#that said. i will never tire of drawing that angry rectangle

[cybertron-after-dark]

Beast wars is good, because with most tf characters you have the robot design and then A Car, which are notoriously hard to draw, and pretty hard to make expressive (unless its tfa but even then). With beast wars, though, their altmodes are always Funny Little Creechurs, and when your art style skews cartoonish and silly like mine does, the altmode feels less like a challenge and more like a shortcut, even an asset. If I'm just gonna draw something quick and funny, I suddenly don't need to draw out the whole complicated robot designs, when I could instead be drawing dinobot as an Incredibly Angry Rectangle

It's just so much easier, I don't even have to look at a reference. There's less pressure to make sure the details line up like on the robot design, because even if it doesn't match the canon design quite as intently. Like as long as its recognizable as a velociraptor and sufficiently grumpy, then That's Dinobot, Baby!!

[dreamweaversofficial]

Year One, Chapter One

Lyric didn’t blow up the kitchen.

This would be because it would be extremely irresponsible of the foster care workers to let her have anything capable of blowing up a kitchen, even if she wanted to, which of course she didn’t.  Why on earth would she want to damage something so integral to the care building?  Did they think she would rebel against the excellent way they were treating her?

They let her off with a warning.  This would have warmed her heart, except she didn’t blow up the kitchen.

“What, it just blew up by itself?”  Maria snaps, yanking her down the hallway.  Lyric follows obediently behind.  “Honestly, Lyric, this sort of thing has to stop.”

“I’ve never not blown up the kitchen before,” Lyric points out reasonably.

Maria gives her a Look, which is completely uncalled for.  “No, but what happened to the dining hall?”

“I was nowhere near those tables.”  Lyric reminds her, stabbing an accusing finger at Ryan.  He jolts, ducking behind the door, and almost certainly resumes eavesdropping immediately.  “He can tell you.”

“And the library?”

A few strands of Lyric’s hair are caught in Maria’s grip, pinned to her arm, and she winces.  “Do you really think a twelve year old is strong enough to knock over a bookshelf?”

“Enough,” Maria says suddenly, voice tired but full of vitriol.  “These incidents line up, Lyric, no matter how many times you somehow prove you aren’t at fault.  It’s disappointing.”

Lyric swallows and shuts up.  Her mind turns the word over, flips it, scrutinizes it from all angles, but it’s no use.  It still stings.

Sighing, Maria ushers her into her room.  It’s sparse, like all the rooms are, but with one noticeable difference: no roommate.  Solitary confinement for children, Lyric thinks grimly.  The door clicks closed behind her.

And she still hasn’t blown up the kitchen.

If she’d really done it, she thinks with vicious intent, she’d have - have - 

With a groan, she throws herself back onto the sheets.  Her fists crumple them, fabric scratchy under her fingers, then slacken.  

“Lyric Akari does not strike first.” she announces aloud, mouth forming the familiar syllables of her name like she’s repeating a prayer.  She stares into the mirror - her room’s one luxury of sorts - and sees herself reflected back, all olive skin and trailing hair over her back.

There’s a shuffling outside her door, and another girl slips through.  

“Aw,” she simpers, “but how do you know that’s really your last name?”  Lyric eyes her, nose wrinkling, and turns her face away.  Abby seems to take this as an invitation, stepping closer.  

“I heard,” she needles, eyeing her surroundings as if inspecting the room, “you did something bad again.”

“Update your vocabulary if you’re going to insult me.”  Lyric retorts.  

“I’d never go so far for a hobby,” Abby hums instead, lacing her fingers together.  The picture of perfect innocence.  Sometimes, Lyric wishes she really were capable of doing half the things she’s accused of.

“Is that what you call tormenting me,” Lyric grumbles, debating how effective throwing her blankets over her face would be.  Probably not very.  “You should prioritize other things - like actually figuring out how to actually keep a foster family.”

Abby’s pale face flushes pink, matching the ribbons in her long black hair, and she swivels to the door.  Lyric relaxes premediatavely.  A mistake, she realizes as the other girl pauses in the doorway.

“At least I can get one in the first place,” she says delicately, then closes the door softly behind her.

She relies on her looks, Lyric knows.  A flick of her hair, a few well placed compliments, and she’s out.  Sometimes Lyric wishes she could change her appearance - brown hair was hardly uncommon, and the green eyes - but Abby always comes back.  It’s pointless to wish.

“Ugh,” Lyric says, with feeling, and pulls the blankets over her head so hard her feet are uncovered.

When she wakes up from her ill-timed nap, it’s to knocking on her door.  That alone is strange - there’s no semblance of privacy in the care system, let alone an attempt to preserve it.  Savoring the strange feeling, she calls “Come in!”

“There’s - someone here to see you,” Maria grits out, and Lyric’s shoulders slacken.

Breathless, she nods, and Maria leads her into the visitation room as if each step pains her.  A man in his thirties, brown hair and olive skin to match hers, sits on the best couch.  For a heartstopping moment, Lyric wonders if they could be related.

That’s ridiculous, she reminds herself.  Just because they share two common features doesn’t mean they’re related.

Then he looks up, and the hopes are crushed for good.

He has purple eyes, what Lyric’s wished and longed for since she could understand what that meant.  Power, family, magic - all off limits due to a few genes that subjected her to a different eye color.

“Miss Akari.” he says, definitive.  “I am Professor Magnus.”

“From Mentality?” Lyric asks, voice tentative, even though she already knows the answer.  She’s done the reading.  What other magic school is there?

The professor inclines his head.  “I hear you’ve been… inciting.”

“I really didn’t blow up that kitchen,” Lyric whispers, fingers worming their way into her pockets.  “I couldn’t have.”

“Mm.”  Professor Magnus takes a step closer.  “Green eyes.”

Lyric almost cracks a joke about how he’s not one to mince words, but her heart is so far into her throat that she’s afraid it would fall out.  She nods her head.

“Unusual.”  He turns to rustle in his bag, and Lyric presses her lips tight together.  Unusual.  The whole problem is that she’s normal - hideously, irritatingly normal.  The word picks at her skin like removing imbedded gravel.  Professor Magnus finally surfaces with a stick of white rock and extends it to her.

She takes it, clutching it in her fist.  It’s a smooth roughness, shimmering grey lines struck through, and she rubs her thumb along the rectangle’s end.  It feels like - what she feels when she thinks about her parents, something she had and then lost.  Drifting in her memory, inaccessible.

“I think I’ve dreamed about this,” she croaks out at last.  Is this a test?  Is she going to be kicked out of care for something she - 

“Yes, I think you have.”  Professor Magnus watches her for a beat, two, three, then turns swiftly to Maria.  “I will be taking her to Mentality.  She will learn there until she is eighteen, provided she doesn’t get kicked out before that time.”

“What?” Maria demands, but he’s already turning back to Lyric.

“Pack your things.  Do not expect to be back.”  With that, he takes the rock back and busies himself with his bag again.

Her breathing catches.  “I - don’t understand.”

“Miss Akari,” Professor Magnus recites, as if he’s said this spiel before and will again, “you are in possession of enough magic to train at Mentality school of Magic.  Please pack your things.”

“I don’t have anything I want to take,” Lyric admits.

He opens the door, strange robes blowing in the wind.  “Excellent.  Follow me.”

With a last look at Maria, who looks both angry and confused, Lyric ducks out the door.

The courtyard is filled with the last vestiges of summer warmth melting into autumn, green leaves blowing in a dry breeze.  Professor Magnus draws her to him by one arm, gently guiding her toward a waiting car.  It’s small, impersonal, a clean black vehicle perfect for blending in.

Lyric pulls a face.  “Do you have any papers?”

The professor pulls an envelope from his sleeve as if prompted.

“... thanks.”

Lyric Akari, it reads, you have been accepted to…

“That’ll do,” Lyric declares, and gets into the car.  Take me away from here, she doesn’t say.  I’m magic, she doesn’t say.  Gabriel’s tooth, she doesn’t say, because she’s pretty sure swearing would be frowned upon.

Instead, she runs her thumb over the paper until it shines.

The ride passes in a blink (“Magic?”  “You were enjoying yourself.”  “Well, dang.”).  Lyric fidgets in the backseat, passing the envelope from hand to hand.  Up front, the professor glances into the rearview mirror, making eye contact for a brief second.

“We’re here.”

Lyric spins to the other window, unbuckling herself frantically and wedging herself along the door.  Mentality rises before her.  Thank god he’s really not a crazy person, Lyric breathes.

“Follow me,” Professor Magnus instructs her, then slides out of the car and into the school.  Lyric throws herself out the car door pell-mell and bolts after him, slowing to an interested skip once they’re walking side by side.  The hallways are empty but for a few teachers scurrying back and forth.

He notes her questioning look.  “The school year starts tomorrow.”

“But I don’t have any supplies!”  Lyric blurts, stricken.

Professor Magnus shakes his head.  “The Headmaster will sort you out.”

Not ‘that’.  ‘You’.  That’s not intimidating at all.  She flicks her fingers a few times to remove nervous energy, then rebounds in her skipping.  This way, she’s faster without actually running.  A few curious looks are aimed at the green eyed girl speeding through the halls of a magic school, but they’re quickly waved aside at the presence of Professor Magnus.

They come upon the administration’s office quicker than Lyric would like, stopping in front of a simple second floor door marked ‘Headmaster’.

“Do they have a name?”  Lyric whispers out of the corner of her mouth.

As if considering, the professor halts with his hand on the doorknob.  “She is to be addressed as Headmaster.”  With that, he swings the door open and whisks inside.  At a loss, Lyric follows.

“Magnus!”  the Headmaster booms, rising from her seat.  “And Lyric - excellent, so my little hunch was right.”

“Alix won’t be terribly pleased about that,” Professor Magnus confides, casting an appraising look at Lyric.

Lyric’s shoulders sink with the knowledge that someone already dislikes her.  As if noticing this, the Headmaster laughs.  “He just owes me detention duty for a month.”

“As for room placements,” Professor Magnus continues, “I was thinking Garen, in Four B.”

The woman nods.  “Get her the first year textbooks, and anything else she’ll need.  He’s a good lad, he’ll take it from there.”

“I have a roommate?”  Lyric asks, head spinning.  “I don’t know.  I’m kind of -”

“Volatile?”  Headmaster interrupts kindly.  “I think you’ll have an easier time of it around other magic users.”

Lyric gulps and presses her lips together.  Professor Magnus, with a last clasp of her shoulder, breezes out of the room.  Headmaster claps her hands.  “Now.  He’ll take anything you’re going to need to your room later - would you like to get settled in?”

Lyric gives a shaky assenting nod, which seems to be permission for the Headmaster to subject her to a tour.  “You’re going to have the same schedule as your dorm mate, so he can explain most of this to you.  We had an in depth tour for the others a few weeks ago, but it’ll be everyone’s first day.”

They stop in front of a large room with a clear floor, displaying a view of the greenery underneath.  Seemingly infinite stacks of bookcases rise to the ceiling, and huge ladders drift back and forth on their own, floating books meandering to their proper shelves.  A woman twitches her fingers, and a book that was attempting to lodge a section labeled Magical Creatures shifts to Defense Spells.  

“Nice try,” she mutters.

“This is our librarian,” the Headmaster tells Lyric.  “If she wasn’t here to control the books, they’d probably escape and start biting people.”

Lyric pales, and she laughs again.  “Don’t worry!  They’ve never done that.”

“Yet.” the librarian says, smiling at Lyric.  She slips her a book titled History of Mentality, and Lyric is quietly grateful as the Headmaster steers her away.

“The dorms are on the first floor,” she continues.  “You’ll be with the other first years, and you’ll stay with them until third year, when you choose your track.”

They halt in front of a door, and Headmaster motions for Lyric to set her hand on the wood surface.  Upon further inspection, a gold four glows above the doorknob.  She turns the handle and peeks inside.

“Now it’ll unlock for you without a key,” the Headmaster dictates.  “Your room, too.”

The space opens to a room with a couch and table, swirls of black and gold on grey walls.  A hammock hangs from the ceiling, and there’s a bookcase along the walls on either side of the door.  Three other doors are labelled Bathroom, Garen and (the label appearing as she watches) Lyric.

“The others will arrive tomorrow,” Headmaster hums cheerfully.  “Professor Magnus should be along to bring you dinner and your supplies later - perhaps you’d like to check out your room?”

Taking this as a dismissal, Lyric whispers a ‘thank you’ and darts into the room labeled with her name.

“Ah - Lyric!”

She pokes her head out the door.

The Headmaster holds out a uniform that she certainly wasn’t holding a moment before.  “This should be your size.”

“Thanks,” Lyric repeats, small smile crossing her face as she takes it.  Headmaster gives her an amiable nod as she leaves the room.

A uniform, she thinks.  Something permanent tying her to this place - like the label on her room, or the way her dorm is charmed to unlock at her touch.  Something she was never given before.

She’s staying here, no matter what she has to do to ensure it.

[writing-royza]

Royai Week Prompt Three - Old Wounds

Old Wounds

Weapons could be used to wound. Any first-grader that got a lecture from their mother about scissors and sharp knives knew that. But he had hit upon one that, although it had wounded him time and again, it also healed him. Riza had been the cause or reason for several major marks inflicted on him – physical and psychological – and yet Roy knew he’d never be able to let go of her. On the surface, sure. Physically, yes. But never in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Because any wound she caused or he incurred on her behalf, he had only to look at her for it to fade away.

———————-

Logically speaking, he shouldn’t be scared of her.

She was a lone thirteen-year-old girl that kept to herself, did her homework, kept a level head on her shoulders, and somehow still managed to keep the entire house (besides the library) clean and have a hot meal ready at the end of the day. There was absolutely nothing about her that should make him break out in the cold sweat that every hormonal teenage boy dreaded… but that was the exact effect she had on him.

If there was anyone with the last name ‘Hawkeye’ that he should be scared of, it was her father. Her terse, intimidating, single-minded father… but somehow, he garnered much less fear in Roy’s book.

He sat on the overstuffed couch in the study, both feet on the floor, both hands on the book in his lap… and tried to recall what he was supposed to be reading. Every muscle was tense, his jaw clenched, he was afraid to move… and all she was doing was sitting on the opposite couch, facing him, scribbling on a notepad and occasionally checking some bit of information in the book beside her. Her legs were tucked up underneath her, the toes of her bare feet wiggling idly as she worked, light concentration turning those already serious brown eyes somber. That was as much as he could see without lifting his head and making it obvious he was watching her.

Finally, enough of the tension eased from his chest to allow him to speak. “What —“ Having been quiet for so long, his voice gave one of its embarrassing mid-puberty squeaks, and he coughed to unsuccessfully cover it. Riza looked up, and he almost lost his nerve, then swallowed hard and tried again. “What are you working on?”

“Oh.” She held up the book. “Book report. Although it’s less of a report and more of a ‘I hope I’m getting this right,’ because the prose is heavy and kind of hard to understand.”

Roy tried a smile. “Yeah. I recognize the title. That’s a rough one.”

His heart started racing as she returned the smile – in a very pretty fashion for someone so terrifying, he had to admit – before she shifted to sit with her back braced on the armrest, her knees drawn up to create a kind of easel for her notepad. “I’ll still take this over my math homework any day.”

“You have trouble with that, too?” Curiosity was drawing him in, now. At her confirming nod, he set his book aside. “Maybe I can help. I mean… I’m a couple years older than you; chances are I’ve had to deal with it already.”

The look she gave him was sidelong, evaluating the offer. After a moment, she said, “Well… I understood basic trigonometry well enough. Sine, cosine, all that. But we just started talking last week about “functions” and I’m already lost.” Her lips twitched in a suppressed smile. “You might say my math skills have become… non-functional.”

He knew he was staring at her. Open-mouthed, no less. He hadn’t been expecting a joke like that, not from her. She was so quiet, so reserved…. This had to be once-in-a-blue-moon sort of thing for her. Laugh, he thought hazily. Laugh before she gets insulted and puts you out of your misery for good.

He settled for a smothered snort, shaking his head with a grin. “I might be able to help a little bit. That stuff was clear as mud to me, as well.” He looked up, still smiling. “What do you say – shall we make it a study date?”

It was exactly the wrong phrasing to use. He saw her walls go up, saw her dart back into her shell… a dozen metaphors came to mind, all leading to the same conclusion. Roy had firmly overstepped his bounds, had trod on this already tenuous new ground, and stepped directly on the new flower of a possible friendship.

You don’t use the word ‘date’ that fast around a kid like her, idiot, he scolded himself. If she didn’t already barely tolerate you, now she’s just going to think you’re a creep. How are you going to fix —

“I… don’t think a date is necessary.” His train of thought cut off abruptly as she dropped her feet to the floor, gathered her book and notepad, and rose. “I should go,” she added quietly. There was no other emotion in her voice, no obvious discomfort, no open dislike… and somehow that was worse. More condemning.

Roy could think of nothing to say as she headed for the door. His mind was reeling with a combination of embarrassment, rejection, and returning fear, all three emotions leaving painful little scratch marks on his heart. Just as her hand reached for the doorknob, he managed a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

Riza froze instantly, then turned to look at him. “Pardon?”

Swallowing the hurt, he sat straight and forced himself to look her in the eye. “I… made that really awkward, and put you in an uncomfortable position,” he said, knowing he sounded overly formal but not having any idea what other words to use. “I’m sorry about that.”

She watched him for several agonizing heartbeats, her expression unreadable, then nodded. “Apology accepted.” She tilted her head, that small smile coming back. “And, hey…. I said no to the date part, not to some help studying. If you’re still willing.”

———————-

Sometimes, he wished he had paid more attention to constellations and important stars in school. Alchemy, chemistry, physics… that had all come first in his mind, not little points of light in the night sky that would still be there when he decided to take the time to learn about them.

Of course, in Central, seeing stars at night was a rarity. The streetlights dimmed them, if not causing them to vanish altogether. At the Academy, he’d been so tired every night when he finally crawled into the bunk that he couldn’t stay awake to stargaze even if he’d wanted to.

But here, in the desert landscape of Ishval, the sky came alive at night.

Lying on his back, dark eyes wide, he stared the sparkling skyscape overhead, trying to memorize all the stories Riza would spin for him, trying to memorize name after name… and failing horribly. He alternated between watching the sky and watching the graceful movements of her fingers as they traced shapes on the starry backdrop.

“This one is Eagle’s Flight,” she said, pointing to a cluster of stars in the shape of a capital T. “The tip of one wing, to its head, to the other wing, with the tail back here. And this is the first one I learned about: Mother Bear.” She traced an uneven rectangle between four stars. “The body…” Her finger trailed along several bright dots. “…a tail…” In front of the rectangle, she added a triangle that culminated in a single forward-facing point. “…and her head.”

He couldn’t help himself. “Bears don’t have tails that long.”

“Seen many bears, have you?” she shot back easily.

Rolling his eyes, he gave up, pointing instead to another section of stars. “What about that one? Is that anything?”

Riza thought a moment, then nodded. “The Seated Queen. She said that she and her daughter were more beautiful than any sea nymph, and that made the god of the sea so angry that he sent a sea monster to destroy the kingdom. The only way he would stop was if the queen and her husband sacrificed their daughter to the monster.”

He turned his head so that he could see her, lying on her back in the sand like he was, her eyes on the stars. “…You’re kidding. You’re making that up.” She shook her head. “What kind of crazy fairy tales were you reading as a kid?!”

“It’s not a fairy tale, it’s a legend,” she corrected him, though teasingly. “Anyway, the daughter was saved before she could be eaten, by a hero – that’s his constellation over there – and the queen and her husband – over there – were placed next to each other in the stars.”

“Hey, that’s a good deal,” he said dryly. “Agree to sacrifice your daughter and be immortalized forever as a bunch of balls of hot, burning gas.”

She laughed quietly, and the two of them sank into companionable silence. Roy breathed deep of the cooling air, wondering how a moment like this – a moment of personal peace and relaxation – could be achieved in the middle of a warzone. He had almost no right to be lying here, calm, when tomorrow he could be sent back out with the first wave of a new attack.

He turned his head slightly, just enough so that he could see her, and watched her eyes still roaming the sky. They flitted from one group of stars to the next, trailed the lines that, of the two of them, only she could see. He could see a shadow of that young girl he’d known, had helped to figure out math homework in the dusty, close confines of her father’s personal library.

Back then, she’d had bruised and scratched-up legs from being outside every moment she could. The soles of her feet were blackened and calloused, requiring a scrub in the bathtub every night, from going barefoot in the summer heat. She had climbed trees with the best of them, swum in the small stream two hundred metres behind her house, and sat perfectly still to let a butterfly alight on the palm of her hand while he watched breathlessly.

And now she was here, with him. She wore the same uniform he did. She had the same tired, dark circles under her eyes that he did. Her hands held the same bloodstains as his… and it was all his fault. She had followed him to this place, and in doing so, he had condemned her, body and soul.

He looked away quickly; too quickly. She noticed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, casually, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to satisfy her. “Just thinking.”

A moment of silence, then, “Not thinking.” Her voice was soft, knowing and sympathetic… but unyielding. “Brooding.”

“Hm.”

Her elbow nudged his ribs. Not painfully, but enough to signal that a second nudge might not be as gentle. “Say it aloud,” she advised. “It’s not going to do you any good if it just sits and festers in your mind.”

Roy held his tongue, trying to wait her out. If he didn’t admit what he had been thinking, she couldn’t hate him for it. She couldn’t hate him for drawing her into this life, for using her father’s research the way he was. She couldn’t hate… him.

But he should have known better than to try to out-wait a sniper. Finally, after fifteen minutes of near-deafening silence, with her head turned so that her eyes were staring holes into his cheek, he let out a a deep sigh. “All right, all right, you win already. I was just… I was thinking that… I’m sorry. Sorry that I drew you into this life.”

Riza said nothing, and after several awkward seconds, he sat up, staring out at the nighttime sands. “I’m sorry that you felt you had to follow me into the military, that it got you sent here, that you’re forced into doing… what it is we do.” More long seconds of silence followed, twisting the knife of guilt a little further into his heart. “I’m so sorry, Riza. For all of it.”

“Does that include thinking so little of me that you believe I’m incapable of my own decisions?”

His head whipped around to find her still lying flat on her back in the sand, her legs crossed at the ankles, her fingers laced together and resting at the bottom of her ribcage, her eyes calm and on the stars once again. “…What?”

“What what?” she countered. “Do you honestly think that I followed you into the military because of some schoolgirl crush? Or maybe you think that you spoke so eloquently about rebuilding the country and using alchemy to help people that I just threw away whatever dreams I had of a civilian life and dashed headlong for the nearest recruitment centre?” She snorted quietly. “Give me some credit, please.”

Roy wasn’t sure what to say, either in general or that wouldn’t make her angrier than she clearly already was, so he kept his mouth shut. Riza continued. “You may have sparked the idea, pardon the pun, of joining the military, but you’re far from the reason I enlisted. I made that decision on my own, based on my own interests. Yes, that led to me being stationed out here, yes, that has led to my having to do things I regret. But in all of it – enlistment, training, being assigned to Ishval – the only point where my hand was forced is in, as you said, doing what we do.”

She got to her feet, brushing herself off. “I gave you my father’s secrets, Roy. I didn’t give you control over my actions or my life. You want to be a leader? You’d do well to remember that.”

Turning, she started back toward the nearby glow of the tents and campfires, leaving him feeling as though one of Kimblee’s explosions had gone off directly underneath him. It sank in, slowly, like ice-cold fingers, that he had probably just ruined one of two genuine friendships he had in this hellhole, and when Hughes heard about this, he could kiss the second one goodbye as well.

You idiot, his mind growled at him. Get off your ass and get after her. Don’t lose her after all you’ve been through.

Scrambling to his feet, he took off, sending sand flying. “Hawkeye, wait up!”

To his relief, she paused, half-turning to watch him approach. Her expression gave nothing away, neither anger or willingness to forgive. Roy skidded slightly as he came to a halt, swallowing hard in nervousness. “I – That was… unfair of me. I assumed a lot of things out of… of guilt, I guess, at finding you here, in a place like this. I feel….”

He struggled with the words for the moment, but she waited, hands folded, watching. “I feel… responsible for you, somehow. Your dad asked me to look after you, and up until now, I’ve done a pretty piss-poor job of that.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair, trying to figure out just how the hell expressing oneself was supposed to work. “You were right, the decisions that brought you here are yours. You’re responsible for your own life. I guess… I just feel guilty that I haven’t done more, and can’t do much, to make sure it’s a happy one.”

When it was clear his words had run out, she spoke. “Would you like to know something that does make me happy?”

He grinned lopsidedly, and only half-heartedly. “Will it make me feel less awful?”

“Maybe.” Her smile was small, knowing. “Something that makes me happy… is seeing someone receive information, and accepting that information and using it to change their outlook. To grow themselves as a person.” She tilted her head to one side, regarding him closely. “And I believe I just saw that.”

He felt it go, felt that cold ice-knife of guilt slide out of the rip it had torn into him, felt the warm, affirming words close up the wound with no blood spilled, and leave him just a little stronger.

“I’ll try to live up to that.” He glanced upward. “Maybe it’s not worth being immortalized in the stars, but it ought to count for something.”

Her fingers brushed, feather-light, against his and then withdrew. “It already counts for a lot.”

———————-

He remembered thinking “oh, good, that’s the last of it” before catching a faint whiff of charred skin, and having to turn away to be violently sick. The tent was too confined, too dark, too oppressively hot all at once, and yet his pulse roared in his ears, spots of light swam in his vision, and a deep chill ran through him.

He spat the foul taste of bile from his mouth, glancing back over her shoulder.

Riza was on her knees, crouched low, her forehead pressed to the sandy ground that served as a floor. He could hear her breathing, the sound coming in sharp hisses around the leather belt clamped between her teeth. Her right hand, the only one he could readily see, slowly clenched and unclenched, compressing and flattening the same palmful of grit over and over.

His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “Hawkeye?”

Her hand froze, then reached with agonizing slowness to the belt and pulled it from her mouth. “Bottom of my kit,” she gritted. “Small white bottle. Get it.”

Roy’s stomach rolled as he moved to do as she said, but he swallowed hard and kept whatever was left in his stomach down. Wriggling a hand through the various articles in her pack, down to the bottom, he fished about until he found something that felt like a bottle. It rattled as he brought it out.

“Pain pills?” he asked, turning toward her.

“For… you know.” She had shifted so that she was sitting, though she was still bent forward. Her cheeks, ashen until now, coloured slightly. “For… ‘women’s troubles?’”

He looked at the label again, read the active ingredient in the medication, and the dosage, his brain feeling fuzzy and sluggish. “…Damn, it hurts bad enough for extra-strength?”

She held out her hand, crooking her fingers impatiently. “Dealing with that means I can deal with this,” she said, just a little sharply. “Two should help.”

“Right, sorry.” He noticed, belatedly, that his fingers were shaking as he twisted the cap off the bottle. The little white tablets inside rattled even harder as he eased a pair of them from the container and passed them to her, watching in dull surprise as she dry-swallowed them, one by one.

He had a sneaking suspicion he was in shock. The one rational part of his brain could realize that. The confusion, the cold sweat, the tent seeming to tilt one way then another around him… all signs pointed to it. He should tell Riza, tell her so that when he most likely passed out, she would know why. It seemed only polite.

She was sitting calm and collected, her eyes closed, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. Maybe he should try that. Mimic her, and in doing so, find some kind of emotional anchor in this storm of emotion.

It hit him again. What had he done? To her, to one of the single most important people in his life, to the quiet girl and stoic woman whom – he had to admit – he had somehow fallen head over heels for? He had marked her. He had marred her. She had been perfect and whole and now —

He watched as she gathered the tan overcoat of her uniform to her chest, apparently realized rather belatedly that she was sitting in the dark without any sort of covering up top. She hugged the fabric, looking his direction… and stopped. “…What?”

“…Can you forgive me for this?”

Brown eyes, dulled slightly by the pain, stared at him for a long moment. Then, quietly, “Roy, I asked you for this. I asked you to destroy it.”

“I didn’t. Destroy it, I mean. Not all of it.” Her eyes flashed with hot anger in the darkness and he scrambled to explain himself. “Riza, I couldn’t! I don’t care how strong you are, that much would…. Even if I held back the most I could, it’d kill you. You can’t go to the medics with this, you know you can’t. They’ll ask too many questions. If I burned that tattoo in its entirety, you’d go into shock and you’d die. Hell, I’m in shock and all I did was snap my fingers!”

Her eyes still smoldered, unrelenting. “So then how —“

“The parts I burnt are absolutely vital to understanding everything else. They tie it all together,” he explained. “It’s… it was surgical, I guess. Precision shots. Without those three spots, the rest is next to useless.”

She was quiet for several beats, then murmured, “Precision shots…. Like a sniper.” The heat was gone from her eyes, the glare fading. “I’m…. I can still be my own person.”

“You always have been.” The smile he offered was nowhere near strong enough to be genuine, but it was a valiant try. “You’re the smartest, strongest, most independent, self-reliant, quick-witted person I know. I’d keep going with adjectives, because I know there’s at least three dozen more, but I can’t think of them.” He closed his eyes, willing the tent to stop spinning, or at least to spin a little less violently. “I want that for you, I want you to have that freedom to be yourself because if any of us deserves to come out of this place with even half a chance, it’s you. It’s you and Hughes.”

“You’re leaving somebody out,” she prodded gently.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you realize how badly this place has hit home for me. I said I wanted to help people, but… I think I’ve got an entire nation – and any others we’re fighting with – to help. I’m not dragging you two into that. Hughes has that girlfriend of his to go home to, you’ve got the rest of your life in front of you.”

“You’re right on that, but wrong on another thing.”

His eyes opened just in time for her to press a soft kiss to his cheek, her hand folding around his. “I’m not leaving here without you.” The words were soft, but anchored stolidly in conviction. “You’ve got big dreams for this country… and thanks to you, so do I. And you’re going to need help to make those happen.”

———————-

His eyes snapped open to darkness, but it wasn’t the darkness of lying on the sand under an Ishvalan sky. Instead, only the whitewashed ceiling stared back at him. The sheets were tangled around his legs, some faint draft turning the sheen of a light sweat icy against his bare chest. Even that did nothing to dispel the summer warmth permeating the apartment.

Nights like this often brought the past back to him in dreams. Sometimes pleasant, more often not. But more and more frequently in the not-too-distant past, it had become much easier to handle.

The reason why was sprawled next to him, her hair lying half on her pillow and half on his, one hand beneath the pillow and the other curled to her chest, her dog draped over one extended leg, and her mouth open just enough for the faintest of snores to issue forth.

Turning onto his side, Roy slid an arm around Riza’s waist, tugging her close against him. If she only knew that she became as un-Riza-like as physically possible while she slept…. He suspected she would find that potentially embarrassing, but he loved it. Hell, he loved her.

And, in the end, that was the miracle balm for any wound, no matter how far in the past or near the present it was.

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

Three Card Draw

For @leonine-eagle as part of the Les Mis Halloween Exchange 2019! Your trick for the prompts mythology au and modern au! I know you asked for pining too and I tried, honest, but I don't think it landed which is why I labelled it gen. Though hopefully I fit in enough friendship feels for you! Regardless I hope you like it and Happy Halloween! Words: 11,617 Rating: T AO3

Being stuck in Limbo for a few centuries was boring. A few thousand years just made him angry.

Zeus had said that he was “a radical even your lauded Prometheus wouldn’t associate with” before chucking him in here. Enjolras was fairly certain he’d been forgotten about by this point.

Not that it made Enjolras any more remorseful. Especially seeing as he wasn’t remorseful to begin with. This just further proved his point that Zeus was a self-important asshat who disrespected women and took advantage of the mortals. It would seem the other gods still wouldn’t listen to him though, if they did maybe he wouldn’t still be in this plane of literal nothing. Or maybe they just couldn’t find him. Or maybe they were too afraid to share his fate.

Regardless, Enjolras wasn’t happy and was getting tired with just arguing with the version of Zeus in his head. Besides, he was a minor god anyway. And the god of freedom. Why was he being punished so severely? What did Zeus expect?

It would have taken him hundreds of years longer before he’d have been even the slightest bit of a threat. At the very least a century. Enjolras had a small following in the northern wilds outside a growing city called Rome; the group was expanding steadily but never at an alarming rate. Or, well, he’d assisted a bit in the Romans establishing a republic and that may have bolstered his following and increased his power. But still not enough to catch the attention of the Greek Pantheon.

Except, some of the Greeks’ followers had come to Rome and as a rapidly expanding city it caught their attention. Enjolras with it. So, he said some things, Zeus was awful, and he was thrown here. The last thing Enjolras heard as the portal closed was Zeus telling his son, Dionysus, that he could have Enjolras’s followers since “intoxication is just a variation on his theme.” That last bit was something that especially pressed on his nerves.

For the umpteenth time Enjolras was finessing the finer points of his argument that freedom did not equate rampancy and debauchery when there was a break in the nothingness. A rectangle had appeared to his right. He couldn’t exactly describe what it looked like beyond the fact that it was something in the nothing. Enjolras didn’t know what this meant or if it might be a trap or a punishment even more severe, but he knew he might not get another chance to leave Limbo. He walked toward it and then through it.

He’d walked right into a room with strips of light coming through window coverings and landing on two sofas, some small tables – all of which were strewn with books both open and closed – and two very shocked young men.

“Holy shit. Ferre, it worked,” the one said in a hushed tone.

“I’ll admit that I’m just as surprised as you are,” his companion replied.

“Are you- are you really a god?” The first asked, eyeing Enjolras suspiciously. Or, more accurately, shifting his suspicious gaze from the book open between them up to Enjolras before going back to the book.

It was quickly dawning on Enjolras that these two men had released him from his prison. Realizing the intelligence, compassion, and will needed to accomplish that quickly endeared the mortals to Enjolras. Besides, the answer was obvious. “What year is it?”

The second man blinked at him from behind two small panes of glass enclosed in some type of dark metal. “2019,” he answered quickly, and added almost as an afterthought, “AD.”

Enjolras frowned and raised his head to the sky, only to be met with a low white ceiling. It was close enough, if Zeus were listening he’d get the point. “Fuck.”

~

“Sometimes I forget that you’re a god,” Courfeyrac remarked from where he was sprawled across the couch in Enjolras and Combeferre’s small apartment. His presence meant there weren’t currently books sprawled there, rather they were piled haphazardly onto the end table by his feet. “But,” he continued, “then you do something like this and I’m abruptly reminded.”

Enjolras glanced down at the bucket of cleaning supplies in his hand before throwing a look to Combeferre who seemed just as confused. Ferre lowered his book to better examine Courfeyrac as he asked, “You mean voluntarily clean the bathroom?”

“Yes!” Courf cried, swooning further into the sofa and making Enjolras roll his eyes to hide his smile. “Marius would never!”

Enjolras snorted. “Well it is Marius.”

Courf scrambled to escape the sofa. Enjolras had learned quickly that it had a tendency to absorb you if you sat there too long and it seemed as though Courfeyrac was the current victim. He’d looked into whose domain crappy apartment furniture fell under and while Combeferre insisted that it was Hestia Enjolras wasn’t too sure, there was no way she’d associate with the abomination that was Ikea. Enjolras was convinced that it was Loki. It was an ongoing debate.

“He is not that bad!” Courfeyrac insisted. Combeferre made a face before going back to his book, leaving Courf to give Enjolras a pleading look. “Really, he’s not.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow, shifting the bucket to his other hand. “The first time I met him he told me that the gods were long dead and that if you were going to waste your time with religion it should at least be to the Catholic Church because at least they did good as an organization.”

Courf winced. Marius’s first impression had not been a good one and he knew. “That was his family talking, not him. You know that.”

Sighing, Enjolras turned to go scrub the toilet. “I do. I just have a tendency to hold a grudge. That happens when you spend thousands of years stuck in literal nothing.”

Following him to the bathroom Courfeyrac snorted and leaned against the doorjamb. “He’s harmless.”

“I know,” Enjolras admitted. “He’s like the thing from the flim with the singing frog.” He disliked not being able to recall the word. In a matter of months he’d managed to catch up on all the history and culture that he missed, with Courfeyrac and Combeferre as diligent and kind teachers, but there was still a steep learning curve and sometimes things escaped him.

Courfeyrac hadn’t responded so Enjolras stopped his scrubbing to look at him. Courf had tilted his head to the side and drawn his brows together in confusion. “Meet the Robinsons?” he asked slowly.

“No,” Combeferre appeared behind Courf, looking amused but benign. “The Muppets. He’s calling Marius a muppet.”

Courfeyrac looked between them, a pouty frown firmly in place. “Marius is…” he stopped, sighed, and continued, “Marius really is a muppet.”

Combeferre looked smug before turning to go back to the living room. Enjolras just snorted and made to keep cleaning. He’d thought that Courfeyrac had left too until he heard him speak again.

“If you don’t like Marius why are you friends with him? Is it just because you need the followers?”

Enjolras let the brush rest in the toilet and turned to look up at Courf. He understood why the question was asked but it still hurt a bit. Enjolras had quickly grown exceptionally close with Courfeyrac and Combeferre and enjoyed being folded easily into their loose group of friends. They were smart, passionate, and believed in everything that Enjolras had been working for before Zeus had exiled him. Courfeyrac and Combeferre were his brothers. And their other friends were just that, friends.

“No. Marius may be a bit misguided but he’s not the only one. Knowledge about the gods is lacking and something happened and no one seems to know what. It’s not his fault that this lack of knowledge impacted him. He’s a good person and seems to genuinely want to learn. He’s my friend and I want to help him,” Enjolras assured Courfeyrac.

Courf nodded, he sank so that he too was sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. “It’s just… I know that you need followers or worshipers or whatever to regain your power and like the twitter thing isn’t going as well as we thought.”

Enjolras shrugged, he wanted to reach out and put a hand on Courf’s shoulder but seeing as how he was still in the middle of cleaning the toilet thought better of it. “It’s gaining traction faster than anything I used to do and I am getting stronger every day. What’s important though is that there are mortals who want to make the world better for each other because it just proves my point: you never needed gods to begin with, just each other. And you and Combeferre and Feuilly and Joly and Bossuet and yes even Marius are proof of that.”

Courfeyrac seemed to be in better spirits as he leveled a searching look at Enjolras. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Say just the right thing?”

Enjolras smirked. “I am a god.”

Courfeyrac laughed and they could hear Combeferre booing the joke from down the hall, making Courf just laugh harder.

~

The weekly meetings at the Musain, a café near Courfeyrac and Combeferre’s university, reminded Enjolras of the rituals that his followers used to conduct. Though these he found much more enjoyable. There was a strident attempt at democracy and even though they all knew Enjolras was a god they never treated him as such. He reveled the egalitarianism of it.

Jehan still insisted that they open every meeting with a poem. Their compositions were far superior to any that Enjolras used to hear though and ranged in topics from soap bubbles to deforestation. Sometimes within the same poem.

It was during Jehan’s reading of a piece on feminism in the film industry that Bahorel ducked into the backroom late, another man on his heels. They settled into seats in the corner, as to not cause a disruption. Enjolras studied the new man as Jehan recited. There was something about the flash of his eyes under his messy curls and the twitch of his mouth that spoke mischief to Enjolras. The same look he’d seen about Hermes, Loki, and Sun Wukong.

Jehan sat down, finished, and rather than snap politely like the others all did the newcomer clapped loudly. He earned a startled look from Jehan and a glare from Enjolras. Bahorel winced and clapped him on the shoulder.

The newcomer looked at Bahorel in confusion. “What? It was good. I’m showing my appreciation.”

Bahorel sighed and made a face at Enjolras that clearly said, “What’re you gonna do?” Enjolras waved it off in favor of looking to Jehan to see what they thought of the whole situation.

They were grinning broadly. “You really enjoyed it?”

“Oh, very much yes,” came the reply. It was enthusiastic and warm but felt like it was the build up to something else and Enjolras was unsurprised as he continued. “The rhythm and cadence? The way you made the syllables fall just so! And-”

“R,” Bahorel interrupted, “why don’t you let me introduce you before you overwhelm Jehan by presenting an impromptu dissertation on their poetry.”

The man called R stopped and grinned. It was lazy and self-deprecating and that mischief was back. Something about it bothered Enjolras but he didn’t know what and he didn’t know why.

“I’m Grantaire,” he said with a sweeping wave of his hand.

Jehan beamed. “R!” they laughed and once it was pointed out Enjolras got the joke too. It was clever and he smiled at it.

“Bahorel beats me up once a week,” Grantaire continued after flashing a warm smile to Jehan.

“I do not!” Bahorel scoffed. He looked like Jason Mamoa’s little brother. Two inches littler and that was it. Compared to Grantaire who, from what Enjolras could tell, was stocky but not tall it wasn’t hard to believe Grantaire.

Grantaire rolled his eyes but his smile never faltered. “’Rel and I box at the same gym and for reasons lost to both of us became sparring partners. He invited me to save the world club and I got tired of saying no.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow at Bahorel, why would he keep inviting someone who didn’t want to come? Bahorel pointedly ignored him.

Bossuet leaned across the table and immediately swept Grantaire into a discussion with Musichetta and Joly. Enjolras knew he was frowning and was relieved to notice that Eponine was too.

Eponine was suspicious of everyone and it came in handy, she could normally tell how trustworthy a person was within a matter of minutes. Since no one seemed to know what had happened to the other gods, or if Zeus would track Enjolras down should he discover he’d been freed, it meant that keeping Enjolras’s identity as a god a secret was imperative. No one was allowed to know until Eponine gave her nod of approval. Enjolras could have easily confirmed their loyalties himself but he hated doing that, feeling that it was an intrusion of privacy and to ask someone to consent would tip his hand. Besides, Eponine hadn’t been wrong yet.

She glanced back at Enjolras and nodded. It seemed her frown was just mild annoyance and initial distrust. Eponine was settling back into her chair and turning back to listen to something Combeferre was saying. Something about Grantaire still seemed off to Enjolras though so he texted Musichetta quickly.

Enjolras: Do you have your tarot cards?

Musichetta: Never leave home w/out em! Why?

Enjolras: Can you do a reading on Grantaire? Can we trust him?

Musichetta: One sec.

Enjolras pretended to listen to Courfeyrac and Feuilly talk about the essay they were doing for the international relations class they were in together. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Musichetta excuse herself from the table, grabbing her bag and slipping it on. She pressed a hand to Grantaire’s shoulder as she passed, saying something likely along the lines of “be right back” and heading towards the bathrooms. About a minute later Enjolras’s phone lit up with a text from her.

Musichetta: Hanged Man, Wheel of Fortune, and Knight of Cups

Enjolras frowned at the screen. Tarot wasn’t in use before but picking it up was almost intuitive for him, though he did much better when the cards were in front of him. As such, it was taking him a second to recall the meanings of the ones Musichetta texted she’d drawn. For Musichetta it was a second language and she would often have entire conversations with her deck, to the delight and amusement of their friends.

She must have known that he was still working it out because another text appeared.

Musichetta: He has a past he’s not sharing and may not want to share with us. Something happened and I think it still is but ultimately we can trust him. He’s good people Enj.

Enjolras typed out a quick “Thanks” before flipping his phone so it was facedown on the table. He’d wait until she got back to really start but in the meantime he could get everyone’s attention.

“Alright,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the low rumble of conversation. People quieted and the room’s attention turned towards him. Musichetta slipped back into her seat and gave him a nod. “Since this is Grantaire’s first time joining us and I think we could all do with a bit of a refresher on the twitter front let’s start there. Courfeyrac? Combeferre?”

“Right,” Courf shuffled his chair back so he could stand, “so we set Enjolras up with a twitter because this is the twenty-first century, I’ve read way too much The Wicked and The Divine, and his witty comebacks translate well into two hundred eighty characters or less.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt Courfeyrac.

“So far we’re at a little over a thousand followers and growing steadily. Um, we do need to work on your hashtag game.” He gave Enjolras a serious look and it was all Enjolras could do to not start talking about how he thought they broke up the flow and Courf would fire back about SEO and all sorts of terms Enjolras realized were important for social media but he was only just beginning to understand.

“The testing of followers to power has been… tricky,” Combeferre winced and Enjolras knew he was thinking of the other day in the kitchen. Enjolras used to be able to just will a flame into existence. He’d managed to light a candle and then Courfeyrac and Marius walked in and he’d nearly set the curtains on fire. “It seems that the physical presence of people who believe in Enjolras make him more powerful but that has also made gathering empirical data difficult.”

There was a laugh from the corner of the room and Enjolras turned to see Grantaire looking at them all incredulously. “You do know you sound like you’re talking about a cult? I mean, I told ‘Rel I thought he’d joined a cult but like I wasn’t serious. Look, nobody should be striving to be Jared Leto dude.”

“It’s not a cult,” Enjolras heard himself say flatly. “We’re trying to make the world better.”

“You know that’s exactly what someone leading a cult might say,” Grantaire still smiled but it was sharp and there was a little bit of mania in his expression now. Enjolras watched as he pulled a flask from somewhere in his coat and took a swig. “Or, you know, a new religion. Which is kinda like a cult. Now fuck Zeus, guy’s a dick who can’t keep his dick in his pants, but like I doubt that any of the gods are gonna go in for you trying to turn yourself into one. Believe me, it doesn’t work like that.”

Enjolras was instantly impressed and just as quickly furious. It was brave to speak so glibly about any of the gods and especially Zeus. Then again, what did this man know? No one knew anything about the gods except the gods themselves and as far as they could tell Enjolras was the only god around.

“Oh, and you’ve tried?” Enjolras heard himself saying before he could stop.

Grantaire just raised his brows and took another long pull from his flask. Enjolras knew what Dionysus looked like and it wasn’t the man at the other end of the table. Something about the angle of the brows and the mocking tilt of the lips and the flask in hand reminded Enjolras of him though and that made him see red.

“There’s no need to become a god when you already are one!” Enjolras threw his hands onto the table, pushing himself to his feet. He could feel his palms getting hot and his chest heaving as he breathed.

Grantaire just stared back from across the table. Enjolras saw there was satisfaction in his expression, Enjolras having confirmed his suspicions and risen to the challenge.

Someone was tugging on the sleeve of his sweater and Enjolras turned to see Combeferre giving him a look. It was part reprimand, part warning and Enjolras knew he needed to heed it. Combeferre was wise beyond his years and much smarter than Enjolras, which they both knew. He also had a much cooler head and was able to direct Enjolras’s anger much better than Enjolras himself was.

He returned to his seat, avoiding his other friends’ eyes and the smug look Grantaire seemed to be sending his way. The spot on the table where his hands had pressed smoked slightly and the plastic had warped. Enjolras felt himself flush as he examined it.

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac said, naturally filling in the awkward silence. He tried to catch Enjolras’s eye but quickly realized that was futile and stopped. “So, like I was, um, explaining? Since the gods draw power from their followers, we’re trying to get Enjolras social media followers and hope the sentiment transfers!”

Where Combeferre took Enjolras’s anger and pointed it at a target, Courfeyrac was able to shape it. Not blunt it, though sometimes he was able to do that too, but turn it into something that was wieldy. Focused. The easy cadence of his voice even now was helping to pull Enjolras back to the present. Not the past, where he was trapped and powerless. Or to the future he dreamt of and longed for and knew with enough help he could achieve. But the present where he was surrounded by his friends who believed in that future and wanted to do what they could to make it a reality.

Courf’s voice had been working, centering Enjolras in the here and now, until Grantaire interrupted. Again.

“Ho-ly fuck,” Grantaire laughed. Enjolras whipped his head up to look at him and this time he really did look manic. “You really are a cult!”

There was some general sputtering and cries of outrage and Courfeyrac was saying “What? No. What? No! We- we- we don’t even have water!”

Enjolras found himself taking a deep breath, closing his eyes, and opening them to focus on Grantaire. “You came because you were curious, for one reason or another, about what we do. We’re trying to help people and it just so happens that I have the ability to do a little more than the average. The gods have mistreated mortals for eons, using them as playthings and pawns. Then, leaving them to be crushed under the rubble of the wars the gods have wrought. We’re saying no more. No more fate or interference, just the freedom to live as you want without dealing with the fallout of beings too powerful and arrogant to give a shit.”

The room had gone silent; if he tried Enjolras was sure he might be able to hear breathing and heartbeats but even that seemed like a stretch in the hush that had fallen.

For the first time all evening Grantaire’s face had gone blank. “You want a revolution,” he said flatly.

Enjolras opened his mouth to contradict but Grantaire had cut him off.

“You want a revolution. Never mind the fact that the gods have fucked off ages ago. Never mind the fact that in a fight with a god all your so-called friends would die and you would be the lone martyr left standing. Who can’t be killed but certainly wouldn’t be allowed to just walk free. No, that wouldn’t matter because you have justice and righteous fury on your side. But wait, I don’t see Forseti or Sekhmet here? Oh, right. Because the gods have all fucked off and left the mortals to rot. How can you fight something that’s not even there?”

“I’m here,” Enjolras said with certainty.

“Good for you! I’ve spent half my life cursing Zeus and you know what? He still hasn’t shown. I feel like my evidence is more damning.” At that Grantaire stood, stuffing his flask back into one of the many pockets on his jacket. “Well ‘Rel, this was fun. Or something. Bossuet, Joly, give me a call and we’ll put a D&D game together.” He walked out the door saying, “I’ll just go, figure you don’t want non-believers in your little cult.”

Nobody moved in the wake of Grantaire’s leaving. Enjolras just blinked at the door, upset and hurt but he didn’t understand why. Not Grantaire’s words, but his leaving was certainly the cause. But why would that upset Enjolras?

Bahorel finally broke the tension. “Dude, I am so sorry. I didn’t- He’s not- I thought he’d be cool, y’know?”

Enjolras nodded. He felt himself relax as everyone seemed to refocus. Grantaire wasn’t the first naysayer Enjolras had met and he wouldn’t be the last. So why did he bother him so much?

~

Enjolras was shocked then when Grantaire appeared at the Musain the next week. He walked in late and carrying a bottle of wine but he didn’t interrupt, just sat in the back drinking and occasionally scoffing at something that had been said. He’d left as soon as the official meeting ended and took his bottle with him.

The next week the scene repeated itself. Again and again, week after week.

Finally, Enjolras was so infuriated by his own inability to work out Grantaire’s motivations he just asked. Breaking off in the middle of speaking he turned slightly to better address Grantaire, “What are you doing here?”

“Not being disruptive?” Grantaire hazarded, confusion plain on his face. “Or would you rather I be disruptive? Because I can be, don’t think I can’t.”

Enjolras huffed. “Oh, I am abundantly aware.”

Grantaire smiled, the expression what Courfeyrac would have called shit eating. “Well,” Grantaire said with sickening sweetness, “then the choice is yours.”

Enjolras felt his face heat. He turned and continued to address his friends. He could see Grantaire drinking from the bottle out of the corner of his eye.

The rest of the night was no different than any other, except that Grantaire stayed until the end. Enjolras was talking with Feuilly about an upcoming protest they were planning to attend when he saw that Grantaire was still there, helping Bossuet move one of the tables back to its place against the wall.

As everyone else filed out Enjolras lingered, noticing that Grantaire did too. Soon the other man was ducking out after Marius and Cosette, leaving Enjolras with Courfeyrac and Combeferre.

“That was odd,” Combeferre commented, nodding after Grantaire.

“Aw, R’s harmless,” Courfeyrac waved it off, shrugging on his jacket. “He drinks too much and runs his mouth but he’s not a bad guy. If you don’t believe me use your weird godly powers to check for yourself.”

Enjolras made a noncommittal noise to that. “I just, I don’t understand why he keeps coming if he doesn’t believe in us.”

“He’s a skeptic.” Combeferre said it like it was a fact. Sunlight reflecting off gases in the atmosphere made the sky blue. Enjolras was a god in exile. Society benefits when women are given opportunities. Grantaire was a skeptic. “He wants to see if we can actually prove him wrong.”

Enjolras scoffed at that. He flipped the lights off as he closed the door to the back room behind them. Courfeyrac patted both Enjolras and Combeferre on the back before going to flirt with the baristas, who were definitely trying to see which one he’d ask out on a date first.

“Look, you’re going to think what you want and I won’t stop you. Just, that’s my opinion on the matter,” Combeferre gave him a level look. “If you don’t believe me you can always ask him yourself. And not in the middle of a meeting leaving him open to public embarrassment.”

Enjolras widened his eyes. “That’s not-”

“I know. He might not have.”

Enjolras cursed. It was ancient and long and his friends always begged him to tell them what it meant but it didn’t translate well so he never did.

Combeferre just smiled, shrugging. He gave a little two finger salute off the corner of his glasses before turning and weaving his way towards the door. He was heading back to the university to get some work done, meaning Enjolras had hours of an empty apartment ahead of himself to stew on the evening.

Enjolras took one last glance to the counter where Courfeyrac was fluttering his eyelashes at the girl with the pixie cut and glasses. She seemed unimpressed which was a far cry from her coworkers. There was no way Courf would be joining him to walk to the metro station anytime soon. Enjolras stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and headed towards the door.

He shouldered the door open and immediately flinched at the shock of the drizzle. Enjolras grumbled at the weather and everyone he could think of who might be responsible for it as he turned to walk down the sidewalk. He was brought up short though by the figure leaning against the wall just under the awning and sipping a cup of coffee.

“Grantaire?” Enjolras asked incredulously.

“Knew you’d be the last one out.”

It was all the confirmation Enjolras needed. “I’m not. Courfeyrac is still in there,” he huffed.

Grantaire laughed, but it didn’t sound mocking. It sounded genuinely amused. Enjolras frowned, suddenly off balance.

“You know I never thought the god of poetry would be so fucking literal.”

“What?” Enjolras felt like he was getting whiplash, so thrown and unsure of what was currently happening.

Grantaire gave him an incredulous look. “Oh, come off it. You’re obviously Apollo, god of the sun and poetry and healing and music and a million other things.”

There was a lot wrong with that sentence but Enjolras managed to zero in on the most minor thing in his shock.

“Apollo isn’t the sun god, Helios is.”

Grantaire looked at him like he was crazy as he sipped from the cup. “Where have you been? They gave Apollo and Artemis the sun and moon ages ago.”

Enjolras frowned. “I was exiled.”

“No shit,” Grantaire laughed. “I mean, it was kinda obvious you weren’t in good standing.” He gestured with a nod back towards the café.

“No.” Enjolras squeezed his eyes shut as he shook his head. “No, I mean I was literally thrown into limbo.”

When he looked back at Grantaire he’d frozen and there was an undecipherable look on his face. But just for a second before it had flashed back to some color of amusement.

“You’re saying Dante actually got that bit right?” He teased.

Enjolras responded with a flat expression.

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “Go on, tell me how wrong I am.”

“It’s a term that is used to describe a pocket dimension wherein nothing exists, not even time.”

“Hmm. Fascinating.” Grantaire raised his eyebrows over the rim of his cup.

“You’re enjoying this,” Enjolras accused.

“Only minimally.”

“Why?”

“It’s amusing? You’re very easy to rile.”

Enjolras huffed, crossing his arms. He assumed that Grantaire chuckled but Enjolras was trying too hard to ignore the other man to tell for sure. He was stubborn but his curiosity won out and his mind had circled back to the beginning of their conversation in the silence.

“Did you really think I was Apollo?”

Grantaire spluttered a bit on his drink, coughing before he answered. “Well yeah. I mean, the whole blonde halo of hair kinda implies it as did the grand speeches and well it wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was a damn good guess.”

Enjolras hummed. He stared out at the street were a car passed, mist making swirling clouds in its lights.

“So I was wrong, I’m used to that. Do I get another guess or would you be so kind as to enlighten an unworthy creature like myself?” The delivery was dry but the bite of acid was still audible in Grantaire’s words.

Enjolras’s brows furrowed and he turned to look at Grantaire again.

Grantaire blinked and took another sip. “We can make it an exchange if you’d rather. You ask me a question and I give you an answer. In fact, you ask me two questions and I’ll answer both.”

Enjolras didn’t see the point or really follow what exactly Grantaire meant but this had been the longest interaction they’d had and so far it wasn’t crashing and burning. Which was exciting if only for the novelty. So, he did as Grantaire had said.

“What’s in the cup?” It was a genuine curiosity because Enjolras had never seen him drink anything that didn’t contain alcohol.

Grantaire gave a slow smile and swirled the cup once. It made Enjolras note the hand warmers he wore, knit from dark purple yarn they looked remarkably similar to the ones that Feuilly had made for him a few weeks before, in fact the only difference that he could see were that his own were gold. It made Enjolras wonder when the two had become friends and how he had not noticed. In fact, the longer that he thought about it the longer Enjolras realized that Grantaire had befriended all of Enjolras’s friends over the past few weeks, gestures and snatches of conversation and off-handed mentions all suddenly righting themselves in his memory.

He was pulled from his musings as Grantaire answered. “Mulled wine.”

Enjolras sighed. Right, most of those memories had something or other to do with nights out on the town and most, if not all, included heavy drinking.

“And where did you get mulled wine?”

“Uh, uh, uh,” Grantaire tutted, waggling a finger. “That’s your second question, you sure you want to waste it?”

Rolling his eyes was Enjolras’s only response. He couldn’t see anything else about Grantaire that could possibly interest him.

“Alright,” Grantaire shrugged. “Suit yourself. I made it.”

Now Enjolras was surprised and genuinely curious. He studied Grantaire to see if he might be teasing him in some way. Grantaire raised his eyebrows and tugged the corner of his lip up in a smirk.

“I bet now you wished you had asked a different question. Or had the ability to ask a third.”

Enjolras glared. Now Grantaire was teasing him.

Grantaire’s smirk turned into a smile. “Fine, I’ll take pity on the poor god and tell you one way you can make mulled wine. Granted, this would be for some shit mulled wine but still drinkable.”

“How kind,” Enjolras said dryly.

“Hmm, yes, thank you,” Grantaire preened. “You order a cup of hot apple cider, but you ask them to only fill it halfway. Then you go to the little bar with the creamers and what not and add extra cinnamon and sugar and steal a stirrer. Then, you fill the cup with your own wine and stir.”

He wasn’t able to help himself, Enjolras wrinkled his nose and took a half step back in mild revulsion. “That sounds disgusting.”

“I did warn you it wouldn’t be great.”

“Still.”

“You asked and I went above and beyond the call of duty to tell you about that. Now, I believe you owe me something?”

Enjolras sighed. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure no one was leaving the Musain before he spoke. “Liber.”

“No shit,” Grantaire whispered as his eyes widened. “No shit. You’re literally liberty leading the people.” He laughed and that hint of mania was back. Enjolras stepped towards Grantaire, reaching out to steady him if he had to. Grantaire jumped back as though Enjolras’s touch would burn him as he kept laughing and muttering “no shit.”

“Yes,” Enjolras hissed. He was hurt by Grantaire’s reaction. It made no sense for him to be and yet he was. “Now can you stop that?”

“Sorry, sorry. It explains so much though. Wow.”

Grantaire’s response was getting excessive. A sudden flare of annoyance flashed through Enjolras and he curled his hands into fists, feeling his nails bite into his palms as they heated up.

“You wanted to know,” he bit out.

Finally, Grantaire caught on to Enjolras’s mood and pressed his lips into a thin line, obviously trying to sober up. However, Enjolras bitterly thought that sober was not something applicable to Grantaire.

“My curiosity has been sated,” Grantaire said, holding up his hands in an attempt to dissuade or perhaps ease Enjolras’s temper.

“Yes,” Enjolras replied shortly. “Now, I really have been standing out in the rain long enough. Goodnight Grantaire.”

“I thought that the gods weren’t bothered by little things like weather?”

Enjolras had turned to stride off but now he pulled up short, glancing back at Grantaire over his shoulder. “Some have gone numb to the mundane, I hope to never do that. Especially after knowing only nothing for so long. Besides, why should the gods not experience life the same as the mortals they seek to rule?”

Grantaire didn’t answer and Enjolras didn’t expect him to as he continued once more towards the metro.

~

During the next meeting Grantaire came in late and sat in his usual corner. Enjolras ignored him as Cosette went over the process they would need to complete for a permit if they wanted to host a rally. When she finished Enjolras thanked her and stood to continue, except he couldn’t ignore Grantaire anymore because Grantaire was loudly questioning why they were having the rally in the first place. Enjolras explained but Grantaire continued to question until it had dissolved into little more than a heated debate, their friends observing it as one might a particularly interesting tennis match. And it did resemble one, with the speed of their volleys back and forth.

And so it went. Every meeting Grantaire would interrupt Enjolras, sometimes with rants and others pointed questions, picking apart whatever he’d been saying. It frustrated and infuriated Enjolras.

“I hate him,” Enjolras said after one meeting, flopping facedown onto his couch. That was one thing he liked about the twenty-first century: the couches were comfortable yet sturdy enough for the perfect melodramatic sulk.

“No, you don’t,” Courfeyrac called from where he was raiding their kitchen, Enjolras could hear the cabinets being opened and closed.

“I do,” Enjolras insisted. Except he said it into the cushions, so it came out as a muffled garble.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” Combeferre teased. Enjolras could hear him smirking. “Maybe if the immortal being wasn’t pouting like a toddler, we’d be able to hear what he’s whining about.”

Enjolras pushed himself upright and threw a withering glare at Combeferre where he’d settled into the armchair.

“Well fuck. It actually worked,” Courfeyrac looked as shocked as he sounded, a corn chip frozen halfway between the bag and his mouth.

Rolling onto his back Enjolras huffed out a sigh. “Why does he bother? He obviously doesn’t care about what we’re trying to do!”

He felt his feet being lifted and raised his head to see Courfeyrac holding them so he could settle on the couch and let Enjolras’s feet rest in his lap. “You could always ask him?” Courf suggested now that he was comfortable.

“But why would Enjolras do that? When he’s obviously perfectly content to just complain about it on end instead,” Combeferre said dryly.

He didn’t deem that worthy of a verbal response so Enjolras just stretched out his arm and flicked his middle finger up instead.

“Every day I understand Zeus’s reasoning for sticking you in Limbo a little bit better,” Combeferre told him mildly. Courfeyrac snorted and then nearly choked on a corn chip. Enjolras rushed to sit up so he could make sure that Courf didn’t actually choke on a corn chip but thankfully he was already coughing and waiving off any assistance.

“This is what comes of you trying to make a joke,” Enjolras said darkly, flicking a hand towards Courfeyrac.

That time Courfeyrac did choke on a corn chip while laughing and Enjolras had to divine him better.

As Courfeyrac gulped down water in the kitchen Combeferre raised an eyebrow at Enjolras.

“Touché.”

“And just fucking talk to Grantaire before one of you gets me killed!” Courfeyrac called from the other room.

~

“Wait!” Joly called as people started to set the backroom back to rights. “Before you go! Halloween party! Two weeks! At our apartment! You must wear a costume but need not bring anything. That is all.”

“I thought that Samhain was a Celtic holiday,” Enjolras said to Combeferre.

“Yes, but like most everything else in the past three thousand years it’s changed,” Combeferre joked.

Enjolras made a face.

“R,” he overheard Bossuet lament, “you have to come. It’s mandatory.”

“And if you don’t I’ll be cross and you’ll be sorry,” Musichetta added. Enjolras was trying not to listen in but the room was small and they were loud and there wasn’t currently anything else to distract him.

“I don’t have a costume so really I can’t,” Grantaire was insisting.

Enjolras couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows and open his mouth. “It doesn’t seem in character for you to turn down such bacchanalia.”

Grantaire sputtered and it turned into a coughing fit. Bossuet clapped him on the back and Joly seemed to procure a cup of water from somewhere and pushed it into Grantaire’s hands. “I’m fine, fine,” he said as he got his breath back, waving off their help.

“Are you sure?” Enjolras asked. He might not get along with Grantaire, but he didn’t dislike the man. Besides, it was in his nature to care for all people.

“Yeah, you, uh, surprised me.”

Joly and Enjolras exchanged a look and Joly once again pressed the cup of water into Grantaire’s hands. This time he accepted, taking a drink before turning back to Enjolras with a challenging expression on his face.

“Are you going, oh fearless leader?” he asked.

Joly and Bossuet both turned expectant eyes on him while Musichetta raised her brows in a subtle but noted threat. “I had no intentions of not.”

“D’you have any ideas for your costume? I mean, you have time obviously, that’s why I wanted to say something tonight, but I was just curious,” Joly said excitedly.

Enjolras couldn’t help but smile at his friend’s enthusiasm. “Not yet, but I’m open to suggestions.”

He caught the look Grantaire gave him. It was somewhat quizzical and something else that wasn’t quite decipherable.

Enjolras left the Musain with Musichetta, Bossuet, and Joly tossing different ideas around, their voices overlapping and echoing out into the night. But, Enjolras couldn’t focus on anything but the memory of Grantaire, who had disappeared off into the night.

~

Enjolras adjusted his hat again, for probably the hundredth time in the last hour. Courfeyrac had talked him into dressing as a pirate for the party, arguing that they lived a life of freedom and fought against societal constraints and so Enjolras should be able to relate to pirates if only in an abstract way.

Lacking any better ideas and being presented with the poofy white shirt, foam sword, and oversized hat by Courfeyrac made Enjolras agree to the costume. He’d added his own black vest and skinny jeans. Combeferre had pointed out that a real pirate would be wearing tall leather boots rather than the Doc Martens Enjolras had gone with but he’d responded to that comment by flipping Ferre off.

He’d resolved to wear it with all the dignity he could muster, resulting in more than one compliment from his friends. “You’re like a blonde Will Turner,” Jehan had told him solemnly.

Enjolras wasn’t positive who that was but when he’d asked Courfeyrac he was given an appraising look and a “You know you kinda are?” Then Bahorel had snuck up behind Courfeyrac and thrown him over his shoulder and the two spun away laughing.

Musichetta had appeared then, sweeping over and trying not to hit anyone with her butterfly wings. She hugged him before holding at arm’s length to examine him. “I told R you’d show but he didn’t believe me. And he laughed at me when I said you’d even scrounged up a costume and yet here you are, looking wonderfully ridiculous.” She smiled brilliantly and the glitter on her cheeks sparkled in the purple fairy lights.

“I haven’t seen Grantaire, is he here?” Enjolras asked. He’d been trying to spot him since they’d arrived but hadn’t seen so much as his shadow among his friends.

Musichetta frowned, just slightly with her pink painted lips turning down and her brow wrinkling. “He’s been hiding in the kitchen all night. I don’t know why, he loves parties.”

Enjolras found that odd too. He’d admit that he didn’t know Grantaire very well at all but from what he did know he could tell that was out of character.

He made to say something to Musichetta about it, but she’d turned away to talk to Bossuet whose costume seemed to just be a blanket slung over his shoulders. Enjolras took the opportunity to slip away, heading towards the kitchen.

It was a long and narrow room tucked just off the side of the living room. While the rest of the apartment had been strung in fairy lights and was dark and loud with the sound of music, the kitchen was bright and quiet. Enjolras blinked at the sudden change. He turned to see Grantaire standing at the stove, stirring an overlarge pot.

“What are you supposed to be?” He asked before he could stop himself. From hear it looked as though Grantaire was wearing his normal jeans and flannel.

Enjolras had caught Grantaire by surprise and he startled, dropping the wooden spoon so that it clattered against the side of the pot.

“Fuck. Warn a guy?”

“Sorry,” Enjolras winced, stepping further into the kitchen.

Grantaire closed his eyes and took a breath, likely trying to slow his heart back down. “Hello Enjolras, happy Halloween. So good to see you too,” he said sarcastically with his eyes still closed. When Grantaire opened them he raised an eyebrow and Enjolras felt himself flush.

“Er, right. Happy Halloween.”

That made Grantaire’s lips twitch up into a grin. He nodded, satisfied. “I’m the fourth part of Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta’s lifecycle of a butterfly.”

Enjolras raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Joly had clearly been the caterpillar, he now understood that Bossuet was supposed to be the cocoon, and Musichetta was the butterfly but he still couldn’t tell what Grantaire was supposed to be.

With a snort Grantaire reached towards the other side of the stove and grabbed something that was leaning against the counter. When he held it up Enjolras could see that it was an overlarge flyswatter. “I’m The End.”

It was terrible, Enjolras couldn’t help but groan at how truly awful it was. Grantaire smiled and laughed happily. Enjolras couldn’t remember ever making Grantaire laugh before, or it least not like that. Normally if he was laughing it was because he thought Enjolras was stupid. This felt more like he was laughing with Enjolras rather than at him.

He went back to stirring whatever it was in the pot and Enjolras couldn’t stop his curiosity. “What’s that?”

“Mulled wine.”

Enjolras flashed back to the first night they spoke and felt his nose wrinkle at the mulled wine Grantaire had talked about then.

Grantaire must have remembered it too. He shook his head, “No this is the real thing. It’s nearly ready, do you want some?” Grantaire had grabbed a mug and a ladle and began to serve it.

Accepting it caused Enjolras’s fingers to brush against Grantaire’s. Grantaire jerked his hand back and Enjolras felt something sink in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it and took a sip of the wine, it was warm and sweet with just the slightest kick.

“This is really good!”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” Grantaire said lightly but there was an edge to it.

“No, really. This is fantastic.”

“You don’t have to fawn over it, it’s just wine.”

“Why must you contradict everything I say?” Enjolras asked, frustrated.

“Because you’re not always right! You act like you know everything and can just show up out of nowhere and save the world! Well you haven’t been here and you haven’t seen the things I have and you’re just so naïve!”

Enjolras stopped. He didn’t know how to respond to Grantaire’s outburst. Grantaire himself even looked as though he didn’t know how to respond to the outburst.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered quickly, staring wide-eyed at the stove and refusing to look up.

Enjolras shook his head. “No,” he said softly, “it’s ok. It makes sense that you would feel that way.”

Grantaire gulped. The silence that stretched between them was excruciating. From the other room floated the sounds of their friends laughing and the thump of the music. Enjolras finally set his mug on the counter and turned to leave. Grantaire still hadn’t moved.

~

For the first time Enjolras was nervous when he saw Grantaire slip in during the meeting after the party. He had no idea what the other man might do or say and, well it didn’t scare him exactly, but he was anxious.

Yet, nothing happened. Much like the meetings following the first that Grantaire had attended he sat and drank, saying nothing. He didn’t even so much as react to Enjolras. It was odd and more than once Enjolras found himself waiting to be interrupted and nearly stumbling when he wasn’t.

They ended earlier than normal and Enjolras couldn’t help but think it was because he and Grantaire hadn’t argued.

As everyone else started talking and stacking chairs Grantaire made to leave. Enjolras ran after him.

He caught Grantaire just as he was exiting the Musain, his breath coming out in a cloud in the chilly night air as he said “Wait!”

Grantaire stopped, then slowly turned around. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat and his shoulders hunched. Grantaire didn’t say anything, just stood there looking at Enjolras expectantly.

Honestly, Enjolras hadn’t planned this far ahead.

He froze as he mentally floundered. He normally was so careful and proud of his organizational skills. Even if Combeferre now refused to go shopping with him because Enjolras was too anal retentive. It was the one thing the other gods had actually liked about him.

Grantaire just stood there, waiting. Enjolras had to say or do something or else he might just walk away and he couldn’t let that happen.

“Why do you think that the social media follower idea isn’t working? Or at least it’s not working on the scale we expected. I have thousands of followers, but I don’t feel any stronger than I did a few months ago. Though a few months ago I suddenly felt stronger than I ever have.”

“What?” Grantaire blinked. Enjolras opened his mouth to keep trying to explain but Grantaire shook his head. “No, I mean, why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re smart and everyone else has given their ideas but you haven’t and I’m curious.”

“No.” Grantaire shook his head. “You don’t like when I share my opinions because they contradict yours. Why?”

Enjolras couldn’t name it. He just knew he needed Grantaire to tell him. He grumbled in frustration. “Because! Because you make me think! And you make my arguments stronger and remind me why I have to do this and you make me better!”

That at least got a reaction from Grantaire other than blank staring. He chuckled darkly instead. “You don’t really believe that.”

“I do!” Enjolras insisted and he realized he did. Grantaire’s apathy and cynicism pissed him off but it did make him think harder and fight more and he appreciated that. Right now though, in the face of it, Enjolras was just pissed. “Unlike you who doesn’t believe in anything!”

Grantaire’s face had gone blank again, but this time there was something cold behind his eyes. No, not cold, missing. There was something missing from behind Grantaire’s eyes as he stood there starring back at Enjolras. “Wrong as usual,” he finally said softly, devoid of any emotion.

Enjolras frowned and stepped towards Grantaire, expecting the other man to move he was surprised when instead Grantaire just ducked his head. Enjolras was so close to Grantaire and yet it wasn’t close enough. Testing his luck, he continued to walk forward until they were standing right in front of each other in the cold night air.

Finally, finally Grantaire did more than stare at his scuffed-up converse. He raised his head and met Enjolras’s gaze with a never before seen ferocity. This close he had to tilt his head up and Enjolras ducked his own in order to accomplish it.

He watched and tensed as Grantaire took a deep breath. A car passed and the door to the Musain opened and closed a few feet behind them but Enjolras was entirely focused on Grantaire, curiosity and anger still warring in his veins.

“I believe in you.” Grantaire said it with such weight that Enjolras actually took a step back. That wasn’t the only reason he’d stumbled though, Enjolras had been suddenly overcome with such a surge in his power that he was physically thrown off balance.

Grantaire caught him, shooting a hand out to grab his elbow and steady him.

Enjolras could do little more than stand there blinking at Grantaire as he tried to process the events of the last thirty seconds. A warm gratitude was spreading through his stomach mixed with an excited twinge of anxiety, curiosity and thrill raged at the amount of power he now felt he had, and over laying it all was layers and layers of shock. Shock for the power. Shock at Grantaire. Shock at himself for the relief he felt to know that Grantaire didn’t really hate him like he’d thought for months now.

“Are you ok?” Grantaire asked, he was studying Enjolras with concern and had managed to guide them from out of the middle of the sidewalk to the Musain’s brick wall.

“I- Yeah- I- Headrush,” Enjolras breathed out as he looked at Grantaire with wide eyes.

Grantaire looked back at him with entirely too much worry and Enjolras felt surprise wash over him again. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I- No- I- I’m good,” Enjolras said. He knew it’d be more convincing if he could actually speak but he now had a full grasp of the ‘speechless’ and ‘dumbstruck’ idioms.

They stood there studying each other, Grantaire with a frown pulling at his brow and Enjolras knew he was gaping like a fish but he felt that was excusable.

Seemingly satisfied that whatever danger Enjolras may or may not have been in had passed Grantaire began talking. Well, began cracking jokes that Enjolras quickly realized had always been his way of deflecting or processing.

“Now I know my having personhood can’t come as that much of a shock; Combeferre is the philosopher, I’m sure he’s talked to you about James,” Grantaire said wryly. It wasn’t effective at hiding his feelings though because Enjolras could still clearly see the frown at his brow.

“You don’t believe in what I’m trying to do,” Enjolras stated. It was a fact. He was still processing and he needed to know what of his impressions of Grantaire were right and which were wrong and where that growing anxiety was coming from.

“I don’t believe that we’re actually able of accomplishing the sweeping change you’re calling for.”

Now Enjolras was frowning and Grantaire was blinking. It was subtle but the way Grantaire said it was very specific. The stared at each other, a silent challenge to see who would explain first.

It was Grantaire. “I don’t think that it’s possible, I don’t believe it will actually work. But,” Grantaire took a deep breath and closed his eyes, almost like he couldn’t bear to look at Enjolras as he spoke, “I believe in you. I believe that you can and will accomplish anything that you put your mind too. I believe that you can change the world.”

Again, Enjolras felt like he was being hit with a wave as his powers surged. His knees buckled and he flung an arm out to hold himself up against the brick. Carefully, he lowered himself to the ground until he was sitting on the gum-stained sidewalk.

Crouching in front of him Grantaire hovered and his mild panic was now palpable. “Are you ok? Seriously Enjolras, are you ok? You’re a god, you can’t get sick. Please tell me you’re ok.”

Taking a shuddering breath Enjolras nodded. “I- it’s- I don’t know,” he admitted.

Grantaire frowned and made to stand, obviously going to fetch Joly or Combeferre who would do little good – not for their still incomplete medical training but for the fact that they did not treat gods. And while Combeferre had stumbled across the spell that had released Enjolras from Limbo and he and Courfeyrac had successfully completed it that was the beginning and end of his magic dabbling. Jehan, who hosted seances and monitored corpse roads, or Musichetta, with her tarot cards and uncanny ability to know the next song before it was played, would probably be more help.

Quickly, Enjolras snatched Grantaire by the sleeve and held him in place. “I’m fine, just need to get my bearings.”

He looked skeptical, but when did Grantaire not look skeptical? He stayed though, lowering himself to sit cross-legged on the freezing cement too.

As they sat there Enjolras’s heart slowed, which had been beating hard enough that it was only now that it wasn’t pounding did he even realize it had been. His breathing returned to normal. His palms still tingled but he knew that would settle eventually.

Grantaire sat watching him with quiet curiosity. His lower lip had been pulled between his teeth to worry. It slipped free as Grantaire gave him a shaky smile. “You sure you’re ok?”

Enjolras nodded. He was still collecting himself and part of that meant that he was trying to parse out how much of what just happened he felt he should share with Grantaire. Much like his earlier revelation, Enjolras suddenly knew that not only could he trust Grantaire, but he had trusted Grantaire for a long time now. If he hadn’t he never would have let his friends share so much of their plans during meetings. More importantly, he’d trusted Grantaire the very first time he’d followed him out of the Musain. He could trust him now.

“I’m fine,” Enjolras assured him. He relaxed, the rough edges of the bricks catching on the shoulders of his jacket. Grantaire seemed to relax at this too, settling more on the concrete. “I’ve been slowly rebuilding my power as I gain followers, right?”

Grantaire’s expression darkened but he nodded.

“Just now I had a surge of power. Twice. I- I’m better than I’ve been in a long time. It just, it wasn’t something I was prepared for and it hit me hard.”

This didn’t seem to put Grantaire at ease. A couple was walking down the street towards them so Grantaire skootched himself so they were sitting next to each other with their backs to the wall.

“What?” Enjolras asked once they’d finally passed.

“Nothing.”

“I thought we’d established that I do genuinely want and care about your opinion,” Enjolras said with only mild exasperation.

He earned an eyeroll.

“Seriously, R.”

That got his attention. Grantaire blinked at him and the surprise was so obvious it was almost comical. Enjolras couldn’t help the self-satisfied smirk at Grantaire’s reaction.

Grantaire made a face. “You were just talking about how you didn’t feel as though you were gaining the same power to person ratio or whatever and then you’re brushing this off as a coincidence.” The words were mean, they were meant to be said mockingly, but they came out flat. Like Grantaire was simply going through the motions.

“I’ve noticed,” Enjolras tried to tease. Grantaire just glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “I want to know if you have any theories why because all I can come up with is a delay. You always seem to think I’m wrong so…”

That made Grantaire’s lip curl in distaste. He turned his head so that he was starring out into the street. Enjolras let him as emotions flickered across his face. When it became clear that Grantaire had retreated deep inside to wage war with himself Enjolras bumped their shoulders together. Grantaire jolted before settling with a pained sigh, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.

“Because,” he groaned, “it’s not ‘followers’ from which you derive your power. The gods are given power so long as people believe in them. It’s why the old gods have died out, passing on their realms to others either by choice or by force or without meaning to at all. It’s how new gods have risen, and what cold cruel gods they are. You only have power so long as people believe you have power. Or whoever they think you are.”

Grantaire’s words explained a lot, why he got stronger with each new friend and yet stagnated despite growing numbers. Why Zeus had forgotten and forsaken and seemingly ignored him. Why no one could explain the gods’ disappearance. Why Grantaire’s confession of belief had resulted in their current positions slumped against the wall. Well, maybe not. That was much more power than Enjolras had ever experienced and Grantaire knew more of the gods than Enjolras himself did.

“Then why did your belief affect me so strongly?” Enjolras asked softly.

He’d turned to look at Grantaire, leaning forward and pinning his gaze.

Grantaire blinked once. Twice. Swallowed, and spoke.

“That’s what happens when you win the belief of another god.”

~

Over the course of the following weeks Grantaire shared his secrets with Enjolras. It started on the sidewalk outside the Musain with a confession of faith. It continued inside the café and at one or another’s apartment, over food or coffee or a movie Grantaire insisted Enjolras just had to see.

“The 1830s were a sucky time to be a young adult,” Grantaire had started his tale. “I’d left my family and found myself in an alcohol fueled haze, stumbling from dance hall to pub to café to dance hall. I bumped into him somewhere in there.”

Enjolras took some sickly sense of vindictive justice to know that Dionysus had aged poorly in the wakes of capitalism. He’d been unable to adjust to the enlightenment and was preserving his power wherever he could.

“He just couldn’t go on. He was too weak,” Grantaire had frowned at the memory but Enjolras felt no sympathy for the old god. “So, he pulled me aside and told me everything, about the gods dying and needing to pass on his realms lest one of the new gods snatch it. He liked me, I was always kind to him, and I had amassed my own small group of fellow revelers that he seemed to think would keep me afloat.”

That had sparked a conversation about power and belief and together they managed to puzzle most of it out. The discussion – which alternated between a true discussion, a debate, and blatant bickering – lasted well into the night and they were swiftly kicked out of the Musain by the barista that Courf never seemed able to work his charms on. She’d seemed apologetic but also annoyed and the hour was so late that they both felt guilty and left a small pile of bills to try and make up for it.

“So you’re the god of wine?” Enjolras asked at the opening of one of their meetings, Grantaire quite literally having just opened his apartment door.

“Good afternoon, Enjolras. You’re really bad at greetings,” Grantaire said sarcastically. Enjolras grumbled as Grantaire stepped aside to let him in. “Less so wine and more general god of alcohol?���

This made them circle back to the power and belief equation. Enjolras was desperately curious to know what exactly fell under Grantaire’s domain. He hadn’t been too positive as Dionysus had simply passed on his divinity, essentially said that Grantaire had to fulfill his responsibilities, and then died. Through a lot of questions – Enjolras’s – and sighs – Grantaire’s – they worked out what did and did not fall under Grantaire’s control.

“I feel like Combeferre would be helpful in this conversation. Or Jehan or Musichetta.” Enjolras frowned down at his empty mug. He got up to make another cup of coffee and stopped in shock at how late it had gotten, the clock on Grantaire’s microwave blinking that it was 3:00 a.m.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask: did you have Chetta do a reading on me?” Grantaire called, he was still sprawled on the floor where he’d moved to lay down about a half hour ago though maybe it was longer.

“I wanted to know if we could trust you,” Enjolras admitted. He’d forgone the coffee and just poured milk into his mug.

Grantaire snorted, he sat up so he could shoot Enjolras a look. He didn’t say anything just laid back down.

“I trust Eponine’s judgement, but you can never be too careful.”

That made Grantaire snort again and rather than returning to his place on the couch Enjolras sat cross-legged on floor next to him. Rolling his head so he could look at Enjolras, Grantaire raised a curious eyebrow. “And? What’d they say?”

“That we could.”

Grantaire laughed. “No shit, Sherlock.”

Enjolras couldn’t stop his smile, not that he wanted to anyway. “Fuck you, Watson.”

Another laugh came from Grantaire, loud and deep and warm. It made Enjolras feel warm too, with pride at being responsible for it and from listening to it.

“I might still have the text?” he offered, already reaching for his phone.

“Why not.”

“She did a three-card draw: Hanged Man, Wheel of Fortune, and Knight of Cups.”

Grantaire scoffed. “Well fuck. I feel intensely seen.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow but Grantaire didn’t elaborate. He’d looked up the meanings behind the cards after that first meeting, but he couldn’t derive anything more and trusted Musichetta. That Grantaire seemed to agree so succinctly was interesting though.

“She ever do a reading for you?” Grantaire asked, genuine curiosity in his tone.

He shook his head before shrugging and making a noncommittal noise. Grantaire raised a brow. “She taught me about tarot and we did readings and all but never on me.”

With a nod Grantaire pushed himself so he was sitting upright. “I’ve found that they help just for like self-reflection.” Grantaire cleared his throat and Enjolras could tell it was because he was suddenly, overwhelming self-conscious. He charged onward though, pushing himself to his feet and moving towards the overfull bookshelves in the corner of the room. “But it’s also an easy way to, uh, assess? Your domain? Power? Whatever. It’s a useful tool for a god.”

Enjolras nodded. He’d realized that but even with Musichetta’s help he was still remedial.

“Here,” Grantaire handed him a small velvet bag and took a seat across the small coffee table from him. “If you want, I can do you. Um, do a reading for you.” Grantaire flushed and Enjolras felt his own cheeks heating up.

“Um, sure?”

“Just shuffle the cards,” Grantaire instructed.

Enjolras pulled the deck out. Like Musichetta’s and the one that he’d seen Jehan pull out every once in a while, they were larger than playing cards, tall and broad. Grantaire’s were decorated with an intricate pattern of vines on the backs. They were cool and slippery as he cut the deck and passed chunks of it from hand to hand. Some cards stuck together, and others moved easily as he shuffled. Once he was satisfied Enjolras set them on the table between himself and Grantaire.

Grantaire picked up the cards and carefully pulled the first three, placing them face up in a neat row between them. Normally that’s all that he and Musichetta would do, quick and messy she’d call it and then add on “but effective.” Grantaire kept going, two more cards were placed below them and then a final one at the bottom creating an inverted pyramid on the table in front of him. Grantaire set the rest of the deck aside and frowned down at them.

“That’s a lot of the Major Arcana,” Enjolras observed.

Grantaire hummed. “Yeah, that happens with gods. Not sure why, besides the fact that we kinda exist on a larger scale? Or something. It’s just a theory.”

Enjolras nodded and began to study the cards with Grantaire. He was too distracted by the artwork though, bold paint strokes and bright colors tempered with thick, dark lines.

“Ok,” Grantaire said and startled Enjolras. He’d zoned out trying to make out the shadowed face of the Magician. “The top row is past and obviously represents you: rebellious, driven, focused, leader, with an innate sense of fairness and responsibility. Seven of wands, Magician, Justice.”

Enjolras nodded and Grantaire continued. “The next row is meant to be present, or the events that have led to your present. The Tower is destruction and downfall and well it’s obviously you getting your ass thrown in Limbo.”

“Gee, thanks,” Enjolras said sarcastically.

Grantaire held his hands up placatingly but gave a wicked grin. “Just saying. Wheel of Fortune is change so being freed but also your little save the world club and your desire to make change.”

“Those I could follow,” Enjolras said dryly.

Grantaire shot him a glare. “You agreed to this.”

Enjolras shrugged and this time it was his turn to spread his hands in a placating gesture.

“Right,” Grantaire narrowed his eyes at him before returning to the final card. “Future, Two of Cups. Truce.” Grantaire frowned.

“Truce?” Enjolras asked, realizing that just sitting here, on Grantaire’s living room floor, was its own truce.

“Um, also connection and…” Grantaire’s ears turned red again. “Uh, attraction.”

Enjolras nodded. He reached towards the deck and drew the top card, placing it over the Two of Cups. The Knight of Cups looked up at them.

The Knight had his armor stacked at his feet and stood in his tunic and leggings. His hair was the same curls as Grantaire’s, and his eyes held the same mischief.

He’d never admit it, but Grantaire had been right. The cards were good for self-reflection and looking at them, hearing Grantaire explain them, the months since he’d met the other man all suddenly fell into place. When he looked up to meet Grantaire’s shocked eyes he could see that they had for the other man as well.

“Truce?” Enjolras asked again, unable to stop himself from smiling.

Grantaire grinned back. “Truce.”

[lokikingofasgardslover713]

Malefic & Help: 1

Masterlist

Malefic & Help Masterlist

Loki Laufeyson x Female Plus Size Reader x Valkyrie/Brunhilde

Warnings: Rape, Non-con, dub-con, Dark fic.

A/N: While in Sakaar, Loki and Brunhilde run across a rare asset that the Grandmaster had kept hidden for centuries until the day it was time to auction them off to the highest bidder. How will the bidding war play out between an old lover and an old friend? Not to mention is there anything left worth saving after centuries of torture and no memories of a life other than that of a sex slave? This is my first Loki/Reader/Brunhilde it took a really dark turn.

Words: +3,800

It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in centuries, embarrassment, embarrassment at having bare, thick, naked form put on display before the on lookers to be auctioned off to the highest bidder and it made no sense. It was an embarrassment that one felt when doing something crude in front of someone who didn’t know this side of you, this darkness, this ugliness that was an atrocity.

The man, it was a man this time wasn’t it? Well whoever they are they weren’t letting up until they ripped another orgasm from her sweat drenched body, lulling head thrown to her back over the wedge like pillow, arms aching from being pinned shackled under her aching back as the noise around her was running into one.

She swore she caught movement that wasn’t Sakaraaian, they didn’t move like one and neither did the other she spotted earlier, an itching at muffled memories that where ripped from her when she came to this realm. Body now shaking as whatever had her was finally spilling into aching womb and the weight  lifted off as eyes fluttered closed. It had been a long time since she had seen the public world of the Grandmaster’ upper floors, normally she was kept to his private quarters only for him or those he deemed worthy of her company, but now it appeared he had ultimately tired of her and was ready to find her a new master.

It was a disgusting display, it left Loki wanting to leave but he really couldn’t, not since he was trying to impress the Grandmaster with his wit and skill. Coming to the auction at the eccentric man’s urging and was glad to note it was drawing to an end as it seemed the last poor soul was being auctioned off but this one the Grandmaster was making a point to give a show of as he neared to look over the poor spirit. This one a woman who was nearing gods knew which number orgasm as she was flopped to her stomach now the bidding reaching higher than the others.

Emerald green meeting the weakening woman’s dull gaze, this one didn’t wear a disc, but a thin metal collar covered in varying ruins, his eyes snapping to the familiar dull Y/E/C orbs that were hazing over, thick bare body jolting as this time it was centarian slamming into her ass, and this time she let out a silent cry before shuttering form fell limp. The current bid 14 million credits, he could do better he had to do better.

“20 million credits,” Loki spoke up as he stepped next to the Grandmaster who paused to look at the newest member of his entourage surprised as the room quieted all but for the poor woman being fucked relentlessly.

“Wow, OK it looks like we have a new bidder,” the Grandmaster began, movement at the back of the crowd catching Loki’s eye.

Brunhilde knew her, the scrapper knew the slab of flesh on the auction block, so to say, was more than any salve, she was Asgardian, one that she recognized from a child before the Valkyrie left the realm. Wondering why she never seen her but if she was private collection then that would explain it and she wasn’t about to let the newest scum who followed the Grandmaster’ shirt tails take her and ruin her more.

“21 million credits and an endless supply of fighters for half the price,” the scrapper spoke making Loki glare at her, the centarian finally pushing off of the now lifeless creature, body spent and fluids leaking out of every orifice as it seemed it was all she could do was breath.

“Sold,” the Grandmaster didn’t hesitate to say as the crowd cleared for the scraper to come forward, the elaborate man calling her scrapper 142, Loki taking a mental note as he stepped close to congratulate her.

“I will offer you double what you paid,” Loki spoke quietly as the tanned woman handed over the small gold rectangle for the credits to be deducted among other things added to the list as she ignored Loki when she took the object back and start for the disoriented woman, flinging a blanket over her pulled off a couch before getting the woman to wobbly feet to leave.

“No, she’s mine,” the bronze woman sneered to Loki pushing past the tall man to hurry out with the woman who was barely able to walk.

The scrapper needed to get the woman settled so she could go make good on the rest of the deal, the annoying man following her close and down the corridors badgering her and offering more for the creature that appeared to be barley hanging on. The annoying asshole even following Brunhilde into her small apartment and back to the bedroom where she laid the limp woman who looked relived to be laying down without anyone expecting a performance.

“Look, whatever you intend her for isn’t happening so leave,” she bellowed at the man who barely budged when she lost her temper drawing a dagger to put it to his throat.

“I want nothing more than to help her, heal her, let me show you,” was all he said as he skirted around the woman to sit on the bed, carefully removing the collar around the shivering woman’s neck for aching body to lose its pale clammy appearance as if it was healing itself from the inside out.

“OK, look,” Brunhilde huffed out in exasperation, she didn’t have time for this and was running low on patience, as well as something told her he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. “How about you rent her for the day, I have to go make good on the rest of the deal or I will end up like her. She comes back better than she left, or I will cut your throat,” she sneered at Loki who was quick to pull the woman into his arms to hold her close before taking steps out of the room.

“You never asked my price,” she spoke after Loki who began to step out of the room via the sliding door.

“Doesn’t matter, it's taken care of,” Loki spoke as he stepped out the door, using his seidr to take them to his quarters that were cleaner and less chaotic.

Quickly the god took long strides to carry her to his own bed, sitting next to the lifeless woman worriedly, hand smoothing over sweat stiff hair as he used seidr to help her own continue to heal her body and to clean her.

“Wake up Y/N, at least show me you can hear me, I know your tired lover, but I need you to wake up, just look at me,” Loki spoke quietly watching her move to open hazy eyes, letting out a sigh at what it could only mean why she was here in bed with this man.

“What does my master ask of me,” she spoke hoarsely, voice strained and hazy eyes not recognizing the man before her, sitting up without shame of being bare before a stranger, but then again she felt the embarrassment as the man made sure to wrap a robe around heavy shoulders to keep naked form covered.

“I'm not your master love, I'm Loki, do you not…,” the man began searching blank face over for any sign of the woman he once knew her as, a warrior full of life, one stronger in seidr than him, well versed and used to share his bed till she was thought dead.

She searched Loki’ face over, was she to know him? Was it her life before that had been wiped from her mind? This was all she knew servitude, the collar, wait, the collar.

Hand going up to soft, bare neck to look up to the man, no, her buyer her new master would be upset the collar was gone, that she lost it. Eyes growing wide in panic as fingers tore at soft neck. No, the collar was to never come off, jerking hands away from her neck to glance around the room, the bed.

He wasn’t her buyer, he was renting her, he had no right to remove it, to take it, Y/E/C orbs locking onto his as it seemed he was at a loss as to what was happening until he finally noted to angry scratches gold painted nails had left in their wake and was now searching frantically over the bed for. In a panic getting to her knees to search the covers like a frantic animal digging in the dirt for a meal.

Carefully he grabbed her wrist to stop the frantic searching, she was wearing herself back down in the panic, he knew she feared punishment and he could only imagine what form it took in the woman’s shattered mind as she shivered with. Loki managing to get Y/N to look at him, well the hands he held her wrist in anyway as he knew it would be hell to pay to get her to look him in the eye.

“My master will be upset that the collar is gone, it… it keeps my seidr bound so no one has to fear me or punish me… please… put it back… please…,” the broken creature pleaded with his wrist, finally looking up to him for a second with pleading eyes before looking back to his wrist, trying to shrink into herself, trying to show submission in hopes of not being punished.

“Your…,” damn he hated to play along with this game, especially with her, what was once a strong lover was now a shivering panicking creature before him that he needed to calm. “Your master,” Loki forced out, “she removed the collar,” liar you did, “she knows, it is OK love, calm down, no need for it, you want be punished,” he sounded to negotiate, moving in attempts to get her to look up at him but still she wouldn’t.

“Look at me pet, I want punish you for meeting my gaze. I have you for the day, until your master returns,” Loki spoke finding it eerie as Y/N calmed to finally look up at him, meeting his gaze though he knew it killed her, slowly releasing trembling wrist to watch her get to her knees before him hands up turned on her thighs, submitting.

“What would you like for me to do for you today,” Y/N spoke quietly looking him over, there was only one reason to be rented out besides just earning some of the money back that her buyer, her new master had spent out to purchase her, knowing the Grandmaster her price wasn’t cheap.

“Norns love what has happened to you,” he breathed, reaching out to place his hand on her soft cheek feeling her lean into and unable to prevent himself from relishing in the feel.

Slowly Loki placed a hand over her upturned one, using his seidr to call her own noting her look down and her body began to shake at what this could mean. Gradually Loki scooted forward to sit close, carefully pulling shivering form into him to hold her in a comforting way, trying to convey he wanted no sexual attention like what she was preparing to offer as he returned the robe to her shoulders with a thought and continued to watch his emerald mist swirling with her golden glimmer.

Loki noted the look in her eye, this was the first time she had seen her seidr in a long time, noting her fall into him, she was lost, not sure what was expected of her. Clear she was unsure how to respond to it, normally one didn’t want, this, it was either on her back, stomach or knees doing as commanded.

A slight tingling of the hand that was placed on her cheek that was beginning to lace into her hair to lay her head to his shoulder as he settled her into his lap. It was breath taking to say the least, the first time that someone had entered her mind in centuries to give her a vision, one of her tangled with the one before her but younger, leaving her wide eyed as she sat back to look over the older version, foggy mind still straining to remember.

Y/E/C orbs focusing as he spoke to her a little more to keep her calm, not looking for responses just explaining all he could in hopes of jogging a memory for as long as he had her in his care before taking her back to Brunhilde. Carefully Loki called the seidr back and allowed hers to retreat, while he continued to hold her close, telling tales of Asgard and when they were children.

“Are you hungry love,” Loki echoed, obvious she wasn’t used to someone asking if she was hungry or caring for what she truly needed, carefully Y/N shuffled in his lap as a bowl of fruit appeared in his hand to place it on his leg hinting for her to eat but noting she refused to reach into the bowl.

Thoughtfully Loki pulled a piece of fruit from the bowl and held it out to her, noting how easily she took it and taking time to eat it as it felt as if she was relaxing further into him. It seemed an odd arrangement whatever this was, she had never been treated like a well she guessed like a queen would be tended to, handled easily and soothingly in a calm atmosphere.

“What do you remember little one,” Loki began to question quietly, the woman shifting in his lap once more her knees pulled in close as he continued to hand over pieces of fruit while his free hand traced along her clothed lax spine, her shoulders moving as she took in a breath to speak, plucking the fruit out of his fingers to hold it in hers.

“I can only remember being tossed in my room for not obeying, for not submitting, after that I just remember the private quarters,” Y/N spoke softly, it wasn’t really permitted to speak of her life but this man that was being so gentle with her tired body, this Loki, it was easy to sense he was just more than any man.

“Well, we will just have to work on that want we dove,” he reaffirmed calmly once more, soothing over her back as he handed the last piece of fruit over, the bowl disappearing as she finished it off and the woman snuggling in closer into the man who seemed to be allowing comfort instead of demanding other acts, hand still soothing over lax spine as the one that was feeding her was rubbing over smooth shins.

Slowly Y/N fell asleep in Loki’ arms, the god continuing to speak of Asgard, of things she had missed, explaining who he was, who she was, a great warrior that he cared for and continued to care for even after her disappearance until it was time to return the sleeping creature to the scrapper, her buyer.  

True to his word Loki had the woman back to Brunhilde’ room, holding the now waking woman in his arms still in the same robe he had placed on her the moment the scrapper stepped into the apartment looking slightly unsteady but nothing out of hand. Cognac orbs looking the two over, noting the woman didn’t move as if she was sore or had been taken advantage of which was good, meant she wouldn’t have to kill him just yet.

“Take her to the bedroom, she needs to rest,” was all the scrapper spoke as Y/N was sat to her feet, obvious she wasn’t sure what to do at the moment, the woman looking at her buyer while taking a few steps away from Loki.

“Y/N needs to eat,” Loki spoke carefully, apparent he wasn’t wanting to anger the scrapper, Brunhilde pausing to look the two over nodding slightly, the tanned woman may take her anger out on his Y/N and that was a thing he wouldn’t allow.

Y/N looked back to Loki before she finally stepped closer to her buyer that was now standing at the edge of the kitchen counter, unsure of what was expected as she stopped before the bronze warrior who looked her over noting how well she looked hinting to her to take a seat at the table. With a gentle nod that left loose locks falling into Y/E/C orbs, Y/N padded to the table taking a seat quietly watching over the two, looking for any sign that she was wanted to behave differently, or if she was expected to prepare herself to perform as it was.

“I see you did as I asked, good for you,” the scrapper snapped out to Loki who was beginning to leave feeling Y/N staring at his back as the scrapper went to the refrigerator to pull a container from it, placing it on the counter, the god had done what he could for the day, maybe if he cooperated for once in his life things would work out for the best.

“Pick her up at first light and have her back the same time,” Brunhilde bit out to Loki who paused in the door way, glancing over his shoulder at the two women, studying Y/N for an instant noting her weary body looked relaxed, it didn’t matter if she had been treated like a play toy for centuries it would still show when one could sense they where about to be used.

“Very well,” was all he spoke, meeting the tanned woman’s cognacs gaze before leaving the two women to themselves.

“You like leftovers,” Brunhilde began speaking to Y/N, carefully looking over at the woman who was doing the same, both studying one another, the scrapper knew the confused woman was waiting for the order, the sign to do as her master commanded and it was actually heart-breaking given Y/N was a great warrior or once was.

“I will eat whatever my master sees fit,” Y/N spoke just loud enough for her to be heard, the scrapper hearing soreness in her throat, meeting Y/E/C orbs while it was clear the woman was preparing to mentally detach herself if need be.

“OK,” Brunhilde began the clatter of plates making Y/N focus on all attention to the bronze woman covered in the days grime from doing whatever it was scrappers done.

Truth be told Y/N was ignorant to certain workings outside of the private world of entertainment so to say, cognac orbs sparkling as they continued to gaze into Y/E/C ones sparkling with curiosity, not fear, a thing Brunhilde knew it had taken her a long time to conquer. “Don’t call me your master, or buyer. You call me Brunhilde, I am your friend, I have known you since Asgard, before I came here. If I had known you were in the Grandmaster’ private collection I would have tried to get you out then, you are safe here with me and apparently that pompous bastard, Loki, just stay close to us yeah?”

Y/N looked the scrapper while Brunhilde’ gaze rake over her thick robed form. It was visibly noticeable to the bronze woman that Y/N looked better than earlier, as well as in the way she moved all be they calculated moves that where learned in order to tread lightly as one would put it. This development was a plus but still she looked tired, Y/N finally responding with a smile and a quiet, “yes Brunhilde.”

Stoically the woman sat in the chair watching Brunhilde plate to food after it was warmed, the scrapper informing Y/N to get the pitcher out of the refrigerator, glasses off of the counter and to take them to the table as the two sat to eat. Brunhilde speaking to the woman about what she did on Sakaar, that she was once more, safe with her, she would ask nothing of her but to help with the burden of the chores around the apartment.  The scrapper explaining after they ate she was going to take a shower and after that Y/N could have the facilities as long as she wanted.

It was comforting to stand under the hot water, letting it rain over thick curves that no longer ached, to take time without anyone interrupting in more ways than one as well as just feeling clean. Seidr had healed and cleaned her body effectively but something about a hot shower made one relax. With a contented sigh Y/N sunk to the floor in the medium sized shower stall letting the water rain over her pulling her knees to her chest to enjoy the feel of it raining over her, jolting when the door opened into the small space, looking up to Brunhilde who looked slightly wobblier than before but giving a smile.

“Take your time, I brought you some clothes,” Brunhilde spoke sitting them on the counter, Y/N getting to her feet to cut the shower off, figuring that the state of her shriveled skin was attesting to the fact she had taken long enough, unashamed of her body to step out to take the clothes but holding them as if waiting for a command, the scrapper realizing she stared longer than she should have at the thick curved woman before her.

Y/N continued to hold to the clothes as she took another step forward, it was always her job to make the first move, standing almost flush to the bronze skinned woman who took in a deep breath as if to steady her own nerves, it was all Brunhilde could do to keep from taking advantage of the situation. This was what she craved in a woman, the prowess, the sureness of her moves though it was a habit taught it was still reminiscent of the old Y/N who was once in line for general.

“I don’t want you like that sweetheart,” the scrapper began, taking the long shirt she had brought from Y/N to put it over her wet head, noting in fit curvaceous form perfectly, hitting mid-thigh, bronze hand reaching up to caress over soft heated cheek and feeling her lean into it calloused thumb cherishing over the soft flesh as Y/N’ eyes fluttered closed.

“Let’s go to bed, I want make a move, promise,” the scrapper pledged to the woman who opened her eyes and smiled at her with a nod.

Quietly Y/N followed the bronze woman to the bedroom, taking what was to be her side of the bed to only wake in the middle of the night with Brunhilde pulled tight to her, arms wrapped around Y/N’ plump stomach and head buried there was well. The woman laying a hand on the scrappers back so she could feel the rise and fall of her gentle breathing, it was calming, comforting and lulled her back to a deep sleep, one she had been deprived of for centuries. Maybe this was better, maybe this was a light, a way out, an easier existence maybe?

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[creative-type]

The Murder of Arthur Wright XII

First Previous AO3

Chapter Twelve: The Thing About Elves

“That &%$#@$# fired you?”

Margot nodded. She was tired, having not slept well the night before, and had been ready to put the whole disaster behind her. Monday was a new day and a new week, and she was more than ready to start afresh.

A surprise invitation to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants didn’t change that, and Margot forced a smile. “The best I can say about the whole thing is that it’s over and done with. How was your last job?”

Lyra propped her chin on a hand and studied her in a way that made Margot’s stomach flutter. She was still in her armor, and was likely to ship out for a job later in the afternoon. They had so little time to see one another during the height of the mercenary season. Margot didn’t want to waste it complaining.

“Tell me you at least cussed him out,” Lyra said imploringly.

“I couldn’t do that,” Margot said.

“You mean you shouldn’t do that. You’re more than capable of dressing down some #$$%@&$,” Lyra said. She narrowed her eyes. “But what about the detective? It sounds like he’s eyeballs deep in a mess.”

Margot stirred her tea absentmindedly. She heard their waitress laugh with another table, and briefly her thoughts turned to Viola Cassetti. She shook that image away.

“I don’t know,” Margot said honestly. “After Mr. Wright left things got pretty heated between me and Cain.”

“Tell me.”

Something about Lyra’s tone startled Margot back to attention. Lyra’s gaze was intensely focused, never once wavering from Margot, not even when someone behind her dropped their drink and shattered the glass into a hundred pieces.

She wanted to know. Margot couldn’t quite hide her surprise in time, and Lyra’s lips quirked into a crooked smile.

“Please?”

Margot laughed at the absurdity of it. “Well, if you insist. It goes like this…”

“I can’t believe it,” Margot breathed. “The &%$#@$# fired us.”

She turned to Cain, but he didn’t seem to see her. He was left staring at the place where Felix Wright had been standing, jerky stick dangling limply from his lips.

“I told you to stay away, Cain. You never were good at listening.”

Margot whirled to see a man leaning against a doorway labeled Harris. He was a tall, lanky man with reddish-brown hair in bad need of trimming and a two-day old beard. There was a vindictive spark in his eyes that Margot didn’t like.

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“My boss,” Cain said tersely. “Took over after Mr. Westmacott left.”

“Al Harris, at your service,” he said, extending a hand. “You must be the professor that I’ve heard so much about.”

“And yet I’ve never heard of you,” Margot said. Harris’s grip tightened for a fraction of a second, and Margot pulled back as soon as was polite.

“Ah, well, Cain’s always been a bit of a glory hound. Not that I blame him, really, but this time it looks like he’s really bitten off more than he can chew. Ain’t that right, Cain?”

Cain didn’t answer.

Harris smirked. “Anyway, unless I’ve gone blind and deaf this Wright case is done for good. There ain’t no reason for you to stick around, Professor. If you’ll excuse us, I’ve got work for Cain. Good, solid work that’ll put food on the table and coin in our pockets.”

“This isn’t over,” Margot said. She turned to Cain. “Is it?”

Harris shot Cain a significant look that made a muscle in Cain’s jaw twitch. His chest swelled, as if he were drawing a breath to argue, but something in his employer’s gaze made him stop. He deflated like an old balloon, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Give me a minute, boss.”

Cain jerked his thumb back to his office, and a confused Margot followed. He rested his head against the door after closing it, knocking his hat right off of his head. He made no move to retrieve it.  

“Why didn’t you let him go?”

The plaintive question caught Margot off-guard and it took her a moment to realize he was talking about Felix Wright. “We needed answers.”

“We needed him on our side,” Cain snapped. He whirled towards her, as angry as she had ever seen him. But even in his anger he kept his voice low as he said, “Wright was the only reason I was able to work this case at all, and you cheesing him off was the last straw.”

“Don’t you dare blame this on me, Dashiell Cain,” Margot said. “It’s not my fault your client is an overgrown child with an inflated self-importance. Honestly, at this point in time it wouldn’t surprise me if he killed Master Wright himself!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cain demanded. “Gods, I knew he was a pretentious blowhard the moment I laid eyes on him. But he was my client, and part of this job means keeping you client happy or else I don’t get paid!”

“Is this what this is about? Money?”

“Look at me, Professor!” Cain said, gesturing at his cramped office. “I’m not like Mr. Westmacott and this isn’t some penny dreadful. I’ve lost income working this case because I believed that—“ He cut himself off suddenly, his face screwed in impotent frustration.

“It doesn’t matter. I…thank you for your help, Professor. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you. But this is the end of the line. There’s nothing else I can do.”

“But what about the Wrights?” Margot asked. “What about the Cassettis? You’ve drug me into some bad situations without me knowing. What are you hiding?”

“I’m sorry. You won’t have to worry about any of that stuff again. I won’t be bothering you any more.”

Cain held open his office door for Margot. The anger was gone, leaving misery in its place. “I need you to leave. Here, I promised I’d give you these.”

Margot wanted nothing more than to argue as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled sheets of paper that held Master Wright’s research notes. She took them wordlessly, knowing that nothing good would come of it. She suspected that he was already in trouble with his boss, and it said a great deal that he was willing to part with Master Wright’s precious research willingly. Even after everything he had put her through with mobsters and murder investigations Margot didn’t want him to lose his job.

She gathered herself to leave, and as she passed made a point to look him dead in the eye.

“This isn’t over, Cain. Not by a longshot.”

Lyra listened thoughtfully to Margot’s entire tale, and when she was finished took a deep draught from her drink. When she set it back on the table she asked, “So what’s next?”

“I don’t know,” Margot said. She didn’t much like admitting her own ignorance. She tried to wash the bad taste out of her mouth with a drink of her own. “I feel like there’s so much I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Well, Cain for one,” Margot said. “He seemed so earnest when it came to this investigation, but if he’s tangled up with the Cassettis…”

“And it sounds like he is,” Lyra said.

“…Then I need to step lightly. I did some research on them last night, and it wasn’t pretty.”

Lyra hummed in agreement. “What else?”

“The dynamics of the Wright family don’t make any sense to me,” Margot said. “It seems like everyone hated him except Abigail, and she’s dead. Even his own wife didn’t seem all that put out at his funeral.”

“Makes perfect sense to me.”

Margot quirked an eyebrow, and Lyra grimaced. “If grew up with elves, I promise it’d make perfect sense.

Margot waited for her to continue, but she only took another drink and looked like she wished it were of the alcoholic variety. When Lyra realized Margot was looking at her she seemed to retreat into her armor, a look of sour displeasure on her face.

“I’ve only worked with elves in a professional capacity,” Margot prompted gently. “I would like to understand, if you’d teach me.”

For a moment it looked like Lyra would refuse, and Margot would have been content not to pressure her. She knew precious little of Lyra’s life growing up, except that it was an unhappy experience. It wasn’t her place to force Lyra to talk about it—even indirectly—if she didn’t want to.

Instead Lyra sighed, and with deft motions plucked the salt shaker off of the table and unscrewed the top. She dumped the contents on the table and drew a crude rectangle with a finger.

“So pretend this is Elvish society. All the little boys and girls are told from the moment they’re old enough to understand that they have to grow up to fit into this box, and if they don’t then they have no place. Women’s job is to get married and have babies, magic is the greatest area of study, the goal in life is to improve your social standing, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.”

There was something close to bitterness her tone, hidden beneath a mocking lilt. She drew a trapezoid over the rectangle. “Of course it’s impossible to fit perfectly into the box because it’s an ideal. It doesn’t actually exist—not that that doesn’t stop people from trying, but whatever. Most, with enough pressure and social training, fit into a shape that’s close enough. They are the quote-unquote ‘normals’.” She wiped away the picture and drew a new rectangle, this time drawing a circle over top.

“Then there people who just don’t fit. Sometimes by choice, sometimes it’s by nature, but they’re outcasts. There isn’t a place for them in society. And when this happens there are three potential outcomes.”

Lyra wiped away the edges of the circle that went beyond the rectangle. “Conform, cutting away whatever parts of yourself that don’t fit.” She wiped away the salt again, and this time drew a separate rectangle and circle. “Leave and try to rebuild a new life for themselves somewhere else. Hopefully somewhere where they can find people who accept them for who they are.”

She paused, her voice strangely thick. Quietly, Margot prompted, “And the third outcome?”

Lyra looked up at her, her eyes burning like a fierce green fire. “They break.”

She wiped the salt away, the line of her mouth set in a grim line. “I guess if you were to sum it up in a word it would be rigid. There isn’t much opportunity to deviate from the norm, whether its your social class or gender role or anything else. Which works out well enough if you fit in, but if you don’t...”

Lyra let her voice trail off and she shrugged. Margot hated seeing her so unhappy, and after a moment of hesitation she placed a comforting hand on top of Lyra’s. Her eyes widened in silent surprise.

“Thanks for trusting me. It means a lot.”

“Yeah, well, whatever.” Lyra’s cheeks flushed pink. “Can we please talk about something else? Like, anything else?”

Margot laughed. “You never did tell me about your last job. Your letter mentioned something about winged horses?”

Margot was still thinking when she returned to her office. She had never given much thought to Elvish society before. There had really been no need. She of course knew of elves reputation of vanity and self-importance, but had never put much stock in it. She knew and worked with plenty of elves that were nothing like their stereotype. Lyra was as far removed from the ideal of a prim, proper, young woman as day was from night.

But stereotypes had to start somewhere, and if Lyra was right then there was an enormous pressure on the Wright family to fit into an idealized picture of a perfect family. It seemed like Felix conformed, Desdemona left, and Abigail…well, based on what Margot knew Abigail broke.

There was another option that Lyra hadn’t mentioned, but whether that was because she hadn’t considered it or didn’t think it possible Margot didn’t know. Change. It was inevitable in every culture, including one as rigid and unyielding as an elf’s. Social mores of all kinds were constantly being challenged, broken, and reshaped over time.

Margot sighed quietly to herself as she sat heavily behind her desk. A spark of magic reheated a cup of stale coffee. There was so much work for her to do that had nothing to do with Master Wright or Dashiell Cain, but she couldn’t bring herself to it. She couldn’t let this go unfinished.

A flick of the wrist Conjured a pen, while another Summoned a scrap of parchment. Margot began writing everything she knew about the murder of Arthur Wright, and when she was finished she began to organize her thoughts. Unanswered questions were listed on a separate sheet of parchment.

What she came up with was this:

Ten years ago Master Wright leaves a teaching position at an elvish university to pursue his research full time, the same year Desdemona runs away from home and is subsequently disowned after allegedly stealing a substantial amount of silver from the family manor. Shortly after, Felix’s engagement dissolves and he becomes estranged from his father before venturing off to start his own business, becoming involved the Cassettis and meeting Isabella along the way.

Despite taking considerable risks and possibly engaging in illicit activity, Felix Wright is successful. He and Isabella are married, and the couple are welcomed back into the good graces of the family. Though he never completely reconciles with his father, Felix begins working with Master Wright.

Three years ago Abigail Wright commits suicide, and Master Wright hires detective Conan Westmacott for a case that includes tailing his disowned daughter. Dashiell Cain watches Desdemona with little fanfare until the day she approaches Westmacott for a meeting of unknown importance.

Days later Mr. Westmacott unexpectedly retires. Cain becomes a full-fledged detective, and also runs afoul of the Cassetti crime family.

In the months prior to his death, Master Wright begins a correspondence with me regarding my paper on the divergence between the scientific and magical properties of elements, and uses it as an additional safeguard on his life’s work. A safeguard that goes beyond the traditional norms of magical experimentation.

Days before Master Wright’s death Mr. Westmacott returns to Cain’s office an unopened note of thanks that reignites Cain’s interest in the case, leading him to sneak into the mage’s conference to see what he can find.

The night before unveiling his life’s work to the public, both Master Wright and Felix attend Anansi’s show, in which the illusionist makes several references to Desdemona Wright. After the performance Master Wright goes to demand an audience with Anansi while Felix gets drunk and plays cards. The latter doesn’t return to the hotel until after two o’clock in the morning while Anansi claims he never spoke with the former in any capacity.

Felix makes a scene with the hotel staff and is rescued by his father. They argue, and after Felix retires to bed while his father continues working.  

The day of the mage’s conference Master Wright is distracted and irritable, forgetting that he had invited me to the unveiling. Desdemona is seen shortly before the explosion by Cain, who manages to sneak his way into the conference. An unknown, catastrophic failing causes a thermal runaway reaction, causing the teleportation device to overheat and explode, killing Master Wright and injuring Felix Wright.

Desdemona’s whereabouts after the incident remain unknown.

Cain’s connection with the Cassettis remain unknown

Felix’s connection with the Cassettis remain unknown

The Cassetti’s interest in Master Wright’s research remain unknown

The details of the case that led to Mr. Westmacott’s retirement remain unknown

The sender of the thank you letter remains unknown

The circumstances surrounding Abigail’s death remain unknown

The reason Desdemona ran away remains unknown

Anansi’s reason for performing the Death of Desdemona remains unknown

Whether Master Wright confronted Anansi remains unknown

The exact cause of the explosion remains unknown

Margot stared at the parchment and rubbed her forehead. There were too many unknowns and not nearly enough answers, so many that she was nearly overwhelmed by looking at them. All this time she had been running from one place to the next, but the only thing she had succeeded in doing was bring up more questions.

A sharp knock at the door snapped her out of her reverie. Hurriedly she slid the parchment into the pocket of her dress and took a bracing swig of her stale, now lukewarm coffee.

“Come in.”

Margot expected the door to open to the friendly face of Ford or Hikaru or any one of her colleagues at the Academy. What she got was the proud, regal personage of Adeline Wright.

Still in deep mourning, Master Wright’s widow swept into the office with the grace of a black swan. Grey eyes that missed nothing scanned the modest interior with vague disapproval before tracking back to Margot. “Good afternoon, Professor. I do hope you’ll forgive me for calling unexpectedly. I have much to discuss with you that cannot wait.”

Without waiting for an invitation she took a seat opposite Margot and folded her hands across her lap. “I don’t wish to keep you from your work, but I have been speaking with my son.”

“Oh?” Margot said, masking her surprise with another sip of coffee.

“It seems that the death of his father has led him to several…indiscretions. I would like to apologize on his behalf. I’ve already spoken to Mr. Cain, but I feel like the gravitas of the situation requires me to discuss the matter with you as well.”

It took a moment before Margot realized what Mrs. Wright reminded her of. On more than one occasion she had had the misfortune of dealing with the parents of unruly students, begging for a chance at a passing grade or a second chance after they had been kicked out of her class.

Margot had a feeling that Mrs. Wright wouldn’t do something as undignified as beg, but she didn’t doubt that there was an ulterior motive for her presence in her office. Margot wondered what it was.

“Felix is a grown man, Mrs. Wright. Surely he can make his own apologies.”

“My son is not well. He is at home convalescing after his distressing ordeal, an ordeal he would not have had to endure if not for the machinations of yourself and Mr. Cain,” Mrs. Wright said. The corner of her mouth turned with displeasure. “After all, it was you who put in his head that his father was murdered.”

She cut Margot off before she could protest. “My son is grieving. Whether from ignorance of malice, you and Mr. Cain have taken advantage of him while in a vulnerable state. Both of you ought to be ashamed of your outrageous behavior and grateful that I do not intend pursue the matter further unless forced.”

Mrs. Wright paused. She studied Margot, her grey eyes cold and calculating, and when she spoke her tone was frigidly polite. “I am willing to overlook your emotional manhandling of my son, but this sordid business ends today. My husband died in an accident. A tragic, horrible accident that nearly took the life of the one you are so desperate to accuse. And in return for my silence, I expect you to keep yours.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Margot said.

“Then allow me to speak plainly: If you continue to sully my son’s good name I am willing and prepared to fight fire with fire. One word, Professor, and I will ensure you become a persona non grata within the academic community. With my connections there’s not a school in the country that would hire you.”

Margot blinked, and slowly leaned back in her seat. There was a part of her, the contrarian that wanted to do nothing more than do what she was told she shouldn’t, but in the back of her mind she heard Cain’s voice.

Some people need a light touch, Prof. You need information, not to scare her away.

“I apologize if I’ve caused you any great distress, Mrs. Wright, but your son hired Mr. Cain because he thought the accident might be more than an accident. Don’t you want to be sure?”

“My husband is dead,” Mrs. Wright said, her voice hard as flint. She lifted her chin imperiously and asked, “Do you have children, Professor?”

“I don’t.”

“Then it is impossible for you to understand. Now that my husband is gone my love and duty is towards my children, and I would see Felix and Isabella succeed in society. The idea that Arthur was murdered is an insult not only to my husband’s memory but to the proper authorities who are investigating the accident.”

“Have they found out why the teleportation device exploded?” Margot asked.

“Whether they have or haven’t is none of your business, Professor,” Mrs. Wright said. “None of this is your business. Again I repeat myself: I will overlook you and that orc’s disgraceful behavior as a token of thanks for your heroics at the mage’s conference. All that I ask is that you leave my son to grieve in peace.”

Mrs. Wright rose to her feet, leaving the or else implied but clearly understood. She spared Margot one last, withering glare, before spinning primly towards the door. “Good day, Professor.”

She left, and Margot let out a breath. She felt like she’d just survived a whirlwind.

“What to do, what to do, what to do,” Margot murmured to herself. She finished the last of her coffee and retrieved her notes from her pocket, grateful that Mrs. Wright had not seen them.

Margot stared at the pages for a long while without really seeing, her interaction with Mrs. Wright churning in her mind. Did she truly believe Master Wright’s death was an accident? Was there something she knew? Had the official investigation turned up any answers?

She held up Master Wright’s formula. The pages were crumpled and worn from repeated foldings and spending extended periods of time in Cain’s magical pocket. If she could just understand them…but no. Even decoded, a large portion near the center of the pages was blank, likely representing the areas of Master Wright’s notebook that were destroyed in the explosion.

Mrs. Wright had been perfectly clear. If Margot chose to pursue this her career was at risk. She had little doubt Mrs. Wright had the clout to make good on her promise.

The thing was, Margot didn’t much like being told what to do, and the only thing Mrs. Wright had succeeded in was reigniting the spark of curiosity that had led her to allying with Cain in the first place.

With a flick of the wrist Margot Conjured a pen, and scrawled on the bottom of her list of unanswered questions

Mrs. Wright’s whereabouts at the time of the murder remain unknown.

[etching-bones-moved]

The Wild Thing, IV

Her new carers were impersonal.

They did not speak to her. They did not smile. She saw their faces perfectly, features defined so sharply her head hurt just looking at them- but their expressions never shifted beyond disinterest. They never answered her questions, and they always left as soon as her sheets and bandages were changed. To them, she was little but an object. Nothing more than a task.

Invisibility was slipped into within a few days, and then gradually, so slowly she only saw it if she paid close attention, she began to peel away from herself. It was the most peculiar sensation she had, drifting outside of her own body. Hadn’t she had a goal, an ambition? Hadn’t she had some resolve or other? Her previous plans of physical grandeur were forgotten; she stayed in bed for days.

The watch snapped her out of it.

It was left by one of the women who tended to her, taken off after its metal clasp had scratched the girl one too many times. Without quite knowing why she did it, the girl had picked it up after they’d left- and hidden it under her sheets. She studied it from time to time, engrossed by the staggered sweep of the second hand across the clock face. It was evidence that each moment ended, it steadied her. Her walking started anew.

The girl began to notice things.

The carers came at 11, 4, and finally 9, after which the lights would be turned off. There was a bathroom she could go to, barely three steps away from her room, but she was not allowed to cross the corridor unaccompanied to reach it. Between 9 and 11, her bedroom door was locked. That discovery had been particularly insidious- yanking at the door handle and finding that it would not give- and it left the girl feeling quite boxed in. Why no windows? Why no clocks? Why would nobody talk to her?

One day, the girl ran an experiment. She refused to take her pills.

The man had assured her, every day, with every new prescription, that what she took was her choice. That her autonomy was preserved, and her decision would be supported no matter what it was. These people pinned her to the bed, putting pressure at her wrists and hips, then later her tender chest and stomach after she still wouldn’t open her mouth. They prised her teeth opened and ignored her screaming, they forced the pills between her lips and then clamped their hands over her mouth and pinched her nose, keeping her from breathing until they were sure she’d swallowed. She was then cuffed to the metal frame of the bed, which put her in a state of panic so acute that the next time they came to her, she instantly vomited.

It took many days of lying still, pretending to be docile and absent in mind, before they allowed her free movement again. By then she knew that she had to get out. She wasn’t sure if the man knew the true nature of these people, but she would stand them no longer.

They came at 11, 4 and 9. The door was locked between 9 and 11, and if that was when they didn’t want her wandering, it was exactly when she should. Closer examination of the door showed it could be opened from either side. And, a week after she was allowed out of bed, two weeks after one of the carers had lost her watch- she had still not thought to come looking for it. She never used her key, either, content to let the other carer handle the door while she wheeled out the trolley.

The girl began to formulate a plan.

At 1 in the afternoon, the girl started to walk. In endless circles, until she was bone tired, until she was so obviously exhausted that when she stumbled against one of the carers, neither of them questioned it. They didn’t even secure her down again, just put her to bed and left. At 9, they came again, and seemed satisfied to see her still curled on her side. Asleep- or so she pretended- fists loosely curled around the key she’d snagged from the carers pocket. The lights flickered out and they went on their way.

She waited, waited, waited.

At midnight, when the darkness was at its most absolute, the girl walked to the door and opened it. Peeking out into the corridor, she found that this too was pitch black. For a few moments, she paused on the threshold, just to see if anyone would come by. They didn’t. The silence did not break for 15 minutes, nor later as she took her first tentative steps into the unknown.

Her nose whistled, so she breathed through her mouth. Her socks slipped too often, so she stripped them off. There was a rhythm that pulsed around her, and she stalked to it. The further she travelled along the blank hallway, the more the darkness felt like divine protection. The man would like it here, she thought, no longer sure if the notion was a comfort.

Eventually, she reached a fork in the road. To her right, she found only a short stretch of hallway, that ended with a single, grand looking door the girl could not open. To her left, the corridor was remained blank. Hesitant now, she followed it, pressed as close to the wall as her sore body could manage.

The first door she encountered was on her right, and unlocked. Opening it made her flinch, for the room that awaited her was blinding compared to the blackness she’d been in. Heartbeat fast now, she slipped inside, and eased the door shut behind her.

The first thing that struck her, was the gut stirring feeling of familiarity. She couldn’t help but feel that she’d been there before. The walls were high, and comprised of rectangles made of steel, stacked on top of each other. Each was dotted with a tiny light that intermittently flashed, and square keypads of metal. She supposed she should walk down the corridor, and see what could be found on the far side- but she felt hopelessly uneasy there. After only a few nauseous seconds, her nerve failed her, and she went back the way she came.

Body storage. Why body storage? Whose bodies were they storing?

The hallway turned to the left. She’d been turned in a circle, she thought, so now she must be walking past the rooms that had been on her left in the original, blank hallway. Was it a setup deliberately meant to confuse? One made so that her gaining entrance to these rooms would be highly unlikely, given that she was sure that if she’d wandered in the day, she’d have been interceded and taken back to her bed?

The further she travelled, the more uneasy she grew.

She tried the doorknobs, locked. All of them were, to the left and right. They were marked too, she felt the grooves of numbers against her fingertips, but she could find no pattern from one door to the next. She counted 15 doors that were this way, inaccessible and nonsensically labelled.

The 16th, however, was different. The 16th was unlocked, and blank.

Palms braced flat against the metal, pulse thrumming at her neck, the girl began to dearly regret her excursion. There was something about this place that did not welcome her, something sinister and cold. Again, this felt familiar, and again the peal of recognition unsettled her. She couldn’t help but feel that if she opened this door, nothing could be the same again.

Like the fool she was, she did it anyway.

Clink, clink, clink.

She didn’t see, at first, but she heard. Sound festered in the air as periodic clinking sounds, accompanied by small, ragged breaths. Gasps, the girl thought, but weak ones. As if the person who made them was struggling to draw breath. As if the person had been struggling to draw breath for a long time. And the clinking- that was metal, shifting with each shallow inhalation. The person was bound.

The girl’s chest became increasingly tight.

Her hands skimmed over the walls beside her, and soon enough found a switch. Scarcely thinking now, she flipped it. Several bright lights flickered into existence. As soon as the girl’s eyes adjusted, she too stopped breathing.

The figure before her was strung up, facing away from her, secured to a large metal X by their wrists, and ankles, and waist. Their back was bare, aside from the deep, inflamed circles that had been cut either side of each vertebra of their prominent spine. The rest of their limbs were not so sparsely wounded- the girl saw long, angry lines gouged into their arms, she saw slashes and puncture wounds at the sides of their legs. She realised with a lurch that all their wounds were symmetrical. That, unlike hers, there was no cut made on one side of their torso that was not replicated with equal savagery on the other. Beyond the figure, tacked to the walls, she saw illustrations, designs. Annotations, stretching out from the different cuts and noting what blade should be used, blades that she saw lined up neatly on trolleys. Every part of it had been planned.

Unable to help herself, a slow, strange sound escaped her lips. At some point, she’d slid to the floor.

This was torture. And the man- he must have known. She refused to believe otherwise, not when he’d monitored her with such meticulous care, not when all their conversations had been measured and shrewd.

“Who’s there?” came the voice.

It was young and broken, and in turn broke the girl’s heart. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she found herself sobbing. She’d allowed this. In her willingness to accept the first kind words spoken to her, she’d never thought to strike out. She’d never thought to confirm what the man said about this being a place of healing with her own eyes-

“I know you’re not one of them,” the child continued in their scratchy whisper, “They never wait by the door. You’re like me, aren’t you? You’re a prisoner. Are we breaking out? Please. Please help me.”

Shame knotted round her ribcage.

“I don’t know the way out. I don’t even know if there is one.”

The concession hurt worse than the pain in her chest.

“Just help me down then, please. Help me. I just want to go home. I’ll give you anything to get home.”

But the girl could not move. She kept thinking about the child’s skin, how sticky with cold sweat it would be to the touch. How hot those open gashes would feel under her fingertips, how swiftly that thin body would collapse in on itself, knees quivering worse than her own. How garish the lights were, and how they would cast the child’s face into such haggard tones no matter how perfect or ruined it was, no matter if it was whole or with bloody sockets where the eyes once had been-

The eyes were new- transplanted-

She remembered then, with an absolute, terrified surety; she had been here before. She’d seen the man here before too, lurking in a corner, watching with charcoal smudged eyes. This was the place of her nightmares, and he was one of them.

Shakily, she clawed her way to her feet.

"I'm so sorry." she said, hands knocking against the doorknob as she tried to command her fingers to grasp it. Blood, or sweat? Was it blood, or sweat that made the metal slip beneath her so? And what could be said for the world tilting? Was it merely panic, or had she never moved beyond that hopeless escape attempt, when she’d been so sick that standing had been a miracle?

The child’s breaths became her own. Wretched and raw and roaring between her ears, just as they had been so many weeks before, when she’d ripped her hand from her cuff, sunk that scalpel between the nurse’s ribs so many times but not as many as it had been wielded against her- she remembered, she relived, she was TORN APART AND-

“Please!”

The girl fell back through the door, and ran. She’d left the light on, spilling into the corridor like a glaring you-are-here sign, she left the child weeping, god- she wished they’d just scream-

---RIPPED TO SHREDS AND-

Hurtling, so much faster and louder than before, the girl had raised a storm. Of murmered voices, footsteps, curiosity-

---DISMANTLED-

She dove into the first room she had the mind to, wrong room, it was filled with people and cages and people in cages and she couldn’t tell if it was them or the walls that were screaming and screaming but by God, it was so loud, so she ran back she ran back she ran back she ran back she ran-

---PIECE BY-

New room, quieter. Darker, colder, it threw her mind into a strange state of absence. There were shelves stacked with countless boxes, and then directly before her- a screen. A large, imposing screen, almost as long as she was tall. She drew towards it in a jittery daze, knowing that this distraction was wrong, knowing that there was something she urgently had to run from-

---PIECE- TORN A-DISMANTLED-

Keyboard and mouse, she shifted it, the screen flared to life. A phase of symmetry, it read, and below it dropped a list of names-

---RIPPED TO SHREDS-

The girl didn’t know them, but she knew that somewhere in these files would be one she did, she’d be here, so she clicked on the menu and tried to guess where… one said A phase of delirium another said suicide, another said disease, another said-

---TORN APART AND RIPPED TO SHREDS AND-

She closed her eyes, tried to close her mind to the hot flushes of remembrance, tried to open her ears back up to the commotion outside. She needed to hide. Why was she doing this? Why was she doing this, why wasn’t she running, why-

---PIECE BY PIECE- TORN-

Somebody tackled her from behind.

The impact was as unexpected as it was disastrous. It shoved her forward and her stomach collided with the metal lip of the desk, agony ripped through her-

---DISMANTLED PIECE BY-

She screamed, panicked, set alight. The hold wrapped around her torso instantly fell away, and both she and her assailant dropped to the floor and scrambled away from each other. Dumbly, she looked to him. His skin was melting, blackening in places; and there she was, perfectly unharmed. Impossible, she was impossible, this was-

---RIPPED TO SHREDS-

She sputtered out. Choked, tried to drag that writhing energy to her skin once more, but it was gone. Control was something she hadn't, and now never would have time to learn.

Two more men charged through the door. One walked sinuously, slowly, he swung low on his hips. The other wore a suit and enthralled expression, lip curled over gold flecked teeth. A fighter, then, and an observer. She raised her hands in supplication, and said, "Please."

The fighter lunged.

She had no place left to retreat to, and he pinned her in seconds. All her hate, she focused on the bare skin that touched his, then all of her desperation and then all of her fear- nothing happened. There was no fire left within her, no energy left to fuel it, she was-

---TORN APART AND- DISMANTLED- AND-

More people filed into the room. More fighters, each lending a hand to hold her down as she writhed and bucked and thrashed. The observer, laughing, lent a hand too, but it went to a decidedly less useful place, and beckoned decidedly different sensations. This caused her to light up again, and with a cacophony of yells they all jumped back. Seizing on the opportunity the girl leapt forward, bracing her fiery, red-hot hand on the observer's chest as she stumbled. She burnt right through his shirt, his skin bubbled beneath her palm-

---RIPPED- APART- PIECE BY PIECE-

But something took hold of her ankle, and she crashed to the ground. The observer was screaming, distantly, far away, but it didn't matter at all because her volatile power slipped once again from her grip, she went cold. A heavy, unbearable weight sat over her hips. Above her, she saw someone begin to fill a syringe with clear liquid.

Tears slipped down her cheeks. She might have been mumbling something, but even in the moment she could not quite tell. The girl's head and voice existed in incoherent harmony, dancing haphazardly from past to present. What did they want with her? What had they done to her?

She was so suddenly tired.

"Kill me?" she asked faintly. Above her, a nurse gave her a pitying smile and shook her head. Then the needle pierced her skin, and drugs shot into her bloodstream.

The girl knew no more.

Next

The greylek initiative tag

[writingevil]

A Circle-Part One

by Evil

Part 2

This world is different from the one your reading this in. In this world everyone’s born with a shape tattooed on their body. This shape dictated where you were in society. Squares were at the top of it all. They lived lavish lives and worked little. Next were Rhombuses. If someone were a Rhombus they worked under the squares. They mostly handled taxes and management jobs. Triangles often worked in the enforcement careers. They were police officers and peace makers. Then their were rectangles who worked hard labor. Rectangles often worked construction and mining with a few lucky ones working in businesses and social working. At the very bottom of the hierarchy were those without shapes. If they weren’t killed when they were born they lived on the streets becoming barbarians and forced to steal to survive. 

Amelia was born to a family of squares. When she was born they checked her head to toe for markings. They checked in vain because the tiny baby didn’t have any. Amelia was dropped into the arms of an old rag-clad woman. The family hadn’t even bothered to wrap the baby in a blanket. The homeless woman carried the child in her arms back to where her people had set up a small encampment. Occasionally a Rhombus in pursuit of political favor with the people would donate some money to the group of people. These people raised Amelia alongside two boys. The elder of the two was named Opus and the younger was named Cal. The three were joined at the hip and they ran around making the most of their childhood. It was when Amelia turned eight that things began to change around their camp of misfits. 

A few men had joined their encampment and every day they would bring back enough food for everyone to eat. Before they were lucky to get more than salted water with weeds in it. The three children were overjoyed and tried to help out as much as they could. They learned to prepare the meat and cook it properly. Two years later the men brought Opus along with them. That night they all came back laughing and Opus had a bruised wrist but a grin on his face. Opus left their triad after that. He always spoke like he was more important than they were. 

Cal started studying with the medicine woman, Shira, after Opus left and Amelia was left on her own. Fed up, one day Amelia followed the group of men and Opus. They walked into the city and stopped before entering drawing rectangles on their arms. Amelia watched as the group slowly sneaked meat and bread into coat pockets and bags. Opus, himself, stole the change purse from a rhombus woman. As they walked out the group took a detour and stopped in a small field. The men began to eat and drink, feasting on whatever cakes and sweets they’d managed to acquire. The men brought back the meat and bread to the camp pretending to be generous. 

Amelia felt fury boil in her chest but kept her mouth shut. That night, at only sixteen years old, Amelia stole their pot of ink. She headed out to the city early and drew a delicate rectangle on her wrist. Throughout the day she sneaked sweats and cakes from vendors. She narrowly avoided both the group of men and Triangles. She made it back to camp and began to pass out the treats. Just seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces made Amelia’s heart leap. When the group of men came back they were shocked by the merry laughter and happy screaming children. When asked who caused this Amelia stepped forward. 

Several of the men stepped forward with harsh glares on their faces but Opus stepped in front of them all. The men laughed and pushed him forward. Opus dragged Amelia out of the camp.

“What did you do?” He shouted at her.

“What so only you men can have the sweets?” She retorted. “They’ve been here for four years and not once have the brought back cakes or sweets for anyone. I’m sorry. I said they didn’t I? Not once in two years have you brought treats back.”

“Why should I? They just sit around and do nothing all day.” 

Amelia steamed, “They raised you! They took you in when no one wanted you! They gave you clothes they made with their own calloused hands! They gave you shelter from storms! They gave you what ever food they could! Not once did they ask you to do more than be a child and be happy!”

“Well not all of us can be children forever, Amelia.”

Amelia slapped him hard. The sound echoed off the trees. “I chop down trees for you to have fire! I stitch your clothes when they’ve been torn. I help Lainet wash the clothes and Grey take care of his two babies! Cal works with Shira to patch you all up when you get a little to rough! You don’t do anything! You rob and steal not only from the rich but from your own people.”

“And what would you do without us?” Opus laughed humorlessly. “You’d be back drinking river water with leaves in it for dinner.”

“We’d be fine without you menacing apes!” 

“ENOUGH!” called a hoarse voice. It was Hilla, the old lady who commanded the camp. The same lady that had Amelia dropped in her arms twelve years ago. “I want the men out of my camp. Opus, if you chose to stay with them I want you gone, too. Amelia, come with me to my tent.”

Amelia took the elder by her arm and carefully led her to her tent leaving a stunned Opus behind. They passed through the camp where the men were packing their things. Hilla and Amelia walked into the tent at the back of the camp. Their was a small lanturn burning in the corner and just enough room for Hilla and Amelia to sit.

“Child. I expect you to take over getting food for the camp. While you were gone today three people showed up. A mother, swollen with child; her daughter, just a few months older than you; and a small son. I want you and the other girl to start taking over for the rotten barbarians. Take only what we need and nothing more, you never know what situations others may be in.�� Hilla coughed harshly causing Amelia to rub her back with worry. “The girl resides in the tent next to yours. You are not to ask about the head covering she wears for it is not your place. Am I understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, go eat and talk with the girl.” 

Amelia nodded and exited the tent and looked around for the new people. The three were sitting alone off by themselves. The mother was severely pregnant and looked like she couldn’t even stand. Despite this she still looked quite young. The boy was thin and pale. The girl had a light cloth wrapped around her head so that all that could be seen of her face were her eyes. Amelia began to walk towards the family but was stopped by Opus. She was immediately on the defensive.

“What?” she snapped.

“The guards don’t question rectangles but don’t try to go higher withing the system. They’ll know.” He looked conflicted and then pulled her into a hug. “I never intended for this to happen. I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish. Take care of Cal, please.”

“I will. Stay safe,” Amelia said hugging him back.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Just don’t be stupid.”

“I was always the stupid one.”

“You were. Get going.”

Opus nodded and pulled away and walked over to the med tent where Cal slept and worked. Amelia turned back to the family and strolled over.

“Has anyone shown you where the med tent is, miss?” She asked crouching next to the group.

The woman nodded. “Are you the Amelia that Hilla spoke of?”

“Yes, I was rescued by Hilla as an infant when I was born with no marks into a square family.” Amelia may have imagined it but it seemed as though the girl looked down at the mention of marks.

“I was raised as a slave to a family of rectangles. Thya’s father was who eventually led to me being thrown out of the house when I was only a few months pregnant with her.” 

“Stories of the past are heavy burdens. May I be allowed to lighten your burden by listening?” Amelia asked, the saying was a respectful term used often in their world.

“I stayed in a camp much like this one. Everyone was very kind and welcoming. The women helped me during Thya’s birth and helped me raise her. I met Lance’s and this little one’s father there. A few months ago, when I was just starting to show, a group of angry triangles burned down our camp. My husband under nature was slaughtered and I barely made it away with my two children.” The woman was tired and her head hung. Her daughter wiped at the beautiful brown eyes that Amelia could now see up close. “Since then we have been traveling. Hilla offered us a place here. I hope we will be able to stay here long.”

“I am sorrowful you had to experience those things. I hope you will find the home you are seeking here.” Amelia lightly rested her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We have a few children here Lance’s age and our medicine woman, Shira, is well versed in delivering. I, of course, will be working with Thya often but if you have need of anything never feel that you are unable to ask me for help.”

Lance looked at Amelia, “You were the one who gave me the cake today!”

“Yes, I did.” 

“Thya and I have never had cake before. Thank you, sister!” 

“Lance!” The mother scolded. “He developed the habit at our first encampment, he calls people he respects brother and sister. I apologize.”

“Don’t, I’ve always wanted a little brother.” She ruffled the boy’s hair. “Thya, we have a pond down a ways if you would wish to accompany me. I’ve witnessed the struggles traveling does.”

Thya glanced nervously at her mother but her mother just nodded grimly. “Thya, this girl will not judge you. There must always be trust in a partnership.”

“I will accompany you.” 

“I might have some clothes that will fit you and I will have one of the women drop off some clean clothes for Lance come morning. Give me a few moments.” Amelia smiled at the family and went to her tent. 

Outside Amelia’s tent was a trunk of clothes and towels. She grabbed two changes of clothes, a towel, and a rag in case she or the girl was on their bloods. She walked back to the family and led Thya down to the pond. They walked in silence, Thya carefully following Amelia through the darkness. When they reached the pond the moon shown down on the murky water. Amelia began to undress and wade out to the water. Thya remained on shore nervously fidgeting.

“Is something wrong?” Amelia asked. She wasn’t used to people being modest about their bodies.

“Please don’t tell anyone what you’re about to see.” Thya nervously stuttered. 

Thya began to unravel the covering on her head revealing long dark hair and full lips. Eventually, the cloth fell away and Amelia gasped in awe. Thya was not shapeless, she couldn’t be. Right in stunning black was a perfect circle on her forehead. 

Part 2