#the black smoke going inside them is so much more horrifying when you remember that the only holes on their bodies

[celestiachan]

emerges from the trenches covered in black smoke. guess what ive been insane about

[aparticularbandit]

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Five (I)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Some of you will think that this beginning is a gimmick. Up to you! Think what you want! (It’s not a gimmick more than anything else in writing is a gimmick, which is to say, of course, it’s a gimmick, because that’s all writing is, really, isn’t it? A bunch of gimmicks? Some of them more successful than others? Isn’t that why we have tropes? The trappings of a Tragedy to tell us whether that’s really what the story is or not? (Do you know the story you’re in?))

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: M for Disturbing Imagery. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

TW for Disturbing Images and Descriptions of Vomit.

AO3

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Book One

Day Five (of a Fatal Captivity).

This time, when Ryoko sleeps, she dreams.

Nothing concrete that she can remember when she wakes up, unfortunately, other than faint flickers of things, as is often the way with dreams.  A building burning, smoke curling into the air and transforming the bright hopeful blue of the sky into the horrifying black despair of a storm just before it hits.  Lightning flashes.  She remembers thinking the rain should help stop the fire, but it isn’t water that falls from the inky black.

Something tells her that bodies are not an effective way to smother fire, no matter how much of that sparkling wine pink bleeds out of them.

Something tells her that she shouldn’t know what that smells like, yet she wakes with the stench of burned flesh in her nostrils.

City on fire!  City on fire!

Mischief.

Mischief.

MISCHIEF.

When Ryoko wakes, it’s with her heart pounding far too quickly, with her forehead beaded with sweat, with her fingernails – sharp and red as blood should be – digging half into the soft mattress beneath her and half into the soft woman still curled against her.  She releases her death grip only to find that she’s left deep imprints in Mikan’s skin, imprints stained that same sparkling pink, a sharp bright wet color now at the tip of her nails.

She’s going to be sick.

She’s going to—

Ryoko whirls away from the woman still curled up against her (as though nothing is wrong, as though she couldn’t even feel those nails piercing her skin), finds a trash can neatly placed next to her bed (as though someone knew this would happen), and barely hears Mikan’s, “What’s wrong?” before she grabs the can and vomits into it.  Her stomach groans, grinds, clenches, and her muscles spasm as she tries to get something – anything – out, but there’s nothing.  She doesn’t know how long she’s been here, doesn’t know how much she’s eaten (or not eaten, as the case may be), and nothing comes out, only bile, and barely any of that.

It burns.

It burns.

She coughs, sputters, heaves again.

Feels Mikan gently drawing her hair out of her face to hold it back and out of the way, fingertips cool as they brush along her skin.  “You’re okay,” she murmurs, soft and soothing.  “You’re going to be okay.  It’s okay.”

She can’t see, her eyes are tearing up so bad, and even when she’s finished, the taste of bile coats the back of her throat, the inside of her mouth, the whole of her tongue.  Her breath comes in huffs.  “I—”  Her eyes squeeze shut, and she wipes them with the back of her arm, trying to ignore the way the IV tugs at her skin.

I had a nightmare, she wants to say, but she can’t get the words out.  “I’m sorry,” she says instead as she slowly melts back into the bed, trash can dropping with a plunk (and a squishy sounding splatter) to the floor.  “I’m sorry—”

“You never need to apologize for anything.”  Mikan smiles at her just as soothing and gentle as she speaks.  She holds the back of her hand to Ryoko’s sweat-covered forehead and hums softly.  “No fever.”

I’m not that kind of sick.

But Mikan’s the nurse here, isn’t she?  So that’s really her call, isn’t it?  She’s the one who would know better.  Probably.

Even so, Ryoko tries to sit back up.  Her head hurts less right now, even with the vomiting, even with the panicky pained rapid heartbeat that still hasn’t quite slower, but that’s not her focus.  Her focus is on getting that stench of burned flesh out of her nose, that acrid taste of bile out of her mouth, and Mikan smells like chemicals and cleaning alcohol (and something slightly putrid), which is better but not better, but she still breathes her in because it least it’s not—

It’s not that.

Her eyes burn.

She ignores that.

“Can I…a drink?”  It’s hard to get the words out around the bitter taste, around her dry mouth.  Food, too, she wants to ask for food, despite everything she’s incredibly hungry, she wants something she can sink her teeth into, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing—

“Of…of course!”

There’s something stuttering and uncertain in Mikan’s voice, but she takes a deep breath in, gives Ryoko another cautious look over, and then kisses her damp forehead gently.  “One moment.”  She curves her hand around Ryoko’s cheek, runs her finger along her jaw, and searches her eyes.  (Ryoko resists the urge to flinch away.)  Then she pushes herself from their shared mattress and heads to the now quite closed door.

Ryoko lets out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.  Mikan is familiar with her in a way that makes her uncomfortable when it doesn’t make her relaxed, which is a weird dichotomy to have, but it’s there all the same.  Her gaze follows the nurse to the door, then she leans back against her headboard and closes her eyes once more.  Maybe, now that her head feels a bit better, she can remember something.

Like how she got here.

But the moment she tries to bring forth any sort of memory at all, her head begins to itch, a pressure that increases as she tries hard to draw something out, until finally she gives up with a little huff, the pounding in her head releasing.  Nothing.  Just Yasuke and the fleeting image of him in the back of her mind: the long, scruffy black hair; the furrowed, thick set brows; the deep blue eyes; the constant, constant scowl.  Her heart beats once, hard, in the center of her chest.

(Something says that remembering him is supposed to make her heart go wild, but what she finds is that remembering him makes her sad – odd – and that that sadness makes her relax – odder.)

As Mikan draws closer (her footsteps shuffling across the hospital room’s tiled floor), Ryoko opens her eyes again.  Tears pool at the edge of her eyes; they still burn, but she doesn’t know why.  When Mikan settles into her chair instead of onto the mattress next to her, Ryoko asks, “You keep calling me beloved?”  She licks her dry lips.  It doesn’t help.  “Why do you.  Um.”  Her brow furrows, and her gaze drops.  “Why?”

Mikan chuckles, her laughter like the bells of a bubbling brook, like wind chimes in the midst of a frost storm.  A hot flush spreads across the bridge of her nose like freckles (and she remembers someone else with freckles across her nose, a memory that flicks in and disappears through her grasp like ash the moment she tries to hold it in place), and this time – this time – her soft smile lights up the blood red beneath the thistle purple of her eyes.  “Because that’s who you are,” she purrs in that deeper tone she sometimes has, the one that makes Ryoko shiver.  “My beloved.”

“Me?” Ryoko asks.  “Or Junko?”

The name sounds weird when she says it, and it sends that sharp stab of pain through her head again.  Ryoko can’t help the way she winces, the way she reaches up and presses cold fingertips along her forehead.  It kind of helps.  (It doesn’t help.)

And yet, at that name, Mikan’s eyes grow dark.  “You,” she breathes out, voice ragged.  “Junko.”

Ryoko licks her lips, and though she knows the answer to the question might kill her, she starts to ask it anyway.  “Who is—?”

“Knock knock!”

Mikan’s teeth grit together, and she’s out of her chair before the door even opens.  “No.”  Her hand catches the little man with the red chef’s hat that is somehow taller than his face is long – or, at least, Ryoko thinks it’s taller; it’s hard to tell given that Mikan’s hand presses directly into the man’s face and pushes him back.  “Out.”

“You asked for tea,” the man says in a smooth, smooth voice, “and I thought our fearless leader would like—”

Fearless leader?

Ryoko waits.

No.  That thought doesn’t make her head hurt, doesn’t cause the horrible itching.  It’s almost like…like it didn’t cause anything.

Weird.

But if it’s true, that would also explain why they’re…why they’re keeping her here.  If she is – was? – their leader, but has somehow forgotten about all of that.

(They must be wrong.  She can’t lead anyone.  She can’t even lead herself.  Especially not right now.  He has to be talking about whoever this Junko person is.  That’s not her.  She could pretend, maybe.  Or could have, if she hadn’t already told Mikan to call her something else.  Maybe she could pretend she’d been playing a game with them?  That can’t be right, though.  No leader of a group like this would play a game like that with—

Well.

Actually, Ryoko doesn’t have any idea what this group even is.  Or does.  So she can’t really say what sort of a person their leader would be like.  Maybe this is a group of kinksters.  That would explain Mikan’s outfit.  And why the guy with the fur around his neck talked so weird.  Doesn’t explain the huge red chef’s hat, but there have to be people who are into that sort of thing, right?  Right?

(Of course, there are.  There’s always someone into that.))

The man lifts onto the tips of his toes so that his eyes can just poke over Mikan’s fingertips.  When he sees Ryoko, his eyes take her in.  And in.  And—

Ryoko slowly pulls her blankets up until they cover everything up to her chin.  She’s just a head.  Just a head.  Everything else can be shapeless and hidden.  She doesn’t want him looking at her that way.  Like….

Like she’s a piece of meat.

“Oh, don’t be so shy~….”

“Out, Teruteru.”  Mikan shoves him back, and the tray he holds in his hands wobbles.  Something on that tray isn’t a drink, maybe more than one something, and one of them sloshes just enough to drip a bit over its side and onto the tray.  “She isn’t taking visitors right now.”  She takes the tray in one hand and moves easy between Teruteru and Ryoko, blocking her from his view.

“Ma chérie—”

“Out.”

Ryoko shrinks further under her blankets.  She doesn’t want to see how Teruteru looks at her as he leaves, doesn’t want to see him at all ever again, actually.  It’s only when she feels the press of weight at the foot of her bed that she peeks out from under the covers, and when she sees Mikan, she lets the drop to her lap.  Then she can smell the tea – the food – on the tray.  Her stomach rumbles hard, and her mouth waters. “Gimme.”

“One moment.”  Mikan sets the tray just next to her, lifts a cup of tea, and blows the steam from it.  “Ginger.  It should help with your stomach.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it!” Ryoko exclaims.  “I just had a nightmare!  That’s all!”  She doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about that stench she remembered filling her nose, doesn’t want the tightness in her stomach when she remembers that smell.  It’s far better to think about the enticing scent of the food in front of her, which makes her stomach quake with desire.  “I’ll be fine.  Please?  It’s been—”

She falters.

Ryoko has no idea how long it’s been since she’s eaten anything.

Her brow furrows again.  “How…how long have I been here?” she asks, gaze flicking up to meet Mikan’s.  “How long was I out?”

Instead of answering, Mikan sips from the tea, closes her eyes for a few seconds, and then hands it over.  “Try this.”

Ryoko hesitates.  Her glance flicks to the door, and she shivers at the thought of that Teruteru messing with her drink.  “Is it okay?”  She bites her lower lip and turns back to Mikan, who she still doesn’t quite trust but who she certainly trusts more than that guy.  “He wouldn’t have done anything funny with it, would he?”

“Not to you.”

The way Mikan says that sends another shiver up Ryoko’s spine, but she takes the tea, holds it warm between her cold hands, and doesn’t drink a drop of it.  Maybe in a few minutes.  Maybe when Mikan has answered her question.

“How long, Mikan?” Ryoko asks again, insistent.  Then, immediately, “And where’s Yasuke?  He should be here by now.  It’s wrong that he’s not.  He wouldn’t leave me like this!”

Mikan hesitates.  She opens her mouth, closes it again.  Her gaze drops.  “Four days,” she says finally, and Ryoko struggles to make the number four out that instead of a general for.  “We rescued you four days ago, and I’ve been taking care of you since then.”  Her gaze lifts, meets Ryoko’s briefly, and then drops again as a small smile creeps to her lips.  “I haven’t left your side.”

Ryoko splutters over her first sip of tea.  “Four days?” she echoes.  “You rescued me?  From what?  Where was I?  Is that why I don’t remember anything?  What were they—”  She stops as a sharp pang spikes through her head again – there and gone all at once – and she winces, nearly splashing her tea over the edge of its cup.

“I…I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Eh?!”  Ryoko slams the teacup into her lap.  Tea sloshes all over its edge, staining the white blankets around her, burning her thighs.  (It doesn’t matter.)  She leans forward as much as she can, pushing her face as close to Mikan’s as she can.  “Why not??”

Mikan searches Ryoko’s wide eyes and blushes before her gaze drops again.  “You’re…you’re not…you’re not at all how I thought you’d be.”  She runs her fingers in small circles on the tray.  “I-i-it’s really…really cute.”

Ryoko’s cheeks puff out, a bright red, and she flumps back against her headboard.  “I’m not cute,” she murmurs.  “Not at all.”  She runs a hand through her hair, long fake fingernails catching on a few strands, and then tucks it back behind one ear before holding her hand out in front of her and staring at those red nails.  Their ends are sharpened into points.  Like shivs.  Or claws.  “These suck.  I’m gonna cut myself.”

“They’re your single defense,” Mikan explains, demure and soft.  “Like a rose’s thorns.”

Ryoko snorts.  “When the tigers come, these won’t do me any good at all.”  (Where did that come from?)  She holds her hand aloft, stares at the fake nails in the overhead light.  “Does this mean I can’t get rid of them?  They’re ugly.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah.  Maybe?  I don’t—”  Ryoko lets her hand drop.  She lifts her teacup to finally take a real sip – one that hopefully she won’t sputter out on anything – but then she catches her reflection in the golden liquid.  Her eyes widen.  “Is that….”  She stares deeper into the liquid.  “That’s not me!”

Her hair is the wrong color (even in the amber reflection, she can tell that).  Her eyes are the wrong color, too.  Her freckles are missing.  She has mascara stains under her eyes.

Ryoko drops the cup.

Fortunately for her, she drops it on the mattress, which means that while it spills what was left of the tea within it and stains the sheet an unsettling piss color, the teacup doesn’t shatter the way it might have otherwise.

But that doesn’t matter.  She’s not worried about that.  This is one of those moments that, when she draws it up in her memories later, the scent of the tea and the color of it as it pours out on the sheets (or the uncomfortable heat as it sinks through them, as it sinks through her gown, as it burns her skin) won’t come up, only the image of that face she’d seen staring up at her, one that grinned at her even though she wasn’t grinning.

Her eyes burn, and she rubs at them with the back of her hand again.

“But that is you, best beloved.”  Mikan reaches out, cups her face, and smears the mascara on her cheek.  “Junko Enoshima, who you really are.”  She smiles, gentle.  “Even if you don’t remember yet.”

Ryoko blinks twice and looks up to meet Mikan’s bloody thistle eyes.  “What if I don’t remember?” she asks.  “What if…what if I’m just…I’m just me?”

Mikan’s expression freezes.  She hesitates.

(That’s enough of an answer.  She doesn’t need to say anything.  Ryoko will remember the space between her breaths far louder than any words she might ever say.)

“You’ll remember,” Mikan murmurs, more of a self-reassurance than any sort of answer to Ryoko.  “You’ll come back to us.  You will.”

(Ryoko’s not so certain.)

[koushou]

hey can i request a oneshot or hc for megumi, thank you 😩❤️

insufferable

pairing : megumi fushiguro x f!reader {small angst + fluff}

warnings : reader injury, gojo being a perv

word count : 3k

a/n : thank u for requesting! i'm a sucker for enemies to lovers, so this was fun to write, i hope you enjoy !

he’s been your rival for as long as you could remember, it was always some kind of competition between the both of you. although, the feeling you both feel for each other, is it truly as simple as hatred? 

Insufferable.

It was the only way to describe the dark haired boy standing in front of you, a smug grin playing on his lips.

“Alright, calm down, you two,” your teacher’s voice rang over to where you were standing as he made his way over.

Gojo sighs, running a hand through his hair as he eyes the both of you. 

“What did I say abo-”

“He clearly had a head start!” You huff, crossing your arms over your chest, glaring down your rival across from you.

“Are you accusing me of cheating?” He raises his eyebrows at you tauntingly.

“Anyone could tell that you ran before sensei blew the whistle!” 

“Maybe you should stop focusing on me, and work on bettering your own abilities instead.” He rolls his eyes while starting to walk away, obviously getting bored of the conversation.

“You—!” 

“Okay, okay, come on,” Gojo leads you away before you could tackle the boy with his back turned to you.

Megumi Fushiguro.

Your life-long rival, you guys had been by each other’s side for as long as you could remember.

Not that you wanted to remember, you hated him. And so did he.

Everything was a competition between the both of you, and although you would die before admitting it, your constant battles did improve you as a jujutsu sorcerer.

When you both found out you were going to be attending Jujutsu Tech together, you personally saw it as an opportunity to fight him even more, to prove that you were the stronger one, while Megumi-

Well, he didn’t care. He never cared about anything, anyway.

“Come on, we’re heading to the mission location,” Gojo begins to walk ahead of you, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You let out a sigh, wishing you could be in the safe confines of your room instead of fighting alongside your least favorite person in the whole world.

“Sensei, what are the curses’ grades?” You ask after the tall white-haired man, who was getting into the front passenger seat of a black car.

“They said it would be a couple Grade 3’s, nothing too much,” the older man yawns, stretching his arms over his head before cursing as they bump against the car’s roof.

“They also mentioned a special grade or something, I don’t really remember,” Gojo slams the car door shut, leaving you to roll your eyes at the man’s irresponsibility.

About to make your way to the car as well, you stumble as a force pushed you from behind, turning around as you get ready to attack whoever was-

“Try not to die to a couple Grade 3’s, alright?” Megumi smirks down at your fuming expression, before making his way to the car.

“I mean, I know they can be quite a hassle for you, but take your time.”

Inhaling sharply, you massage your temples with one hand, trying to suppress your frustration and holding back from tackling the boy to the ground.

“He’s so immature.” Nobara, one of your closest friends at Jujutsu Tech, comes up to you, rolling her eyes at the boy.

“Ignore him, let’s have some meat buns when we get back.” She sends you a wink before walking towards the car, to which you respond with a laugh.

There will be meat buns waiting when I get back, you thought to yourself, licking your lips unconsciously. It will be worth it, snuggling up back in your fluffy blankets, binging your newest favorite show that was airing today-

“You coming or not?” A voice breaks you from your daydream, snapping your head up.

“Ah, are you scared? Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” Megumi smiles at you mockingly, chuckling as he shoves his hands into his pockets and entering the car in the back seats.

Ah.

This was going to be a long day.

-

“We’re here,” Gojo announces, unlocking the car door to get out. 

You all exit the car, stretching as you take note of your surroundings.

The mission assigned this time was to eliminate a couple curses who had sneaked their way into an elementary school. The students were still inside, so you had to be extra careful with fighting.

“Well then, let’s head in.”

Starting to make your way toward the school entrance, a small groan from the side halts you all in your tracks.

A green, slimy creature emerges from the bushes, crawling on its legs as it stares up at all of you.

It leaps forward suddenly, lunging at you, as you raise your sword in time to block it, slicing it in half in one swift motion.

It lets out a final groan as it drops to the ground, melting into a green blob.

“Not too bad, you actually killed it.” Megumi raises an eyebrow in amusement as you clean your sword of any of its remains.

“Thanks for the compliment.” You snarl at him sarcastically, drawing another sigh from Gojo.

You all continue making your way to the school’s front doors, when suddenly your teacher holds an arm out, stopping all of you.

“Shh, listen.”

There was a quiet voice- no, many voices coming from down the hallway of the school. The building was filled with black smoke, restricting your views of where the sounds were coming from.

It sounded as if the many voices were chanting a curse or spell of some sort, and you all knew instantly.

This couldn’t be the doings of a grade 3.

It had to be a special curse.

Gojo steps forward slowly, entering the black smoke as he checks the left hallway, before returning and nodding to you that it was safe.

You nod, slowly making your way into the school as well, turning to check the right hallway. 

The black smoke almost made it hard to breathe, you trying your best to swat away any smoke making your eyes tear up.

The chanting became louder as you entered the hallway, and you saw a figure standing in the middle.

Your breath catches in your throat, ready to turn and tell Gojo what you saw, but could you really describe what it was?

It stood at least two feet above you, with gray skin mixed with red blotches here and there and multiple arms hanging by its side. Horns and unidentifiable liquids stuck to its skin, with its mouth hanging open. It had the sharpest teeth you’d ever seen on a curse- no, you’d ever seen in your life- and drool pooled at the corners of its lips, if you could even call them lips, before dripping down its chin, staining the marble floor.

It continued to chant its spell, however it sounded as if the voices were in your head, in your eardrums, echoing through your brain. 

You could hear your name being called from behind you, probably Gojo, but the chants were getting louder, louder, and louder until the special grade was standing right before you, its tall figure looming over you.

Snap out of it, you thought to yourself, trying to shake its voice out of your head, commanding your legs to move. To turn back. To run.

Finally you felt your legs listening to you, and you turned around and ran. Ignoring the pattering footsteps of the creature following close behind you, you ran as fast as you could.

Finally, you could see the light at the entrance, where you all had been before, and you could almost see their faces, until-

“Y/N—!” 

A sharp pain shot through your stomach.

Ah, that voice.

The voice of your rival who had been competing with you, fighting with you, for your whole life.

It was like it all happened in slow motion, like in the movies.

Megumi and the others stood before you, with a horrified expression as their eyes travelled down, down to your stomach.

You followed their gaze, a dark crimson stain beginning to seep through your uniform, a sharp horn stabbed from the back, right through your body.

Ah, this was it. That jerk was right, huh? I am weak after all.

At that moment, your body went limp. All feelings left your limbs, leaving you to free fall forward, eyes closing as you begin to lose consciousness.

But not before you felt a pair of arms wrap around you, stopping you from the impact.

“Y/N! Wake up, come on, wake up—!”

Why do you keep shouting? You’re so loud, be quiet.

“You can’t do this, wake up— please—“

I told you to be quiet, geez, let me sleep already.

And the last crumb of consciousness left your body.

-

A horrible thumping pain in your head. Hushed voices from next to you. Fingers entangled with yours.

Wait- fingers?

It had never been so hard to open your eyes, wincing as a bright light from above hits you directly. 

Taking a moment to adjust, you finally looked around your surroundings.

It seemed as if you were in a hospital room, long tubes connected to your arms, hands, legs, making it hard for you to move at all.

You notice a doctor and Gojo speaking by the door, but what shocked you was the sleeping boy by your bed.

The sunlight seeping through the window shines on his slender face perfectly, dark strands of hair framing his sleeping face, one you could’ve almost teased him for until you notice his hands. Your hands. 

His fingers entangled with yours by your side, the warmth from his palm radiating through yours as the rise and fall from his breathing caused his hands to move slightly every time.

You wished you could snap a picture of this right now, but the comforting feeling of his hands against yours made you not want to move an inch.

“Ah, you’re awake, Y/N,” You recognized your teacher’s voice as he makes his way over to your bed with a relieved smile.

You feel the boy wake up with a jolt, eyes blinking to focus themselves, before settling on yours and widening. 

It was only then that he became aware of your entangled hands, quickly pulling away and coughing to cover the slight pink spreading across his cheeks.

“How are you feeling?” The doctor next to Gojo asks, holding a clipboard in his hands.

“Just a bit sore in my ribs, but nothing too much.” Megumi glances in your direction, and you would’ve thought it was out of concern before mentally slapping yourself at the absurdity of it.

“Alright, we’ll need to keep you here for a few weeks,” the doctor says, noting something on his clipboard. “I’ll be right back, we still need to give you a check-up.”

He leaves the room, and Gojo takes a seat on the other side of your bed, across from Megumi.

“I’m glad you’re alright, Y/N,” he sighs, before leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head.

“Good thing you were brought back in time, doc says that any longer and the injury would’ve been more severe.” 

You nod, facing your teacher, “Thank you sensei, I should’ve been more careful.”

He shakes his head, “It was a special grade, my fault for not notifying you all earlier.”

A grin spreads across his face, leaning forward slowly in his seat. 

“But I’m not the one you should be thanking.” He nods his head slightly to your left, making you turn to see a coughing Megumi, who suddenly thought his shoes were the most interesting things in the world.

Gojo chuckles, patting your shoulder as he gets up to leave.

“I’ll leave you two alone, Megumi take care of her, alright?”

Even behind the blindfold, you could sense that he was sending a wink your way.

The boy only grumbles in response, fiddling with his hands nervously.

You stare at him, before bursting out in laughter.

His head shoots up, furrowing his eyebrows as he looks at you still laughing.

“What’s with that gloomy look? Don’t tell me…” 

You tilt your head at him, a smirk spreading across your face.

“Aww, are you worried about me, ‘gumi?” 

The use of the nickname you made for him makes him scoff, turning away from you.

“As if. Just wondering about how stupid you were to get yourself hurt.”

He bites his lips for a moment, as if pondering his next words.

“And stop laughing so hard, what—”

Megumi stops and looks away.

“—what if your wound opens again?” He murmurs quietly, but you managed to catch it.

Your eyebrows raise in surprise, before chuckling at him teasingly, “So you are worried about me, liar.”

“Am not!”

“You totally are.”

“Keep lying to yourself.”

With a sigh, you close your eyes, refusing to argue with the boy any longer.

“By the way, what did sensei mean before? That you were the one I should be thanking?”

You open your eyes, waiting for his answer.

His eyes widen the slightest bit, before looking away once again.

“...s’nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You raise your eyebrows at him, confused.

He shakes his head, showing that he wasn’t going to answer.

Groaning, you roll your eyes at his childish behavior, “God- you’re so infuriating sometimes, why—”

“When you fainted, I carried you all the way to the hospital, okay?! On my own damn legs, I ran all the way here, I don’t know why I did, but I did so stop asking—!”

Megumi shouts, panting as he finishes talking with an unreadable look in his eyes.

You gape at him slightly, still trying to register his words.

“You...carried me here? Why didn’t you just take the car?”

He scoffs, “The car is way too slow, I would be faster. Plus, your injury would’ve gotten worse so you should thank me.”

He eyes you, searching for any emotions on your face, but all you felt was confusion at the moment.

A few beats of silence pass, and Megumi sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“Well? At least say something.” He mumbles, shifting his feet on the floor.

You just look at him, not believing what he said, before laughing softly.

“Man, ‘gumi, if I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought you liked me so much that you were scared that I would die.” 

You teased him, expecting a scoff or an insult thrown back of some sort, but he just rolls his bottom teeth in between his teeth, not making eye contact.

“...so what if I do?” He finally says, so softly that you wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t so close to you.

Wait, why was he so close to you—

The distance between you two closed as he leaned forward to meet your lips with his. The kiss was slow, inexperienced, but honest and passionate. 

Your eyes widened in shock, while his were screwed tight, afraid to open and meet yours.

A contrast to his appearance and personality, his lips were soft, fitting snugly against yours, the taste of him sweet, like cherries.

After a few seconds, he pulls away hesitantly, sitting back down in the chair.

The tension was so thick in the room, not even a knife could cut through it.

It was awkward for a few beats before he spoke.

“I-uh, sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” he rubs the back of his neck, a heavy pink dusting his cheeks.

“It..it’s fine, it was nice,” you spoke softly, almost whispering.

His head shot up, facing you. “You liked it?” 

You bit the inside of your cheeks, before nodding, slowly meeting his gaze. 

“Thank you, for saving me.” 

A small smile spreads across his lips. Not a teasing one he would use when he was making fun of you, not a fake one, no. This was different.

Megumi was genuinely smiling at you like you were the most amazing thing he’s ever seen before.

“No problem,” he speaks, before slowly reaching for your hand.

Watching you with a careful gaze for any signs of discomfort, he intertwines his fingers with yours, giving it a small squeeze.

“... I was scared, you know?” He sighs, eyes never leaving your face.

“Scared that… I would lose the one person I care about.” You flush at his words.

“I know, I treat you like you’re below me all the time, like you’re weak, but I-“ He clears his throat, not wanting to mess this up. He only had one chance after all.

“-I do care about you, and I get happy whenever we fight against each other, or with each other. I was scared that- that I would lose the most important person in my life.”

You couldn’t stop the smile spreading across your face, one part of you wanting to tease him like usual, but the other part of you, wanted to do something else.

You tug on his hand that was still holding yours, making him lean forward as you met his lips halfway.

The kiss was a little longer this time, you didn’t have to use words to convey your feelings. He knew. And you knew, too.

Pulling away at last, you lightly flicked his forehead, causing him to pout and rub the sore spot.

You giggle, looking down at your intertwined hands.

“I care about you too, Megumi. A lot. I always have.”

You smile.

“And I always will.”

He smiles widely, leaning forward once again until you hear muffled voices on the other side of the door.

“Do you think they’re having s-”

“Sensei! Stop being so loud, they might hear you—“

The door suddenly slams open with Nobara and Gojo tumbling onto the floor. 

Silence.

Laughing awkwardly, they finally stand up, nudging the other to speak.

“I- she- uh, we- woah—!” Gojo gasps dramatically at the sight of your hands together.

“So you were having s-”

Both of you flush at the same time, shouting at him.

“We weren’t—!”

You all burst out laughing, feeling Megumi squeeze your hand softly.

Gosh, making you feel butterflies in your stomach like this?

Megumi Fushiguro was truly insufferable.

[mandoalorian]

Pain Is For The Living [Javier Peña x F!Reader] - Chapter 3

Summary: Sex work in the heat of 1980’s Colombia was never going to be a walk in the park. Especially not when you had a crush on your number one client, agent Javier Peña. You’d been warned about him and his reputation, but after one very specific incident that would change your life forever, you find yourself attached to him like never before and you’d do anything to make him yours. Even if it means endangering your own life.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Javier being kind of an asshole, allusions to sex, a ~moment~ in the bathtub, mention of PTSD and trauma, food mention, drink mention, ...feelings?

Word count: 4200

Author’s Note: It’s been so long! I’m sorry. It’s been pretty hectic and I’ve been doing my best to wrap up my other series’ and complete requests. I appreciate you all for sticking around and asking for updates on this chapter. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but PIFTL is very difficult to write. It deals with very sensitive issues and so not only can it be mentally draining to write, it takes a lot of time to research and edit. I won’t give up on this series though. I adore this story and can’t wait to share it all with you.

Pain Is For The Living Masterlist

* Reblogs appreciated and my ko-fi is linked in my bio if you wish to support my writing!

Nina pushed off Javi quicker than a bullet leaving a gun, grabbing a blanket from her bed and wrapping it around her naked body. “What the fuck Javier?” she spat.

Jesus Christ -- Javier had never made that mistake before. Moaning someone else’s name? He was better than that. It took him a moment to just process what happened, Nina’s yelling and accusations only a blur in the background. “Who is she, Javier?” Nina questioned, her tone venomous. That was enough to snap the agent out of his thoughts. Her cold eyes burned like wildfire as she glared at him. “Who. Is. She?”

“Uh…” Javier racked his brains to try and figure out a way he’d be able to save this situation. But the longer he took to answer Nina’s question, the more infuriated she got. “Informant.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie. You’d agreed to help him. But whether or not you’d actually be able to provide Javier with any relevant information was a different ordeal in itself.

“You’re still sleeping with your informants?” Nina gasped a little, clicking her tongue and shaking her head in disappointment. “Why am I not surprised?”

Javier sighed and rolled his eyes, pulling himself off Nina’s bed and grabbing his denim jeans that had been previously discarded on the floor. “C’mon Ni, don’t get jealous now. We haven’t been together for like, a year.” Javier hummed, zipping up his pants. His eyes darted around the room as he tried to locate his shirt. Maybe there was no fixing this. For a split second, he’d forgotten why things had ended with Nina, but now it was becoming clear again. He just had to get outta there. He needed air, and a smoke. 

“I let you cum inside of me and you moan out another woman’s name!” Nina exclaimed, shaking her fists in the air. “Javier Peña I fucking hate you!”

Javier offered Nina a small shrug of his shoulders before finding his shirt and buttoning it up. “I’ll see you around Ni.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Called him seventeen times Con, he’s taking the piss.” Steve grimaced, aggressively flicking to the next page of the Bogotá local newspaper.

“Will you just calm down? He’s our friend. We’re doing him a favour. He'll be back soon,” Connie sighed, glancing back over to you, where you had been sleeping on the sofa for the past two and a half hours. “She sleeps better than our Liv,” Connie noted. “Wish we could sleep as well as that.”

Steve hummed in agreement. “I’ll go check on Liv.” He announced at the mention of his daughter. He’d put her down for a nap about an hour ago in Javier’s bedroom.

“No honey, I’ll go. You keep working on your crossword,” Connie giggled before pointing her index finger into one of the blank squares. “Fourteen down: Los huevos revueltos.” 

“I would’ve got that,” Steve huffed, scrambling to write the answer down. He definitely would not have. The Spanish puzzle was made for infants and yet he was still struggling.

“Whatever Murph.” Connie rolled her eyes, leaving the table where they were both sitting at. 

The second she left the room, you woke up in a cold sweat, feeling dizzy and shaking from a nightmare you didn’t want to remember. Your cheeks were wet, tear stained and goose pimples pricked at your arms. You checked your surroundings in a fluster, not recognising the brown leather couch you were laying on, or the oak wood coffee table in front of you, or even the television pushed against the cream coloured walls. A man with blonde hair and mustache raced over to you, and dropped to his knees, holding you by your shoulders.

“Are you okay?” The man quizzed, his blue eyes searching to meet yours. You were horrified, the feeling of an unfamiliar man grabbing you like this. You screamed in terror, and defensively dug your fingernails into his skin. The man yelped out and stumbled back from you, hitting the coffee table in the process. “Fuck-- shit-- ow--” He gasped. “Connie!” he called. “Connie, she's awake!”

The way he yelled and screamed your name... it was like you were some kind of monster. You hated it.

The sound of footsteps padding into the living room alerted you, and a woman, not much older than you, knelt down in front of you. But unlike the man, she knew well enough to keep her distance. “Hi sweetheart, are you alright? I’m Connie, don’t be afraid. You’re okay.” she assured you, her voice sweet like honey. 

“Where am I?” you choked out, tears filling your eyes. 

Connie hesitated for a moment. “She doesn’t remember where she is?” Steve asked Connie with concern, scratching the back of his neck as he pulled himself together and shuffled over to you. Taking a note out of Connie’s book, he kept his distance. Connie briefly explained to her husband how your behaviour right now actually made a lot of sense, and how victims of PTSD can often have ‘memory blanks’.

“Darling, I’m Connie Murphy. I’m a nurse. And this is my husband Steve. Steve is DEA. He’s friends with Javier Peña. You know that name, right? Javier Peña.” She repeated his name slow and steady, allowing you to take your time to process the words. Javier Peña. Just like that, a wave of calmness washed over you. His name felt like home. It felt like safety. 

“I know Javi.” you whispered in admittance, shuffling around on the sofa. You could feel your lips trembling. It was strange. You were new to Bogotá, and you didn’t really have any friends, other than the late Rosa. And well, Javier too. He was a client, sure, but he was always kind and gentle with you, unlike your other customers. You’d like to think of him as a friend. Right now, he was the only person you had. 

“This is Javier’s place. He’s going to watch over you for a little while, okay?” Connie explained. “We are your friends and we’re not going to hurt you. I promise,” the lady soothed. She turned to Steve. “Bring over Olivia.”

“What-- why?” Steve quizzed, his eyebrows furrowing together in bewilderment.

“She needs to know she can trust us. Bring over Olivia,” Begrudgingly following his wife’s instruction, a wary Steve stood up and padded into Javier’s bedroom where Olivia had been left to sleep in a small, transportable crib. He picked up his daughter and carried her into the living room. “This is my daughter Olivia,” Connie told you quietly, smoothing out Olivia’s black hair. “She’s one year old. Would you like to hold her?”

“Connie are you fucking crazy?” Steve snapped.

“I’m a fucking nurse Steve, I know what I’m doing.” Connie hissed back, taking Olivia from her father. She looked back over to you and her deep frown turned into a comforting smile as she slowly handed you the baby. Connie’s hands never left Olivia, and she made an effort to support her head as you cradled the sleeping baby in your arms.

Holding Olivia Murphy gave you a feeling of responsibility. If Steve and Connie were dangerous, they would never have shown you their daughter, let alone allow you to hold her in your arms. You contemplated everything and although it was hard, you decided that you probably could trust them. Still, it raised the question: “Where is Javi?”

Steve shook his head incredulously and stood up, grabbing the phone from one of the side tables and dialling his partner’s number again. You didn’t know what was wrong with the blonde haired agent, but you got the impression that he did not want to be here.

“Steve is going to call him, again. He went to get groceries. I’m sure he won’t be long.” Connie informed softly, and you nodded your head. 

“Your baby is adorable,” you announced quietly and Connie smiled, thankful you were beginning to talk a little more. Seemingly, you’d calmed down, which meant Connie’s comforting approach had worked.

“She’s a real gem, isn’t she?”

Javier was just a couple of blocks away when his carphone began to ring. He eyed up the display and read the ‘17 missed calls’, cursing under his breath. He clicked the accept button and continued to drive.

“Javier Peña. You prick.”

“Hi bestie.” Javier grinned, shaking his head at Steve’s introduction. Typical.

“You left us here for three fucking hours with some random girl -- who, by the way, is incredibly unstable, Javier. I don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, but I’m not here for it. Where the fuck have you been? No, forget that. You better be home in the next ten minutes and you better have the ingredients for my fucking paella.” Steve growled before angrily slamming the phone down on the hook.

Javier couldn’t help but chuckle. Steve Murphy was ever the drama queen.

As he drove down the street, he made one final attempt to shrug off what had happened with Nina. Okay, yeah, saying your name was a little uncalled for. But she always got so needy and possessive -- even when she had no reason to be. Nina and Javier weren’t exclusive and hadn’t been for a long time, so, what was her deal?

What was even more concerning to Javi, was the fact he said your name in the first place. Nina looked rather similar to you. Not identical, but from a distance, there was a chance she could’ve been mistaken. Only, when he was pounding into her from behind, he wasn’t at a distance. In fact he couldn’t have been any closer, and yet he still said your name. He was really struggling to justify it. 

Sure, he’d been thinking about you when he was inside of her. But was that really so bad? You were clearly on his mind, and Javier just pinned that down to the fact he’d been out all day investigating the crime scene at the brothel. He’d been with you, he’d held you and comforted you. Fuck, even before noon he had been fucking your mouth. It wasn’t exactly unreasonable…

But moaning out your name… shit, could Javier really get past that? Was there any way to justify that -- other than the blatant and glaring honest reason that Javier refused to admit. He wouldn’t even let his mind go there. Whatever, it was fine. He was home now. The end of a long day.

Javier grabbed the groceries from the back of his car and buzzed himself into the DEA apartment block where he and Steve were living. Making his way over to his apartment, he opened the front door and set the brown paper bag of ingredients down on the kitchen counter. When he got home, Connie was just finishing up painting your nails a beautiful sea blue gel colour. She turned around and she looked up at Javier. Your eyes, however, were already fixated on him the second he entered the room.

“Where’s Steve?” Javier asked, diverting his gaze from the two women and continuing to unpack the food. 

“He went home. He’s pissed, Javi.” Connie admitted, shaking her head in annoyance and placing the pot of nail polish on the coffee table. She walked into the open space kitchen and nudged the agent.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Javier muttered, stacking the canned goods into a cupboard.

“I’m going home, but don’t think we’ve forgotten about the paella. Steve wants that fucking paella,” Connie chastised. Javier nodded his head but remained silent as he emptied his bag of shopping. “Unbelievable.” Connie scoffed incredulously, and opened the front door before slamming it behind her.

“Thanks Con!” Javier called, but there was no telling if she even heard.

Javier was half way through putting his shopping away when he heard your meek and softly spoken voice call his name in a questioning tone. His dark eyes looked over at you. You were sitting upright on the sofa and his face softened. Stopping what he was doing, he neglected the bag of groceries and padded into the living room to sit down next to you. 

“Hi.” Javier murmured, crossing his legs and adjusting the crochet blanket that was covering your lap. 

“Hi.” you replied, feeling somewhat shy and slightly nervous, for a reason you couldn’t quite place.

“How are you feeling?” Javier asked, bringing himself to look at you.

“Um,” you fumbled at the blanket and thought for a moment. It was a loaded question. Other than the overwhelming feeling of distress and helplessness, you decided to give the agent a simple answer. “Well rested. A little thirsty.” 

Javier nodded. “How would you feel about taking a bath?”

You swallowed back a knot in your throat that you hadn’t even realised was there in the first place. “...Do I smell?” you asked, You stretched out and gave your underarms a sniff, prompting Javier to burst out into laughter. Shit, had you always been that adorable? Your nose scrunched up at the distinct smell of dried up blood on your clothes and your shoulders slumped sadly. Javi, noticing your change in demeanor, gently lifted up the blanket and wrapped it around your body.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he cooed. “Believe me, I get stinky too. It happens. Let me help you take a bath. Come with me.”

Taking his hand, Javier navigated you towards the bathroom. It was a small boxy room with barely any space to move around, and yet, to your surprise, it fit a bathtub. Javier twisted the faucet, and the tap began to run warm water. He picked up a bottle of bubble bath and a tub of salts. “I have a bad back,” Javier told you. “These salts really help me relax. And the bubbles are nice too.”

You nodded with a smile. As he emptied the contents into the tub, you watched the products swirl into a colourful abyss. “It smells like you.” you uttered, without really thinking about the weight of your words. Javier said nothing, and you both sat by the side of the tub in comfortable silence, watching as it filled up. He occasionally dipped his hand in the water, checking the temperature.

“Will you be okay?” Javier asked you, taking out a towel and folding it up on top of the toilet seat.

You weren’t really sure, but you nodded your head anyway. Just as he was about to leave, you spoke up again. “Actually, Javi, could you stay?”

Javier fumbled a little but smiled. “Yeah, of course.”

Javier had seen you naked countless times due to the nature of your job but for some reason, this time, it felt different. He’d never had a woman use his bathtub before, let alone be requested to stay in her presence as she got undressed and stepped inside. You slipped out of your sultry, blood stained dress and let it pool to the floor. Javi’s mouth parted as he took in your naked form under the amber tinted bathroom lights. 

You stepped inside the tub and almost slipped over, but Javier, as quick as lightning, grabbed your arm and steadied you. “Sorry,” he muttered, and your hand slid into his. As your fingers interlocked, you felt something. It was like a bolt of electricity, running up your arm, and judging by Javier’s reaction, he could feel it too. “I should’ve warned you. It can be a little slippery.”

You giggled and tried to tear yourself from Javi’s grip, but he didn’t let go of you once. Instead,  he helped you sit down comfortably amongst the bubbles and aromatic hot water. You moaned, feeling your body become indulged and your muscles soften. You smiled and laid back, the bubbles fizzing around your neck and chin, and Javier felt his heart swell in his chest as he noticed your lips curl into a smile. It was the smile he would kill to see, and he hadn’t even realised how much he missed it.

“Just relax,” Javier soothed. “I’ll be back faster than you can count to ten.”

Javier ran into the kitchen and took a glass from one of the cupboards before racing back to the bathroom. Kneeling down by the side of the tub, he dipped the glass into the water, filling it up, and gently emptied it down your hair. 

“Close your eyes,” he requested, continuing to wet your hair ample enough until it was ready to be shampooed. Taking the bottle of his musky scented shampoo, Javier squirted the thick liquid into your scalp and began to massage it in. You couldn’t believe how gentle he was, and how he was taking his time with you. You’d never in a million years imagine Javier Peña being like this, or acting this intimate, with any woman -- especially not you. To be honest, his own behaviours were even coming to shock Javier. But he just let his instincts take over. He wanted to protect you and make sure you knew just how safe you were. That was the most important thing on his mind.

Once he rinsed your hair, he grabbed some soap and a sponge, handing them to you. “Do you uh-- uh-- do you think you can wash your own body?” He asked, his dark eyebrows knitting together. “If not, that’s okay. I can help. But--”

You smiled and rested a wet hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay Javi. I’ll be fine.” you promised, taking the sponge from him. 

“I’m going to find you some clothes to change into.” He told you. “Shout if you need me. I won’t be long.”

And he stuck by his word. Javier raked through his drawers and picked out a pale yellow button down shirt that he hadn’t worn in a few years and a pair of boxer shorts. Padding back into the bathroom, he presented you with them. “It’s not much but it’s all I have,” he told you. “I’m sure Con will take you out shopping at some point. Or we can hop on back to your place tomorrow to grab some of your stuff,” You smiled and stood up, making sure to be careful not to slip this time. Javier held out the towel for you and wrapped you in it. “I’ll leave you to get dried.”

When Javier went back into the kitchen, he figured he should put the rest of the groceries away, only to notice that the once frozen paella ingredients had become defrosted and been rendered completely useless. “Shit.” Javier cursed, pushing them to one side and running a hand through his hair. Looks like after all of this, he couldn’t make paella tonight. He knew he was about to get an earful from Steve at work tomorrow.

“Do you like pizza?” Javier called, rummaging around for a take-out menu and grabbing his phone from the counter.

“I do!” you called back, buttoning up Javier’s shirt and wrapping a towel around your head.

When you padded into the kitchen, dressed in Javi’s clothes, the agent felt his throat dry up. You were a sight to behold. You smelt distinctly like him, but you already looked one thousand times better now that you were clean and comfortable. You felt better, too. It was amazing what a bath could do to you. You shimmied onto one of the bar stools Javier kept by the counter and rest your elbows against the laminate. Javier passed you the menu so you could look over the dishes.

You agreed on a simple chilli pizza, which was one of Javier’s favourites anyway. Javi called the deli and asked for a large, planning on sharing it with you. Remembering that you’d mentioned you were thirsty, he poured you a glass of water and handed it your way.

“Steve is gonna be so mad at me tomorrow,” Javier chuckled, rubbing his temple. You peeked up from the glass that you nursed and looked up at him through your eyelashes. “I promised him paella and I’m not gonna be able to make it tonight. Not only that but he’s gonna ask me where I’ve been. He’ll know I wasn’t out getting groceries for three hours.”

You furrowed your eyebrows together and tilted your head. “Three hours? Where were you?”

Javier paused and absent-mindedly brushed a finger along his mustache. “I bumped into an ex at the store. Went back to her place and-- you know.”

Your eyes fell back into your glass of water. “Oh.”

Javier picked at his short fingernails and another sigh left his lips. “Shit, I just--” he shook his head. “Made a mistake. A very big mistake.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Yeah, that would probably be for the best but how could he even begin to tell you what happened, when you were part of the problem? Javier figured it might even scare you away. “It doesn’t matter… she’s just…” Javier scratched his head. “She’s fine. It’s a ‘me’ problem, I think.”

The doorbell rang and Javier was grateful for the interruption. He paid the pizza delivery guy and sent the stone bake on the table.

“It looks good,” you smiled. “I’ve never had Colombian pizza.”

Javier’s jaw dropped. “You--?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Dulzura, how long have you lived here?” 

“A month,” you grinned, with a mouthful of pizza. “Tastes good.”

After you’d finished eating, it had gotten pretty late. You and Javier exchanged small talk, learning little things about each other. You liked it a lot. He had always been an enigma to you, and even though he offered little information, it was still something, and you appreciated that a lot.

“It’s been a difficult day,” Javier noted, folding the pizza box and throwing it away to be recycled. “You should take my bed.”

“No,” you insisted. “I’m fine on the sofa. Honestly.”

Javier sighed. “I’m not going to let you sleep on the sofa any longer. You’ll get back ache.”

“Then I’ll just use your bath salts.” You smirked in retaliation. Javier laughed and you relished the way small crinkles appeared in the corner of his honey coloured eyes.

“Please, take my bed.” Javier said, staring at you pointedly. His eyebrows were raised and his strong arms were crossed over his chest.

You were about to argue further but truthfully, sleeping in a bed tonight sounded like exactly what you needed. You took a few steps closer to Javier, a pool of butterflies swirling in your stomach as you broke any distance between you both. You wanted to kiss his lips so desperately, taste him once again. It was only earlier today you’d had your lips wrapped around his cock, and yet, so much had happened in between then and now. You wondered if Javier was thinking about it too.

“Get some sleep, hermosa.”

Your eyes were completely trained on his soft pink lips. You wanted to kiss-- you just wanted to kiss him. Just one kiss. Just one-- you leaned in and shut your eyes, and neared him, closer and closer... but Javier stepped away.

And you felt your heart shatter in your chest.

“Nothing personal,” he told you. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Nothing personal? How were you meant to accept that? You had literally sucked him off just a few hours ago and now he wouldn’t even grace you with a kiss? Maybe Rosa was right; you shouldn’t form crushes on clients. Especially not Javier Peña. You’d only get hurt. You tugged on the sleeves of his button down shirt and balled your fingers into a fist, trying to ignore the pain in your chest.

Without uttering a word, not even a ‘goodnight’, you sulked away and into his bedroom.

Javier wanted to shout out. He didn’t want you to be mad at him, or even upset. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt you. It took him all the strength he could muster to deny you of that kiss. Your perfect lips looked so soft and delicate and if Javier could have it his way, he would’ve taken you in that very moment.

But you were more than just a sex worker now. You were a compliance in the hunt to catch Escobar -- and he had to be careful. No matter what, he couldn’t risk losing track of the bigger picture.

-—-—-—♡—-—-—-

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[morganaspendragonss]

if every breath is sacred

When Carlos wakes up, flames and smoke are filling the room, but TK is nowhere to be seen. He knows the protocols for being in a fire: sit tight, stay low to the ground, wait for help to arrive. But, it’s TK. Protocols have always gone straight out of the window when it comes to TK. So, Carlos—

Well, Carlos does probably the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his�� life.

He grabs two t-shirts from a drawer, holds one over his mouth and nose, and plunges into the inferno.

ao3 | 2.1k | 2.12 spec

The air in their bedroom is sour with a rage Carlos knows isn’t directed at him, yet he can’t help but feel guilty for it anyway. TK is curled up on his side of the bed, back to Carlos, his arms wrapped tightly around himself and his breaths far too carefully even for him to be asleep.

Carlos wants to call him out on it, but he doesn’t want to make things worse than they already are.

He knows he’s not the one TK’s mad at - they’ve had that conversation already - and Carlos is angry too. Mainly at Owen for being so stupid, but also a little bit at his dad even though he knows he was just doing his job. It’s more that they put him in the impossible situation of having to explain to his boyfriend that his father was arrested than anything else; seeing TK’s face fall at the news felt like one of the worst moments of Carlos’s life.

They’ll have to talk about this eventually - tomorrow, hopefully - but, right now, it’s better to just let TK’s anger run its course. 

Which is why Carlos bites his tongue when TK suddenly throws the sheets back and climbs out of bed, leaving the room with only a muttered comment about getting a drink. He sighs, listening to TK’s heavier-than-usual footsteps, relieved when he hears the quiet click of the kettle as opposed to the coffee machine. At least now there’s a chance of TK coming back to bed and getting some sleep, albeit a small one.

Carlos throws his arm over his eyes as the sounds quiet. He’s exhausted and, much as he wants to stay up for TK, he can’t resist the pull of sleep. So he lets himself drift off, praying that things will be easier in the morning.

*

He wakes to the scent of smoke invading his nostrils, harsh coughs already ripping from his throat even as he blinks the remains of sleep away. Carlos frowns, his brain taking a second to register the dim orange glow under the bedroom door for what it is.

Fire.

His eyes widen and he turns to warn TK -

But, TK’s not there. 

The bathroom light isn’t on, either, which means… Which means, he never made it back to bed.

Which means he’s still downstairs.

Carlos jumps out of bed and races to the door, yanking it open, only to come to a sudden halt as flames jump up at him from the stairs. The smoke is thick, but he can see enough to tell that the ground floor has already been overwhelmed by the fire, and that it probably won’t be long until it makes its way up here. His heart is threatening to pound out of his chest with fear and worry, but he forces himself to concentrate, to slip into first responder mode; panicking won’t help TK, nor will it get them out of this mess.

Returning into the bedroom, he snatches his phone from the bedside table and dials, sliding to the floor as more and more smoke invades the room.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“My house, it’s on fire. My boyfriend and I are trapped inside, but I don’t know where he is. He went downstairs to get a drink and I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, there was fire everywhere and he still wasn’t back.”

“Could you give me your address, sir?”

Carlos rattles off his details, suppressing the tickle in his throat for as long as he can before he’s overwhelmed by coughing again. He can hear the dispatcher on the other end saying something, but he can’t make out what.

When the coughs die out, he takes heaving breaths of air, already in short supply. The dispatcher is still talking, so Carlos focuses.

“-ir? Sir, are you there?”

“I’m here,” he gasps eventually, closing his eyes.

“Good, help is on the way. For the time being, is there anywhere you can go to escape from the smoke?”

Carlos shakes his head, before remembering that the action is redundant. “No. There’s nowhere.”

“Alright, just hang tight. Fire and medical should be with you in around six minutes.”

Six minutes.

Too long.

Carlos glances back to the door, his mind going to TK and how long he must have been in the flames and smoke for. A chill goes through him as he realises he doesn’t even know, and he just... He needs to make sure he’s okay.

He may be a cop, and not a firefighter, but Carlos knows the protocols for being in a fire. Sit tight, stay low to the ground, wait for help to arrive. But, it’s TK. Protocols have always gone straight out of the window when it comes to TK. So, Carlos—

Well, Carlos does probably the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his entire life.

He grabs two t-shirts from a drawer, holds one over his mouth and nose, and plunges into the inferno.

*

Flames lick at his exposed skin and thick, black smoke clogs his lungs, the thin cloth of the t-shirt doing next to nothing to halt its path. His eyes are burning, vision obscured with how much they’re watering, but Carlos pushes on, squinting through the haze to search for any sign of his boyfriend.

Navigating his house is difficult, everything seeming alien in this strange half-light, but he manages, and eventually he stumbles - almost literally - over a crumpled figure against the far wall.

“TK!” he cries, or tries to. It comes out hoarse, and quieter than he intended, so Carlos clears his throat and tries again and again and again until he drops down on his knees next to TK. 

“TK,” he says again, shaking his shoulder. TK’s eyes are closed, but they flutter when Carlos shakes him harder. “Come on, baby, open your eyes.”

TK must listen to him, because, slowly, his eyes blink open, widening as he takes in the scene around them. Carlos presses the second t-shirt into his hands and he nods in understanding, raising it to his mouth.

“Help is coming,” Carlos says, mouth close to TK’s ear. “Just a couple more minutes.”

TK nods again and lowers the shirt. He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t get a sound out before a round of coughing comes over him, causing him to fold in on himself. It’s loud enough that TK misses the cracking sound coming from right above his head, the thin trickle of dust raining down on them.

TK misses it, but Carlos doesn’t.

His boyfriend’s name tears out of him, and he just has time to shove TK as hard as he can before the ceiling comes crashing down.

Carlos chokes, suddenly finding it even harder to breathe, as if it wasn’t near impossible before. He’s pinned, the only movement he has left in his right hand. If he strains, he can just about see TK, who’s staring at him with a horrified expression. Carlos attempts a smile, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t work.

His lungs spasm as he tries and fails to take a breath, his entire body burning with the weight crushing him. His vision is dimming, and he knows it’s likely only seconds before he loses consciousness—and, judging by TK’s slow blinks, the same is true for him.

Carlos prays that whichever station was dispatched gets to them soon, but if this is the end - and he really, really wants it not to be - then he can only think to be grateful that they’re in it together. Carefully, he inches his hand forward, stretching his fingers out until they meet TK’s, and he grips on with all the strength he has left in his body.

“I love you,” he chokes out. He doesn’t know if TK hears him, but he knows that he understands by the way his fingers close around Carlos’s.

TK’s lips move, the roaring flames and the pounding of his own heart making it impossible for Carlos to hear him; still, he knows. It’s a comfort, and he gives TK’s hand one last squeeze before all the energy leaves him and his eyes drift shut.

A flash of blue lights up the room behind Carlos’s closed eyelids, but he doesn’t get a chance to figure out what it means before the darkness swallows him whole.

*

TK doesn’t know how he got here. 

He comes back to awareness slowly, a sudden panic constricting his already tight chest as he stares up at the night sky, his mind trying desperately to work out what’s going on. The last thing he remembers, he was in their front room, surrounded by fire, and Carlos—

Carlos.

TK gasps, his lungs on fire, his back arching and his fingers clawing at what he now realises is a gurney - whether he’s fighting for air or to get to Carlos, he doesn’t know.

Either way, he’s quickly pushed back down and an oxygen mask is pressed against his face.

“TK, I need you to calm down,” a familiar voice - Tommy’s - says. 

“Carlos -”

“He’s in good hands, I promise you,” she cuts in, an evasion tactic if TK’s ever heard one. “You’re my priority right now; just focus on breathing for me, alright?”

TK wants to fight, but he still doesn’t have any strength in him, and he’s powerless to do anything as he’s lifted into the ambulance and taken away.

*

He hates hospitals. After the kidnapping, after Grace and Judd, TK had hopes not to have to enter one again for a while. 

He should have known that was just wishful thinking.

This is the worst one, he thinks. He’s not allowed to leave his bed for another day at least, the burns he’d suffered are superficial, but he’d inhaled a lot of smoke and the doctors want to make sure his O2 levels are stable before letting him go.

That would be unbearable enough, but it’s made worse by the fact that he can’t see Carlos. All he’s been told is that Carlos’s injuries were far worse than his own and that he’s been put on a ventilator because his body is too damaged. A horrible guilt wells in TK’s gut at that knowledge - it’s his fault Carlos isn’t awake right now. He knows Carlos saved him when the ceiling came down, and he wishes he hadn’t; he really didn’t need to know what being on the other side of a coma is like.

A quiet knock on the doorframe reaches his ears and he looks up, expecting it to be his dad or one of the team. Instead, he’s surprised to see Carlos’s mom standing there, her eyes red, and a terrifying coldness floods his body.

“Mrs Reyes,” he says, voice trembling. “Is everything okay? Carlos, is he -”

“He’s okay,” she replies, giving him a wobbly smile as she walks towards him. “Or, there’s been no change, which the doctors tell us is a good thing. Gabriel is with him, but I wanted to come and check up on you.”

TK swallows guiltily, wincing slightly at the lingering soreness in his throat. “You didn’t have to do that. I’m fine.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Ah. I see Carlitos didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I raised four children, TK,” she says, a hint of a real smile on her lips. “I know when someone is lying to me.”

TK flushes and looks down at the bedsheets, picking at them idly. “You’re right. I’m not okay, but I don’t think I will be until he wakes up.”

“You care for him a lot.”

“With all my heart.”

She nods and pats his hand, the simple, yet comforting, touch breaking something in TK. His eyes fill with tears and he lets his head fall back on the pillow as his chest heaves with sobbing. It irritates his throat, but he doesn’t care, not when there’s a greater pain that reaches right down to his very soul. 

Mrs Reyes holds him against her without hesitation, not complaining even though his cries must be making a mess of her shirt.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, stroking his hair in a way that makes TK yearn for a mother he never really had. “Everything will be okay. My Carlitos is a fighter, and I know that he is doing everything he can right now to get back to us. To you.”

TK sniffles, and hangs onto her words with everything he has.

Four days later, Carlos’s eyes open and, for the first time since the fire, TK think he can finally breathe again.

[jackarychaoti]

DWC2021-15 - Memory/Chase

TW: Blood | Body Horror | Disturbing Images

-[ MUSIC ] -

Insanity.

In Azeroth, it was known as The Madness, The Darkening, the Dragon’s Sickness... The Nightmare. In many worlds, in millions of languages, it had endless names but it always meant the same thing. A corruption, often brought on by nightmarish feelings or situations, that ate the being alive, twisting it into something else entirely. Dragons fell particularly hard to such a toxic curse, especially.

This was no exception.

“DO NOT LET HIM GET INTO THE FOREST, WE’LL FUCKING LOSE HIM FOREVER!!”

Lokitan screamed as a mere handful of the Heran army raced upon war-bred Granondo, a clove-hooved type horse with coiled horns, best used to ram incoming enemies. Terrifyingly fast creatures that feared nothing in the heat of battle and yet they could not quite keep up with the terror streaking through the rotting fields of a dying wasteland and seemed even less inclined to get anywhere near it.

The target they hunted was a slithering creature running on all fours, bones twisted and inhuman with long tendrils of muddied hair, making the thing look even more sickly in the way that it hung over the face. Now and then, piercing silver eyes would dart back to see just how much closer its pursuers had come in the wild hunt, noting the way the warriors had begun to flank it. If only it could reach the edge of the forest, the beast would have a far better tactical advantage and a speed increase, let alone an easier time to attack those that hunted it.

“Loki!” A voice called out and soon a female rider pushed her steed up to the Dread Prince himself, eyes narrowed, glancing over in his direction. Fire blazed all around her, the snowy locks of her hair wild and free as a hellish set of crimson eyes flitted to the dark-haired rogue. “What do we do if it gets to the forest before we can reach him?!”

“You pray to your mother that we take him down before that.”

Chaos.

It was absolute chaos and he had just told her to pray to the deity that created it.

Inch after inch, Lokitan pressed forward, signaling the General’s finest men to continue flanking the beast, heels dug in harder into his skeletal Granondo to push onward and finally close in the distance of the skittering cretin running on all fours. Once close enough, the agile Prince pushed himself to crouch atop the saddle; he lunged, flickering through the very shadows to reappear right on top of the nightmarish beast. He dared not draw a weapon.

Not against this one.

The clashing form was greeted by the muddied, anemic animal twisting itself to bite hard at its would-be attacker, using the momentum to kick Lokitan right off and send him flying. That mere few seconds to protect itself was costing its safety to get into the forest. A loud shrieking cry pierced through the veil of carnage, knowing the chase was quickly coming to an end. Claws grabbed at the deep red mud below, years of war and corpses all around, the thick blood of countless soldiers meshed together with protected soils and painful, bitter rain. The slick surface had the creature try another attempt to break free, slipping the first few steps.

It was so close… The forest was but a hundred yards away.

Lokitan rolled through the slimy fighting ground, catching himself to snag at the beast’s ankle, yanking it back to throw it in the other direction. He was doing all he could to buy the warriors more time to position themselves and close in on the fighting pair.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Jack.”

Melted silver raised from under the long strands of hair while the beast hunched itself further, a deep snarl and razored fangs revealed themselves in a warning. The aggressive display had Loki push himself to stand and raise his clawed hands, exposing that he was as unarmed as he could possibly be. He stared down at the nightmare-fueled version of his cousin, his best friend who he knew was in so much pain that he had allowed the darkness to consume his heart.

“Look at me, Jackary… I don’t want to hurt you, hn..?”

There was a brief pause and for a moment, the world stood still. Even the droplets of sweat and foul mud froze in place for a fraction of a second while the thing Lokitan referred to as ‘Jackary’ mulled over its choices. Heavy breaths of air pushed out, bellowed in smoke pouring from its twisted jaw that was filled with acidic drool that flopped to the ground in large globs - a clear sign of the beast’s stress.

“Let’s get you home… Let’s get cleaned up…” A leather-clad hand dared to reach for the unholy creation but within a blink of an eye, time sped back up. Teeth snapped at the grasp, claws raised to full-on attack the one being that kept the beast from the forest it was trying to get to.

“FUCKING--!” Loki found himself head to head with the writhing mass of acid-spitting, half-transformed wyrm, a Beast of Insanity that wore a Prince’s crown and who was upsetting the balance of life and death. Without one, there couldn’t truly be another. Every snap of the jowls and swipe of talons was blocked or barely dodged, up until Lokitan lost his footing.

Slipping, he found himself under those wild jaws, hands clasped the wide-open maw above him that threatened to clamp down on his face and bite his skull clean in half. Muscles ached, his posture shook from trying to push what was once his peaceful, loving cousin off him. It wasn’t until another bubbling mixture of acid was seen dripping from under the beast’s tongue that the rogue knew he was in deep trouble… He was going to have to hurt the beast or die.

One hand released the mouth and in a split-second decision, the palm shoved up hard to strike at the creature’s jawline, his intensely sharp claws sliced the beast’s right jaw, stunning and pushing it away, jarred in surprise. It left Lokitan with just the smallest leeway to raise his hand up in the air, giving a hidden signal.

The Insanity-addled creature hissed loudly but before it could turn to lunge the last few steps to disappear into the forest and become a haunting ghost, a slough of chains and ropes fell atop it, blanketing the wild creature. The engineered nets implanted themselves into the dirt below, radiating pulsations of electrical charges to stun the captured beast into a horrifying submission. The haunting screams of agony, half-human, half-dragon rang out in a near ear-shattering volume.

Only when it stopped struggling to even stand did the shocking currents of energy cease their barbaric, but effective, handling.

“Are you hurt?” The woman from earlier charged forward, sliding down from her fiery warsteed to help Lokitan up from the wet earth.

“No,” Lokitan spat out, snagging the hand to be hoisted up, wincing when it indeed hurt to put any sort of weight on one of his legs. Glancing down at it, he was sure there was likely a fracture somewhere... But now wasn’t the time to dawdle.

“Well, you’re not dead, dear brother, so…” Musing, she helped at least support the Dark Prince, glancing down at the wheezing, now bleeding beast. “This isn’t curable, you know. When someone falls to the Insanity, they don’t come back.”

“Untrue,” Loki quipped, hobbling over with his sister’s help until he was able to ease down and sit next to the captured animal. A gloved hand reached forward, pushing the black hair from its face to indeed reveal a half transformed Jackary, the silver spiral of his eyes a dead giveaway at the corruption. “There was a Priest once who fought it and contained it. Rumour has it he wanders around with a single spiral eye, hn? Fucked up shit.”

The woman sighed, almost huffing while a hand motioned down to what remained of Jack. “Look at him, Lokitan. Half transformed, his brain isn’t fucking in there anymore. Put the thing out of its misery and let the avatar of Life be passed down elsewhere. It’ll rebirth by tomorrow, save your own ass.”

“No.” Lokitan took a moment to grip the skull before him, pinning the dragon further as a small crimson glow overtook his eyes. “He was never meant to hurt anyone, it was her that drove him to this.”

“Yeah, well, she’s pretty fucking dead, now isn’t she?”

A hand waved the antsy woman off, freeing Lokitan to simply focus on the inner workings of the beast before him. It was a rare trick the Rogue had up his sleeve and normally it was used to delve into someone’s memories, to unlock what terrifies them the most to use it against them… But what if, he thought, what if he could use it in reverse?

Time ticked by, allowing the dark, shadowy tendrils of his own essence to seep into Jackary’s form, filtering through and plucking every little bit of the corruption to neatly gather it within. A simple box was made at first, deep inside the dragon’s brain. Soon it was locked away and chained relentlessly to his psyche. A personality that he could never escape from, one that in time, would briefly show a fraction of itself and be referred to as…

Naga.

“M’sorry…” Loki whispered while he worked, remolding and melding Jackary’s very essence and memories to pull him from an otherwise impossible return. It was an attempt to do this or be forced to kill him and Lokitan wasn’t sure he inwardly had the power to do that. “You were designed to never forget.. But if you always remember, there is no saving you from the corruption that has been planted within you.”

Lokitan frowned, rubbing his thumb slowly, sweetly along Jackary’s forehead, the beast had long since stopped trying to fight back. It was lethargic.

“I am taking this from you, Jackary. This thing that turned you into something you aren’t.” Lokitan cooed, almost fondly at his twisted cousin as each memory leading up to a certain event was plucked and stolen away and yet what Lokitan hadn’t realized was that in making such a small hole in Jack’s memory, it served as an endless void. A slow-drip leak that would cause him to forever forget things after a while. A blessing and a curse in the future, but at that moment, when Lokitan gazed down and saw the beginnings of Peridot return to those eyes, he knew it was the best decision he could have made.

---

Darnath quietly clamped the journal closed with a small squeeze to the spine, the entry had been written in a far different font and form which made him think that perhaps Lokitan had written it instead. But... Where the memory that had been stolen was placed was beyond the Dragonsworn.

Stormy grey pools glanced at the snoozing blond curled against his side. Jack, in an elven form, had been cozying up for a small nap while his Knight read, blissfully unaware of what haunting stories Darnath had been refamiliarizing himself with once more. The Champion glanced to the spine of the journal, noting the number upon it, and raised his vision upward. The book he was really looking for must have been the one right before this… Maybe that one held the answer he was looking for.

| - @daily-writing-challenge - |

[vibraniumwing]

imagine.

a sirius black x reader wherein the sirius discovers the reader’s hidden fear, desire and talent.

WARNING: a bit angsty at first but fluffy at the end. 

A/N: AAAA okay so mia gave me this sudden spark of an idea so i just went with what my brain could come up with. surprise surprise, i chose sirius black for this one which mean that this is the first one i’ve written for the marauders !! pls be kind because i’m a bit new to writing for them. aaa i hope you guys would like it :< this was also meant to be a very angsty blurb but this is where we are now :D

prompt/inspired by: ariana grande’s imagine, “We go like up ‘til I’m ‘sleep on your chest/love how my face fits so good in your neck.”

---

When love was the topic, you would tend to shy away, rather be talking about exams and whatnot instead of the said emotion. It wasn’t because you hated it; you were certain that you longed to be held the same way James does with Lily, but the little monster of fear withheld you from doing so.

Your eyes wandered to the Gryffindor table where you can see the infamous group — as they would call themselves — the Marauders.

Despite all of them being devilishly handsome, your eyes were only focused on one person, Sirius Black. You’ve only spoken to him once, having him partnered up with you during charms as they were forced apart by Mcgonagall due to their rowdiness. Despite him being quite arrogant, he was definitely clever—much to your surprise— and was quite fun to be around.

“Say Y/N, are you going down to Hogsmeade today?” A friend of yours asked, gulping down her pumpkin juice as she looked at you expectantly. You turned your head around and gave her a small headshake, wanting to sit by the Black Lake and read a few books despite the rather cold weather. 

Your friend shrugged and stood up, asking what you’d want back from the small village before heading off with your small friend group. As they walked away, your eyes glanced back at the table only to see the man you’ve been staring at looking your way, sending a not-so-cheeky wink towards you causing you to blush and turn away.

The rest of the day flew by as normal, with you hastily making your way to the tree you’ve made as your little nook during your quiet times like this. It had the perfect view of the castle and wasn’t too far off from the trek yet enough to keep you hidden from the prying eyes of students that wandered around the campus.

Your eyes stared at the sunlight that glistened against the Black Lake, finding it completely calming you down as you decided to sing a little song to entertain yourself. It was a muggle song you’ve heard from a shop you’ve frequented back in the summer before returning to Hogwarts for the year.

It totally captured how you felt with love; the love you’ve always long for. The unattainable kind.

---

You were a half-blood, having your dad as a wizard and your mom a muggle-born. Your home was always filled with laughter, love and just absolute happiness until one day it wasn’t. Your mother had left for a muggle man, longing for a life without having magic in it.

Within that day, you just didn’t lose a mother, you lost your father and the sense of what love really is. He became closed off and distant, leaving you to tend for yourself as days pass by.

---

The one day you wanted to love again was also the last.

It was your fourth year when you had met him, Christopher Medlar, a Ravenclaw just like you. He taught you how to love and be open, understanding you and your hesitant sentiments completely, making you feel the love and affection you’ve longed for since the day you lost your family.

You had found yourself a new found home within him, a safe space that you’ve never really been exposed to growing up. It all felt foreign and new, yet it was extremely comforting.

Everything was going well between you two until you caught him snogging with a Slytherin and made little to no effort to even talk to you. Making your heart shatter, leaving you to your own pain and despair.

And that day was the day you promised to never love anyone again.

---

Unbeknownst to you however, was the fact that the guy you were looking at earlier at the Great Hall was closely listening to your angelic voice ring out through the quietness of the woods.

Sirius was out and about with the Marauders when he had heard a rather soft voice sing, entrancing him almost immediately. James and Remus were about to speak up when he hushed them right away, fearing the fact that they might scare the person away.

“You guys go on without me, I’ll be able to find you anyways.” He whispered, waving a rather brownish parchment along his friend's way. They both shot him a skeptical look before leaving him alone, now placing bets as to what’ll be the outcome of their friends’ change of plans.

“We go like up ‘til I’m ‘sleep on your chest, love how my face fits so good in your neck. 

Why can’t you imagine a world like that?”

Your singing was interrupted by someone clapping, whipping your head to the direction of the sound, you felt your cheeks immediately flush and heat up at the sight of the male you were looking at.

How mortified were you at the moment? Nobody could ever measure that.

“Nice voice you’ve got there, L/N. Say,what song is that?” Sirius asked so casually, leaning against the tree.  You were at a loss for words, not really sure on how you would react to his compliment since no one really knew you could sing. 

“Just a muggle song I heard a few months back, Black. How long have you been there?” You asked, raising an eyebrow at him as he just shrugged, shoving his hands in his pocket as his signature lazy grin rested on his lips. ‘Merlin, he’s extremely good looking.’ You thought to yourself.

“That’s amazing. Mind telling me what’s it about then, darling?” He probed, now offering you a rather interested look as he settled down beside you.

Your heart jumped out of your chest at his sudden question, unsure on how to answer. You glanced at him, his eyes were locked on you, the same expression painted on his face as he nodded, somewhat signalling that he was waiting for your answer.

Taking a deep breath in, you faced him and said, “It’s about unattainable love. Somewhat like imagining that in this world, you are loved and is being loved in a picture perfect way; a place where no one can really hurt you, Sirius.” A sad smile rested on your lips as your mind wandered back to the horrid memories, the little monster inside taunting you more than ever.

His expression turned into a mixture of sadness, confusion and pity. He quickly caught on, knowing about how you got played by a boy in your house. Sirius had always watched you from afar, not really sure on how to approach you since you were somehow the opposite of him. 

He also feared that he might hurt you, the one thing he kept as a secret and treasured the most.

“Well, you don’t have to imagine that now, darling,” He spoke up, features now showing one of seriousness despite the erratic pace of his heartbeat. You looked at him with wide eyes, unsure of how to react to his words. “I don’t get what you’re saying, Black.”

A sighed, running a hand through his hair, “What I’m saying is why imagine that when I’m here.” He finished. It was rather flattering that he said that but you are unsure; the fear within you warning about how this would just lead you to repeat the same mistakes in the past. Besides, with his reputation, he had enough girls at Hogwarts swooning at the snap of his fingers.

“I appreciate the thought but I’m passing, Black.” You answered, showing him another sad smile as you stared off into the Black Lake. “I think I’m just not ready to love again nor I think I will ever love again. The one I wish for is unattainable, you know. Something far out of reach.” You finished, glancing at the male who had an unreadable expression on his face.

Silence fell upon the two of you until Sirius decided to break it, “But that’s why I’m here. I’ve seen you from afar, Y/N. Don’t think I can’t remember a time where you haven’t looked at me from the Ravenclaw table.” He humored, causing you to look at him with a horrified expression, surprised that he had caught on to your antics.

“Don’t apologize though, no one ever noticed except for me, of course. “I understand that you aren’t ready, but I’m willing to wait for you.” He continued, looking into your eyes as he spoke, “I’m willing to prove to you that you shouldn’t fear love, even if it means for me to wait on forever.” He finished, sighing softly as he grinned.

The monster inside of you thrashed around, wanting for you to not give a chance to Sirius, knowing that there’s a possibility for you to end up like the past but the side that has been longing for something like this is growing stronger as well, making you wish that you shouldn’t fear love in the first place.

A shaky breath escaped you, eyes shutting briefly to collect yourself as you looked at the male, who was waiting patiently. “Just promise me one thing, Sirius.” You told him, looking at him straight into the eyes as you spoke, “The fear inside of me is begging not to give in, but something about you is making me say yes. Promise me that you’ll never break my heart.”

His grin soon turned into a wide smile, nodding at the promise you wanted. “Until my very last breath, love.” as he opened his arms for you, which you looked at with a confused face, unsure on how to react.

“I’m giving you a hug, silly. Now c’mere!” He told you, pulling you into him. He smelled like sweets, a subtle hint of smoke reaching your nose as you easily melted against his touch. It was all foreign to you again yet this time, something was assuring you this would last.

With a few readjustments, you were now in between his legs, back against his chest as his arms were wrapped around you tightly, making you feel extra safe. Your head turned around and you snuggled up against the crook of his neck, eyes fluttering shut as the ambience of your surroundings eased you. He spoke up once more, the vibration from his voice causing you to cozy up against him.

“Soon, you won’t even have to imagine anything. I promise to give you everything you’ve ever wished for.”

---

TAGS: @andromedaa-tonks​ @whoreforfredweasley​

[slippinmickeys]

Five Seconds (8/8)

If you’d like to read this work in its entirety, you may do so here.

October 24, 2018

Scully was half-elated, half terrified when her children escaped from the cabin and their captor. It removed them from harm’s way, but gave the mercenary who held them a sole focus -- herself and the child she carried, and Mulder.

Luis seemed to be even more amped up by their escape, checking his watch and trying his phone twice as often. When she rose and requested a drink of water, the man stood so quickly from the chair he sat in that it fell backwards to the floor.

He stood, twitchy and suspicious, looked at her a moment and then nodded tersely. She turned to go into the kitchen when a powerful force seized her and she stumbled, grabbing onto the back of Mulder’s chair.

“Scully!” he said, alarmed. He rose and moved to her side as the gunman watched them, tense but otherwise expressionless.

The pain wrapped around her middle and went all the way to her back. She’d experienced back labor during her labor with William and remembered the agonizing sensation. This was the real thing.

“Mulder,” she whispered, dragging her eyes up to him. She saw realization dawn on him, saw the mix of tender excitement and abject fear.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he whispered, tilting his head to the side to look at her. They rarely used pet names for each other, but the sound of those words on his lips made her stalwart exterior crumple. Tears fell from her eyes. She looked at him and tried to tell him silently all the things he’d ever meant to her, and all the things he ever would.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” the man said, to Lily. “We are going to unload the ATVs off of the trailer. We are going to drive them to the camp where your family is staying. You will be on one, your brother and I will be on the other. I will have a gun to your brother’s head the entire time. You try anything, I shoot him. He tries anything, I shoot him.”

Lily nodded, and she could hear Will swallow with some difficulty next to her. “My colleague at the camp… Is he alive?”

“Yes,” Lily said, not taking her eyes off the barrel of the gun.

“Good,” he said “Do what I say, and no one has to die.”

Lily could feel the weight of the burner phone in the front pocket of her sweatshirt and sweat broke out on her upper lip. Maybe, she thought, maybe she could still use it.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully grasped his hand tightly, eyes closed, breathing hard. As the night wore on and windows outside the cabin turned pale, her contractions seemed to be progressing as they ought, but she was in pain -- terrible pain -- and his heart clenched for her.

He hadn’t done this since Lily was born nearly two decades before -- holding the hand of his wife while she battled to bring his child into the world.  He still felt an overriding guilt for not being there for her during her complicated and troubled delivery of William.

He remembered walking down the hallway toward her room the day he was born, his breath shaky and halting, not knowing what he’d find. There had been a strange sense of deja vu as he approached her door that night, and he had an odd mental picture — an actual phantasmagoria — flash through his mind unbidden of walking in and seeing Scully, her hair shorter than she had ever cut it, her body on the bed thin and reedy -- most definitely not pregnant. He could still see it in his mind’s eye, Scully lying on her side in the hospital bed, wires and IVs coming out of her, a nasal cannula over her ears. She wore a teal hospital gown and the look on her face was one of horrified surprise. The flash had so disturbed him that he ran the last few feet to her labor and delivery room and crashed through the door, which knocked into the rubber stopper on the wall. There Scully lay, in a pink gown, her hair long and her face pale, but smiling, their son lying peacefully on her chest.

He shook himself of the memory and concentrated on his wife.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The man had Will unhooking the ATVs as he pushed them back and off the ramp of the trailer, his gun strapped to a holster on his leg. Lily had her hand in her pocket thumbing the phone, trying to remember which button was “on” from memory. She depressed the button and the ancient phone beeped once, the sound covered by the merc turning on and revving the first four-wheeler, luck on her side, for once.

He moved to the side of the van and pulled out a mid-sized black canvas attache case that had a biohazard warning patch on the side. He secured it to the back of one of the vehicles and then winked at her. Lily’s insides went cold, thinking of her mother.

He pointed at the ATV and looked to Will. “Hop on, William,” he commanded. They had not told him their names. Her brother mounted the four-wheeler, licking his lips nervously. The merc turned to her.

“You know how to drive one of these?” he asked her. She shook her head. He pointed, impatient. “Throttle. Brake. Get on.”

She did.

“You know where to go,” the man said, then revved his engine, the noise a loud mechanical crank in the sleepy peace of the forest. A flock of birds were startled into flight from the trees above, taking wing into the autumn sky, a flutter of panicked commotion.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Mulder, I need you to promise me something,” Scully said weakly. She was tiring and had refused food. She was laying on the narrow cot by the stove and he was sitting next to her.

“Anything,” he said, brushing back the hair from her forehead.

“Don’t be a hero,” she half-whispered. “I need you. The kids need you. Don’t… don’t try anything.”

Luis, listening in from a few yards away, spoke for the first time in an hour.

“‘S good advice,” he sneered.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Lily slid the phone out of her pocket and took a surreptitious look down. It was on. She glanced back up to watch where she was going -- the trees here were much closer together -- saplings growing like weeds in a field. She had to swerve quickly to miss one and she heard the mercenary shout from behind her. Her quick turn had lifted the right side of the ATV’s wheels almost off the ground -- if she’d been leaning the wrong way or even at all, the whole thing would have gone over.

Straightening and watching her path on a fresh surge of adrenaline, she glanced once again at the phone -- there was a single bar of service showing. She was so shocked she almost dropped it. Licking her lips, she kept her eyes ahead and dialed 911, glancing down once or twice to make sure she’d entered it correctly. She pressed “send.” She was driving one-handed and was hoping the merc didn’t notice. Even with the roar of the engines, she could hear the phone dialing.

They were almost to the cabin. She could smell woodsmoke. If they cleared one more rise, they’d be there.  

The burr of the phone ringing was the only thing she could hear.

Up the rise, she knew the ATV was still right behind her, knew that there was still a gun trained at her brother's head.

"9-1-1, what... your emergency?" she could hear the dispatcher through static.

Then she was over the hill. The cabin sat before them, a squat building standing stalwart in a field of trees, smoke leaking from the chimney and sinking to the ground like an escher painting.

She felt the machine under her go over an unexpected bump on the right side and the wheels rise up slightly. She took a chance on creating enough of a distraction for emergency services to trace her call. She leaned hard left and gravity did the rest, tipping the ATV in what felt like a slow motion fall onto its side. Lily, wearing neither helmet nor seatbelt fell hard onto her shoulder, her head snapping into the earth.

She rolled, and the machine missed her leg, but the phone went flying out of her hand, arcing through the air and into the leaf cover. The other ATV revved to catch up with her and then stopped close to the cabin on a spray of dirt and leaf pieces. Then the engine cut, and she could hear the voice on the other end of the phone several yards away cutting in and out in static.

Stars burst behind her eyes like fireworks popping in the night. When her vision cleared, the man was standing over her, his boots so close to her face that she could smell the leather. Her brother was close, but was clearly wary of the mercenary, and she saw him take several steps backward toward the cabin, his eyes on his sister and the dangerous tableau before him.

The man before her lifted a foot and she braced herself for a kick or a blow, but instead he took several steps off into the duff and then once again lifted his heavy booted foot up and this time slammed it down hard onto the staccato-voiced cell phone in the leaves, the static turning into silence with an almighty metallic crunch.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully’s contractions were extremely close together. She was lying on the cot, her face a sheen of perspiration. Mulder almost didn’t hear the sound of the engines over her groan.

Luis, who had been watching Scully intensely, his brows knitted together, stood quickly when he heard the motors. There was a chaotic sound outside and then the engines cut, close to the cabin.

“About fucking time,” Luis hissed and then was out the door, leaving it open. Mulder looked to Scully and then, very slowly and deliberately leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“No matter what happens,” he whispered, “I always have and always will love you.”

Scully nodded and then another contraction pressed on her and she winced.

“Mulder, I’m feeling really pushy,” she said.

“Shit,” Mulder swore, standing without much hope of doing anything.

Scully opened her mouth and let out an unholy yowl.

And then, from outside the cabin, they heard the unmistakable voice of their fifteen year old son: “Mom?!”

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Shut up,” said the merc to William from where he stood by the cabin’s door.

Lily rolled up to her knees and shook her head, standing woozily, just as the man Luis came barreling out the door.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Luis hissed at the other man.

“Get your panties out of your ass, Cardinal,” he said. “I’m here.”

“She’s in labor, you greasy piece of shit. We’re on the fucking clock.”

Another dump of adrenaline hit Lily’s bloodstream and she took several steps toward her brother, who was still looking at the cabin in alarm.

He nodded at Luis and unstrapped the black attache kit from the back of his ATV, walking to the open doorway, where he paused. He pointed to where Lily stood, not far from her brother.

“Watch these two,” he said, “and maybe don’t lose them this time?”

XxXxXxXxXxX

“...and maybe don’t lose them this time,” Mulder heard from the doorway. The voice was familiar, and when he looked to the man’s face, he was taken over by such an unholy rage that his vision quite literally tunneled, going black from the sides.

He’d launched himself before anyone knew quite what was happening, even himself. His body hit the other man’s full force and they flew outside, landing in the duff and scattering dirt from the force of their impact.

“Krycek,” he hissed, “you son of a bitch-” and then he reared back his fist and delivered a haymaker to the man’s chin -- all the pent of fury of finding Scully at the top of Skyland Mountain all those years ago crashing back -- Krycek’s head whipped back, spraying blood onto the O horizon.

XxXxXxXxXxX

She’d say this for her brother: his time on the ice had served him well.

Cardinal was as taken by surprise as everyone else by their father’s furious launch at the other merc, and Will, who had been standing several feet away, took the opportunity to grab his improvised hockey stick, which had been propped up by the door on the outside of the cabin and swung it with everything he had at the man. It connected with Cardinal directly across the temple; the dull, sickening thud the best thing Lily had ever heard. Cardinal hit the wall of the cabin and crumpled, sliding to the ground like bubbles down wet skin.

Her father’s head whipped around to see what had happened behind him, and Krycek seized the opportunity to kick Mulder hard, sending him flying backwards. Both men scrambled up to standing when Scully appeared in the doorway of the cabin, taking two shaky steps outside. Everyone turned to her.

“Mulder,” she rasped, looking at her husband, distraught, “I think it’s time.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder looked to his wife.

Scully then let out a scream and stumbled forward, grabbing onto a nearby tree for support. Lily dashed to her side without thinking, giving Krycek the opportunity to swing the gun he still held in his hand up to train it on both of them. Mulder’s heart rose to his throat.

From nowhere, Krycek produced another pistol, which he aimed at Will, who had been attempting to get around the side of the cabin after felling Cardinal. Mulder froze.

"This ends one of two ways!" Krycek shouted, stopping everyone in their tracks. There was a smear of blood running down his chin. "All of you dead, or everyone alive. I really don't care one way or the other."

Krycek flicked the gun once at Will, who dropped the stick and made his way over to his sister, who was still several feet away from Scully, who had taken a few staggered steps before slumping to her knees, knocked back by another powerful contraction, this one right on the heels of the last. She was panting, and swung her eyes up to Mulder drunkenly. Krycek had a gun on her and one on their children.

"All right," Mulder said, anguish gripping him, "all right."

He was out of options. He looked to the functioning four-wheeler that Krycek had come in on. Krycek could have Scully on it and to the county road in less than ten minutes. The other four wheeler was still on its side, smoking, the smell of gas and oil ripe in the air. He'd never be able to get to them.

Mulder looked at Scully. He looked at his children. Hopelessness rose in his gut like vomit, consuming and poisonous. He thought vaguely of bum-rushing Krycek once again, one last sacrifice to save those he loved.

The moment slowed to a honied drip. Five seconds to make a choice, each one ticking by more slowly than the one before it. One. He thought of Lily as a baby, of William; the newborn smell of their sweet red hair. Two. He thought of Olivia Kurtzweil, sitting across from him in his office. Lying dead on her own floor. Three. He thought of Samantha, her thick braids flying out behind her, laughing as she ran down the beach in Quonochontaug. Four. He thought of his first day of firearms training at Quantico. His instructor laying a pistol on the countertop and saying: “It takes only seven pounds of pressure to pull a trigger.” Five. He thought of Scully. Of their first meeting in the basement office, her bright seafoam eyes and her chipper little handshake. He thought of her terrified face atop Skyland Mountain, how her hands felt around his neck as he carried her all the way down. He thought of how she gasped when he touched her, of the dusky way her skin looked in the moonlight.

He moved to take a step toward her, but was shocked into stillness when a gun shot rang out out of nowhere and Krycek slumped to the ground. Mulder turned to where the shot had come from and there, standing in the middle of the Northwoods forest in a pristine white blazer and jeans stood Lauren, the archaic rifle that had adorned the deer mount on the cabin wall pressed expertly to her shoulder. Smoke wafted out of the barrel, and she slowly lowered the weapon.

“You stopped answering your phone, Fox,” she said. “We had a deal.”

XxX

Will and Lily were both facing away from where Krycek had fallen, looking at Lauren in surprise, and Mulder took three large strides to get to them before they could turn and see what was left of the man. He grabbed them by the shoulders, one hand on each of them and leaned down.

“It’s okay,” he said, in a quiet voice, “we’re all okay.”

Will turned into him and buried his face into his father’s chest. Lily put her hand over his and turned toward Scully, who was leaning against a tree, one arm wrapped tightly around her stomach. Luis Cardinal was still out cold by the cabin’s wall, his arm thrown out an odd angle. Mulder hoped it was broken.

“Can you guys help your mom into the cabin?” he said and both kids went immediately to her.

He heard the crunching of leaves and found Lauren at his shoulder.

“I called the county Sheriff before I came onto the property,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t know how long it will take them to get here.”

Mulder turned to her in full.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice shaky, “You saved my family.”

“You’re all the family I have left,” she said, “and you would have done the same for me.”

He pulled her tightly to him. She gave him a brief squeeze, the rifle she was holding pressing into his hip. She pulled back.

“Please tell me Dana’s not in labor,” she said.

“Dana’s in labor.”

Lauren took a deep breath and glanced down at the man whose life she had taken not moments before.

“Don’t look,” Mulder said gently.

Lauren nodded stoically and shouldered the rifle.

“There’s another merc by the cabin,” Mulder said, “alive. Can you help me secure him? See if there’s some rope or something inside?”

Lauren nodded and headed into the cabin, and Mulder turned to Krycek and pushed him over onto his back with his foot. The man was looking straight up with sightless eyes. Then Mulder noticed several pairs of zip ties that Krycek had had secured to his utility belt. He tried not to think of what he’d planned to use them for, and pulled one from the dead man’s waist.

“We need to make this quick,” Lauren said as she came out the door, her statement punctuated by a low, feminine moan from inside the cabin. Mulder’s gut roiled.

“Let’s go,” he said, and dragged Cardinal roughly by the shoulders to a medium pine not far from the cabin door. Mulder wrenched the man’s hands behind his back around the tree and Lauren cinched the zip tie on tightly. He gave a light moan but was otherwise still.

When they trotted back into the cabin, they found both kids at their mother’s side, wearing panicked, wary faces.  

Scully had settled onto the cot that had been set up near the woodstove. Her eyes were closed and her hands gripped the steel frame. Mulder asked the kids to collect clean linens and blankets from the cedar cabinet and then went back outside to pull Krycek’s body over behind a large tree, knowing he was disturbing evidence, but not caring. He didn’t want it anywhere the kids could see.

When he came back inside, Scully was propped up on pillows, Lauren kneeling next to her. They both turned to him. Scully reached out her hand and he walked over and grabbed it.

“Any sign of the Sheriff?” Lauren asked in a low voice.

Mulder shook his head.

Scully winced and squeezed his hand, gritting her teeth.

“Her contractions are one on top of each other, Fox,” Lauren said.

Lily had drifted over and spoke from Mulder’s elbow.

“Can you give me and Will something to do?” she said, “he’s kind of freaked, and so am I.”

“Hey Will,” Mulder said, “can you take the bucket to the pump and bring us water?”

“Yeah!” Will jumped up and grabbed the bucket by the kitchen wall and scooted outside quickly.

“Lily,” Mulder said, and she looked up at him. “Do you think you can help your mom?”

“Yeah, I can,” Lily said, and went to Scully’s other side.

Scully looked up to Mulder.

“I’m feeling really pushy,” she said once again and gave him a this is serious look.

“You pitch, I’ll catch,” Mulder said easily, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel, and moved to the end of the bed. He helped Scully pull down her leggings and get situated back on the bed.

Scully was breathing hard and took another deep breath, trying to slow herself down.

“Lil,” she said, pausing to close her eyes and breathe through her nose, “you hold one knee, Lauren will hold the other.”

Lily nodded bravely and grabbed her mother’s leg firmly. Lauren did the same on Scully’s other side.

Mulder could see a bright thatch of hair already crowning between Scully’s legs and grabbed a clean towel, reaching forward.

“Oh my god,” Lauren said, just as Scully gave another almighty yell. The baby’s head was all the way out. One more push and Mulder caught his second son as he careened into the world, registering his complaints loudly for anyone who would hear them.

Will came banging through the door just as Mulder was placing the child on Scully’s chest, a full bucket of water sloshing over where it hung from his hand.

“The Sheriff is here!” he said, as he took in the sight before him.

“Come and meet your brother,” Scully said, smiling tiredly, sweat beaded on her brow.

EPILOGUE

Lily stood in front of the building nervously twirling a lock of hair around her fingers, over and over; a tic she’d had since childhood. Her father was parked not quite a block up the avenue waiting for her -- not totally out of sight, but enough to afford her some privacy. She glanced at his car's taillights once and then looked back at the old building with its colossal white columns and bright red brick.

She knew Travis's schedule well enough that she shouldn’t have been surprised when he emerged from the double doors of the Old Engineering Hall, but her heart skipped a beat anyway.

He was several steps out when he noticed her standing at the base of the old cement staircase, and he pulled up short, cinching his backpack once contemplatively before continuing his descent. He stopped in front of her, but made no move to touch her or talk. He merely looked at her, waiting for her to say something.

She gave him a tentative smile that he didn't return.

"Hi," she finally said.

"Hello," he said. He didn't sound angry or upset, merely expectant, maybe a little resigned.

She felt tears welling in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. She couldn't think of a thing to say -- where to possibly start telling him her story. He must have sensed how overwhelmed she was, as he took a breath and said, not unkindly:

"You were supposed to meet me for lunch. You never showed up."

She pressed her lips together and nodded her head, remembering the feeling of being pursued through the student union, of holding her father's hand and running from Darlene's house, thinking she may have gotten her whole family killed. Of running through the trees. Of gunshots and the hot ozone smell of cordite.

"I called you," he went on, "I called you like thirty times."

"I didn't have my phone," she finally said, "I couldn't-"

"-you didn't have to ghost me, Lillian," he interrupted, "I was afraid something happened to you... I was about to call the cops when I realized that I didn't actually know where you lived." His tone was serious, a touch disappointed, and it made Lily's insides feel like iced lead.  

"My... my name's not Lillian," she whispered, and the tears finally fell from her eyes.

He tilted his head like a confused pup and looked at her, puzzled and upset.

So she told him. Everything. She took a breath and let loose with everything she and her family had been through for the last nine months. In a teary voice with hitching sobs, she told him about her family's genetic legacy, about going on the run, about how she had managed to feel safe and happy when she was with him, able to forget -- at least for a few hours -- about the dangers pressing on her from all sides. And finally about the last 72 hours and her life at the other end of a pointed gun.

He stood, staring at her in fascination and what looked like disbelief. When the last word of explanation had been said, she could feel her insides wilt a little in relief; everything out in the open, the last of her words falling out of her mouth and sinking to the ground, heavier than air.

“I… I would understand if you didn’t believe me,” she finished.

Just as she steeled herself for his withering incredulity and disbelief, he took one giant step toward her, dropping his backpack as he moved, and wrapped her in his thick, sturdy embrace. She felt herself melt into his caress like liquid, felt his hand come up to hold her head tightly to his chest, his fingers threading through her hair.

“I believe you,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her hair.

She experienced a relief so profound she gave an involuntary sob into the solid mass of him, as he murmured words of encouragement and comfort into her ear. She figured out in that moment what love was. It was this.

She wasn't sure how long they held each other, but he didn't pull back until she did, and even then he reached out and grabbed her face in both hands lightly, his thumbs rubbing her cheekbones in a gossamer wisp.

"Jesus," he finally said, searching her eyes with his intense hazel gaze. She gave him a shaky smile and a half laugh and he dropped one hand to her arm, leaving the other on her face, which she leaned into. "I don't know your real name," he chuffed kindly, "What do I even call you?"

She smiled, sniffed -- probably unattractively, she thought -- and closed her eyes once before looking at him with affection. "I'm kind of partial to 'Frisbee,' to be honest," she said. He leaned down and kissed her with everything he was worth.

[fleetingpieces]

Finding you

This was supposed to be a short drabble with some angst and lots of fluff, but ended up being a long one shot with lots of angst. Oops.

Trigger warning: violence, slurs and abuse. Please look after yourself :) Fuck.

Remus froze by the door, the keys still dangling in his hand. The sight in front of him was one that never promised anything good; the smell of smoke and beer was strong, making the air in the room feel heavy and loaded. He could already feel the cold sweat at the back of his neck. He considered opening the door again and just leaving the house, but then one of the men sitting in the living room glanced up, and his eyes landed right on Remus, smirking, making Remus’ muscles lock in disgust.

Remus knew the two men all too well. He knew their names, but never thought of them if he could avoid it; they brought too many bad memories. The dark-haired one -who was still looking at Remus- was the worst; the one with dirty blond curls was just a stupid pawn. Both of them were sprawled on the couch, talking loudly as if they were in their own house, their dirty boots propped on the coffee table that Remus had cleaned that very morning.

Their visits were becoming more and more frequent, and Remus didn’t miss how they always coincided with Lyall’s worst episodes. He was pretty sure they actually encouraged them for their own amusement.

His sorry excuse of a father followed his friend’s gaze then, finally noticing Remus still standing by the front door. Remus gulped as Lyall’s bleary eyes became darker.

“Where the fuck were you?”

“At work.” He tried to come out strong, but the sound of the keys clinking in his trembling hand betrayed his attempt.

Lyall stood up and took a couple of wobbly steps closer to Remus, bracing a hand on the shelf on the wall to support himself. Behind him, the man with raven black hair looked Remus up and down slowly, licking his lips. Remus felt dirty being watched like that.

“I told you I was having people over. I ordered you to come back to make dinner for us,” said Lyall, glaring at him. Remus felt his blood boil.

“Well someone has to bring money to pay the bills, since you are too busy being a lazy ass drunkard.”

He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, it was not smart of him to talk like that right now. But he was just overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all.

“Don’t talk to me like that, you fucking brat!” Lyall yelled, swinging his arm violently over the shelf he’d been holding, and throwing everything on top of it to the floor.

Remus watched horrified as the silver frame that had his mother’s picture fell through the air, arching as if in slow motion. It landed viciously on the hardwood floor. When he heard the loud crack it made, Remus felt his heart shattering as well.

The sound sprang him into motion for the first time since stepping into this godforsaken house. He rushed over, kneeling on the floor next to the small shards scattered all over the floor. One of them dug itself into his knee, but Remus barely even noticed it. He was looking at the frame, the glass had cracked into a million pieces, forming sharp spiderwebs that spreaded over Hope’s smiling face.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Remus yelled, holding it close to his chest with both arms, protecting it like his life depended on it. Maybe it did.

He was using all of his strength to fight the tears; he would not cry in front of these men. Standing up slowly, he glared at Lyall. Remus could have sworn that he saw regret in his eyes for a moment, but it was gone the minute Remus spoke again.

“You disgust me,” he spat.

Lyall’s eyes glinted, and if Remus hadn’t been holding his mother’s picture he would have raised his arms to protect his head. As it was though, Lyall’s fist connected with his jaw, making his head snap to the side painfully. He’d punched him with the full strength of a drunken adult, which made Remus see stars dancing in his vision and stumble back, while the two guys behind them cackled loudly.

A few tears escaped Remus’ eyes then, both from the pain in his face and the even greater one in his chest. He could still remember a time when the man in front of him was actually his father. A time when they would laugh together, and Lyall would teach him to play ball. But that had all been when Hope was still in their lives. Lyall had not been the same after the accident, and in consequence, Remus had lost both of his parents the day Hope’d died.

Cold fear crept up Remus’ spine as he stared at the rage seeping out of Lyall’s eyes. He knew where this was going, how everything would turn out if he didn’t do something; and he was pretty sure that he didn’t have any more antiseptics or gauzes hidden in his room, he’d used them all the last time.

He took a careful step back.

“Where do you think you are going?”

Remus didn’t stay to give an answer, he turned around and bolted to his room. Lyall was too drunk to catch him, but Remus could hear the clumsy steps and the string of curses following behind him. As soon as he had one foot inside his bedroom, he slammed the door shut, throwing the lock on.

He took a couple of steps back, not daring to take his eyes off the door, but he still flinched when Lyall started pounding on it.

“Open the fucking door!”

His back bumped into the opposite wall, and he leaned his weight against it. He was shaking way too much to stand on his own.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

What should he do? There was no way he could open that door, but Lyall was pummeling it so hard that the hinges were groaning. Remus glanced around frantically, and his eyes landed on his dresser. Pushing himself off the wall, he rushed over and shoved it in front of the door, panting with the effort.

There was a pause in the rapping, leaving behind a silence that felt heavy on Remus' shoulders. His breathing was coming in short and painful bursts; the air around him didn’t seem enough to fill his lungs. He needed to calm down, but he also needed to get the fuck out of there, he didn’t believe for a second that Lyall had simply decided to let it go.

Remus took out his phone and called the only person that was on his mind at that moment. Luckily, the line rang only two times.

“Hello?”

“Sirius..”

“Re? Hey, what’s up?”

Remus took a shaky breath in, willing his voice to be steady, but he could only manage a hoarse whisper.

“Can you come pick me up?”

“Right now? I can’t, my bike broke down yesterday, remember? I didn’t have time to get it fixed yet.”

Remus did remember. James, Sirius and Remus had gone to an old dirt road that Sirius loved to go to because it meant he could use his bike at top speed and pretend he was in a Motocross race. But Sirius had also tried to teach James how to ride it, which had clearly been a terrible mistake. James had somehow managed to crash into a tree going 20 km an hour; and even though he hadn’t been injured, the handlebar had broken. Sirius had almost cried when he saw the state of his motorbike, and Remus had been teasing both him and James since.

“James’ parents took the car too, but I could take a bus to your house,” Sirius suggested, saying it as a question, but Remus shook his head even if Sirius couldn’t see him. He knew it would be too late then.

“No, no. It’s ok. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

His voice broke at the end, and Remus had to clamp a hand over his mouth to reign in a sob.

“What’s wrong?” Sirius asked immediately. The worry in his voice was evident, but Remus’ throat had closed up, he couldn’t reply. “Re? Remus, what’s going on?”

The pounding on the door started again, making Remus jump while he scrambled to hang up. He didn’t want Sirius listening to this.

“REMUS! I swear I will knock this fucking door down!”

Remus didn’t doubt that he meant it. He had to get out.

Grabbing a bag from his wardrobe, Remus hastily filled it with essentials, starting with the picture frame he was still holding against his chest. He wrapped it up in a t-shirt to protect the rest of his stuff from the broken glass, there was not time to get rid of it now.

All the while, the curses and fists against the door didn’t stop; Remus could tell that the other two men had joined in to try and get into his room. Right then, he was so fucking thankful for that old, heavy dresser.

The wood sounded like it was cracking when Remus had finally gathered everything he needed and threw the window open. Trying not to think about the distance to the ground, he swung both legs over the windowsill and jumped as quietly as he could.

Remus rolled on the floor a few times, a sharp pain shooting through his knee. He’d completely forgotten about the shard of glass that had undoubtedly buried itself deeper just now, but that was the least of his worries at the moment. He had to go before they noticed he was gone. He didn’t think they would go after him, but he couldn’t take any chances.

Greeting his teeth, Remus ran down the street until he turned the corner; then he slowed down a bit until he was walking at a fast pace, mentally preparing himself for the 45 minute walk to James’ house. The fresh night air felt like a blessing against his face as he tried to calm his nerves, but Remus knew he wouldn’t feel completely safe until he was at his friend’s house.

He was about halfway there when his phone rang.

“Remus!”

“James?”

“Rem, what the hell is going on? Sirius has been walking around the house like a maniac, babbling nonsense about you acting weird, and needing our help…”

“It’s fine James, don’t worry. I’m actually on my w-” Remus tried to explain, but James kept talking at full speed.

“...and then Mum and Dad came back and Sirius just stole the car keys and ran out, yelling for me to call you and tell you that-”

“Wait, what?” Remus yelled, stopping abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Yeah, he just said he was going to get you. He looked pretty worried when he left, but he didn’t explain anything.”

“No. No no no no no.”

Remus panicked. If Sirius went to his house, where Lyall and his friends were surely mad that Remus had ran away… He shuddered to think what they would do. And Sirius absolutely lacked common sense and self preservation, he was too reckless.

“Remus? Remus please, talk to me.”

“I need to call him. He can’t go there, I need to-”

“I tried, but the prat left his phone. He just ran off as soon as my parents came in.”

Remus felt as if his world was starting to collapse. He couldn’t stand the idea of Sirius getting hurt because of him. He couldn’t stand the idea of Sirius getting hurt, period. He looked around frantically, as if he would find something that could help him in the deserted street.

“How long ago did he leave?” he asked James. He could hear the desperation in his own voice, and the confusion in James’.

“Just a few minutes, but-”

Remus hung up. He turned around and sprinted as fast as he could, back to the hell house. He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket, but he couldn’t stop to explain everything to James. The only thing on his mind was Sirius.

Images of everything that Remus had been going through at home came rushing in, but with Sirius’ face instead of his, bloody and broken. The mere mental image caused him so much pain and rage, it was unbearable.

Sirius was the most important person in his life, the thought of losing him scared the shit out of Remus. He was like the sunshine in Remus’ longest night. He’d picked up Remus’ pieces when his Mum’s death had torn him apart, and stayed by his side when Lyall started spiralling down. He always knew where to find Remus and how to bring him into the light.

Remus had never told any of his friends what was going on at home, he couldn’t stand the idea of them looking at him with pity, knowing he was a coward that couldn’t stand up for himself. Especially not Sirius. Sirius who was all courage, smiles and warm feelings.

Feelings, Remus groaned internally.

He’d been trying to get rid of his feelings for Sirius for months now, but they only seemed to be getting stronger. Remus had been terrified when he’d realized he was in love with his best friend, he’d had no idea what to do. He still didn’t. Telling his friends that he was gay would have been a good start, but after Hope had passed Remus had lost the nerve to do it. He couldn’t tell Sirius, he couldn’t risk losing him.

His lungs were burning by the time he reached his house, but the sight of the Potter’s car parked hastily with the front wheel on top of the curb gave him a boost of energy.

The front door was open, the yelling reaching Remus’ ears and sending another pang of fear through him.

“Where’s Remus?!”

As Remus stepped in, what he saw inside froze him in place for a moment, just like a mere hour earlier. But the sight in front of him right now was scarier in a very different way.

The man with the dirty blond hair was sprawled on the floor, unconscious. The other man was just standing there, cracking his knuckles and laughing perversely at the two men standing in the middle of the room. Lyall seemed to be out of it, a beer bottle clutched in his hand and his eyes full of hate.

And Sirius.

Sirius was shorter than Lyall, but he was standing just a few inches from him nonetheless, yelling in his face. His hair was in a messy bun, strands falling in his face, and Remus gasped when he saw the split lip, blood trickling down Sirius’ chin. Even in this shitty situation and with everything going on around him, Remus thought that he was beautiful.

Then he cursed himself, focusing again.

“Sirius!”

The three men went quiet as they turned around, the tension in the room shifting on its edge to land on Remus, almost crushing him. He could feel their gazes and everything they carried, the hate, the anger, the lasciviousness. Remus blocked all of those, focusing solely on Sirius, making sure he was ok.

Remus was not ready for Sirius’ reaction when the boy took a good look at him though. Remus could only imagine what he looked like: sweaty, with blood on his jeans and maybe a swollen face. He watched as Sirius’ scowl got deeper and he spun around, shoving Lyall hard.

“What the fuck did you do to him?!”

Lyall staggered back but managed to stay up.

“It has nothing to do with you!”

Remus, who was already used to it, saw it coming before Sirius did. As Lyall threw his arm back, Remus’ feet moved on their own, and before he realized it he was standing between the two of them, looking right at Lyall’s surprised eyes as his fist connected with the side of Remus’ head.

The force of the impact threw him back, making him fall into Sirius’ arms. The warmth of the other boy’s hands against his sides seeped through his clothes, warming him up to the very core, and Remus glanced up. There was so much concern in Sirius’ eyes that it disarmed him; he was lost in the stormy grey, forgetting about everything else for a second. Remus desperately wanted to place a hand on Sirius’ cheek to reassure him, or maybe kiss his lip better…

“I know what you are!” Lyall’s screaming brought Remus back to the cold, hard reality. “You try to hide it, but everyone knows you’re a damned faggot! It’s your own fault if you got hit, protecting your nancy boyfriend like that!”

Remus paled, his thoughts turning cold as he felt Sirius’ whole body tense up behind him.

No. Please, no. Not now.

“He’s not my boyfriend, leave him out of this,” Remus said, trying to sound calm, but his voice was shaking. What was Sirius thinking? Remus didn’t have the courage to turn around and see, so he stepped out of his grasp instead.

The dark-haired man started laughing loudly then. Remus had almost forgotten he was even there, but his head snapped to him when he felt an icy hand close around his wrist, tugging him forward harshly.

“So it’s true? I’ve been wondering for a while, you know; thought I could teach you a thing or two,” Rick said, lust filling his voice. No, no, don’t think about his name. It doesn’t matter, he’s inconsequential, Remus tried telling himself.

The man pulled him closer, pressing his body against Remus’ back, inhaling the scent from his hair. One of the hands was still holding his wrist with bruising strength, but when the other slipped under his t-shirt, Remus felt paralyzed.

“What are you doing?” Lyall asked. He looked slightly less drunk now, but was stunned in place, his eyes wide. Remus looked up at him pleadingly.

“Nothing, we are just having some fun, right boy?” the man said in a mocking tone.

Lyall didn’t move and Remus wanted to scream at him to do something. Hell, he was screaming at his own body to do something, but the connection between his brain and his extremities was numb, like the rest of him.

“Let go of him,” a quiet voice said. Remus fixed his eyes on the source of it, and was met with pure, concentrated rage. He’d never seen such fury in Sirius’ eyes, and even the dark-haired man took a step back.

“You’ll stay out of it if you know what’s good for you, kid. Unless you want to take his place?”

The words hung in the air as they made their way into Remus’ brain, and once they sunk in, everything in Remus’ vision turned red. He was not going to let that asshole touch so much as a hair on Sirius's head. He brought his elbow up, digging it deep into the man’s stomach, who doubled over. Sirius rushed forward then and pushed the man with his shoulder, making him stumble backwards and crash into the small table.

Not wasting any time, Sirius grabbed Remus by the hand and tugged him gently but hurriedly to the door, making a quick exit before the man could recover. He only stopped for a second next to the still stunned form of Lyall, looking at him with revulsion.

“Hope would be ashamed of you,” he spat with a venomous glare. As Sirius dragged him outside, Remus looked back and was pretty sure he could see Lyall’s face crumble before he covered it with his hands.

Sirius didn’t stop until they were next to the car. He opened the passenger door for Remus and carefully helped him climb in, even buckling the seatbelt for him. Remus let his friend handle him; he felt like his mind was miles away, the events of the night had not settled in yet, but they were approaching him like an oncoming train.

They rode in silence. Sirius was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white, and he kept stealing glances at Remus, but none of them said a word.

James, who'd been pacing by the front door, rushed down the steps when he saw them approaching through the long driveway to the estate. They weren't even completely out of the car before James threw his arms around Remus' neck.

"Oh god, oh thank fucking god. Are you guys ok?" 

He examined Remus' appearance, scowling at what he saw. When Sirius joined them near the entrance, Remus tried his best not to look him in the eye, which made James glance between the two of them, confused.

"My mum is going crazy. She's going to bombard you with questions as soon as you step in," he said, trying to get a grasp on the situation himself.

Remus shook his head quickly.

"Please, I don't want to talk about it. Not right now," he whispered.

James was about to argue, but a look from Sirius shut him up, so he nodded instead.

"Ok. Ok, I'll go talk to them," he said, and without any warning, he lunged forward again, hugging Remus tightly. "I'm so glad you're ok. You scared the living daylights out of me." 

It took Remus two seconds to figure out how to move his body again so he could hug James back just as tight. What had he done to deserve friends like this?

James squeezed him one last time before turning around and going into the house, leaving Remus and Sirius alone. Silence fell, broken only by the chirping of the crickets in the big garden that surrounded the house from all sides, and the faint sound of the sea a few miles away. 

When Sirius extended a hand towards him, Remus couldn't help but flinch back. He felt bad instantly as he finally looked up at Sirius, surprised by his own reaction, and saw how Sirius stopped his hand mid-air with a pained expression on his face.

Remus wanted to explain, but what could he say? That even though his brain felt muddled, he couldn’t stop thinking about every time Lyall and his friends had beaten him up?

He didn’t need to say anything though, ‘cause Sirius’ face softened like he understood exactly what Remus was thinking. Not taking his eyes away from Remus’, Sirius extended his hand again, deliberately slow, and held it between them as an offering. He was giving Remus a choice. He didn’t move a muscle until Remus tentatively laced their fingers together, and then Sirius smiled softly, tugging at his hand gently to lead him inside.

Sirius led him up to the first floor, ignoring the hushed voices coming from the kitchen, which Remus was grateful for. He didn’t have the strength to face Mrs and Mr Potter right now.

He didn’t realize Sirius was not taking him to the guest room until he dragged Remus into his own bedroom, closing the door behind them.

As Sirius finally let go of his hand to drop Remus’ bag on the bed, and Remus realized that he was actually there, that he was safe, the numbness in his body receded and the weight of everything crashed into him, as if the train had finally run him over. The events of the night, the months of abuse, the fact that Sirius of all people had seen it, that Sirius knew. Oh God, Sirius knew the truth, he knew everything! 

It was impossible for Remus to keep himself together any longer.

He slumped on the floor with his back against the bed, hugging his legs. When it became obvious that he would not be able to reign in the tears, he buried his face in his knees, as the sobs quietly shook him. He was sure Sirius would hate him now, and there was no way that Remus could recover from that.

Just a little longer, he thought, for only a few minutes more he wanted to pretend like none of this had happened and that he could have his friends for a bit more. That he could survive this. He hugged himself tighter, trying to keep his pieces together.

“Remus.”

Remus tensed up, but didn’t move. Not yet, please, not yet. I’m not ready.

Warm hands rested lightly on his wrists, kindly prying his arms apart to undo his curled up position.

“Re, look at me,” Sirius whispered.

Reluctantly, Remus slowly raised his head. 

“How long has this been going on?” he asked in a quiet but steely voice. Remus wasn’t sure anymore if the anger was directed at him or not, he had never seen Sirius like this. He turned his head to the side, letting his gaze fall on the floor.

“A while,” he replied quietly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sirius almost yelled, and the pain in his voice startled Remus into looking at him again.

“I..I didn’t want you to pity me. I didn’t want you to see that side of me,” he said with furrowed eyebrows.

“Remus I’m your best friend! I would have helped you!”

“And what could you have done, Sirius? I have nowhere to go!” Remus replied in the same heated tone. Anxiety gripped him again as he understood that he eventually would have to go back there, to that nightmare. Standing up, he started pacing up and down the room, the movement keeping him sane and functioning. “He’s gonna kill me when I go back,” Remus muttered more to himself than anything else.

“You are not going back there,” Sirius said in a hard voice, standing up as well. Remus stopped his pacing to huff a humorless laugh, staring at his feet.

“It’s not like I have a choice, Sirius. At some point, I’m gonna have to-”

“No. I don’t give a flying fuck about what you think you have to do. You are not going back to that house. And if you think Effie or any of us will let you anywhere near that man, then you are sorely mistaken. You’ll be staying here with us.”

Remus knew Mrs Potter cared for him and treated him just like she did Sirius, but there was no way he could impose on her like that. He didn’t feel like arguing about that now though, so he just stayed quiet. Both of them stood there, breathing heavily, Sirius with clenched fists and not taking his eyes off of him, while Remus wrung his hands nervously, still gazing at his feet.

It was a few long minutes before Sirius broke the silence again.

“Is it true?”

Remus knew instantly what Sirius was talking about, but he thought if he pretended not to hear, perhaps Sirius would drop it. He bit his lip, completely missing the way Sirius looked down at his mouth before going back up.

“What that prick said...is it true?” Sirius pressed.

When he didn’t answer again, the sound of steps filled the room before long fingers slipped under Remus’ chin with a care that he had never received before, lifting his head up until gold eyes were locked with silver ones.

Sirius searched his eyes, looking into his very soul, waiting for Remus to say something. Remus knew there was no point avoiding it, Sirius knew him far too well, and it was nearly impossible for Remus to deny him anything when he was staring at him with such an expectant look. He was so stupid when it came to Sirius.

“Yes,” Remus finally replied in a tiny whisper. Sirius’ fingers tensed the slightest bit, which threw Remus into a fit of nervous verbiage. Swallowing over the lump in his throat, he kept talking fast, “I understand if you feel uncomfortable or d-disgusted with me. Take your time, I...I just-”

“Remus, just shut up,” the tenderness in Sirius’ voice contrasted so much with his harsh words, that it left Remus feeling confused. With the rough fingertips still burning under his chin, Remus tilted his head to the side, trying to understand, but he couldn’t figure out the emotion swimming behind the molten silver of Sirius’ eyes.

Sirius hesitated, but then his hand slowly brushed Remus’ face, going up his jaw, until it was cupping his cheek.

“For a smart guy, you can be pretty clueless, you know?” Sirius said with a half smile.

“I...I’m not sure I follow,” Remus said with slightly wide eyes.

Sirius laughed quietly, shaking his head with fondness. He bent down to press their foreheads together, and Remus felt his breath hitch in his throat.

“How could I ever feel disgusted by you? Are you really that blind?”

Remus pulled away an inch with raised eyebrows. He was a bit dense regarding people’s feelings towards him, he knew that much as he always assumed the worst, but the way Sirius was acting...

“You...Are you saying that..?” Remus left the question unfinished; he wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Sirius was giving him a small, shy smile. Sirius Black, shy. Remus thought for sure that he must have been imagining things.

Brushing one of Remus’ curls behind his ear, Sirius struggled for a bit to find the words.

“Re, for the longest time I’ve been holding back. I...I wanted to tell you how I felt, but you were going through so much with your Mum, I just felt like I would be taking advantage when you weren’t doing so great. I didn’t want to add any more pressure into your life, I wanted to wait for the perfect time.”

He laughed bitterly.

“I know I’m not doing much better right now, but I just...I can’t let you sit there thinking that I would hate you for this Re, I...I fucking love you.”

Remus was speechless. All this time, he’d thought he was just a fool for falling for Sirius, for allowing himself to be so close to him when it hurt knowing he could never have him. Remus glanced down when he felt cool fingers lacing themselves with his, and then up to the boy in front of him.

There was so much love pouring out of Sirius that Remus thought he must have definitely been blind not to notice before.

Sirius stared into his eyes, silently asking a question. Remus nodded minutely, and not even a second later he felt soft lips brushing against his, slow and deep.

Remus' hands tangled into soft black locks, shivering at the idea that he was finally allowed to do it after spending so long wishing for it. Sirius’ own set to explore Remus’ body with a hunger that spoke volumes of Sirius’ restraint, caressing Remus back before settling on his hips.

When they broke apart, their breathing agitated, Remus hid his face in the crook of Sirius’ neck, dizzy with the feelings rushing through his body.

“Thank you for coming for me,” he mumbled against Sirius’ skin, eliciting a shiver from the other boy.

Sirius smiled softly, dropping kisses to Remus’ hair and temple. He slid his hands to the small of his back, bringing Remus closer to his chest.

“I will always find you, Moons.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs​

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.  

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter  wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.  

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”  

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.  

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.  

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”  

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”

[secret-engima]

I concur. The last option is the best. Maybe a few headcanons or snippets on how Angeal got roped into being a Braincell again? (Bonus if he originally refuses the call because *cough* Genesis *cough* but still ends up bundling up Ardyn and giving him some calming tea while in complete denial)

Hmmmm finally up for rambling this ask so buckle up!

-Angeal has no desire to be anyone special. He has had a good childhood this time around, with two loving parents and no scientific experimentation whatsoever. His father is one of the gardeners for the Oracles themselves and Angeal is perfectly content to follow in those footsteps once his father retires. He hopes for a peaceful life and carefully hides his lingering guilt and trauma from another life under the mental carpet, and refuses to admit he still dreams of the people he failed (Sephiroth who he abandoned, Genesis who he couldn’t save, his mother who committed suicide because of her guilt at what he’d become, his son apprentice Zack whom he forced to kill him).

-He is befriended by the young Princess, who smiles at him and is content to talk for hours about the flowers and plants he helps maintain. She follows him around sometimes, both asking for advice and giving it impulsively, and even though she is just a child, she has an impressive green thumb and an even more impressive kind heart. He knows that everyone says the Princess is ... odd. And she is. She is too old for her skin sometimes, too wise and too silly by turns in the way only someone who has seen it all and come out the other side can be.

-Privately, Angeal thinks she might be like him. Someone who remembers another life. But he never asks. He never admits. It doesn’t matter anyway. They are both content in their respective new lives, there is no need to drag up ghosts.

-Then one day Fenestala Manor ... burns. A lot of people are killed. A lot more are terrified and grieving and angry. There are whispers of rebellion, of defiance, but none dare when the late Oracle’s children are within Niflheim’s grasp.

-Angeal (who now wears the name Theseus like a suit he refuses to admit doesn’t fit right) keeps his head down and makes no moves to step out of line. He played hero once and he became the monster instead. He will not make that mistake a second time. He does, however, try to make his garden a sanctuary for the poor Princess. He can’t imagine how she must feel, to lose her mother so young, to be held captive by her mother’s killers, to have a brother who rages and cries and pulls bitterly away because he cannot see that his sister is grieving, just in a different way.

-Then the Chancellor of Niflheim visits for the first time, and Angeal only knows because he spots the Princess leading the bemused, sharp-tongued man around the garden, smiling and gentle and welcoming, like she is speaking to an old friend and not one of the leaders of the nation holding her hostage. Angeal keeps his head down, but the Princess trusts him and seems to think he makes fine company for a princess and an enemy politician, and she drags him over to talk about the flower crown she is making their guest.

-The Chancellor smiles and verbally cuts open Angeal in only the most veiled, politest ways. It’s almost impressive, if it didn’t remind him too much of Genesis. So Angeal pretends to not notice and hopes the man goes away and never comes back.

-He goes away.

-He keeps coming back.

-And Angeal keeps finding them in his garden, the Princess and her dangerous, half-mad guest (and Angeal knows madness, he has seen it in faces of friends and mirrors alike, he knows what the Chancellor hides behind his flowery words and indulgent smiles it is not anything nice), and he keeps getting dragged into the conversation, and somewhere along the way he notices that it’s almost always raining on the days the Chancellor visits. A pleasant, faint sort of rain that is almost as nice to be out in as sunshine. If it’s not raining before he arrives, it is within the hour he appears, and it always leaves within the hour the Chancellor does. And that the rain itself whispers against his skin like magic, like the faintest, most persistent of cure spells that Angeal hasn’t felt since he woke up as Theseus.

-Its a coincidence until it’s not. It’s happenstance until Angeal spots the glimmers of something quieter and saner appearing in the man with each visit and flower crown and long, rainy day conversation with the young Oracle.

-It’s not his problem until he stumbles on the man in question vomiting his guts out behind the gardening shed while the Princess has briefly been called away by nervous servants who make up any excuse to keep her away from the Chancellor she seems set on befriending.

-And Angeal has no desire to take another self-destructive, sharp-tongued, venom-fanged, art-loving, idiot redhead under his wing, but he likes to think he isn’t a horrible person in this life, so he gently rescues the man’s hat before it can fall into the smoking black (???) bile and gently steers the man to the nearby plastic chair Angeal sits on when maintaining his tools. He steps into the shed and comes back out with the thermos of tea he was saving for his own lunch and gently pushes the cup into the man’s hands while gold eyes stare at him and toy with his murder (Angeal has seen this powerful man in a moment of weakness, if Angeal disappears in the next two weeks, he won’t die surprised).

-“You should drink,” Angeal tells him softly, “It will help your stomach settle.”

-“Oh will it now.” Ardyn Izunia drawls even as he takes a slow sip of the herbal blend and makes the tiniest face at the taste. They stay in silence for a while, with the Chancellor recovering his breath on the chair and Angeal debating what to do with the patch of very dead ground where black bile was moments ago and healthy grass had been long before that. In the end he covers it with a piece of old tarp and decides to brave the potential radioactive spot later. Once the man who apparently had that stuff inside him has calmed down and hopefully left.

-“You’re taking this very calmly,” Izunia drawls, and Angeal can feel the barbs on the other man’s tongue, waiting to be unleashed at the slightest provocation.

-“You’re hardly the first man to get an upset stomach,” Angeal deflects calmly, “It’s perfectly normal.”

-A scoff that is startled enough to count as a genuine laugh, “Normal, he says.”

-Angeal ignores the question in there and instead turns around to look thoughtfully at the Chancellor. Without his hat to hide his face and his venomous smiles to discourage scrutiny the man looks ... exhausted. Rung dry. And very, very thin. Like he hasn’t eaten a good meal (or anything at all) in days.

-A workaholic maybe? Or something worse. The Princess is an Oracle after all, her duty will be to heal the sick of the otherwise incurable. It isn’t that much of a jump to say she could sense that Ardyn Izunia was sick and was trying to help even while untrained. Either way it’s not his problem. He’s just a gardener. He has no business interacting with this man beyond the times the Princess insists he does.

-He keeps telling himself that as he disappears back into his shed and comes out with another thermos, this one of soup (it’s a good thing it’s chilly weather, otherwise he would have brought a sandwich and that might be too hard for this man to stomach). He offers a cup of still warm soup to the Chancellor, who stares at it like he doesn’t remember what it is. Angeal keeps holding it out until the man takes it from him, “...You have no idea what is going on do you,” Izunia rasps as he sips almost experimentally on the soup.

-Angeal shrugs, “No. But you look like you could use a sit down, some tea, and some food, and my mother would kill me herself if I refused to share what I had with someone who might need it more.”

-A sneer and a flicker of something furious in gold eyes, “Pity then.”

-Angeal turns back from where he had been about to wander off and resume gardening, because he knows that tone and he knows where it leads and it hurts too much to walk away (this lifetime), “No.” He snaps and the Chancellor blinks in surprise at Angeal’s sudden fire. Angeal picks up the tools he needs for the next hour and says more quietly, “Kindness.”

-“Are they not the same thing?”

-Angeal thinks of a blinding smile from a boy in another life who didn’t know the darkness of the world and made it better in the process, of the Princess who welcomes a leader of the enemy into her home and gives him flowers like he is a long-lost friend. He thinks of another redhead who once said something very similar before the end. He dares to meet golden eyes again, “No,” he tells the Chancellor, “they aren’t. But you’re a smart man. I think you knew that already.”

-Ardyn Izunia stares at him and is, for once, speechless. Angeal turns and hurries away before he can give in to the urge to grab a spare picnic blanket out of the shed and drape it on the man’s shoulders.

-That man is dangerous. He is broken and mad and feral and good at hiding all those things which makes him even more dangerous than he otherwise would be. Angeal cannot (will not) get attached. Not again. He won’t fall into that trap. He isn’t a good friend for anyone, let alone a good moral compass or shoulder to cry on. He’ll just make things worse. He knows that.

-Yet somehow that doesn’t stop him from packing a thermos of soup whenever it starts to lightly rain, and passing out cups of it when the Princess and the Chancellor inevitably wander into his corner of the gardens.

-(And maybe, weeks later, Ardyn Izunia corners Angeal where the Princess cannot see and stares at him for a long time. Maybe Izunia’s face shifts and pales as black blood weeps from his eyes and mouth until he looks not like a man but like a ghoul from a nightmare. Maybe he smiles like a predator looking for a kill and asks “Theseus” if he is frightened. If he is horrified.)

-(Maybe Ardyn is left stunned when the simple gardener looks him in the eye and with painful, gentle honesty says no.)

-(”Why not? I am a monster. You should be afraid.” Ardyn growls, his Scourge on display, his monstrous nature bared for this strange, mild-mannered man to see. And he is stunned when the gardener gently touches his pale, purple-veined hands and guides him down to a familiar plastic chair, as he disappears into the shed and comes back with a familiar thermos of soup and presses the cup into his hands.)

-(He is left speechless when this gardener, this human, this mortal, foolish man, finally answers his question, “This,” the gardener taps one of Ardyn’s deathly pale hands, “doesn’t make you any more or less human, or more or less a monster than me.”)

-(“Then what does?” Ardyn asks in a whisper, not sure if he is curious or insulted or ... desperate.)

-(The gardener just smiles, and in the expression there is something unnervingly old and sad and knowing for someone who has not lived two thousand years and not seen his own humanity crumble before his eyes, “You’re a smart man, Chancellor” he hums, “you tell me.”)

-(And Ardyn finds that he is, once again, speechless.)

[hiscyarika]

Marry Me

Word Count: 2.2k

Pairing: Javier Peña x Reader

Summary: Javier has another wedding to attend.

Warning(s): None

A/N: Listen, I know I said I was in my Whiskey feels but then I heard the song “Marry Me” by Thomas Rhett and it was all over from there. Sorry.

Masterlist

Tag Lists

Javier stands in front of the full-length mirror, his hands trembling just enough to make buttoning his white undershirt difficult. As he fumbles with the small discs, trying to make them fit into the holes of the shirt, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He looks up to meet his father’s eyes in the mirror, taking a deep breath to steady himself.

“We’ve gotta get going, hijo. We don’t want to be late,” he says, drawing his hand back and then leaving the room. Javier manages to get the last button in place, then pulls on his black suit jacket.

This isn’t an event that he’ll be late for.

He makes a stop in the kitchen, quickly pouring himself a glass of the strongest whiskey his dad has in the house. He downs it in just a couple of seconds, praying that it’ll be enough to calm him. He can’t stand this shaky feeling, the way his heart feels like it’s going to burst right out of his chest. It almost makes him pick up a cigarette again, but he’s been good about quitting. Besides, he knows you’ll berate him if you smell the smoke on him when he sees you.

When he makes his way outside, his father is already in the passenger seat of the truck. Javier climbs into the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition. The drive to the church is silent, aside from the radio playing softly. Driving gives him more time to breathe, to really let the gravity of the situation settle in on his shoulders. By the time the tall white steeple appears in his view, he at least doesn’t feel like there’s a twenty pound weight on his chest.

He parks the truck and steps out, not surprised when his father immediately finds someone to chat with. Javier shakes his head slightly and heads inside. A smile finally comes to his lips when he finds your mother standing in the foyer. She’s embracing him before he can even open his mouth to greet her.

“Oh, Javier. You look dashing, honey,” she says, giving him a gentle squeeze before releasing him. He feels a bit of heat come to his cheeks. “She’s in the back room getting ready right now. You should go see her.” Javier nods and looks down the hallway. His heart starts pounding in his chest again as he makes his feet move forward.

When he knocks on the door, he’s met with a face that isn’t yours. She’s one of your college friends that he can never remember the name of, though in his defense he’s only met her once. She immediately recognizes him though, and fully opens the door, finally revealing you to him.

You’re standing in front of the window, the sunlight pooling around you and surrounding you in a heavenly glow. You’ve already donned the white dress and veil. Javier swears in that moment you’re the most holy thing he’s laid eyes on. He can’t stop the tears that blur his vision, especially when you look so relieved to see him.

“Javi...you came…,” you breathe, closing the distance that lies between you both. He immediately opens his arms to you, but he holds you gently, not wanting to mess up your hair or makeup. You’re close to doing the damage yourself with the tears that well up in your eyes. He’s just glad that the rest of your bridal party has left the room, letting him have this last moment alone with you.

“Shhh. Don’t cry, mi estrella. Of course I came. I couldn’t miss your special day,” he whispers. It nearly kills him to say the words.

Because you’re getting married today, but not to him…

You giggle, a soft and musical sound that only makes the aching in his chest grow worse. “It means a lot that you’re here, mi sol. I know you’re a busy man nowadays,” you tell him, putting your hands on his shoulders as you pull back just enough to look him in the eye again. You’re practically radiating happiness. He just wishes that it would rub off on him a little bit.

“Never too busy for you. Congratulations, hermosa. I’m happy for you,” he murmurs, cupping your cheek in his hand. He then indulges himself with one kiss, lightly pressed to your forehead. He closes his eyes against the clenching of his heart. “I’ll leave you to get ready. Te quiero mucho, mi estrella,” he whispers, releasing you.

“Te quiero mucho, mi sol,” you reply, running your hands down his arms until you can take his hands. He nearly comes undone when he feels just how perfectly your little fingers lock with his. He wants to drop to his knees and tell you everything that he’s been holding back since the moment the wedding invitation came in the mail. But you squeeze once, then let him go, beaming up at him as he turns and leaves the room. He says nothing.

He’s dazed as he walks into the sanctuary, and he settles himself in the nearest empty pew, far in the back where it’s less likely that anyone will bother him. Everyone wants to be close to the altar, to watch you and your new husband come together before God and start the next chapter of your life together.

He briefly debates leaving, or at least waiting in the truck until it’s all over, to spare himself from having to watch you leave him. But he knows that if he bails on you, you’ll never forgive him for it. More importantly, he’ll never forgive himself.

Instead, he leans back on the uncomfortable wooden bench, trying to ignore the memories that assault his mind. All of the moments he’s ever shared with you since you were just kids come flooding back to him, reminding him of the mistake he made by never telling you the way he felt. Hell, he’d run away from his own wedding just because he couldn’t see himself as anyone’s husband but yours. But instead of giving you the benefit of knowing that, he’d disappeared to Colombia and never looked back.

Javier clears his throat to keep his emotions at bay, and suddenly becomes aware of the frantic, hushed whispering overtaking the room. Looking down at the watch on his left wrist, he understands why. It’s time.

The music starts, ringing from the antique organ on the balcony above the door. Javier watches as your husband-to-be enters the room with the couple of groomsmen and bridesmaids behind him. He’s a nice enough guy. Javier has had some good conversations with him. The guy loves you. He’ll take care of you. And really, that’s the only saving grace. He knows that he won’t have to worry about you. You’ll get the happily ever after that he knows you’ve been dreaming of your entire life.

And then everyone stands, and the bridal march starts.

Javier feels his throat run dry as he pushes himself to his feet, watching you walk down the aisle on your father’s arm. He watches your eyes roam around the room, not stopping until your gaze settles on him. The eye contact lingers just a second longer than it should, and as soon as you turn away from him again, he comes undone. He can’t hold it together anymore. A single, hot tear slides down his cheek as you pass by him.

Javier lets out a shaking breath as the music finally ends, and he lowers himself to sit again. His hands are clenched into fists as he sits there, wishing there was another way for him to release all of the emotion threatening to explode from him now.

The preacher’s voice echoes through the sanctuary as he begins with a prayer. Javier bows his head, hating that the only thing running through his mind is his begging for a way to fix this. If he could go back and do it all again, you would have never even met this guy. He would have never gotten close to marrying Lorraine. You’d be settled down with a couple of kids on his dad’s land by now. The way that it was supposed to be.

“If anyone objects to this union, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Javier’s head snaps up, realizing that he’d been too lost in his own misery to hear the end of the prayer. He looks up at you, the way that you stand with your hands clasped together with your fiancé’s. It’s a decision that he knows he can’t come back from. He doesn’t care. Either he loses you to marriage or anger. Both are a sentence to eternal perdition.

Javier stands, then steps into the aisle.

There’s a cacophony of horrified gasps, and suddenly all eyes are on him. But he only looks at you, gathering every bit of stubborn courage he’s got.

“Javi?,” you asked, shock evident on your face. Your hands drop to your sides, picking up your dress. You step down the three small stairs of the altar, your face softening in worry as you look at him from across the room. “Javi, what are you doing?”

His heart is pounding so loud he can hear the blood rushing in his ears. It’s so loud that he almost can’t hear you. But he forces himself to take a few steps forward, closer to you.

“Mi estrella…,” he starts. He doesn’t know what to say to you. Here he is, interrupting your wedding, embarrassing you and himself in front of everyone that you know. But he doesn’t regret it. You have to know. He has to tell you.

“I can’t let you do this,” he says. There are more gasps and angry whispers.

You shake your head in confusion. “What? W-Why?,” you ask, stepping closer to him. He hates the way you look at him with soft eyes of concern. He doesn’t deserve that from you. Not now. He deserves for you to be furious, to demand that he leave the ceremony and never speak to you again. You’re too saintly for someone as broken as he is.

His eyes fill with tears again, and that’s the end of it for you. He watches as you walk toward him, down the aisle in your wedding dress to him. And then your hands are cupping his cheeks and trying to find any sign of what might be wrong with him. “Mi sol, please talk to me,” you beg, wiping away his tears with the pads of your thumbs.

“I love you...,” he murmurs, glad that you're close enough to hear him because there’s no way he could force himself to be louder,”...too much to let you be another man’s wife.” He’s finally admitted it. After so many years, he’s finally said the words. And now he’s at your mercy. His hands drop to your hips, and he closes his eyes as he realizes that this very well might be the last time that he ever has you this close to him.

“...Really?”

The desperate whisper that leaves your lips catches him off guard. He opens his eyes, searching them for any indication of what you might be feeling, what might be going through your head as you look up at him.

“Of course, hermosa. I always have,” he whispers.

“You should have told me before.”

“I wanted to. Believe me, but I–” He’s stopped by your fiancé calling your name. You jump in surprise, dropping your hands from his face and turning to look at the other man. Javier takes a step back, giving you room to breathe, to think.

He watches as you look back and forth between him and the altar. There’s fear in your eyes now. Javier hates himself for the pressure that he’s put you under, but he can’t take it back now.

You turn back to face him, tears running down your cheeks, and the sadness in your eyes tells him that it’s over.

He’s lost you.

He turns and starts to walk out of the sanctuary. He can’t bring himself to look back at you. It’ll kill him.

“Mi sol!,” you call. He stops. The sound of your heels clicking on the wooden floor gets louder.

He turns just in time to catch you in his arms. You throw your arms around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair. He feels the breath leave his lungs as he clutches you to his chest. His fingers dig gently into the soft skin of your back.

“Mi estrella...,” he chokes, pressing his lips to yours. The kiss is long and desperate and full, one that he’ll remember for the rest of his life. Without breaking away from you, he scoops you up into his arms, mindful of your dress as he carries you out of the church.

There’s an uproar in the sanctuary, but he doesn’t care. He’s got you in his arms and he’ll never let you go.

---

Permanent Tags: @theforceofdarkandlight​ @hail-doodles​ @aerynwrites​ @murdermewithbooks @themandjalorian @longitud-de-onda @readsalot73 @lovingtheway​ @talesfromtheguild @mystical-934  @lavenderl3mons @tiffdawg @lokiaddicted @adikaofmandalore @blue-tidal-wave @forever-rogue @flower-petal-blooming​ @fleurdemiel145 @cable-kenobi @opheliaelysia @pynch-bug​ @lesqui​

[jadienjaystoriesandart]

More Blood God Phil stuff because I be in a mood. @nkhaotic

Asked a question on Tubbo being a new Vassal of the Blood God, and got an answer. Then got to writing this. Tis would be my th thing to this AU, you guys haven’t seen my drawing yet. Hehe, this gave me alot to think about.  (When I get inspired, I can write like crazy, it’s how I can go months without content, then post like five chapters in two days.)

Plot: Tubbo is taken out by Techno and Tommy for what they call some 'fun'. Basically, they are testing to see how he takes killing people.

This is what happens when you are listening to Addict by Silva Hound and Blood-Water by Grandson.

Note: Wilbur is dead in this one, given he had betrayed Phil for the 'newest' god Dream. Read it by NKhaotic on their Tumblr. Also, this is an AU, some things were changed from Cannon to fit into my narrative. Like Tubbo being the one who says Techno should be executed or Phil's 'house arrest', were not his ideas in this.

Warnings: Blood, Killing, Burning things, Explosives, these boys are just Feral okay.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28557531/chapters/70366230

Tubbo walked beside Tommy as they followed Techno out. Truth be told, he had just come to apologize to the other. See, he had no idea of them having taken him from his home for the execution. He had been told they found Techno in the city and thus it was considered right to do so. Enemy of one nation wasn't so much of the other. As far as he cared, Techno could have stayed away and he'd be allowed to live.

He never understood why people around him insisted on lying to get by, it was easier, to tell the truth, and then get your sweet revenge. Which still doesn't explain why they wanted to head out of the server together. Tommy seemed excited, near skipping as he walked.  Any and all questions he asked were just answered with 'wait and see'. So, after getting this for the third time, he resigned to the fact they wouldn't tell him. 

As they neared up the hill, a rather decent sized town could be seen in the distance. So they weren't dragging him out here to kill him, good to know. Techno hummed as he tossed to Tommy a crossbow and fireworks.  "To answer your questions." the piglin said handing the same to Tubbo with a look. "We're here to wreak havoc and kill whoever stands in the way."

Tubbo stared at that, not sure what he was thinking or feeling about that thought. Tommy was grinning at him, "Consider this an... assessment!" he said cheerfully. "I'm sure you'll do great!" Watching as they headed out, Tubbo shook out of his thoughts and quickly followed after them. The way down was silent as if the world itself was holding its breath for the first moment. 

The feeling he got was vaguely familiar, remembering back to when he would take walks with Phil in the city.

*Flashback*

The world was silent as he could hear the sounds of their feet on the cobble paths. Tubbo looked around at that, the birds that normally made noises, were all too quiet. He looked over at Phil who was gazing up at the sky in thought. 

He sighed heavily, "I am sorry about this... as much as I didn't want to do this, my cabinet had forced the issue." he muttered looking away from Phil.

The older male hummed at that, "You do have a duty to your people, if they want something you are to try and supply them with it. Such is the life of a leader."

"But still." Tubbo said, "It feels like they refuse to listen even when I do say something. They constantly override me, and this has caused some... discourse between us." he wasn't sure why he was telling Phil about this. This was supposed to be personal, but, Tubbo didn't have many people talk to about it. 

Phil gazed at him and shrugged, "Then why not make them listen. From what Tommy tells me, you've not always been this passive about things." he tells him honestly.

Turning to that, then looking away with a soft hum. "I suppose I haven't been, not sure what really changed." it was true, he wasn't always passive about things. He wasn't afraid to kill should it come down to it. Gods know he's steeped in the blood of people who wronged him, and the fires still burn around him to this day. Since being president, he has become meeker and more unsure of himself. 

"I'm just saying, grab back your confidence, and if they refuse to listen, make them an example," he suggested to him with a casual look, as if he didn't just tell Tubbo to kill people who went against him. 

Tubbo frowned, "Wouldn't that just make me another tyrant?" he asked curiously.

Phil merely chuckled, "Not if you're smart about it Tubbo, which I am sure you are much smarter than that idiot before you." he said with a scowl, remembering how it all lead to him having to kill Wilbur. 

Silence rang again between them, still the world held its breath. Tubbo looked off into the distance with a tiny hum at the words. Be smart about it... he was sure he could do that.

*End of flashback*

As they neared the area, Tubbo watched as Techno fired off into the buildings. Setting a flame one building. Before Tommy took off with a cackle, slashing through any guards that came too close. 

Coming out of his musing to see the fire around them, the blood that ran into the ground. He looked around to see Techno setting up the flames with each fire of the crossbow. In the light of the fires, Tubbo swore the other's eyes were glowing red in two voids, black holes where his eyes should be. 

The two were chaotic and just going all over the place. Though they were passionate, they were also unfocused. 

Such is the life of a leader.

Tubbo gripped his weapon tightly, pulling out a stick of TNT given to him. Lighting it up he tossed it into the fray of people running. The resulting explosion rang up with screams.

"Now you're getting it!" he heard as Tubbo turned and stared at what he saw. Tommy now had sharp teeth like fangs, black eyes with two red dots. "Come on, still much to destroy we are only on the south side!" he laughed running off to catch up with Techno who was already heading over there. Normal people would be horrified by this, normal people would turn and run. But, if he did that, Tubbo would be denying the fact the thrill this left him with was all he ever loved in life. 

And he's been in need of a stress reliever after days trapped in L'manburge. 

Running down the streets as he would lit up areas with fireworks and torches. The hot days from before with no rain making the grass easy to ignite under the tiniest of sparks.  Tubbo found himself grinning as he jumped from roof to roof, sitting off explosives behind him. People inside screaming out when their house was blown up and the resulting fire from it would burn them or debris would crush them. 

Slowly the awkwardness delved into pure destructive glee between the three boys. The smokes that billow into the reddening sky as the sunset casts a glow over the orange flames that rose high into the sky.

Laughing along with the other two as they left the place late into the night Techno was covered in gunpowder and blood, Tommy had it on his hands from having barehanded some others. The ends of Tubbo's outfit were burnt as Tommy had an arm around him grinning widely with his fang-like teeth.  Addicting the feeling was, just letting go of all conforms in this world and going pure feral on any and all. 

The way back was mostly then recounting people they ran into. Acting out their terror and laughing with tips and compliments on making it better.  And they did admit Tubbo had kept them on track to make sure they got all sectors of the city. 

But, this also meant this night was coming to a close. So he'd have to go back to the city he ran as if this night never happened. Tubbo tried not to let that thought get to him as they neared Techno's house as the moon was high in the sky. He paused however when he saw Phil on the porch smiling at them when they neared. "Look at you boys, did you have fun?" he asked as Tommy and Techno got onto the porch.

"Sure did!" Tommy said smiling as Phil ruffled his hair. 

Techno just grunted with a shrug but did smile at the hand on his shoulder. Tubbo mostly kept silent he turned to head back home.  "And just where are you going young man?" near jumping he turned to see Phil with his arms crossed. "You can't be heading back looking like that, much less this late into the night."

Tubbo mouth moved but no words came out as Tommy snickered and got up pulling him over to sit with them. Techno going inside to wash off his hands and get something for them to eat. Tommy was leaned on the left side of Phil, smiling as fingers ran through his hair. He was mostly back to 'normal' looking if you overlook the blood still on him. 

Shifting a bit, Tubbo felt slightly awkward about this, yelping when an arm pulls him closer to Phil. Tubbo managed to look up to see a soft smile from him, he could faintly hear Tommy's soft breathing. Closing his own eyes as he found Phil was very warm despite how cold the night air was in the snowy plains. 

"You did really good today, all three of you." Phil praised them quietly, Tubbo vaguely hearing him. "I'm pleased with your work." A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, somehow those words filled him with warmth. 

Something soft wrapped around Tubbo, a ruffle of feathers. Yet, he kept his eyes closed, exhaustion finally creeping into his body. 

Somehow, he knew everything would be okay. He was safe, here and now. Latching onto this thought, and onto the calming feeling Phil gave off. Tubbo slowly drifted off to sleep, dreaming of the night they had. 

[heyyyharry]

Chapter 11: The Lake Of Tears

(from ‘The Winter and The Crown’)

…in which journeys end in lovers meeting.

Word count: 3k

AU: queen!y/n, commander!harry

Description: Y/N and Harry set off on a new adventure to find ‘the cure’ for an ancient curse, meanwhile, the enemies are plotting to take her kingdom.

Wattpad link (Reyna as Peach/Y/N)

A/N: I just want to say: STAN LANCE FOR CLEAR SKIN! 🥺

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Y/N was a descendant of the first High King. The facts were still spinning around in Lance’s head as he left the library.

Why hadn’t anyone mentioned it to him before? Could this mean something? Could it have anything to do with the witch’s prophecy about her being the saviour? Y/N might have believed it’d referred her overthrowing her brother, but what if her fate was more than just that?

Something told him that Mary might know more than she’d told him, and if that was true, his Queen might be in bigger danger.

He was too impatient to wait until morning, so he decided to visit Mary this instant. He was hurrying down the long empty corridor when memories flickered across his eyes, slicing over his skin. Memories that he didn’t know he’d had. Memories that he didn’t want. He never would’ve thought that memories could physically hurt, but now the floor and ceiling had started spinning. Lance pressed a palm against the wall as he tried to navigate and not pass out right there.

The real world began to fade. He found himself standing outside in the woods. It was dawn. Snow was falling slowly around him, smoke rising from the chimney of a small cottage. There was movement at one of the windows—a white-haired woman peering out from inside. For a moment Lance thought she saw him, but then she stepped away and disappeared.

“Your Majesty!”

Lance blinked back to reality and saw Jo heading towards him with a lantern in hand. Her face was twisted with concern. “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, eyeing him up and down. “Are you not feeling well?”

Lance opened his mouth to reply just as his thoughts started skipping back and forth. His eyes pinched shut. Every memory was the colour of snow. Icy-white. Rosy cheeks and kisses and sunsets. Tears making rivers at his feet. The pain suddenly subsided and his fingers carefully and slowly fell away from his hair. His throat shivered before he spoke. “I was reading in the library. What are you doing out of bed?”

“I’m looking for Mary,” Jo said.

“She wasn’t in bed?” Lance asked, surprised.

Jo shook her head, her brows furrowed. “I woke up and she was gone.”

“How did she get past the guards outside the door?”

“The guards weren’t there.”

Before Lance could react to that, a scream tore through the stillness of the castle. They both snapped their heads to the same direction as they heard it again, then footsteps of frantic guards pounding down the hallway. Lance and Jo exchanged looks before dashing to where the scream had come from. They bumped into Mary at a turn. She was still dressed in her nightgown, a coat wrapped around her shoulders to keep herself warm. She looked horrified as she bent her knees and apologised to Lance.

Jo yanked her up by her arm and scolded her for having left the room. Meanwhile, Lance was silently watching their behaviours. He could see the difference in the way Jo treated Mary. She didn’t call Mary ‘a witch’ anymore, and she seemed more worried than angry. Lance didn’t want to read into things that might or might not be there, but he felt like Jo had started to trust Mary a bit too much. Unfortunately, he’d started to doubt this woman.

“Where did you go?” he asked, his voice composed.

Fear crossed Mary’s face for a brief second, and she was quick to mask it with a confused expression. “I sleepwalked.”

“Since when do you sleepwalk?” Jo asked.

“I don’t know,” Mary said with a small shrug.

Lance knew she was lying. Mary had put on a coat to leave the room. She’d done it on purpose. But what was it?

“Was it you who screamed?” Jo asked, still holding Mary’s hand.

Mary took a cautious glance at Lance before shaking her head. “No, I heard it too.”

Lance’s heart was beating hard and fast as he pushed aside his doubt for Mary and headed straight toward the screaming. A small crowd of courtiers in nightgowns had gathered around a window, their faces lit by the pale moonlight, and Lance could make out the fear on every single one.

“Your Majesty!” a guard exclaimed, and everyone immediately backed away from the window as soon as they saw Lance.

“It’s the emissary, Your Majesty,” said another guard.

Jo, who was standing right beside Lance now, smacked both hands over her mouth and let out a gasp. Lance peered out of the window of the tower, wind and snow slapping at his face and hair.

On the ground lay George Wallace, his limbs bending in unusual positions. The blood flowed thickly from his body; in the moonlight, it was as dark as black ink. His eyes were open, staring lifelessly back at Lance.

“He killed himself, Your Majesty,” the guard said. There were horrified whispers among the others.

“Did anyone see him jump?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

Lance looked over his shoulder. Jo and the other ladies were sobbing now. But then there was Mary, who silently met his gaze and slowly turned away.

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Y/N sprinted through the forest, her feet punching through the snow, fury growing in her stomach with each violent step. She didn’t look back, but she knew Harry was right behind her.

The snow was falling in thick sheets now, and Y/N vaguely remembered having taken this path before. Her head still hurt. The ringing in her ears had become a scream yet she tried not to slow down to keep up with the deer.

It stopped when they broke out of a line of trees.

Y/N held her breath.

It didn’t take her too long to recognise the familiar surroundings. She had stood on this cliff a few nights ago, looking at the same moon, and witnessed a reunion between two star-crossed lovers with ill fate.

The snow started coming down in thick washes of white, and Y/N began to feel it again. The cold of the water rushing into her lungs. The pain of death.

The wind was blowing harder now. Everything felt too much. She smelled smoke. Something burning. She heard a cry for help. A wailing of a child.

“The deer!” Harry shouted, pulling her back to reality.

Her eyes shot open as she whipped her head around and saw that they were the only two standing on the cliff. The deer was gone.

“It was only an illusion,” Harry yelled over the howling of the wind. “We must get back before it’s too late.”

“Come, Y/N, come, my child.”

It was that voice again, calling from beyond the cliff.

“We can’t go back!” Y/N screamed, pushing away from Harry. “I must–”

He grabbed her by the arms and spun her around with a force so violent that she could see the fear in his eyes when they met hers. He tightened his fingers around her wrists. “Remember what happened at the house. This is not real.”

Y/N remembered vividly what had happened. That was how she knew this wasn’t like that. She was well aware of what was happening. This was real. Harry wouldn’t get it. He hadn’t seen those things that she’d seen. He could not communicate with the deer. It had brought them here for a reason, and the answer they were looking for lay beyond that cliff.

She looked over her shoulders. A strong wind sailed over them and her braid broke loose, releasing her long waves of hair like water pouring into the sky. She looked back at Harry. His green eyes swimming with tears.

“You must jump.”

“I must jump,” she echoed the words coming from beyond the cliff.

Harry’s eyes went wide with shock. “Stop! You’re not thinking straight!”

“I am thinking straight!” she snapped, startling him, yet his grip only tightened around her bony wrists. “You promised that you’d trust me!”

“That doesn’t mean I’d let you kill yourself!” he snapped.

“Come to me, my child.”

Y/N was sobbing now. She shook her head, tears flying out of the corners of her eyes. “The voice is coming from under. I have to jump.”

“You don’t!” He let go of her hand only to cup her face between his cold, gloveless palms. His gaze was fierce and gentle at the same time as he forced her to look him in the eye. “Go back with me,” he spoke softly.

Y/N wanted to go with him. They could return to the cave and pretend that none of this had happened. Sadly, every single part of her knew what she must do next. The trees, the dark snow-filled sky, the ash clouds rising up beneath her feet and the icy water in her lungs. They weren’t illusions; they were memories from a past life, calling out for her, and she must answer.

“I’m sorry.” She released an unsteady breath. “I love you.”

Harry’s fingers froze on her cheeks. His glassy eyes went round and wide as he gazed at her unblinkingly.

She stepped closer, touching his face. “And you loved me, too. I know you don’t remember, but there was a time when I was everything you’d ever wanted. I’m sorry I put you in danger. I’m sorry you had to sacrifice so much for me, even your life. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you then. And I’m sorry I cannot go with you now. So if I don’t come back, I want you to know that nothing has changed for me. I’ll...I’ll always love you no matter what becomes of us.”

“I believe you.”

“What?”

A line appeared between Harry’s brows. He caught his breath, his skin turning blue and grey. “I believe you,” he echoed his own words. “I don’t remember everything. But I...I remember loving you.”

Y/N couldn’t bear another thought, so she shifted forward and pressed her lips to his. His fingers found the back of her neck, gentle like snowflakes caught in hair, and she kissed him harder before her heart swelled up into her throat. When she drew her mouth away from his, she believed he knew what she was going to do next, yet was so stunned by the kiss that he was frozen in place.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered and shoved him away. Right as he fell onto the snow, Y/N threw herself right off the cliff. Harry’s painful cry shattered the dark stormy sky as Y/N started free-falling into the endless blackness.

Everything slowed down until there was nothing. Only her and the moon that seemed to swallow her whole. Her hand reached out, kissing that giant bright globe. Everything was a blur. Her body twirled and jerked as she fell. The wind in her face made it impossible to breathe. She felt like she'd suffocate before she ever hit the water surface. And when she did, she felt a thousand needles poking into her skin. The cold water drowned her. She closed her eyes. And dreamed.

She was standing in the corner of a warm firelit room, watching a woman, whose hair was as white as snow, rocking her child to sleep.

The Moon Lady. Y/N recognised her. She looked even more beautiful up close, yet she seemed so restless. She kept glancing at the door as if expecting somebody. Y/N assumed her husband was supposed to be home by now. The Shadow Man.

The snow was falling down in thick sheets outside the windows. A storm was gathering in the sky, so her husband probably wouldn’t make it back.

Before Y/N could finish her next thought, the door was kicked down with a force so violent that the walls seemed to shake. Cold winds washed over the room, nearly blowing out the fire.

Three tall men walked in, weapons in hands, symbols of the army on their uniforms. They were Isolde guards.

Y/N tried to move. She wanted to help the lady because she recognised the fear in the lady’s eyes. But it seemed as if her feet were glued to the floor, and all she could do was scream at the lady to run, do something, get out of here. No words escaped. No matter how hard she tried to scream, she could not make a sound.

“Where’s Lokesh?” the woman asked, standing up and pressing her baby tightly against her chest.

The men strolled around the room. They knew they could overpower this poor woman, so they were taking their time.

“The King’s never coming back here again,” said one of them as they stared into the fire, which was burning low. “We’re here to collect what’s his.”

Another one reached for the child but the woman was quick to kick over a chair and stop him from getting any closer. “No, you won’t have my child!” she raised her voice. “I need to speak to Lokesh!”

“The child belongs to the King. That’s the deal.”

‘There’s no deal!” cried the woman. “He loves me. He won’t let our baby be harmed!”

“The King has promised the Gods. He won the war, so now it’s either the life of that baby or his.”

“No.” The woman shook her head so fast it might fall right off her neck. “He won the war on his own. He would never trade our baby’s life for any God. He wouldn’t want anyone to hurt his child.”

It was no use reasoning with these men; Y/N knew they weren’t here to hear this woman out.

One of them nodded to the other. “Grab her.”

They advanced. The Moon Lady stepped back.

She screamed.

Y/N felt like her ears exploded as glass shattered and the whole house shook like there was an earthquake. Before any of the men could run for the door, the fire flared out and consumed the one closest to it.

Y/N jolted right up. The smell of ash and snow still hung over her. She felt the snow against her cheek. Cold and wet. The scent of earth and green filled her nostrils. She looked up. Moonlight peeked through the trees, pale and lonely. Her fingers pushed into the snow, into the soil, hands burrowing up to her wrists. A ringing filled her ears. As soon as she realised she was alive, she sucked in air like it had never felt so good inside her lungs.

She was sprawling on the lakeshore, soaked from head to toes yet she couldn’t feel the cold or pain. She rolled up her sleeves and lifted her arms to see that the scars and wounds were all gone. Her skin was as smooth and soft as that of a baby. She looked like she’d stripped off her old skin and put on a new one.

The surface of the lake was as smooth as black glass. Y/N threw a stone and watched it skip across the still water, the radiating ripples caught the moonlight. After three skips, the stone sank, then once again, the lake looked like glass.

She’d found it.

The lake that wasn’t frozen on the coldest winter night on the North mountain.

The lake which had healed her.

The sound of footsteps on the snow startled Y/N, snapping her back to reality. She whipped her head around to find a tall dark figure towering over her. She was just about to fight when she heard the voice.

“Peach, it’s me.”

His face emerged from the shadow, brightened by the moonlight.

“Harry!”

Y/N jumped right to her feet, her arms tightened around his neck. He was wet too, but she’d hold him forever if she could. He hugged her back and everything felt right again. She knew that he was real and not just a figment of her imagination.

He was the first to pull away and cup her face between his palms, bringing their foreheads together. “Peach, are you okay?” he asked, gently.

She nodded fast, not sure if she was laughing or crying. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “You jumped. You could’ve died.”

He let out a shaky laugh as his fingers buried into her tangled hair. “You would’ve definitely died. You can’t swim, Peach.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She blinked up at him. “What? How...how do you know that?”

His mouth curled into the smile of the man she loved. “I’ve saved you from drowning before, haven’t I?”

Realisation finally sank in.

She let out a sob, then burst into tears.

“You remember,” she said quietly.

He gave a nod, brushing his thumbs across her cold cheeks. “Everything, my love. I remember everything.”

[doorsclosingslowly]

Hell is just a beat away (2/9): Keen to show you the unhappy ones below you

Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. (A Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic  AU)

Warnings: accidental underage alcohol consumption, body horror, mention of sex slavery, violence against children, minor character death.

The attendant bends gracefully, smiling as she refills fine translucent cups. The first one is in front of Master Zalandas Fyaar, so the standard diplomatic protocol of privileging the Jedi emissary and guest apparently holds true even on this tiny corrupt world, and then comes that of the twi’lek’s own employer. The man who is Zalandas and Eldra’s new charge. His name is Martrey Woobudg, a tall harried human just like Fyaar, and the upstart frontrunner candidate for mayor of the capital of the Outer Rim planet of Teth. A second passes—a wriggling suspicion in the back of her mind, and then Eldra smooths it over—and then the beautiful twi’lek looks at Master Zalandas and bows and tops up the cup in front of Eldra, too, even though that one has barely been touched.

Woobudg and Master Zalandas pick up their drinks immediately, taking a break from hurried planning to praise the olid tea within. Eldra nibbles at the porcelain edge of her cup. The twi’lek attendant does not drink. She doesn’t even have a cup. Or a biscotti. Or a seat, and when fine hot droplets of tea splatter Eldra’s padawan tunic, and she realizes she’s actually biting down hard now on her crockery.

It’s not the fear of getting poisoned that holds Eldra back from enjoying her tea, although, considering they were called here after the third assassination attempt on Woobudg… maybe a little caution should be in order. It’s a serviceable excuse should Master Zalandas ask, anyway, even if it’s not the true reason, and neither is what Eldra privately decides is the painfully obvious and pointless braggadocio inherent in Woobudg serving imported Chandrilan tea, despite the well-publicized price-hike after last year’s ruined harvest there, and the fact that it absolutely genuinely does taste like unfiltered bantha piss. He’s serving his pricey swill to a couple of Jedi, moreover: to his protectors bound by duty, who do not revel in wealth.

It’s not that, though.

It’s not even really because this is only Eldra’s second diplomatic mission, and she’s sworn she’s going to take her job more seriously this time around. She’s going to make sure no-one, not even once, peeks in unnoticed through the doors and windows. That isn’t it either, and truthfully she’s paying attention far less than she means to.

It’s something far more petty and profane: the subtle spiced fragrance of the attendant’s perfume as she bends over Eldra to reach the china. Her dress, as expensive as the tea, made from rippling opaque silk in a slightly lighter shade of blue than the woman’s skin. It’s a fairly modest cut. Barely any flash of cleavage, despite Eldra’s vantage point. Chosen expressly for this meeting, Eldra thinks sourly, and who do you think you’re fooling?

It’s the attendant’s bearing, calm and open and as serene as any Jedi Master.

It’s the fact that Eldra’s still thinking of her as ‘the attendant’ even though she’s been flitting around the room for two hours now at least. It’s that she wasn’t introduced. It’s that she doesn’t have a cup. A biscotti. A seat.

It’s her teeth.

What would happen, Eldra wonders, if I asked her to come sit and have a drink with us? Besides the obvious, of course: Master Zalandas’ abject disappointment at Eldra’s dearth of diplomatic skill. Would the attendant keep smiling? Displaying her teeth? Or would she flinch the moment the hot nasty leaf juice hits them?

Because her teeth are white-lacquered, dainty, tiny, horrifying stumps. Eldra can’t stop looking at them. They’re almost worn down to the gums. Twice-sanded at least, probably. Once, to sharpen the natural edges further—Eldra runs her tongue over the edges of her own canines, her pointy incisors, like she’s been doing ever since researching for a class project the customs of the peoples of the polar tip of the northernmost continent of Ryloth, the place where she was told she’d been born—teeth sanded once, sharpened, and then, they were ground down again mercilessly to make them blunt.

“Another biscotti, Padawan?”

Watch your feelings, Eldra. Remember that you are a Jedi. Remember your duty. That’s what Master Zalandas means, and Eldra startles, self-conscious and guilty. She must’ve lost her bearing, been grabbing attention even with the question bitten back behind her lips. She nods, a quiet thanks for the reminder. She studies the window again, on guard for any assassin. She tells herself: this meeting is important. Martrey Woobudg is a reformer, an anti-corruption juggernaut, and his rise a chance to wrest Teth from out the criminal syndicates’ control and, ultimately, bring it into the regulatory orbit of the Republic once more. If he keeps his promises after he wins, the election will spell a sea-change for the poor, who’ll finally be able to go about their lives without paying massive bribes to every single government official they have the misfortune of meeting, and it will aid the rise of a stable middle class. It’ll keep out the Hutts, too. It’ll be a triumphant sign of progress. Woobudg is important. His safety is paramount. His fate determines the future of so many people; it’s so much bigger than the life of this one attendant. Eldra knows the brief.

And still, her eyes are drawn back to his twi’lek servant.

To his slave.

That’s why you sand down someone’s teeth until there’s barely anything left. Why you keep at it long after it hurts. Why the sharpest teeth are so popular on Ryloth in the first place.

No-one wants a sex slave capable of biting their throat out.

Dutifully, she attempts to listen again, to keep watch, but looking at Woobudg’s face it’s still all she can think of. Slaver, slaver, slaver. He’s important, and Eldra must protect him, and he’s a slaver.

Looking back at the attendant, she’s met by the serene smile again, full of awful tiny teeth.

Looking at her Master, she feels her own inadequacy.

Looking down at her own hands is no escape. They’re darker than the attendant’s, callused and oil-stained and nails half-covered with flaking black nail polish. They’re the hands of someone far too slowly growing into the knowledge that her body is a shell, a vessel, that she is a luminous being of higher purpose. They’re a Jedi’s hands, or will be, and through them the force flows and shapes the galaxy. They are the hands of someone who will know no emotion, but peace. They are the hands of someone who neither covets nor disdains expensive Chandrilan tea. They are the hands of a faithful servant of the Republic. They are the hands that will protect Woobudg from his enemies and facilitate the rise of Teth, come what may, because she knows right, and she knows duty.

She forces herself to meet Woobudg’s eyes when he looks at her, feigning attention, and hopes he didn’t just ask a question.

She fidgets with her twi’lek girl fingers.

⁂

Hiding and curled and dirty under the stranger’s ship in the now-deserted hangar, two hours after he crawled down there, Maul finally realizes he’s been underestimating his Master. This mission on Nar Shaddaa is not just a chance for the apprentice to prove himself. No, Master is wise and efficient, and he wouldn’t have a single purpose for anything He does when He could, instead, have a myriad. It’s not just a test of Maul’s skill and loyalty.

It’s also a series of lessons.

Yesterday, Maul had been so sure he knew the meaning of cold.

He’d read about it, after all, memorized all the ice worlds in the galaxy and the medical texts on hypothermia and studied the schematics of atoms bouncing ever more slowly off each other. He’d looked at holos of skin blistered and sloughing off from unwise exposure, and he’d been impressed. A little scared, maybe, and very excited to progress in his studies so one day he’d have a chance to experience winter. But Maul’s been hiding under the stranger’s ship for hours now, and Nar Shaddaa is cold. It’s not flashy, the cold, like the holos of icebergs and boiling water thrown up and coming down powder implied. It’s not exciting at all. The cold of Nar Shaddaa is quiet. It’s the floor leeching into Maul’s back and legs, until he can’t tell anymore where wet dirt ends and he begins. It’s uncontrollable shivering. It’s his nose leaking, leaking, leaking. It’s making him tired.

Mustafar bubbled and smoked, and even inside the training complex with its sophisticated uncounted layers of insulation—Maul had dug into the wall once, tunneling almost a quarter-way through with a droid’s breastplate repurposed into a shovel—even inside, during some of the periods that Maul had taken to calling ‘seasons’ after researching the planet of Naboo, it was often so warm Maul wished he was allowed to tear off his tunics, and an additional layer or two of skin with it. Sweating, panting, he’d read the word cold, and he’d wanted it badly. He’d dreamt, open-eyed, for so many hours, of himself rolling around in the cold white snow and chasing ice-weasels. But back then, on Mustafar, it was hot. And Nar Shaddaa is real, and it’s now, and it’s so so cold.

Maul can’t stay down here forever, or even for another minute. He wants to sleep. He wants to run, at the same time, to fight the Jedi apprentice until he meets victory or glorious death. He wants to have completed this mission already. He wants a lightsaber of his own, so he can hold it and bask in its warmth. He wants to sleep. Force, he wants to be asleep. He wants to wake up in his small boiling cell and realize this has all been a dream.

(He wants someone to hold his hand and say, “I’ll help you,” but that’s the most impossible thought of all.)

There is no point in wishing for anything, though. There has never been. He must act. He must stop sneezing. The slave auction will be in four days now, a short strip of time he just needs to overwinter somewhere, Maul tells himself, and even if he doesn’t want to go anywhere near Master’s Star Courier now that it has killed the teenagers that could have been Maul’s friends and the mangy brachno-jag besides, there are many other options. Many other ships. He’s curled down here, in the cold, under just such a ship.

He knows how to pick locks.

It’s not hard at all to gain entry to the ship, now that he’s thought of it. He could have done it in less than thirty seconds, if his hands were shaking less and he had the proper tools, the ones he’s been meaning to build himself for years but in Master’s complex on Mustafar there was little point and then he had to construct stilts and the vocoder-mask for his mission and he forgot—Maul could have sliced the lock in under twenty-five point five seconds, he decides, with the tools, but the ten minutes he actually fiddled with it were acceptable too, because neither the training-droids nor Master himself were there to witness it, and besides, he doesn’t have much practice yet. (He should lock the door again and re-slice it, and over and over, until he’s quick enough. He should. But there’s no-one here to watch, and Nar Shaddaa is cold…)

This one looks almost exactly like Master’s ship, on the inside. Maybe all starships do: a few red-plush benches around a low table in the main travelers’ compartment, overlooked by a massive idling viewscreen, two small side rooms with pairs of sleeping berths, a refresher with a sonic shower and a kitchenette and, most interesting of all, an unlocked engine room and a cockpit with a slightly different layout than the Star Courier had. Maul shall explore them in detail, as soon as he’s warmed up and fed and made sure there are no hidden traps in here. He didn’t dare take apart his Master’s property, but this ship belongs to someone who won’t, can’t, defend his claim against Darth Maul, heir of the Sith—soon-to-be Darth Maul, he corrects quickly—and power is the only true right in the galaxy. Through power he will gain victory, and what is victory in this situation but access to a stranger’s ship’s mechanics? A fuel tank blinks enticingly, and soon Maul shall learn its secrets.

Food first, though.

He upends his satchel over the low table and picks through his haul from the ill-fated convenience store visit. Bottles, ordered by color, to the left—a toxic orange looking one the furthest away, then brown, then the two water bottles with their beautiful waxing gibbous shape when seen from the top and the yellow labels with red writing—and the crinkly chips packages to the right, joined by the sandwiches and the jaw-mask and two pairs of huge glasses with dark lenses and wide red-black frames.

The orange drink is bitter and sickly sweet and probably poisoned, and when he pushes it away it tips over and spills all over the carpet. It deserved that ending, though. It was vile. It didn’t have the right to be drunken by a Sith Lord.

Trying to rinse the taste off his tongue is unsuccessful: the fancy water is bitter, sharp, oily, and Maul shudders. At least the sandwiches smell bright and meaty through their flimsi wrapping. They’ll mask the awful water he’ll have to sip from to avoid dehydration, and so he picks one, to devour while he explores the sitting area.

Perched in an overhead nook is a flickering holo of a weequay male kissing the top of a young weequay’s head, and he turns it off as quickly as he can.

The two blankets and five little pillows are far more welcome spoils, and so is the datapad wedged underneath one of the benches. Someone’s taped a scrap of flimsi securely to the back, too, with two neat rows of handwriting. A name, and then a series of numbers.

Maul types them into the datapad, and it lights up.

“Good evening, Johen,” the pad greets him.

There are pages opened already on the datapad, a search for restaurants on Coruscant and a school’s newsletter and—two catalogues. One of them is Grakkus’ slave auction, and Johen is already logged in.

It’s… in three days?

There must be a mistake. Master said it was in eight days, four days ago, and Master is never wrong, but there’s no slave auction on that date no matter which button Maul presses and where he navigates on the catalogue, just the one in three days, and then five days after, and another five days, and another…

Master doesn’t make mistakes. He knows everything, studied the secrets of the galaxy that the Jedi would keep suppressed, and the hidden weaknesses of far-off planets’ politicians, and every single one of Maul’s minute failures except for the secret dreams, and He would know the true date of this slave auction. He would not err, not when this mission is so vital to the grand plans of the Sith that he sent his own apprentice to complete it. He would never…

He wouldn’t…

But what He would do is test Maul.

A true scion of the Sith does not trust blindly in dates and dossiers, and Master knows that. He must have told Maul the wrong date to pass on this wisdom. He must have, and He didn’t even fear the risk that this momentous mission might fail, because He trusted that Maul would understand.

And Maul did.

Master made the right choice. It’s as if someone had pumped Maul’s chest cavity full up with helium, pulling him off the upholstery and into the cool air: he found the correct date, with time to spare. He procured food and drink and shelter by himself, anticipated the need to hide his childish face under a mask. He built a vocoder. He is powerful and devilishly clever, and more prepared to serve the Sith than anyone has ever been, in all the history he knows, and Lord Sidious knew this when He sent Maul to Nar Shaddaa.

Master has never put His true pride into words; despite the considerable skill of His tongue He likely never will, but this mission is plain proof of the sort Maul never dared to yearn for.

His Master trusts Maul’s skill.

The emotion is overwhelming, and Maul wraps himself up in his blankets, to trap the acknowledgement for a while before it can dissipate.

He is victorious already. He is vengeance. He is Sith.

He’s won three days early.

After half an hour, though, basking in his glory gets boring. His face is growing warm. He’s eaten two sandwiches, too, and forced down seven gulps of awful water. He should sleep, but he isn’t tired yet.

Maul doesn’t exactly know what to do with downtime. Or: he does know. On Mustafar, he had long stretches with nothing to do. Apparently, it’s physically impossible to keep training all the time. SRT-X (or Strut, as Maul had called it in secret) once put itself in front of Maul and showed articles to Lord Sidious, about a vain bodybuilder on Corellia whose arm muscles had eventually started breaking down from overexertion, and he’d nearly poisoned himself with the waste of his own overbulged dead muscle tissue. Strut didn’t survive that confrontation, which in retrospect Maul admits was completely fair. (At the time, he’d cried his eyes out, no matter how much Master had tried to make him to stop, but that too had been a valuable lesson: the Master is always right, and contradiction suicide. Even if the frequency of lessons had tapered off somewhat after that. Lord Sidious had probably independently decided to make Maul train less. He was wise that way.)

He’s had long stretches where he didn’t even feel like tinkering with his droid projects, or meditating, because occasionally the hatred just wouldn’t come. That was before Lord Sidious showed Maul what the Jedi had done to the Sith: nowadays, it’s much easier to feel hatred. (Or what passes for hatred, anyway. Mostly it’s nothing but protective anger, but that is just another failure he cannot admit even to himself.)

During those times when there was nothing to do, Maul often researched people. Master is a politician in His spare time, of course, as Maul overheard some years ago, and He makes people dance and shiver and obey with a single word. It’s almost more impressive than being a Sith Lord. To manipulate people… to talk them into being your friends… Maul might need that skill, especially in the future when he will become the Sith Lord and teach his own apprentice—he would need the skill just to find an apprentice—and so he started his research project. Which admittedly consisted of looking at the hololessons that Master left for him. But that was the best way to observe natural behavior. Which was why Maul watched them. Over and over.

He’s not brought the hololessons with him now, but he is in someone’s ship. Johan had a picture up with his child. Maul already learnt so much today, about cold and efficiency and never trusting anybody and stealing from supermarkets, and maybe there is something additional to learn here, about people. He wobbles back over to the small holo and brings it down to his nest.

There’s nothing else on the datadrive, though, nothing but the toddler cradled in her father’s arms. No instructions. No meaning. Maul tries to imagine what it would feel like, to be that small or that big, but nothing wants to move in his head except for the water strangely threatening to blur his eyesight.

His chest hurts.

His chest hurts, and pain is a message.

Maul wishes he knew what he’s being told.

He moves closer and closer to the holodevice—there must be some power trapped in there, to make him react this way—and then his nose bumps against the plasteel.

It hits the off button, and Maul is alone again.

He tries to fall asleep.

He counts: he nearly finished his mission. He learnt about cold, and efficiency, and not trusting, and probably something about babies. He found food and water and shelter. He nearly made friends with hooded aliens and a brachno-jag. He—

Maul shoots upright and logs back in to the datapad.

He’s forgotten to search the database for the padawan.

⁂

There is one location on Teth even worse than the tea room: the stage out in the open air where Candidate Woobudg is stubbornly campaigning for freedom.

That’s what he keeps shouting.

Freedom, with the might of the Republic guarding his back and his twi’lek slave kneeling at his feet.

Freedom, the people rallying below mutter. Eldra is walking amongst them, looking for threats, while Master Fyaar is standing grimly behind Woobudge. “Optics,” Woobudg had explained and Master Fyaar had acquiesced, and Eldra didn’t understand and did: the twi’lek attendant would look too much like a person, she thinks, if she was next to a Jedi who could have been her daughter.

Freedom! Freedom! All around her, and something pulls on Eldra’s sleeve. It’s the hand of a young red twi’lek man. He’s collared and his left breast is exposed, suckling a sullustan baby. The child’s family—slavers—are a few meters ahead, and that’s what must have given him the courage to beg, wild-eyed and hoarse, “Take me with you, please!”

Freedom!

“We didn’t…” Eldra looks away. “We did not come here to free the slaves.”

⁂

No padawan is listed anywhere in the catalogue for Grakkus’ slave auction. There’s no Jedi, no witch, no force-sensitive or force-null or Sith or any thing or any being in any way remarkable. Nothing, neither in any listing for any future auction nor in the archives of successful deals stretching six decades into the past. No padawan who is not for sale but just a member of Grakkus’ personal collection except a boy who died ten years ago. No references to a Jedi sold by a third party, or even any guest who might be a Jedi when Maul cross-referenced the user lists with holonet articles about his ancestral foes. Two Jedi artifacts, but it’s not like those count.

No person that could in any way be interpreted as the mission target that Master talked about, not even after Maul exploited a weakness in the catalogue’s search field to give himself access that Johen shouldn’t have had and scoured it all over again.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

No way to succeed.

He should have been afraid all along. Maul wasted two hours basking in premature victory and safety; he wasted three days being cautiously optimistic, when he should have been swallowing down his pleas for mercy ever since the very second Master announced He’d send him to Nar Shaddaa.

Send him to failfail.

There’s no padawan here.

What does it mean, that Master wants Maul to fail the very first mission he ever had? What did Maul do wrong? Why couldn’t He just punish—?

Master might have made a mistake, perhaps, Maul’s mind offers timidly. Maybe He’s seen news of a padawan that isn’t here, but Master does not make mistakes. Master knows everything.

Besides, it being a mistake—which it isn’t—wouldn’t make a lick of a difference to Maul’s chances of surviving his Master’s wrath.

Maul swallows a gulp of the oily water, then another, and it burns. That doesn’t make his mind stop spinning, makes him even more woozy and warm and nauseous, but his growing illness won’t matter anyway if Master wants him dead. If he doesn’t find a padawan, nothing will ever matter again.

He’ll be punished. He’ll deserve it. He’ll die.

Maybe this is another lesson. Maul is training to become the Sith Lord after all, and every true Sith must learn that failure is not an option. Their mission is too important for that. Revenge is too important.

(Even if it’s not really meant as a lesson, not truly, Maul has to believe it is. Otherwise, what else is there to do but wait for death?)

Maybe this is a lesson in improvisation. In overcoming terror. In never giving in.

There must be a padawan somewhere on Nar Shaddaa. Somewhere in this quadrant, at least. Somewhere in the galaxy. Master must have meant ‘Nar Shaddaa’ in some general sense that doesn’t just refer to the planet, or maybe the padawan He talked of was moved…

The one location where there definitely are some padawans is the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Maul knows. But there are also several thousand armed and trained Jedi Masters there, and while Darth Maul will absolutely kill them all to avenge his fallen Sith brethren and sisters and siblings, he generally assumed it would happen at least one or two years in the future. That he’d have time to build a lightsaber before fighting to the death against the Grand Master Jedi, and also grow a little taller. His battle plans always took those things for granted.

Maul will just search the rest of the galaxy first for a suitable padawan, he decides, and keep the all-out assault on the Temple as a backup plan. That’s not cowardice: he only has a few more days and travelling to Coruscant will take a lot of time. It’s just efficient to try and find a padawan somewhere else first.

Maybe even somewhere on Nar Shaddaa. Maybe the owner of this ship just wasn’t interested in Jedi padawans.

Maul could get a different result on a different ship. He has to.

⁂

It happens too quickly for Eldra to process. The rally ends and the people disperse, and then there is a sound like static—and then she’s on her back with Master Fyaar’s heavy body on top of her. The air is shivering with the heat of blaster bolts and thick with the stench of burnt flesh and hair.

“Eldra,” Zalandas Fyaar rasps out. “Eldra.”

Eldra looks up at her. Master Fyaar’s blonde locks obscure her face, but they cannot hide the stripe of cooked skin at the very top of it, flecks of bone showing through. More than anything, Eldra wishes she could see her Master’s eyes, see the clear blue serenity that reminds her that all is as the force wills it. More than anything, she wishes she could see a mouth twisted in disappointment at Eldra’s failure to notice the ambush. Freckles. Worry-wrinkles. But Master Fyaar cannot raise her head, because she shielded Eldra with it, and—

“Eldra.”

Eldra raises her hand to Fyaar’s wound. She’s good at healing, she gets far better marks there than for diplomacy or geography or sports, and this is cauterized so there won’t be an infection, she just needs manipulate a few cells, to stabilize…

“You’re strong, child. You will not fall to the dark. I know it.”

That sounds like a goodbye. It doesn’t have to be. It won’t… “Master, please—” Eldra can heal her, she is healing her, the wound is closing a little.

“Always remember you are a Jedi.”

“Master—”

“Remember yourself.“

Jedi Master Zalandas Fyaar doesn’t die because she gives up. She doesn’t die because Eldra gives up, or because Eldra fails, or because survival was impossible: the man who pulls Eldra away from her dying Master simply doesn’t care that they need to touch.

He pushes Master Fyaar to the ground—“This one’s toast!”—and pulls Eldra upright by her left lekku, and no matter how desperately she fights through the pain worse than anything she has ever thought she’d bear, like her brain is being squashed and really that’s what is happening, like every thought she has has been replaced by puke-inducing pressure and she does retch and vomit, but still she fights, because if she can just get to Master Fyaar and save her then everything will be okay.

She fights until she doesn’t see the rise-and-fall of her Master’s chest anymore, and then she screams, and then she stops.

⁂

It’s the twelfth ship now. Same procedure as the last ones. Maul’s working through the entire shipyard ship by ship. Slowly, he crawls over and stands up and waits until the world stops wobbling, and then he slices the lock of the cargo hold. He searches for datapads and tries to access any slaver database he can.

Somewhere, someone must be selling a Jedi padawan. They just have to.

⁂

Something’s being shoved in front of her. A holocam, Eldra registers, to—shoot a picture for the ransom note? But why would they… it would suffice just to contact the Temple; they know where they sent Eldra and her Master; they know they haven’t been in contact; the must know that something went wrong.

Unless they don’t know she’s a…

“How do we want her?” the man holding the holocam asks. “Sultry?”

“Nah,” someone behind her back replies. “Feisty little Jedi like her’ll fetch more as a gladiator or something.”

So they do know. The Temple will ransom her, she’ll go home and everything won’t be okay because Master Fyaar will still be dead but—

“Growl.”

But she’ll go home—

“Growl, you little piece of shit!” the one behind her shouts, and she snarls. There’s a clicking sound. “Again!” she bares her teeth and gets another click, and another, and one more. There. They got the holo they don’t need, and then soon she’ll go—

Eldra screams when a hand twists her lekku.

She screams and screams, and when she calms down, she’s alone in a cell, on the ground, covered in fresh vomit and terrified and confused. I wasn’t fighting! I snarled for the camera, she thinks. I did what they asked me to do, there’s no reason… except they could. Because I’m alone right now.

Because they killed Master Fyaar.

They killed my…

And she…

“Remember yourself,” Master Fyaar said, her last words, and here Eldra is with her fists balled and gathering strands of hate around herself like a shroud. “Remember yourself,” and Eldra could hurt these people so easily if she felt for their cells and made them boil. Eldra could make it painful, and slow. It would be so easy.

So easy to fall.

“Remember yourself.”

⁂

Maul is sweaty and hot and he feels the way he did when he wasn’t allowed to sleep for days. He’s finished one half bottle of the awful water, and it hasn’t helped: everything is spinning and blurry and he’s still thirsty on top. He’s also inside his seventeenth ship and ready to give up on Nar Shaddaa. He’s been seeing the same nine slaver auction databases on repeat, and there’s considerable overlap between the offerings, and still nothing Jedi in sight.

I can’t fail, he thinks, and hits refresh again.

I can’t just fail my Master, and he’s about to exit the database and the ship and the planet when he notices the flashing window at the bottom right.

An alert!

An alert prominently featuring a twi’lek girl baring her teeth at the holocam, but the person is almost incidental to his interest.

“Jedi padawan for sale!” the headline screams in flashing red. “Freshly captured!!!”

So this is his enemy, his target, the prize he has to fetch to fulfill his destiny: she’s young, though probably older than him, and her blue face is badly cut up. There are deep purple bruises on both her lekku, and despite the anger and toughness she’s trying to display she mostly succeeds in looking terrified.

Hah, Maul thinks to himself. I knew the Jedi were soft. I wouldn’t be this weak, if I was captured, which never would happen in the first place because I am Darth Maul, heir of the Sith Order.

He looks at the picture again, trying to find his hatred. She and hers slaughtered the Sith on Malachor; they live in pampered safety; they know nothing of the Force. They—she would just as soon kill him, hurt him, traffic him if their fortunes were reversed. She is his enemy.

Still, she looks just like a person, alone and scared.

There is no point in looking at her image any more.

Maul studies the alert carefully. She is going to be sold tomorrow—not the date Master had told him of, but Maul already established that it was a test. She is going to be sold in the palace of Xev Xrexus, but maybe Master had misheard the name or it was yet another way of probing Maul’s skill. The terror Maul felt because of these tricks was a valuable lesson, a reminder of the utmost importance this mission held for the Sith Order and how inacceptable any kind of failure would be. Maul, moreover, has seen through it: he is completely equal to the task. He will bring the padawan to his Master, and not deviate from the plan for a single second. He is much more skilled than anyone else would be, anyone who isn’t an awesome Sith and therefore, he’ll perform admirably and easily, and Master will be proud. Master will pronounce him Darth Maul, and the many years of training will have paid off. He knows this. (Thinking it really hard, over and over, is the same thing as knowing.)

She’s been captured—

Master must have foreseen it. He is, after all, gifted in the art of clairvoyance he had told Maul, always already aware of the mistakes Maul might make at any point. So it makes sense, it does, that Master sent Maul to this planet days ago on a mission to buy a padawan that was captured two hours ago.

Master is wise that way.

He planned…

And…

By now, Maul is so tired and thirsty—his brain flashing Master knew and but why in quick dizzying succession—that even the relief of having succeeded can’t boost his energy anymore. He locks the ship, overriding any key fobs, and sets an alarm for well before the padawan’s auction. He takes a bite of the awful chips he acquired in the shop, and throws up.

⁂

“Smile.” He does. “Growl.” He does. “Not like that.” There is a slap, and then he arranges his facial muscles differently. He doesn’t know whether he’s succeeded, until he sees the approving nod, and feels the lack of punishment.

There is his body and there is him, and no connection between the two. If he had a mirror, he could make it look more natural, but only an approach. There is no joy here. No anger, or not the kind they would have him display. No future. There are no brothers to watch. There have been no brothers, ever since he was selected and taken off-planet, off-home, too many days or years ago now to count. These people’s expectations are a thick leather shirt, riverdunked and allowed to dry on the body, so tight that he can hardly breathe. There is no space inside for himself, let alone dreams or brothers or rage. There is only a face to rearrange, to the approval of a master.

A different master, soon.

Maybe that master will kill Savage. Maybe they won’t. One way or the other, this will the last ever auction he is sent to. Savage will make sure of that.

[drreporting]

Infections of A Different Kind of Human

3. ALL IS SOFT INSIDE

“And how long has she been like this?”

“Going on 18 hours now,” Owen explained. Ryan looked at Amelia, unconscious and tubed, with a variety of wires and lines running to her. He sighed, running his fingers through his hair, which he’d recently cut pretty short, so it didn’t do much to quell his anxiety. He couldn’t understand why Amelia had left his name on her medical forms.

“Do you have any idea why she would’ve still had you as her proxy?” Owen inquired, twiddling with the hospital band around his wrist. “I thought she would’ve updated it or something, especially after James…”

“If I remember Amelia correctly, she gambles,” Ryan accurately described, “Perhaps she gambled on your marriage working out.” How could she be so reckless? “I have no problem transferring the proxy to you, if that’s what you want,” he appreciatively offered, adding a joke after, “From one divorcee to the other.” He couldn’t take on the pressure of making life or death choices for her, and Owen would likely know all the medical jargon better than he would’ve, so it made sense to transfer it to him.

“I’m not entirely sure if I should take it,” Owen sombrely replied. When Ryan looked at him with a confused expression, he said, “We weren’t exactly in a good place when…”

“So?”

“I literally caught her cheating on me, I don’t think she’d want me making medical decisions on her behalf,” Owen put it bluntly.

“That’s pretty harsh, don’t you think?” Ryan queried, folding his arms, “Isn’t this supposed to be the love of your life, or something?”

“Yeah, but I am clearly not the love of her life anymore, so I don’t think I should be making those decisions,” Owen clarified, sternly. They were not on the best of terms when the accident had occurred and adding the consent of her medical health to that would only make things worse if she eventually woke up. “Give it to Derek, or Meredith. I think that’s best.”

“I think I’ll keep it, actually,” Ryan pondered, eyeing the trauma surgeon as he unfolded his arms, “She can decide what she wants, once she’s awake.”

Owen sighed, submitting. “Sure, why not.”

“How are the kids?” he asked, changing the subject, “How’s R junior doing?”

“He is pretty shaken up,” the red head confessed, “Rosie is…I don’t know. And the twins are pretty young, sounds think they’re coping alright. They don’t like sudden, loud noises much anymore.”

“Yeah, I could imagine,” Ryan sympathized. He walked over to Owen and patted him on his good shoulder before saying, “I’m gonna go talk to him before I leave, if that’s okay.” Without looking at him, Owen nodded, keeping his eyes on Amelia’s small frame, willing her to wake up.

The next day made it two days since Amelia had been shot, and a little over 36 hours since her surgery had been done. As per usual, there was an entourage in Amelia’s room, consisting of Derek, Meredith, Maggie, Ryan, Owen, and more recently, Tom. He’d offered to stay for the while to maintain her condition, and then hopefully query about the patient Amelia had been speaking of to him, the entire reason for his visit. They lazed about the room for most of the day, offering support to each other, and to Owen, as they patiently awaited Amelia’s outcome.

---

Sometime in the evening, they’d all received overhead pages from a nurse, all calling them to Amelia’s room.

“Tom?” Owen rasped as he all but slid into the patient room, Ryan following closely behind, “What’s going on?”

“She’s waking up,” Tom voiced calmly. He’d already called the nurse and began adjusting her pumps for the medications she was being administered when he began hearing a soft cough coming from her.

“Yes, she’s definitely waking up…”

“Well, is she going to open her eyes?”

“If you’re patient enough, Dr. Hunt…”

Amelia opened her eyes to a crowd of people standing over her. She only recognised two of them in the room and they looked…odd?

“Amelia, can you hear us?” Tom asked, shining his penlight in her eyes. Why wouldn’t she be able to hear them? What was Tom doing here?

“Can you try talking?” he asked further, offering her a cup of water with a straw in it. Amelia took the cup and had a small sip, clearing her throat as she figured out what she wanted to say first.

“Where…where am I?” she whispered hoarsely.

“You’re at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, in Seattle,” the Hopkins neurosurgeon expertly answered, a look of concern crossing his face for a flash of a second, “Do you remember any of what happened two days ago?” Two days ago? Amelia shook her head. She looked over at Derek, then at a blonde standing next to him, holding his hand. She figured that was probably the Meredith that Addison had been speaking about. Next to her stood another blonde, more strawberry in colour. His face reeked with fear and stress, and Amelia wondered what would’ve caused him to look so horrified.

“You were in an accident a couple days ago,” Tom explained, “You were wounded, but everything’s okay now; surgery was successful.” She nodded, showing that she understood what he was saying. Looking around the room once more, she observed the faces of the people at her bedside.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Amy?” Derek offered softly, trying to coax her back from wherever in her mind she was right now.

Amelia blankly looked at him before looking away and shrugging. “I wasn’t in Seattle.”

“Do you remember me?” Ryan piped up, garnering the attention of everyone in the room for a moment. She looked at him, at his jet-black hair and icy blue eyes, his loosely fitted plaid shirt and washed-out jeans, and his soft, welcoming smile.

Shaking her head, Amelia responded, “No, but you’re very cute otherwise.” Ryan quirked an eyebrow at her, not expecting a flirtatious reply, while Owen scoffed and averted his eyes as he rolled them.

“Amelia, we met over ten years ago,” Ryan vaguely replied, trying to help her remember, “In LA?”

Amelia raised her eyebrows in shock as though she remembered something, taking another sip of her water. Ryan looked hopefully at her as she continued, “I was in LA.”

He sighed, combing his fingers through his hair. “So, then you don’t remember me…” Amelia furrowed her eyebrows, slightly annoyed that he was asking her the same question again. Why did he want her to remember something about him? “We met at a party?” Ryan explained to her.

“I’ve met a lot of men at parties,” she bluntly replied, “Excuse me if I don’t remember you exactly.”

Owen’s eyes widened. “Wait what-,”

“Okay, let’s give our patient some time to gather her thoughts; she’s only just woken up,” Tom voiced, trying to temporarily brush everything under the rug, “In the meantime, I’m going to need to see her most recent CT scans, and perhaps we can get some new ones?”

“They’re all on the tablet,” Derek explained, pointing at the device that was in Tom’s hand.

“No they’re not,” he  replied, “I imagine I’d have to access them physically in your dinosaur hospital?”

“They’re supposed to be available on the iPad.” Derek took the device from him and began scanning through his sister’s patient chart, only to find out that Tom was right. There was no file, nor record, of any brain scans done on her.

With smoke metaphorically piping through his ears, Derek stepped outside and went straight to the front desk, seeing Isaac there. His eye was still shining purple from Owen’s elbow to his face, and he had to admit that he was kind of glad now that Owen had done it. While Tom was still making his way over, the Shepherd asked, “Where are Amelia’s CT scans?”

Isaac looked up at him and furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t know, they’re supposed to be on the system. I sent an intern to request the scans once she was out of surgery.”

“Wow you must really hate Shepherd to have done that,” Koracick chimed in as he arrived at the desk, “What did she do to you?”

“What? She didn’t do anything to me…”

“You secretly in love with her or something? Did she break your heart?” he further provoked the attending neurosurgeon, making him stand up angrily to defend his actions, “She the one who gave you the black eye?"

“No, it was me,” Owen intervened, making his presence known. Looking to Isaac, he added, “And if there’s something wrong with her brain, you’ll have more than that to worry about.”

“I’m sorry, was that a threat, Dr. Hunt?” Isaac challenged, staring him in his eye. “Perhaps I should report you to HR?”

“And maybe I should report you to the board for negligence concerning a missing CT scan on one of your patients who exhibited neurological symptoms,” he retorted. If Owen could only get his hand out of this sling and hit him, he would. Tom watched the lesser neurosurgeon with a satisfying smirk, while Derek glared at him. To say Amelia had an army, was an understatement.

Isaac wanted to respond, but he knew he was in the wrong and had possibly jeopardised the brain function of his boss by assigning an intern to do his job, so he relented. “I’ll call up CT and get it done right away.”

“Perhaps I should take over head of neuro here,” Tom teased as Isaac walked away, knowing he could be heard, “Looks like this place might fall apart without Shepherd.”

---

When Amelia awoke, she was in a patient room, lying down in bed. Owen’s head laying against the side of the bed, and she would’ve thought he was asleep if it wasn’t for his soft snoring. Weak and in pain, she was barely able to stretch her fingers to poke his head, but he felt the action and his face instantly popped up to look at her. “You’re okay,” he sighed in relief, taking her hand as he let more tears fall, fresher than the ones that fell earlier.

“What happened?” she whispered hoarsely, letting him take her hand in his two larger ones.

“You collapsed during surgery,” he explained, not sure how to explain the rest of the story, “You…Robbins said you were having an ectopic pregnancy. 8 weeks.” Amelia closed her eyes as the tears began to fall. “There was blood leaking from your fallopian tube when she went in…” The words coming out of his mouth slowly faded into the background as she absorbed the information. She couldn’t help but feel like she’d spited herself by their earlier conversation about having an abortion, as illogical as it sounded.

“…there was nothing that she could’ve done,” Owen finished, waiting for her response.

“So, I had a miscarriage,” she repeated, to which he nodded. Amelia averted her gaze and looked out the window, unsure of how to process the information, if she could.

“Are you okay?” he asked, not expecting her silence. He expected an outcry, tears, emotions all over, but there was just silence; Amelia seemed unfazed, numb. “I mean, I know you’re not okay, but…”

“I’m okay,” she said unsurely. Truthfully, she didn’t know if she was really okay, or if the emotions were just waiting to burst out of her at some untimely point in the future. It was hard to tell when all she could think of was how stupid it was that she was actually anxious earlier about how to go about raising a fifth child. Now she felt numb, the kind of numbness that came from touching ice for too long. The type of numbness that stung you after a while, and made your hand cramp.

“Is there anything you need?” he further asked, trying to determine what she might want right now, “Should I bring in the kids?”

“No, don’t bring them,” she responded, pulling her hand out of his grasp, “Can you…can I be alone?” Alone? Amelia never liked being alone with her thoughts, Owen knew this.

“Okay…are you sure?” he sought to confirm, a little disappointed that she couldn’t seem to make eye contact with him, “We don’t have to talk or anything, I could just stay here quietly?”

“Alone is fine, thanks,” she coldly answered him, still not looking in his direction. Sighing, Owen stood and left, looking back once at her small figure, still in bed, facing away from him. After that, Amelia had slowly, but surely, begun to shut him out. To the point where he no longer knew if she even had feelings.

---

“How long do I have to stay in this thing?” Amelia complained. They were in the CT room now, with Owen, Derek and Tom on the other side of the glass, awaiting her results.

Pressing a finger on the mic, Tom responded, “If you stay still and stop talking, we could be finished in less time.”

“What are you even doing here in Seattle?” she further complained as the nurse injected the dye, “Did you lose your job at Hopkins?”

“Far from it,” Koracick replied, “You called me on a consult for a patient, but you never told me who the patient was.” He turned off the mic and looked to Owen and Derek, adding, “Did she ever tell you she had a crush on me back in the day?” Derek rolled his eyes while Owen furrowed his brows in confusion; he really didn’t like this guy.

“Just do the scan,” Derek insisted, a disgusted look on his face. Tom chuckled, enjoying the discomfort he was causing amidst Amelia’s colleagues.

“Okay, scans are coming up now, stay still,” he said into the mic once more. The three doctors watched in anticipation as the scans slowly presented, one by one. As the scans showed their final forms, Derek and Tom furrowed their eyebrows in confusion, leaning in closer to assess them.

“Is that…?” Derek began, unable to say the words aloud.

“What? What’s wrong?” Owen asked, scooting closer to look at the screen, “Oh…”

“That is a…” Tom started, for once at a loss for words, “…big tumour.” He looked up at Amelia through the glass, just as she came out of the CT machine.

“So what’s wrong with my brain?” the Shepherd naively asked, noticing their horrified looks, “Do I have a slow leak bleed or something?”

“No, but you definitely have something…” Tom vaguely replied, giving the scans another once over.

—-

“So these are brain scans from over ten years ago,” Tom explained, handing Amelia the tablet to show her the images, “They were done while you were in LA, as part of your hiring process at a private practice.”

She looked at the scans. “I don’t remember this scan.”

“Yes, I know,” the neurosurgeon humoured her. He swiped the images to the left, landing on her most recent scan. “These are the scans that we took just now.” Amelia looked at the scans in front of her with a look on her face that was hard to read.

Looking up at Tom, and the rest of the doctors in the room, she sought to confirm, “I have a brain tumour?”

“You do, a grade one meningioma,” Derek confirmed, “It would explain why you called Tom. Actually, it explains a lot of things you’ve done over the past five months.” Meredith held Derek’s hand, hoping to offer up some sort of comfort as they displayed the truth for her. Truthfully, a massive brain tumour was the last thing Meredith had thought of when wondering why Amelia was so erratically crazy.

“How long has it been there?” she queried in a small voice, looking back at the scans.

“Likely around ten years or so,” Tom estimated, “You would’ve begun showing signs from a year to two years ago. Pregnancy would also speed up the growth process, so it’s hard to determine how long you’ve had it for, or when exactly you would’ve begun to show symptoms.” Looking to Owen and Derek, Tom asked, “Has she been pregnant over the last five years?” Both surgeons nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Amelia stopped them, “I was pregnant? How many times?” Pressing a hand to her chest, she added, “Oh my god, do I have kids?”

“Five times,” Owen relayed quietly, anticipating a negative reaction. He looked to Ryan, who seemed just as uncomfortable as he did, divulging this information.

“Who’s the father?” she asked slowly, looking suspiciously between Ryan and Owen.

“Me,” was the response that came out of both their mouths.

Opening her eyes even wider, the youngest Shepherd pursed her lips, saying, “Two baby daddies sounds like something that would happen to me.” Both men blushed, averting their eyes as they fiddled with the clothing they wore. “So, which one of you am I still screwing?”

“Amy!” Derek berated her.

“I don’t even like kids.”

“Looks like someone lost their filter again,” Meredith murmured coyly, receiving an eye roll from Derek.

“I am…well I was…” Owen tried to begin to explain their relationship, “We were married. We no longer are. We were together, but I don’t think we were around the time that your accident…”

“So, I am a single mother with four children and two baby daddies,” she begun, trying to make sense of the complicated situation, “And…is there an affair I should be aware of as well? Because that sounds like something I’d do.”

“Is this the tumour talking?” Ryan sought to confirm from Derek.

“I’m not even sure anymore,” Derek sighed.

“This doesn’t explain the memory loss, though,” Amelia accurately pointed out.

“Yes, that’s the only problem,” Tom agreed with her, “The seizure you suffered after your injury would’ve likely had a part to play, but we aren’t seeing anything on your scans. Now, there is a possibility that the tumour is masking it, but we won’t know until we do more testing. The other, faster option, of figuring out what’s going on in there, is surgery.”

“And when can we do surgery?”

“Amy, one step at a time,” Derek condescended his little sister.

“Says the Shepherd without a massive tumour in their head,” she sarcastically retorted, glaring at Derek.

“You need to heal and regain your strength before you can qualify to do this surgery. It is a fairly large tumour, after all; even if it’s not cancerous.”

“Let’s reassess in four weeks,” Tom suggested, taking the tablet from her, “That’ll give you time to heal from your abdominal wounds, and hopefully you’ll be able to regain some of your memories, give us a better idea of how your brain is working and healing.”

Amelia nodded. “And what do I do in the meantime? What if I don’t remember?”

“Heal, get back into your routine,” Tom offered as he slowly exited the room, “Maybe learn to like kids?”

At the mention of the word kids, Amelia gulped. “Okay…” She looked to Owen and Ryan, asking, “When should I…?”

“Maybe we should wait a little longer?” Owen offered unsurely.

“Owen, they miss her,” Ryan defended, “especially Ryan. Let them see her for a bit.”

“I don’t know much about kids, but I’m pretty sure they’d be dying to see their mom,” Amelia offered intuitively, “So…why not?” Ryan and Owen exchanged confusing looks. “What, are they gonna hate me or something?”

“Well,” Ryan was the first to speak up, “the Amelia I remember, isn’t very good with kids…”

“And I think one of them may have a bit of an affliction with your decisions,” Owen offered vaguely.

“So is that a no?” Owen and Ryan exchanged an unsteady gaze..

—-

“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

Rosie nodded her head. “She was there with Dr. Isaac.”

“But why would she do something like that?” Ryan exclaimed, betrayed and confused by his mother’s finnicky behaviour. Rosie shrugged, hugging her arms around her shoulder as she looked around the conference room. She was having a hard time feeling compassion or guilt for her mother’s condition, after having seen her betray her father. Yet she couldn’t figure out why she jumped into action to help save her life. She felt conflicted, and numb.

“What are we gonna do if they break up for real this time?” Rosie asked her older brother. She and Ryan were far too familiar with the back and forth that appeared to always be going on between their parents. It left a consistent feeling of anxiety in the air for both of them.

“We stick together,” Ryan assured her, putting his arm around her shoulder.

“Okay guys, are you ready?” Owen asked as he came into the waiting room to collect them and take them to Amelia. Both kids shrugged, not entirely sure how they were supposed to be feeling right now. Ryan felt emotionally exhausted, while Rosie felt emotionally numb. Realistically, neither kid wanted to deal with anything right now. Rosie just wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed. And Ryan, well oddly enough there was a book he was hoping to get home and finish before all this had happened.

Stooping to their level, the father asked, “What’s going on? I thought you guys would be more excited to see your mom?”

“I am,” Ryan defended lamely, looking down at his lap. No one could ever doubt that Ryan loved his mother with all his heart. “I’m just…”

“We’re just tired, daddy,” Rosie cut in, saving the day with what she would soon learn was called a half truth, “Can we go home?”

Owen frowned, not believing the response, but going along with it. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, we can do that.” He stood up and held his hand out for Rosie, and Ryan jumped off the couch to follow them.

While Owen took the kids home, Ryan sat in the patient room, keeping Amelia company until the trauma surgeon returned. Although a bit odd, it was funny and sentimental talking to the Amelia that he had initially fallen in love with all those years ago.

Taking her hand in his, he asked, “How have you been feeling?”

“I feel like I have really bad food poisoning,” she joked, making him chuckle, “And my head is spinning with all this information.” Ryan nodded sympathetically, imagining how confusing it could be to wake up in the middle of your life and not know anything. “Where is the Owen guy? I thought he was bringing the kids.”

“Oh, he ended up taking them home,” Ryan summarized carefully, “They were pretty tired, and they’ve already missed three days of school, so you know.”

“Oh,” Amelia hummed, looking around her patient room. Mumbling softly, she insightfully stated, “Why do I get the feeling that no one is really fond of me right now?” Ryan opened his mouth and then closed it, unsure of if or how to answer her question.

“It’s a complicated situation, Amelia…”

“Feels more like everyone thinks I’m a bitch,” she retorted, looking outside her patient doors at the personnel on her floor. “I don’t blame them; I probably was a bitch.”

“They’re still dealing with the whole situation,” he explained, squeezing her hand, “A lot happened before you got injured. There were a lot of feelings in the air.” Just then, Owen finally reappeared, seeing the two talking and holding hands and choosing to wait by the nurses’ desk outside her room. Standing up and letting her hand go, Ryan added, “There’s still a lot of feelings in the air. Don’t be too harsh on him.” He patted the back of her hand before exiting the room and going to the desk to speak to Owen. “She’s all yours.”

“Hey, what’s your deal?” Owen accused him in an edgy voice. His eyes were a bit red, and he looked pretty agitated and tired, but Ryan chose to entertain his erratic behaviour still.

“What do you mean?”

“Suddenly, you’re just choosing to stay here and take care of her?” the trauma surgeon assumed, putting his hands on his hips as he tried to tower over Ryan and appear bigger. “I bet you’re real glad she doesn’t remember anything, huh? Now you two can start over…”

“Owen, you’re being unnecessarily weird,” Ryan cut him off, “Amelia is the mother of my son, I just want to make sure that she makes a full recovery.” He was being illogically aggressive, and Ryan knew it was likely because of all that had happened in the last few days, so he tried to be understanding. “I’m not jumping back in the race or anything. I’m just making sure she’s comfortable.”

“By flirting with her?”

“Hunt, I am not the enemy here.”

“Ha, where have I heard that before,” he dismissed him, ready to add to his statement before his phone rang. “This is Dr. Hunt.” Listening to the man on the other line, his anger began to escalate. “I’m on my way.”

“Hey, where are you going?” Ryan called as the trauma surgeon stormed down the hall. Owen ignored his question, making him decide to follow him out of the hospital.

“Owen!” Ryan yelled, following him to the parking lot. When he got close enough, he grabbed him by his shoulder. “Hey-,”

“What?” the surgeon asked through gritted teeth, spinning around to glare at him.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the station,” he replied, “They found Amelia’s car, and the person who stole it.”

“And what are you planning to do when you get there?” Ryan accused, knowing Owen wasn’t thinking straight right now.

“Look, either you come with me or you don’t,” Owen said, pulling his car keys out of his wallet with his good hand, “But I’m going.” Sighing, Ryan combed his fingers through his hair as he weighed his options, realising the only one was to go with him. Amelia wouldn’t forgive him if he allowed Owen to do something ill-advised. The question now was, would he be able to stop him?