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shipaholic · 4 years ago

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Omens Universe, Chapter 14, Part 1

Warnings! Asphyxiation, child endangerment.

Link to next part at the end. (From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

---

Chapter 14

Oh.

Shit.

Zadkiel grabbed Adam. His hands engulfed the boy’s shoulders. Had he always been this tiny? Focus, focus -

“Adam, reality will listen to you. You are in control. Anything that you believe will come true.” Desperation tried to worm into his voice. He held it at bay. “Listen to me. You can hear me talking, right? That means there’s air. You can breathe, you just have to believe there’s air. Come on now.”

Spacedog was hollering. Adam clutched the dog to his chest, painfully tight. His arms were as pale as death.

Zadkiel made a strangled noise. He pulled Adam into a bear hug and dived.

Proxima Centauri B rushed up to meet him. He was breaking most laws of physics right now. He punched through the atmosphere, and didn’t bother to slow his descent as they streaked to the ground, miles of hard earth and marbled mud coming in fast -

Zadkiel burned through the alien sky, flaming like a meteor, and pasted himself on the rocky landscape.

His one safety protocol was to make sure Adam landed on top of him.

With a small explosion, Crowley and Aziraphale were flung apart like rag dolls.

Spacedog wriggled free and tried to lick Adam’s face. The space helmet got in the way. Spacedog pushed it into Adam’s cheek and frantically licked the glass. He whined, a piteous, unbroken sound.

The sprawled bodies did not move.

Then Adam’s face gave a twitch.

“Stop that, you silly Spacedog.”

Spacedog yapped his head off and ran around in circles.

Adam flexed his fingers, experimentally. They still held the Book.

Crowley and Aziraphale realised they had escaped being discorporated. To their dismay, this meant they had to move. They managed to roll over and flop towards Adam and each other. Sitting up could wait.

“You alright, Adam?” Crowley said without moving his lips.

Adam got the gist, even with none of the consonants. “Yeah. Thanks. It’s cool that you did that without being in a rocket.”

“Hell yeah,” Crowley managed.

“I’m so sorry, my dear boy,” Aziraphale said to Adam, just slightly more coherently than Crowley. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“He’s fine, children bounce,” Crowley said, his eyes closed.

Aziraphale tutted. “You’re incorrigible,” he said. Or tried to. It proved a little too difficult in his current state.

Crowley cracked an eye open. “Did you say I’m ineffable?”

“In. Corri. Gible.”

“Good. We don’t use that kind of language in front of the kid.”

Adam sat up, wincing. Spacedog leapt into his arms and tried once more to mash the fishbowl helmet into his face.

~*~

When they’d all recovered a bit, they took in their surroundings.

Crowley had been to the Grand Canyon. Proxima Centauri B was like that, but stranger. Its winding rock tunnels and quarries were an odd, half-melted brown. The sun was low in the sky, either setting or rising, no-one was sure. It was a shockingly pinkish-red, in a night sky tinged a deeper, richer purple than any twilight on Earth.

Crowley tried to appreciate it. It was home, now. And presumably, forever.

Perhaps he just wasn’t in the mood. They were all a bit on-edge. Aziraphale kept sneaking glances at Adam to check he was still breathing. The damn green dog seemed perfectly at home, but that just put Crowley in a worse mood.

He skulked at the back of the group, hands in his pockets. Aziraphale fell back and stood beside him.

“You changed back,” he said, nodding to Crowley’s outfit.

“Eh, yeah. White was never my colour.”

“I suspect it isn’t mine, either,” Aziraphale said, softly.

Crowley’s gaze slipped over the brown and blue and gold of him.

“No. You’ve a bit more character than that,” he said.

Aziraphale smiled up at him from under his lashes. There was a flicker of intent to that look. Heat crawled up Crowley’s neck.

Adam giggled nearby as Spacedog swam laps around his head. They turned to watch him.

“Do you think he’s still the Antichrist, out here?” Aziraphale said.

“Is that a, strand the King of Spain in outer space, is he still a King, kind of thing?”

“I suppose that’s an interesting question. Although I meant it more in a, does he still have his powers out here, kind of thing.”

Crowley’s eyes lingered on the frolicking dog. He sighed. “I think he probably does.”

Aziraphale looked grim. “Poor old Earth,” he murmured.

Crowley shook his head. “If we’d just got on the portal and not let him yammer on about the dog…”

“I didn’t think,” Aziraphale said, sadly.

“Me neither. And I’ve got no excuse. Beelzebub briefed us on that hellhound for an entire Thursday afternoon.”

They watched the boy and dog in silence.

“I suppose it is the Earth that will still - ahm. Be affected by his powers?”

“How do you mean?”

“There’s no chance he’s brought Armageddon with him?”

They stared at each other. They peered at the sky. No sudden rains of blood or other omens appeared.

“Nah, reckon it’s probably still going to happen on Earth.”

Aziraphale looked miserable.

Crowley put a hand on his arm. “Hey. All we could do was get out.”

“I know.”

“Don’t torture yourself.”

Aziraphale mustered a weak smile.

They watched Adam rooting around for a stick to throw for Spacedog. He found a sturdy one right at his feet that was the right size and hurled it across the marsh. Spacedog took off after it, yipping. It was unclear how, in the helmet, he was going to bring it back.

“There isn’t any wood on this planet,” Aziraphale said, carefully.

Crowley nodded glumly. “Guess that confirms it. Reality still bends to his will.” He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I doubt this planet has much of an atmosphere.”

“Mmm, yes. That should have been our first clue.”[1]

“I think a regular child would have frozen to death while he was floating in space.” And/or exploded. Crowley felt he’d seen something like that in a film once.

“...This wasn’t a very child-friendly plan, was it?”

“You’re just noticing this now? We kidnapped an eleven-year-old from his parents.”

“You talked me into it.”

“Of course I did. Demon.”

“A temptation worthy of a commendation,” Aziraphale said, with only a trace of a scolding.

Crowley turned and slipped his arms around Aziraphale’s neck.

“They’ll have to put it in a cannon and fire it into space. Hope it reaches me in a few thousand years.”

Aziraphale chuckled. It was a wonderfully warm, wry sound. It always sounded like he knew he was getting away with something. Crowley watched the tips of his hair stain pink in the alien sun.

Suddenly, Aziraphale’s face fell.

“Crowley, we don’t have to teach him maths, do we?”

~*~

Half an hour later, the euphoria wore off.

Adam trudged across the squishy, marshy ground, investigating his new territory. Spacedog trotted at his heels. Aziraphale and Crowley stood and kept an eye on him from a distance. It was nice, like an amiable family walk across a muddy field in late September.

And then, like an amiable family walk across a muddy field in late September, the mood soured. The mud that had been fun to tromp through sunk through the soles of the walking shoes that were supposed to be waterproof. The rustic landscape grew dreary. That cow had a mean look in its eye.

In other words, it dawned on Adam that he hadn’t eaten for hours, the alien planet all looked the same for miles around, there was a shocking dearth of cinemas, sweet shops or comic books in this area of the galaxy, he would never see his family again, and he had very recently almost died. Also, he forgot to bring snacks.

A suspicion had brewed at the back of his mind for a few hours now. It bubbled away, growing, gaining certainty. Now, grubby, cold and hungry, it was time to ask.

“Are you two actually aliens?”

Aziraphale and Crowley were having a murmured grown-up conversation behind him. They stopped. Their faces went blank in the way grown-up’s faces went when they were thinking how to lie to him.

“Perhaps it’s time to drop the pretence,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley frowned. “It’s not like the truth is any less weird.”

“I dislike lying, on general principle.”

“I’m in favour of lying, on general principle. Let’s compromise and say nothing.”

“You know full well that would be a lie of omission. Don’t think I’m going to start falling for tricks like that after six thousand years -”

“Would you both just stop talking?” Adam said loudly.

They shut up.

“You’re always talking rubbish and I don’t understand it.”

Adam frowned. He held the Book under one arm. For a moment, he heard its pages rustle.

“My whole life is just everyone talking rubbish at me, all the time. Nothing anyone’s ever told me made any sense. Like the stuff about how I was going to destroy the world. And then you two, with the alien stuff. I just believed it because everything was so weird, it’s not like aliens could be any weirder. The only person I’ve ever met who seemed like they properly knew what was going on was that woman back in the car. She’s the one who left me this.” He hefted the Book in his arms. “I’ve got more proper answers from this than I’ve got from anyone, ever.”

“What is that?”

Aziraphale took a step towards him.

Adam’s arms tightened around the Book. Spacedog leapt in front of him and growled.

Aziraphale blinked and halted. Crowley held out an arm.

A chill wind picked up.

“That woman was the only person who seemed like she wanted to help me and tell me what was really going on, and she said I shouldn’t leave. She said it was a mistake to leave. And I didn’t listen. And you zapped her away.” Adam pointed at Crowley.

Crowley inched backwards. “Hang on, I was under a lot of stress…”

“And you grew wings and flew around that bookshop. Aliens don’t do that. You didn’t look like an alien, back then, you looked more like…”

Adam stopped.

“I shouldn’t have come with you,” he muttered.

Aziraphale and Crowley stared at each other.

“You remember you forced us to bring you, right?” Crowley pointed out. “Just saying.”

Aziraphale frowned and nudged him.

The wind whipped at them. Adam was only in a t-shirt. He wasn’t cold.

“I want to go home,” he said.

It was not the lament of a lost child. The words resonated around the landscape. Aziraphale and Crowley felt them down to the bones.

A whirring pulse sounded from high above them, faintly. Nobody glanced up, but a prickle of warning ran up their necks.

“I don’t have to be here. You said reality will listen to me. She said the same thing. In this book.”

An emerald-green spotlight shone down on Adam. The wind became a roaring gale. It whipped Adam’s t-shirt. He stared down Aziraphale and Crowley through eyes that were suddenly dark under the livid green light.

Crowley squinted into the sky.

He said, “What.”

Aziraphale kept his eyes on Adam. Carefully, as though the boy were a skittish animal, he raised his hands towards him.

“Adam, we were not honest with you. I apologise. It is our fault you are in this mess. There are forces at work that it was too difficult to explain to you. You see -”

“Angel, you should take a look at this,” Crowley interrupted.

“Not now, Crowley!”

“Aziraphale, it’s a goddamned flying saucer.”

Aziraphale looked up.

A round, whirring alien spacecraft hovered in the sky above them.

“What,” he said.

Adam stood in the disco-glow of the green spotlight. Furious pulses of wind flapped down on him. He met Crowley’s eyes with a long, hard stare. Spacedog’s hackles rose.

Crowley blinked first. He edged back, one hand on Aziraphale’s arm.

The flying saucer whirred and spun. In a series of loops, it meandered down to the surface of Proxima Centauri B. It let out a gust of steam as it settled like a soggy cake.

A door opened in its side with a hiss.

A ramp descended, and three aliens got out. Two of them were green. The third was a small hump with wheels and an egg-whisker sticking out of it. It quickly got stuck in a marshy patch and made some angry distress noises that the other two ignored.

Adam stood like a king greeting foreign dignitaries as the remaining two aliens walked over to him.

“Hello,” he said.

The alien leader, who had a face like a duck,[2] approached first. “Adam Dowling?”

Adam squinted up at her. The spotlight was still blinding. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“All right, sir. I believe you called for a taxi service.” The alien looked slightly put out to be used as such, but she hid it well. “We’re here to take you back to Earth.”

“Erm,” Crowley said. “Hang on.”

Everyone ignored him, to his relief. He had no idea what he would have said next.

Adam followed the aliens back to their saucer. The slightly taller alien helped the pepper-pot alien back up from where it had tipped over in the mud.

“Wait - Adam -” Aziraphale called.

Crowley put an arm around him. Neither moved to follow. Without speaking, they conceded that this was going to happen whether or not they found it plausible.

The three aliens shuffled back up the gangplank. The round, beeping alien left a long streak of mud as it trundled inside the spaceship. Adam and Spacedog walked behind them.

A scrap of paper flapped loose from inside the Book. The wind carried it directly to Aziraphale. He caught it reflexively.

Adam reached the top of the gangplank and vanished without a backward glance. The spaceship door sealed shut.

The spaceship made a Whomm Whomm Whomm noise and floated into the air. It wobbled a bit, and then streaked into the stratosphere, leaving a green comet trail behind it.

The howling gale abruptly blew itself out. The planet’s surface was deafeningly quiet.

Nothing broke the calm but a tiny green speck in the sky, already winking out of sight.

---

[1] When you only breathe out of habit, you stop thinking about things like oxygen.

[2] “Ducks,” Crowley almost blurted, as a Pavlovian response.

(Link to next part)

#omens universe fic #omens universe #good omens fic #good omens #ineffable husbands #steven universe #ahhhhh the most batshit chapter of all #bless #I enjoy those aliens #the Dalek-y one is from Book Omens #I'm pretty sure I stole all the jokes about it from there but it's been a little while since I read it #I'm sorry about how hard I went with the cartoon physics I don't know how space works and none of these idiots do either

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lamiasluck · 5 years ago

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Freed From Solitary

(Thank you @xpouii again for the prompt! I started this immediately after watching heist lol)

Summary: The new egos arrived and now live with the rest of the egos. For the most part, it all goes well! Illinois and Captain fit in perfectly! However, Yancy finds himself out of his element with the new environment. The new house is far more different than the prison, and Yancy begins to miss his old "home". As he wallows in his homesickness, someone notices how distant he's acting. Eric can spot his anxieties from a mile away and tries his best to help the newbie.

Characters: Eric Derekson and Yancy

Words: 1639

Read on AO3!

The others weren’t sure what to do with Yancy when he arrived. Illinois and Captain were fine, more eccentric personalities to match the rest, but Yancy? Yancy was a new case.

On the surface everything seemed fine, at first he seemed standoffish, but no one blamed him. It was a new place to get used to, after all. However, a keen eye could notice something deeper behind that cool attitude. They could see it in the ways he kept his responses short, in the fact that he found any excuse to lock himself in his room, and by seeing how awkward he acted. Which is why Eric began to worry about the newest ego.

It didn’t take long for Eric to notice something awry, though he was surprised that no one else could tell. Maybe it was because they didn’t know how to deal with shy personalities. Eric knew that fact very well. But Yancy didn’t seem shy like him, just… out of place. It would take awhile before Eric mustered up the courage to confront him about that. Yancy was still a criminal, after all.

The final breaking point really was the fact that Eric never saw Yancy eat with the other egos. Usually, all of the egos ate together with a chosen few trusted to cook, aka Eric. However, Yancy never showed up, honestly Eric has never seen him get food in general. The hospitable part of him just won’t have that, not even his nervousness could compete. So he prepared a neat plate of leftovers after the egos finished dinner and made a beeline for Yancy’s room.

Whatever anxiety was still plaguing him was too late to stop him from knocking on the door. Though he was shaking slightly.

The door cracked open and Yancy peaked at his visitor. “Oh, it’s youse.” He fully opened the door with a confused expression. “Eric, yeah? Whatcha want?”

“Um, I just - just noticed that you, um…” Eric fidgeted under Yancy’s questioning gaze. “You - you weren’t at dinner so, um, I got you food.” He hastily offered the plate.

“Oh.” Yancy nodded and took the plate of - delicious looking - food. He glanced between Eric and the plate with suspicion. “Thanks, but… what’s in it for youse?”

“W-What? Nothing!” Eric said, perhaps a bit too quickly for Yancy’s taste. “I-I mean… it’s just - it’s just that… you’re never around for dinner or lunch s-so… I got worried.”

“Youse worried about me?” Yancy said softly, moreso to himself than to Eric. His heart wept as he stared at Eric’s shaking form slightly shifting side to side and keeping his gaze to the floor, no doubt worrying about a hundred things at once. He cleared his throat before he could actually cry. “Sorry ‘bout that, I usually eat later.”

Everyday on the hour. He could only eat at this time, shower at this time, sleep at this time… Over and over again. It was autopilot at this point. The other egos schedules just didn’t align with his system. The system he was conditioned with.

“It’s okay! No worries, It’s okay,” Eric reassured. “I-I can, um…” He raised a hand to grasp at his shirt collar, “I can start cooking later. If-If you want-! It’s just that you’re missing the others and stuff.”

Yancy scratched the back of his neck. “You don’t gotta worry ‘bout that. I’ll manage.”

“Oh. Oh… okay.” Eric continued to fiddle with his collar. His words kept getting stuck at the back of his throat, mind racing with a million different responses. “They’re… they’re not that scary, y’know?” he blurted out.

Yancy paused, only responding with a questioning noise. He was met with Eric finally looking up at him, doing his best to keep a determined gaze.

“I was nervous too,” he said, voice soft. Yancy found it amazing that someone could speak so quietly, so hesitantly. “I know - I know what it’s like… it’s not too bad, though.”

“Well, it’s not like that. I’m just not used to youse guys, is all.” He didn’t feel shy in the conventional sense, and certainly not to the extent of Eric’s case. It was simply abnormal. The people were too different, there were too many options… too much freedom. His brain couldn’t grasp the concept. He let out a heavy sigh as he stared at Eric’s still determined face. “You’re not gonna let this go, pipsqueak?”

Eric shook his head. He wondered if the nickname was supposed to intimidate him. People seemed to have an affinity to label him with cutesy title, so he had no clue.

“Alright, alright I’ll bite,” he huffed.

“W-Well, you don’t have to force yourself…” his voice quivered, eyebrows quirked upwards in worry. “If you wanna take your time I-I can - I can keep bringing you food here until you’re ready.”

“That’d be nice.” He nodded at Eric’s helpful words, smiling. “Thanks for the grub, pipsqueak.” Yancy reached over to ruffle Eric’s hair before he shut the door. Leaving Eric with a new job, nickname, and messed up hair.

There was another thing to add to Yancy’s ever changing routine. Everyday without fail, Eric went up to his room with a plate of whatever he cooked that day. As different as it was from prison food, he didn’t mind the variety for once. Besides, it wasn’t just the food he savoured.

Some days Eric stayed for a chat and they talked for hours about whatever was interesting. Or, more specifically, Yancy yammering on about prison and/or musicals and Eric listening intently, occasionally muttering thoughtful comments. Other days Eric quickly came by, dropped off his food, and bid farewell. Yancy didn’t mind either option.

He knew the others weren’t anything like Eric, but he figured he needed to join them at some point. His stomach dropped at the thought.

No, he couldn’t stay like this.

Isolation was a different type of hell altogether. Reminded him too much of solitary…

While surprised by his presence, most gave him a friendly welcome when he showed up at the kitchen table. Though it was Eric's reaction that made him give a genuine smile.

“How’s it goin’, pipsqueak?” Yancy surprised him by patting him on the shoulders while his back was turned.

Eric beamed at him. This time shaking from excitement rather than nerves. “You showed up! I-I mean - it’s good! It’s good.” He gestured to the pot of soup. “I’m… I’m almost done with this. You can, um, you wanna join the others?”

“Oh… right,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck as he glanced at the others. “Yeah, I guess I could…”

“Or you could… y-you could chop those potatoes for me?”

Eric smiled as Yancy’s mood instantly bounced up. “I guess can do that for youse.” Yancy cleared his throat, letting his cold guy act return once more. “Been meaning to brush up on the ol’ cooking skills anyways.” He clumsily twirled the knife and almost cut his finger.

“Pl-Please don’t get blood on them.” Eric giggled.

“Yeah, yeah…”

The two listened to the noises of various chatter from the egos while cooking in silence. Well, it was more like Eric doing most of the work and Yancy hovering with moral support. Reminded Yancy of kitchen duty, and dear god was he awful at cooking. Eric’s polite, but insistent suggestions to leave everything to him prevented Yancy from ruining the entire meal altogether. At least he cut the potatoes alright, sloppy, but passable.

“There’s a meeting after this,” Eric said while killing the stove’s fire. “Y-You can go… if-if you want-!” he continued, wiping his hands with a towel. Not all the egos went to the meetings. Honestly Eric didn't know what happened in them, probably malicious scheming considering Dark and Wilford run them.

“Ah… well, I ain’t got anything to add.” Yancy kept scratching the back of his neck mindlessly. The instinctual gesture hit far too close to home for Eric.

“Th-That’s okay! I don’t go to them either. Tonight Bing, King, and I were… were gonna watch some movies. The - The musicals you talked about, actually!” Eric rambled on.

“Oh yeah? Youse guys got a real treat then,” Yancy hummed. He could remember all the songs off the top of his head. Most find it surprising that he knows such an extensive knowledge on these things. But hey, what else is he going to do? Be dark and brooding all the time? Sounded tiring.

“Um… do you - do you wanna join us? I mean… I know you watched them already, but - but y’know?”

This time Yancy didn’t bother hiding his excitement, shining a bright smile. “Course I can watch it with youse!”

“Oh, good!” Eric smiled back. Though after some thought he furrowed his brows. “Have… have you met Bing and King? Are you - are you alright with them?”

“Yeah theys seem alright. I ain’t got any complaints.” Yancy shrugged, ignoring that pit in his stomach for now.

“Okay, s-sorry, just making sure. I-I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

Yancy smiled again, more sheepishly. “Thanks… you’s a good kid, pipsqueak.” He didn’t care that Eric was technically older, it was the thought that counts. “I’ve never dealt with a type like youse,” Yancy said with a hint of amazement. He laughed to himself as he muttered his next sentence. “Wouldn’t last a day where I’m from…”

“Wh-What…?”

“Nothin’, don’t worry ‘bout it.” A hearty pat on the back was all he reassured Eric with. Different environments, different people. A large part of him still felt out of his element. As he glanced at the talking egos, walked by the unlocked doors, and met personalities like Eric. It all violently shook him back to his reality. “We should get grub served, yeah? Come on, I’ll help ya out.”

But that doesn’t mean he’ll give up.

#eric derekson #Yancy #ahwm #markiplier #markiplier egos #fanfic

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shireness-says · 6 years ago

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If I Could See Your Face Once More (4/6)

Summary: This time, there’s no celebration at Granny’s when the latest crisis has been resolved. Instead, they’re left to deal with the body of Killian Jones. A 5B canon divergence where Killian dies in Camelot, never becoming a Dark One. Rated T for language. Also on AO3. ~8.3K. Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

A/N: I’m sorry for what’s about to happen. I promise I’ll fix it.

Thanks to @snidgetsafan for beta-ing, even if she’s mad at me, and to @csmarchmadness for getting me posting this in the first place. I’ll have the 5th chapter up as soon as I finish it.

Tagging: @thejollyroger-writer, @profdanglaisstuff, @captainsjedi, @ultraluckycatnd, @superchocovian, @snowbellewells, @killianjones4ever82, @wellhellotragic, @ohmakemeahercules, @let-it-raines, @lifeinahole27. Shoot me a message if you want to be added to the list!

Thanks for reading - let me know what you think!

Seeing Hades standing in the library, threatening the boy Killian views as a son, is the stuff of nightmares. Killian so distinctly remembers every blow, every cut, every bruise inflicted upon him in the god’s cavernous lair; he remembers, despite Hades’ suave exterior, exactly how furious he got when Killian refused to beg for mercy. It makes Killian’s blood run even colder within his dead veins to see that same… demon masquerading as man anywhere near Henry.

Hades mentioned a proposition, but Killian isn’t interested. “We’re not interested in deals, tyrant,” he growls back.

The god only hums though, like he’s got a secret. It just might worry Killian even more than the deal itself. “Are you sure? You might think differently once you have all the information. Reconsider, if you will.” Hades rolls his eyes as Belle pulls Henry further behind her across the room. “Honestly, you’ve got to stop that. What, you think I’m going to smite the kid down? Not my style.”

“What aren’t you telling us?” David demands, ignoring their enemy’s flat attempt at reassurance. Killian’s wondering the same thing - Emma’s father has always just been a bit more blunt about things. Not one for banter, that one.

“I’m sure you’ve discovered my lovely gift already? The personalized headstones? I’ve always been one for that personal touch, you know.” Hades, on the other hand, prefers to yammer away, in love with theatrics and the sound of his own voice. Killian would much rather he just get to the bloody point. “As time’s gone by, though, I’ve really found myself thinking I just didn’t do quite enough. I mean, you’ve got a child with you! How rude of me not to cater to the youth!”

“You didn’t,” Regina growls, as realization slowly dawns on all of them. Oh, gods. Killian feels sick to his stomach.

“Oh, but I did,” Hades confirms, smiling that slimy grin at the collected crowd as Belle instinctively holds Henry tighter. “Like I said: I don’t need to do any of that messy smiting business. Not when I can just add dear Henry’s name to one of those monuments. Neater, don’t you think?”

“You son of a bitch,” Killian spits. Only Emma’s tight grip on his hand and Liam throwing a cautionary arm across his chest keeps him from throwing himself at Hades, and he can spot the same blazing rage in everyone’s eyes. “I’ll kill you, I swear I will, you demon.”

“Good luck with that,” Hades replies, rolling his eyes. “We can either go that route - which won’t work, by the way, in case you’ve haven’t forgotten our lovely little interlude on my home turf before - or you can listen to my proposition.”

“We’re listening,” Liam says, casting a warning look in Killian’s direction. Hear him out, he’s silently saying. Know what you’re up against.

“The way I see it, you’ve got something I want, and I’ve got something you want. So, just give me the Olympian Crystal, and I’ll be happy to wipe all those headstones clean. Hell, I’ll even throw in a portal to get you all home in, say,” he makes a great show of looking at an oversized watch, “two hours.”

It’s a good deal, Killian knows. There had always been some uncertainty around how they would escape the Underworld once they had found a way to revive him, and now that Henry has been tossed into this mess… well, that’s non-negotiable. Henry’s safety, the safety of both his children comes before anything else. Killian would gladly throttle Hades with his bare hands, but not at Henry’s expense.

Emma’s always been an all-or-nothing type of woman, however. “And Killian?” she demands.

“Well, I can’t let a soul that’s rightfully mine just waltz out of here, you know. It’s just not good for business. I think I’ve been more than generous,” the god protests.

Emma looks like she’s about to snap and turn down the deal, but Killian interrupts before she gets the chance. “Give us a moment to talk.”

“Oh, of course. Important decisions, I understand. I’ll just be over here,” Hades says, poofing himself into one of the library chairs. Showoff. With their threat sedately seated to the side, crossing his legs in a deceptively casual manner, Belle and Henry take this moment to dart across the room to where everyone else is standing. Killian draws Henry into his arms just as soon as he’s close enough. The poor lad looks pale and worried, and all Killian wants is to alleviate that concern as much as he can.

(It also might be one of the last times Killian holds his boy if they take this deal like he thinks they should, but Killian is trying not to think about that yet.)

“You can’t seriously be thinking about taking Hades’ deal,” Emma hisses. “We are not leaving without you.”

“I’m more than thinking about it; I’ve made my decision. Emma, love, we’ve got to take his deal, it’s the only way,” he begs.

“I refuse to accept that. We came down here to save you, Killian, and I don’t intend to give up.”

“Emma, please,” he begs. “I love you, and I want to come home with you more than anything, but things have changed. It’s been bad enough to have your name on one of those tombstones, but Henry’s… I can’t live with myself, knowing that he’s trapped down here when there was another way to make sure you’re all safe. Henry’s safety has to be non-negotiable.” Killian looks around for support, desperate for any backup.

He finds it in an unexpected place. “He’s right, Emma,” Snow, the queen of hope herself, says softly. “We don’t have a plan for getting out of here, not really, and we definitely don’t have a way to remove our names from the headstones. This would solve both. I know you don’t want to leave Killian behind - none of us do, sweetheart. But you have to think of Henry, and the baby, and what’s best for them.”

“If we accept this, though… we give up our chance to save Killian,” Emma whispers, tears pooling at the bottom of her eyes and starting to slip down her cheeks. Killian can’t help but reach out to catch those tears; it’d be working against every instinct he possesses to deny that impulse to try and ease her pain.

“Actually,” Belle cuts in, “that might not be strictly true.” All eyes turn her direction, by turns curious and hopeful. “Henry and I think we found another way. I don’t want to say anything with Hades right over there but… we think there’s another way.”

“And it’s doable in that 2 hour window?” Robin asks.

“I believe so.”

“There’s really no question then, my love,” Killian says, just for Emma. Privately, he’s less hopeful about this last chance, but he can’t say that now, when his love is looking for any excuse to refuse the bargain. “Accept Hades’ deal. It’ll all work out, somehow.”

“I love you,” she says with a wobbly smile.

“And I you, my Swan.”

It feels like one of the ridiculous sports games Dave once forced him to watch as they uncluster from their tight huddle again. If not for the circumstances, it might almost make Killian laugh. But the circumstances are what they are, and it’s impossible to really embrace the humor when they’re about to possibly go bargain his resurrection away.

“So if we give you the stupid Crystal, you’ll let us go?” Emma demands, grasping Killian’s hand and refusing to let go. “Names cleared, one portal, no loopholes?”

“No loopholes,” Hades promises. The bastard even has the gall to look insulted at the implication he’d play anything but fair. “I’m a deity of my word, you know. I’ll even toss in a couple extra minutes to say goodbye, free of charge, just so the expiration lands on a nice neat quarter hour. Give me the Crystal, and the portal will open at 8:15pm.”

Emma still hesitates. Killian can understand that; even if they both know what must happen, putting that officially into motion is still hard. He squeezes her hand - in solidarity, in encouragement, in love, in everything else, and with a final nod, Emma finally takes the plunge.

“We’ll take your deal, then.”

“Excellent,” Hades grins, even such a happy gesture dripping with ooze on him. “I’ll take my prize, then.”

After a last pause, Emma reluctantly hands the Crystal over. In Hades’ hands, it briefly glows as if suddenly activated before becoming just a hunk of rock again. Killian tries to comfort himself with the fact that maybe that glow means they wouldn’t have been able to use the Crystal after all, even if it was still in their possession; it doesn’t work very well. The god waves his other hand in an almost dismissive gesture once he has the crystal, and what feels like a ripple of power chases through the room. That must have been him removing the headstones; Killian sure hopes so, otherwise they’re all doubly screwed.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” quips Hades. “Your portal will open an hour before in the cemetery and close at 8:15 on the dot, no transfers, no take backs, only one small carry-on allowed, take only pictures, leave only footprints, yada yada yada. Have a nice life.” And with another hand gesture, he disappears in a puff of red-tinged smoke.

“Well that was excessive,” Regina comments dryly. That might be the understatement of the year. “Now, Henry, what did you and Belle discover?”

“We think we figured out where the ambrosia bush is!” Henry bursts out, the excitement of his accomplishment practically seeping from his pores.

“Well done, lad!” congratulates Killian, slinging an affectionate arm around his boy’s shoulders.

“Not to be the skeptical one here, because I really do hope you have, but what makes you think you’ve discovered the ambrosia bush, Henry?” Robin asks. He truly doesn’t mean it as a criticism, Killian knows; Robin is just a practical sort, a man who likes having a plan before he rushes into a situation, unlike so many of these other heroes Killian’s thrown his lot in with.

Belle smiles though, as if to reassure Robin that no offense has been taken. “Well, we started thinking about all the places here in the Underworld and back in Storybrooke that are really significant. Like how Hades’ lair and the River of Souls are beneath the library. There were places we ruled out easily, like the diner or the well or Regina’s crypt, but then —”

“The mines!” Henry interrupts, before apologizing sheepishly to Belle. “We just thought… you know, the fairy dust comes from the mines. That’s, like, one of the town’s sources of magic. So we got to thinking… what if they’re hiding some other natural magic?”

“There are some curious stories about the mines,” Liam adds thoughtfully. “People have been known to go in and not come back out. It stands to reason.”

“We looked at the maps, and found a dead-end tunnel,” Belle continues. “There was also a mention in one of the books about some odd mechanisms in one of the tunnels. We think perhaps it’s some sort of door.”

“Perhaps to a secret, fabled plant,” Killian finishes. “Brilliant, lass.” It’s a long shot, certainly, but it’s also the best lead they have - especially when they’ve got a two hour time limit and no other options.

“Okay, so Killian and I will go see about the ambrosia, while the rest of you collect our things. And, you know, the baby and Zelena. We’ll meet you in the cemetery.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Emma’s father asks. “You two going off on your own like that?”

“Maybe it’s not, but someone needs to keep an eye on Henry, and I remember how tightly you stuffed those backpacks when we came down in the first place. We’ll be fine,” Emma replies.

“Are you sure?” Snow cuts in. “Your father or I would be happy to come with you —”

“It’s fine, Mom. Seriously, we’ll meet you by Regina’s crypt when we’re done.”

Somehow, she manages to convince Snow to leave and follow Regina and Robin out. Before Henry trails along after, Killian pulls him into a tight embrace.

“I’m proud of you, my boy,” he whispers into Henry’s hair. Gods willing, the ambrosia will be exactly where Henry and Belle think it is, will be the answer to all their prayers, but Killian’s not taking any chances. If worst comes to worst, and this is the last time he sees Henry, Killian wants to imprint every detail into his very soul.

“Thanks,” Henry mumbles back, before pulling back with determination glinting in his eyes. “It’s going to work, you know. It has to.”

“Ah, well of course it will if the Truest Believer decrees it so,” Killian smiles back, forcing all of his worry down to give Henry this moment. “Now, why don’t you go ask that brother of mine about the time he sent us all chasing after a sea monster?”

Henry happily leaps off to catch up to where Liam waits at the door. Catching his brother’s eye, they exchange nods. Liam will keep an eye on the lad, make sure he doesn’t run off into any foolhardy side quests.

“A sea monster?” Emma asks at his side, her tone somewhere between confusion and amusement.

“A particularly clever dolphin, as it turns out,” he explains. “At the time Liam was absolutely convinced we had discovered some mystical new creature. Blatantly abused his new power as captain to go chasing the bloody thing. You didn’t want your parents’ assistance?” he volleys back.

“I mostly wasn’t in the mood for some dramatic hope speech,” Emma admits. “Or Dad trying to, like, fight the door. Or something. I love them, but if time is of the essence or whatever you’d say…”

“I understand completely,” Killian chuckles. “We’ve always made a good team, you and I.” And they have - right from the beginning, even before the romance and the second chances and the deep, undying love, they’d always worked more effectively together than any other way. It should have been a sign, right there back on the beanstalk; Killian is only glad he embraced it before it was too late.

The trek from the library to the mine entrance is quicker than Killian expected, just down to the end of Main Street before walking down a wooded path. It’s probably overreacting to try and help Emma over and around every minor obstacle in their way - roots and stones and the like - but he does anyways, trying to infuse his love and concerned affection into every touch. If the way Emma smiles even as she rolls her eyes is any indication, she knows that already, has accepted it. Now is the time to hover, anyways; as much as Killian tries not to think about how these could be their last minutes together, it proves impossible to entirely banish that pesky little whispering voice from his head. Instead, he caters to the voice by trying to memorize every little detail of her hands - the little spots of dry skin between her fingers and the half-formed calluses where her fingers and palm meet and the odd little scar further down her palm that he knows is from a childhood tumble on rough gravel, not to mention the very specific way she likes to weave their fingers together (her pinky on the outside, always on the outside, or she’ll untangle them just to rearrange them the way she likes). He loves every part of her - every silly little detail that seems so frivolous and unimportant to anyone else but is everything to him.

(She’s everything to him. Gods, he hopes this works, because he’s tried an afterlife without her already and could barely stand it. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if this doesn’t work.)

The mines themselves are a dark series of tunnels carved into what must have been an existing cave that mostly remind Killian of why he’s glad to be a man of the seas. Even with the electrical switch flipped to switch on a rickety, buzzing series of bulbs, the atmosphere is cloying and claustrophobic, every surface rough from where the tunnels were hewn directly from the stone.

“Careful, love,” he cautions, carefully making his way down ahead of her to test for uneven ground.

Her returning eye roll is less affectionate this time. “I’ve been down to the mines before, Killian,” she reminds him. “Remember how I slayed a dragon? I’m fine.”

The words are rather undermined by a subsequent stumble, making Killian huff in fond exasperation. Bloody stubborn woman. At least it’s an excuse to draw Emma in close against his side - for safekeeping and for comfort.

“I don’t know how you think you’ll be able to handle the map like this,” she grumbles as Killian’s fingers begin stroking gently along her side, just in that place between her bony hip and the soft curve of the Bean.

“Simple. I’ll let you hold it instead,” he replies, only half jokingly. Time is of the essence, but handling the map seems like such a waste when he could be imprinting the feel of her skin between every ridge of his fingertips.

“Smartass,” she mutters with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

It’s the easiest thing in the world, even facing such a terrifying uncertainty, to drop a soft kiss on the side of Emma’s head. “And you love me for it.”

“I do,” she sighs dramatically, before stretching to kiss the back ridge of his jaw in turn. It’s always been one of her favorite spots when it’s just the two of them. Killian pulls Emma even closer against his side as she does so, closing his eyes to better savor the moment.

(It’s not the last, it’s not the last, it can’t possibly be the last… but what if it is? What if he’s forced to live off the memory of her soft lips against the corner of his jaw for the rest of eternity?)

The darkness and close quarters of the mine become no less cloying the deeper they travel, and Killian finds himself clinging to Emma not just for her own safety, but to impart a sense of security to himself as well. In the cave-like environment, the only constants are her warmth against his side and the rocky path they walk along continuously sloping downwards. The map proves to be a blessing as tunnels split again and again, creating a confusion of passageways they’d never have been able to navigate without Henry and Belle’s careful charting. Eventually, the bulbs run out when they get too deep into the maze of the mine, replaced instead by torches, somewhat reminiscent of his and Emma’s little adventure to the past and to Regina’s dungeons. By some miracle, Killian finds a bar matchbook in one of his jacket’s pockets, keeping Emma from having to use her magic. She’s grown more confident again in its use, and more convinced the worst of her exhaustion spells are over, but Killian is decidedly less persuaded. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to his love and the Bean all the way down here. Emma may roll her eyes at the way he frantically starts patting at pockets until he finds the matches, but it really does make him feel better about the situation. Once one is lit, it’s just a matter of continuing to light wall torches along the rest of their way as necessary until they reach the end of their journey through the mines.

Their path finally leads to an elevator, of all things. The walls are even closer down here, barely excavated, and as they squeeze past a last outcropping before the chamber widens for the elevator doors, it’s easy for Killian to understand how this isn’t common knowledge. It’s not something anyone would stumble across on accident by any means. Curiously, he notes that the elevator itself looks an awful lot like the one in the library, both down here and up above in the real world. It’s obvious that contrary to appearances, there is some greater design to this place, even if just in the initial structure.

Killian has some mild concern about the stability of the car, but when he cautiously steps a foot in and allows his weight to shift onto the metal platform, it holds without issue, barely shifting at his weight. Reassured as to the safety of the conveyance, he can finally reach back for Emma. “Milady?” he offers with a smile as he extends a hand back in her direction. It’s such a small thing, but so worth it for the laugh Emma emits as she grasps his hand and boards the elevator car. He’ll do anything to hear that laugh.

“I hope you know how to work this thing,” she jokes, “because I sure as hell don’t.”

It’s easy enough to operate, as things turn out. Though there is a hand crank attached to one wall, the car begins its descent as soon as the cage gate is closed, eliminating the need for any effort on their part. That’s a relief, frankly - Killian’s not sure how well he would have been able to turn the crank with just his one hand, and allowing Emma to do it herself is far out of the question, at least if Killian has any say in it. It feels like the ride downwards takes forever, despite the surprisingly rapid speed, but they pass it in silence, Killian choosing to express himself in the soft rub of his thumb against the back of Emma’s hand as they descend rather than with words.

It’s damn near impossible to see more than a foot beyond their faces when the elevator opens, even with the torch held aloft, but as he and Emma begin lighting the other torches conveniently spread along the walls, he’s pleased to discover that they’re in a wide open space. The persistent feeling of dread still niggles within his empty chest, but the greater space at least helps abate the feeling that the entire world is collapsing in on him, ready to crush him and Emma deep within the earth. A massive set of doors dominates one side of the doors, covered

with intricate metalwork; the lack of evident hinges would suggest that the portal opens inwards, away from the chamber they currently inhabit, but when Killian experimentally presses against the panels, he’s met with resistance. From the feel of things, the door is barred from the opposite side. He shouldn’t be surprised, really; if the contents of the inner chamber are as powerful as they’re rumored to be, a plant with the power to restore life back to the dead, it would stand to reason that there would be some challenge or test to acquire it.

Perhaps that’s where the other device in the room comes in - a set of scales upon a circular table, this one with words in a foreign script encircling the edge.

“Of course it can’t be in plain English,” Emma mutters, frowning ferociously at the inscription. When Killian gets closer though, something triggers in his head - half-remembered lessons from long ago.

“Only a heart filled with true love may pass,” he recites, the translation springing to his tongue more quickly than he anticipated.

“You can read… whatever that is?” Emma asks, raising a questioning eyebrow. He’s always liked to think she picked that up from him.

“Ancient Greek,” he clarifies. “You’d be surprised what they teach you in the Royal Navy.”

“Show-off,” she teases back affectionately. He hadn’t translated the words just to impress her, but as with everything in his life - afterlife? once, always, forever - it’s a lovely little side effect, the way her eyes widen in surprise and appreciation and she smiles like she’s proud of him. He loves that smile; he’d do a lot of things to see that smile. “Ok, well if that’s the case…” she trails off, before shaking out her hands and exhaling a heavy breath. He’s seen that body language before; it usually means she’s trying to ramp herself up to perform some massive feat of magic.

“Hold on a moment, love, what exactly are you doing?” he asks as gently as he can, attempting to disguise the naked alarm in his voice.

Emma just looks at him oddly. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Honestly, darling, I’m not at all sure. Humor a man.”

“Only a heart filled with true love may pass. We need a heart. So, you know,” she waves a hand around, “I’ve got to extract mine real quick.”

“Absolutely not,” Killian protests. With the baby at stake, and Emma’s own exhaustion… absolutely not. There’s no way in hell he’ll allow it, no pun intended.

Emma just rolls her eyes in response. In other circumstances, Killian might find the gesture a little endearing in how quintessentially her it is, but this isn’t one of those moments. “Ok, well, what’s your idea, then? Because last I checked, you don’t have one right now.”

“That doesn’t mean you should just… reach in your chest and yank your own out!” he fires back. “There’s got to be another way.”

“What, with —” Emma checks the watch on her wrist, “sixty-five minutes left?” She fixes Killian with a pointed look, a what’s your brilliant idea, genius? look, until Killian finally sighs out his defeat. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“I still don’t like it, Emma,” he replies more quietly. “I don’t want to put you in harm’s way any further than I already have, not to mention the babe. And I don’t...” He pauses, trying to collect all his worried thoughts into something resembling sense. “I believe we’re true love, and I certainly hope we are, but we can’t know that, Emma. What happens if we’re wrong? How do you know that this won’t all blow up in our faces?”

“I don’t,” she replies simply. “I just have to have faith that it will be fine,” Emma explains, turning to face Killian and grasping his hand. “See?” And without any further ado, she plunges her other hand into her own chest, wincing slightly as her hand disappears to the wrist. It’s all of Killian’s worst nightmares come to life, watching the woman he loves wince in pain as her heart is dislodged from its home beneath her breastbone. Even if he knows, consciously, that Emma’s in no real peril, that she’s removing such a vital organ herself, it brings back horrible memories of Milah’s death and sends panic rippling through his veins. Desperately, Killian tries to remind himself of the gentleness with which she held his own heart after the debacle with Gold and the Spell of Shattered Sight; surely, she’d treat her own heart with the same gentleness she’d granted his.

(Then again, she did also all but slam his heart back into his chest immediately afterwards. ‘Like a bandaid’, his arse; he’s still positive that the gesture was Emma’s own little revenge for all the worry he put her through, not that he can argue if it’s true.)

Emma seems blissfully unaware of the way the ghost of his heart has climbed into Killian’s throat, extracting her hand again with her jewel-red organ beating within her grasp. “See? Fine.”

He has to give her that, honestly; Emma isn’t even winded, and as nervous as it makes Killian to see his love’s heart outside of where it belongs in her chest, he has to say that it’s beautiful. Unlike his own heart, streaked through with dark wisps of all the terrible things he’s done in his long life, Emma’s is a brilliant crimson, mesmerizing to watch. He can just see the way it gently pulses within her palm, visibly calmer than anything he can muster at the moment.

Emma must notice the fascination with which he watches the beating muscle within her hands, as she holds her heart out to him. What symbolism. “Here, you take it,” she offers, practically shocking Killian out of his boots.

“Oh no, I couldn’t —” he tries to protest, but Emma’s always been a stubborn one, and before he knows it she’s grabbing his hand and tipping the pumping muscle into it. He cradles it against his chest on instinct, making sure to keep his hook arm far, far away; the last thing they need is for him to accidentally nick her heart as he tries to hold it. It’s precious, after all, and so small and fragile; as Killian cradles the organ to his body, there’s a passing, hysterical thought that if he actually makes it out of the Underworld, this kind of careful handling might be good practice for the Bean. He’s sure there’s panic in his eyes as he meets Emma’s gaze, but she just smiles back as if to calm him back down.

“I trust you,” she says simply, as if they’re not the biggest words in the world. Sure, he’s known on a certain level that she does indeed trust him, between the Wicked Witch and Camelot and I’m going to choose to see the best in you, but it’s another thing to hear the words. She loves him, too, and the thought of that alone is enough to make Killian giddy, but love and trust are so often wildly different things, especially where his love is concerned; it leaves him a little bit in awe, knowing that he’s somehow earned it.

Maybe he’s overthinking things, though, as Emma just stands there expectantly as he’s bowled over by emotion. “You gonna put it on the scales?” she asks, jolting Killian into motion.

“As you wish.” He hadn’t known the significance of those words when he’d first told her that what feels like an eternity ago in Neverland, but after several movie nights in those blissful six weeks of peace, he does now. Now, when he says the words, he means them most emphatically: I love you, I love you, I love you. She knows it, too, if the way she smiles just that little bit wider as he passes is any indication. That’s just as it should be; his Swan deserves to hear every iteration of those words, every day.

At the scales themselves, he tips her heart onto the unweighted side ever so carefully before standing back to watch and wait - for what, he’s not sure. For the doors to open, he supposes. It all seems so simple, though, and as the doors stay stubbornly closed, Killian wonders if this is the other shoe dropping, or if that’s yet to come.

Emma’s brows furrow in confusion. Killian can just see on her face that she’s already decided it’s impossible their love isn’t true, even as his own stomach plummets with the proof in front of them. “What the hell?” she mutters, stepping back towards the scales herself.

And that’s when it all really goes to hell.

Emma’s barely taken a step when she suddenly cries out in pain, hunching over and clutching at her chest as she gasps desperately for breath.

“Emma, what’s wrong?” he asks helplessly. “What’s wrong? Are you alright? Love, tell me.” She’s obviously not alright, and they’re such stupid words, but they’re all he can come up with in the moment, too worried to pay much attention to sense.

“My… heart…” she manages to gasp out, reaching for the organ only to cry out again, seemingly struck by another attack.

Even in his panic, it’s easy enough to connect the dots that the scale is somehow doing this to Emma, putting her in indescribably pain - Gods, maybe even killing her if he doesn’t do something right this moment. He doesn’t think twice before moving to snatch her heart back to the relative safety of his grasp - Emma, at least, seems to think it’s safe there, even if Killian is less sure of that. He’s hasn’t even finished taking his first step in that direction, however, when he’s stopped by a column of fire, the flames surrounding him and trapping him within their hold. If he feels the flames on his extremities, it’s easily dwarfed by the burning pain that feel like it’s engulfing him from the inside, eating into his soul and heart and everything that makes him him. He should be strong, suffer through it so Emma doesn’t have to add concern for him onto her own pain, but he can’t help the cry that slips out.

“Killian!” she gasps, her eyes widening with an even greater panic than before.

“Get your heart, Emma,” he pleads. There’s something in those same eyes that makes him think she’ll do something drastic to save him at her own expense, and that just can’t stand. She may not think so, but he’s the expendable one here - it’s crucial that she live, that their babe live, even if he’s charred to a crisp right here where he stands. “Emma, get your heart! Your heart!”

He can see her shifting her gaze back and forth between the scales and himself, even as the flames leap higher and send another burst of unbearable pain through his entire being. Killian preoccupies himself praying to any god that will take pity on him that Emma will dive for her heart, save herself. It’s just two steps; at this point, he doesn’t even care if they never open the doors and reach the fabled ambrosia, as long as Emma’s okay. That’s all that matters - all that’s ever mattered, and if she’ll just take those steps, it’ll all be okay —

Instead, another body plows into him, knocking them both over. By some miracle, Killian manages to cushion her fall with his entire body. He could just shake her for choosing him over herself, his stubborn lass, but somehow the fact remains that the flames have disappeared and Emma’s chest only heaves with the exertion, not a slow suffocation.

“Are you alright, love?” he asks again, holding her tight to his body with his hooked arm as his hand combs gently through her hair.

“I’m okay. What about you?”

He laughs a little at that, Emma’s inability to focus on the danger she herself was in for her worry over him. “Aye, love, I’m alright. I’m just fine.” Killian takes a moment just to smile at her, awed by everything she is, before he turns more serious. “You saved me.” He shouldn’t be surprised by that really; she’s been saving him in every conceivable way, ever since that very first moment when she pulled him from beneath a pile of corpses and showed him there were still things in the world worth believing in. Still, the knowledge that she saved him, the unworthy pirate, continues to take his breath away.

“Of course I did,” Emma replies, her voice mildly chiding even as he can see her eyes sweep over his face as if she’s reassuring herself that he’s there.

“You shouldn’t have.”

“But I did,” she reminds him. “I love you.” Simple as that. Like that’s all the explanation needed, and maybe it is.

“And I you,” he echoes, the truth pulled from deep within his soul. “More than I’ll ever have the words to express.” As he draws her into a gentle kiss, something to reassure them both that they’re both still here, still fighting, they almost miss the heavy noise of the doors opening.

Almost.

Emma twists her head to the sign at the sound. “Was that…” she trails off, like she’s afraid to jinx it.

“Aye,” Killian breathes out in response. The proof is right in front of them, after all, the doors having opened to reveal a curved hallway already lit by torches.

“But how…”

“Only a heart filled with true love may pass,” Killian recites back. The meaning of those words is only now starting to really sink in; the doors opened for them, so that means they’re true love, something he hadn’t even dared dream might be true. It nearly brings tears to his eyes, and he can’t help but let the awe leak into his voice. “You did it, love.”

“I guess so,” she agrees, still staring at the door in mild bewilderment. “But… how?”

“You chose me. That was the test.” Killian is kind of reasoning through it as he speaks, but that has to be it. That’s what makes sense. “You could have gone for your heart - should have, probably, but… you chose me. You chose me.” The words will never stop amazing him. Gods, true love.

Emma’s smile is a tender as he’s ever seen it as she strokes along his cheek. “Of course I did, babe,” she says once again. “There was never any question. We’re a team, remember? You and me. Giving up or leaving you like that was never an option.”

Killian sits up suddenly, unable to wait any longer to kiss Emma, his love, his true love. There’s a sweetness to the way their lips meet that’s almost reminiscent of the kiss that started this all, out on Granny’s patio after their time travel adventure. There’s no time to deepen it and turn this into a longer or more passionate encounter - not that this is the place for it, anyways, here on the dusty and rocky floor - but it had just proved impossible not to seal this moment with a kiss.

When they finally separate again, it’s only to rest their foreheads together, still breathing in the same air. Unfortunately, there’s no more time to spare. “Are you ready, my love?” He asks, still somewhat breathless.

“Anything with you,” Emma promises right back, gripping onto his lapels for just a moment longer before they both move to stand up.

It’s hard not to set off down the hewn passageway with something approaching giddiness when Emma’s hand is enveloped within his own and a hope he had almost given up on bouncing around in his still-stopped heart. No matter how many times he’d sworn not to get his hopes up, tried to remind himself this was likely the end of everything, he can’t help it. They’re true love, a fact that bears repeating over and over again. their child will be another product of true love, and it nearly makes him giggle like a child to think about how he or she will be a baby born of true love to a mother that’s herself born of her parents true love. It’s the most delightful and ridiculous statement he’s ever contemplated.

All that hope and wonder, unfortunately, only makes the great fall all the harsher when they both turn the corner to see nothing but an obviously dead bush.

“No,” Emma whispers, her voice the auditory equivalent of whatever this sinking feeling in Killian’s stomach is. “No, there must be something.”

There’s not, though. The bush is just a gnarled mess of branches, no leaves, no flowers, no fruit, even if it’s surrounded by a prettier little golden fence than Killian’s seen in even the most ornate palace gardens. No, the ambrosia plant is clearly, unmistakably dead.

His Emma is a stubborn one, though, and has some of her mother’s unshakable hope - even if she doesn’t like admitting to it. She’s already pulled away from Killian, releasing his hand to stride over to the plant and start rooting around the edges of its soil bed, looking for Gods-only-know-what.

“There’s got to be something left,” she mutters, not quite under her breath in her desperation as she frantically searches. “Leaves or seeds or… something. Why aren’t you looking?” she demands abruptly, that panic back in her eyes again.

“There’s nothing to find, love,” Killian tries to tell her gently, even as his own heart is breaking. This is it; this is how their great search ends.

“Ok, well, if there’s nothing on this plant, there’s got to be another one, right?” she asks, more of that frenzy creeping into her voice as she stands back up and brushes her soil-covered hands off on her jeans. “There’s another plant, we’ve just got to find it.”

“Where, love?” he all but begs, voice breaking on the endearment. “Look around you. There’s nowhere else another ambrosia bush would be hiding.” That much is painfully obvious to him. The chamber surrounding the bush, their last great hope, is perfectly circular and perfectly stone and gravel, the only other organic matter the dried straw fueling the ensorcelled torches. It’s only by a feat of magic, he’s sure, that the perfect circle of soil exists for the plant in the first place; there’s simply no other spot in the cavern that could support life. Emma may look all she likes, but as much as Killian wishes otherwise, she’ll never find anything. It’s just not possible.

Emma huffs in frustration, but it’s so easy for him to see the panic underneath it, especially with the way her eyes dart back and forth as if searching for another answer. “Ok, then, we try the heart split again. Now that my name isn’t on one of those fucking headstones anymore, there shouldn’t be a problem. It could still work.” Even as her hand starts moving towards her chest in a motion Killian hopes never to see again in his life - or afterlife, as it were - she sounds doubtful. And for good reason, too.

“No, love, it won’t,” he says as gently as he can.

“Why the hell not? It worked for my parents. You’ve seen David, he’s totally fine. We didn’t even know anything during the whole Wicked Witch debacle until they got their memories back.”

“Yes, but your father was dead for… not even two minutes. Barely longer than the time it took to split your mother’s heart. It’s been months since I died, love, almost four of them,” Killian reminds her, sending his own dead heart plummeting into his boots in the process.

“There’s a preservation spell over your body, though,” she argues right back, picking up momentum. “It’s not like you’re… rotting away, or something.” The very idea of that is enough to make both of them wince.

“That doesn’t mean anything, unfortunately. You and I have both read the storybook, love; we’ve both seen what happened to Regina’s love, how poorly that turned out. He almost hurt Henry, and I won’t put any of you in danger, especially not from my hand. I won’t, love.”

“But we’re true love,” she insists. “Shouldn’t that make all the difference?”

Before Killian can even contemplate his response, the chamber around them starts rumbling, bits of sediment and small pebbles dislodging and raining down on both their heads. Hades must have opened the portal; the disturbance is too similar to what happened when Zelena arrived in the underworld for it to be anything else. The force up above shakes this whole realm to its very foundations, and Killian’s suddenly even more desperate to get Emma as far away from all this as possible - preferably out of this accursed in-between world all together. It’ll break his heart to say goodbye, but her safety, and that of Henry and the baby, is more important than any pain he might be feeling.

“We’ve got to get out of here, back to the surface, love,” he urges, half a plan forming in his mind as he ushers her reluctantly back towards the stone hallway. If he can just get her to the elevator… “It’s not safe.”

Emma casts a look back around the empty, dead chamber, but there’s no denying that he’s right, as larger chunks of stone start dislodging from the ceiling and tumbling down.

The shaking had settled somewhat by the time they reach the elevator, but Killian still hurries Emma on board. There’s not much time left, after all - a few minutes less than an hour, if his timepiece is correct - and Emma will need every second she can get to make her way back through the tunnels, up to the surface, and over to the cemetery before the portal closes. Emma thankfully goes without complaint, even leading at turns, sensing the urgency of this all.

That is, she goes without complaint until Killian steps back off the metal conveyance.

Her eyebrows furrow in confusion at that. “What are you doing, babe? You said it yourself, we’ve got to go. No time to dawdle, or however you’d phrase it.” The corners of her lips even twitch upwards for moment; she clearly has no idea what he’s planning to do, and it sends another stab of guilt through his body.

Killian swallows heavily in a last effort to muster the courage to follow through on this. “I’m not coming with you, love,” he reveals softly, sadly.

That brings the frown back to her face and the panic back to her eyes. “No, that’s not right,” she argues. “You said —”

“I know what I said darling, that we were both getting out of here, but I lied.” He shakes his head in shame. “I’m sorry. I know I said I’d never do that to you, but I had to get you out of that chamber somehow. You’ve got to get to that portal.”

“Not without you,” she declares, stepping back towards Killian with fire in her eyes. There’s tears forming there too, though. “There’s still time, we can still figure something out—”

“No, we can’t. We’ve tried everything, love. This was our last last chance. And if we have to say goodbye… well, I’d rather it was down here, just the two of us. More privacy,” he tries to joke. It doesn’t work.

“But I’m not ready,” Emma pleads. “It’s not enough time.”

“It’s more time than you and I were ever meant to have,” he reminds her. “And I’m so grateful for that. If you hadn’t come down to try and rescue me, I would have never known about our child. I would have never seen you again. Even if your efforts didn’t work to resurrect me, how can I regret a single moment of that borrowed time? Even if we have to part?”

“But I want you there. I want you to meet the baby, and be a father to Henry, and grow old with me.”

“That’s just not in the cards for us, my love,” he replies, voice breaking in the middle. Damn it all, he’s crying too, and he was supposed to hold himself together to try and make this easier. “But I have faith that you and Henry will remember me, and tell our son or daughter all about their father. Especially how much I’ve loved them, from the moment I knew they existed.”

Emma nods, ducking her head for a moment as if to collect herself. “I don’t know how to say goodbye,” she admits.

“Then don’t,” he suggests. “This won’t be forever, just for now. Just for the moment.” A very long now and a very long moment, without any guarantee that he’s done enough to await Emma in a better place, he doesn’t say. “Promise me, though, that you won’t let my death keep you from a happy ending. You’ve still got so much life ahead of you, love. Let yourself be happy in it. I’ve been so proud to see you break down some of your walls; don’t build them back up just because I’m gone. Promise me that.”

“I promise,” she vows with tears in her eyes. “But you have to swear to me that you’ll move on with Liam, that you won’t wait here for me. Don’t let us be your unfinished business.”

“I promise.” He’s not sure it’s one he can keep, but he’ll try his very best.

There’s no more excuses to wait any longer, and Killian carefully helps Emma back into the elevator, reaching up for the gate. Emma stops him before he can close it though, reaching through the bars to frame his face with both her hands.

“I love you, Killian Jones,” she declares, one last time, with tears streaming down her face.

“And I love you, my Swan.”

Their final kiss is slow and gentle, a kiss meant to soak into his very bones and linger with him for all the many years to come. Killian makes sure to stroke along her cheek and through her hair, hoping to engrain the sensations into his brain so he may never forget. This is their one last time, their final goodbye, and it seems crucial that he catalog every moment.

All too soon, the kiss has so end, though, and with one last moment spend resting his forehead against her own, he draws the gate to clang shut. The elevator car lurches to life as soon as he does, slowly making its way upwards, and Killian quickly moves to tangle his fingers with Emma’s own. He doesn’t intend to let go until he absolutely has to. Seeing Emma shake with quiet sobs as the car pulls away, he moves on instinct, drawing her hand to his mouth for a kiss - one, two, three times before she’s carried out of his reach, in a last ditch effort to show his love exactly how precious she is.

And then she’s gone, leaving Killian to his misery at the bottom of the mine.

———

Liam comes to collect him some indeterminate amount of time later, after the shaking finally subsides.

It doesn’t matter though. Nothing does anymore.

She’s gone.

#cs ff #captain swan #cs angst #my writing #If I Could See Your Face Once More #chapter 4 #ouat s5b #canon divergence #I really am sorry

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vegalocity · 6 years ago

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23, 44, and 47. (Maybe not BABY baby, but a little kid) If 44 is too weird, then 10.

-stretches- okay let’s do this.

I used Stiro as the ship in question because you weren’t specific.

The name on his wrist didn't soundlike a real name, but Hiro had heard stories of people whose nameswere the name their partner called themselves instead of whatwas on their birth certificate, so 'Star Butterfly' was more likely aname whoever it was had chosen for themselves.

But the semantics didn't quite matterto him, because honestly? The concept of Heartnames didn't reallymatter to him either for the longest time. All that Soulmates softjazz and pueberty stuff was just kinda... well... dumb, for the firstfourteen years of his life. It wasn't something he concerned himselfover when there was science to be done and machines to be built.

He paid the name no mind for thelongest time, it wasn't until after Tadashi was gone that he began towonder; maybe as a coping mechanism, a promise that he still wasn'talone. Somewhere out there, a 'Star Butterfly' was wandering aroundwith 'Hiro Hamada' on their wrist, someone who would get him,but who could never replace Tadashi and would never try to.

And then Baymax reactivated and thename he snugly hid beneath a purple wristband was purged from hismind once again.

He supposed that it was his own faultthen, when, a couple of months later, just as Big Hero 6 began toestablish themselves as permanent fixtures in San Fransokyo that ablonde girl with hearts on her cheeks, horns on her head, and a wandthat defied several laws of reality came bounding into his life, andhe had zero coping mechanisms for when Fred gave a wide flourish andannounced her as 'a foreign exchange student his dad was taking in asa favor to the Royal Family of another dimension, Princess StarButterfly of the Kingdom of Mewni'

She wore no bands on her wrists, nocovers for her name. Because she didn't have a name on her wrist.

He didn't need any romantic stuffanyway, it was just a distraction. Why he had her name but she didn'thave his was a question he was completely uninterested in.

No matter how determined she was whenshe insisted on joining the fight alongside Big Hero 6, asking him tomake her a helmet she could wear with her own set of battle armorthat could show that she was on their side. No matter how many timesshe leaned over his shoulder to keep an eye on his work as he triedto make sense of her wand.

No matter how pretty she looked on thenight of the Blood Moon when, after coming home early due to astomach ache, asked him if he wanted to learn how to dance the Mewniway.

So that was how he ended up where hewas now. Helping her with one of her spells and analyzing it at thesame time, her grimoire propped up against his chest as he held histablet aimed at her wand, ready to analyze the magic output and seejust what these 'time based spells' could do.

“So you read this one's wholechapter right?”

“Yeah. Great-Grandma Skywynne was abadass!”

Famous last words.

You know, he'd expected it to beharder, to be in Fred's house ten years ago. After all Mr.Fredrickson was here far more often when Fred was young. But hesupposed that was just what happened when your tech is ten years moreadvanced than anything that even existed at the time. He was able toslip in and out of the shadows pretty easily as he contemplated justhow deadStar was when this spell faded and he returned to his time.

Asit was he was camped out in Star's room in the past, at this time aGuest Room that Fred himself had claimed nobody had ever used in hislife and was only kept dustless by the duties of Heathcliff andwhatever maids were employed that they never saw.

Everyso often he heard voices approaching but paid them no mind as hetried to do something productive with his time and analyze the datahe'd gotten from Star's stupid Temporary Time Reversal Spell.

Therewasn't much for him to work with, but there were some interesting ionreadings and gamma radiation that came from the wand during thespell, so he focused on those.

Fora bit of time he was just focused on that, sitting on the far side ofthe room and hidden from the doorway, when, one last time, voicesapproached the hallway. This time growing louder. Hiro only freakedout a little bit when the door opened for a moment and closed.

“Stardarling, just stay in here for a spell and we'll come retreive youwhen Lord Fredrickson's problems have been eased.”

“ButMammmaaaaaaaaaa”

“No'mama's here dear, it's just to keep you safe!”

Ohyou have got to be kidding.

Alittle girl, blonde pigtails bouncing with her movements began toneurotically pace the length of the room, if Hiro wasn't stillcovered by the bed she'd have likely seen him, and more likelyyelled.

Therewere hearts on her cheeks.

Dammit.

“IfMama's gonna be mean then i'm gonna have some fun in here!” LittleStar stopped her pacing abruptly and pointedly ran over to flop ontothe bed.

Hirostiffened, mentally prepping himself to force the child to be quiet,but to his surprise, after Little Star saw him she didn't scream, orshout, or really do anything but sit up on her knees and look at him.

“Areyou a ghost?”

Heblinked, her little brows were furrowed and she flopped down on herhands so she was closer to his eye level.

“Huh?”

“MisterFredriiiiiickkksnnn,” she sounded out the name “said nobody evercomes into the guest room, but you're here. So you're a nobody” itsounded so obvious when she spoke, if she wasn't literally four yearsold and by extension an idiot he would have questioned his ownobservational skills for a moment.

“Andeveryone knows nobody's are ghosts. So are you a ghost?”

Ohwell...

“Yeah,Uh... I'm a ghost.” Ghost is probably better than Intruder.

Agrin lit up her face as she sat back upright and crossed her legs onthe bed, patting a spot beside her.

“It'snice to meet you Mister Ghost!” He opted instead to sit at the edgeof the bed.

“Uh...yeah. Nice to meet you too, Star.”

Shegasped.

“Howdid you know my name?!”

“Iheard your Mama call it.” the awed look on her face faded.

“Oh.Well what's your name? Do you remember?”

“Whywouldn't I remember?”

“Lotsaghosts can't remember their names after they died!” Again, spokenso confidently granted she was a four year old and thus an idiot.

“WellI do. It's-” A thought occurred to him.

Butterflyeffect and all that nonsense, what if by telling Star his name in thepast she recognized him in the less-distant past? What if shesuddenly remembered this by his name? Could he chance it? Was thisall a closed time loop and he was supposedto tell her his real name? Did it matter? Could he change the futureso irrevocably by one action?

“Tadashi.My name is Tadashi.”

Hersmile widened. “That's a pretty name!”

“Thanks.”

Andfor the next hour that was all that was to it. She spoke of Mewni inher silly childish stories, and he'd tell her of Earth 'before hedied' and tried not to be too weirded out at the irony.

Orthe knowledge that halfway across town Tadashi was still around. Thesting of their parents' death still sharp as he and a four year oldHiro still adjusted to living with Aunt Cass.

Herglaringly bare wrists, even at a young age still grated on him.

“What'sthat?” She finally pointed at the purple band, just barelyuncovered by his sleeve.

Well...okay it wasn't like it was taboo or anything to talk aboutHeartnames, but... it was kinda... just something that wasn't done.It especially wasn't something you drew attention to. And... what didStar's parents just never give her the talk because she came outwithout a name?

“It's...uh... it's a Wristband. It covers my Name.”

“Youhave your name written on your wrist? Why d'ya gotta cover it?”Holy crap her parents never gave her the talk because she came outwithout a name.

Unless...

“Star...Do people have Heartnames on Mewni?” She tilted her head to theside and scrunched her nose up.

“What'saHeartname? Is it like a Heartsong? We’re not ‘sposed to talk ‘bout heartsongs” She leaned in “it’s gotta be a seeecret”

Andsuddenly everything made sense.

Ofcourse that had to be the time the spell finally wore off and Hirowas returned to his time, a shocked Star, fourteen years old andholding her wand aloft, stared at him.

“OhmygoshHiro I'm so sorry I thought it was gonna send ME back not you!” Asshe continued to babble in that annoyingly endearing way the solutionto a problem he'd been soundly ignoring existed buzzed around hishead.

Theyhad a different system. Star didn't have his name because Star'sspecies didn't use names, they used voices.

“HeyStar?” She stopped her yammering to help him back to his feet.

“I'mso gonnamake it up to you Hiro I promisce!”

“It's...it's okay. Just....” He rolled up his sleeve, making sure Star waswatching, before he slipped his wristband off.

“Ithink a misunderstanding was just cleared up. You guys have acompletely different system than us.”

Star'seyes widened when the mark, a light brown, like a strange birthmark,was revealed to her.

“Apparentlyyou guys aren't born with names?”

#Stiro #vega writes stories too #crossovers #crossover ships #I love the idea of someone from a different world having a completely different soulmate system #and it works like... scary good #Anonymous

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lokilickedme · 7 years ago

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Hello My Lady! Just because you asked, here are my faves of yours: #1 King (no surprise here), #2 Jack (too crazy not to love, and the stream crossing of pretty much all your stories is genius) #3 Chem/BD/TTW/TKH/TWK/can't remember them all. They're all special in their own way! Can't believe it'll be 3yrs soon since I started squatting your page!!! God time goes by fast! I'd like to add a special mention for the Muse Meetings, sooo funny, and a Golden Snowflake to Aleks. Cute little bumkin.

Thank you @fudgemuffinanon! Dear god, has it been that long? Seems like I joined up last year…*sits here blinking at my posts from 2015, wondering how that happened*

**LONG TEXT POST COMING UP**

You drew the lucky straw today my darling, I’m feeling wordy and in the mood to share. A lot of people have asked me over the last couple of years how some of my stuff came about, and you mentioned one that gets a lot of asks.

Lemme tell you something about the Muse Meetings. Way back in 1998 when I got my first computer, one of the very first things I ran across by way of internet fanfiction was a little something called The Very Secret Diaries penned by a writer named Cassandra Claire (who is now professionally published under the name Cassandra Clare). The Very Secret Diaries (which are hilarious, btw) woke something up in me - mainly because, as a lifelong writer who had never allowed anyone to read 95% of my work, I finally realized that yeah, there were other people out there whose brains deviated from the standard in the same way mine did. Her writing style back then (in the Diaries specifically, I’ve never actually read anything else she’s written) was very similar to the way I wrote, and those Diaries were exactly the sort of silly, ridiculous, irreverent thing I’d scribbled in my notebooks for most of my life. And people liked it, she had a huge following based on just those out-of-context glimpses of her characters’ personal thoughts. She was writing behind the scenes thoughts of characters, things that would never make it into books, and it was brilliant. That was the kind of stuff I loved to write but had never given myself permission to show anyone. She was showing hers to people, and they were loving it.

Which gave me the inspiration to not only put my work out there in the public eye for the first time ever, but to stick with my personal writing style (which I’d always assumed wasn’t what other people wanted to read, based on the books I’d been exposed to most of my life). Not change anything. Just do me. And doing me meant writing silly nonsense if I wanted to.

So - The Very Secret Diaries are more or less the inspiration for the Muse Meetings, or at least the official written version of them. I’d always imagined dialogues with my characters outside the confines of whatever story I was working on, but never thought anyone else would be interested in seeing me write it out.

The Diaries made me realize different. Not only were her characters yammering and complaining and snarking at each other (both out of character and in), they were doing it in exactly the way I’d imagined my own characters interacting in the real world. I loved it. Seeing someone else do what I’d always done in my head - and do it in an official, out-there-in-the-public-eye capacity, was a revelation. Finally I was able to give myself permission to write the way I wanted to, without restricting myself to the styles and methods in the books in the family library. It had always been in my head, but now it didn’t have to stay there. I could write proper stories, but I could also write what was going on in the other room, where the reader seldom gets to peek. And other people besides myself might like it because hey, there’s precedent.

That was freeing, and I am grateful to Ms Claire for that.

So, a little history that leads up to how and why I finally started writing out the Muse Meetings:

My first fandoms that I wrote for online were Harry Potter and Star Wars (Kenobi specifically). And yes, way back then (late 90′s - early 2000′s) there were already muse meetings among my characters. I’ve been doing these for a long time, and I wish the out-of-character stuff I’d written back then still existed (my HP stuff bit the dust when The Restricted Section shut down, and my SW stuff was on FF.net for a little while but honestly I don’t remember my user ID there or the titles of the fics, though I have searched…so they’re most likely lost as well). It’s sort of a shame because there were some old Anakin/Obi-Wan muse meetings that you guys would have loved…and the stuff between Remus and Sirius while we were hashing out what was going to be in their next chapter? It still pains me that it’s all lost, but maybe it’s for the best. That was nearly two decades ago, we move on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.

After my urge to write HP fic fizzled out I stopped writing for a while, but there were always muse meetings going on in my head for stories I scribbled mentally. To me they’ve always been more fun than the actual stories, which explains my love for gag reels and behind-the-scenes featurettes for movies (I watch those first, always).

And then I found AO3 - funnily enough, I discovered it while searching the internet for one of my lost HP fics - and I decided to start writing in earnest again. With all those thousands and thousands of fics and endless fandoms, it seemed like the perfect place to indulge my need to share what went on in my head. And as I settled into the MCU and my stories started to grow to include multitudes of characters, those impromptu staff meetings with my muses kept being called to order. Stuff that my characters would never say in the context of their stories got said. Scenarios that were too ridiculous to waste time writing were played out. Arguments and fights and bantering between characters who, in the restrictive confines of their own tales, would never in a million years interact…now they were throwing poptarts at each other (and occasionally knives) while the side characters wandered out of the room to watch TV or raid the fridge or sat in horror as someone’s until-now unassuming wife brandished a melon baller as a weapon.

It was messy and fun and was by far my favorite part of the writing process.

That’s what eventually became the Muse Meetings. You want to know how they escaped my head and became an official thing?

Well I’m gonna tell ya lol

One of my very first friends in here, the fantastic @elvenfair1, was one of my first readers at AO3 and she told me I should post links to my fics at this site called tumblr to bring in a bigger audience. So I opened an account here, followed her, posted some links as suggested, and she and I began messaging back and forth pretty much every night as we wrote our respective fics, bouncing ideas off each other and discussing plot points and brainstorming for character names. And as my characters sassed me and refused to cooperate with what I wanted them to do, I would tell elvenfair what was going on in my head with my dumbass OCs and OFCs and we’d laugh and gripe about trying unsuccessfully to reel in our unruly muses.

And then one night back in 2015 she said “You should post this muse stuff, it’s hilarious.”

You know what the first thing I thought was? Cassandra Claire did it 14 years ago and people loved it. So yeah, I can sure as hell do it if I want. If nobody is interested in it, at least it’ll amuse me and elvenfair and that’s cool enough.

And so I did. I started posting them in here first, then as people started requesting them more I eventually moved them to AO3 in a more structured format. And now you guys have multiple Lokis hurling curses at a bartender and viciously baiting a hapless movie star while teenage versions of two other attendees flirt with unsuspecting OFCs, with an occasional appearance by Thor dropping hints about future chapters and looking for fruit roll-ups. It’s messy, but it’s fun and I’ve always enjoyed writing it as a way to let my brain decompress, especially when one of my “real” stories has hit a roadbump.

Since then I’ve seen countless other professional writers doing the exact same thing - J.R. Ward even posts her own version of muse meetings on her official website AND has a published book (her Insiders Guide) that is almost entirely nothing BUT muse meetings. It’s surprising how many writers actually do this and I sometimes wonder if authors like Poe, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Tolkien, Gaiman, McMurtry didn’t do it themselves (I’d bet money on McMurtry). Just goes to show there’s not an original idea anywhere in the universe…no matter how much you might believe you came up with it first, someone out there has been doing it for a long damn time before you - and a million more will do it after you :)

Anyway, I haven’t written any muse meetings in a while but they still go on constantly in my head. I get asked about once a week to go back to doing them, and one day I will, when I have time for it. My actual fics are struggling for writing time as it is and I made a conscious decision to weed out the unnecessary stuff in favor of “real work” (yeah right lol)…but yeah, the Meetings are still one of my favorite things and I won’t stop doing them permanently - they’ll be back.

So thank you Cassandra Claire for inspiring me to let them fly…if it weren’t for those whacked-out Diaries, the Muse Meetings would all still be in my head with only one person (me) laughing at them.

#fudgemuffinanon #long post #it's been a while since I got to talk to an adult IRL due to the kids being sick #so here have all the words at once lol

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accidental-psalms-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Ellie

"You have to be ready, Ellie," my grandfather said. "The world is cruel, and you will lose everything and everyone you've known and loved."

"What does that mean, lolo?" my seven-year-old self inquired. I wasn't really listening. I just indulged him because he bought me ice cream; I was too busy licking the excess off of the cone to take on this conversation. The next moment, my grandfather reached for the cold, cheese-flavored confectionery and took it away from my sticky hands.

"Lolo!" I protested.

"I said: you will lose everything. Are you listening?" he said in a stern voice.

"I'm listening!" I said. "Please give me my ice cream back..."

He did, and then told me to "Go, play."

My grandfather was a harsh man, but he carried a softness that would make people talk about him kindly despite his strictness. I'd known for a while that his family — most especially his grandchildren — were his weakness.

I did not understand it fully then, but his blue eyes contained a sadness that is similar to the arrival of dusk: a certain gloom tinged by the slightest optimism, brought on by the change of rule when the sun abdicates its stellar throne and moonlight claims sovereignty over the sky.

***

I finished my elementary education while living with my grandparents on my father's side of the family. I liked them both equally, but I was closer to my grandfather than anyone (I spent some time with grandma, too, but she spent most of her afternoons gambling with the neighbors).

He loved arts and crafts; be it sculpture, painting, music, or literature, but my grandfather loved the art of mapmaking most of all. He would often commission local artists to make maps of different places for him. My favorite was the one of Panay, with Boracay Island placed like an awkward piece of beef jerky from across this gigantic blanket of prime meat. I think it was drawn by Kurt, the artist next-door who wanted nothing more than two bottles of beer and a stimulating conversation for such a beautifully-colored map.

My grandfather and I spent a lot of time together during my elementary days, and I loved mornings with him the most. Every sunrise, he would take me to Mang Eric's store to get some Yakult, or Chocolait if it's a Wednesday. That is, if I could wake up as early as 6 AM. If I woke up any later, then no Yakult for me.

Of course, I know that it's his own way of getting me to wake up early in the morning and exercise, but if I'm getting a Yakult (or a Chocolait!) out of it, then I don't see a reason to wake up late.

***

I remember waking up at 5:30 one Wednesday morning to the sound of rain, feeling particularly excited about the chocolate drink I would have later. I washed my face, drank some water, and ran to my grandfather's bedroom which, curiously, still had its door closed. I knocked.

"Lolo? Lolo! Lolo, wake up," I yelled. I remember thinking that it was unusual for me to wake up before he did; I know for a fact that he can wake up as early as 3 AM.

My seven-year-old self did not understand the sinking feeling I had then, one that brought frustration, the way one feels when trying to catch a butterfly in vain. I knocked again three times, louder this time. My grandma would probably get angry with me. But I didn't care. It's Wednesday. Everything is better on Wednesdays.

"Lolo!" I shouted. Outside, the rain went on, and I felt as if the raindrops mocked what little voice I had.

The doorknob turned, and the door slowly opened. It was my grandma who said "Sorry, Ellie. Lolo cannot go out today. He is very sick."

"Can I see him?"

"Later, darling," she said.

***

My grandfather did not die that day. In fact, he lived for many years later — much longer than the days I could spend with him. When I needed to be in high school, I had to go to away and live with my parents in the city. I met new people, new friends, and life became much more than just Yakult, and Chocolait, and Sunday ice cream. There were boys to crush on, books and TV series to speculate on and overanalyze, and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all those things I never even imagined would take over my teenage life.

The news of my grandfather's rather unceremonious passing came to us in the middle of my third year in high school, while I was burning brain cells for a barrage of exams that I'll encounter in the following weeks. He died of tuberculosis.

"Your father and I are attending the funeral, sweetie. Will you come?" my mother asked.

"No," I replied. "I need to read— there's just a lot of stuff going on at school right now, mom. Please tell grandma that I love her."

"Alright. Take care of things here, and don't push yourself too hard." she said.

Later that afternoon, I found myself binging on Game of Thrones episodes and fangirling about how Jon Snow should really just end up ruling all of Westeros because he is the one guy that cares and he deserves it.

I will not pretend that I wanted to go to the funeral. I didn't. At the time, I was thinking, it's such a waste of time, the dead are. I knew my grandfather when he was alive, and he made my childhood more colorful. That much is true. He knows that I love him, and I am saddened by his passing, and I think that that is enough. If ever he is watching me, by some notion of the supernatural being true, then he will know that I meant no disrespect.

There's just a lot of things that are more important and more enjoyable than attending someone's funeral right now. I went on with my week, thinking nothing more of it.

***

When my parents came back from the funeral, they brought unripe mangoes and freshly-picked corn. While we were feasting on the produce after lunch, mother told me that grandma found an unsent letter among my grandfather's belongings. The date on the envelope said that he apparently finished the letter three days before his passing.

"Oh? Who's it for?" I asked, intrigued.

"Here," my mother reached into her handbag and produced a sealed white envelope with a map of Panay printed on it. I read the writing on the front: "09/21/2011. For Ellie."

I walked off to my room without a word.

***

Dear Ellie,

I have been thinking about you more and more often these past few days. I know you are faring way better than I can ever, and that alone gives me consolation. The thought of you being energetic, excelling at school, and pursuing some manner of art gives me joy. What remaining energy I have after the days are done, I spend praying that you be kept safe.

You had always been a pearl in my and your grandmother's eyes. When your parents asked us to take care of you in your elementary days — perhaps in a most elaborate attempt to teach you to never forget your roots — we were, at first, reluctant. We are old, and we don't know if we could still handle such a task.

But you made it easier for us, dear one, by being the sweetest girl to grace this boring town. I thought that if I was made solely for the ultimate purpose of taking care of you, then I would accept that I have lived a very full life, indeed.

And yet, see, I am wasting away now, dear child. Whatever life I had is leaving me.

Do you remember when I said that you will lose everything and everyone you have known and loved? When you went away to continue your studies in the city, that was when I felt this truth hurt me the most. I've accepted that you will forget us. Perhaps not completely, but we will be nothing but a very faint memory, one that will be filed behind a multitude of sensations, and whatever tickles the fancy and vigor of youth these days.

I yammer and this must be tiring you; I must get to the point. The purpose of this letter is to ask: Will you come see and us again, soon? Even for one last time. Your grandmother and I will be grateful to have you grace this household once more. I already asked her to prepare your favorite sinigang when you come, as well as to stock the fridge full of Yakult and Chuckie (it's what they call Chocolait these days — I personally hate that cartoon cow, but the drink tastes great all the same).

I hope you will, dear. I actually have more than a feeling that you will grant this request, because I wrote this on a Wednesday, and we both know that everything is better on Wednesdays. Better enough that I even wrote a poem, see:

You will not need a map

The drawings and maps are all gone, Ellie, taken away by a dozen storms, but you must not worry; you will not need them to find me.

I will be the memory of a little valley, a little store on the off-road, the melting ice cream on Sunday afternoons.

The colors fade from my skin, like a blackbird losing feathers to reveal what pale skin lies underneath; weak, frail.

But I believe that even if all of the maps are gone, dear Ellie, you will not need them to find me.

That's it, dear one. I'm afraid I've written what this poor mind could handle to write for a day. Should you decide to come visit, let us know soon.

Sincerely, Your Grandfather

***

I cried that whole afternoon.

I suppose there's no truer adage than "You'll never know what you have been missing until it's gone," but after all was said and done I felt a sense of contentment and purpose, thankful for my parents and my grandparents for making my childhood just that much better.

I had never thanked my grandfather properly, and I have to admit that I was insensitive about his funeral. But I'm a woman of means now, and the idea of giving back was instilled my heart from the day I read that letter. Now, at twenty-eight, I spend my spare time doing volunteer work for a local organization that helps children deal with domestic abuse.

Everyone can be a gift to the world. An act of random kindness, a smile, a melody, a little poem, or the mere act of sharing bowls of sinigang with the next door neighbors, can make a difference. There is no escaping from loss; loss will always be there.

All that matters is how we deal with loss moving forward. And, as my grandfather taught me, I need no map.

#short story #ellie #childhood #grandfather

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her-moth · 7 years ago

Text

passage from Le Guin’s Bryn Mawr Commencement Address (1986)

full text here

The language of the fathers, of Man Ascending, Man the Conqueror, Civilized Man, is not your native tongue. It isn't anybody's native tongue. You didn't even hear the father tongue your first few years, except on the radio or TV, and then you didn't listen, and neither did your little brother, because it was some old politician with hairs in his nose yammering. And you and your brother had better things to do. You had another kind of power to learn. You were learning your mother tongue.

Using the father tongue, I can speak of the mother tongue only, inevitably, to distance it -- to exclude it. It is the other, inferior. It is primitive: inaccurate, unclear, coarse, limited, trivial, banal. It's repetitive, the same over and over, like the work called women's work; earthbound, housebound. It's vulgar, the vulgar tongue, common, common speech, colloquial, low, ordinary, plebeian, like the work ordinary people do, the lives common people live. The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer. It is conversation, a word the root of which means "turning together." The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting. It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart.

John have you got your umbrella I think it's going to rain. Can you come play with me? If I told you once I told you a hundred times. Things here just aren't the same without Mother, I will now sign your affectionate brother James. Oh what am I going to do? So I said to her I said if he thinks she's going to stand for that but them there's his arthritis poor thing and no work. I love you. I hate you. I hate liver. Joan dear did you feed the sheep, don't just stand around mooning. Tell me what they said, tell me what you did. Oh how my feet do hurt. My heart is breaking. Touch me here, touch me again. Once bit twice shy. You look like what the cat dragged in. What a beautiful night. Good morning, hello, goodbye, have a nice day, thanks. God damn you to hell you lying cheat. Pass the soy sauce please. Oh shit. Is it grandma's own sweet pretty dear? What am I going to tell her? There there don't cry. Go to sleep now, go to sleep....Don't go to sleep!

It is a language always on the verge of silence and often on the verge of song. It is the language stories are told in. It is the language spoken by all children and most women, and so I call it the mother tongue, for we learn it from our mothers, and speak it to our kids. I'm trying to use it here in public where it isn't appropriate, not suited to the occasion, but I want to speak it to you because we are women and I can't say what I want to say about women in the language of capital M Man. If I try to be objective I will say, "This is higher and that is lower," I'll make a commencement speech about being successful in the battle of life, I'll lie to you; and I don't want to.

Early this spring I met a musician, the composer Pauline Oliveros, a beautiful woman like a grey rock in a streambed; and to a group of us, women, who were beginning to quarrel over theories in abstract, objective language - and I with my splendid Eastern-women's-college training in the father tongue was in the thick of the fight and going for the kill - to us, Pauline, who is sparing with words, said after clearing her throat, "Offer your experience as your truth." There was a short silence. When we started talking again, we didn't talk objectively, and we didn't fight. We went back to feeling our way into ideas, using the whole intellect not half of it, talking with one another, which involves listening. We tried to offer our experience to one another. Not claiming something: offering something.

How, after all, can one experience deny, negate, disprove, another experience? Even if I've had a lot more of it, your experience is your truth. How can one being prove another being wrong? Even if you're a lot younger and smarter than me, my being is my truth. I can offer it; you don't have to take it. People can't contradict each other, only words can: words separated from experience for use as weapons, words that make the wound, the split between subject and object, exposing and exploiting the object but disguising and defending the subject.

People crave objectivity because to be subjective is to be embodied, to be a body, vulnerable, violable. Men especially aren't used to that; they're trained not to offer but to attack. It's often easier for women to trust one another, to try to speak our experience in our own language, the language we talk to each other in, the mother tongue; so we empower each other.

But you and I have learned to use the mother tongue only at home or safe among friends, and many men learn not to speak it at all. They're taught that there's no safe place for them. From adolescence on, they talk a kind of degraded version of the father tongue with each other - sports scores, job technicalities, sex technicalities, and TV politics. At home, to women and children talking the mother tongue, they respond with a grunt and turn on the ball game. They have let themselves be silenced and dimly they know it, and so resent speakers of the mother tongue; women babble, gabble all the time.... Can't listen to that stuff.

Our schools and colleges, institutions of the patriarchy, generally teach us to listen to people in power, men or women speaking the father tongue; and so they teach us not to listen to the mother tongue, to what the powerless say, poor men, women, children: not to hear that as valid discourse.

I am trying to unlearn these lessons, along with other lessons I was taught by my society, particularly lessons concerning the minds, work, works, and being of women. I am a slow unlearner. But I love my unteachers - the feminist thinkers and writers and talkers and poets and artists and singers and critics and friends, from Wollstonecraft and Woolf through the furies and glories of the seventies and eighties - I celebrate here and now the women who for two centuries have worked for our freedom, the unteachers, the unmasters, the unconquerors, the unwarriors, women who have at risk and at high cost offered their experience as truth. "Let us NOT praise famous women!" Virginia Woolf scribbled in a margin when she was writing Three Guineas, and she's right, but still I have to praise these women and thank them for setting me free in my old age to learn my own language.

#Virginia Woolf #pauline oliveros #Ursula Le Guin #stories #mother tongue #unlearning #language #writing

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erindarroch · 7 years ago

Note

Who says 'I love you' first?

Who says ‘I love you’ first? Well, I guess it was probably Luke? Although I imagine Wedge wasn’t too shy about returning the sentiment…. ;)

Just kidding, dear Anon! I don’t particularly 'ship Luke with anybody at the moment, (and I am pretty sure you were asking about Han and Leia, anyway, right? Hah!) I just needed some way to answer you without answering you, because… I CAN’T MAKE UP MY MIND.

Actually, no. That’s not true. I am pretty sure it was Han. But he’s so…so…

Gah! He’s so disinclined to misty sentimentality or gushing feelings all over the place, it’s REALLY REALLY difficult to write those words coming out of his mouth without making it sound incredibly cheesy and wet. I have attempted it, but whenever I revisit those passages, I cringe a little at seeing The Words on the page.

On the other hand, IRL I think the abject inability to express one’s feelings is indicative of a certain lack of emotional maturity (and I mean that literally, not pejoratively), which I don’t like to ascribe to him by the time we get to Hoth. He’s in his early 30s by that point, and I just don’t like the idea of Han Solo as a perpetual man-child who can’t scrape up the courage to tell the woman he loves how he feels about her, without dicking around or playing mind games.

Still. Those words, from his mouth, are difficult to sell.

I think he definitely has feelings (lots of 'em) about Leia quite early on in their acquaintance, and I also think he becomes more aware of what they are as a consequence of “settling down” for a while with the Rebels. Once he stops flitting around the galaxy and starts living almost in a routine with people who eventually become his friends, I think he begins to reflect a little more than was normally his habit. He becomes more aware of how he feels — about everything, not just Leia — once he stops eschewing attachments (his attachment to Chewie being the exception, of course).

And my headcanon is that he just can’t help himself. He’s a GOOD GUY — although he doesn’t want anybody to notice that or comment on it. He doesn’t even think of himself that way. It’s just that he can’t make himself walk away from people in need, no matter how stridently he bellows that it’s every man for himself, and he only looks out for Number One, and all that nonsense. It’s just bluster. He spouts all of that stuff while simultaneously physically acting to protect others from harm. In the period between ANH and ESB, Han’s actions are always truer than his words.

So he shows his growing love for Leia in myriad ways, starting from a few months ABY and culminating in his decision to risk his life (and Chewie’s!!) to return to the Command Centre on Echo Base, grab her by the arm and then hustle her to safety. And Leia knows how he feels. He doesn’t have to say the words. She doesn’t have to say them, either. By the time we get to Hoth, they’re both well aware that they’re in love with each other, and they’ve already come perilously, deliciously close to spilling the beans and consummating the relationship…. but then Ord Mantell happens and their whole relationship undergoes a big setback as a consequence of what they experienced there. Uncertainty creeps in, along with a desire (possessed by each of them) to press the other into being the first to admit everything aloud, to lay it all on the line. And there we find them at the beginning of ESB. Stubbornly, stupidly about to break it off without confessing the truths they hold in their hearts.

The thing is, Leia’s done. She’s furious about it, and deeply hurt, but she’s D-O-N-E jacking around with Han Solo. She’s actually TRULY ready to let him go. She has decided she’ll cry about it later, when she’s alone in her quarters, and then she’s going to draw a line under it and get on with her life, because FUCK him and his apparent inability to commit to anything or anyone….

Han isn’t quite done, though. Despite having announced his imminent departure, he cannot help himself when it comes to Leia. Right up until the eve of his departure, he’s still needling her and trying to provoke her into being REAL with him. I don’t think he’s playing games… I don’t think he wants her to try to talk him out of going, because no matter what, he MUST go… But I do think he’s trying to provoke her into giving him a reason to come back (provided he survives his next meeting with Jabba). Otherwise, if she doesn’t want him, he may as well go elsewhere, do other work, for better pay, with less risk of Imperial entanglements, right? So his goading of her is partly a sort of plea: tell me you love me, Sweetheart, and you want me to come back. And I will.

The issue (for Han) is risk. He’s a survivor. Sure, he’s a gifted pilot and a crack shot with a blaster, but what he *really* does best is survive. He’s clever and resourceful, and he knows how to keep himself alive. It’s just that his primitive brain yammers at him that going all-in with Leia Organa will be the end of him in some way. And that is true, from a certain point of view. If he pledges himself to her, what’s left of his old life ends and a new one begins, and he doesn’t know what that looks like, or how it will work out. On some level, deep in his heart, he knows that his love for her is powerful enough to shred him, if it all goes wrong. So, it’s scary. And it takes him a while to work up to it.

But finally, quite early on in the trip to Bespin, there’s just nowhere left to hide. They’re stuck on the MF for “a few months” (the only bit of Disney canon I am willing to embrace lol), and Chewie most definitely is NOT going to get in their way. He’s had it up to his furry eyebrows with their ridiculous courtship, and just wants them to get on with it already.

So… they have to talk. And that’s when it happens.

If you want to know more, you’ll just have to wait until @jhgraham and I finish writing it, because at this point, I don’t even know. Hopefully, it won’t be drippy and awful.

Thanks for your question, Anon. I apologise again for writing a novel-length reply. My powers of procrastination know no bounds.

#jhgraham #trip to bespin #i love you i know #this is what i do when I should be working

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aab0289 · 7 years ago

Text

Rwby Chibi Xmas Skit Special. (Part5)

“House Trap?” Weiss’ eyebrow raised, as Ruby darted back to her.

“It’s about a kid who misses his ride for a holiday, gets left alone at Christmas and fights off thieves with comical and cartoon like traps that are implausible with physics. It’s one we watch every Christmas!” Ruby bounced up and down, eager to persuade Weiss to watch it.

“I still say Try Hard 1, cos that’s got guns and guns.” Yang winks as she points to her ember celiac and then her arms, making the others sigh at another terrible pun.

“That sounds like a daft premise, but if we’re doing the film, I’ll watch it too.” Weiss hides her interest, as she sees the others head over to the screen.

“I’ll get the presents, the drinks and-” Ruby is about to bolt carrying more stuff than she can carry.

“Let’s do it one thing at a time Ruby. Otherwise we’ll run out of things to do and you’ll likely hurt yourself.” Weiss advises as she takes a few things off Ruby to carry.

“This is going to be awesome!” Ruby declares as she urges Weiss to follow the others already sat in front of the screen. “Come on Xmas Bestie!”

(Transition scene: Kline cuts the cake that fills the screen, with each slice revealing the next skit till all slices are gone.)

Twas The Night Before Christmas.

The screen cuts to the girls going to bed, Ruby leaving a glass of milk and cookies for Santa. She takes a cookie and leaves a note ‘I promise I only had one of your cookies, R.R.’ as she crawled under the sheet.

Weiss waited for the others to fall asleep, before leaving a note next to the cookies, addressed to Santa. She closes her eyes, Zwei curling up with her on the bed, not aware of the sound coming from the chimney. Santa (his face hidden from the audience) makes his way to leave presents, including a giant bone for Zwei, when he picks up the letter. (It’s read as though Weiss is talking.)

It reads: Dear Saint Nicholas, I know I’ve not been the best friend or huntresses this year. I’ve been bossy, arrogant and rude to my friends & team. I know I don’t deserve them but I would like to ask only one thing this year. I wish to be besties (closer friends) with Blake, Yang, and especially Ruby. I know she can be impulsive, reckless and likes to waste my time, but I wouldn’t trade any of them for all the Dust in the world. With sincere regards, Weiss Schnee. P.s. If its possible, could I please have the latest shoe design to go with my combat skirt as a present? P.s.s. Could you please take this note so they don’t find out? I’d like to keep my reputation intact for just a bit longer.

Santa takes the note with him, disappearing up the chimney in a flash and merrily calling out ‘Ho-ho-ho.’, with the sleigh taking off from the view of the window. The scene turns to the room filled with presents as Ozpin starts to narrate.

“It was the night before Christmas, when all through the dorm, not a single thing stirred, not even a dog.” Ozpin stops as Zwei is awake, pulling away at a present shaped like a bone.

“I said, ‘not even a dog!’” Ozpin calls to Zwei who shies away back to bed. “That’s better, where was I? Oh yes, the children all snug in their beds, dreaming of sugary treats.”

Thought bubbles appear from Team RWBY, Weiss dreaming of crepes, Ruby dreams of cookies, Blake of biscuits shaped like fish and cats, while Yang dreams of Kline’s strawberry cake.

“Along with visions of them opening their presents, springing from their beds with sheer delight, upon finding bundles of toys and fine foods of their favourite kind as they wake.”

Thought bubbles now show the team opening their presents and eating tasty food.

“Their faces and cheeks, rosy like roses with the toys from the man with a beard white as snow. Travelling into the night on beasts that fly high, like the sun brightly rising with a new day over their fair city.”

Another thought bubble shows the other students all rosy cheeks at getting what they wished for Xmas. Then of Santa and his reindeers as they fly over Vale.

“The children merrily dreamed of the fun and wonder they’ll experience once the sun comes up. As they remained in a slumber, even as jolly Saint Nick left gifts for the other students too.”

The scene turns to Team JNPR, all nestled in their beds, except one. The screen focuses on the vacant bed as Nora fills the screen.

“Hey, some of us are trying to SLEEP here!” Nora grumbled as she crosses her arms.

“Miss Valkyrie, I’m trying to narrate here.” Ozpin broke from his narration to directly talk to Nora. “You shouldn’t even be awake now, let alone able to hear me.”

“How can anyone get any sleep with such a booming voice YAMMERING on all night?!” Nora protested, not noticing Santa in the background, tiptoeing with a great big sack.

“Just pretend I’m not here (not that I really am).” Ozpin instructed, as Nora mumbled as she adjusted her pillow and then booped herself with her hammer, instantly drifting off to sleep.

“Well, as I was saying.” Ozpin continued his narration, as Team JNPR all dreamed of Christmas morning. “They remained in slumber, dreaming of their presents, even as Santa Claus crept to leave the children their gifts.”

Pyrrha’s thought bubble is of Jaune kissing her under the mistletoe. Ren and Nora are sharing the same one involving pancakes, with Jaune’s being his Volume 4 armour upgrade.

“With but a tap of his nose, he shot up the chimney and flew into the night on his sleigh, not waking a soul. Not even a mischievous pup.”

Santa jumps up the chimney, while Zwei is back to pulling at the present as Ozpin coughs to get his’s attention.

“Zwei, last warning, be a good boy and go back to bed.” Zwei slowly walks back to bed, with a low huff before snoring, in the bed with Blake. “That’s better.”

Zwei dreams of a giant bone, and cuddles from Team RWBY, including Blake and Weiss who give him a cake & a fish of his own.

“Away he flew, like the down of a thistle.”

Santa’s sleigh begins to rise and the reindeer take the lead in heading home.

“Yet I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight and the sun finally rising on Christmas morning-”

Santa disappears as he calls out one last ‘ho-ho-ho’ as Ozpin continues to narrate.

“Merry Christmas to all.- ” Ozpin’s voice is distorted, another voice is merged, speaking with him, slowly becoming clearer, as the scene is no longer in Vale but a desolate location (the same as from Volume 3’s finale episode). It changes like the pages turning of a book to the very last page.

“-and to all a good night.” Salem says as she turns towards the screen, her eyes glowing red as she smirks before the skit concludes with static.

Thank you for reading this Rwby Chibi Xmas Special, I apologise it’s not all in one post. So I hope you all enjoyed these tales of colourful characters and festive hijinks.

Please let me know what you thought about the skits & wish you all a merry Christmas, even if it’s 2 months away.

#Rwby #rwbychibi #chibi #writing #teamrwby #teamjnpr #velvet scarlatina #rubyrose #weissschnee #yang xiao long #blakebelladonna #jaune arc #nora valkyrie #pyrrha nikos #lie ren #Ozpin #montyoumproject

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valmercados · 5 years ago

Text

I want to show you how I'm going to be upgrading from my current Windows 7 operating system, and this will also work with Windows 8 to the latest Windows 10 for free on Microsoft, comm and right now it's for free, but of course that can change at Any time it's my opinion that Microsoft wants everyone's computer that meets the Windows 10 system requirements on Windows 10, which brings up my disclaimers first of all, make sure you backup everything on your computer prior to the upgrade, because if something happens, while it's the operating system, Not so much a big deal, at least for me, then if I lose all my files and remember the old adage, if you have one backup, you have no backups. If you have two, you have one.

If you have three, you have two because when you do the restore from your one backup, if something happens along the way and you're like oopsie-doodle, well hey, if you had another backup, you're okay, so I would have two backups of your computer number. Two follow me: do everything that I'm doing in this video and don't get off the beaten path? Because if you do something you're, not sure about, you could turn to stone, and so could your computer and then number three is system requirements which we'll go over in just a minute. And that includes having the latest updates of your current operating system, Windows, 7 or Windows 8, just prior to upgrading to Windows 10. So to check my Windows 7 operating system. To make sure I have the latest updates just prior to upgrading to Windows. 10 then come with me good neighbor, down below and click on the start. Button go to the control panel come up here and click on system and security.

There'S the Windows Update, let's go ahead and click on check for updates. Now it says Windows is up-to-date, but I don't trust that I want to make sure that I do have the latest updates by coming over here in the tasks pane and clicking on check for updates. Now, throughout my video, it's gon na be a real short video compared to all the down loadings, the updates when it comes to updating to Windows 10. So just keep that in mind. My video is gon na, go a lot faster than the actual upgrading that it's gon na take for you to get to Windows 10. So there we go when does is up-to-date great, I'm ready to go. So let me go ahead and close out of here and open up Internet Explorer. Whatever browser you want to use and hey there's. My website reinforce us, quick plug. If you're looking for Microsoft Office, training, I've been certified since 2000, all the office applications there and I have the latest office 2016. Also office. 2013. 2010. 2007. Not only do you get the videos on DVD or downloads, but you'll also get the exercises, instructor notes and quizzes. So go ahead and check me out any case. There'S my plug. Let'S come up here and do a search for download Windows 10 and hit enter.

I'M going through the Yahoo search engines. Let me scroll down below this line, because everything above it is an ad and we're looking for the domain. Microsoft comm when it comes to download Windows 10 because anything else and who knows what you're getting on going straight to the makers of it. So with Microsoft, com, download, Windows, 10, click on it and there we go to get started. You'Ll first need to have a license to install Windows 10, meaning that if you're on Windows, 7 or Windows 8 make sure that's activated and I'll show you that just a minute. Because if it's activated, you can go ahead and download the tool now, which will start the process of upgrading from the current operating system 7 or 8 to Windows 10. But before we do that, I recommend that you read well everything here.

I went through it and I found out some like, for example, when you upgrade from Windows 7 and you like the application, the Windows Media Center, it's gon na, be wiped off. You can't have that in Windows 10. So if you really like it, you might want to find some other alternative. In any case, let's go ahead and expand using the tool to upgrade this PC to Windows. 10 click on it and, like I said, read everything here in case: there's some application. That'S not going to come over like the Windows Media Center. If it's something that's dear to your heart and let me click on to get to the meat, potatoes system, requirements and scroll down and there it is the processor you can. I have at least a one gigahertz or faster processor for internal memory. If you have a 32-bit system, it's got to be one gigabyte. If you have a 64, you got to have two gigabytes and I'll show you how you can find out. If you have a 64 or 32 bit system for a hard disk space again back to the 32 bit 16 gigabytes, if you have 64,

it's gon na be 20 gigabytes. So where do you go to find out what you got here? Let'S come down here and click on the start. Button come up here on the computer, right, click on it and go down and left click on properties. There you go up at the top. This is the system information for my computer. Here. I'Ve got windows, 7 ultimate installed service pack, 1 and the processor is: is it 1 gigahertz? Hey it's 3.3 gigahertz. So I pass and then install memory 6 gigabytes. But you wants to know that if I have a 64-bit system that the minimum is 2 gigabytes and well I got a 64-bit system here I got more than the minimum, so I'm good. If it was a 32-bit system, then you could have 1 gigabyte for your internal memory and then before we take a look at the hard drive to see if we have enough space go down below, and you can see that my product key windows is activated. So when I upgrade you'll see that I actually have a valid genuine copy of Microsoft, Windows, 7, so it'll proceed to the upgrade now to find out. Let me go ahead and close out of here how much hard space that I have because remember.

If I have a 32-bit, I need 16 gigabytes. If I have 64 20 gigabytes go ahead and click on the start button and then just click on computer and there's my hard drive. The C Drive. If I have 45 gigabytes free, I'm good. So let's go ahead and close out of here and I wouldn't be pushing it here like if you have just 20 gigabytes that can be squishy, you may run into issues. I would have at least a few gigabytes more than their minimum requirements. So that's my recommendation. In any case, let me go ahead and close out of here check out everything here, make sure that the requirements you meet will software and hardware, because a lot of the problems that I seen people run into is that they barely meet the requirements or they don't. Quite meet it for the hardware: they don't have enough internal memory or hard disk drive space and it just either doesn't update freezes or they haven't done the software where they get. The latest updates for the windows 7 or 8 operating system so get that ready and then read the rest if you're okey dokey with it, let's go ahead and scroll back up and click on the download tool now down below.

Do you want to run it? Of course, we do click yes and getting a few things ready. Lickable notice license terms, read all that more information privacy statement, if you're okey-dokey with that then go ahead and click accept getting a few more things ready here. What do you want to do? Do you want to upgrade this PC now or some other PC? So if you want to upgrade another PC, you can create an installation media on a USB flash drive DVD or ISO file for another PC. Well, I want to do it on this PC, so I'll leave it as is, and just click Next, and here we go so I'm not gon na sit here in Yammer, while we're waiting for this to progress from zero to 100 %. So I'll go ahead and do some magic and we'll jump ahead and keep in mind. It'S gon na be a lot longer for you than what this video takes to be able to get through the steps. And then, after it's done downloading here, which is just a few percentage points off, you can still work on your PC and that little teeny-tiny text.

Oh, isn't that nice, it's going to verify my download here, creating the Windows! 10 media feel free to keep using your PC. Still great, sir, is cleaning things up now. It'S gon na be checking for updates. So again, we'll fly through this. Getting a few things ready now clickable notices and license terms, go ahead and reach you that got more information if you're okey dokey with that click on accept now getting the updates and it's going to take a few minutes. So we'll fly through this, I'm making sure you're ready to install making sure we got enough space to install. You won't be able to use your PC while the windows, installs, save and close your files. Before you begin to recap, you've chosen to install Windows 10 Pro keep personal files and apps. I can change what to keep. Let me click on that, so I can keep my files and applications or I can just keep personal files only and not the programs or nothing everything's gon na be wiped clean whoo. That sounds spooky. I want to keep personal files and apps and leave it as is and click Next, and here we go more updates there we go making sure PC has enough space.

Okay, it's ready to install so let's go ahead and click on install and our PC is gon na restart several times this may take a while. So you go ahead and do what you need to do. I'M going to put this to sleep and then, when we come back in just a few seconds, we'll be near the end here of the percent complete you restarting again and still working on it now. So do you 5 % getting closer, hey there? We go welcome to Windows. 10, Kurt! Oh, that's, nice! Let'S go ahead and click Next choose the privacy settings for your device. Microsoft puts you in control of your privacy. Well, that's good location. Do you want to get location-based experiences like local weather? No, I don't want them to see where I'm at speech recognition talked to Cortana and store apps, that support voice, recognitions and Microsoft.

Your voice, no thanks, Diagnostics, help us fix things, improve Microsoft, products and services. Send data, including a lot of stuff about you on your computer to Microsoft? No thanks, I'm just a big no-no today. Aren'T I Tayler experiences with diagnostic data, get more relevant tips and recommendations to tailor? No thanks. You know sending my information out. I kind of a private guy, except when I'm on YouTube. I suppose let apps use advertising ID to make ads more interesting to you. No thanks, I'm just one big, no and we'll accept all the no noes, and apparently they won't. Let me let go of Cortana. Cortana is your sidekick all that makes it nice sure I'll go ahead, because now I feel it's a part of me to provide personalized experiences and suggestions Microsoft's going to collect some information, I'm kind of a private guy or as much as I can be.

So I'm going to say not now now here we've got new apps for Microsoft, Windows err, so Microsoft has apps to open up your photos and videos to view them listen to music edge to help you find things faster, take notes directly on webpages movies and TV. So if you don't want to use those apps, you can say, let me choose my default apps and then go ahead and choose what you want to use. What you don't want to use I'm going to go ahead and go with the defaults and leave them all checked and say next, oh, they got some updates for my PC. Isn'T that nice, you yay? Let'S start! Please do we've got windows 10 up and running, and then you can just go ahead and follow. Everything else said it provides you with like the best browser ever sync, your browsing, favorites bookmarks, get apps and we're good.

I'M gon na go ahead and close out, not mess with this right now and then quickly like I said, because I had a valid registered license for Windows 7 with this upgrade. Is it free? Let'S see if it's registered and activated here, let's go ahead and click on the windows icon and go up to the little cog here. The settings click on it. Let'S go to system click on that, come down and click on about and let's go ahead and scroll down, I'm going to click on change product here upgrade your edition of Windows, I'm not going to do it, but I'm going to click on it to show you Activation windows is activated with the digital license. Oh that's great! We'Re good thanks for watching hey as a quick reminder. If you like my video, please give it a thumbs up. You can also click on me and subscribe to my channel to get notified for the latest videos and four great specials on my products. Please see the description below this video

#windows #errors #windows 7 #solutions #fix

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nurturingflame · 7 years ago

Text

Week in Review - 63

The sass and side eyes are pretty thick this week. Good news. It’s only going to get worse. ^_~*

In other news, we are very excited to share new art done by the amazing @shellsweet. Definitely recommend her as an artist. Very nice and wonderful to work with! As for the end product, well you can judge for yourself.

Eliza and Gwyn both came out absolutely amazing!! Momma ferret cuddles!!!

Not for personal use. Commissioned by @lydjachan, co-mod of @nurturingflame

To Prune & Grow 5-8

Though Eliza was ashamed to admit that Splinter was on the top of her ‘cravings’ list, she was immediately relieved of the guilt by Phoenix’s typical acceptance of her ferrety tendencies.

“I guess having a girl’s night with Medusa is a much better option than the alternative.” Eliza chuckled lightly at her own poor humor. “In fact some girl time sounds like a good idea all around. What do you think?”

“What do I think about what?” Phoenix questioned, sounding slightly suspicious.

“About Gwyn and I spending some time at the warehouse?” The ferret said brightly before switching her tone to pleading, gripping both of the healer's hands between her own. “Pleeease?? Donnie is suppose to work on a new room for us and I know that Gwyn is going to get underfoot and we both could use some time in the sun.” Eliza looked her friend in the eye, practically begging. “Being here is driving me crazy. I need a break.”

Phoenix pursed her lips, the ferret’s eyes large, her hands warm over her own. “Splinter won’t like that…” she said slowly, and her heart immediately sank when Eliza’s look did.

Phoenix had such a difficult time reading the rat master. Most of the time she got the impression he was not happy with her at all, or that he outright disliked her. Then, other times, he was friendly, or what she surmised was friendly for him. And then there was the night of their dancing in the dojo, when he’d seemed...happy. She liked that Splinter, but doubted she’d have the privilege of seeing that one again. Not after how it ended.

“Ok,” she said, feeling slightly guilty for agreeing and slightly relieved when Eliza perked up. “I don’t mind having you over for as long as you want to stay.” She glanced toward the door. “But you have to help me with Mr. We-Don’t-Need-To-Go-Anywhere-Where-Someone-Might-See-Us.”

“Ya know, from someone who’s children get in trouble all the time I'm kinda sick of that argument.” Eliza huffed though she was elated with the Phoenix’s permission to stay with her. “Of course I'm going to back you up on this one. We've been ‘good girls’ and following his rules for weeks now. It's time to test just how much leeway we've earned.”

“You make it sound like you're asking for early parole.” Phoenix snickered.

“Hey, it's not that far from the truth!” Eliza stood and paced the room a few times while the healer started to pack her bag. “We could just tell him what we intend to do and hash it out like reasonable adults. Oorrrrr…”

“Or?”

“Or we could unleash our secret weapon on him.”

“And that would be?”

Eliza’s smile was almost predatory. “Gwyn, of course.”

Phoenix raised her eyebrows, as if she’d heard the ferret mutant incorrectly. “Your daughter is our secret weapon?” It was usually she who was saying such things, and sicking Medusa on someone was not something she would do lightly. But then again, Phoenix’s daughter could eat people. Gwyn had no chance of doing that.

Eliza stooped and slung her arm over the shorter woman, ignoring the twinge of discomfort as the new position allowed to one of the twins to kick her in the kidney. “My dear sweet Phoenix, you have no idea just how much that girl has our venerable ninja master wrapped around her little finger. Hold on, let me show you.” Eliza pulled her phone from her pocket and quickly swiped through her pictures till she found the one she wanted. “Look at that and tell me that she couldn’t get away with murder.”

Gwyn was sitting next to Splinter at a low table observing intently as the rat was in the process of folding paper. Perched precariously on his head was a completed paper crane while Gwyn had an origami flower tucked behind her ear. It was the epitome of a candid moment where the subjects were unaware they were being observed, just enjoying the activity they were absorbed in. The smile curling Splinter’s muzzle however, was unmistakable.

Eliza felt some of her annoyance drain. “If Gwyn wants to go on a sleepover, I very much doubt that Yoshi would be able to put up too much resistance. But, maybe we should keep it as our ace in the hole.” The ferret stood straighter as Phoenix looked at the picture, rubbing her belly in an attempt to settle the babies before they became too active.

“Come on, Splinter should be making himself some tea right about now. Why don’t we see if we can catch him in the kitchen. Who knows, maybe he’ll be reasonable for once.” Eliza said optimistically as she headed for the door.

Seeing the picture on the phone, Phoenix felt a stab of jealousy. She wasn’t exactly sure what caused it. Was it that her own children were no longer that age, where they delighted in such little things as papermaking? Was it that they were now too old to be absorbed in her in such a fundamental way as Gwyn seemed to be with Splinter in the photo? Was it the fact that the photo existed, an item she had precious few of, and none of them candid shots such as this? Or was it the fact that a father figure was involved with a child, something her children never had? She shook her head, dispelling the feeling with a sigh and smiling up at her friend as she left the room.

Eliza was correct, Splinter was in the kitchen, preparing himself some tea. He raised his eyebrows as they entered, as if their appearance truly surprised him, before lowering his head in a small greeting. “Ladies,” he said smoothly. “Would you care to join me?”

“Yes, please!” Phoenix said brightly, skipping forward. She had no idea where the man got his tea, or what made his preparing it so good, but it was the best stuff she’d tasted in a long, long time. If they could a sweetener down in the sewers, it would be perfect…

Though it was not unusual to see the two women around the lair, it was a surprise for them to join him, usually preferring to keep their own company during The Phoenix's visits.

He smiled and motioned to the little healer to take a seat, his heart wavered just a bit to feel the exuberance she seemed to exude with her girlish skip. He turned to retrieve a second mug from the cabinet only to bump in Eliza who was already there. “Pardon me.”

“No problem, I was just getting myself a glass too.” She smiled cordially, before holding out the very vessel he was planning to retrieve, “You two enjoy your tea, I have some sweet herbal brewed in the fridge already.”

“Thank you.” Splinter replied rotely, inwardly he was put off balance. This was the most interaction she’d had with him nearly all week. Eliza didn't leave the room either, but started to flit here and there, as she often did when in the kitchen, but still managing to stay engaged in the light small talk as Splinter prepared tea for himself and The Phoenix.

“Is there anything you require?” he asked, placing the steaming cup in front of the small woman. At the same time, as if by magic a small plate of cookies and peanut butter crackers, one of his favorite non cheese snacks, appeared on the counter.

He could already hear Eliza chewing on something crunchy and when he looked up her eyes held a smile as she finished her mouthful and then sipped on her tall glass of herbal sweet tea. He blinked, something in the air was off, but the pleasant scene was too nice to allow ill thoughts to taint the mood. He returned his attention to the Phoenix, picking up his dropped thought. “I believe we may still have some milk.”

She raised her brows, smiling again. He remembered she liked milk with her tea! “Really?” she breathed, as if he’d just offered her a diamond. Her family never had milk unless Chategris provided it for them, and she knew very well that when the cat mutant had it, it was stolen. It occurred to her that Splinter and his boys probably didn’t have any either, before Eliza’s arrival into their home. While dumpster diving only provided sour milk, the grocery store had plenty of fresh. Money and a human daughter provided a great deal for people who could not allow themselves to be seen in public.

Then she remembered why they were there. As he stood up and turned to fridge, she turned to Eliza, her smile fading.

She liked Splinter when he was like this, not just because he was accommodating, but that certainly helped. But he was sweet, in his own gruff way, like how he remembered she liked milk with her tea. He had no reason to remember that, he didn’t take milk in his tea. In fact, he had a very ritualistic way in which he drank it, she realized with a start. “Oh,” she moaned, guilt eating at her shoulders as they dropped.

Splinter turned with a speed that surprised her, one moment he was facing the fridge, and in a blink, he was facing her and Eliza, the milk jug in his hand, the liquid inside barely sloshing. His eyebrows were raised in concern, his golden eyes wide, but then his brows dropped in confusion. “What is the matter?” he asked slowly.

Phoenix bit her lip, glancing at Eliza again.

Splinter turned to the ferret mutant, his brows up once again, the soft expression on his face slowly disappearing.

“Eliza was thinking,” Phoenix said yammered, gripping her cup of tea so tightly that her knuckles were turning white, “that she could be out of you and your boys’ hair while you guys were fixing up her and Gwyn’s space.”

“Was she?” he asked smoothly, eyes still on the ferret.

Eliza gave her friend a sour look though she didn't see it, focused as she was on her mug. Splinter placed the milk before the Phoenix calmly before taking his customary seat. He gave no further comment, instead waiting for one of the women to elaborate.

Eliza rolled her eyes from the Phoenix as she poured the milk into her tea, back to him, affecting a casual smile in the process. “Yes, yes I was actually,” she said, her voice slightly pinched. “I just thought that construction might go faster if Gwyn wasn't asking Donnie questions every five minutes, annoying Leo, making Raph mad, or distracting Mikey.”

Splinter took a sip of his tea, trying to remain calm, though he was incensed. How dare she try to manipulate him, did he not have four teenage boys? Did she truly think he would not see through such a ruse. Well, two could play at this game.

“How considerate of you, Mrs. VonHertz. And exactly who’s hair would you be in while you are not in ours?” He put his cup down and gestured to the only human in the room. “Surely you would not impose on the Phoenix and her family. Especially since her home is on the surface,” His voice went from silky to firm. “And it is my understanding that we have an agreement on this matter.”

#nurturingflame #tmnt #TMNT 2012 #tmnt rp #Fanart #shellsweet #commission #OC #rp #roleplay #master splinter #Week In Review #lydjachan #illusion-na

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