#this sounds bitchy and it is but “live and let live” is like my family's n1 rule and it is clashing with this lifestyle | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

schrijverr · 1 month ago

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All the Things Maddie Missed

An addition to chapter 33, wherein we get Maddie’s perspective on trying to reconcile with Buck again after she left him in the hospital. In coming by his house, she is confronted by the family Buck has had the whole time. The family she never knew about.

On AO3.

Ships: Buddie (minor)

Warnings: implied/referenced domestic violence, insecurity, injury, referenced emotionally abusive parents

~~~

Maddie hasn’t spoken to Buck in two and a half weeks now. Guilt and anger, as well as fear war in her chest as she forcefully knocks on the door of a house that she’s never been to before. Buck’s house. Or, more correctly, Buck and Eddie’s house.

When the door is opened, Eddie is looking back her. He looks surprised and a bit of a mess, hair all over and a sweaty in a non-work out way.

Before he can say anything, Maddie speaks: “I had to get the address from Abuela, Pepa refused to give it and Chimney didn’t know it. Can you believe that? A year I’ve been here and I never even realized I didn’t know where my own brother lived.”

She blames Eddie for that. For forcing Buck to shut her out. She can’t think of any reason Buck would have lied to her otherwise and that fear of what Eddie is doing to him now that he’s hurt and vulnerable got her over the fear she had that Buck didn’t want her there. The fear, which only got worse when she had to scramble to find their address anywhere.

“I’m sorry?” Eddie replies, sounding as if he’s unsure if the should be apologizing. He doesn’t look ill intended, but then again, neither had Doug.

She sends him a withering look in response, refusing to be cowed again. She has always protected her little brother and this is no different. Until Buck tells her he is okay and doesn’t want her there in a way she believes, she isn’t going anywhere. “Yeah, I sure hope you are. He lied to me, because of you. Do you have any idea how that looks?”

Almost as if to prove her point, Eddie’s brow scrunches up and his eyes narrow. His voice is harsh when he snaps: “Well, he was also heavily injured and I was the only on there in the hospital with him. Do you have any idea how that looks?”

Instinctively, Maddie flinches and she hates that she does. The guilt is now also overtaking her anger, she knows she should have been there. She knows she shouldn’t have stayed away. But out of everyone, she isn’t going to let Eddie tell her that. So she defends herself: “I needed space.”

“Over two weeks of space?” Eddie says incredulously and judgmentally. “Face it, Maddie, you ran from this. From him. Like you always do.”

“You do not get to accuse me like that,” Maddie hisses. He has no right to speak to her like that after all he’s been doing to her baby brother.

“I don’t?” Eddie asks in a bitchy manner that sets her teeth on edge. “Do you have any idea how much Buck misses you? Of course not, because you aren’t here. And guess what? I am. Back in the hospital you said I don’t know him, but I know him well enough, I spend nearly every day of the past four years with him or in communication with him. I’ve seen him send you dozens of cards and I’ve seen him open the mailbox with that disappointed look on his face over and over. He called you so many times since he woke up, he asked after you. And I was the one, who had to tell him that you weren’t there. Again. So, yeah, I feel like I do get to accuse you like that.”

The words feel like hits and they throw her off too. Silently, they just look at each other for a moment, standing there on the porch of Buck and Eddie’s small home.

She never thought Eddie was a bad guy until that night in the hospital. That night when she suddenly realized he was married to Buck because it was easy, having Buck lie for years to her, being into his head so deep for god knows how long. How he had control over what happened to Buck, instead of her. How he could easily do whatever he wanted to her Evan.

But even then, she let him be. She could recognize he had made the better choice and he smartly kept away from her as to not anger her more. Besides, she can’t imagine how hard it must have been to tell Christopher with the start of the breakdown everyone witnessed.

And then came that doctor, who told them Buck was okay and Eddie was as relieved as all of them. He didn’t seem bad then and Maddie had calmed down enough to process some of it. Buck was married and had decided to lie. Had decided to lie to her, purposefully kept her out, while Eddie got to stay.

At least, he’d been clearly planning to stay and Maddie let her own hurt at being excluded drive her away too. Until she remembered how deceiving looks could be and how good liars could lie and act, so she came to the house on a warpath.

Standing here in front of her now, he seems like a doting husband, someone who loves her brother. Not the abusive, isolating man that was using Buck for his kindness that she had conjured for herself. He looks completely genuine now and she starts to doubt herself. Still, she is going to make sure he isn’t some asshole.

So, she narrows her eyes at him, inspecting him critically as she says: “I don’t get you, you know. What do you want with him?”

“What?” Eddie is practically indignant. As if she has no right to be protective of her baby brother with what she knows of his situation.

“You marry him, because he helps take care of Chris and it’s convenient, then you claim it’s his idea to lie about it, yet it’s an accident that you got in so deep and you just didn’t get around to divorcing him. And then, here you are, living with him and defending him. So what do you want from him, Eddie?”

He pauses at her outburst, blinking a few times, before a realization dawns on his now horrified face. He starts slowly and cautiously: “Maddie, the only reason I was ever in a position to marry him, is because we’re friends. Best friends. Yes, it was a marriage of convenience and he helped with Chris and that’s the reason we became friends and why we got married, but we’d been friends for a year already by the time I married him. I didn’t marry him only to leave immediately.”

That- That is not what she expected.

She doesn’t know what her face is doing exactly, but Eddie shuffles uncomfortably under her eyes, so she keeps it up. However, she has to do a double take. There is a lot of affection in his voice when he talks of Buck.

She knows Buck has a crush on him – half thought it was Stockholm syndrome or used to manipulate him – but maybe it’s returned. But then, why wouldn’t Eddie say in the hospital? Why call Buck his best friend now?

Suspiciously yet curious, she checks: “Friends? Nothing else?”

“No, nothing else,” Eddie sighs. “If we’d actually been married, we would have filled out those stupid forms and not gotten into this mess.” He pinches his brow, then says: “Look, why don’t you come inside? Buck is in his room, but I don’t think he’s napping, so I can go grab him for you. He is better at explaining anyway and he missed you.”

Now that the anger at Eddie has been assuaged somewhat, the guilt she feels for not being there for Buck overtakes her. Their parents were never there for him when he was hurt and now she abandoned him too? Eddie said he’d always been disappointed when she didn’t reply and it seemed that even free from Doug, she hasn’t learned. What an awful sister she is.

She would honestly get it if he was so angry at her, he wouldn’t want to see her. That might explain Eddie’s hostility when he opened the door. So, she’s hesitant when she asks: “Is he mad at me for staying away?”

“He’s not mad. Just sad, honestly. I don’t think he can be mad at you. Pretty sure he was already making a list of everything he ever lied about since he was a little kid, so he could tell you when you talked to him again,” he says, stepping to the side to let her in. “But a sorry can’t hurt.”

“Course,” Maddie says, because that is obvious to her. As she does, she steps inside, curious to see where Buck has been living all this time. The home he made for himself.

Maddie honestly still can’t believe she has never been here before. But first she was hiding out, planning to leave and the less people that knew where she was, the better. Besides, the thought of having to face a bunch of frat bros made her sick to her stomach.

Then Buck just always came by hers. She never questioned it much, figuring it was a nice escape from a probably pretty gross living situation for him. Or maybe even a sweet way to accommodate her, she adds, thinking of their conversation they had around Christmas.

After Doug, the same thing applied as when she just got here. She wanted to be in his assumed living situation even less than her own apartment.

But now she’s in his house. In his living room. In the place he made home, the place she’s been carefully kept out of. She almost doesn’t know what to do with herself, awkwardly standing in the entrance as she looks around.

It’s neat.

Eddie is equally awkward, giving a quick tour. “We got a living room and a kitchen, the bathroom is over there, Chris has a room, that’s my room and Buck’s room is there. We got lucky with the house, the sellers needed it gone, because they were moving to Europe and they had a soft spot for Chris, I think. Buck did most of the communication, he probably charmed them.”

Again, he sounds so fond and very married when he talks about Buck that makes her question if he was honest. However, while Buck lied about the whole family thing, she doesn’t think he could have lied about his one sided infatuation with Eddie. He got away with it, because she never directly asked and she definitely did ask about Eddie.

“Uhm, do you want something to drink? Or should I get Buck first?” Eddie asks, seemingly wanting to get away from her as fast as possible.

She looks to the kitchen, spotting a few details she knows very well. With a small smile, she say: “You can get Buck. I’m pretty sure Buck had input on the kitchen, it’s the same way of organizing we used to have back home. I’ll find myself something to drink.”

Eddie gives her a weird look at that, but she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t get time to question it though, because he nods: “Oh, yeah, ‘course,” then hightails out of there, leaving her to explore a little.

As she gets herself a drink, she hears him knocking in the background and the two have a conversation, but she doesn’t focus on that, instead distracted by the house. She puts on the kettle for some tea, opening the right cabinet immediately and finding a bag she likes. Buck still gets the same brand they used to when they were kids. The detail makes her smile.

While the water boils, she looks around further. The table has five chairs around it, but is half covered in papers. Most of them are school projects from Chris, but there are a few with Buck’s handwriting, mostly grocery lists.

At the spot where Chris probably sits, since the chair is modified for him, there are scratches in the table that come with a kid. She traces them with her finger, mortifyingly chokes up.

Quickly she looks away, but that only makes her eye fall on the fridge that has a few of Christopher’s drawings on it. The one in the center is of three stick figures, obviously representing the family that occupies this home.

On the left, the figure has a spot on his face and is denoted as ‘papi.’ There is love in that picture in the way there wasn’t in their childhood home. Not her house with Doug either.

She tears her eyes away, pouring herself a mug of tea, before cradling it as she wanders back into the living room.

The couch is oddly neat with pillows fluffed in the corner. However, despite that, it looks very comfortable. Whoever picked it, picked it with comfort first and style second, but it’s not an eye sore and very clearly loved. There are throw blankets and pillows. It looks like you could sink into it.

There are two plush chairs too, that don’t match, but seem comfortable. The floor is covered by a fluffy rug and the bookshelves are filled with titles. There are some children’s books she recognizes, since she used to read them to little Evan, but also ones she has never seen before. Elsewhere are titles that Buck mentioned reading.

All the books are organized based on type, then mostly based on spine heights and thickness. It’s the same way Buck used to have books in his room, wanting to find them easily based on topic, but having a stronger visual memory that allowed this to work better than sorting by title or author.

Glancing over at the children’s books, she can see that Chris organizes his the same. It’s a little weird, to see that bit of Buck in a kid she barely knows. However, it doesn’t choke her up like the drawing or table did, instead it fills her with some sort of pride. That she raised Buck well enough that he can pass down things to someone else.

After that, she takes a sip of her tea, wandering over to the fireplace, since there are a bunch of framed photographs up on it. She is curious to see the pictures Buck likely never send her.

Most of them contain Christopher. There is naturally the latest school picture, as well as a baby picture of a very young and overwhelmed looking Eddie holding him. Still, despite that, there is pride in his eyes, even when he clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself. She is reminded of just how young Eddie must have been when Chris was born. No wonder he’d take the help.

Her eyes glide over to the next one, which is of Chris and Eddie in Halloween costumes. She now remembers Buck complaining that all the parents got off for Halloween. At the time, she assumed he was upset he wouldn’t be working with his friends, but now she realizes he was upset at missing Halloween with his kid. She wonders how many disappointments he’s had to face without even getting to complain or sympathy.

With an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, she moves onto the next one. This one is actually of Chris and Buck. It’s taken at the LA zoo. Neither seem to realize the picture is being taken and their faces are only half visible, however, they have big matching grins on their faces, while Buck points at the lions, while Chris is on his tiptoes to see better.

There is another one of the three of them, taking when they must have just come to LA. Eddie is in a sling and crutches are leaning against his chair, the chair next to him is empty. Buck and Chris are across from them and Abuela is sitting at the head. She recognizes it as Abuela’s house and they were probably having dinner. Buck’s smile is a little bashful, but he seems to glow.

She scans over all the others. A birthday party with Chris surrounded by kids as he blows out candles, Buck smiling in the background. A younger Chris next to a Christmas tree in a living room she doesn’t know, beaming at the camera. Eddie asleep with Chris grinning mischievously into the camera as he gives Eddie bunny ears. Maddie knows the couch, but it’s that same unfamiliar living room as before. El Paso probably.

Her eyes, however, get caught on the last picture on the mantle piece.

In it are all three of them, dressed up in suits. For a second, she thinks it’s a wedding picture, but then her eyes fall on the piece of paper Chris is proudly showing to the camera; adoption papers. This picture is from right after Buck adopted Christopher.

It’s clearly taken a few years ago, because Buck and Eddie still have some of that babyfat clinging to their cheeks and Chris is only barely a preschooler.

The three of them are all grinning so widely, it’s almost blinding. Buck and Eddie have both smushed their faces against Chris’s, having squatted down and knelt to be at his height. Maddie knows it’s a marriage of convenience, but it hits her now how true Eddie’s words were too. He wouldn’t have been in this position without being Buck’s friend and it’s clear how close they are.

She keeps staring at that picture.

At their grinning faces.

At the happy family.

At Buck’s family.

Without her permission, tears well up, but she can’t help herself. She is already surrounded by the evidence, but that goddamn picture is just the final straw. Buck has a family. A happy family that loves him. And she missed it.

Maddie missed this.

She got him out of that godforsaken town they called home, the cold house with parents that thought of him as a loser. She got him out. She got him there. And yet she missed it. She missed her brother becoming happy.

Now, she can recall sitting on Abuela’s porch, marveling at the happiness on Buck’s face. She had already mourned missing that, but she missed so much more. She missed him becoming a husband and a father, just as much as she missed him becoming an adult and a firefighter.

After two and a half weeks, she still doesn’t know what she did that caused Buck to shut her out. But in her hurt confusion, she never thought too deeply about what he shut her out off. It was this.

This cozy home with scratches on the table, drawings on the fridge, shelves of organized books and pictures of happy moments. This life Buck has built for himself. This family. This happiness. And Maddie missed it.

She’d been stuck in a marriage that broke her, feeling isolated from everyone, clinging to cards from someone living such a free life that was so far out of her own. And she always felt happy to get those cards, to read how Buck was faring. That she might be stuck there, but she had succeeded in making sure that Buck wouldn’t be.

Reading those cards, imagining what his life looked like, seeing him grow up more through the sparing pictures he send. She always thought that she knew him, despite all the distance between them. That even if she wasn’t there, she was with him. That even though, she didn’t write back, she was still a part of his life. But even in all those cards, she missed this.

It wasn’t until that night in the hospital that she realized she didn’t. That Buck got to make the choice and chose to lie. She had half thought it a lie from Eddie to throw her off – hoped it was – but standing here now, she doesn’t believe it is.

Buck didn’t want tell her. He didn’t tell her. He kept her away from this. She thought she still knew him, but she missed practically everything that made him, him. He’s still as much of a stranger to her than when she first got there.

Still, she couldn’t have hoped for anything more for him. It hurts so much that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her, but she is so happy for him. Evan has always deserved the world. Buck has always deserved the world. Maddie gave up years so he could have it and she is so happy for him that he has, even if she wasn’t a part of it.

God, she hopes she didn’t fuck up so bad, he won’t let her be a part of it now. That she won’t miss more of his life, but this time aware that she’s missing it.

She realized she would have fucked up if she got her way and Eddie hadn’t intervened, the moment she got time to calm down. Even if she was still angry at him. If Buck knows of that, she wouldn’t blame him for never wanting to see her again. The thought of getting shut out of his life once more, hurts like a bitch and she nearly chokes on it.

Then she hears his voice behind her. “Maddie! Hi!” He sounds happy, glad to see her even. It gives her hope.

She turns around, mug already going down and a smile coming onto her face as she actually takes him in for the first time in weeks. And he’s smiling at her. Smiling. “Buck,” she says, wrapping him in a big hug, relieved when he hugs back.

For a moment, she basks in feeling his arms around her, that sweat scent she still knows from when he was a teen infiltrating her nostril along with the deodorant he now wears.

Then she steps back and eyes him critically. He is no longer screaming on her TV screen trapped under a truck, but he’s still leaning on crutches with a thick cast on his leg. Most of the scrapes have already healed, however, there are still white little scars where they’d been. He also looks a little tired and stressed, his eyes drooping like they always do when he’s been sad.

“Are you taking care of yourself? That cast is pretty big, are you making sure it’s clean? Not getting it wet?”

Buck seems slightly embarrassed by her and for a moment she worries if this is why he never shared with her, because she does this. But she likes to think she knows him well enough that he’s also a little pleased by the care. He liked it when she cared, right? Right?

Eddie comes up behind him, a hint of cutting in his voice when he answers for Buck. Red flag. “The entire house is accessible.”

And now she gets to witness their duo act Chimney mentioned for the first time live, as Buck quickly jumps in with a grin and a wink. “Yeah, and Eddie’s a medic, you know. I’m in good hands, promise.”

Seeing it makes Maddie feel weird. She knows Eddie is probably not a bad guy, but she does also know Buck loves him and seeing Eddie be mad at her like this while Buck tries to suss the situation makes her feel wrong footed. Still, she tries to be supportive for now. “Of course. I’m sorry. Go sit. Do you have a pillow to put your foot up?”

“Yeah, it’s that one,” Buck points at one of their throw pillows, before going to lower himself on the chair, while Maddie moves to take a seat on the couch. “Though you should maybe grab a kitchen chair, Eddie shampooed the couch. He’s been cleaning the whole house. Antsy, you know.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says and Maddie is taken aback at the way he is speaking to Buck. However, Buck just rolls his eyes at it and makes a face at Maddie, completely unconcerned. And when she looks closely, she can see the way Eddie’s ears burn when he tells her: “It’s already pretty dry,” and he hasn’t missed a beat in helping Buck get situated comfortably. As if it’s as easy as breathing for him.

She knows both him and Buck insist they’re friends, Buck even staunchly claims he’s straight. But he just keeps acting so very married in front of her. So taken by her brother. She doesn’t know what to make of any of it.

If he’s putting on an act and forced Buck into it, he’s become a way better liar than he’s ever been. So, she starts to feel relatively sure in excluding that possibility. But that still leaves her unsure. Unsure, if he is leading Buck on so he’ll stay or if he doesn’t even know he’s hurting Buck by being so sweet to him all the time. Tantalus’s fruit getting snatched away over and over again.

As Eddie gets back up from where he was helping Buck, he only speaks to Buck: “I’m grabbing you something to drink, then heading out. Want me to take Chris to the park, before heading home?”

Maddie thinks he’s a bit of an asshole for ignoring her and for fully letting her know his actual question, which is if Buck trusts her enough to have Chris in the home with them as they talk it out. And she pretends it doesn’t hurt when Buck apologetically grimaces: “Yeah, that would be nice.”

“Cool.” With that Eddie disappears into the kitchen to make Buck tea, the two Buckleys watching him seamlessly dance around the kitchen in a pattern that is familiar to Maddie too, even if she’s never seen Eddie do it and never someone in that kitchen.

Eddie hands Buck the mug with a fond smile that turns stiff and polite when he turns it onto Maddie. She quirks her brow at that, but he valiantly ignores it as he gives her a nod, then calls out a goodbye, before fleeing the house.

The two of them watch him go, then they just sit there in silence, looking at each other for a moment.

“I’m so sorry for not being here,” Maddie decides to start. “I know I should have.”

“It’s okay,” Buck smiles at her, always so kind and forgiving, no matter how many times everyone around him failed him.

Maddie wants to argue with him that it’s not, but hearing him say that it is, makes her feel better. Makes her feel like they can come back to who they used to be. So, she doesn’t say anything and the two lapse into silence again.

“So…” Maddie starts again after a few seconds, hoping to break the ice and create a place to start to unpack it all, “you’re not in love with your coworker, you’re in love with your spouse.”

“Maddie,” he whines, pouting in a way that tells her he’s embarrassed, not angry, which relieves some of the tension she feels in her back. He complains: “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

“Well, it looks kind of bad too,” Maddie exclaims, unable to keep the disbelieving and slight amused tone out of her voice. Now that Buck doesn’t appear to be mad at her, she can tease him. “Buck, my sweet baby brother, what the fuck happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Buck tries to deflect, sinking into the couch and hiding his blushing face behind his hands.

“Well, we got time,” Maddie points out.

Buck groans, lolls his head back to look at the ceiling, then sighs. He pushes himself to be upright again and says: “Alright, fine, but don’t judge me.”

“I’ll try,” she promises.

So, Buck tells her about meeting a cute girl at work, then realizing she was lonely and in need of help, in the form of a friend. How he’d needed a friend too, so why not listen to her complain about her divorce and ex-in-laws?

How that resulted into watching Chris and giving her little breaks, as well as just hanging out. “We were both outcasts there, it was nice to have someone there,” Buck shrugs.

All his cards spoke about how fun and cool everything was. A freedom of traveling the world and seeing all these places, meeting people. Seemed like she missed his hurt too.

He continues to tell her how Eddie came back from service and avoided him like the plague, while his thing with Shannon went further. Maddie promised not to judge, so she is working really hard to not show too much on her face how wild it is that Buck slept with Chris’s mom and is now married to his dad.

Fortunately, before her face can do something, Buck hits her with: “Then a few months later, she shows up with Chris still sleeping, hands him to me, says it’s a family emergency and to watch him for a bit. I say yes, of course, no problem, you know. Of course I’d help her. A couple of hours later Eddie comes driving up in a panic. Apparently, Shannon signed over custody and left to go take care of her mom in LA. That was her family emergency.”

Maddie cannot control her face at that, because what? That is insane. To leave your kid with your boyfriend and then leave the state, while leaving your ex-husband to figure it out? That- She doesn’t know what to do with that.

Buck notices and being the kind person he is, he quickly goes: “I’m not saying it’s okay. What she did, I mean. But- but she was in a really rough spot too. Like yeah, it really hurt Chris and that’s not okay, but I can’t fully blame her either.”

A part of Maddie wants to tell him that he was in a rough spot too. But there is already so much she needs to catch up on and she doesn’t feel like fighting him on this. So, she stays quiet and gestures for him to continue talking.

He explains how Eddie was totally overwhelmed and Buck sympathized. He was also shocked at the sudden departure and he didn’t want Chris to feel like he was being abandoned by everyone. Unloved. So, he stayed, offered to watch Chris for the night while Eddie figured it out.

That then snowballed into him co-parenting Chris with Eddie, until medical bills finally pushed them to tie the knot, leaving Buck a husband and a father.

“Honestly, Maddie, I didn’t even know I loved him until I got that call and I suddenly had to face a possible world that he was no longer in,” Buck tells her, still sounding haunted after so many years. It was probably his lowest moment and she wasn’t there for it.

When he looks up to her again, his eyes are red rimmed, but he isn’t crying. His voice sounds fucked though, when he says: “I know it’s pathetic and selfish, but I didn’t want him to leave. So, I clung to him, made myself useful. Got a well paying job with a good insurance and built our lives together. Then he wanted to stay and I didn’t argue him out of it. I know we took it too far and it was stupid to do it, but by the time we realized, it was kind of already too late.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me? Evan, I could have helped,” Maddie says, her own voice more wobbly than she’d like.

She is scared to hear the answer. Scared in that small space of time between her question and Buck’s answer.

Sitting here in this house he made a home, she realizes just how much of his life she missed. How he started editing those cards years ago, without coercion, when she stopped responding. How he kept her at an arms length when she came back, never letting her fully in. He didn’t want her to know. And she is terrified to find out why, to hear how she failed him.

God, she tried so hard to do right by him. Telling herself that even when she send him away, she did right by him, because she got him out of there and, look, all his cards show how happy he is. It didn’t matter that she was falling apart, because Evan was doing well.

Maddie gave so much of herself to him, to everyone. To making her parents happy after Daniel, to making sure Buck grew up loved, to Doug as she tried to be his perfect wife. And it wasn’t enough. She was never enough.

She had wanted to run away from that feeling of inadequacy, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave entirely. Not when Buck was injured. What if he needed her? What if he still wanted her there? What if he was scared and needed someone to hold his hand, just like that first time he had to get stitches and he squeezed her hand so tight she had bruises for days? She couldn’t leave him like that.

So, she had given him space instead. He had wanted Eddie to make his decisions to be in that room with him, not her. She could respect that. Which meant she hadn’t been calling or texting or visiting. But now she had forced her way into his home and practically invited him to tell her why he had shut her out, why he didn’t want her there.

“Fuck, Maddie, I wanted to tell you so many times,” Buck sighs. That- That is not what she expected to hear at all.

“You- You did?” she asks, sounding pathetically hopeful to her own ear.

“Of course, I did!” Buck exclaims, practically indignant that anyone would think differently. “You’re my sister. I must have written over a dozen of cards and letters explaining everything to you.”

Cautiously, Maddie says: “I never got any of those letters.”

“I know,” Buck groans. “I never send them.”

Slightly less pessimistic, but still bracing herself, Maddie asks: “Why?”

“It’s stupid,” Buck mutters, then continues when she remains silent. “At first I didn’t want mom or dad to know and I felt embarrassed, I guess. I thought you would think I was making a dumb decision, helping out with a kid like that. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I liked it. I love raising Chris, always have. Suppose I just didn’t want mom or dad to tell me it was a dumb idea. Or worse, you.”

“Oh Buck…”

“I know.” Buck gives her a crooked smile. “Anyway, then I didn’t want to worry you. Especially when Chris had to have surgery. Like, what kind of brother would I be, dumping all that on you when you’d only get in trouble for wanting to help. Because you would have helped. You’re nice like that.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Maddie blushes, tucking her cardigan around herself as she does.

Buck just levels her a look and says: “Come on, Maddie. We both know you would’ve helped me out with this. You’re just a helper, that’s what you do.” He lists: “ER nurse, 9-1-1 dispatcher, big sister? Ring any bells.”

“Alright, alright, so I would have tried to help,” Maddie says. “But even without mentioning that, you could have told me about the good things, right? I mean, you obviously love being Chris’s dad. You sharing that wouldn’t have worried me.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Buck trails off, sending her a guilty look.

“What?” Maddie asks, now getting worried.

“Uhm,” Buck looks away, then winces: “I didn’t want Doug to know.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t want Doug to know,” Buck repeats louder, ripping the band aid off. “I didn’t want him to know Chris existed or where he lived. It’s why I always used my job as return address. I didn’t want him finding my family, because he scared me. I knew he scared me and I never came to get you out of there. He didn’t know how to target me when he was here, but he did find you. Do you have any idea how much that killed me? I couldn’t protect you from him. I almost let you die.”

The words steal the breath out of Maddie’s lungs and she just stares at Buck for a moment, as if an animal caught in a trap. A deer in headlights.

Maddie had always known Buck didn’t like Doug, even admitted to him how he was right about that, but she had never known Doug scared him. Had never realized Buck would hide his own family from her to prevent Doug from finding out about it. Another thing she missed out on because of that horrible man she used to call a husband.

She also doesn’t really know how to react to the guilt. How to make it better. It was her own fault for being careless with her door. For thinking she could outrun him forever. She never expected Buck to protect her from Doug. He’d just been a kid when they started dating. He couldn’t have protected her from her own stupid choice.

But she knows saying that won’t go over well. Both Buck, Chimney and her therapist tell her she shouldn’t think like that. But it’s still taking a little for it to sink in. She can almost believe it, though… on some days. Progress?

However, that’s not something she wants to get into now, so she just says: “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Buck says. She can’t know that inside, the guilt of those thoughts he had when running through that forest are eating him up inside. Too big to ever admit to anyone.

“It is,” she says forcefully. “You protected Chris and you should have. Do you think I would have felt better if he hurt your family too? No. I’m alive and you were there. That’s all I needed. I swear.”

Buck eyes her suspiciously for a second, then seems to believe her. Before he can change his mind about it, Maddie swiftly moves on: “So how did that translate into lying to everyone here?”

And Buck tells her about his insecurities, which turned into being too awkward to bring it up to his coworkers. How he finally ended up telling Eddie when Bobby gave him a job offer. Then how that turned into their dumb decision to lie to everyone.

Maddie almost can’t believe how idiotic that is. However, this is Buck and as much as he is not unintelligent, she has also witnessed his many other ‘great’ plans throughout childhood. So, sadly, she can totally believe he thought that was a good idea.

So, she doesn’t focus on that and doesn’t berate him. He obviously has gotten enough and is fully aware that he shouldn’t have done it. Instead, she asks: “So, why not tell me when I got here?”

“Well, you showed up at my job, not like I could introduce Eddie, and then Hen made that comment, so I couldn’t explain then. And in the car, I thought it might be overwhelming, so I was going to tell you later, but then Eddie texted you knew-”

“What?”

“What what?”

“Eddie thought I knew? Why?” Maddie asks, confused, trying to see how he came to that conclusion.

“Chris talked about his two dads, he assumed that meant you knew that meant it was us. We only later figured out it wasn’t,” Buck explains.

“So, what did you think I was doing?”

“Uh… being homophobic?”

“Buck!”

“What!” Buck exclaims. “You weren’t saying anything to me, how was I supposed to know you didn’t know it was us. Eddie said you knew. I didn’t want to pick a fight with you.”

“Please tell me you realized I wouldn’t do that you,” Maddie pleads. She needs to know Buck always knew she would be in his corner. She doesn’t think he is capable of making her hate him.

“Yeah, yeah, we realized pretty soon after. Especially after the whole drugging thing, you know,” Buck assures her. “I thought about telling you then when you were berating me for calling Eddie my husband,” Maddie blushes in hindsight at the memory, “but I had a massive hang over.”

Maddie grimaces at that. With how she reacted in that hospital, she knows she would have yelled at Buck had he told her then. Probably not very nice with a headache. Maybe not really cool to berate him over something he said while drugged either, but she always tries to protect him. Their parents hadn’t really raised him, what if he didn’t know that wasn’t acceptable? Not like there was someone around to tell him.

Buck scratches his nose and thinks for a second, then admits: “I was going to tell you. Before Christmas. I wanted to invite you to our celebration.”

Confused Maddie waits to hear why he didn’t tell her then. She knows he tried to bring her Christmas cheer, was that after or before? See where her head was at? Did she not pass as emotionally stable enough to be invited for Christmas?

Her thoughts – read, spiral – are interrupted by Buck says: “Then Chimney was there. Buff-Friday.”

She remembers that evening, she had thought Buck was weirdly nicely dressed. Guess he wanted to present as an adult to her. It both makes her fond and a little heartbroken. It was also before the Christmas debacle, so at least she didn’t scare him off with that.

“I remember that,” she says. “You were weird that evening.”

“The whole evening was weird,” Buck argues. “You and your half dating, dating Chim. It was so not cool to suddenly pull that. You can’t just invite Chimney over willy nilly to Buckley sibling night.”

“Alright, I won’t,” she promises, unable to fight off the warmth that blooms in her chest at Buck implying there are going to be more Buckley sibling nights. It’s currently weird between the 118 and Buck and Eddie, but she tries to stay out of it. However, she believes they’ll make up someday.

“Good,” Buck decides, believing her promise. Then he moves on: “Anyway, then I couldn’t tell you.”

“What?”

“You were semi-dating Chimney. Chimney can’t keep secrets. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“I can keep secrets!” Maddie defends herself – she can keep secrets maybe a bit too well, she thinks guiltily – and pouts: “I could have totally kept this one. And told you that you were being an idiot.”

“I know that,” Buck rolls his eyes. “But you don’t like keeping secrets. I wasn’t going to ask you of that, you were putting yourself back out there. I wasn’t going to come between that and make it more complicated for you.”

Now Maddie nearly has to cry. Because that is the sweetest thing she has heard in a long time. Buck is still her little helper, trying to make her life easier. And he is right, she doesn’t like keeping secrets, no mater how good she is at it. He was trying to protect her. Even then.

“God, you’re such a sweetheart,” she tells him, hugging him tight.

Immediately Buck hugs back, pulling her closer as he softly confesses into her hair: “Just trying to pay you back for all you did for me.”

That makes the tears only more prominent and she’s sure Buck can hear it in her voice when she replies: “You never have to pay me back for anything.”

“Still…” Buck deflects.

They sit there in silence for a while, holding each other. It’s not something they’ve really done since Buck was still a little kid. Maddie missed it. She likes doing this now. After everything that has happened these past few months, she needed this.

After they’ve properly soaked in each other’s presence, Maddie demands to know more about Buck’s life here and his embarrassing crush on Eddie. She’s both supportive and teases him. Because that is her right as his sister.

When Buck reveals that Eddie can’t cook, she offers to cook for them. Buck takes it gratefully and she mentally makes a note to stop by with left overs and stuff more often, as well as to offer more help later too.

She goes through the kitchen, helping Buck to one of the chairs there, so she can see what they have and what they still need. Buck texts Eddie to pick up some groceries, before they continue to just catch up further. It’s nice.

They’re still in the kitchen an hour later, when they hear the door open. Chris’s crutches come clattering down the hall, before he stops in the kitchen. Happily, he says: “Hello, papi.” Then he spots her and excitedly gasps: “Tía Maddie!”

Maddie had already paused when Chris called Buck papi, but him calling her tía Maddie makes her stop even more. Logically, she had already realized that Buck was a dad, but having Chris here in front of her, calling her aunt, makes it hit home.

Buck is a father.

Buck has a kid.

Maddie is an aunt.

She has a nephew.

It’s almost too wild to think about and too overwhelming to process. It’s another thing she missed, another thing she wasn’t there for. But also something she is let in on now. Something she gets to have now. A bigger family. Members who aren’t cold and distant. A cute kid she can spoil.

Right around the time, she gets back to herself, Buck smiles: “Yeah, that is tía Maddie. She’s going to make us dinner, so we don’t have to eat daddy’s pasta again.”

Chris giggles at that and conspiratorially tells Maddie: “Daddy’s not good at cooking, pasta is all he can make. We’ve been eating it for a week.”

At that point, Eddie comes up behind Chris, carrying way more grocery bags than healthy or smart, which he drops on the counter. His face is embarrassed as he ruffles Chris’s hair and says: “Okay, that’s enough out of you.”

“I don’t know,” Maddie says, mischievously, wanting to get back at Eddie a little for his attitude from earlier. “I think I’d like to hear more about our food critic here. What do you say, want to be my taste tester?”

“Yes,” Chris cheers.

“Good, come stand here. I’ll chop and you can tell me about what foods you like,” she says, gesturing for Chris to stand with her at the counter, while she goes and grabs the grocery bags.

You can say what you want about Eddie, he can grocery shop well. Everything she wanted is there, right brand too. It takes her a second too long to not be mortifying to realize that’s probably because she taught Buck to grocery shop, so he carried her brand preferences over into his marriage. If Buck usually cooks, then he probably decides brands. It makes her feel weird for a moment, to be connected to Eddie like that, but she shakes it off.

She gets distracted by her nephew – nephew! That is going to make her giddy for a while – who proudly informs her: “I like lots of foods. Papi likes to experiment, we’re his test subjects.”

“Yeah? Do his experiments fail often, or is he good?” Maddie asks. Both genuinely curious and wanting to get to know her nephew and brother better, as well as hoping for some teasing material from this candidly honest kid.

“He’s pretty good, but he burned the brussel sprouts. That was gross,” Chris says in that unabashed manner kids have.

Maddie giggles. “That doesn’t surprise me. Did you know that your papi hated brussel sprouts when he was your age? I had to hide them in the soup just so he would eat them.”

“You knew papi when he was my age?” Chris asks, as if he can’t believe it, which makes Maddie blink for a second.

It hits her then that there was no one there to tell stories about little Buck. Chris didn’t have the Buckley side of the family around him growing up. He had to miss out on that, because she hadn’t bee there to tease Buck, to help with childcare and be a fun aunt.

She vows to make up for that. To never let herself, Buck or Chris miss out on anything again. She was here. She is family and she is going to make sure none of them ever forget that. So, she puts on a smile – one she means too – and says: “I did. I’m his big sister, did I not tell you that? That’s why I’m your tía.”

A/N:

The Buckley siblings always make me a little insane, ngl, but this verse? Ugh, it eats at my brainnnn, it’s unhealthy. Anyway, I went Eddie’s POV for this, since, you know, he realizes he wants to kiss Buck here, which was important, but holy shit, we deserved Maddie’s POV too <3 hope I explained her side somewhat and did her justice!

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gay4harm · 1 year ago

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Pick a side

Paring: Shuri x Riri x Reader

Warning: None really except implied smut, makeout session, reader in a theater nerd, I think das it

A/N: Soo I know I'm supposed to be working on Who is she? but this was just stuck in my head and I had to get the idea out. This will have multiple parts to it. Lmk if you guys want more of it. (This is kinda proofread)

Shuri and Riri were known for being very competitive. They'd see who could finish certain projects first or silly things like seeing who could finish eating first, but most of all they loved seeing who could get the girl first.

Who could fuck her before the other but in the end it always ended with both of them fucking some random and them leaving right after.

This whole thing was Shuri's idea, after losing her family she had developed a few bad habits, she'd drink, party and sleep with women, the ones who would be willing to hookup with no strings attached.

Riri saw this and although she was a bit worried she knew Shuri was a big girl and even when Riri said anything shuri would just shut it down, so the only thing Riri could do was try and be there just in case something happened.

So this is how they got in this predicament, one of their friends telling them everythig he knew about you which was. "Yeah nah thats Y/N, she bad as hell ain't she?"

Riri and shuri nodded as they observed you with your tight black dress on, hair pulled back in a ponytail showing off your black smokey eye makeup and glossed, plump, dark red colored lips, shuri wandered what they would feel like wrapped around her strap and Riri noticed how familiar you looked, like she had met you from before.

Their friend spoke up again. "I tried to get with her last semester but she was playing all hard to get and shii"

"did you ever get with her?" Riri asked. "Nah she real stuck up, acting like she better than everyone."

That's just what Shuri wanted; someone she could breakdown, a real challenge.

"How much you want to bet I could hit that?" Riri looked at Shuri offended as she let a soft scoff fall from her lips. "Nigga you couldn't bag a bitch as bad as her"

"Oh you think I can't?"

"Nigga I know you can't"

"Oh well that sounds like a challenge, two weeks, who ever sleeps with her first wins. Deal?" Shuri stuck her hand out ready to make the deal as Riri hesitantly took Shuri's hand firmly and shook it. "Deal"

Just as Riri let go of shuri's hand she got up and walked over to you who was leaning on a kitchen counter with a cup in hand.

"Hey how you doing pretty?"

"Oh hi" Riri was surprised at your voice; small, southern with a bit of sultriness to it, she would have never expected you to sound as you did. Your resting bitch face gave off the impression that your voice would sound smokey, low and honestly she thought you would be a bit bitchy, as in you would try and dismiss her for coming up to you. She didn't expect you to sound sweet like honey or for when she came over your eyes lit up as if you had been waiting for this moment.

"Oh wow, I'm sorry I just- I didn't expect you to sound like that" You giggle slightly at her words before responding. "Its fine, you would be surprised at how much people say that"

"Uh, I'm Riri, it's nice to meet you" Riri stuck her hand out and you took it, a bit taken aback at how her hands had a slight roughness to them while yours were soft and well moisturized. "I know who you are Riri." Riri furrowed her eyebrows confused at how you knew her, maybe it was just from around school. You noticed her confusion and gave her the same look with your head tilted, did she really not remember you? "We live across from each other.... we're in the same study group" You could tell when the realization hit Riri, what looked like disappointment flashed across her face. "Shit I'm sorry, I knew you looked familiar, I just forgot where"

"Its fine, I've been told I have a very forgettable face." Riri didn't laugh at first and instead looked apologetic but you were just joking of course. You knew Riri had a busy life, not only did she barely come to the study group you guys were in, you two hadn't crossed paths that many time and if you did it was a quick glance and small smile that usually occurred, never going as far as talking.

"Its ok you can laugh, its supposed to be funny" Riri's face was wiped of any uncertainty and instead you two shared the same sheepish chuckle not being able to look each other in the eye.

Its not that it was awkward or anything

you didn't know what it was, well you knew what it was for you. You were a bit nervous, you've had the biggest crush on Riri and honestly you were horrible at flirting, especially when you were put on the spot like this. If it was someone else than you would have been a bit more confident but this was Riri. Someone you were completely head over for. The whole party scene wasn't something you were used to nor was the dress and makeup, it was all a product of your friend Kourtney who had basically dragged you here, at first you were a bit upset but now you were glad you came.

"So uh... you wanna dance?" You looked up from your cup a bit surprised at Riri's question but before you could answer she grabbed your hand and led you to the center of the room where other sweaty bodies were grinding on each other to fast pace songs, that was until a slower song began to play. (play the song bookie)

As the song started you look around to see people grinding on each other in sinful ways, slow dancing or for the people who didn't have anyone to dance with they sat and watch waiting for the next fast paced song to play. Riri began to slowly sway to the music as you stood awkwardly, her hand snaked around your waist pulling you close, you tensed up in response not used to something like this

Riri noticed how uncomfortable you seemed and leaned into your ear, her warm breath making you shiver. "I don't bite, you know" You lean in to hear her better. "I said I don't bite, not unless you want me to" You smile softly at her as she turns you so now your back is pressed against her front with your ass on her crotch.

Never been scared to get wet

No umbrella, you can rain all night

Ooh, woah, woah

And go 'head and drench me with your body

By the time you're finished, baby, I'll be Covered in you, ooh, yeah, yeah

Covered in you

Ooh, you know when we're through

'Cause I'll be covered in you

You begin to move slightly on Riri, unsure of what you were doing

This wasn't exactly your scene.

You were use to singing and dancing during rehearsals, in between work and classes not partying, it wasn't how you were. Being good looking attracted people but you never really gave them the time of day especially when you could tell they only wanted one thing. So you didn't know why you were here, grinding on Riri Williams to a Chris Brown song but you were and it was the best thing ever.

You began to move more fluently with Riri's hands on your hips guiding you.

You know I won't stop 'til I feel it overflowin'

Tell me, tell me, baby, would you mind

If I just jump right in and take the dive? ('Cause I)

Never been scared to get wet

No umbrella, you can rain all night

Ooh, woah, woah (Woah)

And go 'head and drench me with your body

By the time you're finished, baby, I'll be Covered in you, ooh, yeah, yeah

Covered in you

Ooh, you know when we're through

'Cause I'll be covered in you

I ain't runnin'

Keep it comin'

'Til I'm covered, baby

Covered in you

You know when we're through Until I'm covered in you

You had fully went loose, slowly grinding and swaying to the music with Riri behind you, kissing on your neck setting off a fire in you, her lips on you felt so good, so right, like they were made for you.

"You wanna go upstairs ma?" You thought about her question at first, not sure if you should go but then you thought about the way she felt and her lips and their softness, you thought about how much you liked having her hands on you and how you needed them everywhere.

So your reply was obvious as you turned to face her. "I would love to"

She takes your hand, moving through the sea of bodies, as you guys go up the stairs and in one of the unoccupied rooms she sits you down on the edge of the bed with her on the other side of you. No words are passed between the two of you until Riri speaks up. "You ok? You seem a little nervous." You look up at her knowing that she was right, you were nervous. Once again this wasn't something you were used to, you had only ever been with one other person and they were the reason why you were the way you were, shy and reserved, and to some people boring and stuck up.

"Yeah I'm cool just a little nervous"

"There ain't nothing to be nervous about, I'm not gonna hurt you, just wanna make you feel good." Riri grabs your chin making you look at her. She pulls you closer until your lips are just barely touching, not wanting to wait anymore you capture your lips on hers.

They were just as you expected, soft, supple and honestly to you it appeared that she might have more than enough experience with this.

At first it started off with sweet small pecks that turned into something heated, Riri let go enough to bit your bottom lip making your mouth go ajar, she took the opportunity to slid her tongue in your mouth.

She gets a hold of your jaw making you tilt your head up to deepen the kiss, the taste of her cherry lip balm swarmed in your mouth making its way into your mind savoring the flavor, her flavor, her scent, the way her hand traveled up and down your body until it stopped to take hold of your breast with one gentle squeeze.

She was so addicting, everything else was wiped from your mind except the feeling of Riri, you wondered if you went through her mind just as she did with yours.

So when Riri pulled away you were confused, that was until you realized someone had been knocking on the door. She yelled out hoping the mystery person would leave.

"Yo its occupied." She turned back to you to resume your little makeout session but before she could a few more knocks and a voice cut it off. "It me Riri, we gotta go, some business to take care of." Riri got up clearly annoyed, she swung the door open coming face to face with Shuri who had a sly smirk on her face.

"Can't you go handle it yourself, I'm kinda in the middle of something." They both look back at you as you spoke up. "No I mean it's fine, you should go take care of your business, I should get going anyway my friends probably wondering where I went."

You got up heading toward the door but just as your about to walk out Riri grabs your arm. "Before you go let me get cha number, you know so we can finish what we started." She pulls her phone out so you can put your number in and you take it ready to do so. After you left, pushing pass Shuri and into the crowd.

"What the fuck, why would you do that?"

Shuri looks at Riri amused

"Do what?"

You see Kourtney walking up to her, she looks relieved as she grabs you by your shoulders. "God where have you been? I've been looking all over for you." You didn't reply. What would you have said, 'I was upstairs with Riri Williams about to sleep with her until Shuri Udaka, the queen on wakanda decided to interrupt'

There was to much to explain and you were not in the right mind set to explain it. "Can we just go? I don't want to be here anymore" Kourtney looked confused as you pulled her towards the door. "But what-"

"I'll explain later" You both get in the car, driving off to your apartment.

You had lived in a apartment with two of your best friends, Gina and Kourtney. They were your best friends since high school along with Ashlyn of course. You all had decided to go to MIT together which was the best decision ever made. You were here with your three best friends and it made you feel at home, they were like your sisters.

As you got back to your shared apartment, there sat Gina and Ashlyn waiting on the both of you. "Hey, how was the party?" Gina asked from the couch. "Hey, yeah it was cool" You replied as you walked into your bedroom. "Um are we gonna forget about earlier? You forgot to tell me what happened" Kourtney shouted out.

"I didn't forget I'm just- you know... coming down from it"

"Wait coming back from what? What happened?" Ashlyn asked confused just as everyone else. You walk out, now in sweatpants and a tank top. As you do you blurt out. "I almost had sex with Riri Williams"

Everyone turns to stared at you, stunned by your words.

"You did what?"

"It just kind of happened, we didn't get that far"

"Well what stopped you?" Kourtney scooted closer to you, waiting for an answer. "Someone was knocking on the door and it turned out to be Shuri Udaka as in Wakandan royalty."

"Wait you said Shuri Udaka as in like the queen on Wakanda?" You shake your head at Gina's question. "Girl did you not know their dating?" Your eyes widen and your mouth parts to show your shock

"Are you serious!?" Many things were swarming through your head.

Why would Riri try and cheat on Shuri with you at the same party Shuri was at?

Why was Shuri so calm when Riri opens the door and why didn't she say anything?

Was she planning on getting back at both you and Riri later?

Or did she just not care?

Was this a part of some type of game or prank?

Did Riri actually like you?

"Look I doubt anything's going to happen, right?" You look up at Ashlyn as you could tell her voice was laced with false hope. You gave her a weak smile, got up, said your goodbyes and walked back to your room hoping to forget everything that happened.

You woke up, had forgotten about the events that occured last night. Instead you got out of bed, ate breakfast and just as you were about to get ready for the day someone knocked on the door.

Gina was the first to answer it while you began to pick out your outfit for the day.

You began to notice that you hadn't heard the door close but you had heard it open, so you walk out to see it anything had happened.

You had imagined that maybe it was the RA or an old friend so you walk out not expecting much.

But as to what was happening at the front door, it was actually something a lot different.

"Is Y/N here?"

"Um no... no she is not"

"Well do you know when she'll be home or at least where she'll be?"

Just as Gina was about to answer, you walked in

"Gigi who's at the door?" You stop in your tracks to see Shuri, sporting a black tracksuit with her signature black shades. You'd be lying if you said she didn't look good.

Both Gina and Shuri look at you and as they do the events of last night are flooded back in your mind.

"Y/N, do you mind if I talk to you?"

"Uhh yeah of course come in."

Shuri steps pass Gina as she closes the door. Gina walks back to her room hoping to forget all this happened.

As soon as she leaves you speak up. "Ok look if your here to like kill me or something then you should know I didn't even know you and Riri were in a relationship. If I did then I would have never-"

"You think I came here to hurt you for kissing my girlfriend?" Pure confusion was laced over Shuri's face. "Well I mean I would, or at least I'd be pretty upset, but you don't seem upset at all actually."

"Well that is because I'm not." Now instead of Shuri being confused you were.

"Ok so your not mad?"

"Not at all, in fact I'd love it if you were to join me at a party next week"

"Um I'm actually not very fond of parties"

"Well maybe we could grab a drink... at my place"

"You want to hang out at your place?" Shuri gives you a simple shake of her head. You think about it at first and there's only one clear answer.

"That sounds lovely Shuri but I'm gonna have to decline."

Shuri was filled with shock at your decline, this hadn't ever really happened before. Of course there were people who would say no for the fun of it but with you it seemed like you were completely uninterested.

"Ok well are you sure?"

"Positive, now if there isn't anything else you'd like to talk to me about then I suggest you leave."

You walk her out, closing the door as you head to get ready for your day.

While you put the final touches on your outfit and finish up your look, your phone goes off.

You look to see a unknown number but as you read the message you find out to see its Riri texting you a simple good morning text followed by 'how'd you sleep?'

You smile with the thought that Riri might have actually been thinking about you.

You text back with a good morning to start off, ending with 'I slept well, hbu?'

after that the two of you talked the whole day even when you two saw each other in a few classes. The day ended too soon and the only thing you could think about as you walked back to your dorm was how you couldn't wait to see her again.

The same thing went through Riri's head, she actually enjoyed talking to you. You weren't like the other brainless girls she normally spoke to.

She knew this would have to end soon but did it really?

A/N: She's finally done girly pop

It's actually crazy because I have so many other fics I need to finish and start but I had to feed the Shuriri x reader girlie cause I myself am one.

Anywayssss I hope you guys enjoyed this and please remember that I love when you guys tell me how you feel about it so please do.

#riri wiliams x reader #riri williams #riri x reader #riri x black fem reader #marvel #riri x you #dominique thorne #shuri udaku #shuri x black!reader #shuri x reader #shuriri x reader #shuriri #shuri x riri

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witchcraftandgeekness · 2 years ago

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TVDU x Hogwarts AU, Part 4. Part 3 is here

Warning: it is just my opinion

Niklaus 'Klaus' Mikaelson

Life is a chess game for Klaus, and all the people are figures he plays with. Klaus is ambitious, smart, self-preserved, devious mastermind. Enough said.

Elijah Mikaelson

Elijah is best known for his honor, honesty and total loyalty to his family but mostly Klaus. Though he doesn't always live up to his own expectations, he tries his best when writers allow him to.

Rebekah Mikaelson

Soft and caring at heart, Rebekah was forced to be more tough with people, and her short temper and bitchiness of those around her doesn't always let her be the cutie she is inside. Rebekah is confirmed to be the most stubborn person in the family (which says a lot), she will die and kill for those she loves most, and wouldn't tolerate wrong attitude towards herself.

Kol Mikaelson aka My Love

Most of people would have sorted this boy into Slytherin or Gryffindor, but I say he is absolute Ravenclaw. Evidence? Kol is very intelligent, and he sometimes acts on impulse but he is basically never wrong, and people must give more credit to his opinion. Also, the most important trait of this house is the craving for knowledge, and Kol's extensive knowledge of witchcraft makes him walking encyclopedia. Yes, his restless and mischievous nature makes him a total troublemaker but he is an absolute magical nerd at heart.

Freya Mikaelson

At the begining I had impression that Freya would fit into Hufflepuff, but to be honest the only trait of this house she has is loyalty to her family. As soon as she asserted position of the elder sister she feels responsible for all Mikaelson siblings. Freya can be cunning (i.e. if you remember when she understood Klaus will never trust her she orchestrated his daggering, to achieve her freedom from Dahlia), has good actor skills, which she demonstrated few times, and is hell-bent on keeping her family safe and sound, and will do anything for their safety.

Finn Mikaelson

His complete devotion for Esther made me think of him as a Hufflepuff but later he revealed that he values his principles above his personal feelings. Finn's obsession with honor lead to him trying to sacrifice himself to relieve world from vampires. While possessing Vincent, Finn showed that he will do whatever it takes (like torturing and murder) for the things he believes in.

Part 5 is here

#tvd #tvdu #tvd hogwarts au #the originals #the originals hogwarts au #klaus mikaelson #elijah mikaelson #kol mikaelson #mikaelson family #rebekah mikaelson #hogwarts houses #freya mimaelson #finn mikaelson

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my-castles-crumbling · 3 months ago

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okay this is going to be extremely long so apologies in advance

my parents are being bloody overprotective bitches and it's pissing me the hell off. my school, that they picked, is full of rich snobbish brats. my family isn't rich and we can't always do what they do yk? doesn't mean that we're not well off because we are but again not so much that our lifestyles are going to be the same and that's fine. the girls in my school have been going on international trips since before they could walk and i hear about it all the time and i told my parents about it and they explained why we couldn't go but we've been to the best places in our home country and that's been amazing, we've gone on several a year and that's great. but you feel a little well more than a little left out when you hear everyone talking about their international trips, including my best friends so obviously stung a bit, but it's fine. i went on my first one this year at fourteen and seriously i'm probably starting to sound a little ungrateful but i promise, i'm not. then it's practically a known fact that everyone in my year will leave to study abroad for their undergrad and i can't because it's too expensive even though i've always wanted to and i'm smarter than them but that's fine, i'll change my life plan to accomodate that. people have been coming home themselves since they were younger than 10 and they didn't let me until this year. fine, they're just looking out for me. everyone around me had their first sleepovers by twelve but my best friends and i had our first ones this year, and okay fine. i try to understand and accomodate what they want all the time i'm okay with that. the problem here is that i asked them if i could go out with my friend after school to a mall to go to the arcade, have lunch, windowshop a bit and that sort of stuff. my mom outright said no but my dad tends to be more reasonable so i calmly explained all the reasons why i think i should be allowed to go. i'm more mature and responsible than most people my age, my friend lives near the mall and has been there unsupervised, everyone else already has gone out without adult supervision and it's not going to be a regular thing. my dad said that he'd rather i do something more "industrious" but like we have a school event on that day so not like i'd do anything productive in the first place and i kid you not, everyone's going out with their friends. my parents' excuse is that they want me to focus on my studies and they don't think it's a pastime fit for someone of my age. firstly, they were the ones to send me to this school filled with rich snobby bitchy and condescending brats (they say they didn't know that the people would be like that) and now they honestly can't expect me to not want to fit in also it's not that deep every teenager in my city does it why tf can't i. i understand why some things just can't work out for me and i adjust accordingly. but this? it's bad enough that my country's culture is so restrictive that teenagers don't have the freedom or the trust to go around by themselves but everyone does this and they're not even saying it like a just not now thing, i can't go out like that for the entirety of high school like fuck you. i'm not ungrateful okay i appreciate everything but at the same time i do a lot of shit without adult supervision, though it took forever for them to let me, so why not the mall. it sucks, feeling like an outcast because everyone else does it and i can't even go to parties or movies man without adult supervision and i'm extremely responsible so i don't get why. and they're like "look at all the things you do that your friends don't" there's literally nothing i do that at least half my year doesn't too. like i just want to be like them yk and i don't give two shits about popularity but my life is pretty boring and i can't even go out and do shit like everyone around me?? how's that even fucking fair and then i tried to insist, kinda threw a tantrum (not my proudest moment) and then they threatened to stop letting my friends come over, so sincerely, fuck them.

Hi!

Okay so I think this is a chance to SHOW them you're mature. Sit them down and ask to have an adult conversation. Ask them why they don't want you to go by yourself and ask if there's any sort of compromise you can make (like they go but are in a different store or something). Calmly explain why this is important, and if they still say no, then ask what you can do to get them to say yes.

I understand why you want to go. Everyone else does, and it sucks to be left out. I dealt with that a lot growing up, so I really feel your pain here. But the last thing you want to do is throw a tantrum because then you're just proving your parents right. Prove them wrong by making a compromise or asking what you can do to get what you want, and they'll be more likely to treat you maturely, like you want, you know?

Sending you so much love <3

#asks #ask #ask cas

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sissytobitch10seconds · 3 months ago

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Better Me Than All of Us

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Viktor manages to get through to Ben and take the Durango from him. He does the same thing to Jennifer, but then he has the two elements resting entirely inside of his body. The Cleanse doesn't feel like he thought it was based off what his not-brother and acquaintance were going through. Warnings: Temporary character death, heavy angst, POV character death Word Count: 11,404 Ship(s): Viktor Hargreeves-centric

Archive link!

A/N: Let me preface this by saying that I liked s3 and if you came here expecting this to be one of those fics that just shits on it and then moves on, you're going to be sorely disappointed. This is simply a different path that the show could have gone that I would have enjoyed, not a shitting on the original plot. If you're still interested after that then I welcome you to come along this journey with me! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

It was exceedingly rare that all eight of them were present in the same room at the same time, but not completely out of the question.

They had spread out around the eastern most part of North America after they had arrived in the new universe, as a way to protect themselves. Luther had continued to live in The City and nearby Oblivion Memorial Park so that he could visit the spot where he had lost his wife, having long since given up on being able to find her. Diego and Lila had moved a little further south to the suburbs to that they could raise their family and live with Lila’s parents and brother. Allison had moved to the next biggest city, New York, so that she could try out for some small parts in shoots and perform on Broadway. Klaus had moved in with Allison after recovering from his next lapse back into drug addiction and a near-death experience when he actually knew what it was like to be mortal. Five lived in The City as well, so that he could work for the branch of the CIA that worked there. Viktor was the one that had gone the furthest, moving all the way up to Nova Scotia and opening his bar so that he could reinvent himself without his siblings always reminding him of the world-ending mistake that he had made in partners.

Then they had all come back together for a birthday part, five years after they had ended up in an unfamiliar land where none of them knew the rules or how they were meant to behave. It had been scary and confusing at first, but they had adjusted and were able to be amicable around each other. Then Viktor had been kidnapped and things had spiraled widely out of control after that.

None of them had really believe Sy when he said that his daughter had been brainwashed, so they were on alert when quite literally everyone in that little town pulled a gun on them. On the way back to their home base, Lila and Diego’s house in The City, they had decided that they were going to ask Reginald some questions. They had to figure out the universe on their own and now things were getting weirder by the second, including the Marigold reappearing and giving them their powers back in a very strange and indirect way.

When they had arrived at his house, they were met by something that none of them had really been expecting. A woman with gray hair, kind eyes, and an angelic appearance due to her clothing greeted them with the sound of a violin wafting through the room. She set it down when she noticed the eight of them and then said, “You must be a handful of the children that were created by my Marigold. It’s wonderful to meet you all, please come and join me.”

They all looked at each other and then back to the woman like they weren’t quite sure that they believed her. They had met Jennifer already, and they knew that Reginald had been hiding the poor girl away in the town without an explanation as to why. As Klaus had said, The Truman Show was supposed to be a mind-fuck movie and not something to emulate. Viktor was the one that walked over first, his eyes immediately drawn to the violin that was sitting out on the table. “I think that this was the one that I played back in my universe and timeline. Was it always yours?”

The woman smiled wider and nodded, “I gave it to Reginald when I died and asked him to make sure that it got into the hands of someone that would love it just as much as I had. I believe that was you, from what he’s told me.”

“He remembers the past timeline? I thought that this was the Reginald that raised the Sparrows, not the Umbrellas,” Luther said. He walked over behind his brother and then sat down on one of the white couches. Contrasting to the way that the Academy had looked in both timelines that they had encountered it, the home that Abigail and Reginald had made for themselves was bright white and silver, gold accented in a few places but mostly the two most divine colors one could pick. Viktor was relieved that neither group of kids had grown up here, they would have ruined the aesthetic of the place in an instant.

“He remembers some things, the way that we all do when another version of ourselves within the split timeline dies,” Abigail replied. She sat down on the couch opposite them as she motioned for the rest of the Marigold-holders to follow Luther and Viktor’s example.

“What are you talking about?” Five asked. In the normal timeline, before they’d had their powers removed and then roofied back into them, he would have jumped to the couch and flopped back down as obnoxiously as possible. Despite Five’s attempts to try and distance himself as far away from Viktor as he could, the smaller of the two men was still able to read him like a book.

“I was the one that synthesized the Marigold. I would have assumed that you would have been told this, Reggie said that you were the ones that powered the machine that reset the universe and allowed me to come back to life,” the woman said as she looked over them all.

They all turned towards Allison. Back during their third apocalypse, she had made a deal with their ‘father’ that got her what she wanted brought back into the new universe. If any one of them was going to know what this new person was talking about, then it was her. She put her hands up defensively and shook her head to reject the implication that they were putting on her. “I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about,” Allison said with a small shake of her head.

“Reginald didn’t tell you anything?” the woman asked. They all shook their heads and she let out a long huff. “I suppose that I’ll have to do it for him, then. My name is Abigail Hargreeves, I’m Reginald’s Queen. We come from a different planet that he had to evacuate because of an accident that happened due to my experiments. The culture there is very different than what you have on earth, but I suppose that you’ve picked up on that by now. Our civilization was advanced enough that we were experimenting with the synthesis of new materials, such as the Marigold. However, when I created and began testing on my prototype, I noticed that it created something called Durango,” Abigail explained.

Viktor could already feel his brain becoming clogged with more than enough information for one lifetime. During his entire childhood, he had never really questioned why his siblings, and then later himself, had their abilities. He supposed that if he had grown up with exposure to the outside world then it would have been something that came to him much easier, but it hadn’t been so he was completely in the dark about it all. He had learned a decent amount thanks to Harlan, though it seemed that it was going to be an entirely different story from the woman that had made their powers in the first place.

“Did you know that Marigold could do this to living beings when implanted inside of them?” Five asked, leaning forward from where he was standing behind the couch.

“I knew that there was a chance that certain beings could have unexpected side effects when it was gifted to them, but the power trait is unique to human beings. You all have such an interesting way of thinking and creating things around you, the world is entirely different through your eyes than it would be through mine,” Abigail explained. “Anyways, I sadly was not able to survive the after effects of taking the Marigold myself and I passed away. My culture has the women sedating the men through a pheromone that we put off after we are married, so my husband was adamant that he was going to bring me back because I did not have time to tell him not to. I’m afraid that was why he released the Marigold in the first place.”

She shifted on her chair as she continued to explain, ignoring the shocked and overwhelmed looks that everyone else was giving her. “The Marigold was sentient enough that it could look for a proper host, the way that bacteria allows certain beetles on this planet to digest coffee beans in exchange for feasting off the caffeine that otherwise would have killed the insect, the Marigold allows you to interact with the world. It chose you as its hosts and I believe that it gave you this power because the Marigold feasts off of the timeline where it exists, changing the world and consuming pieces of it. Each of you has a unique ability that allows you to alter the universe around you, which was also why the Marigold could be used to fuel the machine that reset this universe and timeline. Does anyone have any questions?”

“Yeah, actually, I do,” Diego said as he began to stand up so that he could address the woman more forcefully. Lila placed her hand on his shoulder from where she was standing beside Five and forced him back down in his chair. There were a lot of things about their marriage that made Viktor viscerally uncomfortable, but he had to admit that Lila was fairly good at making sure that their brother didn’t do anything stupid that might get himself killed.

“What is your question, dear son?” Abigail asked.

That was something that shook Viktor enough that he could barely hear Diego’s question. It made sense that Reginald and Abigail would be considered to be their parents now, since she had created the Marigold that had made their mothers grow them and deliver them in the span of a few seconds and Reginald had released it. They had grown up knowing the woman that had carried them and a robotic nanny as their mothers, though, so it felt like a betrayal to both to think anything else.

“What was with that town entirely staffed by people that your husband told to shoot us?” Diego asked. “I don’t appreciate being lead on a wild goose chase concerning our fucking creation or place in the world or something so that you can distract us from the matter that we actually came to talk to him about.”

Luther nodded in agreement, “It is really hard to get everyone together and make them actually stay together these days. I have another question after Diego’s finished, though.”

“It might be best if I answer yours first,” Abigail said. Her elegant hands had fallen down into her lap and she was now wringing them. The idea that a woman powerful enough to create a new element in the universe could be nervous about something made Viktor feel very, very afraid. He felt that white hot sun in his chest chirp to life and had to take a deep breath so that he could contain it before the massive chandelier in the entrance hall a few feet from them came crashing down around them.

“I met and married another one of the forty three children that was born due to the Marigold. I know that we all had to take it to get our powers back and we exited from an elevator instead of just being here, but is there a chance that she exists in this universe too?” Luther asked.

There was a groan from the more mission-oriented members of the family. Ben said something incredibly cruel and indecent in Korean while Diego began to scrub his face with both of his hands. “Guys, shut up,” Viktor almost shouted over their arguments. They may have all moved on from their loves and feelings, but Viktor and Luther had both been the ones that were damaged the most by Reginald and got away from him last. He knew the pain that his brother was feeling and he didn’t like them all acting like Luther was annoying for trying to keep hope for his future happiness alive.

Abigail gave them all a bemused smile as she nodded. “Not all of the Marigold has been collected back into the jar that I assume you have, I gave it to Sy for a reason after all. I believe that the other thirty six children that were created from the original release of my element are still somewhere in the world, with their powers laying dormant.”

Viktor turned to the side to see what Luther’s reaction was. Before he had gone up to Nova Scotia so that he could have better health care and a more accepting community than what The City could give him, he had helped Luther look for Sloane. Neither of them had known where she was adopted from before she had ended up in the Sparrow Academy, so it had ended up being a rather futile attempt in the end. Luther’s face was now being pulled into a small, shy smile as he thought about the idea of his wife being somewhere in the world, waiting for him. Viktor wished that he could still have that kind of hope for Sissy, but given his track records with his last couple partners, it wouldn’t have lasted anyway.

“That does bring me to the question that was asked before, however. When I created the Marigold, somewhere else in the universe another element was created. I have been calling it Durango, though I do not know if that is the proper name because there’s very little that I know about it. These two elements mirror each other, one allows the universe to be changed and warped while the other destroys everything that it touches. From what I’ve been able to learn from my husband about what happened during my absence, the Durango created a host much like it created all of you,” she explained.

“What does this have to do with that town?” Diego asked. The reason that he had done so well in the police academy before he began to defy the upper ranking members due to their politics was because he was exceedingly mission driven. It had been a long time since Viktor had seen him act like this and it was almost kind of nostalgic, in a very weird sense of the word.

“I was getting to that, young one,” Abigail replied kindly.

“Yeah, she was getting to that, idiot,” Lila snapped.

Viktor winced. He really did not like what they had turned into, they needed to sort out the relationship they had developed with each other. Couples staying together for their kids had never ended well, it was one of the reasons that he had so many regulars come to his bar.

Abigail continued, “Durango is entirely passive unless it comes in contact with Marigold. It doesn’t want to destroy the universe, it wants to destroy Marigold. Unfortunately, since Marigold has the ability to change the universe and the timelines those two things end up being the same in the end. My husband, in all the timelines I’ve been able to see into, took care of the carrier of the Durango either by killing her or locking her away in the type of town that you stumbled into.”

“Wait a second,” Klaus said, holding both of his bare hands up towards them. It was strange to see him without all of the person protection equipment that he now festooned himself with and sans all of his tattoos. “You said that you send Sy with the Marigold to us, which means that you also sent us to that town. What do you want with us?”

“Jesus Christ, I am so sick of this,” Five muttered into his hands. Five had come to visit Viktor for a little while in the five years that they had been in the new universe and they had finally had a moment to talk about the time that they had spent apart from each other. It had left with Viktor feeling deeply sympathetic for Five, who had been manipulated and coerced into doing all number of things to try and get back to his family or stop the apocalypse. Viktor would be just as tired as he was if he had been through all of that, so he understood the other Umbrella’s reluctance to be in another mess.

“I apologize for the confusion with that, I know that I’m new to this and don’t really know how it works,” Abigail said. “I want you to have the Marigold destroy the Durango. I was going to have you collect Jennifer and then bring her back to me so that I can try and extract the unstable element from her and then the Marigold from you. I was hoping that if it did not have a proper host, then it would simply eat itself and cease existing.”

“Why would you want that?” Lila asked. “And I have a couple of questions about the powers and how they work. Like why I have laser eyes now.”

“I don’t know much about the way that the element reacts when it has created a human host, I wasn’t given the time and resources that I needed for the types of experiments that would have clued me into that,” Abigail explained. “I know that the Marigold will cause a timeline collapse, however. It’s not meant to be played around with and whatever created the universes does not appreciate my arrogance. It was why I died in the first place.”

“Yeah, the little girl on the bicycle really doesn’t like our kind,” Klaus nodded as if they were all supposed to know what that meant.

“Girl on the… we don’t have time for this,” Allison said. She had her arms crossed over her chest so she was able to bring up one of her hands to her face and rub at her eyes. “So you sent us to New Grumptown in the hopes that we would come in contact with the Durango so that the reaction would happen? Wouldn’t that kill us or something?”

“That’s a good point,” Five said. “You mentioned what the elements did when they interacted with each other, but not what they did when they were inside of a host. I don’t particularly feel like dying today.”

“Truthfully, I don’t know what will happen when it’s taken from you. I know that the Durango and the Marigold only really interact with each other when they’re active, which the Marigold is inside of a host or during certain experiments and the Durango is when it comes into contact with active Marigold. However, once the Durango is active it begins to consume all the Marigold that it can find even if it is not active. The only thing that can stop it is extracting all of the Marigold from the Durango so that it becomes inactive again, which was what I did when I discovered the interaction. Unfortunately, I was too late to save my ow world,” Abigail explained.

“Why did you start the reaction again here if that was something that almost destroyed your planet?” Allison shouted.

Viktor was certain that the rest of them were feeling her anger and just better at hiding it for the moment. It was something that they had gone through before and now they all had lives that they liked pretty well. The universal reset had been the best outcome for all of them when it came to finding a world at the end of an apocalypse, so they didn’t really want to figure out what the higher beings had in store for them next time. With the parents in the group, they also didn’t want to lose their children simply because they weren’t able to pass Marigold on to any of them.

His head snapped in the other direction as he heard footsteps on the tiled floor. He could see a dark figure walking towards the grand, white entrance of the house. At first he thought that it was just a member of the staff before he realized that they actually hadn’t seen any human hired help since they had arrived and Reginald already had experience creating automatons. He got up from the couch and began to stalk towards the door while pulling on the ends of his jacket so that they were back in place.

“Where do you think that you’re going?” Viktor shouted after Ben, craning his neck so that he could see where his sort-of brother was heading.

“This is all stupid and I’m leaving to go find Jennifer!” Ben called back in reply.

None of the siblings liked that very much. Lila and Five complained in almost the exact same cadence and volume. Diego told him that he was being a coward and to come back. Klaus was shouting several different nicknames that the aforementioned man didn’t seem to like very much. Allison was just groaning loudly. None of the reactions were that out of character for them, but absolutely none of them were helpful whatsoever.

Viktor was the one that sprang off the couch and then chased after Ben. The taller Marigold holder broke out in a run, which made Viktor stop in his tracks. He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and then focused on the sound of the ticking clock up the stairs and to the left. He used the sound to channel into orange and white hot energy, which reached out in long tendrils and grabbed hold of Ben. They pulled him back and away from the doorway until he was finally standing with the other siblings.

“I think I saw something on your arm, did you touch Jennifer?” Luther asked as he looked down at Ben’s arm.

None of them had noticed anything strange about the man until they were looking down at it as well. If it had been their Ben, then there was a chance that they would have picked up on the strange obsessive behavior when it came to Jennifer. Unfortunately, he was the Sparrow version of their brother and none of them knew him well enough to identify when something was well and truly wrong.

“It’s nothing! And of course I touched her, what’s so wrong about that?” Ben asked as he snapped his hand back and away from Allison.

“Weren’t you listening, you utter buffoon?” Five asked. “Abigail said that when the Durango, which is inside of Jennifer, and the Marigold, which is inside all of us thanks to you spiking you sake and Klaus almost dying, interact then they start to create a reaction. If you touched her then the reaction is going to start,” Five snapped. He was seething with anger, like he so often had been before when they were dealing with the end of the world.

“Show me the rash on your arm,” Abigail commanded. Viktor didn’t know if it was her ethereal presence or the fact that she was a special type of matriarchal alien, but he felt compelled to listen to her no matter what she was asking for.

“Absolutely fucking not, you weirdo,” Ben snarled as he once again tried to get away. Luther wrapped his arms around Ben to prevent him from moving more than he absolutely had to, pressing his stomach to Ben’s back so that the Horror couldn’t get out either. Viktor was momentarily worried that it was going to cause Luther to become infected as well, but there was no reason for them to believe that was how the Durango spread yet.

He stepped forward and reached towards Ben’s sleeve so that he could see if there was a rash or not. If they were going to be stupid about the substance that may or may not destroy them and the world, then he was going to have to do it too. He was sick of his siblings being the one to start something and then dragging him along like he was dead weight.

His fingers had just barely brushed the material of Ben’s shirt before he felt like two hands had wrapped around his neck and squeezed. All of the air was stolen from his lungs so quickly that it left him lightheaded. His vision danced with black spots as he stumbled backwards and tried to steady himself on the nothingness behind him. When he came back into his mind, when the static had receded enough that he was able to make out some of the voices around him, he realized that he hadn’t even touched anything.

He was hyperventilating as he supported himself on Diego and Klaus, blinking his eyes seriously. “Either that’s some sort of weird timeline shit or you have the Dorando. I have never in my life felt something like that before and I have been subconsciously picking up on Marigold my entire life,” he rasped out. He wondered if he had been screaming, his voice was sore and his uvula was painful when he tried to swallow.

“Yeah, I don’t ever want you to do that again regardless,” Ben said with that closed-mouth, tight-lipped smile. It made Viktor want to sock him across the face like he almost had when they were in the remnants of that universe’s version of the Academy. The only reason that he didn’t was because he felt about as strong as a limp noodle and he didn’t really care to repeat that experience again.

“Hold still, would you?” Allison asked, her tone totally exasperated. She pulled up Ben’s sleeve and then turned his arm around so that she could see his palm and where the Sparrow/Umbrella tattoo would have been had those not been erased during the reset. In place of the dark black markings was a bubbling, boil-like irritation of the skin that pulsed and glowed red with the beat of the man’s heart.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Diego commented as he peaked over his sister’s shoulder at what they had found.

While staring at it, Viktor could feel the rhythm of the substance the way that he could with everything and everyone else in the universe. The Marigold had adapted itself to the way that the person holding it felt, either singing like Allison’s or screaming like Diego’s. Instead, the sound was the loudest static that had ever appeared in his mind. It was like every single particle that made up the substance was vibrating at a different frequency, but they were running together in a way that made them indistinguishable from each other the way that the Kugelblitz had been. It was loud and overwhelming, but he couldn’t look away from it if he tried.

Allison dropped the sleeve of Ben’s coat back down over the rash and then took a panicked step back. Luther refused to let go of him, because he was certain that the other was going to bolt the moment that his hold loosened even a little bit. Viktor blinked as he was tossed from his mind and back to the world of the living that he was supposed to be inhabiting.

“I think that’s definitely being caused by the Durango, a reaction from when you touched Jennifer. I believe that some of the substance was transferred from her body into yours as it searched for active Marigold,” Abigail explained. “I don’t know what will happen when it continues to move up to where the Marigold is inside of you.”

“It’s in his chest,” Viktor said. “It’s going to continue to move up through his body until it basically gets to his heart, like a poison. I’m guessing that it will destroy the vessel of his body as well,” he said. The rash was his best evidence for it, but the way that he had felt when Harlan had almost dragged some of his Marigold from his body reminded him that they were very intricately locked into their being. It was painful and if it was done incorrectly or by an unconscious substance, then it could very well be their end.

“How do I get this fucking shit out of me, then? I want to go see Jennifer!” Ben shouted as he struggled once again in Lucifer’s strong arms.

“You’re not going anywhere until we figure out how to get that out of you and then maybe out of her,” Lila said. Her fingers danced on the edge of his cuff as she attempted to pull up the fabric so that she could see the rash again, but he managed to get away from Luther just enough to sock her across the face.

“Hey, man! What the fuck?” Diego shouted as he advanced on Ben.

“Stop, he’s not himself right now, and fighting wouldn’t do anything anyway,” Allison said as she stepped between the two of them with her arms outstretched. She had taken the place that Viktor had always occupied when they were children. He hadn’t had powers, or rather he hadn’t known, back then so he had always been the one to stand between them. They wouldn’t attack him because it wasn’t a fair fight and it usually ended with Grace or Reginald telling him to back off and grounding him.

Viktor turned to Abigail just as Five asked, “Do you think that you would be able to contain it like the Marigold if we were able to extract it from Ben and Jennifer?”

She brought one of her long fingers up to her face and tapped her chin as she looked rather pensive. “I’m not sure. I didn’t get the chance to do nearly as much studying done on the Durango as I did the Marigold. I suppose that it would be worth a try. But how would you propose that we get it out of them? The substances have a mind of their own, but it’s not intelligent enough that we could ask if to leave the hosts that it’s fighting inside of.”

“I can do it,” Viktor said quickly. He didn’t even glance back at his siblings because he didn’t want to see them rolling their eyes or underestimating him again. He was the most powerful out of them all, he had caused the end of the world three times and had very active parts in at least two of those, he could remove some particles from his family to save their lives. It wasn’t like he had much going for him in Canada, what with his shit luck and run down bar.

“You can?” Abigail asked.

He nodded. “I have the ability to translate sound into energy, but I can also manipulate that energy when I focus. It allows me to sense and feel the Marigold and Durango in others, which was why I had such a strong reaction when I almost touched Ben. I’ve removed Marigold particles from someone before, I think that I could do it again if I was given the chance.”

She thought about it for a moment before the alien nodded her consent. “I do have a testing facility in this house, so if you would bring Ben with me then we can get started on this.”

Abigail set her violin and bow down in the case instead of next to her on the couch before she rose and began to move through the white and cream halls of the grand mansion. The siblings all looked at each other before Luther picked Ben up and began to follow after her, Viktor walking silently by his side. Allison was the only one that had known how much it took out of Viktor to remove the particles from Harlan and that had been his own Marigold, not even particles that had belonged and created another person.

“Wait, what about Jennifer and the rest of us?” Lila asked.

“Reggie?” Abigail called through the hall, towards a grand spiral staircase that was the only dark color in the room.

It took about two seconds before a the sound of footsteps rang through the high ceilinged hall that they were standing in. Reginald’s brow was furrowed and his book was clutched tightly in his hand as he looked over them all. “You eight just will not leave me alone, will you? I’ve already told you that I am not the man you knew in the other timeline, I am just a very good duplicate of him that made similar choices in wards to adopt for my plans. I can’t believe that you would go so far as to kill the people in my town and then come to harass my wife!”

“Reg, that’s enough,” Abigail said and the man immediately snapped his mouth shut. “I sent them to collect Jennifer as part of a poorly thought-through plan, But now they’re here and they’re going to help me rid the universe once and for all of this horrid science experiment. I need you to send your men out to find Jennifer and bring her back here, Viktor is going to remove the substances from all of these fine individuals and Jennifer needs to be included.”

“Who?” Reginald asked as he looked from the eight beings standing next to his wife and then back to the aforementioned woman.

“The girl that was born inside of the squid, the one that you set up the town to protect so that no inactive or active Marigold would ever touch her,” Abigail explained patiently. Viktor wondered if what she had mentioned about the females of their type soothing and controlling them men had gone a little further than she had first implied. It was kind of fun to watch the man that had terrorized them for years be simplified and subdued in such a strong way.

“Right, of course. I will see you in due time, my love!” Reginald chirped.

“I’m coming with you,” Five snapped.

“I need you here so that I can take your Marigold, Five,” Viktor said. The two of them had grown so far apart since they were children, huddling under the same quilt while reading books that Five had snuck into their home. Viktor knew that part of that was his fault since he had run all the way to Canada so that he could set up a life for himself, but it still hurt to recognize the distance between them.

“You can do it once I get back. My power isn’t quite the same, but I think that I should be able to bring Jennifer back faster than a car,” Five replied.

“You shouldn’t touch her, dear,” Abigail shook her head. “Please, I know that my husband has treated you all poorly in the past but when he’s fulfilling a wish of mine he’ll do exactly what I’ve asked of him. You can trust this, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“We don’t know that you wouldn’t, we’re trusting you on blind faith,” Allison huffed. She crossed her arms over her chest against as her mouth twisted to show her discomfort, it had been her one singular tell her entire life.

“You could Rumor me if it would make you feel better, my dear,” Abigail replied as she gave her another small smile.

Ben thrashed in Luther’s arms again while the two women were staring at each other, which broke the conversation. “Can we get him restrained or in a jail or something, please?” the largest of the siblings asked.

“Right, right, of course,” Abigail replied. She continued down the hall once she had bid her husband goodbye. They stopped at an ornate shelf full of all kinds of artifacts from every country, and likely a couple of different planets. She reached forward and tugged on one of the vases, which was glued to the shelf beneath it. When she let it fall back down, the entire shelf turned sideways to reveal that it had been attached to the wall as well. Through the opening that had just been made was a dark room that she motioned for Luther to enter through.

While stepping around the bookshelf and into the narrow hallway, Ben thrashed again. His legs kicked out like he was an unruly toddler and hit one of the objects towards the bottom of the shelf, knocking it over so that it shattered on the ground. Luther winced as he turned back to Abigail, “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright, dear. After all, the Japanese humans have this wonderful method of putting things back together that gives them more meaning. And it will give Reginald a puzzle to do after this whole mess is over,” Abigail replied. She followed after him once he had gotten all the way through the door and then Viktor and the rest of the siblings followed after her.

They walked down the dimly lit hallway until it opened into a much larger space that was pitch black. Abigail clapped her hands together twice and made a clicking noise with her mouth that cemented that she absolutely was an alien similar to their insects on earth. The lights around the room, embedded in the edges of the ceiling so that the walls were entirely illuminated in soft white, flickered to life at her command. Around the edges of the room was a number of workbenches, each of them with a different project. The center of the room had a bed with several large mechanical clamps on it.

Viktor remembered seeing one of them in the Academy. He knew back then that it had been so that if one of them got hurt they could be restrained and Grace could work on them without fear that they would damage her, allegedly. This one, though, he didn’t know what Abigail and Reginald had been using it for. There weren’t any blood stains on the top of the metal or near the base, so they were either really good at cleaning it or they hadn’t had the chance to use it on someone until the Umbrellas and Ben had arrived.

Luther grunted as he shifted Ben around in his arms to get him down onto the bed. He leaned heavily over his brother, who was halfway supine and still thrashing about. “Do you think I could get a little help here?”

“Shit, sorry, Luther,” Viktor said as he stepped forward to help his brother.

Before his foot had even hit the ground the rest of his siblings launched forward with a chorus of ‘no’s and ‘wait’s. He put his hands up in a surrender as he stepped away from Ben and towards one of the workbenches. He could hear them all arguing with each other about who had to take which limb and what they were going to do when all of their hands were busy. He was focusing on the desk that he had just approached.

The same silver-gray metal as the rest of the room shone up at him, but the contents on top were unique. On the edge of the desk was a tape measure, glued to the bottom so that it could be used every time someone cut something. There was a holder with a myriad of pens, pencils, scissors, and everything else someone would typically need on a desk. In the center was the item that had first caught his eye, the one that made Viktor feel a bit like he was drowning again. There was the red, leather bound book that Reginald had made all the notes in when they were children in the Academy.

With a tentative hand, he reached out and flipped the pages open. He glanced over the black words scrawled in his adoptive father’s handwriting but was unable to process any of it. He kept looking for his name or number designation, anything to show that this version of Reginald also knew what had been done to him. He knew that this wasn’t the man that had adopted and abused him, but part of him couldn’t let go of the idea of screaming at Reginald and making him hurt just as bad as Viktor had been.

“Viktor? Are you ready?” Abigail asked.

He snapped his head over to her and let the book fall shut again. “Yeah, I can get started,” he nodded as he walked over to the desk again. “Should I start with Ben or with someone else? I don’t want them to get Durango from me if something goes wrong.”

“I don’t know how it will interact once it has left the first host that it found, but we have him contained so that he cannot return to Jennifer. If you can go quickly, please start with the others,” Abigail said as she gestured one of her elegant hands out to where the others were crowded around a terrarium containing plants they had never seen before.

“Okay, who wants to go first?” Viktor asked loudly as he clapped his hands together to get their attention.

Klaus raised his hand. “I didn’t want this stupid power back anyway and I want you to remove it before it destroys my life like it did every time before,” he said. He shot a look to Allison which made her role her eyes.

Viktor hoped that after the powers were removed that it would become a non-issue for them and they could go back to being just as close as they were before. She had only been trying to save his life and had been pressured into doing it by the rest of them, it wasn’t her fault and she needed the support of her brother. Viktor had tried to be that for her, but it had ended up working against him because the two of them simply had too much damage to see past to the good that their relationship could have been.

Viktor nodded his head and then held his hand out to Klaus so that he could come over. Luther and Diego grabbed two chairs, setting them down on either side of their other brothers. The siblings that weren’t involved in the initial experiment went to stand on the other side of the table that Ben was strapped into. Despite the tense moment filling the room, Viktor couldn’t help but think that it was a good thing that the Horror had changed to come out of his back, based on the way that he was thrashing against his restraints. Abigail gave Viktor a smile of encouragement before she moved to stand with the other Marigold holders.

Viktor sat down on the chair that had been placed behind him and then reached out for Klaus’ hands again. “I think that you need to use your powers at least once so that I can feel the way that the Marigold resonates outside of just you. I don’t want to hurt you or take out your soul or something,” he sai after a moment of tense words.

Klaus’ eyes flicked over to where Ben was laying on the table and Viktor immediately knew what he was thinking. It must have been hard to go from having a constant companion hovering over his shoulder for nearly a decade and a half to it being silent all the time. Perhaps that was why he had moved in with the sibling that was most likely to come down and chat with him in the same way that Ben had when they were kids.

He looked back to Viktor and gave him a strained smile. “You can do this,” Viktor whispered, trying to be encouraging. Klaus nodded his head and then bowed it so that he was staring down at the floor. He rose in his chair so that he was hovering a couple of inches above the surface.

Viktor leaned back in his own seat and let out a breath as he focused on the sounds around him. The air conditioning vent rattled as it pumped in new oxygen. The breathing of his siblings and Abigail mixed together with their heartbeats and every other sound that their bodies made. Finally, he heard the steady, constant thrum of his own Marigold in his heart. He focused on Klaus and heard the sound of his own soul, what made him, before he signaled out the back and forth pitter patter of the Marigold inside of his chest.

He focused on it as he translated the sound of the Marigold into energy and then began to draw that into his own epicenter. His hands burned while the particles transferred themselves through Klaus’ hands and into his own body. He could feel the way that they were sliding through is veins and settling amongst their brethren in his chest.

When the ordeal was over, he felt as though he had run a marathon again. His body was shaking slightly, like he had just been shocked with a thousand volts. He steadied himself back on the chair and asked, “Can you do the power thing again?”

Klaus nodded and then placed his hands down on his knees. He closed his eyes and hummed as he tried to summon the Marigold back to life so that he could hover. His eyes opened as he stared at Viktor, which was all the confirmation that he needed to know that it had worked. “I could kiss you!” he squealed in excitement.

“Please don’t, I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Viktor shook his head. “Who wants to go next?” he asked as he looked towards the others.

Allison stepped forward just a little bit but then pursed her lips. Klaus grabbed her hand and gave it a soft squeeze, “Ray and Claire will be able to be protected the same way that they were before, you don’t need your power to keep them with you anymore. They love you and will stay because of that.”

“Thank you, Klaus,” Allison whispered. She hugged her brother briefly before she sat down in the chair he had occupied before. Viktor reached his hands out and met hers, like he had so many times before when they were chatting in the sixties.

He let out a low breath as he focused on the same things that he had with Klaus. Her power was drawn straight from her voicebox and mouth, floating through the air before they zapped into him. His mouth went dry instead of damp with saliva and his throat ached with an itch that he was entirely unable to describe. The shaking got a little worse and he felt his skin become clammy with the fever that was developing just below his skin.

Diego was next, his Marigold slipping through the tips of his fingers and his lungs into Viktor’s. It was nice to not have to pant for air anymore, he was already so exhausted from the fight to bring in air that didn’t want to stay with him. He was already getting so tired and every time he thought about the others that he had yet to do, he felt his body shrivel up on itself more than it already had.

Luther made him feel like he was stretched to his max capacity. His body felt like nothing could ever happen to it, no cut would ever bleed and no bruise would ever form. At the same time, it was like he could feel the atoms that made up his human form rattling against each other as they tried to escape the flesh prison that they were contained inside. Luther’s body had shrunken back down to what it had been before he had taken the Marigold and before his accident, which he looked rather happy about.

Lila was a strange one to do. He didn’t feel any different after he took her power into his body but he did feel an itching in the back of his head. The fever had gotten far worse as the buzzing of her Marigold began to interact with the rest that he was currently acting as a vessel for. It was like it was duplicating the sound of every single individual power that was resting inside of him at once which made him want to spew his guts all over the ground.

Five was the last of the siblings not infected with Durango to come and have his power taken away. Before he took Viktor’s hands he said, “You’re not looking too hot.”

“What are you talking about? I am way too hot,” he tried to joke. The smile on his face felt stretched too far. He felt like he was staring into a mirror and the little girl that he had once been was looking back at him, but amplified up to a thousand. There were literally people that were not him rattling around inside of his chest.

“Viktor, are you sure that you should be doing this?” Five asked. He placed his hand down on Viktor’s knee and that tipped him over the edge.

He turned to the side and vomited, spewing out everything that he had ever eaten in his life. His throat ached as the Rumor tried to push itself out of his mouth and his lungs burned despite his lack of need for breath. His body was shaking with the magnitude of power that was inside of him and the lack of an outlet that it had. He needed to get it out, it had to solidify into something else or it was going to kill him.

“I should have remembered. Oh shit, Vik, I’m so sorry,” Allison said.

“What?” Abigail asked, encouraging her to speak on whatever topic she had kept from them about the very dangerous thing that they were doing.

“Viktor has done this once before. He transferred some of his Marigold into a little boy that he cared for to bring him back to life. It was an accident and it had ruined him, so he took it back so that he could live the rest of his life normally,” Allison explained.

“All ten minutes of it,” Viktor griped. He felt bad for doing so when he saw the guilty look that clawed at Allison’s face, but the feeling was immediately taken from him when his body was once more overwhelmed with the feeling of the Marigold rattling around inside of him.

“What happened, Allison?” Luther asked urgently.

“It almost killed him. I had to put a stop to it once or twice because I thought that it would,” she explained. “This isn’t something that we should have rushed him into, we should have taken it slowly or found another way or something!”

The room went very quiet other than the dripping of vomit into the center of the floor where the drain was. Viktor let out a staggering, shaky breath to try and center his body. “It didn’t kill me then, it might not kill me now,” he explained.

“But it might,” Five said. “Remember, you’re not taking the Marigold out of us and then putting it somewhere else exclusively. You’re also handling Durango while your body is still holding active Marigold.”

“What do you care? What do any of you care?” Viktor asked. He felt the particles come to life in his chest. Wind picked up in the room, swirling around him in circles so that it had partially formed a shield. “None of you have ever cared about me when it doesn’t benefit you. Luther picked me as his best man not because he wanted me as a brother but because Klaus was already officiating and he had issues with Five and Diego. Allison tried to be my friend until I stopped being able to give her what she wanted and then she killed my son. Five was my friend until he moved away and realized how much I sucked and that I had stopped being a way to get back at Dad. Diego fucking abandoned me and humiliated me on stage because he was just humoring his stupid little sister by starting a punk band with her. Lila and Klaus and Sparrow Ben couldn’t give a shit about me if I was the last person on earth with them! So just let me fucking do this so that I can make up for all the lives I’ve ended by blowing up the moon and the FBI building and trying to save the life of a little boy that I owned.”

When he stopped talking, he felt a bit better in his soul and spirit than he had before. It was nice to have those words out in the open, to finally bare the dirty laundry that he was running out of places to hide. Physically, he still felt just as awful as he had before.

The room was entirely silent as he let his power die down so that there was nothing but the clinking of the vents above them. He reached out and took Five’s hands into his, yanking his power out of his entire body and then shoving it into his own. It took everything he had for it to not activate immediately since Five had been on the edge of jumping away before he did it.

“Viktor. I want you to know that I did care about you, I just didn’t know how,” Five whispered. “I’m sorry that you didn’t feel like you were my best friend anymore.”

“Best friends don’t abandon each other in brand new universes for six years,” Viktor replied hoarsely. He stood from his chair and then wavered dramatically. Luther and Diego surged forward so that they could steady him as they brought him over to Abigail.

She removed another one of the containers that they had removed the Marigold from originally and then said, “I want you to remove all six of the powers that you’ve removed so far into this and then work on Ben, so that the reaction doesn’t get bigger.”

Viktor nodded. It sounded logical to him, but when he began to move around the Marigold that he was playing host to, he let out a scream that shattered every piece of glass inside of the room other than what she was holding. “I can’t! I can’t,” he shook his head. It had ripped at the very fiber of who he was, like he was trying to bite off his own finger as hard as he could.

“I didn’t anticipate this,” Abigail hummed.

“It’s okay, Vik, it’s gonna be okay,” Luther said as he sat his brother down on another one of the chairs. “You’ve done so well, just close your eyes and rest for a second.

Viktor shook his head, “I can’t rest, it all hurts too much. Bring me to Ben, I want this over with.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? He’s the one that has Durango and Jennifer isn’t back yet,” Lila said as she stepped around Allison so that she was facing him again.

“I can do this. You should go back to your kids. You and Diego have so much shit that you need to talk about. Your relationship with him is worse worse than ours was,” Viktor slurred. It was hard to keep the words inside of him when he felt like this, they all came tumbling from his mouth without him even thinking about it.

Lila shut her mouth and her lips pressed together tightly. She stepped back so that she was standing beside her husband and the two of them began to have a quiet conversation with one another. It was nice to have something to distract them with, so that Viktor could focus on the more important things that he was dealing with in that current moment.

He turned his head towards Luther and then gave a nod. He rose from his feet and walked over to the brother that wasn’t. It was so hard to remember that the Sparrow didn’t know them the way that their Ben had, that he shared none of the same memories and barely loved them at all. Viktor reached down and pressed his hand into Ben’s stomach. He knew where the Horror had been on the other version of him so he knew where he had to draw the Marigold from.

His legs began to shake something fierce as he worked his overtired body further than it was meant to go. He would have crumbled down to the floor if Luther hadn’t been holding him. He felt blood pooling in his mouth and dripping from his nose again. His fingers tingled and his vision went splotchy, but the red and gold particles of both substances removed themselves from Ben and then mixed in with Viktor.

He collapsed down into one of the seats while the others worked to remove Ben from his restraints. He asked, “What the fuck just happened to me and where am I?”

“You touched Jennifer and then went all coo coo bananas for her, Benny,” Klaus explained. “Apparently your attachment to her had to do with the Durango inside of her moving into you, so now that it’s gone she’s gone!”

“You’re so fucking weird,” Ben snarled. He picked himself up off the table and then walked over to one of the desks so that he could play with the shards of broken glass to look nonchalant.

Viktor didn’t know how long they had to wait before the door down the long hallway opened and Reginald entered with someone else following behind him. She had a round face with pretty brown eyes, long black hair that was slightly curly towards the end, and a flannel wrapped around her waist. She spotted Viktor and then immediately rushed towards him, kissing him furiously.

He hadn’t been anticipating that, but it did make sense given the obsession that Ben had developed when he was containing the Durango. “Viktor, if you don’t take it from her and hold both substances in one vessel then you two are going to turn into a monster. I’ve seen it happen before,” Reginald said loudly. “You can do this, my boy. Save the world.”

Viktor broke the kiss with some amount of effort. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do this, he felt like he was breaking in two already. He panted as he launched himself forward so that Jennifer was pinned down on the metal table that Ben had been on before. He sat back before he placed his hands around her neck and then began to draw her power from there.

The Durango had an entirely different feeling than the Marigold had. He was putting something other and different inside of him, something that very much did not belong. He could hear the tinkling of Ben’s Marigold somewhere inside of her, but he drew that into the mess that resided in his chest as well. He could feel the two substances warring inside of him and his body got even warmer and sicker than it had been before.

A memory flashed to the front of Viktor’s mind once he had grasped all of the Durango and Marigold inside of Jennifer and yanked. It played in his mind as he removed himself from on top of her and then stumbled back into the waiting arms of his childhood best friend. Harlan had mentioned something about not being able to control the power that Viktor had given him because he wasn’t like them. They had been born from the Marigold and the Durango was the antithesis of them. He had taken in a bunch of powers that were no longer meant for him to have and the exact thing that was trying to kill him.

He felt the cool of the floor touch his hair and back behind him. His fingers twitched as he continued to call the rest of the Marigold that was out in the world. The only thing that he was able to get out of his mouth was the location and name of each person that he took the Marigold from. He saw some of their memories from when they had used their powers in other universes flash through his mind. Each time he got another piece of the entirety of the Marigold, it felt like he was being electrocuted and shot at the same time. He felt his entire body seize up with the force of the power that it was pushing into something that couldn’t handle it, before he collapsed back down onto the heated ground.

Eventually, it stopped. Everything had pooled inside of his chest. He knew that his skin was glowing with the force of the Marigold and Durango as it fought against itself inside of him. His skin was so hot that he could smell the hair on his arms burning and his clothing felt like it was stripping back his flesh with every movement that he made.

Viktor let a scream finally tear past his throat as his chest was lifted into the air by the force of the reaction that was coming from him. Red and Golden light poured from him and made the bright, aggressive popping that fireworks did when they were set off in the wrong way. The substances that had caused all the mess that they were involved in was eating itself alive inside of him and pouring out into the space around him.

The pain that he was in was absolutely indescribable. It radiated through every single part of his body from the skin downwards until it had sunken down into his bones. He was writhing with the force of it but the movement only made it worse. He could barely move his fingers or his hands in general, everything was falling apart. His lungs were struggling to bring in air and that was making him dizzy and sick, the power that he had gotten from Diego working against him to try and shut down his body. He screamed with every single pulse of blood throughout his body because it felt like lava was filling his veins instead of blood. He could feel his back burning with The Horror as the portal opened and closed on the poor creature over and over again, preventing it from coming out like it wanted to. His mouth filled with blood and he just barely managed to spit it out before it choked him, each time it poured out of him. His eyes burned with the effort it took to keep them open and he was sure that his nose was also soaking his front with crimson.

His mind was buzzing with thousands of memories from thousands of versions of himself and his family. He carried them all, all their pain and hurt and power and sorrow.

He felt the last of the reaction go and then there was only his heart.

It thumped steadily and slowly in his chest, the sound filling his ears.

It was soothing, reassuring.

Then it stopped.

---

The tinkling of the bell above the door was what alerted them to the last few members of their party joining them. Luther and Sloane were seated next to each other, with their hands tangled together under the table like they were school children hiding their love from the teacher instead of adults that had been married for years. Diego and Lila were at the end of the table, though they weren’t married anymore since they had decided they would work better separately. Five sat alone at the other end of the table as he toyed with the coffee in his mug, refusing to drink it but still not letting it be cleaned up by the waitress that kept hovering nearby. Allison and Klaus were arguing quietly with each other about what they were going to do about Claire’s grades.

Jennifer was the last to join them, giving a quick kiss to Ben before they split apart so that they could sit across from each other at the table. Across the restaurant, Claire whooped to embarrass them further. She was sitting with the trio of kids that had come from Lila and Diego’s fleeting marriage to babysit them while her mother and uncle talked about boring adult stuff.

“Sorry about being late,” Jennifer said as she sat down.

“We know how it is being newlyweds,” Allison said, soothing them and teasing them at the same time.

“Shut it,” Ben snarled back at her.

“Ben,” Jennifer warned. He rolled his eyes but relaxed back into his seat and gave up on the chase.

“So, we all know why we’re here,” Diego said so that they could start the proper conversation. “Has anyone heard anything from Viktor?”

“No,” they all chorused across the table. Klaus shifted and said, “I haven’t been able to find out anything from Reginald, but Abigail said that they hadn’t heard anything about him since before the timelines all merged together.”

“It might be time for us to stop looking,” Lila said.

“You can stop looking, but I’m not going to,” Five snarled back at her. His eyes held that wild feral attitude that all the Umbrellas recognized from when he had first come back from the apocalypse, which was a bit worrying to see.

“Five, it’s been two years and none of us have heard anything from him. We have proper lives here with people that we love. No paradoxes, no powers, no Marigold at all. We should just be happy that we have this and try to enjoy it,” Allison argued.

“Viktor was right. None of you ever cared about him. He died for you so that you could have these lives and you can’t even keep looking for him,” Five slammed his coffee cup down onto the table and then rose from his chair. He shoved his hands down into the pockets of his chinos as he turned and left the dinner entirely, not carrying who was going to have to pick up his bill.

This was the way that their yearly meet ups had gone since they had woken up in the full timeline. They were all pieces of what the timelines had been before, a complete version of themselves that were more than the abuse that had been given to them when they were in their versions of the Academy. They had their memories from the main timelines that they had grown up in since they had been so close to Viktor and it was likely something that he was thinking about when he died. At least, that was the theory that they had since none of them could figure out why else they would have two lives rattling around in their heads.

Five walked further and further into The City until he found the park that was where the Academy used to be. He sat down on the bench and ran a hand through his hair, trying to soothe himself. He had meant what he said, he was going to continue to look for Viktor until there was actual physical proof that he wasn’t somewhere out in the world, waiting for them to find him. He had sacrificed everything to make sure that they had a chance at happiness and the least that they could do was make sure that they returned the favor.

He scowled when he heard a dog barking behind him, being led by someone also inhabiting the park. He really wanted to be alone right now, he was still mourning what he should have done to his best friend. The guilt over not being there for him when he was giving the chance and letting Viktor die a horrible, gruesome death while thinking that was eating him alive. He opened his mouth to say something scathing to the person sitting next to him before he looked down and saw Mr. Pennycrumb.

His eyes flicked up and he was met with shaggy brown hair hanging into intense brown eyes, a pale face pulled into a wide smile, and a short frame. “Viktor?”

“Hey Five. Is this seat taken?”

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caviarkitty · 1 year ago

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January was a month of complete escapism, as it usually is for me. Whenever I have the chance to escape from my exam session and spend time with my family, I take it, and so, I spent a month of undeserved enjoyment. My ordinary winter blues were transformed into a tropical escapade, followed by much wanderlust and skiing with my family, and although that was definitely not the most productive way to spend the weeks before my exams, it was definitely the most enjoyable. What I can say is that those days of relaxment gave me the time and clarity to understand what I want in my life this year, and what I want for myself overall.

To be inspired

February presented itself as a month of self realization after so much self conceptualization. It’s a month to practice what I’ve been preaching, and so far so good. This month it’s been esssential to surround myself with things that I find inspiring, with media that enrichs my way of seeing life. I think everyone reaches a certain point in their life when they need to purge negativity out of their lives… for a while, I ‘ve been consuming content that’s made me think to myself: what is this adding to my life? And so, recently, I’ve let my ideals guide my media consumption. Positivity is what’s in, and, as stupid as it may sound, the movie Anyone But You was the first step towards this ideal.

I think it opened my eyes to how good Fell Good movies can make you feel. And it made me question why I’d been turning my head from the beautiful towards the grotesque, thinking it would be more intellectually fulfilling. I think no one here is a stranger to the queen of Feel Good, Nancy Myers. I’m both a romance and interior design enthusiast, so her movies feel twice as rewarding to me, and honestly, I feel like there are many many many romcoms from the 2000s that fall into that dual category. Another way Nancy’s movies boost my seratonin is the Family Factor. I’m a sucker for romances which’s plots also have to do with families, their dynamics and whatnot. Father of the Bride, The Big Wedding, Something’s Gotta Give, It’s complicated, Everyone says I love you… All Prime examples of that.

Staying on the romance theme, let’s talk Nicolas Sparks movies. I don’t know if I’m mega attached to them because of how obsessed I was with that “genre” back when I was little, but I do know that these movies smell of home to me. I always adore the visuals, the closeness to nature, and how the protagonists’ love almost always blooms in the midst of beautiful sceneries. Not to mention the fashion, which, I know, some may call millennial, but I will proudly call girl next door chic. Not to mention the underlying religious themes, which I have to admit are sort of comforting. Although it may not be a real Nicolas Sparks movie, I feel like Endless Love could definitely sneak into that category, and I could not make a February guideline without mentioning it. I don’t know why, but I’ve simply been obsessed with it, the music, the clothes, the beauty, everything.

Beauty isn’t anything without a soul, and so I’d definitely recommend watching Catwalk, the 1995 documentary that followed Christy Turlington around during the 1994 S/S fashion month. Not only does it reveal the vapid side of fashion we’ve all heard insiders snicker about, as it also reveals the liveliness of it all. I was honestly relieved to see to many genuine friendships being captured, and although there was some general bitchiness, there was a lot of passion, and camaraderie too - so many girls just being girls around other girls. And Christy is honestly just a ray of sunlight, and it’s inspiring to see her dealing with hardships with such grace.

To wear

Loveshackfancy dresses + thights

I think it’s no news that I adoreee loveshackfancy. I usually retire my dresses to wear them once again in spring, however, lately i’ve been loving to pair a nice floral dresses with thights, boots and a huge coat. Any sort of flowy dress will do to be completely honest… I guess it’s less about what you wear and how you wear it… after having stuck so closely to more “traditional” winter wear, which to me basically means straight fits, dark colors, an overall heaviness, I’ve been enjoying to play a bit more with textures and channel my inner preppy-bohoness.

Light colored sweaters

I think it goes with the last topic. Recently all dark outfits have become my nightmare, and I feel like they really bring my mood down. I guess, when you need lightness, you need to become light. And that’s what this month has been all about to me: trying to incorporate these ideals and reflect them onto the world has been essential to me. And soemtimes a light colored sweater does all the difference. Instead of reaching for my usual black turtleneck, why not go for a cream off the shoulder sweater? Or a rose cardigan?

english pear and sweet pea jo malone perfume

I feel like all of the topics on this month’s guideline share the same aspirational values. I’d been looking for a signature perfume for a while, and I ‘ve found it on a reinterpretation of a favourite of mine from my childhood/ teenage years. It’s young, it’s bright and it’s delicate, a fragrance that can be so personal, making people want to get a second whiff without ever being invasive of others’ spaces. It was inspired by Keats’ poem “To autumn”, which talks about the transition from summer to autumn, and I feel like this transitory aspect can definitely be smelt.

Tweed purses

Naturally, everyone’s minds goes to the classic chanel flap in tweed, but I honestly think tweed purses can go way bwyond Chanel. I think I’ve previously expressed my love for tweed, but honestly, I feel like it’s a super versatile style both in terms of the seasons when it can be worn and the vibes it can channel. Tweed to me represents can be both traditional and almost bohemian, depending on the type of tweed we’re working with and how you’d style it. Tweed purses just elevate any outfit, and bring an element of fun to them too!

Wrap Cardigan

This is more on the aspirational side, because I’ve been LONGING for a good wrap cardigan with a nice rustic motif. Isabel Marant has some gorgeous ones, as does Ralph Lauren, but, if I had to ask Santa Claus for a belated christmas gift, I’d ask for a an Alanui knit wrap jacket, those are simply la crème de la crème. If I had to describe my ultimate end of winter outfit, it’d be a pair of jeans, flats, a white blouse and a wrap cardigan! It’s cosy but still put together I can’t explain.

To discover

Atomic habits and James Clear’s blog

The glossy

Laura ashley adverts and their impact

Eating for beauty (By Goop)

Sofia Richie in general, just because she seems like such a sweet person, but also her routine for sensitive skin

Tom’s diner just because i love this song

#blog #monthly guidelines #february

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masked-and-doomed · 7 months ago

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NO! No, lambs. You are not going to make me feel like I've never known you. That would be very mean of you guys. They simply have a different interpretation, that is bound to happen, considering how little information we have on you as characters. I simply have my own views on them, they simply have theirs. We are not going to have a crisis over this. Clear?

Baldias I don't know when I'll finish writing your chapter. I think the progress I've made in the past week needs to be dumped in the rubbish bin. Yes I was gonna say trash but opted for the British option. Rubbish just sound funnier.

I think I'm losing it in this void, lambs. Darlings? Yes, you are darlings, as you are part of my family, but I suppose it just doesn't feel as nice on the tongue when it's in regards to you lambs.

I don't know when I'll finish killing you Baldias, I think this might take a whole year. Do I have a whole year? Fuck, I probably don't. Shit.

Well, at least you guys are important and whatever. You're at the tippy top, your guys' opinions matter most, and you don't have anyone above you to worry about disappointing. A whole load of responsibility but at least you don't have to worry about muddy feelings regarding that your downfall is a mix of your own inadequacies and stuff out of your control, rather than being strictly one or the other.

Oh right. I forgot. You're still just people. Haha. Yeah 2187 suckkedd. 3 of you died there. And you, leader, became a lost little lamb. You didn't. You don't? know what to do with your life. Present tense feels weird here. Time and space and all, fucky wucky in the void, it is. Hah.

Hm. Is there any truly saving me?

I know I know, I saved like, most of you guys. And you guys were war criminals. And I helped you become better. Or at least, will. She. I? She. Let's go with She. She hasn't wrote that part yet, but it's the intended future.

Ahah. What a big dreamer She was, and She'll have a bit to show for it. Not as much as She'd like, but enough to give an idea what was the dream She had, huh?

Why have you guys let me talk this long?

“I'm sure you're quite aware with that answer yourself.”

True. Fuckk. This sucks. Do you think sleeping will do anything? I did have more important stuff to do that I wasted time all on. Looking at your alternate selves. Ahah.

“I'd reccomend you'd do at least some of it. You remember all that you've taught us, haven't you? Better half-ass it than nothing.”

God, but I hate doing it. How did you fuckers get through all of that fuckin' paperwork.

“You just have to get it done. Useless whining about it.”

“Damn hated it. And I was the one who had mostly practical shit! I was this close to burning it all.”

“It's a necessary evil to go through. It's mostly tedious rather than difficult. Your situation is quite different.”

I fucking hate thinking. This is why I should've just been made a living weapon for you guys.

“You are, aren't you! I'd much rather have one that's less bitchy. Testament would've been more tolerable.”

Well, if you got Testament, none of you guys would learn to properly love eachother. You require my stupid ass and whimsy.

“...You should kill yourself soon.”

“Baldias!”

“It's not as if you're in a favourable situation. I must admit I can't exactly advise you much here. I can only hope that your fate isn't as grim as ours.”

I need to die, Chronus. I dunno what else there is for me. Nagito would hate me rn. I am sooo faltering at the sight of my future sucking ass. I can't even follow your guys' example!

“We had the whole world at stake. Powerful motivator.”

“I just hope you can keep your chin up as long as you can, dear.”

You're unreasonably nice, Libraria. For what I am.

“...”

When is this ending?

“You're the one that's God here, dumbass.”

“Baldias.”

“And? She literally fucking asked for it!”

“I second Baldias. She wants to hurt. Hurt, Baldias and I have given her in our years.”

“It doesn't mean it's ethical. Nor legal. One can't sign a contract agreeing to be harmed.”

You're pulling law into this? Don't you have better arguments? You're like. Literally controlling the UN.

“Firefly... You're the one writing us."

Right. Sorry you don't have a better argument.

“It's fine. You're letting this all out for some sense of relief right? Is this helping?”

Partially. It still feels like I'm grasping at a puddle that's reflecting you guys, being fooled by the illusion of reflective light. And I don't have the object in my hands.

Hrm. I'd say more here, but I'm worried there will be someone to watch this. Us.

“To have so many of your layers peeled for everyone to see, yet to still keep such a mask. You are quite the esoteric person.”

Compliment.. nice..

“I'm tired of this. Can you shut it, now?”

Ermmm you know what they say. Majority vote.

“Yeah, shut up already! I didn't want to be in your void at all today.”

So two in favour. Chronus, Libraria?

“With all your masks, I am quite curious on what more you could reveal.”

“I like hearing you talk. You're lovely to listen to, dear.”

Fucking tie. Fuck, man.

Should I bring in-?

“No.”

Wow. Not even darling doctor?

“You do remember him taking the news poorly, don't you? You're not losing memory this young, right?”

Shut upp. I just don't think good. Head so empty. Yet so full. Dammit.

Heh. Just like-

“Don't you fucking say his name.”

“Doll, do not speak of him.”

“I'm going to actually strangle you if you finish that sentence.”

“Dear. Do not complete that thought.”

I thought you guys were chill now,,

“Well, She hasn't written out what happens post White H-”

“Name.”

“Damn it.”

“Hrm. It was called Strive, was it not? The game that that incident was held in.”

Post strive?

“Hrmph. Fine enough. Back to my point, She hasn't written that yet.”

Right. Sorry about that. She'll get to it soon, I promise.

“And what's with all those Google Docs I see behind your back, vermin?”

Ermmm. Faut..... To help me cope...

“A chink in your plan, those past few hours were, right? It seems every fortunate thing comes with it's own misfortune for you. Poetic, I suppose.”

“And you wanted poetry, that's what all this has been about!”

I think Monika pities me and my poem skills.

“We keep getting off topic.”

“Can't do much. Since she's doing it all.”

Sorry. Sorry.

“How many times will you say it? When will you forgive yourself for once?”

You fucking know I'm not Faut, Chronus. I'm not you guys either. I'm not. I hate effort.

“What about your art, your writing?”

They're things I like doing. But I damn hate putting effort in things I don't like. I mean! You've seen what happened a week or two ago!

...

Ah... I'm tired..

“You're lazy. We know.”

“Perhaps it's time for your rest. After dinner, of course.”

“Heheh, rest. Yeah right. She doesn't feel any rest, does she?”

“Please take care of yourself, firefly.”

I love you.

“Hey! We're meant to say it first! Way to ruin things like you always do, cunt!”

Ahah. Thank you.

“Sentimental. Never thought I'd be here. But you keep doing your fuckery, and I'm pulled along for the ride.”

I'll make sure others love you guys.

“You should focus on loving yourself, dear.”

I don't have much.

“Still, try to push on, won't you?”

Maybe I'll have a last laugh.

Maybe I'll just be forgotten.

#girl what you on??#mask quartet

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brooklynbred · 7 months ago

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could you find a way to LET ME DOWN SLOWLY? a little S Y M P A T H Y i hope you can SHOW ME. if you wanna go then i'll be so L O N E L Y. if you're leavin baby LET ME DOWN SLOWLY.

#BROOKLYNBRED , is a private , selective , ORIGINAL TAKE W / ORIGINAL LORE steven grant rogers. blog is loosely based on marvel comics but only for the basic story for his marvel verse. the rest of the blog is original lore and backstory.

heavily affiliated with ...

i wanna start off by saying that this portrayal is HEAVILY HEADCANON BASED. while i enjoy aspects of the films , i essentially ignore canon as of CATWS. steve on this blog is heavily based on headcanons and original lore from years spent developing my portrayal , as well as the avengers video game. this blog is happy writing with movie / comic / other based mused.

𝚀𝚄𝙴𝚄𝙴 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚃𝚄𝚂 . . . ( filling ) 𝚃𝙷𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳 𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙲𝙺𝙴𝚁 . . . ( coming soon )

a study in ... sticking up for the little guy , doing the right thing , anarchy , waking up to the world , being the one who gets up when everyone else has been knocked down , losing a love you never got to have , starting again , the hero who never rests , love , loss , grief , family and more!

⁰¹ MAIN. ⁰² MULTIMUSE. ⁰³ PROMPTS. ⁰⁴ STARTERS. ⁰⁵ PINTEREST. ⁰⁶ SIDEBLOG. ⁰⁷ PLAYLIST.

RULES ARE LOCATED BELOW THE CUT.

01. this blog is MUTUALS ONLY , so i will only be writing with people i am mutuals with. this is for my own health and sanity , as i have other things going on in life , and cannot be here all the time. we're running on est , but times when i'm online are not limited to time. i'm up and to bed at odd hours.

02. i will not tolerate drama on my dash or in my asks. if you have beef with someone , keep it to yourselves. i'm 34 years old and it may sound bitchy ... but i just simply don't have the mental energy to handle that.

03. i will write a range of lengths of rp threads , though i will say i have a preference for multi paragraph threads , as it gives me the freedom to get a little more worried without the fear of stressing the other writing partner out.

04. i love shipping! and i love writing some good romance. all that i ask , is that you approach me first to let me know you would like to ship with steve. i have anxiety and when someone just throws themselves at steve it can be a bit of a shock. but please feel free to come to me to inquire about shipping , or liking shipping calls when i post them.

05. there will be triggering content on this blog , given the nature of the themes in captain america stories , and i will do my very best to tag triggers as they come. if i make a mistake , please feel free to politely let me know so i can get it tagged. triggers will be tagged as ' tw tag here. '

06. the mun's name is jj. i'm 34 , living in indiana , and on est. aside from my main oc blog , steve is a big comfort muse of mine , and one of my main muses. you can also find me over on my multimuse blog.

#PINNED POST.#DNI.#PENNED BY JJ.#THEY / THEM PRONOUNSE.#34 / EST.#RE ESTABLISHED 2024.

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brooklynbred-c · 7 months ago

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could you find a way to LET ME DOWN SLOWLY? a little S Y M P A T H Y i hope you can SHOW ME. if you wanna go then i'll be so L O N E L Y. if you're leavin baby LET ME DOWN SLOWLY.

heavily affiliate with . . . @agentxromanoffx , @marvelmyriad , @vintertsarn

i wanna start of by saying that this portrayal is HEAVILY HEADCANON BASED. while i enjoy aspects of the films , i essentially ignore canon as of CATWS. steve on this blog is heavily based on headcanons and original lore from years spent developing my portrayal. this blog is happy writing with movie / comic / other based mused.

𝚀𝚄𝙴𝚄𝙴 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚃𝚄𝚂 . . . ( filling ) 𝚃𝙷𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳 𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙲𝙺𝙴𝚁 . . . ( coming soon )

RULES ARE LOCATED BELOW THE CUT.

#PINNED POST.#do not interact.#PENNED BY JJ.#they / them pronouns #est.#PLEASE READ THE RULES BELOW THE CUT.

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x-ceirios-x · 9 months ago

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(Part 2) City of Fallen Angels, Chapter 15: Beati Bellicosi

please see the masterlist for notes about this series/collection of works

Alec raised his blue eyes. “Who’s Will?”

Magnus exhaled a sort of laugh. “Will. Dear God. That was a long time ago. Will was a Shadowhunter, like you. And yes, he did look like you, but you’re not anything like him. Jace is much more like the way Will was, in personality, at least—and my relationship with you is nothing like the one I had with Will. Is that what’s bothering you?”

“I don’t like thinking you’re only with me because I look like some dead guy you liked.”

“I never said that. Camille implied it. She is a master of implication and manipulation, much like my friend Eleanor you met, though she usually uses such things for good. Camille has a habit of getting into your head and toying with you.”

Alec huffed and rolled his eyes. “Another one of your old friends that doesn’t like me.”

“Eleanor likes you fine, Alexander. She just doesn’t like Shadowhunters.” Magnus sighed. “Camille was wrong. Point blank.”

“You didn’t tell her that.”

“If you let her, she will attack you from every front. Defend one front, she’ll attack another. The only way to deal with her is to pretend she isn’t getting to you.”

“She said pretty boys were your undoing,” Alec said. “Which makes it sound like I’m just one in a long line of toys for you. One dies or goes away, you get another one. I’m nothing. I’m—trivial.”

“Alexander—“

“Which,” Alec went on, staring down at the table again, “is especially unfair, because you are anything but trivial for me. I changed my whole life for you. But nothing ever changes for you, does it? I guess that’s what it means to live forever. Nothing ever really has to matter all that much.”

“I’m telling you that you do matter—“

“The Book of the White,” Alec said, suddenly. “Why did you want it so badly?”

Magnus looked at him, puzzled. “You know why. It’s a very powerful spellbook.”

“But you wanted it for something specific, didn’t you? A spell that was in it?” Alec took a ragged breath. “You don’t have to answer, I can tell by your face that you did. Was it—was it a spell for making me immortal?”

Magnus felt shaken to his core. “Alec,” he whispered. “No. No, I—I wouldn’t do that.”

Alex fixed him with his piercing blue gaze. “Why not? Why through all the years of all the relationships you’ve ever had have you never tried to make any of them immortal like you? If you could have me with you forever, wouldn’t you want to?”

“Of course I would!” Magnus, realizing he was almost shouting, lowered his voice with an effort. “But you don’t understand. You don’t get something for nothing. The price for living forever—“

“Sorry to interrupt, boys.” It was Andromeda Herondale, her phone in one hand and drink in another. “I need to steal Magnus for a moment.”

“Andromeda.” Normally, he liked Jace’s sister well enough, though he didn’t know exactly how well she was considered family by the rest of the institute yet. Rowan hated her and Alec hadn’t been around her long enough to have an opinion. She seemed fine. Not so much at the moment. “Could you please go away? Now is a really bad time.”

Andromeda arched an eyebrow at him, challenging his words with a bored sort of stare. With a dramatic flourish, she downed the rest of her drink and sat the glass down between them. “Then I guess I will just tell Maryse that you were too busy with your relationship issues to come help her find Camille, who I may add, has just broken out of the Sanctuary.”

“Do not tell her that,” Magnus said and sighed. “Why do I have to be present for this?”

Another look, and Magnus understood exactly why. If he didn’t go, the Clave would be suspicious that he had something to do with Camille’s escape, and that was the last thing he needed. Maryse would be furious, complicating his relationship with Alec even further. Andromeda was trying to help him, even if she seemed bitchy about it. And yet—

“She escaped?” Alec said. “No one’s ever escaped the Sanctuary.”

“Well,” she said. “Someone has. I guess tonight is full of firsts, like the first time I’ve had work interrupt me trying to schedule a date with a girl I actually like. I’m not happy about this either and I would like to stake this vampire the next time I see her.”

Alec slunk lower in his seat. “Go,” he said. “It’s an emergency, just go. We can talk later.”

“Fine.” Magnus stood up. “But,” he added, pausing by Alec’s chair and leaning in close to him, “you are not trivial.”

Alec flushed. “If you say so,” he said.

“I say so,” said Magnus, and he turned to follow Andromeda out of the room.

The walk back to the Institute wasn't a pleasant one by any means, as he had to deal with the windchill and the million thoughts spinning through his mind about Alexander and how things stood for them at the moment. Andromeda stayed silent for a long time, simply walking in stride with him, holding her arms and running her hands over them as she tried to warm up.

“That is what you get for wearing a dress like that in October,” he said, realizing he sounded more judgemental than teasing as he was wrapped in his own thoughts.

“You’re just bitter because I wear it better than you would,” she said without missing a beat, flipping her hair over her shoulder with a dramatic flourish. He could tell she was simply firing back, testing the waters to see if he was really trying to pick a fight with her. Which, in fact, he wasn’t. After a moment of silence, she spoke up again. “I couldn’t help but hear part of your conversation—“

“You could,” he said flatly. “I know you like to listen in on things you shouldn’t.”

She grinned. “Guilty as charged. But this time, really, I wasn’t. I just wanted to say I see your point about all that.”

“Do you, now?”

She put her hands up in surrender. “I mean that I understand wanting to put your past behind you. It’s not fair for someone to use it to judge you, whether it’s four hundred years or nineteen. Just because you’ve been burned—or even if you weren’t—it shouldn’t be held against you now.”

Magnus sighed. Something about this girl reminded her of Camille in the sense that she was an expert talker and no doubt knew how to coax information out of people, but he didn’t get the malicious intent from her. He’d play along for now. “I’m glad you understand. Getting Alexander to is a different story.”

“I get that, too,” she said, speaking carefully. She was clearly trying not to upset him or get in the middle of anything, but simply trying to share her thoughts. “Unfortunately, I can’t help with that. Not only do I not know Alec, but I really don’t know anyone at the Institute well enough to even try to help.”

“You haven’t exactly made that easy, I heard,” he said before considering it, only thinking of Rowan’s several text messages containing very colorful insults about her since he came back to New York. “Acting better than everyone isn’t an easy way to make friends.”

She chuckled, allowing the statement to roll off her back easily. “I could dial it back, I admit. If it makes you feel any better, I have tried, but Jace keeps shutting me out and Clary is off in her own world of issues. Only other people who seem to even acknowledge my existence is Maryse and Aric, so I befriended them both.”

“I find it very hard to believe anyone can befriend Aric Ashfair these days,” he muttered bitterly.

His comment amused her, considering how terribly she hid her laugh with a cough. “I lied a little bit. I got Maryse to like me, and I think he just sits in the corner, usually brooding.”

“You don’t say,” he said, rolling his eyes. That sounded incredibly like an Aric thing to do, though he tried to block out the voice in the back of his head that insisted that was bad. He was, justifiably, upset, and wouldn’t continue to be. But part of him felt a little responsible for him, just enough to want to pull him out of whatever hell he put himself in and hope he’d figure out how to be Mollie’s Aric again, not the sad skeleton of a man he faced at the party in Alicante.

“That sounds like history,” she said, biting back a laugh. He shot her a glare. “Hey, I won’t pry. I don’t want to be involved in anything that makes it harder for me to take Maryse or Aric seriously or like them less. I don’t do hundred year grudges, just petty drama.”

“That’s probably better for you in the long run, actually,” he said, looking over at her. “Why are you so invested in petty drama, anyway? Sometimes it’s entertaining, but most times I just can’t be bothered.”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “When you have no skin in the game, what is there to lose?”

For nineteen, he thought it was an oddly sad look to have on life, but he also knew very little about her life. Only that she was Stephen Herondale’s daughter, Luke’s niece, and Jace’s half-sister, which was a recent discovery Alec informed him of when they found out.

He was going to ask something further when they turned onto the Institute’s street. He let the question hang in the air as Andromeda ascended the stairs and placed her hand on the doorknob. After a few seconds, he heard a click, and the front door swung open. Shadowhunter magic, he thought. A pain in the ass in its own right.

“After you,” she said, stepping back and gesturing for him to walk past her. He stepped through the threshold and the door swung closed behind them both, clicking locked behind them. He couldn’t think about her, or Alexander and their relationship issues, or even Aric Ashfair whom he had to work amicably with for the next god-knows-how-long. Now, his only choice was to focus on finding Camille and prove his innocence before it was questioned.

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kirua9 · 2 years ago

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The truth got into my eye –

"Yes, humans are certainly fragile. Although, the thing is — they are valuable to us. You've been in despair, am I wrong? Tell me, Laito?"

Laito has been awfully unlike himself this time. Everyone caught this in the eye but only Reiji had an effort to try dealing with him because he was intimidated by his younger brother sometimes, as he was unpredictably chaotic.

– I don't wanna talk about this girl... I don't know why. After I got with her, I felt that something was changing in me – Laito rubs his eyes, frowning, hiding his face from Reiji.

***

Both of them went to the mansion's garden, filled with blooming smells of rose bushes. After reaching the live hedge, they stopped in front of the small field, where something like a ditch could be seen.

– Could it be, perhaps... Her grave?

– It is...

– It's unsettling how you left it. Please, make it at least not a hole in the middle of this field.

– I... You see, haah... I wanted to do it... But I couldn't bear it anymore!

Laito stepped aside and completely turned away. Reiji frowned and came closer to the pit. He only winced.

Yes, it was that young girl, a sacrificial bride Makoto who was sent to the manor a few months ago. She quickly became the triplet's interest due to her appealing look and durable... mind.

Reiji recalled, how he always scolded her for not matching the norms of etiquette or just her loud manner of speaking, but she never failed to appear upset by his words. She was very easy-going and light-hearted, and sometimes her irritating behaviour was even soothing.

She became intimate with almost everyone in the manor in a very short time and it felt as if she always existed there...

Now Reiji was looking into her muted blue eyes which has always been a definition of what lively eyes are. It was a striking sight, although there was no room for sympathy toward a human girl.

– Do you regret that you killed her?

– Now I don't get a thing about what I feel, Reiji.

Two green fireflies have almost burned Reiji's soul with their teardrops. He got an ominous feeling.

– Please, calm down, Laito. If you don't know what's going on in your mind, then try to rationalize it. I see that you are in.. pain, however, you reached me despite the urge to keep everything in secret. Your actions talk instead of you. Then, tell me how did you do that... – And Reiji gave a gaze to the grave's side.

***

She quickly became Laito's victim as did many girls who appeared in the Sakamaki family.

Laito was interested in her at the beginning of the assumption that she is the kind of girl who seeks attention. He partially got it. But only partially.

She was chatty about herself, she was quick-aid and looked like a creature that was always on the lookout for danger.

"You know, Laito, my uncle never loved me. I was a burden to him and after his death, I still feel he is looking after me. it's like a trace on my soul that he left after he passed away.

The feeling of grief, the regret was eating me out for days after that car accident because I always acted infantile and selfish towards him, I have never behaved. Then I felt my guilt. But you know what? Two weeks passed – and I was enjoying my solitude, playing video games and skipping school.

Am I a nasty person? Am I cynical? What do you think?"

Laito wasn't happy with that frankness. He wasn't in the mood for all of these debates.

"Fu-fu, you really sound shallow bitchy girl, you possess an open mind. But I'm getting bored of you very quickly... Let's have a nice time without those chit-chats... Let me drink your blood instead."

And his long arms wrapped around her body, she was drowning in this weird pleasure, as she was losing her blood but she didn't care for it, because she had nothing to lose. Blood loss didn't make a thing to worry about. Any physical damage didn't bother her anymore.

"How can I enjoy the moment if I always think about what type of bruise and where I have it? It's unnecessary bullshit! It ruins the whole mood! " – she said once.

"Your body isn't rejecting my fangs, but I hear this lying whisper, begging me to stop. All you women are the same damn sweetest thing..."

"I just want you not to be bored, because I don't want to be unwanted. I don't like this feeling. It's suffocating, you know?"

***

After those times they both got satisfaction, got fed with each other – he with blood, she with attention, – Makoto didn't want to be quiet. She always wanted to talk with him.

"Tell me about your parents, will you? "

"Huh... But why are you interested in it? I think it's unnecessary to know for you."

"Why not? We're close enough to share the time, I simply want to know you more.."

Laito glanced at her. There was an irresistible willingness to learn. Something ached inside him, he couldn't figure out where exactly.

"Not everything is worth mentioning, my little human girl.~"

He told it as always with a smile on his lips. She grinned in response but not as she usually did it. Now there was arrogance in the corners of her mouth.

A sparkle of tension rushed through his body. "What's with that face?" he wondered.

"Laito, do you know, what type of a person I am? You surely could realize it, because you're so wise. When I appeared here for the first time you said that everything is written on my forehead. You said I must have been quite lonely. And now. Now, what am I to you?"

He smiled again, but his eyes didn't. He was observing her face, trying to stumble up on something... Something that changed?

He finally caught it.

"How hadn't I noticed this before... This girl wants to know everything, she appreciates only the... "

– "My name means "Truth", by the way! And yours... Laito, yeah? What kanji do you use to write it?" — the sparkle of memories appeared rapidly and disappeared at the same rate.

"She only wants to know the truth."

The vampire bit his tongue. He was the one who enforces on his victims the reality he wanted them to comprehend. Now, what's that? He felt very icky about her statements. And she – she was like she was! Definitely had no fear.

***

Laito undoubtedly loathed, despised his brother Ayato's directness and honesty that he had, unlike Laito himself.

The young man subconsciously discovered how he was... morally weaker than Ayato, but he accused his brother of it, thinking that it is all his stupid fate to be a scapegoat made those priorities.

This jealousy didn't let him go. And now he had to deal with a woman who resembles his brother a lot. The best thing he could desire is to see how Ayato suffers and now – also Makoto.

"Looks like this human girl is begging me to test her durability. Don't worry, Little Bitch, I'll make you rue this.. I'll make you get down in the very core of agony"

***

They continued having their time together. Earlier, things were rather promising: she appeared to show some resistance to his actions, yet also didn't deny that her body felt pleasurable from all those teases.

However, the humility in her, which the vampire could watch over due to her obvious physical weakness towards him, started fading away.

He began to see something else in her bright blue eyes. From the very beginning, she had an open, bright glance, she rather looked curious but also frightened somehow.

Now there was sort of an audacity and it grinned his gears.

But... he didn't know why actually?

"Weird... I feel so weird when I look at her. As if I'm losing my perception?.. Or worse?.. What's that aching feeling in my chest?.."

He remembered her image, he thought she was pretty... At the same time, he didn't understand what keeps his interest in her: the desire to destroy or to make her his possession.?

***

"You told me that you know everything about me. How come? Is it the power of vampires? I honestly never thought vampires were able to read thoughts... Tho I didn't know vampires do exist, sorry.

But Laito, I don't understand you... Yet, I want to. Your eyes look like two mirrors, they reflect me in them and plug me when I want to learn about your soul. Why do you do this to me? You see, I want to be closer to you... I have no one to be with me..."

She never told him, that she loves, only likes... Laito was distracted by how that simple person doesn't say simple words, she says something tricky instead, but without any hint in her voice which would mean — she only acts down to earth. But she didn't have those hints.

***

Once she came to him, looking as if she cried. She couldn't hide her feelings. She didn't even try.

When he saw her red face and looked into her eyes – they became even bluer in comparison to the skin swelled with blood.

"Why are you crying? Tell me, who hurt you?"

He felt concerned but didn't know why.

He held her face with both his hands.

"It's the truth, nothing else." — was heard in response.

Laito clenched his teeth. She looked at him nervously.

"What fucking truth? I don't want to hear this damn word. Tell me who made you cry and I'll cut their head off..."

Makoto gulped, her knees were trembling.

"I asked your brothers... Why are you always acting so strange... I've never understood you... You never wanted to tell me... And they told me what your mother did to y–"

She suddenly felt how his fingertips pushed her cheeks...

Laito grinned atrociously. He tilted his head a little down, closer to her forehead. His cold breath horrified her to the bones.

"Do you cry because you perhaps pity me? Do you think I'm pathetic? Don't you? And you wanted to know all this crap because you wanted to be closer? You just wanted to flare my weaknesses.." – he talked desperately, he was on the edge of madness.

She leaned her arms around his arms, maybe intending to wake him up from rage with touches.

"I'll drink you to death, till your body dries if you lie to me about what's on your mind. Have you heard it? Now tell."

She sighed deeply, as for the last time.

"Laito... I never lied to you... I value the truth... more than anything else in this world... And I think a person has to know their reality, their fate... And accept this to..keep going further in life... But.. Ayato said, you don't want to hear it, you didn't want to hear the facts... And see... And feel your true feelings... And I also felt that you're not okay with yourself... I thought that a person who can't accept the verity of his own life... can't feel... happiness..."

Laito was unable to listen to this shit.

"Cut the crap or I cut you instead!" he shouted, then started mumbling something unrecognizable.

He was hurt, hurt again. Everyone tends to hurt him, he can't make up another way to protect his inner world... Everyone likes destroying, humiliating him, they want to break the facade just to prove to themselves that they are so good and so kind.

"You were hurt, Laito... But... I'll be with you... I'll help you to overcome this because I see you in myself, I felt the sa..."

Laito didn't hear. He grabbed her throat, his long fingers pressed on her skin tightly, and he started strangling her.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Wither already!"

As she was suffocating, she tried to speak but instead, there were only murmurs.

"You never take control over me! You never overlord ! " he yelled.

"I'm suffocating..."

She was done. A huge purple bruise around her neck... Lifeless body. Warm soft skin.

Laito was covered in gloom. He was crying and didn't feel relief as he expected he would... Seems like he didn't find the solution...He made things even worse.

***

He dug a hole in the field and put the body in it. He couldn't make himself close her eyes, he couldn't stand this stare.

***

Reiji sighed.

"The familiars will bury her properly. And for you, Laito... I doubt I'll satisfy you with any advice."

Reiji managed to leave him alone. Honestly, it was the best thing he could do.

"Reiji... do you have something like a poison? I know you have, I know you have everything in your lab..." his voice still had some nervous echo in it.

The older vampire didn't even turn back. "Good grief. I have to admit, she had the truth in her words. You'd better think about it." he said.

***

After this accident, everyone felt how Laito acted downcast. However, nobody had the nerve to soothe his pain.

Ayato kept silent, as he probably figured out why the girl was killed...

Laito ignored Ayato for some time but after a few months, he started acting the ae as usual. A new girl arrived at the mansion, a new cycle started...

However, sometimes during the dawn time, Laito visits Makoto's grave. It's nothing more than an unnamed gravestone, to tell you the truth. He sits nearby the grave, sometimes he cries, who knows why, although. Maybe he figured out whom she was to him? Maybe he was up to way accepting his reality? Or he just regrets that he killed her so he would never play with her again?

Only Laito knows that.

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