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hoseokmylovesworld · 4 years

Text

I Knew It Was You | Jungkook One Shot

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Requested: Anonymous:

“A wolf college au where yn and jk are both the popular students but they’re not really acquainted with each other? theyre actually mates but they dont know that yet. Their friends always hint that theyre basically so compatible with each other and so they start to develop feelings for each other. One day, yn was in her wolf form just hanging around the forest and she met jk’s wolf whom she didnt recognize and they ran and played together. So, theres this other girl who likes jk and tries to make a move and kisses jk but jk immediately rejects her but yn was hurt when she saw and like jk could feel it through their mate bond? and they eventually confess and well realise theyre mates and start dating :D also like soft smut scenes in between especially when they finally officialized their mate bond :) also, jk is the alpha of his pack and is usually cold to outsiders and hes typically only soft for yn :D”

Genre: Wolf au, College au, Fluff, Smut

Length: 9,029k Words

Warnings: Strong language, Underage drinking, Drunk-con, Smut, oral sex (female receiving), fingering, vaginal sex.

A/N:

1. My first ever request! Thank you so much!!! I hope it is the first of many ;D.

2. First time writing Wolf AU, I kinda just made some stuff up...actually I made a lot of stuff up, but who doesn’t.

3. Thank you for being so specific and creative, it really helped. I hope I did it justice.

4. P.S. Listening to Dance For You by Beyoncé on repeat kind of inspired the last bit.

“Is there a reason why Jeon Jungkook is staring at you right now?” your best friend, Camille, whispered in your ear from the desk behind you during class. Your gaze shot up from your notebook and focused straight ahead, processing what she just told you. Your eyes then drifted to the desk, that you knew very well, positioned five rows to the right of you, where Jeon Jungkook was indeed looking in your direction. Once your eyes met, his eyes suddenly wandered down to his own notes, a devilish smirk could be seen on his perfect lips. You did a double take because you couldn’t believe it yourself, but the proof was right there, he had definitely been caught staring. You couldn’t help, but chuckle to yourself. You quickly shrug in Camille’s direction to answer her question, down playing the encounter that made your heart skip a beat.

“Mmhmm.” You heard her unconvinced hum from behind you and chuckle at her meddling behavior. As soon as the professor announced the end of class Camille, of course, was hounding you about the incident.

“So did I miss something, or did something happen between you two?” You look at her in confusion. “No, nothing happened.” You say as you continue to pack up and head home for the day.

“Well, why the fuck not?” She asks animatedly.

“Um, maybe because we don’t know each other.” You throw out with a laugh.

“Of course you do. You guys go to the same parties, I’ve seen you talking. You even have some mutual friends.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s about it, isn’t it? Other than that, we just share a class together.” You tell her as you both walk outside of the building.

“Okay, fine argument, but you realize that’s not the first time he’s been caught staring at you?”

“Everyone stares at me, Camille. They stare at you too. It’s because we’re fucking beautiful.” You smile at her and she can’t help, but smile back at the compliment. “So no, I didn’t notice.”

“This is different Y/N and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything.”

Just as you spoke, Jungkook came into your view walking on the path that intersected with yours. A classmate you know as Crystal was walking beside him, her words falling on deaf ears as Jungkook was not paying much attention to her. He looked up and you locked eyes again. His blank and cold expression was replaced with a warm smile and he even went so far as to wave at you. You hesitated, but quickly lifted your hand and waved back. Before you could warn him, Jungkook collided with a student on his path because he was looking at you and the cold expression was back again. By now you stopped walking and just watched the scene play out.

“Watch where you’re going, yeah?” he grumbled at the boy. The opposite student was speechless and hurried off without an answer. Jungkook looked back up at your slightly shocked expression and a quick look of regret flashed across his face before he took off in a fast walk, Crystal struggling to keep up with him.

“But this isn’t different?” Camille asked with almost perfect timing. You glare at her before continuing your walk. “No. It’s not. And if it is...so what?”

“So what? You’re hot, he’s hot. You’re both popular, you would be so good together. You know you guys have more things in common than you think. Jimin told me he loves singing and video games, too! Everyone on campus would be so jealous.”

You stop in your tracks once again, realizing what Camille wasn’t saying.

“Are you and our friends trying to set me up with Jeon Jungkook behind my back?” You ask seriously. Camille froze, her head snapped up and her eyes widened like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Um...not in so many words.” You raise your eyebrows at her accusingly and she breaks. “When you put it that way it seems bad, okay—”

“Don’t bother.” You offer as the two of you begin to walk again. You actually began to feel a sort of pull towards Jungkook recently, but ignored it because: “He seems like a bad boy type anyways.”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself? I hear he’s not actually like that and you never know, you might like it. You’re nineteen and you’ve never even had a boyfriend before.”

Because a werewolf girl dating a human boy would never work.

“Thanks for the reminder Camille, I’m aware.”

“Look, you’re going to the basketball house party this weekend right? He’s gonna be there. Why don’t you give it a chance?” Her question is only met with silence.

“At least talk to him. Get to know him more. And then you can judge for yourself.”

“Fine. But only because you won’t leave it alone and he is really hot.” You finally gave in. Camille laughed and shouted in triumph. “Thank you. I just want you to find some happiness, you know? And who knows maybe he’s the one.”

The weekend has finally arrived and you really needed a break from studying and work so you dressed to impress and came ready to have a good time at the basketball house on Saturday night. As you approached the house, the many drunk bodies on the porch all greeted you by name, whether you knew them or not, they were all very excited for your and Camille’s arrival. It was the team's captain, an upperclassmen named Yoongi, who opened the door to the house and welcomed you into the crowded living room. “Y/N! Camille! You’re here!” He drunkenly shouted, making both you and your best friend laugh. “Hey, Yoongi! How’s it going?” You asked him, having to talk directly into his ear to be heard over the music.

“Great! Let’s get you girls some drinks though! Have whatever’s in my fridge ‘cause I love you guys and if you run out of booze, come see me.” He walked you both to the kitchen with his arms around your shoulders.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary Yoongi, but thank you anyway.” Camille said, giving Yoongi a kiss on his cheek. You did as Yoongi said and helped yourself to whatever closed, untouched beverage caught your eye in Yoongi’s fridge and once you felt just tipsy enough, you and Camille hit the makeshift dance floor and grabbed everyone’s attention as usual. After a few more songs and a few more drinks you were feeling a bit beat and suddenly wanted a place to lay down that was quieter. Seeing as you were separated from Camille and weren’t in the position to use the best judgement right now, you decided to travel upstairs and find a nice bed to fall into for the time being.

You stumbled through the wide hallways of the house and settled on the third door on the left. You swung the door open, laid eyes on the large freshly made bed and prepared to flop belly first on top of it, but you noticed a person sitting in an armchair near the window. You straightened yourself up as much as you could at the sight to realize it was Jungkook.

“Hi.” Your hoarse voice spoke quietly.

He wore an expression of pleasant surprise and cleared his throat before speaking. “Hi.”

You shook your head in embarrassment and scrambled for an excuse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think anyone would be in here. Yoongi usually says the second floor is off limits.”

“Then why are you here?” He asks playfully.

“We’re good friends and I thought he wouldn’t mind.” You play off innocently. “Why are you here?”

“Same.” Is all he said before a silence came over the two of you.

“Well, sorry again. I’ll just go.” You go to leave, but Jungkook stands and reaches in your direction.

“Wait!” He said. You step back into the room again and face him. “Stay.” He said hopefully.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because these parties are not my style and I could use someone to talk to.” He settled with a smile. The pull you felt for him was making itself known and at this point you couldn’t leave now even if you wanted to.

“Okay.” You shut the door, make your way to the bed and face him. Once you were closer to him, you got a proper whiff of his scent. There was the pleasant waft of fabric softener and his expensive cologne, but the coaxing aroma of cedarwood and lavender practically called to you in a refreshing and comforting way. You couldn’t for the life of you begin to understand the feeling, but if being this close to Jungkook brought it on, then that’s what you would do.

“So, if these parties aren’t your style then why do you always come to them?” You ask curiously.

He sat back down in his chair and took a swig from his beer. “Because my friends come and I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night.” He flashed his bright, perfect teeth and you let out a nervous giggle.

“Seriously?” You asked, not knowing whether you believed that answer. “You’re not even with them, you’re in here by yourself.” His smile slowly morphed into a thoughtful line and he let his head fall to stare at his fidgeting fingers in his lap.

“There was no one there that I wanted to see.” He said quietly.

“But there was someone up here that you wanted to see?” You said sarcastically with a laugh.

“Well there wasn’t before, but there is now.” He looked up with a timid smile and your breath caught in your throat for a split second. You cleared your throat and decided to change the subject due to how warm your insides suddenly became. He doesn’t seem all that bad, maybe you should actually get to know this guy.

“So, while we’re here, avoiding the rest of the world, maybe we could...get to know each other better. I feel like we barely talk.” You offered, following through with Camille’s request. You were suddenly aware of how heavy your head was. Your weighted eyelids dropped and the world went dark before Jungkook was suddenly back in your sight once more, looking pleased with your previous words. It was obvious you were still pretty intoxicated and needed to carefully monitor what came out of your mouth.

“Um, okay. Yeah, uh...what kind of music are you into?” He laughed at his own question, probably thinking it wasn’t interesting enough. But music happened to be your favorite thing to talk about.

“Oh, I listen to everything. I am lacking a little country and heavy metal on my playlist, but I’m sure it’ll pop up sooner or later.” You shrugged.

“So you’re, like, legit.” He gathered his thoughts aloud.

“As legit as they come.” You responded, earning a laugh from Jungkook. The sound was enough to warm your insides ten fold. The two of you went from one topic to the next, sharing your likes and dislikes. You were being respectful of each other's opinions, but the playfulness was still in full effect. Jungkook even moved from his chair and joined you on the bed to sit beside you so that your knees were touching and your legs dangled over the side.

“You can’t honestly sit here and tell me that Far Cry: Primal is better than Far Cry: New Dawn.” You accused, genuinely shocked.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” He defended.

“Well—No! Just no. New Dawn’s gameplay and story is so much better.”

“That is a lie and I won’t stand for it.” He crossed his arms and put on his most serious face.

“Oh yeah? And what are you gonna do about it?” You bated him, leaning forward so that your faces were closer than before. You couldn’t justify your actions, not hardly. All you could think about was Jungkook’s irresistible scent filling your nostrils this entire time and clouding your judgement. Along with the alcohol of course.

Jungkook’s eyes flickered with understanding of your new intentions and his eyes moved back and forth from your lips to your alluring eyes before he too shortened the distance between you. He reached out to cup your cheek and you instinctively leaned into the warmth of his hand. He guided your mouth to his and it felt like a flame was ignited inside of you when your lips touched. Both of you released small moans of pleasure while exploring each other’s mouths. Hands began to wander and you could feel Jungkook guiding you onto your back as he climbed on top of you, your lips still connected. You ran your fingers through his soft hair and let out a whimper when he began to suck on the skin beneath your ear.

His hand glided up your torso and stopped carefully over your breast. He lifted his head from your neck to look into your eyes. “Is this okay?” He asked barely above a whisper. You quickly nodded your heavy head. You had never experienced anything like this, but it felt good and natural so who were you to refuse? You had to admit you were pretty excited about how this night was turning out.

Jungkook continued to fondle your breasts through your shirt and kiss you breathless, the two of you slowly grinding into each other all the while, legs tangled together. Your skirt riding up as you ground your heat into his jean clad thigh, instinctively seeking your own pleasure from him. To your disappointment, Jungkook pulled away to press his sultry lips to your exposed torso while making meaningful, heated eye contact with you. As if he were asking permission to keep going lower. You didn’t need any convincing. Jungkook was so intoxicating and you were so turned on that you didn’t want to say no to him. You wanted to experience what all your friends already have and spoke so highly of so you nodded at his silent request.

He only looked back down and rolled your skirt up to your waist in response, revealing your black joe boxer panties. He caressed your thighs before gently pushing the fabric to the side, his breath wafting over your core and sending a chill up your spine. He spares one more heated glance at your eyes before licking a delicate stripe against your clit causing your breath to hitch and your body to jerk slightly.

“You taste so good.” He suddenly rasped. All you could do was nervously giggle and cover your face out of embarrassment. His kisses and licks against your sensitive clit turned rougher and more driven so that your back was arched and your hands were fisting the sheets of the bed.

You were a moaning mess at his mercy and your head swam with alcohol and the pure bliss that came from Jungkook’s mouth. The feeling of flying. He suddenly inserted a finger inside of you, only adding to the white heat surging through your veins right now. You instantly place your hand on his head and give his shiny hair a gracious tug. He then moans into your clit at the feeling making you lose it even more.

He adds a second finger and moves his hand even faster while he continues to eat you out like a man possessed. “Oh, f—sss. Jungkook.” You whined, feeling your abdomen and your muscles tighten around Jungkook’s fingers. You knew your orgasm was fast approaching and you were desperate for Jungkook to give you what you needed.

The pleasure Jungkook was giving you was too good to be true. This was the kind of thing you only thought you could experience with your future mate. Your eyes suddenly shot open and you were thrown out of your euphoric stupor. You shouldn’t have let this happen, you should have been strong enough to resist temptation to save yourself for your soulmate.

But it was too late, your orgasm slammed into you with a force that knocked the wind out of you. You forgot how to breathe and your whole body tensed with violent waves of pleasure. You let out a broken cry and unknowingly clamped your legs around Jungkook’s head, who was still very persistent in his actions, hands and tongue never letting up through your orgasm. You had to pry him off of you once you got too sensitive to take it anymore.

“Jungkook, stop, stop, stop, stop.” He finally got the message and sat up again. Your juices covering his mouth and chin, which he wiped away slowly and smeared on his jeans. You both attempt to catch your breath, you especially, before you wordlessly adjust your panties and fix your skirt. You then positioned yourself at the edge of the bed beside Jungkook as you were before.

An awkward silence hung between you before Jungkook spoke.

“Did I do something wrong?” He asked, looking down. Your head whipped in his direction at the query.

“What? No! No. That was...amazing. I just..I guess I just wasn’t expecting all that. It was my first time.” And you’re human.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought...we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He reassured you. You let out a heavy sigh and grind your teeth at his words.

“Thanks, but...I don’t think we should do that anymore. Or anything like that.” You all-but whispered. His eyebrows furrowed and his head cocked to the side in confusion.

“Wait, w-why? I thought—”

Because, sadly, you’re not my mate!

“I just think maybe we might be better off as friends. I’m really sorry about this.” You said as you hopped off of the bed and put your shoes on while he sat frozen in one position. You place your hand on the door handle and open it before stopping and risking looking back at him in this state.

Not knowing what else to say, you said “I’ll uh, see you in class on Monday. Bye” and closed the door swiftly, scurrying down the stairs and rejoined the party.

Monday came sooner than you had hoped and you weren’t ready to face Jungkook. You met up with Camille for lunch in between classes at the café. While you ate, you kept thinking about how you would have to man up and soon because you spotted Jungkook enter the café and without meaning to, you locked eyes with him. You froze, but held eye contact out of fear. Whatever he did next, you deserved for what you did last night, you thought. To your immense surprise, Jungkook dropped his permanently cold gaze, smiled a friendly smile and waved at you. You didn’t waste anytime smiling and waving back, hoping that last night wouldn’t get in the way of your friendship.

He made his way to the register and ordered. He leaned against the wall of the waiting area and pulled out his phone in the meantime. He’s keeping his distance, that makes sense, you thought whilst checking him out. While you eye his figure from across the room, you didn’t notice your best friend eyeing you from across the table. You only had eyes for him in that moment. You didn’t try to conceal your staring even as he made his way to the exit. He smiled and nodded in your direction again on his way out and you smiled sweetly back.

“Okay, did something happen between you two or am I blind? ‘Cause I know it’s not the last one.” Camille asked eagerly. “And where did you run off to during the party? I never asked.”

You snapped out of it and faced her once again. “Well, I got to know J.K. like you said.”

“J.K.?! Are you guys on a nickname basis now?” She exclaimed frantically. You glared at her, sending her a message to lower her voice.

“Yes, he said I could call him that. We met up in one of the bedrooms at the party and we talked. Turns out you’re right, he’s not so bad.” A warm smirk graced your face at the memory of your conversations.

“I. Fucking. Told. You. Don’t forget to thank me at the wedding. Never mind, I most definitely will be thanking myself. No need to worry.” Camille babbled.

“Well, you don’t need to worry because I ruined it before it could even be…an it.” You frowned, aimlessly pushing your salad around with your fork.

“You wanna tell me what you did this time?” Your best friend rolled her eyes at you from across the table.

“We may have kissed—”

“You did what?!”

“Calm down and let me finish!” You whisper-yelled causing her to attempt to gather herself.

“We talked and then we kissed and then we were on the bed and...he may have eaten me out.” You say that last bit at a slightly lower volume.

“WHAT?!” Camille shouts, causing almost every head in the café to turn to her. “Camille, you need to calm down, okay?” You say, not actually giving her a choice this time.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry, but what?!”

“Yeah, that happened and it was amazing, but it didn’t exactly end well.”

“Why? Did he...did he try to force you?” Camille leaned in. Her voice was definitely lowered now.

“No, nothing like that. He was sweet. I just—I ended up leaving because...it didn’t feel totally right. I mean it felt right, I just, I got the feeling that he wasn’t the one.”

“So you gave up good sex? Boyfriend or not, anyone would kill to have their first time with that guy. Especially that Crystal chick that’s obsessed with him.” The thought of Jungkook with another girl sent a pang of anger through you, but you wouldn’t let Camille see that. It was over, you didn’t belong together.

“Yeah, well no one said anything about murder. Anyway, I backed out, it’s fine. I’ll find my soulmate someday, I’m destined to.” Literally.

“Hey, well if you’re good, I’m good. Now quiz me. I have an exam later.”

Thanks to your encounter with Jungkook, your following class was a lot less awkward than you thought it would be, but you felt the need to apologize one more time.

When class was over, you told Camille to leave without you and you waited outside for him.

“Jungkook.” You called when you saw his mop of hair leave the classroom among the other heads. His eyes found yours instantly and he approached you.

“Hey, Y/N. How’s it goin’?” He asked with a sunny disposition that you could see right through, now that you were face to face.

“I’m good. How about you?”

“I can’t complain.”

You nodded, looking for the words to say. “I just wanted to apologize again for Saturday. And thank you for not treating me like dirt today. I really shouldn’t have done any of that.”

He laughed lightly. “It’s all good Y/N. No hard feelings. You just know what you want and if you only want to be friends then that works for me. I think you’re a great girl and I just wanna know you.” He admitted genuinely. You were touched, but you were almost bothered by how okay he was with everything.

“That’s really sweet J.K. Thanks. I’ll, uh, see you around then.”

“See ya.”

Well that was way too easy.

Despite all of your attempts to expel your Jungkook from your thoughts, the boy and his sinful mouth wouldn’t leave your mind. You begin to wonder if you’ve made a mistake with the whole friends thing and it seems there was only one thing left to do. Finally you decided to hunker down and call your mom.

“Hey, sweetie! How are you?” Her bell-like voice flowed into your headphones.

“I’m good, I think. I just called ‘cause I have a question. About our kind.”

“Oh, I’m all ears, shoot.”

“H-how do you know you’ve found your mate?” You sputter the sentence quickly, hoping you wouldn’t have to repeat it.

“Oh, honey. Are you seeing someone? And you didn’t tell me?”

“No, mother. It was just a question. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Mmhmm. Tell me about him first, then I’ll answer.” You sighed, realizing you had no choice.

“He’s really nice, and funny and good looking.” Your mother giggled over the phone. “But we only shared a moment. I promise, it’s nothing major. That’s my issue.”

“Well, it’s not easy to put into words, but I’ll try. It’s like realizing everything you’ve done has led up to that moment. The moment you meet. It’s like gravity is pulling you towards that person, but you do go willingly to them. All you can see is that person and you would do or be anything that they needed you to be.” This all sounded familiar, but there was one thing missing.

“And they definitely have to be a werewolf too, right?”

“Of course, you know that. And sometimes you can’t even tell they’re your mate unless you meet their wolf. It’s rare and stupid, but I’ve heard stories and I don’t make the rules.” You laugh at her word vomit and continue to catch up properly.

“Things have been just a little stressful over here, but nothing I can’t handle.” You told her.

“Well when’s the last time you stretched your legs?” You tried to think back to the last time you actually let your wolf roam free and you couldn’t remember. “I don’t even know.”

“Well, do! Go down to that creek we found the last time we visited and just run, but make sure no one sees you.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks mom.”

“Of course, sweetie. I love you.”

“Love you, too. Night.”

You finally found time in your hectic schedule to get away to the woods near the creek you talked about with your mom. You told Camille you were visiting your family last minute so you wouldn’t be back until Sunday afternoon, giving you a solid day and a half to yourself and getting back in touch with your inner animal. You parked your car on the outskirts of the woods, grabbed your backpack full of clothes and necessities and made your way into the trees.

You found a good spot deep enough into the thicket and far enough away from the trail that you were sure you wouldn’t be seen by humans. You hid your backpack in a few bushes and readied yourself for the transformation.

Even though it’s been quite a while it’s like your wolf knew exactly what to do and you were a light gray, seven foot tall werewolf in no time. You could smell all the scents in the forest. You could hear the trees and the moving water from the creek. But you couldn’t hear any people nearby so you knew it was time to start running.

You dug your paws into the soft ground, admiring the natural earth before dashing off into the woodland. You felt free of all the worries you came here with and found yourself forgetting all about midterms and professors and projects and you could just be yourself.

You suddenly stopped on a dime when a familiar scent caressed your nose. Cedarwood and lavender. It was extremely potent and had the collective smell of the forest woven into it, making it one hundred times more appealing. Without your permission, you immediately took off in pursuit of the scent and knew that you wouldn’t stop until you found it. It was calling to you after all, you felt you couldn’t ignore it.

The closer you got to it, you could hear another set of paws pounding at the earth moving with the same urgency as yours. You thought to stop out of fear of making an enemy, but it wasn’t up to you. You had no free will at this point, your wolf had to find the source of this scent.

Your body finally stopped when you came to a clearing, face to face with another wolf. It was dark brown and slightly taller than you. Your body immediately makes itself slightly smaller from the amount of confidence that exudes from the dignified looking wolf. He must be his pack’s alpha, you thought. You both stared at each other from across the clearing and that’s when it happened. The words of your mom from before flood your mind at the sight of the brown wolf in front of you. He’s the one, you thought. Once again your feet begin to carry you to him without much thought and the brown wolf does the same.

You meet in the middle and neither of you hesitate to get familiar with each other’s scents and nuzzle the other, marking each other with that scent as well. You continued this show of affection with your new mate, rejoicing in the fact that the wait was over and you’ve finally found the one you're destined to be with for the rest of your life.

You are interrupted when you feel a large, wet tongue run up the side of your face. You open your eyes to see your mate with his front legs stretched out in front of him with his bum in the air and his tail wagging back and forth quickly. You understand that he wants to play and you assume the same position, waiting for his next move. Seeing this, he took off into the woods and you instantly chased after him.

It took longer than you were proud to admit, but you finally got close enough to tackle him to the ground and the two of you sparred playfully, rolling around on the ground and pinning and nipping at each other. You both carried on like this; chasing, playing and nuzzling until the sun went down and came up again and you tiredly walked back to your backpack in the bushes with the brown wolf on your heels.

Just as you reached your belongings, you heard the footsteps and voices of two hikers. Without thinking, you took off into the forest, as did your mate, but in the opposite direction. You made sure you couldn’t be seen by the hikers and watched as they walked by. But you knew even though they were gone, it was dangerous to be back out in the open at this time. Two humans was enough to cut your roaming time short. Your mate obviously had the same thoughts as you couldn’t smell his scent nearby anymore.

You shifted back into your human form and got dressed in the bush. Cursing those hikers for scaring your mate off, you got in your car and headed back to campus. You didn’t know when you were going to see him again. The thought depressed you, but you promised to be back next weekend at the same time and tried to stay positive as always. “Back to writing papers and dealing with dealing with dickheads again.” You lamented.

As if this week couldn’t get any worse, Camille was sick; meaning you would have go to class and eat lunch and dinner alone, and Jungkook is no longer answering your text messages. He decided you were a shitty person after all, you thought on your way to the local café for your lunch break. As you approach the wall length windows of the café you can see Jungkook sitting at a table right against it with Crystal. Well, there’s your answer right there, you thought venomously. You stop and just watch the two, wondering why this was such a devastating sight when you’re not mated to Jungkook and you’re the one who made him look ridiculous.

As you were standing there looking like a total weirdo and feeling sorry for yourself, Crystal reached across the table to cup the cheek of an oblivious Jungkook and kissed him on the lips. Your eyes widened in horror and your jaw dropped. The betrayal, no matter how unworthy you were of it, felt like it speared a hole through your chest. You didn’t understand why you were ready to collapse in complete agony over someone who didn’t belong to you, but regardless it felt like he ripped your heart out and stomped it into the ground in front of you.

Jungkook pulled away almost immediately with a look of disgust on his face and turned to face you instantly, as if he knew you were there. You locked eyes with a stunned Jungkook and took off without a second glance. This was awkward enough, you didn’t need to confront the situation.

Without warning you begin to feel this crippling guilt and anxiety, even though you didn’t do anything wrong. At least you didn’t think so. You’re distracted by your sudden rush of emotions when you hear Jungkook call your name from behind you. You glance at his desperate, running form before facing forward and continuing on your way. Wherever that was, you didn’t exactly know yet.

He was faster than you thought because in the next second he had his hand on your shoulder and was turning you to face him.

“Y/N! Wait, just wait a second. Let me explain okay?”

“Why? What do you have to explain to me? We’re not together.” You finally admit.

Jungkook cocks his head to the side and squints his eyes in confusion. “How can you...do you not remember?” He asks desperately, needing an answer.

“Remember what? The party? Yeah, all too well.” You say ashamedly.

“No.” He said firmly before thinking aloud. “Was that not you?” He nearly whispered. With your enhanced hearing, you heard clear as day.

“Was what not me?” You were starting to get a little annoyed now.

“Do you not feel that? That pull?”

You look at him, floored. “How do you know about that?”

“Have you had any emotions that weren’t yours recently? Strange feelings at least? I have. I could, I could sense you back there—”

“Okay, what? How do you know that?” You asked, getting overwhelmed. There’s only one way he would know a thing like that, but it couldn’t be.

You allowed him to slowly lean in and take an audible sniff at your neck. “You still have my scent from Saturday.” He said in a satisfied tone of voice, causing you to freeze.

He continued. “And oranges and rosemary.” Another sniff. “And red oak.” It was all starting to make sense. Lavender and cedarwood. You could suddenly smell it all over him, igniting all your senses. He pulled back so he could look you in the eyes deliberately.

You looked back with a new fire behind your eyes. You were too blinded by anger to realize that your mate was standing right in front of you. “I knew it was you.” You said softly before throwing yourself into his arms. He laughed freely, wrapping you in his strong arms.

“You had me doubting myself for a moment.” He said into your neck.

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” You pull him into a heated kiss to seal the deal of officially finding your mate and it feels like nothing you’ve ever felt before. But then you’re reminded of why you were in a mood to begin with. You part from Jungkook and slap his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you answer my messages? I thought you were mad at me.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket to show you. “I got a new phone. My contacts didn’t transfer and I wanted to talk to you in person after this past weekend. Took me all of Sunday to put it together, but I finally figured it out. Thank god one of us did.” He said teasing you. You slapped his arm once again. “I wanted it to be more romantic than this obviously, but I guess we can thank Crystal for that.” He said looking up apologetically.

“Don’t worry about that, if she tries it again I can handle her.”

“Then let’s get out of here, boss.” He wraps an arm around your shoulders and walks back in the direction of the café.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, my sweetest darling.” He replies.

You cringe before you speak again. “Better, I suppose.”

He laughs loudly. “I could get used to this.”

“Oh, spirits, What have you gotten me into?” You ask the sky jokingly.

You enter the café and Crystal is still sitting and waiting patiently in the same spot. Her eyebrows raise at the sight of his arm around your shoulders.

Jungkook stands in front of the table and reaches for his wallet while Crystal watches attentively. Jungkook put some money on the table, said goodbye and the two of you left the café once more. You could see her wide eyes and embarrassed, flushed cheeks through the window as you walked away. Jungkook didn’t look back and that brought an impressed and touched smile to your face.

“I’m thinking this calls for a celebration. What do you say to skipping class for the rest of the day?” He asked, placing a kiss on your cheek for...incentive?

You think about it. You only have one more class left, Camille wasn’t here to tell you not to and this was pretty worthy of celebration. You finally found your soulmate and you absolutely adore them. It was a good enough occasion for you. “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s skip.” You say with a huge carefree smile. “Whoo!” Jungkook howls with excitement.

“Alright my lady. How about I actually take you to a way better lunch than the local café?”

“Like on our first date?” You ask sheepishly.

“Exactly.” He says, stopping in front of you on the sidewalk. “Y/N, will you go on a date with me?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I just saw you kissing some other girl, what’s that about?” You fake cringe. Jungkook sighed and closed his eyes.

“Please don’t do this to me.” He begged, making you laugh.

“Of course I’ll go on a date with you.” You grabbed his hand and you both took off in search of a restaurant that suited both your tastes.

He took you to an Italian restaurant nearby, which happened to be your favorite. “Oh, yeah, Jimin told me you liked it once.” Jungkook said when you mentioned it. You laughed at how naïve you’ve been these past few weeks.

“I still can’t believe our friends really tried to set us up together.” You laughed across the table from him as you waited for your food to come.

“Haha, yeah, I guess they knew something we didn’t. Man, we really were late to the party.”

The following three weeks consisted of you and Jungkook making up for lost time and spending time with each other as much as you possibly could. You found out that Jungkook is actually the alpha of his pack, which includes his room mates, Hoseok and Taehyung. They weren’t psyched you were stealing Jungkook away from them all the time, but it was necessary. It made for a true honeymoon phase as your wolves craved the presence of their mate constantly.

You got excited when he invited you anywhere, both of you knowing that you would always accept. This was partly because your wolves desperately wanted to mate with each other and that fact made you incredibly nervous at times. Thankfully, no matter what form you were in, there was nothing forcing you to do anything, but the feeling would always be there, especially when you were together.

Despite a close call in your dorm room, you both had gotten pretty good at ignoring it as you weren’t ready for that step and Jungkook was perfectly fine with waiting. You figured it would happen when it was supposed to and when it did, it would be perfect because every experience with Jungkook was. You just wanted to spend as much time as you could together before the semester ended.

As you both had a test coming up, Jungkook invited you to his campus apartment to study. You jumped at the opportunity to spend the day with him and get some extra help in the course. You both sprawled all your materials on his king sized bed, that you were incredibly jealous of, and sat on opposite ends just focusing on your respective flash cards.

Both of you would ask the occasional clarifying question or make a joke to break up the tension in the room. You were always comfortable with your mate and vice versa, but the air had taken on a fervent energy that you both noticed. After a while, you began to sweat slightly even though the temperature in the room was perfectly cool. Your eyes glance up at him and away again; you wonder if hanging with Jungkook in his room with his perfectly comfortable bed was the right way to go, especially after what happened last time. Jungkook cleared his throat, getting your attention, which was laser focused on the notebook in front of you to avoid thinking about him taking you on this bed.

“What do you say to a little study break? I’m starting to get a little burnt out over here.” He offered, fanning himself with his shirt.

“Oh, yeah, me too.” You agreed.

“I’m gonna break out those snacks you brought.” He said getting up and walking to his desk where you left them, stealing a kiss on your cheek on his way there. You smile down at your lap as your heart skips a beat. His sweet behavior still gets a reaction out of you even after all this time spent together and you relished every moment of it.

Jungkook fetched some chips and candy for the two of you and sat in front of you tailor style. You talk about school and make plans for next weekend when Jungkook leaned forward and placed a kiss on your lips. You felt your body temperature rise and that intense need that you’d grown so familiar with in the past few weeks appeared again with a new ferocity.

Your body leaned right back into his and you savored the kiss before cutting it short, not wanting to lose control. You dropped your head and shook it apologetically. He rubbed your arm comfortingly and gently grasped your chin in his hand, tilting it up to look into your eyes. “Hey, it’s okay.” He uttered.

You look back into his dark brown eyes, wondering what you did to deserve a mate like Jungkook. How blessed you were to end up with someone as generous, charming, respectful, caring, sexy and talented as him. He never failed to act like a complete gentleman towards you and always let you know just how much he loved you, whether it was through words or eye contact or the way he caressed you.

You wanted to show him how much you appreciate him, how much you were legitimately dedicated to him and that you wanted nothing more than to be with him for the rest of your life just as he has. You wanted to show him how much you truly care for him, how much you understand and value what he has to say, how much you love him. You wanted to show him how good he made you feel that first night at Yoongi’s party.

But you allowed your inexperience and fear of the actual event to hold you back from this stage in your relationship that you both obviously wanted. Why am I so afraid? You thought to yourself. Still lost in Jungkook’s eyes and his touch, your need for him was bordering on feral and growing stronger by the second due to the close proximity.

What am I afraid of? We’re literally destined to be together, we both love each other, we’re basically mated for life anyway. Why not make it official? Your thoughts raced around in your head as your eyes fixated on Junkook’s soft lips and your body subconsciously inched closer to his. Your breaths were becoming heavier and more noticeable with the silence in the room.

Something in your mind clicked and you were on him in a second, wrapping your arms around his neck and feeling his lips on yours again. Jungkook obviously had zero complaints as he wrapped his strong arms around your waist and returned your less than gentle attack on his lips with just as much passion. You climbed into his lap, your body seemingly on autopilot as you rocked your hips back and forth on top of him slowly causing Jungkook to grunt into your mouth. He lets out a small moan when your mouth finds his jaw and travels down to the side of his neck. Without warning, your canines extended and grazed Jungkook’s skin; a sign that your wolf was ready to claim him as yours for life.

You realized what you had almost done when Jungkook separated your mouth from his neck and looked into your eyes carefully, searching for any traces of regret most-likely.

“I’m so sorry,” You rasped out. “I didn’t know I was—”

“It’s okay.” Your mate assured you, placing a hand on your cheek and rubbing his thumb against it tenderly. “It’s more than alright. I just...Is this what you want?”

You nod firmly. “I love you, Jungkook. I want this.” You said softly, playing with the silky hair at the nape of his neck. He nods, searching your eyes for doubts for the last time then you were kissing again. This time, you had no intentions of stopping. Jungkook clumsily pushed all of your notes and materials off of the bed with one hand before helping you to straddle him as he lay down at the head of the bed.

“Oh, I love you too.” He added quickly against your neck. You giggle at the insertion and grab his face in your hands, forcing him to look at you.

“I know, dummy.” You whisper gingerly before pressing your lips to his, hoping that he could sense the passion and desire you felt for him in this moment. He smiled fondly against your lips and got to work on your shirt and bra, vocally praising your body all the while.

“You’re so beautiful, Y/N.” He muttered into your skin, hands caressing your entire body.

You get rid of his offending shirt and toss it behind you without a care in the world as Jungkook’s six pack has stolen all of your attention. As your hands explored the expanses of his newly exposed body, your feral nature returned. You and your mouth made the leisurely trip from his neck to his navel, gladly eliciting the occasional moan from Jungkook.

When you reached your destination, you helped him remove his pants. But before you could attempt to take off his boxers, he flipped you so that he was on top and immediately began planting kisses all over your body making you squirm in the best way.

“Jungkook, please.” You whine after he removes your bottoms.

“Don’t worry baby, I’m gonna make you feel good.” He breathed directly onto your center, causing you to shudder slightly. Your underwear joined the graveyard of clothes littering the hardwood floor when Jungkook spread your lips and lightly ran his tongue along your clit. You couldn’t help, but gasp and twitch at the brief spark of electricity that his actions brought. He held your thighs open to accommodate his head while holding your hips down right before dragging his tongue against your clit in a much more aggressive manner.

Your hand instantly covered your mouth out of shocking pleasure. “Oh, fuck.” You mumbled against it. Your eyelids slowly fluttered closed as Jungkook continued to lap at your clit vigorously. It got harder to breathe as he carried on, pulling all kinds of sounds from you, both human and nonhuman. You finally thread your fingers through his now sweaty hair and grip it so that you could properly grind into his face. You could feel his extended canines grazing your flesh occasionally and the idea turned you on further.

“Oh my God, yes, Jungkook.” You moaned, sensing that your climax was well on it’s way. He suddenly slid a finger inside of you, grazing your g-spot, causing your back to arch immediately. “Oh my God, just like that.” You groaned as He inserted another long, thick finger into you, scissoring them this time.

“Oh, that feels so good, please don’t stop, baby. Please make me cum.” You babbled in your lust filled stupor, hoping that sweet release would come soon. Jungkook focused on finding your g-spot repeatedly and never letting up on your clit, his face was literally buried in your pussy as if he didn’t need air to breathe. The sight in itself was enough to set you off. Your legs shook as you silently came all over your mates face.

When it got to be too much you finally let go of the breath you were holding and let out a short shriek. Jungkook finally came up for air, continuing to scissor his fingers inside of you to make sure you would be stretched enough for him. He kissed you immediately, allowing you to taste yourself on his tongue and lips, but you didn’t mind one bit.

He separated himself and withdrew his fingers from you to remove his own underwear and find a condom. As he made his way back to you, you sat up and reached for his hard member in your second attempt to pleasure him, but you were pushed back on the bed for Jungkook to situate himself in between your legs.

He took your chin in between his fingers and stared deeply into your eyes keenly. “We got the rest of our lives for that, but right now, I need to be inside of you.” He growled from deep within his chest, sending even more wetness between your legs. You only nodded showing you understood, sensing that Jungkook was in Alpha mode and just submitted yourself to him, allowing him to do what he wanted to you.

He brought you closer to him, kissing you breathless while lining himself up at your entrance.

“Are you ready?” He asked, making heated eye contact, his hand supporting the back of your neck to keep your foreheads pressed together.

“Yes.” You whispered with no hesitation at all. Jungkook inserted himself into you slowly, savoring the divine feeling of your velvety walls wrapped tightly around his cock. You on the other hand were trying not to let it show how much pain you were in. You felt every inch of him stretch you out, but the kisses that Jungkook peppered all over your face distracted from the pain.

“You okay?” He panted, placing a kiss on your ear.

“Yeah.” You decided after the pain dissipated. “Why do you have to be so big?”

“That’s just what the spirits blessed me with, babe.” He laughed.

“Just shut up and fuck me.” You breathed seductively, reaching down and grabbing his bare ass in your hands, pushing him into you at the new found pleasure.

You both let out a satisfied grunt and Jungkook continues fucking you at a slow pace, both of you savoring the moment for as long as possible before you both grow impatient and frankly ravenous.

Jungkook kneeled upright on the bed, his muscles rippling and covered in a sheen of sweat, his face contorted in pleasure above you. He guided you onto his cock at a rapid pace with his strong arms and hands gripping you at the waist, sure to make bruises in the near future. You couldn’t care less about the rest of the world around you, let alone bruises as you stare up at the glorious man above you in awe and adoration. You were both grunting and growling as you chased your highs together. Your inner wolves are nearly satiated from all these weeks of torture, it was so close you could taste it.

“Fuck, Jungkook, I think I’m gonna cum.” You rasp as you fist his sheets so hard that you think you heard a tear.

He bends down to your ear and growls, “Let go, baby. Come for me. Only for me.” in the most beautifully fucked out voice you’d ever heard and you were seeing stars. You held his waist as close as possible to you with your legs and your eyes rolled back into your head at the amount of electricity running through your veins. In the midst of your mind shattering orgasm, Jungkook attaches his mouth to your shoulder and bites you, marking you as his mate, adding to your pleasure. Your body shook uncontrollably and you could swear you saw white at one point.

As you were coming down, Jungkook’s thrusts were getting dicey and irregular, giving you a sign that he was close. You grip his face and stare into his eyes passionately.

“That’s it, babe. You fucked me so good. Only you make me feel so good. Now come for me, baby. Give it all to me.” You whimpered.

“Ugh, fuck, Y/N!” He shouted. You felt his dick twitch inside of you and you bit him on the shoulder as he came inside the condom, causing him to groan loudly and gaining you some extra thrusts toward the end as he was coming down.

The two of you go on to kiss all over each other’s lips, faces and necks lovingly in post-coital bliss until eventually he rolls off of you and you lay side by side under the shredded covers, just staring up at the ceiling. Or so you thought. You turn your head to find that Jungkook is staring at you and you turn to face him.

“I love you.” He says genuinely with a wistful expression on his face. You reach your hand out to stroke his cheek with a warm smile on your face.

“I know.” You say as your eyelids become heavy. You snuggle into him, wrapping your arms around him and preparing for the best nap of your life. “I love you too.”

#jungkook smut #jungkook au #jungkook #hoseokmylovesworld #wolf!jungkook #wereowlf!jungkook #bts smut

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savrenim · 3 years

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i am running thru ur tumblr to find ONE POST to cite for tvtropes, and i agree so hard with the soulmate stuff. what if my soulmate is an awful abuser, i want the choice to NOT be with them without some painful physical consequence or loss of perception if i don't date them just because the universe said we were "meant to be"... plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist and less like an ass pull so you could justify getting 2 characters together

oH gods this is something that I have SO many feelings about that probably is slightly informed by my own orientation and preferences, but. feelings. this got long so it's going under the cut

so there are three and a half major things that I have a problem with in terms of general soulmate tropes that are "there is one person who is your perfect romantic partner" (which to be fair I've seen a number of soulmate AUs do that trope with the addendum "although it only applies to a certain percentage of the population / not everyone has soulmates / everyone has soulmates but not everyone has SUPER PERFECT ROMANTIC soulmates" which at least somewhat avoids the statistic inevitability of abusive soulmates if combined with Fate Can See The Future And So Your Fated Soulmate Just Won't Be) and these complaints aren't even from the "I'm poly where's my poly rep" kind of place which is a whole 'nother bag of worms, but let's go:

1. I aggressively believe that love is a choice. Love is something that is built, not predetermined before you meet someone. There might be initial compatibility aspects going down when you first meet someone, but, like. statistically there are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet. If there is only a single person perfectly meant for you, again, statistically, you are not going to meet them, I've seen the figure thrown that on average a person will meet on the order 10,000 people in their lifetime but let's even go 100,000, you will meet 0.001% of the world's population. Unless you think some sort of divine coincidence or fate is guiding you to a soulmate which throws free will out the window and then I can't help you but, like. discarding the math, I think it is actively harmful to a relationship to believe that it can be sustained on chemistry or predetermined 'but we're perfect for each other' alone. It requires work. You choose who is in your life, you choose who stays in your life, you choose who you want to be important to you based on what they contribute to your life and what you contribute to theirs.

(I am assuming this ask is at least partially in reaction to my soulmate post, which actually the fic in question, a buried and a burning flame, has since gone up. I highly recommend reading Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard first, but besides the setup for arson wizards that alas is never used because the fire mage with a soulmate in question is Responsible, I decided to both tackle 'okay soulmarks trope too let's throw it in', which leads to the not-really-a-spoiler passage that appears fairly early on about actually the full layout (albeit with less detail on the 'yeah for mages it just helps ground their magic, nothing romantic about it' part) of my Soulmate Rules:

Soulmates existed, both in the Empire of Astandalas and across the Wide Seas. They just worked slightly differently in Vangavaye-ve than the rest of the worlds.

The rest of the Empire seemed to view soulmates as a monolith. From what Cliopher had been able to glean, the tradition was grounded in their magic. Magi had soulmates, or rather, magic-workers would each have a soulmate. Cliopher wasn't clear if all magic-workers had a soulmate, or if magic-workers simply could have one, but there was always a mage in soulmate pairs, and it was always a pair. There were no marks, no visible signs involved, as soulmates were something that were sensed with magic. They were permanent, intrinsic, and to be recognized immediately.

To Wide Sea Islanders, soulmates were a choice.

The soul-marks, lana and lani-voa, would appear the first time you touched someone that you had chosen to love, with the full knowledge that you loved them. Cliopher had the marks of his mother and father, his sisters, Basil and Dimiter, Bertie and Ghilly. His skin was covered lovingly with the colors of his love, marks that he had gotten used to concealing with long sleeves in Astandalas when he had gotten tired of the constant staring at his 'primitive tattoos'.

Buru Tovo had been the only one to give him lani-voa, a greater mark of the soul. The pattern, with its thick lines and twisting design in a deep blue, extended over the entirety of his left arm and shoulder. They were the dances of his family pressed onto his skin, and he had traced them over with reverent and feather-light touch for months after he had received them. A lani-voa marked someone who had changed your life for the better in a deep and irrevocable way. It was a great honor to have even one.

And now, with the gold stretching up his right arm, new patterns that he didn't recognize stretching up from a handprint of pure gold that was expanding the longer he held that first contact with Tor—

now he had two.

(Buru Tovo is Cliopher's great uncle, for context. In fact, everyone listed there is either a familial or platonic relationship, with a single relationship that used to be romantic but settled into platonic.))

so. yeah. Love is a choice! The Biggest Of Moods! any soulmate lore that undermines that is a Bad Message, in my opinion.

The emphasis also on platonic soulmates leads into my second point:

2. I have found in my life that platonic relationships that I have are and have always been as important if not moreso than the romantic relationships. the emphasis of a single romantic relationship as the most important relationship that you can be in maybe fits for some people, but as a generalization to absolutely everyone I think is toxic and harmful. and not just for aro people! I'm not aro, but I would be miserable to write off my friends as Less Important And Meaningful to me than my parter, whom I love with all my heart! (I've actually ended up in my life settling into what I call the red/blue/gold system for 'relationships that I treat with the importance that society treats romantic relationships', but that's a personal thing). The standard soulmate trope tends to really solidly deliver the thesis of "there is a single romantic relationship that is the single most important relationship in your life" and I just think that's a very bad thesis.

3. Finally, I think the emphasis on permanent/forever is a harmful one for relationships in general. People change. you drift closer to people or further away from them. you move, they move, your schedules change, your interests change, your life changes. if you are living with a romantic partner you're going to keep seeing each other every day, but that doesn't stop you from changing as a person, which means see Point 1 Love Is A Choice; but even if you choose to remain together, you are probably eventually going to Ship Of Theseus your entire relationship. I think it is an important message that if that happens and it is no longer a relationship that is as deeply positive as it once was in your life, you don't...have to keep it out of loyalty to what it once was.

It's okay for people to drift out of your life that were once the most important person in your life. It doesn't invalidate how important and meaningful that relationship used to be, and it isn't a betrayal to let yourself and them and your relationships change and evolve. The idea that something has to be forever for it to matter I think is the idea about soulmates that I disagree with the most. Probably because that was the hardest lesson for me to learn as a kid and a teenager, and the life lesson that I am proudest for learning.

3.5 your point 'plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist' is exactly on the nose, literally I am unable to write anything without attempting to write down a universal theory of everything for How The World Works. if something soulmate-wise is going down even if it never appears on the page you bet your ass I have either figured out the general cosmology and theology of "are there gods or divine forces who have instituted this policy? if so, why? what purpose does it serve", or in the case of abaabf which already has such interesting magic rules in the original canon of "is there an evolutionary reason for soulmates to exist" which I don't go tracing out full evolutionary biology for a fic necessarily mostly because I would want the full evolutionary biology in canon to make sure mine is compliant enough but that sure as hell does translate to "if soulmates exist and it's not for the reason of Because Godlike Beings Said So, there better be a practical purpose". I find at least long-form soulmate fics (ie things With Plot and a Developed Setting that aren't just "let's do a ficlet with this well-known trope") that Do Not Feel Like They've At Least Thought About Why Soulmates Happen To Exist hurt my soul. which I think slightly intersects with my "I hate it when the rules of the universe/ laws of physics are human-centric" instead of "the base rules which were not designed for humans came first, and how the human world works arose in reaction to them" and. yeah. consistent desire to know at least for myself why things are set up the way that they're set up which gods ifmlam is wild and completely bullshit and pulls from quantum multiverse philosophy I started writing that thing when I was like. eighteen? nineteen? but at least it's there so I can be consistent.

as a caveat for everything above: I don't actually think that fiction, fanfiction in particular, needs to perfectly reflect what A Good Relationship or A Good Message About Relationships should be. it is a very human desire in a chaotic and confusing world to want a simple, absolute, binary thing to hold onto. fiction is a place for escapism or wish fulfillment or even exploring things that you wouldn't actually want in real life, I think that the movement in fandom/fiction that all of the messaging in your story should match the advice you'd give for a real-life setup is a bad and harmful one. mostly my opinions on soulmates and hence desire to do inversions of the soulmate trope in my fic and things like the red/blue/gold system and heavy emphasis on platonic relationships in original work that I'm writing is about a desire to see representation for me and the things I love and find important and my sort of relationships in the stories that are a big part of my life. but I am really glad that in doing so I seem to have struck a chord in other people, who maybe want to see the same thing!

#my life #my writing #abaabf #soulmates #also what post are you looking for/ what is its general topic if you haven't found it #I might remember a few keywords and be able to help you search

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lihikainanea · 4 years

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You know those moments in a relationship, when you're a little bit tired, a little bit annoyed and a little bit over it. You love one another, but you're working through that very natural phase of just not being that into each other. However, the sexual tension is still palpable, because in those moments it's sometimes easier in bed. It's easier to pretend at night time. Easier to just fuck your way through those natural arcs of frustration. How would Bill and Tiger handle those moments?

You know what I love about this? How absolutely, unbelievably, incredibly human this is.

People drift apart. Couples drift apart. Relationships tend to have this kind of natural ebb and flow--passionate at times, completely stagnant at others. Friendships are a little easier to navigate, we’ve all had friendships that are jiving at one point and stale the next but I feel like there’s always less at stake. Friendships maybe have less ties, they can recuperate faster from things like this.

Romantic relationships though? Oh, that’s tricky. When things like a legal marriage are involved, where leaving could mean that you literally lose half your income and your assets. When something like a kid is involved, where leaving could mean you only see them every second week and maybe you just can’t be a single parent. People stay for reasons that maybe they shouldn’t. People leave when maybe they should have just tried a little harder. These are real life decisions, and god it’s why I cringe so hard sometimes when I hear people talk about a couple. There are so many internal workings. People lie to their friends. They lie to their partner. They lie to themselves. Sometimes, one convenient reason to stay beats a million logical, desperate reasons to go and that’s...that’s life. Life is not always about choosing whatever option is best for you.

Life is about choosing whichever bad option hurts you less sometimes.

A side note, but I think some of the reason why I’m so critical of couples that I have no business being critical of (it’s never anyone’s place to judge), and why I roll my eyes at all of this GOALS!!!111 talk is just...like, what’s the statistic? 80% or something? 80% of couples fail. One of my absolute career heroes broke it down in a very logical way for me--this woman is extraordinary. You have seen her on the news. She is a powerhouse, she is fearless.

She is in a loveless marriage with a 10 year old son, and she’s staying because her kid is really sensitive and because being a single mother is just impossible for her, at the moment. That’s literally it. That’s why she’s staying with her husband. Because it’s practical, and because it’s the only feasible solution for her.

This is just....life.

But look man, tiger and Bill? They’ve been here before. And I think the only thing that saves them is their deep foundation as best friends before any of the sex started happening, and the respect that comes with being best friends. I’ve ranted on here before but part of my resistance for labelling them as an actual couple is because of that exact fact: I have met far more couples who take this term of girlfriend or boyfriend as an excuse to seriously disrespect their other human. Couples, over time, just seem to develop this extreme distaste for one another.

Best friends though? Shit son, that bond only seems to deepen over time. I would never speak to my best friend the way that I have sometimes caught myself speaking to a significant other. I don’t know why, but for some reason, a lot of us seem to take some big liberties when romance becomes involved.

These two, though? Listen, they have had years of very frankly, very directly, calling one another out on their bullshit. I think that bond, that’s really the only thing that saves them. Because this scenario, this isn’t any extreme emotion. This is just....blah. Something that was hot and heavy before just hit its natural peak and now it’s...blah.

I love the way you worded it. That it’s easier in bed. That it’s easier to pretend at night time. Sexual attraction often has little to do with actual compatibility, with emotion, with commitment. And these two--man, they know their way around the other. Tiger knows all of his on buttons, and he knows every single one of hers. It becomes less about emotion, less about spark, and more just about...scratching the itch. Both are human. Both get horny. Both know the other is real easy for them, and for at least half an hour, it’s some good feelings. It’s some fire put back into their jive for just a few minutes.

I think though...I think both of them are so rooted in touch, and I think that ultimately it’s the kissing that ends up sealing the deal. Couples do that, you know? To me, it has always been the marker of the end of a relationship--when the kissing becomes routine. A kiss hello. A kiss goodbye. A goodnight kiss. These are the relationship equivalent of a handshake.

When the spontaneous kisses disappear--the passionate ones in the hallway, where they cross each other and he loops an arm around her and pulls her in as she giggles. The sweet ones in the kitchen, when he’s chopping something and she just ducks into his vision, stealing a quick one from his lips as he squeaks in surprise because he didn’t even hear her approach. The soft ones in the morning, when he’s still asleep and she’s just pressing her lips gently all over his chest.

When this stops, they both know they’re in trouble.

but like it’s impossible to tell when it stops you know? God this shit sneaks up on you like that. Neither one of them realize, but I think eventually...I kind of love that it’s tiger, that lays it out on the table. That calls attention to it. And maybe it’s one week on a Tuesday--because the sex nights have become Tuesdays and Fridays, every week without fail--I think maybe when Bill reaches for her, she sits up and stays his hands.

“You don’t kiss me anymore,” she says quietly. Bill stops.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure I was just about to,” he huffs.

“You know what I mean bud,” she says softly, “We don’t kiss anymore.”

And Bill, for all of his incredible traits when it comes to her--the Big Dude is still very, very defensive. It’s his Achilles heel. It’s his knee-jerk reaction to being the middle child in a family that is fucking drenched in talent. When someone calls him out--someone he loves, someone he trusts--his immediate reaction is to be defensive.

“Last I checked kissing involved two people kid,” he snaps, “I don’t see you starting anything either. In fact, why am I always the one who--”

“No,” tiger says calmly, and it’s so eerily calm that Bill just...shuts up.

“Cards on the table,” she continues, “I’m calling it out.”

“Calling what out?”

“Calling this out,” she says, “I miss you.”

Bill stares at her, wide and unblinking.

“I’m right fucking--”

A hand, gentle but firm, clamps over his mouth.

“You do not get to talk to me that way,” she says and it’s still calm, “We mean too much to each other. Bill, I miss you.”

Bill removes her hand from his mouth.

“Tiger,” he seethes, and god it’s that quiet anger, “I don’t know what the fuck--”

“I miss you,” she interrupts. And the more she’s saying it...god it’s like she’s admitting it to herself. Admitting that something changed, and somewhere along the way, they lost their way. A lump forms in her throat.

“What the hell do you think--”

“Bill, I miss you,” she repeats, and a few tears escape.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re going on about kid,” he seems angry now, but tiger knows him. She knows him well. And the more she pokes at this wound, this vulnerability--eventually, the light will shine through this crack. And he’s cracking. She knows he is. She reaches a hand out, resting it over one of his and he doesn’t pull away.

“I miss you,” she says again, as the tears slowly trickle down her cheeks.

“This is fucking unbelievable--”

“Bill, I miss you,” she’s a broken record, but Bill shoves the blankets back and swings his legs over the bed.

“Then you can miss me when I’m not right fucking beside you,” he snaps, reaching for his pyjama bottoms. Tiger reaches out, wraps a hand loosely around his arm, kisses his shoulder.

“I miss you,” she whispers against the skin of his back, and she feels him tense. His muscles, alert and ready to bolt, bunch under her hands. He stays still for several minutes, her tears wetting his skin, and he doesn’t move.

But eventually, he lets out a deep sigh. One that doesn’t at all deflate him, one that doesn’t even move his statuesque frame.

“This is not my fault,” he whispers into the darkness, and tiger’s heart breaks. It breaks at the fact that he thinks this is about blame, that he automatically thinks the blame is his.

“No it’s not,” she tells him, “It’s our fault. We both let it get this way, bud.”

He doesn’t say anything, he still doesn’t move, and tiger presses a gentle kiss to the back of his neck.

“But I want to save it. This. I want to fight for this,” she says, and she pauses for a hard swallow before she asks the question that she mildly dreads the answer to. “...do you?”

He’s quiet. He’s quiet for too long, or at least long enough for her to panic. She whimpers, sliding off the bed and crouching in front of him as she takes his face in her hands.

“Bill look at me,” she pleads, “Do you? Want to fight for this?”

His eyes drink her in. And you know, Bonehead Bill. He knows his answer, but it’s like his brain taps out and he forgets to articulate it to her. But this girl kneeling in front of him? She’s his world. His sun, his moon, and every fucking one of his stars. He would fight anything and everyone, for her. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. And he knows this, he thinks this, but right now he’s so caught up in thinking that this is just...this is all his fault. He let her feel unwanted. He let this get to where it is. And with him so deep in his own head, he doesn’t even realize how silent he’s being to her questions and how much panic it’s triggering in her.

“Because if you don’t, it’s fine,” she’s starting to wheeze, her speech coming out fast and frantic, “But you owe it to me to fucking tell me, Bill. To end it definitively, right fucking now, because I--”

“Tiger,” he snaps out of it when his brain focuses on her wheeze, and he instinctively reaches for her inhaler in his nightstand drawer, “Yes. Yes, kid. I...I want to fight for this.”

Like a well coordinated dance, he cups her jaw and holds the inhaler to her lips. She puts her mouth on it and he times a dose with her next inhale, setting the device to the side as he brings his other hand around to cup her face. He strokes her cheeks, taking a long minute to stare into her eyes--her eyes that are pleading, filled with tears, and god he hates himself.

“This is my fault,” he murmurs, and tiger lets out a long exhale once the medicine is absorbed.

“No,” she leans her forehead on his knee and his hands thread into her hair, “Bill, this is us. We’re in this together. We both did this, and we’re both going to work our way out of it.”

He clutches at her, his hands fisting gently in her hair. He swallows around the lump in his own throat.

“How?”

For the first time in their relationship, he’s just...he’s at a complete loss. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Together,” she says, reaching out to cup his jaw and he places a gentle kiss on her palm, “Bill, together. With open minds. With honesty. We will talk it out. We will work it out. We will decide--together--if we need counselling for it. Or if we can fix it ourselves.”

He nods solemnly, running his thumb over her bottom lip. He tugs at her, pulling her up until she’s in his lap and she presses her forehead to his.

“But the first thing we need to do is decide--together--if we’re going to fight for this. I’m all in, bud. That’s where I stand. I want this, I want you, and I will give my everything every step of the way to make this right again,” she tells him. She holds her hand out, spread out in front of him.

“Where do you stand?” she asks quietly. His eyes flick to hers, and he holds her nervous gaze.

“I’m all in kid,” he murmurs, and he loops his fingers through hers, “When it comes to you? I’m all in. I want this. You have my everything every step of the way, too.”

She kisses him slowly, her hand clasped tightly in his as he hugs her closer to him.

“Promises,” she murmurs against his lips, “I’ve got promises to keep.”

“And miles to go before I sleep,” he whispers back.

#oh look #WE UGLY CRYIN IN THE CLUB TONIGHT #bill skarsgard #BFF!Bill #this is the #HEARTBREAK #HOTEL #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #angst #bill skarsgard drabble

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balioc · 5 years

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Your ideology -- if it gets off the ground at all -- will start off with a core base of natural true believers. These are the people for whom the ideology is made. Unless it’s totally artificial, they are the people by whom the ideology is made. It serves their psychological needs; it’s compatible with their temperaments; it plays to their interests and preferences. They’re easy to recruit, because you’re offering something that’s pretty much tailor-made for them.

This is the level at which ideological movements are the most diverse, in terms of human qualities. Natural true believers are heavily selected, and different movements select for different things. A natural true radical feminist is a very different creature from a natural true fascist, and neither of them looks very much like a natural true Hastur cultist.

Life in a baby movement, populated entirely (or almost entirely) by natural true believers, can be pretty sweet. You may not necessarily be getting a lot done, but you’re surrounded by kindred spirits, and that’s worth a lot by itself.

One of the most common ideological failure modes involves imagining that expansion is tantamount to “transforming outsiders into natural true believers.” It’s not. The population of natural true believers is a limited and precious resource, and while it’s theoretically possible to make more...if you have some truly gifted cultural engineers...it’s a difficult, costly, and failure-prone process at the best of times. It doesn’t work at scale.

You can grow, but the growth process necessarily involves attracting other kinds of people to your ideology. And then it won’t be the same.

Success, I think, requires some understanding of what growth is actually going to bring you, and being able to roll with those changes.

**********

The first outsiders to flock to your banner will be the perpetual seekers -- or, to put it less charitably, the serial converters. These are the hipsters and connoisseurs of belief, the people who join movements because they really like joining movements.

They’ll think that you and your doctrines are amazing, at least for a little while. They’re primed for that. But they get bored easily, and they like chasing after the high of new epiphanies. Unless you figure out how to hold their attention in a sustained way, which requires constant work, they’ll drift off.

This is the second-most-common way for a movement to die (after “never really getting anywhere in the first place”). You attract a few interested seekers, but not enough of them to give you a foothold in less-accessible demographics, and after a while they just give up and move on. If you’re lucky, they leave you with something like the original core of natural true believers, sadder but wiser after their experience trying to go big. If you’re unlucky, they cause lots of drama and shred everything on the way out.

These guys can be very annoying to natural true believers, but if you want to expand, you 100% absolutely need them. If you’re smart, you’ll take precautions to make sure they don’t walk off with key pieces of your infrastructure.

**********

If you display some serious growth potential, you start getting the profiteers, who don’t much care about your doctrine or your happy vibe but do care about that growth potential. These are people who see your movement as a vehicle for their private ambitions, who want to sell you to the world and ride you all the way to the top.

...I’ve used some mercantile language here, but they’re not necessarily merchants trying to get rich, although that’s the prototype case I have in mind. They may be going for political power, or simple fame, or all sorts of things. Whatever it is they want, they think that you can help them get it, because your star is rising.

In the long term, even the medium term, the profiteers can utterly wreck you if you’re not careful. They tend to amass a lot of movement-internal power very fast, because they have big plans, and they promise concrete rewards quick. But they usually don’t get whatever-it-is that the movement is really about, and even if they do get it, they don’t care as much as you do. Their instinct is to make your Whole Thing as bland and generic and palatable as they can, so that they can sell it to the widest possible consumer base in the shortest possible timeframe. This is a miserable and degrading experience, of course, but it’s also bad strategy in an eating-your-seed-corn kind of way. The world gets a constant stream of bland generic palatable Hot New Things, and it chews through them fast. There’s a future in being something genuinely weird enough to change the world; there’s no future in being last year’s fad. The profiteers, however, aren’t interested in being careful shepherds of your movement’s power and credibility. The arc of an individual’s career is not that long. Consciously or otherwise, they are happy to burn you up as fuel for themselves.

In the short term, the profiteers are super awesome. They will work tirelessly to help your movement grow, and they will do so in a very effective and practical-minded sort of way, without getting bogged down in the dysfunctions and the arcane abstract concerns that (probably) dominate your natural true believers.

Yes -- these first three groups map roughly onto the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths of that one Meaningness essay. There’s a lot of applicable insight in there. It’s important, however, that if your group is built around a serious ideology rather than a consumable toy, standard-issue Members of the Public aren’t going to come flocking to you during these early stages. Members of the Public don’t adopt new ideologies that easily. Your weirdos will be able to attract only other, different kinds of weirdos.

**********

Close on the heels of the profiteers, you will get the exploiters. Where the profiteers are trying to sell you to the world, the exploiters are trying to sell themselves to you; where the profiteers are trying to make your movement grow (for their own purposes), the exploiters see you as an environment that’s already big enough for them to thrive in it.

Some of them are hucksters and con artists. Some of them are, yes, sexual predators in the classic mold, going after a known population of unusually-naive unusually-vulnerable people who let their guard down around anyone speaking the right shibboleths. (That describes pretty much any ideological movement at this stage. Sorry.)

And some of them are just lonely people desperate to belong to something, who think that they’ve found your movement’s cheat codes for belonging. Some of them are fetishist-types who don’t have the whatever-it-takes to be one of your natural true believers, but who admire or desire that thing, and hope that they can be around their favorite people and get a Your Movement GF or whatever.

Often they’ll be harmless. Sometimes they really, really, really won’t. There will be more of them than you expect.

At the very least, they’re a marker of success. Apparently you’re worth exploiting!

**********

You’ll know that you’ve really made it, as a movement, when you start getting the fifth wave of converts: the status-mongers. They’re joining up with you because they think it will be good for their social lives or their careers -- not in an “I’m going to be the guy who gets rich off of this” kind of way, but in a much lower-key “this makes me look cool or smart or moral, this is good for my reputation” kind of way. They want the generic approval that comes from being on the forefront of the zeitgeist, and apparently the forefront of the zeitgeist is where you are, now. Congratulations.

The arrival of the status-mongers represents a crisis point for your ideology. There will be a lot of them; they’ll soon outnumber all your other people by an order of magnitude or more. (Status-mongers attract more status-mongers, as each one makes it clearer to the world-at-large that your ideology is in fact cool.) They will become the general public’s image of your movement, whether you like it or not. Most of them definitely will not get your Whole Thing, not really. They are interested mostly in being comfortable, in showing off to unenlightened mainstream audiences, and in using your doctrine as a cudgel to beat on their personal rivals.

At this point you don’t really have to fear disappearing into obscurity, but you’re in more danger than ever of losing your way and becoming something totally alien. The status-mongers will be doing their level best to make that happen. You will also start attracting enemies far more powerful and dangerous than any you’ve known before. Anything truly popular and high-status represents a threat to someone big. You need to start prepping for persecution, culture war, and other varieties of large-scale social conflict.

**********

If you can weather all that and come out on top, you finally get the sixth wave of converts, the big prize: the normies. People will join your movement because that’s what everyone else is doing, because that’s what they’ve been taught, because they don’t want to stand out or make waves, because they don’t really care and you represent a plausible default.

Most of the people out there are normies.

That’s the endgame, the victory condition for an expansionist ideology: that you are the normies’ choice.

**********

These are the groups that are out there. This is what you’ll get, when you turn your gaze toward the path of growth. This, and not whatever visions of radical social transformation dance before your eyes when you look at your beloved allies who are just like you.

Brace yourself for it.

#culture engineering #social analysis

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igpitn · 5 years

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i got really in my feelings talking to @maradeur so uhhhh fiveya pacific rim au!!! this got REALLY long so i’ll put it under a cut

for those of you unfamiliar with pacific rim here’s a quick tldr: earth in the future is being plagued by interdimensional monsters (kaijuu) who come from sea (i tHINK) portals!! to fight the monsters, humanity created these giant robotic suits for people to pilot called jaegers. but there has to be two pilots together who share a mental link in the jaeger - they are connected to each other’s minds and control the jaeger together. two pilots capable of making a mental link like that and having it be stable enough to pilot the jaeger in the first place are called “drift compatible”

already so imagine reginald hargreeves, eccentric billionaire who’s donated enough money to be part of jaeger and kaiju research. he oversees potential pilot training and decides that they’re all approaching it wrong. if a strong pre-existing bond is a necessary for drift compatibility, they shouldn’t be SEARCHING for said bonds, they should be creating it!

hence, he adopts 42 children and establishes the umbrella academy. he will train the children from a young age in combat and have them establish bonds with each other in order to produce excellent pilots

the training is severe. it is brutal. many children leave when they turn 18 which is a disappointment to reginald and the rest of the world isn’t sure how they feel about children growing up in that kind of environment. but he only cares about the world

there is Some hope though - he has six children who have all showed potential since they were small. not just in their individual combat skills but with the bonds with each other. reginald focuses most of his attention on them when they turn 13 - numbers 1 through 6

okay so enter five!!!!

five knows since he was young that he was strong and skilled and capable and he’s GOING to pilot a jaeger even if everyone around him is an idiot. while he’s talented he doesn’t understand the importance of drift compatibility.

vanya is also on the training compound but she isn’t part of the rest. she’s more like reginald’s assistant, always there, always quiet, but never really interacting much the other children

she works closest with numbers 1-6 and she likes them well enough it just... stings that she’s ordinary. she saw a jaeger defeat a kaiju in russia when she was small and has had dreams of piloting ever since

so after years of training, when they turn 18, is when reginald decides to test them for drift compatibility. they’ll all be tested together. imagine the shock and dismay five gets when one and three are found to be compatible but so is the TRIO of two four & six. he doesn’t have a partner. the tests show that his levels aren’t high enough. he is discarded. “we will find a partner for you eventually number five but for now you are not needed”

the others get to do real jaeger training while reginald tries to convince the government and all the “legal” channels that that they’re all prepared to pilot with incredible compatibility results along with combat training. it gets approved and everyone gets awarded names as a result.

five is still five.

he’s bitter/angry so he spends a lot of time solo training. the government sends over specialists to help reginald build THREE jaegers so the others can start pilot training. he’s furious. one of those jaegers should be for HIM.

now enter.... vanya

during this time while the others are in pilot training, quiet vanya is his only companion. he asks her to help time his drills or give him data. she’s only an assistant but five likes her well enough. she’s not annoying like the rest and she listens whenever he rants about how UNFAIR it is that he’s stuck here!! he won’t say it to her face, but she’s comforting

one day he’s bored and twirling a staff around (in the original movies, fighting each other with staffs to see how synced your bodies are is another test for drift compatibility) vanya is in the corner, reading a book. he gets an idea.

“vanya.” “hm” “i’m bored. come fight me”

she’s VERY reluctant. vanya doesn’t have a lick of combat training - she’s just been all data reports and analysis for the past 15 years. five doesn’t care - he’s bored and he promises he’ll go easy on her. it takes a while but vanya is... just a little bit curious so she picks up a staff.

they go slow. five talks her through her stance and her moves. “spread your feet wider. you have to move your shoulders more.”

vanya is clumsy but earnest and doesn’t stop which five respects. when he decides she’s ready, he comes at her slowly and they do a bit of mock fighting. vanya falls on her ass a lot but he always tugs her right back up. when she says she’s done he’ll stop. for now, they’ll keep going

vanya is getting more confident and hitting him more firmly and five just... can’t help himself. he goes for this move that always works - sweeping the staff under the person’s feet and pinning them down. he’s done it a dozen times on luther and diego and they hate it. so he goes do it and imagine his SHOCK when vanya avoids it, and goes to hit his shoulder. he blocks it, and they make eye contact.

INSERT FIVE’S REALIZATION.....

“...did you feel that?” five’s never met someone who anticipated his moves, especially someone with NO combat training. that was all vanya. that was all INSTINCT. vanya’s confused. “feel...what?”

he tries to hit again and she blocks him. weakly, she stumbles to the floor from the force of his hit and he grabs her waist as they fall. her on her back with him hovering over her, starring her down intense. it was weak but she STILL blocked him. they stare at each other, panting loudly.

then:

“...i think we’re drift compatible.” “wait what? you’re joking right?” “no. i’ve been training since i was a child and i’ve never felt like this with anyone else before.” “...five i think you’re seeing something because you want to, not because it’s there.”

vanya pushes at his chest and five reluctantly lets her up. he’s SURE of his feeling. he’s always understood drift compatibility the least but it MAKES SENSE bc he was never compatible with the rest. it’s always been her. he says they need to tell reginald and she’s just like NO!!!

vanya is ordinary. five is being ridiculous. there’s no way that they’re compatible and even if they were so what?? she has NO combat experience. does five expect them to get into a jaeger?? she can’t. that’s ridiculous. she CAN’T. she runs away from him and five is left frustrated

the next few days, she avoids him. five has never been a quitter, and if vanya is his only chance of becoming a pilot... he’s not going to let this go. he can’t. he keeps tracking her down and finds her, demands for her to talk to him.

“i don’t have anything to say to you!” “tell me you didn’t feel it too. look me in the eye, and said you felt nothing, and i’ll leave you alone.” vanya stares at the floor. she can’t lie. she did feel something

“even if i did... five i’m not a soldier, i’m not like you. and plus aren’t co-pilots supposed to trust each other? i don’t know you.”

five sees his opening. she’s nervous and skittish, so he can’t... demand things the way he has been. he tries a different approach. “two weeks. we’ll train, i’ll teach you everything i know. and...” he struggles a little. “we can get to know each other. give me two weeks. if you still feel like you can’t, i’ll drop it.”

vanya can’t say no to him. plus again, there’s that little part of her that’s always longed to be a pilot that just tells her to TRY. what’s the harm in trying?

the next two weeks are... wild. five sticks true to his word. every morning, he’s at her door when she gets out for the rest of the day with coffee. she nearly spits the first time “you drink it black?!” “is there a problem?” “are you a psychopath?”

during the day, he accompanies her to all her daily tasks. asking her questions about herself as she works, going over reports and typing data into the computer. “what are your pills for?” “anxiety” “do i make you anxious, vanya?” “you annoy me, that’s for sure number five”

at then at night, they’re during combat training. vanya is always sweaty and out of breath and the end of it while five is cool and collected. “you have no stamina.” “you’re so small” “your muscles... nevermind it’s an insult to call them muscles.” often times vanya is too tired to get up so five picks her up, throws her over his shoulder, and marches them to her quarters

to five, vanya is fascinating. he’s known her all his life but he’s never spent time with her like this. the quiet shadow that’s been in the background is surprisingly clever and capable. plus she gets embarrassed easily and it’s fun

to vanya, she’s already admired five. he’s insanely smart and she watched him grow up from a cocky teen to a confident adult. but getting to know him... he’s infuriating sometimes too. she snaps at him once after training about how he can’t expect her to just KNOW how to do things he’s been doing his whole life. he looks surprised before smiling at her. which surprises HER.

five likes her. he realizes that, the first time she argues back. none of the others have ever made him feel this way. is it normal to like your drift compatible partner? bc suddenly a lot of things make sense.

and then the conversation that changes everything:

“so you’ve been here as long as i have” “that’s right” “so reginald must’ve wanted you in the academy at first.” she hesitates at that. she didn’t consider that. “i... don’t know.”

his question makes her seek out reginald to ask and she’s stunned when reginald bluntly tells her that she had been considered too emotional and unstable to even be a part of the program. it’s not meant for her

vanya stays inside her room and five has to break in. he sits by her on the bed and she’s looking at her pill bottles. “i’ve been taking these since i was five... apparently i’m too emotional to be a pilot” she laughs bitterly and five puts a tentative arm around her shoulder as she recounts the conversation with reginald and then, feeling vulnerable, tells him about her dream to be a pilot bc a jaeger rescued her. she wants to rescue people too.

five squeezes her. “fuck the old man,” he tells her firmly. they flush her pills together and vanya takes his hand, running her fingers over his umbrella tattoo. “okay,” she says. “okay?” she smiles at him. “i’ll do it.”

five manages to get information from ben and they sneakily do their own pilot training. reginald is too busy to realize what’s going on but when he catches them he’s FURIOUS. five won’t back down though. “we’re drift compatible. she was MEANT to pilot with me. you can’t stop this.” he says that vanya is just a civilian and that it’s impossible but five says he’s strong enough to carry the two of them but he can’t do it without vanya

reginald doesn’t believe them. on a whim, he does test their compatibility. if it’s low he can punish the both of them and they’ll never speak of this again

it’s not low. it’s the OPPOSITE of low in fact. they are synced, really synced in that first one and reginald watches in shock.

meanwhile... for five and vanya, who had never truly grown close to another person in their whole lives, drifting is TERRIFYING. five is a very private person but suddenly he can FEEL vanya in his head. and he’s in hers. all her loneliness, all his resentment, all her insecurity, all his bitterness, it all flows through both of them. it’s overwhelming. he has to reach out for vanya’s hand.

but there are good things too. five’s confidence, vanya’s hope. the memories from all the time that they spent together. “you were right,” vanya tells him and in echoes in both of their heads. five can’t even say “i’m always right.” it’s too overwhelming. plus she knows what he thinks. she’s in his HEAD.

after they leave the simulation reginald tells them to prepare for pilot training. five, once he gets over his panting breath and beating heart, picks vanya up by the waist and spins her around

so five and vanya officially become co-pilots and get to PILOT A JAEGER!!!!

i guess insert plot stuff here?? i’m lazy to expand upon it but... they go fight kaiju with the others naturally

the first mission going south bc vanya is terrified of fighting a monster for real and benkliego have to save her. five is furious at first but remembers her real, visceral fear and promises her he’ll protect them

“you have to trust me. you’ve been in my head. don’t you trust me?”

the second time they pilot, it’s a success. it’s a REAL good success but it’s a terribly long battle and alluther almost go down and for a moment five thinks they’re going to die. it’s vanya who thinks “not like this” back at him, bc her fear makes five brave it makes sense that five’s fear makes her brave too. they defeat the kaiju but both have to go into surgery for their wounds afterwards.

five wakes up alone and it’s... a strange feeling. his body feels weird. like it’s not his. drifting with vanya was strange at first and he’d been terrified to let someone in but once he got over that it felt RIGHT

now his head feels unnaturally quiet with just his thoughts. he’s heard about this before - when pilots come back out of the drift it’s hard to be separated from their co-pilot.

he needs to find vanya

he staggers out of bed and limps to her quarters, knocking insistently. part of him is afraid now. he passed out after, what if vanya didn’t make it? what if he has to feel this empty forever?

but the door flies open and there she is, with wide, wild eyes. “van - “ he tries to say her name but vanya jumps at him, throwing her arms around his neck and CLINGING.

they can’t be in each other’s head now, they’re not drifting. physical closeness is the only good substitute

five’s stunned for a moment - she’s never HUGGED him like this - but immediately her skin against his makes him relax and he holds her tighter and just SIGHS in relief

vanya’s whispering to him, urgent and pained. “i thought i was the only one who - “ “no. no you aren’t.” he scoops her close and goes back into her room, dumping her on the bed and holding her. he’s never been this close to another person and he never will be.

vanya slides a hand over his chest, feeling his heartbeat and five does the same to her. they’re quiet for hours, not talking, not sleeping, just pressing close to each other and keeping themselves grounded with touch

“you saved the world the other day,” vanya tells him before they fall asleep. five presses a kiss into her hair. it feels natural. honestly, he wants to kiss her all over but that’s for another time. “WE saved the world,” he replies. she smiles at him.

#fiveya #au tag #pacrim fiveya!!!#oh my god this is SOOO LONG I'M SO SORRY LMAO #I SHOULD JUST WRITE A FIC HUH LASDKJFOAIWEJFOAJSDF #but i got really excited about this bc i reread one of my fav mako/raleigh fics the other day #and thinking about fiveya who both aren't used to touch #cuddling bc they NEED to #it kills meeeeeeee

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lady-of-lyon · 5 years

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Why I Love Steven Universe the Movie - There Are Spoilers

I saw the Steven Universe movie the day after it came out, on the Cartoon Network app. Immediately after watching it, the first thought I had was, “well, that happened.” It seemed a bit bizarre and empty to me at the time, but after a few weeks of ruminating, it slowly began to connect with me more and more.

I get why people don’t like this movie. There are a lot of things I don’t like about it too. The whole journey with the main characters rediscovering what they had already learned in the show was to me uninteresting and unfulfilling. Amnesia is a tricky plot device because it’s an easy cop out, and it’s often used as nothing other than that especially in this movie, where the characters don’t grow or learn, they just fall back to square one and regrow, which creates an illusion of character development that doesn’t really develop anything. The best this movie does with this concept is with Pearl, by clarifying that it wasn’t Rose who gave her her independence but independence itself, but amnesia wasn’t really necessary to make this statement, and other than that what’s learned leaves no impact. Even Steven’s journey is a retread, and he doesn’t have an excuse, because he doesn’t have amnesia. Cool things can be done with amnesia, the movie Memento for one is a prime example, and I also like to direct you to the Criminal Minds season 3 episode Tabula Rasa, but Steven Universe does not do such things.

A lot of the songs in the movie were also sub-par. Let Us Adore You (especially the reprise), Other Friends and Drift Away stick with you, and system/BOOT. PearlFinal (3).Info is cute, but other than that the songs do what their more memorable colleague mentions - they drift away. Yes, burn me at the stake, I did not care for True Kinda Love. To start with it’s not really my kind of music, and it especially rubbed me the wrong way when its chill elevator jams were chosen to accompany the most desperate and dramatic scene in the movie. The pacing is also messed up; little time is spent showing what Steven’s happily ever after actually looks like, so it feels rushed and low-stakes when Spinel comes in to destroy it. I was also personally a bit miffed when Spinel was briefly reverted to being evil just over a bad word choice on Steven’s part, even after the beautiful garden scene.

And of course, the elephant in the room, the treatment of Pink Diamond, with her splitting the fanbase on whether she’s irredeemable or whether the movie unfairly makes her seem so without playing devil’s advocate and acknowledging the abuse that we learned from the series she was taking and how that effected her actions. I won’t dip my toes too deep in that, but I agree with the fanbase that it could’ve been dealt with better.

Wow, it sounds like I really don’t like this movie, huh? And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have, if it weren’t for Spinel.

From parent’s day out on to today, I’ve always gone to small schools. My graduating highschool class had nine people in it, who were all very different in terms of personality and personal goals, and the same can be said of all my other classes. Small schools love to talk about how great small schools are, and how it builds such a strong community, and how the students become family, but it isn’t true. Instead the result was a group of people who were friendly with one another not because they were actually friends, but because they had no other choice, because these were the only people that were around them. You weren’t ever able to find someone who you can really connect with, and even when you kinda did, despite how much you hugged and hung out and ate lunch together, there was always this sense that it was out of necessity, that you were only friends because no one else had even the slightest hint of being compatible. That’s the reason I love shows and movies so much about strangers being forced together to save the day and become friends in the process, because I know from personal experience that something like that is so impossible that the mere thought of it working out is a world of escapism.

And that was the headspace I was in most of my life - escapism, denial. I really did believe the small schools were right, that me and my classmates were close, that we were family. I went on thinking that they liked me, that I was the class clown, the entertainment, their friend. But I found out, that could not be further from the truth.

I switched schools partway through my sixth grade year, mostly because of this teacher I had. She was disorganized and mean and had a personal vendetta against me, so my parents pulled me out. As I was leaving, though, she told me what I hadn’t seen - my classmates hated me. They thought I was weird, and annoying, and childish, and wanted nothing to do with me. She was right, as was confirmed to me last summer by one of the two classmates who were nice to me from that school that I reconnected with, but her saying that really messed me up. I was eleven, why wouldn’t it?

Moving into my new school I was paranoid. It didn’t help that the students here much more openly showed their disdain for things, so they didn’t talk about me behind my back - I mean, I’m sure they did, but more importantly they talked about me to my face. There was a lot of bullying in that middleschool, so I did what I thought was the only choice I had. I distanced myself from them, isolated myself, and further did everything I could to get back. I was a tattle tale. I threw tantrums, and then ran away. I played into my own negative image, because I knew I wasn’t one of them, they had made that very clear, so surely that meant I was against them, right?

But then highschool rolled around. Things were different. The students in my class were largely different from the ones in middleschool, either because they matured or just came in from another school, replacing many who had left. At the start of my freshman year there was still some of that antagonism left in me, but it slowly faded out because I realized I was really, really lonely. I fell back on my attempts to be a class clown, to be entertainment, not because it was who I was and I was in denial by believing they liked me that way, but as a desperate ploy to get friends back. It was the only thing I knew how to do when it came to connecting with others, and of course I fell on my face. Many times. Sometimes literally. The more I tried and failed, the more sad I became, because this time my conclusion wasn’t that they didn’t like me because they were shallow bullies, my conclusion was that they didn’t like me because I was unlikeable.

I was excited going into college for the chance to start fresh, but that mindset still lingered in the back of my head. It kept me from making a lot of friends, because I wouldn’t try, because the fear of being hated outweighed the hope of being happy.

I was pretty lonely my first two years.

You can probably see a few parallels between me and Spinel, and if you can’t I’ll make it clearer. Obviously our life story isn’t the same, but so much of it is alike. Like Spinel I believed that someone who didn’t love me loved me. It wasn’t my fault, or their’s. It was because we were forced together by an institution that could not allow either of us to be happy, only I was in denial about it, and the other people were just grated by my childish optimism. If course I could never make them happy, we weren’t in the right places. But when I found out I wasn’t wanted, from the teacher telling me I wasn’t, to my school’s girl scout troop quietly ceasing to invite me to campouts, despite assuring me that changing schools wasn’t going to keep me from being a part of the troop, to each of my classmates from there following me when I joined social media just to unfollow me a few weeks later, it was a system shock, and I was devastated. I felt like a fool for ever even giving them the time of day, and so I lashed out. The people who got my wrath didn’t deserve it. The middleschoolers were bullies, yes, but they were going through their own insecurities and were just facing the world in a different way. Neither of us were in the right. And when it finally dawned on me that my treatment of them was unloving, it wasn’t because I came to that conclusion, but because I thought I wasn’t able to be loved - I used to be not good enough for them, and now I wasn’t good at all.

Spinel’s phase of self-hatred after her phase of aggression is brief, but it still speaks to me. She doesn’t want to be seen, and while she wants to make friends again, she’s convinced that she’s already ruined things for the people around her. She needs a fresh start.

And that’s where the happy ending comes. I am now happily in a wonderful group of friends. We all eat dinner together not because we have to, but because we want to. It took me a while to connect with them because I was still learning about myself, but after about a year of therapy and heart-to-hearts, I am happy. They are to me what the diamonds will be to Spinel. It shows that it is possible to be loved, to have friends, even when it seems like you’ve ruined everything for yourself.

And that’s why I love Steven Universe the Movie, because it isn’t Steven’s movie, it’s Spinel’s, and in some ways it’s my own. There’s probably not too many people who connected with Spinel’s story like I did, but it was just so powerful to me. She tries to make friends in a group she’s just not compatible with, and when things obviously don’t work out, she lashes out, assuming first that friends aren’t possible, that they’re just going to use you and talk behind your back and leave you behind, and then assuming that she just isn’t lovable. But she learns that there’s hope. She learns that she’s wrong, and it doesn’t seem to be Steven who teaches her this. Her breakdown of “what am I doing? Why do I want to hurt you so bad” comes when she looks at herself and what she’s become. Steven makes her want to try, to try to be better, but ultimately he’s not the one who can save her. It’s clear throughout the movie that he actually doesn’t want to be Spinel’s friend, so it makes sense that he won’t be, that they’re not compatible - I was wrong for antagonizing my middleschool classmates, but I don’t think we could’ve been friends, same with my highschool classmates - the diamonds, however, who, for all you want to say about them, have a lot of personal growth to do on their own, actually do want her. They latch on to her personality, she genuinely gives them joy where other’s couldn’t, and where she couldn’t to others. So they fly off - and Steven’s right, it’s not quite a happily ever after, because there’s still going to be a lot of work to do, but to me, it is a happy ending.

Because someday, somewhere, somehow, you’ll love again.

You just need to find someone.

#steven universe #su #steven universe the movie #su movie #spinel

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welcometophu · 5 years

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Into the Split: Arrival 4

Twinned Book 3: Into the Split

Arrival 4

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They head a little ways away from the cabin in the opposite direction from where Pawel, Mac, and Alaric stand under the trees. Nikolai can feel the wards around the cabin, pressing in on them, trying to keep them there when they stray too far. He stops, and Nikita stops as well, turning to look back at him with confusion.

“There are wards,” he says, because stepping outside of them magnifies the chances of them being found by Shadows.

“Alaric’s Clan,” she replies, and when that doesn’t mean anything to him, she clarifies. “He has really good hearing.”

“I think he’s focused on whatever they’re talking about, and I don’t really care if he listens anyway,” Nikolai says. There’s a stump nearby, wide and mostly flat, cracked from when people passing through have used it to split wood. Nikolai carefully perches on the edge, Nikita next to him. He has his back to the cabin. While it’s possible someone they know might sneak up on them, that isn’t nearly as bad as the idea of someone coming out of the woods.

It’s all so familiar here. Almost like it was home for a while. “Damn it,” Nikolai mutters. “This just set us back days. I thought we were almost there.”

“Where?” Nikita asks, and Nikolai shakes his head, waving away her question.

“Not important right this second.” He’s lying, of course. Havenhill is the most important thing in his life right now, after Seth and staying alive. But he needs to have a better understanding of what’s going on with these intruders who seem to be from another world before he starts confiding in them.

Now that he thinks it, just like that—another world—it seems so impossible.

Nikita huffs, exhaling slowly. “We didn’t mean to come here like this. I mean, yes, I wanted to get to you. Save you. But—”

“What makes you think I need saving?” Nikolai cuts her off, and she leans back from him, eyes wide. He spreads his hands. “Seriously, what makes you think that you invading is going to save me.”

She licks her lips. “This world seems so… dark. Bleak. I just wanted to help. I didn’t realize….” She trails off. “You’re furious, too.”

“Not like Seth, no, but I might be close once I really get my head wrapped around this,” Nikolai admits. It’s too much. Too big. “I thought you were just this weird dream I was having. And it worried Seth because we’ve been bonded since we were little. I’ve never had control problems, and if I did, it was just a little blip and it stopped. But you persisted. I’d close my eyes and suddenly I was dreaming about this place where things seemed like they would if I grew up without the Split, and I had friends, and hey, so what if I was a girl, because life just seemed… right. And familiar, like it didn’t even feel new to me. It felt like what life was supposed to be.”

“Maybe my life and your life would’ve been similar, if the Shadows hadn’t attacked here,” Nikita says quietly. “Maybe you and I are two sides of the same coin. I mean, I can see the parallels even now. You have a boyfriend, I have a girlfriend. You have older brothers, I have an older sister. Your family sounds like they’re Weather Witches, too, just like mine. But you knew you were a Dreamwalker when you were young.”

“Very young,” Nikolai agrees. He can’t remember ever being without his dreams. “You didn’t Emerge when you were a kid?”

“I’m a Weather Witch,” Nikita says. “Just like my parents and my sister. I was a little out of control as a kid, but nothing really strange or problematic. Then recently my Talent got really weird and I started sleeping randomly and creating massive storms when I slept. We figured out that I was dreaming about you, and not remembering, and it made me so stressed that I lost control of my weather abilities.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Nikolai can’t assimilate the idea of being both.

Nikita smiles wryly. “Pawel has a long list of things that don’t make sense that he’s trying to understand. Like Lineage Talents that Emerge with something else. Carolyn’s a Predictive Mage who can now Travel. Mac’s just Emergent in general. I Emerged as a Dreamwalker. Alaric’s Clan and he only just found that dragon form you saw me riding. And Shadows are Emergent, just like Mattie said. Talent is way more complicated than we ever knew. And Pawel studies that.”

Right, they’d mentioned that, along with the name of the university. “Pine Hills University is closed here,” he says slowly. It’s the abandoned university in Unity where they’d hoped to stop, maybe find a safe place for a night. Every time one of them mentions a detail, it cements the idea of there versus here, and Nikolai gets the feeling that they could spend days just throwing information at each other. “Nikita, you and your friends need to understand that this isn’t your home. If you’re from a different world, you should go back there. Be safe in your own place. We’re hunted here. If you saw that in my dreams, it was real. The Shadows want to get us. The humans want to kill us because they think that if we’re gone, the Shadows will leave, even though I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. But everyone who isn’t Talented thinks that we’re at fault for the plague of Shadows, and they hate Dreamwalkers the most.”

“Why?”

He wonders how she can ask that, when she’s an unbonded Dreamwalker. When she’s had experience with her Talent going wild and out of control. “Because we break the spaces between here and the Dreamscape,” he says slowly. “Because it’s Dreamwalkers who let the Shadows in, and it’s Empaths who help us keep them out. We’re the killers and the saviors, all in one.”

Nikita’s mouth is slightly open. “Oh. Oh, that really does explain a lot.” She closes her mouth, her glance flicking back toward the cabin. There’s no one outside now, and Nikolai wonders if everything’s okay inside. He doesn’t hear shouting, so it can’t be that bad.

She lowers her voice, whispering, “Does everyone fall in love with their Empath?”

Nikolai can’t help the low snort that slips free. “Not everyone, no,” he tells her. “But it happens a lot. If you’ve found the right Empath to bond with, you’re compatible. You’ll be best friends at the least, and some people do fall in love if they’re attracted to each other. Seth and I were friends for a really long time before it started to change for us, but when it did change, it just seemed so normal. No one was surprised.”

Her eyebrows go up. “No one?”

“Conversation for another time.” Nikolai doesn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of remembering the people he and Seth have lost. “My point is, it isn’t fated. And there might even be more than one Empath that you click with—but the bond, when it happens, is kind of intense. For us, anyway. Our powers are in sync, and we can do work together. I’m not sure I’d be sane without Seth. More than likely I’d be dead, consumed by Shadows long ago.”

Nikita nods, and he can almost see the wheels turning as she assimilates the information. He has a feeling that as long as she and her friends are here, they’ll have conversations like this often. It’s as if they somehow developed a society that’s missing some of the most basic information about Talent.

“So,” she says slowly, dragging the word out. “Where I’m from, we had the Emergence. It’s almost eleven years now, actually. I was eight when it happened. Pawel was eighteen, almost the same age as my sister. I think he actually knew her. They were both students at Pine Hills at one point. Anyway.” She inhales roughly. “So,” she says again, then stalls.

Nikolai knows there has to be more to the story than that, but he feels like he can counter with some information. Give her more to process while he tries to fit the puzzle pieces together of how this all happened. “When I was eight, we had the Split. It wasn’t a big deal at first, and no one really thought about it much. There were rumors, and I still don’t know how it really happened, but it was like something broke, and the Shadows came. And they hunted us, and humanity got scared, and it all started going downhill from there.”

“Same time,” Nikita murmurs.

“Sounds like.” Nikolai isn’t sure what it means, but coincidences aren’t something to be ignored. “What happened after your Emergence?”

“It was a pretty public thing that happened. There was this gymnastics competition on television, and one of the girls fell, and she teleported and saved herself from breaking her neck, but it was live. So everyone saw magic happen and there was no way to hide it. And she—she wasn’t Lineage. She was Emergent.” Nikita’s gaze drifts toward the cabin.

Nikolai frowns, remembering how Mac had just appeared in front of him and Seth, blinking into being. “Wait. Is your Teleporter that same—” He stops when Nikita nods. “Oh,” he says. “And then?”

“We had to all learn how to live with each other,” Nikita says quietly. “And some people are scared, and some aren’t. It’s easier some places than others, and there are all kinds of new laws. Like Pine Hills is part of the Blended league, which has sports teams with both Talents and people without. Alaric’s boyfriend isn’t Talented, but he’s an amazing quarterback, but then there’s Alaric, who’s also on the team and he’s Clan.”

“And the humans don’t hunt you?” The idea of sports teams where humans and Talents cooperate seems absolutely alien to Nikolai.

Nikita shakes her head, stops midway through the motion and shrugs. “Sometimes. I think we’re all still figuring it out. It gets a little better all the time, and we’ve got people like Pawel who are trying so hard to learn everything there is to know about magic and teach it to other people at the same time. But—” She stalls again abruptly. “We have Shadows, too. After the Emergence, we had a lot more Emergent Talents than there used to be. And now we have Shadows, and people have been dying, like Alaric’s brother. And then I started having nightmares about you, and we realized that Mattie’s soul was in the Dreaming and when Carolyn brought her back she was better. But even more than that, we realized that the Dreaming has all these paths to all these places. Like the Dreaming is one big place that touches everywhere. My world. Your world. Maybe a million others, I don’t know. But your world and mine, they’re close. Like twins.” She swallows. “Like you and me, being twin versions of each other.”

That’s going to take some time to filter through, and Nikolai doesn’t have that kind of time right now. He focuses on the last part. “We aren’t actually twins,” he points out. “We weren’t separated at birth.”

“I know.” Nikita picks at an invisible thread on her jeans. “But we’re similar. And I think that I’m my world’s version of you, or vice versa. And that’s why I wanted to save you. Because your world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, and you’re running, and I didn’t want to see you die. Because that’d be like seeing me die.”

In a strange way, that all makes sense. “I get it,” Nikolai says. “When I first started dreaming about you, I thought you were just this escape my brain had made up for me. It didn’t feel like a Dream, but it felt like more than a dream, too.” He doesn’t know if she can hear the distinction between the words in his voice, but she nods like she can.

“Carolyn has this theory that Dreamwalkers are actually Travelers like her and Mac,” Nikita says quietly. “That we’re meant to go into other worlds, or bring those worlds to us. But we can’t control it enough to make it safe.”

“So we rip holes in between things and the Shadows fall out,” Nikolai muses.

Nikita smiles. “Exactly. They’re in the Dreaming. Or in the spaces between the Dreams.”

That makes a lot of sense. Everyone knows that an unbound Dreamwalker is a risk, that they can draw the Shadows. But if they make literal holes into the place where Shadows live… Nikolai shudders at the thought. “Dreamwalkers are consumed by their Dreams if they aren’t bound,” he says quietly.

“Dreamwalkers are half legend where I’m from,” Nikita admits, still picking at that invisible thread. “They can’t interact with each other, because if they do, entire towns can be swallowed by their dreamscapes. It’s messy. I Emerged while at college, and my Talent doesn’t work quite normally. But I’ve been working with another Dreamwalker—one who didn’t manifest the Dreaming Talent—and with Heather to try to get it all figured out. I think your world has it right with the Empaths, but our world didn’t know that.”

Nikolai’s amazed that they’ve only just started to be invaded by Shadows now, but it sounds as if they’ve found their own way past the problems created by an unbound Dreamwalker. He just makes a small noise, and tries to assimilate what she’s said already.

“Nik.”

He turns as Nikita does when Heather calls. Nikita smiles slightly, and Nikolai has to smile back. She has a point about their similarities and the one with the names is probably going to get confusing the longer they stick together.

Which reminds him.

“How are you going to get home?” he asks.

The smile slips away from Nikita’s lips. Heather approaches more quickly, wraps her arms around Nikita’s shoulder and leans in to kiss her temple. Nikolai can’t feel it, but he’s familiar enough with how Seth calms him to guess what Heather is doing when Nikita’s expression eases.

“I don’t know,” Nikita says. “Like I said, we didn’t mean to come here. Not yet. We were supposed to be planning so it was organized. We don’t have an exit strategy, as Mac called it.”

“And Pawel has just really figured out that we’re here,” Heather says quietly. “He’s tried to use his phone at least a dozen times since you came out here, and he’s getting anxious about not being able to reach Conor or Emily.”

Nikolai’s brow furrows in confusion.

“His son, and his neighbor,” Nikita says. “Conor’s only nine.”

“Pawel’s a professor and a father and he’s our age?” Maybe a little older, Nikolai thinks, but not much.

“All that and he’s not even thirty yet, but he is older than us,” Heather says. She tugs a little at Nikita until she stands. Nikita has to hunch over to wrap her arms around Heather, but they embrace in a way that makes Nikolai look away to give them a moment’s privacy.

Hah. Privacy. That’s something they won’t have much of going forward.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled with a group,” he says slowly. “And you don’t know the rules. It’s like you’re just starting out.”

“Seth went over them again while you two were out here,” Heather says. “Avoid using Talent, although Empathic Talent seems to slide under the radar. Dreamwalkers are dangerous. Don’t trust anyone we meet; they might be someone who wants to kill us. Ration food because we’ll be traveling on foot from safe house to safe house. He said something about wanting to talk to you before we get on the road again tomorrow morning, and that there’s no place close enough to start out today. And he and Alaric had a long conversation about Clan and their appetites and decided that it would be better for Alaric to risk shifting so he can hunt and eat what he finds, rather than avoiding it and starving. As long as he’s not the dragon, Pawel doesn’t think he’ll be unique enough to be a draw for the Shadows.”

There is so much that Nikolai doesn’t know about these people. So many questions that he feels like he should be asking so that they have all the information they need. He feels like he shouldn’t just trust them, but at the same time, another part of his mind feels as if he does know them. As if he’s been with them already. As strange as the things sound when Heather or Nikita says them, they also sound right.

Heather nods back at the cabin. “Seth’s getting anxious that you’ve been out here so long.” Her expression is assessing, settled on Nikolai. “You get co-dependent when you’re bonded. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.”

Nikita kisses her cheek, then touches her palm to Heather’s face and kisses her lips as well. “I get the feeling we’re seeing what you and I might become,” she says softly, and they lean together forehead to forehead.

Heather’s breath stutters, and for a moment Nikolai feels a chill wariness in the air. It’s almost like Seth, but not quite, and it’s shuttered as quickly as it shows. He’s not sure Nikita even notices it, but he knows it came from Heather. They’re not quite in tune yet.

Nikolai pushes to his feet. “I’m going to go see where we stand, and how we’re going to manage with so many of us in a small space, so we can survive until morning. We’ll see what we can dig up for supplies; you guys aren’t really dressed for a hard trek. Seth and I will figure all that out and maybe you two—” He wants to tell them that they need to figure their shit out, understand how to keep Nikita from bringing the Shadows after them, but he also doesn’t think they need the reminder.

Heather looks scared and Nikita looks like she wants to wrap herself up in Heather.

Nikolai’s pretty sure they get it.

He touches Nikita’s shoulder, half expecting the world to shift around them when he does, but everything stays just as stark and cold and bleak as usual. “Come inside when you’re ready.”

He leaves them there as he goes inside where Seth’s waiting for him, still a small bundle of anger, but somewhat soothed. Nikolai decides to kiss him, and more importantly, Seth surges up, grips Nikolai’s shoulders and kisses him back. With everything that’s going on, this one thing, at least, hasn’t changed.

He’ll always have Seth.

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#welcome to phu #welcometophu #into the split #phu twinned #twinned #its arrival

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feynites · 6 years

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Scum Villain AU

Welp, fell down a rabbit hole of translations for novels written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, and my brain would not let go of the idea for a Scum Villain sharkbait AU. I blame @pyrrhy also for being a fantastic enabler.

So, this is a thing now! But first, on Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, the general synopsis is that a book reviewer dies suddenly with his last thoughts being of how unsatisfied he was with the harem/stallion novel he just finished reading. He finds himself subsequently transported into the body of a minor ‘scum’ villain from said book, with the task of fixing/improving the story. Of course, the character he’s currently been cast as was, in the original novel, dismembered and killed by the protagonist.

In the interests of not having that happen, our intrepid hero immediately starts trying to suck up to the protagonist. He does a good job. In fact he does such a good job that the protagonist ends up falling in love with him, and therein lies the core of the story’s shenanigans.

If you wanna read the translations, it’s ongoing here at bc novels. For other works by the same author, there’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Mo Dao Zu Shi, which also has an animated series) over here at Exiled Rebels Scanlations, and Heaven’s Official Blessing is being translated here at Sakhyulations. Translating is hard work so if you read and enjoy any of ‘em, it’s nice to consider donating to the sites, too!

Some of the above stories definitely fall into problematic pitfalls of the slash genre, though. While I am a big fan of the pacing and storytelling Mo Xiang Tong Xiu pulls off and love her characters, I’ve been forewarned on some issues too. As I’m still reading my way through I can’t give my personal assessment on a lot of that stuff or offer more in-depth warnings for everything. But it should probably be mentioned.

Warnings For This Fic in Particular: At the outset of our story, Uthvir is underage. No romance is gonna take place while they are, but when they meet Thenvunin is an 18 year-old posing as their teacher, and Uthvir is 15. This is a slow burn. I also follow the original plot points of the story pretty closely but change up the order/direction of some things, too.

Additional Notes: In the original novel, the story that the lead character gets sucked into is a fantasy/cultivation novel hybrid with elements from a whole thwack of other genres, too. I’m leaning more heavily into the fantasy stuff because I don’t have much experience with cultivation novels, just for reference, but it should be noted that a lot of the story elements draw expressly from Chinese culture and I can take no credit for them - just in case anyone who’s totally new to these genres reads along. Also, I took some liberty with the names of things, because just throwing in Chinese words seemed unfitting and I’m not following the entire script on world-building elements. (Plus, in the novel, the story’s author is notoriously bad at naming things anyway.)

Alright, my apologies for the huge stack of notes/explanations! Please enjoy reading. The characters Calain and Jhe’andal (not seen in this chapter but bound to appear later) belong to @pyrrhy, who’s graciously loaned them to me so I can mess around.

“Stupid author, stupid novel!”

Thenvunin was not entirely surprised that those ended up being the last words he uttered in life. Though he is rather regretful about it. But at the time, processing the sudden failure of his ongoing health treatments had been harder than just fixating on the fact that, probably, the last book he was ever going to read in his life had been that terrible trainwreck of a harem fantasy novel.

That popular disaster of a book, ‘Immortal Demon Way’. With records broken on copies sold, but most critics more or less agreeing that it was mindless dreck. Except, the problem was, it wasn’t really ‘mindless’ dreck. There had been parts that were really promising. That was the real tragedy of the entire mess. The story had plenty of interesting side-characters and concepts, some intriguing world-building, even the promise of genuinely engaging content. But all of it had been tethered to a truly terrible main plotline. A black hole of a plot that managed to be boring and offensive by turns, even if the protagonist did manage to come across as somewhat compelling once in a blue moon.

Because ‘Immortal Demon Way’ was pure self-indulgent trash. The leading character, Uthvir, was one of those characters whose tragic life led them onto a dark path of retribution and conquest. Despite being pure-hearted in their youth, the constant mistreatment from people around them eventually blackened their heart, until they were the sort of person who wear a friendly smile while torturing a man to death. And naturally, over the course of the story, they managed to accumulate a truly massive harem, all filled with beautiful women. Even though the author - writing under an anonymous pen name of ‘Half-Demon Prince’, had come out and said that the character wasn’t exclusively attracted to women - that claim never manifested in the actual text. Which made the whole gesture feel quite performative.

Honestly, Thenvunin probably would have never picked up the book if he didn’t need to review it for the site he worked for. He’d never been fond of harem works, where the hero collects love interests like they’re filling up a basket of flowers. It had less to do with the numbers involved, and more to do with the sheer fact that more love interests usually meant less development on any particular relationship. Plus, inevitably, there would be scheming plotlines within the harem, and Thenvunin had never liked reading about women causing one another to miscarry or murdering each other’s babies to try and keep ahead in ranking. Luckily, ‘Immortal Demon Way’ hadn’t included a lot of such content, and what was there had been easy to skip. Enough so that Thenvunin had found himself speed-reading most of the ‘romantic’ parts. A sure sign of failure, given that romance was his actual preferred genre.

But yes, all in all, ‘Immortal Demon Way’ was one of those stories he would have been happy not to think about ever again. And instead, it had ended up being his last thought in life.

Well…

In his old life, at any rate.

But somehow, after he had died, he had found himself hearing an odd robot voice in his mind. Sort of like one of those automatic screen-readers.

W. ..what…?

“...What’s going on?” Thenvunin had asked.

The obvious question, really. He had felt panicked, or rather, like he should be panicked, but also like everything he could feel was very far away. Shock? He’d gone into shock before. It was a similar sensation, but not exact. But then again, there could be a lot of variables with that sort of thing. Everywhere around him just looked blurry, and pale. As if he was standing in a very modern office and wearing smudged glasses. He wondered if he’d survived after all, and if this latest disaster in his health had damaged his eyes so badly.

It was a chilling thought. Or, it should have been.

World? What world?

“I don’t understand,” Thenvunin said. “Am I in the hospital? Where’s my mother?”

That last question was perhaps more embarrassing than he would have liked, but it didn’t seem as if he was feeling embarrassment too keenly, either. And his mother always came whenever he was hospitalized. Thenvunin was only eighteen, and had been sick all of his life. Naturally, his mother worried a great deal about him, and the hospital staff knew to inform her whenever he had a serious incident.

Deceased…?

Thenvunin reeled, and even with his current level of detachment, struggled to process it all. He tried asking the “system” more questions, but none of them seemed to garner satisfactory answers. Asking who had created it didn’t get him anywhere. Nor did asking how it knew anything about him. Asking what this whole ‘Immortal Demon Way’ project was just prompt a repeat of the ‘story goals’ - it sounded like he was being moved into a story in order to fix it? Like a sort of virtual reality?

He had a great deal of trouble processing the whole concept.

But then, there didn’t seem to be anything for him to do but accept it in the end, either. It could all be a trick, but, Thenvunin did remember dying. Or something that felt close enough to it that he couldn’t bring himself to take that risk. He was afraid of dying; afraid enough that he could feel it, even as he drifted in that strange ‘waiting room’.

It was a feeling that followed him as he woke up in another strange room. But this time it was one he could see. His heart was hammering in his chest, and he felt like he had a terrible headache. The room around him definitely wasn’t a hospital, however. As he sat up, he could see sunlight streaming through several beautiful, open windows. The air smelled fresh, like the mountains he had visited once, before his father left. He sits up to find himself laid out in a comfortable bed, with a clothe on his brow, and a very light but comfortable robe on his body. The pale green fabric is the same colour as his eyes, but he only stares at it for a moment before his attention is arrested by something else.

His body.

Which is… definitely not his body.

There’s a curtain of long, wavy hair falling down past his shoulders. His chest is broad and… chiseled? How could he possibly have a chiseled chest? And his arms are muscular, and long, and utterly devoid of the scars he had gotten from his car crash eight months ago, when he had tried to drive himself to the hospital and veered into a lamppost instead. Thenvunin is almost too shocked to move, but after a moment, he finds himself hurriedly pushing back the blankets and looking at the rest.

His legs - !

His legs look… they look good! Moreover, as he moves, he’s startled to realize that he doesn’t feel any pain. None at all, apart from his headache. Under other circumstances he would assume he was on some heavy painkillers, but obviously, this might not even be the case? He moves his legs and marvels at the ease of it, swivels his hips and feels nothing, and after a minute he cannot help but leap out of bed and begin jumping around, amazed and entranced…

…And more than a little disconcerted. This body is totally, completely different from his own. He looks down at it and intellectually knows that he’s inside of it, but it scarcely feels that way. After a few minutes of either celebrating or panicking, or possibly both, Thenvunin finally locates a full-body mirror next to a dressing station in one corner of the room.

He stares uncomprehendingly at himself.

His eyes are the same, and his hair is the same - if somewhat longer, he thinks - and there’s a certain congruity between his facial features. But the man staring back at him is undeniably, completely different. He looks both strong and elegant, somehow. More muscular than Thenvunin would have ever idealized himself as, but the strength in those muscles is making him feel slightly giddy as he moves. And he’s tall. He’s not stooping over in the least, not struggling to keep his shoulders straight, feeling no pain from his surprisingly trim waistline…

It can’t be him!

He’s still trying to reconcile the idea when he realizes he has no clue who this character is, either. From the system, he gathered that he was going to be transported into an existing character’s body. But there are a few who might match the description of this one, and even more who were mostly undescribed. The only thing he knows for certain is that he is not Uthvir; they would not be so tall.

Right?

System, who am I supposed to be?

He freezes in place, at the sound of the response which he can somehow tell is purely in his own mind.

Did the system just call him a virgin…?

How would it know?!

Although it seemed to know everything. Thenvunin paused in embarrassment, before the rest of the message finally registered. His character is Thenevunin Thenerassan…?

Wait, ‘Thenerassan’? That villain? The corrupt instructor who was always taking time to abuse and harass Uthvir, when they were still young and full of hope for the future? He’d never even realized the character had a first name! Though admittedly, he hadn’t read all of the author’s shared notes and ‘tidbits’ on social media. For a moment he is thoroughly offended. How dare this horrible character share his name!

And then he remembers.

Thenerassan…

Thenerassan dies in this story!

And not peacefully, oh no. After years of abusing Uthvir and then finally betraying them utterly at the grand tournament, the hero comes back seeking vengeance, with their heart blackened and ruthless. They utterly decimate Thenerassan’s reputation, until there is no one on earth who would pity him, and eventually end up taking him prisoner. Then they cut off his limbs, one by one, and blind him, and use their demonic blood to torture him until he can finally take no more and expires.

And Thenvunin himself had once visited the story’s forums to express disappointment that this character wasn’t castrated, too. Considering everything he had done.

He feels faint, going white as a sheet while he stares in the mirror. So consumed with terror that he doesn’t even hear the door to the room opening.

“Brother?” an unfamiliar voice calls.

Thenvunin whips his head around, and freezes in place. A new kind of fear gripping him, as he looks at this unfamiliar person. Presumably a character in the story. For half a heartbeat, he’s almost afraid that it’s Uthvir, come to drag him off for torture and death. But then his mind catches up with him. No, this is… that wouldn’t be right. This place, based on the descriptions, must be Thenerassan’s chambers on Quiet Peak temple. The author of ‘Immortal Demon Way’ had only very loosely followed the structure of a ‘cultivation’ novel, taking grand liberties with the various stages and processes of most established works. The Peaks, as he recalled, were little more than supernatural stomping grounds; like elite clubs for people who had attained immortality through cultivating their internal energies, and becoming incredible fighters.

If he is at Quiet Peak, then he mustn’t be at a point in the story where this character has been ruined, yet. But that’s only one relief; he still finds himself looking at a concerned face he doesn’t recognize.

“...Yes?” he finally ventures.

The stranger comes into the room. He is a man. Handsome. Long dark hair, pretty brown eyes, middle-dark complexion. He could be any number of a dozen characters, really, but Thenvunin supposes he could narrow it down to the ones populating Quiet Peak. It was an early part of the story, so one he remembers fairly well.

Before he can latch onto a guess, though, the stranger pauses and gives him an assessing look.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks. “Your disciples said you collapsed out of nowhere on the practice fields. Compassion took a look at you but couldn’t see any problem, either with your health or internal mystic energies. She advised that we let you rest…”

“Ah,” Thenvunin says. “Um. Well. Yes, I… fainted.”

The stranger raises an eyebrow.

“You fainted? Have you been neglecting yourself in some way, brother?” he asks. He seems cordial enough, which further limits the possibilities for who he could be. Dark hair, brown eyes, friendly enough to check in on the unlikable Thenerassan’s health…

“...Venavismi?” he ventures.

The man blinks.

“Yes?” he asks.

Oh thank goodness.

“I. Um. I seem to be… not feeling well…” he says. It feels like an odd thing to say, since technically speaking, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt so well before in his life. He almost jumps out of his skin when he hears a soft ‘bing’ inside his head, though.

<Warning: Impending Out of Character Behaviour Alert. Current Participant has OOC Restriction Locks still in place. OOC Restriction Locks can be removed once Achievement: Character Development has been obtained.>

Thenvunin freezes in place again.

What?

What are OOC Restriction Locks?!

Meaning… if he behaves out of character, he’ll be penalized?

But Thenerassan is a monster! Thenvunin can’t act like that. It would be beyond the pale! And besides, how can he possibly change anything in this story if he has to act like an amoral reprobate the entire time? No, wait. There was more, wasn’t there?

What’s ‘Achievement: Character Development’?

What?! How am I supposed to do that, I’m nothing like that wretch!

Thenvunin is still in the process of thinking furiously in his mind when Venavismi seems to decide that he must be rattled. He’s accustomed enough to being handled by nurses that being steered back towards his bed barely registers in his mind, until he finds himself being settled onto the mattress again.

“...more rest, brother,” Venavismi is saying, genially. He seems to be about as nice as the impression his character gave off, in the story. Thenvunin always felt rather badly about his death. Which… he suddenly recalls, was Thenerassan’s fault. Retaliating in a fury after the accusations against him had landed, he had killed the first people who attempted to apprehend him, only for Uthvir to swoop in and put a stop to him. One of them had been Venavismi. Decapitated, as he recalls…

He feels an inexplicable rush of shame. Not that he’s responsible for Thenerassan’s actions, but, well…

“Thank you,” he says. “You are a very upright person, Venavismi, even if you can make terrible jokes sometimes.”

What? Just for saying ‘thank you’?!

<Character: Thenerassan would not thank Venavismi without ulterior motive. -5 Deduction. Character: Thenerassan would not compliment Venavismi without ulterior motive. -5 Deduction. Character: Thenerassan would also not display weakness in front of a potential rival. -5 Deduction. Deductions reduced by 50% due to mitigating factor: Plausible Disorientation.>

Internally, Thenvunin fumes. Plausible?! He is most certainly disoriented, of course he is!

But Venavismi does look very surprised.

“Um. Thank you, brother…?” he ventures. “I think I had better get another healer to attend to you. Do you remember hitting your head on anything when you collapsed?”

“Of course not, I don’t even remember collapsing!” Thenvunin snaps, flustered and unhappy with having lost points. Even though he doesn’t know what the points mean. He lets Venavismi bow his way out of the room, the atmosphere awkward and disconcerting, and then finally just drops his head into his hands.

What do all these points even mean, System?

…Yes. Yes, I would, if that will explain this whole confusing mess!

<Beginner’s Tips have been activated! Additional Mode: Character File Recognition has also been activated. New characters will now appear with their names provided by the system, in the event that Character: Thenerassan would be able to recognize them. For a cost of an additional 100 points, Easy Mode may be activated. Warning: current point levels insufficient to make payment. Regarding point system: actions furthering project goals generate points. Lock violations or insufficient story progress will incur penalties. Negative point status will result in Participant’s ejection from the project.>

Ejection from the project…?

In other words, then, if his points go into the negatives, he’ll be sent back home.

Where he’s… dead.

And what happens if I die during the course of this project? He wonders, thinking of the chilling prospect of Thenerassan’s canonical fate.

Death of the Participant will result in ejection from the project.

So… death, again.

Thenvunin lets out a shaky breath.

He would… yes, he would definitely rather avoid that, all things considered. But by the time a healer - whose name Thenerassan apparently would not have bothered to know - comes to his chambers, he doesn’t feel much closer to regaining his equilibrium.

Thenvunin takes an entire day to rest from his ‘mysterious illness’. In the evening, one of his disciples comes with something more substantial for him to eat. Desire, or ‘Squish’, as the narrative had nicknamed her. She is a pleasant girl, and a teenager, though how old she exactly is would depend on when he’s arrived on this scene. Assuming it’s prior to Uthvir’s descent into hell, she could be anywhere between fourteen and nineteen. Thenerassan - the original - had lusted after this girl, behaving inappropriately the entire time. Seeing the girl come into his rooms, Thenvunin is appalled twice-over by that particular story element. Here Thenerassan was supposed to be her mentor, but he had scarcely seemed to teach her anything except that authority figures weren’t to be trusted! And then she had joined Uthvir’s harem, all full of scandals and intrigue, and… admittedly, Thenvunin had rather lost track of her character after that.

He didn’t recall her has terribly complex. Mostly just sweet, and devoted, a simple ‘childhood friend’ style love-interest. Though he’s surprised when she comes in, and he notices that she lacks the typical ‘dainty’ appearance of such a girl. Instead she is heavy-set and… well, fat. With a round face and broad nose, and a tumble of curly dark hair. She is still quite beautiful, and obviously more than strong enough to handle the training at the peak, but Thenvunin doesn’t recall imagining her this way at all from her description.

Then again, Half-Demon Prince, the author, hadn’t been as typically prone to describing the female characters’ measurements and ‘charms’ as most writers in the genre. There had been a lot of fanart… perhaps the standard interpretation of this character was based more on a popular fanartist’s work, than on all the possibilities contained in her description?

But then, why should the ‘project’ choose an atypical interpretation, rather than the most common one?

He supposes that all has to do with how the system even works, and on that front, it has remained entirely silent.

“Teacher, will this meal do?” Squish asks him. Respectful, but a little distant.

It suddenly strikes Thenvunin - Squish was Uthvir’s only childhood friend. The protagonist. If he is to survive this ordeal, it seems absolutely paramount that Uthvir not want to kill him.

“This meal is fine,” he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He focuses intently on Squish’s face. “Tell me, how old are you this year?”

For a moment, he’s almost afraid that the system will tell him that was out-of-character. But it remains silent, and Squish’s expression turns somewhat reluctant.

“Sixteen,” she tells him.

Sixteen… which makes Uthvir fifteen. Three years. Thenvunin has three years to undo Uthvir’s hatred of him. But this also means that Uthvir has already spent two years around the Original Thenerassan. Being bullied, being starved, being beaten, being left out in the cold… Thenvunin pales at the thought of all the rampant child abuse. His only, minor consolation is that Thenerassan hadn’t liked to dirty his own hands. He had preferred to simply encourage the other disciples’ bullying, or to dole out punishments that simply resulted in Uthvir’s misfortune, by doing things like handing out complicated assignments too close to curfew. The other Thenerassan had been concerned with appearances, at least, and the reputation of his sect. It was probably the only reason why he hadn’t just immediately tossed his poor disciple off the mountain.

“My parents have said that they will outright refuse all petitions for my hand until I am twenty,” Squish says, jarring Thenvunin out of his thoughts.

He blinks at her.

“Sensible of them,” he replies.

Oh, for-!

He doesn’t bother to ask what that is about, realizing in a rush of nausea that this interaction must seem like he is digging into his student’s personal business to figure out if he can browbeat her family into handing her over to him. What a sick man the original truly was! He has to fight the urge to clarify things, knowing it will only cost him at the moment.

How many points do I have left? He wonders.

He isn’t entirely addressing the system, but it answers for him anyway.

Since he got here, he’s only managed to lose points…

Squish stares mildly back at him. He lets out a breath.

“Do you know where Disciple Uthvir is?” he asks, attempting to sound as neutral as possible. Neutral cannot really be out of character, right? If Thenerassan was always spitting furious every time he mentioned Uthvir’s name, surely the other mentors at the peak would have had to notice?

Thankfully, that assessment seems correct, as there is no warning or ‘ding’.

Squish’s expression turns wary.

“They’re still doing the tasks you assigned them this morning,” she replies. “They’ve been working as hard as they can.”

Thenvunin purses his lips. Scowling, but not at his student; he’s just trying to figure out how he can start to repair things, when one of the most concrete aspects of Thenerassan’s character was his ardent hatred of all things Uthvir.

“Send them here,” he decides.

<Warning->

How can it be OOC? This is entirely self-serving! He argues. If I don’t get on Uthvir’s good side, I’ll die horribly. If the original Thenerassan knew that, don’t you think he’d start being nicer, too?

Thenvunin swallows.

The food on the lovely tray in front of him makes him slightly nauseous. Squish looks suspicious, but after a moment, she can only nod obediently and leave to go get Uthvir. She looks as though she might say something to him, for a moment. But after a moment passes, she only shakes her head, and then leaves.

So now he needs to think of something that the original Thenerassan would do, that will put a stop to all these abuses - or at least, begin to - without losing him any further points. He has no idea how difficult it will be to regain points, since he hasn’t gained any so far. And that ‘Easy Mode’ that the system mentioned before seems like the sort of thing he might like to unlock, but he’s definitely not going to do so when it will bring his point total remotely close to 'zero'.

By the time Uthvir shows up, the food has gone cold, but Thenvunin thinks he might have happened on a solution. He has moved from his rest bed to his desk, unable to sit still. But he finds himself somewhat frozen again when he finally sees them.

Uthvir.

The terrible demonic tyrant who will eventually slaughter hundreds. Who will build a massive harem of beautiful lovers, all vying for their affections. The sharp, dangerous, deadly protagonist of ‘Immortal Demon Way’.

…But, they’re just a child.

Or a teenager, but Thenvunin’s a legal adult and feels very adult compared to the tiny figure who walks into his chambers. They’ve cut their hair, he notes. He forgets what age they did that at in the story, but thinking on it, it probably wasn’t long after they arrived on the peak. Their uniform is ill-fitting but clean, pulled from standard storage. They have large, red eyes, and soft features. Really, they look younger than fifteen.

But what catches most of his attention is the large blemish on the top of their cheek, and the ugly cut at the corner of their jaw.

Thenvunin stares at them while they shift in place. Waiting to see what kind of torment he has in store for them, no doubt.

I can’t do this. How can I be cruel to a child?

<Warning: Impending Out of Character Behaviour Alert.>

After a moment, Thenvunin clears his throat, and reminds himself of his plan. He makes certain his features retain a cold look, with great effort, as he reaches into a pocket of his robes, and retrieves a little jar of healing salve that the healer left with him. Uthvir’s wary expression does not abate as he tosses it to them; but with their reflexes, of course they catch it.

“It is disgraceful for one of my disciples to go around looking like that,” he declares, lifting his chin and pursing his lips to keep from saying anything else. Poor thing, poor thing, oh you poor little thing… “From now on, there will be no more transgressions to call my good character and teaching into question.”

Uthvir seems to pale at his assertions.

“Teacher,” they say, hurriedly. “Please don’t turn me out. I swear, I will not - I will not provoke them anymore. I know I have been slow at learning how not to, but I think I have made progress... I will redouble my efforts! Please, I have nowhere else to go...”

Thenvunin frowns at their fright, before realizing that Uthvir does not recognize what the healing salve is; they probably think he’s conjuring up an excuse to kick them out of the sect. But even Thenerassan couldn’t really do that - despite his best efforts, Uthvir’s acceptance onto the mountain was the doing of Mana’Din, the Peak Leader.

“Don’t be foolish,” he snaps, and they fall immediately silent. “Do you not even know what a healing salve looks like?”

The OOC Warning remains mercifully silent, but Thenvunin feels like he is dying on the inside.

Uthvir stares uncomprehendingly down at the little jar he gave them.

“This… is healing salve?”

They don’t even know what it looks like! I can smell it from here, but they’re clueless?! They’ve never seen it before?!

Come to that, Thenvunin hadn’t seen it before, either. But apparently he still has some sense memories from the Original… which would also explain why his coordination isn’t completely shot, even if he still feels like a ghost sitting in someone else’s body.

Uthvir doesn’t have the excuse of transporting themselves between worlds, though. They should know what a salve smells like even better than he does. Or they would, if Half-Demon Prince hadn’t given them such a reprehensibly deprived childhood. The realization makes his heart crack in half.

“I expect you to use it,” he says.

He braces himself…

At the ominous ‘ding’ in his mind he nearly dies inside; but to his surprise, the system’s tone isn’t its usual ‘points deducted’ one. It takes him a moment to really register what it’s saying.

<Congratulations! Points toward Achievement: Character Development earned, +10.>

...How many points do I need to get the achievement?

<Beginner’s Tip: Achievements are unlocked at 100 points gained, determined from the moment achievement challenge is set..>

That’s… that’s not so bad, actually. Thenvunin would almost feel good about it, if he hadn’t just been unreasonably cold and cruel to an injured teenager.

...He's going to have to do this at least ten more times. He takes it back, this is terrible.

But Uthvir looks uncomprehendingly at the salve for a moment longer. Before they seem to remember that they’re in the same room as their villainous instructor, and then quickly drop into a bow.

“Thank you, Teacher,” they say.

“Hmph,” Thenvunin replies. “You can go.”

Uthvir doesn’t waste any time in getting away, probably grateful to escape without having something unpleasant happen to them. Once they’re gone, Thenvunin drops back onto his bed, and puts his face into his hands. His shoulders shake, as tears begin to form in his eyes, and spill through the cracks of his fingers.

It’s just a story, he tells himself. Even if it’s different to experience it firsthand, all these people are just characters in a book. It’s not really real.

Is it?

Thenvunin manages to knock his point totals down to 65 before he finally begins to feel confident in manipulating the OOC Locks. Though he still hasn’t managed to earn any new points, he’s figured out some things about the system, and how they seem to be lost.

For one thing, witnesses are required. Thenvunin can do any number of out-of-character things in private, but the system will only notify him of a ‘ding’ if there’s someone present to see it. Which is a good thing, because Thenvunin finds himself breaking down in private quite a bit. The system will also generally warn him if there’s someone liable to witness his out-of-character moments - and whatever else might be said, he does appreciate that. Particularly when he’s been weeping in his rooms, and one of his disciples or another immortal from the peak is on their way to find him.

It’s not that he’s thoroughly miserable, though. It’s just a lot to take in.

Quiet Peak is a really beautiful place. Thenvunin doesn’t think he’s ever been anywhere so lovely before in his life. The peak is situated in a long chain of mystical mountains, and is one of several sacred peaks where spiritualists who have achieved immortality live and congregate. It’s a place replete with nature. Thenvunin’s home is one of several small buildings - almost a village unto itself - situated around a large main temple. It’s summer when he arrives, so the air is clear and warm, with the occasional cool breeze whirling its way around the mountain paths. Lots of small animals fill up the natural spaces of the area. Birds and rodents, foxes and stranger, more fantastical creatures from Half-Demon Prince’s imagination, like Phantom Lemurs and wolves made of branches and vines, held together by ambient nature energy.

To a normal person, some of the animals would probably be quite dangerous. But Thenvunin’s body, as he ascertains, is more than just fit and healthy. He seems to have all the supernatural powers of the immortals in the story. Along with a mystical sword that the original Thenerassed would have pulled from the peak, a blade that was manifested from his own innate energies.

Thenerassan - or rather, Half-Demon Prince - had called the blade ‘Swan’s Grace’. It’s one decision of the old Thenerassan’s that Thenvunin doesn’t mind. The name seems to suit the sword, which rests easily in his grasp, even though he’s never held a sword before in his life. It’s a beautiful thing. Pale and elegant, with a white handle, and a purple tassel tied with enchanted beads that help bolster spiritual energy.

It’s one thing for Thenvunin to know that his body seems to remember how to do some things, though, and another for him to really feel comfortable doing them. The more Thenvunin thinks about upcoming events, the more he finds himself sweating under his collar. There are battles to be fought. Actual battles. Situations where making even the tiniest slip-up could result in death. Thenvunin doesn’t think it’s enough to simply rely on his reflexes, reflexes can’t provide strategies or help him think his way through more complicated situations, or really decide how to apply the skills that he - apparently - now has.

So, when the Peak Leader, Mana’Din, comes to investigate his ‘recovery’ from his mysterious illness, Thenvunin doesn’t waste much time before requesting access to some of the secluded mountain caves that are used for those attempting higher levels of cultivation. Or attempting to regain spiritual equilibrium. He remembers the caves from the books; they were frequently mentioned, and Uthvir even retreated to them on occasion, when a difficult battle had depleted their strength.

Mana’Din is, like Squish, quite different from what Thenvunin had expected, but still well within the bounds of her character description. The Peak Leader is a petite woman, dark-skinned and placid in her countenance. She wears a white half-mask, and an elegant white robe, and regards Thenvunin with what seems to be genuine concern. Almost immediately, he likes her. Though sensing the amount of energy contained within her aura is somewhat disconcerting; Peak Leaders are very strong, of course. Mana’Din is no exception.

In the original story, she was yet another character who died at Uthvir’s hands. Though, more tragically than the original Thenerassan. Uthvir had challenged her for control of the peak. Mana’Din had fought gallantly, but in the end, after all that had led to that moment, the peak’s forces were so weakened that she was no match for a full-powered and determined Uthvir. She as one of the few female characters in the story who actually died, rather than simply falling into Uthvir’s harem after being defeated. Some readers had been quite unhappy about that.

As he invites her to take his morning tea with him, Thenvunin feels another pang of inexplicable guilt. The original Thenerassan’s machinations were a huge component to the weakening of the peak - and to Mana’Din’s inevitable downfall.

“Venavismi told me about your collapse. I came to check on you while you were still unconscious. Forgive me, I would have come to check as soon as you woke, but preparations in the valley took longer than expected.”

Preparations in the…?

Oh! Thenvunin’s pleased to realize that he actually knows what Mana’Din is referring to. The tournament, still scheduled a few years from now, will take place in the valley south of Quiet Peak. Because of the potential dangers of the event, the Peak Lords themselves oversee all the preparations, creating shields and checking the security, and making certain that all possible precautions can be taken. It’s a long endeavour, which is why tournaments are not held more frequently. As an expert in placing barriers, Mana’Din’s skills in particular would be required.

The thought of how badly the tournament still goes puts another twinge of guilt in Thenvunin. He has to bite his tongue to keep from mentioning that extra security will most definitely be needed.

“Are things going well?” he asks, instead.

Mana’Din waves dismissively.

“Of course,” she says. “I’m more concerned over you. I don’t know whether it’s good news or bad news that the healers seem baffled by what’s happened. Do you think it was some sort of attack?”

Thenvunin clears his throat, and shakes his head.

“It did not seem that way to me, though it was… disconcerting,” he replies. Lifting his tea cup, he takes a slow sip. The warm liquid helps to settle his nerves a little, as he prepares his rehearsed lines. “My concern is for the equilibrium of my internal energies. Healers may not notice everything on such a front. If my leader is willing, I would like to retreat to the Secluded Caves, to better attune myself to what may be going on within my body.”

He braces himself. But fortunately, Thenerassan had generally worn a mask of courtesy around his leader; there is no ‘ding’.

Mana’Din makes a contemplative sound, and then inclines her head.

“If you think that would help, then certainly,” she says. “I will gladly open the caves to you. But do you think there is a chance you could unbalance your energies? You should not be left to go alone, in that case.”

Mana’Din is blunt. Thenerassan would have taken offense at the implication that he could unbalance his own energies via meditation, but Thenvunin can only see genuine concern in her expression. Spiritual unbalancing is very dangerous. It can lead to explosive and self-destructive behaviour, as well as lashing out. Left unchecked, it can, as he recalls, cause madness, permanently damage an immortal’s abilities, or even lead to death. And while the original Thenerassan may have been an immortal of indeterminate age, who was very accustomed to cultivating his internal energies, Thenvunin himself is… not.

However, his inexperience could be glaringly obvious to any witnesses who see him try to practice. And if people start to become suspicious, then it could lead to his discovery as an intruder, and then the dreaded ‘project reset’.

Thenvunin’s not sure what the bigger risk is. He hesitates.

Mana’Din seems to read his silence as offense. She lifts a hand.

“Please don’t mistake my concern for doubt. This is a mysterious situation, so, taking some exceptional precautions may be wise,” she tells him. When Thenvunin hesitates again, she purses her lips, and taps the side of her teacup. “Perhaps a compromise? There are certain segments of the cave system that are more open than others. Many of Battle Peak’s disciples are currently using them in early preparation for the tournament. In the event of some calamity, being in that system would probably make it easier to find help, rather than simply using the more traditional caves allotted to our peak…”

The original Thenerassan would have found such a suggestion offensive, Thenvunin thinks again. But would he have protested to his leader? Complaining might seem uglier than just capitulating, or even taking advantage of the situation. Something niggles at the back of his memory. Something about Thenerassan and the caves and Battle Peak… but he doesn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it, as Mana’Din looks at him expectantly.

He puts on a tight smile.

“I suppose, under the circumstances, that would be reasonable,” he concedes.

Mana’Din relaxes a little, and offers him a more genuine smile in return.

“That’s a relief. I’ll worry a little less, now,” she approves. Nothing dings. Thenvunin lets out a silent breath, and sips more of his tea.

Really, Thenvunin can’t help but think. How did it escape your notice that the original Thenerassan wouldn’t have been worth worrying about to begin with?

He doesn’t ask that out loud, though, of course. Despite his repugnant nature, the original Thenerassan currently retains a spotless reputation, marred only by occasion rumours of his ‘harsh’ teaching methods. And that reputation is currently very useful to Thenvunin, who is not looking to ruin it by being an actual child-abusing monster. Even if the system is making that challenging for him.

Mana’Din tells him he can set out for the caves in a few days’ time, after she has established things with Battle Peak. That’s a good development, he thinks, but it still leaves the matter of Uthvir up in the air.

While Thenvunin has been doing what he can to try and mitigate the bullying going on, it’s an uphill battle with the OOC Locks tying his hands. The original Thenerassan had a lot of disciples, though, as Thenvunin recalls, most of them will die as cannon fodder during the tournament. The thought makes him sick to his stomach. Even if they’re mostly a gang of bullies, barring Squish and Uthvir, they’re still children. Well, teenagers. And they’re following the lead set for them by their teacher. Thenvunin is a bit lost at sea on what to do about it all. However, he knows for certain that if he leaves things just as they are, with the senior disciples in charge, it won’t go well for Uthvir.

The trouble is figuring out how he can mitigate that without breaking character.

He’s still turning the matter over in his thoughts later the same day, when he finally decides that, caves or no, he needs to get some practice in.

Despite his lingering troubles with adjusting to having a totally new body, the fact that he actually has energy and a shocking absence of pain keeps making him antsy. All the beautiful nature around him, the strength in his limbs, the air in his lungs, it makes him want to do things. His fingers itch to see what the sword at his belt can do. His heart speeds up at the thought of actually being a warrior, a guardian, someone who can fight and protect people and be gallant and strong. The giddiness he feels over it is even enough to push back his worries about dying, and he finds he doesn’t feel any guilt at all in basically stealing all of these things from the original Thenerassan.

With all that in mind, Thenvunin sets out before evening to find a more secluded spot on the mountain. He has to travel for a while to do it, heading down and into the woods, with Swan’s Grace on his person. The sword feels light, and he finds he often notices its absence more than its presence. He wears green robes that blend in with the pale leaves of the willowy trees that grown in the region, and passes over a woodland stream, before finally finding a good spot.

After triple-checking to make certain that he’s alone, Thenvunin draws his sword, and takes a deep breath.

He swings it.

It slices elegantly through the air.

Another swing. His body remembers motions that Thenvunin has never made before, and after a few more attempts, he finds himself falling into patterns that feel natural. Sword-fighting forms. He pays attention to the way his body moves, or tries to. But it’s exhilarating enough that he soon finds himself distracted by the sheer joy of it all. Swan’s Grace sings, metal through wind, and as his spirits rise Thenvunin finds flurries of air whip up around him. The original Thenerassan was strongly attuned to the wind element. It seems Thenvunin is, too, as the gusts of wind follow his movements, and make the fallen leaves around him dance.

He is so enraptured, he never even notices the tiny figure who stumbles upon him. Arms burdened with firewood, eyes wide as they see their teacher practicing his forms.

Uthvir freezes in place and stares dumbfounded for a moment.

They have seen Master Thenerassan demonstrate techniques before, of course, but such demonstrations have tended to be very simple and mechanical so far. Put your feet here, hold your practice sword like this, sit this way, don’t move like that, and so on and so forth. They have yet to actually see their instructor fight - and of course, they still haven’t. But as they watch, they feel a sudden insight as to what that might look like, and it seems somehow wholly unexpected.

If they ever had to guess, Uthvir would never suppose that Master Thenerassan’s techniques were so… so…

Lovely?

They feel almost like a voyeur, somehow. As if they have stumbled upon the man bathing rather than practicing. The most shocking thing is probably the look on his face, though. From their angle Uthvir can only see part of it, but it seems as if Master Thenerassan is smiling. Smiling as he dances with the wind and strikes out with his sword, moving through forms so complex that Uthvir can only even recognize half of them.

Something in their chest aches with longing.

They want to be that graceful, and powerful. They want to be a master who can rely on their own strength.

They watch, fascinated, until it starts to occur to them that if Master Thenerassan is out practicing in the wilderness by himself, he probably doesn’t want to be seen. Maybe there are some secret techniques that he’s doing? Uthvir’s fear of getting in trouble gradually starts to overcome their interest, and they pull back, retreating the same way they came by and being careful to walk in the footprints they already made, to avoid stepping on twigs or crunching leaves. Every once in a while they glance back, unable to help themselves until Thenerassan is finally out of sight. Then they resolutely keep going, as their heart hammers excitedly in their chest.

They feel as though they have just gotten away with some kind of mischief. Even though, taken at face value, they don’t even know what they mischief would qualify as.

Master Thenerassan could probably enlighten them if he actually caught them, though. And probably assign them even more chores as punishment. Sneering at them from behind his fan.

Although… he seems to be more patient with Uthvir than usual, these days. Maybe Uthvir is actually making fewer mistakes? They’ve found the thought very heartening, even if the other disciples still seem to hate them as much as ever. Except for Squish, of course. Master Thenerassan gave her a new training manual the other day, and she promised to let Uthvir look at it, too. They were going to go this evening, but then Elandaris cornered them and told them to go find firewood.

A lot of the older students shirk their chores onto Uthvir. At first, they’d hoped doing things would be a good way to make friends, but it seems they’re always doing them wrong. Uthvir’s not entirely clueless, although sometimes it feels as though they are. They like to think that it’s the amnesia at fault. The first thing they can recall in life is running, confused, out into the road in one of the southern cities, and nearly falling straight into Lady Mana’Din. They don’t even know how they came by their amnesia; they were first brought to Quiet Peak as a mystery to solve, rather than a disciple to train. The only belonging of any real value that they can claim is the necklace they were wearing at the time Lady Mana’Din found them.

Uthvir never takes it off. They’re deathly afraid of having it stolen. The simple leather cord it’s on is nothing special, but the amber-gold stone, rough and uncut, always feels a little warm against their skin. Lady Mana’Din thinks it might be a Spirit Shard. The only other person they’ve ever shown it to is Squish, and she likes it a lot, too. Uthvir knows she’d be thrilled if they gave it to her, but they can’t bring themselves to part with it. Even if they don’t know why, it’s… theirs.

As if drawn to the current of their thoughts, the necklace in question slides out from under their over-sized collar. Uthvir pauses, shifting the firewood in their arms so that they can reach up and tuck it away again.

“Hey!”

They look up, startled, at the sound of an unwelcome voice.

Elandaris!

Hastily, Uthvir finishes shoving their treasure away again, and takes a wary step backwards. They nearly lose their balance, burdened with the firewood in their arms. Elandaris seems to be alone; they don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“I’ve nearly finished,” they say.

“Took you long enough,” Elandaris replies, marching determinedly towards them. He points at their chest. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Uthvir asks, playing dumb. “The branches…?”

Before they can react, Elandaris reaches out, whip-fast, and yanks the piece of cord around their neck. Uthvir fumbles and their treasure pops back out of their collar, as their heart speeds up.

Oh no!

The older boy’s expression twists in a mix of anger and triumph as he reaches for the spirit shard. Uthvir manages to whirl away in earnest then, though, dropping the firewood they’re carrying. To their horror, the branches and logs fall directly onto Elandaris’ feet.

A disciple of Elandaris’ level isn’t going to be as fragile as most mortals, so Elandaris is at little risk of having his foot bones broken. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still a painful thing to have an armload of wood dropped right onto his shoes.

“I’m sorry!” Uthvir immediately exclaims. Elandaris reels back, cursing, before his face twists in anger and he lashes out and punches Uthvir clean across the face.

The force behind the blow is more than enough to send them staggering.

“You clumsy oaf!” Elandaris exclaims. “How dare you! You could have injured my feet. That would set my training back. Are you trying to sabotage me?!”

“No!” Uthvir assures him, spreading out their hands. “No, of course not! I would never! It was an accident, you grabbed me and-”

“Clumsy piece of shit!” Elandaris accuses again. “Either you did that on purpose, or you are a waste of training! Come back here!”

Uthvir’s attempts to move further away are thwarted by Elandaris grabbing them. They try and counter his grip, but the older student is faster, and pulls at their treasure instead.

“And where did you get this?” he demands.

“It’s mine!” Uthvir insists, reflexively.

“Yours? Where would you get a spirit shard?” Elandaris demands. “Even a cheap-looking one like this should be beyond the means of a beggar’s child like you. And don’t tell me someone gave it to you! I know no one would. You have no coin and you have no friends, so the only answer is that you stole it.”

“I didn’t steal it!”

Elandaris hits them in punishment. Uthvir knows they shouldn’t argue, but this is their treasure. If Elandaris thinks they stole it then he’ll take it away.

“I didn’t steal it!” they insist, through the pain. “It’s always been mine, it was found with me, Lady Mana’Din knows!”

“Liar!” Elandaris accuses. He tugs at the cord, and Uthvir struggles back. A few well-placed kicks send them falling backwards, though. Despite their efforts to train their skills, the extra chores that are always being given to them take up most of the time they would spend practicing. They are behind; they know it. And they don’t have much recourse, though their heart lurches in pure alarm as they feel the ties on their leather cord finally give out.

Elandaris seizes their treasure.

Uthvir falls down, and trips over the dropped firewood.

“No!” they protest, scrambling to get back up. “It’s mine, it’s not-”

“Shut up, you little liar!” Elandaris snaps back, and lands a kick against their stomach. Uthvir grabs his leg, too desperate to back down. They scramble to try and reclaim their necklace. The defiance makes Elandaris even more furious, however, and after a moment they are both rolling through the undergrowth. Uthvir loses track of where their treasure even is, if it’s been dropped or if the older student still has it, as Elandaris gets them pinned and begins pummeling them.

“How dare you!” he snarls. “You sneaky little thief!”

Uthvir tries to cover their face, finally going purely on the defensive. They brace themselves for the beating.

But Elandaris only lands a few uncoordinated hits before he suddenly stops; crying out in pain.

Bewildered, Uthvir risk looking again.

Elandaris is holding his hands up. But there is a large, crimson gash on the back of one of his wrists.

“How did you do that?” he demands, shocked at the sight of his own blood. “Did you stab me?!”

Uthvir swiftly shakes their head.

“How could I?” they ask.

It must be the wrong thing to say, though, because Elandaris just looks angrier. Like he thinks they must be tricking him. Uthvir only feels confused as he lefts his fists again. They brace themselves, but this time they keep watching. So they see quite clearly as his hands come down, and…

A leaf.

A simple leaf, being carried on a swift wind, whips by and slashes Elandaris’ hands again, before he can bring them down to hit. He lets out another cry of pain, and finally scrabbles back off of Uthvir. Bleeding from both hands.

“What are you doing?!” he wails. “You’ve cut me! You wretch! How did you cut me?”

“It’s not me doing it,” Uthvir tries to explain, raising placating hands. “It’s…”

The leaves?

They glance down to the ground, and the two unbroken, perfectly-shaped, but blood-edged leaves lying not too far away. There are techniques that can make even flower petals as sharp as darts, especially in the hands of wind practitioners, Uthvir knows. They’ve read as much as they can, when they’re able to. But in that case…

There’s only one person who could do this sort of thing.

If Master Thenerassan wanted to stop Elandaris, though, he could simply come and tell him to stop?

This must be a lesson, then. Or a test. Uthvir curses their own stupidity, as they wonder what the correct response is. They never seem to know the right answer with these things. But if Master Thenerassan doesn’t want his presence to be known, then… it’s probably better not to tell Elandaris?

Maybe Elandaris is supposed to figure things out for himself? He is also a student, after all.

Uthvir remains silent, and the two of them fall into a wary stand-off. After a moment, they push themselves back to their feet.

“Give me back my treasure,” they demand, helpless to let the matter go.

Elandaris’ expression twists. He looks down, but then, to Uthvir’s growing dismay, seems to realize that he doesn’t still have it.

“I dropped it,” he tells them. Then he lifts his chin. “Which is just lucky for you, because if I hadn’t I’d be taking it to Master Thenerassan right now, and you’d be getting kicked off the mountain for thieving.”

Uthvir balls their fists, but doesn’t dare make a move. The corners of their eyes itch.

“I’m not a thief!”

For a moment, they think Elandaris is going to try and beat them some more. But there’s blood still pouring from his cuts, and the sight of it seems to make him hesitate instead. After a tense second, he turns on his heel.

“You just wait,” he says. “I’m telling Master Thenerassan all about this anyway, about how you tried to break my feet and bloodied my poor hands. And then that’ll finally be the end of you!”

On that note, Elandaris races off. Uthvir thinks they would be terrified of his claims, except…

Except, Master Thenerassan must alright know. Mustn’t he?

And he… he stopped Elandaris.

They just feel confused, as they pause and look around. No matter how they search, though, they can’t seem to see their teacher anywhere. They give up looking for him after a minute - if he doesn’t want to be found, they don’t suppose they stand much of a chance - and instead start searching for the necklace. Their ribs and stomach and face all hurt from Elandaris’ blows, but they can’t just leave it behind. They try and retrace things, but even though they search high and low, pulling aside plants and checking around stumps, and even looking in spots that seem unlikely places, they can’t find it before the sun begins to set.

Their treasure…

Uthvir is so disconsolate, they finally slump on the ground, and let a few tears escape.

“I lost it,” they whisper. “I’m so sorry…”

They aren’t even sure who they’re apologizing to. The words just seem to fly out on their own. They take a minute to cry, holding themselves upright on shaky limbs. Before they finally sigh, and resign themselves to the truth. They still have to bring the firewood back. And now that they’ve lost so much time, they’ll probably have to spend all of tomorrow making up the difference on their chores. The ones they can’t do in the dark, anyway. They sniffle, and brush off their cheeks. Trying to dry their eyes as they finally pick up the dropped firewood, and then stagger back towards the mountain path.

Into their pockets, they tuck a pair of blood-stained leaves.

Thenvunin feels like he must be the worst person in the world.

He had been surprised when his practice had been interrupted by voices. Raised in argument, by the sounds of it. For half a second he was irrationally afraid that he had been caught, and that something about his practice had been so inherently wrong that he was on the verge of being discovered. But then he’d realized the voices were further off than that. And then he’d recognized them, too.

Uthvir and… Elandaris.

Oh no.

As he hurried over, Thenvunin found himself recollecting the scene he was encountering. If it was the one he suspected, anyway. The one where Elandaris stole Uthvir’s precious necklace, the only remnant of their forgotten, tragic past. The one item that could still bring warmth to their cold heart, even when they were at the height of their dark ways.

In the original story, Uthvir had eventually regained the necklace when Elandaris died in the tournament.

Thenvunin watches as the two students struggle through the undergrowth, though, and sees the necklace in question stuck in the middle of a nearby fern. From his angle it’s quite clearly visible. The golden shard is a bright bit of light in the dark green foliage. Most of his attention is soon caught by the fight, however, and his first impulse merits several insistent warnings from the system.

Thenvunin’s fists clench and unclench. Thenerassan wouldn’t have stopped Uthvir’s mistreatment.

System, how many points will I lose for just marching out there and stopping it anyway?

What?! 40 points? He only has sixty-five as it is! That would… that would put him so close to complete failure…

His mouth goes dry. Is he really just going to stand here and watch this happen?

No. No, there has to be a way to interfere. Even if he can’t stop it directly, there must be something he can do. He thinks. There’s a technique, he remembers. It was one of the cooler things about the original Thenerassan, in with all his depravity and scumbag qualities. Precision was something he was actually good at. He could whip around tiny things with enough speed and subtlety to make even the most innocuous strips of paper or blades of grass into weapons.

Of course, the original had mostly used this to inflict secret torments on Uthvir. Thenvunin can only hope it will work in reverse, as he plucks a leaf from a nearby tree. Keeping out of sight, he lifts the leaf to mouth, and blows. The first attempt goes wide of the mark, though. Drawing in a determined breath, Thenvunin grabs another one, and tries again. As Elandaris raises his fists, Thenvunin focuses precisely on where he wants the wind to carry the leaf. He feels the energy in his body, and the energy in the world around himself. And just like that, it feels as if he is remembering how to do something, rather than learning it for the first time.

The leaf slashes Elandaris.

Thenvunin is a little shocked at how much blood it draws. His bullying disciple pales, shocked in turn at the sudden blow.

Even so, Thenvunin doesn’t hesitate to send the second leaf. Uthvir looks as though they’ve been through the wringer. Elandaris finally backs off at that, but Thenvunin frowns deeply at his tirade. Already wondering how to manage that upcoming situation. He thinks he can handle it, though, so long as he focuses on Elandaris’ own misconduct. After all, the original Thenerassan would have known that Uthvir had some possessions, and that accusing them of stealing such things wouldn’t hold any water. He probably just would have been annoyed that Elandaris was wasting his time with information that he couldn’t use.

But then he hears an ominous ding.

What?! But - but, how? It was only a couple of leaves! Neither Uthvir nor Elandaris could possibly know who sent them!

System, I object! There’s no way that should have counted towards a deduction!

But no one even knows it was me!

Thenvunin feels sick. 45. He’s down to 45 points now, and all he’s earned so far is 10. This is a nightmare! He keeps still, fretting over having less than half his starting points, as Uthvir begins to search around for their lost treasure. It takes him a few minutes to even register what they’re doing. And when he does, he feels another lurch in his gut.

There, he thinks at them. Keeping his hiding place, yet trying, at the same time, to mentally project some knowledge of the necklace’s location towards them. It’s right there! Look over there, Uthvir, come on, you can find it!

He could just pick it up and give it to them. But he absolutely can’t, he knows. The thought of losing any more points right now just makes him feel sick to his stomach. So instead he stays locked in place, while he watches Uthvir search and search, their bruises purpling from where Elandaris hit them. Do they still have healing salve left? He tries to think of ways he could get them more, at least, to keep from cracking and doing something impossibly foolish. But he feels as if he is on the verge of it anyway, when Uthvir drops to the ground and begins to cry.

Oh, no! Thenvunin thinks, swallowing hard as his own vision goes a little blurry. Oh, no, Uthvir, it’s alright, it will be alright…

He doesn’t know how he manages to withstand it, until Uthvir finally gathers up the firewood, and limps off alone.

It’s only when they’re gone that he moves himself. Walking quietly over to the fern, and plucking the spirit shard necklace up from where it had been dropped.

<Congratulations! A pivotal scene has been completed. Important Item: Uthvir’s Treasure has been obtained. +100 points awarded. Achievement: Character Development has been obtained! OOC Restriction Lock has been removed.>

Thenvunin is so struck by relief at the sudden, unexpected points gain, that he almost doesn’t notice the necklace vanishing from his hands. But an object just vanishing is actually strange enough that it almost immediately distracts him from the bizarre rush of success.

Wait, system! He protests. Where did it go?

He has to get that back to Uthvir, somehow!

<Beginner’s Tip: Important Items may be stored within the system until Participant decides to use them.>

Thenvunin blinks.

So… you have the necklace?

There’s no answer, but that seems to be the correct assumption.

System, could you please give it back?

He’s thinking he might just be able to sneak it back into Uthvir’s possession, somehow, before he gets a response.

What?! Thenvunin draws in a ragged breath, and then lets out it again. He lifts up a hand to rub at his face. What sort of system even is this? He only just earned those points! And without them he’ll be down to less than half again. And will it undo his achievement? He… he can’t…

He swallows.

…No, he finally answers the system. He can work this out. He’ll get Uthvir their treasure back, it’ll just… take a bit longer than expected. All he has to do is earn enough points to feel comfortable, and then he can spare the 100 points needed to return it. And in the meanwhile, he can focus on making things better for them, now that he can actually act with some freedom. He’ll make it up to them later, he vows.

…Somehow.

The situation still seems bittersweet somehow, as he finally dusts himself off, and makes his own way back.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that the loss of their treasure leaves Uthvir disconsolate.

When they get back, they can’t even bring themselves to tell Squish. She just thinks Elandaris was picking on them again, and it takes a lot of effort for Uthvir to convince her not to go try and break his knees. But they’re already in enough trouble as it stands, and Elandaris has a lot more influence with Master Thenerassan than either Squish or Uthvir. Though…

In light of what happened with the leaves, Uthvir’s not sure what to make of the situation anymore.

Master Thenerassan doesn’t like them. They’ve known that since their first week of training, when he more or less told them so. Most of the disciples at the peak come from good families. Quiet Peak is very well-respected, and the potential to ascend to immortality and prominence is enough to catch a lot of people’s interest. Of course, not everyone has the aptitude or discipline for it. Even a prince wouldn’t be able to join the sect if he lacked the potential for training. But while Quiet Peak looks after its residents, serving the region also doesn’t exactly pay well. So all things considered, most of the applicants who get accepted come from families who have enough affluence to spare them, enough connections to actually get them there, and who also have the potential needed to be considered for training to begin with.

Sometimes, though, masters who are out on trips will cross paths with individuals who seem to have very noteworthy potential. These people can be of all sorts of backgrounds; what matters is just that they have the makings of a good disciple. According to the tenets of Quiet Peak’s sect, there shouldn’t be any discrimination of people based on where they came from originally. Once someone sets themselves to the path of ascension, then, one’s place along that path is more pivotal to rank and influence than their birthrights or privileges.

That’s not really how it works, though. Uthvir is one of only a few disciples with a poor background, and the only one serving Master Thenerassan. When Mana’Din had decided to offer them a place on the peak as a student, Master Thenerassan had warned Uthvir not to expect that the idealism of the tenets would shield them from reality - that someone like them, regardless of their spiritual potential, was a pity case. A servant more than a disciple, not somebody who could actually learn and achieve full mastery someday.

Uthvir wants to, though. Even if it’s unrealistic, even if it’s impossible, they want to be strong. They can’t help but think of what they saw in the trees, before they ran into Elandaris. Master Thenerassan, moving with the wind.

A knock on their door startles them out of their thoughts. Their arrival at the temple was unexpected, so, when they were first set up they were given an old wood shed for a room. Lady Mana’Din told them it was temporary, but they’ve been there ever since. Uthvir actually likes it, though. The thought of sleeping in the barracks, with the other disciples, makes them feel cold dread down their spine. Even if it was the same barracks as Squish, they’d probably never sleep soundly again.

When they call out to the knock, it’s Squish who opens the door. Uthvir relaxes a little, seeing their friend coming in with some clean bandages over one arm, and a lantern in one hand.

“It’s late,” they say.

Squish hangs the lantern up on the hook by the door, and shakes her head.

“I only brought a few things,” she says. “I won’t get in trouble, it’s Venavismi who’s on the evening watch tonight and he’s a soft touch.”

Uthvir swallows, but can’t really find the energy to argue. They cause a lot of trouble for Squish. She doesn’t say so, but the others have told them often enough. Even Master Thenerassan has said so.

“Here,” Squish says, handing them the bandages. “Do you still have that jar of salve?”

Uthvir reaches under their blanket, and grabs the little jar to confirm it.

Another strange thing, they think. Master Thenerassan is often scolding them for not meeting standards, but he doesn’t usually give them the means to do so, either. The salve is really good, too. Uthvir has to fight the temptation to use it all up, rationing themselves and making sure to cover up any injuries that would be visible, first. But it feels warm and smells spicy, and makes the aches fade away. Squish takes the jar from them, which has them frowning.

“Don’t use it all,” they warn.

“I’ll use just enough,” Squish assures them, and then sets about helping them tend their wounds.

It’s always been like this. When Uthvir first came to the peak, Squish looked at them like she’d seen a ghost. But then afterwards, she was always helping them. Even when other people were very clear that everything Uthvir did was wrong, Squish never turned away or stuck up her nose. They could only conclude that she was the kindest person in the world.

That made them think on the strangeness of Master Thenerassan’s behaviour again, though. So far as Uthvir could tell, no one had really changed their attitude towards them since they had arrived at the peak. Lady Mana’Din was kind, like Squish, but she also very busy. She said hello to Uthvir whenever she saw them - which wasn’t often. The other disciples were either indifferent to Uthvir, or else actively disliked them. Master Thenerassan despaired of them ever showing any talent, and was just waiting for them to make the final, crucial error that would finally let him get rid of them.

So why had he given them the salve? Maybe he really was just sick of looking at Uthvir’s bruises and thinking they were an embarrassment. What was going on with the leaves, though? And come to think of it… there have been other things, too. The past while he hasn’t given Uthvir any chores to do. The other disciples have, but not Master Thenerassan. He hasn’t snapped or snarled at them for a while, either, or boxed their ears for speaking out of turn.

It’s nothing really big - but it’s why Uthvir has been hopeful that they’ve been doing better.

So… have they?

Are things different because they’re finally getting some stuff right for a change?

The only trouble Uthvir can find with that thought, is that they don’t think they’ve been doing anything differently. It makes them anxious not to know what they might have done right, because if they can’t figure it out, then how can they keep doing it?

“Squish,” they ask, as she carefully applies a thin layer of salve to their bruised cheek. The tip of her tongue is pressing out, just a little bit, as she concentrates.

“Hmm?”

“Have you noticed anything… different, about Master Thenerassan lately?”

Squish pauses for a moment, frowning a little. She doesn’t like their chief instructor. Uthvir knows that, although she won’t tell them why. They’re almost expecting her to just tell them that she doesn’t want to talk about ‘that man’, like usual.

After a moment, though, her brow furrows a little bit.

“I have, actually. He seems less…” she trails off, and makes a face like she’s trying to think of a term suitable for a student referring to their teacher.

This is a frequent problem whenever Squish talks about Master Thenerassan.

“Shit?” Uthvir suggests.

Mostly to make her laugh. They’re just in the wood shed, after all.

And it works! Squish snorts, and grins a little. Then she seems to think about it, as she goes back to applying the salve, and shakes her head.

“Don’t say that where the others can hear. Disparaging our ‘illustrious’ teacher will just get us into trouble,” she warns.

“I know,” Uthvir says, quietly. “I was just joking. It’s a great honour to serve someone like Master Thenerassan.”

Squish snorts again.

“Don’t say that, either. It makes me want to point out all of his failings instead.” Switching to their other side, she starts rubbing some salve onto the bruises there. Uthvir holds still, and fights back a wince whenever her fingers brush over and especially sensitive spot.

“Lazy,” she mutters. “Insincere. Vain. He barely teaches, I don’t think he can take credit for the success of any of his students, even partially. He just treats us like servants, unless someone else is watching. I wish he’d fall off the peak so someone else would have to take us on instead.”

“Squish!” Uthvir protests. “That’s ungrateful!”

She gives them a flat look.

“I’m incredibly ungrateful for him,” she confirms. Uthvir wants to laugh, although they know they shouldn’t. It’s mostly her tone. Well, that, and the little voice inside their head that whispers that they’ve never liked Master Thenerassan very much either.

They used to. When they first arrived they thought he was magnificent. Regal and handsome, like a portrait of everything a master of Quiet Peak should be. That impression lasted for about five minutes.

Then he opened his mouth.

“But,” Squish says, tugging their shirt open to get at the bruises on their chest and stomach. Uthvir tries to stop her - they’ll waste salve - but she just bats their hands away and starts applying it anyhow. “You’re right. He does seem different, this past little while.”

Hmm.

So if Squish has noticed it, too, then maybe it’s not that Uthvir has actually gotten better at things?

“Do you think he had a revelation?” they wonder.

Their friend shrugs.

“I don’t know. I heard he fell down and hit his head. Maybe it’s a miraculous head bump situation, like in some stories? Something knocked a negative block out of his skull that’s gone unnoticed for decades, and now he’s finally able to channel ‘niceness’ again,” she jokes.

Uthvir gives that prospect some serious consideration, though. It might not be as silly as she’s making it sound. Oh, it wouldn’t be exactly that, obviously. But what studying Uthvir has done has taught them that spiritual energy can behave in really unpredictable ways. If it didn’t, then it would be a lot simpler for people to train and deliberately control it, cultivating it at a steady and consistent rate throughout all individuals. It would be like working with uniformly sized blocks, always knowing the measurements and therefore knowing how many you need in order to build what you want. But instead, it’s like growing a forest full of trees. You can know what kind of seeds you’re putting down, can try and get the trees to grow in certain ways, but in the end, no two forests will ever grow exactly the same.

And Uthvir has overheard a lot of stories, from everywhere around the peak, really. Things can get very quiet, so gossip is inevitable. One of the favourite topics of all the disciples tends to be stories about bizarre things that have happened to people during training, cultivation, meditation, or combat.

There are a lot of stories about people whose erratic behaviour, odd quirks, or particular training struggles turned out to be the cause of some kind of spiritual block that was literally ‘knocked loose’ by something hitting them, or by them falling over, or getting struck by accident. Probably the most popular story is the tale of one ancient master who fell down the temple stairs and nearly doubled his spiritual potency.

Uthvir thinks that one might be a dirty joke in disguise, though. There are a lot of references to ‘bouncing all the way day’ in a pointed fashion that tends to provoke giggles. They think it’s a pretty tame dirty joke, in that case - but that’s beside the point. Many of the stories sound like they’re supposed to be true, even if some of them are just rumours or have all the facts jumbled up.

“...Do you think that really could have happened, though?” they ask Squish.

She pauses. At first she looks like she’s going to just say ‘no, of course not’, and laugh. But then her face scrunches up, as the same thought process seems to occur to her.

“Stranger things have been known to occur,” she finally concludes.

The whole idea makes Uthvir feel strangely hopeful, and also a little bad. Has Master Thenerassan been having difficulties this whole time, then? And no one noticed? That’s sad. Now that Uthvir thinks about it, though, it doesn’t seem like very many people are close to Master Thenerassan.

Squish finishes up, and puts some bandages over the salve to keep it from wiping off while they sleep. Uthvir offers to walk her back to her barracks but she waves them off, and only takes the lantern with her as she finally has to go. Uthvir lets out a long breath, finally feeling the aches from their beating subside; but also keenly feeling the absence of their treasure, and its usual, subtle warmth.

Their blanket feels cold as they settle down. They stare at the moonlight through the cracks in the wood shed door, and think it might just be easier to puzzle over the ineffable ways of their teacher, rather than dwelling on the bitter sense of loss.

The next day proves to be a very strange one for Uthvir.

They wake up late. Which alarms them; they must have overslept, and they have so many chores still to do, they’re bewildered and at a loss that no one kicked open their door and dragged them out to get them. The possible reasons for why that might not have happened aren’t heartening; is Master Thenerassan going to declare that they’ve been neglecting their duties, and finally kick them out?

Is that why no one woke them? Because there’d be no point?

Or are they going to get punished for being lazy and sleeping half the day away?

They hurry out, hastily securing their outer tunic, before they make themselves stop and tie their belt correctly. They can’t afford any more mistakes today! They think quickly, checking the time to find that it’s past noon, and then pelt towards the kitchens. Calling apologies, only to find themselves turned hastily away from their usual scrubbing jobs - jobs they’d neglected yesterday, in all the chaos and confusion.

“It’s alright, Uthvir,” one of the older disciples tell them. Not one of their fellows. Uthvir comes up short, full of dread rather than reassurance, even as she pats their shoulder. “We’ve got it under control. Master Thenerassan sent word not to expect you today.”

Uthvir’s heart sinks into their stomach.

Oh no.

What if yesterday was a test? And they failed?

In a flurry of anxieties, they head for the stables next. But again they find themselves turned away; cordially informed not to worry, that they aren’t expected. They think they even see Elandaris inside, mucking things out with a black expression on his face. Only for a moment. Then they’re shoo’d away. As they head for the temple steps instead, they’re getting ready to plead for their life - or, well, their life at the peak at least - when someone calls out to them.

Uthvir stops, and then drops into a polite-but-rigid bow as they see Young Master Venavismi jogging towards them.

Venavismi is the youngest of the currently ascended masters at the peak. His duties include guarding the grounds, and…

…And escorting unwelcome persons out of the temple.

Uthvir feels like their doom is cheerfully jogging towards them. Some part of them just wants to run, thinking that this must be it. They’re getting kicked out. They don’t even know where they’ll go, or what they’ll do. They’ll end up on the streets, and the other disciples have been very fond of telling them exactly what sorts of things that would entail. They’re as stiff as a statue by the time Venavismi catches up with them.

“Hey, Uthvir!” he says, jovially. “Your master wants to see you. He’s at his studies, but he asked me to keep an eye out for when you got up.”

Uthvir swallows, and takes a minute to register what’s actually being said. In specific, they have to blink, and realize that Venavismi isn’t talking about escorting them off the mountain.

“What?” the ask. They’d been so convinced that disaster was on the way, now that it hasn’t come, they aren’t sure how to respond.

“Master Thenerassan wants to see you,” the older disciple repeats. His expression turns towards worry. “Are you alright, little sibling?”

“Of course,” they say, and manage another hasty bow. They’re still probably in trouble, but maybe… maybe if they’re being talked to, first, then there’s still a chance to salvage things. “Of course, I’ll go straight away. Thank you, Elder Brother.”

“No problem,” Venavismi assures them. He still looks concerned. “Here, let me walk you. I’m heading that way anyhow.”

Uthvir can’t exactly dissuade him without being rude. They go with him towards Master Thenerassan’s home. At a few points they pass some of Uthvir’s fellow disciples - the dark looks they’re giving Uthvir seem amplified, and it actually makes them grateful that the guardian is with them. Even if Venavismi likes to make a lot of inane small-talk.

“So how are your studies going?” he asks.

“I am progressing slowly,” Uthvir admits.

“Oh. Well, everyone usually has to go at their own pace. When I was your age, Lady Mana’Din told me that it was better to measure one’s spiritual progress against their past self, rather than their peers. Look to where you have come from where you started, rather than concerning yourself with how you stack up to the other students.”

“That sounds very wise, thank you for the advice,” Uthvir recites politely. Their thoughts are flying all over the place, though, and in truth, they barely hear most of what Venavismi says as he chats at them. All the way past the mountain garden and over the little bridge to the familiar grounds of Master Thenerassan’s home, and then even inside, as Venavismi is the one who knocks and loudly calls out.

“Brother! I brought your little student!” he says. “Are you still reading?”

There’s a rustling sound from the study.

“Yes, I’m in here. Send them in, please. Thank you,” Master Thenerassan calls back.

Venavismi gives Uthvir a pat on the shoulder.

“There. Go on,” he encourages.

They steel themselves, already rehearsing apologies as they make their way into the office.

The windows are open, Uthvir notes. And the desk has been moved. They can hear some pleasant birdsong, although everything sounds rather ominous to them under the circumstances. Swan’s Grace, Master Thenerassan’s sacred sword, is in its wall stand. Their teacher himself is sitting so that he can face the window; closing some manuals that Uthvir doesn’t recognize. A small tray of snacks is resting on the desk. Though most immortals of Master Thenerassan’s calibre don’t require food for sustenance anymore, many still eat for the pleasure of it.

Uthvir’s empty stomach rumbles a little, and they nearly recoil from themselves in horror.

“Sorry!” they blurt.

Master Thenerassan raises an eyebrow.

However, to their shock and confusion, he then slides the plate of snacks towards them. Until it’s at the edge of the desk nearest to them.

“Have you not eaten yet, Uthvir? I didn’t think Venavismi would bring you in such a rush. Have some of this, and take a seat,” he instructs.

Uthvir hesitates.

Not to be disobedient, but only because they feel like this must be some kind of trap or trick. They wait too long, and they see Master Thenerassan’s smooth expression shift towards something like irritation. Or what they think must be irritation, anyway. Hastily, they do as told, before they can get scolded. They fold themselves down across from his desk, and scoop up one of the sweet powdered rolls from the plate. In such a hurry to obey that they bite into it before they think about manners, and send a scattering of crumbs down their front.

“Sorry,” they say again, through a mouthful.

Their cheeks burn as they realize their second slip-up.

But Master Thenerassan just leans forward, and pointedly sets the plate of snacks directly into Uthvir’s lap.

“There,” he says. “No need to get crumbs anywhere, I had my fill of those anyway.”

Uthvir swallows. Their mouth feels dry with terror and confusion, but asking for a glass of water at this point would be beyond idiocy. They feel like they should refuse the offer, to be obligingly polite and deferential, but Master Thenerassan hasn’t really give them room to. He regards them strangely for a moment. Unsure of how to react, they take a more careful bite of the powdered roll, with care to make sure all the crumbs on their shirt land on the plate.

Master Thenerassan pulls a fan from his sleeve, and opens it. He lets out a long breath, and leans back. It looks as if he might be deciding something. Uthvir can’t escape the thought that he is, in fact, deciding their future.

Their fate.

“Uthvir,” he finally says, after what seems like a small eternity. The sweet roll tastes like ash in their mouth. “I owe you an apology. I have been a negligent instructor.”

To Uthvir, Thenerassan’s words sound incredibly ominous. Like the beginning of a speech that starts with ‘I have failed you as a teacher’ and ends with ‘you are no longer going to be my student’. They swallow, and fight back a cough, and put aside the plate in their lap to drop into the lowest bow they can manage.

“Master Thenerassan, please, you are the greatest instructor I could ever ask for!” they say. “I’m sorry I slept in. I didn’t mean to. I won’t make excuses, but I would never let it happen again, it wasn’t my intention-”

“Uthvir, stop, stop,” Master Thenerassan gently interrupts. They look up to find him motioning at them.

Warily, Uthvir straightens back up again.

The smile he gives them makes them feel even more lost at sea.

“I am not angry with you, Uthvir,” he says, firmly. “You are not in any trouble. On the contrary, if anyone should be punished, it should be the Master Thenerassan who has taught you these past few years. He has done disgracefully. And so, some things around here are now going to change.”

Uthvir blinks.

They are utterly lost. What is going on? What is this leading to? Is it a test? A trap?

Master Thenerassan looks at them strangely again. Then he sighs, and puts his fan up to hide some of his expression once more.

“The other students have been mistreating you,” their teacher asserts.

Uthvir automatically shakes their head in denial.

“Yes, they have been,” Master Thenerassan says, firmly. Angrily, they think. They swallow and duck their head. What’s going on? What are the right answers? For the past few years they haven’t ever been a favoured pupil, but they thought that they had at least figured out how to manage certain interactions. There were patterns that they could predict; that made it easier, even if it always seemed to end in something unpleasant for them anyway.

But now all those patterns are gone.

“I will not permit it to continue,” Master Thenerassan says.

Uthvir bites the inside of their cheek, and keep their gaze averted. So are they being sent away, then? To stop it from continuing?

Another long sigh reaches them.

“...In a few days, Uthvir, I will be making a personal journey to attend to my health. While I am away, I do not think it would be very wise to leave you disciples under Elandaris’ charge. I know he is the senior among you, and that is ordinarily what I would do, but… I, ah. Have been burdening him with too much responsibility.”

Uthvir blinks. The memory of blood-stained leaves beats through the panic in their mind.

Tentatively, they look up at their teacher. But Master Thenerassan is holding his fan, still.

Health? They wonder. Immortals don’t really get sick, but there are things that can injure, poison, or otherwise impeded them in ways similar to illnesses. And spiritual ailments can happen too, of course.

Does this have something to do with his odd behaviour? And his fall? Is… were they and Squish actually right?

But then, Uthvir thinks, maybe he’s going to reverse the process? Maybe he didn’t accidentally remove a block. Maybe he just addled his skull a little. They feel guilty for thinking that sort of thing could make an improvement on the man.

Although… maybe Elandaris just did something to make him really angry? Maybe this isn’t about Uthvir doing better, but Elandaris doing worse?

Master Thenerassan carries on, heedless of their thoughts and speculation.

“Obviously, I cannot simply leave the training of my disciples to the wolves for several weeks. But it would be too much to burden any one Sibling of the peak with handling all of you. So I have made arrangements for you all to attend different teachers, while I am gone. They have generously loaned some of their time for this cause. I will tell everyone, of course, but for now you can know that you and Desire will be answering to Master Venavismi while I’m away.”

Uthvir blinks.

Venavismi?

That’s… not bad? And they’re serving with Squish? Master Thenerassan put them together on purpose?

“Oh,” is all they can manage at first, in their surprise. Then they remember their manners, and duck their head. “Thank you very much, Teacher.”

“Hm. You should thank Master Venavismi for his time, but don’t worry about thanking me,” Master Thenerassan says. “All you need to do is make sure you go to him and tell him if anyone is bothering you. It is not good for the other disciples to shirk their duties onto you. Chores are distributed throughout the peak as part of training. Every disciple must learn how to balance the necessities of daily life with the pursuit of loftier goals. But right now, things are unbalanced. Uthvir does all of the chores, and barely has time to focus on their spiritual cultivation and practice. The others do none of the chores, and do not build up their characters. So don’t think you’re doing them any favours by keeping quiet about their mistreatment towards you.”

Uthvir’s eyes are wide.

Again, they flounder. Not knowing what to say. But the habit of thinking that if there’s a problem, then they must be to blame for it, is an old standby. They immediately start offering apologies again; and rendered uncertain, again, when Master Thenerassan makes them stop that.

“You are not in trouble,” their teacher reiterates.

“But I… hurt their training?” they venture. Isn’t that what they’re getting at?

Master Thenerassan looks vexed.

“No, Uthvir. I am saying that they have hurt your training, as well as their own. And that I have failed you by letting this go on so long,” he declares.

Uthvir feels like someone just opened up the floor underneath them. They stare blankly ahead, and then blink a few times.

They… he… what?

“...Really?” they venture at last.

Master Thenerassan’s expression vanishes behind a wave of his fan again.

“Really,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “But it falls to me, now, to try and fix this. That will take us some time, I fear. And some things cannot be endured; you can no longer sleep in that filthy wood shed, for starters.”

“I don’t mind it!” Uthvir insists, hastily. Please, no, not the barracks…

“The barracks are also unacceptable, in your case,” Master Thenerassan tells them. As if he could read their mind. They wobble in place a little, still missing the floor. Except, bit by bit, they’re starting to wonder if they’re floating rather than sinking. If this is a good feeling, rather than a bad one.

“Fortunately, there is a room by my garden that I do not use,” their teacher continues. “It has its own door to the outside, so there is no need for us to disturb one another. I’ll expect you to have your things moved over there by the end of today. Otherwise, you should focus on your studies until I leave. There will be no more chores until Master Venavismi assigns you some, after I have gone, to try and make up for some of the imbalanced time.”

Uthvir stares.

…What?

As Master Thenerassan looks back at them expectantly, they remember themselves yet again. Dropping into another hasty bow.

“That is too kind!” they insist.

“I think I have explained why it is not,” Master Thenerassan retorts, quietly. Almost more to himself than to him, they think. Before they can think of how to respond, he motions at them to sit up again, using his fan to gesture. “Stop bowing. And finish that plate of food, you are much too malnourished. I have some training manuals for you and Desire, I expect you to give hers to her before I go. Master Venavismi will give you guidance if you need it, but I should still point you in the right direction, so I expect you both to read these manuals while I am gone…”

Uthvir listens. They really do, even though it also still feels like they’re floating away in shock and confusion. They sit in Master Thenerassan’s office, and eat sweets, and listen to birds, and are given two crisp new manuals to tuck under their arm, and a key to a room that leads onto Master Thenerassan’s own garden. They try the shed, first, thinking that makes more sense, but no. The key doesn’t fit there. Instead it opens a door to a quiet little space that looks like it was originally meant to be a meditation room. Uthvir doesn’t know why Master Thenerassan would dislike it enough to not use it; there is a lot of pleasant light and fresh scents from the garden. But someone has put a new bedroll into the corner, along with a chest for keeping clothes in.

Uthvir leaves in a daze to go and get their things. It doesn’t take long, they don’t have very much. The little room still seems sparse and empty as they set down their blanket and put away their spare uniform, and use the extra drawers to hold all their training material and their little tin of healing salve.

Moving their belongings reminds them of what’s missing from the count of items.

It’s a sad thing in with several confusing-but-ostensibly-good things. So Uthvir’s not sure how it works out that they end up sitting on their blanket in a corner of the strange room, with their knees up their chest, crying as quietly as they can.

And when they’ve finished, they feel tired all over again. Even though they overslept already. Their bones feel hollowed out, and the lack of comforting weight at their neck still seems wrong, but… but, as they settle their damp cheeks against their knees, a wave of relief washes over them. It feels the same way that the air does after a storm has broken. And so, with instinctive desire, and a strange sense of balance, they fold themselves into a meditative pose and settle more deliberately into their corner. Closing their eyes as they focus on their breathing, and then on the flow of their spiritual energy.

Their teacher instructed them to practice.

Even if nothing else makes sense, Uthvir supposes that this, at least, probably should.

Thenvunin can’t help but fretting, when the day actually arrives for him to leave and head for the caves.

It still seems like a good plan. Or maybe just the best he can come up with. But there seem to be endless complications to everything. He had assumed things would get simpler once he wasn’t getting ‘dinged’ by the OOC Lock anymore - and in a sense, that really is a benefit. What he’d failed to consider, though, was that there might still be consequences for acting ‘strangely’.

Case in point - the first morning after the lock had worn off, no less than three of the original Thenerassan’s colleagues had asked if he was ‘feeling alright’. Master Tasallir had looked at him as if he might be having some kind of manic episode, one of the peak’s healers had just ‘swung by’ to check on the currents of his spiritual energy, and then Uthvir had seemed positively terrified during a simple interview where all he tried to do was fix their bullying issue and move them to a better place to sleep at night.

He had scared them witless and he didn’t even know how.

They still seem uncertain around him. Thenvunin has been giving them space - and that hasn’t been hard, at the end of the day. He has plenty to deal with in trying to wrangle the other disciples at the moment, who are even more confused that their ‘teacher’ has started behaving differently. At least that makes some sense, though, because Thenvunin isn’t particularly trying to be nice to them.

Oh, he’s not being cruel. But being ‘too nice’ to Squish reads in a way that makes his skin crawl, considering the Original Thenerassan’s ‘niceness’ towards her. And as for his bully students, well, obviously there’s a need to backtrack on some of the damage that’s been done to their values and discipline. Which means actually punishing them for being vicious little beasts.

Thenvunin’s never been a teacher. He went to school, once, for about four years when his health was good. Otherwise it was all homeschooling. So he even finds himself pouring through the Original Thenerassan’s notes, not because he thinks it would be a good thing to emulate the man on a lot of things, but because it… at least gives him an idea of what he’s working with? And what the general structure of things should maybe look like. Unfortunately, most of the Original’s notes just read like the diary entries of some kind of madcap social climber. Who has good connections, who has money, who has relatives who’ve ascended, and things like that.

Otherwise, he didn’t seem to bother with a lot of necessary work.

Thenvunin ends up going to Master Tasallir, who is an ascended scribe and the person in charge of the peak’s records and archives, and mustering up an excuse of losing some of his teaching materials in order to access back-up records in the archives. Tasallir still seems to think he might be deranged, but less than he had before, when Thenvunin had attempted to offer him an actual friendly greeting.

The man does make him nervous, though. He can’t even remember reading about him from the original book, and yet for some reason he is… unreasonably good-looking? Like someone cast him out of precious metals and ivory and then brought him to life via wishes. He is quite possibly the most meticulously groomed person Thenvunin has seen on the entire peak, which is saying something, and every time her speaks to Thenvunin he looks like someone has jammed half a lemon in his mouth.

Thenvunin cannot take it personally. He thinks he would look the same way at the Original Thenerassan, and has no idea what sorts of transgressions his alter-ego might have committed before Thenvunin pulled a body snatch on him.

But the long and short of it is that he spends several days running around in a mad panic, earning no points and feeling as if he is somehow just making everything worse, as he tries to actually teach his students and beseeches the other mentors at the peak for assistance and is perpetually asked if his ‘spiritual equilibrium’ is alright.

So on balance, despite his nervousness over leaving - and what could go wrong in his absence, if that little villain Elandaris gets his hands on Uthvir again - he thinks the trip will be good.

He can study, He can practice his abilities. He can make plans. He can come back, and hope that any major shifts in his ‘general temperament’ might be attributed to a successful trip; like the way some people seem to come back from vacations with entirely new outlooks on life. Or maybe, if he gives them a few days, people will start to forget what the Original was really like. Even just a little bit.

…That’s a long shot, but he can hope.

One silver lining to the whole scenario that he hadn’t even anticipated is that, since he is going to a section of the sacred caves that is not typically used by Quiet Peak, Lady Mana’Din gives him a map of the cave system with his path outlined for him. She also gives him a special pass key, which is little more than a strip of paper with a password written on it. But when Thenvunin presents it to the waterfall opening of the cave system, the water parts, and the entrance is revealed to him; and every other path along the way is also opened by his innocuous-seeming strip of paper.

Thenvunin begins to feel some unease about the situation as he makes his way to the cavern system of Battle Peak.

He’s never been in a cave before. Only really seen them on television and in movies, which doesn’t really do the darkness of them justice. Not that there’s no light; openings up towards the surface let in bright shafts of daylight, but any time a cloud rolls past them, they darken. And there are some lanterns, but still, they don’t illuminate everything. Many passageways seem shrouded in a deep darkness, and the darkness feels strange to him.

Old, somehow.

It reminds him of the practice that some peaks have of binding cursed spirits and demons beneath mountains. Like the dungeons below a castle. Thenvunin does not see anything, or hear anything, or even feel anything more than the odd sense of the ‘energy’ in the place. There are pools of calm, and waterfalls of light, and there are small bodies of still water - clear, somehow - and there is darkness.

Only the darkness bothers him, until he thinks about how much time he is going to be spending here.

Then he is very glad that he brought along so many books.

Every so often he passes a cave that he suspects is occupied, but he doesn’t see any occupants until he gets to the segment of the map that marks the Battle Peak system. He doesn’t get lost or turned around too many times, thankfully. The caves are supposed to be a ‘natural’ place, but they do still have markers for the pilgrims that come.

When Thenvunin is the Battle Peak system, he passes by a small chamber. Filled, unexpectedly, with daylight. An unfamiliar figure mediates in the middle of the room. They do not seem to take note of Thenvunin’s passage, and after a while, he decides it would be best just to leave them to their self-reflection.

Other than that, he doesn’t see anyone until he’s actually made it to the cavern allotted to him.

The space is something of a relief. Though it’s still obviously a cave, it has light. Not as much as the one he saw the meditating disciple in, but enough to give him a glimpse of the sky through the high opening. Water trickles down one side of the cavern wall, and some moss is growing around the opening. Thenvunin can feel the air move a little.

It startles him, how much of a relief that is. Like a friendly touch that he had missed without knowing, ever since he came inside the caves. He moves to the middle of the chamber, and takes a deep breath. Spreading his arms out and feeling the air across his face.

I can do this.

Though after a moment, it occurs to him that he isn’t entirely sure how to start.

The meditation he witnessed earlier rises in his memory, and after a moment, he supposes that’s as good a place to begin as any. He sets the bag he brought into a corner of the cave - Master Venavismi had blinked at the sight of it before he left, asking if it wasn’t traditional to take nothing at all; but Thenvunin managed to say it was only for the trip - and then he settles in a good spot to feel the breeze, and begins.

Once he starts in on things, he finds that, like with the leaves he had thrown at Elandaris, many things are more like waking up a memory than trying to attempt something new. Even though Thenvunin is sure he’s never done any of them before. He manages to pass several hours without feeling like he’s been in a hard stone cave for that long; not noticing the memory of hunger, or feeling pain from the cold stone floor. He alternates between mediation and cultivation, practice and pondering. He takes breaks to read some of the manuals he brought and makes notes, and notices the light changing from day to night, before the habit of sleeping catches up with him.

But that just leaves him feeling antsy and uncertain. And in too much darkness to read anymore.

Sounds from one of the other chambers draws his attention. Thenvunin considers that it might be wise to watch some of the other disciples here, to see what they’re doing. To figure out what he should be doing. He gets up, and dusts himself off, and heads back out of the chamber. A little wandering leads him to a side passage, that descends right down next to the cavern he was in. That’s where the sounds seem to be coming from, along with the steady trickle of running water. He makes his way down, hesitating when the distant lantern light fades, and he has to proceed in darkness. But it only lasts for a short while, before he sees a light at the end of the passage.

The sounds become clearer. It sounds like someone… groaning? Sparring, perhaps? Thenvunin almost thinks for half a second that he’s about to walk in on something inappropriate instead, with the heavy nature of the panting that he hears, but… serious disciples of Battle Peak wouldn’t use the sacred caves for trysts, would they?

That would be too scandalous!

Thenvunin’s face feels hot at the thought, and he’s definitely hoping he doesn’t see anything untoward at all as he reaches the bottom, and takes a look around.

The first thing he notes is that there is only one person in the chamber. It’s a wide space, bigger than the one he had been in, but with more dark patches. A lone disciple is standing just off to one side, with his back towards the passage. His shoulders are hunched; and he is the source of the heavy breaths.

Thenvunin hesitates. Something niggles at the back of his mind, a sense of something he should know, but also a rush of reflexive worry. Thoughts of being in hospitals, of seeing other sick and injured and struggling people.

This man is unwell?

And then the system provides him with a name, hovering in text just below the stranger’s shoulder. Like a caption in a film.

Thenvunin freezes.

All the colour drains out of his face as sudden recognition dawns.

Oh no. Oh no. No, he remembers this now! From when the original Thenerassan was discredited in the story! Battle Peak’s champion was Thenerassan’s rival while they were students, serving under the same teacher. They had bitterly despised one another, and Thenerassan had nursed a grudge ever since the fallout of their constant fighting had seen their teacher hand his tutelage over to Mana’Din at Quiet Peak, in order to separate them. Bitterness at being the one chosen to leave rather than stay, Thenvunin had assumed.

A spark of hatred that had bloomed into an opportunistic murder, when Thenerassan had gone to the sacred caves for self-reflection, and found Calain lost to the haze of spiritual imbalance. A training method gone badly awry. At the time, the murder was considered self-defense; Calain had lashed out and in defending himself, Thenerassan had killed him by mistake. But as the black marks on his reputation grew, it became clear that the murder was deliberate. Calain’s state only provided a plausible excuse.

And Master Calain’s sister was a member of Uthvir’s harem. One of their favourite wives, even. So of course, Uthvir had taken great care to avenge the death of her brother, along with every other payment they drew from Thenerassan’s blood.

I can’t be here, Thenvunin thinks, all at once. He turns to leave but in his hurry, and the dark, a loose pebble flies away from his shoe.

Calain turns. Ragged and wild, like an animal. Thenvunin feels a rush of shock as he sees his skin mottled with darkness, as if covered in dozens of bruises. He can scarcely take in anything else about the man, as fear overwhelms him, and he moves to keep running.

Calain makes a sharp motion. There’s a flash of warning. Reflexes alone save Thenvunin as he leaps back, and barely avoids the sword that cuts across his path.

<Dawn’s Radiance>, the system helpfully tags it.

I don’t care about the names of swords right now! What am I supposed to do?! Thenvunin wonders back. He doesn’t get an answer, isn’t even really expecting anything that helpful, before Calain roars at him and charges. His sword whipping through the air and flying to his hand, as his eyes gleam with wild, erratic energy.

Thenvunin flees in the opposite direction.

“Calain!” he tries, as the two of them begin to race in circles around the chamber. “Calain, it’s me, Thenvunin!”

“I’LL KILL YOU!” Calain roars.

Right, yes, no, the Original Thenerassan may have known him but they weren’t on good terms. Familiarity isn’t going to help. Thenvunin keeps running, and dodging the occasional onslaughts of Calain’s sword, as he tries desperately to think. I need to get help!

He attempts to turn back up the passageway, but the sword blocks his path. And then it cuts towards him, and in a sudden, vivid moment of clarity, Thenvunin knows that if he doesn’t do exactly the right thing right this second, he is going to be speared on that blade.

Before he can really think about it, about what he knows or what he can or can’t do, he turns, and in a smooth motion, draws Swan’s Grace.

The blocking move comes effortlessly. Calain’s sword strikes against his own with enough force to push him backwards, but even though there’s a ton of energy behind it, it’s erratic and unfocused. Thenvunin narrows his eyes, and in a sharp, deliberate gesture, knocks the weapon out of the grasp of Calain’s distorted spiritual energy, and sends it clattering across the chamber.

Right in time for the weapon’s owner to charge him like a zombie from a horror film.

Thenvunin’s ready, though. He feels impossibly calm - like he’s floating out of this body again, like he’s just a director telling it what they need to accomplish - as he turns the flat of his blade to deflect part of Calain’s charge, and then smashes a palm up the underside of his jaw. The energy around them ripples, and Thenvunin’s own bats his attacker away with a rush of wind that howls through the chamber.

Calain smacks against the cavern wall; Thenvunin immobilizes him quickly, enabled mostly, he thinks, but the pure chaos of the other man’s aura, and the incoherence of his intentions. He sits on his back to hold him down, while Calain bucks, and keeps Swan’s Grace ready to deflect in case he should manage to summon his sword again.

But then, reality sinks back in, and Thenvunin is once again at a loss.

What… what he should do?

He can’t hold Calain down forever. But he can’t kill him, either. Even if it weren’t for the situation with Uthvir later on, Thenvunin’s never killed a person before. Trying to tell himself that Calain’s only a fictional character doesn’t seem to work very well. Not when he’s spasming and struggling like a very real, ill man, caught in some kind of terrible seizure.

“Help!” he tries calling. “We need assistance! Is anyone there?”

He thinks he hears something, or maybe a few things. But minutes pass and Calain is getting harder to restrain, and the bruising on his skin is looking worse by the minute, unless that’s just Thenvunin’s imagination. But it seems almost like… like he’s changing. Like the imbalance is…

Oh.

Oh, no. He remembers now. Imbalance one’s energies bad enough, and death can result. Calain body is being destroyed by the energies inside of it. Like a cancer.

But as Thenvunin remembers that, he also finds himself remembering something else. One of Uthvir’s wives went through something similar, didn’t she? Sabotaged in her training by a rival. But Uthvir saved her. In the sort of novel that Immortal Demon Way was, not saving their own wife wouldn’t have fit the power fantasy bill. So Uthvir had used their own spiritual equilibrium to restore hers. Thenvunin even remembers the description of the technique, although he also recalls it being described as very dangerous and liable to damage both parties if it backfires…

It’s seeing Calain spit up a mouthful of blood that finally makes up his mind.

“For the record, I’ve never done this before. So if it doesn’t work, I am sincerely trying,” he says.

Then he summons up his focus, and presses his fingers to specific points on Calain’s back. Digging in, and mustering up the energy he needs, and feeling out what the over-abundance of energy in the other man is. Then he starts channeling in a counter-balance from his own stores.

It feels strange. Like bleeding, almost, but not quite. Thenvunin’s arms tingle and his focus blurs a little. But he takes calm, steady breaths. If there’s one thing he does know, it’s how it feels when something’s going wrong in his body. And this feels tiring, and risky, but not like he’s committed a disaster yet. A soft glow emanates from his touch. He’s so focused, that he doesn’t notice when Calain stops struggling.

He does notice when the mottling on his skin begins to fade, though.

Thenvunin keeps up the process until he feels like he’s starting to lose his own balance. And then he finally pulls his hand away, and stops.

There’s a long moment of utter silence.

Then the system chimes in.

<Congratulations! You have successfully completed a character quest. +50.>

Fifty points? Just fifty, for all that? Thenvunin doesn’t know if he’s more surprised that he got anything at all, or offended that this was somehow worth fewer points than just stealing poor Uthvir’s treasured necklace.

Calain turns, and looks at him with eyes that seem bloodshot, but otherwise normal.

“What?” he says. “Thenvunin?”

He sounds simultaneously offended and bewildered. Thenvunin figures he can let the other man go, now, and does. Only starting to release him before Calain is shoving him off in return, and moving warily away from him.

Thenvunin folds his arms, unable to fight back his annoyance. It might be understandable that almost everyone hates him, here, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t getting sick of it, too.

“What’s that look for?” he demands. “I just saved your life! That was a risky move, you know. I’ve never done anything like that before. And you were trying to kill me the entire time, too!”

Calain’s brow furrows. He looks confused.

Thenvunin curses his luck.

“Oh please don’t tell me you have short-term memory loss?” he snaps. That would be his luck, wouldn’t it?

The comment seems to smooth out some of Calain’s features, though. The other man extends one arm outward, and Dawn’s Radiance flies back into it. Thenvunin stiffens; but after a second, Calain only sheaths the blade back at his hip.

“I remember,” he says, clipped and obviously still wary.

The two of them stare one another down.

“...Why?” Calain finally asks, breaking the silence.

Thenvunin straightens out his clothes, which had been sent somewhat askew by the fight, and hesitates on how to reply.

“Why what?” he asks, in the end.

It just seems to make Calain more annoyed, though.

The effect is somewhat undermined by the fact that the man is bizarrely pretty, though. Thenvunin is beginning to wonder what’s going on with that. When he read the book, he had sort of imagined Master Calain as being a rugged, muscles-upon-muscles, thick-and-hairy warrior type. Barrel-chested and stocky and square-jawed, the sort of man who fought bears under waterfalls. But on reflection, he supposed that the man’s reputation had been described more than his looks. And his sister, Calantha, was a remarkable beauty; dainty and fair, and actually described in an atypical amount of physical detail.

On that reflection, Thenvunin realizes that Calain looks essentially like a male version of her. He’s still obviously fit and broad-shouldered, taller than Thenvunin himself. But he’s delicate-looking too, with a princely sort of countenance. A pretty face, long eyelashes, soft mouth…

The contrast between expectation and reality is a little unnerving.

Still. Calain is glaring, and he does at least have the eyebrows to pull that off.

“Why would you do that?” he asks, looking Thenvunin up and down. As if he’s half expecting some vipers to suddenly come soaring out of his pockets or something.

Thenvunin sighs, internally, and reminds himself that there’s no point in getting annoyed. People are just going to be suspicious. The only person to blame for it isn’t here, because Thenvunin has taken his place.

“I’ve been… thinking about a lot of things,” he says. “Things I regret. About the past. About who I’ve been. I don’t want to be that person anymore, Calain. I’m trying to bury the Thenvunin Thenerassan you knew, and do a better job with the future than he ever would have. I would like to turn over a new leaf.”

Calain looks suspicious, still.

After a few more minutes of staring contests, Thenvunin gives up. He feels bad, now. Tired. Here he was supposed to be building up his spiritual energy, and now he’s set himself back instead. Not that he regrets it. After a moment he finds himself looking Calain over again, and while the other man may still be expecting some kind of trick…

Thenvunin just saved his life.

Maybe he can be proud of that, even if no one else is?

“I’m in the cave at the top of the passage,” he mentions, gesturing. “If you run into difficulties again, come and find me.”

Calain’s expression wavers, while Thenvunin starts to head up. It’s only then that he finally hears the sound of voices calling. Battle Peak disciples approaching from the opposite end of Calain’s chamber, by the sounds of it. After a moment of considering, Thenvunin just decides to keep going. Let them look after Calain, now. They’re his colleagues and he’s probably more comfortable with that anyway.

After a while he hears Calain finally turn and answer the calls, and then the voices move further than Thenvunin can properly hear. He finishes making his way back up the passage, and heads into his own cavern again. Settling down, reviewing the last manual he read, and focusing on figuring out just what all he did to himself, and how he should probably reverse it.

It’s good practice, he tells himself.

Come morning, he has changed his mind entirely. Exerting that much energy in such a strange way was absolutely not worth it. He should have just killed Calain. Maybe this sadistic system would have given him more points. Probably, he thinks. And then he wouldn’t be feeling like someone filled his head with bees and tied all of his muscles into knots.

The second day he gives up on progressing a few times in favour of just quietly weeping in the corner of his cavern.

Eventually, though, Thenvunin finds himself getting back on track. The buzzing in his skull abates, and he manages to smooth out all the aches in his own body, with a deliberateness that makes him envious even while he’s doing it. If only he could have done this while he was alive! Just - fix himself! Heal himself, oh, that would have been a dream come true. The number of nights he had spent awake wishing he could just will his bones better…

It makes him a little emotionally unbalanced. He has to start some things over again, and switches to sword practice for a while instead.

A few times, he thinks about going to check on Calain. But he hears no more strange noises, and after a while, he decides against it. He doesn’t want to jinx it, he managed to get away without killing the man this time, but what if testing his luck just means he ends up doing the whole thing over again?

Sometimes he can tell, without really seeing, that there are other disciples moving around the caves. But mostly, things just stay quiet, and never sees anyone. Hears things, feels things, but doesn’t see things. He forces himself to put his attention to what he needs to do, what he came for. After a while he loses track of time entirely, but, he still has a strong sense that he should stay put for now.

Until, one evening, he abruptly finds that he doesn’t anymore.

Time to go.

Without sparing much thought to question it, Thenvunin gathers up his things. He hesitates, warring with himself over it; but then he turns towards the passageway leading down to the big chamber. It’s still daylight outside the caves, and that makes him feel bolder, even though it doesn’t change the light levels in the passage any.

When he makes his way down, he sees Calain sitting on a flattened stone in the chamber. Eyes closed.

“Brother,” he calls. “I’m leaving. Just so you know. Good luck with the rest of your endeavours.”

It would have been irresponsible, Thenvunin thinks, to just leave without letting the man know that a potential source of help had gone.

Calain doesn’t give any acknowledgement of having heard him or not.

After a minute, Thenvunin can’t help but sniff in annoyance. Muttering a little to himself about rude people and ingrates before turning on his heel and making his way all the way back up that damn passage again, before consulting his map to find the quickest route out.

Once he’s out, getting back to Quiet Peak will be simpler than leaving it. He can just use his energy to fly his way there on his sword. A genre trope that always seemed a little odd to him, but when he tested it out during one of his attempts to master a few basic abilities, he suddenly discovered the appeal.

Of flying, at least.

The map leads him to an opening that heads straight up and out of a wide side passage. Thenvunin takes it, and lets out an audible sigh of relief as he finally comes clear of the cavern rock and breaks out into the trees and open air again. A slightly frigid wind blowing past him, carrying just the faintest hints of snow, while the trees sway. He lets his energy carry him up above the tops of them, as he stretches his arms out again.

That was a success, he thinks. He does feel somewhat better about himself and his abilities now. Even if that whole debacle with Calain still feels vaguely traumatic.

He turns towards Quiet Peak…

…And halts, going cold all over again.

Flames lick upwards from the direction of the temple. While the sky towards the opposite horizon is grey, closer to the peak, the air shimmers with an eerie red light. The next gust of wind that blows his way carries ash instead of snow, and right as he sees it, he hears the first distant chime of the temple’s alarm bells.

He forgot.

How could he forget?!

The attack! The attack on the temple, when Uthvir was fifteen. One of the most formative moments in Uthvir’s pre-Hell development, one of the first ‘big’ fights, a pivotal moment before the tournament that actually seemed to make the story really kick off the ground.

The attack!

Demons have come to Quiet Peak.

#scum villain au #sharkbait #cliffhanger warning #i really wanted to post something #most of my writing efforts have not gone well but!#i am still trying and this was the best success i've had lately #so here you go guys hope somebody likes it #long post

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equallyreal · 7 years

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Unsolicited Opinion: The Characters of Pacific Rim

In the interest of keeping my mind fresh while also getting to scream about the things I love, I’ve decided to start up a new essay project. Unsolicited Opinion will cover my thoughts on specific elements of media, from tropes to characters to plots. What better way to kick things off than by talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, the one and only Pacific Rim?

A common complaint about the film is that the characters are kind of archetypal and flat and therefore boring. This is an assessment I soundly disagree with, for two reasons. One, being derived from archetype isn’t a bad thing as long as you do it well. Two, the characters of Pacific Rim, in my opinion, subvert or play with the archetype they’re derived from in interesting ways. This essay series will cover the ways the narrative achieves this. As a quick housekeeping note, I will only be using the film to make my points. At most, I may talk about a deleted scene, but the paracanon (novels, art of book, comics, etc.) will not be included in the discussion.

We’ll start with our lens character in part one of this essay series: Raleigh Becket is a Good Egg.

Raleigh is set up to be the Hero Protagonist, specifically the confident Maverick sort of Hero Protagonist. All the pieces for this character type are there in the first fifteen minutes. He’s the first of the main heroes that we see. The opening montage specifically mentions that Raleigh belonged to a generation of Jaeger pilots that were considered rock stars, that “We got real good at it, winning.” He’s shown to be cocky, a bit loud, a bit brash, eager to get out there and earn the “fifth notch on the belt.” He wears a leather jacket. He’s got swagger. He cracks jokes about girls with the head LOCCENT officer. He and his brother, Yancy, deliberately disobey orders from their commanding officer in favor of their own wishes. He’s every over-confident male lead in an action movie, sure of his own ability to win and more than willing to say so. On top of that, he suffers a traumatic loss, which is usually a setup for a hero’s plot arc of some sort.

However, this is a plot arc that never comes. Raleigh starts the film as a Hero Protagonist and ends it a Secondary Protagonist Mentor to Mako’s Protagonist. Because the first fifteen minutes are about Raleigh, a lot of people miss that shift and assume that he’s just a really boring main character. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You just have to follow the plot threads and see where they diverge from the expected.

In order to examine what Raleigh’s true plot arc is, we have to look at what his plot arc would’ve been in any other movie. This post on tumblr really sums it up; in another film, he would’ve spent the movie being angsty, taking out his frustrations on other people, learning how to trust again just in time for a big fight and ultimately saving the day and avenging his brother in one fell swoop with the help of side character and emotional crutch, Mako Mori. Almost none of that happens on-screen or at all. The middle part, the no doubt crushing guilt and anger that Raleigh feels that losing his older brother at the young age of twenty-one, is entirely off screen. We catch a glimpse of it early in the film when Stacker picks him up at the Wall—Raleigh is guarded, unwilling to go back, concerned that he won’t be able to handle having someone else in his head because last time hurt too much. But that is dropped like a hot potato the second he meets Mako.

In fact, a lot of things that usually would accompany Raleigh re-joining the plot are dropped like a hot potato. A big one is any emphasis that Raleigh is important. There were already seeds of this subversion early on, with Raleigh explicitly saying that he wasn’t the hero type and that his only unique traits are his fighting skills and his ability to Drift. When he re-arrives at the Shatterdome, there’s no talk of Raleigh’s five notches on the belt, and minimal talk of his incredibly impressive solo Jaeger piloting—something only one other person has been able to do (though we’ll get to that detail later). The one conversation he has about his glory days is centered on how he knows another character via a fight that he refers to as a team effort. He’s not spoken of in reverent whispers, nor does anyone coddle him for being a former legend. He’s not a formal legend, by his own admission—he’s a has-been, and the narrative treats him as such.

Another reason no one coddles him is that no one has to. The plot doesn’t place excess emphasis on his pain, and Raleigh never, at any point, takes out his anger about the loss of Yancy on other people. There are moments that show it still hurts: he still carries a picture of Yancy with him, and it’s his memories of losing his brother that send his first Drift in five years, four months out of alignment. But he also recovers first from the trauma because he has learned to deal with it, and how he’s learned to deal with it does not involve being an asshole to others, no matter what. While he defends his past actions to Mako when she points out his tendency towards unpredictable fighting can be dangerous, he also admits that she has a point and thanks her for her honesty. When finally he pushes back against Chuck instead of just glaring, it’s not because of comments Chuck has made about him or Yancy—it’s because of comments made about Mako. When he makes a mistake in the Drift, he owns up to it. When Stacker rightfully smacks him down for overstepping his boundaries, Raleigh backs down, and never once has an I told you so moment when his assertion that he and Mako would make a great team is proven right. There’s no time for Raleigh to have an ego or to be a bitter jerk. He has other things to focus on.

Which brings us back to Mako.

From the get-go, Raleigh is interested in her. This interest, however, is never about his feelings for her (regardless of how you interpret those feelings); it’s entirely centered on Mako as a person. He asks what her story is, expresses admiration for her skills, and starts supporting her dream of becoming a pilot within a day of meeting her. He’s attentive to her expressions and behavior to the point of being able to read her like a book by day one, which is both a sign of their compatibility and the attention he’s willing to give to her. He opens up to her, rather fittingly in front of their Jaeger as her “heart” is uncovered to be repaired. Raleigh re-frames his experiences with Jaeger piloting, the loss of his brother, and his mistakes in such a way that they benefit Mako, and help her along in her hero’s journey. At the end of their first conversation alone, Raleigh tells Mako that sometimes, “you make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences. That’s what I’m trying to do.” If the behavior described in the paragraphs above this one is anything to go by, he has definitely learned to live with the consequences, and he’s more than willing to pass that knowledge on to Mako.

It’s worth noting that Raleigh does so without being too over bearing. He’s not a know-it-all; there’s never a point where Mako has to roll her eyes and be like “Yeah, I knew that already.” There are two reasons for this. One, he generally helps her out with things she wouldn’t have any way of having concrete knowledge about, like RABITs. Other times, he knows when to back down. He offers advice during their duel until Mako starts flourishing; that’s his cue to shut up and let her actions speak for themselves. He tries to convince her to stand up to Stacker until she makes it clear that she’s not interested; even when he visibly wants to, he walks away from her door and on to see who his pilot will be, even if it’s not her, because that’s what she wants.

This isn’t to say that he won’t fight for her at all. In fact, most of his conflict with Stacker is centered around Mako (that or Stacker withholding information, which is a legitimate concern to be fair). He fights for her, because he views her desires as important. Raleigh doesn’t fight for himself, doesn’t lash out when Chuck insults him, doesn’t care if he gets in trouble for making a mistake. But he’ll fight like hell for Mako.

A white male protagonist whose plot arc is not focused on his pain, but rather on the fact that there is a life after it and you can move on without being a jerk to other people is unique on its own. The fact that he then goes on to frame his pain and loss and use it to help another person—a woman, no less, who fills many of the plot elements that Raleigh would’ve in any other movie—is extraordinary. So much of Raleigh’s plot is focused on helping Mako, and I think that’s a detail a lot of people miss. He’s her sidekick, her copilot, and his plot would not be the same without her.

Which isn’t to say the only resolution of Raleigh’s plot is in using his pain to help Mako. While we don’t see Raleigh coming to terms with his pain, we do get to see him find some peace and resolution as the plot goes on. There are three moments that give Raleigh closure and wrap up his plot arc by allowing him to redeem himself. The first and most obvious comes in their defeat of Leatherback. Raleigh shows he’s learned more caution with a nice bit of overkill, suggesting the double-tap that guarantees Leatherback won’t be an issue the way Knifehead was. Part two comes when he expresses to Mako that he’s finally started thinking about a future for himself. Granted, it’s a moment that comes just as he’s about to go on a mission that could lead to his death, but it’s still a moment that underlines the fact that he has healed. More importantly, he’s healed as a result of their bond. This detail carries over to the third and final stage of Raleigh’s closure: the boss battle at the Breach.

It starts with Stacker. Some of his last words to Raleigh are the last words that he heard from Yancy: Raleigh, listen to me. Unlike last time, though, Raleigh is able to hear the last request, and follow through on it, offering some healing both to the trauma of never being able to do that with his brother, and in the contentious relationship he had with Stacker. This is especially important because it was revealed, not too long before the fight, that Stacker was the other man who had piloted solo. They are alike in that sense, and that discovery along with this scene forge a bond between them that erases past mistakes and disagreements, leaving only mutual respect.

It ends, as it should, with Mako. There are some people who didn’t like the fact that Mako has to sit out the detonation of G. Danger and be saved by Raleigh. I am not one of those people, and there’s two big reasons why. The first is that it shows Mako as a character worth saving, which is important for reasons I’ll get into in my Mako essay. The second is that it is an incredible act of healing for Raleigh that also emphasizes his position as an unconventional, secondary protagonist. He is able to save Mako when he could not save Yancy; in doing so, he de-emphasizes his own importance and emphasizes hers. “I can do this alone,” he tells her. “All I have to do is fall. Anyone can fall.”

Raleigh is doing something anyone could do so that Mako, whom he views as more than just anyone, can live. To borrow a line from Wonder Woman, he can save today, and he really believes that she can save the world—or that she already has, and deserves to live because of it. Anyone can fall is one of my favorite lines in the film, and emphasizes why I love this character so much. Raleigh Becket can be a little shit, manipulative in that way of younger brothers who have learned how to push buttons to get what they want, brash, and questions authority a bit too much. But he’s also kind, empathetic, respectful, and ultimately heroic in all the right ways. His transition from cocksure Hero Protagonist to humble Mentor Secondary Protagonist is, in my opinion, a very solid character arc that deserves more recognition, and more emulation for that matter. The world could use more men like Raleigh Becket in it.

And that’s it for my Raleigh essay! Tune back in on December 20th for Part II of this series, which will focus on Mako Mori and why she’s the most amazing character ever of all time, don’t @ me, I’m right about this.

If you like what you read and want to help me write more four-page single-spaced essays about the characters of Pacific Rim, consider leaving a donation on ko-fi or becoming a patron (links in the blog bio). I know, their new system is questionable, but I’ll be adding more patron benefits to make up for the additional cost, including access to my full character notes from the Pacific Rim essays.

#unsolicited opinion #pacific rim #raleigh becket #I hope the sequel gives him the respect he deserves because he's wonderful and I love him

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izanyas · 7 years

Text

Bridges Burned (Part II)

Second part of the Build Upon The Ruins prequel!

Rating: T Words: 6,900 Warnings: child abuse.

[Read from Part I]

Bridges Burned Part II

Atsushi couldn't sleep on the mattress in his room.

It was only another notch up the scale of shameful things he had discovered after leaving the orphanage. He couldn't sleep on a bed because all he had been allowed to sleep on through his life was a thin cot; he couldn't eat in the mess hall, not while others were there to see him take food he didn't feel he had earned; he couldn't go see the resident doctor, Tanizaki Naomi, unless pulled there by force or authority.

The night that followed the drift test found him wide awake and jittery. He had enough of a blanket to put between his back and the floor and still roll over himself for warmth, but even the harshness of the ground wasn't enough to soothe him. He didn't entertain the thought of trying to sleep on the bed either. He stared at the ceiling, chest tight and eyes unblinking, and he found no sleep at all.

The stars had long risen over the bay by the time he decided to move. His window gave out to the sea, something he was more grateful for than he knew how to say. He had never gotten to appreciate the ocean this much before.

He knocked on the door left of his with shaking hands.

The door opened with violence. He hadn't expected Lucy to be gracious about his arrival, and indeed she wasn't, hair mussed and eyes rimmed with red.

"You better have a very good excuse," she seethed, letting him in.

"I'm sorry," Atsushi pleaded. "I just, I don't really know anyone else here and I—"

"Yeah, whatever. Spare me."

There was something comforting about Lucy's state of near-constant irritation. Her room echoed it, filled to the brim with things Atsushi would not have enough of one lifetime to name—broken toys, rumpled clothes, bits and pieces of metal he thought must come from discarded pilot suits.

"So what is it?" she asked, falling atop her unmade bed. "And does it have anything to do with that spectacular black eye?"

She didn't look like she had been sleeping either, but she must've have laid down at the very least. Her left cheek was still creased from her pillow.

"Sort of," he replied.

"Who did you fight?"

He licked his lips, nervous. "Akutagawa."

There was a pregnant pause.

"Akutagawa?" she repeated.

"He punched me first," he said quickly, and the way she snorted told him all he needed to know about her trust in this statement. He swallowed, and before she could speak, he added, "I had my drift test today."

Lucy looked at him in silence, obviously expecting him to continue. "So?" she asked, when it became obvious that he wouldn't.

"So," he replied. "I can drift."

He wasn't sure what he expected out of her reaction—if he expected a reaction at all—but Lucy showed no sign of surprise. She crossed her legs at the knee, smoothing the lines of the wide grey shirt she wore. The only light in the room came out of her bedside lamp, and it was an old-fashioned thing, with shades like a skirt. It dimmed it to an orange glow. It made the thick of her hair shine beautifully.

"I thought you might," was all she said.

It wasn't at all how he thought the first time he said the words would go.

"How?"

"I've been suiting up pilots for almost two years," she said impatiently. "You people, you have this thing about you. Don't ask me to explain. Sometimes I can just tell."

Atsushi dearly wanted to ask. Instead he mumbled, "I never thought I'd be able to."

"Well, life works in mysterious ways and all that. Congratulations."

"There's nothing to celebrate."

"Why not?"

He looked at her again. Lucy rarely looked curious or invested in anything not related to herself, but he thought there was a glimmer of interest in her eyes. It was hard to tell with the shadows still roaming over the room.

"You just need to find someone to pilot with, now," she said. "Then your whole life's settled. You'll be richer than most people here combined."

"Akutagawa wants to—to test. With me." Atsushi bit the side of his tongue and added, "For drift compatibility."

She snorted again. "No surprise here. He's been getting desperate."

It had been hard to voice his refusal in front of Natsume and Akutagawa earlier, but Atsushi found it even harder now. The words felt like coughs refusing to get out; they constricted in his chest, taking all the room that his air should.

"I don't want to pilot," he admitted, and his lips stung with the confession.

The Headmaster's voice was silent now. No need for his judgment when Atsushi was doing his own, when Lucy would do hers.

He hadn't meant to befriend her, not really. If befriending was even the word to use here. He had arrived at the dock a week prior, numb with hunger and exhaustion; she had been the one to find him by the wide door of the hangar, hiding behind one of the wooden crates stacked outside the entrance.

She had listened to his stammering tale with anger twitching at her mouth. She had dragged him, almost by the neck, to meet Natsume. It was on her suggestion to the man that he had started working and living here.

Atsushi hadn't really expected to find shelter so quickly, no matter what the scavenger had told him. This gratitude was not one he knew how to express.

He talked to Lucy because their rooms neighbored each other, because she had been the one to show him around, because with discovering freedom came the realization that Atsushi was bad at talking to people. Wrecked with anxiety at the best of times, struck with terror at the worst. Most of the workers here came from all over the world and communicated in English, which made things harder, considering that he didn't speak a word of it. Lucy spoke Japanese. It was just easier.

And Lucy was angry, so angry, at everything and everyone. She looked how Atsushi thought he could have if circumstances were different: embittered by her lot in life and not afraid to show it.

Lucy was catharsis.

"We need pilots," she said quietly.

"Pilots get hurt," Atsushi replied.

At the end of the day, that was the crux of the matter. He was so very tired of hurting.

"So what?" Lucy was sneering now, lips curled over her ill-lined teeth. They gleamed in the low light. "We're all gonna get hurt, pilots or not. Kaiju don't discriminate."

"I don't understand how anyone would want to go against one."

He felt frozen with fright at the very idea. Hayate had only had a window of a half hour to lay rampage over Yokohama, but Atsushi still remembered the imprints of its giant feet, the razor-like cuts that his wings had made through the bellies of buildings. He could remember crouching with the other children in the closest imitation of proximity, of solidarity, he had ever experienced; he could recall down to the trails of dust what the underground cellar of the orphanage had looked like that day, trembling with each of the beast's steps.

Hayate was not one of Atsushi's biggest nightmares, but he was a nightmare still. He couldn't imagine having the will to face a kaiju in the flesh. Lucy didn't mock him for that, at least.

Instead she clenched her hands into the rumpled blanket. "There's no one on the track to replace Double Black," she said. She cut him off before he could speak: "Shut up. I have contacts with other teams working on suit designs—all the candidates in San Francisco are matchless too. There's no one."

"Even if I tried," Atsushi said, fear knotting in his throat, "I'd never be as good as Double Black."

"No one will ever be that good anyway."

Her voice had turned lower.

"Did you know them?" he asked, after a second of hesitation.

"Don't talk like they're dead." Atsushi couldn't quite mask the relief he felt at that; Lucy watched his face brighten and sighed. "I started in San Francisco," she said. "They were stationed there at the time, so yeah, I worked with them."

"What are they like?"

He knew his thirst for knowledge came through, he knew he must sound like no more than a rabid fan, but Lucy made no comment of it.

"I'm not supposed to talk about it," she mumbled.

Atsushi wasn't above begging. He told her as much.

"Ugh, fine." She pulled her legs above the mattress and sat cross-legged on it. Atsushi followed her wordless order to sit next to her, and the soft of the bed felt like a threat under his legs. Tension hardened the line of his shoulders. "What do you want to know?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "I guess, what kind of people they are. If they're nice in person."

"Nice isn't really the word I'd use, but they're not too bad. Not the worst." She didn't sound very convinced. "Nakahara's nicer than Dazai," she mused. "He takes the time to make conversation and everything. Most of the time Dazai's too busy talking to him to remember other people exist."

"They're both Japanese?"

"Yeah. Nakahara might be mixed, I'm not sure."

Despite her reluctance, Lucy talked easily of Double Black. She had worked through three different iterations of the suits that its pilots wore; she had spent time with them, testing with them and observing them, and she had gleamed quite a lot even without bonding with them.

She told Atsushi about Dazai Osamu's sharp words and off-putting attitude. She told him of Nakahara Chuuya's blunt acceptance of it, of the way he parried word for word and move for move. She described the training halls of San Francisco's base, where they would spar every morning under the watchful eyes of a number of idle employees; she admitted to the bets she had participated in—about who would win that morning or the next, in how many moves, in how many verbal jabs.

About whether Nakahara and Dazai were truly involved in the kind of relationship that their behavior hinted at.

She spoke, flushed and tentative, of the shameless way Dazai looked at Nakahara, of Nakahara's answering looks, more reserved but no less meaningful. Atsushi thought her hesitance might be because she didn't know what he would think of such a relationship. He had neither the strength nor the wish to tell her that he should be the last person to judge.

It was an hour later that he exited her room. He didn't go back to his at all, just slumped against the wall between their doors and stared at the lone window of the hallway. It was easy to forget about the thrum of exhaustion weighing down his head and limbs; after all, Atsushi had ample experience with ignoring physical discomfort.

The burn on his forearm ached. The bruises on his face beat in time with his heart. Atsushi breathed quietly in the empty corridor, until he felt nothing at all.

He jumped when a cat walked past him.

It didn't seem to have noticed him until then; after the gasp Atsushi let out, it crouched against the opposing wall and stared at him with glowing yellow eyes, teeth bared, hissing.

"Hey, kitty," Atsushi said roughly.

The cat's tail fluffed above its back.

It was obviously not a stray. Its fur was smoothed, shiny, completely black. Atsushi had sharp enough eyes to see the state of its paws and mouth despite the lack of light, and they were nothing at all like those of the cats who sometimes broke into the pantry of the orphanage in search of food. Those were animals with dry and skinny bodies, infested with fleas, losing entire patches of fur; that one wore a red collar around its little neck, and its claws and teeth looked cared for.

Atsushi crouched. The cat stuck itself further against the wall, looking on the very edge of aggression. "Who's your owner?" he asked softly. He tapped his fingers against the floor, catching the cat's attention, trying to lure it forward. "Come on, let's go look for them."

The cat didn't move. It didn't move for a very long time. Eventually Atsushi tired, legs aching through the numbness, and he lowered himself to the floor entirely. Faraway sounds were starting to reach him, people waking up for early shifts or going to bed after nightly ones. The cat paid no attention to them at all. Its eyes stayed fixed on Atsushi's moving hand.

So Atsushi kept going. He slid his fingers from left to right, smiling when the cat's eyes followed them. He hit his nails against the metal floor and chuckled when the cat's tail twitched at the clicking sound. He moved himself closer to the animal inch by inch, crawling through the space separating them so slowly that he thought an hour must have passed like this—with him sitting cross-legged on the cold floor and the cat watching him like a beast about to leap.

"You don't need to be scared," he said, trying to make his voice soothing. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The cat did not understand him, but neither did it move away.

By the time Atsushi was close enough to touch, the cat's tail was no longer raised in acute suspicion. Its ears flattened over its head when Atsushi reached out, but it didn't try to scratch him. It didn't try to bite him. All in all, the experience was a lot more pleasant than touching the strays who wandered near the orphanage; and this cat's fur was so very, very soft.

Atsushi pet it as gently as humanly possible. He touched it with only the tips of his fingers, only on the crown of its head; he let the cat bend forward and touch its nose to his knuckles before trying again, this time with the full of his hand.

"You're the cutest cat I've ever seen," he mused aloud. "I wish you weren't so scared of me, though."

For all answer, the cat batted his hand away, clawless.

It didn't bow its back when Atsushi ran over it with his palm. Its ears never perked. Still it didn't move away, seemed pleased enough to wait here as Atsushi marveled at how soft it was, how little he had ever been allowed such gentle touch and how much he craved it, even from an animal.

Atsushi thought he might well have stayed here for hours, if the cat allowed him. In the end it wasn't the footsteps that cut him out of the haziness, or even the coughing, but Akutagawa's voice only.

"Rashoumon," it whispered.

The cat bit the hand that had stroked it; Atsushi yelped and crawled away.

He had to blink hastily to clear his mind, and realized that the cat was moving away at last. It was trotting toward Akutagawa, who was standing a few feet away. Who was staring at Atsushi.

"What do you want?" Atsushi asked, too tired to try and hide his defensiveness.

Akutagawa waited until the cat was rubbing its head against his leg before answering. He bent down at the waist, picked up the creature, who nestled comfortably in his arms. "Rashoumon is my cat," he said. "He escaped my room earlier."

Oh.

Atsushi sat still for a moment longer. His mind dragged slowly over the information, his body still caught in that dizzy sleeplessness, his palm still warm from stroking the cat's—Rashoumon's—fur. He stood up slowly.

"Okay," he muttered.

Akutagawa nodded almost imperceptibly. Atsushi couldn't help a flash of jealousy at the way Rashoumon purred in his arms; while Atsushi was petting him, and though his neck vibrated, he hadn't made a sound.

Atsushi cleared his throat. "Well, I guess I'll just…" He fumbled with the plastic watch Lucy had gifted him days ago, squinting through the low light to catch the time. "I have to—work. Yeah."

He tried to take a step toward his room, but Akutagwa said, "Wait."

"What?" Atsushi snapped.

He felt very little like accommodating this man with another talk. His bruised eye ached then, as if to remind him of whose hand had hurt him. Not even the strange, withdrawn look Akutagawa was wearing could spark more than vague curiosity.

"Enter the pilot program," Akutagawa said.

Atsushi bristled, replied, "No."

"Why?"

"It's none of your business!"

"It is my business when the fate of the entire world is at stake," Akutagawa shot back.

Gone was the heavy politeness; he sounded the same as he did when he had met Atsushi hours ago, the same as he did with disdain on his fine face before Atsushi had taken the test.

The same as he had right before striking him.

Atsushi's fight against his instinct was a conscious, ferocious one. He stood straight instead of bowing, squared his shoulders rather than allow himself to flinch; this was the same thing, he thought, as watching the destroyed half of the orphanage after Hayate's attack—stepping over broken walls and unearthed crops and feeling only vicious glee. Anything to go against the ones who had raised him to cower.

"You don't care about the world's fate," he let out, teeth gritted and jaw aching. "I heard you in Natsume-san's office—you just want to be a pilot. You only care about yourself. I'm not going to go back on my decision just so you get to be famous and rich."

Akutagawa's entire face scrunched with anger. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he murmured.

"You don't even want me to be your copilot, you'd just take anyone at this point, wouldn't you?" Atsushi's chest burned, from the ever-raw scars on it and from his own pained breathing. He wished he could go back to feeling nothing but the cat's fur; but Akutagawa was holding the cat, and Akutagawa acted as deterrent to even the thought of emptiness.

He felt only anger.

"You hate me," he went on. "You hit me. Maybe I can drift, but that doesn't mean I have to. It doesn't mean I have to be willing to put my life on the line and enter any training program, and even if I did, there's no telling we'd be compatible." Akutagawa opened his mouth to speak, or yell; Atsushi cut him off by adding, "And even if we were, you're the last person I'd want to partner up with."

Atsushi heard the sound of Akutagawa's teeth hitting together through the distance between them. In his arms, Rashoumon wiggled and meowed, and he licked the skin of his master's wrist with his rough little tongue.

This, of all things, made Atsushi's eyes burn.

"So you're scared," Akutagawa said. "Is that it? You're too scared to pilot."

"Yeah," Atsushi replied in a soft breath. "Yeah, I'm scared, and I don't want to do it."

Akutagawa sneered. Atsushi pawed backwards at his door, looking blindly for the handle, and thought fiercely that Akutagawa could shove his opinion where the sun didn't shine. He didn't know anything about Atsushi or his life. He had no right to pass judgment of any kind.

Neither of them seemed willing to move first. Rashoumon dropped to the floor once more, yet Akutagawa didn't pick him up. He stared Atsushi, and Atsushi stared back, poised either to flee or fight.

Eventually, Akutagawa's face relaxed. Atsushi didn't read acceptance on him, or even any kind of respect. When Akutagawa said, "You're wrong about something," his hand clenched down on the handle of his door reflexively.

"About what?" he replied.

"I don't want to be a pilot to be rich or famous. I want to be a pilot because my sister is one." Akutagawa didn't seem willing to wait for Atsushi to find a way to react to that; he went on slowly, his voice thin from some sort of sickness. "I refused to enter the program when I was tested," he said. "A year later, Gin was tested too, and then we weren't given a choice. Two siblings being able to drift were too good an opportunity to pass up on—the former director of the program, Taneda, made it so we'd lose our jobs. He got Gin kicked out of her school. We had nowhere else to go."

In the silence that followed, Atsushi felt out of the reach of words. His mind swam with nothing as he replied, "I thought they weren't allowed to force people into joining."

Akutagawa smiled thinly. "Many of the people in the program joined on their own, but in some cases, the jaeger program can and will put pressure on candidates. Some are given a choice between training or prison. They say Ozaki was like that, and Double Black's pilots too."

"That's…"

Atsushi almost jumped when something touched his leg. He found Rashoumon when he looked down and was too stunned to think of taking the opportunity to pet him again.

"Perhaps you've heard of Heartblade," Akutagawa said lowly.

"Yeah," Atsushi replied, looking back at him. "The new jaeger."

Akutagawa nodded. "My sister pilots it, alongside a woman she met in training."

"So you two aren't…"

"No." Akutagawa took a deep, wheezing breath. He rasped a brief cough into the back of his hand. "Gin and I aren't compatible, against all expectations."

Atsushi didn't know why the words made something constrict in him, tightening in the space of his chest. He didn't know why the usual jealousy he felt upon hearing of family was tinged with compassion.

"I don't want her to risk her life alone," Akutagawa said, looking at him intently. "If there's even a slight chance that I can be by her side and help her, I want to take it."

Atsushi's hand dropped from the handle of the door. "I can't—"

"And there's something else you're wrong about," came the cutting reply. "A day ago, yes, I would've taken anyone. But now I know you're the only one I can pilot with."

"You don't know that," Atsushi retorted. "You can't know that."

"I know you can drift with anyone, like Ozaki's former copilot could."

Atsushi bit his lip until blood seeped through his dry mouth, heavy copper on his tongue, warm and repulsive. The taste was familiar enough to be nauseating.

"I have done more simulation drifts than anyone alive," Akutagawa said roughly. "I have tested alongside more people too, from most to least likely to be compatible with me, from every kind of background there is. All with different personalities. People I loved and people I hated and people I did not care about one way or the other. I can't drift with anyone."

"You can't know that," Atsushi repeated weakly.

"I can," Akutagawa replied. "I'm so familiar with drifting by now that I can tell. I'm a rare case, someone who can drift, but never with anyone else. I've done so much research—even people who don't find good enough matches at least manage to connect with others during tests, but I can't. Whenever I try, the backlash destroys the equipment." He breathed in once again, this time shakily. "My only shot at it is someone like Fukuzawa Yukichi," he continued. "Someone like you."

It made sense, Atsushi thought fleetingly. Everything Akutagawa had said made sense, except for the fact that there was no proof at all that Atsushi could do what he said.

Except for the fact that the thought alone of ceding to Akutagawa's wishes felt like following the path that the Headmaster had laid out for him.

Nausea burned him from stomach to throat, spread bitter over his tongue, mixing with the aftertaste of blood. "I can't," he said. He fiddled with the door once more, pushing it open without looking—and Rashoumon had fallen asleep on his foot and dug his claws into his leg when he moved, and Atsushi felt none of it at all.

He didn't look at Akutagawa's face as he slammed the door shut. He didn't say, I'm sorry.

Atsushi spent the hour before his shift entirely restless. He didn't try to sleep, either on the bed or the floor; he stood under the shower for the better part of that time, heedless of the guilt gnawing at him for abusing rights not his.

There was no one to punish him for it, he told himself. Time and time and time again.

Dawn had come slow and golden over the dock, threading the cold metal walls with yellow veins, making the space of its wide halls shine redly. Atsushi minded very little of it as he walked toward the simulation room. The last dregs of that beautiful light were gone before he even reached it.

The team he was supposed to work with was already here. Atsushi slouched, trying to make himself unnoticeable, but one man at the side turned toward him the moment he was within hearing range—and then Atsushi had much better things to think about than his lateness, the aches on his body, and Akutagawa's plea.

"You're Nakajima, right?" the man said, looking over the tablet he was holding.

The plain grey overalls that all other members had donned fit him nicely at the shoulders and the hips; every word had come out of his mouth with a hint of warmth, with some agreeable laziness; the sun was still low enough over the horizon that it shone directly through the window of the office that neighbored the simulator, and in its light, his hair looked like fire.

Atsushi felt blood rush up his face, felt it spread horridly from ears to neck. He stammered, "Yeah, yes, that's me."

His clothes were too warm on his skin, stuffy, sticky. He thought he might start breathing out vapor.

Either the man didn't notice his horrid blush or chose not to comment on it, for he nodded, touched something on the screen of his tablet, and slid it into a pouch hanging from his waistband. "I'm Oda," he said. His hand flew up, gesturing toward the third door in the room. "There's a suit your size in there, go get changed. We'll start in five minutes, Tachihara's still not here."

Atsushi obeyed with a mortified squeak.

It was hard to focus on anything other than how good Oda looked even with soot staining half of his body, but Atsushi managed. He was used to menial tasks like this; he found the physical effort of moving rubble around and listing everything he found intact enough to be saved soothing, more so than cleaning had been.

His hands and forearms were soon streaked with black. Atsushi made sure not to rip away the bandage covering his wound and kept going.

The group he was with was surprisingly loud. The one named Tachihara, especially, kept talking through the morning, and didn't seem to mind that Atsushi and Oda barely ever responded. Another played some music out of an old-looking radio; the last entertained Tachihara with gossip that Atsushi could barely follow. He didn't know any of the people they were speaking of.

He expected them to talk about Double Black, as everyone had been wont to for days; strangely enough, they seemed to skirt around the topic without ever mentioning it.

The reason why became obvious when they all paused for lunch.

Atsushi's body was vaguely sore by now. He felt the lack of sleep more acutely than he had upon playing with Akutagawa's cat, and his back tensed like a steel cable when he finally sat down at a table. The breath he released then was accordingly painful.

He still wasn't used to eating in the mess hall. He would've preferred to find a corner in which to go through his ill-earned food alone, but Tachihara had looked at him expectantly when he sat down, and Atsushi had felt that he had no choice. At least Oda was eating with them too. Atsushi wasn't selfless enough not to enjoy that fact.

"So, Oda-san," Tachihara said barely five minutes into the meal. There was some tightness to his voice, some apprehension maybe. "Not that we're not delighted to have you here, but…"

"You want to know why I'm not in Alaska," Oda cut in, tranquil.

Tachihara pulled a face. Atsushi stared at his food and tried to find the will to lift any of it to his mouth. His stomach was squirming, though he hadn't eaten in almost a day.

"I'm needed here," Oda went on. "They'll be bringing in Scarlet Wind and Double Black to Yokohama. I need to get started on repairs for both."

Most of the others exchanged careful glances.

"They'll be deploying Double Black again…?"

"I mean, if they can find other people to pilot it then—"

"Never mind that," Tachihara cut in, waving stained chopsticks close to Atsushi's face. The fact that Atsushi didn't jump off the table in reaction was testament to just how tired he was. "Oda, you're Dazai's friend, right? Shouldn't you be with him?"

Dazai—that was the name Lucy had mentioned. One of Double Black's pilots.

Atsushi risked a glance sideways. He found Oda looking down at his coffee, rubbing his thumb against the rim of the thermos's cap, which he was using as a cup of sorts. "Dazai's going to be fine," he said eventually. "Yosano says his injuries aren't so bad. But he's not answering my calls, and I don't think he wants to see me now. Or anyone."

"Anchorage is a fucking desert," Tachihara said, shaking his head, talking in Atsushi's direction. "The base is awful, no one likes being stationed there."

"It's one of the best strongholds we have," Oda replied quietly. "Not a single kaiju's crossed the miracle mile since it's been built."

"Doesn't change the fact that no one's ever there. It can't be good for Dazai, being alone while Chuuya-san's still…"

Oda brought the coffee to his lips. He drank most of it in one go, the rest of his food laying untouched in his tray. As he bottled the thermos back up, he said, "If Chuuya doesn't make it, then it won't matter whether Dazai's alone or not."

He excused himself softly and left the table, taking his tray with him.

Atsushi spent less time staring at Oda during the afternoon than he did thinking on his words. He went through the back-breaking motions of clearing out the room he had destroyed, speaking only when spoken to, ignoring the stretching ache of the wounds on his arm and chest. He stained his skin black and grey with ash. He streaked his forehead and hair with it, every time he rubbed the sweat off of it.

Natsume, Lucy, Oda… even Akutagawa, who seemed to have so little respect for so many people, spoke of Double Black's fall as they would a personal loss. Atsushi understood that pilots were popular, he understood the necessity of jaegers and what it meant to see one prevail over a kaiju; but he had not realized until coming to the base—until seeing the grief so bright on Natsume's face—how much of that was love, not just admiration.

He hadn't realized, coming here, that although there were people one was not supposed to talk to, the jaeger program housed the same names all over the world. They came and went where their strength was needed; they met each other and left each other and met again.

He thought of the scavenger Katai. He thought of his words to him, as he recommended offering his services to Yokohama's dock: You look like you need a family.

"I don't," Atsushi said under his breath, crouching down to try and push melted metal out of the way of the pilot station footholds. It didn't give, and so he hissed, "I'm fine on my own."

"This looks too heavy for one person."

Atsushi jumped, his grip slipping, a shard of glass cutting a single line across his palm.

"I'm sorry," he said to Oda, who was watching him with faint curiosity.

"What for?" Oda asked.

"Just… just sorry."

His hand was bleeding. Atsushi eyed the size of the cut, the traces of dust and ash on his skin, and decided against trying to suck it clean. He pressed the cut against his side to wipe the red drops away.

Oda watched him do it thoughtfully. "Take a break if you need to," he said. "We're mostly done for today."

"I'm fine," Atsushi replied immediately, face burning. He tried not to stare too much at the open collar of Oda's overalls and the skin exposed there that gleamed from the day's efforts. "I'm really fine."

"I didn't say anything this morning because you did well, but you look exhausted, kid."

His concern seemed genuine, though Atsushi wished he wouldn't call him kid. He licked his lips quickly and explained, "I can't stop now. It's, it was my fault the room burned—an accident while I was cleaning—I have to help repair it."

For some reason, Oda smiled.

Atsushi's heart bruised the inside of his ribs.

"Don't worry," Oda said, patting the pilot station next to them with something near affectionate. "It's not the first time this thing gets a bit roughed up, it'll be fine in no time."

"Natsume-san said it cost—"

"I wouldn't believe everything that old man says. He likes getting his laughs." Oda paused and sat down atop the burned-down something Atsushi had been trying to move. "It's expensive, but we won't have to spend that much fixing it. Not like it's going into battle—no need for the real expensive stuff that jaeger cockpits are made out of."

"Oh," Atsushi let out. "That's good, then."

"Yeah."

The silence that followed was perhaps not as awkward as one would have expected. Atsushi stood, wavering slightly on his feet; when Oda made as if to move and make room for him to sit, he crouched down and settled on the floor. He didn't think he could sit so close to the man without turning to ash himself.

"You're new here, aren't you," Oda said quietly. "Where are you from?"

"Yokohama," Atsushi answered. "I used to live at an orphanage near the outskirts."

Oda smiled once more. "I see."

Feeling patently awkward, Atsushi shifted on his behind, trying not to think of the stains that it would leave on the borrowed clothes. "You said it's been destroyed before…?" He gestured to the fake cockpit around them.

"Not that completely, but yeah," Oda replied. "About four years ago. I'd just started working here. Dazai broke it on purpose."

"What?"

"Oh, right." Oda blinked slowly. It was only then that Atsushi noticed the imprint of insomnia on his face, the bags under his eyes that looked almost like bruises. "He's one of Double Black. I think he was trying to get me a better job at the dock, since I was pretty much just carrying stuff around. Recommended me for the repairs, made it look like an accident and everything."

He seemed lost in his thoughts for a second. Atsushi spent it wondering at this Dazai person, from what Lucy had said to what he had overheard from Natsume. From Akutagawa's hard-earned respect to Oda's quiet worry.

"Tachihara-san said that you're his friend," he said carefully.

Oda took a moment to answer. "I am."

The simulator was a cramped thing, much smaller than a true jaeger's head, only fit to house a couple people. In that proximity, with the crisped walls half-hiding them from view, it seemed even sound was having a hard time reaching them. Atsushi had to lend an attentive ear to hear Tachihara's chatter outside, to feel the vibrations that the others' moving caused.

"Is he gonna be okay?" he asked softly. "Your friend."

Oda didn't seem like the person who showed strong emotions. Though his mouth laxed into smiles easily enough, now that Atsushi was speaking, though his demeanor was peaceful, there was a severity to him. Some hardness to the lines of his handsome face. Some brand of a rough life in the shadows marring him.

Atsushi thought, without knowing at all, that was he showed then was the strongest sorrow.

"I hope so."

That night, Atsushi dreamed.

He felt an animal's warm fur between his shaking fingers. They looked much smaller, much thinner than they did now; and the steely room he inhabited at the dock was gone, faded into the much more familiar darkness of the orphanage's cellar.

He felt the cold dirt under his aching back. He felt the burn of the whip and the sting of the stick. His ears were abuzz with the Headmaster's incoherent voice, his chest ablaze with the memory of a red-hot stoker, his heart swollen with despair. It fit as a knot inside his throat; it smarted at the crook of his neck like a blade cutting through skin.

Please, he remembered thinking. Enough. Enough. Enough.

And now that all of it was gone, now that he was free with no idea what to do with freedom, he knew what his mind asked. What his heart truly must know.

What next?

He stroked Rashoumon's fur with one hand; with the other, he pushed himself off the ground entirely.

Atsushi shot up toward the sky like a rocket, until he fingers touched clouds, until the black cat was gone. He stepped toward the sea with immense legs, with a body like a titan's; he waded through blue water in search of the monster to kill.

He found it.

He woke up with a start over the hard floor of his room, heaving and sticky with sweat, the dream-kaiju scorched behind his eyelids like the afterimage of the sun.

Ten minutes later, he knocked on the door of Natsume's office.

"Nakajima-kun?" Natsume mumbled, looking at him over smudged glasses. He picked them off his nose entirely, rubbed the corners of his eyes. "What time is it? My office hours are long gone, you know—"

"Is there a way to test what Akutagawa said about me?" Atsushi cut in.

Natsume looked at him sheepishly.

Atsushi swallowed. "That thing," he tried, "about being able to drift with anyone. Is there a way to test that without… without telling him?"

"If you enter the training program, any and all testing you do will be private," Natsume answered.

Atsushi bit his dry lip, cracking open the wound he had dug there earlier. The taste of blood smeared over his tongue once more.

"I don't want to enter the program," he whispered.

Natsume sighed. "Then I can't test you any more, my boy."

"But…"

Atsushi swallowed. Natsume waited him out, more politely than needed considering that Atsushi had bothered him in the middle of the night. That he looked nowhere near sleep was no excuse at all.

"If I knew for sure that I can drift with him," he said haltingly. "Then maybe."

"There's no way to know for sure."

He clenched his fist. "Please," he breathed, "just one test. One test you can do to check if what he said is true, and if it is then I'll do it. I'll enter the program." Seeing the face Natsume made, he spoke again: "And if it's too much then I'll pay for it, I'll pay you back—I just need to know."

"Price is not the problem," Natsume replied tiredly. "In fact it would cost me very little aside from time, but though it is possible, it necessitates breaking into the privacy of several of our pilots. I can't do this without asking for their consent, least of all for someone who isn't a trainee."

"Akutagawa said he can't drift with anyone," Atsushi said. "Do you think that's true?"

Natsume looked at him for a long time before answering, "I do."

Pity spread like ice through Atsushi's beating heart.

"Okay," he said. The words hanged to the edge of his lips; they felt in his mouth the way nausea did. "I'll enter the program."

Only good enough in the service of others, the Headmaster prophesied.

Natsume beamed at him. "Wonderful! Though, this is usually done via Sakaguchi-kun and during his office hours."

"Can you test me now?" Atsushi asked.

He thought if, if he left now, that he would never come back. He thought whatever foolish courage had won over his fear, had won over his spite, would seep out of him like the will to live had all those years ago.

He thought he would go back to being laid out on the floor of the cellar, bleeding through his clothes, with no one to hear him weep.

"Not immediately, but—"

"I'll wait," Atsushi said. "Please, I need to do this before Akutagawa knows."

Natsume's hold on the frame of the door weakened somewhat.

"I'll send the requests now," he replied, "but I won't know for sure until morning. At the least. I suggest you take that time to fill out the forms I'm about to give you, to spare Sakaguchi-kun some trouble."

Atsushi took them without even looking at them. He didn't reply to Natsume's gentle Good night, didn't say anything at all as he stood in front of the closed door and tried not to think too hard on what he had just done.

His hand curled around thin air. He wished Rashoumon were here.

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#bsd #bungou stray dogs #akuatsu #nakajima atsushi #akutagawa ryuunosuke #fic: bridges burned #fic: build upon the ruins

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