#this is litterally a two year old sketch i finally went back to and finished

[mud-muffin]

Dick and Steph to the rescue!🐬

[bitsandbobsandstuff]

Ink on his heart

Summary: Here’s how Bucky Barnes got a haircut and then decided it was about damn time he controlled his own destiny - starting with a bit of ink. 

Star Spangled Bingo Square: “A thoughtful gift”

Characters: Bucky Barnes x TattooArtist!Reader

Words: 7,400 Warnings: Tattoo experiences, a couple stories about war. Some swearing. Mostly lots of feels and fluff.

A/N: This one has been in my head a long time, I love tattoos and I love the idea of Bucky getting them! While I desperately wish I could draw the designs in my head, hopefully you get enough of a word picture to imagine. And yes, it is kinda long (I know, I know), but I couldn’t stop myself! 

Want to find all my stories? Search #bitsmasterlist or try the link in my bio!

*****

Not that Bucky’s counting, but it’s been three days, 18 hours and 26 minutes and he can’t get over it.

In the damp, chilly hours before dawn, he sits on the floor of the tower living room, watching the marshmallows in his hot chocolate melt in white swirls. Now and then, he lifts his eyes to the windows, finds the faint edges of his reflection in the dark glass, and tilts his head. Tentative fingers scratch through close cropped hair and a slow smile appears. Even now, he expects long strands trailing through his fingers. Believes he can feel the phantom tug of a snarl.

It was just a haircut. What a simple, ordinary thing.  

But Bucky Barnes has never been ordinary.

That small act triggered a startling transformation. Decades of heartbreak fell away with that dark hair, revealing the shape of a man he begins to remember, and it makes him think. About small things, about change. About simple acts making an extraordinary difference.

The last haircut Bucky remembers before the beginning of his first ending, was January 1945. The memory came back one evening, of a tent in Austria, the heavy silence of snow drifting down. He remembers Steve with a dull scissors, snipping carefully along his ear, remembers the catch of a knife gently shaving his neck. It was a ritual they shared for years. When pennies were tight and life was tough, they took care of each other.

And then? Then there was after.

After the fall, after capture, after the world went pear-shaped. Hydra wasn’t concerned with the formalities of self-care, a haircut was functional. Sharp scissors biting into his scalp, rough hands tearing his hair, a harsh slap if he considered resisting. Get it done and get it done fast. The Asset has work to do.

He despised those haircuts.

But now, here he is. No more handlers and horrors. No more running. No more hiding. No more ropes dragging him somewhere he doesn’t want to be.

Wresting back his independence was exhilarating.

When Steve had finished this haircut - because Bucky still preferred a Steve Rogers special to anything - he’d dusted off Bucky’s shoulders and waited. Sam stood behind him, and Bucky rolled his eyes, expecting a barrage of sassy comments.

But Sam just ruffled the freshly cut hair and laughed.

“Not bad old man. Still not as handsome as yours truly, but hey - maybe someday.”

Such a simple thing, a haircut.

It makes him wonder what else he might do, just for himself.      

Fuzzy and disconnected, an old memory flickers to life. It buzzes in his brain, images and connections filtering through the cracks and Bucky lets out a breathless laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmurs to himself. “Okay.”

He closes his eyes and sips his hot chocolate.

*****

Steve yawns when he answers the door. Blond hair spikes in every direction and he rubs his eyes, looking for all the world like a sleepy, overgrown toddler.

“Hey, man. Everything okay?”

Bucky leans against the doorframe and chews his thumbnail while he gathers his thoughts.

“Sure, just - can I get a favor?”

Bemused, Steve ushers him inside and Bucky plops in the red bean bag chair Steve keeps tucked beside his dresser. Stretching out his legs, he waits for Steve to flop back into bed and snuggle his pillow, before he speaks.

“Remember back in ’37 when we were coming home from that shitty bar in Midtown, and we saw that sailor getting a tattoo?”

Whatever Steve expected, it wasn’t this. It takes him a moment to conjure the image, but when it comes he belts out a laugh.

“That terrified kid gettin’ a big heart on his arm? Looked ready to shit his pants?”

Bucky grins at the memory, a milk-faced kid with hair dark and shiny as an oil-slick.  

“Thought he was gonna puke on the guy.”

“Yeah, and didn’t we stand outside that window arguing while you tried to convince me we both needed one? Something about good girls liking bad boys?”  

“Hey, I stand by that statement!”

“Oh fuck off, you know exactly what your Ma would’ve said if we’d come home with tattoos.”

“Yeah,” Bucky chuckles. “God, she’d a skinned me alive.”

“Damn straight,” Steve agrees and they fall quiet, momentarily lost in shared memories of a woman with a voice of steel and a heart of gold.

Bucky leans forward and rests his chin on his knee.

“You know, all these years and I’ve never really - done anything like that,” he admits wistfully. “Gotten something done to me, I mean. Something I decided on my own. If that makes sense?”

Controlling his own destiny, choosing to do something by himself, instead of always accepting things done to him - the idea is intoxicating. He remembers the pained grimace on that sailor’s face and he relishes the prospect.

Pain you choose to feel holds a different meaning, than the torture he knows.

“S’never too late, Buck,” Steve says drowsily. “You can do anything you want.”

Bucky contemplates Steve’s words. He can do anything he wants. Heart beating fast, he takes a deep breath.

“So listen, I was thinking -”

*****

For two straight weeks, Steve works on ideas.

The floor of his bedroom is littered with sketches and concepts, crumpled sheets of paper dappled with flowing lines. Finally, after midnight on a dreary Thursday, he knocks on Bucky’s door. The moment it opens, he shoves his tattered leather portfolio in Bucky’s hands.

“So, I guess, uh - here.”

Steve crosses his arms, his toe tapping nervously, and Bucky chokes down a laugh. Some things about Steve Rogers remain comfortingly unchanged. No matter how incredible his work, all confidence seems to evaporate the moment Bucky lays eyes on anything.

—

“Give it back asshole!”

“God dammit Steve, YOU’RE the one who asked me to look!”

“Yeah well, I changed my mind, now give it back!”

—

Bucky remembers laughing while Steve chased him around their apartment. He remembers the neighbors banging on the wall, shouting at them to shut up, and he remembers the smell of their forgotten scrambled eggs burning. But most of all, he remembers that drawing - he tucked that portrait of his mother in his rucksack the day he shipped out and it stayed there, a good luck charm all through the war.

Steve had cried when Bucky told him.

Because Bucky’s opinion was always the one that mattered. Seventy years changes nothing.

Tonight, he opens the leather case, revealing three separate drawings. Outlines of black ink and a rainbow of colors paint over the curves and breaks of a human form and he pores over each page. Each drawing is utterly unique, telling the story of Bucky Barnes in metaphors and moments.    

There are no words.

His throat feels suddenly thick, cotton lodged in his windpipe.

“I can redo them,” Steve blurts out. He snatches at the paper, but Bucky spins sideways, blocking the reach.

“The fuck you will. You ain’t touching these,” his voice cracks. Blinking back the flood of emotion, he looks up. “This is - they’re perfect, Steve. Thank you.”

Steve blushes petal pink and coughs to hide his delight. He fails miserably, of course, but that’s one more reason Bucky loves the little punk.

*****

One week later, Bucky stands before a demure brick storefront on a slow Brooklyn side street, the portfolio housing Steve’s three precious drawings clutched tight in a sweaty hand. Glancing at the address in his hand, he looks up to find stenciled letters curving across a glass window.

BROOKLYN INK ESTABLISHED 1973

“Here we go,” he mutters. Before he can lose his nerve, he shoves forward.

Three steps inside the tattoo parlor, he pulls up short.

Wow.

Black iron chandeliers hang from the ceiling, splashing sparkles across plush velvet chairs, rich violet and bright turquoise. The floor is an eclectic mix of reclaimed barn board, full of knots and whorls in every shade of brown. Artwork in black and white frames line the brick wall, tattoo designs, letters and fonts, photos of finished work. The entire space overflows with warmth, and Bucky feels instantly at ease.  

The front desk is empty, but he hears someone rattling around back, so he takes a seat. Piled high on an end table are bundles of photo albums, full of work; he sinks into the cushions and starts flipping through.  

Immersed in the images, he misses the sound of quiet footsteps.

“Are you James?”

The voice startles him and in one swift move, he manages to throw the album on the floor and tumble from the chair. Pages of photographs spill everywhere and he crawls over, hastily scooping them up and babbling one inappropriate apology after another.

“Shit! Sorry, I’m sorry! Shit, I mean I’m sorry for saying shit. Fuck, I didn’t - oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m not usually so - ”

Soft laughter greets him and he looks up in panic, a more refined apology on his lips, but the words evaporate.

Crouching beside him, graceful hands gather up the mess of photos, slipping them back into the album. Dropping it carelessly on the end table, she bounces back to her feet and offers him a hand.

“No worries,” she says with a breathtaking smile. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”

Although he has no need for the support, Bucky reaches mutely for her outstretched fingers because he can’t help but take them. When she tugs, he allows her to pull him up.  

“I’m, um - Bucky. Please, call me Bucky.”

“Hello Bucky,” she says. She shares her name and he repeats it slowly. Clearing his throat, he takes a deep breath.

“Thanks for meeting me so late, I know it’s after hours.”

“Sure,” she says lightly. “So, what can I do for you?”

This is the tricky part.

“On the website, it mentioned you had experience with - with tattooing around scars,” he begins carefully. “Scar tissue I mean. Is that right?”

With his question, her expressions turns serious. She observes him for a long moment.

“Yes, I do. Can I ask how long you served?” she asks delicately and Bucky acknowledges her perception with a short nod. He toys with the zipper on Steve’s portfolio, debating his response.

“Seemed like forever,” he finally says, and it’s the most honest answer he has.

Nodding silently, she motions him behind the counter.

“Come on back, let’s see what you had in mind.”

Hugging the pictures to his chest, Bucky follows, eyes saucer wide as they weave through the work area to her space. The shop smells like the woodsy smoke from the candles sitting along her table, mixed with ink and latex and an odd sterile tang. He inhales and discovers he likes it, the strange scent lighting him up.  

Dropping to her stool, she gestures for him to have a seat. Bucky sits gingerly, wide eyes still staring. When she catches his eye, he flushes.

“Sorry. First time I’ve been in a shop.”

“That’s okay, there’s lots to see,” she says easily. Looking at the portfolio still clutched against his chest, she grins. “Did you have some ideas already?”

He thrusts the portfolio at her. Propping it on her knees, she flips it open and he beams when he hears her astonished gasp.

“I like the colors there, if you think they’re possible?”

“Sure, might take some extra time, but I can do it,” she murmurs, pinching her lip. Turning the page sideways, she examines every minute detail, shaking her head in disbelief. “This is exquisite.”  

“I’ll tell my artist. He’s a real diva sometimes.”

“I’d say he’s earned that right,” she laughs, tracing the paper with a light finger. She flips to the second picture and tilts her head. “The grays and silvers might look nice with midnight blue for contrast?”

Bucky nods eagerly. “Yeah, I love that idea.”

She looks again, examining the intricate design.

“Can you tell me about your pain tolerance? The designs are beautiful, but they’re complex. Each will take multiple sessions to finish.”

Bucky drops his eyes. He heaves a sigh at the obligatory question.

“It’s high,” he mutters. “Very - high.”

Silence follows his admission. When he dares to look up again, he feels a twinge in his chest at the compassion he finds. He offers a rueful smile and she slowly returns it.

“Would you like to come after hours? It can get noisy during the day, if you prefer things quieter. Most soldiers like that better.”

There is a sweep of relief at her casual acknowledgement. He huffs out a shaky breath.

“That would be great. If you don’t mind, I mean.”

“Not at all. I’m a night owl anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “Me too.”

She looks back to the portfolio, carefully shuffling the pages.

The third picture appears.

And Bucky sees it, that precise moment when realization sinks in. When she realizes exactly who is sitting in her chair tonight. There is no doubt the drawing gives that fact away. Heart pounding, he flinches, steeling himself for the inevitable.

But nothing happens.

She meets his nervous gaze head on and yet - that gentle smile remains.

“Bucky,” she repeats and this time she understands. “Oh. It’s nice to meet you, Bucky Barnes. Come back tomorrow night, 9pm. Don’t be late.”

He leaves the tattoo shop feeling lighter than he has in years.

*****

TATTOO 1: FOREARM

“Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past.” - Jack London

*****

Perpetually early for everything, Bucky arrives at 8:45pm the next night.

The bell over the door tinkles when he enters, and she looks up from the front desk and waves. His stomach unexpectedly leaps and he thinks it must be nerves.

“Hey, Bucky,” her voice is soft.

“Evening,” he says shyly.  

“You ready to do this?”

“Could hardly sleep last night,” he confesses with a grin.

Sliding timidly into her black leather chair, he watches her arrange tools on a shiny silver tray. An arm rest is attached to his right side, and he dries his sweaty palm on his jeans before easing his arm onto the cushion, palm up. When she drops onto her stool at his side, he offers a weak smile.  

“You got the email I sent with all the information, right? Did you have any questions?”

He scrunches his nose, recalling the long, detailed summary she shared. For each of the three tattoos he requested, she gave him a detailed analysis of the process for creating each design; broke down how long each session would take; gave explicit instructions on the healing and care process; confirmed each individual color and how it would be applied; clarified the tools that would be used, including their brand names and how each one worked; she even provided floor plans of her shop - outlining entries and exits and bathrooms and locations of fire extinguishers.

It was a novel of information that must’ve taken her hours, and he was inexplicably grateful for the time she spent just to make him comfortable.

“No questions, I just, uh - thanks. For putting all that together. It was helpful to have all the information. Helps me keep my head on straight.”

“Of course,” she says. “So this first design should take probably 5-6 hours. Since you’re new, we’ll start with short blocks and see how it goes.”

Bucky gives a jerky nod and she pauses, pressing her fingertips against the smooth skin of his forearm.

“Here are the rules. You’re in charge, okay? We can go as fast or as slow as you need. This is not a race, and I have nowhere to be but here. Any time you want to stop, you say the word and I stop. We can take a breather, grab a cup of coffee and start again - or we can call it a night. This is your experience, Bucky. You’re in control. Understand?”

There is a fierce surge of gratitude at her words. Gratitude for her kindness, for her acceptance. Gratitude for her.

“Got it,” he whispers.

And with that, they begin.

Bucky follows each step, while she measures his arm, while she considers the contours and angles of his muscle, while she cleans and preps his skin. When she finally applies a stencil, his heart is hammering so hard his teeth are chattering.

The low buzz of the tattoo machine fills his ears with a click.

When the needles touch his skin, sweat instantly beads his neck. Adrenaline drenches his tongue and for one wild moment, Bucky panics. Wonders if this was a terrible idea, because what idiot asks for pain, seriously Barnes, what the hell is wrong with you, why’re you so stupid all the -

And then - oh.

Huh.

Interesting.

Wide-eyed, Bucky follows her careful strokes, black lines appearing on his skin.

It does hurt - sort of. Obviously nothing he can’t handle; in the grand scheme of his life, this would register as a minor inconvenience, but there is a pinch.

But that spark of pain vanishes, when the raw symbolism behind Steve’s design hits him full force.

Holy shit.

How many times through the decades did Bucky Barnes die? And how many times did he rise, born again from the frozen ash of oblivion? It was simply what the Soldier did. But it was a shadow-life, nothing more. Bucky never knew how close he was to giving up, until that day above the Potomac, Steve’s bloody face beneath his furious fists. He was so far gone, so lost and forgotten, until those memories cracked the Soldier’s fierce veneer.

And suddenly he was Bucky again. Awake and alive. For the first time in 70 years he felt fire in his soul. For the first time in 70 years he could breathe.

Tears inexplicably fill his eyes.    

“All okay?”

Through a tunnel, Bucky hears her voice. Hypnotized by the metaphor inking itself into his skin, his head feels waterlogged when blinks up at her.

“Sorry?”

She scans his face, her thumb rubbing the pulse thrumming at his wrist.

“Everything okay?” She asks again and Bucky feels a potent rush of euphoria.

“Yes,” he says slowly. The excitement bubbles over and he lets out an ecstatic laugh. “Yes! This is incredible. This is - fucking hell, this is amazing.”

Chuckling to herself, she bends back to her task.

“So I guess we’ll keep going?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Yeah, let’s keep going.”

Two hours later, the outline of the Phoenix is inked into his skin, crisp black lines like fresh paint. Long tail feathers are curled around his wrist, the lush feathered body splashed over his forearm, her wings spread open and curving around his arm, her head reaching toward the sky.

Born from ash. Alive again.

Bucky hates to cover it up, but she insists.

“Follow the cleaning instructions and it should be fine. We need to wait between the sessions, give you time to heal.”

At that comment, he fidgets.

“Actually, I heal pretty - fast.”

“I assumed you might. Usually I say 2-3 weeks between sessions, so how about you come back in 1 week and we can see. Let’s just make sure. Does that work?”

Bucky glances at the crisp white bandage on his arm.

“Okay, that works,” he says.

She squeezes his hand and he meets her eyes.

“You did great,” she tells him.

Bucky smiles in return. And he doesn’t stop for the next six days.

*****

When he walks into the shop for his next session, he carries a large coffee for himself and an extra large iced peach green tea for her. When he gets to the front desk, he thrusts the cup at her.  

“Evening. Um, here. Saw you had one last time, so - anyway.”

“Bucky, thank you. I’ve been craving one all day.” She gives the straw an experimental bite, before taking a long drink and for some reason, the silly quirk makes his heart bounce.

After a quick check on how he’s healed, she declares him perfect and they get started, settling into a comfortable silence. After an hour of buzzing, Bucky clears his throat.

“Is it okay to talk while you work?”

“It is,” she affirms, dabbing at the ink. Glancing up, she sees hesitant blue eyes. “I’m good at listening too. Sometimes it’s nice just to listen.”  

Bucky figures that’s a fair statement. He fiddles with a stray thread on his shirt.

“Do you read much?” He asks hopefully, picturing the teetering stack of books beside his bed. She perks at the question.

“I love to read. Have a pile of books on my nightstand waiting for me to find time. What about you? Are you reading anything good now? Any favorites I should know?”

Bucky swallows the happy surprise. If he could, he’d be content to spend the rest of his years with a comfortable chair, a cup of coffee, and an unending supply of stories. He could talk about books for days, he just normally keeps quiet, because most people aren’t interested in that facet of Bucky Barnes.

So he begins to talk.

He tells her how Natasha lent him all her Russian copies of Pushkin and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, insisting that reading in the original language was infinitely better. He describes how he found a copy of Rumi’s poetry at a yard sale, and what an incredible treasure it was. He flusters recounting how much he cried reading ‘A Fault in our Stars’ and says he was scared shitless to even see a clown for a full year after reading Stephen King.    

He talks and talks and talks, and when he finally stops to breathe, she glances up.

“It’s nice to hear a man who’s so well read,” she says and Bucky preens at the compliment. “Do you have an all time favorite? Something you never get tired of?”

A favorite? No question.

“Yeah, I do. Something I read during the war and kinda fell in love. It’s about here, I guess. About Brooklyn.”

At the description, her mouth quirks, but she keeps working.

“Did you ever think about a book quote for a tattoo?”

Now there’s an idea. He makes a mental note to think of a quote he could add as another tattoo. Or maybe another couple tattoos. Hell, one session in and he’s already addicted.  

The comment tumbles free before he realizes he’s spoken out loud. He blushes at her laughter.

“It can be addicting,” she agrees. Bucky understands completely, seeing the vibrant crimson ink soak into his skin, painting the bird’s feathers. And then she pauses, meeting his eyes with a peculiar expression. “The right words can make you feel invincible.”

Setting the tattoo machine down, she rolls her chair back a bit and sits up straight. Lifting the hem of her shirt, Bucky sees a line of gold text inked below her ribs, his eyes following the flowing cursive.

“She was all of these things and of something more,” he reads aloud.

“‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ is my favorite book too,” she says quietly. There is a long, unbroken moment where they stare into each others eyes. He should say something, he thinks. Something intelligent or witty or anything, but instead he just thinks about the fact that he found a woman in Brooklyn to permanently carve pictures into his skin and she has the same favorite book as him.

Bucky always was a sucker for fate.

“That’s - that’s really - I love that,” he finally says instead.

*****

A week later, Bucky arrives with a bundle of folders and an exasperated expression.

“This is really annoying, but do you mind if I finish some reports while you work? Got behind, someone’s gonna have my ass.” Bucky raises the papers apologetically.

“No problem,” she says easily. “Let’s keep your ass safe.”

Bending back to her task, Bucky snorts a laugh. They’re just a handful of mission reports, normally he types them soon as he returns, but lately he’s been slacking, because lately he has other things he finds more interesting.

Like the scene in front of him.

Together they work, each with their own pen. Bucky writes, she colors, and the clock on the wall ticks along. After awhile, she takes a break to stretch. Rolling her shoulders, she observes him.

“Are you left-handed?” she asks curiously and it takes Bucky a moment to think.

“Oh. Uh, not really,” he says. “But I can switch. Never been a problem.”

At the confession, she raises her eyebrows.

“That’s impressive. I wish I had a talent like that.”

He ducks his head at the praise. And he keeps writing, of course. Maybe adds a bit more flair. After all, the old Bucky Barnes did like to swagger.    

*****

“Well, I think that’s it.”

It takes a beat before Bucky understands what she means. Confused, he peers up at her with a dopey expression and she gestures at his arm.

He feels his heart lurch.

It flames to life along his arm, painted in vibrant ruby red and rich crimson and deep plum, highlights edged in shining gold. Mesmerized, Bucky stares down at the lines of ink and he flexes, the tendons of his arm shifting, and the bird moves. For one wild moment, he believes if he stays still, it could leap from his skin and take flight.  

It leaves him breathless.

“God, this is better - fuck, it’s so much better - than I ever imagined. How did you - wow. I don’t know how you did it, but - thank you. Thank you so much.”

Unanticipated emotion makes his voice tremble. Because this is the first time Bucky Barnes chose something permanent for himself. Serums and metal arms and bullets and blades, those were always forced upon him, his pleading refusals met with violence and sneering indifference.

But this?

This.

This.

This is all his.

*****

TATTOO 2: BACK

“Wear your heart on your sleeve in this life.” - Sylvia Plath

*****

“So, uh, how exactly does this work?”

Standing beside the leather chair while she organizes her inks, Bucky wrinkles his nose. She looks up and motions for him to turn, straddling the chair with his chest pressed against the back.

“Are you comfortable completely removing your shirt? Or would you prefer to leave it part way on? I’ll just need it out of the way for the right side of your back.”

Bucky grimaces. Eventually she’s going to see his shoulder - he knows that - but he’s not in the mood to rip that band-aid off yet.  

“Uh - let’s do part of the way if that’s okay?”

“That’s okay,” she confirms and he awkwardly tugs his right arm free, baring the broad expanse of his back. Tucking his arms in front of him, he slings a leg over the chair and rests his chin carefully on the headrest.

He says nothing, simply stays still while she absorbs the sight. Littered up and down his back are a litany of scars, puckers from the occasional bullet, thin lines from errant blades, and a few other marks he prefers not to define. His voice is muffled when he warily asks.

“Are you able to - work with it?“    

“Absolutely,” she answers firmly and Bucky warms at the decisiveness in her tone. Her confidence makes him feel infinitely more positive.

This is the largest of his three tattoos, stretching from the tip of his shoulder blade and flowing down to his waist. It will also take the longest, but Bucky assures her he has no issue sitting perfectly still for hours.

It’ll be worth it. He can’t wait to show Sam - he’ll get a kick out of this one.

Once she applies the stencil over his skin, she goes to work, dropping into that headspace of deep focus. She works so quietly for so long, he falls into a trance, lulled by the melodic buzz.

When she speaks, it startles him.

“What made you decide you wanted a tattoo?”

He lays his cheek along the edge of the chair so he can see her from the corner of his eye when he answers.

“S’random, but back in ’37, me and Steve were out and I remember walking by this old tattoo shop over in Midtown. They had one of those big glass windows with the chair in front, so people could stand and watch. Anyway, we walk by and there was this kid sitting in the chair, and no fuckin’ joke, he was getting a big heart on his arm with ‘MOM’ written in the middle.”

“Ah yes, the ever popular ‘mom’ tribute. I’ve done a few of those,” she says and Bucky grins.

“Well anyway, I always kinda wanted something, you know? Thought about getting one before I shipped out, but I didn’t, and then it was - “ he pauses for a moment, but she encourages him with a questioning hmmm? and Bucky bravely pushes forward. “I had lots of years where I didn’t get to make my own decisions. And there was so much - bad shit that happened to me. Anyway, I guess I thought if someone’s gonna do something to me, I wanted it to be on my own terms. You know?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I think that makes perfect sense.”

Bucky sits quietly, contemplating. The question has been rattling around his brain for awhile and it spills free before he can stop himself. 

“The whole process, it feels sort of  - intimate, doesn’t it?”

He flushes at the insinuation, but intimate is the best way to describe it, he thinks, this practice of someone permanently carving their art into your skin.

“It is intimate,” she says softly, leaning closer. “It’s almost like you’re - leaving a piece of your soul under someone’s skin? I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s what it’s always felt like.”

Bucky nods, watching her capable, artistic, beautiful hands as they move, slowly transferring bits and pieces of herself to him.

What a gift. He holds on tight.

*****

It was bound to happen at one of the sessions.

It’s been dark and rainy for days, buckets dumped from the heavens, the perpetual grumble of thunder always near. When Bucky comes through the front door, he feels like a wet dog. He shakes out his jacket, stomps his boots. He feels off base tonight, the result of bad sleep, bad dreams, and one particularly bad mission. He’s frustrated with himself for bringing it with him, thinks maybe he should’ve cancelled, but the thought of skipping his session - both the ink and her - was too depressing.

So instead of holing up in his room and moping under the covers, he braved the storm.

The one inside and out.

Searching for calm, he licks chapped lips.

“Hey,” he says, cringing when his voice cracks.

“Hey, Buck,” she turns cheerfully, but when she sees him squinting at her through the droplets cascading down his face, his shoulders hunched and tense, she stops. Looks him up and down and her expression softens. Beckoning him back, she digs up a towel and a dry t-shirt with ‘BROOKLYN INK’ stamped across the front, ushering him to the bathroom.

“Take all the time you need. No rush.”

Bucky mumbles his thanks and shuts the door. Gripping the sink, he glares at the mirror, at the smudge of dark beneath his eyes, at the clench of his jaw. Closing his eyes, he breathes slow and deep.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.”

He repeats the mantra, determined to settle. He’s been eager for this session all week, he’s sure as hell not ruining it because he can’t get his idiot brain to stop spinning.

When he finally emerges, he finds her arranging her work space. Halting in front of her, he keeps trembling hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes downcast.

“I’m afraid I’m poor company tonight,” he admits quietly.

“That’s okay. We can reschedule, Bucky,” she says softly and Bucky feels the disconcerting sting of tears. He rubs the heel of his hand against watery eyes.  

“If it’s okay, I’d - I’d rather go ahead. Been looking forward to seeing you - uh, seeing you work, all week. It was just - “ he pauses and fights the temptation to spill his guts. No, he snarls internally, she doesn’t need to hear all your shit.

He clamps his mouth shut and shrugs instead.

She says nothing, but when she gives his hand a comforting squeeze, Bucky feels that familiar surge of gratitude. She guides him carefully toward the chair and he slumps into the seat, automatically tugging up his new shirt.  

“Just close your eyes and breath. You’re okay.”

Bucky rests his chin on the edge of the chair. Troubled eyes flutter shut, and the comforting buzz of the tattoo machine fills his ears, muting the sound of the storm raging outside. When he feels the prick of the needles, he lets out a weary breath. And when he feels the easy pressure of her fingers, he begins to relax.

For hours, she works. Firm strokes, painting the story across his skin.

The dark night begins to fade before she finally sets her tools aside. When he climbs to his feet, she pulls him into a gentle hug.    

Bucky sinks into her arms.

That morning, the sun begins to shine.

*****

Bucky’s been sitting for a couple hours now, eyeing the brick wall behind the chair. A question pops into his head and he feels like a jerk for not asking sooner.

“Hey - all these hours together, and I never asked you - what made you want to draw on people for a living?”

She hums at the question, and he can hear the happiness in her reply.

“Well, I always wanted to be an artist. For my eleventh birthday, my best friend Mike gave me this set of gel pens, there were a million colors. When I told him I wanted to be a tattoo artist, he let me draw pictures all over him for practice. He insisted on being the first person I inked, once I got my license. Would always tell people he was the ‘original canvas’ for my brilliance.”

When she laughs, Bucky chuckles with her; it reminds him of Steve.

“Sounds like a good man,” he says.

“Yeah, he is - he was,” she quietly corrects herself. “He was an EOD specialist in Afghanistan. Right before he left for his last tour, I drew up plans for the arm sleeve he always wanted; he planned to get it when he finished. A month later, he was in a convoy that was moving through the Gereshk Valley in the Helmand Province, when an IED hit his vehicle. He didn’t make it home.”

The story hits home like a kick in the face.

Too many soldiers, too many lives. Bucky reaches back to still her hand. He slowly turns to face her, gently tugging the tattoo machine free and setting it aside. Wordlessly, he offers his hand and she accepts it gratefully, weaving her fingers through his. It takes a few attempts before she speaks again.  

“It took me a long time to get through that. One day I met a friend working down at the VA, and I heard a vet talking about the scars on his legs. He sounded so - sad about them, you know? Kept saying he didn’t recognize himself anymore. And I just stood there thinking, maybe I couldn’t help Mike, but I could still do something.” Staring resolutely down, she considers her fingers still entangled with Bucky’s. “I did some research and took some classes and - learned how to tattoo on scar tissue.”

Bucky gazes at her. He feels a sweep of pride at the way she turned her tragedy into something beautiful.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” he says and she finally looks up, meeting blue eyes bright with compassion. “But you should know, what you’re doing for people, it’s incredible. And if you don’t mind me saying, I think he’d be real god damn proud of you.”

A tear slips down her cheek and she ducks her head, her whisper so low he nearly misses it.

“Thank you Bucky.”

*****

Hours later, Bucky hears a clatter of tools and her huff of relief.

“All done.”

Wiping her hands, she pops excitedly up from the stool and Bucky pushes back from the chair to follow. Without a thought, she grabs his metal hand, tugging him impatiently over to a set of floor length mirrors along the wall. Bucky grips tight and obediently follows, his pulse racing. When she positions him at the mirror, she adjusts the panels so he can see himself from all angles.

“There, have a look.”

Along his spine, the single metal wing bursts free, so intensely realistic, Bucky’s jaw drops. It arches gracefully up, curving over his shoulder blade and sweeping down his back, razor sharp feathers tickling his rib cage before billowing out above his waist. Made from silvers and grays and shaded hints of midnight blue, it glows in the light. When Bucky reaches toward the sky, the muscles shift beneath the ink and it creates the strangest sensation of feathers unfolding.  

All the scars littering his back, a flesh and bone patchwork of memories left by vicious handlers and fights too close for comfort, have disappeared. Blending into the steel of his new wing, their only purpose is to strengthen the image.

After all this time, he’s come to terms with the metal arm so unwillingly gifted all those years ago. But it’s remained a relic of a past life, something heavy, to drag him down.

But now, he rolls his shoulder back and his new metal wing lifts him higher than he’s felt in a long, long time.

*****

TATTOO 3: SHOULDER

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” - Haruki Murakami

*****

“So our last session.”

“Our last session,” he murmurs.

Bucky thinks for a moment that she seems glum, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

“This is a tough one,” she warns, “but I think we can do it in one session. I won’t try and cover them up, it won’t work. The best solution is to incorporate your scars into the design. Make sense?”

Bucky pictures the pattern Steve drew, bright green leaves and vines tracing the seam of his arm, melding with the thick ribbons of raised tissue. It doesn’t matter, but he timidly asks anyway.

“Will it hurt?”

“No,” she says gently. Pressing her hand to his galloping heart, she shakes her head. “It won’t hurt much there, but you need to tell me if it hurts here. You need to tell me if I should stop. Remember, you’re in charge, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers.

Steeling himself, he whips off his shirt, balling it up in nervous hands. The cool air blowing through the shop is a relief for his overheated body.

“Do you mind if I feel the skin here? So I can make sure I approach it right?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Bucky mumbles. Staring at his hands, he waits.

Leaning close, her fingers brush over him, feeling the lines and ridges, assessing the canvas. For ten minutes, she tests his skin, lightly pushing and pressing, observing the scars and bumps where metal meets man.  

“Does it still hurt?”

She doesn’t want to ask, but needs to know what she’s working with. With a grim smile, he shrugs.

“Not really. Aches sometimes, but doesn’t hurt. Can’t feel much there besides some pressure.”

Nodding, she pinches her lip. “I was thinking last night, um - would you want to add anything else into the design? Nothing big, but a few flowers? Some daisies maybe?”

“Sure, I’d like that. Any reason for daisies?” Bucky asks curiously.

Pulling out a few additional bottles of ink, she absently touches the necklace at her throat, and Bucky sees a silver daisy spinning.

“Daisies represent new beginnings. Thought it might be a nice way to end, if you like?”

Does he like it? The idea of having this small thing in common?

Hell yes he likes it.

Maybe - maybe he even more than likes it?

“Yeah. That sounds perfect,” he says softly. He swallows hard and she nods encouragingly.

“Okay. Remember - stop me if you need a break.”

This one, Bucky knows will be hard. It was the reason he left it to the end - the mental fortitude required here is much different.

As she begins, he contemplates the pink furrows gouged into his skin. The memory of how they got there flashes before him, a sick image of shredded skin raked bloody beneath his blunt fingernails. Faint screams of a past life echo in his ears, the smokey cry of his own voice desperate for relief from the pain.

Cold sweat slides down his face and he slams his eyes shut, but that seems to make it worse. The images glow technicolor bright, and he grunts a frustrated breath.

And then, through the thin latex of her glove, he feels her cool hand press against his pounding heart. Cracking an eye open, he finds her calm face and he focuses on her, until his breathing begins to ease. Blinking rapidly, he drinks in the curve of her nose, the shape of her mouth, the beauty of her eyes.

His heart stutters, stunning him into a different kind of breathless.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, wide eyes locked on hers. “Yeah, I’m okay. You can keep going.”

When she bends back to her task, Bucky melts. It occurs to him, that perhaps if she might let him, he could be content watching her forever.

But for tonight, this forever lasts only a few hours before she’s done.

And there it is.

Shades of green line his shoulder, the vines curling and winding around his scars, blending them seamlessly into the foliage covering his skin. Spidering vines trail across his chest, and it seems incompatible in a way, something alive bursting from the stark metal, but the leaves look so real, he swears they flutter with each breath he takes. Strewn throughout the greenery, small splotches of yellow and white reveal her daisies and he sucks in a breath.

For the first time in his life, Bucky stares at his scars and a foreign word comes to mind, one he never, ever thought to use.

“Beautiful,” he breathes. “They’re beautiful.”

*****

And so, after 3 months and 30 hours together, they were done.

Hands in his pockets, Bucky gazes at her. Ink on her hands, ink on his heart. It hits him then, this is it. They shuffle, making small talk, neither ready to say goodbye.

“Promise you’ll come back if you decide on anything else. Tattoos, piercings, anything,” she teases and Bucky laughs.

“Told you, I might be a little addicted,” he admits, knowing full well he means to tattoos and to her. “Soon as I can think of a reason, I’ll be back.”

“I hope so,” she says. There is a brief moment where she seems to gather her courage and then she leans in to press a soft kiss to his cheek. “You’re a work of art, Bucky, but - you were before any of this. Remember that.”

Dazed, Bucky touches his cheek.

Indelible and perfect, the tattoo of her lips inks itself straight onto his heart.

*****

When she arrives at the shop the next day, there is a new sight sitting on the front desk.

Daisies, their white petals and yellow faces as fresh as the afternoon sunshine filtering through the window. Bemused, she looks around the bustling shop and spies the card propped beside the overflowing vase, her name scrawled across the front.

-

“When I got home, I stood in front of the mirror for hours, staring at your artwork. Every time I told myself to go to sleep, I found something new I loved. The tail feathers on my Phoenix or the petals of your daisies. What you’ve given me is more than I ever hoped - I can never thank you enough.

But anyway, I remembered what you said - how this kind of art is like leaving a piece of your soul under someone’s skin.

Well, I won’t lie - you must have done, because I miss you already.

So at the risk of being forward (although I did break into your shop and leave this, so maybe this won’t seem that forward), would you have dinner with me?  

I think there’s another new beginning waiting out there, if you’d like to find it with me.  

Yours,

Bucky”

-

At the bottom of the note, a phone number is printed.

Brushing her fingers over the delicate white petals, she pictures him, that dark haired man with eyes like blue ink, so heartbreakingly beautiful inside and out. She feels the unconscious pull of her heart, telling her all she needs to know.

A new beginning.

She says yes.

*****

[gotnofucks]

Ball’s In Your Court

Paring: Steve Rogers x Reader, (platonic tony x reader)

Summary: Steve and Y/n have been playing games for years. But now that Rogers is acting like a little bitch, Y/n throws him a curve ball that will either make them or break them.

Words: 2.7k

Warning: None man. Its fluff and angst. Language (?)

A/N: I was experimenting with the third person P.O.V for reader. Hope it’s to your liking.

MASTERLIST

+++++

For as long as Steve could remember, their life together had been a game; bet after bet, challenge after challenge. He had met her when she was just entering her teens, a little girl with a lost wild look in her eyes. She was in all respects Tony’s daughter, rescued by him from the wreckage of his own weapons. He had almost done a double take when Tony had introduced her to the team.

“This is Y/n, she will stay with us from now”

The compound was not used to the pitter patter of little feet or their furniture appearing embellished overnight. She had lost everything, including it seemed herself. So, their first game ironically had been Hide and Seek. She was small and he lost count of how many times she had bested him by crawling under the cramped spaces of desks or vents (Thanks for teaching her that, Barton).

When Tony had complained about the hundredth time that she just wouldn’t eat, Steve would challenge her that whoever finished their breakfast first could choose the movie for tonight. When she refused to let them leave for missions, he would challenge her to a game of cards. She was too young to win against him but her stubborn streak never turned down a game.

Their every interaction had been a game. They could get each other to do anything by playing chess or softball or a game of Horse that drove everyone else up the wall. He got her to open up about school bullies by besting her at Pictionary and she had effectively gotten him to shut up about healthy food by kicking his ass at video games. They dealt with drama via games (Whoever tosses the least paper balls in the bin tells Bruce we fucked his experiment ), they dealt with humor via games (let’s see who can manage to steal Nat’s gun without getting caught), they dealt with grief via game (if you beat me at Heads Up I’ll let you choose the gravestone).

Growing up, she was Tony’s daughter and Steve’s best friend. While Tony raised her, Steve gossiped with her. They were pals and all was fun and games until she grew up from a little girl into a young woman. Steve didn’t know when things changed but the first he noticed it was when she had run into his arms bawling because some idiot boy broke her heart. It was when he found himself conflicted between anger at the boy and jealousy that this shit started.

He had tried, he had really tried to keep it in check. He had tried to keep up with their game’s night ritual, their silly bets and ridiculous challenges. He had tried his best to be a friend, but this was one challenge he lost. She was no more the 14-year-old girl asking him questions for her history project or the 16-year-old nightmare who would put cockroaches in his bed as revenge. This was a young woman in her 20s with curves for days and an attitude that raised hell. It was a classic falling for your best friend story (if only he weren’t old enough to be her dad or was her dad’s best friend).

He had of course been under the impression that he was being subtle about his change in feelings. He tried not to stare when they went out for a swim, he resisted the urge to lick her lips after a nacho eating contest. He was trying so fucking hard, but as anyone could have told him, “Steve, you don’t have a subtle bone in your body, you frisbee throwing maniac”. She was Tony Stark’s daughter; she was not raised to be stupid. She was smart and observant and almost as quick a study as her father. It was no surprise then that she figured out what had Steve so wound up around her.

Maybe it would have creeped her out had it been anyone else, but Steve was her person. He was her one constant, from kissing her boo-boos to getting her home after she drank herself silly, Steve was there. It shouldn’t have surprised Steve so much then when she cornered him one evening and planted a wet one smack on his mouth with a muttered, “This sexual tension it killing me, gotta do something about it because you won’t”.

He wished he could say he clutched her body to his and dragged her to his room for a wild night of passion. But in reality, he chickened out like a bitch and ran away. Not just from her, but he completely disappeared from the compound for two weeks. When he came back, it was with the intentions of telling her they couldn’t do it, it was wrong and a betrayal to Tony. But Steve needn’t have worried because he came back to the compound to find her introducing the team to her boyfriend.

As far as others know, Steve didn’t deliberately break those glasses that night or push the idiot boy in the pool. It was an accident, and if such accidents kept happening around men she dated then it was purely coincidental.

It was a new kind of game they played then, a more dangerous one and if one’s being honest, a very sensual game. She would date someone; he would scare them away. One of them will find the other, have a passionate make out session, probably end up straddling the other on a desk and then one of them will get up and leave with the same lie “This can’t happen again”. Repeat.

Gone were the days of challenges and competitions, in its place was a sexually charged game of Tag. A cat and mouse game where they always chased each other, touching fleetingly before retreating again. Neither would be the one to make a commitment, neither would concede to being the person who would put their hearts on the line. They were two bulls who were made to butt heads (who occasionally took time off to play a quick game of tonsil-hockey).

Steve had known there had to be an end to this. It had gone on for so long that he could bet other people suspected some shit. He had honestly expected for Tony to sucker punch him half a dozen times by now. Right now, he would have taken those punches to the news she had just given to the team.

“I am getting married!” She announced, offering her left hand so others can admire the gorgeous diamond ring that sat on her ring finger. She looked happy, absolutely radiant and it was all Steve could do to stop himself from dragging her out of here by her hair and throwing that offending ring into the garbage chute. What the fuck kind of game was she playing?

He waited until everyone was asleep before he broke into her room. Well, breaking into would suggest it was forced but truly only him and Tony had the authorization to enter. Their relationship may have changed from ‘you’re my best friend’ to ‘I want to be your best lay’, but they still knew each other the best and cared just as much as before, if not more.

She was under the covers in her bed, a small nightlamp on. It had been a while since Steve had been in her room and it was like taking a big gulp of nostalgia. Her room was her sanctuary, so it reflected her heart’s desires. Every surface of the room was littered with one of their memories together. Her pinboard was still holding the notes he would write to her in school, the birthday cards he made himself and the portraits he would sketch for her. On her desk stood the numerous gifts he had gotten her, each well taken care of despite the years between. Right beside her on the cabinet was a picture of them together, both of them holding hands and smiling at each other in what could only be called as “lovesick smitten idiots”.

He was cautious as he lowered himself next to her on the bed, her face so peaceful he felt like he would taint it by his touch and presence. He had looked at her for years, sketched her details hundreds of times and yet each time he beheld her, he felt his heart skip a beat. She was a memory that he tried to forget and yet it emerged every time he closed his eyes. She was in his skin, a part of him in a way that defied all laws of nature and social customs.

“Are you going to keep staring at me and be the creep from Twilight or do you plan on getting inside?”

Her voice made him jump because she hadn’t opened her eyes. She was smiling that lazy smile of hers when she would catch his bluff in poker. He chuckled and shifted the sheets, climbing under them and curling his body around her. It may as well have been cliché to say that they fit like a puzzle, but it was true. They were molded to fit against each other perfectly, like that lid you close over a box and the satisfying ‘tick’ sound it makes when it clicks into place. That’s what being with her felt like. Fitting in. Coming home.

“Why are you doing this Y/n?” Steve asked and she pushed her body into his so he could hug her tighter.

“Because you won’t do anything Steve. We’ve been running around in circles for so long now, and every time I think that finally we’ll be together, you abandon fort and run. I can’t do this anymore.”

Steve took her left hand and watched her ring twinkle in a taunt. It could have been him. It should be him.

“Don’t marry him. He will never give you what you want.”

“I know that Steve, no one can give me what they want because they aren’t you. But I can’t keep waiting for you in the sidelines hoping you’ll pull your head out of your ass. I want to be loved, preferably in this life.”

His arms were like tentacles around her, but she didn’t complain. Every embrace and moment between them was so fleeting, a stolen moment that she enjoyed what she could get. This was probably the longest in a few years that they had held each other without one running for the hills.

“I love you, you know that.” He whispered in her ear, longing evident in his voice.

“I know that, as much as I know that you won’t do shit about it. Loving someone is not always enough Steve. It’s just the beginning. I – I won’t keep my love a secret. I don’t want ten angry sensual minutes in the broom closet. I want walks in the park and two dogs and a cat. I want picnics with our family and pictures that are not restricted to my room. You can’t give me that. You won’t.”

She had run out of tears. Her fiancé may not be Steve Rogers but at least he was an honest man who tried his best to love her the way she deserved. She had met his family and they had met hers; they could post pictures on social media with cheesy captions and hold hands as they drank coffee from a cheap corner place.

“You can never love anyone like you love me” It was a sulky declaration by a hurt lover and she almost cooed to him like a mommy consoling her baby. Steve may have been older to her in years, but when it came to love he was an immature brat.

“That may be true, but I will try. I am not Penelope waiting in the balcony for Odysseus to return. I love you, and that love may never fade away. But my life will go on. It is your choice if you want to be a part of it.”

She faced him, her eyes open and clear. He didn’t know when the little girl who needed help to reach the jar on the shelf had grown up in this headstrong woman who could beat a sailor when it came to cursing. But he couldn’t bear the thought of her staying like this in someone else’s bed, looking at them the way she looked at him. Steve rarely coveted something in his life, but he didn’t realize until now how much he coveted her love. If he lost that, he feared he would lose himself.

“Your father is going to kill me” Steve groaned, and she laughed. Her head was on his chest and an arm around his torso.

“We can elope, you know. Run away and get married. It will be too late to do anything then. You’ll be stuck with me.”

“Did you just propose to me?” Steve questioned and she nodded, her eyes naughty.

“I’m always a step ahead of you Captain. I figured you would take another month at least to ask and I have wasted too much time already.” She whispered against his lips. He leaned up to kiss her deeply, unhurried for the first time. It was like their first kiss all over again, like two star-crossed lovers smashing through their final obstacle and uniting. Steve didn’t know how he had survived so long without having her like this, but as his hands found her soft curves, he swore he can’t go a day without it.

“Stop stop!” She said, pushing his chest and rolling away from him. “We’ve waited this long. You’re not getting your dick wet until you finally commit to me.”

Steve looked more dumbfounded than offended and responded by finally taking off the ring on her finger and throwing it away carelessly.

“I’ll steal the Quinjet, meet me in the hanger in half an hour. Don’t pack shit. We’ll make one stop for the rings and get the first officiant I can find to marry us. We’ll probably be back by breakfast. And then,” His arm wound around her waist “I will lay rest to the sexual tension of years by getting my dick wet. Repeatedly.”

+++++

It was to be expected that Tony’s daughter wouldn’t do anything halfway through. A flair for dramatics was her inheritance and she and Steve walked into the compound newly married in rumpled night clothes and shit eating grin. They found everyone eating in the kitchen, and greetings stopped halfway when the rest of the team noticed their clasped hands.

“What the fuck…” Bruce said, half eaten celery dangling from his open mouth.

Y/n flashed them her award-winning smile and showed the matching rings on her and Steve’s hand. It was a riot under a minute, chairs scraping as they crowded them, trying to see if it was a joke. Then just as suddenly everyone stopped and Tony stepped forward, a spatula in his hand that to Steve looked as threatening as a gun.

“You sick son of a bitch!” Tony shouted and Steve flinched. He looked at Y/n but all she did was wear a smug look on her face that should be illegal in about three continents. “You little bitch! You are supposed to be from the 90s! You were supposed to ask her hand from me like a gentleman you sick little fuck!”

Steve blinked in confusion while she laughed, hopping like a little girl to hug her father.

“Pay up, daddy! You owe me 500 bucks.” She said and Tony groaned, pulling out his wallet and handing her crisp five 100s.

“I – what? What happened?” Steve sputtered, still surprised he wasn’t being beaten by the Iron Legion.

“You weren’t supposed to elope you bastard. Always knew chivalry was dead!” Tony huffed then went back to cooking. “Congratulations by the way. Fucking finally. I’m not surprised my girl had to do everything anyway. She’s taken after me.”

This was a plot twist Steve never expected and he looked at his new wife with a look of horror on his face that could only be translated to as ‘what the fuck have I gotten myself into’.

“I told you baby, I’m always a step ahead of you.” She said, trying and failing to blush like a bride.

+++++

Taglist is open

[yunhowhoitiss]

𝐜𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐮𝐦

𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭!𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐡𝐨 𝐱 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 (𝐟𝐞𝐦)

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.5k+

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff, fantasy au (?), slow burn, angst if you squint, ft co-worker jongho :)

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: You’re finally starting to make ends meet when you start working at your school’s local café, but the world is so full of surprises.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: reader panics a bit(?)

𝐚/𝐧: I came up with this at 4am a couple days ago so it’s not my proudest, but I felt bad just letting it sit in my drafts so here you go :) enjoy!

masterlist

The gentle smell of freshly baked pastries, accompanied by the stronger aroma of ground coffee beans, wafted through the comfy café. There was a constant chatter as customers scattered around the joint whilst waiting, disguising the soft hum coming from behind the coffee machine. Your face was out of sight, except your hair peeked out above the espresso machine where you were pouring a latté, entertaining yourself by decorating a small heart in the foam. A smile tugged at the corners of your lips as your eyes turned to soft crescents when soft wisps of your hair had fallen out of your bun and across the sides of your forehead. The steam floating from the cup caressed your hands as you picked up the mug along with an assortment of macaroons. 

“Order for Julie: four macaroons, a chai latté, and an espresso affogato, extra dry!” You announced through the coffee shop, turning a few heads. 

You made your way back to the station to continue other orders but stopped as you noticed something missing; you had run out of cinnamon to top off drinks. Your coworker ought to know where another carton would be, so you turned towards the kitchen to find him wrist-deep in bread dough. 

“Jongho, where are the extra containers of cinnamon again?”

“Oh, those are in the grey cabinet below the pastry display,” he smiled back, all the while kneading the dough. 

Flashing him an ‘ok’ sign, you headed back to the front of the shop. You hadn’t been working at the Crescent Café very long, but you happened to be a pretty fast learner, according to Jongho; you could make latte art before other trainees could even make a latte. Quickly getting back to work, you served a customer until something caught you eye whilst jotting down an order on your notepad; had the writing been on your wrist all day? It must just be something I wrote down earlier, you thought.

As the sun made its way towards the horizon, you returned to the comfort of your small apartment to freshen up, eat dinner, and momentarily forget your academic responsibilities— homework, ugh-- before heading to school again the next day. You entered you apartment with a relived sigh and threw your keys onto a nearby dresser, mumbling "I'm home" to nobody in particular. Too lazy to go to your room, you simply undressed as you walked towards the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothing behind you. Note to self: clean that up later. 

The moment you stepped into the shower, your shoulders loosened as the hot water washed away your tension. The writing on your wrist caught your eye again. Scrutinizing the messy handwriting, you saw what seemed to be a shopping list. 

“Eggs, lucky charms, and aftershave,” you read aloud. 

Aftershave? I don’t use that. Could it be… you were lost thought, not noticing the warm steam filling the bathroom. You rubbed at your soapy skin frantically in an attempt to wash off the pen, to no avail. Lately, although rarely, you’d started to notice small bruises or random marks on your skin; you’d never seen writing, though. You briefly wondered if there was possibly another person causing this, but you only saw such things in movies or books... right? 

Your heart rate started to pick up, and a heavy sensation built up in your chest. It isn’t possible, it can’t be. The cramped space of your shower started to feel suffocating. Nearly slipping, you jumped out of the shower and dried yourself off. You got dressed in whatever shirt and sweats you found hanging around your bedroom. Was something wrong with you? Am I imagining things? I’m not going crazy, right?  Worrisome thoughts flooded your mind as you spiralled deeper into a panic. Calm down. Don’t skip to conclusions. You threw yourself onto the bed. In and out. It’s that simple, you consoled yourself. Slowly but surely, you felt your heart come to a rest. 

When you lifted your hand up above your head the writing was still there, unchanged. So you weren’t losing your mind. Could somebody else be the cause of this? Was someone else somehow writing on your skin? No, you felt stupid for even considering the thought; otherworldly things like that only happened in comics or movies. Nevertheless, it was the only possibility that made sense to you in the moment. You let your curiosity get the best of you, and paced towards the living room to grab a pen off the coffee table. On your right hand, you simply wrote "Hi," in hopes of eliciting some sort of response.

The following day proved to be a rather sunny, warm Monday, but you had to spend your time in a closed lecture hall. The cold-toned ceiling lights were much too bright for your liking, and the monotonous professor spouted information maybe only a handful of people were genuinely listening to. That morning, you had woken up to find the list on your wrist gone, leaving only your own message from the night before. You started to think you'd really had a hallucination of some sort. 

Half an hour into the lecture, you were already bored out of your mind and absentmindedly sketching intricate doodles on your notebook. I should just give up on biochemistry and become an artist, you mused to yourself. You remained focused on your art, while marks started to take shape on the back of your hand. Your soft eyes widened almost comically at the sight, and you shot a brief look to the people around you to make sure they hadn’t seen anything. Whipping your head back to your hand, you saw that the words stopped writing themselves, leaving a short message saying “Am I going nuts?” 

Wondering the same thing yourself, you jotted down a response below it: “I dunno, you tell me,” followed by a cheeky smiley face. If this really was real, you might as well make a good first impression. 

Weeks trickled into months as you made short exchanges with your newly discovered friend. Some nights you would write “good night” followed by a drawn heart, earning a sweet “sleep well” in return. You would frequently wake up to thoughtful words written on the palm of your hand, or you'd kindly ask your companion how they were doing when you had a quiet day at work. Even so, all you had learned about this person was their name, age, and that they were a student as well. Yunho was a twenty-one-year-old elementary education major with a minor in physiology-- he also worked as a dance teacher on weekends. You still didn’t know much about each other, so the messages never went further than greetings and simple conversations. 

Be that as it may, you liked it like that. Your relationship wasn’t complex; it felt comfortable and pure, and you didn’t want to change it.

Mellow spring afternoons at the café had always been your favourite. The wispy clouds in the sky were painted a buttery yellow by the slowly setting sun, and a steady stream of nearby students stopped by for coffee. Your new friend had sweetly noted "It's golden hour. Made me think of you," on your palm, leaving you in a bubbly mood. You had started your shift by drawing a heart on your wrist, hoping your secret companion would see it. 

You worked by the espresso machine as usual, humming to yourself as always. The bell rang, indicating that customers had arrived; it was a group of what seemed to be three guys and a girl. 

“We’ll be right with you!” you called. You turned towards the kitchen.  “Jongho, can you take their orders?” Silence. “Pretty please? I need to clean up my station.” you persisted. 

“Fine, yeah,” you heard your colleague grumble. 

As you tidied up behind the machine, you felt as though someone was watching you from the counter. You lifted your head curiously, meeting a pair of inquisitive doe eyes coloured a soft hazelnut brown. The warm eyes instantly turned into friendly half-moons as the boy smiled shyly upon being caught staring. You hurried back to cleaning up your station, hoping to hide the pink tint of your cheeks, but the red shade consuming your ears gave you away. 

Jongho handed you the cups for their orders and walked over to the pastry display. You got started on a hot chocolate and three iced americanos, getting back into your “barista brain,” as you liked to call it. After finishing the drinks, you called out "Three iced americanos, a hot chocolate, and two blueberry muffins!” 

You turned around to grab straws, and you overheard one of the guys say “I’ll grab ‘em, you guys can stay here.” You made your way back to the counter, looking up only to be met with the boy from earlier. Butterflies littered your stomach, fluttering up into your chest. “Oh, um, here are some straws,” you smiled gingerly.

“Thanks. Could I please get a sleeve as well?” he asked, “For my hot chocolate.”

“Of course!”

As you handed him the cardboard sleeve, his hands caught your eye. Not only were they the most beautiful hands you'd ever laid eyes on, but the boy had a heart drawn on the valley of skin between his left thumb and wrist, exactly where you had drawn one on your own hand just a while earlier. He seemed to recognize the message on your palm as well; a confused expression ghosted over his face. Gathering all your courage, you nodded towards his hand and did your best to form a coherent sentence. “That’s—”

“Your heart,” he interrupted, “Right?” 

You giggled softly in response, barely containing your excitement.

“Right,” you smiled down at your feet in an attempt to hide the bashful grin that pulled at your lips. A hand popped up in front of you.

“Nice to meet you, y/n. My name’s Yunho-- Oh, but you know that already, don’t you?” Yunho chuckled sheepishly. You looked up and slipped your hand into his, shaking it gently. His hands were warm, fingertips ever so soft.

“Nice to meet you too.”

[inkchantress]

I wrote another fic!!

Title: The Color Yellow

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug (again... what can I say, I’m obsessed lol)

Word Count: 1,710

Summary: That moment in Collector when Adrien sees his broken childhood drawing on the ground. Flashbacks ensue.

AN: The moment that this fic is based off of is an important moment that’s kind of overlooked. It’s not particularly memorable, in and of itself, but I kept thinking that there was probably a story behind that, and well... here it is. Also I wrote most of this after midnight so it might not be super refined but ideas don’t stop till you write them all out lol.

Keep reading under the cut (or read it on AO3)

He couldn’t move.

He was six years old, gap-toothed and slightly cross-eyed, with more colors of crayon at his disposal than he could ever dream of.

Well. Maybe that wasn’t quite true. Maybe he could move. More like he wasn’t willing to try.

But he’d only needed four colors that day. The classics.

The house was empty. His father was gone, off to who knew where. To the basement, to his room. It didn’t matter where. Adrien could never tell the difference.

Red. Green. Blue. Yellow.

He tried to remind himself what he was doing here--they were trying to stop something horrible from happening. They were searching for Hawkmoth.

He’d had plenty of practice coloring with the classic four. He knew them well, from evenings in restaurants where he always scribbled furiously on the kids’ menu. He never went inside the lines, always drew his own thing. And he’d show his parents his masterpiece every time, once the night was over.

Hawkmoth, who at the moment was still at large, who Ladybug thought she had finally pinned down.

Every time, Gabriel Agreste would dismiss whatever work it was, and every single time, Emilie would smile down at Adrien and compliment it. She’d ask him to describe it and suggest areas for improvement, like adding binoculars so the people in the picture could see better, or putting in another bird so the first one could have a friend.

Hawkmoth, who might be his father.

And then, later, to Gabriel, when she thought Adrien couldn’t hear: “Leave him alone. He’s got a creative spirit, Gabe. He’s got it inside him. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

The whole room was trashed. Mannequins smashed, ceramic vases hurled off of shelves, panes of glass lying shattered on the floor. Photographs in frames that sported spiderweb cracks littered the edges of the room.

Adrien knew artists were hard on themselves. He knew they got in their own heads. He knew they drove themselves crazy from the inside out.

But he had done this.

This would be his biggest masterpiece, his museum debut. ‘Six years old and already making history,’ his mother would say theatrically, grinning and tickling him until his stomach hurt from laughing.

And his father would look at the drawing and smile, a real one, one of those lopsided, carefree grins that he only sported in old photographs. ‘I’m proud of you,’ he’d say.

Adrien had driven his father insane. From the outside in.

He worked quickly, a six-year-old man on a mission, tongue poking through the space where he had recently lost his front tooth. There was still a slightly bloody stump from where his gums hadn’t quite healed, and it made the tip of his tongue taste like salt every time he touched it.

It was all because of that stupid book.

He sketched it out with a pencil first. The mountain peaks in the back. The roundness of his father’s glasses, the twist of his mother’s hair. Adrien came out quite a bit taller than he really was, compared to them, but no matter. It didn’t have to be realistic, not really. It just had to be visible.

Adrien could almost see his father in the room, walking around and smashing things. Picking mannequins up over his head and throwing them down onto their sides so they cracked. Kicking vases. Perhaps ranting to Nathalie.

He had to ask Nathalie to show him his mother’s best dress so he could get the pattern right. It was strange, little swirls and clouds and dots all working together. Nathalie had obliged, holding up the gown for him as he sat with his legs crossed on the floor of his mother’s closet, his small hands weaving the spots and swirls on the page. On the way back to the long dining room table that was doubling as his great workspace, Nathalie had asked about the drawing.

“It’s for Mom and Dad,” Adrien had whispered, looking around as if his parents were going to pop out of a corner at any moment. “But it’s a secret. Don’t tell.”

Nathalie nodded dutifully, and the corner of her mouth twitched up. She’d winked at him.

He’d winked, clumsily, back.

Adrien could see his father. Unleashing a tornado on his office, his face red and his lips pressed tight with anger. Picking Adrien’s drawing up and flinging it across the room with such gusto that it shattered on impact.

Blue for his pants, red for his father’s pants, green for the grass beneath their feet, and little accents all over his mother’s dress...

Adrien’s heart was in his throat. He’d done this.

And layers and layers of yellow, waves of blond hair.

He, Adrien Agreste, had done this. He might as well have just broken all of the things himself.

He’d finished the masterpiece with a dripping yellow sun, a bright misshapen oval hanging above his mother’s head. It shone down on the three of them, all proudly wearing wide grins, holding each other’s hands.

It was because of him and Plagg and that stupid book…

When he finished, he’d first shown it to Nathalie. She rarely ever smiled, but she did that day. A full smile, teeth included, accompanied by a professional nod. “I’m sure they’ll love it.”

There was emotion clouded in her voice when she spoke. He didn’t understand it then.

It was all because of him.

They’d eaten dinner together that evening, the three of them and Nathalie. It was Adrien’s favorite, spaghetti and meatballs, the ones that his mother made just right. Emilie told everyone a story of when she and Gabriel were young, and it was the first time Adrien had ever heard Nathalie laugh out loud. Adrien and his mother both laughed so hard they had to stop eating. How Adrien loved his mother’s laugh--when Emilie was laughing, she became the color yellow, sunny and bright and wildly contagious.

And it was working on everybody. They had all caught a case of the Emilies. Adrien could’ve even sworn up and down that he saw his father smile.

God. He wanted to turn back time so badly. He wanted a second chance, a third chance, a million more chances.

After dinner, when all of the dishes were packed away, Nathalie had gathered his parents in the living room and set the stage, and Adrien had emerged brandishing his drawing. He handed it to his mother first, and she was silent for several seconds, taking it in.

“Well?” he’d asked. “Is it okay?”

She’d put a hand to her mouth, which Adrien thought was a bad sign, but then she spoke, so softly it was almost a whisper. “Wow. This is… wonderful.”

She put a finger to the page. “That’s me, right? And that’s your father?”

Adrien had nodded, almost like a bobblehead, wild green eyes wide in his face and gap-toothed mouth grinning.

“And there, that’s you… this is beautiful. Look, Gabe.”

She’d handed his father the drawing, and Adrien’s breath caught.

Gabriel Agreste had surveyed the doodle once, twice, taking in every line, every color.

And he must have still been carrying a case of the Emilies, because he nodded in approval, so subtly it could have been an accident.

It was just like that. No critiques, nothing. Quick and painless.

Adrien turned back to Nathalie, and she, too, must still have been afflicted with the Emilies, because she winked at him for the second time that day. He’d winked back, and it filled him with gold.

“This is beautiful,” Emilie had repeated, “but I think it’s missing something, don’t you?”

“What?” Adrien had asked.

She’d reached out an arm to draw him into her lap. “You’re an artist,” she’d said, tapping his nose. “It needs a signature.”

Gabriel produced a pen from his coat, and Emilie handed it to her son, her eyes filled to the brim with a kind of wild excitement. Adrien had taken the pen, but he’d hesitated, hand hovering over the page.

“Go on,” Emilie had encouraged, smiling so wide she was almost glowing. “Sign it.”

So he had, in blocky kindergarten handwriting, in the deep black ink of the pen. He’d marveled at his own name, at the six letters beaming up at him from the page. They claimed the drawing as his own, a declaration that Adrien Agreste made this masterpiece with his own two hands, determination, inspiration, and four different colors of crayon, all sitting loud and proud on the paper.

It told the world that he was here.

Emilie had picked her son up and swung him around until he started to laugh, and then she had brought him into her arms. He had clung to the fabric of her shirt, the satin and cotton and his mother’s skin, a smell that he swore he’d never forget.

“It’s perfect,” she had whispered.

Adrien wanted to pick the drawing up, piece together the shards of glass into one pane again like time had never touched them. He longed to fix it, reverse it, go back. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted. He felt like his skin might shatter with the pain of wanting. Something had seized him around the heart, and it was collapsing him.

He was driving himself insane. From the inside out.

Like father, like son.

When Ladybug next spoke, it nearly scared him out of his wits--he could have been standing there seconds or hours or days. She looked at him sideways, coated with concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He closed his eyes so his mother and his father and six-year-old self disappeared, and he could see the splash of colors and blocky signature and shattered glass no more. He forced himself away, and the memories all left him alone, one by one--his father’s hidden smile, Nathalie’s laugh, that feeling of wonder that filled him when he signed his name.

The color yellow was the last to go, lingering in his eyelids for a few final seconds. A shock of blond hair and a feeling of warmth and a golden sun, dripping light onto him and his parents like a promise.

He opened his eyes and turned away. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s keep going.”

[kumeko]

breathers

 Characters/Pairings: Naminé/Riku

A/N: Written for the @khrarepairszine charity zine! I picked Naminé/Riku, I’ve had a soft spot for them since CoM. Take a look at the other contributors or pick up a copy. :)

Summary: Naminé had none of Sora’s laziness or Kairi’s relaxed attitude, and honestly, Riku would have left the islands years ago if she’d been around. Still, everyone needed a break, Nobodies included.

…

…

…

…

“Mmmmmm, mmmm, mmmmm,mmm.”

 A delicate humming filled the white house and Riku didn’t have to look to know where it was coming from. He’d recognize Naminé’s soft voice anywhere. Automatically, his feet followed a familiar path to her room. As he got closer, he heard the soft scratch of her crayons, the sharp flip of a page.

 Spotting her familiar silhouette, he stopped at the doorway. As usual, she was sitting at the table, her head bent as she drew scene after scene. The walls were filled with images, with memories, and Riku scanned the colourful pictures. There was the time he raced with Sora, making the raft with Kairi, sleeping under the stars. Other, unknown memories filled with mermaids and warriors and constellations he didn’t know.

 He never did have a chance to talk to Sora after all was said and done, to boast about adventures and swap tales. Quietly, so as not to disturb Naminé, Riku drifted from picture to picture. A boy with a monkey smirked mischievously in one. Another had a bear with his head caught in a honey pot. Riku’s fingers brushed against one of Kairi giving Sora the paopu fruit.

“I had to make sure that memory was returned,” Naminé said apologetically, slowly setting down her sketchpad.

 Resisting the urge to jump, Riku withdrew his hand. “It is an important one.”

 “Yeah.” Pushing her chair back, Naminé slipped off and joined him. Her sad eyes took in the scene and she smiled softly. “That fruit was the basis of everything.”

 “Everything?” Riku asked, cocking his head in confusion.

 “For our ‘friendship’.” She touched the paopu fruit lightly. Her fingers slowly slid off the picture and she turned around and pointed at a few other sketches. The golden fruit was prominent in each of them. “This fruit was important to you. Both of you. So I used that to insert myself.”

 Both of you. Riku didn’t have to ask what she meant by that. It was impossible to forget the sight of his death, of his body choking and gasping for its last breath. “There’s a story on my island, that if two people share one—”

 “Their destinies are intertwined,” Naminé completed. She chuckled at his surprised expression. “You have no idea how often you guys said that in his memories.”

 Riku flushed. Had they really talked about it that much? About this old wife’s tale, with no basis in reality? It was stupid, really. A thing that couldn’t be true in any way. A thing that he spent several years wishing for, a connection that was permanent. A connection that would stay. The dark part of his heart that Ansem had slipped into. “Really?”

 “Really,” she confirmed with a grin, smiling whole-heartedly for once. “You say it a lot.”

 “Not that often,” he disputed, crossing his arms and looking away. “Just to tease Sora with.”

 “Hmm…that may be so.” A serious expression slipped back onto her face and Riku felt a pang of regret. It had been rare enough that she laughed. “Still.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”

 Caught off guard, Riku stared at her. None of his wisecracks came to him, none of his taunts. He was utterly speechless. “I…”

 Naminé said nothing, just giving him a knowing look before letting go. She turned back to her table. “I have almost finished removing the altered memories.”

 Riku glanced at the picture one last time before following her. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he peered at her sketchbook. It was thin now, with only a few pages left. A testament to how hard she worked. “Do you take breaks?” he asked without thinking.

 “Huh?” Naminé blinked, staring at her notepad and then back at him. Confusion shone in her eyes and she cocked her head. “Breaks?”

 “Vacations? Rest? Time off?” Riku rolled his eyes as he clarified. “You’ve been in Sora’s memories, so you have to know what a break is. That’s all the slacker did.”

 “Yeah, of course I do! But…” Naminé’s skin flushed a bright red, and she nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I just…I didn’t.”

 “After all that work?” Riku raised a brow. Gesturing with his head at all the pictures, he frowned. “No one should work that long without a break.”

 “Oh no, it’s okay. I’m fine.” She rubbed her wrist, her shoulders hunching till she looked even smaller than usual. “I don’t—I don’t need a break. It’s fine.”

 “Everyone needs a break.” Riku reached out and grabbed her hand. Yanking her behind him, he headed to the door. “Even you.”

 “No, I—” Naminé protested, digging in her heels. “I can’t, not after what I did.”

 “You’ve apologized enough for that,” Riku rebutted, firmly pulling her along. “Sora’s forgiven you. And even if my clone can’t, I’ve forgiven you. It’s enough.”

 “It isn’t,” she muttered softly.

 “…don’t you think I deserve it even less than you?” Riku asked, looking over his shoulder. When she didn’t say anything, he smirked. “Besides, Sora likes sleeping more than anything. He’ll be fine sleeping for a few extra hours.”

 She stared at him for a long moment before finally giving in. “There’s nowhere to go, the mansion doesn’t really have that much in it.”

 “Hmm, that’s true,” Riku muttered, scratching his chin. Aside from the basement, the mansion was fairly lightly furnished. Even the garden outside was barebones, and whatever little plants grew there had gone wild. “Then we can explore the city.”

 “The city?” Naminé shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly—”

 “It’s a break,” Riku cut her off wryly. Really, there was none of Sora’s or Kairi’s laziness in her. It was almost refreshing to see someone take things seriously for once. “Where were you when I was making that raft? I would have left the islands years ago.”

 Reaching the front door, he let go of her hand and opened it. Bright sunlight filtered through and he shaded his eyes as he stepped out. A soft breeze rustled his hair, a bird chirped nearby, and he had almost forgotten what spring was like. There hadn’t been much time during his journey to just enjoy the places he went to, the seasons the worlds experienced. Turning back, he held out his hand for Naminé. “You coming or do I have to drag you out?”

 “I…” Naminé hesitated, fiddling with her hands nervously as she stared at him. Biting her lip, she took a step outside. Her shoulders hunched, her body braced for some sort of reaction. For someone to drag her back in and put the sketchpad back into her hands.

 “You can leave the entrance, you know,” Riku encouraged gently, his hands still held out.

 “Y-yeah.” Emboldened when nothing happened, she grabbed his hand tightly and took another step. And then another. She squinted up at the sky, at the clouds that littered the blue expanse. “It’s…beautiful.”

 Riku shrugged. He’d seen better skies on his island. “I guess.”

 “I…” Naminé’s head darted left and right, taking in the tall grasses and wild roses that made up the front lawn. “I’d seen it all from his memories. And I think I might have come through here once. But…I didn’t get to see it myself before. Not really.”

 “Never?” Riku jerked his head to her, surprised.

 “Nobodies, we’re not really born like everyone else.” Naminé stared down at the grass, slipping a foot out of her sandals to touch it. Delighted by the ticklish sensation, she set her foot down on the squishy ground and wiggled her toes. “I kinda just came to be, at that castle. And then I was taken here, but that was through a warp gate.”

 “Huh.” Riku rubbed the back of his neck. They were more similar than he’d thought. “So your island was that castle, then.”

 “Hmm?” Naminé peered up at him curiously.

 He shook his head. “Nothing. Put your shoes back on, we’re going to town.”

 “Right. Town.” Naminé set her jaw determinedly. Pressing her foot one last time on the grass, she slipped her sandal back on. “Ready.”

 Riku resisted the urge to laugh at the image in front of him. She looked so determined, like she was off to fight a battle rather than just walk into a small town. But her hand was sweaty in his, her nails digging into his skin lightly, and maybe for her this was a fight. “Alright. Since this is your first time, I’ll guide you.”

 -x-

 “They have scents.” Naminé stared at the rose in her hand, twirling between her fingers. Raising it to her nose, she sniffed it again. “Actual scents.”

 “And thorns.” Gently, he pulled the flower away from her hand. Luckily, she had gripped the stem at the exact right spot to avoid the sharp defense system. Glancing at the house in front of them, he carefully pushed the branch back in place. “Let’s not invade someone’s garden.”

 Not paying him any heed, Naminé wandered to the house next door, to a creeping vine of morning glories. “This one smells so different!”

 “Did you hear me?” Riku groaned, staring down at the long line of houses ahead of them. Maybe he should have taken a different route into town. Not that it would have made much of a difference, there were going to be flowers no matter what path they took.

 Sniffing a peony, Naminé chirped, “This one too!”

 It was going to be a long walk.

 -x-

 A bird chirped. Naminé cupped her ears as they walked, listening to the sounds around her.  Riku watched her from the corner of his eye as she tried to identify the owners of different sounds: birds, dogs, other villagers. Her head craned left and right, and there was something endearing about how she pivoted at each new sound.

 “It’s so noisy,” she murmured, looking excited despite her words.

 “Compared to the mansion, sure,” he refuted, crossing his arms behind his head as he slowed his pace. “If you think this is loud, wait till you see a city.”

 -x-

 “Here.” Riku held out a popsicle, plopping the other one in his mouth. Immediately, a cold, sweet flavour hit his tongue, with a salty kick after.

 “For me?” Naminé awkwardly accepted, staring at the blue popsicle. The wooden handle was slightly slippery and she pinched it with two fingers, trying to save the rest of her hand from the sticky substance. “A popsicle?”

 “It’s the town’s specialty. Might as well try it.” Riku pulled his treat out of his mouth before he could get a brain freeze. “Take a lick, it’s pretty good.”

 “Alright.” Scrunching her face, Naminé hesitantly stuck out her tongue and licked it. She squeezed her eyes shut, considering the flavour, before opening them with surprise. “It’s sweet.”

 “And at a normal level.” Riku shuddered, remembering the frozen treats Sora and Kairi used to have. It was like having pure sugar dissolve on his tongue. “Though I could do without the salt.”

 “You just want to—” Naminé glanced at him and immediately covered her mouth. It couldn’t completely muffle the sound of her laughter and Riku glared at her.

 “What?”

 “Just…your tongue. And lips.” Naminé’s shoulders shook as she tried to compose herself. “It’s all blue.”

 -x-

 “It’s cold!” Naminé yelped, taking a step back. There weren’t many ways to access the shore in Twilight town; the lack of beaches and frosty waters deterred even the most adventures of visitors.

 Sitting on a rock, Riku raised a brow. “What did you think it was gonna be? Warm?”

 “A little.” Naminé shivered, her feet still in the water. The barest edges of the water. The tide lapped at her feet, tiny waves crashing down on her ankles, and she took yet another step back. Looking back at him, she frowned. “The waters in your home were pleasant.”

 “Yeah, because we lived in the tropics.” Riku rolled his eyes. Then again, Sora had never bothered to pay attention to any class, even geography, so maybe she wouldn’t know that.

 A more powerful wave charged up the shore, enveloping her feet, and she darted back even further. “I’m good for now.”

 “You sure?” Riku smirked, gesturing at the water. “You were only in it for a few minutes.”

 “No, definitely, definitely good.” Naminé broke into a run as another crash sounded behind her.

 -x-

 “I hear this has the best view of the sunset,” Riku explained, opening the door on the top of the clock tower. A soft breeze ruffled his hair and he shielded his eyes as the sun’s last rays hit him. “We’re on time at least.”

 Following him out, Naminé peered around him. “Ohhh.” Amazed, she pushed past him and hurried to the railing. Her mouth slack, she watched as the pink and orange hues bled into the blue sky, the sun heading down into the water. “Amazing!”

 “Yeah. I guess.” Riku had seen this sight more often than he cared to remember. It was strange to watch it alone, without Sora’s stupid remarks or Kairi’s sharp jabs.

 “I didn’t know it could be so beautiful,” Naminé breathed, her eyes fixed on the sun.

 Riku smiled. Right, he wasn’t alone. Not now. Leaning on the railing next to her, he glanced at Naminé. “It?”

 “The sky.” Naminé paused, then shook her head. “The world. Everything, really. I saw them in your memories, but…it’s something else to see them for yourself. I never knew such bright blue existed. Or such soft pinks. What else is the universe hiding?”

 “Underwater worlds, worlds ruled by animals,” Riku listed, ticking them off with his finger. “A lot, really. You’ll just have to visit more worlds. Take more breaks.”

 “Visit…” Naminé mused, lowering her eyes slightly. With a sad smile, she shook her head. “No, this is enough. More than enough.”

 “Why?” Riku frowned.

 “I can’t leave the manor like this again—I have too much to do.” She beamed at him, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “I got a lot of memories from this, it can tide me over.” When he opened his mouth to argue, she covered his lips with a finger, her expression stern. “No, really. Thank you. This is more than enough for someone like me.”

 Someone like me. He hated how much that sounded like a curse.

 -x-

 “Thanks for today.” Naminé stretched her arms behind her as she sauntered into her room. Glowing, she beamed brightly at him. “It was a lot of fun, having a break.”

 “Yeah, it’s not bad every once in a while.” Riku rested a hand on his hip, a smirk on his face. “Just don’t take it as often as Sora does.”

 “Maybe he wanted you to take more breaks.” Laughing, she glanced at one of the drawings on the wall. A picture of a boy sleeping on the sand, without a care in the world. “Or maybe he’s just lazy.”

 “The latter. Definitely the latter.” On the wall next to him, Riku spotted one of Sora’s terrible drawings. A picture of Sora’s and Kairi’s head, a paopu fruit passed from one to the other. It was strange. He felt so detached looking at it now. Yet when he’d first saw it, a tidal wave of rage had overcome him. Enough to destroy his world. Enough to destroy many worlds.

 At some point, the wave broke, the rage ebbing away. All that was left was a sense of fondness, of his two dense, idiotic friends and a scenario he should have seen eons ago. He glanced behind him. Naminé was humming again as she picked up her sketch pad. There was one more thing he could do for her.

 “Gimme a sheet.” Walking over to the table, Riku picked up a golden crayon. He rolled it in his hand; the colour was just right.

 “You’re going to draw?” Mystified, Naminé carefully tore out a page for him. “I thought you weren’t good at that.”

 Riku shot her a baleful glare. The downside of her combing through Sora’s memories—his past was an open book to her. Including all of his art classes. “I’m just not interested in it.”

 “That wasn’t what—”

 “I’m just not interested,” he repeated forcefully, grumpily glaring at her. It wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t good, so he wasn’t interested. There was no point in doing something that even Sora, the class idiot, got higher marks than him in. Spreading the sheet of paper, he stared at it for a long moment. Maybe this was a bad idea. Even a simple shape ended up distorted in his hands.

 “If you say so,” Naminé acquiesced, covering her mouth to hide her laughter.

 Riku peeked at her from the corner of his eyes. Shoulders shaking, eyes full of mirth, Naminé looked like an ordinary girl. Nothing like the sad Nobody he usually saw, counting down the days till she disappeared. Determined, he started drawing, straight confident lines into the shape of a star.

 “So, what are you drawing?” Naminé tried to peek over his shoulder, but he blocked her.

 “Just wait.” Biting his cheek, he glanced at her artwork on the walls. Yep. He was right. He was no good at this and he was definitely never doing it again. Finishing the piece, he instructed, “Hold out your hand.”

 Naminé cocked her head. “My hand?”

 “Just hold it out,” he ordered. When she held out her right hand, he placed the sheet on her hands.

 “What?” Naminé stared at it, realization dawning in her expression. “This is…”

 “You didn’t get one either, right?” Riku shrugged, looking away in embarrassment as she stared at him. “It might not be as good as yours, but even I can draw a paopu fruit.”

 “It’s not that. I…I can’t…” Naminé looked back at the paper, her hand still flat and rejecting it entirely. “I’m…I’m not real. I’ll go away.”

 She really wasn’t like any of his friends: softer, more awkward, more nervous. And completely unable to let herself be happy. “Didn’t I say I wouldn’t forget?” Riku reminded her. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. Her bones felt fragile under his hand. “You’re real to me. You’re here.”

 Stricken, she shook her head. “But I….”

 He folded the paper and curled her hand over the hard edges. It crinkled at the touch. “And now you’ll always be real, because our destinies are intertwined.”

 She bit her lip before slowly nodding. Wiping a tear from her eyes, she chuckled. “You’re really bad at drawing.”

 “Oh, shut up.” Riku turned around, his ears burning hot. “Like I said, I’m just not interested in it.”

[emergenciesstory]

My Dying breath

Prequel to “subtle Queues” (line in reference: “It’s not fair, I didn’t do anything wrong! I left, I started over, I made a new life! It’s not fair..”)

Pairing: Platonic! Steve x Reader.

Words: 2497

A/n: @star-spangled-bingo square “domestic abuse”. This is a Prequel to “Subtle Queues”, but can be read as a one shot. I also had a writers prompt to write a short story through Answering machine messages and phone calls, so I was hoping to try that out here.

Warnings: Hair pulling, bruises, yelling. This is on Domestic abuse. I don’t know what you may find triggering. I tried to stay away from a lot of mentions, more like inferences (except one scene) but... IDK I’m human. If someone points out something that may need a tag, please let me know so I can properly warn people. 

Subtle Queues Masterlist

My Masterlist

“Hey, Y/n! How’s life, long time no see.” Steve’s voice came across your phone as you walked through the small town.

   “Hey, It’s good. Really good. Jason and I finally got the house set up, He’s doing really well at his job now. Things are coming together.” You smiled, waving at passersby that recognized you. “I’m really glad we settled here.”

   The small town had brought you a lot, a fixer-upper, a future, a ring. Your Fiance's job had transferred you out to the new base, far away from the bustling city that had been home for so long.

   “How’re you? Haven’t heard from you in months.” You sighed, listening to Steve talk about antics with Bucky in the tower and their last mission. Steve had been your friend since College, meeting in an art class you posed for in order to pay your bills. He was always in the shadows, sketching and missing classes every so often, needing extra time with you posing to complete the projects. You didn’t mind staying late to help, and it didn’t take long for you to warm up to each other and begin chatting while he sketched.

   “Y/n, did you hear me?” Steve asked, your thoughts apparently making you lose track of what he was saying.

   “Sorry Stevie, I was digging for my keys,” you half lied, reaching in your purse for the lanyard as you turned up the walkway. “Whats up?”

   “I said I was hoping to come see you soon. I’m on rotation out of missions at the end of next month for about two weeks.”

   “Oh, sure, yeah that’d be great. I’ll have to ask Jason, but I don’t see what the problem would be.” You answered, mentally reviewing your calendar. “Check with me when we get closer?”

   “Always. Stay safe out there, y/n.” Steve said, noise beginning to fill the background of his call.

   “You too Stevie. Come home.” You heard the call disconnect and pulled the phone from your ear. Setting the phone down, you sighed, and headed to work on finishing painting the upstairs before Jason got home.

_____________

   “Hey, Beautiful. How are you?” You leaned on the closed door of the balcony, glancing behind you to see Jason still sleeping soundly.

   “Hey, Steve. I’m okay, are you just now getting home?” You looked out at the night sky, stars shining overhead.

   “We are, sorry it’s so late. Just checking in about next month, if you still want to see my ugly mug.” Steve chuckled, doubt in his voice.

   “Oh, Stevie. I forgot, I’ll let you know, okay?” You winced as the lie crossed your lips, fingers brushing the fresh split that adorned your lip, still tender in the handprint on your cheek. Jason did not take asking lightly.

   “No worries, Y/n. I figured I’d ask and make sure. It’s still a while out. So tell me, how’s the job been?”

   “Good, good. I really like it here. Things are finally looking up, you know?”

   “You’re not going to tell me what you do?” Steve laughed, Playfully.

   “Oh, a little of this, a little of that.” It wasn’t a complete lie, you were doing many small projects on the house.

   “Y/n, are you okay? You’re quiet.” Concern in his voice wretched at your heart.

“Yeah, Stevie. Just tired is all.” You smiled softly at yourself. “It is later here than there.”  

“I’m sorry, Call me tomorrow? Whenever you wish.” His voice sounded sad, but soft.

“I’ll try my best. Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight, Y/n.”

_____________

   “Hey!” you sniffled,trying to sound perky, Facetime camera on the ceiling. You shifted in the bath, trying to will the tears and scratchiness from your voice away. Jason left, slamming the door about two hours ago, and if trends still blessed you, you’d have four more to clean up the mess before he returned home.

   “Aww, I’m on a mission for a week and all I get is the ceiling? Where’s your beautiful face?” Steve teased. His face was littered with mud and scratches, but his smile was the same lopsided grin.

   “I don’t look as nice as the ceiling.” You mused, rubbing a cloth over your face from the hot water.

   “I doubt that, though your bathroom ceiling is nice. Come on Sweetheart, look at me. I need something nice to distract me from these idiots.” You smiled softly, flipping the camera to your face, trying to keep your shoulders out of frame. “There she is, beautiful as ever!”

   You laughed softly, but it didn’t reach your eyes.

   “Y/n, what’s wrong?”

   “Nothing, why do you ask?”

   “Firstly, you’ve been crying. Spill it.”

   “Just a little argument is all. Nothing big.” You tried your best to smile, but Steve still looked quizzical.

   “Is that a bruise, on your collarbone?” Steve asked quietly, eyes squinting in a way you could tell he was holding back.

   “Hmm? Oh yeah. I fell earlier this week trying to hang a picture. Clumsy me.”

   “Y/n I’ve known you for years now. You are anything but clumsy. What happened?”

   “I’m fine, really. I have to go, Steve, waters getting cold.” You hit the end button, quickly turning off your phone, and soothing the aching parts of your arms that were quickly forming bruises.

_________________

*Steves POV*

   Steve held the phone in his hand, looking at the blank screen. He tried to call back multiple times, but no luck. You were getting shorter and shorter in your conversations, and something wasn’t setting right in his stomach. You never mentioned if it was okay for him to come up in a few weeks, and he was really looking forward to seeing you. Steve sighed, setting the phone down and heading to the debriefing room. At least the mission would take his mind off it, but the feeling in his gut would not go away.

__________________

   You deleted Steve’s text without replying, erasing him from the screen. Smiling at Jason, you handed him his beer and got a nod back, his buddies roughhousing on your couch at the game. You moved outside, curling up in a chair and looking out at the night sky, pulling your sweater down to cover the grip like bruises on your wrists. He loved you, he wanted the best, that’s why he was so rough. He just wanted you to be the perfect wife when the time came. You just needed to learn how to be perfect.

______________

   “Y/n!” Finally you answer your calls. What happened to you?” Steve asked, concern lacing his voice. It was so soft, sweet, comforting.

   “Sorry Steve, I’ve been busy. And hey, I’m sorry about not getting back to you about your vacation. Things have gotten crazy here.” you said softly.

   “Hey, hey, hey. Its fine. I’m just glad you are okay. You had me worried there for a second. Why haven’t you been texting me back?

   Because Jason can’t know. “I’m sorry, I just have been so busy, my phones been dead most of the time. But I’m here now?” You offered.

   “I’m glad. So tell me, what’s been on your honey do list? What are you so wrapped up in? Must be a big project.” He chuckled softly, bringing you to the here and now, nothing mattered.

   You talked, and talked, remembering what it felt like to laugh, to be carefree. You didn’t remember falling asleep, phone in hand. You didn’t remember where you were, until you woke up.

___________

   “You bitch!” Jason screamed, retching you awake by your hair. You yelped, hitting the deck hard where he threw you. Jason held your phone in his hand, screen illuminated to Steve’s face, reading “call ended- 2:46:34”.

   “You are going around behind my back. You whore.” Jason screamed, charging at you.

   “Honey, baby, no, he’s an old College buddy. He was the one who wanted to come visit.” You pleaded, hands up.

   “You wanted him in our house so you could screw him in our bed?!” Jasons voice kept raising his fists clenched to his sides. “I told you to never talk to him again. You disobeyed me.”

   Your face fell, emotions going numb. There was no use fighting, it’d be worse on you. You put your hands down, looking at the floor.

   “I’ll teach you to go behind my back, you bitch.” your mind shut down, everything was dark.

_____________________

*Steves POV*

   His cell phone rang mid-flight. Steve pulled up the control panels on the quintjet, not recognizing the number.

   “Are you just going to let it ring?” Bucky asked, glancing at the team in the back, all pretending as though they weren’t curious. They were on their way back from a mission, all battered and bruised, but it could have been worse. “Isn’t that Y/n’s area code?”

   “Yeah but it’s not her number.” Steve studied it, considering. Bucky hit the Accept button on the console, the call being projected to the flight chairs.

   “Hello?” Bucky answered, shooting Steve a look.

   “Hello, This is Angelica, calling for a.. Mr.Rogers?” The voice was steady, movement sensed behind it.

   “Speaking.” Steve piped in, clicking the buttons for autopilot.

   “Good Evening, Mr. Rogers. As I said, my name is Angelica, I am calling from Baptist Health Hospital regarding Y/n. I’m sorry to be calling at such a late hour, but you are listed as her emergency contact.”

   Steve’s face went white, hands gripping the steering column.

   “Is y/n okay?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

   “I’m afraid that is why we are calling. She walked into our ER earlier this evening with many extensive injuries, and passed out almost as soon as she signed in. We need you to come in as quickly as possible.”

   Steve swallowed. “Um, her, her Fiance is closer than I am. Jason, um Jason-”

   “We have on file to specifically call you, and only you, Mr. Rogers. Is there any way you can come in so we can discuss her injuries?”

   Steve was silent, calculating in his head what may have happened. He just spoke to her before they began flying home. She was sounding better than before, she was-

   “He will be there in an hour, maybe two. Thank you.” Bucky said quickly, hanging up the call and taking over the controls.

   “Bucky, we are on course for New York.” Steve said, suddenly snapped out of his thoughts.

   “Not anymore.” Nat spoke up from the back. “We are taking you to her. It sounded serious.” Her face left no room to argue. “We will drop you off, head home, and send you back a go bag as quickly as we can get back.”

   Steve looked at his teammates, but their minds were made up. Steve Nodded his head, a silent thank you.

____________

   “Captain, to what do we owe the pleasure?” The receptionist spoke, slight joy and surprise in her voice.

   “I received a call from an Angelica pertaining to Y/n Y/L/n.” He spoke in a straight line. The receptionist nodded, typing the name into the system and writing down some information.

   “Third floor, ICU. Just pick up the phone, state your name, as well as the individuals who called you.”

   Steve thanked her, and hurried down the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. In a blur he was standing at the locked doors, speaking on the phone to be let in.

   “Rogers, as in Steve Rogers. I’ll say, I didn’t think we’d be graced with your presence when I called. I wish it was better circumstances.” A woman appeared as the doors opened, extending her hand. “Im Angelica Sumter, Head Doctor over this unit for the night. Might we step into my office?” She gestured to a room beside the entrance.

   “How is Y/n?” Steve asked, moving to where he was directed.

   “Y/n came to us with a dislocated shoulder, knee, and extensive bruising over most of her body. She was malnourished, and her eye is swollen shut.” the Doctor spoke bluntly, pulling out a chart. “She came in two months ago with a bruised collarbone, escorted by a neighbor. It was at that time she removed Mr.Borne from her Emergency contacts list and made yours the only entry.”

   The Doctor looked at Steve as he processed this information.

   “While her injuries do not necessarily place her in intensive care, we are concerned with the layering of bruises she expresses. She refuses to talk to us, only responding by saying she was Clumsy or with a shrug, but clumsy people don’t have handprint bruises.”

   Steve’s face went pale, then anger began to trickle into his features.

   “Mr. Rogers, we are hoping she will speak to you, and that we can get her out of the situation she seems to believe is her fault. I know this is a lot to process but-”

   “I had my suspicions. She’s been, off, since moving here with him. Not herself.”

   The Doctor nodded softly.

   “Can I please see her. I need to know she is okay.” Steve asked, voice breaking.

   “Of course, but may I give you a pair of scrubs to wear, rather than your uniform? Our staff lounge has a shower for you to clean up in as well. Some of our patients here may not react in the best of ways seeing you in this state.”

   Steve looked down at his uniform, mud caking parts of his exposed skin. He chuckled and blushed slightly.

   “Of course. Please, Thank you.”

____________

*y/n POV*

   Your eyelids fluttered open, the soft beeping of a machine constant in the dim lights. A figure sat facing the bed, scrubs leading to a familiar soft face. With a wince, you moved your foot to nudge his arm, stirring him awake gently.

   “Hi.” you whispered, sobs and tears escaping your lips.

   “Shh, hey, hey, no crying. Oh my gosh, y/n. Shh, just breathe, it’s okay. Everything is okay.”

   “I should have told you.” you gasped out, trying to steady your breathing.

   “I should have known. It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re going to fix this. I promise.”

   After a few minutes of Steve rocking you, you caved, spilling everything that happened. You told him when it began when you moved, little things like making you quit your job, to getting more forceful, to not wanting you to talk to people he doesn’t like. It all spilled out, quickly, and was met with soothing rubs on your hand. Steve looked at the bruises littering your arms, neck, ribs, and legs, sadness filling his eyes.

   “I got an apartment. In NY. I was going to just disappear, come out there and start over.” You said softly. “But I fell asleep. He saw our call. It was too late.”

   “It’s not too late.” Steve soothed. “I’ve got you now, y/n. He won’t hurt you again. I swear on my dying breath, no one will ever hurt you again.”

[aj-artjunkyard]

Trials Of Apollo Oneshot Series CHAPTER SIX

Takes place after the burning maze. Spoilers!

Meg propped her red high-tops up on the wooden table, engorging herself in a greasy chicken wing. I myself reclined on the sofa next to her, chewing on the best tasting fish I’d come across in a long time. The aurae brought whatever food the demigod, legacy or ex-god would like best. In my case, it was a typical ancient greek dinner - grilled fish with a small side dish of olives and olive oil. It reminded me of the old days, the heavenly smell wafting from my mother’s kitchen (minus the olives of course, as they had not yet been invented) while young Artemis and I played with nymphs, climbed trees and held archery competitions. Granted, my mother usually added a garnish of ground ambrosia, but that was slightly too impossible for me in my current state. Still, the thought brought tears to my eyes. I missed my sister and mother, more than words could describe. I managed to blink back the moisture welling up, but I was still glad we dined alone.

Our table looked pathetically desolate compared to the tables around us, which held fifteen demigods each. No one really wanted to talk to those who had pulled their respected leader into a quest which had gotten him killed. So, with our backs to the crowd, we ate in thoughtful silence (at least on my part) until Meg stirred me from my nostalgic reverie.

“You think Ella will finish the book thing in time?” Meg asked, pulling a chicken bone from her mouth and flicking it across the table.

“The Sibylline Books.” I corrected.

“Same difference.” 

“That’s my line.”

“Will they be ready or not?”

I sighed with exasperation at the impatience of my master. 

“I do not know.”

Meg rolled her eyes. 

“You never know anything.”

“Hey! I know as much as my father has left intact in my memories, and that is not my fault.”

Meg ignored my defence, and leaned over to my plate to prod my fish in the eye. 

“That’s gross,” she said, screwing up her face.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is in fact disgusting to poke someone else’s food when they know you haven’t washed your hands.”

“Not that, dummy.” She pointed at my forkful of fish, which was halfway to my mouth. “That.”

I rolled my eyes and took another bite. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s hardly cooked.”

“It’s grilled.” 

Meg stuffed her face with another few bites. Her mouth was so full I was surprised she could still breathe. “Aren’t you supposed to put batter on it or something?” She asked, spraying my face with spit and bits of chicken. I grudgingly wiped it off. 

“Is there anything you Americans don’t deep fry?” 

In response, Meg lifted her feet off the low table, swivelled around and dropped them heavily onto my legs. She was now lying the length of the sofa while half-draped over me, pinning me to the soft cushioning. “Ow.”

She snorted at my discomfort, then continued to inhale her meat. 

My mind wandered around the possibilities of ever seeing my family again. My uncle Poseidon, who had always been my favourite uncle (although my only other uncles are either titans or Hades, so I guess that doesn’t come across as much of a compliment, but it is). My good friends, Hermes and Dionysus, who were always up for a good prank on Ares or ready with a bottle of wine after an awful day (but remember, alcohol is bad, kids. We only drink it because we are each over 3000 years old. Do not attempt until you are the same age, no matter what Dionysus tells you). My sister, the sharp huntress whom I would defend to the death. My mother. Sacred Sibyl, I missed my mother. I missed her warm hugs, her sweet honeysuckle scent, her soft, caring voice. I couldn’t stand the thought of never feeling her comforting presence again. I had to get home.

…

I woke, drenched in cold sweat and gasping for breath. ‘Blasted nightmares,’ I thought, desperately trying to rip the sheets off myself with shaking hands. My legs were still partially entangled when I attempted to stand, resulting in me thumping loudly to the floor. I grasped around in the dark for the small bedside table to help me stand. When I found the edge, I began to pull myself up, but the table tipped, sending me back to the hard floor and spilling its contents onto my head. The digital clock that clattered beside me read 01:38. I growled at it and stood, despite my quaking limbs. My nightmares had wildly unsettled me in ways I wouldn’t tolerate. ‘You’ll never hang onto those memories’, they taunted. ‘Give it a week and you won’t even remember their names’. 

“Shut up, shut up!” I hissed to myself. I began wondering, stumbling towards to bookshelf at the end of the long room. ‘What kind of brother forgets a sibling?’ “Stop.” ‘What kind of son?’ “Stop it!”

I began to yank old, dusty, leather bound books from the shelf, looking for anything with my name on the front. I needed to remember me. Anything. Anything at all. Finally, a large black book with the emboldened golden letters ‘APOLLŌ’ printed on the spine caught my attention. It was a few inches thick and the cover was almost as wide as my chest. Eyes widening, I harshly ripped the book out from its place, the sudden weight bearing down on my weak arms almost causing me to drop it. I did not wish to make any more noise than I already had. I wrapped it in my gangly human arms and lugged it out the door. 

I cannot say I knew where I was headed. I simply needed to get somewhere, to feel the crisp night wind sting my skin into feeling anything but numbness. I found myself marching up a hill. The extra muscle exertion distracted me from my troubles, so I kept climbing. A good way up the hill, I started to feel the pull of the familiar. Temple Hill. I scanned the assorted statues and . There was no particular order, other than ‘most important at the top’. Further on, a massive red crypt loomed, decorated with flames and human skulls. The name Mars Ultor came to me, but I overlooked it. My mind was so busy with rushing thoughts and doubts that I feared any more information might make my brain explode.

My fingers fidgeted with the tears and rough leather texture of the book in my grasp. I felt as if a band composed of nothing but timpani were performing a drumroll in my mind, getting more and more intense with each passing second. Unable to stand still for much longer, I bolted to my right, keeping my head down and following whatever path was under my feet. 

Maybe the last scraps of my godly essence guided me to the place it felt most at home. My mind was caught in such a flurry of panic that I barely noticed I was climbing marble steps until the steely cold shocked my unprotected soles. I was in an circular, open room held up by bronze pillars that were rimmed with gold. A golden dome sat over my head, and an array of my favourite items littered the right side of the room - a golden bow, a quiver stocked with arrows, an elegant grand piano. In the middle of the temple, an altar sat, waiting for sacrifices. I padded to the back of the room, my bare feet echoing on the smooth marble. Sliding my back down a pillar, I sat and heaved the book open. I was too flustered  to have possibly read a word, but the pictures soothed me. There were a few century-old ink sketches of the 'Apollo Belvedere’ in Rome, next to a modern Polaroid marked ‘Latona and Her Children, Apollo and Diana, carved 1874’ I smiled at the tranquil scene. Mother rarely appeared as such now, certainly not after the invention of many modern braid styles (she got me to teach her how to use Instagram so she can ‘see the videos all those pretty young ladies post’ and learn new hairstyles. She’s admittedly very talented. We tied on our self-held Let’s See Who Can Braid Their Hair The Fastest completion). A tear dripped onto the picture. I turned the page.

This one showed the ‘Diana as Huntress’  statue in Berlin. Artie always huffed about her statues, said they were ‘Too dramatic’. She questioned why she, a seasoned hunter, would ever stand around and wait around for the wind to blow the right direction just so she could look cool to the monsters charging at her and her girls. She can say what she likes, but I know that she prefers it when sculptors include her dogs. Just a thought for any artists out there, looking to gain Diana’s favour *wink*. I grinned at the thought of her thirteen year old form pouting up at me. The memory was fuzzy, but still clearer than usual. I turned the page again.

Again and again I flicked through photos of my relatives, skimming over the paragraphs just enough that it reminded me of their names and their relationships with me. Hermes/Mercury was my impish best friend, who I’d vowed to love for eternity. Hera/Juno was my stepmother who caused my mother and siblings nothing but pain, but somehow we respected each other enough to eat cabbage together and compliment each other’s hair. Dionysus/Bacchus was the ultimate party-man, often inviting me to play for his revelries. 

I turned the page once more. This time, I was met with an image that spanned the length of the two pages. At the top of the page, black threatening letters spelled out ‘JUPITER, FATHER OF APOLLO’ and in smaller writing ‘St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum’. Even from glancing into those blank, marble eyes, my anger spiked. ‘There he is’, I thought, ‘sitting all smug on his little stupid throne-’ I admit, my thoughts turned to bitter toddler-like insults. But looking at the god responsible for my misery made me want to throw the book across the temple and storm away. So I did just that. The book smacked into the alter (which tipped) and thumped open onto the floor cover side up, the crusty pages wrinkling under the force. I left the hook where the golden bow had hung empty as I went.

…

Twang!

The arrow just inside the red circle of the target, and I mentally awarded myself seven points. Not that it mattered. Judging by the moon’s position in the inky sky, it was now 3am - I had been at Camp Jupiter’s open-air archery range for almost two hours. No one else had been here when I arrived, and I was glad it had stayed that way. I needed time alone. To stew. I had first come out with the intention to ‘practice’ (still an alien concept to ex-flawless archers such as myself), but now, this long into the session, I was only blowing off steam. Channeling my frustration into every loose of an arrow, imagining the target as everyone who had wronged me over the course of this forsaken punishment. My knuckles tightened. My eyes narrowed. My shoulders tensed. 

Twang! An arrow buried itself deep in the flesh of Commodus’ shoulder.

Twang! A wooden shaft protruded from Caligula’s throat.

Twang! Blood seeped through the mauve suit surrounding Nero’s manipulating, insensitive heart.

Twang! Zeus howled in pain at the arrow embedded in his sternum.

Twang! Python writhed in agony, agony he deserved-

“Apollo!”

I yelped and my shot went wildly off course, flying high with no power or distance, and landing in the grass in front of the target with a thud. Whipping around, I was about to tell whoever it was to GO AWAY when I was met with an equally startled young man, dressed in pyjama bottoms and the signature purple Camp Jupiter t-shirt, with the gold letters SPQR emblazoned boldly on the front. He quickly raised his hands in a placid manner, showing that he meant no harm. Nevertheless, I remained on guard. There had been a few who had not exactly welcomed the bearers of Jason’s coffin warmly, and this had been a close friend of the son of Jupiter. I feared I could not take this particular demigod in a fight. Even though he looked to be not much older than myself, he towered above me - perhaps a few inches beyond six foot tall, which made my lanky 5”6 feel minuscule. He had handsome asian features and soft brown eyes that I wagered could shift from kindness to anger in moments. He wore jet black hair in a military cut, making him seem like the world’s youngest army general.

“Frank Zhang.” I nodded to him once before turning back to my anger outlet. I was in no mood to talk. Not after loosing any way to contact my family. Not after loosing my memories to oblivion. Not after loosing Jason. Not when I knew he could react violently, as some already had. And if his heritage and blessing from Mars went against my mortal pathetic self, I doubted I would last more than ten seconds. Thankfully, he did not look like he came to pick a fight. He came forward and stood beside me silently, watching as I drew back the bowstring. I felt his eyes bore into me, assessing my posture, my strength, my balance. It was off-putting. That, dear readers, is why my arrow went rogue. It wasn’t my fault. It thunked into the wooden leg that held up the target. I felt my cheeks redden. I glared at the stupid arrow, willing it to pick itself up and hover over to the bullseye. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen. It stubbornly stayed where it was, planted in the wood. 

I really hated having an audience for my failures, especially if the audience was a child who had once hoped and prayed for me, the Great Golden Archer, to be his father. I doubted Frank felt such a longing anymore. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He was smiling sympathetically at me, having witnessed my disgraceful excuse for a shot for the first time. I decided that Gaia coming back and swallowing me whole at that exact moment would not have been protested against.

“Here,” Frank said calmly, reaching towards me and adjusting my grip on the bowstring. “You’re gripping the string too far up your fingers. You don’t want to make a fist around it.” He peered down at my feet. “And you’re too tense. Relax your stance a little.” I obliged, already seeing my stupid mistakes. My cheeks seemed to heat up even more, and I found myself resisting the urge to bury my acne-ridden face in my hoodie. Frank seemed to notice, and backed off, instead ambling over to a small supply shed where he scooped up a bow and a fistful of arrows. I kept myself occupied from the daunting future that would have Frank humiliating me by nocking another arrow. This time, I tried to take on board what advice I’d been given.

I angled my left foot closer to the direction of the target, so I took on a more open stance, then checked my fingering was correct. Taking a deep breath, I used my back muscles to push my shoulder blades together as to take the strain off my arm and shoulder muscles - an unforgotten golden rule of archery. I drew back the bowstring until I reached my anchor point (the index finger touching the corner of my mouth), and fired. Twang! Not a bullseye, but well within the first yellow circle. I grinned in delight. Success was a rare feeling nowadays.

“Good job.” He congratulated quietly, grinning and turning to his own target. We both drew our bows.

After about ten more shots, and four bullseyes on my part (how many frank got is not relevant, moving on), Frank suggested we go back inside.

“It’s early,” he said, rubbing his eyes and letting out a yawn. He started walking down towards the fifth cohort’s barracks, so I followed. “We should get back. Jason’s funeral is later, and you’ve barely been to sleep.”

“How did you know?”

Frank scratched the back of his neck and smiled awkwardly.

“Well, you made a bit of a racket when you were leaving the barracks. What with the whole…falling and throwing books and stuff…”

Yup. The ground was more than welcome to swallow me now. I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I felt my acne-riddled face turn tomato coloured for the umpteenth time that morning, and glared at the grass.

“Apologies.” I muttered. “I panicked.”

“Yeah, you seemed upset so I told the others to leave you alone. I thought maybe you wanted some peace and quiet. But you were gone for ages, so I came to find you.”

I shot him a questioning look. ‘Why?’ He read my mind. 

“It’s my job as Praetor to make sure everyone’s safe,” he explained, his chest puffing out slightly at the little self-reminder of his recently increased status. “And, it sucks. To loose people, I mean.”

I looked up at the Roman. His eyes were shimmering with tears, but he looked me in the eye anyway. He wasn’t afraid to show emotion, which was a rare trait, especially in the legion, but one I had always admired. 

“I only knew him for a few hours. Why do I feel so awful?”

“Because Jason was a great demigod. The greatest. He made an impact on everyone he talked to.” -Frank gestured around the camp- “He really made an impact here. Especially with the loser fifth cohort.”

“He-he told me to fulfil his promise. To build temples for every god in the pantheon.”

“Yeah. He could be like that. Noble, even at the worst of times. But that’s not the reason you’ve been drilling holes into the archery equipment for an a few hours straight.”

I answered with all the intelligence of someone who hadn’t slept since 1am. 

“Huh?”

“I didn’t think to check here first,” he said. “I went up to your temple.”

I got flashbacks to my toddler-esque temper tantrum.

“Ooh. Yeah…”

“Yeah.” He responded in a tone that said ‘been there, done that, got the t-shirt’. “Families are messy.” 

“I miss them.”

“That’s normal. Bitterness is normal. You aren’t being overdramatic.” 

I smiled at the confirmation. 

“Thanks. It means a lot.”

We were back at the barracks. Frank smiled at me one last time and patted me on the back, before lumbering in. I followed. 

I slept soundly the rest of the night.

…

I walked, lead-legged, up Temple Hill. The whole camp was eerily quiet. Jason’s body had been given proper honours, and the legion had been given the day off from duties. I couldn’t stand the prying eyes of 200 kids for much longer, so, even while I had only gotten four hours of sleep and was weighed down with grief, I travelled to the only place in the camp that was truly ‘mine’. 

Tired and weary, I plopped down on the seat of the sleek, white grand piano. I ran my fingers across the smooth fallboard for a solid minute of distracted silence, before lifting it to reveal the ivory keys. They were chipped and yellowed and seemingly out of place compared to the stark white of the piano itself, were inevitably out of tune. I played a short scale, opened up the lid and tightened the loose turning pins I had hit, then continued with my scales. I repeated until I was positive that every key was in perfect harmony, which took all of ten minutes.

Satisfied with the tuning, I took a deep breath and splayed my fingers out on the keyboard, and played a tune that inspired grace and felt to me like a ballerina daintily dancing on water. After a second, the fingering flowed into my memory, allowing my hands to glide elegantly across the piano while I stared over the rim and through the gaps between the temple’s pillars, and into the distance. The sky was clear and perfect blue, and the warm breeze swept gently through my hair. I remembered sitting with my mother on Delos, our shoulders touching as together, we played two parts of the same harmony. Like two streams running down a mountain, weaving around each other and sometimes intersecting to make one stronger melody. My heartbeat calmed from the stress of what was now everyday life to me. Peril, danger and death.

A jarring dissonance of notes jolted me back to unwelcome reality. I rolled my eyes glared at the pudgy young demigod beside me.

“You know, there are ways to make your presence known without scaring flocks of birds away.”

“Yeah I know,” Meg replied shrugging. “But it’s not as fun as watching you jump ten feet in the air.”

“I wasn’t scared! I knew you were beside me!”

“Uh huh,” she grunted, turning her attention to the keys and banging a few more notes without mercy.

“I just tuned those, you monster.”

Meg smirked. Then she ordered me to shift over on the bench, and practically bounced down in the middle, leaving me with one leg hanging off the side.

“Teach me that one. The one you were playing.”

I was too taken aback to argue it’s difficulty, especially for a beginner. I thought we had long since given up on the piano lessons (Meg was not very good), and even if we hadn’t, this tune was graceful and elegant - not words commonly used to describe Meg McCaffrey. But I admit, I missed playing with someone. And so we began.

“Why don’t you watch me first, try to absorb as much of the tune as possible before I teach you the left hand.”

Meg tried to hide her smile.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Bit of a shorter chapter this time. Sorry for the long wait, I started writing out several completely different chapters and never finished them because they just weren’t good enough. Also, the point about ‘No romance’ in these chapters still stand. Frank and Apollo were written as a kid and an adult becoming good friends, NOT BOYFRIENDS. 

[masqueradelydia]

Maladjustment

Summary: A continuation of Adjustment. Remus prepares for and delivers a new performance.

Characters: Remus Sanders, Roman Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Patton Sanders, some characters I made up whose names aren’t important (The last names are different)

Warnings: None

Ships: N/A

Words: 5754

(Adjustment is here: https://masqueradelydia.tumblr.com/post/186685098818/adjustment-to-personhood if you want to read it first, but it isn’t necessary to read this piece.

           Remus swallowed. Something in his lower intestine begged to flip his organs inside out as he stood up from the little table in front of his fold-up bed and broken lampshade. Papers were strewn about, carefully kept away from the open cans of preservatives, baked beans, and littered Snickers wrappers, along with several tissues that had hardly been aimed anywhere near the trash can. He’d tried to keep them away from the part where the ceiling leakage would drip to the floor and where that ever-growing mold sliding along the edges of the wall, and away from any cracks where something could crawl through and nibble at them. These papers piled up in droves by his feet and around his ankles like mice waiting to scatter around his apartment, but Remus had meant to keep them on the table as he pored over the notes and sketches written on them, trying not to recite the lines on them loudly enough to receive a haranguing from the man next door, or receive another attempt at a hole being punched through his door. It wasn’t his neighbor’s fault after all that Remus couldn’t ever sit still long enough to be quiet.

           Remus should’ve thrown away all of these old papers, but they were still a part of the first project he’d done that would send him towards the life he’d stayed up all night for. His feet wouldn’t stop tapping as he wrote, as if the light from above some stage was getting ever so much closer to them, wanting them to step forward, despite his worn sneakers having so many holes he could feel the concrete through half of the right sole and his nicest jacket being frayed at the sleeves and the collar of it was almost completely detached from the rest of it. His hands wouldn’t stop moving either as he wrote out extra details to his stand-up routine for the night.

           He didn’t think about the sweat building up so much that he felt like it would drip into his eyes and ears, or the faces his friends made the first time he ran his routine by them, the way that Em’s eyes shifted as she cracked the faintest of smiles, or Cal’s drawn out sight and wide-eyed shake of his head as if he’d sat through a lecture. He wasn’t think about Silas’s hands circling his own beer bottle, his face thoroughly transfixed by its design during Remus’s quips and queries. He was going over his routine as it was right now, with its timing and phrasing, elaboration and cuts just enough to give him time to flash a certain kind of grin, the new stories he’d tell cut to their bare essentials and just enough punchlines where they needed to be. He nodded to himself as he looked up to the door, which was about to come off of its hinges from all of the knocking.

           “Remus! Come on out, our flight leaves in two hours,” Silas’s silvery voice sing-songed from the other side.

           “Finish up your makeup, bitch,” Em called out, a certain twang to her tone.

           She’d probably collapse laughing if she’d ever seen how he’d worn it back in the day, at least, when he still had access to it. She was always insistent on dressing her best, even if that just meant an old tank top and a nice haircut. Silas, on the other hand, preferred to show up exactly as he was with his hair up and the occasional wristband.

           Picking up his last draft covered in coffee stains, different colored pen marks, and a little bit of sweat, more than he’d like to admit, Remus went to open the door and was pulled out of it by his collar. One more tear wouldn’t hurt it. Silas slapped him on the back and started to lead him down the hall, the three of them ignoring the person twitching in her sleep a few feet away from them.

           “Look at you, you actually showered,” Silas chirped.

           “And early, too. If we were late, I would tear my eyes out and eat them, and throw them up with all of my guts!”

           “Eugh, we get it. I guess this is understandable, being nervous or whatever, but your set better not make me regret missing my third beer tonight,” Em added with a grumble.

           “You’ll never want to drink again,” Remus assured her.

           This got him a light chuckle from her as they reached the front door and headed for Silas’s truck covered in key marks and fading paint, and some old food residue by the tires. Silas had hauled the other two home drunk on multiple occasions in it, and Remus would count today as the first in months that he wasn’t told that if he threw up in this thing that Silas would kick him out and he would have to walk seven miles back to his apartment.

           Then again, if he hadn’t been out in the snow on one of the many days Silas had followed through with this threat, he wouldn’t have found Gossamer Scruff, a small rat he had hoped would have been alive for longer than a week had Cal not dropped him down the sewer, but today, Remus did not want to remember mourning a three-day old rat he would have not cared for at all three years ago. Cal didn’t see anything worth bemoaning, and Remus supposed it was strange for him to consider it, especially considering that he’d eaten more than one rat on occasion of a few relentless dares.

           “Did you fix up that story about that actor breakin’ your rib,” Silas asked, poking his chest and bringing him back to the present.

           He winced, still not convinced the pain that came with it was normal.

           “Down to the millimeter,” Remus announced, sitting up straight and crossing his arms.

           “You look like a cat when you smile like that,” Em said.

           “Like the Cheshire Cat? Or those weird hairless ones with the wrinkles—”

           “Like one that couldn’t scratch me if it tried,” she finished.

           Silas didn’t let him reflect on that for more than a second.

           “Hey, what’d I tell you? Took you forever, but look what you’re doing! You’re finally scraping up something I haven’t been falling asleep to.”

           “Don’t tell me that my old stuff didn’t at least give you one nightmare, come on, now.”

           Silas put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in as if telling him a deep secret. The smile starting to creep towards the corner of Remus’s mouth halted itself as Silas declared,

           “It gave me visions of nothing but static. I’d rather have my ass run through with a shotgun. At least I’d have something to look at.”

           Remus sat back and avoided slumping as Silas turned the corner. That old stuff had turned into something that Silas still hadn’t fully heard, although he had a good lot of it run by him. It wasn’t a choice out of nowhere for Remus to follow all of Silas’s advice, and Silas would know from holding concerts that were so popular that it resulted in people lining up at the doors hours before it had started, and why Remus could never get past the middle rows, and why Silas couldn’t hear him cheering him on.

           Silas, of course, wasn’t the only influence. Every minute of each day, Remus repeated parts of his routine to himself, tweaking it according to every rule of comedy and performance he knew that he admitted could be of use to him. He repeated it and kept those rules in his head, even if Roman’s occasional criticisms fell in with it, not letting him forget that Thomas could do better if Remus didn’t try to step on Roman’s toes all the time whenever he so much as looked at a playbill.

           Perhaps in the Mindscape everything seemed so sugarcoated because of the way that they would all tiptoe around everything, but afterwards, the realization that everything was crafted in a curiously particular way for the reason of nuances that he did not quite hold became clear. It could have been much better if he had been more involved, perhaps even more nuanced, but neither he nor Roman were given the gift of subtlety. At least, not when they were still getting their bearings. Roman had learned to grow into it and embody the façade of subtlety over years of scrutinizing himself and participating in Thomas’s acting career. Pretty soon, it started to appear after Remus had been on his own that his insistence on shining light on the heavier aspects of life was just that. Insistence.

           Without the chance to mimic the things that both he and Roman could have used, even separately, if he were able to peer through the crack of the wall that kept him hidden, he found the echoes he could manage to make out of Roman scrutinizing himself in the voices of his own acting instructors, with sometimes a certain flick of their head sending something unpleasant down the center of Remus’s spine and a sickly sweet taste in his mouth. He was different, though, he told himself. He was not using it to create something that people will tell their children as lighthearted bedtime stories. He was using it to grow his artwork into something that would actually stick with people, that would bore itself into their minds in the middle of the night and give them visions in their sleep that would frighten and entertain them in a way that could not be explained away just with words. Remus did not want to create his work based upon cheap fairytales that people would forget about, even if it was easier for most other people, even if those things brought them joy instead of irritation, and even if everywhere he looked since he’d come into existence, he’d seen those who’d chosen that path walk the red carpet and bask in the light of everyone who loved them. Ingenuity didn’t matter to them, did it?

          Remus latched onto every change he made to his routine and diagnosed it for anything that Silas or an esteemed director would so much as blink disapprovingly at in order to polish it up. It required ignoring how much his chest hurt when he turned a certain way to sell a few little pauses, and reciting and experimenting on his inflections was a part of the process until his throat felt raw. Most of everyone he knew wouldn’t be pleased to fall off of the back of their trash truck at work and almost be thrown off of it in frustration minutes later because he was trying to craft nuance on a particular part of his piece, but that is a story for another day.

          Em leaned on the back of his seat, pulling on a piece of his hair as if inspecting it for fleas after looking down at his phone bumping every few feet. It had several cracks in it, but still managed to work. If they were lucky, Silas’s car charger would get it up to fifty percent once they had reached the airport.

           “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you dyed your hair again, didn’t you? I guess I’m getting used to it more since you cut it above your ears.”

           “Grey doesn’t make a massive impression like this does,” Remus told her, gesturing to the two green streaks over his brown hair.

           There had been more grey to cover up since when he’d first moved here, and he’d found himself considering that fact more often than he’d have liked to once he’d started performing his first, for once, growing stand-up routine as the littering of grey over the front of his bangs had started to encroach further and further towards his roots, weaving itself through the sides of his head and down to the hair that grew towards the back of his neck, and was the first of it to reach his shoulders before he had finally decided to get a proper haircut instead of working with a pair of safety scissors over his sink, leaving them in the bowl of it to try again each day over the course of about a week and a half to get it right.

           “It’ll certainly turn a few heads. Keep your head straight and meet their eyes tonight.” Silas added.

           “I’ve timed it all out. I’ll stare at them until they want to run on stage and chop my head off to get me to stop it.”

           This received a “Mmm,” and a low “Hm,” from both of them.

           “Within reason,” Remus tacked on, trying to stare at both of them as he felt his voice drop off towards a bit of a growl.

           They took a short stop at the dry-cleaners to pick up Remus’s suit jacket, made with diagonal, fat green lines running up from the waist to the shoulder and arms. Putting it on, Remus had almost felt like he’d grown into it over the past two weeks. Why this was, he wasn’t sure. He’d come up with the basic idea himself, although Cal and Em had been the ones to help him pay for it. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d been getting a little more used to seeing bigger and bigger crowds at his own shows, and people cheering his name after he’d opened for a few comedians who had already made quite the name for themselves, at least, in the local area. He got used to seeing Silas crack a bright smile and let out a real laugh at more and more of his punch lines, and Cal had even dropped his bottle out of his hand from being a little more enraptured by Remus’s story about the time that he had manage to distract an angry group of hecklers at one of Silas’s concerts by demonstrating his ability to pop his shoulder out and pull a condom through his mouth after snorting it up his nose. Em’s head shakes had turned a bit more playful rather than disdainful as well. While Silas had decided to wait in the car for them, Remus’s tailor prattled to Em and himself.

           “You know, my son wanted to become a comedian when he was little. He thought he was going to be the next Conan or something. Do you two ever watch that show? I think it’s a little bit over-dramatic, but I wouldn’t know all that much about it.”

           “Thanks for the help, Donny,” Remus started. “But if we don’t leave now, my agent is going to have my ass on a stick.”

           “Oh, you don’t have to elaborate any further. I know from my son how important punctual-ness is, he would always get in a tizzy if he wasn’t the first to show up at his improv classes.”

           “We really can’t—”

           “Em, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you before your shift’s usually over, you look nice today. I know you usually do, but today you look like you’ve really put on your face, if you know what I mean.”

           “I do what I can, you know,” Em said with an eye roll as she ushered herself and Remus out the door and back to the car.

           Remus knew that Donny was a little bit chatty, but it felt like it was almost half an hour before he had let them leave. Despite this, he had almost forgotten to be surprised that Donny had not at least told him to break a leg that night, as he usually did whenever they saw him. Must have slipped his mind.

Em had her ears covered at the sound of the jet engines whirring in all of their ears while they climbed the railing, up to a small seating section. The pilot, keeping her eyes forward as she ran her fingers over the many buttons and switches on her control panel, cleared her throat and pointed to the seats behind them and the champagne in their cupholders.

           “We’ll be lifting off in precisely five minutes, so please take your seat, Mr. Morgan. Your stewardess will be with you shortly. Please refrain from using any electronic devices while you’re at it.”

           Remus nodded and followed Em and Silas towards the leather seats. Remus’s agent, Ellis, was already sitting in the front seat, looking over his sunglasses at all of them.

           “I see you’ve decided to bring your little friends along, eh? I guess a little moral support can’t be a bad thing,” he sneered, narrowing his eyes at Em and Silas.

           “Get the stick out of your ass, it’s so far up I can see it through your teeth,” Remus joked, sitting down next to him.

           “You’re the first person who’s made it this far without one up your own.”

           “I can find something more exciting than a stick to—”

           Ellis held up a hand, using the other to adjust one of his cufflinks keeping his impeccable black suit to a standard Remus didn’t even consider before he had met him.

           “Save it for the show, hot-shot.”

           “Fine.”

           “Where do you think they get this leather from,” Silas wondered out loud.

           “They skin cows for it, I think, and then they rip out their organs and bleed them out, and then they turn their skin into leather,” Remus told him.

           Em gagged next to him.

           “How the hell do you know that?”

           Remus shrugged, suddenly wanting to reach into the back of his mind to remember who had particularly taught that to Thomas, and how he had managed to remember it.

           “Some teacher in middle school told me,” he started, gesticulating as he began to elaborate. “I wanted to know all the details, it was—”

           “Remus, shut up for a second, I just remembered something!”

           Silas pointed to Remus’s phone, which had been thankfully charged enough to last him the rest of the night.

           “When you were in the dry cleaners, you got a bunch of voicemails. I think they’re from some people you know. They wanted to talk to you, but I told them you’d talk to them after your set.”

           Remus sat up straight, his face now perplexed as he twisted himself around.

           “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Who called? What do they want from me?”

           “I don’t know, I wasn’t paying much attention, I was taking a smoke when they called. You weren’t going to be able to talk to them anyway, I don’t think it was important. It was probably just some scammers.”

           That got Remus to sit back and lean his head on the seat.

           “Oh. You should ‘a told them to go fuck themselves for me.”

           “You can do that yourself when we land. Don’t hold your breath, it’ll be about six hours.”

           “Eh, I have bigger fish to gut anyway.”

           Em would have corrected him on his phrasing, but didn’t feel like speaking up as she prepared herself for a nice little nap.

           Ellis frowned at the sight of Remus’s routine in his hand, refusing to touch it with his own as Remus tried to hand it to him.

           “Don’t shove that at me, it’s covered in coffee rings.”

           A little scoff from him told Remus that no matter what he did, Ellis would not be convinced to pick it up.

           “Do you want me to read it to you, then?”

           “No, I want you to throw it out the window. Yes, read it! You told me you changed at least half of it last night, I want to hear how you’ve done that. This is your jumping point. If you nail this, I guarantee you will have your own television show and your own Netflix special by next August.”

           The next six hours were spent with Remus reciting his routine from perfect memory, trying to change his gyro graphical stability in the process of the jet’s movements in order to ensure that his own were held the exact place he wanted them, keeping Ellis’ every flick of the eyes in mind. While this caused him to stumble quite a few times and hit his head twice and distract his friends when he’d landed on his ass, this didn’t stop him from getting back up and picking it up again, even if it required repeating a few certain lines over and over again.

             Ellis nearly shoved him off of the jet once it had landed and the door had opened, covering his head with a black sheet. Remus was partially thankful for this as he felt nearly blinded by the camera flashes, and didn’t know which way to look. He was getting a little bit more used to hearing his name said so loudly, but this was the first time he’d heard it from so many paparazzi trying to clamor over them as they squeezed into the limousine waiting for them. He could hear Ellis shouting at Silas and Em as they veered off to grab a taxi. Soon enough, he would get used to this, and it would become some sort of routine for him, wouldn’t it? Maybe in a few weeks he would even take the time to scroll through his phone instead of keeping his eyes on Ellis rapidly repeating directions to the chauffeur.

           After repeating this process, he was led down a small red carpet towards what he assumed to be his dressing room. He almost stopped in his footsteps as he looked down at it and the ropes holding back the paparazzi again flashing cameras in his face. This was just the first step of what he had been looking for since he had come into existence. It was the start of everything he could only hope to hold himself back from really thinking of during his time sitting in a nearly light-less room in the Mindscape, listening to everyone talk over each other and hardly have the energy to pay attention to any of them. He had no time to dwell on this as Ellis pushed him forward and through a door that someone had pulled open for them.

           “Come on!”

           Inside, a small crowd of people all dressed in black carrying makeup brushes, clothing racks, speakers, wires, and set pieces. A gangly woman with a handful of makeup brushes ran towards him and pulled him into a rolling chair towards a mirror, turning him to face her and looking him up and down.

           “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before you go on. Tilt your chin up, you look much too pale.”

           He did as she instructed, finding her hand keeping his jaw shut as she held his face still, smearing his face with foundation, layering it over with bronzer and brushing his eyebrows with a small tool he’d only seen Em use.

           “Jake, come fix his hair,” the woman called.

           It only took about three seconds before a shorter man bustled over and ran a brush through his hair, followed by a fine comb and pushing it so that it stayed out of his face when the hairspray came. He pulled on it when Remus coughed.

           “Sorry, should’ve given you some warning, kid. Give me a second.”

           He gave Remus a few more tugs and another puff of hairspray before bidding him good luck and running off somewhere else. Remus didn’t want to say he didn’t recognize himself in the mirror, because he did, but he still felt a little bit dissonant from his reflection. He knew why he was here, and had been kept up on so many nights wondering what this would feel like, looking at himself backstage of a performance of this scale. He knew not everyone rose to be on The Late Late Show in such a short amount of time, but it wasn’t as if he had just woken up yesterday and thought it would be fun to do stand-up.

           He had fifteen minutes before he was on. He didn’t have time to overthink things, he thought, as he pulled out his phone. Huh. He had three new voicemails, but they weren’t from scammers. Nearly dropping his phone in his haste, he put the phone up to his ear and played the first one. An enunciated voice spoke through.

           “Hey, uh, I’d start with asking how you’re doing, but, eh, it seems I don’t have to! You’re doing pretty well for yourself after all, aren’t you? I heard about you all the way out here in Los Angeles! Well, I guess you’ll be here too by the time you get this, but, uh, I want you to know something. I won’t be there tonight, I’ve got an interview, but I know I never really listened to you back in the day. I don’t even know if this will mean all that much to you, after all of, whatever people call it, sibling bonding, we missed out on. I knew you could’ve done something like this, if you pushed yourself. And you did. You made us all look a bit foolish, didn’t you? I guess we had it coming to us. We had it coming.”

           A pause.

           “But that’s not the point. I’m… I’m proud of you. Break a leg.”

           Thirty seconds passed before Remus could register what he’d just heard. A voice he hadn’t heard since the last time he’d heard Roman screeching at him to pretend they’d never met, to scrape by on his own and taste what it feels like to deal with the consequences of being who he was. And now, this. Something pumped its way back into Remus’s lower intestine as the corners of his mouth reached up for his ears. The word, Proud, sounded almost different when someone said it to him, and he was not prepared for what it would sound like, with Roman’s voice cracking and breathing it into the microphone as if he had been waiting forever to say it. Remus swallowed again and let himself take another thirty seconds to collect himself as he played the next voice mail. It began with a long sigh.

           “So, you’re hot shit now. That’s fantastic, I guess. I got a call from someone telling me all about you being on The Late Late Show or something like that. You went from being a disease to whatever you call this. Congratulations. I’m… I’m rooting you on from Dark Owl Records. It sounds stupid, but I actually have a couple of my friends in here at the bar. We’re watching for you right now.” The voice softened. “You’ve got this.”

           He was surprised Virgil had bothered to call at all, but hung onto his long drawl. Virgil had never claimed to be a nice person, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be when he wanted to be. And one of those times was for Remus. Maybe a rare moment, but maybe it would be worth it if Virgil could see the look on Remus’s face that even he himself couldn’t see, turned away from the mirror.

           The last voice mail practically had music coming from behind it, a bouncy piano that had before sent Remus running to his room before he was told to stay away from the family.

           “Remus! I can’t wait to see your face on TV! I knew you could turn yourself around if you just put away all of those bad impulses like I told you to! Oh, it took you so long, but you listened! You listened, and look at yourself! Don’t you feel so much better? You should, you should feel over the moon! Give it a ‘moo’ for me! A-hah! You’re going to do great! Remember to take deep breaths before you go on, okay? I’ll talk to you later. Break a leg, K—”

           Patton must have ended the call before he could finish. It didn’t feel quite right hearing such encouraging things from Patton, as if he were just doing it because—he didn’t have time to think about that, Remus thought. He didn’t really know Remus very well despite their time in the Mindscape, not really, but he at least put in the effort. He was doing his best, after all, according to everyone else. The olive branch went out to everyone, Remus supposed. And that was enough for him right now.

           Remus had to focus. He ran over his lines in his head, turning back to the mirror. He didn’t feel distant from his reflection anymore. He was present, grounded, and just a few minutes later his face would be visible to people who he never thought would meet him. Strangers, people who philosophized at night about such things he couldn’t even wrap his mind around who watched this show to wind down. People his age who were studying hard to pursue their college education, high school students in so many clubs that Remus wouldn’t be able to count them all. People his age who would not look at him two months ago because of the bruises on his neck and the gash running down his arm. It didn’t seem like a big deal then, but suddenly now it was. His own ingenuity was coming to the curtain.

           “Remus, you’re on!”

           He stood up, not knowing where the voice was coming from, but was quickly pulled up to the curtain. He breathed deeply and felt it in his hands, the fabric much lighter than what he’d expected, but this was television. It was not a theater stage. He shut his eyes, counted to three, and listened for the host.

           “And now, everybody, you know him already, let’s give a warm welcome to Mr. Remus Morgan!”

           Remus opened his eyes and pushed open the curtain, walking out expecting a microphone and a large stage, and the host sitting at his usual desk against the cityscape backdrop.

           Confetti flew into his face as party favor noisemakers bombarded him, a few of them landing at his feet. He looked above and below himself, finding the floor and walls of a warehouse, and a ceiling stretching up to several fans. He looked in front of himself and saw Cal, Em, Silas, and several people who he’d seen coming to his shows all smiling back at him. They waited for a second to let their noise die down before shouting one single phrase in unison.

           “The joke’s on you!”

           Remus took a step back and looked here and there at all of these faces, looking down again to register that he was not standing on a platform, and there were no bright lights over his head. He wanted to pinch himself. He wanted to say he’d walked through the wrong door to some place he had just imagined, something he’d conjured up in one of his own dreams that he just hadn’t slept through yet. Above the heads of his onlookers was a large white banner, painted in shoddy writing to say, “Joke’s on Remus,” and two plastic wine glasses were attached to each side.

           “Wh—”

           “We did it! We had you eating out of the palm of our hands,” Em cut him off.

           He tried again, but couldn’t get anything out before—

           “All of this is fake! Everyone here is an actor! They’re all paid actors! We got you, Ree! All of your shows were a prank,” Silas shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear.

           Remus stepped back again, gripping the curtain in his hands to keep himself steady, only for it to rip. He’d stayed on his feet, thankfully, as he stared back at all of them with an open mouth and pulse beating upon his ears. That was it. He couldn’t take all of this in at once, and at the same time, his mind had forced him to. His mouth was dry, and he felt something bubbling up in his stomach, choking it back down his throat to keep it from spilling out all over the floor. He tried to say something, anything, but all that came out was air. Just air.

           “You’re wondering why we’re doing this, aren’t you,” Em asked.

           He just looked at her, his eyes starting to blur. He felt like he was going to pass out.

           “Your comedy career is going nowhere, pal. This is the best you’re ever going to get! Oh, and those phone calls? Your other friends, they were in on it! They knew the whole time!”

           He wouldn’t have believed them if he hadn’t checked his phone and found that all of them had still had him blocked. He couldn’t see their numbers, and it was as if they’d never existed in his phone at all as it dropped to the floor. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess his knees were about to buckle right about now, and it was all he could do to keep himself from hurling his guts out all over them. He couldn’t think about whether they deserved to be thrown up on now. One hand was on his face, keeping his head from pounding so hard that he really would pass out, and the other was forming a fist.

           The voice that came out of him didn’t sound like himself. Not really, but he knew it was. He never wanted them to hear it like this, but he couldn’t change it now.

           “What are you all expecting,” he asked, trying to keep his voice somewhat similar to how he’d presented it only last week. “Are you expecting me to fall apart? To cry? To crumble at your feet?”

           A few murmurs rumbled through the crowd.

           “Are you—”

           A sort of… hiccup kept him from continuing. Somewhere in another universe, he wasn’t watching every good vision he’d had of himself fizzling out, dissolving into a melted mess of wax, quickly wrenching itself from all attainability and taking his throat on the way out. Somewhere in another universe, he was not currently denying everything he didn’t want to admit while simultaneously doing just that. Somewhere he was finding his fist flying right into Silas’s face, taking one of the chairs in front of him and using it as a ballista. Somewhere else, he wasn’t currently trying to put his voice together as it fell out of his mouth and rushed to the ears of everyone in the room. Somewhere, someone was proud of him.

A/N: The plot of this is piece based off of the episode The Gang Breaks Dee of Always Sunny. I don’t take credit for the idea since it came from them first.

[writing-in-grey]

We Were Invincible

I met you my senior year of high school. You had turquoise hair and talked to me as if we’d been friends a lifetime. That first day, the day I met you, you told me we were going to the mall after school. The final bell rang and I got in your car, a Volkswagen Jetta older than we were, passed down to you from your sister, who had gotten bored of the plain white paint and spray-painted a Duck Hunt mural on the sides the way bumptious boys adorn their cars with flames. We drove with the windows down and the radio blasting, and even in your ancient Jetta we overtook every car we met.

I had never before walked into a building feeling like I owned the place, but that’s exactly what we did. We walked into the mall with our arms linked and our heads held up high, ready to take the place by storm. Seventeen years old with the world at our fingertips. We dressed up in lavish outfits, posing for each other and fitting room mirrors. We stuffed our toes into the highest heels we could find, strutting back and forth with our hands on our hips and drowning in raucous laughter. We even went into a photo booth, our arms draped around each other, making faces at the camera. When the mall closed, you drove me back to my house and parked in my driveway. The stars were out, and we lay on the hood of your car, talking until the wee hours of the morning.

That is what I think of when I remember you: high heels and photo strips and lying on your Duck Hunt car as we looked up at the stars. And, of course, that feeling – like nothing in the world could possibly touch us. Like we were invincible.

We became inseparable, you and I. At school, we were above the mass populace. We were smarter, we were more charming, we had our shit figured out. We were special. While the rest of the class continued to struggle with the assignment, we whispered and giggled in the back of the classroom, because we’d already finished. While the rest of the school had to each lunch in the cafeteria, we had special permission to eat in our advisor’s office, just us two. While everyone else got caught up in petty high school drama, we were off in our own little world, above it all.

After school, we’d spend hours at the mall. We’d have countless fitting room fashion shows, each trying to outdo the other. We’d search for the goofiest accessories we could find in the Dollar Store and model them for two-minute photo shoots. We’d race each other from one end of the mall to the other, weaving in and out of shoppers and ducking into alcoves to avoid mall security telling us off for running.

I don’t think I spent a single weekend at home the whole of my senior year. Friday nights we’d hole up in your bedroom, queue up some romantic comedy or other on your laptop, and paint each other’s nails. We even learned how to make fun patterns and designs. We’d stuff ourselves with ice cream piled high with syrup and whipped cream, stay up late, and sleep in later. 

Sometimes I’d have a change of clothes with me, but usually I’d just borrow something of yours when we finally did wake up on Saturdays. Then we’d head to Michaels and each find a craft project to work on, which we’d take back to your house and start in on with more romcoms playing in the background. That year I learned how to draw, how to paint, how to knit and crochet and cross-stitch and sew. We’d spend the whole day just crafting, half-watching movies we’d already seen or didn’t care about, and talking. Talking about anything and everything. About boys and school and all that drama we were so above. About our hopes and our dreams and our plans once we graduated.

Every other Saturday night, I’d help you dye your hair, which was ever-changing. We’d sit in your tiny bathroom in our underwear, covered in spilled color and trying hard not to choke on bleach fumes. Once I even let you dye my hair, but I picked a bad color and had to dye it back a couple days later. We got it right later, though, when I finally dared to try again.

The summer after we graduated was full of late-night adventures and sleepovers that regularly turned into two or three or even four nights in a row. Sometimes you’d text me at 10 or 11pm, asking if I wanted to spend the night. I will forever associate that summer with late-night drives down the deserted country roads between our houses, windows down, moonroof open, and music blasting.

The day you turned eighteen, I held your hand as you got your first tattoo: a purple butterfly on your wrist. Purple, our shared favorite color, the color of your walls and your bedsheets and half your wardrobe and, quite often, your hair. And a butterfly to symbolize your favorite quote: Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. You had that quote painted on your purple walls, and butterflies littered your life. They hung on your walls, painted or drawn; they decorated several of your t-shirts, skirts, dresses, even your socks; they adorned your wall-calendar and the cover of your journal; they were on your pens and the stationary that you only used for the specialest of occasions (which meant, of course, that not a single sheet had yet been used); and then there was the silver butterfly ring that never left your finger, not even for a moment. And now you had a purple butterfly permanently on your wrist, forever your protector.

I drew you a butterfly card for that birthday – sketched in pencil and filled in with soft pastels, the blues and purples blended together with my fingertips – and you hung it in a place of prominence on your wall before we left for the tattoo parlor. Sometimes I wonder if it’s still on your wall, one college dorm room and three apartments later. Somehow I doubt the card survived when not even the tattoo managed that.

We stood in your driveway on a scorching hot day in the middle of August next to your Duck Hunt Jetta, packed to bursting with everything you’d need at college. You stepped so close to me our noses were barely two inches apart, took both of my hands in yours, and said, “What distance?” You were still laughing as you slid behind the wheel of your car, slammed the door, and pulled out of the drive. I waved until you turned the corner out of sight, and you stuck your arm out of the window and waved back the whole time. Once you were gone, I got into my own car, parked on the street and also packed to the brim, and set off myself. Yes it sucked that our colleges were states apart, but I knew we’d remain just as close despite the miles between us. Like you said, what distance?

College was nothing like high school. It was loud and fast and full, and I was so very small and lost without you. I tried to make friends, but it seemed like every time I opened my mouth to say hello, everyone in my general vicinity would simply vanish, like smoke on the wind. I texted you every time I felt like crying, which was all but constantly. I asked you how you were doing, but what I meant was, are you still here with me? Are you still there to be my lifeline now that I’m finally drowning? You texted back that things were great. You’d joined a theater club and everyone in it was just so nice. They were mostly upperclassmen who had been friends for years already, but within minutes you were one of them. You said that you had bonded with three of them in particular, two junior boys and a sophomore girl. The girl and one of the boys had been high school sweethearts; you were sure they were going to get married one day, and you’d just love it if you got to be Maid of Honor. A wish you were granted, years later.

I tried not to text you every time I needed reassurance. I tried to give you space to be happy at your new school with your new friends. I knew all of that was important, so I didn’t blame you for no longer having time for me. But I still clutched my phone so tightly I thought the casing would crack, just waiting for a text to come through. I was sure that once the chaos that was the first few months of college calmed down, once you’d had time to settle into a routine, then you’d have time for me again. I could wait. I might have been drowning, but I would become a champion at holding my breath.

I even found my own group of friends. It felt like months before I did, but it was only a week and a half. I say I found them, but really it was the other way ‘round. They adopted me, just as you had. And they were wonderful, truly. There were three of them, just as you’d found for yourself. Natalie and Amelia were roommates. It was Nat who approached me first. She said that sitting alone in the cafeteria was “unacceptable,” and I was to join her and Amelia immediately – if that was alright with me, of course. They invited me to their room that evening, and, on a whim, I asked if I could bring along my own roommate, Penelope, to whom I hadn’t said more than two words in the week and a half we’d been living together. I don’t know why she came with me when I asked her, but she did, and the four of us just… clicked.

That night, once Penny and I had gone back to our room, turned out the lights, and Penny’s breathing grew slow and even, I texted you about my newfound friends. I was so excited I thought I’d surely burst, and I knew you’d be excited for me, too. I told you everything, from how we met to what we’d done all evening, and how we had plans to hang out all weekend, too. My fingers were trembling with the exhilaration of it all as I typed, and my thumb missed the “send” button three times. I watched as the words moved from the message box to the big blue bubble, as the word beneath it changed from “sending” to “delivered” to “read.”

I told myself I wouldn’t text you until you texted me, but I always broke first. I’d have some amazing adventure with my friends, or I’d get riled up about an annoying classmate, or I’d just see something funny I thought might make you laugh, and I’d tell you about it. Sometimes you’d answer – something short, like “haha” or “sounds fun” or “ok” – but mostly you wouldn’t. 

I tried to forget about you. I tried to lose myself in my new friends, these people who actually wanted to spend time with me. We spent just about every waking moment together, the four of us, making all sorts of fantastic memories. But still what I remember most about that time with them was my hand on my phone, waiting for you to miss me. And sometimes, finally, I would start to let you go, but the moment my fingertips were about to let go was always the moment my phone would ring. You were like a drug I would finally detox from my system, right before someone slipped you back in my drink.

I don’t think I’d ever been as excited for a school vacation as I was for winter break at the end of that first semester. Nor as anxious. I shouldn’t have been, but I was desperate to see you again. I tried so hard not to be, but I was. I think I just wanted to regain that feeling that you gave me, that invincibility, that feeling that I was important. I don’t know why no one else has ever been able to give me that quite like you did. Maybe it’s just because you were the first. But whatever the reason, I was like a child waiting for Christmas morning. Or maybe more like a lost puppy trying to get home.

I texted you weeks before school let out asking when you’d be home and if you wanted to get together. I’d been home for nine days already when you texted me at 10:47pm: “Do you wanna sleep over?”

I left a note for my parents and jumped in the car. The car thermometer said it was twelve degrees outside, but I put the heat on full blast, rolled down all the windows, opened the moonroof, and cranked up the music as I sped my way down the dark, slush-covered roads. I was about halfway to your house when it started to snow, snowflakes falling through the moonroof and drifting in the windows, the few that weren’t blasted immediately back out by the heaters settling on my hair and my eyelashes, but melting before they could do much more.

My safe arrival, despite my less than cautious driving in already unsafe conditions, was just more proof that, with you, nothing could touch me. I let myself in when I got to your house, as I always had. I didn’t even need to use a flashlight as I crept my way through the unlit hallways, so well did I remember them from the innumerable times I’d done this before, and I avoided all of the squeaky stairs as I made my way up to your room; your parents never minded me coming over late, so long as I didn’t wake them. When I rounded the corner of the stairs, I saw light spilling out from around the edges of your door, just like always, and that familiar light filled me the way the spirit of God fills some. I slipped in your door and shut it softly behind me, and there everything was – the purple walls, the butterflies, my sleeping bag and pillow tucked in a corner of the room. And you. You were lying on your twin-size bed, engrossed in your phone.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” you said, without looking up.

“Your hair’s brown,” I said.

“Hang on, I’m talking to Elizabeth.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay, no problem.” I don’t think you heard me.

One minute. Two. Three. I took out my phone and started playing a game, just so I wouldn’t have to stand there like a stranger in your room.

“Heeeey, what’s up!” Twelve minutes, but you finally jumped up and hugged me.

“Your hair’s brown,” I said again.

“Yeah, I decided to go back to natural for a while.”

“It looks good,” I said. “Weird, but good. I don’t think I even knew what your natural hair color was,” I laughed.

“Oh no, this isn’t my natural color, just a natural color.”

“Oh.”

“I was so happy you asked me to hang out,” you said. “I was worried you’d forget about little old me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Oh, you know, just with all the excitement of new people and places, who even has time to remember the little folk back home?” you laughed.

“I texted you a lot,” I said, “but I wasn’t sure if they went through a lot of the time.”

“I love how I don’t even have to reply but you still know I love getting your little updates.”

I swallowed, hard. “So, um,” I said, swallowing again. “Tell me about your friends at school.”

“Oh. My gosh. They are the best. Elizabeth and Benjamin just make the sweetest couple; they’re totally going to get married someday, but I told you that already, didn’t I? But even though they’ve been together longer, I still think me and Lucas are cuter–”

“Wait, you and Lucas are dating?”

“Um, yeah, where have you been?” you said, laughing again. “We’ve been dating for months. And, speaking of, guess who no longer has their V-card?” you asked, pointing at yourself with both hands. “I gave it to him after we’d been dating for a week. How. Great. Is sex?”

“So, did you just get home?”

“Oh no, I’ve been back for about a week and a half. It is so dull here; I can’t wait to go back to school. How did we survive here for so long?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. All this boredom really takes it out of a girl, you know?”

“Right, yeah.”

“Sweet dreams, then,” you said as you turned off the lights.

I unrolled my sleeping bag in the dark, arranging it and the pillow in my usual spot. I crawled in and stared at the ceiling, not remotely tired. I was barely settled when the blackness of the ceiling vanished, replaced by the soft blue glow of the screen of your phone. Through the semi-darkness I could hear the tik-tik-tiking of you texting, a sound that was still ongoing when I finally fell asleep at quarter to four in the morning, and even then I heard it in my dreams.

I woke up before you – not a rare occurrence, but usually we were up within half an hour of each other. Then again, we usually fell asleep around the same time, too; lord only knows how long you continued to text your new and better friends after I fell asleep. I dressed in the dark – the morning light blocked out, as always, by your heavy curtains – and played around on my phone for about an hour, waiting for you to wake. When you didn’t, I grabbed a book off your shelf and made my way downstairs, where I helped myself to some frozen waffles. When I finished the waffles, I stayed seated at your kitchen table and read. It was an hour and a half before you came down, and maybe I imagined it but you almost looked surprised to see me.

Once you’d finished your breakfast, I followed you back to your room, unsure whether or not that is what I was supposed to do. 

“Close the door, would you?” you asked as I entered.

I stood by the closed door as you stripped out of your pajamas and rummaged around in your dresser.

“Do you want to go to Michaels today?” I finally asked as you were pulling a t-shirt over your head. It was deep blue and featured a stylized fox face.

“Listen, I’m so glad you came over,” you said, “because there’s something I wanted to give you.” You pawed through the jewelry box on your dresser for a moment or two, then turned around to face me, your hand outstretched, palm up.

Sitting in your palm was your butterfly ring. I hadn’t even noticed that you weren’t wearing it.

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” you said. “I want you to have something special to remember me by, even when we’re far apart.”

The warmth of your palm against the tips of my fingers was such a sharp contrast to the cold metal of the ring as my fingers wrapped around it, taking it from you. It was heavier than I thought it would be. I slipped it on, internally crowing that you had given this ring to me, not to Elizabeth, not to anyone else, but to me.

That was when I noticed your wrist.

“Hey, what happened to your tattoo?”

“Oh, laser removal. I’m really into foxes now. It’s this thing Lucas and I came up with, where I’m a fox and he’s a bear. It’s so cute. I’ve got, like, fox everything now. See?” you said, tugging at the hem of your fox-face t-shirt.

I glanced down at the butterfly ring adorning my finger – so meaningful just a few moments prior, now little more than a small hunk of metal.

I wore your butterfly ring every day for four months. I would fiddle with it every time I was tempted to keep my hand on my silent phone, waiting for a text that was never going to come. That ring was my methadone, keeping my hands busy to help me kick my addiction. It worked, and it didn’t. I stopped reaching for my phone so much, but the ring became an addiction in and of itself, worse even than its predecessor. That ring symbolized my entire relationship with you – the friend I remembered, who loved butterflies and hanging out with me; and the stranger you became, so willing to throw away everything you’d cherished as soon as you found something –someone – better. That ring was so bittersweet, and possessing it caused within me such intense and conflicting emotions that I could not give up. The highs I felt when I looked at that ring were beyond anything I’d ever known, and the lows were so devastating I thought I was surely going to die. But the thing is they all came at once, those highs and lows together, so that each felt like the other, and I came to associate pain with pleasure, pleasure with pain. I had hoped, initially, that the hurt associated with your ring would help me to let you go; if I wore a constant reminder of the pain you’d caused me, surely I wouldn’t still yearn for your affection. Instead, I grew only more attached to you, desperate for you to love me again, yet still gaining some sick satisfaction when you’d inevitably wound me further. Each scar you gave me became, in my mind, proof of your affection.

After four months of anguish, I took off the ring. I no longer understood a single emotion I had, and I had long ago gone mad with longing. I didn’t know how to fix myself, but I knew that this ring symbolized everything that was wrong inside my head. I was walking back to my dorm room after class when I did it. I was walking over a storm drain, and I stopped. Both feet on the grate. I started shifting my weight from my heels to the balls of my feet and back again just to savor the feeling of the something-then-nothing beneath my feet. I remember thinking maybe shifting my weight like this was like folding a piece of paper back and forth along the same crease, weakening it until it finally rips. Maybe if I shifted my weight back and forth and back and forth for long enough, the bars of the grate would weaken and then snap, and I’d fall right in and disappear forever.

I don’t know how long I stood there, just shifting my weight between my heels and the balls of my feet, the rest of my body swaying almost imperceptibly with each shift, waiting to fall into the eternal void that surely lay just beneath the storm drain. I do know that at some point I stopped. Stood perfectly still, so still I might not have even existed at all. Maybe the people walking all around me couldn’t even see me anymore; maybe I was invisible I was so still. I was so still that even my thoughts stopped. For just a moment or two, my mind was a perfect blank, and I took a breath as I stood there.

Then I raised your ring, still on my finger, to my eyes. I stared at it for nearly a minute, and then I took it off. I crouched down on the storm grate. I took the ring between my thumb and forefinger and held it over one of the gaps in the grate. Time seemed to stop as I held your ring over an abyss, threatening to lose it from this world forever. I think I might have cried then, but I honestly can’t say for sure. I wasn’t aware of any tears rolling down my cheeks, but when the wind blew, it felt wet against my face.

I couldn’t drop it.

Time began again and I stood up and ran back to my room as though the Devil himself were chasing me, your ring clutched tightly in my fist. I flew into my room and slammed the door behind me, still not daring to stop and breathe. I strode across the room to my dresser, and the jewelry box sitting atop it. I flung the box open and dug through the tangled heap of bracelets and necklaces I never wore that lay within. I dug until I reached the very bottom, and there I placed the ring. I piled the old bracelets and necklaces over it again, burying your ring quite thoroughly. That is where I kept it from then on, hidden at the bottom of my jewelry box. Never worn, nor even looked at, yet still not thrown away.

I no longer kept my hand on my phone while out with my friends, but I still texted you whenever no one else was looking.

With the approach of each school vacation, I always told myself that I wouldn’t ask you to hang out. And as soon as I was back in my childhood bedroom, I would always text you to ask if we could. Every yes was the same: me, desperate to remind you how we used to be; and you, dangling me along on a string, gracing me with your presence but never your attention.

After a couple years at school, we each moved out of the dorms and our parents’ houses, and into apartments near our respective schools. Once you moved out, your parents even sold your childhood home and retired to a town by the ocean. I thought surely this was it, the end of you and me. After all, we only ever saw each other when we both went home for breaks, and, with the sale of the house I knew almost better than my own, you would never again have cause to return to the sleepy little town in which we met. I was devastated, and oh so relieved.

But, for reasons I may never understand, you were not yet ready to cut that string on which you held me. Instead, you encouraged me to drive up to your apartment on breaks. I would blast my music for the three-hour drive and arrive exhausted. The three of us – you, me, and Lucas, with whom you now lived – would sit on your couch for hours as you played YouTube videos on your TV, and every time I opened my mouth you’d say, “Shh, you’re missing the video!” Then I’d crash on your couch and drive three hours back the next morning.

We soon graduated college and got Real Jobs™, but not much else changed. You still texted me just often enough to keep me hooked on you, and I would still drive three hours up to sit silently beside you and your boyfriend and then three hours back about once every two or three months, whenever you had time for me. For years, this is how it was, and I was never strong enough to change it.

Then, I met a man.

It was my first time trying a dating website, and he was the first person I talked to upon signing up. The only person I talked to, actually. I messaged him because I lived in New Hampshire and he lived in California and who could be safer to talk to as I eased my way into the online dating pool than a man who lived three thousand miles away?

Falling in love with him was faster and easier than anything I’d ever experienced. A month after we started talking, I flew to California to meet him in person. By the time I flew home four days later, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him.

Nine months into our relationship, the lease on my apartment was up, my car was packed to the brim with all my worldly goods, and the love of my life was on a Boston-bound plane, preparing to be my co-pilot on a two-week road trip back to California and our first shared apartment. Here it was: the biggest adventure of my life thus far. All I had left to do was to say my goodbyes.

You said I had to see you before I left. Of course, I agreed. Luckily, your apartment wasn’t even out of the way; it was directly on the route we would already be driving. I told you when we’d be passing through your neck of the woods, date and time.

“I work Sundays,” you said. “Can’t you pick another day?”

“Don’t you get an hour lunch break, though?” I asked. “We can just get a quick bite to eat.”

“Saturdays are my day off,” you said. “Come up then!”

“But all our hotels are booked already. We can’t change them.”

“So just come see me on Saturday, go back and stay another night at your place, then start your trip on Sunday. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” I said, “is that we’re already going to be driving seven or eight hours a day, sometimes more, for two weeks straight. I can’t just add another six hours on top of that the day before, not when I’m already driving through that area anyway. Please,” I begged, “isn’t there any way we can make Sunday work?”

“I told you, I’m working.”

“Well then, you can come see me on Saturday. It’ll be fun; you never come to my place!”

“I would,” you said, “but I’m already driving down that way later that week. I’m getting a new tattoo! There’s a parlor that has great reviews just a couple towns over from where you are, actually. So I don’t want to do that many back-and-forth trips so soon after each other, you know? That’s just more driving than I think you realize.”

Saturday, the day before our trip was set to begin, you texted me: “So…?”

That was all you said. So much presumption in such a little word. The expectation that I’d move heaven and earth just to see you one last time before I moved.

I cried as I told you I would not. I told you I was sorry, that I wished I could see you before I left, but it just didn’t work out. You weren’t free when I was driving through, and you wouldn’t come see me, so it didn’t work out.

“I didn’t even know coming to see you was an option!” you said.

That conversation was so recent you barely would have had to scroll up to see it.

“I guess,” you said, “I’m just upset because I feel like I’m never going to see you again.”

It took me two days to respond to that message – two days for my fingers to stop shaking with anger, and with hurt, to be able to type. “I’m sorry you’re upset,” I said, “but let’s be real: I have never been a priority to you, and I am not going to put myself out now just to pretend to myself that I am.” I hit send, and my partner held me as I cried. I buried my face in his chest as I let out gut-wrenching sobs, and I felt his own tears fall into my hair as he bore witness to my grief.

When I finally sat up, wiping my puffy eyes on the backs of my hands, he asked me, “What do you want her to say back? How do you want this to go?”

“I don’t care,” I spat. “I don’t care what she says. I’m done with her, done with all of this. She’s never done anything to show me that I mattered to her, so I don’t care. I don’t care if she says she’s sorry or not; I’m just done.”

He squeezed my hand, not saying anything.

“No,” I said, “that’s not true.”

“Then, what do you want her to say?” he asked.

“Something,” I said.

My partner and I had an amazing road trip. We saw the New York City skyline from the George Washington bridge, and we explored Colonial Williamsburg. I met one of his childhood friends now living in Virginia, and he met one of my childhood friends now living in Pennsylvania. We explored the stunning botanical gardens in Atlanta, and a homeless man helped us change the flat tire we got as we tried to leave. We got caught in a sudden downpour as we walked the streets of New Orleans, as drenched the moment the rain started as we could possibly be. We drove through more ghost-towns than I could count, and we saw sun rise over the Grand Canyon. We stayed in 2-star hotels with comfy beds, free wifi, and free continental breakfasts, and we stayed in 5-star hotels with rock slabs for beds, $20/night wifi, and $15 plus 30% fees on room service. We played word-games to keep each other awake as we drove, napped in McDonald’s parking lots when that wasn’t enough. We drove through rain so thick we couldn’t see the taillights ahed of us, wind so strong it jostled the car, and skies bluer than I ever thought possible. And after two long yet incredible weeks, we finally pulled into the driveway that was ours-not-his, and parked.

“I guess that’s it then,” I said.

“Yup, home at last,” he said, knowing I wasn’t talking about the trip.

“Home at last,” I repeated.

“Still nothing?” he asked, glancing at my phone in my hands.

“Not a single word.”

“I’m sorry, love.”

“I didn’t want much,” I said. “I didn’t need her to apologize or say I was right. She could’ve yelled at me, called me names, told me she hated me, even. Because even if she got angry at me, you don’t get angry at people you don’t care about.”

He reached over and held my hand.

“She did the one thing she could’ve done to confirm what I said – that I don’t matter to her.”

“I know she meant a lot to you.”

I didn’t block your number from my phone, nor did I block you on social media (although I did remove you from my friends list). I don’t know why I didn’t block you. I think part of it is because I hoped you’d actually try to contact me someday. And I think part of it was because I knew you never would. And because sometimes, the only reasons I can remember for not messaging you are the two-hundred and sixty-one days and counting that you haven’t been blocked and have not said a single word to me. The truth is I miss you, and I’m not sure if that feeling will ever end. Because even though you were cruel to me for far longer than you were kind, still when I think of you it is of high heels and photo strips and lying on your Duck Hunt car as we looked up at the stars, back when we were invincible.

[ko-fanatic]

Paint on the Wall, Black in Our Minds (part one)

Rating: Teen and up, but dark themes present

Fandom: Ouran High School Host Club

Character(s): Kyoya Ootori

Trigger Warnings: Suicide attempt, self harm, eating disorders (anorexia), depression.

Summary: Paint away the pain. He'll draw himself suffering so that he doesn't inflict it on himself in real life. He'll rip his guts out on the page so he won't really split himself open with the kitchen knife.That didn't really work out though... Did it? (Tumblr Artist AU)

It was late. He could hear the crickets and cicada bugs chirping outside of his window, having called the Sakura tree right outside his window home for a good couple of months now. The sun had long since set, the moon high in the black, almost inky night sky, undisturbed by the light pollution; unlike the house they used to live in. The more rural area really was beautiful, his father citing that the fresh air – fresh start – would do him good.

He wasn't quite sure about that, but it was definitely pleasant. The garden, the stars, the balcony outside of his bedroom - even if the doors were locked by his father before the man went to bed, for peace of mind. It was just so peaceful. He could breathe, and that was certainly an improvement. He could sit back, clear his head, and focus on getting his education back on track.

Honestly, he shouldn't be up this late, but he got distracted by his sketchbook and what was supposed to be a doodle turned into a fully coloured, digital sketch. Dark eyes stared back at him from his computer screen, a slight smile quirking glossy, painted lips and glasses fogged with watercolour steam. It was actually something somewhat sweet, reflecting the atmosphere of that day.

The household had finally settled down from the stress of moving out to what was essentially the middle of nowhere, and so it was something close to normal. His father was in his study, focusing on the paperwork that had built up while he was looking after him, and Kyoya just... wandered. Trees, green leaves parting in the warm breeze and dappling the ground with golden light; it felt calming.

He stretched his arms above his head, shoulders and back cracking with that odd sense of satisfaction, stiff from hours hovering over the graphics tablet. He was feeling tired, but proud.

It had been a couple of years since Kyoya first started his little art blog, noir-nightmare, and it had grown rather popular over that time. His skill increased, as did his follower count, and he... slightly regretted that Edgy Fourteen-Year-Old™ branding. Still, he was kind of stuck with it - at least until he could actually come up with something better. He wasn't that great at coming up with URLs, apparently.

He wanted to post what he’d finished and go to bed, too tired to wait up for notifications and the surge of praise he’d latched on to in his darkest moments. His ego needed stroking every now and again, he sometimes needed positive reinforcement to just keep pushing on. It’d worked for a while, at least…

He sighed, picking at the bandages wrapped around his forearms with a frown. The wounds underneath were itchy, as skin tended to be as it healed, the stitches due to be removed in under a week. Fifteen stitches in the right, eighteen in the left. It was a wake-up call, in a way, different from the smaller, lighter scars that littered his arms and thighs. It wasn't to dull the pain, it was an end. A full stop. Nothing more, nothing less. Dulling the pain was one thing, but being so depressed that he actually attempted... That was much more serious in his eyes.

His father was horrified, of course. He didn't know about the isolation, the not eating, the cutting... They might have both cried, not that either of them would admit it out loud.

Still, as Kyoya went on his Tumblr to post the first piece he'd drawn since his attempt, he just went on his page to... stare at it a little. The post. After what was essentially a goodbye speech, his explanations and last words to his followers, his open suicide note to the blogosphere, was another text post. This was simple, three words that carried so much weight; unfortunately, I survived.

That really was what he felt at the time. He hated it, cooped up in that sterile room with the other children, not old enough to qualify for the adult's ward. He was subjected to the sound of wails and children's television that made him want to jump out of the window, but it set him on the right path. He was taking steps to fix his mental state. He had meds, and a therapist.

He was starting a new school, where no one would know him. A clean slate.

Honestly, that was the most stressful thing at the moment. He knew he could catch up with his peers, but it was pressure. Despite his insistence of the contrary, he didn’t do well under pressure.

He was also on a meal plan. He had to drink disgusting, powdery milkshakes to make up some of his calories and protein. He had to get better, had to recover, with all of his coping mechanisms torn away because they happened to be “unhealthy”. He didn’t know how else to survive. He didn’t do these things because he wanted to die; self-harm and suicide has two very separate intents. He wanted to feel, to live… Just to keep going with a semi-colon rather than a full stop. Cutting himself was preferable to, say, jumping off the roof.

Still, he couldn’t say that. He knew it wasn’t right. Instead, he had to get healthy. Gain some more weight, take his pills, sleep enough… He had to heal.

He sighed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, finishing off his post with a small caption before unceremoniously flopping on his bed.

The little boy stared out of his window, gazing at the stars and thinking of how they’d burnt out long ago. He felt such a kinship with them. He toed the line between living and dead, appearing as if he were breathing to all those around him but knowing the truth. It made him feel warm, even as his tears fogged his glasses.

Sleep; enjoy your sickly sweet nightmares and melancholy dreams.

[explorerezreal]

The Final Post (For real.)

[[ Hey guys.

As everyone knows, I officially retired this blog in December of 2016 after three great years of roleplaying in the League of Legends community. However, it just occurred to me that I have an unfinished piece of writing that I had been working on for NaNoWriMo 2015 that I never released. This original Ezreal origin story will be the final post on this blog, and my final gift to all of you wonderful people. I hope you enjoy! Love always, Ezruul @w@

                                                        Initium

                                      Written for NaNoWriMo 2015

This writing is purely a work of fiction. And by that, I mean fanfiction. Sorry guys, I’m not creative enough for anything else!

That being said, I don’t own League of Legends or any characters or specifically named locations mentioned. That honor goes to Riot Games Inc.

I wish to give thanks to my community for your undying support and faith in my writing.

I don’t remember how it started.

I remember when I figured out that everything was complete and utter bullshit, though. It was an early Tuesday, and I’d once again been reprimanded for doodling my ink-dipped quill pen all over the piece of blank parchment that had been thrust in front of me and expected to be covered in notes involving complicated mathematics that were supposed to aid in techmaturgical blueprints for future energy-saving devices that would be built across the entire City of Progress. The instructor took it upon himself to crumple the start of a shoddy ebony labyrinth that I’d created and mercilessly dump it in the trash bin beside me before handing me a new sheet, an exasperated sigh splitting his lips as he did so.

“Do you think maybe one of these days you’ll actually take notes instead of drawing all over everything, Mister Forcher?” he spoke with an edge, clearly on his last nerve with me despite it being my first lesson of the day. Good morning, indeed. Despite being a mere seven years old, my young tongue had already garnered its fair share of teeth marks from being bitten back so many times, and although I tried to make myself move, I’m not sure anything happened on my face. Or body, really. All I knew was that this thing I was in. This damn school. This damn stuffy classroom…

Had been suffocating me as though it were a toxin-filled gas from the very beginning.

Prodigy. That’s what they’d called me. I had heard the word so many times in my young life but I never got to really understand what the meaning was until I’d turned five and was placed into an educational environment that far surpassed anything that a normal child should experience. Other so-called prodigies littered the shining halls, but none as young as me. Hell, some were even university-age and beyond, but considering where it was, this wasn’t exactly surprising, though I’m sure it was a definite blow to their egos. At first, I was carefree. I of course knew I’d be starting school soon. It sounded like fun in my inexperienced head. My parents’ instructions and newfound rules were very clear, though. Instead of attempting to make friends with the neighbors and playing out in the grass, dirt and concrete beneath the dim illumination of the aged hexlight that lay just at the end of our street, I would have to study. Hard.

“You’re giving up scraped knees for papercuts.” Is what they’d say to make me feel better when my skinny fingers had grown tired of constantly turning pages and attempting to make sense of words that even my above average mind couldn’t yet comprehend. On a particularly warm day when the glare of the sunlight showed itself through the window, I found myself entranced with the red-orange swirled horizon instead of the technological banter in front of me, and the possibility of what lay beyond the walls of the only place I’d ever known captivated me like no other feeling ever had.

I wanted to be out there more than anything.

“Ezreal.”

The sound of my name was like an unexpected clap of thunder, and my small form quickly whipped around to face the textbook, again and at one point, I fantasized that it was the book itself that had spoken to me, but I’d know my father’s stern tone anywhere. I wrinkled my lips and shrank back, waiting for the inevitable.

“Please stop looking outside, Ezreal. You know why you have to do this, right? You’re a prodigy. Act like one. Your education is costing us good gold and the sooner you apply yourself and realize your potential, the better it’ll be for everyone.”

I didn’t know what this word, “potential,” was. But it sounded neat. I rolled the word over and over again in my head, considering what letters went where in its spelling. Potential.

“Potential.” I repeated out loud, nodding my tousled blonde head as I fingered the word of the book I’d stopped at, my eyes brightening with a soft, golden hue; a side-effect of the magic that lay running within my veins alongside the blood. When my father left the room, with a yawn, I’d continue to sneak peeks through the window, each glance checking to see how far the sun had gone down since I last looked. I still wanted to be outside, but wondering what was beyond the glistening white towers of Piltover wasn’t going to help me reach my potential.

I continued studying dutifully in the best ways I possibly could over the next two years, but it didn’t take long before I soon became restless, and my mind would always revert back to subjects that were far, far more interesting. I didn’t have a word for this particularly warm feeling that had settled itself in the pit of my stomach, but as I grew older, I discovered it.

Wanderlust.

It was this lust for wander that had compelled me to begin scribbling onto that sheet of paper that my instructor had thrown away, and it was also what caused me to once again start doodling instead of taking notes or focusing on what was being said in the classroom. The stale words seemed drowned out by the wondrous and vibrant images that took shape in my imagination, and I daydreamed of being somewhere else. Somewhere dark and full of danger. Somewhere unknown that had been quietly itching to be discovered. I dipped the end of my pen into the ink and started making one full line down, but before I even finished the first stroke, the instructor was back, his eyes showcasing that the last of his patience had been drained away.

“If you’re not going to pay attention, Mister Forcher, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Again.” He said, and I could feel the eyes of the other students, particularly those of the much older ones, burning into every piece of me like small branding irons. Some were apathetic, but most were annoyed. Confused. Angry. Possibly even moreso than the instructor himself. Because they didn’t understand how someone as apparently gifted as I was wouldn’t take advantage of the situation that I’d been dealt. I did not speak my response, and instead, I gathered up the leather satchel that had been slung over the back of my chair and departed the room in silence, hungry for the fresh air that would greet me outside of the stuffy walls.

The door clicked behind me, and I could hear the expected sigh from behind it, and then more words. Words that I had absolutely no desire to hear. I started walking, counting the number of times my boots crunched on the leaves as I made my way to my favorite place in the entire esteemed techmaturgical academy; a rock beneath a tree with a weather-stained bench surrounding it. Flopping my satchel atop the bench, I dug my fingers into the pockets and produced a tiny, spiral-bound book with a piece of charcoal hanging from a string attached to the center of the spine. This book was blank, aside from an assortment of sketches that I’d drawn from various areas around the campus. Since I wasn’t doing any assigned work, drawing and sketching was how I preferred to pass my time at school.

Despite my young age, I wasn’t an idiot. I’d stopped officially doing work weeks ago, and it was only a matter of time before my parents found out. I had to tell them eventually, though, that I wasn’t sure that this whole prodigy thing was really for me. When I had done the work that was expected of me, it was forced and passionless, but I’d always assumed that one day I’d realize that this was what life had in store for me. That I’d learn to love and appreciate it. But instead, every textbook I’d ever received had just made me more listless and bored.

I raised my head and took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the spring-laced oxygen. It felt cool, warm, clean, and dusty all at once. I sneezed with force, and following that, the metaphorical hunger in my stomach pleaded to be noticed as though it had physically punched me. I swallowed hard, then looked down at the sketch I’d been absentmindedly creating with the sharpened end of my charocal. It wasn’t a fantastic sketch by any means. All it was was a crude likeness of one of the leaves that had been sitting there before I’d even made the walk to the bench and invaded its personal space.

I could draw rocks and hallways and leaves all day if I wanted. Despite every leaf looking different, the overall environment was the same. And it, unfortunately, was one that I already knew. I took another breath, and then closed the sketchbook, letting the wind ruffle my hair as though it were comforting me from the troubling thoughts that were bubbling inside me. I closed my eyes, allowing it to soothe me.

Then I looked toward the sky and realized that this was never going to get better. I just simply didn’t have the drive for science like so many other Piltovians did, and I couldn’t just choose to ignore it, could I? Maybe I could. It wasn’t too late to start doing assigned work again and actually making an attempt to pay attention in lectures. I was only seven. I had a lot of time ahead of me, didn’t I? Surely I’d figure it out when the time arose, and at this point, it was probably better to just not say a thing.

My imagination caused my father’s voice to touch the sensitive insides of my ears as though it were being carried on the breeze, and my muscles bunched up beneath my skin as though an icy chill had just overcome my small body. “Your education is costing us good gold.”  

I put the sketchbook back into my satchel, slipped it over my shoulder, and soundlessly crept away from the bench, heart lightly fluttering in my throat. The last thing I wanted to do was the walk of shame all the way back to the classroom that I’d been kicked out of, so that only left one other place: the university library. No, I couldn’t go there, either. Libraries were quiet, and being surrounded by silence would only make my own thoughts louder, which was something that I most definitely did not want.

If I didn’t go to the library, the only choice left was home. Maybe if I slowed my stride enough, I’d arrive there at the same time I would if I’d gone to class and no one would suspect a thing. No, that was stupid. I’d almost forgotten it was still morning, and it wouldn’t take more than an hour for me to get back, even if I avoided using the small city paths that I’d discovered that cut the already short time in half. I’d always been good at finding directional shortcuts even when the route was already easy, but I of course had no idea how this would influence my life until a great bit later.

Again, I was internally conflicted, and I blew air out of my lungs in such a way that if anyone were around, they would have seen how intensely frustrated I was, which would prompt the more curious ones to ask why a child was seemingly so stressed. Venting to a stranger sounded nice and all, but everyone around here knew who I was, and if I’d openly shared what was ailing me, I had no doubt it would get back to my parents in some way, and that was a risk that I couldn’t afford to take.

I raised my blue eyes toward the sky that almost perfectly mirrored the shade and set off without a direction in mind, my small hand clutching to the strap of my satchel to keep the weight steady across my meek shoulder. I had no idea where I was going or where I’d end up, but the thought of getting lost had always been somehow comforting. Besides, I was pretty sure I knew how to get back to the university from any place in the entire city. Considering how tall the glistening argent pillars of the entrance were, it would really be hard to miss, even from a distance. Before long, I’d passed said pillars and came into the sight of returning students whom were ascending the steps in an almost synchronized manner, and I could see the way their eyebrows raised upon seeing me.

I lowered my head and brushed through them as though they were invisible and continued my trek, though their whispers were louder than I think they’d intended them to be.

“Shouldn’t he be in class right now? That kid’s gonna flunk.”

“He’s never in class.”

“I wonder why? Maybe he has a tutor at home?

“I don’t know. No one really d-…”

Part of me still thinks that to this day, they’d done that on purpose to get my attention and to possibly gather some information about my recent lack of attendance in the classroom, but I guess I can add it to the list of things I’ll never really know or have an answer for. All I could really do now was hope that they wouldn’t tell or that a teacher or someone of importance wouldn’t see me leaving the campus. I raised my head and darted my gaze left to right. A bird trilled in the distance. All clear as far as I could see.

For some reason, this made me grin. I remember the muscles in my cheeks turning up and me being unable to get rid of it. Maybe it was a good thing. Frowning would just draw more outward attention to the conflict within, right? If I looked happy, no one would ever suspect anything. That is, unless they too realized that I was supposed to be in class at this hour like any other typical student. I breathed in, feeling the air stretch my lungs, and then my feet were moving again, carrying me away from the university like a big burly savior, but this time, it wasn’t just a walk.

It was a sprint.

I still don’t know why I briskly moved as though a beast had been chasing me, but by the time I got to the next street over, my mouth was open and I was panting, my cheeks flushed with a dark coral tint. On the opposite side of the concrete sidewalk, I could see fellow Piltovians standing around and the distant chatter of what was probably an attempt at meaningful conversation, but my focus was swiftly drawn elsewhere. I’d been down this street a number of times before, but I’d never noticed that far off in the distance to the right there seemed to be an area that looked, well…closed off.

I squinted. It wasn’t new, and I’d realized that. The shadowy area had been there the entire time. But why had I never felt so compelled to look over there until this very moment? It didn’t make sense, but then again, I’d never had the best attention span, and really, I still don’t. Wrinkling my nose, I began a steady stride once more, wondering if anybody would see me, a child to normal eyes, attempting to enter what was possibly a forbidden and dangerous area. There weren’t any signs telling me to keep out, though, so I assumed it was alright.

Regardless, I flattened myself against the aged brick wall, holding my breath as though making any noise at all would cause me to burst into flames and then fade into nothingness. I took one step forward, then another, almost as though I was floating toward the darkness and acting like it was a bright beacon instead of a dreary shroud. My shoe crunched on the cracked, uneven cement, and I realized right then that whatever was over here had been there so long that the floor was literally crumbling.

I couldn’t see past the darkness, of course, but I could somewhat make out what looked like a really large circle in the back corner. A hole? Or a covering for a hole? At the current distance I was at, I couldn’t tell. But I wanted to know. Needed to know. I took another step against the crumbling ground, but the sound of gravel separating beneath me was drowned out by the loud gasp that had abruptly slid down my throat and the feeling of being flung back by my collar. The world spun for a few seconds before I realized what had happened and whipped around, my eyes wide with surprise. Someone had stopped me from venturing onwards. Someone had tugged me back into the light of the City of Progress.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the man got there before I did.

“Now just what on Runeterra did you think you were doing over there, young man?” the tall stranger asked me, his lips pressed together into a tight frown and his arms crossed to his chest. He seemed huge. Towering, even. But it’s not like that was really a feat when it came to being compared to me. I knew I should probably be scared by a dark-haired menace, but I wasn’t. At all. In fact, I crossed my arms right back at him, though my motions weren’t as fluid considering I had the weight of my satchel on my shoulder.

“Exploring.” I answered simply, suddenly realizing with each passing second that maybe this stranger wasn’t as old as I’d first assumed he was. Tall, yes, but he had a boyish face and a youthful physique. Teenager, I decided. Not grown up. Possible threat, regardless, though. “I was gonna explore that shadowy place over there. What’s over there? Do you know?”

There was no harm in asking, right?

The young man rolled his eyes, then looked over me and narrowed his icy blue gaze into slits, behaving as though he too had known all about the mysterious area in the close distance but had never really thought about what exactly it was. He put a gloved hand to his smooth chin and lightly rubbed, his voice vibrating with a low hum as he pondered, pulling his thoughts between what whether it was right to indulge me or simply leave me to wonder. He then turned toward me, and his face softened, making him look even younger.

“They say that the tunnels of ancient Piltover before it became civilized are down there. No one’s ever gone down into the sewers to take a look, though, so I don’t know if it’s true.” He said, his broad shoulders rising and then quickly falling again as he shrugged, arms still crossed. “It’s honestly probably just an old city rumor. Nothing a kid your age should be concerned with, and definitely not something you should be trying to get into. You could have fallen down and gotten seriously hurt, you know.”

His gaze hardened again, and I pursed my lips, then snorted. Really, it was a terrible thing this young man had done, giving me this kind of information. My already intense curiosity was suddenly severely heightened, and I hoped it wasn’t evident on my face. I wrinkled my nose, trying not to smile.

“Are you gonna be called a hero then? For savin’ me even though I didn’t really even do anything or get hurt? I was just lookin’, honest!” I said, putting my small palms up toward him as though surrendering for a terrible crime. My neck was starting to ache from where my shirt’s collar had been violently pressed against it during my “rescue”, but I didn’t think it would be enough to leave any sort of mark. Boy, would that have been hard to explain.

The dark-haired teen smiled and I could see his straight teeth were a flawless, pearly white. He certainly looked like a hero, and I wondered if it were true. My eyes must have become as round as a supper saucer or something, because he laughed, and then reached forward to place his large hand atop my flaxen head, rubbing it as though he had known me for years and this was simply a thing that we’d both come to know and expect from the other.

“Maybe. Though I don’t think anyone was around to see my so-called heroic deed.”

I glanced around the young man to see that his words were true. How was it possible that there had been so many people walking around just minutes prior and now it was only the two of us as far as the average eye could see? I certainly hadn’t gone out that far, had I? Unless I horribly misjudged the distance between the civilized street and the darkened corner and was so entranced I’d paid no mind to just how far I’d walked.

I turned my focus back up to the teenager and shrugged, absentmindedly adjusting the strap on my satchel; a habit I was sure to never break. “Good. I’m gunna go back now, then. Won’t be goin’ over here again. Too dangerous, like you said. Don’t wanna get any scraped knees or look for any gross underground tunnels.” What a lie. I brushed past the other boy’s shoulder when I felt the pressure of a hand atop my own, rightfully stopping me. I turned around again, my thin brows furrowed and my expression visibly annoyed.

“You’re really weird.” The teenager said. “Like…really, really weird. I have no idea why a kid your age would even be out here alone in the first place. Much less want to explore something that not even the Piltover protection force will touch without bare hands. What’s your name, anyway? Are you lost? Can I help you get back?”

He looked so suddenly concerned at the possibility that I’d become separated from my parents that I would have felt bad giving him the silent treatment (or lying, really), so I cleared my throat with a small cough before looking up at him once again. Man, he was tall. Even back then, it seemed almost ridiculous just how much height difference there was between us even with the gap in our ages. I huffed, then shook my head side to side, causing strands of light blonde to obscure my vision.

“Name’s Ezreal. And I’m not lost.” I said, my foot slipping back a bit to shake off some of the small bits of dirt that I’d collected on my shoe during my brief venture into the shadows. It wasn’t much. In fact, I would have liked if they’d gotten even dirtier in the midst of my stint. Something about sullying those pristine-looking leather lace-ups was incredibly satisfying. “I was just exploring like I said. And I’m okay! So I’m gunna go back now.”

Something about his tilted head and tension-ridden jawline told me that he’d stopped paying attention to everything I’d said immediately after learning my name, and pinpricks of tension formed in the pit of my belly. Adrenaline throbbed in the back of my neck, and I pondered if running would be a wise thing to do. Why did I tell him my real name? Why didn’t I just lie? It probably would have been a lot easier, considering the teenager now looked as doubly concerned as he did just a few seconds prior to learning that little tidbit.

“Ezreal. The prodigy Forcher boy? The kid that was enrolled at the techmaturigal university at age five?” he asked, spilling the information regarding my young life all over the ground as though it were a handful of small rocks. I bit down on my lip, and if my young mind had known any curse words back then, I surely would have whispered them to myself instead of standing in guilty silence. I inhaled softly, but I was soon cut off by the teen continuing to speak.

“Do you know what time it is? Shouldn’t you be in class? I mean…” He looked down at the rust-colored hexwatch that adorned his thick wrist, but it ended up being upside down, causing him to groan out in frustration as he twisted his arm the other way to right it. “Ten in the morning. Seventeen minutes past the hour. Lectures are in session for most university students right now, and yet I found you out here, trying to get into trouble.” He continued, maneuvering his other hand to press it to my forehead beneath my fringe, feeling for a temperature. “You, uh…you sick, kid? Little warm, there.”

“Magic.” I said, slapping his hand away from me with a weak fist. “Always got a temperature. Mom says it’s because of the magic I was born with or something. I don’t feel sick, though!” I chirped, wondering why I kept talking to this young man when he seemed to know everything else regarding me and my business aside from the fact I was warmer to bare touch than a non-mage would be. He nodded, then gave a thoughtful hum, seemingly satisfied. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. The papers just said you were apparently a genius and seemed to focus on it more than anything else. I forgot about the magic, too. That’s a rarity around here, you know? You should be happy, Ezreal.”

And I should be in school.

“…and in school right now! I’ll walk you back. How about it?”

Called it.

Arguing was futile since he not only knew who I was but also spoiled the fun that I was hopefully going to have in the mysterious dark corner, so I just limply shrugged, which he quickly took as an approval to start walking back in the general direction that I came from, seemingly knowing the way back to the university. I really didn’t want to go back to school, but what choice did I have? At least he didn’t seem like someone who would tell my parents, or anybody, really, about my absence in the classroom and the streak for danger that I seem to have developed in a matter of minutes. I quietly started to follow (quite literally) in his shadow, when he abruptly turned around, almost whacking me in the head with the point of his elbow.

I had never been pleased with my small height until that very moment.

“I’m Jayce, by the way.” He said, finally introducing himself, and to finally have a name to match the face made me feel a little better, but I still couldn’t help but resent him for both putting a dent in my curiosity but also heightening it to levels that I never even thought were possible. Why didn’t the Piltover protection force go down under the city’s ground? Why did the alleged tunnels only have to be a rumor? What if there actually was nothing down there at all and our plane of existence was above a mass of dirt? Or worse, air. Would the city eventually collapse in on itself and become nothingness? Would we become the tunnels?

My head felt like a cyclone with so many questions blowing around in it, but I was at least able to find my voice again before it became apparent that something far more interesting than introductions was taking precedence over everything else. I once again readjusted my satchel strap and forced a smile, but since I couldn’t see it, I’m sure it probably came off as extremely awkward. Despite my youth, I rarely had a true, real smile, and even back then, I knew that was kind of depressing. But, hey, what else could you look like when you’d been forced to study boring textbooks day in and day out?

“Hi, Jayce!” I squeaked, the high, grating pitch causing my face to flush with undisguised embarrassment. Making myself sound deeper would just seem weird and unnatural, though, so I continued on like nothing had happened. Jayce, though, didn’t seem to notice how I sounded and instead just grinned right back at me, and I wondered if maybe what I’d heard was completely different than what he’d heard. I’d hoped so.  “Thanks for savin’ me, I guess.”

I wasn’t really thankful for it, but he didn’t need to know that, right?

“No problem.” He answered, tone proud and beaming as though this had been his intention from the start. Maybe it had. Maybe he’d secretly been following me out of boredom and now was making it his self-proclaimed duty to save naïve Piltovian kids that could possibly end up in trouble or bad areas. I could just see him now running back to his home after depositing me back at the university and fashioning himself a spandex onesie with a bathroom towel attached to it. I wanted to laugh out loud at the thought, but then he’d notice and I’d have to tell him, so instead I just bit the insides of my cheeks.

“You should just try not to give into your curiosities like that again, though. The last thing the City of Progress wants is to find out one of their brightest kids got hurt doing something stupid and unavoidable. Your parents wouldn’t be too happy either!”

They’re never happy, anyway, I wanted to say, but my cheeks were still being crushed between my upper and lower rows of teeth, the pressure becoming increasingly painful the longer I held them. It was much more fun when I was trying to avoid laughing. Now I was avoiding speaking altogether, for good reason. I was suddenly conflicted with this thought. Had my parents always acted so unhappy toward everyone and everything? Or was it me myself that made them unhappy? Had they always been so strict? Or did having a so-called prodigy for a son cause an abrupt change in the way they lived everyday life?

Too many questions for too young a mind. Even despite the sharpness of my intellect, these were things that I certainly didn’t want to bother myself with, though I knew that it would eventually be inevitable.

Sometimes I really hated having so many inquiries.

Quietly, we continued walking, though I could tell that Jayce was itching for conversation that he more than likely wasn’t going to get out of me. It seemed really odd that someone like him had been out wandering around in the morning hour and just happened to be in the same place I had been. Didn’t he have friends he could bother or something? He looked like the popular type of guy that had never been left needing attention in his life, constantly surrounded by praise and adoration by peers, teachers, adults in general, anyone.

I glanced up and was greeted by the towering white pillars of the university in the distance, catching the rays of spring sun, and I shivered inside, thinking about how close it was but also comforted by the warmth of it also being far enough to have to squint to see clearly. Really, I had walked a fairly great distance for the timeframe I’d been missing, and I wondered how far I could really go if I put my mind to it. I had no concept of how long I’d walked prior or even now. My legs just seemed to move on their own even with unwanted companionship. I knew I could stand to be a tad more observant of my surroundings and observant of details in general though. Like doing a sketch, but ingraining it within my eyes and mind instead of on a piece of parchment with a stick of charcoal.

“So…”

Jayce’s deep voice broke through my thoughts. Again. This was becoming an annoying habit. I looked up at him for a split second to let him know I’d heard him, then focused on our melding shadows on the concrete as they swayed with our walk. It was funny how the dark reflections seemed to be the same size despite us being not even close. Light tricks. Weird.

“Hm?” I answered, knowing my split-second glance probably wasn’t enough to let him know I was aware and that he needed an audible cue. I could sense the danger, but I was braced for it, a feeling that would someday become the bane of my godsdamned existence.

“Are you ever going to tell me why you ran away from the campus?”

Yeah, danger. Definitely heading into dangerous territory. Young me might have not had as great of a cognitive grasp as older me does, but I’d never, ever been an idiot. Ever.

“Nope.” I mumbled, refusing to look up again. Why should I tell him? He was still a stranger, for all I knew. He had no business asking me something like that and actually demanding an answer. Then again, he also had no business interrupting my curiosity and quote-unquote saving me. Big jerk.

“Oh, okay. Are you going to do it again?” A pause, then an exhale. He seemed to be searching his internal dictionary for the right thing to say. It took a few seconds, but he apparently found it, the continuation trickling out like a steady stream of water that had come to an abrupt end. “…do I need to be on the lookout? Just in case you get into trouble? I really don’t want to see your face on the papers for anything other than some sort of prodigy thing, if that makes sense.”

“Nope.” I lied. Probably the biggest one I’d ever told in my life thus far. But I couldn’t have him following me around even as a preventive measure, could I? Even now, I still wasn’t certain that he was going to tell my parents, though he never gave any clues that he knew their names or where even to find them, so I figured at least in terms of that, I was as safe as I possibly could be. Still, I thought he might have needed more convincing, so I continued to speak, hammering in the false truth like a nail in a plank. “Not gunna do it again.”

“Good.” Jayce answered soon after, satisfied finally by my lie. I’d never thought of myself as a fantastic liar, but perhaps he assumed that I’d had a glimpse of the danger and wouldn’t dream of getting myself into something as potentially unfavorable as trying to figure out whether or not there actually were tunnels under the city. I put on my best, most thoughtful grin, and continued walking with a spring in my step, feigning excitement about getting back to school when in actuality, I had all intentions of going back to see what the mysterious unknown had for me. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not a week or a month from now.

But someday.

By that point, the university was in plain view, and Jayce gave my tousled head a gentle pat before he turned on his heel and made his departure. I waved to him, but his back was toward me, and I wondered if whether or not I’d ever see him again. It seemed unlikely considering Piltover’s large population of both humans as well as yordles, but something told me that he was going to keep an eye out for me regardless of me saying I’d never wander off toward what was deemed a dangerous place ever again. I gazed up toward the ivory pillars and slowly ventured back onto the campus.

One day, I thought. I had a personal motive and something that finally mine and only mine to work and strive toward.

If I believed in myself enough, I could make it happen.

I could make anything happen.

Something happened to me after my brush with the possible underground tunnel system, and I don’t think it’s something that anyone was expecting. If you can believe it, I actually started going to classes again and diligently completing any and all work that had been assigned to me. Yeah, I know. Crazy, right? I still wasn’t the most talkative student in any of my lectures, but the instructors honestly didn’t care so long as I kept turning work in. The load off my back was comfortable, but if anything, it was just a very potent distraction from the things that were really captivating to me. Honestly, this sudden spurt in my academic career was probably just something good to draw my attention to while I attempted to swallow down the urge to slip away from my seat and make my way back to that darkened corner of the City of Progress to debunk the mystery of what was beneath the concrete once and for all.

The work I completed was as passionless as it had ever been, but every test was returned to me with a perfect score. Every assignment flawlessly completed. At one point, I imagined that I’d get so sucked into techmaturgical studies that I’d eventually forget about what I might possibly find outside the same four walls of a classroom, but I knew in my heart that this would never be the case. I wouldn’t deny, however, that it felt great to not be reprimanded every single goddamn day by both parent and instructor alike, and as my eighth year came to pass, I wondered how long it would take before my urges broke me.

In the weeks following my birthday, the adrenaline that pumped inside my veins alongside the blood and magic seemed to push me toward a new course, and one day, in the midst of a break during my morning lecture, I gathered up my books and notes inside my satchel and headed off toward the front of the university campus, knowing that this was the day I’d both been hoping and dreading for.

I was going to find out what was under the city. And no one was going to stop me. I hadn’t seen Jayce again since our first meeting, and I hoped that there was a chance that he’d forgotten all about me by now, though that seemed too good to be true. I pressed my back against one of the pillars and inhaled, keeping my air safely locked away in my lungs as though I was hoarding it for the winter, and then took off in a rush, the wind I’d made with my run stroking through my blonde locks. From the left and right, eyes of wondering fellow students burned into me, but at least no one would think my leaving was too suspicious, considering this was around the usual time that classes had a short pause during a long lecture.

A half-hour was never enough in my opinion.

I moved with such a pace that it was almost like there was grease stuck to the soles of my shoes and I was skating across the ground, but hopefully it didn’t look quite so obvious to the other people that were around me. I knew I was being stared at, but this wasn’t a particularly new occurrence, considering I was still and probably would always be the youngest person enrolled in the university. I swallowed hard and tensed as though someone was about to scoop me up into their arms and force me back between the pillars, but nothing happened. I had made it outside once again, and now my gaze was darting left to right as I scanned the fastest route to get to the corner with hopefully the least amount of people.

Left. I should go to the left. And I had to keep an eye out, just in case Jayce decided to pop out of the woodwork and meddle. Again. I briefly wondered if I should have fashioned myself some kind of disguise before attempting to trek out toward the area that had so captivated me, but I was already on my way, and it was a bit too late. I wasn’t the only person in Piltover with vibrant gold hair, but it sure as hell made me stand out. Especially when the sun was high in the sky and casting its warm glow on the entirety of the city. I nearly tripped over a crack in the concrete, and only then is when I finally slowed my stride. Walking too fast was sure to garner more attention, anyway, and I instead took to walking at a normal pace, though my lips were still parted to allow my heavy breathing in and out with ease until that too dissipated into a slow, steady pattern.

Inside my chest, though, my heart was beating like jackhammer against my ribs, with little to no intention of stopping. Would someone be there to catch me? Would they stop me like Jayce had a few months prior? I scanned the streets for real threats, but none were detected, and I once again stole a breathy inhale before taking off in a burst of speed, gripping the strap of my satchel tightly to reduce the amount of noise the metallic buckle would make as it smacked against my hip while I ran. There were people in the distance. Of course there were people, and I’d have to take care to not make myself look like I was so obviously up to no good.

Was simply being curious really worthy of getting negative attention, though? I had no answer, and I continued my pace of running and then walking. Walking and then running. A stop-start pattern intended to get me toward my goal without one or the other drawing too much focus on myself. Soon, I saw it. The darkened corner of the City of Progress that had been on my mind from the very second I’d seen it. Taking care and knowing to expect the cracked ground this time, I crept through the dusty fog and then pressed myself against the brick wall, holding my breath. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I braced myself for either Jayce or someone else to once again play hero and stop me from accomplishing my personal task, but as I slowly expelled the air from my lungs in an invisible line, I realized that no one was coming. No one was around. No one was going to see me or stop me this time. I couldn’t help the sly grin that had stretched my lips as I carefully waded through the shadows and into the farthermost corner, looking down at the hole in the ground that seemed utterly endless and dreary. Not that I could really see much of what was there, anyway, but I was willing to take that risk. Of course, I couldn’t just simply jump down into the hole without knowing there was either something to grab or land on. At best, it would cause both of my legs to be broken, and at worst, I’d meet my end at the very bottom of an endless hole.

At least my parents would never see my body that way.

I took a step forward and crouched down, knowing the knees of my black pants would be incredibly dirty as a result of all the dust and cobwebs adorning the corner I’d burrowed myself into. I didn’t care, though. Dirt and dust was honestly the least of my worries at this point, and I thrust my hand down into the hole, throwing all caution and hesitation to the wind. I blinked, feeling something hard brush my small fingers. Hard and lined. Wood? Old wood. I moved my hand to the right and gripped. Rope. Rope and wood.

A ladder.

There was a ladder.

My heart leaped with undisguised joy as my smile stretched even farther, and I couldn’t help the small giggle that had crept up my throat and expelled out through my lips. I quickly silenced myself, not wanting my happiness to bounce off the walls of the aged, ebony brick and possibly into the ears of someone or something unfavorable. There was another dilemma of course, though. I’d felt the ladder, but I had no idea how far it went down. By this point I’d already leaned forward a bit more and pressed my hands lower, feeling that there was indeed at least two more pieces of wood, but that wasn’t really a straight answer. The only solution was to either try to find out myself, or to come back another day with some sort of light source.

I didn’t know if I’d be lucky enough to come back with no one stopping me another day, so I already knew the answer. I had to try to get down there myself. I wasn’t scared, no. Fear had always had a difficult time gripping my throat and it wasn’t about to suddenly get stronger. I had mentally weighed the pros and cons, and as of right then, there had definitely far more pros. Besides, what would I do if I didn’t go down there? Go back to school? Over my more than likely dead body.

I swallowed hard, then breathed the dusty air into my lungs and congratulated myself for not coughing and causing an attention-seeking ruckus. I maneuvered myself to begin the downward descent into the hole, my tiny hands shaking as they gripped the old rope. Could it hold me? Would it hold me? Was Jayce right? Would my name and face really end up in the Piltover papers if something terrible happened to me? Surely they didn’t care that much. At least, not when I was doing something not school related.

I pressed my foot against the first block of wood and hesitated before pressing the second one down, my knuckles turning white with the effort in which they gripped the rope. If the blocks gave way, would I be able to pull myself up to safety? Should I scream for help and give away my plan? Should I quietly accept death?

These were not questions that a child should ever have to think about, but yet, there I was, eight years old, attempting to disappear under the city that had raised me in order to possibly extract its treasures.

My grip loosened a bit when I discovered that the ladder apparently could carry my weight without giving away, and I gave a small sigh of content before slipping my hands down the rope, intending to descend to the next step. And the next.  With each passing second, more of my uncertainty fell away, and as the moist, metallic smell of whatever was underground permeated my nostrils and the hole that lead back up to the outside grew farther and farther away, I knew what the word for what I was feeling inside was.

Courageous. I was being courageous.

At least until I realized that there were no more wooden blocks for me to put my foot on for support. I had grown so accustomed to the feeling of something there to hold my weight, and when I felt nothing but air beneath me, I couldn’t help but let out a small yelp. There I was, in complete and total darkness, hands gripped to an old rope that would probably eventually snap, without any knowledge of what was beneath me.  

Even to this day, I’m not sure how I did it.

I held my breath, then let go of the rope and hoped for the best. My heart stuttered in my chest for a few beats before I realized that the ladder did go all the way to the bottom. I was safe. Unharmed. Though I had no idea what the bottom was. Or what it even looked like. I knelt down in the blackness and graced the surface of the ground with my fingers, my sense of touch incredibly heightened with my lack of vision. It felt like concrete, but much smoother. And colder. Metal, perhaps? Metal and dirt. That squishy softness was definitely dirt.

I got back up on my feet and felt for the ladder, finding it almost instantly. I gripped it in my right hand, holding tightly to it.

“Hello?” I spoke into the blackness, noticing immediately that my voice became a garbled, echoing mess that almost grated the sensitive skin of my ears. Whatever this was, it wasn’t at all a narrow, suffocating crevice. Considering that I was still answering my own greeting, I concluded that it was huge and open. A hall, perhaps. And if that was true, how could something so hollow be supporting our city beneath it? It didn’t make any sense.

Maybe it didn’t go as far as I thought? It wasn’t like I could see anything.

“Hello!” I called out again, this time louder than before, and the noise once more reverberated on the walls and right back into my own head. I might not have had use of my eyes, but after that time, I knew that my surroundings were far bigger than I could have ever imagined. Miles long, maybe. But miles of what?

I needed to know. I needed to come back down here with some source of bright light. But what on Runeterra would be big enough? A hextech flashlight wouldn’t cut it. Not at all. A lantern might work better, but that would only let me see what was a few feet in front of me at best. It would be easy to come by one, though, considering that the Arcanum at the university had them, and no one would think twice about me borrowing one, so that seemed to be my best bet, and at this point, I was going to take whatever I could get. I exhaled and I swore I could see my breath, and that’s when I realized just how cold it was down there in the middle of nothingness. Wearing a scarf in the beginning of spring wasn’t exactly common, but I’d definitely need one for a venture down here. Or even a jacket.

As much as I wanted to stay below the surface, I knew that I couldn’t be down in the dark forever, no matter how comforting it was. I was already late for class again, anyway, effectively tarnishing my perfect record over the last few months. Using my sense of touch and nothing else, I hastily gripped the rope and began dragging myself up the wood blocks until the small circle of light grew bigger and bigger. Refusing to pause to look back down into the depths, I scurried out of the hole and squinted hard, the pain of the sudden brightness impaling both of my eyes. Despite the discomfort, I was grinning. Hard.

Now that I’d known that it was safe (for the most part) to go down there, nothing would stop me from going back.

And tomorrow seemed like as good of a day as any.

I wiped the telltale dust off the knees of my pants and the length of my shirt and jacket and hoped for the best before bouncing back toward the university, hoping it was unlikely that anyone would say anything about my disheveled appearance. I knew that would be giving them far too much credit, though.

For the rest of the day, I sat quietly in my seat, scheming and dreaming of my future career as a brave explorer and guru of the mysterious Piltovian underground. I was lucky, I suppose. No one, including my parents when I arrived home, noticed anything different regarding my demeanor or the fact I was still covered in dust. What was noticeable, though, was that the very next day, I had awoken before the sun had even shown its face through my windows, and I raced down the stairs already prepped and ready for school as though I’d been waiting for the moment my entire life.  

My father had awoken with the noise of my hurried stomps and demanded to know why I’d made such a ruckus, his blue eyes so reminiscent of my own burrowing into my face as though trying to force an answer out of me with one single look. Was that where I got it from? Another ugly lie crawled up out of my throat, but I continued smiling, trying to look as excited as possible when talking about school even though the very thought made my belly sour.

“I’m gunna go study! Bright and early! Gotta take a test.” I spoke, nodding my head up and down almost to the point I’d made myself dizzy. My father looked confused as he raised his hand to his chin, lightly stroking his index finger across the stubbled skin, but then his gaze ceased to be narrow, and he reached forward to stroke his palm across my head. It reminded me of Jayce, which I wasn’t sure was normal or not. I just couldn’t remember the last time my father had shown any affection toward me at all, and this secretly disgusted me.

I had to lie to him just to get some affection? Bullshit. Always was and always would be.

“Alright, then, Ezreal. You should eat something, though. Can’t cram on an empty stomach.” My father said as he turned his back to me to get to the hexfridge in the corner of our small kitchen. He rummaged around it, muttering to himself as he did so, before presenting me with a couple of frosted biscuits in a thin plastic wrapping. Not the best or most nutritious breakfast at all, but frosted biscuits weren’t something I normally got, and it was far more exciting than the bland-tasting porridge I forced down my throat all the other days of the week.

“Thanks, dad!” I squeaked, taking the packet of biscuits in my small hand and running out the door, wondering how on Runeterra I didn’t at all feel guilty about lying to my father and essentially scamming sweet treats off of him. It wasn’t like I’d asked for them, though, right? He gave them to me, so I really shouldn’t have even felt bad in the first place. I brought one of the biscuits to my lips and obnoxiously bit into it, letting some of the frosting get stuck in the corners of my mouth as I watched the sun cast its familiar and comforting gold glow over the entirety of the City of Progress.

The yellowed hue, something that I’d never seen before since there was no possible way I’d ever been to school this early in the past, made the techmaturgical university look oddly warm and inviting, and if it wasn’t so damned stuffy inside, one would think I’d actually want to willingly go there to cram my head full of useless information that others deemed was apparently important for my future as well as the city’s future. Considering the sun had barely risen, it was a miracle that it was even open in the first place.

My shoes, a different, now clean pair, clacked against the smooth tiles of the hallway, and I clutched my satchel’s strap tightly to my chest, trying to imitate a busy and dedicated student as best as I could. My legs carried me to the Arcanum section of the university, and I pushed the oakwood door open with an offending-sounding squeak that caused my teeth to grit and goosebumps to trickle down the length of my spine. If that was the noise that happened every single time someone opened the goddamn door, it was no wonder I hardly saw anyone in this part of the school. At least the inside smelled nice. Leather and…charcoal? Huh. Weird.

I looked around and momentarily became frozen by the plethora of books that lay organized in neat rows atop many, many shelves, and I resisted the urge to run over to look through them in the hopes of finding something interesting, reminding myself of the reason that I’d even come here in the first place. Considering there was no one watching over the front desk, I supposed it would be alright if I took one of the lanterns myself without asking permission. If I  were being technical, there was no one even around to ask for permission, so with a soft sigh, I ducked down behind the front desk and fished one of the lanterns out, surprised that there were so many in such a small place. Why were there so many? What good did lanterns serve in a place that already had so many hexlights strewn about?

I shrugged to myself and grasped the handle of the lantern tightly with one hand, then slinked away from the library without a single sound aside from the stupid squeaky door, which they never oiled, by the way. Pretty sure it’s still doing that even to this day.

It was some sort of otherworldly miracle that no one saw me not only take a lantern, but also take it far away from school grounds. In fact, no one seemed to notice me at all, and I had one moment of completely wondering if I’d somehow activated one of the magical spells from the Arcanum’s library and I’d become invisible. Wouldn’t that have been easy? I walked across the streets of Piltover with precision and determination, though I wasn’t unaware of the fact that Jayce could potentially pop out at any given moment and possibly stop me. Again. But I hadn’t seen him aside from that one time, and it was still relatively early enough that I expected a great majority of the city’s population to still be catching up on their beauty sleep. I moved in the same direction as the morning shadows did, mingling myself with the darkened areas to disappear within them and not give my position away. One thing was certain: by now I’d gotten very good at holding my breath and pressing myself into tight spaces, and I imagined that this would be a thing that would come in handy later.

Finally, I saw it. The darkened corner with the rickety old wood and rope ladder. I almost wanted to happily greet it as though it were an old friend, but I resisted, my eyes as sharp as they could be while I surveyed my surroundings, looking for any danger. And by danger, I meant people. Nothing. Good. I slung the lantern’s handle over my left shoulder and immediately bounded over to the hole, peering down into it. I wondered if using the lantern’s light now would be a good idea or not, but ultimately decided against it as I began to descend down into the hole once again, putting one cautious foot in front of the other.

The last piece of wood, or rather, the lack of the last piece of wood, still startled me despite my being prepared for it, though, and I gasped out into the darkness before letting go of the rope, the soles of my shoes echoing on the ground. I breathed in the blackness for a few seconds before sliding the lantern off my shoulder and hastily turning it on, though I can’t say I was prepared for what was about to be revealed.

The light blazed out from within the center of the lantern, and, to my surprise, nearly illuminated everything within a twenty-foot radius around me. At first I thought this was a normal occurrence considering just how dark it had been in the depths, but I soon realized that the lanterns in the Arcanum were not normal lanterns. They were enchanted lanterns, rich in illumination spells.

I was luckier than I thought, but I didn’t really have time to marvel over it as much as I would have liked, considering I nearly lost my grip the thing and felt the muscles in my jaw grow loose as my mouth dropped open in shock.

It wasn’t dirt or rock beneath me. It was metal. Metal tunnels. An underground system of abandoned, metallic tunnels that more than likely had pathways spilling out through the entirety of the entire city. Of course there was some rock and dirt in the corners and the sides, but otherwise, it was slick. Shining. Gleaming.

Jayce was right. It wasn’t just a rumor. They really existed. They were here. In front of me. Still, I pinched myself on the wrist just to make sure. It stung. I was awake.

And all of this was mine for the taking. I would be able to prove to the entire city that the tunnels existed. But then what? Would they discipline me for skipping school to quite literally hide underground? Would they congratulate me for doing something no one else had the courage to do? Would they praise me?

What about my parents? It seemed odd that I’d almost forgotten completely about them. Surely they’d be supportive of my endeavors no matter what, right, right? Even if it meant throwing everything away that I’d been working for for years already.

Oh, who was I kidding? They’d be pissed and I knew it. Oh well. Their loss. 

[[ UNFINISHED FOREVER ]]

[pixelonline]

GW2 Story Week - Tor: The First Meeting

Tor never liked sailing much, or flying, or dolyak carts, or really anything that jostled him about while he was trying to read or write. Was it really so hard to just stay still so he could finish this new design? Really? Though this particular complaint had him barred from many an owner’s mode of transportation it never stopped him from voicing it.

“Asura gates exist for a damn reason,” he muttered for what felt like the millionth time. His journal open on his lap, with a sketch of what looked like a hawk coming to realization. Why his father had forced him into this barbaric traveling was still beyond his realm of understanding. He was supposed to replace his father at a trial in Divinity’s Reach, not go on some scenic tour. What good did it do commoners to see a noble traveling? To have one temporarily insert himself into their lives for the sake of appearing like he cared? They worked and lived and loved just fine without his presence, and he worked and dreamed and lived just as well without being directly involved with them. A pompous attitude, sure, but was it really different from what reality had decided was true? He cared no more for the person in the third house of the second village than they did for some Human noble’s bookah son gallivanting around. His father was an ambassador, in any case, so it’s not like anything he did even mattered to people. So long as the waypoint taxes were low and some useful Asura tech made their way to the farms there was no reason to even bother remembering the Human ambassador and his family living in Rata Sum.

The harsh ring of Fort Salma’s watchtower bell forced him out of his pity party. Next stop, this place. Check on some Human/Asura relations at the first human fort between the two capitals, chat with a trader or two, pet a cat, maybe even have dinner with some Seraph commanders or whatever. Then, his trip continues on, stopping at small settlements and trading posts, meeting those who wouldn’t know or bother to remember his face. End up at Dvinity’s Reach and spend the next few months flittering about like some self important toadstool. What a lovely trip, really. With a sigh, his journal carefully closed and fit into the small pouch at his hip, he glanced out the cart’s window to the farmland around him. Inspiration struck whenever it might, and he preferred to be able to jot them down immediately. Propriety be damned.  

His cart rolled to a harsh stop, the dolyak doing their obnoxious dolyak yell as stable hands begin the process of cooling them down. He stepped out of the covered cart, dust rising as his boots hit the ground harshly. With Tor’s face an immediate mask of noble dignity and grace, he greeted the people nearby as if he’d known them all his life. He shook hands with a Sergeant Yarbrough who didn’t seem all that pleased to meet him, and was led from the front gates through the small marketplace and into the fort’s more fortified walls. He stopped abruptly in what appeared to be the dining hall.

“My time is precious, my lord, so forgive me if I don’t spend quality time showing you about. We have centaurs invading all around here and I’m needed to protect the villagers. Your quarters are to the left, down the hall. Last room, can’t miss it.” the Sergeant was curt in his statement, already turned from the room and walking out. “The Captain will meet with you tonight, though. She’s dealing with some issues around the fort. We have a higher rank visiting as well, but she’ll be leaving soon. On some mission for the Queen.” Tor nodded, uninterested in responding. He was already planning his report of the place. The farms were a distance from the market and dolyaks were slow. They’d definitely benefit from the efficiency and speed of a hovering...well...anything.

Tor began to wander about the building. Clearly the center of the Seraph’s settlement, the rooms were all packed with either beds, weapons, or supplies. Still considering what tech would make the Fort and its residents safer, maybe a laser turret system for the centaur issue wouldn’t be the best after all, he wandered through a large door to an open plaza in the center of the keep. Obviously redesigned to be a training area, worn out straw dummies hung off wooden poles sadly and blunt weapons littered the ground. A small well in the center drew his attention. More accurately, the sound coming from the well. A woman, clad in red and gold armor sat with her back against it, humming softly as she sharpened arrows. Her long red hair kept away from her neck and face by a single hair pin, her expression serious and focused on her task.

Girenadayle.

He hadn’t seen her since he was a child. A noble as well, he recalled the times he’d seen her play in the central plaza of Divinity’s Reach. Unafraid of adventure even as a kid, she would throw herself fearlessly into whatever game they were playing. He’d watched from the royal library’s window as she bothered her Seraph sister each day to teach her how to hold a sword, what stances would bring the most to her attacks. Tor had been young when his father was chosen to move to the Asura capital, but he never forgot how this one girl stood out to him. He’d heard about her from time to time. Her sister, murdered on patrol. She joining the ranks after her father was claimed by them as well. She rose to lieutenant quickly, rumors claimed it to be because of her nobility, though he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it couldn’t be true.

“Are you going to stare much longer? It’s getting annoying.” She glared in his direction and a thousand daggers pierced his body. No, there was no way she used her noble rank to gain her military one. Her eyes had been sharpened by many, many battles, that much was obvious.

“Er...I-I, yes. I mean, no! I mean...it’s nice to see you. Again. Once more.” Shut up, shut up, shut up! Mashed onions for brains, Tordacien. He stepped towards her and offered a polite bow. Perfectly noble. Not at all weird. It was completely normal to bow to a soldier. Yep. Everyone did it. All the time. She...she was still staring at him. Slowly from boot tip to skull. He felt like a show moa. Had he been assessing her like this? Surely not. ...Right?

“Book kid. You went to Rata Sum. Not much of a dancer, if my feet remember. What are you doing here?” She set down her arrows and stood. “There isn’t much in the way of Asura here, and if you’re heading to Divinity’s Reach I’m fairly certain the gates are much faster.”

He let out a sigh so deep his entire body slacked, the ping of embarrassment at her remembering his two left feet immediately gone. “Thank you. That’s what I said, but no, I’m supposed to see how the settlements between here and Metrica are, get an idea of how the people we govern live, but we get reports every week so how is seeing it myself supposed to change anything? I’m replacing my father at the royal court this year, not taking a nice tour of the territory and have inane talks about things those living it understand much better than I.” She chuckled as he ran out of air for his sarcastic rant. Leaning against the well she seemed entirely at ease now that he’d dropped his own formal posture.

“Well, you can’t do good with laws and whatnot if you don’t see what the needs are, can you? You sound an awful lot like Faren, though you’d think all the books would have made you far more intelligent. You have a responsibility as a noble and representative of Kryta, you should probably act like it. These people, all people, work hard and deserve your full respect.”

He gaped. She just compared him to the most pompous imbecile in all of Tyria. That pinhead couldn’t be a decent Lord if someone covered the goal in women and coin. A constant fountain of ego, even as a child. He’d never liked Faren. None of that having to do with him easily becoming friends with every child, while Tor found himself lacking the skill, of course. Unable to retort, Tor stood there, completely engulfed in old jealousies and new shame. She definitely had a point. Multiple, even. He’d been treating these people as if they didn’t matter, and she saw right through him. Damn fool, even as an adult.

“I’ll be a court in a few days, myself. Captain Thackeray and I have been building a case against someone very dangerous. We may see each other then, Lord Tordacien.” She walked past him, bumping her armored shoulder against his. The shock of her so close, so warm, drove him out of his thoughts.

“Lady...Lieutenant...er...G-Girenadayle. You, uh, you know...I prefer Tor. My name is kind of a mouthful. And overly grandiose.” He hated stuttering. He thought he’d conquered this while attending the College of Statics, but it would seem that the case not so.

She smiled. “I completely agree. Giren, for me. See you in Divinity’s Reach, Tor.”

He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, until she was completely out of sight. She knew his name. She knew his name. They’d only spoken a handful of times at social gatherings. Years, and years ago. He sat down with a thud. She knew his name, wanted to see him again! ....And most likely thought he was a complete ass. Of course, he sounded like one. The commoners, farmers, tradesmen mattered, dammit. How could he have even thought otherwise?! Without them, nothing would function. Every person in Kryta mattered, made their society function and flow. He was no better than them, he’d never had to do hard labor in his life. There’s no way he’d be able to survive the way these people did with what looked like ease. He rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted suddenly. Yep, he’d been a right bear’s rear end. He left the plaza consumed with examining his past behaviors. He’d have to treat his traveling companions when they reached their final destination. He had no doubt that he’d been a pain to be around. As the Sergeant said, his quarters were easy to find, much nicer than any of the other sleeping areas he’d seen. He was grateful that they’d tried to make him feel welcome, though the streak of guilt at the residents going out of their way to make a room nicer just for him still struck. Sitting at the small writing desk in the far corner of the room underneath a window with just enough of the setting sun’s light creeping through, he pulled out his journal. Opening to a new page, he began to write.

Entry 1: Fort Salma

I’ve been quite terrible, recently. Lady Gi Giren reminded me of that. She’s very much the same as I remember her, and so much better. I know now why I’d never seen her around when visiting the capital from time to time, she was out changing, learning, being someone people needed. And what have I done? Wallow in my own thoughts and never once thought of anyone else. That changes, as of now. I’ll take on this duty to meet the people of Kryta seriously and listen to their concerns. What I can’t change myself I’ll take to the ministers. Surely someone has the capability to fix what’s wrong. It’s well past time to get serious. After father’s task is completed, I’ll find something to do that puts some meaning in my life. Continue working on those elixirs I had such an affinity for in my schooling, maybe. We only met for a moment, but still she is an inspiration, isn’t she?

[shleyaay123]

What Curiosity Brings

Inspired by this lovely piece of fan art by @thegreencarousel and the many posts of Crewt Auntie @linddzz. Now on AO3.

Credence Barebone/Newt Scamander 

“It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.”

Credence knew that snooping through another’s belongings was wrong. Snooping was the result of too much curiosity, and curiosity came from the Devil’s whispers. Curiosity drove even the purest souls to sin. Snooping led to belts, punishments and pain.

Snooping led to finding wands under beds and Mother screaming as she flew across the church rafters.

So it was certainly not out of curiosity that Credence rifled through the bottommost drawer in the desk that Newt had so long ago pushed into the corner of his shed. He had run out of ink and hadn’t been able to find another inkwell in the chaotic debris of parchment and seeds and vials that Newt called his workspace. Of course, without more ink, he could not finish his task of deciphering and editing Newt’s notes into something comprehensive and grammatically correct. And so, not wanting to aimlessly wander the suitcase in search of his energetic lover—oh, and how Credence’s neck flushed warm and red at the very thought of that new development, indeed—he had begun to pull out drawers and shuffle their contents around with soft nudges of his fingertips.

Curiosity did not make him open the bottommost drawer in the desk, but before he could recognize the signs of its arrival within his mind, his eyes had caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of the drawer behind a thick brown folder. At first he jumped, afraid he had stumbled across one of the tinier creatures calling the suitcase home. Very quickly, however, did he realize it was something else entirely.

And that was when the curiosity struck.

Curiosity brought his hand forward. Curiosity folded his fingers around the brown folder and pulled it into the light. Curiosity possessed his mind and drove out any thoughts of privacy, of punishment or sin. Curiosity, so innocent and silent, made him open the folder and stare at the photograph laying at the edge among fading yellow pages covered in scrawling, glistening calligraphy.

Credence was not unfamiliar to magical photographs anymore. The old textbooks Newt loaned him when the Obscurus had finally settled back into his bones and magic had become something less mysterious were full of them. He had seen plenty of smiling portraits of influential wizards and sketches of bubbling cauldrons with black ink spilling over their rims, but this...this was...

A cold breath slithered from his lips as he pushed a loose cascade of dark tresses up to one side of his head in an absentminded gesture of unease.

This was all wrong.

It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.

Gone was the confident, determined posture that came from being around his charges, and there was no sign of the playful smirk that appeared when the wizard was being particularly badgering and teasing to those he trusted most. The young man in the photograph held a dark jacket over his shoulders, more like a security blanket than a cloak, his ginger hair cut short and his eyes shadowed and dark from a clear lack of sleep. His cheekbones were sharper, his freckles less pronounced, and despite his youth, there seemed to be a stifling weight upon his posture that Credence could never imagine his current companion suffering through today.

The younger Newt wore a dust brown uniform with simple braid and buttons, a multitude of restraining belts and pouches wrapped around his waist, hips, and chest. He stared at Credence for only a few seconds, each one painful and pleading for some unknown torment to end, before quickly shifting away to the floor. Even this familiar lack of eye contact felt off, as though this young wizard was afraid of being both praised and rejected for his very existence.

The Newt that woke Credence every morning with a gentle hand on his arm and a kiss upon his lips was not fond of maintaining eye contact with humans, either, but never did he attempt to apologize for himself in any way, shape, or form. His Newt remained, in all circumstances and weather, a wild, fantastic beast all his own. This young soldier, this innocent boy, practically screamed guilt and despair with every shift of his slowly hunching body.

The Obscurial found it all a bit too familiar.

“Credence?”

“Ah!” Credence clutched the folder to his chest, blinking rapidly in the sudden onslaught of awareness that he had been crouching on the floor of the shed for quite a while now. The shadows that stretched up the walls had grown higher, darker, as the sun at the height of the suitcase began to fade into a dusky orange. “I’m sorry!”

Credence turned his head and peeked up between the curls that had fallen back over his shoulders, watching as Newt tilted his head to the side and smiled.

“What on earth are you doing down there?” He asked, ignoring Credence’s automatic apologies with the same amount of concern he had never given them to begin with. “Drop something?”

“...no...no, I-uh…” Credence loosened his grip on the folder pressed to his chest, and only then did Newt seem to realize that it was there. Subtly, so much so that anyone who didn’t know the Magizoologist extremely well would have never noticed, his expression froze. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Credence watched as Newt’s lips grew tighter, his eyes grew darker, and his shoulders pushed back as though bracing for a standoff with a wild, stampeding Graphorn. His smile stayed in place, plastered and false, as though he were determined to push his worries out of his mind through sheer force of fragile optimism.

Had Credence been physically capable of hating any part of Newt, that fake smile would have been at the top of his list.

“I’m sorry. I was looking for more ink. I didn’t...” He whispered, forcing his gaze to settle on a spot of mud that had managed to find itself stuck to Newt’s white collar. He had been with Newt long enough to know that no beatings or scathing remarks would follow his confession, but the silent fear of being cast aside still thrummed through his veins with every shaking breath he took. “I saw the picture move, and I wanted to see what it was.”

“...Hmm, you found the picture of me and my brother, then?” Credence winced at the slight strain in Newt’s falsely cheerful voice before glancing down at the photograph in confusion.

“You have a brother?” He had been so focused on the faded depiction of Newt that he had completely overlooked the taller uniformed man standing at his side. Now that he looked closely, however, he realized that besides the light sprinkling of freckles across their cheeks and a similarly chiseled jawline, he never would have known that the two men were related.

Where Newt had shuffled uncomfortably in his own skin with a frown, his brother stood tall and straight. His eyes were hard and cold, though not unkind, as he stared back at Credence’s curious expression. His hair was darker, straighter, and slightly styled to lie flat along the top of his head in a futile attempt at self-control. A dark wand rested lightly in his right hand, though Credence had no doubt that that same grip could become unyielding and proficient in a manner of moments at the first sign of trouble. As the image of Newt shifted his gaze downward, the elder Scamander raised his chin as though silently attempting to compensate for his sibling’s shortcomings.

Credence decided that he disliked him immensely.  

“Yes. Theseus, he’s older than me. He’d already been in the war for almost a year before I joined the DRRB on the Eastern Front.” Newt groaned as he bent down to join Credence on the floor, folding his legs beneath him as he leaned over the open folder. “This was taken before we went our separate ways, about two weeks after I started training. My mother insisted.”

“Durb?” Credence asked incredulously.  

“Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau.” Newt chuckled, his eyes never shifting from the photograph of his past. “I don’t think anyone was surprised. Theseus wasn’t, at least, he made that quite clear.”

“He looks…” Credence bit his tongue, not wishing to offend the older man more than he already had with his violation of privacy. Damn his curiosity.

“Intimidating? Brave? Dashingly handsome?” With each description, Newt’s voice dropped slightly in a strange mix of bitterness and resignation that did not sit right with Credence at all.

“Bossy.” Credence felt Newt’s head snap up, and just before the Obscurial could open his mouth to apologize once more, a high pitched wheezing followed by a short, deep snort echoed through the room. Credence looked up from the photograph to see Newt’s fist hovering in the air below his chin, as though he wished to politely cover his snickering mouth but was powerless to do so. His eyes crinkled in mirth, and the cold squeezing in Credence’s gut loosened ever so slowly.

“Oh, you are wonderful,” Newt wheezed. “That, yes, he was definitely bossy. But, I suppose, he wasn’t the worst as siblings go.”

Credence felt his cheeks heating at the compliment and quickly glanced back down at the folder now sitting in his lap, pushing the photograph to the side and skimming the pages behind it. There were a few newspaper clippings detailing the gritty horrors of different warzones, with black and white landscapes devoid of any life littering the sides of bleak texts. Behind the clippings where thick pages of what appeared to be early versions of Newt’s field notes, all concerning different breeds of dragons. Rough sketches of claws, wings, and snouts were splashed here or there with charts and uneven paragraphs, and Credence could not help but smile.

“Did you like working with them? The dragons?” He asked, pulling out a fully detailed drawing of what was labeled as a “Ukrainian Ironbelly”. The beast had an impressive wingspan, its body arching upwards in a proud stance that showed off the detail sketched in the scales running up the dragon’s side. Deep red eyes stared at an invisible opponent, its jaws unhinged as though about to release a jet of flame into the air.

“…for the most part. They really are the most beautiful beings, if you treat them well.” Newt reached up and gently took the drawing out of Credence’s hand, scrutinizing his past work with a hint of a smile and a soft sniff. “Not easy to do when you’re forced to ride them into battle, let me tell you.”

Credence tried to imagine it, tried to picture Newt’s young freckled face twisted in fear and determination as he held onto the horns of his beloved beasts, with dark clouds crashing down upon them en masse. Just as the image began to fully form, and just as the cloud began to morph into something so much more personal and violent, he banished it forcefully with a shake of his head. The last thing he wanted or needed was to think of Newt screaming and falling…or worse…

Newt must have noticed his mouth twist in despair at his morbid thoughts, because the next thing Credence knew, there was a gentle hand in his hair rubbing at his scalp in soothing circles.

“Hey,” Newt murmured in his ear, “none of that, now. I’m right here. It’s alright. It was a long time ago.”  

Credence forced himself to nod. After a brief hesitation, he placed the folder onto the ground and folded his body into Newt’s calming embrace. They sat like that together, lost in memories and daydreams alike as the sounds of the worlds beyond the doorway filtered in and out of the tiny shed. Credence glanced at the old sketch of the Ukrainian Ironbelly still resting in Newt’s hand, admiring how far they had both come in so short a time, together and apart.

“…well, some things haven’t changed, at least.”

“Hmm?”

“I still can’t read your handwriting very well.”

“My handwriting is perfectly legible, thank you! It’s not my fault you Americans just use chickenscratch and be done with it!”  

[shirlleycoyle]

The Boy on the Mountaintop

Our subletting Funbagger Drew Magary’s third novel, Point B, was released yesterday. A reader once said Drew’s novels read like a really long answer to a Funbag question. So it is with Point B, which asks the question, “Hey, what if you could teleport anywhere you wanted, simply by using your phone?” The following excerpt provides one of many, many answers.

THE BOY ON THE MOUNTAINTOP

By Katy Wagner, GizPo

9/21/2030

(COOS BAY, OR) — Melanie Greenberg has a plan for what to do if she ever meets the Kirsch family. She's rehearsed her speech in the mirror for over a year now. Late at night, when she's mired in the private hell of insomnia, she'll jot down tweaks to her working script, each word chosen carefully for maximum impact. She's learned to write legibly in darkness; rarely does she misspell a word or write one word over another despite writing blind. She can feel the pages for indentations from where she's put pen to paper, so she can locate free white space beneath. And she has sharpened the words down to a blade, so that when she sticks them into a Kirsch, they'll leave a mark.

Can you tell me what you plan on saying?

"The words 'you killed my son' will be in there somewhere."

You think they killed him.

"I know they did. Emilia Kirsch runs the company. Jason Kirsch invented the technology. Tell me who else would be responsible."

Do you want to physically harm Emilia and Jason?

"Yes, but I know I can't. I've convinced myself it's the wrong idea anyway. I want them to live with the hell of being themselves. Emilia and Jason can stay rich. They can stay free. But they'll always have to live inside their hateful bodies, and I want that to hurt them."

It wasn't always easy to get to Coos Bay. You used to have to drive here from Portland, taking the 5 South down to Route 38 and then across to 101, a tattered ribbon of a country highway that would test even a cast-iron stomach. That slim passageway through the wild, coupled with eternally damp weather, was enough to keep Coos Bay relatively isolated in the beginning of the century, especially as shipping jobs began to dry up and drugs took hold over this otherwise anonymous bit of Oregon shoreline.

"We'd have campers and tweakers," says Greenberg. "But now you get these clusters of surfers and fishermen, all zapping in together at exact times and making a goddamn mess before zapping right back out again. And, of course, we have a few port refugees from here and there."

But the greater impact that porting has had on Coos Bay hasn't come from people bypassing the endless roads to come here, but rather its original residents leaving. When the world opened up, the youth of Coos Bay fled in droves. So many kids have dropped out of nearby Marchfield High that the school has been forced to shutter entirely.

One of the kids who dropped out was Melanie's son, Jeffrey. If you're conjuring the stereotype in your head of what a high school dropout might look like these days—lazy, disaffected, porting at random, addicted to black market opioids, etc.—Jeffrey's story will alter that image drastically. He was a straight-A student. He was lead trumpet in the school marching band. He never drank or smoked. A sophomore at Marchfield during the advent of porting, he was already receiving letters from prominent Pac-12 schools with hints of scholarship money in the offing.

"I think, in some ways, porting has been worse for the smart kids," Melanie tells me. I'm in her house right now. It's a split-level abode nestled deep in the woods. This is an area that gets little port traffic, although that hasn't stopped Melanie from keeping dozens of guns handy to fend off aggressive trespassers and would-be squatters. She makes me a fresh pot of coffee but, in a moment of absent-mindedness, forgets to put a filter in the coffeemaker. Hot water and loose grounds spurt all over the kitchen counter.

"Jeffrey wanted to leave Coos Bay, and I don't blame him. I mean, this place was a meth hole. He was excited to get out and see the world, and I was excited for it, too. I just think you have to be ready, you know? No one was ready for it."

She held off buying Jeffrey a PortPhone for as long as she could, but after he saved up hundreds from his own personal landscaping business, she couldn't fend him off any longer.

"I remember where he ported to first," Melanie says to me as she rinses the soaked coffee grounds out of her pot and puts in a fresh filter. "It was Cancun, which is predictable for a 16-year-old. I made him promise only to go for a couple of minutes. So he zaps out, and I'm waiting, and waiting, and I've got half a mind to go to his pin and thrash him in front of all of Mexico. Then he finally came back."

And what was that like?

"He wouldn't stop laughing. That ever happen to you? You're so happy you start laughing, and you don't know why? It was that. And I saw that look of joy from him and…" she begins to cry, "I'm a mom, you know? When you see your kid happy, you want them to stay that way forever. It's like when you give a small child candy, and they go crazy for it. It makes you want to give them more. To spoil them. Because it's so easy. Spoiling them makes them happy. But you know you can't spoil them always because if you keep giving candy to them, it'll…" She can't finish the thought. She presses her hands against the counter and lets out a long exhale.

Jeffrey began porting every weekend, and then every night. Once PortSys began offering unlimited plans, Melanie felt powerless to stop him. He always managed to talk his way out of having the phone confiscated. Sometimes they would port together places, but more often it would be Jeffrey out in the world on his own, Melanie dying a little inside every time he vanished.

"Everything was different overnight, and I needed more time to adjust to that. We all did. We all still do! But PortSys? They never gave a shit. They weren't careful. They didn't bother preparing anyone for this kind of world. They charged ahead because they knew no one would ever have the courage to stop them."

One Sunday in May, Jeffrey told his mom he was going to Los Angeles with fellow bandmate Paul Gallagher. They had an agreement that he would share his pin with her anytime he went somewhere. This day, the destination was the Santa Monica Pier. Melanie watched Jeffrey port out, then ported to Atlanta herself to visit a friend before coming home to wait for him.

But Jeffrey never showed. Melanie called her son. She texted. Still no answer. When she checked her own PortSys account, she realized that Jeffrey had unfriended her that morning, leaving her unable to see his port history. By the time Monday morning arrived, she had turned frantic, porting to Jeffrey's chosen pin on the beach and wading through hordes of unimaginative tourists to look for her son, a human needle in the haystack. When she called PortSys to try to verify his current location, they refused to disclose it.

"Sometimes," Melanie says, "You trust your children too much, you know? Jeffrey was such a good kid, I'd have trusted him with any decision he made. But then I would forget he's still just a kid."

What Melanie didn't know was that Jeffrey's trip to Santa Monica was actually a premeditated ruse. He and Gallagher weren't going to California at all. Rather, they had spent the better part of a month sketching out a plan to port to the summit of Mount Everest. They studied storm patterns. They borrowed mountaineering gear from a friend (lightweight, to adhere to PortSys' YOU PLUS TWO guidelines, which allow for teleporting an extra two kilograms on your person in addition to the mass of your naked body) plus bottles of supplemental from a more experienced summiter. They went on long runs in high altitude cities: cities that Jeffrey had truthfully told his mother he was going to visit, while keeping hidden his ulterior motive for the jaunts.

The plan was port to increasingly high altitudes, get acclimated, and then hit the summit. Once on the roof of the world, Jeffrey and Paul would take in the view of the surrounding hemisphere, get a selfie, and then leave in an instant.

It is, of course, not legal to port to the summit of Everest. Since the advent of porting, only the South Slope of the mountain is open to climbing, with the North Slope formally closed by a Chinese government that outlawed porting from the start and has no plans to reverse that policy. Thus, oversight of Everest's unlicensed port tourism has fallen mostly to overwhelmed Nepalese officials.

The path to the summit was awash in litter and human excrement long before the advent of PortPhones, and porting has only exacerbated the problems at the top of the mountain. As with other national landmarks all over the world, port tourists have overwhelmed and desecrated what were once carefully preserved lands. In a bit of morbid irony, the deadly environs of Everest have help protect it from being completely overrun. Other parks and attractions lack such natural deterrents.

And standard tourist attractions are even more vulnerable, particularly spots highlighted by popular WorldGram travel accounts like @GoHere, which can create nightmare crowding situations the instant it recommends a porting destination. The Eiffel Tower in Paris is patrolled by armed forces at all times because port tourists stampede in at all hours, but the Tower is fortunate enough to be able to afford that security. Prominent amusement parks like Cedar Point in Ohio now must charge by the ride instead of charging gate admission because they can't build a portwall large enough to secure the grounds. Pebble Beach golf course in California now has PINE agents on carts patrolling the holes 24/7. Other hotspots, such as Monte Alban in Oaxaca and parts north of the aurora oval in Alaska, lack the funding to afford a portwall or beefed-up security, and have thus suffered environmental and ecological decay due to massive increases in foot traffic.

The summit of Everest, despite its hostile climate, has also suffered likewise. Perhaps it hasn't suffered the same amount of damage as Uluru in Australia, but any damage done to the roof of the world is substantial and permanent. New mountaineering laws have not helped. Anyone caught porting to the summit of Everest is subject to arrest and fines in excess of $500,000. But catching violators and enforcing fines is nearly impossible. While Nepalese officials were glad that porting eased some of traffic to the summit, they have had little control over the inevitable overcrowding that now routinely happens on it, especially when weather conditions prove favorable. How can you control the top of a mountain when anyone can get there by pushing a button and stepping into a wormhole? You can't keep a police force 33,000 feet up in the sky. You can't patrol it from the air. Proposals to create a portwall around the summit have proved unworkable.

To prevent being identified at the summit, Jeffrey Greenberg and Paul Gallagher left their passport lanyards behind in a still-unknown location. Jeffrey's callowness meant that he had vastly overestimated his ability to execute the Everest plan. As they ported from one acclimation point to the next, Jeffrey complained to Gallagher that he felt nauseous and dizzy: unmistakable signs of altitude sickness. An encroaching storm system—not exactly a surprise development around Everest—forced Jeffrey and Gallagher to accelerate their plans and shorten their acclimation intervals so that they could port to the summit and get out before the squall bore down.

That would prove to be a fatal error, because Jeffrey's lungs were already starved for oxygen. At the peak of Everest, the air only has roughly a third of the oxygen contained in the air at sea level. That thin air, combined with the drop in air pressure, can tax the lungs of even a seasoned climber. And Jeffrey was far from that.

The instant the two boys ported to the South Summit, with an altitude of 28,704 feet, Jeffrey collapsed and began to convulse, the result of a cerebral edema. Gallagher, now terrified, tried to program Jeffrey's PortPhone to port his friend back to safer ground, but couldn't get his bandmate's finger to hold steady on the phone's scanner prompt. Even if Gallagher had succeeded in this, Jeffrey never would have been able to take the crucial step to complete the porting. He was stuck seizing at the summit, his body desperate to hyperventilate but too weak to do so. His diaphragm cramped into a hard knot. The oxygen supply to his brain got cut off entirely. When Gallagher called American medical startup 1RSPND and begged them to have first responders port to the summit, the company told him that they were over their monthly porting data limit, and that PortSys had throttled their service. Mountaineers that had secured official permits to summit the mountain began to openly grouse at the two boys clogging up the summit, which has a surface area roughly the size of an apartment closet. No one was going to help Jeffrey Greenberg.

It was all over in less than a minute. A nearby team of experienced climbers, who had made the summit the old-fashioned way, rushed to administer CPR to Jeffrey, but by then he had no pulse. With the storm closing in quickly, Paul Gallagher, who would only agree to speak on background for this story, had little choice but to abandon his friend right there, 100 meters below the highest point on Earth.

Jeffrey Greenberg's body remains on Everest to this day, scattered among the hundreds of other corpses resting on the mountain that cannot be removed, neither by porting nor by law. He is far from alone in being the only young person to meet a gruesome fate by porting somewhere he didn't belong. There was the case of Taylor Garrison, a college student who accidentally ported into the middle of the Pacific Ocean and drowned. There was the case of Megan Abay, who got stuck in a faulty wormhole that teleported her back and forth from her apartment in Chicago to her parents' home in Addis Ababa every microsecond, splitting her into two places simultaneously and destroying her mind. There was Leann Egan, who was ported 200 feet above her intended pin in Maui thanks to what PortSys described as a "glitch" in its famously guarded algorithm. She fell to her death.

And then there was the strange case of Anthony Drazic, a seven-year-old who, through yet another system "bug," ported directly into the body of a full-grown man named Joshua Klim, killing both instantly. Drazic's body had to be surgically removed from Klim's abdomen in a gruesome Caesarian section that would take a Serbian coroner thirteen hours to complete. To this day, it remains the only violation of PortSys's supposedly ironclad law that solid matter cannot port into other solid matter. And then there are, of course, the tens of thousands of runaways and refugees shot and killed by interior patrols lurking in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, and every other country looking to crack down on port migration.

These deaths, be they the result of direct failures in PortSys's algorithm, or the result of PortSys failing to curtail its users' more reckless impulses, have invariably resulted in solemn statements issued by the company, along with any number of discreetly agreed-upon cash settlements. Melanie Greenberg was offered $28,000 to settle her case against PortSys. When she refused and filed a formal lawsuit, the case was thrown out in Federal court after Congress passed a law that made it illegal to sue "any porting carrier" (curious wording, given that PortSys is the only porting carrier in existence) for accidents resulting from the use of their products.

Calls for PortSys to restrict how users port—into private homes, into war zones, and to dangerous terrain—have been rebuffed by the company in the name of port neutrality. The closest PortSys has come to fixing the problem is establishing two-factor confirmation for any user wishing to port into "conflict zones," areas marked as dangerous by the company (of course, those designations have often been met with vehement protest by residents of said zones). They promise that the bugs that killed Josh Klim and Leann Egan have been fixed in later software updates. The company's parental controls, ostensibly introduced to help parents monitor where kids port, remain cumbersome and lightly used.

When Jason Kirsch was confronted with these facts in an email exchange with me, he remained defiant.

"Our terms of service are clear," he told me. "Our port moderators do not advise people porting to certain areas they have declared as unsafe, but we are not going to close off those areas and restrict the God-given freedoms of those who are experienced and hardy enough to tackle that kind of terrain. I myself have ported to such locations. Have you been to the top of Devil's Tower? I have. It's breathtaking. It is incumbent upon users to follow both their better instincts and the laws of anywhere they choose to port."

"So you're absolved of all responsibility in these deaths?" I asked him.

"Let me make it clear, Katy: This company saved the world. You know that. I know I speak for my mother when I say it's a terrible thing any time someone experiences a porting malfunction."

You mean a porting death.

"No, these are unfortunate malfunctions. In the event of someone harming himself during the porting process, we mourn just as his family mourns."

I don't believe that.

"Believe what you want to believe," Jason Kirsch wrote back. "I have the facts on my side, and what the facts say is that porting solved this planet's energy crisis, along with its housing crisis and its traffic crisis. People can now evacuate from natural disasters in a snap, and rescue workers can port into those same areas with equal speed. Once we get China on board with porting, we'll have improved modern civilization by orders of magnitude. To me, it's insane that some people don't appreciate this. WE INVENTED TELEPORTATION. How can you not be astounded by that? I'm astounded by it every day! Do you understand how many lives this company has saved? 40,000 automobile related deaths in the United States alone. Every year. All saved. Why is that not the focus of your story?"

(Jason Kirsch is not entirely correct here: While passenger automobile deaths are now nearly extinct, trucking fatalities have increased over 500% since the advent of porting, thanks to decaying highway infrastructure plus huge increases in demand for construction and shipped goods in formerly remote areas.)

Melanie Greenberg has never seen her son's body. To visit Jeffrey, she would either have to pay an outrageous amount to have it removed from Everest, or she herself would have to port to the summit, something she is terrified to do both from a physical and legal standpoint. For now, Jeffrey's body remains on display in a permanent, open wake she'll never be able to attend. She long ago forgave Paul Gallagher for his role in Jeffrey's death. Instead, she saves the bulk of her ire for PortSys and the Kirsch family. Sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning, she discovers that she's written hundreds of words in frantic night scribbling. She shows me the notes, which take up an entire filing box.

Are all those notes for the Kirsches?

"Not all of them. I spare more than a few for myself."

I don't think you're alone in having a hard time reckoning with how much freedom to give your children.

"Yeah but my son is dead, so I have hard proof I did a lousy job, don't I? I caved when I should've been stronger. And I let him have this power, because I wanted to have it too."

This is when I notice a rectangular bulge in Melanie's pocket. She takes out her old PortPhone6, the screen slightly cracked and the chrome edges nicked and scarred. She knows what I'm about to ask, so she goes ahead and answers in advance.

"It's for the Kirsches. It's my only way to get to Emilia and Jason. When they do one of their bullshit listening tours, or when Jason stages one of his insufferable new product launches, that's when I'm gonna port in and tell them about my son."

And then?

"And then, I swear to you, I will throw this thing in the fucking ocean."

The Boy on the Mountaintop syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[sarahgallegoauthor-blog]

Chapter 1

 History. The final lesson of the day and the clanging bell rang out loud, signalling to all the bored year nine's of Bro Sant Secondary that the school day was finally and most definitely done.  "Please can everyone leave their world war two projects on my desk?" Mr Pritchard shouted out desperately, craning his scrawny neck up and calling out over the scraping chairs and the general mad dash towards the door and freedom.  Although Storm Lloyd was sat closest to the door, she decided she would wait for everyone to disperse before she was brave enough to stand up and hand in her homework. She made a pretence of looking in her bag, her long glossy black curls falling over her deep, dark eyes.   She realised, with a sense of intense dread that Chloe Morgan and her entourage were seemingly in no rush to leave for their bus, unlike Mr Pritchard, who had already escaped and was pouring himself a coffee in the staff room. Storm hoped she could make it out without being noticed. Grasping her project tightly, she headed over to the battered, old desk, littered with stained coffee cups and old volumes of text books.   Behind her, Storm felt four sets of eyes boring into the back of her head as she realised Chloe and her gang had stopped talking. She placed her handwritten project down carefully onto the teetering pile of immaculately produced digital projects. "Ha, old skool homework!" Sneered Chloe slowly and, right on cue, her gaggle of mates laughed along maliciously.   Storm felt the all too familiar knot of uneasiness develop in her gut. She needed to get out, now. She couldn't let Chloe get her again.

 Head down, she proceeded to the door as quickly and quietly as she could. As her slim hand with the nails bitten right down was about the grab the handle, Chloe reached the door and slammed it shut. Storm turned around, the knot in her gut starting to expand throughout her whole body like a pandemic of fear.

 Chloe, with her perfect blonde hair, and eyes as blue as a summer sky, glared at Storm. Storm tried to look at the floor. She’d never understood why Chloe hated her, but here she was, yet again.

“Doesn’t your bus leave soon?” Chloe spat at Storm. Storm’s stomach lurched forward. She could barely speak. Her back was pinned against the door, Chloe ahead of her, that perfect little button nose inching towards Storm. Storm knew she had to answer but the sounds just wouldn’t form in her throat. Chloe leaned in ominously.

 “I said, Lloyd, isn’t yo…” The door was pushed in with some force. Storm was jolted forwards awkwardly into Chloe who furiously pushed her back. Storm glanced back towards the classroom door and, with relief, she saw Josh. With his blotchy face and the long thick red hair that fell down over his eyes. He was looking into the room. He quickly took in the scene and shoved the door open further.

 “C’mon, Storm. We’ll miss the bus.” He said sternly, grabbing Storm’s wrist firmly and pulling her out into the corridor.

 Chloe had missed out and she was seething “You pushed her in to me, you moron.” She hissed out angrily after Josh.

He stopped and turned round to face her. She always failed to intimidate him which seriously infuriated her.  “Shame.” Josh said indifferently and, making sure he had a firm grip on Storm, strode off down the corridor.

 “Where were you?” Storm asked him, her heart was still racing and the awful sick feeling was refusing to leave her.

 “Have a guess!” He replied with a grin. Storm groaned. He would have been placed in isolation again no doubt. As much as Storm was a model pupil, Josh was her direct opposite.

 Josh’s face grew serious. “I’ve told you though.” He said, “She only picks on you ‘cos you let her. If you stood up to her, told someone, she’d stop. Well, eventually”

 “And I’ve told you it would only make it worse.” Storm snapped back.

 “Of course.” Josh replied as they walked through the main green doors and began to rush through the car park towards the bus stop. “Your current strategy of being a victim is working out really well for you.”

 “Shut it,” Storm grumbled. Deep down she knew he was probably right. But she was far too scared of any repercussions from Chloe to do anything.

They made it to their battered old school bus and piled on amongst the other children. They managed to get two seats together towards the middle and got their belts on, just as the bus started up and began the journey to their little village of Bro through the winding roads of the Welsh hills.

 Storm was still shaking slightly from her encounter with Chloe and was in no mood to talk. Josh picked up on this, as he always would, and he whipped out his black leather sketch pad and returned to a pencil sketch of a dragon he’d been working on. Storm was digging her fingers into her arm. She needed to stop rattling and calm herself before she got home. Nain had the innate ability to be able to read her like a book and Storm was in no mood an interrogation.

 The modern brick buildings of the town began to thin out and they were replaced with older, stone houses. A mass of tumbledown homes in a mixture of slate grey and white stone, broken roof tiles and falling chimney stacks. The hills, forever imposing, regarded the passengers with mere indifference as the bus snaked its way through the winding roads.

 As the bright orange bus pulled up to their stop, Storm and Josh battled their way through the other children and bags to the outside. The stop was a small wooden shed, laden with rude drawings and crude messages. The roof was only half on which caused the inhabitants of the tiny village of Bro no end of problems when they wanted to get into town on a wet and windy day. And in this hidden corner of Wales, more often than not, it was a wet and windy day.

 Storm looked up at the sky. It was turning as dark as the shadows of the stones that littered the pale green and yellow hills. She pulled her dark blue blazer around her tighter and said her farewell to Josh who lived in the centre of the village as she turned in the opposite direction, up the hill.

 She felt the first spots of rain begin to patter down on her cheek. Perfect, she thought to herself, this day just gets better and better. Although she’d only been around on this planet for 12 years, Storm knew that the force called life seriously enjoyed to give those who were down a fair good kicking. Hopefully, this rain would be last of it for the day. She walked up the dirt track and saw the comfortable sight of smoke swirling out of the chimney of Bramble farm, the place that had been her home for the last three years. The rain began to fall harder so she pulled up her collar and set off briskly.

 Storm suddenly became conscious of a scrambling behind her. Footsteps. Then a giggle. Storm recognised that laugh. Her stomach lurched uncomfortably. She was too scared to turn around so tried to walk home quicker. She realised that there was more than one set of footsteps behind her and they were speeding up too.

 “Why don’t you ring your Nain and get her to put on the tea, eh?” Chloe called out from behind Storm. “Oh, hang on. She won’t let you have a phone will she, you sad old cow.”

 The rain started to fall harder, drops, big as acorns, were falling thickly around them. The dirt track was rapidly dissolving into a mud bath.

 “Oi, Storm, don’t you walk away from me. I haven’t finished with you” Chloe called. Storm shivered as she realised just how close Chloe was to her. Storm tried to turn around, just to see how much distance was between them. But as she craned her neck around, she failed to see a moss covered stone blocking her path. Her trainers slipped on the wet stone and Storm went sliding off into the mud.

Chloe and her gang fell about laughing.

 “Oh that’s just too good! I didn’t even need to hit her!” Chloe shouted. Storm noticed with horror that she was holding out her phone. Storm’s muddy fall would be viral before she got home. The sky rumbled with thunder and a flash momentarily lit up the hillside.

 “C’mon.” said Chloe, turning back down the path, her blazer pulled over her perfect blonde hair to shelter her, “I can’t stand a storm.”

Storm groaned as she tried to lift herself up. She could hear their screeches of laughter as they ran back down the hill. Storm was completely caked in mud, Nain was going to kill her. She wasn’t sure what would be worse; Nain or Chloe.

 Strom grumbled away to herself as she slopped through the mud towards Nain’s old farm. The sky broke with another huge crack of lightning and Storm felt the earth beneath her tremble slightly. Tears began to roll down her round cheeks and mix with the rain and mud. How she wished she hadn’t been forced to come here. How she wished with every part of her soul that Mum had never met Tom. That they were still living in Liverpool, still with her friends, not here in the middle of nowhere with a Nain who was too terrified to let her live and too terrifying for Storm to argue with.

 She saw the lights on in the kitchen. Nain was probably worried, in her own way. If only she could sneak past, not let Nain see her mud soaked uniform. Avoid the inevitable questioning she was bound to be in for.

 Then, as her shoes crunched on the gravel leading to the faded white door of Bramble farm, a flash of lightning hit the roof of the barn. It was so bright, so close that it threw Storm to ground once again. The barn, she thought! It could be on fire.