#the memory of back in the blinding building again: two loops are better than one au | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kouomi · 4 years ago

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Summary: Atsumu looks back on your relationship and finds himself longing for the person he called home (Miya Atsumu x f!reader)

Warnings: lil bit of fluff, heavy angst, mentions of death, fighting

Word count: 2,708

A/N: italicized parts are in the past! lil heads up this is not edited!! Someone please hug Tsumu cause I made myself sad writing this

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Posted: March 14th 2021, 8:30 AM EST

“‘Tsumu!” You gasp as your flung onto the couch, a chorus of laughter following your cry. The two of you tumbled around for a few moments before Atsumu pins your hands to your side, a leg on either side of your hips as he grins at his victory.

“Don’t you dare.” You warn, knowing all too well what the mischievous glint in his eye meant. Your warning is too late, however, as his hands move to attack your sides sending you into a flurry of laughter. Tears pricked at your eyes as he mercilessly continued to tickle you, his own laughs of amusement being heard over yours.

“What was that? I don’t think I heard ya.”

“You win! Stop!”

Seemingly satisfied with your call of forfeit Atsumu draws his hands away from your sides, only to fall on top of you making a squeal pass your lips. His arms loop around your waist as you tried to shove

Atsumus eyes nervously scanned the large crowd as he stepped out on to the court, the loud cheers and blaring band falling upon deaf ears as all he could hear was his thoughts whizzed by faster than he could focus on one. It was his first game of high school and while he was able to hide it well, below the surface of his facade he was swelling with nerves and worries. What if he messed up his serve? What if he did something to lose the game for the third years? What if something he did this game made the entire team turn on him like they did in middle school?

Before he could fully process what was happening the referee passed him the ball, hundreds of eyes following its course into his hands. Taking a deep breath, Atsumu spun the ball in his hands.

Don’t mess up.

How many steps do I take?

Is this too far?

What if I throw it up wrong?

Don’t. Mess. Up.

“Go Atsumu!”

The sudden call of his name pulls him out of his thoughts, his attention being drawn back towards the crowd. After a few moments of searching his eyes meet yours, a sense of calm washing over him as you smile back at him. She came, he thought to himself, his own smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. With you there, surely everything would be

“Y/n, can ya please let me in?”

“Go away!”

Atsumu sighs as he leans his head on the bathroom door, his hand once again trying the handle though the lock prevents it from turning.

It was a stupid fight, one that’d been building up over time that suddenly boiled over causing you both to explode at each other. Both of you had said things you didn’t mean, harsh words being thrown at each other since you arrived home. Your throats had gone raw from trying to speak over each other but you both refused to back down, tunnel vision preventing you from hearing one another out as you pressed to prove you were right.

Looking on what you’d said now having been sitting outside the bathroom for about an hour he understood why you’d been upset and, while he didn’t quite want to admit it, you were in the right.

While he knew this now, it didn’t help what had gotten him in this situation in the first place. At the peak of your screaming match he found himself blinded by anger and words he’d never thought he’d ever say to you passed his lips, rolling off his tongue before he realized what he was saying.

“All I’m saying is I want to spend some more time with you! Is that really too much to ask?” You asked, exasperated.

“Ya knew when we started dating how busy I am!” Atsumu exclaimed, “Why are ya suddenly so mad about it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because you spend more time with your fan girls than with your actual girlfriend!”

“Really? Yer pulling that? It’s not my fault yer so needy Y/n, I’m not gonna drop my practices just to make ya happy all the time!”

“If you think I’m needy why don’t you go date one of the girls who keep throwing themselves at you?”

“Maybe I should! They’d probably be less annoying than ya!”

“‘Tsumu, wait-“

“What? Finally realizing how easily I could replace ya? Yer the one who suggested it, remember?” He scoffs, ignoring how you’d shrunken, “Ya should be thankful for the time ya get with me, cause if not there’s other girls who could take yer place. I don’t need ya.”

As soon as he said it he froze, almost not believing that those words had actually come out of his mouth. The look on your face unfortunately proved it to be true, however, as he could see the way it seemed as if all of the fight and anger had been drained out of you leaving you with a hollow expression. You but your lip as you shook your head and shoved your way past him, ignoring all attempts he made at stopping you as you slammed the bathroom door in his face.

“Baby, I’m sorry okay? Can ya unlock the door so we can talk?”

“Leave me alone, Atsumu.”

He felt a pull at his heart at the slight crack in your voice followed by quiet sniffling, guilt threatening to swallow him whole as he realized you were crying because of him.

Unable to put up with you locking yourself away any longer, Atsumu grabbed a bobby-pin from your room and got to work unlocking the door with it, successfully doing so after a few minutes. Almost as soon as the door swung open he’s kneeling on the ground beside where you were curled into a ball, frantically scanning his mind for something to do.

“Y/n...” He says, reaching a hand out to brush your hair away from your face.

He cringes when you flinch, temporarily drawing back before reaching out again this time wrapping his arms around your shuttering frame. Though you temporarily resisted, ultimately you found yourself melting into his embrace as you adjusted to wrap your arms around his torso. Atsumu pulls you into his lap, one of his hands cradling the back of your head as you cried into his shirt while the other ran up and down your back. The two of you sat there until your tears slowed to a stop, Atsumu not daring to move a muscle in fear of scaring you off.

“You really are an asshole, Atsumu.” You mumble, your grip on the fabric of his tshirt tightening.

“I know.” He sighs, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, “I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. Yer the best girlfriend I could ever ask for, no one else even begins to compare. And yer right, I’m not spending enough time with ya but I’ll try to, okay? I love ya so much.”

“I

The two of you lay on the couch in your living room, the only sound being that of the TV you’d turned on for background noise when your boyfriend had appeared at your front door. You’d anticipated his arrival, having watched the game against Karasuno on your phone the day before and such expected the defeated and angry atmosphere that surrounded him.

Atsumu lay on top of you with his arms wrapped firmly around your waist, holding himself in place against you. One of your hands rested on the back of his head that rested on your chest as the other ran up and down his back, paying attention to rub in the patterns you knew he liked. He hadn’t said a word since he arrived other than a short “missed ya”, having passed all welcomes in favor of clinging to you, his body melting into yours. After the loss at nationals he had wanted nothing more than to curl up in your arms, the long trip home seeming to go slower as he counted down the seconds until he could finally be here.

“You did really good.” You whisper, pressing a kiss to his forehead as he tensed slightly. “I’m proud of you.”

“It wasn’t good enough.” Atsumu says, voice weak compared to its usual light hearted tone. “I lost the game for everyone.”

“You weren’t the only one playing, ‘Tsum. It isn’t all one person’s fault. But you are one of the reasons you guys were even able to get that far, yeah? Don’t beat yourself up over one play.”

It’s quiet for a moment as he processes your words, as if trying to decide if he’ll believe you or not. He moves his head upwards so he can nuzzle his face into the crook of your neck, the feeling of a tear falling onto your skin pulling at your heart as you give him a small squeeze.

“It’s just- it was-“ He stutters, his words shaky and ultimately cut off by a sharp intake of breath as he tries to hold back his tears.

“I know.” You murmur, “But you’re still the best setter there is, y’know? And the best boyfriend, best teammate, best looking; you’re so much more than that one game.”

“...Best looking twin?” He asks quietly.

You laugh, “Yes.”

The sound fills his ears, providing him with a sense of comfort no words or actions had been able to. You always knew the right things to say, to do, to comfort him and make him feel better when he was at his lowest and felt ready to give up. Something about you warded off all of the negatives and filled the air around you with warmth. Something about you felt like home. Something about you made him sure that one day, he was going to m

that’s how things between the two of you went, always being cut off too soon. All of his memories with you, each I love you, each kiss, each quiet afternoon spent cuddling on the couch watching movies, everything was ended before it was supposed to. Even your relationship went that way, being cut off, suddenly forced to a stop before it could even really begin. Each memory was halted right in the middle, part of each story missing making them feel impartial and almost fake with holes in their plots and the endings missing. Everything was so vivid, yet so vividly fading at the same time it terrified him that he was losing what little left he had of you. Details faded away so all he was left was glimpses of a memory that didn’t even feel like his anymore; left looking through a foggy window on to a life he wished he still had.

Every day without you felt bland. No longer did he have your soft voice scratchy with sleep whispering in his ear in the mornings; your fingers lacing with his as you wandered around the shops; your body searching for his warmth during the night. The apartment that had once belonged to the both of you was now void of your glowing presence, the air stiff and too quiet without you. His happy, care-free smile had faded from his face and become less frequent as he found himself wondering what he was supposed to do without the one person he could call home.

“I got invited to play for the Olympics next year.” Atsumu says, not quite as enthusiastic as it should be, “Ya always said I’d get there one day.”

No response comes.

“It really sucks without ya here, Y/n.” He continues, feeling his throat start to constrict, “I miss ya. A lot.

It’s already been a year, can ya believe that? I don’t want to believe it. A whole year with ya gone. It’s just... not right.

Sometimes I forget for a few minutes, and I think yer gonna be there when I open the door just like ya always were. It scares me, cause I can’t remember everything, even yer voice is a little gone without the videos. I could never forget yer smile though, even with all the pictures. I think that’s my favorite thing about ya.

I really took everything for granted. I wish I could go back and just hold ya, one more time. One more kiss. One more time hearing ya say I love you. Just something to hold onto. It’s not right, nothings right without ya here. Ya were the reason I was always so happy, ya made everything seem so much brighter, but now it’s just... bland. It’s like I can’t be happy without ya, I don’t wanna be happy without ya.” He stops to wipe his face of the tears that’d begun to fall, though new ones quickly slip into the tracks of the old.

“I wish you’d just come back. Sometimes I get mad at ya, for leaving me here alone, but ya know I can’t stay made atcha for long. It just hurts, knowing yer not coming back... Yer not coming back.”

He hits his lip, the air in his lungs feeling to heavy as if it’s trying to suffocate him from the inside. Everything falls on him at once, like a thick sheet of snow covering everything in sight and leaving him cold and numb yet burning and screaming at the same time. You’re gone. His Y/n, his beautiful wonderful, amazing Y/n, was gone. Everything hurt, every breath, every small movement of his body as it shook with sobs, every nerve; everything hurt as he longed for something that was so painfully taken away.

“Please Y/n/n... I don’t know what to do without ya.” He cries, eyes squeezing shut, “I miss ya, just please... come back to me.”

Still no response. The only sound being Atsumus cries muffled by the snow he sat buried in.

Atsumu barely notices the hand placed on his shoulder, only acknowledging the other person when they call his name.

“Hey.” Osamu starts, glancing down at his brother with eyes heavy with concern before flickering back up. “Do ya wanna minute?”

He doesn’t respond, another cry being answer enough as he feels his body collapsing in on itself. Risking his legs giving out beneath him, Atsumu stands and throws his arms around his twin, desperately clinging to him as if trying to find an anchor to the world. Osamu didn’t say anything as he held the blonde, feeling his own tears prick at the corners of his eyes at seeing his brother so torn and distraught.

He’d known this was going to happen today, that no amount of words would even begin to fill the void within him and every attempt at comfort would fall upon deaf ears so he didn’t try. Instead, he sat there. For a time unbeknownst to the pair they sat on a bench Osamu was able to coax Atsumu towards, no words daring break the silent agreement they’d made to not speak. They sat there until Atsumus heavy sobs eventually eased to a dull crying and he pulled away, eyes meeting his brothers for a moment as if to thank him before he let his head fall back on to the bench to face the sky.

“Come on.” Osamu said quietly, standing and waiting for the other to follow. He does after a moments pause, eyes lingering on the grave he’d sat beside and tracing over your name before he lets out a heavy, shaky sigh and started walking away, ignoring his mind that screamed at him to stay.

“Let’s get ya home.”

Atsumu obliged but he knew that part of him lay within you, that where ever you went, no matter how far was where his home was; that, without you, away from you, he’d never truly be home again. So he left, leaving with you the pieces of himself he’d given away and the memories that failed to fully reanimate with hopes that maybe, if he couldn’t be with you now at least you could find your way back to him, waiting for you to fall into his arms and bring him wherever you had settled; the place he so desperately longed for: home.

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clandonnachaidh · 3 years ago

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Light Across The Seas That Sever (Ch4)

AO3

When he woke the next morning in Amsterdam, his feeling of utter contentment quickly gave way to dread as his hand eagerly searched the space in the bed beside him only to find it empty. Immediately, his eyes snapped opened and he looked around the room for her, for his Claire.

His heart sank at the sight.

The twin bed that she had slept in for the night prior to the one they shared was made, her suitcase gone from its spot by the door. He stumbled as he got out of bed, his limbs not quite awake yet as he burst through the bathroom door and he noticed that her things were gone. It was as if she’d never been there.

If not for the taste of her still on his lips, he’d have wondered if he’d dreamt the whole thing.

He spun around the room in a flurry, unsure of what he was looking for or what he planned on doing once he found it.

Then his eyes fell on the slip of paper that sat on the windowsill, the sun casting its rays down on her pen strokes.

I can’t bring myself to wake you. I have to catch my flight. I’ll let you know when I land in Boston.

Jamie’s heart clenched in his chest and he used the palm of his hand to rub at his sternum without thought. He knew that she was gone. He cursed himself for being such a deep sleeper, wished that he’d had the awareness to know that she had been moving around the room silently, packing her things to leave. But in the afterglow of their love making, having released tension and anticipation that had been building inside of him for years, sleep had taken him down and down until he was oblivious to the world. The last thing he remembered was the ghost of her fingertips on his cheekbone and his jaw as he whispered to her once in his mother tongue, the language of his heart that he knew she didn’t understand but hoped that she could feel the meaning of, before falling into a deep sleep.

“Mo ghaol ort, mo Sorcha.”

He had to find her, had to make her understand that he loved her and had loved her since the moment he saw her. Scrambling into the same clothes from the day before, he tore out of the hotel, not caring that they’d charge him for another night when he would inevitably miss check-out. He rushed to the train station and bought a direct ticket to Schiphol, his shaking fingers calling her repeatedly and his heart falling every time it went to her voicemail.

He left his third message, laying his heart out for her to hear, “Claire, please just answer the phone. Talk to me. I winna ask ye to do anything ye dinna want to do but I have to say it, Claire. And I refuse to say it on your bloody voicemail so answer yer phone, tell me where ye are. I’m on my way to the airport. I’m coming to find you.”

Once he arrived, he pushed his way past the crowds of holiday goers, businessmen in their suits and parents trying to corral their children into order. Suddenly thankful for the view that his height gifted him, he searched frantically for any sign of her. He’d found her flight on the departures board and raced to the terminal, praying to God that something had delayed her and she hadn’t had time to make it through security yet. The panic bubbled in his chest as he began to breathe heavily, black dots appearing in his vision. It took everything in him not to simply start shouting her name in the hope that it would bring her to him.

A furious hysteria was beginning to claw its way into his nervous system, controlling the frantic jerks of his long limbs that felt too heavy for him to carry. He dialled her number again and was astonished when she answered.

“Jamie,” she whispered and he felt his heart shatter at the pain in her voice. “Oh, my Jamie.”

“Claire, where are ye? What were ye thinking running off without saying goodbye?” His voice sounded desperate and angry as he spun on the spot, knowing that the compass in his heart that always navigated him to her side would point him in the right direction. Still, his eyes weren’t able to land on her. “Damn it, Claire, tell me where ye are!”

He heard her let out a sob.

“I’m at my gate. You won’t be able to get through.”

Unable to remain upright at her confession, he slumped against the wall beside him and let his head hang, releasing tears that he had been keeping at bay from the moment he had realised that she had left. He cried with her, not caring if people saw.

“Why did ye do this?”

“I couldn’t stand to say goodbye.”

“Claire, I lo-“

“Don’t,” she cried softly, only speaking when he went to say it again. “I’m begging you, don’t say it. If you care for me at all, don’t make this harder.”

He restrained himself from driving his fist into the cement and pushed his forehead against it as his fingers gripped his phone tighter in his hand.

“I canna believe ye weren’t going to say goodbye,” he whispered with a voice full of hurt and not devoid of anger. “Do ye regret it? Last night?”

Her answer came out in a burst, “No. No, I don’t regret it. But you’re my friend. My best friend and with everything changing… I’m going to need my best friend.”

“Yer being selfish, Claire. To give me hope last night and then to pull it out from underneath me, to leave me wi’out breath,” the words were spilling out of him, not caring if he hurt her. She had hurt him well enough.

“Jamie, I thought-“

“No, ye didna think at all. Only of yerself getting to have a wee bit of fun before running off and settling down a whole fuckin’ ocean away.”

With a man who’s not me, he thought.

The line went quiet apart from the gentle sound of her crying and the odd ragged breath that he drew into his lungs to try and settle his racing mind. He screwed his eyes shut and banged his head lightly against the wall.

“Claire, forgive me, I- fuck, I just dinna ken what tae do.”

“They’re calling my gate, I have to go,” she whispered.

“Please, I didna mean it, I was sore and said more than I meant,” he desperately tried to explain himself.

“I’ll let you know when I land. Goodbye Jamie.”

“Claire—”

When she hung up the phone, he sat on the floor and went to pieces. An hour passed before he was able to bring himself together enough to make his way back to the hotel, gather his things and get his own flight back home. With one look at him, standing on the steps of Lallybroch with the spirit of a broken man, Jenny set her mouth in a straight line. In a feat that would’ve astounded Jamie had he the energy to care, she kept her words to herself and brought him a bottle of whisky as he sat in front of the fireplace, somehow managing to keep her children from pestering their uncle. He spent days moping around the estate, barely speaking a word but she made sure that he knew that when he did want to talk, Jenny Murray would be there to listen.

It was two weeks after Claire had left that Jamie heard from her. It was early evening and he had just punished himself with a 10km run around Lallybroch’s grounds, thinking that if his muscles were screaming in pain then he might get some distraction from the dull ache that had set up shop in his chest. The minute he stepped into the hot stream of the shower, his phone pinged with a message. How he would kick himself afterwards that he hadn’t given it a cursory glance because when he exited the bathroom ten minutes later, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw it.

Sassenach: Message

He opened it greedily, desperate to receive any sort of contact since the painful last phone call that would play on a loop in his mind every night as he lay in bed, sleep evading him.

It was a picture of a bouquet of flowers, a huge arrangement made of foliage and sea holly, thistles and white calla lilies that he knew were her favourite. He’d spent more time than he’d like to admit picking out the perfect flowers for her and knew exactly which bottle of whisky to put in with it (the one that they’d drank together the night that he’d teased her that she had no friends before she replied with a blinding smile and said the words ‘I have you’). She had photographed them prettily displayed on a windowsill that was drenched in sunlight. Underneath she had simply written the words ’Thank you!’ and he realised that he had forgotten that he’d even arranged for the gift to be sent. It was meant be a moving in present, a little reminder of home and the people that she’d left. Now it seemed sad and it made Jamie and his bruised ego feel a bit pathetic.

But it was a start, a small plaster on the gaping hole that was their friendship but one that he was determined to improve on. Anything to keep her in his life, in whatever capacity. He replied to her message with hopes of her having had an easy move, asking whether she was settled in yet. Claire replied almost instantly and so begun the back and forth, both of them trying to be painfully normal as Jamie paced in his bedroom, naked as the day he was born and dripping water all over the floorboards.

When he slipped on a puddle of his own making, he chucked his phone back onto the bed and set to rummaging amongst the old clothing in his drawers in an attempt to find something clean. He really needed to help out around the house more, he thought. Jenny had been rushing around after a husband, two children and now her brother and she deserved better. He had started to deal with the pile of unwashed material that had accumulated on the floor by his bed when he heard his phone ring.

Without even looking, he accepted the call.

“Aye?”

“Hi! It’s Claire!”

As if she needed to tell him that. The minute that he heard her voice he felt like he could breathe that little bit easier for the first time since being in that fucking airport, the gentle lilt of her English accent making him picture the shapes that her lips made. The memory of it stabbed him in the gut and he took a calming breath, turning from his discomfort into the humour that they both teased each other with.

“Sorry whoever ye are, I dinna ken anyone with a Boston accent, ye must hae the wrong number.”

“Asshole,” she snorted. “I sound exactly the same as I always have. It’s… it’s good to hear your voice.”

He smiled into the phone, letting his voice soften and convey the sincerity of his words, “Aye, Sassenach, it’s good to hear yours too.”

An hour or so later, when Jenny Murray went up to her brother’s room to let him know that dinner was on the table, the sound of her brother laughing halted her hand just before she knocked. For the past fortnight, Jamie had been dour, sullen and more prone to tantrums than Wee Jamie and Maggie put together. Getting the two of them fed tonight had been a battle, Ian trying his best to wrangle a teething Maggie as Jenny had an entire bowl of mince and tatties spilled down her front by her son. It had been a tiring night but now, the two wee ones were in bed and her brother was laughing again. Her heart lifted at the thought and she sent a prayer of thanks up to her parents for giving him a bit of a reprieve from his heartbreak.

“Sassenach, ye ken fine well…”

As soon as she heard him say it, she spun herself from Jamie’s door, cursing under her breath about her eejit brother who didn’t know what was good for him and definitely not what was bad for him. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Claire, in fact she had been glad knowing that there was someone to look out for Jamie when he’s was away at university. Jenny always knew that her younger brother was more green behind the ears than he was willing to admit. When he had nonchalantly mentioned that he’d be bringing home a friend for the summer of his first year at university, Jenny had pulled Claire into a hug on the steps of Lallybroch, welcoming her with literal open arms and finding Claire to be a quick witted, intelligent woman but with a softness behind her eyes that Jenny hoped would lend her to being a good friend to her brother. The problem, Jenny quickly realised the first night they’d all sat down to dinner together, was that Jamie had fallen head over heels in love with her.

She tried her hardest to lighten her step as she made her way back into the kitchen, knowing that she would not react kindly to any teasing about her ‘stomping’ around the house. Instead Jenny took out her frustration on the chicken curry that was bubbling on the stove, whirling the wooden spoon around with a little more force than was needed.

“Did I miss saying goodnight tae the bairns?” Jamie’s voice rumbled against the stone walls of the kitchen, pulling her attention away from the storm cloud that was brewing in her stomach as she plated up for herself, his large frame appearing over her shoulder. “Smells fine.”

As the full plate slammed down on the countertop, Jamie frowned in confusion as Jenny turned, her hands set at her hips in a way that still put the fear of God in him.

He took a step backwards (out of her reach if she decided to brandish the spoon at him), his eyebrows raised along with a single hand. Jamie knew from experience that it was better to pip her to the post before she got into the swing of an argument, “Before ye say anything, I want tae apologise first.”

“And just what will ye be apologisin’ for this time, mo bhràthair?”

“For treatin’ this place as a hotel, havin’ ye run after me like I’m one of yer bairns,” he had the foresight to look genuinely penitent and it softened her a bit. “I promise ye I’ll start pullin’ my weight.”

“Well, I canna say that I disagree wi’ ye. And I’ll be thankful of the help, Ian was just sayin’ the west gate needs mending. About time ye bucked up and started helpin’ wi’ the jobs around here,” she said firmly. Jamie’s eyes narrowed in at her face, confused. He’d apologised before she even asked but there was clearly something still there that he hadn’t addressed, that she was expecting him to bring up.

“Is there somethin’ else?” He asked carefully, fighting the urge to pull up the door to the priest hole that he was standing on in an attempt to hide from her wrath.

Instead, she sighed and handed a second plate to him. Her hands went from her hips to the table in front of her as she manoeuvred herself to sit. He followed her lead and sat down across from her, watching closely as she began to eat after expelling another pregnant sigh.

“Will ye give me a hint as to what I’ve done tae piss ye off?” He grumbled as he began to eat himself, trying his hardest not to cower as she sent him a death glare from across the table. Suddenly, the space between her brows furrowed and she let the weight of her head slump into an upturned palm.

“I’m worried about ye, Jamie. I’m always worried about ye but still,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I ken I’ve no’ been out of my room much and I’ve been a right miserable sod. But I’m starting to feel better… I think.”

Jenny narrowed her eyes at him, trying hard not to let the judgement seep in as she quickly placed her hand over the top of his, rolling her eyes when he jumped at the sudden contact.

“I think ye should stay away for a while. She’s in Boston wi’ Frank and havin’ tae adjust to her new life, ye should give her the space to do it.”

Realising that she’d overheard their phone call, Jamie shifted uncomfortably in his seat, fighting the urge to pull his hand from underneath hers as she tightened her grip.

“She was just phonin’ to say thanks for the flowers,” he mumbled, spooning a large helping of his dinner with his free hand into his mouth to try and shut down any need for a further explanation. Sadly, his big sister wasn’t buying it.

“I ken that yer finding it difficult, mo bhràthair, but maybe this is the opportunity tae find someone. Someone who’ll have ye. Ye’ve pined for Claire for so long but she’s never—“

“We slept together. In Amsterdam.”

The words hung in the space between the two siblings, heavy as lead. Jamie had felt the twist of his stomach at saying the words out loud and shot a glance to his sister’s dumbfounded face as the information permeated her thoughts.

“Ye glaikit bastard,” she finally exhaled softly, earning herself a sad smirk from her brother. “Why would ye dae that tae yerself?”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders, “It seemed… it felt like the right thing to do in the moment. And then I woke up the next morning and she was already gone. Chased her to the airport an’ aw but I was too late.”

Jenny huffed again, leaning back in her chair.

“I just thought if I could tell her that I loved her, that I’m in love wi’ her, maybe she’d have stayed. But she didn’t let me say it.”

“Aye, sounds like Claire,” Jenny scoffed, quickly composing herself at the glare she received. “Suppose it makes mare sense for all the mopin’ ye’ve been doing.”

Jamie humphed and rubbed a hand roughly over his face, sinking his fingers through his hair.

“It’s fine, it’s done and I canna change it, wouldn’t change it anyway. It was a very special night for me.”

“I ken but, Jamie, she is gone. She has made her choice. And it’s coorse of her to dangle herself in front of ye when she’s away living her life and yer here, where she left ye.”

His bright blue eyes bore into her, a warning, “Careful, Janet. Claire is my friend and I wilna let her navigate this on her own—“

“She’s nae on her own, she’s wi’ Frank!”

“Aye, she is. And there’s fuck all I can dae about it so this is where I find myself. I wilna let my feelings get the better of me. I will be her friend, as I have been these past years.”

Jenny knew that there was no point in pushing. It was a Fraser family trait, digging your heels in, more often than not to your own detriment. And if there was one topic that Jamie wouldn’t budge on, it was Claire. She got to her feet and grabbed her plate, moving around the table to press a single kiss into the mop of his red hair before leaving the room.

“Ca canny, mo bhràthair.”

#light across the seas that severed #clan donnachaidh #ao3 #outlander fanfic #jamie fraser #Claire beauchamp #outlander #modern au

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whumpinggrounds · 3 years ago

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All Caught Up

woohoo here for day 1 of @whumptober2021 with some superhero/sidekick content :) as i’m sure you’ll figure out, this is for the barbed wire part of the prompt

tagging @whumpy-writings, please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed :)

CW: barbed wire, (duh), blood, field medicine, cuts, pain, crying, sidekick whump, environmental whump (kinda??)

The mission is going well, as far as August can tell. He’s been relegated to recon, which is a nice way of saying that he’s spending the night running circles around the action. Beck, ever the diplomatic leader, makes sure to talk up the importance of it, emphasize how August is keeping them safe by watching everyone’s back. August, young and green though he might be, is smart enough to know that it’s a little less dramatic than all that. At least he’s contributing, August tells himself. Mercer, his fellow trainee, is back at the compound with the medic girl, Valerie. Perhaps it’s only because August’s power is more useful, but he’d like to pretend it’s a little deeper than that.

By his fifteenth lap around their perimeter, August has to call his wishful thinking what it is. He’s not any more capable than Mercer, and certainly he’s less useful than Valerie. He’s just convenient for the current mission, which, by the way, he doesn’t even get to know about. After just a few minutes of the task, he has to admit what he’s really doing, which is running pointless circles around a warehouse in the dark, keeping his eyes open for anyone suspicious.

“What kind of suspicious person should I be looking for?” August had asked, overloaded on adrenaline as Beck and Donovan briefed him on the mission. Beck had nodded at the question, but Donovan had looked nothing short of disgusted.

“We’ll be at an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city in the middle of the night. Anyone shows up, they’re suspicious. Is that simple enough for you?”

After weeks of training with him, August was well used to Donovan’s digs, but hearing it in front of Beck made him flush like it was the first time. He ducked his head, cringing from the friendly pat Beck tried to land on his shoulder.

“Don’s just stressed,” Beck had explained with an apologetic smile. August had forced a smile. If that was true, Donovan’s spent the past several weeks stressed, every minute of every day.

The memory of the conversation cheers August, just a little. It reminds him that he’s out here, jogging easy laps around the warehouse, instead of inside, within range of Donovan’s caustic comments. At a steady, sustainable lope, August cuts through the clear, slightly cool night air like a knife. He’s dressed in black from head to toe, including a mask pulled down over his face that hides his spiky, strawberry blonde hair. When he first dressed out like this, August had been tempted to ask what would happen if someone thought he looked suspicious, skipping around dressed completely in black. Before he got the words out, though, he imagined Donovan’s withering response, and Beck’s awkward pity. August decided it was better just to keep his mouth shut. Now he focuses on watching the world around him, scanning alleyways and empty roads in widening circles. It’s easy, meditative, the most familiar motion August knows.

Around him, the night is thick and silent. His footsteps echo down quiet streets, only the sound of buzzing streetlights and distant sirens there to keep him company. Of all the sketchy parts of the city, August wouldn’t have picked the warehouse district for a criminal hotspot – most of these places are legitimate shipping contract, complete with a rent-a-cops posted outside their chain link fencing. This building is on the edge, though. August examines it on his closer loops, trying to glean from the outside what must be going on within. He has a lot to learn, and it’ll take him twice as long if Donovan and Beck won’t explain things to him outright.

They’ve been in the area almost an hour when a new noise makes August’s ears prick up. Something rattles in one of the side streets, a way that’s been empty the last three times August checked it. Tightening his circle, August trots toward the sound, not sure whether he should hope for a stray dog, or something a little more exciting.

As he draws closer, August tries to note the ways the alleyway might’ve changed, but he just hasn’t been paying enough attention in all this quiet. There’s a bottle, gleaming empty, in the center of the alley, which may not have been there before. Slowing to a walk, August scans both sides of the way carefully, making sure to check the window sconces above him. He gets to the street on the other side, ready to give up, when he sees him. Across the way, there’s a man watching him – dark clothes, shifty eyes. Their eyes lock, and August feels his heart rate pick up.

Before he can say anything or start to move, the other man is turning and running. Despite himself, a smile spreads across August’s face. Perfect.

Springing into action, August throws himself into the chase. After all the casual jogging, it feels so good to run – muscles firing at top speed, peak efficiency. The world blurs past his face as August’s legs pump beneath him, fine and strong. Fully confident in his abilities, August charges forward, fighting the urge to grin.

Up ahead, the stranger doesn’t look back. Presumably, he can hear August’s footsteps, catching up to him in leaps and bounds. The guy darts into a nearby building, dodging through dilapidated rooms, no doubt as a last-ditch attempt at evasion. Smirking, August tears after him.

The only thing that keeps the man out of August’s reach are the doorways and minor obstacles that block August’s path. He has to slow down to dodge, and the stranger pulls ahead again, fleeing out the back door a few precious yards before August. Growling, August hurls himself forward again, springing off the bottom steps of the house. He takes two massive strides and then –

And then August is on the ground, for seemingly no reason. Heart pumping hard, adrenaline surging through his veins, August tries to bounce back to his feet without even checking what might be wrong. That’s when the pain hits.

It’s stinging, at first, in his legs, and then a strange, metallic rattling sound. August lies still, brain still trying to catch up to what exactly is going on. Slowly, tentatively, he tries to separate one leg from the other, and then sucks in a breath as the tearing pain sharpens. Peering down, he whimpers as the source of his agony is revealed.

A bunch of old, rusty strands of barbed wire are wrapped around his legs. He must’ve run into them, almost full speed. If they were stapled to something before, his momentum must’ve carried him straight through, but it’s just as likely that the coils were just sitting there. Either way, the wire is now wrapped tight around his legs, digging in with every little motion he tries to use to escape.

Okay. Okay. August tries to keep his breathing level, but it’s hard. It’s getting shaky. Okay, he tells himself, just, just sit up-

But sitting up moves the wires, makes them tear at his skin in new and agonizing ways. Hissing through his teeth, August gives up for a second, lies panting on the ground like a landed fish. The weight on his legs makes the barbs dig in all the deeper. Whining, August pushes himself up on his elbows and, fighting pain, reaches back to try to pull the damn thing off. Every single motion makes the barbs dig deeper, rip and tear at August’s skin like they have teeth and independent, vicious will.

Despite his gritted teeth, his clenched fists, his desperate attempts to control himself, tears leak from August’s eyes. Angrily he swipes them away, panting through the waves of stinging pain, trying to think. He needs to…he needs to…he needs to get upright, so he can untangle himself.

The thought of standing, of all the maneuvering he’ll need to do, puts a sob in August’s throat. He just wants it to stop hurting. Adrenaline is draining from his system, leaving him with helpless, useless pain. August wants someone to come help him – but even if Donovan and Beck are out looking for him, he has no way of knowing when they’ll find him. Besides, he’s a full-on adult. He’s supposed to be a superhero. He’s supposed to help on this mission, not hinder. August needs to fix this himself.

Drawing in a long, unsteady breath, August steels himself, eyes closed. He can’t fix anything from his current position, facing the ground and unable to see just how bad the knotting is. Trying to stand is going to dig the barbs even deeper into his thighs and calves. Flipping over on his back will tangle him further in the loose strands of wire. There’s no good option, but he can’t just lie here on his face and let the barbs bury themselves in his skin, hoping someone finds him soon.

Gritting his teeth, August makes his move fast, giving himself no time to chicken out. Throwing his body to the side, he flips himself onto his back, dragging the strands of wire with him.

The pain is blinding. Either the wire is still attached to something, or its own weight resisted August’s move – whatever it is, the wire wrapped around his legs drags hard against August’s flesh. Caught off guard, August screams, a harsh, ragged sound that echoes loud into the night. He screams just once, and then bites down savagely on his cheek, pressing a fist to his mouth to muffle his sobs. Below the waist, his pants grow wet with blood.

Fuck. Fuck. It hurts so bad his body shakes with his tears. It hurts. Inside his head, August is wailing, but on the outside, all he can do is lie on the ground shaking, pressing his fist so hard against his teeth that his knuckles split and bleed.

Fuck. Fuck. Just breathe. He has to breathe. He has to breathe, and then he has to get it together, and then he has to fix this.

After a few minutes of regaining his composure, August sits up gingerly. In the dim glow of flickering streetlights, he looks at the mess wound tight around his legs. Just seeing it makes his stomach drop. He has no tools with him, nothing that could be used to cut spiky steel wire. August will have to sit here and peel each piece away from his skin by hand, even as tugging at one strand pulls another strand tighter.

It's going to be agony. But August doesn’t have another choice. Already, his pants are damp, and it won’t be long before a puddle starts to form. He can’t just sit here and weep until his mentors come to save him.

With one shaking finger, August tries to trace the wire, to figure out where and how to start. Eventually, he abandons that idea – he’s held by at least two, maybe three separate pieces of wire, and they’re all twisted together, a chaotic tangle that engulfs his legs in too many different places. Locking his jaw together and vowing that he won’t scream, August sets out to free himself.

It feels like it takes forever. A few times, August wishes dizzily to pass out from blood loss, or pain, but though the barbs cut deep, he’s not losing a dangerous amount of blood. The pain, rather than knocking him out, seems determined to keep him inescapably, unbearably present, aware of every little agony that razor wire can cause. Every shift, every tug, every careful little motion sends searing pain reverberating through his body.

Driven to distraction by the pain, by gritting his teeth and reducing his screams to grunts, August casts around him, finally landing on an old cardboard box collapsing in on itself nearby. With greedy fingers he hauls it to himself, folds it into a packet as thick as a wallet, and stuffs it in his mouth. Cringing from the taste of earth and mold and damp, August draws in a difficult breath around the mouthful and then attempts a particularly hard yank.

Head falling back, August yowls into his makeshift gag, biting down so hard he chokes on his trapped tongue. Coughing, crying, keening into the cardboard like a wounded animal, August works an especially tight strand away from his calves, not letting himself stop, no matter how painful or loud the going is.

When the loop is finally loose, August lets his teeth creak apart. His jaw aches from the clenching, and his teeth have worn deep, blurred impressions in the old cardboard. His hands are trembling, stained with blood from his legs and from where he’s cut his palms heaving at the wire entrapping him. Swiping a bloody hand across his mouth, August tries to get his breath back, all the while moaning, letting out little repetitive whimpering cries, like an animal caught in a trap and begging for aid. Distantly, he’s surprised at himself – he’s never heard these little pleading whines before and wouldn’t have thought it was something he would do. He’d always thought of himself as a yeller, before, someone who outright bellowed their pain. Tonight, he’s timid and pathetic as a child.

By the time Beck and Donovan find him, August is working on the last round of wire, surrounded by the bloody remnants of his prior successes. He’s too exhausted and pain-sick to focus on anything but freeing himself, so he isn’t alerted to the presence of the other supers until he hears Beck’s murmur. “Oh, fuck.” The leader sounds horrified, sick. “Oh, fuck, August, what happened?”

Too weary to have dignity, August just opens his mouth and lets the cardboard fall out, hands dropping to his sides and away from the barbed wire still stuck in his legs. “Saw som’n watchin’ the warehouse.” It’s been so long since he tried to talk that August isn’t sure why he’s slurring – maybe exhaustion, maybe the pain. Maybe because he’s been biting down so hard on cardboard his jaw feels like it won’t work right ever again. “Trieda chase ‘em. Didn’ see…didn’ see the wire.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Don’ know. Feels like…a long time.”

August looks up at Beck with total, hopeless, bottomless despair. Swallowing hard, Beck drops to his knees beside August, hand slipping down to his toolbelt. In seconds, he has a pair of wire cutters out and ready, and August feels hysterical laughter well within him at the thought of how easy this all would’ve been if only Beck had been around.

From another street floats a familiar, four note whistle. Beck replies in kind through his teeth as he brings the clippers to rest against the wire. August grits his teeth, steeling himself for the snap, the sudden retraction of the coils. Hesitating, Beck peers at him. “This…this could hurt.”

“’ve peeled…plen’y of it off m’self,” August grits out. “Jus’…hurry.” He drags in a shaky breath and wills himself to be brave. “…please.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, August remembers the cardboard too late. Without it, he lets an agonized grunt escape his lips as the wire cutters sever the last loop. Even the minute relaxation of his newly released legs is enough to jerk cruelly on the barbs embedded in his thighs. Fresh tears spring to his eyes beneath his mask, and August wonders wretchedly if Beck can see them.

If Beck does see his youngest trainee crying, he’s good enough not to say anything about it. When August peeks through slitted eyes, he sees his leader bent over the wire, focusing hard, drawing each barb out carefully and trying not to jostle as he does.

It hurts only a little less than August’s work on himself, but it’s over blessedly quick. When Beck finally sits back on his heels, August is left panting and bloody, but finally free. For a long moment he just sits there, leaning back on his elbows, trying to catch his breath. Opening his eyes, he discovers that sometime in the last few minutes, Donovan arrived, and is now staring at him, green eyes unreadable under his mask.

“August was trying to chase down a possible spy and ran into some razor wire.” Beck’s voice is low, distracted. “Maybe night vision goggles next time? Or-”

“Or the trainee learns not to run into shit like fences, walls, and goddamned barbed wire.”

“Don-”

“Can’t teach common fucking sense, Beck.” Donovan snorts. “Or maybe you can, but you shouldn’t waste your time.”

Letting his head drop, August bites his lip hard to avoid dissolving into tears. He’s tried so hard to be brave. When he speaks, his voice comes out as a wavery, exhausted whisper. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a long silence from his two mentors. “Come on, Donovan.” Beck sounds tired. “He’s lost a fair amount of blood.”

Donovan just grunts, and crosses the courtyard, and scoops August up in an effortless bridal carry. He isn’t especially gentle, but he isn’t especially rough either, and he carries August, bloody and teary and exhausted, all the way home.

26 notes · View notes

bimsha · 3 years ago

Note

Hello! Can I have an Epiphany request for:

Anime - K Project

Character - Hisui Nagare

Song - Always in my heart by Tamaru Yamada

https://youtu.be/ntqxI9I6Opo

This is my first request in your blog and I look forward of how the request will turn out to be! Thank you and take care always! 🖤

Always In My Heart (Hisui Nagare x Reader)

"The life it's not for comparing things So i hold both of light and shadow"

Song : Always in My Heart but Tamaru Yamada

The sky was heavy with clouds, glooming over his head with their unshed raindrops. The tombs in the cemetery shadowed by the gloom standing in perfect lines holding in themselves a heavy sorrow, a sad story behind them. There was no one in sight, except for an old man a few feet away staring at a tomb. His thin, grey hair ruffling in the soft breeze passing them. He broke his gaze from the man back to the tomb in front of him. Gleaming even in the shadowy surroundings. He knelt and placed the bunch of white lilies in front of the tomb. She loved white lilies.

Six months ago, he was woken up to the blinding ceiling above him and the smell of antiseptic, a bitter smell for his sensitive nose. He moved his head to the right and immediately squinted at the blinding light filtering through the translucent curtains. Sitting there on the white windowsill was a vase with fresh flowers. Who would even bother? He thought glumly moving from the creaking hospital bed to a sitting position. He didn’t remember what happened. His last memory was charging at the Red King until his vision blackened. He needed more strength. His name was Nagare Hisui: The Green King, for certain people. He was supposed to be powerful. Powerful than the man he is right now and he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be sitting inside a lonely hospital room. Hisui struggled for a while and finally managed to sit down. There was no one inside the room. He didn’t mind the silence but it was suffocating sometimes. He didn’t have his phone, nor had a way to contact the others.

Hence, he took the best decision he could at the moment (his doctors would probably think it’s the worst decision) He made an attempt to move and managed to place his feet on the cold floor. The male stood up, one hand tightly gripping the bedpost while the other freezing in mid-air as he tried to balance. The truth was, he didn’t use his legs at all. And rarely moved. That was his way of preserving power inside him, and he didn’t blame his legs when they gave him little support and dragged him back to the bed with a pained grunt. He’ll need to try a bit more before he could stand straight on the ground. He moved his hands, planting them firmly on his mattress trying to move again when the corner of his eyes caught movement. Hisui looked up, expecting a doctor or a nurse, but from the crack of his slightly opened door was a girl, probably around his age, looking at him with beady eyes. Hisui frowned, “Who is it?”

She looked startled by the sudden attention. He heard something fall and a not-so-pretty curse soon following the sound. She collected whatever thing fell and opened the door using her elbow. It was only then that he saw the crutches and her bandaged foot. “What are you doing?”

The girl frowned. “I heard someone groaning in pain, I just came to look”

Hisui turned his gaze to her bandaged foot and then looked back at her. “And you’re supposed to be out of bed because?”

She rolled her eyes, “Because I was on my way to the exercise rooms. I need to make sure I’m all better and you’re trying so hard to run away because?”

Hisui glared at her. He had always been a man of few words and a real-life conversation was strictly ignored except for his closest people. “I’m just trying to get up”

She gestured to the corner of the room. Hisui followed her gaze to see the familiar wheelchair. “I think that probably has something to do with your inability to walk at the moment”

Hisui would’ve flushed but he barely constrained himself. He was feeling extra emotional and angry this morning. Probably a side effect of pain killers and he blamed Tenkei for bringing him here and not their usual hideout. She doesn’t seem to notice his overwhelming emotional status as she looks around. “Do you need help?”

Hisui almost snapped back a no but hesitated. He did want to get out of this smell and this building. He’d give anything to get some fresh air. “Yes” after a beat, he added, “please”

The girl walked to him with the aid of her crutches and looped one of her arms around him helping the male to walk towards the wheelchair. It was obviously a bad idea, because one, Hisui put his full weight on the girl because he was barely able to walk and two, you shouldn’t ask help to walk from a person using crutches. The almost knocked over the wheelchair and crashed to the floor. “You said you could help” Hisui said, wondering why he was stupid enough to ask her for help.

“I overestimated my abilities to help you, pardon” She grinned from her place on the floor. She didn’t seem to be least bothered by the fact that both of them were on the floor. And none of them had the ability to walk properly. “Great, just great,” he muttered under his breath. The doctors soon rushed in and helped them from their awkward position and both of them got a heavy warning from the doctors. Hisui scowled at them, looking away. The girl apologized to them again, turning to leave the room when he finally realized he hadn’t even gotten the name of that annoying human being. But before he could talk, she was gone. He could barely make out her outline, limping towards a door just a few feet away from his own hospital room. The rest of the day he finally decided to bear in the hospital for a bit longer. When Tenkei arrived in the afternoon with Sukuna he did his best to compose himself without lunging at him like a hungry wolf. (Not that he was in any status to do that anyway) Tenkei apologized profusely, trying to make amends with the Green King while Sukuna stood behind him making faces and giggling uncontrollably. According to him, seeing Nagare Hisui inside a hospital was a once in a lifetime chance. After the visiting hours were over, they both bid farewell to the male. Tenkei promised him he’d talk about the discharge with the authorities. He barely looked at the food they brought him. Instead, he found himself wondering about the weird girl he met earlier. It was one hell of a first impression she made.

When the nurse came to give him his medication, he actually found himself asking about her. The nurse smiled, “Oh, you must be talking about (Y/n). She had made quite an impression it seems. She’s friendly with everyone around here. She’s quite talkative”

“I can see that” He mumbled, groaning. "Why is she here?”

“She’s an athlete, had a bad injury”

Hisui wanted to know more details and it was strange that he was pestering about this girl he barely knew about but there was an effect on her. Like she had this magnetic force that drew people in. Hisui had to agree, she was pretty weird. He stopped asking questions and just followed the nurse's instructions focusing on getting discharged instead. But it turned out he’d had to spend a couple of days because they had to run a few tests before releasing him. He didn’t have to wait alone for long, because there she was, waving him by the door. “Can I come in?”

Hisui watched her for a second. His expression was passive and cold. For a moment he wanted to tell her to leave but another part of him wanted to invite her in. He settled with a shrug which the girl interpreted to be a welcoming gesture. She limped towards his bed, “Want to see whether today you can actually get to that wheelchair?”

Hisui shrugged. It was closer to his bed than it was before. He gave it a try, and it certainly worked. She grinned, gesturing towards the door. “Let’s go out. Seems like you could use some fresh air”

As much as he wanted not to accept, the sound of fresh air seemed divine. He followed her in his wheelchair as the girl led him towards an open balcony on their floor. It was empty except for a woman sitting in the lobby adjoining the balcony, staring at a magazine. The quietly passed her and stepped into the open balcony, feeling the fresh air surrounding them. “This is heaven” She muttered, leaning against the railing. Her crutches resting beside her.

Hisui stared at her, confused. “Why are you doing this? I don’t even know you”

She smiled, “You’re the only person who’s closer to my age in here. Everyone’s old. So I thought it'd be great to get to know you!” Her voice was cheerful and… magnetic? He couldn’t place it. But there was a way she talked as if she had been your friend for years. Hisui didn’t really associate with people and he had no idea about social cues. The girl standing in front of him, who was nothing but a stranger was trying to be friends with him. Is this how normal human beings function? He wondered cluelessly.

“How can you be so cheerful when your leg is like that? Aren’t you an athlete?”

“Seems like someone had done his homework” She teased good naturedly. “My leg will get better. I can go back to the track field soon after. I’m counting days until I do.”

“Is it worth it?” He asked, “You’d get injured again” It was almost hypocritical that he was asking this. He himself had given up on his own trying to achieve his goals. What mattered to him were the goals and his ambitions. His health was one of the least things in his mind.

“Don’t jinx it.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. “I’d get better and next time I’d be careful. Running is my dream. What’s life without a dream?”

“An easy one” Hisui blurted out. “You need a goal, not a dream”

She gave him a confused look, “What do you mean?”

“Life is not something to enjoy” Hisui found himself saying. He didn’t know why he was talking about this deep topic with a stranger. But there he was, talking about his ideologies just because he felt she was going after something like that. “It’s a responsibility we all have to carry no matter how bad the outcome will be.”

She was quiet for a moment, “Wow, that’s deep.” (Y/n) sat down on the bench propping her leg on it, looking for a comfortable position. “You can enjoy life, Hisui” He raised his brow when she smiled sheepishly. “I asked your name from one of the nurses. Anyway, as I was saying, don’t you think it’s better to enjoy the life you have than to just think of it as a responsibility? There’s much more to it than you think”

“Don’t you like to be powerful and have control of your life, Y/n? To have your own hidden power?”

She laughed, “You don’t need a power to control your own life Hisui. Your life is yours. What you do with it is your choice.” She sighed, looking at the sky above them, clear blue like a crystal. “It’s sad you think your life is just some game or a responsibility. There’s so much more to it”

Hisui was not convinced but he didn’t talk anymore. He was done with expressing himself deeply for the day. He didn’t know how she was able to get him to talk at all. Did she secretly have a power? Was she serious about not wanting a power? He didn’t find answers to his questions but he did find an annoying friend. After his routine medication, Y/n bursts into his room with a grin. “I’ve got something!” She announced, jumping to his bed, WITHOUT his consent. She was close that he could smell her hair. He almost drew away when she dropped a game console in his hand. “I’ve got the staff to let us play video games!” Her voice was cheery, almost as if she had won the gold medal at the Olympics. Hisui stared dumbly at the device when the screen in his room lit up.

“You don’t know what you’re signing up for" Hisui said quietly, gripping on his console. “You’re going to lose”

She huffed, offended by his remark. “The confidence. Let’s see that after the game sweetheart. I’ve got this one”

Actually, she was bad at it. She was so bad at video games that Hisui almost laughed. But her determination was incredible. “One more. I think I got it” She said, leaning forward, squinting at the screen. “Just a little more push”

Hisui shook his head as the screen displayed Game Over. She groaned, falling back to the bed as if it was her own. For the first time in his life, Hisui didn’t mind someone he barely knew was right beside him, playing video games and losing like a pro. “Told you”

“You’re just too good at this” She muttered, sitting back up. “Teach me your ways, sensei”

“No”

“Rude” She groaned, “One more game?”

“You’re going to lose, what’s the difference?”

“It’s fun?”

“It is not”

“You smiled though” She said with a cocky grin. Hisui was quite sure he DID NOT smile.

“I didn’t” He added firmly, crossing his arms. “You’re imagining things”

“Isn’t this fun?” This time Hisui actually answered the question.

“A bit, I guess”

“What do you think about life now?” She asked hopefully. Hisui actually snorted at that question.

“Life is not a video game.”

She scowled, nudging him with her elbow. The bandages were off her leg, Hisui noticed, blinking. And she was not even wearing the hospital gown. How did he miss those changes? “Are you out of the hospital?”

“Took you exactly two hours to notice, congrats! But yes I am. Still not allowed in the fields but I’m trying on my own.” She patted her leg. “I’d be up and running in no time”

“Don’t you get sick of it?” Hisui asked, leaning back. “Do you think any of this has any meaning at all?"

She leaned back with him. Their heads were just a few centimeters apart from each other. They both stared at the ceiling. “Does it matter? As long as I know my dreams, as long as I can be with the people who are precious to me, I don’t care.” She turned her head to look at his eyes. “Life is not something you calculate and walk through. Take it as you can and try your best and you’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel, that’s what my mom told me.”

Precious people, Hisui thought, moving his gaze back to the ceiling. His mind instantly landed on the small group he always had with him. The only family he ever had. Hisui loved and cared for them, he really did. But was it enough? Y/n laughed beside him. “You got your thinking face on. Stop being so hard on yourself”

“I am not being hard on myself”

“You are being hard on yourself. You never smile, you’re always like this” She made a ridiculous expression on her face.

Hisui leaned in and flicked her forehead, groaning. “I do not” He felt his lips curl into a smile. A genuine smile that lightened his heart. She truly had this aura around him that cheered others up in an instant.

“See? You look really good when you’re smiling”

Hisui scowled, “Shut up”

Their conversation was cut short by Yukari, who walked in with a handful of bags and a bunch of flowers being the gentleman he is. Hisui’s eyes instantly landed on the flowers, white lilies. “Aren’t those for funerals?” He didn’t care Yukari saw him with the girl, he had his eyes on the flowers.

Y/n slapped his arm, standing up. “Those are white lilies!” She exclaimed looking at him. “They symbolize purity and rebirth. Like I can go back to the field again!” She twirled around with a laugh. “Stop seeing negativity and start looking for something positive young man” She bowed to Yukari who looked rather impressed.

“The young lady knows what she’s talking about. Think positively Hisui”

She smiled, a gentle smile that was always there when she talked with him. She waved, “I’d see you two around then. And you” She pointed a threatening finger. “Don’t you dare say anything about white lilies, they are my favourite flowers”

Yukari raised his brow with an amused smile as she left the room and Hisui found himself already missing her. After that, Y/n didn’t come around for a few days. Hisui quietly wondered whether she had finally gotten enough of him when she walked in just the day before his discharge. “Hello, missed me?”

“No” Hisui answered right off the bat.

“Liar liar pants on fire” She sang along, walking in. Her hair moving to her moments, the curls at the end bouncing with rhythm. He didn’t know when he started to notice the little things about her. “Wanna go to the rooftop?”

Hisui shrugged. He had done some exercise the past few days and now with some help he could actually move. Y/n wrapped one of her arms around him helping him up. They both took the lift to reach the rooftop. As soon as they reached there, Hisui collapsed onto a bench with an exhausted sigh. She sat down beside him. Both of them were welcomed by the blue sky, patterned with white clouds. The breeze around them was comforting. “I finally started practicing again” she said. There was this glint of excitement in her eyes that Hisui never saw when looking in the mirror. She was actually passionate about what she loved.

“Good for you” He said, allowing himself to be happy for her.

“What are you going to do when you leave? I don’t know a thing about you”

“I don’t know. Just continue what I have been doing, I guess.” He stated with a sigh. He had no idea what he wanted to do anymore. She had changed something in him. “Don’t you get scared?” He asked, “There will always be someone better than you no matter how hard you try. Don’t you think everyone should have the same powers and talents?”

She shrugged, “If you keep comparing yourself to others your whole life, you’re not living it, you’re judging yourself. The best is to keep trying your best and treat yourself like you deserve everything you have right now. If everyone had equal things the world would be so boring. When I see someone powerful than me, it gives me a thrill to try harder. Gives me a purpose. I’m going to reach that level”

The wind carried the long locks of her hair behind her. Hisui felt a tingling sensation to reach out and tuck it behind her ear. “Aren’t you afraid Y/n? You’d lose yourself if you just kept pushing yourself like that”

She turned around to look at him and laughed nudging their shoulders together. “Silly, I know who I am” She placed a hand on her chest, proudly huffing. “Right here in my heart I’ll always know me”

Hisui hummed, not answering. He turned back to the sky as both sat there in the comfortable silence, reminiscing the words they had spoken, the depths they had gone into each other’s souls. After some time, they decided to head back. The air was getting colder around them. She stood by the door looking at him for a moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow! I’d come back with chocolates to celebrate you getting discharged!”

Hisui’s heart skipped a beat and he nodded. She waved at him with the same grin painting her face. He watched her skipping her way towards the lift and waited for it.

That was the last time he saw her.

When he got discharged the next day, his sapphire blue eyes scanned for her figure but found none. The days following were only silence. He grew impatient and finally decided to seek her out. When Tenkei was informed about her address, he went to her place to see her. He had this rare excitement playing upon his heart. A woman opened the door and when he asked her name, the woman’s face crumpled like a sheet of paper. She burst into tears. Hisui stood by the door, stunned when a man came to the door and invited him in. They took him into a room but there was no Y/n. There was only a picture of her sitting on a low table, a vase of white lilies in front of her smiling picture. The same gentle smile. A car crash had stolen her life. The life of the girl who had been the most lively person he had ever met.

He placed the white lilies on the ground in front of the grave stone. Briefly brushing his fingers over the gray tombstone. He crouched in front of it and smiled. A sad watery smile. Silently thanking her for her words that showed him a new path in life. Thanking her for the life lessons she gave him without even knowing. To the moments they shared that he actually enjoyed. Even though brief, she was the most significant person he had ever met in life. Kind, cheerful and beautiful. He wondered what would’ve happened if he was brave enough that day. To talk about his feelings. To tell her that she’s beautiful. If he could’ve gotten a few more moments, he would’ve kissed her lips and told her how amazing she is. How she saved his life.

He walked out of the cemetery with a sad smile. Life does twist in the most painful ways. When someone’s gone, we start regretting the things we were unable to say. Things we were unable to express. It’s just how life works. Y/n’s words echoed in his heart.

“Right here in my heart I’ll always know me”

"I don't know the meaning of life But I know what's truly precious The way it's leading me to be in love No fear I can find me always in my heart"

I have nothing to say myself besides saying I'm really sorry for taking months to do this. I don't blame you if you have forgotten my existence. ;-; I have been lazy af and the full blame is on me. I'm really sorry for making you wait for so long! ))): I'm really sorry again.

#k #K prject #Green clan #Hisui Nagare #Major character death #Sukuna #Tenkei #Yukari #x reader #k project x reader #Hisui nagare x reader #Epiphany #Always in my heart #female reader oneshot #fanfic

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lesetoilesfous · 3 years ago

Note

I can’t decide if I want “sensory overload” or “on a leash” for Fenris and Fenders, so um, whichever sparks your interest please!

Oh my gosh I had too much fun with this. And "on a leash" gives me a bingo, thank you so so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@badthingshappenbingo

Fandom: Dragon Age 2

Prompt: On A Leash

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Slavery, Brainwashing, Mindwipe, Implied Sexual Abuse, Attempted Prositution, Graphic Depiction of Injury

Pairing: Fenders

Characters: Fenris, Anders, Isabela, Varric Tethras, Merrill

Additional Tags: Angst with a Bittersweet Ending, Hurt/Comfort (mostly), Evil/Red Hawke, post-canon, what if Hawke sold Fenris back to Danarius and then the gang went and saved him

Anders knew it was going to be bad. He was - had been - blinded by his own ignorance and pain in the past, too busy trying to scream loud enough to get people to stop ignoring the people murdering children to listen to anyone else. He’d been young and single minded and irrational, and then older and bitter and furious with a terrible, poisonous kind of pain that made it hard to see the world around him. But he wasn’t naive. He’d spent ten years nursing criminals and refugees. Before that, he’d spent nearly a decade in the Grey Wardens, with former slaves and blood mages and Dalish hunters and Antivan crows. Anders had not been naive since he’d first drunk from the Joining Chalice.

Still.

It’s almost impossible to see in the placid, polite, half-naked man the proud warrior he’d once known. Fenris’ hair has been shaved close to his head, a fuzz of powdered snow that’s bright as the moon against his brown skin. There’s a thick, silver collar hanging around his neck, and in it the reflections of his lyrium tattoos twist and shine like mercury. His chest is mostly bare, and thin white linen is wrapped in a loose skirt around his waist. His body is sculpted and unmarred and beautiful, and Anders does not for a moment believe that it means he has not suffered pain. His wide, green eyes no longer hold any of the intelligence, or humour, or fury that Anders had once fallen in love with. Instead he stares, docile, into the middle distance. A greatsword is slung on a strap of leather over his back, but like this Fenris looks no more capable of wielding it than a kitten. Again, Anders knows better than to trust in appearances.

Attached to the collar is a long, silver chain that ends in a black loop of leather. There are runes stitched into the leather in silver thread, though Anders cannot see what they are from where he’s sitting. Opposite him, relaxed, fingers hooked in the loop of Fenris’ leash, Danarius studies him with open curiosity.

Anders tries very hard not to vomit.

“So, you’re a Spirit Healer?”

Anders ducks his head, feeling his fingers beginning to shake and fighting hard to resist the urge to fidget. There’s a clocktower visible through the white marble arches of this balcony. He only has to last until the hour. Five minutes. He can do this. He tries very hard not to look at Fenris, or the way Danarius’ thumb is stroking possessively over the handle of his leash.

“I - I am, yes. I showed a talent for it when I was young.” Anders twists his hand in the air, summoning a wisp without catching his breath, and Danarius gives him the same indulgent, condescending schoolteacher kind of smile that Uldred used to offer before he beat you. Anders snaps his fingers, and the wisp returns to the Fade. At the back of his mind, Justice shifts uneasily, trying hard to resist his own urge to set the whole blighted mansion on fire. Anders tries to ignore the heat racing up the back of his neck and into his cheeks, and clears his throat. “I, uh, heard you were looking for apprentices?”

He can’t help the nervous tic that has him looking up, again, at Fenris as the lithe strength of his muscles. Again, he looks into those green eyes, searching for the spark of defiance that had drawn him so close so many years ago, like a moth to a flame worth dying for. “I’ve read your work an anatomical augmentation. It’s...fascinating.” Horrifying, he means. Anders had read the essays, in preparation for this. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop having the nightmares. Not least the ones which superimpose Fenris’ face and body over the all too familiar anatomical sketches of Elven Subject 003.

Danarius twitches his hand with a tinkle of the chain like the ringing of a bell, and to Anders’ horror Fenris folds onto his hands and knees in one fluid motion to kneel beside Danarius’ feet. No emotion passes across Fenris’ face. Danarius runs his fingers over the fuzz of Fenris’ shaved head, and Fenris shuts his eyes in open, simple pleasure and Anders nearly throws up. Danarius runs his fingers down the back of Fenris’ neck, squeezing the back of it posssessively before looking up at Anders’ with a terribly possessive gleam in his clear grey eyes. “You’re a fan of my little wolf, then.”

Anders swallows the bile in his throat and stares at the clocktower. Three minutes. He can do this. Sweat tickles down his spine beneath the loose Tevene linen robe he’d bought for this occasion. He resists the urge to fuss with his hair, braided out of the way of his neck and ears in a fashionable Minrathous style. He forces himself to incline his chin. “Y-yes. Among other p-things. Among other things.”

Danarius chuckles, sitting back with a creak of his wicker chair, the crushed purple silk cushions huffing behind him as he moves. “Why so nervous?” Anders forces himself to huff a self deprecating laugh. “You knew him, didn’t you. In Kirkwall.” Anders’ jagged, insincere smile stiffens on his lips and Danarius laughs, moving forward to press both hands onto Fenris’ bare shoulders. Fenris shudders and looks up at him, eyes wide as a child’s. Danarius caresses the back of his head, and leans down to murmur intimately close to his ear, still loud enough for Anders to hear. “Do you recognise him, little wolf? Do you know who this is?”

For the first time since Anders had arrived at Danarius’ damn mansion, Fenris’ expression shows a flicker of emotion. Confusion flickers across his brow in a brief wrinkle followed by sudden, mute fear that freezes his expression with stiff tension when Danarius slips his fingers beneath Fenris’ collar and shakes him, gently. (Like a dog, Anders thinks, and imagines what setting this man on fire would smell like.) Danarius laughs, polite and performative. “How rude, Fenris! This man has come all the way from Kirkwall just to see you! Go on, thank him.”

Fenris hesitates for a millisecond, and Danarius sets a sandaled foot on his shoulder and kicks him forward hard enough that he chokes, briefly, as the leash goes taut and pulls on the collar around his neck. Anders sits forward without thinking, the muscle memory of ten years spent protecting this man’s life before Garrett Hawke ruined them both taking over any conscious thought of deception. Danarius doesn’t remark on him giving himself away - Anders is well aware that that game is long since given up.

Instead, the magister sits back, adjusting his grip on the handle of Fenris’ leash as Fenris sits up with tears of pain bright in his eyes, his fingers moving to dip beneath the skirt of Anders’ robes as he lowers his head towards Anders’ lap.

Anders has about three seconds to look up at Danarius and see the perverse glee in the old man’s eyes before Fenris' mouth bumps his cock through the fabric of his robes and his smalls, and suddenly Anders is two years younger on his back in The Hanged Man with his hands buried deep in silver hair thinking hopelessly that he’s fallen in love again.

Then he’s touching Fenris - ignoring the lightning bolt of rage that twists Danarius’ face as he does so, and gently pushing him away. Fenris looks up at him with an expression of quickly stifled terror, and Anders’ heart shatters. “No, no, it’s alright, it’s not you.” His fingers squeeze, reflexively, against the warm, smooth skin of Fenris’ biceps. “It’s going to be ok. I promise, love.” Again, a flicker of confusion wrinkles Fenris’ brow.

The clocktower strikes twelve. As the bells ring throughout the city, Anders becomes abruptly aware of the street below them: the sound of hawkers and tourists, the shouting of slaves and soft music of minstrels. Danarius is staring at him with a sneer twisting his thin lips blue. Anders gives him a wide, open smile. “Well, since we’ve given up on pretenses.” Then he punches Danarius in the face, harder than he's punched anyone since he escaped Kinloch Hold, relishing the way the man’s nose buckles beneath his fist.

He has a heartbeat to think, Nice job bleeding a Blood Mage, idiot, before Danarius’ blue-veined hand is curling into a rigid claw, and Anders’ body is lifting off the ground, his limbs contorting behind him in an agonising rictus that rips his left arm out of its socket and twists his ankle until it cracks.

Then there’s a thunderous BOOM that rumbles through the building, shaking plaster dust from the painted canopy over their heads, and the balcony on which they’re standing begins to list like a ship at sea. Danarius loses concentration on the spell, and Anders falls to the ground. He doesn’t take the time to breathe through the white hot splinter of pain in his ankle. He grabs the leash and pulls fire into his hands until his fingers are blistering and melts the metal until it breaks. Then he turns to Fenris.

Fenris, who has drawn his greatsword. Anders stares at him, and thinks about sitting with him beside a fireplace, sleepy and soft with wine, and stroking his hair as Fenris admitted that of all the things he feared, one of the ones that terrified him most was killing his friends. The building lists with a grinding rumble like a broken bone beneath a qunari sten, and amphorae and flower pots go flying across the tiled floor, hitting the building across the street in fireworks of soil and clay dust.

Anders’ bad ankle slips on the tiles and he grunts and turns it into a smile, and meets Fenris’ eyes. “No matter what, I want you to know that I forgive you.”

Then he runs forward and tackles Fenris, throwing them both off the side of the balcony. Behind them, Danarius screams, and Anders calls up a shield around them both that materialises a hair’s breadth away from the clinging red vines of Danarius' magic.

It’s only when they’re airborne that Anders registers the blade skewered through his chest.

He breathes, and salt and copper splatter against his lips and tongue. For a moment, in the golden, multicoloured kaleidoscope of sky and street, suspended in the air in a terrible embrace, everything is quiet. Fenris frowns at him, and blinks, and his green eyes flood suddenly with recognition and grief as he looks down at the sword hilt between them, intimate as a lover’s embrace. “Anders.”

Anders grins at him, and thinks he isn’t crying because of the pain, his tears rising behind him as they fall like backwards rain. He cradles Fenris’ head in his hand, and wraps his arms around his shoulders, and chokes as his organs shudder against the blade attempting to split him in two, and he feels Justice’s presence building in his mind like lightning in a thundercloud. “Be right back.”

What happens next returns to Anders in snatches of lucidity. Justice takes over, and draws the fade around them like a cloak as they fall through the wall of the building across the street like a comet. Fenris is unharmed and panicking, covered in Anders’ blood, his white linen skirt pink and red with it, the damn collar still locked around his neck. Justice had drawn the sword out of their chest and filled the wound with a magic simulacra of the blood vessels, muscles, organs and nervous system that needed to be there, in the way he had once reconstructed Kristoff’s corpse. (Both of them had quailed, at that comparison, but neither had time to linger on it.)

The building they’d fallen into was, of course, riddled with magisters, but before Justice could exorcise his frustration with a little smiting, all three men and women were dead with a bolt to the back of the head. Isabela appeared from the shadows in a puff of smoke like a mage herself, and Varric waved at them to follow him onto a waiting carriage. Merrill barely waited for them to get on board before she snapped the reins, and they bolted into the panicking crowds, most of whom were running to get away from the collapsing mansion.

In the carriage, consciousness had begun to make its slippery way out of Justice’s hands like a wriggling fish. Both of them had registered Fenris’ wide-eyed panic: the way he’d stared at their old friends with no hint of recognition, and held Anders’ arm so tightly it would bruise. But at that point, the blood loss had overcome them both, and they had passed out to Fenris shouting Tevene interspersed with Anders’ name, and Isabela trying to understand why.

Two years after Garrett Hawke sells him back into slavery, Anders, Isabela, Varric and Merrill free Fenris from Danarius’ service. They don’t go back to Kirkwall - all of them are too conscious of the so-called Champion’s stomping grounds to trust those streets. But Isabela has a contact in the Antivan Crows (or formerly of them - it’s complicated), so instead they go to Antiva City. Two days later, Anders wakes up.

Fenris is staring at him, wearing real clothes that seem to sit uncomfortably on his shoulders. His collar is gone, and there’s a small frown on his brow - a lifting of his eyebrows towards the bridge of his nose that he always used to wear when he was puzzling over particularly cramped handwriting (or, later into his studies, when he was attempting to accurately interpret and summarise abstract Qunari poetry). Anders breathes, and his chest sets itself on fire, and he groans and lets his head fall back against the richly perfumed pillow behind his head. It does relatively little to drown out the thick stench of hot leather that is as thick in the air as molasses.

Fenris startles when he moves, and stands, moving to the door. Anders frowns at him, turning his head to one side with all the energy he can muster. “Where’r’you’goin’?”

Fenris hesitates, turning back to him before lowering his gaze to stare at his still bare feet. There are new scars there, Anders registers, sadly, in neat white bands around his ankles. “I thought I’d fetch the mistress.”

Anders snorts, “Have you told her you’re calling her that?” He tries again to force himself to sit up, and Fenris starts forward, hands freezing in the air between them. His fingernails are neatly, perfectly filed and it ruins Anders’ tentatively building appetite.

“You really shouldn’t be moving.”

Anders grins, trying to ignore the sweat running down his temples as pain racks through every muscle in his body. “Why? Worried I’m going to split in two?” Fenris grimaces, and Anders grunts, giving up and collapsing to the bed with a thunderbolt of pain. “OW. Sorry. Bad joke.” There’s a rustle of fabric, and when Anders is able to stop seeing stars, he turns to find Fenris on his knees beside the bed, head lowered, hands palm up in front of him. “What in the name of Andraste’s perfect silky knickers are you doing?” Anders asks as if he doesn’t know. He thinks it’s going to be easier not to take this seriously, at first. At least whilst he recovers from the mortal injury.

Fenris flinches, and Anders regrets his bad attempt at humour, feeling Justice rumbling in the back of his head like a bowel movement. “Sorry, sorry. Look, Fenris, I’m not going to...punish you, or fuck you, or whatever it is you think I’m going to do to you. I actually have a very busy day planned of, uh, staring at that crack on the ceiling and pretending it doesn’t hurt when I breathe. Or speak. Fuck. I talk too much. I need to - ow - work on that.”

For a long moment, Fenris says nothing. Outside, there’s the sound of someone playing violin in the street, and the rich, warm sound of Antivan spoken loudly and with laughter. Now that he’s acclimatising to the leather, Anders thinks he can smell cured meat frying, and he’s beginning to reconsider his aborted appetite. He’s trying so hard to see if he can actually hear the sizzling of street food that he almost doesn’t hear Fenris’ voice when he speaks, barely above a whisper. “Why?”

“Because I love you.” Anders responds, more muscle memory than conscious - hey he doesn’t remember anything about you maybe we should start slowly - thought. Fenris stares at him, eyes wide, though his mouth twists in apprehension before he smooths it back into impassivity.

“Domine - My master loves me.”

Anders sighs, falling back in the bed to stare up at the crack in the ceiling and try to ignore the hot-cold flushes of pain rocking up through his body. “You don’t remember anything about me, so I’m not going to take that personally.”

Fenris is very still. “You do not...like him?”

Anders chuckles, and regrets it when his tattered organs throw a violent protest. “What gave that away.”

“You broke his nose.” Fenris says, solemnly, and Anders does laugh then, so hard he thinks it splits something open, and he finds himself clutching at his side in the sudden fear that his organs are going to fall out. When he can breathe again, he coughs on his dry mouth and shifts his gaze to Fenris, who’s watching him with wide eyes and the curl of a smile at the corner of his lips which Anders doesn’t think he knows he’s doing.

Anders’ gaze falls to a pewter jug of water on the bedside table and a wooden cup beside it. It may as well be in the Nocen sea, for all the nauseating pain running through him.

“Would you please pour me a glass of water?”

Fenris immediately hurries to obey with a soft, stifled sigh of something terribly like relief. He offers Anders the cup, and when Anders’ shaking, sweating fingers slip on the wood his hand comes up to cup the back of Anders’ head whilst the other pours the cup against his lips. The feeling of Fenris’ fingers in his hair, after so many years, holding him like this, is almost too much for Anders to bear. He keeps his eyes shut for a long time after swallowing, and breathes as tears tickle between the seams of his eyelids and run quietly down his cheeks.

Fenris’ thumb gently catches a tear and brushes it away from his skin, and Anders forces himself to open his eyes and stare up at the elf in the sunshine yellow and orange painted room in which he’s been laid to recuperate. Fenris meets his eyes, so briefly Anders thinks perhaps he imagined it, and draws his hand away. “My master said that I knew you. But that I had forgotten.” Fenris hesitates, mouth stiffening into a firm line that is so painfully familiar Anders thinks he’d choose the greatsword again. Then he looks up, “Did I - did we - it seems as if I meant a great deal to you.”

Anders smiles at him, though his lips tremble, and tries to ignore the feeling of his heart breaking. Outside, on the street, an older woman walks past, singing quietly to herself and humming when she forgets the words. “I think we meant a great deal to each other.”

Fenris purses his lips, and looks away, out of the window. Over the street, the silver-green leaves of an olive tree brush the windows of nearby buildings. Elsewhere in the building, Anders can hear the familiar purr of Isabela, and Merrill’s chirping, and the soft old gravel growl of Varric. Occasionally, the floorboards creak when they move across the lower floors. At last, Fenris’ shoulders drop, and he shakes his head. “I don’t remember you.” The words are rich with regret and apology.

Anders blinks against the new tears tickling his cheeks, and shakes his head. “I know.” Then he reaches out, his fingers cold and numb with pins and needles. Stiffly, fumbling, he grabs Fenris’ fingertips in his own like a much older man, and squeezes them. “I just wanted you to be free.”

#bad things happen bingo #dragon age 2 #fenders #fenris #anders #my fic #anon

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justasparkwritings · 4 years ago

Text

Illicit Affairs: Beautiful Rooms Pt. 1

Previous: You Made Me

Pairings: Namjoon & Reader (Barely)

Genre: Angst, Slice of Life

Ratings: PG15

Word Count: 2.7K

Warnings: Therapy and Swearing

Summary: Namjoon arrives in LA to begin the work he promised he would do.

Listen: illicit affairs by Taylor Swift

Namjoon lays in his plane-bed, headphones blasting D-2, Daechwita, on a blind loop. The sky is dark, 30,000+ feet in the air, he knows he should be sleeping, resting at the bare minimum. But he can’t, melatonin not kicking in just yet, and his mind is too wired, filled with concerns.

Over a two months ago, after the reckoning, Namjoon put his plans into action. You can’t take managements King, and Queen, and bishops and rooks, without having a plan for total annihilation. Namjoon decided, though without much discussion with Jungkook, what they both needed. What would be the best for both of them, and the rest of Bangtan, was guarantees in their contracts that Bang and Co wouldn’t manipulate them anymore. No more calorie counting, no more extra pay for working out more, no more using Namjoon as a weapon against Jungkook or the others. To do this, Namjoon brought in other lawyers who negotiated with Bang’s team, and in the end the seven men amended their contracts. Gone were the clauses about who they could date, gone was the clause that they couldn’t date, period, gone was Run BTS and the trickery management went through to get the men to perform. They would have ownership of their work going forward, and ownership of their work all the way back to the first Love Yourself album.

Taehyung, Jimin, Hoseok, Yoongi and Jin were shocked when their contracts were handed back, careful to read through the changes. They’d been floored, wondering how Namjoon and Jungkook’s brawl could’ve resulted in this swift change in their deals. Namjoon had put it simply: change or we sue. Big Hit knew that if BTS sued them, they’d take the house, the plastic plants in the lobby, the stock options and the futures of every person on the label. They had the option to lose everything, or to surrender, tails between their legs, to the gods that are BTS.

Namjoon knew that if this had happened three months prior, even two years, he wouldn’t have had the weight needed to push the deal through. But, in their decade plus at Big Hit, their level of power and influence, the fact that they had never signed NDA’s coupled with Namjoon’s intricate diaries, Namjoon recognized he had the power to take everything. Bang and Sejin were scared. They knew that they had a limited amount of time before BTS revolted, and if they were revolting with evidence, there was no possible solution that ended in Big Hit’s favor.

With their new contracts came one request from Bang, Sejin and the five other members of Bangtan, one request that was truly a demand: fix Jungkook and Namjoon.

Fixing Jungkook meant fixing Namjoon’s relationship to the maknae, which is how he finds himself flying across the globe to LA. Getting Jungkook help, away from prying eyes, was his idea. He and his love had brainstormed what would help Jungkook get through this, and this was the solution:

Jungkook would spend 3-6 months in LA undergoing rigorous outpatient therapy

Jungkook would be booked for exhaustion, body dysmorphia, alcoholism, and a host of other issues Namjoon could’ve spent his entire flight listing

Jungkook would rehearse in LA and fly back for specific stages but would otherwise record and work in LA while he went to therapy five days a week

Detox would come first, followed by a month of inpatient treatment

Then, Jungkook would be settled in his outpatient apartment, with a few Big Hit bodyguards around 24/7

Jungkook would have a sponsor in Korea and in the states, whom he reported to,

Jungkook is required to attend AA meetings twice a week for the first three months

Namjoon, would attend therapy twice a week in Korea,

Namjoon would fly to LA to spend a month going through treatment with Jungkook

To this, they signed their names, to the promise of something better, to the hope they would find common ground. Jungkook was packed and on a plane 48 hours later. The two men had some contact through music and through their group chat, but otherwise, Jungkook kept to himself. He loved LA, the sun, the ability to exercise outside every day of the week, the blue skies… There was a level of health that came with LA, and of course the seedy underbelly of diet culture, but for Jungkook, it was a welcome change. Everyone breathed in LA, they weren’t rushing to meet deadlines or get anywhere on time, they didn’t have the next five years planned on a detailed spreadsheet. LA was relaxed, it was breezy, and with its endless supply of green juice, it was the exact place Jungkook needed to be.

He diligently went to therapy, working exclusively with Dr. Aarons on the years of abuse he’d endured. Wrapping his mind around what had happened to him, not as love, not as building his character or strengthening his work ethic, but as a traumatic state of emotional abuse, was harder to swallow than two horse tranquilizers without water. Dr. Aarons gave him books and pamphlets on trauma and emotional abuse, which in his off hours, he read. His first month in treatment was spent in therapy sessions, a weekly Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) session, monitored exercise to help reteach him how to use his body, and reading to discuss. Some days felt like high school, or training days, when he was required to both train for debut and be a high school student. He hated it, hated studying, hated school, but to get better he had to do the work. All he could hope was at the end of this he’d feel better, maybe he'd be better too.

Dr. Aaron’s agreed, for the two men to make progress, to find common ground again, they needed to work through their Kilimanjaro sized problems.

A month into treatment, Jungkook was ready and willing to begin working on repairing his most treasured relationship.

“Namjoon, thank you for joining us here,” Dr. Aarons says, eyes darting between Jungkook, who was freshly showered and bouncing his leg up and down, and Namjoon, stoic, perched on the edge of his chair. Dr. Aarons can tell that Namjoon is less prepared than Jungkook, which is why she is in full control of this session.

“It’s, yeah, glad to be here,” Namjoon says, head bowing.

“I am first generation and am fluent in both English and Korean. My maiden name is Park,” Dr. Aarons smiles, letting Namjoon into her stratification of both cultures. “We can flow from English to Korean at any point.”

“Thank you,” Namjoon bows again.

“This first session is just to create a welcoming and safe space for Jungkook to see you again. Soon he will be off, and you and I will have a bit of time to talk. I have been in communication with your therapist back in Seoul, and he has given me his thoughts as well as points that we can continue to work on as a triad. Jungkook, is there something you wanted to say to Namjoon before you go?”

Jungkook looks at his brother, irises rising to meet his sun-twin. Namjoon’s eyes are tired, heavy, his lids weighty as he continues to battle some jetlag. Jungkook looks fucking fantastic, the sun and balanced eating working wonders on him.

“Thank you, hyung, for being here, and thank you for being willing to work on this with me. I still hold love for you in my heart, though I don’t have to. We’ve both fucked up. I am sorry for punching you, well, beating you up, and I hope you can forgive me, if not today, at some point. And again, thank you, hyung, for fighting for me,” Jungkook’s voice breaks as he utters his last words, eyes dropping to his hands.

“Jungkook, you did great,” Dr. Aarons reassures.

“Thank you, Jungkookie, for being, forgiving, for still wanting to speak to me, to work with me, it,” Namjoon clears his throat, that familiar lump forming. “I know I let you down. I will always be sorry,”

“I know, me too,”

“Jungkook, thank you for being here today. I will see you tomorrow for our first session as a group.” Dr. Aaron’s gave the go-ahead for Jungkook to leave, and he did swiftly, giving Namjoon the chance to confide in Dr. Aarons.

“Thank you, for doing this,” Namjoon spoke.

“This was your idea, correct? The therapy, detox, all of it?”

“Yes,” Namjoon feels the blood rush to his cheeks.

“From what I understand, you’re kind of a genius, right?”

“In music, I suppose,”

Reaching for her notepad, Dr. Aarons’ glances down. “Mm, I spoke with Dr. Cho,”

“Yes?”

“He was very insightful, gave me lots of great notes and things to discuss. I wanted to start by saying that I understand the levels of abuse you went through,” She raises her head to meet his unsteady gaze, clocking the flustered expression.

“Yes,”

“The manipulation, the invalidation, the pain. Namjoon, no one should have to experience all of that, and yet, here you are. You are strong, you are powerful, you are dedicated to your brothers. None of it excuses what you have done, but what I want to convey to you, is that a lot of your actions were not your fault.” Dr. Aarons’ runs through the list of compliments she had jotted down, notes of what to say to create a safe space for Namjoon.

“I, I know,”

“I know you do; I also know that isn’t how you see it.” Dr. Aarons’ sets her pen down and recrossed her legs, eyes never straying from him. She’s formidable, honored and esteemed throughout the community, domestically and abroad. Namjoon knew, he helped picked her, she was the reason Jungkook was here.

“I still did the actions,” Namjoon sighs, “I still followed through with the plan,”

“Yes, but the cost to you and your life was exquisite. You were a pawn,”

“Now I am the victor,” He mumbles.

“Tell me, Namjoon, how old did you feel when you and Jungkook fought?”

“What do you mean?”

“Jungkook’s recounted his memory of that night, but how did you feel? In that moment when he hit you, what age specifically did you feel?”

He takes a moment to think, but the answer is in front of him immediately. “Fifteen,”

“What happened at 15?”

He shifts nervously, the rapid speed of his speech slowing as he spoke. “I was still being scouted by Big Hit, no contracts, just negotiations. My parents were, unsupportive.”

“Within the Seoul rap community, you were making a name for yourself,” Dr. Aarons’ didn’t have to be living in Korea at the time to know who he was, everyone in the first gen community who still had any ties back home knew. You couldn’t listen to music without his mixes coming through. “Yeah, but that only gets you so far. I was talking to Bang about these big plans for a super group, a group that combined rapping and pop, some bridge between the two and other genres… the places were going to go seemed endless.”

“How did you feel in those negotiations?”

Joon smiles. “I felt, ten feet tall. I mattered in those meetings,”

“And to your parents?” Dr. Aaron’s questions.

“I was just their high schooler, hormonal, with dreams bigger than my mind could hold. They, they didn’t want me to do it,”

“But you went for it,” She smiles gently.

“I did, yeah,” Namjoon, hates flattery. Call it his sun sensibility, his rays unable to shine under the humility of the grey cloud he kept above himself.

“What else happened around that time?” She presses.

Namjoon nods again, knowing exactly where she’s leading him. “That’s when I started receiving a lot of hate,”

“Mm, tell me about that,”

“Do I have to?” He asks, voice no longer strong and steady.

“Not if you don’t want to,” She replies.

“It’s just,” Namjoon sighs. “It still hurts.”

“I expect it to. The comments were very personal,”

“About how I look, about the shape of my nose, the sound of my voice, that I’ll never amount to anything and BTS is just, complete trash passing off as music.” He rattles off the ones that plague him, when self-doubt creeps in, the comments that still rise to the top of the pack.

“They escalated, didn’t they?”

“Don’t they always?”

She smiles softly, a precursor to the next blow. “Did you internalize them?”

“Yes,”

“When Jungkook hit you,” She starts.

“It was like every internet troll finally getting their chance to swing,” Namjoon doesn’t hesitate to finish the thought.

“Ahh, there it is.” Dr. Aaron’s allows Namjoon a minute to sit in the realization. “What hurt the most? The physical pain, or the emotional weight you put behind it?”

“I haven’t thought about it like that,” He realizes.

“Well let’s think about it now,” Her voice is kind, leading him to the pasture but never feeding. No wonder everyone raved about her.

“It was the emotions,” He concedes.

“Can you describe what those emotions were?”

“Anger, frustration, inadequacy, disappointment, like I had just shattered the entire world I’d given every bit of myself to creating.”

“That wasn’t why Jungkook was hitting you, though,” Dr. Aarons’ informs him.

“It wasn’t?”

“You tell me, why would he be hitting you?”

“I,” Namjoon exhales, “I betrayed him.”

“Did you let him down?”

“Yes,”

“But did he view you as inadequate?” She pushes.

“No,” Namjoon whispers, voice caught between his vocal chords as the waves of tears start to gain on him.

Dr. Aarons’ smiles again, “No, has he ever?”

“No,” Namjoon shakes his head, hand wiping the tears that have fallen.

“It seems to me like it’s quite the opposite. Jungkook loves you, pure and simple.”

“I betrayed him,” Namjoon argues.

“Betrayal and inadequacy are often put together, at least in our minds. We betray someone, or a relationship, because it’s either not enough for us, or because it’s too much. The dissonance between you and Jungkook is that his anger is misplaced, he can claw at you because you are there, you are present, you are with him every day. He’s shooting the messenger, but you didn’t write the messages, Namjoon.”

“I don’t know if he understands that,”

“There’s only so much I can do to separate what he feels towards you, and what he realizes isn’t your fault. In our time together, as a trio, we will hopefully work towards understanding these complexities within your relationship. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds good,”

“Great! I don’t have any work for you, other than, well, a major piece of homework,”

“Bring it on,” Namjoon loves work. Pure and simple.

“You can’t have dinner with Jungkook tonight, or engage with him in a private setting,” Dr. Aarons’ instructs.

“Makes sense,” Namjoon agrees.

“We’ll begin work on it tomorrow, but until then, you have to stay apart,”

“I can do that, we’re staying in separate places,”

“Great, Namjoon, I am really looking forward to working with you,” Dr. Aarons stands. “I hope you enjoy your day in LA,”

“See you tomorrow,” Namjoon smiles gratefully before exiting her office, his phone at the ready, texts from Yoongi and Hoseok, Taehyung and the rest of Bangtan to check in on him. And then there’s the text from his love, who as he steps into the sun, is waiting for him.

“Joon of my eye, what a pleasure it is to see you,”

Though the smile is clearly plastered across his face, it’s the way his arms circle your waist, head nuzzling into your neck, lips pressing firmly to your skin.

“I fucking missed you,” He mutters.

“You’re being so affectionate, in public,”

“No one’s here,” Namjoon says, head still resting against your shoulder.

“That eye opening, huh?” Your hands move up and down his back, the comfort radiating from your familiar embrace.

“Mm, can we go?” He asks, standing to his full height.

“To your place?”

“Anywhere,” He slips his sunglasses over his eyes, the mist beginning to cloud his vision.

“Of course,” You respond, hand finding his, fingers intertwining. With his baseball cap pulled low on his head, Namjoon is barely recognizable. He doesn’t hesitate to move his free hand across your shoulders, holding onto you as you guide him to your rental car. He might’ve been the messenger of Bang’s threats and manipulations, but a pawn is still a pawn. Namjoon had taken the board in his game against Big Hit, but in Jungkook’s universe, under Jungkook’s rules, he’s still a piece in motion.

Next: Beautiful Rooms Pt. 2

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no-whump-on-main · 4 years ago

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Elora Series-2

Back at it again with part 2!!

I am slightly sleep deprived excuse grammatical errors.

TWs: mention of drugging, possessive whumper.

Clyde Anderson wasn’t an idiot.

He was reckless, maybe, and a little crazy, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had left a completely clean crime scene; not a single strand of hair was left behind, not a single lost eyelash, nothing. As soon as Elora finally gave in and passed out, he took the SIM card out of her phone and crushed it to bits with his foot, though he kept the device itself to dispose of farther away. It didn’t take him long at all to secure her wrists and ankles with thick rope, just to ensure she couldn’t try anything in the off chance that she woke up before they reached their destination. Once she was tied up properly, he shoved her and her bag into the trunk before getting back into the driver’s seat and speeding off.

The drive was long, but not terribly so; it was just about two hours, driven straight through. That was another of the geniuses to his plan; they’d be crossing state lines, twice. That, on top of the squeaky clean scene, made Clyde confident that the police wouldn’t have even the slightest chance of ever finding Elora.

In all honesty, he didn’t know what he was going to do with her. He had a couple of plans, but after that, he was lost. It didn’t seem plausible to keep her forever, but a body to hide would complicate things even further. He could let her go, eventually, but he’d have to rough her up pretty bad to scare her out of telling anyone about him.

Overthinking was a demon. That was a problem to be dealt with later. All he knew at the moment was that he had to have her, and now he did.

Ever since some drunk guy at the bar started rambling to him the wretched bitch who killed his niece, curiosity had eaten at his soul, itching to know more. They became newfound drinking buddies, and he pressed the other man for details every night out for weeks, yet somehow came off without any suspicion. Clyde asked for all sorts of things-her name, where she was from, how she knew his niece-and Dante always answered without question.

The gist of the story he was given was that Dante’s niece, Wren, had been dating this girl for years, which he had never liked in the first place, but one day, when they were sixteen, she took Wren up a mountain and killed her. Clyde had a feeling that wasn’t the entire story, but he truly didn’t care. His fascination was with the Elora, not what she’d done three years ago.

He truly didn’t need much information from Dante, anyways. After a few basic questions, he got everything else he needed from facebook stalking.

And now he’d been watching her for almost five months.

It still felt surreal that he’d finally talked himself into biting back his worries and taking her. He couldn’t explain his feelings about the situation if his life depended on it, but something felt so viscerally right now that she was finally with him, just a few feet away in the trunk. It was as if Elora had always belonged to him, and now things were just as they were supposed to be.

He had her. He finally fucking had her.

About thirty miles away from where he grabbed her, he tossed her SIM-cardless phone out of the window into a soaked ditch on the side of the road. Even if the device was recovered, it wouldn’t have a chance of turning on after soaking in rainwater for so long.

The rest of the drive passed uneventfully, just as Clyde had hoped. He never stopped once, and was incredibly careful to drive lawfully so as to not attract the attention of any cops.

Their final destination was a shitty apartment in an even shittier town in Connecticut. The name Pleasant Park Apartments poorly hid the harsh reality of asbestos-filled walls, cigarette butts lining the sidewalks like snow, and neighbors who were either always too high to give a shit about anything or just naturally apathetic on their own. Clyde had been there for seven years, and was numb to the conditions at this point. He used to live in a nice condo on the better side of town, but after some bitch that couldn’t take a damn joke got fired from his job as a mechanic that paid a pretty penny, he couldn’t afford it anymore. His new job as an insurance agent hardly covered rent for the shithole he had now, but it was all that he could get. At least the coworkers weren’t shit.

After parking the sedan close to his building, Clyde took Elora’s bag out of the trunk and slung it over his shoulder, then proceeded to lift her out of the trunk, holding her beneath her knees and around her back in a bridal carry. She was still completely limp, her body almost jelly-like in its unconscious state. He didn’t anticipate just how heavy she’d feel when he had to carry her up three flights of stairs. By the time he put his key in the door of apartment 307, he was panting heavily, more than ready to drop her in the bathroom prison he’d already prepared for her.

The bathroom was obviously not an ideal location; a basement would have been preferable, but in a two bed two bath apartment, there wasn’t another place to put her. The spare bedroom was too close to the outside and had windows-what if a cop patrolling around looking for druggies heard her, or she lifted the blinds to signal for help? The master bath and bedroom weren’t options for the same reason, and neither were the kitchen or the living room, with far too much open space to properly contain Elora. That left the small guest bathroom in the hallway; the door to it was directly across from the front door of the apartment, but that was the only negative. It didn’t have any external walls, and was easy to rig into somewhat of a cell.

It wasn’t anything fancy, but it wasn’t awful, either. Clyde had never used it, sticking to the master, so it was clean, but the decor was straight out of the eighties, with yellowing floral wallpaper and a big white mat that had begun to grow mold from the surrounding humidity in the center of the room. The bathtub was straight ahead from the door, and the very clearly aged toilet and vanity were along the right wall, lining up with the showerhead.

Clyde did indeed drop Elora, kicking the door closed behind himself then immediately heading over to the bathroom and all but tossing her into the tub. He flinched, though, at the sound of her head smacking against the hard tile that lined the side walls. That was probably overkill-even he knew that.

He didn’t have time to fuss over it, though. He didn’t know how much time he had until she woke up.

A week prior to the kidnapping, he’d purchased a length of heavy duty chain and a few padlocks from a local store. With a bit of ingenuity, he figured out a way to rig them to the bathtub’s faucet without having to install any sort of extra hardware into the walls to prevent them from slipping off. All it took was the tension of looping them around both the faucet and the handle that controlled the water and a few extra wraps around; after being secured with several padlocks, there wasn’t a single plausible way for the chains to be pulled off of the wall. All he had to do after that was secure the loose end of the chain to a pair of handcuffs with another padlock, and he had all he needed to keep Elora exactly where he wanted her to be.

He untied the ropes from her hands and feet, replacing those around her hands with the cuffs. He didn’t worry about securing her feet in any way, as the amount of chain left after the jerry-rigged suspension between the handle and faucet was so short that she would have to hunch over to stand, anyways. She wouldn’t be able to go far with that.

He double-checked everything before leaving the bathroom, each padlock, each individual chain link, and the bathroom itself for any hazards that could be within her reach. There were none. Everything was utterly perfect.

Satisfied, Clyde turned off the lights, closed the door, and headed into his bedroom which was just a door away down the hallway, a gleeful smile on his face.

Elora awoke slowly, in several stages. At first, she couldn’t even tell that she was waking up at all, as wherever she was, it was pitch black. She then realized that she was in fact somewhere, and that somewhere was unfamiliar. She bolted upright with a start. Her head ached horribly from the sudden motion and she flinched, sucking in a loud breath. Ow, shit. Confusion then hit her. Where was she?

The memories came next. She jerked her wrists back abruptly and heard the clanking of metal, feeling tightness around her wrists as something resisted them moving. It kept them together when she tried to pull them apart, as well..handcuffs?

Her first instinct was to scream and jerk as much as she could, fighting chains that she couldn’t even see. She thrashed as hard as she could, her throat feeling raw as she screamed for what felt like an hour.

Soon, though, she fell silent. Dead silent. She swore she could hear footsteps, and they were getting louder. Maybe someone was coming to help her? This could all be a huge misunderstanding.

A door she didn’t even know was there opened and she held her breath. A small amount of light came into the room, but it seemed to be dark outside of wherever she was, too.

She watched as a shadowy figure reached into the room, flipping a light switch. Bright fluorescent lights crackled on immediately, and Elora blinked, her eyes having become accustomed to the darkness.

She whipped her head around to look at the figure after her eyes adjusted. They panned to his face, first; he was a man, with a scraggly goatee and brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed or cut in a long time. His eyes were brown, the whites bloodshot. She could see it in his face that he was slightly overweight, and his skin had an almost-sunburned appearance despite it being the middle of November.

His mouth started moving. He was speaking. His voice was rough and loud.

“Hello.”

Elora’s eyes then panned down to his body. She recognized the clothes he was wearing. She recognized them. It had been too dark to make out his face when she was being kidnapped, but she remembered his clothes. A gray tee shirt and straight-leg jeans. He took her. He was the one. He-

She began screaming again, and then she heard him laugh at the sound of her cries.

Tags: @exploringspaceinpyjamas

#elora #elora larkin #new series #elora series #no whump on main #whump #whump fic #whump oc #whump writing #My writing #whumper #creepy whumper #possessive whumper #lady whump #physical whump #kidnapping #psychological whump

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houseisekai · 4 years ago

Text

House Isekai: Shadowbringers Act 2, Part 3 - Crossroads

House Isekai Shadowbringers AU Masterlist Here

—

Lahabrea, the Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Ashen Wolves, and House Isekai have finally arrived at Derdriu, awaiting the Golden Deer and the Investigation Team.

Only now does Lahabrea give them the answers they have been waiting for, and the war to finish before time runs out...

[No Greater Sorrow - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

Byleth slowly opened his eyes, the light from the windows blinding him.

(Byleth) “Where in the hell...?”

(Minato’s voice) “Oh hey, you’re awake.”

Byleth turned to his side and saw several of the Persona Users in the beds next to him.

(Minako) “Oh, thank god you’re alright!”

(Akira) “Hey, Byleth.”

He slowly sat upright on his bed, reaching for his head.

(Byleth) “Where are we?”

(Mitsuru) “We’re in Derdriu. The journey took a day or two but now we’re just waiting for Claude to arrive in order to discuss our next course of action.”

(Byleth) “And where is everyone else?...Actually, why are you all in the Infirmary with me?”

(Ryuji) “Those voices or whatever is effin’ with our heads. We almost passed out but we seemed to see the same thing...Some kinda tower?”

(Junpei) “That Lahabrea guy better have some answers, I’m sick of being left in the dark.”

(Byleth) “...You may not like what you’ll hear.”

(Minako) “Did he tell you what was happening?”

Byleth hesitated at first, but he responded with a nod.

(Akechi) “That’s just damn great...”

(Akira) “We should probably let the others know you’re alright.”

The Persona users got up and left, though a few stayed behind.

(Minako) “Um...i-it’s good seeing you again, Byleth.”

(Minato) “It’s probably the best news we’ve gotten in a while.”

(Akira) “We’ll see you outside.”

(Byleth) “...Thanks.”

Byleth couldn’t look them in the eye as they spoke. He wasn’t sure he could look at anyone, making him anxious to face House Isekai again.

...

(Claude) “Home sweet home.”

The Golden Deer and Investigation Team finally arrived back in Derdriu, and walked over the hill to the gate.

(Percy) “Milord!”

(Claude) “Hey, Percy. Open the gates for us?”

(Percy) “Of course. You’ll be pleased to know your guests have arrived just last night.”

(Claude) “Go on ahead without me, I’ll be telling the guards to prepare for the worst.”

Everyone nodded and did as he asked.

...

Doomguy and the Ashen Wolves strolled around town due to the lack of having anything better to do.

(Balthus) “Man, anything would be better than just calmly waiting for the Church or Those Who Slither to get a drop on us.”

(Yuri) “Patience big guy. We can’t afford to go hunting when we don’t even know what the hell’s going on. Our time for fighting will come soon enough.”

(Constance) “And what a fantastic time it will be! Fodlan’s fate will be back where it belongs, us!”

(Hapi) “Well we also gotta worry about what the three nations will do after this without Teary and the others keeping them in check. Am I right?”

Hapi turned to Doomguy for at least a nod or shrug. She got neither as he stared to their side.

(Doomguy) “...”

(Hapi) “Hey, Teary, everything alright?”

Doomguy frowned. He thought he saw something move out of their field of vision.

He would have left it alone, but knowing their situation...

Doomguy held up a hand and brought out his shotgun, motioning the Ashen Wolves to head back to the building.

(Yuri) “That’s...discouraging.”

(Hapi) “We should get back to the others.”

They nodded and broke out into a light jog.

...

Byleth staggered out the door of the infirmary to see a few familiar faces.

(Sharon) “Master Byleth, it is good to see you.”

(Cocytus) “WELCOME BACK.”

(Sara) “Jeez, about time.”

(Towa) “Instructor!”

(Angelica) “Yo.”

(Megumi) “Thank goodness you’re awake.”

(Sitri) “Byleth...”

(Byleth) “Thanks. Where is everyone?”

(Sara) “Doomguy went out with the Ashen Wolves to just take a look around the city while the others are here and there in the building.”

(Byleth) “And Lahabrea?”

(Angelica) “In a room upstairs, alone. He said not to call him until Claude was here.”

Knock knock!

(Yu) “Hello? It’s the In-...!!! Oh!”

(Towa) “Yu!”

The rest of the Investigation Team and Golden Deer came through the door.

(Hilda) “Well, well!”

(Yosuke) “Hoho MAN, you guys are a sight for sore eyes!”

Yu took Byleth’s hand and shook it firmly.

(Yu) “Good to see you again, sir.”

(Byleth) “Likewise. Sorry it took so long.”

(Leonie) “Better late than never!”

The other staff smiled as they caught up with the Investigation Team.

(Megumi) “Yuki and the others will be so happy to see you again!”

(Cocytus) “SO, WE HAVE EVERYONE TOGETHER ONCE AGAIN. WHERE IS CLAUDE?”

The door opened once again as if on cue.

(Claude) “Kept ya waiting long?”

He smiled as the rest of House Isekai started to come down the stairs, followed by the Blue Lions and Black Eagles.

(Dimitri) “Claude!”

(Edelgard) “For once, I am relieved to see you.”

(Claude) “Jeez, you’re gonna make a guy blush with compliments like that.”

(Yu) “Long time no see everyone.”

(Yuuri) “YOU GUYS ARE OKAY!”

(Rean) “Hah, I don’t think we had to doubt that, Yuki.”

(Akira) “You guys are more stubborn than us.”

(Minato) “Hey.”

(Minako) “House Isekai is all here again!”

(Ainz) “Unfortunate that we cannot celebrate...”

He examined the room and did a mental head count.

(Claude) “All that’s left should be...”

(Yuri) “That would be us.”

The Ashen Wolves and Doomguy showed up behind Claude, waving.

This was the first time Sitri had seen everyone together like this. It made her smile, knowing how big the family taking care of Byleth was.

(Sitri) “The gang’s all here now.”

(Lahabrea’s voice) “So it would seem.”

[Tears in the Rain - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers]

Everyone looked up the stairs to see Lahabrea leaning against a wall, with Sothis floating beside him.

(Sothis) “Well, you all wanted answers? We’ll give them to you.”

Lahabrea nodded and looked at everyone. Part of him wanted to smile, seeing everyone united like this.

But they were far from being in a happy mood.

(Kazuma) “First of all, just who the fuck are you? You know our past and have your own Sothis, yet we only know our Byleth!”

(Lahabrea) “My name is Byleth Eisner. I am the real one. The real one you’ve seen in all those flashes when your voices echo in your heads.”

(Minako) “That would explain why it feels so real but...We’ve always known our Byleth to be the real one, what makes you so different?”

(Sothis) “Those voices are your past memories. With us two. Up until just this time, you had always been with us everytime you appeared-”

(Aqua) “Woah woah woah, hang on! We’ve only been here once, what are you going on about ‘everytime we appeared’?”

(Lahabrea) “Some of you are aware of the ‘Divine Pulse’ ability, right?”

(Emma) “That time reversal that Sothis and Byleth do?”

Lahabrea nodded. Most of House Isekai looked confused but those who weren’t affected by it could follow.

(Lahabrea) “You all first arrived individually. First it was only Kazuma’s group. We went through 6 years of hell together, and when the war was finished, we were sent back right to the beginning, when Dimitri, Claude, and Edelgard arrived to Remire Village. Then taking Kazuma’s place at the next loop was Class VII, and so on. Time forcefully resets everytime you go home...and I cannot begin to fathom why.”

(Yu) “So, how is Sothis here? If that’s the case, every loop Sothis would have fused with you, right?”

(Sothis) “It’s because I fused with him that I am here right now. I was not truly gone the first time we fused, but it seems whatever force is at work keeps bringing me back.”

(Lahabrea) “And it was during the final loop we did, we reset time ourselves using the Tower at Zanado.”

(Rean) “But, there wasn’t a tower when we were there.”

(Akira) “No I...I think there was?”

Yu turned to Akira.

(Yu) “Was it half made out of what looked like stone and scifi tech?”

(Minako) “Yeah actually, how did you?-”

(Claude) “We confirmed the tower’s presence ourselves. Had a nice visit in it too...”

(Yuuri) “Um, what actually is that tower?”

(Lahabrea) “For now, it’s best to hear it yourselves. Honestly, not even we understand it.”

Lahabrea pulled out a crystal and it began its playback.

“I don’t know if anyone will be seeing this message, whether that be myself or anyone else who comes into this godforsaken tower but…My name is Byleth Eisner. Son of Jeralt Eisner.”

...

Everyone listened to the entire message, and when it finished, most of them were left in a state of shock.

(Lahabrea) “Since you went into the Tower, I can only assume you saw the skies turn a pale white?”

(Claude) “Something like that. Even in Inaba it followed.”

(Miki) “Inaba? As in-”

(Yu) “Our town, yes. We were wanting to say that tower in Zanado started showed up and is releasing shadows onto the real world.”

The Persona Users turned pale.

(Yukari) “S-Shadows are loose right now in all of our homes?!”

(Lahabrea) “So far, just the Persona User’s worlds. But that won’t be for long. Which brings us to why we have you all gathered under a single banner.”

(Sothis) “You all were NEVER meant to be here. At all. Whatever our previous selves did, it caused a catastrophic rip in reality, at least that’s what we’re guessing.”

(Lahabrea) “And we only made it worse by using Divine Pulse ourselves. It’s why House Isekai exists.”

(Megumi) “S-So...our existence here was a mistake?”

It pained Lahabrea to do so, but he nodded.

(Lahabrea) “Yes. And since you all have been here for so long, it’s now starting to affect your worlds.”

The crystal Lahabrea was holding quickly shifted into a reflection that displayed Tokyo, Tatsumi Port Island, and Inaba, the tower being the most noticeable thing in the reflection.

(Lahabrea) “The longer you are here, the worse this effect will become. Our worlds are merging. All of ours.”

(Naoto) “That...makes sense! It’s why Dojima was able to understand Claude and the others!”

Now, it was the School-Living Club’s turn to feel sick.

(Kurumi) “Then...that means...?!”

(Yuuri) “The infection...!”

(Lahabrea) “Will be in Fodlan, yes.”

(Miki) “W-What can we do to stop it?!”

(Sothis) “We honestly don’t know. Our plan right now is to stop whatever remnants of the world we destroyed. Those Who Slither and the Church has technology from that time, and is whats making them able to wage this war.”

Sara turned to Byleth.

(Sara) “...So where’s our Byleth come into this? He’s been quiet this entire time.”

Byleth looked away.

(Lahabrea) “...You saw the Angels at Enbarr. What their infection does to people. It’s affecting Byleth as well.”

(Everyone) !!!

(Sitri) “T-Then that means?!”

(Byleth) “I’m slowly turning into an Angel....”

(Lahabrea) “I’ve done what I can to delay the process, but its why Byleth is able to permanently kill Inquisitors. But...”

(Byleth) “So far we haven’t been able to find a cure. I will die if it is not found.”

(Megumi) “WHAT?!”

(Lahabrea) “Which is why we need to strike now. If we can stop Those who Slither and the Church before his transformation and our worlds merge.”

Yuri frowned as the light from the window blinded him.

(Yuri) “Looks like we’ll get that chance faster than you think.”

[Will and Reason - Tales of Berseria OST]

Cyril and Alois walked towards the gate as the skies turned into a pale white, soldiers rushing to the gate.

(Percy) “Hey, what’s the meaning of this?! You are not authorized to be in Alliance territory-”

(Cyril) “By order of Lady Rhea, we are to execute the Warrior of Darkness! Any resistance will be met with force, do not interfere!”

The church soldiers kicked open the gates and stormed Derdriu, surrounding all exits.

(Alois) “If we do see him...let me speak first, Cyril.”

(Cyril) “Fine. Make it quick if you are able.”

Everyone looked out the window, grabbing their weapons.

(Claude) “Get Judith and the rest of our forces ready. I don’t think I can talk my way out this one.”

(Edelgard) “I don’t think there’s much point hiding your involvement with us. Perhaps if the three of our forces went out and confronted them, we could buy some time.”

(Yu) “That could work.”

(Rean) “Whatever we’re doing, just make it fast!”

(Claude) “Edelgard, let’s go with yours. Just follow my lead though.”

Dimitri and Edelgard nodded. House Isekai and the Ashen Wolves snuck further into the building as the three classes marched out the building.

(Cyril) “Claude von Riegan.”

(Claude) “Hey, Cyril, Alois. Been a hot minute since we saw each other, yeah? I take it you got promoted to Inquisitors-”

(Alois) “Where is Byleth?”

(Claude) “...Byleth? What makes you think he’d be here-”

(Cyril) “DO YOU THINK US FOOLS?! WHERE IS HE?!”

Dimitri and Edelgard looked to their sides to see soldiers closing in on them, weapons drawn.

Hubert held up a hand to not retaliate just yet.

(Alois) “Lord Dimitri, Emperor Edelgard...I was under the impression you were fighting one another.”

(Claude) “They are here in neutral territory to call a truce, so to speak.”

(Alois) “...And I was also under the impression that his highness was kidnapped by members of House Isekai. Clearly I was mistaken.”

Cyril frowned and grabbed his weapon.

(Cyril) “You are aware of what the Church’s sentence is for treason, correct?”

(Claude) “Sure am.”

No one made a move, both sides were waiting to see what would happen first.

(Alois) !? “What in the...?”

Edelgard noticed a bright light coming from her and realized a blue flame surrounded her and the other Black Eagles members.

Before they knew it, their clothes transformed, all the members wearing a mask and costume.

Edelgard was now in her Flame Emperor outfit, with the bottom half of her mask gone.

(Dedue) “Isn’t that just like...?”

(Hilda) “Akira?!”

(Cyril) “The Phantom Thieves?!”

(Edelgard) “Well, I guess that’s as good as a cue as any-”

[Tempest of Seasons (Rain) - Fire Emblem: Three Houses OST]

Edelgard unsheathed Aymr and swung it at the two, causing the debris beneath them to explode.

Everyone else followed suit and began their assault as Alois and Cyril barely dodged Edelgard’s attack.

Before any of the Church knights could respond, many of them were picked off by the gun wielders of House Isekai, who drove them further up the street.

Alliance Soldiers intercepted them and attacked with swords and bows, leaving Alois and Cyril to the classes.

Claude fired an arrow at Cyril, but was deflected by Alois’s siheld.

Dimitri and Edelgard charged in and tried to attack from the sides, but Cyril blocked Dimitri as his wyvern swooped in and knocked back Edelgard.

Hubert snapped his fingers and a massive black fireball fired from his tome and blew up a group of knights, as Dedue and Hilda crushed ones that came too close into the floor.

Another group of church knights came around the corner and were about to charge before being blasted into the wall by a light spell.

One of them tried to get back up before his leg suddenly in the opposite direction, making him fall over as blood burst out of his throat.

Kazuma became visible, taking his knife out the Church Knight as he turned behind him.

(Kazuma) “DARKNESS!”

Darkness charged in and swung her sword at the knocked down soldiers, hitting the pillar nearby, making it tip over and crush them.

(Darkness) “Wha-BUT I HIT THEM!”

(Kazuma) “Fuck it, doesn’t matter, keep going!”

Aqua and Megumin followed behind Kazuma and Darkness, causing mayhem for the Knights.

Several Alliance soldiers were outmatched by the Church knights, injured on the floor about to be killed.

Only a few of them were able to be saved as Lorenz, Lysithea, Caspar, and Sylvain killed the knights attacking them.

Lorenz and Lysithea opened their tomes and fired several Thorons, piercing through their helmets and blasting their heads off. Their bodies quickly dissolved into white dust, with Caspar punching a hole through a knight and Sylvain ran over one with his horse.

(Caspar) “Hey, we need a medic over here!”

Mercedes, Linhardt, and Marianne ran over and began to heal the soldiers they could as the others ran in from behind.

Linhardt raised his head and saw a few of the group running on top of the walls surrounding the city.

The Denizens of Nazarick, Class VII, and the Phantom Thieves looked around them to see the fighting continued on the outside, the advantage being on the Knights’ side.

(Ainz) “We cannot afford to retreat and lose the only city where we have refuge! Do whatever it takes!”

(Albedo) “Yes, Lord Ainz!”

Ainz began giving directions to the rest of his group as they ran, giving himself and two others a necklace of flight.

(Ainz) “Cocytus, Pandora’s Actor, with me, we go after any reinforcements that may be on their way!”

They flew off far past the main gate, leaving the Phantom Thieves and Class VII on the walls.

(Elliot) “L-Look, some of the knights made it to the walls!”

(Rean) “Class VII, take them out!”

(Sara) “They’re only monsters now, so aim to kill!”

(Class VII) “Yeah!” “Got it!” “Understood.”

(Akira) “Leave closing the gates to us. Joker, out.”

He winked at Rean and gracefully leapt off the walls and onto the roofs, the Phantom Thieves using their Personas to get around.

Lahabrea and Byleth saw the Phantom Thieves hop over their head as they looked at the battle.

(Lahabrea) “You know the deal. Captains first, then get away before you’re spotted. No witnesses.”

Byleth nodded as they moved across the shadows, though Byleth couldn’t help but take a second to glance at the group near them.

The Ashen Wolves and School-Living Club, and Sitri were helping the civilians evacuate as S.E.E.S, the Investigation Team and Doomguy protected them from incoming knights.

(Kanji) “How do these assholes even have these many soldiers?!”

(Akihiko) “The fight they’re putting up is a lot fiercer than 5 years ago!”

Their personas killed the knights with ease, though with everyone they got rid of, five more seemed to take his place.

The School-Living Club felt out of their element here as arrows whizzed by everyone's’ head, but still they persevered.

(Megumi) “Get to the main capital building, you’ll be safe there!”

Kurumi did what she could to slow down any of the knights with her shovel by getting the jump on them, but she could already feel eyes on her. Her luck wouldn’t last forever.

(Yuuri) “P-Please keep your head down and move to that building over there, we’ll protect you!”

(Woman) “T-Thank you dear!”

(Hapi) “Shut up and get moving.”

The woman nodded and did as she was told.

Yuuri and Miki were the farthest from the group, helping out a child who was hiding underneath the carriage.

(Miki) “No knights are around right now, you have to get moving!”

(Yuki) “We’ll protect you, take my hand!”

The child nodded and took Yuki’s hand. Once he was out, his eyes went wide as he pointed behind them.

(Child) “W-WATCH OUT!”

Yuki and Miki turned around to see several figures in black fire a spell at them.

They were too slow to react and took the hit directly, sending them flying back into the carriage.

Megumi got distracted when she saw what happened to them, causing her to panic.

Megumi ran over to the two, grabbing a nearby board to attack the hooded figures before she stopped moving entirely, feeling something go through her stomach.

(Sitri) “MEGUMI!”

[Those Who Sow Darkness - Fire Emblem: Three Houses OST]

An Agarthan took the dagger out of her as he filled the gap with some dark magic, causing her to scream in pain.

Doomguy spun around at the noise and saw what was happening and immediately jumped into action.

(Yu) “Huh?- NO!”

(Minako) “Where did they-?!”

(Minato) “GOD DAMN IT!”

(Yuri) “BEHIND US, AGARTHANS!”

Doomguy cleaved the Agarthan in half with his wrist blade and threw his body at the mages who were getting close to Yuki and Miki, about to do the same thing to Megumi.

The Persona Users began engaging the ones who weren’t hit as the Knights backed off.

(Alois) “Those who Slither as well?!”

(Cyril) “Tch, the heretics developing the powers of House Isekai?! We have to go back and warn Lady Rhea, KNIGHTS, RETREAT, WE ARE OUTMATCHED!”

The knights immediately began to pull back. Alois sighed, hoping to see Byleth, but held his tongue and followed orders.

The skies turned back to a normal color as the Church withdrew, though it was far from good news.

Doomguy ran over and grabbed Yuki and Miki and set them next to Megumi.

(Yuuri) “No no no no!”

(Kurumi) “W-What’s happening, how did they get behind us?!”

(Sitri) “Is she alright?!”

Doomguy didn’t respond as he immediately began scanning the three for injuries.

For Yuki and Miki, it appeared worse than it actually was, the worst being a few burn marks, but for Megumi...

Something was spreading throughout her body, but it didn’t look like anything he’s seen.

Everyone stopped fighting when they saw the knights pull back and saw the Agarthans teleport in.

(Agarthan) “There you all are...Saves us the trouble of hunting you down individually.”

The Agarthans went to the dead and raised their hand to them, deploying a black fog that went into the bodies that made them shake violently, dissolving into a black goo as their essence went to the center where Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude was.

(Agarthan) “I see the Church has their own version of our spell. Interesting, but inferior. Honestly, we have no idea how they got their hands on this, but thank you for bringing it to our attention.”

He began laughing as all the black substance was forming into a colossal shape behind him, even ones from outside the gate were getting in.

Some bits and pieces were left off from bodies that were too far, and began rising from the dead.

(Kurumi) “Not again!”

Kurumi raised her shovel and attacked one of the creatures by dislodging the shovel’s head into its neck.

The creature’s neck twisted 180 to face Kurumi, making her back off.

Doomguy gave Kurumi a pistol as he cocked his shotgun and blew the creature into pieces.

They looked around them and they were starting to get surrounded.

(Kurumi) “Do your thing, I got us covered!”

Doomguy nodded and began rip and tearing into the creatures, leaving Kurumi and Yuuri to deal with the stragglers. Yuuri grabbed Kurumi’s shovel while Sitri grabbed a sword on the floor.

She had no idea how to use it, but that wouldn’t stop her.

The Persona Users and Ashen Wolves were too busy trying to evacuate the citizens and were holding off the stragglers on their own as well.

Megumi slowly opened her eyes and saw what was going on. There was no way anyone could spare the help in time before they got overrun.

(Megumi) I have to...!

She got up, though every fiber of her body was in utter pain doing so.

(Megumi) “Kurumi....h-hand me the pistol.”

(Kurumi) “What?! But-”

(Megumi) “It’s...not, a request!”

She grabbed her and Yuuri’s shoulders.

(Megumi) “Get Miki and Yuki out of here, now...! Sitri, watch over them for me?”

(Sitri) “Y-Yes.”

They reluctantly nodded and did as she told. As they ran, a few of them tried to chase them before Megumi caught the creatures attention by blasting their heads off.

(Megumi) “Everyone...please, be safe...”

Clenching her teeth in pain, she thanked Doomguy for having a pistol that didn’t have to reload as she gave cover fire to her students.

...

(Dimitri) “YAAAAGH!”

Dimitri stuck his lance into the blob before it could form anything, but when he pulled it out nothing happened.

(Agarthan) “HAH! Your feeble weapons will do nothing to our creation! Accept your fate and die like the dogs you are!”

The blob finally formed into a bipedal monster, it had massive claws on its hands, and spikes on its back. Six eyeballs covered the left and right side of its body and It’s head was something akin to a bull as it used the horns to charge into the fountain, sending the three and concrete into the air.

They landed next to each other, and got up quickly, trying to find any weak spots.

(Claude) “Any plans? Edelgard, you seem to have Akira’s power, can you do that crazy Persona thing?!”

(Edelgard) “N-No, it only affects the clothes, I’m a bit faster and stronger but other than that, nothing!”

(Dimitri) “I have nothing on me!”

The Agarthan continued to laugh until he saw something out of the corner of his eye walk in from the shadows of a building.

[Boss Theme #2 - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

(Byleth) “You’re going to pay for what you did.”

(Agarthan) “T-THE WARRIOR OF DARKNESS?! KILL HIM, KILL HIM NOW!”

Before the Agarthan could do anything, his vision suddenly went flying into the air, and as it landed, he could see his own body on the rock, headless.

The body fell onto the floor as Lahabrea stepped into view, deactivating the whip function on his sword.

(Lahabrea) “Everyone else is currently dealing with the Agarthans. Big one is left to us, no objections?”

(Byleth) “None at all.”

Byleth and Lahabrea struck as one, going for the legs which only made their weapons bounce off.

Claude fired several arrows at various parts of the body, seeing what would connect.

The arrows that seemed to have any affect were ones shot at the eyes on the body.

Only one arrow pierced through one of the left eyes on its torso as it screamed in pain, and used its massive arms to block the rest.

(Dimitri) “Seems a lot smarter than the one at Enbarr!”

(Edelgard) “Let’s hope its not as stubborn!”

Dimitri and Edelgard charged head on to the bull-like creature, with it charging in response.

Combining their strength, they were barely able to block its charge, driving their feet deep into the concrete, making every muscle in their body burn from the sheer force.

Lahabrea and Byleth hopped onto the arms and plunged their swords into the eye sockets of the head.

It screamed in pain, but didn’t stagger it as much as they were hoping to, in fact it didn’t at all.

The bull rose its head, sending Dimitri and Edelgard into the air as it grabbed Byleth and Lahabrea.

Before it could do anything, Sothis teleported behind the bull and summoned a meteor above it, the meteor smashing it over the head making it drop the two in pain.

Dimitri plunged his lance into the head as he landed, holding on for dear life as it swung violently around trying to get him off.

Edelgard barely managed to catch herself as she landed, trying to figure out how to get close without being crushed.

Claude seized the opportunity and fired arrows into the eyes on the body.

He managed to get three on the right side, but the creature was quick to block the rest.

(Byleth) “DIMITRI, DRIVE IT INTO THE FLOOR!”

Dimitri roared with rage as took out his lance and smashed the bull’s head, the impact of his hit forcing the bull to slam onto the floor.

The eyes blinked with confusion as Edelgard, Lahabrea, and Byleth took out the remaining three eyes, this time making the bull flail violently, its limbs akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Edelgard was hit by the fist and was sent flying into Claude while Byleth and Lahabrea jumped out the way in time.

Dimitri got to its left side, and was about to strike one of the eyes before all five looked at him and a fist almost crushed Dimitri.

He fell onto the floor after narrowingly dodging the attack while Byleth and Lahabrea ran behind him.

The bull covered its left side with both arms, circling around them.

(Lahabrea) “Don’t think we have anything!”

(Byleth) “How about your Sothis?”

(Sothis) “If I did, would’ve done it by now!”

An explosion suddenly struck the side of the bull, making it tumble over and almost fall again before it was pelted by more explosives.

Doomguy came into view with a rocket launcher, firing rapidly into the bull.

The bull was ready to charge into Doomguy before a massive shadow enveloped his own, causing it to look up.

Valimar dropped from the sky and dug its greatsword into the bull’s chest.

(Rean’s voice) “INSTRUCTOR BYLETH!”

Byleth and Lahabrea immediately hopped into action activating the whips and swinging violently at the eyes, carving them into pieces.

Finally, the bull stopped moving as it exploded into black fog, with the other zombie-like creatures that spawned following suit.

They took a deep breath and sheathed their swords at the exact time, in the exact same way. If anyone had any doubt about Lahabrea being Byleth, it was quelled then and there.

(Byleth) “We need to do a head count and check if everyone’s okay-”

(Sitri) “Byleth!”

Sitri ran up to him, with the School-Living Club in tow. The two noticed that Miki and Yuki were hanging onto Yuuri and Kurumi’s arm, the injuries very apparent.

(Lahabrea) “What happened!?”

...

(Aqua) “TURN UNDEAD!”

Another spell blasted apart the creatures, but still more kept coming.

(Kazuma) “HOW MANY FUCKING THINGS OF THESE ARE THERE?!”

(Darkness) “Aqua, how’s your mana looking?!”

(Aqua) “Getting a bit drained here!”

Megumin hit a few back with her staff, looking extremely angry.

(Megumin) “GO AWAY DAMN YOU!”

(Kazuma) “Megumin, we may need you to-”

The creatures suddenly all dropped dead, and faded into a black fog.

(Kazuma) “...Do nothing.”

Everyone took a sigh of relief and looked at the plaza.

(Kazuma) “Let’s see, Valimar and Slayer are there. Pretty safe to assume whatever it was over there is super dead.”

(Darkness) “All the civilians were taken care of correct?”

(Aqua) “Yeah, a good chunk of us saw to that-”

cough cough!

(Megumin) “Heck was that?”

(Kazuma) “That sounded like...”

His heart dropped.

(Kazuma) “Megumi.”

[Yasashii Megu-nee Arigatou - Gakkou Gurashi OST]

The four of them quickly ran to the source of the coughing and saw Megumi laying against the wall, coughing violently as she dropped the pistol onto the floor.

Parts of her dress had holes and blood marks over it. Her blood.

(Megumin) “MEGU-NEE!”

(Darkness) “Aqua!”

Aqua smiled as she put her hand on Megumi’s arm.

(Aqua) “Don’t worry, we’ll have you right as rain!”

A healing spell emitted from her arm, but it had no effect.

(Aqua) “H-Huh? Why can’t I-”

Megumi grabbed Aqua’s arm and smiled, tears running down her face.

(Megumin) “I...don’t think your healing can fix me up this time...”

(Kazuma) “Hey, don’t be playing the hero, you’re way too nice for that shit!-”

Megumi moved her arm to reveal a hole in her stomach. It was then Aqua finally saw what was happening.

The infection was spreading throughout her body. It was some unholy combination of her original infection, the agarthan’s, and a third light-like source she couldn’t identify.

(Darkness) “H-HELP US, OVER HERE! WE NEED A HEALER!”

The rest of House Isekai and the three Houses finally got to the scene and saw what was happening to her.

Sara, Byleth, the School-Living Club, and Sitri ran to her side, while making way for the healers.

(Sara) “Get to helping her already!”

(Byleth) “Do what you can, please!”

First, Marianne, Mercedes, and Linhardt tried using their best healing spell to no effect, then the Persona Users tried.

(Morgana) “Damn it, why isn’t it working?!”

(Yukiko) “T-There’s got to be something we have that can!”

(Yukari) “Can anyone get a sense of how bad the-”

Yukari stopped when she saw Emma tearing up, covering her mouth.

(Kurumi) “H-Hey, Emma! You can see magic crap right, what’s happening to her?!”

(Emma) “She’s...not going to make it.”

(Everyone) !!!

(Miki) “T-THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT! PLEASE, CAN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING?!”

(Ainz) “I used magic detection and...there’s nothing we can do. No amount of healing can stop the infection. I...I am sorry.”

Doomguy scanned Megumi with his visor, but it came up as red.

Lahabrea and Sothis looked on with regret in their eyes.

(Yuuri) “Come on, you know something about this right, why aren’t you?!-”

Megumi grabbed Yuuri’s hand and caught everyone’s attention.

(Megumi) “Don’t worry...This was going to happen either way.”

(Yuki) “But, I don’t understand! Why?! We finally got to see you again and-”

The School-Living Club reached for their head as a sharp pain overwhelmed them.

(Megumi) “You all...got along just fine without me before...And I know you can do so again.”

Megumi began coughing up blood as she struggled to keep her eyes free of tears.

Byleth used his cape to wipe them away.

(Megumi) “Thank you...Byleth.”

She barely had the strength to laugh as she looked up into the skies.

(Megumi) “I...I guess whatever was in my body originally hadn’t gone away. It’s...messing with whatever the Agarthan transformation method is, making it way slower, otherwise I would’ve instantly turned...”

Megumi turned to the School-Living Club members first.

(Megumi) “Kurumi, Yuuri, Yuki...It was so good to see you again. Even if it didn’t last long...I’m glad we could be normal for a little bit together at Garreg Mach. And Miki...Thank you for sticking with them, and protecting Yuki...”

Megumi’s skin on her left arm slowly started to turn into a darker color.

She turned to Byleth, Sitri, and Sara.

(Megumi) “Sara, Byleth...Y-You were some of the strangest co-workers I’ve ever had...but I would never trade that time for anything...And Sitri...? It was an honor...being with your son and husband...”

Yuki sobbed the hardest, holding onto Megumi’s arm shaking it.

(Yuki) “NO NO NO! WE’VE ALREADY LOST YOU BEFORE! NOW THAT YOU’RE BACK, YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE AGAIN! IT’S NOT FAIR!”

(Megumi) “I...Think I’m about to...”

She began coughing up blood again, which Byleth wiped away again.

(Megumi) “There’s only one way to stop the infection...Please don’t let them watch.”

Megumi looked at Sara’s pistol.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

(Megumi) “Yuki, Kurumi, Yuuri, Miki...You all will be fine. I promise.”

Sitri had to grab Yuki and pull her away, as she was kicking violently to try and get back to Megumi.

(Yuki) “NO, MEGU-NEE! MEGU-NEEEEE!”

(Yuuri) “Thank you, Megu-nee...”

(Kurumi) “Thank you, again...”

(Miki) “It was nice to finally meet you, Megu-nee...”

The three walked away, unable to watch what was coming, Sitri escorting them as well.

All of Class VII, the Persona Users, and Kazuma’s group had to follow, unable to watch.

The Denizens of Nazarick bowed their heads in respect, and followed Ainz, away from this.

This was a private moment for the ones closest to her.

The only ones who stayed were Towa, Angelica, Cocytus, Sharon, Doomguy, Lahabrea, and Sothis.

Megumi took off her cross necklace and gave it to Byleth.

(Towa) “Instructor Sakura...T-Thank you.”

(Angelica) “...You’re too nice, ya know that? We’re gonna miss you.”

(Cocytus) “IT WAS AN HONOR FIGHTING AT YOUR SIDE.”

(Sharon) “You and your students will be my family as much as the Reinfords...”

(Doomguy) “...Thanks.”

Lahabrea had to close his eyes, alongside Sothis. Sara and Byleth stood up, and she pointed her pistol at Megumi’s head.

(Byleth) “...Goodbye, Megumi.”

(Sara) “...See you the next time around.”

Sara’s hand started to shake, unable to keep a steady aim.

Megumi’s hand held onto Sara’s, Byleth’s hand eventually joining in.

They all closed their eyes, and Byleth helped Sara pull the trigger.

...

BANG!

...

Thud...!

When everyone opened their eyes, they saw light particles coming off Megumi. Her body slowly started to fade away into a light blue dust, disappearing in front of them.

There was no more blood, or signs of rot on her, and the last thing they saw on Megumi’s face was a smile.

Then, she finally disappeared, a quiet shattering noise emitting as her body turned into white and blue dust.

When she was gone, Sara fell to her knees, sobbing, slowly joined in by Towa, Angelica, then Byleth.

Doomguy, Sharon and Cocytus bowed their heads in respect.

Lahabrea started to walk away, tears in his eyes...

[Afterglow - Gakkou Gurashi OST]

Bathed in the red of the sun What were you thinking? Filling your eyelids to the brim with tears You tried to play it off, saying, "It's so pretty".

Without a doubt I always thought that these days Would continue on and on....

The sky we look upon, Is watching us from far, far away Merely silent, without change. Grasping hands as fellow lost ones, We're no longer alone. Looking to the opposite shore of this ending world, We can see our dawn on the horizon,

We can see it We can see it So put on a smile...

TO BE CONTINUED IN:

#House Isekai #House Isekai Shadowbringers #Byleth eisner #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #Edelgard von Hresvelg #Claude von Riegan #sothis #megumi sakura #sitri eisner

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yespolkadotkitty · 5 years ago

Text

Tinderbox, pt 14

AMAZING art by @raspberrydreamclouds

Story masterlist

When she came out of the bathroom, changed into a much comfier jersey dress - not wanting to get food on the beautiful borrowed cheong-sam - Marshall stood at the tiny stove. The smell of frying bacon and buttery eggs wound through her little apartment, making it warm, homey. She padded over to him on bare feet. When she slid her arms around him, pressing her face to the soft white shirt he wore, Salami wove between her calves, and she thought: just this.

“You like to cook?”

“I used to cook all the time,” he murmured, flipping the omelette deftly. The eggs were golden. “I think it’s ready.”

“Smells good.” Rosie gave him a squeeze and set the small table with plates and cutlery; filled two glasses with water.

Marshall split the omelette and carried the pan to the table, sliding half on to each plate. She laughed when he came back with a little porcelain bowl of finely chopped parsley.

“Thanks, Gordon Ramsey.”

His lips twitched. “Hardly.” He offered her the bowl and after she’d taken a pinch, he served himself.

“Thank you, really.”

“You’re welcome, really.”

Rosie dug in with gusto. The flavours bloomed on her tongue, the rich, sunshine-bright yolk, the salty bacon, the creamy grand padano, her only indulgence from the Italian-run deli two blocks from her apartment. “On my God. This is amazing.....!”

“Thanks.”

She saw the little blush creep into his cheeks as he forked up another mouthful.

“So…..” He glanced up and it was her turn to blush. “I feel like I know almost nothing about you, even though we’ve…. Well. You know.”

“Yeah.” He took a sip of water. “Well…. What would you like to know?”

She mulled it over as Salami nuzzled at her ankle, probably angling for some bacon. “Have you always been a cop?”

“No, actually. I was SWAT before - transferred when Faye was born. Her, ah, mother was worried about it; it can be dangerous.”

“Do you miss it? SWAT, I mean.”

Marshall lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Yes and no.”

“And how did you meet? Faye’s mom, I mean.”

“Blind date. A friend at the station - precinct, here, isn’t it? - set us up.” He shook his head, smiling, a far off look in his eyes. “I had an excuse all lined up, but, turned out, I didn’t need it.”

Rosie’s heart turned over. “I love that.”

His brow furrowed. “Love what? Talking about my ex?”

“No.” She reached over to snag his free hand, tangling their fingers. “I love that you didn’t downplay it. Some guys I’ve dated would have said how their past lovers didn’t matter, or that they were forgotten. I love that you smiled when you thought of her, and that you served me up a good memory.”

He took a deep breath; she watched a muscle in his jaw twitch. “Even if we’d hated each other, I’ll always be grateful to Angie for giving me Faye. Some part of me will always love her for that.”

“I’m glad.” And she meant it with all her heart. “You can’t just turn love off like a tap. I don’t think people work that way.”

He squeezed her hand, holding her gaze. “I really am sorry I didn’t get in touch. Police work is hell on relationships, Rosie, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Plus, if I let you slip through my fingers, Faye will kick my arse. She does tai kwon do and she’s a girl, so if she’s been listening to me about self defence at all these years, she’ll fight dirty.”

“Faye? You told your daughter about me?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Rosie’s breath hitched. “Walter… wow.”

“Yeah, wow. It’s been a long time since I wanted to try with someone, but, I want to.”

She took a long drink of water. “Me, too. God, please tell me you have condoms.”

“I definitely do have condoms. I bought them on the off chance. I…. hoped.”

Rosie caved to the plaintive meows from Salami and fed the purring cat a tiny morsel of leftover bacon from the edge of her plate. “Thank God. ”

Marshall took the plates and glasses to the sink as Rosie measured cat food into Salami’s bowl. It was oddly comforting, moving together like this. We fit, she thought again, happiness blooming inside her like a flower stretching to the sunlight.

“Help me build the bed?”

He stretched out the futon and covers, and when it was done, she opened her arms and he stepped into them, teasing her neck with his lips. She arched to give him better access, combed her fingers through the thick, dark curls of his hair.

“Do you have work tomorrow?” he whispered by her pulse point.

“Not until two.”

Marshall smiled against her skin, his beard tickling pleasantly. “Good. Because I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I want to do everything. Multiple times.”

She shivered in anticipation. “Yes, please.”

In the half light from the small hall lamp, his cobalt eyes were very dark, promising pleasure untold. Rosie tipped up his chin and he took the hint, kissing her languidly, taking his sweet time, as they tasted each other. He murmured her name and licked into her mouth, and Rosie looped her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his, feeling the hard lines of him against her, revelling in it.

Marshall nipped her bottom lip playfully, and then his kisses moved down again, dotting over her chin, down to her neck, where the gentle scrape of his jaw scruff rendered her skin super sensitive. As she giggled, a sound she hadn’t heard herself make for, perhaps, years, he captured her lips again, the kiss so tender this time that her heart bumped painfully in her chest.

As he returned to kissing her neck, his hand lifted to cup her breast, his thumb finding the already firm point of her nipple and teasing it to hardness through the soft fabric of her loose jersey dress. She strained towards him, only wanting more, more, more. Please, more.

“ Fuck, Rosie,” he bit out, her name tumbling from his lips like a prayer.

The sound of her name in his accent, like that, set something loose in Rosie. Maybe it was knowing that he seemed as enchanted by this tug-of-war attraction between them as she was, but it was enough.

She slid her hands into his hair again, loving the feel of it, soft and thick, the curls falling between her fingers. She pressed her mouth to his temple as he continued devouring the super sensitive skin of her neck.

For the first time in - well, longer than she could remember, she stopped thinking, and started to simply feel .

It seemed like Marshall was going to take charge, and she-

She would let him. And it would be glorious.

Rosie arched into his hand as he used the other to yank her closer to him, closer still. With their bodies pressed together there was no mistaking the hard ridge in his jeans pressed to her lower belly. The heat of it, the desperate want of it, made muscles deep inside her clench, over and over. She abandoned his hair and instead slid her hands down to cup his amazing ass through his jeans. It had the effect of pushing his erection closer into her, and she helplessly ground up against him, hearing a little mewl of need and realising belatedly that it came from her lips.

“Walter-”

“Bed?” he murmured against her skin.

“God, yes.”

Almost without warning, he swung her up into his arms as if she weighed hardly a thing, walked them both over to the converted futon. When he would have put her down gently on it, Rosie yanked at his lapels until he collapsed on to it, on to her, that long, work-roughened, rangy body pressed deliciously atop hers. She kept hold of his shirt and tugged his face down until their mouths met again, until their tongues tangled. She let Marshall drink her in and gave as good as she got, savouring every taste, every new texture.

He buried his hands in her hair, and Rosie took the opportunity to start on the buttons of his shirt. He’d looked delicious as sin at the museum, his crisp, snowy shirt slightly open at the neck, exposing that tempting curve where his neck met his shoulders. His jeans hugged his hips like a lover. She wanted her legs there tonight. Every night.

Impatient now, Rosie tore open the last button and shoved the edges of the shirt aside, feasting on his bare chest with her fingers and palms, smoothing her hands over the curls of his chest hair. When she could bear it no more she broke the kiss and used her eyes, too, allowing herself a visual feast of his sculpted physique. The planes and angles of his chest didn’t disappoint. This view would live in her fantasies for some time to come.

She pushed the shirt down his shoulders and it fell to the floor.

Marshall raised a brow, his expression playful. “Impatient?”

Rosie grinned back, feeling light. “I’m simply someone who knows what she wants.”

“And gets it?”

She slid a hand down his naked back to rest on his belt, happiness and desire twinning to make her feel light. “What does it look like to you?”

Thanking my beta, @ly--canthrope ! The next chapter will be pure smut, I promise.

Tagging: @watermeloncavill @dancingwendigo @maggotzombie @hopelessromanticspoonie @just-the-hiddles @abehn250 @littlefreya @brokenthelovely @wanderinglunarnights @mrsaugustwalker @townmoondaltwhistle @captain-rogers-beard @ayamenimthiriel @rayofdawnworld @alyxkbrl @stxphmxlls @mary-ann84 @the-jer-bear @pinkzsugar @peakygroupie @wildwavehc @andahugaroundtheneck @thethirstyarchive @manawhaat @agniavateira @cavillhavoc @dr-kayleigh-dh @boiled-onionrings @promptandpros @screamingrennergasm @ravenpuff02 @chook007 @xocali @magdelen69

#walter marshall #henry cavil fic #imagine walter marshall #night hunter fic

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edelwoodsouls · 4 years ago

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maybe in another universe - ch. 1 [fic]

Jon isn’t expecting anything good when he’s evacuated to the countryside. Living with his crush rival he can just about handle. The secret magical world in the upstairs wardrobe, on the other hand, might just break him.

AKA: Narnia AU

Word Count: 2,707 | Also on Ao3 | Other Chapters: 2,

chapter one: the train to everywhere

As the train leaves the station, Jon doesn't look back.

The corridors outside his carriage are filled with other kids, craning their necks out of the windows to wave at their parents, tears streaming down their faces. It's a mess of loud noise and emotion that makes Jon wholly uncomfortable.

There's no one for him to look back to, no one to share tears with. No one to yell at him, you'll be home before you know it! and have fun, dear! it's okay!

He curls his arms around his suitcase and stares out the opposite window, at the vanishing buildings. Smoke shimmers over the horizon, mixing with the clouds, and Jon tries to imagine the view from above. When the planes fly overhead, do they recognise the smothered lights flickering below? Do they spare a thought for the bodies on the other side of the flames?

The corners of his suitcase begin to dig painfully into his skin.

Before he can spiral any further, the door to the compartment rattles open with a sudden gunshot sound that sets every nerve in his body alight.

He flinches and turns to see a girl roughly his own age, head swathed in a dark blue hijab, pressing her lips in an apologetic line.

"Sorry," she shrugs noncommittally, inclining her head. "Is that seat taken?"

"Uh, no."

"So I can take it?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks." She shoulders her way into the room, heaving her own suitcase up onto the rack above their heads with an easy movement. Jon grips his own sheepishly - several blows to the head have taught him that he is nowhere near strong enough to haul it up that high.

The girl settles into the seat opposite him, retrieves a book from the recesses of her thick navy trench coat. It's a weathered copy of The Iliad, well-thumbed and annotated.

He's leaning forward curiously before he can help himself.

The girl looks up with raised eyebrows. "Nosy much?"

"Sorry," he shrinks back behind the large bulk in his lap. "I just- I used to have that same copy. Before..."

The girl's face softens, infinitessimly. "It's one of my favourites," she offers, almost apologetically. "I started keeping all my books in the shelter a few months ago. It's the only reason this survived."

Jon says nothing - there's nothing he can really say. In this moment, they are just two strangers, sharing a burning world.

"I'm Basira," the girl says, with a decisive look. "I'm from Finchley, being evacuated to Dorset. You?"

"Uh- same," Jon blinks, surprised. "I'm Jon. I've- I've never seen you before?"

"I mean, I imagine you go to the boys' school."

"Not until last year."

"Oh."

Jon glances down at his hands, hoping Basira can't see the way his fingers are white-knuckled against his suitcase.

"Well, I was new before-" she waves her arms vaguely, "all this. Home-schooled. So not really surprising."

"Oh." Slowly, one by one, Jon allows his muscles to relax. "That must've been nice. Quiet."

"That's one word for it," Basira mutters in a way that implies a hundred other meanings than nice. "I was really looking forward to actually getting to know people, y'know? New people, my own age."

"Well, you know me now?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."

Jon tries for a smile, but it comes out as something more of a grimace. All the same, Basira seems to get the sentiment, and returns it.

~/~/~/~

Martin hates trains.

In theory, they're the perfect vessel. Hours of uninterrupted time, the world moving beneath your feet as you curl into a seat with a hot cup of tea and your favourite paperback.

But he hasn't been on a train since his mother sent him away to London, and that sort of memory tends to leave one with a distaste by association.

Now here he is, only a few years later, being sent away again.

He's just glad his mother refused to take him in. He's not sure he could bear going back to that house, potentially indefintiely.

All the same, he's trying to make the best out of the journey that he can. He's heard horror stories of other evacuees, forced to work on farms or taken in only to be used for their ration cards. If that's the sort of fate he's headed for, he'll take the luxury of a nice cuppa and the drafting of a few poems whilst it's still there.

And he really is in the perfect place for it. The smouldering London skyline behind him, the fathomless countryside ahead. A world in flux and chaos, defined in fire and water.

He notes that down in his journal.

"Any good thoughts?" Melanie asks through a mouthful of sandwich.

Martin blinks up at the girl sharing his compartment, an embodiment of chaos if ever he's seen one. She's lying across the seats opposite him, her suitcase open and contents strewn everywhere - she'd been digging through it to find something inane which turned out to be in her pocket the whole time, and hasn't bothered to pack it up again.

Martin's hands itch to tidy the space - instead he grips his pen a little too hard and settles for a quzzical smile.

"Your writing," she points with the corner of her sandwich. "You look very deep in concentration and dramatic. Any good thoughts?"

"I suppose," he shrugs, retreating somewhat under Melanie's energetic gaze. "Something about dichotomies. Peace and war, fire and water. City and country."

"Men and women, nurse and soldier. Alive and dead."

Martin raises an eyebrow. "I guess."

"Hey- if there's any time to be morbid, it's during a war, dontcha think?"

"True. Do you write?"

"Nope. I do photography, though."

Martin can feel himself getting interested despite himself. "Really? Do you have a camera?"

Melanie nudges at the pile of clothes somehow still heaped in the boundaries of her suitcase, revealing the packaging of a beautiful, sleek camera piece that makes Martin fall a little in love with this stranger instantly.

"Is that a Retina I?" he asks, unable to quite keep the awe out of his voice.

"You really know your tech," Melanie says approvingly. "Yeah, it is. I'm going to be a supernaturalist."

"A what?"

"A supernaturalist, Martin. I'm going to be the first person to prove that ghosts exist. I'm going to get one on film."

"Huh."

Martin deliberately avoids Melanie's eyes. To believe in the supernatural is not generally approved of, let alone to talk about it with the sudden reverence and conviction that have crept into Melanie's voice.

He's gotten very used to pretending he's never seen anything out of the ordinary. The smoke that follows him around like a shadow, the spiders that seem to understand him just a little too intelligently - they all have mundane explanations.

He's never met someone so open about such things.

He lasts a matter of seconds before his tongue gets the better of him. "What've you seen?"

Melanie grins, as if she's been waiting from the moment they met just for him to ask. "I got shot by a ghost."

Martin almost knocks over his tea. "I'm sorry?"

"I got shot by a ghost."

"Yeah, you said that already. What I meant to say was, what the fuck?"

Melanie looks delighted to have his attention. She reaches down and rolls her sock to her ankle, revealing a garish red scar screaming across her leg. "London's full of ghosts, if you hadn't noticed. They just love the chaos that's going on right now, always wandering all over the place when the streets are empty and everyone's hidden in their shelters."

"I'm guessing you're not one for shelters," Martin says dryly, attempting to smother the sheer confusion and excitement doing battle in his brain.

"Of course not," Melanie scoffs. "They won't let me enlist because I'm a girl, but, I mean, have you seen some of the boys in charge of Finchley's bomb clearance?"

"A lot of them were in the year above me at school," Martin nods. He could say far more bitter things, but he keeps his mouth shut.

"They're kids, just like us," Melanie nods, a furious look in her eyes. "I wouldn't trust them to protect me from a particularly vicious duck, let alone the end of days raining from the sky."

Martin grins in agreement. Despite initial perceptions, he's starting to like Melanie a lot.

A shame they'll only get to know each other for this one train ride, likely never to hear from each other again. Unless Melanie does actually become famous for photographing ghosts, and he becomes famous for his poetry, and maybe they'll meet at a gala sixty years from now and not recognise each other at all.

Martin mentally kicks himself out of that particular spiral. He's always had a problem with melancholy, and the world being on fire has hardly done anything to improve him.

He's convinced it's what makes him a good poet.

"Hey," he says, to distract himself. "Where are you being sent to?"

"Some professor," Melanie shrugs. "Probably a stuffy old bat who'll put you to work if she finds a single fingerprint in the dust. Academics are all the same, from what I've seen."

Martin looks down at his own tag, brown paper tied with fraying string, looped around his neck by a disinterested attendant at the posting office. He hasn't actually had the nerve to read the name yet.

His heart picks up. "Melanie... it's not Professor Gertrude Robinson, is it?"

~/~/~/~/~

"...But Patroclus called to his comrades with a loud shout: “Myrmidons, ye comrades of Achilles, son of Peleus, be men, my friends, and bethink you of furious valour, to the end that we may win honour for the son of Peleus, that is far the best of the Argives by the ships, himself and his squires that fight in close combat; and that the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnon, may know his blindness in that he honoured not at all the best of the Achaeans-"

"Achilles is such an idiot," Basira interrupts, rolling her eyes and flipping the coin in her palm in absent, distracted movements.

Jon raises an eyebrow and lowers the book. "I can stop, if you'd prefer."

"No, no, you're okay. You've got a surprisingly good voice for this stuff. I'm glad you suggested it."

They've been taking turns reading aloud, switching out every few pages to pass the time, since Jon has no books of his own. But Basira seems to have quickly decided that Jon is a born narrator and delegated all further reading to him.

He's been glowing faintly from the praise ever since.

The journey has flown by - as time often does when Jon's hyperfixations make an appearance - but for once he doesn't feel guilty about indulging it. Basira seems just as fascinated, somehow, and he greatly enjoys her interruptions.

"You don't think Achilles is an idiot?" she asks, crossing her legs and leaning forward intently.

"No, I definitely do- he sends his boyfriend out to fight a war he isn't prepared for just because of a grudge and then throws a tantrum when that hubris gets him killed. He's definitely an idiot."

"Oh good," Basira says, visibly relieved. "For a moment there I thought we were going to have to argue."

Jon laughs, and the sound comes easier than it has in a while. This realisation crawls under his skin, cutting the sound short. He looks out of the window for some semblance of escape-

"Hey! Look!" He points out at the approaching train station, a quaint thing, barely more than a slab of stone emerging from a field. But the sign, rusted as it is, reads the same as the looping handwriting on the label around his neck does.

"Oh joy," Basira sighs. "Countryside air and a new family who'll probably hate me."

"Where are you being sent?" Jon asks, more hopeful than he's willing to admit. "Maybe we'll be neighbours."

"The household of Professor Gertrude Robinson," she reads from her own label.

"So am I!" Jon's heart leaps high in his chest despite himself. "You know, if we're with a professor, she might- I mean, she probably isn't a rough work kind of person- so maybe... this won't be so awful after all?"

Of course, Jon has always had a habit of speaking too soon.

~/~/~/~/~

Gathering Melanie's discarded belongings is a predictably chaotic affair, but she executes it with the practiced air of someone who lives that way every day.

Martin can't decide whether he's excited or dreading living with this girl.

As soon as they sprawl out onto the platform with seconds to spare, Martin realises that Melanie's mess is the least of his worries.

Because perched on the station's only bench, face knitted into his iconic perpetual frown, eyes squinting against the sun, is Jonathan fucking Sims.

Next to his suitcase, and wearing a knitted jumper several sizes too big, he looks tiny. The tall hijabi girl standing on top of the bench, looking searchingly into the distant fields, only serves to exaggerate this.

Melanie notices the sudden drain in his skin immediately, and follows his gaze. "For fucks sake."

"You know him?" Martin asks faintly, resisting the urge to brush his hands through his hair, or smooth his clothes. Jon doesn't care what he looks like, doesn't care about him. He should've learnt back in primary school that being rivals isn't something to be romanticised.

But his heart doesn't seem to get the message as a stray gust of wind dances in Jon's dark hair, and it skips a beat.

"Do I know Jonathan fucking Sims?" Melanie grits out, heaving her suitcase roughly over one shoulder. "That guy is such a wanker. 'Ghosts are for idiots, Melanie. Just a romantic ideal made up by delusional people afraid of the dark.'"

"He's not that bad," Martin begins to protest before he can stop himself, "he's just been through a lot."

"Doesn't excuse him being a dick," Melanie grumbles. "Not to mention he used to date my girlfriend. Always having a disaster and blazing back into her life. What I wouldn't give for five minutes one on one, I'd teach him..."

Melanie goes on muttering under her breath, but Martin barely hears, because Jon has just met his eyes and nothing else in the world matters. There's surprise, then panic, before his expression settles back into a frown.

Martin sighs. It's not as if he should've expected anything else.

"Come on," he says to Melanie, picking up his suitcase. "We'd better get it over with."

The walk to close their distance seems to take hours, and somehow no time at all.

"Martin," Jon greets him with a clipped, emotionless tone.

"Hey, Jon," Martin smiles, refusing to let the other boy's walls get him down. "And you are?"

"Basira," the girl nods, still standing high above them and glancing distractedly towards the dirt path, likely looking for whoever will be along to pick up evacuees. "I guess you guys already know each other?"

"They go to school together," Melanie brushes off the explanation, before introducing herself, too. "Now we're all acquainted, how long before we never have to see each other again?"

Basira's eyes flick silently between the three of them, clearly noting the tension, but saying nothing.

"We're in the same house," Jon says stiffly. "I don't know about you two. I'm sure there are other benches you can loiter at."

"Well we're in the same house," Melanie shoots back, linking her arm with Martin and holding tight. She's a lot stronger than she looks.

An awful thought dawns on Martin, quickly encompassing and eclipsing anything else. "Where..." he swallows around his dry throat, "who are you guys with?"

Martin watches as Jon's eyes widen. Glance down at his own label, across at theirs, and back.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Martin wants to burrow into the ground and hide somewhere his blushing cheeks could never be seen. He shouldn't be surprised, really. This summer was already looking down, being far from London, living with strangers, adjusting to pretending to be whatever fit in most.

Living with the crush who hates his guts is somehow the only escalation that makes sense.

#the magnus archives #fanfiction #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #narnia au #own work #morgan writes

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isimp4hawkz · 3 years ago

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The Thief

(Hawks x Fem OC)

this is an old fic of mine, back when i first got into hawks (what have i become?) i never published it. please bear with my undeveloped writing :} and on behalf of my pre-obsessed self, i hope you enjoy reading this as much as i did writing it.

-Edited slightly-

-Not 100% canon-

-Some aspects may seem far fetched-

Words: 2k

✧༝┉┉┉┉┉˚*❋ ❋ ❋*˚��┉┉┉┉༝✧

Hawks’ POV

Recently, I've been cycling through a continuous loop of circumstances whereas every time that I'm about a millisecond away from saving someone in danger- the same, new, and hot pro hero swoops in right on the knick of time and steals my shot.

A spontaneous looker of a woman who went by the hero name Tundra. I hadn't ever heard of her before the little debut she had as of last week, as goes with most rookies. But this one was quick to gain her prominence in this city.

Do I honestly care all that much? Not really.

I think it's cool when a brand new hero who's fresh out of their side-kicking days steps up and climbs through the ranks, earning themselves a little popularity with the citizens as they answer their calls for help.

And to be frank, I've been taking it easy these days. More than I usually would. Out on the beaches during the day, and partying all throughout the night. Free time was scarce for me. I definitely won't put off having a good time while I still can.

Sure, if someone happens to be in danger on the way to the club, or down on the twisting roads that lead down to the shore, I swoop in and save the day.

The locals around here had basically memorized my name from years of service, but I was afraid that my name had become a blur in the mixture of countless other hero's.

Hell, maybe I'm just being dramatic. It's not like they could actually forget me of course. I'm the number 2 hero in all of Japan, how could you forget me?

You'd think that taking a short hiatus would gain me some sort of up in demand from the fans, but it was the exact opposite of that. I had fallen down to 4th in the approval ratings, instead of remaining proud in my little silver throne.

All because of her...and my own laziness.

And then, I decided that that was enough fun...to some extent...for now at least. It was time to head back into the city, and reclaim my throne—or, at least try to.

I settled onto the roof of my favorite building, it was the tallest one around here. If I wanted to catch a crime in progress, here would be the optimal place to start, where I had an eagle eye view of the city.

It’s funny, being up on this tower reminds me all too much of when I first met the vixen for myself.

An interesting encounter it was.

This is how it went;

I grunted when my wings had suddenly twitched with premonition midair. It was a natural reaction that occurred when something was about to happen, usually abruptly without much warning, a small shiver that pulsated through every single one of my feathers in the blink of an eye.

Instantaneously, two flashes of white sped past me in a blur of haste, followed by a gust of wind that physically made me wobble in my flight.

Ahead of me now flew someone. With a pair of wings as white as snow itself, feathers littered with black markings.

"Woah-" I uttered as I regained my balance, blinking in shock.

They were soon just a barely vivible spec in the distance.

'Huh...Well that's new. Can't remember the last time I saw another winged person besides...'

That person's name was long since lost in my memories. Last I heard, they'd transferred to another hero agency in distant city.

I'd only shrugged it off.

It was best to just continue my leisurely flight. I was in no rush, after all. I've waited this long to get back into the game, what's a few spare minutes of taking my time got on me?

The office building stood tall, barely piercing the sky. It's thin structure made it look like just the faintest breeze could make it topple.

A draft of wind blew viciously against me. It was much cooler up here, the air was naturally a bit thinner. Not that I wasn't used to it, but it had been well over a week since I'd gone here.

I exhaled peacefully as I took my perch on one of the building's edges, gazing down at the city. The sun was beginning to dip into the horizon, lighting the land with tranquil variants of orange and pink. People looked like mere ants from up here, scurrying aside toy vehicles.

The sunsets always looked so nice from here.

Most would see this as a time to be at home and prepare themselves for bed. But for a villain, it was happy hour. A time for iniquity to prosper in the shadows.

'Now then, let's see if we can find any-'

"Hey there." A voice had spoke from behind me, causing my feathers to stand on edge and bolt me into the air on instinct with one strong flap. I immediately whirled around, dumbfounded.

A woman stood before me. The pearly white pair of wings sprouting elegantly from her back and dotted with black markings taking me back to moments ago. They fluttered subtly as she studied me.

'That's strange...why didn't I sense her?'

She sported an inviting smile on her face, yet I could tell by the look in her eye that she was unsure of what to think of me. "Sorry for startling you. Come up here to wait for the stars?" She asks as she looks thoughtfully into the distant sky.

Her eyes shone a sharp grey that caught the sinking glow of the sun. The costume she wore wasn't exactly loose against her skin, ivory feathers imprinted into the fabric around her waist. Curves hugged in all the right places. Rather stunning.

'A hero?'

I must've been staring in a daze for too long, because she'd cleared her throat, shifting her weight from one leg to another in a little rocking motion.

I honestly didn't know what to think of her myself. I've never seen her before.

Mild curiosity somehow got the better of me in seconds. I'd've liked to get a bit of information off of her for my own self pleasure. A little flirtatious prodding would do the trick just fine.

"Now why would I waste my time lookin' up there when there's a much better view down here?"

She sucked in her cheek, never breaking eye contact with me as descended back down onto the platform so we were at the same level, hands dug deep in my pockets. Slapping on one of my signature lazy smirks, I continued, "So tell me, what's a beauty like yourself doin' all the way up here on this fine evening?"

My feathers had suddenly puffed up. It had startled me, but I managed to play it off with a small stretch.

That only happened whenever I wanted to give off a sense of superiority towards another individual, among other things.

She eyed my new display curiously. "Y'know, I could ask you the same—In fact I already did, actually—minus the little pick up line of course." She avoided the question, responding with a little quick-witted remark. It was hard to tell if she was hiding something, or if she's just being cautious.

"Well if you'd really like to know, I'm on duty. This is where I come to sort of survey everything."

She nodded, agreeing that that was a reasonable answer, and when I asked her about her own intentions, she responded with, "Oh, similar reasons. You're looking at a newbie trying to find her way in a foreign country, all while taking steps towards her dream of making something of herself.”

"New here huh? Excuse my manners, or lack of. Allow me to introduce myself. Wing Hero: Hawks." I gave her a curt bow, "Last time I checked, I'm still in the top 10 heroes in the country."

She gives me a strange look after taking my words into consideration. "Hawks..." The way my name rolled off her tongue as she sounded it aloud for herself made me swallow a lump. "In the top 10 you say? Never heard of ya—Granted, I've never really heard of anyone around these parts." She looked over into the horizon, rubbing her bicep. She seemed deliberately captivated by the colors settling onto the land.

'So she claims to be new to the country...'

I wouldn't doubt it too much. The honey color etched across her skin would definitely make others think twice about where she's from. There's also a small accent lingering at the back of her tone, I find it sexy.

Still, I'm rather curious about her, so I'll say something a bit more patronizing as an experiment, testing the waters or whatever. I bring my arms behind my head, looking over at the sunset. "Don't feel bad about being in the blind side. A newbie wouldn't know much about me in the first place unless they're some kind of huge fan, or even a stalker."

Then the look that burgeoned in her eye enthralled me. A corrosive flare. It spoke clear words. 'I don't like when people assume things about me.'

I almost bit my lip. 'That's hot.'

She sighed out nasally. "I can assure you, I'm neither one of those. Owl hero: Tundra." She barely spat that out as she crossed her arms, unintentionally making her breasts bulge in their bindings. "I've been on official duty in this city for over 72 hours now." She looked aside.

'Well that explains the wings.' Wouldn't a quirk like that be manifested from up North? But her skin and accent...She's a living cocktail.

And so I pressed on, chuckling. "I knew it. That cluelessness is bound to stem from lack of experience."

She raised an eyebrow as she met my eyes again. "Excuse me?"

The calmness in her voice was almost unsettling. It threw me for a loop. I genuinely can't think of any other female I've meet who could keep such a level-headed reaction up while being involuntarily insulted.

Those reactions were coaxing me to push her buttons. 'Let's see how far you'd go to remain in complete, professional control...'

"Don't take it personally, pigeon, it's just a fact." I was mostly betting on the bold assumption that she wouldn't take that nickname too kindly, and boy was I right.

"Pigeon?-" Her eyes flared along with a trembling fluff of her feathers. From the back of her throat came a short, rumbling sound resembling a hoot. Telling me I was crossing boundaries in a coherent avian language. Her pupils constricted, staring daggers straight through me.

'Hm. Definitely got bird of prey in her. Or maybe that's just her.'

I cooed mockingly in response, my wings unfurling widely to fan at her. Come at me.

The tension in the air weighed a ton as we stared each other down like natural enemies for a few lengthy seconds.

She seemed to have taken that as a challenge, but to my disappointment, she was quick to recompose herself, allowing her once erect feathers to relax against her back with a curt roll of her shoulders. Her eyes dilated back, though still a bit on the small side as she looked at me. I could feel it in every barb of my feathers, she was ready to tackle me a few moments ago.

It was sad to say that I found myself mildly disappointed. Mildly because to put it short, that reaction would've had my tail wagging if I were a dog. Well worth the effort it took to bring it to light.

She huffed out a breath. "You know what? I should probably be on my way. I'm wasting my time here. Good evening, Hawk man."

And with that, she calmly whirled around, unintentionally flashing me a great view of her juicy thighs and ass as she stormed off to the edge of the building, not forgetting to dramatically spread her wings.

Every step she took made those thighs shake. Holy fuck.

I had to will myself to not stop her. This urging curiosity to know more about this woman was certainly bubbling in its wake. Can't be the last time I'll see her. I don't think I'd allow it, actually.

She didn't look back as she jumped off the edge of the building, swooping down into the depths of the city.

I sighed, eyes promptly returning to study the calmness below. 'She's got a bit of a fire to her, doesn't she?'

"I'll stick a bit of a fire up your ass." A faint slur of mumbles drifted through the wind, making me blink confusedly as it reached my ears.

When I turned to look, there was no one.

#hawks #built different #keigo takami #my hero academia #bnha hawks #keigo #fanfic #keigo x oc #oc insert #fanfiction

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artificialqueens · 5 years ago

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i do like you. [Gigi/Nicky + Jan/Jackie] - pinkgrapefruit

A/N - I wanted to try and figure out these characters and I thought this was the best forward! let me know what you think! betad by the wonderful frey <3

And I don’t like it when you’re never home

And I don’t like it when I’m sleeping alone

And I pick up the phone just to call you again

You never say never but you never say when

Gigi tosses and turns in the double bed that feels so empty, now that she’s its only inhabitant. New York City sunrise is filtering through the blinds in thick, warm stripes, making it harder and harder to forget that she is alone. She rolls onto her back, smoothing the covers on her body where they have become ruched during the night, and stares at the crack in the ceiling, reminiscing about the time Nicky tried to replace the light fitting, but ended up creating web-like fractures in the paintwork. She allows herself to exhale a chuckle at the memory of her normally poised girlfriend covered in plaster dust, waving a screwdriver.

Gigi flops onto her front so she can scroll through her messages, finds the good morning text Nicky sent when she woke up four hours ago, and fires back a response. Makes it sweet, but not saccharine, wanting, but not needy. She toes the line of ‘I love you’ without being overbearing, because she knows how hard it is to want someone, but not be able to hold them close and breathe in honeysuckle and lavender from their hair.

It’s only seven when she drags herself out of bed, tossing the comforter in a way she hopes will make it look clean, without being bothered with the arduous task of pulling the sheets taut. Jan and Jackie’s room faces west, so there is no light seeping from under the door, so she busies herself with feeding their cat and putting last night’s dishes away. Two plates, two bowls, one mug, as she fills the other with lemon and ginger tea. By the time Jan wakes up, Nicky is on her two o’clock lunch break, and Gigi is whispering broken French down the line to try and feel connected. It’s the twentieth of March, which, by the countdown on the wall, means there are only sixty-three days until they breathe the same air again. If she catches Jan staring wistfully at it too - she doesn’t mention it.

She ends the call with a promise to call again and she knows they will try. They always try.

But I do, and I do like you

And I do, and I do like you

Nicky sets down the phone with a sigh and looks over the quad. Parsons is beautiful in Paris, but she manages to miss the feeling of New York. She’s taken the prestigious offer of a semester abroad to be able to see family and experience the culture she’d missed so very much, but looking around it all now, she feels like maybe she misjudged it. Yes, she had been missing family, but now she misses the family she created in the States. It took a year to cement her roots firmly in the US soil, to build friendships and relationships, and find a woman who melts her heart, and now she is five hours out of the loop.

She lets her chin fall onto her hand as her other fumbles to unlock her phone, firing off a text to Jackie, who she knows must be feeling it too. It will be almost six p.m. over there, and - doing the time conversions in her head - Jan will have just woken up.

Paying quickly, she grabs her bag and starts to walk back to the apartment she is leasing. It’s strangely uncomfortable to be back in a country you left. She feels like a foreigner, even though her blood runs clearer here than it ever did in New York. She can breathe more, see the stars if she tries, but she is tied to the floor like a lead balloon.

She sends Gigi a text wishing her a good day, and then buries her phone in her bag, turning back towards the city. She needs cake.

And I don’t like it when you call me out

And I don’t like it when you’re putting me down

Just picking me up on a Saturday night

All ‘cause you had to, had to be right

Jackie responds to Nicky under the table. Her fingers deftly type out condolences and words of wisdom as the rest of her body stays focused on the meal in front of her. She’s having dinner with her host family from her high school exchange trip and she is pretending to be anyone other than herself.

They’re lovely people, they really are, but in a country as famously homophobic as Iran, nowhere is safe. So she tugs on her Hijab and goes back to eating.

By the time dinner is finished, it is almost half-past ten, and Jackie finds herself begging for one of the older sons to escort her across the suburbs of Tehran to her apartment. She arrives home face flushed and completely exhausted, thanking the son in Farsi before triple locking the door and removing the Hijab. She leans back against the wall, hand reaching into a hidden pocket to find her phone - looking forward to the way it will light up with Jan’s face when she turns it on.

She’s not disappointed as texts flood through, ranging from what she had for breakfast to the weather in New York City. It’s a huge comfort for them both to text their random thoughts. It’s a level of connectivity they didn’t think they could experience on different sides of the planet.

Jackie hums to herself quietly as she flicks through her old voice messages, finding one from their freshman year and pressing play. She listens to Jan sing through twenty minutes of the Mean Girls Soundtrack while she removes her subtle makeup and changes into a pair of men’s baseball shorts and an oversized t-shirt for sleep. When it hits half-eleven, she calls Jan, knowing that she’ll be done with classes for the day and heading to their favourite smoothie place. She falls asleep to gossip about the performance movement coach.

And I do, and I do like you

Jan listens to the quiet, even breaths of her girlfriend halfway across the world. She closes her eyes sometimes, when the work she’s trying to complete feels a little too arduous, and tries to imagine that Jackie is laying in bed next to her. She can roll over and see the glow of their alarm clock send shadows over the gentle curves and ridges of her face. The way her baby hairs flatten on her forehead in a way that makes her look younger than twenty-one.

She’s taken out of her daydream by a server trying to clear her smoothie away and she smiles apologetically, gathering her laptop and leaving a dollar on the table. She checks the time on her dad’s old watch between running across roads and down alleys, before finally arriving at the worn down little cabaret theatre being rented out for the latest show. It’s her first off-broadway show, and as she watches the posters go up outside - her name under the lead character - she feels a pang of longing. She wishes so deeply to not be alone in this moment - the taste bitter under her tongue, a raspberry seed stuck between her teeth.

But Jackie is not there, so she enters through the side door and gets to work, rehearsing the final scenes.

It’s eleven p.m. when she slides into bed in New York, firing off a good morning text to Jackie, as her early riser of a girlfriend sends a good night text from across the ocean. She sends a photo of herself tucked in and receives a bleary-eyed photo back of Jackie, comforter pulled up to her nose.

She can almost picture them in the same bed, and it leaves her to fall asleep with a smile on her face.

Why does the street get louder when it gets dark?

Why do I feel that sound in the pounding in the shape of my heart?

Oooh, oooh, oooh

Facetime is not a substitute for the way your hand fits in mine, Gigi thinks, as she sinks further into her couch. The calling tone burns her ears as she waits for Nicky to just pick up the phone. It’s been more and more like this - harder and harder to hold onto the notion that she’ll be home in just a few more weeks. She’s just not sure Nicky will recognise this as home when she finally returns.

Nicky picks up on what she is sure would be the last ring, and the noise sends floods of relief through the American, who tries to sit up straight. She tries to look less overjoyed to see her girlfriend’s tired eyes, feel less warmed by the quiet, but faintly affectionate tone with which she drawls the two-syllable name to make it four.

They exchange ‘I miss yous’ and hold the ‘i love yous’ on the tips of their tongues for a time when togetherness will feel more like togetherness, and less like loneliness. Then they let the silence hang.

“Do you want to come home?” Gigi asks, and maybe it’s not quite how she meant it, but the tone borders on accusatory, and she’s too tired of censorship and questions that go nowhere, but she looks into Nicky’s pixelated eyes and realises maybe she’s made a mistake.

“Why would you ask that?” Nicky replies, hurt and offended. “Why would you act like that?” She’s referring to the petulant lip, the time between texts that’s been dragging on of late, and the way she refuses to look at her, really look at her. But Gigi cannot read minds.

“Look like what?! Look like what, Nick, like I miss you? Like I really fuckin’ miss you?” If the connection was better, Nicky might have seen the tear in the corner of her eye. She might have heard her voice was cracking in a way that wasn’t static.

“I do miss you. I do want to come home,” Nicky finally responds. And she sounds defeated and tired and like the twenty-three days left are out of her control - which they are. She worries her bottom lip with her teeth, fingers finding the bottom of the Vintage t-shirt she stole from Gigi before she left.

Gigi runs her fingers through the front of her hair, letting the dark brown locks fall in front of her face in a moment of frustration.

“I don’t want to end this call angry,” she states, her tone measured and closed off.

Nicky nods. “Twenty-three days, baby.”

“Twenty-three days.”

And I don’t like it when I feel I’ve been had

And I don’t like it when I go to bed mad

Just to wake up again in the middle of the night

Why do you leave, baby, why do we fight?

“Baby!” Jan squeals across the phone as Jackie picks up with a wide smile and a melting heart.

“Baby,” Jackie repeats, mirroring the happiness in tone and the twinkle in the eyes. Jan scrunches her nose at the term of endearment and it makes Jackie chuckles with mirth. “How’s the show going?” She enquires, knowing that’s why Jan called - not that she needed a reason, but judging by the time, she’s just finished a show, and she looks like she’s glowing, so all things considered…

“I GOT SCOUTED!” Jan screams in a way that makes Jackie worry for her neighbours. She hears something hit the wall in their apartment and assumes it’s Gigi’s way of telling the blonde to please shut up. Still, she can’t stop herself from welling up with pride.

“You deserve this, love. I am so proud of you,” she gushes, one hand running over her eyes to try and stop the tears threatening to escape. Jan is openly crying on the other end of the connection, and one of them needs to stay strong. “I love you, baby.” She repeats because it’s all she can say or do to stop herself from booking an early flight home just to give her a massive hug.

“We are gonna damn celebrate when you get home,” Jan tries to assert, but she’s laughing and crying at the same time, so it’s not very effective. “Twenty-three days.”

“I’m expecting a full welcome committee,” Jackie jibes, smiling still.

“Will me and Gigi do?” Jan giggles, snot dripping from her nose as she tries to hide it from Jackie, who just lets out a quiet snort of laughter.

“That sounds perfect. Go to bed, baby. I love you and I’m proud of you.”

“Good morning Jackie, love you,” Jan says like it’s a promise.

“Good night Jan.”

But I do, and I do like you

And I do, and I do like you

Gigi’s been pacing for twenty minutes when Jan finally throws a cushion at her. She cradles her coffee while sitting on the sofa and her eyes keep flicking to the clock - watching it tick through the minutes. They have half an hour before they need to leave, but it feels like months.

“Bitch, you’re making me feel seasick,” she states, looking disapproving as the taller girl picks up a piece of toast before setting it down again. Too excited to eat.

“How are you so calm?” Gigi enquires, eyes narrowing in mock suspicion as Jan continues to sip her coffee instead of letting it go cold. Peanut - the apartment cat - is curled around her feet.

“Unlike you, I told my girlfriend I loved her a year and a bit ago, and am therefore very secure in my relationship.” She pauses, running her fingers through her hair, “I’ve not had to tiptoe around it since she’s been gone.” Gigi gulps, eyes flicking around the room. She’s well aware that’s what’s been going on - they all are - but that doesn’t mean Jan’s bluntness didn’t hurt a little bit. Jan and Jackie got together a month before she and Nicky finally did, and they’re all approaching two years together. Gigi and Nicky are just a little bit - very - emotionally cautious.

“Fine,” she relents. “But you’re driving.” Jan laughs, dislodging herself from the cat and grabbing the keys to the rental car off the countertop.

“Sounds right.”

Why does the street get louder when it gets dark?

Why do I feel that sound in the pounding in the shape of my heart?

Oooh, oooh, oooh

Nicky’s flight comes in first and as the plane prepares to land, she shifts nervously in her seat. She’s excited, maybe a little anxious, and all of her nails on her left hand have been bitten down to stubs. She taps her right-hand nails on the arm of her seat until the businessman next to her gives her a scathing look. She knows from his interactions with the air hostesses that he’s French, so she drops a cursory ‘Pardon’ before she resumes watching New York spiral below her.

She lets her head fall back onto the headrest as the plane comes to a stop on the runway. Nicky pulls out her phone to check her long blonde hair as she pulls it out from her customary travel low ponytail. She’s dressed in a simple pair of light grey jogging bottoms and a white t-shirt tied at the waist, Parson’s hoodie tied around her carry-on.

Gigi had told her they’d meet her in Baggage Claim before they go to Jackie’s terminal, so she walks through the archway into the luggage carousel expectantly. Her smile soon drops, though, when she realises they aren’t there. Her hand curls into a fist, nails digging into the soft skin of her palm as her teeth worry the inside of her cheek.

She jumps at the feeling of two hands on her hips and turns with a start, before suddenly flinging herself onto Gigi’s waiting body. She lets herself relax into the hold of the taller girl, feeling more grounded than she has in months, safe and at home. Nicky doesn’t even realise she is crying until she pulls slightly out of the embrace just to map Gigi’s face. It’s only been four months, but she looks older, the bags under her eyes are a little more prominent - she has a new acne scar on her chin and a couple more freckles on the apples of her cheeks, but she looks perfect. She puts a hand on each cheek and kisses her in a way that connects them deeper than just skin. It’s full of tears and longing, but she needs it more than oxygen, and she only pulls away when she realises that last statement was undoubtedly false, taking in a deep breath while Gigi just studies her. She lets the brunette press her lips to her forehead and smiles at the thought that Gigi didn’t think she missed this.

Nicky feels Gigi’s lips move on her forehead and she doesn’t need to ask to know what it means.

“Me too,” she whispers, “I love you too.”

The spell is broken as Jan coughs behind them. She’s got one hand on Nicky’s giant suitcase and the other on her hip, as she hollers about how this is a lovely reunion, but only one of them has really tried to keep Nicky’s goddamn cat alive, and Nicky slips out of her girlfriends grasp to say a long-awaited hello to one of her best friends.

And I go away, but when I come home again

We’ll find a way to go back and rebegin

Jackie stretches her legs out in the seat, feeling one of her knees crack as she straightens it. After just over eighteen hours travelling - including two connections - she’s finally about to touch down in New York, and she’s beyond happy. The thought of standing in a busy street and just breathing in cool air makes her heart flutter. The idea of the neon lights and the smell of her favourite bodega and a blueberry muffin, god, she could swoon. And Jan.

The smell of her perfume has long since faded on the old Varsity t-shirt she stole back in January, but she can still imagine the shea and sea salt infused blend. She cannot wait to bury her face in her hair and hold her hand and sleep with their legs intertwined under the covers.

She steps off the plane with a sigh of relief, and she feels like she is home. As welcoming as Tehran was - as much as it wormed its way into her heart, New York is where she feels her soul relax.

Back way to the stars

Back into our hearts

We can win

Jackie’s barely stepped into arrivals before she’s jumped on by a short blonde woman, tears streaked down her face in seconds. Jan silently thanks the gods that she kept up her strength training in Tehran, regretful that she’d not even considered the outcome where she’d have knocked her girlfriend to the floor.

Luckily, Jackie can hold her petite love up, legs wrapped around her waist and face buried in the crook of her neck. Nicky hurries over to grab her bags and takes them back to Gigi, while Jackie just focuses on getting them both back to the relative safety of their friends, without walking into any suitcases or unsuspecting humans.

“I missed you so fucking much,” she hears Jan whisper into her neck and she smiles, twisting her head to press a chaste kiss to her hair. Jan drops her legs, sliding down til she’s standing with her arms wrapped tightly around Jackie’s waist, head pressed into her chest while the brunette burrows her face into her hair, chasing the shea and sea salt, and the smell of her grapefruit shampoo.

She looks up at the other couple briefly to wink at them, and they smile in understanding.

Why does the street get louder when it gets dark?

Why do I feel that sound in the pounding in the shape of my heart?

Nicky places her head on Gigi’s naked collarbone, fingers tracing patterns onto her sternum as they both relish in the way the room feels like a vintage polaroid. It’s warm and comfortable and so full of love it’s almost choking. The covers pool around their legs as Gigi uses one finger to lift the blonde’s chin up to meet her - lips connecting as Nicky’s back arches in the moonlight. Her hair cascades over one shoulder and Gigi’s knee rises between the other girl’s legs.

Jackie rests her cheek on Jan’s hip, smiling gently as the blonde runs her fingers through her hair. She places a soft kiss on her navel before she pulls herself up to the top of the bed, laying on her back so Jan can curl around her like a cat. “That felt like a good celebration,” Jan whispers into her favourite point on her neck, and Jackie hums in response. The moonlight falls through the window leaving a pattern of shadows on their intertwined legs.

“G’NIGHT,” Nicky yells and the entire apartment bursts into laughter.

Oooh, oooh, oooh

#rpdr fanfiction #gigi x nicky #gigi goode #jan sport #jackie cox #nicky doll #lesbian au #university au #I have no understanding of new york #fluff #pinkgrapefruit #I do like you #song fic #jankie #s12 #college au

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lizzieraindrops · 4 years ago

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Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 3)

that a garden will grow (11,143 words)

"There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." - The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle That does not mean that there is no joy.

Veera is alive.

Also on AO3 | Playlist soundtrack | Aesthetic sideblog

Happy autumn equinox, everyone.

When I started this story as a oneshot back in 2016, I had no idea that it would turn into a series spanning four years of new life for these characters, much less that it would end up taking me nearly the same amount of time to write it.

I wrote the first part during the darkest yet time of my life as an abstract fantasy of being in a better place. I finish writing it today from a better place, physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. If I've learned anything from this, it's that your own creativity saves you and is powerful enough to call the better things that seem so impossible into existence.

This is my tribute to Veera as a character and everyone like her and anyone who has identified with her. She changed my life. Even with all OB's many, many flaws (dear god there are SO many), without the explicit representation of Veera's neurodivergence in the Helsinki comics, I don't know how I would have figured out that I'm autistic. That has been both the biggest hurdle and the greatest blessing in the trajectory of my healing. Since it's been so central to this story and its writing, I've included a link to some resources for autism spectrum self-diagnosis.

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

***

Veera wakes gently, early, unexpectedly so. As she sits up, her weighted blanket slips off and crumples around her waist like a shed skin. Bands of muted morning coming through the blinds slide over her as she rises from the plane of the bed. The summer sun has still risen first, of course. True dark never falls here in the summer, at this high a latitude. But right now, its light is softened and diffused by a thin veil of cloud over the city. Listening, the others aren’t up and moving yet.

Slight shifting of her relaxed limbs makes the softness of the sheets into an extravagance. She’s in a rare, delicately balanced state, one where her senses have sharpened just enough to turn ordinary sensations exquisite without overwhelming her. She’ll have to spend some time listening to music – and with Niki and Beth. That was the plan anyway. But the others aren’t up yet.

Today, there’s a restlessness in her. Most days, she gets up slow, simply waiting until her body is ready to go about the day. Yet a quiet kind of discomfort has made a home in her core, nudging her to get moving. The feel of it is neither full nor hollow, not exactly painful yet nothing like comfort. It’s just there, a subdued directionless yearning.

But her mind needs to go at its own pace waking up. Inertia drags at her when she tries to move too fast or cut corners in her daily ritual. Subtle distress quickly follows that inertia if she tries to press the issue. It shows in the incrementally increasing fine tension of her muscles, slowly winding her up like clockwork. So she sits with the feeling. Motionless except for her breath in the middle of her bed, she thinks.

Light. Leaves. Home. Hunger. She should eat soon. They’re out of cereal, though. There’s a farmer’s market a few blocks away that should have fresh summer fruit. She could go. She does, sometimes, early in the morning like now, before Niki wakes up, and just wanders around. As long as she keeps it short and doesn’t talk much, she should be able to manage it without giving herself a headache.

Twenty minutes find her feet traversing muted pink granite. Neat rectangular stone cobbles pave the street below her living room window. The rumble of a loud truck passing right by close makes her flinch, but she manages to shake the discomfort out of her neck and shoulders easily enough once it’s gone. Other than that, the streets are unusually peaceful. Most people like get out of the city this close to midsummer.

She steps lightly over the stone in snugly laced canvas shoes, toes touching down first. There’s some sort of bird hidden in the trees lining the street, singing two repeated notes on a slow loop. A flycatcher, she thinks.

Being in motion somewhat soothes her restlessness as she slips through broad swathes of clouded morning light between the shadows of buildings. The persistent sensation is nothing so strident as the hypervigilance that used to keep her so high strung. But its subtle company has been constant, lately. She can tell she’s internally processing something, but she can’t quite pin it down. Maybe that’s why she’s been waking up so much earlier than normal.

Lately, a strangeness has been gently tugging at the edges of her mind. In part, she knows it’s a growing awareness of how much things have changed since four years ago. It’s happened so gradually. It was nigh invisible until she cast far enough back along the path of her own footsteps to see how far she’s come. She almost died, but she didn’t. She’s no longer in a desperate race to survive. Now, she’s alive. The question of who and what she is now is an unnervingly open one.

These days, she wakes within a body that is soft and scarred. She is both a wounded creature walking this world with strange steps and a thing healing yet already whole. More often than not, she finds her shoulders loose and her chest open, instead of curled tight into a semblance of stone. They can still seize up when her fears circle back around to worry at invisible scars. But it’s not an endless anxious state. It isn’t everything she is anymore.

Likewise, her nightmares don’t spend as many nights haunting her. Weeks pass between them, sometimes. When they do steal back to the surface of her psyche, the quiet fear they stir up saps all her energy and trails lazily through the daylight hours like an oilslick. She spends those days baking something sweet in the apartment’s warmly lit kitchen. Or she takes inventory of the shapes and textures of the leaves that hang suspended in the air of every familiar room.

It helps, even if dreams or memories linger smoldering in the back of her mind the whole time. The sensations and sense of space keep her grounded, both within herself and outside of the fickle fear and pain that flares and fades and keeps returning. Of course, nothing is so immediately comforting as the presence – and, in this searingly ephemeral moment, presences – that remind her she is not alone. But even when they aren’t there, the space itself reminds her that she lives with and in this place she’s chosen to call a home.

The apartment is the first home she can remember that feels the way she suspects one is supposed to. It fits around her, small and enclosed enough to know every inch without uncertainty scratching at the bounds of her awareness. Tucked away up on the third floor, it nests in a quiet old brick building that’s as comfortably worn in as her favorite hoodie. Its wide windows spread big and bright in every room, reminding her to breathe freely. She is no longer a creature caged. Shadows are soft in this place, and the sunlight is as much a part of it as the walls. Its radiant forms lance through glass and smile through aches, never failing to wrap her in warmth.

Leaves unfurl gently in every window. She likes to run the living silken or waxy greenness of purposeful growth between her fingertips. Perhaps their green faces are outnumbered by all the strangely familiar human ones in the photos along the whitewashed walls, marking where friendships have germinated. But then again, perhaps not. It’s a close call, and there’s always more of both growing. They’re still something of a miracle to her, after so long alone.

Low murmurs of outdoor conversation bring her back to the pop-up stalls of the market hovering just ahead. She’s there.

There are somewhat fewer visitors than normal, but the market still appears to be proceeding about business as usual. Early on, this Saturday market tends to be quieter than the Sunday one, not quite as full of people. It's that perfect balance of un-crowded enough that she can keep to her own internal world without interruption, but bustling enough that she doesn't stand out. She's just another woman at the market. Once in a while, gazes will slide over the scars on her cheek, or her upper arm if she’s wearing short sleeves (not her leg or ankle, as she never wears anything except pants). Her skin begins to remember to crawl - but then the eyes keep on sliding past, on to the peppers or the green beans or the fresh cut flowers.

Weaving her way into the dispersed crowd, she heads for the egg stand first, just in case they run out. They often do. With a dozen blue and brown eggs in tow, she roves about until she finds a stand with peaches she can smell from several paces away. Their sweet tang fills the air as she picks them out. She also gets some fresh apricots, brushing her fingertips over their velvety little coats of fuzz. She tucks the stonefruit and eggs safely into the backpack she brought and keeps moving. A yeasty oaf of fresh bread for picnicking later joins them. The rounded tip of the long loaf pokes out the top of the zippered pocket, hovering just behind her ear. She leaves the top of its paper wrapper open so it stays crisp.

Live music rolling out from the street corner captures her, pulling her out of her trajectory mid-stride to swing toward the unadorned sidewalk stage. The resonance of shimmering metal strings and singing wood flows over her and through her, and she simply sways with it, part of it. It sparkles over her skin and hums along her bones, making her flutter her fingers in pleasure, and it’s blissful. After everything she’s been through, the long gauntlet of near misses and fires and nightmare flames, it still seems wrong somehow for things to be this okay, to feel this good.

That’s why, when visceral self-consciousness swoops down on her again without warning, its familiar fear is as much something like relief as it is a thorn in an old wound. Nothing even causes it, really: just a stray passing glance from a stranger that slid over her hands instead of her scars and didn’t even linger. But it makes her remember the oddness of the ways her hands move, when she’s happy, when she’s stressed. It makes her stand out if she doesn’t make the effort to hide them – or if she takes a little too long to think in a conversation – or if she lets on that she can be hurt so easily by the smallest, normally inconsequential things.

In more dangerous times, standing out could have ended very badly for her. The feeling of being hunted might have retreated to the back of her mind, but it has never truly left. In moments like this, she still snaps back into old habits. Her fists clench into stillness, her mind into sharp wariness, her whole self into the ache of immobility except for consciously calculated movements. It’s not quite the old full-body taut-wire tension of terror. Nonetheless, it’s a painful tender twisting inside, pulling things skewed and wrong in her chest.

The thing is, she knows she’s one of the lucky ones. For so many people, the fear never gets to recede at all. Either the danger remains ever-present in the casual cruelties of the world, or their wounds never get the care they need to heal. Not everyone can be set free by toppling a single old castle of corruption into the sea. Veera gets to try to heal, as impossibly hard as it is and always will be. She has support to fall back on now, kind hearts that hear her, arms that will hold her when she hurts. Though they’re rare, she has days where she doesn’t feel like she has to hide at all. It’s so strange. Even before the Helsinki fire, she spent so long becoming acquainted with the wariness of attracting too much attention. She’s still trying to understand who she even is if she’s not hiding.

That’s why she’s doing the work she does with CYGNet. They’re all muddling their way toward healing from their one-off odd brand of hurt, but the support system they’re building could be useful for so much more. In her mind, they’re just the beginning. One day, maybe they can expand to help even more people beyond the Leda project. The Beths with different faces but surviving the same family history. The Nikis with different nightmares but recovering from the same betrayal. The Veeras with different scars who are just as overwhelmed by the everyday world, but deserve just as much of a chance to experience it without having to hide their truth in shame and become someone they’re not.

Well. Maybe one day. For now, one thing at a time. She has to take care of herself and her own healing if she’s going to make any progress down that distant path. Sometimes, the path she’s on right now still seems to stretch so much further ahead than she can fathom.

Eyes closed, Veera takes a breath into her tense stillness. To her own fragile heart, she whispers, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. She breathes; it passes.

Giving herself a few minutes more to listen to the music, she waits until the grip of physical memory lessens. The sound is still lovely, even if she can’t quite fall back into the two-piece symphony the way she did mere moments ago. She calms further as she carries herself onward again down the tent-lined street. Under the surface, though, in the same hollow where her restlessness lives, her heart remains sore where something still won’t settle into place.

Fortunately, there are other good things at the market that help soothe the ache. Even for someone like her who needs to limit her exposure to overstimulation and crowds, they make it worth braving all the bustle now and again.

A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth at the sight of a profusion of green fronds leaning out from beneath the awning of the stand up ahead. It's bursting with foliage in more shades of green than she knew existed, and chock full of rows of those knobbly little succulents she loves so much. The vendor is a quiet man with a ponytail and a kind face. He merely smiles at her whenever she comes by. He’s one of those strangers who are friends by the shared appreciation of silence. Sometimes words get in the way.

He nods at her in recognition as she ducks into the stand to avoid a loud group of shoppers. Though there are people in there, something about the vendor and the greenery keeps things calm. The tiny forest is an island in the flow of people. It’s nearly on the opposite end of the market from where she started, and it always provides a brief respite where she can recover a little before heading back. Besides, she likes to look over the lacy ferns and trailing philodendrons and all the tiny succulents in every color of the rainbow, even if she already has too many.

She still leaves most of the houseplants to Niki to look after. But to her own surprise, she’s quite good at taking care of the succulents. For the most part, she leaves them somewhere sunny and ignores them. They love it. Sometimes they even treat her to little shiny-papery flowers in brilliant pink or yellow.

Ranks of mini succulents line one of stall’s tables. She’s barely skimming her fingers over the surfaces of a row of flat, stone-like lithops when she sees it. One of the tiny pots is filled with what appear to be little green spheres like peas. Looking closer, they’re round, succulent leaves attached to thin trailing stems. Sprouting from the end of one string of them is a long, spindly stem curving up to a closed flower bud that bobs in the breeze. She’s never seen anything like it.

The man running the stand notices her looking at it. Veera points at the plant and tilts her head in a question. He smiles and extracts a sheet of paper for her from a messy pile half tucked under the cash box. Its a care sheet for Senecio rowleyanus, or string of pearls.

Veera did promise Niki she’d stop bringing home so many succulents. But the plant man’s pressing the little pot of pearls into her hands, waving her wide eyes away with a smile when she reaches for her wallet. This one will have to be an exception. Her small smile and wave of thanks receive another nod in acknowledgement and farewell. Cupping the pot in both hands, she ventures back into the mid-morning river of people to take herself home.

On the way back down the street, the plant cradled against her chest draws smiles from the crowd. They often transfer to her as well. Something about the green thing in her arms softens people’s expressions, even when they see her scars. It makes it easier to walk softly, and to carry her dull ache of residual fear just as gently.

As if struck, she stumbles when she remembers that today, she gets to go home to her two best friends in the entire world. The ache that knowledge calls forth is just as arresting as the kind that comes with the clinging oilslick fear, yet different. This is far stronger and far sweeter, its truth a soft clarity. Veera clutches her plant close to her chest with one hand as she catches her balance on a fruit-covered table with the other. A handful of little oranges roll off as she bumps into it.

Stammering apologies, Veera scrambles to gather up the fallen fruit. A nearby woman browsing the citrus in a purple sweater kneels down to help her. Veera wasn’t planning on buying mandarins, but she can hardly knock them all over the ground and run off. She hopes she has enough cash left. Straightening up, she looks for somewhere to sit the fruit down so she can check her wallet.

But the woman in the sweater holds her hands out for them. She’s already put the ones she picked up in a canvas bag.

“I’ll take them,” she says. “I was gonna buy some anyway.” Her sweater is a few shades bluer than the warm purple of Veera’s own hoodie.

Veera blinks at her. “Are – are you sure?” She holds out one of the mandarins, showing its dented skin, fragrant with released citrus oils.

The woman gives her a small smile. “Yeah. I’ll eat that one first.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.” Veera delicately hands three more mandarins over. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t worry about it.” The woman’s voice is like her smile: small but kind.

Veera whispers her thanks again, then hurries home before she can be waylaid by any more painfully kind gestures from strangers.

***

Veera’s so relieved to walk through her own door into the kitchen that she doesn’t realize someone’s in the living room, not until she hears a soft sob. Her head snaps up. Niki’s on the couch with her face in her hands and Beth next to her with an arm around her. Alarmed, Veera drops her bag on the kitchen counter and begins to make a beeline for her. But she hesitates. She’s used to offering Niki comfort whenever she can, but is she interrupting?

Too late. Beth makes a small sound of surprise when she notices Veera hovering halfway into the room. Niki looks up too, but she wipes her eyes and gives Veera a watery smile. It’s okay.

Niki holds a hand out as Veera makes her way over to the couch. Gladly, Veera takes it. As Veera stands there before the scruffy secondhand sofa in the hazy light from the window, the three of them are briefly an interlinked chain. Beth watches the other two with soft, understanding eyes, her arm steady over Niki’s shoulders.

Niki heaves a shaky sigh. Then she gives Beth’s knee a thankful squeeze and uses Veera’s hand to lever herself up to standing. She briefly embraces Veera, who returns the gesture. “I’m okay,” Niki whispers. Veera nods. Then Niki slips away into the kitchen and starts bustling around, half-seen behind the half-wall that divides it into an alcove off the main room. Presumably, she’s taking a moment to collect herself while unpacking Veera’s groceries. She does that. Niki doesn’t mind if Veera sees her cry – or Beth, apparently. But she always takes a moment alone afterward to put herself back together.

Veera shakes her head to clear away the traces of her second unexpected fright of the morning. In its wake, the empty spot on the couch is too inviting.

She flops onto the cushions next to Beth with a sigh and goes limp. Maybe going to the market was a little too ambitious for today. She’s already had too much excitement this week with Beth visiting, and she hasn’t slept well because of it, which only saps more of her limited energy. Even good things can be so exhausting. She knows she needs to get more rest than most people do, especially when there’s so much happening. But that’s so hard to remember when she knows that this moment is such a rare blessing. Both of her most important people are right here with her right now. It’s so hard to not throw herself completely into every possible joy she can have, in this transcendent sliver of time.

She rolls her head where it rests against the back of the couch to look at Beth sideways. “I got breakfast,” she offers.

“Looks like you wiped yourself out doing it.” Beth leans against the arm of the sofa to look at her. “Morning.” Her own tired eyes twinkle.

Veera smiles. She tries to fix this moment into memory: the wisps of Beth’s unbrushed hair catching the light, the wooden clatter of Niki opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Veera asks.

Beth runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah. We were just talking, about,” she waves a hand around, encompassing all the faces in all the photos on the walls, “everything. We’re so different. But some of the stuff, it’s the same. The things we’re all going through. You know?”

Veera does.

The kitchen clatter intensifies as Niki starts moving pots and pans around and clinking them down on the stovetop.

“How many eggs do you want?” Niki calls, voice more steady now. When Veera and Beth come over to investigate, she’s already got a skillet out and is debating with herself whether to start a pot of porridge, too. Veera’s always in favor of porridge no matter what, and Beth’s never had proper Finnish porridge before, so that settles that.

Niki starts scooping the mixed grains into the pan without measuring, like normal. She fills it with an unknown amount of water from the sink with some arcane skill of estimation that Veera has never understood. It always turns out fine. As Beth gets to work slicing some of the fresh fruit, Veera sidles up to Niki and lays a light hand on her arm.

Niki meets her questioning eyes. “I’m okay,” she says again. But she leans into Veera’s touch and stays there. Veera says nothing, just strokes a thumb over Niki’s shoulder and holds the space. Oats and rice swirl in the saucepan as Niki stirs them into the water with a wooden spoon.

“I was talking to her about what happened with Aleks, and mum and dad.” Niki’s voice goes soft, but not hushed. Her words aren’t directed at Beth at the other counter, but they’re not hidden from her, either. “How it made it so hard to trust anyone anymore. Especially Suvi, ‘cause she was there before. And you know how that gets me all... ugh.” She twiddles her wooden spoon in the air. Then she leans even more into Veera, into the arm that curls around her in half an embrace. To think, that Veera is someone who offers such gestures now with hardly a hesitant thought.

“She just gets it, you know?” Niki continues. “Not that you don’t, but it’s different. Like, you understand about how people are always expecting things from you. People see what they wanna see, and only take you seriously if you play along with it. It’s so frustrating. And it’s bullshit! I’ve never met anyone who understands that better than you.” She stirs the porridge again.

“And Beth... she was telling me some about her dad. She knows about having someone close to you just pull the whole rug out from under your world.” Niki pauses her stirring, and looks at Veera. “I’ve always been amazed, how you just landed on your feet and hit the ground running, when you found out. I couldn’t have done that, if I was alone.”

Veera shrugs, incidentally squeezing Niki sideways. “I never was very close with Matti.”

Watching her, Niki’s face falls a little. “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you that way. But I wish... I don’t know. I wish you’d had someone who was there for you, then. Everyone deserves that.”

“Huh.” Veera blinks. “I’d never thought of it that way.”

Arms suddenly wrap tight around her middle, a face tucked into the crook of her neck and shoulders. The handle end of a wooden spoon presses into the muscles between her shoulderblades.

“Niki!” Veera exclaims softly.

“Hey, look.” Her voice is sniffly again. “I’m having a day, okay, let me just –” She holds Veera tight.

“Nikiii,” she cajoles. “I’m fine.” Her eyes flick toward Beth over Niki’s shoulder. Her hand hovers over a peach on the cutting board as she meets her eye. Veera tucks her head down a little, embarrassed. But Beth’s smiling, if also looking a bit watery.

“I know,” Niki says into her shoulder. “I know you’re fine. You’re wonderful. But I’m here, okay? You’re always here for us. But we’re here for you, too.” Niki reaches an arm out blindly toward Beth until her fingers make contact, then gathers her in as if calling in backup. Beth gladly lays down the knife and joins the impromptu embrace next to the stove.

“Um.” Veera automatically relaxes under the extra pressure. It’s nice. But she’s still flustered. And the vociferous burbling of the porridge is getting a little concerning. “I think the porridge is going to boil over.”

Niki releases her with a groan. Veera’s sure she’s rolling her eyes, even though she’s a little too overwhelmed to look at either of them.

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting out of letting us be nice to you,” Niki says as she returns to the stove. Soon, the porridge is placated and eggs sizzle in the skillet, providing a crackling accompaniment.

When the food’s ready, they crowd around the table squeezed into the little kitchen nook below the window as if they do this every day. They pick slices of ripe peach and apricot off a cutting board in the middle. Spoons click in bowls as they do their best not to elbow each other. Stonefruit and cinnamon mix in the air with the light sulfur of fresh eggs and the pervasive aroma of the basil in the windowbox.

After a languid breakfast and a long morning spent simply enjoying each other’s company, the cloud cover is well on its way to burning off. The three head out to the nearby park, determined to make the most of the sun while the two Finns show off the splendor of the Helsinki summer to Beth. They pack up the fresh bread and cheese and the rest of the fruit for a picnic later.

Veera’s companions’ eyes are bright and animated as they leave behind the crisscrossing tracks of the train station and step into the shelter of the park’s old trees. Boughs bend and leaves whisper lazily in the light wind breathing over the bay. Veera follows them. With the hood of her jacket pulled down, the cool and verdant breeze caresses her short hair. Shade and sunlight dapple the grass between the footpaths and spatter the old blanket that they throw over the green, the one that usually lives on the couch that Beth’s currently taken over. They’re exposed to the open sky and anything else that might wander the earth with them. But branches lace and lattice across the blue, and the handful of other park-goers are too immersed in their own summer reverie to pay them any mind.

It’s surreal, almost. Niki basks like a lizard, looking like she needs nothing else in the world to keep her happy. Beth keeps running over to stick her toes in the salt water of the little bay. She takes every deliberate step into grass and gravel as if both she and the world are fresh and new. Peace settles into Veera’s bones. She spends half her time watching the others while reading an old fantasy novel in the shade. The other half, she looks upon the scene as if watching herself, absolutely bewildered by the way she both sees and cannot see the pain that still lives in the three of them, even as she still feels the scores it left trailing across her heart.

It's a long and lazy afternoon in the best understated way. By the time they return home sunwarmed, though, Veera’s starting to feel the effects of having been out all day doing too many things. Her skull is beginning to ache. But it’s familiar and cool and quiet here. She can rest.

Once they unpack the remains of their picnic, Niki makes good on her earlier threat of not letting Veera get out of being fussed over. She chivvies the other two into the living room and onto the couch. To Veera’s mild bemusement, Niki sits next to her, across from Beth, looking far too pleased with herself.

Then Niki pulls all three of them into a cuddle pile with Veera caught in the middle.

Veera lets out a little squeak of surprise as she’s smothered in limbs and warm laughter. Beth’s only too happy to help Niki tag-team her, the traitor. She squeezes Beth’s wrist in retaliation, but all that gets her is Beth slipping out of her grip just enough to tangle her fingers with her own.

With a little shuffling, Veera ends up with Niki pressed comfortably up against her side leaning her head on Veera’s shoulder. Niki also tucks an arm around her, as natural and necessary as breathing. Curled up against her other side, Beth backstops her. She lets Niki play with the ends of her long dark hair with the hand that reaches around Veera’s shoulders. Beth’s still holding onto Veera’s hand, steady like she’s never planning on letting go. The intense late afternoon light slants into the room, sending stars refracting off of the glass bottles on the sill that trail green-leaved vine cuttings.

Veera doesn’t know that she’s ever been as happy as she is right now. She watches herself in half-believing wonder, then stops. She breathes. She feels the others’ breathing like her own. She reminds herself to just be here, just exist.

But the restlessness that she awoke with doesn’t cease, even now with the two presences she treasures most on either side of her, tucked almost as close to her body as they are to her heart. It still aches and whispers in her ear with a soft insistence. Something about the fragile intensity of this moment calls to that unknown quantity like its own.

This little apartment on the edge of the city was never meant to be more than just enough for her and Niki to carve a safe space out of a terrifying world. And it has been that. But then there was more. There were the herbs keeping the kitchen and the succulents dotting the shelves. There were the colors covering the floor in rugs and memories covering the walls in photos. There was ample quiet to replace chill silence, and the fullness of kind words spoken like truth. There were pancakes. There was sunshine. There was Jade and Justyna and Janika and Sofia and Sarah and Helena and Katja and Aryanna and Danielle and Alison and Cosima and Jennifer and Tony and Femke and Fay and Krystal; and there was Beth, and there was Niki, and there was her.

Perhaps that’s the strangeness that keeps plucking at her mind. Not only have her situation and surroundings strayed so far from what her life used to be, but she herself is someone different now. She emerged changed out the other side of the two fires that consumed her entire life. Maybe the flames were bookends. She doesnt remember anything from before the first, and the space between them was long and lonely. The person she became during that in-between time is still fused into her foundations.

And yet, so much of the structure of her self has shifted. New parts of her unfurl daily. Being within her own body feels both utterly familiar and completely new. She can look back at the strange girl she once was and still recognize parts of her as the strange woman she is now. Now, she’s someone who gets called Veera with a voice full of love and Mika with sense of wonder and Leda with mild curiosity, and they are all her.

The unexpectedness of being given so many names still leaves her bemused. There’s a surprising intimacy to them, the way people speak them like they’re describing the shape of her in so many other lives. She’s unaccustomed to it. As difficult as people can be, what she has now is... good. When she thinks on it too hard, it makes her ribs feel like they’re closing in on her heart even while her lungs expand to take in the whole sky in an single endless exhilarated breath.

She’s thinking about it now. It’s not just a thought. It’s a longing and a fulfilling, an ache and a balm, a memory and a future, a call and response. It becomes all of her in this moment, and she shivers with its intensity. The shiver ripples into the bodies nestled on either side of her. Only a few years ago, she could never have imagined being so close, or wanting to. Sometimes it’s still too much, even with Niki – even with both of them, now, who are both so inexplicably easy to be around. The companionable solitude bathes her soul like the green breathing of a forest in eternal spring. She thinks about the unlikeliness, the flouted impossibility of it all. The feeling that it calls into bloom from her seed of a heart is almost too much.

“Veera?” Niki turns to face her in response to the shiver, her golden head catching and holding the gilded afternoon light.

“You alright, Veer?” She blinks at the new sound of the new name spoken in Beth’s softest-leather voice. It fits, too.

Veera inhales to speak, but words evade articulation. She releases the breath again to its own wordless purposes. The hand that’s been interlaced with hers squeezes gently as Beth makes a little questioning sound like a cat and shifts the comfortable weight of her knees in Veera’s lap. On Veera’s other side, Niki leans even further into her than she has been and rests her chin on Veera’s shoulder.

The press of their affection and concern envelop her in dearest aching, and it’s so much. She wants to stay right where she is. But she’s hardly slept for the past two nights and she’s tired and aching from overextending herself and her words have left her again. The immensity of feeling blooming inside her on top of everything else is just too much. She won’t be able to stay like this much longer. She needs to be by herself, to quietly sort through the backlog of everything she’s experiencing that’s stacking up faster than she can process it.

First, though, she needs them to know how much this means to her. Her ears pick up every breath and brush of smallest movement, and her world is filled with little strokes of sound that fall across her skin and hum in her chest as if painted there. They’re closer and dearer to her than anyone has ever been. Veera lifts Beth’s hand with her own and sweeps Niki’s hand into her grasp as well. Then, she presses both of them hard against her heartbeat. She bends her head down and locks her arms over her own chest to hold them there. No sound escapes her except a minute whimper.

Wordless murmurs and small shufflings to stay close tell her that they understand what she can’t say right now, and tell it back to her twofold. She sniffles a little, then begins to untangle herself without yet letting go. She doesn’t want to leave. But if she doesn’t, the waves of overwhelm that currently shove at her will become a tide that pulls her under and leaves her head pounding.

Niki’s voice, low. “You getting overloaded?”

Veera nods.

“Okay,” she says gently. “Go wind down. We won’t be loud.” Niki’s always been so understanding, right from the very first moment she’d shared her strangeness. Secret for a secret, she’d said, guarding Veera’s like her own and holding her trust like a treasure.

“Take care, Mika,” Beth says, mimicking Niki’s tone. Beth’s never been here here for this before. But Veera has texted with her at length numerous times in the past, when she can’t bear conversation out loud but still wants company. Veera can still hardly believe that Beth’s really here, proving herself as compassionate through soft sounds and touches as through a keyboard. “Don’t worry,” she adds as Veera still hesitates to let go. “We’ll be here later.”

Veera breathes out and nods again. She manages to stand, still holding one hand in each of hers. She squeezes them one more time, one after the other. Then she picks her way around the blue-and-brown mess of clothes spilling out of Beth’s suitcase onto the living room floor and steps softly into her own room. She closes the door.

With the blinds half shuttered against the afternoon light coming through the west-facing window, it’s cooler, dimmer, quieter than the main room. Veera likes it that way. She needs its restful seclusion as much as she needs the sun-glazed warmth of the rest of the place. Filled with muted purples and greens, there’s no dizzying array of photographs here. The only picture on the walls is a large cream and gray poster of a detailed sketch of the moon with all its craters arcing over its surface. Stubby succulents dot the heavily book-laden shelf and her cluttered desk in front of the window. They sort of glitter in the sunlight. The beams catch the water stored in the overlarge cells of their chunky little leaves, brightening their soothing shades of green, grey, dusty lavender, and mauve.

Nerves spangling, she changes out of her jeans into something softer without looking at what she’s doing. Sometimes, even just looking at things gets to be too tiring. Her hands know exactly where she keeps everything stashed in her dresser drawer, and her fingers are familiar with the texture of nearly every piece of clothing she owns. She doesn’t need to see them to tell them apart.

Veera sinks into the soft give of the comforter spread over her bed with a sigh. When she pulls the weighted blanket at the foot of it over herself with the rain-like rustle of plastic beans in its quilted pockets, it wraps her in gentle even pressure from above and below. The heaviness of it flattens out the frayed edges of her nerves. Laid out flat on her back with her arms floating loosely on either side and her elbows bent upward, the blanket covers everything except her face and hands.

As the creeping tension begins to trickle away, another sigh escapes her lungs. It’s a slow process. With how large her emotions are now, and with all the excitement and exhaustion of the past three days, it will take a few hours to wear down the worst of it. The tightness of her shoulders and the pinched feeling in her neck will fade. But they won’t completely disappear for a day or so – and that’s if she does nothing but rest her body and mind. The strain is mental as much as it is physical. Her brain just does what brains normally do, only sometimes slower and sometimes faster, and getting there via unorthodox roads. When rushed, the process only gets backed up, the road blocked, the paths tangled. Pushing it is like trying to run with a twisted ankle. It only makes it worse.

At times like this, it’s even easier than usual for the world to turn into sandpaper on her soul and senses. Overexposure to the riptide of existence all around rubs her nerves raw, living faster than she can think and burning brighter than she can bear. Sounds become ocean waves with weight behind them and lights fill her eyes with their intense brilliance. Gentle touches catch her skin like fire, while firm pressure forms a gravity well that could either pull her into a stable orbit or sling her satellite round reeling. It’s so easy for her to get overwhelmed by pain and pleasure alike. The line between them is faint and fluid.

To some degree, that vibrant intensity was always going to be part and parcel of the way she experiences the world. She was always going to be strange. Maybe if she hadn’t been put through two fires, it wouldn’t be quite so overwhelming quite so often. Probably. But she doesn’t know where the scars end and the inherent self begins, because they’re the same now. Whatever the cause, the person she is now is someone subject to both exquisite sharpness and terrible softness, captivated by so many infinitesimal pangs of ache and grace. It’s a lion’s share of pain and wonder across a lamb’s shoulders.

She wouldn’t change it, if she could. She didn’t choose it, but it’s hers. It’s her. It’s given her an unprecedented ability to be gentle in just the right ways with the people who need it most. That comes in handy considering how many traumatized Ledas she works with. Besides, she’s found all sorts of unusual yet efficient ways to do what she needs to do, because the normal ways don’t work for her. Sometimes that results in really neat new things, like the advanced cyber-security system she personally designed for CYGNet. It hasn’t been beaten yet, and if her constant updates have anything to say about it, it never will. If she ever gets tired of co-running the organization with their board of Ledas, she could always actually go into the tech field.

Right now, ever leaving CYGNet seems such a remote possibility. After a couple years of a reduced workload so she could actually finish school and take a few courses in database management to supplement her work, she’s finally returned in her full capacity. It feels good. Between her responsibilities managing the sheer volume of information DYAD had surrendered to them and protecting both it and their secure communication network, she has plenty to keep her mind busy and satisfied.

Now that Sofia and Aryanna take care of most of the administrative work, things run a lot smoother, too. Sofia’s steadied into tenacious steadfastness as her confidence grows, and she’s got a level head and a killer knack for budgets. Aryanna’s a great project manager and she’s got plenty enough charisma to handle the public-facing parts of CYGNet that Niki used to wrangle.

Niki’s stepped back a lot from CYGNet since Veera came back full time. She’d only been involved out of circumstance and necessity in the first place. For years, Niki had been the smiling face of Leda to the world, giving their story the life it needed to be told. Veera doesn’t know how she’d ever have done any of it without her. But really, all Niki wanted was a quiet life with the people she loved. So now that things were steadier and the world’s scrutiny had moved on, she was taking more time for herself. She worked part-time in a cat café downtown a few blocks away from the park, went on dates with Suvi around the city, and came home smiling to Veera and their little apartment.

Niki seems softer these days, happier. It’s like she’s settled into her natural gentleness, rather than defiantly clinging to it like a lifeline after the fire tried to burn it out of her. Her recovery is a thing of beauty. Sometimes Veera is stricken into stillness at the sound of Niki humming to herself in the next room, or at the sight of her smiling to herself while reading in a patch of sunlight, her legs stretched out on the couch. Sometimes, the memory of almost losing her so soon after finding her four years ago floats forth, casting Veera’s current joy in a sickly shade.

But they’ve talked through that fear they both have, many times. They’re both here, alive. They both care too much about the closeness they’ve created to ever choose to be too far apart. Anything else that might separate them will just be the ebb and flow of life, and that’s always true for everyone. Veera tries not to worry about it too much. She’s lucky to have Niki in her life. And these days, Veera’s gotten better at believing her when she says she wants to stay.

She finds her mind going unfocused, her body gone heavy like she needs a nap. It’s been an eventful day. Veera curls up on her side under the blanket, burying the rough texture of her scarred cheek in the softness of her pillow. To see her now, anyone might assume she was one of the others, marked only invisibly. Instead, a chapter of her story is written all down the right side of her body in curlicues of too-light ridges and and too-dark indentations, dappled from face to elbow to ankle. People don’t always read past that page to reach the rest of her. Much of the time, she still can’t, either. But at least there is another chapter now. It’s right here where she’s living in this strange new moment.

Her already heavy limbs go slack. Thoughts shift and sift and slip over each other half-defined. Maybe there will be more chapters she can’t even imagine yet, even better than this half-healed, aching glory.

***

When she wakes once again, Veera finds evening falling in its long, slow descent. It’s late. The sky glows with that particular kind of soft, omnipresent golden glow that only comes with the midnight sun at the height of summer. Niki and Beth have probably gone to bed already. They’re both early risers, and Beth is adjusting relatively well to her jetlag. As usual, the evening belongs to Veera.

Evening here is a half-seen time, gilded in twilight in the summers and shrouded in restful darkness throughout the long winter. Her eyes get a reprieve from the sharp definition of day among the soft placement of shadows. Even in winter, she rarely turns on the lights. Navigating the familiar space is easy by the sound of her feet on thin carpet and linoleum, by the brush of her fingertips on the matte whitewashed walls. She’s usually the only one awake. Even when Niki wakes up with bad dreams and seeks her out for comfort, they don’t talk much. Voices are kept low. Most of the time, it’s a space for her to be alone with her thoughts, turning them over and laying her experience of the day to rest before she sleeps.

Cautiously, in case Beth’s asleep in the living room, Veera pries her door open so it doesn’t clunk in its uneven frame. Sure enough, Beth’s curled up in her nest of blankets on the couch. Niki’s bedroom door is ajar, and through it she can just catch the barely-heard sounds of an occupied room, the imperceptible breath or rustle of presence simply felt. It’s the difference between quiet and silence. It's subtle, but worlds away from the dullness that permeates an empty space. Having grown up roaming two floors of dim, silent rooms with only the click of the keyboard from ‘uncle’ Matti’s office for company, Veera is endlessly familiar with that emptiness. This is something else: a living seed hidden under the soil; a flower that’s closed its petals for the night.

Pulling the hood of her well-loved purple hoodie up to shield her ears from the mechanical hum of the fridge, she slips out of her room and heads into the kitchen. Things are less sharp now, but she's still unusually sensitive, especially her ears. Retrieving a tall glass of room temperature water and a tin of chicken soup tipped into a bowl takes only a minute. She doesn’t heat it. The quiet is worth more to her than the warmth, in this comfortable stillness. She retreats to her room with the bowl clutched in her hands and curls up at the foot of her bed for a quiet dinner.

She’s far more relaxed and grounded now than she was earlier. But, checking the clock, she’s just woken up from one of her exhausted five-hour recovery naps. She’s too awake, if in a mild and focused sort of way, to go to sleep like she normally would around now.

Well. Though she’s mostly taking the time Beth’s here off from CYGNet work, she has been checking once a day just to make sure nothing critical or time-sensitive has come up. She hasn’t done that yet today because she was absolutely and completely passed out and dead to the world for half of it, so she might as well get that done now.

She cracks her door partly open so that the presences of the others can better keep her company at a distance. Then she boots up her computer and dials down the display to a dim setting in the endless dusk.

Everything looks fairly normal. There’s nothing of note in the security reports, just the usual bots automatically blocked. Other than that, there’s only two messages in her inbox that have been flagged for immediate attention by her custom filters.

The first is a notice of identity confirmation for Jennifer Fitzsimmons in the States. She filed a request not long ago for all her information retrieved from DYAD to be destroyed. It’s one of the solutions they originally came up with to make sure CYGNet didn’t just replace DYAD as a repository of excruciating detail. The whole point of the organization was to help them all reclaim the autonomy that had been stolen from them. That meant making sure every Leda had full control over their own records. CYGNet couldn’t do much for those who didn’t contact them except seal and guard their data in case they wanted it someday, which Veera did dutifully. But they could make sure that anyone who heard about the organization knew they had the option to cut that unauthorized tie.

Veera was surprised how few chose to do so - only 34 of the 113 Ledas in contact with CYGNet. Many seemed to simply consider it a comprehensive if unnervingly detailed medical history that they could refer to for their own use. Others, like herself, saw the data as a window into otherwise lost parts of their lives. After she’d decidedly parted ways with Matti, she had no one to tell her anything about the times she was too young to remember. Still others, like Beth, wanted nothing to do with their records, but chose to preserve them as proof of their ordeals.

On the other hand, a minority including Jennifer had made contact for the exclusive purpose of requesting their data be destroyed and didn’t seek any engagement with it. CYGNet verified their identities to make sure the files in question pertained to the one who was actually making the request. But they made a point of doing the verification by traditional means. They’d all had enough of blood tests and lab rats.

It was more common for people to decide to delete their data after actually accessing some of their records, the way Niki did. After confirming the identities of her monitors, she’d wanted nothing to do with any of it. She said all it did was hurt. She’d already experienced enough of the sharpness of betrayal without knowing the prickly details of every last lie. Her DYAD records were the first ones they erased. Veera deleted the digital files, and Niki burned the hard copies herself, her smile strangely grim yet satisfied as she set them alight with shaking hands. She seemed lighter, after, and less wary of the warmth of flames.

Veera spends a few minutes completing the second half of double-authorizations for Jennifer’s digital and physical record destruction (permanent removal needed confirmation from two board members) before initiating file deletion. She watches the progress bar creep toward 100% while sending the requisite forms off to Danielle in record storage. She’ll put the hard copies in the incinerator. Set to its lowest volume, Veera’s computer gives a small congratulatory bloop as Jennifer’s digital data disappears for good.

Finally, the only other thing that needs her attention is a request for the general Leda health packet from a new sender, [email protected]. Piquing Veera’s curiosity, it specifically asks after the packet’s chapter on the autism spectrum and common comorbids, even though the sender “would hardly deem it necessary, but my new psychiatrist wants to be thorough.”

As she delves further into the odd letter, it hurts a little to read. It’s laced through with the kind of disdainfully certain air of superiority that reveals just how deeply someone has internalized the cruel views that the world holds of certain ways of being. Veera’s found that this attitude is particularly common in people who actually are on the spectrum, but have been taught since before memory, consciously or unconsciously, to suppress every natural expression of their own differences from the norm. They’re more likely to notice and disparage any deviations in others, specifically because they’ve spent so long trying to disavow their own. They’ve gone so long unsupported, learning to see support only as a weakness instead of as a natural and too-often-denied necessity.

It’s heartbreaking, because Veera’s recognized so many of her own eccentricities in so many of the others, and hardly any of them know what it probably means. She sees it again and again, over CYGNet video conferences and at the occasional Leda meet-ups. Cosima’s hands dance while she talks in much the same way that her own flutter when she’s nervous. Tony’s always blasting his music like his life depends on it, and as far as sensory regulation is concerned, it probably does. Rachel deliberately tilts her head in just such a way that Veera can tell she’s masking, trying to remain poised while she takes an extra moment to process and adapt to a situation.

It’s not that surprising, really, since they all share the same genetics. Most people don’t notice, though, because they only know the broadest and most inaccurate stereotypes. That’s why Veera had insisted on adding the neurodiversity chapter to the health packet.

Veera lightly skims her fingers back and forth over the keyboard without pressing down, thinking. The clicks of the barely jostled keys clatter out a tiny rhythm. Normally, they’d want new contacts to establish a secure CYGNet account. This email’s tone and its throwaway address, though, suggests that it’s either from someone who either isn’t comfortable making contact, or who is struggling too hard with internalized shame to ask for help without doing so anonymously.

It’s an easy decision. Veera attaches the health packet PDF to her reply and sends it along with just a few words of her own.

Hey,

Here’s the health packet, including the neurodiversity chapter. Whether or not any of it applies to you, I hope it helps you find your way closer to yourself. We’ve all got a long way to go if we’re going to build lives we can call our own.

Veera’s fingers hover over the keys. She wants to somehow tell whoever this is that it’s okay. It’s okay to wonder, to look into their own strangeness, to perhaps embrace it. But they’re probably not ready to hear it.

If looking into neurodivergence ends up being a path you need to walk to do that, you’re not alone. I’m here, and so are a lot of the others. You know where to find us.

She signs off as merely MK, hoping that whoever it is might feel more comfortable with another semblance of anonymity. That’s all she can do, and for herself, that’s enough.

All at once, weariness weighs her down. Synthesizing such a delicate appropriate response takes so much effort. She’s gotten better at it, especially when she has time to compose and distill her thoughts. But such nuances don’t come naturally to her. She sags, shoulders loose. Though the light is still golden, it’s actually past midnight now. She hadn’t realized how long she spent trying to craft her words into the right shape. She folds her laptop away and sits on the end of her bed, opening the blinds to stare at the glowing amber of the summer night sky.

Now that her senses are less flooded than they were this afternoon, they itch in the way that means they’re craving some kind of input to regulate them, to calibrate her back into balance. Her vast collection of shared music is her go-to for that. There’s really nothing for it quite like becoming a song for a little while. It lets a steady measured flow of clean water smooth down the troubled riverbed of her nerves, torn up by the passing of the flood.

With her headphones on, she’s bathed in a swell of sound that washes over her like the cool sea on a warm day and just as refreshing. Her widely varied tastes change from hour to hour and minute to minute, but she always comes back to metal. The density and intensity of it literally drown out everything else with that single symphony of sensation. Now, she sways to its current in much the same way she wanted to at the market earlier – was that just this morning? Except now she can because she’s alone, and the only people near are the ones she trusts most. She lets herself dance in it, soothingly rock herself back and forth within its waves, shake out her hands along its endless ripples. She forgets the passage of time for awhile, existing only in the sound and the single present moment.

She emerges from her reverie far more relaxed and substantially more grounded. Setting the headphones aside and stretching her spine out along the bedspread, her limbs have gone soft and slow. Even with her long nap earlier, her overload was exhausting enough that she can probably manage to sleep again til morning. The thought is barely formed before she’s already drifting off.

***

She knows what’s different, when she wakes in soul-deep stillness. Lingering tendrils of vague golden-glazed dreams might just be yesterday’s memories. They retract from her consciousness like opening petals, only to birth her into that same sunlight. She can see the brightness without even opening her eyes, warmth flooding into her room through the door she’s left open.

It’s not just that she’s different now; it’s that she’s actually okay, sort of. And even after years, she’s also clearly not. And somehow... it’s enough.

The truth of it holds her in stillness for a nascent moment, like gentle hands around the wings of a bird about to be released into the sky. Then her eyes open to a room washed in brightness. Her neck and shoulders still ache, but her sight is sharp and clear. The bedroom is the same it’s been for years now, furnished simply, with a mess of cords spilling over her desk to the power strip and the too many favorite books crowding the shelves. But she can see it now, the way it’s filled with life in a way that these traces only barely begin to show. It’s not alive because she moves things around and grows plants in it now. She grows plants in it because she is vulnerably, tenaciously, heart-breakingly alive. She is what is filling the space.

Her life is now full of joy in ways she once could never have imagined. Her happiness feels strange because she is not used to it. She is healing, but she is also just beginning to understand the shape and nature of the scars on her heart and mind. They are just as deep and real as the ones on her skin. They may never truly leave her, and she has made peace with that. But that has done absolutely nothing to stop beauty from seeding her life and springing from every fracture like grass from cracks in concrete.

The restless discomfort that’s been plaguing her has been nothing more than her own hesitance, holding back from fully inhabiting this current joy. Some part of her must still believe that it’s undeserved, or that it’s impossible until she is completely okay.

But it’s not. It’s right here and already making itself hers, as broken and whole as she is. She’s been looking at every new leaf wondering if she’s allowed to love it, even while it’s sinking roots into her life and breathing life into the air.

Few people like her get the opportunities she has; to heal, to help, to grow. She’s already trying so hard to give back as many of those chances as possible, even if it's just to the handful of Ledas she’s been able to help. But that doesn’t change the fact that these opportunities are hers; and yet she’s still half holding back.

She could take them. Not from anyone, but for all of them – and for herself. She could choose it in the unknown names of all her people who have been so lost and alone and longing, the ones who never will be found and the ones who are still hoping. She could believe for all of them that she deserves the joy right in front of her. Maybe this whole time she’s been trying to help the others, she’s been trying to heal herself.

It's a terrifying prospect. But maybe doing right by people like her means doing right by her self, too. Maybe it’s as simple, as impossibly hard, as just letting herself be where she is.

With a shock that catches her breath, she realizes that she’s already made her choice. Somewhere deep inside, something has already shifted like a flower turning toward the sun. She has changed.

It’s never going to be easy. She is going to be healing for the rest of her life. Not to mention, she’ll have to do it in a world where she knows all to well that people are often cruel. But there are also people it’s easy to be around. People like her, and unlike her, but kind people, understanding people, even strangers like the plant vendor at the market and the woman with the oranges. Perhaps she needs to mourn the fact that it took her so long to find any. But now... oh, now.

She tumbles out of bed in yesterday’s clothes. She makes her way out of the room past the crusty soup bowl that she left on her desk last night. Brushing past the great glossy leaves of the swiss cheese plant like a forest creature through the undergrowth, she steps into the central room that’s blazing with light and color and life.

As she enters the kitchen, she ignores the twin cries of greeting from the stove. She casts about for her new little pearls plant. Looking around, she spies it in the kitchen window half hidden under the canopy of the basil. She marches right up to it and into the vault of sunlight streaming in.

One by one, each round little bead of a leaf leads up to the stem holding its spindly floating flower - and it's actually a compound flowerhead. It’s opened up several miniscule pinkish-white flowerets with five pointed petals each. They’re giving off the most incredible, intense smell that fills that whole corner of the kitchen and seems like it couldn’t possibly be produced by something so tiny. Her hands flutter near her shoulders in absolute delight. As she breathes in, the little flower’s fragrance mixes with the pungent aroma of the herbs growing next to it. She drinks it all in deeply, breathes in the smell until it fills her lungs. Sometimes she feels as if she could survive on the richness of such things alone, like a hummingbird subsisting on nothing but nectar.

Nonsense. Her world is so much larger than she ever thought it could be, and she wants it, chooses it. Unlatching the window, she flings the shutters open wide to the trees just outside dancing in a kaleidoscope of green and brown and gold and the sunny city beyond and the blue sky above. The summer breeze that rushes in ruffles her messy hair with a wonderful effervescent sensation.

She laughs out loud, then turns around and practically throws herself at Niki and Beth with arms outspread. She seizes them both in a messy hug that somehow manages to include that wooden spoon again. Veera still laughs, and she feels tears on her cheeks, too.

“Whoa! Hey, girl.”

“Oh, shit! Hi Mika.”

“Hey, Veera, are you okay?”

No. Yes. Always. Never. She finds herself crying harder than she’s ever cried in her life. But she’s still smiling, steeped in a deeper kind of joy and certainty than she’s ever felt before. Someone threads their fingers through her hair and strokes her head until the tide turns and sets her free. And then, still, she is held.

None of this will last. Nothing does. There is more elation and agony and monotony and uncertainty and wonder up ahead. And yet, they’re still here, and she’s beyond grateful. She’s never stopped being here. Maybe this really is exactly where she needs to be. Maybe all she needs to do is tell the garden of her heart that it doesn’t have to stop growing.

When she can, Veera breathes in deeply, her ribs pressing against the arms circling her. She feels the way her exhale blusters soft and warm in the small space between her face and the shoulders she leans it into. The yielding soft pressure of the embrace engraves itself into the very bones of her arms, and she will never ever be able to forget the ache of it and will never want to.

Fuck the fires – this is what’s real now. She wants this to be what makes her who she is. This dance of joy in strangeness can be the story she makes of the rest of her life. All she needs to do is remember her choice, and make it, again and again and again.

“Hey, there, hey... there you are,” Beth murmurs. “You’re here. I’m here. We’re here.”

She is; they are.

They are.

#orphan black #clone club #veera suominen #beth childs #niki lintula #mk ob #fic #long post #herbs on the windowsill au #queerplatonic #aroace #lizzie's adventures in writing #lizzie taking up space #it's here!#it's done.

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