Commander, The Subject has requested “all of the above.” General Takashi Shino

Afterword: Subject 150 has requested more items between the dates noted in Addendum 150.2 and 150.3. Such items include: the highest selling mystery novel written by up-and-coming Unovan author Shauntal; miscellaneous household items: blanket, mattress, pillows; and a grand piano. All items were delivered with no issues.

Addendum 150.3 - Instant Messenger Chat Log between Subject 150 and Captain Asuka Shinohara

[Date: 5/23/2001]

S-150: Hello. 

AS: Hello. Has the portable computer given you any problems?

S-150: None.

AS: How are your accommodations?

S-150: Lacking. The cave is not what I would consider ‘comfortable'. 

AS: I can put a request for more accommodations if you would like. 

S-150: That would be appreciated. Thank you.

[END OF LOG]

[Date: 5/24/2001]

S-150: Hello.

AS: Hello. How are the items we provided you yesterday?

S-150: I broke the lamp. 

AS: Broke the what?

S-150: I was not aware of the fragility of this “lava lamp” that was provided. May I request another one? 

AS: Of course. 

S-150: I am also curious about the slots in this portable computer. It seems that there is room for something to enter this device. 

*pause due to deliberation between surveillance team members*

AS: The slot is for something called a “computer disk” that contains data on various subjects such as movies, music, and games.

S-150: Games can be played digitally?

AS: Correct. However, the portable computer you possess does not have the capability to “run” anything with limited electricity and processing power. It is a device strictly for communication. 

S-150: I see. May I request electricity and a computer that can run these games?

AS: Stand by.

*pause due to deliberation between surveillance team members*

AS: The request will need to be sent to a higher staff member. 

S-150: I have nothing but time.

[END OF LOG]

Afterword: A nearby team of electricians were hired to provide electricity to the entrance to Cerulean Cave. Electricians refused to enter further than the entrance to the cave, reporting feelings of "pressure."

[Date: 5/27/2001]

S-150: Hello. 

AS: Hello. I apologize for the location of the electrical grid, we hired a civilian contractor that has no formal combat and psychic training. 

S-150: It is acceptable. The instructions and instrumentation provided are very impressive. 

AS: Have you experienced anything of the sort before?

S-150: In a lab.

AS: I apologize. 

S-150: Haha

AS: Haha?

S-150: A laugh.

AS: I didn't realize you had a dark sense of humor.

S-150: I feel insulted. Am I not a sapient being like the rest of you?

AS: You are, but you would be surprised at the amount of sapients that lack a sense of ANY kind of humor.

S-150: They must lead dull and uninteresting lives.

AS: Haha  

[END OF LOG]

Addendum 150.4 - Instant Message Chat Log between General Takashi Shino and Commander-In-Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 7/21/2001]

Commander,  All seems to be well over here. The surveillance team is in unusually high spirits. It seems that the monitored conversations have done well to improve the morale of both the team and the subject.  The subject, however, has requested an improvement in the technology provided within Cerulean Cave: heating, cooling, ventilation, electricity, lighting, and most worryingly, internet access. I highly advise against the last option.  Respectfully,  Captain Takashi Shino

[Date 7/22/2001]

Takashi,  For whatever fucking reason, the committee has decided to approve all items including the goddamn internet. Arceus help us all. Nagumo

Addendum 150.5 - IM Chat Logs between Subject 150 and Captain Asuka Shinohara

[Date: 7/29/2001]

AS: Did you seriously order a pizza party to Cerulean Cave?

S-150: Hello. 

S-150: Yes, I did. 

AS: You realize that this area is under constant military surveillance? With top-of-the-line weaponry and security? And that the facilities near Cerulean Cave are designed to be defended with the upmost discretion?

S-150: Yes. May I have them?

AS: Stand by.

*Extended pause for HEAVY deliberation by surveillance team*

AS: We are sending a team of operators to the cave entrance to deliver the pizzas.

S-150:  :) 

[END OF LOG]

Afterword: Subject 150 ordered the entirety of ‘Cerulean Pizzeria’s’ menu items meant for catering for large events. Such events as birthday parties and company-wide events. The delivery driver was sent back to his employer after signing a non-disclosure agreement drafted in short notice by Kanto Homeland Security.

[Date: 8/2/2001]

S-150: Hello. 

S-150: Are you somehow cheating at chess?

AS: The surveillance team doesn’t appreciate that you’re reading their minds, so we’re equipping our psy helmets. Commander Nagumo told us that this isn’t a misappropriation of personal protection equipment. 

S-150:  Booooo >:/

[END OF LOG]

Addendum 150.6.1 - Video Transcript 1 of Virtual Meeting Between Subject 150 - (New Designation: Mewtwo) and Commander-In-Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 8/5/2001]

HN: Hello. I was told by my staff that you requested an audience with me? 

MT: Yes, I did. 

HN: May I ask what for?

MT: Perspective. 

HN: I’m sorry?

MT: What are your goals in… all of this? The guards, the provisions, everything?

HN (pauses): Well, you pose an interesting situation for the nation. You are simultaneously the most dangerous entity in the world, and yet the international committee has agreed that you should be treated like any regular Kantonese citizen. 

MT: The accommodations have been appreciated by all of us.

HN: Hold on a second, us?

MT: I have other pokemon who suffered at the hands of Team Rocket Scientists. They are experiments, like me. They live deeper in the cave. 

HN: Was there a reason you kept this hidden from us until now?

MT: I was scared for them.

HN: Scared?

MT: There are claims that I am the strongest on the planet, yet I was humbled by one of your youngest to hold the title of "champion." I am not as strong as I had hoped. I was not sure if I could provide for the ones I call siblings.

HN: They’re not as strong as you?

MT: On the contrary. They’ve been hurt, abused, and tortured at the hands of people like you.

HN: … People like me?

MT: Your records are public, Commander-In-Chief Nagumo. I understand that you took part of the Kanto-Johto war as a commanding officer. 

HN: I did. 

MT: Then you know what humanity is capable of. What you are capable of. You were a part of it, after all.

HN: I like to think that I’ve passed that. 

MT: Oh? And actions like these are supposed to redeem the actions of your subordinates at Blackthorn City?

HN: ...The ones responsible were put on trial and summarily executed. 

MT: Who says you shouldn’t belong there in the grave with them?

HN: Because my nephew died in Blackthorn by the hands of those... excuses for human beings. He was eight years old. Eight. I personally made sure that those responsible were lined up against a wall, shot, and buried so deep that the earth will roll ten times over before their remains ever see the sun again.

Silence fills the room. Mewtwo leans forward, focusing extremely hard at the screen. Review suggests that Mewtwo was able to telepathically deduce that Commander Nagumo was telling the truth.

MT: You're not lying.

HN: The internet doesn’t have all of the answers, unfortunately. Journalists take advantage of topics like this all of the time, especially if their motives are to smear your reputation while you run for office. If you want public access to the documents, beyond the spoon-feeding speculation of a half-wit college undergraduate, I’m afraid that you have to spend more time than that before you have access to the truth.

MT: (silence)

Commander Nagumo stands to leave, knocking her chair back in the process.

HN: If all you wanted to do is anger me, I’m afraid that this conversation is over.

MT: Wait. 

Commander Nagumo stops.

MT: I apologize. I was not aware that I did not have all of the information. 

HN: ... Apology accepted.

Commander Nagumo sits back down.

MT: Clearly not.

HN: It’s a... touchy subject. I know that you are new to this, but incidents like that don’t get discussed in such an accusatory manner, unless one is on trial or under duress.

Silence. Mewtwo looks uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

MT: You say that the documents detailing this event are accessible. May I see them?

Commander Nagumo turns to the rest of the surveillance and science team. All of them are vehemently shaking their heads or making gestures of disapproval.

HN: Sure.

Surveillance Staff Member: Prime Minister-

HN: I don’t want to hear it. He has the right to know.

HN (turning to mewtwo): Against my advice, my cabinet seem to think that talking about our shame makes us weak. Although, their argument has some merit. The full details don’t paint a good picture of our actions during the Kanto-Johto war. You might not like what you see. 

MT: I have been subject to cruelty that you would not imagine. I feel that you will have to put forth tremendous effort to phase me.

HN: You’d be surprised at what I’ve watched soldiers do for the sake of themselves and their country. Human and pokemon alike.

MT: I see. May we continue this conversation after I’ve read the documents?

HN: If you learn how to be polite in conversation, perhaps. 

MT: You will have to be patient with me. I am only six years old, after all.

[END OF VIDEO CALL]

Addendum 150.6.2 - Video Transcript 2 of Virtual Meeting Between Mewtwo and Commander-In-Chief Haruka Nagumo

[Date: 8/6/2001]

HN: Good morning. 

MT: Hello. Good morning. I would like to apologize for my words the other day. 

Commander Nagumo takes a brief moment to take a sip of her coffee.

HN: I forgive you. I understand why you might be wary of people like me. Talking about Blackthorn is like reopening an old wound, but I should have kept my temper in check. I am also sorry.

MT: I understand and I forgive you. I still harbor resentment towards those who have wronged me. However, you are not one of them. It would be unfair to treat you as such. I let my emotions surface more than I wanted. I would like to continue our conversation, if you would allow it. 

HN: By all means. Before we do...

Commander Nagumo raises a binder to the screen.

HN: Since you had some files on me, I decided to take a deeper look into your time with Team Rocket. It’s all kinds of fucked. 

MT: Fucked?

A science team audibly groans in the background. Commander Nagumo sheepishly lowers the binder and clears her throat. 

HN: It’s an expletive. The science team decided to keep your education material elementary, but given all that’s happened between us, and between you and Team Rocket, I figure we can drop the kindergarten language. 

MT: That... is appreciated. I have to admit, I was beginning to feel that I was being talked down to. I feel that you and I, at the very least, can converse as equals. 

HN: Equals?

MT: The world has not been kind to us, Prime Minister. Given my current circumstance and your position of power, I believe that you and I have a lot in common. We both are responsible for people we care about. We both fought to be where we are and have made grave mistakes in doing so. We are both leaving behind the battlefield, where we thrive, to talk to each other for the sake of cooperation and peace.

HN (visibly surprised): Well, it’s good to see that the strongest pokemon in the world has the capacity of sympathy and empathy. 

MT: I am glad to see that someone in a high position, like yourself, don't see a conversation with a pokemon as beneath you. 

HN: On the contrary. I’m very pleased to let you know that Team Rocket’s views towards pokemon is very, very much out of the ordinary. I’ve see pokemon exhibit more “humanity” than what the best of humanity have to offer.

Commander Nagumo puts the binder away.

HN: Picking up from yesterday, I understand that you have companions in Cerulean Cave?

MT: Yes. In addition to the pokemon who previously inhabited this cave, I have fellow Rocket victims that are seeking refuge. The intent of our initial meeting was to request additional accommodations for them.

Commander Nagumo takes a pen and piece of paper from a nearby surveillance member.

HN: If there is anything that we can do to make your lives comfortable, list them. 

[CONVERSATION HAS BEEN EDITED TO RETAIN SECURITY AND PRIVACY OF THE INHABITANTS OF CERULEAN CAVE] 

MT: … May I ask what you are drinking?

HN: It’s coffee. 

MT: May I request that, as well?

HN: I don’t know, it might not be palatable for someone with a six-year-old tongue. 

MT: Try me.

[END OF VIDEO CALL]

[ADDENDUM 150.7 THRU 150.30 REMOVED FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE INHABITANTS OF CERULEAN CAVE AND IN-SERVICE GATEKEEPER STAFF]

END OF DOCUMENT