#this is only the second worst thing ive drawn today

[ratinasoupkitchen]

I'm so sorry I saw this post's reblogs and I just

@bettertwin1 @mrsleepytello

(SORRY FOR TAGS </3)

[raccoonhearteyes]

Part I  | Part II  | Part III | Part IV  | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI

December 18th, 2018 

It has been over a month since Lexa saw Clarke. Or accidentally fucked her after falling asleep on her roof. She was just so warm. And kind. And being pulled into Clarke’s orbit is just too easy. Lexa knows that if she sees her, she won’t be strong enough to walk away. Even though it’ll be better for her. So instead of risking the temptation, Lexa has avoided any place she may run into Clarke. She refuses to go near the gallery. She avoids the whole borough where Clarke lives. She won’t even let herself get coffee somewhere if there’s a chance a flash of golden hair and baby blue eyes will send her spiraling again. 

Lexa usually loves the holiday season in the city. She loves the lights and the display windows. This year, seeing happy couples kiss at the Rockefeller tree, families cozied together in the winter chill just makes her feel hollow and empty. 

The Darkness preys on weakness, and skates by Lexa. Lexa’s too depressed to walk away and make him chase her. When he takes a lap the second time, he slows to a stop in front of her.

“What’s the matter Lexa, no holiday spirit this year?” 

“Hard to be cheery when you spend it alone.”

“What are you talking about, I’m here, aren’t I?” 

“You’re not exactly the company I’d ever hope for.” 

“Hm, still hung up on your artist, then?”

In the past twenty years, he has been cruel and relentless in trying to get her to give up her soul. He taunts and times his appearances on the days when she feels the worst. But he is still the most consistent aspect of her life, the only person or devil that remembers her. That she can carry a conversation with without worrying about being forgotten. While he’s shown up at bad times, he sometimes shows up just to check. They talk about things other than stealing her soul every so often. Sometimes he’s the outlet she needs for a more serious conversation that a stranger won’t have. 

And tonight, for whatever reason, he seems less likely to convince her to give up. Maybe it’s the holiday spirit. Maybe she’s projecting. Maybe she really is just that desperate for some semblance of human connection. 

“I feel like I lived an entire life with her in these past six months. I know her better than most of her friends do, but I’m not even a blip on her radar. So now I'm just killing time.”

“Until what?” 

“Until I die. Until I give up and let you take my soul.”

He seems genuinely surprised at her confession, then she continues, “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” 

“Known what?”

“That offering a life in which you don’t age seems like something that would last longer. But no one lasts longer than a standard lifetime, do they? People barely last a full lifetime.”

“The best kind of deals are the ones where you think you’ve won,” he shrugs arrogantly.

Lexa is fuming with anger at this point. Who preys on foster kids with lofty promises and rigged deals? This is so wrong, and yet she’s still so trapped, so lonely, that he still might win. 

“So, is this you waving the white flag?”

Lexa is about to say yes, to end it, and let him take her soul if it means the heartbreak stops. But suddenly, there she is. Wrapped in a knit scarf and a beanie, art supplies sprawled over a park bench as she draws the scene. Clarke. She looks beautiful, and seeing her there at this exact moment feels like a sign, and it gives Lexa the courage to tell the Darkness, “Not today.” 

-----------

Like a moth to a flame, she’s drawn closer to Clarke. But she’s wary of getting too close. Close enough to bask in her warmth, but not so close that she burns her wings. It’s a delicate line to tightrope her way across. Especially in the aching loneliness of the holidays. 

Clarke is drawing people, as she always does. So Lexa decides to stand near enough that she’ll inspire another piece, but not so close that she risks falling into conversation with her. That’s too risky. Too easy to fall back into her orbit. Too easy to get sucked into another devastating heartbreak. 

So Lexa is content to watch from afar. To watch Clarke's eyes light up when she captures a moment on the page. To watch her smile at the little kids learning to ice skate below the massive tree. To watch the colors of the tree reflect off her blonde hair and the snow get caught in her lashes. It makes her chest swell with longing, so full it begins to ache. 

It’s not her fault a family asks her to take a photo of them. To get the full tree in the frame she had to take a few steps back. It’s not her fault that happened to be in Clarke’s direction. It’s out of her control that Clarke watched the whole interaction, watched the silly faces she made to get the baby to look in the right direction. 

She was trying to avoid her. To be close, but not too close, but Clarke noticed her this time. It’s not her fault. 

“That was adorable,” Clarke says, gesturing at the small family happily peering at the photos Lexa had just taken. 

“I couldn’t let the baby ruin the photo by looking over there,” Lexa blushes. 

Clarke just smiles at her, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

Lexa doesn't try to continue the conversation. She very intentionally turns her attention back to the tree and the ice skaters below, but she should have accounted for Clarke. Clarke, who has no hesitations in starting a conversation with a pretty stranger, who always talks to new people like they’re old friends. 

“Can I draw you?” she asks. 

“Sure.”Always. She knows she’s breaking a promise to herself, but instead of being rude or dismissive, she caves to blue eyes and a soft smile. 

Clarke has her turn around to face her, lean back on the railing and prop her elbows on it. She wants to get the whole tree in the background, and Lexa tries to steady her breathing to prepare for the intimacy of sustained eye contact while Clarke draws her. Again.   

They make idle chit chat while she works. Lexa keeps her answers short, just shy of curt. She doesn’t return the questions because she already knows Clarke’s answers. Instead, she focuses on the pink tongue poking out between Clarke’s teeth. The little freckle above her lip. Those eyes. Lexa blinks and Clarke is teasing her about something she said over fries. Those eyes are full of mirth and still feel like home. She blinks again and sees the same cocky twinkle looking up from between her legs. 

She has to get out of here. 

But Clarke’s not quite finished, and Lexa is a glutton for punishment. So she stays to model, letting Clarke's eyes trace the curve of her ass. The jut of a jawline. It’s a divine sort of torture. 

But she can’t let it go any further. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t. She’s not strong enough. She’s too afraid to get caught up in a conversation. To end up tangled in bed with Clarke yet again. Her heart can’t take it. 

The second she sees Clarke finish, she literally runs away. It’s not her proudest moment. Or her most well-thought-out, but she’s on survival mode now, and it is what needed to be done. 

Safely on the other side of the rink, she takes one last look at Clarke, who just finished signing her name to the bottom of the piece. Lexa watches her look around in confusion. Glancing down at the piece then up, looking for the model and seeing nothing. Not recognizing the face. Not remembering the brief conversation they had while she worked. Drawing a blank. And Lexa’s heart shatters once again.

[theinfinitybucky]

Undercovers (Bucky Barnes x Reader) - Part Five

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Reader and Bucky are on an undercover mission as husband and wife, but she hates him and by accident begins a game of “Who Can Fake Better”.

Warnings: very brief nudity, cannon typical violence, minors not allowed to interact!!!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

You woke up the next morning hating yourself for every bit of what you had let Bucky do the night before. The regret panging through your chest was nearly unbearable. You sighed and pulled the white shirt off the floor to slip on over your bare chest. With feet hitting the cold marble floor of the hotel room, you walked to the bathroom.

Bucky was still passed out in the bed, taking in deep breaths as he slept. The man looked remarkedly peaceful for what you had done the night before. Right now, he was winning the game. What he had willfully manipulated you into doing was unspeakable. Even worse, what would the team say when they found out about what happened during this mission.

This was all Steve’s fault. He had forced you into this “situation” and not stopped it when another twist came. It had to be this with the target or his men watching the hotel room. That didn’t make this any easier. It was difficult to admit that you might actually enjoy Bucky’s presence. His rare smile. The way he kissed you like nothing else was left in the world but your lips.

Would it really be that bad if you liked him?

You brushed off the tough thought and began to brush your teeth. You met your own gaze in the mirror and shuddered with self-hatred. He hadn’t forced you into it. By the time the two of you were back in the hotel room, it felt right. The lingering regret was all about how you could go back to hating him.

“You okay, Sarah?” Bucky stood in the doorway, fully clothed unlike the last night.

You looked back at him and nodded. A wordless response. He could tell by the regret in your eyes and determined that it would be best to not push the boundaries that were being set. After getting ready for the morning in silence, both of you were discreetly slipping your gun into the blazer pocket when another text rang from Steve. A reminder to not forget about the meeting where you would be seeing the target today.

You would be going into separate meetings for the first two sessions then rejoining each other for lunch at the same table as the previous night. This was an unexpected moment to breathe after last night. The plan originally had you together in the sessions, yet this made more sense after the change in your job description.

           After the two slow sessions, you met for lunch. Taking a seat at the table where you had sat last night, Marcus was already sitting when you arrived. It took to seconds to recognize who was with him, Eric Miller. This was concerning at best. A total nightmare at worst. Bucky, where are you?

           Almost as if you had called him, he appeared behind you. You hated how he could appear out of nowhere without a sound being made. You glanced up to him from the chair you were seated in. You glanced to Eric Miller which received a tiny nod from Bucky. This was where things began to get dirty. Would you risk taking Eric and Marcus down in a room full of people or wait until the meeting time later. Or had they already exchanged the codes and doom was only impending.

           The lunch dragged on forever with white lies being told back and forth between you and Marcus. No intel was gained after the hour-long lunch. It was almost as if they were playing with you and Bucky. An uneasiness continued to settle into your chest. Something was off here. It was only an hour before the codes were “supposedly” being exchanged in the hotel parking lot.

           When 1:00 pm came, Marcus and Eric both excused themselves as if they were on a timer. You waited for them to be out of earshot. They both exited through the tall conference room doors.  Things were about to get messy.

           “I think I left something in the car, Chris.” You took Bucky’s hand and murmured. His eyes locked with your own. He inferred exactly what you were saying. Truly, you had been dropped off and there was no car in the parking lot. This was only a ploy to get you out of the next session and into the parking lot where the codes were being exchanged.

           “I’ll come with you.”

           You both got up out of your respective chairs and headed towards the parking lot. You were too far behind Marcus and Eric. You broke into a running pace with Bucky right on your heels. This could be too late already. You drew your gun and headed out the door. The hotel security guards were right behind you. Great… only making this more difficult.

           Bucky ignored the presences as they called to the both of you.

           Marcus and Eric stood by a black SUV. Marcus was taking a suitcase from Eric when you approached them. Marcus took the suitcase and Eric drew a gun quickly. Your blood ran cold. He didn’t even waste a second and fired a shot at you. Bucky jumped in front of you and blocked the bullet with his vibranium arm. It ricocheted off and hit the SUV with a metallic ping.

           You didn’t take a chance and shot Eric in the knee without a second thought. Marcus dropped the suitcase and raised a gun in one swift movement. Bucky fired towards Marcus, but missed by about two inches when he dodged it. You ducked behind a random white sedan as another shot came towards you. The security guards began encroaching in with their own guns drawn. Breathing heavily, Bucky yelled to the security guards to back off and listed off credentials.

           As he was distracted, you noticed Eric moving. His gun was too close to him from when he had fallen. You stepped toward him to disarm the man. You weren’t fast enough to get there before he would shoot you. The next moment shocked you. He didn’t aim for you. He aimed for Bucky who was not ready for a bullet. As if in slow motion, the gun fired. You screamed and jumped to take it. You were expecting it. He wasn’t. You could make it miss vital organs. You moved in front of Bucky and it hit your shoulder. The bullet lodged underneath your clavicle. You yelled in pain and fell to the ground. Everything went red for a few seconds… Then black. 

_______

           “What the hell happened?” Sam asked as he entered the waiting room where Bucky with his head in his hands. His face was red as if he’d been crying. His clothes were tattered. Dust and ripped holes scattered the fabric from his altercation with Eric and Marcus after Y/N got shot. Y/N had been in surgery for thirty minutes where they were pulling the bullet out of Y/N’s chest.

           Sam tried to push his anger down with in him.

           “You were supposed to protect her!” Sam grunted.

           “The hotel security got involved.” Bucky tried to explain. “They-.”

           “She still has a bullet in her!”

           Bucky went still. He knew that this was all his fault. Y/N had jumped in front of a bullet to save him. He’d noticed it the moment the guards tried to disarm him. The bullet hit Y/N’s chest and he was left to take down four people. He went into semi-Winter Soldier mode when you were shot. It brought out a rage in him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. This was all supposed to be a game. It wasn’t a game anymore.

           Your eyes opened slowly. You looked to your left and saw Bucky asleep in a chair next to you. A sharp pain radiated through your shoulder where the bullet had ripped through your skin. An IV was hooked up to your left arm. You shifted in the bed. Bucky’s eyes fluttered open.

           “Y/N!” He gasped. “I’ll go get a doctor.”

           “No, I’m okay.”

           “You nearly died.”

           “One bullet isn’t nearly dying, Bucky. You of all people should know that.” You smirked. “Where are Steve and Sam? I know you’re not here alone.”

           A bit of what Bucky thought was distain gleamed through your tone.

           “They are downstairs getting some food.” He muttered.

           “Oh, oka-.” You were about to continue when Bucky interrupted you.

           “Why’d you do it, Y/N?” He paused for an infinite moment. “I’m awful to you.”

You thought about it for a moment. Did you save him because you might actually love him after the mission? You may have regretted the sex. Was it because you thought it was just for show? Or because you truly liked him and wanted it to be something more.

“I would never let anyone die. You might drive me insane, but I see that there is good in you."

Bucky took in the words for a second then leaned over the guard rail of the hospital bed. He caught your eyes and noticed you weren’t pulling away. He lips fell onto yours. The kiss was gentler than what you had shared in the hotel room and on the dance floor. His lips formed over your own and your tongues collided. He moved together as he carefully avoided your shoulder. Bucky laced his fingers in your hair.

You heard a gasp and pulled apart to see Steve and Sam standing in the doorway with cups of coffee.

Sam chuckled, “Told you it would work.”

Thank you for reading. This is the last part in this series and I enjoyed writing it sooooooo much <3 Please give a like, reply, follow or reblog for more content in the future. Also, you can request to be added to the tag list! I also am taking one shot requests go ahead and  send your idea in to see it brought to life!

Tag List: @steveharrigntons @thebadassbitchqueen @farfromjustordinary @mela-noche @sstanbarnes @justab-eautifulmess @spideyycents @furiouscopshepherduniversity @sottisesreine @wintersoldat1943 @fookinsuckmecockmate

[charincharge]

AN: Here’s the fourth and final installment of the Actress AU. It was ready much sooner than I anticipated! If you haven’t read the first three parts, you can find them below. I hope this is a satisfying conclusion for you all! xo.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Aelin squinted against a harsh white light, making her head throb. She went to rub the mascara from her sticky lashes, but her hand tugged painfully. She struggled to focus, her brain slowly catching up with her vision as she took in her stark surroundings.

Her breathing increased as she realized where she was.

She tugged her hand again, wincing as the tube under her skin pulled at the tape covering it. Another tube ran into two smaller ones, inserted into her nose, pushing a steady stream of cold air down her throat.

Despite the tubes in her nose, the overwhelming smell of lemon antiseptic pervaded her senses, and she struggled to swallow down the pool of saliva that formed in her mouth as nausea swirled around her stomach.

It clenched hard, and before she knew what was happening, she was on her side, a thin yellow stream of bile pouring from her mouth into a light pink tub placed in front of her face seemingly out of nowhere. It splashed gently, and Aelin recoiled from the smell, her body sweating and shaking with the effort it took to expel the disgusting substance.

“That’s it,” a woman’s soft voice cooed, rubbing at her back. “You’re okay, darling,” it repeated. Despite being unable to see who was touching her, Aelin relaxed into the woman’s hand as she finished throwing up.

She wiped at her mouth, wanting to get rid of the sour taste in her mouth and graciously accepted a small paper cup of water from another mystery person.

Aelin wiped at her eyes again and rolled onto her back into the lumpy pillow behind her head and finally looked around. The hospital room’s curtains had been drawn, letting early morning sunshine filter in, but it was no match for the harsh fluorescents which shone down on Aelin, making her sweat. Two nurses bustled around her, their light green scrubs swishing as they switched out her IV bag and adjusted the oxygen tank beside her.

“You gave everyone quite a scare, sweetheart” the dark-haired nurse said, smoothing Aelin’s hair away from her face. It crunched beneath her touch, still coated in layers of hairspray.

“What happened?” Aelin croaked. The last thing she remembered was being at the premiere party. But judging by the amount of sunlight streaming through the windows, that was hours ago.

“I’m going to grab the doctor, and she’ll explain everything,” the woman said, her even voice attempting to calm Aelin’s racing heart.

Her head pounded agonizingly as she attempted to nod, and the nurse frowned in understanding.

She shushed Aelin, who hadn’t even realized she’d started crying softly as she readjusted her pillows behind her, trying to make her more comfortable. But it was impossible. Every part of Aelin ached with discomfort.

A beautiful woman with long chestnut curls and caramel skin swept into the room, her dark eyes immediately going to Aelin as she introduced herself.

“Aelin,” she said with a professional nod. “I’m Doctor Towers, and I’ve been treating you since you came in last night.” She paused, taking a step closer. “Do you remember what happened?”

Aelin winced as she shook her head again.

“That’s okay,” Dr. Towers assured her. “You had an accidental overdose.” Aelin’s mouth gaped, opened and closing as she struggled to find the words, but the doctor continued. “You came in with cocaine and fentanyl in your system, which is unfortunately something I’ve been seeing more and more of.”

“Fentanyl?” Aelin asked, confused. She had no idea what that even was, and she certainly had no knowledge of taking it.

Dr. Towers narrowed her eyes. “You are extremely lucky to be alive right now. When your friend brought you in, you were completely nonresponsive.”

Aelin gasped. Fear and shame crashed down on her. She was sure this would be all over the gossip sites. She’d be written off as a party girl, instead of a serious budding actress. Everything she’d endured with Arobynn would be for nothing. Another tear fell down her cheek as the doctor explained her treatment.

“We administered Narcan, which is used to treat opioid overdose and were able to get you breathing again.”

“Opioid?”

The doctor pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I’m going to assume you don’t know that your cocaine was cut with fentanyl. It’s been used more frequently as filler, but, as you experienced, it can have potentially fatal interactions.” She paused again. “As I said, you were extremely lucky.” Her face softened as Aelin wiped another tear away. “How are you feeling, physically?”

“Bad,” Aelin chuckled through her tears.

“I’ll bet.” Doctor Towers sighed and adjusted her clipboard. “You’re going to experience a lot of pain today. Your body is going through opioid withdrawal now, as well as cocaine. Plus, Narcan has a few side effects as well – stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, fever, body aches. All sound about right?” Aelin nodded. “We’re going to keep you here to monitor your recovery for the next twelve hours. If you feel shortness of breath or like someone is suddenly sitting on your chest, call for a nurse immediately.”

“Okay,” Aelin said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Because of the events that led you here, you’re required to talk to a psychiatrist. She’s fantastic. Her name is Dr. Ytger, and she can help you decide what your next course of action should be.” Dr. Towers smiled, her seriousness dissolving slightly as her eyes warmed with kindness. “In the meantime, there are quite a few worried people, who have been waiting for you to wake up. If you feel up to it, they can come see you one-by-one.”

Aelin’s chest pounded uncomfortably. “There are people here?”

Dr. Towers’ smile widened as she nodded. “The man who brought you in has asked that he be first to see you.”

“Man?” Aelin rasped. She’d been so sure Manon would have been the one to take her to the hospital, hopefully fielding press the whole time.

Her breath caught as Dr. Towers’s eyes narrowed. “Tall, striking eyes. Pacing a hole in the waiting room carpet?”

Her breath picked up, and she struggled to calm herself as Arobynn’s faux-worried face appeared in her minds eye. She could only imagine how mad he was if he was forced to leave his own premiere party in an ambulance. Just the thought of his angry face was enough to have her feeling nauseous again. She was sure he was only here to protect his image. Heaven forbid his muse died.

“Do you not want to see him?” the doctor asked. “Aelin, if you’re in danger you can tell me. I can have the police here, and I will happily kick that green-eyed man to the curb.”

“Green?” Aelin’s head swirled. “Rowan brought me in? Not a man with red hair?”

The doctor shook her head. “No. No red-headed man.”

As relief flooded her body, she must have nodded because before she knew it, the doctor was exiting her room and returning with Rowan in tow.

Despite the pain that surged through her body, Aelin’s chest warmed at the sight of him. His tux was rumpled beyond belief, his sleeves pushed up to reveal his forearms, and dark purple circles on his skin contrasted with his red-rimmed eyes. He must have been here all night.

He perched himself at the edge of the hospital bed, careful to not brush against Aelin beneath the thin blue blanket, and the night came rushing back to her. The carpet, Rowan’s girlfriend, cocaine in the closet with Archer… She felt awful. She’d absolutely ruined Rowan’s night.

“I’m so glad to see those eyes open again,” he whispered, and Aelin could feel a soft pressure build at her throat. For a second, she was concerned it was the shortness of breath she was supposed to be looking out for, but as she took a deep breath, she couldn’t control the sob that escaped her lips.

Tears poured from her eyes, dripping in steady rivulets down her cheeks, down her chin and dripping onto her hospital gown in dark grey splotches as they mixed with her makeup.

Rowan tentatively raised his hand to her face and wiped at her tears, his thumb caressing her cheek with such a softness that it did nothing to abate her crying. Gods, she had missed his touch. She leaned her head into his hand and sighed, her breath shaking with her tears as they stared at each other in silence.

“I’m sorry,” Aelin whispered finally. She had to apologize to him for ruining his night. For bringing him here, for making him stay in the hospital for hours when he should have been celebrating his feature success.

His green eyes hardened as he spoke, though the soft caress of his thumb never ceased. “None of this is your fault, Aelin. None.”

“But, I ruined your big night, and…”

Rowan paused as he leaned forward, his lips pursing as he examined her face. “Baby,” he said so reverently that it nearly knocked her out. “You almost died, and you think I care about some fucking party?”

His fingers slid to her hair, crunching beneath his touch as Aelin tried not to cringe. She was a complete mess. A stupid, selfish mess. But she couldn’t imagine not wanting this, not wanting him. And she would take whatever he gave her.

“I swear I’m not an addict, I just really like the way cocaine smells.” She attempted to smile as tears formed in Rowan’s eyes.

“That is the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” he said, though he chuckled softly regardless of her inappropriate words. “And I know you’re not an addict,” he sighed. “That’s what I was trying to talk to you about last night. Why I wanted you to meet my—”

“Girlfriend?” Aelin’s heart sank as she remembered the circumstances that led to her latest brush with white dust. But Rowan’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“What? No,” he said, shaking his head. “My cousin.”

“Your cousin?” Aelin’s head was reeling. She was in too much pain and too exhausted for this kind of information. She was confused. Yet again.

“Tall? Blonde? Bright green eyes just like every Whitethorn? Walked the carpet with me?”

“Your cousin,” Aelin repeated. She tried to remember the beautiful blonde draped on Rowan’s arm, but she was nothing more than a hazy memory of blonde smiles and hurt feelings.

“She’s a reporter for The Terrasen Times,” he began. “She’s being doing a series of exposes on abusers in the film industry, and Aelin, she has enough to take Arobynn down.” He breathed in deeply, his bright eyes shining as they filled with tears. “I knew as soon as you kicked me out of your trailer that something had happened. But I didn’t get confirmation until I saw you at that press junket. You’re just the latest in a long line of young actresses emotionally abused and threatened and hooked on drugs to control them. I kept my distance because I didn’t want him to use me against you. But… I didn’t think…” His lip quivered as he fought with his tears. “Baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you.”

“I don’t understand,” Aelin said, her mind swimming with his words but not really processing any of them.

“Four women came forward and are pressing charges against him, Aelin. The article went live last night.” Rowan’s eyes pierced through her as she inhaled a sharp breath. “He’s going to jail. He can’t touch you anymore.”

Months of frustration and fear and anger and shame and guilt released at Rowan’s words, and a fresh wave of tears poured down Aelin’s cheeks. Her body shook, as she felt herself freed from Arobynn’s vindictive grasp. Free. She couldn’t even imagine it.

She reached forward and buried her face into Rowan’s shoulder, letting his arms cradle her and soothe her pain. She inhaled deeply, wanting to immerse herself his scent, but all she could smell was stale alcohol and faint traces of vomit. The smell made her dizzy with nausea, and she soon pulled away to vomit into the bucket next to her bed.

She wiped at her face, black smudging against her skin as she pulled her hands away. “Well, that was romantic,” she laughed, though her tone was anything but humorous.

“Aelin,” Rowan murmured her name with a quiet exuberance. “I don’t care that you’ve been throwing up for hours,” he said seriously. “I love you, have been in love with you, since the first time I laid eyes on you almost a year ago, and I need to kiss you right now.” He smiled sweetly, and as he leaned in, Aelin could feel her heart stutter. “Is this romantic enough for you?” he asked, his lips merely a breath away from hers.

“I love you, too,” she replied. Her confession warmed her from the inside out as their matching smiles met in a soft kiss. His hands stroked the back of her neck, soothing her quivering muscles.

His lips pressed against hers again, seemingly unable to pull back, but Aelin felt her exhaustion catching up with her heavily beating heart all too soon. A large yawn escaped her lips, and Rowan pulled back, his hand trailing down her arm to her tube-laden hand and squeezing it gently.

“Sleep,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She squeezed his hand in return and pulled him toward her. “Come cuddle,” she asked with wide eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere, Aelin,” he replied seriously. “Not ever again.”

But despite his words, he climbed into the small cot with her, arms wrapped around her shoulders. And despite the sweat and the nausea and stomach pain, Aelin fell sleep peacefully for the first time in months.

~*~

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[whirlybirdwhat]

If you still do promts? How about Law getting a minor (big scare) relapse of His Amber lead problem?

I do!!!! Hope you enjoy <333

a mark of (not-quite) death

read on ao3!

Law wakes up aching.  

There is a throbbing in his back, a drum of pain running up his fingers, a blurriness in the back of his head that he can’t quite name, and a weakness that shakes in his limbs as he pushes himself upward.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes. The dull light of his sub – the soft humming of the machines – it’s all already too much. He wants to go back to sleep.

Instinct tells him doing so will be his death –

Wait.

Law’s eyes flash open as his entire body starts shaking.

He hasn’t… hasn’t felt this way since he was 13 and running with Cora. He –

God.

No.

(Litanies of prayers flash through his mind, the same the nuns like to whisper over the children as they laid dying in bed. The lights of the hospital, the screams of agony, the white creeping up up up – his father shaking as he attached IV lines to his sister, the blood pooling on the streets –

No-)

It can’t be. Law got rid of it. He was the survivor. The only survivor, because of his thrice damned fruit.

His eyes look down, to where his hands are clenching the bunk he collapsed in late last night (after feeling off all day god he was a fool-), to where –

White splotches against tanned skin, spreading and rising in irregular shapes.

A relapse.

A relapse of Amber Lead Disease.

Law wants to laugh.

(Laugh, in the kind of laugh those who are about to die have. Laugh, not in the way of the indomitable D, but in the kind of way a sailor laughs in the face of a raging storm that he will not survive. Laugh, in the way that fools cry.)

Who knew it was possible?

Tears well up in his eyes as laughter chokes out past the tightening in his chest. He couldn’t die. Not yet.

Not when Doflamingo still lived.

His chest is getting tighter as he raises a shaky white splotched hand to his face, feeling the wetness there. His skin is rough, raised, god it already spread to his face?

He is going to die.

(Everything hurts.)

The world is going blurry at the edges, darkness creeping in, every limb aching and – Oh.

A sliver of thought breaks through the memories of pain and death and terror.

He needs to breathe.

Law takes a shuddering breath, pressing against his chest as if that would make his lungs work past the blinding panic in his mind.

It helps.

He takes another.

It helps more.

Another, and another, and another, until he is lying back in his too small bunk and looking up at the flickering lights.

Fuck, he thinks.

Fuck.

His eyes slip shut past the instinct ingrained in him from his days with Cora, and finally, finally, he falls back to a restless sleep.

-

Untellable time has passed when he finally drags himself out of bed, legs shaking beneath his weight. Kikoku is a helpful walking stick, his jeans an unhelpful hindrance, and his feet barefoot against the deck.

Bending down had hurt too much to put them on.

He makes his way, slowly, to the kitchen where most of the off-duty crew is, their chatter rising above the hum of engines and the lurching power of the sea.

Bepo –

Bepo is there.

Thank fuck.

He stumbles in and makes a bee-line towards his first mate, ignoring the cries of his crew (idiots – who told them they could care so much about him?) as he finally arrives in front of Bepo, shaking.

Bepo stares. “Captain?” His voice is soft.

Worried.

(The way it is after nightmares shake Law awake and all he can hear is the laughter of a mad tyrant echoing in his mind.)

Law stares back and carefully, carefully, slumps into Bepo’s arms.

(By the shouts of his crew, it’s not so carefully. It’s more the last legs of a starving man giving out.)

“Captain!” Bepo says, less questioning and more panicked and worried this time.

Law just shoves his face into his jacket and mumbles “I’m fine Bepo.” Half the words don’t make it out but it’s fine.

He’s fine.

Law is… Law is fine.

Shachi echoes from his right. “You don’t look fine captain.”

“Yeah!” Penguin chimes in. “You look like death warmed over.”

(He’s not fine)

Law shudders, and shakes his head. “I feel it,” He mutters, uncharacteristically open, and then moves on as Bepo lowers them bother down to the bench. “It’ll… It’ll pass. Just need to operate, that’s all.”

He can’t see it with his face shoved into Bepo’s warmth but he just knows everyone is sharing glances over his head. Especially Shachi and Penguin and Bepo. They knew him… they knew him when he just got over Amber Lead, operating out of his skin with cries of pain and little control over his devil fruit….

And little choice to not do it.

It’s always like this out at sea – out on open waters with a black flag overhead, or the intention to be one. Life or death.

Life or death.

(For so long, Law has intended to die.)

He sighs, further, as they finally sit down, the ache in his legs easing as Bepo allows him to slump into his side. A hot mug is shoved into his hands and lifted to his lips, shakily.

Coffee.

Sweet, just how he secretly likes it. Ikkaku then, the only person who knows how to get it just right, helping him drink.

(His eyes feel so heavy.)

There’s murmuring around him. Law closes it out, to focus on how the jumpsuit is soft on his raised and rash-ridden skin.

Someone moves Kikoku away from him, and he doesn’t move an inch. The worried voices pick up again.

Soon, someone shakes him.

“Captain.”

He’s so tired.

“Captain.”

This is, essentially, the second worst thing that could possibly happen to him. The first being Doflamingo dies before Law can spit in his face and say Fuck You.

“Captain!”

He should have just operated in his room. Why didn’t he do that?

“Law!”

Oh.

He’s a captain now.

That’s him.

He pushes himself off Bepo, and blinks wearily at his crew.

“Yeah – Yes?” He tries to pour irritation into his voice, but honestly – they are a crew, no matter how often he holds them at arms lengths. They know he’s not as prickly as he seems. They have seen him half drowned, drunk out of his mind, and on fifteen to many cups of Shachi’s special coffee.

They can see him sick.

(He’s so tired.)

Penguin peers into his face, his hat tipped up so that he can meet Law’s eyes clearly with his own. “What operation?”

The words come out of him slurred and tired.

“Amber Lead,” He says, and doesn’t miss how Clione in the corner takes a step back. “It’s… not contagious…” He slumps further into Bepo. “That was all a government ruse.”

Most of them are from the North Blue. Most of them have heard the stories – of Flevance, and how it burned to the ground, how its people were exterminated, how its people were contagious and it was good for the world that their disease wasn’t spread.

Most of his crew, however, don’t know that he’s the last survivor.

A hand drifts over his cheek, tapping gently on the raised, white skin, and Law is drawn back into reality.

“’M from Flevance. Last survivor. My fruit… my fruit cured me. Had to operate.” He says, dimly remembering it. “Now its back. Gotta….” His mother would be ashamed of how his voice was drooping. Slurring. There was a patient he had to tend to. Wait. He was the patient. He was so tired and even the coffee wasn’t helping. “Operate again.”

Dimly, he remembers how he wasn’t allowed to see the adults who had Amber Lead. They were always worse off than the children once the disease reached its peak. The body, too old to defend itself. The mind, old enough to understand eminent death. To understand that you were leaving everyone behind, because of an unavoidable fate, because you were born of Flevance and its greed.

Now, Law is aching as he did when he was a child in the last stages of the disease, and he feels… distant and all too close to the fact all at once. He’s tired, but he has survived this before.

Before, he was alone.

Now, he has a crew.

(And a dream, as horrible and revenge driven as it is, to kill the one who took everything else from him.)

A crew that is slowly pulling him out of his despair and into open arms.

Bepo is muttering with Shachi and Penguin, something about how did it set in so fast? And Island conditions? And large concentrations of ore and ocean depths and battles? But all of it is fading distantly.

A hand taps his cheek and pulls the cup from his hands. He tries to follow it, but he is quickly trapped by a large, fluffy orange arm.

“Sleep, Captain.” That’s Clione, stepping closer now. “You can operate when you’re coherent.”

He wants to snap at them, snap at all of them, that he’s a man and doesn’t need to be babied, he’s done this before and he’ll do it again, and he’s a trained doctor –

(Who trained all of them-)

-so he can decide when he needs to sleep but –

Bepo’s arm is soft. Comforting. Familiar.

(He tried to find Cora’s coat after he was killed. He couldn’t. He missed the warmth of smoky black faux feathers. He had no comfort then, when he was digging into his skin with shaky powers and a stolen knife.)

Law falls to sleep, surrounded by crew, and hopes he’ll wake to see morning light.

-

There is none when he wakes. Instead, there is a heavy pressure on his right, crushing him, almost gently, against a large, soft, bodily shaped lump.

For a moment, with the shaking in his limbs, Law thinks he is in Flevance again, hiding amongst the bodies of his dead neighbors and friends to get a chance at life.

His heart races, before Bepo lets out a familiar snore and Shachi slaps at his cheeks.

Ah.

He’s not in Flevance.

He’s home.

(Usually, he would correct himself and say The Polar Tang. Not today. Today he is tired.)

He looks across the room.  They are still in the kitchen, the crew merely moving around him instead of moving him, the idiots. The lights are dimmed, and it seems to be only Bepo and Shachi in the room. A blanket is pulled around him, and his sword leaned against the wall.

He gives a sigh. Someone had even grabbed his hat for him.

(He wants his hat. His father had given it to him. He wants his hat.)

His eyes drift, still tired, but the aching in his limbs has abated for now. It’s time to move, before he’s lost again in pain and memories.

Law pushes at Bepo and Shachi, shoving both off of him in a spur of strength, before standing up.

“Captain!” Bepo cries happily, undeterred from his harsh wake up. On the ground, Shachi rubs his head but doesn’t complain. “You’re awake! Is your head better? Is your body better? Are you okay? Do you need water? Food? Wait maybe don’t’- “

The world spins as Law stands up, but he still manages to grit out a “Bepo!” that shuts the bear up quick. He feels bad for it, but at least the questions are stopped.

“Help me to the operating room.”

Shachi gives him a look even as Law refuses to wait for them to help him across the room to grab his sword. “Are you sure you’re ready to operate?”

Law gives him a look as he grips Kikoku, Bepo helping up his other arm. “If I don’t operate now, I won’t be able to later. If I don’t operate later, I’m going to fucking die.” The clarity in this threat and his voice seems to stir Shachi into opening the doors for them to go through, Law’s feet getting heavier with every step.

“Amber Lead, huh?” Shachi questions quietly.

Law lets out a breath. “Yeah.”

“That’s what you were recovering from when we first met, right? With the white splotches?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re back now.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought they were gone forever.”

Law sighs again. “Me too,” he says, and that’s the end of the conversation. It’s silent then, as they pad through the ship to the operating room. The rest of the crew must know by now, because they don’t question it when Law limps quietly throughout the sub. They only nod, and give him worried looks.

His crew is a crew of fools.

(He wouldn’t trade them for the world.)

The operating room is already open when Law arrives.

(He can barely stand. His legs ache. He bets if he rolled up his pants, his legs would be near entirely white, the disease setting in quick. He hates this. He hates this.)

“Captain!” Penguin cheers from the corner where he is cleaning Law’s favorite sets of scalpels and has a chair set up. “Everything’s ready for when you need it! Didn’t know what exactly you needed, so I got everything that seemed reasonable.”

A part of Law softens at that, though his face hurts to twitch into smile. “Thank you, Peng,” He says, quiet, and with Bepo’s help eases himself into a chair. He sighs and gestures for the tray scalpels Penguin rolls over.

He’s practiced this kind of removal before, on albeit unwilling patients. They were thankful after, but never quite liked it when Law opened them up.

They felt no pain, thanks to the Ope-Ope fruits natural anesthetics, but removing things buried into your skin by what appears to be magical scalpels is never fun.

(It was funny to Law. He was always sadistic like that.)

He picks up a scalpel, gestures for his crew to back away, and then says, very carefully, “Room.”

His crew stares, but then the pieces come together when his eyes lock on Bepo and he says “Shambles.”

In an instant, his head is switched with the air above Bepo’s palms.

Bepo screams, only a bit, but it gives Law the perspective he needs to make this surgery.

His body is trembling before him, Law already feeling the strain from using his devil fruit. Splotches run up his arms from where his sleeves are rolled up, the hoodie dipping just a bit to reveal the splotches on his neck as well. When Law glances into the mirror on the tray, he pauses, for just a moment.

The spots make him seem… hollow. As if he were only a frame of the person he wanted to be. They fill his cheeks and nose, distorting over his forehead, like a skeleton made of flesh and empty spaces.

He looks tired.

(He always looks tired.)

He looks like death.

(A part of him laughs at that. The Surgeon of Death, looking like death warmed over? Irony at its finest.)

He blinks his eyes closed and opens them quickly. If he doesn’t act soon, he’ll be death.

He watches his arms lift in front of him, and mutters “Scan.”

His body lights up in shades of vibrant blue, making his spots glow where they are raised above the skin. Law looks closer, his fingers twirling in the air, till it is as if he can see the innermost parts of his body.

There.

The core of all his trouble, nestled right next to his lungs. A part of the Amber Lead he missed when he didn’t know that Scan was an ability he had with his fruit. A part that grew and grew and grew, and seemed to have been suddenly exacerbated by the climate of the Grand Line.

The only surprising part is that it took till now for it happen.

“Peng. Shach.” He says, straining, speaking odd when your mouth is in one area of the room and your voice box in another. “Get the infectious substance containers.”

Penguin looks alarmed. “Thought you said it wasn’t contagious?”

“Yes.” He responds. “It isn’t. But it is toxic, and this is the closest containment system we have. Get it.”

Penguin gives a snappy salute, and then he and Shachi are running out the door, leaving Bepo and Law’s disembodied head, and his body in the room.

Law sighs, neck leaning back so his head rests on Bepo’s chest. To Bepo’s merit, he only shifts his hold on Law.

A moment, and Bepo shifts his grip again so that one paw is patting Law’s head. IF his body were not so weak he would have strangled Bepo.

(It feels nice. He won’t let him know that.)

“Bepo.” He growls.

“Sorry!” Bepo yelps, but doesn’t stop dragging his fingers through Law’s hair, gentle and calm.

Law doesn’t scold him again, and instead fights the urge to sink into sleep by examining his body further.

His chest tightens when he realizes how much it had spread – all because Law didn’t bother to check up his body earlier. God.

He would have died if he didn’t have his fruit.

If Cora hadn’t…

The operating room door slamming open distracts him from his thoughts.

“We got it!” Shachi and Penguin cheer, rolling over two large glass and plastic and metal containers.

(Law new the destructions of diseases. He filched the best containment for his own ship.

Like hell he would let Flevance happen again.)

Law nods the best he can without a body, and across the room, his body raises its arms.

“Scan,” He says, one more time to be sure. When it all lights up again, he closes his eyes and breathes out.

One second.

Two.

He breathes in, and opens his eyes.

“Room,” He says, and the operating room becomes his. His eyes flash to the air inside the empty cases and –

“Shambles.”

The blue disappears from his eyes, from his body, from his face, the aches disappearing, in a snap from his skin, and into the containers already sealed shut. His fingers twitch, another muttered Shambles, and his head is securely on his body.

The world blurs in front of him.

Fuck.

He’s so tired.

So, so tired.

He lays back, melting against the chair, and doesn’t protest as Bepo lifts him up.

“You’re alright captain. You’re alright.”

As his hat is placed on his head, white splotches slowly fading from his hands in itchy waves, he honestly thinks he might be.

His eyes shut and to worried murmurs, he falls unconscious, operation over.

(His parents would be ashamed of how he didn’t check to make sure the patient was recovering right.

Wait.

He’s the patient.

Fuck.)

-

Law wakes without aching, without wanting to laugh, Bepo wrapped around him again and his favorite food on a tray beside him. When he looks in the mirror, only two splotches of white remain near his eyes, fading as he watches. Someone has washed his hair and scrubbed the other flakes of white on cheeks away with tender care, and a blanket is wrapped carefully around him. This time, Law doesn’t panic. This time, Law goes to goes back to sleep on purpose, smile gracing his features.

His crew is a crew of fools but fuck, if Law doesn’t love them. They keep him alive.

Law won’t die now.

Not yet.

And not from his past.

[roman-writing]

no great revelation (1/8)

Fandom(s): The Haunting of Bly Manor / Star Wars

Pairing: Dani Clayton/Jamie Tyalor

Rating: T

Wordcount: 6,236

Summary: Jamie just wants to enjoy a drink after a hard day's work on the Telosian Restoration Project. The last thing she needs is to get herself caught up in a mysterious woman with a lightsabre at the local bar. 

Aurthor’s notes: Please don’t expect anything from this story. I’m just doodling in between writing ch11 and ch12 of ‘bring home a haunting.’

read it below or read it here on AO3

“The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

—

I.

See, here’s the thing: she didn’t look like a Jedi. In fact she didn’t look much like anything. Any other time, and Jamie would have spared her a brief albeit appreciative glance before moving on. Today however, Jamie did what could only be described as a double take. 

The bar was crowded, and the night was young, and Jamie still had dirt under her fingernails from a day’s hard work beneath the Telosian sun. An Ithorian had just jostled Jamie’s elbow as he pushed by on his way to the bar, ignoring her tired grumble of, “Watch it, hammerhead,” when she’d spilled a bit of the local ale she had been nursing. She was wiping her wrist dry on her drab Corps-issued boilersuit, when she caught sight of her by the bar. 

Or rather. Saw it. A lightsabre. Clear as day. Clipped to this woman’s belt, poorly concealed beneath a cloak clasped together at one shoulder. Jamie nearly spilled her ale again. And that was when she really gave this woman a closer look.

Blonde. Pretty. Maybe a little too pretty. Definitely not Jedi material, however. For starters, her clothes were all wrong. She looked like she’d just stepped off a cruiser from the Core Worlds in those nanosilks. She moved as though too aware of the weapon she bore, her hand drifting to her waist every now and then before gripping her fingers in a fist and trying — and failing — to look nonchalant. And to polish it all off, she kept glancing around as though afraid that every tavern patron was about to grab her by the arm and haul her from the building. 

A nervous tourist, perhaps. Someone unused to travel. Or maybe a mule. Someone unlucky enough to owe a debt to Czerka. 

Jamie’s scant money was on the latter. Which of course begged the question: a mule smuggling what? 

Over the top of the bar, the holo feed flickered with the latest news from across the galaxy. Yet another infringement on the Treaty of Coruscant as Imperial Sith forces seized a planet along the border of the Outer Rim. From her vantage point in the far corner of the tavern, Jamie pretended to watch the feed idly as she sipped at her ale and studied the woman askance. Across the way, the woman was crowded away from the bar and closer towards Jamie’s corner table as thirsty patrons with credits clamoured for a drink, while the bartender — a Kel Dorian with a rusting breather mask that had seen better days — struggled to meet demands. 

Two more people entered the crowded tavern and began shouldering their way towards the bar. Jamie’s hand froze in its journey lifting the glass to her lips. Slowly, she set the drink down and leaned back in her seat, lowering her hand in a nonchalant manner to rest against her thigh. The small mining laser strapped to her leg wasn’t useful for much outside of cutting bits of wire or rope. It would even go through narrow branches in a pinch, if Jamie were too lazy to go trudging off for a proper thermal saw. But it would certainly give somebody a nasty burn if applied with a generous disregard for the health and safety manual. 

Not that starting a fight with two Czerka pillocks was her idea of a relaxing evening after work. Especially not with her history with the Hutt Cartel. The last thing she needed was yet another galaxy-spanning underworld corporation painting a target on her back. 

Pillock One was hassling other patrons, lifting hoods to get a better look at faces and pushing his own ugly mug close enough that said patrons leaned away. Meanwhile, Pillock Two was holding a chip in his outstretched palm, which projected a tiny holo displaying what appeared to be a very large amount of credits as a reward for any who cooperated with their search for a newcomer on the planet. The mini-holo flickered with the Czerka logo and a sign-off from the Official Head Pillock himself: Peter Fucking Quint. 

This day could not get any worse.

Jamie slouched down a few more inches in her seat. Definitely Not A Jedi Mystery Woman near the bar had only just taken notice of their newly arrived friends, and tugged up the hood of her cloak with a panicked expression. Jamie refrained from rolling her eyes, but only just. By the time the Czerka reached the woman, Jamie was well and truly ready for the worst. 

“You there.” Pillock One grabbed a hold of the woman’s shoulder and spun her round. “Not hiding, are you?” 

He reached up to push the hood of her cloak back, but she jerked away. Her expression was firm, but Jamie was close enough to see the tremble of her fingers. “I’m just passing through.”

“Not much of a tourist joint, Telos IV,” Pillock Two said. His voice was muffled behind the bulky helmet he wore, emblazoned with a chipped Czerka logo on one side. 

The woman lifted her chin slightly, pulling her cloak more firmly around herself. “The gardens here are famous across the galaxy.”

“You don’t strike me as the type to get your hands dirty,” Pillock One sneered. 

“Or maybe she does,” Pillock Two said, and he put the chip away, the mini holo vanishing as he did so. The woman shrank away from them, her back pushing against the edge of the bar. 

All right, so the mule theory was out with the bathwater and the last of Jamie's sanity, it would seem.

Don’t get involved, Jamie, she told herself firmly. She grit her teeth and tightened her grip on the mining laser.

The bartender leaned forward and said, “If you don’t mind, you’re scaring the customers.”

“Shut the fuck up, or I’ll hook up your mask to an oxygen tank,” Pillock Two snapped. 

The bartender immediately shuffled back, and the other patrons that had previously been crowding the bar followed suit, creating a vacuum of space around Jamie’s little corner of the tavern. Which, of course, meant that Pillock One looked in her direction, as she was now the only person who hadn’t moved away.

Fuck. 

“She’s with me.”

All three of them froze at the sound of Jamie’s voice. Pillock Two turned to regard her as well, and over his shoulder Jamie could just make out the woman cautiously leaning around him to get a look at who had spoken. 

So much for not getting involved.

“She was getting us some drinks,” Jamie continued. She managed to catch the other woman’s attention and exchanged a significant look.

The woman nodded. “Yeah. I was just - uh -” 

She gestured towards the bartender, who by now was no doubt pressing an emergency transmitter for the authorities located beneath the bar. Jamie would know. She’d had to press it herself once or twice when things got too rowdy around these parts. Not that it happened often. Just often enough. 

Pillock Two pointed to Jamie’s glass. “Looks like you’re still making your way through that one.”

“What can I say?” Jamie gave a shrug and remained seated. “I’m thirsty.” 

Pillock One sauntered over to her table. Jamie glared up at him from her seat, maintaining eye contact even as he reached out and tipped her glass over so that ale foamed and spilled all across the table. 

“Go ahead and drink, then,” he said.

“She’s been on Telos with me for a week already,” Jamie countered, ignoring the slow drip of ale onto her work boots. “Whoever you’re looking for came here — when? On yesterday’s shuttle from Praadost?” 

Pillock One grit his jaw so tight Jamie could see the muscles bunch up there. 

She bared her teeth at him in a smile. “Thought as much. Now, fuck off and let honest people drink in peace. Yeah?” 

For a long tense moment it seemed that would be the start of a very long evening, in which Jamie ended up back in her flat upstairs nursing a bag of ice against her face if she were lucky. Then, Pillock Two thwacked his companion on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“The bounty’s getting away, while we sit here wasting our time,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

Pillock One stayed where he was, glowering at Jamie until Pillock Two made his way back towards the exit. Only then did he follow suit, but not without taking inventory of her appearance. And of course Jamie had to go and wear her Corps-issued boilersuit to the pub, with the AgriCorps logo stamped all over it. Absolutely phenomenal choice there. 

When they’d finally left, Jamie heaved a great sigh and let her head fall back against the chair for a second. Then she rose to her feet and crossed over to the bar. The woman eyed her warily, then seemed confused when Jamie ignored her utterly in favour of leaning against the bar and speaking to the bartender, “Ho’kyn, you got a towel?”

The bartender gave her a relieved nod in thanks, and immediately poured her two fresh ales. He slid them across the bar along with a stained dish towel. Jamie took them, pushed one into the woman’s hands, took the other for herself, and sank back down into her usual corner table seat with a drawn out groan. She used the towel to mop up the remnants of her previous drink before chucking it back towards the direction of the bar. The woman had to dodge out of the way to avoid being hit square in the face.

“You going to sit or not?” Jamie asked, and she kicked the leg of the other chair as an invitation. 

Nonplussed, the woman just stood there, clutching the full glass of ale between her hands as though it were a lifeline. Then she perched herself at the very edge of the seat, so that she seemed fit to flee at the drop of a hat. 

“Thank you,” she said eventually.

Jamie hummed around a sip of her ale, then lowered her glass. “Might want to hide that a bit better next time.”

“Hide what?”

Jamie gave her a significant look, then let her gaze wander down to the woman’s waist, where the glint of metal was clearly visible through a gap in her cloak. Face flushing, the woman jerked the cloak more tightly around her midriff and sent Jamie a glare that lacked any real edge. Before she could hide the lightsabre, Jamie could clearly see this close the faint glow of kyber through the hilt’s decorative casing, blue as the woman’s eyes. 

Or - well. Blue as one of the woman’s eyes. The other was a strange sort of brown, like the gleam of light through amber. 

Must’ve been some kind of cosmetic augment. Except there were no microfibral lines or data ports to suggest further connections that would make such augmentations useful in any capacity. 

“So,” Jamie said, leaning her elbows on the table and cradling the glass of ale between her palms. “What does Czerka want with a pretty thing like you from the Core Worlds?”

The woman shot her a bemused scowl. “I don’t know. I don’t even know who those people were.”

“Well, you’re awfully convincing. I’ll give you that.”

Jamie’s comment was summarily ignored, and the woman asked, “How do you know I’m from the Core Worlds?”

“You’ve got a Core accent thicker than a Senator’s.”

The woman’s mouth dropped open to protest, then shut again without saying anything. Instead she took a sip of the ale, holding the glass precariously from the top rim. Jamie watched this with some amusement, half expecting the glass to be dropped along the way. By some miracle it wasn’t. 

“Let me rephrase the question,” Jamie said. “Why do you have a bounty on your head?”

Her shoulders bunched up around her ears, and the woman cast a furtive look around to see if anyone had overheard their conversation. The other patrons had, indeed, moved back into their space now that Czerka was out of the building, but nobody was paying attention. That was why Jamie liked this corner. Nice and private. 

When the answer wasn’t forthcoming, Jamie slouched back in her seat. “All right. A guessing game, then. Does it have something to do with that stolen lightsabre on your hip?” 

“I could’ve bought it,” the woman countered.

Jamie gave her a slow grin. “You really couldn’t have.”

“And why not?” 

“Because the people who trade in lightsabres aren’t the kind of people you walk away from.” 

“Are you,” the woman asked warily, “a Jedi?”

Jamie gave a derisive snort. “Not even close. Trained in the temple, sure, but I was a shit padawan. Can’t lift a pebble with the Force. Got tossed out of Tython as a failure early on, and they passed me around various Service Corps branches until I ended up here to work on the Restoration Project.” 

“Oh. Right,” she said in a tone that meant she didn’t actually understand the situation at all. 

Jamie tapped her chest where the AgriCorps symbol sewn onto the corner of her boilersuit. “I’m a glorified gardener.”

The woman gestured towards a nearby window, through which the leafy horizon of Telos IV was darkening in the encroaching dusk. “I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job,” she said with a weak smile. 

“Oh, sure,” said Jamie dryly. “Only took us three hundred bloody years. And I still find shell fragments from the orbital barrage some days. Fucking Sith.” 

With a shake of her head, Jamie took a sip of her ale. Across the table, the woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat. 

“But you know,” the woman asked after a lapse in the conversation, “how to use one?” 

“What? A lightsabre?” 

The woman nodded.

“Well, I can hold one without chopping my own fingers off, which is more than most people can say. Never got past Shii-Cho before they yanked the practise blade from my hands and told me I was out.” Jamie made a jerking motion with her thumb over her shoulder as if throwing something away. 

“I never knew what happened to people if they never made it to being a full Jedi.”

“Yes, what glorious lives we lead,” Jamie drawled, and she lifted her ale in a mock salute before draining it and setting the glass back on the table. “Listen, I suggest you lie low for a few days. Sneak back aboard a transport, and then move on before Czerka realise you’ve gone. Just -” Jamie offered a wry smile and said, “- head back to the Core.”

The woman was gazing down into her half-drunk glass of ale. “I can’t. The Core Worlds are — I can’t.” 

“It’s either that, or -” 

And Jamie didn’t finish what she was saying. Instead, she pointed towards the holo feed over the bar, where the news was replaying the spread of red across the galactic map, like a virus creeping ever outward from the Sith homeworld of Korriban. The woman glanced up towards the holo feed and flinched as if she’d been struck across the cheek. 

“Cold War won’t last forever. And when it breaks, this is the last place you want to be.”

The woman frowned at Jamie. “And what about you?”

“I don’t get much of a choice,” Jamie said with a bitter chuckle. “The Council of Reassignment sends me where they send me.” 

“That sounds terrible,” the woman replied softly. 

A few more patrons trickled in through the front door on the far end of the long room. Jamie spared them a quick glance before dismissing them. Just the authorities answering Ho’kyn’s call about the Czerka assholes, no doubt. A handful of officers in tired uniforms and tired expressions behind their opaque half-face shields. They approached the bar and exchanged a few words with Ho’kyn, who gestured back the way they’d come.

“It is what it is,” Jamie replied, training her eye after the officers, who had begun talking to a few patrons and scribbling down notes on the pop-up screens from their forearms. “Difficult to make a living as a Force sensitive outside of the Council’s jurisdiction. And they look after me in their own way. It’s not -”

Jamie trailed off and cocked her head to one side. The holo feed over the bar now bore a description of her newfound acquaintance in the scroll text along the bottom of the usual news. There was no picture attached, but it was clear who the authorities were talking about. Jamie read the scroll text in a bored kind of bemusement. 

Until it got to the part about being wanted for murder, that was. 

Jamie’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. Sitting up straight, she glanced over at the woman, who had tracked where she was looking and whose face had gone white as a sheet. Another glance over her shoulder towards the group of officers slowly making their way from table to table. They weren’t as efficient as Pillock One and Pillock Two, but they would get here eventually.  

With a surreptitious jerk of her head towards the holo feed, Jamie asked quietly, “That right?” 

Eyes wide and hands shaking around her glass of ale, the woman stared at Jamie. Her voice wobbled when she spoke, coming out broken and erratic, “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to - He just - He attacked me out of nowhere. I swear it wasn’t -”

“Fucking hell,” Jamie muttered under her breath. She dragged a hand down her face and shook her head. Then she sighed. “Who are you?” 

“Dani,” was the immediate answer. 

“Dani,” Jamie repeated in a dull tone. “What the fuck have you gotten me into?” 

Worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, Dani said, “Not to seem ungrateful, or anything, but I don’t exactly remember asking for your help.”

Jamie mulled that over for a second, before conceding with a nod of her head. “Fair,” she said. Then she abruptly rose to her feet. “Right. I’m off, then. Good luck.”

“Hang on -! No, wait -!”

When Jamie did not, in fact, ‘hang on’ but instead turned to leave, she felt Dani grab her by the wrist, and she went stock-still.

It was like an electric shock. The wave of it traveled up her arm and hummed between her teeth loud as a thunderclap. It was like standing atop a great mountain, and the wind tearing at her clothes and hair. It was like waking up six feet beneath the ground, gasping for breath and breathing in dust until she drowned in it. It settled over her like a pall, a mist, a cool kiss at the back of her neck that roved down her spine and coiled in her gut. It was like a set of floodgates being unleashed, like being dragged along the current to some great unknown destination, vast and sweeping as the stars. 

“I’m sorry. Please,” Dani whispered, gazing up at her with wide eyes, her voice like a riptide. “Help me.”

And Jamie gaped down at her. Like an absolute moron. 

Not a Jedi. Not at all. Not a Sith, either. At least, not like any Sith Jamie had seen in the holo feeds. All black robes and black masks and red gold eyes that seemed to pierce the veil between them, as though reaching through space and time to claw back the very essence of whoever dared perceive them. And Jamie might not have been the strongest Force sensitive on the books — not by a long shot — but she was Force sensitive. She knew what the Force felt like, and that was —

“Shit,” Jamie hissed. Taking a moment to compose herself and draw in a deep breath, she grabbed hold of Dani’s hand in return and tugged her upright. “Come with me. Pull your hood back up. Keep quiet. Do what I say. And don’t make me regret this.”

Scrambling to do as she was told, Dani pulled her hood up and trailed in Jamie’s wake. Jamie squeezed them around the back of the bar, bending her knees just slightly so that they were a little less conspicuous. Ho’kyn shot them a puzzled look as they passed. 

“I wasn’t here,” Jamie muttered to him.

The sharply pointed feelers on his face clicked. “Back door’s locked. You know the combination.”

“Cheers, mate.”

It was a quick duck and weave through the cramped kitchens and storage rooms, a race past the walk-in freezer, and then Jamie was punching in the combination code to open the rear door. The two of them spilled out into the back alley. Piles of trash had been stored awaiting disposal in the recycling unit that came every three days. Clouds of steam puffed from the vents in the walls, creating white trails that rose into the night sky. 

Dani squeezed her hand tight. Jamie squeezed it back, but then Dani gave her hand a tug and pointed towards the main street down the way. Flashing lights and parked vehicles. More authorities congregated on the front step of Ho’kyn’s tavern. When the heavy metal rear door to the tavern slammed shut, one of the officers shone a torch down the alleyway towards the noise. 

Acting quickly, Jamie pushed Dani up against a nearby wall by the door.

“What are you -?” Dani gasped.

“Just -” Jamie stepped in close, close enough to block Dani from view, “- trust me. Keep your head down. Pretend like we’re -”

The circle of light hit them. Jamie could feel Dani wince, could feel Dani duck her head and bury her face in Jamie’s shoulder, gripping the fabric of Jamie’s boilersuit along her back as though she were a human shield. They were barely touching, but still Jamie felt the heat of Dani’s skin beneath layers of pastel nanosilk, the sweep of her panicked breaths against Jamie’s collarbone. A few stray strands of blonde hair tickled her nose, and Jamie had to fight the urge to scratch at her face. 

To say nothing of the cold length of a lightsabre pressing against her inner thigh. And not in a good way. In a ‘This Will Burn A Hole Through My Leg If I Move’ way. 

After what felt like a whole planetary cycle, the light moved along, the officer clearly disinterested in a couple groping one another behind a seedy bar. Jamie waited a few rapid heartbeats longer before pulling back. Dani peeled her hands away from Jamie’s back, looking small. In the dark, her mismatched eyes seemed to gleam owlishly. Especially the pale brown one. Almost golden. Like something that belonged to a nocturnal animal. 

“This way,” Jamie murmured.

When she began guiding them further into the shadow of the alley, Dani asked haltingly, “Why -? I mean - where are we -?” 

Jamie reached the expected set of metal grated stairs leading up to the second floor above the bar. “My flat.” 

Dani followed without further question, nervous and silent, all but hugging Jamie’s back when Jamie fumbled the passcode to unlock the door at the top of the stairs. They stumbled inside and Jamie only breathed easier when she’d shut the door behind them, locked them, then hit the control panel to lower the alusteel shutters over the windows. 

The apartment was small and dark and not at all quiet. By now Jamie was used to the noise of the nearby streets and the tavern beneath her feet. Her neighbours weren’t exactly gems, either. Another slap of the control panel, and she turned on a few lights and the news holo feed along the wall screen to generate some more noise so that it would be more difficult for them to be overheard by anyone snooping. 

Jamie turned around to find Dani standing stiffly in the middle of the living room. Which was also a kitchenette. And the entryway. And technically the guest bedroom. There was no wall separating it from the actual main bedroom. Beyond that was a door leading to a bathroom, and another door leading to a very cramped closet, which bore nothing but spare sets of Corps-issued boilersuits in various states of shabby, and a few personal outfits that weren’t much better off. 

“Your place is - uh -” Dani started to say, gesturing weakly around her. 

“Pure shite,” Jamie finished for her. “Thanks. I know.” 

“That’s not what I was going to say.” 

“No? And were you ever going to get around to telling me about the whole murder thing?”

“Yeah, actually, I was waiting until after we’d finished our drinks. I thought it would be a good segue into a friendship,” Dani retorted in a tone so sarcastic that Jamie had to quell an answering smile. 

“All right,” Jamie stepped forward, motioning towards the couch for Dani to take a seat and make herself comfortable. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.” 

Dani did not take the invitation; she remained standing, thumbs tucked into her fists, shoulders tense, jaw tense, gaze downcast. 

“Do you want another drink?” Jamie offered quietly.

Dani shook her head. “No. Thank you.” She flexed her hands and said in a dull voice that lacked its previous fire, “I was recently employed by Lord Wingrave of House Thul. He - uh - he needed a governess to teach his young niece and nephew at his family estate, and my background is in education. So, I thought it was a - it was supposed to be a good opportunity for me.”

“Until it wasn’t,” Jamie said.

Dani nodded. “Yeah.” She sniffled and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand before continuing.  “It turned out he has unsavoury friends and -” she wrinkled her nose, “- debts.”

“What kind of friends?” Jamie asked.

Dani didn’t answer, but her eyes darted just for a moment towards the holo feed, where a fleet of Imperial II-class Star Destroyers were raining down hell on fleeing Republic ships. 

Well, shit. 

“Poor choice of friends,” Jamie muttered under her breath.

Dani hummed a note in agreement. 

“Then what happened? Did you hear something you weren’t supposed to? Find something, maybe?”

Dani’s head jerked up to look at Jamie in surprise and — for some reason — suspicion. “I did,” she said slowly. “I found a - a box.”

Rolling up her sleeves for no other reason than to give her hands something to do, Jamie asked, “What kind of box?”  

“Why does everyone keep going on about that box?” Dani asked, her expression suddenly going steely in a way that did not seem to become her. “What is so important about a glowing little box?”

“It glows? Listen, I’m not - Woah! Hey! Be careful where you point that thing!”

The lightsabre had appeared in Dani’s hand in a movement too fast for the eye to track, as if it had always been there, as if it belonged there. The blade was still sheathed, but gone was the awkward hesitance with which she had worn it before. She levelled the unlit hilt towards Jamie with a tilt of her wrist, and her face was hard yet frightened. 

“Who are you? Why do you want to know about this box?” Dani asked, and her voice was surprisingly even for all the tremble in her clenched fist. “Answer me.” 

Jamie had her hands held before her, as though that would somehow help deflect a fucking lightsabre. She tried to drift sideways to get out of the way, but Dani trained the hilt on her as though it were the muzzle of a blaster rifle. 

“The name’s Jamie, but I’d prefer it if you bought me dinner before pointing any weapons at me,” Jamie said blandly. She immediately regretted the quip, when Dani’s hand tightened around the hilt of the sabre and her thumb drifted over the activation button. 

“Okay! Okay!” Jamie scrambled back a few steps, nearly tripping over the edge of the couch, but Dani followed closely after her. “It just seems to be a bit weird, is all. Glowing boxes and corrupt Lords. Y’know. Unless Wingrave was in the habit of collecting items of luminous quality. I don’t fucking know. I’m just trying to get a picture of what happened, so that I can -” Jamie gave a wave of one hand towards Dani, “- help you. Remember? Remember that part? Me helping you?”

If the furrow in Dani’s brow was any indication, she was not convinced by this argument. 

Jamie motioned to the lightsabre. “Also, you’re holding that the wrong way ‘round.”

With a blink of confusion, Dani glanced down at the lightsabre in her grasp, tilting it to one side for a better look. The moment she did so, Jamie leapt forward, grabbed the hilt of the sabre, and tried to wrench it free. A scuffle broke out, and it was not the most dignified scuffle Jamie had ever taken part in. There was a lot of swearing — admittedly, mostly from herself — and a lot of yanking at the lightsabre hilt in futile desperation like a game of tug of war. Except instead of a rope, they were tugging at a weapon that might accidentally extend a nigh unstoppable plasma blade with one wrong movement. 

Eventually, Jamie managed to hook a foot behind Dani’s ankles, causing her to fall to the ground with a graceless yelp. Unfortunately, Dani did not let go of the sabre as expected, and Jamie was dragged down with her. Jamie grunted in pain when a sharp elbow connected with her ribs. With one final yank, she managed to wrest the lightsabre free.

Dani panted beneath her, flushed and half pinned to the floor between Jamie’s knees. Her hair was splayed loosely across the carpet, and she glowered up at Jamie with equal parts impotent fury and fear. 

“Right,” Jamie said breathlessly, ribs still aching. “Now that that’s all sorted, can you please tell me about this glowing box? And spare no detail.”

In answer, Dani’s jaw took a stubborn set. Sighing, Jamie pushed herself upright, then offered Dani a hand. Dani stared at her for a moment before allowing herself to be hauled to her feet, where she brushed down the back of her nanosilks. 

“When was the last time you cleaned your floor?”

“Can’t remember,” Jamie answered honestly.

Dani wrinkled her nose and began to card fingers through her hair in an attempt to tame it. When Jamie held out the lightsabre, palm up, in a silent offering, Dani went very still. Hesitantly, she reached out to take it, but Jamie pulled her hand back slightly before she could do so.

“Be careful,” Jamie warned. “This thing isn’t a toy. You’re more likely to chop off your own leg by accident than you are to actually injure someone else. And don’t point it at me again! Or we’re going to have words. Got it?”

Jamie waited for her to nod, then held the lightsabre out again. Dani took it, and her shoulders relaxed incrementally once she had it back in her grasp. 

“Now,” Jamie said. “Weird glowy box?”

Dani sighed and ran the same hand through her hair that held the lightsabre. Jamie had to suppress a wince. After everything she’d said about being careful, too. Bloody idiot. 

“I don’t know what it was,” Dani admitted. “I overheard a transmission. Something about putting the box where the children could get it. So, naturally, I investigated. I found it on a shelf in their playroom. I picked it up, and -”

She trailed off with a helpless little gesture.

“And?” Jamie pressed.

“And I don’t know,” said Dani, clearly frustrated. She paused to hook the lightsabre back onto her belt, but it took her a few tries to make it work. She almost dropped the weapon in the process, and Jamie took a step back just in case the bloody thing went unsheathing itself into the floor. “I woke up and I didn’t know where I was, or how much time had passed, or -”

“Which is when you looked down and found a dead man at your feet.”

“What?” Dani frowned at her. “No. That was later.” 

“Right. My bad,” Jamie said dryly. “Describe the box to me.” 

“It was about this big.” Dani held up her hands to indicate an object that could comfortably be held in one hand. “Sharp edges. Some kind of black gold metal, but nothing like I’d ever seen before. It looked hollow, but it was heavy. Like the light inside of it had weight.” 

“Was there writing on it? Marks of any kind?”

“Yeah, but nothing I could read.” 

“Would you recognise them if you saw them again?”

Dani shrugged. “Sure. I guess.” 

“Do you have this box with you now?”

At that, Dani’s shoulders went all tense again and she pursed her lips, her expression growing guarded. 

“Forget I asked,” Jamie said with a dismissive wave. With a sigh, she leaned down and began unlacing her work boots. She chucked them into a corner and then flopped onto the couch, placing her feet up on the cushions. “All right. Last question for the night. Did you know that you’re Force sensitive?”

Dani stared at her as though Jamie had sprouted an extra limb. And then she laughed. It was, in all honesty, a very nice laugh. Nothing at all like the nervous smile from the bar. Her smile now had lines at the corners, and she shook her head. 

“No,” said Dani, still laughing. “No, I’m not.”

Jamie hoisted up an eyebrow but said nothing.

“I’m not,” Dani repeated more firmly this time, her smile fading. “There’s nothing - I’m not special. I’m a governess. I’m from a small town on Alderaan in the middle of nowhere. I teach kids about galactic history and how to share toys.” 

Jamie pointed to herself. “And I’m a Rim Rat, but that didn’t stop the Jedi from hauling me off to the Temple for training until they realised I was a waste of time.” 

“I’m not -!” Dani’s voice had started to climb, and she quickly lowered it to a hush. “I’m not - like that. My family is normal. I’m normal. We don’t have any kind of history or - or anything.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t feel it?”

“Feel what? What are you talking about?”

Sitting up abruptly, Jamie leaned forward on the couch. “When you touched me earlier. In the bar. You grabbed my hand, and I felt — That was it. That was the Force. You were like a - a circuit. Like an exposed wire. You didn’t feel it?” 

Dani was staring at her now and there was no laughter. Only a dim and dawning horror.

“No,” Dani croaked. “I didn’t feel anything.”

Jamie huffed out a short and mordant laugh. Then she said, “Liar.” 

“I’m not -” Dani inhaled sharply and sat down on the edge of the couch furthest from Jamie. She crossed her arms. “I don’t want to talk about this.” 

Jamie shook her head and gave an incredulous chuckle. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. Here’s the plan: I have no idea what’s going on -”

“Great start,” Dani muttered under her breath.

“- but I know some people who might,” Jamie continued. 

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?” 

“Catch?” 

“I’ve just spent the last two weeks being chased across half the galaxy by criminals and authorities alike. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little skeptical of your sudden eagerness to help. So,” Dani leaned forward and fixed Jamie with a pinning stare, made all the more unsettling by her mismatched eyes. “What’s the catch?” 

“The catch,” Jamie said, lying back against the couch cushions, “is that my friends are a pair of Jedi on Tython. And the Council doesn’t really think of discretionary funds as a necessity, so I don’t have enough money to get us both there.”

Dani’s face went a little pale. “Can’t they -” she swallowed before continuing, “Can’t they meet us somewhere else? Somewhere halfway, maybe?”

Slinging an arm behind her head, Jamie asked, “Why? What’s wrong with Tython? I mean — apart from the obvious of it being one of the most boring rocks in the known galaxy.”

“Nothing,” said Dani, very unconvincingly. “It’s just - That’s a long way to go. And I’m not exactly swimming in credits either.” 

Jamie studied the way Dani tried to hide the wringing of her hands beneath her cloak, the way Dani noticed what she herself was doing and hid her hands behind her back even as she gave Jamie her best imploring look. Which, granted, was very effective. She certainly had some eyes. 

Gentling her tone Jamie said, “Hannah and Owen are good people. Better friends than I probably deserve. The most they could be accused of is spending too much time with their noses buried in the library or in a kitchen recipe.”

“It’s not - I don’t doubt that. It’s just -” Dani breathed in deeply and then continued in a rush, “I don’t think people will like me going to the central planet of the Jedi Order.” 

“Why would they even care?”

“Because,” Dani said slowly, not meeting Jamie’s gaze. She wrung her hands together in her lap, staring down at her own fingers. “The man I killed was a Jedi.” 

Well, then. 

Things just got complicated.

--

“Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core. There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you.”

— Darth Traya, The Sith Lords

[mistymark]

VIGILANTE/S IV

part four // 2.8k words // superpowered!au // (sort of) gang!au // series masterlist

summary; in which you consider yourself somewhat of a vigilante.

warnings; swearing, mentions of death, weapons and killing, gang shit really 

notes; this fic is now 10k words and that's a personal record so damn

“I hear training was a success,” Doyoung says when he returns from Jaehyun’s ‘errand’.

You roll your eyes, your jaw set. You don’t look at him, focusing instead on the camera footage Mark had given you to watch. A notepad sat in your lap as you sat cross-legged on your bed, the computer in front of you. The footage was over 12 hours long, showing only a large gate leading to an estate that looked to be the size of a museum. The leader of the Red Crown lived there, you knew, and you were supposed to watch and record who was entering and exiting through the gate during the 12-hour time period.

“I’m being serious.” You finally look over at Doyoung, standing in the doorway, and the expression on his face almost resembles pride. He’s never been anything but serious, but he seems more playful now. “You beat Johnny.”

“He beat me about fifty times,” you deadpan, giving him a pointed look before shifting your attention back to your notepad. Doyoung walks in and looks around the room, as if it’s his first time seeing it – like it would help him understand you.

“What was your time?” He asks, his back to you.

“Fifteen twenty?” The worst fifteen minutes and twenty seconds of your life, probably. He looks at you, and for a moment you can’t read the expression on his face.

He quirks an eyebrow at you, but doesn’t say anything. Briefly turning his attention away from you, he stops to look at the drawings and photos attached to the wall, his face stoic again. He’s looking at the detailed sketches of weapons  – disturbingly realistic, in your opinion – that adorn the wall by the door. The others were strangely anatomical – surprisingly accurate hand-drawn outlines of bodies were pinned against another bare wall. One had a skeleton, another vital organs, and one had the bloodstream mapped out beautifully. Hand-written notes were scribbled across the paper – you’d attempted to read them but the messy scrawl was illegible.

“What’s this?” When he turns around, you hold up one of the leather-bound journals you’d found on the bedside table. It was quite possibly the creepiest thing you’d ever read. One of the entries had just read, January 16th, tried knives again. Sixteen stab wounds. Mostly torso, though heart was avoided. Twelve hours exactly. Another, only two days later, was simply: January 18th, bullet between the eyes (removed). 6.4mm. Four hours.

You’d wondered if the owner was an interrogator like Doyoung – or just a torturer. Part of you was glad you hadn’t had the opportunity to meet him. From what it appeared, none of the others really missed him, either.

Doyoung furrows his eyebrows, “Don’t read that. It’s personal.”

“The guy’s dead.”

You’re unsure if Doyoung hears you, as he chooses to focus on the pictures on the walls once again. Your personal favourite was in the closet, attached to the inside of the door, otherwise hidden from sight. It was a mix of charcoal and red paint, barely resembling a face, but it felt more personal than the ones on the walls, tucked away in the closet where no one would see. It wasn’t nearly as detailed or clear as the other posters, and you had stared at it for almost two minutes before realising what it was.

“The first time Donghyuck fought Johnny, he didn’t even get a time.” Doyoung’s voice sounds far away as he recalls the memory. You wish he hadn’t blocked you from using his powers so that you could see whatever he was remembering.

“What about you?”

“About fifteen seconds.” He snorts at your expression. “Don’t be discouraged.” His attention suddenly moves to the door, and you follow his gaze, though nothing is there. With a nod, he leaves.

You’re left alone again, and you wonder what it is with these boys and never saying goodbye.

You’ve managed to speed up the footage just enough to make your task bearable but have to pause it when a familiar black van enters the shot. It’s identical to the one you’d seen at the Den on the night you met the team, but the number plate is different. This number plate is familiar in a different way. Unlike every other vehicle that had passed through the gates, the driver’s window does not slide down. No ID card is able to be captured.

You know exactly who it is – the only person who can enter the estate without having to show credentials. The Red Prince.

Even though the footage is far too grainy to make out anything in the mirrors, you swear you can see his reflection. Eyes that stare directly into the camera, as if he knows you’re watching. You wonder if he knows he’s being watched, that a group of Supers had managed to hack into his security system.

The gate slides open wide, and the eyes disappear. You shiver.

“Y/n?” You’re shaken from your thoughts when a voice calls you from the other side of your door.

“Come in!”

“Wow,” Mark offers you a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Donghyuck never lets me in his room.”

“Well-,” you shrug, then hesitate. You realise you have no idea what to say to him. At least, you don’t have anything to say that isn’t insensitive. Clearing your throat, you push your notepad to the side, “What’s up?”

“I, uh,” his eyes scan the walls, taking in the inside of the room, “Johnny needs the notes from the security footage by tonight. I thought I’d let you know.”

“Thanks, Mark.” You can feel how tight your smile is, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

He turns to leave, but just as the door’s about to close, he pops his head back inside the room, “Oh, by the way, don’t be worried about training today. Johnny was impressed.” He smiles. “Have a good night, y/n.”

It’s almost midnight by the time you get to the end of the footage. 14 vehicles entering, 10 leaving. And you know the licence plates and drivers of them all.

You feel uncomfortable watching the footage, being right at the gate but unable to enter. Your determination to get in there and take down the Red Crown is strong, frustration bubbling inside you. Everything they’re doing goes against what you believe in, and there’s something about your anger that makes you stand up and head to the kitchen. The walls of Jaehyun’s office are transparent again, and the light is on , even though you know he can’t see you, you freeze when his eyes snap up from his laptop.

It’s weird being unable to hear or see the other team members walking around, and the warehouse feels much emptier without them. Soft snoring makes you jump, and you smile at the sight of Jaemin passed out on a couch nearby, his breaths steady, though slightly too fast. Part of you was surprised by how fast he seemed to live his life, though he had told you he had to consciously slow himself down most of the time. “It’s like letting someone win in a race by running slower than them,” he’d explained. “You know you can go faster and beat them, but you don’t. Like constantly coming second place.”

“Does it get frustrating?” You’d asked.

“Almost unbelievably so,” he’d smiled at you, though you could see some inner turmoil behind his eyes.

When you’re filling a glass with water, Jaehyun steps out of his office, the door closing loudly, snapping you out of your thoughts. His feet are soft on the floor – you almost don’t hear him coming. “Can’t sleep?” He’s reaching for a mug on the shelf behind you, and you sidestep to move out of his way.

“I just needed to clear my head,” you swallow, and quickly take a drink of water as an excuse not to elaborate.

Jaehyun slides the mug under the coffee machine, and watches it whir to life. Only now can you read the words printed on the side, ‘World’s Greatest Boss’. You snort when you see it. He turns his head to look at you, and raises an eyebrow. There’s something different in the way he does it. Normally, when he does this, it’s questioning, analytical, intimidating. Now? You’d say it’s borderline flirtatious. It takes you a second to realise why it seems so different.

He’s standing in front of you, leaning over the counter top, waiting for his coffee – in sweatpants. He’s mindlessly biting the inside of his cheek, and you realise you’ve never noticed he has dimples. Probably because he never smiles.

“What?” He’s frowning slightly, but when he looks like this, it just looks cute. The furrow in his brow almost looks guarded, as if he’s worried you’re about to say something offensive.

“Uh,” you look down, collecting your thoughts, then a smile appears on your face. “Your mug, I-”

He looks down at it, and there’s the ghost of a smile on his face, “The first birthday present Johnny ever got me.”

“It’s…cute,” you say it more like a question than a compliment. A loud thud makes you both stand tall, staring into the darkness to make out any movement. There’s a quiet yawn, and the sound of retreating footsteps. You turn back to Jaehyun, and any emotion he’d displayed in the last two minutes was wiped from his face. His face is hard again, and he looks more like the man you’d seen earlier. He looks older, authoritative. “I’m gonna get some rest. I hear training tomorrow is going to be intense,” you offer him a smile.

His attention has moved from you again, staring into the darkness of the warehouse. He bids you goodnight without looking at you, carrying his coffee gently to his office, his mind somewhere else.

You leave your glass in the sink, promising yourself you’ll wash it in the morning, before making your way back to your room.

You can hear faint murmurs coming from another room, but the walls are so thick you can’t make out any of the words. Moving the laptop from your bed to the set of drawers next to the door, you prepare for bed.

The door suddenly bangs open, and a duffel bag is dropped onto the floor noisily. You gasp in shock and the person in the doorway looks just as surprised to see you. “Who are you?” He asks, frozen right there in the middle of the doorway.

“Y/n. Who-” His eyes are wide and calculating, searching the room.

“Well, what are you doing here, y/n?” He crosses his arms, looking at you skeptically.

“I’m part of the team. I-”

“I meant, what are you doing in my room?”

You’re struggling to keep up with the conversation at this point. You shake your head. “Your room – ? Wait, you’re Donghyuck? You’re dead.”

His gaze is fierce, “I was dead. I’m not anymore. Now, I’m tired. And I’d like to sleep in my own bed.” He walks into the room, rifling through the drawers of the dresser, looking for something.

Reaching out for his power, you can feel it thread through your body, though it’s more painful than invigorating, very different to most of the power you can feel in other Supers. “You’re immortal.”

“Obviously,” he doesn’t even turn around.

A lightbulb goes off in your head as the journals on the bedside table catch your attention, “So the journals – you… you were killing yourself?”

Donghyuck rounds on you, “You read my – ? Okay, you’re clearly new to the team. Rule number one; never read anyone’s journal.” At the confused look on your face, he rolls his eyes, “We all have them. You’ll get yours soon. To track your drawbacks; track your strength.”

You raise an eyebrow at him from where you’re sitting on your – his – bed. “Drawbacks?”

“Damn, okay. Rule number two; know your drawbacks. The limits of your power. We all have them. Jaemin’s is how much he has to eat and sleep. Chenle and Mark lack control.” He gestures to his journals before turning back to the drawers, “As you can see, mine is time. Takes a long time to come back to life.” You barely hear it when he mumbles, “Surprise, surprise.”

“You just kill yourself over and over again?”

“Pretty much.” He finds what he’s looking for but doesn’t take it out from the drawer. He turns to face you again, leaning against the dresser with his arms crossed once again. “What do you do?”

“I mimic other people’s abilities.”

His eyebrows raise slightly and he whistles lowly in appreciation, but he doesn’t say anything. “Drawback?”

“Uh… I guess it’s distance. If they’re too far away, it’s like I can’t reach their power.”

He nods in understanding, then furrows his eyebrows, “Johnny will have you training with all of us, then. Have you done ability training yet?”

You shake your head.

“How long have you been here?”

“One day,” you shrug.

“Wait, you’re the one Doyoung brought in?”

You pause, then nod.

“Ah, Jeno killed me before we could meet, I guess.”

“Jeno killed you?!” Your voice is high and loud. Jeno was much stronger, much faster, much more skilled than you were. You had no chance against him if he ever decided you were his next target. Donghyuck’s eyes widen at the loud noise, and he crosses the room to shut the door, “Shit, calm down. I’m immortal – it’s not like it’s a big deal. Almost everyone here has killed me at least once, though he does hold the record.” The side of his mouth quirks up to the side in a smile that you would almost call cute. Maybe if he wasn’t talking about his friend murdering him, he’d be cute.

You don’t know what to say to that. “You’re insane.” That works.

He shrugs, “Jeno’s always been impatient.”

“So he just kills you. Logical.” The disbelief in your voice makes him laugh.

“Rule number three; never get Jeno angry. His drawback is his anger.”

“Holy shit, where were you when I joined? I could have used some of this information.”

He raises an eyebrow at you, “Well, first of all, I was dead. Then I had to go out of town for a day – and here I am.”

You nod, “Right.”

Donghyuck grabs his bag and turns it upside down onto the top of the bed. You aren’t quite sure what you were expecting to come out, but it certainly wasn’t guns. You wait for something – anything – normal to drop out, yet it seems like it’s just guns. At least fifteen of them, ranging in size. You don’t say anything.

He takes one look at your face and immediately explains, “I just bought them. Our weapons dealer is based in China – Winwin? He’s a friend of Jaehyun’s – and he just got into the city two days ago. Jaehyun made me go pick them up.” Under all the posters and sketches on the wall, the walls are painted a bright red, and the subtle blush on Donghyuck’s face almost matches them completely.

“I didn’t realise there was more of you,” you say.

“Us.” You look up in confusion, and he offers you a smile, “More of us.” He clears his throat, his attention going back to the weapons on the bed, “Yeah, Jaehyun has connections everywhere. Japan, China, you name it.”

Carefully, he places the guns in boxes and stacks them in the corner of his room. He brushes off his hands on his thighs, “Look, I’m happy to take the couch tonight, but don’t get any ideas. This is my room, and I fully intend on taking it back after –“ He cuts himself off with a yawn and you raise an eyebrow at him. Rolling his eyes, he heads for the door, giving you an awkward bow of his head as he closes the door.

You feel a little bad about stealing his room, but you’re so tired, you don’t have enough time to think about it before you’re drifting off to sleep in his bed.

[nami-writes]

ive been drawing every day but im self conscious bc i still suck but there are some things ive drawn that im pretty happy with and i have like 4 followers so posting them here doesnt seem like the worst idea lmao

for reference on my art experience: i spent about a month trying to learn realism last feb but i dropped that before i could even draw more than individual eyes/noses/lips, went 6 months without drawing, then made an artist friend who motivated me to draw again, then i lost motivation again for 4 months, and now i’ve been drawing every day since jan 4 + i did a bit of sketching on jan 2. im not an artist whatsoever but i mean im trying lmao

1/5/21 — this was originally supposed to be a leg but i made the calf too low so it looks more like an arm but its actually a decent arm imo!! it was very exciting to draw my first Good Thing even if it didnt turn out the way i wanted it

1/6/21 — a pair of arms i tried to show emotion thru, lowkey inspired by zuko lmao. obviously the hands arent great but i dont hate the arms!

1/7/21 — first full bodies ive ever drawn decently!! i made the first dude muscly and buff unintentionally so i purposely made the second dude skinny and lanky to practice different body types yknow. also tried to practice poses by having the second dude gesture to,,,,,, something and having the third dude kneel on the ground and im pretty happy with how they came out

1/8/21 — legs i drew yesterday that im pretty proud of!

1/9/21 — hand i actually drew today! it’s a lil long and stiff and the index finger’s too thick but its the only good thing that came out of today’s study of hands lmao

i might update this with more good things i draw to keep up motivation and morale but yeah! i drew good things :))

[seafleece]

sand plucked from the sea, or: five times the divine belgard considered her place in the universe and one time she did not

i.

“I wish I had known. What it was. I should have known.”

“Would you have said yes?”

Belgard does not whisper. Can’t. There’s no cause for it, no medium.

“I don't know,” Belgard whispers.

The empty body of Empyrean stands, wings dropped. Head fierce and tall against the awful light and dark of Volition.

Belgard is quiet. There’s this faint, but repeated pull at her, like the tide— she wants Signet to return. Wants to think about anything other than that she looked like this, once.

“Can you carry them?”

—

ii.

“Can you open the Exuvia?”

It’s a bad day. The latest in a series. Belgard’s cables lace over her suit instead of where it ends, where the sleeves of it don’t quite meet her shoes. It’s too much to touch, to feel, to be felt.

She opens an eye. It’s crawling along the floor, miles away. On days where her hands would be wrapped proper in the sashes, she’d let herself drop, fall and fall until the cold panels of the bottom of Belgard rushed to meet her and catch firm, swaying. Reach down a hand and snag it, and ascend again, like something arboreal.

But the swing she’s cradled in isn’t fashioned from her own twisting, it’s Belgard knotting herself together under Signet, holding her aloft. She doesn’t even rock.

She tugs, downward, and Belgard lowers her.

The Exuvia goes still in her hands, like it knows crawling would make her drop it again.

“Here,” Belgard tilts Signet in her swing until she’s mostly horizontal, still curled in on herself like an oyster around grit, no pearl in sight.

“I don’t— I don’t know how to tell you about them yet.”

“I know. I thought I would read to you instead.”

The wings of the Exuvia flare out and close again.

—

iii.

“Signet,” Belgard says, “Signet, Signet.” She sounds like she’s smiling, but she should be crying.

Signet scrabbles at the straps around her wrists. “No.”

“You know it already.”

“Don’t.” She can’t say it. In the air, even between them, it will exist, and the truth of it is so compelling and awful she can’t bear it.

“Such a beautiful passage. My favorite, I think.”

The Assemblage is so long that a favorite passage is meaningless. She knows it, and Belgard knows it. To pick one and hold it above the rest is like emerging with a single grain from the ocean floor. Beautiful, maybe, in the sunlight, but what makes it separate from the others is only that it happens to be in your palm. That, rather than sweeping your hands through the rest of the ocean, you’d leave that one there instead. To make it yours, and give it you. To forgo.

A Divine is for people. Not a person. Belgard telling her that she is Signet’s is saying the worst thing there is to say. That she’s done.

There's a plate on Belgard’s wing that’s shaking loose. Big enough to enclose her, carry her to safety.

“Please.” She reaches out, desperate, buries her hands in two straps, then four, ten, like gathering up a kelp forest. All of them wind around her, enclosing her.

Belgard’s entire body rattles with the force of another explosion, but in the open space of her cockpit she keeps Signet still. Screens open in the corners of Signet’s vision like compound eyes— first, who it is that needs healing, then their middle name, their favorite color. All of the things they can continue to be, if Belgard stops being.

Belgard holds her for a second, and another, and another.

Then, she lets go.

—

iv.

“Hello, Belgard.”

“On the shore the seas gathered themselves like gifts, folded lines like petals unfurling under newest light. How are you?”

They laugh. It sounds like crumpling paper.

“Not so bad. Did you get to meet them?”

“They were busy with rites, the keeper told me. I think they are nervous to see me.”

Shore waves a hand, drawn with age and shaking. “Don’t worry. They’re a good egg. They just want to get it right the first time.”

Belgard doesn’t have eyes to close. Instead she simply tries to picture fewer things, and sticks on the roll in Shore’s shoulders as they laugh quietly. “They’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“That if things were right the first time, we would not be part of the fleet. Yes.” She lights up her panels to prove she gets the joke, even if Shore can’t see them.

She can tell when they look at her again, a fierce and fixing thing unmitigated by their position. She wants to spread her wings and unpin herself from it, feel her Excerpt weaving the two of them out and away from Thyrsus. But Shore is here, and dying, and so she has nowhere to go.

“You’re going to be okay.”

She says nothing.

“Belgard.”

“On the shore the seas gathered themselves like gifts, folded lines like petals unfurling under newest light.”

It’s a beautiful passage. She wonders if Shore can tell she is afraid of when she can no longer say it.

“You talk through it, okay? When it feels like the world should have stopped with you. You explain why you can’t do the things you need to, and one day you find you can.”

“Shore.”

“They’re going to pick Meadow, at the ceremony. They asked me what passage was your favorite and I didn't tell them it was mine. Because it isn’t. Don’t let it be.”

“Shore.” Belgard has no function resembling tears. Her panels, unseen, flare with frustration instead.

“You have to love them, too. Not because they’re the next me, but because they’re someone else.”

She’s a large being, enough to cover Shore a hundred times over. The love for them feels like it spills out of her already.

—

v.

She feels the moment Signet starts to go slack. The Exuvia clips its shell into a single golden dome again.

Belgard has never written for the Assemblage. The few left to tell stories had no time to read them, and then there were none.

She thinks about breaking rocks into sand and scattering them into the sea. Her hands are shaped like hands by coincidence more than anything else— they’re erosion incarnate, even so.

The singular grain that is Signet goes fully limp in her cables and Belgard wants to be smaller so she can press against her contours.

She carried Empyrean’s body home after they fled it. Signet brought the unrecognizable threads of them to her and they wanted her to inhabit her shell again for the shell’s sake, not the ocean. They begged her to keep the sand in her fists, and Signet is safe, quiet and asleep and here, because she held on. First to Signet, and then to herself.

In the dark, the Divine Belgard holds her grain of sand and thinks on becoming an oyster instead.

—

i.

“They marked scars of light in pitch; born in fiercest purpose, and beheld as the signet sealed upon our pact. You look so beautiful like this.”

Belgard flares all around her and grows dim again in a moment— laughter, surprise, captured as a reflex. The cables around Signet’s arms, her waist, slacken and tighten. Not unsure, but aware.

Signet is content to let that thought sit with her— like she had leaving Polyphony’s city. Something to turn over and over again in her mind like a stone, worried smooth over time and trips across the system and to Thyrsus, to ask for someone who liked to sing.

It is such a different thing, to be alone with them again. They must know, she thinks. Must have felt it from her when they met again, that something they had given her had been so rattling as to stay with her. She looks down at them from where she’s suspended— thinks, actively, about what the places where she and Belgard meet must look like in other eyes— and flushes.

It’s Belgard who speaks instead. “Are you afraid?”

Polyphony laughs. Properly.

“No. I don’t believe it will hurt me.”

Belgard says something else to Polyphony, something about bravery, but Signet doesn’t hear it. A cable curls along her wrist and she wraps her fingers around it.

You are beautiful like this, Signet. If only they could see you when you are even more beautiful, when—

Startled, she falls a bit in the cables and Belgard holds her fast.

Below, Polyphony looks curiously on as Belgard’s panels flare again, another show of mirth.

Belgard’s alive with this infectious sort of curiosity today, buzzing where they meet. She pulls on the cable in her fingers, questioning.

I am interested in who it is that would make you ask to be sung to, Signet. I think I get it, now.

Below, Polyphony gathers their skirts under them and accepts the second swing Belgard offers. The weight sends connected cables bouncing for a moment with momentum, moving Signet about.

Belgard moves every single part of herself with purpose. If cables move towards Polyphony that, at another junction, find Signet, Belgard wants her to feel Polyphony in them.

She grips the strap in her fist and presses her smile to another one, captivated by the quiet brazenness of it all. Belgard hums and they sway again together, lazy and thrilling.

Jealous? she teases.

A single panel lights near Signet’s face. A restrained laugh.

You are a different kind of beautiful when they are near. Call it comparison.

Things grow quiet and tense again as they near Volition, and Belgard doesn’t tease her when she returns alone with Polyphony’s lipstick blooming wistful and faded blue at the corner of her mouth. She merely offers the little cable, unconnected to any controls and empty of data, and Signet holds it fast and presses her mouth there, shaking with things unsaid and trusting she will be held in kind.

[the-sheep]

ID GO ABSOLUTELY BONKERS IF U TYPED OUT HIS ENTIRE HISTORY FBFBFBFB i would like 2 see it..........

alright right right

This ended up being A HUGE POST so all info is under the cut.

Unless you’re on mobile, in which case, enjoy scrolling.

It all starts on flight rising. Well, Heart starts on FR. It REALLY starts with my webcomic/animated series.

It wasn’t well drawn or animated at first, but it steadily got better. One of the plot holes, back in 8th grade, was “who created priscilla and Jake?”

It was mostly summed up to “Penny made all the bots its all simple” but i was a middle schooler and i needed a complicated (and edgy) story. 

Thing is I had already made Fandragons of a good chunk of my ocs on flight rising.

I bred two dragons to get my main characters, so why not just use them?

Christy Suggested the name Cavet, and I liked it.

Yeah this is my first digital image of him as a human and he DOES NOT LOOK RIGHT

no necklace, no beard, orange eyes…

horrific.

So I made human designs for them both, but Chrysanthemum remains forgotten, not even canon to Mechanical Fury anymore.

Here’s old art of her and Cavet back before she got wiped out from existence.

the art is bad btu the Heart gimmick is there

Here’s him in his second image ever. The one that pretty much defined his design.He also quickly gained a husband

Anyway he quickly morphed into a villain several time more dangerous than the main villain

He’s responsible for the deaths of not ONE, not TWO, but THREE children.

Two his kids, one the younger sister of a character that one of the dead kids liked.

One of his dead kids got his own story, the other was literally a main character.

Chloride, (Charlie) in all his glory, lucky enough to get resurrected as an android but after finding out he’s not who he thinks he is, has to attempt to live a normal Human life… when his two best friends are paranormal investigators, his love interest having lost their arm and their only remaining sister to the main villain.

He originally found out he was an android by finding his own blueprints, hearing his Mom cry about it, and then cutting open his face (for his signature scar) and running off. 

Running into Cavet’s husband, Nathair Liu. He stitches him up, know all about robotic n all that but he is.

also a secondary villain….

I hate the art in this video but its not my worst.

(Video was Vendy’s debut, too. tho Vendy was more Nate(logan/mind/princi/whatever)’s kid than Cavet’s)

Okay i’ve gotten off track.

Yeah at this point I was really loving Cavet, on FR, and wrote an entire long story between him and Skittles based on the events of Mechanical Fury.

This was where I got the idea for reincarnation.

I needed an explanation for why the same character was in two different universes, and it was perfect. In fact, it lead to an amazing way to end it. 

But what is in control of all this? What does he see in the in between?

Well, Death was packaged with two other red herrings to keep people from thinking she was more important than them from the start, when in fact, she was. One of the plot points is that Cavet dies. He continues causing havoc, but nobody can figure out why or how. he doesn’t have a body.

Except he does. Death.

She was scary, but that was just her, she was a literal robot grim reaper. Nobody suspected she was spreading a virus to make robots susceptible to Augap’s control everywhere she went. Not even her. Cav liked hanging out in the AI scape, AKA the robot afterlife or virtual heaven.

What a fun way to make a real grim reaper.

I never really kept track of the transition from “cute robot char” to “cute real god char”

and i guess it never happened. Heart still thinks of her as she was, as cute little Litty. Except when she’s not. He gave form to the literal concept of DEATH. And became her friend. She still calls him Papa, sometimes.

In any case, Cavet’s doodles started being more and more revolving around his angst with the reincarnation.

in fact, i had a few character in the same boat as him, as I had made a couple dragons into MF characters as well.

I called them The Artifacts. It didn’t seem rounded out with only four, so I added a 5th. To give me more leeway in case I make a character i like enough to bring with them.

and turns out. I did.

I was sad enough about Cavet losing the love of his life, betraying him, creating a rift between them with his descent into obsession.

So he came with them.

They’re inseparable.

after a few lives of getting revenge on him for killing his sons and some adult humans and a BUNCH of robots, (not even counting his crimes in the vampire life he committed because he thought he lost Liu forever) Soul revealed to him something about Heart’s 6th life, which Mind doesn’t remember.

But he was there.

Long story short, he was Captain Shuggazoom. Yeah 10 lives of stuff he forgot before he started remembering his past lives. Messed Heart up.

ANYWAY BACK TO DEVELOPMENT!

I went around, making original characters to fill in Heart’s lives. I put him in a LOT of stories, but a notable one is My Old Ask Blog, @ask-musical-monsters

In which Heart is our lovable Tweedle, Bean.

He’s the bird. (this is also the blog where Willow was made!) (also a character i referenced when putting antauri on the baldi blog)

I still hadn’t abandoned MF so Bean has a lot of influence from Cavet. 

I REALLY liked bean. It occured to me here-ish that Heart isn’t constrained by being my oc. He can be whoever he wants and nobody will care. 

So of course I immediately declare him purple guy. No drawings of him, but I know I said he was purple guy at some point. Also at this point in time I started organizing the lives by number order, and making a simple arc for Heart and the others to follow.

1000 lives. 

I made a brief description of heart’s 1st life, but made it purposefully very superfluous so i can change it whenever i want. All i know is he had albinism, and a desire to live forever.

That summer I got an amazing idea. I would take advantage of the Baldi’s basics trend with a ASK BLOG.

It was a mathematically calculated success. I did as many things as possible to generate more audience. MAIN thing being posting as often as possible, and being REALLY funny. 

But knew I wasn’t going to like adding to the ask blog if i didn’t like the main character

I already knew he was going to be Baldi, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to characterize him either. 

Turns out making him heart solved both of those problems. He’s always been Heart.

And Princi has ALWAYS been mind.

Even if they don’t always show their artifacts, they always were the same people as all these other things ive made. They have a DEEP connection to both each other and me.

At some point, I re-re-discovered SRMTHFG. The first few seconds I saw SK I knew he was Heart. It was so perfect it scared me.

HE EVEN DOES THE POSE!!!!! RED EYES!!!! AAAH!!!

I got an idea for a storyline based on formless and regret and monkeys… so.. uh

Anyway that kinda brings us to today, where the events of the blog have happened based on Heart things, and i can play around with Heart as much as I want.

And Willie’s next life? Well, 23 is my favorite number. It’ll be cool, but I’m not sure how. All I know is 23 wears a striped shirt, and is a vamp again.

In summary, Heart is the most important character I’ve ever made, and I will never come close to anybody as wonderful and as complicated as him. He’s the greatest formless, the best villains, the heroes, and one character i want to hold out for finding irl.

 I love them even in scribbles i find on bus seats, in fanart of him, love her in songs i hear, in flowers i see in the wild.

Whoever they end up being, it’s safe to say I’ve fallen in love with Heart. 

If you want me to describe his in universe story, I’ll need a seperate post.

Other Heart Resources:

The Spreadsheet

The Playlist

[tcdarkeststorms]

Story #1: “I got your back.”

I’m gonna be sick… 

His breathing was ragged, sinking in on himself more as he looked about the room he was in. Medical equipment all over, some of it trailing back to him. He glared at the clip on his finger, half tempted to flick it across the room.

Anything was better than being stuck here. 

Deep breaths, Cade. You can do this. You just gotta fake it till you make it. Make it clear you’re fine and then get the heck outta dodge!

Being brought to the ER was not what he wanted out of his weekend. That much was for certain. But an extremely high fever and being up all night with a stomachache didn’t help either. 

He wasn’t sure where his mother was at the moment. She went to go talk to someone and that was it as far as he was concerned. He… had been pretty checked out when the nurse checking him in looked him over.

That twinge in his side got his attention as he rolled into it, curling up in a ball. 

Just please, please let me go home-

“Excuse me?” A familiar voice caught his attention, looking up at the curtains drawn around this particular section of the ER bay. 

… Crap and a half you have to be kidding me right now. Of all days…

Before Cade could respond the curtain parted, allowing him to see who was dropping in on him. 

The doctor’s eyes widened before he turned his head, glaring at someone Cade couldn't make out.

“Some heads up would’ve been nice y’know!” He called out before shaking his head. “Tch.” He turned to Cade, crossing his arms. “What’s going on?”

“Markus…” Cade grimaced, sitting up a little. “You didn’t say you were working today…”

Markus’ gaze faded into concern at how pale the kid was. Normally he was almost perpetually tanned from how much time he spent in the sun but his skin was pale and sickly appearing. 

“We’ll catch up after I examine you. Mom?”

“Mom. Swear, she’s freaking out for no reason. I feel great.” He insisted.

Markus shook his head, grabbing his stethoscope from his pocket.

“Mm-hm. We’ll see about that.”

Cade grumbled a little, falling quiet as Markus started to examine him. It took a few minutes, as he made notes on his datapad.

“Temperature of one hundred and two…” He stepped back, his gaze narrowing, a hand resting on his chin. “Anything you wanna fill me in on the last few days? Because this chart the nurse was so kind to put together for me says you’ve been having stomach pain and nausea.”

Crap and a half…

The teenager chose not to respond to that, instead pulling out his phone. It was a bratty move and he knew it. 

Markus sighed, making his way over. 

“Let me check your stomach just real fast. I only listened.”

“You’re being as overprotective as Levi is y’know.” 

“That’s called tough love, Bro.” 

Markus pressed onto various areas of the boy’s abdomen… until he got to his right side.

Cade let out a sharp gasp, covering his mouth with both hands, trying not to make much noise.

“W-Whoa…” He moved them away immediately, helping him lie back. “Hey, easy there… Scale of one to ten?”

“Eight… I guess…” 

Markus frowned, stroking his hair, guilt bubbling up. He was trying to keep it compartmentalized. The doctor away from the older brother…

But this hurt him too. Even if it was to diagnose him he didn’t want to cause his brother pain. 

Sure, he could be a pain when he visited home. (Especially with that trumpet…) But he never wished ill on the kid. Never. 

“We’re gonna transfer you upstairs. See if we can slow this down with antibiotics first.”

“What do you think I have?” Cade asked, his voice going quiet as the realization of his situation was settling in.

THIS was his worst case scenario coming to life in front of him.

Markus took a deep breath.

“Appendicitis.”

He was rushed right through from there. Before he knew it, he was in a quiet room in the pediatric ward, overlooking the fountain outside of Concordia.

It would’ve been a nice view and maybe relaxed him… if it wasn’t for all the talk he kept hearing.

“I’ll come by in about a half hour with some stronger antibiotics. I promise, I’m gonna be in charge of his care, Mom. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Markus, you are an angel.Thank you so much. Though… What do you think the odds are of the antibiotics working?”

“If they don’t slow down the inflammation, I’ll perform an appendectomy. I just need your consent, in case his condition changes overnight.”

Surgery, blood, needles… uuuugh….

oooooo

Markus sighed in relief, the second he made it back to the ward, hurrying for Cade’s room, antibiotic drip in hand. He wasn’t sure what to make of how Cade was reacting to all of this… or the attitude he was giving him downstairs. 

Maybe it could be blamed on being sick but this wasn’t his first time not feeling well either. 

Is… he mad at me? 

Nah… Cade’s just barely 13. He’s not like that. He’s just grouchy cause he’s in pain. This’ll help though. 

He knocked briskly on the doorway before heading in.

“Hey, Little Bro, you still up?” 

Cade was out of bed, sitting on the windowsill, looking down at the fountain. He looked to the reflection of Markus in the window and scrunched his nose up.

Markus took a deep breath, going over to him, touching his shoulder gently.

“Cade? I need you to get back in bed for a few. I got your medicine.”

Cade’s eyes trailed to the drip, his eyes widening, a sharp gasp escaping. 

“NO!” He yelped.

“Hey, hey, easy…” Markus squeezed his shoulder. “It’s just an IV drip. This is routine.”

He didn’t respond, looking out the window, bringing his knees to his chest.

Markus was taken aback by this. Cade had NEVER reacted like that before.

This isn’t even the first time I treated him for something. Sure, taking a few days off to make sure his flu didn’t get too bad isn’t the same but… he knows me.

“Cade?” He set the equipment on the night table, kneeling to his level. “Cade, please, tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’re gonna call me a baby or think I’m being stupid. Or you’ll just do it anyway.” 

…  So that’s what’s on his mind.

It was matching up to some of the other kids he treated. It wasn’t his first time having pediatric patients lash out at the idea of getting a needle of some kind or being afraid of being hospitalized.

Markus kicked himself for not realizing this sooner.

“You’re afraid of needles.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

Cade nodded silently, not looking at him. 

“Then all that denial downstairs… You’re afraid of needing injections and IVs if you need surgery after all, isn’t it?”

“... Yeah… and bleeding a lot too…”

Markus let out a long sigh, extending his arm to him.

“C’mere…”

Cade hesitated before he brought his arms around Markus, huddling close, hissing a little when he did so. Markus brought his arms around him, stroking his back.

“Shh…”

“I know it’s irrational. I know it’s stupid-”

“It’s not stupid. You think I like giving shots?”

“... No…”

Markus shook his head, bringing him to arm’s length, his eyes full of concern.

“I’m not doing any of this because I think it’s fun, or because I think I’m being sneaky for all the trumpet related antics over the years. I’m doing it because as a doctor first, I need to treat any patient that comes my way.”

Cade looked away, keeping quiet.

Markus tilted his chin in his direction so their eyes met, his gaze softening.

“You’re still my brother. I don’t want you to hide ANYTHING from me. That scares me if you think you can’t talk to me about this stuff.”

“... Does it hurt?” He asked quietly, his voice shaky. 

“Not at all. I have to disinfect the area with gel and antibiotic gel has an anesthetic in it.” He smiled a little. “I’ve given a lot of IVs to kids who hate needles and not a single complaint. I won’t miss the vein or anything.”

“What about shots?”

“There’s a lot of numbing creams and I can still use the gel too. If I have to operate, I’ll make it clear on your chart that you have an issue with needles as a whole so they’ll HAVE to take special precautions.” Markus stroked his hair, ruffling it up a little, earning a small chuckle in return. “I can do everything in my power to make it as painless as I can.”

Cade took a deep breath, bringing his arms back around his brother, his knees buckling a bit.

Markus held him tightly, lifting him up and onto his bed.

“I just need you to trust me.” 

Cade went quiet before hesitantly offering his arm. 

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Markus went right to work from there, keeping his brother distracted the whole time. The boy didn’t even notice when the needle slipped in once he got started. 

“And… there we are. Nice and secure.” He sat on the edge of his bed. “How’d I do?”

Cade felt the area where it lead into, genuinely surprised.

“It… didn’t hurt.”

“See?”

He smiled, yawning a little. 

Markus pushed on Cade’s shoulder, laying him down.

“I think it’s time you went to bed kiddo.”

“Stay till I fall asleep?”

“What kind of big brother would I be if I left you all alone?” 

“Levi.”

Markus snorted, making a mental note to torment their middle brother later with that anecdote.

Goofy kid…

oooooo 

In the end, the antibiotics didn’t work as intended. Markus still needed to perform the operation.

Though, as promised, he made arrangements so Cade, as far as he knew, wouldn’t even remember half of the process aside from the initial prep. 

“Is he normally like that?” Valerie asked, looking up from scrubbing in, into the OR. 

Cade was laid out on the table, a dazed expression on his face, ignoring everything around him. 

“I had the nurse give him a mild sedative to start off. That way we can avoid any anxiety issues.” Markus replied, as he finished. “Ready?”

“Yep. Let’s go.”

They stepped up to the table.

“You doing okay there?”  He asked. “Anything off?”

Cade looked up, grinning tiredly.

“Feel pretty good actually. Not loopy either…” He sighed in relief. “Thanks big brother.”

Markus smiled softly under the mask. 

“Anything for you.” He looked to Valerie giving a nod.

She nodded, coming up to the other side of the table, administering the anesthesia.

“Wait… She’s not Nigel…” He mumbled, before he drifted off. 

“... Excuse me?”

“Nothing! Scalpel?”

Note to self: Octodad and sedatives DO NOT MIX.

oooooo

Cade bounced back pretty fast after the procedure. He was still hospitalized until his scar healed over more but he was more like himself then he had been in awhile. 

“Oh, come on!”

“Absolutely NOT!”

Valerie raised an eyebrow, poking her head in. Markus and Cade were glaring each other down, the kid having his hands firmly around an instrument case. 

“Give it to me. Right now.”

“Heck no! I gotta practice!”

“In the ward!? Forget it!”

“You were cool when you were being all “I’m your big brother, it’s my job to take care of you.” Well you ain’t doing a good job of it now!”

Markus groaned in frustration, rubbing his temple. 

“Fine. But if you so much as let out one note, I’m taking it and giving it to Levi to hold onto.”

Cade gulped.

“Duly noted.”

Markus looked over to Valerie, hurrying over.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

“Ooooh just peachy.” Markus mumbled. “Just realizing I’m putting a ban on trumpets if I ever have kids.”

“Hah. How bad could he be? He’s a lot livelier than before.”

Markus gave her a sour look as they walked down to the elevator.

Valerie held up her hands in surrender.

“Okay, point taken, trumpets in the ward is a terrible idea.”

“Mm-hm. What do you got for me today?”

Valerie grimaced, handing a chart over to him. 

“... 205. And… of course.”

I’m gonna kill Dr. Rousseau-...

Markus had an idea… An awful idea.

He was going to hear about it from the higher ups later. 

oooooo 

“STOP FOLLOWING ME!”

The music might’ve been pleasant, had Cade actually been playing properly. He knew how… He also knew every darn way to make a trumpet sound like it was being murdered. Currently, he was playing “death noises” from a video game as he followed Luke Rousseau around, blasting as happily as he could. Keeping in mind as soon as they got near patient rooms he’d have to cut it out.

The area where most of the private offices were? Free game. 

Markus bit his lip, trying so very hard not to laugh, recording it all on his phone. 

Luke threw a glare in his direction.

“IS THIS YOURS?!” He shouted over the furious playing that just continued. 

“WHAT?” Markus called over it, grinning. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“I SAID-”

DOOOOOOOT!

Luke glared Markus down before storming off for his office. Cade made it about halfway down before Markus caught up to him, slapping a twenty in his hand.

“Alright, that’s enough.” He threw an arm around his shoulder, smiling fondly. “You did good today.”

“I can come by anytime you need to tick him off.”

“When your follow up exam happens. I could use some Rise of the Valkyries or Ragtime.”

“Ragtime’s worse. Known to cause actual insanity.”

“Ragtime it is… Though, we’ll probably have to get everyone earplugs… and some apology food.”

“Long as I get my other half of the torture payment.”

Markus snorted, guiding him back. As soon as he noted some of the other doctors glaring at him, he put on his best “stern” look, swiping the instrument.

“Now, I told you not to even THINK about doing that! You are in SO much trouble young man!”

“Oh, bite me!”  Cade played along, reaching for it, letting Markus catch his wrist, marching him along back to the ward. 

Soon as they were out of sight, they broke down snickering, leaning on each other to keep upright.

“Okay, it’s official. You’re pretty cool, Big Brother.” Cade laughed, wiping away a tear.

“So are you kiddo. So are you.”

“So… How much can you extend this little vacation from school?”

“Pffft. Mom would kill us both and if not Yaya would.”

“... That’s fair. That’s totally fair.”

[paulwalltran]

Dungeons and Dragons Loneliness

Another interview with lofi music. Today was a pretty shitty day, alot on my mind. Here to unload. 

Today’s mood: Fuck it all...

It’s a mad addiction, a horrendous one. It’s all I think about, it’s all I want to talk about. Or almost anything fantasy related. I’ve recently gotten a little closer with one of my co workers. Delerner Banks, everyone calls him Del. He’s always in the tunnel, and always brings warhammer books to read and do work (whatever it is he’s working on.) We talk about fantasy related things all the time, and sometimes we bounce ideas off each other, feeling out our thoughts of settings and lore. Talking to him about some fantasy before leaving work made me feel alot better. The loneliness inside has been eating at me.

I know it’s salt, I know its jealousy, that I’m mad at my friends. They been hanging out more without me, playing cards and shit. Its not a passion of mine, its fun sometimes, but its still not me. Its what they bond over, its what they do together, and that’s what theyre into. If I had to guess, they’re okay with Dungeons and Dragons, but even my best friend said that I take it too serious. Its fallen out of their favor, it eats up a lot of time, and they each have their version of what a fun campaign would be like. In me, I said to myself, “Fine, fuck it. I’ll have to assemble another crew to play with.” Tough situation then isn’t it? Wanting to play a social game that needs bodies, during an age where social gatherings are frowned upon, because they carry a potential to spread a virus... Still, this is what I want to do. I want a group of friends, who share the same passion I do. My current friends must think ill of me, they may just want to hang out. They think that if they come hang with me, I’ll want a game of DnD without a doubt. They just want to chill and kick it, they don’t want to roll dice. But ask me once and I’ll tell you yes twice, to playing DnD. 

I love it with all my heart, all of the contents and materials are here, ready to play. No extra investments, no money needed to be spent, we can get going off of nothing like we did back then. A table top roleplaying game, we started with cardboard and lego figures, and just two books to share. But there was fun to be had, and a few heated sessions. But fun it was, the more we played the deeper i grew fond of the game. I’m even willing to experiment with other systems if I have someone to guide me. With cards, you gotta constantly update your arsenal to keep up with the meta, and let’s be real, not playing anything remotely close to meta isn’t as fun. Different formats allow different decks, and to keep current you gotta keep up. I dont have the fundings for it, I dont have the luck. I would rather buy a module that’ll last for years, versus a pack of cards. I have two books that have skyrocketed in value, cards go up and down like stocks. But thats the appeal I suppose, I don’t care for it though.

Back to the thing at hand, I’m in their group chat as they make plans. I can’t be there for all that. But fuck it, that’s all Im going to say. Fuck it, on repeat, until its engraved into my head. Pride is getting the best of me, I refused to be denied again. If it’s not something they want to do, so be it, I need to look out for me in the end.  I must muster up the courage to start playing online again, the first one wasn’t bad, but it fell apart. I need to get the courage to be social, and get over the fear that everyone expects you to be a pro player. I’m scared going into this green still, roll20 isn’t my forte. But if I want to play DnD, this seems to be my only option. It may fulfill my wish, to find friends who are just as passionate as I. My other friends, they’re over on the other side. Its fine, it truly is, they have one another, and I need to be strong. I need to find the strength in this loneliness, even though its tearing me apart. My circle becomes smaller, thats just the way of the world. Adapt to survive, be formless like water...

Dungeons and Dragons, my greatest escape. I can be anybody, and do things I normally can’t. I can clobber up bad guys, indecent folk, and finesse my way out of punishment from the law. I can save a village, a town, a kingdom, when I can hardly save myself. I can fly, cast spells, break locks, imagination is my only limit. I can hoard and amass vast amounts of riches, I myself can even become a dragon. I don’t have to be me, although a bit of me resides in everyone I’ve made before. I can never truly separate myself, from those Ive breathed life into. For hours on end, I can go anywhere, do anything, I melt into the world thats placed before me.

 Because the reality is that I’m practically shit, and nobody. The world is fucked up and jacked up and spiraling down the drain. I’m mentally fucked and my physicality is pretty much the same. I’m stuck in place when the world is demanding me to change. I lost with no real direction. No map in hand, no guide, and I’m scared out of my mind. I don’t know whether to trust the process or commit suicide. Im not sure where I’ll end up, if it’s good or bad. Im struggling, I’m suffering, and there seems to be no end. I could say I’m trying, but I would be lying, if I had to look at the brighter side. The positive things in life are so hard to identify. But my emotions are raw and hit hard, slamming against the walls in my skull. Demanding me to give them attention...and attention I give them, as they tear me up. Like being pulled at by the limbs, drawn and quartered is the method it seems like today. I was thinking that I couldn’t drink forever, my body would eventually reject. But what if I drank energy drinks on end, a heart attack to get me out of this place. I can down those all day long, so whats stopping me from taking that way out of it? Less grotesque and violent, it’ll probably be painful as hell. An organ seizing up, as the body ceases the function. I get said thinking about it sometimes, but one day, enough will be enough. But damn that lady...damn her for speaking those words... Tomorrow. If nothing is better by tomorrow, then do as you may. But sleep it off, tomorrow is another day. 

It’s not verbatim, but its the gist. Just wait for tomorrow, and hopefully things will change. The choice is still mine to make, and something in me pushes me forward, keeps me going on. Sometimes I think about who I’m leaving behind, and maybe how much it’ll hurt. The evil darkness inside me says that they’ll get over it, they have to, and time doesn’t wait. I won’t be immortalized, I’ll simply end up a statistic. That maybe itll be a few years the sadness remains fresh, but wounds always heal. Discrediting my actual existence, and any form of relations. Like I wouldn’t have made any actual impressions, people don’t weep for me now. People kind of forget I exist already, what makes me think they won’t after I’m gone? 

I think about my folks, my grandma, my girlfriend, my second family, and other close dear friends. I think about how many last will letters I would have to put out there, before I call for the curtains. Sometimes, I say I will start writing them, but they give me pause. I end up not wanting to leave this world, after pouring out my heart. Because I don’t want to leave any questions behind for people who matter, I want them to know how I felt before I passed. I want to leave with them apart of me, so they would never forget. 

Still it doesn’t change, shit is rough as of lately, work has been eating me up. I feel like Im never hundred percent, and me back on gaming is making it worst. I’ve gotten back onto Elder Scrolls Skyrim, its been my virtual version of DnD. Waiting for the Outer World Expansion, so I can get addicted to that again. All I want to do is play Dungeons and Dragons, the question is how do I make that into a living? I think being a Matthew Mercer is one in a million, I don’t think I’m that great. I’m willing to learn, grow, evolve because it is my passion, but I’m always scared of making mistakes. To be one of the greater Dungeon Masters, to be THE Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Master, it may possibly be the dream. To eat, sleep, breathe, Dee en Dee. My obsession isn’t that crazy though, I’m still behind on the lore of creatures and settings, I haven’t studied at all. But with the right drive and motivation, I would, especially with something as real as a legit group.

Enthusiastic players, who show up every week, bi weekly, once every month even, to play this fantastic game. Group of chill folks who is willing to take the Dungeon Master Mantle with I get burned out and have the desire to be in the player seat. One of those is the driving force, they make me want to plan. They make me want to make the world, the style, everything in general better, with the constructive feedback. I mean it’s been so long as I was a player in a campaign until the end, I’m beginning to think paying for a Dungeon Master wouldn’t be so bad. Once a month? A couple of hours? I mean I’m thinking like seven USD per hour? Eight isn’t bad, but after that it becomes a questionable amount. It repeats in my head, “No DnD is better than Bad DnD”, this much is probably still true. I say still because I still might want at least one session with said game, so I can at least say it was the worst after having attempt it, rolling something. Ha ha, I kid myself, I’m lying because I know the rage would be all to real and caution is my game most of the time. But I mean, I just might have to start exploring the idea, I was definitely going to ask on FaceBook if any Roll20 games was recruiting a newbie. 

Alas, today won’t be the last time I speak on the matter, Dungeons and Dragons haunt me everyday. I stare at minis, I stare at the upcoming books and modules, and I watch youtube where they tell RPG Horror Stories, Its become a huge part of my life, such as dancing once was. It almost links right into my earliest talents...writing. I love to write, just like I’m doing now. Im fairly decent at the writing game if I must say. Hey, real life failed Bard here, I should make one who always ends up playing big bro, and end up being friendzoned by all his interests. Im short, so Halfling is very true. Am I charismatic? Who knows, I can’t say for sure. But yes, I feel like this is what I need, a solid weekly game, maybe once every two weeks, hell, once every month would still be great. Something to look forward to the very least, in this life of routine and mundane. Something to look forward to for me, something that’s my own. Something I don’t need my closer friends to be apart of, since they’re not interested anyhow. I’m really talking shit because I’m hella salty, but at least I’m being upfront. Get it all out now, before the typing is done. 

It’s been a productive session, I may have to attribute it to Lofi it seems. The Lofi Hip Hop Radio on YouTube, also found on Spotify. Some tracks still strike me deep in the chest, giving me horrible flash backs and feeling in my chest. Others keep me going, forward, almost propelling. I’m currently training myself to be accustomed to the sounds, because I at first was very scared. That it would just transport me to a dark place and keep me there. I’ve been trying to confront my feelings more with this music, I think I felt better after last session like this. The more I faced myself, the better I became. Yes, I most definitely referenced Persona 4, another amazing and loved title because of the message it portrays. I always wondered what my shadow self would look like, and what they would say. But eh another time, I’m about to start rambling again. I have to conclude here, before I get off topic.

Until next time Tumblr...

[dirgeofcerberus111]

White and Steven’s Day Out Part 2 - College AU of New Home

Okay so a LONG time ago I made this. A College AU of New Home by @kibbles-bits. There young Steven got lost and ran into White. Had a second part in the works but never finished. Until now. So yeah. Hope you enjoy.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LEFT HIM WITH WHITE?!" 

Rose slammed her foot on the gas pedal and the car shot forward with terrifying speed.

“I was an hour’s drive away, you were at work two hours away, everyone else was in class, and she offered to watch Steven until we could pick him up! How could I say no?” Greg was holding tightly to his seat as the car careened down the road. 

 “Anyone but her would have been better!” The Mrs. Universe protested.

“Come on, Rose. I know you two don’t get along but she’s not that bad,” Greg said as he was holding onto his seat for dear life.

“You don’t know her like I do! There’s no telling what she could have done by now!”

“What could have happened? It’s only been a few hours!”

“I wouldn’t leave him alone with her for a few seconds!” she retorted. 

Their car sped through several streets and red lights, shot past several street signs, and skidded insanely around an intersection before screeching into a parking spot on the sidewalk by the dormitory. Within seconds, Rose was out the car, through the doors, and already making a mad dash up the spiralling flights of stairs. Greg meanwhile, only managed to stumble two steps out of the car before falling face down, still trying to find his legs after having just grand theft auto-ed through half a city.

Meanwhile up in her dorm room, White was reclining in her chair, legs crossed, reading a nondescript textbook with the words “Quantum Physics: Book IV” printed across the cover, with a pair of large librarian-esque cateye glasses on her face. 

The lights were down, the blinds were drawn, and everything was quiet. There wasn’t a sound to be heard in there except for the distant hum of traffic. Not a one.

She was jolted from her tranquil perusal when her door was kicked open. Her head snapped up at the sudden intrusion and her glasses fell from her face, hanging from their eyeglass chains. She was surprised to see Rose standing in the doorway. She was huffing from lack of breath, hair frayed, disheveled, and mad as thunder.

“WHERE’S MY BABY!” she demanded like a thunderstorm.

White didn’t respond at first, still reeling from the intrusion, but her eyes glanced towards the bed on the other side of the room. On it, there little Steven was, curled up and sleeping peacefully with the sheets tucked over his shoulders. 

“He’s… okay?” Rose sputtered, surprised and flustered. “Yeah? What did you think was going to happen?” White said confused.

Rose shivered.

“Oh ye of little faith!” White admonished.

“Hmph!” Rose huffed. She went over to Steven, looked over him relieved, brushing a lock of curled hair out of his sleeping face and breathing a sigh of relief before carefully but quickly collected her sleeping son in her arms and hurrying out.

Now Greg poked his head through the doorway and careful picked his way through the wreckage.

“Sorry about Rose… and your door,” Greg apologized. “Hearing about what happened to Steven really put her on edge,” he explained. “Thanks again for looking after him, White. I really owe ya. I don’t even want to think what could’ve happened if you hadn’t found him,” Greg thanked her honestly. 

See, this is precisely why we like Greg and not Rose, she thought to herself. 

“Oh, it wasn’t a problem at all, Gregory.” 

“Man, schtu-ball seemed really tuckered out,” Greg noted looking back the way he came. “You guys sure must have had a lot of fun, he’s usually such a little ball of energy!” “I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up.” She gave him a beaming smile.

“Y’know, if the occasion ever comes up again, maybe sometime we could ask you to look after him again?” “Absolutely not!” Rose’s voice shrilled from down the hall.

“Oh, anything for you, Greg!” White called down the hall, changing her tone to flirtatious just to make Rose scarlet in the face.

“Ah hah…” Greg laughed nervously rubbing his neck. “Welp, see you later then?” “See you later, Music Man.” White ruffled the hair of the shorter man.

Back in the car, it was dark out now, and the Universes were driving home. Steven was strapped securely in the backseat, still asleep. Finally, Greg spoke up.

“See? I told you it would be alright.”

Rose only grumbled at the wheel and hunched her shoulders.

For a while it was quiet in the car as they drove in silence.

“Rose… I know you don’t like talking about your past, but I really think your being a bit hard on White,” Greg spoke gently. Rose’s expression tightened. “We’re just lucky she decided she likes him. If one of her ‘impulses’ had said otherwise…” Rose didn’t finish. Greg was about to ask Rose what she meant when Steven stirred.

“Hey there, sweetie, how are you feeling?” Rose smiled looking back at her son.

“I’m okay! Where’s Nana?” the boy asked looking around.

“Nana?” Rose asked puzzled. “Yeah, that’s what Auntie White said to call her.” Greg stifled a fit of laughter at that. “Aunty White had to stay home to study, but we came to pick you up,” he explained. Steven’s face made an ‘o’ and he nodded his head in understanding.

“So… what did you two do today?” Rose asked, nervously trying to hide her apprehension.

“We did lots of things! First we went to the donut shop and had donuts, then we went to the fountain park for a while. When I got tired, Nana carried me on her shoulders! After that, we went back to her house and she read me some of her books. Then I got sleepy, and when I woke up, you were here!”

“Well… I’m glad you had fun, dear.”

Things settled down again as the Universe family made their way home, Steven excitedly regaled his father on his adventures today while Rose focused on driving.

Greg listened to his son regale them about the adventures he had today, letting Rose focus on driving. Her thoughts were many. Despite her worst fears, nothing bad had actually happened. And she was grateful that someone had found him and kept him safe.

She couldn’t deny the relief she felt that he was safe. She had White to thank for that, she supposed, in spite of what her instincts had told her. Maybe Greg was right, perhaps she was being overprotective.

Steven was safe, that was what mattered.

Maybe she was wrong. Or maybe they got lucky. Oh well, at least the crisis was over.

Little Steven spoke up from his seat.

“Hey mom, so when can i see Nana again?”

Oh dear…

[a-fic-a-day]

Please dont take my sunshine away

This is my interpretation of what happens to my Traveler Shiloh before the A6 crew find her.

Panic gripped my chest like a vice! ' where is everyone! Where are the guards! What's happening!' With every thought my feet carried me swiftly through the gilded halls of my home. 'This is what you get for falling asleep in the garden again shiloh now you dont know whats going on!' 

Agonized screams and angry shouts could be heard echoing through the halls fueling my hurried escape to where is wasn't sure! A sharp turn and then a site so horrid a scream catches in my throat as I stop just short of the bloodied corpse of a guardsmen. Hands flying to my mouth in horror. Trembling I go to step away before a hand shoots out grabbing me firmly by the shoulder ,tugging me into a side hallway away from the scene.  Before I can scream a voice familiar, gentle and sonorous speaks lowly easing my nerves.

"Hush little  lamb. It's just me. Now listen something really bad is happening and you and I need to get out of here as quickly and quietly as possible."

 In all our lives my brother has never sounded so grave, so serious. His white brows pinched into a scowl upon his normally jovial blue face. I nod still too shaken to speak but trusting Ser'Rose enough to get us out safely. He was always sneaking out he knows the most secret paths some even the most skilled of our guard couldn't even find.

"Where is that guard of yours hmm lamb? Always hovering when you don't need him but now he's a ghost" 

I swallow the lump in my throat as he leads me by the hand out of the palace " I don't know Rosie… i.. I fell asleep in the garden again and i woke up and people were just screaming. I still dont know whats happening Rosie."

He stopped sharply pushing us against a wall. I go to say something and he hushes me with a look. We hear heavy footsteps and a sharp voice so heavy with bloodlust " Find them! Gather every royal mutt up  and put em down!" 

Our hiding spot was thankfully spared as the footsteps ran off in the opposite direction. " that's why we are getting out of here lamb. Some nasty people want us dead but i'm not gonna let that happen! Now come lamb we've got to get to my good friend Ar'dwalla.They owe me a favor and in cashing in today. They're gonna get us off this planet and safe." He paused taking a deep breath  and looking me in the eye where hot tears had begun to gather. 'Im scared but at least i have rosie with me'   I gathered myself and gently  squeezed his hand " ok rosie i trust you."  ' I fear for our brothers and sisters and  our parents  so deeply it hurts but he already knows that…'

The journey out of the palace is tense and quick. Almost being caught several times because of me. it's Painful to think of what could happen should we get caught and i'm the one slowing us down. I tug  on his arm to get him to stop my voice wavers with sadness as I eye our exit  

 " Rosie im slowing us down. We will get caught as soon as we are out…" a shuddering breath " Im not as quick or as stealthy as you… you should go without me . It will be safer for you." 

He is on me in a second. Callused hands gripping my upper arms looking at me as if I had just said the worst thing he has ever heard.  Firmly he says " dont! " he swallows hard and looks down and back up " don't ever say something like that again!  We can both make it! I would never leave you shiloh! Never! You and I are going to make it and we are going to get out of here and live! Do you understand me!" I nob  frantically tears pricking at my eyes again "good! Now let's Go!" And we ran.

 We managed to get  a decent way out before we heard the violence spill into the city. We were vulnerable out here. Ser'Rose more so than I with his bad habit of sneaking out and   being known. People know his face, his voice, he wanted to be seen and known and now it was causing our escape  to be more hazardous. 

" just a little further now lamb and we will be-" he cut himself off abruptly pulling me to his chest and into the shadows. That same bloodthirsty voice from the palace wrapped my heart in an icy grip. " Where are you little prince! We know you're out here somewhere! Best come out quick and ill make your death a quick one runt!"  A crash and then  the sound of solid footfalls " this princey is a little pest I hear! The black sheep always running off from his little flock! Causing trouble for mommy and daddy! Now causing me trouble! Get! Out! Here! Face your death coward!"  

My brother was tense and his jaw clenched  i looked up at him wide eyed. This was our only route to Ar'dwalla. We are trapped right now we stare death in the face.  I whisper my voice dripping in fear " what do we do Rosie? Should we hide and wait?"

 He looks at me. The tension fading from his face into something soft and familiar. Like when he used to calm me from a nightmare. He presses something into my hands, it's cold , rounded metal.  I look into his eyes searching for an answer and all i see is tender sadness and a glint, one that ive seen before that calls for no argument. Once he's made up his mind there is no changing it.  His voice is tender  and soft when he speaks " No lamb you are going to hide. You're going to stay here and you're not going to leave this spot until it's quiet. No matter what you here Shiloh promise me you wont leave this spot!"

I knew what he was going to do " Rosie you can't! You said you'd get us both out! Both you and me! Please Rosie you cant ! I won't let you!" It was like a rock in my stomach as I spoke!  ' he cant he cant he cant! I won't let him! Please rosie don't do this… please..' 

" you're  so good lamb. And i've never done right by you and im sorry im breaking another promise to you! But you were always the best of us. So kind and loving. You should be able to live and enjoy life, find love, have an adventure and im not going to let you die here and ruin that" he held me tighter tears running down  his pale blue cheeks " i love you so so much Shiloh! Don't ever forget that. Take care of yourself and live for me. Live for me lamb!" He kissed my forehead lovingly and with finality before he scrubbed his eyes  before walking out.  Leaving me silently crying praying for his safety.

I could hear him as he spoke tauntingly " I heard someone ask for a prince." 

"Looks like the roach came out." The malice was there in that voice as they spoke slow and drawn out " come here runt and you can die with the rest of your flock." It was near silent the tension in the air only broken by my brothers slow and taunting footfalls a pause and then rage "GAH YOU SNEAKY BLUE BASTARD!" 

" YOU DIDN'T THINK ID GO WITHOUT A FIGHT DID YOU, YOU GIANT FOOL!"  The ragged sounds of a fight! I flinched each time I heard him cry out! Every hit I heard  him take felt as though i took the blow myself  before finally "I'M DONE PLAYING MUTT!" *CRACK*  a gunshot and the sound of   a body hitting the ground with a strained groan "Stay down and die in the dirt mutt"  I had to restrain myself from running out screaming to my brother. Falling to my knees in pain as I waited….. and waited. Until there was nothing just as he said before i crawled to the corner of the alley and saw my brother bleeding on the ground 

"no.." my voice trembled as I clambered to my feet and ran to him. Falling to my knees beside his broken body I laid his head in my lap. The tears came hot and fast choked sobs escaping my body as I caressed his bloody cheeks. 

" why…. Is…. My little lamb… crying..? Hmmm?" His voice so soft and broken.

“ Ser' rose! Please please hold on!! I can fix this! I can fix it! I just need! I need! A needle some tread! Rosie im so sorry! It's My fault if I was-" his hand slowly lifted and touched my cheek " shhhhh… lamb..s'not your fault… it's theirs.. you can't fix this… im sorry. I made you…. Cry." He smiled sadly up at me " can i… see.... My sunshine  smile…  one… last time.."  I held his hand tightly to my cheek as I smiled down at him through the tears and  the pain. He smiled tenderly back tears trailing down his face mingling with his blood. 

" You need… to go now Shiloh.. ill be fine… now that i saw… your smile.. I need you to.. go… and live.".

I choked out a sob " I can't leave you here. Your dying.. we can get you help. Please Rosie i need you. I don't know what to do without you. Please please i can't leave you!" I whisper so desperately to him

He shook his head slowly " you.. know.. i wont.. make it… im sorry…. You're  hurt…. But please… you have… to leave… me" his breath was getting shallower and he was paling fast as the  blood left him. " i… will…. Always … be .. with you.. Shiloh…. Always." He closed his eyes and began humming brokenly. Our lullaby, the sound once soft and comforting now haunting with finality. 

I kissed his forehead " i love you rosie" he smiled tiredly as i placed his head back on the ground. Standing i looked down on him. He looked so calm as he lay dying. I turned and i ran. 

The chaos was still everywhere. It was like I couldn't out run it. Smoke and screaming. Pain and death everywhere you looked. I was so close now. Not to much further. 'you can make it! For Rosie! For Rosie!'  

A large blast and im sent flying and tumbling! Smoke burns my eyes and then  a sharp pain in my head! I'm lying on the ground the sky blurred and fading above me! The pain in my head terrible. ' i was so close… im sorry' 

[phoenix-downer]

Your Voice

Sora had never been big on hospitals. They were cold and sterile and brought back memories of when his grandfather was sick. All those days spent in waiting rooms and sitting by hospital beds and hoping for the best while bracing himself for the worst. And it wasn’t like old people were the only ones who dealt with this kind of thing. Even kids could get really sick.

Even so, he didn’t expect a serious illness to hit Kairi of all people. She was healthy and active, spending hours at the Play Island with him and Riku. All until she’d come down with a fever so bad she had to be hospitalized.

“You can go in now,” the nurse said, a kind woman who smiled and cheered him up a little. He nodded and pushed the door open. Kairi was lying there on the hospital bed, and her cheeks were flushed from the fever. Machines next to her beeped ominously, and an IV connected her to one of them.

“Hey,” he said as he found one of those squeaky hospital chairs and dragged it over. “Long time no see.”

Kairi didn’t say anything; the only response was the steady beeping of the machines.

“We’ve missed you, at school and stuff. Mr. Kobayashi doesn’t know what to do without his star student in homeroom. He keeps looking over at your desk before he remembers you’re not there. We… we all do.”

He reached into his book bag and pulled out one of her favorites: a book of fairytales. Flipping through the pages, he began to read one to her, about a knight who went on a long quest to rescue a princess. In order to save her, he had to give up his heart and become a shade. But the princess found him and saved him with true love’s kiss. He became human again, and they got married and lived happily ever after.

It was a simple tale, but one they’d both loved since they were kids. He carefully tucked it back into his book bag and then pulled out something the art club had made for her, a Get Well Soon card with thalassa shells drawn on it. He read out the names of all the people who had signed it, then put it on the windowsill looking out over the parking lot below.

And now, the real reason he had come. Taking a deep breath, he found her hand. It was warm and kinda limp. This wasn’t the first time he’d held it, but… all the other times were before. Before his heart started racing whenever she walked in the room. Before just meeting her eyes made his face hot and his palms sweaty. Before his mouth went dry any time he tried to talk to her. Before things had changed between them.

“Kairi, you know that saying? About how you never know what you have until it’s gone? When you got sick, that was me. I’d always just… sort of taken it for granted that you’d always be there. But all this has made me realize, that’s not really true. I have no idea how long you’ll be a part of my life. And thinking about that, thinking about losing you someday… it hurt. A lot.”

He took another deep breath before continuing.

“Then I thought about why. You’re my friend, of course, but that’s not all. I think I might…”

His face got hot, and he couldn’t spit the words out. Even though she wasn’t really conscious, the thought of telling her what was on his heart made him want to bolt out of the room.

Maybe, if he said it in a roundabout way…

He thought of the story he’d read to her, and the words came easily.  “You’re my light in the darkness, Kairi.” He smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I know you’ll get better, but I didn’t want to wait to tell you any longer.”

He glanced back towards the door, and the nurse nodded at him. Visiting hours were over.

“Bye for now, Kairi. I hope you feel better soon.” He let her hand linger in his for a little while longer. When her fingers slipped out of his grasp, he had to fight the sinking feeling in his gut.

This wouldn’t be the last time he would see her. It just wouldn’t be. Kairi was strong, and she’d pull through.

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Kairi’s fever came on suddenly, and the days her body spent fighting the infection went by in a delirious haze. Old memories mixed with new sensations to provide strange, vivid images that were half nightmare and half daydream.

But then came a moment of clarity, gentle pressure on her fingers and a warm, familiar voice. She was floating one moment, sinking the next, awash in a sea of confusion and fear, when that voice broke through her dreams and found her.

“Sora?” she murmured. Her eyes fluttered open, and his smile greeted her. Warm and gentle and bright as the sun. She followed his voice, followed the warmth in her hand as he led her away from the darkness and confusion and towards the light.

When she woke up for real, the fever had finally broken, and she was lying on a hospital bed. A few moments later, a nurse bounced into the room to check up on her, a huge smile on her face. Kairi had to stay at the hospital for a few more days as she recovered her strength, but that moment she’d heard Sora’s voice was the turning point, she was sure of it.

Her first day back at school, it felt like the whole school was celebrating her return. The third year students had made a huge banner saying, “Welcome Back, Kairi” in big bold letters, and it was hanging over the balcony on their floor. She caught Riku grinning down at her, and she smiled back and waved at him.

When she reached the shoeboxes, hers was full of cards and presents, and there were so many that she couldn’t reach her indoor shoes until she pulled the gifts out and tucked them into her bag. Her cubby at the back of the classroom was a similar story; it was so full of gifts from her classmates that she knew it would take hours to look through them all.

Mr. Kobayashi’s face brightened as she took her seat. “Kairi! Glad to have you back.” She thanked him for his kind words and reached into her desk for a pencil and a scrap of paper. Scribbling a quick note on it, she casually stood and made her way over towards Sora’s desk. When Mr. Kobayashi was distracted by Selphie asking him about what area she was supposed to clean today, she deposited the note inside Sora’s desk.

Selphie turned to her and winked once her mission was accomplished, and Kairi gave her a grateful smile. The rest of their classmates filtered in after that, all stopping by her desk to congratulate her on her recovery. Sora was the last one to come in, as was his habit. He had figured out how to arrive with exactly one minute to spare before the bell rang, and today was no different. He strolled in like he didn’t have a care in the world, in that easy, confident swagger she’d come to love.

All until he saw her, that is. He stopped, and gone was the swagger. His cheeks flushed, and his whole face lit up like it was Christmas morning.

“Kairi! You’re back!”

She returned his smile. “Yes, I am.”

His grin got bigger, and he stood there and gazed at her. “Wow, that’s… that’s great.”

She felt her own cheeks get hot. “Y-Yeah.”

The moment was interrupted by Tidus scolding him and telling him to sit down before the bell rang so they wouldn’t break their twenty-days-of-no-tardies streak.

He stumbled on the way to his desk and sat down with five seconds to spare. Mr. Kobayashi gave him a look, and he started. “Oh, right. I’m supposed to do the morning greeting today.” He deposited his stuff and went to the front of the room. “Stand up.”

Kairi kept casting looks his way all throughout the morning, hoping he would find her note. It wasn’t till third period that he finally did, when he realized he’d left his math homework in his desk. He stole a glance at her, then nodded slightly to confirm before crumpling the note and stuffing it in his pocket. Tidus noticed what had happened and snickered, but thankfully didn’t rat them out.

During the lunch recess, Sora met her on the roof of the school, like she’d requested. He’d loosened his tie in a way that would get Mr. Kobayashi’s scolding for sure for violating the school dress code. But it was warm outside  and no teachers were around right now, and Kairi sort of liked the more relaxed look on him.

“So, you wanted to meet me up here?” he asked. The view was great; you could see all of the Main Island from here, and even some of the nearby smaller islands. The breeze ruffled his spiky hair and cooled them both down, and it felt nice to be back outside after spending so much time indoors.

“Yes, I did,” she said. Now that he was actually here, though, her palms were sweaty and her mouth was dry. But… she had to do it. She had to tell him.

“Sora, when I was sick, I had a lot of strange dreams. Because of the fever, I mean.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup. Come to think of it, they were more like nightmares.”

His face fell. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But then… I heard a voice. Your voice. It brought me home.” She smiled and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “You came to visit me when I was in the hospital, didn’t you?”

He coughed and stammered. “You weren’t supposed to find out about that,” he muttered, unable to meet her eyes as he scratched his neck. “Do you… do you remember anything I said?”

She shook her head. “No, not really. I just remember hearing your voice, and I think that’s what helped break my fever.”

She found his hand, remembering the time when his fingers weren’t this much bigger than hers. He looked at her, surprise written on his features, and she smiled and nodded.

“Thank you, Sora. Thank you for bringing me home.”

He stared at her for a few moments, then a huge smile spread across his face. He wove their fingers together, his grip strong and steady and firm. “No, thank you, Kairi.”

She tilted her head, her hair splashing against her cheeks. “For what?”

“For being you.”

The way he spoke was so heartfelt that she couldn’t help but look away as she blushed and giggled. When she summoned the courage to look in his eyes again, she almost had to look away again, her heart was fluttering so much.

How glad she was that it had been him to pull her out of the darkness, his voice that had called out to her. Her illness hadn’t been fun or pleasant, but at least one good thing had come from it.

And for now, it was simply enough that they were here, together. They could figure out the rest of the details later, one day at a time.

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A/N: So, back when I was finishing my fic for the twosidesfanzine back in February, I told the other writers that if they could hit 1500 words exactly, I would write a fic for them. Well, several people took me up on my offer, including @peachofthesunshine, so this fic is written for her! She gave me a prompt about Sora visiting Kairi in the hospital, including her being able to hear his voice. Hope you enjoyed!

[momentofmemory]

fictober - day six

Prompt #6: “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?”

Fandom: Spider-Man (All Media Types/Tom Holland Films)

Warnings: Discussion of Parental Death, Bullying

Rating: G

Characters: Peter Parker & May Parker

Words: 2867

Author’s Note: part iv of a may & peter series, but works on its own. i made a terrible mistake the second i set a 2K precedent on these things, but i’m honestly really happy with how this turned out, so. enjoy. :)

>>Pros and Cons

Peter is ten years old, and whenever May watches him finish his math homework, his mind is so far beyond hers it feels like he should be the one helping her.

She knows he’s brilliant—with parents like his, how could he not be—and his teachers start suggesting they look into science magnets before he even enters middle school. She and Ben try to support his passions as much as they can, but the endowment Mary and Richard left has long since run out, and they can only afford so many expenses at once.

Which is why, when Peter comes home from school with sparkling eyes and a crinkled permission slip clutched in his hand, May feels a familiar sense of guilt creep up her spine.

“Hi May!” Peter chirps, slinging his backpack and the piece of paper down on the dining room table.

“Hi yourself,” she says, picking the bag back up and hanging it on the hook by the door. “Snack’s in the kitchen.”

Peter makes a beeline for the peanut butter sandwich in question—one of the few things Ben allows May to make, mostly because it involves zero actual kitchen appliances—and shoves half of it in his mouth. “You won’t believe what happened at school today.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” May says, picking up the note from where it had fallen.

Peter swallows down white bread and store-brand peanut butter while May flips the permission slip over and reads the summary. Apparently there’s some kind of open lab session at the Museum of Science this Friday, and anyone from Peter’s school who wants to go is allowed to count it as one of their field trips for the year. It also includes an overnight lock-in for all kids ten and over, a cut off that Peter just barely meets.

“Isn’t it so cool?” Peter gushes, his sandwich properly consumed. “Mr. Abrams said there might even be an arc reactor replica in the special exhibit section!”

“I think we agreed to avoid all forms of Stark tech after the last expo you went to.” May hears Peter pour a glass of milk as she continues reading.

“This is totally different, May! No bad guys whatsoever.” He pauses. “Unless Flash shows up.”

“Who’s—”

“Anyway we get to go for like the entire day and do our own experiments and everything, it’s going to be awesome!” Peter skids back into the dining room and sits in one of the chairs, planting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. He stares up at her. “Soooo. I can go, right? Ned said he was going!”

May’s eyes find the dollar signs in the fine print and she winces: all expenses not paid. “I don’t know, Peter… didn’t you have another field trip just last month?”

“Yeah, but that was for the Museum of Math. Totally different.”

May frowns and rubs at her temples.

Peter, sensing her reluctance, launches himself to his feet. “I’ll get the board!”

“Peter—” May warns, but he’s scrambling off to the closet before she can stop him.

The board had been Ben’s idea: when Peter was seven, he’d bought an eleven by seventeen inch whiteboard and drawn a line in permanent ink down the middle, with “Peter” written on one side, and “The Adult” written on the other. The concept had been to help Peter learn how to balance pros and cons, and Peter had taken to it so well that he quickly learned to follow along without the visual. They still brought it out on occasion for added effect—like right now, apparently.

Peter returns from his quest and places the board on the table. He pops the cap off of the dry erase marker, and drawing a tally mark in the section labeled Peter, says, “One: it would be totally awesome. Point for me.”

He holds the marker out to May expectantly. After a moment, she sighs and takes it from him. “You’ve already gone on the required number of field trips for this semester.”

Peter frowns as May draws a line on her side. “I can qualify for extra credit if I go on more, though.”

“You’re at the top of your class, Peter, you don’t need any credit.” May draws a line on both her side and his side. “And aren’t you supposed to be saving money for the end of the year school project?”

Another line.

Peter scrunches up his face in thought, then grins. “Yeah, but I got a whole ten dollars from Mr. Delmar yesterday for helping look after his cat!”

…Line.

They continue swapping points for the next few minutes, and May has to admit that Peter does have a fair number of valid arguments. The board quickly fills up and by the time they’ve both run out of steam, there are ten careful lines drawn on both of their sides.

Peter stares miserably at the score: Parker rules state that all ties go to the adult. “…Ned will be there?”

May taps the marker against her thigh. “Yes, I’m aware.”

Peter’s eyes shoot back and forth between May and the whiteboard.

She sighs. “…Your point.”

Peter whoops in triumph as May draws the winning line in his side of the board, and she rolls her eyes and makes a mental note to ask for an extra shift tomorrow to make up for her lapse in judgement.

She doesn’t really mind, though. The electricity in Peter’s smile could generate enough energy to light up their entire apartment.

Peter talks about almost nothing but the trip for the next four days, and his enthusiasm is so infectious May finds she’s pretty excited about it, too.

Still, she has to remind him three times to pack his toothbrush and other necessities, and when he starts debating whether he should bring a change of clothes or the circuit board he’s been building out of parts fished from the dumpster, May wonders if he’s ready for an entire night on his own after all. She mentions this to Ben, who gets hung up on the fact that Peter has built an entire circuit board out of parts fished from the dumpster.

May concedes to this argument without having to get the whiteboard out.

Finally, Friday morning comes, and May bullies Ben into letting her drive so she can take Peter to school without risking being late for work herself. Peter clutches his backpack and chatters nonstop about all the things he’s hoping to build, but as they approach the parking lot his eagerness starts to dampen.

May flicks her blinker on and glances at him in the rearview mirror. “Drop off or walk you in?”

Peter runs his finger across the zipper on his backpack. “Walk in?”

“Sure thing, Tiger.”

May parks the car and takes Peter’s hand into hers, and together they walk up the marble steps of the school. His class is meeting outside, waiting for the Activities Bus to arrive, and May can see that several of the kids are already in the drop off area. She stops at the top of the steps and squeezes Peter’s shoulder.

“Got your toothbrush?”

“Yes.”

“Toothpaste?”

“Yes.”

“And that circuit board?”

Peter crinkles his nose and shrugs. “…Maybe.”

May shakes her head, and then gives him a little push towards his class. Peter stumbles a bit, caught off guard—poor guy’s always been a little clumsy—and then suddenly he’s spinning around and May has a ten year old wrapped around her waist.

“Bye, May,” he says, voice muffled by her coat. A warmth that has nothing to do with body heat steals into her chest, and she hugs him back.

“Bye, Peter.” She ruffles his hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Peter nods, and then he’s scampering off, his reticence all but forgotten as he sees Ned waiting for him.

May watches a moment longer, just enjoying seeing him laugh, and then shoves her hands in her pockets and hurries back to her car.

Having the apartment just to Ben and herself when she gets off work does, May will admit, have its perks—namely, having Ben to herself. She can’t help but feel a little anxious about Peter, but her cell phone never rings and there’s nothing in her inbox, so she relaxes and allows herself to enjoy a quiet evening with her husband.

That sense of peace continues until she picks Peter up the next morning, and he refuses to look at her.

She’d thought he’d be bubbling over with stories from the evening, but all of his answers are perfunctory at best and snappish at worst, so May gives up trying to prompt him and just reminds him they need to pick some things up before going home.

Peter says nothing in response, and May knows something is very, very wrong.

It’s late on a Saturday morning, which means the tourists are out in full force when May and a very sullen Peter arrive at the market. May starts weaving her way through the crowd, and when a burly man bumps into her and separates her from Peter, for a heart-stopping second she thinks she’s lost him. The crowd parts and she catches sight of his blue backpack, and she snatches up his hand before he can disappear again.

May is shocked when he jerks away.

“Peter?”

He balls his fists and looks away, and another person barges between them because it’s New York.

“Peter,” May repeats, dodging around them. “Give me your hand before you get lost.”

“I won’t get lost,” Peter says, and juts his lower lip out.

“What—? Come on, I don’t have time for this, you need to—”

“I don’t need you.”

May looks at Peter in shock. “Excuse me?”

His cheeks flush and his head turns sharply away, but he doesn’t take it back. And then, so quiet May almost misses it, he whispers, “You’re not my mother.”

 May swallows dry air, and even though the crowd has forced them together, she’s never felt so far away from him.

“Fine,” she says. “You follow me, then.”

May spins on her heel and makes her way to the vegetable vender, and while she’d like to say she doesn’t look back, she does, because she’s terrified he won’t be there.

She and Peter finish the rest of the errands in a similar fashion, responses clipped and Peter avoiding any kind of contact, no matter how incidental—even when she hands him the grocery bag to carry, he goes out of his way to keep their hands from brushing. When they get home, Peter goes straight to his room without even saying hi to Ben. He looks at her in bewilderment, about to head out the door himself.

May shrugs helplessly, and texts Ned’s mom before kissing her husband goodbye.

Fifteen minutes later, May’s staring at a blurry photo from yesterday of Peter hugging May on the steps, with the caption ‘MOMMA’S BOY—OH WAIT, HE DOESN’T HAVE ONE’ written on it. 

After an intense interrogation, Ned admits Flash had texted the photo to the entire class, and had tormented Peter with it until one of the teachers stepped in (conveniently just before the parents arrived). He also swears Flash didn’t get ahold of it until that morning, so Peter really did have a good time for most of the trip.

…Just not the end.

May thanks Ned for his honesty and hangs up the phone. She drops her head into her hands and her hair curtains her face.

Couldn’t Parker luck have given him a break just once?

She sits in silence and wonders how on earth she’s going to fix this. Then she stands, pulls back her hair, and puts the kettle on the stove—Ben isn’t here to stop her—and fixes two slightly scalded mugs of hot chocolate.

She taps on Peter’s door, mugs balanced precariously in one hand. There’s no response, but Peter doesn’t tell her to go away, either. She takes it as the closest to an invitation as she’s going to get.

The lights are off, and Peter’s backpack has been abandoned on the floor, and the circuit board he’d been so proud of looks a lot more warped than May remembered it being. Peter himself is curled up on his bed, facing the wall. He rolls over onto his back when May walks in, though his gaze remains fixed on the ceiling. The tear tracks on his face glisten in the light from the door.

“Ned told you?”

“He’s a good friend.” May sets the mugs down on his bedside table. “I’m going to have a long talk with your teachers about this.”

Peter lets out a long breath. “I should quit school.”

“I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves.”

“Nope.” Peter rubs his arm across his face. “Actually I don’t think I can go out in public again. Ever.”

May looks at him thoughtfully, then walks out of the room. She comes back a few moments later carrying the whiteboard, and Peter groans.

“No, May, come on.”

“Too late,” May says, marking the board. “Point one: never having to face Flash again.”

Peter peeks out from under his arm and frowns. “You put that on the Adult side.”

“Correct. We’re playing Devil’s advocate today: I argue for your side, you argue for mine. Your turn.”

“This seems unfair,” Peter says, but he pulls himself into a seated position and takes one of the mugs. “I… would never graduate or get a job?”

May places two marks under Peter, and then one under Adult. “Counterpoint: lots of people work from home. You could do everything online for the rest of your life.”

“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t be able to make like, friends and stuff. Or go see movies.”

May draws another two marks and Peter scowls. “I feel like it’s unfair that you’re marking down two for me and only one for you every time.”

“Stop making so many points, then,” May replies. “How about this: no friends means no one can make fun of you for having them.”

“I think not having things was the problem, actually.”

May freezes midway through drawing the line. Shit.

Peter offers her a watery smile. “Maybe put that on the other side?”

He seems sad, but sincere enough, so May wipes her finger over the unfinished line and places one on Peter’s. She sets the board down. “Peter, I—”

“I’m sorry.” Tears swim into Peter’s eyes and drop into his cocoa. “I didn’t mean it when I said—I said—” He holds the mug tighter to his chest. “…I just really miss her.”

May closes her eyes, and then sits down on the bed next to Peter and pulls him to her. “Me too, Peter. Me too.”

She runs her hand through his hair. “Did I ever tell you how much you remind me of her?”

Peter looks up. “…Really?”

“Really.”

May picks up the second mug for herself, and as they drink their cocoa May tells Peter about how much she loved the sound of Mary’s laugh. The way she always tossed her hair back and how her entire body would shake, holding nothing back, and the sheer exuberance she had for life—similar to Peter’s, in many ways. About all the trouble they used to get into together, and how happy Mary’d been when Peter was born. How she thought he hung the moon, and how she wanted to give him the stars in return. How much she loved him.

“May?”

She takes a sip of cocoa and hums.

Peter plays with his thumbs. “…I really didn’t mean it.”

Chocolate coats May’s tongue before gliding down her throat, but it doesn’t feel nearly as warm as Peter’s words. “I know, buddy. I need you, too.”

Peter glows, and May takes the last sip of her drink.

“Now. Since you’ve decided hanging out with me is cool again,” May says, wiping down the board, “wanna go dumpster diving for some tech while I tell you some more stories?”

“Really?” Peter’s thousand-watt smile lights up his face.

May plucks the empty cocoa cup out of his hand. “Really. We might even hit up some of the fancier ones in Manhattan, if you’re really lucky.”

“Whoa, cool!”

Peter races off to get his jacket and shoes, and May smiles. She doesn’t have the foggiest idea what kinds of things to help Peter look for, but she’d spent a night or two playing lookout for one Mary Parker during her wilder years. She was more than willing to watch over Mary’s son, too.

She stands and puts the whiteboard back in the closet, closing the door just as Peter finishes putting on his boots.

“Ready?”

Peter nods vigorously, and May grabs her keys as they walk out, locking the door behind them. May starts to walk down the stairs, and then a small hand slips into hers.

May looks down in surprise, and Peter flushes, but doesn’t let go. May squeezes his hand and doesn’t say anything as they walk out onto the streets, because she’s not his mom, and that’s okay.

She’s still his, and he’s still hers, and that’s all they need.