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mutable-manifestation · 2 years ago

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The Ghost King (of Miscommunication) Ch. 20

Part 1-12,Part 13,Part 14,Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19

Part 20!

Info:

DC timeline is fucked, I’m going with the “Batman know most ids but hasn’t revealed himself yet” and a use of the ol’ canon “Brucie Wayne is That Famous(™)" and known as being a serial adopter.

As for how Deadman knows things: Rama pulled a favor with clockwork to let Deadman mature as a ghost/learn about important zone information & culture before yeeting him back to the living world with no time lost bc balance reasons.

He doesn’t know everything about the zone - he’d be garbage at finding his way around and he doesn’t really know anybody - but he knows customs and he knows about halfas bc all info about the Ghost King was High Priority Know This Or Don’t At Your Own Risk (the risk is that will turn u into a . He basically spent a subjective decade practicing his powers or reading books on ‘how to ghost’ next to Rama. He never has to go back to the realm to ‘recharge’ because Rama just kinda beams him what he needs to keep going.

***

“Well,” Constantine starts as he - ‘Finally,’ Bruce thinks - steps up to the table, evidently finished examining the scene, “I can tell you why we couldn’t find shit wrong in Gotham.”

“Elaborate,” Bru- Batman - he has to be Batman, now, has to be calm and think if he wants to get Jason back - demands.

“Don’t get your cape in a twist, Dadman, I’m getting there.” Constantine rolls his eyes, taking a seat.

“There’s a reason I don’t visit Gotham if I can help it - other than its stellar reputation and your renowned hospitality to outsiders.”

His amused snort very quickly transitions to a grimace.

“Gotham’s got the magical equivalent of background radiation. Real uncomfortable stuff. Feels like walking in the world’s biggest graveyard. And that-” he jabs a thumb over his shoulder “-feels just like it.”

“You’re saying he’s being kept somewhere in Gotham?” Red Robin perks up, voice hopeful and doubtful at once.

“No,” Constantine shoots down. “I’m saying whatever little fairy theory the kid had going was wrong, the fae haven’t lived in hell for centuries now. Even if it were them, pocket dimensions don’t actually work like that.”

“Wherever that portal led to reeks of death-” the Gotham heroes all tense at this, the others shooting them tentative looks of concern as Constantine steamrolls on “-and Gotham is exactly enough of a cesspit to have covered up the stink of it before. If it weren't for him being treated relatively well there, I woulda guessed he’d been dragged to hell. Dunno much about heaven - obviously - but I’ve never heard of them having escapees.”

“Obviously not,” Robin snaps, standing. “Red Hood is not dead, he was just here. We were able to see and interact with him, without any need for your tricks. Now can you tell us what it is, or do you just intend to sit there and list off all of the things that it is not?”

Beside him, a brace of batarangs appears in Black Bat’s hand, fanned out threateningly.

“Black Bat, Robin, that’s enough.” Batman commands, voice leaving no room for argument.

“He didn’t have a pulse.”

All eyes snap to Oracle, whose voice is only barely heard thanks to the silence following Batman’s words.

“That doesn’t mean anything!” Red Robin insists. “Superman and Martian Manhunter don’t always have a detectable pulse! We already know Hood is…different now. But that doesn’t mean he’s dead! Some kind of magic or advanced tech could’ve-”

“You think I don’t know that?” Oracle demands softly. “I don’t want him to be dead either, but lying to ourselves will just make things harder. We need to know the truth if we’re going to get him back, whether we like that truth or not.”

Constantine allows a few seconds of somber silence before opening his mouth to break it, but is cut off by the door slamming open.

“I’m here,” Shazam says, rushing to his seat, “What’s going on?”

“One second,” Constantine interjects, “Deadman is here too. Let me just….”

Deadman pops into visibility over the table.

In lieu of re-explaining, they play back the relevant recordings - Batman had started them the moment he sat down, just in case.

There were only perhaps 15 minutes of relevant video, including the explanation, the re-kidnapping, and what little Constantine had told them - they’d spent much of the time Jason had been present getting details, brainstorming potential counter-strategies, and just generally killing time in the hopes that the clock would run out and everything would be fine.

“And that’s everything we have so far,” Batman says as he pauses the video - no need to replay the argument. “Thoughts?”

“Well, Conny’s right that they ain’t fairies. You’re not gonna like the answer, though.” Deadman starts, ignoring Constantine’s glare.

“If you have answers we want to hear them, whether we like them or not.” Batman insists, trying to reign in the fragile hope trying to bloom in his chest in favor of bracing himself.

“That portal led to the Infinite Realms - more commonly called ‘The Ghost Zone.’ As the name implies, it’s infinite and - whaddaya know - full of the dead.”

“Then Red Hood is…what? In heaven? Limbo?” Batman’s mind races; was it even possible to steal him back? Had they just…been allowed a final goodbye?

“Nah,” Deadman says, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Heaven, Hell, Purgatory - those places might be all Constantine has interacted with, but you gotta remember that I talk to Rama. Avatar of Vishnu? Yeah. The afterlife is a lot more complicated than most people think; fact of the matter is, all the afterlives people have believed in over the ages exist, and they all sit neatly in their own little slices of the Realms.”

Deadman floats to sit cross-legged at the head of the table.

“The only reason portals to hell and other locations in the Realms look different is because the local deity and/or devil makes them so, but much of the Zone is ungoverned by any specific deities or devils, so if you just open a portal to a random location, odds are it’s gonna be the green swirly.”

“So he is dead,” Signal concludes mournfully.

“Not necessarily. Kid said he got pulled through a portal to some kind of medical center, right? And his body was completely normal until one day he woke up looking different. And you lot didn’t find a body anywhere?”

“No,” Batman answered, “All we could find was the residue from the portal.”

“Well, if he’d up and died he shoulda left a body behind; it woulda been dumped back out by now - somewhere obvious, too, ghosts are big on proper burials. So unless someone managed to vaporize him, odds are he’s not fully dead, but he’s definitely at least a little dead.”

Robin scoffs, “‘A little dead.’ Do you hear yourself? Either he is dead or he is alive, there is no in between for that kind of thing.”

Deadman merely snorts.

“Says the liminal.”

Robin frowns.

“Liminal?” Robin, Batman, and Constantine all chorus.

“I thought that was just Gotham being possessive,” Constantine continues with a raised brow, turning an appraising eye on the batfamily.

“No,” Deadman answers, “All of you bats and birds are liminal - some more than others. Just a little changed, just a little touched by death. With any luck, the missing kid’s case is just a bit more severe. But we can talk more about that later. Back to the kid.”

And they will get to it later. Jason is their priority now, but if something is going on with his kids Bruce intends to know about it.

Deadman pauses to take an unneeded breath.

“I’m gonna be real with you - and Batman, don’t freak out - but it sounds to me like he’s been ghost adopted.”

A beat.

“Excuse me?”

Deadman waits for the litany of ��what the hell’s and ‘ghost adopted???’s and ‘he already has a family!’s to die down.

The non-Gotham members of the League remain quietly confused - hoping this means things can be resolved peacefully while privately wondering if the bats and birds really would turn out to be some kind of self-unaware cryptids.

“Okay. Ghosts form when enough ectoplasm and ectoenergy - which you can think of as basically the carbon and electricity of the Zone, I guess, at least in this context - are present at the death of a being experiencing strong emotions. In the absence of that perfect mixture, a shade - just a soul with no real power - is formed, only able to become a proper ghost and form a core if brought to the Infinite Realms-”

“A core?” Batman asks.

“Ghost brains, basically. Anyway, ghosts can also form if there’s enough ectoplasm and energy in one place, either from the zone itself - known as neverborns - or from strong enough ghosts intentionally forming them - known as naturalborns. Now, ghost families don’t work the same as living families do. Ghost families form from a sort of ‘dibs’ system-”

“Dibs?” comes Flash’s incredulous voice.

“I’m gettin’ there,” Deadman sighed at the second interruption. “As I was sayin’. Regardless’a how, once a core is formed the new ghost is considered a baby ghost. It isn’t really a one-and-done process. Sure, once you’ve got a core you’ve got a ghost now, but not a mature one. Cores have to grow until they reach a stable size and energy level - usually marked by natural power acquisition settling down and ectoplasm fluctuations stabilizing. How long it takes depends on the quality and quantity of ectoplasm and ectoenergy available - the shortest known time was just under 5 years, longest was a few hundred, I think? Average is a decade or two.

This is relevant,” Deadman emphasizes for those who are visibly growing impatient, “For two reasons.”

“Firstly,” he holds up a finger, “The ecto a ghost takes in while maturing has an impact on how it develops, the powers it ends up with naturally. Everything in the zone is made of ectoplasm, and ghosts both take it in and echo out the excess - like plants, kinda. Maybe.

So if a baby ghost is around, say, a fire ghost a lot of the time it’ll probably end up with fire powers of its own. Assuming it was early enough and their core wasn’t already leaning towards ice or something. A stronger ghost parent also means faster growth.

Now, the Infinite Realms are infinite. People can’t always find each other, some people die at different times, some people return to the cycle before their loved ones die, some are neverborns, etc. Most sapient beings want friends and family, it’s just how it goes. So ghosts sometimes just kinda. Dibs each other.

Multiple dibs’ are pretty abnormal; baby ghosts aren’t actual babies in the human sense of the word. They don’t just pick a parent and stay there all the time while they’re waiting to mature. There’s generally that first few week-to-month period where they’ll stay put with whoever dibses them first for safety until the basics settle in, but after that? Ghosts explore, and dibs occur, and lots of newbies end up with something like a dozen parents and however many siblings-in-dibs.

Secondly,” another finger joins the first in a peace sign, “And what I suspect - and hope - is that while souls can fail to form cores and become shades, the opposite is also possible; a living being can become liminal enough to form a core. Making dibsing pretty much inevitable - no decent ghost is going to leave a baby seemingly stranded in the living world to starve into nonexistence. Gotham might have enough polluting the place, but it’s pretty much all rancid so that would’ve made them even more eager to get the kid outta there.”

“So what you’re saying,” Red Robin drawls, “Is that he’s dead-but-not-really and is only missing because a dead-for-sure person took one look at him, went ‘that’s baby,’ and pulled a Bruce Wayne?”

“Pretty much.”

“Even if it wasn’t intended to be malicious it’s still a kidnapping,” Batman says.

“Well, Wulf did offer to let the kid bring guests back with him-”

“What!?” Everyone choruses.

“Yeah, though given the whole fae-kidnapping assumption I think the kid took it as a threat, but he asked the kid how many of you he wanted to bring as guests. He said none, so Wulf said do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars." Deadman said casually, as if that wasn't a heartbreaking bombshell to drop.

"Anyway, point is, if this really is just one big misunderstanding then you can go talk it out. Ghostspeak isn’t really living-friendly and the living language he did know clearly didn’t help. Lucky you, I can translate. And the Realms are a human-safe environment. Well, the air is breathable at least.”

"Human-safe my ass," Constantine spits. "If the demons I deal with dwell in one little slice I don't even wanna think about the kind of nightmares strolling around the rest of the place."

"We're not leaving Red Hood in there."

The Gotham heroes' words leave no room for argument.

They get down to planning.

***

Fun Fact:

Ghosts do change their names because of the whole ‘holds power’ thing - not in a mind control way, but in an emotional way. If someone can dig up how you died they’re probably gonna say something insensitive. Case in point: people on ghost shows being like “hey *ghost name* we heard *insert horrible thing here* happened to you. Is that true?” Rude. You’re a complete stranger.

Anyway here’re the ghost names.

The trio had been dating for over a year when Sam & Tucker died and it was a very stable relationship. They’d been planning out their future together by that point, down to details like where to live so all of their work would overlap, how to manage Danny’s lack of aging (aka moving frequency), etc. When they brought up thinking of ghost names Danny - distracted - immediately just said, “Well you could just go by Phantom now since you will be in another year or two anyway.” He’s incredibly embarrassed when he realizes what he’s just said, but they’re all happy and engaged by the end of the day. (They tease him mercilessly about that being the world's smoothest yet most clueless proposal ever for the next 10 years)

Jazz & Spike Spook were already mentioned in canon with their sense of humor being explained (you’d think the joke would get old after 40 years, it hasn’t. Not when Danny still pouts when he hears Spike’s full name)

Jack was really excited to help fight ghosts as a ghost to protect Danny (he’s really proud of his baby boy growing up and becoming a king via fighting ghosts). He dies before Maddie and calls himself Jack Specter “after the specter deflector, because I be deflecting [your enemies implied here]” (Danny had to go lie down after hearing this sentence [Jazz’s sense of humor came from somewhere and that somewhere is Jack Fenton. Jack Fenton’s knowledge of ‘hip phrases’ comes from Jazz and Jazz’s sense of humor, also known as brother-torture or simply ‘betrayal’ as Danny claims]). Maddie likes that it fits the family name theme and calls back to one of their inventions (& wants to match her husband).

Dani stay a Phantom, ofc, and is formally ghost-adopted by Danny after he tells his parents everything (his parents formally human-adopt her so she has a stable human-world home if she want it, but she calls them Gran and Gramps as a joke that becomes sincere over time)

Wes goes by Wes Wraith because it’s close to wrath and he is fully and consistently angry about fenton=phantom and also a slight edgelord.

Ida Mason is also a ghost. She simply goes by ‘Wilda’ now (pronounced like wild-uh) and looks shockingly like Ember if she was an adult. And her hair wasn’t made of fire. And also went more pink than blue. So barely like Ember at all lol. She died in the middle of trying to finish knitting a scarf and now her obsession is knitting. She knitted a moped. She knitted a house. Home girl knitted herself an entire island and has not stopped.

The Manson parents have a little door-realm connected to their house in the living realm (like Poindexter with the school) and spend their time pretending everything is normal (like how Poindexter was stuck in the bullying loop but just. Reading the same newspaper/remaking the same dress, watching the same shows/etc).

The Foley parents were perhaps the most normal people on the show.

When Sam and Tucker died, the only ones who knew what happened were them and Danny - even Jazz didn’t get an explanation until she & the Fenton parents followed them into the ghost zone to find out what was going on - so the police were left to draw their own conclusions.

The GIW had already proven themselves to be reprehensible and overly willing to step on anyone who got in their way. The tech the police found was a collab between Dalv Co & the GIW and with Vlad’s disappearance and the GIW’s emotionless denial no one ever gets prosecuted for Sam & Tucker’s deaths (Vlad has a warrant out for him & the Mansons try to drag the GIW to court but it never goes anywhere).

The Foleys switch job tracks to take down the GIW/the Anti-Ecto Acts/any other asshole ghost hunters they can find. The Fentons are only exempt because they tell them what happened, explain how their stance on ghosts changed when they found out about Danny, and help the Foleys on their journey.

As ghosts Angela is obsessed with Justice & takes the name Justitia and Maurice is obsessed with ethics (bc if the GIW had any they wouldn’t have made weapons like that in the first place. Literal animals had more rights than ghosts at the point despite them being provably sapient) & takes the name Ethos. (They keep Foley as their last names tho). Yes, Danny does royal-decree them into being Walker’s oversight. Pretty much everyone is a fan of that. Except for the observants, who complain about everything but especially about how much Ethos & Justitia argue with them (what is the ‘greater good’ does not often match up with what is right. Especially when their idea of greater good is ‘eliminate problem via murder or core-crushing before it can become one’ instead of literally anything else).

@mayoota-blog1 @kyrianclawraith, @do3y, @someonebored0100 @omegasmileyface

#dpxdc #Batfam #Justice League #Deadman #John Constantine #poor batfam running the emotional rollercoaster of is he-isn't he #(dead)

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deepdeanvsweston · 1 year ago

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Headcannons: Anna Goodchild!

- LOVES jewellery

- every year her parents gift her a new necklace chain while Cecil and Zosia buy her a charm each to go on it

- also LOVES shoes, she has a favourite pair of red heels that make her feel beautiful and confident

- really into romance novels (I think this is canon tbf)

- but when they get sexual she and Zosia sit in their kitchen reading the scenes aloud dramatically and laughing

- really into sewing and fashion and does super clever things with curtains and towels and stuff

- she does lots of the sewing at the ministry, replacing British clothing labels with French and whatnot

- loves animals, cats especially and always taking them up to the flat because "Zosia, look, this poor thing's practically skin and bone!" while holding up the chunkiest cat ever

- Zosia now has a strict no animals in the flat policy, so you'll often find Anna sat on the steps up to it, trying to coax a little mouse out the gutter or some such thing

- in a qpr with Zosia (though they wouldn't call it that as they didn't have the terms for it) > they'll curl up round each other in bed while gossiping about men, or fashion, or books

- awful at cooking, both Anna and Zosia, it's a wonder the flat's still there

Zosia!

- her and Anna did not like each other at first

- they were shoved in a flat together by request of the ministry and were always being petty towards each other

- Anna bridged the gap with a tentative "I like your lipstick" and the rest was history

- Zosia always signs letters to Anna with that exact shade, if it's not there, or the wrong colour, Anna knows she's in trouble

- very direct, says what she means, and in some cases it comes out as blunt, but in other cases, when she compliments someone you absolutely know she means it

- into psychology, really knowledgeable about body language and all that jazz

- does NOT like animals for this reason, doesn't understand them and thinks they're too unpredictable because their body language is different

- not a big jewellery fan, finds it sort of restricting, so finds herself liking makeup more

- finds it really soothing, especially right after a mission > if she's feeling really jittery, Anna will let Zosia do her makeup too

- a little obsessed with crumpets, and a lot embarrassed by this, keeps an emergency packet in her desk at the ministry

- has a boyfriend back in Poland, who she misses a lot (Zosia is from Poland right, don't say I've got this wrong)

- also awful at cooking, the most she can manage is toasting crumpets without setting the whole street on fire

#zosia???#does she have a surname???#anna goodchild #murder most unladylike #mmu #robin stevens #tbitb #the body in the blitz spoilers #body in the blitz spoilers

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acourtofthought · 1 year ago

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i love how much you're trying to downplay the elriel moments lol, nice try tho!

Az gave Elain TT.....after Cassian first wanted to give her a dagger.

-az could've easily insisted that she take cassian's dagger. he also could've given her any random dagger of his but chose to give TT. even rhys acknowledged how important this was.

Az went to Hyberns camp to rescue Elain....after Cassian first said they'd get her back and after watching Nesta and Cassian debate over it.

-cassian saying they'd get her back doesn't diminish the importance of the scene???? az still chose to risk his life to save elain despite being warned multiple times that he could die.

Az laughed at the gift Elain got him.....right after he looked at Mor with hunger.

-okay?? and?? he had feelings for mor for over 500 years. no one's expecting him to lose them so quickly. it would be more concerning if he did move on from mor so fast.

Az said that Elain should not be exposed to the darkness of the trove even though she just stood up to Nesta saying Nesta had no right telling her what she was allowed to do.

-you do realise that overprotective men is a big thing in sarah's books, right??

Az figured out the name to her power.....after Feyre asked him to look into her riddles and after Feyre first realized that Elain had predicted the ravens in the library.

-looks like there's a common theme here. you keep downplaying elriel moments just cause someone did something first. who cares? doesnt change the fact that az was the only one who saw what was 'wrong' with elain. not like lucien who was probably about to offer sending her to a mental hospital💀💀

Az offered to take Elain to the garden....after Lucien demanded Feyre take her to a garden.

-once again, whats your point??

Az offered to take Elain to see how her seeds were coming in after Feyre first asked her (not to mention he didn't even allow Elain the chance to respond).

-once again, apparently this is a bad elriel scene cause feyre mentioned elain's seeds first?😭😭and you're acting as if he took away her choice to respond. she could've easily answered before taking his hand or even rejected going with him. but she didn't.

Instead of spending your time writing up posts where it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about, maybe it would be better spent re-reading the books.

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those scenes, I'm pointing out how E/riels try to make those scenes more important than they are because they like to extract only the Az / Elain moments while ignoring everything around them:

“We’ll get her back,” Cassian rasped from where he perched on the rolled arm of the chaise longue across the small sitting area, watching her carefully. Rhys, Amren, and Mor were meeting with the other High Lords, informing them what had been done. Seeing if they knew anything. Had any way of helping. Nesta lowered her hands, lifting her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, lips thin. “No, you will not.” She pointed to the map on the table. “I saw that army. Its size, who is in it. I saw it, and there is no chance of any of you getting into its heart. Even you,” she added when Cassian opened his mouth again. “Especially not when you’re injured.” And what Hybern would do to Elain, might already be doing— From the shadows near the entrance to the tent, Azriel said, as if in answer to some unspoken debate, “I’m getting her back.” Nesta slid her gaze to the shadowsinger. Azriel’s hazel eyes glowed golden in the shadows.

Az is sitting there watching CASSIAN say they'll get Elain back. Watching Nesta upset and arguing with him. Then he volunteers to get Elain and you acting like he doesn't care if he dies as proof of his having feelings for Elain is you ignoring EVERYTHING we've been told of Az so far.

Az doesn't care if he dies, period. He is the one always protecting, always throwing himself into danger. YOU are the one acting like it's something special for Elain when it's canon it is not.

As far as TT, did you bother to ask WHY he's never given up TT? Show me one other example of where Az was forced to sit out of battle where he had no need for TT and a defenseless female needed a weapon.

Do you honestly think that he would have given up TT had Mor, the woman he loved, not begged him with tears in her eyes, to sit out of battle, to which he agreed?

As far as Az laughing at Elain's gift but moments before looking at Mor with hunger is simply proof that Az did not have feelings for Elain because SJM males are not in love with other females while in love with someone else. Could he have developed interest in her after that? Absolutely. But your claims that TT and his rescuing Elain equals love and feelings is pretty much disproven considering he was still in love with Mor months later on Solstice. He's not simultaneously in love with Elain. Worst romance ever, to be in love with one female while lusting over another, while they're both in the room together 😬

And no, Az doesn't get points when he hijacks every single thing the other characters do (like Feyre offering to show Elain to the garden then Az jumping in while Elain was standing to leave with Feyre, she didn't reject the switch in escort because she's barely speaking at that time, to anyone. She currently has no fight in her because of DEPRESSION) when it comes to Elain. He never came up with an original idea on his own until he offered to take the potatoes from her hands and even that was because it reminded her of his mother as a servant 😂🥔

Overprotective? You mean when Rhys sent Feyre into the Weavers cottage? You mean like him wanting Feyre to train?

You mean like Cassian saying he didn't like the thought of Nesta scrying again though he understood her motivations, that he knew why she had to do it? Him constantly asking Nesta to train?

These things are not the same as Az flat out saying Elain just shouldn't do it and never once offering to help her become stronger and more capable.

You can sit there and glorify these E/riel moments all you want but the second you bother to put a little pressure on them and ask questions, they crumble like a 5 day old cookie.

I'm not sure why you bother with these anons. Do you honestly believe I'm going to trust that you have a better interpretation of the text than me? Do you just need someone to argue with? You are free to have your opinion as I am mine however you are the one stalking my page (considering I didn't use any tags you would be following) trying to start something. You have to know your words are not going to influence the way I think of these books. I may not have been on Tumblr long but I've been in the fandom for a few years and I've heard every Pro E/riel argument which means I've had plenty of time to figure out where I stand on things. Your take is nothing I haven't heard a thousand times already and I still don't agree.

Also in regards to your last paragraph, quoting things I've said to you and throwing them back at me is the grown up equivalent of "I know you are but what am I?" which is to say, not very grown up at all.

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aphantomr · 1 month ago

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draft 2, now with more visual descriptions:

INTRO:

I am the prophet with the answers you seek — misuse (word of god says this was actually randomly ominous and not explicitly planned) the circus fortuneteller scene. Klein walks into the tent and this is her intro. (by she I mean the goddess of night: woman in black with starry veil, as per her official card. We can skip the extra arms if we want.)

Time, I've unlocked it — veil transitions into night-sky-stars wheeling around, as constellations change position over thousands of years

I see past and future running free — Earth timelapse from on-a-mountain-looking-out. Cities bloom and wither, the world goes dark the sun goes out the red moon goes up and down, not sure about the ordering.

There is a world where I help you get home — in the tent she turns over a card and it’s the Magician (door pathway) (take some liberties with the imagery). zoom into the card which is up into the sky, facing the Earth as we know it (minus australia and maybe africa? i have never seen a map).

But that's not a world I know — we (the camera) are in space. Turn around. The moon is red. Gray fog creeps across the screen, then fades to reveal the glowing (3 broken open) cocoons hanging beyond the open door at the top of the stairs in the sefirah castle.

OR (from red moon) Stars in the night sky transition back into the veil of her-in-the-tent.

KLEIN: what?

CHORUS:

I see a song of past romance — “dunn” and daly dancing as she dies

I see the sacrifice of man — the streets of the dead in the backlund fog disaster

I see portrayals of betrayals — ouroboros’ wall ?painting?carving? of the ancient sun god’s death & dismemberment on that island, gehrman puppet backstab

And a brother's final stand — is there a moment in the tingen final battle where it’s obvious that klein’s trying to [protect]? Add benson and melissa in thought/flashback vibes if you must.

I see you on the brink of death — mushroom/witch hide and seek in the cursed town where he released zaratul, that moment he decides to trade azik’s fate before the goddess of night stops him, maybe forsaken land stuff or the chase scene where the hounds of fulgrim all died. I like the first two because the goddess of night was definitely watching then, which matches the INTRO.

I see you draw your final breath — klein has died how many times now. Pop up from his desk in red moonlight from above&outside through the window (chapter 1 scene 1), then “draw your final breath” with the beat: tingen (Ince) [surprised ‘oh’ with a missing heart], forsaken land mixed melee [illuminated by a bolt of lightning, unless that’s not reasonably canon], lamp genie [melting in a church pew]. Four little hearts in an upper corner counting down. (I’m not sure why I’m having video game feelings about this, but I am.)

I see a man who gets to make it home alive — a traveling lamp (warm yellow) in the dark of the forsaken land, lightning bolt illumination chernobyl! There is a perfect fanart of this on lofter — amon’s gleeful presentation, klein’s blank shock/horror, the ruins, all in stark black and white.

But it's no longer you — the book did this already, but start in the streets of Utopia and (zoom out) trace the threads into the ?sky?ground? wherever his body is. I don’t remember what face he was using then but let’s pretend it was Merlin’s so we can just go backwards, dwayne gehrman sherlock klein ZMR steps into the gray fog and puts on the mask and walks up the stairs towards the camera.

the No Longer You LOTM animatic that exists in my dreams (and nowhere else)

No Longer You (from EPIC: The Musical) has taken over my brain, and Klein sure has been on a journey, so here are, uh, scenes for an animatic I will never make. (I think this song and Klein are good contrasts; he doesn’t straightforwardly fit it, it’s more of the other way around — you are still yourself. Home is the one that’s changed.)

CHORUS:

I see a song of past romance — dunn/daly, for lack of better options. Maybe Tris and the Loen prince??

I see the sacrifice of man — dunn in tingen, backlund fog, war crimes etc

I see portrayals of betrayals — ancient sun god’s death & dismemberment, gehrman puppet backstab

And a brother's final stand — adam and amon, for lack of better options. adam’s dramatic identity reveal(?), amon’s supernova moment / final sefirah castle fight

I see you on the brink of death — ?there are plenty of fight scenes.? Forsaken land trip? The later advancements? Sefirah castle? That time early on he divined sun god blood and got toasted? How did the river of death trip go again? That time he almost sacrificed himself for azik?

I see you draw your final breath — klein has died how many times now.

I see a man who gets to make it home alive — chernobyl!

But it's no longer you — faceless switch ZMR-klein-fool, maybe all main identities just for fun, maybe start in Utopia and zoom out. End with walking up the steps at the end of the novel, or klein’s face looking up at the red moon.

… could also run the intro with [annoying monocle smiley guy], pick from celestial worthy or (time-travel? “helpful”?) amon, idk. Oh actually an IRL transmigrator works great for this one.

OH ACTUALLY goddess of night. I have unresolved feelings around ‘there was definitely a gentler way to break that news’ and what her motivations actually were. also Evernight is just bad translation (judging for accuracy/meaning, not poetry)

INTRO:

I am the prophet with the answers you seek

Time, I've unlocked it

I see past and future running free

There is a world where I help you get home

But that's not a world I know

#lotm #klein moretti

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pearly--rose · 2 years ago

Text

WIP excerpt

I’m now 4,000 words deep into what I’m telling myself is just gonna be a little post-LSH oneshot. It’s centered around a few scenes of Jaime & Brienne sparring, and silly me, I know nothing about sword fighting, and yet here I am trying to write this thing lmao. Anyway, here’s a mostly finished quarter of it:

Yield - (probably) rated T, book canon, post-LSH

“I’ll never get better if you don’t actually try,” he sighs, tapping aside her halfhearted strike with his blade.

She steps outside of his reach. “Perhaps I am not the best person for this task.”

“Nonsense. Where is the wench who nearly drowned me in a brook?” He gestures to his eyebrow with the golden hand. “Where is the wench who gave me this scar?”

She casts her eyes to the dirt rather than meet his gaze.

“Tell me,” Jaime says, circling slowly now, eyes drifting lower, “does your skin bear the memory of my sword as well?” He makes it sound as lewd as possible, hoping to rile her, before lunging forward. He aims the tip of his practice sword for her upper thigh, remembering the blood he made blossom there, oddly thrilled by the thought that he may have left a permanent mark on her skin all those moons ago.

And finally, finally, he’s sparked some life into her. Her faces flushes with indignation as she wrenches herself into furious action, easily parrying his strike before it can make contact with her leg. She continues to drive him back, slashing with impressive ferocity. He attempts his own attack but she quickly smacks the back of his knuckles with the flat of her blade, sending his sword clattering to the ground.

“Yield,” he laughs, shaking out the pain in his hand, utterly delighted. “I yield.”

She draws back, exasperated. “I do not understand you!”

“You seem to have understood well enough. You see, Lady Brienne, when an opponent says ‘yield’—”

“Why are you not angry with me?” She asks, cutting him off as she pushes sweat-dampened hair from her face, exposing the still-healing knot of flesh on her cheek. He feels murderous every time he sees it, reminded of the cruelties she has endured.

“I was, for a moment or two.” He crouches to retrieve his sword, looking up at her from the dirt. “Do you wish me to be angry with you? Curse you, bind your hands and keep you prisoner? Should I have left you to die of your wounds? Shall I call you traitor? Oathbreaker?” He narrows his eyes as he returns to his full height. “But you swore no oaths to me, my lady.”

“I would deserve no less.” She pulls her lips in and furrows her brow and looks completely, utterly at sea. “I truly don’t understand why you do not.”

“Neither do I,” he shrugs, striving for flippancy, and desperately ignoring the way the invisible coil seems to tighten around him again at the look in her eyes. “There, are you satisfied? You do not understand why I don’t hate you, and I do not understand why I forgive you. Fools, the both of us, yet mayhaps we can agree to put it behind us? I admit, I find the way you always expect the worst of me rather tedious and predictable.”

Brienne considers him for a long moment. “Alright,” she says, and she sounds reluctant but a bemused smile threatens her lips, and there is a set to her shoulders that tells him they will not need to discuss it again.

She trudges alongside him as they walk back to camp, though her silence is now more companionable than sullen. She does not speak again until they reach her tent.

“You’re not a lost cause,” she ventures, so quietly he’s not even sure she spoke at first. “The skill is still all there in your mind, it will just take time to reestablish it in your other hand. Lighter steel would do you well in the meantime, while you build strength.”

She begins to unfasten her sword belt and in an instant he understands what she means to do. He feels a rush of annoyance that she would even think it. The lion on Oathkeeper’s pommel seems to grimace up at him, pityingly, when she tries to press the sword into his hand.

“It was meant to be yours,” Brienne says. “Take it.”

Jaime crosses his arms against her. “You’re a highborn lady, surely your wicked septa taught you that it’s impolite to return a gift? I gave you that sword. It pleases me to think of you wielding it,” he snarls.

Something unreadable flickers across her face and she parts her lips as if to speak, but no sound comes out. He suddenly feels as if he said much more than he meant to. Those absurdly expressive eyes of hers are staring at him, and he thinks he could not look away even if he wanted to.

“I will strive to be worthy of it,” she says, finally.

He wants to tell her she need not strive; she is already worthy. That until he met her, he had long thought honor a cruel fantasy. That there is no one worthier in all of Westeros—she may think herself just a maid, yet he is certain there is no truer knight living.

He wants to tell her this, but he does not.

And he does not stop her when she tears her eyes from his, nor does he catch her arm when she brushes past him to duck into her tent. He puts it out of his mind as he makes his way back to his own pavilion, pretending he does not feel the thread trying to pull him back.

#i'm sure this concept has been written before but i can't help myself #the red tent scene but make it book canon #a cookie to anyone who picks up on the (probably not subtle) bit of wordplay i snuck in #my fic #wip #jaime x brienne #fic #fanfic #asoiaf #wip excerpt

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bidonica · 2 years ago

Text

It might be that I was sniffing at many of GoT’s writing and design choices since day 1, but I didn’t expect to be so onboard with HotD’s approach to the material, including catering exactly to me by representing an iconographically rich world, so here we are with

Art in Westeros - HotD edition

MaesterMerry on twitter did a breakdown of the spicy wall paintings in the Red Keep, I suggest you go read it and then come back here!

Most if not all of these appear to be wall paintings rather than tapestries, and seem to sit into a shallow niche/framing in the wall, which makes me think they were designed as part of the keep since its building (so most likely Maegor’s idea, which lines up with a certain way to interpret Targaryen-ness; more on this later). Probably a callback to Valyrian art as it seems to be, stylistically, a mashup of the Pompeii erotic wall paintings and the more abstract, stylized imagery of Roman mosaics.

But where’s *current* Targaryen art? We might get an inkling in the latest episode, 1x03, “First of his Name”, at the big hunt for Aegon’s name day.

there’s a big painting behind Viserys’ throne at the hunt which seems to also be depicting a hunting party. The female character in the fg is blonde and wearing red, and there’s a bigger, probably male figure in black next to her. I’m thinking they might be Jaehaerys and Alysanne, wearing complimentary Targaryen colors. The style and palette made me think of Paolo Uccello’s Hunt in the Forest (1470), books of hours, and International Gothic style in general.

Adding to MaesterMerry’s thread about the erotic art in the Red Keep, I think the hunting scene here is an indicator of the transition from the Targaryen identity as “pagan” and foreign, rooted in what would look like ungodly practices to Westerosi eyes, to an outwardly more genteel court culture, integrated with the existing practices of the realm. That’s another reason I think the painting is from J&A’s reign - it’s the kind of art I’d expect from a king called The Conciliator.

And it's a bit of a theme in this episode where Otto explains the significance of the white hart to Viserys, which from a Doylist perspective happens because the audience needs the explainer, but from a Watsonian one, it’s interesting that Viserys needs the lecture. It shows that the Targaryens are to an extent still transitioning into Westerosi culture and traditions, and it’s interesting that the orgy paintings are conspicuously missing from GoT (and asoiaf) canon, meaning they are going to be covered or destroyed at some point.

Then, the obvious detail: they’re also hunting (normal, not white) deer in the painting. Also are those blonde kids walking behind “Alysanne” simple squires or some of J&A’s children? Is Viserys’ dad in this?

This painting resonates with the themes of the episode, and it’s particularly poignant if it indeed represents Jaehaerys and Alysanne, since Jaehaerys passed the crown directly onto Viserys, who has always struggled to bear it and find purpose in his role as king. He performs what is expected of him as the Old King’s successor; inheriting a relatively flourishing, peaceful kingdom, all that’s left is the pageantry of a ceremonial hunt. Even the deer in the painting is running off the side of the frame, the symbolic essence of kingship eluding Viserys, but also not really being the point of the scene, just like nobody pays attention to him while the party goes on in the royal tent.

More art in westeros

More art in HotD

#art in westeros #hotd spoilers #house of the dragon #viserys i targaryen #art in hotd

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delirious-donna · 3 years ago

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Request: ZerLu; Zeref listening to Lucy's heartbeat as she rewrites the book of E.N.D, E.N.D markings spreading to her heart as she does so. Her heart soon starts to give out on her and Zeref attempts to revive her.

A Shot At Redemption [Zeref & Natsu Dragneel]

an: Hi Anon! Thank you so much for giving me a Zerlu prompt, I adore this pairing although it is very rare indeed. Using the canon events I did not wish to alter too much so I felt it remiss for me to make Zeref seem like he was outright pining for Lucy. I hope you like what I’ve come up with!

warnings: SFW, hurt/comfort, canon events, lil canon divergent, mention of injuries and blood, angst with very little fluff (I’m sorry!!), Zeref ain’t a villain in my heart (a hill I’m willing to die on).

Masterlist

It had begun.

There was nothing he could do to stop it, not that he wanted to. The stars had aligned entirely different from what he had initially predicted. Was it too late for reform? It had to be, surely there was nothing that he could do to redeem himself after all the misery he had inflicted.

The atrocities he had committed all in the name of his ultimate goal to end his immortal life, now altered to a desire to return to his life four hundred years ago. It was a foolish plan, he knew that now. The moment he had absorbed Fairy Heart was the dawning of his comprehension of every mistake he had made, and there were many.

There was no point in time that he could return to that would fix what he had so soundly broken. It was of paramount importance that the timeline continues to play out, yet he did not know exactly why. He could see only a glimpse of what the future had in store for him, but the closer he peered, the fainter the image became. The veils that surrounded what was to come were too dark for even his gaze to pierce.

At his silent command time halted and he looked at the scene in front of him, truly seeing it for its horror. The fragile body of Mavis crumpled, depleted of all magic lay at his feet. Her dress was bloodstained and covered in dirty smears. He could still feel the softness of her silken strands on his fingers, remembered how he had gripped at her hair like a savage and grimaced.

What could possibly be worse than the sight of the petite and innocent looking Mavis in such a perilous position? It was that of his beloved brother, his body slumped protectively over the woman he knew as the First Master of Fairy Tail. Even in his grievously wounded state, he sought only to protect, and Zeref smiled sadly at the brother that he loved so dearly.

Only now could he see the futility of what he had done.

The stain he had placed over the memory of the true Natsu, no, he couldn’t think like that anymore. This boy that lay here, that fought with every ounce of his strength and love, he was the real Natsu. It mattered not how he had come into this world, he was here now and that was all that mattered. Would he be the cause of his final destruction? He didn’t know, but something told him that he would not have long to wait to find out.

Zeref knelt by his fallen body, reaching a tentative hand to examine the place where he had literally punched through his torso. Blood coated his fingertip, crimson red and viscous. Human, so very human. Not a dragon, not a demon, simply a human trying his best.

Time resumed its course.

An awareness prickled at his neck, the gurgling sounds of Natsu’s dying breaths eased to a more normal pattern and he cocked his head in curiosity. Close by, there was a person doing something that he had thought to be impossible. The book of E.N.D. was being rewritten, his story being twisted and effectively removing the organic link that tied the book to Natsu.

He mentally searched for this mysterious person, it had to be someone of immense power to pull this off, but what he found jolted his heart.

The girl named Lucy Heartfilia, one of Natsu’s closest friends, stood with quill raised as she moved at speed to fill in the letters as they disappeared from existence. A vortex of text surrounded her battered frame, deep scratches traced along her exposed ribs and bruises were born upon skin that should be nothing more than flawless and pale in its perfection.

To say that he was shocked would be a grave understatement.

Only a person of truly immense magic power like his own or someone that knew Natsu as intimately as a lover should be able to pull off what she was achieving. He could stop her, but should he?

As only a few seconds ticked by, he continued to watch in fascination and he noted the red streaks that were steadily invading her body. The magic protecting the book was fighting back, Zeref had considered all possibilities when creating the text including countermeasures to prevent this course of action.

Without warning, he was jerked back to his physical body, pulled roughly by a string that felt to reside behind his navel. Natsu was slowly getting to his feet, the wound repairing itself and it was thanks to the effort of the blonde Celestial Mage a few streets away.

Zeref’s attention was torn between his immediate circumstances and the events that he longed to continue to observe. He barely registered the words of renewed fight that Natsu spat at him, his shaky hand lifting to wipe at the blood pooling around his mouth.

Fairy Heart; what a truly heady power. It was correct for it to have been locked away for so long, this was a power that no one single person should have the privilege to wield, yet here he stood in that very position.

Light and dark, two sides of the same coin. Depending on who held the coin would depend on if it were to be benevolent or malevolent.

Zeref Dragneel, the Black Wizard considered the strongest and most evil mage of all time had transformed into the God of time and space, perhaps higher than even that. The blackness no longer consumed his soul, although that was not to say that his darkness had been removed, far from it. Now he understood everything and was not blinded by his selfish plight. He could retrace each and every step that had led to this point much like following an intricate game of chess.

He was not remorseful for what he had incited, no, he was saddened by his own miscalculations and embarrassed by his over-confidence.

What could he do to equal the balance of his actions?

The thought came to him instantly, the wavering thump of a heart that called out to him blindly. An organ that was starting to fail under the stress and influence of his magic, he could help.

The white haired male listened to the irregular rhythm for a few more moments, assessing its deterioration and calculating his best course of action. He placed Natsu and Mavis within a bubble of time, not suspended but greatly slowed as he concentrated on the task at hand.

Gotta keep going, have to save him.

Please.

He is everything to me.

Words of absolute truth from a pure heart and soul, it was fascinating to hear. This Lucy loved his beloved brother, and for the briefest second, he was jealous. Jealous of what they could have in the future, something that would never be possible for him and the beautiful girl he had wounded so cruelly.

Shrugging aside the twist in his gut, he refocused.

She was failing and fast, the flames of the demon would be too much for her fragile human constitution. Zeref sent a shield of protection to encase her precious heart, pausing until the beat stabilised.

Thump thump thump.

The Black Wizard chased the cursed markings of E.N.D. from her body, navigating the twisting labyrinth of veins and arteries that had been infected to this point and decimating the wicked magic that tainted her blood.

They tried to overpower him but that was utterly foolish. He snapped his teeth and the magic came to his heel like a well-trained dog that recognised its master’s voice.

Her resolve had strengthened from the assistance she was unaware of, far too preoccupied in her haste to continue replacing what was being erased from the word vortex. It was working, Zeref could sense the change in Natsu behind him, how he was being reformed and the demon element being eliminated.

This will be my final gift to you, dear brother. You shall never know, but I hope you learn to appreciate the female by your side, she is a strong one.

Zeref closed his eyes with a soft smile playing on his lips. He admired the strength of the woman that loved his brother, it was somehow more impressive than the strength Natsu displayed. Unconditional love offered with nothing asked for in return, he wondered if he could have ever been lucky enough to have met Lucy first. Selfish of him, but true nonetheless.

In his withered heart he knew she would survive, Lucy would be successful in her pursuit and he could let out a long-held sigh of relief. There was nothing more for him to do, no other deed important enough to maintain the time bubble.

This is it.

Time at long last to end this.

It always came down to… time.

And with that, time marched onwards with no further interference from the elder Dragneel.

#delirious writes #zeref #zeref dragneel #lucy heartfilia #zeref x lucy #fairy tail fanfiction #fairy tail #etherious natsu dragneel #zerlu #natsu dragneel #natsu #natsu x lucy

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 3 years ago

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I agree with your Jily thoughts but wondering if you could talk a bit more about it? Why did James bother wasting all that time chasing Lily? Was she just that pretty? Were they ever happy or truly in love? Why did she say yes? If the war didn't happen who would have Jily ended up with? I'd like to think someone like Andromeda (not her exactly, but someone from a pureblood family who held non racist values) for James and i dunno maybe a muggle for Lily? Considering muggleborns arent exactly set up for success and I cant see Lily being okay with living as a second class citizen

For reference, some heretical thoughts on James and Lily's marriage. Also some thoughts on James which include some thoughts on his relationship with Lily.

And you really want me to get flayed over the internet, don't you anon?

Well, I guess that's what I'm here for. So here we go, hopefully people very upset by this sort of thing have their anti filters up.

Why Did James Bother Wasting All that Time Chasing After Lily?

For what it's worth, especially when they're teenagers before real life sets in, I do think James likes Lily.

She's very pretty, which certainly helps, but she's also very driven, very smart, and seems to be very personable (though it does not seem as if she is close with many).

Lily has a lot of likeable qualities beyond just her face that James could be interested in.

That said, there's also her background. I think, especially for a young James in Hogwarts, Lily being muggleborn would make her very appealing.

By pursuing her, he is actively spitting in the face of the Blacks, the Malfoys, and pretty much name your smarmy pureblood family. More, Lily is... not the token muggleborn per se, but the golden standard.

She's pretty, very smart, achieves very good results, again is personable, and all around pleasant. She's the muggleborn that defies the rules and you can take to parties and say, "Wow, look how amazing muggleborns are!"

Compare her to Snape, who is a halfblood, comes from an abusive household, is impoverished, is not good looking, and is not personable.

Notice that James and friends torment the living hell out of Snape, but it's cool, they're progressive because James likes Lily.

And then there's also the challenge of it.

Lily keeps saying no.

Rather than get discouraged, this just encourages James, as it means he's not trying hard enough. James seems to be the guy who likes the chase, if he wasn't, then he would have given up years ago as you said.

Were They Ever Happy or Truly in Love?

I imagine there was a time when they were happy.

They did date shortly in Hogwarts and it must have gone well enough for the relationship to survive graduation. If it was unbearably awful they would have broken up with each other long before that point.

Now, do I think Lily knew the full extent of how much James and pals harassed Snape? No.

Do I imagine Lily had to put up with a lot of talk about how progressive James and Pals are because Sirius has an ACDC t-shirt? Yes.

Do I think Lily's life without Snape proved very bleak and she faced a bleaker future with prospects of unemployment and poverty? Yes.

Do I imagine that Lily got in the way of bro-time for James? Well, he probably made bro-time happen anyway, but she must have to some extent and I'm sure Sirius asked him, "Dude?! What happened to us?!"

But again, if they really were miserable together, they wouldn't have made it to graduation.

In love?

Well, it's hard to say, but I'm inclined to say no.

In Hogwarts they're too young, they don't know enough about each other. They might be riding high on puppy love, maybe, but that's not the same thing.

What we see outside of Hogwarts points to constant stress and hardship that would ruin even the most functional relationship. The small glimpses we do have into their marriage then (that James would run off while in hiding with the invisibility cloak, risking all of their lives, for no reason) is not good.

I imagine as the realities of being in hiding, of having a prophesied child, sunk in their relationship fell into complete disrepair.

If they were in love, I don't think love could survive that, at least, not with these two.

Why Did She Say Yes?

God, you people are going to kill me.

Well, first, Lily as a muggleborn has no prospects and after losing Snape she has no friends.

Lily's last few years of Hogwarts are desperately lonely, James seems to have toned it down and appears to be one of the few purebloods sympathetic to her, and he really seems to like her. He has never wavered in liking her once over many years.

He seems like he's changed.

Perhaps, she can give him a chance.

I imagine Lily at first tentatively agrees to go on a date, and he is charming and funny, so one date turns into two and then they're officially dating.

As for marriage.

... Yeah I just have to say it, shotgun wedding.

They get married and have a child very quickly, and granted, that seems to be the norm in the wizarding world but remember their circumstances.

Both Lily and James are active fighters in Dumbledore's illegal vigilante group, neither appears to have a career (James being old money doesn't have to but I imagine Lily tried (and failed) to find one).

Lily is muggleborn. I don't care how progressive James' parents are, as the heir of a very wealthy and established pureblood family I'm sure they looked at this red-headed muggleborn without a galleon to her name and just died of a heart attack.

True, James was their only child and the product of many difficult years conceiving, and he's from a more progressive family but...

I just see the Potters and many other of the 'lighter' pureblood families having more of the philosophy of "Muggleborns should absolutely go to Hogwarts, get an education, and have a place in society. But don't invite them over for dinner."

That James is allowed to marry Lily very quickly, with seemingly little fuss, with seemingly no obligation of turning down a previously arranged marriage (though the surviving Marauders could have left out such details when recapping things to Harry), and how quickly Harry is born in the times he's born in...

Shotgun wedding.

If the War Hadn't Happened Who Would James and Lily Ended Up With?

Well, I think the shotgun wedding would have happened regardless. But let's say that's not in the books and that there's not a war disrupting things either.

I imagine the relationship doesn't work out as they realize they have different interests and are too different of people. There's very little tying them together.

James likely marries whoever his parents arrange for him to marry. A daughter of a well-to-do established, pureblood line. Which of these women this would be is anyone's guess, but somebody. Probably not any of the Black sisters as they're already accounted for.

As for Lily, I imagine she remains single for a good while. Everyone she knows in her age range is from Hogwarts, this world is very small, and she's probably not going to end up with any of them for the issues you list.

Purebloods really don't get it. The closest are... Arthur Weasley. And when he and Sirius Black riding motorcycles are the closest your culture gets to respect, you're in for a rough dating scene.

If she does end up in a relationship it's with somebody outside of canon or non-obvious.

(And look at me not plugging my ship because I know it's ridiculous. Be proud of me readers.)

#harry potter #harry potter meta #harry potter headcanon #harry potter shipping #james potter #anti james potter #lily evans #james/lily #anti james/lily #meta #headcanon #shipping #opinion

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lunaekalenda · 4 years ago

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So this is an angst request about Erwin! To basically lay it out Erwin and reader are childhood friends and she has always been pretty attached to him, as they grow up he goes into the survey corps and she goes with him as well, and she eventually develops a crush on him and he does too just that he keeps it private to himself.

okay! i hope you like it and sorry for the waiting!! 💖

continuation to the request:

Over time they start falling apart. Either way during an expedition the reader ends up passing away and since then one of the reader's best friends has been passive aggressive with Erwin even when he became commander. So the night before the retaking of Wall Maria he calls that friend into his office and he asks them why they have been acting that way ever since she died. The friend confesses that the reader loved him so much that she didnt care what happened to them and that. The friend confesses that the reader loved him so much that she didnt care what happened to them and that she didn’t care when he fell into the arms of any other woman because she just wanted him to be happy. And that's why the friend was always so mad at Erwin because he never even spared a glance at her. So then Erwin dies and he meets her again and it can end on either fluff or angst if you want to. You can do it in any POV you can! Thanks!

❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁

❁ erwin x female!reader

❁ spoilers! some cursing also, one mention of suicide word, original character introduction, non-canon events and deaths.

❁ a/n: sorry, anon! it took longer than I expected to write this because i kept editing it :’) i hope you like it <3 sorry for any errors and for making this so long :’’) also, i’m not following the manga exact events!!!! also sorry if i messed something up :(

❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁

“You’re what?”

“I’m joining the Survey Corps.” Erwin looked at you, his blue eyes fixed on yours. He left the papers on the desk, getting up. Even knowing he’s just a teenager, he’s pretty tall. But, after all this years, it doesn’t intimidate you.

“You’re not” He says. You raise an eyebrow, looking at him.

“You’re not my father to decide what can I do and what I cannot do. If you’re joining, I’m joining.” Erwin sighs and looks at you fiercely. You keep your gaze in his.

“I have the same possibilities to die as you have, Smith. So don’t fucking dare to tell me not to join.”

Both of you passed the tests to enter the Survey Corps. His intelligence and your strength made the two of you stand out. You cared for Erwin, always checking on him on your training expeditions, and being there when he rans out of gas or needs assistance. Even when he tried to convince you not to, you joined anyway the elimination squad. Erwin joined as well, but his strategic brain made him talk to the heads of the army. Lion waited for you after an intense training. Erwin was entering the Commander’s office. Lion sighed.

“He’s always so occupied with high class men...”

“I’m happy for him.” you say. Lion was cleaning his boots.

He has been your friend since both of you entered the elimination squad, and he’s like a big brother to you now. He rolls his eyes.

“Because you love him.” He says. He was not wrong: A little teen crush on Erwin evolved to the point that you love him. You know he doesn’t feel the same for you, or so you think. He always treats you kind of cold, and more since he entered the Corps. You know he feels responsible of you joining because of his ideas, but you where totally free to join. That doesn’t excuse his new cold attitude towards you. Lion sighs again and gets up, his boots now totally clean.

“He doesn’t look at you that way, y/n” He says. Maybe he’s right, totally right, but the heart doesn’t choose who to love. That’s why you’re deeply in love with him. And because you know him better than anyone. His fears and his goals. The way his blue eyes soften when he talks about something he loves. "But, I do understand you." he says. "Love is just a fucking problem and a headache if it is one-sided" He palmed your shoulder before going out of the tent. Sighing, you stand up and follow him. Erwin comes out of the Commander’s tent at the same time. You look at him and he looks at you. You smile at him, a little smile that he is silently adoring, silently wanting to kiss, to feel it against him.

"Come on, Erwin." The Commander makes Erwin walk behind him, and his expression keeps being the same as usual towards you. You decide it's time to stop making him notice you. He doesn't want anything romantic with you, so just let him be. If he wants to search a cute soldier to get married or a girl to have fun is his decision. You're out of it.

But you didn't know how much he cared for you, how deep in love he was. Just watching the corners of your lips making a little smile makes his heart beat faster, the way you are so close to him even when he is treating you like that hurts him. If he wasn't a soldier, he would ask you to go out with him. He would take your hands sweetly and make you dance to an invented song just to see the way your lips curve in a smile of joy. He would take you to long walks and give you his jacket when you're cold. He would ask your hand in marriage and kiss and nude your body with care and tenderness. He would marry you happily, have maybe a couple kids, if you want to. Live a easy and quiet life.

But he decided to be a soldier.

That means he's risking his life every time he puts his feet out of the walls. As you do. That's why he wants you to leave and search someone who cares for you and loves you deeply. He wants to be that one, but knowing that maybe he'll die in the next expedition, leaving you alone and heartbroken, scares him. He knows you're brave and strong, but a close loose is not a easy thing. Even for you. So he decided to keep a cold attitude towards you.

Years passed by and your crush for him was still there, as intense as always. He is candidate to be the next Commander, as he always wanted to. His desire for knowing why humanity has to be in the walls while the titans can be free out there. Lion knocks on your room door.

"Did you heard the news?" he asks, entering. You shake your head. "We'll go on an emergency expedition tomorrow." Lion sits near you. An emergency expedition. There was a rare type of expedition, the emergency ones: they're made when a strange titan comes around and takes a lot of normal titans with it, near a town or village. "We're leaving tonight at 5. Be ready." You nod. "And try to sleep a bit, yes?" you nod again. Lion leaves silently and you prepare yourself to sleep some hours. You know that going without sleeping will make you an easy prey for titans. At five o'clock, you're all marching towards the entrance of the wall Maria. The Commander assigns your squad to the front.

The expedition starts calmly, even when the atmosphere in the soldier’s files seems tense. Lion rides a horse near you, in silence, and you know Erwin goes behind, with all the high soldiers. You can’t feel titans near, even their steps. That’s why the Commander yell scares you.

“There’s a sparkler!” he yells. You look at both sides, finding easily the black colored flame. “Elimination squad, go and find that damn thing and kill it. Rescue squad, find survivors and take them to the barricade.” You nod, following your squad leader. After a long time riding, without finding signs of a titan near, you start to think that maybe it was just a bad joke of one of the juniors.

That changes when the girl next to you yells, suddenly trapped in a big hand. A strange titan, with an enormous mouth, smiles at her, as if it were trying to tell her that it is going to enjoy every bite of her body. And it does. You saw comrades die because of titans. Smashed, eaten in a bite or even suicides. But you never, never, saw a titan split a comrade in two parts. Her waist bleeds while the titan swallows her legs. The scene is truly gross, how the blood stains the mouth of the titan, dripping to the ground, making the daisies turn red in a cruel metaphor of life and death.

“Eva...” Lion whispers. All the color has left his face. You’re incapable to look to other side, just to the horror expression in Eva’s face, freezed forever while the titan eats her. Then, it’s gaze searches new victims. That’s how you react, when its bloody smile is pointing on your direction. Lion yells.

“y/n!”

Your ODMG goes fast and reaches a near tree, where you hang. The titan looks around. You have it’s neck really close to you. It’s just having it distracted and attack him.

“Lion, distract him!” You yell, hiding behind the trunk. Lion starts to move on the ground, the big eyes of the titan following him fast, his hand trying to reach the fastest soldier of the army. You point with your ODMG to its neck, the perfect angle for attacking it. Once your hooks are well placed, you take two blades and jump.

The attack is one the trainer show you. It’s almos infalible, it has a 0′1 margin of error. It’s impossible to fail. You speed up, trying to reach its neck. But you found its teeth before.

Your expression is surprised when the titan opens its mouth, taking you into it. Your blades made cuts in its mouth because of the speed.

“y/n!” Lion yells, taking out his blades. He goes fast in your help, but maybe it is too late. You feel how the titans’ teeth part you in two, as you saw it did with Eva before. It is instant pain. How you body gets split in two. How the titan parts from your body, to pull the part it has between its teeth far from the other part of your body, using two fingers to hold your upper part. You’re still conscious about what is happening. You can see other titans fighting against your comrades. You can watch them die, as same as you’re about to do. There’s no way to save you.

This is not a romantic book. Erwin is not going to appear in his white horse, just in time to save you. He’s not going to leave the army to take care of you. He’s not going to kill that titan in revenge, yelling and covered in blood. So, that’s why you close your eyes, leaving your body, without making resistance against the titan.

When Lion killed it, it was late for you. Lion tried to wake you up, to make you open your eyes and look at him. But you couldn’t. Your soul was watching him from above.

The news reached your home and Erwin. He went to your house, to show respect and give the sorry to your family.

It hurt him in ways he couldn’t imagine he would get hurt. It was a continuous reminder in his heart, that now you’re not going to smile at him in the corridors or be behind him when he needs you. He cried. He cried a lot, in private, in his room. He regretted every single cold gaze, every time he ignored you thinking it was the best for you. He regrets all the times you reached him to talk with him, and he ignored you to talk with high ranked soldiers. He regrets not confessing to you.

And now he can’t do anything about it because you’re not longer there.

Lion feels guilty, he thinks he could have saved you, but you jumped on the titan’s mouth. It wasn’t his fault. Erwin knows he was your best friend there, and he knows he should go and show his respects to him too, but he can’t. Not now. He decides to wait. The wound is too recent.

That’s how years passed by, slow, and Erwin got upgraded to Commander. He got new soldiers, new squads and new faces. But he stills think about you. About how you would like to meet Hange. How Lion is training the new ones. How well you’ll understand Levi.

He decided that it was time to talk with Lion. Breathing deep, he started to walk towards the barricade. There, Lion was making a ponytail to a young girl, that seemed like a cadet. The girl made the army’s salute towards her Commander, salute that Erwin made back. Lion looked at him, his face tinted with anger, like every time the Commander walked near him. Erwin knows he feels bad because of what happened to you but, angry at him? Why?

“Can we talk in my office?” the blonde man asks. Lion keeps looking at him with anger.

“Why would the Commander need me?”

“Just a couple of minutes, and then you can go back to work.”

Lion reluctantly agrees, following the Commander back to his office. Once they’re in, Erwin starts to talk.

“I know y/n’s death has...”

“Oh, so now you’re going to talk about her.” Lion says. His arms are crossed.

“What do you mean?” Erwin asks. Lion walks toward him. The two of them are similar in height, but Lion is more corpulent.

“You never talked to her when she was alive. Even knowing that she was there for you every fucking time you needed her. She wasn’t your fucking dog, Commander.” the way Lion spits the word makes Erwin realize that he isn’t his favorite soldier. “She was a girl. A girl with feelings, a girl that loved and suffered. A human. Not your war machine, not your gas station, not your shield. A girl.”

Erwin wasn’t getting where was Lion trying to reach with that conversation.

“What do you mean?” he asks, quietly. Lion let out a little sarcastic laugh.

“She was in love with you, Commander Smith. She told me a hundred times that it didn’t care if you were watching another woman because that means you’re happy.” Erwin’s blue eyes shot open in surprise. “She was in love with you. That’s why she was always around you, helping you and caring for you. It wasn’t luck. It was love.”

Erwin got dizzy. That’s why you were always so sweet to him? Always trying to get closer to him, to make sure he was secure, to make him notice you.

How was he so blind?

“I...” Erwin was at a loss of words. Lion sighed.

“I don’t know why you were so cold to her. Why? She was the sweetest girl out there and you treated her with coldness.”

He asks himself the same. Why? To protect you or to protect himself? Was he trying to make you happy or trying to extinguish the love he felt for you? Was it for your good-being or for his?

Was he being egoistic or abnegated?

Lion left the office without looking again to Erwin.

That night, Erwin’s mind was a mess. He only could think about you. About how you cared all this time for him and how he couldn’t save you. But he had an expedition the next day. Even when he wanted to cry and break things and scream, he needs to sleep. He’s human, after all.

He dreamed about you. About how your smile was always for him, and he couldn’t see it. That’s why there are purple marks under his eyes. Levi looks at his Commander, saying anything. Just his normal silence when he looked to the front again. Erwin survived to a lot of battles, a lot, even when one of them costed his arm. But he survived. Even when he wanted to die, because you’re not longer with him. But he obligated himself to keep going.

“Today, we’re fighting to recover a part of Wall Maria, to recover the district of Shiganshina from the titans. Soldiers, offer your hearts!” all the soldiers yelled back to Erwin. He looked at the sky.

Some hours after, the Commander told all his effectives to offer themselves along with him. He knew it was difficult to win towards the beast titan, the one that throws rocks. He talked to Levi earlier, and the Captain asked him if he had a plan. Levi was sure everybody was about to die. But the Commander told Levi that, risking his life and his cadets lives, there was hope for humanity. That’s why Erwin was looking at the distance without fear, the silhouette of the Beast Titan could be seen from where he is. Yelling to his subordinates once again, he made the army advance. And a lot of stones appeared in front of them. He thought about you, about how you where always brave, even when things were complicated.

That was the last thought he had, before getting hit by a rock.

Erwin didn’t expect to find you again, pretty as always, with your beautiful hair clean and shining. He was there, in front of you. You were also wearing the Corps uniform. His eyes started to form tears.

“Erwin?” You asked. He nods. Your watery eyes understood that if he’s there, in front of you, it means he’s dead. You run, hugging him. His scent is as clear as always, his arm tangled on your waist. You cry on his chest and he cries on your neck.

“I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, y/n...” he says. His breath is irregular and his big hand massages your waist.

“It’s okay, Erwin. It’s okay.” Your hand strokes his hair, quietly.

“I told my soldiers to die for the humanity. I sacrificed them for what?” the shock after commanding a whole army, being aware of all the lives he risked for humanity, made him break. You hugged him, being there for him. "Why are you here, with me?"

"Because I love you." you simply say. "I'm still in love with you, Erwin." you answer. He looks at your face.

"You're not angry at me?" he asks. You shake your head.

"I guess you had your causes to avoid me. Maybe you don't like me even a bit or something, and that's totally right."

He knew he needed to explain everything to you, but, for now, he just need to feel your arms around him.

Now, you have all eternity to be together.

#aot fluff #aot x reader #snk fluff #snk x reader #snk fic #aot fic #aot scenario #aot fanfiction #snk headcanons #aot #erwin snk #erwin x you #aot erwin #erwin x reader #erwin smith #erwin angst #erwin fluff

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lazyliars · 4 years ago

Text

Thinking about Tales from The SMP...

So, If I’m interpreting things correctly, Karl canonically doesn’t get to choose when or where he time travels to, meaning that something, or if the books are any indicator, someone, is deciding where he goes, and what “story” he experiences.

“Stories like todays can show that not everything necessarily has to end in misery.”

So, setting aside the obvious question of Who, I’d like to take a moment to consider some of the Why.

Namely, why are the stories that Karl is experiencing necessary for whatever it is he’s doing/going to do?

The Masquerade makes the most sense as of right now - It gives Karl forewarning about the Egg, how it operates, and that it’s old.

It, interestingly enough, doesn’t give us more than that. The only new piece of information the viewers get is, as previously mentioned, that the Egg has been around for awhile.

This lets the theorists narrow things down a little, but the general viewership doesn’t get much out of this nugget of information, so we have to assume that the narrative purpose this serves is to bring Karl up to speed on the Egg stuff.

The Lost City of Mizu again reaffirms the information we already have. In it’s climactic reveal of the Dream Room, we learn that Dream was worshiped through blood sacrifice, and that Ranbob might have murdered the entire city, which reminds Karl and the audience that Dream’s Not A Good Fella.

We could also extrapolate that this is a warning from the In-between that Ranboo is compromised and/or has a connection to Dream, but we’ve yet to see them interact properly so that’s just speculation for now.

The other episodes are less clear in their intended message, lesson, or warning.

The Town that Went Mad gave little to no concrete links to the modern day SMP (until Ponk began to tie it into his lore, which is baller btw go check him out, but which afaik was not planned during the writing of the episode so I’m not counting it to be safe.)

Tubbo/Robin also drops a line about the “Red-Eyed Village Wars” which some have linked to Egg plot. The time period could easily line up with the Masquerade and The Wild West, but there’s every chance that this was a throwaway line from Tubbo, and completely unplanned. We just don’t know.

But more than lore drops, The Town That Went Mad shows Karl an eerily familiar scene - a community of people tearing themselves apart to root out the source of conflict. It’s not quite a 1-1, as the town did have more clear cut “bad guys” then the current SMP, but the similarity remains.

I’ll only count The Town That Never Was as tentatively part of the tales canon. It was the pilot episode, and it doesn’t involve time travel, at least as far as we know.

As for what it has to teach, it’s a clear recreation of the destruction of L’manberg. I don’t know what this teaches, but, uh, yeah.

Then there’s the Beach Episode... It’s got that early installment weirdness, Karl is still very obviously working out the kinks in his storytelling style and voice, and it’s clear that he hasn’t fleshed out what he wants this to be yet. As a consequence, the following theory is tenuous at best, please take it with a grain of salt.

At first glance, the Beach Episode seems to have no lore-relevance. It’s just a fun jaunt between a group of friends.

But, this was streamed on Jan 9th - a time at which Dream had just blown L’manberg up with Techno, and was hiding outside of the SMP lands. This episode also features Ranboo and Dream, the former of which has stated that he and Dream haven’t spoken once, meaning that either he was in Enderwalk when this happened, or this episode not only doesn’t fit into the timeline, but it doesn’t fit into the canon at all.

Now, there’s a good chance that this is just meant to be taken as a filler episode, and we should ignore the canon inconsistencies. However, I’m have adhd that want thing be deeper than it is.

I propose that this Episode is canonical, and takes place in an Alternate Universe - visited by Karl to teach him that, despite how horrible things are right now, they could be better, even idyllic, where a group of friends can cavort around a beach and look for treasure without a care in the world.

This explains the inconsistencies - In this Universe, Dream either didn’t blow up L’manberg, or Ranboo and the rest of the dteam + Bad didn’t mind him doing so.

This opens the door for other AU themed episodes though - silly ones, serious ones... I for one would love to see an over-the-top “darkest timeline” episode, where everyone talks in a low, gruff voice and tries to be darker and edgier than each other.

More lore-oriented, we could see canon-divergence - maybe a “Pog 2020 wins the Elections” story, or a “What if Eret never betrayed?”

I feel like this would give a lot of freedom and give some opportunities to people to explore their current characters on the SMP in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It also serves the narrative, giving Karl reason(s) not to mess up the timeline, lest he get these strange offshoots.

Anyway, I would love to hear what people think about this, and any ideas for AUs that could be explored through the Tales format...

#tftsmp #tales from the smp #dream smp #Karl Jacobs

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melatovnik · 4 years ago

Note

ok ur top faves wangxian fics go

hey yati! 🥰️

alright, so first things first, here’s a big wangxian fic rec list i made a while ago, if you wanna check that one out too! consider the list below part 2. these are all my faves so far since my last rec list (as you'll quickly see, i have a LOT of faves).

and just a fyi/psa/disclaimer for anyone reading this: some of these fics have disturbing themes and/or kinky/freaky sex! make sure to check the authors’ tags and notes before reading. also, much like my first rec list, there’s going to be a mix of mdzs and cql canon, characterizations, dynamics, etc., so bear that in mind.

....ok GO

live from new york by varnes | rated E | 87K words | THE snl au fic!!!! yes, by snl i mean saturday night live. this is perhaps the best and funniest story i've ever read, period. varnes is a fucking genius. read this fic.

Wei Ying lets out a long, ugly groan. “I am fine, Lan Zhan. Everybody is overreacting, it’s so embarrassing for all of you.”

“You had undiagnosed pneumonia, which you walked around with for weeks until you passed out during dress,” Lan Wangji corrects him. “It got a big laugh, until everyone thought you were dead.”

He keeps his voice even and does not tell Wei Ying that it had been Lan Wangji who caught him, who called the ambulance, and who rode with him to the hospital, where he was yelled at by nurses who wanted to know why he hadn’t noticed that Wei Ying couldn’t stop shivering or string proper sentences together.

“Rumors of my demise have been vastly overstated,” Wei Ying says. “Anyway, I’m already feeling much better. Basically fine. Really almost completely back to normal, so stop babying me and tell me why the fuck you let your stupid brother hire the worst man in the world to host our show.”

OR: the one where they all work at SNL, Yanli's ex-boyfriend is hosting, and that's just the beginning of everybody's problems.

swiss cheese theory by varnes | rated M | 19K words | sequel to snl au fic!!!!!! another must-read.

The Swiss Cheese model of accident causation likens human system defences to a series of slices of randomly-holed Swiss Cheese arranged vertically and parallel to each other with gaps in-between each slice. Defences against failure are modelled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of the cheese. The holes in the cheese slices represent individual weaknesses in individual parts of the system. The system as a whole produces failures when holes in all of the slices momentarily align, permitting "a trajectory of accident opportunity," so that a hazard passes through holes in all of the defences, leading to an accident.

OR: Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian go to the courthouse.

OR: “Sweethearts,” the city clerk had said, very gently, “you’re already married.”

best friends forever by varnes | rated T | 17K words | alright, so like, strictly speaking, wangxian isn't the focus of this fic, BUT. this fic is so good!! it is seriously so good, and it made me fall in love with jin ling/lan jingyi. also, it's varnes, so read it!

It happened like this: Jin Ling was a sect leader now, which was, and Jingyi really meant this, fucking hilarious. There were few things funnier, in his honest opinion.

Because he was young, and inexperienced, and also — it had to be said — a real shithead, there was apparently some belief amongst his advisors that the best way forward, to promote the picture of a stable, mature sect leader who absolutely did not cry at the drop of a hat, was for Jin Ling to get married.

OR: Jin Ling and Jingyi get engaged.

Things spiral from there.

For a Good Time, Call by ScarlettStorm | rated E | 171K words

The picture is of Wei Ying, that much is clear. It’s of a lot more of Wei Ying than Lan Zhan is used to seeing. He supposes that, technically, Wei Ying is dressed. It’s a bare technicality, since one of Wei Ying’s hands has rucked up his black tank top practically to his collarbone, showing a long expanse of abdomen and one nipple. Sweat beads on his sternum, catching the light like jewels. His other hand is--Lan Zhan feels his eyes widen, as though unable to look away from a train wreck--on his hip, one thumb tugging down the waistband of a pair of red briefs. Wei Ying is biting his lower lip and looking directly into the camera, sultry, his eyes dark and inviting. His erection is obvious, outlined against the red of the briefs and framed carefully with the hand on his hip. Lan Zhan’s brain goes wildly, screamingly blank.

Or: Lan Zhan accidentally finds his best friend's OnlyFans account and has an ongoing emotional crisis.

love, in fire and blood by cicer | rated E | 360K words | i actually haven't finished this one since i was reading it when it was a WIP, i need to reread it and catch up fjdskl;fjsd, but i love it very much!!!!!! oh my god he wanted to look nice for his husband..... 🙃 [screams with mouth closed]

"You want Wen Ruohan dead," the Patriarch continued idly. "You want his corpse puppets eliminated. You want his halls burned to the ground and his soldiers disemboweled and begging for mercy. Have I about covered it?"

He gave another knife-edged smile.

"But what will you give me in return?"

"We would be willing to offer quite a bit in return for Wen Ruohan's defeat," Lan Xichen admitted. "But I'm afraid we don't know what an immortal such as yourself desires. Please advise us."

The Patriarch waved at hand at the front of the tent. "I want Second Young Master Lan."

(In which the Sunshot Campaign ends through an arranged marriage to the Yiling Patriarch, and Lan Wangji suffers the mortifying ordeal of falling in love with his own husband.)

how to fall in love with a catfish: a guide by wei wuxian (disaster rat) by bwyn & Yuisaki | rated T | 55K words

A new plan hatches in Wei Wuxian’s head. If this nocturnal, bottom-feeding, slimy, invasive mudcat posing as a beautiful actor thinks he can sway Wei Wuxian with animal pictures and a sob story and an unbelievably stilted way of texting with still no dick pictures in the first five minutes of conversation, he has another thing coming. Wei Wuxian’s got it, alright, he has this in the fucking bag.

Wei Wuxian plots to expose a catfish using strategic memes and turtle pictures while wiggling his way out of family dinner. Lan Wangji just wants companions.

there’s no promised goodbye here by Yuisaki | rated T | 54K words

Jiang Cheng stares at him. “Didn’t you say you broke up five months ago?”

“Yeah.”

“So why do you have a picture of you two kissing taped to your fridge?”

“Because we’re too broke for magnets,” Wei Wuxian explains, then considers that statement. “Well, I’m too broke for magnets. Lan Zhan probably refuses to buy them because he’s trying to have lofty ideas about the moral failings of materialism.”

Wei Wuxian navigates the trials of living with his ex-boyfriend in apartment 1301.

paint smears on sunny days by SnowshadowAO3 | rated E | 54K words

To say that he runs to his car would be incorrect, as he is a Lan, and running is both undignified and unnecessary unless in immediate danger. Nor does he slam his key into the ignition, or aggressively swerve around the cars on the freeway, or have a mild panic attack at the fact he is picking A-Yuan up late from school for the first time ever.

He comes close, though.

By the time he arrives, it’s 4:35PM, and he has imagined about fifty different worse-case scenarios. The door is partly open when he gets to it, a messy label of 104B—Art Room scrawled with chalk on a placard next to the faded wood. As he opens it fully, he expects to see a wailing, terrified child, or perhaps a scene of utter misery and betrayal.

What he finds is his son, hands covered in paint, being sung to by a beautiful, dark-haired stranger.

“Ducks live in the pond, yellow ducks, happy ducks!”

Lan Wangji stops in his tracks.

(Or: Falling in love with your son’s art teacher, in five parts)

a paper friend by sunzu | rated G | 5K words

Lan Wangji finds a paperman far from its body and helps get it home.

-Or-

Lan Wangji unknowingly meets Wei Wuxian for the first time.

All Caught Up by brooklinegirl | rated E | 37K words

"Betrothed," Wei Ying says indignantly.

Lan Wangji can't stop his gaze from darting up to him. Wei Ying understands. Wei Ying is looking at him, wide-eyed and upset on his behalf.

"And you don't even like her," Wei Ying says.

"I don't even know her," Lan Wangji says quietly.

"But even if you did—" Wei Ying starts.

"I wouldn't want this," Lan Wangji finishes.

Lead Me On Through by mrsronweasley | rated E | 55K words | oh look another canon-era practice kissing fic fjdskfl;ds

"Who do you think your betrothed is?" Wei Wuxian asks, sprawling out in front of Lan Zhan and enjoying the prim thinning of his lips at the question. He shouldn't be sprawling—they're in the library, for one, and Lan Zhan is studying, for another—but he can't help himself. Wei Wuxian is a sprawler.

"I do not believe this to be of importance," Lan Zhan responds, without turning his gaze away from his book.

"What!" Wei Wuxian sits up. "How can you say that? Of course it's important! This is the person you'll be with for the rest of your life, Lan Zhan."

I Started From the Bottom/And Now I'm Rich by x_los | rated E | 58K words | ok so i know that in my spiel above i said to mind the tags, etc., but actually pay no mind to the first two relationship tags for this fic. i PROMISE that this isn't that sort of dead dove fic fjdksl;fjs;lifkj. i. it. it's wangxian. don't sweat it. don't even trip. just—this fic fucking rules. it's completely insane and it slaps. wei ying is a girlboss and a bitch and i like her So Much

“First, you get the money. Then you get the power, respect - hos come last.”

Wen Qing traps Wei Wuxian in the Demon Slaughtering Cave, but Wei Wuxian isn’t interested in being the beneficiary of the Wen Remnants’ noble sacrifice. His efforts to free himself accidentally send him back to the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign. Coreless but armed with demonic cultivation, knowledge of the future and his wits, Wei Wuxian takes advantage of this opportunity to come out on top of both the war and its aftermath—before either has a chance to happen—by marrying and swiftly burying the cultivation world’s worst men.

Lan Wangji is confused, hurt, and uncomfortably aroused by Wei Wuxian’s improbably elaborate series of Sect-themed bridal negligees.

rather cruelly used and rather reserved by x_los | rated M | 14K words

In the month between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian leaving Yi City and their attending the cultivation conference in Lanling, Wei Wuxian discovers a locked room in the Jingshi. It is a mystery that clever and curious Wei Wuxian is doing everything in his power to avoid solving.

But the rose was awake all night for your sake/Knowing your promise to me by x_los | rated E | 8K words | resentment tenties~

The resentful energy occupying Wei Wuxian's body like an enemy army is very interested in giving him Lan Wangji, tied up with a bow.

Wei Wuxian is hoping that Lan Wangji (who is far too noble and very keen to save Wei Wuxian's misguided soul) doesn't find out about any aspect of that.

Mo Money, Mo Problems by x_los | rated M | 3K words

After the Mo family perishes in distressing and mysterious circumstances, Wei Wuxian, still reeling from his reincarnation, tries to dip back into their manor for a little travelling money. (Forward planning! What a concept!) Lan Wangji catches him immediately, and is highly unimpressed (read: furious) with Wei Wuxian’s decision to run away from him in the first place.

Standing Engagement by x_los | rated M | 18K words

Lan Wangji believes he and Wei Wuxian are essentially engaged. While they search for his missing betrothed, he accidentally reveals as much to Jiang Wanyin. Now everyone in the cultivation world knows about the imminent marriage, except for Wei Wuxian himself.

Coming Back to Yourself by acernor | rated E | 22K words | genital swapping for fun and nonprofit!

Lan Wangji gets cursed with a ~woman's body~ and has to orgasm to go back. Since he's 1) a virgin 2) super repressed and 3) SUPER gay, he has no idea what to do.

If only he had a super nosy friend who's read lots of erotic novels who could help him figure out what to do... hm...

Save a Sword by etymologyplayground | rated E | 5K words | a fic inspired by the above fic!

Lan WangJi presses a kiss into his throat, which draws a shivering whine from him. "Like this," he agrees, his voice so low. Then he slides one warm elegant hand down Wei WuXian's chest to his belly, and then to his — to his —

fan ending for acernor's fabulous masterpiece "coming back to yourself" because i'm a huge goofball and that fic fucks

Our Eyes on the Road by etymologyplayground | rated E | 23K words | brought to you by lore (the author) and Orville Peck's hit song Drive Me, Crazy

Lan Zhan is silent for a long moment, and the van's speakers quietly pipe the second song on the album into the empty space between them. Then Lan Zhan shifts his hand a little on Wei Ying's leg, presses his fingers once into the meat of his thigh. "Alright," he says.

"Alright," Wei Ying echoes in a wheeze.

"Is that better?" Lan Zhan checks, because he is a good boy. Then he spreads his fingers out a little wider, because he is evil and must be stopped.

Lan Zhan is driving to Chicago. Wei Ying tags along.

Worship you till morning comes by feyburner | rated E | 7K words

A meet-cute, a first date, a sleepover.

Let's take a ride round the curves of desire by feyburner | rated E | 6K words | yeah........... uhh, yeah.

Wei Ying was sprawled on the floor in front of the oscillating fan when Lan Zhan got home from work.

The Roots Grow Riotous by hansbekhart | rated E | 105K words | a beautifully crafted, emotionally harrowing fic. i should warn you (since it's not quite tagged as such) that while wangxian is endgame, the overall story doesn't have the sort of happily-ever-after ending you might expect. i’ve seen it described as open-ended but hopeful and cathartic, which i find to be a pretty accurate assessment

Sometimes Lan Zhan doesn’t work through lunch. Sometimes he makes conversation with coworkers in the halls. Sometimes he goes home instead of spending the last hour trawling through Grindr. But mostly, that’s exactly what he does. The sameness is comforting. His life spools out in easily measured increments: capsule collections, yards of hand dyed textiles, ninety day lead times, sell through figures, cost of goods sold.

Every date in manufacturing can be calculated backwards and forward from a single horizon point: the date that the goods must arrive into the country where they'll be sold. Other than that, nothing else really matters.

总有一天; a place to hide (can’t find one near) by yiqie | rated E | 76K words | i can't recall a fic ever affecting me as much as this one did. one of the best stories i've ever read. so, so, so crushingly beautiful. it's viscerally distressing/upsetting at times, especially at the start, so please heed the tags and author's note (they provide a way to skip the beginning scene if needed)!

That’s just the thing, isn’t it? Wei Ying feels nothing. He doesn’t feel anything, and this emptiness should scare him. He knows he should be scared. He wants to be scared. He isn’t. Fear itself is never scary; fear is just a response. It means that your body wants you alive. It’s the absence of terror that scares him.

请兔子吃晚饭; treating a bunny to dinner by yiqie | rated T | 3K words | read this one to recover from the above fic

It’s not really about the food. Being able to share it in the same space is its own kind of magic.

爱不释手; never let me go by yiqie | rated E | 69K words | and then read this one to feel harrowed again, this time in canon-verse!

Wei Wuxian has certainly hoped so ardently in his two lifetimes, for so many different things, in so many different ways, that he could have summoned the demon to his front door with his bare hands. His eyes wander to Lan Zhan, settle on the back of his head, the blue-black curtain of his hair. Oh, how he has hoped.

在此恭迎夷陵老祖; to yiling laozu, the great and venerable by yiqie | rated M | 7K words | read this one to recover from the above fic (this time in canon-verse)

“You don’t know? In Yiling, there’s a tree at the edge of town, one that stands at the fringes of where the city ends and the Burial Mounds begin, called the Lover’s Tree. They say if you write a letter and nail it to its branches, Yiling Laozu will receive it, and he’ll reply.”

你的阳光下; wanna hide in your light by yiqie | rated T | 2K words | :')

Lan Zhan shuts off the water before it can start getting cold, because Wei Ying still needs to take one. Any other day, Wei Ying would have slunk in, pretending to be annoyed that Lan Zhan started without him, and neither of them would have want for hot water, but Wei Ying is still asleep.

From my heart's ground. by orange_crushed | rated E | 38K words | get (orange) CRUSHED!!!!!!!

After a while he can feel a palm against his face, gentle fingers soft and soothing. It’s not real, not exactly: he can tell the difference between a ghost’s touch and a living person’s, between a spirit-vision and an overactive imagination. His education has been thorough. But the beating has also been thorough, so for now he forgets what he knows and leans into it, into the hand cupping his cheek. It’s soft and dry as those forgotten petals, as the touch of a pillow. He can smell wildflowers, can taste blood and dirt. My baby, his mother says, and he closes his eyes. My treasure. He barely remembers the sound of her voice, but the feeling of it is just the same. Just the same as ever.

[In which Lan Wangji loses almost everything, plants a garden, and grows a second chance.]

Pentimento. by orange_crushed | rated E | 73K words | this fic briefly gave me a serious case of career envy :/ ......but seriously, this is an absolute must-read!!!

When Wangji was eighteen he’d walked into the first class of his fall semester painting module and there’d been a boy in a hilariously ugly floppy knit hat sitting cross-legged on the floor at the front of the room. He’d had a sheet of canvas paper taped to his board and his board clamped between his legs and a tackle box of brushes and tubes—a real fishing tackle box, with a fish-shaped logo on it that said BASS, not one of the nice art supply storage boxes they sold in the campus bookstore, like the one Wangji was carrying—open beside him. Everyone else had settled into the rows of stools and easels, but that boy had stayed on the floor for the whole two hour and thirty minute studio. Wangji had looked at him and thought, that idiot’s back is going to hurt.

[Former best friends Lan Wangji, paintings conservator, and Wei Wuxian, art handler, meet again and realize... neither of them were actually in unrequited love.]

Many happy returns. by orange_crushed | rated E | 25K words

His fingers are still clasped between Wangji's. In the mirror Wangji watches him tuck his coat between his thighs so that he can fuss with the tucked-in hem of his shirt, tousle up the side of his hair, all one-handed. "I hope what I'm wearing is okay."

"It's good," Wangji says. "You look good."

"I guess I must," Wei Ying says, and then he smiles and bites his teeth into his bottom lip for a second, devastatingly, and before Wangji can drop dead the doors to the elevator slide open, and the hostess station appears.

[In which lonely businessman Lan Wangji meets the right wrong person and changes the course of his life.]

The dreamers. by orange_crushed | rated E | 17K words

“Stop mothering me,” Wei Ying protests. “Why don’t you ever listen?” He scowls at Wangji, but then the lure of the clean water is too much; he sits grumbling and strips off his vambraces and loosens the collar of his robes and wipes himself down in the steam. Wangji sits on a stool and watches him, and after a while Wei Ying slaps the rag into the bowl and glares back. “Are you going to sit and stare the whole time?” he demands. “You want to see me strip naked and give my filthy evil self a good scrubbing, huh?”

Yes, Wangji thinks.

[This is a story about a horrible war and a beautiful dream; about grabbing happiness where you can find it, and not letting go.]

mercy, tear it down. by orange_crushed | rated E | 31K words

“You want me to call you good?” Wangji says. “To make you feel good?” Wei Ying makes a wretched, soft, surprised sound in the back of his throat. “Then will you be good?”

“Uh,” Wei Ying says. His lashes flick down again, nervously. “Good how?”

Wangji hasn’t quite thought that far ahead.

Kingfisher Feathers by Anonymous | rated E | 83K words | WIP (7/10 chapters, last updated 4/13/21) | omg omegaverse!!!! @/ this anon author... keep up the great work! also i have feelings for u

With an almost trance-like detachment, Wei Wuxian touched his own neck, his fingers skimming over the fresh mark. The bite wound had stopped bleeding, although he had no doubts it would open again if agitated.

Bonded.

He was bonded for life.

"Shit," he whispered. He looked over at the sleeping form of Lan Wangji—the Second Prince of Gusu and, until his brother was found, the sole heir to the throne. "Oh, shit. Lan Qiren is going to kill me."

----------

Lan Wangji goes into a fevered rut and accidentally bonds with Wei Wuxian. When they next meet, he remembers none of it, and Wei Wuxian is determined to keep the bond a secret—even when he's sent to the Cloud Recesses to be a consort in Lan Wangji's harem.

(tl;dr concubine!wwx is already married to emperor!lwj, who has no idea. drama ensues.)

Pull out game weak by 74243 | rated E | 23K words | featuring the hottest meanest dom top lesbian lwj of your wildest dreams. i hope ao3 user 74243 is having an amazing day

Wei Ying swipes right.

Extra Time by Anonymous | rated E | 28K words | fic inspired by the above fic! seriously good

How Wei Ying learned to stop worrying and love the strap (an AU of 74243's Pull out game weak)

Superfan by 74243 | rated E | 19K words | ao3 user 74243 writing banger after banger as per usual

“I’m not going to apologize for my job,” Wei Ying said, “so if you want to give me some kind of lecture--”

“No,” Lan Zhan said. “You misunderstood. I am...” she paused, as if considering the best way to put it. “I’m a fan.”

Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes by 74243 | rated E | 7K works | i'm just going to list all of ao3 user 74243's fics, ok? that's what's gonna happen here

Wei Wuxian was a little surprised herself, although she felt bad for being surprised. Of course it didn’t really mean anything about you, how you presented, Wei Wuxian knew that better than anyone, but all the same it was hard to reconcile Lan Zhan as an omega.

(wwx makes an error of judgment)

If the shoe fits by 74243 | rated E | 8K words

Wei Ying loses a bet.

the And they were roommates series by 74243 | rated E | 19K words total

That was the other thing, when Wei Ying had moved in. She’d scented Lan Zhan immediately, the sandalwood and smoke rising off her, almost before she’d taken in Lan Zhan’s straight posture, her narrowed eyes. She’d known that Lan Zhan could tell, too. At the end, when they’d talked about the rent and Lan Zhan’s nearly finished PhD and Wei Ying’s working hours, Wei Ying had said, casual and effortless, “And you don’t mind that I’m an omega.”

“No,” Lan Zhan said.

Chef's kiss by 74243 | rated E | 7K words

Wei Ying said, “You know, in some ways I’m kind of depressed. I took your biggest dick on my first try. Now I don’t have anything to build up to.”

“There are bigger ones available,” Lan Zhan said lazily. “I can pay for express shipping.”

(Lan Zhan works the late shift.)

Gold-palmed Warrior Quest! by 74243 | rated E | 13K words

When Lan Wangji suggested that they camp along the way to the Unclean Realm, rather than staying at inns, Wei Wuxian had been sceptical.

Dway! by 74243 | rated E | 6K words

“Hm,” Wei Ying said. “You like it rough, though, right? You seem like that kind of alpha.” When she saw Lan Zhan’s expression she raised an eyebrow. “What? Was I wrong? Are you tender and sweet? Do you cry?”

“You were not wrong,” Lan Zhan said. “I do not cry. Do you?”

tgif by 74243 | rated E | 17K words

Today Lan Zhan says that if Wei Ying cannot control her mouth then she will have to tape it shut.

On the ground by 74243 | rated E | 5K words

“I think you will like it,” Lan Zhan said.

Does your mother know by 74243 | rated E | 5K words | editing this rec list on a monday morning to add this brand new fic fresh off the presses. thank u ao3 user 74243 for feeding us so well 🙏

“Lan Zhan is such a well-behaved girl,” Madam Yu said.

all that and more by Euphorion | rated E | 20K words

Wei Wuxian locks his phone and puts it down, blinks at his ceiling, and picks it up again. The pictures are still there.

His first thought is that Lan Zhan meant them for someone else. That he just woke up at—he checks the timestamp—6:30 am on a Sunday and decided to go absolute full nuclear seduction option on some poor boy he met on Grindr, who would now be missing out on the best thing to ever happen to him because Wei Wuxian had a bad habit of distracting—of—oh.

Pieces of last night start to resurface and paste themselves together in his head. He winces.

The Golden Cutsleeve by syrus_jones | rated E | 77K words | of my faves, this is one of my favorite... faves. top faves. incredibly fun and silly and hot. just... oh my GOD, wei YING!

“I know! Why don’t you try it? Let me go and I’ll lend it to you!” Wei Wuxian bribed hysterically, desperate to escape from this encounter by any means necessary. And then, his eyes blew wide, realizing what he just said. ‘Wait— just what am I offering Lan Zhan?!’ he thought. How was he so stupid, how did he just offer that without thinking—

“You want me...to use it… after you?” Lan Zhan asked, his voice unusually faint.

~*~

Wei Wuxian's test of mysterious, literally magical sex toy goes awry when Lan Wangji finds him in the woods 'experimenting' with it and it ends up in Lan Wangji's possession.

Unfortunately, neither of them is aware that the toy is anchored to Wei Wuxian's body. Too bad Wei Wuxian invited him to try it.

Boy Trouble, We've Got Double by saltyfeathers | rated E | 60K words | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is a really good fic

Lan Zhan stands there in his immaculate, cloud-patterned Lan robes, watching him calmly, one fist tucked up against his back. “I am betrothed.”

Wei Wuxian blinks. “Are you…” He tries to laugh. Again, it sounds inhuman. “Is this about last night? Are you mad at me? I only remember some of it, Lan Zhan. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I’m sure whatever I did I was just—” He gestures uselessly. He remembers being warm in Lan Zhan’s lap. He remembers fitting snugly in Lan Zhan’s lap. Wrapping his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck. Nosing at his jaw. “…playing around.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Wei Wuxian.”

none in the forest so bright as these by saltyfeathers | rated E | 6K words

Wei Wuxian puts a hand to his head, brain lost in fog. “Lan Zhan,” he pants. “Why are we here? Are we on a hunt?”

As Lan Zhan tries to remember, his brow furrows. He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t know.”

“This is bad,” Wei Wuxian says. When Lan Zhan cups his cheek again, sparks burst behind Wei Wuxian’s eyes. “Or maybe it’s not,” he says unthinkingly. Sighs, almost. Lan Zhan looks at his own arm like it's betrayed him. Wei Wuxian closes his eyes and presses his face into Lan Zhan’s palm. “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” he murmurs. “What’s happening to us?”

out in the garden, there’s things you hid away by saltyfeathers | rated E | 121K words | oww oww oww 😣😣😣💘

There is a man with empty eye sockets and tears of fire in Wei Wuxian’s dreams. Tendrils of smoke curl around him in sleep, pressing at his most vulnerable spots, seeking entrance, slipping between his ribs.

When he ignores Lan Zhan's offers of help, he declines rapidly. He will die. Or, he should. Anyone else would.

Instead, he flees. And transforms.

crawling through your door by saltyfeathers | rated E | 12K words

Lan Wangji kisses him. When he pulls away, he speaks into the silence between them, because when he is with Wei Ying, he so rarely considers. “Why don’t you touch me anymore?”

Lan Zhan Works for the Historical Society by saltyfeathers | rated E | 7K words | some real real good lesbian action up in here

Pretty Lan Zhan. Beautiful Lan Zhan. Ice queen Lan Zhan. So intimidating and femme and coldly polite in public, yet meaner than a man in the bedroom. Wei Ying has slept with men before and none of them were mean-nice to her like Lan Zhan.

threadfic by saltyfeathers | not rated (each chapter rated/tagged individually) | 34K+ words | WIP (11/? chapters, last updated 3/15/21), but it’s a collection of stand-alone oneshots

semi cleaned-up wangxian twitter threadfic.

【已經打動我的心】So Sing To Me All Night by aroceu | rated T | 10K words | arrow writes wei ying so exquisitely well. i was weepy the whole time read this fic. for the best experience, i recommend following along with the accompanying spotify playlist.

No one listens to the radio in this day and age, but somehow from a bunch of left clicking and right clicking, through Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, Wei Ying finds himself on the WQHS homepage—the UPenn student radio station, promising eclectic tastes from a variety of hosts. Wei Ying can't remember giving a shit about his old college's student radio before he dropped out, but it's eleven at night and he has nothing else better to do. He clicks on the button that says Listen Here! and waits to be impressed.

get wild by aroceu | rated E | 24K words | 🔥🏀🔥 BASKETBALL FIC 🔥🏀🔥

He was looking for a specific reaction—to get Lan Zhan to lash out. All hard edges and demanding, the same way during the first scrim, Lan Zhan's dark voice had made him loose and obedient, itching to both rebel and obey at the same time.

It's them, whatever it is, but it doesn't belong on the basketball court.

Wei Ying didn't expect to enter a weird... something-with-benefits-plus-power-play with the captain of the Gusu basketball team. He's not sure if it's worth it.

without a warning by aroceu | rated T | 10K words | 🥺️🥺️🥺️

“Blegh,” Wei Ying says. “I hate being sick, Lan Zhan… my throat is so sore… why do I talk so much?”

“Stop talking then,” Lan Zhan says.

“You don’t mean that,” Wei Ying says, in his half-asleep daze. “I know you’ll never admit it, Lan Zhan, but you like it when I talk.”

your honor i’m a freak bitch by aroceu | rated E | 6K words

Wei Ying gestures to his outfit. His hands are buried deep within the hoodie; he’s mostly gesturing with the sleeves. “Well, it works with the whole get up, you see?”

“The…” Lan Zhan looks down at where his fingers are toying with the top of Wei Ying’s thigh highs. Wei Ying pretends he is not shivering. “…skirt. And these stockings.”

“Thigh highs, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says, batting at him with the end of a sleeve.

Play It By Ear by aroceu | rated T | 7K words | MY HEART !!!

In the virtual airplane flying over the island, appropriately called Yiling, Lan Zhan watches as bits and pieces of the island load in. There are many Statues of David, a gothic teacup ride, and, from what Lan Zhan can see, an entire field of spoiled turnips.

hanguang-jun @/hanguangjun Do you need turnips to sell?

timmy and tommy in a trenchcoat @/yilinglaozu oh! no haha! 😅 those are from a while ago but my brother insists i keep them there

for the ~aesthetic~

the key that our souls were singing by aroceu | rated M | 5K words

“I haven’t seen you since—Gusu, was it?” Wei Ying says. “Oh my god, it’s been so long. I didn’t even know you were LGBT! Unless you’re here as an ally, which is also totally cool—”

“No, I.” Lan Zhan coughs. Her throat feels dry. “I am a lesbian.”

abort retry fail by aroceu | rated E | 21K words

Lan Wangji must miss his husband over this amnesiac of a man Wei Wuxian has turned into. Well, Wei Wuxian will show him! He'll be even better—or at least, try to be just as good of a husband as he would be, without his memory loss.

Blackout If You Were Mine by aroceu | rated E | 9K words

Wei Ying likes to wear chokers a lot. So Lan Zhan buys some for him. Then, testing their limits, collars.

Wei Ying wears those, too.

Or, the one where Wei Ying and Lan Zhan accidentally stumble into a BDSM relationship.

eleven thousand meters & airborne by aroceu | rated E | 5K words | 😎✈️😎

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying join the mile high club.

many fox given by defractum | rated E | 24K words | can't go wrong with foxxian and dragonji content 🦊🐉

Lan Zhan is glaring at him. That's probably fair.

The last time they'd seen each other, Wei Ying had been digging through Lan Zhan's garbage. They'd made eye contact over the shredded bags, the week's trash scattered around him like stinky, oversized Lego.

Lan Zhan's eyes had been wide with horror, and Wei Ying's had been equally wide with feigned innocence. He'd reached out slowly, maintaining the eye contact, and then flipped over the food waste bin full of onion peel and carrot skin as a distraction and slunk off into the night. Probably not his finest moment.

Modern AU dragon!LWJ meets fox!WWX.

the tamed by defractum | rated E | 12K words

If the Second Jade of Lan insists on bringing the Yiling Patriarch as his guest to the next Cultivation Conference, he must first demonstrate a control over the Yiling Patriarch and his unnatural abilities.

The letter lies on their desk for days.

Post-canon, Wei Ying is invited, sort of, to a Discussion Conference.

us in a king-size, keep it a secret (say i'm your queen, i don't wanna leave this) by matcha_ado | rated E | 3K words

People always said Wei Ying was a royal pain in the ass. They were absolutely right, of course, just not in the way they thought.

it is wednesday my dudes by jelenedra | rated M | 4K words

Wednesday nights at Cloud Recesses strip club are always a little weird, but usually they're not this horny. Whatever Wei Ying and Lan Zhan get up to, Mianmian is not going to be the one to clean it up.

i'm the one for your fire by occultings | rated E | 43K words | cherry magic au! love it

Wei Ying, virgin and noted heterosexual, gets hit with a curse of an unusual nature on his 30th birthday — through physical contact, he can read the minds of others around him.

Enter Lan Zhan, hot former rival and current coworker, whose true thoughts about Wei Ying are nothing like he expects. (A loose Cherry Magic AU)

a thousand teeth, yours among them by darkredloveknot | rated E | 11K words

A one night stand in the time of zombies.

hoe to housewife pipeline by lanzhancore | rated E | 5K words

“You type fast,” Wei Ying murmurs, making a futile attempt at conversation while he waits for him to be done with… whatever. “Not to be pushy, but do you plan on fucking my ass anytime soon?”

or: wei ying has been thirsting after lan zhan for three slutty slutty years

can you feel it by lanzhancore | rated E | an instant classic

“What’s wrong?” Wei Ying asks finally, eyebrows drawn together. “Is everything okay?”

Thumbs stroking circles into his skin as if to comfort him, Lan Zhan says, “Don’t panic.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, sitting up on his elbows. “What did you do to my ass?”

“Nothing,” Lan Zhan says, convincing nobody. “But we need to go to the hospital.”

or: wei ying really should have sprung for the model with the flared base. he learns this lesson the hard way.

because you're mine (i walk the line) by lanzhancore | rated E | 8K words

Wei Ying is freshly cream-pied and still trying to remember where his legs are when Lan Zhan outlaws masturbation.

or: wei ying fucks around and finds out

payload by lanzhancore | rated M | 3K words | babysitter wwx + dilfji, what more could you need

Wei Ying has a whole five hours and thirty-six minutes to calm down but when he hears Lan Zhan’s key turning in the front door lock later that evening he has to cling to the couch cushions to keep from marching into the laundry room to retrieve the briefs so he can wave them in Lan Zhan’s face and demand to know who owns them.

or: lan zhan's self-restraint is not limitless

the to the brim series by verseau | rated E | 14K words total

Wei Ying wants to rob him, but it wouldn’t even be satisfying, since this guy is just—giving away money. With his nice fingers. Maybe Wei Ying will just bite his fingers, and that will give the same endorphin rush as robbing him. / a day told across five parts.

get that message home by verseau | rated G | 2K words | ohhhhhhhhh myyyyy godddddd 😭

Sizhui's father cannot haggle. It is a shame on Sizhui’s honor to have such an honest father.

Author's note [i'm including it here because it's golden]:

there is a scene in arrested development where lucille, who is on the opposite spectrum of humanity as lan zhan, asks, "it's a banana, michael. how much could one cost? ten dollars?" there are no bananas in this story.

dreaming and getting a glimmer by verseau | rated E | 27K words | a particular favorite of mine 🔥🍆💦🕳🔥

Wei Ying discovers himself.

trust your fingertips by plonk | not rated (but really rated E) | 15K word | 🥵️🥵️🥵️🥵️🥵️ plonk you’ve done it again!

Lan Wangji must suppress a shiver at every brush and press of Wei Wuxian’s fingers.

Under different circumstances - less public ones - he would welcome touch, given that his body is in such an aroused state.

Alas, his circumstances are these: sitting quietly while Wei Wuxian, the famous (infamous) Doctor of Yunmeng, digs his fingertips into Lan Wangji’s shoulders and chest and sides and hums thoughtfully.

Doctor, Doctor by YunmengLotus | rated E | 4K words | mmmmhmm!

Wei Ying needs to get a prostate exam. How ever will he deal when the world's hottest doctor walks through the exam room door and tells him to bend over?

TAKOYAKI by ariskamalt | rated E | 3K words | lan zhan gets jealous of his own damn appendages. meanwhile, wei ying is just having a good time.

Lan Zhan…cannot always feel or tell what his tentacles will do.

His free hand curls into a fist. Underneath his skin, the tentacles give a little squirm, as if aware of the challenge he has just issued them. No touching Wei Ying unless he says so, because he wants to touch Wei Ying first. They squirm again, as if to say, Tentacles: 1, Lan Zhan: 0.

That will just have to be remedied.

Or, as phnelt first described: Tentacle-ji with the semi autonomous tentacles getting jealous of his tenties for touching Wei Ying in places he hasn't yet

Outage by SugarMilkTea | rated E | 3K words | [cough] 😳😳😳

The power goes out in Lan Zhan and Wei Ying's rural home in the countryside. Lan Zhan takes advantage of the darkness to give in to one of his baser urges, and Wei Ying's first rural power outage experience is about to get a lot more interesting.

big hands (i know you’re the one) by martyrsdaughter | rated E | 8K words | NICE. 🔥🔥🔥

“Not a big talker, hm?” Wei Ying tilts his head to one side. “That’s okay, I’ve been told I’m a good enough conversationalist for three. My tongue is multi-talented and—”

He has just enough time to feel her palm on the back of his neck and think, oh, her hands are so big, before his words are being stolen into her mouth.

darling, am i a chore? by martyrsdaughter | rated E | 7K words

“Are you done playing around?”

Knowing that’s not what either of them actually wants, Wei Wuxian reaches up to tickle under Lan Wangji’s chin. Soft little scritches, coaxing motions—Lan Wangji is weak to all of them.

“You know what I want,” Wei Wuxian purrs, reaching up on his tiptoes to throw his arms over Lan Wangji’s shoulders. “Call me gege, won’t you? Call me and I’ll stop.”

(or: five times Lan Wangji paid special attention to Wei Wuxian’s interest in being his gege.)

put him on his knees, give him something to believe in by dustyloves | rated E | 2K words | if the title is quoting WAP, then you should know by now it’s gonna be some of that good filth

The next time Wei Ying kisses him, Lan Zhan is careful again. Wei Ying seems determined to make it very difficult.

the hard way by dustyloves | rated E | 9K words

"Anyway, you make it sound like something lewd is going on," Wei Ying complains. "It's all totally above board. She's just being a nice person. It's just one kind alpha grad student offering one room of her huge house to one beta undergrad in need, what could be more appropriate than that?"

// Wei Ying makes a mistake and finds out the hard way.

Exhibition by sevenless | rated E | 5K words

“Oh?” Wei Wuxian raises an eyebrow. “The forbidden section, Lan Zhan?”

“Mn.”

“You’re not afraid of being heard?” Wei Wuxian thinks aloud. A smirk creeps onto his face, eyes glinting. “Or could it be that Lan-er-gongzi actually wants to be heard? Seen? Caught?” He skips in front of him, blocking his way. "Disciplined?”

Lan Wangji’s ears, as always, betray him.

a history of the body by northofallmusic | rated E | 14K words

Wei Ying's body hurts sometimes; she lets Lan Zhan help her.

A fic about the complicated nature of having a body, and also the versatility of sex toys.

(our friendship) up against the ropes by daltoneering | rated E | 36K words

The reboot completes, and Wei Ying’s brain smashes this information together into two mind-shattering thoughts. Number one, he knew very well already, and is now further seared by defined muscles and a mouth-watering tattoo into his every waking moment: Lan Zhan is the hottest fucking person on the planet.

Number two: that guy wasn’t visiting Lan Zhan’s neighbour, he was visiting Lan Zhan, which means:

Lan Zhan fucks. Lan Zhan fucks. Lan Zhan fucks.

;

Lan Zhan has been Wei Ying's best friend for years. Literally, years. How did he not already know? How has he missed this most important of facts? And more importantly, how is he ever going to get over it?

watching my heart go round by typefortydeductions | rated E | 38K+ words | WIP (2/4 chapters, last updated 5/2/21) | lan zhan i love you baby 💞

Lan Zhan falls apart. As it turns out, that's not the end.

oh man this list is so long sd;jfkdsjfhhh

yati, i hope you find some stuff in this pile here that you’ll enjoy! it's not an exhaustive list, so check out the authors’ other works and bookmarks for more goods, if you feel so inclined 😙💕

#darlingbenny #mdzs #fic rec #nsfw!

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aliveanddrunkonsunlight · 4 years ago

Text

physical touch - jaime

Jaime x Brienne + love languages based off @observedchaos post

NSFW

For @naomignome and specially dedicated to @forbiddenfantasies1

Riverrun

Negotiations with the Blackfish are at a stalemate.

This was a thrice damned stupid mission anyway. Emmon Frey could not command a mouse. Perhaps Jaime could install Aunt Genna in his place.

“There’s the Tarth woman,” Daven suggests as a last resort. The sun is starting to set and Jaime was expecting to pick up negotiations the next day, but he perks up hearing her name.

“Yes, bring her. Now.” Brienne is the one who convinced Catelyn and Robb Stark that they might get more out of him if he wasn’t held in a dank cell for a year. Being able to bathe, change into clean clothes, and eat regular meals did not do much for the Starks in the long run, but it served him quite well. He tries to swallow the smirk stretching across his face.

When Brienne is delivered to his tent, he has an assortment of food laid out across the table. “I’ve heard Riverrun’s sources have been severely depleted, so I thought you might wish for a real meal.”

There’s almost a snarl in her voice when she replies, “I am well fed, ser.” Her stomach quickly betrays her, letting out a loud growl.

He bites back a laugh, gesturing at the table. “Have a seat. Would you care for some wine?” He is already tipping the jug towards her cup when she covers the goblet with her hand and wine splashes across her skin. It runs down her arm, a red splotch appearing on the sleeve of her tunic. Jaime apologizes for his clumsiness, sitting down beside her, and taking her hand in his own to carefully clean it with a napkin soaked in water. Glancing up, her blue eyes burn into his, a different kind of hunger building there. Good. When her hand is washed clean, he slowly stands, stepping behind her chair and leans over her shoulder, mouth near her ear. “Should we get you out of this shirt? It will stain, my lady.”

Brienne makes a choked noise in her throat. “You are in quite a hurry, ser.”

“Am I? Perhaps the letters you wrote have not sated me.” The familiar blush rises in her cheeks. “Did mine sate you, my lady?” his voice dips low, breath along the back of her neck.

“Not as well as your mouth, my lord.” Jaime lets out a delighted laugh because gods, he has missed her. She pushes back her chair and then steps into him, their bodies colliding. It is fierce and harsh, teeth and tongues, and the familiar fire burns in his belly.

His hand fists in her hair as she nips and nuzzles at his neck. “Do you have, ahh,” he sucks in a breath over his teeth. “A proposed offer?”

She chuckles against him, lips buzzing along the column of his throat. “After,” she hisses, biting down on a tendon in his throat.

“Fuck,” he breathes in sharply through his nose. Jaime loves the marks she leaves. They may be stuck on opposite sides of this war, but they are well-suited at discovering all of the ways they can still lay claim to the other. Brienne sucks at the skin, tongue darting out to soothe the bite.

When she pulls away, Jaime presses a bruising kiss to her mouth, knocking them back towards the table, where a dish crashes to the ground. They both freeze, expecting one of Jaime’s guards to rush in and catch them in each other’s arms. But no one comes.

“I suppose I should talk to my guard,” he finally says. “It seems they want me dead.”

Brienne laughs. “Maybe it was only loud to us.”

“They will have no doubt about who is being loud in a few minutes, my lady.”

“If you mean yourself…” she trails off, a playful look in her eyes which stuns him speechless before he is kissing her again and guiding her towards his desk.

Brienne perches on the edge, widening her legs so he can stand in between them, untying the laces of her tunic and leaving a mark of his own along her collarbone. She runs her fingers through his hair, his head bent intently to his work when she wraps her legs around him, pulling him close enough to feel the heat of her cunt. He moans against her skin and she rocks her hips against him, the hard ridge of his cock digging into her thigh. “My lady,” he breathes, her movements forcing him to momentarily stop his admiration of her freckles, her skin.

Her hands fall quickly to the laces on his breeches. “You did not let me finish my meal,” she chides him. His trousers pool around his ankles and Brienne’s tongue darts out to wet her lips. Seven hells. “Perhaps I am still hungry.” Her eyes travel up to his as she takes his cock in her hand.

“Brienne,” Jaime hisses. “Not here.” The desk is directly across from the opening of the tent and anyone could see, but there is a chair and an area underneath which would be hidden from view. “You test me,” he murmurs against her lips, catching her in an open-mouth, hurried kiss. Tugging at her wrist, he brings her around the desk, gesturing to the space underneath.

“You do like to play games.” But she obeys him, fitting herself into the space. Seeing what she is willing to go through to be with him only makes him want her more and by the time he moves his chair closer and finally sits down, he is nearly crawling out of his skin.

There is less light streaming through the tent now with the sun dipping below the horizon, but Brienne more than makes up for it with touch, taste, and feel. She smoothes her hands over his thighs, trying to relax and soothe the tension from his muscles, a sweet gesture that she has to know she will undo in minutes. Her thumb strokes along the underside of his cock, his whole body reacting to her touch. already prepared to slide under the desk with her. He can make out the lightness of her hair, her pale skin as she flicks her tongue across the head, making him clench his ass against the wooden chair, a contented yes already falling from his lips. When she finally takes him in her mouth, he grasps the arms of the chair and stifles a groan.

He can easily imagine the pleased look on her face, her head bobbing up and down his length, the wet pop as she releases him. There is a deep inhalation of breath in the moment before she takes all of him in. Her other hand caresses and gently squeezes his balls, causing his hips to thrust towards her. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, hand reaching for her hair, fingertips running gently through it.

Her breath is hot along his shaft, tongue darting out to taste him. “Wait,” she nudges at the back of his knees, her strong hands pulling him towards the edge of the chair. It feels precarious, but he trusts her. She presses a kiss to the top of his thigh. “Try again.”

This time when she takes him in her mouth, it unleashes a growl at the back of his throat. His fingers fan out along her jaw, feeling it move as she does, wet and warm around him. “May I?” She nods and his eyelids flutter closed as he thrusts forward. “You are so good, so good,” he murmurs, getting closer and closer as he slides in and nearly all the way out of her mouth, hand grasping at her hair when he thinks she is going to let go of him completely. Brienne murmurs in understanding and the buzz of her mouth sends shivers up his spine.

All of it is so much better than what he imagines when he reads her letters, much more satisfying than when he takes himself in hand, trying to remember what she felt like wrapped around him, what she tastes like when he is buried in her cunt.

The heat in his stomach unspools faster now, in time with her mouth and his hips twitching against her. His muscles tighten in the moment before, begging, “Now, now” and then he is spilling into her mouth. She hums as she licks him clean and when she emerges from the darkness of the desk, the corner of her mouth ticks up into a satisfied smile. “I’ve missed you.” His muscles feel like putty but he reaches for her. He will always reach for her, no matter how many enemy lines he has to cross.

“I should go back,” Brienne tells him softly.

He shakes his head, thumb stroking the inside of her wrist. “Not if you spent the whole night negotiating.”

A pleased expression crosses her face as she bends her head to kiss him. “If that is what it takes.”

“It most certainly does.”

When he wakes next to her in the early light of dawn, they have come to no better solution. He peppers her neck with kisses, waking her slowly, gently, until the two of them are moving together once again.

If he is to send the Tullys to the Rock, she will travel with them and he will return to King’s Landing. He clings to her tightly, knowing it may be the last moment for some time, trying to memorize her, so he may carry her with him somehow.

“What if…” she says, lying next to him, hand tracing down his chest. “We use the Stark girls to negotiate.”

“How? We do not have them.”

“We could. You and I.” The promise they each made to Catelyn, which Brienne tried to get him to uphold when she returned him to King’s Landing. Her generous offer to travel with her, a way for him to escape the city for even longer. He had wanted to then, but even more so now.

Jaime covers her hand with his own, fingertips circling over the rough skin of her knuckles.“I could not hold the men here.”

“Then send them onwards, to Pennytree or Blackwood or wherever you are ordered to go next. Daven can command them.” It sounds so simple coming from her, such an honorable plan, but there will be questions he will have to face. She is worth it.

“If this works, my lady, you will forever have my utmost respect.”

Her eyes flash. “I did not already?” She clicks her tongue as she sits up and swings her leg across his hips. “That will not do, Lord Commander.”

As she runs her hands up his chest, he is already coming apart at the seams. “You do. Brienne, you do.”

Author’s Note: This could work in place of show s7 tent scene, but I was thinking of it as a canon divergent possibility in the books, where Jaime and Brienne’s trip to KL results in them having a relationship and then Brienne returns to the Tullys rather than seeking out Sansa on her own. So read it whichever way most appeals to you!

#jaime x brienne #fic: physical touch #love languages

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suca-loca · 3 years ago

Text

it’s been a long year since we last spoke (how’s your halo?)

Read on Ao3

Words: 11.5k

Tags: Hurt No comfort, Angst, No Happy Ending, No beta we die like Wilbur

Warnings: Body horror, Blood, Death, Suicidal Implications/Thoughts, Mentions Of Torture, Beating/Fighting

Author's Note: I tentatively present you all this fic as my ticket to board the Dream SMP Fandom. I took some creative liberties with this, such as hints of Niki and Wilbur being childhood friends, as well as Niki living near Techno's cabin, and making Niki respawning to restock her hunger bar during her spiraling/villain arc one of her canon deaths. Also, despite Niki wearing a new skin she has stated that her character still wears Wilbur's coat. Just adding that in here so people don't comment that I got her outfit wrong during a certain scene. And finally, even though I feel this is obvious, this is about the characters and not the streamers themselves. With that out of the way, enjoy the fic!

Summary:

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry.

or; Niki tries, unwillingly may she add, the whole being dead thing. Oh, and Wilbur is there to "help"

The worst part about it is that Niki's whole life doesn't flash before her eyes. It doesn't happen in slow motion and neither is there some comforting, bright light for her to walk towards. It's simply this: one second she's at Church Prime and the next she's falling into pitch blackness.

Then again, she should have known better than to expect any of that dumb cliche stuff 'cause it's not like she died or anything. Not really. Her communicator may say she did, but she knows the truth. She was teleported.

So why does this feel like dying?

foolish girl breaking at the seams from using the same stitching of a burning flag to put yourself back together again. you think the afterlife cares how you arrive? the entry fee is the same for all

She comes in screaming and doesn't stop even when that's all she is anymore. Her body is unrecognizable to her, turned inside out, muscles stretching and bending and snapping in an attempt to mimic the shape she once was.

(She wishes her muscles luck in regressing back into a memory because oh primes, oh dear primes did she try, try again to be the girl wore a white and blue uniform with pride, but that girl only exists now in dreams and sometimes nightmares)

But they can't, for her organs and bones and flesh do not know what it means to not be confined (but they should know, they really should, because she still finds it hard to breath in small spaces ever since Schlatt caged her between iron bars and dirt and Sapnap left her in a hole in the ground over a fish) and so they shake. Convulsing and spasming until she is just sound, just an echo of shrieks that are happening in the past or the present or the future depending on how fast it travels down this tight, narrowed cave she lands in.

Wait, lands in?

She finds herself laying flat on the ground. She blinks. Then does it again for good measure to make sure she's not imaging having eyelids.

She touches her face. Feels the crook of her nose, the curve of her chin, and her soft round ears.

It's all skin. No muscle, no tissue, just her.

Still her.

(For now)

Her body is back. Not whole though - never whole - for she will always be a walking empty space within a solid object, but for now, her body is right. Her body is here. She closes her eyes in relief.

Someone is staring down at her when she opens them again.

"Hello Niki," Wilbur says. "It's been a while."

(It's Doomsday. His name shows up on your communicator and so you become a lit match. The fire eats you away just like the bark of a tree, like the walls of a bakery, two things you once loved most, and you're watching them both burn with his coat over your shoulders, which doesn't help you ignore who you must look like, who you're acting like, whose footsteps you're following in; and doesn't it hurt to know that what's before you isn't just a friend but a reflection?)

She's already scrambling back before she's even fully sat up.

She doesn't get very far, not with the way her wrists twist and bend before finally buckling under the pressure, and she can't find the strength to stand up and run. So all that's left to do is hyperventilate at the way his eyes land on her face, roaming, analyzing, absorbing, trying to read her like a book, unaware she's ripped out the pages long ago. At the way his shadow covers her and maybe once it felt like a blanket, but that time has passed, now all it is is heavy, suffocating, pinning her down. At the way he wears his Pogtopia outfit, pressed and cleaned when the last she saw of it it was covered in ash and black feathers and red, so much red.

But it never comes. In fact, her lungs don't move at all. Almost as if she doesn't need to breathe. As if she hasn't been breathing since she's been down here.

Is that why it was so easy to keep screaming?

"You're not here," she whispers. "Not really."

Wilbur tilts his head to the left.

(Does it in a way a predator would while observing its prey from afar, waiting for the right moment to strike)

"Oh? Where am I then, Niki?"

"My head," Niki responds, practically blurting it out. "Yeah - yeah, that's right. This is just my head playing tricks on me again. A horrible horrible trick, but that's all it is. I - I know it."

Wilbur hums. He sits down as if this will take a while. As if she won't blink and he'll be gone. "Well, that's a damn shame. I was hoping it'd be a beach. Mexican Dream has been talking a lot about La Jolla lately. Sounds like a nice place."

He smiles, suddenly.

(No, not smiles, more like baring his teeth. His very normal teeth that give off the impression that they should be very sharp and very large and very deep in her throat right now)

"Let's hope I don't blow it up."

(Niki is shouting for Wilbur over the chaos when her communicator pings in her pocket. It gets hard to breathe as she reads what it says, and it isn't because every inhale of smoke and pulverized concrete from the tumbling buildings poison her lungs. There's a ringing in her ears, and it isn't because of the TNT that just detonated in front of her. She feels broken, and it isn't because the force of the explosion knocks her back and she skitters across the field, hitting rocks and choking on dirt until she stops on her stomach, limbs bent at weird angles. Her communicator lands right beside her, the screen shattered and static flashing, but she can still catch glimpses of what is on the screen, as clear as day, like a taunt: WilburSoot was slain by Ph1lza)

Niki scrambles to her feet, presses herself as much as she can against the walls, and maybe, just maybe, she'll glitch and go through it and suffocate in a block.

She immediately throws herself away from it when she realizes what she just thought.

Wilbur stands with her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he says. "I thought it would lighten up the mood. So, how are you?"

"How am I?" Niki echoes. "I'm imagining my dead best friend even though I thought I was getting better and I could have sworn I was, I was I swear I was, and this place, this place, I don't know where this is but it, it just feels - I don't even know why - so familiar and so - "

She pauses.

She looks around.

She was so busy panicking from Wilbur's presence that she never took in her surroundings. She stares at the smooth stone walls, the occasional hanging vines, the little aquarium in the corner right next to the entrance, and, finally, the stand. The stand with two signs on the front that read -

No. It can't be. It just can't.

She won't believe it until she's seen the whole thing.

She walks further in, each step hesitant.

And she notices the way everything around her seems so devoid of life. Almost colorless. Close to numb. She thinks it's her body shutting down, the stress finally getting to her, but no. This is worse. Something's going on. She doesn't know what it is exactly, but she knows it isn't her that's wrong here.

(This time)

Wilbur follows closely behind and, as if to prove her point, his footsteps sound muffled, distant, apart from him, like in the way you hear something underwater.

Maybe she is underwater because everything is getting blurry and her face feels wet.

(Or maybe the better comparison is like hearing something behind glass. She's been tapping against the window of a caravan for months as men in suits discuss a country she bled for just as much as them, if not more, without her. The tapping turns to banging, but it is not the glass that shatters. Not the glass that breaks)

She stills as she catches sight of the small wheat farm in the back room, dried and frail and unkempt.

(Like a flower shop)

It really is her bakery.

"No," she mumbles. Then, more stern, as if it'll blow this place away, as Wilbur should have done the first time. "No no no no this can't… this can't be true. I, I shouldn't be here I - it doesn't make any sense, how how how - "

She whirls on Wilbur, the tears coming in waves now. "What are you doing to me?"

(It's his fault she's back here. It has to be, he's the reason you wanted to burn the memories why this is all gone why this should be gone why isn't this gone gone gone gone)

foolish girl who has become like the nation she despises, you are a crater, there is a hole inside of you where a soul once was and it was caused by your own hands because the only destruction you're good at is your own. you couldn't even kill a child with a nuke, so what makes you think you can end a small room on the side of some hill?

"What do you see?" Wilbur says, and the voice in her head disappears. She can't remember what it said. She shakes her head as if the words will fall out her ears.

Suddenly she can't remember why she's shaking her head.

Her next words come out frail.

"My… my bakery. But how? This shouldn't be possible I, I destroyed it - I - "

"Limbo is different for everybody," Wilbur interjects. "For me, it's a train station."

"Limbo? What are you talking about? What is going on? I was nowhere near L'manburg I was - " Niki's mind blanks.

(Smooth quartz all around her and she feels safe there, that she remembers because there is no killing here, the one place bloodshed does not haunt her, and then crushing disappointment that turns into actual crushing as her body gets shredded, mangled, undone like a ribbon except it does not look pretty)

Wilbur gives her a slicing smile. It cuts her down. "This is the afterlife, Niki."

She blinks. She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted to the spot. "What?"

"The afterlife," he continues, eyes sparkling. "Hell. The void. Eternal darkness. Whatever you wanna call it. I call it home."

"Home?" She repeats, shakily.

foolish girl with no place, no one to call home because she's an expert at finding comfort in things that don't stay, of course he sees this place as home. Although if he really wanted to surround himself in emptiness so bad then he just needed to wait a few months for you to become just that

"I'm not dead," she mutters. She attempts to laugh, because if she laughs then this will sound like a joke. Wilbur would joke about such a thing. After all, he poked fun at exploding L'manburg just a while ago. So of course this is a joke. It has to be. It is, and she will not allow her breakdown to be the punchline.

At Wilbur's unflinching smile she says it again, with more conviction. "I'm not!"

"How else do you think you're talking to me? How your bakery is still in one piece? Sorry to be your grim reaper Niki, but you're dead. And now you're here, in the afterlife, with me!" He leans in close, close enough that she should feel his breath on her.

There is nothing. He is nothing.

(And maybe, so is she)

"Isn't that great? We're together again! You and me, just like the old days. And look," His eyes glance at what she wears. It's the coat. Specifically, Wilbur's coat, wrapped around her shoulders.

"We're even matching," he coos.

She thinks she might scream.

She throws herself away from him, almost throws the coat too, but into the furnace next to her.

('I gotta burn the memories I need to destroy it I need to destroy it I need to destroy it,' she once screamed to no one but herself. History repeats itself)

How she ever found comfort in this ratty, old coat she'll never know. And she'll never care to find out. Not when Wilbur is acting like this, like before, like a loose city wire, all dangerous and unpredictable, each word an electric spark, and Niki is trying not to get stung. She remembers how that story ended.

But her's will not end. Not yet.

"I can't be dead," she argues. "I don't remember that I would remember something like that so I - I can't be dead, and I have two lives left so, no, no I can't be I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and I'm in bed I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and you're not real, just a nightmare. I'm alive I'm alive I'm - "

"It's really me, Niki," Wilbur says, and the fire from the furnace roars in response as if his words fan the flames. It's the first time something in this wicked place has felt alive. "In the flesh. Or, rather, a close imitation of it. I think my corpse must have liquified by now, swelling up for months before bursting open, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. What about you? What did you leave for them to find?"

She covers her ears. "Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!"

"Remember it. Remember your last moments."

"Wilbur, please - "

"Feel your wrist," he says. No, orders. And she does. Because she, at her core, is still his soldier.

(She says that she is loyal to him and he responds by saying he wants her to be loyal to L'manburg. She remembers being confused, for she saw them both as the same. Wilbur is L'manburg and L'manburg is Wilbur, one cannot coexist without the other. A few months later, amongst the wreckage of her nation and a father's anguished screams, she'll realize too little too late how true her statement holds)

She doesn't find her heartbeat.

For a second she thinks she made a mistake. That she has her fingers in the wrong place, but no. A soldier knows where to look for life so that they may snuff it out. She can't be making a mistake.

Still, she presses her fingers down, harder this time, nails first, that blood draws, and sobs as she's still met with nothing.

She has no heartbeat.

She is dead.

She chokes. She clutches her chest, not because it hurts to know what she lacks in her chest, but because she remembers. Remembers it so intently, remembers it happening in the snap of a finger, literally, from a smiling God (and maybe it is quite a fitting end, for she goes out the same way she lived, giving second chances to men who don't deserve it) and how the world tilted as the ground slipped away.

But what's worse is the realization that comes after.

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find," she says.

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find because I didn't die," she says again, but weaker. More horrified. "I was teleported. I was on the holy lands when - "

"Teleported?' Wilbur interrupts. His features, just a second ago, eccentric and mad, turn curious. "Wait wait wait, hold on a second, are you telling me you were sent to Hell, Hell, on the fucking Holy Lands? "

Niki weakly nods.

It goes silent.

Suddenly, a snort. A snort that does not sound like it once did, back before the war for independence, before the election, before banishment, before it all, when all there was was a caravan and the worst of their worries was getting Sapnap a vegan hotdog. It's meaner, more shrill, and laced with a madness that seems to roll off his tongue so easily nowadays.

If she weren't watching how hard Wilbur's shoulders shake she'd have never guessed such a sound would come from him.

But there's something else about this snort that chills her to the core. Although she never could have imagined it coming from Wilbur doesn't mean she hasn't heard this kind of laugh before.

It's almost breathless, almost like something left on a stove, steaming, almost like the sound of -

(Dream and Wilbur worked together, both wanted L'manburg gone, both almost killed a kid, both cut off attachments, both lost trust in others, all things Niki has done too, and if Niki is like Wilbur and Wilbur is like Dream then that means - )

(No. Please, no)

"That is -," Wilbur wheezes, wiping away a tear. "That is horribly ironic."

"DreamXD!" She shouts, head tilted up. "Take me back! Take me back right now!"

Wilbur shakes his head. "Oh, no need to try that. I've been there. The whole shouting for help thing? Yeah, will do you no good. No one can hear you down here."

"DreamXD! I'm here!"

"Scream all you want, prime knows you don't need to breathe down here so nothing's stopping you from doing it for forever, but when your screams are all you hear for eternity… well, it'll drive any person mad."

"DreamXD," she shrieks. And her lungs don't shake, don't even give a small quiver, she knows it. Nothing in her does, for the gears don't need to be turning to keep this machine of a body that's been on autopilot since an explosion knocked her off her feet alive anymore. "Please!"

"You stop talking after a few years of just endless screaming for your voice becomes a reminder of your entrapment. But then the silence itself, after a few years, is unbearable. Yet you don't dare speak or make any noise, so it's just madness of a new kind."

She pushes her way past him and makes her way to the exit of her bakery. "I - I liked the magic trick, DreamXD! I really did! You - you can teleport me back now!"

"Too scared to make a noise, but too scared to keep quiet. So you stand still. Your body deteriorates, muscles numb from lack of use, and all you do is use your nails to scratch marks onto the walls to mark how many years have passed since… since absolutely nothing."

She stills. She slowly turns around.

(L'manburg is surrounded by a wall. A wall so mighty and tall she never thought she'd see the day it'd be torn down, much less by its own inhabitants. But this wall right here, the one between her and this old friend, this is a wall that will never meet the same end as its predecessor)

"Wilbur," she whispers. "What do you mean by years?"

Silence.

Wilbur has a far-away look in his eye.

(That look was born in a dirt hole on the side of a small hill and Niki doesn't learn that lesson for she builds her bakery in a similar place. Two places, so small, so cramped, started with hope, have become their worst downfalls, their unfinished symphonies. She parallels him in all the wrong ways)

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry. She was paralyzed before but now, with fear pumping through her veins, she runs. Fear is a more dependent motivator than strength or bravery could ever be, for fear, unlike any other heroic emotion, can't be beaten out of you. Can't be threatened out of you by a friend on your birthday as you try to stop him from pressing a button. Fear only grows, like a weed, you can try to get rid of it all you want, but it multiplies the more you struggle.

She finally gets to the exit, nearly throwing herself at it, only to find a stone wall staring back at her. It's been cemented shut.

She's trapped.

(She is in a cage, a zoo animal for Manburg citizens to point and laugh at. It is cramped, it is humiliating, and it is her home, her everything in wake of becoming nothing to people she once considered friends, Schlatt tells her. Until Quackity frees her. But there is no one to free her now. Except herself)

She pulls up her sleeves and begins mining with her bare hands.

She's been torn apart before, but at least it was quick. This, the way her flesh slowly peels off at each scratch is its own kind of torture. Not because it's painful, but the torture in knowing what you're willing to do to yourself just to see the sky again.

She keeps going.

(She does not throw up at the sight of chunks of flesh dangling where nail once was because she is a soldier and she has seen worse. Seen a child trapped in a box screaming for help and she's unfortunate enough to have a seat in the splash zone. Helped patch up Ponk's wound where his arm should be, afraid she might lose him to blood loss because whoever chopped his arm off didn't cut across the joint to avoid the bone and therefore had to hack again and again and again to get through the bone. Sewed Fundy's head back together from when Schlatt beat him over the scalp with a beer bottle before dying in the caravan; it took a couple of hours to finish because his fur made it hard to spot the bits of glass sticking out his skin. This is not the first or last time she will wash blood off her clothes, she just has to hope it will continue to be someone else's and not her own)

Wilbur comes up beside her. He doesn't even try to stop her, much less flinch at all the red on the wall. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Tommy did."

She snaps her head to him, her clawing ceasing. "Tommy was here?"

He nods. "Arrived a few years ago. I have to admit, when a space opened up here I thought it would be him again, not you. Not that I'm complaining. Don't get me wrong he's a good kid but, well, you know how Tommy gets."

(Everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever sworn to end; Schlatt, Tommy, and although you do not hate Wilbur or Jack you're relationship with them is complicated because they remind you of when you spiraled, you lot are all connected now, bound together from sharing the similar experience of death. She can never separate herself from them. Will be rever grouped in with the people she can't stand most)

"How long was Tommy here for?" She asks softly.

Wilbur clicks his tongue. "Two months I think."

She closes her eyes.

(She wanted to look deep into the crater Tubbo's nuke made and confuse Tommy's charcoal, burnt body for obsidian. She wanted to catch Tommy's choked last breaths in a bottle and get drunk on it every night. She wanted to leave spruce wood on his grave as a sort of flag marking her latest conquest. She wanted to stop thinking that if Wilbur was wrong for believing in Tommy then that means he might have been wrong for believing in her)

She doesn't want Tommy dead anymore and although they're still not friends even she wouldn't wish this on him.

"Two months," she says, and it sinks in.

Is that how long she'll have to wait until someone comes looking for her?

That is if someone even cares to look.

(Puffy doesn't respond to any of her messages after their first date. She turns Jack away when he tries to pull her back into the obsession of caving Tommy's head in. Everyone grieving L'manburg remembers her setting L'mantree aflame. Anyone in the Eggpire is too far gone to even care about themselves. She doesn't have a Tubbo. Isn't anyone's disk. She's just Niki, forgotten, ignored Niki, the first ghost of the server before Ghostbur. Why spare a glance at someone transparent? Someone, not all there?)

No one will come for her.

Wilbur cracks his fingers, and Niki winces, for her bones are still on flesh display and slowly repairing. "Well, now that we've played twenty questions let's move on to a new game. You up for some solitaire?"

She rises to her feet and numbly nods. She might as well have something to do to, to try and prevent the inevitable insanity with a card game.

Might as well accept her fate.

Wilbur reaches into his pocket and pulls out the cards. He sits down on the ground. "Sorry," he says. "I'd offer we play on a table but there are no tables in a train station and I doubt your bakery has one either." He hands her half of the deck. "Help me set it up."

But Niki doesn't take them, for she's focused on the word table because -

(There's a table, a weird table, made up of this block she's never seen before. It's sponge-like, with a hole on top decorated by a blueish-green frame, and she's about to ask where they found it when Phil suddenly apologizes for exploding her bakery. At her shocked expression, he explains he'd like to air out all possible tensions before starting their first-ever official Syndicate meeting so that no past grievances keep them from working as an effective team. Techno merely snorts, saying it's not their fault her bakery was on government land, and Phil responds by shooting him a glare fit for his title as Angel of Death. She'd have laughed, she'd have cried because such a look was once how Phil got Wil to eat his vegetables if it weren't for the fact she tells them they have nothing to apologize for. Tells them she left the oven on the day before the attack and by next sunrise, it was already burnt to the ground. Ranboo doesn't blink once from where he sits across from her as she talks. She sees in his eyes that day, how her laughs and her wails blend in with the chaos around her, as if it belongs there, as if she is one with it. And maybe she is, for the fire that consumes her bakery grows and grows and grows but Niki just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as if she has to sacrifice bits of herself to keep the fire going. Perhaps she is, for every monster requires an offering, and her bakery is that. A representative of the old her burning alive to make room for the new, merciless, unhinged her. Good. She looks down at the flint and steel in her hand and in the reflection of the metal she sees a boy with mismatched eyes standing behind her, staring. And then he takes out his book and writes. It feels like Ranboo has placed a noose around her neck. The memory fades and she holds her breath. She waits for him to say something, to call out her lie. This time, Ranboo undoes the knot. He looks away)

Because she needs to tell Ranboo she appreciated his silence that day. Needs to joke about how all this snow reminds her of an ice cream shop and watch Ranboo nervously laugh as she lightheartedly punches him on the shoulder.

Because she needs to know how that story Phil was telling her about his adventures with Techno on another server, something about an Antarctic Empire, ends. Needs to feed the crows with him to make sure he doesn't stare at their wings for too long.

Because she needs to braid Techno's hair one last time while they talk about how pink is clearly the superior hair color. Needs to thank Techno for giving her these becauses, for they wouldn't exist in the first place had he not offered her a place in the Syndicate.

Ironically enough, she always knew she'd die before she could give back all that she owed them. But only because what she owed them was too long a list, too difficult to be expressed in any way that captured what they deserved.

(Somewhere, in a snow biome, there is a family. They're different from each other, too different at times, and yet Ranboo and Techno could wear each other crowns, each fitting perfectly on their heads and no one would know of the switch, except for Phil of course. Right now they're probably looking at their comms around the dinner table, confused by the last message. 'Nihachu fell from a high place.' They aren't worried. Not yet. But in a couple of days, months for her, they'll start to pace. Phil will stand at the edge of the roof, ready to step off, only to remember he doesn't have wings, can't look for her high up in the sky like he used to when she was a kid. Ranboo will force himself through experiments, lose sleep, break himself in, trying to learn how to teleport so as to cover ground faster in the search, to do more than just let his powers go to waste when they could be what brings her home. Techno will grab her rainbow sweater and put it to Steve's snout, but the trail will go cold every time until eventually all of Niki's clothes don't smell like her anymore. They'll do this every day. Nothing will change but their hope, dwindling away each day. So will they just stare at that last message, her unintentional goodbye, looking for some sort of explanation? For some secret message? Some coordinates until they go mad? They won't think she's dead until they've found a body. Won't stop looking, won't leave a corner of the server untouched. Won't stop till they have something to bury)

She can't do that to them.

She slaps the cards out of Wilbur's hands.

"No," she growls, trying to sound tough and less like a kid throwing a tantrum. Perhaps slapping the cards away was not the best start. "I am not going to waste my time playing Solitaire when I could be spending it finding a way back home. And I will if it's the last thing I do."

Wilbur frowns. Niki has the inkling suspicion it has more to do with the cards being all scattered about than from her declaration. "There is no 'last thing I do anymore.' You dying was the last thing you'll ever do. All you have now is this. This is your forever. Our forever."

She turns away from him, just for a second. Away from the sight of his furrowed brows and the crinkles in the space between them where her index finger would go to poke as she teased him. Away from the scrunch of his nose she would joke made him and Techno finally look like twins. Because despite everything, despite all the months that have settled into their bones since the last they saw each other and the wars they've fought on land and in their minds, it's still Wilbur's face. But only in the physical sense. After that, he stops being her Wilbur.

This would be so much easier if his face had physically morphed into a stranger, to prove to her how much he's changed, what he's become over the months, is not all in her head.

Somehow, she finds a way to start.

"You know, not too long ago I'd have stayed with you here. I wouldn't have even put up a fight. I'd have just laid down, closed my eyes, and let the vines on these walls grow over my body until I was just moss. I was… I was so tired, Wilbur. A part of me always will be. I understood. I finally got why you acted the way you did. There was a time I was on half a heart and instead of eating I would - "

Her body begins to shake so hard she almost expects to look down and she cracks in the ground from an incoming earthquake. The only cracks see she's are her own.

She can't say it. Not like that. Not yet.

" - I would respawn to restock the hunger bar," Niki chokes out instead.

(She respawns with dried blood on the back of her head and bones still rattling from the fall. Along her jutting spine, in an almost perfectly straight line that could be confused for an unkempt path lost to weeds and drought, are bruises. She doesn't feel them. All she feels is the urge to do it again)

She blinks and her hand is in her hair, looking for the bump. She pulls her hand away as if it's a hot furnace. "But I can't stay. Things have changed. I've changed. This is not the first time something dark has tried to consume me, but I can't let it win this time. I can't let this place turn me numb and unhinged, or worse, content. Not when I have people to go home to. Not when - "

She looks down at her hand, the one that traced her scalp, and sees it has clenched into a fist.

(At the count of three, Niki throws rock. She groans as she notices all the other hands make paper. Ranboo and Techno exhale as if the losing sentence wasn't shoveling the front lawn, but death. Or worse, going shopping with Phil for a refrigerator to put in the Syndicate meeting room. Ranboo lost that one. Niki points at Techno's hooves and says it's cheating since they can't ever tell which shape he chooses. She demands a rematch with the same tone one uses to declare war. A few minutes later, they're shouting, going over the rules of rock, paper, scissors, and they only stop when Phil comes home and pulls out the dad voice. They begrudgingly agree to do a rematch another time, once they've cooled down. That was yesterday)

She holds her fist close to her heart. The hand was never her rock, it was always three men in a snowy cabin, handing her a mug of hot cocoa. "Not when I have a lawn to shovel."

Silence.

Then, Wilbur sighs. "You know," he says. He places his arms behind him and leans back to get a better look at her. Somehow, even on the ground, he looks to hold all the power. "Years ago your determination would have been a sight for sore eyes, but here's a reality check. I've been here for almost a dozen years. Eleven years of letting the passing train rip right through me in the hopes it would send me to another layer of hell or maybe propel, heck, even drag my body to the next station. But every time I'd wake up back in the train station as if nothing had happened. Like my body breaking under the wheels was nothing."

He is an avalanche, growing and picking up speed with each word, and Niki realizes, too little too late, she's about to be buried alive. She tries to step back, but Wilbur is up quick and approaching. "There is no escape. The limbo is our stage and we have our lines, our cues, but we do not have a curtain call. We just keep going and going, an endless loop. You can't not play your part. It won't let you."

"I have to at least try," she says.

"Why? What's the point? They'll never know you tried."

Her fear turns to disgust. "Is that why you think I'll try? For the sole reason that one day they'll know what I've done for them? That's far from the truth."

(People built statues of Tommy, for all he's done, for all the influence he had on this server. Niki knows they will not give her the same treatment. But that's fine, more than fine. All she needs is a grave in the snow, beside a little cabin)

She didn't want to look at Wilbur's face before, but now, glaring at him straight on, all she sees staring back is Phil.

The day they found out Wilbur didn't inherit Phil's immortality was the day Phil looked like he should, centuries-old instead of thirty-three, the age when angels stop physically aging. Niki will never forget how deep the lines on Phil's face ran. They might as well have been cracks. And maybe it was, for Phil was breaking as he held his dying son - not dying now, but for an immortal, every second a mortal breathes is just inevitable death - in his arms.

But what still haunts Niki the most after all these years are his eyes. They carried the weight of the world in them. She could feel it, even now, pressing down on her shoulders. All the wars, the fall of cities, the birth of them, children with big smiles and even bigger graves.

Niki was not a soldier yet. She was just a nine-year-old girl who wanted to sleep over at her best friend's house.

She threw up in their sink and they mistook it as her reaction to the news. She didn't correct them.

The only reason she slept easy that night was from the knowledge she would never see those eyes on Wilbur's face. And yet, lo and behold, here it is, like a punch to the gut.

Except now, Niki has had time to numb herself to it. It's hard to get surprised by such a dead look when it's on the face of your roommate.

(Phil's screech - no, not a screech, a caw, high pitched and grief-stricken - is like an alarm clock. Except, instead of Niki waking up to the rising sun outside her window, it's to moonlight and blinking stars. This is the fifth time this month she's met Ranboo and Techno outside Phil's cabin, armed to the teeth, ready for war. The door creaks open, loudly, but they don't wince, for they know it won't wake him. Nothing really does when he's in this state, except for one thing. Techno holds him down and it's weird, will always be weird, to see Techno use such force, such retaliation, on Phil of all people, and then Phil nearly throws Techno through the wall with just a brush of his fingers, and she remembers it's necessary. This isn't Phil they're dealing with, it's the Angel of Death. It takes a while until Techno can get all of the Angel's limbs down, but even then they know it won't last long, and that's when Niki throws a slowness potion on him. Ranboo, meanwhile, turns around all the photos of Wilbur in the room, a safe distance away. They told him it's best he handles that since he's built like a stick, putting him anywhere near a powerful avian would be an accident waiting to happen. It definitely has nothing to do with them freezing up whenever they see Wilbur's smiling face, all happy, and so very alive. Phil's movements turn sluggish as the potion kicks in and Niki holds his face, murmurs soft words, and Techno gives his own weird, but comforting, comments. Something about how Phil can't afford to lose sleeping beauty to these night terrors, what with his old age. Niki snorts. Phil's eyes open immediately. Phil sucks in a sharp breath, like he's forgotten how to breathe, his fist clenching and unclenching. The eyes are back. Based on Techno's face Niki knows then she's not the only person that has seen them. They look at each other, nod, and hold him as he cries. They don't need to ask. There's only one person that could cause such a look. They force Ranboo, who is awkwardly standing to the side, to join. Eventually, they break apart, and Techno coughs. He says he hates them for making this all emotional and bans such an awkward event from ever happening again. And yet, when Phil keeps waking up with eyes too dark around the corners, Techno is there. And so is she and Ranboo)

She will not be the reason Phil's eyes age another year.

"It's about Phil, Techno, and Ranboo deserving someone who will never stop trying to find their way back to them," she says, with conviction. "I'm sorry you're too twisted to see not all actions stem from reward or acknowledgment."

She expects a laugh, a glimpse at his forked tongue spewing words so sweet she could use them as sugar in her desserts, only to take a bite and realize it was salt all along. But what she gets is silence. The type of silence before a storm.

"Phil?" Wilbur whispers.

Niki closes her eyes.

She should have never said their names.

She also should have never opened her eyes again, because Wilbur is looking more like Phil each second. Not because of the eyes. No, worse. Because she sees a boy, a boy with his arms spread open wide and flapping about in an attempt at mimicking his father's wings, and they're both running around in circles in the backyard as he tells her how she'll never have to walk anywhere ever again. He'll carry her when she's tired, when she's not tired, whenever she wants wherever she wants. They stop running around in circles flapping their arms when too much time has passed and his wings still haven't grown in, but the acceptance that it never would did.

She blinks and the memory is gone. Slipping through her fingers like sand.

"How is he?" Wilbur says. His voice wavers a bit. He hides it quickly with a cough, but Niki catches it. Niki thought she always would.

(But then a button was pressed and she realized just how untrue that was)

Niki hesitates. She thinks about the night terrors again. She almost mentions them but falters as she remembers Ranboo telling her how it was Phil who gave him a place to stay after L'manburg was blown up for the last time. How as Technoblade hibernates there's a blanket over his shoulders that wasn't there before and a stick missing from the fireplace. How he always places Niki's plate of breakfast down before the others, as if he knows of her first canon death.

He is a kind man, but that is not why he does these things.

"He misses being a father," she settles on.

Wilbur's shoulders slump. Somewhere, in a different life, Niki's hand is there, squeezing comfortingly. "Is he… is he mad at me?"

"No." She answers quickly. "He's just tired, Wilbur. We all are."

Wilbur laughs. It sounds defeated. Mournful. "Understatement of the fucking year."

He slumps against the wall and Niki is sure it's the only thing keeping Wilbur on his feet. His head hits the smooth stone when he suddenly throws his head back and laughs. Niki doesn't know if she winces from the loud crack the impact makes or from the shrill, unhinged laugh.

"I told him to kill me," Wilbur chuckles. His eyes are blinking rapidly. "I told him to fucking kill me."

(The diamond sword has collected dust. Sometimes, everyone jokes, Phil looks like he has to. Playful teasing about how he's a walking antique that should be displayed in a museum. Phil always laughs them off. But it's moments when he stands too still, alone in his thoughts for too long, that Niki wants to put him behind glass with signs that say 'do not touch,' because all it takes is one gust of wind for an artifact to shatter. But that is no way to live and Phil is not so easily breakable. Worn down a bit, rusted from the loss throughout the eons, yes - who hasn't on this forsaken server? - but not breakable)

Niki thinks she might throw up. "I know."

Wilbur looks at her. His eyes are red, but there are no tears. "You said you understood me. You get why I had to ask him to do it."

"Wilbur - "

" - And so you also understand why you have to stay here."

"What?"

"We've changed Niki," Wilbur starts. "For the worse. Don't you feel it? How that server has destroyed every cell in our body? A slow painful death eating us from the inside out until we've just withered away into someone new, someone unrecognizable?"

(Niki feels she's in a never-ending house of mirrors. Constantly encircled by reflections that are her and not her staring back, each representing different points in her life. Some are unrecognizable, stretched, or squished beyond identification, like a fuzzy memory of a girl carrying a backpack, skipping down a path she was told by a best friend would lead to a nation with yellow and black walls. Some are too terrifying, demonizing her features, giving her slits for eyes and claws for nails holding flint and steel over TNT. All of them she wants to smash)

Wilbur either ignores the horrified expression on her face or doesn't see it. "We killed our old selves as a sacrifice, an offering, to the monster we saw lurking in the edges of our mind. And once you let the monster in there's no going back. All we know from then on is to destroy, to rip apart all we once held dear with no remorse until there's just ash and dust. We thrive, no, revel in it."

(Nemesis, she names herself. Goddess of divine retribution and revenge. Maybe that's who Niki sacrifices herself to. Why she felt such an attachment to the name. A remorseless Goddess said to have led Narcissus to a pool, knowing full well he'd be too captivated to leave his reflection for food or warmth. He died there. It's no coincidence a few weeks before she lived the story herself, leading Tommy to his death in the form of a hot blast of air at the speed of light and seeing it as justice)

"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says, voice shaking. She whirls around, nearly tripping over her feet, fully willing to ignore him as she looks for an exit.

But his next words make her go still.

"Phil didn't know what I'd become. That's why he had to be the one to do it."

She winces. "Don't."

"He didn't even pull out the sword, his arms were too busy holding me, holding me, as if the shape of me still fit against his chest even though I felt so hollow, so much thinner - "

"Wilbur - "

" - he stroked my hair too. Even though it was dirty and unkempt and a mess like everything else about me and I'm pretty sure his fingers got stuck a few times he just wouldn't stop untangling each knot with such care and precision that I remembered my last thought being - "

"Wilbur - "

" - could he have brushed away all the knots and twists in my soul like this? Cleaned me up on the inside like he's doing on the outside? I thought I went crying, Niki. Maybe I did. I'll never know because all I felt was his tears ricocheting on my face - "

"Stop - "

" - he tries to wipe them off. He's cursing at himself, apologizing profusely through hiccuping sobs and, and I don't understand why he's so sorry when it feels like, like when he'd lick his fingers and scrub the grimes of our faces after we played outside too long. Do you remember that Niki - "

"I don't wanna - "

" - because I do. We'd screech so loud, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary as we slapped his hand away and ran, but he'd always catch us a second later because of his wings. I don't wanna run away this time. I'm relishing it, craving every stroke because I'm starting to go cold - "

"Please - "

" - and I wish you weren't teleported here. I wish you had died instead - "

"Wil - "

" - so you would know, so we could relate to what it feels like for the limbo to claim you. To mark you. It's like, it's like being mutilated over and over again. A mallet to your bones, a hole in your brain, everything from your skin to your tendons unraveling before you - "

"Wil listen - "

" - spilling out and about like confetti, and you, you are confetti! You're shredded pieces, everywhere and nowhere all at once, and just as the mangling begins it stops, replaced by the limbo trying to put you, no, force you back together again. It's the same sensation, but in reverse, almost a loop, a tunnel with no light at the end, and all you can do is scream - "

"WILBUR SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

Something shatters

Wilbur falls silent.

Niki looks down. There is a puddle, slowly growing at her feet. She looks to her left. Her hand has punched through the aquarium. Blood trickles down her hand, some get over the glass. She doesn't pull her hand away.

"You never listen," she mumbles, but it seems so loud to her ears. "No one does. No one wants to. I talk and I talk and I talk and yet no response. Not even from the wind. I am a voice box stuck on rewind, repeating myself as life moves on without me."

Niki can hear her voice ring down the bakery, bouncing around with nowhere to settle. Until it does, in Niki's chest, rattling, crackling like a fuse has been lit, and perhaps it has, for her anger feels sizzling. "You used to always say how words were powerful. How they could stop wars, how they could build nations." She lets out a laugh. It burns her throat. "But what would I know?! You and everyone else never gave me a chance to use my voice! Always talking over me whatever chance you could. Even before Pogtopia you walked all over me! Even when I was screaming at top of my lungs you'd - "

She gasps. The glass presses deeper into her skin as her hand trembles. She does not feel it. "Oh primes, oh primes Wil, didn't you hear my screams? I came here screaming, Wil. I, I do know what it feels like for the void to take you. I still feel it, even now, why, why do I still feel it - "

Wilbur staggers to his feet, so quick he promptly falls. He catches himself halfway on Niki's wrist.

His hand scratches on the glass. He doesn't even flinch. Their blood mixes.

(They are one)

He doesn't even grip too tight, and yet it hurts. Stings. "You do understand," he grins. Wide, too wide for his face, that she almost expects his nose and eyes to sink into his skin to make more room. "You do, you do oh thank primes. I'm not alone in this. I've been alone for so long but now, now you're here and you understand! Oh, Niki, I'm so happy you're here."

"You're… happy, I'm here?" She mutters. "You're happy I'm dead?"

He nods frantically. "It's more than that Niki," he says. "DreamXD, whoever that man is, he's my hero for sending you here."

(Parallels between Wilbur and Dream and her and now Wilbur and Dream and DreamXD no no no she can't be them she can't she can't she won't she won't - )

"You don't mean it," she cries. "You don't mean that Wil. Say you don't mean it."

The grin, somehow, becomes wider. She realizes then his eyes don't have to disappear. They're already gone. Replaced by a black hole, too dark in the corners and its gravitational pull making it hard to look away even though she knows staring at it too long will get her sucked into an endless void.

He leans in close like he's sharing a secret. "I only wish he had sent you here sooner."

(Wilbur's life, Niki is realizing, is like a house of mirrors too. Except Wilbur has smashed every mirror. No, actually, not true. Niki sees, if she squints, that Wilbur has abandoned the sledgehammer and is observing a still intact mirror. He didn't keep the mirror depicting a little boy sitting on the steps of a home, their home, trying to play a song and failing because the guitar is too big for his body, but he refuses to buy a smaller one because "this is my Dad's guitar Niki! So, therefore, it's by default the best guitar in the world". Or the one of a father panting heavily on a couch, cursing his human legs while Niki is doubled over laughing because there is a baby fox is running on all fours around the house at 45 miles per hour who doesn't want to be put to bed. Nor the one of a leader, handing out purpose and meaning in the form of a blue and white uniform with a soft smile. No, it's the one of a man who's just pressed a button. Who long before L'manburg's destruction, always felt like he was breathing in smoke, but now kept warm by the ash and dust of his nation flying up to the red sky, it feels - for the first time in a long time - easier to breathe. Niki can't believe he didn't destroy it. He's… preserving it. Why is he preserving this version of himself of all things?)

foolish girl with dreams for a better nation, better server, better future, too much better somethings, you've ruined reality for no one but yourself. think for once about what is and not what was or could have been. he is different. changed for the worse. he's preserving it because he doesn't care about you. can't you see how happy he is over your death? how there's light in his eyes for the first time over yours being snuffed out? how he shows no sympathy in your entrapment here, forever away from Techno, Phil, and Ranboo because it benefits him. so give in and fight fight fight fight

She sees red.

Her fist collides with Wilbur's nose.

She doesn't even wait to hear the crack before she's already reeling back her arm for the next hit.

This time she aims for the jaw. She feels something split. It could be Wilbur's lip or bone. Maybe her mind. She doesn't know and she doesn't care.

What she does know is how familiar this is, having something break under her knuckles. It's easy, familiar even, throwing punch after punch, like some sort of autopilot response. Perhaps it is, for every punch is instinctive, out of body almost. No longer is there a before in the blows, only an after.

Except, that's not true. Not entirely. Because Niki is realizing why there is no before. Because before each blow there is always a struggle from your opponent. Flailing limbs trying to make contact with something, choked wheezes, an attempt to curl into a ball, and, sometimes, begging.

Wilbur does none of that. He's silent the whole time.

It's almost like he takes it willingly.

clever girl with hands too bruised, too scarred, too violent to ever be held so gently. a finger trained to pull the trigger is not meant to bear a promise ring. who's fault do you think that is? you've held back for so long, don't stop now. so give in and get revenge revenge revenge revenge

A swing at his eye. A swift kick to the ribs. A fistful of his hair so tight she could yank his scalp off if she twisted her wrist just so.

It's all a flurry of movements really, too fast for even her own eyes to catch. Half of the time she's lost on where the hits land, totally dependent on wherever the blood leaks the most and the bruises that weren't there a second ago to tell her. Eventually, the damage starts to blur, too much of his face has swelled up to spot any new marks and too many limbs bend at weird angles to differentiate what is and isn't broken, so she stops trying to guess.

Which is why she doesn't know which strike finally gets Wilbur to fall, all she knows is that he does. He doesn't even sway. One second he's on his feet and the next he's on his back.

It's kinda pathetic really, that this was her general.

For a second he's still, too still, and then he spits out a tooth. He licks his gums with a grimace, looking for the gap before finally speaking.

"I see Technoblade's been training you. Do you feel better now?"

clever girl who's seen her fair share of men with livewire tongues, spitting rogue sparks at your skin in the form of harsh words to quiet you down. do not be silenced once more. you let him speak before and it cost you a nation. this time silence him, and I will secure you a limbo without him. so give in and maim maim maim maim

She screams. She thinks she does. It's hard to tell over the deep reverberated banging of Wilbur's head against the stone floor.

The first slam simply causes blood to trickle down his forehead.

The second one caves in the front of his scalp.

The third one he's unrecognizable.

The fourth one there's nothing left to bash.

She keeps going anyway.

"Shut up," she pants between each crack and occasional splat. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."

Wilbur tries to say something. All that comes out is a gurgle, wet and sharp and loud. So very loud. And it keeps going, stringing along and along and along longer than the large chunks of skin and brain on the pavement. It shouldn't be possible, his mouth, along with everything else, is practically gone. Nothing but a small pit inside a bigger pit.

Yet it continues, getting increasingly louder in pitch.

And then she gets it.

He's scared.

clever girl of never-ending war zones, jumping from one horror to the next. this is the last one. and I know that's been said before but you can trust me. just end it and you can finally rest. wouldn't that be nice? so give in and kill kill kill kill kill

She smiles. It hurts her face.

She picks his head up from the ground one last time. She's humming, like a lullaby. Maybe it is. She's putting the baby to sleep. She knows he can't die again, but wherever he goes after this, if the limbo keeps its promise, it can't be pretty.

"I said," she laughs. "Shut up."

She brings his head down.

She blinks.

Her empty hand meets black stone slabs.

"Niki?"

She looks up and immediately regrets it. Everything is too bright, scorching, a burning gaze on every inch of her skin, but what really hurts are her eyes. She thinks they're sizzling, like actually sizzling, because her sclera feels as if it's bubbling and her iris is definitely melting into her brain and there are so many spots dancing behind her eyelids.

And then the voice, soft and familiar, speak's again.

"Do you have your stuff?"

It takes a while, and a lot of blinking, but her eyes eventually readjust.

She gasps.

The first thing she processes isn't that George and DreamXD stand just a few feet away or that it was George speaking. No, it was how absurdly colorful, everything was.

Here there was life. Life. It was like she poked her head through a kaleidoscope, what with how the specks of a rainbow illuminated itself in the clear blue water of the fountain and the sight of shimmering white quartz glistening under the sunbeams that poured through the purple-tinted windows. No longer was everything dulled around the corners and drained at the center like anything in her dreadful, cramped space of a bakery she shared with -

Oh primes.

Her bakery.

This isn't her bakery. This is Church Prime.

"She's back," DreamXD exclaims. He turns to George, bouncing on his heels excitedly as if expecting some sort of reward, but George pays him no mind/ He's too busy looking at Niki, or, more so, through her.

"What happened?" He asks.

She opens her mouth, then slams it shut.

She's alive. Dear primes, she's alive and she's back and she should be happy, cheering, jumping up and down to feel the livelihood ache in her bones but…

She looks back down at the floor. The floor should be covered in blood. Wilbur's blood, and his bits of flesh and tissue and muscle and -

Oh primes. What has she done?

Or better yet, what didn't she do?

"George," she whimpers. "I don't know what's going on. I, I don't know what's going on here."

She hopes it was her imagination. It had to have been. Otherwise, she hosted Wilbur's head up by the splits of his hair, pushed down as hard as she could and -

She wouldn't. She couldn't, not anymore at least. She left that side of herself in a gate full of slaughtered chickens as Jack demanded they try and kill Tommy again. That side of her is as dead as those chickens.

Right?

She prays so, for this is a church after all, and that means prayers have to be answered here. They have to come true. They have to.

There's a smile in DreamXD's voice when he speaks again as if he knows how much this torments her. "I sent her to hell and then I brought her back."

No.

She sobs. She looks down at her hands. Their bear and yet they feel so heavy. As if the ghost of Wilbur's blood and gore is still there, a new thick-coated layer of skin.

She tortured him. Broke him brick by brick again and again and again even as he tried to beg. Her best friend, her general, her family, begging at her feet, and she kept going, would have kept going too, with an ear-splitting grin, like it was some sort of game.

And it had felt so good to finally get a checkmate.

Wilbur is not a demon. He's just seen too much in too little time. Too much pressure on too little shoulders. Too tired to be all there. It's not an excuse for all the pain he's caused, far from it, but it shows his actions didn't come from a place of malice, but rather a cry for help. Niki knows this, she gets it, and she'll say it time and time again. But all she could think about at that moment, before the final strike, was how happy Wilbur was about her death. He deserved a piece of her mind, but not like that. Never like that.

What is wrong with her?

No, no it wasn't her. It was that place, that voice. It was a parasite, burrowing deep within her brain and planting itself in the center, telling her what to do and what to say. Telling her to slaughter left and right. It was so loud, rattling around in her head and echoing like war drums. She couldn't just ignore it, it was too much. So, no, she is free of guilt, free of responsibility, hands all clean.

But she knows that at the end of the day the host still needs to be somewhat conscious for the parasite to thrive.

Oh primes. Is this what Techno deals with every day?

Then, she jumps to her feet.

Techno, Phil, and Ranboo.

It's coming back now, that memory of fury in her eyes, that fire in her voice as she told Wil she had people to go back to. How she was willing to claw her fingers down to bone to make an exit. But that voice, that stupid stupid voice, it told her she could rest, could get revenge, and against her better judgment she listened. It caught her at a moment of weakness, Wilbur's words of memory lane, of Phil, of everything that came before and after his death, she was at a low point. And like a moth to a flame, she was there one moment and gone the next. Back to the old her.

She thought she had left that version of herself behind when she joined the Syndicate. She was so sure she was getting better with Techno, Phil, and Ranboo around.

But all it took was one voice to ruin all her progress.

Her chest constricts and her head feels heavy.

She needs to find them. She needs to tell them what she saw. She needs to tell Phil. She needs… she needs…

She just needs them.

"What did you see?" George says, snapping her out of her thoughts.

This time, her mouth has no problem moving. "George," she starts, voice trembling. "I have seen things. I... I... I have seen things. I don't know what's going on here but I don't know if I should - "

Niki gulps. It's getting so hard to breathe. She should feel thankful that she can breathe in the first place, but every inhale stings as her lungs try to remember to do a motion so foreign to her.

How long has she been down there?

She doesn't want to know.

She just wants to go home.

She walks away, backward, from the two, eyes fixated tightly on them and barely blinking. She remembers the last time she let her guard down around DreamXD. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry George. Good luck with him but I - "

She doesn't finish, because she's already out the door. She wants to run, but she's so sure her lungs would explode at the first push forward of her heel. So she walks.

And walks.

The world walks with her, with each rotation. As if they’re friends taking a stroll. As if it hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her whole, chewed up everything good in her and spat her out when she turned bitter. Returned her back to a world that didn’t change one bit while she was gone, despite her herself changing so much.

It’s like what happened to her didn’t happen at all.

And then she realizes a horrible thing.

Everyone on this server is going to see today as a normal day.

Is it bad that a part of Niki wishes something like the Green Festival could happen right now, so that they could all feel the monstrosity of today?

She stands still. Stationary, like this Earth wants her to be. She thinks she could do it, stay like this forever. She feels numb enough.

Somewhere above, a crow caws.

She burst into tears.

#dream smp #fanfic #fic #niki nihachu #wilbur soot #technoblade #philza #ranboo #the syndicate #the syndicate are found family because I said so #dsmp #niki #niki fic #niki nihachu fanfic #niki fanfic #dream smp fanfiction #dream smp fanfic #dsmp fanfic

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vengfulfate · 3 years ago

Text

The Malachite's Shady Past

Canon to 'Both of Them, and Only Them'

Melanie and Miltiades are on edge as the team arrives in Mistral. A past they would rather forget becomes unavoidable, and Ruby learns more about her girls than any of them expect.

AN - When I ended 'Both of Them, and Only Them' I stated that I may make one-shots in this continuity if I can think of scenes worth exploring. This is one of those one-shots.

---

Jaune, Ren, Nora, Ruby, and the Malachite twins followed Ruby’s uncle Qrow out of a tunneled walkway and into a crowded marketplace filled with as many cheery, colorful people as it was filled with dark corners for slightly shadier transactions. “The City of Mistral.” Qrow introduced the city the group with an exaggerated flourish with him arms.

“About time!” The ever boisterous Nora proclaimed. “Seriously, whose idea was it to walk again?” she continued, staring pointedly at Ruby.

Ruby nervously rubbed the back of her head. “Well, it’s not like there were any airships out of Vale at the time… and I seriously though it would only take a few weeks.”

“At the same time,” Melanie picked up, “you really thought it would only take a few weeks?”

“Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” Ruby frowned.

“Maybe once my feet stop hurting,” Melanie teased.

“Oh, well…” Ruby stuttered. “I could, um… give you a foot massage? Isn’t that a thing couples do? Or would that be weird?”

Qrow interrupted, “what’s weird is you discussin’ that right next to the rest us. Save it for the hotel.”

“Right,” Ruby nodded, turning bright red.

“Sooo…” Jaune cut in, desperate to change the subject, “how much further to Haven Academy?”

“Almost there,” Qrow informed them, “but I figured I’d take you kids on the scenic route.”

“But I’ve already got my tour guides!” Ruby boasted proudly.

“You do!?” Nora replied loudly.

“Mel and Miltia were born here,” Ruby confirmed.

“Really?” Jaune asked, his brow cocking. This was the first any of them heard of it their entire hike here.

“Well, yes,” Miltiades answered tentatively.

“But it’s been a few years since we left,” Melanie continued for her sister.

“Years? Musta left pretty young,” Qrow deduced. “Are you orphans or something?”

The twins’ gazes deterred, clearly uncomfortable with the line of questioning.

“That was a little blunt, Qrow,” Ren lightly scolded in his calm tones, less to reprimand Qrow and more to support the twins’ silence.

“Sorry,” Qrow played along.

The group continued forward, talking about the city. Seeing the chance of a quiet moment, Ruby fell behind a bit for a small semblance of privacy with her girlfriends. “Hey, are you two okay?”

“We’re fine, Ruby,” Melanie smiled.

But Ruby could tell it was a little forced. “You know you can talk to me, right? Even if you don’t… it’s okay to not be okay.”

“I promise, Ruby, we-” Melanie was suddenly stopped by Miltiades. The twins had one of their infamous silent conversations that ended with Melanie sighing. “It’s… a lot to take in. Being back here. Maybe we’ll elaborate later, but not in the street.”

“Whatever makes you feel comfortable,” Ruby assured. The young redhead then decided on a joke to break the tension, “Maybe we can talk while I practice my foot massage?”

It succeeded in bringing a small smile to Melanie’s and Miltiades’s faces. “We’ll see, Gem.”

A few streets later another shadow fell over Miltiades face. “What is it now?” Ruby asked, following her girlfriend’s line of sight to some nearby graffiti in the shape of a spider. “What’s that?”

The twins shared another concerned look. “It’s a gang sign,” Miltiades finally answered.

“And not a good one,” Melanie added. “We should probably catch up with the rest of the group.”

The twins cast a sly look backwards, looking for anyone following them. To their relief, they spotted no one. Unfortunately, that was only because their tail had already broken off, eager to deliver the information they had gained.

---

Things at Haven Academy did not go nearly as well as Qrow had hoped. A fact that sent the aged Huntsmen to the bars while everyone else went back to their hotel. It was a spacious booking, with rooms aplenty and a common area for the group. The twins and Ruby picked a room to settle in, and after months camping as a group on the road, they cherished the opportunity to cuddle alone behind closed doors.

Ruby was the first to break the silence. “So… you two don’t have to say anything… but we are alone now?”

Melanie sighed.

Ruby winced. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s not you,” Melanie assured. “It’s just not happy memories.”

Ruby shifted until she was sitting up with her back against the headboard. “Do you not like being back…?”

Melanie was unsure how to respond. Miltiades ended up being the one to answer, “we like being with you, wherever you are.”

“I’m sorry if I seem pushy,” Ruby continued. “It’s just that when Qrow said… what he said… it made me realize I don’t know anything about before you moved to Vale.”

“You’re right,” Melanie snapped, “you are being pushy.” The brasher twin suddenly stood up and marched out onto the room’s private balcony.

“Mel!” Miltiades called after her sister. Ruby shrank and emotionally folded in on herself, making the milder twin frown. “She’s not mad at you, okay?”

“She seems mad at me,” Ruby countered.

“Let me go talk to her,” Miltiades offered, standing up herself. “We’ll be right back.” Miltiades didn’t like leaving Ruby alone in her poor mood, but this conversation was one the twins had to have, sooner rather than later. She stepped out onto the windy balcony, noting how much ambient noise the door managed to block. She saw her sister leaning on the railing by the far edge. “Are you okay?”

“I just… wasn’t expecting this to come up,” Melanie explained.

“You thought we could get into and out of Mistral without it ever coming up?” Miltiades pointed out.

“Well, I didn’t know how long we’d be here!” Melanie defended. “I was hoping for an afternoon, maybe. In and out and on to the next place…”

“Even if it was years down the road, she would have asked us about our history eventually,” Miltiades argued. “And… I think she deserves to know.”

“I know that,” Melanie sighed. “But what do we say? ‘Our mom is a dead crime boss and the Spider gang are the ones who killed her’?”

“Maybe not be so blunt…” Miltiades added nervously. “But we have to say something. With everything else going on… the last thing she needs to worry about is us.”

Melanie sighed again, her face dropping into her hands. “Alright… just… give me a minute to mentally prepare.”

Miltiades nodded and reentered. Ruby hadn’t moved, and her mood hadn’t improved either. She looked up, quickly noting that Miltiades was alone. “So she is mad at me…”

“No, it’s just a difficult subject,” Miltiades assured. “She just wants a minute to compose herself.”

Ruby nodded. Miltiades sat back on the edge of the bed, the anticipation for the coming conversation raised her nerves as well.

All the pair could do was stay silent while they waited. And waited. And waited… Eventually, Ruby broke the silence, “did she say how long she would take?”

“No,” Miltiades shook her head, “but it shouldn’t have been this long…” The timid twin slowly stepped back out onto the balcony. The empty balcony. Instead of Melanie, there was only a piece of paper pinned to railing where she had been a moment before.

“Oh no…” Miltiades bolted over to the paper. Reading it made her heart drop. She gazed hard into the darkening surroundings as dusk turned to night. “MELANIE!”

The shout had Ruby dashing out onto balcony. “What’s wrong?” Ruby’s trained eyes were distracted a glint on the balcony floor. She knelt down to pick up a tranquilizer dart. She stood back up and turned to Miltiades. “Where’s Melanie?”

Miltiades didn’t speak, she only held out the paper. A note signed with the image of a spider.

Miltiades Malachite,

The Spider’s Web

One hour

Bring the redhead

---

Ruby and Miltiades gathered the others in the common room to update the lot. Nora and Ren looked concerned. Jaune looked angry. Qrow was conspicuously absent.

“Why on earth would they do this?” Nora asked after the explanation.

“I don’t know,” Miltiades answered.

“Are you certain?” Ren followed up. “The two of you have been nervous since we got to the city.”

“Does this have anything to do with what you two wanted to talk to me about?” Ruby tacked on.

Miltiades bit her lip. “We do have a… past, with the Spiders. But that’s all it is! The past!” she quickly assured. “I really don’t know why they would attack us now! They have no reason too,” Militades turned to her girlfriend before adding, “I promise.”

“And what about the part where they want Ruby to come?” Jaune pointed out. “That Tyrian guy wanted to kidnap Ruby. What if this is about our enemies?”

“We need Qrow,” Nora added.

“But where is Qrow?” Miltiades questioned.

It was Ruby’s turn to sigh heavily. “If he’s not back already, he’ll be no help by now.”

“We have to do something!” Miltiades urged. “What will they do to her if we don’t show up!?”

“So what, the five of us just go our own? To face Mistral’s most powerful street gang?” Jaune shook his head.

“And why not!?” Nora jumped up. “Just a week ago we killed a massive, terrifying Grimm no one else had ever even seen before! We can handle a few thugs!”

“I… wasn’t serious, Nora,” Jaune clarified.

“Well I was!” Nora stood her ground.

“We needn’t fight,” Ren pointed out. “We merely need to secure Melanie and escape.”

“But not fighting is boring,” Nora whined.

“Nora,” Ren lightly scolded.

Ruby crossed her arms. “Miltia is right, though. We have to do something. And Qrow’s not gunna be able to help, so it has to be us.”

Jaune groaned. “This is a bad idea. But I don’t think we’re gunna find a better one, so… let’s go.”

---

It didn’t take long to find The Spider’s Web. It was a bar in one of the city’s lower tiers, mainly populated by people who had no where else to go and staffed by the Spider Gang itself. It was more a base of operations hidden in plain sight rather than an actual drinking establishment. A fact made all the more clear by the small army of people guarding the entrance as the group approached.

A girl near the front took a step forward to greet them. “You can stow the grimaces, we just wanna talk.”

“Talk!?” Miltiades shouted, “and what, kidnapping my sister was a polite invitation!?”

“Would a cordial letter have convinced you to come?” The girl pointed out. “Look, we don’t want a fight. You’ll all be free to go after my boss has said her piece. Scout’s honor.”

“Like you’ve ever been a scout,” Jaune shot off.

The girl gave him an amused look. “I bet that sounded a lot more macho in your head, huh? But I get it.” She turned to Ruby, “as a show of good faith, we’ll even let you keep your weapons. But only you two are coming in, and after my boss says her piece this will all be over. No bloodshed.”

“You’ll think we’ll let you just separate us!?” Nora shouted.

The girl rolled her eyes. “I think you don’t have much room to negotiate. We’ve been generous enough letting you keep your weapons. You want the girl back, these are rules.”

Ruby thought for a moment before speaking up. “Two questions.”

“Can’t promise I’ll answer, but go ahead,” the girl conceded.

“Do the names Cinder or Tyrian mean anything to you?” Ruby asked first.

The girl flashed a confused look. “No?”

“And Salem?” Ruby questioned next.

“Isn’t that a movie character?” The girl responded, scratching her head.

Ruby searched the girl’s eyes for any hint of a lie, and found none. “Alright, we’ll follow your rules.”

“Are you sure, Ruby?” Ren asked.

“Just be ready,” the young leader told them. “If you so much as hear a plate drop, all bets are off.”

“We’ll be sure to give the clumsy waitress the night off,” the girl joked. “Come on, you two.”

---

Miltiades and Ruby were led into bar. It was full of Spider gang members, barring one familiar figure seated at a table near the back wall. “Melanie!”

The captured twin spun around at the sound of her name. “Miltia? Ruby? What are you two doing here?”

“Getting you, of course!” Miltiades hugged her sister as though she would vanish again if she let go.

The formally trained Ruby was the one to ask, “are you okay?”

“A little lightheaded from whatever they shot me up with,” Melanie answered. “Other than that, they’ve been treating me surprisingly well. But how did you two find me?”

“We were invited,” Melanie told her. “Apparently, the boss wants a word.”

“With us and Ruby?” Melanie found it hard to believe. “Why?”

“‘Why’ is a good question,” Ruby crossed her arms. “For example, ‘why’ do you two have a ‘history’ with a gang?”

Melanie’s fists clenched. The softer hearted Miltiades once again had to pick up the slack. “Our mother was a big player in Mistral’s underworld. The Spider’s were her lifelong enemies.”

“You told Yang you didn’t get involved in stuff like that,” Ruby reminded them.

“And we don’t!” Miltiades assured.

“When we were children, we didn’t know any better,” Melanie explained. “As we grew older, we realized we didn’t like watching over our shoulders all the time. People around us were constantly being hurt.”

“Or doing the hurting,” Miltiades added.

Ruby’s stance softened as she took in the story. “So… you two moved to Vale alone… and a moment ago you said ‘was’ when talking about your mom…”

“She disappeared,” Melanie elaborated. “Around the same time, the Spider’s started combing the streets. They were even spotted in the upper tiers, all the way up to the academy. We didn’t so much move to Vale as we escaped there.”

“We didn’t want to believe the rumors at first,” Miltiades picked up. “But the longer without so much a letter… it’s pretty obvious what happened.”

“I’m disappointed, girls. I thought I taught you better…”

The voice made the twins freeze. Ruby turned a curious eye to the source. A broadly built woman stepped out of the back room wearing a simple yet clearly expensive ball gown with open shoulders showing a spider tattoo on one of them. She approached the table with a wide smirk on her face. “Always confirm the body.”

The spell broke, and Melanie leapt up from her seat with an angry “You!?”

The woman let out a single chuckle. “Me.”

Ruby was utterly lost. “Who?”

Miltiades finally unfroze herself, though still couldn’t tear her eyes away from the Spider’s boss. “That’s…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

The woman turned to Ruby to introduce herself. “My friends call me Lil’ Miss. These two, however, call me ‘mother’.”

---

The awkward silence after that little reveal persisted long enough for everyone to be seated and served surprisingly well made food. Only the mother touched their dish. The girls were either feeling to awkward (Miltiades), too angry (Melanie), or just too confused (Ruby) to think about eating. “Well, it’s not going to bite you,” the mother Malachite chuckled. “Eat up!”

“Why?” Melanie asked.

“What else do you do with food?” Lil’ Miss joked.

“I mean, why are you here?” Melanie’s hand slammed the table. “Why gather us? Why… just why!?”

“I heard you were in town,” Lil’ Miss told her, “and I missed my girls! I am sorry about the methodology, but I knew you two wouldn’t trust a Spider’s courier.”

“Did you really think that we would just treat this like a happy family reunion?” Melanie scoffed.

The mother slowly lowered her fork. “Perhaps that is a little optimistic of me. Very well, I’m sure you have questions.”

“Why did you never tell us you were alive?” Miltiades jumped in right away.

“Did you think it was a secret you two wanted out?” Lil’ Miss asked in turn. “My disappearance was part of an elaborate plan to take control of the Spiders. I launched an attack, then vanished. The spread themselves thin trying to follow every rumor I planted.” She smirked, “too thin. Next thing they knew their leadership was gone and it was either join me or join them.”

Ruby shuddered at the implication.

“Anyways,” Lil’ Miss continued, “one of those false rumors reached your own ears. By the time the plan was finished, you two had already left. Like I said, I knew you wanted out, so I let you be. I figured contactin’ you would only complicate your lives in ways you were tryin’ to escape.”

Melanie scoffed again. “Are you seriously trying to say you let us think you were dead because you cared?”

“I resent that accusation,” Lil’ Miss frowned. “I may not have been the best mother to you girls, but you are my flesh and blood. How do you think you got that job with Junior, hm? After everyone else turned you down, somehow the less-reputable man was the one eager to hire you?”

“I thought it was because of his nature he took a chance on us,” Miltiades admitted.

“Well, I couldn’t order him to take you in,” Lil’ Miss clarified, “but he did hear one hell of a recommendation.”

“And you’ve been keeping an eye on us ever since?” Melanie questioned.

“Of course,” Lil’ Miss nodded. “It broke my heart when Beacon fell. With the communications down, I couldn’t check up on you. I was worried sick. When a Spider spotted the three of you in the markets, I knew I had to see you.”

“The three of us?” Ruby caught.

Lil’ Miss’s smile returned. “What mother isn’t interested the person that captures their children’s hearts? Circumstances aside, it is nice to finally meet you, Ruby Rose.”

“Um, it’s nice to meet you too?” Ruby returned unsurely.

“I’m sure it isn’t, but I appreciate your kindness,” Lil’ Miss responded honestly. “I just hope you’re treating my girls alright.”

“Better than you ever did,” Melanie jabbed.

Lil’ Miss frowned once more. “I suppose I do deserve that one. I told myself I was doing it so you two wouldn’t struggle in life. I didn’t see how it was affecting you in the then and there.”

The topic ran dry, and the awkward silence returned. “Are you going to eat?” Lil’ Miss eventually asked.

“Do we have a choice?” Melanie asked.

Lil’ Miss sighed. “You can leave anytime you want.”

“Good,” Melanie stood.

“But please,” Lil’ Miss insisted. “Just humor me. One meal with my daughters…”

Melanie only stopped to spare her mother a dirty look before continuing to the door.

“Wait!” Ruby called out.

Melanie stopped. “You’re going to defend her? She’s a crook, Ruby, you basically just heard her admit to killing people!”

“Well, I know if my mom came back to life I wouldn’t care what she’s been doing the last ten years,” Ruby pointed out. “Well… I mean I would, but… you know what I’m saying.”

Miltiades shook her head. “Your mother was a saving people by day, baking cookies by night super-mom. Ours isn’t exactly in the same league.”

“But…”

“Ms. Rose,” Lil’ Miss interrupted. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but the girls are right. I only have myself to blame for their opinion of me.” She stood to face Melanie eye-to-eye, “but if you ever change your minds, I’ll be right here.”

Ruby frowned. She couldn’t say she understood, but she knew it wasn’t her choice.

“C’mon,” Miltiades took their girlfriend’s arm to guide her out. “We have people waiting for us anyways. I’m surprised Nora hasn’t already started breaking legs.”

The scene in front of the bar hadn’t changed much, an eerily still standoff with all people in the same places as a half an hour ago. “See?” The girl guard from before spoke to Jaune, “your friends are safe.”

“What happened?” Jaune asked the three of them.

The twins stayed silent. Ruby only responded with a, “just… don’t ask.”

Jaune was perplexed, but more than that he was happy that his friends were safe, so he took the advice and didn’t question it.

---

When the group got back to the hotel, they were greeted by the sight of a drunk Qrow and a farmhand with familiar eyes. “Where the hell have you all been!?” Qrow slurred.

“Where were we? Where were you!” Jaune countered. “We coulda used your help two hours ago!”

“I…” Qrow started firmly before a grin spread across his drunk face, “…found him.”

“Found who, the kid?” Nora asked.

“I found him…” Qrow chuckled and then practically cheered, “I found him!”

“He’s talking about me,” the kid confirmed.

“And you are?” Jaune questioned.

“Well, you might this hard to believe, but in a way… I am-”

“Nope,” Ruby interrupted, b-lining toward the farmhand. “No, no, no, no, no, no.” She repeated the word until she reached the boy and planted her hand over his mouth. “We have had a very long night. Some,” she gestured to the twins, “longer than others. I don’t think we’re ready for yet another head-spinning revelation, so please, is there any way this can wait for tomorrow?”

The boy looked from side to side, as though listening for something, before slowly nodding.

“Thank you!” Ruby sighed in relief. “Girls, let’s go cuddle.” Melanie opened her mouth, only to be cut of as well, “and before you say you’re not in the mood, I remind you that I am an expert in cuddles, and after that, you two definitely need some.”

Melanie chucked and smiled. “I was going to say cuddles sound nice,” she assured. The twins followed Ruby upstairs, finally, to some proper peace and quiet.

---

A few days later, Lil’ Miss was starting her day with the newspaper. She read about how a group of faunus straight from Menagerie stopped the White Fang from carrying out a terrorist attack on Haven Academy. She also knew Ruby, and by extension her daughters, had business in Haven that night. She wondered if the two events were connected.

As she mused over the printed word, a customer entered her bar. A giant monster of a man, tanned, and with rather magnificent mutton chops. “Looking for information?”

“People,” the man corrected in deep tones. He tossed forward a few pictures. Lil’ Miss was an expert in hiding her emotions, which came in handy as she recognized the people in an instant. Ruby Rose and the people she was travelling with.

“Come back in a day or two,” Lil’ Miss told him.

“A day or two?” The man questioned.

Lil’ Miss shook her head. “There are a lot of people in Mistral. I only keep eyes on the important ones. These people are not important. It will take me time to gather the info, but trust me, I will find them.”

“Very well. Two days.” The man left without another word.

The same girl that traded barbs with Jaune a few days before turned to Lil’ Miss. “I assume we won’t be telling him they’re headed for Atlas?”

“Of course not,” Lil’ Miss answered. “But we have two days to make a believable lie. I hear Vacuo is nice this time of year.”

“People don’t like being sold false info,” the girl pointed out.

“Then we won’t sell it,” Lil’ Miss nodded. “We don’t need his money anyways. We just need to steer him clear of my girls. Make sure there’s room for error in the info packet, just in case.”

“Clever, ma’am. I’ll get right to it.” The girl left to perform her duties.

Lil’ Miss looked back down to the pictures, eyes passing over her daughters in turn before settling on Ruby. “What kind of enemies do you have, Ms. Rose? It’s up to you to keep my daughters safe. I hope you’re up to the task.”

---

I understand I just implied something that has to potential to cause much larger changes to RWBY's narrative. That realization, that Lil' Miss might not want to endanger her children, is precisely what I wanted to acknowledge here. However, I have neither the creativity nor the investment to follow a full fic exploring those changes. So I apologize, but this will remain a one-shot.

#rwby #fanfiction #ruby rose #melanie malachite #miltiades malachite #Ruby x Twins #polyamory

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daintykeith · 4 years ago

Text

RUN KID RUN

Title: Run Kid Run

Summary: Dutch and Hosea are trying to teach John how to read but he runs off after they got frustrated and Arthur goes deep into the woods looking for John.

Word count: 2298

Notes: mild cursing | brief scene despicting an almost hanging | feedback is appreciated!!!

Tags: @onlytherocksliveforever

Happy late Christmas and Happy new year! I’m sorry I’m so late, this took me forever; I’ve been giving it a long thought and decided to comply to your second item in your wish list!

2) i love DUMB ASS John Marston and his better looking brother Arthur; give me a slice of life with the two of them pre-canon, or a story about them helping the other thru a tough time.

I’ve decided to combine both ideas and so this story came to be.

When Arthur was twenty-three, he saw a boy—dirty, savage and with a look in his eyes that had given up on living. This boy was with a rope in his neck, ready to be hanged. Dark gray with no reflection but death itself; no tears, no regret. Dead Eyes that held onto dear life with a fierceness reflected in his fists.

Next to the boy, an unnamed man spoke words of dead wisdom and nonsense which to the eyes of Arthur was meaningless.

“We have come to see the of law enacted. We will not sit idly by as people take the law into their own hands!”

Heavy kind of bullshit that Arthur didn’t enjoy a bit.

The crowd of the town roared loudly in excitement and agreement. For them, it was only entertainment, a show that made Arthur’s gut churn with anger. He tilted his hat lower and turned around, ready to move on. However, Dutch’s hand landed on his shoulder and stopped him.

“He looks like you did, a while ago,” Dutch said with a smirk before the gun in his hip shot the rope on the boy’s neck.

“He doesn’t.”

The boy’s shine returned in a glimpse that Arthur caught with both his eyes and heart. A will to fight and survive, to get the hell out of the mess that was about to start.

“What the hell Dutch?!”

“He was not meant to. Not yet.”

A sense of relief in his chest appeared with a long deep breath. He was glad for the boy that had gotten a chance to live, what was Dutch and Hosea thinking when they brought him into camp?

Arthur got wounded in the dirty fight they had in town for freeing the boy and he was resting in his tent, with Susan on his side cleaning his injuries. When Dutch and Hosea walked in, he asked: “What took ya’ so long?” with a warm grin that quickly faded into disbelief.

The boy stood between the two men, pouting his lips, frowning and crossing his arms as means to make himself more intimidating. The way Dutch smiled, looked and treated him with his gentle gestures and Hosea had given his jacket to protect him from the chilling breeze of that night was so familiar to Arthur; he had been in that place after all. What was that boy doing in camp? Similar to himself in the past, why did they needed to bring someone as intense and dumb as him? Wasn’t one dumb enough? He wondered.

“What’s your name, kid?” Arthur asked after he noticed Dutch’s gaze on him.

The boy stood silent.

“Come on boy, tell him.” Dutch crouched to his side and whispered words to him that Arthur wasn’t able to hear.

He remained silent.

When Arthur was twenty-four, he met the boy. A month had passed from his rescue and Arthur’s birthday quickly arrived with the cold and mean air of winter. There was no snow landscape yet, the skies had become dark and gray like the boy’s eyes and the fallen leaves

“John Marston,” the boy said with a mean streak that left Arthur with a bad taste in his tongue.

“Arthur Morgan.” He extended his hand to greet but John had already abandoned and left him with the words unsaid in his lips.

Arthur sighed and placed his hands on his gun belt; he could see John’s silhouette far away, hiding somewhere where he thought no one could see him, and grinned. A part of him still refused to acknowledge John, prouder than a bull and wilder than a cougar in a midnight sky, and another part of him found itself in that boy who slept with a knife under his pillow.

“John, come here!” Dutch called the next morning.

Arthur was laying in comfortably in his bed, with his worn-out leather hat covering his eyes, thinking about what to draw in his journal. A bird? A flower? An herb? His imagination was as dull as dishwater and his brain couldn’t tell skunks from house cats. Boredom was partly guilty of the dullness, too.

“John, come on.” From his closed tent, Arthur saw how Hosea’s figure grabbed John’s arm and took him somewhere beyond the reach of their shadow. A loud growl, from the boy, echoed through the whole camp that Arthur scoff. The boy was that stubborn?

The blue-eyed man closed his journal, stood up from his bed and walked out of his tent to do the chores of the day. As he chopped wood, he could see Dutch and Hosea, with John between them, sitting together in one of the round tables near the food station with a book in hand. This was going to be fun to see, Arthur thought.

“Okay, let’s try this again,” Dutch said firmly. “Read this part here.”

“No,” John scowled.

“Why not? It’s not that hard if you try. Here. The king in his…” Hosea slowly talked

John went silent.

“Boy,” Dutch lowly growled.

Arthur swung his axe over the log and splat it in half. When he was putting the wood aside, he peeked at John. The boy had his arms crossed, frowning and giving the book in the table a deadly gaze. Did he hate reading that much? Arthur laughed to himself and got caught by Hosea who looked at him with disapproval. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. He tried to slowly walk away, feigning ignorance, but the older man approached quicker than he predicted and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Arthur.” Hosea squeezed hard the shoulder blade and grinned in a way that created grimace in Arthur’s expression, “wanna’ join us? I thought I could show you the new book I got!”

Arthur grunted.

Just great. He knew Hosea’s way of scolding Arthur and thinking about it annoyed him, however, he didn’t expect to see Dutch vexed, red-faced and squeezing the book with both his hands, yelling to John.

On the other hand, Hosea was perplexed. He dragged his hands over his now tired face and sighed.

“He wasn’t this troublesome!” Dutch said to Hosea, referring obviously to Arthur.

Something in that statement made Arthur chest puff in pride. Oh boy, he really liked that. Even if he refused to acknowledge this feeling to everyone else, he liked it when Dutch or Hosea praised him.

Arthur remembered the days when Dutch and Hosea were teaching him to read. Hot summer days, mosquitoes everywhere and that smell he couldn’t forget, berries and lemon, which brought his mind ten years back, when he was a thin, small and young boy. He grinned to the loveable thought and looked at Dutch fighting with John.

“Dutch, what’re ya doin’!? Don’t ya’ grab him like that and rub his head!”

“I know he can do it, but he’s not even trying!”

Something Arthur knew is that Dutch would take as “true” whatever he assumed; and hardly took back his words—standing for what he believed, a true blessing for the wise and a curse for the ignorant. Later on, Arthur didn’t know which of those Dutch was. A true mystery until the very end.

“Dutch, calm down, you’re gonna scare ‘im…”

“But I know he can—"

“Shut up, you pair of dimwits!” Susan yelled from afar as she sewed one of Arthur’s shirt.

And before any of them could say any further word, John slammed his hands against the table and ran away into the woods that surrounded the camp.

“Get back here, boy!”

What a mess. When Arthur saw no signs of Dutch calming down or Hosea backing down, he decided to look out for the now goner.

“John! Where are ya’!?” Arthur yelled as he stomped over some broken sticks. Definitively John.

“Ya’ damn bastard, dontchu’ ever get tired?” he whispered to himself, wondering as he furrowed his brows and rushed his pace.

As he walked deeper into the woods, the stars that normally would be faded under sunlight, had come out without any shame, telling Arthur to hurry. The breeze got colder and the sky darker and even if he found clues of where he could have gone to, the boy sure knew how to keep out of sight. He was going nuts; what the hell was the kid running from?! He had nothing to run from and nowhere to go, what was he thinking?

“John!” He called once more before he heard a gasp to his side.

The moment he turned his head, he saw a terrified boy who had fallen into the ground. Unlike the first time he saw him, fierceness shone in his eyes despite of the fear that his thin body could not hide—however, that didn’t mean it wasn’t agile. He quickly got up into his feet and started running towards the glowing moon.

“Oh no, you ain’t!”

He could hear John’s broken breathing and how he gasped for the air he didn’t have; it broke Arthur’s heart.

“Watchu’ running from, kid?!”

Arthur got closer with every step he took and grabbed without any restrains John’s wrist to stop him, quite brusque for his liking but there was nothing he could do. Those iron eyes gazed at him with the loathe and anger he deserved which left a sour flavor in his mouth. John struggled to free himself from Arthur’s grip but it only got stronger.

“Lemme ask you again, kid. Watchu’ running from?”

John struggled again and Arthur grabbed his other wrist. He took a deep breathe and closed his eyes for a moment. Was it this hard for everyone else to deal with him? Being a kid in the streets wasn’t easy, it roughens you up in a way that shatters what you truly are, breaking and eventually rotting every corner in your mind. But he was no kid in the streets no more, he could finally begin living and not just survive.

“He wanted to kill me,” John replied in a quick low whisper.

Arthur raised a brow. “Dutch was shootin’ his mouth off and by now Hosea and Susan must have given ‘im a black eye for that.” He tried to sound reassuring.

“Let go!” John fought with all his strengths to free himself; Arthur tightened his grip.

“Listen to me, kid. You got nothing to run from; here you got a bed, food and people who want ya’—”

“Dead…” John interrupted.

“Let me finish! Goddamit—as I was saying. None of ‘em want ya’ to be a goner.”

“How can I trust you? They all said I was an idiot, useless. They all hate me and they’ll kill me. It’s better if I’m gone.”

“We’re family.” Arthur meant it. He had found a part of himself in the little black-haired boy that wanted to keep running; running to never look back, from all the things he didn’t deserve.

“We ain’t.”

“Listen to me you little piece of…! You became part of us the very moment Dutch cut that rope on your neck and brought you into the camp.”

“Still; that doesn’t mean I can trust you guys. You’re outlaws.”

John wasn’t buying a single bit of what Arthur was saying. Shit. At this rate he was gonna run off by himself and God knows what would happen to him.

“They took me in when I was your age.” John’s eyes widened in curiosity; “I… well, my momma died when I was real young and my daddy… let’s say I wish he did too. They taught me how to read and Hosea taught me how to draw.”

Despite of the nervousness inside him, Arthur took the journal out of his satchel and gave it to John without letting go of one of his wrists. He eagerly flipped through the pages and stopped to look at some of the drawings it contained; some of the graphite stuck into his fingers, but it didn’t stop him from eyeing with detail each illustration.

“Why didn’t ya’ read? Back then, when Dutch and Hosea asked you to.”

There was a long pregnant pause. “I did—read it, I mean. I, uh, wasn’t sure to er, say it out loud.”

“Really?” Arthur smiled from ear to ear. “See? You’re smart, John! Ya’ ain’t that bad, there’s potential.”

John blushed at Arthur’s praise and kept looking at the drawings until he reached the last one, that page that had remained blank for the whole day.

“They are family to me. Family is everything; I’d die for it.” His voice didn’t shake even once.

John closed the journal and gave Arthur a gaze full of admiration that Arthur wasn’t worthy of. He could be one nasty son-of-a-bitch, rash to anger and emotions; unfamiliar to giving inspirational speeches like Dutch would do or smooth-talking like Hosea the Conman.

“And I will…” he stuttered, “I, uh…”

“You what.”

“I won’t let them kill ya’; just in case.”

A mischievous grin appeared in John’s face. “That won’t stop me tho.”

Arthur had let his guard down. John escaped from his grip and started to run the fastest he could. Where the hell was he going to and, most importantly, where the heck had he gotten all that damn energy from?

“Cuz’ I’ll kill ya’ myself, you little piece of shit!”

“Thank you, brother” John screamed in the distance.

“You ain’t got the right to be my brother!” Yet, he wanted to say but kept it to himself.

That day, when Arthur was twenty-four, his family grew by one member. Even if mocked him every now and then and behaved like assholes, it was the most important thing to Arthur. It was everything he had—not like money or gold; those two could go straight to hell unless Dutch and Hosea gave the word.

#rdr secret santa 2020 #john marston #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 #pre-canon #fanfic #gift #secret santa #gifts #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #Hosea Matthews #dutch van der linde

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