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setaripendragon · 1 month ago

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Trapped in the Amber - John Lives AU

So, I wrote this in a bit of a fugue state after thinking too long about how much I enjoyed writing Meira and John interacting. This may end up going up on Ao3, because it's way more than just a drabble, but it's very definitely not canon for this fic, so... Yeah. AU of Chapter 1 of With Wings Made of Wax (IE: Season 2 Episode 1) where Meira dares to tell the truth and John bends enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, and it's enough to change everything.

Middle of Nowhere, Missouri – Tuesday 1st August 2006

John wakes to a ringing silence that can only come on the heels of cacophonous noise. Right. Meira had driven them right into a truck. He opens his eyes barely a slit, and sees the girl – if that is what she is – shift across the front seat, reaching out to check Sam’s pulse with an arm that goes from looking like mincemeat to whole and hale in seconds.

The satisfaction of being right is really rather bitter in these circumstances. It ought to be reassuring that she seems to give a damn that his boys survive, but… Given what he knows about the yellow-eyed demon and his plans, it’s not. He closes his eyes again and holds himself lax and still when Meira gets done checking Dean and turns to him. Her fingers on his neck makes his skin crawl, but he endures it. Best not to give away the only advantage he has right now.

When he hears the sound of the car door opening, he opens his eyes fully and digs a gun out from under the seat – good, at least Dean isn’t getting sloppy in that – without moving enough to attract any attention. He probably needn’t have worried, Meira is entirely focused on the truck that hit them, and the figure approaching, but better safe than sorry.

John doesn’t jump when Meira shoots the figure, but he does have to go very still to keep himself from reacting. He shuts down all the thoughts about why she’d do that. He can ask questions later, for now, all he needs to focus on is that it’s one enemy less on the field.

He shoves the door open and hauls himself up so he can aim at the thing that’s been travelling with his boys for over eight months over the top of the door. Meira turns just as he gets the gun level, and she goes still the moment she spots him.

“Put the Colt on the ground,” he orders.

“John,” Meira says in an infuriatingly placating tone.

“Oh the ground. Now,” John repeats. He’s not going to tell her a third time. He’s not sure he has much longer before his body betrays him, honestly, so he needs to get this over with, needs this threat neutralised so that he can focus on getting them all some goddamn medical attention.

Thankfully, Meira obeys him. “Step back three paces,” John orders, and she does as she’s told. He wonders why, when he’s pretty damn sure a gunshot wouldn’t actually stop her. Well, maybe to the head. He remembers how badly she’d reacted when she’d hit her head before. Not as badly as a human should have, but it had put her on the floor for a few minutes.

“We don’t have time for this,” Meira tries to distract him, tries to draw his attention away from her and onto his boys. He is goddamn aware of how badly injured they are, and he refuses to be baited like that.

Instead, he puts all his focus into staggering out of his minimal cover to go and get the Colt, snarling out an absent-minded “Shut up.” He turns the gun on Meira the moment it’s in his hand, and she stares back at him with wide, wet eyes.

“John, I swear, I’m not your enemy,” Meira pleads. John doesn’t buy it, not because she isn’t a damn good actress, but because he knows he simply cannot afford to be wrong. “I can-”

He shoots her.

Not with the Colt. As interested as he is in finding out if it can kill whatever she is, he’s more interested in getting answers. Information is more vital than bullets in this war. She collapses and swears at him, but John focuses on where he can see the wound closing up through the hole in her jeans. By the time he manages to force his body across the space between them, it’s already gone like it was never there.

He brings the butt of the Colt down on the back of her skull before she can do more than get to her hands and knees, and sends her back to the ground. She’s still moving, though, so John drops to his knee and hits her again, with as much force as his body is capable of right now. It’s enough force that a normal human would be dead in hours.

He’s banking on her not being that human.

After taking a moment – just a moment – to catch his breath, John shoves back to his feet, ignoring the way the world wavers around him at the sudden change in elevation. He needs to get himself and his boys some medical care, and it’s going to have to be a hospital, because he doesn’t even know how to begin figuring out what the demon did to Dean.

He also needs to get Meira somewhere secure. And he needs to do both things fast, because the demons already found them here once, they can do it again. Reluctantly, he gets out his phone and calls an ambulance. He gives the barest description of the crash, leaves the call connected for them to track to his location, and then puts the phone in Dean’s hand and goes to haul the bodies away.

Only to find that the demon isn’t dead.

Well. The demon is dead, John discovers by splashing holy water on his face, but the host is alive. He won’t be for much longer, but there’s an ambulance coming and he’s not John’s priority, so John leaves him where he is and drags Meira into the truck.

Kansas City, Missouri – Wednesday 2nd August 2006

The industrial park storage that John finds is full of junk, but there’s a big enough space for a full signum dei vivi in the middle, and that’s good enough for him. He paints that one in blood and then, because he learned that trick from Meira herself – even if the lore did check out – he adds another devil’s trap on the ceiling, just to be sure. He puts a solid metal chair in the middle, and ties Meira to it with steel-cored rope.

Dean had told him about the shapeshifter, and how it had used steel rope for her but not him or Sam. John doesn’t know if that was coincidence or if it knew something, but given that demons can recognise her on sight, he’s erring on the side of caution. He’d like to bolt the damn chair to the floor too, but he doesn’t really have the time or the equipment for that.

So he makes do with what he has, and settles in to wait for her to wake up.

It doesn’t take as long as it should. Realistically, she shouldn’t be waking up at all, but after only an hour or so, her breathing picks up and her expression contorts as pain begins to register. “You know,” John comments blithely before she’s fully got her bearings, “I hit anybody else that hard on the head, they’d be dead in hours.”

Meira makes a quiet, pained noise as she tries to open her eyes and immediately shuts them again. She doesn’t say anything in response, sniffing the air like a goddamned animal before she tries opening her eyes again with far more care. Her eyes flick around, then up, then down, and that’s where she stalls, blinking rapidly. John doesn’t know if that’s because her vision is still messed up from the repeated knocks to the head, or if it’s because she’s struggling to comprehend what she’s seeing and the situation she’s in.

The first words out of her mouth are; “Where’s Dean? Sam?”

John can’t tell if her concern is sincere or not and he really doesn’t like that. He takes note, however, of the clear order of her priorities. Dean comes first, which is not what he’d expect of someone potentially in league with the yellow-eyed demon. It does track with what he’s observed of her in the past, however; she defers to Dean, and that could simply be because he’s older, but John doesn’t believe that’s all there is to it.

“Do you really think I’d tell you that?” he asks her, poking the beast and watching it closely for its reaction to the provocation.

Meira peeks out at him, squinting. “Please tell me you took them to a hospital,” she says, instead of demanding information or poking back like she so often does with him. It’s perhaps the best answer she could have given, and John distrusts that on principle.

“They’re safe.” John can give her that much, at least, because if this is a very clever dig for information, all it will tell her is that she’s failed. But she reacts as though her concern is truth, head tipping back and features going slack in evident relief.

Within moments, however, she tenses back up again, expression contorting with distress. As she slides towards an outright frown, John goes in for the kill: “So. What the hell are you?”

Meira laughs at the ceiling, thick and unhappy, like she’s half an inch from sliding over the edge into tears. “I already told you,” she snarks half-heartedly, not bothering to lift her head to actually look at him as she says it.

“You offered a bullshit dodge,” John retorts. “I want the truth.”

It takes Meira long minutes to decide what answer she wants to give, and the longer she takes, the more certain John becomes that the next words out of her mouth will be a lie. Then she heaves a sigh, coming to a resolution, and says the most ridiculous thing John has ever heard; “The truth. The truth is… I’m your granddaughter from the future.”

“That’s really the best you’ve got?” John can’t help but ask. It’s so weak compared to the rest of her lies that it shocks the question out of him before he’s thought over whether that’s actually the tack he wants to take.

Meira shrugs and laughs fatalistically. “It’s the only thing I’ve got, because it’s the truth. Meira Samantha Winchester, born June fourteenth 2018, at your service, Grandfather.” She goes so far as to dip her head to him like some kind of old-fashioned gentleman. It’s galling.

But it’s also telling. Samantha; no doubt meant to imply that she’s Dean’s daughter. And Meira… like Mary, perhaps. The idea of someone profaning Mary’s memory like that curdles like rage in his gut, but he tamps down the burning of it into a steady smoulder and focuses. He can’t think of any significance of June fourteenth, or 2018, but perhaps it’s merely her real birthday, shunted forwards?

He snorts. It’d almost be funny, if she weren’t such a blatant yet unknown threat to his boys. “Go on, then,” he mocks, seating himself on the edge of a ruined desk and making a show of settling in for a long tale. “Explain that one to me.”

Meira blows out a breath, puffing out her cheeks like a chipmunk in an exaggerated expression of consternation. “I don’t even know where to start,” she confesses. “Ask a question; I’ll give you the whole and unvarnished truth, I promise.”

That promise is worth less than the breath it took to say, and she has to know that. Still. The uncertainty of where to begin rings as genuine; a lie is usually better planned out than that. Usually, but Meira has already proven she’s very good at lying. He hasn’t yet worked out what she gets out of a lie this outrageous, though, so he plays along and challenges her to commit to the bit and give him enough rope to hang her with. “Time travel?”

Meira cocks her head at him, an unsettlingly inhuman gesture, and returns the challenge instead of meeting it. “Tell me you don’t see the resemblance between Dean and the guy who convinced you to buy the Impala.”

What?

Despite himself, John casts his memory back. He had been planning to buy a van, a family car, hadn’t he? But then there’d been that guy… Van Halen? No, that couldn’t have been his name, that was…

Dean does have a bad habit of using rock musicians as his aliases.

John feels a chill go down his spine. It’s probably just because Meira already drew the connection and it’s such an old memory, so he’s filling in the blanks with the pieces she’s provided instead of what he actually remembers, but the only face his memory can conjure up is Dean’s.

And it’s such a specific memory.

“How do you know about that?” he asks sharply.

“Dad told me,” Meira answers with no small amount of ‘duh’ in her tone, and it rolls off her tongue so fluidly that it rings, once again, as truth to John’s instincts. That chill tiptoes right back up his spine and sets the hairs on the back of his neck on end.

He doesn’t believe her. He doesn’t, but he’s a lot closer to it than he’s comfortable with. He can’t help but study her face, searching for a family resemblance, and now that he’s looking for it… Fuck. She does look like Mary. She could be Mary’s sister if this were thirty years ago.

But he still doesn’t believe her, because none of this explains what she is and how she does things no human should be able to do. There is no way – no possible way – that Dean would have a child with something inhuman. He’s raised his boys better than that.

Feeling like he’s watching himself move from a very long way away, he gestures at Meira’s leg. “The healing?”

“My other two parents are angels,” Meira says, which catches John beneath the ribs like a jolt of electricity. It explains everything, and yet nothing. He’s aware she claims three dads – which is another reason her claim to be Dean’s daughter is bullshit – but why would both the others be relevant?

That’s a much easier thing to think about than angels.

John has never once seen proof that angels exist, except for the simple fact that if any biblical lore about the devil is true – and quite a lot of the stuff about demons is more accurate than not, so John has to give the sources some credence – then at least one must exist. And more are heavily implied to exist, as it’s very hard to be banished if you’re the only one of your kind.

Mary had never been particularly religious, but she’d believed in angels, John remembers suddenly. It’s a shock, a deep pang of grief at the realisation that he’d nearly forgotten that – nearly lost that part of her – in the onslaught of evil that followed her death, but she had. She’d believed in angels fiercely.

Meira takes his silence as a cue to keep talking. “My qaada is the Angel of Thursday, and my pabbi is the archangel Gabriel. And also kinda the trickster god Loki?” she says, a touch sheepish, like she knows she’s making her story even more ridiculous, even harder to believe, and is doing it anyway because…

“I’d accuse you of lying to me,” John begins, flattening out his tone to keep it from rasping, “but honestly this is getting too ridiculous to be a believable lie.”

Meira shrugs helplessly. “And, dude, you are just scratching the surface of how nuts my life is.”

The words are almost flippant, except they’re too heavy with irony to really be call that, and it makes John incredibly uncomfortable. It rings true, yet again, and he’s starting to wonder. What if she’s not that good an actress and has simply been talking around this insanity? He wants to shy away from the thought, but forces himself to pin it down and consider it with all the discernment twenty years of hunting evil has taught him.

He crosses his arms and keeps his stare level as he watches Meira and turns this all over in his head. “So. You’re a nephilim,” he states, once again poking her to try and find the holes, to try and find the rope he’s going to use to hang her. That he wants to find, because the alternative is… difficult to even contemplate.

“Uh, technically, no,” Meira says, and John narrows his eyes at that. Is that her tactic? Refusing to take the easy answer, the believable answer, specifically in order to add verisimilitude? If so, she’s taking it a bit damn far. His clear suspicion makes her wince, but she doesn’t retract her answer, only elaborates. “A nephilim is created when-” Meira pauses, coughs, and visibly changes tack with a smirk she can’t quite hide. “-through very human methods of reproduction.”

She looks like Dean, John can’t help but think, when he’s about to make a crass innuendo and then thinks better of it in his father’s company. It’s not a thought John likes at all, and he can feel his breathing pick up in alarm as he realises he’s actually very nearly convinced. He forces himself steady with sheer force of will, and focuses on the rest of Meira’s answer.

“My birth was much more angelic in nature,” she’s explaining. “There isn’t really a name for what I am, honestly, because I’m literally only the second of my kind. At a stretch,” she adds the last with a touch of bitterness that, once again, rings true. ‘An abomination’ she’d said, the last time he’d asked her what she actually is, because that’s the only simple and honest answer she has.

If John were a softer man, that might have moved him to sympathy. As it is, it’s still a devastating blow against his conviction that she’s lying to him. “Do you actually have proof of any of this?” John challenges, and makes sure it comes out far more sceptical than he’s actually feeling.

Meira visibly thinks about it, and then leans forwards. John tenses, immediately braced for an attack, an attempt to flee-

All rational thought abandons him for several crucial seconds as the air is suddenly filled with feathers. He recoils with a curse, but Meira doesn’t lunge, and she doesn’t run, just sits there and smiles and offers a cheeky little “Tah-dah!” like this isn’t breaking John’s brain a little.

The wings – wings – are huge, thirteen or fourteen feet across, if he’s any judge, and a brilliant, pristine white on the underside. Sharply angled and narrow, like a raptor, but the patterning he can see over the top of the wrist and elbow joints are most similar to a barn owl, if barn owls could ever look quite that metallic and iridescent.

They are undeniably, irrefutably flesh-and-blood wings. They move when she breathes, rustle and flex when she rolls her shoulders, curl in a little around her the longer John stares.

He can’t-

He is going to need a minute to fucking process this.

Wings.

Angels.

…Fuck.

John puts that all in a box to think about later, and goes back to trying to figure Meira out. He’s not even going to contemplate how this factors in to how much he believes her. “The demons?” he asks instead.

Ire flashes through Meira’s eyes, bright and scalding, and it’s – irritatingly – reassuringly familiar. “For some dumb reason, my grace looks a lot like Lucifer’s. I don’t know why the fuck that happened when it should have been identical to my qaada’s, but maybe Granddad just has a shit sense of humour,” she bites out, and she’s so casual about it, it takes John a good few seconds to catch up to what she actually said.

“Grandad?” he asks on autopilot, and then realises who that has to mean, if any of this has been true, and he nearly chokes on it.

“Capital-G God,” Meira confirms brightly, full of schadenfreude. “But yeah, that’s why the demons trusted me. Because they thought I was the Antichrist or something. I let them think that because then they told me shit like where they were taking you.”

Oh, good, something John can poke without having to think about the girl who calls him grandfather calling God Himself granddad. “You didn’t know that from the future?” he pokes.

Meira snorts at him, and pokes back. “You think Dad’s changed that much? Like fuck he talks about the shit that hurts him more than he’s absolutely got to, and if you think the events that led to your death didn’t hurt him, you’re an idiot.”

John straightens, entirely and thoroughly distracted from his sudden crisis of faith. “My death?” he demands.

Meira’s expression twists, her lower lip catching between her teeth in a clear and futile attempt to disguise her sudden distress. “Dad’s dying,” she tells him, in a voice that suggests that maybe – just maybe – it’s as devastating for her to say as it is for him to hear. “I don’t know if it was the crash or the demon, but… You make a deal. The colt and your soul, for Dean’s life.” Her lips twist in a grim mockery of a smile. “That’s why I’m telling you any ofthis, you paranoid fuckwad; it’s my hail mary pass.”

The attitude is the thing that convinces him that, whatever he thinks of anything else she says, this part is definitely true. She has consistently shown a near aggressive concern for Dean’s well-being, and she has consistently given John lip. The one rather reinforces the veracity of the other.

Still, that’s not going to stop him verifying it for himself.

“I’ll be back,” he informs Meira, as a courtesy, and heads out of the storage shed and towards the car he rented after he ditched the truck. Behind him, just before the door swings shut, he hears a bitterly furious “Motherfucker,” tossed after him.

He very studiously thinks of nothing at all as he drives to the hospital, and thinks of nothing all the way through the gauntlet of staff trying to get him admitted when all he wants is to see his sons and assure himself… He goes to Dean’s room first, and finds Sam up and awake and sitting at his brother’s bedside.

“Dad,” Sam breathes with abject relief when he sees him.

“Sam,” John replies, then looks to Dean. “How are you boys doing?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says dismissively. “But Dean… Dad, they’re saying he might not wake up.” He says it straight out, ripping a band-aid off, and John was half expecting it, but it still hits like a knife to the guts.

Meira was telling the truth about this. What else was she telling the truth about?

No.

He can’t think about that right now. First things first, he assures Sam as best he can, clapping him on the shoulder and promising they’ll do everything they can for Dean. “Where’s Meira?” Sam asks.

“I’ve got her looking into some things,” John deflects.

Sam raises an eyebrow. “And she just did what you said?” he challenges dubiously.

John snorts. “No,” he agrees darkly, “but no matter what she thinks of me, she clearly values Dean’s life, and that’s enough for now.” Sam nods, looking very tired all of a sudden. “Get some rest, I’ve got to-” The pile of things John needs to take care of before he can even begin to start really thinking about everything Meira said threatens to overwhelm him for moment, and he determinedly pushes it all away to focus on just the next thing on his to-do list. “I’ve got to make sure this whole thing doesn’t end up on anyone’s radars.”

“Can I help?” Sam asks, almost eagerly. “What can I do?”

“Rest,” John repeats firmly. He knows as soon as he’s said the word that it’s not going to go over well. Sam de-ages about ten years with the expression of petulant defiance on his face, and John wants tocry. Instead, he gives Sam a task to keep him occupied. “And keep watch over Dean. We don’t know how that demon found us on the road, they could find us here.” Sam’s expression firms, and he nods.

Then John goes and lets himself be admitted, gets treated, spins a bullshit yarn for the police that turn up about a second man in the truck who abducted him, but he fought his way free, gives them the most generic description he can, and gets himself discharged.

He goes and empties the Impala’s trunk before anyone can see the arsenal, and has to double-down on his compartmentalisation as he looks at the car. The memory of Dean leaning on the damn thing and saying “Trust me, this thing's still gonna be badass when it's 40,” floods his mind and he has to pause and brace himself on the extremely dented hood to just breathe.

No.

He has things to do. He loads the weapons and other hunting paraphernalia into a couple of duffel bags, and ignores all the thoughts that threaten to spill over as he encounters the neatly organised collection of knives, because his boys have never favoured them, but Meira- No. He hauls everything off to a motel, where he books himself a room, and sets his alarm for exactly seven hours later.

Kansas City, Missouri – Thursday 3rd August 2006

In the morning, John sorts through everything he pulled out of the Impala, and loads himself up with anything useful. Holy water and markers, mostly, since the Colt is already on his person and isn’t going to be anywhere else for a good long time if he has anything to say about it.

Then he heads back to the cabin.

He circles the area warily, but he sees no evidence of demons or demonic activity, so he dares to approach the actual building, only to stop in his tracks when the damn thing comes into view. The whole thing looks like it’s been split in half down the middle, and one half promptly collapsed, while the other half was torn from the ground and scattered across the surrounding area. There is absolutely no chance that yellow-eyes is actually still in there.

For a moment the rage threatens to swallow him whole. He burns with frustration that Sam hadn’t just taken the damn shot when he had the chance, because he would rather be dead if it meant that thing could no longer walk the earth. In the back of his mind, he hears “your fucking revenge-boner jerk-off buddy” and that very effectively douses the worst of his anger.

It also reminds him of the last item on his to-do list. So he gets back into his rental and drives back to that little storage shed. Meira looks remarkably well for someone who’s spent over twenty-four hours tied up with neither food nor water. The- the wings are still there, but settled like a cloak and mantle around her shoulders instead of spread wide for dramatic effect.

“The demon is gone,” John snaps by way of a greeting, because he is still angry about that, even if it’s not so all-consuming anymore, and he wants to see how she reacts to the implicit accusation.

“What?” Meira asks, wings flaring slightly in her alarm.

“I went back to the cabin,” John informs her, and the utter horror on her face is… something. It’s something. “The place looks like a hurricane hit it, and the demon we left trapped there is gone. You want to explain that?”

Meira gapes at him for several seconds, before bursting out into a familiarly spiteful little rant. “A demon managed to find us bare minutes after we got out of there and ran us off the road, and you’re surprised that there might have been others that found him? Newsflash, dumbass, devil’s traps only work on demons inside them. Ones on the outside can still have enough juice to, say, tear up whatever the trap is drawn on and free their friends.”

Yeah. That’s about what John figured, and the fact that she’s not only come to the same conclusion, but is willing to tear him a new one for not thinking of it is… another point in her favour, really. A liar would be more likely to try and placate him, to soften the notion with a false ‘realisation’ of ‘what must have happened’.

“How do we kill it?”

Meira glares at him. “Dad shoots him in the fucking face about a year from now. Little less, I think,” she states, tone utterly flat and so devoid of any emotion it’s a very clear indicator of her growing impatience. Which shatters just a moment later, and she bursts out with, “Is that enough for you, you colossal twatwaffle? Will you let me out of here so I can save your son’s life, or do you want to play another round of paranoia-boner jerk-off?”

Revenge-boner jerk-off buddy echoes in John’s head again and he grits his teeth. “You just don’t stop, do you?” he asks, to buy himself a few goddamn seconds to process the rest of what she just said.

“Right back at you, motherfucker,” Meira snarls.

Yeah, well, John can’t afford to stop, because if he stops to think for even just a moment, he’s not going to be functional for the next twenty-four hours at least, and he needs to keep functioning.

“How?” John grits out. Functioning. Focusing on the next thing that needs to be done.

“How what?” Meira asks after a beat of evident confusion.

“How would you save Dean’s life?”

Meira gives him a look of such incredulous contempt, John’s control is severely tested in not smacking it off her face. “Uh, hello? Archangel here?”

And there’s that thing John’s been trying very hard not to think about. Angels. And his- And Meira potentially being one. But even if it’s true, even if angels do exist, John still can’t trust that that means anything in the grand scheme of things. “And what would it cost?” he demands, because that’s the question here. That’s the crux of the matter.

The doctors have all but given up, which means all John’s really doing is trying to find the solution that will be least likely to fuck his boys over in the process.

Meira’s breath catches. “Nothing,” she says, voice ragged, catching in her throat and coming out a whisper. She finds her voice a second later to add, “Fuck, I know you don’t think very well of me, but I’m not going to ask for payment for healing my goddamn family!”

John can’t let himself hope. Can’t let himself trust that easily. That’s how people end up dead. That’s how his boys end up dead. Except Dean’s already dying, isn’t he? “Nothing that good comes without a price,” John insists.

Meira kicks her chin up, and gives him more fucking lip. “Okay, fine, it’s going to cost half a dozen years of suffering, a barely averted apocalypse, the explosion of some ten-thousand year old issues, the concerted effort of heaven, hell, and half of fucking purgatory to kill me, and a bout of excruciating pain, but the only parts of it that are going to land on your shoulders are going to come for you anyway, so what the fuck have you got to lose? I’m not going to ask for your goddamned soul.”

A bare day ago, the fact that Meira has apparently figured out that he’s been considering… other options would have had his back up like nothing else, but now, it only serves to make him think- Maybe.

Then Meira’s expression twists into something purely spiteful, and she adds, “but hey, if you want me to extract a price, then how about; Stop traumatising your fucking kids!”

John glares at her to keep his expression steady over the maelstrom of emotions he’s feeling. There’s outrage there, but guilt too, and hope, no matter how hard he’s fighting it, and uncertainty, which he hates more than anything and, more to the point, cannot afford right now. He glares, and curls his hands into fists to keep them steady, but it doesn’t work, and the longer he takes to make his decision, the worse it gets.

In truth, he knows he’s already made his decision, and this dithering is just him not wanting to accept the risks.

He gives himself a mental kick up the ass, and goes to untie the supposed fucking archangel that’s offering to heal his son for nothing except… well, except his trust. A high price indeed, but not quite as high as his soul.

The ropes come loose, and the bruises around Meira’s wrists vanish right in front of his eyes. John wonders if it will be that easy for her to heal Dean, and then has to stop thinking about that or he’s going to change his mind – it can’t be this easy, nothing is this easy – and he’s already set himself on this course. Indecision will kill him just as surely as a bullet. He’s weighed his options, and he’s picked this one. Now, he’s going to stick to it.

“After you,” he tells her, gesturing to the door and pointedly not doing anything to break the trap under their feet.

“You know the signum dei vivi can hold some of the lower ranks of angels?” Meira asks in a deliberately conversational tone as she shakes her wings out and John tries very hard not to watch them instead of her face. “Including the Angel of Thursday. Originally, anyway,” she adds, and John makes a mental note to ask about that later, if-

“You claimed to be an archangel,” John reminds her, almost amused. If she’s trying to convince him to give her the benefit of the doubt if she can’t leave the circle, she’s not going to get anywhere with it anytime soon. But it does remind John that he has options, as distasteful as they are. “Prove it.”

Meira bounces and skips right over the outer edge of the trap, then spins on one heel, wings flaring wide to help her balance and make a spectacle of it. She spreads her arms as if displaying herself; a showy gesture like some game-show presenter, and half-bows to him like an actor at curtain call. “Satisfied, motherfucker?” she chirps with a grin that’s all teeth.

No, he isn’t, but… “If you can save Dean, I will be,” he tells her. If she can save Dean like she’s promised, then perhaps he can afford to trust her. The final test, and if she passes, he will have to accept that she’s been telling the truth.

She nods, accepting that, and gestures to the door. “After you,” she fires back at him. John takes the lead back to the rental, and drives them to the hospital in absolute silence.

They find Sam at Dean’s bedside again, head bowed over John’s own journal, flipping through the pages. He doesn’t look up as John slips into the room, but Meira isn’t quite so stealthy. She makes a noise like someone just kicked her in the gut when John clears her line of sight to the bed, and Sam’s head snaps up.

Something in his shoulders loosens when he spots the source of the noise. John wants to cuff him upside the head for trusting so easily when he taught him better than that, but given the givens it rather stinks of hypocrisy, so he lets the thought go. “Meira, hey,” Sam greets, attempting a smile that falls flat, before just nodding to them instead. “Dad.”

John crosses the room and claps him on the shoulder, grounding himself with the touch as much as it’s meant to comfort Sam. Sam glances up with another smile that just doesn’t quite work, and John has to swallow his own worry. He lets himself drop into the other visitor’s chair and scrubs a hand over his face to hide his expression from the room for a moment.

He can’t believe he’s doing this, that he’s trusting-

Don’t lose your nerve now, Winchester. “Go get something to eat, son,” he instructs. “I’ll- I’ll sit with Dean.” He can’t quite keep the catch out of his voice as he tries to talk about Dean, because either way, the situation is going change soon enough. Either Meira is telling the truth, and she heals Dean, or… or she’s not, and John has probably gotten his son into some even deeper shit than what he suspects is the actual goddamn apocalypse.

Sam opens his mouth to argue, but something seems to stop him, and he huffs a reluctant surrender. “You sure I should leave you two alone together?” he challenges, though it’s clearly not a refusal, just an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

“If anything is going to get Dean to wake up, it’d be needing to mediate, right?” Meira says, playing along. Which is good, because John can’t think of anything to say that isn’t ‘no, you shouldn’t, you know better, I taught you better, goddamnit.’

Sam actually laughs, even if it is a bit ragged around the edges, as he levers himself up from his chair. “I don’t think things are quite that desperate yet,” he chokes out, and then swallows convulsively, like he can taste the lie like rot on his tongue.

“No promises,” Meira quips back, and Sam groans, but heads out of the room anyway with only one hesitant glance back towards the bed.

John expects Meira to do whatever it is she needs in order to heal Dean right away, but she waits, hovering just out of the doorway, looking to John like she’s waiting for a cue. John isn’t sure if he’s grateful that she’s allowing him that small illusion of control, or if he hates her just a bit more for making him even more complicit in this potential betrayal than he already is.

Still, he waits to be sure that Sam will be well out of the blast radius before he jerks his chin towards the bed and raises his eyebrows impatiently at the girl. She pulls a face right back at him, rolling her eyes before she squares her shoulders and steps up to the bed. She very delicately detaches the oxygen mask from Dean’s face. “For the record,” she announces, more to the room than to him, John thinks, “I am lodging a complaint with management that this is the only way I’ve found to get this to work at the moment.”

Hell, does Dean really let his daughter get away with so much goddamn whining? “Noted,” he drawls, making sure that one word communicates ‘get the fuck on with it’ as clearly as possible.

“Fuck you,” Meira mutters, but it’s tinged with humour rather than vitriol. John wonders at the change. Is it really just because he’s giving her a chance? Not all of her antagonism can be put down to a reaction to his distrust, but that edge that he’s always taken as an attempt to drive a wedge between him and his sons… Could that really just have been so much defensive snarling at his attempts to put some distance between his sons and this strange, unknown factor?

Meira draws in a fortifying breath, grabs hold of Dean’s head in both hands, and leans down to seal her mouth over his. John lurches in alarm, mind full of demons and deals and the consequences therein. No. No, if she’s tricked him into trading Dean’s soul for healing instead of his own, he’s going to kill her, and he’s going to make it hurt-!

Meira slumps like her strings have been cut, head bouncing off the edge of the bed as she collapses to floor in the same moment Dean’s eyes flicker open. A high pitched keening noise has both John and Dean scrambling to look around – or over – the side of the bed. “Shit, Meira!” Dean swears, swinging his legs out of bed without any sign of discomfort at all, and dropping to his knees beside her thrashing form.

It’s very clearly a seizure.

John doesn’t think about it, just strips off his jacket and folds it in two quick, economical motions as he glances at the clock and notes the position of the second hand. “Under her head,” he orders Dean, who looks up, startled, but takes the jacket without question and does as he’s told.

It’s an agonising twenty-seven seconds later that Meira stops convulsing with another, much quieter pained noise. “Meira?” Dean calls softly, and Meira’s eyes flicker open. “You back with us?” She nods, and Dean’s shoulders slump with relief. The nod turns into a roll of her head, as she tips it further back and meets John’s gaze. He’s not sure what she’s thinking, but John is feeling the full weight of realisation hit him like a sack of bricks.

That’s his granddaughter.

Fuck.

“The fuck was that?” Dean demands.

“A seizure,” Meira informs him, the little smartass. “Help me up,” she adds, and Dean obliges, hauling her to her feet. She shakes her limbs out like she’s still feeling phantom aches, and John makes several connections at lightning speed. There was no pagan god, was there? Or… that was a side-step, rather than a lie. She does have a pagan god she can call, because apparently the archangel Gabriel has been roleplaying a trickster for fun, but that isn’t how she healed that Meg Masters girl. She did this.

“Thirty seconds,” John informs her, because he doubts anyone else who’s been present has been in a state of mind fit for timing the damn seizure, and if that shit’s getting worse the more she does this, that’s important to know.

“Huh. You timed it?” Meira asks, and John nods, to which she flashes him a quick, grateful little smile.

It makes John feel deeply uncomfortably, so he ignores it in favour of getting Dean back into bed until a medical professional can verify for him that Meira did, in fact, heal him properly. Dean reluctantly goes where he’s bid, sort of. He sits down on the edge of the bed, but refuses to actually get back into it. “I feel fine,” he insists, glancing between John and Meira uncertainly. “The fuck happened?”

John decides to let Meira answer that. He’s interested to see how she handles it, especially now that he can see behind the curtain of her obfuscations.

“You remember we crashed?” she checks, and Dean nods. “Well, I shot the demon that ran us off the road, and John brought you and Sam to the hospital. Sam’s fine, just went to get something to eat,” she adds quickly when Dean’s eyes widen. “That was… what? Yesterday?”

“Two days ago,” John corrects.

“Shit, was I really… out for that long?”

John nods, with the tiniest hint of a smirk.

“Well, fuck.” Meira pauses. “What happened to the Colt?”

John points to his own back at waist level instead of answering aloud.

Meira breathes a sigh of relief, and as the air leaves her, so does all of the stress and tension that was holding her together, it seems. She sags and all but collapses onto the bed beside Dean and leans into him, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Don’t you ever fucking nearly die on me again, Dean,” she says thickly, sounding near to tears.

Dean clears his throat. “Do my best,” he promises, bringing an arm up around her shoulders and squeezing gently. They shudder in his hold as Meira loses the battle against tears, and they sit like that for a long moment, John feeling more and more like the interloper as time drags on.

Eventually, though, Dean lets his arm drop, and Meira takes the cue to sit up and pull herself together. She slides down off the bed so abruptly that John almost thinks she’s collapsed again, but instead, she settles at Dean’s feet, facing away, and says “Braid my hair,” in the most imperious tone John’s ever heard from her.

Dean snorts. “This going to be a thing?” he asks dryly as he pulls out the band holding her – rather wonky by now – ponytail in place.

“Don’t nearly die again and we won’t have to find out,” Meira snarks right back, and Dean chuckles, running his fingers through her hair.

“French braid again?” he asks, and Meira hums an affirmative. Her eyes slide closed again as Dean begins twisting her hair into place, and John watches the moment unfold with a desperate sort of ache in his chest.

This, he thinks suddenly, is what Dean’s future looks like. How often has Dean done this in Meira’s past? He can practically see the years falling off Meira and settling on Dean, until Dean looks as old as John is now, and Meira is a little slip of nothing that could fit on his lap.

He’s desperately glad that when they’re done and Dean’s tied off the braid, Meira immediately causes a ruckus by pressing the call button before Dean can stop her. The ensuing chaos of Dean’s arguments and the nurse’s arrival gives John the time he needs to pull himself back together. He needs to not fall apart in the middle of the goddamn hospital. They’ve still got demons crawling up their asses here, and it wouldn’t do to get caught off guard.

Sam gets back before the chaos is done, and only adds to it by hovering about awkwardly and getting in the way as he tries to assure himself that Dean’s okay. He’s apparently forgotten all about the tray of to-go cups of coffee in his hand, and doesn’t even seem to notice when Meira ducks into the scrum to snag two of them and retreat at speed with her prize. She settles in an arms-length from John and hands him one of the cups without looking at him. John takes it without a word.

Sam doesn’t notice, but Dean does. He tracks the gesture, and narrows his eyes at them suspiciously. Thankfully, the doctor then arrives to back up the nurse’s pleas for Dean to stay the night for observation, and he’s distracted with fending them off. They reluctantly produce discharge papers for him to sign, which he does, and then he practically bolts from the room.

“I fucking hate hospitals,” he announces, as the three of them catch up to him in the hallway and match his rapid pace.

“I’ve always kinda liked them,” Meira confesses, and John turns in unison with his sons to stare at her incredulously. “They’re one of the most defiant places in the world,” she says, full of warmth, “humanity blazing bright against the darkness, telling even death himself ‘not today.’”

There’s something profound in that, in the awe on Meira’s face as she says it. Except then Dean says “Game of Thrones,” in a tone of acknowledgement and grudging amusement, and Meira snaps her fingers and points finger-guns at him, and the moment breaks. John rolls his eyes.

“And you call me a nerd,” Sam grumbles good-naturedly as they reach the front doors and spill out into the muggy afternoon air. “So what now?” he asks, as the rapid escape from the building turns to a slow, uncertain meandering.

John knows he should have an answer, but he doesn’t. He clenches his jaw, and steels himself to come up with a plan of action and present it like it’s a done deal. He has to at least appear to have confidence and certainty for his boys. But before he can make any words leave his lips, Meira speaks up.

“Well, Bobby did say to head back to his once we got John back,” she reminds them all, and then flashes a winsome, utterly mocking smile at John. “He even promised not to shoot at you. Again.”

“Meira,” Dean groans, but even John can tell there’s not enough force behind it to stop her. There’s not enough force behind it to stop a toddler, never mind a wilful adult. This is why Meira’s so goddamn cheeky. Dean clearly needs to take a firmer hand with his kid in the future.

But that kid is currently the only reason Dean is walking out of the hospital, instead of still lying there dying, so… John curbs his first, angry rebuke. “I’m sure you wish he would,” he says instead, dry and pointed.

Meira’s smile grows teeth. “I would love to know what you did that actually made him try,” she taunts; dares. Her gaze holds his, and he can see the challenge in them, the test laid out. The unspoken, yet so terribly loud; tell the truth, if you can bear to admit it.

John is no coward, no matter what she thinks. He nods to her, ever so slightly, because it’s not as if she’s made a secret of the fact that she’s more of a mind with Bobby than John on this particular issue. “We might’ve had an argument or two about how I was raising my boys,” he says through gritted teeth.

Meira’s smile turns sweet, but no less sharp-edged. “I knew I liked him!”

John glares at her. Not only was that cheeky, it was childish and petty, and John has had it up to here with her attitude. “How your father ever put up with you, I have no idea,” he growls. Actually, now he thinks on it, she reminds him a little of Sam in his very worst teen years, when all John got from him was lip. When Sam had dug his heels in on every little issue just to prove he could.

“Dad!” Dean snaps.

There is the commanding tone John had been looking for, the bite in his voice that hits with enough of a punch to bring most anyone up short. John is not most anyone, but it’s good to know that Dean can pull it out when needed, even if he’s deeply unimpressed that it’s being pointed in his direction right now.

All of Meira’s sharp edges soften, though, and she leans into him, a silent gesture of gratitude and reassurance, even as her eyes never leave John. “I,” she begins, and even with the edges filed down there’s something portentous about her words that make them land heavily regardless, “was the light of my dad’s life, and he never gave me cause to doubt that.”

John flinches.

It’s not the words that hit, but the silences in between. The overt contrast, brought into sharp relief by the echoing silence. The absolute faith; the damning doubt.

“Meira!” Dean snaps.

Meira backs down, body language caving in, surrendering to her father’s scolding even though she doesn’t retract the words, the indictment. He’s seen her do this before, back in Chicago; when she’d pushed too far, gone cold with rage at something he’d said and Dean had stepped in, she’d backed down immediately.

At the time, John had taken it as another subtle ploy to drive a wedge between them. Deferring to Dean’s authority over John’s, subtly setting them into equal – and opposing – positions of authority. But no, it’s just instinct, a child listening to their father, even when she believes herself to be in the right, even when she refuses to drop John’s gaze or apologise, she still gives her father enough deference to stop fighting when he tells her to.

Small mercies, when she’s already won the bout.

“I’ll see you at Singer’s,” John says, crisply, because if he doesn’t keep his tone firmly regulated, it’s going to shake.

As he turns and walks away, he hears Dean ask, rather plaintively, “What the hell was that?” but then he’s too far away to hear Meira’s answer. As tempted as he is by a chance to gather more data on her, he finds it’s not enough to overcome the driving need to get away from her sharp gaze and her cutting words and her fucking judgement.

At least he’ll have the drive to Sioux Falls to try and get himself back under control.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota – Thursday 3rd August 2006

John does not feel any more under control by the time he reaches the Singer Salvage Yard. He even gave himself an extra half hour by doing a perimeter check around the place, just to be sure there aren’t any demons lying in wait. That’s as much grace as he’s willing to give himself, though, so after that he forces himself to knock on the door.

It’s opened a moment later by Singer, who levels a completely unreadable look at him for several painful moments before he says, “Winchester.”

“Singer.”

The silence that swells between them is broken by a quiet but ominous growl coming from inside the house, followed by a deliberately provocative “Good boy,” from John’s least favourite pain in the ass.

Singer huffs, somewhere between exasperated and amused, and steps back to let him in. John takes in the way Meira is sprawled out on the couch with a book propped on Rumsfeld’s flanks, and turns back to Singer. “Where are the boys?”

“Dean’s out back looking over the Impala,” Singer answers, closing the door, “and Sam’s gone out to get groceries.”

John grunts an acknowledgement and, with his last valid distraction so neatly removed, forces himself to walk into the study and claim the chair at Singer’s desk, sitting on it sideways so that he’s facing Meira. She looks so perfectly comfortable, so at home here, and it sends John’s thoughts into a whirlwind of questions. Instead of asking a single one of them, he forces himself to breathe steadily, to reel himself in, and focus on the mission. He needs relevant information.

He pulls out his journal and a pen, propping it open on the edge of Singer’s desk, and flipping to the next empty page. He writes today’s date, and Meira’s name. Just her first name, because now he knows the last name is a lie, and he can’t quite bring himself to commit the truth to paper just yet. “From the beginning,” he orders.

Meira meets his eyes, face utterly blank of expression, and then flicks a glance over his shoulder, to where Singer is propping up the doorway. Singer raises one unimpressed eyebrow, and Meira quirks a rueful little smile before turning back to John and cocking her head in an exaggerated gesture of confusion. “Which beginning?”

That’s a stupid question, and all the more for how it’s actually relevant when fucking time-travel is involved. “Blackwater ridge,” John states, because that’s the earliest incident he can find with even a hint of her presence.

Meira gives an acknowledging little bobble of her head. “I crash-landed because someone or something – I suspect the devil, frankly – fucked with my grace mid-flight,” she tells him, point-blank and to the point. John, honestly, appreciates it. He writes it down; ‘Arrived at Blackwater Ridge on 11/11/05 from ______ (>2030?) after an unknown force (suspected; devil?) attacked her and crippled her ability to fly (research: angelic grace, re; flight + time).’

“Missouri.”

“Her granddaughter babysat me a lot as a kid. It was hard not to think about it when I came face to face with her for the first time. Also, she could see what I am,” Meira reports, and John writes that down, too: ‘Knows Missouri’s granddaughter Patience from childhood, but never met Missouri. Missouri aware of her nature (review Missouri re: Meira + angels).’

“Plainview.”

It takes Meira a moment to answer that one, and when she does, it’s with a grimace. “Took me too freaking long to figure out how to make the healing work with my grace bound,” she explains.

“Bound?” John demands, head snapping up, half way through scribbling down ‘Abilities; healin-’

Meira gives him a deeply unimpressed look for that. “If it weren’t I would’ve fucked off back to my own time already,” she informs him, as though that should have been obvious. “I honestly don’t know how the fuck they managed it, but my grace is bound beneath my skin.” She gestures to herself. “I can’t affect anything but myself with it anymore.”

John narrows his eyes, because he knows for a fact that’s untrue. Then again, he remembers her whining from before she healed Dean, and asks, “Why kissing?”

Meira pulls a face. “Spiritual CPR,” she corrects plaintively. John snorts, almost more amused than he is annoyed at her childish antics. Sure, it wasn’t a pleasant notion to contemplate, but you bucked up and did whatever was needed to get the job done, pleasant or not. “Fuck you,” Meira huffed, without any of the familiar bite. Just like in the hospital, it was edged with a wry, self-directed humour than any sort of aggression.

Finally, she relents, and actually answers his damn question. “It’s the same reason demons do it to seal a deal,” she explains. “Healing with grace requires access to the soul, and-” A faint wistful smile crosses her face. “-and kissing is communion.”

That… is certainly a statement, especially coming from a- an angelic being of some kind. John jots it down with a note to consult Jim Murphy on the subject and how it might fit into common consensus on scripture. If nothing else, it’s sure to make for an entertaining conversation. Then he finishes his note about Meira’s abilities. ‘Abilities; healing (self, others through mouth-to-mouth access to soul), flight (through time, hampered, physical wings), shapeshifting (wings not always present),’ with plenty of space left for more.

“Chicago.”

Meira puffs up her cheeks like a chipmunk, and then blows out the breath in one big gusting sigh. “Which part?” she asks with a grimace.

John considers that, then flips back in his journal to the entries covering that whole clusterfuck. He scans it from the beginning, looking for the inconsistencies. “Novak?” he prompts, when he comes to his notes about his and Meira’s official introduction.

“Qaada’s vessel’s surname. I could hardly use Winchester, Pabbi doesn’t have one, and Renaldi is way too loaded for casual use. It was the first thing that came to mind that I could actually use.”

“Vessel?” John asks sharply.

“With consent,” Meira replies, just as sharp.

John notes that down, too, with an underlined reminder to research that, because it sounds suspicious as hell, and he really doesn’t like it. Now’s not the time to open up that question though, because John is looking to get as much information as he can out of her, not derail them with one of her rants about saving monsters.

He flips back to his notes on Chicago.

“The ways to kill demons?” he prompts. It’s been a burning question in his mind ever since she said it. He’d spent twenty years looking for a way to kill that yellow-eyed son of a bitch, and she came along and rattled off three just off the top of her head. It was galling.

Meira raises a hand in a loose fist and begins counting off on her fingers. “The Renaldi have been doing it that way for actual thousands of years before Samuel Colt came up with that ritual,” she explains, flicking up one finger that she then uses to point, with no small amount of melodrama, to her own face. “Angel,” the second finger goes up, and John doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that their backs are towards him. This girl is such a goddamn brat, and it’s so infuriating it’s coming back around to being funny. Not that he’s ever going to let her know that. “And not-bro Ben has the one that was used on Dad.”

The third finger pops up, but John isn’t paying her hand a lick of attention anymore. He’s staring at her dead on, willing himself not to lose his shit until she explains what she just said. She doesn’t speak, though, so he forces himself to grit out, “Explain.”

Meira’s expression is, at least, perfectly solemn. “And the First Seal shall break with the Righteous Man sheds blood in hell,” she quotes. And it is a quote, with all the portentous weight of a fucking prophecy.

Behind him, Singer sucks in a sharp breath. “No,” he breathes, devastated and in denial.

John wishes he could still hide behind denial. He wishes it didn’t fit all too well with the ugly suspicion that’s been growing in the back of his mind this last year or so. He never wrote that down, either, tried not to so much as look at it head on, but the pieces were there, and he’s too much a hunter to not notice them. “I knew it,” he snarls under his breath as it all comes together, like he was just waiting for someone else to say it.

And then the realisation catches up with him, the fucking weight of it.

The apocalypse. The end of the goddamn world, and his boys used to start it. Dean to open the gate, and Sam… Sam to lead the horde.

There’s a distant crunching sound. Pain lances through his hand. He looks down to see ink and blood both leaking out from between his fingers. Black and red. He looks at it, at his blood, and feels strangely disconnected from it. His mind is whirling, plans and contingencies coming together and falling apart rapidly as he tries to find some way out, but it’s all so very far away. Drowned under a frozen, desperate litany of not my boys, not my boys, not my boys-!

It- It doesn’t have to be Sam, does it? There are others. Dozens of others. And if it doesn’t have to be Sam, then maybe it doesn’t have to be Dean, either- And he knows, he knows, doesn’t he, the only way Dean could end up in hell, and-

He looks up, finds Meira watching him with slightly wide eyes. “Why did you stop me?” he rasps, voice ragged with the strain of keeping his emotions in check. “I could’ve-” he chokes on the words.

Meira’s shoulders hitch, like he’s surprised her, like he’s shocked her, and it nearly drives him into a fury. Does she really think so poorly of him? Does she really think he wouldn’t give anything to spare his boys-

“No, you couldn’t.”

It’s gentle. That’s the thing that gets him. Meira has never been less than fierce with him, except now. Now, despite the absolute immovable certainty of her words, her tone is soft. Kind. Anything else, he would have been able to rally against, to fight, but kindness? It slips past his defences and guts him.

He closes his eyes against it, as though that might protect him from the truth. When it doesn’t, he lowers his head into his hands, uncaring of the ink and blood he’s no doubt smearing across his face. He has to focus. He has to breathe, and focus. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be something he can kill to make this go away. He just- He just has to find it, and-

“Hey.”

Her voice is still so achingly soft. As are her hands when they catch his and urge them away from his face. As are her eyes when she goes to her knees before him to meet his gaze without forcing him to look up. It’s such a vulnerable place to put herself, and it makes her look young. Small, and young, and fragile, even though he knows she’s anything but. She holds his hands in hers, palms up and open and bloody, and holds his gaze with hers, soft and open and intent. A tiny smile pulls at one corner of her mouth.

“They win.”

They win.

They win?

They-

John’s sucks in a breath that shakes, rattled down to his bones, down to his soul. He stares at Meira, hardly daring to blink, unable to speak, but begging her with every atom in his body, because that can’t mean what it sounds like. She can’t be saying- But her smile widens, and the tenderness is touched with a hint of mischief, a wicked glint of daring and-

“Your boys beat the devil,” she tells him, and that spark in her eyes is pride. Pride in her family, in her father and her uncle, who beat the devil. Pride she’s offering up to share with him because that’s his boys she’s talking about. Sam and Dean. His sons. “They beat heaven, and hell, and every sorry motherfucker that came after.”

He’s spent so long fighting against hope. He had to be practical, he had to be realistic, he had to be sure. Good things don’t come without a price, every victory has to be snatched out of the jaws of defeat, every ally is a weakness waiting to be exploited.

But here it is, offered to him on a silver platter, and he can’t help but let it in.

Because it’s being offered to him by the only person he could believe it from. She’s the proof. She’s hope incarnate, drop-kicked into his son’s lives by some future menace, right into their fucking laps in the moment they- he needed it most.

He can’t fight the tremble in his lip, all his effort going into mustering the words, the question he needs to ask. He needs to hear it again. Needs to hear her say it again. “They win?” It comes out as hoarse as if he’s been screaming for hours. He feels like he has.

“Yeah,” Meira tells him, eyes bright and fierce. “Yeah, they do.”

The dam breaks.

The sob tears out of him like a living thing, ugly and raw and painful. His restraint shatters like glass, fractured and slicing him to ribbons on its sharp edges all the way down his throat and into his lungs as he gasps. It hurts, to hope, to see a light at the end of the tunnel at last. It hurts and hurts and hurts, deeper and stronger and sharper, a pain so clean it almost feels right.

Before he can even manage one full breath, another sob wrenches through him, burning his lungs, stinging his leaking eyes, setting his body to shaking. He feels like he’s trying to throw up his soul with every ragged, awful heave, and it just doesn’t stop. There is no end to it.

He’s not sure how long he sits there, hunched over in agony, sobbing out his pain and sheer, unrelenting relief. He’s not aware of anything but the hurt for long enough that even time has slipped his grasp. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours.

Reality reasserts itself slowly. First he becomes aware of the ache in his back, the pain in his hand, the rawness of his eyes. Then he realises he’s holding onto something. Then comes the realisation that that something is Meira. His hands are clenched so tight around her upper arms he would’ve left bruises on anyone more human. Her shoulder is wet with his tears, and probably less pleasant fluids. Her arms are curled around his ribs, holding him together as he goes to fucking pieces all over her.

Then he realises he’s gasping, breathing too fast and too shallow, still hitching with the last little lingering sobs. He finds the wherewithal to even it out, to steady himself so that his head stops spinning for lack of oxygen. He forces his fingers to uncurl one at a time, and then lifts his head off Meira’s shoulder to sit up straight.

Humiliation washes over him, and he hopes to god – if god is even listening – that she’ll have the – heh – grace to allow him to pretend this never happened. He’s not holding out much hope, but he has to try, and that starts with dragging up a mask of composure and leading by example.

This. Never happened.

He can believe that.

Any minute now.

When his throat isn’t clogged with lingering tears and snot; he clears it, the sound awkward and sharp in the silence. Meira’s eyes on him are steady and unyielding, and John feels horrifically seen. Like she’s looking right past his flesh and into his soul. And for all he knows, she could be. Fuck.

To his enormous relief, Singer walks into the room then – which means he didn’t stick around to watch John’s humiliation; decent of him – with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a trio of glasses hanging from the other. Not a word is spoken as he puts the glasses down on the corner of his desk, pours a generous measure into each, and re-caps the bottle. They each take a glass in silence, but once they all have one in hand, Singer lifts his and says, with a grim sort of humour, “To beating the apocalypse.”

Meira smiles and lifts hers. “To Team Free-Will.”

John knows he shouldn’t ask, he should let the moment be, but he can’t quite help it. “Team Free-Will?”

Meira’s smile turns sharp and vicious. “Because fuck the angels, fuck god’s plan, and fuck destiny.”

John’s pretty sure his own smile is equally vicious, or it would be, if he wasn’t feeling quite so wrung out. “I’ll drink to that,” he agrees, and lifts his own glass. He wonders, for a moment, what he wants to toast to. To hope? No. Meira’s being corny enough for all of them. But maybe… He meets her gaze and holds it when he says, “To the Winchesters.”

Going by the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes, she recognises what he’s trying to say. She blinks rapidly and sniffs, lip trembling. “Fuck you,” she grouses wetly, and then throws back her whiskey.

John… laughs. Really, what else had he expected?

He drinks his own whiskey as Meira is getting to her feet, but instead of returning to the couch, she hops up to sit on the clear patch of Singer’s desk. She points a finger at John around her empty glass, eyebrows raised at him in a pointed stare. “I’m still mad at you,” she states like a dire warning.

John would scoff, if he had the energy. As it is, it just comes out a soft huff that’s almost but not quite amusement. “I had noticed,” he retorts, reaching for the whiskey. He could use another glass if this conversation is going to go where he thinks it is.

“Missouri,” Meira states, in the exact same tone he’d used… however long ago it was that he’d been interrogating her. The tone that means ‘report, soldier’.

John’s instinct is to bristle, to reassert his authority, but… He’s tired, and he figures turn-about is fair play. And. Well. Granddaughter or not, there’s a tiny part of him that feels like Mary’s memory that can’t quite bring itself to defy the authority of an archangel.

So he closes his eyes, sets his shoulders, and reports. “The demon was after me, not them. If I got too close, if I was seen by one of his agents with the boys… I came to make sure they were safe, that it wasn’t going after them, but I couldn’t risk getting too close.”

“Rockford.”

John has to fight against a sneer. She knows the answer to that one. And, now he’s thinking about it, she probably suspected the answer to the first as well. Report, soldier. “I had to keep them away from California. There were omens all over the fucking state,” he bites out.

“Burkitsville.”

She knows the answer to this, so why-?!

Oh.

Realisation dawns, and John feels very, very stupid. This isn’t a report. This is a dressing down. Explain your mistakes to me, soldier, in detail, so that I know you understand exactly how stupid you’ve been. “The same,” he rasps out. He doesn’t have the strength to fight this right now, which is probably why she’s doing it now. He feels raw and vulnerable, which means that when she drives this knife home, he’s going to feel every fucking inch of it. Damn her.

“Plainview.”

Yeah.

John gasps around the pain of that reminder. He can’t harden his heart against it like he usually does. There’s just not the strength left in him after she tore all his defences down with those two terrible, beautiful words. They win. They win, they win, they win. “I couldn’t-” he starts, and then can’t continue. His voice will break. He’ll cry again. He doesn’t think he has any tears left, but his eyes are stinging anyway.

Report, soldier.

He breathes, steady as a metronome, until he can force his voice steady, even if that just means all the tremors end up in his hands, instead. “There was nothing I could do that Sam wasn’t already doing,” he says flatly, “and I couldn’t bear to watch-” His control fractures, threatens to break, and he drags it back out of sheer bloody spite. “-watch that.”

Meira gives him no quarter.

“Fitchburg.”

Report, soldier.

“I thought finally killing that thing might-” How to say it? How to explain? John fights for words, trying to put the whole ugly mess into as few as possible. “-help Dean put his mistake in the past.”

“His mistake?” Meira challenges with icy softness.

John breathes around another inch of the knife sliding in. Steady breaths. In and out. You were the commanding officer on the field, Winchester. Their mistakes are your mistakes. “My mistake,” he says. Correcting himself. Accepting the censure. Dean wasn’t the one who failed on that hunt. John was, for not anticipating the problem, for not teaching Dean better, for- Well, he thinks Meira would say for asking so much of Dean in the first place.

“The cabin.”

Report, soldier.

Only John’s not actually sure what Meira’s angling at, for this one. He wasn’t even in control for most of that disaster. He opens his eyes, frowning up at Meira. Her expression is hard and solemn, but surprisingly not angry. “Which part?” he asks, echoing her deliberately.

Meira’s eyes flash, and when she speaks, there’s a foreign cadence to her voice. Foreign, but familiar. “‘He wouldn’t be proud of me, he’d be pissed.’” she quotes at him, giving him absolutely no quarter.

John closes his eyes, more of a slow-motion wince than anything more deliberate. “He’s wrong,” he whispers, heart in his throat, because he’s not sure it’s true. Oh, he is proud of Dean, so proud he doesn’t even have words for it, but… he also knows why Dean would think that. He knows he’s always been hard on him, demanded perfection from him, because anything less would mean the death of the last thread tethering John to sanity.

“I know,” Meira says, and for some awful reason, that hurts too. Hurts like a knife to the chest. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

Oh. Yeah. Okay.

Explain your mistakes to me, soldier, in detail, so that I know you understand exactly how stupid you’ve been.

It hurts. It hurts so much he can barely breathe around the ache in his chest, but Meira waits him out with all the patience of an archangel, the kind of timeless patience that could watch mountains crumble to dust under the weight of time alone. It gives him time to wrench the words up from the wounds she’s cut into him, bloody and burning, with her own. “The hunt for the demon had to come first,” he explains, placing each word into the sentence as carefully as if he were defusing a bomb. Or arming one. “It was after Sam for something, and Dean was the only one left I could trust to help me protect him.”

There’s a long pause after he says it. Plenty of time for John to feel the ugliness of his own excuses. When Meira speaks, it’s no longer soft. Still quiet, still cold enough to burn, but now as hard as a granite wall. “You don’t get to do that.”

John’s eyes snap open before he realises he’s going to do it. He stares at her, taken-aback. That is not the dressing down he was expecting, which means the blow is still yet to come. She must read his wary confusion off his face, because she explains without prompting.

“You don’t get to raise them like soldiers since infancy and then get cold fucking feet at the eleventh hour,” she tells him, and despite the vulgarity, there’s an absolute quality to her voice that lends it weight. That, and the look in her eyes. John thinks they might actually be glowing faintly, they’re so bright with righteous fury. “You put a weight no child should ever have to bear on their shoulders, and that was wrong.”

There’s something gutting about having an archangel tell you you’ve done wrong.

There’s something worse about having your granddaughter tell you you’ve fucked up.

“You failed in your duty as a father, and starting to treat them like children now that they no longer are won’t fix it.”

John blinks, and feels a pair of tears streak down his cheeks, burning and then chilled. He hadn’t… seen it that way before, but she’s right. The demon had reappeared, and John, after twenty years of training his boys to fight that very evil, had panicked at the thought of them doing just that. It… had been cruel. “I did the best I could,” he says, but it’s not the defence it could’ve been. It’s still failure. He’d done what he’d thought was best for his boys, and it hadn’t been good enough. He hadn’t been good enough.

“And when your best wasn’t good enough?” Meira asks, cold as ice.

It’s almost amusing, how she’s echoing his thoughts like that. It does at least tell him that he’s come, at last, to the point she was trying to drive home. Here’s the knife. You weren’t good enough. You failed.

“I knuckled down and carried on.” Because what else was there? Lay down and stop trying at all? No. Every inch of him rebels at the mere thought. If he’s going to fail, he’s going to go down swinging. He won’t give the world the satisfaction of breaking him.

“What should you have done?” Meira asks.

John raises his eyebrows, surprised. Once again, she’s thrown him a curve-ball, and he has no idea what answer she wants from him. What should he have done? If he knew that, he would have done it! “I don’t know,” he admits. It’s… easier than he expected it would be, to say the words.

“You ask for help, you great idjit!”

John startles. He’d all but forgotten Singer was there. Meira clearly hadn’t, because she just gives John a hard, cold little smile, and gestures at Singer as if to say ‘there, it’s that easy’. John looks at Singer, who scowls back, and goes over all the arguments they’d had over the years about Sam and Dean. Now that he’s looking at them with fresh eyes, he can see that what it had all boiled down to was ‘let me help you!’ and he hadn’t been able to hear it because…

Because he couldn’t. He couldn’t let go of his boys, because if he did…

If he did, he’d have nothing but the hunt. And vengeance can’t sustain a man forever.

John huffs out a bitter laugh, recognising the selfishness in what he’d always thought he was doing for Sam and Dean’s sake, and drains the glass of whiskey he’s been nursing for this entire dressing down. He keeps his eyes on the glass, because he feels flayed, and he can’t meet anyone’s gaze when he says this.

It is, perhaps, the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

“I need help,” he whispers into the silence.

Singer claps him on the shoulder and gives him a gentle little shake. “And you’ll get it,” he declares, like he’s daring John to argue with him. Some part of John still wants to, but mostly, he just feels… shaken. Unsteady.

It’s terrifying.

“First, go wash your face and maybe catch a nap before your boys see you wrecked like this,” Singer orders. “Sam should be back any minute.”

Orders are good. Orders mean John doesn’t have to work out what to do next. Except his eyes catch on his journal, and he remembers that there’s so much he still needs to do. So many questions that still need answers. Plans that need to be made out of that new information.

“I’m not going anywhere just yet,” Meira says, before he can open his mouth to argue. That alien coldness is gone from her voice now, and she sounds like nothing more than a tired young woman, wry and carelessly friendly. “It can wait.”

They win.

Yes, John supposes it can wait, at that. He lets out a breath that feels like it takes two decades of tension with it, and nods. Suddenly tired down to his bones, John hauls himself up and heads upstairs. He’s got his marching orders. Everything else can wait.

#Supernatural #SPN #John Winchester #Bobby Singer #SPN 2x01 #Trapped in the Amber #Time travel #Next Generation #next gen oc #Meira Winchester #background Dean/Cas/Gabe #13K of what-if about my own fic #John thinking that his trust is a lesser price than his soul #is where this AU falls apart #imo that is PAINFULLY out of character for the man #he would rather deal with the devil he knows #and let the cost fall on his head alone #than take a risk and trust someone not to screw him over

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taevincii · 3 months ago

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Week 1: Post Game Thoughts

Need to rant rq lol

◦ Dicker is the only person I have complete trust in lol at least we can count on him to get us on the board when needed

◦ Mack and Bosa are elite (which we knew)!!! They saved our assess way too many times. The defense as a whole played well this game. Need our offense to step up and match that, tho. Everyone say thank you D!!

◦ Like I said at the start, it is Game 1 after all, and while the O-line does have a lot to figure out, we have to also acknowledge that the Raiders have an elite D-Line (the addition of Christian Wilkins - traded from MIA - alongside Max Crosby is a deadly combination, the Raiders will probably finish with a top 5 Defense in the league this season) and this being a week 1 match-up was difficult to prepare for and adjust to for the basically new O-Line

◦ QJ missed a huge catch for a conversion in the 1st that he cannot continue to do if he’s going to be WR1 this year. Not sure what his deal is but we need him to be better

◦ Palmer, as one of the only veteran receivers on this team, unfortunately, (I’m still bitter about Parham) missing a totally catchable ball in the end zone was unacceptable. Herbert put that on the money and he needed to catch that. That was a tough incompletion.

◦ As for Justin, he was rushing a few of his throws, especially on third down that could’ve given us a much-needed conversion (I get that he didn’t have time bc the Raiders defense is very much elite and he can’t fully trust his OLine) he very much could have PTSD from last year, as well. I, too, hate that he always has to be Superman but if no one else is going to step up, he’s gotta figure out how to make something shake.

◦ On that same note, I ALSO do believe Justin couldn’t let it rip this game bc he doesn’t have that connection with a receiver yet. There isn’t anyone he considers his “go-to” target and, because of that, he was trying to throw to everyone in hopes that someone would make something happen. That is, unfortunately, a part of the game with a new receiving core and that’ll just have to work itself out as the season goes on. Justin (and, thus, the offense) is at his best when he can throw freely and deep but trust with receivers is needed to do that, which he doesn’t have just yet bc no one is consistent.

◦ JK Dobbins!!!!!!!!!!! 10 carries, 135 yds and a TD. Beautiful. Came up big on several occasions, had a great run in the 3rd (although we couldn’t finish the drive and get it in the end zone, smh) and then the TD in the 4th - definitely a spark we needed, so give him his credit for how well he played today, especially finding his spark after a hard 1st half.

◦ Speaking of running, not sure where our run game was throughout the rest of the game, like, I fear it’s on the back of a milk carton; MIA. Greg, we need answers on that one, buddy.

◦ I would like to give Hayden Hurst his credit bc I feel like he isn't talked about enough, he’s been on a few teams around the league (including the Bengals) and is very fucking reliable. Wish he got more targets this game but it’s great to know he’s always an option. A good one, at that

◦Overall rating for our play 6/10 (bonus points for the defense and how we ended the game) we really picked it up at the end which was great to see but we cannot start that slow. Especially against better offensive opponents. We have to be consistent and put the game away as soon as we can. We can’t do these last quarter surges where we’re dependent on one more possession or a field goal to close a game. Penalties were fucking insane, too, I don’t even want to speak on those. Let’s hope they clean that up going forward too.

Looking forward, (hopefully) the Panthers shouldn’t be as much of a test, Steelers could present trouble, but the Chiefs will by far be the hardest game yet, sucks we play them so early in the year. Hopefully, we’ve tweaked some things by then.

Overall game mood: not very pretty but twas a win

#la chargers #Week 1 Thoughts #thanks for coming to my TED Talk

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triphimi · 3 days ago

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Arcane season 2 review and opinions (spoilers obv):

As a show by itself it was good... not as good as 1st season I feel tho? Obviously the biggest problems s2 has are pacing issues and lack of time which resulted in a very rushed story in the whole season but especially episodes 8 and 9.

The ending is bittersweet which was expected, but the lack of connections between characters in act 3 was lame. Yes, I'm bitter about Sevika not having a single line throughout the whole act and Isha not being mentioned by name at all.

That sex scene felt so forced too ngl. I wish we still got it but in different settings cuz like Vi, your sister kinda went to kill herself. The scene itself was cool ig but why did it have to be in a prison cell bro.

I liked what they did with Viktor, Ekko was carrying the plot of act 3 and saved the day as usually, Singed got the happiest ending out of everyone which is funny and fitting to his gameplay in lol. You know, fuck around everywhere, piss off everyone and get away. Isha despite being just a plot device was a nice addition still, loved the dynamic between her and Jinx and Sevika.

Making Singed Orianna's father and the Doctor Reveck was something people were speculating about for a long time already.

Now speaking as a league of legends fan after they decided to make Arcane a main canon...

Why? Things were perfectly fine with how they were before. Sure, some things being canon are cool maybe but it sacrifices so much of the already existing story for this. And it messes up the timeline so bad. Mostly because Singed seemed to stay in P&Z and it doesn't seem like he has any more ties with Noxus after Ambessas death and he didn't seem to have any before so... who made the gas for Noxian invasion of Ionia? Did that even happen anymore. The Invasion had to happen bc Swain seemingly already has a deal with Raum (unless we want to speculate that the crow was just Raum before he made a deal with Swain but who tf knows now?)

If the invasion did happen already then either:

a) Singed did make a gas for Noxus before Arcane and it's just never mentioned that he had previous connections with them?

b) Singed didn't make the gas Noxus used in the invasion. Takes away some importance Singed had in lore but with that new one, he at least has something. With that half of Ionian champions lore isn't fucked at least

c) The invasion did happen but they didn't use the gas which messes up SO MUCH. Half of Ionian champs lore is not canon now? Did something different happen to them, who tf knows?

I know the next series will probably be set in Noxus which might explain some thing (pls timeline) but that's like another 3 years or so of waiting.

Sorry if it felt mostly negative. I don't think that season sucked completely and would still rate it 8/10, ig I was just holding it up to a higher standard than i should've. Its also bc I focused mostly on act 3 here and kinda wanted to rant about the all the main canon lore from before Arcane is now in limbo of what's canon and what's not, and unfortunately it doesn't just include P&Z and Noxus.

#complaing but not about fnaf this time #Arcane

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johnshis · 1 year ago

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Read Batman: The Impostor this weekend. After putting it off for so long, I think it's only obvious I share my thoughts in the last social media I uphold.

It has risen second in my painful lists of favorites. I think there's something so crude about showing a character whose heart is just an open wound. And this takes the cake for me.

I think what the general public mistakes about him would be solved if this was one of the leading comics they read on him. Though I know there's complexity in canon discussions, what matters to me the most is how good the story is being written and told. Primary points of discussion on Batman are tackled, and there's a lot more rawness that people often disregard on him. I haven't read every Batman comic in existence, so don't be a snob and talk to me about which is better. I don't care, this is not a book club.

I don't kill people. Batman does not kill people. That's the phrase that stood out the most, because in these last years, we've seen a rise in the idea that Batman is weak because he does not end the life of the "bad people" and instead believes that people can be rehabilitated. It's the running gag that people think it'll be easier if he just killed Joker for once. When confronted by the idea that he's got blood in his hands, he becomes utterly devastated, a wreck of a man.

Not only does Batman's no kill rule make utter sense to those who are emotionally mature enough to read books that aren't for 1st graders, but in the outlook of a realistic view it's also accurate. Anyone who's ever read any theory on the concept of justice and how the system that's been set up to us manages it is going to understand that one less life doesn't mean one less bad man on the street. The bad men are still running for the mayor, and for positions of power.

In the concept of love within the story, I thought it was cute that Bruce actually fell for Blair. Though it made it more so clear how broken of a person he actually is, this was pointed out on how he could only regulate his emotions when she was with him. How he only felt "peace" when he wasn't alone but with someone who shared his story, his pain too.

I think if you get to the end and you think of it as underwhelming or utterly unfair, then the comic did its job. That's kind of the point; on how things most times won't have a good ending– in the Batman sense. The ending feels bitter in the same way that passing a class with barely a good enough grade feels like you did it, but... nothing really feels rewarding. It just happened.

I have great faith in Mattson now, I'm hopeful the Batman he will bring to us will feel more like the one we've been waiting for to rain down from the sky in the middle of dry season [coughs up... Snyder season...]. About the art; it's perfect. I think the colors and the way they manage with the story are so touching. Andrea had RENT to pay okay. Bruce's design in this might be one of my favorites of his ever. He looks and acts as if the word misery had grown limbs.

Happy late Batman day. Here's a bad review of a comic I cried about while rejoicing on his existence.

#batman #the batman #batman the imposter #batman comics #batman spoilers #batman review #dc comics #dc universe #detective comics #lol idk #reviews #i loved this comic sm

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caramelcoffeeaddict · 1 day ago

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so I know I haven't made any posts about Dancing With The Stars this season, but I've been watching the show every week because there were a few people I really wanted to see. and all three (3) of them made it to the finale! I'm not going to name names just in case there is anyone who has been following the show that hasn't seen it yet, but ugh! out of the 5 contestants in the finale, the ONE person that I did not want to win, won the competition 😭. the three people I was rooting for got 2nd place, 4th place, & 5th place.

including this current season (Season 33), I've only ever watched 3 entire seasons of this show from beginning to end because I had a specific contestant that I really wanted to see. otherwise, I usually just watch individual dances on their YouTube page if they pique my interest. I watched the show for Amber Riley, who came in 1st (Season 17); and Riker Lynch, who came in 2nd (Season 20). so every time I've tuned in for a whole season, my choice from week 1 has made it to the finale and came in either first or second place (yes, that includes this current season). but I'm still bitter about this season's winner. (actually, I'm still bitter that Rumor Willis won season 20 over Riker, but that's another story).

#dwts #dancing with the stars

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princepestilence · 1 year ago

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NYR: May in review

Post-May horoscope: you have to struggle! at your maximum range of extension! in order to grow! your total range of motion!!!

By far the most challenging month I’ve had in this “new” (1yr at the end of June) job, but I have mostly got through it and it should be getting easier soon. I take some comfort knowing that it’s an extraordinarily difficult and overwhelming time for everyone, and also that it has a concrete end date in sight. I am trying to embrace the mistakes and learning opportunities, but I will be so grateful to hit the end of June.

In May:

chaired my first committee meeting. Overall it went well! I don’t think anyone else is going to put their hand up to chair at the AGM in Sept., so I’ve made my peace with being in the role -- properly, not just as Acting Chair -- for the next 18 months or so. Feeling a bit unreal that I am the youngest person there and now about to be chairing, but god, someone has to do it.

do well at work? I’m really not sure. But I am getting things done, so I’ll take the win on that. Mostly a bit frustrated, a bit mortified, and very exhausted and over it. The stress hasn’t been great, but I’m hoping that by the time this season of madness rolls around again next year, I’ll be a lot better prepared to juggle the dozen extra knives sent my way. Metaphorically. The actual knife-juggling I will leave to the performers giving me migraines with their inability to read the emails I send them.

anthology submission - didn’t happen. Something had to give and I decided it would be this. I know there will be other opportunities, as bitter as it feels to just give up without even really trying. But it really was beyond human limitations to do everything this past month, so it is what it is.

surprise visit from my parents. Complicated. Counts as an achievement on my part, although I’m sort of mad that I feel that way about it.

1-month Duolingo streak. On a whim I picked it up again after a long time on May 1st, and it was really, really nice to have so much coming back to me so fast. I know part of why I’ve avoided it -- or even just study and practice in general -- is because I was dreading the experience of relearning and grappling with how much I’d let atrophy. It’s reassuring that that doesn’t actually seem to be the case, and I’ve been really enjoying it as well.

went to some cool arts events. Had a lot of feelings about it all. Also in retrospect I’m glad I made the effort to go even though I was so run-down from work. It was replenishing in a lot of ways, and I’m happy to have been there. Also had a great interaction which involved the author I was chatting with to say, “Oh, if you’re into corpses, you’ll LOVE this book by--” so that was fun.

thesis work. Didn’t get chpt. 1 redraft done -- or even close. But I did get some done, which in light of this month I am also choosing to view as a success. I’m still not happy about the lack of progress, but consoled somewhat by thinking a good day or two will make a huge difference and I do have some days coming up to work on it.

In June, I will:

get to the end of June! By which I mean: survive my job until the godawful tent that makes my life difficult is gone. Then I’m taking a full week or so off. I need it. Mostly to work on:

thesis. Finish chpt. 1 by the end of this month. Ideally, start work on chpt. 2 rewrite as well.

keep on top of Chair duties. One of the easier tasks on the list but I have to remember to keep putting the micro-tasks on the list or else I might forget and they’ll get missed.

go to a zine fair. It’s this weekend and I think it would be fun and a nice excursion and I haven’t been before and would like to see what’s out there in person, but I can feel the weary pulling me down saying, “you could stay home. You could rest. You could catch up on chores. You could work on your thesis and in fact you’re bad for Not doing that,” and I am wobbling on the fence trying to make a good decision for good reasons, as compared to a good decision for bad reasons (thesis, guilt) or a bad decision for good reasons (chores, responsibility). Not sure where rest falls, and I know I will feel at least a bit bad regardless of the choice I make. Hm. Hm. Hm.

Duolingo every day. It’s fun. A lesson is like, a minute and a half. I usually do it when I’m waking up, to warm up the brain for another day.

#2023 resolutions

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piscesgirl87 · 2 years ago

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i dont see how they expect upstead to come back stronger than ever in s11. jesse is not coming back any time soon atleast not as regular. by itself the 1st tweet is ok even if a little delusional but tweeting it after “i’ll laugh if paddy leaves” just shows how bitter they are. but that person is constantly bitter, bashing on the show, bashing on burzek and patrina. they shaded marina for going to israel saying “You true colors will always show. You can try to pretend to be an “activist” through a pfp but you can’t fool people.” and “Y’all choose to sleep on someone who’s problematic and excuse her actions just for some pixels on your screen. Thing is, this is real life and your show isn’t. It shows who y’all truly are.”

and about the show ratings they have said “All the backbones of the franchise are leaving, the ratings are looking terrible, the shows got renewed just for one season and with less episodes for each character. It’s definitely the end” and “on the other hand, if no one is leaving and they all did that for attention to get people to watch, that says a lot about how they're all concerned about ratings.” these are all very recent tweets. clearly they are hoping for the shows to end which if the shows bothers you that much why watch and continue to tweet about it? 😂

I mean that can always have hope for upstead

Tweeting it after saying that yeah it’s mean . There mean and butted people in every fandom

I agree. I don’t get why people hate watch

It doesn’t make them happy so just like, don’t watch lol

But there are still people that do want to watch

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graveltrip · 2 years ago

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4 and 5 for the f1 asks?

So sorry for only getting to this now. 🫣

4. A video from this season that makes you happy

Loved the drawing challange and the driver height video.

5. What do you think was the funniest moment of the season?

Look, at the time I was incredibly pissed about the Alpine shitshow and I'm still bitter about how certain things were handled there, but in hindsight that whole weekend was just so funny. It had everything: Lewis getting his honorary citizenship and the Piquets being pissed abou it; Lando being ill again (seriously what was going on with him last year?); rainy quali; Ferrari quali disasterclass special, George looking like a cartoon villain after he ended up in the gravel; Kmag's magical pole and the grid being in a Haas sandwich; Alpine fuckery vol. 3., those idiots fucking up not the others', but their own fucking race with their shenanigans, Alonso's radio outburst being followed up by him getting a penalty and after everything the 2 Alpines still ending up on the same row for the race; Alex' special helmet curse striking again; the Aston boys wanting some of that teammate drama for themselves; Valtteri giving tips to Guanyu; Esteban's car going up in flames in parc ferme; Daniel tapping Kevin in the race just for the Haas to spin back into him and end his race; another Max vs Lewis special at the restart; Charles flipping off Lando and calling him a dick after their incident; Kevin getting forgotten by the marshalls and having to walk back to the paddock alone; Lando's car giving up on life; Esteban vs the Alpine pitwall; the FIA forgetting about Yuki; Alonso overtaking the Red Bulls; Aston teamorders over a point; Charles vs Ferrari; Red Bull switcharoo drama and divorce; Carlos looking like he never had a happy day in his life; George's 1st win... Not a moment, but funniest weekend for sure.

#askok

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malstermonkey · 2 years ago

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Time & how it differs (& of permanence and transience)

And then, before you know it, the interminable journey ends and you wake up to a wintry darkness, stars doing their twinkling shimmer thing in the Provencal morning sky.

Whisked, in a matter of 46hrs door-to-door (plane/plane/plane/bus/car/train which saw me run the gauntlet of the airport-workers strike in Germany -- the story of doing 160kmh+ down the Autobahn with jet-lagged brain and itchy eyes is one for another day) from a broiling, toasty Sydney (whilst performing my early-morning, stoic vigil, when I loitered waiting for you, I got the sense that Friday was going to be a scorching belter) to a fresh, frosty-though-showing-the-1st-signs-of-Spring Provence remains, even after all these years, somewhat disorienting.

The physical symptoms of jet-lag are one thing (it creates that weird brain-fog) but it’s the radical change of seasons when travelling between hemispheres which gets me -- yes, the temperature changes but it’s more the bellows-effect on the routine of the day: from early-morning-light-to-long-evenings there to the compressed-day opposite here.

My cottage is warm and cosy, there are pools of light dotted around (I hate the antiseptic, harsh brightness of overhead lights) giving the early-morning darkness a dappled and mysterious aspect (the breathing of this house is still unfamiliar, hence there’s mystery in every creak and sigh where the light doesn’t reach). There’s anticipation of what temperatures the day will bring and what magic (or not) frosty morning daybreak will unveil. There’s the prospect of the run to the village bakery (it’s the melange of smells, from the cloying, dense buttery croissants to sugary sweetness of freshly baked slices of tarte au pommes and the crisp snap of baguettes), of coffee drunk in the sun at the table by the walnut tree, of the pine-sap warmed by the afternoon sun..........

But what is vaguely unsettling is that today it is different: this time it isn’t about a few weeks of holiday where the only aim is to forget the humdrum that is our daily doings, this is about (possibly) living here, about becoming part of the community, the landscape. This is about uprooting and about changing things -- potentially about the flow of how I live.

And being accepting of this possibility and it being so.

And it shows up in the small things: so while my 1st coffee (in Provence) tasted exactly as it has always done (Arabica Noir -- bitter & pungent) my daily habit is to not have a 2nd cup (as I would if this was a holiday) and it applies here as it did there.

And so it starts, another transition: I can’t help but think about what remains, what proves to be hard-coded and what turns out to have been but a passing fancy. I’m intrigued.

But also a little worried (that I might, even more radically than before, lose you).

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lillianofliterature · 3 years ago

Note

Can you write a one shot/imagine of the reader being a Silvan elf and being a child hood friend of Legolas and them falling in love, but having to keep the relationship secret? In retrospect, that sounds really complicated, but it would be great if you could do it :)

a secret kept by the stars | legolas greenleaf x reader

REVISED on August 1st, 2022.

a/n: Anon, thank you for the request! It’s perfect! Apologies for the wait, I’ve been dealing with so much mental strain these past couple of years due to my disability and such but I feel a little more confident in my writing lately. The reader is implied fem in this one (referred to as a daughter a few times) although I tried to keep it neutral. I hope this is to your liking! <3

Elvish (Sindarin) translations are provided in the footer. Gif not mine, found on pinterest with no link to source.

This is Legolas maybe a couple centuries before the events of LOTR? And he’s 2931 during the War of the Ring (LOTR), so he’s not a lovesick tween in this lmao, both are consenting adults. Also, he is SUCH a quiet character, his dialogue is sort of hard to get a tone for in the films because there's so little of it, but I hope he's in character for everyone. <3

DO NOT REPOST MY WORK!

summary: As a lowly daughter of Legolas’ former governess, your developed relationship with the Woodland King’s only son and heir is a path forged of risk and painstaking secrecy.

warnings: Thranduil being an overbearing father, a bit of angst mingled with the fluff

word count: 6.5K

music: Stars Are Singing by Hristo Hristov

Deep within the still air of Mirkwood’s dense gloom of vegetation, one might easily forget that spring was fast approaching over the vast regions of Middle-Earth. The only reminders of the changing seasons were the blossoms and colorful weeds pressed into the earth beneath your feet and layered within your foraging basket, seeking the warmth of the sun beneath trees woven with web and the never-fading colors of autumn.

You pitied them as they were, little promises of life eager to feel the hope of the world’s light, shunned beneath the shadows of a melancholy forest cursed with the bitterness of her King’s endless mourning. Something about their pale colors wilting back into the earth before they’d fully bloomed stirred a sense of dread deep within the hollows of your being.

Such delicate life trampled and suffocated without a chance to thrive.

However, there were places in Mirkwood’s vast reach that seemed like sealed capsules of its former glory—crooks and divots in the land that were frozen in time. In one such corner of the forest, toward the northwestern borders, was a glen of trees unlike any other. Their trunks were still wide and strong, yes, but their bark was free of rotted sap and teeming with green moss and furred vines. Their leaves were the only ones that changed with the seasons from within the borders of the wood.

In the center of this small circle of untouched trees was a waterfall that matched their reaching heights, pouring forth from a jagged crag and into a clear pool of water. Running directly from a thin stream branching from the Forest River, it was the only still pond on this side of the palace walls whose waters could be trusted to quench one’s thirst and not muddle the mind with dark confusions.

More importantly to you, it was also the only place in your homeland that offered itself as a safe haven for your most dire secrets; the secrets you kept well-guarded within your heart above all else.

Your feet soon left the promises of spring to their end as you scoured the rocks on the edge of the pond. You knelt by the cool entity, dipping your hands beneath its surface to quench the thirst that had accumulated from your solitary hike. The song of insects and toads accompanied the last yearning notes of the late evening songbirds, pleading for the sun’s last light to linger upon the crag’s private glen. Somewhere above you, a familiar voice added to the divine calls of nature.

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about our evening rendezvous.”

Your gaze lifted upward into the sprawling limbs to find a pair of sapphire eyes already trained on you. The ends of white-blonde hair flicked upward on the air flowing from the little waterfall’s collision into the pond. Every time you saw the prince’s light head of hair, an image of the fresh white linens hanging from the threaded lines in the servant’s quarry was summoned in your mind.

One might think it silly, comparing the hairs on the head of royalty to the cotton fabric drying in the mountain’s underground breeze, but it wasn’t just the pristine flow of it that reminded you so. The linens in the quarry always smelled sweet and their scent even drifted into the halls beyond—in that regard, the prince’s hair was also very much alike, always smelling of a sweetness you could never quite pin.

“Legolas!” You smiled through the syllables of his name. Standing from your crouched perch over the lily pads and minnows thriving in the water, you gaped up at him. Your shock at seeing him having arrived before you was evident in your pleasant stupor. “You’re here early!”

He grinned down at you. “That is precisely what one who is late would say to those who are punctual.”

Feigning a perturbed huff, you bent down and splashed at the surface of the water in his direction. Of course you knew the short reach of your mischievous deed would not reach up into the extending limbs of the trees, but it was something about the action itself that got your point across. Leaned against the wide center trunk with all the nonchalant elegance of an elven prince, he was very obviously unintimidated by your efforts.

A brief moment of admiration settled between the two of you.

Finally, at the end of the week, after endless strict schedules and hours of painstaking work between the two of you, there was this moment of calmness shared in the presence of the boy you loved, under the shelter of a small corner of the forest that seemed to grow just for the two of you, just so you might have a place to meet and not fear prying eyes or hasty rumors.

“You were able to slip past your father earlier today?”

He shrugged. His brief glance toward the leftover autumn leaves littered around your feet told you it had not been a day of pleasant exchanges between the two of them. The smile on your lips wilted when you sensed the tension in his features, the look of recollecting something unpleasant. Had it been another argument about their obvious differences? Another barrage of patronizing lessons and expectations?

You decided to ward off the subject. These precious few hours were meant for more pleasant memories. “Have you been waiting long?”

He shook his head softly down at you, quietly admiring the fading tint of warm light offering a crown of golden warmth on your hair. He thought you the most idyllic being amongst all the beauty on the edge of the forest—with more melody to your voice than the drowsy birdsong, more calming than the lull of the sweet waters at your feet, and even more heavenly than the waking stars.

“Won’t you join me?”

Without hesitation, you approached the wide base of the tree with eagerness. You rooted the heel of your boot into the knots of the bark, flourishing your way up to him with all the ease of a woodland elf more accustomed to the gracious embrace of the branches than paths hewn of crumbling stone. When you were near enough to be reached, he offered his hand to hoist you upwards one last stretch. Of course, he knew you didn’t need any aid in your skillful climbing, but any chance to exchange the affection of touch was gratefully taken.

“Another minute longer and you might have missed the sunset altogether,” he teased.

“It’s the moonlight I prefer, anyway.” You retorted.

His tone was lightly apologetic as he said, “I believe we are without one tonight, melda.”

“But not without the stars,” you countered, redirecting his gaze to the western heavens. At this height, you were well above the drooping waterfall and given a clear vantage point beyond the crag’s corroded surface. There was a break through the line of trees there—a rarity in itself in Mirkwood, to look up and be able to see the sky above you—where the horizon was visible.

On the edge of the forest, life was still seeping in from beyond the dying border. Just upstream beyond the waterfall was the great roaring of the Forest River’s wider curves and beyond that the distant formations of the Grey Mountains. The outside world, thriving and alive, like a painting you might find on display in the village markets.

So close you could reach out and touch it, take hold of a lowly drifting cloud or taste the fresh air of a growing world. Mirkwood, your home, the forest you’d grown up in, was a beautiful forest beyond compare, even with such sadness that fed through her roots. But out there, beyond the forest, was a place you wondered might feel less constricting.

Not because the trees were tangled too tight or the thickets too full of bramble—but because the love you shared with Legolas was a secret shut into an even more confined space. Square feet of the forest that let you take refuge. Because nowhere else in the king’s domain would the daughter of his son’s modest silvan governess be allowed to embrace such unrelenting freedom. It was here, and only here, that those sapphire eyes could remain trained with your (e/c) ones with unflinching steadiness.

“The life in the forest is fading more with each passing season,” Legolas said, suddenly crestfallen. “And life beyond our borders thrives beyond us. It is as though we are stagnant while the other people of this realm change and flourish, while their customs adjust to generations.”

You looked up at him again, turning to find his expression solemn and stern. That same sense of dread you sensed when looking down at the wilting blossoms of spring fell over you. Somehow, in this moment, it felt as though Legolas were a wilting blossom seeking the light and air beyond his father’s borders.

“We are now as we have been for over two thousand years. Every day is unchanged from the one before.”

You took hold of his hand, entwining his fingers with yours gently. He peered down at the touch and rose to trace your knuckles with his free hand.

“Legolas, what happened today? Did your father say something?”

“The same speeches of detached arrogance as always, concealing himself beneath his robes and jewels, never saying what he truly means—what he feels…what his reasoning is for allowing our home to become so void of the very breath of life.”

“Why does he not share these things with you? You are his son, if there is anyone who could help him better understand himself, it is you.”

“To know why my father does not confide in me would be to know why he has no expression of compassion, even with our kin. When I press him on such matters, he only recedes further within himself…Sometimes, when I’m with him in those meetings, I no longer see the Elvenking of our great forest, but a stubborn turtle. He is hidden well within his shell, not wanting anything beyond what is already here…and if I try to help, to be a good son, the son my mother would want me to be—I—…I am met with such contempt.”

“Oh, melamin,” you murmured, winding your arms around his firm waist. Without hesitance, his arms nestled around you with an ethereal warmth you thought rivaled the heavens themselves. As he let his cheek rest against the top of your head, the linen wisps of his hair mingled with yours. That sweet, indecipherable scent filled your senses, inviting you to draw in a slow, deep breath. “One day, King Thranduil will be able to open his heart to you again, perhaps when he is not so afraid of his own heartbreak.”

“And in the meantime, I must try my best to understand him, to see my father for who I remember he was once, and not the cold-hearted king he has become.”

You leaned back enough to look into Legolas’ eyes. “It is not your duty to diminish your own pain in light of his own. You simply have to be you, Legolas. That is enough. You, his only son and heir, are enough. Ceri cin heni?”

Upon seeing the moisture gathering in his eyes, you cupped the soft skin of his cheeks. Under your tender touch, the tightness in his jaw relaxed. You felt the warm breath escape his parted lips slowly. He was cherishing every moment of this meeting, just as you were, savoring every shared sensation and vowel as if it were the last.

“Come, let us sit and enjoy the veil of night.” You offered, guiding him to sit comfortably on the widest reach of the strong limb beneath your boots.

When his legs draped over either side of the branch, you squatted before him and tucked the wayward tendrils that had fallen free from his braids behind his pointed ears. He leaned into your touch, his smile returning. The silkiness of his hair reminded you of the frail blossoms you’d plucked on your trek. “Oh!”

His eyebrows drew together upon your exclamation. He watched patiently as you unwound the leather wide strap of your basket from around your shoulders. You unbuckled the latch and tipped the basket toward him to show him what you’d collected this time (it was an unspoken tradition by now that at every meeting you offered your fair prince a gift from the forest).

“I gathered these on the way here for you. They won’t grow much more than this, so I thought I might make better use of them,” you gingerly twirled a strand of his blonde hair around your finger. “May I?”

“Be my guest, dearest melda. I shall be proud to wear a crown of weeds, as long as yours are the hands that fasten it.”

You playfully bumped him with the little basket as you stepped around him. “They’re not weeds!”

From behind, you straddled the branch in the same fashion as he but allowing yourself room enough to adjust your legs in order to reach the crown of his hair (he was, of course, a little—if not quite a bit—taller than you). You reached around and tucked the basket onto his lap. He cradled it obediently, opening the hatch to inspect the flora for himself. As your fingers began to unbind his braids with the swiftness of familiarity, he spun one of the bigger blossoms between his fingers.

“They’re wood sorrels,” you explained, “We use them in the kitchens to make those supplements you’re always forgetting to take in the mornings.”

He turned his head to the side. “How do you know when I forget them?”

You pushed the tip of your index finger into his cheek, slowly nudging him to face forward again. “Servants know more about their masters than the masters know about themselves—or at least, that is what the head healer claims. It is our job to know.”

There was a long pause that was difficult for you to discern. Was it a quiet moment of calm as he mindlessly toyed with the pink and yellow sorrels? Or had the mention of your work in the palace perturbed him? Instead of probing him again, you kept running your fingers through his hair to untangle what the day’s affairs had knotted with the wind.

When the braids were fully unwound, you pulled a wooden comb from your side pouch to reach the tangles that slipped through your fingers. Though there were hardly any to be found on his pristine head of hair, you knew he liked the rhythm of the comb’s tongs massaging his scalp. It had been this way since you were children—since long before the secret rendezvous in his father’s forests became entwined with your requited expressions of romance. For as long as you could remember, you’d been spending an hour or so most evenings combing through Legolas’ pale golden hair.

The only thing that had changed was how often you were permitted to be this close to him. As you both grew into your duties as prince and pauper, the nightly routine turned to weekly, and on the busier occasions, monthly. It hadn’t been easy to adjust to the gradual distance over the years—in fact, it wasn’t any easier now than when the lines were first being drawn between you as teenagers.

Instead of being the harmless playmate King Thranduil indulged as his son studied and grew up under your mother’s role as his appointed governess, you were now an irrelevant memory in the back of the King’s mind—some frivolous friend of his child that had grown up to become a servant herself, dissolved into the walls of his cavern palace. As far as either of you knew, Legolas’ father was oblivious to your presence still in his son’s intimate livelihood. That was how it was supposed to be—how it needed to be.

“You are not a servant to me,” Legolas finally said, “I do not fashion myself as your master.”

The comb halted in his hair abruptly. Valar above, you were glad your face was hidden from his inquisitive eyes. If it hadn’t been for the interrupted movement of the comb, he never would have known how much those words pierced and comforted all in one breath.

“But Legolas, melamin, I am a servant in your father’s halls. I am the daughter of your former governess. I am Silvan and you are—you are your father’s son. Your blood carries the grace of the Sindar…”

“But I am more than just my father’s son,” he corrected quietly, “And I—I do not want to be exalted above you, or any of our people…but especially you.”

“I did not mean it that way—”

The grip of his palm reaching back to rest on your knee comforted your rising anxieties. Just one touch told you he understood you; he understood that what he wanted or how he thought did not alter the way things were. Yearning for change did not alter what presently was.

“I know.”

Your eyes drifted down to the comb in your hands. Your thumb ran over the messy engravings you had etched into it as a child, chasing a prince through murky creek beds and once-flourishing gardens that had since turned to bare stone. A sudden stinging sensation in your eyes warned you that your heart, though loved so well, was cracking at its more fragile seams. Though you tried to swallow the rising lump in your throat, your quick sniffle was more than enough to alert Legolas of your overwhelming emotions.

“Lean on me, melda.”

His tender words brought a smile to your dampening features, tugging a faint sob from your lips. Brushing his hair over his shoulder, you leaned forward and let your forehead rest against the cool nape of his neck. The soft fabric of his tunic caught your silent tears.

You closed your eyes, focusing on the sounds of the forest’s edge and the steadiness of his breathing. For just a moment, you let yourself imagine that you and he were somewhere beyond the grasp of the Woodland Realm, as beautiful as it were. Somewhere that his father could not extend his power and make him feel so trapped—somewhere where kings did not rank status above love. And for an ever briefer moment, you could almost believe it.

You could believe that the smell of a late snow blowing in from the Grey Mountains might be the chill of a Rohirrim winter. You could believe that the sound of the fresh water was not a mere puddle of sacred reflections in the dying forest, but the living waters of the river Bruinen. You could even believe, just for that second, that you and Legolas were already vowed to each other.

The stillness you shared instilled such a calmness as you both grounded yourselves in each other’s presence. It was inexplicably peaceful. So peaceful, in fact, that when he spoke again, the urgency in his tone nearly startled you.

“I would go with you, now, and make haste back to my father’s halls. I would have every soul, within and beyond our borders, know exactly who holds my heart. I am not ashamed. If you would but utter the words, I would make my petition known to my father that our engagement be acknowledged by his own decree.”

Instinctively, you wove your arms under his and clutched onto his shoulders from behind, hugging him to you. His free hand that did not still hold the violet sorrel rose to cover one of your hands. The beating of your heart pressed to his back gave him a measure to time his thoughts to.

“I know,” you murmured sullenly, “You would keep the moon full in the sky for me…and heal the forest of its plague. And I—I would give you a thousand nights just like this one. I would spend my life combing through your hair and fixing you crowns hewn of Mirkwood’s most delicate offerings…”

“We are both well of age, (Y/n), and I would not accept his dismissal in this matter. Even if he were to threaten to shorn me from succession—”

“He wouldn’t do that to you,”

“Or if he threatened your banishment, or your mother’s—I would take leave of this realm and make a life for us in lands more forgiving to us. Whatever it is you fear, I have vowed that nothing will alter the future we have promised to each other, and I would vow so again if there is need for you to hear it.”

He felt your grip on him tighten and the warmth of your breath grow nearer to his ear. You had nestled your chin in the crook of his neck, on the divot of his shoulder.

“He would despise me,” you stated bluntly, remorsed, “He would despise me and my mother, despite her dedication to this realm, to you—despite what she did for him by returning to her work as a governess. I cannot strip her of her reputation and take the honor of her life’s work from her. Not in that way.”

It’s all we have that’s keeping us within the palace and not out in the woodland villages, you thought. And you almost said it out loud. But Legolas knew. Without your words or whispers or suggestions, he knew.

“And as much as you detest the prideful customs of your father’s reign, you are still responsible for this realm when your era dawns upon us. It would be inexplicably selfish of me to agree to flee with you when your influence here could foster so much change—you can open our doors wide to the world, connect us again with our kin.”

In time, we can be together. In an era where there will be no repercussions for our love.

It felt like treason to speak so freely about the passing reign of elven kings when one so poignant sat with such vitality still upon his throne. Of course, there were dozens of things that Legolas’ father had done right by his people through the years—and hundreds more before your time to witness them. There were rarely ever attacks or intrusions from neighboring lands, save for the occasional drunken troop of foolish bandits.

Mirkwood didn’t receive many travelers—no one with enough sense dared tempt the risk of straying from the Old Forest Road, despite it being a shortcut to River Running and the lands beyond. The trade with Laketown was efficient and prosperous for both parties. There was not one family or person within his halls and villages without a home and bountiful pantries. There was no malice bred between elves here, no crimes or evils done to each other.

As Legolas had once said many moons back and many times since, his father was a protector of his people, loyal and devoted. However, in such fierce protection against the horrors of the world, there is also suffocation and stagnance. Exclusion and ignorance.

“King Thranduil’s reign is far from its conclusion, melda.”

Another lingerment of silence.

Your tears had dried, though you felt the clammy residue still clinging to your cheeks and neck. Hesitantly, you withdrew your grip on him slowly, ruefully. Looking out through the framed clearing in the trees, the deep blue of the night had long stretched beyond the Grey Mountains, chasing the pale pink light of the sun to another world.

The stars were brighter here in the forest’s unperturbed dark without the firelight of the Elvenking’s halls. Unchallenged in their glimmering spectacle, it felt as if they themselves were taking careful caution regarding your secret as you took shelter beneath their blanket of light. Somehow, if at all possible, you sensed in their divinity the distinct sparkle of approval among their radiance. And although you couldn’t see where Legolas’ gaze was trained, you felt for sure he was looking at them too.

“I should finish your crown, my prince,” you whispered. “It won’t be long before you’re discovered sneaking beyond the gates after curfew.”

Leaning back and drying your skin with the hem of your sleeve, you gently ran the comb through his hair one final time. “And what of you? Surely your mother must question where you go so often.”

“If she does suspect something, I trust her to keep her curiosities between us.”

“Do you think she suspects us?”

You pondered the possibility of your mother having put two and two together as your fingers parted and wove sections of golden hair with accustomed skill. Of course she had no way of knowing anymore when Legolas took leave of the palace halls or when he returned—but your schedule she knew very well. The only time you had to spare for excursions into the forest was for foraging herbs and other materials that were needed in the healer’s wing. But even then, you were accompanied by a group of other apprentices doing just the same.

In the brief hours you were free from any routine or task, you were sure it was questionable that you fled into the far reaches of the Mirkwood border for unforeseen amounts of time. It seemed only slightly foolish to assume that she, the one person who’d spent nearly every waking hour with you and Legolas from your earliest years until her gracious dismissal, would not have detected the attachment you had both developed.

“She does tease me about you sometimes when the other healers drone on about their suitors and prospects. I think some part of her senses that our connection as children was never really severed, despite your not needing a governess for many centuries now.” You managed to laugh at the idea of being found out by your mother before even the great Elvenking suspected anything was amiss—and not to mention the prospect of a very grown Legolas still being reared and tutored by your mother.

You truly felt no threat from her doting suspicions. If anyone were to ever discover this forbidden extravagance, you wanted it to be her.

But who knew for certain? Maybe your mother thought you were off seeing some human merchant too afraid to step beyond the forest’s edge and into Mirkwood’s gloom—or even bathing naked somewhere along the river, wary of prying eyes.

“Perhaps we should consider telling her,” Legolas mused, smiling to himself. A memory from his youth was stirred silently within him—an image of your mother soothing his cries as he called out for a mother he did not remember.

“You think so?”

“She has always been good at keeping secrets.”

“Oh? What kind of secrets would those be? Anything I should know?”

His laugh—which was more akin to a giggle when you thought about it—made your belly flutter with warmth. “Do you remember a time when we were only half the height we are now, when my father would still spend afternoons in the gardens with us?”

You hummed a confirmation, lips pursed as you balanced four strands of his silken hair between your fingers.

“Do you also remember that on one particular afternoon in the late summer, he wore one of his more extravagant robes? It had genuine gold thread embroidered with those tiny beryl beads. The pockets in it were deep enough to sheath one’s collection of daggers—”

“Oh, yes! I remember that robe! I told my mother the beadwork looked like blueberries; they were so pretty I wanted to eat them.”

He chuckled. “Might you also recall one particularly heinous, (h/c)-haired elleth who stuffed half of the muddied pies she’d made into those silk-lined pockets? Including the oozing ends of worms yanked up from beneath the pathway stones?”

You chortled, slapping a hand over your gaping mouth. “Valar’s grace! I forgot about that!”

“Forgot about it! How in our lifetime could you have possibly forgotten the day you single-handedly managed a squeamish yelp from the ever-poised Elvenking?”

“We were only a few centuries old! It’s been two thousand years since then, melamin.”

“Well, it should please you to know that I’ve not seen that robe outside of his chambers since that afternoon. I’m quite sure my father had it stripped and sewn with a new lining. It doesn’t smell of roots and musk anymore.”

“See, I was right in assuming he would despise me. Now all the more for my act of wrath against his wardrobe.” You reached around Legolas’ arm and plucked a handful of the sorrels from the basket. With his two side braids done, you could now poke the still stems of the small blossoms between their pleats. “I hardly see what that has to do with my mother’s secret-keeping, however.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why you never got in trouble over that sordid ordeal?”

“I don’t know…I just assumed even your father was above imprisoning children.”

He laughed again. “I might prefer that it had been that simple. You see, you were never chastised by either of our parents not because of my father’s tolerance of children, but for one very important secret kept between myself and your mother.”

As he continued his explanation of how you’d been spared the rod of his father’s sore vanity, you began to part a larger section for the third and final half-up braid that would be centered from his brow. Though there was no moonlight to turn the lovingly woven pleats of gold to streams of silver, you hardly noticed the absence of the moon in his presence.

“Somehow amidst your zealous stupor to feed my father’s garments with rank soil, you hadn’t noticed that his attention had never wavered from me while I practiced my diction. And with your mother focused on her vocal tutoring, there hadn’t been an eye on you between the two of them. My father never even knew you had been within a foot of him that day.”

“After he’d retreated to undress and salvage the mess, I informed your mother I had slipped him some of our attempts at ‘Greenwood cobblers’, which consisted of a healthy balance of nutsedge, mud, and insect larvae. I hadn’t known then that you had added dismantled worms as a garnish. She promised not to tell my father that you had helped me in making them, hoping you would both be spared any scrutiny, seeing as cooking wasn’t one of the subjects I was being taught.”

“Your father thinks you’re the one who ruined his blueberry silks?”

“To this day. Although I hardly think he reminisces on such frivolities anymore.”

After tying the end of his braid off, you leaned forward enough to turn his cheek toward you with your hand and peck your lips to his skin gently. Teasingly, you added, “I had no idea I was so indebted to you.”

His smile was almost mischievous, a glimmer of what it had been as children. “I couldn’t very well have my father thinking my governess ill-fitted for allowing me the opportunity to experience my childhood along with my duties, or run the risk of your not being allowed to accompany her.”

“Are there any other secrets?”

“None you need be privy to as of yet,” he said.

Knowing you wouldn’t pull any such knowledge from him—only because Legolas was a hopeless tease when it came to such details, hoping to make the suspense between recollections and stories linger for your other meetings. Although he was a quiet soul, sparing with his input throughout the week, it was here when alone with you that you relished in whatever he felt compelled to say. And unknown to you, part of him knew very well that the promises and musings shared in private with your mother pertained to his attachment to you, his devotion to her daughter from an early age.

There had been so many inquiries about your wellbeing after the two of you had been forced to spend less time together as you began your studies as a healer. In fact, when your absence was felt most in the days he spent with her alone, many of their conversations had drifted back to you. As a daughter, as a friend…as a companion to the prince who he missed sorely. Words and fond curiosities were exchanged that you had never heard.

“I quite like the sourgrass,” he only half-jested, patting the limp sprigs of flora in his hair.

“Sorrels,” you corrected with a taunt, “Call them by their prettier name. I refuse to admit I’ve crowned the very Prince of Mirkwood with sourgrass.”

It wasn’t long before the toads croaking from the water below had begun to harmonize their songs of ritual and the movement of creatures within the forest stilled peacefully. It was always the late silence of the forest, apart from the sparse chirp of insects, that reminded you both that your rendezvous must come to an end. You were sure it was past midnight now. Your boots echoed a low thump as they planted firmly in the grass, followed by the more graceful landing of your fair prince.

Side by side, you both walked together far off the beaten path along the Forest River in the direction of home. Legolas only managed a few steps into your journey without the comfort of your touch. In an act so natural and tender, he reached out and wove his fingers together with yours. Those conversations carried on as you followed the sounds of the water. Beneath your boots were the same sorrels that now decorated his hair—although you were much more careful to avoid trampling them this time, taking slow steps along the forest floor.

It was hard to force yourselves to quicken your pace, to punctually reach the point of parting before the late night became an early morning. The air was now laden with a thin mist, dotting your hair and skin with its chilled kiss. With no moon to illuminate your path the fog drifting through the region was hardly visible.

When he suddenly stopped to scan the line of towering trees ahead, your heart sank in your chest. Afar off, several dozen yards away, was the flickering glimmer of the first lookout post. If you dared to test your luck beyond your current position, you’d be announcing your courtship to the guards on duty there (who undoubtedly had fixed orders to report all movement or suspicion to the captain).

“I will cross over here and head back the way I came. The guards at the front gates will be waiting for me to return before the palace doors are bolted for the night.” Legolas said. His sapphire eyes were still trained ahead, taking note of the pattern of the lookout guards’ paces. Your grip on his hand tightened subconsciously.

A remorseful smile tugged at your lips as you looked up at him. “I’ll head further east to the village path, then. It’ll take me right up to the servant’s entrance. If anyone asks where I’ve been—” you reached up to pluck a sorrel from his hair, “I have an alibi.”

“I wish we did not have to part like this, melda,” he sympathized. Your gaze fell to your basket of leftover sourgrass, where you began fiddling with the latch. That nagging burning in your eyes returned as you prepared to say goodbye for another tentative bout of time.

It was only made worse when you looked up to see Legolas in the same fragile state. His tears fell first this time under the weight of the oncoming loneliness and distance. You began to undo the crown of sorrels, dropping each drooping blossom back into your basket. He toyed with a tendril of your (h/c) hair as he let you dismantle his crown.

It was better this way, to leave no evidence that you had ever been together. With no flowers in his hair, there would be no suspicion or question of how they came to be or who they were given by. The intricate braids, however, would stay until he could no longer avoid washing his hair. It was a subtle display of his love for every pair of eyes in his kingdom to see. No one would suspect that his hair had been woven by the hands of his secret beloved.

You looped the metal latch of your basket for the last time. The prince was now free of the weeds in his hair and of any evidence that a doting exchange had ever taken place.

Finally, you had the courage to look him in the eyes once more. Your vision blurred, forcing you to blink the moisture from your eyes. You sighed curtly, brushing your tears away hastily with the back of your hand. “I promise I’m not always such a blubbering mess! I do have some semblance of control when we’re apart.”

His sudden proximity siphoned the air from your lungs momentarily as his arms found their place around you. You returned his gesture, wrapping your arms around him, desperate to be as close to each other as possible. Your grip on his tunic was steeled as he pressed his palm to the back of your head with such gentleness.

“I feel as if I weigh down upon you so heavily, my prince. I hadn’t meant for our evening to have been one of such melancholy. I’m so sorry—”

“(Y/n),” he leaned away, garnering your attention, “When we share our sorrows, we grow ever closer. Do not apologize for the tears we shed in the hours we spend together.”

The last few minutes you had together were spent clinging to one another in the darkness of Mirkwood. The time you were able to siphon from your lives to spend together rushed by with such finality of a river pouring across the land in an endless cycle. A kiss to your forehead told you it was time to finally part ways. You had already spent much longer together than before, pushing the limit of freedom either of you had.

“What will we do if someone questions where we’ve been—if my sorrels aren’t enough to satisfy their curiosity? What if your father inquires about your vacant hours?”

“The stars have kept our secret thus far. I believe they will continue to do so.” Legolas cupped your cheeks before drawing near to press his lips to yours. You lingered for one last moment together, tasting the sweet bitterness of your forbidden love affair. The saltiness of your tears mingled briefly before he took a breath.

One last kiss to your hair and the woodland prince was gone into the fog. He moved stealthily across a fallen beam of oak with such swiftness; it was as if there wasn’t a raging body of water rushing beneath him to fret about.

When he reached the other side, he looked back long enough to offer his most indulgent smile. It was a sense of instinctual affection that helped you smile back, despite your sorrows. With a palm to his chest that then extended outward, he offered one last gesture of devotion before turning to disappear into the shadows of the forest.

melda = beloved, dear, sweet

melamin = my love

ceri cin heni = do you understand [very rough translation]

TAGS: @tessaem @izbelross @@moony-artnstuff @wellfuckmyexistence

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insipid-drivel · 2 years ago

Note

i do actually want to hear the story about why you licked a salt lick tho

I thought you'd never ask.

I've always been a bog-baby. I am not joking that there have been times where I've had to paddle my way to my bus stop at the end of my driveway in an honest-to-god canoe. Aside from flood season, that left us with a lot of land to ourselves, and my mom always loved horses and wanted to raise me around them, too. My first job was as a stable hand working with horses at a teaching/therapy ranch for kids and people with special needs. It was awesome and I miss it all the time. Seriously AMA about that stuff because I have stories.

So, in order to raise a horse, you have to have a paddock. Fence? Check. My mom erected an entire wooden fence on her own and got absolutely jacked that year while simultaneously fielding pre-Y2K teleconferences from around the world.

Yep, my mom was on the team at Intel that was responsible for keeping Y2K from happening. She was the owner of the projects tasked with reprogramming Microsoft firmware with updated timestamps for major corporations, governments, and private users around the world. That's why shit didn't hit the fan. You're here, on this website, right this second, in part because of her. I lost a lot of time in my early childhood with her so the lights stayed on and the Internet still worked on January 1st, 2000.

So, imagine Houston basically talking to the Apollo crew during a major crisis while Houston is hanging out in a field digging post holes and grunting into the phone at you because yeehaw. She was getting herself a goddamned pony after that lunacy.

Anyway, so after our property is fixed up for a horse, she starts putting up the real comfort-goods a horse needs to be happy. Horses tend to love salt licks because they do indeed crave The Mineral. Back then, salt licks came in these big, pinkish cubes you put in a metal frame and nailed to a fence post or a tree - wherever. I had no idea what they were and like a kid does, my instant impulse was "I wanna lick it."

Have you ever looked back and reflected on your childhood and realized your parents were 100% fucking with you? I have.

"Go ahead. It's just salt," she said to me when I asked her if it was safe for people, too.

So I walk up to the tree my mom has affixed this salt lick to and stick out my tongue.

The nanosecond-and-a-half that the very tip of my tongue touched that thing was like being struck face-first by a lightning bolt of regret. It was horrible. I had never tasted anything so horrendously salty and bitter in my life (if you know what I mean) and all I could hear over my own retching was my mom pissing herself laughing.

Anyway so Y2K was real and our horse's name was Flamenco.

#storytime #Y2K

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simultaneously-sick-and-calm · 3 years ago

Text

»pairing: Man from the Railroad!Atsuhiro x fem!reader

»word count: 3.2k

»Part 1 | IS IT A GOD INSIDE YOU, GIRL? (1st OGoA AU piece by @get-shiggy-with-it )

»summary: A deal is struck and a desire indulged.

»a/n: part two!! Thanks to my beloved @get-shiggy-with-it for beta reading for me. I hope you enjoy!

»warnings: Appalachian folklore, piv sex, fingering (f receiving), monsterfucking (if you squint), implied tragedy (mine disasters, death of workers/children), some reader backstory, historical AU 1800's mining town, Old Gods of Appalachia podcast AU, 18+ MDNI

The Man from the Railroad was no less intriguing when he returned one evening weeks later to meet with your brother. Just as you'd suspected, he’d practically leaped at the opportunity to cut a potentially lucrative deal without the ever-present gaze of your father looking over his shoulder. For years he had been trying, and failing to make dear old dad believe that he was ready to take over the company. Much to his chagrin however, it was clear that while your father didn’t really trust anyone with the specific ins and outs of the business; the man had seemed in recent years to bristle just a little less when approached by your soft questioning voice, over the harsh cut of his son’s.

This time upon entering the parlor room Atsuhiro took your hand in his own immediately, bringing it once again to the soft plush of his lips in greeting. The heat under your collar seared up the length of your neck, settling once again on your cheeks. “My darling lady! How lovely it is to see your enchanting face. A sight for sore eyes, indeed.”

“Why thank you, Sir. Once again you’re proving to be far too kind.” You brother failed to stifle a huff, clearly irritated that you were distracting his mysterious benefactor. The noise of it shook you back from the daydreams threatening to pull you under.

Pushing from your mind the thoughts of hands at your waist...or how his lips might brush over more of your skin in that same gentle way they caressed your fingers; you guided Atsuhiro’s attention to your brother, finally introducing them. “Henry, this is the Man from the Railroad who asked to see you the other night.”

“Yes, of course!” came your brother’s too jovial attempt at making himself appear likeable. Guiding your guest away without so much as acknowledging your presence. “I was so pleased to hear that you’re interested in our little family affair, kind Sir. Please follow me and we can speak more privately in the office.”

“That sounds just delightful. Lead the way, my friend.” Casting one last glance over the shoulder of his perfectly pressed suit, Atsuhiro winked and followed your brother through the office door.

And just like that, you were once again left standing alone at the desk, consumed by the lingering heat of his lips against your skin. And oh lord above you were hungry for it. It wasn’t an overly familiar feeling, admittedly, but you were no stranger to this kind of desire...to this yearning that threatened to burn you up from the inside whenever you caught wind of him. Which had been often over the last several days.

Since his appearance it seemed as though he was everywhere. Word spread of groups gathering in the large fields just outside town, all to listen to him speak. He promised them purpose, good and honest work that would better not only their own lives but those of all who surrounded them.

Fathers and sons.

Wanderers and vagrants.

All were welcome to join him in working for the Railroad. There was a place for every good, hard-working man among his ranks, and every voice who whispered about this black-suited man with the green bolo tie seemed almost as smitten as you.

Even as all the rumors and the chatter flowed like the streams at the base of the mountain. As the other young women in town flushed and swooned at the sight of the hat sitting proudly above the group of men that surrounded him; you held on to one small thing. The way that his given name tasted on your tongue. It was bitter and sweet, rolling over the plush of your lips with an uncertain kind of hope. For all the tongues that wagged about his sudden and overwhelming appearance in your small hometown, none of them referred to him by any name at all.

Only you had been bestowed the privilege--no, the honor, of having a name to breathe out into the darkest moments of night when every beautiful slope of his face occupied your mind. Those fleeting seconds when all you could hear was the gentle tone of his whispering in your ear, imagining the way that it might deepen and rasp under your kiss. The way it would feel to have your fingers intertwined with his own, or trace them delicately over the sharp line of his jaw and the gentle turn of his grin. All of a sudden the ornate handle behind you turned, startling you once again from your daydreams.

Henry’s voice, followed immediately by the soft floating drone of Atsuhiro’s were just on the other side. You caught just the tail end of their conversation as the door swung open. “Well, Henry my friend, I am simply delighted at the prospect of our future endeavors together. I think that with your manpower, and my connections we can truly turn the tide in this battle. Industry is the path to the future, and we must move along with it. Ever onward and ever forward, as they say, hmm?”

“You’re absolutely right, Sir. I think this is the start of a great partnership.” Henry hadn’t sounded so enthusiastic about anything, aside from maybe a free round of drinks at his favorite watering hole, in years. “We have many who would love to be a part of the kind of thing that you’re offering, and I think that my father especially will be looking forward to seeing all your plans come to fruition.”

Fruition. That was quite the word choice for Henry, and you did your best to stifle a chuckle. Usually by this time he was long inebriated past the point where words with a second syllable became a struggle for him. The attempt was admittedly half-hearted, and the smallest of sounds slipped out before it could be reigned back into the confines of your chest.

Thankfully, Henry was already in the midst of pulling a coat from the rack, and making his way out after a hearty handshake with his new partner. “Wonderful to meet you, and I’m sorry that I have to run out so quickly...I, uh have another meeting to get to.'' He tipped his hat in Atsuhiro’s direction and added a muffled “Sister. I’ll see you in the morning. Please make sure that the good gentleman has all of the information that he needs before you go.”

The both of you murmured farewells in return as he hurried out--no doubt late to boast about his success to the usual crowd of drunkards and fools with whom he spent most evenings. And with his hurried exit, you felt the heat under your skin creep back into its former home. Warming your face in what must have been a world record time. Absently you lifted a hand to brush a stray hair from your eyes, hoping in vain that the action might shake you out whatever state these daydreams had thrust you into. A beat passed in silence, and then another before you felt Atsuhiro’s eyes find you across the small space. He was so much closer just an hour before and still you felt like you’re burning up from the inside out at his attention.

Steeling yourself against your own hesitation, you turned to face him and tried to find your voice among the rabble of butterflies that currently occupied all of the space that used to cradle your lungs. “Henry, seemed to be rather taken with you, Sir--”

“As much as I enjoy hearing you refer to me so formally, my darling girl. You are well aware of my name.”

His hungry stare could have consumed you. In fact, the longer you stood there, with just a few steps holding the rigid distance between you, the more of you became quite certain that it would do just that. Every quip that you might have hoped to throw back sizzled away on the molten heat of your usually sharp tongue. “Y-yes, I am aware of it.”

“Then why,” three smooth strides closed the distance between you, bringing him impossibly close, “my dear, do you seem so insistent on forgetting it just when I want to hear it the most?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I know a great many things. Things that others do not, and could not know. Like the way that your lips curl so lovely around my name in the stillness of night. It's a tantalizing sound my dear, and I am eager to hear more of it."

He was so close as he spoke, the way his breath danced over your lips was astounding. Being so close to him felt similar to the way you had imagined in the several days since he last filled the space around you, but there was also something altogether unexpected about it. Everything about him seemed to surround you, compressing into a space far too small for any physical being to occupy.

The heady smell of him had you intoxicated, clinging to every inch of skin that lay exposed in the cool autumn air that rolled through the open door. His very presence was heavy, like the blankets of fog that clung for far too long at the mouths of caves, or the last sticky days of summer heat that always lingered on the mountain air.

As a child you could recall the way it felt to taste air like tonight’s on your tongue. The way that it invaded your senses, and bit back as if it had teeth all its own sharp and jagged, in their futile attempts to keep the turning seasons at bay. If it weren’t for the way Atsuhiro’s fingertips burned a path along your cheek as they moved smoothly from temple to jaw, you might have been lost to its chill.

He knew.

He knew everything.

More than just the way you spoke his given name. More than the flicker of hope that melted away at the wax seal surrounding your heart. More than the way you melted into his embrace in the same way now.

The glint in his earthen eyes gave way to something more than human, a sum of parts greater than just the man himself who now pressed his body so close to your own. And in that moment, every story your grandmother shared, every warning weaved intricately into the design of the tales came back to you. Along with one other...

Your grandfather didn’t often indulge in storytelling, but he made sure to tell you one. The one about the man from the company with a green bolo tie and sharp silver tongue, that he had met as a younger man. The man who never shared his name, but worked beside him for years to open the mine. To set your family's legacy on its path, one which would eventually lead to this great reaping of the effort he had sown generations ago. You hadn’t ever figured out if the tale was laced with warning like all the others. Honestly, you couldn’t remember any other details, but now you were quite sure that it would make no difference.

You were certain of just one thing. What he needed, and what you wanted were one and the same.

What he sought from you was an opportunity for indulgence. The shred of his humanity that remained among whatever else made up the mass of him was wavering. Flickering like the prayer candles adorning every window in every home as they mourned the things he and his revolution stole from them. He knew that you understood what he was -- what he wasn't, really, and that you weren’t afraid. The weight of your acceptance seemed to settle on his shoulders, and he crumbled into you.

“Atsuhiro...” You whispered into the lips that ghosted over your own.

He tasted like the first crisp breeze of the season. Sharp, and tinged with inevitability, but heavy with understanding that the death of all things familiar lay in wait at its heels.

Desperation overtook him, painting a new color on his usually monochrome pallet. Teeth and tongue fought hard to remain in control, and he won. Licking into your mouth and sighing beautifully when finally you relented the battle of wills and allowed him to consume you completely.

The hands that moments ago were caging you in, now began to roam. Kneading, sliding, savoring every pliable part of you. Hooking a hand beneath one of your knees, Astuhiro lifted your leg, guiding you so shift backward until you found yourself seated on the desk. You used the leverage to lock your legs around his waist and pull him into you, the action bunching your skirts around your waist. Mewling when your hips were finally pressed fully together, you felt the smirk return to his face. Finally you felt him, hard and hot, even through the few remaining layers of clothing that kept you apart.

He pulled away then, tilting your face to look up at him and relishing in the way you groaned at the loss of his heat. Not to say that he was faring much better, it had been so long since he allowed himself this small pleasure, and you were so willing. He was surprised at himself, really, for managing to hold it together this long already. “This is not the first time you have been touched like this, is it, my pet?” He purred into your ear as fingers traced a soft line up the length of your leg, halting to knead the soft flesh just inches away from where you both wanted him to be.

“No, it’s not--hmmm, please…”

He could practically feel the pulsing, the soft wet heat of your waiting cunt. The pretty sounds you made going straight to his cock, and he wanted more. He needed to hear you cry out his name in strangled ecstasy. “Please what, my darling girl? You’re doing so well for me already. Tell me what it is that you need?” he crooned, relishing in the way you preened at even the smallest bit of praise.

“I think,” you began, once again finding the bravery within yourself that his presence seemed to pull out of you, “that it is you who needs me, Atsuhiro.”

He was, for a split second, shocked at the way you took his face in both hands, pulled him to your level and kissed him hard. It was beautiful, this growing fire in you, and as it overtook his senses, he thought for a moment about how he could have loved it--could have loved you--in another life. Or even in his own, back when he was truly just a man. When his name was his own to give freely and did not come with so steep a price.

But now was not the time to linger on such fantasies.

The hand trapped between your bodies made quick work of your underwear, baring your needy cunt to him at last. And Atsuhiro groaned, an altogether animal sound at the slick he found waiting for him there, and he used its abundance to ease first one long finger, then a second, in time into the heat of you. Stroking gently, he explored the soft velvet of your walls until he found it, the spot that made you keen against him. The dark whimper of his given name that fell from your lips when he began to circle the bundle of nerves in sync, was almost more than he could bear. Never in all his time spent on this wretched earth, had he heard something so beautiful.

Now, you were no sweet spring blossom, innocence was something you left behind long ago. But the delicious way he played your body like a violin was foreign indeed. None of the clumsy hands that rushed to lift your skirts had ever made you feel so good.

"Astu--Ah!" You gasped against his shoulder, feeling for all intents like a spring wound too tightly. One hand wound itself tightly in his silky hair and the other blindly searching for the smooth buckle at his waist. Panting, struggling for words between ragged breaths. "Wait! Wait, I--fuck--I want to feel you."

"Yes, of course my dear."

Sliding from your seat on the desk, you beckoned him to follow and settled back into the plush of the sofa. You barely caught the way that his breath hitched as you finally loosed him from the confinement of his clothes. Taking a moment to admire him, you allowed your fingers to trace the lines. Strong smooth stomach giving way to slender hips and and cock that you might even say was pretty. Impressive, certainly, but not in any way that made you fear pain. Rather he looked as though he was made to fit together with you just right.

And oh, how perfect it was.

Atsuhiro trembled as he sank to the hilt into your warmth, and the both of you sighed as he began to move.

Slowly.

Gently.

The moment stretched and was reverent in a way, as though the both of you understood its gravity. He angled and nudged that heavenly spot again, and the way you clenched around him forced a low groan into the air between you.

He looked up with wide eyes, struck again by the reality of you.

Never in any of the handful of times that he'd chosen to indulge in his baser instincts had the object of his fixation been anything more than a pretty face and a warm body, in the end. And he had the small handful of marbles in his breast pocket to prove it. Each one a reminder that he was no longer Sako Atsuhiro. He couldn't risk leaving a loose pair of loose lips with something so powerful as his own name.

But you…

You were something altogether different than the rest. Unexpected. Secure.

He could lose himself in you.

And as you came undone around him with a whimper of his given name, he did just that. Vaulting with you over the precipice. He worked you both through the high, and in return you kissed him deeply.

A while later, still entwined on the old velvet sofa, your name, whispered softly in the surrounding stillness pulled you back from the edge of sleep.

"Hmm?" You asked gently, afraid to disturb the peace. You knew that this was borrowed time.

"You know that I cannot--"

You silenced him with lips against his own. "I know."

"Thank you, my dear."

You awoke the next morning to a stack of those shiny cards on the desk, and a note. Scrawled quickly over the surface were just a handful of words.

These are for the men that your brother wishes to send my way. Keep none for yourself. Ever onward and ever forward.

-A

Next to them in the slim vase where you'd left the blue marble, now was only a long white feather. Very much like the one you'd noticed missing from his hat.

#sako atsuhiro #mr compress x reader #bnha #mha #sako atsuhiro x reader #old gods of appalachia au #the man from the railroad!Atsuhiro #tw monsterfucking (maybe)

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