#though the last time they fought was several thousand years ago

[soulsxng]

"Oooh, it's been a while since I've had the chance to fight with you! Your brothers aren't going to be mad when we wreck everything, are they?"

"Nah. My domain still resets itself in the mornings, so it's fine. You can go all out, Sef."

Abbadon: As the Demon Prince of Discord and War, he's able to bloodlust in beings to the point of driving them into a frenzy. Very tanky, so he can take a lot of hits, but does massive damage with his axe, as well. Has lots of stamina, but is fairly slow, so he tends to use his hell fire to keep enemies midrange, so he can decide if he wants to swing at them with his axe, use hell fire breath, etc.

If all else fails, he'll ultimately shift into his "true form", which...is an issue. It's massive, and much faster than he is in his normal form. He also likes to breathe hell fire all over himself when he's like this, and then leap onto his enemies. Anyway, it looks like this!

Death/"Sef": The Horseman of Death. As the name implies, a lot of their powers lie in death based abilities. Spirit summoning, reanimation or corpses, that sort of thing. They can also drain energy from their opponents at close range, and take it for themselves when they start to tire out.

More of a glass cannon in that they're fast, and they hit hard-- both physically and with magic-- but they can't take all that many hits. Because of this, they've gotten good at studying their opponent's movements, and positioning themself in a spot where they either know their opponent is weaker, or one that they know can't be reached. They also tend to go for vital areas specifically, so they can end a fight fast.

[dangerous-realms]

@violentemperor

[— For where I live to be like this planet would mean my people were also killed for the wrongdoing of a race that used the same energy as them, which is unlikely. So, no; my home planet is not even close to this ghost planet. My race is one of the strongest, and we have even stronger allies ready to help us at any sign of struggle,] replied the saiyan who continued to look around. [— I didn't think there were any ki-users around when I first got here, but to think they were wiped out for one of the stupidest reasons I have ever heard. Whoever killed them failed to realize what they would have brought to this multiverse over the years. It's no surprise that there is no-one who can actually be a decent challenge for and some are much older than I am. Though, I certainly would be much stronger and skilled if, I had a thousand more years behind my current age.]

As he would shrug, it did not matter to him, that Azura and the other were severely lacking compared to him, who had certainly not seen half of the fight they all had seen and fought. It was clear that most and Azura included, had just been wasting away whatever potential they had been born with. His encounter with Leviathan only confirmed just how lazy the people of this multiverse were compared to his. Sure, they had the god of destruction who were severely lacking, yet they were so strong that you could tell they had spent years training themselves and making great use of that potential they were gifted with. That was why someone like Champa was still too much for him even after all those years. Just a brief look at the other a few more years after, and he was surprised that the gap in power between had not even gotten smaller. Or, perhaps he was getting stronger one way or another. [— I should continue to work on that move now that I actually have spare time for it,] Kefla said out loud more so to himself than Azura. In fact, he was going to get back into it the next day. It was a move that needed to be finished quickly. [— Hopefully, there is something to see on this planet or this would have been a waste of time.]

----------------‐-------------–----------‐-----------------‐–-------

"For the sake of that comment, I can neither confirm nor deny that this planet is a ghost town. I doubt that residence from a few generations ago would want to settle where many were wrongfully slain and that they would settle elsewhere to show respect for the fallen innocents."

Says the snow haired women in response to him saying the planet is a ghost planet, not to mention it was what Hikotoshi said to her when she asked such. He didn't want the people he's saved from people like Ubaha people settling where his kin were wrongfully killed, so he put them on the other side of the planet and he kept then from it. Now, she didn't know his race lived over here until now, but since he was older then her she knew he knew best.

However, when he made a remark about people in her multiverse being weak she would scoff. He didn't know that she was holding back in the fight

"Tch, I know plenty of high rollers who are beasts on the field, a few of them being related to me and one of them being me. I'm one of the highest ranked in the demon realm and by chance one of the most dangerous people in the multiverse of the last person like me was anything to go by. Many gods, goddeses, Destroyers, and angelic caretakers from across the multiverse to deal with him when he had to be taken out. He killed a good but and it took the god of ki from Vamethaer here was the only one who could kill him."

She wasn't happy that he was calling people, and especially her of all people, weak, and not really paying attention to what she is saying. It wasn't like she asked for her brother to take 75% of the good stuff with him when he got a body ninety years ago, and now she was somewhat stuck at a snails pace with getting her body back. Only gaining a bit a few years back when she was with Hikotoshi, who she could feel the eyes of on her.

"Also yes, there are things on this planet."

Meanwhile, in the bushes near them is a small child name Kiyokata peaking out behind a rock. Having sensed a great amount of ki coming from here only to see his mother with some lady, of which the lady is who the ki is coming from. His mother had already place him far away and he had returned to check out this person.

"Hmm..."

The small four year old hums to himself as he observed them, they were getting close to the ruin that even his father wouldn't allow him to go near, so why was his mother taking this random lady there? Though as he watched them wall farther away he would lean a bit to far on the rock, slipping off it an making the surrounding bushes rustle like it does when something in it.

[0ptemash]

Nations and more context Part 1

So I noticed in my last post I made mention of a lot of nations being wrecked by the Reawakening. This probably wouldn’t have a lot of meaning to people since they don’t have a visualisation of the nations in question. So I thought it would be a good idea to provide more context on them. I won’t go too in-depth with each, just a little overview that gives you an idea of their character. Please keep in mind that some are more polished than others, and each will probably get their own seperate posts that goes into more detail later on. Each entry won’t be very structured either. It’ll just be what I think is the most relevant information, and condensing it. I’ll provide a photo of my map with the nation in question circles in red so you get an idea of where exactly they’re located.

I’ve been feeling a bit tired/unmotivated lately, so this will only cover three of the nations, hence the part 1.

Shackled Kingdom

Located in the far south, many consider the Shackled Kingdom to be a savage nation, loosely ruled by a single individual known as an Unchained. The region is not for the faint of heart. Its inhabitants, the Li'nki, constantly hold gladiatorial matches against each other and numerous beasts of the desert, in order to “attune” themselves in an attempt to become an Unchained.

The Shackled Kingdom was once a lawless land, with individual clans of the Li'nki fighting amongst one another, over the harsh desert. That was until the time of Recerix, Breaker of Chains. Recerix claimed to have had a vision of Tiamat, a mighty god of the desert. Depicted in this dream, was an event taking place thousands of years ago, in which Tiamat issued a challenge to the proud Li'nki, to break free of their weaknesses and bonds, their "chains" as many devouts would go on to phrase it, and reach a state of purity, become "Unchained". Arrogantly, the Li'nki attempted to overcome this challenge, but were unable to meet it, falling to despair and ruin, they disjoined from each other into smaller clans.

Recerix sought to reunify the split tribes of his people. He believed in order to do this; he must meet Tiamat's challenge. First, Recerix killed his family, and severed any ties with his tribe and allies, believing them to be needless bonds. He banished himself to the desert, where he dwelled upon his many past sins and regrets, bared them before the might of the desert sun, until he believed he was absolved of them, through the sun burning them away. After ten years in that desert, he no longer was plagued by fatigue, hunger, or thirst, and no heat could scold him. He had become the legendary Unchained of legend. Then, he believed that there was only one thing for him to do. Slay Tiamat.

He searched the many dunes of his homeland for three years, before finding what he presumed to be the deity, a giant adult Gilannt, in the Blistering Rocks, seemingly awaiting his arrival. Armed with only a blade of sharpened bone, he fought the creature in a great battle, ended by him piercing the Gilannts heart, ending the beast's life. Though Recerix believed that his life's goals had been achieved, he soon saw the folly in this. The divine quest had been offered to his people as a whole, not just one individual to represent them. All the Li'nki must reach his state of being. So, he spread the tale of his exploits, of his newly acquired status, and of Tiamat's challenge, inspiring the people to meet it as he did. Recerix helped construct the Iron Arena from the skull of Tiamat, as he believed that through battle could one burn away most, if not all, of their bonds, their chains. His final act would be the construction of The Marrow, the top of which would be reserved for any future Unchained, and their attendants. The Li'nki had finally been unified, becoming the Shackled Kingdom, but their struggles were far from over.

Since then, the Li'nki have fought against one another in savage gladiatorial battles, in order to purify themselves and wash away any weaknesses. Many have used the Shackled Kingdoms arena as a breeding ground for warriors of their own, or simply captured Li'nki to serve in their army. But still it remains unconquerable, its people too fierce to be overcome, too preoccupied with finishing the quest started by Recerix.

Keraphaos

Keraphaos is a great expanse of jungles, forests and scrublands, similar to the ones in the Untamed Reaches, which makes it a popular spot to travel to, due to visitors witnessing exotic life without much risk of harm. It is inhabited by the Skerioph, a peaceful race, concerned only with the documentation of Karvouns fauna, history and cultures. 

After the Skerioph uncovered the lands above their underwater home, they argued with one another that such beauty must be kept alive, even if only in records. So they branched off from their landfall, the country that later become known as Keraphaos, and began to document the wondrous flora and fauna around them. Keraphaos wasn’t originally known as such by the Skerioph. They simply labelled the entirety of Karvoun, Keraphaos. In the beginning, Keraphaos acted as a hub for most of the Skeriophs' giant archives, almost as large as cities. These archives would be known as Tome Keeps, or simply Keeps. Their largest Keep, known as the Arch-Keep, was the first of these great constructs to be built. 

It is widely believed that the Skerioph have been to nearly every part of Karvoun, and explored it as early as 15,400 B.R.

After the slow but steady progress made by humans on constructing basic societies, they became more than just another file in the Skerioph’s archives. They offered their assistance to humans, in the form of their vast reservoirs of natural knowledge. Most, like Draconia and Galandium , refused this aid out of the pure pride of their leaders at the time. Areasl however were a different matter. They willingly and readily accepted the Skeriophs aid. Though it wasn’t so much their knowledge on flora and fauna they desired, but their knowledge in advanced technologies. The Skerioph readily assisted them, pleased to promote the growth of a species with such potential. This assistance in technologies and sciences would cause Areasl to take a more pragmatic turn culturally, causing religion to take a great decline, and lay the catalyst for Galandiums cutting off from them.

It was only during the Three Nations War, that the Skerioph established borders around as large area as they could manage, which essentially protected their Keeps from the brunt of the war. This was since the nations participating in the war, Areasl, Draconia, wished to maintain Keraphaos for their own goals. And Galandium was concerned that by invading Keraphaos, they would provoke a combined attack by both Areasl and Draconia. 

However, Galandium would eventually invade Keraphaos, sometime after the wars end. Galandiums leader at the time, Balor, was tired of his nations gradually fading superiority, and wished to investigate the Keraphaos’s Keeps in search of answers for his dilemma. They barred him entry into their nation of course, as they were at the time debating wether they wrong about the humans potential. Balor, unwell in the mind, entered the nation by force, and burnt down the Arch-Keep in a mad frenzy, in Ana event that would later be known among the Skerioph as the Desecration. 

A few decades after the Desecration, a large, possibly sentient automaton, known as Phyphear, would call the ruins of the Arch-Keep home, and is currently in the process of repairing it and repopulating its shelves with both ordinary human books and Skerioph records. 

Jeraspunt

Once located on its eastern coast, but due to the Reawakening it has broke off and has gradually drifted into the Glacier Sea. 

Jeraspunt had always been the victim of subzero temperatures and scarce resources, causing it to be dependent on the generosity of neighbouring nations. This situation has worsened after the Reawakening. The air has become more freezing than before, due to the cold climate of the Glacier Sea, and blizzards are more virulent and frequent. Now that they have been separated from other Nations, their people have grown to be more independent and crafty, hunting creatures they never would have before due to their lethality and relatively low amount of meat.

Before the Reawakening, Jeraspunt’s early history was dominated by them invading other countries, in particular Areasl and Galandim, using advanced longboats, and a drug made from a rare arctic flower that, when ingested, enables an individual to be sustained for weeks without needing food or drink. This was of course due to their lack of proper resources, or rather, the difficulty involved in acquiring them. After a century or two, they realised it was far easier to form alliances and friendships with these Nations to get supplies from them, rather than sacrificing hundreds of their people for small amounts of food that would last for a month at best. 

Jeraspunt has always been ruled by a single Empress. Such a leader is decided upon based on their supposed magical prowess, specifically in their ability to communicate with creatures via a form of telepathy. Spuntians claim this is so the Empress can communicate with a diabolical dragon, imprisoned in a gigantic structure of ice, and ensure it remains dormant. Though such a structure does exist in Jeraspunt, there are little to no records of such a beast residing in the formation. Nonetheless, a fortress taking the form of a wall or barrier as long as this structure is large, was built around it centuries ago, and even today remains manned. 

[digitalsatyr23]

Been doodling during lull periods at work and made some designs for some of my races from certain periods of time in my Arachnia setting. Thought I'd share here for funsies. Each pic also has a lot of lore written beneath it, if that's your thing. :V

Northern Huldra (Circa 0 A.C.): Huldra clad in painted steel and symbols of their twin god, Ilapriat. When the Great Cataclysm caused land masses to break apart and shift uncontrollably, two distinct huldra cultures were interlinked to a new continent now known as Tenrai. Lines were quickly drawn in the sand due to the Southern Huldra following the "old ways" and the Northern Huldra following the "new ways" (which would be considered ancient by any other race's metric). Despite their borders and walls, this was not enough to satisfy either side and strong feelings of animosity were born due to differences in culture and religious beliefs. Small raids and skirmishes erupted into battles and eventually war, for wars over land or resources can eventually be satisfied, but wars over beliefs often don't end until one side is either dead or reduced to insignificance. Thus began the Huldra Civil War, and the fighting between the two different kinds of Huldra would continue for over a thousand years after the Great Cataclysm, changing not only their way of life, but even their very appearance, as Northern Huldra have lion-like tails, whereas Southern Huldra have fox-like tails.

Ice Age Warriors (Circa 8,000 B.C.): Human (left) and Tero (right) warriors from the harsh Ice Age that followed a great war between the gods and titanic beings known as the Sho-Qwala. Humans and Tero fought alongside the God of the Sun, Thufarr, in order to repel the giants, which were led by the God of War, Cheruvyx. This conflict was known simply as the Giant Wars, and both Tero and Humans fought to push back against the giants and banish them from the main continent (if not outright kill them). Later the giants would spread throughout the world and seek refuge in previously unexplored corners of the globe, hiding and trying to either live peaceful lives or plot their revenge. Particularly evil giants would later turn into cyclopes, transformed into monsters by their malice born from oppression. Though the reason has long been forgotten, even to this day, cyclopes despise Thufarr, Humans, and Tero.

Alulan Invader (Circa 425 B.C.): A typical soldier part of the Alulan Dominion. Invaders from the desert world of Xerozyg, they were brought to another world alongside their goddess Spinthra on biomechanical ships in pursuit of the fleeing god, Ilapriat. Long ago, Spinthra had woven a powerful magic artifact that could protect her from divine energies and reflect a god's might back at them no matter how or where they struck. Spinthra used this to defeat Ilapriat in battle and wipe out the first generation of Huldra, conquering Xerozyg for herself. When Spinthra arrived on this new world and used the very same mirror to beat back the gods of that world, she put a naming curse on the world so that it would forever more be known as Arachnia. Even if someone tried saying another name, the curse would change the word as it came out of that person's mouth.

The children of Spinthra, the Alulans, were known to be warriors of incredibly physical prowess, able to throw foes several times larger than them and leap great distances. The truth was that Xerozyg had incredibly intense gravity, so when first walking on Arachnia, even boulders felt light as a feather to a typical Alulan. This extreme difference in perceived strength allowed the Alulans to successfully conquer Arachnia beside their mother goddess - though the Alulan Dominion would not last, as it was eventually foiled by King Illarion and his knights, making it (ironically) the shortest-lived empire in all of Arachnia's history (500 BC - 400 BC). The great strength of Alulans was also shortlived, waning in less than a year as their bodies adapted to Arachnia. It was only through their goddess's power, their intellect, and advanced biotechnology that they were able to keep the world under heel for a century. During their reign, Alulans would advance the art of chemeia, which they called Al-kimiya. This marked the beginning of the practice known as Alchemy.

[36monthplan]

Day Zero

Tomorrow begins day one of my case study of the 36 month plan.

Over the last seven years of my life I employed inconsistent, disorganized effort towards my self improvement… and let the record shows that the results have been profoundly successful! Even with my waxing and waning level of dedication I have clearly come so very far. I’ve proven to myself that with effort change can come over the passage of time, even if one fails more than they succeed, as long as they continue to right their course time and time again. 

It was largely a battle fought upstream with many exhausted stints of being swept back to where I had already been once or numerous times before. It was probably harder than it needed to be to get from where I was then to where I am now but it was the journey I needed to walk to come to this point, with this particular set of life experiences, including knowing just how hard it can be to sustain the will to keep improving in the face of the variables that live will inevitably bring our way as time passes on.

But they say that every seven years every cell in your body has been fully recycled over so that you are a fully different human than the one that existed seven years priors. I believe that to be true both on the cellular and spiritual level. I am so completely different from the Lace who walked the Earth seven years ago, though I know on some level that person was me. I am so conscious of my ability to shape my own existence with focus and effort. It’s been proven to me in both positive and negative ways and so now that I enter this next phase of my life I wish to test a more firm and resolute theory. 

What if one was able to maintain a focused effort towards their self improvement and spiritual development for a period of three consecutive years? 

It is my belief that one can completely reform their entire way of existence for the better in ways they cannot currently even grasp. It is beyond both their current world view and sense of self, existing behind numerous paywalls that they also cannot even yet fathom, but in the end would be so profoundly worth it.

Why three years? In truth, because three is an important number. It is the Trinity number, significant in both religious and spiritual spheres, and is a long enough time to undergo numerous consecutive season cycles with conscious reflection of the prior ones also sustained in this focused state. It’s like going to college, but this time, the only subject is self knowledge. In essence, it’s probably about how long I actually spent out of the last seven actually focused on growth. The rest were lost to regressions, pain and severely hurtful lessons that I will gladly accept with humility now that I have the realization that my experience may save so many from the time wasted on the angsty back and forth that can ensue on a spiritual development path without stability in your focus. 

Pulled yourself open is some heavy stuff and doing so halfway and then leaving it that way can also be so additionally heavy stuff. I have a lot to say on all of this and we will have time to get to all of it because we are going to be together for a while if you decide to stick with me, and I sure hope you do because we are doing this for the sake of all of humanity. Every person that elevates themselves individually elevates us all collectively. It is the greatest act of love and compassion towards your fellow man to master yourself so that you may walk through the world as an example of an awakened soul. 

Three years together at least, I’d say. Not even accounting for laying the foundation and after care, we will have quite a long time to get to know one another. Thirty six months, one thousand and ninety five days. This time is going to pass no matter what you choose to do with it in life. If you’re on the fence about committing, consider that it is a long time no matter what but it is especially difficult to stay conscious without an external support system which is something that became clear to me over the last five years. I’ve been pulled and pushed from the path by only my own inner compass. As dedicated as I am to my personal growth I am also human, flawed and in truth, traumatized. I have strayed and been brought back, time and time again. I do believe that if it is someone’s life path to awaken it will happen eventually no matter what but we do get to choose how difficult this whole process is or is not. We can choose if we want to use our hammer to hit nails directly or make more holes in the wall first. 

If I had a companion with me as I wish for everyone in the world to have, it would’ve been a much easier road to walk, and I think my recognition for that also will lead to this producing a community for me as well that I am very much in need of after many years spent in isolation focused on my own growth. And so that is what brings me to this point. This is the birth of the creation of the 36 month plan. A guide and companion to help walk you through the path of healing, personal growth and development and an ability to overcome your vices and stand in your own power to live the life you have been sent here to experience.

It is a thrilling time to be alive at the birth of this new era of connectedness and spirituality. A global awakening is underway and those of us who have been armed with the knowledge of experience have a responsibility to shine our light outwards as a beacon for those who follow similar paths. I offer myself humbly to you as not only as a guide but a companion through the darkness. My eyes are attuned and my soul is awake. I am no complete being and I am very much still a student of this world however after seven years of committed devotion I have earned the right to say that I live my life on the permanent growth path and I invite and encourage you to do the same.

May you see the best version of yourself behind your minds eye tonight and may you recognize it as truth. You have the power to be exactly that which you envision, and your purpose for being is to overcome your hardships and enable yourself to attain it. The world is designed to hold you down and force you into servitude. Do not accept this fate. Force against any that seek to hold you down and rise up against them in full display of your strength, for you are a champion placed here by God and it is time for you to come into glory.

Lacey Tasty

9/24/23

[oneminutereviews]

Blackbringer by Laini Taylor

Magpie Windwitch hunts devils. The drooling, violent creatures keep escaping from their bottles, released by stupid humans who don't know any better. It's Magpie's job to track them down and bottle them up again. But this time, the thing that came out of the bottle might be something worse than a devil—something beyond even Magpie's considerable abilities. And if she can't figure out how to stop it, the whole world may be in danger.

At first, Magpie comes across as an invincible protagonist: not only is she successfully hunting devils as a pre-adolescent faerie, she also has magical powers that no other faerie has. (The "chosen one" archetype is strong here.) The only thing that causes her trouble is when she does some magic unintentionally and can't figure out how to control it. The stakes don't feel very high. Magpie's best friend is in danger, but Magpie already saved her last chapter—of course she'll save her again.

And then she doesn't.

Losing Magpie's friend Poppy kicks the story up to a new level. Suddenly Magpie isn't invincible; suddenly there are stakes. And suddenly I'm looking forward to every chapter. As Magpie concocts an Orpheus-and-Eurydice-style plan to get her friend back, it's clear she can't do it on her own this time. To defeat the Blackbringer and save the world, she needs the help of the ancient Djinn King. But first, she'll have to convince him that the world is even worth saving.

The worldbuilding in Blackbringer feels a bit scattershot at times: besides faeries, devils, humans, and djinn, there are several kinds of imps (not the same thing as devils!), malevolent spiders straight from the pages of Tolkien or Rowling, and crows who (for some reason) wear clothes and smoke cigars. Oh, and Magpie's grandfather is the West Wind.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this world a lot. First, it has a sense of history. The story is rooted in a war that was fought thousands of years ago, ultimately stretching back to a conflict at the very beginning of time; participants in that ancient conflict reappear throughout the book. Second, the beautiful description of the metaphysical Tapestry underpinning the world reminds me of the music of creation in The Silmarillion. Third, the magic system has enough rules that you can reason about it but enough latitude that unexpected things happen regularly.

The characters are enjoyable, but not too complex. I found the ancient characters the most interesting, particularly as they tried to decide whether to give up on the world or keep fighting for it. There's also a fun minor villain, an imp who just wants to steal a pair of wings for himself but keeps getting caught up in the events of the story.

Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Review submitted by DLosc

[bitchofsteel]

"With pleasure." Freyja grunted through gritted teeth. For cumbersome looking giants, they were fast, faster than any Loyalist she had fought before. She was one to talk, however. She was very nearly their size, a freak of nature among her own kin.

With two well placed blows, the gigantic Blood Angel tore through her augmetic arm, scattering wires and shards of metal in every direction, and flinging Venom several feet from her. Freyja only had Mercy to avail her now; without two arms, her other axe was useless. Taking a couple steps back to regroup, The Blood angel quickly closed the distance, but Freyja was ready for him, parrying his blow with one of her own. " Four hells Draegor! Hurry it up! I don't know how much-" Draegor felt like his eyes were going to melt right out of his skull, but he was almost there. That name was right around the corner, he could feel it. "Mistress, I-"

Lysander! There it was, so simple, yet so hard to reach. It was as though he'd climbed a mountain. Bute he was too late. By the time he'd gleaned the giant's name, the other one whose name he had not pilfered had already shoved a sword through his Mistress's gut. But there was still time, still time to prevent the Ninth Bonelord from being cleaved in two. So Draegor did what he did best. Azure bolts of warp-lightning slithered their way out of his mouth like jagged serpents. They caught Lysander square in the chest; enough of a diversion to get Lysander's comrade to drop the sword and pay attention. Draegor fell to his knees. "If anyone can hear me, take him out. I, I wont be able to do that again." And right as the words left the psyker's mouth, his eyes rolled back into his head and he slipped into the black. Not again.

Not again, not again, not again! This wouldn't be the first time Freyja took a power sword to the stomach, and it wouldn't be the last. She bled profusely from the wound but willed herself to stand. She was not the weak little greenhorn she'd been ten thousand years ago. She was stronger than that. She couldn't let it happen again, she wouldn't let it happen again. The black would never take her! So she willed herself forward, staggering on silent shaky steps as she felt her own warm blood well up in her throat. She would fight. She was win. She was Freyja fucking Vestraddon!

"Your people ruined me!" Freyja accused, pointing to incision scars along her right arm that could have only been the handiwork of a third legion Apothecary.

"Your underlings gave me this affliction and you will undo it!"

Her flesh was marred by hundreds of self afflicted scars, memories of lacerations and puncture wounds she'd wrought in an attempt to relieve her thirst for pain. Thousands of years ago, she'd been spared the shame of a dishonorable death.

This was the cost.

@bitchofsteel

It is rare to get an emotional response from the Chief Apothecary. He tends to be almost notoriously secretive and his will to deny Slaanesh even the slightest sacrifice in the form of feelings is ironclad. But this time he seems to allow himself an exception. A smile as if cut into his face with a scalpel shows amusement. He puts his fingertips together and rests his chin on them. "Do you know the old Terran tale of the people who wanted to eradicate a nick by cutting it away? That's the perfect analogy for your situation. Of course I can cut off your arm and replace it with a weapon of your - or better: my - choice. This is no more than a finger exercise. But what exactly is the point?"

[jedijesi]

Luminary Love

Prince!Din Djarin x F!Princess!Reader

🤍Masterlist🤍

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Smut (F receiving, PiV, Breeding kink)

Summary: Tonight is your (unwanted) wedding to the soon-to-be King of Mandalore, but is there more to him than meets the eye?

Word Count: 3,100+

A/N: I’ve had this idea for several days now and I just needed to write it. Don’t worry tho bc the next ch. of biblichor will b out soon. Enjoy some Din content!🤍

All night long, you received congratulations and cheers. Thousands, billions of people would kill to be in your position, but you dreaded this more than anything. You never wanted to marry the soon-to-be king of Mandalore, but the Royal administration never gave you an option. Throughout the fantastical wedding, you repeatedly reminded yourself it was for your people - they are the ones who will prosper from this. Thankfully, his creed forbade him from removing his helmet in front of others, therefore you weren’t allowed to kiss him. The only time you had to touch him during the ceremony was when you held hands. Even then, his mastiff-leather gloves create a barrier from any real contact.

After the ceremony, you avoided your new husband as best you could. When it was time to put on a show, you had forced yourself to put on the royal smile you had been practicing. When eating, you sat as far away as possible from him but not far enough to worry the royal administrations that watched you two tentatively. The times you were called to waltz, you performed what you had been learning for months but never made eye contact with him. After a few dances, the royals watching had joined in and forgotten about you, giving you the perfect chance to escape.

You spent your time talking with other royalty, expressing your worries and concerns to Princess Mary of Ryloth. Unlike you, she was happily married, but it was her 3rd time. The first two suitors weren’t ‘good enough’ for her, so she became the royal’s biggest scandal and ignored her administration to marry for love. Luckily her experience with terrible lovers led to wonderful tips and tricks that she gladly gave you for your wedding night. You knew she was telling you these things to help, but in reality, it only made you feel worse about your new life.

“Djarin, my oldest friend, how are you enjoying your wedding?” General Paz said with a heavy pat to Din’s pauldron.

“It’s… grand.” Din sounded unconvinced by his own words.

“Grand? Is that all you have to say?”

“Well, everything appears wonderful, but my wife won’t speak nor look at me.”

“Have you attempted to talk to her?”

“Of course!” Din and Paz turn to watch you talk to Princess Mary. “She never responds, though.”

The uncomfortable feeling of Din’s stare props you to turn around. The blue and silver beskar statues jump when you catch them and quickly turn back to avoid any further embarrassment.

“I haven’t seen her in years, but she has grown to be quite beautiful, you must admit.” Paz shrugs.

“I know, it’s one of the many reasons I married her. I just… wish she’d give me a chance.”

“Well, she better. I overheard that the administration is already seething that you two haven’t gone back to your honeymoon suite.”

Din rolls his eyes under his helmet. “I don’t care about them. They shouldn’t have a say in my marriage.”

“Good luck arguing that. You know they expect an heir to be conceived tonight.”

“I already have Grogu. Is he not enough?”

“Nothing is enough for them, my friend.” Paz pats Din’s back reassuringly. “Just be kind to the poor girl. I’m sure she isn’t pleased with all of this.” He gestures to the grand chandeliers and dramatic towers of cake and food.

Din sighs as he fiddles with the edge of his cape. “Alright. I should probably go fetch her before the Administration creates any more drama.”

“Good luck, your majesty.” Paz bows as Din walks your way.

Din let’s go of his cape before wiping his armor of any lingering bits of dust and dirt, wanting to be as presentable as possible for you. When Din arrives behind you, he clears his throat and bows.

“My Princess, it is time for us to leave for the Honeymoon Suite.”

Without a word, you give him a nod and take his arm. The guests cheer and whisper as you and your husband make your way out of the ballroom. You could hear Royal Administers whisper their concerns regarding your fertility or your performance in bed. It was dehumanizing, to say the least. You fought for justice and equality on Naboo, but this was not the way on Mandalore. Your new role would be diminished to a supporting queen who would raise the future heirs. Meanwhile, the other women of Mandalore were busy serving valiantly in wars. This was the way. Mandalore was born out of extremists, and you had to embrace the consequences.

Din hated the whispers. If he were king, he would have lashed out long ago, but the coronation isn’t for another few days. You didn’t deserve to be treated as an object. Din saw you to be the goddess that would help lead his people into prosperity and the gorgeous woman who may one day graciously birth his children. Such slander against someone so perfect made Din rage under his helmet. A few more days. Din would remind himself.

.

The Suite reflected Mandalore: grand and majestic. Silver swirls of beskar outlined the stained glass windows that watched over Mandalore. The bed was larger than any other you had seen before. It looked cozy; a complete contrast to the large and uncomfortable dress you’ve been wearing all day. You walked over to touch the silk-like blankets and sighed at its softness.

Din watched you with interest - mesmerized by the way the roaring fireplace creates a golden glow on your features. “Wife?”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you look at me?” The flicker of sadness in his voice took you by surprise. You weren’t sure if Mandalorians could feel emotions underneath the layers of cold beskar. “Do I… scare you?”

You turn to look at him, your nerves shining through by the twiddling of your thumbs. “I… I don't know.”

“What is wrong, my dear princess? I want to fix this. I don't want to start our marriage off on the wrong foot.” You sit down on the luxurious bed, your eyes now watching as you fiddle with your dress. Din walks towards you, taking a knee to be at eye level with you. “I understand this isn't what you wanted. I heard whispers that it took the maids an hour to get you off your ship. That you fought off any guard that laid a hand on you.” Din chuckled at the image he had created in his head. “But then the fighting stopped… why?” You couldn't find it within yourself to respond. “Won’t you please entertain my curiosity?”

You sighed and looked up into the dark visor. “I realized I was being selfish. I had forgotten that marriage among the royals was for the people… not for love.”

“You do not love me?”

“We barely know each other, your majesty.”

“What are you speaking of? We used to be best friends.”

You scoffed at Din. “We were children, your majesty. You were just a servant boy in the palace back then, but times have changed, haven't they, your majesty.”

“Please refrain from calling me ‘your majesty.’ I thought we were beyond that.” Din groaned, annoyed by the ridiculous title.

“Din, you're to become the Mandalore - the king - in a few days' time. I understand the rules - I understand why you had to marry me.”

“What? So that I could officially hold the title as king? I don't care about a stupid title - the administration does.”

“Then why marry me? There are millions of royals lined up to marry the Mandalore, but why choose me, Din? Why?” You started getting hysterical at it all. Your life's work had come to a halt just so that Din could be crowned king. It was disgusting and unfair.

“As an orphan-servant boy, the days your family visited were the best days of my life. Your parents always treated me like their own - the complete opposite of how the Kryze family did. I meant it when I said you were my best friend. You were the only person who could beat Paz and me in a fight. The only person who would sneak out of the palace to play in the garden at night with me. When your parents… passed and you stopped visiting me… It crushed me. I never stopped thinking about you, my princess.”

You could hear the build-up of tears in Din’s throat, but he wasn't the only one. You too had tears in your eyes, remembering the once pure and innocent life you had. You bring your hand up to din's helmet, holding where his cheek would be.

“Do you remember that last night?”

“Of course I do. It was a cold night in the rose garden. I gave you my coat since you had insisted you didn't need your shall.” Din smiled and chuckled at the memory.

“I... I never saw your lips, but I had never felt such pure joy than the moment they molded against mine.”

Din leans his head forward to rest your foreheads together. Underneath, he continued to beam. It had been so long since he had felt such love - such love that could only be created by you.

“My princess, I never stopped loving you. Even as we grew up and apart, I would watch the holovids that spoke about you, and all the wonderful things you were doing for your people. It was the only thing that kept me going through those torturous years apart from you. I love you.”

Din’s arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you into a tight hug. You reciprocated by wrapping your arms around his shoulders and burying your head in the crook of his neck. “I love you too, Din.”

“My wife?”

“Yes, my husband?”

“Will you take this ridiculous helmet off of me so that I may kiss you and make love to you?”

Your glowing smile melts Din’s heart. Your hand reaches up to slowly slide off the silver beskar helmet that covered those features you dreamt of. An audible gasp escapes past your lips when Din’s lips appear. It took everything in you to not pounce on him and cover him in kisses, but you maintain your composure. His nose was strong and beautiful, and his cheeks… oh, how you wanted to leave lipstick stains on them. Then were his perfect eyes. Those chocolate eyes that expressed an amount of love you'd never completely fathom in your life.

“You're stunning, Din.” Din’s heart flutters at your words. The only compliment he's ever received was about his combat skills and valor. He's never been complimented on his looks before.

“I’d never compare to my gorgeous wife.”

Din takes your face into his palms and slowly pulls you in for a kiss. The moment your lips touch, you feel fireworks exploding all around you. The glowing lights flash behind your eyelids as you mold your lips together. The tickle of his mustache causes you to giggle into the kiss, which Din finds to be enchanting. One of Din's hands leaves your face to grip your torso, massaging and kneading your skin.

“I love you.” He murmurs into the kiss. “I love you more than the moons and stars.”

As the kisses become more intense, so does your lust for one another. Din’s hands undo the strings of your wedding dress as you shed his armor off - lips never leaving each other. Once you two were completely naked, Din had you crawl to the center of the bed.

“Now, lay back, my love. I want to show you how much I love and miss you.” You follow his instructions and rest your head on the large cloud-like pillows.

Din crawls between your legs, taking one into his hand. Starting from your ankle, he works his way down, leaving a trail of sloppy yet delicate kisses. He takes his time at your inner thigh, sucking and licking at your skin to make you emit whimpers.

“D-Din, please don't tease me.”

“Hush, now. Let me take my time loving you.” And he does. He spends his time worshiping your body - kissing and sucking the skin around your lips while his hand massages your breasts. Suddenly, Din dives into your sopping wet cunt, immediately sucking and licking your swollen clit. You let out a loud gasp followed by a moan, making Din’s cock bounce up in excitement.

Your noises sound like music - the most angelic music he's ever heard in his life. Each moan and whimper you let out only addicted him more. Din wraps his hands around your waist and sits back, lifting your hips from the bed and to his mouth. You grip the blankets with a scream as Din explores further into your pussy. The animalistic grunts and growls he lets out only make you wetter.

“Come on, Princess. Cum. Cum all over my face. I need it.” And just like that, you let out a scream as you convulse around his tongue. Din slowly lowers you back onto the bed as he licks up your dripping cum. “You're sweeter than a meiloorun, darling. I've never tasted anything so divine. I’d love to stay between your legs forever and drink your cum until the day I die, but I wanna put a baby in you too badly to do so.” You let out a whimper at his filthy words. “Can I, darling? Will you let me fuck a baby into you?”

“Wait, we're not done?” You ask through pants.

“Not done? We’ll be done when the sun wakes up. Even then, I'm not sure if we'll ever be done. Why?”

“The other princesses said it would only be a minute of discomfort, and it’ll be over.

Din tsks and shakes his head, pressing a few kisses to your clit. “Oh, my darling. I'm not like those other royals. I care about my wife’s pleasure, and you…” Din presses more kisses to your overstimulated heat. “Are nowhere near done with your, please. So, I'll ask you again. Are you ready for me to fuck a baby into you with my thick, hard cock?”

“Stars, yes! Please, Din!” You hated how completely and utterly desperate you sounded, but you were completely and utterly desperate for Din to fuck you.

Din crawls up to meet your half-lidded eyes, drooping with lust. He places soft kisses on your cheeks before pressing one to your lips. “Are you ready for me, Princess?”

“Yes, my husband.”

Din grabs his cock, lining it up with your entrance. With a loud moan, he enters your sopping wet pussy.

“Oh, you're so wet! Ungh… Stars, you're so tight too!” Din’s thrusts speed up to a steady pace, your moans echoing through the room along with the lewd, wet sounds of your bodies pounding together. “From this day forward, y-your. Pussy. Belongs. To. Me.” Din emphasizes his words with his cock hitting against your g-spot.

“O-Only i-if your cock b-belongs - Oh yes, Din - To me.”

Din chuckles through his labored breaths. “Of course, my love. My cock is forever yours to do what you please with. I don't care what time- ugnh- or what p-place. It's yours.” You lean up to capture din’s parted lips, swallowing his beautiful moans. The knot in your stomach starts to tighten. Desperate for your release, you buck your hips back into Din. “Yes, take my cock. It's yours. All yours.” Din takes your legs, pushing them to your chest. Both of you let out a series of loud moans at the deeper feeling.

“Oh, Din! I'm going to cum if you keep doing that!”

“Ugh, I can see the galaxy when I'm inside you! Can you feel that, my love?”

“Yes, I-I can feel your throbbing cock!” You throw your head back at the euphoric feeling. Your exposed neck allows Din to swoop down and suck marks onto it.

“Th-That's me, claiming what's mine. You're all mine, my princess.” Din’s thrusts speed up, desperate and ready for you to cum. Each thrust was accompanied by a loud grunt that made you clench even tighter. “I'm gonna cum. I'm going to give you a baby - our baby. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Din! I love y-you!” You scream out a slew of ‘i love yous’ and clench tightly around Din’s swollen cock. Your orgasm and words of love cause Din to cum, sending spurts of his cum into your womb, where your future child would soon grow.

Din collapses on you which you gladly accept. You wrap your arms around his neck and place kisses on the crown of his head. Both of you stay like that for a while, basking in pure love. Once your breaths are back to normal, Din slowly pulls out of you to lay on the bed beside you. He pulls you closer to him so that no space lingered and adjusted the blankets to create a cocoon of comfort around you two.

You smile as you listen to his heartbeat against his chest. Din’s index finger presses to the underside of your chin, adjusting your eyes to look into his.

“Are you okay, my love?”

You nod lazily, completely worn out. “You know, having a husband isn't so bad after all.” Din lets out a hearty laugh before leaning down to kiss you.

“Yeah, having a wife isn't so bad either.” Din smirks at you, causing you to shy away in embarrassment and return your attention to his chest. Your fingers trace shapes and words onto his chest until you stop. A mark on Din’s torso prompts you to inspect it. “What are your curious fingers doing, my love?”

“What is this?” You ask as your finger traces the mark.

“It’s just a scar, dearest.”

“A scar?” You look back at Din with worry in your eyes.

“Oh, don't worry, my love. I've collected so many over the years, I've become immune to them. That one was either from when I fought Bo-Katan or when I fought a mudhorn to save my son.”

“Goodness.... I've missed so much of your life.” Your face droops with sadness, but Din is quick to relieve your worries.

“Now, it's nothing to be upset over. Yes, we've missed a lot, but that means we can spend the rest of our lives catching up and making new memories. Plus, you can meet my son tomorrow.”

You smile and press a chaste kiss to Din’s lips. “I’d love that.” You pressed another kiss to his lips, but this one wasn't so innocent.

“Did I not satisfy you, my love?” Din chuckles into the kiss. You climb on top of him and shake your head. “Oh, does my princess want more?”

You give Din a mischievous grin and shrug.

Din smirks before leaning in to kiss you. “Well, who am I to deny my wife of her wishes?”

A/N: Idk who from my Javier Peña taglist wants to be on this one, but those who are interested in being added to a Din Djarin taglist or a perminante taglist, please let me know.🤍 Can’t wait to hear what you all think!

[attllhak]

Flora’s Musings

So, here’s the WingAU fic I mentioned. It’s the first one I wrote and features the fun trope of “The Unreliable Narrator That Is History”, which I had a lot of fun with.

I, don’t have a tag list for this AU at this point. So, this part is just my preamble I guess. So, preamble over, here’s the fic.

-------------------

Zelda ran her fingertips between her shoulder blades. She tried not to think about what wasn’t there.

Her wings would come in, she hoped, no she knew they would. They had to. As the princess fated to stop Calamity Ganon it was her duty to unlock her sealing powers, face him, and earn her wings.

It was why she was down here now, in the hidden and secret library they’d excavated. No one cared about this area of the castle, but Zelda loved it there. It was so full of knowledge, and there were records about the Queens and Princesses of the past, ones who had wings themselves.

It was certainly a good excuse to hide down there and do research.

There weren’t many documents on the founders of Hyrule, but she’d translated a few of the ancient texts and had learned much. Apparently her powers came from the fact she was descended from Hylia herself! There were exactly three paintings of her down there, and all of them were old and weathered. Two, one of her alone and one next to her husband, the first King of Hyrule, who was holding the Master Sword, his own wings giving him away as the first of Link’s incarnations, were so old almost all of the colour was gone. The last one, however, had been tucked into a book and, protected from the elements, retained some of its colour.

The goddess reborn had gold wings, bright and shining and as beautiful as everyone expected them to be. Her Hero, however, had red wings, a bright crimson with soft gold flight feathers. What was more, this painting seemed to depict them in their downtime, the goddess still dressed up and all, but leaning over the edge of her throne. Her Hero sat on the dias and leaned against the throne, and was messing with something in his hands that the goddess seemed to be watching, though age obscured what it was. It was entirely unprofessional and sweet, and it made Zelda happy. It made them seem less like untouchable figures of pure good and more like real people. She liked that they were people too.

There was only one picture of the next Queen, and it was so old and weathered that Zelda was scared to touch it lest it crumble into dust. This queen had smaller wings, though Zelda couldn’t tell what colour they were supposed to be. Her Hero was there too, and he had four wings, and Zelda couldn’t be sure but it almost seemed like each wing was a different colour. She couldn’t find any other record of these two, and so she’d taken a picture of the image on the Sheikah Slate to preserve it. This painting was important.

One of the Queens came from the point in history called the Split, a strange period of several thousand years where very different events happened at the same time. They had, through the records in the castle libraries and the temples across Hyrule, figured out this Queen had lived three different recorded lives. Regardless, she always looked the same, or similar at least, in all of her lives. She was a warrior, and her wings, indigo and white and flecked with gold, were always held in a way that showed pride.

Her Hero wasn’t always with her, in two of her lifetimes she ruled alone. In one of them, her Hero had died trying to fight Ganon, and was buried with wings wrapped about him, as was traditional for Heroes and their Queens. The Queen had been Princess then, the books say, and was only 17. I made Zelda uneasy, Link had turned 17 just a few months ago, and her 17th birthday was fast approaching. To think the Hero of Time could die at 17 made her worried for her own Hero. The next of the two he just, wasn’t there. There was no record of the Hero after he defeated Ganon, he just vanished without a trace. Zelda still wanted to know why. The last life gave the most information on the Hero, but he wasn’t listed as a Hero at all. There was no fight in this life, just peace and a failed arrest. As far as historians could tell, this was the most accurate life of hers, but Zelda wasn’t so sure. After all, she and the head of her Royal Guard both had wings. Something had to have happened. These were the only records of the Hero of Time where his wings were visible. A beautiful metallic copper, with darker bronze flight feathers. He seemed to keep them close to his body, like he didn’t want anyone to pay attention to him or them. He apparently married a farm girl in this life.

There were different heirs in each of these lives. For the first life the Queen was a fighter, one with all kinds of magic at her fingertips. Her wings were pink and red, and when she spread them a little bit of gold could be seen at the base of them. This was a Queen who never shied away from the many, many issues her people faced. And many issues there were, records argued whether the number of quests her Hero went on was five or six or twelve. He seemed grumpy in every painting, but after seven-ish quests Zelda would be too. His wings were pink, a million different shades at once. He also seemed to prefer long tunics or dresses to pants. Apparently he didn’t like pants.

After them came a pair of Queens. Zelda initially thought they were cousins, but apparently one was the other’s ancestor, as bizarre as that was. Only one of the two had wings, a soft amber or honey colour, a safe, warm brown. The Princess didn’t have wings, but was no less important if the records and paintings were to be believed. Their Hero didn’t look like much, but his wings, a deep, dark green with earthy brown flight feathers, told of his heroics enough that his looks didn’t have to. Records said he married the Princess, but they never had children, instead helping the Queen raise her bastard twins as a group. Zelda wondered if perhaps the three had all been together, so to speak, and the twins were actually his.

In the second life, there was only one heir, a woman who was named ‘Tetra’ and not Zelda. Her wings were blue, with red separating the blue from gold flight feathers. It was a beautiful colour. Her Hero was usually pictured at her side, his silver tipped sea foam green feathers shining next to her. Those two were always painted outside, and usually on a boat of some kind.

Following the timeline that was decided to be ‘true’, the Queen following the Queen of Three Lives was her great-granddaughter. Her wings, sleek and graceful, were solid black save for the lowest layer of feathers, which was a soft golden-orange colour. Her Hero was hardly ever at her side, history said he spent most of his time in his home village or on assignments for the Queen. Zelda didn’t know if they didn’t get along, or if he hated the city and castle, or why it was that he was never around his Queen, but there was only one painting of him next to her. His wings were big, wide and strong, a range of soft oranges with a rare black feather scattered across them. He also wore a strange charm on a rope around his neck, but no one seemed to know what it was.

The only other Queen, save for the one from 10 000 years ago, was one with a story so outlandish that historians debated on whether or not she was real. She always held a sword or bow in hand, and her wings were either spread for flight or held in close for combat. They were gold, with white flight feathers that seemed to go indigo at the base of each feather. Black flecked the gold, making it obvious she was a fighter. Her Hero was always with her, his wings out behind him, flared up in a show of pride or confidence, a rallying cry for his troops. They fought in a war, so the records claimed. His wings were gold, shiny silver spots scattered over his wings, not dissimilar to the stars in the sky, that made his wings look like they glittered. He was beautiful, as was his Queen, and it was clear that the two were very close.

There weren’t any records on the wings of the Queen 10 000 years ago, nor her Hero, and Zelda didn’t know why that was. Perhaps those records were lost when the Sheikah split. It was unlikely she would ever know.

Zelda didn’t know when her wings would come in, and some days she feared they never would. It was a comfort at least that Link’s wings hadn’t come in yet either.

He found her a few hours later, bringing her a blanket and some food. He sat with her and politely signed a request for her to read to him. They read all through the night, and Impa found them the next morning, Zelda leaned over the desk with her head on her arms and Link leaning on the side of her desk, head tilted back and drooling. She left them there.

When the Calamity hit and she didn’t get her wings she felt like such a failure, especially since Link’s wings had just broken skin a few moments ago, greyish brown wings that were still all fluff coming through the slits in his tunic designed to accommodate them.

She sat next to him in the Shrine of Resurrection, just before they sealed it. His wings were still small, they had never had the chance to come in fully before he fell. She reached over and brushed hair from his face, watching his relaxed features and ignoring the burns on the rest of his body.

“Don’t worry, Link,” she whispered. “I’ll make sure they’re all safe until you wake up,”

She marched on the castle then, staring down the Calamity and ready to give everything she had to keep him at bay.

She reached forward, holding her hand out to the monster and ready to fight. She could feel the triforce on her hand burn in response, her body spilling a radiant golden light. The monster dove for her, and she held her ground, eyes open and ready to stand and fight.

A push on her shoulders, then the pressure bursting and wings spread out behind her.

Blue and white feathers sat on the ground where she was moments before.

(---)

Link stepped into the castle, tiny wings fluffed up in anxiety and nerves making them quiver. He paused as he moved towards the heart, lifting one foot.

Under his boot, was a pair of blue and white feathers, perfectly preserved from when they fell there 100 years before.

[katastrophic-n3vulaa]

ok.

ive created a disease that makes hurt/comfort easy but also mostly fluff

The disease is called inhumano morbo, or more commonly, faerie sickness due to it only affecting non-humans and cannot be passed to people with more than 90% human blood, although they could carry it for years. It was bio-engineered thousands of years ago, and its creator, cure and creation has been lost to time. It used to be far more deadly, as wars used to be fought with using non-human soldiers. It would infect camps and start as headaches, blurriness of vision, elemental powers being harder to control, loss of balance, before it got to the second stage, which consisted of insomnia, fever and hypothermia, bruising, memory loss, loss of motor control, seizures, and the third stage made those symptoms worse and near-blindness, psychosis, build-ups and uncontrolled releases of elemental energy, extreme hallucinations, a forced transformation of the non-human aspects of one’s DNA, and the final and fourth stage led to death, generally via overload of energy or as a product of the symptoms.

Over the years, as the percentage of non-humans decreased, the intensity of the disease did as well. It is far less common than it was and so the knowledge of how to treat it were outdated and often deadly. A few centuries ago, a study was done on the mental state of patients with faerie sickness and it discovered that those with blood from older (often considered near-extinct or completely extinct abnormally powerful species) were more likely to survive by a wide margin, but it affected them longer.

The first stage was not as intense, and led to similar symptoms, the second stage often wouldn’t involve insomnia, severe loss of motor skills, extreme lack of control, or extreme seizures, although those symptoms did occur not as intensely. The third stage changed the most, as their behaviour started to change; it made their behaviour closer to that of a child, but it varied due to how concentrated their blood was. Most, if not all, were not conscious of their decisions and after recovering and being informed of what occurred expressed disbelief and denial, though once processed agreed that their actions made some sense. It seems that while not conscious, thought, feeling and opinions still affected how they acted whilst infected.

The sickness built on the traits and instincts from their non-human forms and amplified them, and after questioning, it was discovered that it (normally) changes them to the behavioural age of the equivalent of their human years in their non-human years (e.g.: if a Dragon is ~500 human years, they are the equivalent of a hatchling and act accordingly, although they never regress younger than a toddler.) If a much younger patient of the same/similar species forms a strong relationship with an older patient, the younger patient, whilst regressing younger than the older one, does not regress as far as they should. An infected patient, if released would also often look (with great success) for those they have relationships/know normally. What happens afterwards is different for every non-human. Some individuals in stage three could also communicate with varying levels of success, from near-full sentences to only growls or grunts.

After an unspecified amount of time, the fourth stage occurs, a forced transformation into their non-human counterpart. This is where the most deaths would occur, whether from pain or problems transforming. They may stay in this state anywhere from 3-10 days, after which they shed their form and return to their human-like form, although leaving a lasting impact.

At any point during the sickness, the infected can come back to their senses for a little while (maximum of an hour) and they often seem tired and brutally honest, perhaps due to fever or fatigue their filter stops, which does allow others to know what they think.

hi have an update on my creative brain!

i was meant to go to the dentist and get my braces on today, but the dentist was running so late that we need to rebook it for another time (anxiety about it going like the stocks vwoom vwoomp)

anyways, i have/had a free afternoon and bothered the angel on earth i call Blue, and neither of us had any idea of what we wanted to do, so i suggested a oneshot, but neither of us knew what to write about

after some ideas which are now on the backburner, i proposed a hurt/comfort one shot idea, because during english today the warm-up was to re-write a really bad introduction into an engaging one and i did that and the friend i swapped with for feedback said 'its depressing and good at being depressing, like it' so when i got that feedback i felt empowered™ about my angst writing. so then i remembered that and proposed Half Good Fic Idea™

after more braincells working, Blue coming up with Half Good Fic Idea™ as chapter 1, we have come up with what is now a full Good Fic Idea™ - it was meant to be a oneshot, but so were 2 of our other WIP fics, and they are ~4 and ~2 chapters planned now - so it evolved into a twoshot because of all Blue's amazing braincells (luv u blue <3).

ANYWAYS we collaborate/co-author fics directly on ao3 (which is a pain in the ass) because blue doesnt have a google account or she lost her passwords i dont remember

BUT for some dumbass reason i decided to do all the tags on the draft on ao3, and for those who dont know, drafts on ao3 delete after 1 month, regardless of whether you edit it (so from the day you first do something on it, you have a timer counting down), so now we have a time limit on when we publish the first chapter!

side note: for some dumb reason the tags dont come up with suggestions so i need to type out every single one and just make sure i didnt do a typo. aaaaaaaaaaaaa its pain but so is life.

the time limit will either be good or bad, depends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

anyways i get to make up a disease curated to hurt/comfort now bye bye!

[holykillercake]

Coin Stealer

Trafalgar Law x psychic!Reader

word count: 3.3k

summary: Law does not believe that you can see dead people, so you crochet him the strange-looking beanie of the strange-looking man that walks around the Polar Tang. 

highlight: ¨I´ll give a chance to the uniform, and I´ll only address you as Captain when you behave as Captain.¨

warning: You are entering Trafalgar´s room. 

notes: Bello, ma people! This is the 3/3 part of a lovely anon request in which the s/o makes them a thing with crochet! This time is Dr. Heart Stealer edition!! I really enjoyed writing this, and it got a little long, but I did not want to cut off important things. Anyway, I hope you like it!

𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞!

¨Hey, Bepo! Have you seen Law?¨

¨Y/N! I don´t know where he is... I´m sorry.¨

¨Oh, it´s ok!¨ you patted the mink´s shoulder, giving him a warm smile. 

You were never a big fan of his constant apologetic personality, but you couldn´t deny that you missed it during your time apart from the crew. 

The Heart Pirates had parted ways a long time ago when your Captain decided that the time to put his life-long plan in action had finally come. The crew split into three parts, and each one followed a different path. 

After the sudden disappearance of the Strawhats, the Paramount War, the Rocky Port Incident, and Law obtaining his title as a Warlord of the Sea, you were the first to depart, remaining in Sabaody Archipelago, waiting for the owners of the Thousand Sunny to return. You fought alongside a fishman called Hacchin, a weird guy that reminded you of Black Leg and other allies to protect the ship. 

Next to leave was Law, who sailed to Punk Hazard, where he formed a partnership with a crazy scientist bastard. Then the rest of the crew went on their own towards the island where you would meet once the plan was concluded.

The trajectory was not smooth by any means, but you did it, all of you. And now you feasted along with the Strawhats, celebrating whatever it was that you did not understand. Maybe they were like that, or maybe they didn't understand the risks you would take from now on. 

Anyway, the crew seemed to be in need of some music and fun, and you were too busy looking for your Captain to care about that.

In the midst of the evening breeze, the crackling of the fire, and the barrels of beer crashing in celebration, you saw the answer you were looking for.

Of course.

¨If I didn´t love you...¨ you growled as you made your way out of the island to reach the Polar Tang. And let´s face it, that was a detour.

You went straight to your room, where Law would probably be sipping coffee, napping, or just running from the crowds. And just like you, it has been months since he stepped on his own ship and slept in his own bed. 

So maybe you could cut him some slack. 

However, as you approached the room, there was no smell of coffee. No smell of coffee and no light snoring. Just a stillness carried with heavy emotions and your boyfriend, sitting in the dim light holding tight the crochet piece you gave him years ago. You swayed in place, expecting that thing you made to provoke him to be at the sea bottom.

¨Wondering why I kept this?¨ he asked. 

¨Not really.¨ you replied. ¨But I am surprised. Am I disturbing?¨

¨You never do.¨

You jumped on the bed, sitting beside him and resting your head on his shoulder.

¨YN-ya... do you know how he...¨ the question struggled to come out.

¨Peaceful.¨ 

¨Hm.¨ he nodded.

¨I don´t like when he smiles, though. It creeps me out.¨ His body bounced slightly as he joined you in a chuckle. 

¨Remember when you gave me this?¨

¨Of course, you almost kicked me out of the ship!¨ you giggled with the memory.

¨You were really annoying back then.¨

¨Hey! Objection!¨

¨Objection rebuffed.¨ he smirked and moved on the bed, pulling you to lay down on his chest.

You told him to shut up before cuddling in, not falling asleep immediately. None of you said much. Instead, you enjoyed the calming and comfortable silence of each other´s company. 

It has been a while since you had that. 

You remember every moment of your early days as a Heart Pirate. You and Law hadn´t started on the best terms, but he needed you - well, your skills - and you were given a good deal. 

The pivot of your history together began on a chain of coincidences. The first one being both of you docking on the same island. The second one was him finding a rare coin for his collection, the same one you would later slip into your pocket. 

You wandered around towns using the beautiful art of distraction to get anything you wanted from anyone. Watches, necklaces, wallets, and, well, coins? It was all he had in his pocket, and since it was a cute one, you decided to keep it. 

Some called you a thief. Some called you a burglar, and some may even have called you a big son of a bitch. But the thing they all had in common was that none of them knew exactly who they were calling those names. 

The thing is, you messed up the first rule and made eye contact with him. Well, it was more of you not being able to take your eyes off of him. He stood out in the crowd, and you had gotten cocky. So when he later found out about the missing coin, it did not take him long to connect you to it. 

A lot of things went through his mind. He felt frustrated because his Haki failed him, annoyed for the trouble he would have going after you, and intrigued by the touch so light he did not feel at all. 

Or that is what he kept telling himself. 

Yes, he was interested in someone with skills like yours, but maybe there was something else he would not admit. The way you looked at him as if you had deciphered his entire life and found the missing pieces of his puzzle. Even the ones he tried to hide. 

That night he went out for your head. Or better, your heart, literally. 

You were enjoying the comfort of your hotel room, eating some snacks, and playing with your new commemorative coin when he materialized himself by the bed. You instantly knew something was about to go down.

Oh, fuck.

That situation got pretty tense pretty quickly, both ends asking things, and no one willing to offer any answers. The stakes were high, glares cutting the air like blades. It did not help to ease the mood when in the sway of his hand your heart popped out of your chest. 

Long story short, his plan was never to drag you to the Polar Tang. Law wanted you to go willingly, joining his crew in exchange for your heart. However, the unfortunate variable he did not consider in the equation was that you would not go down without a fight. So by the time he reached the ship, he noticed the gentle fresh breeze ruffling his hair. 

You know, since his hair was usually covered by the hat. 

...

THE FREAKING HAT!

The next morning when he returned, you were waiting for him with a satisfied smirk bending your lips, the hat on your head, and the coin dancing between your fingers. 

At some point, you had stolen it, and once again, it passed unnoticed by him. That was not a good night for the Heart Pirates. And that was also the night Trafalgar Law realized a couple of things. The first, he needed you on his crew. And the second, you were going to be the death of him. Or maybe the aneurysm of him, he would not give you such credit. 

¨You´re late.¨ you said, amused, and his grip tightened around the sword.

¨What´s your name?¨ he repeated the question you dodged several times during your last encounter. 

¨What´s with the dog?¨ you pointed at the tall, white polar bear wearing a uniform. Law pursued his lips, breathing heavily through the nose.  

¨I am B-¨

¨Bepo-ya don´t talk to he-¨

¨Your name is Bepoya?¨ you ignored the man, bumping into his shoulder as you walked towards the mink ¨Hi, I´m Y/N! Nice meeting you.¨  

The polar bear looked back and forth at you and his Captain, not knowing how to behave in this situation, so he apologized and stepped farther back. 

¨Alrighty, now that we are all introduced, shall we go?¨ 

¨What?¨

¨Come on, Law, focus.¨ you snapped your fingers multiple times, teasing him. ¨You came here to pick me up, right?¨

¨No. I want my hat back.¨ He tried to grab it, but you ducked in time, holding the hat on your head with both hands. It was so soft. 

¨How about a trade? The coin for the hat.¨

¨How about my hat for your heart? Do this, and I won´t...¨ his words died in his mouth as he clutched his pockets. 

¨Looking for this?¨ You held your heart, wrapped in a cold and gelatinous box that you retrieved when you bumped into him minutes earlier.

How could you fool him again? He kept seeking answers that explained why it was so easy for you to outwit him, and his expression showed. 

¨You´re getting close, Law. Put your little trash can to work.¨ you tapped your temple, smiling mischievously at him. 

¨YN-ya, you know I can kill you, right?¨

¨Yeah, but you won´t.¨

¨How do you know?¨

¨I got a sixth sense for these things.¨ 

The rest of the conversation did not take long to come to an end. Amid sarcastic comments and threats to each other's lives, what should have been the pinnacle of the moment became a random passage in the Heart Pirates´ logbook.

¨So, YN-ya, do you want to join us? You´re gonna have to wear a uniform and address me as Captain.¨

¨I´ll give a chance to the uniform, and I´ll only address you as Captain when you behave as Captain.¨

Law sighed, giving himself a carotid massage ¨Ok. Let´s go.¨

He walked a few steps ahead of you and Bepo, wondering why he spent so much effort on an arrogant thief that wouldn't even call him Captain.

You quickly became friends with the polar bear, even apologizing for calling him a dog. He strangely apologized for your apologies, culminating in what would almost make the notorious Surgeon of Death suffer a stroke.

¨What the hell is that?!¨ you shouted when the Polar Tang entered your field of vision ¨That´s not a ship!¨

What if I am claustrophobic?

The ya thing is a schtick?

Death? That´s a little borderline controversial for a doctor.

Trafalgar more like Trafraude!

On occasions like that, Law wondered how peaceful and quiet would be the sixth level of Impel Down. From a current perspective, your initial interaction served as a vaccine, creating the necessary antibodies Law would need to deal with future pirate alliances. 

The crew got attached to you very quickly. Your adventurous spirit, your stunts, and street trades fascinated them. Losing bets against you seemed acceptable, your card tricks and the thing of guessing the numbers they thought was like fuel for a good day at work.

Law didn't seem to mind that much. After all, you wouldn't get him on his nerves if you were busy with them. However, one day, you let slip something that caught his attention. 

¨YEAH! That´s exactly what she looked like! How did you do this?!¨ 

Law heard Shachi´s roar, followed by a wave of surprised ´ooh´s coming from the kitchen, where the majority of the crew hunched around the dinner table. 

The doctor leaned against the door, silently observing what could possibly be more important than keeping the ship working. He had been drowning in files all night, and now he decided to have a coffee break. That mess early in the morning did not make him happy. 

No one seemed to be too intimidated when he cleared his throat, announcing his presence. Everyone greeted him with smiling 'good mornings' and turned their attention back to you.

 ¨What is going on here?¨

¨Captain did you know Y/N can see dead people?!¨ 

The coffee left a bitter aftertaste on his mouth.

¨What?¨

¨Yeah, Captain!¨ Shachi yelled on Law´s face, earning a death glare ¨She just described my mom!¨

¨Really, Y/N-ya? Now you´re a magician and a psychic?¨ he asked, taking the seat across from you. 

¨The perks of being me.¨ you shrugged. 

¨Do you see more dead people here?¨ 

Yes

¨No. But you sound a little skeptical, Law.¨ 

It was way too early for that discussion, but your biological clock didn't seem to care. Whenever Law came with his teasing, you would be ready to strike back.

He gave everyone a lecture about empathic accuracy and how good you were reading cues communicated by words, emotions, and body language. Or some crap like that. 

¨Ok, let me see if I got this right.¨ You shifted in the chair, hands moving in the air ¨You can pull organs out of people´s bodies, cut them in pieces without killing, switch their souls, but you do not believe that I can see dead people?¨

He tilted his head, but not giving you an exact answer.  

¨Do you wanna know what I think?¨

¨No.¨

¨I´ll tell you anyway. I think you have something you don´t want people to know, like a soft spot or a tragic past.¨ you sought the answer in his eyes ¨I´m guessing a loved one who died?¨ 

Overall, he was not wrong. You were a master in reading people´s body language, but you were not a jackass. So when the slight twitch of his mouth cleared up your doubts, it was time to stop. 

You knew how it felt, soft spots, tragic pasts, or late loved ones. There was no need to go further and throw more salt on his wounds. Hopefully, that taught him a lesson. 

An awkward silence ensued while everyone watched the scene, uncertain how to act, fearful that an extra spark would make everything explode into massive destruction.

¨Whatever.¨ he sighed ¨Show´s over. We´ll be reaching land in a few days, and we should be preparing to dock.¨ 

When everyone left the kitchen to go about their businesses, you remained alone with the figure that constantly wandered the submarine. He didn't do it in a creepy way. Despite his extravagant makeup and the intimidating aura, he was not a bother.

And it wasn't like he was there all the time, definitely more than anyone else. His passages were guaranteed on the days when Law was more sensitive. For bad or for good. He would look after him from the distance like a parenting figure. 

¨Who are you?¨ you murmured under your breath. 

For the next few days, Law made sure you were too busy to foster discussions about dead people or paranormal abilities.

When your services stealing rare supplies or getting answers to your Captain's questions you weren't required, you would help him with mountains of paperwork.

Only this time, he had outdone himself.

He managed to assemble the annual check-up of the crew, the inventory packing list, and the update of the logbook at once. This last one could easily wait until after you docked. But that freaking workaholic sadistic surgeon would not let this opportunity slip. So you pulled several all-nighters writing, signing, and stamping, all without exchanging a single word.

When you emerged, a few miles from land, you barely enjoyed the fresh breeze and sunlight. The crew hopped around, getting ready to put their feet on the continent as you sat in the kitchen profusely grouchy.

Your brain was fried, burnt, carbonized. 

¨You´re not coming?¨ Penguin asked, and you shook your head. ¨It´s been a while, Y/N, you should come.¨ you shook your head again. ¨I guess you´re not buying anything for the Captain´s birthday as well.¨

An incohesive question came out of your exhausted being. Penguin couldn´t help but feel sorry for you. ¨By the time his birthday comes up, we will be underwater, so everyone is preparing.¨ 

¨Do I have to?¨

¨No!¨ he chuckled ¨He doesn´t really like it, but we still buy him something.¨

¨Why?¨

¨´Cause he is a good Captain!¨ he said and sprunt out by the voice of someone calling him, waving goodbye at you. 

 It wasn't that you didn´t think Law was a good Captain. It was just an inherent nature of yours to clash every time you looked at each other. 

But on such occasion, you could combine the useful with the pleasant. After all, you were grateful because he gave you friends. Of course, he was the unfortunate by-product that came with them, but you could handle him. 

So fighting against your will to stay and sleep, you forced your way out to the solid ground, hoping to find the most random store someone could wish for, a haberdasher. 

Much to your delight, you did it. You picked a burgundy color wool and the first hook you put your eyes on and returned to your soft bed. 

The chances of you having scared your crewmates by staring at the blank for hours were high. In reality, you wanted to memorize and come up with a pattern for the strange-looking beanie that man wore. 

It had no pompom at the top like Penguin´s. Instead, two long pieces of fabric ran down from each side with heart-like things hanging.

When the sixth day of the tenth month arrived, Law´s desk was cluttered with presents. You had decided to wait until you were done with work and heading to bed to give it to him. 

After conquering that task, you locked yourself in your room, where you stayed until you had it finished. For some reason, you bothered to buy a box to put it in. Whatever.  

On the sixth day of the tenth month, Trafalgar Law could not focus on work. Every slight movement of yours, every bathroom break got him jittery, rehearsing words that wouldn´t make you hate him more. 

Not that you ever hated him, but you didn´t talk, so he didn´t know. After some time starting small talks and being ignored, you just gave up trying. 

By the end of that night, he had given up too. So when you placed the golden-yellow box on his desk, he couldn´t vocalize his feelings. It became just another silent night. 

Chests tight and hearts clogged with unspoken words. 

Law did not work for the next couple of days, and if he left his room, no one saw. The gifts on his desk were not even opened. Everything was left the way it was. 

Maybe you had crossed a line. 

As you marched up to the room at the end of the hall, several paths popped into your mind. You could act like you didn´t care, so what if you left? You had been alone for so long, it wouldn't make any difference! Still, something was begging you to apologize. To ask to stay, because being there was good, everything you never knew you wanted.

You were ready to pack your bags and have your title as a Heart Pirate retracted when you woke up one morning, finding a note on your desk telling you to meet him in his room. Your nails dug into your sweaty palms. Where did this tightness in your chest come from?

When you set foot in the room, your eyes hovered around. It was the first time you saw Law's room. It was exactly how you thought it would be.

Keeping your gaze locked on his was more difficult. He was sitting in an armchair near the foot of the bed. From afar, his appearance remained neat, as always, but as you approached you saw the circles under his eyes even darker. A thing you didn't think was possible.

For the first time, you didn't know how to read his expression. And seeing him vulnerable like that made your stomach drop. So you prepared yourself for the worst. However, to your surprise, all he did was ask you questions. 

No snarky remarks. You just talked.    

That day something changed. And from that day on, Law had found someone to help him carry the unbearable weight he had on his shoulders, and you found a place to call home. 

                                                             ...

¨Y/N-ya.¨ he called you, who was a cuddle away from sleeping.

¨Hm?¨

¨Before you left, in Sabaody...¨

¨Uhm.¨

¨You stole the coin again, didn´t you?¨ 

You giggled and pulled the commemorative coin from your back pocket, snuggling closer to his body and feeling the vibration of his chest as he chuckled.

Extra notes: I hope you had enjoyed it! It came out a little too long, but I have been feeling like I´m limiting myself when it comes to the number of words... I don´t know, I´m confused. 

Anyway, is that pink and red that I see on the horizon?

[scribbiesan]

For @imagine-darksiders

A dream I had last night

It started with a battle.

I’m not sure the species, their features, or anything else, but I know they wanted to take the earth for themselves, and possibly the humans as livestock/slaves. And of course the angel, demons, Makers, and Horsemen were rather opposed to that. The invaders armies were fucking HUUGE tho, so both armies of Heaven and Hell, along with whatever Makers could be spared, the Human army, the Horsemen weren’t quite enough, until the armies of the Kingdom of the Dead arrived (if that can happen?).

They all fought these monsters from beyond for many months, and it seemed they were winning… until the magic-users of these invaders arrived. Their magic was different, and it would, supposedly, completely vaporize any the magic bolts hit, not even leaving dust. It was terrifying, for even the others would be affected, but it was… odd. It made them almost— regress I believe. Turn back the clock to the point of before they even existed. Before the atoms that made up their person even came anywhere close together.

It made sense, after all the Makers, Angels, and Demons were thousands upon thousands upon millions of years old, where as the humans were only a scant few decades in comparison. For the ones who were hit and began to regress, the changes were quick, almost instant, but the magic would only turn back a certain amount of years. For the Makers, Angels, and Demons, it turned back several million years, and wiped their memories from the years taken. But they still existed, just… younger.

But OH.

A bolt was heading straight for Azrael, who didn’t know the effect to his kind, had only seen the effects to Humans, and froze. The magic bolt streaked closer and closer and Azrael had clenched his eyes tight, afraid but believed this to be his time.

Death wasn’t so inclined.

The eldest Horseman shoved Azrael out of the bolts path, but put himself in the way instead. The magic connected with Death’s back.

There was a great flash and bang, then silence.

The bolt regressed Death, that is true… but to the time almost exactly after Death and his siblings became the Horsemen, and they eradicated the Nephilim.

A whole bunch of shit happens after, with hurt and pain and sorrow and reconciliation and Death, and by association, the Horsemen, finally understanding they deserved better, and are allowed to mourn what was stolen from them so long ago, and the years after. And it’s so bittersweet I’m getting emotional thinking about it. It hurts, the healing always does, but it gets better in the long run.

And after all this happens, Young!Death and his siblings deal the final blow to the invaders, and capture some of their magic-users, and find out the effects can be REVERSED. The ones who were vaporized, and others who were deaged can be restored, with the memories they accrued during their time regressed still there. And of course during this time Azrael and Death begin to grow closer, and they realize they do enjoy and even like each other.(interpret that how you will)

The story ends with a great celebration when all the creatures regressed are brought back, and the Horsemen (with whichever favorite Human/s they have) join in. They still have a long way to go in terms of truly being happy, but they’re getting there.

And Death is unmasked again, and the Horsemen share traditional Nephilim cuisine and stories, and War, Fury, Strife, and Death all have these bittersweet smiles on their faces, which is both adorable af and sad as hell, and you get to sit amongst them and share in their smiles and history, and tell them they deserve to be happy and they’ll BELIEVE IT and I just…

Death is a prankster in the sense he’ll sneak food onto your plate when you’re not looking, or leave little presents by you, or something and whenever you try to say it was him he’ll just snark and laugh and deny deny deny, even though you all know it WAS him.

… It was a good dream.

Just wanted to share with you. Hope you enjoyed!

~Toodles!

[weelittleweasley]

Amnesia (p1) | Draco x Reader

Prompt: The Battle of Hogwarts was one that was hard on everyone mentally and physically. During the war, you took a brutal fall, hitting your head, which caused you to lose your memory, amnesia if you will. You forget a solid chunk of your life, specifically your last few years at Hogwarts and the relationships you made with certain people, including your romantic relationship with Draco Malfoy. What happens in Part One of this multipart series?

Warnings: language, violence, blood, memory loss, death, mentions of PTSD, anxiety

Word Count: 5.5k

A/N: This story is not about romanticizing mental health issues. These are serious conditions and this story is not meant to romanticize or fantasize these topics. It’s used as a vessel to convey a different story. That being said, please take care of yourself and sending everyone lots of love. Enjoy part one :)

Flashbacks told in italics! 

War, chaos, violence, and then silence. Peace. The rubble had fallen, the chains had been broken, and the dust had settled. But things weren’t over. No, quite the opposite. This was just the beginning of it all.

Hogwarts, as you knew it, was falling to the ground. Everywhere you looked around you saw stones falling, students running, flashes of light and fire, the echoes of screams, yet the only thing on your mind was finding him. Finding the blonde boy who you loved so much your bones shook and you heart ached. You ran through the halls, dodging falling stones and avoiding spells, curses, and hexes from wands. Your breath was uneven as you ran down the stairs, screaming at the top of your lungs, your throat burning, “Draco!” 

As you ran down the hall, your body collided with that of your closest friend. “(Y/N), you have to run, get out of here, Draco is gone, there’s no use searching for him,” Ron grabs your face in his hands, desperately trying to shake some sense into you. He searched your eyes for any sense of hope; he needed it now more than ever. His face was covered in dried blood and fresh blood, his hands covered in dirt and his eyes full of panic. He needed you to survive this war, if it was the last thing he could do. “Listen to me,” he shakes you as you let a sob escape your lips. “Draco is gone. Okay? He left.”

You shake your head ferociously. “He wouldn’t do that, he’s here. He’s waiting for me. He told me he would wait for me and he’d see me at the end of this,” you yell at Ron, your ribs aching and knees weak. You’d recall when Draco furiously kissed your lips hours before this all dissolved into madness, telling you to stay where you were and he’d come back for you. Draco promised that you both would run away from this and go somewhere you couldn’t be found. Away from his father, away from the Dark Lord, away from magic, away from it all. He wanted to escape just as badly, if not more than you. “I need to find him,” you pushed Ron off with all the might you could muster in your frail body. “Draco!” you scream again, your voice cracking, too weak to echo anymore.

Ron grabs you by the waist now, pulling you away as you kick and scream in his grip, demanding he let you go. “I’m not letting you get killed!” Ron yelled. “I already lost Fred and I’m not losing you too!” he screams, his voice cracking with anger and fear. “Hermione, help!” Ron calls to Hermione who grabs your fists that pound on Ron’s chest.

“Let me go!” you sob, breaking down under the grip of your two close friends, completely losing yourself to your emotions. “I need to find Draco,” you manage to speak in between sobs, choking on your own tears and cries. “He could be dead for all I know! Please let me find him,” you grab onto the collar of Ron’s shirt, begging him, staring into his eyes as tears pour out of yours. “I need to find him. He could be out there, looking for me, calling for me. I need him, Ron, let me go, let me go find him!”

Hermione wraps you in her arms, trying to get you to stop crying as they pull you behind a wall. She whispers in your ear that you needed to protect yourself. You couldn’t worry about Draco anymore. He was a lost cause. But how could you forget about him? This was the man you loved so violently that you would die before you let anything bad happen to him. He was your one and only and you knew that the day he kissed you for the first time. “You need to stay here. Right here. You understand me? This is a matter of your life and death, do you understand?” Hermione scolds you. “Under no circumstances do you run for anyone. You run for your life if someone tries to kill you. You fight back. But under no circumstances do you do anything else, do you understand me?” she yells at you, needing you to understand that you needed to survive this.

With a shaky breath, you nod. Hermione looks at Ron before Hermione runs back to the chaos, flicking her wand, sending beams at Death Eaters, protecting the students. Ron looks at you, tears still in his eyes as you hold back your sobs. Ron engulfs you in a large hug before pressing a firm kiss to your forehead. “I need you to live. Please,” he begs you, clinging onto every last bit of hope he has. “I’ll find you at the end of this and we’ll be okay.” You shake your head, giving him a tight hug again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” you tell him before he joins Hermione, running off protecting her and fellow students.

So there you stood behind the concrete wall, looking around as others fought and got struck. People were getting killed all around you and you were being suffocated by the sight. Why were you just standing here not fighting back? Deliberately disobeying Ron and Hermione’s orders, you run from the wall, flicking your wand swiftly, pushing back Death Eaters, defending yourself and other students. You stood proudly beside your fellow classmates, slashing your wands, casting spells and fighting the good fight. 

As you fight alongside your classmates, you turn your head, keeping a 360 on the area. But that’s when you see him. His blonde hair covered in dirt, his concerned face looking behind him as his mother and father guide him away from the scene, across the bridge. From a distance, you see him look in your direction as your heart sinks. He was leaving without you. 

“Draco,” you whisper, forgetting about everything in the world and focusing on him. “Draco!” you scream with every last fiber in your body. You launch yourself into a run down the stairs and towards the bridge. You push people out of your way in a beeline for your love, hoping that he’ll stop for you, but he doesn’t. His parents keep an iron grip on him, pulling him along the bridge. Draco turns around, seeing you run as he tries to writhe out of his mother’s grip. His face is full of concern, but he can’t escape. His father puts his body in front of Draco’s as Draco screams out in pain and fury. “Draco!” you yell.

Your feet carry you as fast as possible as you run toward the bridge, trying to get to him as quickly as possible before it was too late. Draco claws at his father, trying to get past him. As you run you feel your breath becoming short and your lungs burn, but you ignore the sensation and push. You need to get to him. He needed to get to you. You needed to save each other. 

But that all came to a screeching halt when you name being yelled out in horror by Draco. “(Y/N), watch out!” someone screams a blood curdling scream as you look up to see a large rock come crashing down. 

And that’s when it went white. Your hearing gave out. You went numb. There was silence. Deafening. Palpable. The silence screamed for a million years and then a million more. 

But then there was a roar. Your ears rung and yelled. Your brain thumped against your skull, your lungs burned like you swallowed ash, and your mouth tasted of metal and dirt. You repeated told yourself to open your eyes, but you couldn’t. You tried again and again, but nothing. All you could sense was ringing in your ears and muffled voices. Who was it? Who was talking? You couldn’t understand anyone or what they were saying. It all sounded like a different language. What happened?

Even though your brain was running at a thousand miles an hour, you crashed. Your senses gave out and the silence was back. Deafening. Palpable. The silence screamed again for another million years.

But this time there was a roar and your eyes shot wide open. You sucked in a large breath like you couldn’t breathe before. Your lungs swelled with oxygen, but hurt when you took deep breaths. It took you a second before you felt the rupture of pain that carried from the back of your head to the front. You sucked in a sharp breath, placing a hand where it hurt the most. 

As you looked down, you noticed the white sheets covering your body and the small hospital bed you lied down in. Thin hospital robe on your body and on your arm stuck out multiple IVs and monitors. You heard your heart rate monitor picks up speed as your anxiety grew with every passing second. What happened to you? Why were you in the hospital? Who brought you here? 

When you try to remember what happened to you, you can’t recall a single thing. You can’t even pinpoint what your last memory was, they all just mesh together. Before you can think about what is going on, the door opens up and a Healer’s assistant walks in. “You’re up,” she smiles. “Hello, (Y/N). How are you feeling?” she has a bright grin and calming eyes. This puts you at ease.

“My head hurts,” you respond.

She gives you a knowing smile. “I’m sure it does. You got severely concussed a few days ago,” she grabs a clipboard from the side table and starts scribbling down notes and checking your vitals.

Your eyes go wide, “A few days ago?” you speak bewildered.

The Healer’s assistant takes your temperature with a muggle thermometer before handing you a glass of water. “Yes, a few days ago,” she confirms. “You were in and out of consciousness a few times before you woke up today. Just to put your mind at ease, you have a few broken ribs, that’s why it may be a little hard to breathe and a sprained wrist. We administered you a healing potion, so you should be fully recovered in a few days, but you should still monitor yourself. Your brain, however, is still bruised.” She places down the clipboard and walks back to the door. “Let me tell the Healer that you’re awake. In the meantime, I think there are some people who want to see you.”

You sit up in bed and patiently wait for your visitors. The door swings open and in floods your mother and father. “Mum, Dad,” you smile as they both have tears in their eyes when they see you. They hurry to your side, crying into your hospital gown, kissing your face, thanking Merlin that you were alright. You hold onto them tight, afraid to let them go, as you let a few happy tears fall from your eyes. 

“We thought you were dead,” your mother looks at you as you wipe her tears away, holding onto her and your dad’s hands. “Thank Merlin they got you to the hospital as fast as they could. Madam Pomfrey had taken good care of you before they brought you here,” she tells you. “I can’t believe you are alright.”

You spent a few hours with your parents, the Healer coming in a few times, speaking about how you had to take it easy and how you are lucky to be alive. Your father and mother, however, were acting a little strange whenever they spoke to the Healer. One would get up and speak to him in hushed tones as the other distracted you with conversation, but you couldn’t help but be curious as to what they were leaving you out of. What was going on?

“Mum?” you ask her as your dad whispers to the Healer. “What are they taking about?” you question. She just brushed it off and says he just wants to know how quickly your recovery would be. You knew she was lying, but rather than implore for answers, you let it be. You were tired. 

A few more hours past when the Healer’s assistant from earlier came back in. “Hi, (Y/N), visitor hours are almost done, but you have a few more people who came in to see you,” she tells you as you furrow your brows. She motions her hand to let the visitors in.

When the visitor’s step in it takes you a second to register who they were. Your brain was trying to put names to their faces. You knew that you knew them. You felt your excitement grow when you saw them. You could tell that you had a deep connection to them because when they saw you, both of them started sobbing tears of joy. The girl with fluffy brown hair covered her mouth to conceal her sobs, but a large smile was on her face. Beside her the ginger boy stood, taller in stature but tears running down his face as he silently cried when he saw you. “You’re alright,” he whispers.

Your parents give you and these visitors some privacy, leaving the room so it’s just you three. You stay silent, but a smile is on your face. What are your names? The boy slowly approaches your bedside, sitting next to you, and gently grabbing your hand. He squeezes it and brings another hand to brush the hair out of your eyes. His touch was loving and delicate, handling you with the utmost care. That’s when it hit.

“Ron fucking Weasley,” you laugh as he joins in, pressing his forehead against yours. Ron laughs and cries against you as you cup his cheek gently. It felt like forever since you saw him. You give his hand a squeeze before pulling away and looking at the girl. “Thought I forgot about you, Granger? Get in here,” you speak as she laughs and joins the small group hug, still making sure not to hurt you. The three of you sit and cry and laugh for what feels like hours. “Where have you all been?” you ask with a smile. 

Hermione laughs, “Well, for starters, you’ve been out for four days since your injury.” She rubs your arm. “We’ve all been really worried about you. Harry, too, but he’s also in recovery right now. You’ll see him as soon as you’re discharged from the hospital.”

You nod, the image of Harry Potter popping up at the mention of his name, significant memories flooding back into your brain of him. You think of year four when you had a crush on him briefly during the Triwizard Tournament and you smile at the memory. You also remember Ron teasing you about it after that crush died out, Harry laughing along with you both. Then a question pops up in your mind. “You guys,” you start. “How did I get injured? The Healer told me it’s mostly a head injury, but I don’t remember it. Did you see it happen?”

Ron and Hermione uncomfortably shift in their seats as Hermione shakes her head to Ron, letting him explain what happened. “During the battle, you were running for Draco when a piece of rubble came crashing down and hit you in the head,” Ron explains gently and slowly, making sure not to disturb any trauma that could be sprung up from the horrific scene. Ron recalls watching it unfold and the wind being knocked out of him as it happened. Ron remembers running to your side, screaming for someone to help pick you up and get you to Madam Pomfrey. Ron shakes the memory away and breathes in deeply. Recalling the day was too emotional for him and it happened to recently for him to relive it. He was careful with his words, stroking your hand as he explained what happened.

You furrow your brows in confusion. “Wait, hold on,” you laugh. “Battle? Is that like a new name for a quidditch match or something? I know that I play quite aggressive during games, but I didn’t think it was going to hospitalize me.” As you attempt to crack a joke, Hermione and Ron’s eyes go wide before they look at each other in fear. It was worse than they had thought. “What?” you asked, the concern raising in your voice. “What are you hiding from me?”

Hermione gulps, “Do you not remember the war?” The scoots closer to your bed, seeing if you were playing a joke on them, but you were deadly serious.

“War?” you repeat. “About what? Is He back?” you question, wondering if the Dark Lord was back. You remember Cedric Diggory’s death like it was yesterday, Harry yelling on the field over his dead body that the Dark Lord had returned. Hermione and Ron stutter, trying to find the words. “What’s going on? Are you guys playing a sick joke on me?” you start to frantically ask. “Did Fred and George put you up to this?” At the mention of Fred’s name, Ron instantly tenses and his breath hitches in his throat. Hermione rubs his back, comforting him, holding him close to her as if something happened to Fred. What was going on? Confusion darted through your brain. “I need to go take a breather for a second,” Ron sighs, rising from his chair. “I’m glad you’re awake, (Y/N).” Ron kisses your forehead before walking to the other side of your hospital room, opening the window for some fresh air.

Hermione looks back at you and grabs a hold of both of your hands. “(Y/N), I need you to be completely honest with me like I am being with you right now. What do you remember from Hogwarts? List out the last few things you remember. I need to know,” she pleads, looking deep into your eyes searching.

Your breath picks up as your lungs fill with oxygen, burning from the rapid movement. Your heart rate sky rockets and the back of your head starts to tingle in pain again like it did when you first woke up. Trying to recall your memories, your brain feels like it’s being squeezed. Not much comes up. “I don’t know, ‘Mione,” you tell her. “I remember Cedric’s death, I remember going home for the summer that year, I remember coming back to school and Harry being on edge because no one believed him about the Dark Lord, I remember that twat Umbridge,” you tell her, “but after that the rest is a blur...” Hermione looks at Ron who’s eyes are wide in disbelief. It was much worse than they thought. “What in the bloody hell is this war you’re talking about?” 

Ron looks to Hermione and then looks to you and says, “(Y/N), what year of Hogwarts are we in?” 

You take a second to think. If your memory and your timeline serves you right, you were in year five. “Year five...it’s 1995...why?” you respond. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Bloody hell, this isn’t good,” Ron runs his hands through his hair. Your eyes widen and your heart rate picks up, lungs burning from the rapid inhalations you were breathing in and out. Your head was pounding now. What was happening? Were you wrong? You were sixteen, right? How could you be mistaken? Ron paces back and forth as Hermione remains deadly still. Did your parents not tell you?

The more you think, the more your head hurts. “Wait a second,” you stop the small chatter between Ron and Hermione. “You said I hurt my head because I was running to Draco Malfoy?” you ask as your close friends shake their heads. “Why? I’ve had a total of four conversations with him. Why would I be running after him?”

And that’s when the severity of the situation hit Granger and Weasley. “Go get the Healer,” Hermione commands Ron as he dashes out of the room. “You are being honest with us, right?” she asks as you rapid shake your head. Why would I be lying? “(Y/N), you cannot freak out about this, okay?” she looks at your heart monitor as it beeps quickly, picking up the pace with every passing second. “Okay,” she breathes out. “Listen to me,” she grabs your hands, squeezing them. As she does so, Ron enters back in with the Healer from before. They observe what Hermione does. “(Y/N), you are eighteen. Hogwarts had a battle against Voldemort where many people died and sacrificed themselves for the greater good. That’s where you got injured. You were running to Draco to find him because he-”

“Hold on,” the Healer stops Hermione. “Don’t overflow her with information, she can have an aneurysm from the anxiety and overstimulation.” Hermione rises from her chair as the Healer replaces her seat. “(Y/N), I need you to look at me and breathe. Try to relax yourself.”

At this point you are hyperventilating. “What is going on? Did I miss two years of my life? How long was I asleep for? What war happened? Is this what you and my parents were talking about before? Are you all lying to me?” you start to panic. You look around, needing to get out, out of this room, out of this gown, out of your own head. You felt like you were being tortured from the inside out. “Get these fucking tubes out of me,” you claw your arm as the Healer grabs your hands in attempt to cease your manic movements.

“I need you to listen to me, I will give you the answers you want, (Y/N), okay?” he attempts to reason with you as you try to wiggle out of his grip. “I will tell you what you want to know. Hermione and Ron will be with you the whole time. None of us are lying to you, okay? You just need to trust us,” the Healer speaks slowly as not to rile you up.

Slowly, you let your breathing even out as you lay back in bed, looking at Ron and Hermione. You give them scared looks as Ron grabs your hands, giving them a squeeze, Hermione sitting herself next to you on the bed. “Okay.”

The Healer takes a deep breath in and starts. “You are eighteen, recently graduated from Hogwarts. Hogwarts went through the second wizarding war, which you fought in very bravely. In the midst of it, you saw someone you loved and you ran over to him and got a nasty head injury. The head injury has caused you to have something called temporary amnesia or memory loss. That being said, you can’t remember the past two years of your life,” he tells you.

Your heart drops to the pit of your stomach. You don’t know what to say or do. You just sit in shock as your mouth goes dry. You feel like you’re going to vomit, pass out, scream, cry, or all of the above. How could this just happen to you? You just forgot everything that happened over the past two years? So much could have happened and yet you couldn’t recall an ounce of it. You only remembered up to year five and then your brain just shut you out. Your body was working against you. “What?” you ask breathlessly, tears starting to pool in your eyes as the Healer gives you the sorriest look you have ever seen. “I-I-I don’t understand how can my brain just forget?”

“I’m so sorry you are going through this,” the Healer tells you as you look to Ron and Hermione who are starting to cry now. This couldn’t be happening. “But that being said, this amnesia is temporary. It will wear off, but we don’t know when. It can just come back one day and that can be scary, I know. But you have great resources and friends and family and a boyfriend who will help you navigate through this. I will give you a minute to talk to your friends,” the Healer squeezes your arm before leaving the room.

As the door closes behind him, you erupt into sobs. Hermione cradles you in her chest as violent sobs rippled through your body, causing pain to shoot through every fiber in your body, but you didn’t care. Your brain didn’t work like it should and that was a horrifying thought. Why you? Why you of all people? Why was this happening? Who did this to you? How could this happen? Who let it happen? Too many questions danced in your head that you were unable to answer.

Ron pulls your head up to look at him. “We’re going to get through this,” he tells you. “You have me, you have Hermione, you have Harry, you have your parents, you have our friends,” he smiles at you.

“What did the Healer mean when he said I have a boyfriend? Who? Why can’t I remember him?” you speak through sniffles. You had a feeling that your boyfriend was a certain someone, but the thought of him being your romantic interest made your stomach churn.

Your two friends gulp, trying to figure out how to navigate this situation. “You know how I said you ran over to Draco Malfoy when you got hit?” Hermione says. “It’s him. Draco Malfoy is your boyfriend.”

That’s when you think your heart is going to fall out of your stomach. You could only pinpoint a few memories of him throughout what you can remember. You remember Draco being cruel and mean to you and your friends. He called Hermione a mudblood, he teased Ron relentlessly, he always had a bone to pick with Harry, and he made fun of you until you cried multiple times. How could you love someone like him?

Almost as if one cue, the Healer’s assistant came back in and said, “(Y/N), visitor’s hours are over in twenty minutes, but there is someone in the waiting room for you. He insists that he knows you and he’s your boyfriend. The name is Draco Malfoy.”

Everyone and the air freezes. He was here. He came to see you. He didn’t forget about you, but you certainly did with him. Although he was one of the last people you wanted to see right now, there was a feeling in the pit of your stomach that told you to let him in. He may have the answers you need. Ron and Hermione insist that she turns him away, but you halt their demands, you saying, “Bring him in. I want to see him.”

She nods and leaves the room as Ron and Hermione just look at you shocked, knowing that this is not going to end well for anyone. “Why did-”

“Because I want to know if he has answers,” you simply state, eyes not moving from the door. If Draco really was your boyfriend, then he should know you better than yourself. Maybe Draco could bring back your memory. Maybe he could help you recover quicker. Then his nightmare would be over. 

The door swings open and there he stood, in all black, hair disheveled, a worried look on his face. Draco looked sick. He was pale and looked thin, almost sickly. When his eyes meet yours, tears fill his eyes and a soft smile appears on his face. “Darling,” he breathes out as he steps closer to you. Ron and Hermione instinctively stand up to protect you as he looks over to them, at first angry, but then he sees the looks on their faces and that’s when his fear worsens. He understands with just a look. The situation was worse than he had thought. He thought you would wake up and you would pick up from where you left off. He had explaining to do, but he was ready to work it through with you. But this situation was one he was not prepared for. Draco looks back at you and says, “You...don’t...”

“No,” you shake your head. “I’m sorry, Draco, but I don’t know you like you think I do.”

In that moment, all of Draco’s memories of you flooded his mind. The first time he remembered thinking that he liked you. You were in the room of requirement when Umbridge busted Potter and you had a horrified, yet angry look on your face. As you left the room, you pushed Draco out of the way, looking at him with a disgusted face. 

“You’re despicable, Malfoy,” you spit at him.

Draco let a smirk appear on his face as he bit his lip. “If you want me that badly, (Y/L/N), you should just come to my room tonight,” he spoke, eyes raking you up and down, knowing it would annoy you.

You rolled your eyes before stomping on his foot, him wincing in pain as the boys around him laughed. “If you want to get slapped next time, you should have just asked,” you mimic him. “You’re deplorable.”

Although the memory was not a happy one, Draco was fond of it because he knew you were hard to get and Draco lived for the chase. He knew you could hold your own and not depend on him for everything; you were independent and he found that irresistible. It wasn’t long after that that he had asked you on a date, starting a rollercoaster of relationship. You were there for him in his darkest times, in the hours where he felt himself slipping away, but you were always there to pull him back out and show him the light to which he was forever indebted to you. 

Draco knew that he had no greater love than the love he had found with you and if he had to fight like hell for it, then he would, the rest of the world be damned. 

So there he was, standing in front of you in a hospital bed, the sight already making him sick to his stomach. He looked over to Ron and Hermione as if to ask them to give him some alone time with you. Your two friends looked back at you, to which you nodded, them giving your hands a squeeze before leaving the hospital room.

Now you were alone, staring at the boy in front of you who you were supposed to know everything about and him to you. But instead, your mind drew blank. You couldn’t remember anything about him besides what you had known up to year five. You got no feeling of excitement when you saw him in comparison to the reaction you had when you saw Ron and Hermione. You didn’t feel like you had a connection with him. You just felt numb. Tingling from exhaustion and burning with pain in your head and lungs. So badly you wanted to close your eyes and go to sleep, hoping that this was a sick dream and when you woke up things would be okay. 

“You remember nothing?” he asks, blue eyes like the ocean brimming with tears that threatened to pool over, but disappeared when he took a deep breath in, his attempt to remain strong in front of you. 

“I remember up to year five,” you correct him. “I don’t remember any of our relationship,” you confess.

This makes Draco’s heart plummet into his stomach, but he tries to not show it on his face. He slowly tries to approach your bed and reach for your hand, hoping that his touch would make you remember something, anything. But when he extends his hand out to touch you, you pull away, looking at him way too confused and scared to touch him back. You barely know who he was, why would you want to touch him? As if this whole situation couldn’t get any worse. He had run away from his mother after his father was taken to Azkaban, in hopes to find you and fulfill the dreams that you two had of running away from this place and magic to start a new life together. A clean slate. But his dreams came crashing down from around him. Now Draco had to pick up the pieces and build everything back up exactly as it was. Or else he didn’t know what he’d do. Draco had poured everything into this relationship of yours just for it all to be thrown away due to a nasty head injury. This had to be a sick joke crafted by his father in some way shape or form. But he wished it was that simple.

Draco shakes his head, “Right.” 

You look at the deeply broken boy in front of you and you feel sorry for him. Even though you cannot remember anything about your romantic history, your heart aches for him. This must be difficult to go through. Someone you love not know who you are. What kind of sick torture. “I’m sorry,” you tell him. “I wish I could remember.”

He offers you a sad smile, “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” You just nod your head as the two of you stay in this silence for a moment. “It’ll come back, right? Your memories?”

Nodding gently, you speak, “That’s what the Healer said.”

Draco sits in that moment, knowing that there was hope for you and your relationship. But it was just a matter of if he was willing to fight for it.

To be continued

[memelover1024]

The Original Hunter Part 1

Supernatural/TVD/TO

Mini Series

Sam WinchesterxMikaelson!Reader

Elijah MikaelsonxReader

1500 Words

AN- this is a sort of AU where the originals never left New Orleans and Klaus and Elijah are the official kings of the vampire species, they are only in Mystic Falls for Elena and the hybrid curse. Klaus only has Finn daggered at the time this series is taking place. Also in this Katherine and Elijah were a couple in the 1500s not Katherine and Klaus.

I pulled my cruiser into the garage of the Bunker, and parked it next to the Impala. I grabbed my backpack and made sure the cooler at the bottom was closed and hidden, and walked inside. When I walked into the library and saw my boyfriend Sam at the table looking for a case. When he heard me walking in he looked up at me and smiled.

“Hey babe,”  he said before turning his attention back to whatever was on his laptop.

“Hey, i'm just gonna put this stuff in my office then i'll come help you,” i said to him and then turned down halfway to my office. When I reached the door I pulled out my key and unlocked the door. I walked in and locked it again behind me. When I first moved into the bunker the first thing I did was get a room all to myself that the boys wouldn't go in. At first they were suspicious as to what I had in there, but over time they ceased to care. They have grown to learn that I like my privacy. Privacy isn't a problem for me though, it was that I didn't want them to know what I am. After I locked the door I went and put my keys and backpack on my desk and dug the cooler out from the bottom. I looked behind me at the door to double check it was locked before I opened it. I grabbed a blood bag and drank it.  I was so hungry. I had ran out of blood bags 3 days ago and I hadn't had any time to visit my dealer in town to get more since we were on a hunt. A vampire, how ironic. It was a different type of vampire of course but still similar. The vampire the boys and I hunt are a larger and more cruel species of vampire. Notice, I didn't say dangerous. My species is a thousand times more powerful than them but we have humanity ––most of the time–– they do not. They were created by Eve to be a better version of us, but they are only  feral weak leeches. My species was created by my ex mother-in-law Ester. Yes, I said mother in law. I used to be married to Elijah, one of the kings of our species. I always loved Elijah, I probably always will but it took him a while to learn to love me. We were an arranged marriage, me as the richest young unmarried lady in the village and him as the best fighter in the village, other than his father, and the son of a powerful witch. I was ecstatic about the match, but he was too busy with my younger sister Tatia to notice me.i was pretty, i'll admit that. But tatia was the most beautiful in the village, every man wanted her, even before her husband died. Elijah and his brother always fought over her, while I was there just waiting for him to notice me. He was furious at first about the marriage, he didn't want to marry anyone but Tatia. On our wedding night was the first time he even gave me a second glance. I never cared though, I always saw him and I always loved him. After Tatia died and we were turned into vampires he began to love me. Life on the run will do that to you. We were happy for 500 years and I thought that it would last forever. It didn't. All because of Tatia, or her doppelganger. They’re the same to me, they had the same face, they both took him from me. I was pulled out of my thoughts by a knock on the door. I jumped to hide the blood  bag but then remembered the locked door.

“What?” i asked.

“Come on, Sams found us a case,” Dean called through the door and then his footsteps faded down the hall. I zipped up the cooler with the rest of the blood bag and put them in the mini-fridge which was locked with an electric lock. I grabbed my keys from the desk and made my way to the library. Dean was standing over Sam's shoulder looking at the computer.

“What did we get?” I asked, sitting on Sam's lap and looking at the computer. I read the headline of the newspaper clipping and my heart stopped.

I took a deep breath and regained my composure.

“Looks like a werewolf, only one. So?” I asked, trying to steer them away.

“So?” Dean said confused, “what do you mean so?”

“There are only two victims in a place with many wild animals, there's no evidence, and it's five states away. It says the marks match a mountain lion, this is most likely nothing guys, and it's far away, there's probably another hunter already on it.” I told them my tone was calm, but my soul was desperate.

“I hear you babe and your probably right but i have a feeling about this one, i don't know, but i think we have to go,”

Sam said. I nodded, I couldn't fight anymore without raising suspicion.

“We leave in an hour,” Dean said, making his way back to his room.

I watched from the back of the impala as the Welcome to Mystic Falls sign whizzed passed me as we drove down the road towards my old home. I was so engrossed in the memories of my past that I didn't notice Sam looking back at me.

“You know this place don't you. Y/N?” Sam asked me, a concerned visage. I looked back up at him and sighed.

“Yeah, um, I used to live here,” I whispered silently, still staring out the window. Sam looked  back ahead at the road, knowling i didn't wish to speak about it. The clocktower in the center of the small town came into view, slowly growing larger and larger, as if to taunt me and my fear to face my torments.

We pulled up in front of the mystic grill and Sam Dean and I got out of the impala. We walked in and I looked around. No familiar faces, that's good. I'd heard Niklaus had come home in order to break his curse. I was happy for him, but that didn't mean I had any interest in seeing him any time soon. We walked up the bar and I ordered a whiskey and the boys ordered beer. We sat there for a bit and chatted about the case when I heard a voice from behind me and a smile grew on my face.

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in, finally decided to come home?” I turned and threw myself into Kols arms. Klaus had daggered him several years before I left, he'd told us that he'd never wake him. I thought I'd never see my brother again, thank god i was wrong.

“I never thought I'd see you again,”  I told him, still clutching to his jacket.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he laughed back. We stood there for a few moments before we heard someone clear their throat behind us. I slightly let go of Kol and turned to find Sam and Dean looking inquisitively at me.

“Come to dinner tonight at the house, we can catch up, all of us together.” Kol told me.

“I don't know, i dont want your cook making a whole feast just for  my return and I don't want to intrude.” i told him

“Nonsense, this dinners been planned for a while, and i'm setting a place for you so you best come,”

“Alright i'll come, but nothing extravagant for my sake okay, i pointed a finger at him.

“No promises,” he laughed. I rolled my eyes at him. He kissed me on the cheek and made his way out of the restaurant. I smiled after him, so happy to see him again. Maybe this visit would be so bad after all. I mean anything was possible with Kol.

“Who was that?” Sam asked me, jealousy obvious in his voice. I laughed at his protectiveness.

“That was my brother,” I told them, still smiling widely. They gave me a shocked look. I had never told them about my past or my family. I guess they just assumed that my family was dead and that it was too painful. They never knew I had a brother. And they were probably wondering what else I was hiding.

[twilightprince101]

Packmates

So I've been needing to do some Flash Fiction stuff for my writing class recently and I've had this original idea in my head for a long while at this point. It was HEAVILY inspired by Lera Lynn's "Wolf Like Me" (thanks again Delta for showing me this album) and it's one of the few things I feel REAL proud putting out! So woe! Gay and depressed werewolves be upon ye!

“The Blood Moon draws near.”

“I’m ready.”

“You have said so often this night.”

“I’m aware.”

“Why do you repeat those words so?”

“Is ‘because you asked’ not the right choice?”

“There is a lack of conviction in your voice.”

“I’m tired, you know that by now.”

“But what is it you refer to?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Is it the exhaustion that comes from a great hunt, one that seeps through your limbs and gives you aches that spare your quarter?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Or is it the dreariness of fog that clouds your mind, seeps your vitality drop by drop until naught an ounce of bloodlust remains?”

“That too, I suppose.”

“...Your conviction wavers.”

“Can it not be both?”

“Exhaustion, though inconvenient, is a natural calling deep within oneself. It is a hunter’s blessing in disguise, as one cannot pursue their prey if not at full strength.  Dreariness is the fatigue of the soul, an infestation of hopelessness. Neither are permanent, though the latter plagues those inflicted with insidious thoughts.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“...no, I did not.”

“...”

“...Do you wish to rest before the hour comes?”

“Wouldn’t that be pointless? Considering ‘the gift’ and all that I’m going to get?”

“Perhaps, but have you not gone to great lengths to let me join in pointless activities with you over these long years?”

“.....well, can’t argue with that I guess.”

“Take reprieve in my fur, the wind bares its frost-bitten teeth this deep in the woods.”

“Oh yeah, I guess this’ll be the last chance we really get to do it like this huh?”

“Should you join us there shall be many chances. But yes, if you wish, this will be the last.”

“Yeah, thanks Katey.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...Do you remember what it’s like?”

“Hm?”

“Without fur, I mean. Do you remember what it feels like?”

“What thought led to this question?”

“I dunno, just…”

“...Echoes of memories come and pass, sensations of touch that are not there.”

“Do you miss it at all?”

“My memories have not faded, Jakie. Though they ebb and flow from my mind, they remain. I still remember it all.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that many times.”

“...I do remember that time long ago, when I did not bear this fur or wear these claws. I remember the cold that stung our skin, the scrapes and cuts that adorned our hairless hands.”

“Do you only remember the bad things? Or have those ebbed from your mind as well?”

“I recall them as well, Jackie. The feeling of grass pricking against our bare feet as we ran through these woods as one. The currents brushing against us as we fought the tides of the sea. I especially remember that day you had fallen into a gardener’s crop and had me accompany you in that mess you created.”

“Pfft, really now? That’s one of the things you still remember?”

“Though my mind has changed, my memories have not.”

“.....and?”

“While a part of me does reminisce of those days back home, this change of mine has given me new blessings. My claws assure me in the face of danger, my fur assures me in the face of nature. In my life, this is one of the few times I feel secure in myself.”

“Do you… feel better though? Happier? Will I feel...?”

“.........I cannot say.”

“...”

“...” “...”

“......my apologies. I have… ruined the mood, as I believe you phrase it.”

“No, no it’s okay… actually, now that I think about it, when did you first start getting so poetic?”

“Pardon me?”

“This whole... thing where you talk really fancy and in metaphors. I recognized you starting a while ago, but did you have to read through a dictionary? Or does transforming include suddenly becoming shakespearean?”

“I don’t believe that’s the right term, but yes, to my knowledge this happened gradually since I was given this gift.”

“So then, do you think when I transform tonight the same thing will happen to me? Like you bite me then I have all of medieval theater beamed into my head? Will I be The Shakespeare of Wolves?”

“It is likely, though I will not deny, it would be a shock. I have grown quite fond of the way you speak, compared to my packmates. It is akin to, say, witnessing a fish leap from a flowing stream.”

“You did that one on purpose, didn’t you?!”

“Perhaps I did, perhaps not~"

“Oooh you better watch out, when I join the pack I’m going to destroy you in the weekly poetry slams!”

“Heh, we do not have ‘slams of poetry’ where I will go. Most of our focus is turned to the hunt, though perhaps you could make a fine diplomat between packs.”

“Well, maybe I could bring poetry slams to the pack. We both could! You didn’t go to many but you still know what they’re like, what’s stopping us?”

“That would be… the moon. I do not believe recreation would become much of a priority to you once you shift tonight. Especially for you, considering the ritual.”

“Oh. Yeah, right.”

“...”

“.......”

“...........”

“...you can still leave Jakie.”

“You know I can’t.”

“And why is that?”

“You know why.”

“What of August, who had assisted us in Maplecrest? Or your bloodmate, here in Bloomfield?”

“It’s not me needing somewhere to go Kate. I know that they’d both welcome me back.”

“Then why do you persi-”

“I thought you said your memories were all still there.”

“...I have not forgotten our promise, Jakie.”

“Then you have your answer. I didn’t leave you back then, I’m not leaving you here.”

“...Jakie.”

“Don’t.”

“I am grateful for your assistance all these years, for your companionship. You have offered me comfort, companionship and assistance without question.”

“I said stop, Katie.”

“I shall always be grateful, however you must ask yourself whether or not you should continue to uphold these vows. If the Katie you loved--”

“What’s your problem?! I thought the whole thing with you is that you want to bite people, change people!”

“We do not offer this gift to all those we encounter. Only those who we find--”

“‘A spark of devotion,’ yeah I get it you’ve said that thousands of times already! So then why is it only with me you try to talk someone out of it?!”

“Beca-”

“And don’t say lack of conviction. I said I’ve wanted this for months now, that’s the whole reason we’re here!”

“...............”

“Well?!”

“I… ponder if you would believe me.”

“Spit it out.”

“...because I have always seen you as my packmate.”

“..............”

“...since my mind has changed, I have gained new desires. Whatever old ties I had have long been cut. Yet despite my change you’ve been by my side. My fur warms my body--you have warmed my soul, and that sensation shall never fade.”

“...you didn’t answer me.”

“......Should you accept my gift tonight you shall change eternally. Your conviction here lies with me, but should you accept our gift your soul will be tied to the hunt. I do not wish for you to change with your mind lingering on regrets of what could have been. I respect you as a packmate, Jakie. I wish for your choice to be true.”

“Don’t you get it? What I want is to be with you! You’re my friend, I’ve helped you all this time, I love you!”

“But through these years, have you been happy?”

“..........”

“You say this is your duty, it may be what you desire. But protecting me, has it made you happy? Can you look upon the fields of missed opportunities that have passed without a hint of longing?”

“............”

“I have never needed protection, you know as well as I. These past years of devotion, it has helped you survive. But what I yearn for is for you to live. Abandoning your own self… Do you believe you will be happy then?”

“...........”

“...........”

“.......god damn it. You never made things easy, did you?”

“I am who I am now, Jakie. I cannot give you more than that.”

“........I don’t want to leave you. I don’t even know if I can. I’ve spent so long helping you I don’t know if I… know anything else. What would I even do?”

“I… do not know. But I have seen your conviction these past years--you have several paths ahead of you. Whatever you may choose, I have faith in you. You shall always be my packmate.”

“.......yeah. Yeah…. Yeah.”

“..........”

“...............”

“...the Blood Moon has nearly reached its peak.”

“.......could we just sit together, just for a bit longer?”

“Of course.”

“....thank you.”

“.........”

“.........”

“.........”

“.........I love you, Katie.”

“I love you too, Jakie.”

[qqueenofhades]

i noticed that you like to write a lot of heartrender husbands from fedyor’s side of things (which makes sense cause fedyor is fun!) but i have to ask in the modern au, what was ivan thinking the whole first two months 😂??

like was he carrying the joke the whole time? did his brain short circuit around fedyor?? was he worried about what fedyor was thinking or did he just think he was shy? Did he think the first date went well ☠️?

This was supposed to be lighthearted, but then there came Feels. So here is Ivan's backstory in Phantomverse. Content warning for mentions of an abusive relationship, familial homophobia, implied sexual manipulation, and dark themes. Nothing graphic, but duly noted.

Also on AO3.

Brighton Beach, 2015

It’s safe to say that Ivan Ivanovich Sakharov Kaminsky did not ever, not in a thousand years, not in a million, imagine himself ending up here. At one point, even Moscow would have been a stretch, and that was obviously still Russia. The fact that he would be walking down a sidewalk in Brooklyn, under the elevated tracks of the Q train that rattles and bangs overhead, on a cool spring morning to do his shopping at the Brighton Bazaar – in, should this somehow not be clear, America – and then returning to his apartment and his husband is, quite frankly, something out of an alternate-Ivan timeline. One from the Twilight Zone, or whatever they are calling that kind of thing these days. Sometimes when he thinks about it too much, he gets afraid that it is in fact a dream. That no matter how long it has gone on and how good it has been, it will suddenly and inevitably end. After all, he is Russian. Sunny optimism has never been accused of forming a notable facet of the national character, and Ivan himself would never be described as the hopeful type. But God, for this, he does.

He reaches the bazaar – a bustling blue-awninged international supermarket with three-quarters of its signs written in Cyrillic – and steps inside, grabbing a basket and pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket to double-check his list. He knows what he needs, but he likes the tidiness of writing it down, and he proceeds into the crammed aisles, passing customers speaking English, Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Yiddish, and several other languages he can’t identify by ear. Brighton Bazaar stocks all the Russian products necessary to satisfy even a homesick expat like Ivan, and he enjoys being able to navigate the store with ease and read all the labels at first glance. He can get by in English, if he’s pressed, but it’s easier to leave it to Fedyor, who is fluent, and in here, he can conjure the illusion that he will walk out on the street and be back where he truly belongs. He likes Brighton Beach a great deal more than he ever expected to, but it’s no replacement for the real thing.

Ivan collects his purchases, along with a few special extras, and takes them to the counter. He is greeted in Russian by the checkout clerk, who knows him well for always turning up at the same time every Saturday morning with military precision. As Semyon Pavlovich Kuznetsov (who is called Syoma by his friends, but he has not clearly stated that Ivan can use the diminutive and therefore Ivan does not) scans his items, Ivan consents to exchange a few gruff words of small talk on the weather (nice) how the Mets did last night (badly) and the old guy who apparently died of a heart attack two days ago in the Russian bathhouse on Neck Road (making Ivan glad he did not choose said day to attend). It’s this weird Russian-American hybrid of things, since Semyon is the teenage grandson of a Red Army veteran who fought at Stalingrad, but he was born and raised in Brooklyn, loves American video games, and is fully fluent in American pop culture. It startles Ivan to realize that while this kid speaks Russian perfectly, he has probably never done so in Russia outside of a few visits back to the old country when his family can afford it. That is a very personal question to ask one’s grocery clerk, however, and he does not.

And then there’s that other thing, which he would definitely never be asked in Russia, especially not these days. Semyon hits the button to tally up Ivan’s bill, informs him that he owes $56.77, and then says cheerily, “How is Fedyor?”

Ivan concentrates on digging the exact amount out of his wallet in cash, since he never had a credit card when he lived in Russia and is still somewhat leery of them. “Fedyor is fine,” he says curtly, in the tone that makes it clear that he understands this question is an expected part of an American social interaction, but that is all the information he is willing to venture. “Here is the money.”

Semyon accepts it, counts it into the till, and rings the transaction through, handing Ivan his bags and his receipt. “Have a nice day, Mr. Kaminsky!”

“Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich.” Ivan accepts his purchases and leaves the store, taking a deep breath of the salty, sunny air and the wind whipping off the seafront. It’s still a little too early in the year for there to be many bathers on the beach, though there are always people strolling on the boardwalk. It’s only a few minutes to the apartment, which is just off Brighton Beach Avenue and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Ivan buzzes into the old brownstone, takes the stairs to the third floor, and as he unlocks his front door and lets himself in, wonders, yet again, at the sheer impossibility that his life has led him here.

Ivan is the third of five boys, but he was the one who was named after his father. It was not, of course, because they had some special hope for him to be the great inheritor of paternal pride, but a simple matter of logistics. His oldest brother, Roman, was named after their paternal grandfather. His second-oldest brother, Oleg, was named after their maternal grandfather. When Ivan arrived, only then was it proper to name him after Ivan Romanovich, Ivan Sakharov senior, since rushing too fast to glorify yourself as an individual, rather than your community and your ancestors, could be seen as running contrary to the collectivist ideals of the great Soviet Union. By the time his two younger brothers arrived, his parents were hard pressed for ideas; Yuri (for Gagarin) and Vladimir (originally for Lenin, though that has obviously acquired a different connotation those days) were clearly obtained by putting the names of national heroes into a hat and picking.

Five children was quite a lot for a Soviet-generation family, and Ivan doesn’t know anyone else his age with that number of siblings. After all, more children meant more time standing in line at Municipal Grocery Store #5 for food that has to be shared among more mouths, more worries about how to clothe and educate and accommodate them, more chances for one of them to go terminally astray and betray the family honor. Ivan wonders sometimes if his parents only really wanted Roman and Oleg, but decided to keep going as a matter of gaming the system, so much as it was able to be gamed.

By the early 1980s, the aging, decrepit, dying USSR, run by aging, decrepit, dying men, was in the grip of a demographic crisis so extreme that it was a contest between worrying about which one would end them faster: crazy President Reagan with his finger on the nuclear button, or the whole country just keeling over of old age. The idea of what a family even meant had been under constant challenge since the heady days of the Bolsheviks, who denounced marriage as a construct of bourgeoisie oppression and preached for free love and sexual liberation. Then it went hard back in the other direction during Stalin and the Great Patriotic War, holding up the traditional nuclear family as the highest ideal and offering rewards to mothers who had multiple children. Then it lurched away again. Abortion and contraception had been legal and freely available since the days of the revolution and most Soviet women made good use of them. Plus, of course, the obvious difficulties of maintaining a sizeable family when it was increasingly impossible to obtain even basic supplies and foodstuffs. It just made no sense.

Desperately trying to counter this slide toward self-inflicted obsolescence, the late-stage USSR came up with a number of incentives to boost the birth rate by any means necessary. They allowed mothers to refuse to list fathers on the birth certificate, to avoid social shame if he was married, foreign, a drunkard, or otherwise unsuitable, and beefed up programs to support single women with children. They also went back to the old-school plan of granting extra stipends, housing privileges, and state recognition to families that had more than two children, and Ivan himself was the third of his. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that he was almost surely conceived for the tax benefits.

Not, that is, that it didn’t work. When Ivan was born in 1984, the family lived in a tiny apartment on the tenth floor of a building with no elevator (or rather it did have an elevator, but it was always broken), crowded in with three single young men who were at the very bottom of the list for being assigned housing. By the time his youngest brother, Vladimir, was born in 1987, they had been moved to a small house of their own on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, not far from the bus that his father took two hours a day out to the mine. The cynical old joke in the USSR was that the people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them, though in Ivan Romanovich’s case, the work was backbreakingly real, even if the money wasn’t. He would come home exhausted and filthy after a sixteen-hour shift and yell at Galina Sakharova to feed him, bark at his sons, and then fall asleep in front of the television, only to get up the next morning and shuffle off again.

Ivan Ivanovich has spent a lot of time after he left home trying to understand what that kind of life would do to a man, mostly because he didn’t do it while he was there. Of course he didn’t. He was a child, and it was simply what he was used to, the only way the world could possibly be. On the night of December 26, 1991, as Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev signed the United Soviet Socialist Republics out of existence with a single stroke of the pen, Ivan remembers his father crying and swearing and throwing things at the wall, the heavy yellow-glass ashtray that always seemed unbreakable, perched on the kitchen table to collect the detritus of his constant cigarettes, smashed to bits just like their country, their sense of self, their security. It wasn’t as if life in the USSR was so wonderful. It was just the only thing they knew. Beyond that, there was nothing but the terror of the utterly unknown.

At any rate, the world didn’t end. The oligarchs moved in and began snapping up Russia’s newly privatized economy. Ivan Ivanovich, of course, had no goddamn clue about this either, aside from overhearing his father curse about it some more. He trudged through secondary school and left at eighteen, without even trying to proceed onto university. Those weren’t for someone like him, he knew that. Instead he got a job at the ever-troubled Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, and went straight to work on the factory floor.

It was around this time that the one disruption in his otherwise humdrum life, the one thing that stopped him from just settling into the same miserable existence as his father and going on like that forever, became too impossible to ignore. And that was the fact that no matter how much Ivan tried to squash it down, push it aside, or otherwise pretend it didn’t exist, he could no longer deny the fact that he was attracted to men, and only to men. He bought some of the cheap porn magazines from the tabak, tried to flip through them and get something out of the girls in heavy eyeliner and bleached-blonde hair, spilling out of their scanty lingerie, and just… didn’t. He wasn’t even interested enough to try a conversation with a real flesh-and-blood woman (not that Ivan had ever gotten through a conversation with another human being, especially a woman, without disaster) and see if it was different in the flesh. Nothing about the experience, even imagining it, appealed to him at all. But men…

He knew it wasn’t right, just because – well, you knew that sort of thing, you didn’t have to ask about it, you didn’t let on. But nonetheless, something, somehow, must have given him away, because one evening after the end of his shift, one of his coworkers cornered him in the back. His name was Konstantin and he was a few years older, big and bluff and constantly smelling like machine oil. He stood there, folded his arms, and said, “I will give you five hundred rubles if you suck my dick, Ivan Ivanovich.”

Ivan didn’t know how to answer. He had never spoken to Konstantin about anything aside from the job. He didn’t like him, he wasn’t attracted to him, and he didn’t want his filthy fucking rubles. He wanted to go home and take a shower.

And yet. He wanted to know. So when he went home, it was with five hundred rubles in his pocket, and a strange, indefinable feeling of something both excitement and shame. He looked it up later and found that it was barely seven American dollars, barely enough to buy a sandwich in this place he now lives. Then after that it became – not a relationship, not exactly. But he had done it once and Konstantin knew that he was at least theoretically willing, and there was no getting away from it now. Soon enough it became something of a regular thing, and then Konstantin wanted to try other stuff and not always pay, and if Ivan ever protested, Konstantin would threaten to get him fired from the factory or tell his family what they were doing. Ivan knew that he couldn’t let this happen, and besides, this was a relationship, or so he would tell himself. It was rough and it wasn’t very enjoyable and he didn’t like the way it made him feel, but it was probably the best he was going to get, here in this place, so he had no choice but to put up with it.

Until one night when his older brother came to pick him up from work, which he didn’t usually do. Something about it set off Ivan’s alarm bells, but he got into Roman’s battered old Zhiguli anyway. They didn’t head back toward the house. Instead they headed for the country, the narrow, crumbling road that led into the vast forests of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The city was often voted one of the most beautiful in Siberia, surviving even its long periods of grim industrialization with something of its soul intact. It wasn’t as cold as Yakutsk or Oymyakon, the places where it stayed at sixty below zero all winter long and boiling water froze when you tossed it out the window. Winters only got down to a few degrees below, and in Russia, that was par for the course. Ivan loved his hometown, and he was used to the outdoors. He was a sportsman, a natural athlete. He played hockey, bandy, football, rugby, and basketball (surprisingly popular in Russia). He swam and boxed. He was tall and tough and muscled and most people never bothered him. But when the car coasted to a halt in the middle of nowhere and Roman turned off the headlights, he was still terrified.

His brother said, “I hear you’re doing things, Vanya.”

Ivan didn’t answer.

“I hear you’re doing things with men.” Roman reached over and grabbed him violently by the shoulders, pinning him against the seat. “Disgusting things. I will not have one of those in the family, do you hear me? Do you hear me? If I find out that you have done it ever again, even once, I will make sure that you pay the price. Are you listening? Say that you understand.”

“Yes,” Ivan said. “I understand.”

What he really understood was that he was going to leave, when he had barely been out of Krasnoyarsk Krai in his life. Going as far as Novosibirsk for a shopping trip was unusual, and once, in school, he went to Georgia, which was the first time he had left the country (though of course, it used to be the country). But he knew that he could not stay here anymore, and in a moment of welcome serendipity, that was also when his conscription notice arrived. At the time, every Russian man over the age of eighteen had to serve two obligatory years in the armed forces (though it has since been lowered to one, of which Ivan does not necessarily approve), and his number had come up. So he quit his job, did not say goodbye to Konstantin or tell him where he was going, packed his few boxes of things, and moved four thousand kilometers and four time zones west to Moscow.

Ivan arrived in the capital trying not to present himself as a wet-behind-the-ears country boy, to act like he knew what he was doing, to show he was much tougher and meaner than any of these spoiled, pampered little children whining about how hard it was when they trudged into headquarters and presented their army notices. In that, he had a genuine advantage; he had worked hard for his whole life, he had already been through whatever could possibly endured with a father and four brothers, and he found the strict routines, harsh discipline, and predictable tasks of the army comforting. Everyone was scared of him, he didn’t need to try (though he did), and that was also gratifying. He worked hard and pleased his commanders, who tried to entice him to stay on as a full-time professional serviceman. There were many opportunities for a man of his talents, and more money than Ivan had ever dreamed of. As for his personal life, as long as he was scrupulously discreet and kept turning in good results, they would not trouble to enquire too closely. That was already better than from what he had expected with Konstantin. Once again, he thought it would be the best he got.

That was where, therefore, he met Aleksander Ilyich Morozov.

Morozov was his opposite in many ways – rich, well-spoken, well-educated, the son of a legendary KGB commander and the inheritor of comfort and privilege even in the lean last days of the USSR. He was about Ivan’s own age, but he had a self-possession and a gravitas that made him seem older. He had started training for a career in the Russian security services practically from childhood, and he had pegged Ivan as a particularly promising recruit. “You should come with me,” he said. “We would find an excellent career for you.”

Ivan was never sure how to respond when Morozov started talking like this. He admired the man and was admittedly attracted to him – not just the dark, elegant handsomeness, but the manifest air of being a person who mattered, who made the rest of the world sit up and take notice and play by his rules – and while he knew that Morozov was ruthless, he wasn’t bothered by that and was willing to do the same when it was called for. Ivan didn’t see the world as some nice candy fairy place where good deeds were always rewarded and violence was always wrong, not least since he knew full well that it didn’t work like that. He didn’t have time for these idiots who thought they would get out there and hold hands and change the world with the power of sunshine and kisses or whatever it was. He didn’t.

Then there was one night when Morozov was at Ivan’s apartment, and they had been drinking and making big plans for ruling the world behind the scenes, and Ivan forgot himself entirely and leaned over the table and kissed him. He tried to pull back almost at once, but Morozov didn’t resist. In fact, he leaned in and put a hand behind Ivan’s head and kept him there, and in that moment, Ivan knew that while this might not be personally objectionable for Sasha (his sexuality was undiscussed but evidently fluid), that wasn’t the reason he was going along with it. It was because he knew instinctively that it was a perfect way to control Ivan, to harness his attraction and his weakness and his willingness to go along with whatever Sasha wanted, and in that, despite all the big plans they had put together and the way Ivan had dreamed of his life changing, it was just Konstantin all over again, and Ivan was straight back at the factory on his knees, small and cornered and powerless. It was visceral and it was wrong and it wasn’t the best he would ever do and he wasn’t, he wasn’t taking that.

They pulled back and Sasha made an enquiring noise, like he wanted to know if Ivan was interested in sealing the deal, and instead Ivan ordered him to leave right now, get out. That was the end of their friendship; they never spoke to each other again, and when his third year in the army ran out, which he had already taken voluntarily, he left. He got a job at some Moscow industrial plant and it was there, through the friend of a friend, he met Nadia Zhabina. And it turned out that she was queer (the first time he had ever heard the word spoken in a good way, something he wanted to be, something he didn’t mind accepting, rather than as an attack), and it turned out after that that she had a friend she wanted him to meet, only it clearly meant that she thought they should go out. Like. On a date.

Ivan flatly shut her down. He did not date, he did not want to date, he did not think he would be good at dating, he did not want to meet some pansy city boy from Nizhny Novgorod who he would immediately dislike, and he was not going to do it, the end. Only Nadia really seemed disappointed, and maybe it was not the worst thing to try a little. This would backfire terribly, he would get over it, and move on with his life.

In Ivan’s opinion, the first date with Fedyor Mikhailovich Kaminsky was, at least on his own behalf, a modest success. He was unavoidably late, thanks to the bus running behind schedule, but he introduced himself, his hobbies, and made it clear what sort of person he was and what he was interested in. He even sent a polite follow-up text with an invitation to meet again. There. No questions, no confusion, everything very straightforward and clear. Nothing to complain about. That was how you did a date, yes?

It turned out, however, that Fedyor Mikhailovich was either very reticent, or perhaps confused, or maybe he did not even know that they had been on a date and Nadia had not clearly explained to him. Burned by his experiences at home, knowing how easily word could get out to the wrong people, Ivan did not want to bring up the subject explicitly, but he had to admit to a considerable confusion. Maybe Fedyor actually liked to just mince around Moscow city parks together, like something out of a Tolstoy novel, or to sit on his couch and watch bad American action movies together. (Later, Ivan learned that Die Hard is actually something of a cult classic, but it’s still slightly lost on him.) That wasn’t bad, because Ivan – to his great bafflement and wariness – liked spending time with him. Fedyor wasn’t like him at all, but they clicked nonetheless. He was the exact kind of idealistic activist that Ivan had long disdained, but it was different with him. When Fedya talked, he liked to listen, to dream about a world that really did work that way. It didn’t, but it felt closer.

Besides that, he was cute. He was well-put together. He was charming and vivacious and could talk to people that they met, while Ivan stood scowling with his hands in his pockets and wondered how long this was going to take. He really desperately wanted to kiss Fedya (and for that matter, do other things to him), and he found himself thinking about it a lot. But what if it was like with Sasha again, and it was either Ivan opportunistically taking it for himself, or Fedya selfishly trying to keep him there, to use him for his own purposes? Maybe Fedya was the idiot. He had to know they were together, right? Or were they together? Ivan suddenly wasn’t sure. Damn it! Why didn’t Fedyor subscribe to the school of just being clear about things? Ivan himself had nothing to do with the problem.

But then there came that night, and Fedya cooking dinner and stumbling through trying to ask him if they were maybe something, and in that moment, Ivan found it all so hilarious that the only thing he could do was sit there and let the whole thing play out. Then it turned out, of course, that they were together, and that Fedyor kissed him just as deliciously as Ivan had imagined, and maybe Nadia Zhabina was not so wrong after all.

Maybe she was not wrong in the least.

Ivan takes his supermarket bags to the sunny kitchen of the mostly-remodeled apartment and sets them down. Fedya has picked out all the colors and wallpapers and furniture and paint, and Ivan has done most of the work, since he is gainfully employed as a handyman and repair-person and he doesn’t want to pay some American to half-ass a job that he can do better. The apartment is really quite lovely now. The living room has been done in a pale, springy green, the white plaster moldings washed and repaired, all the junk of the previous owner finally cleared out except for one or two collectibles that they decided to keep. There’s a bookshelf and a desk filled with Fedya’s work things, a couch and a television and a coffee table and new curtains. The bedroom is big and airy, with a ceiling fan and new carpets. Framed pictures and art pieces hang on the wall. It looks like a place where real people live.

Ivan makes breakfast, cooking and stirring and brewing the coffee, and puts it all on a tray. It’s Saturday, so of course Fedya is still asleep, and Ivan pads through the apartment to the closed bedroom door, balancing the tray on his hip long enough to open it and cast a strip of light inside. It takes a moment, but Fedyor rolls over, groggy and tousled and very, very cute with his bed-headed dark hair and squinting eyes. “Vanya? What smells so good?”

“Happy birthday, my love.” Ivan sets the tray on the bedside table and leans down to kiss him, as Fedyor makes a happy humming sound and throws his arms around Ivan’s neck, cuddling against him like a barnacle. “I have made you breakfast.”

(His younger self was wrong, and he has never been so glad of it.)

(This was the best, this is the best, this was waiting for him, this kind of happiness could happen for him, and he is grateful beyond all words that he fought for it and believed it until it did.)