#surely a man can survive being stabbed through the back. through the sheer power of my love of him! surely

[brynnmclean]

🌹

Again, from the Hellblade II fic:

“We feared for you,” Fargrímr says. “You nearly drowned in your own blood that first night. And then the fever came and it seemed certain to take you. But you fought well. It is a relief to have you conscious again.” A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, and Thórgestr allows himself to recognize the fondness of it. It is a look Fargrímr used to wear often around him, a look he has not given to Thórgestr in many years. Thórgestr endures it for a moment and then he has to turn his face away, his eyes slipping closed.

[send me a 🌹 for a sentence/section of my current WIPs!]

[leothelionsaysgrrrr]

✨️✨️✨️ for anyone, but especially for Rex!

I AM SORRY it took me so long to do this there’s just SO! MUCH! to yell about with my trash bastard son :’)

✨ Rexus is, as of 9:39 Dragon, legally dead.  As far as anyone in Minrathous knows, he was leading a mission outside Tevinter a few years before that and none of them ever made it back alive.  Any resemblance between this very definitely dead man and Falx Verus, a bodyguard the Ivory Oasis hired for Silver that year after ‘an incident with a patron’ left him ‘in need of extra security’ is nothing more than coincidence. Or so Silver and his madam tell it, anyway, seeing as Falx Verus is nothing more than Rexus with his hair grown out and a Great Big Bushy Beard.  It’s...an adjustment...for him, for sure, keeping his mouth shut and his ass out of taverns enough to not give himself away OR make himself recognizable during his and Silver’s other (more important) work, plus having to WORK at the brothel rather than GO to the brothel, but it’s necessary.  Not just for his personal growth and work towards atoning for his past and becoming a better person, but because if his younger brother (who framed Rexus for the mass assassinations that allowed him to rise to power in the Magisterium and who has a strong and well-known aversion to brothels) caught wind that he was still alive, he would waste no time making him and anyone who’d been hiding him dead for real.  

✨ To kind of piggyback off the last one, the reason it took a few years to declare him legally dead (and one of the reasons he’s so annoying) is because that was nowhere near the first time people had claimed he’d been killed.  In fact, he has such a reputation for being nearly impossible to kill that people used to refer to him as ‘the cockroach’ or just ‘roach’.  It’s definitely true that he’s a skilled fighter who can dish out and take a beating like a champ, drinks like a fish and has the tolerance to prove it, is stubborn as all hell, and his mother definitely watches his back in ways she doesn’t always alert him to, but most of his success in surviving things he absolutely should not have is sheer dumb luck.  Not even just the fact that he has, despite being...well, HIM, never once been run through, or even significantly stabbed, no, like when he survived a tunnel collapse because the beams fell in just the right way to keep him from being crushed instead of crushing him, or when he turned up in Minrathous a couple weeks after being buried alive near Vyrantium because an animal dug him out.  Or when Lux put three arrows in his chest so he and Emma could escape from him on the mission he led outside Tevinter to capture them, but he survived because he had his very own encounter with the Cryptid That Is Sala.  His favorite is when a magister’s guards threw him off the bridge leading into Minrathous only for him to fall flat on some scaffolding only about 10 feet down and the rope holding the weights they’d tied to his feet to snap and fall to the water below without him.  After the dwarves working on the bridge recovered from the shock, they helped him back up in time to be waiting for them at the Magisterium when they went to report in.  That went about as well for them as could be expected, and all Rexus offered in terms of an explanation was a shrug and a wink.

✨ Emma has a nearly eidetic memory and applies knowledge in a manner that could be considered quite innovative, but she almost completely lacks any imagination whatsoever.  Meaning, she’s perfectly capable of working within the limits of a set of rules she knows to solve a problem in a way that might be considered outlandish or unorthodox, but she’s completely useless at flat out making shit up.  For example, if you asked her to put together an alias with a new name and a backstory, or to invent an entirely new animal that doesn’t exist and has never been pictured anywhere ever, she will just bluescreen and be completely stumped.  She only lies by omission because she would never be able to come up with anything to actually tell a lie (she can keep every single one of anyone else’s lies straight, though, and quite well, but you run the risk of her talking herself through it in front of whoever you’re lying to if you choose to go that route).  On the other hand, if you ask her how to solve an immediate problem with resources at hand, or how she, as a mage who can really only use force magic, nothing elemental, and cannot talk to spirits (they avoid her because her consciousness is bridged into the Fade by one and it’s WEIRD), would accomplish things like conjuring ice or fire, or healing, she would have an answer, and that answer would usually be ‘physics’.  Friction generates heat, and can be used to make fires, so why could she not generate friction by manipulating forces in the air to create heat, and ignite kindling in her hand?  Or create a shroud of it around someone - a tall, scrawny elf who complains about the slightest hint of cold, for instance - to help them stay warm? Similarly, all phase transition really is is an increase or decrease in speed and entropy of molecular movement, so throwing a bucket of water on someone could become a bucket of ice spears if the water molecules were to sufficiently slow and become ordered.  Healing is a little more complicated, since the way she’s worked out to do it also uses a technique Sala taught her that’s like...a state of extreme hyperfocus to the point she’s acutely aware of EVERYTHING going on in whoever she’s healing’s body.  All of that is just more processes and reactions that can be manipulated with force if the mage can focus enough, which she can, but at a heavy cost: she can’t focus enough to manipulate the body’s natural healing processes AND block the body’s sensitivity to pain at the same time, so being healed by her is MASSIVELY painful.  Like, weeks of pain while healing a broken bone normally instead happening over a couple minutes.  That, she tends to keep to herself that she can even do, and only ever uses it on herself because she knows she can handle it.

Got any more?

[iturbide]

More character meme stuff for you. Since Lyon is back on my mind thanks to the new banner, can I hear your thoughts on him please?

Also Ashe please.

You know, with him as the 4-star focus this was not what I was expecting this morning:

So I am all on board with Lyon

How do I feel about this character?

Lyon gets me right in the heart.  Just...his whole story is tragic, when you really think about it.  This young man who is himself intelligent, talented, and capable, but who feels inadequate next to his dearest friends that he loves with all his heart, who feels the crushing pressure of responsibility for his people and his country in the wake of his father’s death and knowing that disaster will soon strike, who falls specifically because he was trying to find a way to prove his worth and save everyone and ended up being manipulated by an unfathomable power.  His kindness and compassion, both admirable traits in and of themselves, ended up becoming a fatal weakness when they allowed Fomortiis the foothold he needed to take hold of Lyon, and from there every good and kind and noble aspect of him ended up twisted beyond recognition.

There’s something about characters with crippling inferiority complexes that draws me in.  I end up feeling deeply for them, wanting the best for them, hoping they’ll succeed and cheering when they’re able to acknowledge and accept their own personal worth...or mourning when they’re not only unable to overcome their self-doubt, but end up becoming victims when it’s exploited by outside forces.  Takumi hits me in very similar ways, especially for Conquest, but Lyon’s story is really heartbreaking for how we see the monster Fomortiis makes of him specifically through the eyes of his dearest friends.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

I...don’t know actually.  I’m not super familiar with Sacred Stones on the whole, so I’m not really familiar with who would be possible or reasonable.  I know that Eirika and Ephraim are both popular partners for him, and there’s definitely an appeal to both of those options, but I don’t know if I prefer one or the other, if there might be someone else out there who’d be good for him, or if I even want to ship him at all so much as give him a chance to find his own happiness for himself.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Eirika and Ephraim, definitely.  Regardless of the romantic side, his friendship with those two is absolutely integral to him and I love the idea of their friendship and how multifaceted it is, fueling both his love for them and his jealousy of them in equal measure.  I’m also really keen on the idea of him being friends with Knoll, since Knoll wants to restore Grado specifically because he wants it to become the nation Lyon truly wanted to make; that says a lot to me personally about the relationship they had, and how much Knoll admired Lyon (especially since he canonically disappears as soon as that work is finished).

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Are there popular Lyon opinions?  I haven’t played Sacred Stones in years at this point: I vaguely recall borrowing it from a friend and I’m reasonably sure I played it through, but the only record I have of it is in some old unfinished fic bits living on an old computer that are directly related to that playthrough. 

How popular is the opinion that Lyon’s story is pretty much perfect?  Because from everything I’ve seen and read it honestly sounds like they handled his arc perfectly, from his motivations to his downfall.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

This is kind of a tough one because I don’t really know Sacred Stones all that well as a game.  My memories are very fuzzy and mostly involve realizing that Myrrh’s dragonstone had limited durability which meant I couldn’t use her in every battle and I was sad about it because dragon girl.  I guess if there’s anything...from what I understand, Lyon is recruitable in some side dungeon if you manage to beat this outrageous hardmode three times?  And yet he has no supports or dialogue.  Like.  What’s even the point if the party doesn’t get to talk to him?  Either don’t make him recruitable or put in dialogue because after everything that happened it’s a crime not to have him say a word.

And also Ashe because I love him

How do I feel about this character?

Ashe is absolutely one of the stand-out characters in the Blue Lions roster and the game on the whole, in my opinion.  His story is honestly fascinating: from a normal commoner kid with siblings and loving parents to an orphan stealing to ensure that he and his siblings could survive on the streets to the adopted child of a minor Kingdom noble with aspirations to be a knight and then back to an orphan thanks to Rhea who’s forced to fight for the Empire depending on your route.  That’s an absolutely wild ride.

Ashe could have been a really tragic character who leans heavy on the sympathy, but he doesn’t.  While there are undeniably tragic elements to his story, especially in the Academy Phase as we’re forced to fight his adoptive father on Rhea’s orders and steal the only parental figure he has (you find him in the cathedral a lot after that, for understandable reasons -- his crisis of faith must be monumental), he never gives up his aspirations to the kind of knight they write stories about.  This is a kid who has resorted to thievery frequently in the past, and his goal in life is to rise up from that low point in his life and become a shining paragon of chivalry and virtue helping the people.  And he puts his money where his mouth is, too: call him gullible, call him naive, but when he sees someone in a bind -- even a thief, claiming he’s been reduced to that to buy medicine for an ailing child -- he always helps out as best he can.  He doesn’t look down on people for their worst moments: he tries to lift them up so they can reach better ones, the same way he was lifted up by Lonato.  With his kindness and his compassion and his earnest ambition, I think he has an excellent chance of succeeding and becoming a knight of story and song.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

TRICK QUESTION once again, I do not have any ships for Ashe.  I don’t have ships for most of the Three Houses kids, and while I love Ashe dearly, none of his supports really grabbed me romantically.  If I had to pick anyone, it would probably be Caspar, because their Supports are stellar: despite how rough the C is, the B turns it all around on its head and makes both of them realize that they were both being way too serious about the whole thing, and the A is sheer perfection as they realize they’ve both been spoiling the cat silly.  The idea of them going on endless adventures together, balancing each other and bringing out the best in one another, is so charming to me, and I could easily see them as lifelong partners.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

PETRA.  I love their Support chain so much and the fact that in their paired endcard she literally creates a whole order of knights in Brigid specifically to help him fulfill his lifelong ambition?  Get yourself a friend like that wow.  Also Annette: I love their Support chain and how even though the both of them are so scared of that very unsettling tower, he still goes and braves it a second time for just to find a treasure that she dropped in their initial flight.  That’s just so sweet okay I love how they get along and how close they are as friends and how they’ll pull out all the stops for one another.  Also, I have a major soft spot for his supports with Dedue because Ashe and Dedue cooking together is excellent (and also his supports with Felix are so charming and definitely show Felix in a better light once the B rolls around).

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Okay so I think I got this one from @anankos but Ashe is really skilled with a knife.  Sure, everybody loves to gush about the precious cinnamon roll, but he can and will cut you if he has to; old habits die hard and he probably has a knife on him at all times just in case he gets in a tight spot, either where he can’t use or doesn’t have his bow.  Ordinarily he would use it for things like hunting and cooking as required, but he’s definitely used it as a cutpurse, and under pressure he will use it to stab someone if it will give him a chance at survival he otherwise wouldn’t have.  Don’t mess with the kid basically.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

This is so small and so minor but I wish we could have seen more of his emotional journey after the loss of Lonato.  I know it’s a really early game event, but given that certain supports can be locked until certain narrative points (like Leonie and Byleth’s B, which focuses directly on the aftermath of Jeralt’s death), I think it would have been beneficial to have shown the impact that death made on him, especially in regards to his view on the church.  Having supports with Seteth could have been great, too, especially given some of his views on the Church as a whole.

Give Me a Character  

[darkblueboxs]

Lifelines

For AFTG Angst Fest day 23: “You can’t die”

Read here or on AO3

TW for extreme violence and gore.

*

His father starts, as promised, with his legs. He slices the tendons with thick, blunt blades that catch in the shredded flesh, eliciting noises that would be stomach-turning if they could be heard over the screaming. There isn’t much left by the time Nathan is finished, lumps of quivering flesh that may have once resembled a human but no more.

By all rights, he should be dead.

But he isn’t. He waits for death to release him from the sweat and blood and agony, but past all reason, all possibility, his heart keeps forcing blood through his veins only for it to spill out onto the cold tiles of his father’s basement.

Eventually, the voices grow distant, and the room grows dark. They didn’t bother locking the door, never imagined that what remained of him could still be capable of movement. On shaky, new limbs that heal with a speed that Neil never thought possible, he drags what is left of himself into the dark.

Three months later, they catch him again at a rest-stop near Chicago. He doesn’t know if they understand what has happened to him any better than he does; he doesn’t stick around to ask. In the backseat of a car wheeling its way back to Baltimore, he cuts and cuts and cuts until the meaty stump of his hand slips through the handcuff without catching.

The cops find a steaming wreck of a car at the roadside, and Malcom’s body cooling in the driver’s seat. The source of the pool of blood in the back, however, remains a mystery to them. The flesh of his regrown hand stings as the night wind catches it, and he picks up a new name and a new look and loses himself once more.

A month later, he is shot.

Days after that, stabbed.

Weeks later, he spits up blood as the gash drawn across his throat seals itself over, fading to a vivid, white line against dark skin. The store clerk stares at it as he swaps his blood-stained tee for a high-collar polo shirt. Later, while examining the scar in a dingy motel bathroom, he wonders in a detached kind of way whether he’ll ever grow numb to the pain, nerves torn through by endless wear and tear. He touches an exploratory finger to the scar, and yanks it back as the ghost of a blade tears through his throat once more. No. He never had that kind of luck.

“He’s been waiting a long time for you,” Lola hisses. Her threats spiral like smoke in the icy mountain air. The wind whips her hair around her face as she backs him up against the cliff edge. “We kept your room just the way you left it. Ready and waiting for your family reunion. We’re going to kill you again, and again, and again, and again, and…” She punctuates her every word with another step forward, and he steps back in turn. As his heels hit the edge, her smile turns sharkish.

Between the cliff and Lola, the decision is easy. He lets himself fall.

He doesn’t hear Lola’s outraged shriek, doesn’t remember landing, doesn’t linger long in the snowdrift before hauling himself back towards civilisation. He doesn’t think about the creak and shift of his ribcage realigning, but he does worry about the deep tracks he leaves in the snow behind him.

He takes a new name, and heads to Arizona.

“You can’t die.” Andrew’s tone is flat, yet still somehow still laced with disdain.

“I said you wouldn’t believe me.” Neil glances over to Wymack, who is watching with his arms crossed, understanding nothing of the German passing between them.

“I never said I didn’t believe you. It would be a stupid lie to tell, even by your standards.”

“So you do believe me.”

“I never said that, either.”

“There’s one way to know for sure.”

Andrew smiles ghoulishly. “I promised coach I wouldn’t spill blood on his carpet.”

“If you can’t figure out how to kill me without spilling any blood then you’re not as good as I thought you were.”

Andrew’s eyes flick over Neil, as though mapping out points of vulnerability, or perhaps looking for something else he missed. “We’ll see.”

Neil waits for Andrew to test his truth, but the night never comes.

A toy that never breaks, Riko calls him, when he uncovers Neil’s secret. His delight drips from his lips like saliva. Buried in the nest, he takes his knives to Neil again, and again, and again, and-

Neil doesn’t die.

With the marks of Christmas still fresh on their skin, Andrew takes him to the roof, eyes roaming critically over Neil’s recoloured hair and naked eyes. He drags Neil over to the edge by his collar, and Neil wonders if Andrew has finally decided to kill him. It’s a long drop to the concrete below, and the horrified churn of Neil’s stomach isn’t lessened by the knowledge that his body will knit his broken bones back together afterwards.

“You’re awfully nervous for a man with nothing to fear.” Andrew has Neil in one hand, his cigarette in the other. One moment of inattention and either could be sent tumbling over the roof’s edge. Neil’s heart hammers so frantically that he’s sure Andrew must feel it through the hand bunched in his shirt, stuttering nervously like the beating wings of a sparrow. The frailty is an illusion; Neil has yet to meet anything that will stop it powering on, dragging him through the worst the world has to offer him.

“You and I know there’s far more to fear in this world than death.”

Andrew makes a noise several shades too derisive to count as laughter. “And what do you fear?”

Neil thinks of a dark, musty room, and the steady drip of blood on tiles. “Eternity.”

Andrew’s hand releases Neil’s shirt to lie flat against his chest, and for a moment Neil is sure that Andrew is finally going to push him over. He studies Neil with eyes that burn amber against the brisk winter sky, and the moment stretches into forever between them.  Not the kind of forever that Neil fears – an eternity spent in the dark being broken and broken and broken is the kind that haunts him at night, but this electrifying moment of uncertainty, he could… tolerate.

Andrew’s hand is warm enough that Neil misses the heat when he withdraws it. Neil tilts forward, although whether he’s following Andrew or escaping the drop behind him he can’t say. Andrew doesn’t acknowledge the impulse as he flicks his cigarette butt off the roof, but his eyes don’t leave Neil’s face.

“Just because you can’t die,” Andrew says, words clipped with a tension Neil can’t decipher, “doesn’t mean you have nothing to lose.”

“I know.” It’s a new truth that burns like acid in his chest, painful as it is terrifying. “I went to the nest because I have something I can’t lose.”

Andrew’s fingers twitch. Maybe he regrets throwing his cigarette off the roof. Maybe he regrets not throwing Neil off after it. “Get out of my sight.”

Neil leaves, heart still beating a frantic pace as though he left it up on the roof edge with Andrew.

He used to believe that it wasn’t the world that was cruel, but the people in it. But people – as far as Neil knows – are not responsible for the power that drags him back to life over and over. For a man who spent the best part of his life on the run, immortality should be a blessing; an immunity to the sticky end that was guaranteed to come to him at his father’s hand. Instead, Neil’s fears have multiplied a hundredfold. At least before, he had been guaranteed some kind of release, no matter how slow and painful the means. Now he fears a lifetime spent in a dark basement, a body pulling itself back together only to be torn apart once more, like Prometheus chained to his rock, rip, repair, repeat.

He wonders what his mother, who he can only picture clawing towards him across the blood-stained tiles of his father’s basement, would have thought of it all. A woman who sacrificed a true life in favour of survival, who put herself through the unimaginable just to keep Neil alive, would perhaps have appreciated Neil’s curse more than he ever could. Maybe it was her sheer determination that landed Neil in this mess, bending the laws of reality itself from beyond the grave just to keep her son’s heart beating. For a moment, Neil is so overcome with hatred that he can barely breathe for it. It’s only now, with his Foxes, that he understands the difference between surviving and living, and if he had any real choice in the matter he would take the latter without hesitation.

Surviving is scraping himself off a grey tile floor and losing himself along stretches of highway that tangle into forever. Living is the weight of Andrew’s body pinning him to the floor as he takes Neil apart again and again and again and-

Andrew says, “stay,” and Neil pictures another kind of forever.

Three. Two. One. Zero.

There was nothing of Neil that needed protecting, that could be protected in any way that wasn’t covered by his curse, and yet Andrew had insisted all the same. Give your back to me.

With Nathan’s men watching the door and Lola’s voice still hissing in his mind, Neil looks at his Foxes and makes the only choice he can. He gives them his forever.

Thank you. You were amazing.

The gun digs into his spine as the team heads out, the threat dragging Neil’s attention away from the riot roaring to life around them. Still, the bullet comes as a surprise.

Of course, the only way to guarantee there isn’t a search is to make sure nobody thinks there’s anything to search for.

The sound registers before the pain does, earth-shatteringly loud even in the chaos of the riot. Neil’s ears scream with the aftershock, but the twist of the bullet inside him tears his attention elsewhere.

Muscles rip and bones shatter and organs burst as the bullet grinds through Neil’s body, and oh, he liked this jacket. Red bleeds through the orange of Neil’s windbreaker, and if he had to guess he would say that the bullet had gone right through the o in Josten.

The crowd screams and ripples around him, a blur of faces that could be Foxes or could be strangers for all Neil’s flickering vision can tell, and men dressed like paramedics seize him by the arms and drag him to a waiting van.

In his last, fleeting moments of consciousness he looks for Andrew.

Then the doors shut, and everything goes black.

He comes around with a bullet rattling around in his ribcage. Coughing the bullet up isn’t as unpleasant as it was being shot by it, but still it scratches Neil’s insides like sandpaper. Between retches he runs through curses in every language he can think of.

Finally, he forces the slug back up his throat and spits, watching as it clatters across the grey tiles.

Grey tiles.

Gr-

The realisation feels like falling off a cliff, dizzying, disorientating, and with the certainty of a rough landing awaiting him at the bottom.

“Rise and shine, kiddo.” He would recognise Lola’s voice anywhere. It seeps into his ears like blood, blocking everything else out.

“My teammates-” Neil stutters.

“Saw you die. Don’t worry, they won’t be looking for you. Well, only in the morgues. They won’t find your body, of course, but maybe we could snip a few pieces of you off for them to stumble upon. I’m feeling generous.” She trails a painted fingernail down Neil’s torso as though following an invisible dotted line. “Your immortality frustrated us at first, you know. But now we’ve all had time to reflect on it, and you know what we’ve seen?” She leans in close, and Neil tries not to breathe in as her perfume drowns him. “Potential.”

Neil yanks at his arms, desperate to put anything between himself and Lola, but the rattle of handcuffs at his back is predictable as it is devastating. The cuffs around his ankles are an unexpected addition to the ensemble. He tries for a kick, but she surges forward, pinning his legs easily with the weight of her body.

His time in the nest – what he can remember of it – was a nightmare of knives and exy and Riko’s smile. But Riko was, when it came down to it, an amateur. He knew how to hurt, but he didn’t know how to destroy, didn’t know the ins and outs of a body like his father’s people did, didn’t know where to draw the line that would keep a victim hovering between awake and unconscious, to keep them suffering that little bit longer. Riko was a bully, but he wasn’t a professional.

Neil survived by clinging to a few things – his foxes, exy, his promises to Andrew – but also to the knowledge that he had survived worse. Riko was a nightmare, it was true, but he was no butcher.

They leave him there to stew in the dark. With a lifetime to wait and their tracks well and truly covered, they have no need to hurry. The air that feeds into the basement through an array of soundproofed ducts is stale and faintly ashy. Without windows, he has no way of gaging the passage of time. The room isn’t just dark, it’s a void, and as time melts Neil’s eyes start picking out patterns from thin air, shapes and shadows that slide around him. He thinks of the bitter January nights spent on the tower roof with Andrew, the glistening stars above and the glow of Palmetto below. He had lived each of those moments with the knowledge of how brutally it would all be ripped away from him, had known to savour the hum of the city and the sparkling sky and Andrew’s lips on his, but all the same he longs for it all just once more. The longing is such a persistent, unhealing pain in his chest that he wonders if it might be what finally kills him.

No such luck.

When the lights flick back on at last, it has been so long that the fluorescent bulbs all but blind him. Neil wants to be on guard against what’s coming, but reflexes force his head into the crook of his shoulder until his eyes can adjust. When he finally forces them open, he wishes he hadn’t, nausea rolling over him as his father’s distinctive outline comes into focus.

He speaks, probably, but nothing penetrates Neil’s terror. He’s five years younger, watching Lola drag his mother’s body away in pieces, promising she’ll be back for him next. Trying to connect the bloodstained hands of his mother’s corpse to the ones that first showed him how to tie his shoelaces, that sewed up his wounds with dental floss and whisky, that massaged hair die into his scalp and broke three of his ribs for kissing a girl…

He was too busy watching the patterns his mother’s blood made on the floor to notice the scars on his face and arms slowly seal themselves over. He did notice his father’s approach, freshly-polished axe glinting at his side.

Past and present blur into one. The first time, his father was restrained, savouring every drop of Neil’s blood as it dribbled onto the tiles. Then came the confusion as wounds sealed themselves over, then anger, cutting and cutting and cutting until Neil couldn’t even remember his own name. Both of them staring as his body knitted itself back together.

The sentence “passed out from the pain” was one that had always irritated Neil. People don’t pass out from pain. They pass out from blood loss, or lack of oxygen, or because of whatever is causing them the pain. There is, however, no simple pain threshold after which the human mind will shut itself off regardless. Pain is not a trip switch. It might shut down the mind, but the body powers on. His body always powers on, and trained hands could hold him on the knife-edge between conscious and not for a long, long time without sacrificing an inch of his pain.

This time, the butcher has no need to hold back. The axe swings, and Nathaniel screams.

He screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and screams until he can’t scream anymore.

And still he powers on.

Time passes. The lights flicker on. The lights flicker off. Light is terror, because it comes with pain, but not knowing what might creep in the shadows is its own kind of nightmare. Sometimes it’s his mother, clawing through a pool of her blood. Sometimes it’s Riko, racquet in hand, the Raven’s victory march roaring at his back as though a stadium is cheering him on. Sometimes it’s Andrew, blood running down his face, laughing faintly as drugs twist his mind into knots.

Lola likes to visit him in the dark, or he thinks she does. Maybe it’s just his own broken mind turning on him. Her disembodied voice puts words to the desperation clawing at the base of his skull. Forever, forever, forever.

Nathaniel forgets the stars. It’s easier than longing for them.

One day, the lights click on, their low buzz enough by now to rouse Nathaniel immediately from sleep. But it is not his father, nor any of his men, who enter.

Nathaniel stares vacantly at the police uniform.

The cop leans against the wall with one hand, makes a faint choking sound. “We got a body down here.”

Do we? Nathaniel wonders.

There are more footsteps, more noises, the door opening and shutting. Neil doesn’t do anything until a hand touches his shoulder, and he jerks back into himself with a shout. Several people scream as Nathaniel wrenches himself away from the touch. The handcuffs bite into the torn flesh of his wrists and for a few minutes everything is a rush of movement and panic.

Eventually, a woman approaches with a pair of plyers in hand. Nathaniel’s vocal cords haven’t healed enough to scream, but the noise he makes seems to get his point across. Gently, without touching him, she twists the chain of the cuffs around his ankles until it snaps, and waits for him to still before repeating the action on his wrists. His arms tumble numbly forward, and Nathaniel slumps for the first time in… he doesn’t know.

“Nathan,” he says, voice like sand in his throat.

The officer glances to her colleague. “Dead.”

It takes Nathaniel a moment to recognise the sound that escapes him as laughter.

He wants to tell them that he can walk, but his throat has done all it can for him, and he doubts they’d believe him anyway. A stretcher comes, and when he catches a glimpse of himself in the upstairs mirror, he starts laughing all over again.

Then they pass through the oak double doors and down the drive towards the waiting ambulance, but the rest of the world fades to a faint mess of colours as Nathaniel stares, stares, stares at the burning blue sky, so bright that he thinks his eyes are going to melt, but he won’t look away.

He breathes.

When he next comes around, the world is soft and blurry, like he’s wearing glasses that don’t belong to him.

“Were you disqualified?” Nathaniel croaks.

There’s a huff of air from beside him. “Jesus, kid.”

His throat hurts too much to repeat the question, so Nathaniel looks pleadingly in what he guesses is Wymack’s direction until he gets his answer.

“We’re playing the Ravens on Saturday,” Wymack answers at last. “Neil-”*

He’s already asleep again, a smile pulling at his lips so painfully that he thinks he might have torn something in the effort.

The hospital doesn’t want to let him go, and neither does the FBI, but in the end neither can find a good enough reason to hold him. They took Nathan in a bust which turned violent, leaving his most of his men dead. The promise of a reunion with the Foxes on the horizon, Nathaniel fidgets with his hair in the bathroom mirror as though taming it to his liking will distract from the rest of him. He can heal himself of anything, but the scars always remained, and there are so many that Nathaniel barely recognises his own reflection. While he’s worried about the foxes’ reactions, more than anything, he’s grateful. There isn’t a hint of his father left in his appearance.

And, at last, he is returned to his Foxes.

The deathly quiet of the room is broken by a whispered, “Neil?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says by way of answer.

“It is him,” Nicky confirms, a little hysterically. Matt makes a pained noise and reaches for Nathaniel’s face, and he can’t help but flinch away from the contact. Matt drops his hand, expression crumbling.

“No,” says Allison sharply. Renee tries to place a hand on her arm, but she throws it off. “No. I’m calling bullshit. We saw you get shot. We saw you die.”

“Where’s Andrew?” He knows the goalkeeper has to be okay, the Foxes could never have made it to the finals without him, but still he needs to see. Allison makes a frustrated noise, so he looks to Renee instead.

“The police just wanted to go over a few more things with him.”

“Like how he beat them at their own job,” Aaron adds flatly. “And how he knew that their dead man wasn’t dead after all.”

Nathaniel ignored the accusation in his tone. “He went to the police?”

“He dragged Kevin in by the neck and told him to say whatever it took to set them after the butcher.”

Nathaniel’s eyes snap to Kevin. “What did you-?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin replies with a kind of certainty Nathaniel has never heard from him before. “It worked.” His eyes linger on Nathaniel’s cheekbone, tracing out what remains of his tattoo. “It worked,” he repeats quietly, as though still convincing himself of the fact.

Nathaniel considers dropping into French to scold Kevin for putting himself in the line of fire, but there’s nothing he can say that Kevin doesn’t already know. After all, Nathaniel knows better than anyone how faint the world’s dangers seem with Andrew at one’s back.

He turns to Wymack. “Take me to him.”

“Neil, you need to rest,” says Abby. “You need your injuries checked, you need-”

“I need Andrew.” Nathaniel runs a hand over his face, feeling the new ridges and bumps drag against his fingertips. “Look at me. Really look. These aren’t injuries, they’re scars.”

“Old scars,” says Dan faintly. “But it doesn’t make sense, Neil-”

“You deserve answers. All of you do. But first, I need to see Andrew.”

Reluctantly, the Foxes agree. They seem unwilling to let Nathaniel out of their sight, however momentarily. He ducks back from their open arms, his heart tipping around in his chest like a boat in a stormy sea, overwhelmed by their affection but unable to reciprocate. Every time hands twitch in his direction, his vision blackens and his body tenses, preparing for a new wave of pain. His injuries may have healed themselves, but each brush of contact revives the sensations that scratch through his skin like phantom fingernails.

Wymack drops Nathaniel at his apartment before heading off to collect Andrew, silencing Nathaniel’s protests with a heavy look. He may have a point – the last place Nathaniel wants to do this is a crowded police precinct.

Nathaniel’s legs buckle as soon as Wymack shuts the door behind him, but luckily his couch is there to catch him.

He is woken by the door tearing open.

Andrew is kneeling before him in an instant, but somehow he knows – knows – not to touch. Arms held stiffly at his sides, he looks his fill, cataloguing every new cut and bruise with his all-consuming gaze. It melts something stiff and painful in Nathaniel’s soul, and he lets himself soften under Andrew’s gaze, spine curving as he melts back into the couch.

For the first time in days, weeks, months, forever – he feels safe.

Andrew whispers his name, and it is his once more.

Physical contact is slow to return to Neil, coming in fits and starts as he gives himself back to the steady care of Andrew’s hands. The dark of night is terrifying, but the court’s glaring artificial lights are worse, and it takes a long time for him to feel comfortable under anything but the gentle amber of sunset.

He learns to love the weight of Andrew’s hands pinning his scarred wrists to the pillow, loves the drag of Andrew’s callouses against the ridges of his healing skin.

The Foxes, to Neil’s eternal surprise and gratitude, accept his truth for what it is. He can tell from the sad glances most of them flit between him and Andrew that they have worries that they aren’t intrusive enough to voice, worries about their future. Neil doesn’t know if he can ever die, doesn’t even know if he can age. He may have an eternity, but Andrew doesn’t, and the prospect of a forever without him is a new kind of horror that jerks him awake in the night as frequently as any of his most violent nightmares.

Instead of acknowledging the time-bomb between them, Neil presses his lips to the pale freckle hidden behind Andrew’s ear and whispers, “stay.”

He’s back on court in time for them to face the Ravens, and under the glow of stadium lights he feels all but on fire. The final timer screams, and Neil falls to his knees, the world hazing over as the adrenaline of their victory pounds through him.

He can only watch with a detached kind of fascination as Riko’s racquet whistles down in the direction of his head. He doesn’t bother to brace himself for pain, doesn’t bother closing his eyes, knows that nothing he can say or do will make the pain any less consuming. He feels only a flash of regret that his family will have to witness something so undoubtedly unpleasant.

There’s a sick thud as racquet connects with body, but the pain never comes. Neil blinks, and his world falls out from under him as he sees who was on the receiving end of the strike.

The racquet hits the floor a moment before Andrew does. Both are dripping with blood.

The world blurs into a rush of blood and noise, but this time it isn’t Neil’s blood, but he can feel the impact regardless, screaming through him like a bullet but worse, and there are hands and faces and they want to separate them, no, no, never again, and Neil hooks a finger into Andrew’s collar and holds it like a lifeline even if he isn’t sure who it’s keeping alive, and then there’s the rumble of an ambulance and the fragile blip of machinery-

And then quiet.

Alone in a hospital room, Neil finds the tangle of something deep in his chest and unravels it, unspooling the source of his impossible power like gossamer thread, so thin and fragile between his fingers for all it has endured, and although he had never wanted it he had never had anywhere else to keep it but within himself, but not anymore, and he weaves and weaves and weaves and finally, finally, finally Andrew opens his eyes.

He touches his hand to where the pain should be, before turning heavy eyes on Neil. “What did you do?”

“Why?” Neil says, because it’s the only syllable he has been able to string together since Riko’s racquet hit its mark. “You knew I could have taken it. You knew he couldn’t hurt me.”

“You can’t die. You can still be hurt.”

“Who cares?”

Andrew’s eyes darken with such fury that the rabbit part of Neil’s mind twitches instinctively. A moment later Andrew’s usual blank expression seals itself back over, and the anger is swallowed.

“I made you a promise,” he says at last.

Half-listening, Neil slips one of the knives from Andrew’s armbands and slides the blade across his palm. They watch as blood wells up along the thin slit and pools in Neil’s callouses. The wound stays.

“That’s new,” Neil says faintly. Andrew retrieves his blade and draws it across his own palm.

Neil doesn’t realise how tightly he’s gripping the sheets of Andrew’s bed until Andrew nudges his hand. “You’re getting blood everywhere.”

“So are you.”

Andrew turns his hand over, and slowly they trace each other’s wounds, fresh and painful and wonderfully mortal. Neil can’t feel a hint of the energy that kept him alive for so long, but when his blood mixes with Andrew’s there’s something new, an intricate tangle of something holding them together.

It’s beautiful and terrible, bone-achingly addictive, and when Andrew cups Neil’s head and pulls him in it’s all he can taste, strong and fragile all at once, sweet and tingling against his lips.

They tie themselves together, and they never let go.

 *

[locria-writes]

Stabbing Vezian doesn't end well for Mc? I just want to do it more now. Especially if you mean Vezian survives and Mc becomes nothing more than his locked up plaything. Because yes she tried to kill him but she's hot. (I assume if she did try to kill him it would be a legitimate reason for him to end the marriage but still keep the power? so he keeps her around just for sexytimes!)

Vezian fills my love of trashy dub con the most out of all your trashmen!

i couldn’t resist okay this was calling me (also dw this is not exactly how the scene will play out in game. it’s really only close to what a belligerent combat-oriented mc might do bc honestly sis deserves to go feral)

also uh, threat of murder, maybe some threat of suicide and implied dub?non?con

You never let your gaze leave Vezian once he enters the bedchambers.

Every fibre of your being trembles with indignant rage -- the humiliation of this whole farce, this ridiculous charade of a besotted fool he’s put on, and everything in between. There’s nothing you’d like more than to see him choke on his own blood.

He’s been careful, but not as careful as he fancies himself. He only gave a cursory sweep of your many boxes of jewels, and while you know not whether it was through negligence or ignorance, the hair-daggers Second Brother gifted you were left in your possession. They’re quite beautiful, all delicately carved gold with numerous precious stones deflecting from their sharp tips.

It’s the same mistake he made all those years ago, you idly muse. Back then, he didn’t expect for such a frail-looking girl to pull out a knife and start swinging at him, screaming curses and wishing death.

While you’re certain Second Brother, your dear mentor, would decry your plan as reckless folly, it’s the simplest, and most direct solution -- you will make sure that Vezian won’t leave these chambers alive, and neither will you. A murder-suicide, a less than honourable death, and far less glamourous than you were hoping for, but it’s the only way you’ll find peace. Even if it fails, at least you’ll die trying. After all, who would trust a man who killed his unwilling bride on their wedding night? He’ll be dethroned, and while you aren’t sure who can succeed him afterward, the Divine Patriarch has given you his promise that he’ll oversee the fallout, but his words are cheap.

Vezian smiles disarmingly, but you’ll never not be on edge near him. His gaze drops to your chest. “It’s a shame Essenian girls don’t wear such cuts. What’s the point of hiding one’s bosom as the nuns do?”

You bite your tongue, holding back the verbal lashing you so sorely wish to give him, the shouts of his perversion and degeneracy. He doesn’t particularly care though, as he moves closer and leans down to trace your collarbone.

He doesn’t see you reach for one of your hairpins. He’s too engrossed in making bawdy comments about your body to notice the glint of a sharpened tip.

But he’s a seasoned fighter, and as soon as you nick his neck, his hand is gripping the blade, easily matching your strength even while bleeding. “You fucking bitch....”

He’s heavier than you, stronger than you, but lacks the agility your small frame gives you. It’s easy to twist away from him, letting go of your first hairpin. It’s fine, you never intended for that to be the killing strike anyway.

You grab another pin, and seeing as he’s facing away from you, you swing down onto the base of his skull.

Vezian whirls around, eyes full of disgust as he knocks the pin out of your hand. He tightly grips your wrist, and for a moment, you’re afraid he might break it.

Still, you have another hand.. You grab your last one, and his eyes narrow, probably thinking that you’ll have another swing at him. He’s wrong, like he always is. You press the tip against the side of your neck, pushing just hard enough to break the skin as a silent threat.

He’s nervous now, you note with delight. The hostility drops from his voice. “Threatening suicide now? How base.”

You keep silent, pressing a bit harder. You don’t know if it’s actually sharp enough, and you aren’t eager to find out otherwise, but there’s nothing else you can do now.

He looks at you with the same wariness one does at a cornered animal, and slowly approaches you.

You stumble back, finally feeling fear creep down your spine. You’re still the same little girl from six years ago, trembling through her bravado as she threatens death on her wedding night.

Vezian looks a little like him, you think, but maybe it’s a trick of the dim candlelight. You remember the traces of cruelty that sometimes filled his eyes, the sheer indifference, and suddenly they’re not so different. The same, a little different, like a cruel joke of a reflection.

Your grip slackens a bit, and he takes that as his chance to grab both your wrists, and drag you back to the bed. He’s cursing you the entire time, calling you derogatory names, but you’re numb to it all.

He tears off your clothes, ignoring your occasional gasps of pain, and uses the to immobilize you. He looms over you, a loathsome smirk on his lips. “We could have had a lovely night, dearest, but you’ve really pissed me off now.”

His eyes are almost the same colour...pale with the barest trace of clear skies, but just a touch colder.

[weeklyfangirl]

Frat Boy Pt. 17

https://weeklyfangirl.tumblr.com/post/188826127780/frat-boy-pt-18https://weeklyfangirl.tumblr.com/post/188826127780/frat-boy-pt-18part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 (1), part 7 (2), part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13 , part 14, part 15, part 16

hi loves, s’been a while :) I’ve been working harder on the frat boy world than you know! 

I had the nightmare again. 

I woke up washed in relief that bodiless entities weren’t hanging over my head- but before the perturbed feeling completely vanished, it snapped back like a rubber band, stinging me harder. 

 The nightmare had gone further this time. 

 The gray crusting wallpaper was, at least, the same. There was a paper house, falling apart as it peeled, and me, trying to outrun the collapse and the ominous beings down its empty corridors. The Watchers, I’d decided to call them, came closer this time as if emboldened by my subconscious inability to dispel them. They’d survived my past dreams, growing stronger with it. And the all-encompassing dread that filled my body sprung each weighted step forward. 

 But before, I hadn’t known what I was running towards. 

 This time, my dream-self knew. There was someone beyond the wall whose animalistic cries weren’t just for anyone. They were for me. I needed to reach them. 

 I ran to the door, just barely ahead of the Watchers. It was barely open, a slight crack to a dark room - but still, it was open. I could kick it further and with a satisfying swoosh, I’d see what - or who - lay beyond it. I could reach them then. 

 It should’ve opened. 

 But it didn’t budge. 

 With impossible dream-logic, it was locked a stubborn two inches ajar. Hopelessly, I tried wedging my body through the opening. A dark shadow appeared at the end of the hall, drawing closer, closer. Slowly, though. It knew I had nowhere left to run. 

 My motions grew frantic, scraping myself against the door as I tried to jam my body further inside. The darkness expanded, trembled, delighted its prey was so easily trapped. 

 There was a flash of the knife from the shadows, the cries grew louder. But I couldn’t reach it, I couldn’t reach him. 

 Darkness stabbed me.

 I woke up drenched in my own sweat. 

 The ghost of the sliding metal lodging between my skin felt hot. My fingers trailed along the dry skin, just below my ribcage, almost certain I’d find a bleeding gouge. Typically, didn’t people wake up before feeling pain?

 --------------

 Dull thuds filled the room. I blurred my vision, imagining the swinging mass to be the thing of my twisted imagination. I socked the punching bag until I felt my fingers were going to fall off. Which was about two minutes. 

 “YOU’RE ALL DOING GREAT! ALMOST DONE GUYS, YOU’RE GETTING STRONGER... besides Y/N!” 

 It was true. My arms were weak noodles. It didn’t stop me from scowling when Renny jogged over in tip-top cheer captain shape. “Come on! Let’s go!! You were doing great!!!” 

 She’d harassed me into coming to the gym tonight screaming “if you don’t show up, I swear I’m going to drag you with me.” Nobody can say she wasn’t true to her word. She’d subbed in for the usual kickboxing teacher, and honestly, she was a natural. A true prodigy. Give a girl a pair of Lulu Lemons and a kickboxing class and she’d… kick its ass? 

 “It’s a free form of therapy eh?” she reasoned, squatting while she spoke. 

 I scowled deeper, hitting the bag weaker than before. 

 “I’m tired,” I managed to moan. So. Incredibly Tired. 

 “Okay I hate to do this, but…” She paused, making sure I’d hear whatever she’d say next. “Think of you-know-whose face.” 

 By sheer Dwayne-The-Rock-Johnson-level will power, I threw my weight against the bag. 

 “There you go!!!” she encouraged, jogging back to the front. 

 I did it once more, in good faith. But my efforts were short-lived and I stopped, breathless, as soon as she was distracted. A droplet of sweat ran down my cupid’s bow. I tasted salt. Anger. Frustration at how weak I was. How helpless I seemed to be. 

 Where was the legendary endorphin high I’ve been promised all these years???! I turned out to be a sweaty sasquatch of a human being, collapsing on the floor as Renny picked up the abandoned towels around me. 

 “You are so dead,” she chuckled. 

 I half-huffed, half-laughed, wholly aware that her statement wasn’t a complete stretch.  

 “So it worked, huh?” Renny asked, driving us out to the free parking lot across the street. Three cop cars whizzed by. No sirens. Non-emergency. 

 “What worked?” 

 “Picturing Harry’s face.” 

 “It wasn’t Harry’s face I was picturing.” 

 “Oh?” 

 She waved her hand to the car waiting to turn in front of us. “Hello? Let’s go fucker!!! Ugh, stupid bitch.” The car moved, begrudgingly, and Renny bee-lined it for the lot. Her tone turned from deadly to friendly in a flip of a switch. “Also, you know there’s a parking garage next to the gym, right?” 

 “Oh, really?” I feigned ignorance. I knew there was a parking garage next to the gym. I just couldn’t afford to pay.

 “Yeah.” We idled at the entrance, and I realized I hadn’t told her where my car is. “Wait, so who were you picturing if it wasn’t Harry?”

 “You know in my nightmares there’s this… dark figure?”

 Her face fell. “Oh my God, you’re still having those?” 

 No matter how much I considered Renny the sister I never had nor asked for, I couldn’t help but feel an odd distance. It was a distance that’d been building over the past weeks, and one that I’d been ignoring, but now, the task seemed impossible. I shrugged, not sure how to explain the unexplainable. I’d dizzied myself all morning trying to figure out what my dreams meant. But in the end, I was too tired. Too tired, too tired, too tired.

 “I’m telling you dude, you should seriously try therapy. I did it after my parents split. Best thing I ever did. It’s something that’s... ugh, it’s stigmatized you know? Therapy is healthy.” 

 “Just like hating yourself in the gym for two hours?” 

 “IT’S HEALTHY!” she shouted at me for the tenth time that evening. I cracked a smile so she knew I didn’t hate it completely. 

 A notification blipped on her phone. She smiled, typing a reply. “Want to hang out with me and Niall tonight?” 

 I half-smiled even though she wasn’t looking at me. 

 “I can’t, I have dinner.” 

 “Oh shit that’s tonight?” She looked up, brows raising. The clock on her dash said 6:48pm - I was definitely late. “Fuck dude, good luck. Tell me how it goes.”

 “I will,” I said. The bluetooth in her car suddenly screeched Timberlake’s “Sexy Back.” We jolted, hands covering our ears as she rushed to turn it down. Her phone glowed - incoming call from Niall - and she looked at me in question. I nodded.

 “Heyyyy boy,” she drawled. 

 His laughter on the other line made me smile. It was crackly through the speakers, somehow making it even more likeable. “Hey beautiful. Where you at?” 

 I got out absentmindedly, closing the door behind me. Her car idled, waiting as I pointed to my car just a stone’s throw away. Nodding, she suddenly laughed at something funny I couldn’t hear. 

 I dug for my keys and slid in the driver’s seat- but my hand paused on the ignition. What in the hell?? My dash was black. Completely black. 

 Did somebody throw a blanket?? Was there a homeless person who’d decided to rest their stuff atop my car? 

 I got out, completely confused, looking at my dashboard covered in a thick liquid. Paint?

 I smeared a finger through it, trembling, a familiar scent, a sick consistency running between my fingers. Knowledge fought against logic just as I caught the tail-end of Renny’s VW disappearing around the corner. 

 There were maybe four other cars in the otherwise deserted lot, dark houses lining the perimeter across the street. The world spun. Saliva bubbled up. Yellow fluorescent street lamps lit my surroundings, but the hue it cast was sinister. I was alone, they told me. Nobody else could see me. 

 Breathe.

 Breathe. 

 The nausea that ran through me at the sudden knowledge of what I’d touched made me convulse. 

 “STOP IT!” I cried, to whoever could hear. “JUST STOP IT RIGHT NOW, YOU FUCKS.” 

 I hurried into the car, locking the doors. My fingers were still wet as I ran the windshield wipers. They weren’t going fast enough. It spread, making it worse. Air vents blew metal. 

 I didn’t care. The tires squealed as I tore out, sticking my head out the window to see. My car swerved on the road as I involuntarily twitched. The blood was drying on my hands. I just needed to leave. We needed to leave. 

 My nightmares no longer lived in the confines of imagination.

 -----

 I called Renny first. It went to voicemail.

 A man exited the convenience store, eyeing me curiously as he went back in his truck. Renny texted -

 With Niall bb. Call you later 

 Fuck. 

 Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

 Fuck fuck FUCK.  

 I didn’t think when I dialled. I didn’t notice my hands were shaking until my phone knocked into my cheek. 

 The dial tone blared in the air. Voicemail. If I was going to die at least one person should know about it.

 I forgot to speak for a moment. “Oh, hi. Harry, uh… they found me. There’s b” - I covered my mouth. Bile rose in my throat. - “...there’s blood all over my car. I’m at the gas station off PCH and Harbor. But you didn’t answer so… never mind. I’ll be fine. I’m fine- fuck.”

 I hung up. The free windshield squeegee they had stationed at each gas pump was the only option. And their murky water were about to get a lot thicker. My dad used to do it all the time for my mom, just like my grandpa always got my grandma gas. Old school chivalry. Father would do it for me now. He’d take care of this. A part of me wanted to call him, but another part didn’t know how in the hell I would explain this. He was busy. Probably already eating with the rest of them or waiting for me. Oh, that’d be awkward. There wasn’t time. 

 I scrubbed with all my weight, pretending the blood wasn’t blood at all. It was thick paint. I just wouldn’t breathe. I wasn’t breathing.

 The squeegee smeared it to a dull red now, the stains lessened but still very much there. 

 My phone rang before I could try scrubbing the other side. 

 “Are you hurt?” the familiar gruff voice asked. Just hearing his voice slightly calmed the mania. 

 “Hi,” I whispered. Why was I whispering? How did I even begin to explain- “Fuck.” 

 Wow, I was eloquent.

 “Y/N, answer the question,” he rushed. 

 “I’m fine. I’m not hurt,” I stammered. “I’m fine.” 

 “Stay where you are.” 

 “I’m sorry, I tried calling Renny but she didn’t answer and now I’m late-”  

 “Just stay where you are. Keep to the lighted area. I’ll be there in ten.” 

 It was less than ten before the grumbling of a motorcycle grew louder, peeling around the corner. It slowed at the entrance, but its rider saw me and the engine roared, only stopping ‘til the sleek machine was propped next to my car. 

 He hopped off with ease, muttering something incomprehensible.

 “I can’t hear you,” I said. 

 He pulled off his helmet, irritated that it didn’t come off easier. Curls in disarray made the worry etched across his face all the more soft. Each time, I forgot how beautiful he was, and the sight of his tall body rushing towards me hit me straight in my unsettled gut. 

 “I’m sorry.” He pulled me in for a hug. “I’m so sorry.” 

 His body held me tight, an influx of Harry and warmth and protection embodied in the steadfastness of his grip covered every inch of me. If I wasn’t so shocked, I would’ve hugged him back.

 I breathed. For a second, the slow electric buzz spreading down my spine was all I could sense. “Y/N,” he breathed. For a second, I didn’t think about why he was holding me. Nothing else processed. 

 He held on a moment longer than I thought he would. His gaze passed me to the car. He was so tall in comparison to it, he didn’t even need to walk around to see the mess.  

 “Fuck.” His words echoed mine from earlier, and he ran a hand down his face. He shook his head, for once, speechless.

 “I’m okay,” I offered.

 He shook his head, backing up only a step. He took my buzz with it. “This isn’t okay, Y/N. I didn’t think they’d do this again.” But the last bit was spoken to himself. His eyes filled with something treacherous, a darkness I’d only caught fractions of before suddenly bore itself to me tenfold. The muscles beneath his black sweater tensed as everything about him tightened. 

 “Again?” I squeaked.

 “It’s pigs blood. An outdated scare tactic.” The obvious came out sharp between gritted teeth. 

 “Well it worked.” 

 His glare locked on me, and I tried not to flinch. He bat his eyes, lessening the sting, and I watched as he tried to return to the present. “You said you were going to be late.” He was trying his best to sound casual, but I heard the strain in his voice. He caught a glimpse of my car and I saw the darkness begin to return before he turned his back to me. 

 “I’m beyond late.”

 He walked to the motorcycle, and I watched as he swung his leg and kicked the stand up in one fluid motion. 

 “Hop on then,” he said, urging me forward with a toss of his head. I walked forward cautiously. 

 “But-”

 “I’ll move your car later tonight.”

 “-I don’t have a helmet.” 

 A ghost of a smile traced his lips. He handed me his helmet. “Don’t fall.” 

 We rolled down PCH, the harbor on one side, the hills on the other. Our coastal city looked different at night. More peaceful. The glitz and the glam more subdued, the orange hues of street lamps shining in a mirrored reflection of the deep blue waters surrounding us. Everything was more approachable and tranquil with everyone tucked away into their homes by 9 PM. 

 Which made it all the more unbelievable that I’d just abandoned my blood-stained car at a gas station.

 He stalled as we crossed the bridge over our beach town’s harbor, and I tugged his jacket to the right - the system we’d established of how I’d give directions. 

 Harry turned his head, the sharp planes of his face stunningly close with how tightly my arms were wrapped around him. Every so often, he’d let an arm fall to rest against mine, letting it warm my own and fastening it tighter around him before we took off again.

 I nodded. He turned. Cruising down Bay View Drive, we passed megamansions of all varieties - tropical Tommy Bahama gated villas with imported plants, Grecian marble fortresses with columns and underground garages. The steep hill to our left held the flower street homes atop them. I rested my head on Harry’s back, wondering what he must be thinking. The girl who always shuns me about money lives here? A nice neighborhood? She clearly doesn’t have the right- 

 He paused at a fork in the road. I tugged his jacket left and we reached the top of Petunia Park’s hill, the entrance to the flower streets. Just above Bay View Drive and the megamansions that were on the water, we were now surrounded by quaint $2 million two-story homes. He paused, the engine rumbling, gently quaking our bodies. 

 I lifted my helmet just enough. “I’m on Carnation.” 

 He remained still, looking out. From the hill, we could see the harbor and the peninsula creating its barrier from the ocean. The houses were twinkling safehouses against the abyss of black horizon. Our little seaside community. In another life, there weren’t as many lights. Traders and fishermen lived in simple homes with simple lives and returned from the sea to sit down at their modest table to have a simple meal and to be simply… happy. If I squinted, I could almost pretend this were something different. That we were in a different time. Time.

 “Harry, I’m late,” I said, as gently as I could. 

 His gaze tore, ripped from reverie. Without saying a word, he adjusted my hands tighter around his waist. Further up the street until there was no view of the ocean, smaller cottages were sprinkled in between the contemporary beach homes. I pulled his jacket hard and he stopped before an earthy gold Provence-inspired home - quaint blue shutters and balconies overlooked an impressive rose garden. 

 I hopped off, handing him his helmet. 

 “S’this it?” 

 “No.” Next door, I walked to the dark-shingled home half its size. I took a deep breath, salty air and dried grass hit my nose. The scent of my childhood. I smiled. “You don’t have to come in. Thank you so much for picking me up-” But when I turned around he was already walking past me, hand reaching back to tug me forward. 

 “Woah, Harry-” I dug in my heels.

 “I’m not inviting myself. Just let me walk you to the door.” 

 Voices drifted to us from the kitchen, the windows probably open. His black BMW was there in the driveway. It blended with the other cars on the street, but to me it looked strange. I’d never get used to it here. I looked to the boy whose black ensemble blended with the night, but whose tall stature made him rise above it.  

 “Okay,” I huffed, because the way Harry’s body was cemented to the ground, I knew that even if I’d said no, he'd walk with me anyway.

 Three knocks was all it took for chairs to scrape along the floor. 

 An excited “She’s here!!” came from beyond the door. 

 “Well thank God, I would’ve eaten the last steaks.” 

 My mom’s eyes brightened as soon as she opened the door - then confusion, then recognition to the boy stood beside me. 

 “You brought your friend.” Her smile grew warmer, opening up her arms. “It’s so nice to meet you.” 

 If the BMW in the driveway was a bizarre sight. This, this right here, topped it all. Harry dwarfed my mom, but he effortlessly leant down, letting her scoop him up. 

 Over his back she mouthed - Nice, then winked.

 “Where have you been? Dad tried calling a thousand times.

 “We were…”

 “At school,” Harry finished. “Her car wasn’t starting.” 

 I shot Harry a look, casually tucking a hair behind my ear. The less they knew the better. 

 “We can have dad look at the car- oh my Gosh, what’s all over your hands?” 

 I looked down - blood. Blood was literally on my hands. 

 “Paint,” I said, ignoring the nauseating fact that pig DNA was stuck beneath my nails.

 “I thought you dropped the art class-?”

 “-It’s a friend’s project.”

 “She’s alive?” a voice called. For once, he was saving instead of berating. As if suddenly realizing we hadn’t even made it through the door before her interview, she turned to Harry with a smile only a mother could give. “Would you like to come in, get some dinner too?” 

 “Oh…” Harry looked at me, almost bashful. “I don’t know,” he settled on. 

 He leant a bit to the side, crossing his arms, then stuffed them in his pockets. It was the only time I could say I’d seen Harry look… awkward. A selfish curiosity wanted to see what he’d look like in my kitchen, in my room, in other parts of my life I’d never thought I’d be sharing with him. He looked like a lost little boy. 

 He must be nervous. 

 “You should stay.” I placed a hand on his arm and he almost flinched at the contact. He looked confused. I couldn’t blame him. Originally I was telling him not to walk me to the door, now I’m saying meet the family! “Stay,” I repeated, softer this time. 

 His eyes searched mine, looking for any hesitance, any joke. He didn’t find any. “Okay,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.  

 My mom flipped around, hands in the air. “Yay, perfect! There’s two steaks, one’s a little smaller. Y/N, you can have that one...” She continued walking away, heading for the kitchen. 

 I waited for Harry to walk through the door, but he stuck out his hand. Me first. 

 If only he knew what he was walking into. 

part 18

[chroniclackofselfpreservation]

Creatures of the Night

Chapter 26 - he'll fashion a cage of flame

Back to the Beginning   < Previous chapter / Next chapter >   

AO3

Masterlist

(TW: graphic imagery, threats)

(The title of the chapter comes from Shanan Ballam's "Wolf Tracks Red Riding Hood".)

The “little prince,” as Bloodwyrm called him, closed Virgil’s door with a click, looking for a moment as if he would murder the floorboards. Remus hadn’t really spoken to the boy-witch yet, but he had a prickly aura. Like sniffing black pepper.

“Downstairs,” he growled, his eyes dark. “Now.”

“After you,” the demon sneered, stepping aside. The stairs were just this side of too steep for Remus’s shorter leg-span, and it was all he could do to keep up with the pair. His foot caught, and he pitched forward. Letting out a tiny yelp of surprise, Remus latched onto the leg of Bloodwyrm’s slacks.

The demon froze, holding its foot mid-stride while Remus righted himself. Icy dread slithered down the back of Remus’s throat. He tensed for whatever kind of punishment the serpent saw fit to give.

“Let go,” it hissed.

“Yeah,” Remus choked, prying his fingers from their death grip on its clothing. It didn’t give him so much as a second glance before continuing down the stairs, straightening its cuffs. Remus followed, the cold of the kitchen floor shocking his bare, clawed feet.

Roman leaned his elbows on the counter and pressed his lips into his hands.

“What do you want?”

Bloodwyrm cocked an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to be more specific. I want many things.”

Remus scampered up the leg of a stool, having to stand to reach the countertop. Roman glanced his way with a look of curiosity edging into wariness, but said nothing, returning his attention to the bigger threat.

Just the way Remus liked it. He wasn’t one for the spotlight. He wasn’t a leader. What he was, was a thief. A mischief maker. Someone who looked idiotic enough to disregard until it was too late. Someone who ran after the heels of the bigger players and picked up the scraps.

Bloodwyrm was the biggest player—and hopefully, if Remus could make himself useful enough, the demon would care enough to protect him from Ursula since he’d abandoned his mission of bringing Virgil’s talisman back to her. What’s more, if Kitty and his gang of increasingly powerful friends teamed up with Bloodwyrm, his chances of survival went up significantly.

No. Not Kitty. Virgil. Remus had to remember that if he didn’t want the familiar finally losing patience and cooking him like a pixie in a stockpot. Besides, with his new friends around, he’d have no chance of intimidating the guy—especially compared to Bloodwyrm.

“What do you want from me to guarantee Virgil’s peace of mind?” Roman said, the anger in his eyes edging on desperation. Remus barely restrained himself from shaking his head. Rookie move. Never reveal how desperate you are.

“You ask a paradox of me, little prince. The only way that familiar—”

“His name is Virgil,” Roman cut in, bristling.

“Whatever. The only way he’ll find comfort is if I leave, but you have requested my assistance. Which will it be?”

“You don’t have to leave,” the boy-witch amended. “But could you maybe… be a bit gentler?”

Remus bust out laughing. “Are you kidding? You want Drok’ben, the Bringer of Death, to be gentle?” He settled down, wiping a tear from his eye. Too much laughter, and he’d show his nerves. “You’re an idiot, boy.”

Roman pinned the demon to the chair with his gaze. The look was so potently honorable, Remus wanted to vomit. “He was a mortal man like me, once. Trusting, friendly… kind, even.”

The demon grew still as stone in its chair. The air dropped a few degrees, but Roman powered through by sheer force of will.

“I’m sure he’s got it inside himself somewhere.”

“That man died long ago.”

“No, he didn’t.” The witch smiled. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting here, offering to help.”

Bloodwyrm met his eyes unflinchingly. From his vantage point, Remus couldn’t see the demon’s eyes, but the hang of its shoulders told him the little prince was winning this fight.

“You’ve a funny way of twisting things in your favor, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard,” Roman said, grin stretching mischievously. He inhaled sharply, standing straight and clapping his hands together. Remus jumped. “So! We don’t exactly have a guest bedroom around here, but you’re more than welcome to the couch or… whatever outdoor accommodations you may prefer,” he shrugged.

Bloodwyrm glanced at the brown couch, nose wrinkling.

Roman snorted. “Please, you slept in a forest for the past year. I’m sure a couch is quite the upgrade for you.”

The demon straightened its caplet, turning up its nose. “I will return in the morning. I need to… stretch,” it said and turned on its heel, disappearing through the back door in a flap of yellow silk and shiny scales.

Remus suddenly found himself alone with the boy-witch, though his back was toward the goblin, staring out into the night. Remus lowered off the stool and began making his way toward the still-open basement door. He wasn’t leaving, by any means, that would completely upset his plan of hanging around Bloodwyrm for protection. However, he wasn’t the biggest fan of being so out in the open with possible hostile parties.

He was only halfway toward the hall when the witch said softly, “Wait here a moment, Remus.”

The hobgoblin froze, heart thumping, mind racing with images of the boy stabbing Bloodwyrm with ease. How easily such a creature could kill someone like him.

The witch turned his amber eyes on him. There was no fear in them. The eyes of a hunter—an experienced one.

“I will not tolerate you tormenting Virgil. You will treat him with the respect he deserves or so help me I will skin you alive with your own teeth. Do I make myself clear?”

Remus nodded so vigorously he lost brain cells.

Roman took a step forward, folding his arms across his chest. “A few more things. Do you know more than Virgil regarding Ursula’s plans?”

“Not likely. She isn’t exactly a trusting woman.”

“Who do you fear more than me? Specifically.”

“I—In order?”

He bared his teeth in a smile. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

Remus nibbled on a corner of his floppy ear and looked the boy-witch over. Did he fear him more than Ursula? The witch was violent when she was angry, cared little for the wellbeing of others, and manipulated everyone she came into contact with, but she wasn’t cruel. If she didn’t need you, she either abandoned you or killed you quickly. There was something in Roman’s eyes that assured the boy-witch could be far more sadistic if given the chance.

“Well, you’re definitely above the dragon witch,” he said, looking away.

“But you fear Dorian more?”

“I think so.”

“You aren’t sure?”

Remus fidgeted some more. “No, I’m not. Can I go now, please?” He winced at the polite expression. He’d never uttered the word before in seriousness.

Appearing mollified, Roman gave a curt nod and turned back to staring out the window.

Remus didn’t waste any time scampering into the blessed confines of the dark cellar.

[banashee]

Part 19 of my @badthingshappenbingo​

Square: “Survivor’s guilt”

Please mind the tags and warnings in the bottom notes!

 Moving on while being stuck

 Ironically enough, after waking up from being mind controlled and being partially responsible for almost ending the world, Clint’s first thought is that he should be dead.

 It is his fault, at least he thinks so, that New York is in shambles. People are either dead, hurt, or at the very least terrified out of their minds. Giant aliens gliding through buildings like a knife through butter - screaming.

 Oh god, the screaming. It’s burned into his brain and keeps him up at night, trembling and nauseous. The screams of terrified civilians haunt him, and he can’t drown them out. Even when he lies in the dark, hearing aids on the bedside table and unable to make out the rustling of blankets or the low sound of his own breath - the screams echo in his mind for hours.

 Clint has never been good with shaking off the suffering of innocent people. It stays with him, long after a battle has ended, despite his job and despite the fact that he himself if capable of levels of violence that most human beings are simply not equipped for.

 Clint knows how to hurt and kill people, and he’s good at it. It is not something that comes to him naturally, but he’s done whatever he had to in order to survive for most of his life. Punching, shooting or stabbing his way out of a situation is something he could do half asleep by now. When SHIELD hired him as their asset, it had been a big step up from other, way more shady jobs. The memories of those days still leave him sleepless with guilt, even more than a decade later.

 But Clint has never knowingly or willingly laid a hand on innocent people. That is, until Loki deemed him worthy for his plans and scrambled his brain without as much as the touch of a staff.

 Clint wishes he was dead, but he is very much alive, although running on fumes.

 The minutes (or hours? He really doesn’t know) he was unconscious after Nat knocked him out on the bridge have been the first time he's been asleep in days. Those days he spent mind controlled leaves him jittery and exhausted. It’s not like Loki really cared for the human shells of those he turned. Although he doesn’t have any proof aside from his own feelings and spotty memories, Clint is very much convinced that he and Eric Selvig and all the other nameless, faceless people have been forced to keep going and held upright and alive by nothing but magic. Days without sleep or food take its toll on human beings, and it catches up to him fast.

 Needless to say, Clint is exhausted, hungry and hurting all over, but there is no time to dwell on any of it. When Captain America knocks on the door and tells you to suit up, you do. No questions asked.

 So he walks out of there and fights off the alien attack that he is partially responsible for. Even when he is about to shut down, his body keeps moving through nothing but sheer spite and will power, and Clint fights like never before.

 The grip on his bow is strong, as it always is, fingers flexing with impatience as he thinks of putting an arrow right through Loki’s eye socket, wiping the smug grin off the bastards face and Clint doesn’t hesitate.

 He doesn’t get to take his personal revenge, but he still fights with everything he’s got.

 It’s the least he can do, and if it kills him then so be it.

 Clint walks into the battle alongside a group of people he doesn't think he belongs to, but when he tells Natasha this later that night, she just scoffs and tells him to stop overthinking. If he wasn’t so goddamn tired of everything he’d laugh - he is either overthinking all the time or not thinking at all - there really is no in between with him and Natasha knows it.

 But Clint knows that she means well, so he just nods and agrees halfheartedly without any intentions of taking care of himself. Whatever horrors wait for him, he quietly vows to deal with it and not bother anyone.

 ‘      You don’t deserve the comfort    .’ the icy cold voice in the back of his head whispers, and that alone is almost enough to leave him shaking again.

 Natasha watches him from the side, not even bothering to hide the fact that she’s keeping a close eye on him. Nat is suspicious of his easy agreement to take it easy, and rightfully so. They have known each other for too many years to be able to keep up any false pretense.

 Clint can't stop thinking that he should have died, if only to spare the world the horrors he helped bring on to it.

 He wakes up around noon the next day, feeling guilty for waking up at all. Nausea rises up in his throat and a dull pain hammers through his entire body - most of all the headache, which is probably the concussion that Nat gave him to knock Loki out of his brain.

 Clint forces himself to get up and get into the bathroom. He’s on his knees and dry heaving into the toilet just seconds later, and nothing but bile comes out. He hasn’t eaten in - well, not since before his watch shift on base in New Mexico before everything went to shit, then nothing but water for days, and then picking a bit on the shawarma before deciding it would be better to      not    be sick all over the place.

 Nat doesn’t deserve to deal with this mess on top of everything else, and neither does the rest of the team, because they seem like decent people. Genuinely nice even, as far as Clint can tell with his fuzzy mind and questionable social skills.

 So he picks at his plate, eating just enough so it looks like he’s trying, but he stops soon. His stomach is revolting by then.

 What little he managed to force down then, he’s now losing just after waking up.

 Disgusted and exhausted once again, Clint strips out of his clothes and steps into the shower. While he is standing under the hot spray of water, the room fogs up and the mist wavers all around the place. Despite being hot as hell, it leaves him shaking and suddenly everything is blue and cold and freezing and Clint slides down onto the floor. Water keeps running all over him, scalding hot but he doesn't feel it as he's shaking apart and gasping for breath.

 It’s the first time he’s alone and in private in way too long, so he doesn’t give a shit how much time he spends panicking on the shower floor.

 When he slowly gets back to himself, the water is still hot because Stark Tower tech, and it doesn’t help the throbbing headache he now has from crying.

 It’s not like he’s able to hear himself without the SHIELD issued hearing aids and no one else is in the room with him, so that’s okay.

 But Clint stays there, sitting in the shower for even longer, once again wishing he’d died.

 Thankfully or unfortunately, depending on who you would ask, he’s too tired to do anything about it.

 Clint can't eat. He wants to, kind of. But just the smell of anything edible is too much for him right now, so he leaves it be.

     'You shouldn't be alive to eat anything. You don't deserve it. Thousands of people are dead because of you and won't ever eat anything at all. You don't deserve to be here.'  

 The mean voice in the back of his mind keeps whispering, and yes, he thinks, it's true.

 Staying here really isn't something he wants to do right now, but he doesn't want to go outside and see the damage, either.

 Clint is still staying in the Tower, not SHIELD.

 It is a safe place and at least here, unlike the helicarrier or New York office, people don’t look at him like he’s about to murder them all.

 They’re right to do so, and Clint is more than sure that he deserves every single glare and insult thrown his way. But it hurts, and he’s so tired of it all - when Tony offers him a place to lay low he doesn’t has to think twice and takes him up on it.  

 If he's completely honest with himself, he didn't think Tony was serious when he offered everyone a standing invitation to crash there whenever, given that this was right after the battle, adrenaline dropping and eating shawarma.

 But as it turns out, he really is offering them all a safe place to crash, for however long they want to (“Just move in whenever, might as well. There is plenty of space, with and without holes in the walls and floor.” Tony had shrugged and went right back to shoveling french fries into his mouth and occasionally slapping out sparks that fly from his suit as if all of this is no big deal at all. To him, it either isn’t, or he is too far away, mind still stuck in space. Clint understands a little bit about that, and just hums non committedly.)

 It’s been weeks since the battle, and Clint is… Not okay, to put it lightly. He’s hiding a lot, keeping to himself and they let him.

 Natasha seeks him out sometimes, to drag him out and into the company of other human beings. He can’t remember her ever being this social, and he’s not entirely sure if she’s doing this because she thinks it might help him, or because she’s growing fond of the team. When he asks her some time, Nat gives a small but honest smile and simply says,

 “Both.”

 Sooner or later, Clint socialises a little bit with the others without being dragged out of his quarters. They’re all happy to chat with him or cook, clean their weapons or just share a space on silence. Clint finds himself liking these people, and well, it is kind of terrifying.

 Steve is polite and kind, a little bit lost really, once he’s out of his uniform and trying to scrape by in this new and modern world. He’s curious with a sense of wonder that reminds them all of how young he really is, and when he’s finally comfortable enough to drop his walls, they get along beautifully.

 Clint knows the risk their Captain took willingly when he asked him to join the team in this battle, and he is not entirely sure how he could ever thank him for it.

 Thor isn’t around much, what with him travelling back and forth through the planets, but he is a good man and fun to be around. Clint had been a little bit scared that he’d remind him of Loki all the time, but he’s proven wrong soon. Thor is his own person, and loyal to a fault to those around him.

 It doesn’t take long for Clint to look at him and simply see a friend instead of anything else.

 Bruce hides a lot in the lab, and Clint understands that, too - he doesn’t bother him, until one day the scientist catches him in the elevator and chats to him about - what even was it again? he doesn’t remember - all the way down and Clint just finds himself walking with him, until they’re back in the labs. Part of him wants to leave and let Bruce get back to work in peace, but he’s got such a nice and calming presence to him that Clint just finds himself walking along and hanging out in the back of the lab, that day and on occasion ever since.

 When Tony walks in a while later, he doesn’t blink and eye at Clint being there and simply pulls a third mug from the cupboard. Then he starts to brew a pot of coffee that’s strong enough to wake the dead.

 The thing with Tony is, he’s surprisingly easy to get along with, as long as one can deal with constant chatter, cheesy puns, casual poking every once in a while and dirty jokes. That and coffee that sends most people into cardiac arrest. Brewed by the man with heart issues himself.

 If anyone asks, it’s that last part that wins Clint over to him in the first place.

 In the privacy of his own mind he knows that this actually happened way before that. It was the second that Tony, exhausted, hurt and dirty like the rest of them, opened up his own home to a group of near-strangers without a thought and never asking for anything in return.

 Natasha is Natasha. She is his other half and Clint loves her dearly just for existing. The two of them have been through too much together to be anything less than they are, and no matter how hard things are, they still have each other.

 Having lost Phil wrecked Natasha just as much as Clint, and the thought nearly losing him as well sends cold dread down her spine. The two of them remain close, and when the nights are cold and lonely, there is always a warm body to crawl close to.

 They can’t always be in the same place - but they know, the other is just a phone call away.

 Clint is not alone by any means, but despite everything, he still feels lonely. On those days, he can’t find it in him to reach out to the person next to him, to say anything or touch them in an attempt to find ground to stand on. Messy thoughts eat him up from the inside, and despite being physically present, his brain clocks out.

 In the back of his mind, there is always that mean voice, whispering to him how he doesn’t deserve any of the company or support, how he should just go and eat a bullet instead.

 On a particularly bad day, Clint just leaves the tower instead of sitting there and feeling alone in a room full of people.

 He doesn’t think about where he’s going, but his feet carry him to central park.

 The air is fresh here, what with fall coming up, but Clint is still wearing sunglasses in an attempt to casually hide himself away. Without the uniform, no one looks twice at him, and he is relieved for it. He doesn’t have the desire or energy to deal with anything right now. Clint doesn’t really look where he is going, despite the repair works still going on in the city.

 Suddenly, something hits him in the head and the shades get knocked off his nose. Clint nearly flinches, but no blows follow, and the hit wasn’t nearly as hard as any attack he’d expect would be.

 Just a second later, a small voice calls,

 “Oh no! I’m very, sorry, Mister!”

 Clint blinks confused, then a small boy with wild curls and big dark eyes appears in his field of vision, a group of other kids on the grass near him. A colorful ball is lazily bouncing near Clint on the floor. His sunglasses are not far away, either. He picks up both items, and lightly throws the ball back to the child approaching him.

 “No problem, kiddo. Have fun,” How on earth he manages a genuine smile, he doesn’t know. But then again, he’s always had a soft spot for kids - animals, too.

 The boy grins brightly and waves a quick thanks while calling out,

 “Thank you! Have a nice day!” and runs back to his friends, hurling the ball in their direction and then they continue their game.

 Clint walks along and doesn't think much of the interaction. Except, his thoughts then suddenly run wild.

 What if this kid had been killed due to him? What if any of the other children there, or any of their families had died in the battle, what if they       have    , and he just doesn’t know?

 ‘      I should have died. I should be dead. I should have died. Not them. Me. I should be dead right now.    ’

 The words echo in his mind again and again, hammering inside of his head and it leaves him breathless. Clint stumbles to a bench and sits down, arms propped up on his knees, eyes locked onto the floor at first and then squeezed shut.

 He’s shaking, and the heart in his chest is racing enough to hurt. Is he having a heart attack?

 Thoughts keep running wild and he can’t grasp any clear conclusions. Cold sweat is running down his back, soaking his shirt and cause it to cling uncomfortably to his skin. Logically, he knows he’s having a panic attack, but the fear in his throat sits there, hot and overwhelming.

 For a moment, he thinks he might have to throw up again, but then, he doesn’t want to do any of this in public and      oh fuck     why did he leave the tower in the first place?

 “Breathe, Clint. Keep breathing, you’re okay.”

 A small but familiar hand slowly reaches out, and he takes it into his own, violently shaking ones. Natasha keeps talking to him, and her grip is firm, reassuring. Safe.      Home    .

 Clint is so happy that she’s here, he doesn’t even asks how she knows where he’d be. Maybe she just followed him. It is entirely possible and something she’d do in a heartbeat if she’s got even a hint of a reason. This is admittedly more than just a hint though.

 “‘m fine.” he forces out, and it sounds hollow even to himself. He wants to reach out further, hug her or simply hide, but he won’t. Not here, not now.

 It’s not fair that she keeps having to come after him to save his sorry ass, he thinks. But good luck suggesting that to Nat.

 She does whatever she wants, and if that includes taking care of her best friend and dragging him home when his own legs would probably give out under him if he tried on his own, who is he to stop her from it?

 Clint doesn’t have it in him to argue, and he doesn’t want to, either.

 “Come on.” says Natasha, when his breathing has finally calmed enough for her to be comfortable to pull him up and wrap an arm around his waist,

 “Let’s go home.”

        *+~

Square: Survivor's guilt

                             Notes:  

Warnings:

- PTSD / Panic attacks - Depression - Survivor's guilt - Suicidal thoughts - Passively suicidal character - violence - implied killing of people on the job - insomnia - Mind control via magic aka Loki - vomiting - food issues

[langwrites]

Merc Work

I have no excuse for this other than needing a break from my NaNoWriMo break from Kei.

Be warned: It has no ending.

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

On a half-decent day, Kei would wake up with the dawn in a world without alarm clocks. If the day was especially good, she’d do so in her own fucking bed and not be on a ridiculous solo mission that’d gotten blown so thoroughly off track that she couldn’t see the proper path with the Hubble telescope. Waking up in an unfamiliar continent was already a sign of a bad time, and then the power of an unfeeling cosmic gearbox threw in the unasked-for bonus of pervasive xenophobia while surrounded by European fantasy analogues. Especially while being trailed by three Academy students on what should have been a harmless trip to visit the graves of their family. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the comparatively minor setback of Kei being on third watch. Sleep was for people who didn’t have a demonic turtle sitting in their lap. And who weren’t “new meat” by local standards.

So, between having to join up with a mercenary band to avoid dealing with racist jackasses through the power of numbers and swords, the apparent tech levels not supporting indoor plumbing, the safety of her students, and sitting in the cold for two hours before sunrise… Well, Kei could be forgiven for feeling a bit crabby.

Ha.

You hush. 

Never.

Kei considered the complete inability to actually keep Isobu from intruding on any conversation he liked, then sighed. There was such a thing as a hopeless fight, even for her. 

Isobu folded his armored forelegs under his belly. Had you not been transported here alongside the children, would you have joined this mercenary band to begin with?

Kei made an “I dunno” noise without opening her mouth. I mean, the sheer isolation would be an absolute nightmare. I know my limits a bit better now. 

The spiritual wreckage of her left arm attested to that issue. 

Isobu looked down, over the edge of Kei’s lap and toward the forest around Remire Village. They were probably about ten meters into the crown of the oak tree Kei chose as her lookout post for the last week, with only minor modifications to the branches. The only real change between this night and others involved Isobu being a lookout alongside her, rather than haunting the nearby river and stealing fish for his own amusement. 

And for feeding the kids, but that hadn’t happened since they’d joined the Jeralt mercenaries last month. 

Even if Kei didn’t trust rowdy men and women to look after a bunch of kids with special powers, she did trust Isobu to keep track of them. If the mercenaries got into a skirmish with bandits or anyone else, Kei ordered Kaito, Aiko, and Roku to hide with their spiky guardian as their sole point of contact with the group. When the situation was safe, Kei would call for them. If it wasn’t… well, that wasn’t going to happen. Kei had seen the local idea of what “power” meant and was left unimpressed. 

Nothing could get past me if it tried.

There’s a sentiment I can get behind. She’d survived worse than angry knights chasing her with spears.

The only one Kei wasn’t entirely sure of was the mercenaries’ second fiddle. The Ashen Demon, sole child of the Blade Breaker, went by Byleth Eisner (or just Byleth) to everyone else. They were half their father’s bulk and didn’t resemble him much in either coloring or general features. The lack of visible emotion on their face left most people around here fairly unnerved, but Kei found it was actually something of an advantage upon joining the mercenaries. Because people like Jeralt were already used to Byleth’s culturally-remarkable flat affect, they had an easier time giving some slack to Kei’s preferred mask of complete professional stoicism. 

The kids didn’t bother hiding their feelings about the whole thing—they latched onto Byleth insofar as they did anyone, perhaps because they were the smallest adult available who wasn’t Kei. 

But Byleth also had a job, and that job included enough of Kei’s personal stabbing quota to disqualify them from combat babysitting duties. 

Though she’d asked once about it anyway.

Byleth’s microexpressions were difficult to read. She left the conversation with the impression they were more confused by Kei’s willingness to approach them than insulted by the presumption, and thus joined Kei and her ducklings at dinner on occasion like they had a standing invitation. 

They basically did. Kei wouldn’t shoo away people who liked her cooking, and Byleth didn’t get loudly drunk all damn night. 

Don’t worry, though. You’re still the indisputed babysitting champion of the battlefield.

Pah. Isobu swatted Kei’s hand with one of his tails. 

Rowdy for a clone, aren’t you?

Insulting for a host, are you not? Isobu reversed it, because of course he did. And it is not as though this clone could be destroyed by anything less than your brute strength.

Fair.

Normally, Kei could have continued this line of thought for some time. Bantering with Isobu was a peaceful way to pass a watch shift. He had good night vision. She had the ability to interact with the world as a human being. These things were very complimentary. 

And Isobu used his sensitive eye, adapted for exploring the sea, to spot the problem before Kei heard it. Smoke at night was difficult to see without decent moonlight, at least for humans. Isobu poked at her brain to draw her attention to it. Likewise, the orange flicker of distant flames was just barely visible in Kei’s periphery if Kei angled her vision, like she would if observing the stars. 

That is going to be our problem in short order.

Isn’t it always? Kei replied, leaning as far sideways as she can to see through the modified canopy. Any farther and gravity would be held at bay only by chakra usage. Time to get up.

Indeed. And that was when Isobu opened his mouth to roar.

It was a tiny noise, relative to his true form’s size, but the sleepy village below them started to stir. The mercenaries were used to the sound of Isobu’s dying rabbit screams by now. 

And down.

Kei shoved Isobu off her lap, sending his spiky ass tumbling out of the tree to land among the three kids piled up in their camping bags. Kaito stirred first, patting sleepily at Isobu’s ridged belly before sitting up. This dislodged Roku and Aiko in order, just in time for Kei to land about a meter away with her finger in front of her face in a clear shh gesture. 

None of her three charges moved a muscle. 

“All three of you need to hide,” Kei told them, in the language no one around here spoke. 

One by one, she hugged each of them tightly enough to convey the seriousness of her request. Three pairs of cautious eyes met hers, in turn, and then they scrambled to hide their possessions under thickets in the village’s outskirts. No bandits could know there might be someone here to chase. 

After about a minute, she picked up Isobu’s little clone and placed him in Kaito’s shaky arms.

The kids knew she’d come back. The mercenaries had fought in five skirmishes since they joined like glorified camp followers, and not one of those battles featured a single opponent Kei couldn’t destroy with her eyes closed. 

But this was their comfort zone. Each time Kei left them, like a mother wolf leaving her den, she stripped that security like a worn bandage. 

Even only after a month of immersion, the kids picked up the local tongue fairly fast. They were young and adaptable and Kei was the only human adult around who spoke Japanese to them. Until they heard it again, from either her or Isobu, they’d stay out of sight. The waiting, though, never really got any easier. 

“They’ll never find us,” Roku said, tugging gently at Aiko and Kaito’s wrists. The oldest, at barely eleven, and already forcing himself to be the most responsible. 

“Bye, Sensei,” Aiko said reluctantly, before Roku curled his arm entirely around her to keep her from running off. 

“Stay safe,” Kei told her. She looked directly to Kaito and added, “Be good for Isobu-chan.” 

Kaito didn’t say anything at all, instead just fixing Kei with a stare like he’d forget what she looked like if he didn’t. This lasted until Isobu ordered Roku to get all three kids away from there, and he did. 

All three of them disappeared into the forest. They knew how to climb trees like bear cubs—or shinobi—which would have to be enough. And if a single enemy got near them, Kei would probably need to cut a grown man in half. Perhaps several.

Byleth would help.

I’ll let you know when it’s safe to be out here again, Kei thought to Isobu. 

You should know that I was not designed for an arboreal existence. I have many prehensile tails, but I am not a squirrel.

But you’re so cute!

Flattery will get you nowhere. With that sassy rejoinder, Isobu did the equivalent of flicking Kei in the forehead.

Kei headed to the village’s front gate, cutting directly through the forest with the ease of someone who’d been in and around the wilderness her entire life. She could hear another group crashing through the woods at high speed, relative to normal human averages, and a larger group likely in pursuit. 

Well, that wouldn’t do. 

Hidden Mist. Though the hand seal for this technique was more of a stance, she could still put her detection trick in action. She just had to make sure it was concentrated on the pursuers, not the pursued. Deliberately leaving voids was useless for her strategies, but it probably kept people from breaking their necks unnecessarily.

And it let her know that the slower, louder group was thirty strong.

She kept going until she reached the village’s gates, spotting a mercenary named Arkady on duty. Backlit by torches, his five earrings caught the light and gave him away. 

“Back from the camping trip already?” Arkady asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice. “Where are the kids?”

“Safe,” Kei told him. She slid into place on the opposite side of the gate, hand on the borrowed steel shortsword that’d carried her for the last month. Her katana was not to be wasted on bandits around here. Or in sparring. “But hidden. Someone is heading this way.” 

Arkady paused, eyed the forest, and then nodded. “I’ll wake the captain and his kid. Stay here.”

Kei let him go and drummed her fingers against her sword’s hilt, waiting. The crashing was getting closer, and her kids were fifty meters away in a tree. Even while dead certain Isobu was with them, her nerves refused to settle.

Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to keep herself and her team so far away from the mercenaries. They were a rowdy crew, but they were only of the rough-and-tumble sort. They expressed affection by going out drinking and slapping each other on the back and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder through wind and rain. Since Byleth had been with Jeralt since before he founded the company, presumably the various members would be at least peripherally trustworthy with children.

Kei, as a nineteen-year-old with dependents who had one half-cracked voice between them, only trusted the company on the battlefield. 

Arkady returned without Byleth or Jeralt, but he did have Marcel. The two of them were like a pair of piratical brunet bookends and cracked jokes anytime they weren’t on the job. It made her students edgy around them, but they were well-liked within the boisterous mercenary crew. Like many soldiers of fortune, they wore a fair amount of jewelry to emphasize their success, which was some of the best advertising around. So was the mess of scars, though only Marcel was missing a chunk of his nose. 

“What’s the matter?” Marcel asked, right before the group Kei’d been hearing for the last sixty-odd meters finally crashed out of the woods at nearly the same volume it started.

Three muddied, twig-strewn teenagers stumble up to the pool of torchlight, panting. 

Kei pointed at them, because it was faster than bothering to explain herself.

One white-haired girl and a dark-haired boy, at complete opposite ends of the “has this person seen the sun in the last decade” skin tone spectrum, while the tallest is the blond boy in the middle. If not for the torches, Kei wouldn’t even be able to call them “kids” in any meaningful sense, but she did know what school uniforms look like. Kei wandered out of her education as a baby adult, by one reckoning or another. Both of them. She hadn’t been able to look up information on the internet for unfortunately obvious reasons, but in a world where bespoke tailoring is a norm rather than a luxury and damn near nobody wore customized clothing unless they were rich, Kei’s intuition was subsumed by screeching alarm bells. 

Third watch on a morning  when they were supposed to be marching north into the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and now this. Kei’s private list of complaints kept getting longer.

“Scarface,” said Marcel, while the kids caught their breath, “why don’t you back up?”

Kei did so, because these kids were likely to react to Kei’s not-Caucasian features with the traditional xenophobia displayed by basically every non-mercenary person from Fódlan so far. If she had to deal with weapons swinging at her face before the sun came up, they’d better be attacks from people she already wanted dead. She didn’t have the patience this early in the morning.

The motion caught the eye of the boy with the yellow shoulder-cape, but little else about Kei was too distinct once she was out of direct torchlight.

Well, mostly. 

Sort of.

She was wearing a haori, her armguards, and the local pants-and-boots combination because her sandals could be saved for special occasions. Instead of covering her face with a mask or even wearing her headband as intended, she tied it around her neck like an ascot. There was only so much point in pretending to be anything but foreign. Between her accent and facial features that she was not going to burn chakra trying to hide, it was something Kei kept in perspective. 

And the yellow-themed kid was still looking at her.

“Kid, eyes over here,” Arkady demanded.

Kei silently cheered at even a token attempt to direct attention away from her.

At this point, Jeralt and Byleth arrived. 

Jeralt was a huge, dull-orange mountain of a man with dirty blond hair and a braid and undercut combination Kei didn’t think would ever catch on. His scarred face told even more of a story than Kei’s did, and no one was quite sure how many battles he’d rushed into and out of alive.  Nor were they sure how old he was. More than anyone else in the company, Jeralt was a cavalry commander down to his metal greaves and could be trusted to lead the group to victory come hell or high water. 

Competing for second place was his shadow. Byleth, the quietest person in the company and therefore the one Kei’s students tolerated best besides the horses, was about Kei’s age. They were also one of the few adults shorter than Kei was. Their eyes were a distinct deep blue and their hair a dark teal, which almost blended in with the charcoal-gray clothes they preferred this late at night, punctuated by matte black armor along their arms and legs. The ghostly complexion stood out like the fucking moon by comparison. 

The two of them commanded all the attention better than a weird foreigner did. 

“Please forgive our intrusion,” said the blond one, bowing with his hand over his heart. Kei’s brain tried to calculate angles to assess formality before remembering that cultures were weird and American accents were weirder. He went on, “We wouldn’t bother you were the situation not dire.”

Jeralt visibly took note of the formality, then said, “What do a bunch of kids like you want at this hour?”

“We’re being pursued by a group of bandits.” Oh for fuck’s sake. While the blond noble kept talking—and he was a noble, because Kei had much more experience with the blunter speech patterns commoners used. Couldn’t be anything else. “I can only hope that you will be so kind as to lend your support.” 

“Bandits? Here?” Jeralt’s gaze flicked to Kei.

She nodded, because it was as good a designation for the enemy still shouting their way through the forest as any. Bandits had been trying to kill Kei since she was Aiko’s age. This wasn’t new.

Jeralt didn’t give the order to attack them just yet. Instead, he turned his attention back to the kids as they started talking. 

The white-haired girl said, “It's true. They attacked us while we were at rest in our camp.”

Not a great sign. Why had three noble children been exposed like that? In Kei’s experience, nobility tended to spend a lot more time cloistered inside protective structures, and even traveling daimyo tended to take a proper procession with them. Where were the guards? People died when they were caught alone. 

Maybe the fire she’d seen was a part of it?

As though to confirm her rising tide of suspicions, the noble boy in yellow said, “We’ve been separated from our companions and we’re outnumbered. They’re after our lives…not to mention our gold.”

Well, then. If they were anything like the bandits Kei ran into during the initial month she’d spent as her students’ sole reliable defense, this wouldn’t take long. 

“I’m impressed you’re staying so calm considering the situation. I… Wait.” Jeralt’s body language went rigid. Like he’d just found an armed opponent in a darkened hallway. “That uniform…”

One of the group’s archers—Rickard—ran up with his bow drawn. He shrugged off Marcel and Arkady’s questions, attention locked on Jeralt so thoroughly that he nearly tripped over Kei on his way to report in. If she’d stuck her foot out, he’d have slammed face-first into the village’s defensive wall. 

“Bandits spotted just outside the village.” Rickard gestured out at the forest. “There are a lot of them.”

Byleth turned their head toward Kei, making an inquisitive gesture with their hand. One of the many, many reasons Kei’s students liked them was because they were willing to pantomime nearly everything if necessary. And while body language didn’t often cross national boundaries, Byleth was willing to learn almost anything Kei put in front of them.

Kei held up three fingers on her right hand—counting her thumb—then brought all five of them together to a single point.

Byleth’s gaze sharpened. 

Jeralt considered Rickard first, then said to the kids, “I guess they followed you all the way here.” He’d caught the gesture conversation with Byleth, and said to his child, “We can’t abandon this village now. Come on, let’s move.” 

Byleth nodded. 

“Hope you’re ready,” Jeralt grunted. “Kid, you take these three into cover and pick off anybody you can reach. Rickard, you’re with Marcel and Arkady. Rally the rest.” Then Jeralt only had Kei left to address. “And you. Your job is skirmisher. Don’t let them get around the village’s defenses.” 

Kei bowed, arms held rigidly at her sides. “As you wish.”

Jeralt waved her off, so Kei decided this was an excellent time to make herself scarce.

[hopeswriting]

Credit image: @noaa​ - Unsplash

Edit image: Pixlr/Canva

Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

Title: The Nuances of a Wrathful Sky

Author: @hopeswriting​​

Rating: T

Pairing: Varia & Xanxus

POV: Third Person Limited, Alternating

Summary: Xanxus doesn’t want, nor looks for, and definitely doesn’t need Guardians. His Guardians find him all the same when he needs them the most (not like he’ll ever admit that aloud), and then just never leave.

Themes: Formation of Varia, Varia’s Backgrounds, The Craddle Affair, Minor or Background Varia Arc

Chapter: 1/? (2057 words)

Squalo wasn’t predestined to be a swordsman, nor the way of the sword called him or chose him or any of that shit.

Squalo decided he wanted to wield a sword. He wanted to spill the blood of his enemies, to stain his weapon and clothes with it, wanted to watch the pain and struggle and despair on their face.

Squalo wanted to be close enough to them to not miss the moment they’d realize he was the death of them, but far enough away so they couldn’t retaliate easily.

He chose the sword and worked to make it an extension of his arm, of his whole body; worked to make it so no other weapons would ever feel so right in his hand.

Whiny Dino splutters and panics and is being his usual pathetic self when he tells him he wants to travel the world to master his technique.

Squalo snatches him by the collar. There’s worry and fear in his eyes of all things, as if Squalo can’t take him on any day, any moment.

“Voi, don’t order me around you scum. I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”

“But Squalo—” There’s a flickering determination in brown eyes, and Squalo considers letting it come to life fully. It’s not often he succeeds to goad the clumsy Sky in a serious fight.

He gets Dino on his tip toes, tightening his grip on his collar, cutting off his breathing. “Don’t insult me Cavallone, who do you think you’re talking with?” A dangerous grin splits his face from ear to ear. “You’re looking at the best swordsman of this generation.”

*

The first thing Squalo learns on his journey is what defeat tastes like. It tastes like looming death, like unfulfilled cravings and a bleeding pride. This one defeat is tainted by mercy, which adds a sharp, sour taste of anger and disdain at the back of his tongue.

“Voi, what do you think you’re doing? Kill me before I kill you.”

“Why are you in such a hurry to die?” the swordmaster says. “I gave you the fight you wanted. I did not hold back either, merely matched my skills to yours. You survived. The way of the sword didn’t let you down just yet.”

“What kind of bullshit is that?” Squalo spits out. He doesn’t live in a world so kind he’ll be given second chances. Victory is living to see the next fight while defeat is death. There’s no room for draws in Squalo’s world. “Kill me before I kill you,” he says again.

The swordmaster turns his back to him and walks away. Squalo crawls to his sword and stands back up. The swordmaster goes down.

*

Squalo continues his journey, tackles on Italy first then Europe, goes to Africa and America, roams the streets of Asia and doesn’t forget Australia. He challenges all the masters he can find, their refined styles clashing against Squalo’s simple sword, which gets deadlier each time he leaves in his wake corpses he dragged down from their pedestal.

They call his first win against a swordmaster a fluke, call him a child who’ll get burn by the fire he’s playing with sooner than later. The second swordmaster he kills is deemed too sloppy, the third one too soft. The fourth one and all the others after him expect him, know better than to underestimate him, don’t hide their killing intent from him. Squalo gives back as good as he gets. Squalo is still the last one standing, and is quick to move on to his next prey

It’s particularly delightful to watch the so-called flawless, strongest and invincible style of the swordmaster and his two apprentices crumbles under his blows. There’s no such thing as a flawless, strongest and invincible style. Squalo swears only by his sword but it’s a truth he acknowledges. It’s a truth he won’t make the mistake to ever forget.

When the Varia tries to recruit him, he’s known and respected as The Ravenous Shark who always finds himself where the blood smells the strongest, and never leaves without a new fresh layer of red trailing his steps.

*

Squalo goes to the Varia headquarters to refuse their offer and gets them off his back. As “independent” they may be they’re still Vongola, and he’s none-too keen to be ordered around.

A step in the mansion and all of his body tenses under the weight of Sky flames all over the place. The undercurrent of anger and violence, the sheer threat of the flames behind their calm aspect isn’t lost on him—it wouldn’t be lost even on the dumbest of dumb fucks on this world.

It’s not a display of power, Squalo knows right away. It’s not a demand for submission either, nor the Sky offering himself up for eventual courtships. This Sky just doesn’t care who his flames reach or who’d be suicidal enough to take it as a challenge. This Sky simply doesn’t see the point to have his flames in a leash.

Squalo mercilessly reigns his Rain flames in lest they lash out blindly, lest they try and submit to the Sky flames, or—god forbid—try and court them.

The Sky is a he, and the utter fury in his eyes is like nothing else Squalo ever seen. His flames thrash and bite and purr, eager to see if they can drown the man—the boy really, and how strange to think they’re about the same age—before they get burn to ashes. The Sky turns his gaze on him, and Squalo’s bloodlust finds a Home at last, strong enough to never need from him any restraint. (Squalo could have been claimed before, truly. But he has no need for a Sky who can encompass him only when he limits himself.)

He walks forward to meet his Sky, the most sure he has ever been in his life, without having any idea on how it’ll play out.

*

Tyr lies dead at his feet after two long days of battle. Squalo looks down at his bloody sword and sees the embodiment of his ambitions. He looks at his bleeding, exhausted and painful body, and sees the proof of his resolve. Squalo looks at his lost left hand and sees the depth of his loyalty.

Squaring the accounts of the battle, washing away the blood spilled*—this is how The Requiem Rain is born.

(Squalo knows there’s a lot of swordmasters he has still to meet and defeat. Knows there’s a lot of swordsmen out there who can challenge him on the title he covets he has to find and eliminate. He doesn’t worry about them. He’s still young after all, there’s no need to rush his pleasure.)

*

Xanxus tells him of his plan, and it’s not a show of trust. It’s sure as hell not a call for help. At most it’s some kind of test, but either way Squalo doesn’t care. (Both of them are letting their hair grow, they’re past needing any show of trust.)

“We’ll need more people of our level for this.”

“I don’t need anyone.”

“Voi,” Squalo cries in indignation, “of course I can take on these Vongola scums on my own too! But you know better than me Nono isn’t to be underestimated. You can’t spare any strength on some underlings if you want to win.”

Xanxus throws his whiskey at him because he said “if”, but he doesn’t disagree.

In a near future and the years to come, when Squalo will have the urge to stab to death or cut the others useless Varia officers heads off, he’d stop and remember just who he has to thank for that. It won’t stop him from trying—if anything, it’ll make him try harder.

*

Someone sold them out, Squalo has no doubt about it. He looks forward to the fight to decide who’ll be the one to kill the traitor, but he knows Xanxus won’t let this particular kill in anyone else hands.

They successfully make their way through the mansion anyway, taking full advantage of Vongola’s hesitation and confusion when they realize they’re fighting their own.

Vongola Nono is a monster on his own right because of course he is. They land some blows, make for a decent challenge, but Squalo isn’t fooled. Vongola Nono isn’t even fighting with his all, doesn’t bother to show them this bare minimum of respect.

When both of them think he’s out cold, words are spoken he could never have imagined, and everything about Xanxus suddenly makes so much more sense. Did Vongola actually expected any other outcome? How delusional of them.

The ice caught Xanxus in his peak of fury, his face all harsh features, his eyes hateful and unforgiving, his hand outstretched in what was meant to be a killing blow. The ice is so incredibly cold against his palm it’s easy to forget it’s not Dying Will Flames; seeps through skin and bones and makes his flames recoil in such a way it can be nothing else but Dying Will Flames. Squalo can’t reach back to his Sky.

“You’re one pathetic man, old man.” But what to say of him then? About how useless he was in his Sky’s hour of need, how useless he is still now, to not be able to carve a new path for them towards their goal. Pathetic doesn’t even begin to cover it, Squalo doesn’t hold himself to such low standards.

“Stop the attack Squalo,” the old man says, sounding so much like the understanding and saddened grandfather he likes to pretend he is, Squalo thinks maybe he really forgot the cold-blooded, ruthless ruler he truly is. “Call back your men. You lost, there’s no need for anymore blood to spill.”

“Do you think this is over? Do you think this will stop him? That your ice froze even his ambitions, his Will?” Xanxus is still alive, as distant and barely there anymore his bond feels. This doesn’t have to be the end. Levi is Raging as they’re talking, and Bel’s bond took on a single-minded focus different from his childish glee from before. But this isn’t what Squalo is asking.

“It’s over,” the old man only says.

Squalo slams his fist against the ice, points his broken sword at him. “Voi, you foolish old man,” he roars, but his voice lowers in an even tone then. “This is only the beginning, can’t you even guess that?” Xanxus is still alive, and if he didn’t kill him now he won’t kill him later. It’s his mistake, maybe the last he’ll ever make. “Xanxus will be back, and when he does we’ll be there. We’ll be ready.” Squalo trusts the man to not be senile enough he doesn’t take his words as the threat they are.

*

Squalo learns that day defeat and failure aren’t the same thing, don’t sink their claws in the soul at the same depth. He learns how easy one is to overcome and forgive, and is too prideful and loyal to let the other be the same.

“The day will surely come when you’ll be thankful you made me your ally*,” Squalo had say to him. He thinks about those words a lot when dealing with the fallout of their failed Coup. Thinks about how they’re there to deal with it while Xanxus is restrained in a prison made of ice.

They’re both still alive, he says to himself when his own words haunt him. Others days will come both of them will be able to share and enjoy. He still can make good of his promise—he will.

*

Eight years later he is send on a hunt to retrieve the rings his Boss needs to make his ambition a reality. Squalo’s hair reaches his waist, a reminder of what he stands for and who he stands with for all the world to see. Xanxus’s hair doesn’t, and it’s a reminder his resolve and strength failed him once.

He won’t fail this time.

*

*: Direct quotes from Amano Akira.

Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in more here are the links on ao3 and ff.net.

[burned-to-the-void]

Wake up to see the stars collide

.

Lion is in coma. Also, there is a rosary in his hand, and a grieving man in the room.

Doc/Lion, 3.4K words, T rated, hurt/comfort, mention of injuries and self-deprecating thoughts.

.

.

Lion does not regret.

He can’t afford any more regrets in his life, after everything he has done and fucking repented in front of God, praying and praying for the tiniest chance of forgiveness. That particular box is already overflowing. So he just tries to make the right decision on the first try, and doesn’t allow himself to question it, no matter how tempting. He doesn’t allow himself to ponder on what if.

And this was the right decision, he is so sure of it. Either one of them had to go in order to spare the other, so he weighed the value of their lives. Of course, the result was predictable.

But I have saved people, too. Not like he did.

I’ve been trying so hard to be good. Doesn’t matter. He can’t wipe the blood off his hand, innocent blood.

Don’t I deserve to live?

He can’t let himself answer that question, but what he did speaks for its own.

It wasn’t a grand gesture, or a self-sacrifice, not really. It was the only reasonable choice.

No, deeper down, he did it because he is a coward. He didn’t want to be the lone survivor, carrying the body and far more on his shoulders. But then he didn’t deserve that fate either.

So Lion is glad he made it, or at least his body did. It’s breathing, feeble but regularly, and the heart in it continues to beat. Got some broken bones and flesh wounds but it’s on its way of recovery. He is not so sure about his soul. But he is here, thinking all these things, isn’t he? Doesn’t it mean his mind is alive too?

Then why can’t he just wake up?

.

If he concentrates, he can feel everything. He can tell the warm hue of the sunlight from the sterile, artificial lighting of the hospital even through closed eyelids. He can sense the texture of the sheet under his limp hands. He can hear the beeping noise of the machine he is more or less attached to. He can feel occasional throbs of pain, dulled by heavy dose of painkillers.

But he can’t move a finger, not a single muscle, can’t even open his eyes to see whether someone is here, or he is alone.

Not that he is left alone, at least for long. Medical staffs come to check his vital sign and scribble down notes in their pad. After a while he’s allowed to see visitors too, or rather visitors are allowed to see him. He wishes they don’t tell his family, because he can’t shove this at their faces too, not after everything he’s done to them. His wish is granted, given that his mission was a highly classified one in the first place.

So all his visitors are his fellow operators visiting him in their spare time. Montagne is the most frequent one, unsurprisingly, and he is easy to tell because he always talks to Lion. He is careful of his tone, to sound casually composed, as if nothing is out of place. Reliable, as ever, his own worries buried deep where no one else can see. He informs Lion of daily events in the base, what happened in the training session and what shenanigans ensued. Lion isn’t largely interested but he is glad that people are moving on; they’re called up to do their job and save the world, not to waste their time over a fallen colleague. But because it’s Montagne, who has this mysterious ability to know where his thoughts are flowing even without words, he tells Lion gently: we’re waiting for you to come back, Olivier. We’re not leaving you behind.

Rook and Twitch join Montagne now and then, to Lion’s surprise. Rook’s voice is on the wrong side of cheery, like someone who is choking on something and trying badly to cover it up. Lion doesn’t think he even liked Lion before, how could he, their interaction was never smooth. He was too naive for his liking, bright and untainted, making Lion want to lash out; better teach him by himself that the world can’t catch up with his standard, that he can’t survive if he keeps believing in something he shouldn’t. He was harsher than he had to be—had any right to be—but still Rook is here, sounding agitated but nonetheless keeping him company. Twitch, on the other hand, is subdued and quiet, nothing like her usual energetic self. It doesn’t feel right to Lion. Neither of them should be this affected, they don’t have to take it this hard. They deserve something better than the secondhand pain.

And there is Doc.

At first, Lion doesn’t recognize him, because he comes alone when there is no other visitor around and he doesn’t talk. He brushes the presence off as one of the medical staffs, but this person lingers for too long, and he can almost feel the haunted gaze on him somehow. It can’t be anyone else.

Most of all he is reassured. What he did wasn’t in vain. The doctor is indeed alive and well, undamaged, if him pacing the room with enough restlessness to wake the dead is any indication. Then he gets annoyed, which is his usual reaction to the man almost on the instinctual level, because he can’t get out of the bed and make him stop with force. Hold him still. Feel his warmth in his hands, the proof that he wasn’t wrong in his decision.

He can’t, and he has no way to vent his frustration. Doc must be feeling the same way, because he breathes in, and then out, slowly and deliberately, in an attempt to calm himself down.

It doesn’t work, however. His voice is still trembling when he finally talks.

Do you think this is fucking fair?

Who said anything was fair, ever? He wants to ask back, fully knowing how immature it sounds.

Answer me, Olivier.

The mattress of his bed dips to the side, and suddenly there is a hand clutching his shirt, fisting the fabric. It shakes, his whole body must be shaking, but he doesn’t break, his muttered curses make his voice crack but they remain dry. 

To Lion it feels like he is being mourned, which is inadequate since he is not dead, at least not technically. In some way it is like watching himself being buried alive. He doesn’t understand where all this grief comes from. They’re not friends. They’re barely even colleagues, just trying to be civil with each other a struggle, more like circumstantial coworkers. Maybe he’s blaming himself for what happened. But even Lion has to admit that it wasn’t Doc’s fault, no one could have predicted that sheer level of disaster, and Doc can’t be dumb enough to think he somehow should have. And it was Lion’s decision from there, so he takes full responsibility. As he always does.

.

The next day, Doc comes in to take hold of his hand. Lion is momentarily confused, because he would never, holding hands is not what they do, they only lay their hands on each other to strike and bruise. His hand is icy, probably due to bad circulation, or maybe just that it’s getting colder outside. He wouldn’t know. Anything outside his room is meaningless, nonexistent to him, and neither is the passage of time.

The hand leaves abruptly, but there is something left in his palm. Tiny beads, their size and the smooth surface so familiar in his hand. He belatedly understands, it’s his rosary. Doc is already gone by then. Not that he can do anything even if he hasn’t left, protest, thank him, ask him why.

Why do you care? Why do I matter to you? Is it guilt? Pity? Your bleeding heart?

He can’t ask, therefore there is no answer, but the rosary stays. It calms his nerves endlessly. Now he can pray, properly, every time when he’s sick and tired of barely existing, caged in his own body. Hail Mary, full of grace.

He does not regret, but he repents. Those two are not the same, do not even concern the same action.

Still, he feels like he should apologize. For being an arrogant prick, for being him really. For being an ungrateful friend to Montagne, for making Rook’s life harder than it has to be, for making Twitch uncomfortable with never ceasing arguments between him and Doc.

But to Doc, he stubbornly refuses to apologize, because he made the right decisions, both then and now. He does feel sorry, though, a distant, bitter kind of feeling one gets when they did something that needed to be done but not without making casualty. Because now Doc has to suffer too, over something he didn’t have the power to choose, didn’t have any say in the matter.

You’re not making any progress. You have to try harder.

He says to Lion sometimes sternly, sometimes pleading, his voice pained. The selfish part of Lion wishes he walks away, realizing that he is not responsible for anything, that he actually prefers Lion’s absence, good riddance, so he can rot away in peace. Even more selfish part of him hopes he doesn’t. He’s grown used to the cool hands on his, fixing his loose grip on the rosary for him.

.

The time slinks past him. He knows this because he can feel his broken ribs healing, wounds mending themselves closed. The dull pain turns into itchiness, and sometimes Lion imagines his fingers twitching with urgent need to scratch it away.

People are returning from their missions and getting deployed again, and the desire to follow them, to be useful, is keen enough to stab. Finka, who has been away for her own mission, comes to visit him as soon as she returns, dragging her Spetsnaz boys along with her. They are apparently terrorising the entire hospital even in their civilian clothes, and Lion is grateful that she has someone to distract her. He knows how she loathes being in the medical facilities outside the context of their work, how they remind her of her deepest fears. Thankfully, Tachanka’s voice booming through the corridors leaves little space to think about anything else at all, even though it adds a headache to Lion’s heap of health issues. And her bold promise that he’ll be back on his feet in no time is oddly reassuring, despite Lion being the last person to believe in blind optimism.

Doc himself isn’t ordered to go anywhere but there are other patients for him to take care of, meaning he has to stay in the base. Montagne tells Lion, who must be jet-lagged and tired but drops by to see him anyway, that Smoke has almost cut off his finger during a knife combat with the terrorists. Lion snorts inwardly, because he isn’t even surprised.

The next time Doc comes by to check on him which is a few days later, he sounds exhausted. Defeated, even.

I’m sorry, he starts, throwing Lion off because what is there to be sorry about? If he’s gonna tell him that he can’t come anymore because he’s busy, it’s hardly worth mentioning.

I shouldn’t have said those things. I’ve been unfair to you.

Doc continues, quietly, and the way he talks without hesitating to choose his words suggests that it’s been on his mind for a while. He’s been thinking about it, possibly ever since Lion’s been in the hospital.

Lion gets it now; why it is so important to Doc that he wakes up.

Lion doesn’t regret, but Doc does. Lion won’t apologize to him, but Doc just did. Lion almost wants to laugh, because clearly, this is why they never get along.

If their lives don’t matter to you, why try saving others? What’s the point? Why are you in this line of work, to feel better about yourself?

Doc was furious enough to be brutally straight, and Lion didn’t mind then because it gave him a perfect excuse to grab the man by the collar and snarl at his face, doesn’t mind now because he was right, at least partially.

But it seems like Doc has been minding it all this time. He must have known why Lion made those decisions, why they were the right ones, but he was kind, too kind to accept the casualties as something necessary so he put the blame on Lion, but as a result he wasn’t kind to him.

I became a smudge on his otherwise clean conscience and he wants to wipe it off, he thinks, and this revelation entertains him immensely, but not as much as this one-sided conversation is making him frustrated. He wants to assert the point that he has said things in Doc’s face too, scratched his pride verbally, they’re even in that sense. He wants to stop Doc from burdening himself with what happened in a heated argument and being a fucking martyr, when he is the one who jumped into the line of bullets. He feels like he is going to burst one day, with all the words left unsaid.

This isn’t going anywhere. I’ll have to wait until you can answer me, won’t I.

With a sigh, Doc drags a chair close to the bed and sits there, unlike Montagne who sometimes sits on the bed by his legs while talking and makes Lion worry about its fate under their combined weight because none of them are exactly light. Maybe because he’s a professional who won’t invade his patients’ personal space, or maybe just because it’s Lion. Still, he is sitting close enough for Lion to get a whiff of his aftershave, to hear his quiet breathing that gradually gets slower and deeper.

He falls asleep like that, lack of proper sleep finally catching up to him. He doesn’t snore, thank god, only sighs now and then and Lion can practically see how there’s a frown on his face. It suits his personality, who worries too much, cares too much.

Nights are usually unbearably long for Lion, because there is no one else to distract him and he can’t even fall asleep like a normal human being, presumably due to the fact he’s always sleeping in a way, just not his brain. His consciousness barely slips under the surface, and he’s less aware of his surrounding but it doesn’t feel like resting. So he both welcomes Doc’s company and envies his ability to plunge into oblivion, and if he wakes up with a cramp in his neck, it’s his problem.

It’s not like Lion can move away to make some space, tell the man to come and lie down properly. It’s not like he’d agree to it.

It’s not like he’d want to share his bed with Doc either, Lion adds belatedly, in the hazy, in-between state of sleeping and being awake. He tries to count his own breathing to give his mind something to do but ends up counting Doc’s breathing instead.

.

.

It all ends one day, quite suddenly. Probably the better option out of the two.

There is an itch on his shoulder, where a bullet wound is mostly healed, and he scratches it, without thinking. He briefly wonders why his head is this groggy, why such a simple task feels this tiring, and then, oh.

Lion opens his eyes, blinks at the blinding light that is attacking his sight. His limbs feel heavy and stiff enough to be made of stone and he feels dazed like he has slept for too long—and he has, hasn’t he. He smiles to himself, and rejoices in the fact that he can.

Every part of his body feels foreign. It indeed is, in a way; there are stitches in his flesh, steel plates holding his bones together. He puts down the rosary to the bedside table, and flexes his fist. The memory of soft skin on his palm is still there, distant as if it was a dream but unforgettable. You can’t untouch someone, in the good way or the bad way. Lion knows.

Lion is sitting up, leaning back on the headboard and feeling inexplicably serene, when he comes in. His musing about trivial things, like the wind shaking the withered leaves of the tree next to his window, or the color of the flowers that is somehow resting in the vase by his bed, is interrupted, because the man just halts on the spot. He looks like he has lost some weight, and gained more grey hair near his temples, not to mention the impressive bags under his eyes.

“You look like shit,” Lion tells him, pleased. Doc’s fingers curve inward, forming two trembling fists, knuckles white, as if he wants to punch something. Hard.

Lion feels generous enough to allow one without fighting back, if it is delivered, but he doubts it would. Doc takes measured steps closer, his expression weirdly shut off. He is slow in his motion, like he’s fearing he might chase something away if he moves too suddenly. It’s ridiculous and shouldn’t make his chest tighten like it does now. Lion feels impatient, tense, and there is something in his throat, alive and beating frantically, just below his collarbone.

Doc kneels on his bed and touches his eyebrow, cheek, just under his jaw where he can feel the quickening pulse; he’s in need to know for sure that Lion is alright and present. Lion put his hands on the man’s back, and he barely needs to pull before Doc gives in and just crumples, leaning in until his forehead touches Lion’s shoulder. He must smell like a sick person, all antiseptic and sweat gone stale, but Doc stays where he is, his breathing fast and shallow, clutching his upper arms in iron grip.

Lion moves the hands on his back slowly, tracing the line of his spine, soothing the man he hates, no, the man who hates him, who is supposed to hate him. He isn’t sure what they are anymore.

When Doc lifts his face to look at Lion, there is a tired smile on his face, a slight twist in his lips. Lion scowls, in lieu of an answer. His eyes are hazel brown, the color rich and warm, and for once they don’t harbor contempt or hatred in them. Lion can’t remember if they ever did, or it was just plain anger, distorted by his opinion that they should.

“No problem in focusing, and they’re reacting to the light nicely. Very well,” Doc mutters to himself with a satisfied hum, and stands up to straighten his clothes, looking astonishingly unselfconscious for a man who just needed a comforting hug.

“I have to go and tell the others, but I can give you a quiet moment of your own if you want. They won’t mind waiting for additional thirty minutes when they’ve already waited three weeks.”

Lion winces at that. Three weeks, no wonder he feels like he has died once and been revived violently.

“No, it’s okay. But ask them if they can bring some food, I’m starving,” he mumbles. It’s literally been ages since he ate anything substantial, he can devour a whole cow by himself.

“You shouldn’t eat right now, your digestive system probably isn’t fully active yet and it is entirely possible that you won’t be able to stay awake for more than a couple of hours for the first few days.”

“You must be kidding me. I’ve slept enough for a year,” Lion groans miserably, earning a proper laugh from the older man.

“This is a gradual recovery, too. You need patience.”

His voice is soft, nothing like Lion has been subjected to from him before, and maybe it’s the tone he reserves for his patients who suffer the most but Lion decides he doesn’t mind it.

“I heard what you said, you know,” he ventures, fully understanding that something precarious is at stake, something he can ruin at any moment if he takes a careless step. Doc stops in the doorway, his facial expression indecipherable. Then, a smile, halfway between uncertain and hopeful.

“Did you?”

Yes,  he wants to answer. I accept your apology, and I want to apologize as well, not for the things I did because I had to do but for the things I said to you. For once it’s not physical inability that hinders him from talking. He simply nods.

And if it is not enough of an answer, they’ll have plenty of time to talk later, when things are settled and Lion is fully recovered. When he’s more mentally prepared.

In the meantime, Lion slowly smiles back.

.

.

[julietandcinderellavocaloid]

Determined Alice Chapter 9

The only thing more astonishing than Rei's betrayal was the sudden appearance of the legion Meiko and the others witnessed being blown from the sky. Nobody had died after all. The loss of the hovercraft was a frustrating inconvenience, but the other legion had no plans to abandon the mission.

Taking advantage of the lower numbers in the prison security and their advantage of surprise, they were able to break into the prison without issue and overwhelm the guards before they could regain enough sense to fight back. Their mission was simple – get in, get everyone out, and run away. They did just that.

However, the run away part of the plan wasn't as simple as it should have been. Meiko sat with Hio and Rinto in their resting room, all staring at each other with nobody having anything to say. Thanks to Rei's betraying them and everyone else, there was no going back to their previous hideout. They had to fly low. Tonio's team had to change course moments before they were supposed to arrive, leaving them to wander about until their new destination for arrival was determined.

Message was already sent to every corner of the rebel group to evacuate immediately. They got out just before their bars and libraries and other secret quarters were attacked – why Rei didn't give away that information sooner so those back at home would be ambushed while the rest were away, Meiko didn't understand. Rinto blamed Rei's shortsighted vision. Hio wanted to believe that deep down, Rei still cared about everyone and at least wanted to give them a chance to escape.

Meiko didn't care which was true. The next time she met Rei, his neck would become well acquainted with one of her knives. For all the stabbing she did, Meiko never killed anyone; she would make an exception just for Rei as retribution for all the pain and heartache he caused her teammates.

For now, she would not dwell too much on what had happened. She was alive. The others were alive. This mission having gone horribly wrong had proven one thing: nothing was promised. They all might have survived, but that didn't mean the next mission wouldn't have any casualties.

"Hio, Rinto," Meiko cautiously began, eyes locked on her fingers as she squeezed them. She didn't want to look at the guys as she talked to them. "I'm . . . I owe you both an apology. More than an apology, really. From day one, I've been a real jerk. I know now that in your own ways, you both have been nothing but nice to me, and I repaid that kindness with coldness. I'm really sorry. I hope moving forward, we can put all that behind us and learn to become proper teammates. If . . . if that's all right with you two, of course."

Silence lingered for a moment too long. Biting her lip, Meiko pondered feigning thirst to leave the room under the excuse of getting a drink. The longer the quiet stretched on, the more awkward she felt under the guys' gaze she didn't see but could still feel.

It was just before she was about to stand that Hio began, "Meiko—"

"We're your teammates whether we like it or not," Rinto interrupted. "Hells, it doesn't matter whether you like it or not. We're stuck together until Mikuo decides otherwise."

Meiko's fingers curled into fists so tight it hurt. It wasn't just what Rinto said, but the cold way he said it. However, Meiko was done arguing, especially since this was a lashing she deserved.

That was why it surprised her when Rinto continued, "With that said, don't worry about it. Everyone has majorly screwed up at least once or twice. We're all used to forgiving and forgetting. It's part of being part of a team. Though it would be kind of nice for you to stop glaring at us all the time, I'll admit."

Putting on her best smile, Meiko looked up at the boys to show them her sincerity and how grateful she was they weren't going to hold any of her previous actions against her. Rinto nodded his head, and Hio returned the smile. Perhaps some things were going to get better amidst all this chaos and terror. No matter how bad things got, it would be more bearable to have these guys on her side. Meiko didn't deny that it would be nice to be a part of a family again.

The thought made her smile fall. Standing to her feet, she told the guys, "I'll be right back. I need to speak with Big Al."

"All right," Rinto replied. "If he's still not briefing with the others, he might be helping to welcome our new guest on board."

"I figured as much. Thanks."

As Meiko turned to leave, Hio called her. Without a word, Meiko turned around to listen what he had to say. Hio kept it short. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Meiko said before she walked out of the room, surprised to find that she told Hio the truth.

"I was just looking for you," Meiko told Big Al when she crossed paths with him in the hallway on her way to the briefing room. Big Al rose a brow but didn't say anything, choosing instead to let Meiko tell him whatever it was she wanted to say. Meiko took a deep breath and said, "I, er, I never really apologized. For stabbing you in the arm, I mean. Yeah, sorry about that. It won't happen again."

Big Al shrugged and motioned for Meiko to follow him as he walked. With her in step beside him, he replied, "Don't apologize. If anything, be grateful you did it. Nobody was going to respect you or take you seriously until you proved to them why we shouldn't turn you away."

"Wait," Meiko furrowed her brows, "you're glad I stabbed you?"

"Don't get me wrong, I would much prefer you never do that again," Big Al replied, grinning at her, "but at least you got the message across that you don't like to be touched without consent."

Although it was small, Meiko did smile back. She didn't go into detail what happened all those years ago, and Big Al didn't ask either. Instead, even without knowing everything, he looked at Meiko as if she was a soldier long before they met. Most people who knew treated Meiko as nothing more than a victim. Meiko wasn't a victim, but a survivor, and the way Big Al treated her indicated he knew as much.

"So," Meiko drawled, changing the subject, "when do I get to meet this super important operative we risked our lives for? I have to know if it was all worth it."

"He hasn't revealed everything yet, but he's already told us enough to confirm that yes, rescuing him was worth it. Come, he's in the back resting room right now. I'm sure he won't mind putting a pause to writing out his report to meet our newest recruit."

While they walked towards the room, Big Al kept his information to the point. "Believe it or not, but he's about your age. Came from the Hera District last year, from a village that isn't even on most Equinox Continent maps. He previously worked on a farm that filed for bankruptcy shortly after he left. It's through his sheer grit, intelligence, and determination he climbed the ranks faster than anyone would have ever expected. I'm sure you two will either get along as best friends or worse rivals."

"If it's the latter," Meiko said, smirking, "I won't be allowed to stab him, will I?"

"No," Big Al replied, only to lean in close and whisper, "unless he absolutely deserves it."

They came to the room, and Big Al knocked on the door. Instead of shouting who was it, the man inside called for the doors to automatically open. Seeing Big Al and Meiko walk into the room, he smiled and powered off his tablet.

"I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon," he told Big Al. Eyes shifting to Meiko, he added, "Or meet such a pretty girl so shortly after my rescue."

"My soldier is not up for debate," Big Al said, and Meiko interpreted this as "Flirting is not allowed."

This operative was, Meiko had to admit, really cute though. He had a rather round face for a guy, and skin so smooth it appeared silky. His baby blue eyes gave him an innocent look. His shaggy pink hair stuck out in multiple different directions. Honestly, Meiko wouldn't mind too much if he decided to flirt with her from time to time. He just needed to keep his hands off. Screw Big Al's permission. Meiko didn't want to have any reason to damage something so beautiful.

"My apologies," the operative said, a hand in the air in a "no worries" sort of gesture. "You're the new recruit, right? Welcome to the rebellion."

"Any excuse to raise hells is all I need," Meiko replied before showing the man a grin. He returned the gesture, and Meiko was sure Big Al was right to say the two of them would either be best friends or worst rivals. The question was which it would be. "I'm Sakine Meiko. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine," the other guy replied. "I'm Luki. It'll be an honor to work alongside you."

[justjessame]

A Little Ass and A Lotta Sass Chapter 18:  When Did the Last Brothel Close Shop...Or What Jobs Did the Wives Have Before?

I’d managed, through sheer force of will, to push the unpleasant truths of my new living arrangement far far back in my mind. With the slate I cleared, I was able to fall into the book I’d grabbed from the shelves. I fell so deeply into the story that I almost didn’t hear Negan’s return. Almost, but who could drown out that whistling as it grew closer? Especially knowing intimately what else the lips doing the whistling could do…

I kept my nose in the book, planning on making Negan work for my attention. Bargaining power only worked if he knew he wouldn’t get everything with me so easily. My attention was going to have to be earned. Even if I knew he was a dirty fighter.

“Ah, there’s my girl,” his grin could be heard in that fucking voice of his.

Certain, I was sure, that I’d launch myself into his arms and make him feel like a 50s husband who just got home after a hard day of bread-winning for the little woman all day. I had to stop myself from snorting at the thought. Sure, he’s a 50s husband who happens to bear more resemblance to the Fonz than to Darren Stevens. Good luck with that, sweetie, I thought, keeping my attention on the page in front of me.

I felt him sit at the end of the couch that I was reclining on with the throw he’d tossed over me the day before. He shifted my legs, lifting them so he could move closer, so my legs would be draped over his lap, from knees down. The throw was still over top of my body, and his hands were running underneath along my leggings covered legs. I kept ‘reading’ even remembering to turn the page here and there.

“Callie,” Negan’s voice had gone to that low, deep, dark place that made everything on me tingle, but I refused to acknowledge it, or him. His fingertips were touching my bare ankle, light but with the callouses my nerves were coming alive. “Sweetheart, what are you reading?” Fucker, I thought, you KNOW that if I speak, and it comes out the least bit breathless, then you’ve won this round.

I took a beat, keeping my eyes on the page of God fucking knew what fucking chapter, and tried to remember what the story had been that kept me so engrossed before I heard him whistling. Shit, what the fuck? Clearing my throat, I lifted up the book so he could see the title for himself. Then I put it down and continued ‘reading’. I felt him shift, moving his hands to my waist, and lifting me so he was at the end where I’d been laying, and now my ass was cradled in his lap. Damn it, I swallowed, feeling how very much he missed me while at ‘work’.

“It looks good,” his voice in my ear. “Why don’t you read it to me?” Oh, he really really didn’t play fair. I felt his lips touch the shell of my ear and my eyes closed. “Callie? Princess? Don’t you want to share with me?”

Another swallow for me, and I forced open my eyes. Sure, why the fuck not? I started from where I’d turned the page absently to while playing with fire. As I read, Negan tempted me to completely lose my damn mind. He’d touch my hand holding the book, running his fingers along my wrist, his head on my shoulder. He’d turn his head and run his nose down the curve of my jaw, listening for any signs that he’d truly won a hitch in my throat, a sigh, but I kept reading. Bringing in the big guns, his lips started exploring my neck, kissing and nipping at every spot that he knew would drive me insane. Until I forgot to read, closed my eyes and just enjoyed the attention he was lavishing on my skin.

His chuckle against my pulse point made me bite my lip. “Finished already?” His hand took the book from mine and tossed it at the table in front of the couch. “Thank fucking God.” And then our lips met and I moaned. As our tongues touched, I forgot why I’d wanted to refuse to give in to his presence, why I’d been playing hard to get. I forgot everything except him and me, and what we could do to one another.

 When we were finally satisfied, which took less time than I thought possible, we lay on the couch together. I had to admit, giving in was always worth it with Negan. I was laying over top of him, my head tucked under his chin, my hand over his slowing heart with his arms wrapped around me to keep me in place. As our breathing regained control, our hearts stopped racing, we relaxed settling in to just being together.

“How was your day?” I finally asked, wanting to hear his voice rumble through my cheek.

His chuckle sounded tired, we had just exercised pretty hard after all. Then he sighed. “The usual,” then as though realizing that I would have no idea what the usual entailed, he kept going. “I always have people pushing for more or taking more than they’ve earned. And with the-” He stopped, and I waited for him to gather his thoughts. “Now that I’m monogamous,” ah, I thought ‘the wives’. “I have a new round of people having to relearn their places.” I started to shift, feeling uncomfortable that I’ve caused him problems, but his arms were like steel holding me to him. “It was bound to happen, Callie.” I felt his lips touch my hair. “You’re more than worth it. It’s just the fucking learning curve.” I felt him groan at the thought. “And finding something they can do, for fuck’s sake, you teased me about them being just pretty fucking faces, well I’m learning that for the most goddamn part, you’re fucking right.”

I propped my chin up on his chest so I could look up at him. “They did nothing except sit here-” his eyes narrowed, and I corrected myself. “They sat wherever they were given space and just waited for you?” The judgement was heavy in my voice. I couldn’t imagine doing that, that anyone could hope to fucking survive in this world without learning to be useful. And sex, while amazingly fun, wasn’t exactly a marketable skill when surrounded by dead biters. “Did they all come from brothels?” That last one was meant to be an internal dialogue, but of course it fell out of my lips.

Negan laughed, no longer sounding tired, and I shook my head. “I’m startin’ to wonder about that myself, Callie.” He shook his own head. “I swear to fucking God, I have no fucking clue what they did prior to latching onto me. None. And now I really fucking wonder.” He studied me, and his smile grew. “Then there’s you.” Ut oh. “Itching to get the fuck out of these rooms to be useful. Fighting to have control over ANYTHING. Jesus, why didn’t I find your ass sooner?”

I let my head fall back to lay on his chest. “You weren’t ready for me.” I shrugged, not knowing how, but knowing it was the truth. “Are we still going to do interviews for my ‘guard’?” I could feel the irritation growing at the thought. I’d negotiated for it, the power to choose, but it grated on me to have to have security. Then again, if what Dwight had said was true, and I had to trust at least that much, then I might need them.

“Yeah,” he said, running a hand up my bare back and into my hair. “I told Dwight to have a few I think you’ll like to come up after dinner.” His hand was tugging the band from my hair, letting it fall in curls down my shoulders. Once free, his fingers began brushing through the silky strands. “They’re people I trust, with my life, Callie.” I knew that he wouldn’t say that about just anyone, but then again he trusts Dwight. I nodded, relaxing at the feeling of his hand running through my hair. “Your hair is fucking gorgeous, baby girl.” I could feel his body coming alive under mine. “Why don’t you wear it down more?”

Propping my head up again so I could meet his eyes, I smiled. “Ever tried getting gore out of long hair? Or undead leavings? And God fucking damn it, imagine one of them grabbing it?” My smile turned to a smirk. “Practicality keeps it up. Even in Alexandria, just because anything can fucking happen. No matter how safe you think you are.”

He considered my words, his hand still running through the curls, letting them twist around his fingers. “Practical?” He squinted, and kept thinking. He licked his lower lip and I waited. “You’re really not at all like them, are you?” And I was fairly certain that wasn’t a question he needed me to answer.

 We were dressed by the time dinner arrived. Negan had gone into the bedroom to do who knew what, so I answered the door. The same delivery boy stood on the other side, and he seemed braced for my kindness this time. He even managed to smile as I handed him the tray from lunch. When I thanked him, he remembered to say “you’re welcome”. Progress. Thank goodness.

I set the table, finally able to do SOMETHING without Negan taking over. When he came out, I’d put the identical plates in our regular spots and had taken my seat. I heard another chuckle leave him as he came closer to join me. “Feeling better?” He asked, and I shot him a look. “It really fucking irritates you that I want to pamper you, doesn’t it?” He took his seat and stared across the table at me.

I stabbed a bite of the potatoes that were growing cold on my plate. “Why would you think that?” I asked, biting my fork with more force than necessary.

His laughter told me that my poker face may need to be relearned for him. “It’s a theory.” He picked up his own fork and we returned to the ‘getting to know you’ portion of our day. “If I would let you do any job here,” he gestured around him, as though I needed help understanding, “what would you prefer to do?”

I considered what he was asking, eating carefully through more of my dinner. “What I did for our group, I guess.” I shrugged, thinking it was most logical.

His brows furrowed, and he took a drink from his glass. “Laundry?” I snorted, shit, that’s right. He’d only witnessed the household chores of Alexandria. Poor man.

“Negan,” I shook my head. “Laundry, taking care of Judith? Those were just family chores.” I giggled at the mere idea that I’d only been a housewife with no husband. “Dad, he understood my little talent, the one you saw me work in that video. That’s what I did. I was his human lie detector.”

I watched him digest this, as he absently ate. Did he honestly think that Dad would let me run off if I didn’t have SOME idea of how to take care of myself here? And that I’d rush off with Satan’s favorite offshoot without some inner understanding that I had a pretty decent understanding of human behavior and that I felt safe with him? Jesus, living with those multiples must have made him assume that sex overrode every brain synapse in a woman’s head. Not that he didn’t manage to short circuit me now and again, but so far it wasn’t permanent.

“How?” He asked, and I smiled.

“You saw how Deanne chose to greet new people? The videos, the questions? They’re fucking useless if you don’t understand human behavior. She convinced herself that being a former politician made her see more than a regular person on the street.” I took another bite, chewing and swallowing before continuing. “It may have worked, but she failed to add in the stress and uncertainty that comes with surviving this bullshit. It changes people, and so sitting down with a layperson and ‘telling all’, has to be reran through a sieve that filters what’s being said, shown, and known with what that person has experienced.”

As I shrugged, he studied me with interest. Learning more about me was apparently making Negan appreciate me more. “And you can do that?” He’d leaned back, food forgotten.

“I told you, I can’t read minds, but behavior? That’s simple.” I looked down at my own plate and was shocked that it was almost empty again. Seriously, how did he fucking do it? “Deanne was different in so many ways. She hadn’t fought, not really. Her people stumbled into Alexandria, and she realized it was a boon. Yet, when her people started scouting for people to join, they didn’t know and she didn’t know how the world changed people. Why would they?” I thought of Aaron, and hoped he was doing well. “She asked questions that didn’t matter. She listened to words, but didn’t pay attention to the thousand yard stare that some people get when they’ve seen too much and are more dangerous because of their quiet and calm. She didn’t use the knowledge she was so fucking smug about to actually comb through the people better.” It had been her downfall. That and refusing for the people to learn useful skills, and learn to kill “She had no idea she had a domestic abuse situation under her nose. She didn’t think learning to survive ‘in case’ was worth the effort. And so, she died. Because, from what I’ve experienced, ‘in case’ or ‘worst case scenario’ has a pretty high fucking likelihood of happening.”

Negan was watching me as I explained. “You’d be able to tell what exactly?” I liked his curiosity. That he wasn’t blowing it off or pretending it was a parlor trick.

I sighed, and took a drink from my own glass. “If a person fidgets, when meeting a new group, it means different things. Fear, discomfort, uncertainty, those are normal, especially now. Couple the fidgets with another tell, shifty eyes with the inability to make eye contact, tugging at any part of their clothing at waist level and then you have to look closer. Eye contact isn’t something we have to fear against walkers, some dickhead humans sure, but walkers aren’t all that interested in staring deeply into your eyes. And the tugging? Concealed weapon, or some type of mark or branding are both possibilities.” I leaned back in my own chair, pleasantly full now. “I can’t tell you that they’re dangerous, but I can tell you where to look to find out.”

He let out a long breath. “Fuck, no wonder Rick kept you out of the first fight.” I was about to object, but he kept going. “You’re too fucking valuable.” Or my mouth overrules my ass, I thought, but yours sounds more complimentary, so do go on. “What do you need to be able to do it?”

I laughed. “A person? A neutral spot?” I shrugged. I’d been gauging people for my entire life. I didn’t really know what I’d need. “I do it without thinking most of the time, Negan.”

“You don’t like Dwight.” It wasn’t a question, but I knew he wanted to know how and why.

I shook my head. “I don’t trust Dwight, there’s a difference.” I stood up, needing to move to explain. “There’s a lot going into it. The way he gave up everything that was taken from Daryl that he took for his own. The fact that you could punish him in such a permanent way.” Negan was nodding with my words. “And there’s a way he stares, at you, that makes my blood run cold.”

Negan’s eyes were furrowed. “He got Sherri back. He’s one of my best warriors.” I could tell this wasn’t to me, it was him trying to see what he’d missed.

“And yet,” I said, making him refocus on me. “There’s something there that even you aren’t sure about.” I knew that too, watching the two of them interact. Negan always seemed to be testing him, and Dwight always seemed to know it. “Maybe he doesn’t trust that he’ll get to keep her, or maybe he’s still fucking angry that you got to have her for so long? I don’t know, I just know that I don’t trust him.”

“What would your suggestion be?” He asked, and I knew I might shock him with my answer, but it was the truth.

“Keep him close. Don’t let him have an inch, but don’t let him know you suspect.” I offered, moving to his side. “There’s a saying, ‘keep your friends close-’”

“‘And your enemies closer.” He finished, pulling me onto his lap.

[keeroo92]

My Brother’s Pain

For @dmcgenweek Day Three - Grief/Sleep

Takes place after the events of DMC5, before the epilogue scenes.

Vergil hated the Underworld.

Why?

Well, for starters, it was always so bloody cold. The chill of it set him on edge the instant he and Dante had crossed over. The familiar icy caress reminded him of his other visits to Hell. He knew from experience if he made it back to the Human Realm, it would take at least a week to feel warm again.

Second on the elder Sparda’s list of reasons to hate Hell was the smell. Every plane had a distinct odor to it, but there was always an undercurrent of wilting roses. Ever since his first “visit” he’d hated the fragrance of roses. By itself, the scent wasn’t worth noticing. But when you mixed in the plane's aroma they had landed on, it was abhorrent.

Wilting roses and wet canine. Only in the Underworld.

Add to the mix of unpleasantness the fact that demons attacked every ten minutes, and Vergil lacked the ability to imagine a worse location to find himself.

And Dante’s here, too. Ugh.

Regardless, he had a job to do, and Vergil would not allow failure to wound his pride. He allowed himself the luxury of wrinkling his nose in distaste as he flicked the Yamato to the side to expel the demon blood coating it, sheathing the blade in a single, fluid motion. Dante didn’t bother. His idiot brother absorbed his own weapon back inside his body without cleaning it.

“C’mon, Verg. Let’s get this done.”

Vergil scoffed, his long legs bringing him to his brother’s side within three strides as the man in red walked toward their goal; the Qlipoth.

“My sentiments exactly, brother.”

Gazing at the tree filled Vergil with shame. He struggled to believe how foolish he’d been to think summoning this monstrosity to the Human Realm would bring him greater power. How naïve to imagine he could somehow become stronger by splitting himself in half. No, his desperation had borne that idea; it didn’t bear further thought.

His new plan was to observe Dante and decide for himself if his methods might cause his own strength to rise if adopted. It was a strategy he’d never considered, but knowing the life his brother led and taking into consideration what his human half had experienced, it was worth exploring. Perhaps the answer was to indulge both sides of himself, as opposed to just the one.

Even if his assessment proved incorrect, it would not be difficult to eliminate the man. Not considering how many demons were nearby waiting to rip him apart. Utilizing them would be child’s play.

The two men reached the Qlipoth within mere hours. There was no change in the lighting to mark the passage of time, leading Vergil to believe this was one of the Realms without sunlight. One where despite this, instead of the land being eternally shadowed, it was eternally bright.

Sleep would be a challenge.

A challenge to face later.

Vergil followed his brother to the bottom of the tree, the pair of them drawing their blades together to destroy the last remnant of his idiocy.

The Qlipoth fell easily to their combined might, a great crash marking its descent as it struck the ground. Once the rumbles subsided, Vergil once again sheathed his blade with care while Dante absorbed his own.

“Well… that’s that,” Dante commented.

“Indeed.”

“Guess we should find somewhere to rest for a bit.”

Vergil hummed his agreement, his cold eyes already scanning the environment for potential sites. Because they were in the Underworld, the Qlipoth hadn’t vanished upon being destroyed. Some of its limbs met nearby in a passable approximation of shelter. It still left one side open to attack, but it was an advantageous find, regardless.

“I’ll take first watch,” Vergil announced as he led his brother to the somewhat sheltered spot. Dante shrugged, peeling off his crimson jacket to curl up underneath it. He used one of the sleeves to cover his eyes and soon enough he filled the air with his restful snores.

Alone at last.

Vergil made a point to sweep his stern gaze across the horizon every few seconds, keeping vigil as was his duty. Yet as his eyes fulfilled his responsibilities, his mind wandered.

He couldn’t help but wonder about Nero. His son. He wasn’t sure how to describe his impression of that fact, his emotions too out of practice to recognize. His very bones informed him Dante had spoken the truth; he knew the boy was his. Yet there was no sense of ownership or urge to claim him.

I suppose I no longer have that right.

He’d made so many mistakes, so many errors in judgement. A twinge of unfamiliar discomfort made him shift uncomfortably as he dwelled on his many failures. He tried to find the language necessary to describe what he felt, but lacked the terminology. This, by itself, was alarming. Vergil prided himself on his vocabulary, always having a word ready for any -

“Mom…”

His eyes shot straight to Dante’s as he mumbled. The sleeve of his coat had fallen away at some point, letting Vergil stare in confusion as his brother writhed in the grip of his nightmares. His twin’s brows met and his teeth showed in a pained grimace.

Dante has nightmares?

“Mom… stay with me…”

Vergil turned away, redirecting his focus through sheer force of will. He envisioned a wall between himself and his brother, one that sound lacked the means to penetrate. He clenched his jaw in frustration as the echoing cries of his brother’s pain intermittently interrupted his musings. His thoughts drifted to their mother, of course. If Dante’s nightmares reflected reality, then it seemed she had left him behind as well.

A rush of understanding and sympathy did its best to overpower him, but he brutally grappled it into submission. Even if Eva left Dante behind, his life was still so different from his own that he didn’t merit kindness.

“Vergil… find Vergil…”

Dante’s muttered words sent Vergil reeling. He must have misheard his brother’s ramblings. For a moment, Vergil maintained his vigil. Yet his curiosity refused to abandon his thoughts and soon enough he edged nearer to his brother. He heard the low moans between the muttered expressions, his own name mixed alongside their mother’s in a cacophony of woe. He stepped closer, now standing mere feet away to listen to every word that escaped Dante’s lips.

“Mom… come back… too late…”

Vergil froze, not daring to draw breath as he listened. He tried to assemble the puzzle pieces into a coherent image, but without more information it was a fool’s errand.

Suddenly Dante’s eyes opened. He instantly spotted Vergil crouched beside him and grimaced, sitting up hurriedly. At first, Vergil considered playing it off somehow, making an excuse. Yet something inside him proclaimed its distaste for the idea. Instead, he sat alongside his brother with a sigh, his form rigid.

The silence stretched on as the two brothers both searched for the right words to bridge the vast gap between them, each for their own reasons. Vergil spoke first.

“I didn’t know you had nightmares about Mother.”

Dante nodded, his white hair hiding most of his expression as it shifted from the motion.

“Of course I do. What a clusterfuck that was.”

Vergil hummed in agreement, unsure how to navigate these treacherous waters. He wanted to know what happened, what Dante had seen. Needed more information regarding the night that left their family shattered. He cleared his throat.

“I miss her, Dante.”

His counterpart looked at him through his hair, probably assessing the truth in his words. Vergil’s chest felt tight as he watched his brother’s expression soften, his pain reflected in his twins gaze as their eyes met for what felt like the first time in understanding. He focused on him, maintaining eye contact despite the overwhelming urge to look away.

Dante broke first, shifting his body to hide his face as he sniffled. Even as Vergil scoffed at the sign of weakness, another part of him wanted nothing more than to lay his arm across his brother’s shoulders and attempt to comfort him. The opposing urges clashed within him in a storm, resulting in him not responding whatsoever.

“I miss her too, Vergil.”

Warmth on his knee made Vergil glance down to spot Dante’s hand resting there. He stared blankly for a long moment, unsure how to proceed. Upon considering it, he could not deny that the contact felt… nice. He wondered when he’d last allowed someone to touch him, but nothing recent came to mind. Dante withdrew his palm, leaving Vergil to puzzle over his mixed reaction. He asked the question he longed to find answers for to give himself another moment to process.

“What happened that night?”

To his surprise, Dante responded.

“She… she hid me in their closet and… went to look for you. I heard her scream but that’s all I know.”

Would she have survived if I’d been there? Was her death my fault?

Vergil bit his lip to stop it from trembling, fighting to conceal his emotions. They swirled within him in a whirlwind. His anger, his regret, his childlike sadness and his grief. He took a halting breath, his shoulders twitching as he withheld a sob.

“It’s okay, Verg. Let go, I’m the only one here and you can kill me later, anyway.”

Vergil glared at his kin intensely enough to melt glass, the mere suggestion of displaying his pain for anyone to see abhorrent. Yet even as he held his angry stare, a tear slipped out and rolled down his cheek. Dante sighed, rolling his eyes at Vergil’s insistence on self-control. He leaned closer and wrapped his arms around his brother, awkwardly pulling the man into a hug. It was clear from the look on his face he expected to Vergil to stab him for it.

Vergil steadfastly remained rigid, his staccato breathing the only outward sign of his grief. Once again, some foreign corner of his being longed to return the embrace. Another portion of his being wished for nothing more than to see Dante with the Yamato embedded in his belly. Yet he did neither.

“I’m not letting go until you either stab me or hug me,” Dante muttered stubbornly.

I’ve stabbed him before and it’s gained me naught. Perhaps it is time for a different approach?

As he said, I can always kill him later.

Vergil raised his arms with reluctance, wrapping them around Dante with a clenched jaw. Somehow, returning the hug made it more difficult to hold in his pain, and all at once it became too much to bear. He shook under the force of his need to control himself, unable to do anything to halt the erosion of his restraint.

Dante patted his back, and the dam disintegrated. Vergil transformed into a pathetic mess of sorrow as his tears dripped down his jaw, his shoulders and chest heaving from the strength of his sobbing. He could feel his heart burning in his rib cage, the low ache he had grown used to evolving into an agony so soul wrenching he couldn’t remain silent.

His own frailty disgusted Vergil as he howled at the still bright sky overhead, expelling as much of his pain as possible with the power of his voice. Dante released him as the sound echoed, cringing from the volume. Even without his brotherly hug, Vergil found control unattainable. He angrily succumbed to the tide of misery within him, riding out the storm until it blew itself out.

At long last, he returned to himself. He felt like a wrung-out towel, devoid of moisture or coherence in the wake of his episode. His limbs were heavy, eyelids swollen and raw from the tears he’d scrubbed away. Only a faded ache remained of his previously tortured heart. He leaned back against the Qlipoth they sheltered beneath, taking deep breaths to calm himself further.

Dante stood, threading his arms through the sleeves of his coat.

“Get some sleep. My turn to keep watch.”

Vergil hastily searched for a response, some arrangement of words to reassert his strength. Yet what escaped his lips did nothing of the sort.

“Thank you, brother.”

For more than taking watch.

[raendown]

Pairing: none (unless I ever get around to writing the rest) Word count: 1770 Summary: This is the moment. He can feel it. This is the moment he will change the course of their future. (And he does but doesn't. It is the past the changes the future, erases itself, and builds anew.)

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

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Amends to the Dead

Dust rises in clouds and is tamped down by streams of water and flame. Dirt sprays and gives under twisting heels. Blood spills and drips, oozing from wounds and soaking in to the thirsty earth beneath them. They clash and spring apart, come together and twist aside, again and again and again in the same dance they have engaged in since they were children. This is just another battle in an endless war and Tobirama is tired. But he is not too tired to go as he knows he must. If Hashirama will not put down the dreams of his youth then Tobirama must be the one to bear the weight of the present; it is not a duty he enjoys but it is one he knows well and he will not falter.

The moment is right. He can feel it in his bones and hear it in the screaming wind that rebounds from a jutsu on the far side of the forest clearing, shifting the clouds of steam that he has concealed himself within after his jutsu crashed against Izuna’s in a spectacular show of chemical reaction. Kunai spring to his hands and as he rushes forward he throws them ahead of himself, aiming not actually towards his target but beyond him. Injury is not the purpose of these blades. They are not for the bite but to mark the kill.

His sword is drawn as he bursts from cover, stepping in to position. Izuna meets his eye and for a split second it’s like the younger man knows what is about to happen. Surely he can see his impending death shining in Tobirama’s bloody red eyes. Tobirama hopes he doesn’t. Izuna may be his enemy by circumstance of birth, he might be cursed the way all Uchiha are, but Tobirama holds no true ill will for the other man. He doesn’t know him enough to hate him. Such is the way of life in their generation and though the Uchiha clan pose the greatest threat to his own out of the rest it does not make them different from any other faceless foe seeking to strike down what is his.

Chakra gathers under his skin until his entire body hums with power and he steps – through space and time he steps and every fiber of his being sings with the current that carries him forward. His blade is drawn and aimed, his strike will be true. Izuna will die with a blade through his chest between the third and fourth rib bones and Tobirama-

Light flashes. Tobirama jerks to a stop, unable to cry out in pain for the sheer shock of the blade that sinks in to his chest. Or quite possibly it is the shock of the face that stares back at him, expression grim and grip steady on the familiar sword in his hand.

It is himself. It is his own face yet deeply lined with age. He can hear the cries of shock as more and more people spot the strange distortion: Senju Tobirama stabbing himself through the only weak point in his thick blue armor. He can feel blood bubbling up until it trickles slowly from between his lips and still he does not move. The sword in him shifts, pulls back, and it tugs his flesh in to the motion until he falls forward against his elder self’s chest. Izuna meets his eyes over the shoulder of familiar plates of armor, as stunned and immobile as he is.

His breath ruffles white fur at the same time as hot air washes over his ear and his own voice speaks in a low, terrible whisper.

“Better my own death than Izuna.”

He wants to gasp but his lungs won’t let him. His fingers claw at the figure holding him in a strangely gentle way – and he listens to himself speak in that awful dead tone.

“I broke it all; the entire world. This moment is when it all fell apart. I ruined my brother’s dream of peace when I put that blade through Izuna’s chest. Let him live. Let Brother offer Madara his hand once more and let the world be rid of the plague that is myself.” Tobirama feels his older self bow his head, lips parting but releasing no sound.

He almost thinks that this must be the limit of human pain until suddenly it doubles, triples, as the sword inside of him is pulled out. A fatal move, he knows. His mind cannot help but remind him calmly that one should never remove an object from a wound until there is a healer ready to begin surgery. His knees collapse and his mind is focusing on the strangest things, skittering away from the gaping hole in his chest. The mud from his jutsu is uncomfortable underneath his knees. A single patch of grass in front of him has somehow avoided being churned with the rest of the dirt, shimmering a rich wet green like a beacon of growth in the midst of so much death just as Hashirama stands amidst the waves of dismissal from his own people and dreams his dreams of peace. His skin feels warm and it strikes him as odd; doesn’t every cliché say that he should feel cold?

Distraction only works for so long, just the few seconds it takes for his form to slump forward. His core is damaged, weak, and he finds he does not have the strength to hold himself upright. The same moment that his shoulder impacts the ground, bearing the brunt of his weight and dragging a piteous groan from his lips, the air is rent by a terrible screeching. Touka, he thinks distantly. She’s seen him fall.

From the corner of his vision he can see the older version of himself standing straight, holding out his own hands and looking down at them with the strangest expression of relief. Incredibly, his fingers are rapidly becoming translucent, fading in to the air around him as the rest of him begins to do the same.

“Ah, yes,” he murmurs in his broken voice. “I am disappearing, erased by an earlier death. As it should be.”

Just barely a dozen feet away Hashirama and Madara stand in perfect stillness, their weapons still resting against each other yet neither paying attention to their opponent any longer. Hashirama gapes openly when this strange vision of his brother begins to stagger towards him with one arm stretching to reach out to him in supplication.

“Brother,” the fading man calls. “Brother…how I’ve missed you…”

Mere inches before their skin can touch the fading completes itself, turning a solid man in to shards of light that scatter on the fading breeze. Another moment passes. Touka screams again and it’s as though her voice shatters the stillness. Hashirama dashes forward towards his fallen brother with a cry of his own, sinking to his knees in the mud and pulling the younger man in to his lap.

The entire battlefield holds its breath, both Senju and Uchiha, as Hashirama presses two fingers to his sibling’s neck. When he sobs with relief and lights his hands with the glow of healing green a collective shudder passes through them all, even some of the Uchiha who fear for their life each time they leave the compound without the safety of their second heir’s presence. Izuna himself backs away from the scene they make slowly, crawling to his brother’s side and watching as Touka hurls herself down in his place, a fierce light in her eyes where there would be tears on a weaker woman.

“How can I help?” she demands.

“Chakra,” Hashirama grunts. “I’ll need chakra. He’s already too far from me.”

“Take mine. Take all of it.”

“He wouldn’t want your life in exchange for his.” By contrast, Hashirama’s face streams openly with tears and he shakes his head, expression solemn and regretful as he shatters inside. “That isn’t his way.”

Madara slips an arm around Izuna’s shoulder and gestures to the rest of his forces without looking at them. Not a single one of them protest when he signals the retreat. There is no honor to be found in senseless slaughter, in striking while the enemy mourns, and so the Uchiha begin to slip away in silence. Madara and Izuna are the last to go, watching in amazement as one by one the Senju fighters approach their leader and kneel, offering their chakra to heal the man who fell.

How is he so precious, they wonder, the man who feels nothing?

It’s a question they have no need to ask out loud, one they already know the answer to. All kin are precious. More than bodies to fall and soldiers to expend, their family are their anchors in this blood-soaked ocean of death, more precious than jewels no matter that very few of them live to see their third decade. All shinobi are born to die but they are born loved. Learning to fight does not mean they forget how to feel.

Madara turns his brother away but looks back one more time for himself. He watches the friend he once considered a brother, the tears streaming down his face as he begs the body under his hands to hold on for just a little longer. He watches the man he thought the most bloodthirsty of them all bleed out from a wound none of them understand. If he survives there will be answers. Only he will ever be able to explain how there came to be two Tobiramas, how one of them looked old and worn, the desperation on his face as he reached for Hashirama, why he chose to kill himself instead of his greatest enemies.

As a man who hates unsolved mysteries Madara wants those answers. And as a brother who recognizes that Izuna could have been the one bleeding out in his arms instead, well, it leaves him hoping for something he never thought he would ever hope for.

He hopes Tobirama survives. Not just for his own sake but for Hashirama as well. For the first time in his life he understands that the only way for either of them to come out on top in this senseless war is for one to lose their precious brother, their last surviving sibling. If he cannot even contemplate the idea of surviving so much pain himself how can he possibly ask Hashirama to do the same? How can he ask anyone to suffer losses he won’t?

Perhaps it is time to revisit old dreams at last.

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of January 29th, 2020

Best of this Week: Conan the Barbarian #12 - Jason Aaron, Mahmud Asrar, Matthew Wilson and Travis Lanham

“He will tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.” - The Nemedian Chronicles.

It’s been quite some time since we’ve done a Conan review and this one took a long time to come out, but it was well worth the wait. After eleven absolutely fantastic issues of sword and sorcery, blood and sex, monsters and men, we’ve reached the end of the “Death of Conan” arc and BOY was it satisfying. Jason Aaron, Mahmud Asrar, Matthew Wilson and Travis Lanham absolutely pay off this amazing story, wrap it up in a nice neat bow for the next creative team and even prepare for the next great story.

Razza and Zazella, the children of the Crimson Witch, have been following Conan since the day he killed their mother, waiting for the perfect time to kill him to resurrect their God, Razazel. Throughout his many years of adventuring, Conan has killed and slaughtered and escaped death more times than any man in the history of the Hyborian Age could ever claim and this has strengthened the potency of his blood for his sacrifice. The tenth issue saw the kids bring Conan back to the Temple of Razazel after near fatal injuries and offering his blood to the Old God.

This issue begins with a short flashback to Conan actually saving the twins years before they meet again. Shortly before bandits try to press gang them onto a ship, Conan swoops in and makes short work of the brigands, gaining the ire of Razza in the process. The Kids are “grateful” for his intervention before walking away, but this is a grave insult to them considering their hatred towards the Cimmerian and the fact that he murdered their mother. This is made even worse by the fact that the kids made a vow to not gloat or talk at the altar when they kill him, but they do just that without confirming his death later on.

When we finally get into the swing of things Asrar, Wilson and Lanham spare no expense when giving readers the action they’ve been waiting for. Asrar shows Conan’s speed and strength as he uses a small boulder to knock Zazella’s sharp, jagged teeth out of her mouth with the rock blurring as he swings it down and Razza looks on in shock. Wilson gives the background and Razazel’s blood roots life through vibrant reds, almost as if to make the reader feel them pumping with evil. Lanham sells Conan’s yell of anger as he strikes with a hearty “RRRRGGH!” word bubble and emphasizing Zazella’s words of fear and disbelief.

After that amazing splash page, Conan rips the daggers out of his chest and faces off against the now monstrous children and the mostly revived Razazel. The fight is dynamic with Conan doing his best to avoid the many mouthed horror that is Razazel. The otherworldly demon could be absolutely horrifying for those with trypophobia as his many mouths look like a cluster of holes, but Wilson gives him a deadlier, darker red to make him amongst the background. Conan, as always, isn’t afraid of the monster and gives him hell throughout the fight.

Conan isn’t just a man, he is an extraordinary man. As stated in a previous review, Conan has fought lesser demons from the depths of hell, beasts of all kinds and monsters that dwarfed him by GREAT margins. He has slain them all and even spat in the face of his own God, Crom at the precipice of death. So Razazel is just another walk in the park for the King of Aquilonia. He thinks nothing of slicing at the fingers of the Old God and even when he’s grabbed and the many mouths are biting and gnawing at him, he just slices at the veins on the walls.

Of course, even Conan still falls prey to the numbers game and with grievous injuries, the Twins begin to overpower him after a good fight. Asrar frames their fight with a fleeting sense of hope as the shot pulls away with each successive panel and more blood is ripped from Conan. Wilson emphasizes this with the backgrounds seemingly getting more red as Conan’s death nears and Lanham excellently places Aaron’s narration of the importance of Conan’s blood out of the way of the action, but still easily readable as you navigate the panels.

And the importance of Conan’s blood cannot be understated as it plays a vital role in the outcome of this battle. One of the better aspects of Aaron’s run thus far is that it has built on Robert E. Howard’s mythos of the character and his amazing feats, but he’s also added something more unexpected in the form of...a legacy, a son: Conn or Conan II. In one splash page, Aaron and Asrar turn the tables as we’re greeted with this child/teenager that’s the spitting image of his father, sword in hand and highlighted amongst his flanking soldiers as they all stare down the monstrous children and their King wounded on the ground.

Now, of course there may be some complaints that Conan having a child ruins his nomadic and loner image, but I argue that this adds a new depth to the character. We’ve seen how fatherhood adds a new layer in characters like Superman and Kratos, improving their stories for the better, so I’m fully on board with it. We’ve already had hundreds of stories of Conan being alone with his throne so exploring a newfound relationship with his boy, teaching him how to be a strong Cimmerian, is something that I didn’t know I wanted until I’d gotten a taste.

Asrar and Wilson continue to sell the horror of things as Conan’s Black Dragon Knights take the fight to the Twins and Razazel. Razza and Zazella make pretty short work of a few of them; Ripping them apart, crushing their heads and even tossing one of them into one of the mouths of Razazel’s forearm in a gruesome display. As they viciously kill and maim Conan’s men, Razza takes pride in his sister and their “soon to come” victory until Conan brutally decapitates him in the middle of his speech. Much like their mother, he survives this and hilarious asks Zazella to throw his head at Conan.

The great Warrior King wastes no time and dispatches Zazella as well, tossing them both into the hole. Conn instructs the soldiers to cut the veins, but Razazel is still hanging on. So Conan does what he does best and leaps into danger. Asrar makes him look like a madman with anger in his eyes, two gaping chest wounds where the kids stabbed him, and his sword in hand about to cut the vein that Razazel is hanging from. Victory is finally at hand when we see Razza, Zazella and Razazel falling into the abyss, defeated by the blood of Conan.

I have to say that there was not a single bad issue in this entire run and this one itself as beyond spectacular. One of the main things that I love about Conan is the simplicity of the character and how anyone can write him, but it takes a REALLY GOOD writer to make you care about him. Throughout the entirety of this series, Jason Aaron held the swinging axe over Conan’s head, dangling it closer and closer with each subsequent issue and victory. At points, I actually thought Aaron might actually do it and end the life of Conan, but deep down we all knew that Conan would emerge victorious.

Mahmud Asrar and Matthew Wilson worked amazingly together on the many issues that they had, capturing the feel of the Hyborian Age with intensity in fights, strong colors and solid inks throughout. I thought Marvel would tone down the violence of the character, but their art and the other artists throughout this book never shied away from the sheer brutality that Conan was capable of. They made sure that this felt like a genuine Conan experience like Dark Horse did during their tenure with the character and much like Marvel did in the 80s. Conan never looked weak and even in defeat he was still a terrifyingly powerful sight to behold.

All in all, I’m excited for more Conan stuff after this. Jim Zub and Roge Antonio take ver the main Conan series after this issue and both of them are very good with writing and art, but Aaron is continuing his story with a King Conan book later this year. Not only that, we’ve got Battle for the Serpent Crown to look forward to, more Savage Avengers and a Dark Agnes miniseries on the way… 2020 is looking like a good year for Conan.